“Welcome to Limehouse.” With those words, Jarvis Cocker set off on the latest instalment of his 30 year musical odyssey, launching into set opener Pilchard from his new solo album, Further Complications. For such a long, often tortuous journey which began at a Sheffield secondary school and the formation of what was originally known as Arabicus Pulp, the Troxy did seem a rather apt stopping point – a former theatre turned bingo-hall in the deepest End End, where Stepney and Limehouse blur into each other, now restored and reborn as an unlikely concert venue.

In fact, Cocker did remark, in his own inimitable way, that the place reminded him of an ice-rink from his youth, where he went to “cop off” with someone, and you still half expected to hear calls of “clickety click” and “legs eleven”, even as support band the Horrors were going through their Neu! meets Echo and the Bunnymen infused motorik indie.

There were a few half-hearted requests from parts of the audience, but tonight was most definitely a Pulp-free zone (the presence of longtime sidekick Steve Mackey on bass was as near as we got). The set leant heavily on Cocker’s sophomore solo effort, which has a rockier, heavier edge to it than its’ predecessor (not surprising given the pedigree of producer Steve Albini). That said, old Jarvis still has the wry wit and subtle smut that made albums like Different Class such stand outs back in the day (witness news songs Leftover and I Never Said I Was Deep), and he still has plenty of those weirdly angular dance moves up his sleeves. As if that weren’t enough, he even dusted off his old junior school recorder skills on the introduction to Caucasian Blues.

A couple of numbers from Cocker’s debut solo album made an appearance towards the end of the set, including a driving Fat Children, whilst the encore opened with Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time. We ended on the closer from Further Complications, You’re In My eyes (Discosong), where Jarvis appears to channel the spirit of Barry White – there was even a glitterball to dazzle the Troxy’s faded glamour.
As Jarvis took the adulation of the massed faithful, it seemed like, after a bit of a wilderness period post-Pulp, old Mr Cocker has most definitely got his mojo back.

Peaches n' Cari goes together like Peaches n' Cream.

Strolling through Brick Lane this previous Saturday, the baking sunshine tried to tempt me to cast aside my plans and do what most Londoners were doing; sprawling, lazing, diving into lidos and lounging in parks. But I was not to be deterred. I had a date with Peaches and I intended to keep it.

Oh, and when I say 'date', let me clarify that she was being shared with around 50 excited fans, who clamoured for her attention as she held court in Amelia's Magazine's favourite East End jewellery shop, Tatty Devine. For those who need reminding of the teaches of Peaches, this avante garde, post feminist provocateur is back with a new album, "I Feel Cream" doing what she does best; pushing boundries and challenging tired gender stereotypes in her own inimitable manner. Much more than just a singer, she is both a performance artist and social commentator - and funny as hell with it. (Any doubters can refer to her 2006 album Impeach My Bush for proof)

As befits such a multifaceted talent, those who turned out to spend their afternoon with Peaches were a cross-generational bunch. Many were fans, some were friends, and Peaches was pleased to see them all. Hugging the girls, posing happily for photos, chatting away about topics that most female singers would shy away from (Case in point, a proud mother approached with her twelve year old daughter and announced "We love your body hair!" Explaining that she is encouraging her daughter to embrace all aspects of her body, Peaches cheered along and threw up her arms in solidarity. "Yay for body hair!" she exclaimed.) Surveying the rambunctious scene, I was curious to see how this had all come about. "I'm good friends with the girls at Tatty Devine" she explained, "And this is where my hairdresser, Charlie Le Mindu, who has created my most recent hairstyle, and designed the hair earrings that I am wearing now has his pop up salon." (See the below photos for the hairstyle in action and please excuse the pose!)

Noting that many people around us seemed to know her personally, I asked if she knew London well. "Absolutely, I have lots of friends here, and I recorded part of my new album in London last year, so it's nice to catch up with everyone." Wanting to discover more about her new album "I Feel Cream" which has remained in the 'most played tracks' on my ipod for a couple of weeks, we discussed the sound and production of the songs. Revealing that she had collaborated with Simian Mobile Disco and Soulwax for part of the album, she explained why it was something of a new direction for her. "For this album, we didn't use any guitars. I was curious to see how that would sound, and wanted to make it more dancefloor electronica; I am really pleased about how it has turned out."

Turning to another aspect of the afternoon, which saw droves of customers handing over cash in exchange for a Peaches designed necklace (which yours truly just had to have), she revealed it's inspiration. "A friend of mine had made me a belt in this exact lettering. She had designed the letters to look like Def Leppard's logo for their albums".

After getting a couple of photos out of her, we chatted about upcoming festivals that she is playing, including Benicassim where I will be throwing myself around in the sun scorched mosh pit, so I made a definite date to watch her performance. Then it was time to leave her to her friends and fans, so I bid farewell to her. It was only fair - everyone wants to get the Teaches of Peaches, and I can see why.

After the well received debut release of 'Greetings From San Francisco' in 2008, Ian Matthew Hale has been busy as ever. With a recent publishing deal, live XFM sessions and even personal praise from Jools Holland, you get the feeling that all the hard work is beginning to pay off.

Speaking quietly but passionately about anything from his love of Prince to an early appreciation of Death Metal, it doesn't take much to cajole an opinion from Ian M. Hale, which made my job of finding out more about the the 27 year old singer- songwriter and his latest release “Loss” a pleasingly simple case of sipping my pint and tending the conversational rudder.



What do you think started you making music?

I'm not entirely certain, I think it was a family thing really. I spent a lot of my upbringing with my uncle who is a musician, so when I was little he would often be having rehearsals and like, the band round. Even when he was just cooking there was loud music playing all the time in the kitchen, wherever we were. Also my dad plays and my grandparents and my sister.

I think it's one of those things, it's not intentional, you know you're interested in something when before you know it, you wake up and you've been studying something for a few years. You've been out searching for music. Then when I was a teenager I started hanging out with this guy on my road a lot who had lots of tracking programs, quite basic now as it was a long time ago, and we had our own sort of little thing for a bit.

I think it became serious when I was about 17 or 18. I'd been playing a long time before then, but I went to do a diploma in music technology so that I could learn a bit about how to do things, which was useless actually because I'm not technically minded. So I ended up leaving there not knowing how to do anything at all. And I still can't use equipment very well. But, you know, I made some good contacts there and a good friend of mine, Tim, I met him there and he became my first producer. Then for a few years every time we got a chance in the summer or if we had a break, I'd go to his place in the country and we'd record demos. After about 3 years the stuff that we were writing started to form a little more.

At that point I was going to university in London and, I don't know, every time I did something I immediately wanted to better it or, you know, correct what I thought was wrong. It took a long time for me to reach the stage where I felt comfortable letting go of the stuff that I had done. For years I had lots and lots of songs that never saw the light of day. And they probably won't, really. But that was part of it.

It seems your uncle's music taste was a big factor in your early music interests. What kind of music did you grow up listening to?

He used to listen to a lot of Steely Dan. And also a lot of Weather Report, which is a great thing to be thrown in your face when you're little, I think. But also, one of my Uncle's best friends was a guy called Gem who used to run Music For Nations, who were quite a big label that did quite a lot of death metal, so I used to get given boxes of tapes that were demos that Music For Nations got sent. So I just had boxes and boxes of death metal, so I used to listen to all them quite a lot. My flatmates, now, listen to a lot of heavy metal and, you know, I quite like it.

So you're going to "sell out" and go electric?

Yeah yeah! The songs seem to be going that way. The songs are becoming more and more full and messy, which I really like because for a long time when I was younger, I couldn't help but feel I was writing these namby pamby pieces of shit and it's really nice to toughen it up a bit. I'm sure it will go more and more that way, but I never can tell. I'm really interested in soul and a lot of rough sounding rock and roll like live Who stuff and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. But that's just how I'm feeling today, I just tend to find something, a group of bands with a sound or aesthetic and then I'll investigate it, listen to it continuously day and night for weeks on end. This single, the Loss single, was heavily influenced by experimental 80's synth pop, so lots of Blade Runner, Yello, Tears For Fears. It's going to be fun thinking about what's next.

So when you sit down to write a song, where do you start from?

I don't know if there's that much of a set formula, for me. It depends what frame of mind I'm in. Often a song will come from mucking around on the guitar until I have a riff, or an entire structure, which I will then maybe try and create a melody around without any lyrics so I sort of sing a thousand different consonants to create the rhythm within the melody. Or I might just not use a guitar or anything and I'll go and sit in a cafe or a pub and write lyrics or poems continuously for a few hours that it can be adapted into a slightly different format.

But it's often a very late evening thing. It tends to kick in around about 11 o'clock or something. Really inappropriate times and go through to, like, half 6 in the morning. But you have to go with it, you know?

It's tough at the moment because I'm so busy and I long to be away from the city right now just so I can do more of it. I feel like I get so much information in the city, I creates a mess and I can't level it out until I disappear for a while, and then it starts to form.

With that in mind, what would you say is the theme of your new material?

Well the single is more like a small EP, or a promo to the album. There was something with the short, poppy nature of the first CD I think I had come to a point where I, I didn't feel like I wanted to do something different, I just started doing something different. This piece of work feels a lot more solid, although half the size, I think conceptually it feels a lot tighter. It's much more negative, I don't think the subject matter is very pleasant. I don't know why, it's just how it went. It started with the last track on the single actually, "Be Careful What You Wish For", from that I devised the concept for the whole piece. For the album, I think it will definitely have to be a large amount of wait and see. I'm looking forward to going away and recording it.

On your first EP the lyrics sounded very personal, was that just good fictional writing or were they based on your experiences?

Well they do come from personal experiences. I, not as a rule but generally, try to set them aside from myself. It's quite important to be as universal as possible. Indulgence is a good thing, but you need to be careful and have an understanding so that you can make sure you don't get carried away with your own rubbish that nobody cares about.

It was personal, but the first EP was a little disjointed. You know, there were lots of songs that had a different aesthetic to one another. It was more of a collection of recordings as an example for my first release that I could then take and hopefully put in to a more coherent form. Although there is an overriding theme throughout the CD, which is to do with the title of it. A kind of naive irresponsible optimism. That was the idea. Lots of people who were in situations who just decided "no I'm not going to do that anymore", either in a positive or negative sense. That childish nature, I suppose. Pretending to be in a fairytale.

You perform and record with your band now, if I can call them that? How did that form?

I work with a few people on a regular basis who are fantastic, I'm very lucky to have them. There is Andrea Adriano from Playtime Productions who is my producer who produced this single and my last EP and he's also my drummer. A very talented, kind of multi-instrumentalist. He's only 20 years old but he's produced some great CD's for some people who are doing quite well now. I think he used to produce some of Adele's stuff before she took off and has done a lot of work with Charlene Soraia who’s doing very well now.

There's also Moss Beynon Juckes who is a really good friend. I met her about five years ago. I looked up to her an awful lot even when I didn't really know who she was. I saw her somewhere performing at an open mic night and I was so taken aback by it that I went back there a week later to see if she was there again, so I could talk to her to see if she would be interested in playing together and she wasn't there, which was a bummer. But as it turned out, someone I was living with was on the same course as her at the time so I gave her a demo of some instrumentals I had worked out. We met up and played a little bit but it didn't really work out. She was much further ahead of me at the time. I wasn't sure what I was doing so we parted. Anyway, two years later I met her again and we really hit it off as I'd had a lot of time to grow artistically and so had she. We started singing, almost like a duo, at open mic nights and also at the Beatroot Rendez-vous which was something Pepe Belmonte, myself and Moss were all doing at the time which was a monthly night in Angel. It’s still going actually, that’s a really great night.

Moss gave me a lot of confidence as the music I had written was sitting really well with her, which helped me enormously. Then one of her best friends, Jo Silverston, a very sought after cellist, she started playing with me as well which was fantastic. She's a really strong backbone to the whole thing, she's a very strong pitch perfect cellist that will just immediately know what you're going for. It’s amazing to have her on board. She plays with all sorts of people. Moss and Jo also have their own act called ‘Infamous Karaoke Star’ and have an EP coming out later this year. It sounds fantastic. Anyhow, so between the four of us we have this quite, almost boisterous sound, as the cello acts as bass. So we have the drums the cello and the guitar and a whole bunch of vocals.

But of course that will change as well in the sense that I'm always looking to expand. Maybe get another guitarist, maybe someone who plays some keys.

You have some interesting artwork on your single, is that the same artist from your last EP?

It's very different from my last EP, yes. It's the same guy, David Callow, who is a phenomenal illustrator. Really incredible, versatile artist who I really enjoy working with. On a musical level he can talk for hours about the songs that I'm writing for a project or what the music would be like which makes it very simple for me to let him do what he wants to do. He's done lots of commissions for all sorts of people although I don't think he's done any CD designs other than mine, so far. Although I don't know for how long it will stay like that.



And you're doing a video for this single as well?

Yeah. That will be put together by Matt Bowron, John Addis and Dan Blacker over at Tactful Cactus and that should be out in the next few weeks. It's my first music video so that should be interesting. I've never done videos before, I've always found it tough to do music videos. I've had a couple of offers before and I've turned them down. It's not something I've actively pursued because I find it very difficult to mix the two mediums. Music and film are tough to mix from a narrative point of view. I think it's to do with the power that each medium has. I think film is very strong and music is very strong and I think you need to be very careful as to which one is intended to be more prominent than the other. If you don't get it right you can end up destroying, or maybe that's a strong way of putting it, but drastically affecting the listeners perception of the song you've put together. But what Matt and John and Dan are doing for me looks great so far. Those guys are really good at what they do and I'm looking forward to the outcome.

What are your plans for the future?

I'd like to be in a position where I am able to working on music almost exclusively. Rob Smith, my manager, has been an absolute force since September last year and he's somebody who believes in my music as much as I do, if not more, which is exactly what I need. Next year I'd like to be on tour a couple of times and be in a position where I can be earning from what I do. Money isn't the reason I do it, but it'll be what I do for money. It's what I want to do, but it won't change depending on how much money I do or don't have.



'Loss' is out now available for purchase at Rough Trade Online, iTunes and in selected stores.
The album 'Successor' is due out later this year.

Monday 29th June
Regina Spektor, Serpentine Sessions, Hyde Park, London.

I love London summers, blessed as we are with plenty of lush green space. Hyde Park are putting on a good show this year with their gasp-inspiringly good line-up for the Serpentine Session, tonight everyone's favourite singing devushka; Regina Spektor takes to the stage, having made the transition from anti-folk to a more mainstream pop during her illustrious career, Ms Spektor has managed to keep her vocal intensity and gift for story-telling in tact; her balmy tales of the strange and the familiar in a voice not quite like any other, will be perfect for an evening in the park.

Tuesday 30th June
M. Ward, Shepherd's Bush Empire, London.

M. Ward has one of the most heart-breakingly lovely voices I've heard in a while, quietly strumming and whispering away in a green and leafy Oregon, entrenched in a rich tradition of simple story- telling and with a predilection for musical simplicity and music of yore; M.Ward is the king of understated brilliance. A must for fans of Smog and other good stuff.

Wednesday 1st July
Deerhoof, Scala, London.

The first time I heard Deerhoof, I was driving around San Francisco on my 19th Birthday and they seemed like a birthday gift from the gods of music. Their inspired sound is as fun as it is unique, like if Sonic Youth were hyper on lemonade at someone's 7th birthday party; this is surely a live experience that is not to be missed.

Thursday 2nd July
The Virgins, Scala, London.

The Virgins have whipped up quite the furore on the other side of the Atlantic, danceable new wave-y good vibes to be had.

Friday 3rd July
Blur, Hyde Park, London.

Do you remember having to pick between Blur and Oasis at school? I do! I was 11 and I am proud to say I chose Blur every time, then this boy in my class bought me Definitely Maybe on cassette for my birthday- what a schmuck! Blur were the most seminal British band of the 90s from their fun Britpop through to the later dalliances with art-rock circa Thirteen. Expect a heady mix of singles and album tracks, and of course lots of fun. With support from Foals and Crystal Castles among others.

Saturday 4th July
Internet Forever, Brixton Windmill, London.

I'm a big fan of fantastically- named Internet Forever and their exciting mix of reverb, keyboards and sweet vocals, like falling in love with a robot that was created by My Bloody Valentine and the Gameboy music people. Over-extended metaphors aside, Internet Forever get two big thumbs up from me, and if I had more thumbs they'd get them too! Head down to the Windmill I promise you won't be disappointed.