Loud And Quiet 7 – Telepathe by LoudAndQuiet

LoudAndQuiet Zero pounds / Volume 03 / Issue 07 / 100 percent psychic

telepathe Aboard the hype machine Plus Teen Sheikhs Gallops! 2ManyDJs Oh Minnows The Magic Wands Let’s Wrestle The Hipshakes Ulterior Danger Mouse

> Telepathe page 26

> The hipshakes page 12

> Teen sheikhs page 24

> 2manydjs page 18

Prime Travel We always knew this month would come, but we never expected it to arrive so soon. London has run out of bands. Even if that were true, there’d of course be a fresh swathe of acts for us to bother for next month’s issue, but over the past 30 days we have made a special effort to look further a field for new music. What we found was a main event in the predictably reliable hot spot of Brooklyn; Telepathe [page 26] being that over hyped duo with a much under hyped album. That was easy, but Sheffield then gave us rambling garage punk in the shape of The Hipshakes [page 12] and a trip to the south coast found us lusting after sausage and mash in Brighton with creators of ‘Dude Culture’ Teen Sheikhs [page 24]. Belgium came to us when 2ManyDJs [page 18] were in town and math rock, shoegaze and ‘cosmo pop’ were sniffed out in Wrexham, Chicago and LA, respectively. The Oyster card has taken a right pounding. www.loudandquiet.com

Contents 07| 09 Photographer: Tom cockram

LOUD AND QUIET ZERO POUNDS / VOLUME 03 / ISSUE 07 / 100 PERCENT PSYCHIC

TELEPATHE ABOARD THE HYPE MACHINE PLUS TEEN SHEIKHS GALLOPS! 2MANYDJS OH MINNOWS THE MAGIC WANDS LET’S WRESTLE THE HIPSHAKES ULTERIOR DANGER MOUSE

07 – Friendly / Daft / Cow 08 – Russian / Laughing / Bear 10 – Dog / Beats / God 12 – Shit / My / Pants 15 – Weird / Cheesy / Love 17 – Exile / Davina / McCall 18 – Middle / Finger / Me 20 – David’s / Lame / Nuts 22 – Fuck / The / Beatles 24 – Ninja / Dude / Sex 30 – Nervous / Wolf / Noise 34 – Diana’s / Trimmed / Knob 37 – Texans / Smell / Disappointing 41 – Face / The / Polaroid

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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

Sub Editor

Advertising

advertise@loudandquiet.com Contributors

Anna Dobbie, Ben Parkes, Benson Burt, Chris Watkeys, Danny Canter, Danielle Goldstien, Dean Driscoll, Edgar Smith, Eleanor Dunk, Elinor Jones, Elizabeth Dodd, Gabriel Green, Janine Bullman, Kelda Hole, Kate Parkin, Kate Swerdlow, Lee Elliot, Mandy Drake, Nathan Westley, Owen Richards, Phil Dixon, Polly Rappaport, Rebecca Innes, Reef Younis, Sam Little, Sam Walton, Simon Leak,Tim Cochrane, Tom Cockram,Tom Goodwyn,Tom Pinnock This Month L&Q Loves

Beth Drake, Keong Woo, Michael Consagra The views expressed in Loud And Quiet are those of the respective contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the magazine or its staff. All rights reserved 2009 © Loud And Quiet.

The Beginning 07| 09

It takes 2 Forget the ‘terrible twos’, the best new bands around are duos Writer: Stuart Stubbs

Everyone, whether 15 or 50, has been in a band at some point. More often than not, these groups won’t actually ever play together, or buy and learn their instruments even. They’re just an idea; a fallacy to past time until the school/pub bell tells you to ‘sling it’. And in this business of fantasy fret-boards, trios, quartets and 5-pieces are a rare thing. Drunk, you’ll float your idea past John, who’ll instantly be recruited on bass, but Dan’s in on the round, Jane’s overheard, Greg’s a close friend, and before long your ‘band’ has 4 guitarists, 3 backing singers and at least two members who can’t actually contribute anything at all. The point? That reality is a long haul from the land of make believe, especially today, as shown by the most interesting of bands being thin on members. It’s not only since The White Stripes that duos have been doing great things and proving that offal-free line-ups are the way to go – Lightning Bolt making that hardcore racket with

more than four limbs hardly bares thinking about – but in 2009 it seems that the indie world has finally caught up with Jack & Meg proper. Just two months after the story of Marmaduke Duke’s funky disco landed them on our front cover, The Big Pink followed with their industrial shoegaze. In half that time Telepathe have arrived on page one due to a discarded debut album that sounds like no other synth pop record we’ve heard before. Gentle Friendly, Plug, Heartsrevolution, The Golden Filter, Kap Bambino, The Magic Wands; they’re all here or have been since January, with good reason. And the pairs keep coming. Crocodiles, you may remember from last month’s Loud And Quiet, when we gave their debut album, ‘Summer of Hate’, an 8. Still happily shacked up with the record of Jesus and Mary Chain vocals and processed drums, we decided we more than liked these two Californians and booked them for the first Loud And Quiet club tour, much like

The Horrors who have recently requested the band’s company on the road this September. A little closer to home are Brighton’s The Sticks who we first came across playing clattering surf punk like their instrumental ‘Blah’ at Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. On a bill that also boasted Speak & The Spells and Joy-Rides, it must be said that a majority were more bothered by gutter balls and comedy names on lane monitors than the impressiveness of Stu and James swapping instruments to produce experimental anti-easy-listening that pulls in Mark E Smith blurts and bopping rock’n’roll riff. Regardless, ‘Cash Cow’ sounds like Factory Floor sparring with a These New Puritans prototype, which surely deserves to turn a few heads. On the dancefloors – where tag teams have been at home since Daft Punk and The Chemical Brothers inspired a generation to ‘go house’ – new talent comes in the form of duos playing live dance music, like the sequined,

camp disco of Fan Death and The Golden Filter. But a more subtle euphoria fizzes through Teengirl Fantasy; a savvy duo that shopped around and rightly decided that releasing a 7” via Merok would do them no harm. Pixelated 8-bit pop defused in massive bongs, this bedroom project is only slightly less downbeat than other twosome champs High Places and infinitely more uplifting. And the list goes on. Neon Indian are your first stop for 80s synths and weightless vocals, Brooklyn percussion fiends Tanlines pick up the tropical baton the morning after a tribal party with Rainbow Arabia while, back in garage land, Peepholes almost lose themselves in enough jet engine fuzz to make Wavves sound like a clean, jangly indie band. By the end of the year the duo bubble will have no doubt burst. Until that day comes, know that your ‘band’ can, like, totally rock, but if you want anyone to buy it, John needs to be the first and last in.

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The Beginning

Books

By Janine & Lee Bullman

Typical Girls? The Story of The Slits By Zoe Street Howe (Omnibus Press) The complete story of a seminal punk band is finally told ---------------------

keeping BOTCH The hardcore band that changed everything without the world knowing it Writer: Ben Patashnik We will never know who comes to our funeral, or even if we’ll get one. The Showbox in Seattle, Washington is a fine place for a eulogy; room enough for 1100 souls to pay their respects and howl sadness until the bar runs dry. Almost seven years ago to the day, on June 15 2002, Botch played their final ever show there, the last time they would carve murder from guitars, bass and drums and inflict aural war on anyone lucky enough to be within earshot. It’s the final resting place of a bunch of guys who started out as a hardcore band but who ended up redefining heavy music entirely. Their magnum opus, the staggering ‘We Are The Romans’ was released almost a decade ago but remains a set text for anyone who remains unconvinced that hardcore can be beautifully ornate or anyone who wants a lesson in progressive music. For over 50 minutes it batters and pounds and pummels and eventually overwhelms, but the intelligence and precision of its assault is, frankly, astonishing. It’ll make you feel like you can walk through flames and tear down walls, like pure liquid energy is pulsing through your veins, like God is laughing with you and not at you, like the universe was created just so you could reach this moment and hear this music. They took the

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base elements of a none-moredogmatic genre – punishing riffs and gut-punch percussion, a vocalist with acid for saliva and a scream that could terrify a velociraptor– and blended them with cut-up rhythms, erudite and baffling structures and an adventurousness that sees them cited alongside Refused as true pioneers. But they never had anything as catchy or palatable as ‘New Noise’ that they could ride to widespread (relatively speaking, anyway) acclaim. Botch remain something of a hidden treasure, partly because of their limited discography – Converge, for example, followed up ‘Jane Doe’ with a succession of equally loved records, Dillinger Escape Plan started slowly but have become an unstoppable hurricane of power, Thrice were always more accessible – but probably because there is nothing even remotely close to compromise in their music. In early-’90s Tacoma, Washington, Tim Latona, Brian Cook, Dave Verellen and Dave Knudson formed Botch because they wanted to play Helmet covers at Tim’s house. After a few years of releasing seveninches, low-key splits, a lengthy US tour with Ink & Dagger and a short Canadian tour with Dave’s dad driving, Hydrahead picked them up and put

out ‘American Nervoso’ in 1998. By now they’d built up a reputation for being the perfect black marriage of technicality and brutality, but it was the emergence of the songs that would go on to comprise ‘We Are The Romans’, released in 1999, that launched them into a lot of people’s faces. Dillinger Escape Plan took them to Europe for their first tour in 2000 and they were meant to tour the US with Murder City Devils in 2001 but pulled out. On February 2nd 2002 Dave Knudson let it slip at a show that they were calling it quits, the news was confirmed a day later. In October after June’s final show the ‘An Anthology Of Dead Ends’ EP was released, featuring the stillborn songs that would have blossomed into a third full-length. Four years later the DVD of their final show, ‘061502’, emerged. The end. Except Botch will never die. The enduring power of ‘We Are The Romans’ simply can’t be underestimated, and it will stand for years to come as a truly essential document of the possibilities of four dudes and some instruments, let alone a hardcore band. Minus The Bear, Russian Circles, Narrows, These Arms Are Snakes and Roy all contain former members. But they’ll always be The Romans. We Are The Romans. We Are The Romans.

Zoe Street Howe has taken on the long overdue roll of biographer to The Slits. More than just another punk band, the release of their debut album – in which they appeared on the cover topless and covered in mud – not only challenged perceptions of women in music, it was artistically pioneering, creating some unusual musical hybrids such as funk and free jazz, pop punk and dub reggae. The Slits were nothing short of unique. Howe interviews both the band and the people who surrounded them such as manager Don Letts, and uncovers some never seen before images. An ardent and vivid tale told with sheer verve.

The Devil’s Paintbrush By Jake Arnott (Sceptre) British novelist paints it black with latest book about Beelzebub --------------------Jake Arnott’s fifth and finest novel yet is set against the backdrop of Paris at the turn of the twentieth century. There we meet Aleister Crowley, history’s most infamous Satanist mountaineer, and Hector MacDonald, recently disgraced Empire War hero. The action ensues as our two heroes come face to face with both past and future over a single day and night that takes in a Black Mass, hallucinogenic drugs and the cold realization that a new day is dawning. Arnott relishes the telling of his tale: The Devil’s Paintbrush is a funny, elegant book that feels like the work of a writer hitting their stride, and there’s not a gangster in sight.

The Beginning

moondog The story of The Viking of 6th Avenue: a pioneer Illustration: Elbowdesigns.co.uk Writer: Polly Rappaport

“I thought that if the God my father preached about was good, he wouldn’t have let it happen to me. And if he was all-powerful and looking the other way at the time, he would have restored my sight. But he did neither, and I lost my faith.” (Moondog, The Viking of 6th Avenue, Robert Scotto) Louis Thomas Hardin was born in Kansas, 1916. His father, a priest, would go on missions around the Midwest, preaching the principles of Christianity to ‘ungodly’ cowboys and Native Americans. It was on journeys such as these that Louis was introduced to the tribal music and traditional drumming techniques that would later form the basis of his own music – it was also when he began to question the religion he had known since birth. The crucial turning point in his life came when, at the age of sixteen, Louis was blinded permanently when a detonating cap he’d found exploded in his face. Gone was his religious faith, gone was his former sense of independence and gradually, as Louis began to delve deeper into music, his family began to dissolve and it was time to strike out and find a new brand of independence. In 1943, a very different Louis Hardin arrived on the streets of New York City, wearing home made clothes in the fashion of a Norse God, complete with long hair and beard and topped off with a horned Viking helmet and seven foot spear. These streets would become his home, spending roughly thirty years of his life standing on 6th Avenue (usually the corner of 54th and 6th), no matter the weather, panhandling a selection of his musical compositions

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and poems as well as performing using percussion instruments of his own invention. In 1947, Louis adopted the pen name Moondog, a tribute to a lame-footed farm dog he’d known back in the Midwest who used to howl at the moon. Moondog became very well known in New York, attracting attention, not just for his appearance (my mother used to see him regularly, sometimes sharing shelter in doorways when it was raining, and unsurprisingly found the six-and-a-halffoot Viking more than a little intimidating) but for the music he made, dubbed Snaketime for its unusual, slinky time signatures and also his use of ‘found sounds’, specimens of noises he would hear in the environment around him, captured on a tape recorder and integrated into his visceral, off-kilter beats. His first album, ‘Moondog’, released on Columbia (which he did not allow the label to listen to before it was recorded) is full of ‘found sounds’: ‘Lullaby’ opens with the cries of an infant, ‘Tree Trail’ is underscored by the squawks and twitters of a forest and ‘Big Cat’ incorporates the fierce roar of a Lion. The mixing was extremely complex (for the1960’s), the overall effect, minimalistic. To Moondog, it seems every sound was a form of music: Philip Glass, with whom he lived for the better part of a year, recalls the towering Viking standing on the roof overlooking the river with his bamboo flute, mimicking – more likely playing along with – the horns of incoming boats. Glass, eventually becoming a world-famous composer himself, was significantly influenced by the work of his blind lodger and they collaborated on a number of

pieces in the 60’s. Most Moondog pieces are around two minutes long and some of his most striking works are closer to a minute and a half, sound bites in and of themselves; a thought, a reaction, a simple statement which says no more and no less than it was intended to. This brevity is another aspect of Moondog Minimalism and also, most appropriately, lends itself to the sampling and looping of his compositions: The popular Mr Scruff track ‘Get A Move On’ is a looped and remixed incarnation of Moondog’s ‘Bird’s Lament’: Scruff has

sampled the Original Sampler. Other artists who have borrowed or been influenced by his music include Janis Joplin (who covered his song, ‘All Is Loneliness’) Elvis Costello, Mouse on Mars and Anthony Hegarty. For all his despair at being plunged into darkness by a negligent God, if Louis Hardin had not been compelled to see the world with his ears, there would have been no Moondog, and aspects we take for granted in today’s music – minimalism, sampling, mixing, drum and bass – would be very different and might not exist at all.

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The Hipshakes The Hipshakes discuss onstage nerves, ‘Slipper Trees’ and conquering America at the age of 15 Writer: Kate Parkin Photographer: Lee Elliott - www.LJEPhotography.com

It’s one of the few token days of British Summer so we sit outside a pub in the leafier end of Sheffield. Guitarist Daniel Russell and bassist Andrew Anderson set about grilling me on mutual friends (we all went to the same High School) while drummer Bruce Sargent is content to huddle over multiple pints of Guinness, offering occasional nods of agreement. The Hipshakes may only be 22 but they’ve already been together 7 years, forming the band at school aged 15. They all went to Sheffield University where Dan studied Architecture, Andy studied Geography and Bruce did Conservation. Based in Sheffield, they all found jobs in their respective fields – so far, so straight-laced. So why the urge to start a rock and roll riot? Bruce starts. “First of all [me and Dan] formed a band with three people, Andrew was in another band.” “I was kicked out for a while cos I didn’t know how to play the guitar,” adds Dan. “It turns out that was our saving grace, as sheer stupidity and not knowing how to play our instruments became the sound that we’ve honed over the years!” Sonically, they’ve received comparisons ranging from underground American punk like The Oblivians and The Reatards, and compilation series Killed By Death. Usually clocking in at under two minutes, their songs are delivered in short, sharp shocks. Dan explains: “We got compared to 60s compilations of Nuggets and Pebbles or box sets of obscure bands that we’d never heard of, but it’s all good. When we started we just knew bands that most people knew like The Ramones and The Stooges.” The Hipshakes recorded their debut album, ‘Shake Their Hips’, with shadowy figure Shaun ‘The Hand’ Alcock from Leeds Punk

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band The Real Losers. He also plays guitar on the album and they covered Real Losers song ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’ on last years EP ‘Live at Rob’s House’ – “All those guys have got stupid nicknames like ‘Hotdog’ and ‘Seashake,” informs Dan. In a 2006 interview for US fanzine Terminal Boredom, Dan claimed they suffered from nerves that exploded into angry performances. I wonder out loud if things have changed. “We have this energy still,” admits Andy “but I only get nervous for occasional shows now whereas it used to be every one. With having played loads now it’s a lot easier. I don’t have to just lie down or shit my pants before a gig anymore. We enjoy it a lot more now.” Their first single ‘OK, Alright’ quickly became ‘flavour of the month’ in America, with releases on underground record labels Slovenly Recordings and Tic Tac Totally. Playing their first tour with Cococoma in 2007, they soon found the recognition they were looking for. “We went from playing every weekend, or thereabouts, around England to crap audiences and crap towns, to suddenly going to play in America,” smiles Dan. “I think people just liked it cos we were dead young when we recorded our first bunch of singles,” reckons Andy. “They thought it was a bit special that there was a bunch of idiots from England playing the music they wanted to hear.” Their tinnitus-triggering wall of guitar noise also caught the attention of legendary DJ and music lover John Peel, who played their demo on his Radio 1 show. It lead to them getting bigger shows and releases in the UK. Andrew also creates melodic punk freakouts with solo project Proto Idiot and a looser garage rock sound with The Creepouts. Dan is in a band with Daf from Navvy called Sexplosion, so I

mention Daf’s obvious enthusiasm for the project to him. “Yeah I’m excited as well,” he buzzes “but everyone does different things, like, Navvy just toured so we couldn’t really practice for a while, everything always clashes.” Describing the changes in the local scene, Andy explains: “I think what Sheffield needs is a place where people can bring their own booze. Ages ago (local bands) Smokers Die Younger and Champion Kickboxer used to run the Electric Blanket nights at the Blind Institute, now that’s just been knocked down.” “Then they moved to Matilda Social Centre,” adds Dan “which is just a squat. Now there’s nowhere like that really, where you can go that’s not governed by rules.” In 2006, thanks to guitarist Dan Russell’s career as an Architect’s Assistant, the band played Architecture Rocks and got their first experience of the corporate industry machine. “We were offered lots of German beer and a stylist,” says Bruce “but we declined it. I wished we hadn’t, we’d have gotten free clothes! We could have got the most expensive clothes and sold them!” “We got a terrible review of that gig though,” frowns Andy “they said we looked like little kids, that’s just insulting!” They’ve tried their hand at covering everything from the Eels to Eddie Cochrane and Johnny Thunders, so what’s next? “Probably something by The Equals, which is Eddy Grants band from the 60s,” laughs Andy. “Especially that one ‘Slippertree’, a song about a man that has a tree that grows slippers that are silver!” Dan: “That was before Eddy Grant ditched his band and did ‘Electric Avenue’. He was in the Greatest R’n’B band ever. Just a bunch of black dudes really rocking out.” Recording in everything from

basements and garages, to mate’s houses and council run studios, for their new album The Hipshakes have opted for a different approach. “Yeah, for the first time we paid for our own recordings and then everything started to go more towards people recording stuff in their bedrooms,” explains Dan “so we’re completely at odds with whatever people from our underground rock world are doing.” As for the rest of 2009, there are plans to release a 7” with B Vicars, a tour with the Lovvers and Andrew is moving to America for a year to do a Masters. While he’s away Bruce and Dan plan to play some dates as a two-piece, though Dan adds, “We’ll still be band after it though.” They will also provide backup for Andrews band Proto Idiot at the Prickly Peas Bowl festival in Sardinia. “You play on the beach with generators or a village fete in front of thousands of crazy peasants,” says Dan. “It’s pretty awesome.” And despite misconceptions about their backgrounds, The Hipshakes resent the implication that to be Punk means to be working class or socially dysfunctional. “The Urinals had a song called ‘I’m White and Middle Class’,” says Dan “and its not like we are writing overtly political songs or pretending to be a band of the people or anything. Everyone can be annoyed by things and write songs about them. A lot of our songs aren’t particularly angry, just delivered with energy. I’d like to write different music (and attempt to, for different projects) but the sound we have developed grew mainly out of boredom and musical incompetence rather than hating the world or rebelling. Or maybe we hated the boredom of where we grew up and rebelled against that.”

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The Magic Wands How chance, Myspace and magic gave birth to sexy US pop music

Writer: MANDY DRAKE As concepts go, ‘Fate’ is as big as they come. It’s no whitehaired supreme being building the universe in under a week, or the critically acclaimed sequel about how the creator of everything had a son who copped it for all of our sins, but it’s pretty bloody huge. It gets us through the night when we’ve just been dumped, and the following day as we’re sacked from a job we could do with keepning. It comforts after we run for the train only to see it pull away, and feeds our lusty dreams up to the moment our lottery tickets are binned. As long as everything’s predestined, everything is going to be just rosy. “We used to joke about that all the time,” giggles Dexy of The Magic Wands. “Chris would be like, ‘this is our destiny’, and I’d say, ‘Shut up! That’s so cheesy.’” Oh yes, Fate has its knockers too. Even those who’ve experienced the kind of serendipity found in a Richard Curtis film can be cynical to the map of the cosmos. “I started this Myspace group called The Dollphins,” continues Dexy “which was like a girl band but there was nobody in it except me, and I had just one song. Chris started stalking me on Myspace, and then… actually it’s funny because I didn’t know it but I’d met him briefly for ten minutes, a year before…” “We met outside a show for, like, a few minutes when I was in LA one time,” interrupts Chris “but I didn’t realise, I just heard her song on the Myspace page and thought, ‘this is so great’.”

“It’s kinda weird,” Dexy ponders “when I first met him I thought, ‘oh, he’s cute’ but then I never saw him again.” Two LA kids meet outside a gig. They go their separate ways, only to meet once again, through Myspace, a year later. Only one of them (Chris) isn’t a Californian at all, but a passing visitor to the City of Angels, from his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. It might not be Fate, but it’s the happy coincidence that gave birth to The Magic Wands, the dreamiest, sexiest pop duo around. The track that Chris quickly became obsessed with was Dexy’s Blondie-toting ‘Teenage Love’: a cross between a hornier ‘Rapture’ and a less calypso ‘Island Of Lost Souls’. After gushing to The Dollphins via Myspace he and Dexy would speak every day on the phone for a summer until Chris finally flew back to LA to meet Dexy for the second time. They spent the weekend together, “really hit it off”, and before long Chris was moving the sole member of his new favourite band into his Nashville home. “We never left the house,” says Dexy. “We turned it into a mini disco and never left, ever. We only went out to eat and that was about it.” The Magic Wands’ place would have been the house rumbling to clipped drum machines and floaty boy/girl coos. Enveloped by the city’s predominant alt. county, blues and rock’n’roll bands, Dexy and Chris would write overdriven sweet pop (‘Kiss Me Dead’), sassy disco with Ramones “HEY!”s (‘Black Magic’) and synthy, cosmic Ladyhawke numbers

(‘Starship’). No wonder they were reluctant to step outside and into a world of plaid shirts and serious beards – The Magic Wands are a party band who have called their debut EP ‘Magic, Love and Dreams’ because “those are the three main topics that we obsessed over when we first met,” nods Dexy “and we still do. Those are the things that we’re really inspired by and interested in. We’re an ESP rock band,” she laughs. As ‘Kiss Me Dead’’s wall of sound meets the shoegaze revival, critics have already voiced certain comparisons, most notably the not unpleasant ‘Nancy Sinatra fronting the Jesus and Mary Chain’ stab from The Guardian. But it’s not accurate, say the band. “We don’t even own a Jesus and Mary Chain record,” said Dexy, for the first time not smiling. “I mean, it’s totally retarded for people to say that, just because we used reverb it doesn’t mean we’re like Jesus and Mary Chain. We don’t dislike them but… no… it’s just a shortcut to thinking. ‘Oh, reverb and delay, Mary Chain’, y’know?” “We try to keep it all kinda ethereal…” begins Chris before being cut off. “No, it’s not ethereal,” counters Dexy. “See? Any word you use it’s like, ‘No!’.” Chris: “It is. It’s like spacey, a lot of it.” “It’s space pop.” Dexy acquiesces and opts for the daftest title she can imagine. “That’s what I told someone the other day that said, ‘we need to know what it is’, so I said, ‘it’s like music on the moon’.”

The truth is The Magic Wands are all of the above. Jesus and Mary Chain is in there somewhere, and so too is ethereal, cosmo pop for moon men to make out to. Fleetingly holed up in the Hollywood Hills, Dexy and Chris have discarded their Nashvillepropelled coffee obsessions for west coast health kicks – “We do a lot of different things here that we wouldn’t do in Nashville,” explains Dexy. “In Nashville we’d go for coffee, in LA we go for a hike in the canyon and then go to a crystal shop or something.” “We’ve been really getting into drinking smoothies here,” adds Chris “but I’m going to get really into coffee when we move to New York.” That’s a month from now, when the duo will flee to Gotham, continuing their aim “to live in as many different places as possible.” Their stay in LA will have been short – acting as downtime after a US tour with The Kills and The Horrors – but it counts, and nearby Indian reserves have given the band their best track yet; the Native American-inspired ‘Warrior’ that thumps harder than anything else they’ve recorded and features a tribal call to rival the best bit in Duran Duran’s ‘Save A Prayer’. It’s fitting that The Magic Wands should be today’s poster band for Fate, really. Whether they find it “so cheesy” or not, Dexy and Chris met by chance so coincidental that the giddy optimism of destiny was bound to be rooted in their music, and it is. Everything’s going to be just rosy.

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Gallops! The Four Horsemen of the instrumental math rock apocalypse Writer: Reef Younis Photographer: Paul Gregory

03 A short hop from Liverpool and a stone’s throw from Manchester, nestling the right side of the border, lays Wrexham, a largeish North Walean town. Boasting a struggling non-league football club, a half decent venue (Central Station) and an ever burgeoning indie music scene, Gallops! emergence is more pleasing than surprising. Born in late 2007, they’re the antidote – not reaction – to the spate of indie copyists consistently emerging from the North West. “We’re definitely not a reaction to it but, I suppose we are a product of it,” explains Mark Huckridge, Gallops! guitarist and keyboardist. “There aren’t any bands in Wrexham who influence us artistically, but in terms of encouraging each other to get out there and play, there’s definitely a motivation to just get out there and do it.” Initially starting out as an experiment between Mark and tech wizard Paul Maurice, their ‘Crutches’ demo soon found its way to Bethan Elfyn’s Radio 1 show playlist and the rest, as they say, is history. “I think it was probably about mid-2008 that we started getting real interest because it was pretty soon after we did

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‘Crutches’,” continues Mark. “We basically did it in two days with a dodgy electric drum track for a laugh, really. It definitely took us by surprise but we’re really happy to have a song people are into. We did our first session for Bethan [Elfyn] last year and we did a session this year in a great studio and recorded some tracks we were really happy with.” With decent noise being generated, Mark and Paul took the swift decision to recruit Dave Morait on drums and Brad Whyte on guitar to beef up Gallops!’s sound, and it’s a move that quickly paid dividends. “When we started it off, it wasn’t a serious thing, it was just me and Paul messing about and then we thought we should get a drummer because we wanted a live drum sound, and get a guitarist to fill out the rest a bit,” says Mark. Ploughing a similarly mute furrow to that of Errors, what the tracks of Gallops! may lack in vocals (oh yes, they’re completely instrumental) is more than made up for with angular guitar stabs, pummelling programmed breakdowns and relentlessly dark rhythms. Not that their lack of vocal prowess is going to keep them up at night…

“We weren’t really thinking about vocals in the first place because none of us can really sing. We haven’t got much choice to be honest but it’s working as it is. A lot of people ask us why we don’t use vocals but, personally, I don’t think our music would suit them. It might sound a bit cliché but I like to let the music speak.” Merging together disparate influences, Gallops!, according to Mark, don’t look to define themselves, musically speaking. Not strictly math rock by numbers, tracks like ‘Lasers’ don’t dare attack with the climactic bombast of Mogwai, instead injecting songs with a snarling, vibrant tension that owes as much to metronomic stickmanship and rapier guitar as it does to spectral keys and invading electronica. This band make tracks that worm their way into your head, peppering your temples with abstract bleeps, simple, bludgeoned percussion and incessantly immediate electro. “Our influences come from further a field than a lot of the bands around at the moment,” explains Mark. “We all have completely different tastes and preferences in the band and we all bring different strands of music: Dave and Brad are more

rock-based, Paul’s into his electronic stuff and I’m into a lot of older music. There isn’t a lot around at the moment that stands out for me. We’re just quite experimental. We started out as an experiment so I don’t think you can get more experimental than that.” Working outside of a conventional four piece, each member has a personal responsibility to bring something to the party and it’s a blueprint that’s serving the band well. “We all do our separate bits and we tend to our songs in their own parts. We very rarely all sit down together and work on a track,” says Mark. With an appearance at the recent Radio 1 Big Weekend under their belts, and festival dates strewn across the summer, the bigger stages certainly beckon, as does an EP. “It was a tough crowd [at the Radio 1 weekend]. We were playing at the same time as people like Franz Ferdinand and Gossip so it was quite difficult to compete. It was a great weekend though and we got a good feeling for playing to crowds that big. It was good to have that kind of warm up, if you like, for being on bigger stages.” A first ‘Big Weekend’ of many.

Oh Minnows Chris Steele-Nicholson’s life after Semifinalists and self-imposed exile in the UK Writer: Danny canter

When you’re in a band called Semifinalists, you’re destined to always be less than second best. Year on year you won’t even be third, but joint third, along with another ill-christened outfit called something like The Nearlies, no doubt. In Big Brother world that’s tantamount to being ninth, and infinitely worse than being the first to get the boot. No one ever remembers who comes joint third, however much film students Chris SteeleNicholson, Ferry Gouw and Adriana Alba were intent on proving otherwise. Under their modest moniker they gave it a good go mind, releasing lush new-romantic pop for three years before Alba left in 2007 and Nicholson and Gouw put the band on an indefinite hiatus at the end of last year. “Ferry and I talked about it and we’re not saying that we’re completely done with Semifinalists but we’ve moved on to some other projects that we’re focusing on completely,” explains Nicholson in a soft American twang. “I don’t know if the doors are totally closed but, yeah, definitely it’s all about Oh Minnows now.” Oh Minnows?! Well, it’s hardly ‘The Winners’ or ‘The Champions’, but if debut EP ‘Might’ is anything to go by,

this now-solo musician is far beyond such trivialities as cock-sure recording names. Released this month via Young And Lost Club Records, the noncommittal title may still reek of a finishing position that’d have Davina McCall forgetting its name, but the cinematic soundscapes found on this debut need no second introduction; from the hazy shoegaze of ‘Version 2’ to the welling up ‘Dear’, which sounds more than a little like The Vines’ weepy ‘Homesick’. It’s the title track that really achieves Nicholson’s goal of “creating something a little bit more introspective… and a little more psychedelic” though. His friends are right when they point out that Oh Minnows “sounds shoegaze-y” [something that the singer is hesitant to relay, perhaps aware of how ‘now’ that sentence is] but ‘Might’ isn’t broody My Bloody Valentine, it’s washy 80s pop, ripe for laying over the love scene in Top Gun. It’s intensely emotive, a homecoming record without its creator knowing it. “I think part of it was being away from the States for six years or so, and then coming back,” he explains. “There was something emotional about that homecoming for me, and in a way

I’ve been rediscovering my own culture and my place in it. “A lot has changed in America. It was just interesting having that chance to see my country struggle along from afar, y’know, through the Bush era. That was difficult. I started to build up this view of an outsider before I came back and had to suddenly try to reconnect with it. I’d built up all of these feelings about my country that I didn’t know I had.” To concentrate on Oh Minnow he may have moved back to his hometown of Chicago [precisely as Barak Obama first turned the key in his new front door, no less - “I made it very clear that I’d only move back over if Obama became President,” he grins] but it was film that brought Nicholson to the UK for so many years, studying at London Film School where he met his fellow Semifinalists, Gouw and Alba “Music and film have always been the things for me,” he enthuses “and then I thought I’d maybe go to grad school. My plan was to come to London, go to grad school and then move to New York or something and become some obscure filmmaker who put films in museums if I could, but then I met the other members of

Semifinalists, we started playing and got a record deal, so Semifinalists always had that cinematic event to it because we were all film students.” Oh Minnows stretches further into the world of moving images; tracks like ‘Might’ sounding like buzzing, emotional film scores. At Semifinalists shows the band would play shrouded in shadows cast by projections that complimented their escapist pop; now Nicholson is concentrating on producing a stand-a-lone film that he intends to submit to some festivals. A clip of the “experimental piece” can be seen on his new Myspace page. Live, it’s hard to say whether Nicholson will obscure his face with cinematic elements once more, because he’s yet to finalise how he’ll present his new tracks on stage. His first proper gig will be at the Loud And Quiet club night on July 13th, but he’s not likely to rush preparations, however soon his first performance. In between previous band tours and recordings, the foundations for Oh Minnows were in fact laid at the dawn of Semifinalists; Chris Steele-Nicholson has been playing the long game in becoming the champ.

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2ManyDJs Something’s got to give…

Writer: Reef Younis Photographer: Gabriel Green A solitary glitter ball hangs from Brixton Academy’s ceiling, rendered obsolete in the company of gaping confetti canons and a giant back screen. Below, a small army of technicians are busy preparing 2ManyDJs new visual assault, not that anyone who’s witnessed their live show has ever been left looking for a distraction. Arguably the ultimate party DJs, brothers Stephen and David DeWaele have been raising roofs for the best part of a decade, straddling the ever-difficult divide between AC/ DC and Dolly Parton and evolving through the now incendiary Soulwax, Radio Soulwax and 2ManyDJs guises. In the bowels of the Academy, David DeWaele is worried. Surprised by the power of a small Myspace ad and indifferent to the fact that tonight and Saturday’s shows (both sell outs) cleared in a recessionary week in February, the advent of a new audiovisual chapter in 2ManyDJs life has him on edge. “It’s nice that people are so willing to just come to a 2ManyDJs set,” he says. “It’s really odd how we went on sale with these two small ads and it sold out in a week. We were completely surprised it went so quickly but we don’t feel pressured by that. There’s always an extra stigma to the London show so I guess in normal circumstances there wouldn’t be any added pressure, but tonight we’re doing something we’ve only done four or five times.” Tonight’s show marks something of a 2ManyDJs matinee, showcasing their painstakingly compiled album cover animations along with trademark good time mash ups. For all the preparation though, David is still wary that they’re entering a new realm in live shows. “You have to look at it like this: Up until a week ago, DJing was the easiest thing in the world for

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us but now we’ve introduced this new concept, it’s more complicated. A few weeks ago we could turn up at a club with our CDs and play the tracks but now with the light show and the big screen…what you’ll see is, I don’t wanna ruin it for you but you’ll basically see animation based on every record sleeve. If we play, I don’t know, AC/DC, you’ll see elements of the cover animated in this crazy way. We’ve been working on it for months,” he explains. So it’s not quite the colossal Daft Punk LED pyramid, and David and Stefan still pack relatively lightweight equipment compared to some, but it’s a new method that demands an increasingly clinical approach to a set in both execution and selection. “Obviously if you play a normal DJ set, you’re a lot more flexible in what you can play but now we’re limited to about 120 tracks over the summer. On average we play somewhere between about 35 and 40 tracks, so we usually know what we’re going to start with and have an idea of what we’re going to end with but everything in between is up for grabs,” he says. Having long established themselves with Soulwax’s electro-tinged indie, 1999 saw the emergence of 2ManyDJs’ genre-bending sets and despite a frosty reception, David recalls getting by with a little help from their friends. “When we first started coming to this country in 1999, one of the first people we met was Erol Alkan and we thought very much alike in terms of music. Erol was very important for us, as were nights like Trash. I think the turning point for us came when we released our first compilation and we saw a big change. We’d be playing at these venues where Sasha or John Digweed were playing or we’d come on after

some guy who’d been playing trance and people would literally be offended, shouting at us and giving us the middle finger,” he explains wide-eyed. “But, I’d say about 2003, the whole world caught up. I think for the first year and a half, we were seen as a threat, not just us, but Erol, James Murphy and Peaches too because we were a threat to the big money making

people in the industry.” A seemingly harsh induction into the UK circuit it might have been but it wasn’t one that overly surprised the duo. Having been exposed to clashing genres growing up in and around the European club scene, the wide, segmented approach to genre in the UK was one 2ManyDJs looked to tackle head on. “I think there’s always been a division

in this country between electronic music and indie, and it affected me in the sense from when I grew up there was no division between music. You could go out and listen to dance or reggae or rock at the same night and I think it’s just about an appreciation for good music. I think it’s healthy that you can listen to a bit of Boys Noize then a little bit of White

Stripes or some Franz Ferdinand then some 50 cent,” David enthuses, remembering a particular fondness for the classic British indie night. “We just thought it was ridiculous. We played Rock City in Nottingham and we went to an indie night there and found it hilarious that they only played The Smiths or…” Jeff Buckley

“Yeah! And it was great! But I guess it reminded us of how we grew up where people danced to Bowie and Acid House and The Cramps or The Stooges, and the guy in the club would play Jimi Hendrix then Blueboy ‘Remember Me’. When we started DJing that was something we wanted to be about. It’s this all-encompassing approach that forms the basis of

the 2ManyDJs dynamic and is the driving force behind their continued popularity. As likely, and capable to drop a bomb for the bloggers, a classic for the fan boys and girls and bring it together to appease the aficionados, it is as much of a 2ManyDJs hallmark to get a Roskilde crowd bumping to Switch as it is a Creamfields crowd rocking out to Metallica, and

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< David (left) and Stephen onstage At brixton academy

something David is still at a loss to fathom. “We still don’t know how that works. I still don’t understand why that is. I don’t understand how it is that we can turn up and play these records and people go nuts. I don’t have a recipe for this success. I have no idea how we do it,” he questions. Equally, as much as the 2ManyDJs moniker draws in the crowds and the plaudits, David is quick to establish that behind the upbeat exterior lays a relentless work ethic and constant internal pressure that staves off any prospect of complacency. “I think we have a strong sense of perspective on the whole situation. We work harder than anyone else and it’s not just in the mixing; it’s in the track making, the remixing, the edits, the animation, the light show… everything. We put in the hours, that’s for sure. There is definitely a technical element to it, we like to mix it well, but everything else is a peripheral to the music, the music is the most important element. It’s about making the music more important than the DJing,” he explains. After the crossover explosion of the last few years that’s seen the likes of Erol Alkan, MSTRKRFT, Simian Mobile Disco, Digitalism and Soulwax on remix and production duties, you’d think David might take a little credit. “I don’t think it was necessarily about the remixes. I don’t know what other people think. I can see the importance of what they might have done but I think for everyone, we don’t look to do it for that reason. It’s just another record that we like and are happy to work on. For us it will always be a case of ‘we like this track’ and that’s it.”

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More than a band turning their hands to decks or DJs expanding into full visual extravaganzas, whether you see them as Soulwax, Radio Soulwax, or 2ManyDJs their constant quest for ingenuity is the driving force behind the DeWaele’s continuing success. “The one thing that has kept us fresh in that world is that we don’t really know any of that world. We’ve played festivals like Creamfields and Global Gathering and we don’t know 75% of the people playing there and have no idea what they play. I know a lot about psych, I know a lot

investment. It was a process of choice and things were worked on but right now because it doesn’t cost money for anyone to make music and put it out, you get so much mediocre music, so there’s no selection anymore. For me personally, there might be the same amount of great music out there but you have to go through all the crap, so much crap, to find it. My ears get tired after a while and it gets harder and harder to find any good stuff.” Ambiguous to the threat of leaks, it’s not just the prospect of trawling through the tawdry scraps of bedroom DJs

“I don’t want to know what P.Diddy is doing at 3am, I want him to make a great track” about disco but I’m pretty sure that if I went into the art world, which I don’t know a lot about, I could come out with something more original than people who’ve been doing it for 20 years on the basis that they’ve been following the same rules. We haven’t followed the same rules and it’s helped us do what we like,” he says. On the continually divisive issue of blogs, leaks and posting tracks, David, like most DJs sees the positives and negatives to a very modern element, and like many, laments the loss of selection and quality control that more traditional routes to market provided. “The balance is too heavy on one side,” he starts, “there used to be a process, it cost money to make and release music and for a label to say we like this track and make the

worldwide that David reserves venom for; he also applies a similar sense of traditionalism to the social networking boom, reverting to a simple request to keep it about the music. “The leaking and the free downloads I don’t care about but anyone with an opinion now feels as though they have this compulsion to put it forward. I don’t want to know what all these people think, I don’t even want to know what my heroes think; I just want to hear their music. All these blogs and tour diaries and constant updates, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what P.Diddy is doing at 3am but I want him to make a great track and hear it.” You might think that it all sounds a bit hypocritical from a man who’s embarking on a summer project to develop what were two humble DJs who started out with

50 CDs and no headphones to the 2ManyDJs road show, but there’s a disarmingly overt awareness to the duo’s ascendancy. “This is the start of our new project and it’s just embarrassingly big. We used to turn up with a CD pouch, maybe 50 CDs and a lame excuse as to why we didn’t have any headphones like ‘somebody at the airport stole them’, and we’d just go on and people would turn up and hopefully have a good time. This is quite different. We have to show up at these venues for 10am, we’ve got two trucks, two tour buses, I have people working for me on this tour and I don’t even know what they do. Like I said, it’s embarrassing for two guys to be responsible for all of this. It’s a lot of work but we’re looking to do this for the next few months and then move onto some Soulwax.” And while the planning, organisation and responsibility are becoming increasingly paramount, at the heart of everything, they’ve never lost the enthusiasm, drive or devotion for what they do, and, in spite of everything are as self-effacing as ever, if a little more stressed for it. “We have no control,” he smiles. “Five years ago we gave up. I don’t know how the world works but it’s nice to know people pay to come see you at a venue, it’s nice to headline a festival but we know how quickly that can go away. We’re not taking it for granted but what’s kept us at this level for so long? There are some people around you who become so successful that it becomes less about the music and all about the secondary stuff. All I know is how to make music and that we still annoy and inspire each other in the same way we always have.”

Danger is my FIRST name 01

Brian Joseph Burton is a distant memory to Danger Mouse; a man intent on releasing his music by any means necessary

Writer: Stuart Stubbs

When you sleep with your enemy either fuck ‘em so hard that they fall in love with you or kill ‘em before sun-up. That’s the first and only rule, and surely the whole point of ‘doing the rude’ with those against you. EMI, we presume, were not aware of this when they planned to work with old foe Danger Mouse. Either that or the major label is crap in the sack and/or equally as inefficient at striking deadly blows. To be fair, Brian Joseph Burton has given the home of Coldplay plenty of reasons to trust him since his initial spat with the company in 2004. That was the year that Danger Mouse sampled The Beatles without permission, mixing the Fab Four’s ‘White Album’ with JayZ’s ‘The Black Album’ to create the controversial, and instantly vetoed ‘The Grey Album’. The producer’s plan to release just 3,000 copies of the mashup was quickly halted by the label (copyright holders of The Beatles) only to see Internet protestors organise a 24-hour free give-a-way – tagged ‘Grey Tuesday’ – in which the record was downloaded over 100,000 times. EMI had thrown water on a fat fire and made a star out of their target, but the following three years saw Danger Mouse produce albums for Gorillaz, Sparklehorse and The Good, the Bad and the Queen, all released by Burton’s previous rivals. All had been forgiven (no doubt because ‘The Grey Album’ hadn’t

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reaped any financial reward) and both parties set about planning a unique Danger Mouse/ Sparklehorse project with film auteur David Lynch – ‘Dark Night Of The Soul’. It’s here, in case you haven’t heard, that the line between heroes and villains gets thumbed into a greasy smudge. Arranged and produced by Sparklehorse main man Mark Linkous and Danger Mouse, ‘Dark Night of The Soul’ is more than a 13-track album that features guest vocals from Julian Casablancas, Black Francis, Nina Persson, Suzanne Vega, Iggy Pop, Wayne Coyne and Jason Lytle – it’s the soundtrack to an audio/ visual art collaboration with David Lynch who has produced a 100+ page book of photography inspired by the record. The two were to be released together, 5,000 times over, for $50. But after a statement from Danger Mouse disclosed how an ongoing dispute with EMI prevented him from releasing the album, Lynch’s book was put on sale early containing a blank CD-R and a label that read: For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will. Appearing to incite piracy of an album that he ‘owes’ EMI, Danger Mouse has seemingly damaged relations with the label beyond repair. “Everything I’ve ever worked on has leaked early,” Danger Mouse commented in the press “so I can only presume that this record will also.” Then came an official statement from Burton’s press

office: Due to an ongoing dispute with EMI, Danger Mouse is unable to release the recorded music for Dark Night Of The Soul without fear of legal entanglement. Danger Mouse remains enormously proud of Dark Night Of The Soul. He hopes that people are lucky enough to hear the music, by whatever means, and are as excited by it as he is. Presumably due to boring legalities, EMI have still not commented on the feud or their plan of action against Danger Mouse, and in a BBC Radio 4 interview with Nicola Stanbridge Burton also said “I can’t get into too many details with it,” before defending his decision by saying, “This was the only real way I thought I could get everything out there. It’s very frustrating. On having done all of the work for this record and having the seeming doom of this not being able to come out it was the last bit of power that I had as the maker of this art.” Corporate machine Vs lone producer who has always held the art-form of music in such high regard that he considers himself more an auteur than anything else (Burton once compared himself to Woody Allen rather than the likes of Dr Dre and Rick Rubin) – choosing sides in this one should be simple, and perhaps it is. But we have to spare a thought for the Goliath for as long as such a large piece of the puzzle is missing, namely the reason EMI and Danger

02 01 Justin Hampton’s Promotional Artwork for ‘The Grey Album’ 02 The cover of ‘DarK Night Of The Soul’’s photography book by david lynch

Mouse have fallen out once more. As Stanbridge rightly countered in her BBC interview, “Nevertheless, you are an artist signed under EMI and rules are rules… and what isn’t being said here is that [fans] are downloading [the record] from the Internet, and isn’t that just encouraging people to break the law?” Came the answer: “I don’t know who legally owns this record, I just know that I don’t want to spend years in court trying to fight it. I’d much rather have the record come out, and if legal problems come from this, that’s just something I’ll have to deal with.” One half of Gnarls Barkley and producer of Beck and The Rapture, Danger Mouse is certainly no ‘everyman’ who watches the free minutes on his mobile and frets about how the TV being on standby might double his electricity bill, but EMI’s size – a company with a revenue of £1.46 billion – pulls the man’s courage into perspective. Owned by business giant Terra Firma, the label could surely crush Burton if they so wish, tangling him in a web of court dates that’d see the artist run out of money, patience and time to pursue the more important things in life, like making music. And yet Danger Mouse remains too close to his art to not risk such a fate. Like with ‘The Grey Album’, he’d become too engrossed with the project to not complete it, regardless

of consequence, which he reportedly saw coming long before ‘Dark Night of The Soul’ was completed. “The worst thing that I could think of was that if this didn’t get out there, that people didn’t get to hear it…” he explained to Radio 4. “If there was another way I would have definitely done it. Sometimes when it comes to all of the record label business it can really get it down. I just wanted to bring a little more imagination to the music that I was making.” Lynch’s photo album would have managed that if label squabbles were nonexistent and the record had been released officially as planned. Now, in true increase-mass-interest-bybanning-it fashion, even more excitement and imagination has been generated around this album – after all, we all love a bit of taboo. Hopefully the boardroom circus won’t pull focus from the record itself, though, because at the epicentre of this silly debate there is an album the deserves to be half of an audio/visual art project with one of the most profound visionaries living today – a largely beautiful labour of love of all involved. If there is a next time, EMI are best off smothering Danger Mouse with a pillow, or realising that musician who care to extraordinary extents do still exist.

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Teen Sheikhs “Drink has a lot to do with the way this band’s turned out” Writer: Stuart stubbs Photographer: tim cochrane If that man says, “Number 4?” again, it’s ours. In The Victory pub, Brighton, it’s sausage and mash night, and plates of podgy bangers and gravy are sailing past us, some without a home. This is where James, one third of local DIY-ers Teen Sheikhs earns his keep, and tonight is no exception as the drummer tends to the taps. Outside, guitarist/singer Andy and bassist Will opt not for lungfuls of clean sea air but drags on rollies and swigs of beer. And then, ‘Number 4’ turns up, probably for the best; James has met his glass collection quota for the time being and joins us and the rest of his “shitty punk band”. “Me and James do a label together called Sex Is Disgusting, in our spare time,” begins Andy in his mellow Scottish tone, much to impressed roars from Will – “Plugged it within 10 seconds,” he laughs. “Amazing!” “Get in there!” Andy nods and continues. “Erm… yeah, we decided to have a laugh and a jam, didn’t have any ideas about how to sound or anything, just thought, ‘yeah, let’s do a two piece punk band’. Then we realised that we weren’t good enough to play as a two-piece, because two pieces need to be pretty proficient, so we asked Will who kept saying ‘no’ basically. He kept saying, ‘No, I don’t think I’m going to like it, I don’t think I’m going to like it…’” “We were going to ask our other housemate,” explains James “but I didn’t think he’d realise what I meant when I said, ‘we’re going to sound like a shitty punk band’, he’d have expected a little more than what we were. But I thought that Will would have a better idea.” Will: “I didn’t want to join for the reasons they didn’t want the other guy to join. ‘We were going to ask James to join our band but we were too scared to because we’re too shit.’ ‘Err, okay, I don’t want to join a shit band.’” “We’ve got a lot better,” says Andy. “Will’s a very well trained musician, me and James

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just picked up drum sticks and a guitar and we didn’t really know what to do so we just learned as we went along.” DIY in the truest sense, Teen Sheikhs formed and started bolting together scratchy indie punk tracks the best they knew how – listening to 80s hardcore and garage bands, drinking and having a laugh. Once three fuzzy songs were complete, it was time for the trio to play their first gig, booked by London noise promoters Upset The Rhythm before a note of Teen Sheikhs’ music had been heard by anyone. “Chris [head of UTR] was like, ‘you’ve got good taste in music, I’m sure your band will be good, you can play if you want,’” says James. “That was really nice of him to trust us.” “I was really nervous for the first two or three shows,” adds Andy “but the first one [at Elephant and Castle two-dayer Yes Way] went by in 30 seconds for me, because I was just thinking, ‘don’t fuck up, and try to be a bit friendly to the crowd.’” “I think there’s a notable difference now,” laughs Will “in as much as then we were scared little boys, now we’re like rockstars or whatever.” The trusting friendship between the band and Upset The Rhythm had been forged by that impressively plugged label of Andy’s and James’, Sex Is Disgusting. It had served them well and soon bands and friends of the imprint (PENS, Male Bonding, Mazes, Cold Pumas) continued to propel Teen Sheikhs onto noisy bills in noisy venues. However lofty their influence though, mates can only get you so far in the music game, just ask Jonathan Wilkes. Luckily, Teen Sheikhs never really needed a hand; tracks like the scuzzy ‘Cracked’ – coming on like No Age played through a child’s broken tape deck – overshadowing many the band have played alongside. “I like No Age,” says Andy “but I wouldn’t say that I’m influenced by them. I’d say that a lot of the bands that they’re influenced by are a lot of the bands that I like, like Hüsker

Dü, The Replacements, Black Flag – I mean we don’t sound directly like Black Flag, not even the same ballpark, but a lot of the same influences from the 80s DIY punk bands like SST, Dischord, Fugazi, so I think we’ve got a lot of the same influences.” James agrees. “Yeah, there’s stuff like that, and then 90s jangly, poppy indie,” he adds. “Andy and Will’s backgrounds is hardcore, mine’s Britpop.” Earlier we were talking about skate parks while James should have been working. Another shared passion, is that something that inspires Teen Sheikhs’ US slack rock sound? “Beer,” comes the answer from Will. That’s what influences this band when their lo-fi heroes fail to. “Hangovers,” adds Andy. “Yes, drink has a lot to do with the way the band’s turned out.” Will: “We’ve never had a sober practice. Well… we’ve had one, yesterday... it was shit.” Andy: “It was really boring, and it went really slowly.” James: “I think we had about 20 renditions of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ played really badly.” “Apart from alcohol what is there…?” questions the singer, until James interjects. “Just Dude Culture, really.” “Yes!” agrees Andy, ready to explain. “‘Dude Culture’ is this thing that started as a joke but has taken over our lives slowly. It’s like, you know how everyone’s making a big deal of this slacker culture at the moment – everything’s very retro, 80s and 90s, flannel shirts and pizza – we’re kind of guilty of it ourselves but we make fun of it.” “It’s kinda like if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles drank beer and had guitars instead of weapons,” offers Will. “Yeah, that’s basically Dude Culture,” says James. “Dinosaurs with bikinis on, surfing on pizza.” Excellent. Glad that’s cleared up. And needless to say, there’ll be no need to explain the angle for the band-hosted all dayer on June 28th. It’s

called Dudefest and it’s a piping hot meat feast in the face of anyone that thought Brighton’s music scene died with The Pipettes. Between BBQ-ing in short shorts (standard wear for a standard activity at any Dude Culture summer party) nearby pub The Hobgoblin will put up underground bands like scrappy girl trio La La Vasquez, fella threesome Cold Pumas and no wave duo The Sticks. If raucous DIY is your thing, Brighton is your town. As soon as Teen Sheikhs raise the funds to record their debut 7” they’re set to release their first record via New York label Capture Tracks, the hobby of Mike Sniper aka Blank Dogs. But (probably) unlike anyone you’ll find kick-flipping at Dudefest – or anywhere else for that matter – Andy, James and Will are adamant that their ambitions reach no further than that, and that they couldn’t be less interested in signing a record deal. “I don’t think we’ve got any desire to be in a ‘band’ band,” says James matter-of-factly. “We’ve definitely got a lot of opinions about how things should be done,” nods Andy. “It’s a cliché, and I’m sure you’ve heard it a lot of times, but we don’t agree with a lot of the music industry… we wouldn’t sign a contract, we’re quite happy to put some singles out on small labels and just have fun. It’s so cliché and every band says it, but we do just want to have a laugh. I mean, I’d never sign a contract.” James: “We’ve seen so many people go down that road and be miserable for it.” Nonchalance to appear cool and unfazed we’ve certainly seen before, and clichés I’ve heard as many as I’ve said (which is a hell of a lot), but Andy and James seem to really mean that they’d never sign a record deal. Perhaps they’re unaware of just how possible such a thing would be for Teen Sheikhs’ fizzing punk. Perhaps they’re being modest. But that wouldn’t be very Dude Culture now, would it? This three are just what we say – DIY in the truest sense.

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In February, we labelled Telepathe’s debut album “pop music like you’ve never completely heard it before”, but as the ferocious hype surrounding the band quickly cooled off, ‘Dance Mother’ began to look 28

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like a lost great record of 2009. Now, back in the country to a muted fanfare, the experimental New Yorkers tell Danielle Goldstein how theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re just getting started Photographer: Tom Cockram

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has been a year since we last bumped into the slender, hard-jawed girls of Telepathe, and rather than tracking Busy Gangnes and Melissa Livaudais down in the heart of (East) London, this time we put our boots on and hiked up north to the vibrant streets of Leeds where they’re set to showcase at the Stag & Dagger festival. As we filter our way through the ambling hipsters with beer can appendages, scanning their timetables for tonight’s hype, we find the Melissa-shaped half of the Brooklyn duo taking cover upstairs at the Library – the pub that is, not the dark oakwalled building crammed with books. In the two years between the band releasing their ‘Farewell Forest’ EP in 2006 and the ‘Chromes On It’ EP in late 2008, they’ve been on a rollercoaster of hype. Much like Oblivion at Alton Towers they climbed all the way up only to be shot straight down. At the beginning of last year we couldn’t wait for their heels to hit British soil, but by the time their show at Concrete and Glass had come around we seemed to be becoming steadily less impressed. Drowned in Sound branded them “an indie-electropop group gone horrendously and quite fascinatingly wrong,” while the Londonist said of the performance before TV On The Radio that it was like “trying to distract a child with a carrot when they’ve got their eye on a cream bun.” Following this they had trouble getting back into the country to play a headline show at Catch because immigration wanted to deport them, and perhaps they should have taken this as a sign because even the NME described their show that night as “karaoke”. So now, having forced their ethereal, pop-laced debut ‘Dance Mother’ into the world, heaving life into its quivering synthetic lungs, are they willing to make the ascent again or are they just not fussed by the limelight? “We like attention, we’re total hams,” splutters Melissa, propelling the words into the atmosphere as if they were searing her tongue. “But when it came down to it, that wasn’t our first priority at all.”

It was nearing the winter of 2007 when Telepathe got mixing in their home lab to piece together ‘Dance Mother’ splicing electro with world beats and chanting over test tubes brimming with Depeche Mode-esque synth lines, all under the humble glow of their laptop. And it wasn’t until a year later that TV On The Radio’s highly acclaimed Dave Sitek came onto the scene. It took another three months to get the record out in the UK alone (for it was pushed back in the US by a month), which makes us think that perhaps they just didn’t want to let it go. “It just turned out that way. It wasn’t a conscious decision at all.We were eager to put it out but…” Melissa pauses for a second, visibly scanning the recesses of her mind for answers. “I feel that rather than being something that’s overnight and fading away into nothing we wanted to make a decision that was like: ‘Ok, we know that we can only make music, we’re not good at doing anything else and this is all we want to do. So, we want to make the best decision possible to maintain this lifestyle.’”

doubt the avant-garde dance ditties of Telepathe have skimmed your eardrums in the past, but if you managed to miss their entrance they’ve been fusing together those pulsations in the chic suburb of Brooklyn, New York City since 2004. Busy and Melissa decided to reform their progpunk experimental band Wikkid, with third member Allie Alvarado, who a year later left them free to collaborate with others and branch out audibly with the limited means of instrumentation that they had at the time.They scoped influence from US hip hop by the likes of Three 6 Mafia and DJ Assault to the South London

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dubstep of Digital Mystikz. “Someone asked me,” Melissa continues. “‘Are you going to strike while the iron is hot?’ But that’s not what we’re thinking about really, we’re just thinking about the finished product and that we want it to be in the right hands. It’s like when you make a piece of art and you’re handing it over to somebody.You want to make sure that you’re going to trust that person.” Plus, she informs us, they were in discussion with a number of different record labels and it took time to decide whether to release the album on one label internationally or concentrate on three individual areas. “We have an American label, a Japanese label and then Cooperative [V2] which covers the UK, Europe and Australia. For a minute we talked to 4AD, which is Dave’s [Sitek] label, but I like Cooperative’s body of work, I feel like it’s so expansive, they put out so many things that we love - it wasn’t just one particular 4AD sound - I feel like they really got our music the most.” And of course they had to pick one that could cough up the fat paycheque that Sitek would be demanding… “Uh…I don’t know,” Melissa states cautiously. “I really don’t know how much he had to do with it.We made the record before we signed to a label. Actually, we did a version of ‘Chromes On It’ before we worked with Dave, which we put up on our Myspace and labels were already writing to us before anyone knew that we were working with Dave.” Sitek tracked down the girls after he overheard a mutual friend playing their Myspace tracks and they met up with him in a bar in Brooklyn.Two weeks later they were recording in his old Stay Gold studio in Williamsburg, where he became

somewhat of a mentor to them. But with the possibility of his big name blinding their judgment, were they apprehensive about adopting a similar sound to other NYC bands he’s worked with (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Pink Noise, Liars)? “No, not at all. He has a lot of expertise and I knew he could bring that to our music. I knew he could take it to another level, but I was never worried that it would sound like TV On the Radio or whoever.You can definitely hear his hand in it because he has this way of making things sound really, really big, but I think musically it’s totally different to the other stuff that he’s done.” Although, earlier this year they mentioned in an interview that some of Sitek’s ideas made them nervous. “His ideas made us nervous in a way in which we thought, ‘Really? You can do that?’ As a mentor we’ve taken so much from him and we’ve learnt to trust his ideas - running a guitar through an outdated filter or running it through a filter on this very outdated sampler and then through this guitar pedal and then through a synthesizer… “It’s not that we doubted him but in the past we worked with engineers or people who had very meagre suggestions. We were just surprised because we had never worked with someone who had no sense of time or efficiency. It was excessive but in a really, really inspiring way. He was just like: ‘You gotta do whatever the fuck you want to do.’” Including, it would seem, taking their makeshift, mantra-like rhythms and slapping a cleaner-cut, pop ring to them. “In Brooklyn there is a lot of experimental music and a lot of knobtwirlers and we got tired of living in the margins of that music and constantly being grouped in with that,” explains Melissa, fairly flustered by the subject. “It’s not that

People have expectations in Brooklyn it’s like a wolf pack and we say: ‘Fuck the wolf pack!

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We like attention, we’re total hams, But when it came down to it, that wasn’t our first priority at all. We want to maintain this lifestyle

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we don’t respect that sort of music, but we want our own identity. I mean, we didn’t even listen to that kind of music.We were listening to a lot of commercial hip hop in the US and we thought: ‘Why don’t we try and up the ante, challenge ourselves and make music that we actually want to listen to?’ - song structures with a verse and a hook.We wanted hooks,” she exclaims, shifting her conversational gear into full throttle. “Then all of a sudden making a hook became a fun challenge and that’s how it evolved.To us it was so leftfield compared to what we were doing before, we felt like we weren’t even thinking before, I don’t know what we were thinking about.” As Melissa describes how much “it sucks” to be dumped into genres such as the Brooklyn experimental music cluster, we’re aware that mentioning their close seating to Gang Gang Dance in previous write-ups could either disrupt her current outpour or push her over the edge completely. Luckily for us it’s the former we discover as we hold our breath during her abrupt pause before she sets off on her tirade. “I’m so sick of that! I’m so fucking sick of it,” she fumes. “It’s crazy because I respect what Gang Gang Dance do, but honestly I don’t think there is anything similar between the two bands other than that we used to share the same label [Social Registry].We were thinking: ‘Wait a minute…are we just advertisement for Gang Gang Dance?’ Argh. But you know what? It’s happening less and less. Now I feel like people get it and think we’re genre-benders making refreshing new music that doesn’t sound like anybody else.” Which could be why they’ve been getting so much interest from other artists wanting to remix their work - Tanlines, Atticus Ross,The Big Pink, to name but a few… “A couple of people just wanted to do it and then some people, like The Big Pink we just asked. On our American label we released the album with three remixes by Chairlift – they’re really good friends of ours – we got them to do a remix of ‘So fine’, and also my friend Lauren Flax who’s a producer and a DJ.We love Burial and

we really wanted to…” she stammers for a few seconds, trying to get her words in order. “We were like, ‘Oh fuck, we really want Burial to do a remix’. But we don’t know him and we don’t know anybody who knows him.We contacted the label and they said: ‘You’d be better off asking him yourself ’, so we didn’t ask him, we chickened out of that one,” Melissa affirms coyly, chuckling a little at the childishness of it all.

now that they’ve changed their direction, it can only be assumed that some of their fans have shunned the oh-so-artsy beats in favour of tracks heavy with brash yet languid synth-lines. “I definitely think we’ve gained a much larger fan base for sure,” muses Melissa calmly “but I definitely feel like we’ve lost some fans too, especially with Brooklyn. People have expectations, especially in the experimental scene - it’s like a wolf pack and we say: ‘Fuck the wolf pack!’ I’m having more fun and it is way more creative and challenging to do what we do now than what we were doing before and we are getting to see the world, so I can’t complain.” Comments have flitted about that Telepathe are a fairly laid back band. It’s easy to see from witnessing their live show why people are brought to this conclusion, as onstage Busy and Melissa are so concentrated on the hundred or so tracks they have to deal with layering upon one another that they may come across as detached and perhaps a little blasé. But Melissa assures us that they are pushing themselves to the limit. “I don’t know in what sense we’re laid back - maybe that we’re trying to have as much fun as we possibly can doing this - but everything is intentional. And we have a lot of touring plans, pretty much until December and we have a ten day break in which we’re going to be recording more material.We’re work horses. Maybe it’s cool if externally it comes off like that, but I’d say we’re pretty neurotic and intense about making music.” She goes on to describe how much the audience can affect a show and how it

reflects back onto them. “Even though we’re always playing the same songs in different orders it just depends on the energy of the room.We just played in London at 93 Feet East and the energy felt crazy,” she expresses with ebullience. “Kids were dancing and singing along to our songs and it was packed.Then we played at ULU, opening for School of Seven Bells and it was a much older audience, at eight o’clock at night, and it just felt really formal. It slowly went by and then it was over. I guess it just depends what kind of vibe is in the air, but generally we try to amp it up.We try to make it fun for everybody.” Following a bad show like that the girls try and ignore the press for the next few weeks, but sometimes it’s as difficult as trying deftly not to stare at a road traffic accident. “I try not to pay attention to that stuff because it’s de-motivational,” Melissa states in an authoritative manner. “Before, because we’d made the record, all of a sudden it was like, ‘Oh, come and tour…’ and there was no time to map it out and make it happen the way we needed to make it happen.We’ve actually done that now in a way that sonically does the record justice.We were under a lot of pressure from our previous manager to just perform. And it’s not like a rock band, it’s not like you just stand up and there’s a drummer and bass player.With our music it’s a lot trickier than that,” she explains before turning onto the opinions of the press. “I took a lot of advice from Dave Sitek because he was our mentor, and his thing is to ‘log out’.There are some [publications] that I’ve been reading for a long time and those are the ones that I read about our music and would be totally heartbroken if they were bummed [reviews].The press has been a lot better about our live shows and I know that’s because we’ve been playing them better, but they always start off weird, with comments about us like ‘skinny arms’, but then it says, ‘Oh but they put on a good show.’ I don’t know, I don’t read comments about skinny arms and underfeeding but I just think, ‘Really? There are so many scrawny guys out there

and you’re making those comments about us?’” With their hectic touring schedule they probably don’t have time to keep up with the press, let alone ignore them, but of course this also means that they have a limited amount of time to write new material as they can’t write on tour. “We definitely work better in a studio, we love it, but I think it’s the best thing to do for us not to lose our minds.This whole thing feels like an exercise in futility to be creative and write on tour, but it’s a little bit hard with electronic music. I feel like we’re pretty spoilt – we have monitors so we like to listen to stuff loud when we do. Working in a van and listening to it on headphones and being cramped on top of each other is like training ourselves to do it in a more stripped down way. “But we are releasing an EP. In the ten days that I said we have off between our touring we’re going to Los Angeles to work on it and that should be out late fall. And then from December on it’s time to make a new record, which I’m really psyched to do.That’s what Busy and I do best, we’re producers.” With ‘Dance Mother’ receiving quite polarised reviews, or “extreme” as Melissa puts it – “I feel like we’re really extreme, so it makes sense” – we can guess that the Telepathe to come will only test more boundaries. “I don’t know what’s in store for the next record but as far as Busy and I are concerned we definitely intend to carry on working with Dave, but we also want to branch out.We’re not looking to make the same record again, obviously. It’ll definitely sound like Telepathe - we love rhythm and we love melody and there’ll be a lot of it. I’ve been listening to a lot of freestyle, but we’re not into recycling a genre of music. I think we’ll put our own twist on it and it’ll be more poppy.” Telepathe will be back in the UK in July, when you can decide whether their next ride on the hype-machine will take them soaring or plummeting to the ground. next ride on the hype-machine will take them soaring or plummeting to the ground.

Stockists

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Black Lips Bo Ningen Broken Records Crystal Fighters Deerhunter Fol Chen Idlewild Jarvis Cocker Mike Bones Moondog My Latest Novel Patrick Wolf Speak & The Spells The Horrors The Pains of Being Pure at Heart Tubelord Ulterior

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Let’s Wrestle In the Court of the Wrestling Let’s (Stolen) By Stuart Stubbs. In stores June 29

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For a slacker punk trio that sloth about their garden shed HQ, Let’s Wrestle’s work ethic doesn’t quite add up with their Pavement-isms. Since WPG (vocals), Mike Lightning (bass) and Darkus Bishop (drums) channelled their love for Hüsker Dü and all things DIY into toothy, bosseyed drawings and skeletal guitar rackets they’ve released two 7” singles, a brilliant mini album and have played every toilet venue in the country… twice.That makes this their debut long player, warts-n-all at 16 tracks long, and quite possibly the most well-humoured record you’ll hear this year. Being considered a joke though, is just a knob gag away from being a champion of wit, and Let’s Wrestle are the band that drawled “We

love our mums but don’t talk about it/We’ve got huge cocks and don’t you doubt it!” on their first ever release. A fair distance from Morrissey’s intellectual prose perhaps, but WPG remains an Eddie Argos that knows when to rein it in before the jokes on him and his band become a novelty act. ‘Diana’s Hair’ – a mid-pace sway about how bassist Lightning’s bouffant resembles the Queen of Hearts’ quaffed do – perhaps illustrates this best, name-checking Charles & Camilla with a wry grin whilst also being an unmistakeably touching bromance song. Or ‘Song For Old People’, about being “wrinkled like a prune”. Or the uncharacteristically tinkering ‘In Dreams’, which features the boyish couplet, “I fell in love with Jesus, but when we went out people teased us”, much to a cheeky snigger before evolving into an aching lament about the fairer sex. And girls do of course fuel Let’s Wrestle as much as the yelping punk pop that

they emulate so well.They formed in their teens after all, probably to snare perspective partners with the ‘ol ‘I’m in a band’ line. Judging by the frustrated ‘It’s Not Going To Happen’ and a grinding ‘I Won’t Lie To You’, the ladies may not be queuing just yet – or the right ones aren’t, at least – but the band do seem to come out of each experience a little more optimistic, and with two album highlights by way of severance - the bouncy self-improvement anthem ‘We Are The Men You’ll Grow To Love Soon’ and the defiant, downbeat ‘I’m In Fighting Mode’. Sixteen tracks is so often too much for any album from any band, and despite there being three short, tolerable interludes here, ‘In The Court Of...’ could still be trimmed into a learner beast, axing the run-of-the-mill ‘Tanks’ and the waltzy ‘My Schedule’ that shines a light on WPG’s limited vocal range. Let’s Wrestle have created something special here though - an underdog album to cherish and take comfort in.

Pic: Magnus Arrevad

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Jack Penate

Tortoise

Dinosaur Jr.

Amazing Baby

Kong

Everything is New

Beacons of Ancestorship

Farm

Rewild

Snake Magnet

(XL) By Tom Goodwyn. In stores now

(Thrill Jockey) By Reef Younis. In stores June 22

(Pias) By Matthias Scherer. In stores now

(V2/Co Op) By Nathan Westley. In stores June 22

(Brew) By Danny Canter. In stores July 13

When Jack Peñate first stumbled into the collective musical consciousness, it was as if he’d managed to defy conventional wisdom. Armed with some half baked pop songs and a cheeky grin, Peñate was both dopey and cheesy. Sadly, this makes the crushing mediocrity of his second album all the harder to take. A more accurate title would be ‘Everything that’s been even the remotest bit successful in the last twelve months’, such is its forensic approach to throwing together the sound of 2009. ‘Be The One’ is pure MGMT gleaned psychedelic pop; ‘Everything Is New’, a shonkier Vampire Weekend and ‘So Near’ sounds like a far less sophisticated Foals.Whether it’s fear of failure or being out of ideas, Peñate won’t be able to smile this record into being a success.

In our world of instant gratification, where cheap bands turn cheaper tricks and musical fads are determined behind publishers doors,Tortoise’s neartwo-decade presence is a small, silent victory for longevity. Having sparkled early on, ‘Beacons of Ancestorship’ shows no sign of reneging on the sinuous amalgamation of jazz, dub and classic minimalism that made their name. Considered as one of the forefathers of post-rock, the beginnings of ‘Charteroak Foundation’ would have ‘Explosions…’ fans nodding in resonance but the offbeat jazz skiffle of ‘Monument Six One Thousand’ characterises ‘Beacons…’’s frustrating inaccessibility. Rich without being truly rewarding, the yardstick is now being used to beat itself.

Coming out hot on the heels of ‘The Eternal’, the new (and, let’s face it, pretty damn good) album by fellow 80s alternative rock legends Sonic Youth, as well as two years after their own pleasantly surprising comeback ‘Beyond’, Dinosaur Jr’s new baby was always going to have its work cut out, so much so that it seems a little afraid of messing with ‘Beyond’s winning formula of understated, danglystrumming killer guitar chords, juxtaposed with those cream-toned 3-minute-solos. Here, ‘I Don’t Wanna Go There’ follows by the book, and ‘Farm’ is topped off with frontman J Mascis’ vocal delivery that balances between slacker deluxe and a stoned Eddie Vedder on the likes of ‘Ocean in the way’. It is a good record, but with a bit more dare and variety it could have been yet another great one.

Though Amazing Baby hail from New York any notion of them exerting Xerox copies of The Strokes’ brash garage rock can be quickly shelved, as too can the idea that they have much in common with any current lumpen scene lording it around Brooklyn. Amazing Baby are one of those rare bands that are keen to tread their own distinctive, idiosyncratic path and ‘Rewild’ is indebted to a time long before the 21st century dawned. From the string adorned opener ‘Bayonets’ until the closing, almost Suede-ish, stomp of ‘Pump Yr Breaks’ the influence of seventies era Bowie rides high. Delve deeper and elements of pysch, prog, funk and pop appear majestically amongst the coiffured sounds.When the overall effect is this good, forgiving the daft name is easy.

Kong – a noise trio from Manchester – say they are “a difficult band to describe unless you’re a music journalist, in which case you’d probably pick a large animal (elephant, dinosaur or a fantastical creature of myth) and put it in an unusual place (Middlesbrough) with predictably madcap results.” Well, we’re not going to fall into that trap, but rather warn you right now that this thrashing debut album is one confrontational beast. Melodies cack their pants while taking a back seat to relentless machinegun drums and Mclusky guitars.Tracks like the shredding ‘Leather Penny’ set the murderous, bloody scene; aggressive and void of reason, like a giant triceratops being refused booze at Sainsbury’s when a shag’s only on the cards if he gets his claws on some vodka.... oh shit!

Major Lazer Guns Don’t Kill People... Lazers Do (Downtown/Co Op) By Sam Walton. In stores July 6

08/10

Major Lazer - or MIA producer Diplo and London knob-twiddler Switch, whose retro-futurist Caribbean bleeps added the substance to Santigold’s high-fashion debut - have here made a darkly propulsive modern dancehall record with various Jamaican luminaries. While large chunks of the lyrics are preoccupied by the more gynaecological end of sex that only a horny 13-year-old boy would find titillating (‘Don’t you like it when I shift your drawers to one side and stuff my stiff dick inside your fat pussy’), this is compensated by some inspired production. ‘Hold the Line’’s sampling of all things telephonic is gloriously wonky, and the sound of a screaming toddler put through an autotune demands to be heard. Far from brilliant, but still with moments of insane genius, ‘Guns...’ will do until its creators find new pop nymphets to play with. www.loudandquiet.com

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autoKratz

Daestro

Future of The Left

Dan Black

Engineers

Animal

Moondagger

Three Fact Fader

(Ghostly) By Kate Parkin. In stores July 6

Travels with Myself and Another (4AD)

(Kitsune/Co Op) By Reef Younis. In stores June 22

By Chris Watkeys. In stores June 22

(A&M) By Elizabeth Dodd. In stores July 6

(Kscope) By Nathan Westley. In stores July 6

Kitsuné blessed, London-based autoKratz have been on the sticky end of some serious dance floor love of late. Rolling in Orwellian cool, you’d think ‘Animal’ would be gnawing at fragile bars, straining to be unleashed. Not so. It’s a cool-tempered effort, harnessing the languid approach of Kitsuné honchos Gildas and Masaya, with searing electro flashes and minimal, roaming electronica. ‘Speak in Silence’ takes the Fischerspooner route, humming with bleak synths and hand claps while ‘Can’t Get Enough’ is in your face like an angry Vitalic; all static metal and analogue computer dirge. ‘Gone Gone Gone’ then heads down the techno autobahn but it’s opener ‘Always More’, with its killer hook and laser gun chorus, that confirms that autoKratz are delivering more than just a promise.

Performing under the superhuman alter ego of Deastro, über-geek Randolph Chabot acts out his bizarre otherworldly fantasies. Piling on layers of shimmering keyboards, ‘Biophelia’ is a powerful opener that hints at Death Cab For Cutie-esque dreamy nostalgia. With ‘Parallelogram’’s breathy Euro pop sheen it comes as a surprise that he hails from the means streets of Detroit. ‘Greens, Grays and Nordics’ channels offbeat optimism over fractured math rock guitars and catchy Bloc Party choruses while competing for the longest ever song title, ‘Daniel Johnston was stabbed in the heart with the Moondagger’ hints at warped realities to rival the costume drama of Empire of the Sun, all of which prove that one man alone can outshine the current musical landscape.

Future Of The Left say they write pop songs, only angrier. But you’re not likely to catch your local postie cheerfully whistling opening track ‘Arming Eritrea’ on his morning round.The song’s nuclear riffs explode like MC5 on pills and then burst into a chorus which hits hard like At The Drive-In in their prime. From here on in though, things go somewhat downhill.The staccato guitar stabs and metronomic menace of ‘The Hope That House Built’ are clearly intended to sound intimidating but actually remind you of Spinal Tap’s silly pomp rock, and I don’t know what frontman Andrew Falkous looks like, but he sounds like a constipated Bruce Dickinson. Whatever you thought of their debut, this is music for pubescent teenage boys to listen to while they play online war games.

Mika doppelganger Dan Black, the Parisian-based Brit that selfidentifies as a cut-n-paste producer, opens ‘Un’ by unapologetically mugging a Rhianna instrumental and playing magpie with Timberland-esque bass samples throughout to ground his lo-fi, ambient ‘space rock’.Things don’t get any better. Lyrically, ‘Un’ is cliché ridden to a quite frightening extent: it strives too hard to better the sum of its parts and decent tracks - the fidget funk of ‘Alone’ - are undermined by overproduced vocals that wind-up more Beddingfield than Yorke, patched over snatches of strings. This debut shouldn’t need to sneer at the art it samples, and in frantically struggling to do so comes across about as convincingly introspective as an episode of The O.C.

It may be 4 years since the release of their debut, but there is little doubting that Engineers are amply skilled.Throughout the thirteen tracks on show here they construct one finely crafted, highly detailed, effect-laden wall of sound after another. Although they owe a large musical debt to long departed shoegaze bands such as Slowdive, other comparisons do creep through on occasion.The hazy, hushly vocalled ‘Does It Feel Right?’ replicates the sound of Doves in masses-pleasing pedestrian-lighters-in-the-airmode while the title track sees them introduce a slight whiff of Visage-inspired, eighties electro to the ghostly touched sonic brew. Unlikely to win praise for originality, Engineers have instead factored together a steady and reliable follow up.

That Fucking Tank Tankology (Gringo) By Sam Walton. In stores July 6

08/10

www.loudandquiet.com

Their name should be the first indicator that TFT don’t take themselves entirely seriously. Another should be that the opening track here is 12 seconds of nothing more than Britpop nohopers Reef ’s ‘Place Your Hands’, which has been renamed ‘It’s Your Letters’, here in a reference to the Chris Evans-hosted late 90s pop show TFI Friday and its Reef-soundtracked viewer’s correspondence segment. A further indicator should be that the majority of the tracks on this entirely instrumental LP of postrock and math-rock have been allocated pisstake names like ‘Dave Grolsh’, ‘Stephen Hawkwind’ and ‘John Faheyshanu’ entirely, it would seem, on a whim. Indeed, the only title that makes any sense is ‘Bruce

Springstonehenge’, which turns out to be TFT’s nuts interpretation of The Boss’ ‘Dancing In The Dark’. But the anarchic, manic and slightly panicstricken sense of humour is not just written on the sleeve, it’s audible across virtually all of ‘Tanknology’ in its madcap, handbrake-turn time signature changes and wide-eyed, blistering pace. Even when the quintessentially British wit takes a back seat, as on the album’s final two tracks, an impressively dark alter ego arrives that remains just as infectious. It’s also a tribute to That Fucking Tank’s musicality that this debut is the kind of album that Battles would’ve created had they been 15 years younger, not been complete masters of their equipment, and grown up surrounded by the absurdist humour of the north of England. Across its relatively short running time ‘Tanknology’ is big, funny and clever - and also very, very daft

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Regina Spektor

Bombay Bicyle Club

The Mars Volta

Wavves

La Roux

Far

I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose (Island)

Octahedron

Wavvves

La Roux

(Bella Union/Co Op) By Edgar Smith. In stores now

(Polydor) By Omarrr. In stores June 29

From a London perspective at least, America seems full of bands pumping a Superfuzz Bigmuffmeets-surf rock sound that’s crawled out of LA’s The Smell and now runs rampant from coast to coast, spilling over the pond into Upset the Rhythm nights here. There seems to be a common theme amongst the likes of Mika Mako and Crystal Antlers - wild live show, disappointing LP - but Wavves buck this trend.Within the confines of Barden’s they sounded more Blink 182 than No Age, but this album captures, in an uncompromisingly fucked-up, dirtcheap fashion, what makes this grunge-punk/no-fi scene so exciting.The playtimeFuckbuttons of its Mini-Korg interludes aside, it’s wall-to-wall garage blasts that raise an eyebrow in tribute to youth subcultures.

Three key advantages La Roux has over inadvertent musical rival Little Boots: 1. Brixton’s Elly Jackson looks like she’s slept funny and ended up with hair like a robotic unicorn, 2. She paints her face like a Rothko canvas, and 3.This twosome - yes, there’s a mute partner called Ben - spent five years working on their self-titled debut.That this only out-nuzzles Victoria Hesketh’s recent electro announcement ‘Hands’ by the slimmest of margins then is somewhat disappointing.You can’t help but think that without Skream’s dub-intervention ‘In For The Kill’ might’ve disappeared off the radar like an Air France Boeing 747. ‘Bulletproof ’, ‘Tigerlily’ (including spoken MJ ‘Thriller’esque interlude) and ‘Quicksand’ are all Magnum-cool wafer-pop. The rest? Under-cooked bollocks.

(Warners) By Polly Rappaport. In stores June 22

By Chris Watkeys. In stores July 6

(Mercury) By Danny Canter. In stores June 22

The latest collection of wide-eyed wisdom, ‘Far’ is an intricate, intimate album that introduces an ever so slightly more grown up sound than when we last heard from Regina Spektor.The music, as ever, presents a perspective on life that is refreshing in its honesty and humour; ‘Folding Chair’, for example, is a characteristically playful tune featuring Ms Spektor singing like a dolphin. However, songs such as ‘Laughing With’ – a series of wry observations about when God is (and is not) laughed at – have a new maturity and thoughtfulness to them, a welcomed serious side to Regina that is balanced by the distinctive way words trip off her tongue or catch in her throat. She might be shaking her head a bit on this record but she still sounds like she’s smiling.

On first listen, Bombay Bicycle Club’s debut for Island Records is neither startlingly original nor pulse-quickeningly exciting.The strongest reference point for their densely layered sound is, oddly, My Bloody Valentine, but track-bytrack there’s a departure into a more stylistically varied musical backdrop. Jack Steadman’s vocals, at least, are distinctive, veering between a richly textured bass and an odd, half-gulping yelp, but ultimately this album succeeds by drawing you in gently. ‘Ghost’ hints lightly at The National’s quiet majesty and ‘Lamplight’’s fuzzy riffs and grungy beats make it something akin to Sleater-Kinney meets MBV. A handful of engagingly brilliant tracks stud this album, and it undoubtedly rewards perseverance. But re-inventing the wheel is clearly not BBC’s forte.

The regularity (some would say relentlessness) with which Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala churn out worthy and rarely dull records, in their solo projects as well as the creative spearheads of The Mars Volta, is a mixed blessing. Because despite their reputation as one of the world’s most thrilling live acts, it is hard to get that worked up about a new release from the prolific progsters. Rest assured: they haven’t lost any of their inventiveness, but instead simply choose to mould it into a few more mellow units, like the first 5 minutes of the splendid single ‘Since We’ve Been Wrong’, which rightly suggests that ‘Octahedron’, while never deliberately obtuse, still proves that this band have few peers to touch them when it comes to going apeshit artfully.

White Denim Fits (Full Time Hobby) By Sam Little. In stores June 22

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Charles Caleb Colton, the 19th century writer and cleric, said that “applause is the spur of noble minds”.This should please White Denim, because while the punch-drunk, exhilarating ‘grog-rock’ (a mixture of 60’s garage and 70’s progressive rock, according to drummer Josh Block) of their debut album ‘Workout Holiday’ did prompt standing ovations from seemingly every single rock critic in the northern hemisphere, it did not quite lead to similar adoration from the average indie punter, let alone to sales figures reflecting the album’s critical acclaim.Will ‘Fits’ fare better in the profit department? If it does, that certainly won’t be down to a newly found restraint on the part of the Texans.The metre-defying rhythms, singer/

guitarist James Petralli’s sprawling noise-rockriffs and the almost nonchalant musical namedropping (from art-punk favourites Minutemen and Devo to “untouchables” like Jimi Hendrix) are all still there, along with, a hit to rival 2008’s ‘Let’s talk about it’ in the driving, bluesy ‘I Start to Run’. Instrumental ‘Sex Prayer’ is a song that would have fitted perfectly onto ‘Electric Ladyland’, and the mellow ‘Paint Yourself ’ could be an Animal Collective song… if they went through a jazz bootcamp run by Keith Moon. There is negligible change in the production – the album was recorded in the same Spartan trailer that gave birth to its predecessor – but there is a confidence in White Denim’s playing that suggests they are happy to keep doing stuff in their very own noisy way, public acclaim be damned. Good on them, because according to Colton, applause is also “the end and aim of weak ones”. www.loudandquiet.com

Live

A Kind of Magic

speak & The Spells

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The Macbeth, Hoxton 12.06.2009 By Polly Rappaport Pics by Kate Swerdlow

www.loudandquiet.com

When asked by Underage Festival to “tell us how you would use the power of music to make a difference in your community”, Speak and the Spells replied, “Throw each other round the stage.” (Ask a stupid question… etc.) And it’s true:This trio of teenage mod/punk hybrids have a penchant for smashing things up – instruments, amps, each other – and when they’re not destroying the stage, they’re in a basement club in the West End, playing obscure 60’s vinyl and rolling about on the floor, an unfortunate habit given their other penchant: dressing completely in white. Tonight, S&TS have taken a break from their standard Clockwork Orange-esque apparel (perhaps there’s been some floor-rolling recently) and, while bass player Ben still looks every bit the monochrome mod, guitarist Joe and drummer Alex have gone for the Dynamic Duo look, sporting Batman and Robin-style capes.Why? Well, why not? “Actually,” says Joe, “Ebay.” (Ask a stupid question… etc.) As they

have described some of their previous gigs, this evening’s set feels very much like a session of Speak and the Spells pissing about in their rehearsal space – chatting, passing round a pint of lager, making silly noises and laughing at each other. Joe delivers an impressive belch into his mic, “What’s this song called?” Ben responds with an enthusiastically demented growl: “Gnngrrar!” Joe, addressing the audience: “This song’s called Grnrrarrr!!” A yelp of deranged delight and in kicks a frantic psych guitar line, backed by punky, precise drums and a driving bass. For all the arsing about and apparent messiness of this outfit, these three clearly listen to the right records – and listen to them a lot. There’s a genuine joy in their performance that can only come from a love of music, but performance isn’t the right word: there’s nothing pretentious or showman-like about S&TS, they’re busy having fun and not giving a flying fuck.That’ll be the angry little punk in them. Throw in some wigged-out surf guitar and

garagey bass and this is the kind of music people dance to – or should do (When did kids start going to gigs just to stand a healthy distance from the stage and look pissed off?? Never mind.) Songs like ‘Born Loser’ were made for moving, being as it is, a combination of immaculate surf with a jangly drum beat that begs for a bit of tongue-in-cheek mop-top head bopping and Joe’s punky brat-style vocals are perfect for screeching along with.Tonight, the set is light on lyrics, sticking mainly to Tourettes-like shouts of ‘Hey!’ between psychedelic twang jams, though we are treated to ‘She’s Dead’, a song about digging up a dead girlfriend. It might not get anyone dancing but certainly grabs some collective attention so by the time Speak and the Spells are destroying their instruments the crowd are laughing, whooping and cheering them on, cymbals flying.That would be the power of music making a difference.

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Ulterior O2 Academy, Islington 06.06.2009 By Stuart Stubbs Pics by Elinor Jones “We’ve been everywhere in the country,” announces Ulterior singer Sunny. “Fucking pointless, except for London, ‘cause you’re cool!” He briefly rethinks. “...and Glasgow, they know how to drink.” Playing support on The White Rose Movement’s latest tour, it seems, hasn’t met the expectations of this quartet, but Sunny, standing in front of us in full Axl Rose regalia (tasselled leather jacket, nipple-length hair, headband, leather trousers even) is clearly not the front man of an average band with lacklustre ambitions. It’s only 8pm, daylight and serene outside, but as Islington Academy is lit by little more than furious bursts of strobe Ulterior are boldly putting in their bid as the next INXS,

infinitely tougher and only a little less sexy. And they don’t fall too short of the mark. Aesthetically the band are a hotchpotch of rock’n’roll icons of the past – Axl’s joined by a Bret Anderson complete with navelskimming shirt, a Sid Vicious in black leather on bare skin, and your pick of The Clash, but probably Strummer – sonically they could swallow U2 on a casual in breath, because two things are impossible to ignore where Ulterior live shows are concerned – this band are as loud as they are brash, and Sunny could in fact wail the Mr Rose he resembles back up his own arse for a further 15 years at least.Tracks like the synthy ‘Weapons’ rumble at an unhealthy volume and snarl like a soreheaded Dave Gahn, and before ‘Aporia’ closes the set in a suitably Bon-Jovi sized stadium rock anthem, new single ‘Sister Speed’ is 80s space punk featuring the biggest drum machine we’ve ever heard. Catch up Britain.

Mike Bones The Fly, Holborn 18.05.2009 By Edgar Smith ▼

What are the rules on closing your eyes while playing your own music? Some moments in a studio or on stage probably are transcendent and deserving of rapturous inner-sight. Mike Bones’ face though, eyes closed from the first strum, heavily suggests that his Gibson is covering-up a throbbing hard-on brought on by thoughts of his own greatness. Don’t forget where you are Mike, it’s ten thirty in the basement of The Fly and you, despite a witty line in every one and a half songs, are not very good.Though the band are solid enough to decide on the set as they go along and the interaction with the crowd is funny, the tunes snailby in mind-numbing succession and none of them warrant the agonised ballad-intensity they’re played with. An all-weather man – hoodie under leather jacket and shades tucked into the v-neck of his t-shirt in case it rains or shines indoors – Mr Bones ably fingerpicks his way around naïve chord sequences and gives Neil Young’s ‘Fucking Up’ the Wah treatment, but it’s ultimately to no other purpose than to platform his ego. As for the rules on music journos leaving gigs early? Well, it’s definitely poor form but there’s only so much cod-classic rock we can take, you know.

broken Records The Cockpit, Leeds 06.06.2009 By Kate Parkin ▼

Singing through the nerves, Jill O’Sullivan lets the drawled vowels hang loose in the air.With a nod to June Carter, the little Sparrow delivers ‘I Will Break You’ in smouldering retro style. Duet ‘Devil Song’, sees drummer Gregor driving the song like a Wild West bandit, creating a whipcrack from sheet metal on his drumkit.This is Sparrow and The Workshop’s first proper tour, expect great things.

Broken Records dominate the stage in true folk band style with their rag-tag bunch of players. Violins soar over ‘Nearly Home’ with singer Jamie Sutherland content to stand in the middle and let the storm swirl around him. When he does let go, his voice is a seething mix of mild tempered urgency and wild abandon. Leaning more towards Seth Lakeman than Frightened Rabbit, Broken Records stay just the right side of traditional.While ‘Good Reason’ shows that they enjoy a good old-fashioned Celtic knees up, ‘A Promise’ sends them crashing back to earth.Trumpets, violins and keyboards all battle to be heard as Jamie waits for the crowds reaction, dulling the idle chatter in one fell swoop. Sadly, ‘Slow Parade’ peters out with more of a whimper than a bang, but that can’t lessen the impact Broken Records have already made on the shell-shocked audience.

Tubelord The Freebutt, Brighton 09.06.2009 By Nathan Watkeys ▼

On first glimpse it would be easy to write off Tubelord as just another Emo-laced, melodic rock trio, content to churn out one highly polished heartfelt song after another, but doing so would be wrong.Tubelord are a little bit special; they exude mass appeal, yet never sound contrived.Transposed to a live environment, their sprightly Math Pop, which prides itself on having intricate fast paced riffs, glorious three part vocal harmonies and alternating dynamics, has a devastatingly powerful effect. Given an almost hero-like welcome, they run through a set that often sends the audience into one heaving, delicately timed, jumping blob. Songs such as ‘I am Azerrad’ and ‘Somewhere Out There a Dog is on Fire’ entice crowd surfing, stage invasions, people to swing off lighting rigs and has the majority of the audience singing the lyrics back loud and proud.When the curfew strikes and the night is all www.loudandquiet.com

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but over, mass disappointment visibly sweeps over them.There are not many bands with just two single releases under their belts that have the capabilities to inspire such extreme audience reactions and only the foolish would argue against them doing this on a larger scale, very very soon.

The HorrorS

Patrick Wolf. Pic: Andy Cook

Jarvis Cocker. Pic: Stephen Pook

The Horrors. Pic: Tim Cochrane

www.loudandquiet.com

Concorde 2, Brighton 04.06.2009 By Stuart Stubbs ▼

It’s not quite the hysteria that would meet a Beatles guff in 1964, but the shrill cries that fanfare The Horrors’ arrival this evening is nonetheless impressive. London was easily won by the Southend punks the first time around so we’ve deliberately ventured south to see if ‘Primary Colours’ has claimed widespread victory as much as anticipated. Clearly,The Horrors’ new Neu!-inspired direction has. Even the chaps claw at their own faces at the first glimpse of Spider Webb’s hooped sailor’s top half and Joshua Third’s rum and coke toast towards the back of the venue. Faris’ late arrival, once his band have wound up the trippy intro to ‘Mirror’s Image’, milks the screams and quickly discards them as the singer thumbs his hair and skulks around, hunched and unable to look at his audience, seemingly too shy to be the man that then barks his way through a set of completely new tracks. As Webb quickens his snaking thin hips to the overdriven padding of his new instrument, Faris too grows in confidence. ‘I Can Control Myself ’ manages to chug extra menacingly despite a couple of sound hitches, but it’s ‘New Ice Age’ that lets Faris out of his cage. “You’re hypnotised,” he growls by way of introduction before looming over the front five rows that reach out in a vain attempt to touch the black-clad figure in control. And, with us more than happy to wait for an encore to hear old hits (‘Count In Fives’, ‘Sheena…’ and ‘Gloves’), that’s exactly what The Horrors are these days.

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Deerhunter The Scala, Kings Cross 18.05.2009 By Matthias Scherer ▼

The days of performing while covered in paint or wearing daisy chains are over for good. Brendan Cox now prefers a dressed-down approach.Tonight, his long-limbed frame is draped in a dark t-shirt and topped by a non-haircut that is more midwestern farmer than indie rockstar, which is what Deerhunter have become – at least to the punters in the stands and balcony of the sold-out venue, twisting their necks to catch a glimpse of the band who trod onstage to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’.While the Boss himself wouldn’t dream of shooting his load that early, the song has become the standard intro music to Deerhunter shows, and the transition into the proper ‘Intro’ from ‘Cryptograms’ works surprisingly well.The ‘Microcastles’ material – especially the krautrocking ‘Nothing Ever Happened’ – also sounds fantastic, while in the background Moses Archuleta injects new lifeblood into the 4/4-beat with his relentless, pinpoint drumming that booms out of the PA like a machine gun firing off rounds in half-time.There is the odd KevinShields-moment and Cox occasionally re-loops his vocals to the point of overindulgence, but after the cheeky lo-fi pop of new track ‘Famous Last Words’ and a captivating rendition of the postpunk/shoegaze bastard ‘Agoraphobia’, all is forgiven.

Crystal Fighters The Mint Lounge, Manchester 28.05.2009 By Laura Hughes ▼

With the ink fresh from their deal with eponymous wonky-dance label Kitsuné, Crystal Fighters will soon become your new favourite party band. This bohemian basement in a rainy corner of the North West is a far cry from their native Spain, but even with three

members missing, the remaining duo still manage to cause utter mayhem. Like the lanky, demon brothers of Carlos Tevez, the duo pout, scream, toss their hair and er… skip the drum kit in favour of two oversized slabs of wood. Eurovision, this aint. Having headlined the likes of Dollop, Matter and Cargo, dancefloor favourites ‘I Love London’ and ‘I Do This Everyday’ juxtapose basslines dirtier than a tramps’ fingernail with distorted, frantic vocals, while new single ‘Xtatic Truth’ is the bastard offspring of DFA 1979 and The Teenagers. “This is our first ever encore!” announces frontman Sebastian, before realising they’ve run out of songs. Shrugging, they launch into a vicious reprise of ‘Solar System’ before collapsing in a heap of sweaty, San Miguel-fuelled exhaustion. Equal parts bonkers and brilliant, Crystal Fighters will make you pull shapes your body didn’t know existed. Surrender your eardrums.

Idlewild Dingwalls, Camden 19-21.05.2009 By Polly Rappaport ▼

Tonight Idlewild have taken their places on their ever-present Persian rugs to embark on the first evening of a three-night residency, revisiting six albums, in their entirety.The band warm up for the debut of their new album with a few staple tracks such as ‘Too Long Awake’ and the audience warm up for the resurrection of ‘Hope is Important’ with a bit of precursory headbanging to staple track ‘Roseability’. “This is a bit of a showcase,” observes singer Roddy Woomble, looking only slightly seasick as he announces that this is the first time they have ever performed forthcoming record, ‘Post Electric Blues’ live. It’s a rocker: guitarists Rod Jones and Allan Stewart are suitably drenched and bouncing off their monitors throughout. On Night No.2 a security barrier has materialised. Boo-hiss. But then again it’s ‘100 Broken Windows’ night and some

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of us remember when Idlewild’s music was for climbing the guy next to you and leaving footprints on his face. Prime specimens of this come in the form of encores ‘Satan Polaroid’, off infamous sapling album ‘Captain’ and postpunk barker ‘Queen Of The Troubled Teens’. “You’re making my missus cry!” shouts a punter as the band revert to their later, more reflective sound. It’s been quite a journey from ‘Captain’ via ‘El Capitan’ – and it’s been three blissful, sweaty, nostalgic nights in Camden Town.

Jarvis Cocker Bataclan, Paris 04.06.2009 By Ian Roebuck ▼

If c*nts really are still running the world, as Mr Cocker professed in his 2006 download single, Jarvis has found the perfect method of escape. Full of painfully polite Parisians, the Bataclan theatre in the 11th arrondissement is hosting a Jarvis love-in within its four intricate walls. Maybe it’s something to do with the national icon now living in Paris with French wife Camille, maybe it’s the new beard; whatever the reason, Jarvis is king. Sticking to his Sheffield roots, breakfast now reportedly involves Marmite on a baguette and it’s a love or hate thing with his new material too. His second solo album, ‘Further Complications’, has received a mixed bag of reviews in blighty, but at the Bataclan every new song ends with rapturous applause. Without Steve Albini’s heavy production there is a crisp clarity to each track, admittedly – Jarvis is on good form.The now perfunctory lank-limbed dance moves seem to have a new lease of life and the banter is back to its glorious best.Whether he is rifling through a ladies bag or developing his GCSE language skills, the man is much loved round these parts and after three (!) encores and a toast to the French capital he mingles with the audience outside. Whatever you do Jarvis, don’t come home - you look too happy.

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black lips Electric Ballroom, Camden 26.05.2009 By Polly Rappaport ▼

It’s the end of the evening for Georgia ASBO veterans Black Lips and, as they take to the stage for one last song, Joe has gone AWOL leaving a crew member to man the drum kit. Jared and Cole argue for a few minutes off mic and as Cole digs into encore ‘Stone Cold’ Jared whips off his own guitar and leaves the stage. A few minutes earlier, the band want the lights switched off for macabre track ‘Buried Alive’ but get no joy. Cole looks rightfully pissed off. He’s not having much fun though moments before the Black Lips were much more themselves – between scream-fest smash’n’squawk tracks Cole announces that he would like to thank Satan while Ian climbs down off the lighting rig, gold teeth glistening in a feral grin. Among other things, he has managed to dodge the assortment of shoes being thrown at the stage (What ever happened to knickers and bottles of piss?). Still, ‘O Katrina’ goes over as raucously as ever, prerequisite punter chaos in full swing after guaranteed crowdsurfer ‘Short Fuse’. Before the night’s set has even begun the Black Lips are already causing trouble by handing out glass bottles of beer to the baying crowd; how could this not all end in tears?

bo ningen The Cross Kings, Kings Cross 27.05.2009 By Edgar Smith ▼

If someone in the 1960’s had imagined (‘Space: 1999’ style) what rock and roll would sound like in 2009, Bo Ningen is what they would have heard in their head. The four Japanese Londoners are headlining their own night, Far East Electric Psychedelic (the name gives some idea of what they’re about) at The Cross Kings and it’s the best gig I’ve seen all year.What with the profoundly cool, effortless onstage wig-outs

and head-bending jams, they are pretty much the consummate psyche band, while at the same time playing an updated J-Rock template that has elements of kraut-rock, metal, hardcore and funk scratched all over it.That might sound messy on paper but live the disorder is wrought into tight riffs that explode into transcendent a-tonal onslaughts without notice. In its obsession with repetition and the twisted patterns of its ungraspable musical narrative, the set has all the appeal of listening to Amon Düül, Can, Melt-Banana or one of the weirder nights at the Dalston Vortex, but they’re the only band around that could capably straddle the worlds of a dazed double-spread and an ATP stage. It’s a hundred times better than what’s on their myspace page so let’s hope their forthcoming single with Stolen Recordings does them justice.

my Latest Novel Bush Hall, Shepherds Bush 25.05.2009 By Chris Watkeys ▼

This is the launch show for My Latest Novel’s seriously-titled new record ‘Deaths and Entrances’ and perhaps fittingly, the band stand blank-faced and serious, selfconsciously aware of the gravity of their music.These guys would make a very fine post-rock outfit should they choose to go in a more instrumental direction - it’s almost possible to describe their music as guitar-based modern classical.The vocals, however, are an integral part of the appeal; ‘Learning Lego’ is suffused with beautiful multi-part harmonies, a quiet whisper which builds to a destructive storm.The band move skillfully between soft swathes of sound and an urgent, clanging menace, while a sweeping violin part adds a melancholy aspect to their wide-reaching soundscapes.The fans here are relatively few, but dedicated, and the opulence of Bush Hall lends itself to a reverent atmosphere. It’s a performance of contrasts, subtlety and power.Very occasionally, the band plunge into the chasm of

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melodramatic catharsis that the likes of Arcade Fire plumb so well, each instrument diving and swaying erratically, like disparate winds coming together to form a hurricane. My Latest Novel are masters of their craft.

The Pains of being pure at heart Jericho, Oxford 11.06.2009 By Tom Goodwyn ▼

It’s a quiet night in Boho, Oxford, with the sky offering the usual mix of drizzle and unrelenting grey. Downstairs, drinkers sit bemused as droves of people fight their way up to the pub’s grotty top floor in a vain attempt to catch a glimpse of New York quintet The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. In spite of the pitiful conditions, the second the band hit the stage they conjure the atmosphere of a sun soaked summer afternoon. Joyful guitar riffs, gentle melodies and delicious harmonies combine for an all too brief forty minutes.Their set breezes past, each song drifting seamlessly into the next. Only before an apparently unplanned encore do they speak a word to the crowd.Throughout the set they echo Weezer or The Shins in prime pop-picking form, but also encased in pleasant fuzz of their own, particularly on ‘Young Adult Friction’ and ‘Come Saturday’. They are most likely what would have happened if Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine had decided that four minutes was quite enough really.With festival season here, it looks like TPBPH are destined to spend the summer playing to overstuffed tents.They’d better get used to it.

Patrick Wolf The Leadmill, Sheffield 28.05.2009 By Kate Parkin ▼

Sharp, stabbing notes from a violin pierce through the darkness as Patrick Wolf materialises on stage.

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Posing coyly he looks like the star of an intergalactic 80’s musical revue, though bereft of his usual glitzy stage makeup. As the crowd gather to gawk at the exotic creature in their midst, it transpires Patrick is suffering from a bout of food poisoning. Despite his fragile state, he draws out a performance of truly Faustian proportions during a sprawling version of ‘Damaris’. Annoyingly, there is a liberal smattering of ultra-camp Eurovision moments with ‘Blackdown’ easily passing for a Spandau Ballet cover, but playing much of his set sitting down – to avoid showering the crowd below in vomit – his voice on ‘Wind In The Wires’ remains breathtaking, with all the twists and turns of Jeff Buckley in full flow.With one final shot, out all the stops are pulled out for ‘Magic Position’, stripping away the posturing with an explosion of pure joy. All pretence lost, it’s the signal the crowd were waiting for, hugging and snogging like the last dance at the school disco. Even when beset by illness, he is still one of the most enigmatic performers of a generation, and something tells us we still haven’t seen the best from Patrick Wolf just yet.

FOL Chen The Macbeth, Hoxton 13.06.2009 By Sam Little ▼

When you’re dying on your arse, an enthusiastic, if not sophisticated, cover version can forgive a multitude of sins.That Fol Chen invite holidaying pals onstage for a perfect rendition of Beastie Boys’ ‘Sabotage’, when they’ve already successfully transform The Macbeth into a trumpet-tooting, pistol-shooting fiesta at the Ok Corral, gives you an idea of how triumphant the Californians’ goodbye to London was. After of week of back-to-back shows in the capital it’s down to the sweet Calipop of ‘Cable TV’ and Melissa Thorne’s gentle voice to see these seven multi-instrumentalists on their way. “That was so much fun,” says Samuel Bing “you should try it.” And he’s right, you should! www.loudandquiet.com

film

by Dean driscoll

Prelude to a miss: the problem with prequels

Johnny Depp in Public Enemies

Cinema Preview Movie careers are made and broken on reps, and infamy plays a big part in this month’s cinematic highlights Notoriety in Hollywood can work for and against you. Christian Bale’s temper was on the brink of notoriety when he was detained by police for allegedly assaulting his mother and sister on the eve of The Dark Knight’s UK premiere and achieved full blown notoriety once a sound engineer on the set of Terminator Salvation captured his (justified, if perhaps not at that intensity) tirade at DoP Shane Hurlbut. Salvation was of course directed by McG, detrimentally notorious for the Charlie’s Angels movies, and for having a stupid name. Bale brushes against notoriety once more in this month’s Public Enemies (released July 1st), playing the nemesis to Johnny Depp’s John Dillinger, the depression-era bête noire of the newly formed FBI and its leader J Edgar Hoover (played here by Dr Manhattan, Billy Crudup). Directed by Michael Mann, it’s difficult not to make parallels with his masterpiece Heat, an epic pairing of two of a generation’s most celebrated actors as men both obsessive in the roles on either side of the law. Shot on digital, with Mann’s perfectionist eye for detail, these are all reasons to be very, very excited. Another man who also revels in being Public Enemy Number 1 is Sacha Baron Cohen, no stranger to infamy with shenanigans under his various comedy alter egos. Following the wild success of Borat, Cohen brings his Austrian provocateur Brüno (released July

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10th) to the screen, following the Borat formula of a loosely documentary-based style, directed by Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm alumnus Larry Charles. Whereas Borat was chiefly concerned with exposing racism and Neanderthal attitudes towards women, Brüno’s modus operandi is to lampoon American homophobia. Somehow managing to be more outrageous than its predecessor, Brüno is all set to match Borat pound for pound – in box office takings and law suits. The rest of the month’s most high profile offerings are mainly aimed at the younger audiences.There’s another 3D CG animated feature, this time in the shape of the 3rd outing of the hugely likeable Ice Age team; the 25th Harry Potter movie, once again bringing together the cream of British acting talent, and Daniel Radcliffe, and then huge robots smack the shit out of each other once more in Michael Bay’s Transformers sequel; gratuitous in every aspect from the big scale CGI robot smackdowns on man-made wonders of the world, to the lingering shots of Megan Fox leaning over various modes of transport in denim hot pants.

This month’s cinema highlights: June 19th: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen July 1st: Public Enemies, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (3D) July 10th: Brüno July 15th: Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince

As the major studios continue on their mission to wring every last drop of cash from past successes, so we’ll keep being bombarded with unwanted sequels and unnecessary remakes. But whilst there is the occasional surprise - a sequel that betters the original; a remake that improves on the original - it’s a struggle to make any sense of the current demand for prequels, which is to bring about a prelude to Alien - the 1979 sci-fi horror by Ridley Scott that.With the series having lost its way with poor subsequent instalments (post James Cameron’s brilliant Aliens and Alien 3 - the flawed but interesting movie debut of David Fincher), Fox have decided the time’s right for the ever-fashionable origin tale to the ire of fans of the original trilogy. The problem is, has there yet been a prequel that’s actually been any good? Leaving aside franchise relaunches such as Batman Begins and Star Trek - which kicked off a brand new mythology for an established property - we’ve recently had critics howling derision at Wolverine, the risible Hannibal Rising (or Dr Lector:The Teen Years) and, of course, had to sit through three of the worst movies ever made only to find out Anakin became Darth Vader because he fell in some lava whilst stropping about in a huff.The problem that escapes the studios is that although in 99% of all action movies everyone has a pretty good idea that the hero will vanquish the bad guy in the end, there is at least the illusion of unpredictability that everyone subscribes to within the suspension of disbelief demanded by such movies. Prequels don’t have that illusion - you know exactly who lives and dies.That failing would appear to be bigger than the studios would admit in their pursuit of the easy buck. Which begs the question: how does that leave things for Guillermo Del Toro’s upcoming take on The Hobbit?

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party wolf Photo Casebook“Big Brother’s Big Bother”

Alright Rod, you been watching Big Brother; the show they threaten to axe every year but never have the decency to?

horoscopes Gemini

Arseholes in a house, all rolling around like dicks and that? Yeah, love it mate

You’re the two-faced queen bitch, Gemini, but this square world is getting both of your mugs down. It seems like you can’t do anything at the moment without someone getting on your back, you lucky devil! No, seriously though, we all need to be given a break sometimes and the good news is that this month a new moon allows you to ‘come and go’ as much as you please. Relations with an important partner will appear a lot simpler also. It’s felt like you’ve had to very much buy love recently... and chain it to a radiator against its will, but while boys in blue have represented killjoys, red, gold and green are lucky for you this month. Single? There’s always the radiator trick.

Celebrity twitter See! Famous people are normal, just like us

Me too. Can’t stand George Lamb though. My girl loves him... Hey, why does George Lamb wear a bowtie, Rod? So even deaf people know that he’s a c*nt! Ha!

G Ramsay

That was tough, yes?! Well, it wasn’t really, just did the same as last week. LOL fucking LOL about 1 hours ago from device

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Now for a really crap makeover of this complete shit hole, which these tards will love even though I’ve just added table cloths about 6 hours ago from device

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Just landed my “You’re full of shit” line and about to announce plans to turn this place into a steak house

Did someone mention lamb? I’m dying for some meat!

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Phoarrr! You jammy git PW!

about 6 hours ago from device

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The service here is a joke, yes!? And the kitchen is well dirty... like last week!!! about 8 hours ago from device

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Teaching fat Yanks to cook again today. Fuck!