THE NORTHERN DRONES
DUBLIN, COUNTY DUBLIN
the northern drones
more info/music of the band on the myspace page
www.myspace.com/thedronesmusic
videos and live recordings here
youtube.com/thenortherndrones
new album to be released july 2010
2009 recorded album 'fanfare meltdown' with seattle poet kim acrylic
available from here
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/katnd
Thanks to Michael Johnson for this latest review in issue 9 of Nemesis To Go http://www.nemesis.to/records.htm
Kim Acylic & The Northern Drones
Fanfare Meltdown (Soundstudio)
An oddity, this - but an engaging one. Here we have the result of a transatlantic collaboration between Kim Acylic, a coffee house poet from Seattle, and the Northern Drones, a band from Dublin. This album, on which Kim declaims her beatnik poems over mantra-like backing music supplied by the band, was apparently put together without either party meeting in person.
You can hear the spacetime mismatch in the production, to a certain extent. Kim's vocal is down in the mix in a way that I suspect wouldn't have happened if everybody had been in the same room when the recording was made. But for all that, there's a scuzzy appeal here, and a real sense of lower east side beat-era grooviness. The band sets up a bohemian groove and dances the mess around. Kim paces through her words with deadpan deliberation. She's got exactly the right voice for her poems - the way she enunciates 'Rock 'n' roll' on the title track is worth the price of admission by itself.
Weirdly, there's no real attempt to coordinate the words and music. Sometimes, it all fades out, mid-poem, and then fades in, randomly, before vanishing again. The effect is a bit like listening to an uncharacteristically laid-back Lydia Lunch over an ill-tuned radio, through a drifting haze of hallucenogenics. It's all quite weird, but never less than compelling.
Uncle N Aug2010
"Ying/yang symbiotic state"
(reviewer magazine)
June 24th, 2009
Kim Acrylic and the Northern Drones Fanfare Meltdown
Review by J. Darren Lee
Beat poetry and psychedelic rhythms is what one immediately thinks when listening to Kim Acrylic and the Northern Drones’ ‘Fanfare Meltdown” for the first time. But it is so much more than that. Influenced heavily by classic experimental bands such as The Velvet Underground, and by beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg, the music beats out a haphazard melody accompanied by the soft lilting voice of Kim Acrylic. Her poetry is deep, dark, heavy and definitely born from Kim’s life experiences as well as the darker side of Kim’s hometown of Seattle. The lyrics ooze the city’s well known dark, gloomy atmosphere of loss and struggles, whether they are personal relationships, or personal demons.
The music especially highlights the vocals in a peculiar way, in that the music itself is not what adds to the heavy darkness embodied by the lyrics. The music is light, the vocals dark in a kind of yin/yang symbiotic state that brings together a whole picture of being. With driving bass guitar and drums, and twangy guitar rhythms, the songs bring the listener on a journey of dark exploration.
However, the music seems to overpower the soft vocals at some times and drowns out Kim’s poetry as in songs like “Girl Afraid”, and sound quality is not consistent throughout the album. Other than this small production issue, fans of psychedelic experimental music will find “Fanfare Meltdown” a dark, but enjoyable musical trip. “Fanfare Meltdown” can be obtained at the band’s myspace site myspace.com/kimacrylicthedrones, or at cdbaby.com/cd/katnd.
"It's Really Good"
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
newest band review
It's really good, makes me want to smoke pot, drink a little, and drone out. Right up my alley. Should I review a little first impressions? Yes, critically speaking, it sounds like old nineties underground music advanced by timeless lyrics and poetry, sometimes almost sounding like Lydia Lunch's better work, with Sonic Youth's pop sensibilities. Seemingly under produced for that old school reel to reel tape sound, though the beat marches through with twangy guitars dancing psychedelically around the slow droning bass lines, all pleasantly ditching out of typical hypnosis with Kim's beautiful poetic lyrics stabbing the surface aimlessly around a reckless cadaver's chest. Inspiring both visually and mentally, it isn't hard within a few sweet seconds to close your eyes and go to a distant fantasy. Truly thirst quenching for a dried up and redundant music scene. I'll be sure to check you out live sometime if you let me know when you play out.
Sylus Melbourne
Regarded (mainly by themselves), as an anti-pro tools band, the northern drones mostly record their music live to tape, with minimum effects and edits, with no effort to polish up their sound to replicate the overproduced clean and stale approach favoured by many contempory bands.
Usually they play drones rather than songs, sometimes repetetive, maybe hypnotic, but mostly in tune.
Irrespective of whatever noises are goin on, the northern drones will continue to threaten to release records and play live or dead whenever suits them, or others.
The Drones formed in Dublin 2008, when an unplanned myspace account was accidently set up. Within months the band had recruited over 40 friends, some of which even left comments on the Drones own personal page.
This encouraged the band to record and upload more music, and they became "the northern drones" after receiving bad mushroom-induced imaginary death threats from the previously unheard of australian gothic band The Drones.
Even tho the northern drones argued that there had also been a punk band from manchester around the time of the Buzzcocks, who were also called The Drones, and the fact that the northern drones music was far more droney than anything the australians could muster, therefore entitling them to be the real drones, the threat of tennis court action left the band no option but to adopt the northern lewinsky into the name.
This was no bother as two of the band were from the north of Ireland anyway, and the basser was German (tho not from the northern part, more the west)
The Northern Drones got their own back however, when in late 2009, the Australian Drones were forced to cancel their much hyped gig in Dublin, due to the guitarist injuring his big toe when someone dropped a delay pedal on it.
Although this unfortunate incident had nothin to do with the northern drones, they nevertheless felt that justice had been done.
drums J mcdaid, bass Inga eichler, guitar/ voc steve L
new album is recorded and to be released on independent soundstudio label in july 2010.
...or maybe august.
