Tag Archives: Tiger Mendoza

Tiger Mendoza – New Ideas album

Released 21st April 2019

Described by Tiger Mendoza’s Ian De Quadros as “A remix album. Of sorts”, New Ideas takes the collaborations forged across previous EPs – 2017’s “Old Ideas 1” and 2018’s “Old Ideas 2” – and explores a kind of reciprocal collaboration alongside two new tracks.

There are four versions of the originally grungy hip-hop “Maverick Souls” from “Old Ideas 2”; Asher Dust’s earnest vocals get a variety of interpretations, the most striking of which is the swift two-minute remix by Didcot’s hardcore punkers Worry, who cover it with a wall of frantic sampling and noise.

The remix by Carterton’s Dan Clear of “Missing You” – with vocals from Lucy Vee and rapper Half Decent – becomes an even more blissed-out stark juxtaposition of choppy rap and the ethereal, while “Jazzer” is transformed by REELS from what Nightshift originally described as a “hypnotic afro-hop babble” into a starker, more frantic house number, and by Breezewax into a slower and surprisingly even more hypnotic piece that gives the beautiful the acoustic guitar and orchestral backing of the original more prominence.

New track “Find You” has vocals from Kate Herridge from Reading’s Ocean Ruins; her shaky “Am I not enough?” refrain loops over heavy beats and reverbed synths – and eventually crunchy guitars – to create a mesmerising whole; the other new track, “Perish The Thought”, which will feature on Asher Dust’s upcoming final album, is an off-kilter hip-hop meld of seemingly detuned guitars and Asher’s trademark paradoxically menacing yet comforting vibrato voice.

The sheer variety of approaches explored justifies the rationale of giving a track of one genre to a musician from another and seeing what they come up with. The album is therefore well worth exploring, especially since the profits from the release will go to The Oxford Foodbank. Above all, however, New Ideas is a fresh testament to the cohesion of and bonhomie between the Oxford music scene at a time when such harmony and unity is sorely and sadly needed.

From Nightshift, April 2019

Tiger Mendoza and David Griffiths – Along Dangerous Roads EP

November 2014

Electro-rockers Tiger Mendoza have been descending into darker industrial hip hop of late, but their (or rather his, this release’s incarnation effectively being a solo project) new EP Along Dangerous Roads, a collaboration with ex-Eeebleee and Witches chap and latterly solo artist David Griffiths, draws on both parties’ influences of computer game music and soundtracks – with a quite hypnotic result.

Now That Days Are Colder is a synthesis of rhythm and orchestra on a claustrophobic scale, like a mini-Hybrid. This theme continues in the swooping violin-led title track, which is punctuated by frenetic, impatient beats and descends into snipped-up nu-skool breaks like it’s the turn of the millennium again and Adam Freeland will be along any minute to remix the hell out of it.

In Desperate Times is a Bedouin-flavoured heavy soundclash that would serve an espionage thriller well, and Eating Crayons is archetypal first-person shooter video game music: an Orb-like pulsating drone with bleeps that takes you through a dimly-lit shipwrecked spacecraft on an unfamiliar planet, stalking pursuing aliens.

On the one non-instrumental, Literature and Life, David’s hushed and measured vocals are underpinned by a plaintive cello while percussion batters around them. The slow and steady resultant tension is palpable.

Home Is The Sailor is reminiscent of ambient electronica proponent Ulrich Schnauss with its relentless drifting of beats above layers of strings. The beats remain delicate as the strings are joined by grinding guitar in a compelling juxtaposition of the whimsical and the sinister.

While video game and film soundtracks work with the visuals and action to consolidate the experience for the player or viewer, these tracks tell stories themselves; melody and mood combine into something evocative and compelling.

 

From Nightshift, November 2014

2014

La Roux – O2 Academy, Oxford – 15th November 2014

Tiger Mendoza and David Griffiths – Along Dangerous Roads EP – November 2014

Amy Simpson – Fairy Tales, Stories & Myths EP – July 2014

Banks – O2 Academy 2, Oxford – 28th March 2014

Katy B – O2 Academy, Oxford – 27th March 2014

Foxes – O2 Academy 2, Oxford – 28th February 2014