Heartbreak for the romantics as Scott Hutchinson and co take Cambridge out on a date for Valentine’s Day. Jude Clarke reviews.
Jude Clarke
Supersonic Festival 2012
Our picks from the impressive, obscure and beyond experimental line-up at this year’s Supersonic Festival.
Elizabeth Fraser – Meltdown @ The Royal Festival Hall, London 07/08/12
On Tuesday night Elizabeth Fraser simultaneously brought The Royal Festival Hall, and our reviewer therein, to its feet and to its knees.
Heard, and Taken Seriously: Ephebiphobia and The School of Rockupy
Jude Clarke speaks to Jamie Kelsey-Fry of Occupy London to find out more about the School of Rockupy project.
Festival Diary: Supersonic – Custard Factory, Birmingham 21-23/10/11
Jude Clarke report on the Birmingham-based alterno-noise-dance-avant-garde-rock-festival, now in its ninth year and with a selection of music that’s inspiring, challenging, entertaining and baffling in equal parts.
Hanni El Khatib – Will The Guns Come Out
Straight-up, straightforward garage rock, with a side of blues and a touch of rock ‘n’ roll; lacking the kind of distinctive voice that is needed to make the singer more than simply “the one who did that Nike ad song”.
CSS – La Liberación
Their combination of joie de vivre and knowingness, worldliness and innocence is still an appealing one, and when it shines through it feels good to have them, in all their entertainingly contradictory nature, back with us again.
Cat’s Eyes – Cat’s Eyes
This side-project from The Horrors’ Faris Badawan and opera singler Rachel Zaffira brings us an album that purrs like the cats in question, slinky and frequently seductive, but with the occasional unsettling curveballs.
Alexander Tucker – Dorwytch
Tucker weaves together elements that have been around for hundreds of years into something fresh, original and inspired. This album of beauty, gravity and inventive musicianship is as impressive as it is arresting.
Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
7th studio album from the curmudgeonly Scottish instrumentalists, which – whilst not up there with their very highest peaks – is still a well crafted and emotionally coherent offering that merits a place in their canon. Jude Clarke reviews.
Sic Alps – Napa Asylum
An overlong, indulgent and sketchy album, yet one that is still strewn with enough lo-fi-pop-gold to make for simple, uncomplicated enjoyment. Sic Alps return with a collection of 22 tracks, with themes including re-incarnation, magic and schizophrenia. Jude Clarke reviews.
Supersonic Festival – The Custard Factory, Birmingham 22/10 – 24/10/2010
Jude Clarke gets to experience the fantastic festival that is Supersonic, probably one of the most interesting and diverse line-ups in the UK festival circuit.