AU Magazine Issue 61

£3.50 December 2009 www.iheartau.com

Phil Kieran Techno Technician

Sufjan Stevens New York State Of Mind

Editors Living In Synth

HEALTH Live Fast, Die Slow

Iss

61

AIR

A Case Of Mistakes And Identity

&

Belfast Burlesque / Josh Ritter / The Clash Bill Murray / Biffy Clyro / Josef K / Funeral Suits Wild Palms / Gama Bomb / Why? / mojoFURY Crimea X / Green Day / Two Door Cinema Club

—3 AU Magazine—

my inspiration The Boxer Rebellion

Oh you wouldn’t want an angel watching over surprise surprise they wouldn’t wanna watch another uninnocent elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults The National

Mistaken For Strangers (taken from the album Boxer)

UNION by The Boxer Rebellion Out now at hmv stores and hmv.com

Photography by Tessa Angus

—4 issue 61—

MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS. Words and Music by Matthew Berninger, Aaron Dessner and Bryce Dessner © 2007 VAL JESTER MUSIC (ASCAP), ABD 13 MUSIC (ASCAP) and HAWK RIDGE SONGS (ASCAP).

All Administered by BUG MUSIC. All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

Iss

AU Magazine —Feature Contents

61

—34 HEALTH “I want to slap Lars Ulrich in the face when he’s selling some painting at auction and cheering with his Cristal”

—36 Air “We are judged always by what we have done, rather than what we are doing”

—42 Phil Kieran “This has to be the best I can possibly make it, or what’s the fucking point?”

—44 Sufjan Stevens “I haven’t written songs in a while. I’ve been taking a hiatus, thinking more existentially and less practically about music”

—48 Editors “If we can be a little subversive and sneak in a little blackness behind a good tune, then I’m quite happy”

Breaking Through —21Funeral Suits

Photo by Nay McArdle

—5 AU Magazine—

Editorial Hello, is 2009 there? We were just talking a second ago, but it seems to have disappeared. They say time moves more quickly as you age, but there does seem to be a universal sense that it is passing at an accelerated rate these days. It feels like only yesterday we were looking ahead to 2009, getting excited about the albums that were coming up, and thinking of all the live bands there were to look forward to. Now the year is drawing to a close and there has hardly been time to breathe. And not only is it the end of another year, but it’s the closing of a decade too.

That’s why for the next issue of AU we’re going to be casting our minds back over the past 10 years for a very special retrospective feature. We don’t want to let the cat out of the bag too early, but we’re really excited about it, and you should be too. All will be revealed in the next few days, so make sure and keep an eye on our forum over at www.iheartau.com.

Weird iheartau.com Search Hits

- This month we decided that rather than have Stupid Things

Said, we’d enlighten you with some of the search terms that have led people to our website, iheartau.com. These terms in no way reflect the content of the site – we’re not perverts!

Tender gay moments Boyfriend in girlfriend shoes People who wear a lot of make up Young man wearing long johns Black shemale big cock dream I Heart Stu Bell Urinating ladies Pleasantly ravaging Naked policewoman Signs of manhood YouTube self-touching Men without pants

—Issue 61 Contributors Publisher / Editor In Chief

Jonny Tiernan

Editor

Francis Jones

Sub Editor

Chris Jones

Contributing Editor Ross Thompson Senior Contributor

Edwin McFee

Contributors

John Calvert, Neill Dougan, Mickey Ferry, John Freeman, Lee Gorman, James Gracey, David Hamilton, Lisa Hughes, Aaron Kennedy, Ailbhe Malone, Nay McArdle, Gerard McCann, Kirstie McCrum, Paul McIver, Kenny Murdock, Joe Nawaz, Steven Rainey, Shain Shapiro, Craig Sheridan, Jeremy Shields.

Design/Illustration

Stuart Bell, Luke Carson, Tim Farrell, Neil Gillespie, Elissa Parente, Mark Reihill

Photo Editor

Richard W Crothers

Photography

John Adams Carrie Davenport Collette McHugh Lucy McCrisken Alessio Michelini

Kim Barclay Promotions And Marketing Assistant —6 issue 61—

AU Magazine —Contents (continued)

6 7 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 18 20

22 24

The AU Stereo Belfast Burlesque Victorian English Gentlemens Club / Gama Bomb Josh Ritter Why? / Hello My Name Is / Heartwork Yes Cadets Fiery Furnaces / We Must Hide In The Studio: Oppenheimer Five To One: Nerds / Eighties Wrestlers Incoming: Wild Palms / Crimea X Breaking Through: Floating Points / Bosque Brown / Funeral Suits / Let Our Enemies Beware / Owensie Hey You! What’s On Your iPod? On The Road With The Answer

25 26 29 32

Flashback: The TV Debut Of The Young Ones History Lessons: Josef K Respect Your Shelf: Bill Murray Classic Album: Public Image Limited – Metal Box

50 Album Reviews 62 Unsigned Universe 63 Live Reviews

Sc

67 70 72 74 76 78 80 81

Most Wanted Screen Games Books Comics Back Of The Net In Pictures: Funeral For A Friend / Biffy Clyro The Last Word – Two Door Cinema Club

To advertise in AU Magazine contact the sales team Tel: 028 9032 4888 or via email jonny@iheartau.com The opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editor or the publisher. Copyright remains with the author / photographer / designer.

Send demos / mail / material to: AU Magazine, 56 Bradbury Place, Belfast, BT7 1RU For more info contact: info@iheartau.com For all general and editorial enquiries call: 028 9032 4455 AU Magazine graciously acknowledges funding support from the Arts Council Of Northern Ireland

Breaking Through —21Let Our Enemies Beware

—7 AU Magazine—

Upfront

The AU Stereo

The AU Stereo

A Place To Bury Strangers Ego Death (Mute)

The Sounds Rockin’ The Office Airwaves This Month...

Julian Casablancas Glass (Rough Trade)

The sometime Strokes’ frontman has made some bold claims for his solo debut, Phrazes For The Young, even suggesting that he might just have bridged the gap between classical and modern music. The tunes may not always live up to their creator’s OTT billing, but here he most certainly walks it like he talks it. Rhythms mass with ominous intent behind spluttering keys, Casablancas intoning in his lead-lined style as we plunge towards a sheer emotional precipice. FJ

GLASS ROCK GLASS ROCK (ECSTATIC PEACE) Beautiful people have great looking children, right?

So, when New York folk-rockers Tall Firs and Detroit psychedelic popsters Soft Location got together for a weeklong musical shag-fest, the results were never in doubt. They spawned the band Glass Rock and the track of the same name (taken from their self-explanatory-titled album Tall Firs Meets Soft Location) is a seriously slinky piece of lounge rock, with Kathy Leisen’s languorous vocal hinting at all sorts of guiltless pleasures. JF COMANECHI DEATH OF YOU (MEROK) Upon hearing Comanechi, Kim Gordon was moved to declare that they make her, “Want to punch holes in Thurston’s face until I can fuck it”. Any band that earns such lavish and lurid praise from Sonic Youth’s high priestess is alright by us. The London-based twosome – Akiko sings and bangs the drums, Simon plays guitar – release their

—8 issue 61—

debut album, Crime Of Love, later this month. This is one of the standouts on a record bristling with sandpaper melodies and caffeinated punk-rock vigour. FJ OWL CITY FIREFLIES (ISLAND) Oh, how we could easily take a dislike to Mr Adam ‘Owl City’ Young. He’d had over 7 million hits on his MySpace page before releasing a record, and he’s very keen to inform anyone that he “follows Jesus Christ wholeheartedly.” By this point AU’s alarm bells began to tinkle. But, any hatred was sent packing on hearing ‘Fireflies’ - a giant, geeky slab of electronic pop with a melody so Goddamned hummable it will haunt your every waking moment. JF SHACKLETON ASHA IN THE TABERNACLE (PERLON) Sam Shackleton is the kind of visionary producer that transcends genre. Sure, the torrents of sub-bass in his tunes owe much to dubstep, but

The New York trio’s debut proper is frequently of a lighter timbre than the terrifying collection of EPs that came out last year amid talk of ‘The loudest band in New York’. Not here though, oh no. The towering centrepiece of the formidable Exploding Head, ‘Ego Death’ is a dead-eyed wonder that channels all your favourite bands that have ever worn shades and a black leather jacket. Oliver Ackerman stays in mean-and-moody mode throughout, but the guitars sell it, played through custom-made pedals and squealing in the chorus as if summoned from the depths of hell. CJ

Darwin Deez Constellations (Lucky Number)

He may look like a cross between a member of MGMT and one of Harry Enfield’s Scousers, but Darwin Deez is one undeniably fun, psych-pop proposition. His debut, double A-side single, ‘Constellations’ / ‘The Coma Song’ is released on Lucky Number on December 7. ‘Constellations’ mixes Strokes - style guitars with a stampede of joyous handclaps and fizzing keys. Throughout Deez cloaks himself in a mystical vibe, the lyrics to children’s nursery rhyme ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ segueing into a wonder-filled existential musing. That’s some good work. FJ

his new album Three EPs goes way beyond the template laid out by Skream, Benga and co, and this track from it is one of the creepiest pieces of music you’ll hear all year. Snatches of the children’s hymn ‘He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands’ drift into the mix among the groaning synths, the pitterpatter of percussion and the churning bass, and it sounds for all the world like a funeral march. This is gloriously weird and wholly original stuff. CJ

You thought the States has this whole noise-pop thing sewn up? You thought wrong, as Peckham synth-and-drums two-piece Gentle Friendly are holding it down for this side of the pond. Like No Age, Animal Collective, Deerhunter et al, they oscillate between serrated noise and moments of dreamy serenity. This track from their debut album falls into the latter camp, a lilting tale of unspecified shenanigans on a scientific base. CJ

LUKE HAINES KLAUS KINSKI (FANTASTIC PLASTIC) Pop’s arch-provocateur is back, and how. New album 21st Century Man is a tour-de-force of craft and guile. Exploring notions of exile, memory and self, Haines identifies with a cast of eccentric kindred spirits, not least lunatic actor and sexual obsessive Klaus Kinski. Here, the sweet folk-pop melody masks the acrid odour of Haines’ acerbic observations. Achtung mutha! FJ

CHROMEO NIGHT BY NIGHT (SKREAM REMIX) (GREEN LABEL SOUND) Following high-profile reworkings of both La Roux and Bat For Lashes, remixer du jour Skream brings his lurching dubstep rhythms to smoother-thansmooth loverboys Chromeo. And guess what? It only bloody works! Ollie Jones’s genius is to make remixes that don’t sound like remixes, so the song is kept pretty much intact (right down to the hair-metal guitar solo); everything is just so; and it sounds as natural as the (equally excellent) Italodisco original. A+, young man. CJ

GENTLE FRIENDLY VINCENTT (UPSET THE RHYTHM)

Upfront

Lead News

THE WHISTLE BAIT BABIES

Risque Business

The Rise Of Belfast Burlesque When you see the word ‘burlesque’, what comes to mind?

It’s acres of flesh and saucy dancing, isn’t it? Well, a new generation of Belfast enthusiasts are doing their bit to revive the spirit and decadence of the interwar years, and you’d better not call it smut. AU went to meet some of the performers and promoters bringing a touch of glamour to their grey old city.

The Bedlam Ballroom, The Whistle Bait Babies, Penguin People and Pigeons and Plums aren’t rubbish Seventies prog rock bands – they are outfits at the forefront of a curious vogue for burlesque in Belfast. Always lagging slightly behind when it comes to riding the fickle and faddish pop-cultural zeitgeist (remember the big Botanic Avenue space-hopper craze of 1996?), Belfast always eventually embraces ‘insert latest craze here’ with the zeal of the glassy-eyed convert.

There are already several high profile themed nights including the Twenties swing and sass of Bedlam Ballroom and the fin de siècle (that’s the siècle before last, by the way) circus-stylings of Pigeons and Plums, as well as the first signs of home-grown female performers taking to the strategically placed sequin.

What, then, is this strange and beautiful thing called burlesque that seems simultaneously – to the untrained lech – both pervy and totally socially acceptable? Think ‘burlesque’ and most people can just about conjure up a picture postcard image of saucy be-sequinned women, winking knowingly at a leering, drooling male audience whilst making their nipple tassels rotate independently of each other with a flourish of female multi-tasking.

Invariably, people associate burlesque with an era (early 20th century), a place (old music halls), and an ambience (racy titillation), which combine to peg it as just a peep-hole bra away from out-and-out stripping.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and one more wrong for good measure. Burlesque may have its knockers, but pornography it ain’t.

Talking to the very lovely Honey and Pixie Moonshine, aka The Whistle Bait Babies burlesque act, aka Lucy Morgan and Lorna King, it becomes clear that for them burlesque is – how typically selfish – all about them. “I’m not necessarily applying feminist theory here,” deadpans Lorna, “but burlesque really is about women being empowered and expressing themselves.”

Words by Joe Nawaz Photos by Carrie Davenport

Fitness teacher by day, Lorna explains that it’s not necessarily about looks, sex or the body beautiful. “It’s just as important that your character and personality is correct.

Although a certain poise helps and you do find ballet dancers are quite good!”

What I get from the girls is a clear understanding that burlesque must always have a narrative and structure, with each move, turn and nuanced wiggle being choreographed meticulously and artfully. Lorna refers me to a famous performance by Gypsy Rose Lee – probably the most renowned burlesque performer of them all – where she demurely introduces the audience to the curve of her collar bone and then, fully-clothed, works her way through until she whips off her stockings, still fully-clothed.

It’s the expert treading of that line between irony and titillation, the celebration of physicality without clumsy resort to pornography, that makes burlesque an empowering experience for female performers. It’s also what makes it as far removed from lad mag salaciousness as you can get. With that thought, you begin to understand why burlesque is developing popularity in relatively puritan Belfast. Sex without the sex – even the Free Ps couldn’t complain about that, untroubled as they are by notions of subversive feminist subtext.

Nonetheless, The Whistle Bait Babies do, occasionally, find themselves being tutted at disapprovingly. Lucy says: “We did have a few older folk frowning at us one Sunday at a vintage fair but also you get older people coming up to you and admiring the outfits and reminiscing about the styles of their youth and that’s really lovely. Our society’s geared towards being scandalised and I suppose that you’ll always get a bit of that.”

“They seem to think it’s about getting your kit off. That’s totally wrong.”

—9 AU Magazine—

Upfront

Belfast Burlesque

“Burlesque really is about women being empowered and expressing themselves”

It’s something which Lucy says is also probably down to the small number of appropriate venues in the city. “There are some lovely places to perform, but occasionally you end up doing things like old men’s pubs, or the other week we were asked to perform at the opening of a tanning salon!” Of course the Babies declined – there’s integrity in what they do. What’s more, forgetting for one moment the tawdriness of publicising the latest ‘Tan-fastic’ franchise, among the unspoken yet scrupulous standards for burlesque performers is the possession of at least pale and, at best, porcelain skin coupled with a violently red lipstick slash where once there were lips.

The Whistle Bait Babies clearly take their cue from the late 19th Century US burlesque tradition which was often a satirical swipe at the mores and hypocrisies of the ruling classes – good proletarian entertainment where women could compete with men as show-stoppers. “They probably brought a few more punters in than the men as well,” reflects Lorna. What is clear from talking to Lorna and Lucy is that they both respect and understand the traditions, ethos and art of burlesque, where narrative, humour and choreography are as important – if not more so – than baring flesh.

The Vaudevillian/US burlesque tradition is part of a broader European literary and performance lineage. When Lucy tells me that the term ‘burlesque’ derives from ‘hurly burly’ and the idea of uncontrolled mayhem, it’s yet another explanation for a word whose meaning is as elusive as the origins of the practice it’s named for. Other interpretations are that it derives from the Spanish word ‘burla’, or ‘joke’.

Today, of course, burlesque has been stripped of much social and cultural significance and, for many, is it simply a nice slice of cultural tourism and a celebration of a bygone era.

As much as you can call them fantastically funny, clever, witty and – dare I say, to complete the rhyme – pretty, The Whistle Bait Babies are also burlesque purists – custodians of a profound tradition. For boys involved in the local milieu, however, there’s a certain degree of pragmatism, if not downright caution, required in their approach to burlesque.

Ever aware of the stereotype of the sleazy burlesque

—10 issue 61—

impresario, the very lovely chaps of The Bedlam Ballroom, local burlesque night promoters and facilitators extraordinaire, go some considerable way to making the business of titillation respectable.

Tadhg and Hornby, self-confessed “vintage scenesters”, have been putting on cabaret evenings with a burlesque theme for two years now. Trilby deftly balanced on his dapper, tweed-swaddled knee (happily attached to the rest of his dapper, tweed-swaddled leg) and with impeccable manners, compere Tadhg resembles a latter-day Trevor Howard. Musician Hornby, with his tats, quiff/flat-top and Fifties-style short-sleeved shirt, looks like a friendly psycho-surf guitarist.

Both are clearly, and charmingly, in thrall to that country known as the past. They formed The Bedlam Ballroom shortly after Tadhg’s 30th birthday – always a traumatic time for a man – and both are drawn to the idea of a ‘golden era’ of art and culture. For them, it’s the inter-war period of the Twenties and Thirties after which, of course, things happened to take a bit of a slide. “I wanted to start a swing dance club night,” explains Tadhg. “I wanted the most tasteless show possible! That didn’t happen so we gravitated to burlesque. We’re both into the retro-vintage scene, for want of a better description, and burlesque seemed like a good direction.” After seeing burlesque shows in Dublin and elsewhere, Tadhg says he was “stunned by how sexual the performances weren’t”, and both agree that burlesque is more about brave art than bare arses.

By way of example, he name-checks contemporary performers Leyla Rose and Dirty Martini. What they do is stunning – check it out. Both also happen to be what might be described as ‘plus size one’. This has no bearing on the hypnotic allure of their performance, they celebrate their ‘femaleness’ without exploiting it.

The appeal for Tadhg and Hornby, apart from the music (“swing was the first punk music,” insists Hornby) and aesthetic, was the exacting cultural standards of the time.

“I find them borderline revolutionary,” reveals Tadhg.

“I personally believe in being courteous and gentlemanly

Belfast Burlesque and that reflects the attitudes and behaviour of people in the Twenties. Of course, I don’t always get it right!” It’s this old world charm and manners that The Bedlam Ballroom boys believe is one of the cornerstones of their ever-expanding success.

and family’ burlesque where women can try their hand. “We’re keen to get top quality local performers coming through.

This would be a way for women to perform in front of friends and also give us a chance to assess whether or not they could do it for real.”

Both of them have a clear respect for the performers that they showcase and maintain strict standards of professionalism when it comes to selecting them. “You get a lot of girls who say, ‘I could do burlesque’,” says Hornby. “They seem to think it’s about getting your kit off. That’s totally wrong.”

The Whistle Bait Babies are now also setting up workshops. Lorna says: “Having women come up to us after a show and say that they loved what we do and would love to try it themselves is brilliant. With the workshops we want them to have a go, have fun and also celebrate burlesque and their own bodies.” A week ago I would have sniggered like a half-stoned Butthead at the thought of women “celebrating their own bodies”. Shame on me – burlesque at its best is bold, bawdy, beautiful and in Belfast.

This common misconception about burlesque may be the reason that acts are frequently booked from the Republic and across the water to meet growing local demand. Evenings by the likes of Tadhg and Hornby, Penguin People and the folk at Pigeon and Plums achieve great popular acclaim. No major festival is complete without at least a lunchtime fan dance and hotpot and Glitter and Sparkle, the great precursor for the current burlesque vogue, is still going strong after many years. Yet, outside the few professional outfits like the Bedlam Ballroom, audiences often have to settle for camp approximations of the real thing. With the notable exception of acts like The Whistle Bait Babies, it seems that there’s a way to go to attract women performers – the creative powerhouse behind burlesque. Hornby tells me that Bedlam are putting on a kind of ‘friends

WWW.MYSPACE.COM/THEBEDLAMBALLROOM WWW.MYSPACE.COM/THEWHISTLEBAITBABIES WWW.PENGUINPEOPLE.CO.UK MAKE UP: NYKKOL PHILLIPS FOR ILLAMASQUA CAR PROVIDED BY WWW.STARCARHIRE.CO.UK LOCATIONS COURTESY OF NOEL SPENCE AT THE TUDOR CINEMA AND EMMA AT MURIEL’S BAR.

—11 AU Magazine—

Upfront

News

Bored To Death

In a year that has seen a glut of Eighties electronic pop and meandering lo-fi experimentation, The Victorian English Gentlemens Club have nobly followed their own art-rock muse, releasing their second album, Love On An Oil Rig, to pretty much universal acclaim. And it doesn’t end there – lead singer Adam Taylor talks AU through a new single, a new art exhibit and the plans for album number three.

Welsh Art-Rockers Exhibit Their Museum Piece

The Cardiff quartet are due to release a third single, ‘Bored In Belgium’, from Love On An Oil Rig later this month, and it’s a thumping, yelping cauldron of tribal drums and ‘Antmusic’-style chants. Although it’s obvious what the song is about, AU is intrigued as to why it was written. Thankfully, Adam is only happy to explain, “When we tour Europe, we inevitably drive through Belgium and, number one, it’s really flat and dull and, number two, we discovered that the suicide rate is one of the highest in Europe. We read that one of the reasons for such a high suicide rate was thought to be boredom. It kind of made me laugh, that you could be so bored that you would kill yourself.

“The dodgy thing is that our agent is from Belgium, so we were concerned as to what he would think when he heard it. We stayed with him for a while when we were over there, and the first thing he said on hearing the song was, ‘Is that about when you stayed at my house?’”

days is for this particular piece, which is kept down in the vaults’. We thought that sounded pretty exciting.” The track, ‘Mr Fenton And His Picture Of Melrose Abbey’, is available as a free download from the museum’s website, www.museumwales.co.uk. “It’s different to a lot of our other stuff – it’s slower with layered vocals.”

A short UK tour is planned for December and, for the uninitiated, expect a little extra from the experience.

“Our shows are something quite visual,” says Adam, “and different to what you normally get. We try and make it as interesting as we can, by using flags or bunting or face-paints. Anything to be visually interesting as well as sonically interesting – that’s the key for us.”

Not content with promoting their current album, Adam is also keen that the band get back in the studio. “We were away for two years, and I was really worried about how we would come back. I want to write and get out another record as soon as we can and not leave it so long next time. We’re basically trying to knock together new songs.

We want to come up with something as different as we can – at the minute it’s noisier and messier.”

John Freeman THE SINGLE ‘BORED IN BELGIUM’ IS OUT ON NOVEMBER 23 VIA THIS IS FAKE DIY. WWW.THEVICTORIANENGLISHGENTLEMENSCLUB.CO.UK

The band have also written a song for the ‘Sight Of Sound’ exhibition at the National Museum in Cardiff. “I think they stole the idea from the Tate, where Graham Coxon did some music connected to a piece of art,” Adam tells AU. “We did something about Roger Fenton [19th century photographer famed for his images from the Crimean War] and his picture called Melrose Abbey – it was a song about that.

“The woman who was organising it said, ‘You can choose anything you like, but the reason I come to work these fascinated us. I also read a lot of pulp fiction novels before working on the record, just to get that authentic spirit. The artwork all ties in too. In that sense, it is a concept album.”

The album cover, incidentally, was created by none other than Jeff Jordan, the brilliant surrealist who has also created art for the likes of The Mars Volta and who has been described as “like the National Geographic on acid”.

“He’s an eccentric,” observes Philip. “He stayed up a couple of nights painting it [the artwork], and went really deep into it. We talked about it an awful lot beforehand, developing the idea from the record title. The finished art is strange and unbelievable, like a cross between the cover of a pulp fiction novel and a piece of cult art.”

Grave New World Gama Bomb To Give Away Ghoulish Third Album For Free Back in June, Irish thrash metallers Gama Bomb announced that they would be commencing work on their third album. The objective: to create a record that was “more faster and more about less stuff”. To this end, they worked with producer Scott Atkins at Grindstone Studios in Suffolk. Work on the album, Tales From The Grave In Space, came to a close in October. So, have the quintet fulfilled their initial ambitions?

—12 issue 61—

“Kind of,” asserts frontman Philip Byrne. “We always said that we wanted to be the thrash metal AC/DC, continually refining what we do. On this record, the ideas were, one, that we entertain ourselves, two, that we entertain the listener and, three, that we terrify with our musical chops.

As regards ‘more faster’, well we can’t really get any faster without turning into a complete mess. But, we’re definitely sharpening up. The last album was like a toasting fork, this one’s a meat hook!”

Where their previous album, 2008’s Citizen Brain, was distinctly Eighties in tone and content – referencing pop culture touchstones from the decade such as Robocop, Commando and The A-Team – this time round the block they’ve looked further back, and found their muse in macabre publications from the Fifties and Sixties.

“Tales From The Crypt, The Twilight Zone, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear,” says Byrne, reciting sources of inspiration. “There was a whole range of comics from that period, aimed at kids, that exploited the horror genre. They

The band clearly approach their music, and everything that accompanies it, with the utmost care and attention, lavishing Gama Bomb not just with money, but with time and affection. Philip describes it as dedication to their “geeky universe”. Why, then, having invested so much in their new album, have they announced that they are to make it available as a free download?

“We’ve got nothing to lose,” states Byrne simply. “If you can reach more people then you become more successful and a bigger band. The only way to do that is by sticking your head above the parapet. Also, of course, this is the most honest way of doing things. I download music. For me, music is a free thing. The new model for the business is about selling gig tickets and t-shirts. So, let’s give the album away for free and hope that more people come to the gigs and buy merch. Ultimately, music’s going two ways, online and down the plughole, and Gama Bomb are on the edge of both!” Francis Jones

TALES FROM THE GRAVE IN SPACE IS AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD FOR FREE FROM NOVEMBER 5 AT EARACHE RECORDS WWW.MYSPACE.COM/GAMABOMB WWW.EARACHE.COM/GAMABOMB

Upfront opportunity to bring back songs which I wrote and then only played live once or twice, but it did mean learning around 60 songs over a really intense period of time. Now, every song has something in it which is way different than ever before. They hear things in the songs and take them in new directions that I just have to sit back and wonder.”

Photo by Collette McHugh

As with most things, Ritter describes his songcraft, praised by the eclectic likes of Stephen King, Cameron Crowe and John Prine, in the most simple of terms. It’s all about connecting with the audience.

“Everything that happens onstage and even on records is a small metaphor for what goes on in anybody’s life: when you mess up or drop your plectrum, everybody feels that way somehow. You either move on or you get flustered or angry. Whether it’s an album or a live show or a song that’s really long, people can tell that you are taking a chance. That’s what matters.”

Ritter has just finished an as yet untitled new album, due out early next year. It promises to have “big, sweeping songs and larger, more polished symphonic numbers”. Ritter laughs and says, “An album is the chance to visit a whole new planet. If the last record was like Jackson Pollock, then this one is more Caravaggio.” Ross Thompson The deluxe editions of The Golden Age Of Radio, Hello Starling and The Animal Years have all been reissued. Each contains a solo acoustic recording of the original album.

WWW.JOSHRITTER.COM

Learning To Walk Josh Ritter On The Long Game “I’ve developed my own philosophy about being a long-term musician,” says Josh Ritter, sipping from a bone china cup of tea. “When I started out there were a lot of choices I made – which maybe seemed counterintuitive at the time – about having a slow-build career. I’ve learnt a lot about being a patient person and just playing and playing and playing. My audience has learnt to be patient with me – they trust that I’m putting everything I’ve got into what I write.”

The Idaho born songwriter built up a reputation in Ireland by touring with The Frames. Now blessed with a glowing, but energy efficient reputation, Ritter’s popularity initially spread by word of mouth. It is a stark contrast to the instant and undeserved fame which is thrust upon unprepared starlets nowadays.

“There’s nothing to it. It treats fame as the ultimate goal, and I guess when you’re starting out that is the ultimate goal.

You have no idea about the other things which go along

with music which are satisfying. It’s great fun to play, you meet girls and people clap when you go onstage. Of course, you imagine that you want that, but everything else is so much richer – when it works right it’s a seamless life you have. You go on the road and you meet friends and you have memories – so much of that can’t be grabbed in 15 minutes.

I don’t see those musicians on those television shows as the kind of artistic travesty that some people do, but I don’t feel that we’re on the same planet. They’re in a whole other universe to me. In a weird metaphor, if you’re lucky and unlucky enough to be launched in that kind of way, it’s like a baby horse who gets shot out of a cannon. You might fly a long distance, but if you don’t land running, then you’re in trouble. I never got shot out of a cannon, I just learnt to walk.”

By the time you read this, Ritter will have finished a soldout tour of Ireland, including three gigs to mark the 40th anniversary of Whelan’s in Dublin. Each one was dedicated to an individual Ritter album (The Golden Age Of Radio, Hello Starling and The Animal Years), for which he was backed by bluegrass crazies The Love Cannon String Band.

“I saw them at my brother’s wedding. They play music from the Eighties on mandolin, banjo, guitar and bass,” says Ritter. It’s a concept more pleasing than it sounds. The reduced country orchestra have reinvented the entirety of Ritter’s back catalogue, adding grace notes to some songs while roughing up others.

“The joy was to bring them in and play all the songs from those albums for the 40th anniversary of Whelan’s. It was an

Shorts Details are beginning to filter through about the second album from art-rockers extraordinaire These New Puritans. Hidden is the title for the Southend-on-Sea quartet’s follow-up to last year’s Beat Pyramid. Song titles include the aggressive-sounding, ‘We Want War’, ‘Attack Music’ and ‘Fire Power’. Hidden is scheduled for release on January 19, 2010.

Hooky power-pop trio Autoban

have hit upon a rather novel idea.

They’re hosting a Mad Hatter’s Ball on December 5 at the Academy 2, Dublin. Gig-goers are wholeheartedly encouraged to don their most spectacular headwear – bowler, beret or beer hat, fedora, fez, trilby or top hat – for what’s sure to be a most funsome shindig.

Support on the night comes from an assortment of Dublin’s finest DJs. More details are available over at

www.myspace.com/autoban.

Busy girl is Alison Mosshart.

Speaking to The Quietus, she confirmed that 2010 will bring fresh albums from both The Kills and her side-project, the Jack White helmed The Dead Weather. In other Dead Weather news, a five-track, fourvideo EP, Live From Third Man West is available now on iTunes.

Jarvis Cocker has moved to quash

rumours that a Pulp reunion is on the cards. He had been quoted in the People as saying that, “Glastonbury means an awful lot to me, I would love to play there again. We’ve talked about it, there we go, there’ll be a band reunion.”

However, Cocker subsequently told Teletext that his comments had been misconstrued, “Pulp have no plans to get back together.

Someone asked me if I fancied

playing at the 40th anniversary of Glastonbury, I said ‘yes’, they twisted that into a ‘Pulp reform’ story. It’s not true.” However, Jarvis definitely will be taking the reins of a Sunday afternoon show on BBC 6 Music from January 10.

The Strokes’ frontman Julian Casablancas has announced a Dublin show in support of his solo album debut, Phrazes For The

Young. He’ll play the Academy, Dublin on December 14.

Oh yes, Midlake have announced details of their third studio album. The Courage of Others – the follow-up to the Texans’ utterly beguiling 2006 wow The Trials of Von Occupanther – looks set for a February 2010 release.

—13 AU Magazine—

News

Upfront

Country Sad Ballad Man Yoni Wolf On The Why? Record Nobody Saw Coming

Little more than a year after releasing one of 2008’s summer-defining – and best – records in Alopecia, indie-rock wordsmiths Why? are back with a radically different follow-up. Eskimo Snow and its predecessor were written and recorded in the same sessions in early 2007, but sonically they are poles apart. Where Apolecia was a wry, witty concoction of indie-pop and languid hiphop, Eskimo Snow is as dark and – at times – bleak as its title, an album that sees main man Yoni Wolf recast as a country troubadour, obsessed with sex and death.

“It is different,” he affirms, talking to us from his brother (and drummer) Josiah’s house in rural Ohio. “It’s kind of a small, consistent, melancholy type of record. If Alopecia is kind of large in scope and out in the world and erratic, I would say that Eskimo Snow is a bit more consistent and internal.”

That manifests itself in a brief and sombre set of songs – “pretty mortality-based” as Wolf admits. The gorgeous, fragile title track closes the album with a lyric that is typically opaque but full of arresting imagery. According to Yoni, it made sense as the album title – the song that “really represents the album”.

“Eskimos have a million words for snow,” he explains.

“They live so close to it, it’s so much a part of their lives that they see it as if through a microscope – very clearly and in all its intricacies. So [the line] “all my words for sadness, like Eskimo snow”. I just feel like that word ‘sad’ is such a vague, basic word. Any of the words for emotion, like happy or sad. I feel like what I do is take those kinds of words and figure out the long answers – the things that can’t be explained in one word.”

The songwriter’s background is in underground hiphop act cLOUDDEAD and as part of the Anticon. collective, but rather than the dextrous rapping that has marked out so much of his previous work – including Alopecia – Eskimo Snow often sees his voice reduced to a resigned croak, albeit one that has a lot of startingly vivid things to say. But then lyrical ingenuity is nothing new on Why? records. The lack of any remnants of hiphop is. Not that Wolf wants to engage with that.

“Throughout my career, I’ve run into people always wanting to categorise me,” he says, with a hint of frustration, “and I just don’t think in those terms too much. I listen to a lot of quote-unquote rap music, yeah.

I say rap more than hip-hop. When I grew up, hip-hop was the culture and rap music is just that someone is rapping. Whatever, I don’t have a problem with all that stuff.”

It’s something that has, and will continue to, come up a lot when this album gets discussed, because it sounds so very different. Is that something Yoni is conscious of, or worried about? “I’m not worried about it,” he says bluntly. “I’m conscious of the fact it doesn’t sound like rap at all. Alopecia sounds like rap music, or half of it, and this doesn’t. Who cares, you know? It’s a record – listen to it for its own sake.”

Remember, though, that this is just one record pulled from those bewilderingly diverse sessions two years ago. Next time round, Yoni hints, things could be very different again. “I’ve been writing some rap-type stuff, I would say – rhythmic and hyper-rhyming, and I imagine the next record will be kind of like that.” Chris Jones

ESKIMO SNOW IS OUT NOW ON TOMLAB WWW.MYSPACE.COM/WHYANTICON

Heartwork

Hello My Name Is

Hello My Name Is...

Modest Mouse The US art-rockers plundered their name from a passage in Virginia Woolf’s story The Mark On The Wall. Although written in 1921, the story was first published posthumously in 1944. The sentence that resonated with Isaac Brock’s bunch reads as follows, “I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest, mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises.”

—14 issue 61—

Heartwork In Praise Of Random LP Art

NOFX - Eating Lamb

If there were one single compelling reason why you should do your bit to ensure that the vinyl format never dies, it’s that this artwork wouldn’t exist without it. This album is available on CD and tape (remember that?) formats, but it has different artwork and a different title (Heavy Petting Zoo, if you must know). The wonderfully tasteful sleeve that you see before you was a vinyl specific piece, probably because they knew that you wouldn’t get away with something so grotesque on a mass-market CD cover. The most disturbing thing about this cover isn’t that it features a man performing oral sex on a sheep, it’s that there are two other sheep in the background, idly chatting, as if what is going on is the most normal thing in the world. That could mean that they just haven’t spotted what is happening and are currently oblivious to it, or it could mean that they’re aware, but patiently waiting their turn. All round disturbing.

CT FE EF M YTH RH

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D AR BO EY LK ITA DIG

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GE AN CH DE O M RD O CH

SELECTE D DRINKS: £1.50

I N D I E , A LT E R N AT I V E , F U N K , D I S C O , ELECTRO, POST-PUNK & EVERYTHING IN-BETWEEN. Passion Pit, LCD Soundsystem, Miike Snow, Au Revoir Simone, Friendly Fires, Amanda Blank, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Glimmers, Chromeo, Annie, Chemical Brothers, Metronomy, BATS, M.I.A., The Temper Trap, Vitalic, The Cure, Dan Black, Modest Mouse, Glass Candy, Peaches, Cut Copy, The xx, Boys Noize, Fol Chen, The Presets, Har Mar Superstar, Chew Lips, TV On The Radio, Fake Blood, Kissy Sell Out, Biffy Clyro, Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Interpol, Crystal Castles, !!!, The Arcade Fire, Phoenix, Beastie Boys, Royksopp, The Knife, The Big Pink, The Cribs, Tiga. ASIWYFA, Rye Rye, Little Boots, Marmaduke Duke, Poni Hoax, Talking Heads, Tigercity, The Prodigy, The Phenomenal Handclap Band, The Strokes, Girls, Two Door Cinema Club, Bloc Party, Crookers, Golden Silvers, Daft Punk, Dizzee Rascal, Animal Collective, MGMT, Prince, Soulwax, The Bloody Beetroots, The Virgins, The Whitest Boy Alive, Simian Mobile Disco.

Do You Remember What The Music Meant?

With: Alan Haslam of Yes Cadets

What is your earliest musical memory?

Listening to Chuck Berry’s All Time Greatest Party Hits on a Fisher Price tape recorder in my cot.

Who was the first band you saw live?

When I was 13 I saw a recently signed and very grungy Muse playing to about 40 teenagers in a little country pub in Devon. The next time I saw them they were playing to a sold out Odyssey Arena.

Who was the last band or artist that you became obsessed about?

I am completely besotted with the latest Sunset Rubdown album, Dragonslayer.

I love the way it’s rooted in classic rock but sounds starkly contemporary and totally unique. We supported them recently, something of a religious experience for most of us and quite possibly the best night of my life.

What would be your desert island album?

It would have to be Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I never tire of the man’s twisted genius and that

E V E R Y F R I D AY | L AV E R Y ’ S B U N K E R | B E L F A S T | 1 0 P M | £ 3 R E S I D E N T D J : J O N N Y T I E R N A N & K I M B A R C L AY

particular album has a special place in the darkest corner of my heart.

What record would you use to seduce someone?

Elbow’s Cast Of Thousands has served me pretty well in the past...

WWW.GIGANTICCLUB.COM GiganticKeytar.indd 3

24/9/09 13:49:59

What one song best captures your character?

‘Seven’ by Fever Ray. It’s introverted, extroverted, melancholy and jubilant all at the same time.

Who is your all time favourite artist?

Other people come and go but Prince is always there for me. I just have to pretend he stopped making music around about 1993.

What piece of music moves you to tears?

Polly Scattergood’s version of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’. Don’t fucking laugh, just listen to it!

YES CADETS’ DEBUT EP IS OUT NOW. THE BAND PLAY AUNTIE ANNIE’S, BELFAST ON NOVEMBER 24 WWW.MYSPACE.COM/YESCADETS

AN EXHIBITION OF RENOWNED ARTISTS, DESIGNERS AND ILLUSTRATORS COMMISSIONED ARTWORK THAT WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE FOR EXCLUSIVE TATTOOING

BY BELFAST CITY SKINWORKS. Launch Night, featuring live music from Kormac & His Big Band, Burlesque Dancers and more, Saturday 7th November, 8pm, The Black Box, Belfast.

THE EXHIBITION WILL BE HOUSED IN THE WATERFRONT, BELFAST FROM MONDAY NOVEMBER 9 TO SATURDAY NOVEMBER 28.

—15 AU Magazine—

TATTOOED ART / ART TATTOOED

We Must Hide

Upfront

They Haven't Gone Away, You Know Fiery Furnaces Embark On Mad Spree Of Releases Around New Album

We Must Hide...

Simon Cowell

“Our van driver, who’s since become a friend, had an accident while we’ve been in England,” explains Matt Friedberger. “He went to hospital and it took him 15 minutes to get seen to and get a free prescription. In the States, that would have cost him at least $2000. Wait a minute – I’m exaggerating. It’s probably more like $900.”

US healthcare reform is just one of umpteen current preoccupations for the alarmingly busy Matt Friedberger and sister Eleanor, aka Fiery Furnaces, not least their recently released seventh album, I’m Going Away. It’s a fitting title for a collection that’s easily their most airy and accessible to date and a departure from the more densely layered and treacly confections of previous releases.

“It’s a more casual record, I guess,” muses Matt, speaking to AU during a mini-tour of the UK. “Our usual stuff has been these Seventies pop-rock tunes which we then make all ‘confused-up’. This time around, we thought we wouldn’t elaborate the tracks and let our loyal listeners do most of the work, adding their own layers and meanings.

We figured that there’s a lot of unemployment at the moment and people need something to work at!”

Not that there’s much hard work to be had here – Eleanor and Matt’s bluesy, slightly off-kilter dynamic remains intact, welded as it is to catchy three-minute tunes with Eleanor’s rasping post-Pretenders holler the crowning glory in what a record company man might describe as their stab at commercial success. That, of course, isn’t remotely what the Fiery Furnaces are interested in. And what better way of scuppering a new album’s chances than by immediately releasing two covers albums of the same material?!

“It was Eleanor’s idea,” explains Matt. “Eleanor and I have covered six songs each from the album. I always rearrange songs for live shows anyway, so this time we just recorded it! Eleanor’s is a folk version – stripped down with guitar —16 issue 61—

and voice. My take was variety – guitar, strings, piano that sort of thing.”

For most bands, the album’s the thing, but after I’m Going Away proper and the I’m Going Away covers albums, there’s also I’m Going Away the manual, or the Silent Record as they call it. This presents democratic deconstruction as album format. It’s essentially the blueprint for the album, containing instructions, lyrics, sheet music, reports and illustrations – encouraging fans (or otherwise) to make their own version of I’m Going Away.

“The information in the book isn’t identical to the album, but enough for people to take it and make their own version of it. Even people who don’t like the album – it’s perfectly creatively valid for your music to be informed by a dislike of Fiery Furnaces!

“There has to be an added level to what you do other than just, ‘You’re the audience and we’re the rock band’, otherwise it’s just stealing people’s money,” he asserts.

“Besides, we’re a family band, and as such the area we perhaps don’t do quite as well in is the rock ‘n’ roll presentation! A lot of people leave the family environment to join a band, [but] we did the opposite and came back to the family to start a band.”

As for the band’s future plans, Matt says they may make another album this winter, or they may wait until next summer. “We might do something simple or go all-out and do something complicated with stuff like a re-imagined orchestra,” he laughs. “Or, we could always go another way!” An apt motto for a restless band with more than a little sense of adventure. Joe Nawaz

I’M GOING AWAY IS OUT NOW ON THRILL JOCKEY WWW.THEFIERYFURNACES.COM

Look at pantomime dame Simon Cowell’s embossed, cream white business card and you won’t see the job description ‘Producer’ or ‘Entrepreneur’, but ‘Wishmaster’. From his humble origins working as a night janitor in a peanut factory, Cowell spent his days in his secret lair assembling chart-topping stars like Robson and Jerome from the body parts of graves he robbed at the weekend. He made gazillions from an impressionable and seemingly deaf British public, which he spent on setting up his infamous ‘talent camps’ where impressionable children were pushed through a daily regime of starvation and aversion therapy: they received electric shocks each time they heard a song by Led Zeppelin or The Beatles, and were given a gumdrop each time they heard one

by Blue or S Club Juniors. When asked how he sleeps at night, Cowell replies, “Very comfortably, thank you, on a downy bed of dollar bills, starlets and endangered animal fur whilst Louis Walsh fans my face with feathers plucked from the posterior of the planet’s only remaining caramel parakeet.” It is a little-known fact that Cowell has not undergone any plastic surgery, but is in fact aging backwards. To quote his diary: “My life is just like Benjamin Button, but without all the boring bits.” If you spot him languishing somewhere within the pages of this very magazine, turn the page lest he fix you with an icy stare and tell you how irredeemably useless you are.

Send your contact details along with a description of where, and on what page, you spotted Simon to info@iheartau.com and you could win a six-month subscription to AU. The winner will be chosen at random from all correct entries received.

Top Ten Songs For Simon Cowell 1. Metallica Master Of Puppets 2. Arctic Monkeys Scummy Man 3. Alice Cooper No More Mr. Nice Guy 4. Eagles Of Death Metal (I Used To Couldn’t Dance) Tight Pants 5. The Replacements Talent Show 6. Morrissey To Me You Are A Work Of Art 7. The White Stripes Rated X 8. Radiohead How I Made My Millions 9. RJD2 Sell The World 10. Iron Maiden Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter

Upfront

In The Studio Oppenheimer

In The Studio - Oppenheimer

Photo by Lucy McCrisken

WHAT: Third album TITLE: (potential titles, Nightmare On Ice, All In With

The Kicks).

PRODUCER: Self-produced STUDIO: Start Together, Belfast.

TRACK TITLES: ‘One Day Your Life Will Flash Before Your Eyes –

Make Sure It’s Worth Watching’, ‘Let’s Get The

Hell Out Of Texas’.

COLLABORATORS: Tim Wheeler, Hornby, Tom McShane, Angie

O’Reilly, string arranger Van Dyke Parks (TBC).

RELEASE DATE: Early 2010 LABEL: TBC

Big changes on planet Oppenheimer. Since the release of 2008’s Take The Whole Mid-Range And Boost It, Rocky O’Reilly’s (and friends) Start Together Studios have gone from strength to strength, while both he and partner in pop Shaun Robinson have gotten married (not to each other!), with the latter also decamping to New York.

We dropped in on them when Shaun was last in town to get the skinny on album number three.

Interview by Chris Jones

How’s recording been going so far?

R: We’re both living very far apart at the moment, and we’ve been recording songs by ourselves and sending them to the other person. It’s the first time we’ve been so isolated. It was initially a problem and really weird, but it’s turned into something really cool because we’re developing the ideas in a different way. [Shaun]’s not restricted by me being the engineer and sound-finder – I’m writing lyrics and trying vocals, which is terrifying.

S: One thing that’s changed for me is that I’ll play a song for three days until I’ve got it totally live, one take, so it’s a real human being. We play it straight and rely on machines to record it, but rely less on machines to, erm, polish that turd.

What’s this album about, for you?

R: I want this to be about the stuff we’ve been listening to and the bands we’ve been touring with. I want it to be about people, and for that human angle to connect with people. We both got to see The Bronx play in New York this year and that was just life-changing, because there were 800 people tearing down the walls of this building and it was rough as anything, but amazing. We toured with The Presidents of the USA, who believe that if you can’t play it in one take, you shouldn’t be writing it. It’s not quite that extreme because we can’t play anything in one take but, you know, it’s definitely taught me about different ways of writing and recording.

R: The way Shaun’s been writing, and the way that I’ve been writing as well, it’s much more structured around the song than about the process or the production.

S: Plus, changing the rules or having a blast at doing things. One album that I’ve been quoting is Midnite Vultures by Beck. [On] over half of the tracks on that album, there comes a point where it just turns into a completely different song, and it never goes back to the way it was before. It just goes… zhoink! It’s something that I’ve thought about. You’ve got to be playful sometimes.

Do you think people will be surprised when they hear it?

R: I think it’s one of those things where they’re still going to hear Oppenheimer in it because it’s still us, but for people who’ve written us off as an electro, synth-pop duo, deliriously happy – those days are gone. We’re not happy anymore.

Are you collaborating with anyone on this album?

R: There is going to be, hopefully – budget allowing, a collaboration with a string-arranger who has come forward and wants to work on the album. We just need to find the cash to make it happen. That’s going to take us in a completely different direction, and in a way that we never thought possible.

I take it you’re not naming names?

How are the songs sounding?

S: Well, Rocky’s rapping, which I think is a brand new thing.

R: A terrifying new thing.

S: Writing songs, this time round I had a piano in front of me rather than an acoustic guitar. So I’ve written some Pink Floyd-esque monstrosities – there’s one song that’s nearly eight minutes long, which is a complete departure.

S: His name’s Van Dyke Parks. He did the instrumentation for Smile by Brian Wilson.

R: ‘The Bear Necessities’ for The Jungle Book, U2, Silverchair. It’s remarkable. And he just contacted us saying that he really, really liked us and let’s find a way to make this happen. So possibly, at some point, we’re going to be in LA watching an orchestra playing Oppenheimer songs, which is incredible.

—17 AU Magazine—

Five to One

Upfront

5 to 1

TH

Nerds

Eighties Wrestlers

Words by Philip Byrne

Brains from Thunderbirds Arguably, there wasn’t much cool about Thunderbirds’ Tracy brothers themselves, what with their ‘festive’ blue uniforms and chip bag hats, but there’s no denying that their resident egghead Brains was a dork of the highest order. This puppet muppet basically established massive glasses as part of the geek image, and rounded out his sex appeal by having a speech impediment and being awkward around women. Plus, his head was enormous.

Million Dollar Man Omaha-born Ted DiBiase was the son of a wrestler and first stepped into the ring at just 21; no wonder he became literal WWF royalty in the heady days of the Eighties as the moolah-obsessed Million Dollar Man. Wearing a diamond-studded belt and flanked by a bodyguard called Virgil, DiBiase actually lived the high life, travelling first class, staying in top hotels and handed cash by WWF bosses to make his character seem more real. He’s now known as the Reasonably Well-off Man.

TH

Q from the Bond movies More a boffin than a nerd, grumpy secret service egghead Q deserves a place on this list thanks to the roll-call of extremely unlikely gadgets he’s dished out to the considerably cooler James Bond over the years – though he’s never managed to invent a mobile phone that can open beer bottles without smashing into bits, or a teenager who doesn’t think the sun revolves around their poetry box.

Ravishing Rick Rude Richard Erwin Rood had a unique shtick in wrestling: he was a moustachio’d, curlymulleted sex machine with lips painted on his bum cheeks, which he would ‘kiss’ at ladies in the crowd. He looked like a comedy Scouser, but the laydees loved him. That sort of thing was acceptable in the Eighties.

RD

Screech from Saved by The Bell The Archduke of Dork, the Nero of Nerds, Screech is all you’d ever want in a dweeb: he had a funny voice, a terrible microphonehead hairdo and was convinced he had a smooth tack with the ladies, which he didn’t.

We nearly died when we learned that Dustin Diamond, who played the geek, made a reallife porno movie called Screeched a few years back. Can you imagine the things he’d be saying in it? 9/11 would look like a picnic by comparison.

Ultimate Warrior Jim ‘Warrior’ Hellwig was a colourful character, whose mental stage outfit and, ahem, creative ringside speech making (often featuring references to UFOs, skeletons and such) made him a fan favourite from 1987 to 1991. He legally changed his name to Warrior in 1993 and is now a motivational speaker who stirs up a lot of controversy with his righter-than-right wing political views. Barack Obama’s a Marxist criminal, apparently.

ND

Garth from Wayne’s World Garth is that rarest and most potent of weirdoes: the heavy metal dork. For, while he’s obsessed with Aerosmith, Alice Cooper and Megadeth and has long hair, Mr Algar is anything but fly and cool. To be fair, though, he pulls Kim Basinger. Dana Carvey’s career has since gone into down-schwing, and is anything but ‘Excellent!’.

Sgt. Slaughter Believe it or not, but Bob ‘Sgt. Slaughter’ Remus was second only in popularity to Hulk Hogan at one point. Which is amusing, as he was themed as a pro-Iraqi, anti-American ally of eastern wrassling baddie General Adnan.

Try getting away with that in modern America, where they’d hang you by the short and curlies for so much as suggesting the US of A isn’t the greatest gold darn heck ass country on this pussy planet.

Brick from Anchorman Friendly, smartly-dressed and always keen on a nice cone of ice-cream, weatherman Brick Tamland boasts an IQ of 48, which, as he explains, makes him ‘mentally retarded’ and a hell of a lot of fun. While Anchorman is Will Ferrell’s party, Steve Carell’s smiley nutbar sidekick is the life and soul. That’s why you don’t see lots of people dressed as him at Halloween. What’s that? The Joker is way cooler? Shit off, you come-lately tossbot.

Legion of Doom Despite being dressed like transvestite American footballers, Mad Max-themed slam kings Hawk and Animal are still regarded as the greatest wrestling tag-team of all time.

They made their WWF debut in 1990, won the World Tag Team Championship over The Nasty Boys and then bizarrely adopted the use of a ventriloquist’s dummy called Rocco as a ringside gimmick. They wrestled on and off, uniting for a last bout in 2003, just five months before Mike ‘Hawk’ Hegstrand died of a heart attack. We didn’t see that one coming.

ST

—18 issue 61—

—19 AU Magazine—

Wild Palms

Incoming

Wild Palms MEMBERS:

FORMATION: FOR FANS OF: CHECK OUT: WEBSITE:

Lou Hill (vocals), Darrell Hawkins (guitars), Garth Jones (bass), James Parish (drums).

Southgate, 2007.

The Cult, These New Puritans, Bauhaus.

Debut single ‘Over Time’. www.myspace.com/wearewildpalms

Legend has it that in the last days of Rome, shit got a little bit crazy. Erecting downy neck-hair at AU this month, Wild Palms are that perfect anarchy of ideas fit to see off the crumbling empire that is the Noughties. In a matter of weeks the great beast will sink prostrate into the sea of history, clad in a shroud of day-glo apparel and clutching dog-eared copies of Gang Of Four For Dummies.

Still, if Wild Palms’ debut single ‘Over Time’ is anything to go by, there’ll be dancing in the streets. As we await further instructions for Decade #2, it’s important that we familiarise ourselves with the hows and whys of their stinging brand of gothic glam. Just in case it comes in handy for the impending apocalypse, like bottled water or tinned food.

“I was studying English at Brighton Uni when I met

—20 issue 61—

Gaz [bassist Gareth Jones], who was studying fine art painting,” explains vocalist Lou Hill. “He was doing this absurdist, abstract thing and doing it very well. It so happened I was doing the same type of thing with my writing and we ended up living together, so it became our approach to making music.”

On their return to London, the pair teamed up with childhood friend and no wave fanatic, drummer James Parish. Guitarist Doug Hawkins completes the line-up.

Wielding a ferocious talent, Hawkins’ dark anti-matter, dispatched in lacerating shards across the five available MySpace tracks, really has a way of focusing the mind.

The product of their combined efforts splits the difference between the nervy censure and frigid economy of post-punk’s most acute acts and the rocking pompadour-goth of The Cult. It wasn’t long before Dazed And Confused and like-minded tastemakers were posting gushy write-ups, resulting in a prestigious slot on the BBC’s Emerging Proms showcase last month.

Despite their artistic background and a former incarnation as Ex Lion Tamers (after the Wire song), Lou is at pains to avoid the ‘art rock’ label. “Our art rock pretensions amount to lugging around Gaz’s paintings as a backdrop to the gigs. We’re very serious about what

we do, but we aren’t going to dictate how people consume our music. We do take inspiration from the likes of Can, Captain Beefheart, The Fall, and [the band’s firm favourite] Billy Childish, but simply for their hard work and dedication to living for music.”

‘Deep Dive’ is a song about escape, that most un-art rock of subject matters, and according to Lou it is most representative of the direction they are taking. “No matter what people say, we aren’t a nihilistic band.

Nihilism is a cop-out – I think you need to take action.

It’s all about the melody and the hypnotic guitars on ‘Deep Dive’. That’s the starting point for us. Instead of ‘attack, attack, attack’, we’re concentrating on what we don’t play. Every night we’d watch [tour-mates] The Warlocks take the smallest of components and build elegance. We started with post-punk foundations, but the process has dispersed.”

So try and keep up if you can, as Wild Palms jerk away from our grasp, leaving only the impression of a band scrabbling for something unprecedented.

They begin Decade #2 by recording a debut album in January. The itinerary is typical of their adventurous spirit. “We are going to Poland with a man we found asleep at our studio,” says Lou. “It turns out he’s a genius producer.” John Calvert

Incoming

Crimea X MEMBERS: DJ Rocca (programming, keys, flute), Jukka Reverberi

(bass, keys, vocals).

FORMATION: Reggio Emilia, Italy, 2009.

FOR FANS OF: Holy Ghost!, Prins Thomas, Lindstrøm.

CHECK OUT: Chorne More EP, out December 6 on Hell Yeah.

Phoros EP out now.

WEBSITE: www.myspace.com/crimeax Disco speaks of nothing so much as hedonism, a genre built for dancefloor escapism and largely unencumbered by intellectualism and politics. Not so with Italian duo Crimea X, two men driven by a fixation with Soviet Russia. “We were raised up in leftist families where it was quite usual to look in the eastern direction, [and] Jukka comes from a village where they still have a Lenin statue in the main square,” explains Luca (aka DJ Rocca), and indeed each song on new EP Chorne More (‘Black Sea’ in Russian) is named after a figure from those eastwardlooking childhoods – Jurij Andropov was the head of the KGB in the Seventies and Eighties, while Varvara

Crimea X

Stepanova and Liubov Popova were prominent avantgarde artists in the 1910s and 1920s, before the antiintellectual Kremlin banned abstract art.

The pair describe their music succinctly as “socialist krautdisco” and, musically as well as politically, there is a lot going on, especially in the pair’s debut EP Phoros, which provided one of the tunes of the summer in the sublime ‘10pm’. Luca and Jukka used the three-tracker (plus remixes) to explore the synthesised textures of Krautrock bands like Tangerine Dream, Neu! and Harmonia, skilfully blending them with the arms-inthe-air, spaced-out euphoria of cosmic disco. “Daniele Baldelli’s lesson is a clear influence,” says Luca of the DJ credited with inventing the genre at the Cosmic club on the shore of Lake Garda. “The way he mixed genres in his old tapes or live sets is truly inspiring. We love also the German cosmic adventure made by the cosmic groups from the Seventies and Eighties. They demonstrate that it is possible to have a national musical scene outside of the USA and UK.” Chorne More is significantly different from Phoros, evidence that the fledgling act have much more to offer.

It’s poppier and more direct, as the glitterball leftists raise the tempo, brighten the tone and, on lead track ‘Jurij’, incorporate a hooky vocal line from Reverberi. Luca puts the change down to the pair’s divergent backgrounds – he as a prominent DJ and Jukka as a member of post-rockers Giardini di Mirò – and indicates that the band themselves don’t even know what their debut album might sound like. “Balkan folk? Nope. We don’t know. We are working on it. We’ve got tons of material, but a full-length is not only a collection of different songs, it is a journey in a musical world. So we need some more time to work on it and think about it, but we honestly [think it will] be ready in the first half of 2010.”

Meanwhile, look out for live shows – nothing in Ireland as yet, but the two Italians have played in London, and they are keen to stress the musical aspect of what they do. “We are both musicians!” says DJ Rocca. “So along with programming we play live bass, flute and some synthesisers. In the future, we’d like to have a more live experience with our marvellous vintage synth collection and a real drummer to perform with us.” The hammer and sickle, we suppose, are optional. Chris Jones

—21 AU Magazine—

Breaking Through

Incoming

Floating Points »

Breaking Through The Emerging Acts You Need To Know About Bosque Brown »

Floating Points

Bosque Brown

REAL NAME: BASED: FOR FANS OF: CHECK OUT: WEBSITE:

MEMBERS:

FORMATION: FOR FANS OF: CHECK OUT: WEBSITE:

Sam Shepherd London Boxcutter, Joy Orbison, Mount Kimbie.

Vacuum EP, out now on Eglo. www.myspace.com/floatingpoints

Sam Shepherd is a restless soul. Originally from Manchester, the young producer has put out a series of platters this year on various labels, but we are still no nearer to discovering what Floating Points is really all about. His contribution to Mary Anne Hobbs’ recent Wild Angels compilation, ‘Esthian III’, was glitchy and fidgety, while a swinging 12” single on Planet Mu, ‘J&W Beat/K&G Beat’, placed him neatly among that label’s roster of dubstep and garage icons. However, his latest EP, Vacuum, is another matter entirely. Here, Shepherd tries his hand at deep house and disco, and comes up trumps. The lead track ‘Vacuum Boogie’ rides on a 4/4 rhythm and a deep, rolling bassline, but the genius is at the top of the mix, where fluttering synth lines swoop in and out of each other, under an all-enveloping haze.

All of this oscillating between styles is a perfectly natural consequence of Shepherd’s background and stupendously catholic tastes. He studied jazz piano and composition at music school, then almost ended up at the Royal College of Music before thinking better of it and doing a degree in pharmacology instead. Now, he’s working on a PhD and sees the music as “just a bit of fun”. Serious enough for him to perform live with a 12-piece ensemble, though. His Dublin appearance at the Twisted Pepper on December 5 is down as a DJ set, and if we know Sam Shepherd at all, you can be sure that it will be no hostage to genre. Chris Jones —22 issue 61—

Mara Lee Miller (vocals), Robert Miller (pedal steel), Gina Milligan (backing vocals/ guitar, bass), Winston Chapman (drums), Jeremy Buller (guitar).

Denton, Texas, 2005.

Mazzy Star, The Whispertown 2000, Joanna Newsom.

The album Baby is available now via Fargo. www.bosquebrown.com

Bosque Brown is the brainchild of Mara Lee Miller, the owner of a ghostly, spellbinding voice. Their new album, Baby, is a beautiful, exposed collection of ballads soaked in Texan backwater desolation. “The guy we made the album with, Chris Flemmons [from Baptist Generals], comes from the same small town in Texas, called Stephenville, as I do,” Mara explains. “I really hope through my words we’ve captured the sound of the place.”

Miller created Bosque Brown in 2005, releasing a debut, Plays Mara Lee Miller, to wide acclaim in her homeland. She then added some backup including husband Robert and sister Gina. “The first album was just me. After that first album [was released] I did a show with the band I now have.” Inevitably, Baby is dominated by Miller’s voice, an intoxicating mix of Hope Sandoval’s poise and the delicious drawl of the Deep South. Word and phrases are contorted and stretched – it’s quite simply extraordinary. “My mom was a music teacher, and she tried to change the way I sounded for a very long time,” laughs Mara. “My voice has developed since the first record, as I’ve gained confidence by singing in front of people.”

Miller recently played a solo set supporting Micah P. Hinson in London, which was an adventure in itself. “It was my first time in Europe, and it felt good to be in a different place. I don’t get out of Texas that much!” John Freeman

Let Our Enemies Beware MEMBERS:

FORMATION: FOR FANS OF: CHECK OUT: WEBSITE:

Shareef Dahroug (vocals, guitar), James Boast (guitar, artwork), Adam Elwin (guitar, vocals), Christopher Boast (drums).

Chatham, Kent, 2004.

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Fugazi, Slint.

Against Karate, out now on Smalltown America. www.myspace.com/letourenemiesbeware

It’s not overstating things in the slightest to say that Let Our Enemies Beware are one of the most exciting rock bands in Britain. For the time being, the Kent quartet fly under the radar, but surely not for long, because once word spreads about their utterly inspired debut album Against Karate, there will be no stopping them. “The band is a cathartic thing, I suppose,” says the brilliantly unhinged frontman Shareef Dahroug. “It’s shaking off the usual boredom and drudgery of everyday life by shouting at a lot of people in the dark and them, for the most part, thanking us for it.”

The band came to our attention via the good people at Smalltown America records, who got involved after spotting them playing live in London. From there, a spot on one of the label’s Public Service Announcement compilations (#9 if you’re interested) and a tour with our very own And So I Watch You From Afar and LaFaro followed, and now LOEB have a rabid, slavering beast of a full-length to show for it all. This is 20 years of noisy bastard guitar music neatly distilled into 45 minutes – the mean ferocity of Shellac, the heart-bursting conviction of At The Drive-In, the creepy atmosphere of Slint and the utter fucking mayhem of …Trail Of Dead when Conrad’s in one of his moods. “Live, we are the aural equivalent of a nervous breakdown,” says Dahroug. “You can decide whether it’s any good for yourself if you don’t mind losing your hearing to find out.” Believe us, sir, we’ll take that risk. Chris Jones

Funeral Suits MEMBERS:

FORMATION: FOR FANS OF: CHECK OUT: WEBSITE:

Brian James (vocals, guitar, bass, synth), Michael McKeogh (vocals, guitar, bass, synth), and Greg McCarthy (drums).

Dublin, 2006.

Cashier No.9, The Cribs, Arcade Fire.

New single ‘Now We’re Moving Now We’re Free’. www.myspace.com/thefuneralsuits

Oh, I love it when a band dresses up, makes with the kohl and glitter, luminescence, gloss, pigment, powder and feather boa to make tunes worthy of a preen in the mirror. In this case it’s been like watching a little sister go from a dressing-up table to theatre stages, as the Funeral Suits did when they were handpicked by Franz Ferdinand for their Irish tour support in March. And then The Breeders. And then Local Natives and now Passion Pit. All this with just two EPs and a few gigs.

Modest-faced young men who’ve pitted their wits and burgeoning hits against the indie-pop scene over the last three years, they don’t prance like the fabulous Franz, they just play, hiding behind a hat, a hood, a brazen song. Then we hear what they call the sound of “peer pressure and apocalypse” but that’s far too reserved – what we really hear is imaginative synths, swapped roles on guitar, tender, thunderous drums and a depth of feeling extending far beyond their years. Michael cradles his guitar beneath his jacket, Greg is too immersed to think of making eye-contact. They’re radio-friendly and the fodder for the hungry music industry, as all beauties are, but the big difference here is that there’s a distinct lack of air-headed starfucking. You won’t find them in smoking gardens at midnight, these belles of the ball play Cinderella songs and flee, leaving us with a crystal memory of great beauty. Nay McArdle

Owensie REAL NAME: FORMATION: FOR FANS OF: CHECK OUT: WEBSITE:

Michael Owens Dublin, 2007.

Nick Drake, John Martyn.

Owensie mini-album (available at shows). www.myspace.com/owensiemusic

What happens when a player in metal and stoner rock bands is left alone with his instrument of choice? In this instance, he makes gentle russet tones on a battered classical guitar picked up in a second-hand shop.

Some two years later, a session in the studio and a MySpace profile bring the solo work of Owensie into the light. His featured songs bring a timeless tenderness and a reminder of the vast creative scope attainable by one man and a guitar. Though well acquainted with the brilliant adrenaline rush of brash alternative rock through his bands Terrordactyl and Realistic Train, Owensie had never stepped onto a stage alone until last month, and those fortunate enough to be in attendance were awed to discover a sweetness and untold honesty in the simple guitar and vocal offerings. A self-titled CD of songs has circulated since that gig, containing amongst others, the delicate flamenco ‘Ronda’, named after an instrument shop on a mountain in the Granada region of Spain. They are simple and stripped-down and the kind of music anyone with an ear and a heart will relate to. Owensie supports James Blackshaw in November and fans of friendly, folky tunes will be in for a treat. It’s no surprise to hear that a new singer-songwriter is in town, but when accustomed to Terrordactyl’s salted jerky, it’s a pleasant discovery to find a sound like honey. Nay McArdle —23 AU Magazine—

Hey You!

Upfront

Words and Photos by Richard W Crothers & Remy Ciuba

Polly Skelton The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition Deadmau5 – Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff The Big Pink – Dominos

What's on your iPod?

Interesting Fact – Polly crashed her sister’s car the night before we stopped her in the street. Hey, at least it wasn’t her own car, right?

What’s On Your Mind?

Insight And Insanity From The AU Forum RE: ALBUMS OF THE DECADE Lish: I nominate The Strokes, Is This It and Killers, Hot Fuss.

My choices are built on the influence both bands had on the music and bands to follow them. It is no secret that The Strokes influenced the likes of Arctic Monkeys and perhaps to an extent, KOL. The Killers’ apostles would be any band that includes a synth as a primary instrument in their music.

Lily Price

Alex Johnston

Stephanie Marshall

Muse – A Natural Selection Robbie Williams – Bodies Train – Drops Of Jupiter

Nickelback – Burnt To The Ground Filter – Hey Man Nice Shot Nickelback – Gotta Be Somebody

Bat For Lashes – Moon And Moon The xx – Islands Yacht – Psychic City

Interesting Fact – Lily has been theatre dancing and doing jazz hands for seven years. She wouldn’t give us a twirl, though.

Interesting Fact – Alex has been told that he doesn’t have an accent (he does). He also likes Nickelback more than anyone should.

Interesting Fact – Stephanie has one of the biggest Pokemon collections in Ireland.

Is this a good or bad thing?

Desus: Are you having a giraffe?

ShowYourBones: The Killers? Purveyors of synth based music? I think the 80s might have something to say about that.

RE: STUPIDEST THING DONE WHEN DRUNK? ncbh: After a school function in Mallusk, I boked outside and someone called a taxi (having searched my wallet for name, phone number, etc). My brother turned up in a taxi and took me back to north Belfast. When I woke up, I put my uniform on, ready for school. It was Sunday dinnertime. I fell asleep in my mashed potato.

Grace Allen

William Wilde

Matthew Magowan

Death In Vegas – Digital Love Kings Of Leon – Charmer Elbow – Grounds For Divorce

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Weeping Song The Secret Machines – Sad And Lonely The Wildhearts – Rooting For The Bad Guy

John Cage – 4’33” Venetian Snares – Die Winnipeg Die Die Die Fuckers Die Merzbow – Takemitsu

Mypilot: Pissing on my bedroom floor.

Interesting Fact – William has “yet to find an appropriate place to call home”.

We don’t know what this means, but presume he’s living somewhere entirely inappropriate, like a skip, or a brothel.

Interesting Fact – Matthew admits he gets his kicks out of thieving Granny Smith apples. He’s such a bad ass.

Calling my uncle’s business associate’s wife a “fucking ugly bitch” for no reason (she WAS ugly though).

Interesting Fact – Yesterday Grace served Ma from The Hole In The Wall Gang a Wham bar. We didn’t even know they still existed. Wham bars that is, not Ma.

Pissing in my cousin’s wardrobe.

RE: THE SLITS Steven Dedalus: I heard an interview with Ari Up on BBC 6 Music last week, and it was just embarrassing. She claimed to be a threat to society. I, for one, do not feel threatened.

RE: IAN BROWN

Johnny Kerr

Danielle Magee

Gavin Mullan

The Creation – Making Time The Walker Brothers – Make It Easy On Yourself Jacques Dutronc – Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi

Led Zeppelin – Houses Of The Holy David Bowie – Dance Magic Muddy Waters – Baby Please Don’t Go

Dorian Concept – Two Dimensional Flying Lotus – Camel Samiyam – Trick Platform

ShowYourBones: Marching on the spot is no substitute for an inability to sing, irrespective of whether you can ride a bike backwards or not.

Interesting Fact – Suzanne does rock climbing, circuit training and accountancy. Wow, that’s like all three kinds of boring.

Interesting Fact – Gavin can think of the worst-case scenario in any given situation. That’s the kind of PMA we admire.

JOIN THE FUN AT WWW.IHEARTAU. COM/FORUM

Interesting Fact – Johnny paints pop art.

Ladies love a man who can handle his paintbrush, eh Johnny?

—24 issue 61—

—25 AU Magazine—

Upfront

The Answer Tour Diary

On The Road With The Answer

After a break at home due to AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson’s illness, The Answer are back in the States and back in the saddle. And the Spinal Tap moments just keep on coming...

Friday, October 16 Our first gig back is in the Verizon Centre, Washington DC. This is our third time in Washington in a year so we are on familiar ground to ease ourselves back in.

The gig is almost perfect, just a few mishaps...

During the last tour we released ‘Tonight’ as a single and, given the age we live in, we had a video message flash up on the screens behind us saying, “Text this number for a free download of The Answer single ‘Tonight’”. But that was then. Now we have a new single – ‘Comfort Zone’.

Of course, the record label and management had spoken to the video guys and told them to stop flashing up the message during the song because that campaign is over.

Unfortunately, nobody thought to tell us! So, before the last song Cormac announced to the 15,000 people in front of us: “Feel free to text the number behind us for a free Answer song” and we started into ‘Under The Sky’. He started dancing around (as he does) and as he jigged back towards the drum riser, he looked up and realised there was no message flashing up on the screen anymore. Oops! I’ve never seen so many confused faces in one room in my life.

Saturday, October 17 Headline show in Webster Hall, New York City. We wake and the bus is parked on 4th Avenue. Our guitar tech (V.B.) who is American informs us that it’s illegal to have a bus with a trailer in Manhattan. Good start to the day. Then we realise, on top of that, we are parked in front of a fire hydrant and... wait for it... in a no parking zone. “Never worry,” we tell him! Half the audience is from Belfast or Ireland. The highlight is playing ‘Evil Man’ live for the first time ever. Already, we can tell it is going to be a favourite with the audiences and with us. Another great gig and the bus didn’t get towed – we didn’t even get a ticket!

Sunday, October 18 The AC/DC show in Buffalo is amazing. It’s so good to be back up on a big stage. During the gig, introducing ‘Comfort Zone’, Cormac announces, “This is our second time in Buffalo – it’s great to be back in your beautiful city.” Micky, Paul and I stare confusedly at each other – we’ve never been in Buffalo before! Sure, no matter.

Tuesday, October 20 Tonight we played for around one hour and 30 mins at the Hard Rock Café in Pittsburgh, but the pièce de résistance of the gig was without a doubt the introduction. The venue had brought in a ‘local celebrity’ to compere the show – someone who obviously had no clue about rock music,

—26 issue 61—

never mind about The Answer. As if MCing the start of a wrestling match he roared down the mic...

“Welcome to the top of the show. This next band is very high-tech. You can check them out on the world wide web at theanswer.ie. Their CD entitled Everyday Dreams is on sale here tonight. When they are not kicking ass at hard rocks around the world, they are doing benefits for keeping kids safe in Belfast. Without further ado, it’s time to make some noise like you damn well mean it! Give it up for The Answer!”

And we had to walk on stage and play after that! We were all laughing so hard, we nearly fucked up the first two songs! Still, when we settled, we played a great gig and afterwards we partied away to the wee small hours.

Wednesday, October 21 Today we are in Philadelphia, the Wachovia Centre to be exact. For once, the gig passes over without any comical incidents and we even receive a standing ovation from the 15,000 strong audience. While we are playing, in the stadium next door the Philadelphia Phillies are playing to get into the World Series and when we come off stage the AC/DC head of security comes to our dressing room and tells us, “Either way, if the Phillies win or lose there will be riots out there tonight. On no account should any of you leave the grounds after the show.”

“Thank God!” my body screams, a blessing in disguise, a get-out-of-jail-free card – there’ll be no drinking, no partying tonight. Tomorrow will be a different thing, though... James Heatley WWW.THEANSWER.IE

Flashback

Rewind

Television’s punk moment The TV debut of The Young Ones, November 9, 1982

27

Years ago

It wasn’t just music that needed a punk revolution.

In the early Eighties, TV was bloated – American brain-rot shows like Dallas and Dynasty dominated the ratings. Viewers depended on Coronation Street to ‘keep it real’. Then, on the 9th of November 1982, the BBC aired a new programme based around four student caricatures; it contained mindless violence, surrealism, swearing, snot, farting, homicidal maniacs and jokes about South American revolutionaries. The Young Ones was pure televisual punk.

Words by John Freeman Illustration by Elissa Parente

Created and written by a pre-fame Ben Elton, Rik Mayall and Lise Mayer, and lasting only for the typically mythical 12 episodes, The Young Ones combined dense, topical dialogue with slapstick violence, surreal sub-sketches and direct-to-camera interplay. It not so much ripped up the rulebook, as appeared not to know that a rulebook even existed.

The four main protagonists were undergraduates at Scumbag College. Rick (played by Mayall) was a self-absorbed sociology student, who loved Lenin and hated Margaret Thatcher (on completing his morning ablutions, he once shouted, “The bathroom’s free, unlike the country under the Thatcherite junta!”).

A vegetarian and faux-anarchist, Rick proclaimed himself the ‘People’s Poet’ – his housemates thought his name began with a silent ‘P’. Vyvyan was a psychopathic punk, and a medical student. Played by Ade Edmondson, he drove a Ford Anglia and had a pet hamster called Special Patrol Group (or SPG for short).

Mortally obsessed with violence, he once kicked his own decapitated head down a railway line. And it was funny to watch.

The most mysterious, and perhaps underdeveloped housemate was Mike The Cool Person. Christopher Ryan’s character was sort of the house leader, and only alluded to being a student. A self-styled El Presidente, Mike was an alleged hit with the ladies, telling one “I know what you’re thinking, and if I told you, you’d think I was talking in centimetres.” Neil the hippy was arguably the most loved character.

Wonderfully enacted by Nigel Planer, Neil was a clinically depressed pacifist, who was passionate about “Vegetable Rights and Peace”. Constantly victimised by his fellow housemates, Neil undertook all the housework and cooking, which inevitably involved lentils and, when times were particularly hard, snow. (“Eat it up quickly, okay.”).

And it wasn’t all toy violence and jokes about farting; Elton’s scriptwriting was also elegant, with segments of perfect comic prose. During the brilliant episode

‘Bambi’, in which our heroes are chosen to appear on University Challenge, Neil tries to help Rick cram numerous useless facts about “crop rotation in the 14th century” on a train journey. If Abbot and Costello or Larry David had written the brilliant, spiralling dialogue (which results in a full-blown hissy fit from Rick) it would have been lauded as one of the great comedy sketches.

Like a fifth Beatle, Alexei Sayle played several characters from the Balowski family, most notably the scurrilous landlord Jerzei, and escaped convict Brian ‘Damage’ Balowski. Sayle delivered some of the show’s most memorable monologues – in ‘Bambi’, Sayle is a train driver being held up by Mexican bandits; his babbling speech about the number of revolutionaries that have biscuits named after them (“You’ve got your Garibaldi, of course”) is sublime.

Music played a major part in defining the show’s mythology; each episode included a band ‘performing’ a song. Motörhead’s ‘Ace Of Spades’ was suitably terrifying on ‘Bambi’, while The Damned vamped it up with their track ‘Nasty’ on, er, ‘Nasty’. Madness appeared twice (‘House Of Fun’ was devilishly creepy on ‘Boring’) and Amazulu’s appearance provided ammunition for a Christmas cracker quality joke – “Amazulu!” nods Rick to SPG. “Oh, ah’m a Glaswegian,” is the rodent’s retort.

The series also included another gazillion inspired cameos. Jennifer Saunders played evil murderess Helen Mucus, Robbie Coltrane was mad scientist Dr Carlisle (“Absolutely amazing! Human beings the size of amoebas”) and DJ Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman was God. Emma Thompson, Steven Fry, Hugh Laurie, Dawn French and Keith Allen also all appeared.

So, 27 years on, does The Young Ones look dated? You bet it does – although even Johnny Rotten venting his fury about the Queen seems faintly twee these days. But, like punk did with music six years earlier, The Young Ones reset the TV dial to endless comedic possibilities.

—27 AU Magazine—

Rewind

History Lessons - Josef K

History Lessons -Josef K —Do you know how to disappear completely? When the spotlight finally settles on the brightest star, what do you do when you find nothing but an empty space? Fame is a fickle mistress, and sometimes, the best thing to do is make the reservation in the hotel, and then slip out the nearest fire exit. But is this “preserving the mystique”, or “dropping the ball”? Time can be a cruel judge, so let the trial commence…

Words by Steven Rainey

As we near the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it’s possible (in a way) to break down the dominant musical trends into several groups. First of all, there were the nu-metal years, where baggy skate jeans were all the rage, and men with funny little beards on their chins urged us to “break stuff” whilst cursing our parents. This was all very fine and well, but after a year or so of this, a bunch of snotty nosed (mainly) American kids came along with skinny ties and good haircuts, plugged in cheap guitars, and made raw and dirty pop, ushering in the garage rock revival.

Then somewhere along the line, things shifted again, and it was no longer acceptable to stand perched against a wall, the collar of your leather jacket turned up whilst smoking a cigarette. This was not cool anymore. Indeed, being ‘cool’ was no longer cool.

‘Serious’ was in, ‘fun’ was out. Suddenly, instead of brash distorted guitars, you had slinky, snaky basslines, icy synths, scratchy guitars, and lyrics about alienation. The garage bands had been consigned to the garage, whilst a whole new generation of kids raided dad’s record collection and found mysterious and oblique records with names like ‘Joy Division’, ‘Gang of Four’, ‘Magazine’, and ‘Public Image Limited’. They kept the skinny ties, but swapped the leather jackets for trench coats, and the post-punk revival boom was hatched.

One of the hallmarks of 21st century contemporary music has been the act of name-dropping. These days, you’re only as cool as the names you’re dropping, dontchaknow. And for a genre that prided itself on being obscure, it was only a matter of time

issue61— 60— —28issue —28

before post-punk was deemed to be rich pickings for the hipster set. After the explosion of punk rock revealed itself to be an artistic dead end, many of the so-called founding fathers of the movement decided to break rank and indulge their more esoteric tastes, forever abandoning the sarcastic sneer and the three chord rush. Reggae and dub highlighted texture and depth, whilst funk unleashed rhythm. Throw in existential loathing and alienation, and you’ve got the heady brew of post-punk. As Howard Devoto once sang, “The light pours out of me.”

And strangely enough, after the ‘here’s three chords, go form a band’, utilitarian spirit of punk, post-punk proved to be even more unifying. Punk had provided the battering ram through culture, and now anything was acceptable. All over the UK (and the US) kids picked up guitars without any real notion of what to do with them, and decided they could express ANYTHING they wanted to through them. After the visceral rush of punk, here came the intellectuals.

Chilly, cerebral funk played by amateurs, with no intention of making you dance? Step right up, sir!

Post-industrial, Ballardian nightmares of paranoia and claustrophobia? Yes sir, I believe we have that on the menu right here! Scratchy tuneless rubbish, created by art students with a head full of ideas and fingers of clay? That’s today’s speciality.

Up north of the border, something strange was brewing.

Punk had largely passed Scotland by, producing relatively few bands of note, but post-punk was like a breath of fresh air through the country, allowing the misfits and outsiders in society to unleash their twisted dreams and nightmares upon an unsuspecting public.

In the relatively short period of 1979 to 1981, one small independent record label would provide us with two bands who would unwittingly provide the blueprint for 21st century music. The label was Postcard Recordings, and the bands were Orange Juice and Josef K. This, as they claimed, tongue firmly buried in cheek, was “the Sound of Young Scotland”.

The label was the creation of Alan Horne, a Glaswegian whose love of the Velvet Underground and the Tamla Motown label led to him envisaging a similar operation, where he could churn out a series of records, combining the pop sensibilities of Motown, with the Velvets’ cutting edge sensibilities. Horne is a semi-legendary figure in indie music history, but effectively became a bit part in his own story, largely due to the incredible nature of the two bands he brought to public attention. Orange Juice were arguably unlike anything else, a complete bolt from the blue. Amid the austere greys of post-punk, they were a Technicolor marvel, full of life and enthusiasm, brimming with optimism. On the other hand, Josef K provided the intellectual back-bone to the label – named after a Kafka protagonist, proudly literary, uptight, itchy, funky – right from the very beginning, they were the real deal.

“We all just met at a party, we were just taken up by the whole guitar new wave/punk thing,” begins Josef K frontman Paul Haig, speaking 30 years after the group formed in Edinburgh. “It was all quite cosy, really! We shared a love of the Velvet Underground and New York punk – you know, Television, Talking Heads.

We also liked Wire as well, they were a bit different… quite cerebral.”

This sense of the ‘cerebral’ is something that would come to categorise – and later haunt – Josef K. Alongside the day-glo Sixties pop sensibilities of label mates Orange Juice, Josef K looked like the most stereotypical of postpunk groups: grey, austere, stern, almost monastic in their existence – completely devoid of fun. The Kafka-quoting and paranoid yelp of Haig’s voice only confirmed the impression of them as heavyweight intellectual titans.

Of course, this ignores the Chic-influenced funk and danceable guitar stabs, but that’s all part of the fun of pigeonholing things…

“We liked to turn the treble up to try and cut right through. We were trying to combine Joy Division and some funk elements. We were just young and naive, really.

It came out of not really being expert players! That’s part of the appeal of punk… a great time.”

Snapped up by Alan Horne to complement Orange Juice on his fledgling label, Josef K quickly found themselves at the forefront of a Scottish ‘scene’. Not that anyone really noticed at first.

“We weren’t aware of starting a movement! Dave McCullough from Sounds magazine came up to Glasgow, and came away telling everyone about this ‘Sound of Young Scotland’. Malcolm [Ross – Josef K guitarist] was friendly with Orange Juice, and we got to know each other and support each other at gigs. Alan Horne had this idea of making a Scottish Motown, but it was all a bit of a myth, really.”

The music press fell head-over-heels for this new sound, pouring all manner of critical praise upon the groups.

After the sudden shock of Ian Curtis’ suicide, Orange —29 AU Magazine—

History Lessons

Juice seemed to be the perfect remedy, providing a sense of optimism and hope that was a million miles away from the heart of darkness represented by Manchester’s finest.

On the other hand, Josef K represented an arty, danceable antidote to the seriousness of post-punk. Yes, it was literate and intelligent, but it had a great beat.

The band themselves represented a different aesthetic as well. Not quite the tortured poets, instead they pursued a healthy interest in philosophy and learning. For once, music was not the cultural touchstone, but literature was.

“You’d see bands with paperbacks in their pockets!” laughs Haig. “They’d always have the title poking out the top so you could see what it was. I’d be more discreet and keep mine in the inside pocket! But it definitely wasn’t a staged thing. Lyrically we were all influenced by what we were reading… Kafka, Camus. It wasn’t so common for musicians to read in those days!”

Initial singles were warmly received, and so began the saga of recording their debut album, one of the more unusual stories in rock and roll history.

“We’d recorded a few singles. It was all done very quickly; we’re in on the morning, and Orange Juice would be there in the evening! We tried the same with the album, and when we got it back, we weren’t happy with it. There were mastering problems. We didn’t like the dynamics, and it had too much sparkle. We wanted it to be live and edgy, and it was too polished and tame. We felt we hadn’t captured what we were all about.”

So, feeling they’d compromised themselves, the band canned the album, titled Sorry For Laughing, believing it to be too professional sounding. This bizarre decision effectively scuppered any momentum the band had developed, so that by the time their second attempt at a debut album was released, this time titled The Only Fun in Town, it was greeted with outright horror by some —30 issue 61—

Josef K

sections of the music press. Lumpy, leaden and decidedly uncommercial, it sank like a stone, dragging the band down with it.

“We’d recorded it quickly in Belgium. It was cheap and thrashy with less vocals – a lot less vocals! When you look back at the first version of the album, it just sounds… better! But we had that punk ethic, we wanted edge. We were so staunch and idealistic about our beliefs that the second version was more in keeping with what we were like.”

At the same time, Orange Juice seemed to be floundering in their attempt to reinvent pop in their own image.

Whilst the initial reception to their first few singles was nothing short of rapturous, things were beginning to sour, and there was a distinct sense that their followers were beginning to surpass the masters. Bands like ABC and Haircut 100 had taken the band’s faux-naivety into the charts with polished and stylish pop productions, whilst Orange Juice still attempted to shamble their way to greatness. The inevitable split with Postcard came during the recording of their first album, with the band eventually scoring a chart hit with ‘Rip It Up’, in 1982.

Meanwhile, Josef K found themselves trapped in a moment, unable – or unwilling – to progress.

parts Orange Juice and Josef K. Even the band’s paranoid aesthetic has wormed its way into the mainstream, with bands such as Editors presenting a more ‘user-friendly’ version of Haig’s claustrophobic vision. Sad music you can dance to? Who’d have ever thought that would catch on!

2009 see’s Haig return with a new album, Relive, which finds him thawing with regards to his past. From the opening notes, there’s a sense of familiarity apparent, not quite like the scratchy Josef K sound of yore, but somehow in tune with the same spirit. Sounding alarmingly contemporary (by ironically harking back to the past) Relive is the most relaxed and enjoyable record Paul Haig has made in a long time, despite possessing that wired tension and widescreen melodrama which prevents us from getting too comfortable.

“I actually can’t remember making it! It was a return to that punk ethic, ‘Just bash it out!’ I had tremendous fun making it and, in a sense, it’s a return to where I started. In a perverse way, I’m copying myself.”

Standing at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, gazing at a sea of imitation, Paul Haig has created an album which references his past, but looks to his future.

“At the start, we were a really close knit band, but like anything, we’d started to drift. It had started to become like a job, and we could have carried on, but we’d have been going through the motions. In a way, we were far too pure to be tampered with. Our last concert was in Glasgow. a really depressing night.”

“I can look back, and listen as a stranger and an outsider.”

After the band’s split, Haig became a peripheral figure in the music industry, increasingly drawn towards the possibilities of electronic music. However, the music of Josef K has continued to grow in influence, with a large number of bands such as Franz Ferdinand drawing inspiration from a heady brew which is equal

RELIVE IS OUT NOW ON RHYTHM OF LIFE

As if it could be any different for the person behind Josef K.

Respect Your Shelf The AU Buyers’ Guide Bill Murray Words by Neill Dougan Illustration by Elissa Parente —31 AU Magazine—

Rewind

Respect Your Shelf - Bill Murray

In a world where the gory details of most Hollywood stars’ lives are common knowledge, Bill Murray is that rarest of things – a major Hollywood player about whom not too much is known. Since first gaining widespread exposure in the US on Saturday Night Live, before making the leap to motion pictures, Murray has retained an air of enigmatic detachment. He gives very few interviews.

Almost unbelievably, he apparently doesn’t have an agent, preferring to manage his own work via a PO box that he supposedly checks infrequently – allegedly missing out on several choice roles over the years as a result.

None of which would be particularly interesting if, over the years, Mr Murray hadn’t turned in some of the greatest comedy performances ever committed to celluloid. The fact that we don’t know a great deal about him as a person means he can be judged solely on his work. And on that basis alone, Bill Murray is one of the greats. Here are a few examples of why.

Ghostbusters (1984) Murray already had form, turning in scene-stealing performances in the likes of Caddyshack (1980) and Tootsie (1982). But it’s his role in classic Eighties romp Ghostbusters that sealed his reputation as a comedy hero.

Chances are, even without Murray’s involvement, the film would have been a massive hit. The elements were all there – a buddy movie with a crackling script, plenty of action, cuttingedge (for the time) special effects, an iconic theme tune and a great ensemble cast. But Murray’s now-signature laconic, deadpan delivery and whip-smart ad-libs lift the movie into the realms of bona fide classic.

For anyone who grew up in the Eighties with even a passing interest in the movies, Ghostbusters is a touchstone. Full of great set pieces, the film follows a team of New York ‘para-psychologists’ who – kitted out in matching cream uniforms and sporting their trusty Proton Packs – find fame and infamy as they investigate a series of paranormal goings-on in the Big Apple.

Murray’s Peter Venkman begins wooing an attractive client, Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver), whose apartment is haunted by the demonic Zuul. Sadly, she is later possessed by Zuul, and her neighbour Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) by another spirit, Vinz Clortho. All of which eventually leads to a climactic rooftop showdown with a pair of hell hounds, an ill-advised (but necessary) crossing of beams and a massive Marshmallow Man intent on destroying the city. What’s not to love?

Best Bit: Difficult to select just one highlight, but when Venkman and co. emerge from a recently-exorcised building and he announces to the waiting crowd that, “We came, we saw… we kicked its ass!”, you just want to get up and cheer.

La Triviata: The role of Venkman was originally written for the late John Belushi, who died while the script was being finalised.

—32 issue 61—

Scrooged (1988) The very phrase ‘Christmas movie’ is enough to send the seasoned cinephile into paroxysms of dread, seeing as how the vast majority of said festive films are utterly terrible.

Thank the baby Jesus, then, for Scrooged, a rare exception to the rule that all seasonal flicks must be slushy, sentimental, unfunny mush.

This modern twist on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is classic prime-period Murray, a vehicle for his singular comedic talents. His portrayal of Frank Cross – a cynical, jaded and manipulative television executive – sees him at his most animated. In fact, at odds with the inscrutable ironist of repute, the Bill Murray of Scrooged is veritably wired – ranting, roaring, gesticulating and yelling his way through Frank’s terrifying journey of self-discovery as he is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future and shown the error of his ways. Amusingly, the more frazzled Frank becomes, the more out of control his haircut gets.

Like Ghostbusters before it, Scrooged has any number of quotable lines and laugh-out-loud moments. The ghosts are all quality, and the large supporting cast (including Karen Allen as Frank’s ex-girlfriend Claire and Alfre Woodard as long-suffering assistant Grace) is excellent. But, needless to say, Murray steals the show with a bravura performance.

Best bit: A reformed and thoroughly wired Frank makes an unexpected appearance in front of the TV cameras to manically declare that he’s a changed man: “Then it can happen! The miracle can happen to you! It’s not just the poor and hungry, it’s everyone! YOU GOTTA HAVE THIS MIRACLE!!”

La Triviata: Frank’s brother James is portrayed by Bill’s real-life sibling, John Murray. Another Murray brother, Joel, also has a small role.

GUIDED BY CHOICES:THE AU DEFENCE Certain of Bill Murray’s films were shoo-ins for inclusion. No discussion of his career would be possible without mention of two outright classics in Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day, as well as his most acclaimed performance in Lost In Translation. The remaining places on the list were very much up for grabs as frankly the man is rarely less than excellent. Accordingly, AU limited itself to movies where Murray plays the lead (or at least one of the leads). For example, while he’s good in Tootsie, it’s by and large a Dustin Hoffman movie. Similarly, while he puts in his usual impressive shift in The Royal Tenenbaums, that’s really more of a Gene Hackman-led affair. Then there are the films which, despite Murray’s best efforts, aren’t particularly good. Broken Flowers left us cold; Ghostbusters II is the archetypal disappointing sequel; while Kingpin, though it undoubtedly had its moments, doesn’t quite make the grade.

Then there’s Caddyshack and Rushmore, both arguably worthy of inclusion. The former didn’t make it because, overall, it was felt that Ghostbusters is the archetypal ‘early period’ Murray flick; while the latter misses out because, when it comes to Wes Anderson-Bill Murray collaborations, AU is in the minority by considering that The Life Aquatic… just edges it.

Lost In Translation (2003) A critically adored, multi awardwinning tale of loneliness and ennui which saw Murray Oscar-nominated for his performance, while writer-director Sofia Coppola bagged the gong for Best Original Screenplay. And you can see why – it’s a contemplative, enigmatic, understated delight, featuring what is undoubtedly Murray’s finest latter-day performance.

Murray plays Bob Harris, an over-the-hill movie star in a struggling marriage, who lands in Hong Kong to shoot a commercial for Suntory Japanese whiskey. Here he encounters Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), the young wife of a celebrity photographer who seems just as lost and bewildered as he. The pair strike up an unlikely, oddly intimate friendship during their brief time together, before they part with a whispered exchange that is inaudible to the viewer.

Though perhaps a tad over-burdened with awards and critical love-notes, there are nonetheless many reasons to like this film, not least the career-making performance of Johansson and the superlative soundtrack, featuring the likes of The Jesus & Mary Chain, Death In Vegas and contributions from the elusive Kevin Shields. But the main reason for repeat viewings is Murray’s measured and poignant portrait of a thoroughly dislocated man.

Best Bit: In what is a considered comedy-drama rather than an outright chuckle-fest, one of the few laughout-loud moments is the scene where Bob shoots his advertisement for Suntory whiskey, complete with apoplectic Japanese director. Bob: “For relaxing time… make it Suntory time”. Director: “CUTO! CUTO! CUTO! CUTO!” La Triviata: Following the film’s release, The Guardian ran an article by Kiku Day, a Danish musician with Japanese roots, slamming what she called the movie’s anti-Japanese racism.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004) Murray followed his lauded turn in Lost In Translation with a thoroughly droll turn a year later as the titular Steve Zissou in Wes Anderson’s comedy.

The typically quirky plot follows formerly-renowned, though latterly discredited, underwater explorer and filmmaker Zissou as he seeks the mysterious ‘Jaguar Shark’ – a creature that he openly wishes to destroy, as it has previously killed his best friend Esteban. Along the way Zissou finds his long-lost son, battles pirates and engages in a series of manoeuvres unbecoming of a man in charge of a sea vessel. Zissou’s documentary of his quest sees him ultimately win back the respect that he has long craved, but at a cost.

The Life Aquatic… is, in truth, a fairly divisive film, one that garnered very mixed reviews and which has as many detractors as fans. Much depends on whether you appreciate Anderson’s deliberately stylised approach.

AU is a fan, but the film is undoubtedly something of an acquired taste. In any case, Murray’s performance can’t be faulted, as he carries off the role of the self-centred, egocentric, but ultimately redeemable, Zissou with customary aplomb. He’s also ably supported by a fine ensemble troupe – including Willem Dafoe, Angelica Huston, Owen Wilson, Jeff Goldblum and Cate Blanchett – and a soundtrack of acoustic David Bowie covers, sung in Portuguese by cast member Seu Jorge.

Best Bit: Zissou’s completely unruffled reaction to the appearance of a gang of heavily-armed pirates: “Don’t point that gun at him. He’s an unpaid intern.”

La Triviata: After Anderson came up with the character name ‘Steve Zissou’, it was discovered that there was a real person with that name in New York. His consent for the use of the name was obtained, and he is listed in the film’s credits.

Groundhog Day (1993) A solid, if unspectacular, box office performer upon its release, Groundhog Day subsequently seeped into the popular consciousness to the extent that it is now widely recognised as one of the best movies of the 1990s. It remains – to the mind of this writer – Bill Murray’s best film to date.

The plot sees Murray’s acerbic, cynical TV weatherman Phil Connors trapped in the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, doomed to repeat the same day again and again until he changes his ways and finds redemption through the love of a good woman, TV producer Rita (Andie McDowell). This relatively simple premise forms the basis for some great comedic set-pieces as Phil does what anyone would do if they found themselves living the same day over and over: he goes on a massive hedonistic rampage, before becoming thoroughly suicidal.

Groundhog Day saw Murray team up again with writerdirector Harold Ramis, and it’s arguable that the talented Mr Ramis (who penned and directed Caddyshack, and of course also co-wrote and starred as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters) brings the best out of Bill. Certainly Murray is in top form here, turning in arguably a career-best performance. A shame, then, that he and Ramis had an unspecified falling out during filming, resulting in a feud that was to last over 10 years.

Best Bit: Each day, at the same time, at the same corner of the street, Phil is accosted by highly annoying school acquaintance Ned Ryerson, who attempts to sell him life assurance. This goes on for some time before Phil finally snaps and simply smacks the hapless Ned square in the face.

La Triviata: The film wasn’t actually shot in Punxsutawney but in Woodstock, Illinois, where there is now a plaque on ‘Ned’s Corner’, commemorating the timeless exchanges that occurred there between Phil and Ned.

—33 AU Magazine—

Rewind

Classic Album - Public Image Limited

Classic Album Public Image Limited – Metal Box (1979)

Post-punk looked to black musical tradition for a clue to the future, with many bands fetishising the power of the bass guitar. However, none would summon its visceral energy quite as sadistically as those titans of art-rock fusion, Public Image Limited. On their tour de force of a second LP, there lies a terrorride, an eternal bad trip and the most unforgiving deconstruction of rock’s pat creative routines ever committed to reel.

Words by John Calvert Illustration by Elissa Parente

A record that could only be the product of radical thinking, Metal Box was the complete realisation of John Lydon’s vision of “anti-music”; something so psychologically repellent and downright challenging compared to anything dispatched into the mainstream before, not least his old band the Sex Pistols Never Mind The Bollocks. Following the loss of Pistols bandmate Sid Vicious to heroin, his mother to cancer and his soul to the global press, Lydon’s bleak disposition pervades, melding with an overwhelming sense of the decay and airless electrical throb of Seventies London. It offered no outlet comparable to punk’s liberating fury and clearly apportioned blame. For many it was the revolution that punk posited but could never fulfil – a sonic one. In 1979, in an end of year review for the NME, Paul Morley declared Metal Box to be “truly what Miles Davis had in mind when he said he could put together the greatest rock ‘n’ roll group in the world.”

The sound of Metal Box encompasses yet defiles Neu!’s metronomic, monochromatic psychedelia, dub reggae, Can’s spayed white funk and finally disco, which for Lydon was more efficient and honest in its functional inanity than the bullshit posturing of ‘meaningful’ rock ‘n’ roll. Alternating between Chic-worthy funk and reggae’s low frequency voodoo, Jah Wobble’s propulsive basslines stand sentry under guitarist Keith Levene’s free-form tablature. The finished product was refashioned with the techniques employed by Jamaica’s soundsystem culture, the better to achieve the kind of strange spatial realms concocted by pioneering producers like Lee Perry.

On opener ‘Albatross’, a 10-minute colossus of bad feeling, Wobble’s subsonic pump contributes a sinister playfulness as Levene’s neo-classical scything runs riot with a perverse devotion to the wrong (but somehow right) notes.

Levene’s performance is leviathan, a virtuoso incarnation of terrible beauty, sucking and drawing, alien, body-less and glowing with a plutonium danger; his “vicious graffiti” as the NME described it perfectly at the time.

‘Memories’, the closest thing to a single on the album, is a manic, quick-tempo, floorfiller of a track. Lydon, forever the futurist, derides his contemporaries’ weakness for rancid Sixties nostalgia, specifically mod culture which was experiencing a revival in 1979. A disorientating, hellish threnody, ‘Death Disco’ is the record’s zenith. Truly a gruelling experience, Lydon sees his beloved mother dying over Levene’s prolapsed rendition of ‘Swan Lake’. True to form, the ex-Johnny Rotten mocks indulgence; he’s repulsed by his own self-pity, yet simultaneously deliers a startling expression of insurmountable bereavement.

The track fades while Lydon repeats the line, “Words cannot explain”. In the post-punk era, vocals were

—34 issue 61—

reinvented and for years they were distorted beyond recognition. Lydon’s were no different yet were uniquely blood-chilling, as evinced on ‘Poptones’ which recounts the story of a rape (and murder?) from the perspective of the victim. Her mind just can’t rid itself of the memory of the banal pop songs he played in his Japanese car on the way to the woods. Wobble’s watertorture bassline is circled by Levene, the guitar’s flailing stream of consciousness calcifying into one perpetual onslaught as the victim begins “losing body heat”.

Lydon’s lyrics are horrible, the vocals otherworldly and grotesquely twisted. With off-kilter intonation and bizarre inflection he drawls: “I can’t forget the impression you’ve made / You left a hole in the back of my head / I don’t like hiding in this foliage and peat / And the cassette plays poptooooooones.”

This chiaroscuro juxtaposition of skanking bass and Levene’s immense noodling renders Metal Box both subterranean and towering, like the gothic monuments comprising the skyline of the band’s hometown. It’s a musical compound rife with paradox: serrated but sensuous, inert and rampant, European and North American, White on Black. Similarly, the manner in which Levene’s guitar closes its cold fingers around Wobble’s repetitions makes for a sound trembling with intensity, but suggestive of pin-pupilled trances.

Metal Box’s legacy has emerged in dribs and drabs ever since, usually when artists look to forge a working interface between black music and art-rock, but also dwelling in the sounds of acts as disparate as Primal Scream, R.E.M. and the Manic Street Preachers. Like many of the British post-punk bands, PiL informed much of what would develop throughout the Eighties in underground America and then by the Nineties, trip-hop’s atmospherics were being directly lifted from the disquiet conjured on Metal Box. More recently, you can hear its influence on dubstep’s oppressive art-garage, including Burial’s diagram of nocturnal South London.

Ultimately, though, it was Metal Box’s guitar sound which travelled the farthest distance from its origins, pinched as it was by U2 so that they could anaesthetise whole stadia of happy folk. The irony being, of course, that Levene had the most diabolical of intentions for his sound, planning to horrify those very same, contented people. A comforting thought to cling to the next time Bono’s telling you to be a nicer person over a glacial guitar chime.

PIL HAVE REFORMED FOR A STRING OF SIX ARENA DATES IN DECEMBER.

WWW.PILOFFICIAL.COM

—35 AU Magazine—

HEALTH

HEALTH

“YOU WILL LOVE EACH OTHER” instructed HEALTH with the release of their 2007 self-titled debut album and oh, we happily obeyed. Two years and a brand-new album later, Jake, John, Jupiter and BJ are feeling the love far beyond the oceans.

Instantly identifiable and utterly unforgettable, their music has been described as groundbreaking, bridging the gap between lofi noise and synthy disco without cliché. Backstage at Dublin’s Village venue just moments before kicking off their biggest European tour to date, AU nabbed the four Jays to discuss Get Color, cat hair and lovingly electrocuting their friends.

Interview & Photography by Nay McArdle

Are you happy to be back on tour?

Jupiter Keyes: It’s pretty exciting. We’ll see, it’s the first show but we’ve been waiting months for the album to come out. So now it’s a relief and pretty awesome.

Jupiter: We followed the rule that everything had to come from the band ourselves, personal, wacky stuff. PJs, a Little League jacket, a painting John’s mom did... it’s all personal.

The new material was written before your last show here, right?

Jupiter: Actually, yeah, we had all the songs from the album done because the album was finished before the last tour.

It seems a good way of minimising piracy too... but they do say true fans will always pay.

Jake: You have to adapt technologically and socially to what’s going on. People who complain the most... it’s always people who sell a ton. I want to slap Lars Ulrich in the face when he’s selling some painting at auction and cheering with his Cristal – “You shouldn’t be downloading our record because I need to buy another yacht!” Fuck you, dude! [Laughter] So I dunno... I don’t think it’s true that true fans will buy the record necessarily.

John: I don’t buy all of them!

Jake: It’s a bummer when you value music less but it’s just a reality that eventually everything will be free.

Especially in our case.

It’s not an easy thing, touring Europe. Did you arrange that yourselves?

Jake Duszik: No, we’re doing a lot more shows this time.

We were actually in Europe about a month ago, we did a few festival shows, not proper HEALTH shows, y’know, with us headlining but still, some guy came to three shows and bought a t-shirt each night and that was cool.

What are you looking forward to?

Jake: We decided to play Poland for the first time. Not only is this the first night of us touring, it’s the first night of us releasing a record. Obviously, there are a lot of variables – one show might be great in one country and terrible in the next, so it’s hard to gauge which places you’re liked in or whether it was just a bad night. At least some places have bank holidays that last four days. We’re great lovers of bank holidays.

People seem pretty excited – no-one’s heard of a band who offers them a three-day stay in their house with bed and breakfast.

BJ Miller: We have to bring them breakfast in bed?!

John Famiglietti: I wrote that!

Whose idea was it to ramp things up by turning Get Color’s release into a ticket sweepstake?

Jake: It was Jupe’s idea originally, we joked about the Golden Ticket thing on the first album but there was no means to accomplish that, nor anyone to buy it, so that was a kind of moot point. Just a joke to start with, it became a conversation, what if we went all Charlie and the fucking Chocolate Factory, even though we don’t have a chocolate factory?

Jupiter: There’s amazing stuff with packaging being done really well by bands recently but we thought it would be interesting – nobody’s excited about owning a record anymore. We wanted to make it more exciting and then wanted the prize to be really weird and unique because we’re not a huge band that would send an autographed drumstick. That’d just be kinda sucky, you know?

BJ: I don’t know how interesting it would be for someone to receive some of Jupiter’s cat’s hair in a bag with a picture of the cat too, but I think that’s pretty exciting.

Jake: I would be so stoked to get a bag of cat hair from one of my favourite artists. If Ted Nugent sent me a bag of his cat hair, I would be blown away. But if Ted Nugent sent me the shells from his gun, that would also make me happy.

You guys aren’t likely to make much money from touring or albums though?

Jake: Touring is actually where we make our money. In the old major-label days, bands made money off records and actually made a loss while touring because they’d have these extravagant costs to make sure their fans wouldn’t be pissed and would buy the next record. But as an indie band, record sales are not a huge source of income. Some do sell a lot of records but tours are where we make money. I don’t get my cash in hand, or rider, or Cristal delivered into my bedroom.

You started out doing free shows, right?

Jake: In reality, all bands do because no one’s going to pay to see a band they don’t know. It’s not like, ‘I don’t know who you are, but I like you and I’m gonna pay you! And here’s your rider!’

BJ: Especially not in LA, where there are literally thousands of bands and no labels. Lots of people still think a label will come out and say “HERE’S YO MONEH!” [laughter] You obviously get on really well... do you stay friends on tour?

Jake: Well, Jupiter just left [for the bathroom] so I don’t know how long we’re gonna last...

John: If you took one of my average friends and put me in a band with them for three months, I dunno if I’d get along with them. You’d yell at your average friends within five minutes. [Jupiter comes back in] Jake: Oh what, we’re supposed to just take you back?!

It has been said that Get Color is a lot tighter and stronger than the first album. How do you think you’ve changed between the two?

Jake: We definitely became a lot more confident. Just the process of writing the stuff initially, recording it, touring it. That creates the solidarity of finding out what kind of

band you are, I think we’re pretty weird. It might have been easier if we were a normal three-piece rock band with a ‘sound’ but it’s more interesting this way.

Did you bring in any unusual instruments or new things for Get Color?

Jupiter: I brought in a lot of pedals [points them out on the pedal board]. That red one’s important. And that green one’s really cool.

John: The green one’s really important too. Just don’t say what it’s called.

Jupiter: We try not to talk about our pedals. We may get asked about them a lot but I don’t know shit about them.

BJ [the drummer]: We should just defer all pedal interviews to me because I really don’t know anything!

Can I ask about the Baltimore Alliance? You’re at opposite ends of the country but seem so close to Baltimore acts Narwhalz and VideoHippos. What happened there?

Jake: The kids are just as cool as fuck out there, way cooler than LA. In LA, all the kids are like, ‘I’m going to go home and have a shower after the gig and put on some perfume, so I can smell myself’, or ‘I’ve brought my car, so I can drive really far home’, or ‘Fuck you guys, I’m going to the beach’. You can’t do that in Baltimore. In Baltimore, it’s like: ‘We all live in a bus together. I have 14 people in my house. My rent is 15 dollars a week but I have a full body rash and I haven’t seen my doctor in about three months. I can’t go outside because I’ll get mugged’.

For a long time, both scenes were neglected and got lost – whereas everyone’s always paying attention to New York, these scenes grew outside of the limelight. Ole Narwhalz have been friends with Dan Deacon for years, so when we were playing shows with these guys, they all knew each other already; you had this constant exchange. When they’re on tour in LA, we help them out with a show and when we’re in Baltimore they will. The cities are really connected.

We played a show in Baltimore that was huge... there was this weirdo friend of VideoHippos. He was having some medical study to see the effect on his brain while smoking weird stuff. So when he came along, we thought, ‘We’ve got to give you something to do’. We had these stimulator paddles that send electricity through you. They don’t really shock you, they just flex your muscles and shit. So it’s kind of like performance art, before we went on stage we just attached them to his face and electrocuted the shit out of him. Jupiter was like ‘Five! Six!’ and the levels just kept going up. He actually started foaming at the mouth, which was pretty cool. Pretty intense.

Jupiter: Dude, we should take that on the road....

GET COLOR IS OUT NOW ON LOVEPUMP UNITED. WWW.MYSPACE.COM/HEALTHMUSIC

—37 AU Magazine—

AIR

—38 issue 61—

Air

Tripping The Light Fantastic

It is over 11 years since Versailles duo Air released their seminal debut album, Moon Safari. The record sold in huge numbers and programme makers, advertisers and dinner party hosts alike adopted its songs. Over-exposure would distort perceptions of the band. Some even damned them with the ‘easy listening’ tag. As they release fifth studio album, Love 2, Jean-Benoît Dunckel explains to AU how Air have been sorely misunderstood.

Words by Francis Jones

The first impression created by Air’s first full-length album, Moon Safari, has proven stubbornly enduring.

That they have been defined by its success is not an entirely bad thing. The album is widely considered a classic after all, an archetype of languid, ever so sensual, European pop. However, whilst many have exiled them to the past, the twosome – Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin – have continued to experiment and push relentlessly forward. There was the voyage-to-the-outerlimits adventuring of 10,000 Hertz Legend (2001), the excursions into film, most notably the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (2000), and an acclaimed collaboration with Charlotte Gainsbourg, for whose album 5:55 (2006) they wrote and played the music.

How dispiriting then for them to find that their new album, Love 2, is being described simply as Moon Safari Mark 2, a return to form – the implication being, of course, that everything they’ve done since then has been below par, or somehow uncharacteristic. Jean-Benoît Dunckel is not pleased. Insisting I call him JB, he gives a sigh and wearily admits that he is, “Very disappointed with the media. They just don’t listen. A lot of people are attached to what we have done before, the article is already written in their head and they just listen to the album quickly on their computer. This is what you get when you are an established band. Our past is much stronger than our present. We are judged always by what we have done, rather than what we are doing.”

JB stresses that Air are always searching for the mountainous terrain, looking to scale new and more demanding peaks. If others cannot perceive this, then that’s their problem. “I want to shock people, rather than do something with no sense of belief, that has no hills and is all flat,” he says, in that deliciously piquant accent.

An exasperated snort and he continues, firing out short sentences like verbal bullet points. “We want to react against the last one [album]. We want to do something different. We are always searching for new ideas. There is always some tension. We are anxious that we do not simply regenerate ourselves. These feelings and emotions go into the music and transform into sound. That is how it works. We are humans and we are artists and everything we experience goes into the music. We risk failure every time we make an album. We would prefer to do something that is totally misunderstood than to repeat ourselves to get success. We hope, and we know, that our fans want to be surprised, for us to inspire wonder in them. ‘Oh, so there is a new Air album, what is the feeling behind it, what is the idea?’”

To some extent, you can sympathise with the critics who JB slams for merely noting the resemblance between Love 2 and Moon Safari. On first listen, the new record is everything we’ve come to expect from the band whose name is a backronym for Love, Imagination and Dream [Amour, Imagination, Rêve]. The motif of romantic

According to the press release for Love 2, Air have attained the status of “de facto ambassadors for modern French pop”. And what charming and well mannered envoys they are too. That said, not all their predecessors have been quite so controversy free.

overshadowed by the manner of his demise. Whilst standing in a filled bath in his Paris apartment, François – who suffered from OCD – noticed a light bulb that wasn’t straight. He tried to straighten it and was accidentally electrocuted. Remember him this way… http://tinyurl.com/claudemyway

ÉDITH PIAF

SERGE GAINSBOURG

Nicknamed ‘La Môme Piaf’ [The Little Sparrow], her physically diminutive frame housed a gargantuan talent.

Unfortunately, Piaf’s life was as tempestuous as she herself was talented. Blind from the age of three to seven, she spent much of her early life at her grandmother’s brothel.

She later wound up singing on the streets of Paris and, at 17, she lost her first child, aged two, to meningitis.

Survived near shooting at the hands of a pimp boyfriend, before being launched into singing career by nightclub owner Louis Leplée. Leplée was later murdered and Piaf accused, but acquitted of being an accessory to the crime.

Equal parts genius and sex pest, Serge Gainsbourg caused a furore with the 1969 release of ‘Je t’aime... moi non plus’, a song which featured the simulated sounds of female orgasm. The Vatican would officially cite the song as “offensive”. Duetting with him on the infamous track was Jane Birkin. 19 years her senior, Gainsbourg would cement his dirty old man status by marrying the then 21-year-old Birkin. Still, for all his faults he was an always-charismatic performer whose influence would be acknowledged by artists including Beck, David Holmes and, indeed, Air. Also worthy of praise for fathering the exquisite Charlotte Gainsbourg and, not least, for terrifying Whitney Houston on a 1986 French chat show… http://tinyurl.com/sergewhitney

THE FRENCH AMBASSADORS

She eventually established herself as one of the world’s greatest singers. Accused of being a traitor for singing to occupying German forces in WWII, Piaf weathered the accusations. She lost her great love, the boxer Marcel Cerden, in a plane crash in 1949. Was later married, got divorced, then remarried. Injured in car crash with Charles Aznavour and subsequently developed dependence on alcohol and morphine.

Two further, near fatal, car crashes occurred before her death, of liver cancer, in 1963. Phew, someone should make a film of that shit. http://tinyurl.com/regretterien

NOIR DÉSIR

CLAUDE FRANÇOIS A versatile, somewhat cheesy, but undeniably hardworking performer, Claude François was akin to a less highly sexed Daniel O’Donnell. Cynically changed his music and hairstyles to suit the prevailing fashion, though he deserves no little respect for writing the original version of ‘My Way’ [Comme d’habitude’].

Unfortunately, this achievement was somewhat

Not strictly pop, but certainly one of the biggest French acts of the last 30 years, the Bordeaux rockers formed back in 1980 and released their first album Où Veux Tu Qu’je R’garde? [Where Do You Want Me To Look?] in 1987.

Propelled by a blistering punk-rock sound, socially aware lyrics and the fiery theatrics of frontman Bertrand Cantat – described as a mix of Jim Morrison and Rimbaud – the band would go on to enjoy great success and popularity.

Cantat somewhat undid all the good work when he battered his then girlfriend, the acclaimed actress Marie Trintignant, into a coma on the night of July 26, 2003.

She died several days later. Now released from prison, Cantat and Noir Désir are currently trying to resurrect their bloodied career. http://tinyurl.com/noirdesirvid

—39 AU Magazine—

—40 issue 61—

TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

—41 AU Magazine—

Air

Tripping The Light Fantastic

obsession that has studded every one of their records is present; ‘So Light Her Footfall’, for example, finds them infatuated, quite simply, with the way in which a woman walks. In less delicate hands, such levels of yearning could be considered the preserve of the stalker, but in Air’s grasp it is a beautiful study in unrequited love. “I perceive it more as a melancholy,” suggests Dunckel of the mood that Air’s music evokes. “It is that feeling to be happy to be sad. Yes, we are like that. Melancholy is the most shared feeling on earth.”

a true artist, or someone who has been insulated against commercial demands by money and success, JB instantly dismisses any suggestion that Air march to the beat of anyone’s drum but their own. “We have been fashionable, but it was a stroke of luck. We have been chosen, but it is impossible to force that. Now, we follow our own way and maybe, one day, it will be fashionable again.”

At the risk of inflaming JB’s ire – and joining the ranks of media types who’ve disappointed him – we have to say that a shared mood is not the only feature that the new album and its predecessors have in common. Yes, there are characteristics that give Love 2 an identity distinct from previous releases, but, often, its sounds have a familiarity to them, sweet, balmy and light, like fresh-spun candyfloss. In these regards, Love 2 is indeed, whisper it, classic Air. When pushed, Dunckel concedes that there are recurring, common characteristics. However, he cannot help but return to admonishing those who judge them only by their past achievements, or who wilfully misunderstand them.

“Sometimes we are misunderstood and especially in the UK. I don’t know what their problem is with prog-rock there, but all I can assure you is that we are not prog-rock.

Air is not rock at all. But, you know, we are putting out albums and music and to be misunderstood sometimes is typical. We accept to be criticised. I think that everyone should be criticised. It is good for us and for the story of music in general. Criticism is interesting, but only when it is well done. Not when it comes from someone being disappointed, or from a journalist who didn’t hear what he expected from us. I don’t like it when people’s reactions are based on fashion, when they expect something to fit a particular style and if something doesn’t have it [that style], then their reaction is to be disappointed and they are conditioned to criticise.”

Given such sentiments, we cannot help but question whether Air believe that they have any obligation to their fans, whether they believe they should ever give them what they want, or give in to the demands of fashion. Like

—42 issue 61—

So determined were they to follow their own way, that Air recorded Love 2 entirely within the confines of their own Atlas Studio, a state-of-the-art facility tucked away in a backstreet in the north of Paris. Here, they were buffeted from the winds of external agents and free to navigate their own path. “We wanted our own studio, to have an environment in which we could be lost and where we could invent for ourselves the best way to proceed. That is what we have; somewhere we can record our tracks without those other influences. I think that we are searching for mistakes. This is what is important. It is how art exists. We are inventing albums and sounds, creating a back catalogue and we want to push in different directions every time.

Later, in like 10 years, I want to look back at our albums and see that [diversity].”

This willingness to embrace the happenstance nature of music puts Air somewhat at odds with their contemporaries. Speak to most bands who are about to release a new album and they’ll do everything they can to convince you that it is the closest they’ve come to perfecting their particular oeuvre. However, JB positively thrills to the idea of imperfection and this explains much about Air’s recording practices. The sounds they create may, at times, seem somewhat synthetic, but, in fact, the way they are put together is extremely organic. The pair throw the door wide open to spontaneity, nothing is scripted; the only thing they know for sure is “what to avoid”. Working in this manner means that there are a lot of ideas that fall by the wayside, as Dunckel confirms.

“There is a lot of music that is left behind. We also extrapolate music out for pictures, it is important for us to create these kinds of accidents that we are searching for.”

Remarkably, once they’ve settled on a song to record, they’ll play it through in full once, or twice and use those

recordings. They don’t use a click track, are wary of editing equipment and software and barely use computers in the music-making process. It’s quite an old-school way of operating and JB concedes that they are somewhat purist in this regard, though they are by no means latter-day Luddites.

“You know, if there is a nice program, and we like it, we will use it. Sometimes we use plug-ins too. I am not against the fact of music that comes from computers, I am sure that computers can generate great sounds. We are not against modernity. The only thing, for us, is that we play everything.”

Helping them “play everything” on the new record is drummer Joey Waronker. “We were coming from the tour and Joey was there, playing onstage. We had a nice feeling together. We like a lot to trip together, when we play. So a lot of tracks have been recorded like that, as a trio.” The Californian, who has played for some of the most iconic names in the alt-rock world – everyone from Beck to the Smashing Pumpkins, Elliott Smith to R.E.M. – helped define Love 2’s up-tempo sound. Dunckel is keen to emphasise the drummer’s input, stating baldly that neither he, nor Godin are good drummers and that without Waronker the album wouldn’t have been quite so dynamic.

JB seems pleased with the changes that the new working methods have wrought and the somewhat more galvanised, buoyant sound that Air have debuted this time around.

Still, he suggests that more radical change is on the horizon, a fact that their latest album title alludes to.

“Love 2 doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It is more a design. But, it is meant to have a good impact on your brain, that when you hear ‘Love 2’, you say to yourself, ‘What’s this, what’s new?’ I like that, it’s like a brand.

There is an intrigue to it. This is a new chapter for Air, with the studio and so on. We are changing now. I think that we want to do more soundtracks. We are ready to explore other concepts. This album is the last that is classic [Air]. The next one will be very different. It will be anti-pop and anti-rock.”

T S A C POD

Hello.

The AU Podcast is never gonna give you up.

For the latest instalment we have some hot and cosy goodies to keep you warm through the rainy and dark nights. Caressing your lobes will be Yes Cadets, Annie, Air, Mr Hudson and loads more.

It will be available to download from mid-November, and the best thing you could do right now is subscribe via iTunes. Do it.

Mega.

It seems only natural to ask what has inspired this hunger for change – after all, the current modus operandi has brought widespread success and all the attendant privileges. “Well, I think that we are not the only ones,” begins JB. “However, now [with their new studio] we have the chance to make something really well recorded, with a really nice texture of sounds and something that is strange – mixing electronics and many loud instruments together. I think this could work, we have many fans all over the world and I think it’s important [to change]. With this promo, I realised how important it is to surprise people. Now, with the Internet, people are always expecting something that is new, that hasn’t been made before. It is hard and a challenge. People expect a lot.”

He assures me that Air are ready for that challenge, in fact they’ve never been better equipped for it. Surveying their progress to date, JB states simply that, “We play better, we sing better and I think that we speak better English! It isn’t perfect, but you should have heard how I was 10 years ago. I think that it [the band] has lasted all these years because we [Dunckel and Godin] are really different.

We complement each other well and need each other. We started to record in 1996.

And we are still here, which is incredible.

However, I think that music has nothing to do with your age. You can play and invent good tracks and great music until you are dead, or too sick to continue.”

However, Dunckel also recognises that he has no absolute or material imperative to continue; that the battle to conjure those innovative sounds he talked about is one he has no need to fight. He even

acknowledges that the possibility of stepping away from it all has flitted across his mind, “Sometimes I’ve thought about leaving music, just not doing it at all. Maybe I’d do something good for humanity, like being a doctor, something that really benefits people. However, I think that our music is a sort of medicine,” he adds with a gentle laugh.

‘Do The Joy’, the opening track on Love 2, warns us that we live “On the brink of our extinction”. Ultimately, perhaps, it is this awareness, more than anything else, that motivates JB and Air.

YE S CA DE TS

A IR

“I realise that life is now. I am doing yoga and I realised just how far you can go in consciousness. When you reach the end of your thirties, you are really keen to lead a good life. It is now or never. I don’t do things to be happy in the future. I just enjoy it now and be happy now. I don’t care about having more money for the future and these kind of things. Money is for now. That is why I am not okay about sacrificing things for money anymore.

Friends, children, family and your body, these are the things that are important.

There is nothing to worry about. The end of life, it’s like Charles De Gaulle said, ‘Old age is a shipwreck’. You must just follow your own course and weather the storm. Life is fantastic, do not worry about decline, it will come. Mercifully, it will come.”

LOVE 2 IS OUT NOW ON EMI WWW.EN.AIRCHEOLOGY.COM

M R HU DS ON —43 AU Magazine—

Phil Kieran

Techno Technician

PHIL KIERAN Techno with a punk rock ethic... With a long overdue solo album finally released, Belfast’s own Phil Kieran gives us an insight into the weird and wonderful world of a techno technician.

Words by Craig Sheridan

—44 issue 61—

Whether they’re aware of it or not, anyone familiar with techno in Belfast will, at some point, have encountered Phil Kieran. If you know of Phil you’ll be familiar with his DJ skills and trademark sound. You’ll also be familiar with his work with techno-punk outfit Alloy Mental, his long-standing residency at Shine, and his over 100 record releases with labels such as Skint, Soma, and Kingsize.

With appearances at festivals including Sonar and, more recently (and locally), Belsonic, Phil’s diary is full of international tour dates for his new live show and indemand DJ sets. And still, he lives in Belfast.

“Lots of people moved to Berlin, but I don’t hear them making better music,” says Phil. “If I moved to Berlin, I’d just end up taking loads of drugs and having too much to do. Something about being here helps keep you a bit more grounded and you just get on with it.” And get on with it he has. His new long player, Shh, has freshly dropped on Sven Väth’s legendary German label Cocoon Records. So, just how did he go from earning £2 an hour at McDonalds to touring his new solo material in the company of Hot Chip?

“I had lessons on the piano and guitar and was in a few pretend bands with my brother, but that was all before I was 16. Later, I began to take it seriously,” Phil recalls. “I think I secretly liked dance music but didn’t want to admit to it. Then Primal Scream’s Screamadelica turned me round to listen to Andrew Weatherall and then I started going to the [Belfast] Art College to David Holmes’ nights and Choice nights. I knew then, that was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

“Mixing records and making tunes was all part of the package, I just wanted to do it all. Everyone was using these [Roland] 909s and 303s but we just couldn’t afford that. But we just kept saving up and collecting equipment and effects units. Then an Akai sampler cost £3000, and I was working in McDonalds and collecting glasses in the Elms making £2 per hour, and then also trying to go out at the weekends.

It was really hard – ‘Do I buy records or equipment?’, you know? Like now, I’m sitting in front a of a big Soundcraft desk that I paid £3000 for, and I paid for that on the drip from Marcus Music. I’d go in every couple of weeks and pay off £60, or £80, and just pay it off. All I needed to do was get equipment, go out and listen to music.”

Phil’s early years as a producer saw him live in a flat in Ulsterville Avenue in south Belfast. “I had £10,000 of equipment in the corner and slept on a mattress on the

floor. I sat up ‘til five in the morning to finish this thing I’d been working on for about two months. Turns out it was shit. I actually collapsed at one stage and got up and started working on it again, though.”

It’s this stubbornness that has allowed Phil to focus on getting the maximum from himself and his equipment. “I don’t have really high-end stuff. It’s nothing any different to what a lot of other kids have. I like being pushed into a corner. I like being limited. I think people get carried away with too many synths and plug-ins, and forget what they’re trying to do. It’s better to limit yourself, so you squeeze things more, bend them a bit more. Instead of using them 10 per cent, you use them 98 per cent, and that shows in the music.

“With the album, I wanted to go out of my way to try and be obscure with my sample sources so the end product could be slightly weird. Before I started, I spent weeks making a sample library, making sounds and a huge drums library. You need to start with a bank of sounds and ideas, maybe have 100 ideas and only use 10, then make another 100 and only use three and keep doing it until it all gels together.

“Alloy Mental opened my mind up a bit; it takes you away from the linear mindset of making dance music. It removes you in a good way and I’m a bit more open-minded to what I’m making. When I was making [Shh], I wanted it to be very electronic, but my attitude toward it was a bit more punk rock. I was making an album for Cocoon Records, thinking when I was making the stuff, ‘This is so not a Cocoon record’, but, when I sent it to them, they loved it.

If you try hard enough to do something good, not trying to be popular, it comes across the right way to the right ears. [Dutch techno producer] Speedy J said to me one time, when you make something and you get a feeling from it, whatever that feeling is, there’s a high likelihood that someone else out there will connect with that same feeling.

You have to have a bit of faith in yourself.”

Considering Shh is the first full-length album to bear Kieran’s own name, how does he envisage it being consumed? Phil explains that it is a “listening experience” – suitable for listening to at home but also boasting segments that can be played at peak time in a club. “Or,” he adds, “you can be listening in your car and it not seem annoying, which some dance music can be. Sometimes hearing bad music inspires you; it tells you what to avoid. I like hearing bad music, because it motivates me to do the right thing.

“I wanted this album to be a reference to all sorts of music from the last 50 years. My ultimate aim is that it doesn’t date, so that in another 10 years you can stick it on and it will still produce the same kind of feeling. I thought the only way to do that was to not think currently, to try and make a piece of music that stuck to melody and mood, and which would therefore continue to translate over time.”

Such sentiments are clear in the new album. It’s packed with full-bodied beats that host distant, haunting pads that draw you in, only to startle with bright fizzing white noise and screaming oscillators. It’s a very European techno style, with a clinical and precise sound akin to Eighties underground electro, not too removed from Justin Robertson’s Lionrock or Cabaret Voltaire, while paying homage to Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, and even the BBC Radiophonic workshop.

The production values testify to years spent honing the crafts of sound design and equalisation. Kieran’s application of the technology and his manipulation of its capabilities are vast and varied, presenting imaginative and intriguing palettes of sound, juxtaposed with solid, throbbing bottom end. It’s a dark, brooding landscape with sonic clouds of retro-futurism.

His productions boast lush space and infinite depth, elements which offer a heady psychedelia often associated with early trance and Goa styles, albeit at a steadier pace. This contemporary aesthetic is accompanied by the feeling that Phil is searching for the evolution of his own artistic boundaries. There is a sense about this piece that it is a seminal work, one that signifies the accumulation of years of graft, practice, determination, sacrifice and vision. A moment where, as an artist, the future is unknown, but bright.

Phil explains, “Each time you do it, you have to clean the slate and think, ‘Right, this is the one, this is my big moment’. It’s not, but you have to motivate yourself in that way. I always take the attitude that this has to be the best I can possibly make it, and you have to take that attitude or what’s the fucking point?”

SHH IS OUT NOW ON COCOON RECORDS WWW.PHILKIERAN.COM

—45 AU Magazine—

Sufjan Stevens

The Quiet American

“I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that sombre city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way.” So speaks Saul Bellow’s most famous protagonist, Augie March. So speaks Sufjan Stevens.

Well, not literally, but he could have done. Stevens is the voice of new America. Unsure yet confident, anxieties and ambitions intermingle. His speech alternates between new-age mysticism and deadpan technical terms. He is modern and old-fashioned both.

A push-me-pull-you of ideas and sounds – if nothing else, Sufjan Stevens has always made the record in his own way.

Words by Ailbhe Malone

Born in Michigan, in 1975, Stevens was once described as having “an impeccable sense of history”. Grandiose a statement as that is, it touches on something like the truth. The “most perfect thing” Stevens has ever seen was a structure that combined the banal with the overawing – in which day-to-day life was enclosed by millennia. “I remember seeing a glacier in the Alps in Switzerland,” he says, “and being in awe. It was a phenomenological experience. I hadn’t really seen a glacier before, and there was something really immense and mammoth about it. It was perfect, in the sense of the span of time – centuries and millennia contained in these glaciers. And we were at the edge of the glacier – it felt monumental and historical, even though it’s just a collection of frozen water.” Rather than having “an impeccable sense of history”, he has an overwhelming sense of perspective.

He deliberates over each answer, picking the correct phrase to use. “My favourite song? That’s too difficult. An ‘inexhaustible song’ is better. I like Dido’s lament from the opera Dido and Aeneas. It’s an opera for kids, so it’s not too sophisticated. It’s her last song before death, before she transpires. It’s beautiful, and it’s a song. It has versechorus-verse-chorus. It’s probably the most melancholy dirge I’ve ever heard.”

Stevens remains one of the more enigmatic stalwarts of the new folk scene. Reluctant to speak about either his faith, or his sexuality, in great depth, his prolific musical output is often over-interpreted, instead of being left to speak for itself. Lyrics become twisted, the author and character become confused. So, Sufjan’s stopped singing. At least for the time being. “I’ve kind of taken a hiatus from that. It’s somewhat self-imposed, after having so many records. And, you know, I’ve always been interested in arrangements and instrumental music. A lot of my records have little transitional musical instrumental sections. So, I thought for The BQE especially, that it would be nice to take a non-narrative, non-literal approach.”

The BQE is an entirely orchestral score for a short film that Stevens made of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The BQE isn’t glamorous. It’s a motorway in New York that goes from – here’s a shocker – Brooklyn to Queens. The film is shot in Super 8, and while Stevens doesn’t exactly make the Expressway look appealing, neither does he bemoan its functionality. The real star of the show, argues Sufjan, isn’t the swooping score – it’s the movie.

“With The BQE, the music is accompanying the film, so I almost think the music is secondary to that project, that the film is the primary art form. The film is centre-stage, and the music is just an accompaniment.” In his opinion, is songwriting a selfish process? He deliberates, “I think for a songwriter, it can be self-centred. But it’s a social phenomenon. So, you often share it with others, you play music with others, so in that way it’s very giving.

But I think that because it’s a mysterious phenomenon,

it definitely indicates to an exterior supernatural thing, outside of yourself. I mean, with the laws of physics and sound waves, music exists, so it does have meaning outside of the experience of a human being. But I think that the imperative behind songwriting can be a selfish impulse. It’s a little bit self-interested. It’s based around a personal experience and sharing that personal experience.

That to me seems a little bit selfish. I don’t think it matters though, because the music itself, as a transcendent art form, has remarkable redeeming qualities.”

The premise of literally bursting with music is a terrifying one – to feel as though, as Stevens says, “music is exterior to me”. To have an output that one cannot entirely control must be unsettling at least, and overwhelming at most. How does he cope? Up until recently, he didn’t.

“Lately, I haven’t written songs in a while. I’ve been taking a hiatus, thinking more existentially and less practically about music. But it can create an obstacle and unnecessary anxieties that I don’t know are very fruitful to meditate on. The meaning of music – what is a song, what is an album, why do we share this? I can see what was interesting about that, but at some point you need to just do it. Even though I have these anxieties about the perceptions of music, I still believe that music is exterior to me. I can relinquish it.”

From the off, Stevens has always found comfort as well as a stimulus in patterns. This applies to most things in his work – from the series of songs he wrote about days of the week while in university (‘Poor Monday!’) to his current obsession with... hula-hooping. The film of The BQE features a trio of whirlybird hula-hooping girls, one of whom is a friend of Sufjan’s. “She’s been hula-hooping for a few years, and she invited me to a hoop class at the YMCA on 14th Street in New York. I started to learn a little bit of hooping. Here it’s not so much like a game, it’s more like yoga. It’s kind of a mix of dance and meditation and athletics. And there’s a whole bizarre sub-culture of hoopers in the States. A lot of adults are doing it now. It’s becoming a fad.”

What appeal does it hold for the singer? “What I like about it is that it’s very insular. Dance can feel very extroverted, like you’re performing, but with hooping, you’re focusing on an object; a particular object around your body. It gives you a focal point to start from. You can just meditate on this plastic hoop as it moves around your body. It’s exterior to you, but it revolves around you.

It keeps you grounded, but you don’t feel self-conscious when you’re hooping, as opposed to dancing. It’s pretty amazing.”

With patterns in mind, Sufjan is taking a step back from the project that has defined his career thus far. In the space of six years, The ‘50 States Project’ has produced two full albums, one offcuts LP, and some of the finest songs of this decade. Yet, Stevens isn’t sure if he wants to continue. “I think you have to understand that that kind

COME ON, FEEL THE ILLINOISE! SUFJAN ISN’T THE ONLY ARTIST TO CATALOGUE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA...

RAY CHARLES – The Genius Hits The Road Released in 1960, The Genius Hits The Road sees Brother Ray metaphorically travelling around the US, covering familiar standards, such as ‘Basin St Blues’ and ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ and some that aren’t so familiar – ‘Carry Me Back To Virginny’, anyone?

Though it doesn’t quite hit the entire 51 states, it was the first record to feature ‘Georgia On My Mind’, one of Charles’ most popular and abiding tracks.

QUEENSRŸCHE – American Soldier This record by Seattle heavy metal band Queensrÿche attempts to vocalise the experience of the American armed forces. Stemming from lead singer Geoff Tate’s interviews with his father (who served in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts), the record intersperses music with the recorded voices of servicemen. Even if metal’s not your bag, this is stirring stuff. The band will be touring the record internationally near the end of this year.

MADONNA – American Life Here’s Madge on tip-top political form. Hang on, did we just write that? Let’s start again. Here is where Madge jumped the proverbial shark. Alas, on a concept album rejecting the American Dream and materialism, the eternal Material Girl fails to prove her mettle. From the cringeworthy rap on the title track – “I’m drinking a Soy latte / I get a double shotte” – to the pseudorevolutionary cover shot, this is the album on which Madonna got it drastically wrong. Pity that, because the second single – ‘Hollywood’ – was actually quite good.

SUFJAN STEVENS THE QUIET AMERICAN

Sufjan Stevens

“It was a publicity stunt.

It wasn’t meant to be taken that seriously.”

The Quiet American

of proposition is completely speculative and hyperbolic.

It was initially very self-promotional; it was a publicity stunt. It wasn’t meant to be taken that seriously. It’s sort of based on the aesthetics of a barker at a fair, or an announcer at the circus. It’s all heightened language.”

Stevens has oscillated before about the project. The above statement is neither a denial nor a confirmation of the project, more a clause of sorts. While the process interests him, the way that people have reacted to it appeals to him even more. “It is really interesting, and it says a lot about how literal we are as a society. There’s very little room for understanding things in a mystical or metaphorical language. I think that there are so many other things to focus on.”

When Stevens was writing Illinois, he considered writing a song about Saul Bellow, but abandoned the premise, as Bellow was too “cumbersome” an idea. In closing, AU mentions Augie March to Stevens. The Adventures of Augie March is a picaresque novel that embraces the power of an imagined America, but is also wary of the alienating forces of such a concept. It celebrates ‘attempts’, and factotums. In particular, the final paragraph of the novel notes that a failed attempt is an attempt nonetheless. Overall, the process is more important than an end result. Does Sufjan agree? “Yes. Exactly. Interestingly, today is Columbus day. The

story of Columbus is a story of hyperbolic speculation.

The whole venture of discovery and colonialism is all speculative. It’s always been about process, and not product. The Vikings were the first Europeans to land in North America, and it was sort of a misadventure – a failed experiment – because they didn’t actually colonise anything. I think a lot of creative endeavours are definitely similar phenomena.”

A ‘failed experiment’ is an experiment all the same.

And even if the ‘50 States Project’ is never completed, that doesn’t mean that it cannot be. As someone more eloquent than AU once said, America was built on uncompleted projects and lofty aspirations. “Why, I am a sort of Columbus of those near-at-hand and believe you can come to them in this immediate terra incognita that spreads out in every gaze. I may well be a flop at this line of endeavour. Columbus, too, thought he was a flop, probably, when they sent him back in chains.

Which didn’t prove there was no America”. Augies’s words, again. But ones which Stevens could have spoken, or sung. For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti, for John Wayne Gacy, Jr, Stevens too sings America.

THE BQE IS OUT NOW ON ROUGH TRADE WWW.SUFJAN.COM

THE FRONT PAGE Come Together

Fridays At The Front Page A HIPPY TRIPPY VIBE! FEATURING LOCAL ORIGINAL LIVE ARISTS.

NOVEMBER:

6TH The White Art Hippies 13th REEFERRADIO 2PIECE ACOUSTIC 20th Trippy Heads 23rd Electric Circus

DECEMBER:

4th COLIN SCALLAN (DUBLIN SONGWRITER) Doors: 9pm -1:30am / Tax: £4 (ConCession £3) The Front Page Bar 108 Donegall Street, Belfast.

Thursdays: Upstairs URBAN ARTS CENTRE - FOLK NIGHT Antrim Lancers + guests and Set Dancing Fridays: Downstairs TRAD SESSION 9pm Saturdays : Downstairs KARAOKE 9pm Saturdays: Upstairs 7TH NOV POLISH PARTY NIGHT

HIP HOP WITH MARIUSZ 14th NOV HARD HITTING FEATURING BEN STEVENS HARD

HOUSE, WITH MICHAEL SMITH & JAMIE HUTTON 21ST NOV KATMANDU 28TH NOV CAVE TECHNO - PET DUO / SLAVE STUDIOS / PETE

OPIATE / 16 BIT 5TH DEC PAUL TURLEY ‘DRUM N BASS’ 12TH DEC JAMES SMITH ‘OLD SCHOOL’ Function room available for private parties etc - Phone 0289032426 —49 AU Magazine—

—50 issue 61—

Editors

Back To The Dark Side

BACK TO THE DARK SIDE

We meet up with a weary Editors before their recent Belfast date, and quiz them on the murky and mysterious album that, after a disappointing second outing, has been described as the ‘true’ follow-up to their acclaimed debut.

As it turns out, they feel much the same way…

Words by Joe Nawaz

It’s testimony to the renewed buzz about them that the venue for Editors’ latest Belfast gig reeks of fish. It’s in the piscine ambience of the cavernous St. George’s Market where this evening the band will scotch all rumours of their imminent demise with an electrifying, not to mention heavily electronic, set.

Fishiness notwithstanding, it’s a marked upgrade from their last visit here to promote their somewhat underwhelming second release A Beginning Has An End. On that occasion they were in the considerably smaller Mandela Hall for a solid, rather than exceptional, gig. The startling success of their debut The Back Room appeared to be more albatross than inspiration and the follow-up had the vague whiff of ‘rush-release and recoup’ about it, but that still didn’t stop it getting to number one.

Two years on, they’re back both physically and creatively.

New album In This Light And On This Evening isn’t just ‘Editors go synth’ as some hacks would have it, but a relinquishing of musical corpulence in favour of a return to pop’s darker crevices. Tom Smith’s malevolent baritone aside, they finally appear to have negated the ‘Boy Division’ trappings of old, emerging with a richer, more layered and defiantly electronic sound. It’s the subtlest, most mature and downright alluring offering yet from the Brum quartet. With dark lyrical shades, it abstracts the same lexicon of loathing of old with decay, loss, regret, fear and loathing all present and correct, as best realised in the stomping ‘Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool’, possibly their best song ever. The relentless neo-romantic motorik of lead-off single ‘Papillon’ is a deceptive if alluring calling card for an album that has, for Editors at least, a satisfying amount of depth to it. Intricately pretty songs like swooning electro-ballad ‘The Boxer’ are allowed to breathe where previously they’d have been buried under a squall of guitars and processed through several echo (and the Bunnymen) chambers, and the final package is an album of dirty, synthetic mood music.

Back to St. George’s and it’s in the band’s makeshift ‘private backstage area’ – which may or may not double by day as the market’s halibut holding area – where AU finds self-confessed studio geek and guitarist Chris Urbanowicz and drummer Ed Lay taking time out for a swift half after an afternoon’s sound-checking, just hours before they take to the stage.

With the affable postgraduate demeanour of nice middle-class boys next door, it’s easy to forget that these down-to-earth chaps are behind the satanic glitter stomp that is ‘Eat Raw Meat…’. But isn’t it always the quiet ones? The guys join me at the nice Formica work surface next to the pre-fab green room. Meanwhile Editor-inchief (a non-executive title by the way) Tom Smith lounges, languorous and pensive, in the background, a disconcertingly saturnine presence marking time before dinner, which I get the impression I’m holding up. Chris and Ed are far too nice to say as much of course, which somehow makes me feel all the worse.

Chris even apologises for being a little tired, explaining that he’s “technically jetlagged” after a flight from the States just the evening before. Despite the tiredness, though, they’re both clearly relieved and pleased that

the album’s release is imminent and agree that it’s easily their best yet. I tell them that the album is littered with fantastic electronic references. For instance the opening title track, with its blank-eyed verse and aged and sinister electronic pitter-patter, is redolent of Sixties electropioneers Silver Apples, themselves recent visitors to Belfast. Chris makes a mental note of the name. “That’s another band to check out, then! People keep mentioning these quite obscure and diverse bands that they ‘get’ from the album. It’s really interesting because we weren’t directly influenced by much in particular. We were aware of a lot of the German bands like Neu! in terms of rhythm and momentum, but it all happened very naturally.”

Indeed, on another standout track, ‘Bricks And Mortar’ – which will end tonight’s gig on a note of Teutonic hearttugging tenderness – they might well be the first band to merge Krautrock with A-Ha. “And the Terminator theme,” laughs Ed. Getting producer Flood in, best known for providing hard, glittering edges for the likes of Depeche Mode, the Bad Seeds, U2 and Smashing Pumpkins, appears to have been a masterstroke. Listening to In This Light... his presence is palpable – a sparse elegance shot through with a little aural grit. Ed and Chris are quick to praise the über-producer, famed and named – as popular legend has it – for once making The Cure’s Robert Smith too many cups of tea in the studio.

“He also produced Nine Inch Nails’ best work,” Chris reminds me. “Flood was top of our list when we started thinking about the third album. We had already decided on the mood and tone and had demoed a few tracks along the lines of the finished album. It was always going to be Flood, or somebody new and unknown who’d have no preconceptions about the work.”

Ed concurs. “Flood was a fantastic shit filter for us. He was very good at seeing whether we were going down the right avenue. He hardly needed to pull us into line. It could be his dance background, but he had a good way of detecting vibe and groove. We trusted him and we didn’t always cut to the chorus. We felt right following the groove this time.”

It’s this looser, more insidious feel that is the album’s strength. The songs seduce rather than scream for attention – and it’s the reason that In This Light… is destined to be played many more times than the threeand-a-half spins I personally gave The Back Room. Like Alan Partridge before them, Ed and Chris see their work in terms of evolution, not revolution. “We rushed the second album,” concedes Chris. “We did it with Jacknife Lee, who works extremely quickly and isn’t given to subtlety. He adds about 20,000 guitars to every track!

This time, we had more time and space to do an album we felt happy with.”

“The new album is a grower rather than providing an immediate pay-off,” adds Ed, “but it definitely rewards with repeated listening.” Rather disarmingly, Chris also admits that it has split those that wanted or expected ‘Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors Part 2’. “This is definitely the first album that’s divided opinion,” says the cheerfully jet-lagged guitarist. “But I also see that we lost a lot of our original fans with A Beginning Has An End and

for me, In This Light… carries on from The Back Room and stuff like ‘Camera’.”

Editors clearly relish the opportunity to showcase their new sound and vision live. Chris is confident that the normally dreaded words ‘and here’s one from our new album’ won’t have people running for cover. “We have a good mix and a lot happening on stage now. People accused us in the past of being one-dimensional; well, now we have personnel moving about stage, swapping instruments and stuff. There’s definitely an interesting dynamic and depth now.”

And what of the reception for the new material? Ed is sanguine: “Well, there are always songs [that] you know straight off that will go down well. ‘Papillon’ was a hit from the moment we first played it. Audiences just took to it. ‘Eat Raw Meat…’ was another immediate favourite.

Other tracks on the new album are subtler and require a bit more attention, but live the response has been positive overall.”

“Mind you, it’s been mainly festival audiences,” muses Chris. “They tend to like everything,” he adds ruefully, when I refer to the wacky-hatted forty-somethings that seem to populate so many of the mainstream rock festivals. Not for the first time, I bring up the subject of ‘Eat Raw Meat’ as a potential single, pointing out that as well as being ridiculously catchy it would be extremely satisfying to get such a disturbing lyrical tableau as, “If you’re chewing with an open mouth / Raw Meat / Your blood drool attracts the flies” into the hit parade. Christ knows what it’s about, but that just renders the Buñuellite imagery all the more disturbing.

“Yeah, it’s great to smuggle a little darkness into the charts,” agrees Chris, diplomatically neglecting to confirm that they’ll be taking my advice on the singles front. “To have blokes at a gig football-chanting lines like ‘people are fragile things’ is brilliant. If we can be a little subversive and sneak in a little blackness behind a good tune, then I’m quite happy.”

It might be the prevailing smell of fish, but Chris and Ed are clearly hungry now and with just an hour to go before the gig, I release them from interview bondage. Before I leave them to join the other two at the all-you-caneat buffet at the Malmaison hotel, Chris tells me about making one of those tourist wrong turns last time he was in Belfast and finding himself in the thick of a frenzied loyalist street battle. Torn in a split second between moving toward rioters or the riot police, he froze. “It was slightly disturbing,” he says. Ed quips: “Especially because he couldn’t decide which side represented safety.”

Too true and an apt closing reflection perhaps for a band who after years of taking succour and success from within their comfort zone have now hit a creative and critical peak by pointedly avoiding the safe side.

IN THIS LIGHT AND ON THIS EVENING IS OUT NOW ON KITCHENWARE RECORDS. WWW.EDITORSOFFICIAL.COM

—51 AU Magazine—

Reviews

Girls – Album

pg 54 Record Reviews | pg 62 Unsigned Universe | pg 63 Live Reviews

Illustration by Mark Reihill WWW.MARKREIHILL.COM

Hudson Mohawke Butter WARP

The debut album from Hudson Mohawke – aka Glaswegian whizzkid Ross Birchard – comes burdened with the weight of expectancy. Ever since he caused a minor sensation with 2008’s Ooops! 12” EP and followed it up with the equally acclaimed Polyfolk Dance EP earlier this year, the clamour for his first full-length has gradually reached something approaching fever pitch. But if Birchard felt any pressure, he hasn’t let it show – the impressive Butter lives up to expectations, and then some.

—52 issue 61—

Exhibiting a sense of exuberance and playfulness that pervades the entire record, opener ‘Shower Melody’ manages to cram the most thunderous beats this side of Entroducing, as well as an amusingly over-the-top, squealing guitar solo, into its 90 seconds. Straightaway, immense second track ‘Gluetooth’ lurches into earshot, riding on the back of a monstrous bass riff. Thrilling in its execution, it provides a neat summation of the Hudson Mohawke modus operandi: frantic, pummelling beats, dizzying synth whirls and an ear for an insidious melody, incorporating elements of soul, funk, old-skool rave and hip-hop.

Any fears that Birchard would have difficulty maintaining the same standard over the course of an album are swiftly dispelled by ‘Joy Fantastic’, one of two songs to feature the vocals of Olivier Daysoul, a strutting slice of futuristic funk based around a staccato beat that wouldn’t sound out of place on a prime-period Prince record. From then on the highlights come thick and fast: ‘Zoo00OOm’ marries spiralling 8-bit synth melodies to an ominous bass pulse and yet more truly bone-shaking beats; the skittery ‘Allhot’, featuring the breathy vocals of Nadsroic, is seductive and otherworldly; while the loping rhythm and dizzying riff of the awesome ‘FUSE’ are simply irresistible.

Plenty to savour, then, but if there’s one criticism that could be levelled at Butter it’s that it’s quite an exhausting experience. Its 51 minutes contain barely a moment’s respite from Birchard’s hyperactive, scattergun approach, which can make for a head-spinning listen over the course of an entire album. Closer ‘Black N Red’, for example, is all over the shop, ending the record on a disappointingly queasy note. By contrast, it’s telling that one of the few moments of relative calm, the beatless ‘Star Crackout’ is also an album highlight.

So, not a record for the morning after. Instead, this might just be the ultimate Saturday night album, a Technicolor riot of sound that more than anything else is just downright great fun: you could stop to admire the technical accomplishment, sure, but the chances are you’ll be too busy throwing some serious shapes. A startling declaration of intent, Butter manages to sound fresh and original while also being, for the most part, a massively enjoyable listen. Good enough to eat. Neill Dougan

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘GLUETOOTH’, ‘Zoo00OOm’, ‘FUSE’, ‘STAR CRACKOUT’.

FOR FANS OF: FLYING LOTUS, J DILLA.

Pelican What We All Come To Need SOUTHERN LORD Reaching their creative pinnacle with debut full-length Australasia has hardly done Pelican any favours, as subsequent albums have failed to live up to its influence.

Most recently, 2007’s City Of Echoes threatened to patronise hardcore fans with shorter and more accessible tracks, however any accusations of dumbing down seem to have touched a nerve on the evidence of What We All Come To Need. Opening track ‘Glimmer’ heralds a return to form with its driving desert rock where muddy, melodic riffing gives way to a dreamlike haze of cymbals and reverb.

Following tracks fall a little short by comparison, though – the pummelling aggression is still there but the simplicity of the structures is a tad disappointing. The couplet of ‘An Inch Above Sand’ and the title track come as a breath of fresh air where we welcome back interweaving guitars and intricate time signatures, a warm front of optimism replacing a hurricane of disillusionment. The best is saved for last, though, with ‘Final Breath’; a swirling and stoned psychedelic grunge epic with multi-layered vocals in the style of Alice In Chains, it’s a stunning and surprising finale.

What We All Come To Need is a fine album, but if you buy the vinyl, expect side two to wear faster. Gerard McCann

Biffy Clyro Only Revolutions

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘GLIMMER’, ‘AN INCH ABOVE SAND’, FINAL BREATH’.

FOR FANS OF: RUSSIAN CIRCLES, DON CABALLERO, KYUSS.

Gentle Friendly Ride Slow UPSET THE RHYTHM Grimy, scuzzy, lo-fi pop music has been the sole preserve of the States for the last couple of years, but Nottingham’s Lovvers and now south London duo Gentle Friendly are holding the British end up rather well. And quite right too – it wouldn’t do to let the Yanks get too far ahead, now, would it? However, although Lovvers are fun and great live, they aren’t doing much that Jay Reatard or No Age haven’t done already. Gentle Friendly, on the other hand, appear to march to the beat of their own drum.

For a start, their line-up is devoid of stringed instruments of any kind, as they rely solely on drums, a keyboard and an organ to make their playful racket. Secondly, as much of a hipster magnet as they undoubtedly are, they sound too individual to be accused of ripping anyone off. Thirdly, and most importantly, they write some weird and wonderful songs when they rein in the obviously breathless experimentation. ‘Lovers Rock’ is a swaying lilt that recalls Clinic’s ‘Distortions’; ‘Vincentt’ is a mysterious little pop song, sung hazily over the organic drone of a synth and an insistent drumbeat; and ‘NO808ON’ plays Dan Deacon at his own frantic game and nearly wins. Ultimately, though, the impression that lingers is that of an exciting and creative new band, one that is going to be fun to follow. Chris Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘LOVERS ROCK’, ‘RIP STATIC’, ‘VINCENTT’.

FOR FANS OF: CLINIC, DAN DEACON, THE MAE SHI.

14TH FLOOR After a decade of apprenticeship, the Ayrshire threepiece stands on the brink of stadium superstardom. And they know it. Recorded in LA, album number five adds the lavish orchestral arrangements of David Campbell to Biffy’s rampant bellow. The result is a very, very impressive rock album. ‘The Captain’ is an instant gem, with a swaggering brass section trading blows with some serious trademark Biffy riffage. ‘God & Satan’ is a perfectly executed ballad, destined for mass adulation, while the omnipotent Josh Homme lends a bludgeoning guitar on the superb ‘Bubbles’. Lyrically, the torrid

intensity of Simon Neil’s marriage is laid bare – “I don’t even know what the fuck we’re still arguing about,” he bemoans on the punch-drunk ‘Shock Shock’.

While Neil speaks passionately about the experimentation with brass and strings on Only Revolutions, this is a band taking a cleverly calculated risk. By working with collaborators of the calibre of Campbell and Homme, they’ve ensured it’s a seamless addition. However, Only Revolutions is not a sonic quantum leap (we’re not talking Kid A-type experimentation here), suggesting that Biffy Clyro have kept one eye on a place in rock’s major league.

And so they should – their time has come. John Freeman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘THE CAPTAIN’, ‘BUBBLES’, ‘GOD & SATAN’.

FOR FANS OF: JANE’S ADDICTION, FOO FIGHTERS.

Sunny Day Real Estate LP2

Sunny Day Real Estate Diary SUB POP

SUB POP

If you have a wonky fringe and tell everyone black is your favourite colour, Sunny Day Real Estate are your patron saints. ‘Emo’ before everyone knew that’s what it was called, this reissue of their critically-acclaimed debut coincides with yet another rematch in their ‘will they/won’t they’ recording history. It’s easy to hear Diary and see how various members fitted in so well with the likes of the Foo Fighters. It’s American college rock as was, all ‘quiet bit/loud bit’ and some really rather touching harmonies, especially on ‘In Circles’ and the mellower ‘Shadows’. From the Slint school of ‘way back cool’, buy it and use the tracks on mix tapes to woo similarly emo members of your preferred gender. Kirstie McCrum

The Seattle sound of yoof is given a slight maturity check on this, Sunny Day Real Estate’s second record. Originally released in 1995, at the time two of the band’s members were already playing with the Foo Fighters, and the collaborative efforts show in the tunefulness on unavoidably rocky tracks like ‘Theo B’. The tune seems straight outta the Grohl stable, as well as being drenched with the tried – tired? – and tested volume changes favoured by the Pixies.

The album was originally given to Sub Pop without a title or artwork, which adds something to its mythology, and the band’s impending break-up seems impressed in every note, from the plaintive ‘5/4’ to the inspiring ‘Waffle’. Not as complete as debut Diary, it nonetheless boasts a fragility which is even more alluring. Kirstie McCrum

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘47’, ‘THE BLANKETS WERE THE STAIRS’, ‘48’.

FOR FANS OF: RIVAL SCHOOLS, GIRLS AGAINST BOYS, SLINT.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘RED ELEPHANT’, ‘8’, ‘RODEO JONES’.

FOR FANS OF: NIRVANA, FOO FIGHTERS, PEARL JAM. —53 AU Magazine—

Reviews

Big Star #1 Record / Radio City UNIVERSAL Due to incompetent marketing by their record company, Big Star’s first two albums achieved criminally poor sales, despite glowing critical acclaim, when released in the early Seventies. These remastered re-releases serve as a reminder – the Memphis quartet made some of the greatest, and most joyous, guitar music ever recorded. Both albums demonstrate the results of sonic stars becoming perfectly aligned. Their debut, 1972’s #1 Record is a distillation of the majestic sounds of sweet soul, psychedelia and shiny guitars of the previous decade; ‘Don’t Lie To Me’ is spacey Led Zeppelin, while ‘The Ballad Of El Goodo’ is a song which only takes the first two lines to nestle snugly into your heart.

Created during a tense, drug-fuelled 1973, the follow-up Radio City is perhaps even better. The gorgeous riff on the chorus of ‘You Get What You Deserve’ is as good as anything you’ll ever hear, while ‘September Gurls’ will render you all warm and giggly. Without Big Star, it’s hard to think that bands like Teenage Fanclub would exist, while R.E.M. might sound very different. If you love guitars, and tunes full of melody and harmonies, and you like smiling while listening to music, these are absolutely essential purchases. John Freeman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE’, ‘SEPTEMBER GURLS’, ‘THE BALLAD OF EL GOODO’, ‘WATCH THE SUNRISE’.

FOR FANS OF: TEENAGE FANCLUB, GIRLS, THE POSIES.

Pearse McGloughlin Busy Whisper URCHIN

Luke Haines 21st Century Man FANTASTIC PLASTIC Luke Haines has been haunting the fringes of the British music scene for some 20 years. As the driving force behind The Auteurs, he cast a dark, contrary shadow when all around him were cladding themselves in the uniform red, white and blue of Britpop. He continued on his inimitable way with the sardonic synth-pop of Black Box Recorder, ruffled feathers with Baader Meinhof and, most recently, in 2006 released the acclaimed Off My Rocker At The Art School Bop. However, impressive though those previous achievements are, he might just have surpassed himself with 21st Century Man. It is a thing of brilliance, Haines’ world condensed into a 10 track, espresso—54 issue 61—

strong – and black – senses blast.

Taking the clay of classic pop, he moulds his material into something strange, but accessible, the whole arranged impeccably and executed with precision.

A most motley crew populate this world, Haines resurrecting maniacal actor ‘Klaus Kinski’, identifying with Van der Graaf Generator man ‘Peter Hammill’ and musing on the fate of fleeing Nazis on ‘Our Man In Buenos Aires’. Mostly, though, on the likes of ‘English Southern Man’ and the title track, he’s documenting himself, filtering recent history through his eyes.

The view, not to mention the sound, is breathtaking.

Francis Jones

Sligo-born McGloughlin’s debut album is a collection of haunting and deeply mellifluous songs that gently seep about the ears and promise to wander the mind for some time to come. His voice, clean and pure, drifts through intricate compositions, intoxicating and bewitching the listener with every gentle, honeyed breath. The deceptive array of instrumentation that softly laps at the ghostly vocals and guitar-led harmonies includes cello, mandolin, double bass and violin; all adding luscious flesh to fragile bones. From opening track ‘L’Espoir Des Revenants’ to the melodic ‘Ways To Kill A Werewolf’ with its lycanthropic metaphors, through ‘Haunting Room’ – a lilting treaty on regret – and the closing lullaby ‘Long Day’, the listener is led along a wistful and contemplative trek in and out of darkness, subdued reflection and beatnik wordplay, all presided over by McGloughlin’s dulcet tones. An album that revels in an unabashed intimacy and raw tenderness. James Gracey

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

DOWNLOAD: ‘OUR MAN IN BUENOS AIRES’, ‘WHITE HONKY AFRO’, ‘21ST CENTURY MAN’.

FOR FANS OF: THE AUTEURS, PULP, SCOTT WALKER.

DOWNLOAD: ‘WAYS TO KILL A WEREWOLF’, ‘L’ESPOIR DES REVENANTS’, ‘CHANGELING’.

FOR FANS OF: IAIN ARCHER, BURNING CODES, RED HOUSE PAINTERS.

Espers III WICHITA III sees the Philadelphian five-piece return with their latest offering of neo-psychedelic folk. Seemingly untameable in their idiosyncrasies, Espers have concocted another lugubrious album that billows along rather dreamily, whilst constantly throwing up surprising and lavish digressions.

This LP was recorded entirely to analogue tape, then mixed to tape in an effort to emphasise a sense of space; all the while it builds on the beautifully frazzled mood of its predecessors whilst taking the band on a more melodydriven journey. The distorted guitars that ominously snake and shimmy around the whispery vocals on ‘I Can’t See Clear’ unfurl as a throwback to the likes of Fairport Convention, whilst the avant-folk instrument mash-ups on tracks such as ‘That Which Darkly Thrives’ and ‘Colony’, with its sinister strings and cacophonous drums, sprawl out with an epic grandeur. Things become more intimate on tracks like ‘The Pearl’ and ‘Trollslända’, with their fingerpicked reverie and folksy, shimmering mellowness. A rich, acid-steeped melancholy constantly holds sway over proceedings, rooting the album in a plaintive, optimistic atmosphere. The sound is full and thick and there is never a quiet moment: kaleidoscopic guitars seem to be everswarming and droning behind the scenes, interweaving with richly textured instrumentals that float freely from track to track. James Gracey

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘THE ROAD OF GOLDEN DUST’, ‘ANOTHER MOON SONG’, ‘CAROLINE’.

FOR FANS OF: THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND, SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE, VETIVER.

Sufjan Stevens The BQE ROUGH TRADE I’m not sure if this fits in with Sufjan Stevens’ grandiose plans to release one album for every American state, but its concept does comes close. The BQE is a suite written for a movie detailing the history of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a small motorway built to link New York that has a fabled history. Commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The BQE is a classical suite aimed at adding an elegiac interpretation to a story riddled with empty promises, poor planning and inefficient design. As such, Stevens keeps his melodies minimal, preferring to explore the concepts of the sounds around the music, rather than delving into full-blown, symphonic otherworldliness. And in this sense, while Stevens’ typical flutters of woodwinds and focus on reed instruments dominates, his take on The BQE is solemn, almost forlorn, one that almost vindicates the failure of the expressway’s design in its quiescent beauty. It does add another notch on Stevens’ creative canon, showcasing the songwriter in the role of composer and conductor, but it does not follow his usual route, and in that direction asks more questions than it answers. Maybe, in this sense, it is a triumph, unlike the expressway is eulogises. Shain Shapiro

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘THE WHOLE THING’, ‘IT’S A SYMPHONY’.

FOR FANS OF: WAGNER, ROMANTICISM.

mojoFURY Visiting Hours Of A Travelling Circus WHITE Survival of the fittest could be the motto for the music business and, on this showing, mojoFURY have every attribute required to prosper in its vicious arena. They have long endured, their musical progression become a thing of almost Darwinian beauty. From brutish beginnings, they slowly dragged themselves out of rock’s primordial gloop, metamorphosed from a three-piece into a quartet, struggled through that awkward phase, and now, they are ready to soar.

Souped-up versions of long-time favourites such as ‘Kill Cock Robin’, ‘What Colour’s The Bear’ and ‘The Mann’ are impressive, but – of the old material – it is ‘Pill Pigeon Is An Orange Wheel’ that most forcefully apprehends the

listener’s attention. Here, the tender as Elliott Smith centre is cocooned within a blistering, Bronx-style maelstrom of noise.

Elsewhere, on the crisply bittersweet ‘Electric Sea’, emotions are laid out as naked and vulnerable as a newborn. However, there are also plenty of new weapons in the armoury to blow you away. Freewheeling over six minutes, ‘Lemon Marine’ is on the offensive from the get-go, firing into a maniacal trumpet-wielding finale that would do Rocket From The Crypt proud. They even have time for a brief foray into glitchtronica with ‘An Organ For A Friend’.

Intrigue, adventure, intelligence and creativity these are the genetic markers of a band whose progress, up to now, could be measured in small steps. Consider this, then, mojoFURY’s evolutionary quantum leap. Francis Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘LEMON MARINE’, ‘DEEP FISH TANK’, ‘PILL PIGEON IS AN ORANGE WHEEL’.

FOR FANS OF: QOTSA, ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT, EARLY BIFFY CLYRO.

The Pony Collaboration If These Are The Good Times

Headlights Wildlife

SERIES 8

POLYVINYL

Perhaps this is the perfect time of year for The Pony Collaboration’s follow-up to their 2007 self-titled debut.

As darkness falls early and leaves gather on the pavement, play this record: its gentle, poignant pop melodies will help you appreciate autumn’s wistful hues while gently reminding you of spring’s hopefulness. James Scallen’s gravelly, Kurt Wagner-esque vocal gives the record real presence, and a long-enough-in-the-tooth, acerbic warmth. …Good Times is a genuinely compelling album, parading nostalgic melodies, understated musicianship and spacious production in every crevice. Imagine Badly Drawn Boy arranging a Tindersticks record and you’re half-way there. Aaron Kennedy

The ‘difficult’ third album from Illinois-bred Headlights was constructed against a background of internal group wranglings but, judging from the opening Sixties popinfused chords of ‘Telephones’, the problems didn’t hinder the flow of creative juices. The shoegaze-influenced sounds double in stature with boy-girl vocal dynamics and the album is strengthened by the fact it was recorded live, adding to the urgency. With many gems worthy of having Stuart Murdoch at the helm, Wildlife manages to stay on the right side of cheesy at all times and, with highly personal subject matter on the likes of the ghostly ‘You and Eye’, shows there is more to Headlights than meets the eye. Lisa Hughes

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DOWNLOAD: ‘I NEVER KNEW’, ‘HOME’.

FOR FANS OF: WILL OLDHAM, TINDERSTICKS, DAN MICHAELSON.

DOWNLOAD: ‘I DON’T MIND’, ‘GET GOING’, ‘SECRETS’.

FOR FANS OF: BELLE & SEBASTIAN, THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART. —55 AU Magazine—

Reviews

BATTLES

Q&A: Hudson Mohawke AU: What does Warp Records mean to you?

HM: It means a different thing to me these days than it did before. It’s different seeing it from the inside than to be just a listener, but from a listener’s point of view, before I was involved with the label, it was just something that really fascinated me. It was really uncompromising stuff, really creative, really engaging.

Do you have a favourite Warp album or artist?

There’s too much to choose from, but one of my favourite records is Music Has The Right To Children by Boards of Canada. I really like some of the Jimi Tenor stuff, even though you never really hear much about him and he’s maybe not thought of as a ‘traditional’ Warp artist. Some of his stuff, the orchestration on it, it’s amazing.

What do you make of Warp’s diversification in recent years when it’s started signing a few guitar bands like Grizzly Bear and Battles?

I think one of the key ideas behind the label is surprising people. I think it’s quite admirable that they don’t get bogged down in repeating themselves or continually doing the things that got them the name in the first place.

A lot of labels seem to be having it tough at the moment, but Warp continues to flourish. Why do you think that is?

Well, just like I was saying, they haven’t been afraid to diversify, they don’t get stuck in the way that labels have traditionally been run. They’re not afraid to try new things, especially with the digital side of things – they have the Bleep store which is basically Warp’s answer to iTunes, they have Warp Films. They’re more than just a record label.

Various Artists Warp20 WARP

Trust Warp Records to do things differently. For 20 years a bastion of experimentation, innovation and a large amount of shit-hot, head-melting tunes, when it came time to celebrate its second decade, we were never going to get a simple ‘Best Of’. Instead we have a lovinglycurated boxset that takes in fan choices, rarities, cover versions and various other goodies.

The collection kicks off with ‘Chosen’ – two discs of Warp classics, with one selected by fans and the other —56 issue 61—

by label co-founder Steve Beckett. The fans’ picks are up first and, boy, have they played a blinder. At the risk of gushing embarrassingly, these are 10 tracks of absolute, incandescent brilliance. Hearing Aphex Twin’s ‘Windowlicker’, followed directly by ‘Roygbiv’ by Boards of Canada, which leads into Squarepusher’s ‘My Red Hot Car’, before ‘Atlas’ by Battles comes roaring out of the speakers… well, words can barely do it justice. It is, to paraphrase Bart Simpson, a pleasure overload. Okay, one might quibble over the inclusion or absence of this track or that and, alright, Autechre’s abrasive ‘Gantz Graf’ won’t be for everyone, but as a 10-song summation of what the label is all about, it’s perfect.

So far, so uniformly excellent. On then to ‘Recreated’ wherein, over two further discs, Warp artists offer their take on a selection of tunes from the label’s back catalogue. Cover versions, of course, can be hit and miss, so it’s testament to the artists that some of the boxset’s greatest delights are found here. Leila manages to turn Aphex Twin’s ‘Vodhosbn’ into a contemplative piano ballad – some achievement – while Tim Exile turns in a delightfully woozy version of Jamie Lidell’s ‘A Little Bit More’. Elsewhere Bibio’s take on Boards of Canada’s ‘Kaini Industries’ – replacing the original’s analogue synths with acoustic guitar and piano – is simply fantastic.

Beckett’s choices are equally interesting, and just as impressive. Battles (‘Race:Out’) and Grizzly Bear (the immense ‘Colorado’) represent the label’s latter-day diversification into signing a smattering of left-field guitar bands, but for the most part it’s the glitchy, radical electronica for which Warp is renowned. The label’s bighitters are well represented again with more from Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Boards of Canada, and there are also sterling efforts from Xeper (with the sly groove of ‘Carceres Ex Novum’) and Mike Ink (‘Paroles’). Special mention must also go to the sensual future-funk of Jamie Lidell’s ‘Daddy’s Car’ and the loping, irresistible beat of Flying Lotus’s ‘GNG BNG’.

Warp20, then, is a treat – a perfect place for the uninitiated to start and a reminder to enthusiasts of why they love the label. Here’s to the next 20 years.

Neill Dougan

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘WINDOWLICKER’ (APHEX TWIN), ‘AMO BISHOP RODEN’ (BOARDS OF CANADA), ‘‘VORDHOSBN’ (LEILA – APHEX TWIN COVER), ‘KAINI INDUSTRIES’ (BIBIO – BOARDS OF CANADA COVER).

FOR FANS OF: ER, WARP RECORDS.

Julian Casablancas Phrazes For The Young ROUGH TRADE Listening to this album conjures up a very particular image… Julian Casablancas riding shotgun with Marty McFly in the time-warping DeLorean from Back To The Future. Their destination, the Eighties. Of course, Julian’s not the first person this season to go holidaying to that particular decade, but on this evidence he’s a most welcome visitor. Keen though he is to sample the local synth culture, Casablancas doesn’t go entirely native, though – the opening ‘Out Of The Blue’ finds him unable to fully shake those dirty garage-rock riffs from his hair.

The Bontempi beats that open ‘Left And Right In The Dark’ are a precursor to a billowing, guitar-led melody, before the synths resurface in the chorus.

Not quite the electro-pop record that pre-publicity hinted at, then; instead Casablancas gilds the jagged rock of The Strokes in synthetic sparkle. It is, at times, both as colourful and as frustrating as that great icon of the Eighties, the Rubik’s Cube. Thankfully, on balance, the credit column is somewhat more full than the debit.

On the plus side there’s ‘Ludlow St.’, a quirky, twanging ode to the Manhattan of yesteryear, ‘Glass’, on which Casablancas conjures up a sucker-punch chorus from keys and drum machine, and lead single ‘11th Dimension’, a tantalising slice of synth-rock with funk trimmings. In fact, only ‘Tourist’ – which bleeps and splutters its way rather aimlessly – and the initially flat-footed ‘4 Chords of The Apocalypse’ disappoint.

Ben Frost

By The Throat BEDROOM COMMUNITY

To say that this album is amongst the best of the assorted Strokes’ flying solo efforts is to damn with faint praise.

Indeed, you suspect that when they next pool their efforts, the quartet will struggle to come up with something as commendable as Phrazes For The Young. Francis Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘LEFT AND RIGHT IN THE DARK’, ‘11TH DIMENSION’, ‘GLASS’.

FOR FANS OF: YEAH YEAH YEAHS, VANGELIS, NEW ORDER.

The Brute Chorus The Brute Chorus

What kind of perverse Australian ends up living and working in Reykjavik, Iceland? Exactly the kind that would make bleak, desolate music like this, I guess.

Ben Frost runs the Bedroom Community collective/ label with former Björk cohort Valgeir Sigurðsson and classical composer Nico Muhly, and this aptly titled third album is arresting, forbidding stuff – a sonic experience like few others. Frost operates on the boundary between modern classical (à la Jóhann Jóhannsson) and electronic noise/drone, and for fans of Fennesz and Tim Hecker,

By The Throat will be manna. The stormy ‘Killshot’ and the seriously unsettling ‘Ó God Protect Me’ – which

samples what sounds like the snatched gasps of a hospital patient – outline Frost’s mission from the beginning. If this is a window into his soul, then you have to fear for him, for the whole album is dripping with a sense of creeping dread. And it’s a physical experience as much as an aural or emotional one – Frost uses gut-punching bass pressure and ear-splitting noise as sonic punctuation amongst the synthesisers, field recordings and classical instrumentation. There are guest appearances from Sigur Rós collaborators Amiina, Arcade Fire’s Jeremy Gara and the aforementioned Muhly, but this is no-one’s vision but Frost’s. It’s fearless and it’s frightening and it demands to be heard shit-your-pants loud. Chris Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘KILLSHOT’, ‘Ó GOD PROTECT ME’, ‘THROUGH THE ROOF OF YOUR MOUTH’.

FOR FANS OF: FENNESZ, TIM HECKER, JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON.

Ex Libras Suite(S)

Steven Wilson NSRGNTS RMXS

SELF-RELEASED The Brute Chorus are well aware that their music is best sampled in the flesh. Their ballsy brew of bottomof-the-bottle blues and blackened, twisted love songs comes whiffing of sweat and Jack Daniel’s. So, it made consummate good sense that their debut album was recorded live, in a single take, in front of 300 fans. Tigs from Chew Lips duets with lead vocalist James Steel on the vaudeville slapstick of ‘The Cuckoo And The Stolen Heart’, while ‘Chateau’ is stripped back, baring its formidable melody for all to hear (Jack White take note).

The Brute Chorus does stray alarmingly into rockabilly on a couple of occasions, but the overall effect is one of good, honest fun. John Freeman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘THE CUCKOO AND THE STOLEN HEART’, ‘CHATEAU’, ‘SEND ME A MESSAGE’.

FOR FANS OF: NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS, THE RUMBLE STRIPS, THE HENTCHMEN.

WIREBIRD

KSCOPE

Ex Libras are a band who have obviously heard a Radiohead record or two, and although it would be unfair to label them as shameless copyists, they clearly wear their influence on the sleeve of their Kid A t-shirt. From the tense, building piano and guitar right down to the falsetto and stylish, scatty beats, the debut album from this London three-piece is all very familiar. There are worse influences to have, though, and Suite(s) is an ambitious and grandiose album that bears repeated listening. Perhaps the most inspired moment here is on the high tempo trip-hop of the oddly named ‘Phat Knickers’ – it suggests Ex Libras may have a plan B. Gerard McCann

From the frontman of Porcupine Tree comes an album which bears the hallmarks of a vanity release. The minialbum is made up of six songs which are remixes of tracks released earlier this year on the album Insurgentes. Equal parts Massive Attack and Thom Yorke (solo), there is a haunting darkness that slices through the Wilson remixes which makes it worth at least a listen, but it’s not one to get under the skin of the casual listener. One of the remixes, ‘Abandoner (Danse Macabre Mix)’ was selected through a competition on Wilson’s website. So at least that guy will be buying this record. Kirstie McCrum

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘UNDERACHIEVER’, PHAT KNICKERS’, ‘RADAR’.

FOR FANS OF: RADIOHEAD, JEFF BUCKLEY, MUSE.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘47’, ‘THE BLANKETS WERE THE STAIRS’, ‘48’.

FOR FANS OF: RIVAL SCHOOLS, GIRLS AGAINST BOYS, SLINT. —57 AU Magazine—

Reviews

Glorytellers Atone SOUTHERN Americana has become increasingly popular since genre leaders Whiskeytown and Lambchop took to the stage.

It is on the back of this heritage that Glorytellers seek to carve their own niche. With acoustic and electric guitars accompanied by twin fiddles, Glorytellers’ sound is upbeat and foot-tappingly reassuring. At times this can become a little overbearing, with some of the songs virtually identical, but there’s enough to keep you interested for a short while.

Twee but fun. David Hamilton

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘CONCAVES’, ‘THE KEYSTONE’.

FOR FANS OF: IDA, SECRET STARS, KARATE.

Cosmo Jarvis Cosmo Jarvis tUnE-yArDs BiRd-BrAiNs 4AD Merrill Garbus recorded this debut album herself in the most lo-fi way imaginable these days (a digital voice recorder and free software) and doesn’t it just show?

It’s scratchy, hissy and rough, and sometimes the bass interrupts with a blast of unintended distortion, but the miraculous thing is that Garbus’s songwriting survives it. And then some. She signed to 4AD and was picked

David Turpin Haunted!

to tour with the Dirty Projectors, and things like that don’t happen just by chance. Highlights like the assshaking Afro-pop of ‘Hatari’, the eerie nursery rhyme ‘Lions’ and the dancehall-infused ‘Jamaican’ show just how far you can push such a simple set-up. The singing is heartfelt, the cut-up arrangements often ingenious and the songs frankly wonderful. What we have here is a pop maverick, and if you can stomach the bargain-basement sound and the 54-minute runtime, then you’re in for a bit of a treat.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘HATARI’, ‘SUNLIGHT’, ‘LIONS’.

FOR FANS OF: MICACHU & THE SHAPES, DIRTY PROJECTORS, THE SLITS.

DJ /rupture & Matt Shadetek Solar Life Raft

KABINET

THE AGRICULTURE

David Turpin has populated his second LP with dancing skeletons, deals with the Devil, hounds from hell and all manner of spooky delights. Hip-hop beats blend with graceful and lush string arrangements and generous sprinklings of irresistible pop exuberance to form a mellow, curiously emotive and deliciously experimental collection of songs. The album fuses an odd selection of musical styles, to quietly sensational effect. It is testament to Turpin’s artistry and vision that everything is reined in and woven together effortlessly in his sonic webs. The galloping drums, haunting vocals, soaring melodies and rousing chorus of ‘Melmoth’, with its darkly romantic tale of a wager with the devil gone awry, and ‘The Bone Dance’, with its sparkling rhythms, irresistible spunk and feverishly infectious chorus, are two highlights that are guaranteed to keep your ‘spirits’ high throughout the dark, wintery nights ahead. James Gracey

Solar Life Raft is a dub-infused mix album with moments of ambience, spiked with influences from hip-hop, dancehall and reggae, with a deep grounding in African and Caribbean influences. If dub producer the Mad Professor was locked in a room with a set of turntables and a stack of dubstep tracks the results would sound somewhat similar.

DJ /rupture and Shadetek bring five original tracks to the mix and four remixes, making the collection as selfstyled as possible. They offer a disc suited to the post-club wind-down, sunrises, or nights spent in thick clouds of herbal enlightenment. 22 short tracks give this collection a reasonably long play time, and they are also releasing a digital-only version, Solar Life Raft: The Ingredients, in an unmixed, DJ friendly format. Craig Sheridan

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DOWNLOAD: JAHDAN BLAKKAMOORE – ‘FOR THE SOULS’, DJ /RUPTURE AND SHADETEK – ‘UNDERWATER HIGH-RISE’, DJ /RUPTURE AND SHADETEK – ‘4TH STORY WATER LINE’.

FOR FANS OF: BOXCUTTER, MAD PROFESSOR, JAH SHAKA SOUNDSYSTEM.

DOWNLOAD: ‘THE BONE DANCE’, ‘MELMOTH’, ‘HEART-BEEP’.

FOR FANS OF: JAMIE LIDELL, RICHARD SWIFT, JAPE. —58 issue 61—

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WALL OF SOUND Separated into two nine-track disks – Humasyouhitch and Sonofabitch – this debut album introduces the world to Cosmo Jarvis, a 19-year-old lyricist of many shades and one ambitiously versatile musician. Humasyouhitch is packed with the expected misadventures of a teenager in heat, with ‘Mel’s Song’ and ‘Jessica Alba’s Number’ light-heartedly dripping of acne-cream, odour issues and love unrequited. Sonofabitch, on the other hand, is darker and focuses on the breakdown of family life on tracks like ‘Mummy’s Been Drinking’ and ‘Problems’. Musically colourful and lyrically stinging, this album hints at an angry and witty voice for a new decade. Mickey Ferry

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘MEL’S SONG’, ‘SHE’S GOT YOU’, ‘PROBLEMS’.

FOR FANS OF: ARCTIC MONKEYS, THE STREETS, THE ENEMY.

Owen New Leaves POLYVINYL New Leaves is the second solo album from ex-Joan of Arc mainman Mike Kinsella. Like 2006’s At Home With Owen, the songs are mainly subdued, acoustic ruminations on the absolute futility of their author’s existence. Kinsella lays bare his life to the listener, his faults, his insecurities and his relationship breakdowns, as on the title track: “I’m tired of sleeping on the couch, like a guest, in my own house”. The album is similar to The Mountain Goats’ The Sunset Tree but Kinsella seems to lack John Darnielle’s resilience and you fear that ‘Curtain Call’ could be a poignant legacy. The down at the mouth feel is a little overwhelming but taking one song at a time, this is heartbreaking stuff. Kenny Murdock

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘NEVER BEEN BORN’, ‘UGLY ON THE INSIDE’.

FOR FANS OF: THE MOUNTAIN GOATS, IRON AND WINE.

The Hidden Cameras Origin: Orphan ARTS & CRAFTS Origin: Orphan is The Hidden Cameras’ fourth record, and as far a step away from their debut as they could possibly muster. Gone is the ‘gay church folk music’ of Ecce Homo; instead, opener ‘Ratify The New’ is a seven-minute chant, using Erhu violins, that errs on the wrong side of Enya’s Lord Of The Rings-style work. After a shaky, pseudo-intellectual start (avoid ‘In The NA’ – an exploration of creativity and the artist), the record settles down into familiar Arts & Crafts territory. ‘Kingdom Come’ is an enjoyable early-Broken Social Scene swoon, with Yeasayer whoops. ‘Ratify The New’? Rather, ‘Justify The New’. Ailbhe Malone

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘KINGDOM COME’, ‘UNDERAGE’.

FOR FANS OF: BRENDAN CANNING, YEASAYER.

Miss Paula Flynn Miss Paula Flynn MPF Miss Paula Flynn was the voice behind the version of ‘Let’s Dance’ which graced the Ballygowan adverts two summers ago and topped the Irish charts as we waited for the sun to come out. Rather than being a flash in the pan, Miss Paula has been the partner in crime of folk-punk poet Jinx Lennon and many of the songs here share his acerbic views on modern life.

Her roots in rural County Armagh come to the fore in ‘Killed A Bird’, a meditation on the passing of a winged stranger at the wheels of her pickup truck. Gentle observations aside, this is a jazzy, breezy release that highlights the songstress’s husky vocals, a perfect accompaniment to breakfast in bed or the wee small hours. Jeremy Shields

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘LITTLE MISS FORKHILL’, ‘KILLED A BIRD’, ‘LIFE NEVER STOPS FOR DEATH’.

FOR FANS OF: IMELDA MAY, EDDIE READER.

Osso & Sufjan Stevens Run Rabbit Run Beak> Beak>

ASTHMATIC KITTY Heads up all dedicated Sufjan fans, or those with a penchant for the unconventional. You may recall Sufjan’s 2001 Enjoy Your Rabbit – a glitchy collection of experimental electronic arrangements inspired by the Chinese Zodiac. Well, Run Rabbit Run is that self-same album re-arranged by the string quartet Osso (New Pornos, Kanye, Sufjan). While some of the arrangements get slightly lost in translation – with the thoughtful, choppy intrigue of the original rendered busy and clunky – this is essentially a warm, lively recording, and a fitting tribute to our beloved orchestral folk-pop doyen. Aaron Kennedy

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘YEAR OF THE ROOSTER’.

FOR FANS OF: KRONOS QUARTET, CLOGS.

INVADA Portishead auteur Geoff Barrow’s pet Krautrock project surpasses any high expectations you might have of the triphop mastermind, hewing desperately close to the title of art-rock release of the year. It’s fitting that just as dubstep emerges into the light, the author of the previous decade’s great innovation has mined deeper and darker than ever before, freed as he is on Beak> from the constraints of fashioning other people’s work. Admittedly, the trio of Bristolians avoid fan-boy homage by only a hair, content to rework Neu!’s ‘Hallogallo’ five times, albeit heavier on bass and with a paranoiac bent, but the results more than rival the very finest that the GDR’s post-industrial mystics

had to offer. The greater revelation is that the non-motorikgoverned tracks, traversing dark-as-fuck doom-metal, post-rock and haunted electronic miasma, virtually best the stretches of exquisite kosmische. These parts of the album resonate with torment, transmitting images of downed helicopters, lead-poisoned old men, polluted canals and windswept cemeteries, below the threshold of conscious perception. ‘Dundry Hill’, every bit as distressing an experience as you’d expect from the man who gave the world ‘Threads’, marries cavernous moaning to the almost imperceptible sound of distant nuclear sirens; the master of chilling atmosphere at the top of his game. Absolutely essential. John Calvert

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘BACKWELL’, ‘HAM GREEN’, ‘DUNDRY HILL’.

FOR FANS OF: NEU!, GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR, PORTISHEAD.

—59 AU Magazine—

Reviews

2562 Unbalance TECTONIC If 2008’s Aerial marked out Dave Huismans – aka 2562 – as one to watch (even making AU’s prestigious Albums of the Year list), then this follow-up sees him make good on that promise in no uncertain terms. Inspired moments of invention abound on a murky, thoroughly atmospheric record of twitchy, skittering beats and throbbing bass. If the pitch-shifting synth riff of ‘Like A Dream’ and the mangled vocal samples of ‘Lost’ are impressive, then the astonishingly accomplished off-kilter beats and minor-key menace of ‘Who Are You Fooling’ are downright jawdropping. Call it ‘dubstep’ or ‘techno’ if you like but, in truth, Unbalance doesn’t sit entirely easily in either camp.

This compelling, restlessly insistent electro is in a style all of Huisman’s own. Neill Dougan

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘LIKE A DREAM’, ‘YES/NO’, ‘WHO ARE YOU FOOLING?’.

FOR FANS OF: FLYING LOTUS, HOLDEN, MARTYN.

Teitur All My Mistakes A&G Earlier this year, Faroese native Teitur released his critically acclaimed album The Singer. All My Mistakes comprises songs from his two previous albums, unreleased on these shores. Coming across like an (even more) sugar-coated Owen, or a blunted Elliott Smith, Teitur, despite some lovely arrangements, often lacks the musical edge required to lift his songs from coffee table to stratosphere. However, his bittersweet lyrical honesty is endearing on songs like ‘Your The Ocean’ so occasionally he’ll lay himself bare, remind you that you are not in fact listening to James Morrison, and demand further investigation. The enjoyable marimbapop of ‘Catherine The Waitress’, taken from The Singer, displays the more laid-back and experimental side that has since led him to critical-acclaim. Best start the investigation there, then. Paul McIver

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 The Mountain Goats The Life Of The World To Come 4AD This record is a revelation. John Darnielle, principle songwriter and the sole core member left in The Mountain Goats, has taken to biblical imagery and teachings to influence his sixth album, and, in such, created a set that finds a way to be utterly entrancing without a shade of the polemic. Instead, Darnielle surrounds his broken, folk-drenched ways with questions surrounding history and the ever—60 issue 61—

changing world of biblical interpretation, providing a passageway between accepting biblical perversion while simultaneously questioning its power. Joined by Owen Pallett on string arrangements and members of Arcade Fire and Fucked Up, each song sifts through manuscripts of ideas, crafting a set wise beyond its years, and arguably the best Darnielle has ever released. Those baffled in the past with the work of The Mountain Goats, especially last outing Heretic Pride, should give over their scruples to The Life Of The World To Come as it is, from start to finish, an absolute corker, and as such a surefire contender for album of the year. Shain Shapiro

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘PSALMS’, ‘ROMANS’, ‘GENESIS’.

FOR FANS OF: SMOG, EARLY MOUNTAIN GOATS.

DOWNLOAD: ‘YOUR THE OCEAN’, ‘CATHERINE THE WAITRESS’.

FOR FANS OF: ELLIOTT SMITH, OWEN, SHOUT OUT LOUDS.

Har Mar Superstar Dark Touches DILETTANTE His first full outing since 2004’s The Handler, Sean Tillman aka Har Mar Superstar’s latest is the album equivalent of speed dating. Its conveyor belt of musical styles – electropop, hip-hop, funk jams and smooth operator R&B – swirls round in dizzying fashion. Rather disorientating it may be, then, but it’s a mostly alluring affair and you’re sure to find something to tickle your pickle. The multifaceted

nature of the record is no doubt informed by the numerous collaborators that Tillman’s called in, an extensive roll call that includes John Fields (Andrew WK, Jonas Brothers), The Faint’s beat merchants Clark Baechle and Jacob Thiele, alt-rapper P.O.S. and lounge-rock slacker Adam Green. The album even features a vocal cameo from The O.C.’s Samaire Armstrong on the Jackson 5-evoking ‘Dope Man’. Throughout, the common currency is melody.

Tillman is a much sought-after songwriter and tracks such as ‘Sunshine’ and ‘Tall Boy’ – originally penned for Britney – show why. This is exuberant, fun stuff, Har Mar playing up to his unlikely lover man status on ‘I Got Next’ and mentally cross-dressing on the anthemic ‘Girls Only’.

Hook yourself up. Francis Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘TALL BOY’, ‘DOPE, MAN’, ‘GIRLS ONLY’.

FOR FANS OF: PRINCE, JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, HALL AND OATES.

Converge Axe To Fall EPITAPH After nearly two decades as a band, Converge have got this metalcore thing licked, although these days the only thing hardcore about their sound is the viciously barked vocals. Musically, this is metal through and through – a blast of lightning-fast leads, oppressively heavy chugging and punishing double bass kicks – all played at frightening pace and intensity. Good as each individual track is, it has to be noted that the lack of light and shade becomes a bit wearing over the course of an album, which is why stunningly atmospheric post-metal closer ‘Wretched World’ comes as such a relief, and points to an exciting new direction for the veteran bruisers. Lee Gorman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘DARK HORSE’, ‘WRETCHED WORLD’.

FOR FANS OF: THE JUDAS FACTOR, TORCHE, VISION OF DISORDER.

Johnny Foreigner Grace And The Big Picture BEST BEFORE Birmingham’s most precious commodity, Johnny Foreigner, have returned bearing much the same fuzzed-up but vaguely doleful brand of uncontainable noise-pop as before, pitched somewhere between Babes In Toyland and Nineties emo band Cap’n Jazz. Still as fresh as breakfast OJ and less gratingly self-conscious than the oft-compared Los Campesinos!, on Grace and the Big Picture, their gift remains

the ability to communicate what it’s like to be young and both terrified and exhilarated by a confusing adult world.

A heightened sense of melody and a greater emphasis on euphoric choruses (or as they put it ‘More Heart, Less Tongue’), could be interpreted as a lamentable blunting of their sound or perhaps evidence of a more assured touch.

Really, though, it’s just their version of growing up. And haven’t they turned out well. John Calvert

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘CRIMINALS’, ‘MORE HEART LESS TONGUE’, FEELS LIKE SUMMER’.

FOR FANS OF: LOS CAMPESINOS!, TUBELORD, THOMAS TANTRUM.

Yes Cadets Yes Cadets EP

Various Artists 10 Years Of Technique

Various Artists 15 Years Of Metalheadz

TECHNIQUE

SELF-RELEASED

METALHEADZ

With a 15-pack of floor shakers, this compilation is a self-congratulatory pat on the back for a label consistently putting out thick, groove laden drum & bass blasters.

Junglist in its perspective, but with five 2009 re-rubs to keep the sound fresh, this collection opens (and pretty much continues) with Drumsound and Bassline Smith’s back catalogue. Opener ‘Law Of The Jungle’, pumps out of your speakers like The Chronic-era Dr. Dre, if you can imagine him taking speed and producing for Pendulum.

Highlights come from Technicolor, providing the smooth, soul-influenced contrast on ‘Elastic’ and later on the remix of ‘Stay Loose’, while Tantrum Desire brings the roughneck aggression with a series of epic remixes. Craig Sheridan

Belfast outfit Yes Cadets may have been around barely a year, but this eponymous debut EP arrives astonishingly fully-formed. Opener ‘Rufio’ sets the tone with its seamless fusion of bratty indie-punk and slick, electrotinged new wave, incorporating all manner of subtle sonic trickery under an infuriatingly catchy ‘ba-da-da’ vocal hook. Irrepressible single ‘Canada’ follows, heading straight for the dance floor with its turbo-charged synth line and high-end guitar chirping. ‘Burial/Tongues’ and ‘H.O.T.’ up the funk levels, the latter in particular revealing a love for diminutive love god Prince, while ‘Fashionista Art Party’ is an angular sneer worthy of Help She Can’t Swim. Accomplished and infectious, this is one of the most exciting debuts of the year. Lee Gorman

When Roni Size & Reprazent won the 1997 Mercury Music Prize with New Forms, drum & bass was on the cusp of commercial and crossover success. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way, as the genre was simply too dark and tense to appeal to a mass audience, but against the odds Metalheadz have continued to entertain a dedicated community. The roster has not changed too much since its inception in 1994; the likes of Photek’s ‘Consciousness’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’ by Alex Reece can be found on the seminal Platinum Breakz compilation. This is an excellent document, its quality confirmed in that it cannot find space for anything from Goldie’s classic Timeless. Gerard McCann

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘CAPE FEAR (TANTRUM DESIRE REMIX)’, ‘JUNGLIST’, ‘LAW OF THE JUNGLE’.

FOR FANS OF: EXAMPLE, PENDULUM, CHASE & STATUS.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘RUFIO’, ‘CANADA’, ‘BURIAL/TONGUES’.

FOR FANS OF: JOHNNY FOREIGNER, HOT HOT HEAT, CLONE QUARTET.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘ALEX REECE ‘ PULP FICTION’, LEMON D ‘THIS IS LA’, ADAM F ‘METROPOLIS’.

FOR FANS OF: GOLDIE, LONDON ELEKTRICITY, RONI SIZE. —61 AU Magazine—

Reviews

waltzes us off our feet. The electro-pop marketplace might be fit to burst, but there’s always room for a performer as gifted as Annie. Francis Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘MY LOVE IS BETTER’, ‘I DON’T LIKE YOUR BAND’, ‘MARIE CHERIE’.

FOR FANS OF: ROBYN, SAINT ETIENNE, PET SHOP BOYS.

Lisa Germano Magic Neighbour YOUNG GOO

The Swell Season Strict Joy ANTI The road that we trudge, while paved with good intentions, often leads to nowhere but disaster and disappointment. Nobody realises that more fully than Glen Hansard. After spending the worst part of two decades slugging it out with uncooperative labels and a largely disinterested public, he and his new creative partner Markéta Irglová hitched their wagon to the big time with the success of the movie Once and the Oscarwinning song ‘Falling Slowly’. Two years later, and groaning under the diver boot weight of expectation, comes second album proper Strict Joy. While an enjoyable and often-times stirring listen, it does see Hansard in the

Brakes Rock Is Dodelijk

midst of a perplexing identity crisis: half of it sounds like the rousing alternative rock he used to make with The Frames, and half of it like the eerie pastoral folk he now makes with The Swell Season. The frequent stylistic left turns and gear changes can be discomfiting: ‘High Horses’ could easily fit on In Rainbows; ‘Love That Conquers’ is evidently influenced by the band’s time touring with Iron And Wine; while ‘Fantasy Man’ could be plucked from the soundtrack to The Wicker Man. It all very much feels like Hansard, whichever path he chooses, is shedding his skin – skin that does not necessarily want to be shed.

Change can be a painful, bone-breaking process, and while this album is good, there is no doubt that the next one will be truly great. Ross Thompson

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Annie Don’t Stop SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND

Rock Is Dodelijk is a postcard from two of Brakes’ live shows, a hometown gig in Brighton and a recent performance in Cologne, the latter being the rawer of the two. Whilst the songs are punky, abrasive and urgent, the absence of audience atmosphere, particularly in the more polished and produced Brighton set, makes this release more of a sampler for Brakes’ wares than a live document. Brakes get to the point with their tunes, the majority of which are under two minutes long, though their cover of Johnny Cash’s ‘Jackson’ is a relative epic at over three minutes. An adequate introduction to the band, and enough to leave the listener curious for more. Jeremy Shields

But for label shenanigans, this album could have been released over a year ago. A version of the record was, in fact, leaked, with a moist Popjustice.com declaring it a “complete modern masterpiece”. Whilst Don’t Stop is good, it is not quite deserving of such a gushing accolade. What’s more, its delayed delivery will do Annie no favours. Had it come out when originally scheduled, the Norwegian could have pre-empted the subsequent invasion of synth-pop princesses.

As it stands though – and to damn with her own lyrics – she’s in danger of “sounding so passé”. Still, there’s much to savour here and some flavours never fail to tantalise. Mostly, the record is redolent of the streamlined pop of Xenomania, understandable given that they – amongst many others – collaborated with Annie on the album. The laser beam melodies of ‘My Love Is Better’ and the title track are high impact numbers. ‘The Breakfast Song’, though, is just annoying. Such irritations are almost entirely excused by ‘Marie Cherie’, a down-tempo dream of a song that

DOWNLOAD: ‘WHY TELL THE TRUTH (WHEN IT’S EASIER TO LIE)’, ‘NY PIE, ‘CEASE AND DESIST’.

FOR FANS OF: GANG OF FOUR, BUZZCOCKS, LIBERTINES. —62 issue 61—

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘A MILLION TIMES,’ ‘SIMPLE,’ ‘KITTY TRAIN’.

FOR FANS OF: ALELA DIANE, MAZZY STAR, CAT POWER.

DOWNLOAD: ‘LOW RISING’, ‘IN THESE ARMS’, ‘I HAVE LOVED YOU WRONG’.

FOR FANS OF: IRON AND WINE, WILL OLDHAM, VAN MORRISON.

FATCAT

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Throughout her career, the insanely talented singer/ songwriter Lisa Germano has been terribly underrated. In an ideal world, albums such as Geek The Girl and Excerpts From A Love Circus should have soundtracked a million broken teenage romances, but for whatever reason her intensely personal songs have rarely strayed out of the realm of an elite few (despite roping in the likes of Johnny Marr and David Bowie to help record her music along the way). Magic Neighbour is Lisa’s eighth album, and it continues the theme of rebirth and renewal. You see, at the start of the decade she unofficially retired from music and this album sees her clawing her way back to the top. Her breathy, baby doll vocals are still as battered and bruised as ever (‘Simple,’ ‘Snow’) and the skeletal musical accompaniment leaves us in no doubt that Germano’s still a shockingly good songwriter. Don’t count her out just yet. Edwin McFee

Black Mold Snowblindness Is Crystal Antz FLEMISH EYE Black Mold is the alias of Chad VanGaalen, long time lone wolf of his very own one-man scene, and Snow Blindness Is Crystal Antz is the esoteric songwriter’s esoteric experiment in electronica and a great example of how one man’s “free associative songwriting” can be another man’s load of old nonsense. Dispatched from his base in Calgary, it’s singular music of a peculiar temperament that’s pretty much without precedent, which theoretically is something to celebrate, if only you could shift the nagging feeling that Snow Blindness is the cursory tinkering of a pretentious tit. The sound is a cerebral composite of baroque instruments, discordant electronics and 8-bit bleeps, and whilst the bubbly chiptune element does provide an appealing foil to the climate of pursed lips and corduroy trousers, to categorise this as party music is gravely overstepping the mark. John Calvert

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘METAL SPIDER WEB #2’, ‘WET FERNS’.

FOR FANS OF: WENDY CARLOS, JEAN-MICHEL JARRE, CRYSTAL CASTLES.

Hush Arbors Yankee Reality ECSTATIC PEACE Yankee Reality is Hush Arbors’ second album for Ecstatic Peace, but their first with rock legend J. Mascis in the producer’s chair. No-one could accuse Keith Wood of lacking ideas, but the constant flitting from one style to another, indeed from one decade to another, proves the record’s undoing. Opener ‘Day Before’ sounds like substandard Dinosaur Jr, ‘Sun Shall’ like a poor man’s Velvet Underground and on ‘So They Say’, Wood manages a vocal slaughter unrivalled since the days of Tiny Tim. Possibly worst of all is ‘Take It Easy’, a brutal pastiche of ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ that sounds like Joe Pasquale backed by The Woolpackers. Not Mascis’ finest hour. Kenny Murdock

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘LISBON’.

FOR FANS OF: THE RUTLES.

Turbo Fruits Echo Kids Cold Cave Love Comes Close

ARK Turbo Fruits were a side-project of ex-Be Your Own Pet frontman Jonas Stein and, since the dissolution, of BYOP, it’s now a full-time venture. Analog-fuzzy, and with a languid rockabilly vocal, there are undertones of early Ramones and The Beach Boys. Too fine-tuned for garage and not manic enough for psychobilly, probable-single ‘Get Up Get On Down (Tonite)’ soundtracks the new Ellen Page movie. Most of the tracks clock in at under three minutes, but each one drags slightly. The record feels stilted – it’s both ironic and admiring.

There’s no real force. ‘Knowing’ rock and roll doesn’t work. The only way to play simple songs such as these is with one’s gut, not by laughing behind one’s hand. Ailbhe Malone

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MATADOR Formerly a one-man project but now a fully-fledged band, Matador’s new electro hopes release their debut, Love Comes Close. ‘Cebe And Me’ ushers in the album in stark fashion, pitch-black synth throbs washing over a distant, spoken-word vocal. The following title track sets out their dark electro-pop stall, sighing keys underpinning some incongruously light guitar and Wesley Eisold’s baroque delivery. Unfortunately, the high standard of this opening pair proves elusive, with

MERCURY One of the great pop humorists, Mr Ben Hudson is back – sans Library – to offer more amusing takes on musical styles. He has enlisted label boss Kanye West to perfect his satirical swipe on humourless hip-hop and makes sport of the tired old clichés that blight the charts. From the Hoffstyle Europop of ‘White Lies’ to the Eighties synth pap of ‘Knew We Were Trouble’ to the vocoder-drenched title track, Mr H is an accomplished mimic – even doing an uncanny monotone Akon on ‘There Will Be Tears’. It’s an hilarious excursion, and one for which he should be lauded.

Unless it’s not actually a joke...? Kirstie McCrum

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘INSTANT MESSENGER’, ‘THERE WILL BE TEARS’, ‘LIFT YOUR HEAD’.

FOR FANS OF: KANYE WEST, AKON.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘LOVE COMES CLOSE’, ‘LIFE MAGAZINE’, ‘YOUTH AND LUST’.

FOR FANS OF: EDITORS, FRYARS, NEW ORDER.

Felix You Are The One I Pick

Various Artists New Moon O.S.T.

DOWNLOAD: ‘GET UP GET ON DOWN (TONITE)’.

FOR FANS OF: RAMONES, BE YOUR OWN PET.

Mr Hudson Straight No Chaser

the remainder of the album patchy. For every stunner like ‘Youth And Lust’, a masterpiece in unresolved tension with lush synth beds and metronomic beat, there’s a missed opportunity such as ‘The Laurels Of Erotomania’, where a great pop melody is sabotaged by Eisold’s agonised moan. Perhaps the singer’s previous stints in various hardcore bands explains his apparent fear of Cold Cave’s accessible side, but there’s a genuinely great pop record straining to burst out from its doomy shackles here, if only he’d let it. As it is, Love Comes Close is brief, punchy and promising, but ultimately frustrating. Lee Gorman

ATLANTIC

KRANKY

Movie soundtracks are hit and miss at the best of times but this accompaniment to the latest instalment of teen vampire franchise Twilight has a remarkably high strike rate. Death Cab For Cutie’s brooding ‘Meet Me On The Equinox’ gets things off to a flier; Thom Yorke’s ‘Hearing Damage’ is characteristically fraught, minimalist electronica; Lykke Li and Anya Marina contribute beautifully restrained ballads. Bon Iver and St Vincent join forces on ‘Roslyn’ for a typically spectral lament, while Grizzly Bear’s match-up with Victoria Legrand results in the swirling waltz ‘Slow Life’. With good efforts from BRMC and Editors among others, only a lazy Muse remix and The Killers’ odd ‘A White Demon Love Song’ really disappoint. Lee Gorman

Nottingham-based duo Felix are instantly striking, largely due to the delivery of Lucinda Chau – a naively fragile voice fighting with ire. The sparse yet opulent background of guitar, piano and strings allows Chau’s musings to take centre stage and entice the listener into a sinister little world where beauty and terror go hand in hand. ‘Waltzing For Weasel’, ‘What I Learned From TV’ and ‘Bernard St’ are standout tracks; the former’s “you raped all the girls” refrain a measure of the dark lyrical content. But there is always light around the corner; ascending instrumental sections evoke sunrise and offer respite in light. This album is a world of its own and dedication is required to fully appreciate its atmosphere and discover further intricacies.

Intriguing stuff. Paul McIver

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DOWNLOAD: DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE – ‘MEET ME ON THE EQUINOX’, BON IVER & ST VINCENT – ‘ROSLYN’, GRIZZLY BEAR & VICTORIA LEGRAND – ‘SLOW LIFE’.

FOR FANS OF: TWILIGHT, DARK WAS THE NIGHT.

DOWNLOAD: ‘WALTZING FOR WEASEL’, ‘WHAT I LEARNED FROM TV’. ‘BERNARD ST’.

FOR FANS OF: BEACH HOUSE, BAT FOR LASHES, BJORK. —63 AU Magazine—

Unsigned Universe

RAMS’ Pocket Radio

Photo by Scott Clayton

RAMS’ Pocket Radio Demo Full of intriguing left-turns and whipped into a lather of emotion, these six tracks provide a stunning introduction to RAMS’ Pocket Radio. The opening ‘Dogs Run In Packs’ unfurls its cautionary tale over a blistering Ben Folds-style chorus. Even more impressive is ‘Dieter Rams Has Got The Pocket Radio’, a three-minute pop-melodrama whose cascading piano brings to mind Dresden Dolls. There is real ambition here too, from the tender remembrances of ‘Boats’, to the propulsive rock of ‘Number/Letter/Architecture’. Equally at ease on the stripped-back and largely acoustic ‘Souvenir’ or on the sparky male-female duet of ‘Rhythm’, RAMS’ Pocket Radio is an artist of verve and versatility. Get tuned in. FJ WWW.MYSPACE.COM/RAMSPOCKETRADIO

Strait Laces Seconds Out This debut single from the spiky Coleraine trio is a little bit back to front. Lead track ‘Seconds Out’ is a breathless two-and-a-half minute romp, never settling on an idea for very long and slightly infuriating because of it. Dave Hanna’s caterwauling vocals bear comparison to Niall Kennedy of contemporaries – and clear influences – Panama Kings, but the yelping energy is all a bit much to handle. Surprisingly enough, Uber Glitterati’s electro-pop remix fares better, slowing things down (with the added benefit of pitching down Hanna’s voice) and crafting a slick, coherent pop song where once there was wide-eyed chaos. Better still, though, is the third track, which can count itself unlucky to be tacked on at the end. ‘Romantic Issues’ is a stylish, confident tune that owes much to the Arctic Monkeys, turning on a dime from the lithe, cocksure verse to a turbocharged chorus. Great stuff; it’s just a shame it wasn’t given more prominence. CJ WWW.STRAITLACES.COM

We Are Resistance Public Service Announcement The Derry six-piece lay out their design for life on opening track ‘P.S.A.’. Brimming with ideas, the song seems to pull in several different directions at once.

However, they manage to keep it together. Just. Prowling like Rick James with a pocketful of Viagra, the funklaced rock of ‘Terra Nova’ makes for an energetic romp.

Elsewhere, on the media baiting ‘Gran Mal’ – “fuck BBC, fuck ITV” – and the musically schizophrenic ‘Just A Minute’, the sentiments veer a little too close to the domain of the soapbox preacher. Greater lyrical sleight of hand and tighter musical focus is required, but Public Service Announcement serves notice of We Are Resistance’s potential. FJ WWW.WEARERESISTANCE.COM

—64 issue 61—

InProfile ACT: RAMS’ POCKET RADIO LOCATION: LISBURN MEMBERS: PETER MCCAULEY (VOCALS, PIANO); AND LIVE, RIC VAN DEN BOS (DRUMS), RYAN MITCHELL (GUITAR), SHAUNA TOHILL (BASS, BACKING VOCALS).

FOR FANS OF: BEN FOLDS, AQUALUNG, DUKE SPECIAL. WEBSITE: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/RAMSPOCKETRADIO

How do you find fronting a band now as opposed to your time in Ego, when you were operating behind a drumkit?

It’s daunting, but coming out from behind a set of drums and a row of guitars makes it a lot easier to connect with the audience. That’s what I love most about playing this stuff live. The physicality of drumming makes it much easier to get stuck in and induce a general reaction, but mood and emotional atmosphere are easier to stir up through chords, melody and lyrics.

Interview by Richard W Crothers

How did you find recording the EP? Did the finished product turn out as expected?

Ryan Mitchell and I come from the same place musically, we played and toured in our first band [Ego], lived together during that period and we’ve been mates for ages. Ryan records to suit the song and captures what is played honestly. He liked the stuff and I trusted him to work with it the way he wanted to. I kind of vaguely knew how it was going to sound. However, we never knew what way it was going to work. The first time we could hear the drums and piano together was after they had been tracked.

Here, Peter McCauley tell us about his new alter-Ego as RAMS’ Pocket Radio, the peddler of effortlessly stirring alt-rock.

There’s a real sense of cohesion to the tracks. How long have you spent finessing the material on the demo?

Most of the songs have taken about a year or longer to come together – whether that’s constantly fine-tuning or distilling concepts. With tracks like ‘Boats’ and ‘Dieter Rams Has Got The Pocket Radio’ there were a lot of parts that got scrapped and adjusted, whereas with ‘Dogs Run In Packs’ and ‘Souvenir’ it was a case of getting to grips with the ideas without going near a piano. Once I grasped how I felt about certain things, the ideas translated relatively quickly into songs.

What do you intend to do next with RPR? I’ll be tracking some more stuff with an orchestra soon.

I want to push the boundaries of the instrumentation for the new tracks I’ve been writing. I’m also currently planning a few events to explore the live sound further and challenge perceptions of what RAMS’ is.

Photo by Alessio Michelini

&

C!TIES

Hard Working Class Heroes Festival Various Venues, Dublin Seven years. 100 bands. Six venues. Three days. Too many numbers. That’s not the only headache. HWCH requires serious advance planning and the streets of Dublin are filled with people racing around trying to catch newly-hyped bands and older established favourites without wasting a minute in between. With bands taking inspiration from many genres, it’s more than just straightup indie. But electronica has its grubby paws everywhere, from post-rock to Eighties pop.

Friday and the crowds are fresh – ready and bubbling with energy. Sligo-via-Belfast lads A Plastic Rose are a welcome burst of fire in The Button Factory after the drudgery of dull but inoffensive The Brothers Movement. They start off well, reminiscent of early Snow Patrol and Ash, but soon settle into formulaic but serviceable emo-rock, polished to perfection.

Becoming a trio has given thrash-dance punks Not Squares a chance to mix things up a bit. As riotous as ever, new material such as ‘Release The Bees’ takes the commerical influence of Soulwax but tosses it around, giving it the quirky, off-kilter vibe that our shouting, dancing boys tend to favour.

After a jaunt to Canada to record their debut album, Heritage Centre admit to being a little rusty. True, the boys are usually extremely professional and there

is something missing in this show, but their intelligent songwriting is always a pleasure to hear live.

Twisted Pepper headliner and electro-pop maestro Neosupervital show that it takes serious determination to carry off such a seemingly effortless and silly performance.

Camper than a row of diamanté-encrusted tent pegs, it’s a glittering extravaganza of Eighties synth and overzealous rocking out on a baby-blue wireless guitar that looks more Fisher Price than Fender. Tim O’Donovan’s alter-ego invites the audience onstage before giving a bar-top dance show to the pumping beat of his own Chris de Burgh remix.

Saturday night and over in 4 Dame Lane the Northerners kick start the evening. Despite the quiet venue, energetic alt-pop quartet Escape Act play as if the place was packed to the rafters. Showcasing new tracks from their forthcoming second album, it’s as jagged and catchy as ever.

On the other side of the river, country kids C!ties show promise with their grandiose, mostly instrumental rock epics interspersed with random electronics. Although slightly overlong in places, it’s a strong performance with bassist Sean giving the trio their sparkle. An engaging showman, he performs with an endearing, unassuming confidence.

In Andrew’s Lane Theatre, the evening ends with Sweet Jane, who present solid rock and roll with dirty little riffs and gritty male/female vocals, while Adebisi Shank do as expected and blow everyone away. They work the crowd effortlessly – it’s pure energy. While influenced by Battles and Oxes, it seems these guys are now carving out their own place in the world of noise-rock.

By Sunday, the hangovers are starting to kick in and for this reason, punk powerhouses Hassle Merchants’ sonic assault is a little harsh this early in the evening. By the time off-the-wall hardcore three-piece Jogging rage onstage, however, we’ve gotten used to it and are ready for their At The Drive-In inspired rock. They do well to remind us that synths may be in fashion but loud guitardriven melodies will always have power.

Next up are Sounds Of System Breakdown.

Breakdown, indeed. Technology being what it is – unpredictable – the electronics take a wee break mid-song while the others play valiantly on, finding their feet as if nothing ever happened. And the levels are crazy. One minute it’s too much keys, then too much guitar and the vocals are never quite there. Yet despite all the makings of an utter disaster, these guys are great – combining elements of LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture with their own dance-punk electro-clash flavour to suggest something that could be very good indeed.

By the time Newbridge’s finest Super Extra Bonus Party take to the stage in Andrew’s Lane Theatre it’s well after midnight and after a long weekend, the crowd is smaller than the hip-hop inspired genrehoppers deserve. But it’s pure passion onstage – this group is firmly in the ascendant.

As the festival draws to a close, Ireland has a new batch of heroes – creative, innovative and exciting. But when it comes to hard working, the hundreds of weary-footed fans deserve some recognition for their mad dashes across the fair city. Here’s to next year! Louise McHenry —65 AU Magazine—

Live Reviews

Green Day Odyssey Arena, Belfast Arriving onstage at the ever-so-punctual time of 8pm (how punk), Green Day waste no time in kicking Belfast’s collective arse with an opening salvo of ‘21st Century Breakdown’ and ‘Know Your Enemy’, and despite this reviewer’s initial doubts about their current ‘Queen does punk’ sonic manifesto, the crowd are eating it up.

Tonight’s gig is all about the bells and whistles that go along with arena shows and you know what? It’s actually kinda fun. The newly blond Billie Joe Armstrong drags audience members from the pit to join him onstage for a few sing-songs, he covers us all with toilet paper, hoses down youngsters with a super soaker and then shoots free t-shirts out of a gun. In fact, for the full two-and-a-half hours the band are pretty much relentless.

Set-wise we get the likes of the faithful-pleasing ‘Welcome To Paradise’ and ‘When I Come Around,’ and we even get to hear a story about drummer Tre Cool and bassist Mike Dirnt dropping acid and making dicks out of themselves during the trio’s first ever show in our city in ’91. However, tonight’s performance isn’t about pleasing the punk rock posers or proving to the naysayers that Green Day still ‘mean it, maaaan’. It’s about giving the people who paid for tickets a good time and showing that they can compete with the big guns – which they do with aplomb.

Of course, it’s nice when Billie Joe sings a phrase from ‘Teenage Kicks’ during ‘King For A Day’ while waxing lyrical about the gospel of punk rock, but ultimately we realise that, like The Clash before them, they’ve left it all behind. After nearly three hours of music, the band take their final bow by letting the singer serenade us with ‘Time Of Your Life’ backed only with a battered old acoustic. It’s a cheesy moment for sure, but we can’t argue with the sentiment. Edwin McFee

—66 issue 61—

Green Day

Photo by Carrie Davenport

sung and played with real intensity. This man is pushing 60, but he puts many a young buck to shame.

Frank Turner, Oppenheimer, Beans On Toast The Stiff Kitten, Belfast Pre-gig and Frank Turner is out-and-about, mingling with the crowd, chatting and getting his photo taken with all and sundry. It’s this accessibility and interaction with his fans that is one of Turner’s most admirable attributes.

As Frank does his meet-and-greet, Beans On Toast – a one-man guitar dynamo – takes to the stage. He’s got a highly stylised approach to building performer-audience rapport, riling the crowd with comments such as, “Oh, they sang along better in Dublin.”. Maybe he could learn some interpersonal skills from Frank? Next up, Oppenheimer with their first hometown performance in nine months.

They air a set comprised entirely of new tracks; it’s a risk, but one that is fulsomely rewarded by a receptive audience.

Afterwards, team Oppenheimer are buzzing from the encouraging reaction to their freshly debuted material, and rightly so, they’ve played an incredible set and provided some tantalising clues to what we can expect from album number three.

When Frank Turner takes his bow, the crowd reacts as if they’re greeting their best mate. It’s hard not to get swept up in the genuine and mutual warmth that seems to emanate from both the stage and the spectators. The utterly infectious ‘The Road’ lays down an early marker for this most vibrant of performances. Turner plays most of new album Poetry Of The Deed, but plunges too into that rich back catalogue. Betweensong banter is crisp and enjoyable, including a shout out to a guy who has come to every one of his Belfast gigs. This down to earth mentality is refreshing with audience participation also something of a theme this evening. At one stage a rather excited member of the crowd even gets up onstage to perform a harmonica solo! Energy, exuberance, and singalongs that will long echo in the memory, Turner brings it all to the table.

Richard W Crothers

Dälek, Charles Hayward Black Box, Belfast This is a night for adventure, headed by an act that has achieved the impressive feat of sounding like precisely no one else. But before Dälek’s bizarre yet invigorating collision of noise and rap, it’s fitting that the support comes from Charles Hayward, a man who has spent the last 30 years resolutely going his own way. Best known as the drummer in English experimental group This Heat during the late Seventies and early Eighties, he now tours alone. Naturally enough, his masterful, expressive drumming is the main focus, but this is no smug wankathon – it’s gritty and creative, Hayward using his feet to control a phalanx of machines, layering ambient soundscapes and shards of noise under the rhythms. And there are songs, too – awkward and unlovely at times, but

Not Dälek, though. The New Jersey duo may look like a couple of meatheads when they take the stage – DJ Oktopus’s wifebeater, MC Dälek’s enormously oversized clothes on his already enormously oversized frame, topped off with a pair of sunglasses in a room that’s just a shade above pitch black – but there’s no idiotic bluster here, just an hour of surging noise, beats and rhymes. If you imagine Kevin Shields adding his guitar onslaught to Public Enemy, you’re halfway there. Despite the underlying sonics, though, the rhythms and words make Dälek no more or less than a hip-hop act, and they are keen to prove their credentials.

Towards the end of the show, MC Dälek addresses the crowd for only the second time, giving heartfelt shout-outs to the late Jam Master Jay and J Dilla, amongst others. “This is my culture,” he exclaims, “these are my words, this is my motherfuckin’ life!” It’s almost as if he feels the need to publicly connect to these figures, since his band is signed to a predominantly (though nowhere near exclusively) rock label in Mike Patton’s Ipecac Recordings, and the vast majority of the crowd tonight is, to go on appearances alone, from the rock and metal fraternity. And sure enough, you can – and do – get lost in the blizzard of noise coming from DJ Oktopus’s laptops. But this isn’t shoegaze with a bit of rapping over the top – it’s hip-hop that’s adventurous and broad-minded enough to use a totally different sound palette to any other comparable act. And its sheer power leaves you breathless. Chris Jones

Josh Ritter The Empire, Belfast A handful of scenes from The Wire are set in a rowdy Baltimore bar, where worn out policemen go to drink themselves blind and pick up women too inebriated to realise how mutt ugly these cops are. It’s the kind of place you go in through the front door and out through the window, but the sense of bonhomie is palpable, and the jukebox is deafening. Irish drinking songs are reverberating whilst the flatfoots raise their glasses in the air, spilling suds over their suits. Tonight, The Empire becomes that rowdy Baltimore bar. Josh Ritter hops about the stage like a sprite, grinning joyfully throughout, generating enough energy to light up a small town. He is accompanied by the Love Cannon String Band, a group of old friends who reinvent Ritter’s folk rock gems like ‘Kathleen’, ‘Right Moves’, ‘Snow Is Gone’ and ‘Lillian, Egypt’ by fusing them with bluegrass and the kind of Irish verve which makes you want to sell up, buy a farm and dig fresh peat for the rest of your life. Three box fresh new songs reveal just how poetic a lyricist Ritter has become – the comparisons with the trinity of Dylan, Cohen and Springsteen are wholly accurate. To close the set, Josh perches on the front of the stage, and sings the traditional song ‘The Parting Glass’. Every bottle and tumbler in the room is held aloft. It’s a beautiful sight. Ross Thompson

No Age The Exchange, Dublin No Age’s Saturday night gig at Crawdaddy was postponed due to Ryanair being their usual belligerent selves (or Dean Spunt not knowing the rules on hand luggage; you choose) so here we are at an all-ages venue on Sunday afternoon instead, primed for some daylight scuzz. It’s a weird atmosphere all round – everyone is sober, the venue is bright and clean and you get the sense some people have fit the gig in around their Sunday shopping. But though a band as raw as No Age would doubtless benefit from grimier surroundings, they do their best to engage the fans, Spunt riffing on Ryanair’s inadequacies (always a popular theme) and beckoning the reticent crowd towards the stage. And they play fucking loud, so loud in fact that at one point the Gardai show up, before being reassured that everything is above board.

Opening with Nouns (and career) highlight ‘Teen Creeps’, drummer/vocalist Spunt and guitarist Randy Randall rip through tracks from both albums and the new EP Losing Feeling, with ‘You’re A Target’’s soaring fuzz-punk an early winner. No doubt relieved to be playing in Dublin at all, the pair extol the virtues of The Exchange, surely drawing parallels with their beloved The Smell back home in LA. Spunt isn’t the greatest drummer in the world (nor the greatest singer, for that matter), but his enthusiasm is infectious, and you find yourself amusedly watching his facial expressions as he attacks his ride cymbal with barely disguised glee, particularly during the scorching ‘Sleeper Hold’. This won’t have been the best show of No Age’s European tour (nor the best of the day – they will play a hastily arranged show at the Academy 2 later in the evening), but it sure beats traipsing around H&M on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Chris Jones

The Bad Plus Spiegeltent, Belfast From the very first bars of their very first song, Minnesotan jazztronauts The Bad Plus defy the audience not to plug their ears with beermats and shake their heads at the racket klunking from the speakers. It’s as if the handsome three-piece are averse to letting melody rear its ugly head, for they keep beating it back down into its hole with wrong notes and unwarranted tempo changes. It’s a sound that is at once beautiful and odd, as if somebody has allowed you to touch the moon only to find its surface is pasted with cold glue. Contrary beggars by nature, The Bad Plus might be offering a stick without a carrot on the end, but if you listen closely, and allow the logical parts of your brain to power down, the effect is mesmerising. Sometimes their unique brand of post-jazz sounds like stars slowly colliding, sometimes it’s a window reverse breaking back into its frame, others it’s a tin of lit fireworks toppling down a stairwell. Either way, it jolts the brain and taps the foot quite unlike anything else. The Bad Plus may not be everybody’s cup of mango juice, but those who get their wry sense of mischief leave the venue walking to a different rhythm. Challenging does not always have to mean difficult. Ross Thompson

Arctic Monkeys Electric Factory, Philadelphia It’s not often that one of the UK’s biggest bands plays in intimate surrounds. But at Philly’s smallish, 1500capacity Electric Factory there is a chance to see the new, grown-up Arctic Monkeys up close and personal.

Ably supported by perky Californian pop tarts The Like, tonight feels like a deliberate statement of intent: the past has been all but banished. During a 90-minute set we only get two songs from their debut album, while Humbug is aired in almost its entirety. And it sounds great.

‘Crying Lightning’ is received by the boisterous all-age crowd like an old favourite, while a muscular ‘The Fire And The Thud’ demonstrates the strength of the Monkeys new sonic direction. The tracks ebb and flow, their complex structure allowing the space for embellishment and enhancement. The band are tight and focused – Alex Turner now almost smoulders (although he looks a little lost sans guitar on ‘Potion Approaching’) and Matt Helders’ drumming is typically aggressive. We get a screaming version of Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’ and a spanking ‘Sketchead’, the extra download track from Humbug, for which Turner advises to “spell it right” to find it on iTunes. They end the main set with a sumptuously stretched-out ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ before returning for ‘Pretty Visitors’, which snakes past the crowd-surfers.

All bodes well for their forthcoming Belfast and Dublin shows. However, if the potential omission of ‘Mardy Bum’ will give you a face on, get over it – Arctic Monkeys have moved on. John Freeman

—67 AU Magazine—

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MODERN WARFARE 2

To Infinity Ward And Beyond: The Return Of Modern Warfare

This is it. The big one. Sorry, make that the BIG ONE. If Internet rumours are to be believed, videogame companies have hoisted the white flag and delayed their new titles to make way for the release of the mighty, all-conquering Modern Warfare 2. To say that this bad boy will sell a few copies when it hits shelves is akin to saying that some people quite like biscuits, or that the Daily Mail occasionally prints unpleasant articles about homosexuals. It would be a safe bet to wager that it will be the biggest selling game of the year, if not the decade, and could even rival Tetris and Super Mario Bros. as one of the highest grossing releases in gaming history. Seriously, a cert has never been more dead.

To put all of this grovelly eulogising into context, one needs to comprehend just how feverishly anticipated the release date for Modern Warfare 2 has become.

The word ‘phenomenon’ is frequently busted out by overenthusiastic journos, but rarely justifiably. In this instance, however, the product has more than earned its stripes. Since first storming the fronts in 2003, the Call Of Duty series has grown from just another join-thedots World War shooter into one of the most lucrative franchises in the industry. With levels loosely based on actual battles and skirmishes, the first three games were enjoyable if workmanlike affairs. There is no doubt that the settings of trenches, airfields and bomb ravaged cities lent proceedings an air of credulity – it really did feel as if you were fighting in a tightly knit platoon – but there was nothing truly special to mark them out from other games cut from the same khaki cloth.

However, the fourth tour of duty, subtitled Modern Warfare, would change all that. By shunting the

timeframe to the near future, and transplanting the battlefield to the Middle East, Russia and Ukraine, developers Infinity Ward injected the game with a shot of blitzkrieg adrenaline. The campaign, split into several tangential storylines and fought in scenes recognisable to anyone following the real life conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, was unabashedly loud and violent. There was the nagging argument that the writers played a little too fast and loose with current events, that they were effectively making a mockery of those giving their lives for their country, but this didn’t faze the legions of gamers signing up for the multiplayer. Modern Warfare remains one of the most popular titles in the online world, with constant battles between virtual soldiers aiming for that illustrious prestige rank.

So popular in fact, that the only thing that will stop them playing Modern Warfare will be the arrival of Modern Warfare 2. By the time you read this blurb, thousands upon thousands of gamers the world over will already have wasted days working on their ‘death to kill’ count.

With a brand new single campaign and a multiplayer mode which has been tweaked more dramatically than Dannii Minogue’s face, this release is sure to clean up like an Octopus street sweeper this Christmas. If you’re still looking for a present for the man who has everything, the ‘Prestige Edition’ comes in a box big enough to choke a baby elephant, containing a set of working night vision goggles and a plastic moulded head for those times when you’re not peeping in people’s windows. Practical? No. Cool? Definitely. Ross Thompson Modern Warfare 2 is released on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on November 10.

—69 AU Magazine—

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Most Wanted All That Glitters Is Gold

A Tom Waits concert comes along less frequently than Halley’s Comet, so when it appears you could do far worse than to reach up into the sky and catch it by its burning tail. Pitched halfway between a deranged jive-bomb cabaret and a religious revival, the troubadour’s shows are legendary affairs, alternating routinely between graveyard polkas and whiskey-eyed ballads. Waits can work a crowd like no other performer, breaking up songs with rambling anecdotes which recall stand-up and beat poetry. A consummate entertainer, he rarely plays the same show twice, meaning that each gig is special and uniquely crafted. Fans might be waiting with bated breath for a new album proper, but this live effort, recorded in various world cities, including Dublin, will plug the hole until the other comet passes by again. RT Tom Waits: Glitter And Doom Live is released on November 23.

TOM WAITS

IN JIM WE TRUST Jim Marshall has long been recognised as one of the foremost names in rock photography. The legendary lensman opens the doors to his unpublished archives for Trust, an extraordinary collection that features images of some of the most iconic artists of the past 50 years.

Granted the sort of access that today’s photographers could only dream of, Marshall captures his subjects at both their most glamorous and unguarded moments.

Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Dylan, and many more feature. FJ Trust: Photographs of Jim Marshall is available now from Omnibus Press.

LETS-A GO AGAIN Though he seems to do precious little in the way of plumbing, Super Mario always has a hectic schedule.

There are turtle shells to jump upon, pipes to navigate, and a bothersome girlfriend to rescue from a faraway castle.

It’s amazing that he does all of this just by subsisting on a diet of magic mushrooms. No, not that kind of magic mushrooms. Mario has been jumping about hyperactively and muttering to himself in ersatz Italian for nearly 30 years, but those famous blue dungarees show no sign of wear or tear. His latest outing, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, is set to be a classic in the side-scrolling, platform-jumping mould. Featuring simultaneous four-player gaming, it looks like old school Nintendo, which means that it will be fizzwhizz addictive and almost infinitely replayable. RT

Atlantic, Save Your Breath and, Bangor’s own Two Door Cinema Club. Meanwhile, December sees the beginning of a series of shows taking place alternately in Sandino’s, Derry, and the Speakeasy, Belfast. Acts confirmed include Clown Parlour, Axis Of, A Plastic Rose and Dutch Schultz. RT The BBC ‘United Nations’ takes place in the Mandela Hall on November 17.

A New Night For The North kicks off in Sandinos on December 6.

BACK TO THE FUTURE Ironically, given the incessant downpour of freezing rain this past summer, there were few cinema releases worth watching. Trudging about in damp clothes was infinitely preferable to sitting through a lot of the dreck on offer.

Surprisingly, one of the tent-pole movies worth sitting through was Terminator: Salvation, which rewired the series’ circuitry after things went a bit haywire with outing number three. Christian Bale, renowned for his sailormouthed meltdown on set, reprises his growly-voiced, furrow-browed schtick, but he is convincing as a solid but surly action hero. Sam Worthington, however, soon to be blue in the face in the none-more-hyped Avatar, manfully walks away with the picture. His understated, gently tragic performance as the mysterious Max provides the film’s beating heart – even if it is cybernetic. The film isn’t perfect by any means, but as far as high octane romps in a post-apocalyptic world go, it’s right up there. RT Terminator: Salvation is released on DVD on November 23.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is released on Wii on November 20.

GIG, GIG LOVE

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—70 issue 61—

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We’ve said it before, but Northern Ireland’s live music scene is thriving. In one week, if you so desired, you could head out every night and catch solo artists, bands and DJs playing every genre under the sun – and some above it. Here are two events worth marking in blood-red pen in your diary.

First up there’s the ‘United Nations’ gig in the Mandela Hall. The BBC proudly present a quartet of bands currently earmarked for great things: Pulled Apart By Horses, Twin

TERMINATOR: SALVATION

Most Wanted

LEFT 4 DEAD 2

Dot Dot Dot...

The Best Of The Rest In Live Music Monday, November 9 Motörhead Ulster Hall, Belfast A Place To Bury Strangers, Japandroids Whelan’s, Dublin (November 11, Auntie Annie’s, Belfast) Tuesday, November 10 Damien Jurado Whelan’s, Dublin

DEAD GOOD Last autumn’s zombie videogame Left 4 Dead was a gaming highlight of the year. On one infected, mangled hand, it was a frenzied first person shooter where the undead truly came alive through online cooperative play.

On the other, it effectively conjured up an unsettling vision of a world ruined by a pandemic and subsequent societal breakdown. It managed to be at once scary and enjoyably camp. When industry leader Valve announced that they were to drop a sequel, the predictably titled Left 4 Dead 2, enraged fanboys started an online boycott, mewling that they were effectively being ripped off for content that should have been downloadable. They have since done an about-turn when faced with the list of goodies on offer: an improved AI director, new campaigns, several new modes and melee weapons – face-planting a Deadite with a frying pan should never lose its appeal. L4D2 also features something scarier than vampire ducks: zombie clowns. Shudder. RT Left 4 Dead 2 is released on PC and Xbox 360 on November 17.

JAZZ-MA-TAZZ Free jazz connoisseurs should lap up a pair of cutting edge performances at the Sonic Arts Research Centre.

Drummer Chris Corsano, an alumnus of Björk, Sonic Youth and Jim O’Rourke, brings his challenging, improvisational style to the venue. He is followed by the seasoned avant-garde outfit Profound Sound Trio, who have been garnering much acclaim since their formation last year. Neither act is what you would call easy listening, but they bring an experience and musical know-how not often seen at close quarters. RT

bungled record deals and broken hearts – is charted in The South Bank Show later this month, and is well worth a Sunday evening watch. RT Elbow appear on The South Bank Show on ITV on November 15.

GLORIOUS INGLOURIOUS Quentin Tarantino’s latest film may lack the visual oneinch punch of the Kill Bill duo, and may be choppier than a Galilee storm, but it remains his wildest, most enjoyable film to date. Disregard the bleating of sniffy critics, who will prattle on guffingly about the hyper-violence, the clever dick use of metafilm, the cameos and the anachronistic soundtrack. None of that really matters, because this is a director working at the top of his game.

Tarantino displays admirable restraint, particularly in two long, talky sequences, each of which is deftly measured with a building sense of dread. Yes, Brad Pitt is creepy funny as Nazi-hating Tennessee redneck Aldo Raine, and yes, Christoph Waltz is a knockout as Colonel Landa, but it is the two dialogue-heavy scenes – one in a farmhouse and one in an underground bar – which resonate. Absolutely wonderful. RT Inglourious Basterds is released on DVD on December 7.

Wednesday, November 11 Shred Yr Face 3: Espers, The Cave Singers, Woods Crawdaddy, Dublin (November 12, Speakeasy, Belfast) Brightblack Morning Light Whelan’s (Upstairs), Dublin Thursday, November 12 La Roux Academy, Dublin Friday, November 13 Orbital Tripod, Dublin (also November 14) Great Lake Swimmers Crawdaddy, Dublin (November 14, Speakeasy, Belfast) Saturday, November 14 Cymbals Eat Guitars Crawdaddy, Dublin (November 15, Auntie Annie’s, Belfast) Giveamanakick Cyprus Avenue, Cork Monday, November 16 The Specials St. George’s Market, Belfast

Chris Corsano plays the Sonic Arts Research Centre on November 14.

Profound Sound Trio play the same venue on November 20.

Jay Reatard Whelan’s, Dublin Wednesday, November 18 Dangerfields, The Demise, Circadian, Drained White Auntie Annie’s, Belfast

A JOINT AWARD Overcoming commercial disaster and personal tragedy seems to be all in a day’s work for Elbow.

The ever-cheerful Mancunians have faced more woe and strife in an average lunch break than most bands experience in their entire career, yet they have faced each hardship with good cheer and a very British tenacity. In doing so, they have graduated into one of the most popular groups in the UK. Their most recent album, The Seldom Seen Kid, is a fantastic work of songcraft and lyricism that has rightfully earned them more plaudits – including the Mercury Prize – and various festival headline slots. The road to a sad kind of success – paved with

Mark Eitzel Cyprus Avenue, Cork (November 11, The Village, Dublin, November 13, Tobergal Lane Cafe, Sligo)

IN G

Thursday, November 19 Radar/BBC Introducing: John Shelly & The Creatures, Heritage Centre, Jumping Orbit Speakeasy, Belfast LO R

IO U S

BA ST ER DS

Hauschka The Sugar Club, Dublin

Two Step: Panda Kopanda, teenagersintokyo, Nakatomi Towers, AU DJs Limelight, Belfast Friday, November 20 Joe Lally (Fugazi), Adebisi Shank Crawdaddy, Dublin Mala & Sgt. Pokes (Digital Mystikz), Safetyboy Crawdaddy, Dublin Saturday, November 21 Atlas Sound Whelan’s, Dublin Sunday, November 22 Ian Brown St. George’s Market Monday, November 23 Gary Numan The Pavilion, Cork (November 24, Tripod, Dublin) Tuesday, November 24 Yes Cadets Auntie Annie’s, Belfast Thursday, November 26 Ash, Panama Kings Spring & Airbrake, Belfast Radar/BBC Introducing: This Is Our Monument, Kasper Rosa, Burn The Canvas Speakeasy, Belfast Friday, November 27 Monotonix Crawdaddy, Dublin Bell X1 Olympia, Dublin (also November 28) James Blackshaw, Owensie The Joinery, Dublin Saturday, November 28 Little Boots Mandela Hall, Belfast Carl Craig Twisted Pepper, Dublin Laura Izibor Tripod, Dublin (November 29, Spring & Airbrake, Belfast) Wednesday, December 2 Richard Hawley Ulster Hall, Belfast The Pogues, William Elliot Whitmore St. George’s Market, Belfast

—71 AU Magazine—

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Murder Most Florid:

10 Years Of Crime Scene Investigation

Words by Ross Thompson

CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION

Since it first launched in 2000, the Crime Scene Investigation behemoth has given birth to three separate series, been broadcast to nearly a third of the planet, and been translated into most known languages. If internet speculation is to be trusted, then the show’s popularity has exponentially multiplied the applications for university courses on forensic science.

“It’s mental chewing gum, but that does not mean that you can’t learn stuff at the same time” —72 issue 61—

The greatest trick CSI ever pulled was convincing viewers to care less about the cool cops and manly firemen working the scene, and more about the smart but socially backwards eggheads spraying luminol to determine blood spatter and poking a thermometer in a body’s liver. To be fair, this makes it seem that working with corpses is, well, dead boring, but every episode of CSI is rendered with the kind of crash bang wallop you would expect from loud and proud Hollywood movies about hijacked submarines and giant komodo dragons terrorising Los Angeles. You wouldn’t get the same results with refrigerator salesmen or zoologists.

The catalyst for the amped-up dynamism of CSI is Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer mogul behind dumb-as-a-boxof-hair films like The Rock, Con Air, Pearl Harbor and, of course, that paean to male bonding, Top Gun. Each of these money-guzzling releases was based upon a basic equation: knowingly ludicrous plot + one-dimensional characters x big explosions = happy audience. It was only a matter of time before Bruckheimer turned his Rolex hand to television. The original incarnation of CSI was set in Las Vegas, a place as famous for its glitz, glamour and unending Barry Manilow residencies as it is for the desert which surrounds it: a vast, desolate landscape which is said to be filled with scores of victims, unseen reminders of an era when the city was run by the mob. The show immediately took advantage of Las Vegas’s dual nature – the self-billed ‘Entertainment Capital of the World’ could equally be called ‘Murder Central’. The back alleys, parking lots, hotel suites and dressing rooms of this superficial fantasy world are rarely dry of blood and chalk outlines. The city never runs out of questionable characters soon to meet a sticky end: showgirls with skirts cut down to there and shady businessmen with bankrolls to stick into elasticated garters.

For a fledgling television programme, CSI leaped straight out of the traps snarling and baring its teeth. Adhering to Bruckheimer’s usual ramstam approach, the rollicking theme tune (‘Who Are You?’ by The Who) and glossy

production values made this a scalpel cut above the rest of wordy but dull police procedural dramas. Three things made CSI a must watch. Firstly, it had a varied and likeable array of main and supporting characters working in the crime lab: stripper turned scientist Catherine Willows; gambling addict Warrick Brown; square-jawed Nick Stokes; damaged but tough Sara Sidle; and supervisor Gil Grissom, named for the astronaut Gus Grissom and described by actor William Petersen as “a guy who finds the world in little things”. ‘Gruesome’ Grissom, an entomology nut for whom no situation is unworthy of a quizzical squint, is an odd kind of hero – reserved, saturnine, inclined to speak in literary quotations – but he is a hero nonetheless. The more CSI progressed, the more of Grissom’s back story was revealed, and the more likeable he became. The fact that he lacked the brawn and cocksure swagger of your average leading man made him all the more appealing.

Secondly, CSI was, believe it or not, educational. Yes, it’s mental chewing gum, but that does not mean that you can’t learn stuff at the same time. Every episode of CSI is like a barmy, hi-tech version of Cluedo – there’s a corpse or two, but the victims haven’t fallen off ladders or been beaned with a candlestick. No, nothing is ever that straightforward in Las Vegas. These poor souls have been mummified in an oil drum, turned to soup in a scalding hot shower, impaled on a hunting implement or torn apart by wolves. When the intrepid team stumble upon a body, or poke its guts about in the autopsy room, the viewer is treated to some Basil Exposition dialogue of exactly how it ended up in its current state: what exactly happens when a pea hammer impacts a cranium, or a dog’s teeth bite a shinbone, how a bullet’s path is affected by wind direction etc. This semi-scientific verbiage is complemented by fancy graphics illustrating Grissom’s explanation. It’s an arresting and economic way of explaining a lot of cumbersome detail without descending into blurbling techie jargon – and it gives you amazing facts to casually drop into conversation at parties.

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Thirdly, CSI, while hokey and contrived, is fabulously gripping. Each episode crams a lot of plot into 45 minutes – with two or three murders, you can play at guessing the killer’s identity, but most solutions are so wacky that you have more chance of netting the moon’s reflection in a puddle. As the show has accumulated higher ratings with each season, the writers have grown more daring. For evidence, check out the episode ‘Fur And Loathing’, in which a ‘Furries’ convention is curtailed by the death of a man in a racoon suit; or ‘Who Shot Sherlock?’, structured like a classic Conan Doyle mystery; or ‘Toe Tags’, in which dead bodies try to figure out the circumstances of their own deaths.

With multiple in-jokes and references to Kurosawa, Lumet, Bowie and Hitchcock, it’s witty, self-effacing and smarter than the winner at a Mensa spelling bee.

The highpoint of the ambitious ‘Miniature Killer’ story arc from Season Seven remains a masterpiece in sustained plotting.

That said, CSI is not without its detractors. It may have come under attack for not providing a wholly accurate representation of actual forensic science work, but this is the same as complaining that Dan Brown is a fairly unreliable historian, or that Heroes gives the impression that people start spontaneous fires by frowning and wriggling their fingers mysteriously. Of greater concern for many is the show’s dependence on violent themes, which are blacker than an asphalt freeway and touch upon issues rarely mentioned in the polite company of mainstream television. There are cases involving child abuse, date rape, cannibalism, Grissom’s fascination with sadomasochism (hello, Lady Heather), snuff films, vampirism, mental disability… more hot potatoes than a high street chip shop. But this accusation, when you think about it, is pretty silly. Murder is a horrible and messy business, and CSI never allows the viewer to forget that. Every victim, no matter how fanciful their death, is treated with the reverence and diligent fieldwork he, or she, deserves. And when the crime is solved and the body is tagged and bagged, it leaves you feeling equal amounts satisfaction and sadness for the lonely cadaver sliding into the morgue.

CSI: Las Vegas was so successful that a spin-off was

inevitable – and, for once, welcome. It’s sibling, CSI: Miami, introduced in a crossover episode with Team Grissom at the end of Season Two, initially appeared to be a lighter affair. Taking full advantage of the sky-burnt sunshine of south Florida and Bruckheimer’s trademark screen filters, the new show had a visual style which was as bright and artificial as candyfloss. If Las Vegas was whiskey and downers, Miami was amphetamines and rum. There could well be hyperbolic stories about snipers, lynching, tidal waves and shark attacks, but there could equally be sombre affairs about illegal immigration and paedophilia. Miami was daft and it knew it. Horatio Caine (David Caruso, returning to television with his tail between his legs), a forensics expert and former bomb squad officer didn’t do Grissom’s squint – he had a tic all of his own: remove sunglasses, say the feed line, put on sunglasses, say the punchline. This normally happens pre-credits, followed by another song by The Who, the yowling ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.

“It’s witty, selfeffacing and smarter than the winner at a Mensa spelling bee”

However, Miami soon settled down and stopped jumping about like a child after a birthday party buffet.

Horatio, at first portrayed as part saint-like White Knight in an Armani suit, part Doctor Barnardo to traumatised children, was given meatier storylines which required him to do more than intoning wisdom in a hushed voice. Hispanic gangsters, drug runners and the Russian mob figure heavily, and more is disclosed about Horatio’s own chequered past – thankfully, he may not be the goody-Gucci-shoes he appears.

The torch – standard issue for all forensic scientists – was handed on to CSI: New York in another crossover episode, this time at the end of Season Two of Miami.

Bleaker and more serious than its predecessor, the first instalment of New York addressed the looming issue of the Twin Tower attacks, and then grew progressively darker. The Big Apple is rotten to the core with bent cops, serial killers, suicide jumpers, sex offenders… It’s not a glowing endorsement for the city, and the good guys don’t always win, but it is entertaining.

The CSI franchise has now been running for a whisker short of a decade. In that time it has arguably become the most lucrative programme on television, though I wouldn’t like to see its budget for prosthetic corpses

and syrup blood. Its reputation is such that it is able to draw renowned actors like Gary Sinise, who plays lead character Detective Mac Taylor in New York, and Laurence Fishburne, who has recently joined the cast of Las Vegas. Unusually for a business where scriptwriters desperately shoehorn in ridiculous concepts about time travel, collective amnesia and the end of the world, the thinking behind CSI remains refreshingly simple: find the evidence, convict the killer, give the family – and the audience – closure. Job done. Until next week.

Every season of CSI: Las Vegas, Miami and New York is now available at the princely sum of £10.

Competition: Win A Copy Of Transformers 2

CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures, we have two DVD copies of the trash-talkin’, pyramid-smashin’, city-wreckin’, hotpants-wearin’, hash-brownie-eatin’ Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen to give away. To be in with a chance of winning one, send your name, details and the title of your favourite Transformer to ross@iheartau.com.

—73 AU Magazine—

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Console Yourself!

Our regular round-up of the new releases: how to know when it’s time to play Half-Life and when it’s time to get a life…

Words by Ross Thompson

DEAD SPACE: EXTRACTION

“Extraction contains its share of quiet, ropetaut moments, but most of the time it’s intent on pulverising the player into submission”

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—74 issue 61—

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DEAD SPACE: EXTRACTION (EA, Wii) The maim of the game…

Unleashed onto an unsuspecting public in the deep freeze of last winter, Dead Space went on to win the title of ‘game of the year’ by a few million parsecs. A stark contrast to the lacklustre shooters and car-jack-a-thons which preceded it, this thwomping adventure raised the bar – and then beaned you in the forehead with it. Nothing quickens the blood quite like charging across the roof of a spaceship whilst avoiding hurtling meteors and rabid, dog-shaped humanoids. Sure, there was nothing wholly original about the game’s survival horror mechanic and sci-fi trappings, but the energy and spirit with which it presented itself was second to none. As with its spiritual predecessor Bioshock, the plot in Dead Space was twistier than Shirley Temple’s ringlets, and as cleverly wrought as that of most tent pole movies. In the dim future, a routine mining operation goes horribly awry when workers unearth an ancient relic – a mammoth hulk of twisted sculpture which wouldn’t look out of place in the Tate Modern. Before anyone has time to change out of their overalls and have a freeze-dried Cup-aSoup, mass hysteria sets in and health and safety legislation goes out the window – along with the body parts. If that doesn’t constitute a bad day at the chalk-face, a vicious alien organism starts mutating the bodies into ‘Necromorphs’: human bodies turned inside out and reanimated, skin stretched like canvas, bones popped out of their sockets, faces twisted into pained gargoyle expressions. Alternating between panicky shootouts in fused light corridors and unbearably tense puzzle-solving sequences, Dead Space was exhilarating, deeply scary and had a belter of an ending.

And that ending encouraged a sequel rather than demanding one. Kudos then to Visceral Games for doing something fresh and exciting with the source material rather than tossing off a retread of the first game’s best bits. A prequel of sorts, the Wii exclusive Dead Space: Extraction builds on the franchise’s already rich mythology by focusing on events on the planet leading up to the moment when colonists went doodlygaga. Stylistically, it takes the ‘shooter on rails’ template laid down by Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles and expands upon it. The player may be required to do little more than move the reticule and shoot, but that is not to say that the gameplay is restrictive. Best described as a ‘guided first person experience’, Extraction drags you by the guts

through 10 levels of increasingly intense action. The first person perspective adds real oomph – the Necromorphs are just as gloopily fearsome as before, but it’s more unnerving when they are charging towards the camera at full pelt.

These grotesque gargoyles want to induct new recruits to their slavering, spiky club, but membership requires having your head removed from your shoulders. Extraction contains its share of quiet, rope taut moments, but most of the time it’s intent on pulverising the player into submission.

Working with a console with such limited circuitry, the producers have made a brave fist of cramming in an awful lot of goodies. It would be tempting to be churlish about the game’s running time, but each of the levels is replayable, and there is a smattering of challenges with high score bonuses to hunt down. Top marks for including the Dead Space animated comics, originally up for grabs on Xbox Live, and making a welcome reappearance here.

Most impressive is the soundtrack, which lurches from eerie silence punctured only by the distant screams of the suffering crew, to an all-out, up-to-11 orchestra of chaos.

Extraction, by its own high standards, compares pretty well; by anyone else’s, it’s awesome.

THE BEATLES: ROCK BAND (EA, PS3 / Wii / Xbox 360) Rubber console…

The Beatles, as if you need reminded of the fact, were and are a pretty big deal. Catalogued in most quarters as the greatest group of all time, they influenced music nearly as much as the humble quaver and minim. When they weren’t racking up one number one single after another and sending thousands of fans into a quasispiritual epiphany, they were blithely inventing genres in the time most people take to make a toasted sandwich.

How then, you may ask, does the band’s rich and admittedly chequered history translate into a videogame?

Well, just think about. Seriously, it’s genius. The reason The Beatles deserve a standalone edition of Rock Band is because their career is the perfect story arc. You wouldn’t get the same effect with, for example, The Twang, and one for The Rolling Stones would go on forever.

Compact but not bijou, The Beatles’ lifespan starts in humble beginnings and ends in worldwide fame and sour milk acrimony, with all of the highs and lows in between.

It has drama, it has human interest, and it has really,

Games really great music. In fact, playing The Beatles: Rock Band, you are reminded afresh how clever these songsmiths truly were.

Tracks from each successive album are performed in a variety of recognisable locations such the Cavern Club and The Ed Sullivan Show. However, it is in the band’s mid-period that the game really comes alive. Famously, The Beatles shunned live performances in favour of recording in the studio, growing beards and bending their minds with Dr. Robert’s prescriptions. Here, the backgrounds melt into psychedelic dreamscapes, swirling gardens and plateaus populated by massive elephants, yellow submarines and Blue Meanies. They are a riot of colour and imagination, so much so that it’s easy to be distracted from playing the song at hand to gawp at the kaleidoscope swirling around the fretboard. The Beatles: Rock Band benefits enormously from input from Apple Corps, who by all accounts not only coached developers Harmonix on the finer details of the band’s chronicle, but also pushed them to be braver and wilder with the far-out moments. This is a real treasure trove for fans, as archive photos and trivia are unlocked as you progress, and achievements are atypically inventive: hitting all the drum fills on ‘Helter Skelter’, for example.

That said, Beatles greenhorns and Rock Band virgins alike will find much to enjoy here – it’s a brilliant package.

PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER 2010 (Konami, PC / PS2 / PS3 / PSP / Wii / Xbox 360) Football crazy…

Since the heady days of the lowly Spectrum 48k and Commodore 64, footie games have been an evergreen genre for the home computer and console market. It seems that players can’t get enough of pixelised pitches and digital mullets. Pro Evo, the Real to FIFA’s Barça is now in its ninth season, and shows no signs of hanging up its boots. This instalment is updated with rising stars and old grounds, and gameplay provides a fluid and intelligent experience for novices and hardcore football fans alike. Konami have pretty much tweaked all there is to tweak, so the AI is smarter, online is more reliable, and the animations are more authentic. The whole shebang is tighter than a WAG’s leather trousers. It’s not in the same league as Match Day II on the Speccy, but it comes a close second.

NBA LIVE 10 (EA, PS3 / PSP / Xbox 360) Hoops a daisy…

Over here, basketball may not be as popular a sport as rugby or joyriding, but in America it is followed with religious fanaticism. The excitement it generates stems largely from the fact that it appears to be played by

giants, but its location of almost claustrophobic indoor courts also serve to whip the audience into a whooping, hollering frenzy. This new NBA joint captures the atmosphere of a live match with aplomb, and is more intuitive and immediate than sports games can be.

Whether you love it or find it deathly dull will of course depend on how much you enjoy shooting hoops. For the converts amongst us, this fills the shorts and cut-off vest nicely.

THE KING OF FIGHTERS XII (SNK Playmore, PS3 / Xbox 360)

“Pro Evo, the Real to FIFA’s Barça is now in its ninth season, and shows no signs of hanging up its boots”

King of the whirl…

Plonked halfway between kooky beat-em-ups like Soul Calibur and serious classics like Street Fighter, this fighting title utilises a three on three tag team system where your gang of badasses duffs up an opposing gang of equally badass dudes. The character design, as with most games of this type, is a trifle odd. In few other places will you see a pneumatic woman dressed as an accountant trading blows with a barn-sized sumo wrestler or an old man who resembles a Japanese Stig of the Dump. This quirky sense of humour is also applied to the arenas, which are colourful, bright and animated in the style of Manga cartoons. In fact, everything about King Of Fighters is intended to be accessible and friendly. The learning curve is more of a gentle Munro rather than a sheer cliff face, and it doesn’t take the fingers of a pickpocket to pull off the trickier finishing moves. It may not be as deep and long-lasting as the sonic boom of the aforementioned Street Fighter, but it is fun.

MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE 2 (Activision, DS / PS2 / PS3 / PSP / Wii / Xbox 360) Caped scraper caper…

Vicarious Visions raid the abounding back catalogue of the comic book giant for this sock boom pow sequel.

You select a team of four from an extensive roster of Marvel superheroes, and then fight and power your way up through level after level of heinous dudes. With its partly top down perspective, endless waves of enemies and group play, it is reminiscent of the classic arcade puggie Gauntlet, and there are equal amounts of frantic, sugar rush enjoyment to be had here. Based loosely on a pre-existent storyline, MUA 2 throws most favourite characters into the fray: Iron Man, Captain America, Storm, Spider-Man, Nick Fury and Daredevil all get to strut their body-armoured stuff. If the relentless dungeon crawling and button mashing does wear thin after a while, there are still plenty of Easter eggs and hidden missions to unlock. As with this year’s Wolverine title, it’s not exactly excelsior, but it is surprisingly addictive.

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MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE 2

—75 AU Magazine—

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Revolution Rock The Story Of London Calling Words by Francis Jones

Books

As the author of Last Gang In Town, Marcus Gray has form when it comes to writing about The Clash. With Route 19 Revisited, however, he might just have outdone himself. The book affords the band’s seminal album, London Calling, the sort of scrutiny that is usually reserved for the work of cultural colossuses such as Bob Dylan. Here, Marcus tells AU about the creation of this impeccably researched and relayed tale.

You had documented The Clash before, and others had also written about the band, about punk and, indeed, about London Calling. Given that, what made you think that there was anything more worth saying?

Look at The Beatles industry - there are hundreds of books about them and people are always finding a new wrinkle.

Compared to them, I don’t think The Clash have been written to death, and nobody’s really gotten into London Calling in any great detail. There have been a couple of magazine features, but nothing really properly researched, or that gets into the meat of every song and the recording process. I wanted the central section of the book to really go into the background to each of the songs in fanatical, almost shaggy dog-like detail. I just thought, ‘Well, if I want to do it, why not do it?’. So I did.

In personal terms, why are The Clash significant?

“There is something on nearly every page that even the most ardent Clash fan wouldn’t be aware of” —76 issue 61—

I’m always wary when I’m asked about being a fan. I may have written two books about The Clash, but I write about other things too. Yes, they had a fairly big impact on my life in my mid-teens, but then so did the ‘Pistols, The Stranglers and The Jam. I was at the perfect age for that all to hit me straight between the eyes. I bought all The Clash albums when they came out, I got my copy of ‘(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais’ autographed by Joe Strummer when I was 17. I’ve done that side of it.

Having that background in Clash fandom, was it difficult to assume a sense of writerly objectivity about the subject?

Not really. In fact, I probably went the other way. In general, I am hypercritical of things. My brother, for example, wouldn’t hear a critical word against Neil Young, but if

people wanted to sit there and slag The Clash off for 24hours, well, I’d probably join in. I don’t have that protective urge.

Did you ever encounter The Clash in your capacity as a music writer?

No. I didn’t. And, after the first time I wrote about them, it was made clear to me that I would never interview them.

They weren’t happy with Last Gang. In a way, I’m hoping – with the new book – to lay to rest the idea that I’m some disappointed, bitter geezer, sitting there writing screeds of hate and invective about The Clash.

What was it about Last Gang that so annoyed the band?

I don’t think there was anything in particular, it was more that they thought that the overall tone was a bit harsh.

How much of an impediment was the lack of access to the band members?

Well, I knew beforehand that the band wouldn’t talk to me.

Not only because I’d fouled the nest with Last Gang, but also because they were working on their own, pink, coffee-table book [The Clash (2008)]. The general public can be quite naïve, they ask, ‘Oh, did you talk to them?’ Anybody who has any kind of status in the entertainment world is not going to give their information to somebody they don’t know. It’s an asset. Luckily, however, you do get access to people who were quite involved in the process. They have a different perspective on it as well. The band is in the eye of the storm, and if you try and pin them down to talk about a certain period you find they can’t quite remember.

Did any of the people you spoke to tell you anything that caused you to reassess your understanding of The Clash?

Muff Winwood, The Clash’s A&R guy at CBS, was interesting. I got a completely different perspective on the label/band relationship [from him]. It was always portrayed as a very adversarial relationship, but Winwood said that, in reality, they got on fine. It was a game and it suited the band to cast CBS in a certain light

Books

“It really captured the mood of the times. A lot of what it talks about is still very relevant.”

Review

Back On The Corner It’s astounding to think about how many words have been expended on The Wire. It’s safe to say that just as many words have been banged out about the greatest television show ever (copyright pending) as, say, the workings of the solar system or Robbie Williams’ romantic conquests. And what words they have been – the HBO crime series has been lauded with more slobbery rhapsodising than any other programme of its kind. Two things though: one, any praise festooned upon this superb drama is more than deserved, for it is written and acted with panache and insight largely missing from our screens. Two, we have no problem squeezing in a few more words if they have been penned by Rafael Alvarez.

The Wire scriptwriter has completed Truth Be Told, a comprehensive and lovingly assembled guide to all five of its seasons. It’s stuffed like Stringer Bell’s gangster roll with exclusive photographs, summaries for every episode, and illuminative essays from David Simon, Nick Hornby and George Pelecanos dropping the dime on what goes on behind the scenes. In comparison to the other tawdry tie-ins doing the rounds, this is a hugely intelligent tome which serves as both an introduction to The Wire for new kids on the block, and a re-up for old hands in need of a fresh fix. Ross Thompson THE WIRE: TRUTH BE TOLD IS OUT NOW. WE HAVE ONE COPY OF THE BOOK TO GIVE AWAY, COURTESY OF CANONGATE. TO BE IN WITH A CHANCE OF WINNING, SEND YOUR NAME AND DETAILS TO ROSS@IHEARTAU.COM.

and the label went along with that.

Some of the reviews of Last Gang seemed to resent you for kicking against the myth of The Clash.

There were some great reviews of that book. The publisher sends you all the clippings – sometimes you wish that they wouldn’t – and some of them heaped praise on the book, whilst others just went to town on it, all guns blazing. The amount of contradiction between the positive and the negative and, also, between what some people liked and other didn’t, was amazing. I realised that there is no such thing as the perfect book; it is entirely down to what the person reading it expects.

Was there anything you unearthed that will particularly surprise fans?

It was more of an accumulative thing. I’d think that there is something on nearly every page that even the most ardent Clash fan wouldn’t be aware of. The title track has a really interesting story. The Clash always liked to give the impression that they would sit down and knock a song out, eyeball-to-eyeball, in 20 minutes maximum. But, Strummer was still rewriting the ‘London Calling’ lyric three months after they started. It went through at least five drafts. The end song contains elements of all the versions that went before.

What, in particular, do you think was The Clash’s biggest failing?

If I was making a criticism of them, I’d say that there was an awful lot of revolutionary rhetoric and not an awful lot of revolution. There are a lot of bands who’ve come along since who think it’s alright to shout loudly and point and not get involved. It’s funny, the people who do get involved and do things behind the scenes, don’t do an awful lot of pointing and shouting.

Within the context of punk, what set The Clash apart from their contemporaries?

Firstly, they were the band that sold themselves as being socially conscious. A lot of other acts jumped on the

bandwagon – The Jam, Stiff Little Fingers, and so on. They also set the template for bringing in a reggae influence.

Later, The Ruts, The Police and The Specials would come in on that. So they created a few movements. However, in the end, what gives them their status is the fact that they lasted a decade, kept developing and kept changing. They went to America and were the only band from the punk background to make it there. The other thing of course was that – despite the fact that they were, in lots of respects, very hard line – they weren’t musically difficult and they changed from punk-rock to something that, say, people who were fans of The Rolling Stones could like, and which had mass appeal.

Surveyed from the perspective of 30 years on, what do you think is the lasting legacy of London Calling?

The record came out right after the Winter of Discontent, the low point of a decade’s worth of grumbling depressions, and just before the Thatcher era, which would be another stretch of misery. It really captured the mood of the times.

A lot of what it talks about is still very relevant – the worklife balance, terrorism, despotic leaders, police violence, climate change. It’s also a crossroads album geographically.

It’s all filtered through this Anglo-centric punk band, but brings in Sixties guitar music, R&B from America, reggae and so on. In that respect, it’s like a very primitive world album. They were also playing around with dance; there are touches of funk and disco. They explored that more on Sandinista!, but you had the beginnings of that on London Calling. It’s also a linking album between the great Sixties albums of The Who and The Stones and the Britpop albums of the Nineties by the likes of Blur, those great monolithic, London albums. Sadly, though, I suppose their greatest legacy is U2, or rather, putting the social consciousness back into music and making it obligatory to sing about saving the whales!

ROUTE 19 REVISITED: THE CLASH AND LONDON CALLING IS PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 5 BY JONATHAN CAPE WWW.MARCUSGRAY.CO.UK —77 AU Magazine—

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Comics

Heroes Reunited The Resurrection Of Captain America This Christmas, fanboys across the globe will be receiving an extra special present courtesy of Marvel Comics – the return of Steve Rogers as Captain America. While the details of Cap’s rebirth are yet to be revealed, what we do know is that once the Super Soldier comes back from the dead he’ll get down to business by taking on Norman (the Green chuffin’ Goblin) Osborn’s Dark Reign.

This month, we chat to Avengers architect Brian Michael Bendis to hear about 2010’s big event, the Siege, and we talk Dr Doom, Asgard and the reunion of Marvel’s holy trinity (that’s Iron Man, Thor and Captain America in case you didn’t know…).

Words by Edwin McFee

Ok, let’s get down to business. What can you tell us about the up-coming Siege event?

Brian Michael Bendis: “Well, it’s two things at once.

For one, it’s the shocking finale of the Dark Reign that poured all over the Marvel universe this year. At the same time, it’s the opening of a very, very large, brand new chapter, particularly for the Avengers franchise-but also for things going forward in the Marvel U next year. It’s a tight four-issue mini-series [not eight or 10] and they set up and deliver what I think will be a huge payoff for people picking it up. For folks waiting for an event to reunite the classic Avengers all on the same side, this is it. That hasn’t happened since I’ve been on the book and even further back, to a decade I think” Is Thor and Asgard a part of it?

“There’s a lot going on with these characters considering they’ve been beating the shit out of each other in recent years” —78 issue 61—

Bendis: “Asgard is part of it; Thor is a big part of it, and so is Iron Man, Captain America, the New Avengers, the Mighty Avengers, the Dark Avengers, the Secret Warriors and more. Maria Hill makes a giant comeback in this too.

Asgard is a foundation for what they’re all fighting over – the whys and whats happening to it are things that’ll be revealed in the mini-series.”

For a long time now, Thor and Asgard have been penned off from the larger Marvel U, but over the past year Loki’s turned up in the Cabal [a shadowy sect of super-villains]. Is this the start of something big happening for the Norse Gods?

Bendis: “Well, in the biggest sense Asgard has been a key part of Marvel, and the Avengers, for a long time. The threat of Loki is what brought the Avengers together in the first place (probably Loki’s biggest boner move on Midgard). Second, the idea that Asgard is now on Earth means something is wrong with the nine worlds.”

You’re talking about the Nine Worlds, the realm of which Asgard existed in up until Asgard’s move to Oklahoma in Thor issue one, right?

Bendis: “Right. Asgard shouldn’t be on Earth – or Midgard, as Asgardians call it. From Norman Osborn’s point of view now as head of H.A.M.M.E.R., it’s a massive threat. Consider the situation – all of a sudden another country is on top of the United States. That can’t be seen as a good thing by anybody on the outside.

Norman’s thoughts are that this is a legitimate threat and could easily be seen that way by others. Loki also agrees this is wrong, and not the way Asgard should be. But for the heroes, it is what it is. There isn’t a person in the Marvel U that Thor hasn’t chipped in to help out once, so they’re on his side.”

So let’s cut to the chase. Are we finally going to get a reunion of the Big Three in the Siege?

Bendis: “Well… all three are in the book. Will they get over themselves and their previous disagreements to get on the same page and reunite? The answer to that is the price of admission – the price of the comic. There’s a lot going on with these characters considering they’ve been beating the shit out of each other in recent years. Most of them have died and come back to life since their last team-up. Do they feel the same way they did two years ago? Wait and see.”

It’s been a while since the three have teamed up. How long has this been in the pipeline?

Bendis: “We’ve been aiming towards this for some time.

Siege is part of a larger arc that includes Secret Invasion and Secret War before that. Here’s what I’ll promise – coming out of Siege, there will be a big change to the Avengers books’ line-ups and rosters; as big as it was after Avengers:

Comics

Shorts First they did it with Spiderman, then they did it with the Incredible Hulk and now everyone’s favourite feral mutie Wolverine is to get the Hero’s Initiative 100 Covers treatment. The charity (which aids comic creators who have fallen on hard times) have enlisted 100 of the industry’s biggest superstars to draw Logan and you can

now buy the limited edition trade paperback collecting all of the artwork via www. heroesinitiative.org. They also have a link to where you can bid for the original art.

The Green Lantern film starring Ryan ‘Van Wilder’ Reynolds continues to gather steam with shooting for the film beginning in New

Orleans in March ’10. We bet Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory is having sleepless nights thinking about it already.

It’s with a heavy heart that we tell you that Robert ‘The Walking Dead/Battle Pope’ Kirkman is ending the Astounding Wolf Man with issue 25. The book (published

by Image) will wrap up in early 2010.

Finally, it looks like this year’s Dublin City Comic Con will be postponed until March 2010. At the time of going to press we were waiting on a statement from the organiser, but keep your eyes peeled on AU’s comic pages for future announcements.

My Favourite Comic Nick Harmer

“I had a very active imagination as a kid and comics was a place where anything could happen. I was drawn in by the art, the characters and their stories and growing up I was dead serious about the [X-Men] Fall of the Mutants storyline. Oh man, I would pull my hair out waiting for the next issues. I remember in a fit of needing more story I even bought that Power Pack tie-in issue. Chris Claremont was the man at that time. He came to my comic book store in Tacoma for a signing once and I waited in line forever just to get a chance to say hello to him.

“For folks waiting for an event to reunite the classic Avengers all on the same side, this is it” Disassembled. I promise at the end of this event, this miniseries will change the entire Avengers franchise. And it’s not something we have to do.

Which means…?

Bendis: “Usually, big shifts like this are precipitated by a change in creators, or lagging sales, or something, but not for this. This status quo change isn’t something we have to do, it’s something we want to do.”

When did the idea for the Siege start popping up?

Bendis: “Well, my initial pitch of Secret Invasion and its effects on the Marvel U was the idea that with Norman in charge, everyone gets to be Peter Parker. None of the other writers were forced to be a part of it, but people jumped onto it. Seeing that, I realised how potent the idea was. In the initial pitch for Secret Invasion when the Cabal assembled (then called the Illumi-naughty), everyone at the table puts forward one big thing they want out of this. In there you get Doom’s desire to control Latveria, the Hood wants his gang, and Loki

wants Asgard. Asgard’s the big get – the hardest on the wish list to acquire. How does a mortal like Norman Osborn wrap his head around getting a hold of the god realm of Asgard? That was the original finale of Secret Invasion, but we decided to hold back to make it mean more.”

You’ve got the mighty Olivier Coipel on pencils for the project (whom you also worked with on House of M).

After that event he became the artist who redefined Thor and Asgard in the pages of the newly-launched Thor series. What made you choose him for this project?

Bendis: “It was a no-brainer to me. I had a blast working with him on House of M. I think it was one of the greatest things we’ve ever accomplished. I don’t look back at my previous work too often, but when Olivier signed up for Siege I went back to look at House of M and it was so much better than I remembered. I remember being in love with Olivier’s pages as they came in, and I also remembered that we really got into the groove once House of M started rolling. We’ve worked on a few things since this, like an issue of New Avengers, and we’ve been talking about doing something major again and this is it. For a while, Thor was taking up all of his time but when Siege came up, he was on top of my list. It came to me when I was thinking which artist had influence on both Thor and the Avengers together, and it’s him. He’s perfect, so we hit the ground running. And he’s not coming in alone either. Long-time inker Mark Morales is onboard, as well as newly exclusive Marvel colourist Laura Martin who’s been colouring Secret Invasion and Thor. It’s a real A-List super team.”

“These days I haven’t been able to religiously follow a storyline, but I try and keep up with the X-Men universe. I loved Civil War too and Marvel Zombies never fails to make me smile. My all-time favorite is Wolverine though. I will follow Wolverine anywhere, though I have to admit, I’m still a little upset about the whole ‘bone claws’ addition to his story. When I discovered Wolverine and the X-Men he was just a mutant who could heal fast and that’s how he was able to survive having his skeleton coated with adamantium and claws put IN. He wasn’t born with bone claws. That’s ridiculous. I know I should just accept this as part of his story now, but I was just such an expert on him when I was a kid it’s hard to give that up.”

NICK HARMER PLAYS BASS FOR DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE. WWW.DEATHCABFOR CUTIE.COM.

SIEGE: THE CABAL ISSUE ONE SHIPS ON DECEMBER 3 WWW.MARVEL.COM —79 AU Magazine—

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Here's Looking At You(Tube) / Weird Wide Web

Here's Looking At You(Tube) Warp Records Special As you should know by now, having read our album review elsewhere in this issue, groundbreaking electronica label Warp Records is celebrating its 20-year anniversary with a spiffing boxset. But the good folk at Warp are not only renowned for churning out large volumes of head-melting dance music. They also do a nice line in uncompromising – and often controversial – visual content, especially when director (and frequent Aphex Twin collaborator) Chris Cunningham is involved. Here’s a little taster of the slightly, er, warped worldview of Warp.

Little hint – those AU readers of an easily-offended or sensitive disposition might be advised to avoid watching these while eating your din-dins.

DADDY CRUEL As anyone who’s seen his frankly upsetting promo clip for ‘Windowlicker’ knows, Aphex Twin’s Cunningham-directed music videos are occasionally very, very weird indeed. For proof, look no further than ‘Come To Daddy’, which makes ‘Windowlicker’ look tame. It features a load of kids running around a desolate urban wasteland, fighting and trashing the place and upsetting an elderly lady. Nothing particularly unusual about that, you might say. But then consider that the head of each and every child has been replaced by that of Aphex Twin himself, sporting a thoroughly disturbing rictus grin. And that’s not to mention the horrific distorted head that appears periodically on a TV screen, mouthing the lyrics to the song. Then, from the 3.50 point, something truly scary happens. We won’t spoil it for you, but suffice to say you wouldn’t want it to happen to your Granny.

WWW.TINYURL.COM/APHEXDADDY NOW THAT’S JUST WRONGS

Words by Neill Dougan

Weird WideWeb

Surf Far, So Good BE AGGRESSIVE Picture the scene. You’ve brought a packed lunch into work.

You’re pretty hungry after a morning of hard graft. You go to the canteen, open the refrigerator and… it’s gone. Your lovingly-created sandwich has vanished. Consumed by a thief; a low-life, greedy thief. What can you do about it?

Why, pen an angry note of course! And here’s a collection of many such angry notes, scribbled furiously by victims of similar instances of injustice. There are also many of the classic ‘note to the room-mate’-type missives from people who don’t fancy a face-to-face confrontation about whose turn it is to do the washing-up. People’s petty frustrations have rarely been so entertaining.

Warp Films – a sister company of Warp Records dedicated to the visual arts – has released a handful of feature films since its inception in 1999, including My Wrongs #8245–8249 & 117, the first film by anarchic comedy saboteur Chris Morris. The short has a somewhat, ahem, unusual plot: a

‘PUSH IT More Chris Cunningham-directed lunacy here, this time for Warp stalwart Squarepusher’s ‘Come On My Selector’. The clip follows a young girl and her dog as they try to escape from what appears to be an Asian psychiatric hospital, busting out a few handy kung-fu moves on the hapless orderlies along the way. Pretty fun stuff to begin with but – Cunningham being Cunningham – things quickly take a very unusual turn, as the girl rounds on her tormentors with vicious glee. There’s a straitjacket, a bit of prisoner mistreatment and, finally, a totally deranged human-canine ‘brainswap’. Completely off the wall.

WWW.TINYURL.COM/MYSELECTOR

WWW.ODDEE.COM/ITEM_96675.ASPX DUAL AS FUCK

PATENT NONSENSE Wouldn’t it be great to be an inventor? Rather than actually

WWW.DUALCOMIC.COM

—80 issue 61—

WWW.TINYURL.COM/MYWRONGS

having to go and sit in an office day-in, day-out in order to earn a crust, you would essentially be living on your wits, coming up with new and amazing consumer items that a grateful populace would love to own. Sadly, however, most people’s ideas are rubbish, which is why more of us don’t make our living this way. For every iPod there’s a ‘urinal headrest’ or a cheese-flavoured cigarette filter. Here’s a selection of the world’s most bizarre and, let’s face it, crap patent applications. Although frankly we fancy the Automatic Bed-Maker.

Web-comics. Ace! Just like real comics, except you don’t have to buy and subsequently find a place to store them.

Dual is a fine example of what we mean, a fairly out-there tale of a man, Bill, and his imaginary friend Yasu. When danger approaches, Bill eats Yasu (no, really) and transforms into a being of terrible destructive power. Unsure whether he is a hero or a villain, Bill’s voyage of discovery sees him take on various nefarious demons, devils and other nasty underworld types, all the while struggling with domestic issues like the unexpected pregnancy of his girlfriend Carina.

Who also happens to be a witch. Clearly a labour of love for creator Michael Walton, Dual is sharp, stylish and a little bit scary.

WWW.PASSIVEAGGRESSIVENOTES.COM

mentally disturbed man (played by Paddy Considine) is convinced by a talking Doberman pinscher named Rothko (voiced by Morris) that he is on trial for everything he has ever done in his life, and that the dog is his lawyer. It’s well worth checking out the whole thing, but here’s just one of many deranged scenes crammed into its 12 minutes, as Rothko kills a duck in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers, before giving Considine’s nameless protagonist a stern telling-off for protesting that, “It’s not my dog.”

Words by Neill Dougan

Story Of The Video / Get Your Clicks

Get Your Clicks Our Guide To The Best Online Places For The Things You Need Words by Neill Dougan THIS MONTH: WINTER STUFF SCARVES-BEANIES

Story Of The Video

Camera Obscura TITLE: ‘THE SWEETEST THING’ DIRECTOR: BLAIR YOUNG

Winsome Scots Camera Obscura have recently released the video for the latest single from fourth album My Maudlin Career, so what better time to pick bassist Gavin Dunbar’s brain for the musician’s take on the ins and outs of making videos?

Is making videos a fun thing to be involved in? Or is it as gruelling as some people would have us believe?

It is quite good fun, ‘cause it’s a bit different to what we’d normally be doing. It can be a long day right enough, but the results are usually worth all the hanging about. It’s a bit weird for us, ‘cause none of us exactly consider ourselves to be actors, and depending on what the video involves, we do sometimes have to do a bit of ‘acting’. It feels a bit odd, but we usually have a good laugh at it.

How much creative involvement does the band have with putting together the videos?

We usually have a good discussion with Blair Young, who makes pretty much all our videos, about what we’d like to do and how we’d like to do it. He’ll often have a good idea we’re happy to go along with and he has a really good idea of the band’s aesthetic, so we trust him to do something we’re all happy with.

When piecing together a song at the very beginning, do you ever envisage how a video for it might look? Would you pass on such suggestions, or is it something you’d leave up to the director?

The video ideas usually only come when we know which songs are going to be singles and need a video done for them – that’s when the thinking caps go on.

From storyboard to final output, is there ever much difference, or does it generally go to plan?

The storyboard ideas for the videos are usually fairly loose, so if any ideas crop up during the shoot things can get added at the last minute, but Blair usually has a fairly strong idea about what he wants to capture, so everything we need to do is usually set up in advance.

Brrr! Winter’s here, folks. And you know what that means. It’s going to be brass monkeys out there. And yet still we don’t, as a species, see the benefits of hibernation.

Shocking. So, if we’re going to have to continue going outside in the rain, wind, sleet and snow, we’re going to have to wrap up warm. Keep the biting cold at bay at scarves-beanies.com, where you’ll find a winning array of hats, gloves, shawls, scarves, and even a wondrous invention known as the indoor boot. That’s a warm, wooly slipper-type boot that you wear inside the house.

Mmmm, cosy.

WWW.SCARVES-BEANIES.COM WOOLY HATS They say that most of the body’s heat loss occurs through the head. Whether or not there is any truth in this statement is completely beyond us, but why take a chance? Insulate the old bonce with a nifty winter chapeau from woolyhats.com, which offers everything from yer standard pom-pom affair to the beanie, the snood and even – if you want to stay warm and simultaneously cause a security scare in any Northern Irish town or city – the much-maligned balaclava.

Combine it with a black bomber jacket for the full paramilitary effect to really put the wind up people. Or not.

WWW.WOOLYHATS.COM BRITISH THERMALS Of course, there’s little point in keeping your head warm if your nether regions are freezing. Solve this tricky problem by visiting British Thermals, where you can pick up an exhaustive array of super-warm smalls, from long johns and vests to T-shirts, trunks and camisoles. Of course you’ll look a right tit kitted out in this gear (just check out the fixed grins of the models on the page), but the beauty is that no-one need ever know. Unless of course, in your rush to get out there and road-test your super-warm undies, you somehow forget to add a second layer of normal clothing, in which case you’ve no-one to blame but yourself.

WWW.BRITISHTHERMALS.COM

Has anything gone dreadfully wrong on a video shoot? Any major injuries, or mishaps?

We’ve not had any major injuries. My trousers fell down during the filming of the ‘Teenager’ video. Blair thought it would be fun to make us do a scene of keep fit physical jerks in a field, and I’d forgotten my belt. It turned out afterwards that he never had any intention of using it in the video, he just wanted to film us jumping about for his own amusement.

WATCH THE VIDEO ONLINE AT WWW.TINYURL.COM/SWEETESTTHING Interview by Richard W Crothers

WWW.CAMERA-OBSCURA.NET

—81 AU Magazine—

Sc In Pictures

Funeral For A Friend @ The Nerve Centre, Derry

Jackie, Neil, Linda & Chris

Funeral For A Friend

Louise & Madlen

Alisha, Ruairi, Christy & David

Funeral For A Friend The Nerve Centre, Derry

Iani & John

Steven, Nayfen & Darrell

Tony & Anne

Comhghall, Darragh & Tracy

Steph, Erin, Jo Jo & Marie

Maria, Michael & Mitchell

There was an obvious buzz tonight in the Nerve Centre as the crowd eagerly awaited Funeral For A Friend’s return to Derry. It’s not a regular occurrence that said venue is packed out only half an hour after doors open, but this night was an exception. Support act Daveit Ferris – an acoustic solo artist hailing from Derry – enjoyed the audience’s attention, the crowd falling for each and every heartfelt lyric and gentle guitar murmur.

In a novel move, Funeral For A Friend allowed their fans to choose the set list for tonight’s show. Given this, it was no surprise to find them tearing through the likes of ‘Streetcar’ and ‘Roses For The Dead’, turning in a performance which gripped our attention for every sweat-saturated second.

Words and Photos by John Adams —82 issue 61—

Biffy Clyro @ St. Georges Market

Biffy Clyro St. Georges Market, Belfast Since 2007’s Puzzle, Biffy Clyro have stood poised on the precipice of stadium-sized superstardom. Tonight, in a rammed St. George’s Market, the Ayrshire trio show that they’ve got the mettle and the might required to take that step up. Taking the stage to a deafening cacophony of screams, the Biff deliver a lacerating set, frontman Simon Neil a wailing dervish, all flailing limbs and unfettered emotion. They proudly brandish tracks from new album Only Revolutions, a record which surely represents the last stepping stone in their journey from cherished cult to big-time contenders. For, on this showing, Biffy Clyro have well and truly arrived.

Photos by Richard W Crothers Words by Francis Jones

Conal

Lara & Vanessa

Emma, Chris & Kevin

Ashleigh, Joy & Nadia

Biffy Clyro

Marissa & James

Claire & Hayley

Rachel & Matthew

Siobhan, Cathal, Lauren & Gary

Peter & Owen

Ben, Connoll, Rory, Morgan & Zac —83 AU Magazine—

Sc Subbacultcha

The Last Word

The Last Word

With Kev Baird of:

Two Door Cinema Club "We don’t get much time for holidays but when you play in places like Latvia and Barcelona and you’ve time to hit the beach and play a show it basically is a holiday, right?"

When was the last time you were in hospital?

The last time was only like two months ago – I developed a very sore throat after Glastonbury. It wasn’t an STD, I may add.

What was the last thing you laughed out loud at?

Feeding Sam [Halliday, guitarist] pineapple on the Eurostar to Paris this morning.

Famous Last Words John F. Kennedy (29 May 1917 – 22 November 1963) “No, you certainly can’t.” (Replying to Nellie Connelly, wife of Governor John Connelly, who said: “You certainly can’t say that the people of Dallas haven’t given you a nice welcome, Mr. President.”)

Lester Burnham in American Beauty “Man, oh man, oh man.” (Murmured to himself.)

This Issue Was Powered By...

FIFA 10 tournaments, 15 goals in 55 minutes, home cooking, bastard application forms, The Damned United, Harvey Milk, getting behind the wheel, Jamie Oliver’s pasta sauces, sammywilsonmp twitter, new Peep Show, old IT Crowd.

—84 issue 61—

Who is the last person you would want to be stuck on a desert island with?

Everyone seems to be loving Cheryl Cole these days but she’s really annoyed me lately. I read that she wants to be the next Simon Cowell and spot new talent and help them... crazy.

If you were on death row what would you want for your last meal?

Kobe steak. Never tried it but apparently it’s very expensive.

When was the last time you cried?

Last time was a few weeks ago, whilst watching 24...

What was your last expensive purchase?

I got suckered in to buying expensive face wash yesterday. But it’s moisturiser too, so that’s legit, right?

What was the last thing that made you proud?

When my friend texted me to tell me that our song was being played in McDonalds in Glasgow.

What was the last thing you won?

I’m one of those people who never win anything. I found a fiver on the street the other day which I guess is winning.

When was the last time you got angry?

I got angry last night when I found a cockroach in our freezer. Even more angry that it was not frozen.

Where did you go on your last holiday?

We don’t get much time for holidays but when you play in places like Latvia and Barcelona and you’ve time to hit the beach and play a show it basically is a holiday, right?

Where is the last place on earth that you’d want to go to?

Castleford. [A town in Yorkshire -Geography Ed.] What was the last record you bought?

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix by Phoenix.

When was the last time you threw up?

Barcelona When was the last time you were ashamed?

Barcelona What was the last good thing you saw on television?

We don’t own a TV. What was the last thing you downloaded?

Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

What was the last good book you read?

Prey by Michael Crichton.

What does the last text you received say?

Private things...

What was the last bad job you had?

Handing out flyers with Sam in Lurgan telling people their water was being turned off.

When was the last time you broke the law?

I screwed National Express a lot in the summer by not buying a ticket.

If the world was about to end, what would your last words be? www.myspace.com/twodoorcinemaclub.

Shameless...

TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB PLAY A FREE GIG AT THE MANDELA HALL, BELFAST ON NOVEMBER 17.

AS THE MAN SAID, THE WEBSITE IS WWW. MYSPACE.COM/TWODOORCINEMACLUB

trans in association with Smalltown America present

AND SO I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR Ulster Hall LaFaro, Cashier No.9 & Adebisi Shank 18 December, Doors 8.00pm £8 in advance/£10 on door Over 14s show Tickets available from the Ulster Hall & Waterfront Hall Box Office, Call 028 9033 4455 or visit www.ulsterhall.co.uk Credit & debit card charges apply.

See ‘How to book’ section of the website for further details.

FREE Tiger Beer After Show Party with Not Squares djs Ulster Hall Group Space, 11.00pm

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