Holly Herndon
Saturday 4th June
ILOVEMAKONNEN Wiley + Slimzee AJ Tracey / Benga / Bugzy Malone / Congo Natty Ft. Congo Dubz + Iron Dread / Ghetts / Jammer / Lady Leshurr / Logan Sama / Newham Generals + J Cush / P Money / RAY BLK / So Solid Crew (Lisa Maffia & Romeo) / Big Zuu / Brockie / Complexion / Creed / DJ Cartier / DJ Ron b2b Kenny Ken / DJ Spoony / Foundation (Scott Garcia & Sticky) / Fusion / Gorgon Sound (Kahn + Neek) / GQ / Jammz / Livin' Proof DJs / Marcus Nasty / Matt Jam Lamont / MC Det / MC Moose / Mez / Mikill Pane / Motive b2b CWD / PAP / Randall b2b Jumpin Jack Frost / Sam Supplier / Siobhan Bell / Sir Spyro / SK Vibemaker / Splurge Boys / The HeavyTrackerz / Vectra / Vencha / Wookie / YGG / Yungen / S TA G E S H O S T E D B Y :
Lord Of The Mics / Livin’ Proof / Heritage vs. London Some’ting
Sunday 5th June
Azealia Banks Novelist A. G. Cook / Calibre / dBridge / Geko / Josey Rebelle / Kamixlo b2b Lexxi / Koreless / Laurel Halo b2b Hodge / Loefah b2b Fabio / Marcus Intalex / MssingNo / Murlo / Paleman / Skeptical / Youngsta / Zed Bias / Ant TC1 / Chunky / Cousin / DLR / Kid Drama / Lamont / Lily Mercer / Lotic / Loxy / MC Visionobi / Mickey Pearce / Mr. Mitch b2b Logos / Nídia Minaj / SP:MC / Survival / The Age of Luna / Zero T / S TA G E S H O S T E D B Y :
FWD>> / Swamp 81 / Exit vs Dispatch Records
Final weekend tickets on sale now! Saturday & Sunday Day Tickets Moving Fast.
Subject to licence
15-16 JULY 2016 VICTORIA PARK
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
RUN THE JEWELS
JUNGLE
MAJOR LAZER LCD SOUNDSYSTEM ALSO APPEARING ACROSS THE WEEKEND…
JACK GARRATT CHET FAKER MIIKE SNOW DIPLO LUCIANO RICARDO VILLALOBOS HANNAH WANTS KANO STORMZY MØ CHRONIXX GEORGE CLINTON PARLIAMENT FUNKADELIC JORIS VOORN DAVID RODIGAN MBE ELROW PRESENTS SAMBODROMO DO BRASIL STEVE LAWLER JACKMASTER ODESZA JAMIE WOON RITON OH WONDER GOLDLINK RICHY AHMED PATRICK TOPPING B.TRAITS MELÉ + MONKI’S NRG FLASH T Q D (ROYAL T B2B DJ Q B2B FLAVA D) DJ HYPE & MC IC3 ONEMAN B2B MY NU LENG CRAIG RICHARDS TERRY FRANCIS KIASMOS CRITICAL SOUNDSYSTEM JUSTIN MARTIN PREDITAH BIG NARSTIE WAZE & ODYSSEY ALAN FITZPATRICK DJ BARELY LEGAL SG LEWIS FORMATION THE COMPOZERS FRIEND WITHIN GEORGE PRIVATTI DE LA SWING ANDRES CAMPO HOT BLOOD BILLY KENNY
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CARL COX
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ANIMAL COLLECTIVE APPLESCAL ARTWORK AURORA BASTILLE BEATY HEART BENJAMIN DAMAGE BICEP BILLIE MARTEN BLACK HONEY BODHI PRES. ROOTS CARAVAN PALACE CHRIS TOFU CLEAN CUT KID CRAIG DAVID’S TS5 CREEPER DAMIAN “JR. GONG” MARLEY DANNY L HARLE DAVID RODIGAN PRES. RAM JAM DJ YODA EATS EVERYTHING ESKA ESKIMO DANCE: WILEY, SECTION BOYZ, CHIP, BIG NARSTIE, NEWHAM GENERALS, FRISCO, P MONEY, ELF KID, AJ TRACEY, JAMMZ, FEKKY, LOGAN SAMA, MAXIMUM EVIAN CHRIST FATHERSON FICKLE FRIENDS FRANCES GHOSTPOET GOLDIE HÆLOS HEIDI HINDS HISTORY OF JUNGLE/DRUM & BASS FT. ALED JONES (MC) & ROB DA BANK HONEY SOUNDSYSTEM HOSPITALITY PRES: CAMO & KROOKED, LONDON ELEKTRICITY, S.P.Y B2B NU:TONE, DANNY BYRD B2B BROOKES BROTHERS, MADUK, DYNAMITE MC & WREC IZZY BIZU JAGWAR MA JAMES ZABIELA JEREMY LOOPS JP COOPER KANO KATY B KITTY, DAISY & LEWIS KREPT & KONAN KURUPT FM LADY LESHURR LOUIS BERRY LOYLE CARNER MELÉ & MONKI’S NRG FLASH MILK TEETH MØ MOOSE BLOOD MOUNT KIMBIE (DJ SET) MURA MASA ODESZA ONEMAN B2B MY NU LENG PC MUSIC ALL STARS PETITE MELLER POTÉ PRETTY VICIOUS PUP RAJASTHAN HERITAGE BRASS BAND RATIONALE REGGIE ’N’ BOLLIE RICHIE HAWTIN RIDE ROYCE WOOD JUNIOR SHY FX’S PARTY ON THE MOON SKEPTA SKREAM SLAMBOREE SNAKEHIPS SPRING KING SUNFLOWER BEAN THE BLACK MADONNA THE CUBAN BROTHERS THE HUMAN LEAGUE THE JAPANESE HOUSE THE SHERLOCKS THE WYTCHES THIS IS THE KIT TOURIST VANT & MANY MORE STILL TO BE ANNOUNCED
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GREG WILSON
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NORMAL BEHAVIOUR: JOHN HANLEY, CARL H AND JANE FITZ SAMMY STRING
STU CROSBIE
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29TH JUNE - 6TH JULY 2016 THE GARDEN, TISNO, CROATIA LOVEINTERNATIONALFESTIVAL.COM
10pm - late
Night Sessions:
11am - 10pm*
Brockwell Park:
A new festival for London Saturday 9th July 2016
Anthony Naples Ben Klock Benji B Boxed dBridge Digital Mystikz Donato Dozzy Fatima Yamaha Goldie Hunee Jamie xx Jeremy Underground Job Jobse Josey Rebelle
Joy Orbison Kamasi Washington Mind Against Mister Saturday Night Moodymann Omar-S Om Unit Ryan Elliott Sam Binga Sassy J Shackleton Yussef Kamaal Trio Zomby *subject to license
Dimensions Festival Bussey Building
Deviation Corsica Studios
Studio 89 Brixton Electric
Outlook x Metalheadz Fire London
Glasgow to Detroit Phonox
Jamie & Friends The Coronet
A Taste of Afrobeat Vibrations Effra Social
Rhythm Section x Mister Saturday Canavans Peckham
ÂŁ55 Day & Night tickets include entry to our day festival in Brockwell Park as well as a night session of your choice. Tickets available from www.sunfall.co.uk
FREE EXHIBITION
The free destination for the incurably curious Tuesday–Sunday until 18.00, Thursday until 22.00 Euston, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE wellcomecollection.org/thisisavoice
Euston Square
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MAMA, TIME OUT, COMMUNION, SOUNDCRASH & SUPERFLY PRESENT
17TH JULY 2016 / VICTORIA PARK
SIGUR RÓS
A LONDON EXCLUSIVE
/ CARIBOU
A LONDON EXCLUSIVE
LIANNE LA HAVAS / NATHANIEL RATELIFF & THE NIGHT SWEATS MATT CORBY / CALEXICO / CAT’S EYES / SUBMOTION ORCHESTRA
MARIBOU STATE LIVE / SUSANNE SUNDFØR / TINARIWEN / AKALA MATTHEW & THE ATLAS / GOGO PENGUIN / BILLIE MARTEN / RUKHSANA MERRISE JAMES CANTY / GILLBANKS / ANTIMONY / COSMIC STRIP FABRIC SUNDAY SESSIONS ANDREW WEATHERALL / JAZZANOVA DJ SET 20 YEARS ON THE DECKS / THE 2 BEARS / PEDESTRIAN STAGES FROM
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SPORTS & LEISURE
SUNDAY SPORTS DAY
COMPERED BY ROBIN & PARTRIDGE W/ LOST & FOUND / VOLLEYBALL ENGLAND CROQUET EAST DISCO DODGEBALL NON APPLICABLES DANCE COMPANY MARAWA’S MAJORETTES BADMINTON MATCHES, TUG OF WAR BATTLES, RELAY RUM RACES, SOCK WRESTLING, MUSICAL SACK RACES, STICKY LIMBO COMPETITIONS, WHEELBARROW RACES, SWING OLYMPICS, IMPROMPTU PITCH INVASIONS
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Highlights Exhibitions Guan Xiao: Flattened Metal
in association with K11 Art Foundation 20 Apr – 19 Jun 2016 Lower Gallery
Martine Syms: Fact & Trouble 20 Apr – 19 Jun 2016 Upper Gallery
Dennis Morris: PiL – First Issue to Metal Box 23 Mar – 15 May 2016 ICA Fox Reading Room
Film
Events Culture Now: Dennis Morris Fri 1 Apr, 1pm
Artist Dennis Morris is in conversation with producer Andrew Higgie, on the occasion of ICA exhibition Dennis Morris: PiL – First Issue to Metal Box.
Re-fashioning the Female Body Fri 22 Apr, 1pm
Hettie Judah chairs a discussion with Georgina Godley and a panel including Miren Arzalluz and Karen Vangodtsenhoven, investigating the transformations of the female silhouette during the twentieth century that challenged established notions about beauty and femininity.
Brian Eno Fri 29 Apr, 1pm
Marking the occasion of a new exhibition of lightbox works at Paul Stolper Gallery, English artist, musician and composer Brian Eno discusses his visual art work with writer and novelist Michael Bracewell. Institute of Contemporary Arts The Mall London SW1Y 5AH 020 7930 3647, www.ica.org.uk
Initiation[s]: Workshop with ICA Associate Poet Kayo Chingonyi Sat 9 Apr, 2pm
Pablo Larraín Focus 1–5 Apr 2016
A spoken word, performance and design workshop led by ICA Associate Poet Kayo Chingonyi for 16-19 year-olds.
STOP PLAY RECORD: A Conversation with Artists and Filmmakers Thu 14 Apr, 6.30pm
Short presentations and discussions for aspiring artists and filmmakers who want to hear from professionals working with the moving image.
To celebrate the release of Pablo Larraín’s latest feature film The Club, the ICA, Network Releasing and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama present a retrospective of the Oscar-nominated director’s work.
The Filth and the Fury + Q&A with Julien Temple Tue 12 Apr, 6.15pm 14th KINOTEKA Polish Film Festival 15–22 Apr 2016
Decommissioned Talk Series: David Oswell Wed 20 Apr, 2pm
The festival returns for its 14th edition, with a selection of film and documentary, both classic and contemporary looking at the theme: what it means to be human.
Martine Syms: Misdirected Kiss Fri 22 Apr, 6.30pm
Frames of Representation 20–27 Apr 2016
ICA exhibiting artist Martine Syms presents Misdirected Kiss, a performative lecture that tells a story about language, movement, and performance as observed in black female entertainers.
A new documentary film festival which showcases new forms of documentary cinema and invites discussion around the issues these films raise.
Guan Xiao in association with
The ICA is a registered charity no. 236848
Contents Features 28
HOLLY HERNDON Along with collaborators Mat Dryhurst and Colin Self, Holly Herndon is creating radically progressive art to portray the emotional palettes of today. Xavier Boucherat heads out to Berlin to discuss the ideology that drives them
34
LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY Attempting to rise to the transcendent plain on which Lee “Scratch” Perry so eccentrically exists, Gwyn Thomas de Chroustchoff tuned in to the rhythmic mysticism of the dub pioneer
38
ANDERSON .PAAK Having emerged from underneath the wing of Dr. Dre to bring us the gleaming album Malibu, Anderson .Paak is experiencing long-overdue praise for his talents, but not without telling the stories of struggle that have come with them JOSEY REBELLE One of London’s premier resident DJs sat down with Felicity Martin to discuss her Student Union beginnings, eclecticism and her baby-making mixes for Rinse FM
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PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING The radical self-publishing zine scene is far from being limited by the confines of London. Sirin Kale steps into the world of Mushpit, Cuntry Living, Polyester and OOMK, where their creators reclaim culture and identity from the grips of capitalism
Holly Herndon shot exclusively for Crack by Ronald Dick Berlin: March 2016
MOTOR CITY DRUM ENSEMBLE Amidst the throes of Bloc. festival, the German selector opens up to Aurora Mitchell about the more serious realities of dance music and how he chooses to exist within them
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Regulars 21
EDITORIAL Never Mind the Bollocks
56
AESTHETIC: MABEL Alongside our extensive styled shoot, the emerging singer-songwriter talks supporting young designers and her poptimist outlook
93
20 QUESTIONS: MIKE SKINNER The ex-Streets producer and perennially decent guy chats seabass, snapchat and dressing room riders with Davy Reed
91
TURNING POINTS: CHARLES BRADLEY Henry Murray nails down the peaks and troughs of the 67-year-old soul singer on his late breakthrough career and intensely emotional life story
94
PERSPECTIVE Music critic and Discwoman member Michelle Lhooq discusses the recent debates around the “safe spaces” club policy
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Room 01
Room 01
Craig Richards Sonja Moonear Fumiya Tanaka Alex Celler
fabric
Craig Richards Jamie Jones Audion (live) Room 02
Room 02
Joris Voorn Adriatique Terry Francis
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EPM 15 Robert Hood Marcel Fengler Esteban Adame (live) House Of Black Lanterns
Room 01
Craig Richards Joseph Capriati (5 Hour Set) Room 02
MDR Marcel Dettmann Anthony Parasole Milton Bradley
16 Room 01
Terry Francis Claude VonStroke Harvard Bass Room 02
fabric 87: Alan Fitzpatrick Launch Alan Fitzpatrick Mike Dehnert (live) Reset Robot
23 Craig Richards Magda Heartthrob (live) Krankbrother Room 02
Terry Francis Leftroom Matt Tolfrey Laura Jones jozif
www.fabriclondon.com
Room 01
Issue 63
Executive Editors Thomas Frost tom@crackmagazine.net Jake Applebee jake@crackmagazine.net Editor Davy Reed Marketing / Events Manager Luke Sutton luke@crackmagazine.net Deputy Editor Anna Tehabsim Online Editor Billy Black Junior Online Editor Sammy Jones Editorial Assistant Duncan Harrison Creative Director Alfie Allen Graphic Design Yasseen Faik Marketing / Events Assistant Lucy Harding Staff Writer Tom Watson Film Editor Tim Oxley Smith Art Editor Augustin Macellari Intern Henry Murray Fashion Leonn Ward, Luci Ellis, Nuriye Sonmez, Anna Wild Words Xavier Boucherat, Jake Hall, Gwyn Thomas de Chroustchoff, Sirin Kale, Aurora Mitchell, Kyle Ellison, Felicity Martin, Michelle Lhooq, Adam Corner, Lucie Grace, Joe Goggins, Emma Roberson, Tom Watson, Gunseli Yalcinkaya, Rob Bates, Jack Law, Benjamin Salt, Katie Hawthorne, Aine Devaney, Trina John-Charles, Mike Vinti, Francis Blagburn, Lee Fairweather Photography Dexter Lander, Juan José Ortiz, Theo Cottle, Harry Mitchell, Jack Johnstone, Jake Davis, Ro Murphy, Paul Husband, Mimi Taylor, Marcus Werner, Antonio Pagamo, Ross Silcocks Illustration Ed Chambers Advertising To enquire about advertising and to request a media pack: advertising@crackmagazine.net CRACK is published by Crack Industries Ltd © All rights reserved. All material in Crack magazine may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of Crack Industries Ltd. Crack Magazine and its contributors cannot accept any liability for reader discontent arising from the editorial features. Crack Magazine reserves the right to accept or reject any article or material supplied for publication or to edit this material prior to publishing. Crack magazine cannot be held responsible for loss or damage to supplied materials. The opinions expressed or recommendations given in the magazine are the views of the individual author and do not necessarily represent the views of Crack Industries Ltd. We accept no liability for any misprints or mistakes and no responsibility can be taken for the contents of these pages.
NITAM Retold CAVERN OF ANTI MATTER Void Beat MODESELEKTOR The Black Block AVALON EMERSON 2000 Species of Cacti CUT COPY The Twilight SEVERED HEADS Propellor DJ MARFOX 2685 AISHA DEVI Mazda (Killing Sound version ft. Rider Shafique & Bogues) OM UNIT & SAM BINGA Windmill Kick ONDO FUDD Blue Dot BATU Reez ANOHNI Drone Bomb Me MITSKI Your Best American Girl FEAR OF MEN Island
It was on was 3 March, when I was combing through the day’s influx of press releases, and a subject line caught my eye: “'When the Queen gives a fucking nod to Punk 40th something’s wrong” - McLaren’s son'” You’ve probably heard all about it now. Joe Corré, the son of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood – who are also the parents of the classic punk aesthetic – has vowed to burn his £5m collection of memorabilia on 26 November this year, the 40th anniversary of The Sex Pistol’s exhilarating debut single Anarchy In The UK. As far as I’m aware, Crack was the first publication to run with the news online, and the article quickly became one of the most viewed pieces we’ve posted on the website this year. Corrê claims the stunt is a protest against Punk London, a yearlong schedule of celebrations that’s backed by a £99,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and has received official support from Boris Johnson’s office alongside – allegedly – an endorsement from the “fascist regime” herself, the Queen. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t attracted to the idea of Corré’s mass bonfire. When the news broke, hundreds of outraged ex-punks flocked to our comments section, and in fairness, there are valid reasons for doubting Corré’s intent. In 2007, he reportedly took £40m after selling Agent Provocateur, and he’s got a 60% stake in the PR company who are publicising the project. The most common complaint is that £5m would be a colossal contribution to charity, and the moral argument possibly ends there. But that wouldn’t make a point, would it? That wouldn’t rescue punk’s legacy from being co-opted and commodified by the establishment, from being totally nullified of its rebellious power and sold to bemused tourists. But it’s probably wise to not concern yourself about the potential incineration of Sid Vicious’s torn-up vest or Captain Sensible’s beret. In this issue’s Holly Herndon cover story, her regular collaborator Mat Dryhurst discusses the way that subcultures are eventually subsumed by the corporate world. “[The] process of trying to figure out how it feels to connect with people in new ways and cultivating new languages outside of that sphere is really fucking important,” he argues. He’s right. The art and music that’s really worth our attention probably won’t look or sound like it’s from the late 70s. And if we are hoping to retain some of punk’s true ethos, the fate of a collection of dusty old leather jackets is largely irrelevant. Davy Reed, Editor
BENT SHAPES 86’d In ‘03 FAKE BOYFRIEND Ship CHEW Protect and Swerve THE SPOOK SCHOOL Speak When You’re Spoken To SEBADOH Brand New Love YG + NIPSEY HUSSLE fdt HARDRIVE Deep Inside HELEN Zanzibar AFTERGLOW Come Back To Me SAINT PEPSI Enjoy Yourself MAKOTO MATSUSHITA Love Was Really Gone CONJOINT No Balls MARIA USBECK Jungla Inqueita OWEN JAY & SULTAN MELCHIOR Rising High (Kai Alcé Remix) DEFT Cat Like Thief
Issue 63 | crackmagazine.net
Respect Zaha Hadid Phife Dawg Rebecca Fitzgerald Jack Scales Alex Roach Hugo Gantley
22
Recommended
O ur g uid e t o w ha t 's g o ing o n in y o ur cit y
SCR ATCHA DVA Bussey Building 21 April
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE The Troxy 12 April
SONAR New Order, Skepta, The Black Madonna Barcelona, Spain 16-18 June 180€
LIVIT Y SOUND Patterns, Brighton 22 April As a hub for experimental dance music that doesn’t neglect the dancefloor, the producers affiliated with the Bristol-based label Livity Sound have gradually gathered international acclaim on their own terms. This outing at Brighton’s Patterns will see label heads Kowton and Peverelist (a Bristol veteran who weathered the city’s explosive 00s dubstep scene) play alongside close Livity associate Hodge. These are the kind of producers who probably hate genre tags, but you can roughly expect fragments of house, grime, jungle and dubstep to be held together with a rugged techno template.
AMY BECKER Phonox 20 April
BIRDSKULLS Birthdays 12 April
Sonar is one of those events where, once you’ve attended once, the idea of someone else going without you fills you with more jealousy and envy than seeing your friend find £10 on the pavement. Your days are spent sitting back in the sun enjoying a deftly organised programme of events in their innovative concert spaces and your nights are spent roaming around a renovated airport hangar watching some of the best names in dance and electronic music. And they haven’t disappointed with the 2016 bill. The expansive programme includes the European debut of ANOHNI’s live show, grime heavyweights Skepta, Stormzy and Section Boyz, seminal producer Jean Michel-Jarre, ascendant singer Kelela and Oneohthrix Point Never, among many others. You can see all this in the day before going all night long to the likes of Soichi Terada, Powell and Lorenzo Senni’s Hot Shotz collaboration and Ben UFO b2b Helena Hauff. Don’t miss out.
BABYFATHER Autumn Street Studios 7 April
NAO Village Underground, London 26 + 27 April It’s not surprising that NAO has been turning so many heads since her novel brand of futuristic RnB appeared a couple of summers ago. She makes the kind of silky pop music that you’d happily repeat immediately after listening once. Her East London roots give the neo-soul inflections in her music a real depth and – as she readies a debut studio album – it’s looking like playtime is over for NAO. With a lot of industry support in her corner, these dates will probably be the last she plays in venues of this size. Catch her while you can because her music is custom-built to explode.
HONEY DIJON XOYO 8 April DJ HARVEY + FRIENDS Ministry of Sound 23 April £26 Having held residency at the Ministry of Sound during the mid 90s, DJ Harvey is likely to ignite cherished memories from the institution's heady early years. Now with the club boasting a state of the art Dolby Atmos sound system – “a multidimensional soundscape that you’ve never heard before” – Harvey’s brand of disco will hit harder than ever. For this special homecoming show, you can catch one of the best DJs on the planet with the people he choses to party with, as DJ Harvey brings an as-of-yet unannounced selection of friends and cohorts. Don't forget, Harvey Bassett is a man known for his charisma and showmanship – from his early days in Sussex to Honolulu, LA and more recently Berlin, Harvey has never lost touch with where the fun people are – so be sure his selected posse wont disappoint.
DJ NOBU Oval Space 16 April SECRETSUNDA ZE OPENING St John at Hackney 30 April £21.50
PUSHA T Electric Brixton 27 April
BIG NARSTIE fabric 15 April
For many, the Secretsundaze opening party represents the beginning of summer. Something of a rarity for the London clubbing institution, this year's opening event will actually be taking place on a Saturday, to make room for the venue’s Sunday service. That’s right, you’ve guessed it, it’s in a church. Helping out with Secretsundaze’s Saturday mass is Chicago pioneer Lil Louis, PBar representative Steffi, Swedish hot shot Kornél Kovács and many more. The day party will go on from the early hours of the afternoon to the early hours of Sunday morning to usher in the first taste of sundaze’s bound-to-be-huge 2016 calendar.
23 LIIMA Rich Mix 11 April
ZIP (ALL NIGHT LONG) Phonox 22 April
OPTIMO Patterns, Brighton 23 April
Phonox lay more cement on top of their already solid reputation as London’s home of the 'All Night Long' set. Perlon co-founder Zip is one of the elite DJs of the minimal house world and has exported the sound of his pioneering label around the globe, often alongside his regular partner Ricardo Villalobos. And for the German DJ, a set of this length will mean he’s right at home.
TRESOR 25 Oval Space 7 May £15
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE The Troxy 12 April
LENA WILLIKENS Corsica Studios 9 April
KIMYA DASWON Islington Assembly Hall 14 April
The story of Tresor is still hugely inspiring. The club was born in early 90s Berlin, where liberal attitudes blossomed from the rubble of the wall and techno provided the force to bind this ethos. You can still feel Tresor's influence on the landscape of electronic music 25 years on, and the club is celebrating its past, present and commitment to the future with a series of anniversary events. The series includes integral contributors to the club's vision alongside those who have helped preserve it over the years. The line-up for this event at Oval Space includes Tresor figureheads and all round techno OGs Juan Atkins and Moritz Von Oswald, who present the new incarnation of their Borderland project, alongside Ilian Tape duo Zenker Brothers and Argentina’s Jonas Kopp. For those who missed out first time round – this is your chance to soak up the original spirit of Tresor.
Animal Collective are one of a handful of bands who manage to be both incredibly difficult and extremely accessible at the same time. This alone, of course, is reason enough to love them without ever questioning what you’re actually listening to. Their latest album, Painting With, is a triumph of genreless art and it’s replete with plonks, blips and plenty of chirps. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find a plonk, blip or chirp-free moment in any of their material. We’re pretty sure that this is why they rule. We could be wrong though. Maybe go check them out live for confirmation?
PL AYBOI CARTI Efes 6 April
THREE TR APPED TIGERS Scala 28 April
SECTION BOYZ KOKO 5 April
FE AR OF MEN The Victoria 8 April POP. 1280 The Shacklewell Arms 23 April Pop. 1280 might have one of the most misleading names in music history. Firstly, they’re certainly not a pop band and secondly there are only four of them, not twelve thousand and eighty. Liars. Seriously though, the Brooklyn quartet peddle a distinctly evil brand of industrial electronica that explores excruciating scraping synths, sparse melodramatic howls and machine-mined beats. You know, the kind of jams you’d expect your pink-haired mate who makes regular excursions to Cyberdog and pays for everything in Bitcoin. Except it’s actually pretty good.
STEVE GUNN The Lexington 21 April
Drake gets ushered out of the O2 Arena, he’s just performed a shaky rendition of his verse on Rihanna’s Work at the BRIT Awards. He knows it wasn’t great. He’s just tired. He’s been working more and going out less. The driver asks him where he wants to go. He thinks hard. Back to Toronto? Back to the hotel? “Take me to Section Boyz” he says, not quite knowing where the words came from. “I want to see the Section Boyz”. “Say no more”, says the driver and they whizz out of Greenwich faster than you can say “Lock arf”. Drake was right to trust his instinct to go see the Section Boyz. You should trust yours.
DENNIS MORRIS: PIL: FIRST ISSUE TO METAL BOX ICA Exhibition runs until 15 May
THE FIELD Moth Club 30 April
While the general public will always associate John Lydon with the Sex Pistols, his most interesting work was arguably with Public Image Ltd. – the group he formed following the Pistols’ near-instant demise in the late 70s. Channelling punk’s hostility with krautrock and dub influences, PiL’s early years saw them match their sonic adventures with a striking aesthetic formed with the photographer Dennis Morris, who helped create the band’s iconic logo as well as the notorious packaging concept for the literally-titled Metal Box. This exhibition will present Morris’ rarely seen photos from PiL’s early years – an overlooked, curious cultural epoch.
New Music
AMNESIA SCANNER
CEREMENTED
K ADIATA The ‘trap’ label might well make your stomach turn a little, and we wouldn’t blame you. With any luck, a new word will emerge that won’t evoke images of frat parties and trailers to 22 Jump Street but, until that day comes, we are going to have to assure you that 22-year-old South Londoner Kadiata is making some of the most interesting and novel trap music around. Even that won’t do it justice – the sound is a cloudy wave of US influences, grimey venom and hazy production. Defiantly built for 2016 but somehow dosed with enough ambition to make it sound timeless.
O dumb 1 Novelist, Future : @KADIATA93
Ceremented is the solo project of what we can only assume is a very morbid individual. The Arizonabased musicians’s first cassette, Unbound Horror, is four-tracks long and contains some of the most rotten, depraved music you’re ever likely to hear. Information about the project is scarce online but the EP is best described as a torturous, dragging descent into hades. There are hints of black metal in the shrieking vocals while the constant double tap of death metal and the ultra slow bassthrum of funeral doom combine and buckle into a demented cacophony. If this first, all too brief, collection is anything to go by, Ceremented have a very bright (or should that be dark?) future ahead of them indeed and we can’t wait to hear what’s next.
O Way of Flesh 1 Winter, Sorrow
: ceremented.bandcamp.com
ASH KOOSHA
CARDI B
Like the music of many of his contemporaries, Ash Koosha’s sound exists in a world of collapsed boundaries. "I see the future as an amalgam of everything we once tried to define. Every line will blur, in gender, sexuality, genre, politics.” Koosha tells us. “We wont be able to hold on to the dogma that is 'definition'.” It’s an ambitious outlook, and one that fuels his output. The Iranian musician employs a destructive approach to production, similar to the likes of Arca or Angel-Ho, enhancing the physicality of his sound. This amorphous approach is driven by his intensely synesthetic mind. "Music is always presented as a wave line,” Koosha explains. “It's as if it's flat. That representation couldn't be further from reality. Music in my mind has materiality and physicality. You can break it, throw it. I don't control it obsessively, I direct the chaos. This freedom to create, unfettered from reality, hasn’t come easily for Koosha. As a teen, he was briefly incarcerated in his native Tehran for hosting a gig with his former band Font. By the time he was granted asylum in the UK, Koosha tells us, the inability to perform had irrevocably shaped him. "The limitations either push you, or drag you into depression. In my case it made me more curious and dedicated." Koosha’s curiosity has pushed his work into new realms. His new, Ninja Tune-released album I Also Known As I, following last year’s debut GUUD LP, explores the duality of the self through glitchy bursts of colour and texture. A dizzying trip further into the rabbit hole of his sound, Koosha is also thrilled to be working alongside virtual reality."It's very similar to how I imagine sound objects,” he explains. “The wall between audience and sound is broken – you're literally standing inside the music." You can see why Koosha is enticed by the technology – it’s the full realisation of his approach, one entirely concerned with the new; designed to whisk us away from the rigidity of the physical world with exhilarating velocity.
Let us explain, this page of the magazine is usually reserved for true unknowns who deserve more spotlight. But you may well have heard of Cardi B. She’s the breakout show-stealer of VH1’s manic reality-drama Love and Hip-Hop. It isn’t usually the place we go looking for exciting new rap talents but Cardi is the exception. The Bronx native just dropped the phenomenal Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 – a razor-sharp salute to the ladies fitting the criteria set out in the title. Once you’ve recovered from the tape’s artwork (a surefire frontrunner for end of year lists), we highly recommend getting acquainted with Queen Cardi as she bodies a battery of harsh clubfriendly instrumentals. Brokeboys need not apply. O Sauce Boyz 1 Nicki Minaj, Mykki Blanco : @iamcardib
Should you require a more direct introduction to the ethos and music of Amnesia Scanner, we suggest you immediately head to their, shall we say, encapsulating website (amnesiascanner.net), where you’ll find just about all you need to know about the Finnish duo’s new project. If a startling and minor traumatic experience is not what you need right now, then, put simply, Amnesia Scanner is the highly experimental brainchild of Ville Haimala and Marti Kalliala. AS, their debut release on Young Turks, aggressively deconstructs club sounds through a pallet of smashed glass and thrusted synth stabs, while traditional percussion is thrown out for mangled vocal samples and ghostly rattles. The AS EP has been hailed as one of the most exciting recent Young Turks releases, and it’s certainly one of the imprint’s most thrilling experiments in willfully indefinable sounds.
O AS CRUST 1 FKA twigs, The Haxan Cloak : @amnesiascanner
O Mudafossil 1 Oneohtrix Point Never, Visionist : @AshKoosha
O Track 1 File Next To : Website
AMINE K B.TRAITS BICEP BOOKA SHADE DAVID AUGUST dj set DERRICK MAY DIXON DOLAN BERGIN DUBFIRE DUSKY ELI & FUR GEORGE FITZGERALD HELENA HAUFF HUNEE JENNIFER CARDINI JOB JOBSE LEON VYNEHALL LINDSTRØM live
MANO LE TOUGH MARGARET DYGAS MAYA JANE COLES MIDLAND MOTOR CITY DRUM ENSEMBLE OBJEKT OMAR SOULEYMAN live PRINS THOMAS RODRIGUEZ JR. live SEI A SPEAKING MINDS TALE OF US THE BLACK MADONNA + MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED
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Holly Herndon: New Feelings
The sun’s out, and in an East Berlin flat, Holly Herndon and long-term collaborator Mat Dryhurst are hiding out with Quentin, an uninhibited Maine Coon cat. The two are between homes in the capital, which will serve as a base for at least the next two years. “There’s a lot of work to do, including the album,” says Mat. “We can’t spend four months trying to fit in somewhere else.” The album he refers to will follow 2015’s Platform, a critically-acclaimed, hyperemotional sequence of hi-tech laptop pop that was driven by signature splintered vocals. Holly's most adventurous yet accessible work to date, it dealt explicitly with themes such as state surveillance and digital intimacy. Tours off the back of it were dedicated to incarcerated Wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who Holly and Mat interviewed last year for Paper Mag via US mail and encrypted web platforms. For the next album, Holly, Mat and Colin Self, an NYC-based composer and vocalist, are effectively forming a band. Despite all three having already collaborated extensively, with Colin providing operatic vocals and vogue performances, Holly’s adamant the new approach is different from Platform. While much of Platform was created remotely via file sharing, the new creative process takes place in person, at rehearsals. “Maybe it’s more immediate,” Holly says of the forthcoming record. “I’m always transforming, and right now we’re responding to what makes us happy when we play live.” Mat comments that
where Platform had the feel of a studio record, this might deliver something more ecstatic, and ‘classically human’. For a laptop-orientated artist, live performance is far more at the heart of Holly’s music than you might think. You could assume that the shattered vocals you hear on Platform and 2012’s techno-leaning Movement – a record she began developing during her time as a student at Mills College, Oakland, California, where she completed an MFA in Electronic Music – were the result of meticulous micro-editing and sequencing, but that’s not the case. Hours go into tuning patches that can produce certain harmonics and effects, all of which then have to be fed through a complicated routing chain on Ableton. Much of what you hear is being delivered through a microphone in a continuous take, and not necessarily the result of cutting and pasting. Now that Holly’s moved from playing small noise shows in Oakland, to stages worldwide, there are new things to address. Recent touring schedules have been hectic, and taken her to a lot of festivals where other electronic musicians rely heavily on automation to perform. The standard criticism here is that live shows, in essence, should be dependent on the possibility of something going wrong. Automation removes that risk, and thus removes the human element. This need not be the case. On the contrary, Holly suggests – it frees up space for it. “One of the wonderful things about powerful machines is that if they
can automate certain processes, it frees us up to act like human beings with each other, and our audience,” she says. “If a machine takes over a part, I’m not just going to stand there – it means that we can actually be emotional together, and see each other.” This was literally the case in June 2015, when she, Mat and others played a show at Berghain that explored the emotionally and conceptually complex themes that run through Platform. The performances turned some of the club’s unwritten conventions on their heads. At one stage, the houselights went up, prompting audience members to look at each other. Midway through the set, Jacob Applebaum, journalist and confidant of Edward Snowden, was invited to make a speech. Fans were Facebook-stalked prior to arriving, and personal messages were delivered to them on screen (‘Sorry you didn’t get the job Marie’, ‘Happy birthday Marco,’ etc.). “That’s my favourite show I’ve ever done,” says Mat. “Berghain has such a profound law to it. DJs will completely change their sets. There’s a reverence for tradition there, and it’s awesome. But when we told them we wanted the lights turned up, or data-mine everyone, or that [Berlinbased sound artist] Claire Tolan would be opening the show on the floor with a Britney headset mic, the Berghain people thought that was awesome.”
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Words: Xavier Boucherat Photography: Ronald Dick Hair, Make-up and Styling: Christian Fritzenwanker
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“If society is ever going to progress, and move beyond certain oppressive institutions and infrastructure, then the idea of fantasy is essential”
“That’s why that space was created,” adds Holly. “It’s a place where you can make things like that happen. And there’s always the danger of missing that point. The danger people see is that if you’re trying to define something new, you’re asking people to think harder. And that’s challenging, especially when you don’t want to ruin people’s weekends.” Somehow, in 2016, there remain people who find this approach not only challenging, but downright offensive. There are also people who still struggle with the idea of music made with a laptop – specifically, Holly Herndon’s laptop. You don’t have to work too far through the comments beneath videos of Holly speaking at Loop, Ableton’s innovative music-making summit, to come across mansplaining and the objections of an unfortunate few who can’t stand to see someone fuck with the formula. Holly doesn’t read the comments. “Let’s be clear,” she says. “If I was a singersongwriter, or a synth-pop queen, nobody would be bothered. Certain archetypes are allowed. I’ve already made a very good case for what I do, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life making the same point.” Mat does read the comments. He compares analogue fetishism and techno purism with the straightedge movement that emerged from the DC hardcore scene. “It wasn’t Ian MacKaye or Jeff Nelson who created the hard-line,” he says. “The people who came around and stopped people drinking at bars came way after the fact. They forged identities without stopping to think they might be misconstruing things. And I feel the same about a lot of this shit. When I hear someone say ‘That’s not real techno,’ it’s like, what the fuck do you know about real techno?” Unlike some of their fans, he adds, the real innovators are usually far more laid back.
Holly agrees. “Do you think Jeff Mills was worried about staying faithful to Kraftwerk? Of course not, he just went ahead and invented techno.” All too often, she argues, the voices which insist on authenticity are privileged ones. “It’s easy to be ‘authentic’ when you’ve got a trust fund, and you’re in a position buy an 808, or go fully modular,” says Holly. “I’m not rich. So there’s some complicated class issues there as well.” It’s clear that some people are intimidated, and even fans might find the live show’s intimacy unsettling. But for her, it’s necessary to stir the ecstatic emotion she wants to see. “We don’t want to do things in a manipulative, nostalgic way,” she explains. “We don’t want to rely on cinematic tropes. There are certain things you can do in music, certain swells you can employ, that push a button. You’ll be watching TV and a tampon commercial comes on that makes you start crying – and then you’re mad at yourself, asking why you feel such emotion for a stupid tampon commercial. That’s not what we’re going for.” Holly’s more interested in the new emotions tied up in things like technology. These might include the endorphin rush you get when you flick on your phone and see that your new crush has been messaging you, or learning of a friend’s death over Skype – the base experience is nothing new, but the medium through which it’s delivered and the peculiar processes it creates have unique nuances.
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“I am moved to constantly redefine what emotion sounds like. The world is a very different place now, and I want sounds that reflect it”
What’s more, these nuances are always changing, and Holly’s work is never done. “I do feel that in music, we rest on our past laurels,” she says, “and that moves me to constantly redefine what emotion sounds like. I’ll hear something on the radio, or at a concert, and it’ll sound like the 70s, the 80s. The world is a very different place now, and I want sounds that reflect that.” Mat sees a crucial political consequence in constant redefinition. People living under certain, oppressive conditions develop new languages and cultures of understanding together, in order to comprehend their world. “A lot of these cultures are subsumed and corporatised over time,” he says, “like ‘rock and roll energy’, or ‘hardcore realness’.” In corporatising, entities like social media networks, or tampon ads, are harnessing the powerful melancholy within these cultures for the purposes of mass manipulation.
“This process of trying to figure out how it feels to connect with people in new ways and cultivating new languages outside of that sphere is really fucking important,” he continues. “And it’d be pretentious to say that anyone’s figured it out, but surely that should be the end goal.” What’s more, anything that is dreamed up is likely to be subsumed too. Mat gives a contemporary example – auto-tune as employed by Kanye, Lil Wayne and so many others, now subsumed to a point where anyone can get away with using it. But there was a point when using the technology in a way that subverted its initial corrective purpose communicated something new, and intimate. “If we as a society are ever going to progress, and move beyond certain oppressive institutions and infrastructure, then the idea of fantasy is essential.” Holly is a huge sci-fi fan, not least for
its ability to remind us that everything is in flux – that all systems of control eventually fall. Losing sight of this, she says, can dull the desire to change things. “Being able to recognise the plasticity of things gives us the agency to mould the world the way we want to see it.” Through overtly communicating with their audience, whether through text on screen or direct instruction, Holly, Mat and Colin are trying to create a club-space that can foster fantasy, and provide access to other worlds. Carving out this space may not necessarily negate heavy feelings of suffering – to paraphrase DJ Sprinkles, clubs are no oasis from suffering; suffering is in here, with us – but Holly, Mat and Colin are optimists, and the response they’ve received at shows blows apart suggestions that the music is overly dry, challenging or esoteric. People can take it, says Mat.
“We’re doing something ecstatic, engaging and weird enough that people who’ve never heard of us stick around at our shows asking ‘what the fuck’s gonna happen next?!’” concludes Holly. “That’s the power you have as a musician on stage. You can create the environment you want. We see so many problems in certain clubs, where you’ll have a misogynist environment, or a racist environment. It’s important for musicians to take back control of the environment they see themselves in.” Holly Herndon appears at Field Day, Victoria Park, London, 11-12 June
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Lee “Scratch” Perry: The Eternal Power of Dub Science
“I am anti-demon. I ain’t have no trouble with them, they can’t trouble me. They eat my shit. Lion – ROAARGH! Tiger – SLIIICE! Lightning – CRAAASH! The jungle – KABOOM! Thunder – BOOM! The sea splash – SPLASH! Lying imperial vampires – WHACK-ACK-AH!”
Words: Gwyn Thomas de Chroustchoff Photography: Dexter Lander
As I sat in my flat in Cardiff, with a Jamaican octogenarian spitting out ear-splitting sound effects and beating out rhythms on the desk over the phone, amplified by my fizzing speakers, I wondered what Rachel, who lives downstairs, was thinking. I also wondered what I’d been thinking when I prepared two pages of questions. Perhaps, somehow, you just know him as the eccentric, strangely dressed dub guy from your parents’ record collection, but Lee “Scratch” Perry has been recording for over 50 years and has had a more lasting impact on our approach to music than the vast majority of ‘living legends’. Beginning as a runner in the studios, Perry became a talent scout, a performer, and finally a masterful engineer and super producer to reggae’s biggest stars, before co-creating the offshoot genre of dub. He was involved with the Maytals, the Skatalites, Coxsone Dodd, Junior Murvin; he shaped Bob Marley and the Wailers’ sound into its most perfect form. Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s role in reggae, dub and also the birth and growth of hip-hop and electronic music is beyond exaggeration – bass-bins worldwide emit sounds carrying the DNA of his alchemical dub experiments and murky studio science. I’d also recently watched Vision of Paradise, a new documentary about his
life for which director Volker Schaner spent 15 years getting closer to his unique outlook, and I had read enough interviews to know he’d have some interesting things to say. So there was a nervous excitement on my part as I called the number I’d been given, and was answered by Lee’s wife, Mireille. She’s seemingly the gatekeeper and custodian of this revered individual; the devastating fire at Perry’s Swiss studio in December 2015 was the result of his being allowed a single candle for a photoshoot, against Mireille’s normal rules. I’m given another number, for the man himself, and am greeted with a surprisingly strong “Hello!” “I have a good ‘outerview’ for you, you’re not gonna be getting an interview, this is an outerview.” All my intentions of how our chat would go were soon extinguished. At one point – perhaps sparked by my Russian surname, he provides an insight into his unusual biology. “And you can tell them that I have all of the Russian magic, man. All Russian magic. And I have the Russians behind me. I have the Russian sickle and the Russian hammer. I have the Russian hammer and the Russian sickle. And the Russian love... on my back. And I have the Japanese soldier, all the Japanese soldiers in my cock. All the Russian soldiers on my back.” His voice is stronger than you might expect. He launches it at the handset from deep inside his chest, which ironically makes it distorted and difficult to understand.
Biographer and reggae historian David Katz says that becoming his ghostwriter “felt like both a blessing and a curse – a cumbersome burden, yet at the same time an honour that I could not refuse.” I could relate. Perry pours out rhythmic patois, mystical speech; mystifying non-sequiturs are often followed by hollow, mechanical laughter. His words course with enticing images and ideas – he’s an enigma, in the true sense of the word, and a fountain of surreal fervour for his own personal mythology. Seeming to absorb elements of Pantheism alongside his Christian and Rastafarian beliefs, he calls upon totems and figures that hover constantly at the forefront of his mind. “I follow the master of iron and the master of lion. The master of tiger and the master of elephant. The master of the jungle. Whoooop! The master of the animal in the jungle. Animal love! Jungle love! Whoooop! Tiger law! SLICE! Lion law! SLASH! Pure love, unity, racial harmony. No war, no Babylon. No evil. Lion bear no demons, no bullshit, no vampire, no bloodsucker. No black bonfire, no black vampire. No white vampire, no black vampire.” For the most part though, speaking to Perry is less of a dialogue and more a case of tuning in to his rhythmic proclamations, incantations and animal impersonations, seemingly guided by free association rather than by any intention to make a point. He’s also got joyful, childlike passion for playing with the sounds and meanings of his words, liberally using rhythm and rhyme. Sharp and funny, when asked where he got his wisdom, he responds, barely hesitating,
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“I have too much energy! Atomic power heart, atomic power mind, atomic power truth”
“Wisdom! With tongue! I looked down and it was there, the perfect tongue.” A question about his tour of the UK starts him off on an anti-monarchy tirade for which he’s renowned. “I think the Queen is a punk, and I make the Queen very drunk. I inherit London, England, Great Britain.” It’s tempting to link Perry’s crude, absurd references and surreal responses with his advancing age, but it’s foolish to assume he’s lost the plot. A defining characteristic of his sound has always been the wild, inscrutable logic guiding his arrangement, and the gleeful, seemingly-nonsensical lyrics – back in 1975 he was burping over his tracks. He harnessed the accidents, faults and malfunctions of the equipment, giving an unconscious, human, original power that he saw as spiritual. Blowing ganja smoke over the tapes, burying microphones underground and so on – I abandoned my plan, and just mentioned things that seemed important to him, which seems to go down well: “I like this outerview, it’s perfect,” he chuckles. I asked if he could explain his unusual reserves of energy. “I have too much energy! Atomic power. Atomic power heart; atomic power mind; atomic power truth. I’ve got destruction power,” he cackles, “I’ve got real destruction power; I have all the power.” This facet of Perry’s personality is inescapable – the aloof self-importance that’s part bravado, part messiah complex. This could well be a hang-up from an early musical career where, for a talented individual in the fiercely competitive Jamaican reggae scene, there were constant threats of exploitation and musical trespass. Even in the golden era of dub, as a renowned hitmaker, he often had to
wrestle for the opportunities he wanted, and he’s often downplayed the involvement of important collaborators like King Tubby. Now truly on a throne, ‘The Upsetter’ does the same in interviews. The Guardian’s Tim Adams phoned him up on the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence to seek his thoughts, and the bottom line was the “secret number 9. Nine nine nine!” He truly has majesty in modern music. It’s hard to imagine the effect the sounds coming out of his Black Ark studio had in the early 70s. There’s a living movement in the busy, breathing bustle of drum and bass rhythm; sounds that aren’t possible with only human hands but are totally organic and alive in feeling. Much has been made of his crazy recording techniques – and this fits with his personal eccentricities, but he was importantly a technological pioneer. He was among the first people to approach music technology and studio engineering in the way that he did, using relatively basic equipment but paying a minute attention to the intricate and subtle dynamics of the mix and using ingenious, outlandish techniques to create the effects he wanted. Foundational dance music producers, like Tom Moulton in New York, borrowed the aesthetic pioneered by Perry and his highly technological rhythm science shaped club and soundsystem music thereafter – from house and jungle to garage and dubstep. Schaner describes Perry’s early productions as “geometric, abstract music that keeps your mind going and flying into unseen spaces,” a description that could just as easily be applied to any modern mutation of rave music. But maybe the impossibility of achieving a dialogue about specific parts of his career is only natural – how could I be so naïve to think I could ask a man who has played such an enormous part in
musical history about specific moments or reflections? His preference for an ‘outer view’ seems somehow appropriate, equally to do with a philosophical kind of transcendence of the shallow clamour of media and cultural renown. Maybe his obtuse humour does make more sense – Perry as the laughing Buddha. He does indeed have a spiritual resilience and an appreciation for pleasant moments; sounding confident after the setback of his second studio fire (he burned down his Black Ark studio 1979, due to “bad energy”). He’s happy to have settled back in Jamaica, “in the black house of power.” In paradise? Yes, he laughs: he’s on the phone to me. But after three decades in Switzerland, he resists placing any importance on the countries we live in – “why be an extreterrestrial covered in flags?” Finally, after explaining a few more important points to me – “I am antinegative;” “I wouldn’t use money to wipe my bottom” – and proclaiming, at length, his hatred of the Pope and his love of Japanese food, he’s gone. He suddenly bids me a quick goodbye and leaves me on the line to his personal chef (“my name’s Joseph, but my nickname is Joe”). It’s been a bewildering, exhilarating experience, like standing too close to the speaker for too long – it must be all that atomic energy. For information about Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Vision Of Paradise film, visit visionofparadise.de
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The Californian Glow of Anderson .Paak
Issue 63 | crackmagazine.net
“Things are getting onto a bigger scale for me. I'm learning how to embrace that�
39 Anderson .Paak is the sort of guy who could turn out his pockets and make half-decent music with whatever fell out. He was just seven years old when he wrote his first song – a naive gangsta rap track called Trigger – and at 11 he joined the church band where he mastered the drums. It was his singing voice, though, that would one day catch the attention of childhood hero Dr. Dre. “He told me when we first started writing, ‘you’ve got that natural pain in your voice,’” says .Paak, now 30 years old with a freshly inked record contract for Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment. It’s true, .Paak has lived through some tough experiences – from seeing both his parents get locked up, to enduring a period of homelessness – and you can hear it in his warm rasp that cracks and strains in all the right places. It’s a voice that sounds thoroughly lived in, like the well-thumbed copy of a favourite book. The writing sessions he’s talking about were for Compton – Dre’s first album in 16 years – on which .Paak has six feature placements, more than any other artist. That’s a mighty leap of faith from the famously perfectionist producer, who’d never heard a note of .Paak’s music before he walked in the studio. “A few days into working on Compton he told me he wanted to sign me,” the Californian singer-rapper tells me over the phone. “We were working late one night and I played him six or seven songs – he just told me to keep going. The same night he told my manager, ‘alright, we’re going to do this, tomorrow I’m going to have some paperwork for you’ – and that’s what happened.” This kind of success was never guaranteed. Singing was really the last jigsaw piece for the multi-talented musician, who moved to LA from Oxnard in his early twenties to escape boredom and get around more diversity; .Paak was one of the only African American kids at his school in Ventura, California. When he finally got to LA, though, things very nearly fell apart. .Paak was left homeless after losing a farming job in 2011, before being taken in by Shafiq Husayn of the futurist hip-hop trio SaRa. He spent the next few years hopping around the LA beat scene collaborating
Words: Kyle Ellison Photography: Juan José Ortiz
with anyone he could, while at the same time honing his own songs. During this period he released two records under the name Breezy Lovejoy, and spent a stint as tour drummer for American Idol contestant Haley Reinhart. Gradually, his own career in music began to take shape, and he grew more confident in his singing voice too. “When I came out to LA I still didn’t think I was a very good singer,” admits .Paak. “There were some things that came quite quickly, like drumming and production, but singing was definitely something where I had to gain a lot of confidence and figure out what tone I wanted to do. It was always a work in progress right up until the Anderson .Paak stage.” A week after our conversation, I attend .Paak’s sold out show at London’s XOYO – and any signs of his aforementioned self-doubt are untraceable. Opening with Compton highlight Animals, .Paak arrives on stage in a Culture Club T-shirt and a Bart Simpson baseball jacket, before inviting his band The Free Nationals on stage to perform songs from his recent solo album Malibu. .Paak is everywhere; one minute rapping centre stage, then running behind the drum kit to lead his band through extended jams. At another point he jumps down to get among the crowd, where he dances along to the horn-laden funk boogie Am I Wrong. Funk is one of many sounds you’ll find on Malibu – the album really does resist easy categorisation, fluctuating freely between gospel, soul, hip-hop, Latin and synth-pop. Although the music often sounds as though it’s basking in the warmth of the Californian sunshine, lyrically Malibu doesn’t shy away from the dark narratives of .Paak’s life, such as the story of his mother being sentenced to 14 years in prison on fraud charges, and the addictions that claimed his father’s life. “Who cares your daddy couldn’t be here? Mama always kept the cable on,” he croons on The Dreamer, joined by a church choir that includes four of his nieces. As well as being his most personal record yet, Malibu feels like a leap forward in terms of pure songwriting craft. Lead single The Season / Carry Me is particularly moving, a near-perfect two-parter that describes
Issue 63 | crackmagazine.net
“Dr. Dre told me I’ve got that natural pain in my voice”
the power of a family’s love amidst the struggles of poverty. “Don’t forget that dot, nigga you paid for it,” he raps on the song’s first verse, referring to the period in his name. It stands for “detail”, serving as a reminder of all the time he feels he was slept on, or “living under my greatness,” as he puts it on the song. Now signed to Aftermath, of course, the world will be watching his every move. There's also NxWorries, his collaboration with LA beatmaker Knxwledge which has a full album on Stones Throw ready to go. “It’s my Ziggy Stardust, or my Gnarls Barkley,” he claims. “I can tap into a whole new character where I’m pulling on different things.” It was the NxWorries single Suede that .Paak played in his first meeting with Dr. Dre, who then looped the song three times in a row. Ever the businessman, Dre later advised him not to do so many features. “That was interesting to me,” says .Paak, “because I spend a lot of time working with underground artists – kind of just venturing out and doing a lot of different things. I feel like things are getting onto a bigger scale,
and I’m still kinda getting used to these things while he’s all about going big. I’m learning how to embrace that.” For now, .Paak says that being on the road with the people he struggled with is all the success that he needs, besides which — fame killed all of his favourite entertainers. “I don’t want to see my dreams fall down the wayside because of that certain thing,” he concludes. “I always want to have that hunger like I did when I was seven years old wanting to make dope music.” Anderson .Paak has seen and done a lot since he wrote Trigger in his childhood bedroom, yet somehow this feels like the beginning. Malibu is out now via Steel Wool / OBE / Art Club / Empire. Anderson .Paak appears at North Sea Jazz, Rotterdam, 8-10 July
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Motor City Drum Ensemble: Looking for Light in the Nighttime Words: Aurora Mitchell Photography: Theo Cottle
“I feel that society is going in the way of being hyper-ego centred, fast paced nonsense that’s not actually going anywhere and people like Donald Trump are the perfect iconisation of this,” Danilo Plessow remarks. It’s a Saturday night and I’m sat with the man behind Motor City Drum Ensemble, discussing the intense realities connected to club spaces and politics in a crowded restaurant at Minehead’s Butlins resort. As we finish up eating, we take our conversation somewhere less crowded, walking out into the darkness towards his chalet accommodation provided for tonight's set at Bloc. weekender. Having just jumped off a flight from his current home of Amsterdam, he looks around curiously, taking in the family-tailored amusements and the hoards of festival attendees – many of whom seem to recognise him immediately. Plessow has never been a DJ who cares about being on trend or pandering to expectations. When I mention the wealth of techno at the event he’s about to play, he says with a wide smile, “Fuck it, I think I’m going to take it slow.” Going through his laptop in his chalet beforehand in preparation, he mulls over tracks that range from the blissful electro of James Stinson’s The Other People Place to Hafi Deo, a popular peak-time set staple from African singer-songwriter Tabu Ley Rochereau. Having been playing out for over 10 years now, Plessow’s sets see him take his audience on a musical journey throughout soul, disco and house, into jazz or even
zouk – a genre centered on a jump-up beat, that originated in the 80s from the Caribbean islands. “For me, there is no one genre or style that I feel that I should represent,” he plainly states. “Discovering music has always been very random for me. Meaning I would go to a record store and there would be crates and crates of records all mixed up. In this way, you just picked from every genre that you liked and that’s the spirit that I try to keep in my DJ sets as well. “I don’t have anything against so-called hits,” he clarifies about the better-known end of his DJ selections. “Every DJ has these go-to records from playing shows endlessly, they always save a party. I’m not ashamed of admitting, of course, there’s definitely a box of things like that to rescue a dancefloor.” Over the years, certain tracks have become heavily associated with Motor City Drum Ensemble – and they’ve become more rare because of it. One of those is Keep The Fire Burning, an adored disco record from Gwen McCrae. Ever since it was played in his first Boiler Room set, the price of the record has sky-rocketed. The effect has completely shocked Plessow. “I played in Australia recently and this one girl came to me and said, ‘you’re such a son of a bitch, you made this record a £50 record and now I can’t buy it!’” Talking about classic and rare records leads us onto the subject of repress culture and Discogs inflation, the former of which he views in a positive light and the latter, not so favourably. “I believe that limiting
your records as a record label only plays into the dealer’s hands,” he relays to me sternly. “For me, music must be accessible for people who don’t have the means but still want to own the object… so why would you want to be cocky about it and not repress?” In March, MCDE Recordings, which Plessow runs with Pablo Valentino, released their first ever repress, It’s All In The Groove by City People/20 Below. For some time, the sensuous deep house record from 1996 has been a favourite of Plessow’s. “I’ve known the guy for a long time, he explains. “Accidentally, it also happens that he made one of the best house records that ever came out of the UK, so we were linking on both levels.” Fortunately, everything came together. It was put together purely on City People/20 Below’s terms – from mastering to packaging to the timing of the release. “It’s really positive to see that there’s such a big market for this music because even though it’s 20 years old, it’s really fresh and hasn’t aged a bit.” Releasing productions of his own has been put on the backburner in recent years, and Plessow admits that “life got in the way”. He’s currently searching for apartments in Paris, and he’s lived between five cities in 10 years. He seems a little averse to the claustrophobia of settling into a tightknit scene. “I grew up in a place where everything was far removed,” he says – Plessow was raised in the German town of Schwäbisch Gmünd. “All my biggest records have been done when I was not so exposed to a constant stream of
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like-minded producers or people into music.” “I don’t want to release something that I feel wasn’t created in a unique environment,” he continues. “I need to create this cave where I switch off from all the troubles and just do music, like how people do yoga – it’s really a spiritual thing.” Extending on spirituality, Plessow has put together the debut compilation for Dekmantel’s Selectors series that incorporates the work of a minister called Reverend Raphael Green – a process which involved calling a church in St. Louis, Missouri to convince them. Those familiar with MCDE’s sets will have guessed that Plessow has been listening to religiouslyinformed music for a very long time, having grown up on Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and John Coltrane. “It feels really weird to play this very spiritual and deep music that’s so far removed from all the hedonistic things that are going on in nightlife,” Plessow tells me. “But then I feel that if I can put out the message of universal love and god forgives and all of that positivity on the dancefloor and people listen to the message from that, in a way you create a better place as opposed to playing a track that says ‘we are all high on ketamine.’” When we discuss that aspect of the DJ lifestyle, the excess that comes with all the late nights and the euphoria, he explains, “This has always been the background but it’s more – you can do drugs and be an idiot, but you can also do drugs and be a sane person who cherishes certain values.” Three years ago, Plessow shattered the endlessly celebratory image of the DJing lifestyle very publicly through a film with Resident Advisor. Talking at length about his anxiety, it was an eye opener for many viewers - realising they weren’t alone in dealing with the issue. After it was published, Plessow had a lot
of people emailing him and coming up to him in person to talk about their own experiences and thanking him for speaking about it. “People with this kind of illness, they can’t tell their friends because they don’t want to lose face. If someone who has a following speaks out about it, it has a direct effect on so many people who couldn’t even tell this to their parents,” he states. Towards the end of our conversation, he confesses that he once felt the same way. “I hid it from my parents for years.” But, hopefully, Daniel Plessow is in a more positive place now, focusing on the familyoriented vibe of MCDE Recordings and working on new productions of his own. His next release will be a departure in a way, as he reveals to me that it’ll be the last that demonstrates the production ethos of his Raw Cuts series, which sees him working with an MPC and SP-12 samplers onto reel to reel. “It’s really basic house music. I love this kind of shit,” he says, looking over to me with a grin. “If it’s done right, I love it.” Motor City Drum Ensemble’s Selectors 001 compilation will be released 23 May via Dekmantel He appears at Field Day, Victoria Park, London, 11-12 June
Issue 63 | crackmagazine.net
“I need to create this cave where I switch off from all the troubles and just do music”
“I have an affinity with Rinse FM because it’s raw, and it’s from the streets people that grew up with nothing making something for themselves”
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Josey Rebelle: Bring Down The Walls I’ve met with Josey Rebelle at a packed bar in Dalston, and, today, she’s freaking out about pencils. “I just read this news item that said pencils are in low abundance, everyone’s buying those adult colouring books, so they’re going towards that. It’s been a rollercoaster of a day!” she laughs. “I went to Tokyo a couple of years ago just to buy stationery. I had to leave clothes behind there so that I could fit more stationery in my suitcase.” Sunday mornings for Josey are a bit more laid-back. When you lock into her Rinse FM show, you’ll find her chatting around a gorgeous array of soul, house, jungle, jazz, techno, and everything in between. For her it’s all about the selection, connecting the dots between different strands of the music she loves. It’s this eclecticism that has kept the Tottenham born-and-bred DJ a staple on London’s scene for some time now. “I know it’s an absolute cliché when you read DJ bios and they’re like, she grew up in a musical family, listening to Stevie Wonder and The Clash...” she jokes, referring to her reggae and soul-loving parents, an elder sister who was into rare groove and a brother who drew for electro and early house. It was her brother who taught her to mix on those records, aged twelve. “At school there was loads of boys who had decks but I just did not have the confidence to step up to them,” she admits. “I’d be really jealous and knew I could do it. My brother was the one who kept encouraging me - this was over many, many years. Then one day I was like, d’you know what, I’m either gonna sell all my records, or I’m gonna go for it.”
University was where Josey took the plunge from bedroom to the club. She was Music Editor of the LSE’s student newspaper, and part of the Underground Dance Music Society, a group of jungle lovers. “At that point jungle was my absolute obsession, my number one love,” she stresses. “I remember them talking about watching such and such DJ, and I started mouthing off, saying I could play better. And they were like, “OK, we’ll book you for the next one”. And I was like, “Oh shit!”” The pressure for her first gig at the student union bar, then, was very much on. “Lots of people came to see me crash and burn! I knew that, so I practiced and practiced so hard, and I smashed it.
Words: Felicity Martin Photography: Harry Mitchell
“I basically set a precedent, because since then I’ve never wanted to come off the decks. The security guard had to switch all the lights off so that we’d go, because I didn’t wanna leave.” From that moment on, Josey’s bookings started coming in thick and fast. She played at Boiler Room’s first ever broadcast, scored residencies at Plastic People, and became a regular at nights like Nonsense, Deviation, as well as clubs from XOYO to Panorama Bar. “I’m quite an introvert, even though I’m outgoing,” she says, explaining that she gets called out for looking stony-faced on the decks, whereas in person she’s all smiles and jokes. “What I like about DJing is that it’s very head-down, very solo.” After getting a call from “a mysterious character called Rat” she joined Rinse in 2011 - but on the anti-social slot of 3-5am on a Thursday. Deciding not to tell anyone at her day job, Josey spent a year hoping her colleagues wouldn’t notice her glazed-over eyes the next morning; that persistent work ethic earned her stripes with station boss Geeneus and co. It’s Josey’s super-smooth mix selections that have led, much to her amusement, to multiple babies being made – as her listeners email in to say. “A couple of times a year I do a little pregnancy selection – Valentine’s Day’s the classic – I say, you’re gonna be pregnant after this! With Rinse babies,” she laughs. She cites her favourite on-air moments from the last half-decade as when she invited
went from FM to community license, just knowing how hard they persevered and grafted to get that. Knowing that the odds were all stacked against them, ‘cos they’d been an illegal station for so long.
soul legend Leroy Burgess and her mostloved vocalist, Robert Owens, onto her show. “Both of them were so humble,” she gushes. “They didn’t wanna be put on a pedestal.” This May, Josey celebrates five years within the Rinse FM’s pink walls, but the ex-pirate means a lot more to her than just a place with decks and a mic. “The affinity I have for it is that it’s raw, and it’s from the streets - people that grew up with nothing making something for themselves. That resonates so strongly with me, ‘cos I’ve grown up in a working class family, I’ve lived on a council estate for most of my life. Like w hen [Rinse]
“You hear stories about the music industry where people are stabbing each other in the back,” she finishes, moments before we bump into DJ Barely Legal on the street, “but I feel lucky to have been surrounded by a community of people, like [NTS’s] Femi, Funkineven, the Apron Records crew, it’s amazing to watch all these people coming up at the same time. People I used to dance next to at Plastic People, I’m now playing their tunes on radio. This generation, they’re the kind of people who’ve got each others’ backs.” Josey Rebelle appears at Sunfall, London, 9 July
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Progressive Publishing: Is This a Golden Era for Female-Focused Zines?
It’s pissing rain as I make my way to London’s Ditto Press for the Mushpit’s eighth issue launch, though the inclement weather hasn’t deterred most of London’s magheads from turning up. Familiar faces from magazines, culture sites, artists and photographers stream in, and the unofficial dress code seems to be streetwear for the boys, and red eyeshadow, space buns, and the odd bared nipple for the girls. Inside, I find Bertie Brandes and Charlotte Roberts – the 26-year-old joint founders of Mushpit – and we head to the back room for a chat. Listening back to the recording, it’s near-impossible to distinguish who’s speaking when. Mushpit is funny, bawdy and raw. It’s also #relatable, although I do wonder whether the knowing in-jokes and specific cultural references translate as well outside of the London creative scene. The humour lies somewhere between the muff jokes of The Wife of Bath combined with knowing references to millennial Insta-culture – a fact amply illustrated when I ask the girls to name one of their favourite pieces. “Maybe the quiz…” Roberts muses. “Are you arty, Insta, or arty-Insta?” Mushpit is at the forefront of the UK’s burgeoning zine scene, competing with publications such as OOMK, Chapess, Polyester and Cuntry Living, to name but a few. You’ll find them stocked at magCulture or sold at specialist zine fairs across the country and abroad. Their editors are bright, young, and precocious. The aforementioned all have female founders. Many will secure jobs off the success of their publications – consulting for brands,
as staff writers, or contributing editors for online youth culture, music or arts sites. Today’s zine revival consciously models itself on the self-published punk zines of the 1970s and the riot grrrl movement of the early 1990s. Back then zines were informed by an anarchic anti-establishment attitude and a DIY ethos, with print runs of less than a thousand and black and white sheets stapled together by hand and distributed at gigs and record shops. Things have got considerably more professional since then – most zines now have art directors and often hire established photographers to shoot their covers (Mushpit issue 6 was shot with Tyrone Lebon). Even the cover stars are getting bigger (Polyester recently secured Chanel muse and Rookie founder Tavi Gevinson). Some of the most interesting and innovative zines coming out of the UK are emerging from outside London, which is refreshing, given how much our capital tends to dominate the creative scene. Chapess is edited by 29-year-old Cherry Styles from her Manchester home, while Cuntry Living is currently helmed by a rotating group of Oxford University students. Styles explains she and Chapess founder Zara Gardner were “strongly” motivated to start the zine “because we wanted to make feminism relevant to younger girls, particularly those in rural areas with limited resources, as we had been.” Lu Williams from Cuntry Living explains the zine’s eye-catching name. “We are directly subverting literature and media aimed towards women, like Country Living. They uphold a heteronormative male gaze-
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based representation of cis gender women that is very white and middle-class. We’re also reclaiming ‘cunt’ in order to build a new feminine that’s powerful, radical, self-assured and not afraid to be angry. It’s interesting that a word that derives from cis female anatomy still provokes so much reaction and disgust. Culture has essentially removed us from our own bodies, sold it back to us in either a super-sexualised way, or in a ridiculously repressed, delicate form – and we’re taking it back.” By its very nature, self-publishing gives young creators an opportunity to disrupt established publishing models. Though, now that feminism has been co-opted by mainstream brands, the danger is that even zines will get sucked into their clammy, corporate embrace. Styles agrees that “self-publishing is, by its nature political, whether that’s explicit in its content or not. Many artists and writers throughout history have self-published through both choice and necessity. Zines give people an alternative, and inform culture from the ground up”. The challenge faced by many zine publishers is how to scale up without losing their DIY, anti-corporate ethos. Brandes articulates this dilemma. “We need to grow in every sense because otherwise we’ll have to stop, and that will be sad. We’re toying with the idea of how we could use adverts in either a way that’s so patronising that it’s like the joke is on the advertisers, or in a really nonpatronising way for our readers.”
Scaling up a zine also raises another concern: how to raise your profile by using bigger, well-known names while still retaining a sense of loyalty to your earlier contributors. Ione Gamble, the 22-yearold founder of Polyester, identifies this as a “difficult issue”: “You don’t want to be nepotistic, and only feature my friends issue after issue because Polyester isn’t an elite club that only a select few can be part of. On the other hand, if you do want to grow as a publication – not all zine publishers do – you have to start pulling in bigger names to raise your profile, sell more copies, and get more stockists. A healthy mix of both I hope is the answer. If you pull in someone with a huge name, get a smaller photographer who could do with the exposure to shoot it, or one of your mates on makeup who’s still studying.” There’s also a danger of zine publishers being co-opted by the mainstream, mirroring what has happened to punk. Angeli Bhose from Cuntry Living articulates this worry. “We’ve worked hard to be an explicitly anti-capitalist zine, fundraising for the money to print and distribute zines, and never selling them.” And as feminism continues to become steadily commodified by brands seeking to target a millennial, socially-aware audience, zine publishers risk being sucked into the slipstream of major companies – and in doing so, losing their integrity. “When companies take advantage of the growing interest around feminism in popular culture and try to sell it back to us, re-packaged, it is really frustrating. Although feminist adverts may seem like progress, they primarily aid the interest of women who have a lot of privileges already, and do little for the cause of poor, queer, non-professionalised women or women of colour.”
Words: Sirin Kale Photography: Jack Johnstone
“Zines give people an alternative, and inform culture from the ground up” - Cherry Styles, Chapess
Gamble is optimistic that zine culture will withstand the onslaught of PR-backed, major-brand-sponsored all-female “collectives” seeking to capitalise on the feminist zeitgeist. “Zine culture has been around for over twenty-five years, and at the end of the day as long as people are still dissatisfied with what they see in the mainstream they’ll seek out something that pushes against these ideals and presents an alternative. Maybe big brands will stop paying consultation agencies to make halfbaked zines, but I don’t think that’ll be any detriment to the actual zine community.” A (valid) criticism of contemporary zine culture is that, to outsiders at least, it can appear representative of so-called ‘white feminism’, representing the views of women from privileged backgrounds with aboveaverage levels of education. To be fair, this is something all the women I interviewed for this piece were conscious of and engaged with articulately. 28-year-old Rose Nordin from OOMK zine explains how they seek to disrupt this narrative: “[OOMK Editor/Co-founder] Sofia Niazi and I met at London Zine symposium and got talking about the nature of the feminist zines we were reading at the time. We shared the opinion that the dominant narrative for theses zines was
often reflective of feminism in mainstream culture, which is representative of the white experience and often addressed in isolation from other forms of oppression. We enjoy these zines, but felt like we wanted to make something that explored the activism of women outside the dominant white narrative.” Nordin singles out Deep Roots, a piece in OOMK issue two, about the New Beacon book shop as a favourite. “It tells the story of the first black publishers in the UK. We hold their story in high esteem and strive to be as active, committed and radical.” For the OOMK editors and contributors, zines “allow people to speak for themselves, rather than being spoken about. They are very direct channels for voices and a friend to the marginalised.” It’s impossible to be a legitimate zine publisher and not to be tapped into politics or broader cultural trends in a meaningful way. But, as Roberts points out, humour can be a sharp-edged political weapon. “The funniest bits of Mushpit are always the realest, and humour is important to us and often not done well by mainstream publications. But we’re definitely worthy in that everything we do has a kernel of politics to it. We don’t just spout bullshit because it’s funny.”
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us d e v o rem y l l a i t back sen t i s e d l s o a re h es, s i u t d l sed o i u l b C a “ n u x w ur o er-se o p rm. u s o m f o a e fr r t e a eith delic n , i d s e u s to pres e r ack” a b n t i i r g takin way, o e r ’ ing e v i W L y r Cunt , s m a illi - Lu W
As I leave the Mushpit launch and step out into a drizzly March evening, I’m struck by the abundance of creative, interesting people in the room. Later, when talking to Styles over email, I ask her whether she thinks now is a good time to be a creative given all we hear about the squeeze on millennials from an inescapable triumvirate of rising rents, wage pressures and an austerity-driven, conservative ideological agenda. “The internet has definitely made it easier to connect,” she argues. “People are still making zines because it’s still a relatively cheap and easy way of disseminating ideas. But the most creative and interesting people I know are making art because it’s the only way they know of doing things, to keep going. I love what John Waters says about people calling themselves artists: History will decide if you are an artist.” While not all of the people in today’s zine world will withstand the onslaught of history to create something that really endures, one thing is certain: Despite many forces trying to stand in their way, there’s an inspired generation of young female creators out there – and they’re absolutely killing it. Mushpit Issue 8 is out now. To order a copy, visit dittopress.co.uk
SET IN HENHAM PARK SUFFOLK
14th - 17th july 2016
KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS / DAUGHTER / COURTNEY BARNETT / CHET FAKER / PERFUME GENIUS ROOTS MANUVA / LAURA MVULA / PANTHA DU PRINCE PRESENTS THE TRIAD / BLANCK MASS THEATRE
COMEDY
Nils Frahm 274x173 Crack Magazine ad.indd 1
&
J O S H W I D D I C O M B E / R U S S E L L H O W A R D / R E G G I E W AT T S DAVID O’DOHERTY / ROBIN INCE & JOSIE LONG / TAPE FACE / MARK WATSON / SARA PASCOE / NICK HELM PLUS MANY MORE MUSIC AND ARTS ACTS ACROSS THE WEEKEND
For line up so far visit Latit udefestival.c o.uk / Tickets from seetickets.c om / 0871 231 0846
1–3 Jul
Possibly Colliding a weekend curated by Nils Frahm
More information and full line-up at barbican.org.uk/nilsfrahm #PossiblyColliding
03/03/2016
Place yourself at the heart of a buzzing scene of producers, composers and performers breaking musical boundaries with a weekend led by pianist and composer Nils Frahm
More information and full line-up at barbican.org.uk/nilsfrahm #PossiblyColliding
1–3 Jul
Possibly Colliding
a weekend curated by Nils Frahm
Place yourself at the heart of a buzzing scene of producers, composers and performers breaking musical boundaries with a weekend led by pianist and composer Nils Frahm
More information and full line-up at barbican.org.uk/nilsfrahm
Place yourself at the heart of a buzzing scene of producers, composers and performers breaking musical boundaries with a weekend led by pianist and composer Nils Frahm
56 In an era where the music industry’s conceptions of “credibility” are constantly morphing, Mabel McVey wears her love for pure pop music on her sleeve. Her response when asked whether she thinks the lingering connotations of pop music being ‘uncool’ are beginning to genuinely disappear, her reply is succinct – “Well I really hope so, because it’s absolute bullshit.” When I call Mabel she’s fresh from a hot yoga session, strolling around sunny Los Angeles with a smoothie bowl in hand. This Californian lifestyle is one of many she’s already experienced in just 20 years – she was born in the mountains of rural Spain before her family moved to London, where she lived until she was eight years old and returned to when she was 18. Between these spells in the British capital, the musician spent her adolescence in the perceivably straight-laced Stockholm. It was here that Mabel became acutely aware of her racial identity. “There just wasn’t a word for what I was,” she tells me. “In London, I would tell people I was mixedrace and they’d just say ‘OK, cool’, whereas in Sweden it was difficult because I felt like I had to explain myself. People still say ‘mulatto’, which basically means ‘mule.’” Despite the prevalence of uneducated attitudes towards race, Sweden’s musical output appears to be diversifying, with artists such as Seinabo Sey (who is half-Gambian) and Zhala (a musician of Kurdish heritage) gathering local support and international attention. “I think people like to label everything, so they’ll think about Sweden and assume everybody’s blonde,” Mabel says. “If you look at all these amazingly strong women in music now, we’re all brown – and I love that!” Aside from her contemporaries, Mabel cites throwback influences as sources of inspiration. “I feel like a lot of RnB victimises women, and I hate that. Women are strong, we’re powerful – I think Destiny’s Child showed me that.”
The musician’s affinity for the 90s is as evident in her style. “Fashion is one of the only other ways I learned to express myself,” she tells me. “Growing up, I was always into wearing these crazy outfits, so it’s nice that it puts me in control of defining the way that people perceive me.” She admits that her outfits have the ability to both reflect and affect her mood. “Sometimes I can spend an hour wearing something that just makes me feel really banging. That can change my day.” Mabel’s also aware of the power of her platform, and she’s eager to share her spotlight with young designers. In this shoot, she wears designs from Londoners Ashley Williams and Christopher Shannon, as well as pieces from Nicopanda and Moschino. “The fact that people are supporting me is amazing, so I want to be supporting other young people that are doing things just because I know how important it is. Music and fashion go hand in hand, so it’s important to help each other out.” Somewhat surprisingly, Mabel initially tried resisting her urges to explore music as career. She is, somewhat famously, the daughter of Neneh Cherry and Massive Attack producer Cameron McVey – a musical heritage which she admits made the release of her first single a daunting experience. “I naturally thought that people would assume a lot of stuff, which they do. People assume that my parents helped me write the tunes, which they didn’t.” Her debut single Know Me Better – released last year – was an infectious, upbeat invitation to look past her famous parents and instead explore her own personality, juxtaposing candid lyrics with huge pop choruses. Follow-up single My Boy My Town increased Mabel’s hype, earning her a Twitter endorsement from one of the most successful women in music, Adele. “I was so shocked! But she tells real stories, and I want to do that too, so it was good for me and my confidence.” Ultimately, though, for Mabel it all comes down to accessibility, creating songs which are euphoric yet relatable. “I really love when people just smash a good pop tune,” she says. “Yeah, I like to try that.” Mabel appears at Field Day, Victoria Park, London, 11-12 June
Aesthetic: Mabel Words: Jake Hall Photography: Leonn Ward Styling: Luci Ellis Hair: Nuriye Sonmez using ghd & Bumble and Bumble Make-up: Anna Wild using Charlotte Tilbury & Caudalie Skincare
This Page Jacket: Christopher Shannon Bralet: Moschino Jeans: Topshop Earrings: Stylist's Own Necklaces & Rings: Mabel's Own
Page 58-59 Jacket: Ashley Williams Top: Topshop Trousers: Ashley Williams Earrings: Othongthai All Other Jewellery: Mabel's Own
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Jacket: Nicopanda Top: Topshop Shorts: Nicopanda Earrings: Jiwinaia
Top: Christopher Shannon Jeans: Misbhv Earrings: Ohthongthai All Other Jewellery: Mabel's Own
Top: Christopher Shannon Choker: Othongthai Earrings: Jiwinaia
Issue 63 | crackmagazine.net
Words: Anna Tehabsim, Davy Reed + Sammy Jones Photography: Jake Davis
Bloc. Butlins, Mineahead 11-13 March
“This is it. It’s the final one and we won’t be doing any curtain calls, encores, reunion tours or one-lastjobs. If you ever want to see the titans of techno (and related musics) face down with 6,000 ravers in a Butlins holiday park, this is your very last opportunity to do so.” His tone may have been upbeat, but when Bloc. co-founder Alex Benson announced that 2016’s event would be the clubbing institution’s final ever weekender, our hearts sank. Having returned to Butlins for a large-scale festival for the first time since 2012’s infamous Pleasure Gardens meltdown, 2015’s Bloc. weekender felt like an inspiring comeback, with a clued-up crowd flocking to the budget holiday camp for an incredible line-up. “Long may it return,” we declared in our review. One positive outcome of Benson’s pre-festival announcement was the amped up enthusiasm from this year’s crowd. For fans of Bloc.’s particular music policy, this was the chance to say farewell to the strangeness of holiday park raving, to dart between aforementioned techno titans and dilapidated
day-glo arcades and drink so much Hooch that your teeth hurt. Friday night set the tone for the diversity of music on offer. This year’s schedule seemed to provide a greater variety of sounds and styles, potentially a response to last year’s late-night soundtrack being somewhat dominated by brutal techno. Opening sets like Floating Points’ gentle live show and Intergalactic Gary’s woozy, thick new wave provided the soft landing to ease people into the weekend. After Tama Sumo and Lakuti’s disco-licked house in Carhartt’s sports bar-turned-dancefloor, and Carl Craig’s minimal and muscular Modular Pursuits show in the expansive Centre stage, Friday’s highlight came in the form of Optimo and Andrew Weatherall’s closing set, meandering through various alternative dancefloor anthems and curveballs – including the unlikely crowd-pleaser of Moby’s remix of Simple Minds’ Theme For Great Cities. Due to Bloc.’s rigorously hedonistic nature, daytime activities are rare. Yet this year there was some stuff
available for the early riser, with LEME’s scheduled series of talks including in-depth looks at the likes of Powell, DJ Bone and Mute Records founder Daniel Miller. We deemed Fostering Female Community in Electronic Music worthy of getting out of bed for. Hosted by shesaid.so’s Sofia Ilyas, it was an impassioned and well-rounded debate on the realities of misogyny in the industry and the degree to which we should be actively encouraging connections between and providing support systems for female artists. It is worth noting that Bloc. itself faced criticism when an initial announcement for their 2015 event featured exclusively male acts, and that this year’s line-up featured more women across the weekend. Kicking things off in the Centre stage on the Saturday, Holly Herndon’s dreamy glimpse into dystopia was at once comforting and strange, layering a tougher sound under her avant laptop-pop. Accompanied by the singing and vogueing Colin Self and visual collaborator Mat Dryhurst, theirs is one of the most unique A/V shows around, with a backdrop
of 2D figures darting around a warped digitised chasm alongside messages from Dryhurst explaining why their tour is dedicated to incarcerated former US intelligence officer Chelsea Manning. They close by saying that they “will be dancing”, and, true to their word, the three of them were spotted leaving the Crack stage following Ceephax Acid Crew’s comically wild closing set. While the majority of the crowd seem to bow out by this point, the Sunday night at Bloc. Weekender is a gruelling, but strangely heartwarming ritual – a unison of the unkempt and sleep-deprived, many of whom have become acquainted with each other over the course of the weekend. As with last year’s line-up, Sunday’s real treat was the jungle and DnB takeover at the Reds Stage. It took a little while to get going – although dBridge’s experimental nature would be compelling in another context, there was only a few hours left of the last ever Bloc. weekender, and this was not what the crowd was craving. But once Dom & Roland took the baton, all inhibitions were lost, and Goldie then arrived to deliver a no-holds-
barred set of throwback Metalheadz bangers, pushing past Sunday’s 1.30am early curfew by half an hour – at which point it’s a struggle to stay standing. While still bleary-eyed but in good spirits from the weekend, we initially posted this review on Crack’s website just before The Spectator published Bloc. co-founder George Hull’s widely-circulated article entitled Dull hipsters in broad daylight – why I’m done with today’s dance music. None of the review above has been adjusted, but considering that the negativity of Hull’s article has threatened to completely fuck up the Bloc. weekender’s legacy, we felt left with no choice but to alter our conclusion. Alongside mocking his staff for having vegan diets and engaging in university degrees, Hull described Bloc.’s audience as “a precious and unimaginative bunch of wimpy pseudo-hedonists”, ridiculing the term “safe spaces” – an opinion which, at best, must have been formed in total ignorance of the progress the wider dance community is trying to achieve in preventing
sexual harassment in clubs. But underneath all Hull’s peculiar hostility, maybe he did raise some valid points for discussion – the risk of countercultural spirit being suppressed by dance music’s financial reliance on corporations, non-committal and trend-aware relationships with music becoming more commonplace, and so forth. In our original conclusion, we celebrated Alex Benson and George Hull’s plans to invest in sustainable London venues and affordable music workspaces in the face of frequent club closures, and we commended their offer to give advice to a younger generation of promoters. Our feelings on the former compliment pretty much remain in tact. But in terms of the latter, you could do much better than seeking advice from a promoter so eager to turn his back on an entire generation with an article for a Conservative-leaning publication. Let’s not allow this mess to ruin our memories of a great festival.
Opening Concert 24.08.16
Massive Attack
Kamasi Washington | Moodymann Festival Performances 25-28.08.16 Worldwide exclusive & first full live performance in 20 years:
Larry Heard aka Mr Fingers Live Hiatus Kaiyote Moritz Von Oswald Trio ft. Tony Allen & Max Loderbauer Octave One (Live) Ben Klock Marcel Dettmann Richie Hawtin (Extended set - The Moat)
Mood II Swing Joe Claussell Motor City Drum Ensemble Rødhåd Ron Trent Nightmares on Wax Daniel Bell Hessle Audio: Ben Ufo x Pangaea x Pearson Sound Daniel Avery DJ Fett Burger & DJ Sotofett (Sex Tags Mania) Hieroglyphic Being Midland Marcellus Pittman K’Alexi Shelby Tama Sumo Plus Many Many More
Kyle Hall Gene Hunt Hunee Jeremy Underground Mala dBridge Steve O’Sullivan (Live) Virginia Live ft. Steffi & Dexter Helena Hauff Darkstar (Live) Mike Huckaby DJ Qu DJ Stingray The Bug ft. Miss Red Loefah Ryan Elliott Kai Alce Soichi Terada Petar Dundov Matias Aguayo Zenker Brothers Broken English Club aka Oliver Ho Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Orchestra Antal
dimensionsfestival.com
Benji B Rahaan Calibre Pender Street Steppers Awesome Tapes From Africa Alix Perez Om Unit Kahn Fracture Intergalactic Gary Yussef Kamaal Trio Henry Wu (DJ) Alexander Nut Suzanne Kraft Moomin Skeptical Fit Siegel DJ Spinn Dan Shake Hodge Massimiliano Pagliari Mim Suleiman Shanti Celeste Débruit Derek Plaslaiko
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LET’S EAT GRANDMA
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‘Never Be Like You’ feat. Kai
‘Deep Six Textbook’
‘Miss World’
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A LV V A Y S
SONGHOY BLUES ‘Music In Exile’
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‘VEGA INTL. Night School’
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GENGAHR
Found Festival 2016
Saturday 11th June | Brockwell Park, London.
Derrick May / Dyed Soundorom Kerri Chandler / Kassem Mosse Live Legowelt Live / Leon Vynehall / Marcellus Pittman Maurice Fulton / Midland / Mood II Swing Paranoid London Live / Pender Street Steppers Petre Inspirescu / Rødhüd / Ron Morelli Ron Trent / Session Victim Live / Theo Parrish Trade Live (Surgeon & Blawan) Asquith / Beautiful Swimmers / Binh / Courtesy / Daniel Wang Dream 2 Science Live / Feelings / Francesco Del Garda / Kasra V Mara Trax (Maayan Nidam & Vera) / Mr Beatnick / Route 8 The Menendez Brothers / Secretsundaze / Wamdue Kids Live Willow / Zenker Brothers
+ many more across 6 stages
foundfestival.com
EVENEMENTENTERREIN WALIBI HOLLAND / BIDDINGHUIZEN / THE NETHERLANDS
MUSE $ DISCLOSURE LCD SOUNDSYSTEM SIGUR RÓS $ THE LAST SHADOW PUPPETS OSCAR AND THE WOLF AURORA $ ANDERSON .PAAK & THE FREE NATIONALS BIFFY CLYRO $ CHVRCHES COLLABS FT. CHRIS LIEBING & SPEEDY J DAMIAN ‘JR GONG’ MARLEY $ DUA LIPA EAGLES OF DEATH METAL $ FLATBUSH ZOMBIES FOALS $ GHOST $ HANS TEEUWEN $ JACK GARRATT JAMES BLAKE $ JAMIE WOON $ KAYTRANADA $ M83 OH WONDER $ PARKWAY DRIVE $ PAUL KALKBRENNER PHILIP GLASS ENSEMBLE – KOYAANISQATSI LIVE! RECONDITE $ RØDHÅD $ SUM 41 $ TRAVIS SCOTT WOLFMOTHER DOCTOR KRAPULA $ DUB INC $ ESPAÑA CIRCO ESTE FRANK CARTER & THE RATTLESNAKES $ GIRAFFAGE ISLAM CHIPSY & EEK $ KAMASI WASHINGTON $ MICK JENKINS RY X $ SEVN ALIAS $ SLEEPING WITH SIRENS $ TALE OF US THE BLACK MADONNA $ THEE OH SEES $ THE RUMJACKS TIGGS DA AUTHOR $ TOURIS LEMC $ WHITNEY AND MANY MORE TO COME...
CHECK LOWLANDS.NL FOR TICKETS AND UPDATES
Live
MA X RICHTER Kraftwerk, Berlin 15 April
COSMOSIS Victoria Warehouse, Manchester 12 March
GRIMES Brixton Academy, London 10 March As rises to stardom go, Grimes has shown us how it’s done with a weird grace, honest poise and absolutely zero compromises. It’s been four years since Claire Boucher first landed in London to play a tiny gig at a strip club in Soho, shortly after signing to 4AD. Then she was a charming, but alarmingly shy performer, and tonight it seems she’s not quite conquered the stage fright. Flagged by dancers and backed up by her very own Tank Girl-esque bandmate Hana, she launches with Genesis, which is followed by Realiti and a synth heavy-version of the Flesh Without Blood. Wild and out of breath, Boucher steps forward to say hello, and is met by a prolonged roar of approval. “I appreciate you clapping, but I’m shy,” she says, gesturing for the applause to stop. A new, bassier reworking of Be a Body is followed by the now-classic Oblivion. Her pleas to the overexcited pit feel endearingly-good natured: “please remember to drink some water and do not crush your peers.” Boucher explains that she’ll not be leaving the stage before playing an encore – “I have terrible nerves. To leave is too much” – before ending the night with Kill vs Maim– a song that was “written from the perspective of Al Pacino in The Godfather Pt II. Except he’s a vampire who can switch gender and travel through space”. The crowd chant the anthemic “B-E-HA-V-E, arrest us!” chorus in unison, subscribing to Grimes’ eccentric vision and, hopefully, proving her self-doubt wrong. ! Lucie Grace N Ro Murphy
Cosmosis is organised in part by the promoters behind Remake Remodel, Manchester’s top psych and garage rock club night. This year, the organisers swapped one venue on the fringes of the city centre for another, leaving Rusholme’s Antwerp Mansion behind and setting up shop, instead, at the cavernous Victoria Warehouse, which holds 8000 at its busiest. The venue remains unloved by many of the town’s gig-goers. But sound bleed, the primary concern at a festival as loud as Cosmosis, has been largely eradicated. It’s to the credit of the organisers that they adhered to a loose definition of what made this a psych festival – that explains how they found room for the raw sixties sound of local outfit PINS. I’ve caught them live countless times over that period, and every time they seem more urgent, more aggressive, more pointed than the last. Sleaford Mods leave us in little doubt about the scale of Jason Williamson’s intensity of delivery, and this hour-long set is a tour-de-force during which he barely stops for breath, as if a quick thirty second break might somehow rob him of all his righteous anger. Later, The Brian Jonestown Massacre offer compelling evidence that Anton Newcombe’s visceral, fizzing onstage intensity remains undimmed by his procession into middle-age and ongoing sobriety, and that they’ve probably never carried themselves with quite this much swagger, quite this much verve. But then it’s up to The Jesus and Mary Chain to deliver the evening’s standout performance. They’ve spent the past eighteen months touring Psychocandy to mark its thirtieth anniversary. Tonight’s more of a greatest hits affair, which actually makes it all the more a testament to the Reid brothers that the likes of The Living End and Never Understand sound so vital, so cutting, alongside the more recent likes of All Things Must Pass’ and Reverence. Despite the venue’s aforementioned problems, the atmosphere at Cosmosis still managed to reach fever pitch. Musically, Cosmosis’ organisers are onto something here, with a stellar line-up, a crossover crowd and a nuanced blend of the old guard and the bright young things. ! Joe Goggins N Paul Husband
GAIK A Contact Theatre, Manchester 19 March A regular event at the Contact Theatre, the Black Sound Series showcases and celebrates black music and culture coming out of Manchester. Although GAIKA resides in South London now, at his debut Manchester show he told the audience that he spent his formative years in Manchester – and he’s also part of the city’s GREY collective, who proudly shun genre restrictions. As they explained to Noisey last year, the GREY collective’s aim is to dismantle the preconceived notions of what British black music means. GAIKA’s newly formed live experience is still very much in its embryonic stages, but during his debut Manchester gig, that visceral mission rang through loud and clear. For his headlining slot at Black Sound Series, GAIKA had put together a bespoke audiovisual experience to perform his debut mixtape MACHINE in its entirety. Tracks like HECO blazed with menacing dancehall energy, while the hazy dub textures of BLASPHEMER suited the venue’s foggy, theatrical visuals perfectly. To perform BOHDY KNOWS and BLASPHEMER, GAIKA was joined by fellow Mancunian and GREY collective artist Bipolar Sunshine. Shouting out the GREY movement repeatedly, they were clearly both energised by GAIKA’s first major live accomplishment. At this early stage, it would be unfair to get bogged down by the occasional patchiness of GAIKA’s show. What we have learnt, is that this is an ambitious, uncompromising vision that’s gearing up for something greater. ! Duncan Harrison N Mimi Taylor
Max Richter believes in dreams. At least that’s what his music would suggest. His 2015 conceptual work, Sleep, was an eight-hour album he composed with the intention of it being played during bedtime; a kind of neo-classical lullaby meant to explore the effect music has on our subconscious. Premiering the live version of Sleep at Kraftwerk, a music venue housed in an old power plant in Berlin Mitte, this concert took place overnight, running from midnight to eight the next morning. Over 400 guests brought their own pillows and blankets, gathering on camping beds spread throughout the Kraftwerk’s expansive concrete halls. It wasn’t long before everyone seemed to be asleep. The night’s most special moments, though, occurred during the inevitable intermittent stirrings: I awoke at around 2:30am to see a solitary audience member standing in front of the stage, eyes closed, arms reaching for the ceiling, completely lost in the music. Later, around 5:00am, I woke up to a room that was sound asleep, while Richter played the piano alone. There was a time where I dreamed that I was at the concert, and I awoke confused as to what was a dream and what was a memory. I’d set an alarm for 6:30am so that I could catch the end of the performance. Slowly the front of the hall filled up again as eventually the strings faded into nothing more than a whisper. There was a long, almost contemplative pause before the audience erupted into a minutes-long standing ovation. Despite exhaustion, Richter beamed. The performance, for all intents and purpose, was a dream come true. ! Emma Robertson N Markus Werner
new this month
BELLA UNION ‘16
Em my T h e G re at
exmagician
More Rain
Second Love
Scan The Blue
CD LP Download
CD LP Download
CD LP Download
Explosions In The Sky
D o o m squ ad
Marissa Nadler
The Wilderness
Total Time
Strangers
01.04.2016
29.04.2016
20.05.2016
out now
coming soon
M .Wa rd
Beach House
MONEY
Father John Misty
Wild Nothing
Thank Your Lucky Stars
Su ic ide So ng s
I Love You, Honeybear
Life of Pause
more info at bellaunion.com
GWENNO Y Dydd Olaf Out Now
STEALING SHEEP
KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD Paper Mâché Dream Balloon Out Now
NIGHT BEATS
Not Real Out Now
Who Sold my Generation Out Now
PALEHOUND
KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD
Dry Food Out Now
Nonagon Infinity Out 29.4.16
AMBER ARCADES
M. CRAFT
Fading Lines Out 3.6.16
Blood Moon Out 17.6.16
Lanzarote
04—16 MOTH Club
lanzaroteworks.com #lanzaroteworks
presents
Shacklewell Arms
Wednesday 13 April
ULRIKA SPACEK Valette St London E8
71 Shacklewell Lane London E8
mothclub.co.uk
shacklewellarms.com
Friday 15 April
BEAU WANZER Tuesday 5 April
THE KVB Thursday 7 April
SMINO & MONTE BOOKER Friday 8 April
KLAVES Friday 15 April
SULK Wednesday 20 April
THE AWAY DAYS Friday 22 April
LUST FOR YOUTH Saturday 23 April
IS TROPICAL Monday 25 April
MISTY MILLER Tuesday 26 April
MEILYR JONES Friday 29 April
GUADALUPE PLATA Saturday 30 April
THE FIELD Thursday 5 May
THE COATHANGERS Friday 6 May
ROZI PLAIN
Saturday 9 April
CHAIN OF FLOWERS
Wednesday 20 + Thursday 21 April
SPECTRES
Wednesday 13 April
JINGO
Friday 22 April
NATHAN G WILKINS
Thursday 14 April
SCOUT NIBLET Friday 15 April
ZOZO Saturday 23 April
POP. 1280 Sunday 24 April
BROTHERS IN LAW Thursday 28 April
DEATH PEDALS Monday 2 May
10,000 RUSSOS
The Waiting Room 175 Stoke Newington High St N16 waitingroomn16.com Wednesday 6 April
BIG GIRLS Thursday 7 April
ANY OTHER Saturday 9 April
KEMAΛ
Saturday 23 April
MIKE SKINNER Tuesday 26 April
CHELOU
The Lock Tavern 35 Chalk Farm Rd London NW1 lock-tavern.com Tuesday 5 April
SAMARIS Wednesday 6 April
GOLD CLASS Friday 8 April
AVANTE BLACK Wednesday 20 April
SAMPLE ANSWER Thursday 28 April
BEN HOLLAND BAND 11—12 June
FIELD DAY: MOTH CLUB STAGE THE SHACKLEWELL ARMS STAGE
Live
MOODYMANN ://about blank, Berlin 24 February
CONVERGENCE Various Venues, London 10-20 March Do you get the feeling that we’re counting down to Year Zero for London's nightlife? With venue closures, inflated ticket prices and the muchdebated passivity of 'part-time ravers,' there’s a general concern that the community is getting lost in its own self-reflective wormhole. Now in its third year, Convergence festival’s Artistic Director Glenn Max ushered in this recurring idea of "the re-materialisation of culture beyond its digital vapourisation." In other words, rather than submitting to the depressing rhetoric of a contemporary music culture lacking any backbone, Convergence is choosing to push the discourse forward. Pieces of a Man: The Gil Scott Heron Project was a live celebration which Dave Okumu led a collective of artists that included Floating Points, Kwabs, Joan As Police Woman, Anna Calvi, Jamie Woon and a host of household names. There was a surprise appearance from comedian Reginald D. Hunter, who recited an endearingly nervous version of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and spoken word artist Kate Tempest – who performed an original piece that sparked a desire for civil disobedience among the crowd. Karen Gwyer’s hardware-heavy, experimental techno set at Village Underground presented her under dulled lighting, yet her noise curled under the nails and pummelled at the temples. Similarly, Omar Souleyman’s fusion of traditional dabke and conspicuously westernised dance music caused a rapturous Koko crowd to totally lose themselves. Souleyman himself casually treaded from stage left to right, clapping, stamping, nodding demurely. It’s curious, in respect of these defiantly heady displays, that Convergence chose to close this year’s festival with James Lavelle, who was ‘presenting UNKLE Sounds’. For a festival that had boisterously disrupted and re-interrupted electronic music’s trajectory countless times in the past four weeks, it felt a conclusion undermined by the gravitas of what preceded it. Regardless, Convergence is a festival on a constant creative incline. Their contribution to music, art, technology and the notion of electronic music as means of social and cultural growth acts as a reassurance that while we are slowly pilfered of club culture’s heritage, there is certainly a future worth raving for. ! Tom Watson N Antonio Pagano
HORIZON FESTIVAL Bansko Ski Resort, Bulgaria 12-19 March Walking through the streets of Bansko, it’s hard to believe that it is home to one of Europe’s greatest ski parties. In between Stalinist buildings and Orthodox churches, an array of local art galleries scattered among the sex shops, strip clubs and ‘erotica shows’ that Bansko has to offer. But Horizon’s goal is clear; to host a credible selection of DJs and live acts over its seven days and six nights, while offering 75km of ski pistes and snowbased revelry. Sunday night began with a calm but enjoyable set from Moxie, who played to an attentive, if not slightly jetlagged crowd; while John Talabot’s slow burning deep house provided a starting point to ease people into the week’s partying schedule. In between Ghostchant’s richly textured soundscapes at the Secret Hotel and Medlar’s disco-infused anthems at the Mountain Creek, Monday daytime consisted mostly of enjoying Bansko’s powdery pistes. The evening took a strange turn when we were invited to Pigalle – a local strip club, to see none other than DnB legend Goldie play b2b with KiNK. The layout centred around three poles, where strippers took turns performing while Goldie played. It’s safe to say the effect of the Metalheadz material was somewhat lost in the venue’s seedily-lit interior. The highlight of the week was the Secret Hotel house party that took place on the penultimate night in the heart of the Pyreneese Mountains. Once inside, the now abandoned mansion felt like infinity – a graffitied labyrinth of rooms crammed with mattresses, laser machines and faux fireplaces. Rooms rolled into other rooms that revealed secret passageways into balconies and hidden dancefloors. It was a celebratory finale to Horizon: only in its fifth year, the festival demonstrated – with a bit of careful tweaking – potential for even more success. ! Gunseli Yalcinkaya N Ross Silcocks
It’s not too often that Detroit hero Moodymann comes to Berlin. This time, it was thanks to the crew at !K7, whose esteemed DJ-Kicks mix series played host to Moody to celebrate its first installation of 2016 at ://about blank. I arrived late, but just in time to catch the tail end of Flo Real, which was, for all intents and purposes, a strong opening set: a playful variety of boogie and languid, effervescent disco-house. It’s hard being an opening DJ, and even harder when you’re opening for Moodymann. Moody arrived right on time and ready to get down (and, it’s worth noting, dressed in red tracksuit and matching red bucket hat — a strong look in a sea of Berlin black). Starting out with old school soul and funk, he brought us all over the map – the epitome of a “don’t get too comfortable” DJ set. You’d step out to get some air and he’d be mixing in a hip-hop bassline or a Paranoid London track, only to abandon that for high-energy disco, house, or boogie. At some point near the end, he dropped Dopehead’s Guttah Guttah (a feature on his DJ-Kicks mix), before jumping on the mic himself. Classic Moody. That said, for the first timers, there were a lot of confused looks passed around; if you’re a fan of the Detroit legend’s music, his DJ sets can take you aback if you’re expecting to hear house or gritty late-night beats. Best to just roll with it, in true Moodymann form. ! Emma Robertson
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06 08
IGGY POP Post Pop Depression Loma Vista
There’s no keeping Fatima Al Qadiri quiet. And why would we want to? Her last few efforts — 2014’s Asiatisch album and 2012’s Fade to Mind-released Desert Strike EP – have been testaments to the Kuwaiti-born, New York-based producer’s ineffable nerve when it comes to confronting intense, complex socio-political issues. Her latest, Brute, an 11-track LP released via Hyperdub, is no different. If the cover art, which features a Josh Kline sculpture of a teletubby in riot gear (entitled PoPo, get it?) isn’t enough indication, opening track Endzone samples recordings from the Ferguson riots, setting the tone for an album that explores the nervous adrenaline of protest and the darkness of police brutality. The slow, melancholy strains of tracks such as Fragmentation are pretty and contemplative, and lead track Battery channels a sense of anti-establishment energy. But that said, the album’s formulaic sound – dark ambient textures punctuated by restrained fragments of grime – starts to feel exhausting quite quickly. Blood Moon calls to mind Al Qadiri’s Szechuan, off Asiatisch (or is it something from Desert Strike?), while Curfew could be a mutation of her dub production, Knight Fare. While the music of Brute is at no points devoid of atmosphere or emotion and Al Qadiri’s message is spoken loud and clear, it’s a little disappointing that she’s employed such a similar soundscape across projects with major thematic differences.
Footwork has proven itself one of the most diverse styles in club music. Compare the minimal, abrasive vocal cut-ups of Dj Roc’s Crack Capone with Traxman’s soulful offerings, or Jlin’s menacing sonic assaults, and you’d swear they were made in different worlds entirely. That said, it seems likely that the polished, high-energy formula of the late Rashad Harden will serve as a benchmark for the many footwork producers who continue to take inspiration from his work. Afterlife isn’t the first record to celebrate Rashad’s achievements. Machinedrum paid tribute with the Movin’ Forward release, and Hyperdub’s Next Life compilation acknowledged the style’s potential for fierce futurism, with unreleased tracks from a range of names taking footwork forward – DJ Rashad made a single official appearance. Afterlife takes a more direct approach, unearthing 14 unreleased Rashad tracks created with collaborators Spinn, Gantman, Traxman and younger producers such as Earl, Manny and Taso. The Teklife crew’s industrious production rate, as seen in Tim and Barry’s 2012 documentary, suggests there must have been a serious catalogue to dig through. Most interesting on Afterlife are the tracks with little things you don’t hear elsewhere in Rashad’s work. Oh God has a slow burning intro made with a mournful, wavering synth and minimal drums. It sounds a little cinematic in the same way Bowie’s Warszawa does. Get Fuk’d Up’s brooding saw-tooth buzz and shouty vocals are confrontational, anti-party, even threatening. The same hard edge appears on Ratchet City, with machine-gun speed claps and relentless, exasperated vocals. Closer Roll a Tree is great fun – Jill Scott’s turn-of-the-century RnB single Take a Long Walk gets loaded into the MPC, and Rashad and Manny get trigger-happy on the pads. I say that, actually what I mean is they lose their shit and totally gut the thing. Job done.
Propelled by intoxicants, rebellion and libido, Iggy Pop has toplessly snaked a lubricious path through four decades, establishing himself as the very personification of rock ‘n’ roll’s rebellious urges. As the voice of The Stooges, then solo, Pop made seminal records in the late 1960s and 70s, and arguably a couple more beyond. But his output has been chequered, and he hasn’t released strong work for years. Now, as he approaches his seventies, Pop reviews it all on this introspective collaboration with Josh Homme. Why the Elder Statesman stuff now? Doesn’t that seem a little incongruous for the self-styled Godfather of Punk? He’s said, harshly, that this album happened because he realised he’d ‘outlived’ his ‘utility’. But maybe the title of The Stooges’s last album - Ready to Die - gave it away already. This might well be Pop’s swansong. Death looms large in the context of this album. The world is still mourning the loss of Pop’s close friend and collaborator David Bowie, and, not too long ago, their mutual friend Lou Reed passed away. Homme, on the other hand, has said the album was helpful when coming to terms with the Paris attacks at the Bataclan last year. On American Valhalla, Pop addresses the subject explicitly: “Death is a pill that’s hard to swallow”, candidly expressing the fear of mortality common to many of us. Indeed, Homme’s influence is clear throughout, but it’s most discernible on Break Into Your Heart. Creepy, dark and buttressed by brooding guitars, it bears all the hallmarks of Homme’s bleak brand of gothic Americana. Sunday is another highlight, drawing on the Herculean drug habit of Pop’s most notorious phases for its lyrical content. But there’s also a silliness that’s all Pop’s own. For most of Post Pop Depression, the music rarely goes beyond straightforward, restrained rock production. So if you were hoping that Pop would attempt to muster up one last Search & Destroy, you’ll be left unsatisfied. Better to approach this record as a wellpitched resignation letter from a class act.
! Emma Robertson
! Xavier Boucherat
! Robert Bates
DJ R ASHAD Afterlife Teklife
FATIMA AL Q ADIRI Brute Hyperdub
KENDRICK L AMAR untitled, unmastered Top Dawg / Aftermath / Interscope Jay Z once ruefully eyed hip-hop’s conscious/commercial divide by rapping: “Truthfully, I wanna rhyme like Common Sense / But I did five mill and ain’t rapped like Common since.” This conflict continues to dominate the discourse about rap lyricism, but over the last few years, Kendrick Lamar has been proving that you can bridge that divide. Despite his weird voice, his weirder voices, his oblique lyrics and baroque song-structures, “King Kendrick” has sold millions, won Grammys, and managed to (to paraphrase Buzzfeed, probably) “break the internet” simply by releasing a collection of “untitled” off-cuts from last year’s universally lauded and largely anti-commercial album To Pimp a Butterfly. With Kendrick, everything is calculated, and untitled, unmastered.’s un-title can be trusted to carry at least a double meaning. On Untitled 3, Kendrick describes the antagonistic process of doing business with the exploitative “white man” – “put a price on my talent, I hit the bank and withdraw”. Now subject to the financial pressures of the mainstream, Kendrick must resist the orders to compromise his art. But then there’s Kendrick’s true master. Untitled 1, with its Book of Revelations imagery (“planes falling out the sky, trains fallin’ off the track”) finding Kendrick reproachfully addressing the boss upstairs: “I tithed for you, pushed the club to the side for you, who love you like I love you?” There are gnomic hints of Old Testament wrath amidst the cauldron of conflicted feelings Kendrick ventriloquises. Surveying the contemporary rap scene, Kendrick (on Untitled 2) hollers: “I see jiggaboos… I see Styrofoam”. The apocalypse on Untitled 1 has as little mercy for “bad bitches” and “real niggas” as it does for “discriminating the poor”; the rapture won’t have much ‘rap’ in it. Kendrick, however, is a “conscious” rapper with the restless, selflacerating consciousness of the God fearing – more suffering parishioner than confident preacher. untitled, unmastered is all agonised questioning (“Where did it all go wrong?”, “Before I blink do I see me before them pearly gates?”), offering few answers. The dense, jazzy production, though beautifully played and often – indeed – sweet and sunny, is also sonically unresolved. It billows and seethes, with dissonant horn-runs flickering across even its smoother surfaces. “Look at my flaws,” Kendrick pleads on Untitled 6, and those flaws are in full evidence here – his sometimes sloppy flow, his awkward phrasing, his increasing self-indulgence – so that one might exasperatedly add Unfinished to the album’s un-title. But maybe this is the point of Kendrick’s music? Like his lyrics, like his consciousness (buffeted by the storms of modernity and racial identity), it is a work in progress. And so is our appreciation of it; few rappers demand, and reward, such devotion – even from the most fervently agnostic. ! Jack Law
PARQUET COURTS Human Performance Rough Trade There’s much to love about Human Performance, the fifth album from garage-rock quartet Parquet Courts. The band’s stoned, absurdist humour is present (“You look so nice / Chinese fried rice”, they chant on the Devo-influenced I Was Just There), as are the wirey, nervously energetic guitar riffs – see the hesitantly groovy No Man, No City and the wobbly surf rock lead of Berlin Got Blurry. But despite Parquet Courts’ high jinks, Human Performance is in fact the sound of a band growing older. On Outside, for instance, Andrew Savage croons “I picked out all the grey hairs that remain on the outside”. Captive Of The Sun proves a clear album highlight – a pained lament to not only to New York, but to modern claustrophobic urban living in general. The mood is then switched with the beautiful Steady on My Mind – a Velvet Underground pastiche complete with relaxed percussion that could’ve been played by Moe Tucker herself. Perhaps in their maturity, Parquet Courts have lost a little of the urgency that made songs like, say, Stoned and Starving so much fun. What they have given us in return, is a richer, broader sonic palette and – on occasion – deeper lyrical subject matter. It'll be interesting to see how things unfold from here. ! Benjamin Salt
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07 07 06 JOHN CARPENTER Lost Themes II Sacred Bones
Atlanta punk rock trio The Coathangers have championed the “fake it ‘til you make it” approach both loudly and proudly in the ten years they’ve been making music together. 2016 sees them ring in their double-digit birthday with a fifth studio album, Nosebleed Weekend – but there comes a time when having a pop at it becomes a legitimate day-job, and unfortunately Julia Kugel, Meredith Franco and Stephanie Luke sound sterilised by their hard-earned experience. Nosebleed Weekend saw the trio take to Valentine Studio in California. Once witness to the Beach Boys and Frank Zappa, the recording studio fell into disrepair and producer Nic Jodoin undertook a mammoth clear-up job on the 1980s time-capsule. The Coathangers are the first band to record there since its renovation, but the album’s smoother, poppier production can’t mask the fact that Nosebleed Weekend resolutely refuses to take many risks. Where the band’s selftitled, mid-noughties debut was characterised by a sloppy lack of professionalism, it felt all the more thrilling for it. The Coathangers circa 2016 employ a solid, tried and tested structure thirteen times over, with very little urgency. The record’s most convincing tracks – Had Enough and Down Down – owe debt to The Distillers' Brody Dalle, with gravelled, commanding delivery and vigorous basslines. But elsewhere, as on album-opener Perfume, you’ll find formulaic three-minuters as the band lead you through all the motions of a punk-rock brooder without ever coming to the crunch. Early single Make It Right is refreshed by poppy, “woah-oh” backing vocals on an otherwise gritty enough rock track, but when the trio attempt true theatrics – like on the creepy, stagnant Copycat – it just feels forced. Nosebleed Weekend is a by-the-books punk rock record; a straightforward listen, but unforgivably inoffensive.
At his recent art show, Dean Blunt’s fans flocked to a London gallery for what turned out to be an exhibition compromised of a single stock photo and the highpitched screech of anti-loitering technology usually used to deter “intimidating” youths from public spaces. This sentiment has been the cornerstone to his success as a non-conformist and fearless (or even arrogant, some would protest) provocateur. It’s never been straightforward with Blunt, and BBF Hosted by DJ Escrow takes his confrontational message about identity and outsider politics one step further. DJ Escrow – who seems to be Blunt’s fictional creation – spouts the ramblings of an aspiring MC who’s brimming with youthful bravado and masked insecurity. His brags are alternately soundtracked by soft acoustic guitar playing, and horrifically intense white noise. The album opens with (what sounds like) a looped sample of Craig David’s 2000 MOBOs acceptance speech for Best RnB act: the sentence ‘This makes me proud to be British’ is repeated for three and half minutes. This theme creeps back in over jarring noise throughout the album. Thought provoking or just confusing, many listeners will frustrate themselves when considering whether or not Blunt’s works are ingenious social commentary or whether he’s just laughing at us. But despite the conceptual trickery, Blunt’s sound – which often sees melancholic strings wash over dubby hip-hop – is often deeply affecting, and his smoky baritone barely conceals his emotion. Is the search for meaning behind Blunt’s work as futile as a stoned and paranoid trip down a rabbit hole? Rather than rationalise Blunt, maybe it’s best to just recognise both the humour and the pain of his music.
What is it about Mark Frost and David Lynch’s early 90s serial drama Twin Peaks that inspires such a devoted following? A gorgeously weird setting, singular cast and pair of genius writers, yes – but surely no small part of this sparkle-eyed fidelity is indebted to Angelo Badalamenti’s instantly timeless soundtrack. This is a sentiment shared by Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu. In an essay written for Crack entitled The Staggering Beauty within the Music of Twin Peaks, he called Badalamenti’s OST “powerful, touching and terrorising”. His devotion is fierce, and is mirrored throughout this collection of reinterpretations of the original tracks. The preternatural and instantly recognisable atmosphere of the OST is continued in the preservation of the “two or three repeating chords” Stewart describes in the aforementioned essay. Alongside them, in true Xiu Xiu fashion, appear echoing guitar, off-key pianos, and bristly, unplaceable noises. The most recognisable of the tracks and the show’s main theme, Falling, calls to mind blistered vinyl, while Audrey’s Dance, centred around that an immortal five-tone xylophone phrase, is full of cosmic synth suggestions that whip in and out. The whole LP sounds as if it’s been crumpled and then laid flat, crinkled edges kept intact. Far from a replacement or unnecessary fans-only extension, Xiu Xiu have tampered with the soundtrack just enough to deepen the sound without tearing out its heart. It’s not better than the original, it’s just different – a noisy, intense counterpart that never strays too far from those dreamy double summits.
For techno fans of the bearded variety, The Field is an artist with impeccable credentials. His releases to date have mostly involved conjuring languid machine melodies into existence, and then letting them disintegrate mournfully over thudding techno and rumbling acid-tinged beats. When he hits his stride, The Field’s long form manipulations are masterful and mesmerising, and the opening title track of his fifth studio album,The Follower, neatly encapsulates his oeuvre, shifting 180 degrees from gloomy to glorious before its nine minutes have run their course. While it would be missing the point entirely to complain about getting ‘lost’ in The Field’s music – that’s sort of the point – there is a fine line between hypnotic and anonymous. Pink Sun, the second track on the album, sails dangerously close to the latter – and there are a couple of other tracks that do too. Elsewhere the hazy dynamism that made previous releases so essential is in full effect: Monte Verita offers an intoxicating blend of rubber-band acid bass, restless rhythm and melancholy melody. And the gorgeous Raise The Dead chimes and purrs along like only The Field can. But while there are no clangers, or terrible tracks on The Follower, on occasions this record feels like The Field-bynumbers, and as a result it’s by no means his strongest work.
For Carpenter purists, last year’s Lost Themes was met with a sort of conflicting antipathy. It was a record that forcibly blinded its audience from any visual accompaniment analogous with the horror director’s canon of film scores. Historically, our obligation as filmgoers is to interpret the suggested mood of scenes through both sound and vision. A generous summary would be that Lost Themes placed thumbs over our eyes; that we were gently coerced into being the masters of our own perverse screenplays. The creative process of this follow-up album saw John Carpenter return to the studio with his son, Cody Carpenter, and godson, Daniel Davies – the triptych who initially swapped audio sketches before constructing the tracks as a single unit in the same city. Unsurprisingly, it equates a confusion of aims and intentions. It’s a medley of synth-induced keyboards that hobble along to rock drum presets and reverberated guitar distortions. It’s a frenetically disorganised practice in Ennio Moriccone and Goblin worship; one that catches your imagination off guard and leaves you in some kind of sunless limbo. In a single sitting Carpenter inappropriately juggles strains of melancholy with unfounded aggression and atonal dread. Tracks like White Pulse and Windy Death forge such maniacal whimsy only to then totally abandon their notions and hastily shepherd us towards a contradictory dimension. Rather than expounding on ideas, Carpenter takes these excessive aural U-turns, and all sense of narrative is lost. Yet while every song attempts to be its own dystopian B-movie, with all their laboured peaks and troughs, we are periodically reacquainted with Carpenter’s fabled love affair with minimalism. As a young director, his soundtracks spawned out of necessity and out of that came a real creative modesty; one that galvanised a generation of electronic producers. With Lost Themes II, the images conjured are wistful and erratic; far removed from the cult classic standard Carpenter is so capable of reaching.
! Katie Hawthorne
! Aine Devaney
! Sammy Jones
! Adam Corner
! Tom Watson
THE COATHANGERS Nosebleed Weekend Suicide Squeeze BABYFATHER BFF Hosted by DJ Escrow Hyperdub XIU XIU Xiu Xiu Plays The Music of Twin Peaks Bella Union
THE FIELD The Follower Kompakt
CARDI B Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 The KSR Group Former stripper turned reality TV star puts out a hip-hop EP. On the surface, some might presume it’s doomed to failure, a venture designed for the 'shallow' hip-hop fans more preoccupied with industry gossip than the music itself. However, Cardi B's mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 feeds her loyal fan base (2.8 million Instagram followers) perfectly and is also, arguably, the best music to come out of the TV show Love And Hip-Hop New York for some time – although Cardi's music was barely ever featured on the programme. This is typical of Cardi B's story. Often dismissed and underestimated, she somehow manages to pull herself up to the top. It is for this reason, more than anything else, that will make you want to like this project. Her famous catchphrases 'WASHPOPPIN' and 'FOREVA' inform the titles of the project’s two stand out tracks, racking up – at the time of writing – a total of 231k and 328k plays respectively on Soundcloud. Swift on Demand shines as the more prominent producer, with his efforts being the more catchy and memorable. Other producers on the project include Lamshaft, Josh Xantus and BMC Beats, who bring us sounds ranging from trap to garish EDM. Historically, many of the best rappers hail from New York and Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 is dotted with references to such. On WASHPOPPIN Lil Kim's 'you wanna be my main squeeze, baby. Dontcha?/You want get between my knees, baby' is converted into, you hit the club with 20 Gs, baby/And spend it all on Cardi B, baby'. Notorious B.I.G's Ten Crack Commandments is reworked into Ten Trick Commandments – a song about using men for money. Even the project’s artwork, which depicts Cardi B recieving oral sex, is very similar to a Remy Ma scene from the Terror Squad video for Lean Back. Because of this, you can't help but form comparisons, which only makes you see this EP for what it really is. Cardi B the underdog, big mouth and comedian, is great. However, Cardi B the rapper, definitely needs work. ! Trina John-Charles
ANNA MEREDITH
MEILYR JONES
VA R M I N T S
2013
OUT NOW
OUT NOW
KIRAN LEONARD
TELEMAN
GRAPEFRUIT
BRILLIANT SANITY
OUT NOW
8th April 2016
@moshimoshimusic www.moshimoshimusic.com
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K ANO Made in the Manor Parlophone For those who never got to tune into the right pirate broadcasts, grime is a genre that has primarily existed on a track-by-track basis. Whether it's Pulse X or Shutdown, according to the wider music listening public, the genre's most pivotal moments have been – with the exception of Boy In Da Corner – one-offs. Today however, grime finds itself at the centre of the UK's attention, embraced more than ever by the mainstream and with it the pressures of a mainstream artist; and that includes albums. Made in the Manor then is one of the first major full-lengths of grime 2.0; except, it’s not really grime. Over the course of 13 tracks (15 if you count the bonuses) Kano explores the vast spectrum of UK bass and rap music, incorporating everything from hip-hop, to neo-soul, to garage. Kicking off with Hail, a Rustieassisted anthem featuring 80s metal guitar riffs, melodramatic church bells and a Next Hype sample, Kano reintroduces himself with aggression. However it’s second track T-Shirt Weather in the Manor that really sets the tone for the album. A lighter, piano-led beat allows Kano room to breath, reminiscing about summers in the city. From chasing down ice-cream vans to dancehall parties, it’s a seemingly idyllic picture of the MC’s roots. Listen a little deeper however, and the police siren sampled in the beat hints at the 'sweet summers turn[ed] sinister' detailed on the second verse. Meanwhile, This Is England’s hip-hop beat and K-a's Mike Skinner-eqsue patriotism lend it a more rueful quality than the bangers that precede it on the album. Indeed, influence of The Streets’ more bitter-sweet material crops up throughout; from the wailing slowjam Little Sis to the Damon Albarn featuring Deep Blues. It’s fitting that Kano should choose this moment in grime's history to reflect on his roots. However this indulgent insistence on looking back wears thin and, by the time the album closes with My Sound, you can't help but wish Kano had come back with more raw appeal. ! Mike Vinti
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L ARRY LEVAN Genius Of Time Universal It’s safe to say that club culture would not be what it is today without the exploits of Larry Levan. Starting out alongside Frankie Knuckles in the early 70s, he went on to pioneer the whole notion of DJing, through his mythologised residency at Paradise Garage during the height of disco in 1977. In 2016, what’s most notable about these edits is how tremendously DJ-friendly they are. Certainly, Levan would have spent many years pitch-riding unquantised tracks, but evidently, this became tiresome, leading him to prefer the rank-and-file kick drums that became more popular in the 80s. The tracklist showcases less of the sounds of 70s disco – acoustic drums, horn sections, strings – and leans harder on the early 80s, just as the old instrumentation started blending with the computer sounds of the decade. This is indicative of Levan’s shakey start to Paradise Garage, which due to a lot of technical problems early on, took a few years creeping into the 80s for the club to rally a dedicated audience. Levan’s edits of tracks like Groovin’ On With You are drenched in a hyper-80s pallette which occasionally becomes tired, only to be satisfyingly refreshed with the gorgeous guitar jams on Gwen Guhtrie’s It Should Have Been You and the big pianos of Tell You by Loose Joints. This compilation is a DJ’s dream; no tracks fall below the dreaded five minute mark, and the wide breadth of tempo and groove means a high utility rate throughout the album; be it the UK “12 version of Grace Jones’ Feel Up – a broken-but-groovy slow burner – or the likes of Can’t Shake Your Love and First True Love Affair – pure high-tempo disco rocket fuel. Genius Of Time brings the listener somewhat closer to envisioning the crucial beginnings of New York’s club land. Far from a paradise in reality perhaps, but with Larry Levan at the helm, you can imagine it might have sounded like it.
! Henry Murray
PUCE MARY The Spiral Posh Isolation
Certain posthumous names from hip-hop’s history ring out down the decades, their legendary status seemingly growing rather than diminishing as the years go by. As one of the most fervently celebrated producers in the genre’s history, James ‘J Dilla’ Yancey is a prime example. Following what seems like a permanent drip-drip-drip of unreleased instrumental tracks, we now have the apparently final LP of Dilla material – a vocal album intended for release before his untimely passing in 2002, and curated by Stones Throw’s Creative Director. At times, The Diary is gold-standard Dilla. The crisp, menacing, Introduction sets a suitably biographic tone. Lead single, The Anthem, featuring the reliably unruly Frank n Dank is strong (although was first released three years ago, when the album was first optimistically scheduled for release), and a sunny-side-up Madlib beat propels The Shining Part 1 along in true Jaylib spirit. At times The Diary is confusing - additional production duties feel allocated in a slightly haphazard way. There are also some major clangers – the Gary Numan-sampling Trucks (like Cars, of course) sounds hamfisted and probably shouldn’t have made the cut. Albums like this raise questions about who really has ownership (creatively) of material that can only be interpreted in the context of the current cultural climate. Dilla obviously liked Trucks enough at the time to commit it to tape, but would he have released it now? Donuts it ain’t, but if The Diary is the final statement from the J Dilla estate, it could have ended a whole lot worse.
The Hope VI housing project, from which PJ Harvey’s ninth solo album takes its name, was a social housing measure in the US that sought to flatten dilapidated housing projects and rebuild them as mixed income housing. Opening track Community Of Hope documents Harvey’s travels around Washington D.C.’s Ward 7, an area that was particularly affected by the initiative. The track’s observations are stark: “OK, this is just drug town, just zombies, but that’s just life”, “And the school just looks like a shithole / Does that look like a nice place?” This unforgiving assessment has provoked intense criticism from Leah Garrett, a representative of the Community Of Hope initiative that looks to help those in need with healthcare, housing and education in the ward. “We’ve been tackling some of the challenges you named in your song. We improve life in a place that you call the ‘pathway of death’,” she wrote. “By calling out this picture of poverty in terms of streets and buildings and not the humans who live here, have you not reduced their dignity? Have you not trashed the place that, for better or worse, is home to people who are working to make it better, who take pride in their accomplishments?” It’s a valid point. The track does not seek to explain itself. The Hope Six Demolition Project’s lyrical content draws heavily from Harvey’s wanderings to places of social struggle and warfare, including Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington D.C. The surprise is that much of the delivery lies in the straight up recounting of her observations, omitting any other further musings. On Orange Monkey she states: “I took a plane to a foreign land and said I’d write down what I found.” No doubt. The content is grim, and while there’s not been a great deal of musical evolution since Harvey's 2011 album Let England Shake, the songs here are brass-smothered, denser and more compact. As with Let England Shake, struggle and war remain at the forefront, though rather dwelling on the shaping of countries through historical conflict, Hope Six is more directly concerned with the struggle in present form. The observations of Afghanistan in Ministry Of Defence recounts this “human hell” – needles, spoons, shit, and everything in between. The Hope Six Demolition Project is a provocative compilation of Harvey’s fascination with conflict. Where Let England Shake existed in a century old dialogue that leant itself to tearful melancholy, Hope Six is upfront, stark and difficult. The connections between her lyrical inspirations and her intent aren’t easy to decipher, but the power of her delivery mirrors the determination of an artist who’s never afraid to embrace the pain.
A hollow signal closes in. A claustrophobic, clawing scrape. The Spiral takes hold with a dull thud. A thud that repeats and rests behind a grey curtain of static. There’s a moment of silence before Frederikke Hoffmeier places her feet on more familiar ground on Night Is A Trap II. The Copenhagen-based producer will have approached her third full-length as Puce Mary with the weight of expectation on her shoulders. The expectation being that Hoffmeier’s industrial noise experiments will have reached a zenith. While The Spiral begins with a slow clasp, the album is at its most affecting on tracks like The Temptation To Exist with its unsettling, Penderecki-mimicking strings and all-too-human ambience. This uncomfortable anthropology is present too in Hoffmeier’s words. “Their skin will start softening, coming off / and they will frantically scratch their faces and peel themselves like oranges,” she whispers on Enter Into Them while her visceral soundscape crashes and echoes behind her, her voice, eventually, engulfed entirely. These moments of unexpected empathy are occasionally overshadowed by the various, perhaps unavoidable, cliches of Puce Mary’s particular brand of noise. The megaphoned vocals on The Actor fall towards pastiche, for example. Yet, as the album reaches its aptly titled closer, Slow Agony of A Dying Orgasm, Hoffmeier’s hackneyed yells emerge from a different place. This time they occupy a space beneath an agitated thud of hammered metal which pounds its way to a shrill anti-climax. The Spiral straddles the extremes of courage and vulnerability. Its creator revels in existential horror to great effect. As an artist on the brink of self-discovery, Hoffmeier’s intangible zenith seems somewhat irrelevant at this point. The best, as they say, is yet to come.
! Adam Corner
! Thomas Frost
! Billy Black
J DILL A The Diary Mass Appeal
PJ HARVEY The Hope Six Demolition Project Island Records
GIGS 2016
AFRICA EXPRESS PRESENTS...
GHOSTFACE KILLAH
WITH SECRET SPECIAL GUEST + KOJEY RADICAL Saturday 14 May
BUY TICKETS AND FIND OUT MORE 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk
THE SYRIAN NATIONAL ORCHESTRA FOR ARABIC MUSIC WITH DAMON ALBARN AND GUESTS PART OF 14-18 NOW
Saturday 25 June
07 Film
HAIL , CAESAR! dir: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen Starring: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Ralph Fiennes
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COURT dir. Chaitanya Tamhane Starring: Vira Sathidar, Vivek Gomber, Geetanjali Kulkarni In its wry portrayal of a broken justice system and state repression, Court paints a realistic picture of India's contrasts and complexities. Narayan Kamble, crotchety singer of catchy socialist songs aimed at the authoritarian government, is arrested while performing at a protest gathering commemorating a massacre. The film centres on his never-ending trial. The singer is accused of inciting the suicide of one of his fans – a poor municipal worker, who dies in the sewers, unprotected by safety equipment, intoxicated by alcohol. Defence lawyer Vinay Vora exposes the lazily corrupt police and courts that prioritise speedy convictions and rely on outdated laws, in the process exploiting the uneducated working classes and paying off state witnesses. Modern India is juxtaposed with conservative traditionality. Vora listens to jazz on moody night drives and defies his parents’ obsession with marriage plans. In opposition, the conservative state prosecutor Nutan dutifully cooks her family supper after work. Kamble stubbornly wanders in between both worlds, playing folk music in the slums without payment. A sad, mocking irony fills Court, its trudging pace and lack of conclusion highlighting the interminable struggle. The court has a frustrating, Kafka-esque humour, and that humour is exactly where the seemingly impassive film’s sadness and anger lie. Excellently acted with cool realism, Kamble’s face a silent mask of derision and fury, Court is a brilliant satire. ! Gwyn Thomas de Croustchoff
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George Clooney as a drugged up Roman soldier? Scarlett Johansson as a lairy mermaid? Channing Tatum tap dancing in a tight, white, sailor boy outfit? The latest Coen Brothers’ takes audiences on a joyous, star-filled romp through the Golden Age of Hollywood. Josh Brolins’ Eddie Mannix is the eye of the storm as head fixer for Capitol Pictures, the fictional studio previously seen in the Coens’ Barton Fink. We move through a day in his life, where he struggles with a stream of crises; pregnant starlets, risqué photoshoots, kidnapped actors and closet Communist screenwriters abound. But perhaps the most memorable scenes are those that seem side fare; a religious focus group, McDormands’ comically dark turn as editor C.C. Calhoun, and a wickedly painful elocution exercise between Alden Ehrenreichs’ character Hobie Doyle and Ralph Fiennes’ Laurence Laurents. It can become frustrating that these discursions are left incomplete, but nevertheless Hail, Caesar! is incredibly watchable. Part celebration, part gleeful mockery and highly self-referential, Hail, Caesar! keeps things light and is – at its core – a love letter to the bizarre absurdities of the film industry.
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! Tamsyn Aurelia-Eros Black
HIGH RISE dir. Ben Wheatley Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller Ben Wheatley’s stellar interpretation of JG Ballard’s High Rise is a little like Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film The Exterminating Angel, in which a dinner party full of upper class socialites descends into Lord of the Fliesstyle anarchy when the guests discover they are unable to leave. Like Bunuel’s socialites, the inhabitants of Wheatley’s high rise are essentially trapped. It is testament to the film’s success that it’s just as focussed on the psychological worlds of its characters as it is the social structures they inhabit. As a social commentary the film is complex, as there is no binary relationship between an oppressive ruling class and an oppressed population in the film; there’s just an ever-expanding network of selfish people slowly losing their grip on reality as they clamber over one another in the dark. The most compelling moments explore characters’ internal disintegration, as with lower middle class resident Helen Wilder’s slow-motion, blank-faced dancing, a moment which echoes the anxious surrealism of Ayoade's The Double or Glazer's Under The Skin with just as much unsettling energy. Wheatley’s use of torch-lit shots and hand-held camerawork, together with a trademark sugary, sinister soundtrack, make for a vision of dystopia as nightmarish as it is distinctly recognisable. High Rise is a vision of our past and our future wrapped into one, and the resulting scenes are as simultaneously familiar and alien as the architecture of the building itself. ! Francis Blagburn
05
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE dir. Zack Snyder Starring: Ben Affleck, Henry Caville, Jesse Eisenberg After spending a few years in development purgatory Batman v Superman is here. The story follows on from 2013's Man of Steel and Superman’s battle with Zod – which left Metropolis in ruins. Batman holds Superman accountable for this destruction, while young entrepreneur Lex Luthor exploits the situation, seeing it as this chance to destroy both superheroes and – of course – take over the world. Aesthetically, the film looks exceptional, and some of the cast excel in their roles, with Gal Gadot standing out as Wonder Woman/Diana Prince – which neatly sets the audience up for her own solo franchise. Sadly, the rest of the film doesn’t hold up. Batman v Superman has a hard time deciding on what it wants to be – a fashionably serious interpretation, or a goofy but loyal comic book adaptation. The sluggish pacing can only be described as a bumpy ride, with jolts of sudden energy to make the film seem more entertaining than it actually is. Unfortunately Batman v Superman is a rather pulpy disappointment, with dashes of potential here and there let down by its misjudged casting, miscalculated pacing and ghastly script all mushed up into one epic misfire. ! Lee Fairweather
ANOMALISA dir. Charlie Kaufman Starring: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan Everyone thinks of themselves as an individual; everyone thinks of themselves as an anomaly. Charlie Kaufman’s most recent masterpiece, an unnervingly lifelike stop-motion love story Anomalisa, suggests otherwise. Like many of Kaufman’s protagonists, Michael Stone is undergoing a midlife crisis. The film begins with Stone en route to Cincinnati – coincidentally, the same place he broke up with long-term girlfriend Bella many years before. Condemned by the dreariness of his existence, he attempts to repair his severed past – an attempt which fails miserably. It is only when he stumbles across Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh), an average-looking girl with a scar on her face that he sees (or hears) someone who stands out against the monotonous world he has built for himself. Like Kaufman’s earlier screenplays for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich, Anomalisa concerns itself with themes of identity, consciousness and the ‘felt’ self. The hotel Stone checks into at the beginning of the film is called The Fregoli, which shares its name with a rare disorder the Fregoli delusion, where the paranoid subject believes different people are actually the disguises of one single person who’s out to get them. Is everyone is Kaufman’s world being controlled by an all-powerful puppeteer? Are the characters aware that they are puppets? Do we have freedom over our lives, or are we all seeking validation through sex, money and other people? Ugh – someone, hand me a drink.
! Gunseli Yalcinkaya
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BIRD ON THE WIRE PRESENTS
MON 16TH MAY MOTH CLUB
Giant³ Sand & Jason Lytle Giant³ Sand & Jason Lytle
MON 11TH APR VILLAGE UNDERGROUND
MON 11TH APR VILLAGE UNDERGROUND
Quilt
Kimya Dawson + VERY SPECIAL GUESTS LITTLE WINGS THU 14TH APR ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL
MON 11TH APR RICH MIX
WED 13TH O APRIL UT D THE WAITING ROOM L SO
Damien Jurado
Kimya Dawson + Little Wings
THU 14TH APR ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL
Damien Jurado
MON 18TH APR ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL
Shobaleader One THE BRAND NEW PROJECT FROM SQUAREPUSHER SUN 8TH MAY ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL
MON 18TH APR ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL
MON 18TH APR OSLO
TUE 19TH APR CAFE OTO
Nonkeen
T WED 20TH APR OU VILLAGELDUNDERGROUND O S
Virginia Wing FREE
SAT 23RD APR BIRTHDAYS
Destroyer + VERY SPECIAL GUEST RYLEY WALKER WED 15TH JUN KOKO
ONLY UK DATE
The Tallest Man on Earth + VERY SPECIAL GUEST DAMIEN JURADO TUE 21ST JUN ROYAL ALBERT HALL
TUE 26TH APR HOXTON SQUARE BAR & KITCHEN
MON 23 MAY OSLO
Suuns
TUE 24TH MAY ICA
Marissa Nadler
WED 25TH MAY ST JOHN ON BETHNAL GREEN
Nadia Reid WED 1ST JUN THE LEXINGTON
THU 2ND JUN RICH MIX
Destroyer + Ryley Walker WED 15TH JUN KOKO
The Tallest Man on Earth TUE 21ST JUN ROYAL ALBERT HALL
Woods
SAT 6TH AUG HACKNEY / LONDON FIELDS
Nzca Lines
Destroyer Woods
Julia Destroyer Holter
WED 28TH SEPT VILLAGE UNDERGROUND
Julia Holter
MON 14TH NOV O2 SHEPHERDS BUSH EMPIRE
TUE 3RD MAY THE FORGE
Shobaleader One THE BRAND NEW PROJECT FROM SQUAREPUSHER SUN 8TH MAY ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL
Homeshake
Visions Festival
She Drew The Gun Great Lake Swimmers
WED 18TH MAY MOTH CLUB
WED 22ND JUN THE DOME TUFNELL PARK
Laura Gibson
THU 28 APR THE VICTORIA
Bleached
Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld
Dungen
Susanna
TUE 17TH MAY HOXTON SQUARE BAR & KITCHEN
Porches + Frankie Cosmos
Basia Bulat
Ulrika Spacek
Kaki King
THU 19TH MAY UT THE VICTORIA w/ Mass Gothic D OMAY FRI 27TH L O REDS GALLERY
Liima
WED 13TH APR HOXTON SQUARE BAR & KITCHEN
MON 16TH MAY HOXTON SQUARE BAR & KITCHEN
WED 22ND JUN THE DOME TUFNELL PARK
MON 14TH NOV O2 SHEPHERDS BUSH EMPIRE
MORE INFO & TICKETS BIRDONTHEWIRE.NET
UPCOMING LONDON SHOWS
presents FRI.15.APR.16
SAT.30.APR.16
FRI.20.MAY.16 SAT.21.MAY.16 SUN.22.MAY.16
MON.18.APR.16
TUE.19.APR.16
WED.20.APR.16
THU.21.APR.16
TUE.03.MAY.16
WED.04.MAY.16
THU.05.MAY.16
FRI.06.MAY.16
MON.23.MAY.16
WED.25.MAY.16
WED.25.MAY.16
SAT.07.MAY.16
RADICAL FACE
SAT.28.MAY.16 SAT.23.APR.16 TUE.10.MAY.16 SUN.29.MAY.16 SAT.23.APR.16 TUE.10.MAY.16
THREE TRAPPED TIGERS
Shapes
Scala
Tues 26, Weds 27 & Thur 28 April.
Wednesday 27 April.
Thursday 28 April.
MUTUAL BENEFIT
THE FIELD
RADIATION CIT Y
Bush Hall
Moth Club
The Victoria
Thursday 28 April.
Saturday 30 April.
Wednesday 04 May.
CHASTIT Y BELT
KEVIN MORBY
SOPHIA
Oslo
The Dome
The Lexing ton
Thursday 05 May.
Friday 06 May.
Monday 09 May.
THOMAS COHEN
MON.09.MAY.16
MELT YOURSELF DOWN
The Forge
FRI.27.MAY.16 THU.21.APR.16
w w w . r o c k f e e d b a c k . c o m
ALICE PHOEBE TOOTHLESS LOU
Chats Palace
Moth Club
Bush Hall
Monday 16 May.
Tuesday 17 May.
Tuesday 17 May.
FATHER JOHN MIST Y
BL ACK PEACHES
SONGHOY BLUES
Plus Fatoumata Diawara
Roundhouse
Moth Club
Roundhouse PL
Weds 18, Thur 19 & Fri 20 May.
Thursday 19 May.
Saturday 21 May.
TUE.31.MAY.16 MON.25.APR.16 SUN.15.MAY.16 TUE.31.MAY.16 MON.25.APR.16
JULIEN BLAENAVON BAKER
SPRING KING Scala
Dingwalls
The Forge
Thursday 26 May.
Thursday 26 May.
Thursday 26 May.
MON.16.MAY.16 FRI.03.JUN.16 TUE.26.APR.16 WED.18.MAY.16
FRI.10.JUN.16
WED.27.APR.16 WED.18.MAY.16 SUN.12.JUN.16
LET’S EAT GRANDMA
AMBER ARCADES
MATMOS
Electrowerkz
The Lexing ton
Oslo
Wednesday 01 June.
Tuesday 07 June.
Tuesday 07 June.
THE TITUS MYSTERY ANDRONICUS LIGHTS
D WN
The Dome
Shacklewell Arms
XOYO
Thursday 09 June.
Thursday 09 June.
Wednesday 15 June.
THU.28.APR.16 THU.19.MAY.16 MON.13.JUN.16
FRI.29.APR.16
SAT.21.MAY.16
KIRAN LEONARD
NEON INDIAN
VISIONS FESTIVAL
Oval Space
Various Venues
100 Club
Thursday 16 June.
Saturday 06 August.
Wednesday 24 August.
FRI.17.JUN.16
SUNFLOWER BY THE SEA BEAN
POLIÇA
Scala
Dreamland, Margate Roundhouse
Thursday 15 September.
Friday 30 September
Wednesday 19 October.
more info at www.rockfe e dback.com
808 PRESENTS 8IN8 A S E R I E S O F 8 U N I Q U E LY C U R AT E D N I G H T S A C R O S S 8 C I T I E S 1 5 / 03/16 C O S M I C B A L L R O O M , N E WCA S T L E , 8 O 8 + I L L B E H AV I O U R
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YOUSEF + SPECIAL GUESTS
2 7 / 03 / 1 6 CA N A L M I L L S , L E E D S , E A S T E R S U N DAY I N A SS O C I AT I O N W I T H 8 O 8
M AYA J A N E C O L E S , J O R I S V O O R N , PA U L W O O L F O R D , D E N N E Y 1 0 / 04 /16 R A I N B OW V E N U E S , B I R M I N G H A M , 8 O 8 + C LOA K ’ N ’ D A G G E R
THOMAS MELCHIOR
1 6 / 04/16 S U B C LU B , G L A S G OW , 808 + S U B C U LT U R E P R E S E N T …
DJ HARVEY, HARRI & DOMENIC
2 2 /04/16 S T E A LT H , N OT T I N G H A M , 8 O 8 + S T E A LT H P R E S E N T …
M A R I B O U S TAT E , P E D E S T R I A N 13/05/16 B R I S TO L , 8 O 8 P R E S E N T S …
S E C R E T F R E E PA R T Y
19/05/16 V E N U E T B A , LO N D O N , 8 O 8 P R E S E N T S …
TOMMYD + VERY SPECIAL GUESTS
F O R A L L D E TA I L S A N D T O G A I N E X C L U S I V E A C C E S S T O T H E G U E S T L I S T F O R 8 I N 8 A N D A L L O U R W O R L D W I D E E V E N T S J O I N T H E M A I L I N G L I S T AT 8 O 8 D R I N K . C O M
13.4.2016
THE BIG MOON
+ VIRGIN KIDS + BREATHE PANEL
100 CLUB
11.5.2016
ROSIE LOWE + ABRAHAMBLUE
SCALA
31.5.2016
ROYAL HEADACHE + THE REBEL
TUFNELL PARK DOME
TICKTOCK TUES 12 APRIL SERVANT JAZZ QUARTERS GET WELL SOON WED 13 APRIL THE LEXINGTON THE BIG MOON WED 13 APRIL 100 CLUB STEVE GUNN THURS 21 APRIL THE LEXINGTON MISTY MILLER MON 25 APRIL MOTH CLUB BEACH BABY WED 27 APRIL THE LEXINGTON WOVOKA GENTLE THURS 28 APRIL THE PICKLE FACTORY
ROZI PLAIN FRI 6 MAY MOTH CLUB
MOTHERS WED 18 MAY CHATS PALACE
ROSIE LOWE WED 11 MAY SCALA
JESSY LANZA WED 18 MAY THE PICKLE FACTORY
KAGOULE WED 11 MAY THE LEXINGTON LAIL ARAD TUES 17 MAY CHATS PALACE SOCIETY TUES 17 MAY THE LEXINGTON BEVERLY WED 18 MAY DALSTON VICTORIA MONIKA WED 18 MAY OSLO HACKNEY
WOLF PARADE TUES 14 & WED 15 JUNE SCALA CAR SEAT HEADREST TUES 21 JUNE 100 CLUB
WHITE LUNG THURS 26 MAY VICTORIA
SERATONES THURS 1 SEPT THE LEXINGTON
CATE LE BON THURS 26 MAY OVAL SPACE ROYAL HEADACHE TUES 31 MAY TUFNELL PARK DOME ASTRONAUTALIS THURS 2 & FRI 3 JUNE THE WATER RATS
BEATY HEART THURS 6 OCT BUSSEY BUILDING EZRA FURMAN MON 31 OCT ROUNDHOUSE LA FEMME THURS 17 NOV O2 SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE
PARALLELLINESPROMOTIONS.COM
91
Turning Points: Charles Bradley “The way James Brown got on stage and gave it his all, it made me realise what I want to do”
It’s safe to say, Charles Bradley is no stranger to hard times. Living on the streets at a young age, he went on to nomadically tour the country, finding himself in harsh labour conditions, while dealing with the full brunt of America’s segregation. But at 62, Bradley has finally found his voice. After losing his job of 17 years and waking up to find his brother shot dead, Charles had almost given up by the time he was discovered by Daptone label boss, Gabriel Roth. Performing as a James Brown tribute act “Black Velvet”, the heartaches and pains Bradley was carrying seeped through his soul exterior, Roth - seeing recording potential - can now, along with songwriter Tom Brenneck, adorne the accolade of bringing the voice of Charles Bradley to the masses. Charles seeks to heal his listeners, to carry their aches and to be a “soldier of the universe”. His voices carries pain, but his words send a message of love, delivered through over half a century of chaotic and often traumatic experience. With the recent passing of his mother, he has left the studio for the third time, carrying more weight than ever.
Words: Henry Murray
1962: Seeing James Brown at the Apollo You know, I always liked the blues, but James Brown is the one who took rhythm and made it into rhythm and blues. I felt my spirit say, “Woah, I want this”. To this day I love rhythm and blues, and you got some lyrics to sing in front of it? Oh my god, there ain’t nothing like it. The way [James Brown] got on stage and gave it his all, it made me realise that I want to do that. 1977: Hearing Eagles’ Take It To The Limit I just heard that the guy who sang that song passed away. He was always one of the people I wanted to meet and thank because that song really helped me save my own life. When I was going through hell with the police in upstate New York, the things that they had done to me, I went to this pizza restaurant. I was thinking, “How can I get out of this body? I can’t take no more pains in this body”. This guy walked in and he put a quarter in the jukebox and played Take It To The Limit. I jumped up, broke down crying and ran out the door. The part that really hits me so deeply is, “When the dreams keep turning out and burning out the same/put me on a highway/ show me a sign/take it to the limit one more time”. It’s really one of my favourite songs; anybody who puts lyrics like that together gotta be a good person.
2011: Daptone Records and first recordings My guys that I have behind me, my manager Rich, Martin, Jerry, these guys are really helping me be somebody. They’re doing things that help me send a message to the world. They saw my love, they saw my deepness, and they saw my honesty. Guys like Tom Brenneck, Gabriel Roth, these guys took me when I was about to give up, and gave me a chance. They opened the door for me and said “Charles, if you want it, go after it”. God knows it’s not easy, but I have met more people in my life that now make me want to heal.
Present: Changes and touring This album makes me think of the changes in my life since my mother passed away. That’s why I like to go out into the audience sometimes to really just walk out there and hear what people whisper in my ear, I look into their faces and I see the tears. It does me a lot of good, because I have met a lot of people out there that come to me and say “I didn’t know how to deal with my own aches and pains, but to see you get on the stage and sing these things has helped me with my own life”. I think ‘wow, that’s beautiful.’
2014: The passing of Bradley’s mother When my mom was sick and we were learning that track, Changes – it’s a song that really hurts me. What made me really want to learn that song was the last verse, “It took so long to realise/I can still hear her last goodbye/but now all my days have turned into tears/I wish I could go back and change these years”. That’s the part that really hits me; I just close my eyes and see the moment that my mom took her last breath. I used to ask my mother, how have you gone through all this hurt and pain and still got love in you? She always told me “trust in God, keep on pushing”. Just keep pressing on forward, with your hurt, your honesty, just keep giving that love. If you can do that, you’ll make a difference in the world. You’re not gonna let this world change you, just keep pushing in a positive and loving way, and that’s what I do.”
Changes is out now via Dunham / Daptone. Charles Bradley appears at Cambridge, 28-31 July
93
20 Questions: Mike Skinner “Everyone’s got a little place in their heart for happy hardcore”
Wanna feel old? It’s been 14 years since Mike Skinner released Original Pirate Material, the seminal debut album from The Streets. Having won the hearts of a generation with tales of greasy spoon cafeterias, eighths and Playstations, geezers on E, darlings on charlie and a middle finger raised to the Criminal Justice Bill, Mike Skinner will go down history as the epitome of a sound bloke. Mike picked up the phone to promote the forthcoming Tonga parties he’s hosting with his Mancunian mates from the Murkage crew. The conversation that unfolded covered topics such as P Diddy, culinary advice and left-wing audio books.
What was your favourite cartoon when you were a kid? Batfink. What was the last book that you read? I don’t read with my eyes, I read with my ears. The last audiobook I listened to was Karl Marx: Philosophy in an Hour. Who’s your favourite member of the WuTang Clan? Raekwon. But I always saw myself as a RZA type of guy – makes the beats, but not a very good rapper. What’s your signature recipe? I’d just do a nice bit of fish. Grill it on the pan skin-side, because it starts to disintegrate if you flip it over. Are we talking a sea bass or something? Probably a nice bit of salmon, with some sweet potato. Do you have a number one fan? There are a few who are completely nuts. There’s a guy called Shep who’s been around since the first album. And there’s a girl called Tess, who lives in Holland, she’s amazing.
Words: Davy Reed
Who’s your favourite person to follow on Instagram? I got kicked off Instagram I think. I was only on there for about two weeks. I said something about terrorism, and my account disappeared. I’m on Snapchat now. How do we follow you? darkertheshadow Have you ever been arrested? No, I haven’t. Happy hardcore or jump up drum ‘n’ bass? Jump up drum ‘n’ bass really. But everyone’s
got a little place in their heart for happy hardcore. I remember going to World Dance, must have been 1996. DJ Dougal. 7am. That was a moment. Have you ever had a nickname? I used to get called House Boy by a load of Jamaicans I knew. This was in the 90s, even a little bit before garage, so it wasn’t really cool to be into house music. Especially in Birmingham. Do you have any regrettable tattoos? No. I’d only get a tattoo of something that was going to mean something to me forever, so at one point I was going to get The Streets lighter. But it just looks stupid if you’ve got a logo of your own shit tattooed on your arm. Describe your worst haircut... Towards the end of The Streets, I got quite a high fade. By that point I was a bit fatter than I had been when I was 20, and it wasn’t very forgiving. But thankfully I’ve never done anything that bad with my hair – a french crop, you can’t go wrong. What’s your best tour survival tip? I really like hacking your packing – trying to get the luggage size down. I’ve got one of those plugs that does every country. And I only wear black. So what’s the situation with stuff like underwear and socks when you’re on a long tour? Do you stop off at launderettes, or do you constantly have to buy new packs? Well because I only DJ now, I’m only ever away for up to three nights at a time. But I had phases where I’d just wash stuff in my hotel sink – I got quite good at that. But yeah, you literally just dispose of all your underwear. I don’t think I could do that now, it’s not very ethical is it? With your rider, right, you can’t put underwear or cigarettes – but
really that’s what you want, some pants and some fags. But no one will do it, it’s like it’s against the code of dressing room riders. Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met? I’ve spoken to Kanye a few times. Jay Z? I’ve hung out with P Diddy as well. Gwyneth Paltrow’s kids went to the same school as my kids, and my wife did some work for Madonna. So out of those people, who did you have the most enlightening experience with? I spent the most amount of time with P Diddy. He was putting together that Notorious B.I.G. duets album in New York, and they invited me to do a duet with Biggie! The song ended up being Two Nations on the third Streets album. They took Biggie off, obviously, because it was completely bonkers, and they were probably really shocked. Is there a piece of advice you wish you could give yourself ten years ago. Get a better room, and get better speakers. What would you like written on your tombstone? “Nobody likes a polymath” Why? In the UK, we’re very suspicious of people who engage in more than one art form. It’s like if you go to a west end nightclub, like Movida or whatever, there’ll be these guys who will give you their business cards and it’ll say “dancer, producer, DJ, photographer, video director”. “I’ll do anything”, basically. I used to hate that, but I’ve ended up being that guy! Mike Skinner and Murkage presents Tonga appears at MADE festival, Birmingham, 30 July
Perspective: Reclaim the Club On 19 March, The Spectator published an article written by Bloc. co-founder George Hull which bemoaned a perceived lack of intensity in today’s nightlife. The piece was widely criticised for dismissing the safe space policy encouraged by a growing number of clubbers. Here, Discwoman member and Thump features editor Michelle Lhooq discusses the safe space policy and its enduring importance Safe space. Even the phrase sounds sort of lame. Especially if you say it out loud, all nasal and hissing, like the whining of a hopelessly naïve student who demands trigger warnings before reading Aristophanes. Unsurprisingly, the idea of a politically correct utopia sanitised from all possible offences is often the target of ridicule: in a 2015 episode of South Park called Safe Space, Cartman sings a hammy, Broadway-style musical number about living in a literal safe space with “bully-proof windows” and “troll-safe doors”. In March, Bloc. co-founder George Hull probably thought he was performing the same sort of “fuck you” to bleeding-heart liberals when he wrote in The Spectator that “the rave was supposed to feel like a distinctly unsafe space.” In Hull’s nowinfamous op-ed, the 32-year-old lamented that “young people these days just don’t know how to rave” because “they are too safe and boring.” According to Hull, “staying up all night in a disorienting and vaguely threatening environment, surrounded by questionable people” is
the point of partying — a point that’s been lost on an “unimaginative bunch of wimpy pseudo-hedonists”, AKA the youth of today. While everyone chuckled to South Park’s winking takedown of overly-sensitive PC culture, Hull faced an immediate and unanimous backlash from the dance music industry and beyond. The reason for this, as my colleague Angus Harrison pointed out in an article for THUMP, is that Hull’s perspective is one borne from privilege. “What to him might be vaguely threatening, to others might mean sexual assault, verbal abuse, and getting followed home,” Harrison wrote. “The questionable people tend not to prey on the large dominant groups of white males bombing around the place like there’s nothing to be afraid of.” The need to make nightclubs “safe spaces” is thrown into sharp relief when you consider the pervasiveness of sexual assault at music events. In recent years, rapes have been reported at Electric Zoo in New York, Made in America Festival in Philadelphia, Glastonbury, Reading Festival, and countless others around the world. Part of the problem is that the sort of hedonistic spirit that Hull champions is often used as an insidious excuse for the perpetuation of rape culture. In a June 2014 article called What To Do If You’re Sexually Assaulted At A Music Festival, Gothamist posted a picture of a bikini-wearing girl at Mysteryland who was spanked and groped by men in the crowd when she climbed
on a speaker to dance. According to the photographer, “her reaction was simply a mild look of distaste… She didn’t say anything.” Most victims don’t — last year, while reporting a story on a woman who was allegedly raped in a club bathroom in New York City, I was shocked to learn that according to RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), only 32% of rapes are brought to the police, making it one of the most under-reported crimes. Prosecuting sexual assault is also exceedingly difficult; out of those reported rapes, just two percent of the accused actually get convicted and serve time. Fortunately, more festivals have been waking up to this issue and devoting resources to curb it. A stall called Reclaim The Night at Bestival raises awareness about consent, and has a team of sexual violence experts and nurses to help victims who want to talk about incidents. But not all festivals are eager to address the problem. “I guess events are concerned about being seen as a festival that’s got a problem with sexual assault,” a manager of the stall told Broadly, in an article titled There’s a Rape Problem at Music Festivals and Nobody Seems to Care. “But, by embracing approaches such as ours, they would actually be making their festivals safer spaces.” In 2016, nightclubs, music festivals, and raves are political arenas where culture wars are fought against a background of
Illustration: Ed Chambers
rattling subwoofers and strobes. The rise of feminist DJ collectives like Discwoman, Sister, TGAF, and Siren has created a space — both online and off — where women in the music community feel welcome and supported. Meanwhile, queer musicians like Arca, Mykki Blanco, ANOHNI, and the KUNQ crew have emphasised diversity and brought traditionally marginalised voices into the spotlight. While many like to champion raves as democratic spaces where people of all races, genders, and sexual affiliations can gather under the unifying bond of music, this is ultimately a fantasy. In reality, it takes a lot of work to create an environment where sexism, racism, transphobia, and other social ills are kept at bay. Sure, you could call this a “safe space”— or just the way things should be. @MichelleLhooq
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Barcelona 16.17.18 June
a-trak, acid arab, alizzz, alva noto, angel molina, anohni: hopelessness, ata kak, badbadnotgood, ben klock, ben ufo b2b helena hauff, bicep, bob moses, booka shade, boys noize, bruna & wooky + alba g. corral, byetone, cauto, club cheval, congo natty, coyu, cyclo (carsten nicolai + ryoji ikeda), danny l harle, david august (live band), dawn of midi, dj ez, drippin, dvs1 & rødhåd, eats everything, ed banger house party, el guincho, fatboy slim, field by martin messier, flume, four tet (7h set), gazelle twin: kingdom come, gerd janson, homesick, hot shotz (powell + lorenzo senni), intergalactic gary, ison, ivy lab, jackmaster, jackwasfaster, jacob korn, james blake, james rhodes, jamie woon, jean-michel jarre, john grant, john grvy, john luther adams, john talabot, kaytranada, kelela, kenny dope, kerri chandler, king midas sound + fennesz, kode9 x lawrence lek present the nøtel, kölsch (live), lady leshurr, lafawndah, las hermanas, laurent garnier (7h set), lemonick, lil jabba, magic mountain high, malard, mano le tough, matias aguayo, melé & monki’s nrg flash, mikael seifu, mind against, mura masa, n.m.o, new order, nicola cruz, niño de elche + los voluble, nozinja, oneohtrix point never, paco osuna, pulsinger & irl, red axes, richie hawtin, roots manuva, santigold, section boyz, sevdaliza, skepta, sobrenadar, soft revolvers by myriam bleau, soichi terada, stormzy, strand, the black madonna, the martinez brothers, the spanish dub invasion feat. mad professor, toxe, troyboi, tuff city kids, underground resistance presents timeline, undo, yung lean... an initiative of
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