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
ALBUM: The John Henrys - ‘Sweet As The Grain’
Written by: Hugh Platt
Country Music frightens me. You know that scene in Terminator 2 where he walks into the bar, beats that guy up, melts his face on the kitchen hob and nicks his threads? Country music was playing in the background. Not to mention every brain-scarring psycho moment in Deliverance - remember the kid with the banjo? Exactly. Country music is the twangy veneer on nasty things.
Except The John Henrys don’t play up to my self-created stereotype. At all. The Canadian five-piece have about as much darkness to them as an over-enthusiastic children’s TV presenter, locked in Dr Smile’s House of Happy Pills.
The John Henrys play ‘Thought Yourself Lucky’ live:
Their 60’s shake-shuffle and hazy blues might not be enough for me to get over my fear and prejudice of all things country, but in amongst all that twanging I hear an album that smells like the first whiff of a fresh whiskey bottle, rather than the glum final dregs. The John Henrys are Good Time Boys, not Good Ol’ Boys, and foo to you if you can’t enjoy a bit of that.
‘Sweet As The Grain’ came out today on True North Records. For more info, check out their official website and their MySpace page.
EP: Kono Michi & The Stone Ghost Collective - ‘The Grey Eulogy EP’
Written by: Hugh Platt
I love Christmas. Society takes a step back from all the bollocks it preaches for the rest of the year (Don’t Drink So Much. Don’t Eat So Much. Stop Snogging Random Strangers You Meet In the Pub. Be Miserable. Be Quiet.) and instead everyone acts like they should (Drinking Too Much. Eating Too Much. Enjoying Mistletoe Too Much. Having Fun. Singing Songs). Big Coats! Mulled wine! Presents! The slim hope of snow! Dr Who Xmas Specials! And the record industry slowly grinding to a halt as everyone starts chucking up Best Ofs and re-releases for the Christmas rush. Meaning we get to spend more time with our feet up, listening to the records we think we like, rather than those we think we ought to cover. Yes, Christmas is a good thing.
Another reason to celebrate this Winter (well, if you live in The North, that is), is because Kono Michi and The Stone Ghost Collective are embarking on a mini-tour to promote their new collaborative release, The Grey Eulogy EP. Four tracks book-ended by covers of ‘The Look Of Love’ and ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’, it’s at once both wintry and warming. With both acts solid staples of Shark Batter Records, their covers were never going to be straightforward. ‘The Look Of Love’ slips from a whispering murmur to the edge of ghostly nervousness, as opposed to the retching sweetness of the Bacharach original. ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ pairs an unexpected outback twang with Kono Michi’s violin, and the addition of Brendan McAndrew of The Stone Ghost Collective on vocals - sounding like a young Tom Waits if he existed solely on a diet of honey and lemon - suprises us by finding a new spin to put on a song we thought well and truly spun out.
Kono Michi & The Stone Ghost Collective hang out and practice in France and Switzerland:
It’s with the two original tracks that the EP crackles and pops though. The title-track, described by the band as a “death-bed ballad”, mixes maudlin lyricism with a warmly uplifting melody, mulling over its sense of mortality. It feels right that we’re listening to it now, during the onset of Winter, with the song feeling delicately crisp, rather than glum and grey.
‘War Correspondence’ reminds us a bit of long-forgotten LA-electrolocists, Snake River Conspiracy¸ only without that boring obsession with making bad covers of The Smiths. Combining a killer chorus of “You lie on your back / it’s a mortar attack”, it manages to be robotic without having to sound like a cheap automated sex-product (Goldfrapp: take note). It’s addictive like an arcade game that you can’t stop pumping pound coins in till you’ve blown your bus fare home. A genuine contender for Track of the Year.
‘The Grey Eulogy EP’ by Kono Michi and The Stone Ghost Collective is out now on Shark Batter Records. They’re on a micro-tour of the north of the UK from tomorrow - get yourself here to see if there’s a date near you.
Single: Selfish C**t - ‘England Made Me II’
Written by: David Harrison
Selfish C**t never had a name for radio. It was always such an abrasive name that I found it was difficult to them seriously, dismissing them as a bunch of attention-seeking skinny-jeans types.
But ‘England Made Me II’, their latest single, is just too bloody good. First up (thank God), it isn’t a cover of the Black Box Recorder song. Instead it kicks off with a US-style preacher vocal that doesn’t reconcile with the title at all, but then the car-crash smash of guitars kick in and send you flying into the nearest ditch.
Calling on the ghost of McClusky, 80’s Matchbox, The Cramps, Sex Pistols and all things that are fucking great in low-fi rock n roll, Selfish C**t have made a bastard brilliant record. It might just be one riff all the way through, but who gives a toss? It’s better then that 700 billion dollar Chinese Democracy record, and probably only took about ten minutes to record as to boot.
Splendid - carry on.
REVIEWED: Chinese Democracy
Written by: Hugh Platt
Is there any dance move, stage gesture or physical act of defiance, more rock’n’roll, than the pelvic thrust? You can keep your devil horn throwing, your crowd surfing, your stage diving, your head banging, your mosh pit’ing – the pelvic thrust sums up everything about rock’n’roll. The ill-restrained sexual desire. The disregard for what others may think. The fact that if anyone other than a rockstar attempts it anywhere but on a stage in front of an audience, it looks totally fucking stupid.
If records were dance moves, then Chinese Democracy would be a pelvic thrust. If anyone other than Axl Rose had made this album, it would sound totally fucking stupid. Despite holding the lion’s share of ex-GnR members, there’s no way Velvet Revolver could’ve made this album. It’s over-wrought, over-the-top, over-budget and completely, unequivocally, a Guns record.
There’s no point in even trying to review this objectively. Notwithstanding that this is possibly the most mystery-shrouded record release in the last twenty years, notwithstanding the fact that this review will make fuck-all difference in altering your decision whether to buy it or not, and notwithstanding the fact that this review is a result of a single playback in a record company boardroom, it’s impossible to listen to Axl Rose’s new baby without the dull ache of regret in the pit of your guts. For all the acres of talent used in it’s creation – the liner notes for this record go into exasperating detail – and the years spent making it, the crushing realisation hits you that this is just a capable album, not an exceptional one.
You’ll have already heard the title-track by now – opening the album, it feels more portentous than it did as a stand-alone track. Those Elton John urges he squirted out indiscriminately with ‘November Rain’ – well, they’re back with ‘Street Of Dreams’, only nowhere near as grandoise. The rumoured dalliances with industrial metal chug? See ‘Shackler’s Revenge’. “Don’t ever try to tell me how much you care for me / Don’t ever try to tell me how much you’re meant for me,” Axl sneers at us. Oh, if only you knew, Axl, if only you knew.
‘Better’, which is being lined up as a potential second single, has a pumping chorus, but its refrains of “Now I know you better / You know I know better” never quite get under your skin the way you desperately, fervently hope they will. As a fan you want this record to succeed, but as a fan you can’t really deny that it fails.
‘I.R.S’, played live at Rock AM Ring, 2006:
There’s one, huge, elephant-in-the-room problem with Chinese Democracy – bangers. Or rather, the lack thereof - the title-track is the fieriest bombast the album can manage. Oh, there are acres of solos, from the Bill & Ted excess of the guitar wanking in ‘Street Of Dreams’, to the big, stabby mentalism of the one that ‘Riad N’ The Bedouins’ indulges, but none of them have the soul-fucking, spine-ripping, raw gonzo genius of classic Guns. A few tracks like ‘Scrapped’ might come close to the cocksure riff attitude of old, but they can’t hide the fact that there’s not one true anthem of the ages here. No ‘Paradise City’. No ‘You Should Be Mine’. And certainly no ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’.
If anything, Chinese Democracy goes to show that without Slash, Duff and Izzy to keep a stern rock’n’roll eye on him, there’s no-one to curtail Axl’s wanton musical excesses. The hired help just smile and do what they’re told, whereas the classic Guns would take their frontman’s wild ideas and give them that juiced-up wild-eye’d rock finish, and make them into the solid-gold genius that those early GnR records had in abundance.
When legends die young, they become cannonised as they’ll never tarnish their legacy with ever-decreasing returns. When Chinese Democracy was the joke of the industry – the album that would never come – then the legacy of GnR was unimpeachable. Now? Guns N’ Roses were one legend we wish had stayed dead.
‘Chinese Democracy’ is out on November 24.
Subliminal Girls - ‘Self Obsession is an Art Form’
Written by: Hugh Platt
There’s something thoroughly irksome about Subliminal Girls. Their last single, ‘Burn KOKO’, was a shoulders-back, lip-curled sneer at London indie-culture. It simultaneously managed to pompously deride music fans who weren’t “hardcore” indie, and similarly turn their nose up at very elitist scenesterism, as if the band couild somehow transcend the entire spectrum and comment upon it from a big white high horse, perched atop the local peak of moral high ground.
They’ve continued to maximise how objectionable they are with their latest single, ‘Self Obsession is an Art Form’. The vocals have an airy lilt of Pete Doherty to them, with lyrics more ruggishly literal than the guffish poetry of The Nation’s Favourite Junkie®. That doesn’t stop there from being something gratingly self-satisfied about these three minutes of post-pub sentimentalist beige.
The first B-side, ‘Posh Girls Names’, almost, almost makes up for it, with an Art Brut-ish twinge, a babbling stream of consciousness underneath an almost Eddie Argos anti-pop delivery. Which just makes it even more of a shame that the second extra track, ‘Electronic Hearts’, continues their prior hypocritical rants against hipster culture, rolling their music-eyes at “Clichéd bands and pointless art”.
Subliminal Girls play ‘Small Town Girl’ & ‘Self Obsession is an Art Form’, live at Selfridges:
Maybe it’s me that’s missing something? Maybe this is a joke that I just don’t get? Maybe it’s a big ironic statement that I haven’t been able to see an edge of in order to get a handle on the whole thing? Maybe I’ve had too many cups of coffee and I’m seeing masked contempt when there is none?
Oh, wait - the band have got a vinyl boxset version of this release out for £1200, because they’ve got Brit artist, Stuart Semple, to design the various gubbins that goes with the tunes (click here for the full deal). That’s not at all pretentious, is it? To use a phrase like “so far up their own arse they can’t see daylight” in conjunction with Subliminal Girls wouldn’t be too harsh, would it?
‘Self Obsession is an Artform’ is out on PopArt London on November 17. For more info, go check out Subliminal Girls’ official website.
Tah Mac - ‘Time Of My Life’
Written by: Shokrates The Finger
3 Things We Like About This Single From Tah Mac
1. The excessive amount of woo, whuh, yeah, ha, hey, and other superfluous extra vocals callbacks that litter ‘The Time Of My Life’. Listening to a single by Tah Mac is like having a conversation with someone you don’t know very well who is so uncomfortable in your presence he has to keep saying anything that comes into his head to avoid uncomfortable silences.
2. The random bursts of lyrical genius. The use of rhetorical questions! “Feels good, don’t it?” You don’t get enough of that in hiphop. “Every day’s like a Friday?” Which means I can eat a Crunchy Bar every bloody day of the week without feeling guilty.
3. The fact that everyone in the video (check it below) couldn’t be any less enthusiastic, except Mr Tah Mac himself. I’m guessing they didn’t exactly have too many auditions for those dancing girls, eh? Anyway, it makes for a much more entertaining video than your usual generic hophop vid:
3 Things We Hate About This Single From Tah Mac
1. It is only ever acceptable to have a remix as your only b-side if a) it is by The Chemical Brothers or Soulwax or someone like that, or b) you’re a faceless dance act and no-one really cares. But in this reviewer’s opinion, hiphop b-sides should be bombastic party songs, or unfunny comedy skits. Not bloody remixes.
2. Something about it sounds like the music at the start of an episode of CSI: Miami. You know – the bit just before they discover the body, and we’re treated to some ridiculous party montage of bikini models lounging about and frolicking in a swimming pool while gangster-types cut shady deals in the background. At least Tah Mac didn’t draft David Caruso in for guest vocal duties.
3. His name – I know hip hop stars love homophonic names, but Tah Mac? Naming yourself after the stuff they put on roads? That’s just…well….silly?
‘Time Of My Life’ is out on November 17 on Tah MC Entertainment.
Review: Guns N’ Roses - ‘Chinese Democracy’
Written by: David Harrison
The hundred years and 700 billion dollars it took to bring this single out, unfortunately means that unless The Axl Rose Project (I can’t bring myself to call them GnR) instigates a Bill & Teds Bogus Journey type epiphany for the human race, it’s going to fall flat. So I suppose I better attempt a pithy review?
Chinese Democracy has a one minute intro that sounds like Axl has taken some cues from Tool. Well, that is until a two chord wonder kicks in and the track becomes an X-Factor segway. A heavily fx’d Axl starts complaining about things, says the word ‘masturbation’, and then it’s over with an explosion at the end. Then my iTunes starts playing Guttermouth, and suddenly modern American punk sounds more fun then it did five minutes ago.
P.S: Rumour update has the Axl Rose Project touring in 2009 and Slash getting back on board and making up Guns N Roses in 2010. Yeah, right.
Reviewed: Metallica and the Death Magnetic experience
Written by: David Harrison
The last album that arrived in my hands with such expectation as Death Magnetic was months ago - Justice in fact. Metallica really jumped backed into our good books a few years back when they played the entire of Master of Puppets at Download Festival, after years of being out in the corporate cold with their Napster mission and the whole St Anger debacle. Monday night at the O2 Arena, Hetfield jokes ‘Frantic’ is off the “very popular” St Anger album, to a giant groan from the audience. Hetfield laughs: “It still rocks”.
Pleased that the album arrived before the show, nothing is under five minutes and only one under six. This isn’t the The Ramones, but it’s just as fast. A few details seem to indicate this album will be great.
1. Rick Ruben (the lost member of ZZ-top) at the helm of buttons. Whom I would’ve thought cut through their rock star indecision: “Just make it like this, Ulrich, and shut up. I am taller then you have a beard and produced Licensed to Ill, Reign in Blood, Blood Sugar Sex Magic and Johnny Cash’s last record - so listen up midget”.
2. Every magazine that has had the album already has said ‘return to form’, but then every album since Master of Puppets has said that, every magazine wants the interview don’t they?
3. It has the old logo on it.
The album opens with very distinct Metallica sound - it just couldn’t be anyone else - and if it was, everyone would accuse them of sounding like Metallica. This album is so big it won’t work on your crappy computer speakers. Throw it on the Tannoy Speakers, that’s better.
The single: ‘The Day That Never Comes’. Big and anthemic, six minutes into it I’m starting to wonder how these old guys can remember the arrangement. I mean, I can’t remember the password to my computer that I change a few weeks’ back. I want listen in on the internal monitors they all wear. I bet there are arrangement prompts on it. Has to be. Of course, there there is a heavy argument that they are seasoned professionals, and they are playing the O2 Arena while I’m just watching. But have you seen Some Kind of Monster? If they were that good, surely Lars Ulrich would be a better drummer.
None of this denies that this album is a feat of modern metal, currently sitting at Number 1 in the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic. I feel a sense of metal-pride I haven’t felt since I found out that ‘Bring your Daughter to the Slaughter’ got to number 1 on the walk to school, a vertible feast of riffs and metal headbanging heaven. ‘The Day That Never Comes’ alone must have about 20 sections at least to it and a bunch of words too. Lets count them.
- Pre-lude twiddly melody bit
- Intro melody,
- Intro melody with drums.
- Intro melody with first verse
- Same melody but rock with stabs - and vocals getting all gruff.
- Queen-y twiddly bit
- Same melody but solo featurette
- Intro melody with second first
- Melody has gone all rock - guess this is a chorus, these stabs are cool.
- Queen-y twiddly bit
- Queen-y twiddly bit 5 more times slightly differently
- Intro into Outro
- Ooh this bit sounds like Orion.
- Ohh this bit sounds like Orion with singing, ‘Love is a four letter word’
- Key Change ‘I suffer this no longer’
- Lots of sliding to get out of this bit and into
- Queeny twiddly bit x 2 into
- Fast like ‘Battery’ go apeshit bit
- Iron Maiden double guitar solo/riffing
- Slow slides
- Double guitar riffs, this time not iron maiden.
- More double guitar solo runs
- Some new riff quite low on the neck.
- Fast chugga chugga bit, with a more traditional solo quite shreddy quite long.
- Slow slides with some chugga interludes
- Slides faster.Go twiddle it is an outro.
26 sections, and I am pretty sure I missed out one or three. The whole album is like this. A masterpiece of arrangement, and we wouldn’t expect anything less from the lost the Great Beard Rubin. It is enough to gives previous incarnations of attention-deficit rock like System of a Down and Mr Bungle a valium and a nice sit down for a minute.
I get the impression from the instrumental ‘Suicide & Redemtion’ that Metallica have been listen to other bands other then themselves this time round. Not because it sounds like anybody, but it just sounds a bit different from them. Maybe they paid attention to The Sword and Mastodon on recent support slots. Actually scratch that… this track fucking rocks because it sounds like the heavy bit in The A-Team theme.
Unfortunately, this instrumental rock opus, that dispenses with trying to put meaningless lyrics sprinkled over the top, was skipped from the O2 show. We were told to expect something ‘different’ and in turn was expecting the whole album of Death Magnetic. Fortunately we escaped another rendition of ‘Sad But True’ or ‘Enter Sandman’. Instead slightly more off the well beaten track like ‘The Thing That Should Not Be’ and ‘Of Wolf and Man’.
The gig feels intimate, even though it has about 15,000 people here, as the band are playing in the middle of the room on a platform, surrounded by mic’s and the drumkit moves ninety degree’s every few songs. As Hetfield says - there is so much front row. The show has no pyro, and barely any lights. It is stripped down and rawer, like a proper race car. No hotdog stalls or support acts to distract us from the ‘tallica.
The O2 sort of has a feeling of going to a gig in Brent Cross, and in turn everyone behaved like they were shopping with their mum. Having a few enjoyable drinks, comparing tickets, we wasted the afternoon away getting the feel for some metal youth revival. Elsewhere in the east of London Metallica had a more enjoyable day and went down to watch the Lehman’s bank redudantees crying clutching boxes of staplers, wondering why they didn’t set up that smelly candle company.
Not that it matters: we headbang away blissfully, ignoring the fact we are not 16 and this is really going to hurt tomorrow morning.
Bag O Singles
Written by: David Harrison
CDs build up on the kitchen table until I can find a time to ignore all those people who pay me to work. In a desperate attempt to find something new and exciting for Beef Warehouse’s set at Latitude here are the kitchen table files.
Nelson – You Can’t Stop
Saw these guys at the ICA last week. I was wondering why these good looking posers weren’t hounded out of town. Upon realising it was a French band I understood why the pint size poser was cool. On the strength of that bought the single: BORING indie stabby schmindie. Try again Nelson, there were really good tracks there, alas this isn’t one of them.
The Shortwave Set – Now Til ‘69
For some reason I assume the Shortwave set are to be Indie and ignore the bleeder first time round. Then a rare glance at the accompanying blurb reads ‘produced by DangerMouse’, ‘Swirling Psychedelic’. Ooh pops in the player.
Not psychedelic, not swirling, not produced with any particular quirk some bleeps in the background. Oh bugger pass me the Peter Bjorn and John album and lets slot this track in there as another album filler.
Get Well Soon – If This Hat Is Missing – I Have Gone Hunting
This record is built with the right amount of British cynical humour that is proper for a band. The vocalists are a pleasant surprise giving us a ‘Shoot Baby, Shoot Baby’ in the background. The cavelike growl (as in Nick not Man) of the vocals are hard to hear. It isn’t breaking moulds but it isn’t exactly ruining them either, that was a rubbish on the shelf kind of comment.
Wired Desire – Barely Illegal
What do we think of bands trying to invoke the great god classic hard rock? Airbourne do quite well although when AC/DC turn up next year not sure anyone will remember. Nobody dare mentions The Darkness and their flash in the pan. Def Leppard hasn’t always been the stadium tour they are doing with Whitesnake. The Datsuns where the darlings of a month way back in 02. Then you have these cats Wired Desire. First Track: GnRish Second Track to Third Track AC/DC in short it is barely credible.
The Levellers – Before the End
Thursday at Glastonbury I must have been asked 20 times if I was going to see the Levellers. Maybe only in mediawank London we don’t care about the Levellers and are we totally wrong? Yes. Before the End is a beautifully tender track. Very Touching.. In fact it seems to be a love song. If you didn’t like the Levellers before you probably still won’t but are you sure it is because of them?
Solange – I Decided
Sweet saccharin pop this isn’t aimed at me I can sense… The jinky Jangly piano is almost madness like with a disco stomp underneath. Pharrel Williams written apparently, she is a Knowles it is all top level US pop family at work, made for writhing around on MTV. X factor vocals that sometimes feel a bit tuned sit over the top of by no means classic pop song. Not offensive but not much of anything, will probably sell in its millions.
The Music – The Spike
Remember watching The Music at Homelands a few years on the trot wondering what the fuss was about. Years on their dance rock seems as stoic as it did then. Haven’t they been listening to music in the last few years? That Justice album, the intensity of the Unkle album. I have a funny feeling they didn’t. If anyone wants below par nineties sounding indie dance crossover you can have it.
Bloc Party - Mecury
By far the record of the week. Love the intro bit weird and easy to mix, when the tune kicks in it is almost keyless, this is a good thing. Bit of a move from previous stuff, but then that is ace as well as can’t say got Bloc Party. This went down a stormer at Latitude last week. Turning right everywhere The Music track goes wrong, this is the indie rock dance crossover for 2008 and definately not Indie landfill.
- Shows this week
- SHOW OF HANDS WITH MIRANDA SYKES
- THE WEDDING PRESENT
- ANTTI SIIRALA
- ANTTI SIIRALA
- SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT
- SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT
- JIMBOB (CARTER USM) + CHRIS T-T + AKIRA THE DON + SUBLIMINAL GIRLS
- KASULE XMAS PARTY - 2 DAY TICKET (MILES HUNT, JIMBOB, THE INDELICATES + MORE)
- FUNHOUSE COMEDY CLUB
- THE PEACOCKS
- FUNHOUSE COMEDY CLUB
- FUNHOUSE COMEDY CLUB
- LOCRA
- CHRISTMAS CHAMPIONS
- INTRODUCING A NOTE FOR NOTE REWORKING OF DJ SHADOWS CLASSIC LP.
- PURR PRESENTS PINEY GIR AND THE AGE OF REASON, BETTY & THE WEREWOLVES, COLLIDING LEMONS
- FIL CAMPBELL WITH TOM MCFARLAND & BRENDAN EMMETT