Loud And Quiet 9 – HEALTH

LoudAndQuiet Zero pounds / Volume 03 / Issue 09 / 100 percent GOOD FOR YOU

PLUS Male Bonding Sex Is Disgusting Electricity In Our Homes A Grave With No Name The Vinyl Stitches Gold Panda spectrals

HEALTH Get Color

> Male bonding page 14

> Electricity in our homes page 18

> spectrals page 30

“What’s the best… …festival you’ve played?” Ask that to Dizzee Rascal at T4 On The Beach and he’ll say, “This one… Miquita.” He’s lying, but it’s what you’ve got to say when asked. Now ask us what’s the best festival you’ve curated a stage at and we’ll say, “This one… Offset-affiliated person.” The conundrum, then, is that when we do host a stage at this year’s Offset Festival it really will be the best anything we’ve curated, and not only because it’ll be the first.

-----On September 5th, the Loud And Quiet tent will play home to Speak & The Spells, Mazes, Teen Sheikhs, Damo Suzuki, Cold Pumas, Metronomy, Drum Eyes and two bands featured in this issue, Spectrals and Male Bonding.

-----Oh yes, this issue. ‘Playing Eavis’ has taken up plenty of time over the past 30 days but in no way have we neglected our primary duty of creating issue 9. There’s no shoddy afterthoughts here, just the first cover feature of a band we’ve been obsessed with for two years, exclusive interviews with The Vinyl Stitches, Gold Panda, Electricity In Our Homes and A Grave With No Name, and a special live review section dedicated to festival highlights, here and abroad.

-----Our favourite issue ever? This one… [insert own name here]. www.loudandquiet.com

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Contents 09| 09 Photographer: tim cochrane

LOUD AND QUIET ZERO POUNDS / VOLUME 03 / ISSUE 09 / 100 PERCENT GOOD FOR YOU

PLUS

MALE BONDING SEX IS DISGUSTING ELECTRICITY IN OUR HOMES A GRAVE WITH NO NAME THE VINYL STITCHES GOLD PANDA SPECTRALS

HEALTH

Get Color

07 – Win / Cold / Blood 08 – Wogan / Likes / Drugs 10 – Dodgy / Old / Dude 13 – Sonic / Pop / Suicide 14 – Rancid / American / Girls 16 – Are / You / Indians 18 – Margarine / Trout / Mask 20 – Charlie / Says / No 23 – Messy / Sex / Warts 26 – First / Rapping / Dinosaurs 30 – Lovely / Weird / Junk 34 – Classic / 80s / Yobs 37 – Bigger / Grimy / Crotch 39 – Hogan / Knows / Best

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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, Elizabeth Dodd Greg Cochrane, Kate Hutchinson, Mandy Drake, Owen Richards, Rebecca Innes, Reef Younis, Sam Little, Sam Walton, Simon Leak,Tim Cochrane This Month L&Q Loves

Alex Thomson, Beth Drake, Keong Woo, Ronnie@Niteline 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 09| 09

My Mercury’s in Disarray The Mercury Prize’s faux myth and dodgy decisions Writer: Mandy Dr ake

There’s a brilliant myth about the Mercury Prize. Y’know, about how it’s a poisoned chalice, like some primitive X Factor winner’s title. They say it hangs heavy around the neck, forcing the coveted yearly champ/champs to actually believe that their album is the best of the year. Fools! What follows is either premature retirement (Miss Dynamite), some incredibly naff follow up records (Badly Drawn Boy) or a year-long haze of a celebration and the sudden realisation that there’s a new Mercury king or queen now and we really should get back to making some more music (Klaxons).

Like all great conspiracies, it’s actually a load of old tosh. Following her 2002 scoop, whether in a daily cold sweat of second tricky album fever or not, Miss Dynamite – and get this – decided that raising a family was more important than getting props from the So Solid Crew. Badly Drawn Boy – a woolly hat with an acoustic guitar, lest we not forget – most likely only had one half decent record in him regardless of its success, and Klaxons still have time to follow ‘Myths Of The

Near Future’ with something equally as daft, thrilling and original. Primal Scream, who won the first ever Mercury gong in 1992 for ‘Screamadelica’, have proved that evolution (and certain chemicals) keeps the most inspiring winners ticking over beyond their youth; Arctic Monkeys are hardly a ‘remember them?’ band; M People being awarded anything other than a shit sandwich at lunchtime still sullies this whole process 15 years later.

So no, there’s no Mercury Prize conspiracy, just artists that are better than one record, those that aren’t and M People.

Mercury winners are as diverse and hit-and-miss as you’d expect from an award given to ‘the best record of the year’ – an impossible task and one that judges have proved to be over the past two years.

As dead-cert Amy Winehouse waddled away from the ceremony empty handed in 2007, Klaxons bounced around all over host Jools Holland and gurned into camera lenses. ‘Back To Black’ had been deemed too retro sounding, not inventive enough and ultimately a bit safe for

the radical Mercurys. Klaxons were victorious due to having created a record that genuinely sounded like little else that had come before it – a no brainer for an award in innovation. It was probably the most justified decision the Mercury panel had made since ‘Boy In Da Corner’ snubbed Coldplay’s mammoth but conventional ‘A Rush Of Blood To The Head’. And then Elbow collected their gong a year later, making us feel lied to 12 months previous. A beautiful guitar record ‘Seldom Seen Kid’ is, but what happened to all of this talk of “the winner needs to be pushing boundaries in music”? What happened to Burial’s ‘Untrue’?

The simple answer there is that the aloof little oik didn’t turn up to the ceremony, and even if you don’t believe that that could have cost ‘Untrue’ the mantle, you can’t ignore the ‘give it to Elbow for being really persistent and nice guys’ whiff that hung in the air.

Similarly, a cynical mind like mine might think that Anthony & The Johnsons beating MIA to the top spot in 2005 was

more a strategic ploy from the prize to appeal to mass Guardian readers rather than truly reward originality; Talvin Singh ticking the box marked ‘uncommercial winner every 10 years’ in 1999. In that instance, this year looks promising for the token unknowns (‘Led Bib’, ‘Sweet Billy Pilgrim’, ‘Lisa Hannigan’) who probably represent the world of jazz, piano ballads and possibly classical music. For the fluttering types, Speech Debelle is worth a shout – sure, due to her folk-hop debut, but also because she can make the Mercury urban once more. Or maybe 2009’s prize will go to the best record (read as: my favourite record on the list, which is The Horrors’, if you care).

Why I’m moaning, I don’t know. Thanks to this award forever changing its yardstick of excellence, the Mercury Prize is the only unpredictable decoration we have. Whoever wins is completely irrelevant to everyone but the winner and their record sales, but like the utterly pointless Royal Family, we’d rather have them than be without.

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The Beginning

Radio Ha Ha All we need is… a true alternative, and we found it at Diesel:U:Music Radio Writer: Stuart Stubbs

Even if I could drive, clamp/ traffic/thief-happy London is hardly the town I’d want my wheels rolling through. I don’t work on a building site and noise at breakfast makes me nauseous. Ultimately though, radio and I don’t get along because trying to find a station worth listening to is like standing behind Chris Moyles in a buffet queue – a thoroughly tedious and eventually unrewarding exercise.

Putting pins in smug DJs – spherical or otherwise – playlists are the most cancerous aspect of most stations. A few specialist shows aside (John Kennedy’s Xfm stint, Huw Stephen’s Radio 1 opposite number, Annie Macs gushy but proactive Mash Up offering) the airwaves are a plume of whitevan-man-pleasers, Calvin Harris to Snow Patrol and back again, every hour the same. Bizarrely, if you want a number one hit single (remember them?) the Radio 1 playlist is an inescapable prerequisite, and yet BBC soothsayers reward the same likely candidates with this career-boosting honour, telling a nation to like what they already do. It’s like the lazy genius villain who could use his power for good but thinks, “Nah… X Factor is making me too much money.” If Yeasayer were played to a nation of shopkeepers 15

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times a day, everyone’s music tastes would surely be far better off.

Even the ‘alternative’ stations have descended into pushers of ‘indie as stated by T4 on The Beach’. Virgin Radio became Absolute instead of the more apt David Bowie Vs Queen FM; Xfm is now embodied in its yearly Winter Wonderland lineups – a worthy charity show, yes, but one that last year saw Kaiser Chiefs, Iglu & Hartley and Scouting For Girls share the same stage.

I’d never considered any of this until asked to present a one-off show on Internet station Diesel:U:Music Radio. Our carte blanche weekly podcast could finally reach a wider, unsuspecting audience. Taking the pin out of smug DJs, I was about to become one, but a forward thinking broadcaster (like Wogan), supporting the little man and firing out old forgotten favourites. It was going to be a two-hour show like never before. But suddenly even ‘Fool’ from Blur’s ‘Leisure’ seemed weak and obvious; an album track by LA garage band Nodzzz just an overplayed George Lamb favourite.

A sheet of A4 paper on the wall of the D:U:M studio – found on the top floor of a Dalston warehouse conversion and resembling a sleeker Sugar Ape

headquarters – reads NO RULES RADIO, which is pretty accurate.

Playlists only exist in the minds of regular and guest DJs, be they Lucy Pink’s twice weekly hip hop show or sporadic hours from Italians Do It Better, Disco Zombie Squad and Artrocker, who arrive for their show as I’m leaving. With music fans as diverse as that playing what they want, listening to D: U:M can become an education.

‘Discovery’, of course sounds far more fitting and less academic, but most importantly it is a true alternative to the mainstream broadcasters. And that’s something I didn’t expect. I knew I could play whatever I wanted but I still presumed there was a ceiling to that. Seemingly not, as senior producer Hermeet is visibly disappointed that I’ve not brought the first HEALTH album with me, enthusing about sounda-like hardcore band Aa. And so my ‘leftfield’ selection of tracks jumped ten feet nearer the middle of the road, on D:U:M Avenue, anyhow.

Perhaps the name tricked me – this ‘No Rules Radio’ is, after all, owned by a massive mainstream clothing company. At least it’s not owned by the public though, because the poster boy of our radio station has a best friend called Comedy Dave.

Books

By Janine and Lee Bullman

Mozipedia: The encyclopaedia of Morrissey and The Smiths

By Simon Goddard (Ebury Press) Everything you ever wanted to know about Morrissey but were too afraid to ask --------------------Any book that relates the story of The Fonz calling long distance from LA to Manchester to ask Morrissey’s mother for her recipe for mashed potato has to be worth the price of admission. Simon Goddard’s book is as extensively researched and engaging, as you’d expect from the writer who brought us Songs That Saved Your Life and richly deserves its status as the definitive tome on the life, work and influences of Stephen Patrick Morrissey. There’s more to life than books you know, but not much more.

Will Work For Drugs

By Lydia Lunch (Akashic Books) A compilation of literary work that match Lunch’s aural output --------------------Will Work For Drugs collects seventeen examples of Lydia Lunch’s work – some of it previously unpublished – ranging from essays and examples of her short fiction to interviews with fellow underground luminaries and perennial outsiders such as Hubert Selby Jr. and Nick Tosches.

The writing throughout this collection is refreshingly dense and demanding, comparisons to William Burroughs ring true, and Will Work… is every bit as raw and uncompromising as anything she has yet set to vinyl. A successful collection, which offers an excellent introduction to the woman and her singular worldview. Best read at night.

The Beginning

Dude! Where’s my fun?

Phil Burt remembers a simpler time, when her favourite bands were less po-faced

Last week I was invited to a friend’s frat party. Now, for anyone who fell for the adolescent charms of Stifler, Garth Algar or Ted Theodore Logan, these two words need no further explanation, but for all who apparently slept through the 1990s, frat party reads: an excuse to drink copious amounts of suspicious looking punch, crowd surf in a kitchen while dressed up as a quarter back and listen to nothing but shameless teenage American rock. We’re talking about the pure, unadulterated high-five inducing tracks of Blink 182, Sum 41, Lit. And while listening to the repeated, dorky “uh huh, uh huhs” of ‘Pretty Fly for a White Guy’, I found myself regressing to a happier time.

Between discovering music with the pelvic thrusts of MJ and spending more recent nights comparing hairstyles at the Old Blue Last, there was a period of

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my life when the biggest problems were whether I’d get the lead in the school play or a snog at the next house party was. Innocent, childish and fun, the perfect soundtrack to these teenage hopes was offered up with American accents and fake tattoos.

Let’s face facts, since first squeezing ourselves into tight, black jeans and sculpting our hair into Faris-esque nests, we’ve lost the ability to let go and have fun – east London is certainly no place for such behaviour. Sure, it’s where to go to hear new music; a place to pose; a place to see and be seen; but it’s not really the kind of place that invites you to let your hair down and wear your happiness on your face. Any attempt to do this - whether it’s pulling a dodgy looking dance move or getting over emotional at the camaraderie of your closest buds – is sure to

be met with disdainful looks and remarks of how Hoxton “really is letting in any old riff raff nowadays”.

Watching bands, we’re expected to stand resolutely still, simply nodding along in time. It is in reaction to this jaded, critical stance taken by the Shoreditch masses that has led Speak & the Spells to don outfits resembling giant tampons – their words, not ours – and chuck themselves onto the floor showing their audience how to have a good time.

It’s not just east London though – the mannequins in Topshop seem to look at happy shoppers with extra disdain these days; V Festival is about maintaining that Kate Moss look, which is impossible if creaseinducing dancing is to be had.

Blink 182 are today a bunch of late 30-year-old douches still singing about making prank phone calls and ditching classes

they’ve not been cursed by in two decades. There’s no escaping that, but have a look at Mark Hoppus’ twitter page. With updates such as ‘Today = blink182 rehearsal, interview with Tony Hawk, photo shoot, motion city soundtrack, and dinner with friends’ you’ll soon realise he’s having a lot more fun than your average seri-arse muso who thought ‘R O M A N C E were sick tonight’.

And that’s the beauty of this music. It’s about hanging out with your mates and getting the boys or girls, not trying to ‘outcool’ the guy next to you, because you don’t even know that guy, or his sour-puss. And while it’s perfectly natural to grow up, mature and become more serious, you still need to let go. I recommend travelling back to when your biggest fear was that your first shag was going to be with one of your Mum’s home baked pies. Party on!

A Grave With No Name Alex Shields’ music may be nameless, but shallow it ain’t Writer: reef younis Photographer: phil sharp

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t’s after a hard day’s slog that we catch up with Alex Shields, chief purveyor of A Grave With No Name - AGWNN from here on in – and find him in jovial mood.

It’s unsurprising really, having recently released a warmly received EP, and following a successful support slot with the much championed The Big Pink, his optimism is as much tempered by the rumblings of small success as it is his own expectations.

“We did a tour with The Big Pink and that was amazing but I didn’t have any expectations at the start and continue to not really have any. The EP has been received within the world it’s in, pretty well,” he unassumingly admits.

Touting a new EP for the Autumn, and with work on a debut LP beginning in earnest, Alex is increasingly buoyed by the prospect of AGWNN’s progression, even if it’s only modestly noted by a few.

“In October I’m going to clear my hard drive of stuff and put out everything on a new No Pain In Pop release in November.

I’m also really looking to work towards writing a great album you can live inside and that a few people can discover and mean something to.”

Perhaps it’s not the grandest statement of intent but Alex isn’t your typical operator. A musical dictator (in the nicest sense) he conducts AGWNN’s spatial majesty with individual verve; painting downbeat panorama and evoking vivid images of rolling plains from the confines of four bedroom walls. Thus far, it’s a creative dynamic that’s served him well, even if it is a little unconventional.

“I do all the recordings on my own, it’s the kind of music I make on my own. I record it and play all the instruments and kind of tell the other guys what to do. Sometimes it doesn’t work out live but we take it from there,” he explains.

Pitched as everything from distorted grunge to irreverent shoegaze, the band’s bedroom origins immediately point to nights spent tinkering away, Alex concertedly perfecting his lo-fi finery. At times driven and all encompassing, there remains a fragility to AGWNN, and for a man and a band so intent on evoking expanse and imagery, and investing so much in a sense of musical freedom, they are tags he finds to be far from accurate.

Limiting, even.

“To be honest I think lo-fi’s the wrong tag because I think

there’s bedroom recording and there’s lo-fi and in the original kind of wave of lo-fi bands, they’d be recording with four tracks or eight tracks which limits what you can record to an extent, but with computers you can do as much as you want and layer and layer. I do use an eight track but it’s not a conscious thing, it was kind of born out of necessity. I’m not the kind of person who can rock up to a recording studio and knock out a song,” he explains.

And it’s also this exploratory outlook that drives Alex down new, more inventive avenues as he discovers and develops AGWNN’s admittedly raw sound.

“I like to push myself and the way I write is, if I’m in a rut, if I find something isn’t giving me the results, I’ll try a different approach. Equally, at some point, it’s going to give me an extra creative route to go down. If you put yourself out of your comfort zone, it’s always going to push you to be creative.

“I think I’ve always seen sounds because music to me is a really 3D thing and I always try and bring that forward. I think bands should use sounds to their maximum potential, to create worlds. It’s definitely something I have in mind when I’m making the tracks in my bedroom, you know, music you can enter.”

A brief visit to the band’s myspace page will tell you all you need to hear - Alex’s ethereal falsetto imbuing the music with a permeating sadness - tracks like ‘Sofia’ and ‘And We Parted Ways At Mt. Jade’, for all their sonic grinding, underpinned by an emotive glaze.

And it’s here, arguably, where AGWNN’s strength lies; capturing the ability to move (in the emotional sense) and transport (you somewhere else in your head) without being overtly dramatic or obvious.

“I’m obsessed with melody,” Alex starts. “I’m not the world’s greatest musician and I don’t have that ability. I’m a big fan of using reverb and distortion but I listen to a lot of different music and people seem to miss that. My main interest is just bringing texture to really strong songs.

“To me when lyrics combine with amazing production and amazing music, that’s great, but music itself is way more powerful. I’ve never been into music that’s just been about the lyrics. Like, I’m not a Bob Dylan fan; I’m not a Morrissey fan, where the natural

gravitation is towards the lyrics. You can have great rock records, great instrumental records. I think when you listen to chart records, you’re not really buying into the lyrics, you’re just letting the track wash over you.”

You could suggest it’s a similar experience listening to AGWNN, but where conventional pop records are typically designed to shift and uplift, Alex believes he’s spinning on the darker side of the coin, allowing elements of his own experiences to add some sorry introspection.

“Generally pop records tend towards being happy and upbeat.

I’m trying to almost bring the other side. I really don’t like the word ‘pop’ which suggests a great melody but pop music is a genre. I think when people say they’re experimenting with a pop record they’re just making a more melodic record.

“Inevitably your music relates to your state of mind. I think perhaps there was one song on the EP that relates to my life. I had one day when my nan went to the eye hospital and there was ceremony for a friend who’d committed suicide so I decided to just sit down and convey the feeling of loss I was experiencing then. I try and avoid the whole sense of ‘oh, my girlfriend’s left me’ and give it more of a universal appeal.”

Throughout our conversation, Alex comes across as considered and extremely eloquent, both in discussing the band and music in general, as the conversation meanders down that well trodden path. Spending his days working for a major label, you’d think he might suffer from an overload, stumbling from the professional interest to the personal passion, but it’s a merger he seems to enjoy with an almost unwavering positivity.

“I literally spend my entire day listening to albums or the radio and watching all the different music channels. Even if it’s something I don’t like, I’ll always try and look for a good part. I think it’s weird that people don’t say, ‘this song sounds sad, it uses these sounds’, it’s always, ‘It sounds like My Bloody Valentine covering Animal Collective’ but I suppose it’s a journalistic tag. I think as a music fan it’s definitely attractive but for artists, it’s equally frustrating because we always like to think we’re doing something more original than anyone else,” he chuckles.

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Male Bonding They’ve only just signed to Sup Pop and already a backlash is brewing Writer: Matthias Scherer Photographer: Gabriel green If Male Bonding had their way, they’d live in the United States, play some house shows, put out tapes and 7”s with musician friends on a regular basis, grab the odd rad slice of pizza (we’ll come back to that later), and maybe take down the Drownedinsound message board.

There is a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t sit down with Loud And Quiet to do an interview, but since the Dalston trio have arrived where they are now (on the roster of the almighty Sup Pop label, bessies with Brooklyn hipster darlings Vivian Girls) completely on their own terms, it’s probably fair to assume that nobody held a gun to their head and told them to talk to us.

Anyway, today, over lentil soup in one of their local haunts on Kingsland High Street (they all live together, around the corner), John Arthur Webb [guitar and vocals], Kevin Hendrick [bass and vocals] and Robin Silas Christian [drums] do their best to answer questions about their signing to a indie label giant and their somewhat strained relationship with the British music press.

“We’re not very charismatic at first glance”, warns John “maybe if you sit here for a month you might get something interesting out of us.” He’s only half joking, but that’s a minor drawback. Because while Male Bonding’s ramshackle, breathless jungle punk doesn’t stray too far from that ubiquitous, grimy guitar sound of bands like Abe Vigoda, Wavves and label mates No Age, it’s also inherently danceable and catchy, albeit in a tribal, spazzy kind of way as apposed to a fist-in-the-air-here-come-thecrew-shouts way. Is that L.A. scene built around The Smell a

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point of reference for Male Bonding? “The influence is more on a personal level than anything else”, says Kevin.

“I like the idea, the aesthetic of it”, says John.

“We’ve been there a couple of times and it’s an amazing, inspiring place and scene. I like the way that a lot of those bands (Abe Vigoda, Mika Miko etc) operate, particularly No Age, they just seem to have gotten it all right, really.”

Not too interested in discussing sonic similarities, he adds: “In terms of sound, I don’t know whether we have anything in common with them.”

His exasperation on this topic is somewhat understandable, given that the band have been labelled with the “crap hipster band” tag by a handful of haters: “typical[ly]… shit UK band” and “to [sic] ugly to have headshots” are two of the comments on the news item on the Sub Pop website proclaiming Male Bonding’s signature. Kevin chuckles: “It’s quite interesting and funny for us to read that [the usernames underneath those comments read, helpfully, ‘ballbag’ and ‘just another arsehole’]. Almost automatically, there seems to be this ‘fashionable and shit’ dig, this kind of mini-backlash.”

John chips in: “It is kind of understandable, though…”

“Yeah, I can understand the shit bit”, concedes Kevin “but the fashionable bit… I guess the outside view is that we’re signed to Sub Pop, and that we haven’t really done anything to earn that, even though we have.”

They certainly can’t be accused of laziness. After Robin met Kevin and John through mutual friends (the latter two worked together at a second hand record shop) they played their

first gig in May last year – a house show in Maidstone, apparently – and then proceeded to sweat their way through East London’s venues, playing with the likes of HEALTH and Fucked Up. When it came to releasing some recorded material, they took, to them, the most logical route: doing it themselves. The Paradise Vendors label was formed and has released various tapes and vinyl singles since then. In fact, it was their prolific and self-released vinyl output that got Male Bonding their prestigious record deal in the first place: A label employee bought the band’s ‘Year’s Not Long’ split single with Eat Skull, liked it, got in touch and … “now we’re signed to Sub Pop”, says Robin in typically dry fashion. Could the angry comments, although not very cutting or inventive, be indicative of a kind of genre overkill?

“Maybe”, muses Kevin “Sub Pop signed the [LOCATION noise pop band] Dum Dum Girls just before us. People don’t like it when labels seem to be arranging some kind of scene or something. I guess badly recorded music, or however they might perceive it, attracts slightly larger labels at the moment, and people seem to be angry about that for whatever reason. I don’t really know what goes through the minds of people who dwell on forums and message boards. Some people are attacking us for not being very English,” he laughs.

Erm, what?

John: “Yeah, on Drownedinsound. That forum is just rancid. They say that we only speak in American slang and say things like: ‘Hey dude, let’s grab a rad slice of pizza’. I don’t think I’ve ever said that in my life.”

Kevin: “It’s really dire.

There’s this whole thread going on about how we’re really into being American and dressing American. It’s like an indie British National Party on there or something.”

Engaging or co-operating with the press doesn’t rank highly on Male Bonding’s priority list anyway. Getting their own fix from Pitchfork and other blogs, they are surprised that magazines like the NME are still going. “[Music magazines] don’t have the same access to artists that they used to have”, observes Kevin. “They used to sell a copy of their magazine by having a certain band on the

“Drownedinsound is a rancid forum. It’s like an indie British National Party on there or something”

cover. People would be like, ‘Oh, I definitely want to read that interview’. But today, that band is probably fucking tweeting every five minutes. I mean, newspapers and magazines are still valid, it’s good and important to read physically, but the only way to go is to make it free – obviously that’s hard to fund these days.”

And some magazines, the band learned the hard way, go to ridiculous lengths to secure such funding. Earlier this year, they were offered a spot on a compilation CD plus a potential feature/review in a London magazine, all for the dumping price of £200. The band politely

declined. It’s not like they would need the extra coverage, either: They are currently busy writing their debut album and are due to start recording in October – in America, unsurprisingly. So can major labels today still offer something to bands like the “fiercely independent” (John) Male Bonding? John is very pragmatic about this aspect of being in a band: “It’s all relative, really. We wouldn’t have released our own album, because we would’ve just lost a horrific amount of money doing that. But maybe this [releasing the album on Sub Pop] is a way of reaching more people, like

The Horrors, who signed their major deal after 2 shows or whatever. They’re doing alright for themselves now.”

As a closing question, I ask them about the poster collage on their Myspace depicting an impressive density of positively explosive metal hair: Are they closet Iron-Maiden-fans?

“Nah,” says John, and adds with a grin: “That’s actually from a pizza restaurant in America.” Laughter breaks out at our table. “It’s called Old Times Pizza or something. Grab a Rad Slice of Pizza. We’re busted, I guess. I can understand those kids on Drownedinsound now.”

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03

Vinyl Stitches 60s garage to broaden the narrowest of minds and sweat all over a broken heart Writer: stuart stubbs Photographer: Elinor jones

Let’s presume you pick up Loud And Quiet on its first day in the wild. That makes today August 15th, 2009. It’s still the AM, of course, as you wanted to make sure you definitely picked up this month’s issue. This afternoon, Camden psych trio The Vinyl Stitches will cover the whole of ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’ in a jeans shop on Carnaby Street to open a new Andy Warhol exhibition. You should go.

Lead singer/guitarist ClaudeClaws: “I don’t want to sound like an arsehole but there’s too many indie bands and shit fucking bands around that aren’t really doing anything.”

Sam-Bam [drums]: “We’re really big, strap-on dildo rock [laughs], which I think sounds better live.”

Claude: “It’s much better live, yeah… it’s loud. I just think differently when we play.

I was really bad in the past, when we first started the band, and I’d attack the audience and attack the soundman and throw my microphone., I don’t know. I get fed up when people in the audience are just lame. It’s just a good show, a high energy show, you know, lots of sweat.”

See! You should definitely go.

‘Dildo Rock’ sound like The

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Darkness (cock rock played by a dildo called Justin) but The Vinyl Stitches in fact sound like a modern equivalent to their heroes – namely The Velvets, The Stooges and all great 60s rock’n’roll bands. In a Camden pub they’re visibly passionate, excited to be ‘talking shop’, knocking others out of frustration as opposed to arrogance or shock tactics, dressed how we wish all bands would but don’t. Their garage is primal, “played as a unit” and with every show Claude has less need to lash out at a lame audience. The Vinyl Stitches can even make tabloid fodder dance.

“We had Jack Tweed, Jade Goody’s Jack Tweed, and his entourage come and watch us play the other night,” says a still amazed Sam “and they just came in and started going mad and convulsing on the floor and doing turtle spins. It was crazy. It was so dead because of the tube strike so I went outside flyering to anyone just saying, ‘yeah, you can come in’, and I gave one to Jack Tweed and didn’t realise and then they came back with the flyer.”

“We would have taken the piss,” says bassist VinSinister, a Texan aesthetically akin to a lost Horror “but they

took the piss out of themselves.

It was amazing, I think everyone was just watching them making asses out of themselves.”

Prior to that, sweaty shows of note include the band’s best, packing out a Weatherspoons in the less than forgiving Chelmsford, Essex (“ People were coming up to us like we were Jesus Christ’s disciples or something,” explains Claude) and their worst - “We had people trying to kill him,” says the singer, pointing at a grinning Vin. “All these druggies. Where was it?”

“From the first second, as soon as we walked in it was like, ‘urgh, where are you from?’” remembers the bassist.

Claude: “‘Are you Indians?’

It was kind of like really racist but funnily enough when we started playing they were all dancing to our music and loving us… DEPTFORD! It was Deptford!”

The Vinyl Stitches – a band to make the male equivalent of a WAG turtle spin and Deptford less racist for half an hour; a band that refuse to let egos get in the way of the finished product (“new bands are too complicated for the sake of it,” they note – Sam was recruited for her primitive drumming); an outfit better read than most.

“A lot of bands who request us on MySpace are like, ‘Let us know what you sound like’,” explains Claude “and I look at their influences and it’s like The Libertines, like new bands and it’s like, oh my god, you don’t know anything. Sorry. It can be embarrassing when some people say, ‘oh you guys sound like the Von Bondies.’”

“But not only that you go, ‘oh the Von Bondies, they were heavily influenced by The Velvet Underground’,” adds Sam “and then it clicks. The thing is, music is like a journey, you keep on going further back and you think, ah, hang on, that new band sounds like this, that’s where they got it from, and it’s amazing.”

Free of misconceptions, The Vinyl Stitches know exactly what they are. As their self-title debut EP (on Death Pop records) suggests, they’re a band that make stripped garage psych about girls to dance to (“All the songs are about...” Claude thinks. “Shagging,” says Sam).

“New bands might think we’re just a throwback band and we need to get with it but music’s music, you know, rock’n’roll will never go out of style and that’s what we are, we’re rock’n’roll.”

Gold Panda Personal electro may be endangered but it’s in no way extinct Writer: Ian roebuck Photographer: Owen richards

04 “I haven’t got any Autechre records; I don’t even know how to say their bloody name”. Gold Panda doesn’t take himself very seriously. Last night the 28 year old from Chelmsford transformed a packed Roundhouse into a swirling mirror ball of sight and sound and still he kicks back with a melancholy smile. Not even a lazy comparison to mid-90’s Warp Records output puts him off his stride. “Squarepusher and Aphex Twin are alright but I don’t know about all the other stuff.”

Carried on stage by his manager in a panda suit, this is surely a man with a horizontal outlook.

“I’m not really comfortable up there though, maybe I’m just good at covering up”.

Made in his bedroom using carefully sourced samples, the translation to stage must be a tough one for his extremely personal music, but it echoed gloriously around the cavernous columns of the Roundhouse.

Supporting Simian Mobile Disco at the well publicised iTunes festival, GP could finally showcase his abundant humour and achingly beautiful breaks to a wider audience; albeit a perplexed one, the set’s rich originality lost on one particular toilet-bound stooge -

“It’s OK this,” I was assured “bit prog though, innit.” And Panda’s reaction, “Ha! Yeah progs alright, a lot of people expect it to be a rock show, it’s a bit more leftfield than that.”

James Ford and Jas Shaw of SMD felt the love though, so impressed by his fragmented sound they invited him back for more shows in the future. Things are moving fast but just like his chopped up, sample infusedbeats it’s been a disjointed ride, in a positive way.

Having always made music, only now does it seem prevalent in Gold Panda’s life. “It was just something I was doing and I didn’t see it going anywhere,” he says. “I got really depressed in my early 20’s and just thought everything had been done before and we are all going to die. I was living in my parent’s bedroom, well not their bedroom; it was mine in their house…” A job at record shop/London institution Pure Groove kept him ticking over. “I used to work there many moons ago when it was in Archway, it means a lot to me that place”. Before, a few gigs out DJ’ing kept him in the loop, but as with most of his activities a sense of selfdeprecation pierces through –

“I’m a shit DJ, I just can’t be bothered to do it and I don’t see the point in playing other people’s records.” When you have material as stunning as new 7” ‘Quitters Raga’ (out now on Make Mine Music) you can see his point. A heartbreakingly brittle piece of stuttering glitch-pop, the track is over in just under two minutes leaving you longing for more.

Despite his prolific nature it wasn’t Gold Panda’s personal material that first raised attention. Remixes for mates (Stricken City, Tin Can Telephone) soon led to re-edits of bigger fish like Bloc Party, Little Boots and Telepathe. “I compromised a bit with some of them as I was just doing it for friends,” he says “in an ideal world I would have said no.” You get the impression Gold Panda is at his most golden when bedroombound or in charity shops and record exchanges searching for that next inspirational sample.

A collector at heart he is a man who also hoards hidden talents. An avid follower of Japanese culture, he can both speak and write the language having spent time at the School of Oriental and Asian studies.

Living in Kawasaki for a year with a famous DJ must have

helped too. Tokyo’s queen of techno Mayuri helped him settle in on the industrial banks of the Tama river. It wasn’t all fun, a year teaching English made him realise his potential lay elsewhere. “I hated it,” he says. “My English was worse than my Japanese. Some people love it don’t they, but it wasn’t for me”. The Japan experience seeps effortlessly into the dreamy dub-step that occupies his sound. Regularly sampling world music it’s clear you are listening to a well-travelled panda, one that doesn’t shy away from innovative noise.

So with work, travel, DJ’ing and sitting in bedroom’s behind him, what now? “I’d like to do a lot more with visuals,” he explains “kind of small films to go with the music. I want to do a concept album with a story for each track, I see images and shapes like a dream but I won’t know until I film it”. He smiles as he’s talking, careful not to slip into seriousness. Just chatting about the recording process seems to get him back on track. “I like to keep all my mistakes as its part of my personality. It’s great when things only happen once so you have to go back and listen again”.

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Electricity In Our Homes Releasing half ideas that are more interesting than your average band’s proudest works Writer: Polly rappaport Photographer: Phil Sharp

There is an issue with the opening of a packet of peanuts: Paul haphazardly grapples with it for a bit then hands it over to Charlie who considers carefully ripping the top down the middle before assuming the position for a full-on crisppacket-pull-apart-style attack.

Even as Paul is voicing his relish at the idea of the savoury snack explosion that could ensue, Bonnie calmly removes the pack from Charlie’s determined grasp and, with one neat tear the bag is open.

“The cover’s actually better than the material on it,” states Charlie, Electricity In Our Homes’ guitarist, referring to the band’s new 12” EP, ‘We Agree completely’. “That’s not putting down the material, the cover’s just so good.” The sleeve is a photo of what could be described as doily heaven, with the band cosied up in an opulently hideous bed, surrounded by white lace ruffles and a garish red carpet as well as a rusty shovel, a smart shirt and a tiny man in a tux.

“Charlie had this idea of a bedroom scene and where these guys live there is the most horrendous Italian furniture shop you could imagine,” says bassist Bonnie. “It’s got gold thrones and… it’s amazing! You can’t believe how much it costs to be tasteless, the bed we were in cost something like three grand.”

“And it was made out of

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hollow plastic,” adds Charlie.

Bonnie giggles. “It looked like ivory from a distance but when you got up to it, it was more like a margarine tub!”

As for the material, “There’s a few really good songs on there,” says Charlie “and some others which are just sketches, unfinished things. I don’t think we were too worried about putting out an album or an EP or anything in particular, we just had the chance to record in this really great studio and we had some songs we really loved and some bits and bobs we liked so we just kind of cut them together, in quite a naïve way, I think. Listening to it now, I think we could have done it better but maybe now, because we think we could do it better, it would actually be worse and it’s that naivety to it that makes it good.”

“It is what it is,” says Bonnie. “We just wanted to put something out rather than waiting around. It was a bit rushed. We went to Fortress with a guy who’d come to see us live and he said he’d like to do something with us and the original idea he suggested was to do a ‘Trout Mask Replica’, a seventeen one-minute track record and just bang it all out in a day. That’s what he came to us with and,” Bonnie laughs, “it just all changed, it wasn’t really what we wanted to do!”

Charlie continues, “We wanted it to be like ‘The Faust Tapes’,

like loads of spliced bits and bobs and I think that’s what it is, it’s like a one-day version of ‘The Faust Tapes’, which were years of catalogue cut together.”

“Ours was a bit… time constrained, I suppose,” says Bonnie “but I think it’s a great record.”

And it is. Prior to ‘We Agree Completely’, EIOH released two singles and a 7” EP. “The 7” was the first thing we did,” says Bonnie “and if you listen to that now, compared to the 12”, you can still tell it’s us but there is quite a big departure. I suppose we understand each other more and can play a lot better.”

“We’ve already got some new songs,” announces Charlie.

“We’re ahead of ourselves, planning on an album maybe in the wintertime. The songs we’re writing are more… mature.”

“Not ‘mature’, “ interjects drummer Paul, but Charlie continues, “We’re looking further ahead than we ever have before – when we first started we didn’t think we’d last more than a year or two and now it’s been two and a half years and it’s getting better.”

Paul points out that, in fact, it’s only just coming up on a year that EIOH has been a three-piece. They used to have a singer, Tom, “The last member to join and the first member to leave”, whom all three agree was a great guy but “didn’t want to

do it.” Charlie calculates that it’s almost exactly a year to the day that Tom left, a few weeks before their set at Offset Festival 2008. EIOH had to scrap their whole set because, among other things, this departure meant that someone else had to sing and none of the remaining trio was thrilled by the idea of playing and singing at the same time. A year on, they’ll be playing Offset again and it will mark their first anniversary as a three-piece. “Then a year from now we’ll be a two-piece,” says Paul, turning to Bonnie. “We’ve already spoken about who’s going to replace you.”

At the moment, the band are very much concentrating on new songs and admit this is due to a communal impatience, playing tracks only a few times before getting bored and wanting to move on to new material. “There is a down side to that,” admits Bonnie “because people maybe don’t get to hear the songs they really like but we don’t want to play stuff just because someone else wants us to.”

“But we’re not in a position to have to do that,” Charlie counters. “We don’t have to please anybody because we have so few fans.” [Hmmm, and what about those that recently filled Rough Trade East to capacity at the band’s EP launch, aye?] “It doesn’t matter, we can play what we want and that’s a really nice position to be in.”

“Yeah,” concedes Bonnie “the

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set’s already new again which feels quite nice.”

“It’s all about the album as far as I’m concerned,” says Charlie. “This time next year we’ll hopefully have a handful of really interesting gigs, a few in London maybe and I’d really like to go back to Europe again. Next year could consist of us playing about three gigs a month, maybe less, depending on what interesting things pop up – and also writing this record.”

Bonnie muses, “It’d be nice to get a bigger label as well at this stage, I’d like to.”

“I don’t know whether I agree with that, y’know,” replies Charlie. “Our best record release experience has been this last one, which was with the second smallest label we’ve ever worked with and it worked so much better than with the other ones because we were the priority.”

Bonnie: “Yeah, it was very straightforward and it’s not always like that, I suppose, working with a bigger label, but I would like more people to get the chance to hear it. I think the songs are getting so good now and we write them for people to listen to them. I mean, we’re getting played on the radio a little bit more now so that’ll help and the EP is selling really well, all the other records have sold out so, like Charlie said, we’re in a nice position. We’re really lucky.”

Lucky indeed, to have released such a successful body of work in such a short time.

“It just so happened that when we’d been writing and playing songs for only a few months we had the chance to put out a record and normally that doesn’t happen,” says Charlie.

Unlike some of their peers, EIOH didn’t have the time to

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develop their sound or settle on a style before laying down tracks for release. The result has been a succession of snapshots, freeze-frames of where the band happened to be at that particular moment in their musical evolution. “We charted unfinished territory each time,” proudly states Charlie “nothing was ever on standby and nothing was a statement of ‘this is what I sound like’ or ‘this is what I want to do, musically, for the rest of my life’ and I think that’s a real benefit.”

And the others agree that it would be a very different story if they hadn’t got a record out for the first twelve months but, then again, these days all any band needs to get their music out there is a computer and a MySpace page. Bonnie feels this makes the whole thing a bit less special, Charlie sees it as a good thing, a sorting process in which the good stuff survives and everything else eventually fizzles out. It’s also a testament to how fickle fans can be – even with their apparently minimal fan-base, EIOH have come across people who preferred them as a four-piece, when they were a more aggressive, sharp, post punk band.

“It’s a one trick thing,” says Charlie “and people really liked that and now… I don’t know what they think. They just don’t like it!”

This doesn’t bother EIOH at all, they’d be bored if they still sounded the way they did over two years ago and it would be manufactured anyway; that sound was the product of a band who were still learning their way round their instruments and, as Bonnie says, “You can’t fake it, you can’t pretend you’re shit at something; you get better.”

“We were just genuinely shit,” states Charlie, matterof-factly “and now we’re slightly less shit.”

Electricity In Our Homes are, in fact, quite a tight band.

Their songwriting process is quick and intuitive; it might be a drum beat or a bass line that kicks things off, they’ll try various things around that, keeping or binning ideas with minimal, if any, deliberation.

The vocals are a slightly different matter: Paul tends to blurt things as he plays whereas Charlie has a notebook of lyrics. Their current sound is more bass and drum led, closely followed by vocals with the guitar being added almost as an afterthought and, in the case of ‘We Agree…’, being treated as more of a percussive instrument than a melodic one, “like a twenty-four fret cymbal with six strings,” explains Charlie.

“We wanted it to sound a bit silly,” he says “a bit funny. I think it’s really important to have a sense of humour.”

“We have become a bit more light-hearted,” agrees Bonnie.

“Not light-hearted,” Charlie insists. “I’m really serious

“You can’t fake it and pretend you’re shit at something; you get better. Now we’re slightly less shit.”

about being funny.”

While EIOH may have progressed into the realms of being “slightly less shit” they have yet to get to the stage of acquiring their own gear and are constantly borrowing amps and drums etc from the bands they play with. This touches a nerve.

“We got in trouble when somebody’s drum kit got smashed up in Scotland,” says Bonnie.

“The Low Miffs,” exclaims Paul, momentarily relinquishing his empty peanut packet crinkling, “Yeah, get them in there, they still owe us money.”

Apparently the band were having a bit too much of a nice time and broke the Miffs’ stuff, resulting in the forking out of all of EIOH’s money, leaving them to hitch a lift to Edinburgh (and the smashing of said lift’s back window when the boot was closed). “Those guys owe us at least sixty quid.”

For a band that formed with no intention of lasting, EIOH have had quite a few adventures (playing so badly at a birthday party that they had to be physically removed from the stage) and some amazing opportunities (being flown to Russia to play – and executing their set well enough so as not to be removed from the stage) but we digress… Charlie’s getting impatient and he wants to talk about the album. “I think it’s going to be an album made up of quite strong songs,” he declares as Bonnie nods enthusiastically. “I have this really good idea for the artwork…”

Believe us, it’s another conceptual one and a stunning departure from the Italian bedroom suite aesthetic.

Meanwhile, Paul has begun a slightly more strategic assault on the next packet of peanuts.

Label Profile

Let’s Talk about Sex!

…and how disgusting it is Writer: stuart stubbs Illustration: JAMES HINES

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ou have to ask, after Salt & Pepper finished demanding that we “talk about sex, baby” which road did that conversation take? The sickening “when a man and woman wuv each other wevy, wevy much” shit-scared parent routine? The fear mongering “one kid did it for fifteen seconds and his scrotum fell off” Christian/PSE teacher fave? Or perhaps the honest warts-n-all (excuse the rank pun) direction about how, if you’re lucky enough to find someone who will ‘do you’, don’t expect it to be like it is in the movies, not even the messy blue ones.

For Andrew Auld and James Hines the birds and the bees chat must have come in the form of the latter. Last October they christened their DIY 7” label Sex Is Disgusting (too right, boys) and promptly began releasing guitar bands to be enjoyed equally as much with your pants on as off.

Following January’s Human Hair limited single – a release of heavy, slow guitar churns and John Richmond barks – they’ve recently supported bluesy Manchester trio Mazes by putting out ‘Bowies Knives’, a song mixed through a Sony TV. “It’s not a business,” they say “just an expensive hobby”, and one that’s bankrolled by student loans and a passion for UK garage bands.

“What made it a reality was, I think, there being UK bands that we just thought ‘this has gotta happen, someone’s gotta put these out’,” explains James over lunch “and, you know, there’s more, there’s increasingly more bands in the UK that definitely need a break and have things to put out.

“I think there was also a knowing that no one else is gonna do it, knowing that no

other label is going to put them out. There are some good UK labels but a lot of them concentrate on overseas bands, which is fine, but when there’s as many good bands at the moment as there are I think the gaze should maybe turn to the UK a bit more.”

PENS, Graffiti Island, La La Vasquez, The Sticks, Thee Fair Ohs, Cold Pumas; the list of DIY/lo-fi bands inspired by LA’s The Smell and US primitive punk is gladly growing, so much so that the States have started peering back our way, Sub Pop having recently signed Dalston dudes Male Bonding.

Today, James – who together with Andy also makes up two thirds of Teen Sheikhs and plays in sloppy quintet Pheromoans – is in London (away from his hometown of Brighton) record shopping. We find him in Notting Hill, halfway between the Music Exchange and Rough Trade where he’s heading to drop in copies of SID’s latest release, ‘Bowie Knives’. In a couple more months he’ll be back with another pressing by the band they were originally going to make their first ‘signing’, Graffiti Island.

Self-distributed, funded and designed (James is already making use of his yetcompleted degree in illustration), it’s an enterprise as DIY as Black Flag putting up shelving, but a common thread between the bands they release isn’t as completely obvious.

“Erm… what’s our label ethos?” ponders James. “We’re not, like, ticking boxes.

There are lots of people we want to work with. I mean, we’re focusing on British bands but I don’t know – if we like it we like it.

Y’know, Human Hair and Mazes are quite different and I’m looking forward to Graffiti

Island and Thee Fair Ohs – they’re all totally unique. I don’t know what the common thread is though. It’s just all really cool dudes, you know, who we want to hang out with.”

And you’re cool dudes yourselves, right? I mean, people want to hang out with Sex Is Disgusting; you’ve got ‘Sex’ in your name.

“No. The only thing was, like, Andy said the other day, because we played with Crocodiles, and one of them picked up the record and was like, ‘Oh, who does this?’ to Andy and they had a chat and the guys were like [puts on slight American accent], ‘Yeah, you’re working with our friends The Breakers from like LA or San Francisco’ and Andy was like, ‘What?’ and they were like, ‘Yeah our friends the Breakers, you’re working with them’, and Andy was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’, and they were like, ‘Yeah, Sex is Disgusting, you’re gonna like put them out and stuff’ and it’s a good ten minutes before Andy realised that they’d been talking and maybe mentioned doing something and he’d said, ‘Yeah, yeah cool maybe in the future, we’re a real small operation and we’ve got a bit of a backlog’.” James stops. “But… really, is that a thing to brag about?”

Well, yes, it seems to be.

And the emails from wanting bands that James finds baffling (“I can’t even imagine being in a band and asking someone to put out a record, it’s bizarre,” he says) are further proof. Maybe it’s the uprising of the new slacker rock movement, but Sex Is Disgusting is a name that people know, whether via its Teen Sheikh’s affiliation, the DJ sets and gigs that Andy and James promote under the

moniker or the fuzzy rulefree guitar music they release. And that’s the real test of any label, from hipper than thou bedroom imprints to sturdy giants like Beggars Banquet – it really is all about the music.

“Good music will always sell,” says James “and if you put something out and it doesn’t sell then maybe you’re not right to have a label and [laughs] you’ve got bad taste in music. It doesn’t matter about any economical climate or the record industry falling apart because good music will always sell and if you’ve got stuff that isn’t selling then either the artworks bad, or you’ve got crap taste.”

Sage advice. So, presumably, if you’re confident in your tastes, the Sex Is Disgusting campaign for a better musical world slogan is ‘definitely start a record label’?

“There’s not enough labels in the UK, that’s for sure.”

James quickly rethinks. “Or not enough ones doing the right thing. There’s hardly any, you know, Paradise Vendors, which I don’t know what’s going to happen to that now that Male Bonding have signed to Sub Pop, whether they’ve got major commitments because it’s John and Kevin from Male Bonding.

There’s them, Upset The Rhythm still put a lot of good stuff out but its mainly American – they’ve only released a handful of UK bands, but they’re doing a few more, Trashkit are coming up, they’ve got a new Sticks record. Dire are great, and Static Shock and Twin Grrl but I still don’t think there’s enough at all; more people should be out there doing it.” Careful, you’ll sound like Salt & Pepper.

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A A A llleeea a ag g gu u ueee o o offf ttth h heeeiiir r r c c clllo o on n neee

HEALTH on playing Willy Wonka, writing making a sad new album and continuing to Writer: stuart stubbs Photographer: Tim Cochrane

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a club banger, sound like no one else

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> (L-R) BJ, Jupiter, JAke and john in shoreditch, london. august 2009.

SSS

tood next to the four members of HEALTH, we watch an east London tower block burn to the ground… or at least the mass of grey concrete will do if the fire brigade don’t arrive soon.

Hypnotised by the flames that dance in the derelict window frames, Jake [vocals and guitar], John [bass and noises], BJ [drums] and Jupiter [guitar] are only distracted by one other impressive spectacle – girls. Lots of girls. Between the smoke and a constant wave of approaching admirers, the band are unexpectedly trapped; a stranded hardcore troupe that continue to surprise.

Last year, when we met John and Jupiter as they promoted their self-titled debut album – a ferocious record of thrashing grindcore, zombie vocals, experimental noises and odd structures – they told us of how the studio had been a place of pedantic accuracy and frustration. In LA’s DIY Mecca The Smell club, they would spend whole nights recording single snare drum sounds, like four fussier Martin Hannetts. In retrospect of how precise ‘HEALTH’ sounds (in its pauses as much as its sudden shrieks and tumbling drum fills) of course that’s how the album was conceived.Then, in April, came the first glimpse of new material.

Limited 7” single ‘Die Slow’ was the band’s most accessible track to date, sounding more like a highlight from remix album ‘HEATLH//DISCO’ than the abrasive avant-garde punk we’d began to expect.

Brilliantly, the dance track thumped like you wish Liars would but are incapable of.The initial shock over, HEALTH were now angling for wider appeal and we were ready for a second album of imaginative club

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bangers. Only the rest of ‘Get Color’ – released September 7th via City Slang – sounds nothing like that at all.

“I think the song fits on the record in the context of ‘Get Color’ but, yeah, it definitely isn’t [representative of the whole album],” says Jake, now nowhere near a burning building or a gaggle of gals “and that’s something we’re afraid of, critically I guess. Like, that song has been really well received by fans, probably more so than any other song we’ve ever written, but we were worried about a backlash. Everyone who reviewed it was like, ‘New direction for HEALTH’, and it’s like, yeah, there’s a new direction but if you think it’s all going to be like the remix album then no, it’s not like that shit at all.”

“We wrote the song to be the single,” continues Jupiter “but when it came to releasing it we were like, ‘Fuck! What if people misinterpret this direction and how it relates to the rest of the album?’ It was kinda angling for a top ten hit but obviously our music is fucking weird. Jake often tells this story about when we were writing this song we were like, ‘Fuck yeah.This is Radiohead; we’re ready to go!’”

Jake: “Yeah, I was already having the ground dug out for my pool.”

“I spent a lot of money ahead of time,” deadpans John. “I thought this was going to be a lot bigger than it was. Bought a fur coat, bought a girl a car – I didn’t even know that girl.”

Jake: “I invested into all of this research by some guy I found on the internet who said he could… like, you know how there’s all this stuff on the internet about recreating

dinosaurs, I was like, ‘Fuck dude, ground level! I’m going to build a billion-dollar empire!’Totally fucked me. I should have known he wouldn’t have been using PayPal.” Jupiter: “My warnings fell on deaf ears – ‘I dunno guys…’”

This is how HEALTH tend to conduct press interviews, serious answers snowballing into layers of quick-witted dry jokes that stack higher as each member trumps the previous gag. As well as being highly entertaining (infinitely more so than well rehearsed mews of “We just do what we want and if other people like it, great”) it’s a fitting way for this band to carry themselves.

‘HEALTH’ was musically uncompromising and aggressive but Jake’s ghostly vocals also provided a certain amount of serenity amongst the chaos. It was a Jekyll and Hyde of an album: dark and light, pissed and content, manic Zoothorns next to sweet, if inaudible, chirps.The same applies to ‘Get Color’ with one notable difference – Fuck Buttons-esque megaphone screams and metal cutter buzzes are still there but Jake’s otherworldly singing is purposefully more melodic.Tracks like ‘Severin’ and ‘Before Tigers’ are proof that HEALTH still sound as bi-polar as ever.

“I think the first album sounded evil and the second one sounds sad,” says John.

“It’s darker…” adds Jake, stopping himself. “Well, the first record is very dark but it’s more atonal and really abrasive, and there are qualities from that that are definitely on this record but it’s more melodic and those melodies are more dark and sad.”

John: “The first record was you in middle

school punching your bed and shit, this record is you crying like a bitch in high school.”

“The third record’s going to be you at a keg party in college,” adds Jupiter. “You’ve pulled through it all and you’re finally getting laid.”

Jake: “Then the bottom drops out on the fourth record when you’ve graduated and you’re unemployed.That record’s going to be very depressing.”

BJ: “It’s all like 15 years later, just like in TV, like how Monica is supposed to be 26 in Friends but she’s actually 40 – we’re way too old to have those feelings but we’re going retro.”

“By the fifth or sixth record we’ll just suck,” ends Jake. “No one will hear it, it’ll be like that last Clash record. I’ll be a total alcoholic and no one will be doing anything so our manager will write it and it’s going to suck. He’ll be rapping over it and shit.”

First serious, then jovial.The band probably do have albums 3 to 6 in mind though, even if shitty raps from their manager are unlikely to be featured on them (although rule nothing out where HEALTH are concerned).

Sessions at The Smell would end up with “some bums taking a shit next to the door every morning”, so, unsurprisingly, the band changed tact for ‘Get Color’, recording it in – get this – an actual studio. Long nights at the technically illegal venue felt cursed, this time around was, says Jake, “the same shit, although not literally,” he smiles. “We definitely did it faster but we always feel like everything’s going wrong.”

“At first it seemed like everything was

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going really smooth,” adds Jupiter while BJ orders the most obscure beers the bar we’re in has to offer. “We were working with an engineer who was recording everything for us and that was one of the biggest problems on the first album: we did it ourselves and didn’t have a fucking clue what we were doing.We did it all to tape this time and when we’d hear playback we were like, ‘fuck yeah, this sounds really good.’ So the whole process of recording it was pretty smooth, other than it not moving as quickly as we wanted it to because the guy we were recording it with... err… has his own pace, I guess.”

“Sushi breaks,” says Jake on an out breath, raising his eyebrows.

“He knows what he’s doing,” continues Jupiter “but we had differences in artistic

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vision. Like, it’s our album, it’s not his album, so we argued a lot, like, ‘hey man this is how we wanna do it.’ ‘No, you can’t do that.’

‘We’re doing that, it’s how we want it!’ And there’s some things that ended up how we didn’t want them, which is frustrating.”

John says: “It’s definitely soured us on working with other people.” HEALTH – an island of a band who design and sell their own merchandise – had let someone into their cottage industry and been let down.

But the bassist who’s serpent-like onstage, snaking his hips to a hidden rhythm and tossing his head as if performing Howard Donald’s come-to-bed dance from the ‘Back For Good’ video, also says: “The third time’s a charm,” referring to his band’s next album, which will take the faeces-stained lessons learned from recording alone and recent

tricks picked up from ‘Get Color’’s sessions to produce “a perfect album man.” “There won’t be two years until the next album,” says John. “We’re going to shoot while we’re hot.We’re ready to roll some sevens.”

TTT

here’s no doubt that HEALTH are best off left to their own devises.They rigidly work to a rule that means as soon as a new track sounds like anything else they’ve heard they bin it.Writing such a righteous manifesto may not be that impressive, but following it to the letter is. Even for those who couldn’t stomach ‘HEALTH’’s relentless experimental hardcore blasts and 50-second assaults couldn’t ignore that itxx was a record like no other. Now though, HEALTH do

sound like someone – themselves. For the band, this has meant a) adding another band to the ‘Vito if we sound like…’ list, and b) accepting that they have become artists unique enough to not be considered copyists.That’s how ‘Die Slow’ made it from its conventional beats beginning, all the way to track 2 on ‘Get Color’. It’s also how the band’s new album has ended up full of songs that sound more complete and stand-alone than before.

Once, spotting the end of ‘Crimewave’ and the beginning of ‘Courtship’ was only easy for the four that wrote them, now new track ‘Eat Flesh’ grinds and scrapes to a definite, metallic end. Silence. ‘We Are Water’ follows with a ravey, electronic intro and a recurring metal riff, ‘In Violet’ is positively epic by HEALTH’s standards, clocking in at

“The first album was you in middle school, punching your bed; this record is you crying like a bitch in high school” or something like that...”

“That’s good, man,” interjects BJ. “Did you just come up with that?”

“Yeah, write that down,” says Jupiter in agreement.

Jake: “Just don’t tell Paul Simon… But, yeah, so it’s still more detached, like third person, weird, abstract lyrics… well, not that abstract.”

“Yeah, the lyrics on this one are a little more like stories…” grin John, leaning closer to my Dictaphone “… but Jake didn’t know ‘cos he can’t tell!”

What John’s referring to is the furore that HEALTH’s ambiguous lyrics have caused in the past. Finding the true lyrics from the band’s debut album was impossible even before Crystal Castles started chopping them up and reassembling for their remix of ‘Crimewave’. Since that track’s success, fans have fought it out on blogs and YouTube comment columns, claiming the words ‘shark’s tits’ “are DEFINITELY correct”, and such like.

“We’re going to put the lyrics online this time,” reveals Jake. “You literally can’t find them for the first record.”

“The thing is that kids go on these lyric sites and just write what they think they are,” adds John. “It’s like, ‘Ah, shit!’Technology has a way. I had a moment like that when I thought in ‘Careless Whisper’ he was saying ‘goddamn rhythm’, not ‘got no rhythm.’”

And guess what? It’s not ‘shark’s tits’ either.

PPP 6 minutes and 15 seconds. It’s something of the band’s take on balladry and the song that realises John’s interpretation of ‘Get Color’ as being a sad/bitch-crying album.

All tracks feature Jake’s vocals this time around, but no, he’s not singing in verse/ chorus/verse predictably. In fact, his ethereal coos are still inaudible, and even if you could hear them they remain abstract enough to not give away where the album title came from.

“I’d say the first record is more conceptually unified, lyrically,” says Jake “although there were a lot less lyrics, but one thing that’s definitely still there is that things are still detached. It’s not like I’m trying to tell you a story about how I loved this girl once and then we broke up and that’s how life goes, even flowers bend with the rainfall

ublishing their mysterious lyrics, writing songs with endings, composing a track down-tempo enough to be considered a ballad (!); this isn’t how you go about proving that HEALTH are still as innovative and uncompromising as they were pre-‘Die Slow’. But they are. ‘Get Color’ is no easy listen for dinner parties, and the opening ‘In Heat’ – racing off to chase the next shipment of debut albums where its thrash metal sensibilities belong – proves that. ‘Death+’ is the band at their most demented and sinister, sounding like a malfunctioning machine of Willy Wonka’s, about to cough up a crooked Bum Gobbler candy. It burps and wheezes persistently, as if slowly cornering you like a B-movie mummy.

HEALTH have another Wonka-ism up their sleeve mind, and it’s one that only a truly DIY band would conceive and put into practice. In 66 copies of ‘Get Color’ there are golden tickets.

Jupiter explains: “We’re doing this golden ticket scheme with our US release of the

album where implanted in CDs that go to indie record stores will be 66 handmade tickets, individually signed and numbered, and they each correspond to a prize we’ll give you. And it’s all personal items,” he continues “stuff that is either meaningful to us or somehow significant on a person level; things like childhood photos, a record from our personal collections, signed and stuff, a book from one of our personal libraries.

Other things like my mum’s an astrologer, she’ll call you up and give you an astrological consultation, BJ or Jake’s mum will knit you a scarf. And the grand prize of all this is we’re going to fly someone to LA with a friend and we’ll treat them like kings or queens – they can sleep on our floor or couch, we’re going to make them breakfast, take care of them, if they’re of age give them drinks, just have a good time, take them on cool hikes, and then the final awesome thing we’re going to do is take them to Magic Mountain, which is the coolest rollercoaster park in LA.” Only 6 of these tickets will be here in the UK, but the needle is made bigger and haystack smaller by the fact that they will all be in copies of the album sold at Rough Trade stores. And if the grand prize ticket does turn up in London, will HEALTH still foot the bill for travelling to LA? “Err, if you can get to NY we’ll get you there…” says Jupiter, before interrupting himself and reassuring: “we’ll sort something out. I think if you’re in Nigeria we can’t really afford to fly you out though.”

“And you’ve got to think about this too,” says Jake “Willy Wonka was fucking loaded and you still had to bring your lazy ass to the factory, so we’re taking you a step further and we’re not going to try to kill you 16 times.

You won’t go down the bad egg shoot, be turned into a giant blueberry or be that fat kid that fell in the chocolate river and got sucked up a tube…”

Jupiter: “But you will get the shit scared out of you by Tatsu, which is one of the most amazing rollercoaster’s in the world.”

Talk of the golden ticket scheme seems to excite the band as much as anything we’ve discussed regarding the band’s new material.

Perhaps that’s because it’s more than a dappy promo exercise – its plan is to reintroduce music fans to interacting with bands and records on a personal level.

“It’s not like a hard thing to realise from what’s going on with the music industry and world that most people don’t really buy records,” reasons Jake “especially not records of super fucking weird bands – those people know what’s going on on the internet and download shit – so we’re just trying to make

it fun, like, ‘hey, if you’re still cool enough to give us money for a record we might as well make it interesting’. And things have become less personal about how you interact with a record.You used to buy a record, take it to your house and have to sit down and listen to it – it was like a personal conversation.

Now the shit’s everywhere, on blogs or whatever.This makes it more interesting and a conversation again.”

September 7th looks like a busy day for Rough Trade then, Augustus Gloops and Veruca Salts tearing the cellophane of their new HEALTH albums in hope of a shiny ticket within. And the indie store (HEALTH like to support the indie stores) is also where you can buy a UK-exclusive EP from the band… and then go home and have sex to it.

“If you like that weird noisy shit on the first record this is even weirder,” promises Jake. “It’s a 15-minute jam, all ambient, weird improvisation…”

“It’s just us jizzing all over the analogue tape with our pedals,” interrupts Jupiter.

John: “It’s made for lovers. It’s very erotic, for making out or doing it to.”

Jupiter: “I had sex to it, it was fucking great.”

Jake: “I was there.”

Jupiter: “He was watching, it was nothing weird. I think it’s cute.”

AAA

round the time of the bands next album will be ‘Legacy Edition’ releases of both ‘HEALTH’ and ‘Get Color’. And there’ll be plenty more surprises until then, no doubt. Someone will be Charlie for the day (making their friend his weird Granddad who would leave his bed for sweets but not the toilet); another will own a new handknitted scarf.Tours will probably stretch lengthier than anticipated and fans will still argue about lyrics.

Words like ‘radical’, ‘innovative’ and ‘challenging’ have today become worthless compliments in music, largely due to their overuse in Jo Whiley-narrated adverts for bands like Scouting For Girls and solo songwriters that we’re told are, “the name on everyone’s lips”, even though we’ve never heard of them. For a few though, they genuinely apply and next to the Dirty Projectors and Battles of this world you’ll find the rule-less HEALTH.They – and ‘Get Color’ – continue to inspire.

“You can make up what you like really,” says John to me after the interview. “You can say that we’re watching a building on fire and 10 different girls keep coming up to us all the time. Make it into your own piece of art.”

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29

Spectrals

A childhood diet of Motown, doo-wop and Phil Spector is all a growing ‘Ghost Surf’ boy needs Writer: kate parkin Photographer: Bart Pettman

Little can be learned about Spectrals from the internet.

Hiding behind his shadowy alter ego, 19-year-old Louis Jones has so far evaded the spotlight.

Lanky and quietly spoken, with a shock of ginger hair, he’s a far cry from the moody raconteur I was expecting to meet.

At Leeds venue The Brudenell, with the clatter of a band practice in the background, we stop to discuss the events of recent months, his love of classic Motown and the lingering presence of Phil Spector.

Louis explains: “I’ve been doing stuff off and on for a couple of years. Spectrals and the sort of stuff I’m doing now, that sort of started in May. It was just some things that I’ve had knocking around for a while.

I had a block of free time and just recorded and it came out better than I expected.”

From a small town outside Leeds, he was brought up on a musical diet of Motown and doowop, under the influence of bands like The Supremes and The Isley Brothers. Despite only playing under the guise of Spectrals for a few months he is set to play several dates with Lovvers in September and the Loud And Quiet Stage at this year’s Offset Festival.

“I’ve just found out this week that Loud And Quiet want me to play their stage at Offset,” he says “so that’s a bit scary.

That’s going to be the first Spectrals gig. I’ll probably play in a friend’s living room before that, try and do something quite low key, but that will be the first proper gig, I’m really excited for that. The line up they’ve got for that so far – Mazes, Male Bonding – just that stage alone, it’s brilliant to be included.”

Live, he has a ‘classic band’ set up, but his recordings are all his own. Hidden under dense layers of reverb lie shimmering gems like ‘Don’t Mind’ and

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‘Leave Me Be’. Echoing his early 60’s influences, the songs have a melodic heart filtered through a fuzzy exterior. Collectively Louis describes his music as ‘Ghost Surf’. He explains: “I guess certain music is quite a sort of weird vibe. I guess there is that sort of element to it, like obviously there’s the influences of surf music and doowop music and I wanted to put more of a weird twist on it, make it a bit creepy. They’re all quite tongue in cheek though, the songs that I’ve written, without doing it down.”

The classic song writing techniques of Phil Spector are an obvious influence, from the catchy hooks and dreamy harmonies to the name of the band. Louis explains: “I wanted to play on the Phil Spector thing without being too obvious really, but also like Spectrals, it’s a bit ghostly, sort of spooky, a bit weird maybe. I didn’t really want to name it after him or do it as my name, so I thought I’d go with something that was quite simple.”

Having already garnered the attention of American indie label Captured Tracks he is set to release a 7” through them in August, with a full length LP following later in the year. As a fan of the label they contacted him after hearing his demo on Myspace.

“I’m just recording at the moment with a friend of mine who has a studio and I go up there and he just lets me crack on. I struggle on some instruments, like I’m not the best drummer, but I’m getting to the stage where what I want the drums to sound like I can achieve. I think there’s something to be said for that really, rather than just relying on computers.”

An EP for UK label Suplex Cassettes has also been recorded, and a split 7” with Sheffield band Bhurgheist.

“I think the way I heard a lot of things on tapes and vinyl has influenced the way Spectrals sounds,” reasons Louis. “I think it benefits from being played on vinyl, there’s a warmth to it. I don’t want to just do the tape thing or the vinyl thing, I don’t want to just limit it, but I think it suits it, definitely.

“Another thing I like about the vinyl format is that it lends itself well to doing singles,” he adds “a whole lot of the old soul records work on singles and I think there’s something lovely about that, having an A and a B side, that a theme can almost run through if something’s on a 7”. Two parts of a similar sort of thought really.”

This is also something Spectrals shares in common with his idol Spector who once described LPs as “two hits and ten pieces of junk.”

Touching on the saturation of acts like Little Boots and La Roux, Louis chimes in: “I hate that kind of stuff. I’m not interested in the disco, dancey thing. I think obviously it has its place, but to me I think we need more bands like Lovvers and less like Little Boots.”

He adds: “Male Bonding, Teen Sheikhs, those are the sorts of bands that are really exciting in the UK at the moment. With Male Bonding, one of the guys is putting out a tape with a band called Thee Fair Ohs, there seems to be something really productive going on over there.”

Currently in the process of recording his debut album, Louis says he is definitely concentrating on Spectrals.

“I’ve done other things,” he explains “the other band I was sort of in came to its natural conclusion [He was previously in a band called Old Gold with his brother and some friends], not to say that we’ll never play or anything, but it’s really Spectrals that I want to carry

on with. I think it’s that that most reflects my interests musically, and personality probably.”

When it comes to the issue of cover versions, there’s only one song that springs to mind.

“I’m learning one at the moment to play live,” he says “it’s a really early Elvis Costello demo, one of the tracks that he demoed for his first album, it’s called ‘Wave a White Flag’. With the Spectrals songs I like to do really sort of nice, poppy, almost upbeat songs and then the lyrics can be quite negative or bitter; I like to play around with that. This song, it’s a bit perfect for that.”

And so things return full circle to his first love, Motown.

“That’s the sort of thing that probably informs Spectrals,” enthuses Louis. “There was a lot of music around when I was growing up, from my mum and my dad, like The Supremes’ ‘Baby Love’, that’s probably the first song I remember loving.

Obviously you get into other things as you get older, but it never leaves you, and one day it’ll come through in something that you do.”

“I always want to do the same sort of songs, I don’t want to be defined by what’s underground, but in the same way, I think the music’s really influenced by what’s going on at the moment, I just want to keep playing as much as I can.”

With bands like Lovvers and Finally Punk getting some press attention and underground labels like Sex Is Disgusting and Suplex becoming more widely known, it’s possible we could be entering into new era of Punk and Low-fi bands in the mainstream. Spectrals might just be one of the acts that makes it beyond the ‘parish line’.

06

PICK UP LOUD AND QUIET AT...

55 DSL 10a Newburgh Street Soho, W1

Coffee Plant Portobello Rd Notting Hill, W11

North London Tavern Kilburn High Rd Kilburn, NW6

The Enterprise Chalk Farm Rd Chalk Farm, NW1

60 Million Postcards Exeter Rd Bournemouth, BH2 1RU

Dedectors Weld 170 Uxbridge Rd Shepherds Bush, W12

Paradise 19 Kilburn Lane Kensal Green, W10 4AE

The Face Carnaby Street Soho, W1

93 feet east 150 Brick Lane Shoreditch, E1

Dreambags/Jaguar Shoes Kingsland Road Shoreditch, E2

Pop Boutique Monmouth St Covent Garden, WC2

The Good Ship Kilburn High Rd Kilburn, NW6

Amersham Arms New Cross Rd New Cross, SE14

Dublin Castle Parkway Camden, NW1

Pure Groove 6-7 West Smithfield Farringdon, EC1A

The Legion 348 Old Street Shoreditch, EC1

Bar Chocolate 26 d’Arblay Street Soho, W1F

Episode 26 Chalk Farm Road Camden, NW1

Purple Turtle 65 Crowndale Road Camden, NW1

The Luminaire Kilburn High Rd Kilburn, NW6

Barden’s Boudoir Stoke Newington Road Dalston, N16

Fred Perry Short Gardens Covent Garden, Wc2H

Rokit True Vintage Camden High Street Camden, NW1

The Macbeth Hoxton St Hoxton, E2

Bar Music Hall Eastern Road Shoreditch, EC1

Ghetto 58 Old Street Shoreditch, EC1

Rokit True Vintage Brick Lane Shoreditch, E1

The Social Little Portland Street Oxford Circus, W1

Beyond Retro Great Marlborough St Soho, W1

Goldsmiths College Lewisham Way New Cross, SE15

Rough Trade East Drays Walk Brick Lane, E1

Start The Bus Baldwin St Bristol, BS1 1RU

Brixton Windmill 22 Blenheim Gardens Brixton, SW2 5BZ

Hoxton Sq Bar & Kitchen Hoxton Square Hoxton, E2

Rough Trade Shop Talbot Road Notting Hill, W11

The Strong Rooms Curtain Rd Shoreditch, E2

Bull & Gate 389 Kentish Town Road Kentish Town, NW5

ICMP Dyne Rd Kilburn, NW6

Rythm Factory Whitechapel Rd Whitechapel, E1

The Victoria Grove Road Mile End, E3

Bungalow & Bears Division St Sheffield, S1 4GF

Keston Lodge 131 Upper St Islington, N1

Sister Ray Berwick St Soho, W1F

The Wilmington Arms Roseberry Ave Islington, EC1R

Cafe Kick Shoreditch High Street Shoreditch, E2

Lock 17 Chalk Farm Road Camden, NW1

Size?

Neal St Covent Garden, WC2H

The Worlds End Camden High St Camden, NW1

Camberwell College Of Arts Peckham Rd Peckham, SE5

Lock Tavern 35 Chalk Farm Rd Camden, NW1

Star Green Tickets Argyle Street Oxford Circus, W1

Tommy Flynn’s 55 Camden High St London, NW1

Cargo Rivington St Shoreditch, E1

London School Of Economics Houghton St Holborn, WC2A

The Albany Great Portland St London, W1W

ULU Malet St Holborn, WC1E

Catch Kingsland Rd Shoreditch, E1

London School Of Fashion Princess St Oxford Circus, W1W

The Bean Curtain Road Shoreditch, EC2

University Of Arts Davies St Mayfair, W1K

Club 229 Great Portland St Oxford Circus, W11

MTV Studios 17-19 Hawley Cresent Camden, NW1

The Cross Kings York Way Kings Cross, WC1

Water Rats Grays Inn Rd Kings Cross, WC1X

re sept vi 09 ews A lbums

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Amanda Blank BLK JKS Dot Allison frYars George Pringle Japandroids Jay Reatard Julian Plenti Mew Monotonix Nodzzz Patrick Cleandenin Sian Alice Group Stricken City The Dodos The Very Best The xx Tyondai Braxton Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club

festivals

01 02 03 04 05 06

1234Shoreditch Field Day Latitude Oshega Secret Garden Party Y Not

-} www.loudandquiet.com

33

The xx The xx (Young Turks/XL)

By Stuart Stubbs. In stores Aug 17

07/10

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Fake gold, black hoods and stern faces. Recent teens The xx hardly look like a band capable of making delicate electronic symphonies; they’re surely the local dropouts that make you wince involuntarily as you pass them in the street.

Michael Jackson never looked like an innocent man though, did he? “We only wear hoodies because we’re cold,” reasoned co-mouthpiece Romy when we interviewed her two months ago, not in a “ya got twennee pee f ’me?” huff, but a shy, hushed voice that together with best friend Oliver drives this emotive lo-fi debut.

The xx aren’t yobs, they’re romantics.Very articulate, understated romantics.

Falling in love starts with a down tempo surf riff, rising vocal hums and clipped processed

beats that quickly become key in this record’s charm and success (no doubt due to programmer James taking on the producer role).

So far, so post-Metronomy. But ‘The xx’ instantly feels warmer than most drum machine albums that synthetically click along, neither completely human nor decisively computerised.

It’s because of Romy and Oliver, two soul mates – if you believe in such a thing – that have been inseparable since playschool; a pair that share his’n’her throaty purrs.

‘VCR’ is named after boxy recording equipment but sounds like a nostalgic love song between a classic 80s songstress and a lived-in black soul singer. In truth, little else makes Romy and Oliver cringe more than the idea of relations between them – they don’t even tell each other what their separate lyrics are about – though the convincing emotion on each of their parts is either completely heartfelt or the band’s best trick yet.

‘Crystalised’ (the best song here) nearly ventures into tribal territories – in a Bat-ForLashes-howling-at-an-urban-moon sense of the word – and ‘Islands’ features a dubby, slowmotion mathrock riff that’s The Police at half speed and yet still the fastest track present by a stretch. Seduction takes time, and The xx aren’t about to pander to being a quick pop fix, which is brave but ultimately responsible for this debut falling short of the masterpiece yardstick.

Upped BPM and four-to-the-floor highhats shouldn’t be needed to keep our attention – truth is, disco’s so rinsed right now that they’re the quickest route to fixed stares into the middle distance – but after such an engaging start, the constantly mellow pace of ‘The xx’ can struggle to hold your attention, like Kings Of Leon’s ‘Because of the Times’, which seemed to play for 3 hours, but always in the background.

Continual plays treat to cure this ailment though; a pill that is a joy to swallow.

Pic: Owen Richards

Albums

09/10

06/10

06/10

06/10

07/10

Tyondai Braxton

The Dodos

Monotonix

Stricken City

Central Market

Time To Die

(Warp)

By Sam Walton. In stores now

(Wichita)

By Tom Goodwyn. In stores Aug 31

Where Were You When It Happened (Drag City)

Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club

By Mathias Scherer. In stores Aug 31

It’s not uncommon for errant musicians making ego-stroking side projects to name-drop classical composers, even if the solo LP they’re promoting ends up sounding barely more musical than The Twang. But when Tyondai Braxton, one quarter of avant-rock genre squelchers Battles cites Stravinsky’s ‘The Nightingale’ as inspiration, it’s worth taking notice.

Essentially a contemporary classical seven-movement symphony, scored

by Braxton and performed with New York’s Wordless Music Orchestra, ‘Central Market’ retains the playful quirks of Braxton’s band but delivers them at orchestral scale. Delicate polyrhythmic electronics pulse, repeating motifs come and go to make ‘Central Market’ even better than Battles’ ‘Mirrored’.Technically and musically awe-inspiring.

San Francisco duo The Dodos are now onto their third album and have clearly found where they belong on the musical map. New long player ‘Time To Die’ features indie wizard Phil Ek at the controls, a man who’s recent track record boasts Fleet Foxes, Shins, Built to Spill and the sadly departed Pretty Girls Make Graves.

And, in a not so bizarre twist,The Dodos have helmed a sound that shows of all those acts. So ‘Time To Die’ is worthy of your time, right?

Well, yes, for a time. Cuts like ‘Longform’ and ‘The Strums’ combine a bombastic drum sound with lilting pseudo Americana. But while being pleasant enough, as is the rest of the record - catchy in places, charming in others - in all honesty,The Dodo’s third record is a little too harmless to be considered memorable.

It’s a cliché that’s been sucked dry to the point of desertification: Bands “renowned for their frantic/ chaotic/anarchic live shows” will inevitably “struggle to capture the frenzy/chaos/anarchy” of those shows on record. Monotonix are, apparently, prone to the odd cymbal-burning or stage dive, and banned from playing most of their native Israel’s music venues.To assess ‘Where Were You…’ without having seen the band does prove tricky – the lack of hummable hooks can’t be disguised by “kerazee” stage antics, yet the record has its own brand of warmth and charm. Pleasantly retro guitar riffs (think a more simplistic Led Zep) interact well with taut drumming, but singer Ami Shalev’s vocals, while fittingly zany, don’t grab the listener as they might in – you guessed it – a live setting.

Love On An Oil Rig (This Is Fake DIY)

By Nathan Westley. In stores Sept 7 The VEGC have always been an unconventional group, their distinctiveness bred through ignoring stale ideas of what a guitar band should be.Three years after rising out of Cardiff, they return to having gone through a dramatic transformation, where the end result only bears the loosest of resemblance to what once stood.

Textually rich and dynamically expansive, this sophomore outing is a slow burner as opposed to an instant hit. Lead single ‘Parrot’ sees them shift towards Liars-esque noise experimentation and metallic sounding verses before leading into more standardised, Pixies-tinged, high rising choruses (‘Periscope Envy’); the majority of this album following a similar trajectory - an idiosyncratic wonky record that many will envy.

Songs About People I Know (Puregroove)

By Stuart Stubbs. In stores Sept 14 Having heard ‘Songs About People I Know’, famous cheese-mongercome-bass-rack Alex James tracked down Stricken City and invited them onto his farm for a demo session. As powerful as Blur are though, time travel is still beyond them so this debut mini album is of course James free. No matter: Britpop endorsements are all well and good but merely serve as Groucho Club icing when a band are already making angular/ intricate indie like this. A mixture of a cappella bus recordings (the opening ‘Gifted’), 80s-tinged art pop (the cowbell-bouncing ‘Pull Down The House’) and beautiful piano balladry (‘Terrible Things’), it’s clear what got James so excited - Rebekah Raa’s delicate voice (no longer comparable only to Bjork’s) and her guitar band’s ability to never sound predictable.

Nodzzz Nodzzz (What’s Your Rupture)

By Polly Rappaport. In stores Aug 24

08/10

When record shops are packed with an array of post punk, noise pop, quirk rock and the like, what’s one more lo fi DIY album to add to the pile? Amongst other things, Nodzzz is not so much lo fi as no fi, opener ‘Is She There’ setting the scene with a back porch drum line and a guitar that sounds like it’s plugged into a tin can, accompanied by Dead Milkmen-ish speak-sing monotonations, delivered with tight-jawed, nasally Californian matter-offactness. Each under-two-minute track (the whole thing is over in under sixteen) has hooks to be reckoned with and the entire album has hints of Costello, Childish et al, as well as a sarky, sunny, misfit attitude that doesn’t want to hang with its alleged record shop peers - it just wants the car keys and, maybe someday, a real amp.Which is why we love it. www.loudandquiet.com

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Albums 04/10

07/10

05/10

05/10

02/10

Japandroids

Sian Alice Group

BLK JKS

Julian Plenti

Patrick Cleandenim

Post-Nothing

Troubled, Shaken etc

After Robots

Julian Plenti Is Skyscraper

(Polyvinyl)

By Chris Watkeys. In stores now

(Beautiful Happiness)

By Chris Watkeys. In stores now

(CoOp)

By Tom Goodwyn. In stores Sept 21

(Matador)

By Sam Walton. In stores now

Orange Moonbeam Floorshow (Broken Horse)

By Stuart Stubbs. In stores Aug 24

Japandroids are a two-piece, drums’n’guitar, US garage rock outfit. So far, so unremarkable. But think less White Stripes, more Giant Drag. Debut album ‘PostNothing’ could quite easily have rolled, without fanfare, from the American production line labelled ‘college radio’; its vocals scream teenage angst, its loose punky structures scream early Lemonheads making a hash of covering My Bloody Valentine.

Uncomfortably though, tracks like ‘Wet Hair’ are more suggestive of a roughed-up Blink 182 (pause here to shudder), while ‘Rockers East Vancouver’ is a monotonous, directionless dirge. Only the hazy, epic grandeur of ‘Crazy/Forever’ provides an island of respite in this sea of homogenous indie bilge.

‘Post-Nothing’’s problem is that it’s just so overwhelmingly ordinary.

Sian Alice Group are an intriguing proposition. Rare amongst bands in that their refusal to be pigeonholed is actually valid, they’re an unusual hybrid of pianobased folk, a dash of electronica and the kind of music ideally suited to an indie film soundtrack – think Lavender Diamond, mutated by Leftfield and fronted

by Kate Bush.The music is beguiling and absorbing in equal measure, low-key and intricate.

Singer Sian Ahern’s vocals are the standout piece in this unique jigsaw - ‘Love That Moves The Sun’ has her delicate voice floating over a shimmering, repetitive backdrop, while on songs like ‘Through Air Over Water’, harmonies espouse a deep-seated longing. Richly inventive and beautifully executed, this is a gem of an album.

With Foals and Vampire Weekend having catapulted a use of tribal Africans rhythms to mainstream success, the timing of BLK JKS’ (pronounced like the opposite of Fruit Salads) debut couldn’t be better.The South African foursome claim to have set out to present a carefree notion of African musicianship to a wider audience, which they do, but with angelic and devilish consequences.There are times on ‘After Robots’ where the free flowing, almost jazzy grooves are hypnotic and joyous to listen to, especially on ‘Lakeside’ and ‘Taxidermy’. But there are also moments where freeform turns into proggy, overlong nonsense and you tune out. Charming though ‘After Robots’ is, the lack of a more cutthroat approach makes this something of hit and miss.

You may know Julian Plenti better as Paul Banks, Interpol singer, a fact he appears to want to obscure, but which becomes crashingly apparent the moment he opens his mouth on the first track.The wholly fabricated back story suggests that this is Plenti’s debut album, born of a particular piece of bedroom production software, but in reality ‘Is Skyscraper’ is an Interpol album performed without the other members, with a slightly crumbier rhythm section and more haphazard results. On the whole, it’s better than Interpol’s last, and worst, LP, and benefits from an intimacy that Banks probably isn’t able to achieve with the rest of his band around him. But these tracks feel more like ideas than songs, and there’s not enough intensity or interest here to excuse the utter joylessness of the project.

If it’s getting increasingly harder to separate the Flight Of The Conchords parody from ironic-free electro goon – and it is – Patrick Cleandenim is here to baffle anyone listening.The 24-year-old is keen to tell the world of how he used to pen lyrics in a bungalow once owned by William Burroughs. He’s a serious musician, nay, an artist. ‘Orange Moonbeam…’ aims at early 80s pop/commercial dance production but winds up hitting the discointerpretation-of-a-corporateteam-building-video target smack on the money.The downbeat ‘Heart Attack’ is a vast improvement on the preceding ‘Stage Fright’ - an annoying calypso track, possibly pulled for the bin of Jack Penate - but ultimately Cleandenim is far more Jemaine than the Bowie he adores.

Jay Reatard Watch Me Fall (Matador)

By Omarrr. In stores Sept 17

06/10

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What we know so far:Tennessee’s Jay Reatard has released more records than you’ve taken tinkles, his choice of weapon is the flaming Flying-V, if you accidentally crowd surf onto him at a gig while he’s trying to shred he’ll smash your face in Tyson-style and sometimes his gigs end after just 10 minute of fuzzy yelling and cracked vocals.

Whereas albums like 2006’s ‘Blood Visions’ and a million lost 7” were typified by the main man’s distorted yowl, this time out he’s cleaned up, refrained from recording his vocals through Grandma’s VCR and, in his own words, focussed on ‘melody’, all of which should see the selfdeprecating ‘Watch Me Fall’ (sample lyric: “all is lost/there is no hope/all is lost/there is no hope

for me”) become a much more engaging listen than it actually turns out to be ‘It Ain’t Gonna Save Me’ (cheer up, Jay) the video of which features Reatard hilariously being attacked by a party of savage eight-year olds - blows open the doors in rickety fashion.

Somewhat reassuringly/disappointingly, Reatard still sounds like Jack White hanging out of a car window, only a little more polished.

Following on, ‘Before I Was Caught’, ‘Man Of Steel’ and ‘Can’t Do It Anymore’ (there, there, it’ll be alright) could really be from any Reatard associated project. Creeping closer ‘A Whisper (There Is No Sun)’ (you’re not even trying now!), debuting a string section, is the only real departure from his basement garage rollocking.

It’s no dud then, but neither is it the fractured homework of a supposed madman that we’d expected. Not a fall as such, just a minor trip.

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09/10

06/10

07/10

02/10

George Pringle

frYars

Dot Allison

Mew

Amanda Blank

Salon Des Refuse

Dark Young Hearts

Room 7 1/2

No More Stories

I Love You

(Self Release)

By Danny Canter. In stores Sept 7

(frYarcorp/Bandstock)

By Stuart Stubbs. In stores Sept 14

(Arthoused/Absolute)

By Reef Younis. In stores Aug 31

(Columbia)

By Phil Burt. In stores Aug 24

(Downtown)

By Phil Burt. In stores Aug 17

Even posh people hate the upper classes. It’s why Oasis won Blurgate and John Lydon acted like an uneducated toe rag, spitting in the street and living in squats when he and his fellow ‘punks’ weren’t at Henley Regatta or round mummy and daddy’s. George Pringle is far more honest than that though, and although her Fine Art degree and finer enunciation has seen her sharp-tongued on message boards and blogs for over two years, she’s always refused to dumb down her intelligent GarageBand poetry.

Hopefully this self released/ produced debut will be given half a chance by the green-eyed snobs, because while it is certainly pretentious it’s also wholly original, as tracks like ‘We Could Have Been Heroes’ mix dubby beats and Telepathe-esque synth samples with Pringle’s provocative prose.

Ben Garrett, it seems, is obsessed with the macabre. Crooning like a Nosferatu Patrick Wolf, he’s been producing digital, gothic show tunes for the past three years, mentioning killers, miscarriages and death wherever he can. And that’s exactly why ‘Young Dark Hearts’ is quite possibly the most confident and precisely formed pop record of the year. La Rouxsized choruses are exactly where they should be throughout, but so too are dark and intriguing thoughts not found on anything as piffy as ‘In For The Kill’.We’re all going to die and ‘Ananas Trunk Railway’ is keen to remind us, like a closing number from The Lion King. ‘Visitors’ is Candi Staton disco, but also creepy and defiant, helped by Dave Gahn providing backing vocals.Where did Esser’s clever pop hits go? Ask frYars.

Dot Allison moves in some pretty luminary circles. Boasting collaborations with Paul Weller and Scott Walker, and championed by the ever-woeful Pete Doherty, her bewitching voice is one to be heard wandering down windswept wooded paths, not in muggily soundtracked Kings Cross bedsits.

It’s an album that comes on with ethereal assurance; the melancholic, weighted ‘Fall to Me’ the highlight of the piano-laden laments. But the lo-fi strumming of ‘I Wanna Break Your Heart’, peppered with Doherty’s drugged, intermittent mumbles, and the frail Weller turn on ‘Love’s Got Me Crazy’ serve to highlight the hypnotism of Allison’s wraithlike vocals. Injecting a bit of gypsy fire into Walker’s ‘Montague Terrace (In Blue)’, you can’t help but think she could have carried this one off by herself.

Returning with their fifth studio album, Mew have roped in uberproducer Rich Costey to make sure ‘No More Stories’, their first in four years, is worth the wait.

And the mastermind behind Muse’s ‘Black Holes And Revelations’ certainly helps the Danes. From the outset with the dreamy, backward sounding ‘New Terrain’, Mew present an album full of upbeat, wistful tracks hopping between lazy summer tunes and hand-clapping dance songs. Much softer than previous records, Jonas Bjerre’s voice is a less manic version of The Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala. Lead off single ‘Introducing Palace Players’ has been exciting fans for months now, but it’s likely to be ‘Vaccine’ that’s the live favourite. Nothing ground breaking, but perfect for a sunny afternoon.

Not content with the hordes of female artists doing the rounds, Philadelphia born Amanda Blank thinks we could do with another one, collaring Diplo and Switch to yet again work their magic.

Unfortunately, this time around it seems they’re out of ideas.While there is the occasional solid pop song – for example the fast paced, bouncy album opener ‘Make It, Take It’ - Blank ends up sounding like a starstruck teen trying to emulate her idols. ‘Something Bigger, Something Better’ is a less grimy ‘XR2’, ‘Shame On Me’ is clearly Santigold’s ‘Creator’ while stand out single ‘Might Like you Better’ is half Lady GaGa, half crotch-grabbing 90s era Madonna.

Amanda Blank is nothing different, nothing new and not good enough to stand out of the already overcrowded pack.

The Very Best Warm Heart Of Africa (Moshi Moshi)

By Phil Burt. In stores Sept 14

08/10

It’s not often that a stranger you meet in a second hand furniture store has a profound affect on your career. But that’s exactly what happened when Esau Mwamwaya met producers Radioclit back in 2007.The intrepid bargain hunters quickly became Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit Are The Very Best, only to shorten their title in time for the release of this, their debut LP. ‘Warm Heart of Africa’ does exactly what it says on the tin – a mixture of African songs that succeed to warm your heart and lift your spirits out of the grey mundane world of 9-5 London.

But there is a problem nestling under the optimistic lyrics.Though at the centre of this album is a Malawian singer/drummer, in essence

‘Warm Heart…’ is simply another Western appropriation of African music. Since Damon Albarn buggered off to Mali in 2000, the idea of L’Afrique, c’est chic has been paramount, with artists such as M.I.A and Amadou & Mariam offering Brits the chance to get a taste of the continent’s music wrapped up neatly in a BBC2 world music package.

However, putting the politics to one side, it’s undeniably a good album. ‘Yalira’ is a joyous opener to the record, while the aforementioned M.I.A adds her punchy, gritty tones to ‘Rain Dance’.The stand out track, though, is the collaboration with Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig on the infectious and bouncy title track.

The fact that it sounds quite simply like a new VW single supports the cultural cash-in argument that The Very Best is perhaps not so much representative of Africa’s warm heart.

Luckily, it’s brilliant, fun and intricate, and sure to have Jools Holland reaching for the phone. www.loudandquiet.com

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Live | Festival Special

SOKO by SAM PEARCE

Secret Garden Party ▼

Huntington 24 - 26.07.2009

By Stuart Stubbs

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Jarvis Cocker by ANDY WILLSHER

When you’re dressed as Hulk Hogan you can do anything – mud-wrestle (obviously); punt a giant apple around a lake; jump on stage with Jarvis Cocker halfway through every other song he plays; swap clothes with a hardcore Baltimore band while they yell in your face. Right now though, 10,000 secret gardeners are thinking the same of being disguised as fried eggs, Run DMC, cats, chimps, wizards and massive bellends (literally).This is an enchanted world of adolescent adventure; a bubble-blowing place of wildest abandonment; where nothing is improbable and even less is frowned upon: Alice’s Wonderland without the bad drugs. In fact, so giddy is this year’s Secret Garden Party that its third-rate, folk-heavy lineup somehow only heightens the experience – three days of unmissable bands, after all, is why so many of us never make it to the more interesting further reaches of Glastonbury.

In the midst of this eccentric do though – which turns distinctively Wickerman once its organisers set fire to their floating stage, stranded in the middle of the idyllic Great Lake – a handful of bands are as brilliant as the organic pies on sale.

The xx – playing the relocated Where The Wild Things Are stage – are as humble as ever, smiling to one another at the cheers received by ‘Crystalised’ and a majority of their new self-titled album.That they left a vital keyboard at home, leaving Baria to hop on and off stage à la an unwanted Liam Gallagher, is only noticed by a few, everyone else transfixed

by James’ electronic drum-pad poking. It’s a solid set,

beautiful at times, but being Hulk Hogan – and alive – things are already starting to get a little too lethargic as day one bobs along. Cream teas and oversized chess battles are all fair enough (yes, both are now somewhat predictably part of SGP life) but we’re one more Soko performance away from a coma, so our consciousness is thrust into the hands of Phoenix and Jarvis Cocker.

The former’s disco pop on The Great Stage rightly sees the festival’s first stage invasion. Surrounding trees are underlit, the floating stage is blissfully unaware of its fate and paradise may not be throbbing to this French electro but it’s certainly showing signs of life. And now that we know climbing on the stage won’t end in a security beating, this land seems more lawless and exciting than ever.That’s how five of Jarvis Cocker’s songs end with the Pulp singer totally lost in amongst 50 ‘gardeners’.Those not on stage know he’s still there somewhere, they can hear him posing for pictures, politely asking if he can carry on with the show and meeting and greeting anyone who wants to shake hands. Maybe it’s the atmosphere – like that time Moby didn’t seem all bad at Worthy Farm – but the absurd posturing is for once upstaged

by Cocker’s songs too. His solo material! An eye-blink hour of bombastic show tunes, it’s as if he was made for Secret Garden Party’s nihilistic yet twee way.

Everything on day two is then completely eclipsed by The Death Set in the festival’s best-kept secret of a tent, Ninja Tunes. It’s here that the trio – performing at first to

Secret Garden Party’s Great Lake and floating stage by SAM PEARCE

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y not festival Pikehall Farm, Matlock 31.07- 02.08.2009

By Kate Parkin ▼

only myself,The Ultimate Warrior and the bar staff – remove my blond moustache and ask a handful of arriving audience members to “pass it around for the next song”.With that, the sweaty piece of fake hair is slapped on some poor soul’s face and no more than twenty heads start thrashing around to the DIY punk that made up the band’s debut album, ‘Worldwide’.

Grubby and beer-soaked, the upper-lip-warmer finds its resting place on a plastic pint glass onstage; a perfect spot to enjoy a closing cover of Nirvana’s ‘Territorial Pissings’.

Had Au Revoir Simone and Chairlift arrived a day earlier,The Death Set’s clean sweep could have been soiled.

Bringing SGP 2009 to a close – because you just can’t give that mantle to the soulless, headlining set from Zero 7 – the New York set were between them a charming, melodic force (particularly the girl trio of Au Revoir), providers of the best pop song of the weekend (Chairlift’s ‘Bruises’) and sweet without being as sickly as the Icelandic elf that opened the main stage on day two, Hafdis Huld. Now though, we have to return to a much less vibrant world. Sure, we can listen to our dream festival lineups on Spotify but is there really much point if you’re no longer dressed as a former pro wrestler?

Next time you can, go to Secret Garden Party, whether they book The Smiths or Status Quo. Music is important, but so too is so much more where festivals are concerned.That’s why Rage Against The Machine at last year’s Reading was less ‘a moment’ and more a legendary band playing very quietly to a corporate slurry pit.Trust me, Hogan knows best.

Tucked away in the hills of the Peak District lies the tiny festival of Y Not. At just 4,000 capacity over two stages it has an instantly homely feel and a tradition of fancy dress that sees pirates and sailors mixing with Sponge Bobs and Scooby Doos.

And so, to the music… Starting things off, The Whisky Cats lighthearted brand of old-fashioned boogaloo warms up the increasingly rain sodden crowd. Rampaging through our ears like Talking Heads on amphetamines, Baddies storm the stage, suited and booted like preppy androids, taking things up a gear with the jerking post punk spikes of ‘Battleships’.

Local boy Little Lost David calms things down on the indoor stage, his trembling operatic voice leading the crowd in jubilant song while, starting slightly subdued, Johnny Foreigner soon work themselves into their customary angular lather, ricocheting their voices off each other as the crowd splash around in the mud below.

In true festival tradition, Saturday sees the heavens open, so we retreat indoors for the agitated techno musings of Napoleon III. A modern take on the one-man band, he vaults between reel-to-reel recorders and kids toys, creating

sublime harmonies in-between while, outside, Esser’s squelching beats and heavy basslines fall a little flat when competing with an increasingly rowdy gang of mudwrestlers.

Minus the female vocalist, it’s a leaner, meaner version of Noah and The Whale that takes to the stage.

Stripped of their usual sweetness, ‘Give a Little Love’ and ‘Rocks and Daggers’ take on darker qualities, lifted by soaring rabble-rousing endings.

A rare glimpse of sunshine lifts the spirits for the final day; Kill It Kid’s bouncing gypsy violins pack out the straw filled barn, rounded off with a quirky tribute to Michael Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’ (sigh).

One of the surprise hits of the weekend though is electro duo HUW who deliver an uplifting mix of Four Tet-inspired beats more suited to sundowners in Ibiza than a midafternoon in Derbyshire.

By now the sailors are bedraggled and the Sponge Bobs are looking soggy, but Young Knives have one last ace up their sleeve. Surveying the scene with a maddened look in his eye, singer Henry Dartnell thrashes his way through ‘Terra Firma’ as House of Lords coaxes jarring noises from his guitar. Classics ‘The Weekends and Bleakdays’ rub shoulders with the bombastic choruses of ‘Current Of the River’ for a classic finale.

There are more chances than ever for the musically minded to get their rocks off in a muddy field.With its quirky sensibility and outright charm, this should definitely be one of them.

The Whisky Cats by Sam Bennett

www.loudandquiet.com

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Live | Festival Special

S.C.U.M by Elinor Jones

Food at Field Day by Phil Sharp

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1234shoreditch Shoreditch Park, London 26.07.2009

By Sacha Shaikh ▼

Somewhere in Shoreditch, the super trendy set march in 4/4 time to 1234 Festival number 2. After mistakenly queuing up at the ticket holders entrance, I’m promptly told to head to the opposite side to procure my pass.

The queue here seems even bigger! No one pays for records these days, but surely some do for festivals? Well, I guess all favours were pulled for a festival with one of the most exciting line-ups in town.

Scanning the guide, I head into the ether, passing by the Converse openmic stage, pausing to watch a hysterical acoustic version of The Minder theme tune - a peculiar national anthem to the sovereign state of short shorts, strategically ripped tights, and tighter.

Off to the P.I.X Stage to catch Banjo or Freakout, a man that divides opinion.The tent is packed, maybe due to the terrible weather or maybe because no one wants to miss an unearthed gem; that next I-knowsomething-you-don’t band. Alessio Natalizia (BOF) starts as he means to go on, the two-drum set up and heavy guitar sound creating a gargantuan,

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tribal sonic A-bomb – serious kudos for a two-man outfit.The crowd, a huge cooler-than-thou jury, are most definitely still out though.

Next up, Crystal Fighters, an Anglo/Basque group washed ashore in the surf. “EVERYBODY!” they scream to the crowd, hands aloft, beat attacking like the most pleasurable cardiac overdo anyone under the age of 30 can experience without illicit powders or a lifetime of chips. It’s a brief set, but come conclusion, their Euro Indie Electro had got even a few of the most statue-like upper echelons of the East London cool hierarchy tapping their super-pointy soles.

Later, Ulterior and A Place To Bury Strangers - darker, edgier, and drawing on bands like Suicide – look on with faces that mirror the sea staring back at them. Last year’s hotly tipped S.C.U.M seem to have been swotting up from The Horrors handbook, twiddling the distortion knob anticlockwise, and dare I say it, with one toe dipped in Lake Melody. On the main stage Patrick Wolf brings a sparkle into the lives of the brave weather battlers, and soon there’s a mutli-coloured sea of oscillating umbrellas.

If organisation is improved and another incredible line up is secured, I’ll be back.

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Field day Victoria Park, London 01.08.2009

By Sam Walton ▼

Field Day’s chequered past (mile-long queues for the bar and bogs in 2007; terrible sound and no provision for torrential rain in 2008), make this year’s event something of a “third time lucky” affair.This time around, the organisers are desperate to be talked about for their brave and dynamic line-up, not for the lavs.

And third time lucky it is.

Everything goes to plan, more or less: There is an overstaffed, under populated bar round every corner, tiny waits for the loos, and when apocalyptic weather soaks East London for four solid hours, the site fails to disintegrate.The main stage is still blighted with sound problems – most notably when The Horrors’ wall-ofsound shoegaze sounds like it’s being amplified by a Roberts Radio – but these are intermittent.

Errors’ early set on the main stage, however, suffers no such sound issues, and their Teutonic synth-driven postrock comes over surprisingly well in the lunchtime gloom. It’s a hard act to follow, as the charisma-free Final Fantasy discovers. He scrapes through a

couple of numbers before telling the dwindling audience, “here’s where you call me a cunt and wanker”. Maybe fortunately for him, no one’s listening to hear the invitation.

Elsewhere, earnest U2-botherers Wild Beasts serve up some po-faced American-indebted indie that sounds nice but hardly inspires anyone to rush home and order their back catalogue, and Little Boots parades through a set of enjoyable but innocuous SAWindebted Kylie Lite. Erol Alkan follows her with a DJ set of rabble-rousing nerd-house with added squiggles that offers a perfect shelter from the day’s worst downpour, and Four Tet’s offkilter techno sounds beautiful but is disappointingly quiet.

Skream’s DJ set on the main stage consists simply of an MC berating the organisers for cutting their set short while excellent two-step garage plays underneath him, and then Mogwai round off proceedings with a peerless, career-spanning set that is, unexpectedly for Field Day but characteristically for Mogwai, deafeningly loud. It is a hugely satisfying end to the day, and adds further support to the general consensus that with regard to gloriously eclectic festivals, Field Day may just have got it right third time.

Nick Cave by Paul Griggs

Miike Snow by MartinThibault

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Latitude Henham Park, Suffolk 17 - 19.07.2009

By Matt Warwick ▼

Mung bean haters everywhere seem to hold Latitude up as a crèche with bad poetry. And it kind of is. But if you’re 17, on heat and all you want to do is end up in a ditch, frothing at the eyes, having lost everything you ever owned, this is just as good a place to do it.

During sundown in Henham Park’s beautiful pine forest, Passion Pit have just started up ‘The Reeling’ to crown their set of mega synth-disco.The 17year-olds are all here at the tiny Sunrise Arena (a tent that holds no more than 500 people) and they’re not moaning about old people ruining everything.

Sure, a couple of NME hacks are there along with some chin-strokers from The Times and the BBC, but this is Latitude - the media ponces and mad partygoers down beer together, feeding off the energy of a buzz band with serious momentum. And all within the surrounds of what feels like the Ewok Village on the Forest Moon of Endor.

Thom Yorke makes everyone cry the next morning with a set of acoustic Radiohead and solo songs, including ‘Harrowdown Hill’ (from ‘The Eraser’), ‘Apeggi’, lost ’Head classic ‘True Love

Waits’ and a mega version of ‘Videotape’.Turns out he’s not at all morose and uncommunicative either, sharing jokes with the audience and rising happily to the banter.With the weather all hot and hazy, and the crowd so quiet you could hear a guitar pick drop, it is the perfect time to have him on.Then it shits it down… Not that you need to care – the site’s in a small valley and doesn’t have the clay ‘issues’ of Glastonbury, so the water just disappears. And there’s always enough space to sit under the dense forest away from everyone, have a beer (or mussels and chips followed by a blueberry muffin) and ride it out.

Like with Passion Pit, Latitude doesn’t seem to be too precious about where they put bands on either.We stumble across beat-box don Schlomo and friends on a tiny wooden box of a stage covering Prodigy classics, watched by hundreds between twisty old trees.

There’s always something going on: for every mung bean or Mika acoustic set you get Grace Jones coming on after curfew, swearing her head off, or the wondrous gothic horror of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds.

Whether viewed from the baby group play area or the bottom of the deepest K-hole, Latitude’s food-dyed sheep and giant fairylights are an impressive thing to witness.

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osheaga Montreal, Quebec 01 -02.08.2009

By Chris Beanland ▼

“Montreal is the greatest city in the world!” proclaims The Stills’Tim Fletcher halfway through their triumphant hometown set at Osheaga “…and this song is about that,” he adds before the dark lords of Quebec’s music launch into ‘Being Here’.

Now, Fletcher might actually have a point, because this wonderful city like a perfect piece of France parachuted into North America - hosts one giant party during the summer months. Because the winters are so disgustingly cold in Montreal, as soon as the sun comes out there are music festivals galore in this wordy, worldy city of culture, and set in a charming park on a little island in the middle of the St Lawrence, Osheaga is one of the picks of the bunch.

Our highlights from the two days include Cursive, whose Nebraskan angst-rock is offset by trumpets and politeness, and Norwegians Miike Snow - a genuine revelation that could have been so much like a poor man’s Metronomy and yet deliver a live set sparkling with hooks.

Yeah Yeah Yeah’s have upped their

live game to the point where they are now more than ready to headline festivals - and this they do, standing in for the Beastie Boys at the last minute and dazzling the crowd with their shifty yet sublime hipster indie, laced with more disco than ever these days.

Whatever you may or may not think about the technical merits of what Girl Talk churns out, the boy can sure put on a show too, and seeing 150 Canadian kids dizzy with excitement, dancing on stage to his mismatched mash-ups certainly brings on a smile.

Is there any chaff? Of course.

Arctic Monkeys’ new-song-heavy set is turgid and dull, rather like their new haircuts wot Alexa told them to get.

Rufus Wainwright - a man increasingly annoying when backed by a full band pulling focus - plays solo and failed to entrance. And, quite honestly, we’d prefer to never have to listen to any more La Roux for a long time - we heard them out, but we won’t be back.

But in truth Osheaga is as much about experiencing the madness and energy of Montreal as anything else, and nothing expresses that better than Crystal Castles, from down the road in Toronto. Screaming and writhing, Alice Glass is as electric as ever - pointing to what’s so great about Canada and its music scene right now. www.loudandquiet.com

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film

by Dean driscoll

In Praise of Brian Cox: hollywood’s ulimate ‘27%er’

The Hurt Locker

Cinema Preview Regular readers will already be aware of the trepidation with which we’re approaching Tarantino’s return. After a really rather bad trailer, and mixed reviews from Cannes, the jury is out until it opens on August 19th.Though there’s much to be alarmed about - with titles that gave Transformers 2 four stars giving the Basterds the thumbs up, and more considered critics making no bones about their distaste - there is one heartening constant to the press the film has received:The performance of Austrian actor Christopher Waltz, in the role of ‘The Jew Hunter’ Colonel Hans Landa. It’s said to be an iconic performance – QT has even gone so far as to say it was such a difficult role to nail that he thought it might have been impossible to cast, given that it requires fluency in four languages and no little charisma in order to pull off. Even the most scathing notices for the film have praised Waltz – so much so that it may well be worth sitting through some more turgid, lengthy scenes of smug dialogue (a la Kill Bill 2) in order to appreciate it.

While Quentin might publicly express delight in dividing the critics, how he must wish for the kind of reception afforded Kathryn Bigalow’s The Hurt Locker (released August 28th). Currently scoring 98% on reviews aggregator RottenTomatoes.com, this Iraq-set tale of bomb disposal experts does away with the soapbox politicking of Lions For Lambs and Rendition, and instead focuses on the tale of three characters immersed within the madness of the Middle East conflict. It may well be that focus that is its strongest point – whilst there may be a lost classic amongst the

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recent movies that have denounced the war in Iraq, it will not be until years after the conflict is over that we look back and are able to appreciate a prescient point of view.

As it is, we already know war is bad, and that we were led into it under flimsy false pretences. What The Hurt Locker is said to do effectively is capture the high tension of life on the ground, focusing on the humans involved rather than a larger moral outrage. Bigalow made one of the 90s classic movies with Point Break and, if the reviews are anything to go by, she may have made one of this decade’s best too, and produced one of this year’s summer sleeper hits.

Other movies to look out for this month include the second half of Mesrine, Public Enemy #1 – the French gangster movie charting the rise and fall of France’s most notorious gangster; Judd Apatow’s third directorial outing (after the 40 year Old Virgin and Knocked Up), which offers us semi-serious turns by Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen and a you-can’t-beserious running time of 2 1/2 hours; quirky romance, starring the excellent Joseph Gordon Levitt and reliably doe-eyed Zooey Deschanel, in 500 Days of Summer; and alien stuff in the Peter Jackson-produced South African-set District 9, which aims to propel itself to a huge gross via a secretive, Cloverfield-like marketing campaign.

This month’s cinema highlights August 19th - Inglourious Basterds August 28th - The Hurt Locker, Mesrine: Public Enemy #1, Funny People September 4th - District 9, 500 Days of Summer

Empire recently posted a blog on their site extolling the virtues of Hollywood’s ‘27%ers’ – actors with the ability to elevate your enjoyment of a movie by up to a wholly unscientific approximate of 27 per cent, just by popping up in a minor role. For example, successful 27%ers who have gone on to graduate to leading man status include Sam Rockwell, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Rudd. Coen Brothers alumnus Richard Jenkins got a well-earned Oscar nomination for his leading man role in The Visitor, having made a 25-year career out of scene-stealing in the likes of There’s Something About Mary and Intolerable Cruelty.

The blog opened up to Empires readers suggesting their own favourite 27%er, but shockingly it wasn’t until the 39th comment that the name of arguably the finest of them all cropped up.

Brian Cox could well be the ultimate exponent of the minor character arts, instantly whisking away scenes in a plethora of movies: Fincher’s Zodiac, Spike Jonze’s Adaptation and Spike Lee’s The 25th Hour are fantastic films, but it’s the presence of Cox that elevates them. It’s something about the man’s presence, his voice - a deep gruff Dundee brogue - that resonates. He may only get 2 minutes screentime, but that’s all he needs to make an indelible mark.

Of those movies named Zodiac being a personal favourite the most memorable moments are those featuring Cox. He gives good villain too, adding depth to X2’s Stryker and giving the world the definitive Hannibal Lector performance in Michael Mann’s Manhunter (the original adaptation of Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, and the first screen appearance of the character Anthony Hopkins would later make his own).

Brian Cox could literally make anything 27% better… maybe we should club together to get him digitally inserted into the Star Wars prequels?

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party wolf Photo Casebook“It comes on us all”

MJ, Farah Fawcett, the legend that is Bobby Robson; it’ll be you meeting your maker next, Rod, you old bastard!

horoscopes Leo

Don’t joke mate - I found a lump in my pants the other day... turned out to be my junk. HA!

Cor blimey, Leo, me old Yankee doodle dandy, you’re world’s been flipped on its head, hasn’t it? It’s time to role with the punches though. People - incuding you change. Fortunately, you’re fully aware of this.While some old crones will forever be wedging themselves into the leotards of life, screaming “Love me, I’m 75 but still beautiful”, you’ve got far more decorum than that... and two more years before you look like a really pathetic old witch (yeah, yeah, or wizard). A recent spat with a loved one will prove you right this month too they’ve been dining out on past success for too long.

You’re better off without them, Lock, Stock and two smoking copies of ‘The Immaculate Collection’.

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

Thought you were talking about when you shat yourself watching Ugly Betty for a minute then.

Must have been a very small lump then if it was your chap.

KKatona

On busss hoome. Done a poo about 20 minutes ago from device

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Posh Sainsbury and arse even. I’m so pissed about 6 hours ago from device

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2 roast dinners for a fiver. Jamie Oliver, you can shove your posj Sainburts up you ars!!! about 6 hours ago from device

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Off to Iceland now. It’s so fucking cheap but I still get a discount. Regretting the curry now. Think the bus driver is too... he’s fit :P

Unlike yours, babe.

Cheers for last night, I’ll show myself out

Phoarrr!

You jammy git PW!

about 7 hours ago from device

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Morning TV is so much better with a beer and lamb bhuna. *Guff* about 8 hours ago from device

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@PAndre you’re better without er, babe!

46

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