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Amelia’s Magazine | :Kinema: – Interview

All illustrations by Andrea Kearney.
It is March and the daffodils are in full bloom. London is drunk on sunshine. There is talk of vest tops and the unbearably exciting prospect of leaving the house without a coat. March also means that the light has started illuminating my smudgy windows and the dust that had collected under my radiators over winter. Yes. It’s probably time to think about Spring cleaning. For someone who is slightly anal (ok, visit very anal), you’d think I would find the prospect of a spring clean satisfying and wholesome. This would be wrong. I do it as little as I can get away with and secretly long for a cleaner (my bookshelves though, dosage are neurotically ordered according to colour).
My aversion to cleaning doesn’t mean that I don’t think about it. During my unemployment 18 months ago, a particularly low point came when I had exhausted Homes Under the Hammer and resorted to How Clean Is Your House. Kim and Aggy were all vinegar and lemon juice and elbow grease and baking soda and impossibly blonde chignons; and I was converted. As I sat on the sofa in my pyjamas, I thought to myself, if it’s good enough for Kim and Aggy, its good enough for me. It would take me another year and a half to act on this (ahem); fast forward to New Years Eve 2009. Maybe it was something to do with spending the last day of 2009 up to my elbows in ‘tetrasodium pyrophosphate’ (bleach, apparently) but that night I drunkenly resolved that 2010 would finally be the year that I would reduce the chemicals in my home.
A look in my cleaning cupboard, and in fact in most average cleaning cupboards, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were entering a nuclear zone. ‘Irritating to skin, toxic, risk of serious damage to eyes, harmful, keep locked up and out of the reach of children, if swallowed, seek medical attention immediately and show this container.” Yikes. I realised that there was something wrong with sloshing substances around my home that could literally burn my hands off.

The first hurdle in my new year’s resolution was not being able to find big enough quantities of vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. My initial web searches yielded nothing, but just before I was about to spend £14 buying 6 tiny boxes of bicarb, I came across the wonderful Summer Naturals* web shop which stocks industrial quantities of everything you’d need to make your own cleaning supplies.
I began with surface spray. Mine had run out so I washed out the bottle and gathered my supplies around me. An air of anticipation settled in the kitchen.
I’m not going to lie, it began dreadfully. Like an excited 9 year old I decided to slosh a bit of everything in there and make a ‘potion’. I must have been otherwise engaged during my school science lessons (vinegar + bicarb = volcano!) because attempt number one ended with a frothy white layer of goo covering my kitchen surfaces. Attempt number 2 was slightly more restrained but still an unmitigated fail. Putting any sort of powder in to a bottle with a nozzle will just clog it. I went back to the Summer Naturals website with my tail between my legs and found a much more functioning recipe for a surface cleaner (vinegar, water, Dr Bronmers castile soap and orange essential oil, if you were wondering) and the rest has sort of snowballed from there.

The benefits

• At the risk of sounding like a sad housewife, you can do most, if not all, household tasks with a few chemical free ingredients. This includes drains, toilets, floors, dishwasher powder and washing powder. • I have saved a fortune. Domesto’s Grotbuster Bleach Gel will set you back £1.97! Cillit bang Degeaser Power Cleaner will cost you £3.07! Cif Power Cream Bathroom Spray; £3.66! My Summer Naturals stash cost about £20 and will last me years. • It’s safe. If I spill a bit of my floor cleaner on my hands (borax, water, scented oil) the worst that will happen is that I will smell pleasantly of lavender. • It works. I live in a ‘hard water’ area so I know that I need to add more vinegar than usual to help the lime scale breakdown, which it does • My home smells amazing. Essential oils are needed to mask the vinegar smell, or your home will smell like a chip shop. French Lavender and juniper berry scented floors? Peppermint and rose scented surfaces? Oh yes please. The oils add an antiseptic quality too. • Cleaning has become (dare I say it?) more enjoyable for both me and my mister, and it’s even slightly more regular too. Boom.Give it a go. And give it some time. It’s not quite as quick as squirting some Domestos Grotbuster Bleach Gel down your loo, but the process is much more satisfying and the results are pretty darn good too.

Hailing from Brighton, purchase :Kinema: (yes, click those colons are an intentional and integral part of the band’s name) haven’t been around for long but have already managed to put out a series of warm and smart poptacular indie tracks that insist – nay, demand – a trip to the dancefloor. I dropped lead singer Dominic a line to find out more about them, and he cheerfully responded to my questions with admirable depth and dedication. Nice one, Dominic. Let’s take it away:

Hello there. Can you introduce yourselves and the rest of the band?

Dominic Ashton, singer, at your service, then we also have Ross Flight on Keytar and synths and on guitar Andy James Nelson.

Lovely. Describe yourselves and the music you make for us.

Musically the phrase ‘Dancefloor Romance’ feels right. In more familiar terms you could say we are a soulful, electronic pop band.

Interesting self-description there, ‘dancefloor romance’ – that’s a phrase that really reminds me of Franz Ferdinand‘s declaration that they wanted to make ‘music that girls can dance to’. They were at the forefront of a post-punk revival, and then we had other danceable indie bands coming through under hip’n’happening labels like dance-punk and, hah, ‘nu-rave’. Alongside bands like Phoenix (who appear to have finally cracked more widespread praise, and who are a band that I reckon share a few traits with you guys) would you consider yourselves to be a part of a new similarly-minded dance/indie/pop crossover trend? Put more simply, is your time now?

We are definitely fans of a lot of the indie-dance stuff. We listen to a lot of the DFA, Kitsune and Modular bands, and DJs, and that obviously has an influence on the music you make, but I think it’s important for any pop producer to listen to a wide variety of contemporary music and to try and meld as much of it together as possible into one cohesive pop sound. I have absolutely no problem with people calling us indie-dance or whatever, if that’s the element they are mainly hearing in our songs then that’s all fine with us, but I’d like to think we share just as much musical DNA with people like the Neptunes as we do with Franz Ferdinand – though I’m willing to admit that we aren’t as good-looking. As for whether this is our time, I’d like to believe that we could have released these songs 5 years ago, or we could release them in 5 years time and it wouldn’t really make a difference. If the indie-dance scene collapsed tomorrow I don’t think it would really affect us; I don’t think pop music is ever going to disappear.

So what is it that you’re trying to achieve with your music?

It wasn’t so much as planned, but the idea of bridging a gap between ‘indie’ music and ‘pop’ music really appeals to us. People tend to polarise these forms – pop music being seen as fake or manufactured; indie music being more ‘real’ and authentic. Now whilst we don’t wholly disagree what this, we have a big love for pop music and are trying to improve its reputation by making pop with an indie sensibility if you like. Writing songs that mean something and performing them ourselves.

Why do you think it is that a lot of people don’t consider music with groove, your average pop song, to be as worthy as, say, a straight up folk song? You’re right that pop often gets labelled as being insincere, phony, or fake, but why is that? I can’t really detect any huge difference between Little Boots and Lady Gaga, yet they receive different kinds of assessments in the press, for instance.

Well… I could probably give you an essay in answer to this but I’ll try and keep things brief. I think there is a whole host of reasons to be honest. A lot of people are of the opinion that for music to be meaningful, the performer has to have written the material themselves, and to a certain extent I would agree with this. I don’t get the feeling that Lady Gaga has invested too much of her time in the writing and production of her music and so I tend to regard her as a celebrity who’s main purpose is to sell mobile phones and soft drinks through the medium of music video. That’s not to say, however, that music that is written and produced for performers, rather than by them, isn’t of value. If you look at some of the motown that the Dozier/Holland/Dozier team created for a variety of artists, it is some of the most memorable music ever made. So I think its got more to do with how music has been commercialised in the last couple of decades. Once major record companies realised that to score a hit single they didn’t have to make a great song, they just had to market it correctly, that’s precisely what they did and we ended up with such musical heavyweights as Steps and Vanilla. I don’t actually have a problem with major labels doing that; children seem to like it and it makes a lot of money that record labels (supposedly) spend on developing other artists. What I dislike is how it has led to music fans equating the term ‘pop music’ with stuff like Steps, because there is a world of difference between what we do and what is churned out by the majors.

Secondly (I told you this was going to be long), I think there has always been a type of music fan who thinks that the classic subject matter of pop is not what ‘real’ musicians should concern themselves with. It probably started when disco and rock seemed to polarise the music world in the seventies. I’ve always got the feeling that some rock fans feel that musicians should concern themselves with loftier themes than dancing and making sweet love, and maybe they are right, but I’ve always felt that rock albums that are only concerned with digging to the very depths of the human soul are just as misrepresentative of the breadth of human experience because dancing and fucking are great fun and a large important part of many peoples’ lives. Even folk musicians think about sex sometimes, so I don’t know why it is that they rarely tackle the subject. Its just generic conventions I guess. As far as our music goes, we try and write about it all.

Very sentient analysis there, I have to say. So how do you go about convincing people that you’re serious about having fun?

Once people hear our songs I don’t actually think they need that much convincing. There’s a song that I wrote about how I love my synthesizers more than my girlfriend, a subject matter that you probably wouldn’t find in the lyrics of say, Cheryl Cole, because she has yet to learn the joys of producing her own records. I think people pick up on those things pretty quickly and realise that our stuff is, for want of a better word, ‘authentic’.

Which are the artists that have influenced you the most, then?

We all have different influences, but we like to think our music follows in the footsteps of early-80′s yacht-rock stars like Michael McDonald – although, perhaps more like if they’d spent more time hanging out at new wave discos like The Roxy or Paradise Garage than in marinas. From today, artists like Holy Ghost! and Aeroplane, and a whole host of French producers, inspire us.

What are you recording or planning to release? Anything soon?

There’s a double A side of ‘Recreation’ and our cover of Animal Collective’s ‘My Girls’ released as a download on the 29th of March. Then, in April, the ‘Circles’ EP gets released as a limited edition 2 track 7? yellow vinyl and a 4 track digital release, and our friends Grovesnor and Line have supplied remixes for that one.

Both these releases are coming out on Hot Pockets, and after that we’ll see. There’s interest from various quarters, but we’re just taking it as it comes at the moment, we’ve also recently done some remixes for other artists but we can’t say too much about that just yet, we don’t want to ruin the surprise.

You can’t reveal anything about the remixes? Pretty please?

Oh, alright then – we’ve just given Husky Rescue a kind of Derrick May meets Billie Jean re-working, there’s a remix we did of an Italian band LFC coming out soon and we’re currently working on giving our label mates Shock Defeat! a sparkling synth make over. There’s a few more things in the pipeline but I really can’t say anything more about them at the moment.

Can’t forget this either – where can people catch you guys live? Any festival slots lined up?

Over the next month or so it’s mainly London and Brighton, in fact we have 3 gigs in a row in west, central and east London in late april (22nd/23rd/24th) so if you live there you really have no excuse to not see us play. As for festivals we’ve got 3 or 4 offers on the table, they should be all confirmed soon. Best bet is to check our website or join our mailing list, we’re getting offered all sorts of gigs at the moment so hopefully people will be able to catch us playing near them very soon.

Ta muchly, Dominic.

Written by Ian Steadman on Wednesday March 24th, 2010 5:29 pm

Categories ,:kinema:, ,authentic, ,band, ,boogie, ,brighton, ,dance, ,french, ,Indie, ,indie-dance, ,interview, ,live, ,motown, ,pop, ,production

Amelia’s Magazine | Wild Beasts

So here we are. After a couple of years the guys from Canada return come back with their long awaited second release Neon Bible. As a consequence a little journey to London is always good to promote their new material and the Brixton Academy has no problem in selling out tickets of their four concerts in March.

Supporting artist is Patrick Wolf who’s also coming back on the scene with a lighter, more about online funnier and probably less difficult album than his previous offerings. His was a good show, try nothing to complain about and he certainly knows how to impress the public with his vocal qualities.

Suddenly it’s nine o’clock: lights down, what is ed public screaming and from the video projectors a preacher is explaining to us God’s law. In the background an enormous neon bible illuminates in red while some other neon’s appear in front of the stage.
Keep the Car Running, The Well and the Lighthouse or Ocean of Noise, the last one much better live than on the album, are among the first to be performed before coming to their relatively old hits.

As for Arcade Fire they represent everything a big band should be: multi-instrumentalists (Régine Chassagne), violins, horns, organs, lots of different materials and a show that offers all the songs that a fan can ask. The lead vocalist Win Butler is constantly supplied by choruses, shouts or backing vocals while the rest of the band seem unable to rest and keeps moving around the stage. Well, static is definitely not the word to define them. Chaotic in their movements and epic in their anti-minimalist concept of music probably fits better for a band that concentrates on orchestrations.

A really good live show that makes you come back home and listen again to the new release if, just like me, you’ve been a little disappointed the first time you heard it. Even if I am definitely a bigger supporter of Funeral, I am beginning to think that probably in a couple of weeks I’ll be playing Neon Bible constantly on my earphones.

Barfly on a Friday night – rammed. Not as you might expect with sweaty youths, help oh no, visit an older crowd is in tow tonight for a couple of hot, new electro-ey acts – wicked.

Amelia’s Magazine | Beirut

In today’s over-saturated electro market it would be easy to dismiss Simian Mobile Disco as just another bleep and whistle DJ duo. However, stomach troche if the reaction of the Hoxton Bar crowd was anything to go by it would seem that what we have on our hands is a bona fide rave outfit.

I’m not talking lamé leggings and novelty over-sized jewellery here (although the room wasn’t short of any of that), but in a scene that’s more about the fashion than the music SMD stand out as one of the few acts who understand what the phrase ‘Rave’ actually means.

A sweaty, hands-in-the-air music industry crowd is a rare sight, and while many tried the obligatory arms folded, ‘contemplating the relevance of the sound look’, it wasn’t long before the irresistible combination of the spectacular light show and pounding, dance heavy hooks and beats had everyone moving like it was 1992.

With all the retina burning, multi-coloured strobe action and the fact that I was stuck behind a couple of six-footers, it was difficult to catch a glimpse of Misters James Ford and Jas Shaw, although it was clear from the head-bopping shadows on stage that these two were enjoying their music just as much as their sweaty disciples. As things reached their climax with the brilliant It’s the beat, there was barely a still foot to be seen and with the whole night taking on a distinctly retro air it was long before the ‘ironic’ old skool hand movements made an appearance, probably in a bid to disguise the fact that GASP, they were actually enjoying dance music. Like it or not, SMD had brought out the Bez in all of us.

This year the RCA’s Summer show combined various fields in an all-encompassing exhibition space that was both innovative and exciting to explore.

Amelia’s Magazine | First Aid Kit

You can’t help but smile at the sight of Jessy Pemberton, viagra treatment all rosy cheeks and red lipstick bold and bright, discount she is the picture of wholesome. The industrious girl with her fingers in many home-baked pies, bustled in to meet me for a quick juice in Fresh and Wild and talk ghosts, the weird and wonderous activities of the Pemberton clan, and illustration of course.

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in knitwear design, Jessy has worked with the likes of Paul Smith and Jockey; exhibited alongside Tracy Emin and Mike Figgis; and worked with Cath Kidston on her book ‘Make!” – to name a few achievements. But it is when you come to look at her own illustrations that the world of Jessy Permberton springs to life, a fabric of its own woven together with home-made videos, a boundless imagination and a child-like sense of fun. I soon find that the simple question, so where do you get your inspiration from?, opens a window to this world, and all I am required to do is sit back, listen, and enjoy. By the time my carrot and ginger concoction gets to the lumpy bits, it is luckily only in my head that I say, ‘erm, adopt me?”

Take Harold the Ghost; pictured above with younger twins Chloe and Amelia. He comes to aid of children in times of need, asking only a small payment by way of some toast. One story involves a boy who gets bullied for having big ears. The boy calls on Harold, by post, who comes to the rescue with a heavy dose of bully medicine by giving them gigantic ears … But the initial genesis of Harold came from one of the many home-made movies (featured below) made by the Pemberton siblings, on one of their annual trips to the Welsh countryside. It’s also worth looking at their very own zombie film, apparently inspired from watching Braindead a million times over in early years.

The illustration of below is mother Pemberton, who does not drive and is accustomed to going to and from antique sales with her bike and trailer; a habitual collector to which Jessy has followed suite. The French Girl and Cakes comes from another story, Bella and the Sky, into which her family appear in various guises, and the last is a drawing of her dad in younger years, who apparently is the only member of the family that does not partake in their creative activities, thank you very much.

As the world of ghosts comes up against the straight-faced world of publishing we hope that Harold and friends will find thier way to tables and shelves soon. Jessy is also currently working on a top secret project with Rubbish Magazine. Keep your eyes peeled for her name during London Fashion Week.

Feel your modern cynicism just fall away as First Aid Kit‘s new EP begins. Drunken Trees summons folk songs of yesteryear and golden-tinged days-gone-by, hospital the ultimate antidote to credit crunchiness and war. The Swedish sisters have a knack of lulling you with their sweet sound until you wake, medicine revitalized by smart lyrics and a punchy chorus. Here they are at their harmonic best. The seven songs that unfold are the sort heard around bonfires with stars twinkling above, visit this site melody and words perfectly aligned.

The emphasis is on storytelling, playful one minute, subdued the next, ‘Little Moon’ gathers you around with ‘There’s a city at the top of the mountains…I used to go there as a child’ and the narrative rolls on from there. Each track melts into another and the enchanted tales keep coming. And with such song-writing, Joanna and Klara demonstrate a maturity beyond their teenage years. The balmy ‘Tangerine’ (lyrically reminiscent of Regina Spektor) is a gorgeous blanket of sound, recorded at home; ‘Jagadamba, You Might’ is notable as sing-along, dance-along folk.

It’s no wonder they’ve already earned a sparkling reputation in Scandinavia and are rapidly gaining a fan-base over here. Inevitable comparisons are with Joanna Newsom, and the girls cite influences as varied as Bright Eyes, Devendra Banhart and Vashti Bunyan. Listen carefully and their vocals actually owe more to Stina Nordemstam, albeit poppier and younger. There are low points: ‘Pervigilo’ is pretty, but on the dull side and overlong, the tunes are syrupy and won’t satisfy those with more savoury tastes. Many of the songs fade away rather than burn out. But these are matters of personal preference.

Drunken Trees is bulging with extras, a bonus track, a much You-Tubed Fleet Foxes cover and a DVD of three songs recorded in a Swedish forest. Plenty to satisfy devotees, and an album and UK tour set for later in the year. If this taster is anything to go by, it’ll be full of pure, natural sound and mysteries you’ll just want to keep unravelling.

Written by Melanie Harrison on Tuesday January 27th, 2009 11:05 am

Categories ,Band, ,Drunken Trees, ,EP, ,Indie

Amelia’s Magazine | A Hawk And A Hacksaw

Rufus%20Wainwright%20Release%20the%20stars.jpg
Five albums in, medications malady and with only mild commercial success to date, it would be a reasonable assessment to describe Rufus Wainwright’s dramatic, theatrical pop as something of an acquired taste. For many, he over eggs the pudding , and then some. But whilst bold ambition may be a deterrent to some, his loyal fans will rejoice at this offering. This is classic Rufus, and whilst it wont be winning him many new fans, this simply doesn’t matter. This is a record to admire, it may even be his most satisfying work to date.

As expected, Wainwright offers up his usual mix of epic and restrained throughout the 13 songs, and there are a number of gems. Striking orchestration and characteristically high in the mix Rufus vocals lead us into opener Do I Dissapoint You. It is a brilliant opening song to set the tone for what is to follow. The diversity of instruments employed here alone is staggering, and like many songs throughout the album the arrangement is gloriously ambitious. The recurring operatic theme, present throughout all his previous work has been thankfully maintained.

First Single Going To A Town (which was B listed by Radio 2) follows. Its mournful tones echoing latter day Beatles balladry (think Fool On The Hill) and it features the albums most engaging lyrics. Amidst numerous misforgivings with his homeland, Wainwright again finds himself lost in the confusion of love and religion (another recurring theme here), “Tell me, do you really think you go to hell for having loved?” he pleads. For all the record’s grandiose, it is these moments of human insecurity that really strike a chord. It is also one of a number of outstanding vocals on the record.

The pace doesn’t let up throughout the opening half – Nobody’s Off The Hook, Between My Legs and Tiergarten sit easily amongst the artists best work. But, it cannot quite be maintained throughout the second half – a better focus on sequencing next time perhaps. But this is a minor gripe. With each listen, hidden depths are revealed, suggesting that this is a record that will endure also. It is a joy.

The%20Concretes%20Hey%20Trouble.jpg
Troubles! That’s exactly what the Concretes got into during the last year. One of the three founding members and nonetheless the lead vocalist of the band decided to quit to start her solo project Taken by Trees. If that was not enough the destiny decided to punish them furthermore and as a result they had all their equipment stolen during the U.S. tour. Quite a difficult time for a band, sildenafil isn’t it? However, The Concretes decided to look ahead and continue their career as a seven piece band, giving Maria Erikkson the difficult task to substitute the charismatic and easily recognisable voice of Victoria Bergsman.

Amelia’s Magazine | Cherry Ghost: Thirst For Romance

Aided in no uncertain terms by a show stopping performance at Texas’ recent South By Southwest festival, order case Portland three-piece Menomena present their debut UK release. This is in fact the bands third release – with their two previous albums available in the US exclusively. School friends Danny Seim, mind Justin Harris and Brent Knopf have derived a creative process of much interest that has resulted in a work that is both experimental and forward thinking without being inaccessible.

The bands sound is essentially a combination of looped sounds which are selected from a computer programme called Deeler. The Deeler Sessions culminate in the layering of these looped sounds and vocal addition. The good news is that for the most part this results in songs of sonic density that are out of left field but rich in melody. It is a combination that makes ‘Friend and Foe’ a compelling listen.

Often the fragmented nature of the songs will result in a messy, disjointed sound to begin with. But cohesion arises from moments of inspiration that morph abstract noises into quasi – pop melodies. It maybe a gorgeous piano line, delicate vocal harmony or obscure drum loop. Whatever, these songs keep you guessing, and aside from the odd ill judged inclusion (notably at the tail end of the album) they are nothing less than enthralling.

There are echoes of Mercury Rev on the defiant ‘Rotten Hell’, whilst howling guitars and brooding Saxophone characterise ‘Weird’. Elsewhere Menomena take ‘Up’ era REM as a reference point on ‘My My’- A brilliantly structured song defined by its paradoxical use of warm keyboards and choppy, industrial beats. It is one of many gems.

It’s a shame that the record falls away so badly in its last quarter. The final three songs appear to be an afterthought – lumped on at the end to pad things out when there really is no need for their presence. It leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mouth, but spin straight back to the start and all is forgotten. Friend and Foe deserves attention.

It’s always a danger to be overly vocal about your influences, ambulance it invariably leads people to compare you to those you have cited as inspiration, more about and with a band name taken from a Wilco song, dosage Cherry Ghost have set the bar a little too high. Thirst for Romance is positioned firmly in the folk/country influenced indie rock category and despite not being a spectacular record it has some nice moments, even if they are a little bit uninspired.

Amelia’s Magazine | Music Listings

Monday 26th January

Lucky Dragons, health store Luminaire, viagra London

Pretentious blurb going on about birthing fragile networks of digital signals or whatever but don’t be put off as it should be an interesting night of experimental folktronica.

Zombie Zombie, Ruby Lounge, Manchester

French electro with a cool Germanic edge.

Michael Baker, Ida Brown, John Barrow, Slaughtered Lamb, London

Folk rock from Michael Baker with more acoustic sounds in support at this lovely, folk-oriented venue.

Tuesday 27th January

Grace Jones, Roundhouse, London

Will be nothing less than extraordinary show from this wildly experimental but still accessibly pop singer. Her new album is spectacular as we have raved on previous occasions and she is completely fantastic live.

Let’s Wrestle, Screaming Tea Party, Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen, London

Fun party indie boys headline with cute bubblegum punk support from Screaming Tea Party.

Luke Haines, FreeDM studio at Roundhouse, London

He of the Auteurs and Black Box Recorder and self-proclaimed Britpop instigator plays his highly regarded solo material.

Wednesday 28th January

Crystal Antlers, Darker My Lover, Loverman, Ark People, Lexington, London

I will save my thesis on the fact that every single hip new band seems to be called Crystal something at the moment for another time. Instead catch the Antlers’ Long Beach raw punk on their first European tour. Sweaty, bruising fun.

Six Toes, The Mariner’s Children, Share, Slaughtered Lamb, London

Delicate and pretty, the exact antithesis of the Lexington gig. A Wednesday night of contrasts.

Thursday 29th January

George Pringle, Applicants, 4 or 5 Magicians, Buffalo Bar London

Spoken word to a stark electro backing track from George Pringle. Dead arty.

Glissando, City Screen, York

Gliding atmospheric sounds, perfectly suited to the cinema venue.

Friday 30th January

Afrikan Boy, The Real Heat, Barden’s Boudoir, London

Signed to M.I.A.’s label, probably best known for his hilarious masterpiece about shoplifting bargain supermarkets.

Luminous Frenzy, Shunt Vaults, London

Where better than an underground dungeon club to see this haunting cinematic live show? Nowhere better.

Saturday 31st January

Stereo Total, Bar Rumba, London

Like a Franco-German White Stripes (girl singer/drummer, boy guitarist) only about a million times more appealing and with a sense of humour. And nothing in common musically. Playing electro-punk reworkings of French chanson and ye-ye as well as their own charming and wittily insouciant numbers in French, German, English and any other languages they happen to have picked up.

Mike Bones, Oakford Social, Reading

Session guitarist supreme, turned solo singer-songwriter with interestingly lovelorn songs and none of the whingeing usually associated with that damning tag.

Micachu and the Shapes, Macbeth, London

On nearly everyone’s list of ones to watch 2009 (and of course, featured in Issue 10), catch Micachu’s angular and unpredictable show in a small venue while you still can.

Sky Larkin, Brudenell Social Club, Leeds

Homecoming gig for this local band whose sweet and clever indie rock is slightly off-kilter lending shades of Sonic Youth to their jangly guitars.

Sunday 1st February

Emmy the Great, Phoenix, Exeter

Promoting her debut album despite having been touring material for the past four years, with deceptively sweet-sounding tunes and scarily frank lyrics.

Written by Prudence Ivey on Monday January 26th, 2009 5:13 pm

Categories ,Band, ,Live, ,Music Listings

Amelia’s Magazine | Menomena: Friend and Foe

Written by Emyr Price on Monday September 10th, 2007 4:23 pm

Categories ,Album, ,Band, ,Menomena, ,Pop, ,Review

Amelia’s Magazine | Grizzly Bear & Gravenhurst

The last time I saw Final Fantasy was in the tiny Spitz venue. Tonight he is playing to full capacity at the Scala; word has clearly spread and expectations are high. I am here on my own with only a monster coldsore for company. Prior to the gig I sit down at a table opposite a morose and unenthusiastic man in his mid-30s (that point where the unfulfilled of the gender start to become manically desperate) who is nevertheless keen to talk to me – his profession changes from writer on the blag to “actually I work at an internet company and I am a frustrated musician” at the drop of my job description. Not so worth trying to impress me, purchase buy eh?! I persuade him that Canadian impresario Owen, decease the man who is Final Fantasy, will be well worth watching. Post-set I am vindicated, but Mr. Morose is nowhere to be seen.

Owen takes to the stage with his inimitable banter in full flow, and proceeds to play his entire set on his lonesome, with just his trusted viola, a keyboard, and some looping mechanism (that I can’t hope to understand) for company. Oh, and a lovely young lady, who stands with her back to the crowd in front of an old fashioned projector that she proceeds to masterfully manipulate. Final Fantasy‘s music has been set to acetate drama, and the result is mesmerizing, even if I have to struggle to see the events unfold through the lighting rig that obscures my view on the top balcony.

Final Fantasy is on a one-man misson to coax as many sounds as he can possibly can from a viola, and in his looping hands this one instrument becomes a full orchestra, and the crowd loves it. There is even a lady at the front of the audience whose frantically waving hands can’t decide whether they are vogueing or conducting throughout the entire set. “Has anyone got any questions?” he asks at one point. “Any constructive criticism?” “No, I don’t normally do poppers!” he replies to the one query he gets. “Lesson learned, never talk to the audience!” Even when things go slightly pear-shaped with the looping business, which they inevitably do, he carries on in such a postive manner that no one minds. As the climax is reached and the star-crossed silhouette of lovers finally meet on the projection screen, Owen lifts his miniature partner into the air and they both stumble off stage. There will be a wave of enquiries into viola lessons across the capital shortly.

Did you know that the man who designed Battersea Power Station (Sir Giles Gilbert Scott) also designed the classic red phone box? Clearly a talented guy. I went to see the Chinese exhibition at the Power Station (as it has now been rebranded) for the same reason as everybody else was there – mainly to see the station before it is at last transformed. The art I could give or take – it was haphazard and I was unsure of its meaning, remedy although I particularly enjoyed the fermenting apple wall (mmmm, store yummy appley smell) – the other stuff was merely an adjunct to the amazingly damp interior of the building, (you will find out a lot more about Chinese contemporary arts by reading my new issue). I really hope that the ludicrously long-in-the-planning development will do this amazing building justice – the ominous and ugly “luxury resort hotel” going up next to it must surely be one of the ways in which they have at last found funding. I hadn’t realised how much I treasure the iconic shape of the station, what with me being a sarf-Londoner and all.

Amelia’s Magazine | The Twilight Sad: And She Would Darken The Memory

The Twilight Sad are all over it, reeling in plaudits from all and sundry, both here and over the pond. They deserve it too. Singer James Graham just sounds so damn Scottish, and we all know that that is just cool. They also manage to sound like most of the best bits of most of the best bands out Scotland in the last twenty years. They manage the detached, half-drunk commentary of Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat, the sheer massiveness of Mogwai and the angry forlorn cries of Biffy Clyro… without even a hint of The Proclaimers or Shamen.

And She Would darken The Memory Of Youth is the full title of the haunting A-side but it’s That Summer, At home I had Become The Invisible Boy that sticks in the head. Graham cries with worryingly real urgency: “The kids are on fire, in the bedroom, and the cunt sits at his desk, and he’s plotting away.” What a cunt.

Written by Harry Shiel on Friday July 6th, 2007 12:30 pm

Categories ,Band, ,Review, ,Single, ,The Twilight Sad

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