Brudenell Social Club

Leeds can be argued the best city in the UK for music. With Manchester or London, the sheer size and intensity of the scenes render them difficult to keep on top of; one must specialise, keeping specific promoters, acts, or venues in mind. The bustling musical climate of Leeds, however, is much more penetrable, and it is feasible (if exhausting and costly) to keep up a comprehensive involvement.

To kick off with the increasingly marginalised “mainstream”: the relatively young O2 Academy is first port of call for ultra-super-mega-popstars passing through the city – usually unit-shifters like The Cribs or Paolo Nutini, but the occasional treat turns up e.g. Morrissey or Public Image Ltd.. In addition, the University Union’s Refectory has been drawing huge acts since the ’60s, from Zeppelin to Bloc Party, all presumably impressed with the canteen.

The Cockpit, a converted air-raid shelter near the train station, will not leave you hungering for faux- alternative touring acts, and if you’re lucky you can glimpse Generation MySpace in their natural habitat as dyed black bangs flail around the dark vodka-and-coke-stickied dancefloor to repeat plays of Rage Against The Machine’s Christmas #1. The Faversham will see medium-profile names come through on occasion, but you will have to put up with a piss-rubbish acoustic and two ill-positioned pillars that bands insist on playing directly behind. It’s also possible to have a good night out at the Fav, so long as you get so drunk that you forget you didn’t have a good night out.

LS6-ward is the Brudenell Social Club, a must-frequent venue that puts on exquisitely selected touring acts and presents as a nice old man’s pub simultaneously. £1.75 pints for the win. The house promoter is 100% on the ball with local and global breakthrough acts, the sound crew are super, and you can kill the inter-band duration or questionable support act in the games room, equipped with cheap table football, pool, snooker, darts, dominoes and novelty pinball.

Entering Nation of Shopkeepers can often be like walking into an issue of Vice, but it regularly plays host to hip blog-hyped acts, and these gigs are often inexplicably free entry (although you do occasionally pay the price of being surrounded by Nathan Barley extras). In the daytime you can flick through a discarded copy of Stool Pigeon and eat nice, pretentious food: hello, brie and avocado burger for £7.50.

The Well (formerly ‘Joseph’s Well’) is on the up, with recent visits from British Sea Power and Keane, as well as its regular solid local bills. Homegrown talent (and often homegrown lack of talent) can be witnessed in smaller live spaces upstairs in the Library and Packhorse pubs, which also provide potential starting points for any budding DIY promoters out there. Royal Park Cellars and The Fenton are regular hotbeds of noisy metal, in suitably small, sweaty rooms. Carpe Diem is fine if you like quantity over quality – they put on bills indiscriminately and without much thought, as well as having circa nine hundred open mic nights per second.

Independent promoters well worth being spammed by include: Brew, British Wildlife, Default This, Dirty Otter, Fancy Claps, Forest of Sound, Futuresound, Good Folk, Melting Vinyl, Room 237, Royal Park Cellars, Tiger Trap, and you can scout the net for many more.

When it comes to nightlife the biggest-bannered establishments are, of course, shiny chain-dives like Oceana, Gatecrasher, Tiger Tiger etc. but since you are reading this I can assume you’re not one to spend the witching hour lying in jock-vomit, with an unfamiliar oompa loopma doll trying to do sex on you. Fab Cafe is a well-located alternative to the above twat-sties, albeit a little too self-conscious in its geekiness, and Santiago now houses many of the alternative clubnights of The Subculture, following its recent tragic demise. Vegan-freegan-queergan-feministarian types should know about the “autonomous, radical social centre” that is The Common Place, a glimpse of whose highly varied events can be seen on their website.

The dwindling proportion of musos wondering “where’s the classical music at, dawg?” should start with the Town Hall, Grand Theatre, and the university’s Clothworkers’ Centenary Concert Hall, for both period and contemporary programmes.

Holy Ghost!

A revolution is taking place (always, somewhere), and DFA is one of those labels that is making its own aesthetic mark. For almost ten years the label has consequently altered and given us a feel of how they imagine the NY underground scene should sound. With danceable mixtures of punk, disco, and house at its core. Most of it done the organic way, i.e. no laptops, but actual synths and drums and a real bass and all that jazz. Watch LCD Soundsystem perform with their full band, or The Juan MacLean, or any of the other bands for that matter; it is all people playing instruments.

And DFA is not resting on their laurels  either, their quest being in full throttle this year with a new LCD album, a DJ Kicks by John MacLean, and on the slate are new albums by The Rapture, Shit Robot, Hercules and Love Affair, and Holy Ghost!, a rap band turned disco duo consisting of Nick Millhiser and Alex Frankel. Under the wings of James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy they have been working in their niche of the DFA fabric to finish their soon to be released EP Static on the Wire.

I went to a LCD gig not too long ago, and except for you guys I think I literally saw every DFA member who has ever lived. Is DFA a family or is it mostly music you guys share?

NICK:  It is a family for sure. We are all friends first, label-mates, bandmates, artists, label managers second.

ALEX: Absolutely a family. Don’t make me get emotional.

I read an interview with John MacLean, who said that Alex once called him up while you two were DJing, John heard you guys playing ‘Happy House’ in the background, and Alex was “yelling at me about quantizing the hi-hats”. Does this anecdote accurately describe how you guys are when it comes to music?

NICK:  Pretty much. He called me once when he was DJing to tell me that kick on our Cut Copy remix wasn’t “tough enough”. He was right.

ALEX: Hahaha, that’s amazing. Yes, that describes it. Also the words NERDY + PARTICULAR +  OUTDATED.

Can we do a word association game? Which five words do you associate with:

Alex/Nick (aka, the other Holy Ghost! member)

NICK: “Oh, daddy. Why do you make cry….”

ALEX: That’s six Nick, read better.  

Jacques Renault (DJ mate + friend)

NICK: Siren

ALEX:  “I love you  my bro”

James Murphy (Label owner plus LCD Soundsystem frontman)

NICK: Jigga!

ALEX: jigga! Marlow and sons. Good.

Nancy Whang (The Juan MacLean/LCD Soundsystem)

NICK: Kiddo!

ALEX: Nando. Miss nancy whang. Hot.

Juan MacLean (The Juan MacLean)

NICK: King Cone.

ALEX: Baby gets what baby wants.

In three (or six) degrees of separation, what is the most unlikely person you could get to?

NICK: These are good questions! Hmmm, let me think. Abe Lincoln is a distant cousin of mine on my mother’s side. Fact!

ALEX: Michael McDonald. I refuse to give my mom his info though. Stalker status.

As probably already has become obvious from the John MacLean anecdote, everything is being looked at with an expert eye. Most guys at DFA know their gear, they dislike their software (or in any case want as little to do with a laptop in terms of music), and when you know, you also can find out what stuff can get out what sound the best. It seems like the DFA guys are that way concerning life as well, humanity before mechanization. Well…

You guys met Murphy and Goldsworthy ages ago, you all became friends, and years later you’ve got your EP released by them and you’re opening for LCD; do nice guys get further in life?

NICK: Apparently not. I’ve heard reports that we’re actually huge assholes.

ALEX: Nice guys finish first? Shit, better start a new band.

You heard reports, seriously? Already starting band feuds, or was that a typical internet thingy where people are just talking shit on message boards?

NICK: No, I haven’t seen anything on the blogs, but please forward me anything you’ve stumbled across. I’ve heard it from promoters and other DJs. Like, “man people say you guys are assholes but you’re actually really nice.”

Surfing Discogs for hours from your comfy chair and coming up with some rare goodies or browsing a musky cellar and come away with 10 LPs for 15 dollars? And why does the one appeal more?

NICK: Musky cellar, though I haven’t been record shopping in ages. I like touching records, holding them in my hands, reading credits, etc. I also don’t like computers much. That’s why we don’t DJ with them or use them on stage.

ALEX: Musky? Mmm, you’ve got me excited.

About the DJing, you guys do it “old-fashioned”, what do you guys think of people like Richie Hawtin, using Traktor and linking it to LastFM or Twitter and stuff? I can imagine him thinking that embracing technology opens many possibilities.

NICK: we have no beef with technology, but at the same time neither one of us particularly enjoys spending time at the computer. For me, the computer is a tool for work. I have no interest in scrolling through a bunch of tiny texts on an LCD screen when I’m DJing. I spend far too much of my time doing that as it is.

What is the latest bit of gear you bought and were over the moon about?

NICK: We are very, very close to buying a Yamaha CS80 which is something we’ve been looking at for years. It is truly the most beautiful sounding polyphonic synthesiser ever built. It truly makes everything else sound like a toy. I might actually cry if we get it, but that’s largely because of how much it’s going to cost.

ALEX: Tears of joy, tears of joy.

(One month later)

NICK: We lost the auction ;(.

I don’t assume you can drag that one across Europe though. What does your road set-up look like?

Nick: The live rig is kind of a stripped down version of our studio remade with as much modern, stable gear as possible played live by 4 dudes. No laptop anywhere near the stage.

According to you, what is the most underrated piece of equipment, and what is the appeal to you personally?

Nick: Most underrated: Orban 111B Spring Reverb, Ashly SC-44 parametric EQ and the Ashly SC series compressors. All very cheap. All very, very good. James gave me an Ashly SC66 when we started working on Holy Ghost! stuff and it was the only compressor I had for years. It’s the only compressor used on ‘Hold On’.

ALEX: A piano.

In your DJ sets a love for vintage disco comes shining through, is that just the music or also the Disco aesthetic, and what makes up that aesthetic for you personally?

NICK:  A good disco record is hard to beat on many levels. It’s just an amalgam of so many great things – great songwriting, optimism, complete lack of irony, amazing production, amazing engineering, amazing musicianship and tough as shit drumming.

They have been playing together for some years now as they grew up living two blocks from each other. First they played in a now defunct rap band called Automato, and now they have formed Holy Ghost! and have been creating music under that moniker for some time now. In the past few years they have been releasing killer remixes, like the ones for Moby’s ‘I Love to Move in Here’, Curses!’ ‘The Deep End’, and more recently they did cuts for LCD Soundsystem, Friendly Fires, and Monarchy. Slowly singles have been coming out as well. Very slowly, that is, but the guys are not rushing. On the 23rd of August they will be releasing their first EP called Static on the Wire, and later this year or early 2011 their first full length will appear. To support the EP they’ve opened for LCD Soundsystem in the US, did a small European tour, and are now returning to the US for a lengthy road trip with Chromeo.

Could you tell us about the new EP you guys are releasing?

ALEX: It’s called Static on the Wire. It just came out in the US of A and will be out in Europe in August, it’s got four songs on it. It’s kind of a handshake to strangers, saying “hi, this is what we do, would you like to be friends and later enjoy moments of over emotional joy, sadness, and rage?” It’s an HG! starter kit. It was recorded over two years, during the same sessions as our album.

I’ve read that the album will be coming out late 2010/early 2011. If the EP is a handshake, what will the album be saying?

NICK: If the EP is a handshake then the album is the kiss at the end of the night. Or maybe it’s a slap in the face.  That will have to be your call!

Can you tell me something about the art work for the EP? Are you guys hands on with that or do you let other people at DFA decide?

NICK: The basic concepts for the artwork are our own but we pass our crude ideas on to people like Drew Hefron and Michael Vadino with actual talent to do the actual hard work.

You guys will be heavily supporting the EP with the LCD, Chromeo, and a festival Europe tour. Is that a crowded agenda or are you guys relishing the prospect?

ALEX: Relishment and punishment are not far a part. We definitely are biting off more than we can chew, but hey, what you can’t chew you swallow, right? That sounds gross. No, I’m being stupid, we’re ridiculously thrilled to be able to support these bands. Honestly, I’m elated

Kanye West

Forgive me if this feels like I’m already straightening out 2010’s picture frames, pushing its chairs under its tables and hurrying you out of the door marked ‘2011’ when we’re only halfway through August. The trouble is music release schedules operate several months ahead of real time so, as someone who is informed about music releases on a daily basis whether I like it or not, I’m currently existing in a parallel universe where it’s late October/early November.

Luckily, from my position in this imagined future (all release dates are of course subject to change), this autumn looks like continuing what was already been a strong year for new records. 2010 has seen many of the previous decade’s primary acts return in some form or another, to varying degrees of success, such as The National, LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire, Big Boi and Broken Social Scene. At the same time, newer acts have continued to hone their sound (Wavves, Best Coast) or seemingly burst out fully formed (Wild Nothing, Male Bonding, Baths). When looking ahead, it’s always the big names that stand out then – but don’t rule out a few surprises along the way.

Big names don’t come much bigger than recent Twitter convert Kanye West, who revealed in his recent surreal, hilarious, and even endearing Ustream monologue that his still untitled new record will finally be released in November. Leaked track ‘Power’ sees him return to rapping after 808s and Heartbreak (and already has its own Kanye-as-Roman-God trailer – he’s beyond simple music videos now) and if he can retain this song’s intensity and energy over a whole record, he could be approaching a career best.

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

Bradford Cox rivalled Kanye (at least on particular sections of the Internet) in the questionable blog post stakes for a while, and Deerhunter will return in September with Halcyon Digest. Free (so far) of the leak controversies that have dogged his last couple of releases, early previews have been positive. ‘Revival’ further demonstrates the malleability of Deerhunter’s sound, and there are reports that the record includes synth touches, more acoustic guitars and even an oboe solo. Who’d have laid out this path for this band after Cryptograms?

If Deerhunter continue to carve out their own distinctive body of work, two artists are looking to further expand on their own in the coming months. Nick Cave and a few of his Bad Seeds reconvene as Grinderman for their second album in September. If you needed further proof that this is a vehicle for them to flex their musical muscles in new ways while also having a laugh (in a terrifying sort of way) then look no further than the video for ‘Heathen Child’. It turns out the gods are just dirty old men. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see how Corin Tucker’s first record since the Sleater Kinney (hopefully) hiatus shapes up – 1000 Years track ‘Doubt’ only lets up for the sound of waves crashing on the beach.

We’ve also recently had a taste of the new record by Antony and the Johnsons – Swanlights is due in October and lead single ‘Thank You For Your Love’ is Antony at his loosest and most at ease than ever before. Whether this is a good thing or not is up for debate – I Am A Bird Now and The Crying Light both worked due to their atmospheric restraint that set Antony’s tremendous voice apart. However, The Crying Light’s songs sounded odd taken out of an album context, so the wait for Swanlight continues. Speaking of restraint, one band knows when to open up and when to hold back is The Walkmen. Their forthcoming album Lisbon will please those who fell for You & Me – ‘Angela Surf City’ and ‘Blue As Your Blood’ pack the same punch as ‘I Lost You’, and the album closes with a set of their best ballads yet. Gone are the days of ‘The Rat’, when they’d throw everything at you from the off and, surprisingly, they’re all the better for it.

Robyn - Body Talk Pt. 2

Another band who appear to be settling into their sound is No Age. Their forthcoming record Everything In Between anchors their ferocious two-pronged noise attack with ambience and electronics and appears to be the summation of their sound that Nouns was claimed to be at the time of its release. Lyrically, the songs address the mundane ups and downs of life, which gives their otherworldly noise a human touch. Robyn has always been adept at zoning in on fragile, human moments in her pop songs, and Body Talk Pt. 2 arrives in September. With ‘Hang With Me’ as its emotional centre, it’s difficult to see how she can fail and with Body Talk Pt. 3 also due by the end of the year, she could be about to pull off a quite astonishing run.

Finally, although the die hards haven’t had an Animal Collective album this year, the band’s members haven’t exactly been slacking off. There’s ODDSAC, a collaboration with Danny Perez that sounds like it’s aimed at fans of acid flashbacks rather than fans of ‘My Girls’. And then there’s the solo projects – Avey Tare’s first solo record Down There will be released in October and apparently has a lot to do with crocodiles. Meanwhile, Panda Bear will follow up Person Pitch (which arguably spawned chillwave) with Tomboy. Expect many ecstatic reviews followed by disappointing and/or confusing live shows.

What’s left? Interpol’s new line up have a self-titled record due soon; The Clientele, despite threatening otherwise, have new material on the horizon; The Thermals will release Personal Life in September; expect Calories to fly the flag for British DIY in September with the expansive Basic Nature; and Royksopp follow last year’s bright Junior with the sombre Senior.

So, should we care more about Interpol? Should we care less about Robyn? As ever though, it’s often the records you aren’t expecting that have the most impact – are there any hidden gems that have yet to catch our eye?

Penguin Prison

Penguin Prison is New Yorker Chris Glover. He was first introduced to the world by influential boutique label Neon Gold who specialise in pop music. Bloggers gobble up Neon Gold’s blog posts and spit them out on their own sites perhaps partly due to laziness but mostly because the music they put out is just so good. Success stories include Marina and the Diamonds and Ellie Goulding who occupied the top spots on the BBC’s Sound of 2010 list showing how their influence had infiltrated the mainstream.

Penguin Prison has also received a warm welcome by the blogs and will want to emulate the label’s success stories as he goes on. All his songs so far have been offered as free downloads. His first song ‘Animal Animal#, a slightly lacklustre pop song with reggae-lite noises was underwhelming compared to his remixes making you think that perhaps he’s a better producer than a pop star. His remix of Erik (not really worth the) Hassle (of checking out the rest of his music) in particular takes away all the middle of the road dullness and transforms the song into an incredibly listenable heartbreaker showing off Hassle’s interesting voice and lyrics. Everything else since then has proved the “better producer” theory wrong. ‘A Funny Thing’ is a sparkly mellow dance number with a brilliant Monarchy remix.

He attended a professional performing arts school and sang in a gospel choir with Alicia Keys, which will probably be an interview soundbite that keeps haunting him, and this probably didn’t dampen his ambitious side and on double A-side release ‘The Worse It Gets’/'Something I’m Not’ he gets to show off more of his singing abilities. The fidgety synth-pop of ‘Something I’m Not’ contrasts with the more laid-back ‘The Worse It Gets; and both are his best songs to date.

The album, which is apparently coming soon but hasn’t been given a definite release date, has been co-produced by Dan Grech-Marguerat, who has previously worked with Wiley, Sound of Arrows and Tom Jones (that’s one dinner party we’d etc. etc.) so it promises to be a twinkly synth extravaganza.

The one man electro pop scene hasn’t set the chart alight over the past few years despite a lot of hype surrounding many from the self-made Frankmusik to the more manufactured Alex Gardner and the aforementioned Erik Hassle. Recently pretending to be in a band has become the new acceptable face of the solo artist with their Machines and Diamonds. Penguin Prison feels more like a band’s frontman and may prove a more credible option for those who can’t handle the thought of liking a male pop star and in the few live gigs he’s done he’s played with a proper band with guitars and everything.  He is most definitely a talented performer and producer who doesn’t deserve to be dismissed.

The xx - xx

As Paul The Octopus isn’t returning our calls we’ll have to make do with our own physic cephalopod, Mitchell Stirling as he casts his tentacles over the elite 12 British and N. Irish records that might be receiving nods next week.

Last year I, like most people felt that Doves winning would be to similar to the Elbow win the previous year but didn’t think that would prevent them getting a nod (nor did the bookies, they were favourites). Similarly we all thought that Portishead’s Third was a lock the year before and it didn’t make it. This year we can’t even find odds before the nominations but you can pick up a vibe on a few releases.

The XX – XX: We’d would be frankly astounded if this doesn’t get nominated, it was already being talked about as a potential winner around the time of last year’s ceremony. WE fully expect it to go in as favourite once the nominations are announced as well based on the acclaim it received at the end of the year that wasn’t restricted to the UK indie press, it was lauded by the broadsheets, the older music press and even the likes of FACT, The Wire and Mixmag. We haven’t seen a reaction to a British record like that since Dummy a former Mercury Prize winner. The one to beat we feel.

Wild Beasts – Two Dancers: Discussed in similar terms last autumn as a potential winner when summer rolled round. It has also been applauded thoroughly for the delight it takes in it’s own outsider status from the striking imagery to the arresting melodies. We don’t think it has enough momentum behind it with its September release in the way The XX have though.

Laura Marling – I Speak Because I Can: We’ve rhapsodised a fair bit about Miss Marling on this site and to anyone that will listen. It seems critical and public consensus is catching up with me and she’ll likely add the nomination of her first album in 2008 with this one. We also fully expect it to be among the favourites when the odds are drawn up.

Marina and the Diamonds – The Family Jewels and Ellie Goulding – Lights: We’re almost flipping a coin on this one. The top two of the BBC’s Sound of…  poll at the start of the year and in the previous two years the women at the top of that list have had a 50% strike rate with Duffy and Little Boots not making the cut, La Roux and Adele did. We think a similar thing is going to happen this time and although neither album really set my pulses racing we’ll go with Marina for having slightly more of the star quality. Bank on at least one of them to make it though.

Delphic – Acolyte: With the slightly more leftfield guitar-indie of The XX and Wild Beasts it’s hard to think of a typical Conor NME indie type album that might make it so we’ll plump for Delphic on account of the high amounts of tips at the start of the year and the goodwill they still have from their incredible early singles.

Plan B – The Defamation of Strickland Banks: It was a surprise at the time that his ‘British Eminem’ debut didn’t attract the attentions of the judges who went with Sway’s This Is My Demo and likely couldn’t find room for both on the list. The change to an easier on the Radio 2 listener’s ears singing style and lack of calling everyone listening a c**t probably puts him in a good position to land on the list.

Others that could make it.

Like last year we’ll throw in albums we’d like to see on the list first. These New Puritans‘  Hidden would be high up on my nomination sheet, a step up from their debut as impressive as that of The Horrors last year. We are also a big fan of Race Horses‘ Goodbye Falkenburg but fear that if SFA can’t get on the last two lists it’s unlikely another Welsh band that has followed them can. (we’re sure Jude Rogers will try though!) If we’re following the saga of the release of Fanfarlo’s Reservoir correctly, it should be eligible this year if entered but who knows on that one.

We’d love to see Field Music’s third album on there but with the panel choosing not to include the excellent Tones of Town or The Week That Was, we’re not convinced that they’ll be sitting through a double album too often from their listening pile. Their loss, we know. We also would have loved to have seen Twilight Sad, Frightened Rabbit and Mystery Jets make the line-up in 2008 though we think they all suffered in what was a very strong year for the prize. Their most recent albums are all in with a shout of making it but we feel that they aren’t as strong as previous efforts. The Big Pink’s debut seems a very long time ago now but Glasvegas managed to make the list after a long gap last time out. We’re 50:50 on A Brief History of Love doing likewise. We also can’t see Alex Turner making it four from four with Arctic Monkeys‘ Humbug certainly not a bad album by any standard but it’s autumn release handicaps it more than any perceived dip in quality we feel. A couple of albums that could make it on both strength and previous efforts feeling hard-done-by are Foals‘ Total Life Forever and Los Campesinos! with Romance is Boring.

With a presumed nod for Laura Marling we think, despite the wealth of talent in the indie folk box there’s probably only room for one more nomination; it would likely be Mumford and Sons. A band that have had stratospheric rise in the past 12 months with a feverent fan-base that clearly adores them and their intense live show as well as lashings of Radio 1 play their have the wind in their sails despite a large amount of sniping at them. This probably means no place for Noah & the Whale’s The First Days of Spring or Peggy Sue’s Fossils and Other Phantoms as there surely wouldn’t be a third album from that corner of the world. Previous nominees The Unthanks and newcomers Stornoway and Goldheart Assembly are more on the Radio 2/Uncut end of the folk spectrum so they could usurp Mumford and Sons or join them in a heavily folky list.

Moving away from guitars there’s every chance that Hot Chip’s recent effort One Life Stand, a more complete effort than Made In The Dark could be nominated like 2006’s The Warning was. We also think that if Four Tet are ever going to get a nomination than this is year with There Is Love in You, one of the best received albums of the year. In a similar vein Fuck Buttons, Scuba, James Yuill and Broadcast and The Focus Group may feel in with a shout.

Typically there’s a Irish nomination just to remind everyone that Irish acts are eligible prime suspect this year is likely to be the joyful but lightweight indie pop of Two Door Cinema Club or Dublin’s Villagers. Former nominees Polar Bear, Dizzee Rascal, Portico Quartet, Maps, Fyfe Dangerfield, Jamie T and Richard Hawley all have perfectly serviceable albums that could make it. Muse’s last album was terrible but that doesn’t stop the panel from including one record a year to really annoy us. A much better home-grown stadium rock effort would be Biffy Clyro who surely deserve a look-in for persistence alone.

There are a few acts that’ve never been on the list that might make a debut Steve Mason’s Beta Band never made the cut. Nor, surprisingly did Grammy and BRIT nominee Corinne Bailey Rae with her debut. We think she may well atone for that oversight. Paul Weller has his best album since 1993 nomination for Wild Wood but we don’t think he’s the kind of act they’d want to nominate still. What price a nomination for Teenage Fanclub or The Fall after all these years? (We can’t see them wanting Mark E. Smith gurning at Lauren Laverne in September to be honest.)

We have also mulled records by The Cribs, North Atlantic Oscillation, Archie Bronson Outfit, Rox, Bombay Bicycle Club, New Young Pony Club, Massive Attack, Lonelady, Pulled Apart By Horses, Tunng, Kate Nash, The Chemical Brothers and Blood Red Shoes and could only see NYPC or Lonelady sneaking on to the list but we’re not going to tip them.

We wanted to mention Slow Club as a nominee we’d like to see but Charles and Rebecca’s wonderful debut falls outside of the dates for being on this year’s list after looking it up. Anyone who is suggesting Gorrilaz will be nominated may want to do their homework on the band’s previous nomination though!

Our final predictions: The XX, Wild Beasts, Laura Marling, Marina and The Diamonds, Plan B, Delphic, Four Tet, Foals, Biffy Clyro, Mumford and Sons, Empirical and Villagers.

Half a dozen more to cover our tracks: Scuba, Ellie Goulding, The Fall, Corrine Bailey Rae, Hot Chip and These New Puritans.

How accurate will we be?

Panda Bear

As you read this, Spain will still be celebrating their World Cup victory; Paul Gasgoine will be solemnly dismantiling his fishing rod; Paul the Octopus will be eating from a solitaty feeding bowl and you will be wondering why this sentence insists on being so fucking long when I could be spending words discussing one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the year…

PANDA BEAR – Tomboy

As Animal Collective moves further and further into the realm of purely electronic music, ‘Tomboy’ indicates that Panda Bear might be using his upcoming solo album to experiment with live instrumentation again. That’s not to say that ‘Tomboy’ could ever be mistaken for a live performance: there are still plenty of samples and the song is anchored by a reverb-soaked programmed beat but – being firmly led by guitar – this feels more organic than anything on Person Pitch.

In terms of similarities to his previous solo work, Noah still piles layers and layers of identical vocal takes upon one another to provide his voice with the distinctive hazy glow that enriches his music so much. Also, as with Person Pitch, ‘Tomboy’ is more an atmospheric mood piece than it is an example of Panda Bear’s song writing prowess: the vocal line hugs tightly to the erratic chord progression in a drone that recalls the sound collages of Animal Collective’s earlier material rather than the structured focus of their newer albums.

All in all, this is intriguing and promising stuff. As with anything Panda Bear touches, ‘Tomboy’ manages to sound completely fresh whilst being unmistakably him. And do you want to know the best news of all? The B-side is even more tantalising.

KATE NASH – Kiss That Grrrl

If you felt an urge for sixties girl group music, you probably wouldn’t naturally gravitate towards a new Kate Nash single to scratch that itch. Unexpectedly, however, ‘Kiss That Grrrl’ saunters along on a cleanly toned guitar lick vividly recalling the sound of that era. Leaving her trademark piano entirely abandoned, Nash creates a relatively authentic sounding throwback whilst her chatty, faux-Cockney vocal delivery ensures that this is still unmistakably A Kate Nash Song.

Sixties echoes also reverberate through the lyrics with lines like “baby, please don’t break my heart because you’re the only one I love” being exactly the sort of thing you might hear in an old Lesley Gore number. By and large, however, Nash’s lyrics are far more fiercely jealous than anything you would have heard in ‘It’s My Party’. Lesley Gore rather innocently wondered where her Johnny had gone, and why Judy left the same time. Kate Nash, infinitely more bitterly, tries to think of a thousand ways to hurt Johnny and speculates that Judy might be anorexic. She must eat so many lemons.

KATIE PRICE – Free To Love Again

Erase from your memory (if you haven’t already) the Katie Price who embarrassingly warbled her way through a strained version of ‘A Whole New World’ with then-husband Peter Andre. Nobody saw this coming. This – her debut single proper – is as life affirming as dance music comes and it’s a downright tragedy that it will be dismissed by so many people before it’s even heard. For Price to release an opus of this magnitude so early in her career is nothing short of staggering. ‘Free to Love Again’ is a powerful assertion of independence and empowerment set to this year’s most vibrant and intelligent dance beat – music for the brain, the soul and the feet. Expect this – if there is any justice in the world – to dominate the second half of 2010.

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FIRST AID KIT – Sailor Song

First Aid Kit simultaneously invited and nullified comparisons to the Fleet Foxes when they rose to prominence by posting a video on YouTube of themselves covering a song from that band’s debut album – a performance which arguably surpassed the original’s rich and towering harmonies despite the band being only two in number.

New single ‘Sailor Song’ keeps the skeletal basics of acoustic guitars and warm harmonies but moves into a jauntier, more up-tempo mode than the Fleet Foxes are known for. The sisters are Swedish, and this song is very much out-on-the-porch-with-a-banjo Americana folk. As the drums kick in following a sparsely strummed opening, the music begins to swing with toe tapping pace but grates slightly by being a little too kitsch. As a showcase of the girls’ ability to endear us to their gorgeous, harmonising voices it works well enough, but it’s one of the least affecting cuts from the recent album.

PARAMORE – Careful

After confusing “My Twitter account was hacked” with “I took a topless photo of myself and accidentally posted it on the internet”, Hayley Williams and her band now seem to have confused “releasing a new single” with “re-releasing ‘Ignorance’ sans chorus”. Its harmonic riffs, crunchy palm muting and over-earnest vocal delivery leave it entirely indistinguishable from everything else you have ever heard from this sort of band – a song destined to be enthusiastically endorsed by Fearne Cotton as exciting new music in five weeks time.

To be fair to the band, ‘Careful’ manages to steer clear of any refrain as annoying as “ig-nur-ence is yah new best friend” (doesn’t it feel like that song has been around forever, by the way?); it instead features a subtler (read: more bearable) yet characteristically anthemic chorus. Ultimately, however, this is Paramore exactly as we know them and ‘Careful’ isn’t going to change anybody’s mind about the band one way or the other. If you can look at a present-day photo of Billie Joe Armstrong without slamming your face onto the desk, this might be for you.

THE PIPETTES – Call Me

Forgive me, but I must admit that I’ve pretty much lost track of the Pipettes. Back in the day, there were three of them, wearing matching polka dot dresses and singing doo wop girl group music. Between then and now, we’ve apparently lost all of the original members (there’s just two of them now by the looks of things); they’ve relinquished the right to describe themselves as the prettiest girls we’ve ever met (if, indeed, they ever had it) and, with songs like ‘Call Me’, they’re peddling a sound more accurately described as a blend of seventies disco and eighties electro.

Critics seem eager to abuse the band for the change in sound but surely the Pipettes deserve credit for not rocking up five years after their slew of brilliant sixties throwbacks and trying to make the soufflé rise twice. There is a problem, however, and it is that this simply is not as catchy as any of their old stuff let alone their pinnacle ‘Pull Shapes’. ‘Call Me’ is an upbeat, sugary, loved-up delight, to be sure – but essentially lacks the sparkle of the band’s first run.

PROFESSOR GREEN ft. LILY ALLEN – Just Be Good To Green

Whilst ‘Just Be Good to Green’ is nowhere near as poisonous as the misogynistic garbage festering within quotes from interviews with Prof. Green, one still wonders why female collaborators continue to affiliate themselves with lyrical rackets like this. If I were a woman, I would be reluctant (at best) to provide a chorus to a song by a guy who self-admittedly “ain’t good to girls” (Eazy-E will be rolling in his grave at the pussy-ass faggot’s lack of conviction: just admit that you nut in bitches’ eyes, motherfucker).

Putting all this to one side, the thing thumps and grinds between its two chords effectively enough to achieve what it presumably sets out to do: make drunken people dance in clubs. Add to this a coolly aloof and hooky chorus from Lily (who brings to the mix her trademark backbeat guitar stokes) and you have – presuming that you’ve consumed enough alcohol – a tolerable enough dance record, in spite of a terrible vocal from Professor Green himself.

Having been to festivals for the last seven years I thought I had seen it all, heard it all, done it all, but maybe more importantly knew exactly what to expect, but no festival experience could prepare me for the five nights spent in a field in a farm in Pilton. Now that I have sampled a five-star festival I am not sure that any other festival can compare.

Before Glastonbury my favourite festival had always been Reading, for a few reasons this has always been great, but for quite a few more reasons it has had its draw backs.

Let’s concentrate for the purposes of this article on the awesomeness that is Glastonbury Festival.

Firstly, has to be the line-up, it’s a festival that every artist has heard of, a friend of mine who is in a band said to me “I will know I have made it, when I get to headline the Pyramid stage”. For the 40th anniversary we were all promised a killer line-up, and Gorillaz replacing U2 was met with very mixed opinions. I was on the fence on that one, and went to see the Gorillaz on the pretence that they had planned something extra special. In my opinion, it wasn’t all that. The rest, though, was epic.

The festival kicked off with Rolf Harris, a legend. Whether, like me, you know him from childhood as the guy that taught you to draw cartoon versions of himself on the body of a kangaroo during Cartoon Club, or because your grandparents played his vinyl’s on their ancient record players, or because you are of a younger generation and know him from his Jekyll and Hyde performances on Animal Hospital. Either way, it was a great start to a festival, and in his words: “a highlight of my entertaining career”

Then you had performances from Snoop Dog at his very first Glastonbury. Making the crowd “jump around” in 30c heat is no mean feat. Secret performances from Radiohead, the regular festival circuit band Vampire Weekend, and Julian Casablancas performing Strokes material without the rest of the Strokes.

Mumford & Sons and Bombay Bicycle Club, who between them seemed to pull in the biggest John Peel tent audiences of the weekend.

Then Stevie Wonder, singing Happy Birthday with Michael Eavis on stage, to bring it all to an end. Love it or loathe it, it was a fitting and emotional end to a festival. Even if it did look like embarrassing car crash TV when I watched it back last night, you will have to take my word that it was probably a ‘had to be there’ kind of moment.

There were literally hundreds of acts across well over 40 stages. It would be natural to think Glastonbury and music go hand in hand, and stop there, however Glasto is so much more than music.

It is huge, at least ten times bigger than any other festival I have ever been to. And you could be forgiven to thinking that due to its size that it is just field after field divided by hedges and farm gates, but it isn’t. There is something to do, see or hear in almost every square inch of the vast place. Besides the stages and hundreds of food and clothes vendors, you have purpose-built nightclubs made of actual bricks and mortar with NY taxis and underground train carriages sticking out. Quiet places to think and reflect on the days events, hidden relaxation havens, and if you’re into communication during the festival even somewhere to hide from the sun and charge your phone.

There are the craft fields where you can be taught to glaze pots, make plates and spoons or carve from stone, with each themed area transporting you to what could be described as alternate universes decorated with movie set precision. Some of these places are better ventured after dark where a whole different Glastonbury comes to life.

The festival commonly resembles a Turkish mud bath, not this year though. Over the course of the weekend, Glastonbury experienced some of the highest temperatures it has ever had and without a cloud in the sky, the heat and sun were sometimes relentless. Maybe this is a sign of global warming, frankly, I don’t give a shit as I got to leave my wellies in the car, rather than carry them along with all my other crap on what seemed like a two-mile hike from the car park.

The community aspect is something completely different too, everyone is friendly, willing to help, and doesn’t care about another person’s opinion. One such environment was the Twisto group on twitter. I started following these people about two months prior to Glastonbury. Everyone has the same goals, to go and enjoy Glasto, regardless of which acts you plan to see. The buzz of excitement coming off these people leading up to the last few days before glasto was contagious.

Then there’s the camping environment. I think a festival is a lot about the people you go with, and I went with a great bunch of people, naturally friends bring friends whom you don’t know, and in turn, they become your friends. I honestly believe that 50% of my current social circle were originally friends of friends at festivals over the years.

I guess your Glasto camping experience is all down to where you decide to camp. We were in one of the new un-named fields. We arrived and unpacked the car at the hottest point of the day, so almost immediately after wristband exchange, Jms, (our “group co-ordinator)” dropped his bags, and said, “Fuck it, this will do.” Camp Fuck It was born. I must write to Emily Eavis and enquire whether this would be a field name they could pursue in future years…

Owing to one of our people, Kate, being pregnant, it was pre-decided that we would camp somewhere peaceful-ish, within easy access to toilets and medical facilities. The camp we chose fitted the bill perfectly.

At other festivals you see people frequently jumping the fence without having paid for a ticket. At modern Glasto, not one!

At other festivals you see drunk/drugged people kicking off, and frequently see the tell tale signs of someone being evicted due to their behaviour (the swarm of security guards, the revellers bundled into the back of land rovers). At Glasto, just one! And it was a relatively harmless argument to start off with, it was 9am, and he disliked another fella for stealing the numbers to his girlfriend’s postcode. Strange reason to lose your £185 ticket.

My final point about Glastonbury is the traffic to get onto site, and I think it’s my only real negative on the whole glasto experience. How can a festival that has been running for 40 years still suffer traffic chaos? 7am ‘til 2pm to travel the 20-odd miles from the M5 to the site.

Living in close proximity to Silverstone, I am aware of the changes forced upon traffic systems by huge volumes of people for one weekend per calendar year. I am incredibly surprised that more hasn’t been done about it.

Will I do Glasto again? Without a shadow of doubt!

The question at the beginning of this article was, is there life after Glasto?

The answer is still to be determined, but I go back to Reading with incredibly high expectations, knowing full well that, sadly, it probably won’t match up.

Dour festival

ALERT! ALERT! GIVEAWAY PRIZE ALERT! FREEBIES BELOW!

We are giving away five pairs of tickets to Dour, including camping! All you need to do is send your name, your guest’s name, and both of your email addresses to musosguide (at) gmail (dot) com. Easy as. You don’t even have to answer a question! These are the T&Cs from the lovely festival-running people there…

You have until Monday July 4 to enter…

And now you can read the preview…

If the increasingly gentrified and innocuous UK festival scene bores you, and you hanker for something a little more adventurous, you can’t go far wrong with Dour Festival – taking place between July 15 and 18 this year (2010, future readers).

Now maturing into its early 20s, the Dour festival was formally Europe’s best-kept secret, nestled as it within the municipality of Dour, Belgium. However, with this year’s roster of bands such as Faith No More, The Maccabees, Chris Cunningham, Atari Teenage Riot, Los Campesinos!, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Owen Pallett, Chrome Hoof, New Young Pony Club, De La Soul, Fucked Up, Monotonix and GWAR to name but a meager selection, you’ll be hard pressed to find a festival with a staggeringly vast and varied array of music for the price (Just under £100 including camping or £198 for ticket, camping and ride).

With over 200 bands on six stages over four days, and continuing way into the early hours, toward its climax Dour begins to seem like more of an endurance test, albeit one set in an environment that’s as accommodating as it is relentless. Not so much about going to see the bands you know, but rather stumbling around to happen across some amazing European acts, Dour accommodates for the most esoteric and intrepid music fan.

We’ll see you there.

Vampires are the latest craze to strike the entertainment industry, so it’s only natural that they have now infiltrated the music business. Hunter S. Thompson famously called the music industry a “cruel and shallow money trench” for “thieves” and “pimps”, but today it’s being portrayed as a home to thirsty bloodsuckers.

Rob Stefaniuk’s latest film, Suck, premiered at London’s Soho Screening Rooms on Tuesday night, and the small crowd was treated to a preview of the next installment of sexy vampire fiction…only this time, it’s got rock ‘n roll royalty.

Featuring cameos from Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins (Black Flag) and Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides), this comedic spoof on the current vampire phenomenon traces the overnight success of an average, unknown band (The Winners) that drive around in a hurst, become vampires and get a taste of celebrity (and the groupies they feed on).

The Winners

Every aspect of this film makes it a budding cult classic. Not only does it also star Malcolm McDowell of A Clockwork Orange, one of the biggest cult classic films of all time, but it also has so many minor touches that music buffs will love to spot. For instance, a few classic album cover scenes are subtly recreated throughout the film, including T.Rex’s Electric Warrior, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., The Beatles’ Abbey Road and The Who’s The Kids Are Alright soundtrack. And we don’t want to spoil anything, but one vampire gets killed after being impaled with a guitar. There’s also a featured newspaper headline that reads, “Vampires Eat the Jonas Brothers”. How’s that for irony?

Alice Cooper

Suck is a Universal Pictures (UK) film. The DVD will be released in October. Suck is also an official sponsor of the Bloodstock 2010 Festival (August 13-15), which supports the Metal 2 Masses unsigned bands competition (www.bloodstock.uk.com)

Summer Camp

After coming across the superbly excellent Summer Camp (Elizabeth Sankey and Jeremy Warmsley) back in December last year with an ‘introducing Summer Camp‘ feature – back when we didn’t even know their identities – and giving them a glowing live review supporting The Drums, the time has now finally come for a one-on-one with the band. It’s taken a long time!

When you first started, everything was quite secretive – how long did you think or hope that was going to last?

Jeremy Walmsley: We wanted to stop it being a secret much sooner than it eventually emerged. We were just doing the project for fun, and we were doing it anonymously as we didn’t want our friends to know it was us. And then it turned into this big “oh, they’re anonymous” thing.

Someone at Platform (where Elizabeth is Editor) reviewed your first song didn’t they?

Elizabeth Sankey: Yes, but they had no idea it was me though.

JW: It was really funny. Elizabeth came home from work that day and told me that one of Platform’s writers had said they were doing a piece on Summer Camp.

You should have done it yourselves! Like last year, when Stewart Lee reviewed his own BBC show for Time Out. It was a really scathing review, where he described himself as “just a man going on and on about nothing”…

ES: That’s’ brilliant! I did get asked to do a Radar piece for NME on Summer Camp, though – they didn’t know it was us but I just couldn’t do that.

Did anyone actually think that you were seven school kids from Sweden?

ES: People did. Even now there are some left still saying we are keeping our identities hidden.

There was a piece in The Independent only the other week saying just as much. Just after the night I saw you play, taking note of the fact that you weren’t wearing masks.

ES: There does seem to be a spate of bands doing the whole anonymous thing, and it’s a really good idea but just not something we set out to do intentionally.

JW: It’s true, even though in a way it worked out really well for us. The whole anonymous “idea” simply wasn’t an idea. We just wanted to make some music.

ES: We weren’t sure how we would do the whole reveal thing – we thought we’d end up probably just playing live, with people seeing it was us and writing about it. Luckily, we were outed by The Stool Pigeon and we just had to deal with it.

Did you ever even consider playing live with masks?

ES: By the time we were playing, a lot of people knew who we were anyway. We didn’t want to hold on to it, so we kind of just let go.

JW: I think it’s blown up into a bigger deal than it ever was meant to be. No-one sent us an e-mail saying “Hey, who are you?” I’m not sure anyone actually cared about it at the time. Now it’s just an interesting thing for journalists to talk about. I wish we had a better answer to the question.

ES: Yeah, I wish we’d planned it because we would have enjoyed it a lot more rather than being stressed out by it.

JW: But then again, Max Clifford is my father.

ES: No he isn’t!

The first thing you did was a cover of ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ as made famous by The Flamingos. How did you come about that?

ES: I made Jeremy a mixtape with it on there. We decided then to do a cover of it one afternoon.

JW: I’d never heard Elizabeth sing.

ES: I hadn’t really sung before!

It’s odd because another band that are playing here this weekend, North Atlantic Oscillation [Ed - at The Great Escape], covered it too last year. A recent-ish one I really like though is Mercury Rev’s cover, which was a b-side to one of the single releases of ‘Goddess on a Hi-Way’, and also in a John Peel session.

JW: They were doing some Neil Young covers around that period too, acoustic ones.

Yes, ‘Vampire Blues’ is on that single as well. Their ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ has a load of saxophones on it. It’s on their Peel Sessions boxset.

JW: Some of my favourite versions of that are the really cheesy, big-band jazz versions before the Flamingos did it, which was a massive reinvention of the song – they really re-wrote it.

The original is from the early/mid ’30s, isn’t it. Flamingos late Fifties but I guess a lot of people found it through its use in GoodFellas. I know I did…

JW: And American Graffiti.

A lot of people talk about Summer Camp in the same terms as glo-fi bands like Washed Out, Memory Tapes and so on. Do you feel an affinity with that, and them? Or a UK reaction to it?

JW: I can see why people compare us. We are similar, but it’s not like we ever sat down and said “Let’s be a glo-fi band!”

ES: I think it’s natural to have comparisons to them and it’s especially nice, as they are doing great stuff. Likewise most bands in that position will say they’re not set in a scene. We like that stuff but we never really sat down and self-consciously went for that. We can see why the comparison is made but obviously we personally think that what we do is different.

I think it’s interesting as the Wikipedia page for Chillwave…

Both: There’s a Wikipedia page on it!

Yep, and you aren’t on it actually.

JW: Well there you go, that’s the proof. If we aren’t on the Wikipedia entry we can’t be chillwave!

It does mention acts mistakenly labelled by iTunes as chillwave, like The XX, jj and Best Coast.

ES: Really? What I really like is that chillwave was invented by Carles at Hipster Runoff, as a joke. It’s amazing that it’s now a genre, with a Wikipedia page based on how he labelled those bands.

I think that does become a self-perpetuating thing; a lot of these bands self-release stuff on tapes instead of digitally or on CD.

ES: They are into the whole lo-fi aesthetic.

Yes, that seemed to be a happy coincidence at first, but now people are running with it and it’s a key characteristic.

JW: A few years ago it was the likes of Times New Viking doing their releases like that, and a few years ago you had Fennesz’s Endless Summer, which if it came out this year…

It would be included as chillwave, yeah, definitely.

JW: Really though, if somebody wants so label something as being ‘X’, it doesn’t have any effect on the way we think about our music when we’re doing it – but maybe it does when we listen to it.

ES: I think it’s really good to be compared to other bands in such a way as to make you not want to be seen as being as poppy as them say – it gives you an opportunity to move in a different direction.

I think that’s an interesting quirk of what you might want to call ‘The Digital Age’; unlike say Merseybeat, punk, shoegaze or even Britpop, you won’t have met any of these bands. You aren’t working out of one small record label or a club in London, LA or Paris.

ES: That is quite sad though in a way. Now with blogs you can be a Drowned in Sound band or Muso’s Guide or Pitchfork or whatever.

Those are your tribes more than any individual band.

ES: Yeah, that’s how you get classified which in a way is better because we did a remix for  James Yuill, who we only met yesterday -  it was amazing to work with him.

I think it’s really good that there’ve been bands forming from forums in the same way that bands used to from NME adverts.

JW:Yep, Kasier Chiefs found their drummer that way.

It’s good that people can respond to things in that way. It’s like the call-and-response thing between The Beatles and The Beach Boys or punk on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s on a micro-level but it’s more frequent.

JW: Like when ‘No Scrubs’ came out and that other group did ‘No Pigeons’.

While now, a pastiche like that would be on YouTube within days.

ES: The only problem with the era is longevity… everything moves at a much faster pace.

These things have to be place in context, Sporty Thievz’s ‘No Pigeons’ makes no sense if you haven’t heard ‘No Scrubs’

ES: When you are a band and you’ve been playing for years and years at the Hacienda and you finally get there with the internet, there’s a very short time to make an impact.

JW: When I look at it, most of the music I listen to know, it’s music I hear about and buy through the internet.

Oh totally. When I was 16-17, I used to read NME, Mojo, Q, Uncut, Select and Melody Maker, look at the reviews and say “that sounds good, I might buy that.” Now, when I read the ones that are still with us I may have heard a lot of the records already and I’m thinking “I don’t agree with that” or “Yeah, that’s what I thought”.

ES: In a way that’s good and brings everyone to a level – you can tell when someone gives a bad review to say “Ahh! not everyone agrees.”

With the video for ‘Ghost Train’ and the package of the group, the artwork, the MySpace and so on, was there a real aim to have a motif running through in a way that a band like The Smiths did?

ES: I think we’ve just been lucky enough to find a visual image that matches what we do.

JW: The Smiths and Belle and Sebastian are great examples of that.

With their artwork, you could take the name away and tell it was one of their sleeves.

JW: I think for us with the artwork and the blog, which Elizabeth adds to most days, it’s quite easy to look at a photo and say whether it’s a Summer Camp photo or not. The music that we’ve made does seem to have a strong kind of visual sense – or I like to imagine so anyway. It’s not why we’ve done it but I hope that aesthetic is distinct enough for people to know it’s Summer Camp in the same way as you mention with The Smiths.

ES: I haven’t really thought about it like that again, as it’s a happy accident more than anything. I really like having something where the image fits in with the story of the song, and it reflects on each other. To be honest I just really love all those photos and I may have done a blog on them anyway!

JW: I’m sure it’s the same with The Smiths; those were just images that Morrissey liked and connected to something in the music.

In some cases literally, with the lines from Billy Liar and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning being incorporated into the songs and images used on the sleeve.

ES: I think it’s an idea that offsets the music and adds to it. Maybe your own sense of what the songs are about. Not something as literal as “here’s a song that’s about smack and here’s the sleeve of someone doing smack”, though…

Is Summer Camp now the primary focus for both of you or is it an off and on project?

JW: It’s been our primary focus for four months now and I imagine that it’s going to be that for the indefinite future.

ES: We both do other stuff as well, but this is what we are committed to and passionate about. It would be great to do it for as long as possible.

Is this a good way to break up the normal cycle of touring and recording?

JW: Oh yeah, already I mean going back to the chillwave comparisons, the songs that we wrote in our first few months of existence are  nothing like the songs we’ve written since then. They are more all over the place vocally; if you had heard the three most recent songs we have recorded, I don’t think anyone would say we’re a chillwave band.

ES: Then again, to us they sound so different but to anyone else, who knows?

Are you finding your way around in terms of getting the sounds you make in the studio live? Is it a difficult thing, the mix between playing, singing, loops and samples?

ES: It’s tricky. We don’t want to have too much that isn’t live but we have some amazing people that help us out – we are really lucky to have them. It has been difficult though, and each time we play we are getting better and better.

JW: The most important thing is choosing which songs to play, as we’ve got nearly thirty to choose from now.

So has it affected your writing over the past few months, knowing you’ve got to perform the songs live?

ES: A little. We have been having conversations in the middle of writing about how hard it might be to recreate. But we don’t let it put us off.

When you take the famous example of The Beatles just before they stopped touring, there are shows from Japan in 1966 where between the screams and the small PA systems, they can’t get quite get across songs like ‘Nowhere Man’. Aside from all of the other issues they had with touring, they reached a point where they must’ve just thought themselves, “fuck it”.

JW: I dunno. I’ve seen some versions of ‘Nowhere Man’ which are still awesome. We do really enjoying playing live.

ES: It’s just a bit of a challenge that needs to be overcome every now and again.

I’m sure The Beatles would have liked some loops or a laptop to help them out, not that either are some kind of panacea.

JW: I do think that some people see a laptop, and think everything is coming from it. For us, it’s usually only one keyboard sound coming from the laptop; we don’t have any backing track, and all the vocal samples are being triggered by Elizabeth.

ES: We want it to be real; we don’t want it to be seen as fake.

JW: I saw a band who had an orchestra on a laptop. Can you imagine!

ES: Urrggh!

JW: A lot of people probably aren’t that bothered anyway, if it makes the show better, whatever. For us, we just want to be excited about our show.

ES: For us, it’s because we are really anal about controlling all the music coming from the stage.

JW: There are ways of including it that are really good. I’ve done gigs like that before and I don’t think it’s as much fun for the musicians. We want it to be a good show, and we want to be able to get into it.

ES: Plus it kind of restricts you. I’ve only been singing for a little while so it’s good to know that if something went wrong, the band would still be there behind me.

How have you found singing live in general?

ES: Yeah, it’s been amazing. Before we started doing it I said to the band, “I don’t know what I’m going to do! What if I go mad?” It was really odd not knowing what was going to happen, and I was really stressed out. Then as soon as I did the first gig, it was just fine. I wouldn’t say by any stretch I’m a seasoned pro, though. I still have a long way to go as a performer but when you get up there and you start, the adrenaline flows – it keeps you going. Hopefully with more shows we’ll get better and better and better.

After Jeremy mentioned Fennesz, my brain started thinking… even though the vocal samples are twenty years further down the line and not from nature documentaries, your earlier stuff really reminds me of Boards of Canada. And they’re another group who retained an air of mystery for years, until it was revealed that they were brothers. I would almost go as far as describing them as they are prog-chillwave™ (no Google hits for this so I’m claiming it). Thoughts?

ES: I don’t think either of us have ever actually listened to much Boards of Canada, so that wasn’t an influence or reference point for us.  ’90s hip hop like Wu-Tang, Organized Konfusion and Pharcyde were where I first experienced bands using sampling, so I’d state bands like that as more of an influence.

JW: Yeah, I’ve never really listened to much Boards of Canada I’m afraid, but I do see where you’re coming from. I would point to Eno/Byrne’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts as a pretty essential bit of sample tomfoolery.

Also back to our conversation about the nature of reviews and the changing shit that the internet has had on closing that three-month gap between a record going to reviewers and the public. A 15-year-old can download every Rolling Stones album in a little over an hour, and become an ‘expert’ in no time at all.

Do you think that reviewers no longer act as gatekeepers? Do you think that this has made the music press more insular not less, due to a conformation bias between internet music fans, bloggers and the publications? The more democratic nature of the internet has seen a centalisation of taste, with people listening to more music, but end-of-year lists still seem to coalesce around the same 100 or so albums each year. I often find that come December, the more interesting lists come from places like Scandinavia or Poland.

JW: I don’t think there’s such a thing about being an expert when it comes to music. That same teenager could just read up about the band on Wikipedia and be able to win a pub quiz on the Stones without ever having heard a note of their music. I think the idea of a reviewer being a “gatekeeper” to music is a bit unfair on listeners, too. Everyone has the right to get into anything – there’s no rule saying “you can’t listen to our band unless you understand our influences”. That would be very weird. So in that respect I think the internet opening up new avenues of discovering music is a good thing. I think.

ES: I love the idea of music journalists being gatekeepers.  I think it did used to be that one of the main roles of the reviewer was to explain how the music sounded, since they’d heard it and the reader hadn’t.  And now, the readers probably have heard it, and already made up their minds.  I quite like the new way, and I think the growth of small blogs are fantastic.  It means big music publications have to up their game and change how they discuss music, which is great.  And it can also mean there’s sometimes a fixation on finding new bands, as everyone wants to be the first to write about something.  That means older and more established bands sometimes get pushed to one side when they release their second or third album, because everyone’s excited about some new act.  But, as you pointed out yourself, it also means people are digging around to find stuff where they wouldn’t normally look, rather than just taking those lists you mentioned as the be all and end all.

How has it been putting out records with Moshi Moshi, and touring with some of their roster like The Drums and Slow Club? There doesn’t seem to be a definitive Moshi Moshi sound even after four years of the singles club. How did you come about joining their gang?

ES:  Moshi Moshi are amazing.  As a band who never expected to be a band, our priority has always been to work with people who we trust and who value the same things we do.  We were both fans of the label already, and felt really lucky to be invited into their gang.  And working with them, we’ve found that they’re lovely, wise, and hilarious people who tell it like it is.  Touring with Slow Club was brilliant.  We were all mates already, so it was great to tour with them and see how they do it.  Their fanbase is insanely dedicated, and you can totally see why – they’re a band who’ve grown gradually in an old-school way, they’ve done it ‘right’ (whatever that means).  It was amazing to see them at Koko, having a huge crowd singing along.  It was the culmination of all the hard-work and talent those two have put in.  Plus their bassist kicked ass [Ed - that was Jeremy].

Thank you, Summer Camp!