Loud And Quiet 21 – Fever Ray by LoudAndQuiet

LoudAndQuiet Zero pounds / Volume 03 / Issue 21 / 100 percent ENIGMATIC

in case you were wondering

zola jesus !!! warpaint peepholes sauna youth prizes black angels avi buffalo

mystery (wo)men

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10.2010

This month’s issue is steeped it mystery. It’s the issue that features Karin ‘Fever Ray’ Andersson on the cover, but only shows her gold painted lips. Her band – a gang of wax faced could-be serial killers – are equally as enigmatic to stare at, although it must be said that the giggly mastermind we met with before her mesmeric, smoke-bellowing-and-lazer show at Brixton Academy was far from the nightmarish grunter seen accepting an award at this year’s Swedish Grammys. Zola Jesus [page 14] played at that London show too – a young woman of self-imposed alienation who studied opera for the sake of ‘good singing’ and is no stranger to fine cloak’n’dagger noir pop either. Like Andersson, her music is highly personal, but then, she is the sometime collaborator of bareall musicians Former Ghosts and Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu. Warpaint’s mystique is in their far out LA psyche [page 12], which dodges any true definition by channelling math rock jams, folk harmonies and tribal rhythms to make a new, trippy West Coast sound that’s far more fascinating – and pro – than the clattering, DIY garage punk we’ve grown used to over the past year. And while there’s not yet a neat term for what Brighton duo Peepholes [page 24] do either, !!! [page 18] offer us some clarity amidst the vagueness as frontman Nic Offer defends new, less-wild album ‘Strange Weather, Isn’t It?’ with candid honesty. Now turn to page 26 and try telling us you’re not the slightest bit intrigued.

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C o n t e n ts

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Photography by Jörgen Ringstrand Costume by Andreas Nilsson

07 .................. . Gallows / Fade / Away 08 .................. . Death / Of / The / Critic 10 .................. . Hollywood / Psych / Fools 15 .................. . Jesus / Loves / Opera 16 .................. . Debt / Motivated / Interview 17 .................. . The / Hot / Baps 18 .................. . Three / Explanation / Marks 22 .................. . The / Quiet / Ones 24 .................. . Serious / Self / Sabotage 26 .................. . Favourite / Worst / Nightmare 32 .................. . Acid / Is / Good 36 .................. . Sex / Gangster / Dies 42 .................. . Far / Out / Finale 46 .................. . Joaquin / Loses / Plot 48 .................. . R.I.P / Big / Brother 04

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Contact

info@loudandquiet.com Loud And Quiet 2 Loveridge Mews Kilburn London NW6 2DP Stuart Stubbs Alex Wilshire Art Director Lee Belcher film editor Dean Driscoll Editor

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advertise@loudandquiet.com Contributors

Bart Pettman, Chris Watkeys, Daniel Dylan-Wray, Danny Canter DK. Goldstien, Elinor Jones Edgar Smith, Frankie Nazardo, Holly Lucas, Janine Bullman, Kate Parkin, Kelda Hole, Gabriel Green, Leon Diaper Mandy Drake, Martin Cordiner Matthias Scherer, Nathan Westley, Owen Richards, Polly Rappaport, Phil Dixon, Phil Sharp, Reef Younis, Sam Little, Sian Rowe Sam Walton, Simon Leak,Tim Cochrane,Tom Goodwyn,Tom Pinnock This Month L&Q Loves

Adrian Read, Jamie Woolgar, Lisa Durrant, Martina Connors, Rachel Hendry,William Lawrence The views expressed in Loud And Quiet are those of the respective contributors and do not necessari ly reflect the opini ons of the magazine or its staff. All rights reserved 2010 © Loud And Quiet.

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fading away Someone should have told Gallows about the ‘burning out’ option, says Omarrr Tanti

“We probably shouldn’t be doing this gig,” sighed Frank Carter to two hundred odd diehards at The Prodigy’s Warrior’s Dance festival in Milton Keynes this summer. “I’m glad we did,” he added, unconvincingly. It wasn’t the nonplussed car-park crowd that was most upsetting though (Gallows were up against Pendulum at the 60,000 capacitity all-dayer after all; a band far more likely to be found in Liam Howlett’s stereo these days than a blood and blisters punk band), it was the band’s own lacklustre display. A few short years ago they were the most thrilling, unpredictable, self-combustible tornado of destruction in the country. Frank would be seen swinging from nearby furniture, riding around on peoples’ shoulders, tattooing himself on stage or generally bleeding all over the place. Other bands would be frightened to be on the bill with them. Now, it looks like he’d break down in tears if someone nudged the jaunty angle

of his bowler hat. As he tiredly pulled the mic stand towards him, rolling his eyes and staring dead-eyed at the twenty fans who charge at each other he effectively looked like a man that had well and truly given up – a pattern in-keeping with Gallow’s whole summer. Two friends reported the exact same lethargy from a Cyprus Hill support slot and a gig at Hevy festival. A member of an unnamed British rock band who cite the Watford punks as their biggest influence recently told me that they walked away after one song of the band’s set in the latter incident because it was too painful to watch. Which begs the question, what the hell are Gallows doing? In December of last year they were officially dropped by Warner Records, a parting affectionately labelled ‘Another Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle’ in homage to The Sex Pistols’ famous major label blags. Snapped up after their incendiary debut album

‘Orchestra Of Wolves’, the corporation snared them for £1 million and gave them free rein for the follow-up, hoping to mould them into the British My Chemical Romance. Instead they picked Rage Against The Machine producer G-G-Garth and made one of the most ambitious, angerridden punk albums of the last ten years in ‘Grey Britain’. It sold diddly-squat and they were discharged back into the comfort of the arms of their devoted fan-base with their hardcore morals intact. They’d played the mega label-roulette and won. Busted the casino’s vault and were heading into the sunset. You’d think then that that would have galvanised the gang, and that this summer would have been a victory parade for punk. Yet it seems more like repatriation. If being dropped by their cash-daddies was such a punch in the stomach for the group’s morale they should have just packed it all in. Or played one last celebratory gig with all the bands that have formed

in their image and gone out with a blood-stained bang. Instead, they’ve dragged a sorry looking shadow of themselves around the country playing half-arsed shows, dismantling their hardearned credibility as they go. Frank has made no secret of wanting to return to his firstlove (ink) and now has a love interest in New York where he looks set to relocate. But, perhaps unfortunately for him, the boney-framed ginger mouthpiece seems to have become the unlikely hero of his brother’s dream, Stephen Carter being one of the band’s guitarists. Whether he’s still just turning up out of a misplaced loyalty to his family or bagging the last few coins, we don’t know, but the self-proclaimed “biggest mistake the British music industry ever made” could have departed in the same spectacular way they arrived. Gallows never sold out, but they are in danger of petering out. And it was surely never meant to be that way.

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FANZINE By Danny Canter

What Would Henry Rollins Do? By Jack A homemade fanzine about punk --------------------As the name suggests by casting Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins as The Messiah, WWHRD? is a hardcore fanzine, lovingly pieced together in the Norwich area by a man called Jack. Rather brilliantly, Jack started off writing a blog of the same name about underground punk bands before regressing (or progressing) to stapling together photocopied issues of a physical zine, most of which he writes himself. Issue 5 was recently released and follows a simple yet charming course of Q&As, reviews and thought pieces written in the first person. To say Jack’s intentions are good is a massive understatement as he documents the new UK hardcore scene. Henry Rollins would love it.

Death of the critic? Reef Younis questions the worth of himself and all music journos

wEbsite By Mandy Drake

I’m going to just lay this out on the line from the outset: what are we doing here? I don’t mean us, us, as in some grand existential question, I mean the panda-eyed, shell-backed, keyboard-clawed hacks who spend most of their lives stuck to sweatbox venue floors, wildly fending in smoke and strobe lights, living in the hope that tinnitus won’t get them until much, much later on. The bolshie ne’er-do-wells who slave and slur, pouring gushing fanboy (and girl) adulation on bands they love and venomous scorn on those they love to hate. Seriously, think about it. We don’t live in a world where there are gatekeepers of information anymore; where what was written by ink-stained hands and nicotine stained fingers is gospel. And, before you say anything, this isn’t some doeeyed ramble about how great it was that Melody Maker evolved from a few pages of sheet music, it’s more a case of morbid selfdeprecation and the growing realisation that music writers, as an increasingly deformed species (if the previous description is correct), are probably, increasingly redundant

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in the grand scheme of things. But perhaps redundant isn’t the word. Perhaps the role and, ahem, responsibility, has just changed. There’s been plenty of time to acclimatise to the digital age, and if bands have been empowered to the extent they can bypass record labels, doesn’t that mean that our beloved hacks are merely the literary thugs holding the door open instead of dangling the keys? In a world of blogs, social media and digital distribution, anyone and everyone can have an informed opinion, but where the music press, and indeed its writers, thrived on the access, exclusivity and adulation, these barriers have long been removed since the advent of sending albums and promos electronically whizzing through the air. You could say, considerably less grandly, they’ve become facilitators and elevated aggregators of music largely already exposed, absorbed and criticised by the masses. Or janitors, if you will, keeping a close eye on the rowdy, over saturation of blog roll that threatens to clog up the regulated (ish) system.

The rise of the blog should arguably have sounded the death knell, giving sovereign opinion to the majority but, in many respects, far from undermining the gravitas of music journalism, it has heightened the need for an informed voice of authority and validation. A music writer’s classic objective has always been straightforward in that it’s a basic conveyance of opinion, regardless of how constructive, obnoxious or comical it might be. But with the majority of publications pandering and peddling the same content and towing the same cover lines, the need for differentiation and necessity of capturing readers’ imagination and trust has increasingly become more difficult. And with that blanket attitude, in a world where blog machines give fans an interactive, immediate forum and directly pander to the simple notion of “why read when you can listen?” we’re (yes, me) reduced to watching Almost Famous and reading back issues of the NME, smug in the knowledge that everyone’s a critic. Some just happen to be better at it.

www. kickingagainstthepricks. org By Daniel Dylan Wray An anti-website website --------------------Kicking Against The Pricks was, for a short time, a physical magazine with a difference. With its founder strictly against advertising, Issue 1 of the Sheffield based mag would accept donations in exchange for copies. Unfortunately not everyone is as goodnatured as Daniel Dylan Wray hoped. As he says, “it meant it didn’t work and I lost loads of money on it.” Also against the idea of yet another blog or website featuring tedious news to ensure it was constantly updated, Daniel launched www. kickingagainstthepricks.org, which posts new content (a ‘new issue’) once a month, keeping the content focussed and magazine aesthetic in place. Clever aye?

s i n g les & E Ps

01 Egyptian Hip Hop Some Reptiles Developed Wings (Moshi Moshi) Out Sept 20

At the tail end of 2009 we claimed that ‘Radd Pit’ - then a Myspace obsession of ours thanks to its quaking, Cure-like vocals and raining, ‘80s guitar lick was the best song of the year. Manchester schoolboys Egyptian Hip Hop were certain to be the chief romancers of 2010 and we were very excited. Thankfully, we still are. And ‘Radd Pit’ awarded a proper release on this four-track EP - has never seemed better. It could very well be the best song of this year too. Re-recorded and more fluid than before, it’s not been overhauled but buffed and remastered, the sweet organ breaks as intact as Alex Hewett’s trembling voice that warbles and continually threatens to crack under the weight of the song’s

adolescent emotion. Opener ‘Moon Crooner’ explores a camper side of ‘80s synth pop, making a far better job of sprightly, chiming disco than Golden Silvers ever did, helped along by the kind of excitable baseline that always made Metronomy so appealing. The pop out of the way, ‘Some Reptiles...’ then makes way for electro instrumental ‘Middle Name Period’ (a spidery track that goes through more breakdowns than Kerry Katona does in an average week) and ‘Native’ - six minutes of juggling oriental sounds and avoiding choruses as it lurches on. After all that initial excitement Egyptian Hip Hop are taking their time, but they’re still worthy of the hype.

Blue On Blue

Dam Mantle

The One

Summer Daze EP

Purple Arrow EP

Double Life

Kashmir Kid Return To Bombay City

(BlueOnBlue Records) Out Sept 27 -----

(Wichita) Out Now -----

(24th Century) Out Now -----

(Gut Instinct) Out Sept 27 -----

This self-released debut EP by London trio Blue On Blue couldn’t be more suitably titled. Channelling such sensory manipulators as Joy Division (the ‘Atmosphere’-a-like ‘Fallen’) and Jesus Mary Chain (‘Summer Daze’) one minute, and the dizzy, exuberance of early Boo Radleys and Young Marble Giants the next (‘Cherry Acid Drop’) it’s hypnotic stuff that also feels giddy and washed out like a Polaroid taken in the evening sun. What will really keep you warm this coming season though is ‘Cinnamon Swirl’ - the shortest and best track here, which features a beautifully simple guitar hook from 1991.

‘Purple Arrow’ only follows on from Dam Mantle’s ‘Grey’ EP in part - the part that sees Tom Marshall still hunched over a desk of wires making weird, glitchy music that you can’t quite dance to or fully enjoy while “entertaining guests”. That’s not to say that this latest collection of sonic nonsense is completely redundant though. It is, as the squealing title track attests thanks to its vague sense of uniformality, a leap toward listenable greatness for the young musician obsessed with noise - a notable stride away from the plain nutty ‘Grey’ and closer to Mantle’s awesome live show.

Having called his side project The One, perhaps Fair Ohs drummer Joe Ryan is trying to tell his fellow tropical punks something. Along with Emeson Nwolie - a man with a voice so soulful it makes Cee Lo sound like Axl Rose gargling glass Ryan has been experimenting with electronics for some time now and ‘Double Life’ spearheads the duo’s debut EP of the same name. Set to electronic drums, synthesiser flourishes and various swathes of dub production, it’s a little Womack & Womack and a lot Gnarls Barkley in late-night session mode. Smooth and sultry, The One could become Ryan’s sole concern.

For his debut release - and the first non-Goldielocks’ track on Gut Instinct - Kashmir Kid (aka Jahan Nazeer) squeezes into ‘Return To Bombay City’’s two minutes sixteen seconds the sound of Alex Kid raving his way through Miracle World, classic, squelching dubstep drops and deep dancehall bass bumps. It’s what’s got London’s urban radio station Rinse FM so worked up and you’d have to have very little interest in UK garage and dubstep to not be suitably impressed too. A punk approach to its particular brand of inner-city dance music, it’s playful where many others are unjustly self-indulgent.

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Reviews by M. Drake, S. Little, S. Stubbs

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warpaint

Warpaint’s debut album, ‘The Fool’, is not the kind of record you instantly love. You might not even like it for some time. It is, as they say, ‘a grower’, like any record you bought more than a year ago and still listen to. At best, it features two songs that might trouble the commercial world, although the ‘Polly’-esque hook of ‘Undertow’ is milked far too infrequently to bum-rush the charts, and the mathy, wailing ‘Composure’ quickly discards its catchy bits too as it returns to the eerie, droned-out place from whence it came. Something about it has clever ears giving it a second, third and fourteenth chance though, until its intricacies, extensive influences (from psych to post-punk to tribal rhythms to wistful folk harmonies) and straight up beauty become so glaringly obvious that you wonder how you ever missed them. Like when you realise your longterm best friend at school is actually pretty fit. How the hell did it get past you!? Famous people (and others, I’m sure) have noticed Warpaint’s charm since they formed in LA in 2004. The late Heath Ledger was a fan, as is Billy Zane, and when the band played London pre-Reading & Leeds Nicholas ‘About A Boy’ Hoult turned up, along with the cast of Transformers. And for the sake of clanging down one more showbiz name, John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers (the then boyfriend of guitarist and singer Emily Kokal) produced Warpaint’s debut EP, ‘Exquisite Corpse’, in 2008. Oh, and bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg has a sister who was a founding member of the band too

– Hollywood actress Shannyn Sossamon. All of this suggests that Warpaint are four very well connected young women who tear up the City of Angels, party with the stars and make music because they can. And that might be true, but they’re not fameseekers. ‘The Fool’ is uncompromising, anti-socialite, spiritual proof of that, even in its name. “Well, The Fool is the first card in the tarot deck,” ponders Jenny “and Emily and Theresa are really into the tarot, and it represents being ego-less and in a really strong place of vulnerability – kinda being naked without caring about how you’re being perceived. It’s about throwing yourself in the fire and not caring if you get burnt.” “Yeah,” adds drummer Stella Mozgawa who joined the band three weeks before they recorded the album. “It’s basically about self-sacrifice.” Jenny: “It’s not so much that that theme runs through our songs, but rather us putting our music out there in general, and the way Stella joined the band, not knowing what was going to happen but going for it.” Since Leeds Festival, Jenny and Stella have been in Amsterdam eating cake while Emily and fellow singing guitarist Theresa Wayman have been in Hamburg. Today they’re reconvening at Maida Vale Studios to record three songs for Radio One’s Rob Da Bank show. Jenny’s been up all night, having failed to execute a plan to “get stoned and pass out” (“It just didn’t happen,” she says “so I was staring at the

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Great albums are rarely loved instantly Photographer: Gabriel Green Writer: Stuart Stubbs

walls until we left this morning.”) while Stella energetically fills us in on Axl Rose gossip from the previous weekend, oxygen mask breaks ‘an all. “[Reading and Leeds] were really fun,” she says. “There wasn’t as many people at the Leeds show but I enjoy that. I like being the underdog. Because how can you know your worth as a band if you’re only surrounded by sycophant?” “For the first three years we just played in Los Angeles,” says Jenny “over and over and over. So people are familiar with us in LA, but that doesn’t mean that they’re familiar with you anywhere else. “I feel like we’ve met a lot of people who’ve helped us along the way in LA. And we might not have met them in San Francisco or somewhere else, but it’s kinda irritating – not to be negative – because there are so many bands there and so many people playing shows. It’s kinda like, ‘I’m in a band!’ ‘Oh really? So is everyone in the bar.’ But then that’s one way that has helped us because by being in LA you’ve got to stay on your toes and you’ve got to be good.” Stella says that the city has a “strange magnetism”. “The people you’re supposed to meet, you’ll meet,” she explains “and several times. They’ll keep popping up despite how sprawling it is. They’ll keep reappearing until you do something about it.” It all sounds like a serendipitous movie, and that suits Warpaint just fine, ‘The Fool’ as frequently cosmic as the band’s own beliefs. Like the

city itself, it has a ‘strange magnetism’, which is why it’s so hard to leave well alone. To belittle it to a snappy soundbite (which is no mean feat considering how many genres it fellates over the course of its nine songs and forty seven minutes), it sounds how Telepathe would if they’d been schooled on louche, meandering psych, minimal folk and rock guitars rather than commercial hip-hop and synthesisers. “You could say that we’re poppy, that we’re psychedelic, that we’re rock, that we’re a dance band...” says Jenny, and she’s right – Warpaint are the sum of all these parts. At one point, on ‘Baby’ – a track that manages to make five minutes of one acoustic guitar, tight vocal harmonies and nothing else feel like it’s over in a shot – they even sound like Cheryl Crow without damaging their sirenistic appeal. And that’s because, in a post Vivian Girls world where ‘DIY’ increasingly feels like a better word for ‘amateur’, this four-piece are offering us a girl group who write far out, expansive alt. pop like no one else. Nicholas ‘About A Boy’ Hoult might be chatting to Billy Zane while they do it, and the band’s LA hipness certainly hasn’t hindered their appeal back home and abroad (truth be told, their ties and general aesthetic were largely the most interesting aspects of the hit and miss ‘Exquisite Corpse’ EP) but there’s something about Warpaint and their confidently patient debut album that surpasses all the Hollywood fluff that deserves to be given a chance. And another. And another.

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zola jesus

What happens when an opera singer discovers Throbbing Gristle Photographer: Tom Cockram Writer: DK Goldstein

On stage, Nika Roza Danilova, perhaps better known as Zola Jesus, is timid and restrained. Draped in black from the capelike shrug hanging around her shoulders to the hardy boots upon her feet, she hunches over her mic with her bright blonde tresses covering most of her face. Her two accomplices, Rory Kane and Alex DeGroot are steadfast behind her on keys and samples, respectively, as she clomps around modestly, directing her spine-chilling croons towards the floor or back wall before pouring a glass of water over her head, brushing her hair back and thanking the crowd ahead of walking off. This is when we find her backstage, collapsed in a big, dark swivel chair, just a little damp but with a big smile on her face. The Wisconsin girl, who reaches a little over five foot, may exude a sinister and somewhat mysterious air live, but in person she’s your average, bubbly 21-year-old who had a crap time in school and is ecstatic to be finally coming into her own. She explains that high school was a matter of waiting out the years and plundering through, which is why she coined the alias Zola Jesus for herself. “The name I developed before I started high school,” she says. “I made it up for myself and wanted people to call me that so that they would stop talking to me because I didn’t get along with anyone in school. We didn’t have anything in common ever, so I just tried to alienate myself.” Nika’s fight against the small farming town of Merrill, WI, began with opera singing lessons at the age of ten. “I just wanted to be a really good singer,” she justifies “to the point of being willing to be in an opera, because pop singers

aren’t really good singers. When you think of someone that is the best at what they’re doing… it takes classical training to learn how to sing perfectly, whereas pop singers are really nasal. I felt like studying opera was the most extreme way to be a good singer.” Despite studying it for ten years on and off, Nika never performed in an opera. “I would make up my own operas,” she says “but there were never really any opportunities to be in them where I lived. The arts weren’t really big there.” As well as channelling opera into her compositions from a young age, Nika also became interested in more avant-garde music. “I liked pop music and soul in the beginning,” she states “but then I grew up with punk and from there I started discovering a lot of other experimental music through my older brother. Bands like The Residents and Throbbing Gristle; that cultivated me to be this person interested in the darker side of things.” Film and literature also affected her work. “I like John Carpenter [the director] and things like that. I like sci-fi and Philip K Dick the author, plus living in the country. Those are my influences,” she affirms matterof-factly. As she speaks Nika is concise, choosing her words carefully so as not to waste one more than is necessary to convey her point. Her music follows in a similar vein in that her songs are very clear cut, which is easily picked up on in her fourth album ‘Stridulum II’ – a reissue of her ‘Stridulum’ EP. Album opener ‘I Can’t Stand’ is a story of heartache from the perspective of the other lover. “It’s not easy to let it all go, but once in a while it’s good for your soul so don’t let it

get you down,” she drones over a slow, minimal beat. Current single ‘Night’ is about being safe together at the end of the night; the eerie echoes put to a choppy, tinny beat and little else, but when it comes to Nika’s darkly atmospheric sounds she doesn’t need anything more to help her create such a gutwrenching impact. ‘Manifest Destiny’ probably has the most going on of the whole album, with layers of industrial synths, clattering samples and belting vocals, which really come into their own as Nika howls agonizingly about being alienated from home and searching for the one. “I feel that when I’m up there I’m telling a story or having something to say,” she describes of her feelings on stage. “So when I say ‘you’ or ‘me’ it’s always me and I’m talking to the person in front of me. Every song has a meaning and purpose and I feel that what I sing needs no explanation.” Up until this summer Nika had been studying Philosophy and French at university, so even though she’s on her fourth LP, this is the first time she’s toured Europe because she didn’t want to defer. “I like to finish what I start,” she pronounces “and I feel that if I’d have taken a break I would never have gone back.” As well as dealing with her final exams, she also had to juggle writing and recording ‘Stridulum II’ to a strict deadline. “I had one week to write this record,” she beams, proud of the accomplishment. “I was on a deadline because they [US label Sacred Bones] needed it in time for whatever reason, and it was my exam week so I wrote it in between my exams. Plus, I was leaving for Los Angeles – that’s where my husband lives – so I had to have it done before I

left.” And with the help of DeGroot the two of them managed to get it recorded in time. “[DeGroot] recorded my vocals in a spare bedroom in the place I lived and he mixed it for me so it sounded a little higher quality,” she explains. “So it’s cleaner, absolutely, that was my intention. I went in to make a clean sounding record and I guess you can do it yourself, I didn’t know that.” Once the shy, awkward kid who didn’t want anyone to talk to her, with self-confessed anxiety issues, Zola Jesus is finally blossoming into an enigmatic flower, albeit a shadowy one, with the guts to stand on stage and tell everyone how she sees things. Soon she’ll be finishing up her month-long European tour before heading back to stake her ground in the US, but that doesn’t mean music is earning her keep yet. “Noooo, never,” she intones. “But I don’t have a day job, so my husband works and buys groceries,” she utters coyly. Which is probably why she has time, on top of her solo project, to collaborate with Kane on his electro-synth fusions when she can. “We both like to indulge in R&B music like Rihanna and stuff like that,” she chirrups. “So we get together and make those kinds of songs; very formulaic pop songs with auto-tuning.” Or she links up with This Song is a Mess But So Am I’s Freddy Ruppert and Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu via email to work on their Former Ghosts endeavour, which gets its official airing this November. The UK tour will be the first time the three have ever played in the same room together. “It’s gonna be a Former Ghosts, Zola Jesus, Xiu Xiu tour,” clarifies Nika “and it’s gonna be madness.”

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sauna youth

The ones that nearly got away Photographer: Owen Richards Writer: Matthias Scherer

It’s taken two months, two buses and two tube rides across London, but here we are: sitting down in a field with Sauna Youth, just after they’ve played a storming set at the cosy but hip Offset Festival. At least we think it was a storming set: their interviewer badly underestimated the slow-motion agony that is TFL on a Sunday and only caught the band’s last two songs. So, why the long wait for an interview? Well, since the band live in three different cities and only play a handful of shows a month, it’s been somewhat difficult to get everyone together. But since they are one of the most interesting UK punk rock bands around at the moment, we happily waited it out until Rich Phoenix (vocals), Lindsay Corstorphine (guitar), Christopher Murphy (bass) and Reza Mirehsan (drums) re-convened for this rare festival appearance. Song writing is inevitably a somewhat one-dimensional process. “I write most of the songs at my computer and e-mail them to everyone, and we all learn our parts separately,” says Lindsay. To laughter, he adds, “I’m not sure if that comes across live.” “We try and practice before shows, but we’ve definitely played live more often than we

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have practised,” Christopher acknowledges. All four are veterans of the UK punk scene (former projects include The Steal and Captain Everything) and they came together on a whim. Lindsay and Rich, who are based in London and Brighton, respectively, wrote and recorded the Sauna Youth demo tape in typically scattered fashion last autumn – “I don’t think the two of us were in the same room once during the recording,” says Rich – and common friends Reza and Christopher, who at that point neither owned a bass nor had played for some years, were drafted in. Despite all four working full-time jobs and the organisational hazards of the physical distance between them, Rich insists they take their band seriously. “We’re constantly doing bandrelated stuff because we do everything ourselves,” he says. “We design our T-shirts, book our own shows and do the artwork. The band’s something that’s always there.” Reza agrees: “It’s not like we’re trying to achieve everything – it’s more natural than that. We just do what we can, when we can, and try to enjoy it.” That attitude of only doing

what feels right is apparent in the way the band produce and distribute their releases (two tapes and a 7”, with an LP on the way) – independently or with help from friends (Rich’s girlfriend wrote a short story that appears on their latest tape, and Patrick from Cold Pumas contributed one to their demo) rather than industry insiders – and the way they approach playing shows. Rich looks at the others: “I think we’re all aware that the most fun shows we play take place outside of conventional venues. That appropriation of places is interesting. It creates a different atmosphere and headspace for people. To celebrate the release of our last tape we played a show at this community centre in Brighton, which is an all-ages and no alcohol venue, and it was great – everyone walking around with cups of tea and stuff like that, a real group effort.” The financing for the ‘Youth’ 7” EP was similarly uncomplicated – a mate just lent them the money. “So the reason for this interview is partly motivated by debt,” Rich smiles. “We owe a good friend £550 and we need to sell records to pay him off,” he explains. “And people who read this might go, ‘Oh, they sound

quite interesting, I’ll buy their record.’ So hopefully, a day after your next issue comes out, I’ll get like… 4 more orders in my Paypal account.” The record and the tapes contain a brand of shouty, catchy garage punk that owes its drive to an underrated drummer. “I’m obsessed with that Ramones drumbeat,” enthuses Lindsay. “All our songs are 200bpm or faster, and the best thing about being in this band is trying to perfect that song structure. And punishing Reza by making him play these songs. But he rises to the challenge every time.” Scattered around the releases are a couple of sonic surprises – a [classic UK punk band] Snuff cover re-arranged with the help of a Rolling Stones sample, a remix of one of their own songs in the mould of ambient artist William Basinski, and the two aforementioned short stories, which fill the respective B-sides of the two Sauna Youth tapes. Not very common things to do on a punk rock cassette, is it? “Why not?” asks Lindsay. “We could say that we did it because Black Flag did it on ‘Family Man’. But it’s not that. It’s just like ‘why not?’ Why wouldn’t you wanna put a good story on there?” On evidence of the results we’d be foolish to disagree.

prizes

Say my name, say my name Photographer: Nancy Thornber Writer: Ian Roebuck

“The Hot Baps. The Inquisition of the C*nt. Wild Bees... or maybe it was just The Baps.” Hari, Noam and Scott of the recently named Prizes are three friends demonstrating that a talent for music doesn’t necessarily extend to a way with words. “We had a short list, well a long list and we started out with the most ridiculous ones thinking good stuff will come out of it,” explains Hari, the savvy soul of Prizes, a sharp, erudite and charming man, despite his band name choices. “None of them are serious suggestions,” continues Noam, Prizes Israeli keyboardist, programmer and Belushi-esque bad boy. “We thought we’d have trouble in ensuing publications.” “They’re truly terrible names” adds Scott, the level headed Leeds lad on bass summing up in standard fashion. Maybe Prizes diction isn’t quite as brusque as first predicted. A name change wouldn’t be pertinent if not for Prizes unique, glorious glow of sound. Under the name Treasure their glittering, sample-heavy hazepop caused a ripple through the blogosphere. Heads turned and trouble followed. “I really wanted to be called Treasure,” says Hari “and when I looked it up on Google and

Myspace I saw there were so many of them, so I thought surely this is a safe bet. I didn’t want it to blow up but we got this e-mail saying we’ve seen you on Stereogum and Pitchfork and we’ve been Treasure longer. I listened to about ten seconds then realised it doesn’t matter if they’re any good, we can’t carry on.” So Treasure UK reluctantly bowed down to Treasure Brooklyn (it’s a wonder anything gets done in that corner of New York) and somewhat reluctantly became Prizes. “We just got fed up of going back and forth in the end,” they say. The band is maturing under their new moniker, though. This time last year Hari was building layers and lyrics from his home, pushing his wares through the web and producing sample-led, languid beauties that borrowed heavily from Fleetwood Mac and Bowies ‘Hunky Dory’. Waaga and Lefse records soon showed interest in his project. “Yeah I didn’t think that one through,” he says. “Not sure how they were going to get clearance!” Hari soon met Noam at a Carnaby Street store (working not browsing) and then Scott through the Internet and Prizes sparked into life on stage. It must be hard to leave the comfort and controlled environment that the blog

blanket provides though, and, as with any modern musical project, projection through the Internet is essential to finding a voice. “Well, obviously it’s a lot more instant than back in the day where you’d make twenty demos then send them off,” notes Hari. “With it being right there I find I have to restrict myself.” And it’s good for the odd Google ego trip, I presume? “Every week,” he chuckles, “Every hour,” chips in Noam. Self-deprecation is a common theme to our chat, and all three characters are astute to the realms of absurdity that interviews provide. “At the start I read everything and it was exciting,” says Hari “and then you read odd things. For instance there was a picture of me in an Anthrax t-shirt and someone wrote on Twitter that I looked pretentious in it. I thought let’s just stop reading this.” Hari shrugs it off with a smile, his acceptance born out of familiarity. Prizes Internet presence can only be helped by the bands striking videos for the tracks ‘Canada’ and ‘Rumours’. Jamie Harley’s nostalgic visuals have added romantic poise to works from Memory Tapes and His Clancyness but it’s with Prizes the marriage seems destined for

ruby anniversary pressies. His distorted, distant take on Pamela’s sex tape (‘Canada’) and Diana’s nuptials (‘Rumours’) ache with poignancy, especially in tandem with Hari’s longing lyrics. Could there be a theme going on with ill-fated couples? Maybe another sex tape will feature again? Hari laughs: “Jamie told me he was editing the ‘Canada’ video on the train and getting loads of weird looks for it.” Less ‘pervert!’ looks came Jamie’s way at a recent Prizes show, the bill also featuring Memoryhouse, How to Dress Well and Visions of Trees and three hours of visuals from the filmmaker. “He catered for each band individually and gave the entire night a special feeling,” Noam states, clearly impressed. There’s the imminent addition of a drummer into Prizes’ world too. “He’s called James and yep we met him on the Internet as well,” says Hari. “He likes Guided by Voices so he’s in,” deadpans Scott. So it seems the one-man bedroom band is not just branching out but well and truly over, and a sound that seemed ready to slide into the diminishing deck-chair-chillwave scene now sits apart in its own stylish beat. And with their own name and everything.

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let it all out After their hardest year yet, !!! frontman Nic Offer talks Reef Younis through the less wild than expected ‘Strange Weather, Isn’t It?’ and in doing so explains how these New Yorkers are more punk than ever. Photographer: Guy Eppel Writer: Reef Younis It might be the release of Chk Chk Chk’s (!!!) first album in three years, or perhaps the gruelling global tour that’ll see the band more or less play up to the first day of your advent calendar, but after three days worth of hustling and hoping, juggling time zones and pinging countless emails back and forth, we reach the conclusion that Nic Offer is a difficult man to pin down. “Yeah, sorry, we’ve been travelling around so it’s kind of easier to co-ordinate time zones this way,” Nic explains, crackling down a trans-Atlantic phone line. “I’m glad we’ve finally got to do this.” It’s been a few years of upheaval for the band, with John Pugh leaving in 2007 to concentrate on his own project and Jerry Fuchs’ tragic death after falling down an elevator shaft, but !!!, it seems, are a band resolute to overcome any obstacle. Imbibed with a reckless punk spirit, they’ve long been considered one of the early purveyors of dance punk continued and popularised, to some extent, by the heavyweights of NYC: the funk of The Rapture; the condensed chaos of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs; the electronic gloss of LCD Soundsystem; and the distorted creativity of TV on the Radio. As club-friendly as any contemporary cross over, they’ve always carried a frenetic dance floor appeal, meeting writhing funk rhythms with Nic’s sultry murmurs and excitable yelp. But things are a little different this time round and here we find them, over a decade and four albums into their career, on the cusp of the US leg of a punishing album tour. Not that Nic sees it that way.

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“We don’t think of it as punishing,” he says. “When we did the last big tour we lost a few people along the way but that was after twelve years of touring so, at this point, we’re always excited to get back on the road. It’s like you get really strong the more you play and you become a finely tuned machine, so by the time we hit the UK we should have everything real tight and it’ll be kick ass.” Nic’s excitement is palpable and it’s particularly impressive considering the adversity he’s faced, not just of the last few months, but for the duration of !!!’s lively 14 years.With band members spread far and wide, an ever-revolving line up, deaths, departures and a constant battle to deliver against a punk funk/dance tag that, rightly or wrongly, throws up a world of connotations, !!!’s desire to challenge expectations is no less diminished, despite the lukewarm reaction to their latest LP. “It never works out like you want it to but I take it for what it is and learn what I can from it and don’t let the parts that stroke my ego inflate it too much,” he explains. “It’s always a bit dangerous to play around in that area but it’s an interesting way to see what the problems are with it [the album] and the failures and successes, but I’m not going to say I’m 100% happy with the reaction. At the end of the day, as long as you’re 100% happy with the record, that’s all that matters. “You try and make every song as good as it can be, and every song on there we put everything into.When I think of the record it’s like…,” Nic pauses for thought. “Whatever criticisms people have, whatever songs they point to, someone else will point to it as the highlight. Singles have a way of uniting everyone and on this album perhaps a few more songs are more for specific people, and a few less people are going to like these songs, and I guess that’s how it’s

I’ll have differing opinions, but, for me, our best records are ‘Myth Takes’ and this last record. It might not be the critical consensus but I think you need to wait and look back on it in twenty years. Let it sit for a while. That isn’t to say I couldn’t pick it apart but the things I’d want to improve aren’t necessarily the things people pick up on and write about.” Having written and recorded the album in Berlin, Nic readily admits the city had an influence on the album’s outcome but is also quick to establish it was a decision as much born of opportunity as it was the appeal of hanging out in one of the world’s premier club capitals. “It was a chance that presented itself and it would have been foolish not to take it,” he says. “We don’t all live in the same town so we need to pick a place to be together.There was also the whole romance of it and the

“You make the record from the space you’re in at that time…this record was definitely one of the hardest we’ve made” going to be with this record. For me, I try and pick it apart and I still love it.” It’s this single-mindedness that kept !!! from dissolving when times got tough. From the early days of not being considered punk enough by the die-hards, to constant critical comparisons with the energy and agitation of their early work, they’re still a band streamlining and refining the vigour of their debut and sophomore albums. “This album is different.We’ve made a record before that we weren’t completely satisfied with when we made ‘Louden Up Now’ – we felt we could have made a better record. It wasn’t such a case of we were overly immersed in it, we were probably just a bit rushed. But perhaps that was the fault

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with this record; we didn’t take a step back.” Although Nic’s outlook regarding new album ‘Strange Weather, Isn’t it?’ errs on the personal, it’s not simply a case of being overly attached to the record. Indeed, it’s that same level of intimacy, blunt, tenacious honesty and edgy vibrancy that’s been !!!’s lifeblood for their entire career, even if it’s not as overt this time around. “I still enjoy it and I guess when I’ve thought that a band has made a record they’re not totally satisfied with they weren’t trying their hardest or they weren’t in the right place, but that wasn’t the case with this one and that’s why I feel so confident in it. “At the end of the day, I can give you my personal review of all the earlier records, and

club scene being so different and something we could soak up and see if it had an influence on the record.” And it did. ‘Strange Weather…’ carries rapier flashes of the trademark !!! gnashing, loose-limbed intensity but there’s a darkness and a measured minimalism that lends the album a new, focused control – a claim not often levelled at a band often accused of letting their indulgent, progressive approach get the better of them. “In some ways it also came out of a conversation I was having with a friend and she was kind of complaining about the last record, saying it was too long and jammy. Like I said, I love that record, so I guess that kind of input helped us focus and strip it down and bring it to its essence by putting only what needed to be there in there. “But you’re always trying to use your environment as an influence.We were attracted to the minimalism of CAN, Stereolab, Neu! and it seems people are always overplaying the funk and sometimes it’s good to settle into something simple. “Berlin had some influence but we were in a fresh environment that stimulated us in different ways, and then we could go out and be inspired by the club. At the end of the day it was exciting and it was fun going out and seeing how people dance and react to club music. It’s a reference point any band should work with because that simplicity keeps you on the right path.” !!! are a band who invest everything in what they do.There’s a wholehearted conviction and a steadfast belief, and it’s arguably one of the reasons why, for some, their records struggle to replicate the power and intensity of their ballistic live show. “Some of the shows we’ve played this year have been the best we’ve ever played and a lot of the new songs in the set are taking over,” says Nic. “We just enjoy doing what we do best, and I think that comes across.” But, for all the adversity of the last two years there’s a very real sense that this album allowed !!! to consign and release the spectre

of those events. “You make the record from the space you’re in at that time, and everything that we went through is there in the record and some things definitely came out in that for sure.Your music is you – it’s you expressing yourself and the things you’re going through at the time. Our records are that and this record was definitely one of the hardest we’ve made.” But for a band as progressive as !!!, looking anything but forward would be a drastic, literal change in direction. Never a band content to sit back and amplify their success of that time, Nic’s keen to point out that there’s a vast difference between being forward thinking and having a set plan. “You make each record along the way and each record we’ve made we didn’t know what it would be until we came to make it. We’ve never sat with any label and said, ‘we’re going to do this’ or ‘let’s do this’, and it takes us a while because we like to change the perspective. I think you learn so much from making a record – it helps make the next record better.We’ve done things with this one that we never thought we could do and we feel as though it’s opened a door for us that we’re intrigued to go through. “I’ve always looked at Bowie and Blur as the reference points. I like the bands where each record is different and they’re moving to some other place and if you like an artist, you should like the things they’re exploring and trust in where they’re going. And for us, you try and be the artist you enjoy.That’s what’s exciting about a band; their journey.” !!!’s journey has been more turbulent than most and while the last few months haven’t exactly seen many happy endings, at no point do you feel their longevity, creativity or durability will cede a millimetre. And why would it? Having faced down and fought from their beginning it could be why they feel that three exclamation marks is an apt representation of who they are and what they’re about. After all, a full stop is the sign of a quitter, right? “I think of this generation we were the first band to make a dance/punk record and with it being where we were and where we were coming from it kind of made sense. I felt like we weathered it fairly well and when we came out of it people didn’t think that punk funk or dance punk was this dead movement. But at a certain point, you tend to get comfortable with that label. “If you take glam, you might take Roxy Music and Bowie and T-Rex, and they’re all different from each other but they all sit well under that title. Every band is going to face that at some point and it’s their job to push it beyond that. “We just want to push it further and further, throw the paint on canvas, push it around and see what we come up with. I definitely see open doors and there’s still dance music playing in the hallway and that’s the way I want to go.We don’t have it in us to make a country record.We’re still hit by a groove and we’re still a bunch of punks.”

avi buffalo

For the tornado of feedback that they are on stage, they’re a quiet bunch Photographer: Holly Lucas Writer: Daniel Dylan Wray

Sub Pop’s assault on the summer has taken many musical varieties this year, but none have been sweeter than the sounds of Avi Buffalo’s debut LP – an album littered with lush harmonies, sweeping arrangements and seamless pop gems, all stemming from the mind of an eighteenyear-old named Avi, from Long Beach, California. We tried to catch up with him, Arin Fazio (bass) and Sheridan Riley (drums) a while back, only to be stopped by a hospitalising bout of food poisoning. Finally we find the trio having played at Green Man festival; one of their first UK shows as a three-piece, following the departure of keyboardist Rebecca Coleman. Live, Avi Buffalo is a much more charged-up, brutal affair than on record, their leader hunched over his guitar, his hands a pink blur as he frantically mangles and assaults the fret board on the edge of molestation. He’s a fan of making noise (which he describes as “really tasteless, brutal speaker gargling”) to such a degree that he is no longer permitted by police to practice in his garage back home. I ask is this an intended direction for the new record, to which Avi replies, “Maybe. I’d definitely like more guitar on the next record.”

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The change in tone from sweeter folk to abrasive screeching is perhaps a result of necessity as much as it is an intended musical direction. Losing their keyboard player and backing singer, who was largely responsible for the sweet onrecord harmonising, seems to have affected the band’s sonic approach to things. They all nod in quiet agreement when asked if they’ll remain a three-piece. It seems it may be a little too soon to discuss the matter in depth. Avi has a stark intensity to him though, his eyes persistently transfixed into your retinas, almost reversing the role of who is questioning who. Avi Buffalo have been the ‘band to interview’ for a while though. It’s been as busy year already, and surely signing with Sub Pop was a big deal? They all bounce their heads in solid, unified agreement. “Oh yeah, it was huge, a really big deal…They’ve been so great and supportive.” And the extensive touring, how has that been? They all solemnly nod and murmur “yeah” but their eyes say more than their mouths do. While they are clearly relishing their musical endeavours they look frazzled. “But we have a month off coming up soon, which we’re looking forward to. We want to

practice on our instruments.” That doesn’t sound like time off to me. That sounds like writing news songs together in practice. “No,” deadpans Avi “on our own. I think we all want to get a little better on our instruments, I’m going to take some guitar lessons…and hopefully learn some piano.” It’s hard not to chuckle at this. Avi, who is now nineteen, is by far the most gifted guitar player I see all weekend at Green Man. Likewise, when I bring up the age factor of the band, he instantly and earnestly states, “I mean, I’m nearly twenty now, I’m trying to get away from the whole high school thing.” That’s where the band met, in high school, and they’ve gone straight from graduating to being in a full-time touring band. They all “definitely” plan to go to college though, and can see the pros and cons of choosing the band over the life of an average teen. “I’m not sure if there are aspects of growing up that we’re missing out on or not,” ponders Avi. “It’s hard to tell when it’s happening at the time. If we are missing out on some aspects then we’re learning from other aspects [by being in a band].”

Recently they’ve played with a huge array of people, supporting Modest Mouse, Wolf Parade, Blitzen Trapper and being asked by Jim James to support My Morning Jacket at the Greek theatre in L.A, a venue they watched the very same band in as punters only a year earlier. “Touring with people who are musical influences has been amazing,” enthuses Avi. “We’ve learnt so much from them about being in a band… on a personal level even more than on a musical level.” Avi Buffalo’s musical aspirations coupled with their enthusiasm and grounded personalities all point to a prosperous and auspicious rise in the music world, while their leader has serious potential to become one of the guitar virtuoso’s of our generation, following in the footsteps of one of his heroes Nels Cline. I ask what is it about the Wilco guitarist that Avi admires? He fumbles around, words half falling out of his mouth, half constructed sentences meandering, until he finally smirks, “he’s just Nels Cline.” And for now Avi Buffalo seem quite content at being just that – no pretence, no bullshit, no disillusionment, just Avi Buffalo.

peepholes

They don’t make it easy on themselves Photographer: Holly Lucas Writer: Stuart Stubbs

Brighton duo Peepholes are selfsaboteurs. In a musical climate where the forecast is ‘you should be so lucky’, Katia Barrett and Nick Carlisle tussle not with the terminally ill music machine for pays and lays like the rest but with themselves. “Musician” has become a gruelling profession in an age of zero record sales and digital saturation, and Peepholes have always made it that little bit harder on themselves. “Our band works around us,” explains Katia (or Kat). “We never got a third person, which would have been easier, we just kept trying to make things louder ourselves and different. We’re starting to finally sound like there’s more than two people in the band now.” “Our setup is a drumkit and then one musical source, if you like, which is a keyboard that only plays one note at a time,” continues Nick “so there’s a hell of a lot of restriction, and that’s obviously a bit of a challenge. Even if you do have some musical idea that you want to express you probably won’t be able to on that setup anyway, so you have to work against your best wishes and see what comes out.” Kat and Nick met in Brighton and have been playing as a pair

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for the last four years, although “it feels like we’ve only been getting going within the last year,” says Nick “not just in terms of the small bit of attention that we’re getting but in terms of our sound coming together.” Surprisingly, this is their first interview, conducted in a backroom of a north London pub. “It’d be unfair to introduce someone to this,” smiles Kat, explaining why they didn’t simply get a third member to fill out Peepholes’ sound. “We’re like weird siblings who squabble a lot. It’d be horrible for someone else to have to pick a side.” “No matter what we’ve sounded like in the past, we’ve always sounded like there isn’t really enough going on, and I like that,” says Nick. “That’s my main reason to be resistant to introducing someone else, because the moment it becomes the standard guitar, bass and drums, it becomes hard to sound new. Or new to me anyway.” The self-sabotage is more a case of self-discipline, really; a necessity that’s finally lead the band to their current sound – a mixture of static-surfing analogue synth chords, selftaught, tom-heavy drums and caterwaul vocals, not unlike the sounds found on early Gentle

Friendly EP’s, which perhaps points to why ‘Kingdom’, Peepholes’ new mini album, is being released on 12” by Upset The Rhythm. “We actually started out as a very quiet band,” laughs Nick. “We had this Chinese violin. And the whole thing is, the space that you’re in dictates what kind of music you make, and we were in Kat’s bedsit, so we couldn’t keep people awake. It was once we started using rehearsal rooms that it changed and we turned it up.” “I used to play drums on this Yamaha pad thing,” says Kat. “I’d never played drums before. I won it on Ebay and I’m sure there were two other people bidding on it. One of them was Mary something and I’m sure it was a mum buying it for her son, and I pinched it at the last second. I’m really proud of that buy.” “The first year we were properly doing this it was guitar and drums,” continues Nick “and then the second year we went through effects pedals…” “No, we went through the Casio thing…” says Kat. Nick: “Oh yeah, so that was another year, and then probably 2009 we started using my old analogue synth and came across a chaos pad…” Kat: “I think once we settled on instruments – because we’d swap around all the time – then it became what it is now.” ‘Kingdom’ is a record worth four years of experimentation. It sounds weird and otherworldly and rhythmic and playful. And – in its closing seven minutes and twenty-five seconds called ‘Carnivore’ – it sounds deafeningly destructive and more than a little insane. It does not sound like the conventional drums and guitar Peepholes we first heard a year or so ago. It does not sound conventional at all, which helps explain – along with the fact that Kat now lives in London – why Peepholes haven’t been shovelled in the current Brighton DIY scene. “That’s more garagey,” says Kat “which has come back in a big way… They [chief promoters Sex Is Disgusting] are friends

of ours but I dunno, reliving the garage thing…” Kat trails off. “I feel like we’re going against something a little bit, just at the moment.” “This is a little bit boring,” announces Nick “but it is to do with our instrumentation. Even if we wanted to sound like those bands, and I’m sure we’re influenced by them in some way – I mean, I like a lot of them – we couldn’t possibly anyway, because we’ve got a synth.” And there’s the fact that your songs don’t remotely follow a verse/chorus structure. That sets Peepholes apart, and plants a foot closer to dance music in many respects. And, in amongst all the clicking of drum sticks and wall of static, ‘Kingdom’ feels a bit emotional somehow. It’s just a little difficult to decide what emotions are in

there. “Oh it has its moments,” laughs Kat. “It has all of its moments.” “It’s definitely not brooding,” rules Nick. “It’s not Joy Division… I think it’s emotionless.” Kat: “Really!? ‘Carnivore’ is full of emotion.” Nick: “Is it? I think it’s full of events.” Kat: “Emotional events.” Nick: “I don’t know if they’re events of the human heart. It’s architecture. It’s buildings falling over… ‘Sleep In the Shower’ is pretty happy. I would say it’s upbeat and destructive.” Intentionally? Nick: “Definitely.” As with any new band these days – lest we not forget the “age of zero record sales” – playing live is a big part of

Peepholes life, and it’s something they’re getting more… err… ‘serious’ about. “Nick’s moving a little more than he used to now,” says Kat. “I was just so frightened before,” he nods “just of what Kat was going to do at any point in the set. What we do is – well, every fifth show we do – we finish a song an hour before and then play it out. What they don’t know tonight is what they can expect is that from the second song we’re probably going to fall apart.” Ok, not ‘sabotage’ and not ‘serious’. Confident. Peepholes are getting more confident at playing live. “It used to be a lot more slapstick,” notes Kat. “There’s more pouting, and I’m always wary of my ‘drum mouth’, which I think is like this…” Kat freezes in a drumming pose and sticks

out her chin. “It’s like you’re always about to say something but don’t,” says Nick. “We used to wear masks sometimes,” says Kat “but every outfit we’d wear would be plagued with disaster.” “We played this show dressed in these jellyfish costumes we’d made,” explains Nick. “Well, I say jellyfish, it wasn’t like they looked that much like jellyfish.” Kat: “I spent ages on those, they DID look like jellyfish.” Nick: “Well, I thought it looked like we were in strange domes, like abstract jellyfish. But the thing about this was that the tentacles would get wrapped up in our instruments. It’d pull your head all over the place and it became impossible to play… I think that was the start of my back problems.”

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There are rumours circulating that Fever Ray is soon to be no more, so what’s with these new, frankly horrific characters from the depths of Karin Dreijer Andersson’s imagination? Photographer: Jörgen Ringstrand Writer: Polly Rappaport Costumes: Andreas Nilsson

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t’s pissing down wi--th rain in Brixton, London, and I’ve just been ushered into a starkly furnished dressing room, offered a place on either of two well-worn sofas, and told simply, “Karin will be along in a minute.” Last we saw of Fever Ray’s Karin Dreijer Andersson, she was accepting a Swedish Grammy for Best Artist, decked out in a parody of Lady Gaga’s head-to-toe red lace ensemble, with the addition of a mouthless, melted face mask. Her acceptance speech was a growling gargle that had us thinking she was going to vomit. Youtube it.There’s a bald rubber mask resting limply on a nearby table. I choose to focus on some socks drying on the window ledge instead. It’s hard to know what to expect from this encounter. For all intents and purposes, Fever Ray is the new Bjork, with her penchant for decadent, artfully eccentric costumes, strikingly candid lyrics, filtered, elfin/goblin vocals, and eerie, evocative synth and beat-based music. The name Fever Ray is, in fact, Karin’s own description of her searing, icy sound. Her other guise is as one half of The Knife, a slightly more aggressive electronic project shared with her brother Olof, also a project prone to masks and vocal effects. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what Karin looks or sounds like.What I do know is that this is the third stop of a six-gig tour and that although I am sat waiting in a room with some socks and a creepy mask, I’m not waiting for my turn – this is the only interview Fever Ray is doing in London. After all, why get the press involved in what is more than likely just a final victory lap? That said, what am I doing here? I’m either about to have an audience with a demon-voiced melty mask, who will tell me in no uncertain terms that This Is It, or… Or what? The door opens. “This is Karin, you have an hour.”The rubber mask and I have been joined by a slender woman in jeans and a big, cosy grey jumper with cats on it, who removes the socks from the window so it can close, checks the other window is shut, asks if I would like water or tea, and curls up on the other sofa, playing intermittently with a black elastic on her wrist or the ends of her auburn-blonde hair.This is Karin: the artist behind the complex character of Fever Ray, the haunting vocals, the naked lyrics, and the thrillingly complex electronic compositions. She speaks carefully, thoughtfully, frequently to the opposite wall, yet at the same time is completely open and honest.There is inherent warmth about her and a good-natured impulsiveness. I am talking to an intelligent, passionate artist, who, so it sounds, always has something in the works, and, so we hope, never shuts the door on a project. L&Q: I’ve heard a rumour that this is the last tour? KDA: “For this album, yes, and I don’t know when the next album will happen, so it could be… I mean, we will not book any more shows for a very, very long time.” L&Q:The same rumour was going round last year – that you would be playing your last shows. KDA: “I never said last shows! [laughs] I don’t

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know who said that.We were thinking of closing down Fever Ray touring last year, but then we had a lot of energy left and there were things that were still interesting to continue working with on the stage. So this year we did one show in April, and these six shows in September… But none after that.” L&Q: So if it’s just a six-show tour, why have these new costumes and characters been introduced? KDA: “We just wanted to proceed. I’ve been working very closely with Andreas Nilsson, he is an artist who has been doing many videos for Fever Ray and The Knife, and also working on the live shows and we just wanted to continue, to find out where it ended on the last tour and

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make it progress. I think these new characters are a good inspiration for what will happen next after this run.” L&Q: Somewhere between then and now, you and your brother wrote an opera as The Knife, ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’, based on Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’. How involved were you in that? KDA: “Musically I was involved everywhere, in some tracks less than others.We were working in Berlin, where Olof lives, and also Matt Sims, and Janine (Rostron) – in fact, all three live in Berlin! – so we were mostly working in Berlin and sometimes in Stockholm or Copenhagen, and we worked for two years. It was a long project.”

L&Q:Was that part of why Fever Ray took a break for a bit, or were you involved in both at the same time? KDA: “It was pretty much at the same time. I mean, we were finished with the music in June last year, and that was when I was touring the most, I think. So, yes, both projects were happening at the same time!” L&Q:When you first started Fever Ray, you seemed pretty adamant that there was no character, that you were just seeing where the music took you. But a character has emerged. Did working on two things at once affect Fever Ray’s character development? KDA: “Oh yes! For me it had similarities. In Darwin, for example, time was something we

discussed a lot because we wanted to work in different time spaces, like this very long time from the Big Bang until today, and also the time space of Darwin’s life, from when he was born until now.That was something that in some way has affected the Fever Ray work. I can’t say how, but when we were discussing it and I was thinking about it a lot, how to relate to time, and when you talk in school about the time that humans have existed it’s like this [holds thumb and index finger a few millimetres apart] and the rest is like this [holding arms out as far as they can go] and it’s so hard to ever understand. I also read a lot of letters between Charles Darwin and his wife, and his ideas about society and how people worked made him seem really… human. He was a humanist and had very controversial ideas about what a human is and the way he and his wife looked upon family, it puts perspective on what life is today. It was interesting in so many different ways to study these concepts, and something quite rare for a group of musicians to do.” L&Q:Your lyrics are very personal, very human, paired with controlled, synthetic music. Does the music serve as a mask for some of the raw feelings to hide behind? KDA: “I don’t see it as hiding, though that is of course one way of looking at it, but I think if you tell something through a character, or through a very synthetic sound, it gets even more intense, you boil it down to the only thing that’s needed to know or say. Sometimes I just want very exact words - to use as little as possible to say something big. I like it when something is very clear, direct. For me, it’s facts, it’s like reading a map, which I like. I think a lot of things are so complicated around us, so it’s nice when something is what it is.When I wrote the lyrics for the Fever Ray album… It was six months in my life when I had been at home with a screaming baby. In Sweden, you are very isolated when you become a mother, it’s like, now must stay at home.Then, after six or seven months I went to my studio, and when I look back on it, it’s about that paranoia you get from being at home all of a sudden – you’ve had all the people around you, your friends, just disappear. In Sweden it’s not such a social life, it’s cold most of the year, you don’t meet people outside, you’re outside just to run to your car or run into the supermarket or something, and the summer is so short, about two weeks, and the other fifty weeks are cold. I think people are very lonely. And the second kind of isolation, when you become a mother, you’re just thrown into some kind of biological mess all of a sudden. As a feminist, everything is about gender construction, and then you meet people from these mothers healthcare institutions, and they deeply believe that all female humans are born just to raise and breastfeed children! And that was a huge shock the first time, I had lived a very free life before then, I had been playing music, but you’re not expected to go back to work, and most women don’t. All these well-educated women all of a sudden lose half their identity, and that was really frightening for me. [Heavy, thoughtful pause, then laughs] Yeah, so the album is about that time!” L&Q: It sounds terrifying. KDA: “The problem is that you’re expected to act a certain way as a mother, and I deeply fight against that. My oldest daughter is seven now, past the hardest first years, and it’s fantastic, and I think it’s very unfair for women – and men – to have to handle having children in a certain way. Also I don’t think you should have this predetermined role, just because you are a woman.” L&Q: Has your involvement in feminism had an impact on your work, especially after such a frightening introduction to motherhood?

“This could be the last tour. I mean, we’re not going to book another show for a very, very long time” www.loudandquiet.com

“People in suits are really scary. You don’t know anything about someone who’s wearing a suit” 30

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KDA: “Absolutely, and it’s something you have to go back to and study because it changes so much according to culture.We have a certain way of seeing feminism in Sweden, it poses interesting political questions, and that’s what I’m most interested in, class and culture are subjects I want to work with.” L&Q: Are you into politics? KDA: “I’m not part of a political party at all, no. [she says firmly].Well, yes, a little bit. [laughs] There is a feminist party in Sweden, and they can’t get any money from the government for their campaign, so The Knife gave money to the feminist party and that got them really good publicity, and Benny Andersson, from ABBA, he gives them a lot of money every year, and that’s great. Also there’s a summer camp in Sweden, Popkollo, for girls only to learn and play instruments, as well as music production and electronic music production. I was there for the first time this summer, to lecture about electro composition. It was fantastic. I think it’s really important because there are so few female musicians and producers. It was so hard when I was little – I still hate going into music shops, guitar shops, whatever. All these men just stare and stare at you and you feel like an idiot.” L&Q:When did you start playing music? KDA: “I started playing guitar when I was ten, and then I started my first band when I was fourteen, at school.When I was nineteen I started this high school indie rock band [laughs] and I’ve been playing ever since then.” L&Q: Is it easier to work on your own than as part of a band? KDA: “I don’t know… [giggling] I don’t know if you’d call it a band, working with my brother! [laughs] Of course it’s easier to work on your own in one sense, but then you have to make all these decisions yourself, it’s so much more up to you and that can be really boring. You get really fed up with yourself. It’s really good to work with other people, and if that’s not in a band, it can be in a collaboration.” L&Q: Have you done any collaborations as Fever Ray? KDA: “We’ve been doing a track for a film, all five of us [the other four being the currently rather ghastly looking characters that are Fever Ray’s live band] have been writing a piece together – it’s the first time we have really been working all together.The other collaboration was The Knife doing ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’ with Matt and Janine.” L&Q: So about these new Fever Ray characters, the new concept, was that your idea? KDA: “I knew I wanted a change.The things we did before, we had done modifications – I started off with a painted face and in a very shamanic or pagan sort of dress, then I turned into something that was more gothic. Still I was very human, I think. And now… I’m not. [laughs] It’s so interesting to try out how you experience and how you perform the music, through these filters, because for me it is very different. It’s very minimal, maybe. I don’t know but it’s a big difference and I didn’t want it to be… There’s nothing religious about it. L&Q: Eh… What? KDA: “I think some people thought it was, and I was a bit afraid that it was seen as a religious ritual, black magic or nature religion, which it’s just not about. [laughing, possibly at the expression on my face] So, now it looks like someone’s kicked off a party at the boring office gathering. [still giggling] We just wanted to take another turn and see how it changed things.” L&Q: According to the website, the band are now Wall Street Zombies and you are their Apocalyptic Puppet Master. Sounds good, I love it! KDA: “Yes, me too! I’m controlling the capitalists from the stage – that would be great,

I could press the red button.” L&Q: Do you still play in almost total darkness? KDA: “We have double the number of lamps now. But I think it’s important to find that balance, you don’t want to see everything on stage and it’s good to have your own ideas about what’s going on. It’s still a hard thing, with the live performance, what it’s really about. I think we need to start experimenting with it, because we’re not there to show our cool clothes, it’s not a fashion show. I really want to create something, to capture the whole room, to make the music more intense, and that goes for us on stage as well. If it goes well, it’s a fantastic way of experiencing music.” L&Q:The last time I saw Fever Ray it was in a pitch black airport hangar just outside Rennes. That was quite a way to experience your music. KDA: “That was our first time playing in France – our only time! We’re playing tomorrow in Paris, and we’ll see how it goes… French people can be really hard to… get. [laughs] We’ll see.” L&Q:You’ve got a 7-inch out at the moment – a cover? KDA: “We do three covers live, and one was released now, ‘Mercy Street’, a Peter Gabriel track. I like the 7-inch format, and I thought it would be nice to have something for this last run.” L&Q: It’s not nice, this word, ‘last’… What’s next, after the tour? KDA: “I will be writing music for a play, an adaptation of the Ingmar Bergman film The Hour of the Wolf. Andreas Nilsson is doing the set design, I’m doing the music and it’s a friend of ours directing. It’s exciting, Bergman is one of the top icons in Sweden, and as soon as it was published that we were going to be doing this, I got an email from the Ingmar Bergman Society, saying, ‘If you want to come and work at Ingmar Bergman’s house, on this island, where he had his study and which is now an

artist residence, just let us know and you can come here and work for a few weeks on this project.’ I told it to the other two and they were like, [in a panicky, excited voice] ‘Yes! We have to go! It’s the only time we will be invited!’ [laughs] It’s very nice, because it isn’t a play already, so we have the freedom to do what we like.We will work with film also, and I said I wanted surround sound, they said, ‘Okay!’We start on – What day is it today? Wednesday? We start in a week and it will open in March.” L&Q: And after the play… KDA: “I’m working with Olof too.We started last spring.” L&Q:We’ll be hearing more from The Knife, then? KDA: “Yes, I think so.We’ll see, we have just started with improvisations.We have improvisation sessions, [laughs] hours and hours of recordings, so we’ll see what, if anything, comes out of that.” L&Q:Will these be Berlin sessions or Stockholm? KDA: “He will come to Stockholm.” L&Q: So you’ll get to spend some time with your kids. KDA: “Yes, this year I haven’t been away much, but last year was horrible. It’s difficult when they start school, you can’t take them with you.” L&Q: Have you taken them on tour before? KDA: “My oldest one, she’s been with me for a few shows here and there. A lot of people in the band and crew have kids, and last year we took a few weekends where we brought all the kids, and mothers, fathers, girlfriends, boyfriends, all looking after everybody, it was lots of fun.” L&Q: Not all staying on the same bus, I assume… (Fever Ray are living out of a bus on this tour, not liking the fuss and bother of hotels) KDA: “Um… Yes! [laughs] The kids staying in the same bunk as their parents. It was really fun

and it’s something I think they will remember forever.” L&Q:This loneliness you mentioned before, it seems to be an integral part of Swedish culture, the sense of darkness and introspection, which is why Bergman is such an icon, and it’s certainly a big part of your music… KDA: “Do you think it’s the climate?” L&Q: Oh, yeah, the cold weather gives you lots of time to think, sometimes very existential thoughts. It’s where Swedes get that dark sense of humour. KDA: “Yes, It’s very important to be able to laugh at misery, how could you live through it otherwise?” L&Q: In a way, you’re doing that with these ghoulish parodies on stage, sending up miserable corporate suits. KDA: “For me they are really scary – so unpredictable, people in suits. And the female character, in the kilt… I have family who are more upper class, who wore kilts and white blouses at Christmas, and my mother wanted us to fit in when we met with these people, so she made us wear kilts [laughs] and white blouses, and black, shiny shoes. I hated it so much, we had these things on, but we didn’t know how to wear them, couldn’t move, me and my sister, we felt so miserable. I really felt how hard my mother tried to fit in with these people – it was on my father’s side – and she didn’t get there. For me to see her disappointment, it caused so much anxiety. My sister, she never combed her hair, and with this white blouse [laughs] and the kilt, it was so wrong! So these characters on stage, they capture that kind of anxiety, the terrible people.You don’t know anything about someone who’s wearing a suit. And a tie… L&Q: A slipknot, putting a noose around your neck before going to work. KDA: “Yes, why would you want to do that? We’ll have to deal with that on the next album.”

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black angels

Acid tales of Roky Erickson with Texas’ number one psych band Photographer: Owen Richards Writer: Edgar Smith

“We like to encourage people to rethink preconceived notions, to question authority and I think that’s what we encourage on every album: Mind expansion.” You guessed it; Black Angels are a psychedelic band. As with most progressive ideas springing from the lets-get-naked bit of the last century, psychedelia is pretty hard to pin-down, buttonup and quantify. Trying to define psychedelic music becomes like the experience of listening to it; understanding tends to split last minute and spin away like an acid visual – it’s mercurial and that’s probably why we like it. You know when you’re hearing it though, and here it is. The Black Angels are, for want of a less awful expression, the real deal. Three albums in (latest ‘Phosphene Dream’ is out this month), they’ve achieved a cultish, leftfield stature reminiscent of their contemporaries and recent L&Q pin-ups Wooden Shjips. Two of them, frontman Alex Maas and guitarist Christian Bland, are backstage at the West End’s Borderline, sheltering from the surprise summer rain. The band hail from Texas, making them geographic (as well as musical) descendants of psych Gods 13th Floor Elevators, a band that sonically stands apart from Californian analogues. Is there something special about Texan bands? “Someone asked this the other day,” says Christian “‘why do so many psychedelic bands come out of Texas?’ I think the reason 13th Floor Elevators came out of Austin in 1965/66 was because it was very conservative. I think as an exact backlash against the conservative nature of Texas, there’s this freak-out of weirdoes… to even things out. Nature, I think, evens itself out.” “Totally,” chips in Alex. “I think we have a Texas kind of style, y’know, if there is one. Texas psychedelic music particularly… seems like Elevators were a lot grittier than any, like, Southern rock

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band… but then you can’t compare them to anything really.” This admiration for Tommy Hall and Roky Erickson’s band received its karmic reward when Alex and Christian’s troupe were asked to be Erikson’s backing musicians for a West Coast tour in 2008. For those who don’t know of the man in question, he is, along with anyone from that band that didn’t die horribly, an archetypal acid casualty. The lyrics and the manifesto-like scrawls on their first album were deadly serious - they believed in a lysergically-accessed ‘other place’ and they never fully returned. “Tommy Hall, was just…,” Christian searches for the rest of his sentence. “He thought LSD was the answer; opening everyone’s mind and letting everything come through, being able to see beyond race and everything that causes divisions as humans. But, looking back on that period, we see that LSD is, you know, a good...” They both laugh. “…within reason, a good thing. Like, used as a sacrament it can help open your mind,” he continues “but they took it at every show. People like Syd Barrett, Tommy Hall, and Roky Erickson… used in excess like they were doing, it’s very bad, it just causes you to go too far out of your mind and not be able to come back to reality.” Touring with an idol that’s psychologically damaged must have given rise to some internal conflictions, what was he like? “Kind of quiet,” says Alex. “I think he’s pretty reserved, freaked-out a little bit by things happening, you know, confused. One thing we noticed is that when we played the music, he had these moments of clarity and then once you got off stage he’d start driftingoff.” “Our experience with him was interesting,” picks-up Christian. “Alex and I had seen him play beforehand and the band that backed him was more clean blues, you know, not really psychedelic, not lending itself

to the 13th Floor Elevators’ grittiness. He always does ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ and ‘Splash One’, but our goal was to do the first five on the first album. The very first practice, we started out and played ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ with him and that was unreal ‘cause he still has those screams down.” Christian does his best impression of the Erickson yowl. “Then we tried to do ‘Reverberation’, and he got real like, ‘huh, I don’t remember this one… how about we try something else, here?’ And next practice we tried to do the same thing and he’d just be like ‘ahh, I don’t remember this one.’ So finally we invited him over to our house and we retaught him the songs on acoustic guitar with the words printedout and the chords so he could look along. We did that probably for two weeks, twice a week and one electric practice a week, practicing his solo stuff.” Eventually, it worked and they got to live-out their fantasy of practically being their heroes. At which point, you have to question whether this is all old hat. Umpteen psych revivals on, the medium continues to reinvent itself for each generation, sticking as it does so to elements that crystallized in the late sixties. In the question ‘What is it about psych that lends itself to revivalism?’, there’s a tacit request for them to defend their use of a form more than half a century old. “I think because it’s progressive,” says Christian. “Imagine listening to the radio in the fifties, compared to right now. All that totally influenced the rock and roll players in the sixties, so there was an explosion of creativity. I think that was a creative renaissance and anyone who can see that and draw from that is in the right direction – I mean, the best band ever, The Beatles, came out in the sixties.” “What you could also call psychedelic music,” adds Alex

“is just like this spiritual kind of thing, like this witchcraft music from North Africa and Kenya. Old folk music from old villages, that stuff’s the most psychedelic stuff there is! It’s been there probably for hundreds, thousands of years, but it’s just like a heartbeat.” “Yeah, Heartbeat music!” While psychedelia and their propensity to enjoy it might be timeless, their heads are turned to the present-day. Their 2006 debut ‘Passover’ was not only a dark, Velvets-influenced fuzz-out but also a strident anti-war document from the Bush era; unlike the majority of new bands, their music is politically eloquent and impassioned. War is a recurrent theme. Where did all the protest music go? “They [today’s songwriters] are probably afraid,” says Christian “afraid that they’re gonna strike a nerve, you know? That people are not going to like what they say… or maybe they just don’t care, maybe they don’t know enough about it too. Also, [media conglomerate] Clear Channel kind of rules the radio waves. If you say something that’s controversial, it’s not going to be played, it won’t get advertisements… I don’t even know how to take Clear Channel down… it’s so powerful. There’s somebody way up the top that’s calling the shots, or who knows? Maybe some CEO’s daughter likes this stuff so... that’s the stuff were playing! I think there are people still definitely doing political music; I just don’t think it’s being played to the masses. If we were to get a huge record deal and use that money to try and take down…” Christian looses his thread. “The other thing,’ picks up Alex “is using the enemy against itself. We picked that up from Anton [Newcombe, of course]. Anton says that in Battle, you use the enemy against itself, you know, its strength.” Three cheers for a band who believe in things, however vague. Hurray for vagueness.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Alex Maas Christian Bland Nate Ryan Kyle Hunt Stephanie Bailey

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WE ARE COMING FOR YOU MEMORY TAPES AIR FRANCE THE CONCRETES GUARDS THE GAY BLADES NIVA THE SILENT LEAGUE ANR www.somethinginconstruction.com @SICrecords

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Al bums

Deerhunter Halcyon Digest (4ad) By Tom Pinnock. In stores Sept 27

06/10

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In days where far too many people follow fashion, Deerhunter have made a career of pushing forward on their own unique trajectory; embracing ambient punk on the droning ‘Cryptograms’, welcoming in pop melodies and krautrock for ‘Microcastle’, exploring DIY and collage on ‘Weird Era Cont.’ and constructing more upbeat pop structures on last year’s ‘Rainwater Cassette Exchange’ EP. Bradford Cox’s band have now taken a bizarre step sideways and broken through the fourth wall of music making – throughout much of ‘Halcyon Digest’, Deerhunter sound more like Cox’s side project Atlas Sound than themselves. Cox’s solo project has turned out some masterpieces, not least last year’s ‘Logos’ album, and its more electronic, dreamy influence at first seems to have worked its wonders on ‘Halcyon Digest’.The opener ‘Earthquake’ is a snail’s-pace,

crystalline creation with Cox intoning over backwards drums and echoing acoustic guitar. So far so good. ‘Helicopter’ also displays Atlas Sound influences. An electronics-tinged track with a lot less guitar than in recent live airings, its words are complemented in the lyrics sheets by a horrific (true?) Dennis Cooper story about an abused Russian male prostitute and pornographic performer – true to Cox’s obsessions with the dark and seedy side of life, ‘Dima’ is sold into sex slavery and dies, perhaps thrown out of a helicopter over a remote Russian forest by gangsters. These songs are shining successes of their new approach but, elsewhere, tracks like ‘Sailing’, deathly slow and almost bland, are signs Deerhunter would be best served by higher tempos and more structured songwriting.The smoky, tape-echoing ‘Basement Scene’ makes a virtue of its shuffling rhythm, but ‘Coronado’ does little over a minimal chord sequence and cheesy saxophone. It’s telling that first single ‘Revival’, a twominute guitar-led pop song (with a proper

chorus an’ everything!), is by far the most immediate and also long-term rewarding song on the album. Maybe Cox is feeling the limitations of recording with a four-piece group and, after years of boundless inspiration, needs a bit of recuperation to get his creative juices flowing properly again. After all, the most classicsounding Deerhunter track on the album, ‘Desire Lines’, is written and sung by guitarist Lockett Pundt rather than Cox. Not to say that ‘Halcyon Digest’ is a bad album – there are at least five songs on here that would rival any released this year – but it’s not in the same league as their other releases over the last four years or so.That’s not to say that bands should continue ploughing the same furrow, remaking their most popular songs again and again, and Deerhunter should be applauded for once more changing their style – and on songs like ‘Earthquake’ and ‘Helicopter’ it works a treat. It’s just a shame that on half of ‘Halcyon Digest’ they’ve replaced the Deerhunter ‘sound’ with something less inspired.

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El Guincho

Marnie Stern

Grass Widow

Anika

The Walkmen

Pop Negro

Marnie Stern

Past Time

Anika

Lisbon

(Young Turks) By Daniel Dylan Wray. In stores now

(Soutterain Transmissions) By D. K. Golstein. In stores Oct 4

(Kill Rock Stars) By Matthias Scherer. In stores Oct 4

(Invada) By Edgar Smith. In stores Oct 11

(Bella Union) By Tom Goodwyn. In stores Oct 11

This album is an odd one. It has the ability to almost simultaneously transform you from thinking it’s one-dimensional and somewhat repetitive to thinking it’s full of depth, variation and intrigue. So ultimately, as you can imagine, it has flaws as well as a sense of accomplishment and fluidity. Its problem is that it feels somewhat trapped within a specific sound and genre, and while there is no question of its inventiveness within its sound, you sometimes crave for it to break free from it and the constraints and convention that accompany El Guincho’s tropical, dance/pop shtick. Pablo DíazReixa is clearly a man who has mastered his art and subsequent individual sound, but it’s time to start mastering a new one and applying his skills to something that would sound like he is being challenged a bit more. Here he sounds a little too comfortable.

Unlike her last album ‘This is it…’, ‘Marnie Stern’ is less song-based and more choppy, switching pace constantly and pulling the rug from beneath you before you can grasp what exactly it is you’re listening to. ‘For Ash’ is an explosion of an opener, combining Animal Collective’s weird childlike croons and the Mae Shi’s erratic percussion.There’s a sense of urgency that rushes it wildly onto the widdly-riffed ‘Nothing Left’ before you can process all of the sounds. ‘Building a Body’ takes on a B52’s lilt with its cheerleader-like shouts, while ‘Female Guitar Players are the New Black’ aches of Stern’s humour and is a wall of sound packed with wistful vocals and drum rolls upon drum rolls. An exciting, mind-blowing listen, this third album from the blonde, Deerhoof-resembling New Yorker is something worth falling head over heal for.

Much like the news that GCSE results have improved on the previous year, a new release by an all-girl noise pop band these days is greeted with an unenthusiastic shrug rather than optimism.We’re all in favour of girls in bands, but generally prefer them not to be rubbish. Grass Widow, an allfemale Frisco three-piece, share the lo-fi aesthetic of their fellow girl rockers, but, on closer inspection, there is a lot more to be discovered in their brand of post-punk.The guitars are undistorted almost throughout and follow stringent, dissonant single-noted riffs – the kind to please Gang Of Four. There are some effectively placed violin touches too, but the most distinct stylistic device are the three-way harmonies, which swarm around the record like bees with seasonal depression and add to its slightly outlandish but overall engaging feel. A pleasant surprise.

Anika’s is a strange, impressive debut that seems to have sprung from the middle of nowhere, its thematic direction and minimal production lending it a haunting quality that lingers long after it’s stopped playing, no doubt because it was recorded with Geoff Barrow’s kraut psychonauts Beak>. Opener ‘Terry’ is a darkly synthesizer-bent girl group ballad, ‘End of the World’ is a cover of Skeeter Davis’ 1962 country-pop hit, sung like a smacked-out Nico with truly scratchy, severely panned post-punk guitar.This mesh of disparate but concordant elements continues throughout to stunning effect, even if ‘Masters of War’, a deep piece of wobbly, retro dub, veers too close to the winceworthy political shape-throwing of the original post-punk crowd. Enter a female solo artist for you to give a shit about, that T4 will miss completely.

Permanently featured on critic’s Albums of The Year polls every time they release a record, New York’s The Walkmen have so far not managed to translate acclaim into record sales.The closest they came was in 2004, with ‘Bows And Arrows’. New album ‘Lisbon’, their sixth, is a continuation of mellowing that’s taken place since those early, bratty days.The expansive Americana of much of ‘Lisbon’ is like a more wistful Springsteen, mixed with Beck’s quieter moments. Opener ‘Juveniles’ wouldn’t sound out of place on a Band Of Horses album, while ‘Blue As Your Blood’ has all the hallmarks of a more reflective Conor Oberst creation. Lyrically all dusty roads and lessons learned, it takes a while to get used to, but it’s worth putting the effort in. Diehards will love it, most won’t notice, but that’s always been the Walkmen’s way.

Salem King Night (IAMSOUND) By Polly Rappaport. In stores Sept 27

08/10

The only preamble to the vicious experience that is ‘King Knight’ is a three-second static sample and a painfully slowed down ‘I love you’ (to the tune of the children’s song used to torture prisoners in Guantanamo Bay), then your senses are hurled into a head-on collision with stinging synths, a relentless beat and the decidedly unholy strains of a children’s choir singing ‘O Holy Night’. And that’s just setting the scene for the next forty minutes. Salem have harnessed the darker aspects of rap, house, industrial and even classical music, concocting a nightmare world, a feverish dream, which is a claustrophobic tangle of sounds, at once restless, paranoid and heavy. Euphoric vocal samples and soaring chords trip over uneven beats in ‘Redlights’, but with the abrupt addition of rumbling prison cell clanks and menacing steam piston hisses on ‘Traxx’, everything goes queasy, racing pulse turning to cold sweat. It’s a terrifying and astounding album – don’t listen to it alone. www.loudandquiet.com

Al bums 07/10

08/10

07/10

08/10

Gold Panda

Ice, Sea, Dead People

Teengirl Fantasy

Drums of Death

Blonde Redhead

Lucky Shiner

Teeth Union

7AM

Generation Hexed

Penny Sparkle

(No Town) By Stuart Stubbs. In stores Oct 11

(Lost Toys/Dirty) By Nathan Westley. In stores Sept 27

(Merok) By Sam Walton. In stores now

(Greco Roman) By Reef Younis. In stores Sept 20

(4ad) By Chris Watkeys. In stores Oct 4

Just one of Gold Panda’s previously released tracks has made this, his debut album, namely because Derwin Dicker doesn’t like to repeat himself... unless he’s indulging in self-deprecation on Twitter, which is most of the time. The stuttering, dissected and reassembled ‘You’ proves that Dicker is quite the underestimater, as does the remainder of ‘Lucky Shiner’, which is a more ambient affair than might be expected. Having decided, “not to make an album of bangers”, it’s a collection of minimal techno tracks that calmly chime over the fizzy crackle of Gold Panda’s own turntable. ‘Before We Talk’ hints at Dicker’s glitch-flirting past, while songs like ‘Same Dream China’ point to his talents in downbeat hip hop beats and oriental studies. Named after his grandmother, it’s an album that sounds as personal as it does beautiful, with no need for lyrics.

From the initial ear-twisting note of this thunderous record it becomes blindingly obvious that it will not find favour with the aging chattering classes who loudly grumble that, “Music isn’t as good now as it was in my day”, because those keen on luscious melodies will soon be shaken into a quivering, deeply scarred wreck by a continual stream of spiky edged mathematical discordance that hurtles by faster than a Japanese Bullet train. ‘Justin Klein’ may have a traditional, counted-in intro but like ‘Hence Elvis’ and every other song contained on this album it is fiercely abrasive, manically chaotic and fantastically riff heavy. ‘Teeth Union’ will not bring any mainstream awards towards ISDP but at least they can be proud that they have created a short, sharp record that gleefully jumps over the barriers and brings others to an instant halt.

Don’t be fooled by the name, or the air of postmodern prankster that surrounds them – Teengirl Fantasy are not the art-school button-bashers they might like to suggest. Indeed, ‘7AM’ sounds less like a teen girl fantasy and more like a big-budget night of hedonism in a luxurious Balearic club, all velvety throb and sparkling hi-hats. Sure, there’s faux glamour and paper-thin soul, but the event is executed so as to render the con either irrelevant or undetectable. Mainly recalling the late-night dub-house side of early 90s rave – as the tracks slip by, the impression is that the record’s title refers to the end of the night rather than the start of the morning – ‘7AM’ is gorgeously consistent, evocative and woozy, and surprisingly European and vintage-sounding for a pair of US college students called Nick and Logan.This is a lovely debut.

Debut albums are so often a labour of love that, well, sometimes, things slip through the cracks.You become attached, developing a Loctite bond to beats, lines, ideas that, ordinarily, should have been incinerated. As a stand-alone, loud, brash, raging track of rave revivalism, ‘Won’t Be Long’ would have held its own in the halcyon era of ‘Music For A Jilted Generation’ on saucer-eyed adrenalin alone, but Colin Bailey’s insistence on crunching and twisting vocals alongside his riotously ghoulish beats makes ‘Generation Hexed’ have to walk the line more than it needs to. Still, for every analogue blast of ‘Creak’’s epic, binary-crashing Halo score, ‘Lonely Days’ nostalgic reawakening of Double 99’s ‘Ripgroove’ and the rave-tinged ‘London Teeth’, you’ll soon find yourself marching to Drums of Death’s morbid beat.

Blonde Redhead’s eighth album sees them continue along the stripped down, electronic path they first set foot on with 2007’s ‘23’. Depeche Mode’s erstwhile producer mixed this record, and it shows – the music is slick and shiny, with some buzzy, prominent basslines, while Kazu Makino’s vocals slide easily over the gloss. Opener ‘Here Sometimes’ is spacious, moving into smooth, slow-paced electronica; ‘Will There Be Stars’ is a melancholy electronic lament with bright, minor synths; ‘My Plants Are Dead’ is reminiscent of ‘In Rainbows’-era Radiohead. And any feelings that this record is a little one-paced can be deflected by accepting its consistently enclosing, almost claustrophobic atmosphere, as, after forty minutes of understated beauty, ‘Penny Sparkle’ saves its best ‘till last in the the almost-epic space journey of ‘Spain’.

No Age Everything In Between (Sub Pop) By Sam Walton. In stores Sept 27

09/10

www.loudandquiet.com

A record of two halves, this. Side A continues where No Age’s debut ended, offering further examples of wonderfully tuneful west coast pop hidden artfully behind layers of 80s no-wave punk, a technique that delays and then amplifies gratification.The second half, meanwhile, eschews much of the Sonic Youth/Fugazi aesthetic for a dreamier sound, constructed more from drone than screech but one that retains an admirable clatter nonetheless. A trio of instrumental numbers that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Godspeed You Black Emperor record sit among slower, loop-based songs, with the hypnosis only pierced by the closing ‘Chem Trails’, the band’s most commercial-sounding song to date. But in terms of contradictions, ‘Everything In Between’’s split-personality sequencing is only the start of it: the production is simultaneously dense and expansive, the performance taut and fluid, the songs aggressive and sweet, all in parallel. It’s an utterly engrossing record full of thrilling paradoxes.

07/10

06/10

Frankie Rose & The Outs Frankie Rose & The Outs (Memphis Industries) By Polly Rappaport. In stores Oct 11 It would be fair to argue that we don’t need yet another 60’s girl group throwback. However, we’ve got one, and at least there’s a seasoned veteran at the helm. Frankie (serial band-hopper) Rose employs the airy vocals of Crystal Stilts, the lo-fi of Vivian Girls and the sublime harmonies of Dum Dum Girls to create eerily authentic retro pop with a knack for melancholy. Most of the record is a series of heady lullabies, bathed in sonic halos - tracks like ‘Little Brown Haired Girls’ are beat led, but soft around the edges, with a lighter touch than Rose’s previous projects.Then she’ll weigh in with a go-go hipped, Nancy Sinatra bass line which, coupled with ShangriLas vocals, introduces a seductive groove to an otherwise totally ethereal record. It’s nothing new, but if it’s your thing, you’ll be enchanted.

04/10

05/10

Neon Indian

Kisses

Apache Beat

Tamaryn

Psychic Chasms

The Heart of the Nightlife

Last Chants

The Waves

(Static Tongues) By Reef Younis. In stores Sept 20

(This Is Music) By Laura Davies. In stores Oct 11

(IAMSOUND) By Nathan Westley. In stores Oct 11

(Mexican Summer) By Chris Watkeys. In stores Oct 4

Just under a year ago, Alan Palomo put this very album out into the world. Revered by the blogs it promised a world of sublime pop regression, dipping into a land of 80s reminiscence, glazed with the sunshine electronica of a generation gorged on Tron and a futuristic promise. A year on and not much has changed. ‘Psychic Chasms’ (bar a few bonus remixes) still finds an awkwardly promising middle ground – too downbeat and droning to truly capture a sense of summery optimism but a dimension away from simply muddling towards an odd technological limbo either. ‘(AM)’ is a brooding, glinting treasure, kissed by a laser-gun-totin’ M83, while the sharp-edged thrust of ‘Ephemeral Artery’ threatens some dark clouds to scupper the sunset stroll of title track ‘Psychic Chasms’, but where, you have to ask, is the futuristic promise?

Kisses want to be Ibiza’s next big thing.The only problem is they could be better than background dirge in a fleuro cocktail bar on San Antonio’s strip, as occasionally proven here. Opening track ‘Kisses’ (yes, same name, confusing) is late night radio fodder with its dancemusic-by-numbers Balearic beats. Ignore this two-months-late offering and ‘The Heart of the Nightlife’ gets progressively better. Standout track ‘People can do the Most Amazing Things’ leaves the tanked-up Brits abroad well alone and takes us down a 1980’s route, veering past Hurts and Duran Duran. Its Alec R. Costandinos vibe is promising (note the homage in their name, taken from Costandinos’ 1978 track Love and Kisses), but the debut soon returns to the White Isle, At least LA’s Jesse Kivel and Zinzi Edmundson are beginning to replicate Hot Chip rather than Chicane.

Apache Beat may arrive as long term students of studied cool, with an achingly hip list of previous touring partners clasped in their hands, but though such fundamentals can help momentarily gain attention, it can only go so far in holding peoples’ attention. Alas, it’s therefore disappointing to find that the Brooklyn band’s debut album tends to wearily creak and groan its way through a colourful musical series of sonical inlets instead of charging into them with wild abandon. Whether this ‘play safe’ approach half references Liars’ level of dynamicism,TV on the Radio’s habit of layering sounds or a Gang Gang Dance style of structuralism, the end result falls foul of an almost pre-diagnosed need to be seen as creatively minded.Which is why ‘Last Chants’ is far from a strong, long lasting record and is rather lacklustre at best.

Tamaryn is a New Zealand-born, San Francisco-based artist, and ‘The Waves’ is her full-length debut following a couple of vinyl single releases last year. Hers is a droney sound, with My Bloody Valentine and Giant Drag as easy references.The main riff of the opening, title track, though, is like that of Pixies’ ‘Here Comes Your Man’. Coated in acid and fed through a buzzsaw, it’s an opening volley that promises much and is met by the chiming and expansive ‘Choirs of Winter’. But thereafter there’s something of a mope overload, and with little or no variance from song to song things get seriously dull around track five, ‘Sandstone’.This is accomplished and well executed stuff, but it’s unfortunately terminally unengaging. Late on, the short shot of ‘Cascades’ gives a kick to the corpse, but for too much of the time this is a lifeless album.

Glasser Ring (True Panther) By Stuart Stubbs. In stores Sept 27

08/10

Glasser is Cameron Mesirow - an LA local with the kind of GarageBand skills that could close down every space-wasting recording studio in the world. ‘Ring’ is her debut album and to say it’s extraordinary sounding is a bit like saying “that Afghanistan War’s a bit nasty now, aye?”. Opening to the tribal rumble of ‘Apply’, things start off very Bat For Lashes, which is perhaps what makes the track such a standout here. It’s something of a curveball though. Similar to Natasha Khan’s recent work, African influences are certainly a plenty - especially on ‘Plane Temp’, which features a recurring group mantra and more rolling drums - but Mesirow quickly boasts her own unique sound thanks to a voice that makes every song sound like a hymn for the dawn of a new, technology-less world. It’s odd, then, that synths, processed beats and computers have made ‘Ring’ the intricate, adventurous and organically sounding album it is beneath its choral centrepiece of Mesirow’s cherub-like, skyward voice. www.loudandquiet.com

Al bums 05/10

06/10

02/10

00/10

07/10

Panico

Unnatural Helpers

Detachments

Violens

Of Montreal

Kick

Cracked Love & Other Drugs (Hardly Art)

Detachments

Amoral

False Priest

By Danny Canter. In stores Oct 4

(Thisisnotanexit) By Laura Davies. In stores Oct 4

(Static Recital) By Kate Parkin. In stores Oct 4

(Polyvinyl) By Edgar Smith. In stores now

Seattle band Unnatural Helpers (or, more accurately, Seattle native and only consistent UH member Dean Whitmore) are the kind of self-proclaimed knuckleheads that play in bars and get wasted, maaan. They’ll be doing it in their fifties, just like The Hold Steady are doing now. ‘Cracked Love...’ is their second album and makes light work of fifteen tracks, clocking in at twenty six minutes, presumably to make way for more shambolic partying. Like so many things that are dumb though, for a time this record is a hell of a lot of fun too, especially ‘Sunshine/Pretty Girls’, which features an R&B pop chorus that could have easily come from ‘Give Out...’-era Primal Scream. ‘Brainstroke’ (Mark E Smith vocals and blues riffs) is also worth attending the celebrations for before UH’s limited range proves ‘Cracked Love...’ outstays its welcome by at least five songs.

Not getting off to the best start, Detachments’ debut album launches with ‘Audio/Visual’ – a track that would even be too 1980s-retro for Boy George’s secret love cave. It’s the excessive lasers, see? And leave that drum machine button alone! Oh wait, it’s been replaced by a worn to death synth button on ‘I Don’t Want to Play’ instead.Wanting to sound minimal wave, this trio actually sound like a poor man’s The Faint, which is doing The Faint a disservice. And even though ‘Art of Viewing’ improves things with its brooding vocals, these Mancunians have spent way too much time mimicking Ian Curtis (for once not a lazy comparison), which unfortunately makes most of this eponymous LP sounds shallow and lacklustre, while ‘You Never Knew Me’’s three and a half minutes feels like I’ve wasted hours listening to a Joy Division tribute.

As children of the 80s,Violens have instant appeal, sounding like just the kind of band Ducky from Pretty in Pink would front if he wasn’t busy being the sober foil for Charlie Sheen in Middle American sitcoms. Coming on like a Duran Duran flashback, the foot shuffling niceties of ‘Full Collision’ are pounded by a jarring ending, while ‘The Dawn of Your Happiness’ is a shimmering gladioli-ridden pop peon. Singer Jorge Elbrecht inhabits his hairbrush fantasies with swaggering charisma, moving from Depeche Mode to a psychedelic take on an Aztec Camera warble for ‘Violent Sensation Descends’, before the sinister turn of title track ‘Amoral’. The static flurry of ‘Another Strike Restrained’ is Violen’s most modern track, “modern” meaning sounding like a thrashier New Order.Thing is, nothing’s quite the same the second time around.

Of Montreal have been around forever and, while circling eternity, they’ve had their ups and downs. Previous LP ‘Skeletal Lamping’ for instance, was a down. ‘False Priest’ is miles better, wearing its love of Hall and Oats and ‘Diamond Dogs’ Bowie on its sequined sleeve. By most accounts, they’re the kind of over-imaginative, quirky band that can gratify and enrage simultaneously, often within the same listen.Thankfully, this record avoids the grating end of the kooky scale – stomping ground of outré dinosaur Patrick Wolf, say – backing-up its flamboyance with ace band workouts and substantial, wryly delivered lyrics. It’s a longish album of lightly psychedelic white funk that craftily updates the dated-sounding MGMT model and lead-single ‘Coquet Coquette’ is fab. NB: got a problem with the adjective ‘fab’? You might not like this.

(Chemikal Underground) By Tom Goodwyn. In stores Oct 11 For most albums, the location and studio of where they were made is pretty irrelevant, but then there are those that seem to soak up the past sounds of the room they were recorded in. Panico’s new one, ‘Kick’, falls very much into the latter category. Helmed in Franz Ferdinand’s studio in Glasgow, the album is track after track of angular indie pop, and their influences seem identical too; Orange Juice, Gang Of Four,Talking Heads, XTC, all lending their sharp riffs and wonky sensibilities to everything here.Though most of Panico’s tracks are slightly too long to be really radio-friendly, they still have a palpable zing to them with ‘Bright Lights’ and ‘Guadalupe’ being particularly catchy, which points to a decent record, but one that sounds a bit too much like the sum of its influences. “Derivative” would be too far, but there’s nothing worth sitting up for either.

Swans My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky (Young God) By Edgar Smith. In stores Sept 20

10/10

www.loudandquiet.com

Post No-Wavers Swans have a back catalogue as huge and diverse as a continent. Michael Gira (their Mark E. Smith, if you like) recently reformed the band after dissolving it in 1997 and has given the world another stunning, avant-garde masterpiece to put on the shelf with the rest. Anyone of his calibre would avoid anything cheap or tribute-like but we were hardly expecting them to clear a bar set so high. Gira utilises the acoustic arrangements and gentler tonalities of late Swans and his Angels of Light project but to the same, heavy ends as the first records, demonstrating, as he does so well, the lyrical maturity and broad emotional range of a demonic Leonard Cohen. All thrashed ambience and John Adams pulses, the nine-and-a-half minute opener ‘No Words/No Thoughts’, ‘Eden Prison’ and the Devendra Banhart-featuring ‘You Fucking People Make Me Sick’ are standouts but, really, this is brilliant start-to-finish; the most wellcrafted and terrifying album I’ve heard this year.

Live

Season Finale

Green Man festival

▼

Glanusk Park, Powys 20-22.08.2010 By Reef Younis Pics by Shot2Bits

www.loudandquiet.com

And so we find ourselves in the hills of the Brecon Beacons, flanked by the River Usk, and our festival entrance corridored by some of Wales’ most breath-taking natural scenery.Yes, I am Welsh. But without taking you on a Rhod Gilbert style slant, Green Man, on location alone, is easily host to three of the loveliest days of the year. An eclectic mix of folk-tinged pleasantness and acoustic agreeableness – typically capped with a 24-hour party spirit once the stars begin to hide – quality over quantity is very much the Green Man mantra.Well, that and recycling. And being nice to people. So, with those draconian ideals in place, and in the trippy, hippy ethos that permeates the site like the heavy herbal haze, Matthew & The Atlas begin proceedings at the Far Out Tent, capturing the congregation with brooding acoustic stomps and Matthew Hegarty’s grizzled vocal. With the rain threatening to write a new parable, Sleepy Sun’s slightly troubled performance overcomes a quickly deteriorating mic as they lumber, lurch and mesmerise with syrupy guitar indulgence, Bret Constantino and Rachel Williams settling us into a stupor of

indulgent, progressive rock. What’s rather special is to have Steve Mason gracing stages again, and after the despondent mire of Black Affair he seems to have come out the other side happy, shin…well, at least back to his melodic best. He even treats us to sentimental, Beta Band-come-High Fidelity favourite, ‘Dry In the Rain’, which makes at least one boy cry. So after a few swift Aspall’s, Fuck Buttons’ waspish maelstrom of noise swells the volume, Andy and Ben crouched and poised, enacting a rasping, agitated call and response that’s the ‘Buttons epic hallmark only to be blown out the water by the inimitable DJ Yoda who splices, stamps and chops his way through a regressive DeLorean ride back to a childhood spent watching Inspector Gadget, rapping to the Fresh Prince and laughing and dancing like a giddy idiot. Bed time. With most festival goers questioning their decision to bring a tent over an ark, Racehorses merrily rollick through a perky set of quirky, elasticated pop early Saturday, while Avi Buffalo continue to belie their tender age with an excruciatingly likeable performance and the

heavy hitting These New Puritans face off against the thunder brewing in the clouds, and win. Wild Beasts continue to prove why they’re main stage material in the making with a flawless demonstration of the dramatic passion that made ‘Limbo, Panto’ such a fine album but the night always belonged to Wayne Coyne and The Flaming Lips. Huge confetti canons, orange dancers and a mad man cavorting around in a giant space ball, it’s an unrivalled display of showmanship that few grandstand headliners can match. On Sunday, in blazing sunshine, Darwin Deez captures the sun-kissed spirit of the festival to perfection with his wonderfully dumb, choreographed dance breakdowns while Silver Columns put in one of the shows of the weekend at the intimate Green Man Pub. Undeterred by a system crash, the duo whoop, holler and bound as their “camp disco” staves off the rain and keeps the party spirit alive. Not that they really needed to, because as soon as we step into Gold Panda’s dark cave of smoke, blinking LED’s and annihilating, introspective electronica, well, we kind of lost our minds.

OFFSET festivAL Hainault Country Park, Essex 04-05.09.2010 By Edgar Smith Photography by Kristina Mordokhovitch and Gile Smith ▼

Offset is pretty much the pick of the independent UK festivals, putting on this summer’s best alternative line up in a forest at the end of London’s Central Line.The selling point this year was the usual skip-full of new bands along with some of the truly legendary leftfield musicians who have influenced them, a few of them being really special obscurities. Fittingly then, it was Charles De Goal, a French band from the ‘80s that don’t even have a Wikipedia page, that impressed most on the first day. Looking like dads in band Tshirts (and one really bad hat), they humbly knocked out a jaw-dropping set of art pop and minimal disco punk. Suiting the current

vogue for all things cold wave, it represented something of a coup for the Experimental Circle Club tent; the band hardly ever play in England and looked genuinely surprised by the enthusiastic welcome they receive. Earlier on the Saturday, Relics got the same tent nodding along to their brand of bleached shoe-gaze and Goth-toned postpunk and O. Children aired the morbid burlesque of their debut album, throwing-in yesteryear single ‘Ace Breasts’ and sounding harder-edged than on record. In fact, London bands did well on the first day. One of the best sets came, as expected, from psych-rock wizards Bo Ningen. Though the main-stage didn’t seem like the best place to see them, the unbalances in the mix thankfully served to turn the drum kit into a thundering, hypnotic monster and the larger scale of the surrounds only provided them with a bigger platform for their customary last song freak-out. Going one further than the tent-pole climbing of last year, drummer Mon Chan scaled the whole

scaffold of the stage and crucified himself on the wind. It was like a weird film. Lovvers and Male Bonding sounded reliably fuzzy, Trash Talk sent everyone fucking nuts in the festival’s dedicated hardcore tent but the next truly massive set was one of space-age instrumentals from nascent supergroup Patent Saints, featuring members of V.E.G.A.S Whores, Bo Ningen and S.C.U.M.Together they spin an inspired improvisatory Kosmische that takes its cues from Neu!, Masonna and Butthole Surfers and, with the future-punk riot of Flats on Sunday, they were the best new band around. Telepathe crowned the Loud and Quiet tent with their quintessentially Brooklyn electronics on the first night and it felt a bit like a good comeback show. Factory Floor, also gracing the L&Q stage, were (you got the impression) let down by sound issues; their signature sequences didn’t seem quite synchronised with their drum parts and it just wasn’t loud enough. Maybe they’re undergoing a transitional phase as they try

and find ‘their sound’ live. Mount Kimbie, the bleeding-edge bass cousins of Portishead and Burial, played in the same spot the following day and smashed it in front of a small, into-it crowd. While it was not much of a surprise that the likes of Art Brut (more depressing than sad animals at the zoo) and Good Shoes (a sight worthy of a hospice) weren’t worth the instruments they were holding, it was sad that acid-metal types Chrome Hoof, punkfunk originators Liquid Liquid and highbrow Canadian chill-out merchant Caribou (all considered to be great live) weren’t better.The latter two in particular had glitches with sound, which tainted the atmosphere. This, however, is what’s sacrificed at a festival so uncompromising; there’s not as much money in doing things with integrity and it can have a slightly entropic effect on organisation. For anything this fun in a field, we’ll happily to put up with a snag or two, though.

www.loudandquiet.com

Live ▼

Modest Mouse The Troxy, London 08.09.2010 By Reef Younis ▼

Gonjasufi. Pic: Gabriel Green

Women. Pic: Owen Richards

There’s a rich level of fandom that comes with loving a band like Modest Mouse. Active for the best part of 17 years, they’d earned the mainstream success that went with the critical acclaim long before it happened but, to the diehards, there’s a sense that they’re a band who’ve almost been shared with the wrong people. Johnny Marr’s involvement ultimately gave them a whole new commercial charm, his quintessential Britishness awkwardly sidling alongside their obvious Americanism, which further skewed their appeal. But Johnny’s long gone, and tonight Isaac Brock is wired and alive, bugged out, trying to vanquish whatever demon inhabits him on stage, and although The Troxy’s sound flitters between the muddied and the crystal, it’s a show to appease all. Opening with ‘Dramamine’ from their debut album, the band’s set-list is one that takes in the entire Modest Mouse timeline, and whilst there’s an obvious polarity between their work pre ‘Good News for People Who Love Bad News’ and more recent offerings, with the most vocal excitement reserved for popular, breakthrough single ‘Float On’, it doesn’t diminish from a performance to firmly point anyone in the direction of their wealthy back catalogue.

Hatcham social Bull & Gate, Kentish Town 06.09.2010 By Stuart Stubbs ▼

Modest Mouse. Pic: Elinor Jones

www.loudandquiet.com

At some point over the last twelve months, whilst holed away recording a second album, Hatcham Social have gone through some lineup changes.They’ve got a new bassist, for one, and Electricity In Our Homes frontman Charles Boyer has made them a five-piece. Singer Toby is without his guitar too; although that’ll no doubt change once his broken hand (an Offset Festival casualty) is fixed. He should consider the ‘compere pop star’ stance though – he’s good at it, if a little awkward looking without a shielding instrument, and as he

fingers his microphone and wobbles his knees from time to time there no question that the band sound meaty enough with three stringed things instead of four (the Coxon-like Jerome Watson makes more than enough screeching racket himself).Two Hatcham consistencies are their perfectly balanced, 80s noir pop songs, which are forlorn without being pantomime new romantic or needy and wallowing (somehow we’re still not bored of ‘So So Happy Making’, new track ‘New York Girl’ might be their best yet and even a closing cover of Lou Reed’s ‘Vicious’ insights a hug and a flowerpot dance or two), and, rather sadly, how underrated this band still are. Maybe it’s Monday night’s torrential rain, but a measly crowd has made the show considering just how perfectly formed last year’s ‘You Dig The Tunnel…’ LP is, and judging by the three new songs we hear tonight, album number two will be just as handsome. Hopefully more people will realise it.

the besnard lakes The Garage, Islington, London 19.08.2010 By Chris Watkeys ▼

Your Dad, or even your Granddad, would approve of The Besnard Lakes; but don’t let that put you off. Although singer Jace Lasek could very easily be on the books of a Robert Plant look-alike agency, and the band look as though they’ve stolen most of their stage clobber from the costume department of Almost Famous, their music is rich, shimmering and expansive. It’s a blast of energizing, fundamentally engaging rock’n’roll, and the packed out Garage is swimming in it.There are chord changes which wrench at the gut; psychedelic, senseassaulting wig-outs; passages of drone-rock laced with pure harmonies; and, on ‘Chicago Train’, a delicate flute line which hovers over a song so sweet it carries you away, enveloped in a cocoon of melodic beauty. ‘Disaster’ is equally beautiful, with boy-girl vocals weaving intricately in and out of each other before descending into a fiery, visceral whirlpool of guitar and drums. After a longish set it’s a predictably drawn-out ending to

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the show, the band barely visible in a pea soup of dry ice while a thudding bass line underpins the storm.The Besnard Lakes grab you by the guts and rock your soul.Tell your Dad to be careful.

Eels Brixton Academy, London 01.09.2010 By Matthias Scherer ▼

With his trilogy of albums completed, it would have made sense for Mark Oliver ‘E’ Everett to fill tonight’s set with tracks solely from those albums, as a summary of the journey through desire, loss and hope that the records represent. Instead, him and his hirsute helpers blast out a mammoth set replete with covers, re-makes and, yes, hits. Opening the set on his own with a couple of quieter, more despairing songs, which showcase his visceral, onein-a-million vocals (‘End Times’, ‘3 Speed’), E then calls upon his trusty band to rock the cider cups out of people’s hands with punky renditions of The Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Summer in the City’, a Ramonesesque run through of ‘I Like Birds’, the gnarly, lupine grunge-folk of ‘Dog Faced Boy’ and a surprisingly funky cover of George Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’. E, dressed in an allwhite jumpsuit, trademark sunglasses and a bandana, looks like an urban terrorist but exuded a frivolity that’s almost blasphemous considering his often outright bleak material, but it makes for a versatile, engaging spectacle. One of many highlights is one of his most well-known songs ‘Mr E’s Beautiful Blues’, mashed up with the riffs of ‘Twist and Shout’ – a cheeky move, but like almost everything he does tonight, it works.

women The Hope, Brighton 08.09.2010 By Nathan Westley ▼

A quick passing glance at a poster which loudly announces ‘Women’ whilst it clings to the wall outside the venue may give small hope to any singleton, heterosexual male strolling past that it could be there

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lucky night.Yet the bearded foursome that greets any inquisitives inside are far removed from the image that any enquiring wander might expect. Lined up parallel across the narrow stage, this masculine quartet indulge us in an hour worth of almost Brian Jonestown Massacre style, earcaressing retro-ism – albeit minus the self destructible egotism and the constant merry-go-round of band members.Whether they incorporate their fondness of drones dressed in fuzz or drenched in reverb over Velvet Underground sixties guitar pop or switch to abrasive Sonic Youth-styled, full-on discordance, the material passes by merrily, safe in the knowledge that solid performances like this will only add weight to those arguing that much-lauded recent release ‘Public Strain’ is one of the albums of the year.They may not be the type of Women that many would like to take home with them at the end of the night, but an hour in there company is enough to satisfy even the most fastidious.

Les Savvy Fav Cargo, Shoreditch, London 10.09.2010 By Omarrr ▼

Tim Harrington is on a mission to always top himself. Not like that. To out-do his own adventures. Last time we saw Les Savy Fav at this year’s Primavera Sound the rotund main man hid on stage pre-set dressed as a hairy sasquatch before leaping up from the floor halfway through the first song, surprising the hundreds watching on. In the past we’ve seen him ride a BMX through a woodland thicket and ride a flight case like a canoe across his followers.Where to next? Tonight’s antics include starting the evening inside a white-cotton version of Wayne Coyne’s zorbing ball, tearing it off to reveal ‘Beardo’ dressed as a day-glo Fred Flintstone and skinning down to his pants. Believe it or not, the music does form the main event tonight though, as LSF celebrate the release of their fifth LP, ‘Root For Ruin’. A lot of fresh cuts get an airing, including album highlights ‘Sleepless In Silverlake’, ‘Let’s Get Out Of Here’ and fist-clenching album opener ‘Appetites’.They slot explosively next to older warriors

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‘The Sweat Descends’ and ‘Patty Lee’.Thankfully, as always, the tunes are equal to the showpiece.

Depreciation Guild Jericho Tavern, Oxford 05.09.2010 By Tom Goodwyn ▼

Much like half of their day jobs in The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Brooklyn’s The Depreciation Guild explore the gentler side of alternative rock, mixing the laid back guitar sound of early Smashing Pumpkins with the walls of noise created by My Bloody Valentine and adding glossy keyboards to give a poppy sheen to everything they do, not too dissimilar to vintage New Order. Each one of the eight songs they play tonight builds slowly and gradually, starting with warm, hazy guitar riffs and slowly morphing into lilting, hypnotic pop songs, complete, occasionally, with a pseudo psychedelic freakout part of the way through. Some of their tracks are more straightforward than others, with the standout of the set being ‘My Chariot’ – a fuzzy gem driven by an insanely catchy keyboard refrain and sticky, sweet chorus, begging to be hummed all the way home. Elsewhere, ‘Dream About Me’ and ‘Trace’ seek to drill and edit some of the band’s more trippy psychedelia into four and five minutes packages, both of which work very well. Studious and inventive in what they do, there’s no reason The Depreciation Guild shouldn’t be as least as successful as the band from whence they came.

Neon indian The Harley, Sheffield 07.09.2010 By Daniel Dylan Wray ▼

Dogged by sound problems from the off, it’s a slightly stalled start for Neon Indian tonight. But while the soundman hops on and off the stage, there is still a penetrating kick to the show, largely due to Jason Faries visceral drums, which subsequently become a fundamental aspect of NI’s success in the face of adversity, the juxtaposition of the understated, harmonious electronics merging

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with relentlessly thrashing beats to create an idiosyncratic and engaging amalgamation of sounds. As for the vocals, they struggle throughout, not that it’s too much of an issue – it is the swirling and fluttering sounds of synths and theremins that demand the attention, after all. More unforgivable are the moments of slight repetition and feelings of reworked material, even if they are brief, while what’s most notably brutal it is, which ultimately saves equipment failures from getting the better of Neon India tonight. Alongside the subtle and intricate tinkering of the electronics it creates a refreshing and rewarding dichotomy, which suggest Neon Indian are a better live band than studio one.

the mountain goats Brudenell Social Club, Leeds 08.09.2010 By Daniel Dylan Wray ▼

Tonight John Darnielle is a pastor at his pulpit and the crowd his blindly lead followers and believers. Such is the conviction of his delivery and subsequent reception it receives, it really is to almost biblical proportions. Sweat drips from the mass of adoring foreheads and creates a tepid and stagnant air that makes you clasp for breath, but nobody even thinks about leaving. It’s far too engaging for that. As a three piece, tonight the band are on blistering form, while Darnielle also kills his solo set halfway through.The set-list is near perfect too, which is a nigh on impossible feat to achieve due to the quantity of songs the band possess and the fact that each period of their career has such devout followers it can be a task to please all ears.This is combated by dipping in and out of periods and albums in applebobbing fashion, and yet there remains an almost clinical sense of fluidity to the evening. Darnielle’s delivery fluctuates between ferocious, seething intensity to sweet, delicate whispers. An encore of ‘No Children’ followed by ‘The Best Ever Death Metal Band of Denton’ sees the screaming masses spew “I hope you die!” followed by “hail satan!” is searing unison. I wish going to regular church were more like this.

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Gonjasufi Electrowerkz, Angel, London 07.09.2010 By Gabriel Green ▼

Tonight was to be the first full live show in the UK from the rapper/ yoga teacher that is Gonjasufi, here alongside The Gaslamp Killer, predominant producer of the debut album ‘A Sufi and a Killer’. First up though is DJ Kutmah, recently and notoriously deported from the US, blending Goodie Mob a cappellas with sampled drums and all sorts in between. Firmly ensconced in the list of DJs who know and perform every lyric, solo and drum roll in each and all of their records, the selfstyled Muthafuckin Gaslamp Killlllller tears through his time, putting in enough energy for a whole band and all the while stepping from behind the decks to blast away on his ipad drum machine. And so Gonjasufi steps on stage to join him as the hyped crowd chant back as he sings his off-key songs in his off-kilter voice. Interspersing new material with album tracks such as ‘KowboyzandIndians’, ‘Sheep’ and the almighty ‘Ancestors’, the duo deliver a suitably rough and ready set to echo their crunchy, gnarled and frankly shamanic sound. Judging by the queue of punters waiting after the show to buy/get their CD’s signed, it won’t be long before we see Gonjasufi back on these shores.

Mountain Man O2 Academy, Leeds 08.09.2010 By Kate Parkin ▼

Three wholesome, fair-haired maidens, Mountain Man couldn’t be less butch than their name suggests. Building luscious harmonies almost entirely unaccompanied (making Laura Marling appear as full-sounded as Muse), songs like ‘Animal Tracks’ echo with the warmth of the distant past, while their cover of Mills Brothers’ ‘How’m I Doin’ is dragged straight up from the great railroads. As they pause the crowd let out an audible sigh – this is music in its purest, rawest form. Lingering over every breath, ‘Mouthwings’ holds us captive in

its choral folds, while ‘Rivers’’s panicked breathlessness adds an uneasy tension. Centred around Molly Erin Sarle’s ragged gasps as Alex Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath drive her on with sharp bird-like coos, it darts to a heady climax.Their gentle lullabies have had them likened to a female Fleet Foxes, but they are far more unique than that suggests, relying solely on the twists and turns of their three voices to draw in the crowd. Evoking the red pine forests where they were born, ‘Dog Song’ carries all the passion and longing of a grizzled old songsmith as gently plucked guitars waver through the air, permeating its warm glow to make Mountain Man seem right at home. Swapping stories with the crowd and bashfully missing the odd note, their music is beautifully simple and simply beautiful.

Black Mountain O2 Academy, Oxford 04.09.2010 By Tom Goodwyn ▼

Canadian outfit Black Mountain’s sound and stage show is unashamed in its homage to the best of 70s rock.This may sound awful as it brings back nightmares of Wolfmother and The Darkness, but despite sporting a cartoonish, grooooovy fancy-dress look, this is a formidable rock band with some excellent songs. Live, they avoid the clichés that their clothes don’t, steering clear of improv and drum solos, instead playing a tightly crafted 90-minute set, mostly taken from new album ‘Wilderness Heart’. Bold and clearly not daunted by ambition, they throw just about every band you can think of from said decade of pomp into the mix.There are Zeppelin style riffs, a Floyd-esque, mystical mellotron, a rhythmic presence that Cream would be proud of and, in singer Amber Webber’s, Janis Joplins’ throaty vocals wail on. And ‘Stormy High’, ‘Wucan’ and new single ‘Old Fangs’ are particularly like test-tube-grown stadium rockers, complete with stomping melodies and punchy choruses. Homages are almost always bad. Quite often very bad. But what Black Mountain do is on a par and sometimes better than what the finest 70s rock bands had to offer.

www.loudandquiet.com

Cinema review

film By ian roebuck

The illusionist Starring: Didier Gustin, Jil Aigrot Edith Rankin, Jean-Claude Donda Director: Sylvain Chomet

9/10

Joaquin Phoenix in the Casey Affleck documentary I’m Still Here

Brother’s In Arms In the case of all Hollywood siblings there’s a dud, and only one Affleck continued to impress -----When it comes to the gene pool it’s easy to establish which sibling is the Olympic swimmer and which one is left cleaning the chlorine stained cracks. How about Kevin Bacon, his questionable face and superb acting choices make him a standout performer for his generation. Not too sure about the musicianship of brother Michael though. Need more proof? Take David Arquette or the Baldwins. Do you think Stephen is first on Alec’s Christmas dinner invitation list? Nobody takes the biscuit quite like the Affleck’s, though. Benjamin Geza Affleck-Boldt burst onto the scene back in 1997 with Good Will Hunting, making his uncharacteristic features omnipresent for the subsequent decade. But you can trace his acting career with a simple linear graph – pre his breakthrough he gave us Dazed and Confused and Mallrats (not bad going, Ben), post chumming up with Matt Damon we got Bounce, Pearl Harbour and Gigli. Sure there’s the odd Changing Lanes but interesting roles have eluded Ben’s blankness for quite some time now. Meanwhile, brother Casey has been bubbling under for quite some time. Barely one line of dialogue but he still ate the awesome scenery up in Gerry and went on to do so much more.With melancholic mirth

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in Lonesome Jim and quiet menace in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Casey well and truly put his big bro to shame, and recent projects suggest that Casey’s cult status will continue. Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me may have flopped but even after socking sassy women he came out shining. Now he’s chosen to direct in extraordinary fashion. I’m Still Here is a documentary (or blatant mockumentary considering they’re mates) of Joaquin Phoenix’s rather spectacular fall from grace.We all know beardy man lost the plot, quit his day job and announced he would rap for cash, and now we have the pleasure of watching his erratic journey as Casey’s cameras captured it all, every last human dump on top of the aforementioned actor, if reports are to be trusted. Add to that male nudity, cocaine, call girls and oral sex with publicists and you’ve got yourself the coolest film in Hollywood. Only a sex scandal involving an on-set female producer would align the Affleck’s once more. So perhaps we are finally moving towards balance in our intake of Affleck’s; parity restored as they move behind the camera. Ben’s Gone Baby Gone a critical success, his next movie, The Town, looks to follow suit. A gritty Boston crime-caper starring Mad Men’s Jon Hamm promises much and what’s next for Casey after exposing Phoenix’s genitals? Who’s to say, but there’s never a dull moment with these two, apart from Jersey Girl, Forces of Nature, Oceans Twe…

French film-maker Jacques Tati made just six feature length films in his lifetime, each celebrating his unique physical presence and magnetism. In 1956 the elegant performer wrote The Illusionist: a lost lament to his daughter Sophie whom he longed to know deeply. Tati’s work and fame kept him away from his family, The Illusionist never making it onto our screens until now. After making the visually stunning Belleville Rendezvous, Sylvain Chomet was approached by Sophie herself just two years before her death. Chomet’s next project would be Tati’s most personal legacy. A poignant, expressive and often hilarious film, it seems as if Chomet’s melancholic paintbrush was the perfect marriage to Tati’s tight choreography and sense of fun.We follow Jacques Tati himself, a stage entertainer in the twilight of his and indeed his trade’s time in the limelight, as he is forced to take on more and more obscure jobs in order to stay in a world he so clearly loves. His journey takes him to Edinburgh via London, Chomet’s eye sweeping across our beautiful landscape with remarkable passion and affection. Tati’s illusionist is a lonesome soul, content in his own company but lacking heart. It’s when he meets a kindred spirit deep in the highlands that the film sparkles and Chomet’s palette fills with warmth. With practically no dialogue (when it comes it’s mostly Gaelic or French) the film relies on its aesthetic beauty and simple story to please; yet still it delivers in droves.The sheer detail is at times overwhelming, every shot lit in cinematic style and every composition carefully constructed. Finding yourself marvelling at the changes in weather, the sound of birdsong and the reflection of a passing train becomes second nature, as you realise that you could watch this ten times over and still pick up a hidden treasure or comedic delight. A film full to the brim of subtle mystery, aching with emotion and rich in colourful character,Tati and his daughter would be proud.

DIGITAL

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party wolf RIP BIG BROTHER: PW’s best bits

Michael Jackson and Nasty Nick Bateman ask Big Brother for alcohol (as per usual). BB says, “sod off!” and makes MJ wipe cream on Nick’s face. “He he,” tittered Jacko. “You look like you got that skin thing I’ve got now.” Classic TV!

Vanessa Feltz enters the BB house in wedding dress having soiled all other clothes she owes the previous night.

MEMOIRS I went back to the house the evening after that very last eviction, the names of all the great housemates ringing in my ears. Bubble, Nasty Nick, Dan who was ginger but dyed his hair black, others. I’d given ten years to BB, gurned my face inside out, and it was gone. I didn’t know what to do. “I’m coming to get yooouuu!!!” I yelled but trailed off.There was no one left to ‘come and get’. I slumped against some graffiti that said RIP Jade and laughed at the fact that that pig had become more popular than me, ‘Big Mother’. I sat silently for what felt like ages, and then, after three minutes, I heard a scratching over by the skips that we used to filter all of sewage from the house through. “Davina,” said a faint voice from inside. “Is that you? Have you come to get me?” I climbed up and peered inside. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Dermot. He’d been living there since quitting the show. “I didn’t know what to do without BB,” he sobbed. I was staring my future in the face... and it stunk of cabbage. Dermot asked if I wanted to move in with him and George Lamb. I gurned a sad gurn and left him whistling the BB theme tune. I was back in a week.

Lonely hearts “It’s not weird, it’s a sexy Facebook”

GoOutWith MyFriend.com Mel

Area: Children: Diet: Employment:

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Mini me from Austin Powers would always wear sun glasses so you could never tell where he was looking. Here he is definitely looking at Michael’s chest... and I admire that.

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LA As long as their ‘right’ The lord, of course Was in films about cops and Scotts

Mel has this to say about Mel: Yeah yeah, you’re meant to get a ‘friend’ to write this bit, I know. But it turns out, what with Danny Glover on holiday still, none of my pals have the time to write a few words about the Gibbo so I thought I’d give it a go myself. They’d probably all say the same as me anyway. They’d say ‘Mel is so nice. He’s really nice to woman and people of all sorts, including people of different races, even the evil ones. He is definitely not a racist, and he doesn’t even have a problem with the jews.’ Yeah, they’d say that, and then we’d all have a laugh, because we’re happy people. Right Mel? Mel responded by saying: Oh Mel, you’re so nice. Did you get my text last night, only you didn’t reply?

Disclaimer: The representations of the persons herein are purely fictitious.

35, looking for an obedient woman

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A 90v current is passed through Davina McCall and Jade Goodie as part of a task supporting alternative fuel sources. No idea what’s with the ‘Well Soon!’ banner though.