AU Magazine Issue 62

The Japanese Popstars Total Distorted Dance Mayhem Edwyn Collins Rips It Up And Starts Again

£3.50 January 2010 www.iheartau.com

Ultimate Travel The World In A Year

Irish Albums of the Decade

your top

50

Snow Patrol 15 Years Of Toil And Triumph

&

Annie / Bunny And The Bull / Hudson Mohawke / Comanechi James Ellroy / Kid Sister / Russell Brand / We Fell To Earth Lisa Hannigan / Joy Orbison / And So I Watch You From Afar

Iss

62

—1 AU Magazine—

my inspiration EDITORS

you’ve got a nerve to be asking a favour you’ve got a nerve to be calling my number The Walkmen The Rat

Photography by Kevin Westenberg

—2 issue 62—

THE RAT: Written by James Leithauser, Martin Walter, Matthew Barrick, Peter Bauer and Paul Maroon.

Published by District 6 publishing.

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AU Magazine —Feature Contents

62

—35 Irish Albums Of The Decade Your Top 50 revealed

—42 Edwyn Collins “‘A Girl Like You’ was the one. It started in Belgium, then France and then just continued. It was unstoppable.”

—44 Snow Patrol “I don’t care if the next album sells the same amount as Songs For Polarbears”

—50 The Japanese Popstars “We basically wanted free passes for Oxegen, so we set about trying to make some music and become a live act”

—52 A Global Odyssey “On your death bed, do you want to look back on the stuff you bought, or the stuff you did?””

Breaking Through —21Tickley Feather

—3 AU Magazine—

Editorial The end of a decade, the end of an era. Over the past two years readers of AU will have noticed that the magazine has reached a zenith of quality. We’ve had some of our biggest cover stars, our best photography and our best writing during the past twenty issues. ‘Why is that, and why are you telling us this?’ you might ask. Well, these developments have been due to the hard work, talent and dedication of our Editor, Francis Jones. When he took up the Editor role of AU back at the start of 2008 he took what was already a jewel of a publication, and he polished it to the point where it is the shining diamond it is today. However, this is Francis’ last issue as Editor before he moves on to pastures new. It’s been an incredibly impressive series of issues that he has been at the helm of, and he has left a legacy behind that we are all proud of. I’m sure you’ll join us in raising a glass in toast to Francis, and wishing him all the best in his future endeavours.

Francis, you’ll be missed.

Stupid Things Said This Month We just saw Prince Margaret Stop playing with the wind-up chicken, we’re working.

I’m leaving.

I hate driving. There, I said it.

By the way, that reference to Failblog is the most modern thing I’ll ever say.

She looks like an elongated globule of melted cheese.

These trainers are pretty hip, aren’t they?

—Issue 62 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, James Hendicott, Lisa Hughes, Adam Lacey, Ailbhe Malone, Nay McArdle, Gerard McCann, Kirstie McCrum, Louise McHenry, Paul McIver, Kenny Murdock, Joe Nawaz, Steven Rainey, Craig Sheridan, Jeremy Shields.

Design/Illustration

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

Photo Editor

Richard W Crothers

Photography

Carrie Davenport Alessio Michelini Killian Sexton

Promotions And Kim Barclay Marketing Assistant

—4 issue 62—

AU Magazine —Contents (continued)

6 7 10 11 12 13 15 16 18 20

22 24

The AU Stereo ASIWYFA Hudson Mohawke / Hello My Name Is / Heartwork Tegan And Sara Annie 4 Or 5 Magicians Lisa Hannigan / We Must Hide Five To One: Battle-axes / Maneaters Incoming: Kid Sister / Comanechi Breaking Through: Pomegranates/ Hey Rosetta! / We Fell To Earth / Joy Orbison / Tickley Feather / Zealots Hey You! What’s On Your iPod? On The Road With The Answer

25 26 30 33

Flashback: Altamont History Lessons: Kevin Cummins A To Z: Aliases Classic Album: Kate Bush – Hounds Of Love

54 Album Reviews 63 Live Reviews 65 Unsigned Universe

Sc

67 70 72 74 76 78 80 81

Most Wanted Screen Games Books Comics Back Of The Net In Pictures: Calvin Harris / Ash The Last Word – Adam Green

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

Incoming —18 Kid Sister

—5 AU Magazine—

Upfront

Stereo

The AU Stereo

The Soft Pack Answer To Yourself (Heavenly)

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

Tom Waits Make It Rain (Anti)

Comprising tracks plucked from his various musical incarnations – brawlers, bawlers and bastards alike – performed in different cities on his recent tour, the new Glitter and Doom Live album captures the sizzling junkyard blues of Tom Waits to scintillating effect. With its rhythmic pulse, sinuous guitar licks and Waits’ rasping pleas, this is one of the highlights of a multi-peaked set. FJ

KID SISTER RIGHT HAND HI (ASYLUM) The new single from her much belated debut album, this frantic collision of electro and hiphop is a sharply tailored number that walks a similar line to the likes of Amanda Blank and Santigold. Cue a salvo of splintering beats and fast-tongued flow as Melisa Young introduces herself in exhilarating fashion, “Hi, I’m Kid Sister and I’m stacking money / Drinking all night, got you feeling right / Better get your right hand high.” The accompanying video is a good ‘un too. FJ ALLO, DARLIN’ WILL YOU PLEASE SPEND NEW YEAR’S WITH ME? (FORTUNA POP!) Allo, Darlin’ is the sound of Australian-born and North London-based singer songwriter Elizabeth Morris. When not serving tea and cakes to The Mighty Boosh in her Dalston café, she pens songs about Henry Rollins and the death of Polaroids. If your Hogmanay is not sorted yet,

—6 issue 62—

this timely lullaby will solve the annual dilemma – “Will you please spend New Year’s with me? / We can hide in my bedroom and watch cartoons all night,” whispers Morris. You won’t get a better offer. JF 40 THIEVES (FEAT. QZEN) DON’T TURN IT OFF (PERMANENT VACATION) Stealing centre-stage on Greg Wilson’s excellent new Credit To The Edit 2 compilation comes 40 Thieves’ sassy cover of Hot Chocolate’s disco classic. The San Fran DJ/production collective have given the track a streamlined feel, the synths glittering and cool, the bass grooving irresistibly and Qzen singing with seductive intent. Effortlessly cool. FJ THREE TALES ANY GOOD (SELF-RELEASED) The first new material since their eponymous debut album, Three Tales return with the triple whammy of new EP The Hidden Possibilities In All Things and it’s an absolute treat. Majestic

Formerly called The Muslims, the San Diego quartet have drilled down to rock ‘n’ roll’s core, extracting its essence for their forthcoming debut. In much of the press they’ve so far garnered you’ll find their name nestling alongside references to The Strokes, The Velvet Underground and The Modern Lovers. Such comparisons indicate that whilst originality might not be their strong suit, they at least pilfer with panache. Note then the ragged charms of ‘Answer To Yourself’. FJ

Yeasayer Ambling Alp (Mute)

Necks on the block here, but 2010 could be a very big year indeed for Brooklynite pop maestros Yeasayer. ‘Ambling Alp’ is the first single from their stonking second album Odd Blood, a joyously weird pop song in the vein of Animal Collective and Passion Pit – as with most of the new record, there’s less of the weirdy-beardy mysticism, more of the neon-bright synths and sing-a-long choruses. Album of the year 2010, anyone? We’re only half-joking… CJ

closer ‘Any Good’ just about steals pride of place; its bruised melody accompanying the delicate ruminations of Ben McAuley, guitar weaving its ragged way and piano providing an elegant shadow. Beautiful and free. Download the EP at www.threetales.bandcamp.com. FJ RACE HORSES MAN IN MY MIND (FANTASTIC PLASTIC) Beating off some pretty stiff competition, Race Horses have stormed through the field to become Aberystwyth’s finest musical export. ‘Man In My Mind’ is the title track from their new EP, ahead of a debut album early next year. Meilyr Jones’ gorgeously accented vocal describes a chap obsessed with Gnosticism and Bear Grylls, on a song that starts with a Mahler symphony before freaking out on a mad-pop joyride. Odds-on to become your favourite new band of 2010. JF WAGAWAGA PHEMINEX (ACROPLANE) On second album Jinjanoon Bus, bass cadet

Sam Osborn goes wild with his vocal samples and indulges in some head-melting drum programming. Squarepusher, Boxcutter and Aphex Twin fans will be pleased. This opening track features samples of Chris Morris interviewing fellow comedy genius Peter Cook about, among other things, buying crack on Leicester Square and some unruly behaviour from Her Maj. Funny stuff. Download both albums free from acroplane.org. CJ TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB I CAN TALK (KITSUNE) Exciting times for Two Door. They have a slew of dates throughout Europe in the offing, debut album Tourist History due in February and a recommendation for this particular track from none other than Kanye West. Yes, Mr West was so moved that he posted the video for ‘I Can Talk’ on his blog. Listen to the track and you can understand why Kanye’s dickie-bow was spinning with excitement; it’s a slice of rabid electro-pop that’ll leave you instantly smitten. FJ

Upfront

A Is For Achievement

And So I Watch You From Afar look back on a remarkable 2009 and forward to a promising 2010 ASIWYFA need no introduction: they are your brothers. Just home from Poland, their year swept past in those white stripes: a record deal, the self-titled debut album, major festivals and tours, tours, tours. Here, guitarist Rory Friers (above, far left) talks us through a quite incredible 12 months.

Interview by Nay McArdle Photos by Carrie Davenport

ASIWYFA

RORY ON… THE YEAR’S HIGHLIGHTS There have been some real ‘pinch yourself’ moments.

Headlining Glasgowbury was a very proud moment for us all. Our album launch with the choir up in the balcony.

Getting to share the stage with heroes like The Jesus Lizard and see some of the world as a result of the tunes we’ve written together was mind-boggling. I don’t think we’ve had more craic than when we’re touring with our friends from home, whether LaFaro or Adebisi Shank or Axis Of; it’s really exciting to watch people you love blowing away crowds all night then getting to hang out with them all day. Overall though, I think seeing our audience grow further afield has been the real highlight.

RORY ON… BUILDING A FANBASE ALL OVER EUROPE After two years flat-out, only now can we be confident there’ll be decent crowds at shows. Even then, it’s never a certainty. Europe seems to be a different story because of Last.fm and torrent sites – a lot of people are already into the band so we’ve almost bypassed that initial stage of playing to no-one. I reckon the tour we’ve just arrived home from has been the most exciting, in that we were out as far as Poland and Hungary and we had 100+ people at the shows who had T-shirts and knew our music. That was a great buzz. We actually played over 170 shows in 2009, which is mental when you take into account all the travel. We’re off to Russia in early 2010 and we’ll let you know how it goes there.

RORY ON… THE BAND’S NEW EP Although we’ve had to write a lot on the road, we managed to squeeze in a new EP called the Letters EP. Our bud Brian who was working for Smalltown America [the band’s label] was given the nickname ‘Detective Frank S. Monaghan’ by the Fighting With Wire lads and the S stood for Salamander. We thought this was the funniest thing and ended up calling a new track ‘S Is For Salamander’ after him. Over a few weeks discussing what Frank Monaghan would look and talk like, we started adding other characters to the story.

Tony [Wright, guitar] introduced an arch-enemy Django the Bastard who drags a coffin about all day with a massive fuck-off gun in it and occasionally blows baddies away. That’s where ‘D Is For Django The Bastard’ came from. The final song ‘K Is For Killing Spree’ was written and named in honour of a band from Belfast who we’d seen in Portrush years ago when we played in our old band Zombie Safari Park. They really changed how I personally approached songwriting and opened up an extra creative vein in us. They were called The Killing Spree and they were awesome. If you listen carefully, halfway through the song we play a Killing Spree riff for literally 4 or 5 seconds as a mark of respect; only the super-nerds will hear it.

RORY ON… THE SECOND ALBUM We’ve finished writing most of album number two, which we’re really buzzing on. We did some demoing with Andrew from Smalltown in his Derry studio not long ago and it was really cool listening to what we have for next year. It’s so much better than anything we’ve done before and I think that’s genuinely down to the intense way we approached writing. We’re gonna record in January and February and plan to get two EPs and an album out over the course of the year. Then we’re pretty much on the road until October. Now we’ve moved into doing European shows it means we’ve gotta put even more into getting out and touring next year.

“I see a lot of road signs and white lines when I close my eyes at night. We’re all haunted by thoughts of service stops and dodgy sandwiches. We eat, sleep and breathe the band.”

—7 AU Magazine—

Upfront

ASIWYFA

Doing things this way makes it tense as fuck, and that’s how the tunes always sound; that’s the way things have always been in ASIWYFA since the start. Tense feels right for us; relaxed makes us feel uneasy, but that’s how we like it. Is that ironic? I don’t think I’ve ever found a genuine example of irony. This could be an exclusive…

says, it will take twice as long. We learnt that no matter how much you have it serviced your van will break down on the autobahn. Chris [Wee, drums] learnt not to ask the woman on stage in a venue where the sound “man” is because predictably she IS the sound man and will be very offended.

RORY ON… WHAT THEY’VE LEARNT IN 2009

RORY ON… THEIR BIGGEST HEADLINE SHOW TO DATE

We’ve learnt a lot more about doing this on such a fulltime level. We’ve really strengthened up individually and as a unit, and we’ve got a really strong group of people around us now who help make sure everything is running the way we need it to be. Having Smalltown onboard brought that next level we needed for the album. They’re so good to us, they really give us loads of room to try stuff out and take risks.

We learnt only to jump off speaker stacks when there’s someone there to catch you. We’ve learnt that Ireland as a whole has an amazing music scene which is easy to take for granted. We learnt that some people won’t understand that it can be really difficult being away from home all the time and will become pretty cold-hearted towards you. We’ve learnt that you’ve got to become as thick-skinned as possible to keep pushing towards what you want from life. We’ve learnt that we have the most amazing, supportive friends and family in the world.

We’ve learnt that regardless of having to make people’s Christmas presents for the first time in 20 years because you literally don’t own a penny, if you’ve been in Kerrang! or played the Mandela Hall, some people will think you’re rich.

We also learnt that six Irish guys at their first ever European festival with a free bar the night before they play a main stage isn’t a good idea. We learnt never to try and drive from Leeds to Vienna in one go, even if Faith No More are playing, because despite what Google Maps —8 issue 62—

There are goals you set yourself in life and playing the Ulster Hall was one of those things that always seemed a little too much to hope for. It’s where we all went to our first proper show, as did our parents and grandparents.

Tony’s mum and dad first met there at Christmas and my Granda still tells me about the time he saw Buddy Rich there. We’re very humbled and we’ll make sure it’s one to remember for everyone there. Anyone from Northern Ireland knows how much history and relevance that building has politically and musically. I think everyone felt its absence when it was being refurbished over the past few years. To have it open again and to join that list of performers alongside Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, The Who, Beastie Boys and Pink Floyd is beyond words.

RORY ON… LOOKING LONG-TERM We’re by no means a big band – not in the slightest – but we think we have the beginnings of something pretty exciting and somewhere in the distance, if we look hard enough, we can make out the beginnings of some sort of self-sustainability. If we can just get there, then maybe we can make music for the rest of our lives.

ASIWYFA PLAY THE ULSTER HALL, BELFAST ON DECEMBER 18 WITH SUPPORT FROM LAFARO, ADEBISI SHANK AND CASHIER NO.9 WWW.MYSPACE.COM/ANDSOIWATCHYOUFROMAFAR

News

10 For

2010 The Irish Acts Planning To Make Waves Next Year

Words by Nay McArdle and Chris Jones

LOGIKPARTY A sharp new band with ex-Dagger Lees bassist Benni Johnston on vocals, they’ll deliver on drone and tantalising curses.

The achingly-tasteful Dublin promoters Skinny Wolves booked them for their first gig... ‘nuff said.

-

THE REDNECK MANIFESTO Word is, the Rednecks’ long-awaited fourth album will be released on Dublin label Richter Collective (Adebisi Shank, BATS, Marvins Revolt). Hurry up lads, minds are waiting to be blown.

GENERAL FIASCO

NOT SQUARES The synth-driven post-punk band hope to have their debut album out around April/ May. It’s in its early stages, but drummer Keith Winter revealed that there are possible collaborations afoot with Belfast techno bod Phil Kieran and Vinny from Adebisi Shank and The Vinny Club.

The power-pop trio recorded debut album Buildings earlier this year at Manor Park Studios in rural County Antrim. It’ll be out on Infectious Records (The Temper Trap, early Ash) on March 22. We’re hoping for great things.

LAFARO The long-established Belfast face-melters are finally ready to drop their debut album in March on Smalltown America Records.

It’s self-titled, but if the stories we’re hearing about the artwork are true, it could become known as The Duck Album…

HUNTER-GATHERER Little known outside his own front door, this electronic reaper has finally released his album I Dreamt I Was A Footstep In The Trail Of A Murderer for public consumption. It’s sublime – check out our review on p.60.

TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB

O EMPEROR After careful consideration, the winners of the 2007 NSMA (National Student Music Award) have decided they want to do the delightful, atmospheric music thing after all. Glad to hear it.

CASHIER NO.9 Danny Todd’s twanging indie-rockers have a David Holmes-produced album in the can, having recorded it this summer in Belfast and LA. No title or label as yet, but expect it to see the light of day before the summer.

FUNERAL SUITS They will release an album.

It will be brilliant.

Of all the bands on this list, this is the one that is really destined for big things. The Bangor lads’ album Tourist History is due out February 22 on the tastemaking Paris label Kitsuné, who seem to be pitching them as a junior Phoenix. Add a smidgen of Foals’ wired energy and the slicing guitars of early Bloc Party, and we have a sure fire winner on our hands.

—9 AU Magazine—

News

Upfront

Gimme Some Mo'

Hudson Mohawke reveals tantalising production collaborations in the offing (possibly), talks unusual console origins

Hot new kid on the electronica block, Glasgow’s Hudson Mohawke, is currently turning heads and moving feet with Butter, his Technicolor riot of a debut album. But the man known to his mum as Ross Birchard isn’t resting on his laurels, telling AU that he’s already making moves towards becoming a shit-hot studio gun-for-hire.

“I’m trying to move into production for other artists,” he says. “I’m quite interested to see what I could do producing some kind of mainstream R’n’B stuff. I’ve got a couple of things but they’re not finalised so I wouldn’t really have them bandied about, but I’m possibly going to be submitting some stuff for Rihanna, for M.I.A. and a couple of other people, maybe some stuff for Bloc Party as well.

“I’m interested in doing that because that’s another of my inspirations, big mainstream hip-hop producers who can turn their hand to almost any style and always come up with amazing stuff, like the Neptunes and Timbaland and even going back to Quincy Jones and

that kind of stuff – to be the backbone behind it, to be able to go in any direction and be able to be the real creative force behind it. I mean I’ll always do my own solo stuff but I’m interested to go beyond that because it’s more of a challenge for me.”

As befits an artist who pretty much stands alone in terms of his sound, HudMo had a rather novel introduction into the world of music production. As he tells AU, it’s all thanks to the Sony PlayStation.

Discussing his musical origins, he lists the soul and pop records owned by his father (a radio DJ) as formative influences, as well as jungle mixtapes given to him by his cousin, and adds: “At the same time as that, it seemed like a natural thing to experiment with production, but I didn’t have a computer, I didn’t have any equipment. I had nothing like that, so at that time – around 1998 or something – there was a PlayStation game that came out which was called Music, and I bought that game.

“I just started playing it and did that completely

religiously. And it was quite different to the sort of music-oriented computer games that are around now – you could actually make some tracks on it; it was a proper music sequencer, quite similar to the early Atari computers which lots of early electronic music was made on. We didn’t get a PC until about 2001 or something like that, and I was just using the family computer in the living room. Whenever I could get my sister off MSN or something like that I’d be there with the headphones on trying to make music. That’s how I got started, basically.”

Needless to say, Birchard has since come a long way since then, but if things go to plan M.I.A., Rihanna and Bloc Party might have cause to say a little prayer of thanks to the humble PlayStation in the not-toodistant future. Neill Dougan HUDSON MOHAWKE’S DEBUT ALBUM BUTTER IS OUT NOW ON WARP RECORDS WWW.MYSPACE.COM/HUDSONMO

Heartwork

Hello My Name Is

Hello My Name Is...

Steely Dan Steely Dan was a term for a strap-on dildo in the William Burroughs novel Naked Lunch. Donald Fagan and Walter Becker thought the name would be an amusing nod to one of their favourite Beat writers and, furthermore, weren’t expecting the band to last that long. None of their previous acts had. So, next time you’re bopping to ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ in some hip discotheque, just think, Steely Dan = dildo.

Heartwork In Praise Of Random LP Art

Riot - Fire Down Under —10 issue 62—

‘Hello, is Sanity there please? It’s Riot here, we’ve been trying to get a hold of it for a while, can you just let it know I called?’ ‘Look Sanity, just take the call OK? If you don’t answer now I’m going to just lose it on our new album cover, I can tell.’ ‘Sanity, please talk to me, I’m losing my mind totally. I keep getting visions of fire, and I’m in it. Let me know what it means, please.’ ‘Right, Sanity, I can’t take it any more, does the fire mean I’m in hell? The vision keeps changing, now I have the head of a seal, crossed with a polar bear, it kind of suits me, I like it.’ ‘Fine, don’t speak to me then, I’m going with it, I don’t care what you think.

Our cover is going to feature a polar-seal head on my body against a backdrop of flames, and it will be awesome, you wait and see. Fuck you sanity.’

Upfront

Beatific Visions

Tegan And Sara on sainthood, love, and, er, Tiësto Things have changed round Tegan and Sara’s way. Ever since they began making music in 1997, the twins have worked separately, writing songs from different sides of North America. Up until now, that is. Due to an unlikely catalyst, Tegan and Sara have collaborated for the first time in their career. Who convinced them to change their minds? Tiësto. No, really. Tegan launches into the backstory with gusto.

“Tiësto remixed ‘Back In Your Head’. He came to Vancouver a couple of years later and we hung out and he said, “I really enjoyed collaborating with you, and I’d love to do other collaborations with you guys.” So we said ‘yes’.

What’s neat about it is that it doesn’t sound like you’d expect it to. I’m really glad we did it; I think artists should do that more often. You know, go outside their genre. It was good because it was what ignited the interest with Sara and I to write with each other. We’d never really collaborated before. I was like, ‘This is cool, that could work’.”

So, the sisters moved in together for the first time since their teens. The product was Sainthood – a raucous indie-pop record, one dramatically different in texture and tone to its predecessor, The Con. Despite the positive reaction that Sainthood has received, Tegan bemoans the way herself and Sara have been branded. “It would be nice not to be called ‘lesbian-Canadian-alt-folk-poptwins’ all the time.” Does she tire of being a twin? “I think when I was younger it annoyed me that we were always referred to as twins. But being a twin is a weird thing, you know! I met [Jenny Lewis collaborators] The Watson Twins the other day and I was really freaked out. I was like, ‘Oh, there are two of you!’ No wonder people are weirded out by you.”

is intense, there’s nothing I feel as intense about in my life. It’s not even actual love, it’s the idea of love – the idea of caring about someone else, the things people do.” Eventually, she shrugged off the constraints, and continued to write about what she wanted to – albeit in a different way. After 10 years of writing love songs, inspiration still comes easily. Tegan pauses, and reflects, “My perspective has just gotten wider. I don’t think I’ve gotten over writing about love, I don’t think I want to.

I’ve just found new things to say.” Ailbhe Malone WWW.TEGANANDSARAH.COM

Working together, the sisters had a definite vision for the new album. Tegan recalls how they wanted to convey change, and catharsis. “The Con was a depressing-ass record. It was a dark time. It was really intimate too – we wanted to connect with people. We wanted to approach Sainthood with a different mentality. The mentality was that we are a live band, and we wanted it to sound like a pop-rock record. We’re kind of brushing off some of the baggage and having fun.”

Content-wise, the Quins consciously tried to write about topics other than love. ‘Hell’, for example, is about drug dealing and breakdown in their local community. However, staying on topic was more difficult than previously thought. Tegan smiles, and explains, “I think during [2004 album] So Jealous, I had to justify writing about love. Maybe it’s because I’m older. Maybe it’s because I don’t care so much what people think anymore, but I love writing about love. It

Shorts It’s been a while, but the new Massive Attack album is imminent. Heligoland – the follow-up to 2003’s 100th Window – drops February 8. The all-star contributors include Damon Albarn, Guy Garvey, Hope Sandoval and TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe.

Work is underway on the third album from Canadian indie

icons Arcade Fire. The band’s label, Mercury, confirmed that the new record will arrive at some point in 2010.

Jason Pierce is currently cocooned in the studio working on the follow-up to Spiritualized’s 2008 album Songs In A&E. Details on the new album are rather hazy at present, but fans can keep

themselves occupied in the interim with the just released, snazzy reissue of the classic Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space.

Over at Pitchfork, Panda Bear has been talking about his forthcoming (at some point) new album, “The rhythms are really basic and kind of raw and simple and are electronic. It’s

not live instrumentation, I’ve been playing guitar but I feed it through the same thing that the sequences are on. It’s a very electronic sound and very-voice heavy. A simple arrangement of drums, the guitar and singing.

Really there are only two or three elements to every song.

It’s pretty raw sounding for better for worse. The tone is a lot darker and it sounds sort of

dramatic or romantic to me.”

Vans have just released a set of Pixies-themed skate footwear.

Available as slip-ons, or hitops, the Death to the Pixies shoes feature the classic image of a slumped over Black Francis.

Noise-rock renegades Liars have revealed that the follow-up to 2007’s self-titled album is

near at hand. Recorded with the assistance of Tom Biller (Beck, Where The Wild Things Are OST), Sisterworld will emerge on March 8. According to the band the new record is about “The alternate spaces people create in order to maintain identity in a city like LA. Environments where outcasts and loners celebrate a skewered relationship to society.”

—11 AU Magazine—

Upfront

News

It's A Hard Knock Life

Annie tells all about the problematic delivery of don’t stop

“It’s very exciting to be involved in projects that are outside the traditional pop way of thinking.”

You’d be hard pressed to tell by the excellence and effervescent nature of Annie’s second album Don’t Stop but, until recently, all had not been progressing as the Norwegian pop princess might have hoped. That the album has only belatedly been released provides the clearest indication of how difficult recent years have been for its maker. Following 2005’s much lauded debut, Anniemal, Annie commenced work on a follow-up that would see her capitalise on the goodwill and admiration that the first record had engendered, to become a pop star of international repute. Well, that was the plan…

“When I signed up with Island [Annie’s former label] it was via a particular A&R,” she recounts. “He later left.

I started working with another A&R, and I don’t think he really got the record and what I was doing. I just kept working with different people who expected different things and, in some ways, it was a bit of a struggle. It’s better now that I’m kind of my own boss and it’s definitely much easier not to be on a major label.”

Leaked versions of Don’t Stop had been circulating for some time prior to the album’s official release on Smalltown Supersound. “It [the leak] was really frustrating. I did want to keep it a secret and it was annoying to have all these people coming up and saying they’d heard this song, or that song.” The final, legit Don’t Stop was warmly greeted by the music press and public, —12 issue 62—

much to Annie’s relief. “That nobody would be interested in the album at all [after it was delayed so long], of course, that’s something that you are afraid of. At the same time, it was just important for me to keep going and keep involved in music.”

One way in which she kept herself occupied whilst waiting to have her own album green-lighted was by writing for other artists. Annie has contributed tracks to the forthcoming debut of feisty pop duo Mini Viva.

That hook up was facilitated by Xenomania, the pop production house par excellence who, alongside the likes of Alex Kapranos, Paul Epworth, Timo Kaukolampi and Richard X, helped craft Don’t Stop.

“What was really interesting working with them [Xenomania], as opposed to the way I worked before, was that they focused so much on the actual songwriting.

Brian [Higgins] said when I arrived there that I had to be prepared to really work and to write lots of songs, that we wouldn’t be stopping until we had really stretched ourselves. I wrote more songs than I ever had before and at the same time it was really inspiring, to think about music and melodies and the whole perspective of songwriting.”

Working with Xenomania also brought Annie into the orbit of Girls Aloud, and had things turned out differently

the celebrated quintet may very well have appeared on Don’t Stop. “They were actually in the studio then, recording a song called ‘Can’t Speak French’,” recounts Annie. “Obviously, they were spending a lot of time there.

We needed some background vocals and they were up for doing it. But, then the management contacted the label and they were like, ‘Oh, they can’t be singing on an Annie record when they’ve got to be doing their own’. All that type of stuff, so it was a record label thing, the girls were really cool.”

The experience of making Don’t Stop – despite its hardships and uncertainties – and of working with myriad producers and other musicians has fuelled Annie’s desire to keep changing it up, to see what else she’s capable of achieving. “I’m such a music nerd,” she confesses. “I keep listening to and buying music. I think I’m going to keep developing and I never want to just do exactly the same every time. You have to keep it interesting and be different. That’s very important to me and it’s very exciting to be involved in projects that are outside the traditional pop way of thinking. I want to do as much as possible, to keep pushing in other directions.”

Francis Jones DON’T STOP IS OUT NOW ON SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND WWW.MYSPACE.COM/ANNIEMUSIC

T S A C POD

News

Hello.

The AU Podcast is too tight to mention.

For the latest instalment we have a plethora of auditory delights to both entertain and inform you. Expect to hear nuggest of joy from Adam Green, Three Tales, Warpaint and loads more.

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

Beezer.

Do You Remember What The Music Meant?

With: Dan Ormsby from 4 Or 5 Magicians

What is your earliest musical memory?

Dancing round the living room to Rick Astley on Top Of The Pops, probably when ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ came out. I would have been three or four. According to my mum I was actually quite good at the silly dance he did!

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

Not sure about obsessed, but recently I have been listening to an unhealthy amount of modern-era Scott Walker. There was a period right up until we went on tour at the beginning of the month, where I had listened to either Tilt or The Drift every day for as long as I can remember. Both albums with so much going on, something new to hear and learn with every listen.

What record would you use to seduce someone?

Seduction (in the classic sense at least!) isn’t really my forte. I don’t own any Marvin Gaye records or anything so I’d probably just stick on something like ‘Raisins’ by Dinosaur Jr. and hope the girl in question was impressed by my impeccable air guitar routine.

The Mars Volta at the LA2 in London in 2003. It was the birthday of my girlfriend at the time so I bought us a pair of tickets having both been big At The Drive-In fans, and being really impressed by the Tremulant EP. We went, full of excitement, and ended up walking out early, after enduring 45 minutes of nonstop, self-indulgent, random noise. The worst thing was I missed the last ever UK show by the awesome Karate which was on the same night. I never got to see them live.

AD AM GR EE N

Who is your all time favourite artist?

There are a whole load of bands and artists that, having heard them, I could never really be without in my collection; they are all equally essential to me. The answer I give to this question, though, is R.E.M. Their consistency giving them the edge – they released 11 albums in a row from 1983 to 1998 with wall-towall perfect, or near perfect, songs on all of them. That said, Fugazi did pretty much the same (albeit with seven albums instead of 11), and they run them close, as do Nirvana, The Replacements and Guided By Voices.

What piece of music moves you to tears?

There have been a few over the years. I sometimes play ‘Here Comes A Regular’

by The Replacements at acoustic shows, and I always have to choke back tears while singing the last line. Such a bleak and honest, but beautiful song.

TH R EE TA LE S

THE BAND’S DEBUT ALBUM EMPTY, DERIVATIVE POP SONGS IS OUT NOW ON SMALLTOWN AMERICA RECORDS WWW.MYSPACE.COM/4OR5MAGICIANS

What one song best captures your character?

‘Unsatisfied’ by The Replacements.

Who was the worst band you’ve seen live?

W AR PA IN T —13 AU Magazine—

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00 -10

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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.

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24/9/09 13:49:59

We Must Hide

Upfront

Sew Far, Sew Good Lisa Hannigan ponders our Irish albums poll and gives us a sneak preview of her next record We Must Hide...

Jordan!

It’s been a big year for Lisa Hannigan. Her debut album Sea Sew was nominated for every prize going apart from an MTV Moonman, and led to guest slots on not only Later…, but also The Colbert Report and Jay Leno. Don’t forget to also include a solid touring schedule that took in most of the UK and Ireland, Europe, and the States.

Typically upbeat, and remarkably self-effacing, when asked for the best and worst experiences of the year, Hannigan struggles to knock or elevate any of them.

“The Stephen Colbert thing was the best craic. We got to watch his show from the inside. He was so nice, and it was so unexpected. He just found us on YouTube. That was something very homemade and exciting. And just touring has been so much fun. We played a New York show with David Gray – we were the bread in the David Gray sandwich. I can’t think of the worst thing – that’s a good sign. Nothing springs to mind! There weren’t even any mild annoyances! In general, I’m pretty cheerful.”

What has she learned over the year? “I’ve learned how to write songs quicker. I get an idea, then I literally go out of my house and ramble for a couple of hours. I go on the outskirts, the neighbourhoods, little residential roads.

I sing while I walk, I hum away, which gets some looks from people. Most people are listening to their iPods, so I don’t care. I don’t even listen to my iPod that much.”

AU mentions how it’s been compiling a list of the 50 top Irish albums of the past decade. Has she any contributions?

“Top Irish albums? Cathy Davey’s Tales of Silversleeve.

And then, earlier in the decade, would be David Kitt’s The

Big Romance. That was a summer of sound; it was what we listened to. The Frames For the Birds. The two of those records are of a time – a really amazing time for me. Mic Christopher Skylarkin is one that I listen to still. Bell X1 – Music In Mouth. Jape, I’d say Ritual.”

Does she feel that Irish music has changed much in the past decade? She laughs, and counters, “I should hope Irish music has changed a lot in the past 10 years – apart from styles, people are doing stuff on their own, rather than hanging around waiting for a record company.

Doing stuff in their bedroom and playing gigs. Looking out, those people, apart from Mic [Christopher], all those people are still making music. I think people just listen to what they like to listen to. They just like what they like. I try to avoid the industry side of things as much as possible, as I just wouldn’t be very good at it.”

With another laugh, marketing strategies and moneymaking schemes are shrugged off, in favour of what she is good at; working away – speedily now – on a new collection of album tracks. When can we expect a new record? And will there be a crafty cover once more?”

The songs that I’ve written, a couple of them are darker than Sea Sew. Sea Sew is more cheerful. Next year, I have to finish recording and writing the whole record. I haven’t even thought of a title for it yet. I’ll be doing something hopefully equally arduous for the cover – maybe I’ll carve it.” All together now, readers: “Damien who?” Ailbhe Malone WWW.LISAHANNIGAN.IE

Who would ever have imagined that the British public would bond in a show of solidarity behind Peter Andre?

Yes, that Peter Andre. Most people felt sorry for the chest-oiling, crotch-grinding, six-packing insaniac because he reminded them of the put-upon boyfriend of their evil older sister. He might have modelled his look on one of the bodybuilding extras from a Gay Chat advert, but he deserves a Purple Heart for enduring daily ear and ego bashings from Jordan, a woman so tragically dangerous she should be marked with a black spot on a map – or come branded with a radioactive label. Named for an Asian river, Jordan flows in one direction: money-bound. Apparently, she is genetically equipped with an internal GPS tracking system so potent it can detect paparazzi within a radius of 10 miles. You know, for those beachside moments when your bikini accidentally pops off. Most recently seen moping about the Australian jungle, Jordan has since become such a malcontent harpy of vengeance that even the insects on that show with Anc and Dent contacted their union and refused to get into a glass box with her.

Meanwhile, Peter was at home, supping mojitos with a family of koalas and listening to his own records. Jordan has retreated somewhere within the pages of this very magazine, but here’s a clue: she’s not on page three.

Send your contact details along with a description of where, and on what page, you spotted Jordan to info@iheartau.com and you could win a six-month AU subscription.

The winner will be chosen at random from all correct entries received.

Top Ten Songs For Jordan 1. Peter Andre Letting You Go 2. The Shins Australia 3. The Vines In The Jungle 4. Blur This Is A Low 5. The Beatles Money (That’s What I Want) 6. Radiohead We Suck Young Blood (Your Time Is Up) 7. Matthew Sweet Walk Out 8. Beck Lost Cause 9. Morrissey You’re Gonna Need Someone On Your Side 10. Peter Andre Never Going To Give You Up —15 AU Magazine—

Five to One

Upfront

5 to 1

TH

Battle-axes

Maneaters

Words by Jonny Tiernan

Anne Robinson People might think that the image portrayed

by Anne Robinson on television show The Weakest Link is an exaggerated and over-thetop version of her personality. In reality, the attitude she displays on the programme is actually Anne making a real effort to be nicer and kinder than she is off-screen. An ardent supporter of foxhunting, it is our opinion that she is determined to wipe them out completely in an effort to leave herself as the only red haired bitch left in existence, Highlander style.

Madonna Compared to other powerful female maneaters, Madonna has been relatively modest in her number of partners. High profile conquests include Sean Penn, Warren Beatty and Guy Ritchie – the lady clearly digs the movie-men. Apparently she believes that by copulating with males who specialise in this area, her acting abilities will improve and reach new heights. Someone needs to tell her that it doesn’t matter how many of this type of guy you sleep with, some turds are just unpolishable.

TH

Pat Butcher Eastenders fans will of course be quick to point out that Pat’s surname is now Evans.

We don’t care, in our minds she will always be Pat Butcher. The name suits her more as well.

She looks like she could have her own spin-off series, where she is a serial killer who likes to chop people up and feed them to others. Hell, why make it a spin-off? We should start a campaign to introduce that as a story arc, it’d be the best ever.

Pamela Anderson While Pammie might not have been married as many times as others on this list, the fact that she married Tommy Lee after having only known him for 96 hours makes her a fully qualified maneater in our book. The irony of Pamela, a strict vegetarian, marrying a meathead nicknamed T-Bone isn’t lost on us. She’s also a fan of the short marriage, with two other short-lived hitches under her belt.

Hungry, but filled quite easily it seems.

RD

Anne Widdecombe Anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, climatesceptic, against women priests – yep, Widdecombe could well be considered a conservative hard-ass. She actually switched faith to the Roman Catholic Church after the Church of England allowed women to become priests. That’s a battle-axe in action, in our book. It’s also been famously claimed that Anne is still a virgin. We believe that all it would take for her views to soften is a good old-fashioned seeing-to. Though to be fair, it’s the kind of service we might need to bring back conscription for.

Zsa Zsa Gabor Auld Zsa Zsa is a true marriage veteran, having tied the knot no less than nine times during her 92 years on Earth. The shortest of her marriages lasted a mere one day, due to the fact that her previous marriage hadn’t been properly dissolved. Hey, the girl doesn’t like to hang around, give her a break. Her current marriage is the longest lasting to date (23 years and counting), which hopefully means that she found her true love in the end. Awww.

ND

Mary Whitehouse Professional killjoy Whitehouse devoted most of her life to the pursuit of cleaning up both the airwaves and the TV screen. Looking back, it might seem a bit funny and harmless that someone could get so wound-up by Doctor Who and The Benny Hill Show. Then you find out that she actually took legal action for blasphemous libel against Gay News, and believed that homosexuality was “like having acne”, implying that 60% of gay people can be cured by psychiatry. Not so funny now. If Mary was alive today she’d be Iris Robinson’s best friend.

Elizabeth Taylor Lizzie trails Zsa Zsa in the number of marriages she has been through by just one. However, she trails in the number of husbands by two.

Confused? Don’t be, Taylor remarried Richard Burton in 1975. So nice, she ate him twice.

What makes Liz even more of a maneater is the fact that there was less than a two week gap between her fourth and fifth marriages, and less than six months between her sixth and seventh.

That’s some appetite.

Margaret Thatcher Seriously, Margaret Thatcher is one of the most terrifying women to have ever lived.

She is able to stop a person’s heart simply by locking their gaze for more than five seconds.

She’s kind of like a modern-day Medusa, only without the head of snakes, obv. You have to respect her strength of character and resilience, though. Mainly because if you don’t it’s reported that she will visit you in your dreams and make sure you never wake up again.

Margaret Thatcher You might be wondering why a woman who was married to the same man for some 52 years is top of this list. Well, we have it on good authority that during her political heyday Maggie actually ate men, cannibal style. It’s where she gained her political strength, and apparently snorting the ground down bones of victims is what gave her the edge necessary to win the battle for 10 Downing Street. Rumour has it that once her supply of dead men was cut off her political career nosedived. Oh, and the world was a happier place.

ST

—16 issue 62—

6TH GUINNESS

BELFAST NASHV ILLE SONGWRITERS FESTIVAL 24-28 FEBRUARY 2010 Pre-festival Nashville’s Phil Vassar in Concert, 29th January, Madisons Hotel, £12

A-Z Songwriters Iain Archer 27 Feb Ulster Hall £20 Tom Baxter 27 Feb Ulster Hall £20 Carlene Carter 24 Feb Empire (solo) £22, 25 Feb Kings Head £22 Nanci Griffith 25 Feb Empire £22, 27 Feb May St Church (solo) £22 Ralph McTell 26 Feb May St Church £15 Mundy 25 Feb Madisons £12, 26 Feb Empire (solo concert) £12 Midge Ure 27 Feb Empire £15 Andy White 26 Feb Black Box £15 Holly Williams 26 Feb Kings Head (solo) £10, 27 Feb Ulster Hall

Department for

Social Development

Tickets: www.belfastnashville.com Tel: 028 9024 6609 —17 AU Magazine—

kid Sister

Incoming

KID SISTER REAL NAME: BASED: FOR FANS OF: CHECK OUT:

WEBSITE:

Melisa Young Chicago, Illinois.

Missy Elliott, M.I.A., Kanye West.

The single ‘Right Hand Hi’, out now on Asylum Records. www.myspace.com/kidsister

Melisa Young aka Kid Sister is feeling especially giddy today. “I’m going crazy, I feel like I’m a little bit on crack,” she splutters, “In a good way… if there is such a thing?!” With her long awaited debut album, Ultraviolet, due for release in the US tomorrow – and the UK in March 2010 – such high spirits are understandable.

After all, the record has had a rather torturous gestation, some three years in the making, over which period the tracklisting, release date and even title – it was previously called Dream Date – have all changed. So, just why has it taken so long to deliver?

“We were looking for the cohesion that the first version of the album didn’t have,” states Young. “We had to go on the cohesion quest, try and figure out what was gonna make the album really gel. We just needed more up-tempo songs on there.”

The final version of the album is certainly dynamic, its pace and worship of the beat betraying its creator’s love of house music.

“Up until I was 10, or 11, I only listened to classical music,” recalls Kid Sis. “Then I discovered house. I went a little crazy after that.

House music was like crack for my ears, it was unbelievable what could be done with electronic music. It was so different and so exciting. Then I discovered hip-hop. To be able to fuse my two favourite genres seamlessly is really neat. It’s cool, because it comes naturally to me.”

Indeed, most everything about Young’s musical career has come naturally. As she relates, she had rather limited ambitions when she started making music. “I wanted to get some free beers, have a good time and escape my crappy workaday life. I had three jobs, I didn’t have time to go out and party and have fun. The one day a week that I could afford to go out and have a beer or two, it would be at my brother’s [Josh “J2K” Young, one half of rap DJ Duo Flosstradamus] parties. It would be one dollar a beer and everyone having a good time. I would jump up on the couch and do a couple of songs.”

It was at one such party that Young first encountered Spank Rock producer XXXchange. “He’s now a long-time collaborator, but then he was just starting out too. He said, ‘Hey, I heard you’re a rapper, want some beats?’ He gave me some beats and let me bang. That’s basically what happened. The rest is history.”

One landmark in her recent history is the massive, Kanye Westguesting first single ‘Pro Nails’. “The fact that he’s on the record is a miracle,” affirms Melisa. “It wasn’t like me petitioning, or whatever.

It fell in my lap.” On Ultraviolet you’ll also find contributions from the likes of Estelle, Rusko, Cee-lo, The Count and Sinden and Young’s current squeeze, DJ A-Trak. Together they’ve helped Kid Sister make an all out party jamboree of a record, twisting genres into a tight knot, bringing invention and a sense of fun to the table.

“The whole purpose of me making music is to bring people together who, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t be brought together,” says Melisa. “To bring people from different backgrounds all to one, super happy, universal place. No one’s judgmental, come as you are.” Francis Jones

—18 issue 62—

Incoming

Comanechi

COMANECHI MEMBERS: FORMATION: FOR FANS OF: CHECK OUT: WEBSITE:

Akiko Matsuura, Simon Petrovitch.

Hackney, London, 2008.

Black Sabbath, Melt Banana, Sonic Youth.

Debut album Crime Of Love, out now on Merok. www.comanechi.com

So you have a stocking to fill, but what do you get for the music fan who has everything? Why not try a couple of new-fangled sub-genres?

Some neo-shitwave-substep for those early morning commutes. Perhaps some crossover anti-wonk-fi for the modern city gent. For the on-the move executive, a handy travel-sized introduction to post-spazz operacore, and... well, are you getting tired yet? For little Akiko Matsuura, Comanechi’s resident drummer, vocalist and walking one inch punch, the answer is simple: “Comenechi! It’s, how you say, pure.”

Oscillating between heavy grunge, sludge metal and riot grrrl scuzz, Comanechi’s perfectly realised debut Crime Of Love subsumes the listener into Akiko World – a garishly-lit interzone of broken hearts, cheap drugs, great parties, degenerate art, sex-obsessed fashionistas, shit-orbust nihilists and one deceased cat. Utterly depraved debauchery is the effect; cathartic bliss coupled with septic shock. It is, as Akiko puts it, pure.

“I want music scene not to suck, you know?” She may have a scrambled take on the English vernacular but when it comes to the universal language of punk rock, Akiko’s a linguistic Liberace. “I love the attitude of punk. Comanechi is real; we didn’t have enough money for pedals to make a different sound, or a big studio. I’m from nothing, no rich family, no rock star parents, and no connections in London. Music you hear in taxis… it has nothing in common with me.”

Of course, behind every great woman there’s a great man. Harbinger of burning Peavey amps and un-evolved, sinful riffage, guitarist Simon Petrovitch defecates abominable slabs of noise that would penetrate 11 inches of reinforced glass, and you’ll think he’s discovered the meaning of life. “He’s passive but in a really good way,” remarks Akiko. “He just lets me be me. We’re opposites in every way. I couldn’t have another Akiko in the band, I’d just fight with her!”

Put simply, Comanechi are an act with a firm grasp on the artistic power of puerility, and with a dedicated autodidact in Akiko they look to an array of transgressors for inspiration. “I like Richard Kern [photo-eroticist and documentarian of New York’s bare-brick underbelly], Yayoi Kusama [Japanese sexual surrealist], my brother, who got me into Nirvana, and Bruce Lee!” In terms of taboo-embracing iconoclasts, though, there’s only one man for Akiko. “I love John Waters’ films. Kitsch and colourful, cool, low budget but inspired,” which could be a succinctly rendered blurb on Comanechi’s sound.

In between fronting London noise-rock band Pre and supporting The Gossip, the Klaxons, and Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees with Comanechi, Akiko has an increasingly lucrative sideline in the shape of next-gen shoegazers The Big Pink, with Crime Of Love released on Milo Big Pink’s Merok label. “It isn’t punk but it’s something I can show my parents. I’ve never really explained exactly to them what I do over here and, like, how messy I get. The Big Pink played Summer Sonic [Japan’s Glasto] and they saw me on these huge monitors from really far away and they cried,” she beams.

The band name is in reference to iconic gymnast Nadia Comaneci, who perfect 10’d the shit out of the 1976 Olympics. So it’s a symbol of feminine power, right Akiko? “It’s the pervert point of view.” Come again? “It’s like, she was only 14 but she’s wearing these skimpy clothes and all these people watched her and admired her body – pervert point of view. Like, I wear skimpy clothes on stage too.” It seems that the next time he spots Akiko on a monitor; Pop Matsuura will have a very different excuse for a good cry. John Calvert

—19 AU Magazine—

Incoming

Breaking Through

BREAKING THROUGH

Pomegranates

Hey Rosetta!

We Fell To Earth

MEMBERS: Joey Cook (vocals, guitar), Isaac Karns (bass),

Jacob Merritt (drums), Josh Kufeldt (guitar).

FORMATION: Cincinnati, 2006.

FOR FANS OF: Girls, Vampire Weekend, The Shins.

CHECK OUT: The album Everybody, Come Outside! is available now

via Heist Or Hit. WEBSITE: www.myspace.com/pomegranatesart

MEMBERS: Tim Baker (vocals, piano, guitar), Adam Hogan

(guitar), Josh Ward (bass), Phil Maloney (drums),

Romesh Thavanathan (cello), Erin Aurich (violin).

FORMATION: Newfoundland, Canada, 2005.

FOR FANS OF: Broken Social Scene, Bon Iver, Hope Of The States.

CHECK OUT: Forthcoming album Into Your Lungs (release date TBC) WEBSITE: www.myspace.com/heyrosetta

MEMBERS: Richard File (vocals, keyboards),

Wendy Rae Fowler (bass, vocals).

FORMATION: Joshua Tree, California, 2005.

FOR FANS OF: UNKLE, Can, The Cranes.

CHECK OUT: The re-released album We Fell To Earth

is available now via In Stereo.

WEBSITE: www.myspace.com/wefelltoearth

The new Pomegranates album Everybody, Come Outside! is a concept album. Sort of. It’s loosely based on the story of some poor sap who leaves home, only to be abducted by a time traveller. But don’t let that put you off – unless you can’t cope with 40 minutes of, as drummer Jacob Merritt describes it, “exuberant space pop”. While Everybody, Come Outside! is the Cincinnati quartet’s first UK release, it’s actually their second album. AU is therefore compelled to ask Merritt: where have you been all our lives? “Well, we released an album [in 2008] that we have mixed feelings about called Everything Is Alive.

There are a few tunes that we still enjoy playing, but overall we think its pretty average. Ha ha.”

Touring the indigenous communities of the Canadian Arctic as well as some of the cooler if more conventional music spots in London in the same year, it’s all much of a muchness for Hey Rosetta!. Aside from being probably the first guitar band open to potential heckling in a variety of Inuit dialects, they also happen to be the latest sextet from the former colony who could legitimately have ‘next big thing’ stamped on their passports.

When Josh Homme introduced ex-UNKLE man Richard File to singer-bassist Wendy Rae Fowler at the infamous Rancho De La Luna studios in California, a musical flame sparked into life – kindled by a mutual love of German experimentalism. “We found a common ground which we built on, which was Krautrock,” Richard explains. “So, with that foundation, we were looking for a beat and just going with it, and playing that beat non-stop until Wendy came up with a fucking sick bassline, and went on from there.” Wendy, whose sensuous voice lifts the compelling drive of new track ‘Deaf’, is typically concise. “I’m quite shy, but I felt some sort of connection with Rich, and chats about music led to us picking up some instruments, and, um, the rest is history.”

There is a sense of mischief running through the current Pomegranates’ sound, as multiple riffs and pace changes are thrown at the unsuspecting listener. Jacob agrees, “We had a lot of fun with this one. We gave ourselves a narrative framework to build the songs around, which was a bit challenging, but we think it yielded some good results. We just wanted to stretch ourselves as musicians, and forcing ourselves to work within the basic parameters of a weird story seemed a good way to do that.”

Trying to pin down the band’s points of reference is tricky – there are moments of perfect indie-pop (‘Southern Ocean’), Vampire Weekend-style bossa nova (‘Svaatzi Uutsi’) and spectral lullabies (‘Sail (Away With Me)’). Jacob is happy to shed some light on their source of inspiration. “A few artists seemed to keep coming up when we were writing. Specifically, Talking Heads, Fela Kuti, and Mew. We wanted to make a really joyful sort of bizarre album.” And with Everybody, Come Outside! that’s exactly what Pomegranates have done. John Freeman

—20 issue 62—

Head Rosetta Tim Baker’s own description of the music as “open, impassioned, lyrical rock with strings” is an over-modest appraisal of the band’s real power. Produced by singer-songwriter and fellow countryman Hawksley Workman, their debut full-length Into Your Lungs (And Around In Your Heart And On Through Your Blood) boasts the kind of string-laden swoon and bitter romantic croon that would turn even the most wide-eyed ingénue into a world weary emotional masochist.

Formed in the unlikely environs of the sleepy fishing port of St John’s, Newfoundland, by the restlessly creative Baker, Hey Rosetta! have in four short years firmly established themselves as critical and commercial darlings in their home country. It’s a trick they’re sure to repeat over here shortly with the release of Into Your Lungs and their recent string of epic live dates in London.

Typically understated, Baker himself is surprised by the band’s rapid evolution. “I came back from Montreal University with a briefcase full of songs and no real direction or money. I went searching around for the right folks to join me. That was in the spring of 2005.

And now it’s 2009. I have no idea what happened in the meantime! A lot of travelling I guess. And a lot of surreality.” Joe Nawaz

‘Deaf’ explores textures and atmospherics, and sounds like doom-mongers The Cranes being resuscitated by Massive Attack. “We’re really into hypnotic groups like Can,” Wendy says. The track now neatly ends the duo’s re-released eponymous debut album, paving the way for further sonic exploration. “Of course, you take on new influences all the time and kind of hone the sound,” adds Richard. “Ultimately, you’re trying to purify something so it becomes like perfume, where you take rose petals and in the end they become this one drop of purest essence. Ha, I just made that up!”

Wendy cracks the faintest of laughs, “He’s got some amazing metaphors, you wouldn’t believe. Pulls ‘em out all the time.”

Live, even after just a handful of gigs, We Fell To Earth are quite a spectacle. There is a dark intensity in their sound as beats throb amid ominous synths. Between songs, Fowler flashes a swooningly delightful smile and File fiddles with his all-important drum machine because, as he tells AU post-gig, “Grooves are the foundation, they always will be.” John Freeman

Joy Orbison REAL NAME: Peter O’Grady BASED: South London FOR FANS OF: Floating Points, Martyn, Gold Panda.

CHECK OUT: ‘Hyph Mngo’ 12”/download, out now on Hotflush.

WEBSITE: www.myspace.com/joyorbison If elusive genius Burial is the chronicler of late-night London – street lights reflected in puddles, the distant thump of an underground rave and half-heard arguments in fast food outlets – then Joy Orbison is the diametric opposite. Like his fellow south London native, 22-year-old Peter O’Grady takes two-step garage and dubstep as his starting point, but rather than going dark and eerie, his music is bright and euphoric – he’s in the rave, not skulking outside it.

O’Grady (who apparently flirted with the name Demon Albarn before settling on Joy Orbison) has released very little so far, but already he is a poster boy of British bass music. And there’s a very good reason for that – this summer’s debut 12” ‘Hyph Mngo’ caused jaws to drop and saliva glands to engage, as O’Grady emerged with two tracks of sheer, inarguable brilliance. He shares Burial’s genius for using chewed-up diva vocals, but instead of evoking tension and sorrow, he blends the ecstasy rush of classic house with Technicolor synths and bumping basslines. A delirious remix of Four Tet’s ‘Love Cry’ maintains the form, and a MySpace preview of his latest 12”, ‘BRKLN CLLN’/’J. Doe’ (released on his own label, Doldrums Recordings) would suggest that he’s only just getting started. Album please, sir. Chris Jones

Tickley Feather

Zealots

REAL NAME: Annie Sachs FORMATION: Philadelphia, 2004.

FOR FANS OF: Animal Collective, Björk, Atlas Sound.

CHECK OUT: The album Hors D’Oeuvres is available now via Paw Tracks.

WEBSITE: www.myspace.com/tickleyfeather

MEMBERS:

FORMATION: FOR FANS OF: CHECK OUT: WEBSITE:

Tickley Feather is 31-year-old Virginian Annie Sachs, who has spent the last few years hidden away raising her young son, and crafting her spectral sound. Having just released her second album, Hors D’Oeuvres, on Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label, Annie’s mix of lo-fi scuzz and a hillbilly Björk is as intoxicating as the woman herself.

“I’ve always liked to sing, and then I got a guitar,” Annie tells us as she sips her pre-gig lager. “A boyfriend at the time said, ‘You need to get a four-track’. My mom got me one – it was a $100 TASCAM – and that’s the thing I still use. In 2004 I was at home with my little boy while my friends were all out partying. That’s when I learnt to use the fourtrack and became friends with it.”

After relocating from Philadelphia, Annie recorded most of Hors D’Oeuvres in a dilapidated farmhouse, back in rural Virginia. Solitude was the key. “I have to be away from mothering and I have to have privacy as I’m really ashamed and embarrassed about singing. I’m trying to sculpt this thing – it’s a totally physical act to record.”

After her 2008 eponymous debut album caught the attention of Animal Collective, Annie toured the US with her new mentors. It was a surprisingly difficult time. “Their shows were all so huge – like 1,000 people – when I had not had experience of doing things like that before. That felt scary as shit. It was damaging in some ways – I was just not expecting to be analysed at all, I had not thought about an audience. I didn’t record again until this last summer.” Happily, the resultant Hors D’Oeuvres will whet your appetite for more Tickley Feather. John Freeman

Mark Scully (drums, vocals), Dan Woods (guitar), Ruth Kennington (vocals, synths, keys), Colum Jordan (bass, vocals).

Dublin, 2005.

Stereolab, Interpol, Wire.

Debut EP Flowers For My Broken Head, out now. www.myspace.com/zealotsmusic

After some serious line-up reshuffling and the acquisition of Ruth Kennington on vocals and keys, Zealots took some time out to revise and perfect their material. They finally emerged blinking into the sunlight this October with their first EP, the excellent Flowers For My Broken Head.

While still very much in the shadows of the Dublin music scene, it’s obvious that there is great potential here after an impressive performance at this year’s Hard Working Class Heroes festival and a number of support slots alongside a few of their more established counterparts. Subdued and understated, this is a band that does not arrive amidst fanfare; rather, they creep up and take you by surprise. Don’t expect to be left breathless on first sight, but then again don’t be surprised when for days after hearing them you feel their dark melodies echoing and the memory of Ruth’s deceptively innocent vocals carving away at your brain.

With elements of the sugared vocals of Lush and Stereolab but with less shoegaze and riffs reminiscent of Interpol, Zealots crush a mélange of influences together to create something not wholly unique, but certainly captivating. Perhaps their only issue is that the stand-out tracks tend to stand out a little too much, leaving a couple of songs in their catalogue sounding less than overwhelming. But there is definitely something bewitching about these unusual electro-indie rockers, and we can only expect to be captivated by more of their magic in 2010. Louise McHenry

—21 AU Magazine—

Upfront

Hey You!

Words and Photos by Richard W Crothers

Ryan Orr Dead Vito – She’s Beautiful But Fakes It Rush – Tom Sawyer Tool – Stinkfist

What's on your iPod?

Interesting Fact – His band used to be called Red Lemonade, but people kept asking why, so the group changed their name to Ruby’s Masquerade. When we asked ‘why?’, Ryan walked away.

What’s On Your Mind?

Insight And Insanity From The AU Forum RE: STONE ROSES VS IAN BROWN SOLO Mypilot: Comparing Ian Brown solo to the Stone Roses is like comparing Buckfast to champagne. Now, you may very well prefer the former, BUT if you do, the chances are you’re an uncouth yob with not much in the way of good taste.

Rebecca McCusker

Olivia McCormack

Georgie Ross

Kings Of Nothing – Over The Counter Culture Hot Snakes – 10th Planet Death In Vegas – Girls

Cream – White Room Biffy Clyro – Who’s Got A Match?

Rise Against – Under The Knife

Black Keys – I Got Mine Bon Iver – Blindsided Karen Dalton – Katie Cruel

Interesting Fact – Olivia cannot make caramel. She tried, but only succeeded in making a bit of a mess and causing some collateral damage to her house.

Interesting Fact – Cannot use a glue gun correctly (proved this by showing AU her burnt up, messy hands).

Interesting Fact – Rebecca has four metal screws in her elbow.

RE: MOST ROMANTIC GESTURES CallMeKatya: I don’t think I’ve ever done anything romantic for anyone, because I’m selfish like that. Sometimes though, I will send a text with an “x” at the end. Not often though, I try to reserve that for Christmas and birthdays. Keepin’ them on their toes.

Watercolourbynumbers: I took the Mrs to Paris ... she’s now the ex Mrs ... not romantic enough.

RE: STUPIDEST THING WHEN DRUNK

Scorchy Mackin

Matthew Jackson

Jamie Langston

Machine Head – Days Turn Blue To Gray In Case Of Fire – Parallels Placebo – Every You Every Me

Panama Kings – Sky, Forever & Consequence Ruby’s Masquerade – Over Simon And Garfunkel – Mrs. Robinson

Death Cab For Cutie – I Will Follow You Into The Dark Rend Collective – Faith Two Door Cinema Club – I Can Talk

Interesting Fact – Matthew is scarred from hip to hip.

Interesting Fact – Once climbed on stage in front of 10,000 people.

Interesting Fact – Miss Mackin has a very strong fear of bananas! How strange.

Peter Martin

Julie Armstrong

Anthony Breen

MGMT – Kids Seu Jorge – The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions CSS – Move

Sigur Rós – Gobbledigook The Priests – Pie Jesu Gipsy Kings – Allegria

The King Blues – I Got Love Setting Of Sinners – Protest Song Fight Like Apes – Jake Summers

Interesting Fact – She once found a love heart with her name on it, but let’s ignore that and make fun of her for listening to The Priests.

Interesting Fact – Anthony tried to be smart and give us a web address. If I could read his writing we might have put it in, but I doubt it.

Interesting Fact – Over the past three years, Peter has not lived in the same place for more than six months. Wherever he lays his Y-fronts, that’s his home.

—22 issue 62—

Strider: Got completely blocked at Immortal Technique and ended up scouring the Holylands for parties. We came across this house on fire and ran in with the firefighters up the stairs until they realised and shouted at us to get out. That night is a bit hazy for me. I woke up in some Botanic park on top of a child’s playing frame with an absolutely brutal headache, barely able to walk. Luckily there was a taxi somewhat nearby.

Georges Grun: Opened the passenger car door and ‘skied’ down the O’Neill Road (quite steep if driving down as far as the lights beside Whiteabbey hospital) whilst holding onto said passenger door window, during an icy February night.

Burnt kitchen at 4am, classic falling asleep with the oven on. Bought Nazi paraphernalia off Amazon.

JOIN THE FUN AT WWW.IHEARTAU. COM/FORUM

—23 AU Magazine—

Upfront

The Answer Tour Diary

On The Road With The Answer

As the County Down band’s year-and-a-bit with AC/DC comes to a close, drummer James Heatley reflects on some of the best craic yet, including a proper Jim’ll Fix It moment in Austin...

So, we have now finished touring with AC/DC – for the time being anyway. But there are still a few tales to tell – two in particular come to mind and it just so happens that they concern The Answer’s favourite places in America – New Orleans and Austin, Texas.

The last leg of the AC/DC tour is spent in the southern states of America. At the end of October, we make our way down to New Orleans, driving over the legendary Lakes of Pontchartrain, through Mississippi and into Louisiana. For some time, it seems that everyone we meet in America asks, “Have you been to New Orleans?” then add something along the lines of, “Oh, you boys will have some fun in New Orleans!” As such, we’ve built it up in our heads for ages and are all really looking forward to getting there.

Unfortunately for myself and Paul [Mahon, guitar], when we arrive we are nursing some of the worst tequila hangovers known to man and can’t move, but everyone else immediately heads off to the French Quarter to meet the AC/DC guys. From what we are told, a barrage of strip joints, crazy clubs and dirty bars ensue. Eventually everyone settles at what is to become known as “the best bar in New Orleans”.

At one point in the night, there is a 50-strong squad of Answer and AC/DC band and crew drinking in this small

bar – among them some of the biggest and hardest, most heterosexual men you have ever met in your life – truck drivers, riggers, techs, and so on. As the night goes on, one by one, more of the band and crew trickle back to the buses – stocious. But as we all turn in for the night there is no sign of Cormac [Neeson, vocals] or our soundman, Dan. In fact, they aren’t seen until it is near time for soundcheck the next day. We can’t get much out of them but, apparently, they got stuck in morning rush hour traffic on their way back from the night out. That’s rock ‘n’ roll right there.

Now, for the punch line. The next night after the show we all head into town again, this time including Paul [Mahon, guitar] and myself – raring to go. Everyone suggests that we go back to the bar they were at the night before. Sure, why not? We walk in and have one look around. “Lads, I hate to tell youse this – this is a gay bar!” I say, and suddenly it all becomes obvious. Ha ha.

Friday, November 6 finds us in Austin, Texas. This is our fourth visit to Austin. As I mentioned, it’s one of our favourite places in the world and somewhere we would all highly recommend visiting. Anyway, back to the story – during AC/DC’s last song ‘For Those About To Rock’, all of The Answer are standing down at the side of the stage.

Brian Johnson comes over to sing to the audience in the tiers of seats above us. But then he spots us all standing there.

As he sings the words “We salute you!” and the cannons fire, he points, first, at me, then Paul and Micky [Waters, bass], dedicating a line to each of us. Then, in front of 15,000 people he spots Cormac standing at the end and instead of singing the line he says, “Alright Cormac,

—24 issue 62—

me son” and gives him a salute. We just stood there speechless. AC/DC saluting The Answer!!!

The next day we get a call from AC/DC’s tour manager: “The band want to take you out for dinner.” Well, what can you say? A few hours later, we are eating what is probably the best food that we have ever tasted – $150 steaks and unbelievable seafood. Them AC/DC boys know how to do it. Angus turns and says to me, “How’s your grub, James?” I nod approvingly. “It’s just, the place we wanted to take youse to was booked up.” I can only imagine what that would have been like.

Sunday November 8: Houston, Texas. The end of an era. Tonight, we wrapped up our time with AC/DC. The band presented us each with a plaque about 4x4 foot in size saying: “AC/DC Black Ice Tour 2009 – AC/DC would like to thank James Heatley – The Answer for 118 gigs – a year in rock ‘n’ roll”. You said it boys.

And so I finish on that high note. As these articles have shown, 2009 has been quite a year for The Answer, one we will never forget. But bigger and better things are just around the corner. So we will see you all at the Ulster Hall on December 14, and those of you we don’t see – have a Merry Christmas. We will get you in the New Year.

James Heatley AS THE MAN SAID, THE ANSWER PLAY THE ULSTER HALL, BELFAST ON DECEMBER 14, WITH SUPPORT FROM BLACK SPIDERS AND SWANEE RIVER WWW.THEANSWER.IE

Flashback

Rewind

Altamont

December 6, 1969.

35

Years ago

It was the death of the dream – the end of an era. In one fell swoop, the entire hopes and fears of a generation were made horrifyingly real.

In a flash of metal upon metal, the Sixties died, splattered with blood and tears, whilst the band thundered on in the background. This was Altamont – this was the end.

Words by Steven Rainey The Rolling Stones had not had a good year. Guitarist Brian Jones had departed the band in June, amid increasing paranoia caused by his excessive drug use. He was found dead a month later, amid circumstances which have never been resolved. Despite making some of the best music of their career, the band found themselves under siege, torn apart from within, and targeted by the press and the authorities. Two days after Jones’ death, the band performed at a free concert in London’s Hyde Park, paying tribute to the deceased Jones, and attempting to reconnect themselves with their people.

They were introduced as “The greatest rock and roll band in the world,” and they were determined to live up to the appellation.

aficionados as security during the Hyde Park concert, and acting upon the advice of the Grateful Dead, hired the San Francisco chapter of the Angels to act as security for the event, reportedly for £500 worth of beer.

A lack of facilities and the widespread availability of drugs and alcohol had led to the mood of the concert growing increasingly agitated as the day had gone on.

Fights had broken out between audience and ‘security’, with the Angels arming themselves with pool cues and chains to subdue the crowd. By this point, the ‘peace and love’ ideals that the concert was supposed to be celebrating were notably absent.

The Woodstock festival in New York State took place in August, and it had proved to be a focal point for the hippie generation, overcoming the various difficulties it faced to become a celebration of the ‘peace and love’ ethos of the day. The Stones were scheduled to play the Altamont Free Concert, anticipated to be a Woodstock for the West Coast. As the end of the decade loomed large, the Stones seemed determined to greet the Seventies with a renewed sense of optimism and carry through the idealism of the hippie movement to a new generation. Sadly, things didn’t turn out this way.

By the time the Stones took to the stage, the mood was poisonous, with open hostility dominating the crowd.

During their performance of ‘Under My Thumb’, things fell apart, and in an instant, the utopian dream of the Sixties went up in flames. During an attempt to storm the stage, 18-year-old Meredith Hunter was attacked by the Hells Angels security, and chased back into the crowd.

After his girlfriend pleaded with him to calm down, he drew a long barrelled revolver from his coat. Alan Passaro, one of the Angels security, charged at him from the side, deflecting the revolver and stabbing him twice with a knife.

The Grateful Dead had been using the Hells Angels biker gang as security at their concerts, perceiving the Angels as the “outlaw brothers of the counterculture.”

The Stones had used a group of British Hells Angels

The band continued to play, and the rest of their set passed off without any major incident, but the damage had been done. The coroner’s report showed that Hunter had been high on methamphetamine when he’d been

stabbed, and Alan Passaro was eventually acquitted of murder, after a jury decided he had acted in self-defence.

But the counterculture never really recovered from this incident, perhaps finally learning that every action must result in consequence. Whilst they had aimed for a society of peace and love, where freedom and harmony ruled the day, in the end they were torn apart from within, rather than from without.

The counterculture retreated within itself, never recovering from staring into the abyss. Cynicism and bitterness dominated the Seventies, with the hopeful optimism of the Sixties seemingly buried beneath an ocean of remorse. The hippie movement had devoured itself, and left only death in its wake.

And for those that had been there, they were left with a painful reminder of what had taken place, something that would never leave them – a documentary crew filming the concert had recorded the entire incident on film for the Rolling Stones film, Gimme Shelter. There, in all of its Technicolor glory, was the exact moment the utopian dream died; idealism devouring itself.

And the Stones? They just kept on rolling, unable – or unwilling – to salve the wounds of the culture they had helped birth. When one considers the grotesque parody they have become, perhaps we can spare a thought to the spectre of death that lies at their very core, and forgive them their mistakes. After all, not everyone has to carry the demise of hope upon their shoulders.

—25 AU Magazine—

History Lessons -Kevin Cummins

MORRISSEY, ROCHDALE CANAL, MANCHESTER, SEPTEMBER 5, 1989

issue62— 60— —26issue —26

Rewind

History Lessons - Kevin Cummins

—Kevin Cummins takes photographs of people. The difference between him and a high street happy snapper is that his art resides in the National Portrait Gallery, and his pictures of musicians have become iconic – be it Ian Curtis smoking a cigarette, a paint-spattered Stone Roses or Sean Ryder clinging to a huge letter ‘E’.

AU buys a pint for the man who has defined the visual image of Manchester’s musical history over the last 30 years.

Words by John Freeman Kevin is also a huge football fan, of Manchester City in particular, and AU arranges to meet him outside Altrincham’s ground, where he’s just been a guest of the directors at a non-league match. Hence, he’s looking very dapper (“I look like I’m dressed for a wedding”) in a dark suit and pointy shoes. We agree to head off to a gastro-pub in a leafy Cheshire suburb of his beloved Manchester. By chance, the place is of childhood significance. “I grew up round the corner from here. I used to sit outside this pub, waiting for my dad while he had a pint on a Sunday lunchtime. I’ve never actually been inside,” Kevin tells us.

Once inside, and pint in hand, Cummins is affable and a consummate storyteller – well aware that he has three decades of awesome music anecdotes stowed away. Only at the mention of Manchester United, Duran Duran and certain NME writers does he become anything less than utterly charming. Even though he’s got a rather fabulous new book to promote (Manchester: Looking For The Light Through The Pouring Rain), he seems quite content to indulge AU and relive a multitude of memories.

Photography seems to have been in Kevin’s blood. “My dad and my granddad were both keen amateurs. They both had dark rooms, so from a very early age I used to take photographs. I could process and print photographs before I was old enough to go to school.” But it was his love of music which began to map out a career path.

“I was the eldest in the family, and my musical tastes were influenced by my mum’s friends’ kids. I went to see Hendrix at the [Manchester] Palace, when I think Lulu was on the same bill! The first album I bought with my own money was Sergeant Pepper. I just liked anything really, I didn’t have a developed taste.

have 10 more pictures’, they’d be delighted. It’s just that I’d quite like them to buy them, instead of just having to give stuff away. They say ‘You’re donating it to the nation’, or something like that.”

Perhaps Cummins’ greatest work was with Joy Division.

His seminal shots of the band captured on a bleak, snow-filled Mancunian cityscape, or practising in a derelict rehearsal room, are truly timeless images. Kevin is justifiably bullish about his influence on the way fans interpreted the visual aesthetic. “I think I helped to define how a generation thought about Joy Division. I was trying to take photographs of them while reflecting their sound and music, and their appeal. So, I wanted pictures of sparseness and I wanted that bleakness which that urban landscape had at the time, because I felt that’s what their lyrics and music had.”

However, Kevin didn’t always plan it that way. “I didn’t think I was defining this for a future generation, because I was really defining it for next week’s NME. I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. When I photographed Joy Division in the snow, which has become the determining image of the band, I was actually worried about the snow.

I was always thinking with an editorial head on. I thought that if we run this in two or three weeks, we’ll look stupid because the snow will have gone.”

Cold, hard economics came into it, too. “I was restricted by the amount of film I had. If that picture of Joy Division went over half a page in NME in 1979, I got £6.50 for it. It cost me £10 for a roll of film, processing costs and contact sheets, so I was losing three-and-a-half quid on every shot I did. Now, of course, I shoot digitally, so it has changed because you can shoot forever and you’re not waiting for specific moments.”

“The reason I got really into photography was that I loved going to gigs. Initially, I’d take the college camera bag to gigs at the Free Trade Hall [in Manchester] and just walk in. There were no passes in those days. After doing that two or three times, I decided to put a camera in the bag and start taking pictures. That’s when I thought I could do this for a living.”

So, in a world of multiple music channels on TV, and internet downloading, has the role of photography changed in music? Kevin nods, “Stuart Maconie recently said, ‘Kevin made bands iconic, but I can’t remember a single picture that’s been taken in the last 10 years that you would ever think is an iconic, or defining, picture of a band’. That’s not simply down to digital [photography] – there’s too much mass media.”

And it’s been quite a career. Kevin was chief photographer for the NME for over 10 years, and has three of his pictures on permanent display in London’s National Portrait Gallery, a fact of which he is rightfully proud. “It validates what you’re doing, doesn’t it? You don’t just want your mum to pat you on the head and tell you you’re doing OK. If I said to them, ‘You could

Even when sat opposite a plucky AU journalist, Kevin is quite happy to reflect on the office politics at work in the NME office of the 1980s. “I’ll make myself really unpopular now, but you’re commissioned generally by writers, and writers, with the best will in the world, are not visual people. They’d say ‘The Wonder Stuff AUMagazine— Magazine— —27AU —27

“I think I helped to define how a generation thought about Joy Division”

IAN CURTIS, JOY DIVISION; FUTURAMA, QUEEN’S HALL, LEEDS, 8 SEPTEMBER 1979 —28 issue 62—

History Lessons

Kevin Cummins

OASIS; SLY STREET, EAST LONDON, 21 FEBRUARY 1994 have a got a new record called ‘Size Of A Cow’, so why don’t we photograph Miles Hunt next to a cow?’ The worst NME covers of all time have all been writers’ ideas. At the NME there was such disdain for the photographer. In the days before computers, we’d have a slide projector and we would project several images on to the side of a cupboard, where a template cover was taped up, so we could see what would work as that week’s cover. The photo credit on the side of this mock template was ‘Photo taken by some chancer with a licence to print money’. And that’s how the writers thought of us.”

However, the notion of the visual image framing a band’s musical context was not lost on one budding photographer in particular. “A few years ago, I was doing a talk in Manchester about media manipulation with Tony [Wilson] and Bill Drummond,” Kevin explains. “I was saying that I never released pictures of Ian Curtis smiling, because that wasn’t the image we were trying to project. At the end of the talk, this girl came up to me really shyly and said ‘Have you got any pictures of my dad smiling?’ It was obvious whom she was when I looked – I could see it in her eyes. We had a really weird night, just sitting around talking about him.” Natalie Curtis, daughter of the Joy Division singer, is now a hugely talented photographer in her own right.

Even though he’s lived in London for over 20 years, Cummins has become most highly renowned for his work with Manchester artists. And it’s an impressive list – as well as Joy Division, The Stone Roses, New Order, Buzzcocks, The Smiths and Oasis, he’s photographed the likes of The Fall’s Mark E Smith for over 30 years.

Some subjects are easier to photograph than others.

“Mark always looked old and then he’s grown into his face more. Because he’s got such a lot of character in his face, he’s easy to work with and you can always, always get something out of that.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Morrissey and the Happy Mondays were a joy too. “Morrissey has an idea of how he wants to look, but what he also likes to do is experiment. If you photographed Morrissey, he didn’t look at his watch after 15 minutes and say ‘Right, I’ve had enough’. I’ve not photographed him for ages. Morrissey moves on. I’ve done the photos of Morrissey I want. I’ve done him at his best, I think.”

And as for Shaun Ryder and his merry bunch of ecstatic urchins? “They just did whatever I asked them

to, as they trusted me. I went down to the Hacienda to meet them one afternoon. Tony [Wilson] said to Shaun [Ryder], ‘This is Kevin, he’s photographed the Sex Pistols and Ian Curtis’, and Shaun went, ‘They’re fucking dead!’. I just thought, ‘This is gonna be a bit tough’. I was talking to them and said ‘How do you see yourselves? How would you like to be portrayed?’

They said, ‘We want our picture taken with Rambo’.

Wilson starts fidgeting about and I said to him, ‘So, have you got Sly’s number then?’ and Shaun looked at me and said, ‘No, you daft cunt, there is a picture of him on a billboard across the road’. They just wanted to be photographed by that. What I liked about that was that it was so un-Factory, it was the complete antithesis of everything that had gone on before it, which was this über-cool style.”

while Courtney Love was a particular favourite – “She was fantastic, we got on really well. I photographed her before and after [Kurt Cobain’s death].”

Many of these artists have become great friends with the photographer, allowing him access to a more private side to their public personae. He’s particularly defensive of the Gallagher brothers. “With Liam, most people think he’s just a lad and kicks off all the time. He is an incredibly beautiful-looking person and that’s what I wanted to show in the pictures. All the pictures of Liam, he looks great in them, because that’s how I see him.

So getting back to all things Mancunian, what about this new book then? Manchester: Looking For The Light Through The Pouring Rain is a beautiful collection of Cummins’ photographs of Manchester and its bands.

The pictures are interspersed with luminous prose by the likes of former NME accomplice Stuart Maconie, Johnny Marr and his old chum Mark E Smith.

“Once, I was sat in a pub in Shoreditch with a mate and the only other person in the pub was sat with his back to us, and he turned round and it was Liam. He came and sat with us and then my phone rang, and it was my daughter. He’s met her a few times, and Oasis are her band. Liam said, ‘Is that Ella?’ and he took the phone off me and went and sat in a corner for half an hour and chatted to my daughter. He made her day, not that she would have ever let on.

At the other end of the likeability spectrum, a couple of groups didn’t enamour themselves to Cummins.

“There have maybe been two bands I’ve worked with that I just couldn’t stand. Duran Duran were the worst people I’ve ever met, and New Model Army who, well, who cares about them? What I can’t stand is bands who don’t respect what photographers do on our side of the business. We make them interesting for the general public. What will the public remember? They will remember great music, of course they will. But, they also remember great visuals and great one-liners.”

“It was a very hands-on process for me, and Faber [& Faber], who are a big publisher, indulged me by agreeing for me to do it in my time,” admits Kevin. “It was important to be a certain size, because it is a book you can hold and read. You can read it like a novel, as it’s got a beautiful narrative flow, because you go from the words into the pictures and the pictures are telling you a story. You have to read it. It’s not a compendium of Manchester bands, it’s the best photographs and they tell their own story.”

“That says a lot about Liam to me – he’s a very, very, very generous bloke, as is Noel. They’re both really lovely – I’ve never seen another side to them.

Obviously, they kick off with each other, but I would with my brother.” And what’s Kevin’s view on the recent demise of Oasis? He flashes a wry smile.

“I did say to Noel that it gives them the opportunity in 10 years’ time to get back together, do the 25th anniversary tour and probably make even more money.”

The cover of the book defines what makes Kevin Cummins’ work so evocative – it’s a picture of Morrissey in silhouette stood on the bank of a canal, under an iron bridge. “You don’t have to know its Morrissey to know it’s a picture of Manchester – it’s a very Northern image.” A picture, indeed, can speak a thousand words.

But Cummins is not just the visual documenter of Manchester music – he’s photographed some major international stars including U2, Madonna and Michael Stipe (“He’s alright, he can be hard work”),

MANCHESTER: LOOKING FOR THE LIGHT THROUGH THE POURING RAIN, PUBLISHED BY FABER & FABER IS AVAILABLE NOW WWW.KEVINCUMMINS.CO.UK —29 AU Magazine—

A-Z -Aliases

—30 issue 62—

Rewind

A to Z - Aliases

—What’s in a name? Well, a name is primarily used to identify yourself to other members of the human species.

All well and good if you’ve nothing to hide. However, from time to time, certain of us have cause to conceal our true identity, whether we are on the run from the authorities having committed some kind of heinous crime, or are simply a musician in the world of hip-hop, where it’s a case of the more epithets, the better. In the view of AU, we could all use an alias or two. Besides serving the useful purpose of keeping one’s real name hidden, they also quite often sound pretty cool. So join with us in leaving your drab old moniker behind and reinventing yourself with a new and exciting soubriquet like, I dunno, Howlin’ Guns McGraw. Or something.

Words by Neill Dougan Illustration by Neil Gillespie

A IS FOR ARAGORN

The mysterious Ranger from Tolkien’s epic Lord Of The Rings went by more monikers than he had hot dinners (although, in fairness, since he lived mostly outdoors, surviving on his wits, he probably didn’t actually have that many hot dinners, but you get the drift). Call him what you will – Aragorn, Strider, Longshanks, the Dúnadan, Elessar Telcontar, Wingfoot – you can’t deny he’s one dashing mofo. And – if you’re talking about Viggo Mortenson’s portrayal in the movie trilogy – incredibly sexy to boot. Or so we’re told.

B IS FOR CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Hard livin’, womanising writer Charles Bukowski poured out the tawdry, hilarious and often moving details of his life into such classic novels as Post Office, Factotum, Hollywood and Ham On Rye. In five of his books, Bukowski’s protagonist was a thinly-veiled version of himself called Henry ‘Hank’ Chinaski. See what he did there with the whole ‘Bukowski’/‘Chinaski’ thing? Oh, Charlie, you fiendishly inventive devil.

C IS FOR COMMUNISTS

The Russian revolutionaries at large in the early years of the 20th century were great craic altogether. It was all intrigue, insurrection and – most importantly – multifarious pseudonyms. Notable amongst them were Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (known to most of us as Lenin), Lev Davidovich Bronstein (aka Trotsky) and, of course, the greatest japester of them all, Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, later to find notoriety as Stalin, which literally translates as ‘steel’. How cool is that? Shame about all the mass murder and whatnot, but still.

D IS FOR DOOM

The man born Daniel Dumile in London was later to make his name in the world of left-field hip-hop as a whacked-out New York MC capable of hilarious, baffling and frighteningly accomplished flights of linguistic fancy.

In true hip-hop fashion he has also dropped rhymes under a head-spinning array of titles – there’s his main stage

name MF Doom (latterly shortened to plain old DOOM) as well as King Geedorah, Viktor Vaughn, Metal Fingers and the Supervillain. That’s not even mentioning his allstar collaborations with Dangermouse and Madlib under the names Dangerdoom and Madvillain respectively.

All the while wearing a gladiator mask to keep his true identity hidden. Yes, he’s a bit strange.

E IS FOR EMINEM

Globe-conquering rap hero Marshall Mathers was once just an aspiring, down-at-heel Detroit rapper who had made a minor splash under the name Eminem (which he hit upon by taking the first initials of his first and last names and putting them together – ‘M and M’, geddit?). But it wasn’t until he chanced upon the idea of filtering the thoughts and fantasies of a foulmouthed, drugged-up, outrageously offensive (and quite amusing) alter-ego called Slim Shady that he hit major paydirt. He was pretty good for a few years. Then he disappeared for a while. Then he came back. Wasn’t so good anymore. So it goes.

F IS FOR FATBOY SLIM

If you’re going to pursue a career as a hedonistic purveyor of good-time party music while caning it and generally ‘having it large’, you probably won’t get far with a name like Quentin. This was the conundrum facing Quentin Cook, once of Christian-Marxist indierockers The Housemartins, when he embarked on his DJing career. Is it any wonder, then, that he came up with the way more rock ‘n’ roll name of... er, Norman.

Right. He subsequently fared better under the far superior stage name of Fatboy Slim, scoring a string of hits in the late Nineties and helping to invent ‘Big Beat’ in the process (er, hooray). Getting into the swing of the whole alias thing, Cook has recorded under a baffling array of sobriquets, including Pizzaman, Brighton Port Authority and Mighty Dub Katz to name but a few.

He was even, at one point, rumoured to be the brains behind shady dubstep sensation Burial. However this was clearly untrue, as Burial is actually good.

G IS FOR THE GENERAL

Notorious Dublin gangster Martin Cahill made a name for himself in the 1980s with a series of

brazen, outrageous heists. Dubbed ‘The General’ by a fascinated Irish media, he once robbed a Garda Síochána depot for confiscated weapons, while on another occasion he made off with a series of priceless paintings from Russborough House in Wicklow, before being bumped off by the IRA near his home in Rathmines. Later immortalised by Brendan Gleeson in John Boorman’s 1998 biopic, the one remaining mystery of Cahill’s life is why he was actually called The General. Seriously, if you know, write in and tell us.

H IS FOR HANDLES

A ‘handle’ is the commonly-used slang term for the assumed names of CB radio enthusiasts (ask your granddad) or, to quickly bring us back to the 21st century, internet hacker-types. Famous hacker handles include ‘Condor’ (Kevin Mitnick, once the most wanted computer criminal in American history) and ‘Solo’ (Gary McKinnon, facing extradition to the States where he’s due to be banged up for infiltrating US military computer systems). Of course, the term ‘handle’ also refers to the usernames we give ourselves so we can pen screeds of anonymous invective on the internet. What a thing is man, eh?

I IS FOR YUSUF ISLAM

The man born Steven Demetre Georgiou later found fame with the rather catchier nom de stage of Cat Stevens, under which he penned several hit albums of mellow folk-rock such as Tea For The Tillerman and Teaser And The Firecat. Then, upon his conversion to Islam in 1977, he took the name Yusuf Islam, which latterly he has shortened to plain old Yusuf (the commercial demands of the music industry requiring that one adopt a catchy stage name whatever one’s religious beliefs might be).

Most recently seen being booed offstage in Dublin, which just goes to show that a customer-baffling series of name changes is – amazingly – no guarantee of continued public acclaim.

J IS FOR RUSSELL JONES

Known to you and I as Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Jones brought an air of outright lunacy to the already dangerous WuTang Clan, while going by a lengthy list of ludicrous monikers, including (but not limited to) Dirt McGirt, —31 AU Magazine—

Big Baby Jesus, Joe Bananas, Ol’ Dirt Schultz and Ill Irving the Murderer. Unfortunately for Russell, his many pseudonyms did not prevent the police from collaring him for his many criminal misdemeanours, including (but not limited to) assault, robbery, shoplifting and failure to pay child support for three of his 13 children. His early death of an overdose – in November 2004 aged 36 – was, sadly enough, not entirely unexpected. Truly, he was too crazy to live.

K IS FOR CLARK KENT Perhaps the most famous alias of them all, ‘Clark Kent’ is the earthly name assumed by Kal-El, native of the planet Krypton and known to the grateful citizens of Metropolis as Superman. Essentially immortal (unless you happen to have some kryptonite lying around), Superman nonetheless has the gullibility of the general populace to thank for his continued anonymity, fooled as they apparently are by the mere act of him donning a suit, a pair of spectacles and a nerdy, bumbling demeanour. Pathetic human scum.

L IS FOR LITTLE RICHARD

Known to his ma as Richard Wayne Penniman, Little Richard was arguably as pivotal as Elvis in the development of what we know and love as rock ‘n’ roll, hollering and screaming his way through formative classics like ‘Tutti Frutti’, ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly’. In his early days in family gospel group The Penniman Singers, he was also known as War Hawk, because of his ever-so-slightly raucous vocal stylings. Now aged 76, as well as a hugely influential musician he’s also been a faith healer and an ordained minister, and these days is notable for looking like Prince’s granddad in drag. Seriously, his appearance is quite odd.

M IS FOR MADLIB

Ridiculously prolific hip-hop DJ, rapper and producer extraordinaire Madlib (born Otis Jackson Jnr in Oxnard, California) is not only responsible for some of the most wondrous and out-there music you’re likely to hear. He’s also released it under a frankly perplexing host of names, including The Beat Konducta, Quasimoto (his helium-voiced rap alter-ego) and DJ Rels. Of particular note is Yesterday’s New Quintet – an entirely fictional jazz band with actual individual members (Ahmad Miller, Monk Hughes, Joe McDuphrey and Malik Flavor), in which each member is in fact Madlib himself. Not only that, but he’s gone on to release ‘solo’ albums under the names of the various Quintet members. Clearly not satisfied with inventing just the one group, he also made up a second fictional band, Sound Directions, under which name he released the winning The Funky Side Of Life in 2005. Jeez, these musician-types, eh? Way too much time on their hands.

N IS FOR NOM DE GUERRE

Literally a ‘war name’, the nom de guerre was an alias traditionally adopted by members of the French Foreign Legion, and later by members of the French Resistance in World War II, as a means of disguising their past.

In more recent times the term has come to mean a moniker adopted by terrorists, guerrillas, former SAS soldiers flogging tell-all memoirs, or indeed anyone who wishes to conceal their identity. Famous examples might include Carlos the Jackal (Venezuelan nutjob Ilich Ramirez Sanchez) and Nicolas Coppola, nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola, who adopted the stage name Nicolas Cage to avoid accusations of nepotism.

Then there’s Robbie Williams, who’s generally known by the name ‘Annoying Twat’.

O IS FOR WILL OLDHAM

Reclusive, luxuriously-bearded Kentucky songwriter Oldham began producing spooky, ramshackle deathcountry-folk-blues in the early Nineties. Confusingly, he did so under a variety of pseudonyms. First album, —32 issue 62—

1993’s eerie There Is No-One What Will Take Care Of You, came out under the Palace Brothers moniker, and a number of variations on the ‘Palace’ theme followed – Palace Songs, Palace Music and plain old Palace. He also released one album – 1997’s Joya – under his birth name, before settling on the name Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy for most releases since then, including his 1999 masterpiece I See A Darkness. All well and good, but all those different names make it bloody hard to track down his stuff in record shops. Very inconsiderate, Will.

P IS FOR PRINCE

Somewhat amusingly, the name ‘Prince’ is not an alias at all. In fact the lascivious funk-rocking singer of ‘When Doves Cry’ and ‘Purple Rain’ was actually christened Prince Rogers Nelson. For real.

Fair play to his parents, that’s some good naming right there. Perhaps mentally scarred by the fact that his outlandish real name had denied him the experience of ever having a proper nickname, Prince later totally flipped and renamed himself after an unpronounceable symbol of his own devising. Then he changed back to plain old Prince. Everyone was fairly relieved, to be honest.

Q IS FOR Q-TIP Born Jonathan Davis, Q-Tip found hip-hop immortality as the main MC of NYC legends A Tribe Called Quest before embarking on a successful – if truncated – solo career (his second solo album being shelved by his label at one point for being uncommercial). Also occasionally known to go by the slightly-less-catchy name Kamaal Ibn John Fareed and – in his guise as a producer – The Abstract. Just the three aliases then, Jonathan? Tsk. By established hip-hop standards, that’s positively shabby.

R IS FOR THE RAMONES

We’d wager that the names John Cummings, Thomas Erdelyi, Douglas Colvin and Jeffrey Hyman probably don’t mean much to you. But what if we told you that those same four everyday schmoes would later find fame as Johnny, Tommy, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone?

Shocking though it may seem, the four original members of the New York punk pioneers weren’t brothers at all. In fact, as warts ‘n’ all 2003 documentary End Of The Century made clear, they pretty much hated each other. Which, ironically, is actually the case with most real families. Funny old world, innit?

S IS FOR BERNARD SHAKEY

Bernard Shakey is the alias of choice of one Neil Young.

You may have heard of him – fairly successful Canadian singer-type fella. Pretty good songwriter. Shakey is the pseudonym traditionally chosen by Young for his various non-musical projects, for example his films such as Human Highway and Greendale. Sadly, Bernard Shakey happens to be the worst film director since Michael Bay, and his movies should be avoided like a nasty dose of the clap. Just stick to the songwriting, Neil. That, and the massive, 15-minute guitar freakouts for which you are also renowned. Those are pretty cool.

T IS FOR TIMBALAND

Über-successful R & B producer Timbaland – born Timothy Mosley but also known as Timbo, Thomas Crown, DJ Timmy Tim and DJ Tiny Tim – has brought his futuristic, hyped up sound to the work of many of the music world’s most successful artists, including Missy Elliott, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake. Throughout his many collaborations and productions, multiinstrumentalist Tim has enjoyed massive commercial success, while still retaining his credibility. Then he went and said he wanted to work with Coldplay, and all that went out the window.

U IS FOR THE UPSETTER

Legendary dub reggae pioneer and all-round headcase Lee Perry has churned out album after album of head-

melting dub madness since his debut The Upsetter in 1969 and along the way has assumed many monikers, most famously The Upsetter, Scratch or plain old Pipecock Jackson. Ask him how he got those nicknames, however, and he’s unlikely to remember, as his gargantuan intake of weed and alcohol over the decades has in all probability rendered him unable to recall what happened five minutes ago.

V IS FOR JOHNNY VEGAS

It may or may not come as a surprise to learn that this hefty north of England comedian was not actually born with the surname Vegas. Nor, indeed, was he christened Johnny. On the contrary, the big lad was known as Michael Pennington until his stand-up career took off in the mid-Nineties. Later lampooned the trend for celebrity wedding specials in trashy mags like OK! And Hello by selling the rights to his own nuptials to Viz comic for the princely sum of £1, a move that greatly endeared him to AU.

W IS FOR CHRISTOPHER WALLACE

Christopher George Latore Wallace was a veritable mountain of a man, standing at 6’3” in his sock soles and tipping the scales at over 20 stone. As a rapper he found fame under stage names The Notorious B.I.G and Biggie Smalls, and was also occasionally known as The Black Frank White, before the East Coast-West Coast hip-hop feud that raged in the Nineties saw him gunned down in LA in 1997 – a murder that remains unsolved to this day. The same feud also claimed the life of Biggie’s rival Tupac Shakur, but tragically left Puff Daddy walking around unscathed. Where’s the justice?

X IS FOR MALCOLM X

This legendary radical activist for the rights of African-Americans was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, later abandoning his ‘slave name’ in favour of the letter ‘X’ upon joining the Nation of Islam. Achieving fame and notoriety for his vehement denunciation of the crimes of the white man, he later changed his name again to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz when he converted to Sunni Islam, and has been regularly voted one of the greatest Americans in history. You might even say he was ‘X-cellent’. Sorry.

Y IS FOR JAMES YANCEY

Achieving success as a producer for Common, De La Soul and Busta Rhymes (among many, many others), Yancey – better known by his stage names J Dilla or Jay Dee – made his name with his unique, idiosyncratic beats, as highlighted by his final album Donuts, put together from his hospital bed and released just days before his death from the rare blood disorder TTP at the age of just 32. If he was somewhat underappreciated during his lifetime, he’s been elevated to near-sainthood since his passing, an untimely death traditionally being an excellent career move in the twisted and evil music industry.

Z IS FOR ROBERT ZIMMERMAN

Born in 1941, the young Robert Zimmerman abbreviated his first name to Bob, adopted the surname Dylan (in tribute to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas) and became one of the most influential rock musicians of all time. Perhaps in a tribute to hip-hop (or, er, perhaps not), mischievous prankster Dylan has gone under many, many pseudonyms over the years, including Elston Gunn, Tedham Porterhouse, Blind Boy Grunt, Elmer Johnson, Sergei Petrov, Jack Frost, Jack Fate, and Robert Milkwood Thomas. If you think that sounds a bit wacky, wait till you hear his new festive album, Christmas In The Heart. It’s completely off the wall.

Classic Album - Kate Bush

Rewind

CLASSIC ALBUM

Kate Bush – Hounds Of Love (1985)

There is perhaps no more distinct and idiosyncratic a character in 20th century music than Kate Bush. Not only is she an artist who has accomplished the rare feat of combining musical innovation with commercial success, but she has also managed to do so on her own terms whilst maintaining complete creative control of her work; even at a time when some of the biggest movers in the industry were unable to do so.

Add to this the fact that she was a young woman still in her twenties who had overcome the male-dominated nature of the music business, and you begin to fathom the influence she has had over pop music today.

Bush, in the words of one critic, “got all the mad women down from the attic and into the charts.”

Words by James Gracey Produced after The Dreaming – an album so dense, dark and progressive that it left many critics baffled – Hounds Of Love, Bush’s fifth studio album, would elevate her to new heights and ensure her recognition as the influential and groundbreaking artist she is still regarded as today. Reaction to Hounds Of Love was overwhelmingly positive – and even though this would go on to become her biggest hit to date, it didn’t mean she was any less experimental or meticulous in her approach than what had come to be expected from her.

Bush upgraded her home studio, a barn at her family farm in East Wickham, Kent, to allow her more creative freedom, time and control, and to ensure costs would be kept down. Maintaining full control, she produced the album herself, recording it over 18 months in a relaxed environment – her parents often cooked meals for the session players – sourcing the talents of myriad musicians including James Guthrie, who had worked as an engineer on Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Bush also travelled to Ireland to alleviate writer’s block and even recorded some material with Bill Whelan (of Riverdance fame) in Dublin’s Windmill Lane Studios.

Hounds Of Love is a concept album of two halves. The first is weaved around different ideas of ‘love’, ranging from

anthropomorphised love – chasing down and ripping to shreds those who experience it (‘Hounds Of Love’) – to the fierce maternal love of a woman attempting to protect her murderous son (‘Mother Stands For Comfort’). The second half – titled The Ninth Wave – evokes a narrative detailing the plight of someone lost at sea and waiting to die. The most daring and challenging aspects of the album lay in this section, as Celtic-inspired rhythms and percussion (‘Jig Of Life’) mesh with melodic piano compositions (‘And Dream Of Sheep’), vigorous string arrangements (‘Under Ice’) and moodily progressive pieces utilising layered synthesisers, drum machines and distorted voices (‘Waking The Witch’, ‘Watching You Without Me’).

and philosophy – ranging from Jacques Tourneur’s moody horror film Night Of The Demon and Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (‘Hounds Of Love’), to Peter Reich’s ‘A Book of Dreams’ (‘Cloudbusting’) – Hounds Of Love boasts some weighty concepts and intricate production values.

Yet it still manages to be an inviting, rich and rewarding album. It would produce no less than four Top 40 singles (‘Running Up That Hill’ – with its airy synthesised rhythms and driving drum beat; ‘Cloudbusting’ – featuring a video conceived by Bush and Terry Gilliam, and starring Donald Sutherland; ‘Hounds Of Love’ and ‘The Big Sky’ – an exuberant ditty about the innocence of young love), all highlighting Bush’s masterful command of the Fairlight synthesiser.

‘Hello Earth’ is imbued with a gentle majesty as Bush makes stunning use of a traditional Georgian folk song motif (also featured in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu – Phantom der Nacht) performed by the Richard Hickox Choir. Revered guitarist John Williams also contributes a whimsical piece for the last track (‘The Morning Fog’), ensuring the album ends on a hopeful note, as the narrator finds herself rescued from the dark water at dawn.

When the album was released it ousted Madonna’s Like A Virgin from the top of the charts and featured Bush’s most successful single (‘Running Up That Hill’) since ‘Wuthering Heights’. Innumerable critical accolades followed as she recaptured imaginations and even took America by storm; building on her reputation as an innovative and credible Ophelia of pop music. Bush’s vision has never been more unique, her sound more inimitable or her creativity as downright daring, or uncompromising as it is on Hounds Of Love.

Drawing inspiration from film, literature, psychoanalysis

—33 AU Magazine—

—34 issue 62—

THE TOP 50 Irish Albums Of The Decade

So here it is, the past 3,653 days of Irish music condensed down into the 50 best albums, as voted for by you – the readers of AU Magazine.

The final 50 makes for interesting reading and traverses a dizzying variety of genres to encompass a mix of magnificent debuts and career bests. Taken together, these albums signify that Irish music has never been in finer fettle.

Here’s to the next decade.

WORDS: NEILL DOUGAN, LEE GORMAN, CHRIS JONES, FRANCIS JONES, NAY MCARDLE, AILBHE MALONE, STEVEN RAINEY, RIGSY, JONNY TIERNAN PHOTOGRAPHY: CARRIE DAVENPORT, LILI FORBERG, GAVIN MILLAR, LOREANA RUSHE

THE TOP 50 50 BOXCUTTER ONEIRIC (2006)

Deep and dubby debut album from Co. Armagh’s electronica godhead.

49 DAMIEN DEMPSEY SEIZE THE DAY (2003) Dublin’s working class hero invited Sinead O’Connor to guest on his second album.

48 ALLOY MENTAL WE HAVE CONTROL (2007)

Rabble-rousing techno from producer Phil Kieran and Belfast indie stalwarts Martin Corrigan and Danny Todd.

47 PATRICK KELLEHER YOU LOOK COLD (2009)

Startlingly creative debut album from electro-folk wunderkind.

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ROBYN G. SHIELS A LIFETIME OF MIDNIGHTS (2006)

BOXCUTTER GLYPHIC (2007)

JETPLANE LANDING ZERO FOR CONDUCT (2001)

The gorgeous debut from Belfast’s answer to Will Oldham.

45 SI SCHROEDER COPING MECHANISMS (2006)

The only album so far from the much-cherished indietronica boyo.

44 SO COW THESE TRULY ARE END TIMES (2007)

Tuam’s finest indie-pop star, and Pitchforkapproved. Ooh.

On his second album, Lurgan’s Barry Lynn unfurled the tight, meticulously programmed dubstep of debut Oneiric and exploded in a million directions at once – jazz, jungle, garage and IDM all get a look-in, and yet Glyphic remains remarkably cohesive.

It is a true masterwork, and it came at just the right time for Lynn to ride the dubstep boom, while at the same time standing proudly apart from it. CJ

Debut album from the Derry DIY heroes.

40 DESERT HEARTS LET’S GET WORSE (2004) Charley Mooney and friends’ first missive.

KEY TRACK: ‘GLYPHIC’

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GEMMA HAYES NIGHT ON MY SIDE (2002)

JJ72 JJ72 (2000)

The Mercury-nominated album featured the wondrous ‘Let A Good Thing Go’.

For a while, this lot were massive. Then it all just fizzled out. Shame.

Irish Albums Of The Decade

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CATHY DAVEY TALES OF SILVERSLEEVE (2007)

THE CHALETS CHECK IN (2005) Spunky indie-pop that, sadly, only lasted for one album.

Lisa Hannigan’s favourite Irish album of the decade (see p.15), and it beat her by one place.

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OPPENHEIMER TAKE THE WHOLE MIDRANGE AND BOOST IT (2008)

THE DIVINE COMEDY REGENERATION (2001)

Second album from America’s favourite NI indie band.

Nigel Godrich produced this record, a major departure for Neil Hannon at the time.

33 DELORENTOS IN LOVE WITH DETAIL (2007)

38 THE DIVINE COMEDY ABSENT FRIENDS (2004)

It was on Absent Friends that everything we love about Neil Hannon came together.

Beautifully. It’s a hugely ambitious record, drenched in orchestration and ambition (yet not a single note sounds out of place), swelling with sound and character. As always with The Divine Comedy, there are moments of mischief and majesty, sunshine and tragedy. In short, a breathtaking, glorious collection of songs. Rigsy KEY TRACK: ‘CHARMED LIFE’

37 BELL X1 FLOCK (2005)

They still haven’t truly broken through anywhere else, but this was the Kildare band’s first Irish #1 album.

36 THREE TALES THREE TALES (2008)

When Ben McAuley isn’t recording every NI band worth their salt, he’s knocking out gorgeous, fragile indie-folk as on this debut album.

27 FIONN REGAN THE END OF HISTORY (2006)

They released this album, then split up, then got back together, and then released another album.

Make your mind up, boys.

Mercury-nominated debut from the Bray folkie.

32 BELL XI MUSIC IN MOUTH (2003)

Native heroes’ second album and first substantial success.

31 JETPLANE LANDING ONCE LIKE A SPARK (2003)

The post-hardcore heroes’ second album and first to feature Fighting With Wire’s Cahir O’Doherty.

30 LISA HANNIGAN SEA SEW (2008)

A cohesive collection of songs that both lure and envelop the listener, Hannigan’s almost baritone range is equally joyous and seductive. Swirly, husky, enticing, a backing singer no longer, Sea Sew is the moment that Lisa Hannigan showed the whole world exactly what she was made of. If nothing else, it’s the sound of someone doing exactly what they want to do. AM KEY TRACK: ‘LILLE’.

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26 REPUBLIC OF LOOSE AAAGH! (2006) Mick Pyro’s funkateers step it up on album number two.

25 THE THRILLS SO MUCH FOR THE CITY (2003) Briefly darlings of the NME, The Thrills’ debut got to #1 in the Irish charts, #3 in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize.

THE TOP 50 GM

22 THE REDNECK MANIFESTO THIRTYSIXSTRINGS (2001) While post-rock got lost in itself, The Redneck Manifesto slipped free of the genre’s limitations to produce this imaginative debut by welding etheric instrumental drift with the precision timing and cursed riffs of hardcore.

Rich and warm, the heady mix of sweet pot and soundscapes over landscapes made Thirtysixstrings the catalyst album for Irish music’s reinvention.

NMcA KEY TRACK: ‘SLOW ON THE UPTAKE’

21 CLONE QUARTET WELL-OILED MACHINE (2007) Lean and direct indieelectro from Andy Henry and friends, and led off by the immortal ‘Carousel’.

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DESERT HEARTS HOTSY TOTSY NAGASAKI (2006)

DAVID KITT THE BIG ROMANCE (2001)

It starts with rumbling bass and textured atmosphere, but within moments, Desert Hearts have hit their stride, charging into the unknown, and dragging us all in their wake. The band’s second album is a quantum leap forward, taking all the sounds and themes of their debut, and developing them in ways no-one would have thought possible. This is absolutely vital music, and it still packs an atom bomb-sized punch. SR KEY TRACK: ‘GRAVITAS’

23 THE REDNECK MANIFESTO I AM BRAZIL (2004)

Still to be followed up, this was the band’s third album of the decade.

—38 issue 62—

Still Kitt’s most successful album, it went doubleplatinum in Ireland.

19 SIMPLE KID 1 (2003)

Ciarán McFeely’s appropriately-named debut album, which brought him considerable success in Ireland and the UK. He’s gone very quiet of late, though…

18 MUMBLIN’ DEAF RO THE HERRING AND THE BRINE (2007)

Self-deprecatingly-named Dublin fingerpicker with an incredibly committed following.

17 DUKE SPECIAL SONGS FROM THE DEEP FOREST (2006) The album on which Peter Wilson perfected his Duke Special brew, Songs From The Deep Forest was a potent concoction, bittersweet to the taste and intoxicating to boot.

With its sumptuous string arrangements, heightened sense of grandeur and brittle piano-led melodies this, his second longplayer, marked the ascension of Duke Special to the ranks of Irish music aristocracy. FJ KEY TRACK: ‘FREEWHEEL’

16 BATS RED IN TOOTH & CLAW (2009)

Incendiary dance-punkmetal from the mad scientists of Dublin’s suburbia.

15 DAVID HOLMES BOW DOWN TO THE EXIT SIGN (2000)

Following 1997’s awesome Let’s Get Killed it was never going to be easy, but Holmer pulled if off with aplomb with this sprawling, atmospheric mélange of strutting funk, gritty soul and raucous punk. An all-star cast of guests – Bobby Gillespie, Jon Spencer, Martina Topley-Bird and NYC beat-poet Carl HancockRux among them – all played their part in making Bow Down… an intoxicating, thoroughly addictive brew. ND KEY TRACK: ‘COMPARED TO WHAT’

Irish Albums Of The Decade

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14 SNOW PATROL WHEN IT’S ALL OVER WE STILL HAVE TO CLEAR UP (2001) Gloriously fragile and resolutely lo-fi, this was your last chance to see Snow Patrol before they went interstellar.

9 SNOW PATROL FINAL STRAW (2003)

11 ADEBISI SHANK THIS IS THE ALBUM OF A BAND CALLED ADEBISI SHANK (2008)

13 ASH FREE ALL ANGELS (2001)

Free All Angels is the sound of a hundred misspent summers, of melting ice-pops and heartfelt crushes in the sand dunes. From the earnest ‘Shining Light’ to the puppy-dog ‘Candy’, the teen heart has never been so eloquent. We can do teen-punk-rock too, Yanks. And do you know what? We can do it better. AM KEY TRACK: ‘SHINING LIGHT’

12 THE IMMEDIATE IN TOWERS AND CLOUDS (2006)

The one and only album from the now-defunct Dublin indie band, whose frontman Conor O’Brien has gone on to form Villagers.

If Crash Bandicoot could play bass, he’d join Adebisi Shank.

Dispensing with introductions, This Is The Album Of... bounds through 23 minutes of hairpin guitar turns, clocked to the same kicks of Krautrock, techno and math-rock. Racking up legions of bewildered listeners and bashing the mindboxes of Irish music critics, it dared to do what no other band could: romp home. N McA KEY TRACK: ‘SNAKEHIPS’

10 THE JANE BRADFORDS THE JANE BRADFORDS (2008) Since the release of the debut, Deci Gallen’s lot have undergone a bit of a countrified transformation, but this was choice electro-indie-rock.

Gary Lightbody and co hit paydirt with their third album, Iain Archer’s songwriting nous helping them strike a perfect balance between their early lo-fi cool and the stadiumshagging drama of today.

Traversing gritty poprock, chiming apology ballads and paranoid monologues, Final Straw has everything, but it’s the heart-stopping ‘Run’ that really makes it soar. LG KEY TRACK: ‘RUN’

8 FIGHTING WITH WIRE MAN VS MONSTER (2008)

The Jetplane Landingaffiliated alt. rockers signed to Atlantic Records, largely on the basis of this hook-strewn debut album.

7 THE FRAMES FOR THE BIRDS (2001)

Partly produced by Steve Albini, this was the band’s best-received album.

6 DAMIEN RICE O (2002)

Frighteningly successful debut album from the Dubliner, which arguably launched Lisa Hannigan’s career as well as his own.

—39 AU Magazine—

THE TOP 50

Irish Albums Of The Decade GM

LF

5

4

FIGHT LIKE APES FIGHT LIKE APES AND THE MYSTERY OF THE GOLDEN MEDALLION (2009)

OPPENHEIMER OPPENHEIMER (2006)

In the last 10 years (and since music began, really) way too many of the ‘big’ records offered up from the Republic were subtle efforts, presented by singer-songwriters and the type of band you could bring home to meet your mum. Thank God for Fight Like Apes, then, who took random musical reference points and assaulted them good ‘n’ proper. ...Gold Medallion was beyond exciting; a daft, clearly unsafe rollercoaster ride through the Technicolor amusement park that is their twisted minds. As for bringing them home to meet your mum? Not a good idea – they’d probably give her a wedgie. Rigsy

An album that never outstayed its welcome and left the listener yearning for an immediate repeat, the debut from the Belfast duo was an effervescent collection of perfect electropop nuggets. Brimming with melodic brio, of the record’s 14 short songs only two break the three-minute mark. This is to-the-point pop, with instantly enamouring and indelible anthems such as ‘Saturday Looks Bad To Me’ and ‘Breakfast In NYC’ providing abundant evidence of the pair’s intuitive songwriting talent. JT KEY TRACK: ‘BREAKFAST IN NYC’

KEY TRACK: ‘I’M BEGINNING TO THINK YOU PREFER BEVERLEY HILLS 90210 TO ME’

GM

3

DAVID HOLMES THE HOLY PICTURES (2008) Delving into his personal history, David Holmes unleashed perhaps his best album so far. Combining intimate storytelling with an expansive sound that takes in electronics, indie rock and icy Krautrock, The Holy Pictures uses the Belfast of days gone by as a blank canvas upon which to paint the future. Despite his Hollywood sensibilities, this is a ‘Belfast’ album through and through, and further testament to Holmes’ development as a true artist. SR KEY TRACK: ‘THE BALLAD OF SARAH AND JACK’ —40 issue 62—

LR

2

JAPE RITUAL (2008) Dublin’s favourite son Richie Egan had been making solid progress before this – ‘Floating’ is a classic – but nothing really prepared us for the leap forward in songwriting nous evinced on Ritual. Electo-pop that was by turns ebullient and contemplative, it offered further proof of Jape’s burgeoning talent and scooped 2009’s Choice Music Prize into the bargain. ND KEY TRACK: ‘STREETWISE’

This time last year, And So I Watch You From Afar were coming down from the high of their triumphant A Little Solidarity festival and a debut Mandela Hall show. Now, they find themselves on the brink of headlining the Ulster Hall and with an album hailed as the best this island has produced in the last 10 years. THE LAST 10 YEARS! HAVE THAT, BONO! Take a second to consider what they have achieved, and give yourselves a pat on the back while you’re at it for your exemplary taste.

As they are fond of saying themselves, they’re ‘just an AND SO I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR instrumental punk band from the north coast’, but this AND SO I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR award (2009) isn’t just a victory for the 50-odd minutes of music they unleashed in the Spring, it’s recognition of what the band mean to people; of their uncanny ability to connect with their fans, whether blogging at length from the road or chatting amiably to punters after the show; and whether playing live in huge venues (such as at the Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium where they were faced with a crowd of thousands) or in tiny dives.

Eastern Europe and finding salivating crowds ready and waiting for them. Next stops after Christmas? Holland, Russia, Texas!

As for the album? Yeah, that’s pretty cool as well. It didn’t take too long for the band to move from highly promising post-Explosions/Mogwai instrumental rock to the allyelling, all-thrashing post-rock-math-metal behemoth we know and love today, and the difference is there for all to hear in the transition from the (much cherished, by the way) mini-album This Is Our Machine And Nothing Can Stop It to the self-titled, [AU] chart-topping debut. The opening ‘Set Guitars To Kill’ is a ludicrously exciting statement of intent, and from then on the pace rarely slips.

The highlight? The heart-stopping metallic mayhem of ‘Clench Fists, Grit Teeth… GO!’. But you could equally make a case for the galvanising majesty of ‘Start A Band’, the shimmering oldie ‘The Voiceless’ or the song that defines the band and their beloved peers, ‘A Little Bit Of Solidarity Goes A Long Way’. If there is a flaw, it’s that there’s almost too much intensity; too much eye-popping energy to take in one sitting. But that’s the nature of the band; for better or for worse, they don’t do half measures.

This time last year, And So I Watch You From Afar were coming down from the high of their triumphant A Little Solidarity festival and a debut Mandela Hall show. Now, they find themselves on the brink of headlining the Ulster Hall and with an album hailed as the best this island has produced in the last 10 years. THE LAST 10 YEARS! HAVE THAT, And make no mistake, there have been plenty of those over the last few years,achieved, because ASIWYFA done ityourselves a pat on BONO! Take a second to consider what they have andhavegive the hard, old-fashioned way – quit your job, get in the van the back while you’re at it for your exemplary taste. and start slogging around the toilet venues of Britain and As I write this, the band have just Tweeted that they are

AND SO I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR

Ireland to build up an obsessed fanbase (many of whom putting the finishing touches to the opening track of the AND SO I now sport their iconic logo about their person), making second album, and that it “sounds like Arnie did when he WATCH YOU surethey’re that next time, they bring their mates along. Repeat pulled the tracking device out his nose in Total Recall.”

As they are fond of saying themselves, ‘just an instrumental punk band from ad infinitum. It’s a hard old grind at times, but it works.

Same again next year, then? Chris Jones FROM AFAR the north coast’, but this award isn’t just a victory forchatter theexcitedly 50-odd minutes of music Meanwhile, the converts online, word spreads, and before they know it the band are touring KEY TRACK: ‘CLENCH FISTS, GRIT TEETH… GO!’ (2009) they unleashed in the Spring, it’s recognition of what the band mean to people; of their

uncanny ability to connect with their fans, whether blogging at length from the road or chatting amiably to punters after the show; and whether playing live in huge venues (such as at the Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium where they were faced with a crowd of thousands) or in tiny dives.

And make no mistake, there have been plenty of those over the last few years, because ASIWYFA have done it the hard, old-fashioned way – quit your job, get in the van and start slogging around the toilet venues of Britain and Ireland to build up an obsessed fanbase (many of whom now sport their iconic logo about their person), making sure that next time, they bring their mates along. Repeat ad infinitum. It’s a hard old grind at times, but it works. Meanwhile, the converts chatter excitedly online, word spreads, and before they know it the band are touring Eastern Europe and finding salivating crowds ready and waiting for them. Next stops after Christmas? Holland, Russia, Texas!

As for the album? Yeah, that’s pretty cool as well. It didn’t take too long for the band to move from highly promising post-Explosions/Mogwai instrumental rock to the all-yelling, all-thrashing post-rock-math-metal behemoth we know and love today, and the difference is there for all to hear in the transition from the (much cherished, by the way) mini-album This Is Our Machine And Nothing Can Stop It to the self-titled, [AU] chart-topping debut.

The opening ‘Set Guitars To Kill’ is a ludicrously exciting statement of intent, and from then on the pace rarely slips. The highlight? The heart-stopping metallic mayhem of ‘Clench Fists, Grit Teeth… GO!’. But you could equally point to the galvanising majesty of ‘Start A Band’, the shimmering oldie ‘The Voiceless’ or the song that defines the band and their beloved peers, ‘A Little Solidarity Goes A Long Way’. If there is a flaw, it’s that there’s almost too much intensity; too much eye-popping energy to take in one sitting. But that’s the nature of the band; for better or for worse, they don’t do half measures.

As I write this, the band have just Tweeted that they are putting the finishing touches to the opening track of the second album, and that it “sounds like Arnie did when he pulled the tracking device out his nose in Total Recall.” Same again next year, then? Chris Jones KEY TRACK: ‘CLENCH FISTS, GRIT TEETH… GO!’

Photo by Carrie Davenport

—41 AU Magazine—

Sufjan Stevens

the Quiet American

EDWYN COLLINS TAKING THE PLEASURE WITH THE PAIN Do you like what was once aberrantly referred to as indie music? If you swoon to the literate romanticism of say, Camera Obscura, sway to the arch-pop savvy of, perhaps, Franz Ferdinand, or even sing along to ambitious outsiders such as The Smiths then you almost certainly owe a debt of gratitude to Edwyn Collins.

Words by Joe Nawaz

—42 issue 62—

As well as once upon a time fronting a ridiculously influential little Scottish band by the name of Orange Juice, Collins is also one of those ‘rare-as-hens-dentures’ figures from the post-punk milieu whose musical currency is equally as vital as their legacy. Brian Eno once said of the Velvet Underground that while only a couple of hundred people heard Lou and co’s albums, each of those hardened disciples went on to form bands themselves, thus disseminating the VU virus directly into the bloodstream of popular music culture. Ditto Orange Juice. From the legendary singles on the equally legendary Postcard label through their brief stint as pop stars with ‘Rip It Up’ to their untimely demise into near commercial obscurity, OJ’s influence far outweighed their sales. What’s puzzling though isn’t the huge reach of their influence, but the lack of success, because Orange Juice’s music simply shone.

They may not have had the technical virtuosity or production pyrotechnics of some of their more successful, soulless peers but the sheer ramshackle beauty and exuberance of their early music and the Sad Laments and peerless grooves that filled their later records made them one of the most important bands of the era. So much so that Simon Reynolds’ excellent and definitive book on the early Eighties post-punk scene wasn’t called What Difference Does it Make?, but rather Rip it Up And Start Again. Their creative constant was Collins – who wore his “fringe like Roger McGuinn’s” and his poetic heart on his starched, ironic sleeve.

Always waspish and witty in interviews and driven by an uncompromising musical vision, Collins never succumbed to the vacuous blandishments of a vapid record industry.

That made him both cool and unpopular. Years later, in the midst of the Britpop debacle, when he scored a deserved but shock monster hit with ‘A Girl Like You’ (a song as globally ubiquitous as nitrogen) he followed the success with stinging attacks on the contrived flag waving and faddish fakery of the so-called scene.

Most recently, it’s the brain haemorrhage and his subsequent contracting of the MRSA virus in 2005 which, sadly, have probably brought him most notices. He’s doggedly stayed on the road to recovery ever since, though, and it’s in this state of ascendancy that the esteemed Edwyn Collins is due to play the Out To Lunch Festival in Belfast in early 2010 – already one of the most hotly anticipated gigs of the new year.

It’s in this spirit of anticipation, then, that AU chats then to Edwyn Collins from his home studio, with the occasional assistance of his manager, partner and soul mate, the indefatigable Grace Maxwell. What starts out as a standard interview soon becomes a sprawling three-way hands-free yarn about life, love, Alastair Campbell’s resemblance to Malcolm Tucker, the difference between Orange Lodges here and on the West Coast of Scotland and much more, sadly, than can be contained within the confines of 1,600 words.

But, ‘Upwards and Onwards’, to quote the man. EC is funny, warm and a lot mellower than the firebrand one could have expected of old – something he rather disarmingly admits himself. He’s still a playful presence though and at one point when he admits to liking late Seventies plodder Joe Jackson he stops both Grace and I in our tracks as we’re not sure if he’s taking the piss or not. It wouldn’t be like him. The effusive and friendly Grace who, after 25 years, knows Edwyn inside out, occasionally helps answer or, getting carried away herself, even takes over.

“Whose bloody interview is this anyway?!” Edwyn cries out in mock indignation.

I start by sheepishly admitting to Edwyn that my old band once covered, nay buried, the Orange Juice classic ‘Flesh Of My Flesh’ – a fact that he has the good sense to laugh at and the good grace not to pass comment on. Grace reminds me of the opening couplet: “Here’s a penny for your thoughts / Incidentally you may keep the change” – “That’s just brilliant. I’m constantly reminded what a brilliant lyricist Edwyn is.”

She’s biased, of course, but she also happens to be right.

His appearance in Belfast will be the first time in nine years that a Northern Irish audience has had an opportunity to hear first hand just how right she is. For a man recovering from serious illness, 40 gigs in the past couple of years is astonishing testimony to Edwyn’s renewed powers. Make no mistake: Edwyn Collin’s recovery has been nothing short of miraculous. Grace points to the 2007 BBC documentary which poignantly showed him returning to his studio for the first time after his ordeal. The prognosis for future performance at that time looked heartbreakingly bleak.

“I had to re-learn all my songs.” he reveals. “It was really difficult, but it eventually paid off. I started with (OJ’s first ever single) ‘Falling and Laughing’, then ‘Home Again’,

“I had to re-learn all my songs.

It was really difficult, but it eventually paid off.”

‘Poor Old Soul’ and ‘A Girl Like You’.” Collins has now systematically re-learned 20 of his songs by rote and now sings them with a supreme confidence, the book of songs next to him on stage now little more than a “security blanket”.

Grace adds: “With sheer bloody-mindedness and practice he’s now absolutely brilliant. Looking at that documentary and then seeing his recent gig at the Bloomsbury Ballroom, the difference is stunning.”

He’s also recording again. 10 new songs are “shaping up nicely”. One of those songs, ‘I’m Losing Sleep’ is a Northern Soul stomper with a killer vocal and bodes extremely well for the new material. With the likes of Roddy Frame, Sex Pistol Paul Cook and Romeo from The Magic Numbers dropping by, there’s no shortage of illustrious friends, old and new, collaborating on new material, the first since the excellent Home Again was released in 2007. A certain Ryan Jarman of The Cribs also recently popped into the studio to co-write two songs, perhaps returning the favour for Edwyn producing their 2005 album The New Fellas, recently nominated as one of the albums of the decade by the NME. I take Edwyn back to his early OJ days in Glasgow, where in 1979 he, James Kirk, Steve Daly and David McLymont

“My arrogance really masked my shyness” first formed the musical blueprint and the music business model that would help define the sound and vision of a whole generation of bands. “We honestly didn’t have any agenda in Orange Juice other than making good music,” Edwyn reveals, somewhat surprisingly, considering the huge impact of that good music.

Grace adds that his eclecticism (which saw the band channel Chic, Buzzcocks and The Byrds in equal measure) and constant re-evaluation are what drove Orange Juice to the critical heights. Always revered by the critics, Orange Juice and Collins were nonetheless harassed by some purists for their ever-evolving output. Each album was different from the last – culminating in The Orange Juice album – a potted history of popular music filtered through Collins’ skewed romantic prism and a criminally overlooked masterpiece. Grace literally concurs with me. “Put down and criminally overlooked!” she jokingly observes. “The entire Orange Juice output is definitely due what they call a ‘full critical re-evaluation’.”

Quite why the man once described by The Guardian as “the Scottish Cole Porter” never conquered the hit parade is a source of much speculation. Certainly his sense of integrity and refusal to play the games required

for commercial success didn’t help. Nor, it seems, did his annoying habit of being smarter, funnier and more sarcastic than the people he was frequently interviewed by. “He was really quite withering,” says Grace. “He gave short shrift in interviews to people he considered to be not very good.”

“I didn’t!” protests a hurt Edwyn. “My arrogance really masked my shyness at the time.” A slightly disingenuous remark, but it’s certainly true that looking back to the mid-Eighties, with his film-star looks and wrought-ironic songwriting genius, he was a pop star in the making.

Music’s answer to Montgomery Clift.

The one thing that Grace says kept Edwyn going during the years when he “couldn’t get arrested” was his Protestant work ethic – a revelation I say, which may prove divisive in a Norn Iron music mag. Edwyn, I’m relieved to hear, laughs heartily. Denomination of industry notwithstanding, it was the drive to constantly make music that propelled Collins to quietly produce a steady stream of excellent music in the early Nineties, culminating in the release of the Gorgeous George album and, of course, the all-conquering single ‘A Girl Like You’.

When I put it to Grace that – catchy as the song is – it’s not even the best song on Gorgeous George, she tuts, “That’s a typical NME comment! It’s an instant classic. Edwyn’s a big fan of pure pop music and ‘A Girl Like You’ was just… poptastic!”

He adds: “A Girl Like You was the one. It started in Belgium, then France and then just continued. It was unstoppable. It built us our studio – some place to call home.”

It’s easy to forget just how huge ‘A Girl Like You’ was back in 1994 – you couldn’t turn on a radio, change a TV channel, or sit in a pub without hearing it. These days, while it may be the song that ‘one hit wonder’ Collins is forever associated with, it’s just the tip of the iceberg of his creative output, which illness aside, has for 30-years been as consistently thrilling as it is prodigious.

Having produced them, it’s natural that Edwyn admits to being a “huge fan” of The Cribs, and when I ask him what he makes of that other Eighties legend Johnny Marr joining them, he diplomatically says, “I think Johnny’s a fantastic guitarist.” However, he can’t resist following with “but he is rather old!”

When I suggest it’s kind of like Keith Richards ‘hanging with the kids’, he chuckles a little but he clearly has a lot of affection for the band. Aside from The Cribs, Edwyn names Franz Ferdinand and The Maccabees as current favourites although he does think The Maccs sound a “bit posh”. I recommend the Wild Beasts as “The Maccabees squared” to Edwyn and Grace and they reveal that their son Will is mad about them. “You can’t really like the same music as your kids, can you?” says Grace. “We’re content to be the old gits now!”

We’ve been talking for hours, my mobile battery’s blinking and Edwyn is needed in the studio. Before he goes I tentatively ask him, no, put it to him that he’s the godfather of modern guitar bands. “I am,” he says wonderfully abruptly, a little of the old swagger returning before I am regaled with an anecdote, which is such a fitting end to the interview, I could weep with gratitude for the providence of it all.

“I was walking down Kilburn Road some years back.

There were these three black guys across the road all nodding to each other and looking at me. I was starting to get a little panicky as they got closer and kept staring at me and murmuring to themselves. One of them came right up to me eventually and said in this broad Mancunian accent: ‘You’re that guy who invented indie, aren’t ya?!’”

WWW.EDWYNCOLLINS.COM EDWYN COLLINS PLAYS THE BLACK BOX, BELFAST ON JAN 15.

WWW.CQAF.COM

—43 AU Magazine—

Words by Chris Jones

—44 issue 62—

Sufjan Stevens

—46 issue 62—

the Quiet American

AS BANGOR’S FAVOURITE SONS REACH A SIGNIFICANT MILESTONE IN THEIR TOPSY-TURVY CAREER – THE RELEASE OF A BEST-OF ALBUM – WE QUIZ GARY LIGHTBODY ON THE BAND’S STORY SO FAR: THE LITTLEHEARD BUT MUCH-LOVED EARLY ALBUMS, THE IMPACT OF THEIR MASSIVE SUCCESS, AND WHERE THE BAND GOES FROM HERE. You don’t need us to tell you that the last decade has been something of a rollercoaster ride for Snow Patrol. Their zeroes to heroes tale has been one of the most bizarre career trajectories of the last 10 years and now, eight years after being dropped by tiny indie label Jeepster (where they had played second fiddle to Belle & Sebastian), they have released a sprawling, double-disc career retrospective, fully ensconced in the big league. It seems like another world entirely from the one they inhabited seven years ago, when they played a gig in front of 18 people at a High Wycombe strip club.

As compilation albums go, Up To Now is a strange beast.

Rather than go the Foo Fighters angle and compile their 15 or so most popular songs, the band has opted for the scenic route through their back catalogue, with 30 tracks spread over two CDs. All of their five albums are represented pretty much equitably (though the 1998 debut Songs For Polarbears contributes only two tracks), and they are joined by B-sides, live recordings, a couple of songs from Lightbody’s short-lived Scottish indie supergroup The Reindeer Section (featuring members of Belle & Sebastian, Idlewild, Teenage Fanclub and Arab Strap among others), and three brand new songs.

“It’s a history, you know,” says Gary Lightbody, shivering outside the London studio where the band is preparing for their current ‘Reworked’ tour, where they are playing relatively intimate venues and showcasing versions of songs from their entire career, backed with a 16-piece miniorchestra. “We’ve been together 15 years and we’ve started to write some of the strangest music we’ve ever written.

We’re out of our comfort zone, or what people might imagine our comfort zone is. We thought it was time to say goodbye to past Snow Patrol, and start afresh.”

The strangest music they’ve ever written? If Lightbody is talking about the three new songs on Up To Now, it’s hard to agree with him. Lead single ‘Just Say Yes’ may have come as a shock to some fans, but only in its neon, synth-pop veneer, because under the electronics is a typically lovelorn, mid-tempo, latter-day Snow Patrol song. Meanwhile, ‘Give Me Strength’ is a hopeful acoustic ballad, and ‘Dark Roman Wine’ is a plaintive, organ-backed lament. It’s really nothing we haven’t heard before – more introspective than the likes of ‘Run’ and ‘Chasing Cars’, sure, but the band are hardly reinventing the wheel. In any case, as Lightbody admits, they’re never likely to stray too far from the template they’ve established in the last five years for melodic, accessible songwriting.

“The song is king,” he asserts. “We’re never going to start a song with a beat or some sort of squiggly noise.

We’re always going to start a song with a piano or a guitar and whether or not we remove that piano or guitar and turn it into something else further down the line is still to be discovered, but it’ll always be a song to begin with. It was meandering in the early days, but now we’re a little more pointed.”

That change in approach and sound, though we might put it differently ourselves, makes listening to the compilation a strange experience. Anyone who has ever heard the first two albums (and there are now a fair few – they’ve both belatedly gone Gold in the UK, aided by reissues in 2006) will struggle to reconcile the youthful, ragged charm of the band they hear on Songs For Polarbears and

When It’s All Over We Still Have To Clear Up with the arch professionalism audible on Eyes Open and A Hundred Million Suns. Up To Now seems to have been sequenced pretty randomly (though Lightbody claims that they intended it to “flow”), so at times it plays like a collection of different bands. You’ll find the gossamer-light twee-pop of When It’s All Over… track ‘Batten Down The Hatch’ sandwiched between two anthemic singles in ‘You’re All I Have’ and ‘Just Say Yes’, while elsewhere the stately ‘The Golden Floor’ leads into the crunchy, ‘Teenage Kicks’esque power-pop of their early signature song ‘Starfighter Pilot’.

It’s all a little disorientating, but then that’s the nature of the band’s story and it is to to their credit that they have not shied away from it, choosing instead to present to fans old and new their entire history – or at least a version of it, for we could argue passionately for the inclusion of ‘Wow’, ‘If I’d Found The Right Words To Say’, ‘One Hundred Things You Should Have Done In Bed’, ‘One Night Is Not Enough’ or any number of others. All of this makes you wonder how the man himself feels about the very different music they made in those difficult early days; under-theradar albums that are still much loved by the small band of fans they had at the time.

“I really, really enjoyed listening back to both of them,” he says. “There are some moments where I cringe – if you do anything creative in any way, the things that you created in the early stages of your career are always going to leave you slightly embarrassed. I’m not distancing myself from those albums, I’m just saying that there are parts of them that I would like to erase from all memory.”

Can you give us any specifics?

“Lyrically, some of it is shocking, you know? Properly, properly shocking. There are fans from those days that absolutely adore those songs, still, and ask us to play them all the time. This is what this tour’s about, really. Hopefully, it’ll be the people who are aware that we have been around for 15 years. We’re going to go and delve into those songs and recreate them in a way that we would maybe play them right now, so that we can give people an idea of either how far we’ve come, or maybe they want to run back into a time machine and go and live in those days. Part of me doesn’t.”

Given everything that has happened since ‘Run’ became an enormous, all-conquering hit (Lightbody is happy to remind me that Final Straw did little better than the first two albums until that single came out), you can’t really blame him. Gary Lightbody is now a very wealthy man and the leader of one of the biggest bands in Britain and Ireland, if not the world. Over the last five years, they have featured in countless TV programmes and (in the case of ‘Signal Fire’ from Spider-Man 3) a Hollywood blockbuster, sold out arenas all over Europe and shifted in the region of 10 million albums worldwide. They are a seriously big deal. But to many ears, they have also become incredibly dull – the very epitome of post-Coldplay, bland mediocrity.

Lightbody just about acknowledges as much when he talks about the process of choosing songs for Up To Now – “When people are playing it in their cars, you don’t want them skipping tracks.” But does he not also concede that there was a palpable charm to the first two albums; that they were actually more alluring for their wonkiness?

“Well, that’s the thing,” he says. “There are plenty of songs with no click track, there’s hardly any tuning going on. Just this out-of-tune nonsense – not nonsense, that’s way too harsh – slightly wobbly guitar, and yeah there is of course a charm to it, and there’s some songs on that first record that I adore. ‘Fifteen Minutes Old’ for one, and ‘If I’d Found The Right Words To Say’ [from the second album], I still think is a stunning piece of music.”

He’s right about that one. It’s arguably the band’s finest musical achievement, an impossibly vulnerable, heartbreakingly intimate meditation on the end of a relationship. And it’s one of many songs that makes When It’s All Over We Still Have To Clear Up, for this writer’s money, the band’s best album. That second record was a refinement on the raw and patchy – though immensely promising – Songs For Polarbears, and its lyrical content has probably never been bettered by the band since. The thing is, they were never the slightest bit cool and, in 2001, when the music press was obsessed with everything New York and achingly hip, there wasn’t much love to go

DEER, OH DEER In 2001, dropped by Jeepster Records and broke, Gary Lightbody rounded up the cream of the Scottish indie scene and formed The Reindeer Section, the many-membered supergroup that released two albums before playing their last gig in December 2002. So what have the main players been up to since? It’s a mixed bag, shall we say…

SNOW PATROL (Gary Lightbody, Jonny Quinn, Mark McClelland) Lightbody and Quinn continue to anchor the Patrol as they lay waste to album charts and radio playlists worldwide. Shortly after the Final Straw tour ended, McClelland left in acrimonious circumstances, and he now plays in unsigned Edinburgh band Little Doses.

IDLEWILD (Roddy Woomble) Like Snow Patrol, the once-incendiary Edinburgh band adopted a more commercial sound (and lost their bassist) with 2002’s The Remote Part, but that was their commercial peak. Sixth fulllength Post-Electric Blues was released this year to general indifference.

THE VASELINES (Eugene Kelly) Favourites of Kurt Cobain, The Vaselines had been dormant for 11 years by the time Kelly joined The Reindeer Section. He released a solo album in 2003, and reformed the band last year.

ASTRID (William Campbell, Charlie Clarke, Neil Payne, Gareth Russell) Split up after the release of third album One On Four in 2004. Payne now drums for Texas, while bassist Russell joined Idlewild.

—48 issue 62—

BELLE & SEBASTIAN (Richard Colburn, Mick Cooke, Bobby Kildea) Former labelmates of Snow Patrol, the indiepop heroes are on hiatus following the release of their seventh – and most successful – album The Life Pursuit in 2006. Bangor man Kildea now tours with The Vaselines, while Colburn DJs and Cooke is a session musician, composer and member of ska band The Amphetameanies.

MOGWAI (John Cummins) Released their sixth album The Hawk Is Howling last year. Guitarist Cummins remains in the band and has produced albums for Part Chimp and Fuck Buttons.

ARAB STRAP (Colin MacPherson, Malcolm Middleton, Aidan Moffat) Released two more albums before splitting in 2006. Middleton is now a well-regarded solo artist, while chief mumbler Moffat has a number of projects on the go.

TEENAGE FANCLUB (Norman Blake) Longtime heroes of Lightbody’s, the power-pop icons are currently working on their ninth album.

MULL HISTORICAL SOCIETY (Colin MacIntyre) MacIntyre’s indie-popsters released their third and final album in 2004 before he retired the name and embarked on a solo career. Two albums so far.

ALFIE (Ben Dumville, Lee Gorton, Sam Morris) The Manchester indie band split up in 2005 after releasing their fourth album Crying At Teatime.

Gorton now puts on folk gigs in London.

around for Glasgow-based indie geeks who wore normal clothes and sounded like Sebadoh, Pavement and Beck.

“The difference between Songs For Polarbears and When It’s All Over…, I thought was astounding,” says Lightbody.

“At the time, I thought we’d really leapt forward and I don’t think anybody else was really making music like that at the time in the UK. There wer a lot of people making music like that in America, and that’s where a lot of our influences were coming from, but it was so out of touch with what was happening in the UK that it just sank without a trace.”

So it was just the wrong time to be doing that kind of thing?

“Yeah, exactly. It was only that Final Straw accidentally lucked into a shift in what people were buying and listening to in 2004 that we had a hit album. There was a lot of luck that went into it – I don’t think the standard had got so much better between those two albums. Maybe we learned how to write a chorus here and there…”

Well, one in particular made a difference. ‘Run’ actually predates When It’s All Over…, having been written around Christmas 2000, and it had been played at gigs for some time before ending up on Final Straw. Incredibly, when Jeepster dropped the band two months after When It’s All Over… had been released, they and the band’s then publishing company already knew of its existence. It was then left to Fiction – a branch of Polydor and the only bidders in the end – to reap the rewards of their punt on the band. But even Snow Patrol themselves had no idea that the song would be such a success.

“Nah, it had been kicking about for years, mate,” says Lightbody, almost scornful of the idea that they knew what they were sitting on. “Nobody thought anything was going to be a hit. ‘Run’ is six minutes, the album version.” You thought it wouldn’t even be released as a single? “Yeah.

[BBC Radio 1’s] Jo Whiley played that full six minutes on daytime radio and the record company were like, ‘Okay, can we do a radio edit of this?’. I was dead against it for ages – we were still so wet behind the ears that I didn’t realise that most bands do that. If you want to have a single and you want to get it on the radio, you fit the format. If you don’t get it

played on the radio, then no-one’s going to fucking hear it.

Simple as that.”

And lo, finally, the band’s career took off at terrifying speed.

What happened next was arguably even more amazing. In 2006, back down to earth again after the shock of a massive hit record and relentless touring, Snow Patrol released a new album, Eyes Open, and became even bigger, propelled by a song that Lightbody himself describes as a “Goliath”. “‘Chasing Cars’ was written on a night in Garrett [‘Jacknife’ Lee, producer]’s house, with many, many bottles of wine and many, many other songs. I wrote 10 songs, four of which ended up on the album, and ‘Chasing Cars’ was one of them.

Garrett and I would just write and write and write and wake up the next day and look back over what we’d done the night before, and ‘Chasing Cars’ was just in amongst that. It was only then that it hit us – it stuck out from all of those 10 songs by a mile. We played it to the guys, they thought it would be something special, but nobody thought it would be what it was. Compared to ‘Run’, it’s a Goliath in terms of the success and the countries it appears in. That was the only worldwide hit that we had, and it stepped it up quite considerably, really.”

Rightly or wrongly, those two songs have cemented the band’s image as purveyors of earnest, lighter-waving anthems. And a glance down the track list of Up To Now supports the notion that the Snow Patrol sound has become immeasurably more commercial in recent years.

‘Crack The Shutters’, ‘Hands Open’ and ‘Take Back The City’ are three more glossy, radio-friendly singles, the like of which would never have been associated with the band in the early days. You would therefore assume that, with considerable help from producer Garrett Lee, the band have hit on a successful formula and are happy to continue churning out crowd-pleasing tracks intended for drive-time radio and mass singalongs. Not so, according to Lightbody.

“That’s the type of music that we make naturally – it’s a perfectly natural process, it’s just that these days I don’t listen to any bands that sound like us, not really. It’s just the music that I write.”

But surely the knowledge that you will be playing in front of huge arena and festival crowds changes your mindset when

you are writing songs?

“I don’t know. We always go off somewhere and write – we go to Ireland, to the middle of the countryside, or we go to our houses and lock the doors and we do these things either together as a band or on our own, so there’s not a lot of people around. It’s not as if we’re writing songs in front of 80,000 people, where you feel under pressure to please them or to change the way you write for the general consensus.

It’s still a very personal thing, and I can’t imagine it ever changing or us ever sitting at home, thinking, ‘Oh, well this will sound great at a festival and people can sing along’.”

You never think anything like that, even when you’re writing a big chorus?

“No, I don’t. I mean, we watched U2 18 times this summer – we were playing with them all through Europe and America – and you hear the ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’, the ‘La, la, la’, the big, singalong bits and it’s just made for huge crowds, but they have been writing for huge crowds for 25 fucking years.

They have been in that arena; we haven’t. You know, we’re not shouting out for the world the way U2 are. There’s still a clumsiness to what we do, and I kind of like it that way.”

Indeed, a large part of Snow Patrol’s appeal seems to be their accessible, friendly image. There’s nothing starry about the band, and few non-fans can name any of the members apart from Lightbody himself (“the songs are famous, not the guys”), while his vulnerable, soul-baring lyrics seem to connect with people in a way that few others can manage.

If the frequently compared Coldplay are austere, vague and distant, Snow Patrol just seem normal and flawed – the boys next door. Feeding into that is the fact that Lightbody has moved back to Bangor after years spent in Scotland, and it’s a genuine surprise to find out the extent to which he leads a normal life. Millions of record sales don’t equate to a complete loss of privacy after all.

“It’s only been in the last few years that I’d go out in Belfast and people know who I am,” he reveals. “Yeah, fair enough, most places people would be nudging each other. Hopefully people come over – I like it when I’m out having a drink and people come over and go, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ or, ‘Hey, you fucking dickhead, who do you think you are?’.

You know, it adds a nice wee edge to the night. But I’ve never, ever thought that I couldn’t leave the house. I’m never given any hassle by anybody – certainly not in Northern Ireland – to the point where you feel like a celebrity that’s hounded. We’re not famous; we’re not celebrities. I spend a lot of time here [in London], and I have never, EVER, been stopped by anybody.

Really? Never? “There was one time and it was somebody from home. So I’m completely anonymous here. Belfast is really the only place and it’s still fairly pleasant, completely manageable.”

So what next for the kings of accessible pop-rock? The band’s last album, the relatively low-key A Hundred Million Suns, received reviews just as mixed as those that greeted Eyes Open, and although it was the band’s biggest hit in America (where it reached number nine on the Billboard chart), its pitch at maturity and lack of a big single to match ‘Run’ and ‘Chasing Cars’ meant it sold just (!) two million copies, compared to its predecessor’s five million. Obviously fiercely proud of the album in the face of criticism, Lightbody insists that it was “an extremely brave record” and, somewhat bizarrely given its unassuming, melodic nature, that “it maybe frightened a few people off in places”.

But he is adamant that although he has eventually found a winning formula, he would like to experiment with different styles – electronics as on ‘Just Say Yes’, pure pop, country, “heavy, heavy rock” – and that the only thing that drives him to make music comes from within himself; not what critics think, not what the label wants and not what people might expect of him.

“I don’t care if the next album sells the same amount as Songs For Polarbears did when it was first released,” he says bluntly.

“It really doesn’t matter. We’ve had an incredible, incredible life in that spotlight, and I just want to make music that thrills me. I never want to turn round at the end of our career and regret something. I’ve nothing to regret so far and I don’t want to break that streak.”

UP TO NOW IS OUT NOW ON FICTION WWW.SNOWPATROL.COM

—49 AU Magazine—

—50 issue 62—

The Japanese Popstars

Spin the bottle

THE JAPANESE POPSTARS

What a year it’s been for The Japanese Popstars. The three Derry natives – Decky Hedrock, Gary ‘Curntables’ Curran and Gareth ‘Gallo’ Donoghue – have dropped an acclaimed studio album in followed by an electric live album, toured the world and been described variously as the Orbital, Underworld or Chemical Brothers of our time. With a string of high profile remixes for artists such as Editors, Depeche Mode, Beyoncé and The Ting Tings under their belt, they’ve ditched the nine-tofive and are ready to drop their second studio album in March 2010.

Words by Craig Sheridan

From start to finish it’s been an unrelenting 2009 for The Japanese Popstars. AU corners Decky Hedrock as he takes a breather from an adrenalin-fuelled studio session. “We’re trying to get our new album put together,” he explains. “We’ve just pulled some new tracks out of the bag; some new ideas that we’ve never had before and they seem to work. We’ve stopped doing remixes so we could get our tracks finished.”

The Popstars are in such high demand that they had to cancel a US tour to get to work on their latest offering.

One date they didn’t miss, however, was a Halloween spectacular.

“We played with MSTRKRFT in Toronto, in a place called Government; it was absolutely rammed. At one point in our set there was a stage invasion – all these people stormed the stage and started going bananas!

We couldn’t believe what was happening and then the bouncers threw them off-stage. It was absolute madness!”

What sets the Popstars apart is that their primary focus is as a live act. “We’ve had the joys of taking our ship on the road, getting all our gear and playing most of the big festivals in Europe and faraway places; we’ve been lucky enough too that we’ve done a load of remixes for amazing acts. It’s blown us away, you know, we did Beyoncé and Depeche Mode in the same couple of months. Then one of Gary’s favourite bands, Editors, came knocking on our door to do a remix too. We still can’t believe it, we’re just enjoying it. Our music is doing well overseas and we just did a live album [We Just Are: Live], which is a testament to us as a live act.

We enjoy what we’re doing and we want everyone else to enjoy it.”

In line with that rigid Derry tradition of ‘keeping your feet on the ground’, Decky describes the band as “just your average boys having a bit of craic, trying to make the most of a good time.” It’s that sense of fun that comes across during their live shows, almost like they’re having too much fun to be earning a living, but that’s not the case. In the midst of a credit crunch, the Popstars made the ultimate commitment and packed in their day jobs to chase the dream.

“I left the day job in February, the other two left theirs in November, and we’ve been at this full-time ever since trying to get the most out of it. During all this, we

“EVERYTHING JUST SHIT ITSELF” WORD OF ADVICE: DON’T MAKE YOUR FABRIC DEBUT WITH A LOAD OF BRAND NEW EQUIPMENT…

were doing all these big remixes and trying to gig and trying to balance a full-time job. The big comedown was Monday morning when you went back into the real world and no one had a clue what you were on about, and that Pete Tong had played you at the weekend. We were going to Australia, and we had no time off left in work, so we basically cut our jobs and went off on tour for two weeks. It’s a bit surreal when you look back on it, but dreams come true.”

The Japanese Popstars’ seemingly overnight success has actually been founded on years of hard graft and determination. “I was doing music before,” explains Decky, “in a different band [Hedrock Valley Beats], and Gary was a DJ. Gary gave me my first show. He was DJing in Derry; he also gave Gallo his first show too. We’ve been mates for over 10 years. We were sitting at Oxegen, Gary and me, a few years back, and decided we could do better than some of the live acts

That established a nice rapport with Sony, and they came back and asked us for more.”

With remix work and tour dates filling up the diary, and a bit of geographical separation, the trio have had to find some creative methods of collaborating on new material. “We’ve got three studios – Gallo’s in Belfast, me and Gary are here in Derry. We can work on three individual tracks at the same time, and put them together so the three of us are involved. Most of it works via email, so we’ll send ideas to each other and tinker at them until we’re all happy with them.

We have the joy that we can all DJ and play live so if we have an idea we can try it in our set and if it’s not working we take out the part that’s not working, or learn to make it bigger. We can road test our stuff because we’re playing every weekend, so it’s handy for testing new material. If it works, it works; if it doesn’t, it gets scrapped.”

“We did Beyoncé and Depeche Mode in the same couple of months.

Then one of Gary’s favourite bands, Editors, came knocking on our door to do a remix too.” we were watching. We basically wanted free passes in for next year, so we set about trying to make some music and become a live act. I sent out a demo and a couple of clubs were interested and one of them offered us a show. We agreed to it without actually thinking how we were going to do it live, and that’s where Gallo came in. Gary went looking for someone who knew how to do the live thing, and Gallo was all into Ableton and programming stuff live, so we gave him a call. He was just back from Australia and this fell into his lap, and he decided to give it a go, and the rest is history.”

No sooner had debut single ‘Rodney Trotter’ blasted Pete Tong’s Radio One show than the Popstars were billed at the same festival where it all started. Again, something magic happened at that festival, when they bagged their first major remix commission.

“The only people we actually approached were The Ting Tings. That was last year. We met them at Oxegen, and literally had our balls out [literally?! –Ed.] and asked them could we do a remix. They said ‘aye’ straight away, a couple of days later we got the call.

So from intimate DJ gigs to rocking 10,000 festivalgoers on the far side of the planet, Decky insists that audience interaction is still the primary driver for the live shows. “I think, to a degree, playing the more intimate spots is a lot better – you can see the crowd and gauge a better reaction, and people interact with you easier than when you’re on a stage in front of 10,000 people, [where] a lot of the time people stare at you because you’re that far away. We enjoy doing both, but personally, I do like the smaller clubs – going on stage in a small, sweaty club where you can capture all 400 people.”

The way things are going, they might not be long for those cosy surroundings.

WE JUST ARE: LIVE IS OUT NOW ON GUNG HO! WWW.MYSPACE.COM/THEJAPANESEPOPSTARS

“When we played in [legendary London club] Fabric, we noticed a small glitch when we were sound-checking, but thought it might have been one of the sound files. After three songs, the new kit kind of shit itself. Gary started laughing – there we were, main room, peak-time slot; and everything just shit itself. We had a couple of people from a few record labels and friends there too, to see us for the first time. I continued to play on and ended up doing a three or four-minute keyboard solo! You know, just to interact with the crowd and keep things going. We don’t take ourselves too seriously – we wouldn’t have stormed off – we just tried to get everything up and running and tried to enjoy it, and I think the crowd realised that, and really got into my keyboard solo! When it all kicked back off again they went hell for leather at it and it was even better. The guy who booked us actually thought it was part of the show and that it was all set up. It couldn’t have worked any better – the atmosphere was brilliant.”

Graham Hughes

Spin the bottle A Global Odyssey

GRAHAM HUGHES: A GLOBAL ODYSSEY 200 COUNTRIES. ONE YEAR. NO FLIGHTS. NO PRIVATE TRANSPORT. ONE STRIKINGLY AMBITIOUS MAN. Words by James Hendicott Photos by Rocco Fasano

When most of us feel the urge to break a world record, we join a particularly large Facebook group, start growing our toenails, or attend an oversized pillow fight. Not Graham Hughes. While the world was still shaking off its collective New Year 2009 hangover, Graham was setting off across Argentina, hoping to cross a few borders before teatime. His main concerns this year have been things like, ‘Am I going to get arrested for my out-of-date visa?’; ‘How do I convince the government of an African island that I’m not a human trafficker?’ or ‘Why does every backcountry bus’s resident goat gravitate towards me?’. His record attempt is gritty, multi-national and logistically outrageous, and it’s taken the best part of a decade to get off the ground. Graham’s seeing the entire world, and he’s doing it his way.

The aim? To drop in on every one of the 192 UN member states (plus eight assorted others, in the interest of a nice even number), all inside a single calendar year. With a lot of money and a good grasp of flight schedules, though, setting foot in all those countries – an average of one every 43 hours – would be far too easy, and go totally against both Graham’s philosophy and his budget. So the audacious adventurer came up with some rules to make things more interesting: no flying, no private transport (a rule enforced by the Guinness Book of Records race regulations, which can’t condone a public race – even a year-long one – in private vehicles) and no sneaking into tiny backwater territories and counting them as visiting the motherland. That ought to make things suitably complex.

Years of planning concluded when, on the first of January, an otherwise innocuous border crossing from Argentina to Paraguay was accompanied by an appropriate mental fanfare and the start of a solo round-the-world charge. Only four days later, Graham found himself curled up in the back of a bus across Bolivia with a nasty case of altitude sickness, no doubt wondering what on earth he’d let himself in for.

—52 issue 62—

Things weren’t to get any easier, and although Graham’s an experienced backpacker, the intensity and pace of this particular trip was another thing entirely.

It takes a particular kind of personality to attempt this kind of adventure. Liverpudlian Graham describes himself as “a total fruitloop” and “hyperactive”, while his philosophy is “to have a good time, all the time” as well as showing a healthy disregard for modern materialism: “On your death bed, do you want to look back on the stuff you bought, or the stuff you did?” It’s the same kind of outgoing thinking that had seen Graham become a central figure on the Liverpool indie scene, where he shot videos for the likes of Arctic Monkeys and The Coral with his film company Hydra Studios, as well as winning the Liverpool 48 Hour Film Challenge. He also teamed up with Mark Bowness, the founder of the off-the-wall The Beach inspired island adventure ‘Tribe Wanted’ (www.tribewanted.com).

The first half of the year went swimmingly: having negotiated the Americas, Graham even had time to drop in on his family in Liverpool, before flitting through Europe in little more than a fortnight. Then came Africa.

Graham’s been arrested in Cameroon, Cape Verde and Congo, for things like filming a nuclear bunker cunningly masquerading as a roundabout, or pushing his visa blagging a little too far. He’s had to re-route to avoid Somalian pirates, struggled with ferry routes to Mauritius and then Madagascar, been sent on 4,000km round trip to replace a slightly out-of-date visa… and then the worst happened, and the West African island of Cape Verde – which Graham’s own rules dictate he can’t fly to – nearly ended it all.

Having paid an extortionate sum to a Senegalese fisherman to acquire a lift, Graham was arrested on arrival, held in 3m2 cell for six days with 11 other men, and not

even given the right to meet with a lawyer. When his case did come to court – and Graham was eventually set free with just a fine – he found getting off Cape Verde almost as difficult, and ended up staying for a total of just over six weeks. The record was still on, but the 200-country target had gone. Unsurprisingly, Graham rates the country as his second least favourite on his website’s ‘League of Nations’, accompanied simply by the word ‘No’. Cape Verde was country number 89, a number that, incidentally, has gained him so many stamps in his passport that the Moldovans were convinced it was fake.

There has been the occasional break in Graham’s manic schedule. He (intentionally) paused for breath in the Dominican Republic, Florida, Halifax and (less intentionally) Gabon, but when he’s on the move, things pass by ludicrously fast. Russia and Belarus were so quick they only involved a walk up to the border post, where Graham – having technically entered the country – was turned around and sent on his way. Plenty of other countries have flown by so fast that Graham confesses that he really doesn’t have anything to say about them.

Logistical problems are a nightmare. With two passports on the go, Graham had to obtain a visa for every last corner of Africa before he left, only to have the entire trip thrown out of whack by his jail time in Cape Verde.

West Africa then became a case of blag (or pay) your way through, while Graham’s long-suffering girlfriend Mandy and the rest of the Odyssey team hung around at home trying to fix it all up. The Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries have proven awkward, too, with personal invitations from residents needed for every visa.

On the ground, things are a lot more fun. In Gabon, Graham sampled iboga, a hallucinogenic tree root that the local tribes use to liven up the evenings, but managed to

avoid the full tribal induction. A good thing, too, since it involves taking so much that you vomit, and often having the root inserted up your bum to top it off. In Venezuela he sat quietly and pondered amongst nerve-jangling maps laying claim to Guyana, a long-time British (and never Venezuelan) territory. On reaching Colombia, Graham experienced America’s ludicrous, forest-destroying anticocaine policy first hand, and responded by blogging “fair trade cocaine is the way forward”. Later, in a single day in Europe, he visited Liechtenstein and Switzerland by 5am in the morning, before mistakenly taking a train to the tiny and inconveniently named Italian village of San Marino, and having to turn round to check off the better-known principality.

Mind-bogglingly, the total budget for the entire trip is less than £18,000, which works out at under £90 per country, meaning – if you have Graham’s flare for a budget – you could see the entire world for the price of a mid-range car.

This works partly because of Graham’s insanely fast pace of life (he covered most of Europe in days, and England, TWEET TO THE BEAT GRAHAM DOCUMENTS HIS JOURNEY THROUGH TWITTER ON @THEODYSSEYEXP. HERE ARE A FEW OF HIS BEST MOMENTS. Jan 27 – Dazed in Barbados, after spending the night on the cold metal floor of a BANANA BOAT. Yes, it was full of bananas. Same again tonight.

Feb 21 – Just seen a group of about fifty dolphins jumping out of the water ahead of the ship I’m on.

That was cool.

Mar 19 – I’m on board a boat called The Bootlegger

Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in just 24 hours), but it’s largely because experience has taught him how to travel on the cheap.

Couchsurfing, sleeping on trains, eating street food and hitching lifts are all part of the fun, and keep Graham’s hard earned cash stretching to plenty of new horizons.

The madness all has to be documented somehow, and Graham plans to turn his adventures into what will no doubt be one of the more off-the-wall travel books.

He’s gained the (non-financial) backing of National Geographic, Lonely Planet and the BBC, too, who plan to make a documentary on his efforts, while all the man himself wants from the experience is to enjoy the lunacy and set a seriously hard-to-beat benchmark. So will he make it? Well, Graham’s latest estimate puts him at around 170 countries by the dawn of 2010, 30 short of his original ambitious target. That’s still an average of very nearly a country every two days. He blames Cape Verde for falling short, but he’s far from bitter. If he makes it as far as Australia (country number 188) for New Year, our

heading out from the Conch Republic. Up yours Uncle Sam, don’t tell me what I can’t do!

May 4 – Whoosh. 40 nations in under two weeks.

If the rest of the world was this easy, I’d be home in time for Glasto.

May 29 – Welcome to Africa. The answer is no.

Now what’s the question?

Jun 6 – Graham and the crew on board the boat he chartered were all arrested on suspicion of being illegal immigrants. Mandy x

gallant explorer has promised to head for Cairns, watch the fireworks whilst quite phenomenally drunk, and throw himself naked into a billabong.

As Graham’s attempt is the first of its kind, however it goes he will finish up with a record. It’s going to be a seriously hard mark to beat, too, but should you have the guts to make your own attempt, Graham’s been kind enough to throw us some tips: “Have your own yacht, or know how to sail. Get to Cuba from Mexico, not the US. Don’t turn up in Cape Verde with a bunch of Senegalese fisherman. Wear your safety belt. Smile, and the world will smile with you.” Go on, we dare you…

To catch up with Graham, you can find his blogs, video diaries and witticisms on every country to date at www. grahamdavidhughes.com, or catch up with the day-byday madness on Twitter at @TheOdysseyExp.

Aug 24 – The Gabonese consider themselves more French than the French. Anyone dare me to dress up as a German and chase them about?

AUG 29 – Hands up who spent last night eating hallucinogenic tree bark with a crazy mad dancing African tribe…

SEP 8 – Someone get advertising standards on the phone. They’ve never even heard of Um Bongo in the Congo.

the pavement. Welcome to the murder capital of the world.

OCT 17 – The coolest thing about Dar Es Salaam is that all the bars have Masai Warriors for bouncers.

I kid you not.

NOV 6 – Departing Port Louis, Mauritius in the next few minutes. Captain Klaus is hilarious – he swears like, well, like a sailor. I’m off to raid the galley.

OCT 2 – The bus drove right through Jo’burg last night. Police cordon, flashing lights, body bag on —53 AU Magazine—

Reviews

Tom Waits – Glitter And Doom Live

pg 54 Record Reviews | pg 63 Live Reviews |pg 65 Unsigned Universe

Illustration by Mark Reihill WWW.MARKREIHILL.COM

Tom Waits Glitter And Doom: Live ANTI

The world’s greatest showman has so many costumes that it’s difficult to tell where the fake Tom Waits ends and the real Tom Waits begins. The hellfire and brimstone preacher, dangling his congregation over the maw of Hades while its minions slurp hungrily below. The sozzled beatnik in a moth-ridden hobo suit, freshly pressed under the buttocks of a rhinoceros. The wistful old man, rocking —54 issue 62—

his arthritic limbs on his Tennessee porch and reminiscing about the good days. Each of these characters, and the rest of their lunatic brethren, take to the stage at least once during this live recording. In lieu of an album proper, Waits’ fans, who are many and spectacularly ardent, will have to make do with this release, with tracks taken from various locations on his recent Glitter And Doom tour. But ‘make do’ isn’t the right phrase, for this is much, much better than live albums – traditionally released just in time for Christmas or when an artist has a new paternity suit to deal with – generally tend to be.

For a start, it doesn’t sound like your common-or-garden concert recording. Waits is certainly not common, and if he gardened he would do his raking and hoeing with human bones. It sounds like an illegal bootleg, the kind you used to buy on C90 cassette out of a cardboard box at the back of a second hand record store. It’s a little rough round the edges, or maybe that’s just the way his gonzo bar band normally play. Secondly, Waits is as obtuse as ever with his choice of setlist: instead of plumping for a chronological run of his ‘hits’, he has picked out obscure and neglected tracks, orphans such as ‘Lucinda’, ‘Singapore’ and ‘Dirt In The Ground’. Each is

deconstructed and rebuilt until it bears scant resemblance to its original shape. The results are fabulously exciting: you can hear the roar of the crowd as Waits sprinkles them with fairy dust.

There are a couple of small flies floundering in the ointment. The powers that be have seen fit to include a compilation of Waits’ monologues and pre-song banter on a second disc, which is equivalent to lopping off a juggler’s left arm. Waits’ free association is an intrinsic element of his onstage shtick – his gigs can stretch towards the three hour mark – so it would have made more sense to make the Glitter And Doom a double, and put all the talky bits back in their rightful place. It’s a trivial complaint, and one that doesn’t really spoil the party.

Always leave them wanting more. Ross Thompson

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘DIRT IN THE GROUND’, ‘GOIN’ OUT WEST’, ‘I’LL SHOOT THE MOON’.

FOR FANS OF: CAPTAIN BEEFHEART, FRANK ZAPPA, RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN.

Royal Bangs Let It Beep

here, but this is an album of promising style rather than fulfilled potential. With a little work on the writing, their next one could be superb. Lee Gorman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 AUDIO EAGLE / CO-OP / CITY SLANG Royal Bangs were the first non-Ohio artists to sign to Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle label. Their sound is a blend of jagged, post-rock rhythms and indie beats enhanced by the urgent yelp of frontman Ryan Schaefer.

‘My Car Is Haunted’ sounds like TV On The Radio’s ‘Dancing Choose’ remixed by Fujiya & Miyagi, while ‘Brainbow’ could be a Kieran Hebden remix of Vampire Weekend. Royal Bangs’ hyperactive squall and two-pronged drum assault has slain punters and critics all across the US with ‘Shit Xmas’ (what a great title!), an impressive, spacegun, garage-rock stomp, a particular live highlight. Royal Bangs have come to banish too-cool, indie inhibitions.

Excuse me! Give me some room. Kenny Murdock

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘MANIVERSE’, ‘SHIT XMAS’.

FOR FANS OF: ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI, WHITE DENIM.

Radian Chimeric

DOWNLOAD: ‘SCORPIO’, ‘NEVER HAD A CHANCE’, ‘NEW SHADOW’.

FOR FANS OF: MONSTERS OF FOLK, ANGUS AND JULIA STONE, ELLIOTT SMITH.

Gay For Johnny Depp Manthology

A studied attempt at evolving the form, Viennese postrock act Radian have sculpted a raw, fitful and atypically kinetic variety of the genre, punctuated with jarring steel-on-bone guitar noise. It’s like being in a dank, dark electronics factory when all the machines begin working of their own accord, like in Close Encounters, and then someone turns the cutting blade on beside your ear. The production terraforms their choppy, digitally rearranged compositions into something living and textured, without neglecting to coat the cinematic washes with a wide screen lustre, whilst the more minimalist tracks could score some weirdo allegorical version of Russian Bagpuss. Instead of a cool, highbrow exercise in oblique improvisation, though, Chimeric is seductive, impassioned and powerfully atmospheric. John Calvert

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘GIT CUT NOIS’, ‘FEEDBACK MIKRO/ CITY LIGHTS’.

FOR FANS OF: MOGWAI, EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY, AUTECHRE.

The Dutchess And The Duke Sunset/Sunrise

Hardcore in every sense, Manthology is a retrospective of Gay For Johnny Depp’s less than conventional back catalogue. Featuring tracks such as ‘Cumpassion’ and ‘Sex In Your Mouth’, it is not hard to figure out why GFJD have not made a name for themselves outside of the spazz-core spectrum. Culled from debut album The Politics Of Cruelty and various EPs, the 31 tracks here are musically and lyrically unambitious, at times unlistenable, and just give the impression of a bunch of lads who like to shout “fuck”. The most grating issue though is that they simply have nothing worthwhile to say and are akin to a punk rock Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown. Gerard McCann

DOWNLOAD: ‘NOISE’, ‘HAPPENS’, ‘HERE’ FOR FANS OF: ANAL CUNT, ELECTRIC SIX.

Moby Wait For Me: Deluxe Edition

DOWNLOAD: ‘NEVER ANYONE BUT YOU’, ‘GRAVEN WOOD’.

FOR FANS OF: SCRITTI POLITTI, CAMERA OBSCURA.

The Beat Poets The Making EP SELF-RELEASED Belfast-based band The Beat Poets have been making all the right noises in all the right places recently. From being championed by ATL to making ripples in New York, they are forging a path to accommodate their brand of radio-friendly guitar-driven rock. This EP captures a band unafraid to make big-sounding guitar music with rousing choruses. All the early-U2 boxes are ticked, yes, but tracks like ‘The Making’ and ‘Race’ more than illustrate that The Beat Poets can do it well and there is a live audience out there who will respond more than positively. Meanwhile, ‘Bloodline’, with its Stone Rosesinspired acoustic flavourings and spirited vocals, suggests a diversity that will also serve them well. Mickey Ferry

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

FOR FANS OF: MANSUN, MANIC STREET PREACHERS, U2.

LITTLE IDIOT This is a triple disc pack, with an ambient version of the album on the second disc and a DVD with live performances from a number of festivals. Moby has said, “I wanted to make something that I would listen to on a Sunday morning when it’s raining,” and he’s delivered on that promise with a record that boasts moments of hypnotic loveliness. It’s safe to say that the producer is making music for himself these days. It’s all very downtempo and melodic, made all the more intimate with the stripped back ambience of disc two. It won’t make many radio playlists, but it will light up the mornings of a burned-out raver looking for some fresh innovation and a mature perspective. Craig Sheridan

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘PALE HORSES’, ‘WAIT FOR ME (AMBIENT VERSION)’.

FOR FANS OF: BOARDS OF CANADA, BRIAN ENO.

HARDLY ART That Seattle pair Jesse Lortz and Kimberly Morrison have gigged with Fleet Foxes comes as little surprise. The two acts share a penchant for harmonised retro folk, although Sunset/Sunrise, their second record, is neither as symphonic nor as celebratory as that of their former tourmates. Instead, the duo strip things back, soaking up Sixties pop influences and occasionally throwing in some ragged blues licks that recall Seasick Steve or even early Stones. The shared male/ female vocals work well and there are some strong tracks

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ADAADAT

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 THRILL JOCKEY

end of a holiday romance. As the daylight hours dwindle and you dig out the overcoat, this could be the record your neighbours hear through the walls repeatedly. This and the sound of you sobbing, obviously. The music is a charming mix of the Sixties lounge pop of Bacharach and David and the mid-Eighties indie jangle of Aztec Camera. In fact Alasdair MacLean’s fey, whispered vocals will remind you of the woefully underrated Green Gartside, but therein lies a cautionary tale of the public’s aversion to M.O.R. nostalgia. Coming to a bargain bin near you soon. Kenny Murdock

The Clientele Bonfires On The Heath POINTY For their fourth album The Clientele have re-written the soundtrack to that empty, yet warm, fuzzy feeling at the

Father Murphy And He Told Us To Turn To The Sun AAGOO Italian three-piece Father Murphy build on the enigmatic and broodingly twisted sounds they produced with their debut Six Musicians Getting Unknown with this, their second LP. Sparse, minimal production draws attention to the discordant guitars and off-kilter drumming, accompanied by hushed and moody vocals that seem to hint at all manner of ungodly goings-on. Recorded in a church, the record at times feels monastic, with its chiming bells, atmospheric organs and otherworldly chanting. Events draw to a close with the 10-minute opus ‘In Their Graves’, an appropriately cacophonous mass that seethes and licks from the depths of a Hammer Horrorinspired underworld. James Gracey

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘GO SINISTER’, ‘HIDE YOURSELF IN’.

FOR FANS OF: THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, THE HOLY KISS, MARIO BAVA MOVIES. —55 AU Magazine—

Reviews

Warpaint Exquisite Corpse MANIMAL VINYL Despite inexplicably naming their debut – and themselves – for some sort of death metal alter egos, LA female trio Warpaint have started on an excellent footing – opening for The Slits and now an album mixed by RHCP guru John Frusciante. This dreamy, hazy excursion smells like teen spirit with My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless tucked under its arm. The driving drumbeats push the songs on relentlessly, but instead of sounding harsh and rocky, there’s a hypnotic, widescreen beauty to the music here. With song lengths ranging between four and seven minutes, it’s clear that these chicks love to play, but Exquisite Corpse is haunting ephemera at its very best. Opener ‘Stars’ kicks into something rather special, while the mournful ‘Billie Holiday’ (sic) is an acoustic meander through an elusive wonderland of pain and pulchritude. If you met Exquisite Corpse at a party, it would smell of dead roses and chain smoke, and you would be mesmerised.

Kirstie McCrum

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘ELEPHANTS’, ‘BILLIE HOLIDAY’, ‘KRIMSON’.

FOR FANS OF: MY BLOODY VALENTINE, CAT POWER.

Snow Patrol Up To Now FICTION Speaking to Gary Lightbody for this issue’s cover feature, it’s striking just how sure he is that Snow Patrol are getting better and better all the time. It just isn’t true. If anything, it’s been downhill ever since Final Straw, and this compilation is aural proof. Take the new single ‘Just Say Yes’, one of three brand new songs among the 27 other singles, album tracks and rarities jumbled up for your delectation. Put simply, the band sound like a lobotomised The Bravery. It’s limp, phoned-in rubbish and the attempt to whack a load of synths onto it in the apparent belief that it makes them sound relevant and edgy is outright laughable.

Then consider the band’s recent singles – ‘Crack The Shutters’, ‘The Planets Bend Between Us’, ‘Take Back The City’ (okay, kudos for managing to fit in two different choruses on that one). Can anyone honestly, with a straight face, claim that these songs, slick as they are, hold a candle to the classic ‘Starfighter Pilot’ (a sister song to Ash’s ‘Angel Interceptor’ and a close cousin of ‘Teenage Kicks’), ‘Ask Me How I Am’, or ‘On/Off’? And that’s just the early tracks that made it onto this compilation – whither ‘One Night Is Not Enough’, ‘Wow’ and the sumptuous ‘If I’d Found The Right Words To Say’?

And before you start moaning, this isn’t about snobbery or jealousy. The career-making Final Straw deserved its success, and it’s represented by three very good songs in ‘Spitting Games’, ‘Chocolate’ and ‘Run’ (two versions). But, as much as Lightbody denies it (and he does), you can’t shake the notion that the runaway success of ‘Run’ has mapped out the rest of the band’s career for them. Suddenly, Lightbody finds himself capable of writing glossy, radio-friendly anthems, and the crunchy rockers and scratchy indie-pop of old – full —56 issue 62—

as they are of wit, charm, subtlety, heart and soul – can get stuffed. Hence, the execrable ‘Chasing Cars’.

Hearing all of this gloop mixed in among the best of their work makes for an entirely dispiriting experience, and that’s before you even consider all the great songs that have had to make way for the likes of ‘Hands Open’ (in which it sounds like they literally can’t wait to wheel out the chorus) and ‘Signal Fire’. Up To Now can only be recommended as an entry point for people that think the band formed in 2004. But it’s best avoided, really. Chris Jones

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wearisome and somewhat forced, there’s enough raw, majestic discordance and bile to justify a belated release.

As DIY recordings go, this is the lowest of the fidelities but I doubt they’d have it any other way. Paul McIver

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘BROKEN TAMAGOTCHI’, ‘THE MOJO TOP 100’, ‘IT’S CHRISTMAS TIME (FOR GOD’S SAKE)’.

FOR FANS OF: LOS CAMPESINOS!, THE WEDDING PRESENT, YAKUZA.

Heritage Centre Sidney Maxwell Williamson EP

DOWNLOAD: ‘SET THE FIRE TO THE THIRD BAR’ (AS PROOF OF A GOOD LATTER-DAY SONG), WHEN IT’S ALL OVER WE STILL HAVE TO CLEAR UP. FOR FANS OF: COLDPLAY, KEANE, MAROON FUCKING 5.

Nosferatu D2 We’re Gonna Walk Around This City With Our Headphones On To Block Out The Noise AUDIO ANTIHERO Recently lauded as ‘album of the year’ by Gareth Campesinos!, this is the debut by Nosferatu D2, the now-defunct sibling duo from Croydon. Yes, that’s correct. Singer Ben Parker’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics throw out references like confetti: “I wanna feel like Greg Dulli in the morning,” he spits in ‘2 People 0 Superpowers’, unveiling the most telling influence on his own deeply confessional lyrical tone. However, the music is all furious, jangly guitars and astonishing drumming courtesy of brother Adam. And while the continuous references and personal narrative becomes

SELF-RELEASED After an excellent first release back in February, Heritage Centre need to keep up the pace. And while their second effort Sidney Maxwell Williamson lacks the immediate punch of their debut, it’s an exciting taster for the forthcoming album. There’s no doubt the five-piece can bring together great riffs, sing-a-long lyrics and catchy melodies to create something special. Each track is popsong perfect in terms of length; the guys have obviously spent time practising the art of creating succinct, radiofriendly tunes. And it’s endlessly refreshing to hear the Dundalk accent proudly evident in the vocals. Natural and unpretentious, this is a band that keeps promising more and more. Louise McHenry

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘STOLEN IT TWICE’, ‘THROW STONES’, ‘IT’S EASY’.

FOR FANS OF: WEEZER, IDLEWILD, EARLY SNOW PATROL.

Lawrence Arabia Chant Darling BELLA UNION From the label that brought us Fleet Foxes comes another record of flighty, harmonised folk, albeit one with a lighter, more intimate vibe. Chant Darling’s roots lie firmly in Sixties pop, the shuffling rhythms and subtle brass washes layered with sweet falsetto harmonies which bring to mind prime Beach Boys or The Beatles at their poppiest. The songs unfurl gradually, revealing hidden delights over several listens, and while the album never quite reaches the euphoric heights of their illustrious labelmates’ debut, it is a strong addition to Bella Union’s impressive roster. Lee Gorman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘LOOK LIKE A FOOL’, ‘THE UNDESIRABLES’, ‘THE BEAUTIFUL YOUNG CREW’.

FOR FANS OF: ARMOURED BEAR, MIDLAKE.

Metronomy Pip Paine (Pay The £5000 You Owe) BECAUSE MUSIC Since expanded to a four-piece, Metronomy’s 2006 debut was the work of one man, Brighton-based producer/ remixer of repute Joseph Mount. That oddly-titled first album is now re-released with four bonus tracks (the best of which is the hyperactive ‘Are Mums Mates’) and, yeah, it still sounds pretty ace – glitchy, fractured but always melodic electronica. Frantic beats rub up against vaguely broken, cheap-sounding synths (as on ‘Peter’s Pan’), offkilter guitar signatures (see ‘Black Eye/Burnt Thumb’ and punky opener ‘You Could Easily Have Me’) and screaming synth riffs (‘1 String Strung’). Quirky, inventive and great fun, this has dated not one iota. Neill Dougan

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OOIOO Armonico Hewa THRILL JOCKEY Armonico Hewa is a combination of Spanish and Swahili words, defined by the band as “air in a harmonious state”. Hailing from the stables of ‘Japanoise’ peddlers Boredoms, OOIOO is a female quartet, fronted by the talismanic (emphasis on ‘manic’) Yoshimi P-We. The sound on this, their sixth album, is a lysergic, acidfriendly style of repetition, childish chanting, infrequent

Collapse Under The Empire Find A Place To Be Safe

DOWNLOAD: ‘YOU COULD EASILY HAVE ME’, ‘PETER’S PAN’, ‘BEARCAN’.

FOR FANS OF: APHEX TWIN, HUDSON MOHAWKE.

Jesca Hoop Hunting My Dress SISTER JACK

LAST LAUGH It would take a brave man to suggest that Californian kook Jesca Hoop is anything other than the next big thing. Having received notable endorsements from Tom Waits – who she used to nanny for – and Guy Garvey, she is on her way to success, whether you like it or not.

And you might like it – gentle and feminine, she hits the high notes with aplomb and regularity, before plunging to the long, low ones with surprising skill. So, vocal range, interesting celebrity friends and a lot of moxie – a pretty good package if you throw in insistent radio-friendly hits like ‘Whispering Light’ and soulful reveries like ‘Murder of Birds’. Off the wall and on her way. Kirstie McCrum

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘WHISPERING LIGHT’, ‘FOUR DREAMS’, ‘HUNTING MY DRESS’.

FOR FANS OF: BJÖRK, KATE BUSH, CATHY DAVEY.

Shellac guitars, spacey keyboards and manic, binary code-inspired multilingual mantras over the whole hypnotic mess. It’s easy to see why they have previously opened for the likes of Sonic Youth. Songs like ‘Kipepeo’ and ‘Ulda’ are nerve-wracking yet inviting, whilst the funky overtones of ‘Honki Ponki’ ultimately give way to child-like singing and a bongo coda that can only lead over the edge of a very high cliff and to a fall you may well enjoy. Adam Lacey

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘KIPEPEO’, ‘ULDA’, ‘HONKI PONKI’.

FOR FANS OF: SONIC YOUTH, MELT BANANA, APHEX TWIN.

Brilliant Colors Introducing SLUMBERLAND

Inspired by Orwell’s vision of an authoritarian state, Find A Place To Be Safe sees CUTE create a momentumbuilding marriage of atmospheric and thunderous guitars. Ambience, distortion and reverb flow upstream together in ‘Tranquility’, breaking only for a welcome string interlude. ‘Decay’ and ‘Intelligence’ begin with light lashings of nocturnal keyboards, but gather screaming guitars and even elements of trance along the way. With such multi-faceted instrumental music becoming increasingly prevalent, creating a location in the mind is key. Here we have 11 mini-movies that, despite their epic ambition, remain controlled and focused. It’s a compelling journey that finds beauty in some dark visions. Mickey Ferry

It’s 1986; every kid wants a Transformer for Christmas, a top footballer’s dodgy handball causes outrage, and C86 is the only sound the indie brigade cares for. Some things never change. Well, not in Brilliant Colors’ world anyway.

The guitars jangle, the lyrics are indecipherable, and the fi is lo. Hailing from San Francisco, this all-girl threepiece have clearly studied their subject well. ‘Absolutely Anything’ is Nena’s ‘99 Red Balloons’ revamped with a Rickenbacker, while standout track ‘Over There’ showcases a mockney accent that would make Lily Allen blush, but as Ian Brown once put it, “It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at.” Racing through 10 tracks in under 25 minutes, Introducing is a short sharp shock of a debut. Gerard McCann

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DOWNLOAD: ‘TRANQUILITY’, ‘FIND A PLACE TO BE SAFE’, ‘INTELLIGENCE’.

FOR FANS OF: GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR, MOGWAI, GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT.

DOWNLOAD: ‘ENGLISH CITIES’, ‘OVER THERE’, ‘MYTHIC’.

FOR FANS OF: THE PASTELS, TALULAH GOSH, VIVIAN GIRLS. —57 AU Magazine—

Reviews

Etienne Jaumet Night Music VERSATILE You have to admire the sheer balls of Frenchman Etienne Jaumet. Not many artists would open their album with a gargantuan 20-minute epic, but that’s exactly what Jaumet does with ‘For Falling Asleep’. Consisting of a repeating, oscillating bass riff and a relentless beat overlaid with uneasy synth and jazz-inflected saxophone, it’s hypnotic, compelling stuff. The last five minutes in particular – when the beat drops and a delicate harp enters the picture – is spine-tingling.

Perhaps inevitably, the remainder of Night Music doesn’t quite live up to this outrageous opening gambit, but anyone who loves repetition, squelchy synths and pulsing bass will find plenty to admire in the dark groove of ‘Entropy’ and trippy sax-heavy closer ‘At The Crack Of Dawn’. Neill Dougan

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘FOR FALLING ASLEEP’, ‘ENTROPY’.

FOR FANS OF: STEVE REICH, BRIAN ENO.

Cats For Peru Attack Of The Pitching Machine PHANTOM POWER Sheffield’s Cats For Peru were named after a 19th century tale of feline abduction and export in the village of Parkgate, County Antrim. Fortunately, their debut album has more substance than the elaborate hoax which gave them their identity. The songs are slices of independent pop, equal parts the angular rhythms of Franz Ferdinand, the anthemic melodies of Coldplay and the new-folk shimmer of Noah & The Whale. It’s fun, if a little repetitive, but check out the Axl Rose-sings-Les Savy Fav brilliance of ‘Love In A Lift’.

Worth the retail price on its own. Kenny Murdock

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘I LOVE YOU MORE THAN EVOLUTION’, ‘LOVE IN A LIFT. FOR FANS OF: FRANZ FERDINAND, THE LEISURE SOCIETY.

Thao And The Get Down Stay Down Know Better, Learn Faster KILL ROCK STARS Her debut gave Kill Rocks Stars their biggest selling record of 2008, so Thao Nguyen can be forgiven for returning to the template of bright, breezy folk-rock that catapulted her into the indie big-time. Sufjan Stevens producer Martine fills out the infectiously sprightly ditties, loaded with heartsick laments to an expired relationship. Granted, her lyrical content contains many wry, resentful anecdotes about those painful last days of love, but musically the persistent peppiness can be cloying. It’s when she drops the act and lets her chin drop, on the likes of the title track, that some much needed context is provided, making her stoic optimism elsewhere —58 issue 62—

on the album all the more poignant. Andrew Bird is on hand with an elegiac violin to prop her up again, and frequently the results are quietly moving. John Calvert

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘KNOW BETTER, LEARN FASTER’, ‘BODY’, ‘BUT WHAT OF STRANGERS’.

FOR FANS OF: AIMEE MANN, FEIST, NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL.

Sleep Whale Houseboat

of a clapboard house. Ominous and delicate at the same time, it’s as if Jenny Lewis had run away and turned up a week later with leaves in her hair, spooked by what she saw behind the woodshed. Jealousy, fear and passion all interweave in ‘Jealous Of Your Heart’, unleashing a potent cocktail of threatening stillness and lurking hysteria, while lead single ‘A Horse’s Grin’ has an anxious clip-clop offbeat with skittering, galloping vocals. Truly wonderful stuff. Ailbhe Malone

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘INTO THE WILD’, ‘JEALOUS OF YOUR HEART’.

FOR FANS OF: VASHTI BUNYAN, FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE, THE DEAD WEATHER.

A Grave With No Name Mountain Debris

WESTERN VINYL Sleep Whale hail from Texas and are purveyors of layered, spacey tunes, the kind of dreamscape pop that could soundtrack the final moments before the land of nod, or a midnight safari through Area 51 with the sunroof open and the windows down. ‘Roof Sailing’ has the feel of a Ry Cooder interlude from the Paris, Texas soundtrack, and Sleep Whale keep to the same style in ‘Summer Sick’.

Post-rock or music-by-maths this isn’t – the tunes are engaging and worthy of a listen, but outside of the ambient grooving set and soundtrack aficionados, Houseboat will float on only a few dedicated waves. Jeremy Shields

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘COTTON CURLS’, ‘ROOF SAILING’, ‘SLEEP REPRISE’.

FOR FANS OF: WHEN PILOTS EJECT, BRIAN ENO, AIR.

Sparrow And The Workshop Into The Wild DISTILLER This Glasgow three-piece (by way of Wales and America) make music that’s like the wind blowing through the porch

NO PAIN IN POP Collecting together tracks from all of AGWNN’s releases to date and a number of previously unheard recordings, Mountain Debris is the story so far, documenting a band steeped in an atmospheric winter of pining-in-thedistance vocals and chomping guitars. While the mood remains the same throughout, moments of anthemic escapism occasionally break out, like the glorious ‘Sofia’ and the appealingly rusty but playful ‘Stone Setting’.

Cushioned between these are Pixies bass-led sprints like ‘Horses’ and the mysteriously lush ‘Chimes’ and the naked piano-led ‘Underpass’, the latter with a plaintive vocal style not too far removed from The Band’s Richard Manuel. 16 diverse tracks clocking in at just over half an hour is a considerable achievement. The short duration makes putting Mountain Debris on repeat both inviting and essential. It takes time to break the glass but there’s warmth in the winter after all. Mickey Ferry

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘SOFIA’, ‘HORSES’, ‘UNDERPASS’.

FOR FANS OF: BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE, SIGUR RÓS, KEVIN SHIELDS.

Laura Veirs July Flame BELLA UNION Taking the nostalgia of mid-summer as her inspiration, Laura Veirs has concocted a sun-dappled, rustically hued album of disarming beauty. The echoic majesty of opener ‘I Can Still See Your Tracks’ immediately sets the tone, with its quietly soaring melodies and nectar-sweet vocals.

Tinged with the irresistible twang of alt.country, each track seems geared to highlighting Veirs’ masterful fingerpicking and serenely confident vocals, as she waxes lyrical about the paradox of wanting permanence in the full knowledge that it is unobtainable.

Enhancing the folksy sound are rich string arrangements courtesy of Stephen Barber and a few improvised pieces on viola by Eyvind Kang. Tracks such as the toetapping ‘Summer Is The Champion’ and the babbling ‘Life Is Good Blues’ have enough hooks to qualify them as catchy, whilst the likes of ‘Carol Kaye’ and the aforementioned opening track utilise Fleet Foxes-like choral pieces that can’t fail to send tingles to all the right places. While it may prove a little too becalming for some, it still hits all the right notes and marks Veirs as a songwriter to keep an eye on. Recorded in the barn behind her house in Portland, Oregon, July Flame is a wistful, fully fleshed record that strips back production to a soft and lush minimum, allowing Veirs’ soulful voice to take its rightful place – centre-stage. James Gracey

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘I CAN STILL SEE YOUR TRACKS’, ‘MAKE SOMETHING GOOD’, ‘CAROL KANE’.

FOR FANS OF: NEKO CASE, JENNY LEWIS & THE WATSON TWINS, FLEET FOXES.

My Robot Friend Soft-Core DOUBLE FEATURE For his third album Howard Rigberg/Robot has assembled a pleasingly disparate set of collaborators, including Alison Moyet, Galaxie 500 hero Dean Wareham and Zombie Nation. Nothing new there for the egg-headed part-time sculptor, but the results on this occasion are more than just window dressing. Mr Robot has always had an incredibly beguiling way with a tune and a charming penchant for slightly rubbish analogue synths (a good thing), but previous efforts always seemed to over-reach, congested as they were with smart ideas which were more impressive than loveable.

With Soft-Core he appears to have got the balance right and produced a lean, coherent album of startling eclecticism. From the throbbing electronic gristle of ‘The Short Game’ to the country ballad yearning of ‘Waiting’, Soft-Core is a taster tour into wrought-ironic bliss. It’s easy to see why the likes of the Pet Shop Boys and Robbie Williams cover his stuff, as his songs have enough charm and wit to be hits in the grasping hands of more media-friendly pop-tarts. Indictment or accolade?

Need you even ask? Joe Nawaz

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘ASTRONAUT (FEAT DEAN WAREHAM)’, ‘MEAN’, ‘SLEEPWALKERS (FEAT. OUTPUTMESSAGE)’.

FOR FANS OF: EELS, HOT CHIP, MAGNETIC FIELDS.

Comanechi Crime Of Love MEROK Reports from London have been flooding in of postpunk types declaring total servility to thy Dark Lord, with the formidable Kasms the best example of a unit with an indie back-story drinking greedily from the ruby-dashed goblets of metal, sludge and deep grunge.

Whilst retaining punk undertones, the defectors cannot help but succumb to the allure of wielding red-blooded power, with nary a wiry guitar sound in earshot. With the arrival of diabolic Hackney duo, thy cup runneth over.

Into Comanechi’s glamorously wasted noise-cuts and the no-fi imitations of fatalistic metal, a fortune of cheap thrills are woven. Though a little obvious, Simon Petrovitch’s oafish, lycanthropic riffs are deeply

satisfying, jutting luridly at you from rigid structures.

Chord for abominable chord it’s like his play for rock immortality, and weren’t the Ramones all about young daydreams? Containing very little padding, the record is made all the more calamitous by Akiko Matsuura’s flaying rhythms and the risible recording values (the result of financial impairment rather than a hipster move). What you’re left with is a very pure entity.

There’s nothing terribly radical about Comanechi, per se. Their pop-art infused neo-grunge takes freely from the innovations of legends past. What they do bring is an innate understanding of why punk exists at all, which seems an increasingly elusive quality of late. In Crime Of Love they’ve produced a grand paean to the genre; simultaneously a glorious meltdown and an act of selfdetermination. John Calvert

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘MY PUSSY’, ‘CRIME OF LOVE’, ‘CLOSE ENOUGH TO KISS’.

FOR FANS OF: BLACK SABBATH, SONIC YOUTH, L7.

Ola Podrida Belly Of The Lion

Zealots Flowers For My Broken Head EP SELF-RELEASED

WESTERN VINYL

With their first EP, Zealots have collated five intoxicating, haunting electro-rock numbers. It’s the first and last tracks that shine the brightest. ‘Contrition’ quickly builds up with an ensnaring hook that refuses to be forgotten. And ‘Chalk Outlines’ takes creepy to all-new but wonderful levels – Ruth Kennington’s breathless, soaring vocals are chilling here, with an occasional tinge of Karen O-style anguish. Yet despite everything, it manages never to become too bleak or desolate. Strength and vulnerability sit side-by-side, as is evidenced by the screeching ode to assurance and survival, ‘The Glitch’. Each song creeps underneath the skin and clings there, resonating for days on end. Louise McHenry

Ola Podrida, aka David Wingo, re-imagines his lost youth to a hazy and lazy soundtrack on this, his second album. Anyone put off by the drawl of J. Mascis and the like should move on now, because Wingo would sink rather than float your musical boat. However, the shimmering beauty of these simple songs shines through the intermittent bouts of lethargy. His knack for simple yet effective melodies is especially apparent in the stunning ‘just me and my banjo’ mantras ‘Donkey’ and ‘This Old World’. Lyrically resplendent too, this album is a treat for anyone entranced by sombre summer sounds. Paul McIver

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘CONTRITION’, ‘CHALK OUTLINES’.

FOR FANS OF: STEREOLAB, LUSH, WIRE.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘DONKEY’, ‘THIS OLD WORLD’.

FOR FANS OF: BON IVER, YO LA TENGO, BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE. —59 AU Magazine—

Reviews

Marvins Revolt Patrolling The Heights RICHTER COLLECTIVE See the name of the label up there? That’s a guarantee of quality. And while the Dublin-based Richter Collective have spent much of the last few years hoovering up the most exciting bands this island has to offer (Adebisi Shank, BATS, Not Squares and Enemies for starters), they occasionally cast their net further afield as well. Case in point: Copenhagen’s Marvins Revolt. This is their third album – their second on RC – and the Danish trio have settled into a wonderfully addictive math-pop groove. While much of their label’s roster is concerned with the ‘noisy bastard’ end of the experimental spectrum, Marvins Revolt channel their manifest musical chops into catchy pop songwriting, full of bittersweet melodies, genius hooks and surprising twists and turns. And while there isn’t a lot here to chow down on (nine songs, 25 minutes), there’s a weirdly heartwarming quality to songs like ‘Siberia’, ‘Likewise’ and the shapeshifting ‘Parliament’ that keeps you coming back for more. The closing ‘Like Wires’ even sounds like Christmas. An endearing little nugget of an album. Chris Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘SIBERIA’, ‘PARLIAMENT’, ‘ORGANIZE YOUR ARMS’.

FOR FANS OF: MICE PARADE, BEFORE MACHINES, THIS TOWN NEEDS GUNS.

Rio En Medio Frontier MANIMAL VINYL Rio En Medio’s second full-length is a record which will divide listeners into two factions. Unfortunately, as sonically accomplished as Frontier is, neither is likely to champion it, as the album’s intricately layered found sounds, haunting vocal drifts and delicate instrumentation manages, the unenviable feat of being too cluttered and distracting for ambient fans and too wispy and unstructured for folkies. Even those (like myself) with a foot firmly planted in both camps will find it unfocused and devoid of the kind of hooks necessary to draw them into such ethereal sounds. A decision looms for main protagonist Danielle Stech-Homsy; fence-sitting like this will not sustain a career. Lee Gorman

Cave’s merry band are inevitable, but Pete Phythian’s dextrous vocal and the intricacy of banjo, glockenspiel and theremin, set against Vini Taylor’s driving guitar, create a unique feel to this debut offering. ‘Rosa Salvaje’ positively aches with longing, while ‘Mean Old Jack’ tells the story of a man “with his 16 children and 14 wives”, like Tom Waits at his bleakest. The pulsing rock of ‘Vony & The Plynths’ and the creeping pop of ‘Nautilus’ ensure that The Gilded Palace Of Sin should win your heart, without having to resort to their threats of violence. John Freeman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘WEDDING RICE’, ‘NAUTILUS’, ‘ROSA SALVAJE’.

FOR FANS OF: NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS, THE BRUTE CHORUS, SEMAPHORE.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘HEARTLESS’, ‘VENUS OF WILLENDORF’.

FOR FANS OF: BAT FOR LASHES, MUM, ST VINCENT.

The Gilded Palace Of Sin You Break Our Hearts, We’ll Tears Yours Out CENTRAL CONTROL INTERNATIONAL Manchester’s The Gilded Palace Of Sin owe less to grey rain and more to the Gothic melodrama of a John Ford desert vista. This is blackened folk, staggering under the weight of desolation and tragedy. Overseen by ex-Bad Seed Barry Adamson, comparisons with Nick —60 issue 62—

SELF-RELEASED

Hunter-Gatherer I Dreamed I Was A Footstep In The Trail Of A Murderer

At various times, Hunter-Gatherer’s debut full-length manages to sound like air escaping from a tyre, the soundtrack to ET and a Hoover trying to remove a particularly uncooperative piece of gum from a classroom carpet. In electro circles, though, there’s no doubt that it’s the overall effect that counts, and once all the beeps and tings are moulded together, the Dublin native takes you on a near-spiritual journey. It’s a headspinning whirl of vibes that in tracks like the haunting ‘Cloud’ and the melancholy ‘Snow Globe’ make you feel like the world’s a kaleidoscope, and Hunter-Gatherer is slowly churning the colours. Largely pedestrian in tempo but exceedingly heartfelt, this is the kind of album whose whole is significantly more than its

constituent parts, and while you might not want to listen to it every day, it’s a textbook soundtrack to all things wistful and scenic. James Hendicott

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘SNOW-GLOBE’, ‘LEFT FOR DEAD’, ‘ATTICS’.

FOR FANS OF: TANGERINE DREAM, THE KNIFE, KID A-ERA RADIOHEAD.

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School Of Medicine The Audacity Of Hype ALTERNATIVE TENTACLES In the 20 years since the Dead Kennedys’ acrimonious split, Jello Biafra has been nothing if not prolific in his continued assault on the complacent monolith that he believes the United States to be, whether by spoken word recordings, tours or collaborations with an incredible variety of leftfield musicians. For fans seeking a return to the DKs’ twin guitar attack, though this is the record to listen to. Opener ‘The Terror Of Tinytown’ explores how paranoid Iraqnophobia feeds lawlessness in the upper echelons of society, and ‘I Won’t Give Up’ urges change by agitation from below, not through soundbites from the top. Check out the inlay sheet for some bizarre quotes and you’ll realise that Jello is still a vital monitor for our warped generation. Jeremy Shields

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘ELECTRONIC PLANTATION’, ‘I WON’T GIVE UP’, ‘CLEAN AS A THISTLE’.

FOR FANS OF: CHUMBAWAMBA, BAD RELIGION, STIFF LITTLE FINGERS.

Adam Green Minor Love ROUGH TRADE Former Moldy Peaches mainman Adam Green graces these shores in January ahead of the release of his sixth album, one that sees the singer-songwriter continuing to invoke Lou Reed while allowing a more personal snapshot to slip through. With his deadpan, often flat delivery on tracks like the single ‘What Makes Him Act So Bad’, and lines of humility like “I’ve been too awful to ever be thoughtful”, Minor Love is a more tender and self-effacing affair than we’ve come to expect from the New Yorker.

Likewise, the soundscape is more expansive, swapping the coffee shop anti-folk schtick of yore for a more apt jazz and blues bar setting in places. For avid followers of Green’s solo output, there is little here to shock or disappoint and those happy with his outpourings have no cause to complain. When he puts the irreverence aside, Green reveals himself to be quite the craftsman of song and Minor Love succeeds in showcasing the songwriting abilities his Juno-inspired cult following and surreal blogging unfortunately kept in the dark for so long. Lisa Hughes

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘BUDDY BRADLEY’, ‘CASTLES AND TASSELS’, ‘STADIUM SOUL’.

FOR FANS OF: THE MOLDY PEACHES, LOU REED.

DISTRACTION

Tempelhof We Were Not There From The Beginning, We Won’t Be There For The End

For their debut full-length release, Italian duo Tempelhof have delivered a swelling yet subtle slice of down-tempo electronic post-rock. With minimal vocals and lush atmospherics invitingly imposing themselves on 10 mini-epic tracks, WWNTFTB, WWBTFTE is a cinematic journey that is careful never to over-indulge on the momentum-building wave of sounds and samples; all inspired by Bologna’s film library archives. The Eno-laced ambience of tracks like ‘Berlin’ and the splendidly simplistic electro building blocks that comprise ‘Enjoy Neukölln’ help to make this a soothingly beautiful collection. Mickey Ferry

and forth by post. Initially, their first long-player Plain seems to continue the tuneful electronic experimentation defined by that EP. That isn’t nearly the whole story, though – as well as carrying the spluttering torch of post-punk, DIY electronica, Plain mixes synth lines with jarring beats, sweet and sour vocals, surreal lyricism and an ever-shifting musical palette. Disjointed swathes of glacial electronic noise segue into gently strummed acoustic guitars which then appear to be smashed up on the spot and thrown down the stairs along with the kitchen sink – often in the space of one song. A restless, blissfully inventive album of cool noise. Joe Nawaz

DOWNLOAD: ‘FLUID FLOW’, ‘LA MAITRESSE’, ‘BECOMING DELUDED’.

FOR FANS OF: MOMUS, CABARET VOLTAIRE, LCD SOUNDSYSTEM.

Christy And Emily Superstition

DOWNLOAD: ‘WE WERE NOT THERE FROM THE BEGINNING, WE WON’T BE THERE FOR THE END’, ‘ENJOY NEUKOLLN’, ‘AQUAPLANING’.

FOR FANS OF: BRIAN ENO, KRAFTWERK, ORBITAL. BIG PRINT

AMBULANCE CHASER Mike Liffey and Dar Fahy are Mail Order Messiahs – sonamed, one imagines, because of the way in which they recorded their debut Par Avion EP; living in different parts of Ireland, they exchanged lyrics and demos back

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

FOR FANS OF: AQUALUNG, WHITE MAGIC.

Gay Against You Righteous Signals, Sour Dudes

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Mail Order Messiahs Plain

moments of genius and cleverly harmonised melodies, though, aren’t quite far enough from coffee table to pull this album through. James Hendicott

Sitting staunchly on the fence between conventional classical piano and slowed-down, psychedelic nu-folk, Brooklyn-based Christy And Emily’s second LP flits sporadically through the off-the-wall and the jarringly emotional. At times the pair wonders into Aqualung and Sigur Rós territory, an organic effect that’s spoilt somewhat by the 19th century nursery rhyme vibe of tracks like ‘Nightingale’. ‘Golden Rings’, on the other hand, is a swirly, lo-fi pop track, while delicate title track ‘Superstition’ tugs at the heartstrings and ‘Tidal Wave’ shows a more experimental side with pulsing drums and deeply layered Spanish vocals. Occasional oblique

ADAADAT The title is oxymoronic, because listening to this album will either reaffirm life’s young dream or leave you freezing cold. There are no two ways about it. And if you have the stomach for colourful and noise-soaked electro-thrashpop you’ll absolutely LOVE this band. Melodies dart and dash while being relentlessly assaulted by brash vocals and Aphex Twin-style analogue noisebites. ‘Victory Quix’ and ‘Niels Bohr’ ease you in with their instant hooks while initially-throwaway songs like ‘Spooked, Channels’ and ‘Righteous Signals’ make beautiful sense with repeated plays. And beautiful nonsense. This album becomes crazily addictive after a few listens, which is usually the sign of something special. Which this is, by the way. Apparently this Glaswegian duo are still learning how to work together.

Long may it continue! Paul McIver

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘CRUISIN’, ‘VICTORY QUIX’, ‘GLORIOUS DAWN’.

FOR FANS OF: ATARI TEENAGE RIOT, TELEPATHE, DEVO. —61 AU Magazine—

Reviews

from Carryduff to New York and he hasn’t been idle; setting up a new band under the name Radial Nerve. Lost In Space is infused with that melodic and winsome feel we demand of our favourite musical sons and daughters, only now with added widescreen vision you can drive along the M2 to. It will of course be hugely successful, loved and acclaimed and who am I to complain? Somewhat ironic though that a local lad had to go to the States to discover his very own U2pia. Joe Nawaz

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘RAIN’, ‘TRANSATLANTIC’, ‘BORN ON AN ISLAND’.

FOR FANS OF: SNOW PATROL, DUKE SPECIAL, POCKET PROMISE.

Ruby Throat The Ventriloquist SLEEP LIKE WOLVES

DOMINO

Benjy Ferree Come Back To The Five And Dime, Bobby Dee Bobby Dee

Benjy Ferree’s second long player is a concept album of sorts. The ‘Bobby Dee’ of the title is in fact Bobby Driscoll, the Oscar-winning child actor of Peter Pan and Treasure Island who died alone and destitute in 1968 at the age of just 31. DC-based Ferree weaves the rise and fall of Driscoll – his childhood idol – into a kind of loose narrative arc for the record and a paean for life’s losers everywhere. He does this mostly by vocally and musically aping Electric Warrior-era T-Rex, with a dollop of doo-wop, some thumping

4 Or 5 Magicians Empty Derivative Pop Songs SMALLTOWN AMERICA This record sounds like the aural equivalent of the outfit one wears the night before going on holiday.

Normal clothes stowed away, an ensemble is concocted from disparate remnants of one’s wardrobe. Fine by themselves, but together they form a terrible chimera of fashion. Prom dress, Aran sweater and cowboy boots.

You get the idea. On Empty Derivative Pop Songs we find Pavement sitting uncomfortably with the Arctic Monkeys, alongside Reverend And The Makers. And none of them sound happy to be there. ‘Change the Record’ sounds like a Built To Spill backing track with Tesco Value Alex Turner lyrics. There’s even a Rio reference in ‘Is This Your Ideal Man’. ‘Forever On The Edge’ follows the same tack – Jamie T vocals mixed with Stephen Malkmus fuzz. Halfway in, lead singer Dan Ormsby’s voice begins to grate significantly, and when combined with lyrics that are questionable at best (‘Is This Your Ideal Man’ contains the Wordsworthian couplet – “Wouldn’t say boo to a goose / But he’d say cunt to a nun”), it all gets a bit too much to bear.

—62 issue 62—

country blues and a soupÇon of early, histrionic Queen thrown in for good measure.

The playful and kitsch swagger of much of the music renders it not so much a eulogy to a childhood hero as the soundtrack to the campest musical never made this side of Rocky Horror II – with Ferree taking centre stage as the Pope of mope. Which makes Come Back To The Five And Dime… absolutely, essentially, brilliantly nuts. The campaign begins now for Benjy Ferree to score the stage musical of that other prematurely dead star – Marc Bolan. Joe Nawaz

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘BLOWN OUT (GOLD DOUBLOONS AND PCS OF 8)’, ‘THE GRIPS’, ‘WHEN YOU’RE SIXTEEN’.

FOR FANS OF: T-REX, WHITE STRIPES, SUFJAN STEVENS.

Turning her back on the Riot Grrrl roots of Daisy Chainsaw and the rock sounds of Queen Adreena, KatieJane Garside’s latest project sees her trawling the depths through indie-folk and bluegrass-inspired musings.

Keeping the musical canvas created by cohort Chris Whittingham to a bare minimum, the album is decorated

by Garside’s already well-exercised vocal leanings, laid over sparse and delicate arrangements. There is nothing instantaneous or accessible about The Ventriloquist and it is guilty of running on too long, a fact rammed home by the addition of two new songs and an EP of new material.

Soothing in spots, unsettling in others, The Ventriloquist is a whiskey-drenched artistic endeavour that is occasionally beautiful and not as pretentious as expected – but is, ultimately, an acquired taste. Lisa Hughes

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘LIE TO ME’, ‘DEAR DANIEL’, ‘NAKED RUBY’.

FOR FANS OF: MAZZY STAR, KATE BUSH.

Baron Flip Skateboard Presents: Extremely Sorry Soundtrack

The influences are all there. It’s just the content that’s missing. Empty Derivative Pop Songs? The punchline writes itself. Ailbhe Malone

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘FOREVER ON THE EDGE’.

FOR FANS OF: PAVEMENT, BUILT TO SPILL.

Radial Nerve Lost In Space FONTANA There’s a kind of perfectly capable act that thrives in the unique and rarefied musical ecosystem of Norn Iron.

Like a melodic Madagascar, subtle, distinct genetic mutations occur in the musical DNA here. All the better adapted, of course, to sate indigenous appetites for cloying sentimentality, allied to contrived, minor-chord sadness.

One such example is Colin Campbell, better known here perhaps as Kidd Dynamo and for his stint drumming with Desert Hearts. It’s been years since Campbell decamped

FLIP Drum & bass head Baron takes an unexpected departure for this outing, the soundtrack to a new brand of skateboarding films. The project sees Baron working with a cast of contributors including Lemmy from Motörhead, Dave Lombardo of Slayer, and even Snoop Dogg and Warren G. Fused with breathtaking scenes of skateboarding madness, this soundtrack is impressive, but its instrumental basis and lack of coherent themes makes it feel like a compilation rather than an album.

That said, the more time you spend with it, the greater its appeal. In this age of iPod-fodder this album is a grower, and staying with it might provide a measure of long-term satisfaction. Craig Sheridan

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘STAND BY ME’, ‘THE PROCESS OF EXTINCTION’.

FOR FANS OF: POST-PUNK FILM SOUNDTRACKS, BALLSY WORLD MUSIC WITH A METAL TINGE.

Robot Koch Death Star Droid

&

ROBOTS DON’T SLEEP Robot Koch deals in glitchy dubstep with flashbacks to triphop, on a par with the likes of Hudson Mohawke, and with a striking similarity to the seamless collage of Endtroducingera DJ Shadow. This collection is a slick demonstration of contemporary production, populated with deep hip-hop grooves, spacey sound effects, delicate melodies and thick low end. Death Star Droid is sequenced perfectly, flowing naturally and coherently as an entire piece, and it will work equally well on headphones, in the car, or in the club. There are cuts with electro bite, there are cuts with a subtle, haunting quality, but all offerings are on the bleeding edge of the underground urban assault on mediocrity. Craig Sheridan

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘PEOPLE ARE STRANGE’, ‘GOROM SEN’.

FOR FANS OF: HUDSON MOHAWKE, PORTISHEAD.

Squid Ninjaz Revenge Of The Blowfish SQUID NINJA Call it blind ignorance (or blame Goldie Lookin’ Chain), but this reviewer’s heart sank upon spying the words ‘Welsh hip hop’ on the press release accompanying the debut release from Squid Ninjaz. Well, more fool me: one listen to opener ‘8 Bars’ – claustrophobic, smoked-out and boasting rhymes from 15 emcees – is enough to convince that the Barry Town crew know their stuff. Murky and menacing, of particular note is the outstanding ‘Tramadol’ which namechecks Sonic the Hedgehog, Heather McCartney, Robert Mugabe, Peter Schmeichel, Rick Waller and a town overrun with steroid-addled “six-year-olds with six-packs”.

Barry sounds like quite a place. Neill Dougan

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘8 BARS’, ‘TRAMADOL’.

FOR FANS OF: WU-TANG CLAN, JYAGER.

Mordant Music Symptoms MORDANT MUSIC The ‘mysterious’ Baron Mordant’s second album proper may have fared better back when tinkering with primeval computers to create music was deemed impressive. The fact is that now anyone with a PC and a vague grasp of rhythm can knock out songs akin to this ill-formed mush of plinking keyboards and mood music – the sort that, happily, is usually confined to bargain bin chill-out compilations. Only the plastic techno beat of ‘You Are A Door’ raises the temperature, while the inexplicably titled ‘Seeing Death Thru Eric Gates’ at least, for those of a certain age, conjures up images of the mullet-haired Ipswich Town legend. John Freeman

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DOWNLOAD: ‘YOU ARE A DOOR’, ‘SEEING DEATH THRU ERIC GATES’.

FOR FANS OF: SAINT ETIENNE, RYUICHI SAKAMOTO.

Arctic Monkeys Odyssey Arena, Belfast The Arctic Monkeys have made the transition from gauche Sheffield teens clad in the streetwear of their contemporaries to sure-footed players on the global rock stage, their poise and effortless cool holding the audience of devotees, some clad in gorilla suits (!), in the palm of their hand, every song greeted like the arrival of an old friend popped round for a cup of tea and a chinwag. The lush velvet curtains that envelope the stage are pulled back to reveal an unobtrusively lit stage, free of any visual jiggery-pokery. The band rumble through ‘Brianstorm’, ‘This House Is A Circus’ and ‘Still Take You Home’ before a “take it away Matthew” lights the touchpaper for an incendiary ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’. The song rips through the Odyssey like a tsunami.

‘The View From The Afternoon’ sets off a wave of crowd-surfing which Alex calms down with his “this one’s a little bit gentler” introduction to ‘Cornerstone’. The audience lose any remaining vestige of self-control with the arrival of ‘When The Sun Goes Down’, the pregnant pause before the guitar assault one of those utterly life affirming moments. As the climax to ‘Secret Door’ approaches, a cannonade of streamers explode over the band and audience, enveloping the Odyssey in a glistening snow globe. The band returns for an encore of ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ and bid us farewell with a promise to return. We’ll be waiting for them. Jeremy Shields

A Place To Bury Strangers Auntie Annie’s, Belfast Yeah, yeah, ‘loudest band in New York’; we know the billing. But volume alone isn’t always enough. In the studio, A Place To Bury Strangers are well aware of that fact, and their debut album proper Exploding Head is gloriously realised proof – for all the industrialstrength drumming and waves of screaming guitar noise, the album is home to several thrillingly intense, bracing tunes. Tonight, the three-piece unleash most of them, and the fantastic ‘Deadbeat’, ‘In Your Heart’ and the title track stand out through force of melody, attitude and a fearsome rhythm section. But overall, there is something lacking, with Oliver Ackermann’s vocals struggling to be heard over the torrent of noise.

It’s so loud, you can feel the kick drum thump against your chest, and the likes of ‘Lost Feeling’ – a slow grind anyway – sound more like a dirge.

When the band launch into album closer ‘I Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow Of Your Heart’ 45 minutes in, you know that a furious blowout is imminent. On that front, Ackermann and co deliver, as they embark on a My Bloody Valentine-style noise jam, the frontman tearing strings from his guitar as bassist Jono MOFO and drummer Jay Space bludgeon the crowd into submission. But total submission isn’t an option; not yet. After nearly 10 minutes of this, Ackermann switches guitars, starts into another song and we get an entirely unnecessary repeat performance.

It’s too much; we retire defeated, exhausted and halfdeaf. Chris Jones

The Night Marchers, Dan Sartain The Black Box, Belfast “I’m trying to pick a fight tonight by the way,” grins the beyond stoned, stick-thin, guitar slinger Dan Sartain. Yes readers, the Alabama blues man is in particularly prickly form, but it all seems to add to his geek chic appeal. Playing a large smattering of brand new songs (has it really been nearly four years since Join Dan Sartain?) things really kick off when some of his fellow Swami labelmates The Night Marchers accompany him onstage for the likes of ‘Drama Queens,’ ‘Perverted Justice’ and ‘Thought It Over.’

However, Sartain succeeds best when he gives us raw, rockabilly-tinged renditions from his criminally underrated records. He might be an eternal square peg in a round hole, but songs such as ‘Walk Among the Cobras Part IV’ could charm the stars out of the sky and that’s all that matters.

Dan stays onstage to perform a few numbers with The Night Marchers and although he’s seemingly forgotten how to play a single chord, he looks like he’s having fun with Speedo and the boys. It’s quite reassuring to see the former Rocket From The Crypt mainman enjoy himself after years spent slogging his guts out on the road and ‘I Wanna Deadbeat You’ and ‘You’ve Got Nerve’ are some of the best modern rock ‘n’ roll songs you’ll hear. Sadly there’s no ‘Whose Lady Are You’ but when you’re watching one of the best frontman in the business it doesn’t really matter.

Classic stuff. Edwin McFee

Morrissey National Stadium, Dublin As part of a tour promoting B-sides compilation Swords, the setlist tonight has been structured accordingly, making it a frustrating evening for those who have dipped in and out of Morrissey’s world for the last 25 years, but a sheer delight for the faithful.

The wit, passion and spitting venom of ‘Is It Really So Strange?’, ‘Teenage Dad On The Estate’ and ‘Ganglord’ reinforce the theory that as a Smith and a solo artist, some of Morrissey’s finest moments have been on the flipside of the singles.

Not everything works tonight. The band struggle with Smiths classic ‘Cemetry Gates’, while even Morrissey himself seems bored by ‘How Soon Is Now?’ at this point. Meanwhile, the inclusion of ‘Death At One’s Elbow’ is a timely reminder that his former band did not always walk on water. ‘This Charming Man’ continues to crunch, free from Marr’s iconic guitar-riff, and as ever divides the audience. They unite in frenzy, though, for the anthemic ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’ and the smooth rockabilly stomp of ‘The Loop’, and even ‘I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris’ gets a rapturous reaction in a week when all things Parisian have pierced the Irish heart.

He’s on top form as a raconteur, berating Aer Lingus (“Aer Fungus,” he hisses); claiming he sent a lightweight Damien Dempsey home in a taxi after two drinks the night before and dedicating a powerful ‘The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores’ to Eurovision king and McDonalds advert star, Johnny Logan.

But Morrissey will never be a jukebox. If he wished to be, The Smiths would’ve reformed long ago.

Encore ‘Something Is Squeezing My Skull’ ends in high-spirited, shirt-ripping drama as Moz waves farewell to his family’s city and yet another year of refusal. Mickey Ferry

—63 AU Magazine—

Live Reviews

Russell Brand Odyssey Arena, Belfast

Russell Brand

Photo by Carrie Davenport

Minutes before Russell Brand makes his way onstage, you can hear a multitude of obnoxious, big-haired ladies talking way too loudly, clearly hoping for a tickle on the funnyman’s love truncheon. Needless to say, their efforts are in vain but they give it a good hard try until a VT comes on featuring all of the comedians most ‘outrageous’ moments (the tour’s called Scandalous y’see…). As he strides onstage in bollock torturing trousers backed by AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black’ it’s obvious right from the get go that Brand hasn’t a clue how to fill the hour he’s been allotted onstage. In fact for the first 15 minutes he spends his time strutting around like a peacock gone goth and saying hello to AU’s photographer instead of giving us laughs, but hey, his female followers seem to think it’s inspired…

Tonight’s show is a stark reminder that comedians need to keep writing material no matter what the circumstances.

Case in point – our Russell relies far too much on Manuelgate (which was a year ago) and slagging off Twilight (which is such an easy target we reckon even Gordon Brown could come up with something remotely funny on the subject). Don’t get us wrong, Russell Brand can be a funny bloke. When he drops the façade and indulges in some self-deprecating humour (such as telling us Noel Gallagher thought he looked like Rev Al Sharpton when he presented the MTV Awards) it’s genuinely hilarious, but those moments are few and far between.

We’ve learnt two things about the comedian this evening.

Firstly, he’s hopeless when he’s caught on the hop (when one pissed-up mentalist beside us starts screaming about Bob Geldof he looks far too frightened to think of a comeback) and, secondly, his material is older than Bruce Forsyth’s hair-piece. While his show may have pleased the faithful, we think that there’s only so long he can continue with the same old schtick. File under D for disappointing. Edwin McFee

Russell Brand - Cock Of The Walk —64 issue 62—

Unsigned Universe

InProfile ACT: SLEEP THIEVES LOCATION: DUBLIN MEMBERS: DEREK MURPHY (GUITARS, KEYS, SYNTHS, PROGRAMMING), SORCHA BRENNAN (VOCALS, KEYS, GLOCKENSPIEL, GUITAR), WAYNE FAHY (BASS, SYNTH, VOCALS, PROGRAMMING).

FOR FANS OF: STEREOLAB, OPPENHEIMER, MATES OF STATE. WEBSITE: MYSPACE.COM/WEARESLEEPTHIEVES

Sleep Thieves

did it feel to get something recorded, released and out into the world?

It was great, a real labour of love to put it out there and we’re delighted and amazed with the positive reaction we’ve had to it, from punters at our shows, to lovely words written by magazines and websites etc. It’s a good snapshot of the different aspects of electro, pop and indie that we trade in.

What bands have influenced your sound?

We’ve all been in bands previous to this which were more rock influenced so it was whatever we were listening to over the last few years in the electronic music scene that pushed us this way. Bands like M83, The Faint, of Montreal, Jape, Ladytron, Dan Deacon – they definitely got us thinking about beats, synths, a different way of approaching music, and here we are...

We all love playing live (who doesn’t?) and we’ve been quite busy over the last year on the circuit. We’ve played with some awesome Irish bands and a couple of international artists too. The two [gigs] that stand out would be supporting Saint Etienne in Cork Opera House last summer. That was great as the venue and stage were huge and Saint Etienne are Nineties royalty. It was great to be part of that. Also, our EP launch in Whelan’s in Dublin was great. Once we stepped on stage the business hats we’d needed to wear for so long to get the EP ready just fell off and we had a blast!

You just released an EP, It Was Only A Satellite. How

How has the gigging scene been treating you? Have there been any especially memorable performances for Sleep Thieves?

Where would you like the band to be by this time next year?

We’re not ones to rest on our laurels, so we’ll probably put something else out before too long – first half of 2010 if it’s another EP. Live, we’ll absolutely be looking to get out there as much as possible, that’s any band’s bread and butter.

Thankfully, this year, opportunities came our way more than we had to go chasing them, so lets hope that long continues and we can bring the noise to as many people as possible!

More Than Conquerors Set Fire To The Night

Sleep Thieves It Was Only A Satellite

The Varionis Whatever It Takes

A little taster for a promised full-length EP, More Than Conquerors sketch out their sound on ‘Set Fire To The Night’. Counter punching call-and-response vocals meet ingratiating guitar hooks and heavy impact drums.

There’s an unashamed emo tinge to proceedings and it’s a little overly earnest in places, but all told, this is a commendably well-crafted tune from the fledgling outfit. FJ

Fizzing like a sherbet flying saucer, the opening ‘Winter’ paints a somewhat twee picture. The male and female vocals circle each other in a delicate courtship dance, keys chirruping and drums thudding gently. It’s all very polite. ‘Osumi’, however, kicks off in a more interesting direction, with a wiry guitar flourish and off-kilter rhythms coming in mid-way.

The scene-stealer, though, is ‘Make Your Move’. Rumbling bass and dance beats provide plenty of oomph, before Sorcha Brennan’s voice wafts breezily into the picture. There’s intrigue too in the fleeting form of ‘This Is Not An Exit’, New Order-style guitar meshing darkly with razor-edged synths. FJ

The brothers Gallagher, the ladette, alcopops, TFI Friday – if these are your cultural touchstones then you may find much to enjoy in The Varionis’ Britpop-emulating sounds. Really, though, for anyone who likes their music to have even a scintilla of creativity and forward-thinking vision the three cuts on Whatever It Takes are utterly inessential. Throughout the lyrics are laboured and guitars trudge like a Weight Watchers class on an uphill trek. Honestly, there are inbred rednecks in the darkest corners of the Deep South less backward than this. FJ

Interview by Richard W Crothers Purveyors of bleeping marvelous electro-pop with sugar spun indie sentiments, Sleep Thieves tell us about their progress to date and plans for the future..

WWW.MYSPACE.COM/MORETHANCONQUERORSNI

WWW.MYSPACE.COM/THEVARIONIS —65 AU Magazine—

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THE LOW ANTHEM

Feast On This

Arts Festival Warms Up January

Sometimes we forget just how fortunate we are to live in Northern Ireland. That might sound like a strange thing to say but it’s true. Think about it for a moment. Our country has long been a hotbed of creativity and artistic endeavour. From Seamus Heaney to Stiff Little Fingers, C.S. Lewis to The Frames, this little island has always punched above its weight, culturally speaking. In the past it may have been rent into bloody pieces by decades of politics and spite, but the growth of a rich, multifaceted cultural identity has helped to soothe those wounds – and occasionally heal them. Simply put, you could head out in Belfast every night of the week to see everything from a thrash metal gig to a burlesque performance. It’s wonderful to know that a whole world of possibility is right there at our fingertips, on our doorsteps, ready to buzz our nerve endings.

At the centre of all this physical and emotional redevelopment is Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, which is fast transforming into a bristling hub of exciting cultural activity. This is thanks in part to the good folks who have worked to establish the annual Arts Festival, which delights the city each May with a king’s ransom of films, artists and performers. The area’s network of side-street bars, galleries and other venues is the ideal location for such shenanigans. Its seemingly intimate style provides the perfect antidote to the summer’s mud-and-Buckysoaked festivals.

"After busting your belly and numbing your brain with Christmas telly, why not head down to the Cathedral Quarter for something a little different?”

Similarly, the summer event’s counterpart, Out To Lunch, which kicks off this coming January, is a lovely way to start the New Year. After busting your belly and numbing your brain with Christmas telly, why not head down to the Cathedral Quarter for something a little different? This year’s menu is as eclectic and intriguing as before, and those who are still peckish after the holiday eating marathon will be happy to know that many of the early afternoon gigs are accompanied by a meal – hence the luncheon in the title. Comedy comes in the form of radio and telly

stalwarts Andrew Maxwell and Robin Ince, who have been steadily building a reputation by courting awards and controversy in equal measures.

There is also a real feast in terms of music. After a grim few years, Edwyn Collins makes a welcome return to health and the Belfast stage (see our interview on page 42), and elsewhere you can delight in the sounds of the likes of The Low Anthem, Malcolm Middleton and a DJ set from Ninja Tunes’ Bonobo. A special hearty shout out goes to a triple-header from Here Comes The Landed Gentry, Not Squares and Cutaways.

We know it should be a month of cutting back and slimming down after the December binge, but the event is fattened up with readings, performances and other special events. To say more would spoil the surprise. Like we said, we’re pretty fortunate to live here. Ross Thompson The Out To Lunch festival runs from January 6 to 31.

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—67 AU Magazine—

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Indie Movie 500 No matter how in touch with their feminine side a dutiful boyfriend or husband may be, the phrase ‘romantic comedy’ should still send a spike of fear up his spine. How many times have we suffered the sight of Matthew McConaughey rippling his chiselled abs and riveted nipples whilst a Maroon 5 track plays in the background? Well, my fellow Droogs, it’s time to take off that Master Chief helmet, grab your girlfriend’s hand and bolt for the DVD store, because finally there’s a romantic comedy that will not shrink your manlies by a few pant sizes. (500) Days Of Summer has two likeable leads (Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a great soundtrack (Pixies, The Temper Trap, The Smiths) and a story which is sweet, sour and surprisingly real. Taking its title from the relationship which develops between the two main characters, (500) Days jumps backwards and forwards from one date to another – which makes it reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, though less depressing and melancholic. That’s high praise indeed. RT (500) Days Of Summer is released on DVD on January 18.

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER

GUN CRAZY Show a hi-res picture of new videogame heroine Bayonetta to your average knuckle-dragging male and he is likely to lose control of all his bodily functions in an amatory apoplexy. The titular witch is all kinds of awesome from head to stilettoed toe. She wears glasses, so she must be intelligent; she has revolvers for high heels, so she knows how to kick ass; and most of her clothing is made out of her own hair, so she’s thrifty too. Yep, that’s the ideal woman right there. Packed full of ultraviolent, high-kicking action, weirder than shizz level design and a bonkers storyline about celestial warfare, it’s reportedly so good it earned a mythical 40/40 score from Japanese publication Famitsu. And so it should: it’s created by Hideki Kamiya, the respected gaming guru behind Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 2 and Okami. The first truly essential release of the new decade, Bayonetta will make Lara Croft run back to her mansion to bake Girl Scout cookies. RT Bayonetta is released on PS3 and Xbox 360 on January 8.

FROM SHEFFIELD WITH LOVE

expanded version packed with more goodies than the pockets of a fat kid in a tuck shop. Aside from the usual extras you’d expect from such a bumper edition – documentary, photo galleries, unseen clips – there is also a deck of ‘Outrage’ playing cards, Boosh tin and smart belt buckle. Sweet. FJ The Mighty Boosh Future Sailors Tour Live Show: Limited Edition is available now.

TEES, TEES, TEES LET ME GET WHAT I WANT We’ve mentioned this natty website before, but it’s worth mentioning again – if only for the reason that Christmas is ho-ho-hoing around the next corner, and you’ll soon be running about like a headless elf looking for something for that special geek in your life. Last Exit To Nowhere specialise in t-shirts emblazoned with insignias and emblems from the discerning film fan’s favourite movies. If you’ve been fruitlessly scouring clothes shops for tops bearing the symbol of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, or the logo for Camp Crystal Lake, then gift fulfilment is just one left click away. RT www.lastexittonowhere.com.

Good things, they say, come to those who wait.

Richard Hawley’s saunter back to Belfast has been twice delayed, but we’ll bet our secret stash of Brylcreem that it’ll be worth it in the end. The last time the Sheffield Sinatra and his band played our town, they nearly spun the mirrorball off its hook with their rockabilly shenanigans. The upcoming show is likely to be a more sombre affair, if new album Truelove’s Gutter is anything to go by. With one dash of whiskey, two dashes of regret, it’s the perfect late night record – like Scott Walker refracted through a bottle of Newcy Brown. Let’s ballad. RT

BOOSHING YOUR BUTTONS

Just in case you have been trapped in an underground labyrinth for the past few months, and the ageless man faun Pan has not been kind enough to keep you up to speed with the latest goings on in Rocksville, it’s our duty to inform you that Modest Mouse hit Ireland later this month. The critically lauded Seattle space rockers are not known for their frequent appearances on these shores, so it’s advisable to grab this opportunity while it’s still smoking. To sweeten the deal, everybody’s favourite maudlin Scots Frightened Rabbit are along for the ride. Think of it as the last great tour of the decade. RT

Documenting last year’s live tour, Future Sailors bids you come aboard HMS The Mighty Boosh. The show is available in a variety of formats including a 4-disc

Modest Mouse and Frightened Rabbit play Galway, Limerick, Dublin (two nights) and Belfast from December 4-9.

Richard Hawley plays the Ulster Hall on December 20.

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—68 issue 62—

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GOOD NEWS FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE GOOD GIGS

Most Wanted

Dot Dot Dot...

The Best Of The Rest In Live Music

Be it in Black Books or his stand-up performances, Dylan Moran’s comedic shtick is essentially the same, the elegantly tailored observations belying the bumbling mannerisms and dishevelled appearance.

Delivered in front of an appreciative Sydney audience, What It Is is a virtuoso display, chock full of original ideas, the downbeat Moran sidestepping cliché even when tackling comedy mainstays such as relationships and religion. FJ What It Is is available now.

ON THE RIGHT TRACKS One of the gaming world’s most iconic characters, Link, bounds back onto the DS in the muchanticipated release The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.

Following on directly from Link’s previous adventure The Phantom Hourglass, it has all the hallmarks of a classic Zelda title – innovative dungeons, multiple artefacts and weapons, oodles of cuteness. Expanding upon the same control scheme as before, the new Zelda jaunt promises to be the kind of rewarding and engrossing fairy tale you love to hear at Christmas. RT

to replace your eyeballs with neodymium magnets which would fry your own brain. It was made by dipsticks for dipsticks, and it couldn’t hold a candle to District 9, a sci-fi fable which was filmed on a fraction of the budget but had infinitely more charm. The first full-length feature from Neill Blomkamp, it sees an alien spaceship appearing above Johannesburg. The passengers – squitchy, squelchy aliens who would even be refused entry to the Mos Eisley Cantina – soon taste the apartheid which has tainted South African history.

The film excels in its ability to make challenging points about prejudice and social deprivation, but it still manages to do everything that a blockbuster action movie should do. Unmissable. RT District 9 is released on DVD on December 28.

Florence and the Machine, The Temper Trap Olympia, Dublin

Placebo Olympia, Dublin (also December 16)

Tuesday, December 8 White Lies, The Kissaway Trail Mandela Hall, Belfast (December 9, Dublin Academy; December 10, Cork Opera House) Richter Collective Christmas Party: Adebisi Shank, Enemies, BATS, Marvins Revolt, Hands Up Who Wants To Die, The Continuous Battle Of Order, Jogging Twisted Pepper, Dublin Lily Allen O2, Dublin Wednesday, December 9 Dirty Three Whelan’s, Dublin (December 10, Cyprus Avenue, Cork) Marvins Revolt Cyprus Avenue, Cork (then touring – check iheartau.com for details) Thursday, December 10 Sketchy: Har Mar Superstar (7.30pm, £4) Stiff Kitten, Belfast Iain Archer Black Box, Belfast A Plastic Rose, The Good Fight, Pocket Promise, Kasper Rosa Empire, Belfast Frightened Rabbit Mason’s, Derry

The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is released on December 11.

U:Mack’s 15th Birthday: Battles, The Ex, 65daysofstatic, !!! DJs, Adebisi Shank, Skinny Wolves DJs Tripod, Dublin

BRAINS AND PRAWNS Financially speaking, the summer of 2009 was pwned

by Transformers 2, a film so heinous it made you want

Tuesday, December 15 The xx Speakeasy, Belfast (then touring – check iheartau.com for details)

Lisa Hannigan Glor Theatre, Ennis (then touring – check iheartau.com for details)

MODEST MOUSE

THE WILD RAMBLER

Monday, December 7 Snow Patrol Waterfront Hall, Belfast (also December 8 & 9)

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Depeche Mode, Soulsavers The O2, Dublin

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Thursday, December 17 Soulwaxmas: Soulwax (live), 2manyDJs & more Ulster Hall, Belfast The Prodigy, Does It Offend You Yeah (live), South Central (DJ set) Odyssey Arena, Belfast (December 18, Dublin O2) Two Step: In Case Of Fire, Dutch Schultz, Axis Of (9pm, £5) Limelight, Belfast Friday, December 18 And So I Watch You From Afar, Cashier No.9 Ulster Hall, Belfast Edan (DJ set) - Echo Party Twisted Pepper, Dublin (December 19, Cork Cyprus Avenue) Saturday, December 19 Oppenheimer (all ages, 3pm) Spring & Airbrake, Belfast Oppenheimer, Skibunny (live), Nakatomi Towers, Rigsy (9pm) Spring & Airbrake, Belfast Fake Blood, Boom Monk Ben Stiff Kitten, Belfast Andrew Weatherall (DJ set), Deep Fried Funk DJs St Columb’s Hall, Derry General Fiasco, Colenso Parade (all ages) Strule Arts Centre, Omagh (GF then touring – check iheartau.com for details) Sunday, December 20 Richard Hawley, Colenso Parade Ulster Hall, Belfast

Friday, December 11 Paul McCartney Rodrigo y Gabriela The O2, Dublin Academy, Dublin (December 12, Cork Savoy; December 13, Cork Opera House) Republic Of Loose Cyprus Avenue, Cork Adebisi Shank, Marvins Revolt Bar Ritz, Castlebar Monday, December 21 Switch Fight Like Apes Twisted Pepper, Dublin Electric Avenue, Waterford (then touring – check iheartau.com for details) Saturday, December 26 Shine: Chris Liebing, Saturday, December 12 Alex Under (live), Fergie, Science: Johnny Foreigner, Seth Troxler, Timmy Stewart FAUX DJs QUBSU, Belfast Auntie Annie’s, Belfast Japanese Popstars (live), Ecker vs Grub: Boxcutter, Nez, Phil Kieran (live), T-Polar, Bloom, De-Twist Deep Fried Funk DJs, Sneak Attack Menagerie, Belfast Nerve Centre, Derry James Lavelle, Timmy Stewart Stiff Kitten, Belfast The Answer Academy, Dublin (December 14, Belfast Ulster Hall)

DISTRICT 9

Wednesday, December 16 Fuck Buttons Lane Theatre, Cork (tnen touring – check iheartau.com for details)

Monday, December 14 Julian Casablancas Academy, Dublin

Monday, December 28 The Undertones Sandino’s, Derry Tuesday, December 29 Madness Odyssey Arena, Belfast Deadmau5 Ulster Hall, Belfast

—69 AU Magazine—

Sc Screen

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Bunny And The Bull One For The Road

Words by Francis Jones

BUNNY AND THE BULL

An unconventional buddy movie-cumsurrealist road trip, Bunny and The Bull takes us off-the-beaten track and into the mind of agoraphobic shut-in Stephen (Ed Hogg).

It’s a touching and often hilarious story, one set within the confines of Stephen’s febrile imagination. We witness flashbacks to the European adventure he embarked upon the previous summer with best friend – chronic wastrel and compulsive gambler – Bunny (Simon Farnaby). Along the way, the duo pick up sexy Spanish waitress Eloisa (Verónica Echegui) and encounter a procession of bizarre characters, including Richard Ayoade as an excruciatingly dull tour guide in a shoe museum, Julian Barrett’s dog-fancying Hungarian tramp and Noel Fielding’s sozzled former matador. Written and directed by Paul King, he of The Mighty Boosh fame, Bunny and The Bull is as visually arresting as it is emotionally engaging.

Here, Ed and Simon recall their experience making one of the year’s most memorable films.

—70 issue 62—

How did you first become aware of the project?

Ed: I got the script in via my agent and went up for the first round of auditions. All my friends were going for it at the same time, it was the buzz script. Everyone knew Paul King from the Boosh had written it.

Simon: I’d met Paul at the BBC. They were putting together this sketch show – doomed eventually – of young up-and-coming talent. It included Pulling’s Sharon Horgan, actually. Anyway, Paul was directing that and we got on really well. We ended up doing a one man show in London. During improvisation for that, I started telling Paul stories about my family. My granddad was a gambling addict and alcoholic, Paul found this hilarious!

We devised a theatre show around the theme of gambling and the question of whether or not these things are hereditary – I gamble as well. After that show, Paul went on a trip around Europe. He did say that he was gonna write a film that might be loosely based on some of the themes in the show and asked was I okay with that. I said, ‘Yes, of course’. He wrote the script and then I came in and helped him write a bit more.

So you were a shoo-in for the part of Bunny?

Simon: Well, when it came to getting the film made, I had to undergo a quite rigorous audition process. I wasn’t very famous and they wanted a name, but once they resigned themselves to the fact that they wouldn’t get a big name, I got the part!

beaming smile and this slightly nervous guy. He made me feel at ease, we chatted and made each other laugh and immediately just had a kind of kinship. Ed’s from Sheffield too, so we’re both Northern and reasonably down-to-earth.

Ed: We lived together throughout the shoot, in an apartment together. We’re both quite laidback, we’re not really method actors, or tortured artist types. We’d finish acting and go and have a pint and a chat. We could go over lines together back at the flat, watch Wimbledon on the telly, or the [golf] Open. It was really nice, actually.

Watching the film I was reminded a little of Withnail and I, especially with regards to Bunny.

Simon: Perhaps, but he’s more based on myself. I like a drink and I’m pretty laidback. I might not make the decisions that Bunny makes, though. He’s a very selfish man, even though he’s only trying to do his best for his buddy. But, there is a touch of Withnail in there. I like those waster characters, people on the periphery, like in Charles Bukowski novels, or in J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man – the character of Sebastian Dangerfield, a wild wild man, a bit like Bunny, I guess.

Ed, your character has all these neuroses that he’s trying to keep in check. How difficult was it to play that character, and do you have any compulsions yourself?

The relationship between Stephen and Bunny is key to the film. As the actors bringing that dynamic to life, what was the relationship between the two of you like?

Ed: I can’t imagine how it must be for people who are like that and the things they put themselves through.

However, I have those little things that everybody has.

I’m obsessed with plug switches being turned off – even though there’s no difference, they always have to be flicked off.

Simon: I’d never met Ed before. Once we got through the first couple of castings, we did these ‘chemistry auditions’.

They were designed to see which pairs of actors worked best together. We just clicked. I walked in and saw his

Visually, the film is stunningly creative. When did you realise just how imaginative it was going to be?

Screen Ed: I wasn’t thinking about it as we were filming. I can remember seeing the interior of the flat for the first time and that was kind of the ‘normal’ environment. I thought that was incredible, so detailed. I saw the first cut of the film before the animation went on top and thought it was good, and then when I saw it with all the animation I was blown away.

Simon: Paul described it to me a number of times. To be honest it didn’t quite sink in how this was gonna happen, he’d say like, ‘There are gonna be worlds made out of newspapers’, and I’d be like, ‘Right!’. I just trusted that he knew what he was doing. I’d come onto set for the first time and go, ‘Oh, I see’.

The film has drawn attention in part from the association with The Mighty Boosh, do you think that works exclusively to your advantage, or that it might create misconceptions about the film?

Ed: I love The Mighty Boosh and if people compare the film to it then I’d be really chuffed. However, Paul’s made a film that stands on its own two feet – this isn’t a Mighty Boosh film. I certainly don’t mind the comparison, or when people say that it’s heavily influenced by the work of Michel Gondry. Paul would probably say [the work of Gondry] is a bit of an inspiration, but not the sole influence on him wanting to become a filmmaker. There are lots of different influences.

Simon, you were over in Northern Ireland recently working on Your Highness. How did you find that experience compared to Bunny and The Bull?

Simon: That was amazing and somewhat lucky in that it had the same casting director as Bunny and The Bull.

I was a big fan of David Gordon Green [director of Your Highness] and Danny McBride and I’d seen Pineapple Express. So it was great to get a part in it. It featured James Franco and Natalie Portman; I never imagined I’d be acting in the same film as these people. It was very odd, but an incredible time. The budget was something like £60m and my part was somewhat smaller than that of Bunny. That’s the main difference. I was in Belfast for something like three months, we used to go to Tedford’s [seafood restaurant], maybe up Botanic. I used to go to the Queen’s Film Theatre too, that’s where all the best stuff was on and where Bunny and The Bull is showing, I believe!

Ed, you made your feature film debut in White Lightnin’. I know that Carrie Fisher stars as your love interest in that. For males of a certain generation, that’s something of a fantasy come true – what was it like working with her?

Ed: Well, she’s not a twenty-something anymore, she’s my mum’s age! But she was absolutely lovely. It was my first film and I was so green and nervous. Part of the reason why I gave any sort of a performance was firstly down to the director Dominic Murphy and, secondly, down to her.

Returning to Bunny and The Bull, as we mentioned earlier, the film has drawn comparison to the work of cult films and filmmakers. Do you hope it attains that sort of status?

Simon: I’d like it to be like those films that you watch so many times and quote. I think this film has a chance of getting to that stage.

“I saw the first cut of the film before the animation went on top and thought it was good, and then when I saw it with all the animation I was blown away”

Ed: I’d also love it to be like that. If you ask any actor, that’s the type of film they went to be involved in.

Nobody sets out to make a blockbuster movie, but you want to be in a film that people love and treasure.

BUNNY AND THE BULL IS SHOWING NOW AT THE QUEEN’S FILM THEATRE, BELFAST UNTIL DECEMBER 10.

WWW.QUEENSFILMTHEATRE.COM

Little Screen Words by Ross Thompson No more playing with dolls…

Well, it had to happen. A few issues back, in an article on Joss Whedon’s smart and sassy sci-fi series Dollhouse, we mentioned that the show was one pay cheque away from cancellation. Turns out it was too smart, too sassy and, well, probably too sci-fi for Fox, who axed the show midway through its second season. If you haven’t checked it out yet, Dollhouse – an everyday tale of political intrigue, human trafficking and memory wiping – is quite silly but a whole bag of fun and well worth watching.

Who goes there…

Speaking of goodbyes, this Christmas sees the current incarnation of Doctor Who breathe his last. In the two part special The End Of Time, David Tennant bows out, to be replaced by a younger, sleeker, undoubtedly less talented model. The double episode, which is also notable for the presence of one Timothy Dalton, will see John Simm reprise his role as The Master. If only Tennant would hang around long enough to use his sonic screwdriver on another series to be given a Christmas special: My Family.

BUNNY AND THE BULL

I am not a number (again)...

Like The Terminator, American television companies absolutely will not stop, ever. The wholly unnecessary remake of The Prisoner is currently showing in the States, and no doubt will splodge against our screens sometime soon despite being given a critical pasting. It stars Ian McKellen and lots of other actors you’ll recognise from other places. We would be less vague about this story if it warranted being less vague about. Up next: the 2010 version of Henry’s Cat, now in three-dimensional CGI. —71 AU Magazine—

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Console Yourself!

This Year's Gaming Christmas Crackers Words by Ross Thompson

Christmas is fast approaching, and the videogame elves have been working extra long shifts to make sure the shelves are fully stocked with top-notch titles.

With so many new releases vying for your attention, here’s our round-up of which ones should be tickling your pixels this holiday season…

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“Offset by zombie sieges so intense they could make seasoned console monkeys weep like Jan Moir at a Gay Pride parade” —72 issue 62—

LEFT 4 DEAD 2

LEFT 4 DEAD 2 (EA, PC / Xbox 360)

Slabber zombie and witch…

Nothing says jingle bells like a zombie apocalypse, and nobody says it more proudly than Valve. The peerless developers caused quite the overexcited hoo-hah amongst gamers this time last year with Left 4 Dead, a deranged multiplayer first person shooter which pitted your meagre gang against legions of decomposing townsfolk. The resulting showdowns saw you backed into the corners of airport departure lounges and disused depots whilst the undead horde tried to use your stomach for a gut trough. The gameplay was refreshingly simple – run, shoot, scream a little bit – yet offset by zombie sieges so intense they could make seasoned console monkeys weep like Jan Moir at a Gay Pride parade. Now, in less time than it takes Peter Crouch to fall down a hill, Valve have bounded back with a sequel which ups the ante in almost every respect. Instead of knocking out a lazy expansion, the bods over in Washington have crafted a follow-up which is bigger, badder, longer and madder than before. Impressively, it takes risks where others would play safe. This time the hi-jinx shift to the Deep South, whose gassy, hoodoo-drenched marshlands and dilapidated carnivals are the perfect backdrop for all the carnage. Where lesser programmers would use darkness to both create artificial fear and cover a multitude of graphical sins, L4D2 places several levels in the bright bayou sunlight. The infected, both the regular kind and the ‘special’ ones who resemble a mutant boy band (Spitter, Smoker, Jockey, Witch etc.), are revealed in all their gory glory, sloppy entrails and all. The effect is unnerving, to say the least. Not exactly a game to put on when you fancy a pre-sleepy wind-down, L4D2 is at times trickier than a Venusian spelling test, but the thrill of thwacking a zombie with a frying pan – accompanied by comedy cartoon DONG!!! – more than compensates for that. With more campaigns, more modes and more weapons than before, it’s instantly pick-up-and-playable for both new converts and old hands. Run for your life.

BORDERLANDS (2K Games, PC / PS3 / Xbox 360) Profoundly in love with Pandora…

A game so time-consuming you can play it until your fingers become symbiotically melded into your joypad, this lootem-up successfully combines elements from two disparate genres: the first person shooter and the role playing game.

The results are hugely impressive. Gearbox Software have

managed to create a universe as vast and richly detailed as any other you may have stepped into, but the usual clatter of baffling stats and dialogue trees are replaced by straight ahead action and a simple levelling up system. During its production, Borderlands was frequently likened to Fallout 3, which should be taken as a compliment, and there are definite similarities: both pit the gamer in a desolate, nastyinfested wasteland where raiders battle it out with the last dregs of humanity. However, Borderlands is distinguished by its gorgeous cel-shaded visuals, whose bright colour palette contrasts with the muddy browns and ashen greys common to other games from this ilk. Secondly, it has a healthy sense of humour, partly inherited from the late sci-fi series Firefly.

Whilst wandering around the planet Pandora, rooting through storage crates and accumulating countless weapon combinations, you will meet all kinds of space rednecks and backwoods bin-lids, each of whom have spent too long near to radiated objects, and who each have a favour to ask.

There are umpty-ump quests and sidequests to complete, either on your lonesome or co-operatively, but the variety of task means that few become a chore. All things considered, Borderlands provides an unusual, fun and consistently entertaining foray to the outer limits.

ASSASSIN’S CREED 2 (Ubisoft, PC / PS3 / Xbox 360) Slash and grab…

The original Assassin’s Creed had one of the most curious storylines of recent years – bartender Desmond Miles is kidnapped, placed in the kind of hi-tech machine you’d find buried in Bill Gates’ basement, and his mind duly simulates the memories of one of his ancestors. Turns out one of Miles’ forbears was a trained killer in the Holy Land, circa 1191. It promised more than it delivered in the long run, but the idea was kooky enough to carry it through the duller sandbox sections. In AC2, we are in Renaissance Italy for another rollicking adventure involving intrigue, murder and Leonardo Da Vinci. The gameplay largely remains the same, though this time you control Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a nobleman-turned-Italian who spends his days mincing around Tuscany and Florence whilst occasionally bumping off corrupt officials. However, things have been tweaked and stretched substantially. Gone are the boring free roaming bits and repetitive races, replaced by stealth missions and much improved combat. The whole thing is tied together by a twisty-turny plot which would make Dan Brown spit his caviar and wonder why he didn’t write it. Because it’s really good, that’s why.

Games MODERN WARFARE 2 (Activision, PC / PS3 / Xbox 360)

Modern strife is rubbish…

By the time you read this (if you’re not too busy pretending to take down Russian dissidents, that is) the latest instalment in the Call Of Duty franchise will have sold enough copies to fill the Albert Hall. It’s not surprising, really. When the world’s smartest cookies were first assembling Space Invaders, they no doubt dreamed that gaming would one day look like this.

Nothing much has changed in the interim – this is still a case of goodies versus baddies, no matter how much it is wrapped up in a boy’s own tale of global terrorism and gruffly-voiced soldiers. Yet, MW2 is more concerned with shaking up your adrenaline glands than telling a coherent story. And sweet Judge Dredd’s lawgiver, does it excel in this regard. This is the pinnacle of machismo – nowhere else will normal people like you and me feel part of a tight-knit band of brothers as buff as Task Force 141. The single campaign is still too brief, and it’s clear that most man hours have been channelled into the multiplayer, which is as slick and stylish as these things get.

Like Ross Kemp’s balaclava, MW2 is full to bursting point – Infinity Ward have packed in new levels, perks and killstreaks and deathstreaks to keep trigger happy gamers… well, trigger happy for months to come.

BAND HERO / DJ HERO (Activision, PS2 / PS3 / Xbox 360 / Wii) Strum and bass…

It’s odd to think of a time when the gaming calendar was not punctuated by the latest permutation in the Hero franchise.

To cynics, development team Red Octane seem to pluck another musical instrument out of the catalogue and use it as a licence to print money. This, of course, is far from the truth – it is pretty difficult to be heroic whilst playing the bassoon. And those who scoff have clearly never played any title from the Hero series. They may be more lucrative than a Girls Aloud wedding, but there is a good reason for that: these games tend to be easily playable for those who wouldn’t know one end of a console from the other. Sure, DJ Hero, with its nifty turntable peripheral, is not exactly street – well, perhaps Pigeon Street – but it’s unlikely it would be sold in Tesco if it came bundled with a miniature Glock and a handful of doobies. It’s aimed squarely at those who don’t know how to crossfade and mash up, but the point is that it makes you believe that you can. The learning curve is gentle: approximately 10 minutes spent with the non-patronising tutorial and you are rollin’ and scratchin’ tracks from Daft Punk, DJ Shadow, Queen, Grandmaster Flash et al like a pro.

Also released is Band Hero, a package directed more towards the kids than its bigger, leather-clad brother. Its family appeal is reflected in the soundtrack, which features the likes of Alphabeat, Taylor Swift and, bizarrely, Carl ‘Kung Fu

Fighting’ Douglas. Band Hero wears its intentions proudly – this will be the party game for many a Christmas shindig.

BRÜTAL LEGEND (EA, PS3 / Xbox 360)

For those about to hit block…

Anyone who misspent their teenage years sewing Twisted Sister patches onto their schoolbag will appreciate the sentiments behind this oddity from Double Fine Productions.

Tim Schafer, the designer of classics such as Monkey Island and Grim Fandango, applies his zippy writing skills to the grimy, sweaty, hairy world of heavy metal. Eddie Riggs, who looks like a more genial Glenn Danzig, is the world’s greatest roadie – not that he has much competition. He is killed in a freak accident onstage, Spinal Tap style, and is magically transported to the kingdom of Ormagöden. Resembling a fusion of goth album covers and Hieronymous Bosch paintings, this netherworld is full of horned beasts, buxom maidens, giant stone swords and foliage made from car parts.

Somehow, Schafer managed to convince some proper talent to jump on his druid plough for the ride. Jack Black brings Riggs to life with his trademark vocal stylings and yelps of “decapitatiiiooon”, whilst Lemmy, Ozzy and… ummm…

Rob Halford all ham it up royally. So far, so good, but the wheels come off the chariot when Brütal Legend stops being about exploring and thwacking beasties with your axe, and more about controlling headbangers to do your bidding.

The sudden lurches into underwhelming real time strategy just don’t work. Thankfully, the enthusiasm and goodwill displayed elsewhere just about save the day.

DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS (EA, PC / PS3 / Xbox 360) Axe me, axe me, axe me…

While many RPGs are longer and less coherent than an average plotline on Lost, there are a select few which are interpretable for those normal folks who don’t speak Elvish.

BioWare, the people responsible for sci-fi jaunt Mass Effect, get down to business with this pleasingly old school release.

It’s a time sponge in the traditional mould, where hours upon hours of the Christmas holidays will be sucked up into this salty tale of warriors, dragons and darkspawn blood. Yes, darkspawn blood. There is a head-busting level of detail on offer, with multiple origin stories, conversations and missions, and more monsters than you would shake a sword of destiny at. This might sound as if it is slow as shuck water, but it makes for engrossing stuff. Seriously, dozens of speccy preteen boys have suffered so we can play games like this, so let’s be thankful. Dragon Age is certainly not for those who prefer the switch on, shoot stuff, switch off way of gaming, but those who get it will be happier than a cave dwarf in a mead brewery.

“Resembling a fusion of goth album covers and Hieronymous Bosch paintings, this netherworld is full of horned beasts, buxom maidens, giant stone swords and foliage made from car parts”

Courtesy of Ubosoft, we have one PS3 copy and one Xbox copy of Assassin’s Creed 2 to give away. To purlion one of your very own, send your name, details and hood size to ross@iheartau.com

B RÜ

TA L L E

G EN D

ASSASSIN'S CREED 2

—73 AU Magazine—

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Books

books

Glamour And Grit

The Dark, Dark Fiction Of James Ellroy Words by Ross Thompson

“Good evening peepers, prowlers, pederasts, peasants, panty-sniffers, punks and pimps. I’m James Ellroy, the demon dog, the foul owl with the death growl, the white knight of the far right. I’m the author of 16 books, masterpieces all; they precede all my future masterpieces.

These books will leave you steamed and dry-cleaned, tiedyed, swept to the side, screwed, true-blued, tattooed and bah fongooed. These are books for the whole family, if the name of your family is the Manson Family.”

So begins the well-worn opening speech to a public appearance from American crime writer James Ellroy.

The eight ball bald, bespectacled sexagenarian who wears a suit so sharp it could cut diamonds, hawks out the words rat-a-tat-tat with equal fervour, rolling them around in his mouth like blackcurrant-flavoured pebbles before spitballing them at the audience. The effect is mesmerising.

His delivery flows like a syphilitic sewer, but this isn’t just a foul mouth in fifth gear; it has rhythm, it has purpose, it has poetry. When it comes to expressing his opinions, Ellroy is not known for being backwards in coming forwards. When interviews are granted, he frequently lets rip in dramatic monologues so salty they would choke even the most devoted McDonalds super-sizer. Dear help the cub reporter who is plonked down in a hotel foyer across from Senior Ellroy – no subject is too hush hush, —74 issue 62—

and most of it is unprintable. In-between more cuss words than you’ll find written on the wall of a Harlem toilet cubicle, he’ll rag on about the notches on the Kennedy bedposts, the contents of Tricky Dick Nixon’s little black book, and the allure of Michelle Obama’s biceps. A little slander, a little libel, a whole flagon of hell-black humour.

When it comes to his own writing, Ellroy is no shrinking violet. He once claimed that he wanted to be known as the greatest crime novelist who ever lived, and he occasionally boasts that he has since donned that mantle.

On balance, he has a point: few writers come close to equalling the breadth or depth of the wall which he has constructed, brick by painstaking brick, like Robert Frost, across the American landscape. The power he unleashes in each of his political noir masterpieces could light up the entire western hemisphere. Show me another writer who can fill one book with hundreds of sentences as evocative as “the chief wanted local stumblebums chilled so they wouldn’t crash Mayor Bowron’s lawn party for underprivileged kids and snarf up all the cookies” and I will drink my own body weight in curdled milk.

Ellroy calls his literary babies “moral documents” which reside in a halfway house between creative license and American history where the join is less visible than the surgery stitches on supermodels. His most ambitious work, the ‘Underworld USA’ trilogy, for example, starts in the late 1950s and works through around 20 of the worst years the United States ever endured. Ellroy snarls and spits through two decades of political malfeasance, reimagining recognisable events whilst just imagining others. The three books form a hulking infinite regress of cross-dressing, call girls, black militants, drug dealing, double-dealing, the Klan, the Man and the war in Nam. The great and the good “rub shoulders and other body parts” with the ghosts of the criminal underworld. “Gay Edgar Hoover” gets entangled in entrapment, Howard Hughes drinks human blood, and the Kennedy boys sleep with anything with a pulse. Critics may argue that this is an alternate version of historical events, but in truth it’s more of a nip tuck than a full facelift. The corruption which burrows to the heart of American politicking

remains the same, no matter how fancy a shirt and tie you throw it in. Few writers have delved so deeply into the soiled, blood-soggy pockets of America’s chequered past.

Blood’s A Rover, the final book in the series, has just been published, and is thick enough to fill a Christmas stocking and leave no room for either apples or lumps of coal. It is, according to the man himself, the story of the little guy sitting outside the corridors of power with a gun in a briefcase – the low level weevil who schemes and beavers away behind scenes instantly familiar to those who watch the Discovery Channel. There are dozens of these putzes and shmoes and bottom feeders in this book, and they are given equal credence as high-ranking presidents, police chiefs and priests.

Ellroy is an expert at mapping lines between the different boxes of American political manoeuvring – the one filled with oil, the one filled with booze, the one filled with blood, and the one filled with money. How, to paraphrase another excellent crime writer, David Simon, all the pieces fit. How the escalation of racial tension and the assassination of Martin Luther King connect to voodoo rituals in Haiti. Some might call it conspiracy theories; Ellroy casually calls it “cool shit”.

“His delivery flows like a syphilitic sewer, but this isn’t just a foul mouth in fifth gear; it has rhythm, it has purpose, it has poetry”

Books

“He once claimed that he wanted to be known as the greatest crime novelist who ever lived, and he occasionally boasts that he has since donned that mantle”

You might ask where Ellroy gets his keen nose for justice, who or what lit this fire in his belly. The answer is at once simple and horrifying. In 1958, when he was 10, his mother Jean was raped, killed and abandoned like a sack of used rags by a perpetrator who was never caught.

The murder, as Ellroy puts it, corrupted his imagination.

In part frustrated by a case which nobody could shut, in part puzzled by the Oedipal feelings stirring in his darker thoughts, he fixated on another unsolved homicide, that of Elizabeth Short, aka The Black Dahlia. This welter of feeling fed into the novel of that name, a grim, psychosexual crime fantasy which plunges the reader down the darkest of elevator shafts without an elevator.

“I had created a fictional Elizabeth Short to usurp my mother’s claim and upstage her,” Ellroy later wrote. “It worked in the novel. It sold a great many books. It left Jean still dead on that roadside, unblessed with love.”

Published in 1993, The Black Dahlia did indeed sell a great many books, but it did so at a cost. This was, to borrow William Burroughs’s phrase, a man writing himself out of debt. Accordingly, it’s probably the most difficult thing you will ever read. It was wrought out of love – tainted or otherwise – and loss and the kind of gut wrench that comes along only once every half-century.

Ellroy leaves no stone or body part unturned in this “fount of curiosity with pitbull ardour”, particularly when it comes to the grimier details of the Dahlia case – she was tortured for days and cut in half, and Ellroy details the whole shebang like a horny pathologist. After reading, you may find yourself checking under your fingernails for dirt, your hands for blood spatter.

What readers find most troubling about this writing is the distinct lack of hero figures therein. There are no good guys in Ellroywood, just various shades of bad. In the sprawling ‘L.A. Quartet’, parts of which were adopted for Curtis Hanson’s sublime L.A. Confidential movie, bent cops, gossip rag tattletales, movie moguls, prostitutes, playboys and coke barons wheel, deal, feel and steal their crooked way around the City of Angels. The slow-burn of tension from Dahlia through to White Jazz is a symphony of storytelling. Once you’ve wrapped your head around

Ellroy’s writing style – sentences shorter than Danny DeVito’s inner leg, few adjectives, no connectives, lots of swearing – it’s an engaging, enriching read. Your head will spin and your gut will ache, but you’ll be wowed and zowed and kapowed by Ellroy’s skills. And, according to the man, if you buy his books you’ll be “guaranteed a front row seat in heaven.”

Ellroy’s fingerprints can be found smudged all over popular culture, highbrow and lowbrow. Without Ellroy, there would arguably be no Ian Rankin, no Shield, no Wire, and crucially, no Ellroy. The world would be a lighter, but sadder place for it.

BLOOD’S A ROVER IS OUT NOW ON CENTURY BOOKS

Shorts Ozzy Osbourne has committed his rather muddled memories to record for recently released biography I Am Ozzy. Not since Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt has rock ‘n’ roll excess been documented in such eye-wateringly sordid detail. It’s all in here, the drink, the drugs and the lunacy, from pissing on the Alamo, to biting the head off of that bat and the failed attempt to strangle Sharon.

End of a decade, innit. Seems only yesterday that we were getting our knickers in a twist over the Millennium Bug, worried that airplanes might drop from the skies and microwaves might refuse to heat our meal-forone lasagne. So how has the world changed in the intervening 10 years? Tim Footman attempts to survey the decade past in The Noughties. It’s a breathless gallop through the years and across varied terrain, covering everything from Obama to the rise of the Asian economy, 9/11 to the ubiquity of the iPod. The change in tone, from the genuinely monumental to transient and trivial can be a little unsettling, but it’s an ambitious effort and worth dipping into.

Thomas de Quincy, now there was a proper drug addict. An infamous figure in the canon of English literature, de Quincy’s extracurricular activities make Pete Doherty look as dangerous as Mary Poppins. His grim life and times are relayed in a new biography, The English Opium Eater by Robert Morrison. Author of 1821’s hugely influential Confessions of an Opium Eater, de Quincy has been held up as an antihero figure by all manner of hapless berks. The reality, as Morrison skilfully relays in this balanced account, was altogether more squalid.

—75 AU Magazine—

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Comics

comics

How To Make A Monster

The Future Of Frank Castle The Punisher: the List was the comic that shocked the industry when it was released last month and now, four weeks after Frank Castle was literally chopped up into little bits by Wolverine’s son Daken, we meet up with writer Rick Remender to find out about what’s in store for issue 11 and the story-arc that’s quite tellingly titled ‘Franken-Castle’.

Words by Edwin McFee

First off, I don’t know if people realised this, but you killed the Punisher…

What info can you give fans about the Franken-Castle arc starting in issue 11?

Rick Remender: Yeah, that’s right. We killed him in a way that I thought was fitting to the character.

Remender: The basic set-up is, whatever is left of Frank, we wanted to do something pretty wild with it. We’re dealing with a character that is surrounded by cosmic dudes riding surfboards and men with radioactive spiderblood. I wanted this to feel like a Marvel comic book in the sense that Punisher Max is a straight up noir/crime book and Punisher is straight up fantasy.

He’s quite dead... and in pieces thanks to Daken Akihiro and Norman Osborn.

Remender: Yep, that’s about it. I think none of it would have really been possible if not for the Hood and his resurrection of Frank’s family in this past arc of Punisher.

I think Frank’s actions in issue 10 – to put his family back into their graves – was kind of the straw that broke the Punisher’s back. He was pretty broken down by the end of issue 10. The Punisher: The List is Norman and Daken kind of coming in for the final swoop; I like to think of it as the Hood crushed Frank’s soul and Daken (along with Norman) have come to finish the job.

“Marvel has all these great monsters and they’re scattered all over the place; why not have them living in one central place?”

—76 issue 62—

So, seeing as how Frank operates in a world where men stretch their arms into the Negative Zone, aliens invade every few weeks and there are a dozen Hulks running around, the idea that that this sort of place doesn’t affect Frank Castle is a bit ridiculous; especially given the concentrated quantity of insane super-villains and things like that. So, as we were digging through the various possibilities of what radical hole we would drop Frank Castle down into, we all fell in love with the idea that it would involve the Legion of Monsters, who, as it turns out, used the Morlock tunnels as refuge centuries before the Morlocks existed. Now, every monster in the Marvel Universe is down there in this ‘Monster Metropolis’ being sheltered and guarded by the Legion of Monsters. What happens to Frank is that he is dropped smack-dab into the heart of this city. The point of the story, the goal of the story, is to see Frank’s rise from the gutter he’s been dropped into. What happened with Daken isn’t over. In the fourth arc, we’ve got Frank’s rematch with Daken and it’s going to be a very different exchange…

How did you approach telling the editors at Marvel that you planned to kill off one of their most popular characters?

Remender: I just straight up said I wanted to kill Frank.

Looking at what he was up against, with both the Hood

and Osborn involved, I knew that, of all the characters struggling with Osborn during the Dark Reign arc, Frank was going to struggle the most. I mean Frank tried to assassinate Norman in the first couple of pages of Punisher one at the very beginning of the Dark Reign cycle, so he’s pretty high up on Norman’s list of people to kill. I mean this is a guy who has his own squads of Avengers and X-Men, the Thunderbolts, H.A.M.M.E.R. – basically the whole world at this point; so, when the List came up, that’s when I decided I wanted to do the final chapter between Frank and Norman.

What’s the fan reaction been like?

Remender: It’s been crazy. Beyond the terrific fan reaction we’ve had several huge writers, [guys like Millar and Bendis] have made really positive remarks, praising our efforts. Millar said the issue was his favourite single issue of the year. I think people find it refreshing to see something logically play out in terms of the outcome between Frank, Norman and Daken; this story doesn’t feel mandated by the constraint of ‘Oh, wait, you can’t kill the main character of a series’. He should die in this scenario. And he does.

How did you come up with this idea of merging the Punisher with an iconic character like Frankenstein?

Remender: It goes back to something Jason Aaron, Matt Fraction, Tony Moore, and I had been batting around when we were pitching a Ghost Rider/Wolverine/ Punisher series and, as we were putting together ideas, I had come up with this idea of a ‘Monster Metropolis’ underneath New York. Marvel has all these great monsters and they’re scattered all over the place; why not have them living in one central place, giving them this central mission? We had discussed the possibility of making Frank into the Spirit of Vengeance and tying him

Comics

My Favourite Comic Tad Kubler

“We’re dealing with a character that is surrounded by cosmic dudes riding surfboards and men with radioactive spider-blood” into all the cool stuff Jason is doing over in Ghost Rider.

As we were developing stuff, Tony drew this picture of Frank in this sort of gangly, destroyed half-robot body and we started talking Frankenstein’s involvement. Over time, that project was sort of shelved and we all got a little too busy to do it.

Who will Franken-Castle be up against in this story arc?

Remender: We have an entirely new villain and he’s tied into a very awesome part of Marvel’s tradition that I don’t want to reveal just yet, but this villain is a monster-killing machine. Basically, he’s after something one of the monsters has. His family was slaughtered by a pack of werewolves in 1914 forcing him to kill his family and his village before they transformed into monsters... I don’t want to go too far into the origin stuff – people will have to check it out for themselves.

Will Frank find himself siding with new allies?

Remender: Yeah, like I’ve said, I’m a huge fan of the Legion of Monsters so Frank’s going to be joining up with them. Neither Son of Satan or Ghost Rider will be present because they’re off being bad asses somewhere else but it’s all the other members: Man-Thing, the Mummy, Manphibian, Morbius the Living Vampire, and Werewolf By Night. It’s that classic line-up of monsters who are living below New York protecting the remaining monsters from Monster Isle and all the Kirby beasts, the Seventies Englehart monsters and all the other crazy Marvel baddies that haven’t been hunted down and killed. They’re all hiding down there.

Finally, how permanent will the Franken-Castle character be? Will he still be around in 10 years time?

Remender: It’s going to progress in a direction that people should be excited about; people like to see Frank Castle kicking huge amounts of villainous ass. The problem with the Marvel Universe is that Frank is going to have a hard time taking on someone like the Sentry if he goes at him with a rifle and a landmine; that’s why I gave him an armory of Marvel relics, so that he could wage a war against all these fantastic characters. Like I’ve said, we’re really dead-set on remaining true to Frank’s established sensibilities and integrity but we’re trying to equip him in such a way that he’s able to deal with the mainstream Marvel Universe as a whole. He’s going to have a leg up the next time he faces Wolverine or Daken. If he goes up against a group of augmented villains, he’s going to be able to bring down some serious murder on those fools.

“I have to say I’m probably the biggest comic book fan in The Hold Steady. I’ve never had a conversation about it with any of the other guys, but I think I hold the title.

One of our old sound men was a really big comic book fan and he’s the one who would point out new movies that were coming out that I would never have thought of, and say like, ‘Oh yeah, this is based on a comic book’. So he kind of kept me in touch with that world.

“Oddly enough, my daughter goes to school with Hugh Jackman’s kid and so I’ve been watching all the new advertisements for the Wolverine movie and picking up Wolverine comics. It’s funny, because we live in the same neighbourhood in New York and I go to collect my daughter from school and there’s like paparazzi outside and all that kind of stuff and I’m like, ‘Wow dude, my band’s famous’. And then he rolls up and I’m like, ‘Aww shit, that’s not for me’. I’m kidding, of course. So yeah, that’s my X-Men connection and on account of that I have to say that my favourite book is Uncanny X-Men.” TAD KUBLER PLAYS GUITAR FOR THE HOLD STEADY.

ISSUE 11 OF THE PUNISHER IS OUT NOW AND IS PUBLISHED BY MARVEL COMICS. FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT WWW.MARVEL.COM.

Shorts Well, it looks like Ken Branagh has found his actors to play the Warriors Three in the up coming Thor film (out May 2011). As it turns out, the film is going to be a bit of an Irish love-in with the director being from Belfast, Stuart Townsend (who plays Fandral the Dashing) hailing

from Dublin, Ray Stevenson (who plays Volstagg the Voluminous) having been born in Lisburn and Tadanobu Asano (who plays Hogan the Grim) living on the High Walk in Newry (OK, we’re only joking about that last one…).

Rumours that the film will now be called McThor are so

far unconfirmed…

Image United (the all star Image comics crossover) has completely sold out this month but don’t worry if you haven’t managed to snag a copy. The publisher will be offering a second printing and it ships on Dec 23.

Writer Adam Beechen and artist Tim Seeley start work on their run on Wildstorm’s flagship title Wildcats in January. At the time of going to press the length of their stint remained unconfirmed, but as always we’ll keep you posted on any further developments.

—77 AU Magazine—

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Here's Looking At You(Tube) / Weird Wide Web

www

Here's Looking At You(Tube) National Disgrace

A major sporting event can be an emotive affair. It can be an historic, defining moment that unites a nation in glorious victory, or a monumental tragedy that can send the populace as a man to drown its sorrows in the nearest hostelry (kind of like what happened when France put Ireland out of the World Cup the other week, but we should probably move on from that...). Anyway, an integral part of these gargantuan clashes is the prematch rendition of the national anthem: a minute or so when team and fans come together as one to give a rowdy, passionate demonstration of national pride and generally get themselves fired up for the battle ahead. Yes, a welldelivered anthem can be a stirring thing indeed. But when it goes wrong, well…

Words can’t quite do justice to the sheer horror of the following clips. Prepare to cringe, that’s all we’ll say.

Words by Neill Dougan

Weird WideWeb Wild Surf WAKE UP ‘BOO Constantly trawling t’interweb for weird shit to look at can be a tiring business. Sometimes you just want an Ikea-type approach, with all the zany disturbing photos you can handle under one roof. Give thanks, then, for Visboo, a seemingly never-ending compendium of links to all things freaky, funny and foul. You want pictures of prostitutes captured on Google Street Map? Right here buddy. The gruesome transformation of Pete Burns? You got it. Freakiest yearbook pictures? Yep. Basically, if you’re inclined to waste time online, you might well be here all day.

WWW.VISBOO.COM GET THE PICTURE Boston.com is a news website focusing, unsurprisingly perhaps, on goings on in, er, Boston. But its ‘Big —78 issue 62—

CARL LEWIS

I DON’T LIKE REGGAE… In case you don’t know, Ras Dumasani is a leading South African exponent of reggae music who currently resides in France. When the two nations met in a rugby international in Toulouse earlier this month, the bold Ras was chosen to deliver the Springboks’ anthem. A bad idea, as it turned out, since Dumasani proceeded to croak his way through the hymn in the manner that suggests he may have caned it a bit too hard on the ganja.

The reactions of the South African players range from mild mirth to complete bemusement to severe irritation.

The best part comes from 1:10 on when a would-be uplifting key change causes Ras to completely lose it. The commentator’s wry remark upon the conclusion of the shameful rendition is priceless, too.

TINYURL.COM/SPRINGBOKSRASTA LEWIS LOSES IT Carl Lewis is widely – and correctly – renowned as one of the greatest all-round athletes ever to step onto the track.

His record speaks for itself – nine Olympic golds and eight World Championship golds in a glittering top-flight career that ran from 1979 to 1996. But while he may have been unstoppable on the track, poor ol’ Carl sure as shit cannot sing. Sadly, he actually appears to think he is in possession

of the voice of an angel. Why else would he volunteer to sing The Star-Spangled Banner before a major league basketball game in 1993 – and a cappella to boot? A host of ballers including Michael Jordan look like they want the ground to swallow them as Lewis massacres the anthem, actually stopping at one point to apologise to the crowd. For those of you who can’t stand the hideousness of the full clip, we’ve also helpfully provided a truncated version containing the – ahem – ‘highlights’.

TINYURL.COM/LEWISANTHEMLONG TINYURL.COM/LEWISANTHEMSHORT

CUBA CRISIS Cuba Gooding Sr – father of the popular film actor Cuba Gooding Jr – was the lead singer of Seventies soul band The Main Ingredient. Hard to believe on this evidence, as the elder Gooding ‘does a Carl Lewis’ on the US anthem prior to a basketball game in 2008. Watch in horror as he grimaces, gurns and massively over-emotes through a bizarre reading of the song, complete with falsetto squeaks and oddly clipped diction. He looks quite pleased with himself at the end, too! On the plus side, check out how much he resembles his more famous son. It’s quite uncanny.

TINYURL.COM/CUBAANTHEM

Picture’ section takes a more international view, posting photographs from around the world, and it contains some pretty amazing stuff, updated every week. There are plenty of shots here that will take your breath away, not least the collection of entries for a National Geographic Photo contest, which contains some unbelievably stunning pictures. Then there’s the series of pics on sulphur mining on an Indonesian volcano, which is frankly mind-blowing. Put it this way, you’ll never bitch about your job again.

WWW.BOSTON.COM/BIGPICTURE JOY TO THE WORLD Village of Joy is a self-proclaimed online magazine “about the world’s most interesting, weird and wonderful things”. Big deal, you might say, there’s a million websites covering all things strange and unusual. Well, for one thing, it’s lovingly designed so it’s pretty nice to look at. For another, VoJ takes a rather arty and high-brow approach to bizarre stuff online, focusing on the likes of controversial sculpture, abnormal architecture and provocative art. That said, there’s some pretty funny material on there too, like the ‘25 Motivational Posters’. ‘Joy’ might be putting it a bit strongly, but it’ll certainly put a smile on your face.

WWW.VILLAGEOFJOY.COM

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 THIS MONTH: DOG STUFF Words by Neill Dougan URBAN PUP

Story Of The Video Two Door Cinema Club TITLE: ‘I CAN TALK’ DIRECTOR: MEGAFORCE

The Bangor boys send out the advance party for their debut album Tourist History with the single ‘I Can Talk’ and just look at the video. A swirling jamboree of colours and herky-jerky visuals, Megaforce brilliantly captures both the viewer’s attention and the frenetic nature of the song. Bassist Kev Baird tells AU about the video that’s grabbed the attention of an international superstar.

The ideas in the video are very creative and obviously planned to complement the song. How much input did the band have?

We had a planning meeting a month or so before the shoot and discussed ideas with Megaforce. We didn’t really need to have much input because we loved their ideas so much. They pitched their ideas and we loved them! We made a few suggestions and tweaks.

Was making the video an enjoyable experience for you all? Did you get to jetpack off anywhere nice?

Yeah we loved it! We shot it in this awesome chateau just outside Paris. It was super professional so we were kind of just taken aback the whole time! Had a great time fucking around in a huge castle though!

How long did the whole process take?

We left our hotel at 5am and finished at 4am the next day.

So 23-hours.

Are you excited about the finished video?

As the old saying goes, a dog is for life, not just for Christmas. So, should you awake on December 25th this year to find a loveable puppy in your stocking, make sure to take care of the little feller. Start by wrapping him up warm for the harsh winter to come at Urban Pup, where you’ll find all your doggy fashion needs, including a laugh-out-loud selection of doggy coats, hoodies and sweaters (seriously, they’re class) and a range of so-called ‘Pet Carriers’, which look suspiciously like handbags.

There’s even dog formal wear although, frankly, dressing a puppy in a tuxedo seems to be bordering on animal cruelty.

WWW.URBANPUP.IE EQUAFLEECE Not quite as designer-orientated as Urban Pup, Equafleece is aimed more at the outdoors-y, ‘enjoys a good run around a field’ type of canine. Coats, fleeces, sweaters, tank tops and t-shirts are up for grabs for your mutt, all in a range of bold primary colours. There is even what appears to be a range of fluorescent doggie bandanas – what more could a hound ask for? What’s that you say?

Dog shorts? Ah come on now, that’s just taking the p... oh no, hang on. They have those too.

WWW.EQUAFLEECE.CO.UK TRIXIE AND PEANUT Named after site founder Susan Bing’s two rescued boxers, this site has everything you need to kit out your own four-legged friend. As well as the usual apparel – sweaters, raincoats and the like – there’s a massive range of lesser-spotted accessories, including the frankly perplexing dog hats and dog boots which, if they seem a bit baffling in terms of their actual utility (in what possible situation would a dog need to wear boots or a hat?), at least look rather fetching. Warning: If you don’t already have a dog, spending time on this site may well make you obsessed with getting one.

WWW.TRIXIEANDPEANUT.COM

It’s awesome! We’re so proud of it and we think it really works visually for the song and the band. We’ve had such a great response from it and we’re really honoured to have worked with Megaforce who are incredibly talented.

Not only did the video generate excitement amongst Two Door fans, but Kanye West actually posted the video on his blog. What did that mean for the band?

Em... we just laughed. It was a bit crazy! I think we’d have to meet him face-to-face to 100% believe it!

Apparently Daft Punk told him about us... not sure how true that is though!

Interview by Richard W. Crothers —79 AU Magazine—

Sc Calvin Harris @ St George’s Market, Belfast

In Pictures

Gemma, Hannah, Louise & Yasmin

Eve, Natasha, Lauren, Hailey & Sophie

Michelle & Emma

Susanne, Bronagh & Niamh

Samantha, Siobhan & Karen

Michael, Diarmid, Aaron & Decky Calvin Harris

Peter, Michael & Nathan

Adam

Grace, Julian, Yvonne, Craig and Caroline

Calvin Harris St Georges Market, Belfast St. George’s Market seems to be hosting all the big names these days, with Scottish DJ and dance music geezer Calvin Harris the latest high-profile name to grace the fish-stained floors. The venue is packed with screaming teenagers, the crowd showing their appreciation of Harris’s dancefloor bespoke sounds, with hits such as ‘Flashback’, ‘I’m Not Alone’ and, of course, ‘Ready For The Weekend’ finding particular favour. What’s more, with a full band in tow, tonight’s performance is elevated above the usual one-man DJ sets, Calvin and co. exuding energy galore.

Photos by Killian Sexton —80 issue 62—

Tracey, Sean, Conor & Beckie

Hazel, Laura, Katie, Jan & Gillian

Nicola, Claire & Amanda

Ash @ The Button Factory

Ash The Button Factory, Dublin Having survived the gruelling – not to mention groundbreaking – A to Z jaunt around the UK in support of their equally ambitious A to Z singles series, Ash make a triumphant Irish homecoming. The set is a mix of back catalogue staples – ‘Meltdown’, ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ and ‘Burn Baby Burn’ – and new, synthesiser supplemented songs which have been penned as part of the aforementioned A to Z series. New and old alike, the set is greedily gobbled down by an enthusiastic, if joyously partisan audience.

Chris & Edwina

Photos by Alessio Michelini

Michella & Ailis

Eibhlin & Jack

Maire & Laura

Eric

Lorraine & Jason

Ronan & Ruth

Diane & Eddie

Joanna & Belinda

Darragh, Kieran & Paul

Ash Andrew

—81 AU Magazine—

Sc Subbacultcha

The Last Word

The Last Word With:

Adam Green "I’m going to break the law in about an hour. I break the law every time I get my bong."

Interview by James Hendicott

When was the last time you were in hospital?

Just a few days ago, I took my friend Jimmy to the emergency room. He broke his hand on a window. It was about eight in the morning and we’d been up all night, and all of a sudden he decided he needed to go to hospital. But the emergency room was all swine-flued out, and I left feeling like I was going to contract the swine flu. [Adam adopts a sarcastic tone] I did that for him. It’s time to get the vaccinations in, I think.

Famous Last Words Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) “Go on, get out – last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.”

(To his housekeeper, who urged him to tell her his last words so she could write them down for posterity.)

Private Witherspoon in Dog Soldiers “I hope I give you the shits, you fuckin’ wimp.” (Said to the werewolves he knows are about to kill and eat him.)

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The end of the year, the end of the decade, the end of an era, hellraisers, Two Door Cinema Club tunes, driving tests, nice bit of steak, making this a good one, the crush, comedy DVDs. —82 issue 62—

Who’s the last person on earth you’d like to be stuck on a desert island with?

I don’t know, Lady Gaga? I was just talking the other day about how her music’s so worthless. I like the way she dresses, she’s pretty good at dressing, and she’s from the same part of New York as me, so I’ve got to give it to her, she got out of this crummy hell hole, so… yeah, I love the way she dressed, but I hate what she’s singing. I mean, does she really write that stuff? It’s full of shit.

When was the last time you cried?

I was crying on the couch last night. My ex-wife’s couch, about how bad my life is, and how no-one likes me. Thanks for the reminder, though! People are going to love reading now about how I was crying last night on my ex-wife’s couch.

What was your last holiday?

Let me think… I went to Mexico. It was cool. We didn’t really do the tourist stuff. I went to a graveyard that was really scenic, and I drank out of a coconut, and bought a guitar on the beach. I speak Spanish quite well, so I can get by there. Another holiday I want to take is Transylvania, and check out some castles in Estonia, too.

What was the last good record you heard?

The new Vampire Weekend album’s cool. I like Julian Casablancas’ new solo album, too. I’m always looking for old stuff, like the band The Association. They’re something to cherish. When I first bought their record I thought it was so corny, but the more I listen to it… I

think if you’re going through a bit of heartbreak, that’s the perfect album, the greatest hits of The Association.

What was the last bad job you had?

I haven’t had a bad job since I was a kid. I used to work in a video store, right when PlayStation came out. I was at the store trying to sell games, and I didn’t play them, so kids would always have questions about the games, and I didn’t know. So I got fired for not playing or knowing enough about video games. I had a funny job at a used clothing store, too. This was when I was about 17 or 18, and The Strokes would come in, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and all these people, before they were in the band. So I knew everyone from the clothes store. But that was kind of a good job, as I got to meet lots of musicians.

When was the last time you broke the law?

I’m going to break the law in about an hour. I break the law every time I get my bong.

When was the last time you felt proud?

Well I just finished the last layer of papier-mâché on my sculptures. It’s taken me months to do it, and I’m happy now I can paint the things. You need at least three or four layers of it so it doesn’t come apart when you pick it up.

They’re about seven feet tall, so they have some intrinsic weight to them.

If the world was about to end, what would be your last words?

I’d probably say, “Of course.” Of course this would happen. I’d probably smoke. Why, are you going to start the apocalypse? I was watching this great film the other day on YouTube that’s all still photos; it’s like the inspiration behind Twelve Monkeys [we think he means La Jetée]. You should check it out.

ADAM GREEN’S SIXTH SOLO ALBUM MINOR LOVE IS OUT JANUARY 8 ON ROUGH TRADE RECORDS WWW.ADAMGREEN.NET

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CLASSIC DISCO POP AND ROCK WITH DJ GREGZ ECLECTIC STUDENT CLUB WITH PANDA HEARTS PINEAPPLE CUT N PASTE DISCO WITH FAUX DJS EMO / PUNK / HARDCORE WITH DJ DARREN CRAIG CUTTING EDGE INDIE & ELECTRO WITH DJ JONNY TIERNAN

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—83 AU Magazine—

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—84 issue 62—