Reading Festival, Caversham Bridge

Reading Festival

August 27-29, 2010

When the music at Reading Festival begins on Friday (following a boozy Thursday session in the town centre), a hangover is as welcome as the evacuation of vomit that preceded it (said sickness is still being blamed on an salmonella-friendly campsite BBQ on Thursday night). As the phrase goes, time stands still for no man (even one with a hangover) and a now-successful remedy is to get a cold pint of Gaymers (other ciders are available, just nowhere near the festival site) and head off to see some bands. … Continue Reading

Standon Calling, Standon

Standon Calling - view from the crowd

Earlier this week, I read an article about how miserable the music festival experience can be. One of their prime examples was Chicago’s Pitchfork Festival; a festival which I had the pleasure of attending last year. And whilst I had an undeniably great time, I can see where the writers of the article were coming from – it was cramped, it was hot, and it wasn’t ideal. … Continue Reading

Offset Festival (Saturday), Hainault Country Park

Offset Festival

September 5, 2009

So here we are again: the first weekend of September. An autumnal chill on the darker nights, and one of the last festivals of the summer – Offset, in a beautiful country park in Essex.

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Metronomy – Not Made For Love EP

Metronomy

Completely out of nowhere, Metronomy have just released a new EP. It’s the first fruit of their new line-up, and it’s a decidely different offering to Nights Out. In fact, it verges closer to the lo-fi (hell, it’s relative!) of their debut album Pip Paine (Pay Back The £5000 You Owe). Kind of. Well actually not really; the Not Made For Love EP is an interesting stopgap with not too much indication of what the future holds.

Title track ‘Not Made For Love’ feels restrained. It’s a slow-builder, with the line “you made a big mistake” repeated over an ever-building cross-section of lines into a still-pared down climax. The sound comes together masterfully, staccato rhythms dropping in and out over the top of delirious in-unison syncopation. Thoughts, hopes or fears that the addition of a drummer in the live show would turn Metronomy into a guitar band seem to have been royally dismissed. … Continue Reading

Offset Festival adds Metronomy to its line-up

Metronomy

Woah there, MG live favourites Metronomy have been announced as the headliners of Loud & Quiet’s stage at Offset Festival this very year, taking place in Hainault Forest on September 5 and 6.

In a line-up already featuring the unchartered likes of A Certain Ratio, The Slits and Damo Suzuki amidst 2009’s tried and tested (The Horrors! Wild Beasts! Future Of The Left!), it’s lining up to be one of the most diverse billings across the year’s festival calendar.

It hasn’t even sold out! And you can check out bands just about to blow up (hopefully not really) such as Male Bonding and An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump. … Continue Reading

A Your Twenties Tour Diary: Country Mouse, Town Mouse

Standon Calling, Hertfordshire, and White Heat, Soho

A warm late July morning, clouds moving fast across the London sky, England giving the Aussies a run for their money in the third test, and a man in a grey towelling bathrobe brandishing a chisel at us as we pull away. All this augurs well – a fine day for a rock show.

man in grey towelling bathrobe

Our little Vauxhall estate is groaning with the paraphernalia of the working band – Fender Stratocasters, Vic Firth drumsticks and cherry pie. We’re not past the Archway roundabout before the little bugger gives out. We enlist the help of some burly bystanders to get the show back on the road.

Vauxhall estate + burly bystanders = back on the road again!

Knights of the Holloway Road! We salute you.

Standon Calling, out by Stansted Airport, is an eerie place at 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon, in the midst of a train strike. It’s our first-ever festival set and, whilst the little bubble dome tent we’re playing in is not exactly overflowing with punters, we acquit ourselves with reasonable aplomb. A couple of Koppaberg pear ciders and we’re away – the catering pasta salad we consume before playing kicks in around midway through the set: better than red bull for sure. We make sure to catch Django Django before heading off back to London for sweet Archway Kebab Centre falafel. Good times.

So, from the empty Hertfordshire wastes of Standon to the fleshpots and fleapits of Soho – our ‘Billionaires’ single launch at White Heat, Madame Jojo’s. When Armageddon comes, it’ll be just the cockroaches and Keith Richards left. And they’ll be sharing a WKD blue at White Heat.

Launching a single is like waving goodbye to your child on their first day at school. You dress make sure they’ve tied their laces and remembered their lunchbox, and then basically they’re out in the big bad playground where other singles by the likes of The Horrors and Jack Penate and Beyonce will come and box their ears and threaten to bogwash them and throw them in the holly bushes. But it’s a step you’ve got to take, so it can make its way in the big bad world.

White Heat is like a comforter for said child – a consoling note in the lunchbox. The first band on was Frankie and the Heartstrings, who were awesome and who feature Pete Gofton, aka Johnny X from Kenickie, on guitar and keys. Basically my new favourite band. … Continue Reading

Our favourite gigs of 2009… so far

Of Montreal

2009’s been a corker, and we’ve only just entered its second half. And what better way to mark its passing than by a quick, chronological rundown of the best live moments thus far…

Russell Warfield

Of Montreal at Manchester University Students Union – January 29

Men dressed as pigs sprayed the crowd with pink feathers during the final, euphoric chorus of ‘A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger’. A man dressed as a tiger held another man upside down whilst he bit his crotch (meanwhile, ninjas infiltrated the dance floor). Barnes underwent three costume changes; one of which left him naked except for shaving foam. These, and countless other relentlessly mental antics, felt like the perfect visual manifestation of the smile-inducing schizophrenia of last year’s Skeletal Lamping. And, luckily, the musicianship suffered nothing for the band’s visual ambitions. From the opener ‘She’s A Rejector’, the crowd were instantly energised and dancing right up until Barnes and company closed their encore with a fun and well-earned cover of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (punctuated by Barnes launching himself into the crowd and trashing gear with his guitar). I left the gig smeared with shaving foam and pink feathers. Surely you must agree that any gig which allows me to use the sentence “I left the gig smeared with shaving foam and pink feathers” deserves an honourable mention as one of the best of the year? … Continue Reading

More additions to line-up for this year’s Underage Festival

Underage Festival

Little Boots, Kid British, Marina and the Diamonds, Golden Silvers and Master Shortie have all joined the line-up for London’s Underage Festival, to be held in Victoria Park on Sunday 2nd August.

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An incontinence-inducing Great Escape billing…

Mika Miko

As well as a stonking bill elsewhere, our friends Levi’s® OnesToWatch® are putting on a dreamy bill at the Brighton-centric extravaganza impending this weekend. The Great Escape looks fab, doesn’t it?

The beautifully-arranged bill includes self-declared “dirty psychedelic flower punks”, Black Lips, and Scottish wonder boys The Twilight Sad who will be fresh back from a European tour supporting Mogwai. Hockey, Dananananakroyd, Mika Miko and Metronomy also figure.

In fact, the line-up looks exactly like this:
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Hinterland – Day One

Mark E. Smith

April 30, 2009

You’re used to my reviews by now, you’ve accepted the way I like to splice them with abstract observations. And here’s some inspired from Hinterland:

(1) Never mind stupid-on-purpose becoming the new smart, why doesn’t precocious-in-hindsight eventually find the musically retarded?
(2) Do I have ADHD or is everyone else not moving for a reason (this isn’t a new abstraction, merely the recollection/grandiose coming together of an old one)?

Glasgow is a strikingly independent city. Those I encountered were interesting, interested and constantly striving. Maybe it’s a magnetism thing, but it’s pretty unusual (self-obsession: check). So it’s only fitting that it has its own festival, Hinterland’s mostly locally-formed line-up aptly tailored to the brief. The most salient observation from the two-day festival are the amount of venues on around one-fifth capacity; only The Fall at The Arches 1 and Jeffrey Lewis at King Tut’s are full (albeit bursting), even Metronomy at the fairly small Arches 2 could do with around another 50 audience members. It’s completely unjustified – there’s around 100 noteworthy acts on the bill, but maybe it’s only novel for me because I’m not a local? Just a sidenote, really.

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