LEND THEM YOUR EARS - 24/01/11 - LOW DUO

Good day one and all, here is another Lend Them Your Ears, where I offer up a new act for your listening pleasure - this week, it's incredible purveyors of "highly emotive minimalist guitar pop music" - Low Duo.

As their name (and the above picture) suggests, Low Duo are a duo. In fact, they are a pair of brothers from Sheffield, if we're going to get all precise about it. Listening to their tracks, it is easy to forget that they were formed just 5 months ago - the sparse sound of their songs crackles with a quite remarkable depth of feeling that lures you in, gently but firmly.
Despite being such a young band Low Duo already have a 5 track EP out, available from http://lowduo.bandcamp.com/ for just £1, which is incredible value - what can you even get for a quid these days? One and a half Creme Eggs? 117 Nepalese Rupees? Anything in Poundland? Needless to say, the EP, entitled The EP of Hope and Despair, offers much better value than all of these and purchasing it could turn out to be one of the wisest things you do with your money all year. To give you a taster, the opening track It Was You and Me is available as a free download below.




All 5 tracks follow a similar template - a single voice over a single guitar or piano, singing songs of, yes, hope and despair which are equal parts romantic and dark ("some people will die, some people will fly to the moon" ). These songs get under your skin and creep up and down your spine, firmly lodging themselves somewhere deep inside you, their simplicity making them incredibly easy to get immersed in. It really is amazing how much Low Duo get out of such simple, stripped back arrangements - they leave you on the edge of your seat, genuinely touched, and there's so little going on musically that you really wonder how they do it. Maybe they're a pair of shamans, who knows. What I do know however is that this is truly brilliant music that you, yes you, should be listening to.



The band are already working on a follow up EP and have a slot supporting Sound of 2011 nominee Anna Calvi in February to look forward to, as well as other live dates over the next 2 months.
You can find more information at www.myspace.com/lowduo and http://www.facebook.com/lowduo

After the mash-ups of Girl Talk, the industrial goth of Silk Flowers and now the minimalist melancholy of Low Duo it feels like something is out of kilter around here but don't worry, I'm sure there will be something with some glockenspiel, ukulele and hand-clapping mentioned on this blog in the not too distant future...