DIY, September 2013

DIY

Fac t o r y f l o o r s u m m e r c a m p M G M T l o n d o n g r a m m a r

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thisisfakediy.co.uk

CHVRCHES Nothing is Sacred

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Tour 2013

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BrIsToL LouIsIAnA

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DrMArTens.coM/sTAnDForsoMeThInGTour2013 chArITY pArTner: www.facebook.com/drmartens

08444 77 1000 2 thisisfakediy.co.uk

#sTAnDForsoMeThInG WhAT Do You sTAnD For?

EDITOR’S LETTER

GOODVSEVIL WHAT'S ON THE DIY TEAM'S RADAR

We’ve been waiting what feels like a very (very, very) long time for CHVRCHES to drop their debut album. Not because it’s been an long time in coming, just because it’s reaaaaaaaaaaaally exciting.

Most bands leave it too long, or rush something out before they’re ready. Not this lot, though. And it shows. It’s been a long time since anyone delivered a record so accomplished on their first effort.

This month’s cover feature gets under the skin of a band that know exactly what they want, and finds out how they realised it so spectacularly.

Victoria Sinden - Deputy Editor GOOD: Reading Festival. Now we can start the countdown to Christmas, right?

EVIL: Missing: one DIY stamp. Last seen: before Reading. Reward: 50p.

El Hunt - Assistant Online Editor GOOD: Accidentally predicting the historical event that was Dido’s comeback. EVIL: The eternal regret that I didn’t enter Reading Festival’s rap battle.

Sarah Jamieson - News Editor GOOD: Watching Gnarwolves play to a mahoooosive crowd at Reading Festival was really, really awesome.

EVIL: Post-Reading Fatigue. It’s the worst.

STEPHEN ACKROYD GOOD: Biffy Clyro’s Reading headline slot was the kind of life affirming moment it’s worth waiting a decade for.

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EVIL: I love Trent

Reznor, really I do, but why did he have to pick on the Biff.

Cheer up, dude.

Jamie Milton - Online Editor GOOD: Every time Guy from Disclosure comes on Skype, this usually means he’s about to play live. Inside info. EVIL: Reading Festival punters mistaking me for King Krule.

Extra minutes that Peace’s Harry spent getting his stage outfit ready, while the rest of his band drank beer.

Days two of Team DIY will have henna ink smudged across their limbs.

Tours announced within a few days of Reading & Leeds finishing.

Bands who thought El had gangrene when they saw her disastrous henna.

Times a band’s Dad winked at us in Reading’s press area.

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Members of Swim Deep super-excited to see Eminem.

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Editor Stephen Ackroyd

R E A D I N G F E S T I VA L

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YO U M E AT S I X

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FRANZ FERDINAND

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THE ORWELLS

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BIPOLAR SUNSHINE

31 M O K O 36 C H V R C H E S 44 F A C T O R Y F L O O R 48 S U M M E R C A M P 52 S K Y L A R K I N 54 M G M T 60 T H E N A K E D A N D F A M O U S 62 L O N D O N G R A M M A R 66 A R C T I C

R EG UL ARS

MONKEYS

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R E V I E W S : 66 A L B U M S 76 L I V E

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Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden Reviews Editor Emma Swann News Editor Sarah Jamieson Staff Writer: Gareth Ware Art Director Louise Mason Head Of Marketing & Events Jack Clothier Online Editor Jamie Milton Assistant Online Editor El Hunt Contributors Danny Wright, George Smale, Hayley Fox, Huw Oliver, Jake May, James West, Jonathan Simpson, Kyle Forward, Martyn Young, Matthew Davies, Nathan Comer, Nathan Standlee, Tim Lee, Tom Doyle, Tom Walters Photographers Fraser Stephen, Hannah Cordingley, Lucy Hoang, Mike Massaro, Sarah Louise Bennett, Xander Lloyd For DIY editorial info@thisisfakediy.co.uk For DIY sales rupert@sonicdigital.co.uk tel: +44 (0)20 76130555 For DIY online sales lawrence@sonicdigital.co.uk tel: +44 (0)20 76130555 DIY is published by Sonic Media Group. All material copyright (c). All rights reserved.

This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of DIY. 25p where sold.

Disclaimer: While every effort is made to ensure the information in this magazine is correct, changes can occur which affect the accuracy of copy, for which Sonic Media Group holds no responsibility. The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of DIY or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally.

AVAILABLE TO OWN 16TH SEPTEMBER 2013 “ Wild Light” is where the music leads.

All that matters is to listen.

Co-produced by longtime conspirator Dave Sanderson, mixed at the Castle of Doom by Tony Doogan (Belle and Sebastien / Mogwai) in Glasgow, mastered at Abbey Road Studios Also available as Limited Edition Digipak (incl. bonus track), 180g vinyl edition (incl. album on CD) & iTunes Exclusive Version

UK Tour 2013 19.9.2013 – Kingston - New Slang 20.9.2013 – London – Rough Trade East in-store 22.9.2013 – Edinburgh – Liquid Rooms 23.9.2013 – Manchester – Sound Control 24.9.2013 – Nottingham – Rescue Rooms 25.9.2013 – London – Scala 26.9.2013 – Bristol – Thekla

“ No-one knows what is happening.

There is a lot of danger out there, ok?”

www.superballmusic.com www.65daysofstatic.com 5

S W NE Reading & Leeds has been and gone.

Wellies were muddied, riotous sing alongs were had, beers that cost more than they should were downed.

A guest appearance on Saturday set tongues wagging; a band’s Dad wandered amongst the plastic picnic furniture in the guest area. A good time was had by all. Well, apart from Trent Reznor. Here’s DIY’s definitive guide to everything that happened over the year’s best weekend.

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It’s not uncommon to drop the ball at a festival like Reading. There’s a lot of pressure; possibly live on the telly, certainly playing to a huge crowd that may not normally turn up to a show. It can make or break or band.

Some can’t handle it.

Not FIDLAR (Radio 1/NME Stage). ‘Cheap Beer’ is less than thirty seconds in and the roof is off, the doors are half way to the Main Stage and absolutely all bets are off. Twelve months ago the LA punks’ Festival Republic set announced their arrival, this year it’s a triumphant refusal to act their age. They’re the gloriously putrid meat in a Class of 2013 sandwich.

Before them DEAP VALLY thump, bump and fist pump their way to glory, resulting in a satisfying growl and a mid set lap of honour. Afterwards PEACE take Reading 2013.

It’s no exaggeration. Half way up the second stage isn’t the usual place to do it, but B-Town’s leading lights feel like they’ve achieved something important. Strutting with confidence, not arrogance, a packed tent jumps, screams and sings every word back. ‘Follow Baby’ sounds like a de facto anthem - in fact, every single track does. There’s a connection between band and crowd no other feels to command. It’s the kind of set that lives long in the memory.

Opening a stage is always a bit of a challenge on day one, but for GNARWOLVES (Lock Up Stage), it seems like an absolute walk in the park. In fact, the tent is packed. Spilling-out-of-the-edges packed. And, even though it’s still early, spirits are already high, voices already raised. There’s barely a crowd member not singing along throughout, and it’s proof enough that Gnarwolves are destined for much, much bigger things.

PARQUET COURTS (Festival Republic Stage) aren’t here to muck about. The New Yorkers haven’t quite grown into the tent packers they deserve, but that’s no comment on their quality. ‘Stoned And Starving’ and ‘Master Of My Craft’ both sound as exciting live as on record.

Following a rammed surprise set on the BBC Introducing stage earlier in the day, BASTILLE (Radio 1/NME Stage) may have brought the biggest

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DEFTONES RETURN

Deftones mark their return to Reading with a triumphant set on the Main Stage. This show holds particular importance for the band: it’s their first UK date since the death of bassist Chi Cheng in April 2013. “It’s something that’s always in our minds,” frontman Chino Moreno explains, “but we try to make it so that it’s more of a celebration of everything we’ve had, and to not let it weigh on us so much. I mean, we get there and we play and it’s going through our minds through the show constantly. It’d be impossible for him not to.”

FIDLAR PREPARE

FIDLAR are prepped early on Friday afternoon, having already put a lot of thought into their set.

“We’ll sneak in some new songs - maybe a cover,” frontman Zac Carper explains before they go on stage. “We’ve been trying to get our bass player to sing, so maybe he’ll sing a couple of songs.” In the end, they covered Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ ‘Red Right Hand’.

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non Main Stage crowd of the festival. With more people stuck outside the super-sized tent as inside, as time goes on the usually shy Dan Smith is looking more and more like a man accepting he might be at the centre of something rather, y’know, popular?

Operating on an epic scale, there’s no doubting Bastille offer something very different to their peers, but if anything it works in a festival setting even better than at their own shows. Vocal hooks even the most intoxicated of festival goers can yell back, Reading is eating from their hands.

A$AP ROCKY is up soon after (Radio 1/NME Stage), and the mood only gets rowdier. Delivering ‘Purple Swag’ and the like to a purple drenched tent, there’s a typically liberal approach to Chop n’ Screw, and plenty of filthy lyricism along the way. A$AP also proposes a call to arms for “all the bad bitches” to get onstage. Very few do, so instead the A$AP mob welcome a drunken, topless man wearing knitted ear warmers to their crew instead. It’s a hip-hop set of the highest ilk. Later, SKRILLEX, aided by a no-expense-spared light show and what appears to be a dubstep spaceship, transforms the stage’s big top atmosphere to a cavernous nightclub with his beats, drops and wubs.

Meanwhile, things are heating up over on the other side of the arena, where DEFTONES (Main Stage) have arrived. Marking the start of what’s set to be a rather riotous evening, their brand of groove-infused metallic rock provokes many a mosh pit, and tracks like ‘My Own Summer (Shove It)’ begin to warm the crowd up nicely.

Competing with GREEN DAY at Reading isn’t strictly fair for any new act, but CHVRCHES (Festival Republic Stage) hold a must see tag that still manages to pull a creditable crowd. Those there are treated to something special. As their debut album approaches, the Scottish trio grow more and more into their own skin live. An electronic act with both songs and a muscular core, it’s not just the singles that are met with a euphoric response. Once the record is out 8 thisisfakediy.co.uk

INSTAGREADING

When a band asks if you letting them borrow your Instagram for the day is really a good idea, a few alarm bells ring. Not enough to not hand over the passwords anyway, mind. Gnarwolves took over DIY’s account on the first day of Reading 2013: here’s a taster of what they got up to.

BASTILLE

PLAY SECRET SET The biggest tent crowd of Friday gather mid-afternoon for Bastille, but that isn’t the only place Dan Smith & Co. pop up: they also play a secret set on the BBC Introducing Stage. “The only slightly stressful thing was that it was going out live on the radio, and we couldn’t really hear ourselves,” Dan explains afterwards. “I kept forgetting the words as well. But, the reason we

couldn’t hear ourselves was because people were singing along so loudly - so that was nice!”

WHAT’S ON YOUR RIDER?

“We ask for ripe avocados, manuka honey, hummus. I would love to have a masseuse on our rider, but I don’t know if we’re at that level yet.” DEAP VALLY

there, expect a much bigger stage next year.

Needless to say, those punk rock titans in GREEN DAY (Main Stage) still manage to draw quite an audience, despite the plethora of distractions elsewhere on site. And rightly so, really, because - all eye-rolling aside - no one does it quite like Green Day. Especially when their set includes a full run-through of their 1994 album, ‘Dookie’. Blasting through two-hours of anthems from their twenty-odd-year career and running around like maniacs all at the same time is no mean feat and, truthfully, it’s only testament to the three of them for managing it. Yeah, they’re not quite the secret guests opening the Radio 1/NME Stage this year, but the final slot of Friday is one they’re never not going to deserve.

ARE YOU EXCITED TO HAVE YOUR PARENTS HERE WATCHING YOU?

SO, HARRY AND SAM. HAVE YOU GOT ANYTHING SPECIAL PLANNED FOR YOUR SET?

H: Yeah, this is the first time we’ve properly worked on the live show, it feels like the first step on a different staircase I guess. And I’m wearing fantastic trousers.

HOW ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE, DO YOU HAVE YOUR OUTFIT SORTED YET?

Sam: I’ve got a couple of options.

H: Never do anything except all black, Sam. What’s the moon against the night sky?

S: I’m like the night sky.

H: It makes it sound so SO, YOU’RE HALF OF PEACE’S demeaning…

DAD, HERE TO SEE HARRY D: I’m staying with the Ben AND SAM TODAY. ARE YOU Sherman myself.

Harry: Yeah, definitely. It’s their first festival, the first time they’ll have seen us on a big stage, so it should be massive.

LOOKING FORWARD TO IT?

Dad: Oh, very much so. We can’t wait to see them play.

We’ve seen them a couple of times in the past, but not at a festival at this sort of magnitude, if you like. It’s very exciting.

ONE OF THE LEATHER JACKETS HARRY WEARS ON STAGE BELONGS TO YOU, DOESN’T IT?

D: Yeah, the leather jacket with Marilyn Monroe on. It used to have fringing. We cut the fringing off, somebody did. It may have been me. I’m not sure.

H: It wasn’t me!

Before Bastille take to the Introducing Stage for their ‘secret’ performance, Birmingham’s JAWS play their first ever set at the festival. “It’s very, very weird,” frontman Connor Schofield laughs afterwards. “It’s good though. We didn’t know Bastille was a guest until after we played. One of the best crowds we’ve ever played to. Our favourite gig ever.”

SO YOU’RE REALLY TRAVELING THE WORLD NOW?

H: Yeah, and it feels premium.

S: We actually got our first First Class flight. It felt like a whole new world. Jamiroquai was sat next to me, and I was in awe.

DID YOU GET HOT FLANNELS?

H: Yes! Pyjamas as well.

D: Proper cutlery and no plastic?

No plastic involved?

S: Metal cutlery, and a salt and pepper grinder.

D: We don’t even have that at home!

Q&APEACE

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, BANDS OFTEN HAVE TO DO A LOT OF WORK AT FESTIVALS. NOT HARRY AND SAM KOISSER, THOUGH: THEY’VE BROUGHT THEIR MUM AND DAD ALONG TO HELP.

JAWS

MAKE THEIR READING DEBUT

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INSTAGREADING Saturday was Swim Deep’s turn to take

over DIY’s Instagram. Along with some half-naked posing, they posted this gem, dubbed ‘Willselfie’.

CHILDHOOD (Radio 1/ NME Stage) have a

strange obligation in being given the task of opening and closing day two of Reading 2013. Their first hurrah comes in the form of soundtracking a soggy, spacious midday slumber. The sun-kissed ‘Solemn Skies’ has never sounded grander, in turn awakening a wandering crowd into doe-eyed swooners.

A few hours later, any confused passers-by would be forgiven for assuming the band taking to the Radio 1/NME Stage were more akin to One Direction than a south London riotous quartet, as PALMA VIOLETS are greeted to a sea of screaming.

Dressed in a dapper 70s suit, bandleader Chilli Jesson does everything in his power to keep the decibels high, as the impressively tight foursome predictably cause havoc from ‘Rattlesnake Highway’ to ‘Brand New Song’.

Shrouding the stage and the senses in a misty fog of acid-wash colours, TAME IMPALA (Radio 1/NME Stage) are just as prone to biting riffs as they are prolonged psych freakouts. A supposedly poorly Kevin Parker strikes a clever balance, with the stomping ‘Elephant’ giving way to five good minutes of forecasted, tripped-out storms. By the end, Parker’s strewn out on the stage floor, all remnants of normality gone runaway.

When FOALS (Main Stage) wrote ‘Inhaler’, were they dreaming of Reading? It’s still them, with its intricate, math rock thread, but that riff - like a wave of sonic energy bombarding the massive early evening crowd - is the stuff of dreams. This is no delicate, bookish band thrown in the deep end. Foals rock. So much so they may now be this country’s most important guitar band.

Nobody at Reading would disagree. It’s suitably dark and 10 thisisfakediy.co.uk

FOALS

CHILDHOOD OPEN AND CLOSE

Childhood were in an odd position: scheduled for two sets each at Reading & Leeds, they were tasked with both opening the festival on the Radio 1/NME Stage and closing it on the BBC Introducing Stage.

“It’s all about the temperament. It’s all about not getting too fucked,” Ben revealed. “We had heard Arctic Monkeys were meant to be doing a secret show before our set [on the Radio 1/NME Stage] but it didn’t materialise.”

PALMA VIOLETS CELEBRATE Reading means a lot of things to a lot of people, and for Palma Violets, it’s extra special. “It was amazing, really special festival for us,” the band’s Chilli Jesson explained. “We love Reading because we all met here. It’s incredible, it’s four years since we met here. It’s like the anniversary, very special. We might go back to the same campsite tonight, yellow 7. I put on my suit, only for today, for the anniversary.”

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atmospheric for London-based band SAVAGES (Festival Republic Stage) as they return to the stage on which they impressed so many at last year’s event.

Opening with ‘I Am Here’, the post-punk foursome rattle through many a song from debut album ‘Silence Yourself ’, finishing with a rousing ‘Husbands’.

Let’s face it, ALT-J were never going to compete with the bombast of Eminem as the band step up to headline the Radio 1/NME Stage. Instead, it’s a classy, minimalist set-up; the band surrounded with what look like (but most certainly aren’t) a forest of Ikea floor lamps, the subdued lighting suiting the Mercury winners’ aesthetic perfectly. It’s not all understated, of course – the entire tent is both hanging on to, and singing along to Joe Newman’s every word. Even all those unintelligible ones.

Saturday has been building up to The Real Slim Shady on the Main Stage. EMINEM doesn’t disappoint, emerging out of monolithic automatic doors, hood up, and cap peak pulled down, like some kind of fantastically unbelievable cartoon character. Even when he’s just roaming the stage doing slightly baffling Tai Chi style dancing and leaving most of the work to his ‘Hype Man’, it’s unreal to see him in the flesh. Once the killer combination of ‘My Name Is’, ‘The Real Slim Shady’ and ‘Without Me’ fire out in quick medleyspeed succession, it feels like the year 2000 again.

Throw in ‘Love The Way You Lie’, and his collab with B.o.B on ‘Airplanes’, and the crowd descends into mayhem.

Em has one more secret weapon in his arsenal, the formidable DIDO, who strolls onto stage and performs ‘Stan’ with the calm, collected poise of a true pop legend, before exiting serenely through drifting smoke like an ethereal sprite. It’s encore ‘Lose Yourself ’, though, that cements the deal, and the whole of Reading apparently knows every word. Tonight’s headliner was overblown, hard-hitting, and just the right level of ridiculous. You nailed it, Shady.

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THEME PARK GET WET

While Leeds was a bit of a washout, Reading wasn’t too bad this year: but that didn’t stop Theme Park getting wet. “There was a point where there were jets of water coming down,” said Miles Haughton. “That was when it started pissing it down. There was a juxtaposition there. It’s certainly suited to boosting crowd numbers!”

SAVAGES

THE BRONX ARE BACK

The Bronx’s set on the Lock Up stage doesn’t just mark a return to Reading & Leeds; it also draws to close their European tour, in the best manner possible. “You know, this tour has been bookended

by England,” explains frontman Matt Caughthran.

“We started at the Rebellion Fest in Blackpool, and now we’re finishing at Reading & Leeds, which is something that’s a huge thing for our band. We never get tired of this place - we love it - and it’s nice to be back.”

“WHO KNOWS,” DIY WROTE IN THE INTRO TO OUR SATURDAY READING LIVE BLOG, “DIDO MIGHT EVEN PLAY A SECRET SET. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST (THIS IS ALMOST 100% NOT GOING TO HAPPEN).” WE STARTED

#DIDOWATCH anyway, of course.

12.17PM: DIDO UPDATE. Looking at the singer’s Twitter, she’s not updated for over a month.

That means she could be anywhere.

SHE COULD BE AT READING NOW. We’ll be on Dido watch all day.

12:51PM: DIDO WATCH

UPDATE #2. My tea has gone cold and I’m wondering why I’ve got out of bed at all. Is this a sign?

1.29PM: Our #Didowatch is gaining momentum. A white flag has been spotted on a dressing room door. Dido doesn’t like white flags.

A red herring?

2.28PM: The Dido

rumours have gone into MELTDOWN. Theme Park, post Reading Fest set, claimed they’d come into a close encounter with the smooth-pop legend. “She tried to invade our stage during the set,” claimed Marcus.

Dido.” Word’s spreading about today’s guest appearance in the press area.

3.06PM: “Earlier I

served someone who looked a bit like Dido, could have been her.” Rhian at Gourmet Burger says. #didowatch

3.11PM: Swim Deep are going gung-ho on Instagram.

They’re posting pictures of each other getting changed now. There’s a very skinny Cav. Or is that Dido? No, it’s definitely Cav. 4.29PM: “I’ve forgotten

what Dido looks like,” says Drenge’s Eoin Loveless.

5.06PM: DIY’s El Hunt wanted a Dido ‘White Flag’ tattoo, but couldn’t be bothered to pay someone to do it. A big mistake.

6.10PM: WELL THERE YOU GO, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Dido, on Instagram.

6.14PM: Dido is playing.

This is officially A Thing. You genuinely did hear it here first.

Thank you and goodnight (we’ll still be blogging for a few hours yet).

7.22PM: Palma Violets’

2.34PM: Oh. My. God. #readingfestival #didowatch

2.55PM: “Oh my god,

seriously? I’m so excited now! I love

5.29PM: The Dido rumour-

mill is in overdrive. We spoke to an excitable festival goer just now who said: “I’m so excited I will pull my face off and swap it with yours. Wait, is this true? Dido is my life!”

Chilli Jesson on Dido’s rumoured appearance: “Amazing! I love Dido. She’s my girl.” He also sang ‘Life For Rent’ in Artist Catering.

11.02PM: Eminem is currently onstage with Dido. #didowatch is a success!

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Day three of any festival can be a bit of a slog. It needs a definitive wake up call, but honestly, it’s somewhat of a surprise to see WAVVES (Radio 1/NME Stage) so bright eyed and bushy tailed by a Sunday lunchtime, never mind their crowd.

With a set perfectly suited to festivals - all bratty energy and shrugged attitude - they’re never not a delight.

It’s almost as if EDITORS’ latest album, ‘The Weight Of Your Love’ was intended for an early-evening slot on the Main Stage. The band’s new, beefier, U2-esque sounds lend themselves brilliantly to the outdoor setting. What’s more, Tom Smith’s new haircut and sunglasses combo makes him look curiously like Paul Hewson...

ALUNAGEORGE (Radio 1/NME Stage) turn up with a sizeable, excited crowd. Rattling through ‘the hits’, they’re unlucky to be followed shortly after by HAIM, who turn the hype up to eleven. It’s deserved, too. Their brand of festival friendly FM rock sounds more robust; every single sounds like an anthem. They’ll be back next year on a the Main Stage, we’d be more than willing to bet.

Opening their set with a thundering rendition of ‘Thriller’, FALL OUT BOY’s (Main Stage) return to arms is nothing short of epic. Showcasing a band filled with a new lease of life, their newest material sounds incredible in such an arena. There’s also a REGENERATE generous helping of golden oldies, all of which Editors’ Tom Smith and Russell Leetch are bursting at the seams with an energy that arrive in Reading from the mud-swept Leeds had long disappeared the last time they graced Fest to play a Main Stage performance, and this stage. they’re adapting to recent line-up changes well, it seems. “It’s a new band for us,” Smith says, A stubborn low brow and a fancy cape are the “so it’s new for the audience to have two only clues offered as to Trent Reznor’s mood different faces on stage. The old songs for tonight’s NINE INCH NAILS (Main feel a bit fresher, and obviously Stage) set, rumours abound that he’s all hot and there’s new songs as well.” bothered about not being given a headline slot.

EDITORS

If the strobe and smoke blast of the resulting show is anything to go by, he’s trying to prove a point. A good

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chunk of new album ‘Hesitation Marks’ gets an airing in favour of bigger beings ‘Hurt’, ‘Closer’, etc. In turn, his band provide a bleepfilled wave of terror; one of the more immersive sets of the weekend.

PHOENIX (Radio 1/NME Stage) have an unenviable task. On the other side of the arena Biffy Clyro are playing the set of their lives. Almost everyone is there, but with a more modest audience the Frenchmen work wonders. Battling technical issues to boot, they manage to sound both epically huge and brilliantly intimate.

There aren’t many bands who can headline a major festival. Most are rotated around like traded horses - Glastonbury one year, T In The Park the next. It’s not as if BIFFY CLYRO (Main Stage) haven’t headlined before - they’ve got a couple, including Download, under their belt - but Reading is a different league all together. If they get this right, Biffy confirm what many have believed for a while now; that they belong amongst the highest echelons of Britain’s current crop of bands.

They’re not going about it half-arsed. There are flames shooting in to the sky, huge screens and an ornate stage set up. Over the past few albums it’s no secret the Scots have been building up a cache of big festival friendly anthems. From ‘That Golden Rule’ to ‘Many Of Horror’, ‘The Captain’ and encore closer ‘Mountains’, they certainly have the hits, but there’s also a nod to the past. ‘Glitter And Trauma’, ‘Saturday Superhouse’ and ‘57’ all make a welcome showing too.

It’s impossible to overstate how important this feels.

Smashing out of the park is one thing; that they’ve done this while making established peers look flat out average is something else all together. Of every band this weekend, Biffy feel the most comfortable in their craft. There’s a genuine connection to their audience, we’re all in this together. It’s a coronation, the end of a journey and the start of a new chapter. Make no mistake, they’ll be topping the bill at every other festival near you very, very soon indeed.

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INSTAGREADING

NEWS READING & LEEDS 2013

Having wrestled the keys from Gnarwolves and Swim Deep’s grip, DIY’s back on Instagram. Thankfully neither band managed to get us banned. In amongst today’s snaps, there’s one each of Pete and Patrick from Fall Out Boy, on stage.

Which gets more likes? Pete.

But far more popular was our earlier photo of Pete by the backstage fridge.

MIXOLOGY

It didn’t take long before the back stage drinks lost their lustre, but there were plenty of bands on hand over the weekend to give their mixology recommendations. Here’s the resulting menu.

PHOENIX GET SURROUNDED Not all festivals are for everyone, and Phoenix don’t seem so sure of Reading this year. “Tonight it’s hard becausee it feels like a prison here,” Laurent Brancowitz laughs before the band’s set. “The whole system is based on the principle of a zoo, you know? We’re surrounded by big walls. The walls of shame. Leeds was a bit different. You can feel a biblical vibe you know?

A gathering of tribes.”

THE PALMA VIOLET

“Vodka, whiskey, petrol and matches.”

LONG ISLAND ICED BONDAX

“Snapple, sour skittles, a dash of desperados, good champagne, a sprinkle of pepper, and a twist of lime.

Served with a medium rare steak on the side.”

CHARLIPOLITAN XCX “Vodka, cherry liquor and champagne, with a strawberry in, and a little bit of salt round the edge of the glass.”

ALUNAGEORGE PINAMOJITO

“Rum, some pineapple juice, crushed ice, and sugar round the rim. That’s it, simple.

Served in a tall slim glass with a cocktail thingy at the top, margherita-style.”

SAN CISCO CAMPARI

“We’d add a bit of fireworks, or pyrotechnics.

Maybe petrol. Cinnamon and custard, too...

And we’d charge $50 for it.”

FALL OUT BOY GO WILD Fall Out Boy, Nine Inch Nails, Biffy Clyro. It’s a big night for rock, and Pete Wentz and co are in excitable mood to be a part of it. Ahead of their set, he explains: “To be playing third to last on a festival like this is crazy. Today’s wild. These are the festivals that we were fans of growing up, on TV and stuff.”

TRENT KICKS OFF

The Nine Inch Nails chaps aren’t happy campers, with rumours spreading early on in the day that all wasn’t well. Prior to their pre-Biffy Clyro set, Trent Reznor took to Twitter to have a whinge: “Should be an unusual show tonight at Reading... the lying promoter and the band following us (whoever the fuck they are) fucked us on our production.”

17

NEWS READING & LEEDS 2013

ThingS WE LEARnT at REaDinG 2013

CABIN FEVER HAS SET IN AND DELIRIUM IS HIGH. NERVES ARE BEGINNING TO FROTH OVERBOARD. PEOPLE AREN’T QUITE ABLE TO CONTAIN THEMSELVES ANYMORE. THEY’VE BEEN TO LEEDS AND WITNESSED PEOPLE DROWNING IN MUD, AND NOW, THEY NEED TO GET SOME THINGS OFF THEIR CHEST. This is Reading Festival, and it’s the perfect place to discover secrets.

Luckily, we’re always around to lend an ear when people can’t help oversharing. Here are just a few of the crazy, stupid, wonderful things that we found out this year.

1

DEAP VALLY COULD HAVE A FUTURE CAREER IN FIGURE SKATING (AND POSSIBLY DIRECTING HORROR MOVIES)

“We’ve been watching a lot of competitive Olympic figure skating. It’s really inspiring because of the level of focus and discipline. They kill it, they slay it, like ‘meh, it’s the Olympics, whatever.’

Ice skating is crazy, you have something that you could kill someone with on the bottom of your feet. That’s a great idea for a horror movie, or an action film. The 12 year old girl who looks like the victim, but then she kills someone...”

- Lindsey Troy

DEFTONES’

DRUMMER CAN’T HELP HIS PERSPIRATION

“I’m a sweater! It’s good, because I don’t really stink because I’m always circulating, but I’m hot as hell!” - Abe Cunningham

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2

SPLASHH ARE PROPER MUMMY’S BOYS “Reading’s that festival that you want to go to as a kid, but my mum would never let me come to Reading & Leeds… It was always V Festival!” - Thomas Beale

4

FALL OUT BOY

SPEND A LOT OF TIME WORRYING ABOUT THEIR HAIR “It’s been an interesting process to try and make eleven music videos out of a continuous story.

Some of it’s been really exciting, and some are like, ‘Man, we’re sitting around in fake blood right now, for twelve hours on end...”

And trying to keep the continuity [is challenging], like, ‘Man, was my hair like this, or like that last time?!’” - Pete Wentz

5

BASTILLE GOT TO HANG OUT WITH DAVID BLOODY LYNCH

“We did that David Lynch remix, and when we were in LA, we were doing some gigs there. Basically, I ended going to his house and hanging out with him, which was ridiculous! It couldn’t have been more of a ridiculous, weird, surreal fanboy dream moment if it tried.” Dan Smith

6

PALMA VIOLETS

ARE HUNGRY (AND EVER-SODEMANDING) BOYS

“I had steak and kidney pie [from catering], it was alright. Wait, you can sort me out with a chicken burger?! I could really go for a chicken burger!” - Chilli Jesson

DRENGE

WORSHIP AT THE CHURCH OF COBAIN

7

“With Reading as a whole, Nirvana is the big thing. Before I went onstage I was like, ‘Don’t upset Lord Kurt’.” - Eoin Loveless

8

FIDLAR

ARE ALWAYS GOING TO BE BAD INFLUENCES

“Henna is the ink stuff, right? Wait, if you dye your hair afterwards you’ll get blood poisoning! You have to try that!” - Zac Carper

19

NEWS YOU ME AT SIX

In The Studio:

You Me At Six WITH THEIR LAST ALBUM ‘SINNERS N E V E R S L E E P ’ , T H E Y FA C E D S O M E O F THE BIGGEST HIGHS AND LOWS OF T H E I R C A R E E R . N O W, YO U M E AT S I X A R E W O R K I N G O N T H E I R N E X T S T E P.

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B

orn around seven years ago into a scene filled with pop punk wannabes and Fueled By Ramen clones, You Me At Six were faced with the challenge of being the five teenage boys with floppy fringes that somehow stood out from the rest of the crowd.

“We decided with ‘Hold Me Down’ that we didn’t want to, so tried something different. We’re now 22, 23, 24 and I’d like to think that the music we’re making on this record will embody that, but at the same time, will still pay homage to our roots.

Through sheer determination, hard work and a little bit of luck, they managed it. Now, with a sold out Wembley Arena show tucked neatly into their belts, there’s no denying that they’ve come a long way. But it’s time for a new challenge, and it’s staring them right in the face.

“We’ve got a lot of songs in our back catalogue, and we know what works and what doesn’t. That can only help us to figure out our identity. I feel like we’ve definitely done that in the last six years, and now this record is us being the band that we’ve wanted to be for a while.”

“Most bands don’t get to make it to their fourth record with a fanbase that’s that fussed,” offers frontman Josh Franceschi, a young man with a penchant for honesty, on LA time. “With a lot of my favourite bands, I fell out of love with them by the time they were on their third or fourth record because they weren’t making the kind of music that I wanted to listen to.”

Spending their last three albums honing their sound was one thing, but their last record – the explosive

With the five members all still gracing their mid-twenties, You Me At Six have grown up in the eyes of their audience, just as their audience has grown up in front of them. There’s a certain sense of understanding one another’s nuances.

“I think that’s always been one of the most attractive things about our band for our fans, especially when we were younger. I guess, we were just that UK band that was in the right place, at the right time, and it was up to us to figure out that if we wanted to be a pop punk band for the rest of our career, or not.

‘Sinners Never Sleep’ – marked more than just another step on the ladder.

That was their make or break point, and they’re aware of its successes and failures.

“With ‘Sinners’ we found out what our band should and shouldn’t do. I think we might have confused people with that record. You have songs like ‘No One Does It Better’ and ‘Crash’, then suddenly the heavier ones kick in, and people would be like, ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

“This record, we’ve been conscious

of that, and felt that we needed to narrow our perspective. I don’t think there’ll be as drastic differences. One song was screaming and one song was strings. There was fucking Aerosmith guitar riffs,” he laughs. “But I don’t quite think that’s gonna be happening again.

“When we did ‘Sinners’, we were going through a phase where all of our friends were in heavy bands. We were the band that weren’t really like that, but we were influenced by all of our surroundings. If we put out that record now, I don’t know how much sense that would make, but at the time, it felt perfect to do that stuff for us. I think it worked in the sense of converting certain people who may have disregarded You Me At Six from the first few records. That’s kinda why we did it to be honest.”

Needless to say, without that album the band we know probably wouldn’t be around today. “I think, regardless of what you do in life - whether it’s being in a band, being an athlete, a student or working a 9 to 5 job - you have to go through those patches of negativity and pressure to have that moment of clarity, and passage to a better place.

“We needed to go through that as a band. We needed to admit there were issues, and to grow from that. I think when people hear the new record, I’d be very surprised if that sense of positivity doesn’t come across. I don’t see how it couldn’t. It’s almost as though everything’s behind us and the music really speaks for itself.”

You Me At Six’s new album will be released in early 2014.

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NEWS FRANZ FERDINAND

“IT SOUNDS LIKE A FRANZ FERDINAND RECORD.” FRANZ ARE BACK, AND - AS ALEX KAPRANOS EXPLAINS T H E Y ’ R E N O T S H Y I N G AWAY F R O M B E I N G T H E M S E LV E S .

Words: Emma Swann.

As the seventh second of ‘Right Action’, the opening song and almost title track of ‘Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action’, hits – that’s it. Confirmed. This couldn’t be anything but a Franz Ferdinand album. And, as frontman Alex Kapranos points out while sat at his Mum’s house in Glasgow, it’s the quartet’s personality - it can’t help but permeate everything they do. It’s not as if they’ve not tried anything new. In fact, “there are a lot of things that are very different; there’s a weird oboe-type solo, there’s a Colombian rhythm, there’s circus pop rhythm, all sorts of odd little things.”

The songs were recorded mostly between Glasgow and London a

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few days at a time, a process which Kapranos says meant they “never got bored.” It features collaborations, both musical and production-based: Björn Yttling “worked on a couple of songs,” as did Todd Terje, and both ‘Right Action’ and ‘Goodbye Lovers & Friends’ feature contributions from Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard of Hot Chip. “These sort of things,” Alex explains, “they just feel like they sit in to place, and it sounds like a Franz Ferdinand record.”

It’s by both accident and design.

The band recently took part in Beck’s Song Reader live show at the Barbican, London, and Alex recalls “we were playing a Beck song, and as soon as we started playing,

it sounded like Franz Ferdinand!”

It’s a good thing, he assures, that “you can take something that’s written by a completely different personality, but your own always makes it sound like you. Like when Frank Sinatra sang a song. I’m not saying we sound anything like Frank Sinatra,” he laughs. “but you know it’s him singing because he was so comfortable in his own personality.

I’m not even a big Frank Sinatra fan, but like, you always recognise it as being him.” The thing is, he says, “you should never be afraid of your own identity.”

Franz Ferdinand’s new album ‘Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action’ is out now via Domino.

23

NEWS #STANDFORSOMETHING

specTor 24 thisisfakediy.co.uk

Full Tour Revealed This autumn, DIY is teaming up with Dr. Martens for the #STANDFORSOMETHING Tour: five gigs in five cities around the UK, showcasing some of the best bands we could get our hands on. We’ve already revealed Young Guns as headlining The Louisiana in Bristol on 12th October, and now we can bring you the rest.

Sonic Boom Six will be kicking things off in Manchester, before Spector take to the intimate confines of London’s Birthdays, Lower Than Atlantis raise hell in Nottingham’s Spanky Van Dykes and, finally, the tour culminates with Dry the River playing Glasgow’s legendary King Tut’s.

Tickets are on sale now, available over the counter in select Dr. Martens stores and online via ticketweb.co.uk/standforsomething.

They’re just £5 each. Visit drmartens.com/standforsomethingtour2013 for more information.

WhAT Do You sTAnD For FreD MAcpherson? (specTor) “What’s the phrase? ‘If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything’. We stand for trying to break down any of the few, outdated, remaining barriers between being in an indie band and being a pop group in the 21st Century.

We stand for entertainment; the recognition that with art and bands, entertainment sits in the middle. There’s as much truth in entertainment as there is in art.

We stand for being honest with yourself, and enjoying what you enjoy. There is no shame. Like what you like.”

Tour 2013

The DeTAILs

DIY

--------28TH SEPT

SONIC BOOM SIX MANCHESTER DEAF INSTITUTE --------12TH OCT

YOUNG GUNS BRISTOL LOUISIANA --------26TH OCT

SPECTOR LONDON BIRTHDAYS --------9TH NOV

LOWER THAN ATLANTIS NOTTINGHAM SPANKY VAN DYKES --------16TH NOV

DRY THE RIVER GLASGOW KING TUT’S ---------

KEEP UPDATED ON DRMARTENS.COM AND THISISFAKEDIY.CO.UK FOR ALL THE NEWS

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NEWS #STANDFORSOMETHING

WhAT Do You sTAnD For MIKe Duce (LoWer ThAn ATLAnTIs)

WhAT Do You sTAnD For scoTT MILLer (DrY The rIver)

“We stand for doing your own thing. It’s about being proud of who you are without worrying what everyone else thinks.

That’s our approach to style, it’s our approach to music, it’s our approach to life. It’s about what you want to do, not what everyone expects you to do.”

“Be yourself. I’d rather have people hate me for who I am, instead of pretending to be someone else. I always say on stage that if four normal idiots that came from nothing can do what we’re doing, then anyone can do it.”

“Dry the River stands for encouraging people to have a good time, and enjoy some real music. We like to have a good time when we play, and we just hope that the people that come to the shows can as well.”

TIcKeTs £5: AvAILABLe FroM seLecTeD uK Dr. MArTens sTores &TIcKeTWeB.co.uK/sTAnDForsoMeThInG

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sonIc BooM sIx

WhAT Do You sTAnD For BArneY BooM? (sonIc BooM sIx)

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NEU THE ORWELLS

NEu

N E W

M U S I C

N E W

B A N D S

THEORWELLS I F T H E O R W E L L S H A D T H E I R WAY, U S S U B U R B S W O U L D BE SWIMMING IN BLO OD, GUTS AND PLENT Y OF BEER. IN R E A L I T Y, T H E Y B R I N G T H I S K I N D O F C A R N A G E T O T H E S TA G E .

LESS NINETEEN-EIGHTY-FOUR, MORE NINETEEN-EIGHTYG O R E . Words: Tom Walters.

D

eranged, unhinged and completely bonkers, witnessing The Orwells live isn’t a task for the faint-hearted. But it comes recommended. Their frantic, loony performance of revivalist garage rock is defined by frontman Mario Cuomo. Red-faced, full of beer, throwing himself around the stage like Goldilocks on a rampage - it’s one hell of a sight to see unravel.

“Once Mario gets on stage he sets a bar that we kind of have to reach, and we try to keep up with him,” guitarist Matt O’Keefe asserts while speaking from the band’s Chicago neighbourhood.

Mario’s stage presence

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channels not only the flipped out and charismatic lunacy of The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins, but also the slick and effortlessly cool vibe of The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas.

Step outside of the live arena however, and you’ll discover incredibly dark and intimidating lyrics, a trait that Matt pins down to not only some of the band’s major influences, but their lives thus far. Asked if the caricature of an image they display is, in actual fact, completely genuine, he responds clearly: “It most definitely is. It mostly comes from a frustration that we have just from where we grew up, and who we were growing up.

“When we have the stage, it’s like it’s our turn to be

heard. We try to make everybody hear us and remember what we said, so yeah, there is an anger and frustration that’s totally genuine on the stage.”

The Orwells’ songs are swimming in knives, guns, blood and guts. The words are penned mostly from Mario’s own twisted imagination. “I was talking to someone the other day who asked ‘what is it that makes Mario sing about the dark shit that he does in some songs?’ and I said it was just that we come from a place where – or at least our town – it’s very perfect and clean cut.

“I think Mario sometimes fantasises about what it’d be like if things were flipped for a day. I think that’s where those songs come from. Like, ‘What if we got our way for a day?’”

One big influence for the band is the Black Lips, an Atlanta garage rock outfit also known for their own wildly theatrical shows. Nudity abound, too. With a band renowned for being so outlandish and eccentric, surely some of it is manufactured? “They’re fucking crazy,” Matt responds. “If you catch us on the right night and we’ve got some drinks in us, yeah, definitely [we’re theatrical]. But we’re not like peeing on stage and shit.

“Growing up our favourite band of all time was The Strokes,” he explains. “They had that whole image where they looked bored as shit on stage and we thought that was cool, and then we saw the Black Lips. Seeing them opened this whole new door where playing a live show wasn’t about just sounding good, but it was

about the energy and the emotion that you put into it.

People are going to remember if you put all your heart on the stage.”

But do things ever get out of hand? Matt recounts one incident where things did get a little rowdy - their first show at this year’s SXSW. The band’s half hour set was cut down to just three songs, which prompted the guys to hold the last note of ‘Mallrats (La La La)’ in protest until people came to remove them from the stage. “It ended up with Mario fist fighting one of the sound guys,” Matt tragically denounces. “People were trying to throw us down and beers were being thrown and that’s when I think it got a little bit crazy and we got off the stage.”

He clarifies that this was a one time thing, and, despite their shows becoming associated with energy and intensity, they never have a set of rules to follow on stage.

“We don’t really set any boundaries, it’s just whatever happens,” he clarifies. “I think once you do that it’s just not genuine - people can tell you’re kind of faking it.

We always just go on [stage] and we don’t really say much. There’s no rule set. That’s just who we are and how we perform. You catch us on a night where maybe it’s a little like underpar… maybe it’s because we’re tired or something. But then you’ll catch us on a night where it’s the opposite and we’re getting into fistfights with sound guys.”

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NEU BIPOLAR SUNSHINE

NEu

NEu

Bipolar Sunshine:

NEu

ADIO MARCHANT HAD TO CALL

I T Q U I T S , TA K E R I S K S A N D AC C E P T M I N I - C R I S E S T O B EG I N H I S Q U I C K F I R E P O P P R O J E C T . S U N N Y S P E L L S S O O N F O L L O W E D . Words: Jamie Milton. Photo: Emma Swann.

T

he clue’s in the name. For Adio Marchant, emotions rule the roost. In the beginning of 2012, he called it quits on a band with a major label record deal. Kid British was over before most of the fans knew about it.

“I had the itch,” he admits. “As soon as I can see something not going the direction I want it to go, there’s no point in doing it.” So he saved up ideas. Like a piggy bank, only with a bigger end-goal than a mini break to Cornwall. “I could come up with the same type of idea with the band, but when it has to go through three other people, it doesn’t end up the same.”

He’s explaining this sitting outside

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Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, the venue where Bipolar Sunshine finally became this validated, exciting thing, not just an idea in Adio’s head.

“Everything I’ve been doing over the last year and a half, came to a moment,” he recalls. Suddenly these supposed risks seemed like the most sensible decision Marchant had even made.

That’s not to say he’s made it, by any means. A couple of singles in, the odd festival slot under his belt. Perfection doesn’t come in an instant - Adio would know. “I’m very outspoken about where I’m at... What’s the worst that’ll happen? I’m gonna smash a few bum notes.” Flaws are inevitable.

Sometimes they’ll even play to

Bipolar Sunshine’s advantage. “I’ll put myself in the hot seat and I might make mistakes, but fuck it,” he states.

When ‘Rivers’ - his mission statement of a single - chants “been low, but I’ve been higher,” that’s all you need to know about Adio’s approach.

Dallying emotions, dealing with the odd crisis - it might make a quick dent, but there’s an underlying optimism. “It’s coming from a vulnerable state of me trying to do something that maybe I’ve never tried to do before.” And it’s this fear that you latch onto as a listener. If it was all just plain-old sunshine it’d be nothing of interest. Bipolar Sunshine, though? Well that’s a different prospect.

T

he Moko you see today is all about the striking hair and the flooring voice, but it’s her childhood that gave her the vital influences to reach the soulful electro blend the 21-year-old dotes upon: she found her voice in classical choirs and charismatic gospel churches. Moko says the main reason her five-year-old self started to sing was down to “being able to have that technical understanding, as well as that natural soul feeling.”

In gaining this feeling, the New Cross artist explains her mum is the person who most influenced her.

“My mum had a massive collection of records and I just used to sit there and without meaning to, all these influences sneaked in somehow.”

While she enjoys new music, like London Grammar for instance, she

NEu admits she’s a bit stuck in the past.

The soul, electro crossover “has never been a contrived idea, because it’s been done from Candi Staton down to Massive Attack.” The latter is an outfit Moko was once obsessed with, and this adoration sneaks into the vocal samples on her track, ‘Hand On Heart’. “Growing up I think I was subconsciously into it because my mum was a massive fan,” Moko enthuses. “[She] used to rinse ‘Unfinished Symphony’.”

When Moko was 16, she would sneak into New Cross parties and pubs to check out the Nu-Rave scene that was starting up. “I was really obsessed with electronic music and the fusion between electronic music and rock, pop or soul and all these other kinds of elements.” Recently

graduated from Goldsmiths, she’s since had a successful few months playing festival sets.

More recently, she’s featured on Chase And Status’s new track, ‘Count On Me’. The production duo emailed Moko before they headed to the studio, providing a beat for her to write to. The process was a change for Moko, who’s more used to throwing ideas around with Imposters, a loose collective she provides vocals for.

Determined to allow her music to do the talking, rather than being “heavily made up like a crazy bitch,” Moko no doubt has the talented credentials to be raising the roof.

“My look, very much like my music, comes from my childhood. For me, it’s all about subtlety.”

REVIVING TRIPHOP AND MAKING IT

M O K O

ICONIC, SOUTH LONDON’S MOKO IS ON A MISSION, HAND F I R M LY O N HEART

.

Words: Hayley Fox, Photo: Emma Swann.

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NEU RECOMMENDED

2

3 1

4

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4

4

1 H O C K E Y S M I T H

2 L E

Y O U T H

Sisters on the Cornish coast, creating starry-eyed singles out of a caravan.

LA dance dazzler with a potential chart-topper Hockeysmith’s story could be blown out of proportion, but we’ll buy on his hands. it. According to the bio they’re two sisters, living in a caravan in The Cassie-sampling bubblegum dance of Le a small Cornwall town. Somehow, within this environment, they Youth’s ‘C O O L’ was released 10 months back; record ambitious eight-minute tracks with a view of the Cornish a whim upload on Soundcloud from LA producer coastline. It’s more interesting than ‘bedroom band gets micro- Wes James. But it’s since turned into the de facto phone, records songs’, as backstories go. song of the summer. Just about every UK radio station Their two songs to date carry bombastic titles - e.g. ‘Let’s is loaded to the brim with ‘C O O L’ plays. But the song Bang’ - and navigate through oddball, adventurous terri- itself nearly failed to see the light of day. tory like it’s second nature. What’s especially curious is ‘C O O L’’s one of the most crucial first steps in an age, and that they have a debut single already printed, on clear it’s anything but a one-hit-wonder. All-embracing, hands vinyl, ready for release in August. Label involvement in the air, it’s a rejoicing dance triumph, one of the most is foggy, but names have been mentioned. They used inclusive of its kind. Never settling, it keeps to one pristine to play shows in Brighton, but Cornwall seems to be pace and takes enlivened, sweetly-delivered pop to headier the perfect place for their strangely inclined, misty heights. songs to come alive. Long may that continue. (Ja- The single nearly didn’t happen. “I was working on like ten songs mie Milton) at the same time,” says Wes. “They convinced me to finish [‘C O O FOR FANS OF: KATE BUSH, CORNISH ICE L’]. I scrap things all the time. Daily. It’s fucked up my head a little CREAM WITH SYRUP POURED ON TOP. bit.” (Jamie Milton) FOR FANS OF: IBIZA WITHOUT THE ALCOPOPS, ‘GET LUCKY’.

NEu RECOMMENDED

3CYRIL

HAHN

4RADKEY

Brotherly trio with punk-addled verve in spades.

R&B obsessive turning his head to hyped-up electronic When a new band emerges consisting of three brothers, named originals. after their surnames and creating furiously fast punk rock, it’s A remix is a remix, or so you’d imagine. It’s often a impossible for the world to ignore. package, a perceived-to-be-necessary addition to a single, or a hype-gathering tidbit to lodge alongside an Radkey have got aggression, there’s no doubting that emerging track. But in Cyril Hahn’s case, remixes were listen to the first five seconds of ‘Out Here In My Head’ and you can’t deny these three brothers seem pretty pissed the very foundations of his career.

The Vancouver-residing producer did something different. off. However, dig a little deeper and buried beneath lies He gathered up big names, celebrated pop icons like the warm, crooning vocal tone of guitarist and vocalist Dee Radkey. On cursory listen, it’s not dissimilar to Destiny’s Child and Mariah Carey, and he applied a limitless approach. Barely anything from the originals made it out the the baritone calls of Drenge’s Eoin Loveless, and other side. Vocals were pitch-shifted into oblivion, atmospherics particularly on ‘Spirals’ Dee’s delivery shows off a trio some distance above your average teen punk plugged firmly towards the ‘dark’ dial.

A year on and Hahn landed with his debut track proper, ‘Perfect three-piece. Having just finished their first UK Form’. The misty beginnings laid out with those remixes were tour and released their ‘Cat & Mouse’ EP, the shafted in favour of a clean, club-ready aesthetic. Suddenly the world is definitely developing a taste for the guy looks capable of producing chart staples of his own, rather than Radkey brothers. (George Smale) miraculously re-moulding celebrated classics. (Jamie Milton)

FOR FANS OF: INTENSE KARAOKE SESSIONS, 90S R&B.

FOR FANS OF: STEAK BUFFETS, HARLEY DAVIDSONS.

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NEU MIXTAPE

N O T C O N T E N T W I T H G I V I N G YO U A F R E E M AG A Z I N E , W E ’ V E P U T T O G E T H E R A F R E E M I X TA P E F U L L O F O U R FAVO U R I T E N E W B A N D S ; D O W N L OA D F R O M THISISFAKEDIY.CO.UK /MIXTAPE

NEu mixtapE HEAVY WAVES No Good

One last hurrah for B-town or the official next step for a blossoming scene? Heavy Waves’ ‘No Good’ is a ferocious, unrelenting giant, one that’ll send any doubts you had about Birmingham’s potential down a sorry drain.

JENSEN SPORTAG Bellz

Welcome to Jensen Sportag’s future-club. All drinks are served in glasses made of ice, with a view of space available from every window. ‘Bellz’ is something way outside of normal parameters.

JR. SEA Out Of Body Auto Reply

Tropical pop with supernova ambition. Jr. Sea is a talented bod who’s so far remained relatively anonymous. Clearly supremely intelligent, ‘Out Of Body Auto Reply’ is an email emergency gone bonkers.

DIVE IN Let Go

Dive In’s name is a bit of a giveaway: Sun-kissed escape is the order of the day. Think it’s all been done already? Not like this. This belongs in city stadiums, not throwaway holiday resorts.

EMPTY POOLS Exploded View

Bristol grunge outfit Empty Pools offer a twisted take on how to stir a crowd. Their ever-shifting rock stance could go Joy Formidable-big. Instead it chooses to turn and shift, shunning convention. Too know-it-all for its own good?

Not a chance. ‘Exploded View’ is a clever beast.

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OCEAÁN Neéd U

Manchester producer Oceaán has experience in bands, but it’s hard to tell. ‘Neéd U’ is a slick, potentially game-changing electronic cut. It’s the vocals that do the trick. A sense of longing is soaked in layer-upon-layer of cleverly-applied effect.

RALEIGH RITCHIE A Moor

Smooth seductive type Raleigh Ritchie’s only a couple of months in and he’s already gone and supported Kendrick Lamar on his recent UK tour. Some might call that a coup, but it makes perfect sense.

SAILOR & I Tough Lovee

With the knowhow for conveying crippling sadness, Sailor & I is rooted towards one sole emotion. Somehow it doesn’t bog you down. ‘Tough Love’ expresses hardship without sounding like a drunk guy drowning his sorrows.

EAST OF ELY Easy Friend

If you thought Swim Deep dealt well in beach-ready anthemia, wait until you get your ears round East Of Ely. This Sydney group are the audible equivalent of going windsurfing without spraining a knee.

SOLOMON GREY Gascarene Sound

A foggy closer to drown out everything that preceded it, Black Butter signings Solomon Grey provide serene, calming presence; like the first time your panicking limbs decide to swim rather than get conquered by the water.

NEu n e w s

Aussie’s most exciting export since Fosters Gold, THE PREATURES, will soon play their very first UK shows: London’s Madame Jojos and Hoxton Bar & Kitchen on 22nd and 23rd October respectively.

In Soun d s F rom My Ci t y, N eu as ks s ome of mu s ic ’ s cr e at ive tal e n ts to t e l l us all ab o u t t h e mo s t e xci t i ng ban d s on t h e i r d o orst ep. sounds

from

my

cit y

newcastle Josh Dalton is the founder of UK blog Crack In The Road. The site specialises in new music, being one of the first to recommend the likes of Youth Lagoon and Eddi Front. Not that he’s boasting or anything. With this in mind, Neu asked Josh for some of his more local tips, based in and around the city of Newcastle.

GOODBYE CHANEL

Goodbye Chanel’s tropical-enhanced sound points more to the golden, surfer filled beaches of LA than to the jagged, unforgiving coastline of Tynemouth.

With his debut EP ‘Through Night To Paradise’ deservedly gaining him listeners from far further afield than his own hometown, he’s currently Newcastle’s fastest rising newcomer.

NATASHA HAWS

With a voice as powerful as it is versatile, South Shields songwriter Natasha Haws has spent the past couple of years bewitching crowds around the North East. She recently brought on board a new live band and her sound’s grown bolder as a result. With every track she releases, Natasha places the irrepressible spirit of PJ Harvey against the tender songwriting abilities of Feist.

RADKEY have announced details of a new EP. ‘Devil Fruit’ is released on 15th October, led by the positively explosive ‘Romance Dawn’. Listen now on thisisfakediy. co.uk.

WOLF ALICE are set to release their debut EP ‘Blush’ on 7th October through Chess Club Records. The 90s-indebted rush of ‘She’ heads up the EP - listen on thisisfakediy.co.uk.

New Zealand 16-year-old pop sensation LORDE is concluding a ridiculous year by releasing her puntastic ‘Pure Heroine’ debut album on 28th October via Virgin Records.

Disclosure collaborator SAM SMITH upped his chart-ready ambitions with the release of ‘Nirvana’, a new single. The new song is a slow-seeping ballad, arguably Smith’s biggest track to date. Listen on thisisfakediy.co.uk.

35

INTERVIEW CHVRCHES

T W E LV E M O N T H S AGO THEY EXPLODED WITH THE UNDOUBTED TRACK OF THE YEAR. FOR ANYONE ELSE THE PRESSURE TO DELIVER AN ALBUM TO MATCH WOULD BE TOO MUCH, BUT CHVRCHES AREN’T JUST ANOTHER BAND. Words: Stephen Ackroyd

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nothing is sacred

37

INTERVIEW CHVRCHES

T

he hype machine isn’t a toy. It’s not some Speak & Spell sat in the corner of a toddler’s play room. It’s a bone cruncher, a meat grinder, a massive tank with an even bigger cannon intent on blowing any band willing to poke their head over the trenches to kingdom come. In 2013, it has had more targets than usual. A grateful few have made it past to the open fields of mainstream success, but many more who brought in the year with the loftiest of dreams find themselves missing a leg, crawling hopelessly towards safety with the promise of a few reasonably attended tour dates and a vague hope of recouping at least half of their major label’s money. It’s a bloodbath out there.

A

wkward metaphors aside, if a measure of expectation is a double edged sword, CHVRCHES currently hold several gallons worth of the stuff. Of all the year’s fresh blood, only Haim have this many eyes trained on their debut album. Both sides of the pond are watching with intent. Only the very best will do.

It’s no shock - for once the attention is deserved. Every action - from the more considered but equally catchy ‘Recover’ to the barely concealed vendetta of ‘Gun’ - has been perfect. Not a stride out of step, not a single regrettable action. If the hype machine can turn a band to jelly, CHVRCHES are facing it down with the steely expression of a vengeful Arnie in a late 80s action film, bazooka over his shoulder, barely a sweat across his brow.

“It’s been pretty crazy,” laughs Ian Cook. “We try not to have our heads too much in that sort of thing,” follows Martin Doherty. “We’re aware of how things are going, and the shows have been crazy, but I think now there’s a tendency for people to get caught up in what everyone else is saying about them. It takes their eye off the ball creatively. We’ve tried to ignore as much of what was going on around us as possible. Otherwise we could get big heads and start believing what everyone was saying, and that’s dangerous!”

In that message alone, what makes CHVRCHES different from their peers becomes obvious. They’re nailed down; relative grown ups in a world of excited pups.

Everything has fallen into place since they got together just shy of two years ago. They’ve worked hard, and things have started to go their way. It’s all the band’s own doing - and, crucially, there’s never been a masterplan.

38 thisisfakediy.co.uk

“There’s been no masterplan.”

“T

he story of the beginning is pretty straightforward,” Martin, the band’s synth-player and sampler extraordinaire, explains. “I had recorded with Iain on the last Aereogramme album. We were really good friends and we worked together in different production capacities; I went off and joined The Twilight Sad, and he went off and did his own thing, writing for TV, playing in another band. Eventually we sat down together and started hashing out some ideas.

“At the end of 2011 he played me some demos he’d been working on with Lauren [Mayberry - the band’s formidable main vocalist], and I was immediately blown away by her vocals. She came in to the studio, we talked, chatted and we tried some stuff out, and pretty soon we formed a tight partnership, in terms of realising that she had a lot to offer as a songwriter as much as vocals, and things started to happen really quickly.”

Sure, most bands have been round the block to one extent or another before

fame comes knocking, but CHVRCHES’ origin story feels somewhat different. There’s a measure and purpose to their actions, a comfort in their own skin.

“We put a song online in May last year,” Lauren recalls.

“About that time we were a completely unsigned band.

There was no marketing, no labels, no A&R or any people like that. It’s been pretty amazing for us because people have responded just to the music; I don’t feel like people have reacted to us because it’s been pushed down their throats.

“I think it’s important for us to remember that we wouldn’t be doing all the awesome stuff we’re getting to do right now were it not for people having found our band on the internet. It was just people passing it to their friends, and I think that’s a really powerful thing. We wouldn’t be able to do any of the great stuff we’re doing were it not for the response of those people right at the start.”

Being fair, it wasn’t just any old song they flung in to the online abyss. The aforementioned ‘Lies’ announces itself like a SWAT team, kicking in the doors and setting up camp. Immediate, muscular but never obvious or cliched, no one track can make a band, but there was no doubting their name was now on every must watch list going. At that point, many others would follow up with a slightly disappointing second effort. Good, but not great. Not CHVRCHES.

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INTERVIEW CHVRCHES

picture: Eliot Hazel 40 thisisfakediy.co.uk

“We don’t subscribe to the idea that the album is dead.”

To call ‘The Mother We Share’ great would be an understatement. It’s the song of the last twelve months, one of the best of the previous decade. A nighttime cruise through the neon jungle, with a vocal that still forms goosebumps with its brilliance, its timing felt perfect. No bloat, no grandeur, just brilliant electropop of the very highest order. From that point, all bets were off.

“We met with a lot of people,” Iain explains, recounting the inevitable industry circus that followed. “It was long process of to-ing and fro-ing. There were a lot of arseholes.

The cliche of the British A&R guy who is all about cocaine and money and just completely morally bereft, we met a few of those. Not all of them, there were some very lovely people too, but there were also some people that were just despicable human beings.”

“Each of us has a fairly good bullshit filter,” Lauren adds. “I think that I’m probably the most cynical of all of the group to an extent, but I think you can tell pretty early on when someone would tell you something that they think they haven’t credited you with that much of a brain. They’re just coming to you, telling you all these things, and you’re like ‘well it’s not actually gonna be like that’. Then when you look at what they’re actually saying, that’s not something we’re actually interested in.”

“We only eventually signed a UK deal at the start of this year,” she continues, “and by that point we’d made most of the record, it was just finishing touches and things like that. I think it was helpful to us that when people started talking to us, we had already proved our method to a certain extent, so the people we were meeting with knew what they were getting. It’s made it easier for us to make sure that this band is the band that we wanted it to be.

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INTERVIEW CHVRCHES

“We wanted to put out something that we could stand behind and was ours. I think that certain people that we talked to wouldn’t have done that, and were perceiving our band in a way that we would never have wanted to present it. It’s important to us that we never did any of that stuff, because I don’t think that makes you happy.

You’re only around for a short amount of time, why do stuff that’s gonna make you unhappy in the long run for the chance of something really short-term, and probably not that valuable?”

“But yeah, we’re really happy,” Iain affirms. “We were very very careful, and really chuffed and happy to be

W

here others have lost their heads and compromised, CHVRCHES seem to have known exactly what they were doing from the get go. Their album ‘The Bones Of What You Believe’, has been timed to perfection. Not overcooked nor rushed, it contains everything that caught the imagination and turns it into a proper record. Far from ‘The Mother We Share’ and eleven other songs, it’s the sound of a band who know exactly what they want.

“I’m glad that you say that,” Iain laughs. “There’s a lot of impatient people on the internet that are constantly like, ‘where is the album?! where is the album?!’ But there’s been no masterplan, we’ve just gone with what we feel is right.

Initially we were a bit worried that September 2013 was gonna be way way too long a wait, but it doesn’t feel like we made the wrong decision.”

“We thought long and hard about everything,” adds Martyn, “even right down to the way it was sequenced. It’s specifically as if it was on vinyl: there is a deliberate end of side A and beginning of side B. We really, really thought

42 thisisfakediy.co.uk

working with the people that we decided to work with.

We have a really clear idea of what we want to achieve with this band. I feel like if we were to start getting in another producer, or other songwriters and stuff, it’d completely dilute the essence of what it is we’re trying to do.

“There was some discussion about the possibility of looking at other producers, but pretty soon we realised that even though they might bring something interesting and new, we wanted to keep it in-house - especially given that it was our first album. We wanted to make a statement that was entirely ours.”

about it that way. We don’t really subscribe to the idea that the album format is dead. I think it would be really a sad thing to see it like that.

“But, at the same time, there are more immediate songs on there; we understand the importance of singles. And you just have to look at a band like The Cure, who did it time and time again. They were able to make records that had depth and worth over the course of a full album, but at the same time satisfy people’s desire to hear the more immediate side of the band. And that’s for sure something that we’ve tried to achieve. If we can get anywhere near what they’ve been capable of doing over a number of records, then we’ll be in good shape.”

“It’s important that all the music and lyrics and stuff is very… genuine,” Lauren ponders. “None of it’s contrived, we’ve not written something in order to appeal to any demographic or anything.

That’s a very industry way to think. We just wanted to write songs that meant something to us, that had

“Just fucking a sense of melody and emotion. At the end of the day that’s what connects with people.”

leave it!”

“This is probably the most democratic band I’ve ever been in,” she says of the writing and recording process.

“It is very much a democracy,” Ian confirms.

“We all have input in to every part of the process with the songwriting, but we all have our individual strengths as well. Martin and I have a lot of similar skills when it comes to production, and Lauren’s strengths tend to lie in things like lyrics and some of the melodies. But we all pitch in.

“Every song that we’ve written so far has come from a very small seed - a synth sound, a sample, a simple chord sequence - and then it tends to snowball really really quickly in the studio. Usually within about an hour we’ve got the bare bones of a song. It can go really quickly after that, or it can take weeks. “’The Mother We Share’ was one that took absolutely months to finally arrive at an arrangement that we were happy with. We kept going back to it and tinkering because we never felt like it was quite right. But when we arrived at it, we were like OK, so this is the song. We’ve arrived!” He laughs. “And the lyrics tend to always go on at the very end.”

“Martin tends to be a bit of a perfectionist,” he adds, “and he’s always wanting to go back, and because we’ve got our own studio space, we can go back and tweak until it actually has to be sent to duplication. That’s something that I don’t like to do personally, but Martin often needs dissuading from going ‘oh we just need to fix the tuning

on that bit’.

Like, ‘no, no, just fucking leave it’!”

Writing the album ended up being a very natural process. “It helped that we’d been working on some of the things that are on the record two years ago, when we started writing together,” Lauren explains “’Lies’ and ‘Mother…’ are two of the songs we first wrote. It was helpful to us that we’ve had that amount of time to get to know each other as songwriters and figure out the band’s sound.

“I think if we had been signed at the end of 2012 without doing anything first, and then had to put out a record in September 2013, that would have been a massive amount of pressure. It would’ve felt like a rush job. But because we had been, for want of a horrible and manky phrase, growing together for the last year before that, that stood us in good stead. We were just able to go ‘OK, so we’ll carry on doing what we’re doing’. That’s a good place to be.”

“No matter what happens after this point,” she states, “we’ll look back on it and be like ‘we made that record exactly the way we wanted to make it’. We can stand behind that if anything great or not so great happens. It’s our record.” DIY CHVRCHES’ debut album ‘The Bones Of What You Belive’ will be released on 23rd September via Virgin.

43

INTERVIEW FACTORY FLOOR

CT O

RY

READY FOR THE FLOOR FA

. ht rig n.

W an ny Sw n a a D s : mm d or : E W oto Ph

ARE

FLO OR

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IT

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UP

I

n an inconspicuous building in Seven Sisters, North London, instruments and cables lie strewn across the floor; ash trays and tea cups cover nearly every surface. Doubling as both studio and living quarters, the space in question currently houses Dominic Butler (synths), Nik Void (guitar / vocals) and Gabriel Gurnsey (drums). The reason for this becomes more apparent as they speak. As well as being funny, relentlessly creative and ferociously determined, they’re intensely focused.

Factory Floor is what they’ve devoted themselves to. This building is the place where, for the last two years, they’ve been meticulously working on their debut album. “I’ve always dreamed of being in a space when you can be creative and you can record, it seemed like the most natural thing to do,” Nik says. “It’s a pretty open space as we kind of live here as well, so you get into starting at midday and ending late at night.”

“WE’VE GOT MORE “I think we would’ve CONFIDENT IN OUR spent £1 million on it if we’d gone somewhere O W N PAT H . ” else,” adds Gabe, “you don’t have the pressures of time.” Dom nods, “There’s something about being in studios that make you feel like you’re visiting somewhere.” “It’s always a bit clinical in other studios. When we’re in here you get happy mistakes.” Gabe pauses as the band laugh.

“That’s not the right word - I mean creative accidents.”

This idea of ‘creative accidents’ is what’s driven the band’s music forwards; taking ideas from live shows and making them work. Gabe explains, “We were doing shows constantly over the last two years so we were writing a lot of stuff on stage and progressing it there, saying, ‘Fuck, let’s track that’. A lot of the songs are kind of snapshots of live three hour run-throughs of a tiny idea. A lot of sounds come through the PA as well, the drums bleeding through Nic’s mic.” “A lot of things kind of develop when we play live,” Dom explains. “I guess the nature of just doing so many shows – that’s when your brain is stimulated so that’s when the ideas happen.”

The result of these sonic experiments is one of the albums of the year. A vast record that is raw and chaotic, charged and brutal. It’s instinctive and human as well as pulsing and otherworldly. Most of all, it just is; all consuming. “We didn’t have any preconceived

ideas about how the album would sound. ‘Two Different Ways’ was kind of a turning point for how we thought our music was progressing,” Nic discloses. “From the short amount of time between the EP and that song we’d changed quite a lot so we had no idea whether we’d change a lot more during the process of two years.

We’ve got more confident in our own path. There’s a lot more space in the album than we’d anticipated.”

Dom notes that “time became irrelevant” during the process of making the album, while Gabe adds that he was “putting stuff on tapes, taking it off, going mad.” It was a rigorous two years of live shows and piecing together the record. “I think we came to a realisation over whether certain songs were working,” Gabe ponders. “The ones where we played together as three kind of stuck as they’re the ones where we’re playing off each other and have that feel to them.” Dom agrees, “You start to see the songs that fit together in a certain way. As a band we started to sense that.”

The band have been a three piece since Nik joined in late 2009. It seems like a definite turning point.

“There’s a point when you’re playing with the right people when you’ll 45

INTERVIEW FACTORY FLOOR

say, ‘Fuck what was that?’” Gabe laughs. “And you can’t fake it or recreate it in any way, it just takes the right kind of elements of sound to get to that point. It just happens.”

It’s led to a record they’re rightly proud of. “It’s quite difficult for an artist to say they like their own album,” says Nik, “but I do really like it, and I’ll listen to the whole thing all at once.”

Indeed, one of the striking things you notice when listening to the album is how well it works, building and building to the inevitable climax. Was it hard to get that order? “We had to take a step back. Luckily we sent our tracks off to be mixed

by Q [LA based producer, Timothy ‘Q’ Wiles] and that gave us a bit of breathing time,” Nik explains. “It sounded really obvious to us to start off with something that is really minimal and then gradually work it through.” “There were tracks that were quite gentle before they were mixed,” Gabe adds, “and then when they came back they were so much louder.”

This idea of loudness is something that Factory Floor are renowned for. Their brutal live shows are relentless and thrilling, but it’s something they realised early on they wouldn’t be able to repeat on record. “It’s really hard to replicate that experience ‘cos you’re missing key points: the audience and the spaces, the nerves and adrenaline,” Dom says. “For me what’s fascinating is how it will evolve when it comes back to the live setting again. We’ll take that beginning seed and change it again. It keeps you on your toes.” “The live shows are going to take on a life of their own,” Gabe agrees. “We never play the same show twice, and we’re not going to try and replicate the album.

Like Dom says that’s the seed – we’ll play the first show and see where it goes.”

It’s a tribute to the band’s versatility that they are seemingly at home in a myriad of different settings, whether that’s a rave or an art gallery. “We’ve been quite fortunate,” says Nic, “We played a warehouse where we had the audience around us and they had a quadphonic soundsystem around, and we’ve played the IPA. We can play a warehouse at three in the morning and play an art gallery uncomfortably at six in the afternoon.” “The best 46 thisisfakediy.co.uk

shows are when people get really lost in them and it allows us to get really lost in them too,” adds Gabe.

And collaborations with members of acts such as Throbbing Gristle and New Order have also given them the confidence to push their sound forward. “It’s a reassuring thing when you play with your heroes and they like playing back with you,” Nic smiles. “It gives you a sense of confidence, especially if you’re trying to reinvent what you’re doing like I’m trying to do with the guitar – you think am I completely going down the wrong road here? Is this a bit crazy?”

It’s this vast scope that gives you the sense t h a t

Fa c t o r y Floor can be any band they want to be.

What ambitions do they have for this record?

“Ultimately we want to get our own sound so you’d hear a track and know instantly that it’s Factory Floor. That’s kind of important to us,” says Nic, “I also hope it still sounds relevant in twenty years time.” “I want it to be on T4 or Hollyoaks,” laughs Gabe. “I hope it’s in the background of Eastenders at some point. That will make my day.”DIY Factory Floor’s self-titled debut album will be released on 9th September via DFA.

47

INTERVIEW SUMMER CAMP

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ORANGE WEDNESDAYS AND 90S HIP-HOP: SUMMER CAMP’S NEW RECORD 48 thisisfakediy.co.uk

S H

IS BORN FROM SOME UNEXPECTED PL ACES. Word s & Photos: Emm a Swann .

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INTERVIEW SUMMER CAMP

P

ost the sad demise of Kim ‘n Thurston, Summer Camp’s Elizabeth Sankey and Jeremy Warmsley are probably the most prominent married couple in indiedom. And (whisper), they’re cute with it. As they discuss the evening’s dinner plans (take away, as it happens – though Jeremy makes a mean pad thai and a “particularly nice fresh tomato pasta dish”), they repeatedly point out how the other reacts. They don’t just finish each other’s sentences, they talk over them, one starting before the other’s finished.

“We’re very different,” Elizabeth reiterates several times throughout, though in this instance she’s referring to the pair’s work ethic – and, given them living, travelling and touring together - how they keep work, well, work. “I think Jeremy wants to be working every day,” she continues, “he feels bad if he isn’t, whereas I’m much more of a ‘when the muse arrives’ kind of person.”

“I’ve always taken a lot of inspiration from Nick Cave,” Jeremy adds, “who literally has an office, with a piano and a typewriter, he goes in Monday to Friday, 9-5.”

“Whereas sometimes,” Elizabeth interrupts, “I do not want to be in that room, it’s the last thing I’ll want to be doing, and I’ll just be like...” She pulls a face.

“But, I think our band life is actually probably more regulated than it is for most,” she adds, “because we’re in the same house, we have the same schedule, so it’s not like we’re calling each other up going, ‘Do you want to write today?’ We have this great thing where we have days off during the week, which is amazing.” Jeremy butts in. “The new album is basically brought to you by Orange Wednesdays.”

Oh, yes. The album. Eleven tracks, self-titled, features a photo of the pair snogging on the front. It’s also a bit disco, which may or may not have been deliberate.

Jeremy “didn’t think it was at all disco” as they were writing, but it did start life as an attempt at “ethereal disco”. Those songs, “none of them were very good,” he adds, got scrapped early on.

But, thanks to Elizabeth’s influence - “she introduced me to a lot of 90s hip-hop stuff I didn’t really know too much about” (which may in fact not be that obscure: he’s never heard Cleopatra’s ‘Comin’ Atcha’, and can’t tell the difference between Jason Orange and Howard Donald) - “there are a few songs on the second half of where we just took classic 90s hip-hop loops from old funk records. To me that’s the really obvious part of the aesthetic, but nobody seems to have picked up on it!”

While it’s a question to which the answer will be obvious – it’s still got to be asked. Bands argue.

Couples argue. What happens when Summer Camp argue? “I think we’re actually really lucky,” Jeremy reassures, “because we’re actually able to be honest with each other. Whereas I think a lot of people in bands have to be really diplomatic and tiptoe around each other.”

Elizabeth – thankfully – agrees. “We know that we’re too invested in it for one of us to just walk out.

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“WE’RE TOO INVESTED IN THE BAND FOR ONE OF US TO JUST WALK OUT.”

“CL ASSIC 90S HIP-HOP IS A REALLY OBVIOUS PART OF THE AESTHETIC.”

So we can be harsh to each other.

Although I tend to be the one that’s harsh to Jeremy. Jeremy’s never that harsh back.” “You’ll be harsh about it in the moment,” Jeremy confirms, “whereas I’ll just kind of finally mention three days later that, you know, I think the entire song is a bit shit and we should do something else instead. Or I won’t mention it again, and we won’t finish it off. I’ve done that a few times.”

The album was co-produced with someone who is a bit of a legend.

The pair met with Stephen Street a year ago, at a Blur gig at Hyde Park.

They’d wanted him to work on their debut, ‘Welcome To Condale’, but it didn’t work out. “I remember being so nervous,” Jeremy says of the meeting, “because he’s made so many records that I love so much, and just the idea of him actually recording one of our albums seemed so unlikely...” “...and then it’s so crazy watching Blur and being like, ‘Oh my God’,” Elizabeth interrupts.

“The first time I had to put down a guitar line with him, my hands were shaking I was so nervous. He’s an amazing producer,” Jeremy continues, gushing, “how he just lets you actually be yourself. Some producers will take a band and will be like, ‘Well we’re gonna change that, we’re gonna get rid of all the guitar parts and put on synths instead, put some tambourine’.

“He works with what you give him much more. I mean, if you think of the difference between [Blur’s] ‘The Great Escape’ and the album that followed it, the self-titled album, they have almost nothing in common, sonically, apart from the bare facts of Graham playing guitar and Damon singing, and I think he’s just so great at letting the band just do what they want.”

They wouldn’t, they begin to explain, be totally against the idea of a super producer, a Mark Ronson type taking on Summer Camp and giving it their own style. “I would like to do a one-off single with someone like that,” Jeremy suggests, “Dave Sitek or someone, just to see what it was like as an experience.” He pauses. “No, I wouldn’t. No, I couldn’t do it.”

And remixes? “Oh no,” he dismisses, “that’s brilliant. I love remixes.” “Errr.”

Elizabeth isn’t so sure. “Sometimes you feel weird.” “Maybe once I’ve felt weird.” “You’ve got better now.” “Now I’ve got a bit more confidence, I guess,” Jeremy decides. “I think both of us,” Elizabeth sums up, “until we’ve got to the end point with the producer, we’re still very much invested in it and are very precious about things that get changed. But as soon as it’s signed off, I’m like ‘I’m outta here!’” DIY Summer Camp’s self-titled new album will be released on 9th September via Moshi Moshi.

51

INTERVIEW SKY LARKIN

T/O/ t/h/e s/k/y 52 thisisfakediy.co.uk

SKY LARKIN ARE BACK, AND THEY’RE GOING FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH. Words: Martyn Young.

T

hree years after the release of their second album ‘Kaleide’, Leeds’ Sky Larkin are returning with their third full-length ‘Motto’. It’s a slightly different Sky Larkin that emerges into the sunlight, with an innate confidence in their new songs and a renewed sense of identity. Often a break can be a spark for regeneration, and in their case, their absence allowed the core members of singer and guitarist Katie Harkin and drummer Nestor Matthews, to explore a different way of working.

The album was mostly written on the road as Katie toured the world playing with Wild Beasts. Playing keyboards with the band helped reaffirm her desire to make the next Sky Larkin album a pure guitar record. “It just felt right,” she explains. “I always felt that there was a remit that our band has been trying to fulfil to make guitar music that is arresting, that isn’t aggressive and is beautiful without being permissive. I feel like that is a sensation that extends to our live shows.”

The experience of touring with Wild Beasts was an important one in allowing Katie to gain a fresh perspective on her songwriting.

It was a challenge to work on two concurrent projects, but one that was hugely beneficial. “It made me realise how strong I was. The second album came out 18 months after the first; I really hadn’t stopped since we started the band and there had been no time for reflection up until that point. With Wild Beasts, I didn’t have to do the driving and I didn’t have 17 London Lexington to carry the guitar cases. It 18 Leicester Firebug meant I could be the tourist 19 Sheffield The Harley 20 Sunderland Pop Recs Ltd on tour. The boys would do 21 Glasgow Nice n Sleazy press and I had time that I 23 Leeds Brudenell Social Club could use to write.”

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25 Nottingham Bodega 26 Cardiff Gwdihw 28 Aldershot West End Centre 30 Manchester Deaf Institute

That strength is evident in lead single ‘Loom’, a track

that is quintessentially Sky Larkin but has a deceptively deeper quality. “I like the power of songs,” Katie pronounces. “I’ve reflected that they can be evocative without being self evident. The power of the three-minute pop song is that it can be evocative. You can hear a song and you might not have even heard the words properly, but it still makes you feel something. It’s that which is so satisfying about writing songs.”

Perhaps the most important factor in Sky Larkin’s musical evolution, or “rebirth” as Katie calls it, was the introduction of two new members to write and record the album, which was once again produced in Seattle with long-time collaborator John Goodmanson. Sam Pryor and Nile Marr on bass and guitar respectively helped to create ‘Motto’’s denser and more dynamic sound, as Nestor explains. “There were two whole new spheres of influence involved. We weren’t really chained to what we used to sound like. Having the second guitar meant that Katie wasn’t chained to hers. It meant that we could spread the sound out and get deeper and more involved in it.”

‘Motto’ is an album of perfectly distilled melodic and evocative pop songs that is tailor made to be performed live. The band are eager to get back on the road for September’s DIY-supported UK tour. “Of all the things that you can partner up with, this is exactly the sort of thing our band would want to do,” Katie explains. Perhaps the most exciting thing for the band, she adds, is the effect that these songs will have on their fans both old and, hopefully, new. “One of the most gratifying things for a musician is that you release this music and kind of forget that it has legs of its own. People will tell you stories about the significance that your songs have had on their lives. That’s going to be the most fun thing.” DIY Sky Larkin’s new album ‘Motto’ will be released on 13th September via Wichita Recordings.

53

INTERVIEW MGMT

54 thisisfakediy.co.uk

“

“

ilovecats

A N D R E W VA N W Y N G A R D E N & B E N G O L D WA S S E R EXPLAIN THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF

M

G

M

T

Words: El Hunt. Photos: Emma Swann.

55

INTERVIEW MGMT

“THIS ALBUM ISN’T TRYING TO BE IRONIC.”

56 thisisfakediy.co.uk

M

GMT are back, and they have completely refreshed their approach. This time around they’ve written “a cat album,” apparently. “First of all, let me say, I don’t discriminate between any animals,” says Andrew VanWyngarden, earnestly. “I love all animals but I used to fancy myself more as a dog person. Then I got a kitten while we were recording up near the studio – there was a free kittens flyer at the grocery store,” he giggles.

“She started off called Batman, cos’ she’s all black and has the big ears. That’s kind of morphed now, and we call her Baggy.

She’s totally taken over my brain.”

“I’m a dog person,” says Ben Goldwasser with typical deadpan. “I love cats, but I’m allergic to them.”

The band’s last album, ‘Congratulations’, Andrew says, is “more of a dog album” – whatever the hell that means. If he’s implying that it is has a different tone to MGMT’s debut, and to this new album, then he’s correct. ‘Congratulations’ was somewhat challenging, and required loyalty, patience. Rather than springing from fences with seven lives and a brazen exuberance, everything seemed to change.

MGMT’s tongue-in-cheek irony became loaded with a darkly charged cynicism instead, and the response was varied. Some critics used descriptors like ‘brave’ and ‘artistic’. Others dug straight in there with the knife, and opted for ‘alienating’.

“It’s not like it was altogether shocking or out of the blue,” says Andrew, looking somewhat uneasy with the fact that he’s currently sat in an ornate golden throne. “We were pushing ourselves to do something different, and create this more inward, introspective record – I suppose you could say darker. Of course people are going to react like that. We’re not behaving in the way that they are

expecting us to.” It seems both Andrew and Ben feel frustrated by being lambasted for trying to do something new creatively. “I think that became the tagline of ‘Congratulations’,” says Ben, “as being a departure. For us it really wasn’t. We just made an album!” He pauses. “It’s not like we thought, ok, now we’re going to alienate these people. We love our fans.” Did accusations that suggested otherwise annoy the band? “You can’t let it wind you up,” says Ben, “because that’s what they want.” “The annoying part was being portrayed as doing it intentionally; I think they called it ‘career suicide’,” says Andrew with a deadpan chuckle.

Still, it seems like ‘Congratulations’ was an album MGMT desperately needed to make, and the accompanying difficulties have made them a more confident band today. “The reward of that struggle was where we are now,” says Andrew, “a point where we feel really comfortable making whatever song comes into our head and not second guessing it, or worrying about how it’s going to be perceived. I think we’ve established ourselves as a band that can do lots of different things.”

Comfortable is a word both Ben and Andrew use regularly in talking about their third, eponymous album. Initially the decision to self-title was typically tongue-in-cheek. “We felt like it was playing on this sort of cliché of a third album being self-titled. A lot of bands have done that; The Velvet Underground, Sublime, a tonne of others. I think Ben and I like to play into those rock’n’roll stereotypes. But, in the end,” Andrew adds, “it’s kind of funny that, to me, an album that is probably our most direct and from our brains is self-titled. It’s appropriate.”

There’s a definite shift in Ben and Andrew’s mindset, and ‘MGMT’ feels like their most honest record yet. The band have visited every shade of irony since their debut single ‘Time To Pretend’ - even morphing into their own parody.

Truthfulness feels like a logical progression

57

INTERVIEW MGMT

beyond that. “That song was slightly prophetic,” says Andrew. “Not, like, the hard drug habits, or buying islands, or whatever, but just considering that I never had the drive or ambition to become some mega band – other than in a very ironic sense…” He speaks carefully, pausing, before letting loose fragmentary chunks of sentences at a time. “We were like, 25, so we were enjoying it, partying, having a good time. I think, for me, it’s a pretty clear progression in the three albums, a reflection of our age and insights at the time. Now I feel like we’re both 30, and we’re more at ease. It feels like coming out and not worrying about it too much.” That’s not to say MGMT have turned all sensible and conventional, despite ditching their headbands and tie-dye. “I don’t think we’re making ‘Adult Contemporary Music’,” Ben says with a grin.

Now MGMT seem more concerned now with writing from a more grounded place. “[Debut, ‘Oracular Spectacular’] was very sarcastic and ironic, and written in college – it was naïve and fantastical, very wide-eyed. This is supposed to be empowering, it’s trying to be real and it’s not a hidden message,” Ben agrees. “I think it’s a different form of cynicism. With this album it’s more playful, in a way, and not trying to be ironic. It’s really just acknowledging that the world we’re living in right now is a pretty ridiculous place, and that in a way we have to accept it, but we also have to have a sense of humour about it. We have to be able to go on with our lives.”

“What I realised recently,” Andrew adds, “is the music I connect with most is music where I feel like the artist is exposing himself – for lack of a better word.” He giggles at the unintentional euphemism. “Exposing real emotions and getting down to something that has a universal appeal, on a human level. I know it sounds pretty grandiose, but those are the songs I really connect with the most. If I can even touch on that, with our music and lyrics, that’s what I want.”

If anything, ‘MGMT’ is a return to the spontaneity that made the band so magical and appealing in the first place.

Written from improvised jams, spanning hours, it feels more alive, less refined. “I think we’ve learnt from the past,” agrees Ben, “that a lot of the time when you do that, [overthink], you’re ruining the original thing that made it cool.” Lyrically, Andrew cites Philip Lamentia, the beat 58 thisisfakediy.co.uk

poet who wrote about dream sequences, and their link to everyday life, as a major influence on the record. Using phonetics to write lyrics sometimes – “I make lyrics that sound like the sounds I’m making, even if it’s just gibberish.

A lot of the times meaning will come later,” he laughs – the approach is geared towards experimentation rather than perfectionism. MGMT sound all the more exciting for it. To use Andrew’s words, it seems to “rekindle the spirit that was around when we were first making music.”

Part of that spirit, they divulge, is a little paranormal.

“When we’re writing music, and we don’t know where it came from, that must’ve been aliens,” laughs Ben. “You’re going through the day,” continuse Andrew, intently, ”and maybe you’re eating lunch and staring at your food, and things all seem too bizarre. Everyday reality seems too strange, and you somehow justify it by saying there’s some sort of alien in your head. We’ve done that since we met.” ‘Alien Days’ references that same joke than began when the pair were both 18. “I think that we felt it was a good opening, because lyrically it reflects on our experiences together as a band, on the first and second album, and also in college. I think it moves us to where we are now.”

Did any alien encounters happen during the recording of ‘MGMT’? “I think Andrew has more alien experiences than I do, people see more aliens in the desert,” laughs Ben. “The song ‘Astromancy’ came from this wild experience I had when I was in Iceland last fall,” begins Andrew.

“My friends and I had driven up to this little peninsula in the middle of nowhere, and I woke up at, like, four in the morning, and lay in a field by myself. I was watching the aurora borealis. There was this light show happening, and then there was this bizarre moment with these two lights that started converging on where I was.” He pauses.

“I don’t want to go into too much detail and sound like a freak or something, but that was a weird moment!

“I think for the first record there were a couple of moments where I felt alien contact, and Ben and I would laugh about it, saying the aliens were writing the songs. This record is less like that.

It’s more about feeling like an alien yourself.”DIY MGMT’s self-titled new album will be released on 17th September via Columbia Records.

“YOU CAN’T LET IT WIND YOU UP.”

59

INTERVIEW THE NAKED AND FAMOUS

M a k i n g

m u s i c

t r a v e l l i n g

t h e

w h i l e w o r l d :

The

Naked and Fa m o u s t a k e

60 thisisfakediy.co.uk

i t

i n

t h e i r

s t r i d e .

J

ust when a band has been gone enough to slip from the memory, that’s when they should return with something mindblowing . The Naked and Famous have done ex actly that with their comeback tr ack ‘Hearts Like Ours’. an antipodean electro -pop gem, the accompanying album ‘In Rolling Waves’ imminent, VOCALIST alisa x ayalith expl ains all .

You wrote the album in LA...

It was finished in LA, but actually a lot of the record was written while we were touring, just bits and pieces, so I feel like half of it was on the road, and the rest of it was finished when we had settled in LA.

travelling, and you get too busy. But it’s very important for us to be as actively creative as possible, so even if we’re on the road we still try to be as creative as we can.

However we can.

The album seems to start off quite euphoric, then calms down, sort of like a party and aftermath.

[Laughs] That’s the first time I’ve heard someone describe it that way. That’s very interesting. I would consider an album to be a journey, so there’s always gotta be peaks and dips along the way. I still listen to whole albums, and I generally do consider them a journey, and on this record it was very important to create that kind of vibe. It’s a lot more dynamic than the last record too. The first one was quite dense and quite bright, but this second one seems to have more breathing space.

“ I ’ M P R E P A R E D F O R A N Y T H I N G ”

Is it hard to write on the road?

I guess it really depends what sort of band you are, and what sort of musicians you are. It’s not very hard for us to write things on our laptops. If we catch a day off, it’s very easy for us all to go in to one room together and start hashing things out. I use my voice memo on my iPhone, [then] when I get back to the bus I can plug my stuff in to my laptop and record something very basic.

It sounds almost easy.

I think in that way it’s very easy, and we have lots of opportunities on the road where we’ve had like a week off, and we’ve had time to go in to a studio. One of those was just after we played Glastonbury; we went to Wales and lived in a residential studio for a week. There’s been lots of magical things like that that have happened. It can be very difficult to write on the road as well - you get so tired from playing shows, you’re so overwhelmed from

You wanted to make sure you could play it all live?

Yes, that’s something that is really important for us.

Especially being heavily an electronic-based band.

I feel like I’ve seen so many bands put a lot of it on track. The one thing that we were so proud of, is that we don’t do that.

Does that put constraints what you do in the studio?

Yeah, we set in place this restriction, so we have to work within those parameters, based on how many hands we have! [Laughs] Sometimes it’s a bit of a bummer, but then actually it’s good because we don’t get too carried away.

What comes next?

Since we’ve been in this cave of writing the record, I feel like I’m just coming out, and things have started snowballing. The tour starts in September, and then I’ll be living out of a suitcase for who knows how long. Last time it was on and off for two years - but who knows how long this one is going to be! Hopefully not too long, but I’m prepared for anything, really.

The Naked And Famous’s new album ‘In Rolling Waves’ will be released on 16th September via Fiction.

61

INTERVIEW LONDON GRAMMAR

“ S pace

is the answer!

INT I MATE

SPARS I T Y

2 01 3.

Words: Huw Oliver.

62 thisisfakediy.co.uk

”

IS

NO

LOND ON D O UBT

G RAMMAR’S

ONE

OF

T H E

DE L ICAT E ,

S O UND S

OF

hell are there no photos of

then.”

voice! As it turns out, this

Now, of course, they’ve

and lyricist Hannah tells us

the

them anywhere? And that was all accidental. Singer

W

a cover-up was “genuinely never

an

idea”,

whilst

guitarist Dan expounds, “It would be more a case of village

‘oh, let’s put a song out and

find Germans on pills, Brits on cheap beer and Italians

it’. That’s what I thought it

and the carefree clientele limbering up doesn’t really seem

people jumped on it, people

students performing post-xx art-pop. But how wrong first

very anonymous because

elcome

to

freakout

Ferropolis, where you’ll currently

let’s see what happens with

on holiday. It’s Melt! festival in sweltering rural Germany

seemed like and then when

like the sort to be enthralled by soft-spoken ex-humanities

assumed we were being

impressions can be.

there was no picture on

The setting is idyllic. The sun shines bright, 34 celsius

video. But it was more a

two-hour coach journey away from Berlin, positioned

a video.”

This Ferropolis, as its name correctly suggests, is an open

Although these were the

weekend only, brutalist steelwork surrounds substance-

the band to most, London

electronic music (tonight’s headliners are The Knife), the

a thing for three or four

trio London Grammar, playing their first ever European

there was a stripped-back

do they please.

stop for a since-defunct

One week later, it’s back on similarly surreal turf. This

who attended Nottingham

the twig-festooned Where The Wild Things Are stage at

(Hannah and Dot studied

Hannah Reid, Dot Major and Dan Rothman – excited and

and

‘If You Wait’, their forthcoming debut album and one of

YouTube quite a long time

on the thermometer, 50 Factor on the skin. Melt! is a

on a miniature peninsula jutting out into a sky-blue lake.

Soundcloud. There was no case of we just hadn’t made

museum of gigantic industrial machinery, where, for one

songs which introduced

addled festival-going. With a line-up dominated by

Grammar has actually been

odd guitar-wielders slip in and out, and silk-smooth British

years now. In particular,

festival, are among the early afternoon deviators. And boy,

session they played at a bus

been

re-unveiled

world,

with

to

more

experience behind them

and on a much larger platform.

Non-blurred

promo pics abound and they the

even

album

model

artwork.

on It

seems they’ve blossomed naturally and progressively,

with some early funding

from Ministry of Sound

and production tips from Tim Bran (The Verve, La

Roux) and Roy Kerr aka The Freelance Hellraiser (Ladyhawke, Little Boots).

But some faint relics still

remain of their origins. The two closing tracks on the album, ‘Flickers’ and ‘If

You Wait’, more restrained

but more bewailing, date from way back. It’s almost as if the record is trying to tell their story in reverse order.

music blog run by a friend

In fact, Dan claims it’s that

time, sitting awkwardly in the back of a tour bus behind

University

track which was pivotal to

Cambridgeshire bash Secret Garden Party. The band –

English; Dan, Philosophy

alert, booze in hand, are readying themselves to talk about

video was removed from

the most anticipated releases of the year so far.

ago, but Hannah offers

Their rise to fame has been unexpected, or so their modesty

saw that now, they’d just be

& Dust’ emerged online last year, there was much talk of

a negative thing. We’ve

with

Economics).

them

The

some reasoning, “If people

suggests. When mp3s of buzz tracks ‘Hey Now’ and ‘Metal

like, ‘oh’. It would be such

their apparent anonymity. Who were these guys? Why the

changed too much since

final, melancholic titletheir success. “That was the song that, in a way, kind of

made lots of things develop

in terms of our situation with

management

and

label. A lot of people heard

that song and were really impressed by it. I think,

considering we spent so much time making the album, it also seems to

63

INTERVIEW LONDON GRAMMAR

apply lyrically.”

making this beat. It was

It was this same song

somehow we’ve come out

that led to their recent collaboration

with

Disclosure on the houseinfluenced Lose

‘Help

My

Mind’,

Me

off

the duo’s recent charttopping ‘Settle’ album.

“We knew their managers

quite a while ago when we

were

picking

management,”

our

Hannah

reveals. “We were picking between

our

management

current

and

two

guys called Jack and Sam, Method

Management,

who manage them. And they sort of remained good friends after we made that decision and

they had the demo and I think the boys really liked the sound of it.”

Evidently

energised

drummer,

keyboardist

by the change of topic, and

production

whiz

Dot explains how it all

came about so quickly: “They’d made the beat the morning we went because at the time I remember

thinking they had so many beats. They had all

these things in a folder.

Ten minutes before we went

in,

they’d

been

all a bit sudden, and then with a track that everyone

seems to love. It was a really quick process.”

however, two key ideas in

sound:

room

Grammar’s manoeuvre,

London

luxurious

and

for

the

interaction between vocal and guitar. According to

Dot, “There’s one thing we could always agree on: the bad things. That

always came down to

the space. It took us a long time to realise that, because

when

you’re

a new band and you suddenly have all these

opportunities, and you’re like, ‘hey, I’m going to

have this person and this person and this person’.

There

amazing

are

so

weren’t sounding right,” Hannah recalls. “We were like,

this is really shit. We were all really frustrated and I

On their own album, combine

“We had, like, a really bad session and the songs just

many

opportunities

and you’re just so fresh-

faced and you want to do all of that. And then you think, ‘where is this

going?’ There were points when there were issues with how the album was

developing and the only

thing we could always agree on was the space.”

remember getting a text from Dan being like, ‘SPACE...

SPACE... How could we be so stupid? SPACE... SPACE IS THE ANSWER’.”

Space, but what for? To facilitate a frisson, a chill, a feeling

in the listener, all by bringing to focus the coupling and mirroring of Hannah’s powerful voice with Dan’s intricate

guitar lines. Without legroom, this can’t be noticed. But they’ve known how to create this breathing space since

the very beginning. “That was how we met originally,” Hannah continues. “It was just me and Dan, and Dan

would make loads of guitar loops and I would write a vocal

to the guitar loop. So, they are, in most of the songs, the two top lines that carry the music along.”

18 months of determination to perfect this later, and

they’ve succeeded; the outcome is 11 songs of breathless

cohesion and compelling magnetism. Be it the chillingly

casual delivery on breakthrough opener ‘Hey Now’, the sensitive ex-boyfriend drama of ‘Wasting My Young Years’, live show highlight ‘Shyer’, the utterly beautiful

‘Interlude’, song-about-being-a-woman ‘Strong’ or the

aforementioned closing bang, it’s impossible to pick out any sort of blemish.

The production and mixing lays bare the all-important interaction, creating a sense of wholesale urgency and leaving you on tenterhooks at every corner. So, ‘If You Wait’ will certainly cement their place as one of the

UK’s most unique, in-demand new acts, but how do they feel about the whole shebang? Dan is characteristically

unassuming. “We just hope that people want us to make

a second one. That’s it, really. Other than that, we don’t have much expectation. Every time people come to see us

at a festival and every time someone buys our records, it’s a surprise.” DIY

London Grammar’s new album ‘If You Wait’ will be released on 9th September via Metal & Dust.

64 thisisfakediy.co.uk

“We just hope that people want us to make a second album.�

}

65

9

ARCTIC MONKEYS AM (Domino)

Some bands are born brilliant, but very few emerge truly great. That takes time. Twisting and turning by a mixture of accident and design, roughing up and rounding off, most fall apart under the weight of their own artistic ego and flagging fan bases before they ever figure it out. Not Arctic Monkeys, though. Their first movements were incendiary.

The most exciting band of their generation, they mixed youthful exuberance with an old head, matching Alex 66 thisisfakediy.co.uk

Turner’s snidely brilliant quips to a brand of machine gun guitar pop both smarter and more robust than their peers. Version 1.0 reached heights few others could aspire to, but that was only the beginning. Since then, they’ve not sat back and repeated the same trick. Nor have they lost their sense of fun, rushing off to push boundaries nobody cared for in the first place. They’ve not become earnest, or tried too hard. Instead, they resolved to find the biggest, baddest rocker on the planet and went back to school. With Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme as mentor, bit by bit they began to evolve into something truly special - an effortless, timeless trans-atlantic powerhouse. The woozy, late night swoon of ‘No. 1 Party Anthem’ shows their progression well. Definitively British, even beyond Turner’s Yorkshire drawl, its slow burning wilt is everything the title suggests it isn’t, and yet all the

better for it. Dry but not depressing, the swaggering confidence of a band who’ve found their place is undeniable. ‘Snap Out Of It’ and its bolshy stomp, the after hours, creep on creepin’ on bassline of ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?’; the moments when ‘AM’ clicks are too many to count. Those already well documented - the opening salvo of lead track ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ and last year’s ‘R U Mine?’ - feel like the doors being kicked in on a back room bar raid. Even ‘Knee Socks’, with Homme on guest vocals, doesn’t wilt in the presence of the man credited with masterminding their transformation. Instead his 30 second background cameo becomes a moment

of revelation. It’s time to put it on record.

While the embryonic Monkeys were one of the most important acts around, all grown up they’re Britain’s best rock ‘n’ roll band. ‘AM’ leaves nothing to debate.

A punch drunk brawler with a heart, it’s the pay off to a perfect evolution. The influence of both Homme and Sheffield’s favourite son Richard Hawley is no secret. All crocodile shoes, Brylcreemed quiffs and hard stuff on the rocks, this is no tribute act. Wound into their DNA, it’s not just a final sheen of falsetto and a distorted guitar. Arctic Monkeys may have left the desert, but the desert never left them. The students have graduated with honours. (Stephen Ackroyd)

TRACKLISTING Do I Wanna Know?

R U Mine?

One For The Road Arabella I Want It All No. 1 Party Anthem Mad Sounds Fireside Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?

Snap Out Of It Knee Socks I Wanna Be Yours 67

REVIEWS ALBUMS

5 KINGS OF LEON

Mechanical Bull

(Columbia) Kings Of Leon are very good at being Kings Of Leon, and ‘Mechanical Bull’ is almost comical in its levels of selfawareness (plenty of times to wave mobile phones aloft in stadia worldwide; sort-of power ballad, sort-of acousticy bombast; references to sin, home and lemonade). While ‘Supersoaker’ seemed to suggest the band were on for a ‘well-the-first-two-albums-were-good’ kind of renaissance, and shining gem ‘Don’t Matter’ is almost QOTSA-esque in its desert-driven ballsout rock, elsewhere it’s, well, more of the same. There might not be a whole lot of ‘bull’ in ‘Mechanical Bull’, but there are definitely a lot of mechanics on play.

Uninspiring, unexciting, largely forgettable – this is nothing more than Kings Of Leon by numbers. (Emma Swann)

8

LONDON GRAMMAR

If You Wait (Metal & Dust) The shimmering, glacial vocals of Hannah Reid are hard to miss. They’re at the very heart of what London Grammar do, and mean there’s a stillness to ‘If You Wait’, which helps to elevate her voice further, as it shines and controls most of this debut album.

And while there’s an undeniable weight of expectation, London Grammar have created an album of graceful sophistication. That it never ventures far from its chosen path makes you wonder where their next move will be but for now this is more than big, tender and beguiling enough. (Danny Wright)

7 MANIC STREET PREACHERS

Rewind The Film (Columbia) Rhetoric, politics, activism and vitriol. That’s what the Manic Street Preachers are all about, right? We want them snarling, all balaclavas and feather boas, belting out ‘Faster’ at a hundred miles an hour. Well, maybe not, and certainly not on ‘Rewind The Film’. There’s barely an electric guitar on the Manics’ latest full length.

Instead, it’s lush strings, grand arrangements and Richard ‘I’ll Make Your Album Significantly More Brilliant’ Hawley. While it may not be what’s written on most fans’ wish list, it’s always been true that, when tempered, the Manic Street Preachers have a special kind of magic touch. ‘Show Me The Wonder’ is testemant to the fact that a happy Welshman is a great thing. All sweeping brass and awestruck lyrics, it’s like a wide eyed Professor Brian Cox kicking back after one too many slush puppies. Add to that Hawley’s spellbinding turn on the title track, and Lucy Rose’s brilliant cameo on opener ‘This Sullen Welsh Heart’, and you’re left with a refreshingly enjoyable album.

(Stephen Ackroyd)

68 thisisfakediy.co.uk

4 THE 1975 The 1975

(Dirty Hit / Polydor) 1975. Charlie Chaplin is knighted, Bill Gates coins the term ‘Micro-soft’, Sony wants the world to use Betamax, and David Beckham is born. None of these facts, of course, are particularly relevant, but each are infinitely more interesting than anything from this, the self-titled debut from The 1975. The lack of hooks, the lack of ideas, the lack of any distinguishing factors is as baffling as it is laughable. It’s almost as if the songs were constructed by way of algorithm.

However confusing the whole thing is, to call ‘The 1975’ a strange beast would be to suggest it had a discernible personality. It doesn’t. (Emma Swann)

9

CHVRCHES

The Bones of What You Believe (Virgin / Goodbye)

TRACKLISTING The Mother We Share We Sink Gun Tether Lies Under The Tide Recover Night Sky Science/Vision Lungs

By The Throat You Caught The Light

There’s a moment half way through ‘Tether’ that sums up everything that’s so impressive about ‘The Bones Of What You Believe’. The track itself isn’t the barnstorming pop smash you’d expect to become the standout moment of the Scottish three piece’s debut album, and yet as those trance like synths build, threaten euphoria then die away to be replaced by a whole different refrain, the true art of CHVRCHES becomes apparent.

The slew of predictions and tipster nods that came at the start of the year were to be expected, but this isn’t a band who would ever soil themselves at the first sign of pressure. Instead, they carried on doing what they did best - retreating to their studio to craft perfect electro-pop gems.

Even with their standout singles all in working order, there’s nothing so saccharine sweet as to require limited exposure. ‘The Mother We Share’, as an

opener, is more hauntingly impressive than ever before. In context, ‘Gun’ and ‘Lies’ hit just as hard, but it’s not just those already well known that possess that magic touch.

‘We Sink’ glitches its way to a wonderfully vindictive promise to “be the thorn in your side till you die,” while ‘Lungs’, jerking like a reanimated android, proves there’s no fear of front weighting. When less immediate, CHVRCHES’ talents are even more striking. Like a proper album, closer ‘You Caught The Light’ burns slow but bright. Martin Doherty’s vocal talents may be often ignored in the shadow of bandmate Lauren Mayberry’s near iconic delivery, but here they’re perfect.

That ‘The Bones Of What You Believe’ isn’t just a vehicle to deliver that super hit is remarkable in itself. As twelve equally matched moments of varied tone but consistent brilliance, it’s nothing short of exactly what was expected - the start of something even bigger. (Stephen Ackroyd)

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REVIEWS ALBUMS

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NINE INCH NAILS Hesitation Marks (Polydor)

TRACKLISTING The Eater Of Dreams Copy Of A Came Back Haunted Find My Way All Time Low Disappointed Everything Satellite Various Methods Of Escape Running I Would For You In Two While I’m Still Here Black Noise

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Striding back into view with an imperious swagger is Trent Reznor. After the least inactive “hiatus” ever Reznor steps back into the guise of Nine Inch Nails promising to return to the industry-changing, selfdestructing course of annihilation he’s sped forwards on since 1989. ‘Hesitation Marks’ represents a renewed energy, at an almost unmatched level, packaged into something of a musical scrapbook. It even eschews the traditional rage and anxiety in favour of more resolute and rational statements, with a greater degree of certainty and finality than anyone’s come to expect. As a whole it’s secure and consistent in a blippy, mechanical march, but under closer inspection it beats and pulses in a deceptively organic way.

‘Copy Of A’ picks up where ‘The Slip’ left off five years ago, with a sombre synth-led procession through anxiety and selfquestioning. It’s the first hint of an album that abandons typical sensory assault and pursues drip-by-drip poisoning over its fourteen tracks. As the momentum builds Reznor increasingly satisfies dormant urges, re-introducing the ‘Pretty Hate Machine’ funk in ‘All Time Low’. While the sinews of ‘Year Zero’ stretch onto the bones of ‘Satellite’, ‘Everything’ represents a jaw-dropping deconstruction of pop punk. Black disco meets a shadowy dancefloor nirvana in a jittering paranoid climax for ‘Running’. The depth is such that each listen reveals

a new quirk. From guitar gnashing sawwheels, to bubbling basslines, the tracks are layered tapestries of a career that rarely comes close to repeating itself. As a whole ‘Hesitation Marks’ is sparser than previous albums, and certainly less reliant on the chaotic crashes of guitars. It’s cinematic and thrilling. Each track features peaks and troughs that pulsate in a mesmerising rise and fall. ‘Hesitation Marks’ is Reznor’s Frankenstein. The most complete archiving of everywhere Nine Inch Nails has been, but more than that a jaw-dropping preview of everywhere it can go.

(Matthew Davies)

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Holograms’ debut was a solid, cohesive effort, but it seemed to lack a certain sprinkle of excitement. On this follow up, ‘Forever’, they sound richer and more energetic than ever before, but they’re still not quite a physical, tangible force. A vague, gloomy sense of anger hangs over ‘Forever’ like a feathery plume, a billowing cloud, an airborne toxic event. Holograms write claustrophobic music with a jet black core, and flecks of white noise swarming hungrily around the fringes. This album has all the right ingredients, but like the debut, the fireworks seem a little absent. The main issue with Holograms is that they don’t seem to create anything memorable out of their nihilistic destruction, least of all an emotional response.

‘Forever’ is just a little bit tedious, quite repetitive and by the end, unfortunately, thoroughly forgettable. (El Hunt)

!

o u t ,

Forever (Captured Tracks)

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HOLOGRAMS

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What HAIM is it? It’s HAIM they released their debut album, of course!

HAIM DAYS ARE GONE 30TH SEPTEMBER

THE PROPER ORNAMENTS Waiting For The Summer

(Lo Recordings) To be ‘Waiting For The Summer’ as early on (or as late, perhaps) as September may seem a little foolish at first, but one play of this debut full-length from The Proper Ornaments and it makes total sense. There are hints of James Hoare’s day job in Veronica Falls, sure, but think less scuzzy, less immediate and more floaty and indebted to the 1960s. (Emma Swann)

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THE STRYPES Snapshot

(Virgin EMI) A bunch of teenagers who sound like they thought Jet was a good idea, The Strypes’ take on blues rock ‘n roll is supposed to, it seems, be the antithesis of boyband-worship. The irony of course, is that the quartet’s songs are far more derivative than their reality TV counterparts; their suits less dapper; and their covers less choice.

Now, where’s that One Direction CD? (Emma Swann)

3

It’s only bloody being released FINALLY! Get ready to love it.

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SUMMER CAMP Summer Camp

(Moshi Moshi) ‘Summer Camp’ is, all in all, a wholly enjoyable sophomore effort, possessing of a homespun charm that bears more similarities to those early Myspace demos than predecessor ‘Welcome To Condale’, and filled with Elizabeth Sankey’s tales of teenage love and nostalgia, which are still far from tiresome. Apart from a few moments of brief departure in sound (‘Everything Has Changed’ and ‘Phone Call’ sound like B-sides from TLC or Mariah Carey’s unheard back catalogue, ‘The End’ has a kick drum Westwood would be proud of) for the most part you get what you’d expect from Summer Camp. But hey, why change it when it’s so damn good? (Nathan Standlee)

ICONA POP THIS IS... ICONA POP 7TH OCTOBER

Katie Harkin and band might’ve decamped once again to Seattle to record ‘Motto’, but they didn’t meet Frasier. Shame.

SKY LARKIN MOTTO 30TH SEPTEMBER

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REVIEWS ALBUMS

8 JOANNA GRUESOME 7

SPLASHH Comfort (Luv Luv Luv) Déjà vu is a weird old quirk of human memory, and so is déjà entendu – the strong, unshakable sensation of having heard something before. Splashh are a band that provide it in droves; ‘Comfort’ is a debut steeped in a vague, hazy familiarity, hurled together into one great big wonderful pastiche. But while it sounds like an awful lot of things, what it isn’t is a cheap imitation. There’s an irresistible spontaneity to ‘Comfort’ that makes it hard to dislike. The nostalgia of ‘Comfort’ is inescapable, but not central. That keen, wide-eyed absorption is simply what comes from four excitable twenty-somethings making huge ripples together in Hackney. The actual magic of this record owes far more to the present than anything else. (El Hunt)

NAKED AND 7 THE 6 DEAF HAVANA FAMOUS In Rolling Waves (Fiction)

If you pay attention to the pages of DIY, you’ll already know all about ‘Hearts Like Ours’. The first track to be taken from The Naked And Famous’ second album, it’s that most common cliche the perfect summer anthem. This time, though, it really is. All air punching synths against a rainbow sky, it stands head and shoulders above its compatriots on ‘In Rolling Waves’. That’s no major slight. Elsewhere there are still moments of equal excitement, just in quite different ways. ‘Waltz’, with its more lazy shuffle and understated earworm sort-of-chorus chief amongst them. A welcome return. (Stephen Ackroyd)

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Old Souls

(BMG Chrysalis) Perhaps the thing that stands out most immediately about ‘Old Souls’, is that Deaf Havana are more than the band that they once were in the most literal sense. What was once a quartet has swelled to a permanent six piece and the impact on their sound is as pervasive as it is obvious. The pace has slowed too, in terms of influences this is far more Counting Crows and Springsteen than it is Thrice and Thursday. What we seem to have here is a band singing songs about being young, but playing them like old men.

Having old souls is fine, but the result doesn’t have to be middle of the road rock records. (Tom Doyle)

Weird Sister (Fortuna Pop) ‘Weird Sister’ is frequently snotty, frequently loud and frequently abrasive.

And underneath the bits which sound like a troop of excitable teenagers banging around, there exists a band who have designs on more melodic and majestic goals. When Joanna Gruesome stick the two things totally together, the results are fantastic: a distant haze of My Bloody Valentine-esque feedback settling on on top of barely discernible lyrics delivered with punky vigour.

Sometimes gloriously messy, sometime just simply glorious. (Tim Lee)

7 TROUMACA The Grace

(Brownswood Recordings) Troumaca’s debut ‘The Grace’ tows a fine line. Dub elements simmer in the background of ultimately chilled-out ‘ jams’. Yet somehow they defy everything, all these downbeat expectations that crop up at the mere mention of ‘dub’ and ‘reggae’. If anything the Birmingham group far closer sport a clever Peaking Lightsstyle balancing act, where these terms are anything but dirty words. Their songs are electronic-rooted, casting aside notions that they’re a weak link in B-town’s guitar fuzz brigade. Mates with Peace and Swim Deep they might be, but Troumaca’s zone is entirely theirs to inhabit. (Jamie Milton)

6 BABYSHAMBLES Sequel to the Prequel

(Parlophone) It’s been six years since the last Babyshambles record and four years since Pete Doherty’s last solo record, and while he’s continued to appear in the limelight for reasons both fair (the reformation of The Libertines; his debut acting role) and foul (prison; rehab; his debut acting role), there’s been a growing sense of his musical career grinding to a halt. ‘Sequel To The Prequel’ offers the suggestion that might be premature. On ‘Farmer’s Daughter’ Doherty lays into the chorus with a voice most thought had long since wasted away, turning it into something soaringly anthemic. The worst bits are those which are a touch less, for want of a better word, professional. While it’s hard to disagree with the sentiment of ‘Penguins’, as a song it is kind of slight, the vaudevillian musical-hall waltz of ‘Sequel To The Prequel’ comes over as novelty, and the attempted ska of ‘Dr. No’ just energetically skanks towards being a bad idea. But, in the grand scheme of things, ‘Sequel To The Prequel’ is a definite step in a positive direction. (Tim Lee)

9 MGMT

MGMT (Columbia) What made MGMT’s debut, ‘Oracular Spectacular’ so special was its innate sense of fun and fondness for reckless abandon. And lyrically and musically, this is unsurprisingly much more mature. The days of the ‘live fast and die young’ vision, so prominent on ‘Time To Pretend’, have well and truly been left behind. Highlight ‘Introspection’ reflects on the unending mystery of trying to figure out and accept who you really are, while ‘Your Life Is A Lie’ wastes no time beating around the bush, preaching the benefits of a solitary lifestyle. It’s a truly immaculate full-length that shows growth and maturity in songwriting and sound, with adult themes cleverly masked by playful sonics that evoke the innocence of childhood. MGMT haven’t necessarily re-discovered their mojo, but re-imagined it. (Nathan Standlee)

5

GLASVEGAS

9

FOREST SWORDS

Later... (Pieface Records) Listening to ‘Later... When The TV Turns To Static’, you can understand how those in the front row of Moses’ debut at Mount Sinai felt.

Which is a problem, because things which are told to you under a banner of being important are often the things which come over as the most uninteresting. It’s the same with this album. Glasvegas make the act of being in a band and making music sound like penance; it’s a bit of a drag. Each time James Allen attempts to grab you by the lapels and unload some emotional weighty couplet, all it provokes is a sigh and an absentminded ruminate on what’s for dinner. (Tim Lee)

Engravings

(Tri Angle) ‘Engravings’ has a zennish, meditative quality at its epicentre, and Forest Swords’ music sounds ritualistic, but it’s not denouncing anything or pushing some tired agenda. It has a palpable design, but it’s so wonderfully vague that it’s hard to really describe in the conventional sense. All too often electronic music feels cold and impersonal, removed behind protective sound-desks and masked by endless ‘drops’. This is electronic mastery at its very finest, because it manages to make electronic music feel tactile, organic, and alive. (El Hunt) 73

REVIEWS ALBUMS

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GOLDFRAPP Tales of Us (Mute)

It’s almost shocking how Goldfrapp have managed to lead a double life over the past decade, ditching electronics (Supernature, Black Cherry) for acoustics (Felt Mountain, Seventh Tree) almost at random. The group’s two sounds have always been so different in feel, but something inherent blurs the lines: Alison and her powerful, intoxicating chant. On ‘Tales of Us’, the acoustic guitar and string sections are back wearing First Team Colours, the Sandy Denny-like folk ballad ‘Alvar’ and throbbing, dreamy number ‘Thea’ proving the most stirring of the lot.

(Huw Oliver)

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7 KING KRULE

6 Feet Beneath The Moon (True Panther Sounds / XL Recordings) ‘6 Feet Beneath The Moon’ was the only kind of album that King Krule was ever going to put out. Songs so well constructed, but so indebted to the album concept as well. ‘Ocean Bed’ is as conventional as he’s gone – a song just about loving someone. But like the shattered glass on the night’s pavement that the record conjures up, it’s just one shard of who this young man is. He dips and dives but keeps the album a genuine work. He hits so many spots and they all seem to fit his deep-and-surly style perfectly. (Kyle Forward)

BODY/HEAD

Coming Apart (Matador)

‘Body/Head’, Kim Gordon’s collaborative project with free-noise extraordinaire Bill Nace, is more experimental, scraping, abrasive, and disarming than anything she has done before; and considering her previous output with Sonic Youth, that’s quite the feat. ‘By ‘Last Mistress’, a mere three tracks in, she’s impersonating canine ‘woof ’ noises over Nace’s sinister backdrop, delivering almost Dadaist lyricism like “dogs, when they piss”.

Like being trapped in an animal soup of swirling madness and mind-boggling flavours, inside a giant Thermos flask of fucked up weirdness. ‘Coming Apart’ is an exciting, if extremely strange album.

(El Hunt)

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6

LISSIE

Back To Forever (Columbia)

There’s a consistent sense of déjà vu that accompanies every melody, a pleasant sense of cosy familiarity, but all things considered, ‘Back To Forever’ isn’t half bad. In the best possible way, Lissie sounds a bit like those hairbrush-microphone renditions in front of mirrors, or 90s bedroom stage-dives. Sure, she sounds uncannily like Avril Lavigne turned country-pop, but as somebody who voluntarily wore checkered sweatbands in early adolescence as a homage to ‘Complicated’, this album is like kryptonite. (El Hunt)

TOUCHÉ AMORÉ

Is Survived By

(Deathwish Inc) With their previous two albums, Touché Amoré pinned their colours to the mast. Both clocking in around the twenty minute mark, the band became quickly infamous for their vicious, quick-paced assault, but now, things have changed.

‘Is Survived By’ still possesses momentum, but feels more in control. Exploring new realms – both musically and lyrically – with familiar hands, heads and hearts, this is an album, and a band, ready to give survival a go. (Sarah Jamieson)

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EDWARD SHARPE AND THE MAGNETIC ZEROS

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (Gentlemen of the Road)

Of course, as with any unrelentingly blissful formula as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros use, if the sky-facing euphoria and sentimentality can’t be matched then the whole thing can be terribly nauseating. ‘Let’s Get High’ is a near-cacophonous piece of pomp, like T. Rex’s ‘Teenage Dream’ if Marc Bolan had given the session musicians the wrong song sheets. But still, despite how easy it is to discredit this, it still holds a certain warmth that endears rather than averts; its blemishes becoming part of the allure. (James West)

WOLF ALICE She

8

FACTORY FLOOR Factory Floor (DFA Records)

In waiting so long to release an album, what could have been a fatal error has turned out to be a stroke of inspiration. Because what makes ‘Factory Floor’ so special is that it takes the shudderingly visceral volume of the band’s live shows and channels that power in a supremely focused way.

They’ve resisted the temptation to go for volume, for loudness. Make no mistake this is an album that is about power, kinetic energy and forward thrust – but it’s equally an album that is minimal and spacious; a journey that builds and builds, that takes you with it on a path to their own dark universe. (Danny Wright)

If the question was ‘How much more 90s can Wolf Alice get?’, then the answer is ‘Well, just about this much’. ‘She’ might as well be wearing a neon puffer jacket and Buffalo boots as it shows off a promisingly darker side to the Londoners’ nu-grunge.

PARQUET COURTS

You’ve Got Me Wondering Now

Parquet Courts are effing brilliant, so it should come as no surprise that this brand new Parquet Courts song is also effing brilliant.

EAGULLS Nerve Endings

With some news – finally – on the whole debut album front, Leedsbased five-piece Eagulls have confirmed they’ve signed with new label Partisan, and unveiled this, a suitably dark punk-fuelled four-minute beast of a track.

SPECTOR Decade Of Decay

7

While he’s not off playing with Solange, producing the Origi-babes, or recording under his own Blood Orange moniker, Dev Hynes is doing stuff like recording Spector’s first new material in over a year. Rumours that the song is about Fred’s teeth remain unsubstantiated.

JACKSON SCOTT

Melbourne (Fat Possum)

With ‘Melbourne’, Jackson Scott isn’t here to out-slack all of his peers, despite the sluggish moan of ‘Evie’ being Deerhunter with the lights out, a sinister glow matching Bradford Cox-style refrain. That’s only half the story. What’s trickier to pick up on is its tough-to-match craft, most of which is barely stressed beyond an eye-gouging noise that defines the record. It’s a semistoned thought process, a bugged-out streaming of consciousness that defines ‘Melbourne’. They say practice makes perfect. As it turns out, if it’s just a case of running with wild ideas and seeing what happens, Jackson Scott’s someone to look up to. (Jamie Milton)

YUCK Middle Sea

‘Middle Sea’ is a pretty good pun and serves as the second taster of the now trio’s forthcoming album and fellow play-on-words, ‘Glow & Behold’. It’s as joyfully scuzzy as anything that’s come before, and proves a band really don’t need to call Adam Lambert when they’re short a frontman. Although that’s one great mental image…

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ph otos: Hannah C o rdin g le y

LATITUDE H E N H A M PA R K , S U F F O L K

live kr af t werk

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and vocalist Taigen Kawabe plays his instrument waved above his head for no reason other than apparently to prove that he can), but watching them is an impressive and physically draining experience. Saturday has the first ever showing of DANIEL KITSON’s film ‘It’s Always Right Now, Until It’s Later’, and while it’s an obscure experience watching a filmed live performance while the live performer stands on watching, it really works. Brave and simple.

There’s a queue almost the length of the site for the for National Theatre Wales and NEON NEON’s ‘Praxis Makes Perfect’, people escaping the hot festival site into a dark intense world of underground Russian politics with Fidel Castro playing basketball. Urgently rebooting our brains to remember how to make paper airplanes at the cast’s demand, it’s nice to feel needed as an audience. Though it does feel like a school bell’s rung at the end, as we run across the breezy fields to Karen O’s open arms. It should be heartbreakingly wrong to watch a scruffy garage band on a main stage like this, but YEAH YEAH YEAHS pull off the near impossible task of making the raw noise of New York circa 2001 work with a huge

bo n in g en

With a festival like Latitude, housed in the beautiful setting of Southwold’s Henham Park, the experience is as much about the general atmosphere as it is the artists on the poster. A stage housed in the middle of a wood, just up a mud path from a lonely, playable piano is a fitting example of the kind of things you stumble upon. On Friday, JAPANDROIDS pack out the iArena, although don’t quite manage to replicate live what they do so well on record. Guitarist Brian King’s vocals fall somewhat flat and their energetic, noisy rock just doesn’t quite click – though those in the audience don’t seem to mind.

Later, BO NINGEN are as loud and riffy as anyone could expect. Long black hair flies back and forth while the Japanese four-piece rock out, powerfully and energetically. At times it leans dangerously close to prog rock-ish show-offiness (bassist

and genuine happiness. There’s proper real energy, Karen’s wearing golden clothes, all is well in the world. Watching KRAFTWERK, however, is a little bit like waiting in a queue in a shopping centre, the big screens uneasily commercial rather than filmatic. On Sunday on the Radio 3 Lavish Lounge ANNA MEREDITH creates an intensity to outdo anything on the main stage, overwhelming every sense with 68 dimensions of mind bending electroclassical joy from a tiny wallpapered living room under some pine trees.

GRIZZLY BEAR follow a notentirely-convincing JAMES BLAKE with a considerably more gripping showing, meanwhile HOOKWORMS’ mix of drone and psychedelia pounds and swells delightfully; sucking you in, chewing you up, and spitting you out. (Jake May / Louise Mason)

ye ah ye ah ye ah s

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REVIEWS LIVE

G RE E N MAN T H E B L A C K M O U N T A I N S , WA L E S P H O T O S : J o n a t h a n S i m p s o n

Surrounded by the stunning hills of Wales’ Black Mountains, the views from around the Green Man site are most definitely first-class. However, it’s the music on offer over the course of the weekend that proves to be most stunning of all. PARQUET COURTS pack out the Far Out tent late on Friday afternoon, offering up their now well-established brand of insightful post-pun, MIDLAKE’s folk leanings suit the Mountain Stage sunset slot perfectly, and some beautiful backdrops and lighting trickery make their set all the more fitting. Later, FUCK BUTTONS are over at the Far Out tent making a shit-load of distorted noise over some psychedelic visuals. It’s pretty

You’ and ‘The Marry Song’. A beautifully sunny Sunday sees FANFARLO delight the Mountain Stage with some Beirut-ish indie, while singer Simon Balthazar proudly swigs and reviews various alcohols between songs, and in-turn drunkenly forgets some lyrics. Later in the afternoon at the Far Out tent, MELODY’S ECHO CHAMBER are still going through soundcheck fifteen minutes after L O C A L N AT I V E S

BAND OF HORSES

energetic stuff. On to a rainy, cold Saturday, and the young boys of BLAENAVON are in the Far Out tent being all quirky, while over at the new Green Man Rising stage, Cardiff ’s RADSTEWART sound a lot like Pavement. Later in the evening, THE HORRORS draw what is definitely the biggest crowd yet for their set on the Mountain Stage, before BAND OF HORSES power through the wonderful ‘Is There A Ghost’ and strip things down for ‘No One’s Gonna Love

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they were meant to start. It’s worth the wait though. Finally, LOCAL NATIVES provide a final highpoint with their evening slot on the Mountain Stage, putting on a highly emotive, passionate and powerful performance. They possess a distinctly more percussive sound live, and certainly don’t shy away from going all out on the energy front. (Nathan Standlee)

D E A P VA L LY

F I B B EN ICASSIM B E N I C A S S I M , S PA I N

photos: Lucy Hoang

It takes a strong soul to last the full four nights at Benicassim. Why? Because the scorching Spanish sun is absolutely relentless. Sleeping past 8am becomes nigh-on impossible, such is the strength of the searing heat, lest you enjoy sleeping in a tent filled with your own sweat. Day one sees the near-forgotten LA ROUX kick things off on the main stage. She’s decent enough, but her new material pales in comparison to the old mainstays. The day is dominated by the mighty QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE though, who showcase a mix of old and new material to equal aplomb. Josh Homme and co are truly a force to be reckoned with, and a great start to the festival. Day two has a distinctly Britpop vibe going on with BEADY EYE, PRIMAL SCREAM and JOHNNY MARR occupying the big slots. But it’s DIZZEE RASCAL who provides the most highlights, causing multiple fainting incidents during his renditions of ‘Bonkers’, ‘Dance Wiv Me’ and ‘Fix Up, Look Sharp’. BEADY EYE seem positively bored on the main

DIZZEE RASCAL

stage and leave in memory what must be one of the dullest headline festival performances ever witnessed.

Day three unquestionably belongs to headliners ARCTIC MONKEYS though, who sounded absolutely huge playing a set full of promising new material as well as old cornerstones such as ‘Brianstorm’ and ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’. The final day sees DEAP VALLY struggle to get the crowd energized due to the stifling heat.

Their songs sound great, but the unbearably awkward between-song banter certainly didn’t help their cause.

Festival closers THE KILLERS later offer up what is arguably the best set of the weekend. Powering through endless hits ‘Mr. Brightside’, ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ and ‘Smile Like You Mean It’, they end with a bang on ‘When You Were Young’, and, accompanied by huge glitter cannons and an epic firework display, provide a suitably spectacular end. (Nathan Standlee) 79

REVIEWS LIVE

VIS IONS VA R I O U S V E N U E S , L O N D O N P H O T O S : e m m a s w a n n

It’s always going to be a bit special, isn’t it? Visions Festival hits East London with one of this summer’s most buzzworthy line-ups,taking over London Fields Brewhouse and its surrounding spaces of Netil House and Oval Space. The end result? A thoroughly enjoyable day. Kicking off proceedings are Brighton’s GAPS, whose airy folkinspired electronica is a wonderful daydream-inducing affair. Despite being plagued with a few technical issues, the duo manage to conjure something suitably intimate for the low-lit stage at the Brewhouse, which is all brought together by the charming charisma of vocalist GAPS

Rachel. Next up is Australian KIRIN J. CALLINAN, who puts on the most

downright insane performance of the day. Honestly, the way he works a guitar is utter wizardry: dozens of pedals are perfectly arranged on stage, and the soundscapes he casts has everyone captivated by his technical prowess. With one hell of a pair of lungs on him too, it’s no surprise he opened for fellow oddball Ariel Pink on his US tour this June.

Newcomer JACKSON SCOTT takes to the same stage later on in the afternoon for his debut European show, and the venue fills out for the first time that day. Ramshackle, juvenile and audaciously confident, Jackson’s haunting and hazy guitarstrumming becomes a visceral and ferocious onslaught live. A slacker only in the most aesthetic sense of the word, Scott not only gives a thoroughly engaging performance

but also shows us all that he isn’t just a lackadaisical teenager. Bouncers snapping photos, a post-performance Jackson Scott crowdsurfing in ways no man ever has before.

Fist-pumping arms as far as the eye can see. It can only be a CLOUD NOTHINGS show, can’t it? The Ohio three-piece fronted by infamous bedroom-dweller DYLAN BALDI turn Netil House into a sauna, tearing through a set sprinkled with some new numbers that sound like the best material they have produced yet. It’s confidently executed, as you’d expect, and incredibly sweaty as a result. Then, down at Oval Space, !!! zip through over an hour’s worth of material ranging from the poppy delights of their new record ‘Thr!!!er’, to some forward-thinking EDM interludes that have the whole building shaking in time to the beat.

(Tom Walters) ICEAGE

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SUPER BO CK SUPER RO CK M EC O, S E S I M B R A , P O R T U G A L

Super Bock Super Rock is a silly name for a festival.

It’s a silly name to us Brits who’ve barely heard of this particular fizzy alcoholic beverage; it’s probably still a silly name for the locals who are used to seeing it on every second billboard around. On Thursday an oddly-dressed AZEALIA BANKS leads a relentless set, JOHNNY MARR’s solo material leaves much to be desired, before ARCTIC MONKEYS’ set is as assured as any festival headliner’s. Friday’s main stage openers BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB sound laboured; KAISER CHIEFS are overshadowed by what’s going on off-stage, and THE KILLERS bring a Vegas show with as much flourish as they can muster. The nostalgia trip extends in to Saturday, with ASH blasting through their old hits, WE ARE SCIENTISTS causing giggles, and !!!’s Nic Offer deciding to perform in his boxer shorts, before the weekend’s big event. Portugal is desperate for a piece of QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE, whose set is hit-tastic, with a huge, sleazy dollop of ‘...

Like Clockwork’ thrown in. (Emma Swann)

B EACONS F U N K I R K E S TAT E , S K I P T O N P H O T O : X A N D E R L L OY D

Set on the sweeping moorland of Skipton, Beacons is growing up fast. FUN ADULTS, whose sophisti-pop bears the groove of Wild Beasts and Alt-J kick off musical events, before fellow Leodiensians NOPE are about as far removed from this restraint as possible, delivering a semi-improvised set that’s as hypnotic as it is viscerally satisfying. Some technical issues mar later sets, and it’s BONOBO who perhaps suffers most. The only antidote to this frustration is the blistering FUCKED UP, cathartically destroying everyone with their swathe of guitars. It’s EAST INDIA YOUTH’s aggressive arpeggiated journeys that really impress during his set, before GOLD PANDA makes it all seem so easy. MIKAL CRONIN sends the crowd’s feet a-jumpin’ with his confessional garage songwriting, while Machinedrum’s drum & bass and hip-hop heavy set made sure those same feet keep moving until the early morning. The headline segment suffers with SAVAGES playing one of the smaller stages, leaving many without a glimpse of the band. This disappointment is easily alleviated with the quality elsewhere, JAMES HOLDEN’s joy radiating as his intriguing trance-like beats take the crowd at the Red Bull stage to altered states. (Nathan Comer)

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fr ee | is s ue 21 | august 2013

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The Fl aming Lips | peace | charli xcx | fidl aR

y i d eto fr fre ee e || issue issue 1167 | march apr il 201 201 33

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