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MARCH 2012 WHEN JACKIE SHONE
MUSIC & REVIEWS
CURRENT AFFAIRS
GIGS & EVENTS
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
FREE
81
Calling time on Northern Ireland’s licensing laws
Napalm Death
Barney talks us through 30 years of grindcore madness
Jackie Fullerton
Fowl play: the silver fox on an unexpected career change
Rory Gallagher
AU pays tribute to an Irish blues genius
A TO Z OF GIGS | LEMON SOLE | future islands | asiwyfa in russia | no wave cinema | grimes | SLEIGH BELLS | CHEMICAL BROTHERS | JOHN BELUSHI
my inspiration And So I Watch You From Afar
If you’re after getting the honey then you don’t go killing the bees Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros Jonny Appleseed
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Photography by Dara Munnis
MAGAZINE ISSUE 81 | CONTENTS EDITORIAL On March 14, 2012 it will be exactly ten years to the day since the very first incarnation of the modern-day Alternative Ulster was launched. It began life as a weekly radio show on a Belfast Community station called Northern Visions (which is now a TV station – www.northernvisions.org), and an accompanying website. The whole story of how it all started, and how it got to here, is too big for this entire publication, let alone the editorial, but whatever way you look at it, a decade is a long time. The website and magazine now are almost unrecognisable from the old school origins. But while our appearance might be slicker than ever before, deep down we still have the same heart. We still want to promote the best of music and culture from Northern Ireland, we still passionately believe that there is a lot to be proud of in this country, and we still love what we do. AU has come a long way, carried by the amazing talent and dedication of a huge list of great people. You all know who you are, thank you so much. You’ve made AU what it is today. Here’s to another ten. Jonny.
UPFRONT News and views from the world of AU
REVIEWS The AU Verdict
ROLL CALL Publisher / Editor-in-Chief – Jonny Tiernan Editor – Chris Jones Business Manager – Andrew Scott Contributing Editors – Francis Jones, Ross Thompson Album Reviews Sub-editor – Patrick Conboy Editorial interns – Brian Coney, Andrew Lemon Website assistants – Becca Gilbert, Shannon O’Neill, James Wallace Design Tim Farrell (www.timothyfarrell.co.uk) Illustration Linda Coulter, Michael Murray, Mark Reihill Photography Cory Danks, Kieran Frost, Alan Moore, Gavin Sloan, Bernie McAllister. Contributors Kiran Acharya, Keith Anderson, Niall Byrne, Dave Donnelly, Neill Dougan, John Freeman, Lee Gorman, Daniel Harrison, James Hendicott, Andrew Johnston, Adam Kula, Adam Lacey, Stevie Lennox, Ian Maleney, Iain McDowell, Aoife McElwain, Lauren Murphy, Joe Nawaz, Steven Rainey, Eamonn Seoige, Dean Van Nguyen
STUPID THINGS SAID THIS MONTH I know your hair from a distance. What have you been ordering on the Internet? I’ve been ramming packages in your postbox all week. I had a dream I opened a fish stall in Jamaica, and no one would buy my prawns. It was more fun wandering the streets that you think. Geography was in my dream last night. Here, you know the way I really love shoes? Jackie fucking Fullerton, like! I’m very interested in this leek situation.
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48 Album Reviews
Page 8 – Hot Topic: A Ministerial Mess Page 10 – ASIWYFA in Russia Page 12 – Richter Collective Page 13 – Unknown Pleasures Page 14 – Mmoths / Band Maths Page 15 – Season’s Eatings Page 16 – Jackie Fullerton Page 18 – Lee Ranaldo Page 19 – Games Page 20 – What’s On Your iPod? Page 21 – Teethgrinder / My First Band: Aidan Moffat Page 22 – The Chemical Brothers: Don’t Think Page 23 – Red Bull Music Academy / News Shorts Page 24 – Weird Wide Web Page 26 _ Incomings: The Jezabels / Fixers / Kindness / Grimes
Page 53 – Young Blood Page 54 – Live Reviews Page 55 – Movie and Game Reviews
REWIND AU rolls back the years Page 56 – Flashback: The Death of John Belushi Page 57 – Classic Movie: Blade Runner
FEATURES AU goes in-depth
If you’d like to stock AU in your business, or you live in an area where AU isn’t currently stocked, but you’d like to see it available, then drop info@iheartau.com a line. We’ll sort you out. To advertise in AU Magazine contact the sales team Tel: 028 9032 4888 or via email: andrew@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.
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58 History Lessons: Napalm Death
Page 28 – Future Islands Page 36 – No Wave, No Rules Page 40 – A to Z Of Gigs Page 44 – Rory Gallagher
Page 60 – In Pics: Isodisco / The War On Drugs Page 62 – The Last Word: with Matthew Taylor from Dry The River
Send demos / mail / material to: AU Magazine, 2nd Floor, 21 Ormeau Avenue, Belfast, BT2 8HD 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
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White Heat
THE TV SHOW
Like a dramatised version of the Up documentaries, new BBC Two series White Heat charts the lives of seven friends from 1965 to the present against a backdrop of the eras’ political events. Beginning in the chums’ carefree student days, the six-parter takes several turns for the gritty, from the death of Churchill to the rise of Thatcher, the Falklands and AIDS. It might not sound like a laugh-a-minute – or even a laugh-a-decade – but with a script by BAFTA-winner Paula Milne, White Heat should provide some classic, quality Beeb fare. AJ
STAYING IN White Heat starts on BBC Two on March 8.
BBC Essential Mixes The ARCHIVE
There have been many legendary Essential Mixes over the years, from the likes of Massive Attack, Daft Punk (pictured), Richie Hawtin, DJ Shadow, UNKLE and 2 Many DJs, as well as great sets from local artists like Phil Kieran, David Holmes and The Japanese Popstars. With no official BBC archive for these mixes, one kind Soundcloud user has collated 909 (an apt number) various mixes dating from the very beginning in 1993, right up to 2011. The perfect accompaniment to a house party, or simply a great excuse to delve into an almost 20-year history of one of the great institutions of dance music. AS www.soundcloud.com/das-boy/sets/essential-mix
Angry Birds Space The APP
In days gone by, if you wanted to throw a handful of fowl at crown-wearing pigs you would have to make your way to a country fair in Cullybackey. However, the arrival of the iPhone and Rovio’s multimillion-selling app changed all that. Chances are that on any journey you take you will be one seat away from someone plugging away at the physics-based puzzler. They will be in, arf arf, hog heaven when Angry Birds Space is released later this month. Little is currently known about the new iteration other than that it will contain both old elements and fresh ones. Likely to be downloaded a few times. RT Angry Birds Space is released on March 22.
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THE SUBSCRIPTION
THE BOOK
Netflix
Nature’s Weirdest Events
They might not be making too much money yet, but Spotify have set the agenda with their streaming model. The latest to jump on the bandwagon is Netflix, which you might think of as Spotify for TV and movies. Jump on the month’s free trial and you can browse the modest library (it really isn’t anywhere near as exhaustive as Spotify’s) – if you like what you see, sign up for £5.99 a month. Everything is divided by genre and sub-genre, and you can search by title, actor, director and so on, so it’s a breeze to use. Sounds like the death knell for Xtra Vision and their like. CJ
In this two-programme curio from the BBC, Springwatch’s ageing punkcum-wildlife expert Chris Packham reveals some of the most bizarre natural happenings on the planet. See! Cars cocooned by caterpillars! Marvel! At exploding toads! Shiver! As whole towns are entombed in ice! Take shelter! From plagues of mice and locusts! Mind your heads! As fish fall from the sky! Avoid! Mass sea foam! Beware! The holes that swallow buildings! Retch! At fish with giant lice for tongues! The only thing weirder is the stories Packham unearths to explain the phenomena. AJ
THE DOCUMENTARY
www.netflix.com
Out March 12 on DVD & Blu-Ray
Edge Of Dark Water
Contagion
This could well be the masterpiece from Joe R. Lansdale, the ever-fertile Texan author responsible for some of the finest crime novels of the past 20 years. Like previous Lansdale gems it’s set during The Great Depression but its Mark Twain characters and backwoods setting are substantially darkened by a heaped teaspoon of Southern Gothic, blood, corruption and murder. The novel is full of Champion Joe’s trademark salty dialogue but leavened by the same seam of poignancy which ran through The Bottoms and A Fine Dark Line. RT
This unsettling take on the ‘society in crisis’ subgenre starts with a cough and a crowded bus. As Steven Soderbergh masterfully tracks the journey of a killer virus from a bowl of peanuts to a school playground to the political crisis room, you may look suspiciously at the person sitting next to you. It’s a simple concept but one which works very well, thanks to an ensemble cast of prime Hollywood talent, largely cast against type: a tubbier Matt Damon as the everyman father desperately trying to protect his family and Jude Law as a morally deficient media weasel. RT
THE DVD
Edge Of Dark Water is published on March 15.
Contagion is released on DVD & Blu-Ray on March 5.
Mass Effect 3 And now the end is near... we close the chapter on one of the most acclaimed gaming epics of recent times. Get ready to weep mercury man tears as we wave goodbye to Commander Shepard and his ragbag mercenary team of mercenaries as they face off against the merciless race known as the Collectors. The new game promises Kinect voice commands, multiple story variables and an even tighter combat system. It’s safe to say that part three will be just as dramatic and thrilling a sendoff as the series deserves. RT
THE GAME Mass Effect 3 is released for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on March 9.
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Festival: Titanic Lockdown Ah, Belfast. Where else in the world would the anniversary of a maritime disaster for which the city was partly responsible be the cue for a year of celebration? But sod it – any excuse for a party, and the Titanic Lockdown is shaping up to be one of the best. Located in the indoor skate-park and cultural centre T-13 against the backdrop of the iconic Samson and Goliath cranes, the day-long festival boasts high-calibre headliners in the form of UK hip-hop don Roots Manuva (pictured) and legendary DJ Gilles Peterson, who always brings the party in eclectic fashion.
GOING OUT
FESTIVAL
Earlier in the day, there is a family-friendly free gig featuring local acts Pocket Billiards, The Bonnevilles, VerseChorusVerse and Katie and the Carnival (as seen on Come Dine With Me!), as well as an outdoor food market, live street art, urban sports demos, fashion and jewellery making workshops, stare wars, Wii Olympics, close-up magic, face painting, fire and light shows and plenty more. Fun for the kids during the day and a proper party for the grown-ups in the evening – it’s a damn’d cliché, but there really is something for everyone. CJ T-13, Queen’s Road, Belfast on March 31. Full details at www.titanic-lockdown.com
PLAY
CLUB
CLUB
Born To Run
2 Many DJs, The 2 Bears & Space Dimension Controller
Belfast Music Club: Tim Sweeney
For anyone curious how Bruce Springsteen went from being a working-class New Jersey loner to a 120million-selling, stadium-straddling, Grammy, Oscar and Golden Globe-snaffling rock ‘n’ roll colossus, Born To Run: The Play should provide at least some of the answers. Mickey Devlin, Cookstown’s leading (let’s face it, only) Boss impersonator, has parlayed several crowd-pleasing years on the tribute act circuit into what he describes as a “fast-paced, funny and sometimes sad” one-man show. As long as he plays ‘Glory Days’, this writer will be satisfied. AJ
St. Patrick’s Day ravers, rejoice, as Belgian duo 2 Many DJs yet again return to Belfast. The Dewaele brothers were central to dance-rock outfit Soulwax, and have made even greater waves over the last decade by DJing under the 2 Many DJs moniker. As if that wasn’t enough, pop-house revivalists The 2 Bears are set to support on the night, performing tracks from their ace debut album Be Strong, while Belfast’s R&S-signed cosmic king Space Dimension Controller will headline the second room. AnL
Back in 1999, an 18-year-old Tim Sweeney moved to New York and started an early hours dance music show on college radio. 13 years on, Beats In Space is a worldwide institution, with star guests (Carl Craig, Lindstrom, James Murphy, Four Tet…) and tens of thousands of listeners tuning in locally via the FM dial or online. He is also part of the DFA collective and regularly DJs and creates mixes under their banner, as well as spreading the gospel throughout the world. Expect an eclectic mix of electronic styles from a man who knows few boundaries. CJ
Shine @ QUB Students’ Union, Belfast on March 17
Menagerie, Belfast on March 30
OLIVER CORR
Born To Run is at the Courtyard Theatre, Newtownabbey on March 10 and on tour throughout April and May.
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COMEDY
GIG
COMEDY
Michael Redmond
Spiritualized
Mirthathon 2012
Stand-up comedians whose claim to fame is that they fleetingly appeared in Father Ted are ten-apenny, but Michael Redmond has more going for him than simply having played the pathologically boring Father Stone. If you don’t believe us, ask Stewart Lee, who based his infamous ‘Joe Pasquale’ routine around an old Redmond gag. The Dublin-born performer is a master of deadpan, with his shock of white hair and droopy moustache inspiring titters before he even speaks. Support on Redmond’s Irish tour comes from Belfast taxi driver-turned-jokesmith Paddy McDonnell. AJ
With their highly anticipated seventh studio album, Sweet Heart Sweet Light, set for release on March 19, seminal space-rockers Spiritualized will play Belfast and Dublin on March 23 and 24. Without question, Jason Pierce’s band – formed from the ashes of Spacemen 3 in 1990 – are one of the more legendary acts to play these parts in recent times, so if you’re lucky enough to consider yourself a fan or have just heard ‘they’re class’, this is an ideal opportunity to experience the English band’s gospel-tinged psychedelic drone live. BC
From AU’s own writer, comedian and fundraiser Andrew Johnston comes a quite ridiculous undertaking – 12 hours in Auntie Annie’s bar, with 100 comedians doing sets of seven minutes each, with all the proceeds going to Mencap. It’s a noble and ambitious venture for sure, and while the standard of comedy is bound to be variable – performers range from seasoned comics to absolute beginners – it’s sure to be a lot of fun. And hey, it’s for charidee. CJ
Michael Redmond plays the Black Box, Belfast on April 4, the Playhouse, Portrush on April 5, Amplified Bar, Newry on April 6 and Whelan’s, Dublin on April 8.
Mandela Hall, Belfast on March 23 and Vicar St, Dublin on March 24
Auntie Annie’s, Belfast on March 18
GIG
SPOKEN WORD
GIG
Daniel Johnston
Peter Tatchell
Odd Future
Easily one of the most popular proponents of so-called ‘outsider music’, American singersongwriter Daniel Johnston makes his Belfast debut. Whether you’re drawn in by the excellent 2006 documentary, The Devil And Daniel Johnston, Kurt Cobain’s high praises in his favour or, quite simply, his music, this looks set to be a special night featuring Johnston’s sparse acoustic craft – ranging from the painfully sincere to the wonderfully light-hearted – and looks certain to captivate an audience that has been waiting for this evening for some time. BC
As part of the Foyle Film Festival’s Intercultural & Anti-Racism Programme, which runs from March 21 to 30, veteran gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell visits Derry and Belfast to discuss a 45-year career during which he has been beaten unconscious by neo-Nazis in Moscow, attempted not one but two citizen’s arrests of Robert Mugabe and courted controversy with outspoken views on animal rights, music censorship and the age of consent. Featuring an audience Q&A as the centrepiece each night, the talks promise to be lively affairs. AJ
One would think that a fad such as OFWGKTA would die down quickly but, for once, the hype is actually justified. With Earl free at last, free at last – Carlito-style – and Hodgy Beats still delivering the goods with a new EP, this lot’s last Dublin foray at the Academy is bound to now be eclipsed by a spectacularly hipster-heavy Olympia jaunt. Expect stage-dives, cursing, misogyny and drug references. If Korn hadn’t discovered metal, OFWGKTA would be their jam... AdL
Empire, Belfast on April 4
Peter Tatchell appears at the Tower Hotel, Derry on March 23 and Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast on March 24.
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Olympia, Dublin on April 2
A Ministerial Mess The good news is that Nelson McCausland isn’t slashing arts funding after all. But he has caused no end of heartache – and it isn’t over… Words by Adam Kula
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One of Ulster’s political top dogs has been forced into a U-turn over a bid to slash arts funding. Nelson McCausland MLA sparked uproar after deciding to end a £280,000 fund which helps support dozens of culture projects in Belfast – particularly in the Cathedral Quarter. It provoked anger from those trying to lead the city’s cultural revival, but after two weeks of negative press, the controversial DUP minister said that he has found the money after all. Here’s how the whole shambles unfolded… Before… The Laganside Events Grant (LEG) is a £280,000 fund, parcelled out to around 30 organisations in the riverside area each year. Among the many activities which rely on it are the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival (audience of 70,000, it got £12,000 from LEG last year), The Black Box (44,000 annual visitors, and gets around £10,000 from LEG), and Culture Night (draws 20,000 attendees, and got £12,000 last year from LEG). But at the start of February, such groups got a letter saying “pressures on the department’s budget” meant the scheme was ending in March. This came as a shock to everyone AU spoke to – with just weeks before the start of the new financial year, it wrongfooted a lot of organisers who depend on the money. That cash would be used, for instance, to cover the costs of the marquee in Custom House Square as part of May’s Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival. “Without the money to put up a marquee, it’s difficult to see how I can make those particular events stack up,” said Sean Kelly, its director. “It’s not going to completely derail the festival. But
given the short notice at a very advanced stage in planning, it leaves me with a hole in the budget that I can only fill by raising ticket prices or scaling back some planned events.” Surely adding a few quid to the price of a ticket isn’t too much of a hardship, is it? “It’s a fair point, but given the economic time we’re in, that might be a disincentive to attend the festival. It might mean it becomes a festival open only to those affluent enough to afford it, whilst we’re trying to make it as accessible as possible.” The Cathedral Quarter Steering Group, set up by the department, recently published a five-year plan for the area. The very first objective in the whole plan? Keeping the LEG grant going. Its chairman Paul McErlean said: “Having spent thousands of volunteer hours putting this together and doing consultations with stakeholders and the wider Cathedral Quarter community, Objective One: Part One gets taken away before we get started! What was the point in the department getting us to do all of this in the first place? There are people saying: ‘why did we bother our arse?’ It’s a serious undermining of our work. I don’t know if it’s going to lead to the cancellation of anything. It is too early to say. But it’s going to create serious difficulties.” Off the record, others were even more outspoken – claiming that running their programmes of packedout events for even less money was just impossible. The opinion was also voiced that Mr McCausland “doesn’t have a great feeling for arts and culture activities of the type which go on in the Cathedral Quarter.” In this respect, Mr McCausland has form. He has been in the firing line in the past for trying to steer cultural activities towards his own preferences. Last year, for instance, he was criticised for calling on organisers of Belfast Festival at Queen’s to include pro-Israeli views and gospel music, and in 2010 he wrote to the Ulster Museum to ask that creationism be promoted alongside its science exhibits. After… Following days of silence, the department’s press office finally released two statements late on February 16. One said that £250,000 had been found by the finance minister, Sammy Wilson, to
The fate of one popular venue continues to hang in the balance. Despite growing audience numbers, The Black Box says it could be forced to shut its doors if its funding is axed. But this time, the body responsible is the Arts Council, not the Department for Social Development. “If funding doesn’t come from the Arts Council we’re going to have to ask Belfast City Council, or anyone and everyone, for money,” said Sarah Jones (left), part of the management team. With cash so tight across the board, there is slim guarantee of that happening. If not...? “We’ll probably close in June, I’d say,” said Sarah. “We might be able to keep going until September, but you have to be responsible for your business. You can’t just keep going until you have no money
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keep the programme running for the year. It included a pre-prepared comment from Mr McCausland: “It is important that those groups who have received this grant previously now work to achieve long term financial sustainability and move away from reliance on public funding. I hope to engage in the coming weeks with the Cathedral Quarter groups to explore how best to achieve this necessary objective, given the current economic climate.” Asked who, if anyone, was consulted over axing the grant, the press office said: “This is a discretionary grant scheme, rolled forward year-on-year on the basis of affordability - all applicants are made aware of this fact.” Ok then. Was there any kind of impact assessment on what cutting the grant would have done to regeneration? Once again: “This is a discretionary grant fund, rolled forward year-on-year on the basis of affordability – all applicants are made aware of this fact.” Requests to speak to the minister himself in the hope of shedding some light on the matter was refused. Alex Maskey, the Sinn Fein MLA who heads the Stormont committee overseeing the ministers’ work, said they had been given no prior notification of the grant cut. “In the round, I think this has been handled quite poorly,” he said. Asked what’s to stop a similar debacle next year, he said: “Obviously I can’t speak for the department, but clearly there’s no guarantee for any funding in any aspect of government.” As for those who rely on the grant money, they are simply relieved – for the time being. Paul McErlean said: “I have to try and see the positive side. I think it’s good government at work. Other departments were able to step in and assist, so I’m totally thrilled. Everyone else, particularly the people on the front line actually managing the events, have gone through no end of stress and difficulties thinking what they’re going to do with their events. I genuinely don’t think there was a need for it, and they could have done this a lot differently. “The overriding feeling is one of relief and happiness that the money’s been restored and events won’t be affected – at least not for another year.”
left. You have to wind up in a responsible fashion.” Since 2007, the 300-capacity Black Box has received £25,000 from the Arts Council each year. But this has been from a small “development fund”, designed only for short-term projects – because until now, The Black Box was seen as a temporary space. But now The Black Box is being told it must apply to the Arts Council’s “annual fund” for cash, putting it in direct competition with far bigger venues like the Royal Opera House, The Lyric... and now its new neighbour the MAC, too. A decision is due in March. For more, visit www.iheartau.com /2012/02/black-box-in-crisis
Putin The Work In ASIWYFA talk us through their latest Russian odyssey For the second year in a row, Belfast-based instrumentalists And So I Watch You From Afar spent the depths of winter in Russia and Ukraine, this time nipping into Belarus as well. Rory Friers, are you mad? “I’m not sure!” he chuckles. “When we arrived off the plane into a snowstorm at -30ºC and all our beards froze I think we were asking ourselves the same question, but moments like that certainly remind you you’re not at home anymore and that’s pretty amazing. It’s like, “Yip… we’re definitely in Russia, lads.” This time around there were no Russian bear tattoos or, thankfully, serious knee injuries to be had (“Adger was as sure-footed as a mountain goat,” says Rory of the accident-prone bassist), and a few other things have changed too. “We didn’t have Tony [Wright, departed guitarist] out with us this time which was really weird,” says Rory. “Last year was so much banter so it was sad to not have him there this time to see how things had progressed.” And things really have progressed – drumming hunk Chris Wee “signed a few boobies”, their first ever show in the Belarusian capital Minsk brought nearly 800 fans to the venue, and all through the tour the crowds were completely up for their brand of righteous instrumental fury. “We were playing to more people and to more fans rather than people curious to see the ‘band from Ireland’,” says Rory. “Seeing that kind of progression is what we live for.” Chris Jones
1 1.“We are here!!” In our hostel in Kazan we found this giant map and took great pleasure planning future tours and eating pizza. Just out of shot, Andy [Coles, soundman] plays sludge metal to some fans who were waiting for us as we arrived with bottles of whiskey and cider. 2. Waiting in Frankfurt airport. Our original flight had been cancelled so we had all been up all night and were feeling a little worse for wear. Niall has a really bad fear of flights and if you look closely you can notice he’s listening to his pre-flight Fear Of Flying audiobook, which worked a treat. 3. Andy and Rory arrive at the hotel in St. Petersburg. We had been travelling all night in our van and as we arrived here at 7am words cannot describe how cold it was. The hotel on the other hand won the coveted ‘breakfast of the tour’ award.
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4 4. Andy and Niall in Rostov. We played with an amazing band called Aerofall this night. The venue had a CBGBsstyle toilet with no cubicle. We also flooded the shower in the venue accidentally and the night turned into a pretty amazing party consisting of a lot of drinks that were on fire. 5. The poster for our Kiev show in Ukraine. The show nearly didn’t happen because all the gear broke but we finally got something together at the last minute and it ended up being one of our favourites from the tour. 6. Chris finds the props box back stage at the club were we were playing in our home from home, Samara. He goes for giant silver mask thing, purple wing-type backpack thing and of course the 18 inch sparkly platform things. 7. Chris can’t decide on devil horns or middle finger and in the end goes for both. Punk rock. 8. Andy and Adger wait for our van to get us in Minsk after a band day around the city buying Russian dolls. This was the last day of tour and the show on this night was one of our favourites.
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‘Friends’ With Benefits How small labels are having to innovate to survive
PHOTO BY KIERAN FROST
Dublin’s Richter Collective form an exhilarating stream amid the very lifeblood of the Irish music scene. Long at the core of Ireland’s wonderfully fruitful indie/math-rock movement, the collaborative label has been affiliated with some of the top Irish releases of the last few years, including the likes of ASIWYFA, Adebisi Shank, The Redneck Manifesto and Not Squares. Like many of their contemporaries, though, the very survival of Richter Collective is far from guaranteed. You could argue that if a business isn’t financially viable, it isn’t a business. On the other hand, if a label as popular and compelling as Richter can’t find the money to keep the tunes rolling, what hope is there for the rest of us? There had to be another way. Unveiled in early 2012, Richter’s ‘Friends Of’ project is the brainchild of label co-founder Michael Roe, and seeks to use the label’s loyal fan base as a mutually beneficial financial refuge. The difficulties, according to Roe, are simple. “The main problem is cash flow,” he explains. “Before you start getting any
money in, you have to pay for recording, pressing [CDs and vinyl] and PR. And then you have to wait a huge amount of time before you get the expenditure back from sales. We have a lot of money locked up in stock, but some of it won’t ship for five years.” There’s another option, but it’s not an appetising one. “We could stop now,” Roe says, “and we’d be fine, but if we want to invest in anything, be it producing new albums or special projects like vinyl, re-issues or deluxe editions, we need to have the cash outlay.” The consequences of those financial limitations are already being felt: Richter had to pass on releasing Logikparty’s upcoming debut album, simply because the timing wasn’t financially viable. In Roe’s eyes, problems don’t truly stem from much-cited issues like illegal downloading. Instead, he refers to “the hazards of the industry”. “It’s just part of the business model, which could be improved by doing a few things more directly – approaching shops ourselves, for example – but that involves so much time and paperwork. For smaller labels it’s counterproductive. Distributors are essential, but slow the process down.” There are tricks, though. “Our partnership with Sargent House in the US has hugely increased exposure for our bands, particularly ASIWYFA. There’s an informal agreement with a Japanese label that helps, too, and we’d like more.” Publicity is great, clearly, but finance remains the major barrier.
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‘Friends Of’, then, seeks to close that financial gap. For €100 a year, fans get the full back catalogue digitally, free gig entry all year, five CD albums, a Richter T-shirt and exclusive album previews. “Hopefully people will be into the idea,” Roe says. “We’ve already had a great reaction, I think people know we’re not rolling in the cash. Just the physical stuff is worth around €50. We hope to develop the idea, change it up over a year or two. It might offset some other sales, but having the cash up front to invest is just far more valuable to us.” Other labels have already experimented with similarly inventive concepts. The ‘subscription scheme’ – allowing label fans to bulk buy a set number of releases – is currently in use by labels like Boston hardcore outlet B9, who give online-only access to more than 200 releases at $30 per year. Eclectic Michigan label Ghostly International, home to the likes of Mobius Band and Matthew Dear, currently offer a $15 per month service for downloads of all new releases and other exclusives. The fine print might vary, but the theme is consistent: indie labels need to adapt – and find upfront financing – to survive. By offering heady buy-ins to their biggest fans, they might have stumbled across a way to do so. James Hendicott To find out more about Friends Of Richter Collective, check out www.richtercollective.com
UNKNOWN PLEASURES Niall Byrne digs deep to uncover the freshest new music
the
beat
THE LIMELIGHT
THUR 15th MARCH 8pm - £17
+ LOST ALONE SPRING & AIRBRAKE - SAT 17th MARCH - 7.30pm - £7.50
WET NUNS THE LIMELIGHT
THE S Y A D R Y T W SUBHE RIVER THURS 5th APRIL - 9pm - £10.50
BBC sounds of 2012 Blog Buzz – Oliver Tank Oliver Tank walks a beautiful line between electronic music and acoustic music without thoroughly being in either camp. Some folks might call it folktronica but the 21-year-old Sydney musician possesses a rare gift to conjure up a unique space that doesn’t bring to mind a lot of what that label signifies. It’s his voice that does it. Like Sam Amidon, whose distinctive timbre can transport you to the old American South, Tank’s rasp is equally evocative but the twist of autotune on melodies aren’t tied to a time and place despite the enigmatic, reverbed use of violin, female backing vocals and postdubstep tropes. In short: Oliver Tank makes beautiful music. - yespleaserecords.bandcamp.com /album/dreams Mixtape - Mick E. Rawrk Dublin-based Loudmouth Collective are the people to turn to if you’re looking for old school hip-hop styles mixed with cutting-edge electronica. Their latest release Mick E. Rawrk’s (pronounced like the embattled actor) Micks Tape was inspired by the aggressive punk-rap of Death Grips’ Ex-Military from last year. The result is a rugged and raw rap mixtape with an Irish twist. - bit.ly/mickstape Blog of the month – Ad Hoc Music blogs have been around so long now that a kick back against what they’ve become is forming as
an ideal. Offering an alternative to the alternative, Ad Hoc was set up by the two editors at the helm of Pitchfork’s sister site Altered Zones. The idea is for it to be 100% independent underground music and visual culture publication. It will feature contributions from bloggers like 20 Jazz Funk Greats, Dummy Magazine, No Fear Of Pop, Rose Quartz and more. There’s also a quarterly zine planned with people like Neon Indian, Daniel Lopatin, James Leyland Kirby, the Pelly Twins and Maria Minerva contributing. The site is looking for $33,333 at time of writing to kick this off via a crowd funding website. - adhoc.fm Free Download - The Darcys Anyone with any ounce of musical credibility is into Steely Dan. Fact. The Seventies band led by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are responsible for such oft-sampled classics such as ‘Reelin’ In The Years’, ‘Do It Again’, ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ and ‘Kid Charlemagne’. Classic, harmonious pop rock songs of the era. Canadian band The Darcys have paid homage to their genius by covering the entire album Aja in their own unique way (yes, Steely Dan are just that good, people). It sounds like The Antlers doing atmospheric covers of classics and it’s a free download from the Arts & Crafts label. - thedarcys.ca www.nialler9.com
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Towards The Light Blog darling Mmoths on his rapid rise and debut EP was kind of the worst. I always feel so nervous because it’s something that’s personal to you, your own music.” A persistent criticism levelled at electronic producers is the lack of a focal point in a live setting – certainly with the comparatively chilled brand of electronica that is Mmoths’ calling card – and a common response is the A/V approach. “Yeah, I’m trying to get visuals for the tour over the next month-ish, so that’s going to be an element of the live show,” he confirms, and there’s something of an evocative, impressionistic quality to Colleran’s compositions that lends itself to the imagery of say, Brendan Canty of Feel Good Lost – who directed the video for the original version of ‘Summer’.
There’s been no shortage of bedroom electronic producers in Ireland of late, but one of the more notable success stories in the last year or so has been that of 18-year-old Jack Colleran (aka Mmoths; previously Moths). Mmoths’ sound is very much a blog-friendly one – in a similar ballpark to the likes of Sun Glitters or Blackbird Blackbird, his predominantly instrumental tracks are warm, melodic and subtly emotive, ranging from uptempo Gold Pandaesque loops to more ambient numbers. After catching the ear with a couple of tracks posted to his Soundcloud account, the word-of-mouth buzz around the young Kildare-based producer
has spread steadily: gaining attention from outlets like Prefix magazine and XLR8R, being asked by Interpol to remix ‘The Undoing’, and just recently selling out his EP launch in Dublin’s Twisted Pepper. “It was amazing how many people were listening. It kind of put a bit of pressure on me,” says Colleran, who just sat his Leaving Cert last summer. “I sort of had to think about what I was putting up, ‘cos there was a bigger audience. I just put them up to send to my friends and stuff like that, I never planned on it being anything like a job or something I would do regularly.” Moving from the laptop into the arena of live performance can often be daunting, and Colleran’s first live performance was on the fairly big stage of last year’s Castlepalooza festival. “I hate listening to my music around other people, so performing
Mmoths’ self-titled debut EP features a couple of re-worked versions of his tunes, with the addition of vocals that only serve to enhance their dreamy, sunkissed vibe: Superhumanoids guest on ‘Summer’ while ‘Heart’ features Sarah from blog darlings Keep Shelly In Athens. “I was talking to the guys from the label and they wanted to re-release them but I didn’t really want to,” he explains. “They’d already been out and and it didn’t really make any sense, so I was like, ‘Why don’t we put vocals on them?’. They needed another element anyway I think, so John from Solar Bears put me in touch with Sarah from Keep Shelly In Athens and she was up for it. And, yeah it sounds good, I’m pretty happy with what she’s done on that track.” What’s noticeable about acts like Mmoths and Solar Bears is how they’ve harnessed the blogosphere and taken full advantage of the opportunities it presents, whether in terms of grabbing the attention of influential blogs (XLR8R, Gorilla vs. Bear) or collaborating with international acts like KSIA and thus benefiting (if that’s not too Machiavellian a term) from their higher profile. “The possibilities are endless,” enthuses Colleran. “Just collaborating with someone over in Athens... I’ve never even met Sarah or any of the rest of the band, yet we’re suddenly able to make a track together. It’s weird but cool as fuck.” Daniel Harrison Mmoths’ self-titled EP is now via SQE Records. www.mmothsmusic.com
Band Maths No.14 The Cure
37% - Eyeliner 26% - The sadness of the middle-aged goth 19% - Unlikely superstardom 13% - Three-minute pop gems 5% - Three-hour festival sets
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SEASON’S EATINGS Don’t flounder with lemon sole goujons – a friendly fish recipe for the onset of Spring. Hands up who’s afraid to cook fish? For one reason or another, otherwise capable cooks find fish daunting. Many of us know, or even are, the kitchen whizz who times steaks to the split second and dices vegetables in a cool blur of ninja knife action, yet falls to blubbering pieces in the face of simple piece of fish. Which begs the question, why do such people find fish so daunting? Perhaps it is the choice. Unlike say pork, beef, and lamb, where you have a clear idea what you are dealing with, fish has such a variety of species that it can be difficult to know where to start and what cooking technique suits a particular type. The perceived messiness and general smelliness of raw fish is surely a concern also. Yet neither of these things should be an issue. A bit of knowledge and some basic rules of thumb (for example, oily fish is not suited to deep frying)
should overcome the first concern. As for the second, well, fresh fish should have next to no odour, and furthermore, all that messy gutty stuff is what your cheery local fishmonger is there to do. Your fishmonger will also be delighted to give you advice on how to cook fish. Go on, interact with them, ask some questions, and you’ll make their day, for this is the sort of stuff that makes the world a friendlier place. The following lemon sole dish is an elegant little variation on fish and chips that provides an easy introduction into cooking fish. Lemon sole is currently in season and very sustainable. The light fish goes deliciously with a lemon mayonnaise, which you can tell your dinner guests is the only lemony thing in their meal as lemon sole does not taste of lemon, and nor is it, curiously enough, sole. It’s flounder.
Lemon Sole Goujons with Lemon Mayo & Spicy Wedges Serves 2/3
Words by Darragh McCausland Photo by Aoife McElwain
THERE’S THIS LITTLE PLACE...
Ginger Bistro 7-8 Hope Street, Belfast, BT12 5EE T: +44 (0)28 9024 4421 W: gingerbistro.com
While the Ginger Bistro is hardly Belfast’s best kept secret (it was, after all, voted Northern Ireland’s best restaurant), we’re going to draw attention to the fine little place for those AU readers who might not be familiar with the city. Ginger has a welcoming, slightly quirky style that comfortably straddles the line between smart and casual. In saying that, there is nothing casual about their impressive menu that leans heavily on Irish cuisine.
For the goujons and lemon mayo:
For the spicy wedges:
4 fillets of lemon sole (without skin) sliced into strips 50g plain flour 100g breadcrumbs 2 beaten eggs ¼ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon ground black pepper 4 tablespoons of mayonnaise Fresh lemon juice to taste (about a teaspoon or so)
1 tablespoon of plain flour ½ teaspoon mild chilli powder or cayenne pepper 2 or 3 large rooster potatoes cut into 8 wedges (with or without jackets depending on your preference) 4 tablespoons vegetable or sunflower oil Salt and pepper to taste
For the wedges, pre-heat the oven to 200°C, then toss the potatoes with the remaining ingredients in a bowl, making sure they are all completely coated in the spicy, oily mixture. Scatter them into a non-stick or oiled roasting dish and bake for about 35 minutes until crisp and cooked through. Once finished, remove to dry on kitchen paper.
rolling it in the breadcrumbs until it is coated all over. Heat the oil in a deep frying pan on a medium heat. Add the goujons to the pan in separate batches, cooking each batch for approximately 2 to 3 minutes on each side until it is golden. Remove the goujons with a slotted spoon and let them dry on kitchen paper.
When the wedges are almost ready you can start the goujons. First sprinkle the flour on a plate, then mix the breadcrumbs and seasoning together and sprinkle onto another plate, before beating the eggs in a separate bowl. Now take the strips of lemon sole and dredge each piece in the flour before dipping it in the egg and
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Before serving the finished dish, fork the lemon juice through the mayonnaise and serve as a dip. The dish can be finished off with a light salad of your choice, and for a right proper fish and chips experience you might want to sprinkle a little malt vinegar over the goujons and wedges. That’s all there is to it; fabulous fish without the fear.
The Silver Fox Can you believe it?! Football commentator Jackie Fullerton voices canine video game.
Ciaran Lavery
Imagine a fantastical world were foxes gad about on their hind legs like preening, epicurean fops of the most exalted order. And like true gentlemen gastronomes, they dine on the best fed free-range chickens to be roasted in the finest Le Creuset casserole pots. But in order to secure his dinner, the fabulous Monsieur Fox would dispense a bespoke one-liner about “bad korma”, turn on a shapely paw and run like buggery to collect as many chucks as his three minute time allotment will allow.
The former Ipswich manager and long-serving international Jim Magilton is like “a fourth son” to Jackie. New NI manager Michael O’Neill is “nobody’s fool. But whoever took the job was going to be up against it.” He’s diplomatically cautious about the current squad (“lacking in quality throughout”) and is proud of his head for figures. “David Healy is 32 and scoring again for the Rangers first team. Norway will be his 92nd Cap – see, I’ve still got it!”
Enterprising young Ballymena games designer William Barr has envisioned such a casually violent and hugely colourful anthropomorphic dystopia. His company Billy Goat Entertainment have created Outfoxed – part cartoon, part video game and all luscious, lovingly rendered 3D landscape. And let’s not forget that voice.
Healy is indirectly responsible for Fullerton’s sideways slink into the world of computer gaming and animation. “I met young William when I was doing voiceover for a Healy DVD that he was working on. I must admit, when I read the script, I had to smile at some of the one-liners.” Outfoxed is indeed awash with the familiar Fullerton purr, doling out chicken-related puns and gags that may have some crying fowl but others clucking with delight. “There’s a bunch of catchphrases there,” he says. “One in particular, people have picked out as me already. It’s ‘I didn’t think I’d be chasing young birds at my age’!”
Smooth sportscaster and BBC Northern Ireland institution Jackie Fullerton is the voice that taunts, teases and pleases throughout Outfoxed. He takes a break from preparing for the Northern IrelandNorway match to chat to AU about his new career as a canine cartoon hero. He has an opinion or two on the NI football team, and displays that unique blend of casual namedrop and fingertip knowledge.
He’s surprisingly modest about his own vocal prowess: “I suppose some people would say I have a certain smoothness to my voice.” It’s pure Jackie F: part Shatner, part Lynam. Jackie is full of mellifluous plaudits about the efforts of William and his team at Billy Goat, and he seems genuinely enthused by the product he’s helped to create. “It’s really good to see small creative businesses getting ahead at last.”
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The foxy Mr Fullerton reveals he got a “nominal fee” for his labours, but says it was the love of the project, faith in William and a willingness to “give something back” after 40 years in the business that really got him fired up about Outfoxed. Furthermore, a promised share of any potential profits seemed rather agreeable. “William has promised me royalties! When a fellow Ballymena man makes you an offer like that you take it seriously,” he jokes. It’s his own sense of self-deprecating fun that Jackie feels brings some added bite to his role as the recidivistic Reynard. “I’ve always believed that a sense of humour is important and it’s been the secret of my longevity, I think. It certainly wasn’t talent,” he chuckles warmly. One thing is certain, the game itself is indeed a distracting hoot. Jackie has already road-tested it at the core demographic – his own teenage grandsons. “Jack and Erin are both 14 and I have to say they aren’t totally embarrassed by it,” he reveals, beaming. “Now I’m looking forward to playing it with John and Hannah, my two younger grandkids, and watching their reaction as they hear my voice on screen whilst I’m still sitting next to them!” Joe Nawaz Outfoxed is available to buy now from the Apple App Store. www.billygoat.tv
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FrIday 23rd March MandeLa haLL Doors 8pm Tickets £17.50
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TICKETS ON SALE FROM QUEEN’S STUDENTS’ UNION BOX OFFICE. BOOKING FEES APPLY ELSEWHERE. QUEEN’S STUDENTS’ UNION, 77-79 UNIVERSITY ROAD, BELFAST, BT7 1NF. TEL: 028 9097 3726. AVAILABLE FROM TICKETMASTER.IE AND ALL TICKETMASTER OUTLETS. 24HR TICKET LINE - 0844 277 4455.
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There’s Only One Ranaldo Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo talks to AU about his new solo album
When Sonic Youth announced a hiatus late last year, fans had every right to feel an extreme sadness. That the extended break was sparked by the split between Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon after 27 years of marriage only added to the sense of sorrow. However, happily, the individual band members have been very busy. Moore released his excellent Demolished Thoughts album last year and Gordon has just launched her new fashion line with Surface To Air. And this month sees the release of a solo album, Between The Times And The Tides, by guitarist Lee Ranaldo, who has roped the Yoof’s drummer Steve Shelley into the glistening new project. “Over the last few years I have gotten into the more interesting things that I have done, solo-wise, in my career,” Lee tells AU from his New York home. “I was doing all this abstract compositional stuff and exhibiting more visual stuff, but because Sonic Youth wasn’t working so much on new material I was really missing the opportunity to sing lyrics.” The catalyst for the album was an invitation to perform an acoustic gig in France in 2010. “I
thought I was just going to play a bunch of Sonic Youth songs acoustically but a new song called ‘Lost’ popped out. From then on, songs just started to generate; it seemed that that song’s creation turned a key in a lock. The flow hasn’t stopped; I’m working on four or five new ones at the moment. “I wrote these songs over the last year-and-a-half on an acoustic guitar and I really thought I was going to end up making a very simple record. Then, through some sessions I did with Steve and then [bassist] Irwin Menken, they started to turn into these band songs and it kind of surprised me. They seemed to naturally open up in some interesting ways and we pursued their course.” While Ranaldo has released solo work before, Between The Times And The Tides is a bold guitar record reminiscent in places of Goo-era Sonic Youth, and will be viewed as his first major outing since the band announced its hiatus. “I’m trying not to think like that,” Lee says when we ask whether his album carries an extra ‘weight’ of expectation. “This record was honestly made in a vacuum against what was going on and was fully created before any of the ruptures within Sonic Youth were known. But, I am pretty thankful the record came about in those circumstances. I don’t know if I would have been
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able to withstand the weight of trying to create a record if I had known things were stopping for a while with Sonic Youth.” It’s easy to see how the respective band members have continued to busy themselves. After spending three decades redefining the edges and pushing back the boundaries of rock music, the (temporary) demise of Sonic Youth must leave a huge gap in their lives. AU asks whether Lee has undergone a period of mourning. “Not really, it’s been a very wonderful part of my life. If there is any sense of grieving it is really just for two close friends who are going through some agonising times at the moment, more than anything else. We are not saying anything beyond the fact we are on hiatus at the moment, but we have been a band together for almost exactly 30 years which is an amazingly long run. I feel mostly good about all the incredible stuff we’ve done together. The future will take its own shape with regards to the band.” John Freeman Between The Times And The Tides is released on March 26 via Matador. www.leeranaldo.com
The Long And The Short Of It Gamers get shirty about the supposed brevity of new release…
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THE ORE CK, AND M O C PEA TKJE ISIT: ON VO.UK , SID SK RA I U T A A L M SIC.C AJA FOR I&M R IN GONMU R E O H M IN RT IKUE FOR FU W.MOV WW
KINGDOMS OF AMALUR: RECKONING A curious debate has been rumbling on videogame forums and blogs since the release of Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning (EA, Multiformat), a fantastic RPG from the pen of fantasy author R. A. Salvatore. Fans have not been whinging about the title’s storyline – your usual enjoyable hokum about trolls, elves and mages – nor have they been boo-hooing about the gameplay, which is much more action-orientated than your average Western adventure. No the complaints are related to its length. Specifically, that it is too short. It is worth noting at this early stage that gamers are reporting an average completion time of 70 hours. Yes, 70 hours. Let’s take a moment to contextualise this statistic: that’s the equivalent of nearly 50 trips to the cinema or, if it’s more your poison, football matches. Even the most scrooge-like of skinflints would see that this is value for money. The root problem, it seems, is that at one point during production developers 38 Studios claimed that exploring every nook and cranny of its mythological tundra would consume a whopping 200 hours – that’s just over a whole week if you don’t allow time for eating or relief breaks. This, of course, would not pose a challenge for eastern Starcraft obsessives who do not view sleep deprivation or heart failure as an inconvenience, but for
the average gamer even a comparatively frugal 70 hours seems an unhealthy investment. This stand-off poses interesting questions about the relationship between, to put it crudely, manufacturer and consumer. Namely, what and how much players have grown to expect from a product when they pony up their hard-earned money. It goes hand in hand with a concurrent discussion about the paucity of the campaigns in Call Of Duty and Battlefield which max out at six hours apiece. However, the unwritten rule for such first-person shooters is that the single player missions are an afterthought when compared to the weeks and weeks lost to online multiplayer matches – the real reason people are buying them in the first place. Regardless, it seems churlish to complain about the expected running length of a game when it exceeds the one day point. After all, the same rule is not applied to, say, albums or novels or a night out at the go-karts. The latter costs the same as a newly released videogame and lasts a fraction of the time. Some people really need to get a life – and then spend it playing Kingdoms Of Amalur. It’s truly awesome. Ross Thompson
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Sub scribe A 10-issue subscription to AU is just £13. Yeah, that’s right, £13. Right now you are thinking one of two things. Either a) Hey, I picked the latest copy of AU up for free, and can do every month, why would I pay, douchebag? Or b) Sweet! I can get AU delivered straight to my door, and it’s a super reasonable price for such a service. If you want to join the clever people in what we are now calling Column B, head on over to www.iheartau.com and click on ‘Magazine/Subscriptions’ or pop a cheque for £13 (or €35, due to the cost of posting across the border) made payable to Alternative Ulster Ltd in the post to AU Magazine, 21 Ormeau Avenue, Belfast, BT2 8HD. All prices include postage and packing. In fact, the price pretty much just covers P&P, that’s how dead on we are.
HEY YOU! WHAT’S ON YOUR iPOD? Just what does the person on the street listen to? AU finds out…
Andy from Belfast Occupation: Artist/filmmaker
Chris from Seaford Occupation: Musician
James from Belfast Occupation: Student
Fredrick Robinson – Laughing At Clouds Radiohead – Lotus Flower Slum Village – Look Of Love
Kasabian – Velociraptor The Vaccines – If You Wanna Franz Ferdinand – Turn It On
Benjamin Francis Leftwich – Atlas Hands Green Day – Basket Case Lostprophets – Last Train Home
Random fact: Andy can handle two spicy burritos at once. Braver man than us!
Random fact: Chris won the all-Ireland under-18s skating competition. What a hero.
Random fact: James has a brown belt in jiu-jitsu, so don’t mess with him.
Meabh from Belfast Occupation: Student
Tania from Newry Occupation: Student
Cara from Belfast Occupation: Student
Slipknot – Wait & Bleed Machine Head – Halo Wednesday 13 – Bad Things Happen
Kanye West – The Glory Eminem – Evil Deeds Linkin Park – Forgotten
Beach House – Take Care Bombay Bicycle Club – Shuffle Alkaline Trio – Stupid Kid
Random fact: Meabh absolutely loves piercings and tattoos. Bet her granny doesn’t though.
Random fact: Tania managed to break her arm three times in three years. Now that’s just careless!
Random fact: Cara knitted her own jumper, with a cat on it. Awwwsome.
Lauren from Belfast Occupation: Hairdresser
Mick from Belfast Occupation: Student
Ed from Belfast Occupation: Unemployed
Black Stone Cherry – Blame It On The Boom Boom Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – If I Had A Gun Joan Jett – Crimson and Clover
Christy Moore – Ride On Alice Cooper – Poison Elton John – Your Song
Interpol – PDA Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit Rolling Stones – Satisfaction
Random fact: Lauren has bright pink hair, as modelled above.
Random fact: Mick loves a good swim, be it in the sea or down the leisure centre.
Random fact: Ed was bored, and off for a skate. Hope he had fun and avoided serious injury.
Photos and interviews by Cory Danks
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TEETHGRINDER Dave Donnelly sets the world to rights. This month: home-grown football.
The days are getting longer, bitter winter is givng way to bitter spring, and that can only mean one thing: the football season’s back. What? Oh yeah. While many football fans spent the winter months becoming experts on the nuances of race relations in South America or boning up on the finer points of Monaco’s tax laws, I’ve anxiously awaited the return of domestic football to the Republic (and Derry) to satisfy my yearning for the live football fix. My team, Shamrock Rovers, finished up the season just before Christmas with a four goal home loss to Tottenham Hotspur. While the idea going down 4-0 to Spurs might seem a ridiculous prospect to a Liverpool fan [subtle! -LFC Ed.], for a team whose season had finished a month previously and hadn’t played for two weeks, it was a respectable finish to an unforgettable year. It wasn’t always like this – until a few years ago I’d have considered myself a Manchester United fan first and Rovers second – but once the live football bug bites, it’s very difficult to go back to watching games in your living room. As vicarious thrills go, watching your team win the Champions League from a barstool just doesn’t compare to seeing your
team bravely throw everything at a side whose striker cost more than your entire squad is paid in 10 years. What I wouldn’t give to have been at White Hart Lane when Stephen Rice put Rovers 1-0. As it happens, I was ducking in and out of a gig and just managed to miss it live, but the feeling of looking at the scoreboard and seeing my local side beating the top-ranked team in the competition is one I’ll find hard to forget. Over the past year, Ireland has seen a host of its brightest talents move to the Sky Leagues. Derry City’s James McClean may be the one grabbing the headlines, but we’ve also seen young Rovers Enda Stevens and Karl Sheppard move to Aston Villa and Reading respectively, while Northern Ireland’s Rory Donnelly was courted by Liverpool and Everton before joining up with countryman Brendan Rodgers at Premier League Swansea. Your local league may lack the glamour and names of the Sky Leagues – not to mention Ray Wilkins’ diamond insights – but get down to support your local team and I guarantee you’ll see some future internationals. You might even find that many of your local sides play the kind of passing football the millionaires at Stoke or Aston Villa would never be given license to.
Band Name: Bay Age: about 20 “I played the drums really badly and that’s something I regret, because the guy who wrote the songs, Jason, could play the drums much better than me and would have done so much better if he’d just done it himself! I feel a bit guilty about that – I feel like I held him back a bit because he wrote great songs. The best record was acoustic and Jason wrote quite romantic lyrics,
that was on the telly, most of them left and we had to get a new band – including Malcolm Middleton. He was playing the bass, I think. There was Jason, me and Malcolm and another guy called Ronnie, a great guitarist. The plan was to do some gigs, but towards the end Jason kind of gave up on it. As things turned out, it was probably for the best for us because it encouraged Malcolm and I to do something together, and we ended up doing Arab Strap.
“I got a signed picture of Kirsty Young” all very tasteful. We used to listen to things like Godflesh and Codeine, and we’d take some pills and go for a drive and listen to acid house, but the music he would make was nothing like that at all. “The only time we ever played a gig was on Scottish TV, on some arts programme late at night. We’d started to rehearse together, and the band
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“The TV performance was very peculiar. We didn’t get paid for it, but I had a big crush on Kirsty Young – at the time she was just a newsreader on the evening news – and I got a signed picture. That was my wages for the performance, which was more than enough!” Aidan Moffat and Bill Wells play the Grand Social, Dublin on March 30. www.aidanmoffat.co.uk
Music: Response Chemical Brothers director Adam Smith on the making of a concert movie classic
Adam Smith is buzzing with excitement and who could blame him? Recent limited screenings of the film The Chemical Brothers: Don’t Think were met with waves of euphoria around the world, as normally sedate cinemas were transformed into banging raves. His work is a triumph of cinematic innovation, capturing the electronic duo of Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands at their brilliant best. In fact, Don’t Think has set a new high watermark for the concert film genre. Never before has the sheer manic exhilaration of the live experience been documented so authentically. Smith’s knowledge of The Chemical Brothers is unparalleled. For almost two decades he’s worked as their live visual artist, sculpting their renowned theatrics. Finally, his dream project became a reality, but at very short notice. “I guess we were inspired by films like [Talking Heads’] Stop Making Sense and their fresh treatment of a live show’s intensity,” he says. “However, we only received the green light two weeks before filming at the Fujirock
Festival so the pressure was on! Initially, we were set on Nîmes in France but bureaucracy got in the way. “In retrospect, French audiences are a little guarded and we preferred a crowd full of child-like wonder with the capacity to really lose it. Thankfully, Japanese audiences have that attitude in buckets! “The basic concept was to capture what it really feels like at one of the shows, proper stuck in the thick of it, as opposed to simply documenting the literal visual spectacle. The standard nine-camera TV shoot using a sweeping crane is very formulaic. We placed cameras in the audience with signs saying, ‘Don’t look into the lens’. We were looking for something a little special.” Employing a series of innovative techniques, Smith documented the audience’s spontaneous response to the audio/visual overload. “Myself, Tom and Ed really liked shaky camera-phone footage taken in the crowd because it had that claustrophobic feel. We also know a guy involved in editing the Underworld live film and his advice was ‘get loads of quality crowd footage’! It needed a sense of cinematic grammar where you experience what they see and their subsequent emotional reaction. It’s that level of sweaty intimacy we were after, the
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manic energy that exists between performer and spectator. The footage was really inspiring. In some ways it’s like great acting, people reacting in the moment without being self-conscious.” Smith is very thankful that his collaborators allowed him space to develop his vision. “The lads were amazing. I had so much creative freedom, yet we all fed in ideas. Tom came up with the concept for the infinite ladder sequence and we ran with it. The music is the script that takes the listener on a journey. To me they’re fantastic creative enablers and their only concern was that camera set-up didn’t restrict the show or diminish the experience for the audience. The edit was very collaborative and the boys would always give direct feedback, no fluffing about!” Has Adam been surprised by the overwhelming reaction of cinema goers? “It’s really blown my mind! I’ve worked with the guys for 18 years, but this is certainly a special time. I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity. It really has been a very humbling experience.” Eamonn Seoige The Chemical Brothers: Don’t Think is released by EMI on Blu Ray/CD & DVD/CD formats on March 23. www.dontthinkmovie.com
New York, New York One month left for applications to the Red Bull Music Academy 2012 notoriously in-depth, but the rewards are huge. As well as getting to explore one of the world’s great city’s at Red Bull’s expense, the Academy itself is a playground. The RBMA team like to convert a disused or underused building and install studios bristling with equipment, a lecture theatre, a radio station and offices – and they leave it all behind for future generations. And then there are the star guests. The famous couch has played host to the great and good, sharing anecdotes and insights and showing off their best work. Last year in Madrid, Erykah Badu, Matías Aguayo, Bootsy Collins, RZA and Oneohtrix Point Never all appeared, while in London in 2011, Moodymann gave a memorable talk accompanied by lady friends plying him with brandy, braiding his hair and handing out goodies.
Speak to anyone who has ever been a participant at the Red Bull Music Academy and they will tell you that it was one of the highlights of their entire life. What musician or DJ wouldn’t want to spend a week in one of the world’s great cities, all expenses paid, while hanging out with likeminded individuals and learning from the best?
In recent years, the Academy has pitched up in Barcelona, Melbourne, Toronto, Sao Paulo and Berlin to name a few. Last year’s edition took over the abattoir-turned-cultural centre Matadero in Madrid, and in 2012 it leaves Europe for the first time since 2007, setting up shop for the second time in New York.
Previous participants include big names like Aloe Blacc, Hudson Mohawke, Flying Lotus and Katy B, while Ireland has a strong tradition of sending our brightest and best – Arveene, Olan B and Krystal Klear from Dublin, and Space Dimension Controller, Defcon and Timmy Stewart from Belfast have all been involved in the past. If you fancy joining that illustrious list, get cracking now. Chris Jones
Open to musicians, DJs, producers, vocalists – anyone involved in forward-thinking music – competition is tough, and the application form is
Applications for New York 2012 close on April 2 – for more information and to apply, check out www.redbullmusicacademy.com
Warzone Collective Nine years after it closed, you can still hear the doyens of the Belfast indie, rock, punk and electronic scenes speak in hushed tones of nights at Giro’s, the DIY-run city centre venue that hosted the likes of Refused, Fugazi and NoMeansNo when they visited the city in the Eighties and Nineties, as well as countless local bands and DJs. Well, Giro’s is gone now but the people who ran it – The Warzone Collective – have reformed and are back in a new city centre venue on Little Victoria Street. Run by volunteers, The Warzone Centre is a much-needed space for putting on local bands and providing space for gigs, activism and (coming soon) a vegetarian and vegan café. Search Facebook for more info. CJ
Reset Records The guys behind the Reset club night in Belfast – David Baxter (aka Kab Driver), Connor Dougan (aka Defcon, pictured) and Brian Greene have announced that they are starting a label in order to release their own music, as well as that of other artists from Ireland and further afield. Reset Records debuts with In Binary Shrines, the long-awaited debut EP from Defcon, a graduate of the Red Bull Music Academy (see above for more on that). That will be followed by the new collaboration between Baxter and Greene, both of whom have worked with Boxcutter in the past. The label launches at the Menagerie in Belfast on March 24 – expect live and DJ sets from all three, and a guest appearance from English producer Real, aka Jackson Almond. CJ
NEWS SHORTS
The Host When we spoke to Barry Lynn last year, he told us that he was often tempted to leave the Boxcutter name behind, typecast as it was with the dubstep movement he has been moving further away from with each record. Less than a year on, and he has done it – on March 20, Planet Mu releases his debut album under his new name: The Host. A soft, contemplative record, it builds on some of the themes of The Dissolve – the woozy, psychedelic feel and the occasional nod to the footwork movement and fellow acolytes like Kuedo and Machine Drum, for example – but it also explores new territories, closing with two tracks reminiscent of Emeralds’ ambient guitar-and-synth odysseys. Another fine entry in the Barry Lynn canon. CJ
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Here’s Looking at You(Tube) Sparklehorse Memorial Special Words by Neill Dougan
It was two years ago this month that Mark Linkous, prodigiously talented songwriter and underappreciated creative genius behind Sparklehorse, took his own life. At the time this event made AU very sad and, now we think about it, we still are a bit. However, while we’d obviously much prefer that he was still among us, at least ol’ Linko (as he probably wasn’t known) left behind some truly great music – just a few examples of which are presented below. Here’s to you, Linko! LONDON CALLING
SAINTS ALIVE
HAPPY DAYS
This version of William Blake’s poem ‘London’ set to music – originally released as a limited edition promo in 1995 – is a neat encapsulation of Sparklehorse’s modus operandi, notable for its atmospheric, evocative melody and Linkous’s typically hushed, world-weary vocals. Of course the lyrics aren’t as good as the average Sparklehorse song, but that’s understandable – William Blake was good, but he’s no Mark Linkous.
‘Saint Mary’ is such a mournful, intimate piece of music that listening to it almost feels like you’re intruding on some moment of intense personal turmoil. Which is actually the case: the song is named after the London hospital where the singer recuperated following a notorious 1996 accident/ overdose that almost cost him the use of his legs. It’s accompanied here by an appropriately eerie, lo-fi video. Mmmm, haunting.
Linkous was rightly lauded for his minor-key laments, but he could also do upbeat, as evinced by ‘Happy Man’, a superb new wave rocker which is notable for the immortal line “I woke up in a horse’s stomach one foggy morning / His eyes were crazy and he smashed into the cemetery gates.” Ah, yes, the old ‘waking up in a horse’s stomach thing’. We’ve all been there.
- TINYURL.COM/LINKOUSLONDON
- TINYURL.COM/SPARKLEHORSESAINTMARY
WEIRD WIDE WEB
WHO IS BON IVER? We all remember (well, I remember) the outcry a year ago when Arcade Fire’s living, breathing monument to bland, The Suburbs, won best album at the Grammys. Actually, it was more blue bloody murder as pop fans took to Twitter to ask, Who Are The Suburbs? This year Bon Iver went one step further and bagged himself two. This blog gathers the best of the reaction to Bonny Bear’s shock win. - who-is-bon-iver.tumblr.com
COOK SUCK We all know foodies – people who love food almost as much as they love showing you how good they are at making it. The internet’s full of them, but for every culinary maestro there’s somebody who couldn’t make toast without putting himself at risk of CJD… and posting the results online. Cook Suck reviews some of the worst and worst the internet (usually Facebook) has to offer. Ever doubt your cooking skills? This website is essential. - cooksuck.com
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- TINYURL.COM/SPARKLEHORSEHAPPYMAN
Words by Dave Donnelly
JOURNAL DAWGZ Generally speaking, the comments sections of news websites aren’t known as bastions of well-considered, nuanced argument. No matter how well- or badlyresearched the article is, the comments section is often an opportunity for people to voice their more extreme or badly thought-out opinions under the veil of (semi) anonymity. Journal Dawgz takes this absurdity to its logical conclusion, putting the words of Journal.ie’s finest on the lips of cartoon dawgz. - journaldawgz.tumblr.com
STORY OF THE VIDEO NANU NANU
"aaagh! my eyes!" The column that’s going to dance on your grave. Just you wait. Words by Neill Dougan
Title: ‘Skin’ Director: Murray Cummings and the band
As well as the dark, atmospheric songs she writes under her own name, Dublin’s Laura Sheeran has adopted the character of Glitterface and teamed up with her fiancé Marc Aubele to make gothic electro-pop as Nanu Nanu. Their first single, ‘Skin’, is available as a free download and it has a suitably murky, weird video to match. Think The Knife, Zola Jesus and Planningtorock – in sound and vision, this is a world away from Laura’s cousin, Ed Sheeran… Who directed the video and how did you come to work with them? My cousin Murray Cummings is a very talented cameraman with a great eye and he is a very creative person too. Back in London, where he lives, he does a lot of live filming for our other cousin Ed Sheeran. We knew Murray was the right guy and it was proven when we started the shoot – we managed to exceed any expectations we’d had for the video and bring it to a totally different level. What was the original concept or brief for the video? We had been drawn to the idea of using projections for a while, using mirrors and also filming stuff to be
played back on screens or TVs in the room with us. We spent a bit of time experimenting with different projection ideas, filming things, burning them to DVD and projecting them in different ways on different surfaces. We did loads of projecting onto our own bodies as well which looked really great – that stuff all looked really beautiful and confusing! But we really liked that weirdness. What’s with all the glitter, Glitterface? This is going to sound bonkers but about three or four years ago I just had this recurring desire to try covering all my skin in red paint and matching glitter. I got a few big bags of glitter and matching body paint and began planning a photoshoot. One really sunny day my housemate and I went out to the garden and painted me all over, covered me in this gel stuff and poured glitter all over me. It was loads of fun! I experimented with that look a few more times for shoots and videos and eventually I guess you could say Glitterface was born. Did you have any particular inspirations – other music videos, film, TV, photography? Well it’s an obvious one, but we are both major David Lynch fans! Music videos, we really like a lot of Chris Cunningham’s work and also a good friend of ours, SWALL, makes really cool videos for her songs. TV, we were watching American Horror Story when we were editing the ‘Skin’ video, perhaps that might have had some influence! And photography, we are absolutely in love with a young Irish photographer, Maeve O’Neill, who has been producing some stunning work over the past year. Watch the video online at vimeo.com/37267193 www.nanunanu.bandcamp.com
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Secret stoner Madeleine loved nothing more than when the grandkids had gone home and she could fire up a massive blunt.
Unaware that he was actually allergic to chocolate, hungry kitten Milo got stuck into his owner’s bowl of Weetos – with disastrous consequences.
Jobbing actor Sean was baffled as to why he wasn’t getting any work, until it was pointed out to him that his portfolio picture may not have been entirely appropriate.
The Jezabels
Fixers
Kindness
Members: Hayley Mary (vocals), Heather Shannon (piano, keys), Nik Kaloper (drums) Samuel Lockwood (guitar). Formation: Sydney, Australia, 2007. For Fans Of: Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Cranberries, Cold War Kids. Check Out: The album Prisoner is out on now via PIAS. Website: www.thejezabels.com
Members: Jack Goldstein (vocals, keys), Jason Warner (bass), Christopher Dawson (guitar), Roo Bhasin (guitar), Michael Thompson (drums). Formation: Oxford, 2009. For Fans Of: Chad Valley, Brian Wilson/ Van Dyke Parks, Milagres. Check Out: The single ‘Iron Deer Dream’ is out on March 11 via Vertigo. Website: www.fixerstheband.com
Real Name: Adam Bainbridge. Based: London, England. For Fans Of: Prince, Arthur Russell, Ariel Pink. Check Out: World, You Need A Change Of Mind, out March 19 on Female Energy/Polydor. Website: www.kindness.es
We seem to live in an age where so much of the new music that is cherished is made by earnest young folk hidden away in their bedrooms recording their navel-gazed confessionals onto GarageBand. You can almost hear the lack of Vitamin D. So, once in a while, it is refreshingly healthy to uncover a band who describe themselves as “predominantly a live act” and make ballsy anthems that are intended to be played to seas of air-punching festival-goers in sunlit meadows. The Jezabels are such a band; the four-piece from Sydney, Australia are already pretty damn huge in their homeland. They write big, bold music – Nik Kaloper’s drumming dial appears to be permanently set to ‘pummelling’ – and look like they don’t spend any time moping in their collective boudoirs. Their recently-released debut album, Prisoner, showcases their formidable live capability; vocalist Hayley Mary skitters between a brash Siouxsie Sioux and The Duke Spirit’s Leila Moss as The Jezabels lay out their ‘we’ll-tour-like-bastards-untilyou-love-us’ manifesto. Songs such as ‘Endless Summer’ and the very Banshee-like title track hint at a mix of influences, including Mary’s Celtic roots, to produce a sound which the band used to jokingly refer to as “gothic pop”. So, slap on your sunblock and make room for an arm full of wristbands – The Jezabels are coming to a field near you. John Freeman
Oxford’s Fixers are five noble young men making expansive, impossible-to-pigeonhole music that has been both developed and refined in the public glare since their formation in 2009. Following the insistent pummel of new single ‘Iron Deer Dream’, their debut long-player We’ll Be The Moon is due in May. “As soon as we finished the album it felt sacred,” admits vocalist Jack Goldstein. “It’s got serious pace, both emotively and literally.” If Jack sounds like a confident man, he has reason to be. Fixers already have a sizeable following, having toured like titans for the last two years. “Perhaps we came to people’s attention a little prematurely; we were still finding our sound,” he reflects. “It felt like we were experimenting in front of a live crowd. There is something great about that but it can throw your audience in perplexing directions. It feels like our album is the result of that process.” The ensuing record is a dizzying fusion of glistening, experimental pop, West Coast surf rock and tinges of psychedelia. If the Fixers sound is a complex beast, Jack has a simple take on one aspect of their immediate future – his definition of success for the band in 2012. “By December, we are in Kokomo drinking White Russians and using novelty oversized cheques as our deck chairs. Anything less is failure.” John Freeman
THE EMERGING ACTS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
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Whatever happened to mystery in pop music? Not so long ago, the closest you could get to a musician’s innermost thoughts was a guarded interview in the NME. Now you have Tyler, The Creator vomiting his every thought into Twitter, bands posting backstage pics on Facebook, and electronic producer Zomby acting like a colossal tool online whenever possible. But thankfully, none of that holds any water with young British musician Adam Bainbridge. There is precious little information online, a holding page for a website, and he declined to respond to our email queries, but he’s left us a sparkling diamond of a debut album, and that’s just fine. World, You Need A Change Of Mind is a strangely strident album title for an artist who appears to be much more interested in sound and style than any grand statements. Maybe it’s his way of saying, ‘look at me – this is how it should be done’. Either way, he’s doing it with panache. The record’s 41 minutes reference some of modern music’s most idiosyncratic talents – Prince, Arthur Russell and Ariel Pink loom especially large – but while Bainbridge doesn’t yet have the individualistic personality to match, he has the talent. The monumental ‘Cyan’ got him noticed and there’s plenty more where that came from, not least ‘That’s Alright’, which positively throbs with the spirit of prime Eighties Prince. Style and substance minus the nonsense – Kindness is a pop star to rally behind. Chris Jones
GRIMES Real Name: Claire Boucher Based: Montreal, Canada For Fans Of: Autre Ne Veut, Gang Gang Dance, TLC Check Out: Visions LP, released by 4AD on March 12 Website: www.grimesmusic.com When Grimes signed to 4AD earlier this year, it seemed like the perfect match in many ways: an artist who’s regularly expressed her admiration for one of the label’s defining acts (Cocteau Twins), but also one with a singular vision that deserves to rub shoulders with the likes of labelmates Gang Gang Dance and St. Vincent. New album Visions is her fourth release, following 2010’s striking long-players Geidi Primes and Halifaxa and last year’s Darkbloom EP (a split release with fellow Canadian D’eon). However, Boucher considers it her first album proper: “I do like the other albums but I think this is the first one where I was doing exactly what I wanted,” she says, “whereas the other ones were kind of like mistakes that turned out well.” They may have captured Grimes at a formative stage, but Geidi Primes and Halifaxa were greeted enthusiastically by a blogosphere that was (over) eager to link her goth-tinged, enticingly weird lo-fi sound with the prevailing witch house ‘scene’. “The
attention was sometimes a little weird,” Boucher admits, “but definitely productive for me.” Darkbloom, and in particular its stunning single ‘Vanessa’, heralded a new clarity and purpose to her sound: with vocals pushed to the forefront, ‘Vanessa’ retained some characteristic chilliness but the strangely haunting hooks were pure, seductive pop pleasure. It’s that increasingly confident, direct approach that provides the blueprint for Visions. “I think it’s just come from playing live,” she ponders, “but I’ve definitely become more accustomed to hearing myself, which makes the whole thing a lot easier. Before I just put so much reverb over everything, to the point where you couldn’t even hear it.” It’s something that distinguishes her from many of her contemporaries – artists like Autre Ne Veut or How To Dress Well – who tend to manipulate, distort or cast shadows over their R&B influences. “I just thought it seemed the natural thing to do. All my favourite artists have a really strong presence in what they do, like Prince or Beyoncé – anyone that I would emulate is like that, with a really strong visual/ vocal presence. I don’t like the idea of hiding behind stuff. I like the idea of using distortion or reverb if it’s tasteful and there’s an aesthetic reason behind it, but
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if it’s just out of being shy or something...” Visions certainly doesn’t skulk in the shadows: it’s an ambitious, dazzling album that ranges from the R&B-infused pop transcendence of ‘Genesis’ and ‘Infinite Love Without Fulfilment’ to the post-Enya soundscape of ‘Symphonia IX’, topped off by a brace of spectral, poignant ballads in ‘Skin’ and ‘Know The Way’. Although Boucher has a charmingly easy-going manner, she’s unquestionably a driven character; and one who controls almost every aspect of Grimes, from recording to artwork to videos (which are distinctive in themselves). “I really want to have a pretty firm handle on how it all goes down. I really like making videos and doing all the visual stuff. As an artist I’ve always been more of a visual artist – the music was sort of a happy accident.” In creating Visions, Boucher employed some extreme, Rivers Cuomo-style working methods: blacking out her windows, taking amphetamines and more or less fasting for an entire month. Would she do it all again? “Yeah, I would definitely do that again. It was really horrible but it’s a really effective way to do something. It’s physically bad but the feeling that you’re making something good is my favourite feeling – so I would sacrifice my health to achieve that.” Daniel Harrison
Future Islands Behind the electronic façade is one of indie-rock’s most captivating songwriters and performers. Ahead of their fifth Dublin show, Samuel T. Herring speaks to AU about giving everything you have – and getting it back with interest Words by Chris Jones When Future Islands arrive at Whelan’s on March 10 it will mark the latest chapter in a love affair between the Baltimore-based trio and their Dublin fans. Although they have never managed to play anywhere else in Ireland, the show will be their fifth in the capital since their Irish debut less than three years ago. “We did two nights with our friend Dan Deacon at the… Andrew’s Lane Theatre? And that was awesome. Really awesome. That was our first time in Dublin and we were having so much fun,” Samuel T. Herring chuckles. So began a beautiful tale, with headline shows upstairs at Whelan’s later in 2009 and at the Workman’s Club in late 2010 cementing the band’s cult status among fans who appreciate what this band is, and what it definitely is not. Although casual listeners might focus on the shimmering synths and mechanical beats and have them pegged as some kind of superficial electro-pop act, at the core of Future Islands beats a very human heart, personified by the emotional vortex that is Samuel T. Herring. And crowds respond. “The last time we were over, Dublin was the last day of a really heavy, heavy tour – physically and mentally. We were happy it was the last show,
through that process, a narrative began to emerge for me. It’s kind of a funny thing, because to me the album starts in the middle of a story and ends at the beginning of a story.” Herring takes us through the album, song-by-song, explaining the love stories and what each track signifies, but you don’t need to know the specifics to understand the record as a narrative arc. It tells a story in sound, from the sorrowful mid-section (and that gorgeous duet with Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, ‘The Great Fire’) to the redemption and celebration of ‘Close To None’ and ‘Balance’, as the protagonist – Herring himself – celebrates new love. In songwriting and performance, Herring invests more of himself than your average indie-rock frontman – to such a degree that you wonder why he is willing to be so open about his emotions. “I try to write about what I know, so if I write a story that isn’t mine or try to tell a story in the third person, it is difficult,” he says. “When I pull from my own life, I can be as honest as possible, because I know the story and I know how I feel. That’s the beauty of it and what makes it a strong, honest statement – putting my life out there and showing people that. It’s vulnerable for people.”
experimentalism evolved into Future Islands. But for Herring the performer, Glenn Danzig, Jim Morrison and Nineties rappers were important influences. “I always thought Jim Morrison was awesome,” he says. “He had a beautiful voice and this crazy energy and power on stage – a commanding presence. But I’d say my biggest influence lyrically, and I still think in stage presence and the passion that I try to perform with, comes from hip-hop. In rock and roll music, it’s about singing a universal song, but in hip-hop it’s me-me-me. The MC speaks to his personal struggles – he tells you his story. It’s not this universal thing. And that’s what I’ve always tried to do with this. Maybe it has something to do with my unorthodox style.” Unorthodox is one word for it – Herring belongs to a lineage of gravel-voiced singers that takes in Tom Waits, Joe Cocker, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Marianne Faithfull and many more, all of whom have proved that a pure intent is more important than a pure tone. As time and touring have gone on, so Herring’s voice has got rougher – thanks to screaming, booze and cigarettes, he says. But although he sounds much older than his 27 years, he isn’t complaining. “As my voice is changed, I’ve learned how to use it,” he explains. “I’ve found
“I put everything out there because that’s what I think is the way it should be done – with the most honesty and truth and power” happy to be in Dublin, and happy to share it with this awesome crowd. We were completely blown away. I remember the second song we did was ‘Inch Of Dust’, and when the middle break in the chorus came in, it seemed like the whole audience was singing along with me. At least the front half of the room was doing that: ‘Oh-oh, oh-oh.’ Oh my god.” That experience must have been foremost in the band’s mind when they booked the current tour, which again finishes in Dublin. This time around, though, Herring and bandmates Gerrit Welmers (keys and programming) and William Cashion (bass) have a new album to promote, their third and most rounded to date – a subtle refinement after the quantum leap they made between their lo-fi debut Wave Like Home in 2007 and 2010’s Thrill Jockey debut, In Evening Air. The overriding theme of On The Water, as usual with this band, is love won and lost, and as Herring explains, the album tells a true-life tale. “When we were trying to structure the album,” he recalls, “a lot of it was trying to establish a flow, so the three of us all sat down individually and we were working on ordering the songs in different ways and seeing what worked. As we were going
The same applies when Herring gets onstage – a quick search of YouTube will yield videos of him charging around the stage in small bars, big stages and record stores, declaiming his lyrics like a young, bug-eyed Tom Waits, acting out and completely inhabiting his tales of heartache. That his bandmates normally stand stock-still and pokerfaced matters not a jot – they hold down the music and Herring adds the vital ingredient. “That’s where I feel comfortable,” he says, swatting aside any notion of feeling vulnerable with an audience’s eyes upon him. “I perform the way I would want to see it performed. I put everything out there because that’s what I think is the way it should be done – with the most honesty and truth and power. For me, it’s the interplay between the physical power and the presence on stage, and that fragility and vulnerability, to show people that you can open up in a big way, and you can be weak in front of people, and still be very strong. I work with those juxtapositions on stage.”
my own voice, and that’s a beautiful thing for me. Within the last couple of years I’ve felt my voice on the page and my real voice coming together. When I was young, I could sing but I didn’t know how to. I didn’t know how to use my voice to reach these emotional peaks or valleys. Whereas now, I don’t have the voice I used to have but I have my own voice and I know how to use it. And that’s my biggest strength.”
A quick chat about Herring’s heroes throws up some interesting answers. Herring and bassist William Cashion bonded at college over their love of 1990s hip-hop, and over a number of years their bedroom
Future Islands play Whelan’s, Dublin on March 10. On The Water is out now on Thrill Jockey. www.future-islands.com
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It’s far from his only strength, though, as his Dublin fans will tell you. And while those of us outside the city can gripe about having to travel to the capital or else miss the band yet again, Herring can take inspiration from the last time he finished a tour here. “I felt so alive,” he says. “I was dead getting up there but after that second song, I was ready. We’re giving as much as we can up there and if the crowd is giving back, we’re going to give even more, and they’re going to give even more. When you have that interplay, it’s perfect.”
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‘Our time, our place’. You might have noticed this slogan popping up everywhere this year. 2012 is all about tourism in Northern Ireland, celebrating what we have on our doorstep, our history, and our future. One thing that we really have going for us, and that we can use to attract people to these shores, is our nightlife and culture. We boast arguably the most exciting music scene in Ireland right now, and on most nights of the week a tourist to Belfast will be able to stumble across a venue where they can hear some great music, have a fantastic time, and enjoy a few drinks. Right up until 1am, or midnight on a Sunday, when you’re forced to stop, and shortly after, forced to go home. If you’re a foreigner here on holiday, you’d probably wonder just what the heck is going on, and question just who decided that the bar or club should shut at this time. We locals are well used to this fact, so we just suck it up and move on, grumbling as we do so. We’re grown-ups, can we not decide for ourselves when we’ve had enough, or when we want to go to bed? If we really want to attract visitors to this country, and to add growth to one of the strongest and most promising aspects of our local produce, we need to bring our licensing laws up to date. The Giant’s Causeway only looks good in the daytime, and some of us like to enjoy the night.
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Over the next few pages, Keith Anderson examines how the recent MTV European Music Awards were saved partly as a result of some well-timed pragmatism, why the city’s ‘superclubs’ have much to answer for, and how a tragedy in the Lagan might affect the chances of any more progress being made in the near future... Words by Keith Anderson. Additional research by Kiran Acharya. Cover illustration by Linda Coulter. Infographic by Michael Murray In late June 2011, an email dropped into a Belfast City Council inbox. It had been fired off in haste by a concerned MTV European Music Awards organiser. “Shutting the bars,” the email warned, “isn’t an option and would create enormous problems for the [sic] MTV.” The Sunday night event was in danger of being derailed due to Northern Ireland’s strict Sunday alcohol licensing. By this point, Belfast City Council had plunged half a million pounds of public money into coaxing the high profile awards ceremony, and the international media circus which would follow, to the city.
event. One publican told AU: “If we wanted to go late, we had to let police know what we were doing, what promos we’d be running, and how many door staff would be on. We couldn’t advertise the fact we were open. It was agreed on a day-by-day basis over the weekend. If one night went without drama or incident, the next night was the same. This worked perfectly from Friday until Sunday night. From what I saw, there were only seven arrests. It was a great partnership between local venues and the authorities. It’s just a shame it was something agreed under the table, and not above.”
Plans had been in the pipeline for over two years, and Belfast intended to go all-out for such a star attraction. In the run up to the Northern Ireland Tourism Board 2012 ‘Our Time, Our Place’ campaign, getting Belfast linked with an international brand like MTV was an opportunity they couldn’t turn down. Several options were thrown about. Media reports of the Viacom-owned broadcaster decamping to Copenhagen if a solution couldn’t be found were wide of the mark, but MTV did at one point look at holding a private after-party in the Harland & Wolff Paint Hall. This would have got past the strict Sunday laws which stop alcohol purchases in licensed premises at midnight on the dot. But the idea jarred with the promise of massive benefits and investment to local businesses. The trickle-down effect from the awards into the local economy was a cornerstone of Belfast City Council’s plans.
A council spokeswoman said: “We carried out 16 ‘during performance’ inspections at licensed premises on the Friday and Saturday night of the MTV weekend. Most of the premises visited were taking part in Belfast Music Week. Friday and Saturday nights are the normal nights for the service to carry out these inspections.” Belfast City Council explained that they will visit a venue if they get a complaint about over-crowding or public safety fears, though stated that no complaints were made over the MTV weekend that would warrant inspections. Last year, Rain nightclub had their licence revoked after the council found more than 300 extra bodies in the Tomb Street venue. Though due to their liquor licence not being revoked they were left in a strange limbo where they could serve alcohol, but not have DJs or any performances until the suspension was lifted.
“We just want the alcohol licence harmonised with the entertainment licence. A small extension to 2am with a longer drinking up period to 3am would make a massive difference.” Michael Stewart, The Hudson Bar Emergency legislation was looked at as well. Pubs of Ulster, which represents the trade, lobbied the council and Department of Social Development to pass an ‘Exceptional Hours’ amendment to current legislation. Despite council support for licence change, it was rejected due to time constraints on pushing it through the Northern Ireland Assembly. By early July, the November deadline was fast approaching. MTV were getting nervous. By late October these concerns suddenly faded, and on the night of the awards numerous pubs and clubs in Belfast kept their doors open late into the night with no consequences. There were no inspections by Belfast City Council for breaches of entertainment licences, nor by the PSNI for breaches of the liquor licensing law. Though council inspectors were on the ground, monitoring the Odyssey, the gig at City Hall and the after-parties at the Europa and Merchant hotels (residents at hotels are not covered by Sunday night licences restrictions), there was not one visit to a pub or bar in the city centre that night. Though no material evidence has been produced, AU magazine has spoken to three separate sources within the entertainments industry who claim a verbal agreement between organisers and public authorities including the PSNI was reached in the run up to the
The PSNI did not deny that meetings took place, referring to a statement issued at the time: “Laws regarding licensing hours have not been altered for this weekend and licensed venues operating outside of permitted hours could face prosecution.” Subverting local licensing laws is nothing new to Northern Irish venues. As it stands, late licences mean clubs can serve alcohol until 1am, with a ‘drinking up period’ until 1.30am. At 1.30am, a venue can keep the music going, but all alcoholic beverages must be removed from tables, with glasses cleaned and bottles binned. The entertainment licence, which is issued by the council, allows the likes of DJs to keep playing until 3am – but between 1.30am and 3am no alcohol should be consumed, let alone sold. According to one Cathedral Quarter barman, two of the tricks of the trade are as follows. 1) Some clubs stop selling pints or bottles of anything at 1am and turn to spirits and mixers. Quicker to serve, quicker to drink and easier to clear from tables if police decide to inspect the venue. 2) In several instances, clubs have been known to tamper with the time stamp on receipts, so a drink sold at 2am suddenly becomes a drink sold at 11pm when official audits of the books are carried out.
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ALCOHOL : THE FACTS Researched by Kiran Acharya Northern Ireland has some of the strictest alcohol laws in the world, with even nightclubs forced to stop serving alcohol at 1am, even if the entertainment continues for another two hours. But opening hours are just part of the story. Here, we look at some facts and figures surrounding alcohol consumption – and its consequences.
SENSIBLE UNITS PER WEEK
as recommended by uk government
21
14
£900M
the annual social cost of alcohol misuse in northern ireland, according to the department of health, social services and public safety
ALCOHOL-RELATED HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS IN NORTHERN IRELAND 12,291 alcohol-related hospital admissions in 2010/2011 9,375 alcohol-related hospital admissions in 2001/2002
31.1
%
ALCOHOL-RELATED DEATHS IN NORTHERN IRELAND
increase in the last decade
49.5 increase in the last decade
190 in 2000
284 in 2010
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%
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Snow Patrol play Belfast City Hall as part of the MTV European Music Awards
Michael Stewart of the recently opened Hudson Bar on Gresham Street believes this sort of practice is in the minority, and a few tweaks to current legislation would help the industry greatly and in turn, make sure an ‘MTV situation’ wouldn’t happen in the future. Changes similar to the Licensing Act 2003, which created the potential for ‘24-hour drinking’ in England and Wales, aren’t on the agenda, but a measure of relaxation is. “Instead of ridiculous solutions, the ideal one is quite simple. We just want the alcohol licence harmonised with the entertainment licence. A small extension to 2am with a longer drinking-up period to 3am would make a massive difference.” Publicans argue that by extending the drinkingup period, it would help avoid the ‘Odyssey problem’ where you can find three so-called superclubs emptying out on to the street in a short period of time. This puts strain on local transport services, including taxis, and also on the police from a public safety point of view. Having a longer drinking-up period would allow this outflow to happen over an extended period of time. Colin Neill of Pubs of Ulster believes this is the key to avoiding post-club trouble. Another point to consider, Colin argues, is the actual logistics involved in clearing all alcoholic beverages from a club or pub in 30 minutes. He explained: “That’s impossible for us in large venues. It was grand when the law was created back in the Nineties when the majority of venues could hold less than 100 people. Now we have venues of 300, 500, even 1500 people. You cannot physically work to this law.”
Changes to the legislation seemed to be on track, with positive noises coming from local councils and the DSD. Self-regulation seemed like the way forward, and a consultation had been completed which recommended a code of conduct for Northern Irish licence holders, in exchange for longer opening hours. Then something happened which blew this quite literally out of the water. Joby Murphy and his girlfriend Karen McKeever were at the sold-out Snow Patrol concert at the Odyssey Arena before heading to the complex’s Beach Club nightclub for £1 vodka shots. Karen described how, at the end of the night, Joby left the club but didn’t want to go home. “He just wanted to stay out and party,” Karen told the BBC’s Stephen Nolan. He refused to get into a waiting taxi. With the meter running, Joby’s girlfriend left him to make his own way home. It’s still unclear how the following sequence of events actually played out, but the next time Joby was seen was by a night watchman at the Lagan weir lookout. The 20-year-old had climbed on to the handrail. Below him was a significant drop into the river. Once he hit the water, the weir watchman kept visual contact with Jody as he struggled across to a group of tour boats, moored nearby. He attempted to pull himself from the icy water. At this point the watchman was on the bridge, but had to run a significant distance back to the riverside for a lifesaver. By the time he returned, Joby had disappeared into the darkness of the Lagan.
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The watchmen heard a noise. It was Joby’s phone, lying on the ground. Karen was checking to see if he had made it home safely. As the search for Joby’s body continued, the DSD Minister Nelson McCausland called an emergency meeting. McCausland met with the drowned teenager’s family, and then representatives from Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety; Belfast City Council; Translink; the Department of Culture Arts and Leisure; the Department of Justice; PSNI; the Fire And Rescue Service; the Ambulance Service and Pubs of Ulster. Though it is not clear what was specifically talked about, AU has been told that discussion quickly turned to cut-price drinks promos and the influence of superclubs, like those at the Odyssey Pavilion. A representative from the NI ambulance service claimed that call-outs to incidents were higher on nights when drink promotions were on. Minutes from the meeting were requested, but a DSD official stated they were not available. In a statement released to the press, Nelson McCausland explained, “I will bring forward regulations later this year banning certain promotions that encourage irresponsible drinking. My officials are also working with the drinks trade to develop a code of practice on promotions. There are clear health, as well as public safety issues to be addressed and I am confident our community will support positive action.” The DSD minister declined an interview with AU Magazine.
Glance AT A
Colin Neill believes this incident risks the chance of having a sensible debate on alcohol licensing reform. “It was a tragic accident. Absolutely tragic. No excuse. But from an industry point of view, we’ve already been working with the government on irresponsible promotions. As a responsible industry we sell a controlled substance. We don’t deal in bread and milk. So it has to be sold responsibly. We have actually led the campaign to get responsible promotions on to the agenda. There are a lot of issues about responsible drinking. About 70% of all alcohol is consumed at home. From a pub’s point of view, alcohol is almost a secondary business now. People come to the pub for food, for entertainment. We’ve seen an increase in sports coverage. Nobody goes to a pub for a drink. They go for something else.” Historically pubs used to sell all the alcohol, and really only that. Now with the prevalence of supermarkets with off-licences, Colin argues that alcohol is sold like any other commodity. “The supermarkets sell it below cost to attract people in. If you look at the price of a bottle of vodka
Pubs of Ulster are keen to push forward with plans for a code of conduct. This would set standards in relation to irresponsible drinks promos, opening hours, ‘happy hours’ and other promotions, along with club safety. Having this tied to the renewal of alcohol licences by the courts and of entertainment licences by the councils would mean stronger regulation. Colin explains, “They banned ‘Happy Hours’ in Dublin, but then the venues just went for ‘Happy Weeks’. They just dropped their prices for a week at a time to get round the law. This is why we want a code of conduct which is closely linked to licence reviews. If the courts can see consistent breaches of the code of conduct, they can revoke an owner’s licence. It’s about making sure publicans are fit and proper. We’ve worked with the Department of Social Development on this and a draft code of conduct has been published. We need to turn this in to legislation and get it through the Northern Ireland Assembly. We want it linked to the council applications for entertainments licences.
“There are just eight venues in Belfast which we would class as irresponsible and they’re damaging the entire industry” Colin Neill, Pubs of Ulster in a supermarket, there’s absolutely no profit margin. We can’t compete with that.” But cut-price beer and spirits are not just confined to the shop aisles. In some Belfast clubs, drinks promos are as low as £1 per measure. The Box at the Odyssey has offered shots of vodka at 90p and in one club a bottle of spirits and four cans of Red Bull can be bought for £40. This point was put to Colin. “We have to recognise that we have a different culture than continental Europe though, and I fully accept this. We need legislation to reflect Northern Ireland.” But Colin argued a different kind of drinking culture has emerged in recent years, meaning customers spend less time in venues, forcing bar managers to compensate. “You find people will opt to stay at home for ‘pre-drinks’ and then turn up at a venue after 11,” he says. “That doesn’t excuse what we see as irresponsible promotions in our trade. Drinks at ‘pocket money prices’ is not what we want. We have a duty of care to the customer. It’s actually illegal to sell alcohol to someone who is drunk.”
“But it’s very unfortunate to talk about any deregulation after what happened. It was a tragic event, but if you look at it; there are some 1500 pubs in the province and just eight venues in Belfast which we would class as irresponsible and they’re damaging the entire industry. We’re one of the highest grossing tourism sectors in Northern Ireland and we need to protect what we have.” It’s a sentiment shared by the Hudson’s Michael Stewart. “The days of the superclub are numbered. People want more than just a club experience. These drinks promos are a price war and they appeal to the lowest common denominator. Punters want an all-round experience – the food, the drink, the sociability. We’re working towards that.” Joby Murphy’s body was recovered from the Lagan in late February. His family is now campaigning for stricter regulation on drinks promotions in Northern Ireland. Information sources: Institute for Criminal Policy Research Department For Culture, Media & Sport Department of Health, Social Services & Public Safety, Northern Ireland
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Late 1970s New York wasn’t just about Blondie, the Ramones, Talking Heads and the rest – it was also a hotbed of independent, DIY filmmaking. A new featurelength documentary, Blank City, documents the febrile ‘no wave’ cinema scene and uncovers a story long untold. Words by Joe Nawaz At the very end of Blank City, the film director Jim Jarmusch says, “forget about the past, and bring in the future.” He’s symbolically putting a torch to the past 90 minutes of colourful reminiscence and scintillating footage from the countercultural front line that was late Seventies/early Eighties NYC. In doing so, he’s also calling out the irony of creating a retrospective about the doggedly forward-looking, scorched earth ‘no wave’ movement of art, music and filmmaking that poked, prodded and challenged the conventions of art, society and life in general. Innovative hustlers and visionary misfits pepper and season this evocative documentary by Celine Danhier. Blank City focuses on the filmmakers, the originators of no wave cinema and the “cinema of transgression”, which flourished in the desolate, decaying dystopia that was New York’s Lower East Side and was inextricably entwined with the punk music scene, the CBGBs set, disco and the birth
and the film makers who brought the punk spirit to cinema. Lizzie Borden, Michael Oblowitz, John Lurie, Vivienne Dick, Scott B and Beth B, Fab 5 Freddy, James Nares were making cinema with humour, heart and head-fucking honesty, all possibly indebted to an original batch of stolen Super 8 cameras with sound. In Blank City, Michael Oblowitz describes the earliest stabs at no wave film making brilliantly. “We were throwing everything out the window,” he says. “Shooting a movie in 16mm with scratches everywhere with musicians that nobody had ever heard of, kicking and dragging themselves onto the stage of NYC and announcing we’re here. We’ve arrived.” Filmic influences like Cassavetes, Godard, Antonioni, Warhol and Passolini were sublimated and subverted and pioneering methods such as filming without lights and using handheld cameras were borne out of sheer necessity rather than high falutin’ concept.
Dahnier tells AU. “Over the years, I became familiar with the music scene, but I wasn’t really aware of the underground movies made in New York during that period, except perhaps Jim Jarmusch’s early films. When I started to see some of these movies. I felt the films captured the time so well – the music, the spirit and the attitude, all of which had such a brutal sincerity that I loved, and inspired me to do Blank City. I wanted to find out more and see if I could track down some of these filmmakers.” Danhier reveals that it was surprisingly easy to get people such as Steve Buscemi to talk freely about no wave and the events of a lifetime ago. “We were really lucky, because almost everybody said yes, and when they said no we found some ways to convince them,” she says. “I guess we didn’t really take ‘no’ as an answer! I was particularly pleased to interview Jim Jarmusch not long after we first began shooting. His Stranger Than Paradise movie
“The films captured the time so well – the music, the spirit and the attitude, all of which had such a brutal sincerity” Celine Danhier of hip-hop. Jarmusch was there, along with Steve Buscemi, Debbie Harry, John Waters, Lydia Lunch and a cast of thousands of creatively restless kids. Blank City captures a genuine thrilling confluence of time and place where musicians made films and filmmakers were picking up guitars and everybody partied and created amidst the splendid decay of a neglected city. The perfect cultural storm was aided and abetted by social corrosion and civic neglect. These acted as a catalyst for many young people who flocked to New York in the mid-Seventies. The debt-ridden city had been abandoned by Lyndon B Johnson and as the legendary James Chance gleefully puts it: “Straights were fleeing. The only people that wanted to come were freaks and crazy people. We lived like itinerant kings.” He chuckles to himself, looking startlingly like a slightly more frayed version of his youthful self. Danhier, through extensive access to all the pivotal players (Steve Buscemi to Debbie Harry, Jarmusch to Lydia Lunch and Nick Zedd to Amos Poe) has mapped out a chronological rise and fall (and subsequent mainstream co-option) of no wave
Debbie Harry gushes, “It felt like our lives were movies. It was very cinematic,” while a typically playful John Waters reveals, “You were mugged at night and it was anarchy by day. It was the height of New York debauchery.” “Nothing existed before 1976,” avers a ridiculously youthful-looking Thurston Moore. And so on and so, deliciously, forth. It was with such incredible archive material and personal testimony that Danhier, a former Sorbonne law graduate, has forensically pieced together a film that’s as much a love letter as it is historical document. She’s another creative spirit that’s fallen for the romance of the filth and the fury of this most febrile of cultural revolutions. Accordingly, she’s liberally sprinkled her soundtrack with the loud, dissonant music of the time. Television, Richard Hell, James Chance and the Contortions, DNA, Liquid Liquid and Beirut Slump capture the speedfuelled electricity of young New York of the Carter/ Reagan crossover. “I’ve always been very fascinated and drawn to the city of New York – the energy and the atmosphere,”
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is what put downtown New York filmmaking on the map for me and it’s still one of my favourite films. It’s such a stripped-down and simple story, totally character driven and perfectly cast with his friends, the beloved underdogs who populated downtown NYC.” In fact, there’s a great bit in Blank City were Jarmusch reveals that throughout the filming of his mainstream breakthrough Permanent Vacation, the soon-to-be-a-millionaire graffiti icon Jean-Michel Basquiat was crashing on his floor, and they had to keep pushing the sleeping artist out of sight of the camera while they were filming. There’s another brilliantly candid and telling scene where a disarmingly frank John Lurie says he still hates Basquiat to this day for making the art about the money. That age-old tension is surprisingly mainly absent from the subjects of Blank City – most, if not all, appear to have preserved a degree of the integrity that fired them in the first place. A Julie Burchill-esque Lydia Lunch is sneeringly loath to give ‘no wave’ a name and Jarmusch balks at the idea of making film purely for money. Danhier enthusiastically agrees: “What’s so inspiring about
NICK ZEDD
SCOTT B AND BETH B
PATTI ASTOR
people like Jim is that he continues to make the films he wants to make without getting sucked into the Hollywood vortex, or succumbing to any kind of commercialism that doesn’t ring true to his artistic voice.”
CELINE DANHIER
The likes of Jarmusch and even John Waters may be the most famous of the no wave auteurs, but characters such as James Nares, Nick Zedd and Michael Oblowitz have staked their own place in cinema’s pantheon. The titles of Zedd’s polemical gems alone are worth the price of admission – Bogus Man, War Is Menstrual Envy! and Geek Maggot Bingo just cry out for a triple bill retrospective. “The filmmakers had no real creative or money restrictions,” explains Dahnier. “Some films were shot in black and white, some in colour, some long, some short, narrative or documentary or experimental. Their brutal approach could be seen as naïve and very romantic to some, but the way they made the films I find to just be totally inspiring. And some of the great American independent filmmakers today came from that era, such as Jim Jarmusch or Steve Buscemi or Kathryn Bigelow. So I think it was really the attitude, the feeling of freedom to express yourself in a raw and pure way, that and the desire to break from tradition, from authority, from what came before.” As the Seventies became the Eighties, priorities, conditions and politics changed. Artists didn’t live so freely within the haven of Avenue B – Bowery. Heroin, AIDS and Reaganism took malignant hold and changed the way the filmmakers saw the world and their part in it. As a result, the final throes of no wave become more about the political than the
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personal vision and, as Blank City demonstrates, that critical wave of cinema was met with evictions and systematic ‘cleansing’ of the downtown areas of NYC. Over 30 years on, the legacy of no wave music, art and film is pretty clear and does indeed offer a little credible gloss to many commercial enterprises. It’s in the DNA of ‘edgy’ popular music and the somewhat dubious emergence of the standard American indie film, but it also shares the same life-force as the democratising evolution of digital filmmaking. Dahnier says, “There’s a real feel of no wave in digital filmmaking today both for documentary and narrative. It creates a similar freedom in filmmaking that I believe sync sound Super 8 did in the late Seventies.” The approach, she says, is where the kinship ends. “In terms of the spirit and content, I really don’t think there is anything that similar. A lot of the small digital films today are so personal and specific to the filmmakers and I think seem more like a diary than anything else. But I think the power of the no wave films has the ability to pop up anywhere these days. I think that is one of the legacies that no wave leaves us today. Don’t be afraid to push the boundaries, to question, to open your mind to creating what you want to make and finding the way to do it, no matter what.” As Lydia Lunch doesn’t quite say in Blank City: The ugly, brutal truth is all about us. Now blag a camera and go film it. Blank City is showing at the Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast on March 6, 7 and 8. www.blankcityfilm.com
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A to Z of Gigs If you are reading this magazine, chances are you’re a fan of live music. Isn’t it great, though? From stumbling upon a brilliant unknown band in a sweaty little hovel the size of your bathroom, to catching all the hot chart acts of the day in a hangar-sized arena covered with the logos of corporate sponsors, gigs are, frankly, awesome. Even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good. Yes, we know that it’s not like AU to get all gushy and positive about, well, anything in life really. But live music is the exception – we love it without reservation. Even if we are almost completely deaf as a result. Totally worth it. Words by Neill Dougan Illustration by Mark Reihill
A
F
is for Audience Participation
is for First Gig Ever
There are two types of audience participation at concerts. The first is the orchestrated, cheesy, ‘Hey, everyone clap your hands!’ type of thing. The second is basically when punters sporadically interrupt proceedings with heckling and random drunken exhortations. Needless to say, the latter is far more entertaining.
Everyone remembers their first gig. Your correspondent’s first live music experience was Neil Young and Pearl Jam in Slane Castle, 1992. Pretty cool, eh? And rendered only slightly less cool by the fact that we were there with our parents and spent most of the concert eating chicken legs from the lunch hamper that had been carefully prepared by our mother. Rock ‘n’ roll!
B
is for Black Market Most regular gig-goers will, at one time or another, have been forced to do business with a ‘tout’ or ‘scalper’. While in theory it’s possible to haggle with these gentlemen, in practice they are so dog-rough that it’s advisable to just cough up and be done with it. Especially that one-legged guy who hangs around outside the Olympia in Dublin. Scary fucker.
c
is for Charity Gigs Huge benefit concerts such as Live Aid, Live Earth and Live 8 are good examples of pop stars behaving in a completely selfless manner to raise awareness and cash for good causes. And, if the artists happen to experience a massive spike in record sales afterwards, well, that’s just a happy coincidence.
D
is for Dancing Depending on the type of concert you’re at, different forms of dancing are acceptable. At a metal gig, for example, you might find yourself moshing or headbanging. At a dance gig you might see people waving their arms about in time to the music, possibly while shirtless and holding glow sticks, all the while gurning maniacally. These pale in comparison to the indie guitar gig, where punters tend to stand quietly stroking their chins in quiet appreciation. Heady stuff indeed.
E
is for Earplugs Attending live music events is hazardous to your hearing. Tinnitus (nasty) or just plain deafness (less likely, but more nasty) are the probable consequences of prolonged exposure to amplified music without hearing protection. So it’s earplugs now or a hearing aid later. Or, if you prefer, one of those massive ear trumpet things. Proper old school, those.
G
is Guerilla Gigs Bypassing normal venues and the usual modes of promotion, so-called guerrilla gigs are chaotic affairs announced at short notice, with directions to the venue (usually a grotty drug den somewhere) issued online. Notable exponents were shambolic indie chancers The Others, who even performed impromptu shows on the London Underground. Which must have been a living hell for any number of innocent commuters.
H
is for Hard Work Back in the day, being in a successful band brought a certain degree of material comfort. Not any longer. What with no-one actually buying CDs any more (thanks, internet!), most bands are forced to eke out a meagre existence, touring incessantly to make ends meet. So next time you witness a somewhat lacklustre performance, spare a thought for the artists, who’ve probably been living in a clappedout van for weeks on end and are likely suffering from life-threatening levels of sleep deprivation. Give them until the third song before you start bottling them, at least.
I
see, so the only possible manner of movement is to propel oneself vertically into the air. That’s simple science, that is.
K
is for Ker-chiing! If you’re one of the elite few massive moneyspinning bands still in operation, live shows can be one hell of a profitable business. U2’s ‘360’ tour raked in a scarcely credible $700 million, while the Rolling Stones’ ‘Bigger Bang’ jaunt landed them $558 million. Surely even Keith Richards couldn’t spend all that on drugs. Well, he could probably give it a go.
L
is for Lip-syncing Miming (and its modern-day cousin, auto-tune) is commonplace at a certain category of pop concert – Britney Spears, Girls Aloud, you know the type of thing. Of course no-one in the audience at these events actually cares about this, because they are mostly eight-year-old girls. Incidentally if you’re at one of these gigs and you’re not an eight-year-old girl, or the parent of an eight-year-old girl, it’s time to take a long hard look at yourself.
M
is for Merchandise Perusing the merch stall is all part of the gig-going experience. Here you’ll find everything from the bog-standard (t-shirts, CDs) to the downright strange (Franz Ferdinand Y-fronts; Supergrass teatowels; Manics party poppers). As a general rule, it’s best to avoid buying any merchandise that seems hilarious when you are drunk. You’ll just feel silly in the morning.
N
is for Internet Gigs
is for New Stuff
The wonder of modern technology allows us to catch gigs without even stepping outside our front door, viewing them online from the comfort of our homes. Great! All that’s missing is the atmosphere, sense of occasion, fun or any point to the whole enterprise whatsoever.
Why must bands insist on inflicting their new, ‘written-on-the-tour-bus’ guff upon paying audiences? Just play the friggin’ hits, goddammit! Play them now or we tear this place apart!
J
is for Jumping You know a gig is getting exciting when the people in the first few rows start leaping up and down. It’s usually quite congested in those front rows, you
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O
is for One More Tune “One more tune! One more tune!” is the customary chant of an Irish audience demanding an encore, awnd is traditionally accompanied by clapping of hands and stamping of feet. Woe betide the band that ignores this request and refuses to come back on, as the crowd
Q
X
S is likely to... er... gradually calm down and start to drift off home. Yep, we’re harsh taskmasters alright.
P
As stage chat goes, it certainly beats “How you doing out there?” for originality, if not good taste.
T
is for Positions
is for Talking
Here’s how a band lines up on stage. Guitarist on the right; singer in the middle; second (optional) guitarist on the left; bass player hovering in the rear; drummer at the very back. If you see any show where this arrangement is not followed to the letter, you know you are witnessing something dangerously avant-garde.
There’s only one thing more annoying than people who will happily pay to see a gig and then proceed to chat to their mates the whole way through it, and that’s the sanctimonious die-hard fans who ‘shush’ them crossly. The former should go to the pub if they want a conversation. The latter should just go away. Anywhere at all will do.
Q
U
is for Quickfire
is for Underage Gigs
Most gigs tend to last maybe 45 to 90 minutes, but occasionally they tend to be slightly more, uhm, truncated. Much-hyped NYC rapper Azealia Banks, for example, heroically managed a full 25 minutes in Dublin’s Whelan’s recently. What a trouper.
Many bands with youthful fan bases put on shows specifically for minors. Most of these acts are dodgy emo groups, for the very simple reason that every single person under the age of 18, without exception, has terrible taste in music. No, don’t argue. You’ll realise in a few years.
R
is for Rip-Off It’s now acknowledged that basically everyone in the Republic of Ireland is skint. Yet gigs in the south are still about 25% more expensive than in the UK. Even given AU’s lamentable grasp of economic theory there seems to be something not quite right about that.
S
is for Stage Banter At a reformed Happy Mondays gig once attended by your correspondent, Shaun Ryder told the following joke from the stage: “What’s the difference between acne and a paedophile? Acne doesn’t come on your face till you’re 16.”
V
is for Venues Why, we hear you ask, would anyone prefer a dank, dingy, tiny toilet venue where bands no-one has ever heard make their doomed bids for attention, over pristine enormodomes where yer Snow Patrols and Coldplays strut their stuff and the Budweiser flows like nectar into branded plastic pint glasses? Oh, yes, that’s right: because those massive stadium shows are always, always terrible.
W
is for Worst Gig Ever AU’s least enjoyable gig experience was upstairs in Whelan’s when Phil Elvrum of The Microphones/
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Mount Eerie played a set of abruptly short songs that he had either made up immediately before coming on stage, or was making up on the spot, literally as he sang. Well, either that, or any of the times we’ve seen Bob Dylan.
X
is for X-Rated Performing live can be quite the adrenaline rush and sometimes people get carried away. Doors frontman Jim Morrison was famously charged with indecent exposure after getting the old ‘lad’ out on stage in Miami. Since then the likes of Marilyn Manson (charged with ‘sexual misconduct’ against a bouncer at a gig) and Mike Patton (pissed in his shoe, then drank it) have also disgraced themselves on stage. We’re sure they’re nice boys really.
Y
is for Yeeeooooooo! Traditional audience response when some aspect of a live musical performance – a successful rendition of a popular tune, perhaps, or a well-aimed quip from the stage – meets with general approval. Other acceptable responses include whooping or whistling at ear-splitting volume. Take your pick.
Z
is for Zippo Back in the pre-smoking ban days, a lighter was a handy thing to have at a gig, not only to light cigarettes with but also to wave about to create an evocative mini-light show when the band played an emotive ballad. Nowadays people sometimes wave their mobile phones around. Bit naff by comparison, isn’t it?
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He could play guitar with the best of them, but there’s still a sense that he never got his due. His peers worshipped the ground he walked on, but he always had to exist in their shadow. In the 17 years since his death, Rory Gallagher legacy has enjoyed periodic bursts of interest, but to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his musical career, a new series of reissues brings his music back to life, every incendiary note and lyric infused with a burning clarity. AU looks back at the life of Rory Gallagher and the musicians he has inspired through his incredible music. Words by Steven Rainey Illustration by Mark Reihill
Times change, and one man’s rebellion is another man’s status quo. The explosion of punk rock in the late Seventies attempted to re-write the musical rulebook, taking one look at musical history before throwing it on the fire. Virtuosity was out. Paying your dues was out. The blues was a no-no. Within a year, the musical landscape of the UK had undergone a massive seismic change, and things have never been the same since. ‘Rock’ became ‘classic rock’, a thing of the past, with as much relevance to the present day as a stegosaurus. Whole careers became nostalgia acts overnight, never to really recover. But back in the early Sixties, the emergence of British blues music was a dangerous thing, a grubby, pulsating beast, full of energy and hormones, taking a fresh look at sex and pain, and scaring the establishment silly whilst doing so. Out of the myriad acts that formed during the British blues boom, Cork’s Taste were an anomaly – a three-piece band from Ireland, attempting to show that Irish people could play the blues too. Many were sceptical of them, the differing attitudes of the time causing many to look at them and wonder what these bumpkins could know of Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker. The band might have gone unnoticed, save for the incredible talent of their guitarist and singer, Rory Gallagher.
“He came to the gig in Guildford, and offered to help me carry in the gear backstage. I just thought he was a guy looking for a free ticket, because the gig was sold out! I was chatting to him backstage after, and he was asking for a beer. I said, ‘Are you crazy? With this management, they wouldn’t even put in a sandwich!’. He was appalled, and asked me why the band had split. For some reason, I opened up to him, thinking he was just some guy looking for a free ticket. He said, ‘Why doesn’t your brother have a word with me?’. And I said, ‘Why would he want to talk to you?’. He goes, ‘I’m Peter Grant, I manage a band called Led Zeppelin’. When Peter got involved, they were so terrified and shocked by him, because he had such a reputation, and they gave him this six album deal with the rights reverting back to him.” With Grant’s involvement, Gallagher’s contract was renegotiated, and he was given a six-album deal that allowed him to make the music he wanted to make, the way he wanted to make it. It is this incredible six-album run that has been re-issued, and is arguably the reason we’re still talking about Rory Gallagher today. Despite being only 23, the young man from Cork was about to leave his mark on the music world. As Donal says, his 1971 self-titled debut was an emancipation from the chains that had bound him. “He always knew what
“Whenever the guitar’s cranked up and he’s ripping it up, there’s nothing better” Cormac Neeson, The Answer Gallagher’s stratospheric guitar playing soon silenced the doubters, with the band quickly making a mark on the music scene of the late Sixties, poised to make the leap to the big-time. Sadly it was not to be, and the band split up after performing at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970.
songs he wanted, and what the sound should be. The first album found him in the studio with engineer Eddy Offord, and the shackles were off. On the first album, you’re hearing him being able to broaden out. Rory was just wallowing in the freedom of musically being able to do what he wanted.”
“The demise of Taste was a huge disappointment for Rory,” says Donal Gallagher, Rory’s brother and tour manager. “The way that the band imploded led to huge management rows, and the two other musicians took the side of the manager against Rory. He felt very isolated, and you didn’t have music business lawyers you could discuss this with. It was a time when you were only as good as your next record, and it was easy to be rubbed out by the business.”
Firmly established as one of the most exciting of a new breed of guitarists, Gallagher’s debut found him opening up his musical palette from the blues-based music he’d been playing in Taste. Whilst he would never truly leave the blues behind, his first album showed him as a songwriter capable of going in whatever direction he wanted to.
A chance meeting with one of the music industry’s most imposing characters provided a vital catalyst to the musician’s career, setting the stage for some of the most incredible music of the Seventies. Contractually obliged to complete one final promotional tour, Donal found himself talking to a strange man backstage before the gig.
“Obviously, first and foremost, it’s the blues guitar that I connect with, because I’m a massive blues fan,” says Cormac Neeson, frontman with Northern Irish rock band The Answer. Over the course of three albums, the band have established a global following that regularly sees them being called the ‘saviours of rock and roll’. But the spectre of Rory Gallagher’s music haunts every note they play, something Neeson isn’t shy to admit to.
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Blues Brother
The genius and continuing legacy of Rory Gallagher 45 AU81
The 1970s saw sectarian violence in Northern Ireland reach new heights, and the Miami Showband massacre had the knock-on effect of causing the vast majority of touring musical acts to give the north a wide berth. The days when the likes of the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Pink Floyd would come to Northern Ireland appeared to be over. As with many things, Rory Gallagher ploughed his own furrow, repeatedly returning to the country, finding a hungry audience of both Protestants and Catholics. Irish Tour ’74 found him performing in the Ulster Hall on New Year’s Day in the aftermath of 10 explosions across the city. Amidst this tense atmosphere, Gallagher delighted the faithful, showcasing a dazzling display of all he was capable of to an appreciative crowd. “He knew how tough cracking London was going to be,” explains Donal Gallagher. “Belfast had a very lively R&B scene, and Rory knew that if he could get established there, there’d be enough work for him to make his reputation there.” Belfast became a home from home for the guitarist, somewhere that he would repeatedly return to, and his concerts became a beacon of hope, reminding people that there was more to life than sectarian strife. As Donal says, “To him, it was family. Rory was very grateful to Belfast.”
“Whenever the guitar’s cranked up like that and he’s ripping it up, there’s nothing better,” he says. “Even more so than the studio albums, the live material is what really blows me away. His creativity up there and the passion and the emotion comes through on every note that he plays, but he was also a great man for crossing through the genres. Blues, jazz, rock, folk… the list goes on and on. “He was just such an accomplished guitar player, and he didn’t rest on his laurels. And he deserves respect for that. In his day, he probably could have walked into any of those supergroups and blown their players off the stage, and I know he had numerous offers. But he stuck to his guns, because he felt he had something to say and he didn’t want to be restricted by other musicians telling him what to do. That really appeals to me as well.” Deuce (also 1971), Blueprint and Tattoo (both 1973) showcased the meteoric development of Gallagher as a musician and songwriter. In many ways, the most striking thing about these records is the quick succession in which they were recorded and released, a testament to Gallagher’s mastery of his craft, even at this stage, but that is to ignore the unforgettable music held within. From the folk troubadour of ‘Don’t Know Where I’m Going’, to the Celtic mystery of ‘Walk On Hot Coals’ and the magisterial rock of ‘A Million Miles Away’, these albums portray Gallagher as a master of all trades, seemingly incapable of merely dabbling with any musical genre, instead leaving his own indelible stamp upon them.
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“At one point I was in fear that he’d given up the guitar as he’d switched to the alto sax!” laughs Donal Gallagher. “He was so into John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, and his jazz collection was growing every day. At the same time Bert Jansch and Pentangle and Davy Graham albums would make him think that he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to be a folk musician! And then his grounding in the blues, as well as the showbands… It’s hard to describe what Rory’s music was, as it had so many elements.” As well as his four studio albums, Gallagher released two live albums during this fertile period, albums which would cement his reputation internationally as perhaps the best guitar player in the world. If the studio albums represented the ‘writer’ Rory Gallagher, the live albums captured a creative genius, capable of reinventing his own material in seemingly endless permutations, night after night. For Cormac Neeson, these albums are a vital part of rock’s DNA, a veritable textbook on what is expected of you when you step up onto a stage. “As a fan, and as a professional musician as well, he’s the perfect role model. He’s doing something that nobody else in the world could do as well as him. He probably couldn’t do anything else as well as play guitar and get up on the stage, and it’s just a perfect fit for the man. When he gets up there, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world, and that’s exactly how every other musician should conduct themselves in my opinion.
“ Seeing him was like having the bends, it felt like there were bubbles in your blood” Wilbur McDonald, Rory fan
“This is why he’s such an influence on the way The Answer conduct themselves. It shouldn’t be taken for granted, and the people that are there to see you play, they’re the reason that you’re up there, you owe them everything. And when you see Rory on stage, it’s an unbridled joy and appreciation for being given that gift and being put up on the stage.” One of the fans that saw him up on the stage in his prime is Wilbur McDonald, and the impact of seeing Gallagher in full flight hasn’t left him after all these years. “I started out when Taste were still on the go,” he begins, “Places like Cookstown, Ballymena – you couldn’t contain yourself, and you’d just go wherever you could go. You didn’t get tickets, you just found some way of getting there, and hoped for the best. You’d just slum it or walk it! Seeing him was like having the bends, it felt like there were bubbles in your blood. These songs were the foundation for him to go on an excursion into wherever his head was at the time, and you enjoyed every single minute of it.” Live! in Europe (1972) and Irish Tour ’74 (1974) are arguably the artistic highpoint of this early stage of Gallagher’s career, influencing a whole generation of guitar players, as well as convincing his peers that he was the ‘real deal’. Over the years, figures as diverse as Queen’s Brian May, Slash, The Edge, Bill Hicks, and Johnny Marr of The Smiths have spoken of the impact Gallagher’s music had upon them. Alongside many others, their opinion has caused many people to consider Gallagher the ‘guitarist’s guitarist’, a master
craftsman whose gift has proved inspirational to so many. Whilst he was never as flamboyant as Hendrix, or as commercially successful as Clapton or Page, for Gallagher, the praise that he won from his fellow musicians was consolation enough for the fact that he wasn’t scaling those same commercial heights. “To get an accolade from a fellow musician, no matter whether they were in a showband or what, was certainly something he enjoyed,” confirms Donal Gallagher. “Particularly considering that there was some form of resentment from certain quarters, a few cynical critics in the press and media. There was a perception that Rory and Taste had usurped certain people’s territory in London on the blues scene. A lot of bands were resentful of them, so when you had the likes of John Lennon coming to see him and saying he was amazing, it made the others shut up! “Muddy Waters came and selected Rory to play guitar on his album, which was such a snub to the rest of them! Then in 1973, Jerry Lee Lewis arrived in London, and Rory was the guitar player. They were really Rory’s achievements. I suppose if he was reminiscing, he would say that being picked by Muddy Waters was THE moment.” Ultimately, his perfectionism and the changing attitudes of music would lead to him slowing down in the latter half of the decade. The 1980s found him still recording and performing, but at a much reduced pace, haunted by doubt and obsession. He died in
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1995, having been suffering from sever liver damage, the result of prescription medicine and alcohol. Hardly a victim of rock and roll excess, Gallagher was rather a man cut down by his own private demons and the crutches he used to escape them. Whilst Van Morrison and Thin Lizzy tend to be seen as Ireland’s most famous musical exports of the Seventies, there is no doubt that Gallagher retains a loyal following all over the globe. The energy and sheer passion that flowed through every note he recorded still shines through, and every year finds a new generation of fans discovering his work. As Wilbur McDonald explains, there is something about the music of Rory Gallagher that simply refuses to fade away. “There’s an energy that comes out of it, and only a few people in the world can hold your attention in the way that he did for so long. There’s no age to it, it’s got its own life.” The first six Rory Gallagher albums – Rory Gallagher, Deuce, Live! In Europe, Blueprint, Tattoo and Irish Tour ’74 – are out now in remastered and expanded form. www.rorygallagher.com
• pg 48 Record Reviews | pg 53 Young Blood | PG 54 LIVE REVIEWS | pg 55 MOVIE & GAME REVIEWS •
Illustration by Mark Reihill
Sleigh Bells Reign Of Terror MOM + POP
Sleigh Bells’ debut album, 2010’s Treats, was a balancing act; Derek Miller’s fearsome guitar and shell-shock inducing beats pitched against Alexis Krauss’ honeyed vocals and melodic heart. Reign Of Terror is a refinement of that routine, our man and woman on wire teetering delicately between all-out noise assault and sublime pop. This album is more collaborative than Treats, a record Miller had already mostly written prior to his fateful encounter with Krauss. There is a heightened sense of melody here, a throwback perhaps to Krauss’ days in teen-pop band Rubyblue. Allied to Miller’s dirty guitar sounds, the result is like sonic prospecting – no matter how grimy a track gets, you’re always likely to find a precious melodic nugget. It’s interesting, too, to note the way in which these songs subvert and tarnish the image of America’s gilded youth. This album is not made for the cleancut jock and prom queen, it’s for the kids who are pushed to the margins and turn to bludgeoning
guitar riffs to dampen down the dark thoughts – if you like, you could describe it as musical Whac-AMole for the psychologically damaged. ‘You Lost Me’ – a song which tempers Air’s spectral shimmer with the anvil-clanging riffs of AC/DC – seems to explicitly reference the 1985 case of two “teenage metal-heads”, a pair of young Nevada men who, it was alleged, made a suicide pact after listening obsessively to Judas Priest’s Stained Class. The families sued the band and their label, their lawyer arguing, “Judas Priest and CBS pander this stuff to alienated teenagers. The members of the chess club, the math and science majors don’t listen to this stuff. It’s the dropouts, the drug and alcohol abusers.” Pockmarked by death and violence, Reign Of Terror reads like a set of anthems for that lost generation; celebrations of love that’s fucked-up and lives that are dysfunctional. Our punk-rock Danny and Sandy kick-off with ‘True Shred Guitar’, the title doubling as album battle cry. The riff is filthier than a shit smuggler’s pocket, Krauss exhorting, “Push it, push it, push it, true shred guitar / enemies on your knees, suffer please.” The yin-and-yang of Miller and Krauss is perhaps best exemplified by ‘Born To Lose’: clanging processed beats and jackhammer riffs collide with woozy vocal – it’s like a sweet summer breeze wafting across an industrial wasteland. On ‘Crush’, Krauss comes on like one of those warped cheerleaders from the ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
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video, crying out “make you, or break you,” whilst Miller chops out humungous metal riffs. A sense of conflict, be it personal, or musical, fuels the record. The sleeve-notes come burnished with images of fields aflame, evoking the start of Apocalypse Now and the burning rain of napalm. Inside, there are pictures of combat rifles. The record is punctured by the sound of gunfire and explosions. Meanwhile, Miller does his best to create his own theatre of war: on ‘Comeback Kid’, soft-tongued voice is underpinned with machine-gun rhythms and gutjabbing guitar. ‘Demons’, perhaps the heaviest track here, sounds like the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan as soundtracked by Slayer, the whizzing shrapnel whine of guitar matched by artillery-thud beats and female drill sergeant bark. And, though the album stumbles to a close through the uninspired sludge of ‘D.O.A.’, ‘Never Say Die’ provides a final, persuasive example of the Miller/ Krauss dynamic. With chainsaw guitar intersecting with bewitching voice – like the crossed beams of Ghostbusters – it is the interplay of these forces that gives the record its devastating power. Francis Jones
KEY TRACKS: ‘END OF THE LINE’, ‘DEMONS’, ‘NEVER SAY DIE’, ‘YOU LOST ME’. FOR FANS OF: CRYSTAL CASTLES, M.I.A., ATARI TEENAGE RIOT.
Phantogram Nightlife BARSUK
Any 20-something hedonist looking for the perfect soundtrack to the imaginary film of their wild life (and all 20-something hedonists who live their lives to imaginary soundtracks), need look no further than Phantogram. Phantogram are a duo from New York who, on Nightlife, have pretty much nailed the sort of emotionally-bubbling, wide-eyed, dance-pop style of music that will appeal to breathless young people living out their arty dreams in big cities. Of course, the older and more embittered listener might find the star-shaped hopscotch beats of songs like ‘Don’t Move’ a bit too romantic and youthful, but that is their fault and not Phantogram’s. The world will inevitably become a dark and cynical place for Phantogram, so who could deny them this winsome and assured moment in the dance-pop sun? Darragh McCausland
Mouse On Mars Parastrophics MONKEYTOWN
KEY TRACKS: ‘DON’T MOVE’, ‘TURNING INTO STONE’. FOR FANS OF: JOGGER, M83.
The Host The Host PLANET MU
Unlike the grizzly, unsettling Korean horror classic with which it shares a name, The Host’s self-titled debut album is a warm and inviting experience from start to finish. Heavily indebted to the Warp catalogue of the late Nineties, The Host updates classic cosmic analogue synths with rolling beats that hint at two-step rhythms and interjections of sharp-edged digital noise. It is the retro synth workouts which give the album its character though; a skyward-looking exploration of shining textures and percussion echoing in space. It steers clear of any sterility through the ever-bubbling funk of the bass lines which, more than anything else, give Barry ‘Boxcutter’ Lynn away. A beautiful, ambitious and fun trip along the scenic route with a man clearly enthralled by sound. Ian Maleney
KEY TRACKS: ‘HIDDEN ONTOLOGY’, RAINY SEQUENCES/ PHOSPHENE PATTERNS’, ‘BIRTHDAY BLUEBELLS’. FOR FANS OF: BOXCUTTER, SQUAREPUSHER, THE ORB.
Mmoths Mmoths EP SQE
Jack Colleran has been subject to more hype than most of his peers, and in a way it’s understandable. His style – encompassing warm, blissed-out tones, punchy loops and an emotive undertone – is one that remains very popular in the blogosphere, despite the fact that, post-chillwave craze, a lot of this type of music tends to feel a bit samey. Opening with the gentle ambient hum of ‘Thnx’, Mmoths features re-workings as well as new material. Sarah from Keep Shelly In Athens provides guest
As one of the most prolific duos of glitch and IDM in the Nineties, Mouse On Mars developed a heady mix of the playful and the avant-garde before disappearing on an indefinite hiatus in 2006. Now returning on Modeselektor’s Monkeytown label, Parastrophics carries on where Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma left off six years ago. This time around not an ounce of groove is sacrificed and vocals on ‘Heart’, filling in the spaces in the mix: the result is a generic sun-dazed ballad where once there was a fairly decent instrumental. ‘Summer’, meanwhile, features similarly dreamy vocals from Superhumanoids, who seem to crib a melody from Hot Chip while they’re at it. It’s all very pleasant, but nothing more. There’s no reason to write him off just yet - and it’s notable that his best work has come in the form of remixes for Passion Pit and Bon Iver but next time around, less following the formula and more fucking with it. Daniel Harrison
contemporary club-banging beats are seamlessly integrated with the duo’s characteristic crunchy synths and off-the-wall vocal samples. Showing off a mastery of the sound collage techniques and swung rhythms that have made labels like Brainfeeder the toast of the EDM world, Parastrophics is a welcome return for two guys who’s irreverence and skill will never go out of fashion. Ian Maleney
KEY TRACKS: ‘METROTOPY’, ‘THEY KNOW YOUR NAME’, ‘GEARKNOT CHERRY’. FOR FANS OF: FLYING LOTUS, SQUAREPUSHER, BIBIO. presumably designed to add gravitas, they just sound grating. Rams’ has skill but he could show it off better than this. Adam Kula
KEY TRACKS: ‘BODY AND THE SEA’. FOR FANS OF: KEANE, DUKE SPECIAL, SNOW PATROL.
Tindersticks The Something Rain LUCKY DOG
KEY TRACKS: ‘HEART’, ‘BREAKING THROUGH’. FOR FANS OF: SUN GLITTERS, BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD, HOUSES.
Rams’ Pocket Radio 1+2 EP SELF-RELEASED
This four-track EP from Lisburn’s much-hyped songwriter Peter McCauley is an example of why such hype should be taken with an industrial-sized consignment of salt. With the rangy vocals of the opening title track, Rams’ shows he has talent. Shame he doesn’t have imagination to match. With the exception of the inventive chord changes on ‘Body And The Sea’, his keyboard-led songs are easy on the ear, but never remarkable enough to leave a dent. His emo-style voice, pitched somewhere between Lisburn and California, lacks character – it could belong to any X Factor finalist. Final track ‘Love Is A Bitter Thing’ delivers the same message as 100 other ballads, but with the added annoyance of being full of jarring pauses–
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Tindersticks’ ninth album begins a little curiously. Over a jazzy soundtrack with a hint of eeriness, Stuart Staples murmurs an evocative spoken word story with... well, let’s just say a ‘strange’ twist. ‘Chocolate’ is a brave opener for the Nottingham band, although it serves a purpose by demanding the listener’s attention from the outset. Since re-jigging their line-up in 2010 (David Kitt is now a full-time member and cowrote one of the tracks here, ‘Frozen’), Tindersticks seem to have found a renewed vigour. This is an unremittingly sultry album that nods to their jazz-noir cabaret past (‘Show Me Everything’) but keeps things fresh by switching between dreamy contemplation (‘Medicine’) and comparatively upbeat, brass-flecked soul (‘Slippin’ Shoes’). Closer ‘Goodbye Joe’ even sounds like something from an Air record. Perhaps not their best album, but a lush continuation of a fine band’s catalogue, nevertheless. Lauren Murphy
KEY TRACKS: ‘SHOW ME EVERYTHING’, ‘FROZEN’. FOR FANS OF: LAMBCHOP, AIR, SMOG.
The Decemberists We All Raise Our Voices To The Air (Live Songs 04.1108.11) ROUGH TRADE
Don’t let the parentheses confuse you – these 20 songs weren’t recorded in four days in November, but over four months in 2011, on the acclaimed indie-folk act’s Popes Of Pendarvia World Tour. Covering material from the group’s six full-length albums and recorded at 12 different concerts, it presents a diverse overview of the Portland band’s decade-plus career to date, but in the context of the here and now. Live albums are always peculiar beasts – by nature, aimed at converted fans of the band in question rather than a brand new audience. Yet this double disc collection would certainly serve those with a passing interest in, or mild curiosity about, the band – not least for poignant performances of ‘Calamity Song’, ‘We Both Go Down Together’ and, brilliantly, a chronological medley of all three parts of ‘The Crane Wife’ as well as a superb extended version of ‘The Mariner’s Revenge Song’. Peppered with Colin Meloy’s amusing banter, We All Raise Our Voices presents both the romantic, intelligent black humour of their anachronistic folk tales and the personalities responsible for creating them. Mischa Pearlman
KEY TRACKS: ‘THE MARINER’S REVENGE SONG’, ‘THE CRANE WIFE 1, 2 & 3’, ‘CALAMITY SONG’. FOR FANS OF: NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL, OKKERVIL RIVER, THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS.
Scuba Personality HOTFLUSH
School Of Seven Bells Ghostory FULL TIME HOBBY
The loss of a founder member changes any group, but when that member co-fronts a trio with her identical twin, the effect is profound. So it proves with SVIIB’s third album. Ghostory is a markedly different beast to its predecessors; gone are the harsher textures and much of the light and shade, replaced by a slick pop wall of sound thick with layered vocals and soft shoegaze echoes. Initially, this appears a samey and impenetrable collection, but these nine tracks gradually reveal their
secrets over repeated listens, with more energetic efforts ‘The Night’ and ‘Lafaye’ distinguishing themselves from the slow-motion beauty of ‘Love Play’ and ‘Reappear’. Most enthralling is urgent eight-minute closer ‘When You Sing’, where multi-tracked vocals rise to wash over a continually-swelling dance-rock pulse. An impressive evolution for a group which could have crumbled, it’s only that lack of immediacy which can really hold Ghostory back. Lee Gorman
KEY TRACKS: ‘THE NIGHT’, ‘WHEN YOU SING’, ‘LAFAYE’. FOR FANS OF: M83, THE NAKED AND FAMOUS, SHINY TOY GUNS.
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Let’s be very clear about something: this is not dubstep. The Hotflush label boss and the man responsible for one of bass music’s finest hours – 2009’s Triangulation – paved the way for the big-room dynamics of Personality with last year’s Adrenalin EP. The title track was a curveball, eight minutes of euphoric house that even had some sniffy listeners using that dirty word, ‘trance’. Shudder. Didn’t stop it slaying dancefloors the world over, though. The new record continues down that road – witness the bright piano-house of ‘NE1BUTU’, the fistpumping synths of ‘July’ and the robot-voiced electro banger ‘The Hope’. It’s hard to imagine a record as unashamedly crowd-pleasing as this coming out on Hotflush were it not for the fact that it’s Scuba’s own label, but while it’s sad to note the absence of Triangulation-style deep, dark rollers, Scuba productions always ooze class, no matter the genre. These new clothes fit rather well. Chris Jones
KEY TRACKS: ‘NE1BUTU’, ‘ACTION’, ‘IF U WANT’. FOR FANS OF: UNDERWORLD, THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS, MARTYN.
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Malojian The Broken Deer EP PUBLIC SECTOR RECORDS
Having shed his bandmates, along with the felinity of the Cat Malojian moniker, Lurgan troubadour Stevie Scullion sets off on his solo trek with a debut EP not too dissimilar to the offerings of his previous incarnation. Gone to a large extent, admittedly, are the tentative dalliances with psychedelic electronics, but the winsome, west-coast harmonics and the penchant for a winning chorus are maintained. Radiofriendly refrains on ‘Often Wonder’ and ‘Julie-Anne’ suggest Scullion owns an overworked copy of Elliott Smith’s XO, and his unashamedly local vocal only adds to the charm. The understated ‘All I Need’, with its delicate, traditional bluegrass instrumentation, is an all-too-brief bucolic beauty, and while the EP draws to a tame end, this varied, well-rounded collection can only help to enhance Scullion’s standing as a songwriter of substance. Iain McDowell
KEY TRACKS: ‘OFTEN WONDER’, ‘ALL I NEED’. FOR FANS OF: ELLIOTT SMITH, THE BEACH BOYS, BRIAN HOUSTON.
Grimes Visions 4AD
With 2010’s twin LPs Geidi Primes and Halifaxa regarded by Grimes (aka Montreal’s Claire Boucher) as formative works-in-progress, Visions is pitched as her debut album proper. The blueprint is provided by last year’s split Darkbloom EP with D’eon, where her darkly seductive vocals were pushed to the forefront of more direct – but still enticingly weird – song structures. Visions’ opening tracks, ‘Infinite Love Without Fulfilment’ and ‘Genesis’, burst dazzlingly out of the blocks. The former is all prominent bass, snappy percussion and devilishly catchy vocal harmonising, while the latter is sublime: a shape-shifting pop song that combines twinkling hooks with Grimes’ chilly, gothic touches.
Katie Kim Cover and Flood FLAMING JUNE
Waterford’s Katie Sullivan may not be a household name as of yet, and with Cover And Flood, her second album, that’s unlikely to change. That’s not a reflection of the quality on show here, of which there is plenty; ‘Blood Bean’ and ‘Your Mountains’ are just two examples of the kind of gorgeous acoustic lullabies that come so easy to Sullivan. Elsewhere the
haunting ‘Charlie’ and ‘The Feast’ show off a more ethereal, slowcore-indebted sound, one which provides a welcome contrast to ditties like ‘Sugar’ and closer ‘Habits’. This wonderfully understated sound which runs throughout Cover And Flood is unlikely to make Katie Kim the name on everyone’s lips in 2012, but her music is all the richer for it. Andrew Lemon
KEY TRACKS: ‘CHARLIE’, ‘BLOOD BEAN’, ‘HABITS’. FOR FANS OF: JOANNA NEWSOM, KOROUVA, MAZZY STAR.
Mudbitch Step In Bang Bang
Sinéad O’Connor How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?
SELF-RELEASED
ONE LITTLE INDIAN
While her TLC-meets-Cocteaus aesthetic might put you in mind of the Tri Angle crew, the vital difference is that she plays her pop-oriented influences relatively straight, without manipulation or submersion. Boucher’s personality is the driving force, and although there’s something of a midalbum lull – where her arrangements don’t always seem to be keeping pace with her ideas – further standouts arrive towards the end, with the blissedout new age vibes of ‘Symphonia IX’ and a brace of barren-sounding ballads that herald new emotional depth. Daniel Harrison
It’s a well-known fact that all the best bands hail from the back-arse of nowhere. A five-piece from Coalisland, Co. Tyrone, Mudbitch’s debut EP, Step In Bang Bang, is a hugely promising sign of a discodoom aesthetic being created nowhere else in this country. Over the course of six tracks, from opener ‘Bugnance’, rapturous highlight ‘Traybakes’ and the riff-fuelled descent into the maelstrom that is ‘Crime Is Crime Is Crime’, Dominic McNamee’s masterful synth tangents and Mudbitch’s crazily eclectic noise betray hints of everything from Suicide, Wooden Shjips and synth-rockers Trans Am to create a swelling and comforting cacophony akin to PVT and Nick Cave jamming space-rockers Jessamine. Whatever you do, do not be put off by the name: these guys mean business. Brian Coney
It is not without a background level of intrepidation that one approaches a new Sinéad O’Connor album. So brutal is her tendency towards utmost honesty, a new set of songs can be laced with all manner of torment. And with the welldocumented difficulties surrounding her recent marriage still fresh, this album could have gotten lost in the emotional storm. It won’t – How...? is O’Connor’s best album in over a decade. From the pre-ceremony love-gush of ‘4th And Vine’ and the stunningly affecting ‘Reason On Me’, her supreme voice sounds as moving as it ever did. It’s not all good as ‘Queen Of Denmark’ contains teethgrindingly bad lyrics, but this album triumphantly confirms that Sinéad will not be slipping into comfortable middle-age. John Freeman
KEY TRACKS: ‘INFINITE ♡ WITHOUT FULFILMENT’, ‘GENESIS’, ‘SKIN’. FOR FANS OF: AUTRE NE VEUT, GANG GANG DANCE, T.L.C.
KEY TRACKS: ‘TRAYBAKES’, ‘ALL OUT’, ‘CRIME IS CRIME IS CRIME’. FOR FANS OF: PVT, ADD N TO (X), TRANS AM.
KEY TRACKS: ‘4TH AND VINE’, ‘REASON WITH ME’, ‘BACK WHERE YOU BELONG’. FOR FANS OF: EVA CASSIDY, ANNA CALVI, FEIST.
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Young Blood Your indispensable guide to new releases from up-and-coming acts Charles Hurts and Hello Translinks? Blue Romance Released on Belfast-based label CF Records, Blue Romance collects three short tracks of infectiously wistful jangle-pop courtesy of Charles Hurts, a Belfast two-piece featuring Philip Quinn on guitar and vocals and Steven Henry (aka Hello Translinks?) on bass. Lovelorn opener ‘It’s Not You’ is redolent of the bridge from The Beatles’ ‘Ask Me Why’, ‘Ain’t Goin Nowhere’ evokes The Smiths’ ‘Barbarism Begins At Home’ as played by Echo And The Bunnymen, whilst ‘The Answer Is No’, a cover of Sixties band Keith Powell & The Valets, is a wonderfully contorted slab of hazy vocals and bobbing synth. BC - cf-records.bandcamp.com/album/blue-romance
Glimmermen Satellite People Having each played in various bands for the last 15 years, Dublin three-piece Glimmermen are something of an underground supergroup playing so-called ‘urban post-rock blues’. With refreshingly intelligent guitar work evoking both Television and Maps And Atlases, the four tracks on Satellite People are perhaps best represented by the title track, a tidy hybrid of Mission of Burma circa Signals, Calls and Marches EP, The Pop Group and early Captain Beefheart. Not least for frontman Gavin Cowley’s coolly conversational approach, this is an impressive snapshot of greater things to come for Glimmermen. BC - glimmermen.bandcamp.com
Chocolate Love Factory Octavia Despite releasing a couple of first-rate EPs over the last couple of years, Octavia marks a definite musical progression and a tangible statement of intent from Belfast-based three-piece Chocolate Love Factory. Whether you look to the low-end groove of ‘Scarlett Blues’, the rampant throwdown that is ‘Ticks’ or the riff-ravaged highlight that is ‘Octavia’, frontman Rory Dee’s furious vocals take centre-stage time and again, each scream an ear-splitting reminder of this band’s hardened intent. Disregarding what you might make of their name, these five tracks reveal Chocolate Love Factory to be one of this small country’s best in riff-fuelled rock. BC - chocolatelovefactory.bandcamp.com
INPROFILE: ACT: FROM: FOR FANS OF: WEBSITE:
Charles Hurts Belfast Dum Dum Girls, Beat Happening, Girls Names. soundcloud.com/charleshurts
Words by Brian Coney
One of a handful of Belfast-based acts playing delectably retrogressive guitar-pop, Charles Hurts are newfangled defenders of old-school sounds. Having released a firstrate EP last month to coincide with Valentine’s Day entitled Blue Romance, they’re almost certain to build upon its growing acclaim in the coming months. AU catches up with Charles Hurts’ main man Philip Quinn to shoot the proverbial breeze. How did Charles Hurts come about? The band came about when I wrote songs, wanted to put a band together and took a pun
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from a local car dealership near my parents’ house. I love puns. How would you describe your sound and from whom do you take influence? I’m not really sure how I could place our sound, The new EP is a bit of a departure for us, a little less reverb and somewhat less cluttered than before. I always like bands that have a lot of different types of songs without sounding like lots of different bands. Influence-wise, we draw a lot from Fifties and Sixties pop, garage rock, Krautrock and postpunk. I suppose those influences pop up here and there in different songs. What do you make of the Belfast music scene at the minute? I think the ‘scene’ is probably the best I’ve known it to be. Previously, there’d have only been one or two bands I’d pay attention too, whereas now I’d say that figure is probably closer to 10 or more. However, if you use the term ‘music scene to insinuate that there’s some unifying strand in Belfast’s music underbelly, I don’t think that’s true. What do you hope the future holds for the band? There’s no real gameplan as such, just trying to write more, record more and perform more. We definitely want to expand to at least a three-piece in the coming months. Unfortunately life often intervenes on the two of us.
LIVE REVIEWS
Lightbox Tour Love and Death inc, Belfast Boasting a line-up that includes some of the brightest stars in Ireland’s electronic scene, as well as being located in a venue whose indie chic atmosphere seems to lend itself to a night of headbobbing and toe-tapping, tonight’s date of the Lightbox tour would appear to tick all the boxes. This is a gig that by all rights should be packed to the rafters – but it appears Belfast didn’t quite get the memo. Free entry to the gig is announced several hours before doors open. Angry mutters emerge from the Twittersphere suggesting a bustup between artists and venue. It all appears to have fallen flat before it even kicks off. Upon entry, it doesn’t appear to be much more hopeful. A solitary line of fans bob to opening act Lemonada, whose bright, sparkling electro feels a little ironic given the poor turnout. It’s music meant to get fans on their feet and dancing, but it doesn’t – either because no-one wants to this early on in the night or because there just aren’t enough people here to do so. But both the crowd and the artists soon warm to the occasion, as both Tenaka and Simon Bird put in memorable sets that also seem to make greater use of the visuals behind them, courtesy of Brendan Canty, aka Feel Good Lost. Fleeting images are replaced by scenes that actually stick, and are appropriate backdrops to the Gold Panda-inspired beats of the former and the fuzzy power-noise of the latter. Cork-based Reid and Waterford’s Monto are up next, and they both keep the night’s theme of Father Ted samples going (“The real villain in this piece is yet to be revealed!”) as well as delivering a harder-edged brand of electro. Both sets veer into the realms of chillwave towards the end, which is also no bad thing. MPC king SertOne may take centre stage as the crowd’s attention is on the wane, but he has their full gaze as he powers though a set of pitch-shifted beats and Dilla-inspired tunes; even finding time for his cover of the late producer’s track ‘Fall In Love’. It may not have got off to the most promising of starts, but Lightbox in Belfast turned into a quality, if extremely understated night out. We can only hope that the next time these producers hit Belfast, a healthier turnout ensues. That’s assuming there is a next time, of course. Andrew Lemon
PHOTO BY KIERAN FROST
tUnE-yArDs Button Factory, Dublin While the sold-out Button Factory might be uncomfortably busy, Merrill Garbus’s entry is so low key that she takes the tightly packed crowd totally by surprise. Strolling out on stage alone, shoulders slumped, half-smiling as small bursts of applause breakout around the room courtesy of dedicated fans who recognise her instantly, it’s hard to believe this is the same woman who so powerfully bellowed out last year’s w h o k i l l, a 2011 album of year candidate. But the tUnEyArDs leading lady quickly makes her presence felt, performing some powerful half-yodelling, halfscat tribal yelps a cappella. This booming recital is a reminder that Garbus, as a vocalist, is the closest thing modern music has to Nina Simone. Her voice is roaring, yet soulful; androgynous, yet sexy. And like Simone, Garbus does nothing obvious. After getting everyone’s attention with her gallant solo choral performance, she begins using a vocal loop pedal to form her own backing harmonies. Joined on stage by bassist Nate Brenner and a twoman saxophone section (though they disappear for a time), Garbus’s backing is minimal. Instead, she
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uses the various looping pedals at her feet to form her intricate vocal and drum arrangements. Building these patterns from the ground up, the quickness in which she executes each one throughout the night is highly impressive. Such is her speed and efficiency with the technology, evolutionary flaws to the human eyes and ears mean it isn’t always easy to keep up. The first fully-formed song performed is the as-yet unreleased ‘Party Can’, and things really start to boil with Garbus’s passionate battle cry, “Do you wanna live?,” garnering an enthusiastic “yeah!” from the capacity crowd. But it’s tracks from w h o k i l l that garner the biggest reaction. The brass section sound great on the single ‘Bizness’, while Garbus’s delicate ukulele fiddles and supple vocal on ‘Powa’ is a stunning highlight. Elsewhere, B-side ‘Youth’ is an unexpected treat, while ‘Fiya’ from her debut album Bird-Brains is a soft change of pace. But returning to w h o k i l l by, first, closing with ‘Yes Yes You’ (where Garbus instructs the crowd, “This is where you jump” before the band bounce around stage) and reappearing to encore with the synthbacked ‘My Country’, the crowd leave in no doubt that they’d just seen one of the true 21st century greats. Dean Van Nguyen
The Thing
Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen Cert: 15
DVD
It speaks volumes that Universal Pictures have made little effort to publicise this cackhanded attempt at remaking a film which should have been left well alone. Initially, the redo begins as a prequel of sorts to John Carpenter’s seminal slice of sci-fi paranoia but soon mutates into a clone of its predecessor. Fittingly, it neither looks nor feels quite right: the magic of Rob Bottin’s gooey prosthetics is replaced by decidedly ropey CGI and the acting is laughable. Never a good thing in a horror movie. Whereas the original coldly dissected the strange and cruel things men do when confined to claustrophobic areas with one another, this politically correct update throws in a female scientist, an approach which seems to be less about offering feminist discourse and more about using eye candy to distract from the film’s manifold problems. With its icebound setting and simple premise, this could have been a slowly turning screw of sustained tension but in reality it amounts to a group of jobbing actors running around in the dark, screaming pointlessly. While Carpenter’s Thing was unsettling and at times truly outrageous, this one is about as frightening as a box of raisins. Ross Thompson THE THING IS RELEASED ON DVD AND BLU-RAY ON MARCH 26
CONSOLE YOURSELF! The AU round-up of gaming releases Now this is more like it. After endless weeks of drowsy slumber the industry has finally got its collective finger out and started publishing some games. Finally reaching these shores is Catherine (Atlus, Multiformat), a release which defies pigeonholing at every turn. Add one shot of survival horror, a dash of puzzle solving and a soupçon of dating simulation and blend in the storyline from Hitchcock’s Vertigo... ding! You have the most deliberately off the wall release since Bayonetta. Nothing quite compares to scaling a wall of falling blocks in your underpants whilst giant babies squeal in the background. If the idea of talking sheepmen doesn’t fill you with wonder, then the even more bizarro Asura’s Wrath (Capcom, Multi) will probably push you over the edge. Best described as interactive anime, it relies heavily upon quick time events, which essentially means you mash buttons whilst watching a cartoon. But what a cartoon. To say that it’s hyperbolic is akin to saying that Heston Blumenthal occasionally uses odd ingredients. From smacking out minor deities the size of planetoids to sprinting after crimson yetis, this is truly deranged stuff. Some will bemoan its emphasis on cut-scenes whilst others will savour its God Of War-style action. Regardless, Asura’s Wrath looks and sounds stunning, and illustrates what designers can achieve when truly let off the leash.
Catherine A final curio comes in the form of Gotham City Impostors (Warner Bros., Multi), a downloadable FPS involving Batman’s titular hometown. The package is dominated by its online multiplayer, which eschews the comic’s trademark darkness in favour of knockabout comedy: spring-heeled shoes, bin-lid shields and so on. A more sedate pace is offered by The Jak And Daxter Trilogy (Sony, PS3), which upscales the classic games to HD, adds trophies and 3D support. In truth, this is icing on a scrummy cake. Before developers Naughty Dog excelled with the Uncharted series they proved their level design mettle with these widely revered platformers. It’s amazing how well they hold up a decade after their first release, which is due in no small part to the detail crammed into every element
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of their funny, exciting, at times infuriating stages. Hitting a similar retro note is the reboot of Syndicate (EA, Multi), which takes the seminal real time strategy and puts it in a shiny suit of first person shooter armour. It’s a choice that, with its story of megacorporations and enhanced agents, makes sense in the shadow of Deus Ex and Crysis 2. Starbreeze Studios, who previously produced the ultraviolent The Darkness, have created a loud and proud shooter which is hugely enjoyable if at times derivative – then again, what combat shooter is not derivative these days? A combination of voice work from Brian Cox and Rosario Dawson and a glossy graphical sheen lends Syndicate the look and feel of a big budget Hollywood picture. Ross Thompson
FLASHBACK The Death of John Belushi, March 5, 1982
30 YEARS AGO When he died, John Belushi had succeeded at one thing: he had become a warning to his friends as to the fate that could await them all. With a series of flop films under his belt, Belushi appeared to have squandered his early promise, now descending into a whirlpool of drugs and alcohol. But 30 years later, he is regarded as a legend, one of the all-time greats of American comedy. On the 30th anniversary of his death, AU takes a look at a life that epitomised the cliché of ‘live fast, die young’, and examines how John Belushi’s death made him a success.
When The Blues Brothers was released in 1980, it was not the box office success many had hoped it to be. Far from making John Belushi a household name, it instantly bypassed the mainstream, lingering in cult obscurity for a number of years. His previous film, Steven Spielberg’s Second World War comedy 1941, had met a similar fate, becoming a rare box office bomb for the celebrated director. It seemed increasingly likely that Belushi was falling behind in the race with his former Saturday Night Live co-stars to gain mainstream acceptance. Belushi had originally been the break-out star of the pioneering live sketch show, his larger than life presence endearing him to an audience hungry for new comedic thrills, and his portrayal of Bluto Blutarsky in National Lampoon’s Animal House had instantly established him as a talented new performer in the emerging new wave of American comedy. The failure of The Blues Brothers and 1941 had hit him hard, and his personal life was beginning to unravel behind the scenes. With his excessive drinking already gaining attention in a culture of excess, Belushi was the guy who could keep going, long after everyone else had fallen by the wayside. Add to this a prodigious appetite for drugs, and it all adds up to disaster. On the evening of the March 5, 1982, Belushi was in party mood, enjoying the company of Robert
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De Niro and Robin Williams amongst others such as Gordon Lightfoot and Cathy Smith, a backing singer who had been involved with The Band’s Levon Helm. At some point over the course of the evening, she administered Belushi with a powerful speedball – a mixture of cocaine and heroin. He was later found dead in his room, a forensics report declaring his death to be a result of drug abuse. Two months later, Smith admitted giving him the speedball in National Enquirer, eventually serving 15 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter. In the years after his death, his star continued to rise in a way it might not have done had he continued to make movies. With such a small body of work, films like Animal House and The Blues Brothers continued to shine as an example of this incredible comedic talent. Tragedy always makes the survivors money, and Belushi’s story is no different. The advent of home video allowed millions of people to enjoy his films, and over the years Belushi has become known as a virtuoso comedian, death preserving the image of him as the eternal college frat boy, or the sunglasseswearing bluesman, forever on the road. Whilst he’d undoubtedly have preferred to make more films, and gain mainstream success on his own terms, one can imagine that Belushi would be more than happy with his current position in history. After all, with no small amount of black humour, death kind of suits him. Steven Rainey
Classic MOVIE Blade Runner 1982 in which the city is effectively controlled by a mega-powerful company, the Tyrell Corporation. What this means, in reality, is a lot of darkly lit shots, heaps of mumbling and a legion of loyal believers over-interpreting every minor detail of a deceptively thin plotline. But many aspects of Blade Runner are indeed sensational; the cinematography, special effects and soundtrack (by synth overlord Vangelis) are incredible and in 1993 the movie was selected by the US Congress for preservation by the National Film Registry. It has become that influential and is rightfully cited as having a key role in defining how science-fiction is perceived across art forms as diverse as comics, video games and pop music. But, while it may be irrefutable that Blade Runner is an all-time classic, it is not beyond reproach. A firsttime viewer may struggle to see what all the fuss was about. In some ways, the film is weighed down by its three-decade span of influence. Its majesty is now over-familiar; there is an almost constant need to remember just how visionary it must have been in 1982, simply because Blade Runner has inspired virtually every single subsequent futuristic vision of a dystopic hell (we are looking at you The Terminator, I, Robot, RoboCop, and even sodding Astro Boy). It looks and feels like a two-hour rock video, akin to living inside Thom Yorke’s head for an evening. It’s gripping (in parts), occasionally thought-provoking (in a ‘some of this is just pseudo-intellectual bullshit’ sort of way) and utterly cheerless.
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
is a lot of legend surrounding Blade Runner), Hauer improvised the speech that – when repeated verbatim – can still make a generation of movies fans go weak at the knees, while leaving another generation bemused and perplexed.
Another problem when viewing Blade Runner today is the 2019 timeline, which is now only seven years away. It can be difficult to watch the film and not dismiss some of the futuristic technology. In one scene, the Rick Deckard character uses voice recognition to get his computer to scan back and forth across a video image. It’s so freaking painstaking, you can almost imagine a young Steve Jobs sitting through the movie and dreaming up touch-screen and pinch-enlarge technology whilst still in the cinema. However, other aspects are spookily on the money; the film’s depiction of the Chinafication of downtown Los Angeles seems visionary as the current global shift in superpowerstates continues its easterly march.
So says Roy Batty, a character played by Rutger Hauer in Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece, Blade Runner. Batty is a ‘replicant’ or a ‘bioengineered being’ and delivers this soliloquy at the end (although no spoiler alert is required) of a movie which still, three decades on, defines the sciencefiction film genre. According to legend (and there
The film stars Harrison Ford as ‘blade runner’ super-cop Rick Deckard. The aforementioned replicants are used for dangerous or menial work in ‘off-world colonies’ and are banned from Earth. Blade runners hunt down and ‘retire’ any replicants who have returned. The film is set in Los Angeles in 2019 and depicts a post-modernistic dystopia
Blade Runner is a brilliant work of art but, 30 years on, has a lot to answer for. It set the tone for a gazillion science-fiction films being set in apocalyptic landscapes, where it is always night time and it is always raining. The future never, ever seems bright. Why does post-modernism always need to be so bleak? John Freeman
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After 31 years, 15 albums, countless world tours and even more line-up changes, Birmingham bruisers Napalm Death have redefined punk, metal or whatever label you want to put on them. As they prepare to unleash latest opus Utilitarian, AU grills frontman Mark ‘Barney’ Greenway on the past, the present and the future of Britain’s most extreme musical export… Words by Andrew Johnston
Music historians can’t decide if it was Bill Haley, Elvis Presley or Chuck Berry who ‘invented’ rock ‘n’ roll. Similar debates rage over the roots of heavy metal, punk and grunge. But there is no such dispute about grindcore. Napalm Death are grindcore; grindcore is Napalm Death. Sure, the Birmingham mob’s early peers – notably US crazies Siege and Repulsion – were crucial influences, but when Napalm Death first got together in mid-1981, the hardest, fastest band on the planet was probably Venom or Discharge. Napalm Death predate even Metallica and Slayer. Over the course of the next three decades, the group would go from being regarded as something of a joke in the mainstream media to their current position as hugely respected ambassadors for the British extreme music scene. The ubiquitous quartet have made guest appearances on everything from Never Mind The Buzzcocks to Skins, and are even in The Guinness Book Of Records for the world’s shortest song, the 1.316 seconds-long ‘You Suffer’. Still, wholesale line-up changes, label woes and the deaths of two ex-members have blighted a career that has been steady rather than stellar, at least in terms of sales. But as Napalm Death prepare to release their 15th collection of skin-flaying blast beats, face-melting riffs and vocals that sound like they were recorded in a Saw trap, lead singer Mark Greenway – known to one and all as ‘Barney’, as in ‘Barney Rubble’, a holdover from his chaotic drinking days – remains satisfied with his lot. “We’ve stuck at it, and we’ve done it on our own terms,” he says, in his unmistakable Brummie brogue. “If you are going to do a band like Napalm that has a certain white-noise element to it, you make your bed and you lie in it. It’s not going to be for everybody. When you start it in the first place, you never set out to be a syrupy, sugar-coated band.” Now 42, Barney is a walking contradiction. On stage, he roars like a man possessed. Off stage, the teetotal vegetarian is a softly spoken socialist and ardent advocate of animal rights. Far from mellowing out on Utilitarian, the frontman has taken his lyrical cues from the Occupy movement. Indeed, Barney feels he has become more committed with age – as if time were running out to make a difference. “I was always told that as you get older generally you get more conservative, in the broadest sense of that word,” he says. “But I actually find myself, if there is a barometer on it, going in the other direction. My needle’s going the other way. I am always willing to listen to other points, but when I feel that something
is right or not right, then I will hold onto it for grim death, like hanging over a cliff edge.” Utilitarian, to AU’s ears, is the strongest work Napalm Death have put their iconic scrawled logo to since 2000’s career-high Enemy Of The Music Business. The 18 tracks (19 on the LP) continue the band’s trademark assault on the senses, give or take a discordant saxophone break here or a choral-style vocal passage there. “As individuals, we all have our different perspectives on what Napalm is,” explains Barney. “You have members who perhaps lean more towards the ‘traditional’, but then you have others who want to push the boundaries further. So, where we converge in the middle things always just seem to work out quite well.” To Barney’s annoyance, the release of Utilitarian on Century Media coincides with former label Earache’s latest repackaging of the debut Napalm Death offering, 1987’s Scum. “We’ve had continuous problems with them down the years,” he sighs. “Just when you think the relationship has reached some kind of coming together they go and do something like that.” It is perhaps made doubly frustrating by the fact none of the current Napalm Death line-up actually plays on Scum. In fact, the group’s membership was so unstable at the time that even between the record’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ sides they changed vocalist, guitarist and bassist. Today, the closest Napalm Death have to an original member is bassist Shane Embury, who joined for the Scum tour. Embury has ridden out the various overhauls that have seen underground luminaries such as Lee Dorrian (Cathedral), Bill Steer (Carcass) and Mick Harris (Scorn) come and go. Barney joined in 1989, current guitar-mangler Mitch Harris in 1990 and drummer Danny Herrera in ’92, and thus Napalm Death have remained (save for ex-Terrorizer axeman Jesse Pintado’s stint from 1989 to 2004, and a brief spell in 1996 when Extreme Noise Terror throat-shredder Phil Vane replaced Barney; both Pintado and Vane have since sadly died). The original Napalm Death evolved from the British crust-punk scene of the early Eighties, making their first vinyl appearance with the snottynosed ‘Crucifixion Of Possessions’ on a 1984 Crass Records compilation. Barney was just 11 when the initial assembly of ‘Nik Napalm’, ‘Si O’ and ‘Rat’ started abusing Midlands noise limits, but their concerts formed an important part of his youth. “Napalm was a constituent part of the scene in Birmingham, mainly centred around the Mermaid pub in the Sparkhill area of the city,” he remembers.
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“Round about ’85, ’86, I used to go the gigs every weekend. Obviously, Napalm being from Birmingham, I got to know the members of the band gradually over time. As they were moving towards making the Scum album, I was a part of it, I was around it, and it was great to watch. I could see the band had a certain special something, even then.” Birmingham looms large in the history of Napalm Death. In 2011, for instance, Napalm and the grindcore scene featured heavily in the Home Of Metal exhibition in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. But Barney scoffs at the notion that the city that also spawned the likes of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and, er, UB40 was somehow an essential part of the equation. “Birmingham seems to have a very fertile music scene,” he concedes, “but I wouldn’t want to over-romanticise that. It could have been Sheffield. It could have been Manchester. It could have been Wigan. It could have been Milton Keynes. It could have been anywhere.” But there’s no overstating the impact Napalm Death have had on the alternative musical landscape in the UK and beyond. Ferocious statements of intent like 1988’s From Enslavement To Obliteration, 1990’s Harmony Corruption and 1992’s Utopia Banished have inspired thousands of garage musicians worldwide to play harder, faster and, er, shorter. Album after album, tour after tour, Napalm Death have endured, rarely looking back – well, until last year anyway. “We’re not usually ones to trumpet ourselves, but for the 30th anniversary we thought it’d be a little bit special to get some of those old members and get a really old venue in Birmingham,” reveals Barney. “But some members wanted to do it, kind of, and then other members didn’t, and it seemed as if it would be a bit half-arsed, so we decided not to pursue it in the end.” And so, 2012 sees another new record and more heavy-duty touring. As the foursome hit their mid40s, they feel the need to keep fit. “In my bedroom I’ve got an aerobics machine,” laughs Barney. “Once you get out on the road for five weeks of gigs, halfway through if you don’t have a certain level of fitness you’re fucked, and it just feels miserable. It’s always better for me to put in a bit of effort now, so when we go out on that stage I can give the people that have paid money on the door the best that I can. You’re only as good as your next gig.” Utilitarian is out now via Century Media www.napalmdeath.org
ISODISCO SECOND BIRTHDAY The Hudson Bar, Belfast Photos by Gavin Sloan Andrea
Conor
Paddy & Alleyn
Conor & Roisin
Nicola & Laura
Karim & Ali
Jenny, Ross, Cull & Lisa
Mark & Jonny
Deirdre & Lauren
Corina Ramos
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The WAR ON DRUGS Whelan’s, Dublin
Photos by Alan Moore
Ruadhan
Peter & Emma
Nicola & Tony
Phillip, Michelle & Ciaran
Oliviah & Leah
The War On Drugs
Evelyn & Ciaran
Aaron & Robert
Ian & Alex
Silva, Simon, Sara & Natalie
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Erin, Sammy & Cian
THE LAST WORD With Matthew Taylor from Dry The River When was the last time you had a fistfight? At a festival on the isle of Jersey. It turned into a very strange and primal evening. People screaming, wrestling, singing Blackadder. I’m happy to say I beat Scott’s ass in the fight. When was the last time you doubted yourself? More or less every night at shows. I play mind games with myself about whether I’ll mess up. I do it for entertainment because I know the parts so well and sometimes it makes me actually mess up. It’s weird and stupid. When was the last time you threw up? The last time I was in Amsterdam. Must have been just over a year ago. No more details. When was the last time you did something you regret? Regret is unhealthy. Try and turn it into blind justification. What was the last good record you bought? New Junk Aesthetic by Every Time I Die or Tamer Animals by Other Lives. What was the last thing you Googled? “Darren Bent injury” When was the last time you were scared? Woman In Black at the theatre. Well scary mate.
When was the last time you bought a band t-shirt at a gig? Think it was Sigur Rós at Hammersmith Apollo a few years ago. When was the last time you offended someone? I tweeted about Christina Aguilera saying she sounded like she was having a nail driven through her foot once, which got me into trouble because we’re on the same label. So I’d like to retract that. I think she’s great. When was the last time one of your heroes disappointed you? Hmmm… Maybe when the Arrested Development cast told me they were making a film, and then seemingly never made it. Or when Martin O’Neill quit Villa.
When was the last time you felt guilty? Last week when I woke up in a Travelodge bed with a Nintendo 64 game I had drunkenly stolen from someone’s house in High Wycombe. I’m going to post it back with a copy of our album, I felt so guilty. It was Diddy Kong Racing though, good steal. What was the last piece of good advice you were given? This happens so rarely I am struggling to think of an answer! Maybe it was ‘go and see the theatre production of the Woman In Black’, because I did and it was amazing. Profound advice has been lacking lately. When was the last time you cried? The last time I drank whiskey. It has that effect. So probably about five years ago.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS “Love one another.” George Harrison (February 25, 1943 – November 29, 2001) “Eva se va.” (Eva is leaving) Eva Perón, First Lady of Argentina (May 7, 1919 – July 26, 1952)
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What was the last bad job you had? I worked in a strip bar when I was at uni. It had strippers midday ‘til 5pm then bands on in the evening. I worked the bar, and sold tickets for private dances. Not a great time, looking back. When was the last time you broke the law? I’m not an idiot, I’m not telling you! If the world was about to end, what would your last words be? “Well, that was disappointing.” Dry The River’s debut album Shallow Bed is out now. They play the Limelight, Belfast on April 23. www.drytheriver.net
THIS ISSUE WAS POWERED BY Sludge metal, fucking off to Oh Yeah, the flu, countless 30th birthdays (we’re old), The Vineyard, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, backside disasters, the Carling Cup, baby Max, Boyz II Men, quinoa, The Wonder Villains, Come Dine With Me, bad NI accents (Sons Of Anarchy!).
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