There is so much to love on "Ford" by London's alt rock art punk noir Modern Woman that if you think to hard about the emotional edges and apparent or non apparent influences you will just sit in your own sweat gobsmacked and unable to speak. I am kind of feeling like that right now. As the song started with a delicious bass line, love the slide as part of the rhythmic persuasion, the guitar notes fall on top of it in such a perfect but totally surprising way (LOVE the guitar notes / shapes) courtesy of front person / songwriter Sophie Harris and she shares:
“‘Ford’ has been one of the oldest songs in our repertoire. I wrote the bass line loop for it a long time ago, one day when I only had a bass to hand. I structured the song and added guitar and simple vocal. I wanted to give it a raw and slightly sinister feel to it. We can spend an incredibly long time working a song in our practice space before we ever play it live, so we wanted to make sure that energy resonated through the recording”
She adds, “Lyrically, it is about a girl who borrows her brother's Ford and drives it around. For Juan’s vocals towards the end of the song, I went with a William Burroughs-esque cut up technique and collected different car-related writings, chopped them up and reformed them.”
Sophie's vocal aesthetic, with a potent artistic flair has elements (to me) of baroque pop blending with post punk / art punk all twisted through raw alt rock personas. It is as if Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, Concrete Blond and Siouxsie Sioux (Susan Ballion) got together and had a scrappy musical child. Dig this so much.
She adds, “Lyrically, it is about a girl who borrows her brother's Ford and drives it around. For Juan’s vocals towards the end of the song, I went with a William Burroughs-esque cut up technique and collected different car-related writings, chopped them up and reformed them.”
Sophie's vocal aesthetic, with a potent artistic flair has elements (to me) of baroque pop blending with post punk / art punk all twisted through raw alt rock personas. It is as if Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, Concrete Blond and Siouxsie Sioux (Susan Ballion) got together and had a scrappy musical child. Dig this so much.
Modern Woman is wonderfully rounded out by Juan Brint-Gutierrez on bass, David Denyer of percussion, violin and samples and Adam Blackhurst on Drums and is a follow up to the band's well received debut EP "Fighting In My Dream".
The track comes accompanied by a video directed by the band’s previous collaborator Sandra Ebert filmed in the Cambridgeshire countryside, and it was produced & mixed by Oli Barton-Wood (Porridge Radio, Nilufer Yanya, Obongjayer) and mastered by Jason Mitchell (PJ Harvey, Dry Cleaning, Aldous Harding).
-Robb Donker Curtius
(see LIVE dates below)
The band will be on the road with festival appearances including Latitude and End Of The Road, as well as a tour alongside Sub Pop’s TV Priest in the winter.
July 22nd - Suffolk, UK @ Latitude Festival
Aug 13th - Nottingham, UK @ Bodega
Sept 1st-4th - Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival
Sept 24th - Sheffield, UK @ Float Along Festival
Oct 30th - Bristol, UK @ Louisiana *
Oct 31st - Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds *
Nov 1st - Dublin, IRE @ The Workman’s Club *
Nov 3rd - Manchester, UK @ YES Pink Room *
Nov 4th - Glasgow, UK @ Broadcast *
Nov 5th - Leeds, UK @ Belgrave Music Hall *
Nov 7th - Cambridge, UK @ Portland Arms *
Nov 8th - Leicester, UK @ Firebug *
Nov 10th - London, UK @ Scala *
Nov 12th - Southampton, UK @ Joiners *
Nov 13th - Brighton, UK @ Green Door Store *
* W/ TV Priest
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/modernwomanmusic
https://modernwoman.band/
https://open.spotify.com/track/0tezhBKVdSXhhab63oiPp7
London-based Modern Woman began life as the songwriting project of Sophie Harris, a literature graduate who started playing the songs solo at spoken word nights she ran. An introduction through a mutual friend led her to meeting David Denyer, an Anglo-German-Armenian composer by trade whose interests include Merzbow records and building his own instruments and pedals. The two started playing together with Denyer playing an array of homemade violins, synths, effects and percussion - including a battered wooden table with a metal colander nailed into it and jagged remnants of cymbals that take a pummelling throughout the band’s live show.
After a period of comings and goings of different line ups the band was completed by the driving rhythm section of bassist plus occasional saxophonist Juan Brint Gutiérrez and drummer Adam Blackhurst.
The band’s music, still based around Harris’ songwriting, explores a diverse range of sounds drawing from their melting pot of influences from post-punk and 60s folk music to free-jazz and noise. Lyrical nods to myth and folklore sit amongst songs that range from poetic monologues, stripped back folk songs to the ferociously experimental.
Playing their first show in the later half of 2019 the band quickly built a word of mouth following around their incendiary live performances gaining early fans in influential peers like IDLES, Squid and black midi, before lockdown cruelly stopped them in their tracks.
** At this particular time we find ourselves in a financial pinch due to many factors. We want to keep AP going. It has been a passion project for over 13 years. PLEASE consider donating, we could really use the support. Thanks so much
We get by with a little help from our friends
Modern Woman, London, Sophie Harris, "Ford", alt rock, post punk, art punk, gothic, dark, punk noir, sinister, Official Video, noise rock, experimental, blended genres,
The band will be on the road with festival appearances including Latitude and End Of The Road, as well as a tour alongside Sub Pop’s TV Priest in the winter.
July 22nd - Suffolk, UK @ Latitude Festival
Aug 13th - Nottingham, UK @ Bodega
Sept 1st-4th - Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival
Sept 24th - Sheffield, UK @ Float Along Festival
Oct 30th - Bristol, UK @ Louisiana *
Oct 31st - Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds *
Nov 1st - Dublin, IRE @ The Workman’s Club *
Nov 3rd - Manchester, UK @ YES Pink Room *
Nov 4th - Glasgow, UK @ Broadcast *
Nov 5th - Leeds, UK @ Belgrave Music Hall *
Nov 7th - Cambridge, UK @ Portland Arms *
Nov 8th - Leicester, UK @ Firebug *
Nov 10th - London, UK @ Scala *
Nov 12th - Southampton, UK @ Joiners *
Nov 13th - Brighton, UK @ Green Door Store *
* W/ TV Priest
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/modernwomanmusic
https://modernwoman.band/
https://open.spotify.com/track/0tezhBKVdSXhhab63oiPp7
London-based Modern Woman began life as the songwriting project of Sophie Harris, a literature graduate who started playing the songs solo at spoken word nights she ran. An introduction through a mutual friend led her to meeting David Denyer, an Anglo-German-Armenian composer by trade whose interests include Merzbow records and building his own instruments and pedals. The two started playing together with Denyer playing an array of homemade violins, synths, effects and percussion - including a battered wooden table with a metal colander nailed into it and jagged remnants of cymbals that take a pummelling throughout the band’s live show.
After a period of comings and goings of different line ups the band was completed by the driving rhythm section of bassist plus occasional saxophonist Juan Brint Gutiérrez and drummer Adam Blackhurst.
The band’s music, still based around Harris’ songwriting, explores a diverse range of sounds drawing from their melting pot of influences from post-punk and 60s folk music to free-jazz and noise. Lyrical nods to myth and folklore sit amongst songs that range from poetic monologues, stripped back folk songs to the ferociously experimental.
Playing their first show in the later half of 2019 the band quickly built a word of mouth following around their incendiary live performances gaining early fans in influential peers like IDLES, Squid and black midi, before lockdown cruelly stopped them in their tracks.
** At this particular time we find ourselves in a financial pinch due to many factors. We want to keep AP going. It has been a passion project for over 13 years. PLEASE consider donating, we could really use the support. Thanks so much
We get by with a little help from our friends
Modern Woman, London, Sophie Harris, "Ford", alt rock, post punk, art punk, gothic, dark, punk noir, sinister, Official Video, noise rock, experimental, blended genres,
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