Sunset Cinema Club

on Wednesday, December 17, 2008
At the weekend I had the pleasure of seeing four bands for free at Clash magazine's first afternoon gig at the Notting Hill Arts Club in London. Run by Mike Diver, formerly of DrownedInSound fame, there should be plenty more in the future following the success of this effort.

I've already written about three bands that were on offer (Cats In Paris, Good Books with new "shoegazey" material, and Johnny Foreigner) but I genuinely felt they were all outdone by the opening act, Sunset Cinema Club. That's not to say their sets were particularly awful, just that Sunset Cinema Club really impressed me. Especially considering I thought they were a bit of a shouty mess when I first heard them a while back. If this blog post were a film, this would be the scene where I overcome my prejudices.

sunset cinema club session mp3

Anyways, so Sunset Cinema Club = shouty mess no longer. Well, maybe still a bit shouty. But now I've seen the error of my ways. 'Hardcore' in particular, with its recollections of Distophia and semi-likeness to Hot Club de Paris is a track that possibly supercedes anything by those two bands. Except I'm getting a bit carried away. Still, other songs like '7Eleven' prove that 'Hardcore' is no one-off and also show off their dazzling variety of influences from post-hardcore riffage to r&b/soul softly-softly vocals. Post-powerpop.

With a Japanese album already out but no sign of a UK version (although you can buy the import from [Norman Records], it'll be interesting to see where Sunset Cinema Club go from here. They have a shedload of demos on [their website], which I haven't had time to listen to but seeing as quite a few appear on the album (in finished form), I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a few more gems there.



I was pretty inspired by Sunset Cinema Club but not as inspired as I was when I first saw the [following video]. It swedes 40 inspirational film speeches (and a few extra triumphant moments to boot) into two minutes. Favourite lines include "SHAAAAAAAAAAAAME ON YOU" and "you're like a big bear, man". Quality stuff. Good music too, from Patrick Doyle's soundtrack of 'Henry V' apparently. Try to name all 40 films if you like, I got about half.



Oh and I now have Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/keephopeinside - add me or whatever it is you're meant to do with it. Cheers.

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