ISSUE 14
7 - 13 AUGUST 2018
LIVE & ALBUM REVIEWS MUSIC NEWS GIG LISTINGS OUT OF TOWN
THE WEDDING PRESENT AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA Photo: Naomi Dryden-Smith
ISSUE 14
CONTENTS THE WEDDING PRESENT
David Gedge talks to Brightonsfinest about the band’s early DIY days and their all-day At The Edge of The Sea festival in Brighton
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CEO: Frank Sansom EDITOR: Daniel White
LISTINGS
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Our recommended listings and previews of this week’s gigs
ALBUMS Check out the latest album releases
PRODUCTION: Adam Kidd, Jonski Mason
LIVE REVIEWS
COVER SHOT: Naomi Dryden-Smith
WOMAD Festival and The Rock House Festival feature in this week’s reviews
CONTRIBUTORS: Jamie MacMillan, Jeff Hemmings, Iain Lauder, Ben Noble, Liam McMillen, Ben Walker, Christian Middleton, Kelly Westlake, Paul Hill, Chloe Hashemi, Dan Whitehouse, Annie Roberts
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press@brightonsfinest.com advertising@brightonsfinest.com Copyright © 2018. All rights reserved.
OUT OF TOWN
brightonsfinest.com
Our favourite upcoming gigs outside of Brighton
brightonsfinestpresents @brightonsfinest
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NEWS
BRINGING THE ARTISTS CLOSER TO YOU...
Nordoff Robbins, the UK’s largest independent music therapy charity, have announced the return of their Get Loud campaign on 26th September. Brighton will play host to Enter Shikari at Concorde 2 as well as All Saints at Komedia, with £10 tickets available now.
Jon Spencer has announced his first ever solo album will be called Spencer Sings The Hits, with first single ‘Do the Trash Can’ a typically high voltage and mangled garagebues-rock pounder. He’ll be touring the UK with The Melvins, including a date at Concorde 2 on 29th October.
brightonsfinestuk @brightonsfinest
The 2018 Mercury Prize shortlist has been announced, with Noel Gallagher and Wolf Alice among those in the running. Over 200 LPs were submitted and have now been whittled down to 12, with the ceremony at Hammersmith Apollo in London on 20th September.
GIG LISTINGS The Hope & Ruin
PREVIEWS The Prince Albert
Good Guy Clarence Tuesday 7th August Tickets: £5 OTD Presented by Woyera Records
Sal Paradise Wednesday 8th August Tickets: £5 Presented by Scruff of the Neck
Mold Wednesday 8th August Tickets: £4 OTD Presented by Dentcha & Do Your Best
The Weirdos Thursday 9th August Tickets: £8.80
A Room Swept White Friday 10th August Tickets: FREE Mystic Braves Sunday 12th August Tickets: £7.70 Presented by Love Thy Neighbour Sons of Bills Monday 13th August Tickets: £11.50 Presented by One Inch Badge Greenness Saturday 18th August Tickets: £5.50 Presented by FemFriday & Melting Vinyl
Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar Stone Cold Fiction Thursday 9th August Tickets: £3.30 Jacob Aaron & The Reign Friday 10th August Tickets: £7 OTD Presented by Paralytic Promotions Astpai Tuesday 14th August Tickets: £4.40 Presented by sugar-free + Unfun Space Blood Wednesday 15th August Tickets: £5.50 Presented by Small Pond Gloo Friday 17th August Tickets: £5 OTD Presented by sugar-free
Patterns Slum Village Sunday 12th August Tickets: £17.50 Presented by AGMP Concerts
The Haunt Pianos Become The Teeth Saturday 11th August Tickets: £15 Presented by One Inch Badge
The Hotknives Friday 10th August Tickets: £11 The Runawayz Saturday 11st August Tickets: £11 The Schizophonics Monday 13th August Tickets: £9.35
Bishop Nehru - The Haunt Wednesday 8th August 2018 Bishop Nehru, fresh from his latest release - the Kaytranada and MF DOOM-produced Elevators: Acts I & II - is sure to bring his 90s hip-hop and jazz fusion for a very special show at The Haunt. At just 21 years old, Nehru has already built up an impressive body of work with eight different projects under his belt, as well as receiving praise from Kendrick Lamar. An artist of such accolades at The Haunt is certainly not to be missed.
Green Door Store Pardans Tuesday 7th August Tickets: FREE Time, The Valuator Wednesday 8th August Tickets: £5 Presented by Paralytic Promotions Samana Thursday 9th August Tickets: FREE Presented by Green Door Store FemRock Pride Friday 10th August Tickets: £5+ Presented by FemRock Standard Jordan Friday 17th August Tickets: FREE
PI OF CK T WE HE EK
At The Edge Of The Sea Festival Concorde 2 - Saturday 11th August The brainchild of David Gedge, this allday festival pulls together an impressive line-up of bands with a unique mixture of styles and non-stop music from start to finish, bouncing between the main stage and a stage in the bar area of Concorde 2. This year is the 10th anniversary and will feature The Wedding Present, Cinerama, Terry De Castro, Helen And The Horns, Young Romance, Salad, The Catenary Wires and many more.
Komedia The Hungry Mothers Thursday 9th August Tickets: £5 Talitha Rise Friday 10th August Tickets: £13 Presented by Komedia The Skatalites Monday 13th August Tickets: £20 Presented by Global Beats
Concorde 2 Skid Row Sunday 19th August Tickets: £25 Presented by Skid Row
The Rhythm Method - Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar - Saturday 11th August 2018 After having to cancel their Joker performance last autumn, it’s been well over a year since the duo performed in our city. Yet, they’ve been on top form for the last year, with the releases of ‘Party Politics’, ‘Cruel’, and ‘Something For The Weekend’. Known for their hilarious on-stage antics, as well as their frankly addictive take on pop music, it’s sure to be, in their own words, a “proper naughty” occasion down in Sticky Mike’s basement.
BRIGHTONSFINEST.COM
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LIVE REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS Our Girl – Stranger Today Out: 17th August 2018
Led by The Big Moon’s Soph Nathan, Our Girl’s debut long player is full to the brim with anthemic and bitter-sweet shoegaze-meets-guitar-pop. There’s a quiet-loud aesthetic throughout, Nathan layering the guitars thanks to the input of producer Bill Ryder-Jones, who took the basic ingredients of guitar, bass and drums and powered them up, creating a wall-of sound effect, best heard on the pining romance of ‘I Really Like You’.
A group who consistently surprise audiences, Deaf Havana’s 2018 return, Rituals, has not only followed suit, but has entirely transported the Norfolk lads into a new realm which is sparkly, shiny and slick beyond belief. Vocalist James-Veck Gilodi has beautifully captured a precise blend of vibrancy with tentative lyricism that’s filled to the brim with realism and disturbance. Like previous albums, Rituals will certainly split audiences.
Deaf Havana – Rituals Out: 3rd August 2018
Music from far and wide, 128 countries to be precise, descended on WOMAD Festival for four days of musical paradise. Keeping its reputation as one of the politest, most relaxed feelgood festivals out there, the likes of BCUC, Maalem Hamid El Kasri, Renata Rosa, Gasper Nali and Leftfield all played mind blowing sets that will live long in the memory.
For the second year running, The Rock House Festival was a roaring success. Featuring a mixed bill of acts drawn from the learning disabled music community and up-and-coming local bands, this vibrant all-dayer of diverse music created a great atmosphere, soaked up by the integrated crowd. A testament to the great work done by local arts charity Carousel. Read the full reviews at Brightonsfinest.com/live
Read the full reviews at Brightonsfinest.com/albums
NIGHTLIFE
OUT OF TOWN
Purple Velvet Curtains Friday 10th August Patterns 11pm - 4am
ETHNIK Friday 10th August Hideout 8pm - 2am
Iron Maiden Friday 10th August The O2 Arena, London 7pm
The Sugarhill Gang Saturday 11th August Islington Assembly Hall, London, 7pm
Twisted Frequencies Friday 10th August Rialto Theatre 9pm - 5am
Meet The Sloths Friday 10th August Green Door Store 11pm - 4am
Ethan Johns Saturday 11th August St Mary’s Church, Guildford 7pm
Lice Saturday 11th August The Old Blue Last, London 7:30pm
War On Techno Record Label Launch Party Friday 10th August Volks, 10pm - 6am
Faro & Friends Saturday 11th August Patterns 11pm - 4am
Slaughter & The Dogs Sunday 12th August Lewes Con Club 7.30pm
Joan As Police Woman Monday 13th August Omeara, London 7pm
We Are Family Saturday 11th August Hideout 11pm - 5am
Sonic Switch Saturday 11th August Green Door Store 11pm - 4am
Ariel Pink Tuesday 14th August Heaven, London 7.30pm
Beautiful Days Festival Friday 17th – Sunday 19th August Escot Park
Full event listings at Brightonsfinest.com/listings
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BRIGHTONSFINEST.COM
THE WEDDING PRESENT At The Edge of The Sea Festival takes place this week and, ahead of the all-dayer, Jeff Hemmings sat down with David Gedge to talk John Peel, Tommy, and their forthcoming documentary In 1987, Leeds band The Wedding Present were riding high on the buzz generated by a number of self-released singles and support from the likes of Radio One DJ’s John Peel and Andy Kershaw. It was also during this year that they released their debut album, George Best, on their own label, Reception. It featured a now iconic image of that equally iconic footballer of the same name on the cover, and became a minor commercial success, scraping the top 50, and cementing the band’s reputation as one of the best around, one who were spearheading the so-called ‘indie’ scene that had slowly grown out of post-punk. Along with Primal Scream, The Wedding Present have, with the odd blip or two, stayed the course since those early days. Now, in 2018, they are as highly revered as ever: they’re still releasing records, curate their own annual festival, At The Edge of The Sea, and even have a new film documenting their early years, Something Left Behind, to celebrate. At The Edge of The Sea has, over its ten years, usually involved The Wedding Present performing two sets: one of which revolves around them performing one of their albums in full. This time, they are digging out Tommy, a compilation of early singles, B-sides and radio sessions, that was released post-George Best. It is a fantastic document of their early years, when they forged the distinctive raw aggression of their music, and fused that with the kitchen-sink narrative lyrics of David Gedge, the band’s only constant throughout their 34 years together. “The band started in 1985 and we did a series of singles on our own label,” explains David Gedge. “We didn’t make George Best until late 1987. It was quite unusual at the time, to wait that long before doing an album. Partly, we didn’t want to put all those songs we had released on George Best. We thought that would be a bit of a rip off. We tried to keep George Best as new as possible. But that meant we had
Photo: Naomi Dryden-Smith
all these tracks that had only been out as indie singles. So, it was an obvious idea to put them all together, and it came out the following year.” This year represents the 30th anniversary of Tommy‘s release, an album which contains a treasure trove of indie classics, including their first ever single ‘Go Out And Get ‘Em Boy!’, as well as subsequent singles ‘Once More’, and ‘My Favourite Dress’, as well as a number of those early BBC sessions. In a day and age when so many bands are now in effect DIY, back in the 80s there was very little information around as to how you would actually record, manufacture and release your own record. “You just asked people,” says Gedge. “There was a recording studio in Leeds that we used frequently, and they gave us advice. We also looked in the back of one of the old newspapers, like the NME or Melody Maker, where there were adverts like ‘Get a thousand of your seven inches pressed’. We did just that, we sent it to one of those places. To save money, I borrowed two of my mother’s suitcases, went down to London on a National Express coach, went to the pressing plant, got the 500 seven inches, and brought them home. And we got the sleeve printed at a local printers in Leeds. We actually cut out the image on these sheets, glued it, and then put the record in there. Then we took them to York where there was a distribution company called Red Rhino, and we let them have them sale or return. It was very much a cottage industry. But then of course Peel played it, about 10 times in the first few weeks. As a result it sold out very quickly.”
Part of 2018’s At The Edge of The Sea will be the second ever screening of Something Left Behind, a documentary made by Worthing resident Andrew Jezard which focusses on the band’s early years, up to and including the recording of George Best. “Andrew met Shaun Charman, our first drummer, and Shaun invited him to come and see the band, at one of our anniversary shows. He liked the idea of some of these fans who had followed the band all these years. His initial idea was to do a film based on the thoughts of the fans, which is an interesting angle, but I said if I was to see a documentary about a certain album or band, I would want to hear from the producer, and all the band members. So, he got hold of all the original four members, even Keith, who lives in Australia, and Amelia Fletcher, who did some of the singing on the early records. It’s a big story of how The Wedding Present began, and made George Best. In the early years I kept every press cutting, every recording, every photograph. He filled his car boot with all this stuff and took it away. He’s done an amazing job.” To read the full interview visit Brightonsfinest.com/TWP Something Left Behind, 10th August, Duke of York Picturehouse, followed by a Q&A with David Gedge, Shaun Carman and Andrew Jezard.