NOIZEMAKESENEMIES.CO.UK

NOIZE POLLUTION // STATION SESSIONS: BRINGING MUSIC TO LONDON’S COMMUTERS @ ST. PANCRAS STATION

2009-07-15T23:59:00.002+01:00

One wouldn’t think it to be a good idea to slap a gig in the middle of one of London’s busiest stations; but St. Pancras International and Syllabus music have teamed up to do just that every Thursday evening in July. Taking to the stage are some of music’s upcoming yet most talented artists to play to a multitude of travellers and gain some much desired exposure for their bands.
I went down on the 9th and managed to catch the Momeraths and Juan Zelada play a set each, and see how well the Station Sessions work at entertaining London’s time-is-money-credit-crunch generation of commuters. With a modestly sized stage the bands performed with a very stripped down set up, including a drum kit consisting of not more than a bass and snare, bringing the event closer to the grassroots side of the spectrum.

The Momeraths, a folk pop band (emphasis on the folk) brightened up every travellers’ day with their colourful image and energetic modern twist on such a classic genre. They’ve honed-in on their sound making it very unique and live they can recreate the professional polishing of a well mastered CD. They have some interesting and original techniques, including using a bar stool as a percussion instrument, shakers, floor tom and whatever else they feel like hitting. The vocals are beautifully harmonised and sound incredibly ear friendly between the male and female parts. They’re a tight band who was together for the entire set with constantly high amounts of energy, and they just look good on the stage too. The Momeraths are a very refreshing and entertaining band and with a single out on Monday they should be going far.

“It was a really enjoyable gig,” says the Momeraths, “playing in a station is quite similar to busking, which we’ve done before, but this is very posh busking. Here we’re getting departure announcements over our set and we haven’t previously had four Bose L1 systems to help us busk. It’s also a great way to get exposure, not just to commuters but to those around the world - we were even playing to some Belgians before. We’d definitely like to do this again.”

Next up was Juan Zelada who has been making a name for himself in his native Spain and is now taking over the UK just as quickly. The set opened up with a feel-good reggae track that sounded like the theme to a lazy summer’s day, especially the trumpet player which added a very flavoursome twist. The set provided a wealth of styles, from Breakfast in Spitafields which incorporated folk with arpeggiating Spanish guitar licks to Baby Be Mine which displayed the more country side of Juan. All his songs were professionally crafted and pulled off live with ease and confidence, allowing Zelada to wonder around the stage and demonstrate his showmanship by getting the gathering crowd to sing along his songs. All his tracks had an underlying mix of folk and funk from the Jamerson style bass lines adding a melodic rhythm or the drummer making the most of the half drum set, yet still holding the song together and making the band extra tight.

“The gig has been brilliant,” Says Juan Zelada, “everybody seems to be smiling which can only be good. Playing in a station compared to your usual venue has its uncertainties and you never know how it’s gonna turn out. It’s all very spontaneous and I love it that way. It’s a brilliant way to get exposure too; many people have come up to me wanting to buy CDs after the show. There’s no doubt that I would do this again, I would for sure.”

The artists were truly astonishing and to see them play in a station was an experience in itself. The gathering crowds of workers on their way home stopped to dance and sing along and made the session a huge success. I’d highly recommend stopping by to watch the acts in the next few weeks as the grassroots set up of the event makes the artists try different performance techniques that they wouldn’t otherwise do, culminating in a more original performance.

“So far the event is going really well,” says MD of Syllabus Music Gideon Chain, “it’s exceeded expectations and the atmosphere has been great. The bands have been getting fantastic coverage from the press and in general they’ve had good exposure. I’m looking forward to Basement Jaxx singer’s side project Vula who are playing an acoustic set and Beggar Joe. St. Pancras is the place to be.”

“I think the Station Sessions have gone really well so far,” says Sam Kidby, a representative of the station, “everyone’s loved it and I really think we are making a difference. I’ve really enjoyed Juan saying ‘let’s do this St. Pancras style!’ as it sums up the nature of the station: there really isn’t any other station like it. Over the next three weeks there will be six brilliant bands but I’m most looking forward to Vula, Beggar Joe and Marcus Bonfanti who will steal the show due to his amazing style and voice. I’ve really enjoyed putting this event on as there’s been no money involved really but just people who want and know how to put good events on.”

Syllabus is a creative music consultancy that helps businesses incorporate music, and music-related programming, into their over-arching brand strategies. They’ve released Rosie and the Goldbugs, Let’s Tea Party and many others and their artists can be seen at Station Sessions.

By Josh Charig

Still to come on the 16th July are Beggar Joe, 23rd Katie Vogel and Marcus Bonfanti, 30th Vula and Kerry Leatham.

For more information on Station Sessions go to www.stationsessions.com.

www.myspace.com/wherethemomerathsgo

IN PICTURES // GHOST OF A THOUSAND + THE COMPUTERS

2009-07-15T23:40:00.004+01:00

2 mighty rockers for the price of one to feast your eyeballs on as this distortion juggernaut rolls into Exeter!

By Rob Dand

INTERVIEW // SKINT AND DEMORALISED: VOICE O' THE TIMES

2009-06-29T22:11:00.005+01:00

Twenty-year-old Matt Abbott makes up one half of the Motown influenced spoken word duo, Skint and Demoralised, and despite his newly acquired acclaim and whirlwind two months – Abbott’s young feet seem pretty firmly fixed to the ground.
For those of you who haven’t heard of Skint and Demoralised (that’s anyone who works during Edith Boman’s daily Radio One stint), Matt Abbott was fresh from the monotony of education in his hometown of Wakefield, Yorkshire, when he started looking to poetry as a way of finding his footing in a dog-eat-dog music industry (“I’m not a singer and I cant play an instrument so I didn’t have any natural path music”) but before long he found his platform alongside producer MiNI dOG:

“I was really inspired by John Cooper Clarke who used to do spoken word before bands like The Fall and The Sex Pistols. I always loved words and language but as a teenager it’s not cool to say you like poetry so I started doing spoken word in pubs and clubs.

“It was just an excuse not to do college work really but I would record it on my mobile and then upload them onto MySpace so people could hear them. Then someone got in touch with me about putting my poetry over music tracks and I thought it’d be a bit of a novelty and agreed. Within a month we had five songs, without even having met, but when we did, we just clicked and after two years, we’re still trying!”

And the trying appears to be paying off with new single ‘Red Lipstick’ out 13th July and already earning the duo a place at some of the most prestigious music festivals around the country over the next few months. Their debut is a three minute ode to the girl next door revealing Abbott’s college penchant for more down to earth girls who apparently like no more than ‘red lipstick, fish and chips, orange juice and trips to the sea-side.’

Whilst this fresh pop track will likely win them some criticism from more ‘serious’ Indie-meets-spoken word fans when compared to the likes of The Streets and Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, Matt’s words plummet to further depths than the quirky debut would perhaps lead you to believe; with one poem specifically targeting the errors of the BNP, warranting him a place on stage at Love Music Hate Racism:

“The racism issue has always been important to me and obviously the BNP were elected in Yorkshire and I’m a Yorkshire lad so hopefully I’ve put that point out there. Love Music Hate Racism is important and a good cause because kids don’t listen to politicians and need younger people. Racism is a social and moral issue. I can’t change the world but if I can help, I will do.”

Barely out of his teens, Matt seems to have had quite a impact with his profound words establishing him a firm following, something demonstrated with Skint and Demoralised playing their first headline tour in February earlier this year and all their plans to help them pass the time throughout the usually dubious weather of the English Summer:

We’re doing Bestival, Reading Festival, Wireless, Latitude and now Glastonbury and we’ve got the release of ‘Red Lipstick’. We’ve also got another single coming out in September, a tour around then and then the album will be out 15th October. We’re just taking it one step at a time though. We don’t want to disappear after one single and an album.”

Hopes are also high for their debut album, fusing a sort of 60s soul with Matt’s Mike Skinner-esque observations and his innate balls to be different and veer away from the mainstream:

“Our music is largely inspired by Motown and Northern Soul but we didn’t want to do an Amy Winehouse rip off but we used her band to get that real authentic sound and not a sort of Mark Ronson soul-by-numbers.

“Although a lot of people, like John McClure in Reverend and the Makers, don’t put their spoken word stuff on their albums - we’ve done spoken word interludes on the album. Not like Eminem, but like spoken word with sound affects. It’s a bit weird…but we quite like that it’s a bit strange because it shows people what it is that we do.”

As the interview with Matt comes to an end, three things resound; (1) he chats faster than I thought was humanly possible when his bubbly nature and excitement for his career take over his speech, (2) He does do mainstream, caving to Twitter (and confessing that he is ‘a bit sad’ and does all his updates in rhyme) and (3) Skint and Demoralised are really quite a refreshing addition to the music scene and clearly loving every minute.

By Laura Routledge

NEW NOIZE MAKERS INTERVIEW // WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS

2009-06-29T21:57:00.001+01:00

After meeting at high school in Edinburgh with a collective interest in contemporary indie music, four young bairns by the name of Adam Thompson (guitar/vocals), Sean Smith (bass), Michael Palmer (guitar) and Darren Lackie (drums) started We Were Promised Jetpacks – Fat Cat Records’ latest acquisition from the ever-burgeoning Scottish music scene.
On one of the finest days Glasgow has witnessed in 2009, I was joined by three-quarters of WWPJ in Adam, Sean and Michael. Rather than sitting in the sun kissed Botanic Gardens only five minutes walk away, we descended on the bands local, which also happened to be the West End’s finest old person’s pub, fully equipped with horse racing on the big screen.

After three-quarters of the band relocated to Glasgow for university, WWPJ began to tear the roofs from many of Glasgow’s finest little venues, slowly developing a hype that has landed the band where they stand now – on the cusp of a debut album release and a UK headlining tour to boot. WWPJ can now sit gleefully on Fat Cat’s increasingly impressive repertoire of Scottish talent (alongside friends Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad), albeit only following some friendly tip-offs and record label patience in abundance.

We Were Promised Jetpacks have a sound oh-so recognisable and is heavily influenced by a range of music dating back to bands youth. Debut album These Four Walls underpins the bands influence of late nineties Britpop, combined with the style of granduesque musicianship familiar with Mogwai and modern indie markers such as The Futureheads and Bloc Party. For an album recorded in just eight days, These Four Walls is undoubtedly something to be proud of, and looks sure to propel the band to greater heights. Recorded with Ken Thomas (Sigur Ros, David Bowie), the band conceded that the initial response to Thomas’s mixes was rather sceptical, which led to Peter Katis (Interpol, Frightened Rabbit), a close associate of Fat Cat, taking the reigns.

The concept of the debut album and the necessity to ‘nail it or else’, was something that was trailing through the inexperienced minds of the band, although they insist that the end product has been wholly worth it. “The recording of the album was both relaxing and stressful,” explains Adam. “The whole time we were there I was convinced that this was our one chance to get our first album right, and sometimes I felt we hadn’t prepared enough. Now we just can’t wait to go record the second album”

Not many bands are fortunate enough to find themselves in the position that We Were Promised Jetpacks ended up in, mainly due to the patience and commitment of Fat Cat Records. “When the deal with Fat Cat came up in April 2008, our drummer was in Germany studying for five months,” explains Adam. “The label wanted to see us live before we could go ahead with anything, which of course was impossible for a few months. We asked if it would be possible to hold it off and finish university, which the label was totally fine with.” The hype that began to develop about the band following the discussions with Fat Cat, as Sean explains, was possibly the bands best period in terms of generating a fan base. “When everybody heard about the Fat Cat thing, they couldn’t actually see us live for months,” he said. “We built up this snow-ball effect type following without really having to do any work whatsoever. It was odd, yet possibly our most successful period!”

Additionally, there are not many bands that, having yet to release any material at all, would get the chance to perform at SXSW (South by South-West Festival) in Austin, Texas with fellow Scots Primal Scream and Glasvegas, as well as a gig at New York’s infamous Bowery Ballroom. Having received praising reviews from publications such as The Fly and Vanity Fair, the band admitted that they often had to question whether everything was genuinely happening. “When I was standing tuning my guitar in New York, the thought of ‘what the hell are we doing here?’ hit me pretty hard,” explains Adam. “We had never released anything and we were playing this lovely big venue in New York. It was crazy.”

Prior to the discussions with Fat Cat and the recording of These Four Walls, the band developed a admiration and friendship with Scottish label counterparts Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad. Being two highly successful bands, WWPJ may find themselves often being compared to their labelmates, although this is something that they insist does not worry them. “People who say that we are a rip-off of these two bands don’t actually realise that we were listening to their music long before Fat Cat ever became involved,” says Adam. “Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad were major influences long before any of this happened. I honestly would not compare our sound to either of them.” Sean added: “Because we have so much personal respect for the two bands, had we to put an album out on any other label at any other time, we would have been aspiring to make it as good as them.”

These Four Walls is available to buy now on Fat Cat Records.

By Andrew Burns

INTERVIEW // GHOST OF A THOUSAND

2009-06-20T11:58:00.001+01:00

Slam Dunk Festival in Leeds brings together 14year old emos, and 22 year old pop punk lovers from across the north, and with the line up only improving every year, it’s not surprising. Don’t get me wrong, I think everyone has had just enough You Me at Six for an entire lifetime, but with other acts including Kids In Glasshouses, the Blackout, Cobra Starship, the Audition and Brighton’s very own Ghost of a Thousand, I jumped at the chance to go and have a chat with guitarist Andy Blythe, about the band, the album, that Gallows tour and life in general.
NOIZE: So Andy, first off, the boring but important questions. For those people that haven’t heard of you, describe your sound.

Andy: For us, it’s a mixture of rock & roll music, hardcore music and skate punk. We’re all into different things, like out drummer and other guitar player (Memby and Jag) grew up listening to Bad Religion and the Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph bands, whereas I liked the more hardcore Bridge 9 end of the spectrum,. I suppose our sound it where our tastes meet, like rock and roll is what we all like, garage rock bands like the Hives and the Stooges.

N: So has the line up always been as it is now? Were you one of those met in college, garage rock bands?

A: Me and Mem (drummer) met at college, and him and Jag (guitarist) were already writing demos and looking for other members of the band. They played me what they had and I loved it, we started rehearsing as a three, and then Mem, who was working in a bar with Tom (singer) offered to help us as we were auditioning for singers but nothing was really working. It was great with him and then we found a guy to play bass, though he only lasted a few months. Gaz, who plays bass now, played for a while, on the first album but he left, for another bassist, and mow Gaz is back in the band.

N: So is it a cursed position, playing bass in TGOAT?

A: No, not at all, there was all sorts of shit going down, but we never parted with them on bad terms, Gez’s commitment and friendship was always honoured, but he wasn’t the right man for the job, and well, now Gaz is back and he works much better with the rest of us and it’s great again!

N: And what about the band name?

A: I hate answering this as it’s a really boring story actually, basically we were all sat around taking a break from practice really early on, and Mem was like I really like the word ghost, which at the time was quite original as there weren’t really any bands with ghost in their name, so Tom just suggested The Ghost of a Thousand, and we liked it! No more complicated than that, nothing profound or obscure, and I really should learn a more elaborate story to tell!

N: You’ve just come off the Gallows tour, how was that?

A: Well we only did three days, but it was really good. We’ve known those guys from about 2007 and they’ve opened up some pretty big doors for us. We’re big fans of what they do, and they’re big fans of what we do, and we formed around the same sort of time, so have similar influences. A lot of people think we’re influenced by Gallows, but that’s not the case. The similarity in the sound is probably cos we’re all from the same generation, but our new album and their new album are very different, subject matter is very different.

N: The new album – it has a completely different sound to the old one – was that a purposeful advance or just a gradual move?

A: it wasn’t a conscious thing, we didn’t sit down and set an agenda for the second album, once Gaz came back, we’d all had a pretty shit year to be honest, like personal relationships ending and Tom’s going through some tough family times, it affected the mood of the band, it was a lot more sombre. It got to the end of writing the album when I realised I hadn’t been out socialising with my friends for so long, I didn’t know how to do it any more! It’s hard, but the mood of the album reflects that, it’s a document of the time. We’ve always been a band to take risks, we’re not really happy writing the same music for the rest of our careers, and we do want careers out of it at the end of the day. We don’t want to be just a hyped fashionable band.

N: So you’ve mentioned quite a few bands that have influenced you, are there any that you feel have influenced you the whole way through?

A: People who influence our sound is not so big a part of the process now as it was back then, I think now we’re more comfortable with how we play as players rather than trying to emulate someone else. Now it’s got a lot more personality, and lots more ours. It’s our piece of art. Certain bands try and emulate their favourite bands without trying to grow as players, so we’ve had various influences but nothing that we want to be, that’s not what we’re aiming for.

N: So you’ve had quite an impressive year so far, new album, new single, Gallows dates, what are your next steps for domination?!

A: we love European music fans, we played a festival in Belguim, we had a really great slot, surrounded by loads of punk, hardcore and metal bands, it was great. We’re booked in to do a few more European festivals this year, trying to get into Europe a lot more, and whether it’s festivals or tiny club shows we’re content whatever. We play because we love playing live, whether there are 5 people or 5000 people there.

N: Where do you see yourself if 5 years? What are the future plans?

A: There’s a lot more that hasn’t been said or written, and we’re capable of so much more. It feels like we’re ready to go again, tour loads, write at least one more album and fill a headline tour playing to 500-1000 people a night. It’s ambitious but it’s not unrealistic. It’s not like we want world domination, it would be nice if it did happen but if it didn’t we wouldn’t be upset.

N: Have you got anything else planned for this year?

A: We’ve got Reading and Leeds festival over here, Download, things like that, but not in terms of recording.

N: So is there anyone particularly that you’re keen to see at the festivals, or at Slam Dunk here today?

A: Our stage is pretty much full of our friends, I mean we’ve played loads with everyone one the bill, even You Me at Six, Kids in Glass Houses, and the line up is so solid, it should be a great day! I’d love to tour one day with Converge, who are on our new label, Epitaph, and Bad Religion. It’s great just to hang out, particularly with nice people!

N: So, sell me your new single…

A: Bright Lights, it’s got everything, catchy riffs, a big chorus, a dynamic breakdown and a climatic ending!

By Jessica Kempner

NOIZE POLLUTION // THE THIRD SEOUL DJ FESTIVAL 2009: AN EXPERIMENT IN FESTIVAL JOURNALISM GONE HORRIBLY WRONG

2009-06-20T11:52:00.003+01:00

The Seoul World DJ Festival is an annual soiree held at the Nanji Campground on the banks of Seoul’s Han River in South Korea. The first festival was coordinated by the city’s tourism agency and due to an influx of praise, especially from Seoul’s ex-pat scene, the event was consequently transformed into a proper festival with an admission fee and all.
Each year it attracts more than ninety-thousand people over the duration of a weekend. By the time we arrived four beers, a Bloody Mary and a Bailey’s mixer had taken place. Dark sunglasses reflected the twinkling lights of the heaving metropolis that is Seoul while the strobes and search lights raked across the sky, transforming the Han River into a lurid water colour of fluorescent greens and reds. This fateful night also happened to be hosting a full moon, no mere coincidence, especially when you consider how the word lunatic is borrowed from the Italian "lunacus", which in turns borrows from "luna", denoting the age old link between madness and the turns of the moon. This was a dark omen for a few drunken fools on the river side surrounded by ninety thousand Koreans tanked up to the eye balls on soju and free hugs, like the summer of 69’ crossed with a Gooneys Christmas Special. After some bad noise at the press registration we got in and shambled around with a few other magazine folk before making our way to what we assumed to be the press tent. We had full press credentials, courtesy of a magazine known as Expat Experiment , we were in, taken care of and ready to interview some big names. How little we knew.

Though the music was loud enough to make our ear drums explode the arena was a fair size smaller that we’d imagined, with only a single bar in the whole place. We found our way to the back stage, flashed our passes and entered what we quite reasonably assumed to be the press centre. I remember remarking to Darren Jones, the photographer on this dreadful night, that those inside the tent appeared to be vampire fruit cakes, gawking over their iMacs, Twittering and nursing their ramen noodle pots. A travesty in terms of serious music journalism I thought to myself, not a goddamn cocktail in sight! I doubted this turd bags would even know good hard and dirty dance music if it ran up and bit them. No competition was a slight let down but we were resolute to solider on dispite any good sport. Yet when Jones tried to access the stage his pleas were cold heartedly refused. The steroid gobbling harness bull of a security guard only grunted, “Get in the pit!” Jones dove in, scampering round in front of the stage, keeping his heard down as if to avoid machine fire, crouching below the masses pressed up against his crowd barrier behind him. I went to follow but an unexpected sonic blast wave from the speaker stack next to me sent me reeling away, desperately hoping my ear drum was still intact. I staggered behind the stage in search of an interview, still holding my ear only to be turned away and told I told I didn’t belong there.

I retreated to the press tent filled with what thought were half baked journalism interns, noting some of them were looking at Japanese scat porn website .I started searching around the tent for the makings of a fresh soju cocktail when suddenly I was strong armed out of the tent and informed that it was not in fact a press tent at all and the people I’d been making fun of were in fact festival stewards.

It became instantly apparent how our press passes were only good for removing dirt from under our finger nails, truly worthless, literally opening no doors because there weren’t even any to open. No interviews, no stage access, not even any where to sit.

In order to make up for lost time I got involved with a few rounds of cocktails. Meanwhile Jones procured a fire extinguisher from the good people at the Jägermestier tent with which to protest against the festival’s inhume treatment of the press (I was already drafting a letter to Amnesty International on the back of one of Jones’ cigarette packets). Down at the front was where the real action was to be found, the crowd surfers waiting to be picked up and carried by an ocean of hands rising and falling with the occasional sacrifice, some poor fool sentenced to a fate of tumbling head over heels, descending from the crest of upturned palms, landing on their heads, only to leap back up with a dumb grin on their faces. The DJ’s, Ricky Stone and Towatai, hypnotized the masses, sending them berserk with the simple flick of a fader.

At the opportune moment I aimed the nozzle to the sky, pulled the pin and unleashed the beast. The little metal dragon spewed a volcanic eruption of toxic flame retardant chemicals high into the night sky and the masses reeled away, coughing and spluttering.

Looking up I discovered a deathly stare being shot at me from a security guard behind the steel barrier in front of the stage. It was a stand off straight out of a spaghetti western: He fingered his walky talky as I moved my hand towards the squat little dragon’s nozzle, I could hear some more toxic chemicals sloshing around in the squat little dragon’s belly and I’d already observed the lack of any medical teams on the site. We both knew any confrontation would be a case of assured mutual destruction. Finally I began to back away into the crowd, never letting my eyes leave his. I discreetly lay the squat little dragon at someone’s feet as I passed. Our eyes were locked until we were out of sight of each other, destined to meet on some god forsaken twilight battlefield another day. The streets of Seoul were dark and deserted, providing a clam respite that was greatly needed. If one thing was for sure it was that the Seoul DJ Festival had been an exhausting hedonistic meltdown, leaving all concerned with a cataclysmic hangovers and a need to find some secluded place to hibernate in for a few weeks.

By Roy Parkes
Photos by Darren Jones

INTERVIEW // THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT: WELCOME TO THE WHIRLWIND

2009-05-28T23:17:00.003+01:00

”It was the first time I slept in my own bed since last July and I woke up at like 7 in the morning, I looked around and I was like “Where the fuck am I?!” I didn’t have any idea and it took a few minutes and then I was like ‘Oh fuck, I’m home! Oh, alright.”
After nine months on the road that has propelled them all around the world, it is hardly surprising that the travelling circus that The Airborne Toxic Event have become has left lead singer and guitarist, Mikel Jollett, more disorientated than an insomniac on a Ferris Wheel.

The bands whirlwind existence was perhaps paved by its formation and the romantically alternative way that Mikel turned to music. With his DNA undoubtedly laced with an innate creativity, Jollett began with dreams of being a writer. With his dedication to achieve his ambition set in stone, it wasn’t until an unfortunate turn of fate that led Mikel to find escapism and solace within music and song-writing:

“I’d been kind of locked in a room for five years just reading and writing and I never had anywhere to be. Like, ever. I would go a week or two without seeing another person. My gas had been turned off most the year and I had to do all this weird shit to try and afford groceries. I hadn’t paid taxes in like 7 years, I defaulted on my student loan, my credit was shot to hell and I just didn’t care.

“I was just writing all the time and I suddenly picked up a guitar, I had no ambition to be a musician, I just wanted to be a writer. I started playing music, I think almost just cause I couldn’t write for a while. I’d gone through some shit and it was hard to concentrate, so I would just play guitar every day and one day became a week, and one week became a month, and a month became a year. And I’d taken this year out to write a novel and after about a year id written about 100 songs, but only about 1500 words of the novel. So at that point I was like ‘Well I guess I’d better form a band, it’s all I’m ever gonna do.’”

This dark time that forced Mikel to re-evaluate his passions (the news that his mother had been diagnosed with cancer and that Jollett himself had developed two genetic diseases) appears to have almost honed his talent for writing lyrics that speak the words you’d wanted to say but had not known how to articulate.

And it seems to have paid off; the band’s new album came out early this year and has already received prestigious reviews from some of the most renowned music press. Yet the album, largely inspired by a bad break up and ex-novelist Mikel’s love of all things erudite, is as genuine and close to the bone as the thirteen tracks of refreshingly un-self indulgent rock would lead you to believe:

“A lot of the stuff I was thinking about was stuff I guess I learnt as a writer. I think if you’re any kind of writer, your job is to write stuff that is unpopular but is true - whereas a politician’s job is to say things that are popular but untrue. So for me, I kinda got off on saying things from the perspective of what was actually real or what was actually true. ‘Cause I’d always felt relieved reading about that. I’d actually feel relief when I was reading Phillip Roth or something, and be like ‘Wow look how depraved this is’ it made me feel like ‘Oh good, it’s not just me.’

So having toured all over the world (“We’re like a group of gypsies or something. We just write songs, travel around and play them.”), The Airborne Toxic Event are beginning to taste the rewards of their hard work, particularly over the last year. This is something truly embodied by the difference in experiences at 2008’s SXSW, to this year’s:

“Last year [at SXSW] we played a few shows, I think we were what was called a ‘buzz band’, you know like a lot of industry people with their fucking arms crossed watching from the back of the room, trying to figure out whether or not they should write about us. With the press, I think for us in particular they didn’t really understand us at first because every band is supposed to be trying to do a ‘thing’ and there’s just no fucking irony in our band.

”This year, we played in a place that held about 500 and they turned away 1500 people. The show was crazy, loud and fun; we were up dancing on the bar and jumping around. I stole some vodka and I was pouring people drinks and stuff during the show. After the show I saw the bouncer in the hallway and he had his head in his lap, and I was like ‘You alright, man?’ and he was like ‘That was the worst fucking show I’ve ever worked in my whole life!’ So yeah, it was pretty different from last year.”

Having taken their name from a section of ‘White Noise’, a Don Delillo novel, it was clear from the outset that The Airborne Toxic Event were not just another band. They personify a refreshing sort of 60’s ethos to rock and roll, not one that has become so self indulgent and refined by skinny jeans, a side parting and wearing your little brothers t-shirts. They appear to have a depth that in many ways set them apart from a lot of modern-day alternative bands and without a doubt, echoes the reality that they are destined for great things.

“It’s definitely fun to play shows and it’s good that people kinda know who we are. But we haven’t really done anything yet….”

By Laura Routledge

NEW NOIZE MAKERS INTERVIEW // TAWNY OWL AND THE BIRDS OF PREY

2009-05-21T22:09:00.003+01:00

Tawny Owl And The Birds Of Prey are a delightfully eerie alt-pop outfit from Norwich. Mixing genres and drawing influences from genres and musical movements spanning decades, the band offer a diverse and eclectic range of harmonies and technical chord structures that are commercially appealing enough to project the bands talent across a wide field without jeopardizing the bands dark underground credibility.
Jack began as a solo artist performing under the stage name Tawny Owl, but the recent decision to take on a band (The Birds Of Prey) has resulted in the outfit you hear today. Speaking to Jack you really get a feel of his intelligence and the marvel behind the obvious technical ability that went into producing the music becomes apparent.

NOIZE: Describe your sound.

TAWNY OWL: Thurston forms a band backed by The Funk Brothers but with Norwich teenagers instead of music Gods. We like pop music and really loud guitars. Lots of close three / four part harmony and strange harmonies, creepy sounds, feedback, and Phil Spector produced songs.

NOIZE: What inspires you as an artist when it comes to song writing?

TAWNY OWL: I take a lot of influence from books. I read a lot and I think that filters through into our song writing. Some of my lyrics are paraphrased ideas from what other people have said, and lyrically I like my song structures to be a kind of slide show of ideas and images that come together to represent something. Wow pretentious. My background as a musician also has something to do with it, I tend towards cluster chords and complicated lines, but I really love 60s pop and that is a definite influence. I think the 60s pop thing is probably my biggest inspiration for writing music, a lot of it is so sad lyrically but so upbeat. Like that first song by Phil Spector - To Know Him Is To Love Him, it’s this beautiful ballad but the title takes its name from Spector’s Dad’s grave inscription. And lines like “Everyone says there’ll come a day / When I’ll walk alongside of him” are just amazingly sad when thought of in context. It’s easy to just go aww cute pop song but it’s so dark.

I also feel drawn to scary things. I love horror movies and creepy Victorian waltzes. Halloween is definitely my favourite holiday, spooky Xmas right? I definitely elicit a response from the listener on some level and shock, suspense and surprise are my preferred techniques. That doesn’t mean I’m going to be up on stage doing an Iggy Pop but I definitely like to keep the listener guessing.

Finally the Tawny Owl thing is a real aid to my song writing. I’m a pretty normal person really. I’m quite boring so writing as a different person is my liberation. I can say, paradoxically, what I really feel and what I mean in a way I might find interesting and hope that others will be interested too.

NOIZE: How did the band come together? How did you meet?

TAWNY OWL: I was doing solo stuff around Norwich and I decided to form a band. I’d just gotten noticed by team Milkbar and kind of wanted to broaden my palette a bit. Drums were a big thing. I basically got Alex Carson very early on; he runs Barefeet Records and does his own thing. He went about snapping up Lucy Burns from Francis and Louis, Lydia Walker who he knew to be a talented singer, guitarist, violinist and songwriter in her own right. After that we worked through some drummers including Fab from the Kabeedies until we found Hector who also plays for Magpied. His tightness from Magpied was allowed to run free a little bit in our more fluid and improvisational songs. Finally, and just recently, we recruited Sam Hill who does an incredible solo ambient project. We were looking for someone who could do bass and laptop / synth but not indie synth and the way he uses his mandolin is kind of exactly what we had in mind. The addition of bass is pretty handy too.

Basically we were all just musicians and everybody still had their solo or other group stuff still going on but we were liked playing together and worked well as a band, we’re all very much looking forward to a few weeks’ intense rehearsals.

NOIZE: You originally started as a solo artist what made you want to take on a band?

TAWNY OWL: Well like I said I wanted to extend the sound a bit more, I started doing this with a laptop but I wanted lots of live drums. I really like some very drum heavy albums like Liars Drums Not Dead and the stuff by Boredoms. Also I was trying to do harmonies with pitch shifters and stuff and it sounded absolutely crazy when all I really wanted was a couple of female vocalists. More musicians just meant that songs were given a bit more breathing room. Also being in a band is so much more fun than being a solo artist.

NOIZE: Congratulations on signing to Milkbar. How did this come about? Are you happy about the way things are going so far?

TAWNY OWL: It’s been great! I get on with Lewis and Jake and all the other bands. More people have heard of us, we play more gigs and we got some stellar recordings down with Jeremy Warmsley. It’s also a bit of a community feel. I DJ for the Milkbar club night and run House of Dolls with Lewis, Jake and my friend Joe. The entire bands club together, we come to each others shows and like one another’s music. Well I hope they like my music, I like theirs at any rate. I’m gutted that Cold Hands are on hiatus at the moment but Lunaire are a definite must see. Incredible live band. This year, since January, has been one of the best times of my life, it’s kind of weird cause of all my friends are in bands or involved in music in some way so my social life and band life are really one and the same. Pretty sweet.

NOIZE: Double A side Ghost Writer / Cinema is out in June. Could you tell us a bit about this? Talk us through the production of the single.

TAWNY OWL: We spent four days in London with Jeremy Warmsley who had seen us at the Arts Centre in Norwich when he opened the Milkbar label. I guess he was impressed with our show because he offered to work with us on our single. We kind of leapt at Jeremy’s offer and in March of this year cut the tracks. It was recorded at House of Strange and in Jeremy’s house. House of Strange has been the studio at which a lot of our favourites have been recorded, people like Emmy the Great and Noah and the Whale. We sound very different to those bands but we were really psyched to be there. On a personal level it was so fulfilling to watch these songs get recorded because they’ve been with me so long, been through so many permutations and so on. I’ve nearly killed off Tawny Owl a couple of times but getting a decent recording done felt like the perfect justification for sticking with it in spite of the number of shitty gigs I played solo or the self doubt I feel when writing music.

The actual recording process was really fun, really hectic and quite a bonding experience. I found out Alex spends like twenty minutes a day on his hair, him and Hector were like the pimps of Covent Garden, never have I seen women flock to the two in Norwich. Apart from Hector. I think he has the lynx effect. Lydia was like the one take wonder, she nailed it every time. And Lucy as ever, was there to calm me down when I got stressed or pissed off. She’s pretty good at helping me not smoke to keep the old voice box in working order. It was fun and we’re really happy with the results.

NOIZE: Are there any artists / bands / producers you would really love to work with?

TAWNY OWL: Christ so many. Hmm. Phil Spector definitely. I’d love to work with people like Diplo or Bangladesh as I love their music but don’t write that kind of thing at all. It would be interesting to see how it came out. I would love to work with Clipse or JME or Bun B but I can’t really see it happening some how. Also hip hop indie cross over is generally shit but we could make something good. Maybe. In Norwich there are people I’d love to work with, Check Out Girls and Mat Riviere spring to mind. I think I’m playing trumpet for Francis and Louis and Alex Carson’s next recordings and I’m psyched about that. I definitely would like to work with someone who does a lot of electronic stuff. Burial, Four Tet, The Knife… These are all dream people it’s hardly like I have them on speed dial. Also other dream people to work with are Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Thurston Moore and Animal Collective.

I’d like to collaborate with writers too. I’d like to nab Phillip Roth; Ghost Writer is very much inspired by his book of the same name. And Cormac McCarthy, we could do like this badass dessert surf shit but really creepy and he could read like the opening to All The Pretty Horses, it would be incredible. Again this almost certainly won’t happen. Or a poet like John Cooper Clarke or someone like Simon Armitage.

NOIZE: Going by your gig listing you don’t seem to be touring much is there a reason for this and are there any plans to get out there in the future?

TAWNY OWL: We were all at school / uni right now. As soon as exam time is out of the way we’re going to be playing lots more gigs luckily it coincides with single release time. So all is good.

NOIZE: What has been the best show you’ve played so far and why?

TAWNY OWL: There’s been a few crackers. I really enjoyed a gig for Something Good which was in a scout hut in Norwich. Lots of my favourite bands were there like the aforementioned Check Out Girls, plus the Balky Mule from Fat Cat records played. It was organized by my friend Grace of the Middle Ones and it was a really nice chilled out spring day. Lots of ice cold beer and good vibes and I thought we played well, also all morning before we played the whole band were round my house with some friends. Everyone was hung over as a wolverine and we just sat with a few hair of the dog beers watching trashy b movies squished on the sofa, I think we watched this awesome Troma movie called Class of Nuke Em High. Its soooooo good. We ran through some songs and stuff. Lewis from the label was sick in my bathroom. It was such a good day.

Some of the Milkbar gigs stand out too. The first one with Warmsley at the Arts Centre in Norwich was fun, that was the first one we played as a band and we were all pretty nervous but the audience were really receptive. There was one we played at the Marquee we played in Norwich too. Alex was ill and couldn’t make it and I was like smashing my guitar against the amp and stuff. It was one of those really scrappy, aggressive gigs where nothing goes too wrong.

I really like playing in Norwich, you tend to know like half of the audience and everyone else is in a band too, it’s a cool environment.

NOIZE: And the worst?

TAWNY OWL: Hmm some of my acoustic were pretty shocking. There was one in a really horrible bar in Norwich which I won’t name because I think its run by Russian mafiosos or something. It was fucking crazy. I was in one of those open acoustic showcase things and everyone rambling through Dylan and Oasis covers. I get on and my music is a bit strange sometimes, so I’m sat convulsing and screaming and thrashing the shit out of my guitar and some guy starts heckling me and I can’t hear him cause I’m all in a jazz trance and have my eyes closed and everything. Anyway so he’s like “Oi gay boy get off the fucking stage you poncy cunt” and all this, and my friend Fuchsia, who is a bona fide badass rolls up to this guy and goes “fuck off” and smashes the pint out of his hand covering him in beer. Now he’s about to smack her in the face but realises she’s a hot girl, he faces a moral conundrum, should he hit her and be damned or should he do something not entirely wrong in every sense of the word? I stop playing cause I can hear there’s this massive commotion by the bar and everybody’s screaming and pushing and some of the people are right in some of the other people’s faces and it’s all about to kick off. Fuchsia just walks out of the pub unscathed, however some of our friends are there and this one lad Josh, who is pissed as arseholes, sidles up to the bloke and is like “yeah?” This guy is some kind of sixth foot four mother fucker with like skins tattooed on his forehead and HATE and shit all on his knuckles, he has a tattoo of two tears coming from his eye. He is clearly not someone to fuck with. Anyway, my boy Joe rolls in and is all like “alright everybody chill the fuck out” they nip outside and Joe starts handing out cigarettes. I quietly walk off stage into a now entirely empty pub. Some other weird shit happened that night too but it’s a really really long story, involving pro plus, the police and a man unable to urinate.

NOIZE: Any regrets so far?

TAWNY OWL: I smashed a really nice on stage once. Wish I hadn’t.

NOIZE: What are your plans for the future? Album, touring etc…

TAWNY OWL: Well it depends really. I’m going to keep that under my hat for now. Suffice to say I’ll be playing plenty of gigs this summer.

NOIZE: What are you doing right now?

TAWNY OWL: Right this second? I’m in the library. Tonight I’m going to see a secret gig in Norwich, makes me feel really cool! I have some work and some revision to do and then I’m going to grab some food. Probably a pie.

By David Kendall

www.myspace.com/tawnyowlband

IN PICTURES // NME RADAR TOUR: LA ROUX + HEARTBREAK + MAGISTRATES + THE CHAPMAN FAMILY

2009-05-21T21:43:00.007+01:00

Fresh from the new band pages to a south coast stage for some of the hottest new acts around. Led by an 80s icon for the naughties.

LA ROUX

HEARTBREAK

MAGISTRATES

THE CHAPMAN FAMILY

By Dan Smyth

NEW NOIZE MAKERS INTERVIEW // THE AVALON

2009-05-21T21:07:00.002+01:00

The Avalon are a five piece South West technical alt-rock band with underlying hints of post hardcore. Coming across as something like a cross between Thursday and Yourcodenameis:milo, the band throw out a progressive sound with plenty of twisting guitar sections, spiky drums and more vocal harmonies than you can shake a stick at.
For a band that claims not to be “another scene band” I don’t really see anything truly ground breaking here, however, there are plenty of positive points that carry The Avalon through with heaps of credibility and musical talent. With plans to Tour coming up very soon I believe this will truly test the bands Staying power and their ability to appeal to people outside of their home town.

NOIZE: Describe your sound.

THE AVALON: Our sound is hard to describe, a few people have compared us to bands such as Thursday and minus the bear. We usually just describe ourselves as an alternative rock band.

NOIZE: What would you say to people who just see you as another ‘scene’ band?

THE AVALON: I’m hoping that after people hear our tracks or see us live they will see that we aren’t another band trying to fit a certain scene or trend. But at the same time we are trying very hard to make our music appealing to everyone.

NOIZE: Do you think that you are doing anything different as artists when it comes to the scene that the band is a part of?

THE AVALON: We all have such different music tastes that the songs are usually a blend of everything, from bands like bloc party and editors to bands such as flood of red and misery signals, we don’t want to try and write music just to be cool, we would much prefer to write songs we enjoy writing and playing to a smaller audience of people who actually care, rather than a large audience of people who are only there because its cool to be.

NOIZE: How did you all meet? How did the band come together?

THE AVALON: The current line up consists of members of past local bands; anyone from Plymouth may be familiar with Box Socials, Elenor/Fall For Freedom and Aim For Grace. So a few of us met just from gigging with each other, but the original members of The Avalon (me, Carl and Ant) have all been friends for years, and myself and Ant have been writing music together since we were 13.

NOIZE: How did you come up with the band name? Does it mean anything?

THE AVALON: It took us months to think of a name, and for a while we left it hoping that out of the blue it would just come to us, but it didn’t. For a while we were going to settle on The Everlong, but we quickly grew to hate it. The Avalon comes from the name of Anthony Green’s debut album called ‘Avalon’ which he named after a place her recorded. We are all huge fans of the work Anthony Green does with his band Circa Survive and his solo/other projects; it seemed like a good way to go for a name.

NOIZE: Although you are a relatively new band you seem to be sticking to local shows at the minute. Are there any plans to take The Avalon further afield?

THE AVALON: YES! Of course. We have a U.K tour booked for June and are currently working on setting up 2 or 3 more U.K tours with various local bands, slowly but surely we want to try and gain as many fans as possible over the next few years. We are extremely keen on trying to turn the South West into the music scene that Wales has for itself, where all the bands help each other out. If one band makes it, then try and help the rest of the southwest out.

NOIZE: You aren’t signed at the minute. Is signing to a label something that’s on your mind, or are you taking things as they go?

THE AVALON: There are a lot of labels out there now, and it’s a lot easier for bands to get signed with these small Indie labels floating about, the trick is finding one that will work with you and actually project you further. We are much keener on trying to get a booking agent and even a manager before we think about going for a label. We are a very DIY band and unless we find the right label it will be very difficult to work with someone who doesn’t share the same views as us.

NOIZE: What’s the best show you’ve played so far and why?

THE AVALON: we have supported some awesome bands so far such as The Blackout and Exit Ten, and those shows usually have an awesome turn out, but there was a show we played with Brotherhood of the lake at the white rabbit on the 20th of march, which was such a fun show, we opened with a Limp Bizkit cover and our drummer also turned 21 that night so it meant a lot of partying. We also filmed a bunch of crazy antics with Brotherhood of the lake, which was a lot of fun.

NOIZE: What’s the worst?

THE AVALON: A show we were meant to play at The Hippo in March. We were asked to play an extremely last minute show at the local venue, so we decided to help out by popping down and playing as they were a few bands short, we lagged all our equipment down, dragged it all in to the venue for them t turn around and say they didn’t want us to play anymore. Luckily they covered petrol costs, but the staff were rude, and because of it we won’t play there again.

NOIZE: Any regrets so far?

THE AVALON: There aren’t any regrets as such, but it took us a long time to find the right line up, we tried 2 drummers previous to this line up and it just didn’t work out, so our bassist decided to step up and change rolls, he adapted to the drums really quickly and finding a bass player and 2nd guitarist was fairly easy.

NOIZE: What are your plans for the future? Where do you see things going?

THE AVALON: For the moment we are just going to see where things take us, we don’t want to run before we can walk. But we have been talking about doing a debut album in 2010, and maybe attempting to get over to Europe in the summer of that year as well, but for this year its just writing and demoing as much as possible with a few U.K tours to start getting our name around.

NOIZE: What are you doing right now?

THE AVALON: Drinking some of Sainsbury’s finest cranberry and raspberry juice but also writing a whole bunch of new songs which we will be demoing through out the year.

NOIZE: Plug any EP / album / tour you may be working on?

THE AVALON: We will be touring the U.K in June this year, you can check out all our dates on our MySpace page www.myspace.com/TheAvalonUK. We are also going to be compiling an EP with all the Demo’s we have done so far, we are making 100 hand numbered copies and it will feature 4 tracks, that will be available from us for £1 on the tour and anytime afterwards.

By David Kendall

www.myspace.com/theavalonuk

NEW NOIZE MAKERS INTERVIEW // CRAZY ARM

2009-05-10T21:19:00.003+01:00

Formed in 2005 as an amalgamation of The Once Over Twice and Plymouth ska-core legends No Comply, folk fused punk rockers Crazy Arm have finally embarked on their journey to reach the masses after signing to Xtra Mile (Rueben, The Xerts).
Politically charged and passionately driven by their beliefs and world views, the band have really stepped up their game recently with an album due out on June the 8th and a string of live dates to promote it across the country. Talking to Darren Johns (singer/guitarist), you really get a sense of the genuine love he has for what he believes in and the way his frontline insight into a world that most would choose to ignore shapes him as a person as well as an artist. With single Broken By The Wheel out on the 25th May on 7” as well as being digitally released, you are bound to come across the band sooner or later and they are definitely worth checking out.

NOIZE: Your sound is quite unique, how would you describe it?

I hate pigeonholing ourselves but when I’m forced to I usually say that we’re a punk band with bits of outlaw country and late-‘60s rock thrown in for good measure. It all falls a bit short though as there are plenty of other styles floating about when we play. Although we play in folk-style open tunings, we never set out to sound like anything. It’s all rock’n’roll to me.

NOIZE: Could you tell us a little about how the band came together?

I was still singer/guitarist in The Once Over Twice, and Simon [Marsh, drums] and Jon [Dailey, bass] were still in NoComply when we started the band, back in May 2005. We were hanging out together all the time so it made sense to play music together. At first, it was just a casual, but no less enjoyable, thing. When our ‘first’ bands split up a year later, Crazy Arm took on a life of its own, especially with the inclusion of Dan Couling on second guitar and backing vocals. The rest is whisky-fuelled history.

NOIZE: Congratulations on signing with Xtra Mile Recordings. Is there any advice you would give to bands when pursuing a contract?

Thanks. My advice would be to not pursue a contract. Pursue music! Pursue writing the best songs that you can with the right people, regardless of what anyone else thinks! Pursue giving meaning to what you do! And make sure you OWN your own songs. Bands that form with the sole intention of getting signed and being famous are useless. All they’ll ever amount to is a cash cow for someone else’s ambitions. Once you’ve put the work in, labels will appreciate it and eventually come to you. If they don’t, fuck ‘em. Put it out yourself. All you need is a distributor, loads of contacts and serious dedication.

NOIZE: You have your debut single out at the end of the month. Could you tell us a bit about this?

‘Broken By The Wheel’ comes out on 25th May on 7” vinyl through Seven Inch Records, which is a small indie label based in Chepstow. It’s a limited edition run, 500 copies, on coloured vinyl. Xtra Mile are doing the digital side of the release. The song title is a method of medieval torture and is also a term used to describe people who violently oppose change in society; for example, the BNP. The b-side is ‘British Steel’, an old song of ours which sounds a lot different, although it has been a crowd favourite over the years.

NOIZE: As individuals you all have strong political and personal views. Does this contribute to who you are as a band and does it drive you in any way?

It certainly drives me, and it drives the ethos of the band on a day-to-day level. As well as communicating ideas through the songs, we strive to work with people that reflect our ideas, and we channel our beliefs through the band. We do benefit shows whenever we can, especially for groups/individuals who are less likely to achieve popular support; from Palestine Solidarity to anarchist-orientated activists, to organisations that work with asylum seekers and help to dispel the myths surrounding immigration. I’d love to be in a position where we could afford to do a whole benefit tour. On the album sleeve, we’ve published a list of 50 websites of groups/campaigns that we identify with: including anarchist, animal liberation, feminist, anti-war, ecological, refugee and pro-independence struggles.

NOIZE: How do you maintain this without sounding like one of those ‘Rock Against Bush’ clichés?

Well, I certainly prefer those leftist clichés to the reactionary conservative clichés of the Jeremy Clarkson-loving brigade! I’ve been actively involved in radical politics, to a greater or lesser extent, for a quarter of a century so the notion of appearing clichéd, or of following the crowd, just doesn’t wash. There’s a colourful history of revolutionary, grass-roots resistance to corrupt governments, bosses and institutions that stretches back for hundreds and hundreds of years. I’m simply not interested in entering a discourse with critics who really don’t give a shit about anything and just want to justify their own apathy.

NOIZE: Let us know a little about your June tour?

It’s coming on nicely. We’re trying to self-book about 15 dates – currently we have about 10 confirmed. The tour coincides with the album release and we’ll have copies of the single too. So, at last, we’ll have some music that people can actually walk away with. Hopefully we’ll be finishing the tour with a few dates alongside our friends, the awesome Failsafe. We’re still waiting to see what happens.

NOIZE: The album is also released in June. Are you happy with the way it came out?

Very much so. It’s been a long time coming! Unfortunately, we had to scrap recordings we’d done previously at a local studio as we kept outgrowing the songs and writing new ones. So when we had the opportunity to do a session with a friend, Peter Miles, at his new studio in Ashburton, on the edge of Dartmoor, we jumped at it. Pete brought out the best in us in every sense. The sound was amazing, the environment, the energy, the dynamics between us all… and Pete’s vegan cuisine was awesome.

NOIZE: Are there any bands/artists/producers that you would really like to work with?

Obviously there are other producers who’ve made fucking great records but we’d have to like them as people, first and foremost, before committing to anything. I’m much happier when I’m recording in my comfort zone with someone who knows us well and who lives nearby. As for bands, it wouldn’t be very realistic of me to say that we want to do a split album with, say, The Constantines or Fleet Foxes! There are plenty of bands we’d like to tour with which could be achievable, and plenty that we already have. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists and Baroness would be top of the wish-list. Having said that, we went out with Bangers in March and, to be honest, I can’t imagine a nicer band to tour with.

NOIZE: What are your plans for the future as a band? Where do you see things going in the next two years?

All we’ve been talking about really. We want to see how far we can go with this. It’s my last-chance-saloon as far as playing in a rock’n’roll band goes. The other three are in their prime. Well, nearly all of them! In the immediate future: see how well the album and single do. Hopefully it’ll help us to book bigger tours and shows, and get some good support slots. We should be playing some European dates in August too. Longer-term plans are to keep the ball rolling, release more singles and EPs, record another album in a year’s time – we’ve got more than enough songs for it, play on every continent, talk to lots of people and share ideas, raise funds for grass-roots organisations, carpet the walls of the van with fake fur, make mistakes and learn from them. Keep busy, in a nutshell.

NOIZE: Plug your single, album and tour!

Single ‘Broken By The Wheel’ out on Seven Inch Records, 25th May! It rocks!
Album ‘Born To Ruin’ out on Xtra Mile Recordings, 8th June! It rocks some more!

By Dave Kendall

June / album launch tour dates so far:
2nd – Cavern, Exeter with NEW BRUISES
6th – Hobos, Bridgend with A NEW DAY (tbc)
7th – Fawcett Inn, Portsmouth with ASTPAI
9th – Farmhouse, Canterbury with RENTOKILL
11th – King Alfs, Southampton with NEW BRUISES
12th – White Rabbit, Plymouth with FAILSAFE
14th – Prince Albert, Brighton with LEMURIA
16th – Portland Arms, Cambridge
17th – Purple Turtle, London with MISCHIEF BREW
19th – The Xoo Club, Peterborough with LAUGHING IN THE FACE OF
20th – Cricketers, Keighley with SOUNDS OF SWAMI
21st – Packhorse, Leeds with SOUNDS OF SWAMI (tbc)
23rd – Preston with FAILSAFE (tbc)

NEW NOIZE MAKERS INTERVIEW // BROTHERHOOD OF THE LAKE

2009-05-10T21:14:00.002+01:00

Whilst some would question the South West metal scene at the moment, I for one still remain confident in the fact that we have a lot to offer. Despite so many bands popping up like weeds and consisting of floppy black haired fashion core ‘scenesters’, Plymouth’s Brotherhood of the Lake are a true-to-self, no nonsense outfit that have a genuine passion for what they do.
Casting aside the shackles of the current grind/death scene, Brotherhood manage to pull off an intelligent, innovative sound that doesn’t sacrifice talent for gore. Rusty and Grant’s sporadic guitars, Adam’s floor shaking bass lines and Lee’s highly technical drums, are all complimented fully by the raw, passionate and gut wrenching vocals of their lead singer Rob.

Having been thrown in at the deep end very early on supporting Arizona legends The Bled on their tour with Johnny Truant, and since gracing the stage with top metal and hardcore bands such as Misery Signals, Terror, Devil Sold His Soul, Protest the Hero and many more, Brotherhood have certainly taken their experiences on board and learnt every step of the way.

After chopping and changing the line-up recently, BOTL have finally found the perfect mix to bring out the bands full potential. Drawing talent from other heavyweight Plymouth Bands such as Castor:Troy, Youth Gone Wrong and Death of Lola Rose, Brotherhood have laid the foundations on which to build a solid outfit that, in my opinion, is unmovable.

You need only to attend any one of the bands numerous shows across the country to see what I mean here. Whether it is hanging off the ceiling rails or jumping around the stage drenched in sweat, Brotherhood's stage presence is an art that has been mastered, and their skills honed through constant touring and live performance.

Headlining large shows and touring themselves, this is definitely a band that is to be experienced live. Stage presence, technical ability and a genuine appreciation and passion for the music make this band what it is! Fresh back from a headlining tour with Brace For A Fall, BOTL are determined to get their name out there and will stop at nothing to ensure that they are noticed - quite rightly so.

NOIZE: When and how did you all get together?

Russell: I was living in Wiltshire at the time and I was about to move back to Plymouth so I put the feelers out on a Plymouth Music Forum looking for a vocalist and Rob replied. So we basically wrote an entire set over MSN. I wrote and recorded the music in my spare room, sent it down to Rob and he put the vocals on and sent it back for me to mix. When I finally moved down to Plymouth we filled in the gaps in the line up with a couple of guys Rob knew (Robin and James).

NOIZE: Describe your sound.

Russell: Well the idea is to sound like a band in a room not so much a digital sound but more organic. I like to think we are kind of a massively heavy rock band but it’s blatantly metal.

NOIZE: Let’s get to know you all, Give the best and worst points of each band member.

Russell: Rob - We are pretty close being the founder members of the band he's pretty easy going with a really annoying sense of humor. Adam-Mellow chap, completely in love with the old school Black Flag, Vans shoes and Calculator watches! Lee- Loves playing, loves music, Panics a lot, Hairiest arms ever - Awesome dude though. Grant- He's a catch! We've been looking for the right second guitarist since we started we needed someone who could play really well, but not a widdler who over plays everything, a massive knowledge of music in general and we found him! Awesome!

NOIZE: Who is Mr. sensible and the first to bed?

Russell: Lee blatantly he's got his drums in the car and the merch off the wall before we've packed up!

NOIZE: Who is the party animal?

Russell: It’s a Grant/Adam split they take it to a new level!

NOIZE: Best gig so far and why?

Russell: We did one at Maker festival in Cornwall that was Awesome but I think it was Bournemouth Opera House with The Bled and Johnny Truant. We had an awesome night with the Bled drinking and ended up at a Foam Party dancing to techno with them, I've never seen someone laugh as much as James Munoz (vocalist with the bled) Making foam afros on everyone! It ruled

NOIZE: Worst gig or event that your band have been involved in and why?

Russell: We played a festival in Bristol where the promoter put in a lot of work to make it happen and get people in, but it was just one of those things! I think we played to 9 people and a fuse went in my amp? Brilliant!

NOIZE: Why should people check you out?

Russell: Because we mean it! Plain and simple! We want to make the best music we can, not the best music in a genre we can, It happens to be metal be that’s what comes out of us! I know it’s a cliché to say but it’s not about fads and haircuts it’s about the hairs standing up on the back of your neck when you're playing. It's already changing and developing from this EP the new material different and more musical, it’s still monstrously heavy - just in a different way. We want to be around for a while and to do that it needs to have substance not just the guitar stunts and million MPH kick drums!

NOIZE: Who do you most commonly get compared to? Do you agree with the comparisons?

Russell: Olly Mitchell (Johnny Truant) once said Norma Jean\Slayer I'm happy with that. But we don't really get much in the way of comparisons.

NOIZE: Which one of your songs would you want someone to hear first and why?

Russell: "50 Owls in one house" it’s why we put it on the EP first, I think it's got Hooks, melody and a massive outro, Awesome!

NOIZE: You were on tour with The Bled and Johnny Truant as your first tour. Was it intimidating playing with well established bands so early on?

Russell: Yes on that first date in Portsmouth when we loaded the gear in and The Bled were sound checking we we're like "HOLY SHIT! We are out of our depth here!" It was cool with the truants because we we're fiends with them way before the tour, But it turned out that The Bled are the nicest and most down to earth dudes ever so we had a load of beers with them on the first night and we got on like a house on fire so it was all cool from then on, and they made a point of bigging us up every night on stage so that was more than we could ever ask for.

NOIZE: What did you learn and would you like to take these experiences back and do it again as the band you are now?

Russell: We learned that if you are nice and respectful to people you'll get the same back. There’s always bitchiness in any scene and it sucks! I still can't believe people have a problem with other people because they play/like a style of music that they don’t? It's bizarre to me. Everyone has little niggles with music but don't fall out about it! It's not worth it. We wouldn't do anything different though, it ruled!!

NOIZE: Dream venue or festival you’d love to play?

Russell: Vans Warped tour USA, Download, Reading!

NOIZE: How do you keep tour life fresh and fun?

Russell: Really annoying in jokes that only we find funny? But I think that would be the same answer for every band. Oh Gaffa Tape Spa (Basically removing hair with gaffa tape). And 2 Dabs (Bite the top off of a flying saucer and remove the sherbert contents with only 2 dabs of your tongue! (Scooping is frowned upon.)

NOIZE: Dream gig Line-up?

Russell: Mastodon, The Chariot, The Bled, Brotherhood of the lake.

NOIZE: What is your band’s motto or ethos?

Russell: KISF (Keep It Super Friendly) it's the way forward!

NOIZE: What would you like people to say about your band?

Russell: Awesome band, sound a bit different from the norm. Really nice dudes!

NOIZE: What are the best and worst things you’ve heard said about your band?

Russell: One of the reviews recently said "Let Brotherhood of the lake into your life and let them reshape it!" Holy shit that’s mental! But another review said we sounded like "A slowed down Cradle of Filth with a 15 year old singing" Which when I think about it would sound awesome hahaha!

NOIZE: Any message to your fans?

Russell: Come and say hello

NOIZE: What are your next goals as a band?

Russell: Tour and Festivals through the summer, fingers crossed. We are writing at the mo for a full length Album and the plan is to record in November and hopefully get it put out as soon as we can.

NOIZE: Plug your album, EP, tour!

Russell: We are touring in April and May come out and see us and come and say hello!
The EP is in stores now and on iTunes. Go buy it so we can afford to carry on making and recording music for you!

You can buy Brotherhood of the Lake’s debut EP which is released on Glasstone Records in HMV stores across the country, and download tracks on iTunes. Keep a lookout for the excellent split EP with Castor:Troy available alongside official merchandise from all shows.

By Dave Kendall

www.myspace.com/brotherhoodofthelake

INTERVIEW // THE TWO HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSO - THE PRESETS

2009-05-08T00:19:00.001+01:00

Less than 24 hours after landing in the U.S., Kim Moyes, half of the Aussie industrial, techno, new wave, dance punk, rock duo The Presets, kept his eyes and ears open long enough to chat about his band’s early spring U.S. tour. From his room at a Hollywood hotel, Moyes, who handles percussion and keys, gave a candid interview.
“Touring in the U.S. for three years, we’ve done a couple shows on our own. It’s good, but we seem to be jam-packed in the middle of other things, so you don’t enjoy it as much. And we’d get drunk, and by the end we’d feel 50 years old. You’d see us, and we looked like they did in that 'Benjamin Buttons' movie.”

The band enjoyed a mini break over the Christmas holiday (summertime in Australia), which gave them a short rest from that three-year tour. This U.S. tour Moyes chatted about wrapped up in April. They headlined a handful of shows and played the epic Coachella Festival in California. Moyes said the band have created a new element to their live shows.

“We’ve redone the whole set, and we’ve remixed songs so it sounds fresher,” he said. “It’s the last tour overseas before we take a break. It’s been a nice, fun little run. There was about a year between the first record and the last record. By the time you do stuff in the States, people in Australia are saying. ‘When’s the next one coming out?’ In Australia, it’s been phenomenal.”

The rest of the world has caught on as well. The band’s 2008 album, "Apocalypso," has sold more than two million copies. The fourth single off the album, “If I Know You,” was released in late March 2009. The Presets unveiled their new live look in the states earlier this year. They brought it back to the Australian mainland in early May. They’re playing all over the country, touring with Architecture in Helsinki. Although they’ve yet to unveil their summer tour schedule, one would assume (and more than likely be correct) that the duo will hit the festival circuit. Speaking of festivals, Moyes said he has mixed feelings. He and Presets bandmate Julian Hamilton enjoy playing them, but don’t like getting lost in the shuffle of the, for lack of a better term, higher-profile bands.

“We played T in the Park (Scotland), which is a great festival,” Moyes said. “It’s one of those festivals that has a great reputation in terms of lineup. We had a great time slot, closing this tent, but we were up against Prodigy, Rage Against the Machine, Primal Scream. Anybody would be pressed to miss out on that bunch instead of us, ‘that Aussie band.’ ”

At last year’s V-Fest, The Presets had quite a laugh during their set, particularly when the electricity from their fans overshadowed a quite cocky Billy Corgan.

“We were playing against Smashing Pumpkins,” Moyes said. “We were playing ‘My People,’ while Billy Corgan was playing acoustic. He was dissing us. It was quite a laugh. He started putting stuff about us into his song. He complained to the promoters so he could play his little ballad. What a sad, bald baby.”

By Ryan Wood

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INTERVIEW // ANNIE MAC: I DON’T NEED NO SLEEP!

2009-05-08T00:12:00.005+01:00

Annie Mac on DJing around the world, interviewing dogs, and ‘dull as fuck’ popstars.
It’s just before 4am, and in a rammed nightclub basement Annie Mac has finished her set to a rather hectic crowd.

Scrambling down from the DJ booth through a floor of jam-packed ravers, some sweat-ridden, neon-sunglass-wearing girls grab her for a photo. She obliges, her crossover appeal as respected DJ to television presenter is obvious at tonight’s sell-out in Bournemouth.

We meet outside the seaside venue and bundle into in her driver’s small black car as the masses pour out the club. Annie leans around the front passenger seat, brushing her curly hair back as she focuses on something out of the rear window. “Oh nice, there’s someone throwing up,” she announces, clearly unfased.

Playing everything from garage to drum and bass, Annie Mac is known for her bold mixes. Her sets, which combine a range of genres, have gained her a dedicated young following searching for both new and innovative tracks to remixed classics. A style directly linked to her high-profile radio show.

“I love the Mashup on Radio 1 because I get the chance to play older stuff as well as newer music. Like my favourite track at the moment is from a band called Rochelle and it’s an Andy George remix of their song ‘Chin Up’, and I love it, but at the same time I play classics like Sia, ‘Little Man’.”

Tonight was the warm-up to the Annie Mac’s Presents Tour which will see her playing sets across the U.K, from Birmingham to in her home country Northern Ireland. But here, in the seaside of Bournemouth, Annie’s got good memories.

“I’ve come down here a few times, and had some really random weekends. I had a really good one when I brought some friends, stayed over, and we swam in the sea at 4 in the morning,” she reveals, her Irish accent becoming stronger in the longer replies.

This time Annie brought Fake Blood, also known as Theo Keating, one half of electro DJ duo Black Ghosts, and who she describes as her ‘most inspiring DJ’ at the moment.

“He does so much more than just play records,” Annie says as she lights a cigarette and appears to blow smoke in admiration. “He loops stuff, he scratches stuff, and he’s just so creative with the way he DJs. I hate playing after him because it’s just like you can’t follow that shit.”

Aside from touring, Annie presents BBC’s Switch show, which, in her own words, has featured some of the most bizarre moments of her career. From games involving having her face in bowls of spaghetti hoops to live sumo wrestling.

The Irish DJ also has her own quirky line of questioning on the show when interviewing musicians. Including: “Would you every go roller skating to pull a girl?” and “How often do you wash?”

“I don’t like asking boring questions,” Annie states defiantly. “Asking ‘when ‘s your record out’ is so dull, you’ve got to try and change it up a bit.”

But changing it up is one thing, some of her interviews have taken interesting to the extreme. And there’s a certain one that sticks out firmly in the Radio 1 DJ’s memory: when she interviewed a dog, well, a man-dog.

“It was the maddest interview I’ve done,” she laughs. “Rex the dog was a man who pretended to be a dog the whole way through an interview. He basically had bark sounds, and if I asked him a question it was one bark for yes, two barks for no.” A few seconds later after clearly thinking about the odd interview she nods, smiles, and adds: “Yea, that was pretty cool.”

On the opposite end of the scale was another interview Annie did for Switch with American pop singer JoJo (one of those all-American teens) who she had to take out shopping. The DJ turns awkwardly on her car seat, her wide-blue eyes divert to the window, and then after a brief moment she states flatly: “She was dull as fuck.” Annie continues: “JoJo was really boring. It was bad, and it was painful. You can tell by my face in that video. I mean I tried.”

Moving back to more successful times in her various jobs and Annie recounts last summer in Ibiza as her craziest moment DJing. It was her 30th birthday, and during a set at Amnesia the nightclub gave a box of fake moustaches and wigs to a group of her friends.

“It was insane, they stormed the DJ booth half-way through the set, and they all looked like clowns. I was like what the fuck is going on? But it was such a great birthday present.”

After speaking for about ten minutes Annie’s life seems like one massive party and still upbeat in these early hours she’s clearly loving it, but does she get any sleep, I mean when can she fit it in?
“I got some in at the start of this year but as the tour progresses I won’t. I’ll get less and less. Tonight I’ll get about 6 hours and then tomorrow I’ve got a gig in Huddersfield and I’ll get in about 8am. You miss out on sleep at the weekend but then I always try and catch up on Mondays.”

Amongst sleeping and DJing, she loves going out for a dance. In-fact there’s a night on Thursdays at Nottinghill Arts Club which she describes as ‘nice to dance at before my sets on Friday.’ This is one woman full of a lot of energy.

The night, called YoYo, plays ‘proper urban music, like hip hop and garage, funky and jungle’, a genre mix showing Annie’s wide range of music tastes that relate directly to her varied sets.

Looking towards the summer and her schedule is rammed with a range of festivals, including Bestival, and Glastonbury, which Annie counts ‘as closest to my heart,’ but also Oxygen in Ireland and possibly Sonar in Barcelona where she played last year. There are also plans laid out for America.

“Miami is the one I’m most looking forward to. It’s a daytime party around a swimming pool and I’m bringing a lot of my favourite DJs from the UK to America, like Fake Blood and Rusko. It’s going to be all over the place, and it’ll be really exciting playing to Americans who I’m not sure are aware of it all.“

After the summer, the Annie Mac Presents Tour starts up again, but with such a demanding schedule will there ever be some original releases from the remix queen?

“I’d like to make music, but I want to make sure that it’s the right music and it’s perfect, and I don’t really like DJs on the radio who make tunes. If I do it, I’ll do it for myself and just play it out. I’d release it under a different name and keep it on the low. “

But for now, the music is turned off, because as I clamber out of the car into the quiet street, Annie is heading back to London to sleep. I guess she needs to make the most of it.

By Harry Harris

FEATURE // EYES DOWN: THE RETURN OF SHOEGAZE

2009-05-08T00:05:00.001+01:00

Music is like fashion. Re-invention, recycling, borrowing ideas from the past and making something of your very own is the key. And like fashion, something from the past always makes either a shambolic or a very magnificent return.
Not to point any fingers but the revival of Rave music in mid 2006 to early 2007 and neon power made an impact, but it is now long forgotten, put to the back of the minds of some very colourful teenagers who would rather not remember their clothes but may still be grateful for their copy of the ‘Hadouken!’ album.

2009 seems as though it is turning into the year for bands turning to an electric "screw real instruments" (not that there is anything wrong with that) side. Bands such as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs hardly using guitars on their new album, Friendly Fires making a Brazilian carnival sound, the gloomy sound of The White Lies and the electro pop wailings of La Roux all hitting the mainstream, there is something much more sinister creeping up on them. This is the year for Psychedelic, New Wave and ShoeGaze, and anything to fall between those lines, to hit people in the face. None of this ever really went away, the 1960s/70s inspired sounds were the highlights of the 1980s and early 1990s but Brit Poppers, Dance Music, Urban and downright Indie bands dominated, and still do. The very group of genres that consists of Shoe Gaze, Psychedelic, New Wave, 1960s, 70s and 80s Garage, Punk and jaunty freak-beat sounds do have followings, but nothing big has ever come from any of them, this, hopefully, could change. This could be the year that the bands that fall into this category get the recognition they deserve.

In a quiet but pleasant corner of the Sugarmill, Stoke, Toby Kidd of Hatcham Social explains, "It never was a popular collection of music, of course it had its fans and did get some recognition. That is why My Bloody Valentine and Jesus and Mary Chain are recognised, this is because they wanted to make a pop record and people liked and bought the record." It is true; Jesus and Mary Chain did make a popular record that people who never listened to anything from the Shoe Gaze or Psychedelic mixture.

From the 1960s, Psychedelic has been a genre that has remained rather underground, whether it has been music by The Sonics, the notorious Screaming Lord Sutch or The Velvet Underground. However, the days of having to be a London Trendy to enjoy the obscure and unknown club nights are soon to be gone. Fringes that make seeing impossible, bowl haircuts, knitted jumpers, painted on jeans, polka dots, stripes and dapper suits are moving all around the country, setting up club nights wherever they can. ‘Off With the Octopus’, a Stoke-on-Trent, yes home of Robbie Williams, club night that falls once a month in the basement of a FatCats Cafe Bar is proving a success. It hosts gigs for Psychedelic bands such as LoveLust and playing beats that pay homage to 1960s London.

The bands and artists emerging now and the ones from the last few decades still remain hidden to some extent but one band to thank in particular for the rise of the floppy fringed yet well spoken performers are Southends finest, The Horrors. They used what little instrumental skills they had (now organist Thomethy Furse was the only member able to play instruments) and brought their ideas to life. Fusing 60s fashion, attitude, guitar drilling, Sutch-esque screaming, wall climbing and black paint throwing to create a name for themselves and one of the most unique debut albums of the last ten years. With the release of their second album ‘Primary Colours’ drawing closer, they promise a very different approach. They have been working with instruments they would never have before, isolating themselves in a practice room listening to rare and obscure vinyls and swapping roles as band members. First single ‘Sea Within a Sea’ already shows that in the last two years the band have become much stronger and the transition from boys to serious musicians. The album is a beautiful array of psychedelic sounds, Faris’ haunting voice and its obvious influences of bands old and new.

Inspiration is a huge factor in this movement. Bands are always inspiring other bands. Toby Kidd is more than happy to say who Hatcham Social as a band listen to and also who he listened to when growing up.

“We are quite an open minded band and people would never normally guess our influences. The Beach Boys, Motown and Northern Soul Records are something we all enjoy listening to. The David Bowie record ‘Low’ is something I myself listen to, also a lot of 1980s electronic music such as the Eurythmics.”

Most of these are obvious inspirations when you listen to Hatcham Social’s album, ‘You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The Soul’, but the band themselves are very unique, their music has the 1980s feel to it, even a sense of The Charlatans, who Hatcham Social did some support shows for last year.

Electricity in Our Homes, Neils Children, Ipso Facto, KASMS, These New Puritans, The Horrors, Hatcham Social are the current bands that fall under the categories of this new psychedelic movement, even spouting a new genre of ‘New Gaze’, especially, These New Puritans. All of these bands have gained popularity outside of the underground scene, releasing albums, successful gigs and recognition from mainstream magazines. They are all bands who use each other for inspiration and share similar and sometimes the same influences. They all have a much broader imagination on how to create the perfect record compared to the usual generic guitar bands and also how to make the best live sets they can. Let us all hope that they can shape up the music world and prove you do not have to travel back in time to enjoy lesser known, but one of the best musical movements.

By Lilly Roberts

IN PICTURES // FRIENDLY FIRES + HOCKEY @ SOUTHAMPTON

2009-05-07T23:55:00.005+01:00

St. Albans favourite indie dancefloor fillers and the buzzie yankee newbies hit the south coast!

By Dan Smyth

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REVIEW // SXSW 2009 - PART 2

2009-05-07T22:15:00.007+01:00

When you hear about SXSW, or even when you’re going and trying to plan your schedule, it feels like forever, since you have to plan to be awake for 76 hours over the 4 days. But when you’re actually there the time flies by so quickly and by the time you get to Friday it’s like, “Hold on, this is halfway over!”.

FRIDAY

MUMFORD AND SONS @ FLAMINGO CANTINA

So for our Friday, we had the earliest morning of any of the days – having to be at Flamingo Cantina at 12pm to see Mumford and Sons. I know its kind of ridiculous to claim that having a day start at 12pm is early, but when you’re on 4 hours of sleep and two days without a meal, it is.

But anyway, Mumford and Sons. What more can I say about them? They’re great. This was probably the best performance I saw of theirs. It was some big party that Camera Obscura were playing later in the day but Mumford did draw a fair crowd.

Flamingo Cantina might be my new favourite place to see a gig. There’s an amazing wall mural, the stage is tiny and there is lots of sitting room, even like, directly to the right of the stage, so we were able to enjoy Mumford and Sons so relaxed.

They played the same set that they had been playing during their other SXSW gigs, but they were on fire today. They played “Little Lion Man” and “Timshel” and “The Cave” all of which are incredibly melodic and catchy.

They played a really, really short set because of time constraints, but we were glad because we had to get in the car and drive over to a Pizzeria.

WEREWOLVES @ RED HOUSE PIZZERIA

Now by the time we got to Red House Pizzeria, we realized we were way too early for Jay Jay Pistolet but we were able to see this young band from NY called Werewolves.

They had a lot of members, 4 or 5, if I remember correctly, and I probably don’t. They were an awesome little band, who worked really well in the warm Austin sunshine, even if their name would suggest otherwise. Their music was pretty upbeat and poppy, and rhythmically driven. The sound quality at the pizzeria wasn’t the greatest, because OK, it’s a pizza place not a venue – but they were pretty good. I look forward to hearing what they do in the future as they’re quite a young band. Their parting words were “Our myspace is www.myspace.com/amsterdam. Because we like to smoke weed”. Hmm, annoying AND endearing at the same time.

JAY JAY PISTOLET @ RED HOUSE PIZZERIA

Prompt as ever, Jay Jay Pistolet came on looking rather nervous to be alone and out of the comfort of 6th street. However, he put on an amazing show. As I mentioned before, it was an incredibly beautiful, warm day in Austin and even though his throat was sore, Jay Jay put on a lovely show.

He played the same couple of songs that he played at every SXSW show that I saw: the sublime “Happy Birthday You”; the melancholic “Hooked Up On Us”; and the tender “Always on my Way Back Home”. Ever the gentleman, Justin gracefully stopped his set a little early to allow Red House Pizzeria to get back on schedule and so he could make his radio session.

Justin has currently got a single “We are Free” out and he’s also got an EP called “Happy Birthday You – EP”, both of which are available in the UK and the US via iTunes. Justin has got some real lyrical talent – his rhymes seem natural and elegant, and his sense of melody is always spot on – and I won’t even mention his voice (again). I highly recommend checking him out.

JAY JAY PISTOLET @ NOKIA SESSION

Having made friends with Justin’s manager, who I might add is also in a brilliant one man band called ‘Beans on Toast’, we offered to give them a ride to wherever they happened to be going to next as we felt bad that they had to take cabs everywhere. So we drove them to this church that had been renovated into a home studio.

Justin had been brought in to do what he kept referring to as a “Nokia Session” and while I believe him, I’ve not been able to view/hear hide nor hair of this session just yet. The place was really nice – had an open kitchen and a little patio, and the studio was at the bottom of a huge stairwell that forked up into the second story of the house. We were lucky enough to get to sit on the stairs (as quiet as mice) as Justin recorded three songs.

Yes, they were the same three he’d been playing at every SXSW performance that I’d seen but I honestly wasn’t even sick of them. Each performance had some subtle nuance that made the songs sound fresh and exciting. I love Justin’s songs on the recordings when they are fleshed out, but they are really special when it’s just him and an acoustic guitar. It was a wonderful session to sit in on and I really do hope that I find it some day because each song was so wonderful and clear.

KING KHAN & THE SHRINES @ EMO’S MAIN ROOM, PITCHFORK VS WINDISH AGENCY PARTY

After Jay Jay’s set at the church, we hustled back to 6th street and practically jumped out of a moving car to make it over to Emo’s for the Pitchfork vs. Windish Agency party. We were forced to wait a few minutes because the place was packed with people. To be fair, it was the Pitchfork Party so all these bands were either buzz bands or hipster favourites.

We were hardly able to see King Khan and the Shrines because of how insanely packed the place was. They were, of course, amazing, thrilling the crowd with their unique brand of erotic psychedelic soul music.

I doubt you remember but two days ago, I mentioned we hadn’t eaten for ages and how tough it was to carry on through the hunger. Now at this point, which was 4pm on the Friday, we still hadn’t had a warm meal. And so as soon as King Khan and all the Shrines were off stage we rushed out of there to get our first and only warm meal of SXSW at the quaint although fairly expensive Old Pecan St. Café. Highly recommended if you have any hours to kill.

HEY NEGRITA @ FRIENDS, JAIL GUITAR DOORS

After King Khan and our magically filling meal, we decided to kill some time and walk to the river and back before heading into Friends for the Jail Guard Door showcase. We were there originally to see Beans on Toast and head over to Dananananaykroyd who were playing the Scottish showcase at La Zona Rosa. However, like SXSW has a habit of doing – our plans were wrecked due to scheduling.

However, we did get to see a little English country blues band called Hey Negrita. Apparently, they were named after the Rolling Stones. I was impressed because they had a guy playing stand-up bass which I, for one, think needs to be brought back into more live showings. Hey Negrita were exactly what they say they are: a country blues band. They gave a very pleasant, energetic performance, but I just wasn’t too terribly impressed with their sound, nor their songs. It was a little too Americana for my taste. Good but not great.

BEANS ON TOAST @ FRIENDS, JAIL GUITAR DOORS

Now this is a performance that was like three years in the making for me. I was incredibly excited about seeing Beans on Toast and we were up front, which unbeknown to me, was kind of an awkward place to stand. If you don’t know, Beans’ general setup is atop of a chair with the microphone stretched up as high as he is. And although Beans is not a very tall man - he's got an incredible presence about him - an air of mystery and wisdom.

It seemed like kind of a rushed show - especially since he went on quite late, and he proceeded to say that he was only allowed to play a couple of songs which I was not pleased to hear. However, he was able to charm his way into playing about 5. His whole ethos is just something that clicks with me. The man is witty, got a really good ear for rhyming - making it seem natural and flow properly, and his subjects - usually something controversial (global warming), or dealing with social problems (obesity), even topical songs (the smoking ban), or the fall back (drugs) all take on a new light and generally humour when Beans deals with them. He played "Coke" which has got the audience participation of everybody being tricked into raising their hands admitting they're, too, addicted to cocaine. He also played a wonderful song called "MDMAzing" about taking, duh, MDMA at a festival. He also played a political song about Barack Obama, and I forget the other one he did.

What I do remember is being completely in awe of him. His set was absolutely fantastic and I really do think it's an incredible shame that the man hasn't gotten an album out yet. He writes with such a fresh eye to situations that all of us are familiar with and has such a clear voice. Pretty much everything about Beans on Toast gets an A+ in my book. I was really sad that I wasn't able to see him on Saturday when he played a spur of the moment set at Stephen F's bar, but I am incredibly happy to have caught his set at Friends.

AMAZING BABY / JAPANESE MOTORS @ EMO'S MAIN ROOM

After the gloriousness that was Beans on Toast, we headed over to Emo's Main Room to wait for the most amazing/crazy double bill that is Black Lips and King Khan & The Shrines back to back. Not only are they both insane in their own right, but they are friends too which I happen to think is pretty appropriate. After Black Lips were forced to flee India this year, they went to Berlin and apparently formed a supergroup and wrote and recorded an album so definitely keep your eyes peeled for that.

But in the three hours we had to kill, we were forced to see two bands. The first was Amazing Baby. They were just OK. And that's really all I have to say about them. Before I even found out that they were friends with/opened for MGMT, all I could think was "Wow, this band really wants to be MGMT." But they aren't. In my humble opinion, that's really all you need to know. They weren't horrible, they didn't disgust me, they were just totally average.

After the mediocrity showing that was Amazing Baby, we got to see Japanese Motors. Apparently they're from Detroit, but they play LA all the time so I was kind of surprised my first show happened to be at SXSW. They were far better than Amazing Baby. But, at the same time, I wasn't impressed enough to take any photos or to remember any songs. They did have fun songs and some that stuck out a bit to me, but I think SXSW really has a way of forcing bands to let their true colours shine through and Japanese Motors were just a little better than OK.

BLACK LIPS @ EMO'S MAIN ROOM

This was pretty much the show that I was looking forward to so much since the exact minute Black Lips were announced. If you don't know this about me, Black Lips are one of my favourite bands - and definitely my favourite live band. I could go on and on and on and on about them, but I have a million times already so I won't. Also, the first time I ever saw them was in Austin at Emo's, so revisiting that was (I though) going to be amazing.

So they took a long time to set up, but when I know I'm going to experience greatness, I can pretty much wait for about 12 hours. So blah blah, Black Lips came on and then this other guy walks out, who I've literally never seen before in my life and grabs the mic and is like WOO! Now, I had no idea who this dude was and kind of was like, what? But from what I could glean at the time, it was a guy from Wu Tang Clan. Now, I know how much Black Lips like Wu Tang Clan, and they've even played WuTang for me and my friend, so we could tell that this probably was a little dream come true for them - so it was cool for the first 5 minutes. I mean, Black Lips playing backing band to GZA from WTC (although this was info I found out later) is not something you see on a daily basis.

So the first 5 minutes - cool by me. The last 15 minutes? Fucking excruciating! What the hell? This GZA was doing some of the most cracked out rapping I've heard - and from what I could tell by the looks on the Lips faces, they were just as confused as the crowd. Now, we were confused but some people were angry, in fact, the people behind me were shouting "FUCKING ASSHOLES!" and "Get off the stage!". The only two people behind me not yelling at Black Lips? King Khan and Har Mar Superstar. Oh yeah. By the time GZA left, I was dying of hunger and my feet were killing me, so I, too, was cranky. It was a trainwreck, to some a beautiful one, but a trainwreck nonetheless.

However, Black Lips can do no wrong in my book, so then we got a short as hell version of a real Lips gig - quick, a little arrogant, a little sloppy, but amazing nonetheless. They played just about 4 songs, I think it was "Sea of Blasphemy", "Drugs", one more off 200 Million Thousand and then "Bad Kids". Ian himself had to say, "We're tired of people saying they don't like rap music. How about people just like good music." And then he promised their next album would have some rap on it. Or something. Who knows. All I know, is I'm probably gonna like it.

KING KHAN & THE SHRINES @ EMO'S MAIN ROOM

King Khan and the Shrines have never been anything but absolutely on par and totally fantastic. In fact, I don't think I can even imagine an environment that would be too weird for King Khan or a place that he couldn't rock the hell out of. And Emo's Main Room was no different. They were even better this time than the Pitchfork Party they played earlier in the day.

This was basically our only show that began at 1, and I gotta say, I have never felt more exhausted but thank god for King Khan because when he went on - the whole room was just a crazy blur of, well, craziness. Unlike during most day parties, King Khan was in a total 70s throwback suit complete with bigger-than-bootleg, but smaller-than-flare pants.

They started with "Land of the Freak" as usual and proceeded to play mostly the same set as before, but after the first song, I noticed about 10 people / friends had snuck through the stage door and were bopping around accordingly. By the second song, like 15 people were now on stage (mind, that's in addition to the 8 people in the Shrines) including Cole Alexander, picking up any musical instrument they could find to play in time to the music and dance around. It was such an awesome collective of people enjoying the music and having fun.

After 3 or so songs, most of the people got off stage and let King Khan and his merry Shrines take over with their own craziness. Let me take this time to say that the first 5 people or so in the crowd, including myself and my friend, were going fairly wild and the rest of the crowd was really boring and while they seemed like they were enjoying it - their feet were totally still. What gives? I mean, you have King Khan belting the songs out and shimmying. You have Boomberella (or whatever) basically doing a strip-tease on stage (and as my friend said, "You can't tell me she has never stripped before"). You have the bassist jumping up on the amp, pulling his pants down and tucking everything back and wagging his tongue at the crowd. You have the keyboardist, attempting to pick his keyboard up and failing, having the keyboard practically slide into the audience. It was like sensory overload, everywhere you look something's happening. Which is the Brilliance of King Khan and the Shrines. After all the chaos, we went home and ate a sandwich and passed out and died.

SATURDAY

Friday was filled with lots of ups and downs and a fair amount of insanity. I was ready for Saturday to be a little more calm and a lot less standing. Of course, this was completely unrealistic. I've got to say, with the advantage of looking back, I wish I had gone to see more bands on the day. But, c'est la vie, right? Anyway, Saturday morning was really nice as our first show wasn't until about 145, so we actually got to get large coffees and even went as far as to eat breakfast.

MUMFORD AND SONS @ RED HOUSE PIZZERIA

So before heading over to Mumford and Sons at the Pizzeria, we picked up fellow travellers, Justin and Jay and trekked the 1+ mile over to the Pizzeria. Upon entering and realizing that it's just barely 1pm and they don't go on until like 2:30, we're all kind of like oh, great! But then Justin and Jay decided they wanted some good BBQ while they were in Austin, because, if you live in a cave/haven't heard, the BBQ in Austin is GREAT. I personally think Fort Worth BBQ is great, but hey, that's just me.

So we made it back to Red House for the first song by Mumford and Sons, which, of course, was lovely. Unfortunately then, after just one song, we decided to leave the Pizzeria and take Jay and Justin and ourselves to the Q Magazine Party which was being held that afternoon at the Parish. After dropping off the talent, we scurried to find a parking spot and run over to the parish to catch Justin who was supposed to go on at 3:30.

At 3:28, we were nestled into the growing crowd at the Parish, rum and coke in hand, waiting patiently for Justin go to on. We find out that he has just LEFT the stage. In the time (approx. 20 minutes) between dropping him off and finding parking and getting in - he went on, performed 3 songs, and left the stage. Basically, it was a major loss for us. However, Pete & The Pirates were about to go on next, which was great because we had nothing else to do that afternoon.

PETE & THE PIRATES @ THE PARISH, Q MAGAZINE PARTY

There's a couple things that I learned about Pete & The Pirates over the course of the Saturday afternoon. I will now share them.

1) They are fun to photograph. I took many photographs of them.
2) They are a really fun band, complete with super catchy riffs, bold vocals and intelligent lyrics.
3) Pete is the bassist. The lead singer is NOT Pete.
4) They are coming to America to tour very soon. [This could've been a lie, who knows]
5) They don't want anything to do with NME. I found this out even though I couldn't be less affiliated with NME. Don't forget this, ok?
6) They made a tour video of SXSW. I don't look forward to seeing this, though.

Overall, I really enjoyed them. I meant to see them many more times over the course of SXSW, but of course, I wasn't able to. I really enjoyed their set - so did the rest of the crowd. Everyone was bopping along and I've been giving their debut album "Little Death" quite a lot since returning from Austin.

LITTL’ANS @ THE RIO

When I heard Littl'ans were playing this years SXSW, I was pretty damn excited. I've been listening to the many projects of Andrew Aveling for some time now. White Sport - great! Solo Littl'ans "demos" - amazing! Their Way 7" - sublime! Primitive World (debut Littl'ans album) - just beyond! So the prospect of seeing them live was extremely exciting.

They had the early slow, starting at 8pm, and this was actually the only event they played during the entirety of SXSW. The Rio is an odd little venue because it's actually a restaurant and the stage area was like, a roped off area of the dining room with a minuscule little stage. At the start of the set, the carpet/dance floor was fairly empty. However, by the end of the set a good little crowd had formed, obviously they had overhead Littl'ans tender songs and been compelled to come watch.

Another thing you need to know about the Rio is, they have very strong margaritas. This is why my memory of the exact setlist may be fuzzy. It's either that, or I'm writing this 3 weeks late and took practically 0 notes.

Most involved with the post-Libertines scene in London have heard of Littl'ans if for no other reason than their sublime single "Their Way" which featured/was stolen by Pete Doherty. They also supported Babyshambles on some tours where, supposedly, some police activity and silliness occurred. But since then, they've kept themselves on the down-low, recording their low-key debut, "Primitive World" in New York in 2007.

Primitive World has been and continues to be one of my favourite albums of recent years. It's one of those albums that is very good when you first listen to it and keeps getting stronger each after each and every listen. On the surface you have a very tender album, filled with love songs for any occasion - even occasions with no love connection whatsoever. However, I've found that the emotions on this album run the gamut from lust to loneliness, to nostalgia, to friendship and back.

Musically, they're tight. There's not an ounce of fat or excess on the record and that transfers to the live show, as well. Each song is to the point, succinct, and edited to perfection. Not a song on the album hits over 5 minutes, and only two hit over 4 minutes.

Lyrically, I think Andrew Aveling is one of the most clever wordsmiths in a long time. Not since I first discovered the Smiths (um, a long time) have phrases gotten stuck in my head for so long, nor have I called any lyricist brilliant the way I would Aveling. Not only is he insightful but he is clever

Now, Aveling's voice is something I don't want to go into too much depth on just because I think it's so amazing and could go on forever. His voice is really what ties the record together. There's obviously some great guitar work on the album and the rhythm section keep the songs tight, moving like machines, but Aveling's voice is what really sets them apart. It's such a distinctive voice, and what's really special is how many things he's able to convey with his voice. In the same song (one of my favourites) "Don't Call It Love", which by the way might be one of the greatest one night stand songs of all time, he's able to sound needy, callous and caring. In "Everytime" he's able to convey tenderness, and loneliness, with one of my favourite set of lines on the whole album, "And I asked her if she was lonely / and she replied, "Yeah I am a lonely girl / but somebody might suddenly just find that I am worth it all". Amazing. His voice and his lyrical ability are what really set Littl'ans apart from the rest of the East London bands.

I think I've inadvertently reviewed their album when I was meant to write about their show at SXSW. But everything I've mentioned up to this point has gone into the live show and made it one of the best, if not the best, that I was privy to at this years SXSW. I only wish they had played more shows because I'm convinced this album is amazing and their live show was really wonderful as well. Basically, I think the songs are really special and I think they come across really well live and this band definitely have a bright, bright future. They are coming out with a second album this year, that I've been told is totally different but totally brilliant which is something I, of course, really believe.

So after Littl'ans showcase, we made our way over to the Perez Hilton party which was, um, well, I dunno what it was like, I just remember a shit ton of people, drinking awful chemical-tasting drinks, and getting really trashed. The last thing I remember hearing was Beyonce's little sister (I refuse to name her and give her any sort of legitimacy) and thinking, "What the fuck?" before grabbing the people I was with and leaving promptly. We were then dragged downtown to Maggie Maes where, I think, we saw a Leeds band called "Your Vegas" but wasn't terribly impressed with them either so we walked up 6th street a little bit, and said our farewells to Austin before going back to the house we were staying at and drinking more. Then we went to sleep and died. The perfect way to end any SXSW. Minus the fact that I had to spend the two days after driving across Texas, through NM and the worst state in the Union, Arizona to get back to California.

To sum it up succinctly, as I haven't with anything else related to this review, any band I saw, or anything ever that I write about: GO TO SXSW, IT WILL BE THE BEST WEEK OF YOUR LIFE. As for me? I'm already planning where to stay next year.

Words & photos by Brianna Saraceno

IN PICTURES // SXSW 2009: PART 1

2009-05-07T22:02:00.010+01:00

An epic year at the worlds biggest music festival kept our happy snapper busy. The first part of our mammoth in pictures feature.

BLACK LIPS

BEANS ON TOAST

MUMFORD & SONS

LITTL'ANS

KING KHAN & THE SHRINES

By Brianna Saraceno

IN PICTURES // SXSW 2009: PART 2

2009-05-07T21:51:00.006+01:00

More eye candy from the madness of half the world's music industries all pilgrimaging to a southern US town for 4 days.

DANANANANAYKROYD

JAY JAY PISTOLET

FOOLS GOLD

By Brianna Saraceno

IN PICTURES // SXSW 2009: PART 3

2009-05-07T21:41:00.006+01:00

And so we draw the curtain on another mesmeric South By South West and the people of Austin have some rather unenviable cleaning up to do.

PETE & THE PIRATES

MUMFORD & SONS

KING KHAN & THE SHRINES

By Brianna Saraceno

IN A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

2009-04-28T00:11:00.002+01:00

Jim rubbed his temple with his left hand as he squeezed the cardboard cup from which the acrid smell of the cheap black coffee was emanating. He watched as the coffee bobbed up and down as the pain in his head came and went in pangs.
It was like someone had smacked him round the head with a two by four yet his recollections of the previous night were so vague it was not impossible that somebody had. He moved his hand down his face and stroked his unshaven cheek as he gazed upon the racks upon racks of vinyl records that lay in front of him, enclosed within his gloomy shop on this crisp Friday morning. He had a velvet goldmine of music to choose from, but given his sedated state he had settled for something soothing yet not sickly sweet, namely the Sonic Youth’s cover of The Carpenter’s “Super Star”; calming melodies mixed with buzzing feedback and lifeless synthesizers.

Just then a piercing electronic whine interrupted the song. It had come from the little speaker perched on the wall behind the counter, between an Iggy Pop poster and a framed black and white photograph of Elton John. The whine indicated someone had just opened the door to the shop. Jim tried to focus his gaze on the slowly closing door and the figure in front of it. There stood a teenage girl dressed in a black leather biker jacket and cut off denim skirt. Her black leggings disappeared into a huge pair of white hi-topped Nikes that had evidently seen better days; her hair was a bleached blonde mop that seemingly travelled in every direction yet still managed to fall over her eyes. She stood somewhat nervously for a moment, clasping her leopard print handbag, looking around the store before turning her attention to Jim and offering him an apologetic smile. He contemplated replying with one of his blood chilling stares he usually reserved for customers who tried to haggle down the price of his wares, but instead gave something stalled halfway between grimace and smile.

With this gesture acting as non-verbal permission the girl stepped over to one of the racks and began carefully fingering through the records on display. She was looking at the ‘1970’s/GLAM’ section, which Jim incidentally felt was both eclectic and representative of the that particular genre, almost as satisfying as the neighbouring ‘1970’s/ PUNK’ section or the ‘1990’s/DANCE’ section over the other side of the store. He watched her lazily as he continued to squeeze the cup, on first impressions he doubted she was going to try and nick anything but through past experience he was past being trusting of his customers. The Sonic Youth track ended; followed by the next track he’d enqued, a live 1975 version of “Wild Horses” by The Rolling Stones. Just then the girl turned to inspect the rack behind her, ‘1980’s/HIP HOP’ and as she turned Jim noticed her t shirt. It was imprinted with the cover photograph from The New York Dolls self titled debut. Did she know about the Dolls or was it just a fashion statement? Maybe she had discovered them through Morrissey? Or the Dee Dee Ramone/Johnny Thunders connection? Or through reading into where Malcolm McLaren got most of his ideas for The Sex Pistols from…

That first Dolls record, he hadn’t listened to that in a while, but what a record! It was such a pillar in that whole musical lineage , the ancestry of The Velvet Underground, Television, The Voidoids, The Talking Heads, The Ramones, Blondie leading through to the new comers like The Walkmen and The Strokes, maybe even The Killers if he was feeling generous. With that Jim drifted off into a New York day dream.

CGBG’s, Max’s Kansas City, silver balloons reflecting the glaring lights of Andy Warhol’s factory, basement art galleries, yellow cabs. The remnants of the post war jazz scene (which arguably also influenced the Hip Hop scene of the 1980’s, but that was another story and another rack of records), dark and dingy clubs in which Garage bands bashed out buzzy Blues and Rock covers. Away from the shiny happy psychedelic people on the West Coast, instead the biting cold of the East, where art and Rock combined with the junkie scene that endured from the early Jazzers to Lou Reed and beyond.

The look, the sound, the danger, the low brow character that has made the NY scene a definition of cool again and again, the records sitting in his shop were testament to this fact alone. When the children of the West Coast were busy putting flowers in their hair the underside of NY was descending into the murky realms of the junk and transvestite scenes. When just about everyone else was pulling on their flared pants and frilly shirts the NY underground were pulling on their skinny jeans and black leather jackets. When everyone else was obsessing over manufactured boy bands and teen idols the NY anti was asking “Is This It?”.

How many times had Jim asked himself what exactly made the NY scene so cool? How many times had he given up? Yet on this Friday morning, in the thralls of self induced fatigue he decided to give it another shot.

Maybe it was because New York was a tale of two cities, the one presented on the records of The Velvets, The Dolls, The Ramones, that dark and dangerous metropolis that sat in incomplete disparity to the mainstream presentations of glitz and glamour such as those found on Frank Sinatra records. Audrey Hepburn sits down to breakfast in a Fifth Avenue jewellery store with a cat draped around her shoulder while a few blocks away a young man turns tricks to buy his next fix. The old Times Square of transvestite prostitutes versus its revamped replacement of Disney chain stores, the ultra dark undercurrent against the sickly sweet gloss; the rotting underside of the big apple, the brooding housing projects that serve as havens for the vampire junkies, dark sunglasses shielding tormented eyes from the harsh realities of the cold streets on the morning after. While to some New York exists as a pretty commodity to be groomed and flashed about ,the underground, the Noir York, sit in complete disparity, shitting all over whatever the city tourist board try and churn out. It is perhaps this contrast , the stark difference alone, that is the root of this cool and the reason what there is nothing quite like the NY scene: The Velvets, The Dolls, The Ramones, Blondie, The Strokes. None of it is for show, never playful or whimsical, dead serious, more than mere Pop music, something else entirely. A distillation of some evanescent force, the fumes rising from the bonfire of the vanities that continues to burn in The Big Apples, a huge F- U to the NY mainstream.

Maybe that was why Jim had racks of music made by generation after generation of New Yorkers sitting in his store, that were sought after by generation after generation of British kids and their parents before them. The live version of “Wild Horse” ended, Jim stirred out of his NY day dream and turned to his laptop, halting it from playing the next enqued track, “I am the Resurrection” by The Stones Roses, instead selecting Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side”. He glanced up as the distinctive bass line groaned out of the speakers below the counter, his customer did not glance up from the record she was inspecting but he saw the corner of her mouth creep into a smile as she started to tap one over sized Nike in time with the song. Jim in turn smiled to himself and finished his coffee.

By Dann Gaymer

MY RECORD STORE DAY

2009-04-28T00:04:00.002+01:00

Saturday April 18th was a day for us all to celebrate our local record stores, search through some 12”’s and bag ourselves some exclusive records released just for the day.
There was a mummer that such a day was heralding the beginning of a novelty-status for indie stores, but what it seemed to prove is that the local indie is as in great a shape now as it’s perhaps ever been. The death of the high street (circa recent recession) has proven that CD sales really are on a downward spiral, torrents and file sharing sites are some of the most visited on the web so this isn’t much of a shock to anyone in the know, but the rise of vinyl collectors has risen – and this is a surprise to some. But CDs were never really that exciting, just part of the evolution to make music more mobile. Vinyl’s have continued look good, sounds great, and have become stalwart for the real music collectors.

Record store day was a good an excuse for there to be some creativity with our shopping. My local, ‘Black Cat Records’ in the East wing of Somerset’s county town Taunton, decided to put on a last minute guerilla gig on the pavement. At 11am a mini PA system was set up along with a stall of bargain records, throughout the day there were free and local CDs being given out among customers. Local college band The Darlingtons played a half hour electric-acoustic set with full drum kit. Despite traffic zooming past the set sounded surprisingly clear and the local boys went down well within the mixed audience. Another local act put in a good effort before an in store hip-hop performance from local skaters. Passers-by looked a bit confused at all this excitement, but not as confused as the owners of the flats situated behind the make shift venue.

The buzz around the store was unmistakeable compared to the usual mid-week flow. It felt like a scene based around a record shop, albeit for one day. The street gig gave the afternoon a 50s Jamaica street-party vibe (just more white and middle class). For once, the police who drove by were surprisingly slack at parking and stopping any kind of excitement happening in my town. The event felt genuinely anarchic compared to many events of this nature, based around nationwide ‘days’.

It all went to prove that a bit of organisation in tow with a local scene can go a long way to making a Saturday much more interesting than buying overpriced coffees. Self-owned shops can organise days like this and offer something HMV and the now defunct Zavvi could never – a bit of spirit. Record store day managed to show, for us anyway, what the organisers were hoping it to. No matter how much of a farce, or a beginning of an end, you could feel about such a tag line as the 18th carried, it did its job – ensuring many more Record Store Days to come.

Nicholas Burman

www.recordstoreday.com

PIRATES, PEERS AND DIGITAL PIONEERS: HOW DOWNLOADS HAVE HELPED THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

2009-04-05T12:38:00.003+01:00

A controversial statement, but the coming of downloads, both legal and illegal, has really helped the music business in the long term. After looking at the industry before and during the mass downloading happened, it’s easy to see where it will go: a more accessible, higher quality standard of music.
Everyone is aware of Napster and the havoc it caused for the larger pop acts (“but my solid gold swimming pool won’t buy itself” shouted Lars Ulrich), and after many law suits it was eventually shut down, yet that was only the beginning. Eventually, lots of peer to peer software was made available to anyone with an internet connection, allowing people to download songs and albums for free at the expense of the record label and artist. As the law caught up with them, more intricate ways to download music were made, so if Kazaa was shut down, it didn’t matter because you could download entire discographies from a torrent site.

Gaining popularity at a slower rate were web sites you could download songs legally from, the most successful being iTunes which currently owns about 85% of the music download market. At the time, all this downloading, including legal downloading to an extent, was seen as “the end of the music industry” and musicians everywhere were going to be on the street, busking with their Fender jazz basses and Gibson Les Pauls that once were used to headline Reading, whilst record labels were making thousands of workers redundant.

No one actually took a step back and thought how this could dramatically improve the music business. The main sufferers are the major labels (who most musicians hate), as bands still get a lot of money for having their songs played on TV and radio and make money on merchandise. There have also been successful bands that make a very good living since the mass downloading, just read NME or Kerrang and you’ll see. Even before the internet was available for domestic and pornographic use, people could copy CDs to tape or CD, which at the time was also “killing music”.

Most importantly, free downloads mean music is more accessible to everyone. If not free, it’s very cheap, 70p or so for a song on Play.com. The price of CDs has fallen from about £15 to £5-10 and vinyl sales have increased too. Very accessible music allows consumers to dig into the annals of history and find the artists and albums that made music what it is today, making music more appreciated by the listener.

As more people appreciate music and go beyond the bubblegum pop that was the nineties charts, they want to write and play music. In the last few years there’s been a huge increase in musicians: music institutes have an increasing number of applicants and a lot of bar and pubs have managed to fit in a live venue where there wasn’t one before. In some places there are more musicians than non-musicians. In turn this puts a bigger demand on music technology: everything from new guitar strings to multi-track recorders to a bass drum pedal. Better technology is becoming cheaper, especially in home recording gear, which is also becoming more commonplace amongst more serious semi-professional musicians.

Because CD sales aren’t as good as they once were, the emphasis has gone back into live gigs, and bands put on increasingly better shows for their audience. Every year, more and more festivals keep springing up to meet the demand for more live music. The live shows I’ve been to in recent years have been more entertaining and more energetic than several years ago before downloading began.

I don’t condone illegal downloads and I’m very much against downloading songs of new bands who need the money. I can, however, see that the shape of the music industry is better off now than it was because people can get free music. Being a musician myself, I don’t focus on the fact that I’m going into an industry where everyone “steals” from me, I look at more creative ways to earn a living.

By Josh Charig

JOHN FRUSCIANTE: A RETROSPECTIVE WITHIN EMPTINESS

2009-03-30T19:39:00.003+01:00

On January 20th John Frusciante, the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, released his tenth studio album entitled The Empyrean. The road to this tenth solo effort and his career with and away from the Red Hot Chili Peppers is a rocky one to say the least.
From being a teenage fanatic of the Chili Peppers Funk/Punk/Rap fusion to suddenly becoming their guitarist after the death of found member Hillel Slovak, then going on to help shape a whole new sound on the legendary Blood Sugar Sex Magik album, to then falling into a near fatal heroin addiction and all but disappearing from the world of poplar music only to return to the band and help take them to their biggest successes with Californciation, By The Way and Stadium Arcadium, becoming one of the hardest working and celebrated musicians of his time. Today Frusciante is one of the most coveted guitarists of his time with the Chilis, yet all the while he has also been playing and recording his own music, displaying his prowess as a song writer, vocalist and multi instrumentalist, demonstrating his wide musical influences from Hendrix and Zappa to New Order and the Wu Tang Clan. What will follow is nowhere close to giving a full picture of Frusciante, in fact to do his story justice Frusciante really needs a book or two penned about him (ala Keidis’s book ‘Scar Tissue’?), instead this is merely a sketch of Frusciante’s varied recording career.

In 1991 Blood Sugar Sex Magik was released after a solid few months of dedicated monk like recording (documented in the ‘Funky Monks’ film). Although having already recorded one record with the RHCP, (1989’s Mother’s Milk ,after replacing the late Hillel Slovak Frusciante) Frusciante was still finding his feet musically, not in technique but rather in forging a sound that was his own. BSSM was this realization. Frusciante flourished in the environment in which the record was made; secluded from the real world in a grand Hollywood mansion with only band mates, engineers and producer Rick Rubin for company, he immersed himself in music and art, ferociously focusing on his playing. The results were paramount, Frusciante produced a definitive watery style that fusing Funk, Punk, Blues, Metal, Psychedelia yet also bringing a keen sensitivity to melody that had previously been absent from the bands music. This coincided with singer Anthony Keidis’s move to singing over rapping and bassist Flea’s shift away from his signature slap heavy style to more minimalist parts. The resulting tracks that typified this style such as “Give It Away” and “Under The Bridge” made the RHCP’s super stars.

Yet Frusciante’s reintegration into the real world, in which he was now regarded a Rock god, did not come easily. Troubled with the mainstream success that they had achieved Frusciante started resenting the band (especially Keidis) and his audience until finally he quit and he retired to his Hollywood home, once again immersed him self in art and music, only this time involving copious quantities of drugs, chiefly heroin. Two years later in 1994 Frusciante released his first solo effort Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt on Rick Rubin’s American Recordings, reputedly upon the urgings of close friend River Phoenix. It was in fact recorded between 1988 and 1992, later mixed by Frusciante, and is in fact two records hence the double title. The first half is like a guided tour of Frusciante’s haunting existence in his Hollywood home (see Johnny Depp and Perry Pharrel’s film ‘Stuff’). Coplicard broken melodies, lo-fi jams filled with shrieks and wails yet peppered with moments of pure brilliance: it’s messy, dark and sometimes painful, but beautiful at the same time, a piece of abstract art along the lines of Pollock or Dali. The second half’s tracks are all untitled, ranging from little jams to croaky to short and surprisingly decent pieces of song writing such as “Untitled 3#”. It is not easy listening music but it certainly took many by surprise. That is, some were surprised at how free and expressive they felt it was, other surprised by how bad it sounded to them and what a fall from grace it represented.

By the time Smile from the Streets You Hold was released in 1997 Frusciante was barely alive. His best friend River Phoenix had died, his former band had gone onto record an album without him, replacing him with Dave Narrovo of Jane’s Addiction (1995’s One Hot Minute, still a hotly debated record).To make matters worse Frusciante’s house had burnt down and he had almost had his arm amputated due to the infected abbesses on them caused by mis-injecting heroin. It is almost certain that the record was merely left over from his first solo release, scraps and rejects from an abstract art project that was already regarded as difficult. The results are frustrating at best, tormenting at worst and Frusciante later admitted he only released the record for drug money and has since had it removed from the market due to how uncomfortable he felt with it (though there are rumours of a re-release).It is a record for the die hard fans and collectors but even they felt let down and saddened by this proof that a man who had once being a young brilliant Rock star with so much potential had become a burnt out husk, all the signs pointing to an eminent demise.

Yet In late 1997, after more than five years of heroin addiction Frusciante quit cold turkey, reputedly sweating it at night clubs. However he couldn’t get off cocaine and alcohol and was finally admitted to rehab upon the urgings of Bob Forrest (of Thelonious Monster / The Bicycle Thief).Fully recovered Frusciante re-entered society in an almost reborn state, becoming a devotee of yoga, organic food and even abstaining from sexual intercourse .Meanwhile the Red Hot Chili Peppers had parted ways with Navarro (who had himself relapsed) the band being regarded as having had it’s day in the sun ,being on the verge of break up. Then the impossible happened when bassist Flea invited Frusciante to rejoin and Frusciante accepted. Frusciante’s technical prowess had diminished leading him to a less is more approach which helped forge a sound that was not at all macho, but rather watery and soothing whilst still packing a much needed punch, where before he would have plaid twenty notes he played just one.

This change of attitude and sound which helped restore the bands fortunes with the massive hit record Caifornication (1999), exhibiting more grown up and gentle ballads such as “Scar Tissue” whilst still holding Funk Rock credentials with tracks like “Around The World”. Spurred on by his artistic and spiritual rebirth Frusciante recorded his third solo effort To Record Water For Only Ten Days (2001) on Warner. On this record Frusciante merged the stark experimentalism of his previous solo efforts, taming and simplifying, harnessing them to gentle melodies and thoughtful spiritualistic lyrics to create a fresh and exciting sound that also exhibited Frusciante’s skill as an composer. It was followed by the EP Going Inside (2001) and From the Sounds Inside an internet only record that consists of material left over from To Record Water For Only Ten Days , which Frusciante offered to his loyal fan base for free on his website, a gesture of gratitude rarely exhibited by musician of his stature, much like the intimate live shows he played to support these records. Frusciante’s previous experiments with sound processing stepped up a notch with extensive use of synthesizers, digital processors, drum machines and an array of vintage studio effects. Here Frusciante started to exhibit his long term interests in Electronic, Dance music and New Wave groups such as New Order, more away from the Funk, Hard Rock and psychedelic influences he had previously exhibited. While his previous solo efforts had surprised in how different from the Chili’s they were in a difficult fashion his new solo work surprised with how accessible yet original it was. As a result fans of Frusciante should have found no surprises in the Chili’s next record By The Way(2002), a decidedly unfunky laid back and relaxed collection of minimalist pieces, fusing Synth Pop, Beach Boys/1950’s Rock and Roll sensibilities with Ska, Reggae and a host of other influences.

After the by the way tour Frusicante’s work followed a similar direction with a deeper investigated melodic structure, changes and effects processing, By The Way being almost completely free of flashy guitar solos that had at least occasionally appeared in Californication. His next release Shadows Collide With People (2004) is probably his most accessible work with such pieces as the epic “Carvel”; American Folk and Rock ballads given a Modest Mouse like treatment to create charming and deep pieces that exhibit a level of warmth and intimacy not usually encountered in popular music. Yet in 2004 Frusciante would not offer merely one release one but an incredible six in six months of 2004 on the Record Collection label, demonstrating his zealous work ethic. The first to follow Shadows Collide with People was The Will to Death a much sparser, rawer and less costly affair in comparison, featuring only his long time friend and collaborator Josh Klinghoffer, the DC EP was notable for featuring Ian MacKaye of Fugazi on guitar, Inside of Emptiness is a more Rock based affair featuring Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of the Mars Volta, A Sphere in the Heart of Silence neing in complete juxtaposition, being an Electronic a co-release with Josh Klinghoffer, Curtains finishing Frusiciante’s impressive streak with a mainly acoustic set up, once again in stark contrast giving the energetic and upbeat Folky single “The Past Recedes”. In the space of a year Frusciante had produced a body of work that others could only produce over the course of their entire career while each one sitting in the contrast to the other, proving how diverse and eclectic his interest and abilities are. Arguably Frusciante was promoted from the rank of simply ‘guitarist’ to the pedestal of ‘musician’ in the true sense of the word.

The RHCP in 2006 returned from a temporal hiatus to record the double album Stadium Arcadium, a dictionary of the bands previous sounds and experiments set in a cosmic opera of run away teenage bandits and intergalactic cowboys. The album itself was a rediscovery of the bands Funk Rock origins, marrying them with the more sensitive and melody driven pieces of their latter work. Meanwhile Frusciante has rekindled his teenage interest in big and hard guitar tones, extensive Wah Wah use and face melting solos, from the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Van Halen, giving the record a much more aggressive in your face sound than the RHCP’s previous two releases. After revealing themselves as latter day saints of Rock and crossing the entire globe a few days the Chilies have gone on indefinite hiatus while the individual members follow their individual pursuits. Of course, Frusciante has taken this opportunity to release another album, his 10th, entitled The Empyrean (2009).Almost as a comedown from the virtuoso excess of Stadium Arcadium this record sees Frusciante return to a more psychedelic sphere , moving away from the Hard Rock attitude to layered sounds, yet rather than layering in the variety of The Smiths or Modest Mouse sitting closer to his long time hero Frank Zappa and a reinvestigation of the Syd Barrett / Captain Beefheart sensibilities he toyed with on his first two drug addled releases. The record is a raw departure from his previous work, a cosmic concept record, another part of his musical evolution: the virtuosity ever present not just in his guitar playing but on his vocals, arrangements, songwriting and production, no doubt a set up for whatever he chooses to turn his virtuosity to next.

Frusciante is almost like a man who has lived the life of many instead of one, much the same as how his musical style and influences are that of a dozen musicians instead of one. He has truly taken up the mantle of the fallen guitar gods of years past, yet his impressive portfolio of solo works adds a further depth as an alter ego from his work with the RHCP, an eclectic and intimate selection that begs to b explored and enjoyed. The Empyrean is the latest chapter in his larger than life story that is surely just at the cusp greater heights of musical brilliance.

By Dann Gaymer

IN PICTURES: LILY ALLEN + LA ROUX @ SOUTHAMPTON GUILDHALL

2009-03-24T20:06:00.004Z

Keith's little minx of an offspring is back, as if you didn't know. This time she's out on the road with the rather splendid La Roux to, what a treat.

By Dan Smyth