A band with one of the most google-unfriendly names you’re likely to come across, apart from perhaps The The or as a certain member of our editorial team discovered last week, the name of up-and-coming chanteuse Fanny, The Men return this week with a brand new, ferociously engaging record entitled Open Your Heart.

It’s four sets of very tired eyes that greet us as we catch up with the Brooklyn post-punk four-piece, busy unpacking their gear in a migraine-inducingly bright CAMP Basement. As the band indulge in a bit of quiet time before the evening’s festivities commence, the phrase ‘calm before the storm’ has never felt as relevant as at this particular moment. Perfectly charming, yet indubitably knackered, the band’s show at CAMP Basement tonight will mark their final European date before heading home for a few weeks’ well earned R’n’R.

“It’s been long. 34 shows or something? 37 shows? It’s been long but it’s been good, it’s all been good,” explains vocalist and guitarist Mark Perro. “There have been a lot of good shows in good cities… We go home tomorrow, then we’re home for like, 12 days. Then we’re doing a two and a half week tour in the US down to Austin and back for SXSW. Not much of a break, but it’s all right,”

And exhausted they will be. 34 (or 37, whichever it may be) shows is an impressive feat for any performer, and an even more impressive achievement when the band is reputed for pouring every inch of their spirit into each show. It’s their kinetic, rugged performances that have earned The Men their current status as one of the most galvanizing forces on the live circuit, and you don’t get accolades like that if all you do is turn up and mince about the stage.

“Athens was a really wild show,” says drummer Rich Samis of a favourite show from their latest stint of gigs. ”It’s a really wild place right now. To be there at the time we were was pretty cool - the next day there were these protests and riots. And we played with some great bands there too, this band called Acid Baby Jesus who were really good. They’re really cool people and a really cool band.”

Heralded for the energy and ferocity of their live show, the band are equally as applauded for their albums, the latest of which dropped this week via Brooklyn based Sacred Bones Records, also home to Zola Jesus, Crystal Stilts, Woods and Moon Duo. Mention of the new record ignites a spark in the band, who brighten up at the mere thought of finally being able to share their newest effort with their fans. “I’m anxious for it to come out already so we can stop being in this middle period…” says Perro. ”I mean, we recorded it a year ago, so it’s a long wait to have all these people talking about your record that haven’t even heard it yet. It’ll be nice to have it out there and stop it being this mysterious thing that no one knows anything about.” Have any of the new tracks made it onto the latest setlist? “A bunch, four or five songs.” And have they gone down well? “Usually! If we’re not too tired!” says Perro through a burst of apologetic laughter.

Open Your Heart marks the third full length record from the Brooklynites, and appears just eight months after its predecessor, 2011′s Leave Home. “We recorded it with this guy Ben, who’s actually – once Tia [current bassist] finishes this tour – going to start playing bass for us full time,” explains Perro. ”He actually recorded Leave Home as well and he used to run a studio in the basement of this Catholic school in Brooklyn that has since closed down. So we recorded there with him over the span of six or eight sessions, not too many times. The first day we got completely shut down because they were shooting a film upstairs. We turned on our amplifiers and the producers all came down and said “No… not going to happen.”” Suggesting that you weren’t providing a suitable soundtrack to the scene they were shooting? “No, I guess not! Apart from that, it was a pretty normal recording session I guess, I mean nothing too difficult or strange. We had a pretty good idea of what we were trying to do and we had most of the songs pretty together and formed before we got there, so we just banged them out.”

The Men have certainly had an eventful last 12 months. Having spent the earlier days of their career cruising along at a relatively modest pace, last year’s release of Leave Home saw the band catapulted into a tempo of touring and working that they’d not experienced before. So how has that been? “Things have definitely changed. We’ve been busier, that’s for sure – there’s a lot of things to do outside of the music all of a sudden which is not something we’re used to. There’s more people involved, more people have an opinion over what we’re doing and have ideas about what we should and should not do, so that’s different. And not necessarily in a good way. But sometimes in a good way, so in that sense, it’s really different. Musically, you’re still going to be doing the same thing, it’s just that the world outside of the music has become a lot more complicated. Which is good and bad. It is what it is.”

This grounded attitude has served The Men well over the past 12 months as the band have embarked upon intensive tours alongside the likes of Iceage and Milk Music. They have a refreshingly blunt, no nonsense, no bullshit approach to the business pressures that have tried to increase their hold over The Men throughout the past year, yet the band continue to retain a sure sense of steadiness and direction as to what is it they want to do, rather than what, according to some, they should be doing.

“There’s a lot of people that are involved in our band and outside of the band that try to put us in all sorts of different situations,” Perro explains. “We try to weigh each one and avoid being all over the place because a) that’s stressful for everybody involved, b) within the band that’s stressful and then on top of that, you don’t want to be all over the place because it’s all oversaturated. To see “Oh yeah, Rich had a croissant this morning!” on the internet. Who wants to see that?”
“…How do you know that?!” asks a slightly disconcerted Rich.
“You told me you had a croissant this morning!”

Oversaturation certainly is an issue in modern day music. ”Yeah we try to avoid that,” Perro expands. ”We think about that. I think it’s a lot easier to put yourself out there now so I think people really use that. But I think we need to be careful not to do that. Anybody can have a website and a Twitter and Facebook and all this other crap. Is all that stuff really necessary? Or is it just overcrowded pollution? Noise pollution.”

After a quick jaunt through the influences over Open Your Heart, (“Cheap Trick. Big Star. 70s rock, country. We listen to everything”), the story behind the title track of the album is broached. “I just came up with it in like, two minutes on the couch.” says guitarist and vocalist Nick Chiericozzi. ”It was real easy. It reminded me of a Tom Petty and Frank Black song called… something about the moon. And it sounded good! It’s one of those things, those are usually the best songs, the ones that take the least amount of time.”

And that’s exactly what makes The Men so endearing. There are no media led marketing ploys, they’re not constantly striving to break down barriers. They’re creating music spontaneously, passionately and honestly and with the pressure and nature of the current musical climate, that’s probably one of the hardest traits to retain. Exhausted as they may be, fatigue does nothing to hinder the thunderous performance that rouses and rattles CAMP Basement later in the evening. A packed out crowd quivers into a swaying, sweaty mess as The Men unleash their decisively intense, yet surprisingly accesible set to a riff hungry crowd. This level of acceptance might not be what they had in mind at the offset, but this band might just turn out to be exactly what we’ve all been waiting for.

Open Your Heart is available now through Sacred Bones Records.

Quite often when speaking to artists about their journey through music, the subject in question will have a few tales to tell about previous projects. Be that as a member of an embarrassing ska-punk band while in Sixth Form, or an acoustic performance of a heart wrenching indie song designed to win the heart of the guy or girl they’d set there sights on, more often than not, musicians will have been involved in other projects before their current one.  It’s not that often however, that the artist in question started out as a bona fide pop star in her native region, with MTV awards to prove it. But that’s exactly the case with Karin Park, better known nowadays for her dark and brooding synth led compositions than her pop tinged beginnings.

As we catch up with Karin Park, she’s in Paris in the midst of a tour with SBTRKT. “We also just played with Azari & III… in Brussels. Both acts are really good so I’m really happy to be on tour with them.”

“The response [at the shows] has been overwhelming. I actually think the gig with Azari & III the other day at Botanique was one of the highlights so far. I just wasn’t expecting the reaction we got but 650 people started dancing and screaming right away and completely stayed with us through the whole set. It was great.”

Karin Park has spent the last year on the road, writing, recording and is now preparing to unleash the fruits of her labour in the shape of her fourth album Highwire Poetry, an invigorating mix of industrial pop, electronic inventions and heart-wrenching observations.

2004 saw Park release her first album, a hugely successful record entitled Superworldunknown which propelled her into the Norwegian spotlight. The music is worlds apart from that which Park associates herself with today, so how does she feel about her first album now?

“For me, there are a lot of emotions tied up in my first album, even though I feel like a completely different person now. It was kind of a musical childhood with both good and bad memories. I’ve felt overwhelming happiness and I’ve cried my heart out in hotel rooms, made confused statements and been totally depressed. It’s been an interesting journey!”

“I try to avoid hypothetical questions, as they leave my brain boiling. I’m sure I would have changed something [about my first album] but it doesn’t feel like it matters. I know I’ve learned a lot but I don’t really regret anything.”

Originally from Sweden, it was in Norway where Park first made her mark having left the small community of Djura, Sweden for the bright lights of Oslo, stopping off in Japan along the way. “I grew up in church where my parents made me sing every Sunday from an age of 5 and we moved to Japan when I was 7. We lived in the countryside in Japan too so there weren’t really many influences outside of our church before I got my first Whitney Houston cassette at the age of 10 and my brother discovered Metallica. My first serious love was Depeche Mode. We listened to Kraftwerk, Front 242 and things like that but my love for that came later when I discovered analogue synths properly.”

Living in such a tight knit community meant that Park was quick to turn to music for entertainment, “I was 6 years old when I made a lullaby for my younger sister and brother which they made me sing for them every night,” says Park. “I played the piano from 10, but didn’t really compose much before I was 16. Then I started to record my own stuff.” Park continues to make music with brother David today, him being her sole band member taking on the responsibility of a variety of instruments, mainly drums and bass, as well inventions that we’re not so familiar with. “Well, you see the equipment we want to use for our live shows doesn’t really exist yet,” explains Park, “so we have to build some of it ourselves.”

“[David and I] were kind of bitter enemies until the age of 20. We didn’t really know each other that well until I phoned him up in 2004 and said I needed a really good drummer. He started on drums, then he played guitar for a while, then he went to bass but now he is back on the drums and bass at the same time. He is the master of multitasking. We write some of the music together as well. He’s the best partner and we hardly ever fight anymore… David is the instrument genius. He is so creative when it comes to finding ways to play our quite special live set. He plays the drums and the bass at the same time and we have created a set up where we can experiment and be impulsive on stage.”

Highwire Poetry is Parks’ fourth album, an album more intense, more stylised and more experimental than anything she’s released up until this point. ”I wanted to go deeper in to this electronic journey that I had started on [previous album] Ashes to Gold. One day I got a song from Barry Barnett in the UK [producer of 5 tracks on Highwire Poetry] that he wanted me to write on. He didn’t know me. He had just heard my music from Myspace and his label contacted me.”

“So I wrote a song, they loved it and State of the Eye recordings flew over to Norway to see me. I really liked them and they ended up signing me for a whole album based on one song. That song is called ‘Thousand Loaded Guns’ and is now on the album.”

Park then went on to work with producer Christoffer Berg, who having already produced the likes of Fever Ray/The Knifeand Little Dragon proved to be a perfect match to Park’s style and approach. It hasn’t been a completely seamless process however, as using a writing approach that Park was unfamiliar with proved to set the journey of making this album off to a very bad start indeed. ”I actually had my first proper ‘writing session’ with some professional hit makers this time,” she says. “I thought it would be fun to try it. Me and these guys had a 3 day session. I CRIED the second day when I walked to the studio. I felt emotionally raped and just hated every second of it.”

“I take music very seriously. Maybe too seriously sometimes. But songwriting is an emotional process for me and not just something that you put together carelessly. So that didn’t work out. But then I hung out in the studio with Barry, Johnny McDaid and my brother David who’s got the same approach as me and loves music in the same way I do.”

The first single to be taken from Highwire Poetry is ’Fryngies’, a driving piece featuring hypnotic, dark electronic tones and nuances (“I love bass and beats so I’ve been focusing a lot on that”) with Park’s mesmerising, striking vocal providing the focal point. “Well, it’s kind of [a song] about looking forward,” says Park of the single, “pushing ahead and don’t let the monsters in your life get to you even though they are everywhere. You know the times when you feel that everything is just coming at you. It’s too much to take and you’re nearly drowning.”

An exceptional performer, an extraordinary writer and someone with an inspired approach to creating honest, progressive and exciting electronic music, Park is a very interesting prospect for 2012 indeed. ”Start out strong, and keep increasing.” says Park of her work ethic. “My dad told me this and it’s a motto from a Swedish cross country skier called Sixten Järnberg.” Strong in music, strong in mind, strong in attitude, this is certainly not the last we’ll be hearing of Karin Park.

Karin Park will release ‘Fryngies’ on the 5 March 2012, with Highwire Poetry due for release this Spring. Karin will be playing White Heat at Madame Jojo’s on the 6 March to mark the release.

Porcelain Raft first leapt to our collective attention back in 2010, when his track ‘Tip of Your Tongue‘ went…well, viral. In no time at all, the tantalising tones of the hazy, heady song were rattling around blogs and sites as far as search engines could reach. Made from the hands of the then London, now Brooklyn-based Italian Mauro Remeddi, ‘Tip of Your Tongue’ succeeded in engaging everybody that was lulled into its path, and went on to spawn some great remixes too.

Fast forward to the early days of 2012, and Remeddi is driving up to Scotland, excitedly awaiting the imminent release of Porcelain Raft’s first album Strange Weekend. “We just played two shows [with M83] and it’s been so much fun. On stage I’m joined by Michael on drums, so now that we’re two, the sound is way richer, there are more details – I’m having so much fun!”

‘Hype’ can be a contentious creature, and the resulting pressure can often entice artists to travel in all of the wrong directions. So with the attention generated by ‘Tip of Your Tongue’ following Remiddi around, was there any sense of pressure to speed along and strike while the iron was hot, so to speak? “No, I didn’t feel pressure” he states. “We say that about that song now but back then, it didn’t feel like it was anything special. But I also think that in my case, momentum is not what I’m looking for. After that track came out, I had a lot of interest in the sense of  ‘how would you like to support it?’ so I started playing live. That’s what I wanted to do, more than recording an album. So basically, instead of recording and signing  a deal, we started to play live and did that for a year and it was amazing. So I just took my time and then when I felt like making a record, I just did it.”

Whenever Porcelain Raft is described or discussed, the manner in which the music is made is always a subject that comes to the forefront. Remiddi has made no secret of his recording habits, and of the fact that the early Porcelain Raft tracks that garnered him so much attention were recorded alone in his London bedroom. “I had to use headphones, and I couldn’t really sing loud, and I couldn’t use drums – I was in a flat – so sometimes, my music had this feeling of intimacy just because of that. Because it couldn’t be otherwise” says Remiddi of the process. “I just decided to stick with [that method], to play in a room, to not have any producers – just me by myself having fun with my music. But instead of being in my bedroom, I thought ‘let’s go somewhere where I can actually play drums and sing loud’. Then I could go more into details about things. I wasn’t just forced to be intimate or quiet, I could’ve been loud if I wanted to. So it just meant freedom.”

Having created each minute element of the music himself, the project must feel like such a personal thing, so how does Remiddi feel about opening the music  up to another participant on stage?  ”Even if something is personal, the important thing is to leave space for somebody else to come in and feel what he wants to feel as well” he replies. “So you’re telling a story, but you’re not dictating the feelings – you might feel one way about the story, but someone else might feel differently. So the important thing is to leave that space for somebody else to project his own feelings and in that sense, it’s been great.” The location of of the creation of Strange Weekend may have differed from that used for the making of 2011′s Gone Blind EP, but did time led to any other major changes? ”The process was still exactly the same,” Remeddi states, “the idea of composing and recording a song in the same day, and trying to not over-produce it, not over-think it. The approach was very similar, I didn’t want to change that. My next album probably won’t be like that, I’ll do what I feel like. It’s not like I’ll stick with this just for the sake of it, but right now, it really represents me.”

“I sit down recording, and then maybe improvise some lyrics and a melody, and then I’ll listen back to it. Sometimes, when you just say random things for the sake of finding a melody, actually those things that you’re singing randomly start to make sense. So I’ll start to listen to what I just sang and a sentence can start a feeling, and a sentence can start a story. I create the image that the sound will follow.”

Strange Weekend comprises a refined collection of glimmering, lovelorn, swooning melodies. It’s an album full of tender tunes, while remaining bright, vibrant and lively. It’s a body of work that could in no way have been created by a novice, but who’s saying that Porcelain Raft is indeed a novice? In fact, Remiddi boasts an eclectic music CV, to say the least. Playing piano for a New York tap show, composing film scores and playing gypsy klezmer music with the Berlin Youth Circus are all listed as previous professions, implying that Remiddi’s musical training has been far from ordinary. “I wanted to experiment and see if I really liked it. And then I’d move on and do something else. So they all make sense in my life, because I’m doing what I’m doing now because of those things.  They made me understand what I really like and what wasn’t a very good fit for me.”

With Remiddi currently in the process of creating a number of videos to accompany the album’s tracks, it’s easy to spot the fact that each song harbours a distinct personality and message, with each song telling a story and some inciting a certain sense of nostalgia, especially for the composer.  ”I like ‘Unless Speak From Your Heart’. I had so much fun with every song but I remember that one because it was summer and I was finishing the album, so it was just adding details – I didn’t have to record anymore, it was more about editing. And I remember that all of my friends were out having beers, it was such a beautiful day and I thought ‘argh, I really have to finish this!’ So I thought ‘ah, fuck it’ and I got some beers and I recorded the track in one day, just because I wanted to. I was drunk and singing and composing this song, and it was fun! That was the last track I recorded for the album.”

Thankfully, the anticipation roused by those first whisperings of ‘Tip of Your Tongue’ have amounted to something which very much lives up to expectations. As a first album, Strange Weekend is accomplished and as an antidote to that dull, wintery sensation that seems to thrive in these January days, it’s perfectly fitting. As Mauro Remiddi prepares to climb back into his tour van to complete his journey to Glasgow, he offers an insight into what the year will hold for Porcelain Raft: “I have my laptop with me and I’m going to make a video for most of the songs while I’m on tour” he explains. “Then I have so many songs that I didn’t actually release, that were recorded for this album. I recorded maybe 20 songs for this album, and then decided to just use 10 but there are these ten songs that I love, so I think I want to do something with them. There’s lots of material to work on.” Prolific as ever and completely unphased by the kind of attention that would’ve melted someone with less experience and drive, Porcelain Raft is sure to make 2012 into whatever he wants it to be, and while we’re waiting to see what that is, we’ve got a great record to be listening to.