Tickets- Hed Kandi Launch Party '09
- 2020rocks. Late Show Featuring Stanton Warriors
- 2020rocks. Early Show Featuring Sway Live
- 2020rocks. Launch Party '09 Featuring Laid Back Lu
- 2020 New Years Eve Masquerade Ball
- Gehenna Vii Vii Vii
- Metronomy - Shockwaves Nme Awards Tour 2009
- The Wombats - Shockwaves Nme Awards Tour 2009
- Tricky - Shockwaves Nme Awards Tour 2009
- Shockwaves Nme Awards Show 2009 Present Tricky
Interview: Naughty Jack is tempted out of his castle of solitude.
Written by: David Harrison
Naughty Jack, aka Adam Morley, is reclusive character. Earlier this year, he popped his head out of his shell for a spot of promotion of his album, Good Times, and to do a few appearances on the festival circuit. In turn, this generated a maelstrom of interest and gig offers that were met with polite declines. Why? Because Naughty Jack chose instead to rewire his house and consider the next album. Music Towers caught up with him and quizzed him a bit.
So it if it isn’t too obvious, what is Good Times about?
“It’s about nostalgia, which is a feeling I really enjoy; when you get a connection to all the good things that have happened to you, or even not so good things. All those things are part of you, and it’s important to feel them. Music does that for me and helps me get clear my head of any cloudy, stressy, numbness that might be in my head from everyday life.
“The track ‘Good Times’ is about me and my friends sitting in the sunshine in our old age, after all the business of life has ceased to matter, looking back at our youth when we didn’t give a shit.”
There are numerous references to alcohol on the record - do you have something that you want to tell us?
“Good alcohol helps me to get in touch with what’s important in life. It’s not the alcohol that I’m referring to, it’s the urge to suck up life and make the most of it while you can.”
Good Times, are you sure you are qualified to be a blues singer?
“No. I’ve never claimed to be a bluesman. I’m coming from a different place in a lot of ways. If I was to go around trying to be a bluesman, it would be really embarrassing for all involved. I haven’t really got the blues, I’m really pretty happy. If something bad happens, I don’t tend to dwell on it. But I’ve loved blues since I was a boy, so the influence is bound to be there.”
Your album cover proudly displays your influences, citing Professor Longhair, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits and Howlin’ Wolf among others. But the album maintains a pretty unique style throughout, despite the range of influences.
“I was really exciting about all these artists at the time I recorded the album and I wanted to bring it all together. On the other hand I didn’t want it to sound like a Sol Hoopii cover followed by something by The Band, for example.
“I knew that the dobro and double bass were pretty distinctive. So as long as stuck to this format and didn’t mess around with backing vocals, percussion or other instruments, I could allow the influences to flow strongly and still create a valuable, clearly defined sound of my own.”
Good Times is very laid back album, are you that laid back day to day?
“The album sounds like how I felt when I was recording it; by myself, snowed in, no-one to talk to, but with all the time in the world to write, play and record. I was emotional, nostalgic, excited, inspired; I had a supply of whiskey and I was relaxed.
“But at the same time I was very focussed on what I was doing. It felt good and right to be putting down these recordings.”
There’s an effortless quality to it despire the complexity of the playing. Did the parts come easy?
“Definitely, songs that had been bothering me for months came together easily. I recorded all the vocals in one three-hour drunken session, most are first takes. They came out croaky and a bit sloppy, but the recordings captured a feeling that I’d like to remember. I knew that if I went back to it afterwards, I’d risk losing that.”
Who would you like to work with?
“A lot of the people I’d really love to work with seem to have died recently, like some of the original calysonians and blues players. But a great piano player would be good - Pinetop Perkins is still playing, I hear.”
Where can we see you next?
“Well, I’m currently re-wiring and plumbing my house and deciding if the bassment is going to be a flat or a recording studio, and musing on the next album. So first I need to work out how this boiler is going to fit under the stairs.”
For more info on Naughty Jack, go and check out his official website.
Interview: Seventeen Evergreen love ATP Festival and Chicks
Written by: Beren Neale
Seventeen Evergreen land in London for a one-off show and talk to Beren Neale about their debut album, floppy cheese and those lazy Pavement comparisons.
Seventeen Evergreen are a San Francisco band, but their explorative music can be linked to no terrestrial region. Having fed a lifelong passion for all things unearthly, drifted around the West Coast of America when growing up and soaked in influences from their travels across Europe, the delicate, magnificent music of Caleb Pate and Nephi Evans is more akin to finding a spider’s web in the corner of a moon crater than any current trend.
Since the US release earlier this year of their debut album Life Embarrasses me on Planet Earth, the two have visited London only twice. But the band is familiar with the city, as Caleb lived here in 2001. It was during this time, after an enjoyable but fruitless search for new musicians, that he returned to San Francisco with Nephi to regroup, refocus, and “make Seventeen Evergreen a more serious proposition”.
Why the move back to San Francisco? Is there a scene that you identify with there?
Caleb: Maybe if they’ll have us. It’s a very hipster-driven, cliquey scene. There are a handful of really cool psychedelic bands, noise bands, but I’m probably more into some of the indie hip hop stuff in Oakland… A handful of bands we like: Deerhoof, The Papercuts, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound. They’re a Comets On Fire kinda band - heavy psych, buzz stuff.
It sounds like an All Tomorrow’s Parties line-up…
C: ATP is the best festival I’ve ever seen. I went to the Tortoise one, and it was amazing – Boards of Canada, Television, Yo La Tengo, Lambchop. That was 2001, around the time I lived here.
I regret missing the one Steve Malkmus curated.
C: He should have read all the erroneous reviews that we sound like Pavement, and he would have invited us.
Just googling you guys you see…
C: Pavement 1,000 times!
I thought I’d sneak that in there, subtle like.
C: You did a good job - I normally don’t talk about it. (Journalists) can be very lazy. Like, the Pavement thing is understandable because of geography, and the way we speak possibly. But Pavement is like the older brother of everyone that plays music. We happen to come 90 minutes away from where they come from (Stockton, CA), but I think to say that our music is derived from them… I think that’s slighting.
Nephi: I don’t think that our music has been influenced by Pavement at all. They’re just another band which I like. If we’re writing ideas and I hear something that’s too similar, I’m very aware of that.
C: To a fault we’re this way. Jokingly, I tried to rip of Dexy’s Midnight Runners, cos I thought it’d be funny, and put it in this song and he (Nephi) had such an issue with it that I had to write a completely different part real quick. I’m not self-conscience in that way - he perhaps a bit more so. But, I don’t think we’re particularly good at ripping off other bands, because it’s better what we come up with.
There’s a strong otherworldly theme through the album…
C: I think that the album definitely encapsulates some of my youthful obsessions. As long as I remember I was always really interested in the moon and space travel and aliens and these sorts of things. I have so many illustrations that I did when I was a little kid drawing spaceships.
Talking about illustrations, I remember some questions I emailed you before about zines, and you mentioned something about Floppy Cheese…
C: Nephi reminded me of that actually, cos I showed it to him long after I made it. It was a zine that an old friend and I did together. Basically, really bad music reviews, fake skateboard contest coverage, photocopied vinyl dudes made by Fisher Price (?) Just a really juvenile thing.
What inspired that?
The inspiration was my uncle had written a play called Floppy Cheese, which was based on this (living) blancmange idea - very Monty Python sort of vibe. I was like 11, right. So at one point we recited it and that became the title of the zine. Actually, me and my uncle used to do some really bizarre early electroacoustic music together using reel-to-reel tape machines, glasses and water and all kinds of things. His name’s Eric Simonson. He’s a composer. Why did you ask that? I was interested why you’d ask that.
I’ve got a friend that runs this zine… It was just a shot in the dark. What other art mediums inform your music?
C: Chicks!
Chicks?
C: That’s what’s on my mind at the moment.
Any luck in London?
This time? Not as many. I’ve seen London as virtually a smorgasbord in the past. This time I haven’t really been vibing on it.
Fair enough. Going back to another answer from a previous question - about how you wanted to “give back more than you get.” What did you mean?
C: I think it’s nice to give back, to try to express yourself in a way that you think needs to be expressed. I’m not speaking about giving back to the public or listeners. I’m actually speaking about giving back to the musical canon. Because (assumes mock lofty tone) the people will be enriched eventually by us enlarging the canon… I mean, giving back to ‘the people’ is simply giving them another Strokes. That’s all they want, right? They want another Killers, Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, you name it.
N: We’ve had comments from people, like ‘I was driving home to one of your songs and…’
C: … I totalled my car listening to your record’. We have various stories: ‘I had driven home from my wife giving birth to our first kid, listening to your record.’ It’s kinda like, wow, people live to our music.
That must be satisfying, as that album was entirely your own vision, with no interference…
N: Absolutely. We did everything [on the album] ourselves.
C: We had no label interaction when we made the record. We weren’t signed to anybody. We released it ourselves first and then we found labels coming to us later. They’ll probably be interested in working with us more closely on album number two, but we’ll see if we want to take their advice. We definitely learnt a lot from making it and I think the forty or so songs we’ve written for the next record illustrates that.
End of interview.
It’s time for the guys to get ready for the gig, and Nephi leaves to catch the end of support act Kyte. After some rambling chat with Caleb about psychedelic folk-rock innovator Merrell Fankhauser, we too head over. Entering the venue, we’re both stopped in our tracks by the music being played down the corridor: ‘Bud-ids-no sac-ah-rah-fiees’ wails a disturbingly familiar voice. “Not a good Billy Joel”, says Caleb. “That’s Elton John” I politely correct him. “It’s Billie Joel!” he demands. Although not my finest hour, I assure him I’m not mistaken, as I bought the track on its release in the 90s. “It’s Elton!” he concedes with a grin, and we launch into a unique rendition: ‘Col col heart. Hrr-dun-by-yoo’. “Hey!” exclaims Caleb. “You’ve got to put this in your piece. This is your end.” And so it is.
Interview: Dan Le Sac & Scroobius Pip
Written by: Hugh Platt
While we’re sitting down at one of the many tables in the guest area, Music Towers’ interview with Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip keeps getting interrupted by a seeming never-ending stream of small children asking Scroobius Pip to pose for photos. Perhaps it is his – and I speak as a connoisseur of facial grooming – magnificent beard that makes him so easy to spot.
“The beard is seeming to make a comeback,” Scroobius looks up from the pad he is scrawling on for the little girl asking for an autograph. “It’s got to be done. I feel the greatest facial hair tragedy is Hitler. No-one can wear that moustache now. I don’t know if anyone did beforehand, but you don’t see that about now at all. He’s ruined that for all facial-hair people now.” But oddly enough, Stalin’s beard is still acceptable, and he killed just as many people.
The duo have relaxing after bringing their unique marriage of Scroobius Pip’s spoken word delivery and Dan Le Sac’s laptop-based production to the Dance stage, and blowing the roof off with their tactical musical nuclear strike on pseuds and idiots, ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’. It’s a towering monster of track that could’ve over-shadowed a lesser act.
“I hate it when bands get too precious over songs. We get a good reaction from it, which is really pleasing, so I’m perfectly happy to keep a banging tune in there.” Scroobius reflect. “We like to get some variation in there, and if it does become a continuing thing, it’s one that we can easily change and update. It could develop with us quite comfortably.”
“We’re quite lucky that the reaction for the next single has been so good. In a less novelty way, in a more serious way.” adds Dan Le Sac. “It’s nice that we can have ‘Thou Shalt…’ there as this calling card, but it’s backed up by other things. When we released it as a download we made sure people could also download ‘Angles’, which is as far from ‘Thou Shalt…’ as you can get. It’s about a kid killing himself.”
‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’, for those of you who have somehow not managed to hear it, is a series of new commandments for the modern music fan. Most of them are self-explanatory (Thou Shall Not Read NME, Thou Shall Not Buy Nestle Products), but there was always one that confused us: “Thou shall spell the word phoenix P-H-E-O-N-I-X, not P-H-O-E-N-I-X, regardless of what the Oxford English Dictionary tells you”.
“I’ve had sleepless nights over it – it annoys me. I genuinely have. The English language likes to bastardise Latin and most other languages, which is cool, but if we’re gonna change stuff a bit, let’s change it to how it sounds when we spell it and say it? Why spell it foe-ee-nix? Or say it as foe-ee-nix, don’t say fee-nix, say foe-ee-nix.”
“Why isn’t it F-E-N-I-X?” Dan Le Sac interrupts.
“Because that would be Fenn-ix. I like to spell things how I want to. ‘The Scroobious Pip’, the poem, is spelt different from how I spell it. [Edward Lear] spells it I-O-U-S, I spell it I-U-S. I’m a bit of a stickler for spelling things how I want. Development of language, I call it.”
So are there any other words that annoy Scroobius? “I’ve been so focused on phoenix for so long, it’s hard to think of any others. I want to get that one sorted out first, and then we’ll move on.”
.
During their performance earlier, the band mentioned they had just been booked to support hip-hop legend, Rakim. “We’re doing a gig with Rakim! That’s what it’s all about, really. Getting to do stuff like that.” There’s a sense of excitement churning around inside Scroobius, which manifests through a grin that shines out of his beard like pearls stuck in seaweed.
“In Dublin, of all places. Second time we’re going to Dublin and we’re supporting Rakim . Ages and ages and ages ago, we did an interview for a magazine out there called Foggy Notions, and they do promotions as well. They booked us for Electric Picnic, next weekend. It’s probably the biggest festival in Ireland; Bjork’s playing, we’re playing – it’s that sort of scale” Dan’s cheeky laugh sums up his persona perfectly – ever so slightly amazed to be where he is, but in no way being awed or taking it too serious. And in addition to Rakim, the pair are lined up to support Gogol Bordello in London come November.
“Once our headlining tour is over, we’re then just really concentrating on the album, so we’re only taking good support slots for a bit so we don’t gig as much for a while.” Yes, the album, we were getting round to that.
“The problem we have at the moment is we keep writing and then it gets better,” Dan sighs. “ We’ve got three in the pipeline that are stronger than things that would’ve gone on the album. We’re going to stop writing in the next month or so because if we keep on like this we’ll never release it. You only get to release your first album once, so it’s gotta be good. You can’t let people down and release your cack.” So have they cleared the Dizzee Rascal sample for ‘Fixed’, their UK-Hip hop-baiting track of contempt?
“He didn’t clear the Billy Squires track that he sampled so I dunno why we should. But it’s one of those tracks that we’ll clear what we need to clear if we decide to put it on the album. We’ve got quite a lot of bangers stashed away,” he says, tapping his nose conspiratorially.
“I’ve always seen it as a possible as a live b-side. We might sling it out as a free download and not have it on the album,” Scroobius shrugs. “It goes down well at the moment – and it’s not having a go at Dizzee Rascal, as we try to make clear as often as possible.” He makes a big show of banging the table with his palm to emphasise this point.
“When I walked passed him yesterday he didn’t hit me, which is a good sign.”
Moving away from whether or not they’re marked for death by Rascal, why did the pair settle on their unusual stage names?
“It’s taken from an Edward Lear poem, called “The Scroobious Pip”. It’s about a little creature that wakes up in the jungle and doesn’t know what it is, and it goes with the lions for a bit, but it’s not a lion, so it goes with the insects, and so on and so forth. And in the end it decides it doesn’t have to go into any of those categories, it can just be The Scroobious Pip. So that’s where I nicked that from. It’s not just a silly name. Obviously, it is a silly name, but not just a silly name,” he says as he switches his attention from the tape recorder to his musical partner in crime. “And yours [indicating Dan], is about testicles, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Basically. I’m Dan The Bag. That’s my name. There’s not really an explanation to be had.” That’s a good enough reason in Music Towers’ book. “If I was in France and actually in a bag, I‘d be Dan Dans Le Sac, which isn’t bad either.”
The way the pair bounce off each other, interrupt the other in the middle of speaking, and generally correct, contradict and tease each other, they must’ve been finishing each others sentences for years.
“We’d known each other donkey’s years, lived in the same town, worked in the same shops, that sort of thing. It weren’t until June last year, when I did a couple of remixes from [Scroobius Pip’s] solo album, and then it seemed to be working. People seemed to be receptive of what I was doing to what he was doing, so we just wrote together and it seems to have exploded. It’s popped, really.”
“It’s been an amazing reaction,” Scroobius takes over. “It’s shedding more light on an already hugely popular and very strong spoken word scene in the UK, so it’s good that it’s having that effect. It was surprising, but a very welcome surprise. It proves there are more people listening.”
“A lot of festivals this year have done spoken word tents and it’s been great.” As soon as he’s said it, the name that simultaneously pops onto everyone present’s lips is Latitude.
“Awesome. I spent the whole time in the poetry tent. Polar Bear and David J, and a few others just blew me away – absolutely amazing.”
Scroobius Pip and Dan Le Sac aren’t the only act incorporating spoken-word into their work. Reverend & The Makers, playing on the Carling stage, incorporated spoken word pieces between their songs, and have done loads of stuff with John Cooper Clarke as well.
“Eddie Temple-Morris [XFM’s minmaster extraordinaire] has said that the two best lyricists in music today are Scroobius Pip and [John McClure] of Reverend and The Makers. I tried to see him on Friday at Reading but they’d swapped slots with Cajun Dance Party – fucking had to sit through Cajun Dance Party [shaking his head in disgust] – no, no, it was alright, it was…pleasant.”
The expression on Dan Le Sac’s face tells us that the Cajun Dance Party experience was actually anything but pleasant.
And so to the WigDogs: like every other act Music Towers has interviewed this weekend, can they describe them in ten words or less? Apparently not, as Scroobius Pip, man of words, seems unable to do anything except stare at the picture with wide-eyes and giggle.
“I am literally speechless. That’s amazing. It’s the future of canine fashion.”
The pair are giggling and smiling, clearly pleased as punch that everything is going so swell. They’ve achieved what so few people thought they’d be able to do, and escape being just a one-hit wonder with the mantra-manifesto of ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’. With new single, ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’ getting warmly received by everywhere they play,
But we’ve got last question, after the tour, after all that, after everything’s been said and done – give people one more commandment in the ‘Thou Shalt…’ manner, what would it be?
“Thou shalt…buy our album. If that’s all said and done, and that’s all we’re ever gonna do, let’s do it, let’s make some money!”
Interview: Rosie & The Goldbug - the dark side of pop music
Written by: Hugh Platt
“Back then we were very piano-orientated. We’re now more bass-and-drum-orientated,” says Rosie Vanier, she of the band’s name. She’s talking about when Music Towers first encountered her band, when they were the only real shining star at a lamentable corporate battle of the bands-type affair, where Music Towers described their performance as “vaudeville brand of gothic ephemera as a more than welcome change from the indie-boys-with-haircuts-and-guitars”.
“It’s a lot more focused around Pixie and Plums being in the band, with the piano riffs floating on top,” Rosie explains. “I was very restricted with the piano and it was a little bit boring - we realised we had to make an adjustment with the instrumentation. It’s a lot more ballsy and feisty, before it was quite melodic, and we were going for that really epic sound, whereas now it’s all about vibe and having a good time.”
Completed by drummer Sarah ‘Plums’ Morgan and Lee ‘Pixie’ Matthews, Rosie & The Goldbug formed in Cornwall, and along with pasties and Straw Dogs, they’re set to be the next thing to come out of the toecap of Britain that will get people talking. “ Cornwall is a beautiful place and there’s a lot of music going on down here, but it’s very different to London. London you can hop on the bus all the time, whereas down here you’ve got a little bit more time to explore and create your own thing and anything can happen. There’s a lot to be inspired by.
“It’s hard to say it without sounding derogatory, but I guess its sometimes a little bit ‘behind the times’ here,” Vanier mulls. “You make up whatever you want instead going with what’s ‘hot’. There’s a lot more freedom and a lot less restrictions.”
The promo video for ‘War Of The Roses (Because You Said So)’:
That experience has led to a series of songs that range from the dark-disco stomp of ’Heartbreak’ through to fragile ‘Springtime Dreaming’. If Katie Jane Garside stopped chasing garden sprites to front Dragonette for a night, then it could’ve resulted in the ‘War Of The Roses EP. But this hasn’t meant they haven’t taken a cosmopolitan approach to songwriters.
“My instant reaction was to think ‘oh no, I don’t want to write with anyone’ because I was really precious about my song-writing,” Rosie sighs. “Then I thought \this is ridiculous – I’ve got the opportunity to work with some people I really admire’.” And it’s true – the list of people who’ve come on board to help pen songs is admirable indeed. “Before I knew it, I was writing with Marcella Detroit – I was an absolute Shakespeare’s Sister fan when I was younger, so that was a bit of a dream come true, writing with her. Jim [Eliot]from Kish Mauve [writer of ‘2 Hearts’ – Kylie Minogue’s top 5 hit] – he’s a bit of a wizard. I wrote with Pär Wiksten as well, from The Wannadies, which was a great experience.”
As well as playing a host of festivals over the summer (culminating with an appearance on the BBC Introducing stage at Bestival), the band have a London residency of sorts lined up. While glossy chart-botherers like Duffy might prefer the Piccadilly gloss of the Pigalle for such things, Rosie and The Goldbug have gone for the 12 Bar Club in Soho – it’s a “unique” venue, that’s for sure…
Rosie laughs at the description. Music Towers strongest memories of the 12 Bar involve cheering along a fight in the alleyway behind the venue after a misguided whiskey-drinking competition that ran into the wee hours. “The 12 Bar has really inspired us – because it is really smelly and rancid in there. We were changing in the toilets for a gig there once and we were thinking ‘for fuck’s sake; it can’t get any worse than this’ as it basically stank of shit.
The promo video for ‘Feeling’:
“We thought it was a perfect concept for our album – this is what we’ve experienced for the last year - an absolute weird experience of going from revolting venues to being in flash record company offices.
“As the 12 Bar is important to us, and we thought it would be a good place to do a residency and show what we’ve got. Not many people know us yet, and we’re willing to start wherever to get people to know who we are. The 12 Bar represents everything – it’s such a cranky little venue with such a tiny stage and I love performing in strange spaces. There’s lots of beams to climb over. It’s very unique.”
That sounds a lot like fightin’ talk. Rosie & The Goldbug don’t have anything to prove, but Vanier sure sounds like she’s got gusto. “I don’t like that Marmite thing. The whole ‘you either hate it or you don’t’ thing confuses me because maybe sometimes you like it a little bit, and then sometimes not. It’s not as simple as black and white.”
‘War Of The Roses (Because You Said So)’ by Rosie And The Goldbug is out now on Lover Records. The band is midway through their residency at the 12 Bar Club – click here for more details.
Interview: Simian Mobile Disco - a duo in demand
Written by: Hugh Platt
“I saw a few reviews of the records that were all ‘after all the hype …blah blah blah’ – what?” James Ford splurts incredulously. “The press created the fucking hype themselves!”
Ford is talking about The Age of the Understatement, debut record from The Last Shadow Puppets, which he both produced and played drums for. Ford is very much the indie producer of the moment, having taken production duties on Klaxons’ Mercury-winning Myths of the Near Future and Arctic Monkeys’ Favourite Worst Nightmare among others. Now he sounds like he is having trouble in not spitting his lunch out when I ask him about his reaction to the press hysteria over The Last Shadow Puppets record, which he both produced and played drums on.
“I suppose I was a bit naïve, because I supposed anything Alex [Turner, of Arctic Monkeys] touches would cause people to talk about it, but really when we recorded it, it was just like a two-week holiday where we were trying to record an EP,” he recollects. “The original intention was for it just to come out quietly. But I don’t think Domino pushed it too hard – off the back of the Arctics, it was never going to be a quiet affair”.
‘Quiet’ isn’t really one of the things one associates with Ford, or his cohort Jas Shaw with whom he forms electro-devil duo, Simian Mobile Disco. Come August, the pair are set to become the latest act to put out a mix for London über-club, Fabric (it exists somewhere far in excess of what used to be called superclubs) as part of the Fabriclive series.
The promo video for ‘Hustler’:
“We wanted it to be a set that we’d play at Fabric. It’s pretty techno and pretty mean in places”, says Ford. “But we also wanted to try to put stuff that you wouldn’t normally hear at Fabric in there. There’s Raymond Scott and Moon Dog and things like that. But hopefully we’ve put it together in a way that wouldn’t break someone’s stride on the dancefloor, but people will be exposed to a few tracks they wouldn’t normally hear in that context.”
So they weren’t tempted to push something controversial then? There was more than a bit of controversy with Justice’s allegedly ‘rejected’ Fabriclive mix. Ford seems pragmatic on the issue unmoved: “If we were doing a Late Night Tales or something to listen to at home, that’s one thing, but we wanted to do a good reproduction of our DJ set at this point in time”
In addition to the Fabriclive release, Simian Mobile Disco have a packed summer of DJ slots and live performances on the European festival circuit. The pair are hard-picked to come to a decision over which they prefer.
“ Well, our DJ set is really easy,” Jas states matter-of-factly. “You just pick up a big bag of records and just head to the club! With the live show, it’s a lot more involved.” He goes on to describe SMD’s setup: “We’ve designed this system – a fair chunk out of our studio, a mixer and lots of old analogue gear and loads of vintage output and guitar pedals and lots of kind of stuff all plugged in together. It allows us to play the tracks but jump around in terms of the structure and improvise. We can make new stuff up on the spot and there are quite a few bits of the set where we have no idea what’s going to happen.”
For many musicians, that sounds like the idea of a hell. Or Jazz. “The whole idea is to make it fun for us,” explains Jas. “But it’s quite a pain in the arse. We’ve got loads of fragile kit that always takes too long to set up, but it’s worth it in the end.”
The promo video for ‘I Believe’:
“We have sections in the set where there’s planned chaos,” adds Ford. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Basically we can tell pretty quickly if it’s ‘happening’ or if it’s not, and we can skip over it or extend it on the go.”
“ Because we put so into the live show, it’s more rewarding when we do a really good show,” says Ford, weighing up the pros and con’s of live show vs DJ set. “But I wouldn’t want to give up DJ’ing as it’s a lot of fun – you can just go to a lot more far-reach places, you get treated really nice and you can get hammered! Which is more fun in a traditional sense…”
James and Jack’s Essential Records
We asked the duo what records they couldn’t do without when DJ’ing. Their choices were:
- ‘Erotic Discourse’ - Paul Woolford presents Bobby Peru
- Spastik’ - Plastikman
- ‘Huncut Hacuka’ - Fine Cut Bodies
- The Don’ - Sisters of Transistors
- Sleep Deprivation (Simon Baker Remix)’ - Simian Mobile Disco
All of which are on their shiny new Fabriclive mix. Which is handy.
‘FABRICLIVE 41: Simian Mobile Disco’ is out on Fabric Records in August. The pair are playing festivals all over Europe this Summer – check here to see if they’re playing at one you’re going to.
Interview: The Parlotones - rock’n'roll South African-style
Written by: Hugh Platt
Khan Morbee – it’s the kinda name that makes me think of men in animal furs and war paint, swinging fake weapons about and hollering ‘BATTLE METAL!” at each other. Calm down though – Khan Morbee is actually the frontman of South African indie-rock-types, The Parlotones. There’s not a Lordi-esque jockstrap in sight, just rousingly accomplished indie rock’n’roll.
“Myself and [Neil Pauw, drummer] were introduced by a mutual friend who knew we liked similar bands, we got together and ‘jammed’ a few times soon realising we needed additional musicians.” It’s an age old story, only instead of coming together in a grotty bedsit in Camden, the embryonic form of The Parlotones developed in South Africa. “[Neil] had played in a band previously with [Paul Hodgson, guitarist], and our bassist [Glenn Hodgeson] (who at that stage was really a pianist), happened to be the brother of the guitarist and he took over the reigns of the only instrument left to complete the package.”
“We are fans of The Beatles, Queen, Radiohead and more recently Coldplay (although we never knew of them when we named ourselves) and noticed a connection with Parlophone records, so we slightly morphed the name in an attempt to tempt fate.”
Of course, when a band is fairly established in one territory and trying to break into others, it can cause bizarre release schedules, even in this day and age when it is possible to download a band’s album before they’re even aware they’ve finished it. Which is why the band is only getting round to promoting their ‘Radiocontrolledrobot’ album here, while the follow-up is already out in South Africa.
“[Radiocontrolledrobot’] was our first proper recording in which we did 18 songs in 2 weeks. We have obviously been promoting that album since [2005] and now we are sort of multiple-personalities, having to promote different albums in the different territories. I’d like to think that as musicians we’ve obviously improved, so playing them here seems almost effortless. The songs have been given a breath of fresh air playing them to brand new audiences and winning them over one by one. It’s an exciting challenge…”
“The idea is to release [‘A World Next Door To Yours’] abroad next year and then do a simultaneous release with the third album, so that we’re not having to do this disjointed promotional thing. We’re recording an unplugged session back home in May, we’re very excited about it. It will also give us a chance to delay releasing another album in SA so that we can correlate the third release.”
“I think with ‘A World Next Door…’ we’ve settled on a Parlotones sound that is distinctly ours. Both albums, and albums going forward will always reflect our energetic side as well as our gentler side. I think this is largely due to the fact that influences range from Simon and Garfunkel to System of a Down – we’ll never go to those extremes but will try sit somewhere comfortably in between”
And The Parlotones aren’t afraid to make their influences as clear as an invisible window pane, with recent single ‘Louder Than Bombs’ being “unashamedly a direct reference to [The Smiths] greatest hits album” of the same name. “We are all big fans and we used to throw indie parties back home where we would have friends playing all the indie classics, we would play and the parties were called Louder then Bombs, we even had flyers made with Louder than Bombs big on the front.
“We wrote a song called ‘Louder than Bombs’ as a sort of ode to that moment in our lives. Lyrically, it expresses our desire to ‘make it’ with the refrain ‘Finally it’s happening…’ Weirdly, it was written when things were starting to ‘happen’ (well, what we thought was happening) for us back home and it’s getting a bit of mileage over here – needless to say we’re holding thumbs” That means ‘crossing their fingers’, for those not au fait with SA slang.
The video for ‘Louder than bombs’:
[”src”:”http://www.youtube.com/v/L9JGTFlEKRg&hl=en”,”wmode”:”transparent”]
The band is back in South Africa at the moment, gearing up to record a show on May 8 for their first DVD release. It’s a startling comparison to their relatively small profile in the UK “We have experienced this anonymous existence when we were starting out back home so we don’t feel that out of place…it really makes the sweet moments that much sweeter and we appreciate every step of the journey.”
The band’s popularity back home led them to be one of the bands playing the much derided Live Earth at its South African-leg. Looking back, does Morbee think the whole worldwide event now smacks somewhat of environmental tokenism?
“I really don’t know – the world loves to panic about ‘something’, whether its war, crime, terrorism, bird flu etc. I don’t really know how much of its fact or how much of its fiction, or how much of it is designed by authority to induce a sense of their purpose and existence as the big brother who steps in to fix it.
“Our level of panic is all relative, people in London say crime is a problem, which I find laughable coming from Johannesburg…but then again, I’m sure someone coming from Lagos would find crime in Johannesburg laughable. I don’t really know the real answers but will try to assist whenever there is a perception that something needs to be fixed, i.e. our big stance back home in assisting with HIV/Aids charities and our involvement in Live Earth.
“My only concern is that a loud noise is made initially and it soon peters off into returning to old ‘more comfortable’ habits whilst the hob knobs deliberate on end how to fix the problem so as to not impact the profit machine to intensely – who’s actually running the show? The intentions were good and we were honoured to be a part of that process. I just hope the noise continues and results in real action, not just a couple of windmills peppered across the continent for decoration”
So why is it that while hundreds of identikit indie-twerps in tight jeans (aka the XFM daytime playlist…) somehow prosper, while bands from South Africa are virtually unknown over here? Geographical distances are increasingly irrelevant now thanks to this invention called ‘the internet’.
“In the past, we didn’t have the technology to compete on quality, sanctions were in place for many years, and unfortunately politics stifled arts and culture into a sideline hobby, not to be taken too seriously - and heaven forbid, be considered a career.
“Our currency is also weak making the necessity of touring difficult. There’s also a inferiority complex that seems entrenched whereby we tend to think everything from overseas is bigger and better evident even today where ‘BIG’ international bands who sell way less than local artists [domestically in South Africa] are placed higher on a bill. The verdict is still out on whether it can be done and we’re going to give it our best shot”
“ If all else fails we’ve enjoyed the journey thus far and that’s worth its weight in gold.”
The video for ‘Dragonflies & Astronauts’:
[”wmode”:”transparent”,”src”:”http://www.youtube.com/v/kYO5MnrRlu8&hl=en”]
‘Radiocontrolledrobot’ is ether set for imminent release, or has already come out, depending where you happen to live in the world. It’s easier if you just go check the website, yeah?
Let us steer you in the direction of What Would Jesus Drive
Written by: admin
Okay, has everybody calmed down now? Have we all finished reading those nauseating and embarrassing “new music for 2008!” columns that ever rag, website and TV show has been hoofing at us since mid-December. Good, because Music Towers wants to get back to the business of telling you about new music that is exciting us, here, not the new music that the big fetid beast that is the lazy journalistic zeitgeist has decided to over-hype this time around.
We first featured What Would Jesus Drive back in May 2006. We’d kept half an eye on them for some time before that, having first caught them when they performed as a four-piece as The Barbs. The on and only time we caught The Barbs live was supporting the sadly-ceased <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Mika Bomb </B>at the soon-to-re-open <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Highbury Garage</B>, where<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> </B>they were making razor-tongued evil surf-rock, with enough hooks so catchy they could snag Jaws like an Ebola harpoon.</SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Despite putting out a great little album on <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Mother Tongue, The Barbs </B>eventually<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> </B>split, but for vocalist/guitarists<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> Tim Box </B>and <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Amy Box</B> it wasn’t over: the pair went on to form <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>What Would Jesus Drive</B>. So what prompted the end of<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> The Barbs?
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #339966″>“I think it had run its course,” </SPAN><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Amy</SPAN></B> <SPAN lang=EN-GB>reflects. <SPAN style=”COLOR: #339966″>“We were all really proud of what we achieved as <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>The Barbs</B> but it was time to move on.”</SPAN></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“Amy and I met when she joined <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>The Barbs</B> so when we became a couple it made sense to start something of our own,” </SPAN><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Tim</SPAN></B> <SPAN lang=EN-GB>adds. <SPAN style=”COLOR: #3366ff”></SPAN></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>When<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> WWJD </B>started out they played as a three-piece, and very much sounded like a progression from<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> The Barbs </B>– all jerky guitars and sharp-tongued lyrics<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>. </B>Then one day we were idly checking out their <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>MySpace</B> page and they were down to just the two of them. </SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“</SPAN></B> <SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>It wasn’t initially our decision.” </SPAN><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Tim</SPAN></B> <SPAN lang=EN-GB>remarks of the slimming down of the band <SPAN style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“Our drummer quit 4 days before a gig, and we stubbornly refused to be put out by it. It’s much more fun live, less fucking about. Press go and start playing.”</SPAN></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #339966″>“It was just luck that we actually preferred being a 2-piece,”</SPAN><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> <SPAN lang=EN-GB>Amy</SPAN></B> <SPAN lang=EN-GB>adds</SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“It was the aforementioned resignation of the drummer that led to the line up change, but it certainly enabled us a lot more freedom over what we could achieve.” </SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-GB>This new found freedom has seen the band’s sound has moved away from the rock’d out surf-riffs of <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>The Barbs </B>to an electronically-augmented cousin of artrock, who happens to have the dangerous habit of sticking his fingers in plug sockets just to see what happens. </SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #339966″>“We have always wanted to have more flexibility. The electro elements have been waiting to happ