Issue 25 - June 2014
IMS IBIZA CELEBRATES
20 YEARS OF WALL OF SOUND
BOY GEORGE:
‘WE SHOULD BE PROUD OF BRITISH HOUSE’ BOUGHTON ESTATE, KETTERING, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, NN14 1BJ, UNITED KINGDOM
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OVER 180 BANDS, 6 STAGES, CIRCUS BIG TOP, AND MUCH MORE 3/5 DAY WEEKEND AND DAY TICKETS ON SALE NOW
Sonic Shocks - Issue 25
June 2014
P 3: 20 YEARS OF WALL OF SOUND By Nelly Loriaux and Cristina Massei P. 5: IMS IBIZA - THE LOWDOWN By Alte Bakken and Nelly Loriaux P. 8: SUBURBAN LEGENDS Interview and live photo by Cristina Massei P. 10: ROCK’N’ROLL MUSEUM - Festival Special Article & photos by Paul Roundhill P. 12: GEORGE CLINTON IntervIew & main photo by Cristina Massei P. 15: FOXY SHAZAM Interviewby Cristina Massei P. 16: CHANNEL ZERO Interview by Matt Dawson P. 18: THE GOLDEN AGE OF BURLESQUE By Sophia Disgrace P. 20 : THE FRUITFUL EARTH Interview & live photoS by Mark Fletcher P. 22: NOTHING MORE Interview by Matt Dawson P. 24: FALCONER Interview by Matt Dawson P. 25: SASHA GRADIVA Interview & photos by Cristina Massei P. 28: THE TRICKS Interview by Cristina Massei P. 30: THE PARLOTONES Interview and main photo by Cristina Massei P. 34: LENNY LORENZI Interview C.Massei/N.Loriaux, photos C.Massei P. 36: LEEE BLACK CHILDERS TRIBUTE By Nina Antonia and Cristina Massei P. 38: DOWNLOAD SPECIAL IntervIew & live photos by Cristina Massei P. 42: BREATHE CAROLINA Interview by Nelly Loriaux P. 43: THE CIRCLES Interview and live photos by Mark Fletcher P. 44: MUSIC REVIEWS By Matt Dawson and John Morgan
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Tent, wellies and wet wipes all packed, we’re all ready for another summer of Festivals. Sonic Shocks kicked off the season already with a sold-out Camden Rocks, special guest: the sun. Yay! Next on our list is Download, this year presenting a bill more eclectic than ever: from Aerosmith to Offspring to Dying Fetus, I dare you not to find something for your ears. Our 4 pages guide starts at page 38, check it out for some ideas and brief interviews. If you’re wondering how it all started and what Festivals used to be, look no further than our Rock’n’Roll Museum feature: Paul takes us back to Stonehenge and more generally to the days when revellers were too busy enjoying themselves to tweet about it... We’ve also been to Ibiza for the International Music Summit, where Mark Jones and his legendary Wall Of Sound were celebrating the label’s 20th anniversary: Boy George had quite a lot to say before going back to record the much awaited Culture Club comeback album. We met ‘Gun Girl’ Sasha Gradiva and DJ Producer Lenny Lorenzi amongst others, read the interviews (and check out Sasha’s photos!). Most of all, we met the funk legend that is George Clinton! Back to sunny UK, we talked to Channel Zero, Falconer, Foxy Shazam, Fruitful Earth, Nothing More, The Circles, The Tricks and superfunny Suburban Legends. Then we went on top of a roof to speak to SouthAfrican superstars the Parlotones, as they landed from performing on a Virgin Atlantic flight. And finally, a very special treat for you all: a tribute to late iconic photographer Leee Black Childers, including a vintage interview by author Nina Antonia where Leee talks about Bowie and the Ziggy years. Thanks to Nina for letting us rummage through her audio tapes - by the way, her new book on Peter Doherty ‘From Albion to Shangri La’ is out on July 1st (just before the Libertines reunion show in Hyde Park) but you can already find it on Kindle. Don’t forget our Alt-Fest competition is still running, find us on Facebook for a chance to win a pair of full camping tickets. Enjoy our June issue and see you at Donington! Cristina
Cover photo credit Cristina Massei EDITOR IN CHIEF & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Cristina Massei thewickedwitch@sonicshocks.com ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Matt Dawson - cygnus@sonicshocks.com Nelly Loriaux - nelly@sonicshocks.com US CORRESPONDENT: Denise Britt - denise@sonicshocks.com
Contributors on this issue WRITERS: Paul Roundhill, John Morgan, Mark Fletcher, Nina Antonia, Atle Bakken PHOTOGRAPHERS: Cristina Massei, Nelly Loriaux, Paul Roundhill, Mark Fletcher
CONTACT US
General enquiries, review requests and unsolicited material: info@sonicshocks.com Advertising enquiries and info: advertising@sonicshocks.com PLEASE NOTE: We listen to everything but - often in your own interest - we don’t always review it...
Sonic Shocks - Issue 25
June 2014
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20 years of
r Pink
ay M Happy Birthd
‘SPENDING TIME WITH WALL OF SOUND IS LIKE BEING ON AN EPIC ROAD MOVIE WITHOUT A MAP - OR NO ROAD’ - BANKSY IMS 2014 big closing brings everyone in the conference room to celebrate influential label Wall Of Sound’s 20th anniversary. For this special occasion, WOS creator Mark Jones is joined by Boy George, Danny Donnelly (Suburban Records), music attorney Stephen Kempner, and Mike & Claire Manumission to host a colourful presentation, ending with a cake and a staged Twitter greeting from a man pleasing himself on camera. Jones certainly has a colourful past: from forming visuals company Pop with Michael Speechley to putting on the Special Branch parties at The Royal Oak, The Zoo, Rockley Sands, Mambo Madness and many other acid house parties such as Trip, Sin and Shoom. But how did it all start? ‘I convinced my mum and dad to buy a Yamaha CS01 synthesizer and I just reacted against anything real musically, but I was into melody as well. I don’t think pop has to be a 4 letter word - it doesn’t have to mean shit’. He went on to form ‘prock’ (pop/ rock) band Perfect Day, performing on national TV, and scoring front covers on Just Seventeen and Jackie magazines. “I remember you as a popstar – comments Boy George – you were fucking gorgeous“. They both had caught an interest for Electronic Dance Music early on; however, Mark went on to become a boy
Mark Jones from PROCK to RDM
band star with A Perfect Day while Boy George found stardom with 80s pop icons Culture Club - currently recording a new album in Valencia, Spain while preparing for a December reunion tour. After A Perfect Day disbanded, Mark joined forces with Marc Lessner working for distributor Soul Trader. He established his network through pressing and distributing deals for small labels and acts such as Kruder and Dorfmeister, Basement Jaxx and Larry Heard among others. In 1994, a compilation of these artists was made and entitled ‘Give ‹Em Enough Dope Vol.1’: Wall of Sound was officially born. Further compilations would feature Pressure Drop, Larry Heard, The Ballistic Brothers and Basement Jaxx with label signings Akasha, Les Rhythmes Digitales and Propellerheads. I started the label in the beginning because electronic dance music had become so diluted and there wasn’t any feeling – explains Mark - you weren’t allowed to say I love Steely Dan, I love Hip-Hop so we threw all of that together because certain electronic dance music didn’t have any meaning or feeling and that was the beginning; people like Basement Jaxx I pressed 500 vinyls to help them start, it was almost like a collision of electronic music. It’s about being who you are not somebody else, that’s for me the most important thing. I think in the UK there’s this sort of attitude that if you’re successful at one thing you’ve got no right to
be successful in another - adds Boy George, as he recalls his first exposure to house music - The first time I heard (house music) was at the Paradise Garage and I was making an album with Culture Club, I remember being in Spectrum with 30 people there and I don’t think anybody really knew what was going to happen and how exciting it was going to become in a matter of months. George goes on to share his first DJ experience with the audience: I was constantly going to raves and it became my vibe; I became a DJ in the backroom of Pushka – they had this chillout room with a cassette table and I was saying to Debbie [the organiser] ‘You should get a DJ in here’. She said ‘why don’t you do it’ so I turned up with my cardboard box of 45’s and played everything from old Reggae to Islands in the stream and old house tunes, everything you can think of, and that’s how I kind of ended up being a DJ doing backrooms – and I’m still here annoying everyone! The room laughs with the legendary DJ-singer, clearly in great shape and mood today. After a blast from the past, the next logical step is considering how things have changed in the past 20 years. Danny Donnelly looks at the way the landscape has evolved: It’s changed dramatically, you have the longevity in your career by being passionate and that’s what this guy [Mark]’s done. His enthusiasm – you can see it, it’s right there at the front of you. We all know sitting here how the in-
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ternet’s affected that (the change). I was into the compilation albums – Euphoria, Pure Garage - and that dropped off but we’ve seen it come back a bit. The interesting thing is that now we’re seeing people want a hard copy in their hand. Mike & Claire – founders of Manumission – remember Ibiza back in the day: it was much more anti-corporate - says Claire - wild and free, it was pretty much a 36 hour party every week, Mark came on stage with us once. Mark interrupts: You remember what you did with me once on stage? She gave me breakfast, you came out with a frying pan and the egg popped out! But when it comes to the White Isle, Boy George doesn’t completely share the nostalgia vibe: I prefer Ibiza now because it’s a lot simpler, people may say ‘it’s not as exciting’ but I find because I’m sober it’s a more civilised place to come to. He has other worries regarding the current local scene - In terms of what’s happening now there’s this kind of gentrification of the island and this VIP thing which I think is a bit worrying because seriously, fuck the VIP! Boring bastards basically. If you go to a club and there’s a VIP section you know it’s going to be pretty shit. – A cheering audience is clearly with George on that one - The whole poshing things up affects the music and when you hear these guys talking one of the things that’s significant about that is the personalities. When you think about the artists, they had look and vibe; we’re in an age where no one knows who everyone is, they’re huge and sell records but you couldn’t sing one of their songs if you tried. Think of the first time you heard a Wall Of Sound
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record: a lot of it was context – where you are, what was happening, the early rave scene, governments trying to shut it down - and then coming to Ibiza originally, coming up to clubs where there was no room and you were in nature and house music; it was liberating, you couldn’t do that in London. People are moaning about things now because they’re boring – there are other clubs to go to, other things to listen to – you just have to make the right choices – he continues, before injecting a bit of welcome national pride in the UK audience: There’s a lot of British music that we don’t champion enough – the Americans are proud of what they do and they push it, we need to do more of that and be proud of what we create because British house is the best. The attention goes back to the man with the Midas touch, Mark Jones: his relentless passion for music has no boundaries. His love of electronic still shines through but with a rocky twist, and he is keen to share his RDM (Rocktronic Dance Music) to who’s willing to take notice. His recent showcases at the Record Store (Camden) brought us Killaflaw, an electrorock duo from Liverpool. I’ve had my eye on these randy scouse gits for a while, and it’s great to finally get cut finger to paper and sign Killaflaw says Jones. They’re a band whose music has never been more relevant in these heady days of Rock N Rave. He is largely responsible for bringing us Norwegian electronic luminaries Röyksopp,
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whose debut album Melody AM (2001) went platinum, Les Rythmes Digitales (Stuart Price), re-launching the career of the iconic Grace Jones (who released her first album in 10 years, Hurricane, in 2008), plus ‘recent’ additions like Human League with album Credo in 2011, Reverend & The Makers’ single Heavyweight Champion of the World, new signings Aeroplane, Kids on Bridges and Icelandic electro quarted SYKUR in 2013. His longevity in the business may have surprised a few but what counts is, he›s still here 20 years on... and striving. With his hands in so many pies, it’s no surprise IMS recognised Mr Pink› 20 years achievement; the man always seem to be at the right place, at the right time. The lighted cake is then delivered to the Chief himself, who uses the next two hours around the Hard Rock Hotel, making sure everybody has their piece - so to speak. This is a man who knows how to make a splash. Mark, here’s a personal message from Nelly: Thanks for giving me the first slice of your cake, I felt very honoured, even though I know you were a bit reluctant cutting it. I loved every bite of it, even though it went straight to my thighs… Wall Of Sound had a lot to do with me getting into electronic music. I fell in love with The Wiseguy’s first album ‘Executive Suite’, promptly joined the mailing list and had WOS flyers all over my bedroom wall as a student in Belfast. Then Les Rythmes Digitales ‘Darkdancer’ came out and I was a full convert. - Annie Mac
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THE LOWDOWN Now that EDM and Tech House really have grown up and gone mainstream, the statistics at this year‘s IMS Summit in Ibiza demonstrated its progress and strength. On the first day of the Summit, arranged by BBC1 DJ Pete Tong and his colleagues, analyst Kevin Watson could present a business which is at its highest peak in history. It had again outgrown both rock and pop sales, with a gain of 5% of digital tracks with 7% in the US alone; 12 out of 100 top selling albums in 2013 were EDM/Tech House tracks (Versus 5 out of 100 in 2012) .In one year EDM/Tech House has increased its total value by 35% , from $4.5 billion to $6.2 billion. Even if a divide between the two genres has been more prominent lately, European DJs tend to discriminate artists who dominate the American EDM charts. Swedish Chart topper Avicii, who now has 356 million Youtube streams of his song “Wake Me Up“, had an 95% hate feedback when his management presented his ideas upfront. Something they were able to turn around to “95% fans’’ according to the management. On Facebook, David Guetta is still topping the DJ list with 50 million followers. But the young artists are now growing the fastest. DJ Hardwell is now the top young gainer with 70,000 new followers per day. This has also led to Hardwell winning the top ranking at the 2013 ‹DJ Mag Top 100› competition, as well as doubling his Twitter fans. The EDM Festivals have exploded internationally in 2013, almost doubling in India, reaching up to 300,000 people. They have also started to match DJs on social media, even exceeding them on YouTube views. Effects from the EDM advances were shown on the corporate side, where the American media conglomerate SFX Entertainment has been spending $120 mil buying up EDM brands and festivals, while software companies like Ableton, Native Instruments and Serato have quadrupled their sales in 2013. The EDM/Tech House gain have also had its effect on TV production. BBC1‘s DJ Annie Mac just sold her Superstar DJ
series (following Tiesto, Seth Troxler, Diplo, Disclosure and Fatboy Slim) to Channel 4 in the UK, while HBO, FIFA SYCO and even Disney are planning similar shows. TV production company “Boiler Room“ are expanding their Live DJ series into UK and South America, while planning to monetizing on their compilations through cooperation with labels. Lohan Prescencer (Ministry of Sound) gave his State of the Nation address, stating that the genre has evolved constantly, and although Ministry initially had lost money on the download startup, they now sell over 2 million digital bundles a year, mostly on one-off hits and compilations. Mark Lawrence announced himself as the new CEO of the Association for Electronic Music (AFEM) after having pioneered the way Dance music Royalties gained from calculation by the PRS. A New Award show is in the talking, and the organisation is here to “preserve, promote and protect our genre”. But Lawrence made a point of learning from “failure as a vital part of the road to success“. Major Label Chief Miles Leonard (Parlaphone / Warner) admitted to have taken a 5 year period to “modify their
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culture and thinking“ while catching up to the fast changes of both the Electronic music distribution and the decline of digital sales. He has responded by acquiring Big Beat Records and 3 other Dance labels for the Warner portfolio, being strengthened by an expansion of their Sync- and Branding departments. It now includes Deadmau5, David Guetta (through EMI France), the Swedish House Mafia and Coldplay›s collaboration with Avicii. The effort sold 100.000 copies in the UK last week. Leonard stated that the appetite for music is better than ever, with radio still being the big driver for breaking records worldwide, getting “jigsaw help“ from Spotify and Social Media. “I don‘t think “Statistics are of vital importance in our signing and marketing decisions, as guts feeling is still the best factor›› Leonard continued “But at least Statistics don‘t lie.“ An International Round table discussion of the so called BRICS countries (Brazil, India, China & South Africa) stated that the potential for Electronic music in these markets are huge, but that certain infrastructure must come in place.South Africa has local EDM festivals with up to 40,000 people and broadcast support but no International sponsors ( Duncan Ringrose, Shadoworks management), Russia lacks proper Dance music structure ( Kirill Lupinos Effective Records),,India has its Supersonic Festivals with up to 70,000 people whilst with a potential of 100 million fans, China has a huge Electronic Music potential but lack in Social Media like Facebook and Twitter. Industry insider & veteran Bob Lefsetz earlier this year stated that the financial winners of a Music summit mostly are the organizers themselves. With the IMS being sold out weeks in
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advance, the program itself being announced only days from its start, one can start to think about that sentence. The Press and IMS participants were denied access, without warning, to both Ushuaia and Space openings, although entries should have been granted through their passes and tickets. With such small scandal in the planning, but still a financial success, we are only hoping for more seriousness and prioritizing of the Ibiza-nightlife part of IMS next year. Mix engineer ace Andrew Scheps, with credits from Beyonce to Black Sabbath, gave us the Insider‘s scoop on how to make a mix simple but great. “Always take stuff out of the mix instead of adding“.He added “It‘s better to have 5 Great tracks than 9000 OK ones. Cuz when you add the Nine thousand and first one it will not make a difference.“ He also let us in on secrets for the bestsounding tracks on the internet (He should know what he‘s talking about, after all he won the Loudness War for Metallicas “Death Magnetic“ album in 2008.) “in addition to parallel compression, If you turn your final mix 1/2 a dB down it will sound better on iTunes“ and ‘’ if you are using Youtube, upload in HD cuz the sound is so much better››. Scheps ended with ‹›only use .Wav files, because otherwise they will change it to something else›› Sometimes called “the Fifth member of U2“, manager Paul McGuiness de-
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bunked this title and said he preferred the manager title, simply because he had always been on a manager contract with the band. “I discovered that the 17 year old kids could not really play, but they could write songs.“ McGuinness chuckled. ,“I decided early on that I wanted to do things different, we did not want to conquer America through London so we went our own route.“ he told us. We were paid $70.000 from Seymour Stein (also interviewed at this year‘s IMS) to tour over there for 3 months even before we had something to give him.“ But U2 soon became a successful touring act. And over the years one of the all-time best-selling music artists.“ Having undertaken perhaps the biggest, newest and impossible stage creations in History, (U2‘s 360◊ tour, grossing $3.1 billion) employing 400 people, 200 of them drivers, McGuiness commented on the present trend of gigantic stage productions, involving corporate sponsorship for DJs. “I think companies like Live Nation are important, because without them we could not afford such massive investments in new concert inventions. So I welcome both Blackberry and Apple.›› “I think that established bands should not appear immediately on Spotify due to their financial arrangements. New bands should do it for the promotion of it. Musicians have to get paid,
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otherwise it will turn into an amateur sport, and we don‘t want that“ McGuiness told us about the new distributors and streamers. “Personally I think that Google is the largest theft-enabler for the music industry››. “But I believe that if an artist is talented, special and know what is going on in the society, the labels will give still him/her the keys to the car, putting you in the driver‘s seat.“ IMS new location this year at the Hard Rock Hotel in Playa D‘en Bossa worked very well, with enough expansion for the years to come, including a massive stage with all the top equipment money can buy. Feedback from delegates at the Q&A sessions demonstrated a strong desire for a few good gigs, so hopefully this need will be fulfilled next year. WHERE TO STAY Now that Playa D’en Bossa has become the centre for IMS and most openings in Ibiza, Apartamentos Lido is the hidden pearl that has the perfect location a stone throw away from many of your favourite venues, as well as an idyllic 360 degrees ocean panoramic view over the beach front and Dalt Vila without the Ibicenco steep prices. With 3 great restaurants in the vicinity and a supermarket across the street, everything is at hand with no need to hop on a bus after your all night parties.
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June 2014
Group chat with the dudes in Suburban Legends backstage at the Underworld: way to spend a Saturday evening! They’re about to release a Disney covers’ EP, but most of all they’re about to cheer up Camden with one of their legendary shows. I meet original member Brian Robertson (trombone), bassist Brad Polidori and guitarist Brian Klemm, shortly joined by current lead vocalist Vincent Walker. Warning: if you expect a serious interview, look away now… It’s the 2nd to last date of your UK tour – how has it been so far? Brian K : It’s been awesome! Brad: A lot of fun. Brian K: It’s been interesting to see how people pay attention to us after coming off a support tour to be repeat customers and actually come and see us on our own. I saw you guys on the Reel Big Fish tour as I saw you guys then and loved it! All: Thank you! BK: Which venue was that at? Shepherd’s Bush Empire. (Vince enters the room) BK: Hey Vince, introduce yourself! V: Hi, I’m Vince from Suburban Legends! Oh yeah! I know you guys make a big point of entertaining people on your shows, what I was wondering is this: how do
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people entertain YOU? BK: It’s funny because sometimes there’s people that do cute and endearing things in the crowd and you hear things where you go ‘did you see what happened? This person was hammered and did this!’ It’s pretty much that they’re entertaining without them knowing they’re entertaining us. Was there one particular episode on this tour that stood out for you? Vince: Just at the last show we did an engagement – a guy contacted us in advance and said he wanted to get engaged to his girlfriend at the show. BK: [He] proposed during the set. Brad: In Huddersfield we met the mayor, he came up on stage with a glass of wine! BK: He was there the last time we played Huddersfield. Did you get him to dance or sing? Vince: He danced, there’s probably video of it on YouTube somewhere! Brian got two guys to kiss… BK: I was doing Kiss The Girl from The Little Mermaid and then I ask out into the crowd ‘Is anybody on a date?’ and some guy went ‘I AM!’, he was just being an obnoxious dude so I called him out – ‘Where’s your date?’ and his friend said ‘It’s me!’ so I said ‘You guys are going to dance!’ I sang around them ‘Kiss The Girl’ and at the end I try and get the couple to kiss – this time it was a dude and a dude, it turned out they were friends, everyone cheered them on to kiss and they ended up kissing. Were they drunk? Oh yeah! [laughs] Maybe it was the start of something new!
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We have a saying in Italy: In Vino Veritas – In Wine Is Truth so when you’re drunk, your true self comes out, we use it as an excuse when we do foolish things – you think that’s true? V: For some people… BK: Some people can be fake too! [laughs] Especially when a guy’s trying to hook up with a girl and he’s drinking or the other way around. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done when you were drunk? B1: [laughs] Erm… Must be really weird because noone’s talking! Brad: Here’s my personal story: when we were last in New York a couple of months ago the last thing I remember is running through the hotel at 8 just wearing a coat and nothing underneath as families were coming out and going to breakfast. BK: I snuck in backstage at a Warrant/ Whitesnake concert and got into their dressing room and ate their catering, snuck through security while David Coverdale was on stage thinking ‘I could pull down my pants, jump on his back, get arrested and have the best story ever!’ Brad: It made sense at the time right? BK: Yeah! Did you do it? BK: No, I didn’t. Oh man! Tonight we have a special guest in Mc Lars… BK: Hopefully! We did the title track on his last album ‘This Gigantic Robot Kills’, we’ve done it a couple of times and I thought it’d be cool to do it tonight. Anything else special for this London show? BK: Lots of interaction and the guy who booked our first Orange County show when we were starting out just so happens to be here tonight! Do you think he thinks ‘how the hell are they playing London’ OR ‘I knew you’d play there someday!’ BK: Both! He’s still a big supporter, he booked us a gig right before we left and he hires me to teach his niece guitar lessons! His name is John Halpren and he works for Golden Boys. So after this – another show in the UK and then what’s next? V: Another couple of gigs in the Netherlands then we fly back to California where we’re currently working on preproduction for our new full length al-
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bum. The last thing you released was a Disney cover EP and I think I read that it will influence the new album quite a lot. Brad: Oh yeah, those Disney songs are hits. You can’t forget them, they’re really good so… So how’s the new album going? Vince: We’ve got enough for a full album – 12 songs but we’re going to go home and write a couple more because we had a good flow after the Reel Big Fish run, we’re going to do some more pre-production and tracking in summer and then hopefully we’ll get it out by the end of the year. So the Disney EP – Dreams Aren’t Real But These Songs Are – I think the dream has come real for you guys… BK: Absolutely Out of all the tales – which one would you compare it to? Brad: A Dream Is A Wish. BK: You’ve Got A Friend In Me. BR: Toy Story. BK: We’re all like best friends, because of this band we’re able to travel the world as best friends, play music together as best friends, to bond and make it a business together. It IS a dream come true to do this together with your friends. I’m sure get asked this a lot: You have a lot of fun on stage – is it still the same as when you started or has it become a real day job? BK: There’s times when you have to go through the motions because things happen in your personal life and it’s hard to sometimes leave that at the door, but you find different ways of
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having fun during the show that you didn’t have before; we all connect in a different way on stage – we’ll have different jokes – inside jokes – going on at all times. Brad: The more comfortable you get on stage too, the more you can observe what’s going on around you. Everyone’s still having fun, that’s good. Now time for word association… If Suburban legends was a drug what would it be? Vince: Prozac. I agree, total anti-depressant! Movie? BK: Cheesy 80’s movie – some romcom like almost Ferris Bueller’s Day Off without the day off! BR: We’re like a friend. BK: We always keep messing up, you know how he has all those gadgets in his room? None of them work although we have trash everywhere and it’s organised like something’s going to happen but nothing does! Brad: Dirty Dancing. [all laugh] Goonies but the treasure map just tells us where to get a Slushie. Flight Of The Navigator! City? BR: Orlando. BK: You just knew where to go! V: We’re pretty southern California though. Disney character? Brad: We’re all Prince Charmings… BR: I don’t know about that! V: It depends on your mood – some days you’d be Mufasa, some days you’d be Simba. BK: I’d say I’m Goofy. Tall, lanky, a knucklehead but somewhat endearing at times. Brad: Darth Vader, he’s kinda Disney now. V: Lightning Steve McQueen ‘cause he’s
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fast. Thinking about Disney - You do shows in Disneyland. Did you ever scare any kids? Brad: All the time [laugh] Vince: We’re just kidding. Disneyland gives us an opportunity to play in front of a lot of families and stuff, some have gotten to know us over the years while we’ve been there so they’ll bring their young ones, we have this one fan named Carter who’s 4 years old and wears big headphones, there’s always kids in the back dancing with their parents so it’s really fun to see our music have that kind of effect on kids at that age. They’re like 3 or 4 and can barely walk but once they hear us they start moving and dancing. BR: It’s a cool thing also to see that parents have something to bond with their kids over other than being at home watching a cartoon, the kids love our music ‘cause it’s fun and the parents like it too, it’s something you can do together. Is there anything else you guys would like to say – how do we convert others? BK: Constantly check our website to find out when we’re playing your city. People that don’t like our music will come to our show because we’re entertaining. V: Even beyond that we’ll have people that will say ‘I don’t like ska music but I like you guys.’ Did you ever wanted to do a different style of music at any point? BK: When I was younger I wanted to do blues and I did it. Brad: I was in rock bands until I met these guys 4 years ago and I really didn’t know much about ska music – it’s fun, bright, happy and makes you want to move, for me it’s still kind of brand new and I enjoy it.
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rock’n’roll museum
By Paul Roundhill “THE ROCK AND ROLL MUSEUM” IS A REGISTERED TRADE-NAME SINCE 1990. This is a regular feature in Sonic Shocks magazine. All modules are available for syndication - all rights reserved.
The photos in this feature were taken at Stonehenge Free Festival in 1976. Festivals were a chance for the children of Albion to cast off shackles of class and conduct to play out a hippy fantasy in England’s verdant pastures. I travelled there from Brighton with a crew from the OPEN café. It must be understood that in those days of post-Stalinist Russian communism hard-line textbook MARXISM played an energetic role in the battle for change in Britain had-been. This vegetarian café was a bastion of the alternative society - the so-called counter-culture which was flourishing in Britain in the 70s. It’s hard to imagine now, but the old Establishment was on its last legs; two world wars and technological advances, particularly in media had spawned an unruly populace that would no longer kow-tow to their rulers. The British Empire had necessitated a system which
probably owed much to ancient Rome, with a ‘patrician’ rulingclass of old families and a ‘plebeian’ lower tier. The world wars had thrust all stratas into the field together not so much shoulder to shoul-
der as cheek-by-jowl and, especially during the 2nd World War, the desperate struggle had forced Britain to muster its resources regardless of social class. The upper-classes protected for centuries by wealth, privilege, education found that they could not hold back the rising tide of twentieth century meritocracy. Perhaps the festivals were a final working out of that process… Certainly there were aristocrats who allowed their land to be the setting for free love and wild psychedelic bacchanalias; members of their caste have always exhibited a penchant for loucheness set on fire and letting the gypsies camp on their land so that a bit of fun could be had. The marxist backed Socialist Worker Parter Agitprop brigade simultaneously augmented the ragamuffin army away from their urban squats and barricades. Whatever the socio-economic dynamic the Beatniks had begun a tradition exemplified by the singer Dono-
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van who famously traipsed off in his glad-rags with guitar and tambourine to sleep under Brighton pier in the van of a latter day Rasputin called “Gypsy Dave”. I was brought up in Heston where the motorway service station now stands close to Heathrow airport; I remember my father bringing me out of the house to stand and watch as a duffel-coated milieu proceeded eastwards with ‘ban the bomb’ banners on their way from Aldermarston to Parliament: it was my first
sight of the undercurrents appearing on the surface… I was too young to escape parental bonds and savour the delights of The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park, but I was keenly aware that it was happening and the following summer managed to arrive in Hyde Park where it seemed that the entire counter-culture was disporting to Roy Harper (he memorably sang “I hate the White Man”), Kevin Ayers and the Edgar Broughton Band with their chant of “Out Demons out”. The photographs here were taken at Stonehenge in 1976 where I don’t remember seeing a single burger or ice-cream van (probably would have been either “liberated” or turned over) and an open air all day event in 1978 at former airfield “Blackbush” featuring Bob Dylan. The hardship was all part of the fun. Free festivals were a challenge to the police and authorities from a hard-core convoy of travellers and tee pee dwellers - throughout the 70s this uneasy mixture of upper class libertarians, socialist warriors, under-cover ‘faux hippy ”coppers and doubtless MI5 agent provocateurs coursed around Britain setting up camp wherever conditions seemed suitable. Commercial events differed in the status of the art-
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ists and of course the ticket entry price, but the Isle of Wight aside it was the Free Festivals that it was all about. Compulsory microdots, compulsory Roy Harper - his voice increasing and decreasing with wind direction and an almost complete absence of any legitimate commerce. I once happened upon Richie Havens playing an acoustic set in front of a VW van. Highlights for me could never be caught on camera but they include sunrises a plenty… A trail of rag-a-muffins traipsing through morning dew up to the stones to catch the druids ceremony, with hares boxing like tiny kangaroos in the grass around us with the finest band in the world playing “The Sun Machine is coming up” behind us... Many, many hilarious close encounters with country plod and a magical encounter in an oak forest near Stonehenge where it seemed the pixie folk had built their bowers and were sporting about tripping the night fantastic…A solitary flautist in the misty dawn all dressed in motley and on one leg heralding the first morning of the world. Free food, hearty girls serving up bean burgers. Urgent, serious discussions around campfires and endless meanderings in search of and successfully encountering magic of all kinds. Squaddies A.W.O.L from their regiment and under-cover coppers were abroad aplenty, particularly in 1976. By 1980 even Glasto was turning commercial.
All photography original by Paul Roundhill. Copyright protected, all rights reserved. For any enquiry about buying or exhibiting Mr Roundhilll’s work, please contact us or the man himself by email at ayeayerobot@yahoo.co.uk
June 2014
The master architect of P-Funk looks content and at ease, enjoying the relaxed atmosphere at the Hard Rock Hotel’s poolside soaked in the Ibiza sun. George Clinton, next to Sly Stone and James Brown, is regarded as one of the most legendary innovators of funk music, an irrefutable influence on many coming after him not limited to funk: from Red Hot Chilli Peppers to Dr Dre and several rap artists, musicians of all genres have been taking inspiration –and more - from The Parliaments/Funkadelic, making Clinton one of the most sampled artists of all time. Did he ever get paid for it? ‘No, but instead of getting a drug habit I got a lawyer’ jokes George during his IMS keynotes. At 73, the iconic artist didn’t just survive the excesses of the 60s and 70s: with health and addiction no longer an issue he’s still actively recording and performing. He’s also a prolific record producer working with the likes of Primal Scream, Tupac, Ice Cube, Outkast and many more, and founded record label The C Kunspyruhzy in 2003. Indeed, he could show a few 20somethings how it’s
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really done. photo www.dougiewallace.com The day after an impromptu rendition of ‘We Got The Funk’ – joined by Nona Hendryx and Simon Le Bon - to celebrate Nile Rodgers’ Legends Award, we manage to get a little time with this extraordinary man to get the lowdown and ask a few more questions… Hi George… It’s a honour and a pleasure to meet you! So, I hear yesterday you performed for Nile Rodgers with Nona Hendryx and she ended up catwalking on the tables? We got up on the stage, I had no idea what we was doing but we had fun up there! Yep. Me and Nona have known each other since she was about 16 years old. I used to cut her hair! (yes, George Clinton used to be a barber in his teens, when he first formed a doo wop group The Parliaments… the rest is history) Your presence here – is it a sign you’re taking your music in an electronic direction? We’ve always been electronic in everything else y’know? Funk is dance music period so it goes from disco to hiphop to techno and electronic; it’s all still a dance move, whenever I see someone’s dancing I want to bring the funk!
You did a bit of dancing yourself last night? Oh I think I was doing something! [laughs] Now let’s go back to the old days – what inspired you to start creating music? I go back to ’56 when Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers brought out Why Do Fools Fall In Love? When that record came out EVERY teenager wanted to be a singer, every boy and girl – it was like the beginning of Rock and Roll, I was in grade school and we started Parliament in grade school. What brought on the transition from Parliament to Funkadelic? The music I started with was DooWop and that led right into the Motown era, but when that started to wane and Rock and Roll had come to Europe and back to the States in the 60’s it came back psychedelic, so we had to do something to stay in touch with the times – we got ourselves a band and became Parliament/Funkadelic. Your live shows were absolutely out of this world – do you feel there’s anyone today that can capture that in their live shows? Nobody’s doing it out there like
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“whenever I see someone’s dancing I want to bring the funk!”
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that, there’s probably someone out there that could do it and will sooner or later but nobody’s done it so far. The spaceship was a phenomena in itself which we donated to the Smithsonian Institute – that along with the gospel type of vibe we had, it’s a different thing. The days when you danced naked round tables! Those were the days! We’d put clothes back on by the time we got to Mothership! What was more fun? Well if you can remember the 60’s you weren’t there! [laughs] All of it’s fun to me – last night was as much fun as I ever had anywhere but it’s always fun when you’ve got loads of people grooving out - Nona and the guy from Duran Duran [Simon Le Bon] funking around. Now I know back in the 60’s there was a bit of acid involved with the dancing naked… Oh that was a pre-requisite! Is there anything now that would give you that euphoric state? I wouldn’t try although normal medicine would probably do it nowadays because of the connotation; it’s for money, the system with all the drugs they sell you on TV now all designed to do the things street drugs did in the 60/70’s. I’m 73 years old – it took me 70 to chill out! Do you have any new projects coming out – given your last record was 2008? I’ve got a book coming out in September/October – my life story and
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I’ve included in the book an album and there’s 33 songs, I’m doing a reality show with my grandkids so by October this year there’s going to be a whole lot out. I did a whole lot of songs with different people – Kendrick Lamar, Rudimental, Boy George. I’m going to make up for lost time – that’s why there’s so many on the album, because while I’ve recorded the songs over the years but I’ve been in the courts with the lawsuits and copyright issues for so long that I didn’t have chance to put them out – I just added more to it this past year so you’ve got 33. One of the issues was the campaign in 2012 – the Unsung, Unshaken and Uncompensated for African-American musicians – can you tell us more about that? Of course all the songs that we did that were sampled – they took all the money from the artists that were sampled – the Dr Dre’s and the Snoop Dogg’s – all those people paid for those songs from their royalties but their record companies never gave them to us; them, the publishing companies along with BMI manipulated that stuff – we had to go all the way to Congress, which is where we’re at now with it because it’s so big that no one wants to cop to it – hundreds of millions of dollars from 25 to 30 years of royalties. We never stopped touring so it’s always on the shelf – you can go and buy those records any time and all the samples and commercials are still happening today with the music – NONE of the band members got paid. I find there’s always been a tendency from the business side of the industry to rip-off the artists – do you think it’s become more difficult or easier for the artists to defend themselves? I think it might be easier now because of all the attention that’s come out about the copyright issues, everybody’s eyes is on that, we’ve made so much noise that I think now it’s going to be easier –Prince
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just got his masters back, the record companies don’t want to deal with every artist like that because there’s a lot of money in lawsuits – congressional law and Supreme court. You can see [that the artists] they’re getting paid better, Dr Dre’s a billionaire now! He’s one that got charged millions of dollars for sampling my songs but I never got the money. Out of all the collaborations in your career which one did you find more fun and interesting? Chilli Peppers are one of my favourites – they wanted to be rock and roll funksters and they did it, when they got their first Grammy they called us to perform with them, they recorded Gangsters Of Love on my last album so we’ve been pretty close. Sly Stone – we’ve been friends, got high together, did crazy shit together. He’s in the same boat as me with trying to get his money between his ex managers, record companies. We call it racketeering as they all get together and have to keep their stuff under the table. What does George Clinton like to do when not doing music? Fishing, I go fishing all the time. What’s the biggest fish you’ve ever caught? 357 lbs. A Marlin. My wife beat me though – got one that was 375 lbs!
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Their debut album is still to these days high in my mood-boosting collection, ‘Oh Lord’ a healthier and far more effective version of Prozac: works when I have the blues, when I see red and every time I generally need a pair of pink glasses on my nose. Now Foxy Shazam are back with their 5th album, Gonzo, that was recorded all in one go and given out for free on the band’s website. An unexpected and welcome move for all fans, followed by an even more welcome US tour. Mmmhhh, ok, what about this side of the pond though? Let’s find out from Eric, Daisy and Alex, kindly finding the time to answer our questions… At a time when artists ask to pay for albums in advance (see Kickstarter, Pledge etc), how did you decide to release an album for free? If there’s no money there’s no problem. Although there’s nothing wrong with using the approach of Kickstarter, we feel the way to make an impact and do something different is to give everything and take nothing. I hear Gonzo was recorded all at once, back to back. Did you get the result you wanted? That is totally true, and yes, we are very happy with the result. How did you come to the decision to lock yourselves in a room and do this? Sudden inspiration? Boredom? Obviously wasn’t to pay the bills… Process of elimination. We tried a couple different techniques of songwriting, some old (writing in pairs, starting acoustically) some new (building songs
photo by Steven King
digitally) but the ideas didn’t really start flowing until we were all standing in the same room with loud amps. How was working with Steve Albini and how did you convince him to be part of this? Seriously, if you know the way Steve works it is by being an available conduit of quality sound production for all genres and levels of musicians. He is unique. He was a pleasure to work with. Totally inspiring dude. How did you find Foxy Shazam progressed as a band throughout your 5 records? ,Considering that we’ve been a group of between 5 and 6 dudes going thru their twenties with all the shifting interests and upheavals that entails, I’d say we’ve progressed naturally. To me, our records are the soundtrack of us growing together and as individuals. With this record being softer in sound than your previous work, where are you going next? Nice try, we cherish the element of surprise too much to answer this question. Your debut was more comedy oriented and over the top, is it something you grew out of? See the answer above about growing up. That our earlier work comes across as “comedy” is evidence that we’ve gotten better at getting our point across as we’ve grown How about your antics on stage, can we expect the same kind of funny energetic show you got us used to? Oh, absolutely, but we are taking to
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the next level with a light show, pyrotechnics, live animals onstage, and a live beheading. Some of those are lies, but it will be tight, I promise. What is that picture of Tom Hanks doing on your Facebook page? He’s a fan, and asked if we’d put a picture of him up to prove to his kids that he knows us. He was supposed to send us the Forrest Gump 20th Anniversary box set, but it never showed up. And what’s this all pink/purple thing? We look good in those colors. Don’t you agree? (Eric) In ‘Tragic Thrill’ you mention finding out who you really are… Did you? I did a little more than i knew before. But I don’t think there is an end to figuring out who you are. (Eric) As a father, would you like your son to follow your footsteps or would you prefer him to be a lawyer/doctor/ carpenter…. Anything but! I want them to do whatever is strongest in their hearts. of course. And last but not least, after this lengthy US tour can we hope to see you in the UK and Europe live again? Hopefully we’ll be seeing our friends in the UK and making some new ones on the continent before the end of the year. Stay tuned!
June 2014
Deemed as the ‘Belgian Metallica’, Channel Zero have overcome personal tragedy to release Kill All Kings. Matt Dawson finds out from vocalist Franky De Smet Van Damme what’s behind their songs and what it’s like to tour with Bodycount… Channel Zero got back together a few years ago after some time – what inspired the reunion? In Belgium we have a crazy status [of being] pretty big in the 90’s. The whole thing started when we replace the American band Live on a very big festival and back then Belgian bands didn’t really show up on the main stages, all of a sudden we were there, we did our thing and everybody loved it so ever since then in Belgium we can’t do anything wrong anymore! For 2010 our manager contacted me – he was one of the 10/15 people that tried to get us back on the rails but I was always ‘Look: even if the intention is really good, once you meet the 4 crazy dudes that are in that band, there’s a big chance that we’ll be off the discussion in about 2 days!’ Marlon for me was the one that really did his homework so we did one show and since the old guitar player didn’t want to join due to ear trouble we put some shows upfront and that 1 show exploded into 7 shows. All of a sudden in 45 minutes we sold more than 12,000 tickets so we were falling off our chairs thinking ‘What the hell?!’ Of course
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it’s amazing but the one thing was to do the one show but we’re now doing 6 with 1 show for disabled people and we didn’t have a guitar player! It took some time and we couldn’t find the right guy so we had 5 options with help from Roadrunner, we tried Mikey – the funny part was to us he wasn’t well known but the vibe was there! I didn’t have the big plan of restarting the band because I was having a good paid job selling PA systems – I had to go San Francisco for training so Mikey said ‘Stay 2/3 days at my place, we’re going to have some fun!’ At that moment the volcano exploded in Iceland so I had to stay more than 1 month in LA – the lady at United offered a month or a month and a half , I was like Hallelujah! – so I was obligated to make music, what a punishment! [laughs] Mikey and I got into a cheap, small studio and wrote stuff that became the 2011 album, I quit my job again due to playing so much over here, we started to get the whole thing back on track, I think also the difference between this album and 2011’s is we took way more time and Mikey and I know each other more. The album’s doing well because doing a band in 2014 – it’s so easy to fall into a trap of looking back – which I’m not saying you can’t – but I like taking risks and making a good mixture. I’m really happy – when you’ve done music for this long you’re used to the ups with stadium then the down phase. Of course during the recording of Kill All Kings Phil Baheux passed away, what led to Roy Mayorga being the choice to replace Phil? The thing is on the Saturday Phil passed away the following Monday he was going to record the drums – he was completely healthy, there was no sign that he was going to leave us so it felt like a baseball bat smashed us in so many ways, after 1 month press in Belgium were trying to get info so I was like ‘We don’t have any news!’ We didn’t know what we were going to do because I knew taking another Belgian drummer wasn’t the problem, I’m sure it was going to be a big shift and I didn’t want to get into all that stress because sometimes everybody’s opinions are just like ‘ugh!’
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All of a sudden Mikey mentioned Roy due to him being a really good friend and said’ If you still want to do this, I want to do this just to help you out and do what’s right towards the legacy of Phil.’ Immediately I was like ‘That’s awesome!’ – a real clear light of day moment – Roy is like for me one of the top 3 drummers so it made sense for me, Roy’s a down to earth guy and a really great person, he nailed it in 3 days – he came up with stuff that left my jaw on the ground, it turned out to be the best match we could do like a gift from heaven! I would like to pick a few tracks off the album and let you describe what they mean to you – starting with the opening track ‘Dark Passenger’. Dexter fan by any chance? You got it! I watched Dexter until season 6 and then everybody tells me not to watch [the] later [episodes] (laughs) Next is ‘Burn The Nation’… I don’t know if you remember but at the beginning of last year France had these heavy riots going on and I thought it was like ‘how do you fucking do that?’ They’re literally burning
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streets down and the idea of Burn The Nation – I’m not a guy that believes revolution is the solution but sometimes a spark starts and all of a sudden … I speak fluent French because [of] half of the band so we felt it really hard as everybody was thinking whether it was coming to our country – we had small incidents that didn’t quite pick up unlike France but I thought it was amazing how a little spark of frustration explodes and all of a sudden it’s like everywhere. Electronic Cocaine… Well that’s a term used in the States for people that get hooked to social media and the red dot from your smartphone when you have messages – the human brain is easily tickled by that – we don’t even realise that we’re hooked so hard to something that’s so simple but it’s there all the time, people check messages all night even if they’re the stupidest things. 3 or 4 months ago I dropped my Facebook off my phone and the 1st 2 weeks I was checking for something that’s not there! The title track of the album – Kill All Kings It’s a metaphor to the whole financial system, a reaction on the whole situation that we’re living in. When you work over here you have a little over 50% in your pocket – when I see people that were struggling during the 2008 financial crisis being solved by the Central European Bank, which plays God in my opinion, and all these countries are obligated to pay so much rent – they literally strangled Greece . I’m like ‘What’s the use of so much rent?’ Finally – Army Of Bugs. In the 50’s in the States American espionage organisations were looking for animals to use for warfare. They have those drones that are smaller than a
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ping-pong ball that fly but they have a battery that dies after 5-10 minutes, you can’t use them. I read a couple of articles that asks if they could put something on a big bug that flies so that fascinated me a little bit – we can download music in the air (cloud) so I wouldn’t be surprised if something passed by that’s a fly going back into a station recording information! It wouldn’t surprise me. Out of all those – which is your favourite? I like Electronic Cocaine as it was one of the first songs we made when we started to write the new album and for one reason or the other that has that musical structure that was meant to be, it’s also a little bit out of the usual standard metal song. Along with Duisternis – the first time I’ve sung something in French – it’s a shock to many to hear me sing in French as singing in English is more natural! Now Metal Blade will be releasing the album in the UK – what led to that relationship? We proposed the album to a few labels and Metal Blade got the tapes and instantly were like they wanted to do this, we got our first offer worldwide a week later. We have to be honest – getting something out there is easier said than done. Metal Blade is also the label that distributed our third album in the USA back in 1995 so for me it was a really positive vibe as the last album was distributed a little bit in Germany and France then when it came to the UK the first question was what are your promotional strengths? The problem is if you can’t answer that most will ask why you want to play there. Now in this context it’s a good start to building up something new, it’s a good rep-
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resentation. If the music talks, the rest walks. We played UK with Bodycount and it’s a whole new adventure – we’re not 26 anymore but we want to kick some ass! Bodycount you say? How was touring with that band – there has to be a few Ice-T stories? He’s such a positive crazy dude, always fun when he’s around. The thing is in 1995 – on that show where we replaced Live, he was after us! – he came on Belgian TV and went (Franky does an impression of Ice-T) ‘Normally I’m the first one getting on stage and kicking ass, all of a sudden Channel Zero took our spot!’ In 1997 we got the offer to go on tour and he kept his word, that was a 55 day tour - they flew from town to town while we took a bus so it was complicated getting there on time with traffic – we had such a fun time, we were in a hall while there was 25 back stages with tons of beer, he passes by asking where’s your backstage, we reply that we didn’t get one. All of a sudden he’s going ‘if they don’t have a decent backstage in 5 minutes, everybody leaves!’ People jumping out of closets going [makes noise like Curly from The Three Stooges! A great dude. At the moment no UK gigs on the horizon then? We have so many festivals in Belgium going on and since it gets released the 24th June we need time to build it up plus Mikey lives in Tokyo while Seven who’s playing drums at this moment lives in Stockholm we have to get together to get the whole thing rolling. We hope after Summer we get the chance to get on a tour so we’re stoked to see what’s going to happen. It’s always for me an extra challenge to see if I can convince UK people to listen to my stuff. So as a final message – convince the people of the UK WHY we should catch Channel Zero live? Well Kill all Kings brings you Channel Zero 2014 with a slash of 90’s metal, we always try to have a good time, we don’t have to forget music has to stay fun, hope we can change your mind for 90 minutes. Just have a great time!
June 2014
Burlesque! Welcome to your one stop drop for all the news on the best burlesque nights, in the capital and beyond! My name is Sophia Disgrace and I’ve performed at numerous events in the U.K and abroad, from festivals to the most exclusive clubs. I tend perform in a neo burlesque style and incorparate other elements, such as fire play, into my routines. Burlesque - or ‘the art of tease’ as it’s also known, first rose to prominence in the 1950’s; in recent years it’s enjoyed something of a revival, with stars such as Dita Von Teese helping to popularise the scene once again. Here are my pick of all things burlesque this month, enjoy it while the good weather lasts...
SUGARKICKS GETS ANIMATED!
@ The Latest Musicbar, Brighton Friday 6th June, 9pm-2am This rather unique night is embracing all things animated. Expect a wry homage to all things Disney and beyond - with a distinctly adult twist! Highlights will include a pole dancing Lara Croft (Yum!) and a ‘Slutty Snow White’.... Go sully your childhood and join in the fun by adding to the mischief yourself - fancy dress is encouraged, but not compulsory. Tickets are from £7.00,available via http://www.skiddle.com/whatson/
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By Sophia Disgrace
SUMMERS GONE BY BURLESQUE SHOW + VINTAGE MARKET
@ The Frog and Bucket, Preston Sunday 22nd June, 7pm-10.45pm Travel back in time to the balmy summers of the 1930s and 40s, when guys were dashing and gals were full of good time sass. This quirky little event is offering a vintage oasis for the night to all those who are tired of modern day living. Enjoy a selection of retro inspired performances, whilst browsing a selection of thoughtfully rendered vintage market stalls. Tickets from £6.50, email info@ burlesquecomedy.com
This month’s velvet curtain reveals...
Burlesque Spotlight! The spotlight falls on...
COP AN EIFFEL
AN EVENING OF FRENCH THEMED BURLESQUE & CABARET @ The Picturedrome, Huddersfield Friday 13th June, 7pm-4am Now, with an event title that snappy how can you not buy a ticket?! This event is homaging -you guessed it - all things Gallic. Expect plenty of sauciness and impeccably rendered costumes. Acts include the lovely Constance Peach, the exuberant Giddy Heights plus guests - oh yes and a couple of gals who like to dance a Can Can or two! Tickets are £12, available from www. picturedrome.net
Get fit in a shimmy (or two): if you’ve had enough of the gym and can’t be arsed with another lap of the pool then this is for you.... Yes now you can prance, pose AND tone at these new keep fit classeswith a difference! Do burlesque and keep fit at the same time? YES PLEASE! For more information have a gander here: http://burlexfitness.co.uk/ and get to it!
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Mark sits at the bar speaking with Sara, Dave and Danny before their album launch event to promote sophomore album Rising Sun at the Servant Jazz Quarters. Tell me how the Fruitful Earth came about, who started the band, where are you all from? We are a live trio playing laid back Rock ‘n’ Roll that can get full on at times with laid back grooves, sweet and soulful. Because we are a trio live its pretty essential with little decoration. We have drums, bass, piano and vocals and its quite dynamic live. No guitar? No guitar live which is sort of a bold thing. And the band consists of? Sarah Blair playing piano and singing, David Gordon playing bass, and Danny Mayers on drums. Who are the writers in the band?
Sarah: I write all of the songs, that is what’s happened for the first two albums. Before I met Dave and Danny the line up of the band had been changing and its really only since Dave and Danny have been part of the band that it has finally come together as a unit and it’s a very strong sound. It’s always been a strong band but there is something that happens when you work with a group of people over a period of time. We’ve had a few months gigging and getting our stuff together. You’re compared to some signifi-
cant artists like Hendrix, Carole King, and Elton John. Is this the sound you are trying to reproduce? Dave: I don’t think we’re trying to reproduce any particular sound, it’s just what’s coming out. I mean we grew up in the Seventies, well I did, Sarah is a bit younger than me and Danny is a lot younger than me, but I grew up with all of that kind of music so what I play will reflect a lot of what I listened to in the Seventies. How do you feel about the comparisons? Sarah: I am a big big Carole King fan but I wouldn’t say that the music is influenced by her, it’s just that I happen to be a woman playing piano and I think it’s an obvious connection to make. It’s not one I would make but I am very honoured to be compared to her, especially in terms of the song writing because of her history with Gerry Goffin writing fantastic songs. Those are all good things in a sense but it’s not the full story behind Fruitful Earth, it’s just that it’s got a piano in it! At this point a guy walks in and jokingly asks if there is a gig tonight and are the band any good? It was Andy J Jones who helped record the album and has worked with people like Squeeze. He also helped out with percussions. You said you grew up in the Seventies. Have you worked with any other artists along the way? Dave: I’ve worked w i t h Canned Heat, some TV work with Julian Lennon back in A u s t ra l i a , David Gates from Bread playing
with him on tour and various other people like Chad Smith from Red Hot Chilli Peppers. What are you intending to do with this second album? To reach out to people with really great music. There’s a lot of heart and soul going into the recording and the live stuff as well. The intention is really quality because the songs were worked on a lot; the structure, the sound, in order to get them sounding good. So we would like to reach a broad section of people. I don’t think we are completely main stream but we have got broad appeal. Sarah: We recorded it last year and it took about six months. It would
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have taken a bit less than that but Andy’s a really busy guy, my schedule is quite busy so trying to get into the studio was tough. We may get a couple of sessions each week. We recorded it sequentially and unfortunately I hadn’t met these lovely guys then (Dave and Danny) so I was using session players for the album. Starting with drums first, then the bass, then the piano. Dave: Sarah is an amazing artist. Classically trained I hear? Sarah: Yes but that hasn’t held me back. It took me a long time to loosen up because when you’ve had classical training there’s a lot of discipline that goes into that which is really good but you have to learn to let go of a few things if you want to play good rock and roll music. I am really grateful for it now because I went through a time where I wanted to be much more free in my life and the training was quite rigid, but it was what was on offer at that time in my life and I’m just grateful that I’ve got it now and I really enjoy
So how did you meet these guys (Dave and Danny)? Danny: I was always looking to play with great players so I was always looking at adverts and Sarah posted an advert for a drummer. So I just went along for the audition. But when I first heard the music, I thought this is the kind of stuff I want to play. So who do you listen to at the moment? Danny: I’m a big Jeff Buckley fan, Gary Clarke junior, John Mayer but I’m a big fan of guitarists as well actually. I love blues, I’m a massive blues fan. I haven’t listened enough to Hendrix, I need to do that but John Mayer is a massive Hendrix fan and some of his Hendrix covers are amazing. playing classical reper- What about your drummer influtoire; I still do that but my heart is in ences? There’s a guy called Steve Jordan who the stuff that I do with the band.
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plays for John Mayer but he’s played for many artists, he’s quite a big session player. There’s a guy called Chad Smith who Dave has played with but to be honest I listen to more guitar based stuff. So Dave, growing up in the Seventies. Who was you bass player idol? Stanley Clarke and then Marcus Miller, Jacko Prestorias. I like to listen to Frank Zappa and Steeley Dan. That’s the music I grew up with and I still listen to today. What are we going to see from Fruitful Earth in the next year and beyond? Sarah: Gigs. Exciting live shows. I don’t pretend to know it all, I’m a bit of a beginner playing live shows but I am hoping to get better and be good. Dave: We just want people to come and see the band, like it, and tell their friends and hopefully they’ll like it too.
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San Antonio’s Nothing More may be new to all those reading this interview but when their first EVER UK show is at the prestigious Download Festival it’s only fair that we at Sonic get to know the band well. Vocalist Jonny Hawkins discusses the Download appearance, what Nothing More means to him and even discusses Terence McKenna with Matt Dawson. Nothing More’s relatively new in the UK despite being around for over 10 years or so… I’ve been with the guitar and bassist for over 10 years but as far as what Nothing More is today I’d say it’s about 3 years, maybe 4. When it all started what would you say was the main philosophy for the band? We really started with a few things but one big thing was [that] for the path we were taking it was incredibly necessary to abandon any forms of a plan b and what I mean by that is we were like any kid in America being encouraged to go to college, we saw a lot of bands around us that were incredibly talented and failing, not because of the external factors but more often because internally one or more of the members had a plan b where they could go and get a good job and live a comfortable life but they would do that and sacrifice what they were working towards in the music industry. We took note of that and did not go to college, well I didn’t go and the others dropped out, we knew the going would get tough because we were setting out to do this DIY and without a label so the plan b would be a weak point in our exterior trying to break through to the other side of this world. We also stated a commitment that no matter what happens we would stick it out for each other because if any of us backed out it would affect all of us. Do you feel the philosophy has changed, if at all? That aspect of thought didn’t really change, we still hold that today but I think in regards to more bigger things in life it’s evolved a lot. We all grew up in the church – when we were kids we had religious families and experiences because of that upbringing, a lot of them were good but some ingrained some weird thoughts into our heads
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are tracks like Christ Copyright and My MTV that aren’t afraid to go after particular things. What track from the album should people do you think need to pay close attention to? I could go in a lot of directions with this one but I think the most useful and helpful song is ‘This Is The Time’, I say that because a lot of the songs like ‘Christ Copyright’ and ‘My MTV’ are about specific things we’re pissed off about and see as things that need to be changed or fixed that people need to be aware of but at the end of the day most people what’s more important is how they cope with the inevitable things that we all have to deal with in life and ‘This Is The Time’ really focuses on one of the hardest things of being human which is learning how to let go – the anatomy of letting go. We’re very good creatures at having these emotional muscles that are very strong at gripping things but the muscles to let go of things are weaker, I don’t know why that is exactly that just seems to be the case for most people and so it explores the idea and is a concept that weaves through each song on the album. Do you expect backlash from particular groups over songs like Christ Copyright? It’s actually a song I’ve always wanted that were shed when we got out into to play at Westboro Baptist Church! the real world and started grappling with life ourselves and coming to form The weird thing is I think we’re not trying to be polarising as much as we’re our own beliefs. to find the middle way – trying I think the biggest change is that we trying to get to the root of everything rather learned to value questions more than than being distracted by the symptoms answers and we saw that as we have of all the problems which to me [what] once been but also as many people a lot of our social disagreements are – we as humans have a strong ad- prohibiting our progress togetherand is diction to certainty and I think that what team you’re on, what political more often than not is the root of the party you’re involved with, what reliproblem with whatever we’re trying to gion you are and less focus on the root figure out in this world with different of everything underneath all of that. groups of people [and] with conflict. You have people that are so convinced The backlash towards our lyrics – that they know what’s going on just we’ve had some because we do come because they saw it on the television from a very conservative area but for or someone told them a story that the most part we’ve tried our best to genuinely display we care about peothey were born into. more than trying to break them We want to spread doubt and also ple down and beat them over the head spread hope at the same time even with an idea, we’re just venting our though those have been mutually ex- own feelings but at the end of the day clusive most of the time – with the we’re trying to help. church specifically – because I don’t Do you feel that these days the interthink they’re comfortable with that. I can tell because on the album there net is much stronger in getting music photo by Johnny White
June 2014
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photo by Jody Domingue
out there? I think it’s a more exciting medium but as much as strong – I’m not really sure because it’s much more expansive like a giant cloud that has lighting through it but I feel that television – what it used to be – is like a powerful stream of water, potent because so many people had it and it was less distraction. Things are changing as it gets more powerful though. When it comes to social media – you guys are quite prominent, do you feel that’s helped? I feel like it’s been an amazing infrastructure and support system but I don’t think it’s been something that has created our following as much as going out into the real world and playing shows – that’s the way people are connected with us but once they are it’s amazing. We started touring when Facebook was just in colleges and before anyone could get on it, at that time I remember sitting in a van on a laptop just out of high school and taking people’s information down in email lists, trying to stay in touch with EVERYONE was like a task but now everyone has a profile it’s all getting better and better. It’s only becoming more inter-connected. Download Festival is your first UK show – that has to be nerve wracking surely! How is it doing a show at one of our biggest festivals? First and foremost it’s incredibly exciting but honestly you mention nerves and all that – having done this for so long the only thing that gets me nervous is hometown shows because the audience are all people who knew
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FFDP guys at Welcome To Rockville, they seem to be excited to have us on so that’s a good sign. Now I wanted to ask your influences –particularly Terence McKenna so I wanted to know what led to the love for him? I came across him when – and I don’t know if you’ve done this – I went down the YouTube rabbit trail and I was listening to Carl Jung and Alan Watt video, I came across some of his stuff – his biggest thing was taking a new perspective on hallucinogenics… DMT… That interested me, I’ve never been one to be excited about substance abuse for the sake of doing it but when I was younger I had hallucinations – quite vivid ones – minus substances, his whole take on it which is exploratory and a sober look into their purpose. We’ve pushed them out and them as inherently bad as a you in elementary school and middle labelled society but actually things that school but opportunities like this ex- we can learnthere’s from them if used in the cite me, I just want it to happen soon- right ways. I tend to resonate with that er! same feeling as well. Who are you looking forward to I personally found about McKenna catching? via the Joe Rogan Experience, Some I’m excited about are Killshim and Duncan Truswitch Engage who we’re about sell’s podcasts have to do some shows with, Aerogood for discoversmith for sheer curiosity, Dilling things like that inger Escape Plan – that’ll – Emil from OM/ be pretty chaotic! Grails is on there. I’ll recommend Greg’s stage presence is the Psychedelic something else! Salon Podcast There’s a lot of bands, which is like Memphis May Fire… an archive of Letlive are good to catch on McKenna’s lecthe Friday if you can. tures. When it comes to the UK I’ll check it out! I presume there are more plans? For this run Download’s the only one confirmed but we’re going to try and come back late Autumn/early Winter. That’s the goal. I saw a US tour with Five Finger Death Punch and Volbeat – feelings toward touring on a tour that big around America? It’s overwhelming, we’ve never done a stadium tour before so this is a huge step, I just know it’s going to be insane and we met the
June 2014
As the Black Moon begins to rise, Stefan Weinerhall talks to Sonic Shocks revealing why you won’t see Falconer for at least another year, 3 top moments in the band’s 15 years career and why he has no time for Game Of Thrones… Given Falconer has been going for 15 years – if you count the demos created in 1999 - what would you say are the top 3 moments you’ve had while being in the group? 1, recording the first album was something really special and interesting. It was anew style for me using a vocalist that didn’t really fit but brought something special to the music with his voice. 2, the gig at Wacken in 2002. It was our 3rd gig ever and it was in front of thousands of people, it surely felt both fantastic and surreal. 3, the return of Mathias in 2006 for the NORTHWIND album. Things fell into place again and we all felt like we came home after hitch-hiking around for a while musically. You worked with Andy LaRocque for the album – I presume most of the band are fans of Mercyful Fate/King Diamond so working with him must have been a delight? I can’t say I’m a fan of either band. I do have a hard time with the vocals often although The Eye is easily their best album. I’d prefer King Diamond over Mercyful Fate. Nowadays we don’t really see Andy as the ”rockstar” but more as the fun dude in the studio. But I must admit that for the first time we met it was like meeting a Hollywood star. For me he was mainly the guy who had recorded an album with Chuck Schuldiner of Death. For any young bands – describe how it is working at Sonic Train studios? It feels calm and laid back, not as ”productive” as one might think. Of course we work but the atmosphere is often quite ”light” making it a un-stressful environment. If you could sum up Black Moon Ris-
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ing in 5 words what would they be? Intensity, riffs, roots, sombre, comeback Regarding your live show – what can we expect on this tour and how would you describe it in one word as a TV show, movie and book? B/W still picture, since we’re such an inactive band regarding
live gigs. What are Falconer’s plans in regards to summer festivals? Actually we planned to do some festivals this summer but when I finally came around many festivals were already booked, so we just postponed it until next year. If we were to play live we didn’t want to start rehearsing all the song from scratch again if there wasn’t any special gigs planned. Since we haven’t played the live songs since 2009, it’s not like we know them from the back of our hands. So I really hope that we can do some festivals in 2015 to show the people some kind of life sign at least. But then again I think that our fans know what to expect from us and what not. It might not be the most sensible thing for a band to not promote itself, I mean, I’m sure that if we would have toured as much as we could have we would be way bigger and sell more albums than we do now, but we have always claimed to be studio band. In the past we were restrained by Mathias’ schedule but nowadays we all have other obligations and interests on the side so we’re all satisfied with the current situation. The creative process is the reason I do music, I have always considered myself more of a songwriter than an artist and I’m certainly not gonna change when I’m 38. Old geezers don’t change that easily! Let’s say Falconer were asked to curate a festival titled the Jester’s Ball – who would you book?
Aah, that’s hard. Blood Ceremony, Blackmore’s Night, Jess and the Ancient Ones, Jethro tull, Ten. That could have been a slightly 70’sish medieval rock festival in my style. What is your favourite story of mythology? Well the only mythology I really know is the Norse so I’d have to chose the story where Loki fooled everyone in the world by killing Balder by making the blind Höder use the bow and shoot with a arrow of mistletoe. The only thing in the world that Balder’s mother hadn’t asked to at all cost Hoder to hurt Balder. Well, there’s more to it but I’ll leave it at this. If you’re a fan – thoughts on Game Of Thrones or any other fantasy based novel/series? Haven’t seen GoT, although my wife is hooked on it. The little glimpses I’ve seen seems very interesting but I know I’d get hooked on it to and I have other things to spend my time on, so I’ll try to NOT get more things interfering on my time. Haven’t seen ROME either but it looks damn interesting too. VIKINGS I saw 2 episodes of and it was not for me. It was to polished, too much beautiful people. Too ‘americanised’ if you like. Which albums have you been listening to the most – current or classic? Iron Maiden, Powerslave Jethro tull, Thick as a brick Kiss, Hotter than hell Those are the bands I can get lost in , sometimes just overdosing before I feel that I’ve gotten my dose for some time.
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SASHA GRADIVA She’s been dubbed the Russian Madonna – there’s in fact an uncanny resemblance there – and Gun Girl due to a very special red carpet gown. However, we were impressed by her captivating blend of pop and EDM. Sasha Gradiva has shared the stage with acts such as Icona Pop, Emeli Sande, Cher Lloyd, Adam Lambert & others, enchanting crowds with her distinctive visually enhanced performances. We found her in Ibiza promoting new
single ‘Unbreakable’; she ditched platinum blonde for firey red and, judging from her Facebook, LA for la Isla Blanca… Welcome to Ibiza! Is this your first time here? It’s my first time in Ibiza, actually my first time at the IMS so I’m very excited to see what it feels like. You’re here to promote your new single ‘Unbreakable’. Yes I am. We’re going to release this single pretty soon – my team got stuck in Monaco so I’m here by myself for interviews and meeting business so I’m being an artist and manager at the same time! How does it feel? A bit crazy! I read a quote earlier on your Facebook – ‘Artists are always learning, artists are always questioning, artists make choices based on their
feelings NOT spreadsheets.’ Where did that come from? I think I was angry at the time – angry with my producer I think because he was being robotic and not creative and at that moment I decided that OK I’ve got to define what the artist is. Is it difficult for an artist to deal with the business side of things - I always thought they’re two opposites. They are. Thankfully I don’t do it all the time, it’s just happened. We’re having a few shows in Europe right now so my management had to go to Monaco to figure out a few things but I love to communicate and meet new people so I don’t think it’ll be a bad experience, it will be good. Let’s talk about Unbreakable – how did it come to be? What’s it about? We wrote it with A Poet Named Life, he’s a Grammy nominated guy for ‘Boom Boom Pow’ by The Black Eyed Peas, it was a great experience – [we] both were going through something personal so it resolved into this song. When I came into the studio I said I wanted to write something where I’d be just screaming not singing then we injected that into the song. No one is unbreakable – what breaks you? I’m pretty tolerant, I hate laziness, that’s the only thing that can really get me, if I see people are lazy it drives me mental!
You’re a very active person? It’s not about being active, I think it’s about being effective and proactive. I’m fine with people that don’t know something but try something, as long as I see they’re trying I will be by their side helping but if I see lazy people – can’t deal with it. So what’s next – any plans for the UK? Well in 2013 I’ve done a US tour – I got to see each and every state, I love US fans, they’re so far the best, I believe we’re booking a tour for the summer and it’s going to be a European tour – hopefully I’ll be in London. It’s one of my favourite cities, also I feel that the most creative minds migrate from one country to another and right now it’s the time where most are in London. What’s the most aspiring part of London? You’ll laugh but I love history and gothic things so every time I go to Westminster Abbey – I feel so inspired there! What can we expect from your live show? Usually I have my dancers with me that I work with very closely, I design my costumes myself – I love lights in the costumes and every few months I like to change them and I’ve got something interesting in mind, hopefully I’ll be in LA long enough to pre-
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“I saw this picture of a sunset and there was a girl in a long skirt carrying a huge machine gun, this is normal for them�
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June 2014
pare a new program but I always change things or even if I sing the same songs I like to remix them – I just get really bored fat so I need to change everything over time. Speaking of costumes that famous one at the Grammys [A dress with a gun sleeve which gave her the nickname Gun Girl in the US music media] – did you design that? That was my idea, it was executed by amazing, talented designers, it wouldn’t have happened without them but the creative idea behind it was mine. A pink gown and a machine gun… What was the message you wanted to put across? Thanks for asking! You’d be surprised how many didn’t even ask this question: they just assumed that I wanted to shock people. It did shock and drove a lot of attention but the message behind it is actually pretty spiritual – I’m part of the charity organisation called Kids Creating Peace and before the Grammys I was in Palestine with this organisation and it’s so fascinating and shocking what I saw there, kids next to solders and you know in Israel girls are in the army, I saw this picture of a sunset and there was a girl in a long skirt carrying a huge machine gun, this is normal for them because they have constant conflict so I was amazed by this image and I wanted to show
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it via the not matching Barbie style dress with the disturbing machine gun next to it. But most people just thought it was a new fashion trend: ‘Barbie Terminator’! Another name you’ve been given is the Russian Madonna, although you also get comparisons with Lady Gaga and other female stars; who’s your main inspiration? Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna – she’s a powerful feminine force that inspired so many women around the world, I think she’s done an amazing job - George Michael and Shakespeare’s Sister. Shakespeare’s Sister… Not one I hear often as an influence. I remember for ‘Unbreakable’ listening to their single ‘Stay’ – thankfully I have a big range with my voice which was another thing I wanted in ‘Unbreakable’ . This range in your voice – was it natural or something you had to work at? Where I grew up we didn’t have a school for pop singing, we had one for opera singing so I was going there for a while; naturally I have a pretty low voice but they were teaching how to sing high in opera. Music critics often describe me as combining the range of Kesha and Madonna – I guess that’s a compliment! How did your sound of pop and electronic come together? Well this is my third EDM conference but I’m coming from the pop world, I’ve been working with Tricky Stewart who wrote and produced ‘Single Ladies’, ‘Umbrella’ etc. I was very deep into pop and I love EDM. Believe it or not I sometimes do acoustic sets and I love the intimacy about it, but my natural energy is to perform remixes and to create a show that I will still be in the Top 40 world but give the same energy as a lot of big name DJs – crowds, big uplifting shows. Do you have a dream DJ that you would like to work with? Avicii – I like his pop songs and his musicality; I’m not a fan of hard EDM, I like the pop element that sticks in people’s minds, something you can be emotionally attached to. What’s your position on the re-
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cent events in Russia? I actively oppose the current Russian government regarding anti gay laws and I feel sad and also upset that my own country lives in a different world, they’re just not getting it. It’s annoying to feel that they’re late with everything. I was part of the demonstrations in LA on the day of the Winter Olympics opening. On a day to day basis no one hates gay people, but they forbade the expression of being gay which can be dangerous; when governments make laws they should think about what outcome it would get. People are more tolerant in Moscow/St Petersburg towards the LGBT community, but in smaller cities it’s disturbing. What’s next after Unbreakable in regards to the UK/Europe? Hopefully I come with my performances to the UK, after this single I’ll be releasing another – making music non-stop! In the meanwhile I’ll in Germany and Monaco after this. Where can we find out more and keep up-to-date about you? I saw you follow your Facebook personally, is that a good way? I’m very active on social media – I engage as much as I can, creating new T-shirts; I feel this is my responsibility as part of what I do, I try and interact as much as I can, it is important for me. Follow me on Twitter @ sashagradiva !
June 2014
It took a while to get ‘Safari Inn’ out, but was definitely worth the wait. Besides, the past three years gave music fans a chance to get to know this band where it really counts: on the live circuit. From the 9th June we can finally enjoy The Tricks straight from our CD player, MP3 device, mobile phone, iPad, whatever rocks your boat. In the meanwhile, the boys had some fun answering our questions and they even took the time to make this interview almost as colourful as they are. It’s not every day that we find a band who can bring a mailer to life, so we decided to leave it exactly as we received it. Hope you enjoy reading this as much as we did; we’re off to try the mescaline… eeerrrr… the album… Your debut album is out on June 9th after 3 years of hard work; what took you so long and are you happy with the results? Joel: We got signed early in our development as a band; we were signed on potential. So over the last three years we have been working on our sound and songs, building our reputation, playing shows around the UK, just working out what The Tricks is. At intervals throughout this process we went to LA on 3 separate occasions to record the songs we had been playing on tour. The record should have come sooner- there have been setbacks and fuck ups- but in the end we have got there. The album is a testament to perseverance. John: Too much fannying around, and yes I’m happy with it. It’s delightful to have a whole album out that has a perfect sprightly, punchy tone to it ready for the summer. It captures the sound of us four guys going at it, sweating with our instruments in a room together (in a purely musical and not homoerotic way). That’s important to me... not too many tricks in the studio... only four needed.
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worlds. In London it rains; in LA it shines. In London we eat a traditional English breakfast; in LA we eat a Taco Bell breakfast burrito. But we love both cities. Inevitably, a lot of the darker, rough-around-theedges songs were written in London and the shinier, more widescreen songs were written in LA. John: Having no window in your bedroom in London can be depressing at times. LA has constant sunshine and a recording studio for us to hang out at. Definitely affects the output I would think. Eliot: Yeah, In London you know who you are and what you’re doing. Once you land in L.A. you instantly feel like you’re on a film set, which you pretty much always are. It creates an odd sense of belonging somewhere that you actually have never been to based on memories from things you didn’t actually do but you’ve seen in a film. I think this helped us ground ourselves and take on influences quicker than if we’d gone somewhere that was totally new.
While getting this album together, you got together a loyal fan base with your famed live shows; what’s special about The Tricks live, and was it difficult to translate that on record? Joel: In our live show we experiment with the structure and presentation of our songs. Fuck with people’s perception a bit; you think you know ‘Not Too Young’ but we’re going to add a psychedelic intro, just to wig you out. It’s very atmospheric. On ‘Safari Inn’ we have presented the songs in a more straight-to-the-point fashion. There’s no meandering; the songs and sounds go straight for the jugular. John: Playing live is the whole point ‘Safari Inn’ was born in Hackney and of playing in a band for me. If you raised in LA, how do you find two don’t go all in during a live perforsuch different environments influ- mance then there is no point. I think our individual passion and love for enced your sound and lyrics? is accelerated and compleJoel: London and LA are different music mented when we all play live togeth-
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photo Andy Wilksher er. I think that is what people like to see in a live performance, people who are totally involved and consumed by what they do. June also sees the release of a double A side single, On Trial/Gilgamesh. Can you tell us more about these tracks and why did you choose them to introduce ‘Safari Inn’? Joel: ‘On Trial’ is a brooding, building song; we love playing it live. People are quick to judge certain individuals actions both in the media and in everyday life; sometimes you’ve got to respect those individual’s conviction. That sounds like philosophical bollocks so maybe you should draw your own conclusions on what it’s about! Gilgamesh was inspired by ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’ (not the restaurant in Camden!) which is an ancient poem. You should read it. These songs sum up the two aspects of The Tricks character; On Trial is reflective and slow-burning, Gilgamesh is really direct. John: On Trial - People who don’t give a shit about what others think... good or bad. Gilgamesh - The never ending search for what might be around the next corner.
June 2014
Let’s try to describe ‘Safari Inn’ to our readers with a word association round; what would this album be if it was… Tricks: A car... it would be a 49 Mercury. The car James Dean drove in Rebel Without a Cause. A meal... A burger. Eliot ate so many burgers during the recording of the album in LA that we’re surprised he’s not the size of Elvis. His record was 5 in one day. A season... Summer. It’s a hot BBQ album with patches of rain. A drug... Booze. Or heroin. Whatever’s available. Eliot: Or Mescaline, takes about 3 years to grow a decent amount but then you’re in for a great trip of enlightenment. A movie... True Romance. ‘Safari Inn’ is the motel in True Romance. We stayed there when we recorded the album. You have a few gigs booked this summer, any Festival slot being discussed? If you had to pick a UK Festival to play at, which one would it be? Tricks: We may pop up at a few festivals... Watch this space. We’d fucking love to play the big ones like Glastonbury... Or Reading...
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up with loads of different people. Sounds fun but probably not great for his health. Eliot: Yeah I heard he’s also had death threats from that other NY pizza themed band, Personel & The Pizzas, obviously it’s a dangerous business. Maybe we should start a burger themed band or has someone else already done that? What’s the final goal for the Tricks: playing a few gigs here and there, make a living out of music or world domination? Tricks: Our goal as a band is always morphing... We’ve been taking on one thing at a time. Our first goal was to write some cool songs, our next was to become an exciting live act, our third was to record the songs... Right now we just want the album to have some success then our next goal would be to finish writing a superior second album. The end game is a career; the bigger the venues, the bigger the crowds the better.
You’re headlining the ultimate gig – Hyde Park, Madison Square Garden, you name it: which act dead or alive would you pick to warm up the crowd for you? Joel: It would be a very hard to choose our dream support act because we all individually have loads of different musical heroes. CollecChecking out your Facebook page tively it would probably be a toss-up I saw an interest in ‘Home Alone’ and pizza… Did you get a chance to check out Macaulay Culkin’s band ‘The Pizza Underground’ and what do you think? Joel: After watching a video of Pizza Underground getting bottled at Dot to Dot it doesn’t fill you with optimism about the quality of the band. However Culkin is John’s childhood hero so... He can join The Tricks if he fancies it. John: Got offered a ticket about half hr before they were about to go on at Concrete the other week but I bailed. I had just eaten a huge Papa Johns and felt the size of Buzz from Home Alone. I dunno, just a silly joke project I guess, an excuse for Kevin to go around the world getting fucked
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between The Clash, Blur and The Strokes. John: Andrew WK. Why ‘The Tricks’? (where did the name come from) Tricks: The origin of The Tricks name is lost in the annals of time... Many believe, however, that it came from Ash’s time as a magician’s apprentice. Any final word of wisdom to our readers? Joel: A word of wisdom... Don’t vote UKIP. Oh shit, too late. John: Play real instruments. Stop looking at your screens. Eliot: You shouldn’t cultivate anything on your face that grows naturally on your arse.. Where can we find ‘Safari Inn’ and why should we absolutely get a copy? Joel: ‘Safari Inn’ is available to download from iTunes and Amazon on the 9th June. You can get the wonderfully beautiful CD of ‘Safari Inn’ from HMV. Or you can come to see us play (Camden Barfly 13th June) and we’ll sell you a dodgy bootleg version out of the back of our van... John: It will hypnotise you into bliss.
June 2014
After reaching multi-platinum status in native South Africa and performing at the Olympics’ opening ceremony in 2010, the Parlotones moved to the US to begin their quest for world domination. While many European countries have already opened their arms to the band, the UK have proved harder to penetrate so far; however, with their latest album the Parlotones are making sure to pull all the stops. ‘Standing Like Giants’, released on June 2nd, may be the one to break the band to the British masses, a welcome alternative to Coldplay and the likes. To promote the album, they boarded a Virgin Atlantic flight to London and performed a few songs in the air – yes, that’s right, ‘in’ not ‘on’ – taking requests from passengers and serenading them at their seats. Once landed, the Parlotones aimed high again setting up a – sold out – show in the plush surroundings of the Kensington Roof Gardens. A great chance to share a glass of wine and a nice chat with frontman Kahn Morbee… I actually saw you guys 3 years ago on another roof in London – Sanctum, the ‘Rock’n’Roll’ hotel.. On the top floor, yes. Some fancy boutique hotel… Now here we are on a roof again and you’re just back from playing on a plane! Yes! [laughs] We seem to like to be elevated! The album’s called Standing Like Giants so you definitely like heights don’t you?
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It seems like it. [laughs] No one suffers vertigo or anything? No, the drummer was quite scared of heights but he kind of overcame them, we were part of a TV show that took us skydiving, and we all did it – the whole band. Did he need convincing? Did you have to push him down? No, it was funny, we went bungee jumping as well and he couldn’t do that but he said it’s like weird, when you’re up in a plane – everything seems so small on the ground [so] it seemed less scary than bungee jumping where you can seem a little bit closer – that was his theory! How was playing on a plane? It was pretty interesting, it was cool though, we kinda went through all the cabins, we started at first class and then worked our way down, the passengers could request a serenade
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and I think there were about 60 requests but we could only get to 10 people, we could only do it in a certain amount of time and obviously they’ve got to serve dinner and all that stuff. It was a cool vibe, [the] passengers were all awesome – they were really kind of supportive and for them it was a first as well. It was quite funny because when you start in first class the aisle’s this wide and just gets narrower and narrower, eventually we were all squashed up trying to perform! So the gig tonight – is it going to be acoustic or a full gig? Full gig. Some guests and we did make some tickets available to the public , so it’s going to be packed! Now you guys are really big in South Africa and are starting to get big in the US and you moved to California recently? Yes, to Los Angeles. How does that all work out? Yeah it’s cool. The weather must be good as well. Yeah, it’s amazing, never really gets cold! Do you go back [to South Africa] often? We did last year because we recorded back home and we’re always going to go back home because our families are still living there, we still record our albums there and obviously we are going to do at least 1 tour a year in South Africa [as] it’s still a big fan base for us. So now that the States is working out as well, it’s time to get Europe? Last piece of the puzzle. We’ve done Europe, parts of it. We’ve had songs all over Europe
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“...human greed. If there was ONE cure I
could discover it’d be a cure for greed.” Khan Morbee
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and we’ve played all over Europe. Our strongest territories’ are Germany, Switzerland and Austria but we’ve had pretty good radio in Italy, we’ve toured there once and then we played a festival last year – the Heineken Jammin’ Festival. How do you find the UK market? It’s… I think that every market’s pretty tough, the UK’s much harder to get into radio than other places but we have quite a cool fan base in various pockets, we have a loyal fan base that keeps us coming back every year. Is there a plan for this album to get bigger over here? That’s always the plan, I guess every band hopes in some way that it’ll appeal to a large amount of people and they’ll get some success out of it. So the album – Standing Like Giants – it’s out 2nd of June, are you coming after the release for an extended tour? Yes, that’s the idea. What about festivals? Obviously we’d love to play the festivals but that all depends on organisers and whether or not they think we… Fit the bill? Exactly, because we’re not that prominent on radio and stuff over here I understand that they may not want to pick us. We have played V Fest and T In The Park, we’ve played loads in Switzerland and Germany, we’ve played a couple in the States and I’m sure we’ll get a few pop up here and there, I don’t know – we’ll have to wait and see. So you’ve been around for a while – this is your 7th album if we count the acoustic one. From the debut in 2003 to your most successful one in 2012 – how do you feel that the band has evolved? Just by default of playing so much for years we’ve become better musicians, a lot tighter, our knowledge of song writing, studios and live has improved or is far richer, it’s all subjective whether it’s improved or not [laughs], that’s in the eye of the audience and I guess as you continue on the journey of life you absorb more experiences, influences and you suck that all in and it all pours out and manifests itself in some weird song. You’ve been compared to the likes of Radiohead and Coldplay. What would you say are your main influences?
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Well I love both those bands. Radiohead – The Bends, that’s the album I tended to learn guitar on so it’s one of my all time favourite albums. I think when we started out we wanted to sound like a mixture of The Cure, The Smiths, Radiohead, R.E.M and INXS then later on we had already started – before I’d even heard of Coldplay – who were kinda a mellower version of Radiohead, then I discovered Travis then Muse – a more aggressive Radiohead [laughs] – but there’s thousands of influences from very chilled ambient stuff to Slipknot [laughs]. I’ve been listening to the new album
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and I find it quite diverse especially Spellbound. [Kahn starts singing the chorus for that track] That’s kind of got a 80’s feel, I don’t know what it is and also we’re always trying to experiment a bit with the sonic treatment, y’know the sound waves. Do you produce your own albums? We have a producer but we’ll collaborate – he’ll suggest some things, we both produce it. You’re a very socially active band – you participate in a lot of initiatives and your lyrics reflect that –is there any topic that is particularly close to
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ery year, enough to keep sustainability and when they banned it entirely that’s when the price of the horn shot up and now it’s out of control. It’s more valuable than gold. Just human greed. If there’s ONE cure I could discover it’d be a cure for greed. I’m a keen diver and the things I’ve seen travelling with marine life is absolutely shocking. We don’t even know the bulk of it. The rhino gets all the attention because the way it’s been slaughtered is quite gruesome and grotesque but there’s thousands of species and plant life that are on the brink of extinction, We’re going to kill ourselves out and nature will prevail. How can people like us help? Is there any organization you think is doing something seriously? I don’t know, sometimes I think what’s the point? I do believe there ARE good peoyou at the moment? ple out there trying to make a differThere’s one song in particular called ence, you’ve just got to find those ‘Slow Assassination’ – I touch on the organisations and try and help them theme of Mother Nature and planet raise funds to keep it going. ProbEarth and how we’re slowly killing it. lem is the people that are poaching It really hits because back home our have way more money and then it unique offering is our wildlife and becomes who’s richer and the bigger our abundance of natural environ- army in the background… ment, we’re losing the battle against poaching and I don’t get it – human greed. We can’t save a species because someone in Asia believes that the bones of lions or tigers and the horns of rhinos have some medicinal secret power and it shouldn’t be like that. These are beautiful animals that are on the brink of extinction, surely we’ve evolved beyond some barbaric bullshit belief? There’s enough humans on the planet [laughs]. Apparently WWF are in favour of hunting in a certain proportion because the money that comes back can be invested in actually saving the species or something.. I know, a funny thing is you were ALLOWED to hunt a certain amount of rhino ev-
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Speaking of South Africa, why do you feel the Oscar Pistorius trial is getting this much attention? It’s kind of a sad story because he was a public figure – disabled, overcame all those odds, first disabled athlete to complete in [the] ablebodied Olympics so for a while we were very proud of him, he was the darling of the sports fraternity and then he goes and does this. What’s your opinion, do you think it was an accident? I don’t think so. Finally, what can we expect from this album? Why should we get it and when’s the best time to listen to it? You should get it because it’ll be the soundtrack of your life for now, you should listen to it when happy or sad, when you’re driving… The way I approach an album or song writing in general is to try and almost tell a story that has ups, downs, highs and lows. Not all of it is personal, some of it’s an observation on mankind’s experience and I hopefully tell that story and people go ‘that song’s about my life.’ We all write differently and music’s very subjective, I know what I like out of music – songs that talk to me about my life, captures my mood or whatever the case is and when I write I try to do the same. Ultimately I want to leave a message of some sort of hope and aspiration without going into things.
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Lenny Lorenzi, Class 1990, hails from the thriving Romagna region in Italy, Rimini to be precise, considered kind of an Italian Ibiza for its nightlife and world renowned clubs. We managed to catch up with him between business meetings, as the busy DJ and producer worked hard on his several active projects: record label Talk Musique, Wave Music Boat Party – currently putting the final touches to a couple of Sonar events in Barcelona – and his newest ‘cinema in a hot tub’ venture. To begin – how are you finding Ibiza? It’s an amazing place! You’re a DJ, you have your own label in Talk Musique and are involved in some other ventures – what exactly brings you here at IMS this year? As you said, I have quite a few things going on these days. Talk Musique for a start, but also FLOOP Cinema – an idea I got from London’s Hot Tub Cinema – and Wave Music Boat Party, with a couple of very special dates coming up at Sonar in Barcelona! About FLOOP Cinema, what does it consist in for the uninitiated and where are you running that at the moment? It’s something I tried in London 3 years ago and decided to take to Italy – we’re currently operating in the Emilia-Romagna region. Basically you can watch a movie while sitting in a hot tub, with a nice cold floating drink in the middle and some snacks. Your label, talk musique, is based on a
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very particular concept based on the number 12… I started Talk Musique because I was getting so many demos from friends to play at clubs, when I started to listen I was like ‘there’s something interesting there’, so I decided to started a label with a difference. Talk Musique is not
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only as a record label, it is a real musical scheme. In fact, the initial founding idea was to create a family of 12 carefully selected artists with whom to establish a long-term relationship, so that these artists release an EP a year, a track for a Various Artists compilation and a Remix of one of the other
artists on the label. Everyone remixes each other. Each EP has also an exclusive guest remixer among the best out there: Darius Syrossian, Ntfo & Rhadow, Anthea, NiCe7, Sidney Charles... great talents who have contributed to the growth and success of the label. Luciano, who will be working with me at Sonar in June, might be doing something with us as well. Do you have a residency for your artists? When I choose my artists I pick from many different countries – I want to do something so the label works in every country – Phillpp Ort is from London and he’s my contact to England, I have
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people in Poland because I want contacts in Poland, guys in Korea because I want to do something there. I get 12 artists that are the future, I want to showcase around the world [rather than one club]. Maybe if the label gets bigger we’ll think about it. Why 12? I believe in the Illuminati and the number 13 is the start of everything so I choose 12 artists – 12 releases and the final release – a compilation – will be the 13th. Where can we find your releases and
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in what form? We’ve recently moved onto vinyl, you can find our records you in Phonica in Soho, Rush Hour in Amsterdam and more. Every release on our label must be perfection – from the master to promotion. Let’s talk about the upcoming boat parties at Sonar, which are on June 13th and 15th. 3 months ago I was talking with my partner in Italy about Sonar and he say ‘everyone does a party there, we can do a good party, why don’t we export what we do in Italy?’ So when I found the right boat I spoke to Luciano
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about a good partnership and we’re the only free bar party! Have you ever thought about a drink sponsorship? In Italy we work with Red Bull and Gray Goose Vodka, for beer we work with Heineken and in Spain we maybe will work with Corona. It’s another reason why we’re here. Have you ever heard of Red Bull Revolutions? They used the London Eye to have a party with a different DJ in every cabin, maybe you should get involved and take care of the boat parties… That could be interesting, we’re actually thinking of doing something like that in Rimini - the Ibiza of Italy - we have have a panoramic wheel there too; the cabins are smaller but could work. We have a big event there on 10th June: 200,000 people partying in the harbour, an all nighter – 6pm to 2am - distributed on several boats, 2 DJ in each boat. This summer we may also work BPM in Mexico. What kind of sound are you looking for with the label? I’m starting with techno, in the future it’s not just one genre – deep house, techno in the middle to funky house. It’s a lot more commercial now but it does work – acts like Avicii, Martin Garrix… Something that skates the underground. When I play, I want people dancing and sometimes put on something from 1980 and the people enjoy it; it’s not always what you want to play, but it’s what they want to hear. If you can work the crowd with the music you have it’s a win-win! Lately it’s evolved with a lot of groups doing what I call Rock And Rave… I started with a computer then recently I’ve started doing live recordings in the studio with the artists from the label. When we listen to music we say these tracks have something different due to live instruments, now I need to change from computer to something more live like drum machines. 6th June is my first gig in San Marino with live instruments. One channel of live instruments, 2 of visuals from the computer. When I was younger I didn’t start with a mixer and a turntable, I started with the guitar. I’ve seen bands in London like Killaflaw where one’s doing guitar while one’s doing the deck… I want to use all live instruments, many artists I’m working with have never played an instrument!
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BYE BYE BABY! A tribute to Leee Black Childers Sony tape player, was both a shocking and emotional experience as Leee discussed a tape he wanted played at his funeral. Despite the sombre aspect of the interview, Leee’s sparkling humour is more than apparent. LBC – ‘The tape starts with Janis Joplin singing ‘Bye Bye Baby’ then it goes into Dorothy Lamour singing ‘Aloha Oe’. In a Southern funeral by that time you’re out in the cemetery; as the coffin’s being lowered you have Roy Rogers and Dale Evans singing ‘Happy Trails’ and I’ve got Vera Lynn singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and then, as the casket is down, Ethel Merman bursts into ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’, then at the very end of the tape is Jimmy Durante saying ‘Goodnight Mrs Calabash wherever you are’. It’s a very humorous tape; there are moments where I expect some tears When photographer Leee Black th from whoever outlives me. Anyone Childers died on April 6 , 2014, the that does won’t outlive this tape! – creative world lost one of its greatest raconteurs and iconographers. From he says, before bursting into laughs again. the denizens of Warhol’s Factory, to the legendary backroom of Max’s Kansas City to London ’77, Leee captured an entire alternative universe. As well as being an integral part of Bowie’s management company, Mainman, Leee looked after Iggy Pop during one of the Stooge’s most turbulent junctures and also managed the legendary Heartbreakers. Leee’s work amasses one of the best visual records of a world where freedom of expression was the only way of life. The synchronicity of having met Nina Antonia who interviewed Leee on several occasions, and my interest in his photographs, led to Nina giving me access to her cassette archive so that I could do a piece on Leee for Sonic Shocks. The first cassette I (randomly) chose to listen to on a vintage
Leee Black Childers’s was given his creative blessing by none other than Andy Warhol, who told him ‘Say you’re a photographer, and you’re a photographer,’ he explained, before pointing at Factory muse and movie queen ,Candy Darling, saying, ‘Look at her. She says she’s a woman. And she is.’ Leee conferred a stylish immortality on all of his subjects, from Bowie looking through the window of the Trans-Siberian express, to Patti Smith outside CBGB and his ground- breaking 1971 portrait of the New York Dolls. I’m often asked what makes a good photographer. Anyone can learn the techniques, press buttons, get the right exposure or use a few arty gimmicks. But a true photographer, like Leee Black Childers, has an artist’s eye and brings eloquence to the image. And that, no one can teach. It comes from the ability to go beyond mere surface into art. As part of our tribute to Leee, we have also included a previously unpublished interview he did with Nina Antonia, where he shares his recollections of working with David Bowie, during the Ziggy years.
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like that. We bribed RCA into giving us all this stuff and before they knew it we were riding around in limousines. What they didn’t know was the reason why was because we couldn’t afford taxis! Was the plan was to make David as weird and wonderful as possible…? Definitely. NO ONE knew who he was except the nerdiest people. We took him to the Factory, we took him to see the New York Dolls. David and Elton John had no concept of how to transform into these flaming creatures which were from the underground theatre, but bit by bit they discovered a look. We realised if you’re on stage in glitter and shiny make-up with weird clothes and colours it was all theatre, almost like medieval theatre. Did David ever meet Jackie Curtis? Yes. Most of the ideas were too outrageous! What did you think he took from Jackie, though? His use of glitter and his hair became redder. See, people accuse me of being overly critical of David and I’m not really, just being honest which he would be too. One night I confronted him as people were grumbling about the looks and sounds that he was taking, he said ‘most of those people have gone as far as they’re going to take it and if I take the best of them, they can help me along my way’. He made some bad visual mistakes the circle in the middle of his forehead was so stupid, everybody made fun of that. How was the first big US Ziggy tour? Sex, drugs and insanity? Well… yes! Mick Ronson – no insanity of any kind, he played wonderful guitar and reluctantly dyed his hair silver. Everyone always says lovely things about Mick Ronson… Never heard a cross word said about him. We got to Arizona and he comes out in this tiny bathing suit and swims around in the pool not being aware of the Arizona sun, and by the time he came out of the pool his skin was bright red! Most of the constant sex though was really to do with the roadies and that’s pretty consistent with all bands. You mentioned before that George Underwood came up with the Ziggy Idea? Yes, George was a child-
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hood friend, they (him and David) were roughhousing when they were about 9-10 and he hit David in the eye, hence the weird eye. I think he designed the whole character of Ziggy Stardust because he was still wallowing in guilt for blinding David. The tour was spectacularly surprising because David hadn’t had any hits at all yet, it was my job to follow all the rules to make the stage the way he wanted it to be – size and all. I guess I was the technical manager. The first show was in Cleveland – a 5,000-seater and it was sold out! Cherry and I were flabbergasted, he came out on stage and did that whole Ziggy Stardust thing; suddenly we were in St Louis – 600 people showed up in a 7,000- seater place. Bowie comes out in his outrageous clothes, and says ‘come on everybody, get down to the bandstand’ and they all crawled right to the front of the stage. David got his acoustic guitar out and did a whole acoustic set. I was most impressed that he could adapt to the circumstances and that’s how the whole tour was. There’s been a lot written that Bowie lost himself in the Ziggy character, is that true or is that mystique? There’s a certain amount of truth there. Every day you’re putting on a certain makeup, actors will tell you this – you find yourself taking on characteristics, he became like this little elf. Who did you prefer? David because he’d discuss things when he calmed down, it wasn’t like he thought he was Ziggy. How did it go from Bowie to Iggy? I was very good at looking after rebellious rockstars; keeping them in line – like when David got lost in Seattle. Picked up by some guy in a bar, David didn’t realise that when you get outside of Seattle it’s just woods until he stumbled out at dawn… He found the highway and a phone so we figured out how to find him, got him back to the hotel before Defries knew he was missing.
& S R ID A V E A Y D Y , G E G E I E Z L E H T
The relationship between Leee Childers and David Bowie is one for the rock’n’roll book of legends. From the days Leee introduced David to New York, the Factory and the Dolls to the flamboyant antics and props of the Ziggy shows, the late photographer lived and shot history in the making. Digging into Nina Antonia’s treasured tapes, we got to hear some exceptional tales, including that of a young David lost in woods outside Seattle… LBC - I was working as a photographer at ‘16’ Magazine and in the evenings I was doing underground theatre. At ‘16’ there were no hours: sometimes I would work for 10-12 then I would have to haul up to the theatre and cook a huge dinner because that was part of the props on stage – chicken livers and scrambled eggs. Then Cherry Vanilla and I went to London; she became a writer for Circus and I became the photographer. She’d just call up and say ‘we’re from Circus and see Marc Bolan is playing’, then it’d be Rod Stewart and the next one. One day I’m searching through the listings and there’s a tiny little ad for David Bowie, and Tony (Defries – Bowie’s manager) invited me up to come and have dinner; he was very casual and asked ‘What would you do with David?’. He ate up our outrageous ideas – clothes, a lot of colour and lights, Tony then asked ‘would you like to work for me?’. And that’s how I ended up working with Bowie. He said ‘do the same thing with David that’d you’d do for one of your shows’, so we’d just show up and be outrageous all the time. We were never out of our particular drag, we just covered the wonder of being able to spray the air with shoe polish, to turn the air bright from aching dreams and stuff
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Another summer season of festivals has arrived to grace fans of music once more and Donington is again the setting for one of the biggest global rock festivals. This year we’re graced with reunions, a new contender to main stage and as always some bands you wouldn’t expect. The weekend begins with Tax The Heat opening up the Zippo Encore Stage (13:00 - 13:25), making their Download debut to the delight of the more classic/bluesy rock fans; these are advised to follow with another band on the rise, The Temperance Movement (16:55-17:35) – just follow the singalongs of ‘Only Friend’ and ‘Chinese Lanterns’, surely to be heard from quite far away. Over on the Main Stage - this year renamed the Stephen Sutton stage - the ever popular Skindred (15:3516:20) return with their ragga-metal infused groove and for the crowd to do their best ‘Newport Helicopter’ once more, while the Pepsi Max Stage has a night of pure contrast ahead: next to high-energy Letlive (18:50-19:30) with the unpredictable Jason Aalon Butler you can catch two of the biggest Prog bands around today. Anathema (19:5520:35) is likely to cause a few misty eyes with ‘Thin Air’ while Opeth (21:00-22:00) will be bringing us some Heritage and if we’re lucky an early taste of Pale Communion. If Main Stage headliners Avenged Sevenfold (21:00-22:50) are not your thing, Zippo Encore give us a triple whammy of punk in Flogging Molly (19:05-19:45), legends Bad Religion (20:10-20:55) and - performing Smash in full and some more old goodies – The Offspring (21:25-22:45). Saturday starts with a surprise famously brought to you by a little innocent Twitter hashtag: on Main Stage, ladies and gentlemen Dying Fetus (11:00-11:30)! Later on that very same stage the party animals
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known as Bowling For Soup (15:00- rock goodness of Monster Magnet 15:45). Never boring… (17:10 – 17:50), The Wildhearts Classic rock fans, come 15:20 on the (18:15-18:55), Twisted FUCKING Zippo Encore Stage you’re in for a Sister (19:20-20:20) and rocking all treat as a true six-pack arrives: Skid over Donington with Status Quo! Row (15:20-15:50), Orange Gob- (20:50-22:00) lin (16:15-16:45), the stoner/psych On the Red Bull Studios stage we
have a reunion that many tech-metal fans have been crying out for in Sikth (21:5522:25), while defining the latest era of tech Skyharbor play earlier in the day at 16:2516:50. Finally for the extreme metal fan, the double bill of the Black Dahlia Murder (19:00-19:40) and the mighty Nergal with Behemoth will grace the Pepsi Max stage (21:10-22:10). Sunday sees the Main Stage becoming a day of arena rock starting with Winger (11:5512:25) to continue with guitar legends Richie Sambora (ex Bon Jovi) – flanked by the excellent Orianthi – and Joe Bonamassa (Sambora – 13:50-14:35, Bonamassa – 15:00-15:45). Party time follows with a dose of Steel Panther (17:40-18:40), all in all an nice appetizer before almighty Aerosmith close proceedings with their unforgettable classics and a dose of Steven Tyler’s iconic mouth. Still, if the classic buffet on offer on Main doesn’t rock your boat, no reason to leave early: the Zippo encore stage closes out with a triple threat of diversity as Philip H.Anselmo returns to Donington, this time with the Illegals (17:1017:50), followed by Taylor Momsen and her The Pretty Reckless for a trip to the alternative side (19:25-20:20) and finally Trivium go back to the old-school, reprising the first ever set they did at Download many years ago (20:5022:00). The Pepsi Max stage sees the return of our hot&coming friends The Graveltones (12:30-12:55) before taking us back in time with Crazytown (15:35-16:05) and Suicide Silence (19:00-19:40) and, fittingly closing this stage, one of the craziest live bands you will ever have the chance to witness: The Dillinger Escape Plan (21:10-22:10). We already know where we’re going to be… Do you? If you’re still debating, here’s what some of the bands on the bill had to say to Sonic Shocks. See you at Donington!
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Answers by Trevor Strnad It’s your third time at Download – what do you remember from the first? We’re excited to be back, it’s a massive scale for a band like us , we started at the super far away stage up on the hill and we’ve been moving up in the food chain ever since. I’m excited to see how it unfolds this time. We were there the year Lars couldn’t play with Metallica and they had to have Lombardo and that dude from Slipknot [Joey Jordison] fill in. You’re playing on the Pepsi Max stage with Behemoth on the Saturday – any other bands are you hoping to catch throughout the weekend? That’s the first I’ve heard that we’re playing with Behemoth so that’s awesome, we’ll have to hang out with Behemoth, there’s no gentlemen that can rage harder than those Polish motherfuckers, they can drink and drink! I like Sikth – met one of them on our first time over, Twisted Sister and Skid Row. Upon A Burning Body – those guys are cool, we did Warped tour with them. Lawnmower Deth- got to see those UK legends! What’s your favourite festival memory? Download was the very first time I got next level ripped out of my skull, smoking out of an apple –thinking everything’s like I’m in a fish bowl right now, let’s go and see Slayer! What’s the one item you can’t live without at a festival? I’ve never done the full on camping thing – I’ve walked through the camps especially at the German metal fest but I would imagine you’d need bug spray, weed – the pursuit has bought me to the tent town. I’m always the guy that buys too much merch, I guess I have to wear them all at the same time! If you had a stage for a day – who would you book? Carcass – we’ve just got off tour with those guys, Napalm Death, Spearhead for obscure UK bands, Basement Torture Killings. Answers by guitarist Matt Bond Who are you looking forward to seeing at Download? Skindred, Aerosmith, Fall Out boy - There’s so many great bands at Download 2014! Why should people come and check your set out - what can they expect to see? We’re gonna pump you full of so much adrenalin your hangover with be instantly cured. You definitely got me with that one! What will you be promoting at Download - what releases do you have coming up? Gonna be smashing out our new single ‘Don’t Feel Right’ and loads of new tunes from the new album Gold Dust coming your way very soon…
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2014 SPECIAL
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Answers from Mikey Sorbello This is your second year at Download festival in a row – did you expect to be coming back to Donington quite so soon? When we were asked to play again I couldn’t believe it, I think we were the loudest band on the acoustic stage last year so I guess it worked. Where can people catch you at the festival? Any idea on the approximate time? Oooooo I know its early Sunday on the Pepsi max stage, God I love Pepsi! Pepsi is far better any rivalled brand of cola, Pepsi. I think I’ll name my son Pepsi, Pepsi Sorbello has a ring. Who are you hoping to catch over the weekend? We would love to see our boys Rival Sons but will be in Austria playing Novarock, so I guess Aerosmith have to be the winners. Last time we talked your Pledge campaign was in full swing; now the album has been out there for some time – are you happy with the feedback? Completely, what I love is that when we look back we can say “we did it”, WE being us and every single amazing person that pledged! Give us one festival memory as a fan… One! Okay...let me think.....PG or R? The first festival I ever went to was Homebake in Aus-
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So first time at Download? It’s our second but we went under a different name last year. Download last year was kind of the first show as Zoax. We were on the poster as our old name and we were there as our new name. It’s a big moment coming back definitely because last year was the Red Bull stage, this year’s the Pepsi Max so we kind of went up a bit and it’s like really exciting. To be back 2 years in a row first off and then to be on a bigger stage! So if anyone wants to catch you at Download – when can they do so? At the moment it’s 12:25 on Saturday at the Pepsi Max stage. Why should people catch your live show? It’s incredibly engaging, Adam right now
tralia. I had no idea I was going, a friend show up on my door in the morning with a can of pink hair goo and 2 tickets, we spiked our hair (pink) ripped our clothes found some sort of alcohol and had the funniest day ever. I guess the essence of the Festival is spontaneity and meeting new people but most of all just not giving a F@#$. What are the post Download plans for the band? Don’t stop! Don’t ever stop! That’s the overall plan really but next will be more writing, a few more festivals then a European tour, then America....then space after space I am unsure, perhaps I’ll stay in space....who knows.
is the nicest man on earth, very calm and flaccid, the second he gets a few people in front of him encouraging him it’s a good time shall we say! I like to get involved, if you come to the show I will get you so involved, you will have a great time! A wonderful way to wake up! Exactly, if you weren’t as we walk on stage, you definitely will be at the end of it. So if we enjoy the show what can we buy you at the end? I’d have a vodka. A nice cold beer! I was expecting bacon and eggs – it’s 12:25! [All laugh], who are you looking forward to seeing? Behemoth – one of my favourite bands, they’re headlining the same stage we’re on the same day, Sikth have got back together as well and that’s going to be such a moment. Graveltones, Verses, Polar and Feed The Rhino. You guys last released an EP, what can we expect next? The EP only came out in February so it’s not that long ago but we’re working on our album and we’re just wanting to finish it off, we’re working insanely hard on it – every night we’re sending emails back and forth to each other, it’s pretty full on to be honest. New material at Download? We’re actually deciding stuff, trying to make the right move on whether we should. We were rehearsing yesterday and we played some new stuff, we’ve got a new thing to be played today, it might be part of a song. Anything else you’d like to say? See us at Download because it’d be a lovely brunch, and our EP is on iTunes titled XIII!
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This is Tax The Heat’s first year at Donington - who did you call first after you got the confirmation and did you celebrate in style? We were over the moon when we found out. Jack (drummer) called me and then I pretty much called everyone I know. It’s going to be amazing. I then went to the pub and got very drunk with the guys. Where can people catch you at the fest? Any idea on the time yet? We are opening up the second stage on Friday 13th. We haven’t been given times yet. It’s normally late morning/early afternoon. While you’re at the festival who are you hoping to catch/hang out with? Are there plans to soak in the experience by going camping for the weekend or is it a case of playing then having to leave the next day? We are planning on camping and making the most of the weekend. Really looking forward to seeing Royal Blood, Aerosmith, Turbowolf, Rival Sons and many more. I’ll definitely try to stalk Steve Tyler and Joe Perry. For people that haven’t caught you before – why should they go and see you? Because they will see a high energy rock band, at the start of their career ready to climb the ladder and with a lot to prove. If you’re into high energy rhythm and blues get ya ass to a show. If you had one festival memory as a fan – what is it and why is it so memorable? It would probably be Reading in about 2001 as it was my first one. I got on the train with 4 mates and it was incredible so many amazing bands and lots of laughs. It was so hot that summer we camped outside, my mate slept walked through the camp fire in a sleeping bag, I had to put him out and he had no recollection the next day! Piss head! After Donington – what’s next for Tax The Heat? We are honoured to be supporting Aerosmith at Calling Festival on June 28th. In July we head out on tour with Black Star Riders and play an awesome festival called Steelhouse in Wales. The plan is to tour our asses off and get our debut record recorded. Answers from singer Blacky Who are you looking forward to seeing at Download? For me it’s all about Aerosmith. Imagine “walk this way” blaring out and you’re 6 pints in with a little sunburn. Epic behaviour Why should people come and check your set out - what can they expect to see? Last year was a game changer for us. Check the video from last year. We’re in the same tent but this time we’re main support on the Saturday night h t t p : / / m .y o u t u b e . c o m / watch?v=o2YVl8UnuWQ What will you be promoting at Download - what releases do you have coming up? We are releasing our debut single “possessed” on July 21st. Check www.Facebook. com/thehowlingofficial for details.
2014 SPECIAL
Answers from Alex Veale
June 2014
Between the April release of acclaimed sophomore album ‘Savages’ and upcoming Vans Warped Tour, it’s busy days for cross-genre alchemists Breathe Carolina. From metalcore all the way to electro-pop, there is no venue where these lads can’t kick off an unforgettable party. Nelly was curious to find out more from Luis Bonet…
2013 seems to have been a turning point for Breathe Carolina between the departure of Kyle and your return to Fearless Records. Did that have an impact on your sound’s evolution and/or the writing process of the new songs? Change always has an impact on creativity. How was the transition from working with a major label (Columbia) to going back to Fearless Records? Major labels take artists that did all the work already and throw money around to try to get them bigger. A
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label like Fearless helps with the core of the artist and puts in that hard work to make the band successful. From Screamo-Punk to Electro Pop to metalcore to EDM, you certainly have a rather ‘hybrid’ sound. Genre blending does bring an element of originality, but how can you, as a band, satisfy your audience? First and foremost, WE HAVE THE BEST FANS EVER. To follow that in the studio were not really thinking about anyone but ourselves. We write what we love and hope that others will love it too. It’s been that way since the beginning and I think it’s worked. It makes us less predictable. How did the collaboration with Karmin Tyler Carter and Danny Worsnop come about? All through friendship! Bang It Out - we sent the song to Karmin a long time ago and were just waiting to finally be able to get to get together and work on it! Chasing Hearts - we just got off the Sleeping with Sirens tour with issues and made awesome friends with Tyler Carter. We wanted to do a track together and Chasing Hearts was perfect for him. Sellouts - we’ve known Danny for a longgggg time and thought he was perfect for the song...clearly he was! Can we expect more collaboration or even remixes in the near future? Yes definitely more collaborations and remixes... We currently have two on the way...1 with a group called Disco Fries and one from CANDYLAND. Although you have already not only
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performed Live with your current line up on the ‘Sleeping With Sirens Tour’ but also showcased your news songs to some extent, do you feel ready to conquer old and new fans alike? We want to take over the whole fucking world. Will you be performing the whole album on the forthcoming Vans warped tour? Any surprises planned? Surprises are better when they are surprises. You got a gold record for ‘Blackout’. If (or when) this happens again, which song do you think would or should achieve that status? We got a platinum record for Blackout, 1,000,000 and don’t you forget it! Haha You really can’t say, you have to let nature take its course. But I would like to see I DONT KNOW WHAT IM DOING be the next. You have said you’d like to get more into the EDM world. So what’s your plan to achieve this goal? We dj...a fucking lot. And we’ve started collaborating with djs...it’s fucking fun. If you were given a residency in Ibiza, which club would you like to appear at? Literally any one haha Anything else you’d like to tell your fans? We have truly seen how fucking important you guys are and how much you mean to us! This isn’t bullshit... WE REALLY FUCKING LOVE YOU GUYS.
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June 2014
Catching up with the band after their sound check at Madame JoJo’s in Soho, London where they were scheduled to support the Sundowners. In order to chill a little, we decided to frequent the Yard bar over the road and mix a little Rock ‘n’ Roll with city traders just finishing for the day. So you’re the Circles? Is it ‘The Circles’ or just ‘Circles’ We’re not quite decided yet but the Facebook page says ‘The Circles’ so… Who have we got in the band? Rich: I’m Richard Foster on Bass Greg: I’m Greg McMurray, I play Drums Paul: I’m Paul Cross and I sing and play Guitar And where are you from? How long have you been together? We’re from the Midlands and as a band we’ve been together for about eighteen months. We’ve been dicking about for years playing in different bands growing up. We’ve known each other a long time man. How did you get together? Paul: We’ve (Paul & Greg) known each other for years since we were four or something. We just started writing some tunes together not to show anyone, just for ourselves for a laugh. We played for our Dads and that was it. But then our Dads liked it so we just put it out on the internet. We’ve always known Rich plays Bass and he’s boss so we started playing together. What genre would you put yourselves under? Dunno, the ‘Good Songs’ genre I guess. We just wanna write good tunes for people to enjoy ‘em. Not really fussed about putting us in a box. You’re about to release a new E.P.? Yeah, on June 9th. But it’s available to download at the moment. It’s on Skeleton Key Records. We met Jay through playing gigs and stuff and he was really in to what we were doing and helped us lay down the tracks and we really liked it. But we’ll see how it goes, we will keep playing gigs and getting the sounds out there and see if anyone likes it. What brought you to this level of maturity? Good influences, good bands, and we are the only three people we know that like playing what we’re playing
and none of us have got caught up in any of the clichés like ‘I play music, so I need to be in a band. And I need to be famous now’. Playing live is pretty new to us. We’ve only being playing live for eighteen months because we’ve been really happy writing songs and getting things right. It’s all about the songs for us really. You said part of what has brought you this far is good influences, who are they? Fuckin’ ‘ell where do you start? The obvious ones are The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, we are actually into loads of stuff. Rich: I listen to a lot of soul being a bass player. I’m not much of a writer. I am, but not in the band. I’m into Mowtown and Soul mainly. Paul: I like lots of the old blues classics like Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf but we also look back to who our influences were influenced by and that gives a new dimension to what fuels your creativity. Rich: It’s a bit like Oasis were one of the first bands I got into and when you listen to what they were influenced by you then get to like things like The Beatles, the Who, the Smiths and stuff that weren’t around when I was growing up. You are clearly serious about music, in your taste, your approach, your attitude, and respect for it. Have you got a defined strategy of where you want to be ultimately? We want to play for a living. We love music, we love playing music, so the longer we can do it the better. We want to right good tunes and for people to enjoy it as much as we enjoy it. We’re not interested in getting stuff out just
to be big. And we don’t want an office job ever again! But we want to make songs that stand the test of time. We want to be the music for the real people! But we never intended to gig we just used to write loads of tunes together and then we recorded some and put them on the internet and started getting some interest. So we decided we ought to start doing some gigs. So it was never a master plan it just fell into our laps I guess. What are you intending to get out of this mini tour you’re on? More people getting into our tunes. The tunes are good, so we just need to get people to hear them. Rich: I’m just having a laugh man. The last year has been a laugh. And it’s better than sitting in my bedroom. But if I can just influence one person to pick up a guitar and play, I’m a happy man! What’s in store for the next twelve months? Get the E.P out, start recording again, maybe release a single later in the year and start recording an album. But in the mean time just play in front of as many people as possible. A festival would be good but you need to earn a festival. You have to play the small pubs, clubs and shit holes in order to get your stripes. An album? Yeah man, we’ve probably got enough tunes to put three together. But our intention is early next year for an album. Rich: He’s (Paul) got about seven thousand ideas but we’re quire strict on binning off tunes. Paul: Me and Greg write most of the stuff. He’s (Greg) John, I’m Paul, and he’s (Rich) George. You know what I mean? What’s the aspirations? To play some good songs, play to some big crowds, have a laugh, and continue writing good songs for as long as possible. Rich: To inspire a couple of lads to be in a band like we do rather than getting an office job and being on the path to nothingness. You get one life, so to inspire someone to do something different would be it. What’s your message? If the band had a message it would be do what you want, take from life what you want. Don’t conform. Enjoy!
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ALBUM REVIEWS
Diaries Of A Hero
Nazareth
Self Titled
Godflesh Decline & Fall
Dust On The Tracks – Out Now With so many bands trying to break through by settling into particular boxes, Diaries Of A Hero decide on their second release to mix a few together to make an accessible album. Some people may recognise the name from supporting of all bands Motorhead and Anthrax two years ago, but on this record the tone has shifted into more commercial territory – reminiscent of say Bullet For My Valentine than Beherit – but nevertheless there are moments that give Diaries Of A Hero something to stand out from the pack. Tracks like ‘J5’s briefly foray into technical metal with the breakdown near the end, with ‘Victims Of Chaos’ displaying the heavier side while showing the thought and accuracy in putting the solos together - very well indeed, no feelings of throwing one in for the sake of it. It must also be noted that Acle from TesseracT’s production works well by balancing it perfectly – no accusations of ‘loudness’ here. Don’t go looking for a game-changer because it’s not intended to be, however Diaries Of A Hero do have something that will appeal to fans of a particular style – not too heavy but not too saccharine either. By Matt Dawson
Rock ‘n’ roll Telephone Union Square – 9th June
Avalanche Recordings – 2nd June After a return to the live fold at the tail end of 2012, 2014 sees an EP of hotly anticipated new material from industrial metal pioneers Godflesh. The 4 new songs are a return to the 90s sound of industrial heaviness that defined the band back in the day. The drum machine is back, the gut rumbling bass sound remains and Justin’s voice doesn’t seem to have aged a day. Add to this a few discordant riffs so ugly that they exude beauty, and there you have it: Industrial Metal defined, Welcome back guys… It’s been too long. 8.5/10
With over four decades of music, classic rockers Nazareth have had an up and down career. For every Hair Of The Dog there’s been an album like Big Dogz that didn’t quite hit the mark, but as they reach album number 23 they’re to go through an end of another chapter yet. Dan McCaffery recently announced that he’d be retiring due to ill health and for a swansong he’s gone out on a high, with his gravelly vocals bringing back the Nazareth that classic rock fans know and love dearly. Listen in particular to songs ‘One Set Of Bones’ and ‘God Of The Mountain’ –which was the song for the Austrian Winter Olympics team of all things! With guitar solos from Jimmy Murrison that will leave a smile on your face, this end of a chapter will satisfy fans and hopefully, with Linton Osborne taking over, the future’s in safe hands for the Dunfermline fellows as they reach their fifth decade.
By John Morgan By Matt Dawson