Big Tea Blog: Archive

Ghost BC - Infestissumam - Album Review

Ghost BC’s love affair with the Devil continues… [[MORE]] Changing your name must be quite annoying, but when your identity exists in a state of cowled mystery and no one knows who you are anyway it probably makes little actual difference. It certainly hasn’t for Scandinavian heretics Ghost, whose second album has had to be delivered under the moniker of Ghost BC to satisfy some...

Apr 11th

Nineteen Years Today - RIP Kurt Donald Cobain

In memory of one of the great departed… [[MORE]] Nineteen years today. Almost two decades. The few all too brief years in the early nineties when Nirvana were the biggest band on the planet seem so long ago now. We’ve been without Cobain for far longer than we were with him, yet his star burns as bright today as it did back then. No band since Nirvana has conquered the world quite like...

Apr 5th

My Bloody Valentine - Hammersmith Apollo,...

Going deaf never sounded so good… [[MORE]] “Earplugs. You’re gonna need ‘em,” says the girl handing out little packets of orange foam to My Bloody Valentine’s audience as they file into Hammersmith Apollo. MBV’s reputation for eardrum-splitting volume is legendary. Mention the loudest band you’ve ever seen, and inevitably people will agree, it’s either MBV or Motorhead. I remember a...

Mar 14th

Sound City: Real to Reel - Album Review

From the stage to your stereo via the big screen, it’s Dave Grohl’s mixed bag of punks and rockers and Paul McCartney… [[MORE]] Yep, he’s been busy again. I’m beginning to wonder if Dave Grohl does actually sleep – and whether he allows the other Foos to too – as he seems to find so much time for his various and never ending projects. On the back of his Sound City documentary...

Mar 7th

Sound City Players - Kentish Town Forum - 19th...

Dave Grohl’s traveling band bring Sound City to London… [[MORE]] Enough has been said and written about Dave Grohl being a workaholic. Those epic gigs, endless collaborations, tours, movies, supergroups, handing out Brit Awards, making Soundgarden look silly on Segways…so now that’s out of the way let’s focus on his current Sound City Players project and it’s live incarnation...

Feb 21st

Atoms For Peace - Album Stream

Yorke, Godrich, Flea - what could possibly go wrong? [[MORE]] Well not a lot actually. The album isn’t half bad. Review to follow, but have a listen yourself first… Tweet us your thoughts @bigtearecords Big Tea is now a record label! Our debut single is a limited edition 7” hand numbered white vinyl by the fabulous Absolute Monarchs. Stop by our website by CLICKING HERE to have a...

Feb 20th

Psych For Sore Eyes - Sonic Cathedral - EP Review

Psychedelia is back! [[MORE]] If there was a ‘packaging of the year’ award, I imagine Sonic Cathedral would probably be in with a good shout for it for the double 7” Psych For Sore Eyes. It’s not every release which comes with 3D glasses, the hues of which are reflected in the two pieces of green and red 7” vinyl containing six slices of trippy psychedelia. We’re only in February, but it’s...

Feb 20th

Kraftwerk - Tate Modern - 13th February 2013 -...

German electro pioneers Kraftwerk take on a whole new dimension… [[MORE]] “Cold, calculated, distanced, magnificent,” reads the text I receive shortly after stumbling out of the Tate Modern, trying to readjust to three dimensions without the aid of complimentary specs. The message is referring, of course, to the sublime Kraftwerk show we have just been privileged enough to see; this...

Feb 14th

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away -...

The fifteenth album of a glorious career finds Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in reflective mood…[[MORE]] The new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Album is a thing of rare beauty. Cave is an irrepressibly prolific artist, gifted with his words, and with the Bad Seeds complimented by a band who’s sense of atmosphere and ambiance in the music they underpin Cave’s often dark, sometimes very hard to...

Feb 8th

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My Bloody Valentine - mbv - Album Review

After more than two decades, My Bloody Valentine return in captivating fashion… [[MORE]] The wait for the My Bloody Valentine website to load seemed nearly as long as the 21 or so years it’s taken for this most precociously talented of bands to finally release the long-awaited, much anticipated follow up to their classic masterpiece Loveless. At 3am, having gotten only as far as entering...

Feb 5th

Big Tea's 25 Best Albums Of 2012

We’re bound to have missed plenty, but here’s some we enjoyed this year… [[MORE]] So, as 2012 draws to a close and there’s little left to be released now (except that long awaited My Bloody Valentine record…oh…), it’s time for another rather rambling and pointless list of what we here at Big Tea Records enjoyed this year. We’ll start with the albums, then the 7s,...

Dec 20th

Soundgarden - Shepherds Bush Empire - 09.11.2012 -...

Grunge legends deliver stunning career spanning set… [[MORE]] Some eighteen years ago or so, Soundgarden became the first band to play at the newly renovated Shepherds Bush Empire. Since then, their career has rocketed, peaked, dipped, dissolved and now gained new momentum since the reformation that has brought about the new record King Animal, the album cover art providing the pale...

Nov 13th

Soundgarden - King Animal - Album Review

The Knights of the Soundtable ride again…Soundgarden’s new album King Animal reviewed… [[MORE]] April 9th, 1997. Tensions in Soundgarden are coming to a head. Two months earlier, Ben Shepherd has stormed off stage in Hawaii, not to return. Chris Cornell plays the encore alone. By April 9th, Soundgarden are over. With grunge having faded, and Soundgarden’s stylistic shift away...

Nov 8th

Death At Sea - Drag - Single Review

Death At Sea’s debut single offers genuinely fresh, exciting new UK guitar music… [[MORE]] This is only to be a short post, but having recieved my copy of Death At Sea’s debut 7” single ‘Drag’, backed with ‘Selfless’, we felt compelled to pen a few words about this remarkably good single. Death At Sea hail from Liverpool, where their three guitar...

Oct 23rd

Nine Black Alps - Borderline, London - 15.10.2012

Manchester’s finest neo-grungers Nine Black Alps serve up a seventeen song treat… [[MORE]] Nine Black Alps seventeen strong setlist in London’s Borderline earlier this week served as a reminder as to just how good this band were, still are and continue to be, long after their departure from a major label you get the impression probably stifled them during their two album spell...

Oct 17th

The Libertines - Up The Bracket - A Response To...

The Libertines’ debut is ten years old, but what was better, Up The Bracket or the soap opera that surrounded it? Did the music live up to its protagonists? [[MORE]] Last week’s NME was dedicated to celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Libertines’ Up The Bracket, an album the nation’s favourite sycophantic weekly music tabloid fatuously proclaimed to be “…one of the most...

Oct 17th

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah! Don’t...

Godspeed You! Black Emperor return with a truly captivating new record… [[MORE]] Sometimes, a band really have been away too long, you notice the space where they used to be, it aches and moans and screams to be filled. It’s a void, a gap, almost impenetrable. Almost. Then they reform and it can go one of two ways. Firstly, the old magic is well and truly gone and chances of it returning...

Oct 16th

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Toy - Toy - Album Review

Toy’s eponymous debut record has been attracting lots of praise,have they earned it? [[MORE]] From the ashes of Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, one of the many bands never to fulfil the potential the media initially saw in them and quickly forgot about once their debut album had been released, or in Joe Lean’s case never actually released, sprung Toy, featuring three former members....

Sep 26th

Soundgarden confirm new album release date!

Soundgarden finally confirm release date for King Animal… [[MORE]] At last! Been waiting for this news for so long now, and finally it drops. Regular readers of the Big Tea Blog will know we like Soundgarden a LOT, so we couldn’t resist this very brief missive to post the trailer for the new Soundgarden album, titled King Animal and set for release on November 13th 2012. Take a...

Sep 19th

Green Day - ¡Uno! - Album Review

We take a listen to the first of Green Day’s three new albums, and find ourselves pleasantly surprised with the first installment ¡Uno!… [[MORE]] So, there’s three new Green Day albums to come over the next few months, imaginatively titled ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tre!, and the band have been super-busy with little club shows and guerrilla gigs at Reading Festival to promote them, the...

Sep 19th

At The Drive-In - Brixton Academy, 28.08.2012 -...

Post-hardcore legends At The Drive-In return after twelve years to finally finish the Relationship Of Command tour [[MORE]] It may only have taken them twelve years, but At The Drive-In have finally concluded their Relationship Of Command tour, which was curtailed by over-indulgence, excess and a breakdown of the band’s own relationships just as their star was beginning it’s acute ascendency....

Aug 29th

Walking Papers: An Interview with former Screaming...

Walking Papers is the new band from Barrett Martin, Duff McKagan and Jeff Angell. Big Tea Blog caught up with Barrett for a quick chat… [[MORE]] “The supergroup tag has always seen a bit over overblown to me,” observes Barrett Martin, drummer for the sadly defunct Screaming Trees, as well as grunge collective Mad Season and now Walking Papers, his new project with former Guns N Roses...

Aug 28th

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Refused - Kentish Town Forum, 12.08.2012 - Live...

It’s official: Refused are not fuckin’ dead… [[MORE]] It’s not every day you get chance to witness a live resurrection. Refused, legendary Swedish post-hardcore punk band, were, in their own words, ‘fuckin’ dead’ until announcing earlier this year that they weren’t dead anymore and instead were set to tour the world, picking up from where their career had come to a rather...

Aug 22nd

Dinosaur Jr - I Believe In Sky - Album Review

The third installment from the reformed Dinosaur Jr arrives shortly on PIAS, and it’s as good as ever… [[MORE]] I Believe In Sky marks the third album by the classic line-up of Dinosaur Jr since their reformation in 2005, when Lou Barlow, Murph and J Mascis regrouped to continue the legacy which began back in the 1980s. Their brand of brooding indie rock, dominated by Mascis’...

Aug 19th

Polica - Give You The Ghost - Album Review

Poliça’s debut album Give You The Ghost is as haunting as the title suggests [[MORE]] Regular readers of the Big Tea Blog will probably be aware that our usual focus is on guitar bands, with an unashamed leaning towards the grunge bands of the early nineties slightly more prominent in our ramblings and musings than most others, but every now and again a record piques our interest that...

Aug 19th

Ty Segall Band - Slaughterhouse - Album Review

We reckon the Ty Segall Band have released one of the albums of the year in Slaughterhouse. Have a read why… [[MORE]] I love letting the needle fall on a record that from its very outset is destined to be as loud as fuck and pulverise not only your eardrums, but your speakers too. The sludge and feedback which opens the Ty Segall Band’s quite marvellous Slaughterhouse fits just this bill,...

Aug 2nd

Afghan Whigs make free track available to download

Exciting news from the Afghan Whigs [[MORE]] It’s been a little while since last we posted anything, but that isn’t because we have nothing for you, we have lots of exciting content coming up over the next month which will include reviews of new albums from Dinosaur Jr, Ty Segall and Polica and live reviews of Grant Lee Buffalo and the Refused to come too. And, of course, we’re preparing the...

Aug 1st

Soundgarden - Hard Rock Calling, Hyde Park, London...

Legendary Seattle grunge outfit Soundgarden return for their first headline UK show in sixteen years at Hard Rock Calling in London’s Hyde Park [[MORE]] The forecast is looking a bit grim, the sky as dark and foreboding as the chorus section of the ‘Black Hole Sun’ video, so perhaps it’s quite fitting the inclemency of the weather is in line with Soundgarden at perhaps their most...

Jul 18th

Pearl Jam - what would your setlist be?

Pearl Jam allowed a fan to choose a setlist in Amsterdam last month, given the same opportunity, what would your setlist be? [[MORE]] Pearl Jam’s gig on June 27th in Amsterdam was highly notable for the fact they allowed a dedicated fan to choose the setlist they played that night. It’s not the first time they’ve done something like this either, having once allowed the road crew to choose the...

Jul 11th

Gladiators Eat Fire - psychedelic hardcore from...

Anyone for a bit of Psychedelic Hogwash? Our writer Charlie Farmer tucked right in, here’s his thoughts… [[MORE]] Gladiators Eat Fire are a metal / grunge / psychedelic hybrid band with pretty good potential. Opening track ‘Dispossessed’starts with sludgy Black Sabbath doom riffs, with some nice gut ripping shouting and a swap to Black Flag like hardcore halfway through the song. So...

Jul 4th

Garbage - Not Your Kind Of People

Garbage return with their fifth album Not Your Kind Of People, and it’s a mixed affair. [[MORE]] Amongst the drunken memories of Britpop, of floppy hair and hideous green trainers and Adidas tracksuit tops, somewhere in the ether lurks distant recollections of Garbage actually being quite good. The fact that Butch Vig was the drummer was enough for the grungers, still grumpy in 1995 after...

Jul 3rd

The Stone Roses - Heaton Park - June 30th 2012

Finally the Stone Roses Heaton Park reunion shows are upon us, but was it worth the wait? Did it justify the hype? [[MORE]] Mooching about outside Heaton Park, waiting for the gates to open and the heavens to close, there’s a buzz about this evening’s Stone Roses gig which is palpable, yet quite hard to really describe. The more obvious paint splattered t-shirts and Reni hats don’t really tell...

Jul 2nd

Pearl Jam - Isle Of Wight Festival - June 23rd...

The rain holds just long enough for Pearl Jam to light up the Isle Of Wight Festival. [[MORE]] Hailing from Seattle, Pearl Jam are probably used to the rain by now, and certainly accustomed to the threat of it at least. As they take the stage at the Isle Of Wight festival the clouds above are looming ominously, grey and heavy with rain, and it’s only a matter of time until the monsoon picks up...

Jun 28th

Indie On The Move - The Ultimate DIY Touring...

Being an unsigned artist is tough. Indie On The Move will make life much easier for you…read on to find out how. [[MORE]] The music business really can be a bitch, ask the countless hard working bands who are systematically ignored by labels the world over, usually in deference to something oft mistakenly considered cool but turns out to be either too late, too soon or too much of the...

May 8th

Silversun Pickups - Neck Of The Woods

Silversun Pickups deliver their stunning third album Neck Of The Woods and finally come of age, read the review below… [[MORE]] From the very outset of their career, Silversun Pickups have consistently delivered dynamic post-grunge rock built around gentle, reserved vocals and melodies, urgent guitar parts and a rare gift for inventive songwriting and arrangements. Whilst their first two...

May 4th

Richard Hawley - Standing At The Sky's Edge

Richard Hawley goes all grit and dirt for new album Standing At The Sky’s Edge, but does it work? [[MORE]] Richard Hawley’s past few albums have been the indie equivalent of easy listening, beautiful, sombre records patterned with lots of instrumentation and Hawley’s deep croon, but all very similar to one another. Standing At The Sky’s Edge sees him adopting a heavier, dirtier,...

Apr 27th

Jack White - Blunderbuss

Since the White Stripes ceased to be a going concern in 2011, there’s been plenty written about a Jack White solo album and now finally Blunderbuss is here. [[MORE]] There’s always the feeling with Jack White that perhaps he gets a little easily distracted, jumping form one project to another, from the White Stripes to the Raconteurs to the Dead Weather to the Raconteurs and so forth, but...

Apr 22nd

Red Fang - Camden Underworld - 18th April 2012

Bearded stoner rock from Portland, Oregon’s fabulous Red Fang, live at the Camden Underworld, April 18th 2012. [[MORE]] Some bands were just born to play small, dank, rammed venues and blow the roofs off them, it’s not that the bigger stage wouldn’t suit them or they don’t belong there, it’s just a case of the glove fitting, and fitting well. Having been created in a basement in Portland,...

Apr 19th

The Dandy Warhols - This Machine

As The Dandy Warhols prepare to release their ninth studio album This Machine, we wonder if it’ll be any different? And do we want it to be? [[MORE]] Since being dropped by Capitol in 2007, the Dandy Warhols’ career hasn’t stalled as many bands’ do when the financial clout and backing of a major label is suddenly withdrawn. Their career has generated eight albums to date, this being their...

Apr 17th

Absolute Monarchs - 1 - Album Review

The next big thing from Seattle? We review Absolute Monarchs debut album on Good To Die Records. Blimey, where to start with this record. Let’s start with location, and see where we end up. We all know what happened in Seattle in the early nineties, the great music, the attitude, the tragedies. The legacy. When Kurt decided enough was enough, devoid of its one true megastar the grunge scene lost...

Apr 9th

Lee Ranaldo - Between The Times And The Tides

Post Sonic Youth, Lee Ranaldo sets out on his own, with a little help from his friends. [[MORE]] In the wake of Sonic Youth’s hiatus following the demise of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordons’ marriage, Lee Ranaldo hasn’t been sitting around on his laurels wondering what to do with his new found free time. Instead, perhaps using up some of the material that Sonic Youth aren’t going to, his solo...

Mar 13th

Whirr

A short, sweet interview with Sergio Miranda of Californian shoegazers Whirr. Released to criminally little fanfare in 2011, Whirr’s debut Distressor EP was a dreamy blend of early nineties shoegaze and latter day psychedelia, awash with lots of fuzzy distortion and whispery vocals which populated seven blissful songs. As they prepare for the launch of their first full album on Tee Pee...

Mar 5th

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Revolution Gospel Choir - The Revolution EP

Revolution Gospel Choir, side project of Low singer and guitarist Alan Sparhawk, give away free Revolution EP. The internet may have dealt a bitch of a blow to the music industry, stripping artists and labels of their rights, utterly screwing traditional retail outlets – look at poor old HMV (that’ll teach you for marking everything up way beyond its worth for so long) – and fostering the...

Feb 29th

Alice In Chains - Dirt - Retrospective #2

Alice In Chains announced a fortnight ago that the grunge legends are entering the studio to record the follow up to 2009’s comeback record Black Gives Way To Blue. For the next instalment in our Retrospective series we re-visit their seminal record Dirt and ask was this actually grunge’s finest record? Music is full of stories of serendipity and pure chance, without these odd moments in time...

Feb 24th

Mark Lanegan Band - Blues Funeral

The seventh solo album from Mark Lanegan arrives via 4AD Records on February 6th and it’s already causing a stir. We take a listen to Blues Funeral and give you our thoughts on this astonishing record. Read on… [[MORE]] Mark Lanegan is a workaholic. If he isn’t having a folky moment with Isobel Campbell, he’s volunteering some gritty vocals for long time friend and collaborator Greg...

Feb 2nd

Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream - A...

As Siamese Dream approaches its twentieth birthday, and following on from the recent remastered editions of both Siamese Dream and Gish released by EMI, the time seems right to look back at this fabulous record, one of the greatest records of its time. Smashing Pumpkins’ finest hour, and Billy Corgan’s insurmountable masterpiece. The date was July 27th 1993 when Virgin Records...

Jan 18th

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The Return Of Shoegazing

There is a theory that popular music moves in approximate twenty year cycles, that the trends of one moment in time will become, two decades later, an evolved and opaque reflection of that which went before. Added to this is the idea that musical trends never really go away, they simply lurk in the underground until the kids of twenty years ago, the A&R men of today, sign their teenage wet...

Jan 13th

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