#7bitarcade

[marriagesband]

7BitArcade Reviews ArcTanGent // Marriages

photos by Nick Sayers

Marriages (featuring ex-members of post-rock group Red Sparrowes), are yet another great find. Tender and hypnotic vocals from their singer Emma Ruth Rundle, lie tastefully on top of delayed and eerie guitar, where the focus is on the texture and overall feel of the song rather than on non-stop riffage. I’m watching Marriages a fair distance away from the stage, and I find that I’m enjoying them far more with my eyes closed – happy to be led into the imaginative sound-world that they create. An acquaintance who is watching them with me is such a convert that he immediately buys Marriages’ latest album, Salome, from the adjacent merch stand.

to readfull article // reviews click HERE.

[megananndowning]

[baconchinblog]

Grazi 7BitArcade, You've been a great friend

7BitArcade spawned from a really bad idea on one drunken night after university had ended. It was more, ‘what the hell can we do whilst playing games and drinking’ than “how do we create a successful music blog” but what happened was the latter (whilst sprinkled heavily with the former). For 5 years now, 3 if you count the relaunch as the start, I’ve been heading up 7BitArcade as the top dog, co-owner or whatever title you want to give me but now that will come to an end. I still remember some of those early days where a podcast microphone and a slurred mind created fantastic content. 

As of the 1st October 2014 (that’s like tomorrow), I will be relinquishing my control over 7BitArcade and giving it over to those who I am sure of will make the website ridiculously successful. Yes haters, I said I was leaving earlier in the year but complications arose and I stuck around a bit longer. It’s hard to leave something that you have invested 110% of your time into whilst abandoning every other part of your life to concentrate on it (Lindsay I’m sorry). 7Bit blood flows through my veins but now it’s time to unhook and have a transfusion with a blood type that is more of a Firebox shade.

7BitArcade has helped make me who I am today; that’s doesn’t include friendships of which I have made many just by pretending to be an editor and by having ideas that are so far fetched they should not have happened, but did. 

Dropping yourself into an unknown business idea really helps craft you and makes anyone adapt to the situation. It’s a piece of advice that Ollie (Editor 405) gave me a long time ago. Other pieces of advice that he suggested will long remain hidden. If you don’t know how to plan a project or an event, learn. If you don’t try you will never know; a statement that has taken me above and beyond my remit but has nonetheless brought about so many opportunities. Live fast kids.

7BitArcade will now be owned in full by Jonathan Dadds, Natt Day, Antony Lusmore and Michael Williams. They are the go to guys for everything based around 7BitArcade and I wish them the best of luck going forward. Working with them has been both stressful and enjoyable, but mainly stressful. Fingers crossed that we will get suitably drunk at this final shindig by the lock in Camden at the weekend.

What will I be going on to do I hear you cry? Well first of all I will be focusing full time on my role at Firebox, which will require all of my creative juices however, further on in the future, there will be something. I’m not sure what the full plan is yet, but there are ideas flowing around.

Before I 100% go, I need to do some thanks.

Time for some namedropping.

Thanks to Alan Teader for teaching me bits about business; Ben Cordell for putting up with fits; Goc O'Callaghan for advising me on event management and being an incredible individual; Oliver Primus for being blunt. Wil Cook for being blunter; Josie Curtis for always supporting 7BitArcade from it's conception. Jack Clothier/Kev Douche for always being behind 7Bit; All at ILikePress,Gravy, Division, Charmfactory, ALTPR, Premier PR (from the gaming times). If i've missed anyone, I'm sorry but this isn't a last will and rites. 

Special thanks go to 7Bit team past and present. Jonathan Dadds for allowing me to stab him* and still be ok with me; Natt Day for organisation but still being annoying; Harry Bandell for revolutionising our new music section; Michael Williams for agreeing to every video idea I have ever had; Antony Lusmore for being an incredible writer but just shit at life; Morgan Williams for such a strong brand presence; Lucy James for proving that you can be successful from Newcastle. Katy Hatch/Ashley Brancker for putting up with tight deadlines; Lindsay Allan for sticking with me.

To the rest of you, love and kisses; Also i'm no longer relevant to your press releases. 

P.S. Please stop emailing me now KTHXBYE PR.

P.P.S. My adam@7bitarcade email address will still work for a while as i’ve got nowhere near to the end of moving subscriptions across to [email protected]

P.P.P.S. You can find me over at @baconchin on twitter, but let’s be honest that’s where you probably came from to read this.

* It was a plastic knife. 

[praisetheloud]

Bristol based Iran Iran's superb set at ArcTanGent Festival 2014

[7bitarcade]

Hey Tumblr, sorry it has been so long

We have neglected Tumblr a lot recently. It wasn't meant to be this way! We're sorry home of animated Gif's and Supernatural fans but we just got caught up in progressing the pursuit of exclusive music. Tough times there it really is; Swept away by post rock. Beaten up by shoegaze. Is that the right way around? Who knows. Either way, Tumblr we are back and so much has happened since we last chatted. 

Games are back! TV & film are making their debut whilst Professional Wrestling is a field we are dabbling in. All of this swings the pendulum of thought to one question. Why is 7BitArcade returning to a content medium that it dropped a few years past?

It's pretty simple really

We have always loved games and we believed the time was right to slowly bring the medium back in to complement the quality music writing that we were & are creating. The video game market is changing all the time and we have got content creators on board who appreciate this; they appreciate that video content should be done without pretension but with a pure unadulterated love for the games they are playing. it's a refreshing outlook on the genre that we all know and love. 

The plan is to build on a strong history of video game journalism and make sure that all of our writers will be appreciated for the work that they do.  

So what about the music?

The music will never stop and there is no way in hell that we will let the quality of music writing drop. Instead we have actively been recruiting a number of top quality writers and video content producers to help with the next stage of 7BitArcade music. More on that in the near future. 

Who is where and doing what

All change please. All change. 

Since we last spoke, Adam Libonatti-Roche has dropped back from being a  co-owner of the site and is now in charge of business & development due to taking the role of Tech Editor at The 405, hence making Jonathan Dadds the owner of 7BitArcade.

Natt Day remains as Editor & Track of the Day and Antony Lusmore continues to head up Band of the Day whilst also taking a firm grip on the Pro Wrestling section. 

After working on the ArcTanGent project in 2013, Michael Williams has become our head of video production and will head up a number of huge projects that we are working on for 2014-2015. 

That's it for today. We will have more over the next week. 7BitArcade out. 

[ellaesmith]

Here on Yuck’s second album original front man Daniel Blumberg is missing and guitarist Max Bloom has taken the reins to guide Glow & Behold into a different space than that of their self-titled 2011 record. Sometimes a bands internal lineup changes, and that can be for the better, but here I’m not so sure. It’s not so much Blumberg’s absence that causes such doubt but rather the album itself. It lacks in grit and simply blurs itself into the atmosphere. Yet having said that, blaming Blumberg’s nonexistence for the result of this record devalues Yuck as a whole. This record is good, but when compared to their replayable debut it feels hollow.

Glow & Behold was produced by Chris Coady whose work ranges from Smith Westerns to dreamy Beach House and noisy synth pop band Cold Cave, which links to why on this record you can see Yuck have accumulated a load of sounds. They still have the ability to create fuzzy 90’s songs while also bringing the surroundings down a mark to enter a tenderly overcast environment. Their debut already exposed their CD collection and as far as I can tell, they haven’t strayed all too far. With lusciously shoegazey songs like “Loose My Breath” and “Rebirth” which all sound like a less-noisy fuzz that could exist on a My Bloody Valentine album, while others just sound like a weak and exhausted remake of what we previously knew. “Memory Fields” is a loosely gripped ballad that scratches the surface of “Suck”, while “Middle Sea” holds the catchy hooks that “Get Away” or “Georgia” were smothered in. However, all of their songs even those that tenuously stand out, all lack edge. Yuck were never an in-your-face band but they had character in their subtle individuality, their 90’s sound served perfect for Blumberg’s gloomy lyrics and now Yuck seem to fall into the category of that band with the ‘alright’ second album.

Glow & Behold feels like an album that was pieced together to prove that Yuck can do it alone without their front man. They have become a replication of pretty good bands and subsequently sound like a pretty good bad. Whether you love, hate or are in limbo with this record, you will inevitably always go back to Yuck’s self-titled album to become awash with nostalgia because this album purely isn’t the same.

[ellaesmith]

Essentially, I’m in a totally different place now to where I was when I first came across Balance and Composure. Back in 2009, their EP ‘Only Boundaries’ came out, I was sixteen and at the time, it was probably one of my most play records. It held the depth of Brand New’s influential ‘Devil and God’ record with the vocal catchiness that made you able to sing along to every word. They were the new band on the scene and subsequently made everyone want more. After said EP came a split with Tigers Jaw and a year later their 2011 album, ‘Separation’. ‘Separation’ was a clean, tight and forthcoming album for a band that had only formed four years ago. With great confidence, it seemed that they had put themselves on a landmark that was already filled with many similar bands. Yet, Balance and Composure seemed to hold a profundity that others didn’t. It’s now 2013, and my taste in music has swayed in many directions, meaning that I rarely, non-ironically, listen to bands that stem from an ‘emo’-esque genre. However, The Things We Think We’re Missing has a track called “Ella”, so how could I turn down? (For those who don’t know, Ella is my name).

This record is as good as 2011’s Separation. Their sound hasn’t strayed, but the vocal hooks have arguably improved. Vocalist Jonathon Simmons’s nasal harmonies are ever present, while thumping drums and ominous melodic guitars provide a noisy background to bring the album back down to their typical alt-rock sound. The album opener, ‘Parachutes’ tempts you in for a miniscule twenty seconds, and then you’re hit with a bang and realise what you’re in for- a 13 track album where all you want to do is air drum like you did as a grungy teenager. The album runs and runs, each song channels into another and the only difference between the tracks are (at times) Simmons’ mid-tempo singing over a minimal guitar riff which adds a weighty texture to the total record. Apart from this, thanks to Simmons’ voice, the album is catchy, ‘Tiny Raindrop’, is undoubtedly one that stays in your mind.

It’s probably hard for bands to keep their intensity while trying to create an album that is accommodating to all sorts of people, and speaking for myself, someone who can be unapologetically narrow-minded when it comes to music, this record is engaging. It’s riff-ridden and everything you want from a band of this genre. ‘Reflection’ is four minutes of invigorating yet gorgeous music. The album improves on itself with each impending track. For a genre that can be occasionally generic, here is an album, which holds variety while keeping itself genuine.

Balance and Composure have put out an album that brings all people, like myself, back down to earth. They’ve won and made us realise that they are still accessible. This is an album to be listened to authentically, and if you’ve not dropped your ‘ironic only’ wall by the final thirteenth track, then this album is wasted on you. For Balance and Composure, ‘The Things We Think We’re Missing’ is an expression of a poignant void, but for me, it was this.

[flamingirls]