Bearded Magazine

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To reach the most diverse, passionate, up-to-date gadgetry and alternative audience, Bearded is the vehicle you want to hitch a lift from.

Dishing itself out on 100% recycled stock, Bearded is a unique animal in the overcrowded jungle of magazine production that, like a burgeoning Simba in the Lion King, is rapidly finding its voice.

Hop on board now for cheap advertising rates that will stay cheap for as long as you are travelling with us. As our reason for travelling, independent record labels can enjoy significant discounts.

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Contents & Credits

07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 16 18 20 24 30 34 38 44 48 58 59 60 62 64 66

Editorial Live Reviews Stanley Brinks The Go! Team Pram Broken Social Scene Project X Presents...

Nancy Elizabeth The Fiery Furnaces News The Bearded Sluice Box Features British Sea Power David Shrigley Edinburgh Music Scene Jeffrey Lewis The Bearded Records of 2007 Oh No Ono Record Reviews Singles Round-Up Coming Soon Diary Dates Sons & Daughters Jim Noir From the Euphotic Depths Minutemen FFP. B Competition Winner

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Words Anita Awbi, Theunis Bates, Owe Carter, Amanda Farah, Daisy Greenwell, Jamie Hailstone, Billy Hamilton, Simon Harper, Dmitri Kossavanov, Sam Lusardi, Gareth Main, Jonathan Pearson, Andy Price, Ashleigh Rainbird, Jeremy Style, Megan Weston, David Winstanley, Ben Wood.

Photography Simon Arye, Simon Birk, Tim Broddin, Kurt Buhagiar, Matt Durutti, Claire L Evans, Amanda Farah, Clemence Freschard, Catherine Friel, Amy Giunta, Martin Gray, Jenna Greenwood, Jessie Grout Smith, Steve Gullick, Ollie Johnson, Eric Lippe, Matt Murtagh, Katja Ogrin, Sam Saunders, Jessie Grout Smith, Danielle St Laurent, Eva Vermandel.

Illustration Hannah Barton, Luke Best, Nous Vous, Emily Robertson, David Shrigley (cover), Holly Wales, Zeroten.

Publisher Fleeing from Pigeons Design & Art Direction Kevin Summers www.thisismakebelieve.co.uk Website Design Stuart Main Address Bearded Magazine 18 Woodbridge Road Moseley Birmingham B13 8EJ Telephone 0121 449 8546 0773 822 6580 Email info@beardedmagazine.co.uk Art hello@thisismakebelieve.co.uk Website www.beardedmagazine.co.uk Roll of Honour All our contributors, Pete Ashton, Ben Ayres, Geoff Baker, Lara Baker, Nathan Beazer, Joolz Bosson, Paul Bradshaw, Lisa and Jenny at Capsule, Austen Cruickshank, Jon at Darling Dept, Geoff Dolman, Lisa Durrant, Seb Emina, Leslie Gilotti, Garmon Gruffydd, Sofia Hagberg, Simon Harper, Kerry Harvey-Piper, Nick Hollywood, Ryan Hoxley, Antony Inglis Hall, Kaplan Kaye, Will Lawrence, Annette Lee, Hayley Longdin, Alex, Vanessa, Stuart, Nikki and Samuel Main, Alison Millar, Richard Onslow, Ben at Outpost, John Peel (RIP), Kate Price, Math Priest, Sam Shemtob, Chris at Stone Immaculate, Simon Tasse, Ashley Minto, Joe Murphy, Richard Onslow, Ryan Oxley, Kiera Poland, Zoe Price, Steve Rose, David Silverman, Paula Tew, Sam Willis, Tony Wilson (RIP), Ben WinboltLewis, Steph Wood, Fiona Wooton.

Environmental Credentials Bearded is printed on 100% recycled paper, produced using 100% post consumer, de-inked waste. Please help limit the impact of climate change, get Bearded.

Editorial

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Shortly after the October issue of Bearded left the presses, the news came in that OiNK’s Pink Palace, the much loved and heavily used BitTorrent tracker, was shut down by British and Dutch authorities. With its demise came the sounds of two sides ready to do battle.

I am not someone who can discuss the legalities of the website - that will be battled out in the courts - but it was upsetting to see the spin put out by the arresting authorities, painting the website as a soulless money-making enemy to artists. We all know that no website that allows people to share their love of music is there for its demise; rather it is there purely to get their music heard by as many people as possible. What was pleasing about the shutdown of OiNK was the response from the artists themselves. Instead of having the RIAA and BPI speaking for them as a collective identity, artists actually made their voices heard. In particular, and giving plenty of weight to the pro-OiNK camp, were the comments of Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor in an interview with New York Magazine admitting to having been a member of the BitTorrent community.

“I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often,” he said. “At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store.”

And no, that does not mean it was great because it was free (and it was free, despite what the BBC may falsely report), he continued: “Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted.

“If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now.”

Therein lies the real debate, not the debate whether the site is legal or not but rather the fact that nobody has developed a quality, legal, service for people to share files and enjoy the freedom of music. It is not the artists who are losing out from ‘piracy’, it is the large record companies. For the future of music, I for one think that is a hugely positive step.

With the value of music at an all time low, it is interesting to meet an artist who is certainly not in the game for the money.

David Shrigley earns his money as a fine artist. So why would he bother putting together a random compilation on a German record label? Find out on page 22.

Also in this issue of Bearded, British Sea Power gear up for the release of their third album (page 18), Oh No Ono discuss the influx of Danish musicians (page 42), Jeffrey Lewis excites himself about Crass (page 32), we look at the rejuvenation of music in Edinburgh (page 28) and we run through our favourite albums of the past year which we feel won’t get much of a mention anywhere else (page 36).

Of course, all with the usual news, views and reviews. There is plenty to get excited about in the latest issue of Bearded. Enjoy the read!

Wishing you all the best for the festive season and into the New Year.

Gareth Main Fleeing from Pigeons

Illustration Opposite Zeroten Web www.zeroten.net

Live Reviews Stanley Brinks

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Stanley Brinks / Vase / Rozi Plain 24/09/07 The Cube (Bristol) Stanley Brinks used to be known as André Herman Düne as part of the popular French three-piece. Now he is operating more underground with records released seemingly every gig and with a name change and a continued penchant for smoking indoors.

This new incarnation, having been through monikers Ben Dope, Ben Haschish, Klaus Bong, John Trawling, John Andreas and Lord Stanisla, wasted no time gracing the stage of the Cube Microplex Cinema to a room at about a third of capacity, standing a good two feet away from the mic - his reduced sized classical guitar hung low on a fraying piece of rope. The tension was sharp – overhearing conversations beforehand – no one seemed willing to cast any predictions on set inclusions .One thing was for sure, few people expected any Herman Düne songs to be played.

As it turned out, not even any previous Andre Herman Düne tracks were played. Instead Brinks chose to play an elongated set of tunes from his short time as Stanley Brinks – from a handful of records never commercially released and only available on the tour.

But it didn’t matter. Each incarnation has a different personality and Brinks is clearly a storyteller. Disturbed, unrestrained? Most definitely. But also joyfully poetic.

Opening with a song written in the first person to a girl telling her about how he had accidentally committed first degree murder, but it was all okay - because there were no witnesses... phew!

Brinks is also a big fan of themes, whether intentional or not, the set was littered with references to sisters of friends and smoking. As the set progressed, the barefooted, bespectacled singer gradually stepped closer and closer towards the audiences and, ditching the microphone completely, Brinks eventually sat down upon the steps after forty minutes and spoke his first words to the audience. Ever the thinker, his thoughts were again possessed by reoccurring themes – mainly smoking - and his attempts to flaunt the ban in London, which he then went on to do in the Cube.

And this incarnation, Stanley Brinks, does and thinks whatever he pleases, which is nothing but welcome when also armed with an extraordinary library of songs that truly embrace the art of soulful melancholy. He may be shying away from his brother’s success, but this Herman Düne will always have something important to say, whatever his name.

Words Andy Price Photography Clemence Freschard

Live Reviews The Go! Team

Words Ben Wood Photography Matt Durutti

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The Go! Team 09/10/07 Astoria (London) I have a confession to make. I’m just about the only person in indieville who can’t see what the fuss is about when it comes to ‘Brighton’s finest’, The Go! Team. To everyone else, they’re a hydra-headed explosion of pure joy, genre-mashing party-starters of the highest order. But I’ve never really got it. Sure, they’re a great idea for a band; but they don’t back up the hype.

The band’s much-touted influences (playground chants, old-skool hip-hop, indie guitars, MOR ‘70s soundtracks) certainly suggest their tunes will be varied.

But the uptempo majority are kinda formless, and pretty near interchangeable.

And the ones that aren’t (the wannabe charming, but weakly sung Chi-fronted numbers, and the sun-dappled soundtracky Littlest Hobo moments) are worse.

The Team could do with a decent producer to give their tunes some shape; encourage them to write some stronger melodies; and up the funk factor.

Maybe fellow Brightonian Fatboy Slim is available? They certainly need help from someone…

But I’m not a cynical man: I don’t go to any gig wanting to be disappointed, and I was fully expecting the Team to be one of those ‘poor album, great live’ bands. The crowd were certainly into it: several times I almost lost an eye thanks to the over-enthusiastic arm-waving of the gent in front of me, and abandoned jigging was the order of the day.

The band jumped around like loons while foxy frontwoman Ninja gave it her all. But I must confess, I wasn’t feeling it. Odd snippets hit home: the psychedelic guitar intro to ‘Grip like a Vice’, the occasional Motown vibe… but overall the best you could say about most of the tunes is that they were mercifully short.

The Team tick all the boxes for a decent live act, before sabotaging them.

They have a charismatic frontperson, but mix the vocals too low and sideline her with endless instrumentals. They have a wide range of influences that they turn into a samey mulch. They try to ‘bring the funk’, but have a thrashalong indie rhythm section that stops them ever sounding remotely groovy.

And though this may seem like blasphemy to many, I was reminded of the Polyphonic Spree. They too, were ridiculously upbeat, were garlanded with praise, and were kinda ‘high concept’. And they too had no decent tunes.

Sorry everyone. The Emperor has no clothes. The clock is ticking…

Live Reviews Pram

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Pram / Modified Toy Orchestra / Shady Bard 15/10/07 Town Hall (Birmingham) It has been a long time coming for Birmingham residents to see their town hall back ready for action. After closing in 1996 for a £35 million refurbishment, it is now the home of a stunningly fabulous music venue and is well worth the eleven year wait for its reopening eight days before this show – 173 years to the day since the Grade I listed building first opened its doors for the Birmingham Triennial Festival in 1834.

Eleven years ago, local residents Pram had released four records since their inception in 1990. Nowadays they are touting their superb The Moving Frontier and it is fitting for the Capsule event, shows that always show the best in modern day alternative, independent music, that they give the Town Hall its first taste of alternative music since its refurb.

Also on the bill were two artists light years apart, Modified Toy Orchestra – Brian Duffy’s children’s toy bastardising six-piece – and Shady Bard – Birmingham’s latest jewel in the crown.

Shady Bard opened the show with an elongated set that subsequently truncated the headliner’s allocated time. Thankfully the Static Caravan-signed band put in a hell of a show, adding an extra, extravagant, stadium-filling dimension to tracks from their outstanding debut record From the Ground Up (which one insists everybody goes and buys), and slipping in a few new excellent tracks – some might say the highlights of the night.

It was disappointing then that Modified Toy Orchestra seemed to slip up in the bizarre environment of an all-seated show. Their doll defamation can be wonderful when left to roam but it sounded too much like a forty minute repetition. There were movements within the band prior and post show so it may be that uncertainty that affected their work. It was sad also that this will be the last ever rendition of what seemed to be the band’s perpetual set highlight, ‘Pocket Calculator’. The fabulous Kraftwerk cover, with lead vocal being sung by the departing Mike Johnston, who is to release his first record as Mike in Mono in 2008, it seems the Orchestra will have lost a shiny addition to their bow. One that seems like it will be hard to replace.

By the time Pram hit the stage, there was an air of the pissed off floating through the venue. It was dismissed immediately as the band became the highlight. Forever unpopular everywhere, the band are loved unconditionally in their homeland and with good reason. A tastefully scary mix of music and visualisation was only spoilt by the length (or lack thereof) of the set. It was nice to see the band come back after crowd demands, if only to apologise.

There was no need to, however short, it was superbly sweet for everyone. A triumph for Pram and Shady Bard, a triumph for Birmingham and a triumph for the forever blossoming alternative music family that lives there.

Words Gareth Main Photography Katja Ogrin

Live Reviews Broken Social Scene

Words Andy Price Photography Kurt Buhagiar

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Broken Social Scene 18/10/07 Thekla (Bristol) Earlier this year these guys released an album confusingly titled Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew – Spirit if…and then announced a tour in support on which they’d be playing the album.

Somewhat critically, the Canadian collective currently consisting of around 15 members were accused of cashing in on a popular brand. I say why not – they are solely responsible for building that brand with great tunes and deserve to use it to experiment. Furthermore, it is simply an album of songs recorded by Broken Social Scene, toured by Broken Social Scene but with sole song writing duties by Kevin Drew, one of the founding members of Broken Social Scene.

And the album is great, really great – and they bought it all the way across the Atlantic to play it in the dirty hold of a permanently docked ship in Bristol called the Thekla Social.

Despite billing the show as “plays Spirit If…” it was unclear whether it was going to be a straight run through. Could they really deny a loyal UK audience a few BSS numbers?

Well no, they couldn’t. Whether it was due to Jimmy Shaw’s recent addition and (barely noticeable) unfamiliarity with Drew’s solo effort is unknown, but the band opened the show with nigh on 7 minutes of rock pop genius in ‘Lucky Ones’ instead of album opener ‘Farewell to the Pressure Kids’ (played later with guest violin from supporting band, the quirky and energetic Noah and the Whale) before ripping into the Broken Social Scene classic ‘Cause=Time’ with great applause from the crowd. It was at that point that every audience member – whether they were there because they like the album, like BSS or were a little lost – realised they were in for something special.

Alongside virtually every song on the outstanding Spirit If…album, the band also played a few more of Broken Social Scene’s most well known, guitar based songs including the phenomenal ‘Stars and Sons’ and a truly epic ‘Lover’s Spit’.

The band oozed energy with excellent chemistry between the two founding members of BSS: Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew – Canning reportedly the next inline for the Broken Social Scene Presents series.

The only low point in this value-for-money two hour set was the not quite successful crowd sing-along for the last song – Spirit If…closer ‘When It Begins’. But apart from this, the show was impeccable. The quality of playing, the quality of songs, the energy and the enthusiasm of each member is rarely seen.

These guys showed up virtually every performing band in existence on this very special evening.

Live Reviews Project X Presents...

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Project X Presents...

03/11/07 Rainbow Warehouse (Birmingham) There are times in life when you sit down, shrug your shoulders and think ‘surely there has to be something more innovative in life?’ You know, once I had to review a Razorlight record for a music paper and, by the end of the aural experience, I felt like ending my life because I was on the verge of failing to realise that some people do actually care about what they produce, and strive to produce something incredible, something exciting, something DIFFERENT. When I heard of the Project X Presents show, I gawped at the scale of the plan. Music, comedy, entertainment, a “seamless six-hour fantasy journey of music and light”, they had to be kidding.

Well, no actually, they weren’t. My wildest imaginations had pictured some sort of futurist, bombastic madhouse that went further than my puny little writer’s mind could barely comprehend. What I got was something much scarier.

On my arrival into the warehouse, past the nettle strewn doorway, the weird clown-like person sat on a portacabin throwing something at people and the scary person with the massive headset (although they might not have actually been in the show), I was greeted by a hunched, cackling, pseudo-French lady on Acid. Well, I’m sure it was some psychedelic as she peppered me with lavender.

‘Out of the way woman!’

A drink bought I turned around to see that the French woman had friends who were giggling around the floor. One girl is dressed as some sort of animal and is swivelling around on the floor squealing. The French woman has managed to find a big pile of salt from somewhere and is sprinkling it around the warehouse.

Are these performance artists or just random weirdoes picked up after last orders somewhere and kept pissed?

Departing from the playing dumb aspect of reviewing performance art and returning to the spectacle, and it is a spectacle, the Project X team have pulled together a phenomenal show, overlapping every performance, as it says on the tin, seamlessly. The mad acting of the performance troupe Untervelt sets the scene nicely by immediately engaging the audience whilst floor and aerial feats are performed. Music from fabulous kraut rockers Einstellung and Rich Batsford provide highlights whilst the comedy styling of the excellent Reginald D Hunter tickle the funny bone in a manner in which you feel unsure you should be laughing (sample: “a raped woman drove a bus of passengers who failed to help her over a cliff, was she punishing them or are women just really shit drivers?”). I laughed anyway, you can judge me later.

What is to be judged is the show itself, and it is a rip-roaring success. There are way too many people playing it safe in this day and age, it is refreshing to see an eclectic group of very talented individuals coming together and forging their individual talents into a show of such magnitude and pulling it off. You can stick your visual show one night, comedy the next night and music the night after, in this day and age we want it in one sitting, and Project X is a delicious meal that will fill us up for weeks.

Words Gareth Main Photography Matt Murtagh

Live Reviews Nancy Elizabeth

Words Gareth Main Photography Sam Saunders

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Nancy Elizabeth / Thee, Stranded Horse 08/11/07 Taylor John’s House (Coventry) Folk, it has certainly travelled far since the days of Chaucer and the middle ages, for some it has been developed, distressed and reborn into something new, for others, its key characteristics remain strong but they focus their words onto the modern world.

With Nancy Elizabeth and Thee, Stranded Horse, the paths of the two cross over, Nancy Elizabeth (Cunliffe) having developed a sweet sound, using her incredible voice to great effect and Thee, Stranded Horse (known to his friends as Yann Tambour) adopting a thick traditional folk accent.

Both artists take the acoustic folk singer approach, with Cunliffe switching between acoustic guitar, Celtic harp and piano throughout. Her set is so twee it is something of a disappointment when she plays Battle and Victory highlight ‘Hey Son’ with a fuzzy effect pedal that makes the whole thing a little bit too intense to sit down and enjoy. Thankfully, it is the only setback in the entire set.

She is a curious lady is Cunliffe, with her thick Wigan accent not exactly projecting an air of beauty, but when she starts singing, it lifts into an angelic chorus that enchants. Set closer, the six minute ‘Battle and Victory’, is an excellent reference point. Stunningly developed, the track shows off Cunliffe’s ability in the best light, she can play as well as sing and, as the 22-year old develops her writing and playing further, we could have a very exciting artist on our hands. The only thing anyone has welcomed coming from Wigan.

It takes approximately the time to get to the bar in the wonderfully intimate, and rather sparse, Taylor John’s House before Thee, Stranded Horse has got both his West African koras onstage, pulled on his tank top and started regaling some stories.

An air of pretention fills the room when Tambour plays, he reeks of folk: tank top, young man’s beard, dodgy foreign instruments, suspicious comment about “if you don’t know what this instrument is, it’s a [muffle].” Unfortunately for those anti-pretention types, he blows the room away with tracks from his Blank Tapes released debut Churning Strides. ‘Swaying Eel’ and ‘Tainted Days’ are the highlights as Tambour goes a bit mad on guitar and kora, sometimes at the same time, and yelps inaudibly throughout. We hear what he’s saying though: folk isn’t dead, it’s just evolving.

Live Reviews The Fiery Furnaces

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The Fiery Furnaces 11/11/07 Koko (London) The Fiery Furnaces topped the bill at the Thrill Jockey 15th birthday party celebrations, joined by an impressive roster including Sea and Cake, Trans AM and Arboretum. It was a sure-fire line-up at Camden’s cavernous Koko venue, but for some reason the crowds weren’t there. The huge dance hall was only about a quarter full for the fanciful brother-sister duo and their entourage, and I couldn’t help but think Koko’s strict non-smoking policy (once you’re in it’s really tricky to get out for a sly one) had perhaps turned the puffing majority off the eight-hour marathon gig.

Following an anniversary speech from the label heads, the Fierys’ Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger waded on and instantly launched into what was essentially a playback of their new album Widow City. Although they have been threatening to quit pranking about and play straight for a while, it was surprising to see they really meant it. With ex-Sebadoh bassist Jason Lewenstein and drummer Bob D’Amico in tow, Matthew got viciously engrossed in his keyboards, while Eleanor ditched the guitar, putting everything into her singing and performance.

She had all the flair of a young Patti Smith and managed to captivate the nearempty room with her spark. It was a fierce set, though the rhythm section let things down a bit; Jason weighed in too heavy, and Bob was pure pub rock with an obvious penchant for Led Zeppelin.

They ran through the album’s standout tracks like ‘Ex-Guru’ and ‘Duplexes Of The Dead’ with relish, and the set swung from verse to chorus, song to song, like a wonky fairground ride on a stormy sea. There was very little banter in between.

Attempting to recreate a record perfectly on stage must be a tricky feat, and a lot of successful live acts avoid dogmatic replication in favour of a more instinctive approach - which may have suited the Fierys well this time. Inviting percussionists, flutists and a brass section to play could have recreated Widow City’s intricacies more subtly.

Their sixth studio album comes densely packed and bursting with different noises; piano, tootling flutes, chimes and synthy stabs, yet all of these punctuations were absent at the behest of a traditional four-piece band. Sadly, a lot of their joyful samples were left far away in the studio too.

Although they sounded tight, and lurched from their trademark gypsy rhythms to plonky keyboard solos with ease, there was something missing. Widow City seems to work best in the studio, with immense walls of sound and songs that confuse the listener with near-fatal breakdowns half way through. Live, they have a reputation for pushing their quirky arrangements to the limit, bringing something more spontaneous to the performance, but not tonight. It would have been nice to see them strip the songs back to their skeletons and reconstruct them to better effect. They could have relied on the strong melodies, their sonic wizardry and maybe some interesting guests to help them through, rather than falling back on the hell-for-leather rock sound they chose instead.

Still, against the raucous backdrop, Eleanor’s melodic vocals and lyrical ramblings smoothed over the flaws. Although she no longer writes, instead being at the mercy of her brother’s insanely vivid imagery, she dogmatically recounted the words with convincing persuasion. They didn’t completely defy the many critics of Widow City with this set, but The Fiery Furnaces certainly put up a fight - albeit a bit strait-laced and lacklustre in places.

Words Anita Awbi Photography Tim Broddin Amy Giunta

Illustration Opposite Emily Robertson Web www.seeplats.com

News

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News

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Foot off the Brakes Brakes have announced that they are heading back into the studio to record their third album. The as-yet-untitled record, the follow up to 2006’s The Beatific Visions is being squeezed out in between tours for the Electric Soft Parade and releases for Tom White’s additional project Restlesslist. Having recorded and mixed their debut Give Blood in seven days and not taking too much longer over their second, it seems like we can expect a release sometime in 2008.

A Capsule the Doctor Ordered Capsule, the delightful people behind the brilliant Supersonic Festival, have released full live sets of various bands who performed at this year’s Supersonic.

Artists providing their set for download include Mogwai, Bee Stung Lips, Shit and Shine, Modified Toy Orchestra, Kid606 and Calvados Beam Trio. You can access the sets by visiting last.fm at www.last.fm/ group/capsule_supersonic Indies Make Mark on States A host of British independents have made their way into the nominations for the Plug Independent Music Awards 2008.

Radiohead’s In Rainbows has got the nod in the album of the year category, whilst Welsh seven-piece Los Campesinos! pick up the flag in the new artist category and Scout Niblett has a nomination for best female. In the best label category, the UK has Domino, Warp and the Beggars Group fighting over the gong. Europe has another nomination through France’s Ed Banger Records. The awards will be hosted on 6 March in New York City.

Malcolm Middleton Photography Eva Vermandel Laura Groves Photography Jenna Greenwood Brakes Photography Steve Gullick

Twee as Folk Bearded are (finally) having a launch party to celebrate the birth of the magazine.

The ‘Twee as Folk: Belated Bash for the Birth of Bearded’ show will be on Friday 15 February at the Sunflower Lounge in Birmingham and will feature the superb XL recordings signed Laura Groves as well as the outstanding Ratface and unsigned Bristol band The Al Fresco Banks Band.

Tickets are £5 and can be bought from www.beardedmagazine.co.uk without a booking fee.

Race for Christmas Number One Scottish warbler Malcolm Middleton has been offered the longest odds ever of reaching the, umm, coveted Christmas number one spot. The ex-Arab Strap man’s new single, ‘We’re All Going to Die’, is being released by Full Time Hobby on 17 December in a last minute indie push for the top spot but has just been given an outsiders chance by bookies William Hill at 1000-1. “Christmas is the best time for a song like this to be released into the mainstream consciousness, especially now in 2007,” says Malcolm. When asked about who they think will pip Middleton to the crown, the bookmakers gave us odds of the X-factor winner as 1-3 and Cliff Richard with Brian May at 16-1, the same price as Cliff Richard with Daniel O’Donnell. “People don’t want to be lied to by Cliff Richards any more. It’s maybe time they were told what’s really waiting for them inside their Christmas stockings,” says Malcolm.

Stop Press: Malcolm’s odds have now been cut to 12-1, stop betting and buy the record.

The Bearded Sluice Box

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The Bearded Sluice Box

YACHT Label Err Words Ashleigh Rainbird Photography Claire L Evans Arsenal IBelieve in You, Your Magic is Real LP Web www.myspace.com/yacht The Sequins Label Tough Love Words Simon Harper Photography Ollie Johnson Arsenal Nobody Dreams About Me EP Patients EP The Death of Style LP Web www.myspace.com/thesequinsspace Holton’s Opulent Oog Label Big Potato Words Gareth Main Photography Courtesy of Big Potato Arsenal The Problem of Knowledge LP Web www.myspace.com/holtonsopulentoog attack + defend Label Shape Words Amanda Farah Photography Simon Arye Arsenal Garibaldi 7” Make LP Owl EP Web www.myspace.com/attackanddefend Grovesnor Label Hi-Beat Words Jamie Hailstone Photography Catherine Friel Arsenal Nitemoves 7”. Metrosexual LP Web www.myspace.com/grovesnormusic

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attack + defend This Cardiff trio plays dance friendly postpunk. They don’t have a bass player, but their keyboardist more than picks up the slack, and they give the general impression of having listened to too much Syd Barrett while playing first generation Nintendo games. Their songs also approach new territory with such subject matter as mass consumption, DNA, and Garibaldi and the unification of Italy (and quite plainly, it is not possible for a band with a song about Garibaldi to not be awesome). Catch them live if you can - it’s a great opportunity to shake your arse while getting educated on economic trends.

Holton’s Opulent Oog What’s an oog? I’m damned if I know.

What I do know is the ten tracks that make up The Problem of Knowledge, the debut record from Holten’s Opulent Oog are going to make very big waves when they are released in February. The alt. country splendour was recorded in an analogue studio for a mere £100 and it is minimalistic just above the extreme, built around a violin and Spanish guitar and it is absolutely brilliant. It seems that alternative country is coming back into popularity, and it seems that Holton’s Opulent Oog are going to be leading the way.

YACHT A two man label putting out 500 copies of an album on vinyl defines limited, especially when the artist in question has just finished touring with LCD Soundsystem.

But Norwegian born Jona Bechtolt, one half of the now defunct The Blow, is heading it alone from here, making bouncy, funky electronic indie that’s totally danceable. A pioneer of laptop dance (oxymoron, no?), Bechtolt knows how to please net savvy music connoisseurs with some indie-boy-goes-electro antics. In fact, to him, the internet fun is equally as important as the music itself, which is all very revolutionary. Fret not though, the web aspect doesn’t take anything away from the sublime energetic electro that founds his fun and games.

Grovesnor If you listen to ‘Nitemoves’ by Grovesnor and don’t think it is the greatest song ever, then there is something wrong with you – and that’s a scientific fact! Hot Chip’s former drummer Rob Smoughton is the king of lo-fi electronica and his music is sex on legs. Using nothing more than his patented ‘Grovesnor electro riddim machine’, the odd keyboard and the smattering of guitars, he takes the lo-fi genre to unparalleled and almost dizzying heights. His last record Metrosexual served him well, but as anyone who has seen his live shows knows – it ain’t over until the Grovesnor man sings ‘Nitemoves’. It’s the ultimate musical tool for seduction, oozing sex, passion and romance in equal measures. It makes Barry White sound like the Teletubbies and drives the ladies wild.

He’s also a thoroughly decent chap and his live shows rock. If there was any justice in this world, he would be a mega star.

The Sequins Throw together sharp, technicolour pop songs, robust energy and an ebullient sense of the romantic, The Sequins are among the hottest properties to emerge on Coventry’s excellent Tough Love record label. The quintet weaves the kind of bittersweet tales and luminous melodicism that enamoured so many with the Smiths, Orange Juice and The Wedding Present.

With singles like ‘Nobody Dreams About Me’ and ‘Patients’ already putting ticks in the column marked ‘minor classics’, the ultra-talented five-piece have just released their debut album, The Death of Style - full to the brim with poptastic offerings such as ‘The Grass Is Never Green’ and ‘Les Faux Amis’, the twelve songs which feature on their first full-length outing are rambunctious pop nuggets which warm the heart and excite the ears.

Such hook-wielding élan is impossible to overlook, and they’re bound to be filling floors at an indie disco near you soon.

Vive le elegance!

Features British Sea Power

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The Reprise of British Sea Power Are animals rock music? Is trying to record in an ice storm rock music? With a passionate history with flora and fauna, including once breaking an arm whilst trying to climb a tree to cut off a branch, British Sea Power have become a symbol of alternative British stuffiness. Amanda Farah met up with the band to learn about their brand of ‘rock’ music.

Do you like rock music? This reasonably straightforward question was chosen by British Sea Power as the intentionally unpretentious title for their third album. The question has since morphed into something of a game – naming things musical and nonmusical and dubbing them rock music or not rock music – and the Brighton-based quartet known for referencing literature, historical figures, and landmarks in their songs have again taken something seemingly simple and made it more elaborate.

Tonight British Sea Power are playing White Mischief, and it may be the first time their tree branches and decoy birds aren’t the greatest spectacle at a venue, as they’ll be surrounded by hundreds in Victorian dress, cabaret performers, and an Edwardian space pirate called Ginger Roger. It seems a suitable end to a tour that saw BSP playing in a Catholic Church (with the drum kit set up on the altar), on a ferry sailing from Mersey out to the Irish Sea (the sound wasn’t so good), and in the highest pub in Britain (inhabited by a helpful ghost and a supposedly evil cat).

“We had a nice sing song on the piano afterwards,” says bassist and vocalist Hamilton of the Tan Hill gig. “They were trying to raise money for the local charity,” guitarist and vocalist Yan chimes in.

“Someone offered 50 quid if we could play a Neil Diamond song. But we couldn’t.”

The band have been touring in support of their EP Krakenhaus?, playing dates in America and off the beaten path in Britain. Two of the songs on Krakenhaus?, ‘Atom’ and ‘Down On The Ground’ are both featured on the band’s forthcoming third album, recorded in the freezing winter of Montreal and the sweltering summer of the Czech Republic. As British Sea Power have often allowed space for a sentimental look at nature in their music, it seems quite suitable that such extremes in weather would influence their latest release.

“It’s about people becoming obsessed with the weather, and starting to describe nature as an evil woman,” says Yan of the track ‘Canvey Island.’ “An evil, vengeful woman, like a bad girlfriend you’ve done the wrong thing to. Even on the news, the language involved, it’s quite amazing. I find it really quite fascinating and also completely wrong. There’s no simple cause or single factor. They call it ‘climate porn’ – the glamorisation of extreme weather of new, biblical proportions.”

The song’s title reflects an event of biblical proportions from the days before climate change was sexy. “On Canvey Island 1953 / Many lives were lost / With the records of a football team” recounts the tragedy that faced the small island in the Thames half a century ago.

“I first heard about it on the radio and they were interviewing a guy who had been in the flood and he’d lost either a friend or a family member,” Yan explained. “But he’d gotten over that quite quickly, ‘cause then he started talking about all the football team back logs, and he was utterly devastated by that.

It seemed to have left a bigger mark on him than the loss of human life.”

Live Photography Amanda Farah

Features British Sea Power

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Features British Sea Power

Press Photography Eva Vermandel

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Features British Sea Power

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While Yan insists that ‘Canvey Island’ is more of a description than a ‘save the world’ song, it’s hard to miss the message in the next single, ‘Waving Flags,’ which makes reference to Polish immigrants and Austrian-born actress Hedy Lamarr (Lamarr, the Brothers Wilkinson note, was not only the first woman to be depicted in a sex scene not in a pornographic film, but also did pioneering work on frequency hopped spread spectrums, which provide the basis of the technology used on cordless telephones and Wi-Fi internet connections).

“It’s not really about [Hedy Lamarr], but she’s what came to mind,” says Yan. “It was a reaction to all of these horrible headlines we were getting, basically blaming everything on the Polish. ‘You’re taking our jobs.’ They’re all jobs no one wants, so we thought we’d write a nice welcoming song.”

Do You Like Rock Music? is bookended by ‘All In It’ and ‘We Close Our Eyes,’ two seemingly identical songs spawned from the same originally instrumental track and developed into similar but unique forms. The latter of the two provides a showcase for Yan’s attempt at mixing a track.

“There are so many things in there that probably no one will ever hear,” says Yan. “There is a helicopter on that song. There’s several people walking up and down stone staircases; there’s probably at least forty people, although half of those people are me,” he says with a laugh. “Probably at least four drum kits, violas, several woodwinds. But it’s one big blur, a lot of it.”

The mixing project was actually born out of much more stressful circumstances than mere whimsy. British Sea Power had originally intended to record the entire record in icy Montreal.

“This big generator blew up down the road. It was like some kind of bomb went off,” says Hamilton of some of the more bizarre occurrences of their Canadian recording session. “And there was a gas leak, so they wouldn’t let us back in. And there was the big ice storm where all the trees were crystallized. It seems like disasters follow us whenever we go to America and Canada.”

A generator blowing up might not qualify as catastrophic, but leaving Montreal without having completed Do You Like Rock Music? weighed heavily on the band.

“I’d thought we’d failed twice,” says Yan. “I’d thought we’d run out of money, so me and my brother there,” he says, motioning in the direction of the stage where Hamilton is sound checking his bass, “tried to mix it ourselves just on these quite cheap digital things that we have that we do a lot of demos and b-sides and stuff on. Just at home with no budget. And that took about two months.

“The label kept saying, ‘Why isn’t it finished? Haven’t you done it yet?’ It was really stressful.”

But after all of that stress, the band ended up at an old fort in Cornwall where Do You Like Rock Music?’s leading singles, ‘Atom’ and ‘Waving Flags’ were recorded. The Cornwall recordings were taken to the Czech Republic to be mixed with the Montreal works. Now they’re getting quizzed by fans and press on what is and is not rock music.

“What did we say yesterday?” asks Yan. “I said donkey yesterday,” Hamilton responds, setting up another exchange.

“Yeah, they make a lot of noise.”

“Not much use to them.”

“Most animals are rock music,” says Yan definitively. “It’s hard to think of one that isn’t. There doesn’t have to be one that isn’t.

Animals are just good.”

Features David Shrigley

Forced to Speak with Others David Shrigley is the acclaimed artist who is most renowned for his often crude, usually abrasive drawings that have appeared in countless books, in postcard packs and regularly in The Guardian’s Weekend magazine. From exhibitions across the globe and selling his artwork for large sums of money, he has dipped his wick in musical waters with the release of superb compilation record Worried Noodles on German label Tomlab. Gareth Main spoke to him about his musical aspirations...

Illustration David Shrigley Web www.davidshrigley.com

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“I’m fortunate that I can do what I want,” says a relaxed, not in the slightest bit smug, David Shrigley on a cold, wet October morning in London. Neither of us really want to be here, me as a northerner, naturally afraid of the capital, and he, around 400 miles from his home in Glasgow with a few hundred books to sign before the weekend is up.

“My only ambition in life was to be left alone,” he continues, but this is no artist who is a moody recluse, Shrigley is an artist who has the most simple of life’s true ambitions – to be happy in what one is doing, to have fun, and to get by without having to check the bank balance regularly and worry about whether the cash point will let you take out a tenner so that you can eat for the next week. Shrigley has done that to such an extent that he can spend some of his time with forays into the murky waters of music.

We are sat in a London hotel ready to discuss his recent project Worried Noodles. An outstanding body of work in collaboration with German label Tomlab, it is a compilation of artists ranging from Franz Ferdinand and David Byrne through to Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and Psapp, all brought together under the instruction of making sense of nonsense – a book of lyrics penned by one of the art world’s most popular surrealists.

It is presented in a lovely cardboard case with a 106-page hardback book of Shrigley’s work. It is where art and music truly meet, and they complement each other perfectly.

“I met Jan [Lankisch] from Tomlab when I was doing an exhibition in Cologne around five years ago and he asked me if I fancied designing a T-shirt for the label. After that, he said I should do a record cover for one of his bands but I never got around to doing that until this year when I did one for Deerhoof (12 different covers for Friend Opportunity). In the meantime they were getting a little impatient and they said, ‘why don’t we do an artwork publication that will just be a record cover without a record in it? A conceptual artwork – just a record sleeve.’ I thought it was quite a fun idea so I started working on it. When I’d finished I just thought it needed something else and so I made this song book to go in it and wrote all these lyrics although they were lyrics in name only, a sort of concrete poetry.

“Then almost inevitably the record company turned around and said ‘you know we should get some people to come and record these songs’ and I just went along with it but thought that ideally it should just get released as a 12’’ record without a cover so that it would be a companion piece to the original publication. It spiralled out of control very quickly and it turned into a double CD so really the whole project came from a response to a proposition and then a response to that response.

It was much more accidental than by design.”

And, for a project that “spiralled out of control”, it has been brought together incredibly tidily, mixing together the surrealism of Shrigley’s lyrics with the musicianship of some of the most respected musicians around. Indeed, some of the tracks are just ludicrous and a little throwaway. Franz Ferdinand’s take on the lyrics for ‘No’ is not going to win them any Brit awards anytime soon but the joy of the record is in its contrasts - Hot Chip take on the same lyrics and come up with something completely different. Similarly, the sheer breadth of artists involved in the project is astonishing, and it keeps you interested as the record takes you through all sorts of musical experiences.

Features David Shrigley

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Features David Shrigley

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Features David Shrigley

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“It is very much a Tomlab project and sits almost as a Tomlab sampler. Obviously it isn’t a sampler as it is all unique but they chose the artists on their label and ones they might like to have on the label. They asked me who I wanted on it and if there were any artists I’d like to be involved. The ones I suggested were just the artists who I thought there was a good chance they would say yes, I let Tomlab do the hard work of asking Elton John. Most of the selection is to do with them, there were a few artists I asked who couldn’t do it for one reason or another because they were busy or dead. Hasil Adkins was one artist I wanted on it who died two months before being asked – that was a shame.”

But the record didn’t miss the artists that couldn’t commit to the project, clocking in 39 different artists was probably enough and, at almost two hours long, the sprawling piece is probably best kept at its current length.

“It did become this big sprawling, uneven thing, I guess it became so big because it was unedited and there wasn’t really any way of editing it because you couldn’t invite Franz Ferdinand to be on the record and then not use the track, it would just not have worked, so it had to be this big all or nothing giant thing.

“It was a very curious experience. I really enjoyed the process of getting these Mp3s sent to me every week. I’d get emails from Jan saying ‘this is Grizzly Bear, what do you think of this one?’ and I’d just send an email back just saying... ‘great’. I really missed it once it was over.”

Worried Noodles isn’t Shrigley’s first dip into musical waters. In 2006 he released a spoken word album Forced to Speak With Others, a curious double LP that again continued his fascination for the absurd characterised in his artwork. As a reference point, the track ‘Our Children’ is a story of a mother’s distress at her rapidly developing children – born with hair and teeth – who terrorise their parents, locking them away at home and telling people that they are dead. It is sampled with miscellaneous noises and background orders of ‘fuck off mummy, shut up daddy’ and ‘fuck off you cunt’. It is a little bizarre and, most importantly for Shrigley, “not shite”.

“The only thing that matters with anything is that the end result is good, not shite. When I did interviews for the spoken word record, and I did hardly any publicity for it - it slipped out without anyone noticing – I just said I wanted to make a record and I didn’t want it to be shite. In retrospect, it definitely wasn’t shite, it is a really interesting record and probably the record that I would actually buy – but I buy any old shit as long as it’s interesting.

Similarly, all I wanted for Worried Noodles was for it not to be shite and it definitely isn’t shite. As a compilation album it is certainly a really interesting record.”

Shrigley’s main source of income as a fine artist has taken him into the mainstream music world. Fans of Blur might know his name as the director of the outstanding video for ‘Good Song’ from Think Tank, the cartoon story of a fairy looking for love and finding it with a squirrel who ends up killing him by accidently thinking the fairy’s head is a nut. The squirrel is then slaughtered by a swarm of fairies in revenge.

“It all came about from being asked to do something for MTV a few years before that with a group of guys called Shynola who do pop videos. They like my work and wanted to work with me. The MTV thing didn’t come off and so they were looking for an opportunity to do a pop video together. They had already done a video for Blur on that album (‘Crazy Beat’) and I think they just had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted because Damon (Albarn) liked them. So we got together and EMI hated it. They thought the video was terrible and didn’t want it to get made. Damon put his foot down though and then it got made and it was great.

Features David Shrigley

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“I’m very sympatric to their way of working and I’d like to find an opportunity to work with them again because they are really nice guys but it hasn’t come round to that yet.”

It may seem strange that an artist previously known for crude drawings would get the opportunity to direct the video for one of the most renowned bands in the world, but Shrigley’s work has covered many mediums, including photography, sculpture and animation. In 2006, he co-directed the multiple award-winning short film ‘Who I Am and What I Want’, a black and white cartoon voiced by Kevin Eldon. More recently, he has created the title sequence to the brilliantly-soundtracked film ‘Hallam Foe’ and another music video, this time for Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy on ‘Agnes Queen of Sorrow’.

“I started making drawings because it was a way to make art without having to labour too much. It was just a completely concentrated form of what I wanted to say and I could say what I wanted to say on a single page rather than having to make a sculpture. It is a process of reduction and I figured that that was okay, I could just say everything on the page and I wouldn’t have to make things out of bronze.

“I’ve never really been interested in cartoons or graphic art, I just end up doing it because it was my oeuvre reduced into funny little drawings. I didn’t do any of the things that weren’t necessary like using perspective or making things look like what they were supposed to be. I used text as well to make it more accessible and that is how I started.

“For me, it is the easiest way to work because I am so comfortable with it that it ceases to be a challenge after a while so I am looking to do different things which is perhaps why writing a book of lyrics appealed to me. I’m always on the lookout to do something different. ‘Ants Have Sex in Your Beer’ (his latest book) started off as aiming to be a book of poetry and, in the same way as the lyrics, they are only nominally poems but inevitably I got bored with that idea and filled the rest of the book with drawings.

“I’m very fortunate in the fact that I can make a living from what I do. There aren’t many artists that do and so I feel an obligation to fritter away on projects that are ridiculous and, as long as I have fun doing it and it isn’t shite, it meets my criteria.”

And the last thing Worried Noodles is is shite. A wonderful collection, part the bizarre lyrics, part the astounding array of talent of the artists involved and part the commitment and persistence of Tomlab. But what would have been the pop lineup of artists to make up the album?

“You could do the same project with pop artists, you could have Justin Timberlake on there, Elton John would make a great job of it I’m sure, Neil Diamond would have been good with big voiced men of a certain age.

“I would quite like to have had Johnny Cash on there, although I guess he won’t be on it now, Tom Jones, Aretha Franklin. If I’d chosen the artists in terms of people that I like, it wouldn’t have been very appropriate because I’m into Lightning Bolt and noisy things. You can’t really have someone singing with a mask on. We could have all them (Aretha, Tom et al) on it and then put Lightning Bolt on the b-side. That would be good.”

We leave with David contemplating that fantasy line-up of artists safe in the knowledge that, although the Worried Noodles roster is hardly a wish list of most people, it is of the highest and most eclectic quality, a stunning labour of love, put together by people who aren’t looking at the final figure but with a care of producing something brilliant and absolutely unique.

For more information on David Shrigley’s work and exhibitions, visit www.davidshrigley.com

Features David Shrigley

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Features Edinburgh Music Scene

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Scene to be Heard It is a depressing story of a non-existent vibrant arts community. Thousands may descend on Edinburgh each August for the city’s arts festival season but, once the Royal Mile has been cleared, the city is a desolate creative black hole. All that is changing, resident Billy Hamilton takes us through the rapid emergence of the music scene of Old Smoky.

Photography Martin Gray

Features Edinburgh Music Scene

Few cities rival the vibrancy of Edinburgh in August. Illuminated by the glow of thousands of enchanted tourists, the Old Town’s cobbled pathways are annually transformed into the beating pulse of the global arts community. A jostling, multi-cultural bonanza of colour, creativity and laughter, there truly is no finer place to be than Auld Reekie during the festival.

But when the bitter chill of autumn sets in, those ebullient summer days quickly fade from memory. The city’s once bustling streets are suddenly more haunting than any spectre found lurking within the walls of Mary King’s Close, while venues, which weeks before bulged to the infectious sound of music, comedy and theatre, rest unattended, uncared, unloved.

Having exposed herself to the world during four weeks of salacious cultural promiscuity, the old lady of Edinburgh tightens her chastity pants and shuts up shop for the remaining eleven months of the year.

This depressing mist of inactivity has breathed a cold, lifeless sigh into every pore of the city’s artistic grassroots, with creative hubs like The Lighthouse Studios and Roxy Arthouse departing to the sound of minimal local rabble while steadfast cultural arts trusts Out Of The Blue and Wasps have found centrally located studios replaced by more commercially viable ventures (aka profit-spinning flats). Its reputation as a forbearer of culture may be safe in the eyes of the global arts community but Edinburgh’s apathetic approach to the cultivation of local talent has been manifesting for years and nowhere more so than in that barometer of any thriving subculture - the city’s music scene.

Constantly lingering in the shadow of its much vaunted M8 cousin, Edinburgh has nonetheless produced a glittering array of esteemed, if not commercially successful, acts like The Fire Engines, Josef K, Goodbye Mr McKenzie and, more recently, Idlewild. But ask any of the city’s 100,000 or so students to name another successful local act and you’ll be met with faces as blank as daddy’s cheque book because, quite simply, very few groups slip out from Edinburgh Castle’s watchful gaze and into the national spotlight. So, why has a city steeped in culture and rich tradition produced such a limp musical output of late?

Andrew Eaton, Arts editor of national newspaper The Scotsman and frontman for Edinburgh / Glasgow synth-pop duo Swimmer One, believes history has had a significant impact upon the city’s current plight: “I suspect a big issue in Edinburgh is the lack of what Sam Ainsley [Head of Master of Fine Arts at Glasgow School of Art] once described to me as ‘a critical mass’ - a generation of bands and artists moving to a city and becoming successful, but also staying in the city long enough to inspire a new wave of creative young people to move there,” he says. “Once that happens several times over, it becomes a cycle - each wave of talent replaced by another one. While the new wave keeps the city’s grassroots scene vibrant, the one before becomes international ambassador, bringing new people in.”

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This hypothesis has been successfully tried and tested for decades in Glasgow, with artists like Orange Juice, Belle & Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand spawning clusters of new aspiring local acts that feed off this energy and further progress the cycle of creativity. But Andrew feels it will take more than one skinny-tie adorning ensemble of indie urchins to create a thriving, industrious music scene: “People need to continuously bang on about how great Edinburgh actually is so that it becomes somewhere that people think they should be outside of the festival,” he explains. “Cities change over a long period of time and it takes a number of years; it’s about gradual shifts in perceptions and the way people view a city is not something that can change overnight.”

“There’s a sense that you need to make people [within Edinburgh] talk to each other,” Andrew continues. “There are folk doing some really interesting stuff in the city and they all vaguely know each other but I just can’t imagine there ever being a band like the Reindeer Selection [famed Scottish indie ‘supergroup’ containing members of Arab Strap, Teenage Fanclub and Mogwai to name but a few] in Edinburgh. Perhaps people aren’t drinking in the right place?”

It may seem like an obscure, almost sardonic, remark but drinking together in the right place was exactly what gave rise to Glasgow’s The Château – a renowned art-deco warehouse established by Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos on the banks of the River Clyde where artists and musicians converged to create a neo-rave of sounds and images that eventually became the epicentre of the West Coast and - in the eyes of the English music press at least - Scottish music scene. Over the past decade there have been promising, if sporadic, flurries of activity amidst the Edinburgh music community, with bands like ballboy and Aberfeldy edging into the periphery of public consciousness, but there’s been little in the way of Glasgow’s coordination or camaraderie between artists, promoters and venues and, as a result, enthusiasm from despondent gig-goers waned.

As audiences dwindled the city’s venues began to dissolve.

The much eulogised The Venue made way for a spate of luxurious apartments and Cas Rock was replaced by an utterly soulless Latino themed bar. Even when new havens emerged they quickly folded as unmitigated disasters - Gig’s residency in the city centre was a prime example, with owners shying away from larger touring bands in favour of local acts despite having a capacity of two thousand, needless to say the venue closed after three months. Edinburgh had hit deadlock: bands wouldn’t play because crowds weren’t there, and crowds weren’t there because the band’s they wanted to see wouldn’t play.

But recently a siege mentality has formed within the city’s music community. Innovative local acts like The Magnificents, Found, Broken Records, and The Acute are making significant waves on the Scottish music scene; a sprawl of regular gig / club nights have lured back previously unreceptive audiences; and new venues with an eye for innovation are sprouting up across the city centre. As if from nowhere, a buzz has finally begun to resonate throughout the capital’s musical underbelly.

Features Edinburgh Music Scene

One of the catalysts in this hive of activity is Born To Be Wide [BTBW] - a meeting place for those working within the local music business to exchange ideas, socialise and play their favourite records. Although not as anarchic as The Château, BTBW nonetheless shares a similar sense of community to that which stimulated Glasgow’s blossoming music scene. Co-founder of BTBW Olaf Furniss explains: “Born To Be Wide was born out of the frustration that most music-related launches were in Glasgow and that if you wanted to see everybody involved in the Scottish scene a trip west was required. We were sick of the clichéd articles and TV programmes pandering to the illusion that good music only comes out of one city in Scotland.”

Operating under the mission statement “creating some sort of scene”, BTBW wears its heart firmly on its sleeve but with such staunch sloganeering it could be argued that contriving a movement rather than letting it grow naturally is the antithesis of what a scene should be. “I wouldn’t read too much into the slogan,” says Olaf. “The fact is we were unaware of any place where different musicians, journalists and promoters could come together. This could have happened around a certain venue, pub or club, and to some extent it already was [happening].

However, other than providing a focal point for people to meet and hang out, everything is really organic. We don’t have people walking around wearing name badges like they are at some kind of motivational seminar.”

He adds: “The big achievement [of BTBW] has been to bring together a diverse range of people who might never have met.

It’s great when they end up working together as a result of BTBW, for example Found’s new album is being released on Fence Records after band members met [Fence Collective luminary and label co-runner] Johnny Lynch when he was a guest.

Another example is [broadcaster and ex-footballer] Pat Nevin DJing the same night we had one of his musical heroes, Grant McLennan from the Go Betweens, on the bill…Since we started there’s become a stronger DIY culture emerging, with bands, promoters and labels all giving it a go.”

Club / gig night I Fly Spitfires epitomises this adoption of a more bull-headed attitude within Edinburgh’s musical community. Established by Chris McAuley and Gavin Glove in 2005 as a means of hearing the music they liked rather than the generic Libertines-led tripe that had engulfed the city’s bars and clubs, the night quickly gained a reputation as a purveyor of quality, cutting-edge music and has built-up up an ardent audience of like-minded devotees.

Gavin believes one of the major factors in I Fly Spitfires’ success lies in its refreshing approach to the provision of local acts: “We’re trying to eradicate the notion of local bands, where if you’re from a home city there’s a mentality that they don’t matter as much as touring bands,” he says. “[Local bands] get treated really poorly by promoters and there’s an obvious gap between those who are treated well and those who aren’t. What we’re trying to do is make an even playing field so that local bands don’t develop an inferiority complex.”

Illustration Luke Best Web www.lukebest.com

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With a plethora of invigorating club nights like I Fly Spitfires, This Is Music and Fast, Edinburgh now has a network of promoters all working in tandem to energise its music scene but Chris recalls a time when it was all very different: “When we started there was no music community here as far as I’m concerned,” he says.

“Now people are beginning to talk to each other. Before, it was very regimented in as far as what you could do – promoters were competing against one another instead of working together – but now there’s all these little underground nights appearing that speak to us and we speak to them. The whole improvement of Edinburgh’s music scene is grounded in that kind of communication.”

One of the acts beginning to reap the rewards of the city’s musical rejuvenation is captivating melodic spine-quiverers Broken Records. Currently self-managed, the local septet has already garnered a wealth of column inches in national music rags and websites despite having formed less than a year ago.

Band frontman Jamie Sutherland agrees that Edinburgh has recently seen a dramatic shift in attitude to music in the city: “There has been a huge boost in confidence in Edinburgh’s musical community since the turn of the year,” he exclaims.

“We took part in the T Break competition in the summer and managed to get through to play at T in the Park. Out of the 15 bands that got through around half were from Edinburgh and this experience has definitely bred a more professional outlook in terms of live performances and also in terms of a future playing music. The overall impression is that a lot of Edinburgh bands are starting to get their acts together a bit more.”

Somewhat paradoxically, Jamie feels the spotlight which has been firmly focused on Glasgow over the past few years has proved beneficial to this progression of the Edinburgh music scene: “Edinburgh is a curious place to play music in. It has never really had any kind of consistent creative community to put a scene or group of bands together and thus has always been viewed as the poor relation in the east,” he explains. “However, this has just given people the time and space to create music that is utterly unselfconscious and without designs on getting signed – people tend to just make music for the love of making music. Also, because the city is turning into one giant apartment block or Standard Life building, venues are getting scarcer and this creates challenges in itself. People are having to work harder than ever to put on and promote shows and this is leading to a camaraderie between Edinburgh bands that would never be tied together through the way they sound.”

It is this eclecticism and work ethic that singles Edinburgh’s current independent scene out from the likes of Glasgow, Sheffield or Manchester. Whereas each of these cities have their own distinctive sound, Edinburgh is transforming into a simmering melting pot of diversity stirred by the bands, promoters, labels, venues and gig-goers dwelling within its musical community.

It may not have a show-stopping behemoth to call its own just yet but, with the emergence of this dynamic and creative subculture, Auld Reekie may finally have something to shout about for the eleven months of the year when the festival bandwagon’s not in town.

Features Edinburgh Music Scene

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Features Jeffrey Lewis

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Not a Cutoff the Old Block Sleeping with lots of clothes on, arguing with his brother, not making huge amounts of sense and getting confused with it all, then recording an album of Crass covers when he has his own songs written already. Jeffrey Lewis is a strange but loveable character out of the New York anti-folk scene, Andy Price learnt about how he copes with the steady rise to stardom.

Photography Eric Lippe

Features Jeffrey Lewis

On a surprisingly balmy Monday evening in September, New York’s Jeffrey Lewis could be found huddled in the upstairs bar of the Thekla Social in Bristol. Despite the rare break in unpleasant weather, Lewis chooses to spend his pre-show spare time inking a new comic - possibly the next issue of his ‘Fuff’ comic series.

Today though, we are here to talk about his music - namely his latest record - 12 Crass Songs - and yes that is an entire album of covers from the Brighton based punk band of the late ‘70s and ‘80s replicated in Lewis’ trademark folk style.

Following Bearded’s arrival, Lewis looks up and a smile crosses his face and he tells us proudly that he’s all set for the occasion as he hasn’t yet shaved. Apparently his slight bedraggled demeanour is due to a questionable night’s sleep at the End of the Road festival the previous night. “Unfortunately when we were told the festival was going to hook us up with sleeping stuff we showed up and they had tents for us, but they didn’t actually have any sleeping bags.” Lewis says. “We didn’t actually get any sleep at night because it was so cold. We just put on all the clothes we brought for the whole tour and bundled up in lots of layers and just laid there and cried until dawn.”

Asking Lewis how he felt the festival went down for both himself and his touring band (consisting of his brother Jack on bass, drummer Dave Beauchamp and new keys player and vocalist, Helen Schreiner) it became clear that these festivals were a new experience for Lewis’ steady but always increasing popularity. “It was actually a bigger show than we expected. I didn’t realise there would be so many people watching us and we were trying out a whole lot of new material we’d never played live.

“That aside I thought it was a good show. I certainly enjoyed being at the festival and we got to see a bunch of friends of ours who were there: Herman Düne, Turner Cody…”

It’s these friends of Lewis’ that make up a part of what has now become known as the anti-folk scene. With its roots firmly in New York City, its term and subsequent following originated in the mid-late ‘90s thanks to open mic nights run at the Sidewalk Café by fellow musician Lach. Some would follow the style back to the early homemade recordings of Milwaukee band, The Frogs.

Some may even go as far back to the ‘60s and cite The Fugs as early exponents of the genre. Either way, it is acts like Lewis and The Moldy Peaches who have headed up the current surge in slack acoustic picking and some honest, punk rock-styled lyrics.

Lewis himself began making music in 1997 and released a number of demo tapes to sell at shows - these were usually straightforward 4-track tapes and sometimes simple boom box recordings. The most notable issue from this time was the Indie Rock Fortune Cookie cassette, which featured respected Lewis tracks such as ‘The East River’ and ‘The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song’. As well as two boom box recordings with brother Jack – ‘Another Girl’ and ‘The Man With The Golden Arm’. These tracks showed more than anything, the punk rock tendencies that were explored further as Lewis progressed to label releases.

It was in 2001 that UK label Rough Trade decided to release the LP The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane. This opened up an entire new audience for Lewis in Europe and he began to tour more vigorously. But, after spending so much time organising his own releases and his own tours Lewis is even now a little uncertain about the whole idea of the record label - especially when given the ‘independent’ tag.

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He muses: “Rough Trade is theoretically an independent label but there’s no difference really. Not that I really know what it’s like being on a major but it’s not like it’s a bunch of kids putting it together. A lot of these indie labels that are still considered indie labels basically function as smaller versions of regular labels.”

In fact - it is only now, on the eve of a somewhat surprisingly anticipated album of Crass covers that Lewis is considering accepting help in booking and organising his tours and music: “The manager of Dinosaur Jr. has been kind of managing us in the last month without a real contract. He sort of wants to be our manager and wants to show us what he can do for us without so far saying well I’m going to take 50%”. Lewis continues to take a laissez-faire attitude towards any significant changes in the band and this becomes a running theme as we talk. Playing the importance of this information down, he says: “we’ve just been trying that out for the past month or so. It may not turn into anything.”

But of course, Lewis can’t go on organising everything himself forever as his ambitions grow. His 2005 effort City and Eastern Songs (credited alongside his brother Jack) showed ambition beyond anything ever attempted by Lewis before: studio recorded, experimental instrument and production techniques - the way it was produced was a great turning point in their careers.

Lewis still feels uncomfortable. When an artist has built his reputation around sub-standard recording techniques and honest, sometimes embarrassing narration then it becomes difficult to find the right direction to go in. Continuing down the path of growth and musical exploration or return to the writing on the move, fast paced picking style of a man and his guitar?

Either one could be considered a step in the wrong direction or at least a few steps further sideways. Lewis approaches this subject in a way that suggests he has already given it much thought, yet still having made no significant decision. “It’s funny because you see it happening to other acts and you always think you’ll avoid that. But as things get more complicated it’s harder and harder to have the courage to simplify it.”

Specifically referencing live shows in terms of expansion, he seems to have been put off expanding the band any further from a recent experience watching other bands who go too far: “I had a free ticket to see Willy Nelson in New York the other night and he was on stage with 10 people [including] five guitarists and you could hardly even hear him play guitar and sing.”

In regards to his own live shows, Lewis is very conscious of his current worth and, ever selfless in his thoughts, he worries about what a crowd may think of his shows: “There’s so much pressure when you’re playing to bigger and bigger audiences and you don’t want to rip people off. If you’re used to playing to 50 people and then there’s 500 people. You think “oh man I don’t even own an amplifier, can I just go on and do the same dinky little thing that I’ve been doing at home to small audiences”.

So maybe I’ll get this pedal or I’ll add this person on bass and then it’ll just grow and grow and it’s really hard for people to go backwards. I would theoretically like to keep everything in a certain space where I could still go out and play solo or I could do it as a duo or a trio rather than just continually add things to it.”

Features Jeffrey Lewis

One thing that he does still do himself and no doubt always will is design his own album covers. The recently released 12 Crass Songs is his most adventurous yet in terms of the artwork.

“I didn’t know what the reaction would be from Rough Trade.

I did this very elaborate big colour fold out thing – a very specific design that I’ve never seen on another album – where there’s no plastic involved – it was just paper and they were totally fine with it even though it was way more expensive than other album designs that I’ve done. They’ve always been very supportive in a non-specific way. I’m like ‘I’m thinking of doing this’ and they say ‘okay great!’”

Lewis still voices his thoughts on whether their laid-back nature could sometimes hinder an artist’s progress: “I’ve never really encountered any opposition from anything I’ve been doing.

Sometimes I wish they would offer more criticism and more guidance.

“I’m always a little scared because I never know where the line is going to be drawn – at a certain point they’re gonna be like ‘goodbye’. But so far everything’s like ‘sure.’”

However – so far, this has evidently failed to stop Jeff from making the most of it all – including getting plenty of friends in on the new record. As well as Schreiner, a little drum and percussion work from Dave and, of course, a Jack Lewis cameo – The Babyskins (renowned for backing Herman Düne) also appear. But Lewis is no stranger to collaboration in both artwork and music – having recorded and designed artwork with fellow New Yorkers Dufus and designing the album cover to the only record by The Moldy Peaches.

And Lewis has a few collaborative skeletons in his closet that are a little less well known: “We did record a bunch of stuff at Misty’s Big Adventure’s house in Birmingham” he reveals. “We never really had a chance to finish the recordings because we were on tour with the band at the time and every night after a show we’d go back to their house and try to do a bit more stuff and then [Grandmaster] Gareth was going to finish the stuff on his own after we left but then got involved with Misty’s stuff and those recordings are still sitting there unfinished.”

He then goes on to say that a number of songs written during this period ended up re-recorded and slotted into City and Eastern Songs, including some of the highlights of that record, ‘Art Land’, ‘Time Machine’ and ‘Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror’.

“There were maybe eight songs we worked on with him that never got finished. So who knows – if Gareth still has them – maybe they’ll surface eventually.”

This part of the conversation approached time issues again, but Lewis far from complains – using this as a way to be more creative with what little time in between touring there is left. “We have this experiment we’re trying where we have fans sending in short film clips and editing them together into this totally random montage movie. It’s so easy – someone emails you a file in the right format and you stick it into iMovie or iTunes or one of these things and you have this montage film and you can manipulate and work with the footage in all kinds of ways if you want to. I always assumed it would be so much more complicated to put something like that together.”

Illustration Holly Wales Web www.eatjapanesefood.co.uk

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So – innovative live shows? Check. Song writing time? Hmm… “I’ve been touring a total of four or five months a year – that’s almost half my year. It’s as if each 24 hour day I used to have has been cut down to 12 hours. Suddenly the creative time I have available has been cut in half.

“I don’t really know how bands deal with that because once you have the opportunity to tour you can’t really hold down a regular job because you just get fired when you start leaving town all the time. So you have to tour just to survive and when you’re touring all the time it gets very hard to take the same amount of time to create”.

It’s certainly no surprise that the amount of bedroom artists are flourishing and DIY mentalities are returning – Lewis thinks back to the old touring days and tries to makes sense of it all, dusting off his thinking cap and getting stuck into some figures: “Whereas most bands could go around playing to 50 people a night and survive – without a middle man there was no one taking a percentage for this and a percentage for that – and without hotels or manager etc. we made $200 in a night and $100 of that just went into our pockets. The average band might have to make $600 a night just to have the same amount in their pockets. But it did affect the amount of creative time I had. I think at this point it might be worth 10% of my earnings to be able to have somebody else sending out the emails and somebody else to handle booking the shows.”

And maybe this was the reason that Lewis has enlisted the help of a manager type figure – so he can get on with a brand new record of new material right? Well, kinda…

“It’s pretty much recorded. I just haven’t really finished it. I recorded a bunch of stuff at my friends place in Brooklyn and then before I finished it I started doing stuff with this album and thought it would be more interesting to get this album done and release the other stuff afterwards.”

Despite seeming like a new record may just be around the corner, Lewis is in no hurry: “I usually think the longer I wait the better it’ll be. If I’m choosing the best 10 songs out of 20 or the best 10 songs out 40 that I’ve written then the album will be that much better. So I’m not really in a hurry about these things.

There’s no deadline with Rough Trade either so it’s just whenever I feel like sending something in.”

Although fans of Jeff’s brother Jack and joint effort City of Eastern Songs might have cause for concern as the younger Lewis has now moved out to Oregon and released an album this year as Jack Lewis and The Cutoffs. However, Jeff is hopeful: “I love Jack’s songs. There’s a certain conflict between the fact that he has his own creative thing and I’ve got my band but I absolutely love him as a member of my band and I love taking his songs as raw material and producing them in my own way.”

Lewis elaborates on conflict: “If he resists a certain change then it’s like “well, you can do whatever you want with it in your band but if you’re gonna play it in this band I’d like to do it this way.” But of course it doesn’t stop us from arguing all the time anyway – but having a brother in a band is gonna be like that.”

So what’s next? It seems fans of Jeffrey Lewis will have to wait a little longer for a new record – but then at least it’s written – whether Jack will return for it is still uncertain, but in the meantime Lewis has plenty of material to catch up on, both musically with 12 Crass Songs and artistically through issue 6 of Lewis’ own comic book tales that came out in September. Lewis rarely goes a year without a release so it certainly wouldn’t be unheard of to expect a new record sometime in the near future.

Features The Bearded Records of 2007

Not Been Sniffed At When you get to the end of the year, it is usually the time to look back over the past year and look at what was good, what was bad and what was okay before looking forward to the year ahead. We here at Bearded are a bunch who like to talk up those records that might not get the kudos we feel they deserve and, as such, instead of looking at ‘the best’ records of 2007 (as that is entirely subjective), we decided to look, in no particular order, at some of the records that we think should get another mention before we get excited by 2008’s delights.

Notepads at the ready...

Imagery Courtesy of respective label

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Features The Bearded Records of 2007

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Features The Bearded Records of 2007

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Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba Label Out Here Words Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba Gareth Label Main -Out Here Dead Words Heart Bloom Label Gareth Main KEI Words Dead Heart Bloom Amanda Farah Label -KEI Electric Words Soft Parade Label Amanda Farah Truck Words Electric Soft Parade Sam LabelLusardi Truck Words Sam Lusardi

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Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba Segu Blue Ali Farka Touré’s death from cancer in March 2006 was a tragic happening for the worldwide popularity of the West African music Bassekou Kouyate & guitarist Ngoni Ba Segu Blue scene. A legendary who had used his own money to Ali Farka Touré’s death from cancer in 2006 was and a tragic fund the upgrade of roads, installationMarch of sewer canals happening worldwide popularity of the African music introductionfor of the electricity in the Malian town of West Niafunké, Touré scene.

A legendary guitarist had used own money paved the way for the world who to connect withhisAfrican music to fund thehis upgrade of roads, installation of sewer canals and through blues-influenced guitar noodlings. introduction electricity in thethis Malian of Niafunké, That wayof was swept clean year town with the release ofTouré paved theKouyate’s way for the world to released connect through with African Bassekou Segu Blue, the music German through his blues-influenced guitar noodlings.

Out Here label. A former touring musician with Touré, Kouyate was swept clean this yeartowith release of tookThat the way introduction of African music thethe world one step Bassekou Segu Blue, released through the German further

by Kouyate’s leading the record with his playing of traditional Out Hereinstrument label. A former touring musician Touré, Kouyate lute-like the ngoni and, throughwith a large number took the introduction the world one big step of collaborations andofhisAfrican ngoni music quartettoNgoni Ba (“the further by leading the record with his playing of traditional ngoni”), he has released a record that is traditional whilst utterly lute-like instrument through largeheard number contemporary, like the andngoni dislikeand, anything youahave from the of collaborations and his ngoni quartet Ba (“the big oft-forgotten continent – Touré’s legacy Ngoni lives on. ngoni”), he has released a record that is traditional whilst utterly contemporary, like and dislike anything you have heard from the Dead Heart Bloom Chelsea Diaries oft-forgotten – Touré’s legacy on. Dead Heart Boris Skalsky iscontinent the one-man driving forcelives behind -Bloom who has taken the idea of the independent musician to Dead Chelsea a new Heart level; Bloom he writes all the Diaries music, records things himself with Boris Skalsky is the one-man driving books force behind Dead Heart minimal contributions from friends, his shows, does the stick Bloom who has taken the idea of the independent musician to management bits, and owns and operates the label he releases a new level; all the music, thingsishimself with the music on.heHiswrites second effort in asrecords many years a collection minimal contributions friends, books his shows,debut does and the stick of acoustic songs – a from departure from his self-titled management bits, and owns and operates the label he releases any work he did over the course of his eight-year tenure with the music on. second effort in asBut many yearsDiaries is a collection Washington DCHisshoegazers Phaser.

Chelsea (named of – a departure his self-titled debut and for acoustic the New songs York Chelsea, not thefrom London one) is still a safe any work he did over the course of his eight-year tenure with distance from the dreaded singer-songwriter tag; plenty of Washington Phaser. (named introspectionDC butshoegazers twice as much biteBut asChelsea any oneDiaries man with a for the Be New York not London one) is still a safe guitar. sure toChelsea, check out histhe website, www.deadheartbloom. distance from thecan dreaded singer-songwriter tag; plenty com, where you download both his self-titled recordofand this introspection but twice astraditionalists much bite ascan anybuy onehard mancopies with ain one in full for free (or you guitar.

Be sure to check out at hiswork website, www.deadheartbloom.

CD form).

Skalsky is already on his next effort with a bit of com, where you can download his self-titled record and this help from former bandmate Paulboth Wood.

The new record, which one in full free (or you canisbuy copies will also befor available as atraditionalists free download, duehard out in 2008.in CD - form). Skalsky is already at work on his next effort with a bit of help from former bandmate Wood.

The new record, which Electric Soft Parade No Need Paul to be Downhearted will available music as a free download, is due out in 2008.

Withalso the be mainstream press falling over themselves to -crack out the glowsticks, wear luminous clothing and salivate Electric Soft Parade No Need be Downhearted uncontrollably at nu-rave, the to humble British indie band has once With the mainstream music press falling overendured themselves again been pushed to the sidelines.

Having the to same crack out the glowsticks, wear luminous clothing and salivate salivation in the recent past, with fanfares and a major-label uncontrollably nu-rave, humble British indie band hastorrid once deal, Brighton’satElectric Softthe Parade have endured a more again been pushed to theofsidelines.

Having endured the same time following the release their acclaimed debut Holes in the salivation in theextended recent past, with fanfares andsuits a major-label Wall. Following wranglings with the at BMG, and deal, Brighton’s Electric Soft Parade have endured a more excursions as half of Brakes, ESP came back this year with atorrid gem time following the release of their acclaimed HolesoninTruck the of a record which has slipped under the radar,debut released Wall.

Following extended wranglings with the suits at BMG, and and entitled No Need To Be Downhearted. excursions as half ESP came back year with a gem First single ‘Life of in Brakes, the Backseat’ recalls thethis wide-eyed of a record of which has slipped the radar, on Truck innocence youth and gave under advance noticereleased of the album’s and entitled No Follow-up Need To Be Downhearted. general theme. singles included the barnstorming First single ‘Life in the I Backseat’ recalls ‘If That’s The Case, Then Don’t Know’ and the the wide-eyed more wistful innocence of youth excellent and gavetracks advance the album’s ‘Misunderstanding’, both;notice but theofmeasure of an general theme.

Follow-up singles included the barnstorming album however, lies not in the cherry-picked singles but in the ‘If That’s The Case,‘No Then I Don’t and the more ‘growers’.

Opener Need To Know’ Be Downhearted Pt.1’wistful and ‘Woken ‘Misunderstanding’, excellent tracksofboth; but the measure of an

By A Kiss’ being just two examples an album that continues to album however, lies not in the cherry-picked singles but the impress listen on listen. Clever song structure and varietyinabound ‘growers’.

‘No Needhappy To Be Downhearted Pt.1’ and ‘Woken showing aOpener maturing band, to be making pressure-free By A Kiss’ being just two examples of an album that continues to music once again. impress listen on listen. Clever song structure and variety abound showing a maturing band, happy to be making pressure-free music once again.

24/5/09 13:43:50

Features The Bearded Records of 2007

Illinois Label Ace Fu Words Amanda Farah Jack Lewis Label Smoking Gun Words Andy Price J.J. Grey and Mofro Label Alligator Words Jamie Hailstone

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Illinois What The Hell Do I Know? [EP] No, it isn’t a reference to Sufjan Stevens, and no, they aren’t from the state of Illinois either. This quartet hailing from Bucks County, Pennsylvania (not far from the US East Coast) plays indie pop with folk roots and lots of beats and banjo. Added to the mix are electronic bleeps and blips, vocals fed through machines or altered by frontman Chris Archibald’s own vocal chords and whimsy, and other instruments so distorted by computer fiddling that you couldn’t place them if you tried, but you’ll probably like better than if they came through clean. It’s definitely worth checking out their EP before Illinois release their debut full length next year.

Jack Lewis L’vov Goes to Emandee w/ My Unicef Box Jack Lewis had been in brother Jeff’s shadow for far too long, so in 2007 he assembled The Cutoffs and, with Smoking Gun Records in tow, released the bizarrely and enigmatically titled L’vov Goes to Emandee w/ My Unicef Box. Previously, Jack’s work has appeared many times as collaboration on his brother’s records, notably the inclusions of ‘Another Girl’ and ‘Man With The Golden Arm’ on Jeff Lewis’ seminal The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane and then cowriting City and Eastern Songs.

But this certainly isn’t Jack’s first Jeff-less adventure, having previously self-released an album made whilst in college whilst contributing two tracks to the Herman Düne collaboration record The Colmar Tapes from which ‘Graffiti Artist Bombs’, has earned itself a re-recording for this release. It is the tale of a young graffitist with all the gear but no balls and along with ‘Nothing like the O.E.D.’ and opener ‘Shadow Party’, these tracks should have made this album an instant garage classic with roughly recorded, heavily riffed yet sparse tracks of hard-hitting rock music.

Unfortunately, L’vov Goes To…successfully managed to slip under the radar, which is a damned shame. But despite this passing by, the record still proves that Jack Lewis in no way lives up to his sometimes moniker of “lesser” Lewis and we’ll be enjoying his underground mumblings for some time to come.

J.J. Grey and Mofro Country Ghetto If you like your funk low down and dirty, then this is the record for you. The independent blues label Alligator has been churning out some fantastic releases over the last few years, but this is truly in a different league. J.J. Grey and Mofro have been described as ‘red neck chic’ and ‘swamp rock’, but neither tag really does them justice. If you can imagine Bruce Springsteen fronting Primal Scream during their Give Out But Don’t Give Up phase, then you are halfway there.

For many people, Country Ghetto will be retro heaven with tonnes of juicy Hammond Organs, horn stabs, Fender Rhodes and ‘chicken scratch’ electric guitars. The opening track ‘War’ is a case in point. The pounding drum beat and funky beat both sound like leftovers from ‘Exile On Main Street’, but J.J. Grey’s lyrics are all about living in America under George W. Bush. That feeling continues with the title track, which also contains some truly scorching harmonica and a deep Sly and the Family Stone groove.

There are two songs towards the end of this record which truly make it essential listening - ‘Mississippi’ and ‘The Sun Is Shining Down’. The former is a terrific slice of rare groove, worthy of The Meters, while the latter is a poignant piece of soul which will linger in your heart long after the album has stopped playing. If you thought the music industry in the United States was on its last legs, think again. This is a record with heart, soul and conviction. Did I mention it was damn funky too?

Features The Bearded Records of 2007

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Malcolm Middleton A Brighter Beat There are many wonderful things about the ex-Arab Strapper’s third album, and I shall name but a few. Let’s start at the beginning. The first song is called ‘We’re All Going To Die’, which is a splendid title for an opening track, is it not? And it sounds a bit like a Scottish Carter USM. Yes, of course that’s a good thing.

Then we have the variation. There’s the punk influence, the piano and the pickery, the occasional trudge through treacle, the pure poppiness of single ‘Fuck It, I Love You’, and even the aureate and anthemic shortly before the album closes with a smudged full stop. Even within the limits of the songs we’re treated to some rather ambitious arrangements.

And it’s all underpinned by a dolorous lyric. The title track, for example, is an ode to the epic struggle many face in plucking up the wherewithal to simply leave the house. Yet by marrying the morose with some often jaunty soundscapes, it is apparent that we are meant to see that there is a perverse joy to be salvaged from the bleakness. After all, when something is bittersweet, it is the sweet that comes latterly.

Queen Victoria The Endless Night After years of writing songs and keeping them to himself, Nick Malkin (AKA Queen Victoria) released his debut album, a collection of ten delicate songs. Contrary to the standard style of solo acts, Malkin buries his vox underneath his complex arrangements of acoustic guitar and piano, sometimes fleshed out with the roaring distortion of an electric guitar or bells. But don’t be mistaken: the lyrics are every bit as important as the music itself, and are very conveniently included in the album’s booklet lest you should miss a word.

Written and recorded over the course of a year in the artist’s home, The Endless Night reflects a labour of love in the obsessive detail paid to the project. In addition to writing the songs and playing all of the instruments, Malkin also produced and mixed the record and executed the album artwork. For the listener, the songs are pretty, full of honest self-deprecation, a genuine display of emotion hidden in the detached sounds of a minimalist folk style.

Ratface …On Ice! Now Ratface is an interesting one. His punk rock roots are about the clearest thing on this record, made DIY over what feels like a couple of amphetamine-fuelled nights of home recording. But indicating that this Bristol-based rapper is some kind of junkie is a fatal error and, although his songs are littered occasionally with weed references, the themes centre much more on the lifestyle of the 9-5er’s staying up late and fucking around. A larger idea he seems to embrace is the confusion in his mind that is in his music. Should he be trying to get a record deal even though his style of music no longer represents where he started? It’s a conundrum, and it all gets explored over ten fantastic tracks.

Whether his shouting vocal penetrates the jumping beats in anthemic and highly sing-along ‘Bony King of Nowhere’ or he’s fading down the album with the drunken acoustic guitar style and quiet vocal desperation of ‘Four in the Morning’, Ratface is about the most honest and forceful son of a bitch rocking the white-rapping gig at the moment.

Malcolm Middleton Label Full Time Hobby Words Owe Carter Queen Victoria Label Self-Released Words Amanda Farah Ratface Label At The Library Words Andy Price

Features The Bearded Records of 2007

Serafina Steer Label Static Caravan Words Simon Harper Shady Bard Label Static Caravan Words Simon Harper

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Serafina Steer Cheap Demo Bad Science With very little fanfare, London-based songwriter Serafina Steer delivered one of the most pleasant aural surprises of the year.

Despite the all too obvious Joanna Newsom comparisons, it was the harpist’s magical vignettes and mindful way with electronics that ensured she captured the imaginations of discerning listeners.

Other comparisons with Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson are perhaps nearer the mark. Sefa’s beautiful compositions are often understated – her sledgehammer lyrics less so – and the songs contained on this debut offering channel all the bonkers charm of lysergic mavericks like Animal Collective.

From the opening track ‘By the River’, a Brian Eno cover, Cheap Demo Bad Science features eleven tracks sublimely crafted by Serafina, with its centre-piece the deliciously spooky ‘Peach Heart’. Bewitchingly melodic, it crackles and flutters thanks to production from Mike Lindsay of digital-folk flag-bearers Tunng, whose dreamy vision is echoed here.

The prodigious use of expletives on ‘Council Flat’ is one of the more jarring elements of this stunning record, especially as they are uttered in her otherwise dainty voice, which appears light and wispy when she’s not intoning such Anglo-Saxon terms of endearment.

Elsewhere, Sefa’s way with a lyric is particularly enchanting, and aside from the profanities she weaves some wonderful images throughout – ‘Tiger’, with its wonky, harp-plucked rhythm, is among the most startling tracks. Elegant and yet with a hint of a sinister undercurrent, it’s a fine example of Steer’s ability to wrap her dark tales in an otherworldly sense of loveliness, the homespun melodies often cloaking the macabre subject matter.

An intriguing record both musically and lyrically, it confirms Steer as a real find, with the harpist already hitting her songwriting stride. Cheap Demo Bad Science oozes class, and it’s hard to think she won’t be making songs this good for years to come.

Shady Bard From the Ground Up With a pronounced DIY aesthetic - see their hand-made merchandise and the recycled packaging for their earliest releases – Shady Bard have a lo-fi, earthy appeal, complemented by their fondness for gig venues far removed from the beaten indie-rock track (including churches and a Victorian bandstand). Clearly at one with nature, themes surrounding the environment and ecology are woven throughout the eleven songs on this sublimely engaging debut.

With a set-up incorporating violin, cello, French horn, piano and Casiotone, the quintet concoct an expansive blend of instrumentation and harmonies, and their dizzying indie-folk is dispatched with the same élan as on the finest work by the likes of Sparklehorse, Grandaddy, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and Super Furry Animals. The stately piano-led ‘Booby’ is among the standout tracks contained here and is indicative of the vibrant array of textures which burst through each song.

There is also a raucous side to their otherwise fragile, glistening melodicism. Treeology’s beautifully plangent opening gambit gives way to a dissonant, scuzzed-up frenzy more resonant of Sonic Youth, suggesting there’s also a post-rock dynamic at the heart of Shady Bard’s gentle, soft-focus vignettes.

An air of wistfulness and melancholia permeates the album throughout, but there’s also an odd feeling of defiance and contentedness, which invites comparisons with Mercury Rev. The album’s non-vocal title track is one such grandiose statement of intent, and the most ambitious composition here; an elegant melody which swoons and soars, akin to the most delicate atmospheres conjured by Spiritualized and Mogwai.

Alternately pastoral and glacial, the five-piece have recorded a set of slow-building songs which fully deliver on their early promise, displaying an inherent scuffed charm. From the Ground Up is packed with humanity and considerable warmth.

It’s a comfort blanket of an album - wrap yourself in its myriad layers and drift away.

Features The Bearded Records of 2007

Stateless Label K7!

Words Ashleigh Rainbird Taken By Trees Label Rough Trade Words Andy Price Various Artists Label Freshly Squeezed Music Words Jamie Hailstone

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Stateless Stateless Seeing as I’m informed ‘Bloodstream’ has been played on late night Radio 1 broadcasts, I’m not sure how ‘unnoticed’ Stateless’ eponymously titled debut really was, but it really deserves more attention than it earned upon its release this summer.

They comfortably squeeze themselves into some crazy halfway-house between Coldplay (bad) and Radiohead (good), complete with the essential harrowing vocals and piano trinkets.

But this set up is given a boost of unique energy from a resident turntablist and sound mixer, adding a hip hop element to the Leeds quintet. So much so that DJ Shadow requested to collaborate with vocalist Chris James on a track for his album The Outsider, which is also worth checking out.

Besides the stunning ‘Bloodstream’ that’s only just been released despite lending its title to a 2005 EP, ‘This Language’ stands out for its vivacity and combination of heavy rock elements and a rap from the wonderfully named Lateef the Truthspeaker. Then of course, there are techno elements thrown into the mix with ‘Exit’ – another expertly crafted soundscape – in amongst the trip-hop and breakbeat mixes. The layers of contrasting sounds fuse into an intense, melodically romantic atmosphere that pretty much verges on perfection in places.

The boys produced a thoroughly underrated debut that would make a credible alternative to the rubbish that usually finds its way onto thirty-something’s coffee tables.

Taken By Trees Open Field Back in 2006, Sweden’s indie-rock heroes The Concretes lost founding member and vocalist Victoria Bergman. It was not long after Bergman had shot to the front of a much wider audience through her vocals on the international hit ‘Young Folks’ with Peter, Bjorn and John. Despite the general ambivalence towards any new material from The Concretes without their staple vocalist, Bergman herself still failed to receive her deserved kudos after an initial brief interest and moderate praise much in line with The Concretes new album Hey, Trouble!

The ten-track record, the first released since Rough Trade’s breakaway from Universal, was extremely stripped down, quite possibly in response to the larger sound inevitable from years playing in a seven piece. The rhythm section was generally made up of ‘Young Folks’ collaborators, Björn Yttling and John Eriksson – Yttling himself dealing with the majority of production duties.

Peter Bjorn and John and The Concretes are both great bands and Taken By Trees can almost be seen as taking the best parts of both. But that would be unfair to Bergman, as whilst The Concretes’ lyrics can be often seen as trivial and uninteresting, Bergman must have had somewhat of an emotional backlog to sort through as this is a highly personal record.

Various Artists Eclectrik A record label sampler as one of the albums of the year? You’re kidding? Well no actually. The Brighton-based Freshly Squeezed Music are the heirs apparent to fellow local Fatboy Slim’s ethos of ‘party on and you can’t go wrong’ and no self-respecting music lover should be without this little 12 track beauty.

Kicking off with the sublime ‘Electric Love’ by Dodo, which is a fine piece of Goldfrapp-esque electro sleaze, it then gets seriously steamy with ‘La Degustation’ by The Lovers. Anyone who owns Lovage’s classic Music To Make Love To Your Old Lady By will feel instantly at home with this tale of seduction and wine tasting.

Freshly Squeezed main man Nick Hollywood (aka Lemon) gets the party started with a truly swelegant version of the 1960s Batman TV series tune. This track has truly to be heard to be believed and should be a staple of every office party. Another Lemon track ‘Let’s Go Bikini’ carries on the funky kitsch vibe and the wonderfully named Voodoo Trombone Quartet go one step beyond with two tracks of their inspired ska / dance fusion.

If this record was a drink, it would be an impeccably presented and deliciously decadent glass of fresh champagne, served in a very funky little bar, full of people who just wanted to have a good time. It oozes funk, romance and groove in equal measure. It’s as cheap as chips and will impress all your friends.

Go order your copy now and tell your friends to buy one too.

Features Oh No Ono

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Oh Not Everybody’s Taste Denmark’s Oh No Ono may sound like some sort of satire-laden joke band, they have electronics and highly-pitched voices and a sound that has been shaking dance floors across Europe. Andy Price finds out why they aren’t the new Junior Senior…

Photography Simon Birk

Features Oh No Ono

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The beginnings of electro-pop sensations Oh No Ono echo that of many before them, “the band was basically formed out of boredom,” they say. It is not a particularly thrilling beginning but - when you live in the fourth largest city of the sparsely populated country of Denmark – that’s probably the way it is going to happen.

It is surprising that the Scandinavian label Morningside Records has taken so long to release debut album Yes in the UK. It first surfaced in 2006 in their home country - the retro sound owing plenty to ‘80s disco and the more modern indie sounds – but at double speed, vocals included. This high-pitch resonance can initially pierce but eventually draws a listener in as they switch between flowing arpeggios and simplistic chorus led romps.

And the record picked up plenty of steam in Denmark, stirring their thirst for success: “when you are just starting out as band you can’t imagine anything bigger than getting a record deal, but as your career evolves your ambitions grow at an even faster rate.”

Despite this gaining the band a youthful and highly influential following there is still unrest: “Even though we feel privileged to be able to play in front of huge crowds and all of that, our ambitions are bigger than that” It is unlikely that these aspirations will go unfulfilled. The fact is, this band have a real talent. At first sight they may seem to base themselves a little too much on a gimmick – but as the music plays it becomes clear that this vastly inventive sound is built on a ridiculously elongated array of musical tastes and aptitude. Their skinny looks - coated in drab suits and white afros are a little too out there for mainstream consumption but their music is erratic but competent to the point where success is both deserved and inevitable.

Prior to the release of Yes we asked the band to sit down and inform us about Scandinavian music, perceptions of the Ono and their plans for the UK…

Features Oh No Ono

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Features Oh No Ono

Illustration Nous Vous Web www.nousvous.eu

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How did the association with Morningside happen? We started working with Morningside Records after our debut concert in September 2004. We were long-time friends with Figurines, a band already signed to Morningside, so Figurines recommended Morningside to see our show and apparently they liked it a lot!

We released an EP in February 2005. It went well and if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. We’re glad to be on Morningside, it is by far the best Danish independent record label. It is also home to a host of other moderately successful Scandinavian bands – what is this attributed to? Writing good songs and playing them well at concerts is of course the most important thing, far more important than your geographical location. But that being said we do know that the Danish music scene hasn’t had much attention internationally but bands like Junior Senior, Mew and The Raveonettes have received a lot of attention in recent years. It seems as if foreign media and music lovers in general have discovered the interesting scene there actually is in Denmark at the moment. Do you concern yourself that the media will be looking to label the band in alongside Danish contemporaries? No, not really. We plan on releasing more than a couple of records and will probably have to get used to a lot of different labels if we manage to stick to our musical ambition of continuously challenging ourselves as musicians. You have played some intriguing covers of Bob Dylan and the Beatles at live shows, yet these influences aren’t so obvious on record…

We get inspired by artists that challenge the way we usually think about music. The artists you mention and others like The Beach Boys, Talking Heads, David Bowie etc. are all so full of ideas that it is hard not to be impressed by their musical expressions. Anyone with that kind of drive and energy is a potential influence for us. On Yes we tried to write music that pushes the limits of what pop music can be. In general it is catchy melodies exposed to some more alternative approaches in the arrangements and the lyrics.Now that Yes has been around in Denmark for well over a year new material is surely inevitable, the question is, with a highly volatile sound what should be expected? We have been playing live shows with the Yes songs for nearly one and a half years now so it is only natural for us to make new music. There will be changes. We are artistically restless and music has to be challenging to us and hopefully to the people that spend their precious time listening to us. We want to be in constant movement, musically speaking, and we want to have fun - so we’ll definitely do what we can to not repeat ourselves. Your sound is not exactly conventional, what is the response like? It is the same everywhere! We get a fair amount of attention from the press and some love us and some hate us... There aren’t really that many in between. We’re pleased with not meeting everybody’s taste. What is the Danish scene all about and how does Oh No Ono fit into its mould? The Danish scene is okay... not amazing, but alright. The scene around Morningside Records is much more exciting than the rest of the Danish scene (and our label is not holding a gun to our heads!). There’s some really interesting stuff coming from the labels Rumraket and the people from Yoyo Oyoy as well. But the mainstream is still in a pretty terrible state and dominated by easy-listening and straightforward rock or ‘80s pop. But the times are a-changing, our audience in Denmark is young and it is our impression that the younger audience is more critical towards non-important music than earlier. The young people today are exposed to a lot of different - also more challenging music - made available on the net. We are optimistic for a bright Danish future.

Record Reviews

Aim Label ATIC Words Jeremy Style Anthony Reynolds Label Spinney Words Ben Wood Black Mountain Label Jagjaguwar Words Megan Weston imagery Courtesy of respective label

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Aim Hinterland / Cold Water Music Reissues may be something of a dirty subject in this day and age with everyone wanting to reap the profits on old records before free downloading makes them all worthless again. Andy Turner, the man behind Aim, has been talking about his reasons for rereleasing his first two records through his own ATIC label: “Not long after starting ATIC records it became apparent that my old label, Grand Central, was winding up and that I was going to get the rights back to all my old songs,” says Turner about the reissues.

“I wanted to differentiate them from the original releases without affecting what made people like them in the first place.

All the singles from the original albums had new and exclusive tracks on them so we decided to add these to the relevant LPs.” Okay, yes, this sounds like the general spiel we always get around a reissue, whether it be music or a film or whatever else. All we need now is something how this addition is actually making the record better so that everyone who already has a copy should go and buy another one.

“As they [the b-sides] were recorded during the same period I was pretty confident they would work but I was surprised and excited by how well they sit within the context of the original records... it’s almost like adding these new songs has made the original albums complete.”

Now I don’t want to be a sceptic, but is he saying that when we shelled out £24 for these two records at the turn of the century we were in fact buying into a semi-finished product? I don’t think so and I doubt that Taylor thinks so either. So is there any point to this reissue?

There is no doubt that Taylor is one of the best hip hop artists to have emerged in the UK over the past decade, but what is the point in rehashing what has been said before? The All Music Guide gives both Cold Water Music and Hinterland four (out of five) stars and the killer PR quotes, from John Bush are “evoke(s) the heyday of rap’s Golden Age” (Cold Water Music) and “Turner’s gotten even better” (Hinterland).

What I can say about these records are on the ‘new old’ tracks. On Cold Water Music ‘Another Summer’ is relaxed enough to cause no great upset to the original record whilst ‘Underground Crown Holders’ provides something of an outstanding reprise to the record’s high points, it flows nicely off the other bonus track and works well enough as a ‘new ending’ to an already accomplished record. On Hinterland ‘Mag’ bounces along nicely without offending, ‘Peru’ skiffles with muted electric beats and ‘Nightlife’ again provides a good enough ending to the record.

Realistically though, no additional tracks can add anything to the overall quality of the records – and they are quality records – and there is no reason for anyone who has bought the original pressings to purchase the reissue. The only benefit is that maybe it will claim a few more fans for Aim, the bulk of the revenue though will probably come from ready established fans, and for that reason, this record is more an enemy than a friend. Here’s to Aim’s next proper release, maybe we can take that one seriously.

Record Reviews

Anthony Reynolds British Ballads If you’re a sucker for the likes of Scott Walker, Tindersticks, Richard Hawley and Nick Cave, you’ve come to the right place. The debut album from Anthony Reynolds, the former frontman of cult faves Jack (of Pioneer Soundtracks fame), is a sumptuous and classy affair.

Romantic, melancholic, bookish and wine-stained, British Ballads deals with matters of the heart and the everyday epiphanies we can all experience if we are paying attention.

Most of the lyrics seem to deal with hope: finding it, losing it, and how sometimes we must carry on living without it. Reynolds’ Hawley-esque croon generally operates in two settings: slow, ambient meditations burnished with touches of piano, violin and strings; and swaying orchestral mid-paced ’60s-esque numbers.

Even his sleeve-notes are classy. Comedian Robin Ince calls the album ‘beautiful music for drunken librarians’, telling us ‘we are lyrically in a world of grime, hope, city lights and stars’.

Reynolds further ups the ante by collaborating with the likes of author Colin Wilson, former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde and Vashti Bunyan (who seems to be making up for lost time by appearing on every other folk record at moment). But after raising our expectations, does the album live up to them?

Generally, yes. Opener ‘I know you know’ (featuring Dot Allison) sets the tone nicely. Its subtle groove and gently swinging bass giving it that Lee and Nancy vibe as Indian-sounding strings smear in amidst piano and subtle jazz drums. “I know you know I’ve been fakin’ / waitin for your love…” Reynolds murmurs – this is definitely grown-up music. Vocally, Reynolds is of the ‘less is more’ school: his understated and well-enunciated tones rarely soar or growl.

‘Those Kind of Songs’ is in a similar vein, its well-worn lyrical theme saved by quirky lyrics (“The moon is gonna get you / while you are dressed liked that / standing naked in the kitchen / with your arms around the cat”) and the ability to hit emotional peaks without over-emoting.

The pace slows down though, firstly through ‘Country Girl’, which starts off slow and jazzily atmospheric with Reynolds’ slow drawled Walker-esque lines echoed in spoken form by Vashti Bunyan. Then ‘The Disappointed’ darkens the mood further from melancholic to downright gloomy, its tale of stoicism and despair softened by beautiful strings as Reynolds lets rip: “These are the breaks / this is how it crumbles” he sobs, “…we the disappointed sit smothered by cotton / our children sorry we conceived them / aborted and rotten.” It’s bleak enough to appear on a Nick Cave album, and that’s really saying something…

The only unsuccessful experiment on British Ballads is ‘The Hill’, a short poem by doomed World War One writer Rupert Brooke, with a sinister looming electronic backing. Compared to the rest of the arrangements, the music sounds a bit threadbare.

It is a mood lifted only by the catchy but atypical closing track ‘Song of Leaving’, which bids us adieu, its strummy ’80stinged indie guitar pop strongly reminiscent of Doves. “Sad songs are always best” he croons - a suitable epitaph for the close of an album custom-made for a good wallow. The perfect album as the nights draw in: close the curtains, spark up the fire, pour yourself a glass of something and lose yourself in British Ballads.

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Black Mountain In the Future Opening with the heavy psyche-induced ‘Stormy High’, the unified howling cries and serious power as Stephen McBean leads his army through the bounds of clichéd riffs and rolling drum-beats. It’s been three years in the waiting; and following the numerous side-projects, guises and sporadic offerings, Black Mountain have finally offered up their second album. In the Future immediately satisfies any previous qualms of the heavy psyche-rock quintet falling by the wayside to their acclaimed self-titled debut.

The road to the future has been an interesting one for these five mental health careworkers from Vancouver. There was the tour with Coldplay, the offering of track ‘Stay Free’ on the Spiderman 3 soundtrack and the stop / start recording of their follow up. But the sincerity of their energy in creating a developed tighter prog-rock sound and a complete album of tracks they believe in is what makes this album successful, despite it’s lack of futuristic application or production.

The visual representation of In The Future is enveloped in the distinctively prog-esque feel to the follow-up. With its Storm Thorgerson styled artwork, neatly syncing into this fold is track ‘Wucan’, the Floyd sci-keys epic leading tripped out voyagers but sustaining that scuzzy Black Mountain heaviness. Whilst ‘Tyrants’, the eight-minute marathon, sees Amber Webber raising the stakes of her previously less dominate role, with her vocals dipping into the ranges of the powerful warbles of Grace Slick.

Softer moments weave seamlessly into the crashing heavier breaks, with the elements more tightly woven than on their previous effort.

This album will not change your life - it’s not supposed to. It fulfils the purpose that Black Mountain serve, the success of their previous album was not due to the forward-thinking application of sound and song, but due to the genuine nature of their productivity. Outputting overly distorted guitar heaviness, whilst bellowing beneath the psychedelic tunings of the keyboard as the band sing defiantly of angels, freedom and fighting.

Predictably it has echoes of Sabbath, Led Zep and Floyd, but what gives Black Mountain’s In The Future sustainability is its most prominent character - themselves.

Record Reviews

British Sea Power Label Rough Trade Words Amanda Farah Charlottlefield Label Fat Cat Words Jonathan Pearson Chris Bathgate Label Tangled Up! Recordings Words Jamie Hailstone imagery Courtesy of respective label

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British Sea Power Do You Like Rock Music?

Things can be punk without being musical. People can be punk.

People and products can try to be punk, can market themselves as punk, and it can generally be assumed that if you’re putting effort into projecting an image of punk, you aren’t punk, it isn’t punk. Anarchy in the UK? That’s pretty punk. Avril Lavigne? There is nothing punk about pink skull t-shirts or songs about your girlfriend.

CBGB was punk, but wearing a CBGB shirt if you’ve never been there is decidedly not punk (for the record: CB’s was a hole, but a hole that will be hard to fill).

Now, rock music. The fine fellows in British Sea Power feel that rock music also extends beyond what is musical, and, like punk, rock bands might not really be rock music. Obviously British Sea Power consider themselves to be purveyors of rock music and why not?

On their third outing, BSP continue on in the vein of 2005’s Open Season; the insane crunch of 2003’s The Decline of British Sea Power is surely missed, but with less noise there can be more sound, and such sounds are heard in the faint violin strains that add a ghostly air to ‘No Lucifer’ and the subtle scrapes that bookend the album in the first and final track. The fantastic anthemic choruses that have always been so prevalent to their songs roar through the album, and we see Hamilton morphing from a secondary vocalist to confidently sharing vocal duties.

That almost twisted love of nature we’ve come to associate with BSP is still there, present in songs about massive birds and flooded islands, and the influence of a wild boar running through the woods near their studio.

They are just as poetic as ever, perhaps more thoughtprovoking than ever, and Do You Like Rock Music? shows the band finding their niche; perhaps developing a slightly more polished sound, but they couldn’t shake their artistic grandeur if they tried.

Record Reviews

Charlottlefield What Are Friends For? Brighton-based four-piece Charlottefield are not for the fainthearted. Stripped back, and unrelenting, What Are Friends For? epitomises the visceral, aggressive sound that the band have been crafting since their debut EP in 2002. Spiky atonal guitars mix with half-shouted, half-sung vocals and exceptionally committed drumming (seriously, he should get a medal for keeping things running) while off-kilter time changes make room for sinister bass riffs.

While the peculiar structure of most of the tracks on What Are Friends For? makes for an interesting listen, the album does generate the sensation that one is listening to eight tracks worth of four people doing essentially what they feel like. This makes for a peculiar dichotomy: there is an obvious sense of purpose about this band, but they find themselves hoisted by their own intricate petard. Each individual musical contribution is worth a listen, but it becomes increasingly difficult to separate anything out to cling onto. Too much is attempted in too small a musical space with the end result being that the intricacy of the album is easily (and perhaps correctly) confused with an improvised mess. The vocals, though delivered with undisputed conviction, are largely incomprehensible. “Let me speak for me!” yells frontman Thomas House on the opening track ‘Beatings’. All very well, Thomas, but at least let us know what it is you’re trying to say before accusing us of not listening.

That’s not to say that this album doesn’t have its highlights.

The musicianship, especially that of drummer Ashley Marlowe, is impressive throughout and there are moments where it all falls into place and suddenly makes sense. Musically, Charlottefield are clearly extremely capable and at points the band combine beautifully to create a noise that genuinely has a point to prove, rather than simply creating a noise. That there is little sensation of moving or advancing through the album while listening to it, however, is testament to the fact that given the band’s propensity for extended riffing and time changes, there really is little to set the album’s eight tracks apart. The feeling is that the band doesn’t really get out of second gear at any stage. After the first track finishes, the rest all come and go accompanied by a vague sense of having heard it before. On the closing number ‘Backwards’, the band find their feet, showing what they are capable of, but this comes as too little, too late.

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Chris Bathgate A Cork Tale Wake A one sentence review to this record would be: ‘Music to watch the leaves fall down by.’

Dark, haunting and not without its fear share of foreboding, night is most definitely falling and happy hour is a long, distant memory. Winter is coming folks, so you all better wrap up warm!

Musically, A Cork Tale Wake is blacker than black – gothic noir if you will. It is also stunning and, while it might not be the most accessible album you’ll hear this year, it definitely is the most rewarding. Chris Bathgate may be an unknown this side of the Pond, but he’s one of the leading lights of the local music scene back home in his native Michigan. A Cork Wake Tale may be his first record to be released in the UK but it is his third in the US. All the songs come layered down with bags of atmospheric e-bows, violins and trumpets, with the odd bit of distorted guitar thrown in for good measure. This set of twelve songs, which includes an exclusive track for British listeners, fit together remarkably well.

‘Every Wall You Own’ has a slightly Wilco meets Johnny Cash feel to it, complete with a Mexican trumpet style final section. His singing on every track is cool, clear and full of passion. He serves his songs well and you can see why he was named the best solo artist in Michigan by the Real Detroit Weekly last year.

Above all, this is one sombre, haunting record with some very spooky songs. None of these songs are going to get much airplay on the Disney Channel, but something tells me that Chris Bathgate would rather have it that way. ‘The Last Parade On Ann St’ is terrifically moving, while ‘Smiles Like A Fist’ could almost be a Coldplay or a Manic Street Preachers track with a stunning combination of Fender Rhodes, rock guitar and trumpet.

Winters in his native Ann Arbor may not be a barrel of laughs, but they have certainly inspired this folk singer to record an incredibly powerful and memorable album.

Record Reviews

Harrisons Label Melodic Words David Winstanley Lightspeed Champion Label Domino Words Ashleigh Rainbird Lupen Crook and the Murderbirds Label Tap n Tin Words Gareth Main imagery Courtesy of respective label

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Harrisons No Fighting in the War Room You could easily be cynical about Sheffield right now. People are willing to flock to music originating from that particular northern city like so many music-loving moths to a flame. The Sheffield scene is burning bright and there are a lot of young (and not so young) pretenders thanking the gods that the Arctic Monkeys emerged from their city, helping to turn the spotlight of music fan attention upon them all by default.

But this is where the cynicism creeps in. Maybe I’m just smelling the flowers and then looking for the hearse, yet I can’t help but be a tiny bit nonplussed when the Harrisons are described as being a “Sheffield four-piece” rather than a band in their own right that happen to come from Sheffield. I check myself here though, before I slide into vitriol, and pledge to push my cynical urges to the back of my tortured mind and give the Harrisons’ new album No Fighting in the War Room a spin - in its own right.

As the first track popped its little Paul Weller-shaped head up over the parapet I thought I had this album nailed straight away.

It’s a good opener. The rapid-fire lyrics of ‘Dear Constable’ speak of social injustice and the earthy grit of urban life, backed by ska-influenced guitars, riding cymbals and clear defined bass, it is infectious. There is an undeniable “northern bite” to the vocals, and the echo-laden backing vocals recall being down in a tube station at midnight.

The second track, ‘Man Of The Hour’, is another Wellerish offering. More ska and a slick bass sound show conviction and the mantra that “I’ve got things to say to you, you tell lies for all to see” typifies the passion in the track. But then the third track appears to have a guest vocal from Dr Feelgood who then passes the mic to Paul Jones as it gets all post-British Blues and Merseybeat. It doesn’t develop much beyond a central riff. It feels a bit out of place already.

Here, my cynicism rises. The album’s other tracks are comprised of a kind of indie ballad (‘Little Boy Lost’) that turns into a Who-style poem to personal freedom, the mellow-starting ‘Simmer Away’ that seems to go on too long, a funky-guitar exercise in catchiness called ‘Take It To The Mattress’ that keeps things moving along; but there seems to be a lack of cohesion and consistent style. ‘Listen’ changes the tone again into a Verveian emotional acoustic number, and ‘Monday’s Arms’ jumps back onto the earlier track of ska beats and catchy vocals but clarity of style and a solid direction are lacking.

No Fighting In The War Room has many good tracks, but lacks a core sound. Eclectic may be a way to attract attention, but it doesn’t lend itself to a real listenable album. Devoid of a central theme or style, the songs don’t really inspire passion or love and they don’t ignite fire in the listener’s mind. When does a good assortment of styles and songs become just too many? Why would so many colours be painted on one canvas?

The Harrisons’ album has too broad a mix. And there goes my cynicism again: maybe the need to capitalise on the “Sheffield scene” has meant the Harrisons have had to throw all the tricks into one bag in the hope that their time is now. They’ve let us have everything they’ve got to show what they can do. In parts this is a good result, on the whole it is less successful.

Record Reviews

Lightspeed Champion Falling Off the Lavender Bridge What do you get if you cross the mesmerising vocals of the indie-folk elite with the percussive element of The Faint, and let Test-Icicles’ lead screecher have free reign over them all? Well, apparently you get folk, and regardless of anything else to do with this album, we very much like that moniker.

If you liked Devonte ‘Dev’ Hynes back in his heyday headlining Astoria with two trusty trendy accomplices, don’t hold out much hope for Lightspeed Champion, this solo project couldn’t be further from his defunct art-rock punk trio, which will probably be a positive criticism for those who prefer bloodless ears. But Dev deserves genuine credit, if only for following his heart. He relocated from Texas to Edinburgh, basing himself in London, where he commutes from his humble Essex abode. He likes Essex, so he lives there – simple as. Similarly, he boasts that he’s “unashamedly a huge country fan” and that the love of the genre motivated him to write a country-inspired record. To do so, he turned his back on thousands of adolescent admirers just as Test Icicles reached their peak, but if Dev likes country music, Dev will make country music.

The only problem is, this isn’t country music. And it’s still coming from a collection of elitist scene kids; only now he’s surrounded himself with the folky clique that normally remain under the radar. Accompanied by Florence (of Florence and the Machine), Emmy the Great and members of Cursvie and Tilly and the Wall, really is making country for our ‘trend-saturated times’ as he says he is. There are a few nice tracks, highlights being debut single ‘Galaxy of the Lost’ and to a lesser extent ‘Midnight Surprise’, except to say this one drags on would be a heinous understatement. The lyrics lack the insightful humour Dev claims they have – the fact that the record label release a blurb where he summarises each track underlines this. It’s worth a listen, but it certainly won’t be fitting everybody’s tastes and it’s just not the groundbreaking concept Dev is convinced it is.

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Lupen Crook and the Murderbirds Iscariot the Ladder Thank the lord for Lupen Crook. You remember that album Accidents Occur Whilst Sleeping? Yeah it was good wasn’t it? Didn’t you just wish there wasn’t so much random shit on it though? Well guess what? That Lupen Crook fellow that did it has learnt from his mistakes, he has cropped the half (oh so) hit tracks from the crap and put together Iscariot the Ladder – ten tracks of eclectic, outstanding pure Lupen. Now let’s see if he can push on and do something awesome.

Accidents Occur Whilst Sleeping crept out on Tap n Tin in July 2006, it was a mixed bag of incredible tracks mixed with utter tripe, a soundtrack to a man hearing mixed things in his head with a catalogue of songs he is unable to chop down into a cohesive record. It came out at 15 tracks longs and was a mess.

Luckily for us he has been back to the drawing board and is on incredible form on Iscariot the Ladder.

Staking a more than realistic claim for the best record of 2008, Iscariot... launches in with an infectious punk rock attitude, with music that is offensively brilliant. “Fuck you jews I’m not paying” he cries in ‘Staghead and Monster’, ironically one of the more restrained songs musically on the record, is filled with the sexual allusions and sheer bloodlust that peppered the first record.

But Iscariot the Ladder is not an entirely new record. At least three of the tracks have been seen someplace before.

‘Matthew’s Magpie’, ‘Lucky Six’ and the aforementioned ‘Staghead and Monster’ all appeared on Crook’s debut Petals Fresh From Roadkill EP, released back in August 2005. It being a case of shooting his creative load too early is a poor hypothesis, and the inclusion of the lacklustre ‘Matilda V’, a missing track from the EP, on Accidents... would point towards Crook instead saving the three other tracks for reworking on a project that would do them justice. Without doubt, even ‘Matthew’s Magpie’, which seemed out of place as the title track of Crook’s last EP, sounds absolutely stunning in the context of such an excellent record.

But it begs the question of what is coming next from Crook. There is no doubt whatsoever that he is one of Britain’s most prized songwriters, too obscene for the mainstream and too good to be ignored, he is without doubt a jewel in the independent music scene’s crown, if the tabloids want a rock star who is truly fucked up, but with the tunes to back it up, maybe they need to go knock on Lupen’s door.

Record Reviews

Montag Label Carpark Words Jamie Hailstone Oh No Ono Label Morningside Words Andy Price One More Grain Label White Heat Words Ashleigh Rainbird imagery Courtesy of respective label

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Montag Going Places Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Beach Boy Brian Wilson had been born in Canada, and not California?

No, I haven’t either, but imagine if he had. All those lush harmonies and complex arrangements would have a touch of Gallic charm instead of the all-American goodness which permeated through songs like ‘Fun Fun Fun’ and ‘California Girls’.

In many ways, this record, the third by Montag, also known as Canadian Antoine Bedard is the natural heir to Pet Sounds, with warm melodies and a ‘60s pop feel for what is Montag’s most ambitious and lush collection of songs to date.

But Montag does not just stop there. On the title track, he teams up with no less than 70 different collaborators. After launching an open call for audio clips, as part of his ‘We Have Sound’ project, he received samples from 15 different countries.

It’s a testament to his talent that all the samples and clips are fused together so beautifully and create such a memorable song.

With these samples, and with a host of other contributors in tow (including fellow musos Anthony Gonzales (M83), Owen Pallet (Final Fantasy), Any Millan (Stars), Au Revoir Simone, Victoria Legrand (Beach House) and Ghislain Poirer to name a few) Montag builds up a lush musical landscape with a stunning mixture of acoustic, electronic and analogue instruments. The end result is a surprisingly cohesive record.

There is a quiet intensity that slowly builds up through the anthemic ‘Best Boy Electric’ and ‘Hands Off Creature’ and comes to a crescendo with the title track. At times, it is peaceful and at other times it is slightly disturbing.

But, Montag has taken an almost laughable number of different influences and musicians and fused them together to make a stunning and cohesive piece of musical art. To do that takes real skill, and he is not one to drop the ball.

Record Reviews

Oh No Ono Yes Listener beware: There is a significant risk of developing an RSI from all the foot tapping you will be prone to when listening to these Danish rascals’ debut record, Yes. Foot tapping isn’t quite the right phrase... leg jigging? Intense vibrations in the calf muscles? It is impossible to be able to perform a simple foot tap when presented with this magnificent synth-laden otherworldly array of lightning paced foolishness.

The ability with which Oh No Ono perform on this record drags the listener along on an intense journey of musical ecstasy.

The chipmunk infused vocal styling can be catchy as hell - only tiring minutely nearer the end.

But this is a journey - and it truly requires the listener to sit back and listen as the five-piece will do all the work - filling our eager palette with sharp guitars, soft but poignant bass, reverb laden drums and erratic yet fantastic synthesisers.

The floating introduction of ‘The Strawberry Festival’ presents a lonesome piano sound - a simple beginning for the sounds to build and come into full force on the biting second track ‘The Shock of the Real’. This oriental tinged romp that departs endless wisdom, reminding us not to fuck with Brussels, and most importantly “You can’t buy love with Euros baby”.

Recent single ‘Practical Money Skills For Life’ is impeccable with its sycophantic guitars and contaminable hooks. The perfectly placed halfway respite, ‘Victim of the Modern Age’ in particular makes this record a pleasure to listen to. It’s not long before the band dispenses again with their instruments, bar synth, to play us out to the beautiful ‘Talking Lynddie England’ bringing to a close a near perfect collection of songs that together make Yes. First released by the excellent Danish indie label Morningside Records way back in August 2006, anticipation for a UK release has been growing steadily through the sporadic forays into the British Isles - most recently with fellow Danes, Figurines. Since it has been well over a year since the initial inception of the album into the music world – it wouldn’t be hasty to expect even more glorious material very soon.

Oh No Ono fully embrace the retro culture that is abound today - but they do it well, the music sounding agonisingly close to being a piss take that if it wasn’t so well performed it could just as easily be disregarded as nonsense. So many acts caught up in an attempted ‘80s revival fall flat on their face and generally looks like dicks... Oh No Ono, well, they still look like dicks, but with an irony that is somewhat endearing. These boys and their musical adventures can’t be praised enough.

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One More Grain Isle of Grain This band, and their album, are a bit odd. NME’s desperate attempts to pigeonhole them produced a rather simplistic ‘postpunk with brass’, but that’s a poor effort to define the theatrics within this Lancaster-accented, laidback brass jamboree of theatrical idiosyncrasies. And NME missed a superb opportunity to use the term ‘avant-garage’ to their advantage, which One More Grain’s influential predecessors Pere Ubu coined specifically so that lazy journalists could wrap up untidy cacophonies in a neat little bundle. So there it is. I’m lazy. And it beats seeing them filed under ‘New Folk’, which will probably have been updated to ‘Nu Folk’ by the time this goes to print.

Musically, the album is a tad abstract. Rhythmical syncopations give a broody and uneasy edge to the majority of tracks. But it’s the stoical lyrics of vocalist Daniel Patrick Quinn, an ex-countryside dwelling philosophy graduate, which will bewilder most. Each track is a musical monologue, with spoken narratives delivered in a burly drawl. He adopts the Wordsworthian hill walker style he acquired in the Scottish Highlands (or ‘Edinburgh’, as it’s alternatively known), to explore London’s urban landscapes with bleak intrigue, mixing fleeting observations with ephemeral anecdotes. ‘A Town is What You Make It’ after all, and he makes East London’s Bow, where the band are based, a bloody carnival. But then again, they do record there in an ex-pub coinhabited by Xerox Teens while the grime scene flourishes around them, so their life probably is carnival-esque if you compare it with one spent trampling through the dales.

First single, ‘Having a Ball’, is the tamest offering from the album. Compared with the peculiarity of ‘Lad with a Balloon’ in which poetry takes the form of ‘rub a dub dang glider, three men in a hang glider’, it’s practically chartable. All these crazy streams of consciousness combine with jazz style trumpets, in a party of pretentiousness to please the Camel puffing v-neck wearers of the East End’s art scene.

‘They say he must have swallowed a clown’; I say he frequently swallows something far more sinister.

Record Reviews

Portico Quartet Label The Vortex Words Gareth Main Sons & Daughters Label Domino Words Theunis Bates The Heliocentrics Label Now-Again Words Ben Wood imagery Courtesy of respective label

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Portico Quartet Knee-deep in the North Sea Jazz has seen something of a re-emergence in popular culture over the past few years. Bands such as the Seb Roachford led Polar Bear and his now major label signed Acoustic Ladyland have led the way, with high selling records and Mercury Music Prize nominations following in their wake.

In fact, the F-IRE Collective, London’s eclectic jazz community, have forged jazz back into the public ear and life is all the better for it. Okay, we may not have the smoky jazz clubs of yesteryear thanks to new laws which you may or may not agree with but, in London Gillett Square’s Vortex Jazz Club, the jazz community has a dedicated venue that wreaks of quality rather than pretention.

And it is in conjunction with perhaps the world’s best jazz record label Babel that The Vortex have set up a record label themselves and, in keeping with jazz’s improvisational roots, who else to mark the label’s first release than a bunch of buskers?

Portico Quartet have, they say, sold 10,000 records by busking on London’s South Bank. For a four piece band who clock up a collective age of around twenty years fewer then the age of Louis Armstrong if he were still alive today, it is a pretty special achievement.

And the band don’t sound like a bunch of art students simply ripping off what has been before them. The quartet manage to continue the work of the F-IRE Collective by producing a contemporary jazz record, if such a thing can exist, tracks such as ‘Steps in the Wrong Direction’ build and build layers upon one another for an epic, climatic finish before segueing seamlessly into the next track.

Throughout Knee-deep... the quartet take the more than complicated aesthetics of jazz, crash them around and bring them all together in a way that could be defined as regimented chaos. There is little orchestration but the layers all fit together in a perfect mess.

But that perfect mess will be the downfall in hitting the mainstream. There is little to dance to on Knee-deep, rather you would prefer to sit in a darkened, smoky club and nod slowly in appreciation to its beautiful show of instrumentation, from Jack Wyllie’s saxophone through double bass and to Chinese cooking implement come Caribbean steel drum instrument the hang.

Eclectic, delicious and creamy, 21st century jazz at its best.

Record Reviews

Sons & Daughters This Gift Dear reader, I have a confession to make. When it comes to music, I’m a little... anti the white woman. Flick through my collection and you’ll find Aretha, Kelis, CSS and Chinese noisters Hang on the Box. But no Joni Mitchell and no Vashti Bunyan.

Before you shred the magazine in disgust, let me explain my unsound prejudice. I’m from a new-age family whose idea of good child rearing involved force-feeding me lentils, Clannad and Enya. Sure I could retreat to my room and detox with the Jesus Lizard, but still those fey folk sounds crept in. Now any female voice touched by tweeness or incense-smoke – that means you Cat Power, and you Martha Wainwright – will trigger a shivering flashback White women singers are the collateral damage of this unfortunate upbringing. But there are a few exceptions. If there’s enough grit, enough, lets call it ‘un-Enya,’ in a voice then I’ll forgive its owner’s Europeaness. Adele Bethel of Sons & Daughters is the apogee of this anti-twee ethos. With a voice that veers from a bitter Scottish snarl to a banshee scream, she can cut through unfaithful lovers and rivals, and weave murder ballads worthy of Johnny Cash.

It’s that scream, or rather the lack of it, that first hits you when you listen to Sons & Daughters’ third album, This Gift.

Maybe producer Bernard Butler told Adele to tame her vocals.

After working with Suede frontman Brett Anderson for a large part of your career, it’s understandable that you’d develop an aversion to screeching. Or maybe it’s just that the band have been slowly evolving into a poppier beast. While first album Love the Cup fused Pogues-ish folk with rockabilly, its sequel The Repulsion Box bubbled with darker, post-punk sounds. Now under the stewardship of Bowie-fanatic Butler, Sons & Daughters have applied a glam finish to their songs. ‘Darling’ – a delicious dissection of football WAGs – features a jagged guitar line that echoes the Bowie-produced, Iggy Pop track ‘Some Weird Sin.’ Those sharp, Bowie-inspired riffs also slice through ‘Rebel With A Ghost,’ maybe one of the only songs about battling depression to feature a sing-along “nah-na-na-nah” Phil Spector chorus.

And the lyrics don’t get any lighter. A newspaper article about Assia Wevill, a less-famous lover of Ted Hughes’ who also committed suicide, inspired This Gift. ‘Iodine’ – a slow, Smiths-ish jangle – strolls through the mind of a self-harmer. And behind the stomping soul beat of ‘The Nest’ is a depressing tale inspired

by Ken Loach’s pioneering saga of homelessness ‘Cathy Come Home.’

This Gift is wrapped in energy, but there’s a sense that the band are sometimes fighting to escape Butler’s heavy-handed production. The beauty of Sons & Daughters lies in their raw unpredictability. Does the already tender ‘Split Lips’ really need a backdrop of violins, or ‘This Gift’ a mini-synth freakout? The answer can be found in the album’s final two tracks, where the screams and the chaos are left in. ‘House in My Head,’ another inwardlooking epic of depression, races on a simple, incessant beat.

And ‘Goodbye Service’ boasts the album’s greatest fuzzed-up guitar line, a riff worthy of early ‘90s Mudhoney.

Sons & Daughters have long been tipped as the next big thing. But to finally breakthrough, they’ll need a producer who can capture the chaos of their sound, and not force his own tidier vision on them.

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The Heliocentrics Out There (Adopts portentous ’50s-style sci-fi narrator’s voice) This is a journey through space and time… Get ready to lose yourself in the Twilight Zone soundscapes of cosmic nu-jazzers The Heliocentrics.

This outfit already has quite a rep, they have accompanied turntablist demi-god DJ Shadow on a track; are currently collaborating with the legendary David Axelrod; and bandleader Malcolm Catto provides hip-hop producer Madlib with his drum breaks. It’s easy to see why: you can imagine these almost entirely vocal-free tunes being plundered for samples by the more progressive hip-hop heads and soundtrack merchants.

Out There was four years in the making, and features an eight-piece band who create their stoned-out grooves largely organically (and feature some unusual-sounding instruments: Thai guitar, oud and santur anyone?). The Bridget Riley-style black-and-white ‘60s Op Art sleeve (the kind you stare at and your eyes go funny) is an appropriate guide to the spacey sonics within. Bandleader Catto’s drums propel a shape-shifting melange of bubbling dub rhythms, on-and-off funky percussion, superfly bass, cheesy ‘50s sci-fi samples, Sun-Ra-style horns, sundry FX and psychedelic keyboards.

The off-kilter horns and cosmic titles (Distant Star, Flight 583, Sirius B, They Are Among Us, Age of the Sun, Sirius A) display a kinship with the intergalactic idealism of jazz genii Sun Ra and John Coltrane. However, some of the tracks have echoes of the ambience, eclectic funk and uptempo trip-hop of the mid-90s, as well as traces of early ‘70s funk and ‘60s psychedelia.

You might expect an album called Out There to feature a handful of long tracks alone. Instead, there are 24 short ones – doubling as one long groove with many variations. It’s difficult to pick out individual tunes: this is the opposite of the typical modern funky record that features a few decent moments but overstays its welcome. This is an old-fashioned, ‘spark up a doobie, sit back and listen to the whole thing in one go’ number.

Trying to fit this charming and accessible record into a pigeonhole is pointless and impossible. It contains elements of hip-hop, funk, jazz, ambience, psychedelia and electronica.

While not as groundbreaking as its creators make out, it is an involving and transporting listen. This is a musical bubble bath, neither background nor foreground music but somewhere inbetween. It is definitely atmospheric, but there’s a bit too much going on for it to be mere aural wallpaper.

To the stars…

Singles Round-Up

The turn of the year is a bad time for independent releases. With major labels fighting it out for which crap best of record will fill most Christmas stockings, there really isn’t a market for the little man.

So how nice it is to see Malcolm Middleton getting in on the fight with his 1000-1 for Christmas number one single ‘We’re All Going to Die’ (Full Time Hobby). The fast-paced opener for outstanding third release A Brighter Beat, it is filled with the Christmas cheer likened to fighting through Primark on a Saturday trying to buy a pair of new socks. Bah humbug indeed, we love it.

Keeping it in Scotland, Edinburgh’s Damn Shames have been hopping onto the Klaxons-led, vomit-inducing “new rave scene” or whatever label the press have put on it this week. Their second single ‘Fear of Assault / Last Things’ (Albeano) continues on in the same vein without bringing much new to the table. There is undoubtedly something underlying what, on the face of it, is plagiarism of the plagiarists and the three 19-year olds will have to use that if they are going to avoid being tarred with the same brush as many others.

One band who managed to be thrown in with the Klaxons around the time people were getting excited about dance with guitars (yeah HOW original is that?!) were Shitdisco. Perhaps it is something to do with them being much better than aforementioned contemporaries or their radio unfriendly name but everyone seemed to ignore the excellent Kingdom of Fear when it was released in April. Awesomely funky and deliciously independent, ‘I Know Kung Fu’ (Fierce Panda) cuts a cloth that pretty much shits all over anything else labelled with the woeful new rave title.

Saving us from all this guitars and dance bollocks is Ralph Cumbers as Bass Clef who continues to lead the way in the emerging Dubstep scene. Taking the melodies of IDM and mixing it with elements of Jungle and Gabba, ‘Zamyatin Tapes Vol. 1 and Vol. 2’ (Blank Tapes) are two outstanding records clocking in at about 15 minutes each. Instead of trying to make you dance, Cumbers just shakes you to the bone with thunderous bass that powers through you to submission, delicious.

On the other side of the fence is Speed Circus who seem to be stuck somewhere in the early noughties. ‘Lighthouse’ (Degenerate) sounds like it comes from somewhere between The Bandits and The Coral. Perhaps news doesn’t travel fast from the North West to London but both said bands saw their ships (ho ho sea shanties) sail a long while back. This is a sound that has long since passed its best before date and is only going to attract those embarrassing Noel Gallagher fanboy types who should have stopped buying new bands’ records around 2003.

Taking that upbeat guitar-led sound and doing something different with it is Spilt Milk on their debut single ‘Frank’ (Happy Release). With a penchant for glockenspiels, ‘Frank’ bobs along in a lovely twee manner. The odd shout and wood block bashing gives a nice taste for what may come afterwards from the London four-piece.

Carrying on this upbeat guitar stuff, Sunny Day Sets Fire have given a taste of their forthcoming debut record with the AArelease of ‘End of the Road / Lack of View’ (Brikabrak). ‘End of the Road’ (not a reference to the fabulous festival co-organised by their manager Sofia Hagberg) skips along nicely enough, but it doesn’t do as much for us as some of our live favourites that we can sense coming on the long player whilst ‘Lack of View’ is a six minute epic that slowly builds to a tremendous climax. We know more (and better) is to come, so we’ll hold on tight.

Words Jeremy Style

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Described as funked-up hip-hop-pop by their press people, there isn’t particularly much to fit that description on the back of this single from Belfast four-piece Olympic Lifts. What ‘I am Cursed’ (Bruised Fruit) is though is an upbeat sing-along, swimming along nicely with waves of trumpets, duelling vocals, comedy and monkey references. Their future looks bright, despite the fact that their third album is pending. Totally awesome Ice, Sea, Dead People could either be the best or worst band name you’ve ever come across. Letting the music do the talking, we love it. Little over two minutes of insanely catchy punk with riproaring guitars illogical screaming, ‘Hence:Elvis’ (Dirty / Buyourself) is the first single from the Bedford three-piece. And they have cracked something on the head with their ace garage punk, just mind you don’t crack your own head when listening in.

The ten year old ‘UKs Biggest Small Label’ Static Caravan have released some incredibly awesome music to celebrate their anniversary in 2007, just go listen to the Serafina Steer, Shady Bard and Binary Oppositions records and see what we mean. It is pretty fitting that they should bookend the old and new years with the release of two amazing singles. Yellow Moon Band with ‘Maybach’, a ravishing guitar-led instrumental which, if it had apt words, would be ripping apart most alternative radio stations.

They do start singing on b-side ‘Folly’ and it’s brilliant, mixing epic rock guitars with their almost country lyrical offerings could offer a bizarre, but luminous, new future. As far as limited edition singles go, it could only really be usurped by Safety Word’s ‘Pope Joan / Dandelion Clock’ on which ‘Pope Joan’ sounds as unpredictable as any record you’ll hear all century. It bobbles along, weaving and winding, and you are always on tenterhooks for what they’re going to do next. This is supported by ‘Dandelion Clock’ as, when you think the band are going to launch into something unadulterated and loud, they dampen it down with a psychedelic lullaby. They describe it as “Syd Barrett soothing toddlers to sleep”, we’re inclined to agree.

One of the hits of First Steps Into..., the third album by Blue States was definitely ‘Last of Old England’. Unfortunately it is the less amazing ‘Down the Days’ that soundtracks the Down the Days EP (Memphis Industries). Most of Andy Dragazis’s output over the years has hovered in the middleground between ace and horrid, rarely stretching either way. Here, nothing on the EP changes tempo much at all - cruising again in second gear. It would be wonderful for Dragazis to throw caution to the wind at some point, but the future is increasingly bleak.

The final record in the pile is from our (new) favourite Icelanders amiina who managed to rope in the late Lee Hazlewood to sing over their beautifully soft melodies on a new version of ‘Hilli’ (Ever). After being approached by his manager, Hazlewood agreed on the condition that his manager wrote the words. After being told to research a Finnish legend about an island where the snow tasted of sugar, his manager, Wyndham Wallace, managed to conjur up the words despite never finding the legend. In pain Hazlewood adapted and recorded the words and the result, released just four months after his death on 4 August 2007, is one of the most pleasant, heart wrenching records ever put to tape. The image of an old man on his deathbed singing a sweet lament, mixed with a delightful orchestral backing, provides an apt end to a celebrated career.

Coming Soon Diary Dates

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ballboy 20/12/07 Cabaret Voltaire (Edinburgh) Edinburgh’s finest four-piece indie janglers return from hiding since the release of 2004’s The Royal Theatre to play material from their forthcoming new album, pencilled in for release in the new year.

For the uninitiated, think Belle & Sebastian but with fewer people and ruder songs with more than ample support from the late, great John Peel.

Untitled Musical Project 21/12/07 Clockwork (London) Settle yourself into the last weekend before Christmas with a show from the Bearded favourites. Playing in support of their outstanding self-titled debut long player, you can expect outlandish raucousness, with top quality tunes that strike an outstanding balance between loud brashness and tunefulness.

KateGoes 21/12/07 B2 (Norwich) Unbelievably still unsigned five piece who sound like the result of a love affair between God and a squeaky toy.

Superbly twee and unlike anything that has been heard before, they’re more than likely to be dressed up for a themed night. Previous themes include KateGoes... down the Rabbit hole, KateGoes... swimming and KateGoes... and gets pregnant. Expect the unexpected and expect the brilliant.

Web www.myspace.com/ballboymusic www.myspace.com/untitledmusicalproject www.myspace.com/kategoes www.myspace.com/drumstreetsefa www.myspace.com/porticoquartet www.myspace.com/seasicksteve

Serafina Steer 23/12/07 The Prince Albert (Brighton) Most definitely not the British Joanna Newsom but with many reference points for lazy journalists like, erm, she plays the harp - a bit like saying that Razorlight are like any talented guitar band. Steer’s outstanding debut album Cheap Demo Bad Science is more than enough reason to investigate further. One girl and her harp, and biting lyrical references, is there any reason not to enquire?

Portico Quartet 09/01/08 Brunei Gallery (London) The best dressed buskers in London town take their Babel label approved jazz for a show at the free entry Brunei Gallery.

Playing in support of recently released debut record knee-deep in the North Sea. Expect something brilliant.

Seasick Steve 26/01/08 Carling Academy (Birmingham) Doesn’t require much of an introduction.

Just over a year on from his breakthrough Hootenanny performance that propelled him into the spotlight, ancient bluesman Steve continues to tour relentlessly. This is his second show at this venue in little over three months – not bad for an old timer.

Coming Soon Sons & Daughters

Sons and Daughters are the much fancied Glaswegian foursome who have toured with Franz Ferdinand and Morrissey, and are about to release their third album This Gift. Ailidh Lennon tells Daisy Greenwell it’s by far their best album yet.

Sons & Daughters This Gift Label Domino Due 28/01/08

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How did the band first begin? When Adele and Dave were playing in Arab Strap she wrote some songs on the tour bus and he promised to play the drums on them. I had been learning to play classical piano and mandolin, and Adele was working in a record shop when she met Scott, and he played guitar, so we all just got a practice together one day, and it started from there really. Is it true that the name came from a dream? Yeah, well Adele had had a dream about Bob Dylan playing in the back of her parents garden, and he was singing ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’ and got to the line “your sons and daughters are beyond your command,” and she just thought what an excellent name for a band. Your first record, Love the Cup, was released by little-known Brooklyn label Ba Da Bing! There can’t be that many unsigned Glasgow bands whose first record was released under an American independent label. Yeah, that was kind of weird how that came about. The first proper touring we ever did was in America. It was strange going from playing a handful of shows in Glasgow to the coasts of America. People were actually coming to see us and we were just like ‘what?!’ What did they make of you out there? Some people can understand us ok, but some people really struggled [with our accents] and couldn’t understand what we were saying. A lot of people say ‘your English is very good!’ as though English is our second language.

Is it better when you tour over here then? We play really small venues. We’re trying to get the new songs up to scratch live. We seem to be getting good reactions though, from people in places we’ve never been before, like Carlisle. I think the best place we have played was Brighton the other day. Just because it’s a place we’ve played quite a lot before, and the people kind of… I don’t know, maybe they’ve got more sense of it or something. The worst one was probably in Oxford last night. There was about a hundred people there and they were all a bit reserved. It was a bit of struggle. It’s like ‘do you even like us? Do you want us to leave?’ no, it’s not as bad as that! You’ve toured with Franz Ferdinand haven’t you? Yeah. We’ve done quite a lot actually. We supported Morrissey last year. We couldn’t have asked for better people to tour with, we’ve been really lucky in that sense. Glasgow has got an amazingly creative music and arts scene, why is that? Yeah it does. Maybe because it’s such a small city that everyone knows each other and collaborates with each other. It’s also so far from London that it’s kind of in its own little bubble up there. There’s not nearly as much bandwagon jumping.

There are loads and loads of bands and they all know each other but they’re all doing completely separate music. There’s no scene of one kind of music. Everyone who likes music there likes all kinds of music, they are very open minded. You guys are very influenced by American folk, but what about the Scottish kind? Well it’s something that’s often said to us, but none of us come from a traditional folk background or anything.

But because I play the mandolin in some of the songs people sort of relate that to traditional folk music. We weren’t brought up with it, but I think maybe there’s a wee bit of it there somewhere. Scott and Adele are a couple, do you think that makes a good on stage chemistry for the band? Well yeah I think so. The band we’re on tour with at the moment (Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club), there’re two girls and a guy and one of the girls and the guy are together aswell. I’ve been watching them every day and they have a proper chemistry on stage. I can’t really watch my own band when I’m playing, but it’s made me wonder ‘what are Scott and Adele like on stage?’ maybe there’s a sexual tension or something (giggles)! What was it like recording the new record? It was pretty much the longest we’ve ever spent recording an album. We recorded it with Bernard Butler, the guitarist from Suede. We took about eight weeks recording it down in London in a recording studio in West Hampstead. So it was a real luxury for us to be able to work with a proper producer, someone who had lots of ideas, who knew what was working and what wasn’t working. I think the album has totally benefited from that. As a result we were able to try out a lot of stuff. There are loads and loads of layers of guitars, and loads and loads of different things we’ve never tried before. We really wanted to push ourselves. Would you say it’s your best album yet? Yeah, by a long way. The last two were done so quickly, because of budget restraints and everything. Repulsion Box we did in two weeks, and Love the Cup in five days, so it’s definitely the best. Have you got a favourite track on it? Yeah, it’s called The Nest. It’s a very dark song, great to play live. Where do you hope to go with Sons and Daughters in the future? I hope we can play with as many great people as we can, and travel the world. Maybe start thinking about another album, we’re already starting to have ideas for the next one, only vague ones, but there’s definitely another one in there.

Coming Soon Sons & Daughters

Photography Danielle St Laurent

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Coming Soon Jim Noir

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Jim Noir is a one-man indie pop tune producing machine from Manchester.

Churning out songs from conception to the final glossy product, he is a model of synergy, aided by the good folks at My Dad Records, who release his work in the UK. Fresh off a support gig with Super Furry Animals and with a new EP entitled All Right, Jim kindly gave Amanda Farah a few thoughts about his new EP, the future of the CD, and his plans for next year.

Firstly, your trend of releasing EPs. Is there any reason you seem to favour the string of EPs leading into LPs? Can we expect another EP before your next full length? I’m not sure yet actually. I imagine there may be another EP or a single before the album to warm everyone up for it. Although if I had the choice I’d put the album out tomorrow so I can get cracking on another one. I’ve been away too long and want to vent all my musical juices. The EP is coming out as a digital download and on vinyl. Was it your decision or the label’s to forego CDs? Will future releases see the same formats?

Well it’s only a matter of time before CDs are gone as a music buying thing. I’m sure they will stay around as semi decent ways to copy and share stuff. With my stuff I’ve always asked the label gods to make sure it comes out on vinyl, purely cos I want it on vinyl meself. Most of my music I hope will one day be out on plasma dolphin, which is an invisible form of mind potato giving the listener the option of listening to up to 14 tracks simultaneously whilst mixing them together and playing the instrument of their choice on their favourite record, live, over the internet. How do you feel the All Right EP is different from the songs on the Tower Of Love? What can we expect for your full length? When can we expect a full length? Full length is definitely coming trust me, in March 2008 hopefully. Compared to Tower Of Love the next one is positively speaker blowing. All the tracks are quite different from each other so they don’t all sound like All Right. I wanted to do a choir song but I don’t know any choirs so I did it meself. You write, record, produce, and mix all of your work. Any parts of the process you prefer? Any bits that are particularly painful? Yeah all those bits are my favourite bit. The most painful bit is when I realise I wrote better songs than are on the album that I forgot about. Final note, your songs have ended up on television in the States in Adidas commercials and episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. Have you seen any of the shows or adverts? How do you feel about your music reaching audiences this way? I’m in two minds really. I don’t wanna be known for being an advert whore who won’t say no to anything. But in another way, it really is the only way I can make enough money to buy penguin food for my pet penguin Larry as I am not and may never reach the top 40. C’mon kids, buy my records and I’ll stop selling out!

Jim Noir Title TBC Label My Dad Due March 2008

Coming Soon Jim Noir

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Photography Amanda Farah Jessie Grout Smith

From the Euphotic Depths Minutemen

One of Bearded’s writers plunges deep into the delves of independent music to dredge up an artist who lurked beneath the radar of musical taste. This issue, Dmitri Kossavanov revisits seeing the band who would change his life, Minutemen…

Selected Discography The Punch Line (SST, 1981) What Makes A Man Start Fires? (SST, 1983) Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat EP (SST, 1983) Double Nickels on the Dime (SST, 1984) 3-Way Tie (for last) (SST, 1985)

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It was a warm October evening in 1981 when I was invited by a friend to go and see a band who, in his words, would, “change the world”. In San Francisco, we all seemed to think that music would change the world and, as the hardcore punk scene spread across the US, life felt pretty good.

The band my friend was talking about was Minutemen – a raucous three-piece from San Pedro who sounded like nothing else around. With any hint of bass or midrange frequencies on D. Boon’s guitar switched off, his trademark tightly loose guitar style introduced me to ‘Static’ – the first Minutemen song I ever heard – which, by the time Mike Watt’s unique bass style had made no sense underneath Boon eight seconds later, had me hooked. A further forty-five seconds of awe had me counting the pennies to buy a copy of their outstanding, and for me unparalleled, debut record The Punch Line.

That record symbolised everything that Minutemen were about: cheap, no thrills awesomeness. The record’s 18 tracks clock in at exactly 15 minutes, it was recorded after midnight (when studio space was cheapest) in one night and onto previously used tape. The album’s rapid recording is reflected in the tracks, with the onslaught of sub-minute track after another, led by Watt’s controlled rambunctious bass lines and Boon’s cutting treble guitar, the record picks you up, rips off your head, shakes it about for quarter of an hour than puts you back together, exhausted, to enjoy the ride once again.

It was that DIY ethic that characterised the band. Referred to by them as ‘Econo’, the threesome would often book the studio in graveyard hours, record live so that they didn’t have to waste time mastering and practice regularly so that they had to do the least amount of recording to get a record finished. On their live tours, the band would tech the shows themselves and carry their own equipment. It was these practices that actually made the band profitable despite the lack of any widespread popularity.

In fact, as the band became more popular, their recordings were made increasingly cheaply. 1983’s Buzz of Howl Under the Influence of Heat, an 8-track EP that clocked in at thirty seconds longer than their debut long player, was recorded for a mere $50 as the record was recorded live to two-track tape with no overdubs being recorded. The record showed a development in the Minutemen sound, with the band experimenting more and incorporating solos. The instrumental ‘Dreams are Free, Motherfucker!’ and ‘The Toe Jam’ marked the most wild diversions from the sound categorised on The Punch Line.

Another characteristic of the band was their humour. As well as adopting the traditional politically-inspired lyrics of many of their contemporaries, both Watt and Boon frequently injected comedic references into their songs. ‘Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs’ (from What Makes a Man Start Fires?) is a cloaked tribute to Dylan (a hero of Watt’s), parodying his early lyrical style.

Summer 1984 was what many critics identify as the band’s crowning point. The release of the unprecedented 45-track record Double Nickels on the Dime, marked the next step away from Minutemen’s punk roots with heavy elements of jazz creeping into D. Boon’s acclaimed guitar work alongside swing and country to mix in to create a completely unique and unmatched sound.

The unprecedented length to Double Nickels... came almost by accident. The band had written an album but Watt had been convinced to go back into the studio after hearing label mates Hüsker Dü’s double album Zen Arcade. The record was inevitably the band’s most expensive, costing around $1,100 to record in various locations. The band then allocated each of them a side of the record and drew straws to see which of them could pick their side first. The fourth side became the chaff side, with the tracks being what was left over from the band picking their tracks. The record is also known for containing arguably the band’s most well-know song ‘Corona’, which was used as the theme for ‘Jackass’.

In 1985, the band came to a tragic end. Shortly after the release of their fourth LP 3-Way Tie (for last), D. Boon died in a road accident. On 22 December, Boon was travelling in the back of a van, lying down without a seatbelt as he had been suffering from a fever. The van ran off the road and Boon was reportedly thrown out of the vehicle, breaking his neck and dying instantaneously. The band broke up but resurfaced as fIREHOSE, a poor replacement for the band, with Minutemen fanatic Ed Crawford.

After Minutemen, Watt also performed with his wife (now divorced) Kira Roessler (former bassist in Black Flag) under the guise of Dos and has recently been playing bass for Iggy and the Stooges. After fIREHOSE, George Hurley collaborated again with Watt on Unknown Instructors with Pere Ubu’s David Thomas. The passion and intensity of Minutemen, for me, has never been recaptured.

Illustration Opposite Hannah Barton Web www.hannahbarton.com

Bearded FFP. C 65

FFP. B Competition Winner

Bearded FFP. C 66

Last issue we asked you to do lots of various things in the hope of winning a Tunng tote bag full of goodies. The winner of the competition was Newcastle resident Lewis Young who sent us the following tale about a Platypus. Lots of goodies off to you!

“Unfortunately for me, the only platypus I have ever had the displeasure of meeting was a criminal, which is never a pleasant experience to be involved in.

After returning home from a hard day’s work at the Jam factory (old Melvin Murraymints had trapped his hand in the berry-crushing machine again - I tell you, that poor guy is going to lose that hand of his one day), I found the platypus in question sitting in my favourite armchair, smoking a thin Cuban cigar. He had a menthol cigarette sitting in an ashtray, which was placed on the arm of my chair, waiting patiently to be smoked.

He introduced himself: “Hello. You can call me Jeffrey. I’m an investment banker by trade.”

I know now that he was lying. His name was Richard.

I asked the obvious: “What are you doing in my house?”

“I’m here to offer you an investment opportunity.” he said, calmly. “You see, my Nigerian uncle recently passed away, leaving an incredible fortune behind. His will clearly states that this is my inheiritance. Unfortunately, due to unforseen circumstances, this money is locked within his offshore bank account. Basically, I need a trusted UK businessman to transfer these funds from the offshore bank account into the UK, as Nigerian law is very complicated, and prevents me from doing this myself. This is where YOU come in. You are that trusted businessman.”

Strangely, I don’t own a business. I never have. However, I’m not one to turn down an opportunity to help someone in need. I continued to listen to what Jeffrey had to say.

“Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to carry out this perfectly legal transaction for free. You are entitled to ten percent of his fortune for your troubles. Should you take on this fantastic opportunity, you will receive 8.7 MILLION US DOLLARS.” He spoke those last few words in capitals, to emphasise his point.

I remained silent. I was thinking about how wet Jeffrey was making my armchair. I thought about offering him a towel, but I didn’t have one big enough.

“Listen, I’ll leave my number here. You don’t need to decide right now. Just give me a call when you do.”

He left, taking his ashtray with him.

Three weeks have passed now since I rang Jeffrey back and gave him my bank details. Turns out he wasn’t an investment banker at all, he was a con-man (or con-platypus, depending on how PC you are). He left me penniless, and worst of all, I can’t get the smell of fish fingers out of my armchair.”

Imagery Courtesy of Tunng

Bearded FFP. C 67

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