Sub Pop. Nirvana, right? Grunge, right? Well, right, but that’s just the surface you’re scratching, kiddo.

To celebrate the label’s 25th year, we’ve had a go at compiling a brief history (or introduction, overview, call it what you like) that’s intended as a guide for people who might know Sub Pop for Nirvana, but little else. This, just ten reasons why Sub Pop is rather remarkable, is based on the assumption that if you don’t know Nirvana, there are probably articles you’d rather be reading anyway.

1)       It’s the best university assignment ever

The story of quitting college to follow a rock and roll dream is a familiar one, but Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt went about things in the opposite manner. His label’s name was shortened from that of a radio show that became a zine he authored in the early 1980s called Subterranean Pop, a kindred spirit of Sniffin’ Glue before it and Maximumrockandroll after that focused its attention squarely on the burgeoning post punk, hardcore, noise and proto-grunge music being released by local contemporary DIY labels. Whilst its contents hardly seemed academic, there was a much more bookish purpose to its creation – Pavitt got course credit from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington for every issue. Only a handful of runs in, he’d come across enough amazing sounds to justify releasing accompanying compilation tapes. After nine issues, releasing music rather than commenting on it took precedence. Sub Pop the label was tentatively born with 5,000 pressings of a vinyl-only compilation – the now highly sought-after Sub Pop 100 – in 1986. Its first track was a spoken word (alright, screamed) intro from Steve Albini, with seals of approval not coming much higher.

Steve Albini – Spoken Word Intro Thing:

2)       They made Seattle cool (even before Frasier)

Pavitt worked at a record store called Fallout in the musically thriving Washington city of early 1980s Seattle. He also had a dedicated Sub Pop show on KCMU radio, where he’d meet fellow presenter and subsequent business partner Jonathan Poneman (they both went full time with Sub Pop in 1988, hence this quarter-century anniversary). The city blessed them with flagship bands like Mudhoney and Nirvana – who, though formed in Aberdeen, were regulars on the scene – and they responded in kind. Though its gaze was certainly not narrow, Sub Pop has always been synonymous with alternative rock in Seattle. They were especially supportive in its formative stages, for example flying Melody Maker’s Everett True over all the way from the UK in the hope that he’d whip the British press into a suitable frenzy over the sounds he found in their city. Of course, he duly did. Their support of the locale continues to this day, with one of their finest recent signings, hip hop wizards Shabazz Palaces, also counting themselves Seattle natives. But more on them later. For now, perhaps the defining Seattle grunge song – Mudhoney’s ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’:

As awe inspiringly beautiful, euphoric and masterful as their music was, Air France was more of a members club – open to all, 24/7 – than a band. In seven blurry years, two friends – Joel Karlsson and Henrik Markstedt – encountered a world of (accidental) adventure and (often self inflicted) catastrophe that now, 12 months after the group split, is held as dear to the lucky few they touched as the music itself.

It was always so difficult for journalists and fans to understand the concept of the Swedish duo and the world they existed in unless you got to experience it first hand. Their live show was often talked about with as much fervour and anticipation as that of their elusive debut album – two elephants in the same room that became such a domineering topic in interviews during the band’s latter months but ultimately never saw the light of day.

As much of a tribute as a history lesson, the story of Air France is re-told here by Best Fit founder Rich Thane – a die-hard fan and longtime friend of the band – as well as  Joel and Henrik themselves and the handful people who shaped the group’s short lived career.

Henrik and Joel, circa-2007.

Introduction

“Me and Henrik met in 1997″ explains Joel Karlsson – “I was super shy, but tried at the same time to seem cool and urban. Henrik also seemed to struggle a lot with his social interactions with people and we realised that when we were together, we could communicate with people – we filled in where the other left off. When we found out this equation I think people started to believe that we were cool and, we actually became quite popular. We would write magazines and fanzines. Made radio shows… Start political riots in school and play practical jokes on teachers.”

After high school, the pair would drift apart as further education took its hold and Henrik began studying at the University of Uppsala – 50 minutes north of the pairs native Stockholm. It wasn’t until Joel started a fanzine with a close friend that the pair were eventually reunited, with Henrik brought into the fold to illustrate the ‘zine. Shortly after, and months apart, the pair upped roots and fled to Gothenburg where they’d found love with twin sisters Ida and Elin.

“Henrik and I listened to a lot of dance music this during this period and thought it would be cool to have a band with beats but one that didn’t sounded so cold like everything else that was coming out during that time.” Karlsson continues, “Our first song was called ‘Behind Cabin Curtains’. We worked on it every day for six months until one day our computer crashed and we lost everything…”

‘Collapsing At Your Doorstep’

Never a pair to embrace modern technology by the balls, it was almost a miracle that the pair even finished the first EP – No Trade Winds. Yet, the company they were keeping in the small coastal City eventually made waves towards the influential ears of one Eric Berglund – founder of Sincerely Yours and member of Gothenburg underground pop upstarts The Tough Alliance. In an interview with Pitchfork, they explained of their initial reactions to the sudden label interest – “We panicked, turned off our cell phones, and stayed indoors for weeks. We wanted to keep Air France to ourselves and not have to fucking compromise with anyone.”

Before long the pair realised that their slow working ethic and borderline OCD approach to music making was something they had to make peace with – “we’re never going to feel finished. The song ‘Never Content’ was about that feeling of letting go.”

Only My Bloody Valentine could keep people in on a Saturday night with the promise of a new record. So whilst you listen to ‘MBV’, why not take a trip down memory lane with Thomas Hannan’s retrospective of what made them so great in the first place.

Taking a cursory look back at the rest of the Creation Records roster, the very idea of My Bloody Valentine’s masterwork Loveless being released on a label that has become so synonymous with the rise, success, excess and implosion of something as comparatively base as Britpop seems exceedingly peculiar. Though it dabbled in the more leftfield aspects of indie rock and dance now and again, Creation’s strengths lay in launching bands who looked like folks who worked in the pubs you drank at but whose songs sounded like those you’d end up communally shouting yourself hoarse to at a festival, drunkenly hugging a stranger.  Though a great deal of it was enormously successful and some if it brilliant (indeed, some of the brilliant stuff wasn’t that successful, and vice versa), it’d be difficult to call much of it high art – a claim I’d happily level at Loveless.

An interesting point highlighted by the recent remaster and reissue job done on the band’s two Creation albums and numerous EPs is that Loveless seems like as much of an anomaly in the MBV back catalogue as it does in that of the label that, rumour has it, chucked the best part of a quarter of a million quid at its manufacture. Great though nigh-on every song contained in this series is, and at times confrontational, blissed-out and atonal as they get, you can forgive contemporary MBV fans in 1991 for being knocked for six by Isn’t Anything’s eventual successor.  There’s been nothing quite like Loveless before or since, but being as we are blessed with the opportunity to revisit prior works sounding better than they ever have, it’s a delight to remind oneself that their pre-Loveless material for Creation suffers only in comparison to the classic that ended it.  These records are a testament to the fact that Kevin Shields’ lot were never less than really bloody good.  And once, they were impeccable.

Though it’s doubtful they did so intentionally, MBV know how to build a legend.  In the time between their final album and their 2007 reformation, rumour has it that Kevin Shields discarded hundreds of recordings of new MBV tracks, ones that range from the purely dissonant to, if some talk is to be believed, bordering on jungle.  Thing is, nobody’s heard any of it.  Chat about there being a new album ‘this year’ has gone on for the past 20, with even the eventual appearance of these long-rumoured reissues coming as something of a surprise.  For a while it seemed as if MBV had split up in the best way any band can; without any fanfare, they just stopped making music.

Much like that of Nick Drake (of whom no film exists, anywhere) their legend has been bolstered by the fact that relatively little footage of their renowned live show is available, and what there is certainly doesn’t live up to the way we’re told it sounded back in the day – there’s only so much justice a fan-recorded YouTube clip from a late Eighties performance can do to a band reported to be quite this cacophonous.  As such, talk of their live prowess reached near-mythical levels, discussed either in increasingly exaggerated terms by people who once experienced it, or left to the imaginations of a new generation who thought they’d never get to have it ravage their own ears.

Then, a reformation in ‘07 and OH MY GOOD GOD.  It turns out they really did like to mutate a single note from ‘You Made Me Realise’ in to up to half an hour of unrelenting squall so loud that both times I experienced it I could feel my lungs rattling around inside my rib cage.  Reaching 130dB, the band affectionately referred to it as the “holocaust section”.  Earplugs were handed out at the beginning of their reunion shows in a gesture that at first seemed cute, but instantly became a matter of physical necessity.  Hell, I like noise – purely atonal, dissonant, confrontational, nasty noise – and have been to see my fair share of it performed live.  But this was a sound that would make Merzbow cry blood.

Now, thanks to one of history’s most painstaking remastering jobs helmed by Shields himself, the records hint at that live power in a way they never quite managed before.  I won’t bore you with further talk of decibel levels, the limitations of the modern compact disc player or mp3 compression – just be assured that the improved sonics of these reissues are a revelation, and wholly justify a second purchase.  Rest assured Shields has not just spent all this time on the liner notes.

My Bloody Valentine evolved from far less deafening beginnings.  Though their fondness for noise was always apparent, it often took the form of more of a hissing, crackling sound rather than the repeated punches to the head of later releases, and sat atop songs that veered between a punky thrash and bubblegum pop, bits of it even bordering on twee.  Formed in 1983 by teenhood friends Kevin Shields and drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig in Dublin, Ireland, the band who eventually would become known as My Bloody Valentine would experience numerous personnel, name and stylistic changes before settling on a core line up; Shields and Ó Cíosóig remain two original members of a group that in its infancy also featured singer Dave Conway and his girlfriend Tina Durkin on keyboards.  This quartet relocated to Berlin for the recording of their debut mini-LP This Is Your Bloody Valentine, with Conway assuming the role of chief songwriter.  Released in January 1985 on Tycoon records, it’s a curious and now hard to come by record heavier on goth-rock and tinny thrash guitars than it was on either melody or sonic prowess.

After it failed to make much of a commercial or critical impact, the band relocated to London to record a series of EPs, losing the under-confident Durkin somewhere along the way.  Rather than search for a replacement keyboardist, the band focused its efforts on recruiting a bass player and ended up enlisting the services of Debbie Googe, who plays with them to this day.  Their first release with Googe (and only one on Fever records) was December 1985’s Geek EP, a Cramps-esque romp of which Shields is said to be pretty ashamed, the lack of attention paid to it leading him to contemplate whether a move to New York – and away from My Bloody Valentine entirely – might be a better option.

Thankfully, he stayed put.  And though their next release, The New Record By My Bloody Valentine, might have a title as imaginative as that of an early Leonard Cohen record, it in fact saw a more forward thinking, focused, increasingly bonded MBV take on the indie-pop sound of the time (Tallulah Gosh, The Pastels et al.) with far more pleasing results than displayed on its predecessor.  This early line up would release one more limited edition EP – 1987’s Sunny Sundae Smile, on Lazy Records – before parting company with Dave Conway, whose struggle with a recurring gastric illness began to take precedence over life in what was at the time a mildly unsuccessful indie rock group.

Step forward Kevin Shields.  Though vocalist Bilinda Butcher was also recruited through the age-old method of putting an ad in the music press (cementing the present day line up), she was less of a replacement for Conway than a shift towards a new way of doing things entirely – which, it’s probably fair to say, was Shields’ way (the pair also began a brief relationship at the time).  Now operating as chief songwriter and co-lead singer with Butcher, Shields oversaw a re-think of My Bloody Valentine through which the band as we know them today would really start to take shape.

2012 was the year that indie finally died. It was a slow demise, not so much tragic as pathetic; a gentle slide into senility, punctuated by death rattles that sounded very much like cassette-only EPs.

Critiques of guitar music in 2012 have invariably focused on its tendency for throwback, but indie, in all its permutations (the vast majority of which involve boys (almost always boys) with guitars), has always been characterised by its rearguard nature. It seldom looks forward without first taking a lengthy glance over its shoulder, surveying the landscape from which it emerged. In fact, it seldom looks forward.

This retromanic character has been the subject of endless conversation since the publication of Simon Reynolds’ most recent book. Retromania set out to explain “pop culture’s addiction to its own past,” armed with a vague sense of unease about iPods and a passing acquaintance with critical theory, and ended up defining the terms of the discussion for the next year and half. But the past twelve months have demonstrated that retromania is too blunt an instrument to really tackle the problem of mainstream guitar music. A quick turn around London’s dive venues (many of which are now firm establishment fixtures thanks, in great part, to indie’s success in the early 2000s) reveals something far more complicated than Reynolds’ reductive analysis suggests.

The heyday of the straight-up MC5 rip-off or the Gang Of Four tribute are, thank God, seemingly over. Similitude is no longer the marker of authenticity. It’s no longer adequate to say “Splashh sound like Dinosaur Jr.,” or “Peace sound like a shitter Happy Mondays,” or “Palma Violets long more than anything even to sound like a shit tribute to a shit tribute to The Clash.” Straight retro mimesis seems to be over – and it has been replaced, fittingly enough, by what we might call a New Retro: a more complex aesthetic that reflects a generation’s confusion. Individually these bands are less than worthless. Together, though, they mean something. And that thing is not pleasant.

The temporal remains indie’s key concern. But while in the past it was all about the past, today it’s about neither past nor future, but rather about negating time altogether – about wrenching itself into timelessness. When yet another band pitches up in denim and tie-dye, their intention is not just to flick back the calendar to the mid ‘90s. Instead they are displaying the signifiers they have self-consciously accreted, the ultimate goal of the process being not the production of new (or old) music but the production of a timeless affect. They want to make you feel a certain way – the way that they feel, the way their friends feel. It’s something close to melancholy, but notably more violent. It’s a generational pall.

Indie is no longer content to simply bolt together old periods and call them ‘now’, and we can see this in part as an attempt to reclaim narrative control. The New Retro is being played by middle class kids who felt they had been promised something. They are resolutely not the people who are suffering most as the social fissures widen, but despite this they tend to have seen a major difference between their visions for their life and their lived experience. They reached their future and, waddya know, it really wasn’t what they’d been told to expect.

So my generation has given up its faith in the notion of ‘future’ altogether. The myth of linear progress, trending ever upwards, tilting ever forward, has been comprehensively destroyed. “No future” retroactively became the slogan under which punk operated, but those two words have never carried as much meaning as they do for those who find themselves under the age of 30 today. We missed the long boom. Ours is the first generation in modern history for which peacetime life will be worse than it was for their parents.

And yet the New Retro crowd are unwilling to fully embrace the past either, understanding that you cannot happily immerse yourself in any specific time period if you have lost your faith in time itself. The bittersweet gluttony of the ‘90s was predicated on the idea either that the boom would last forever, or that we’d better have a fuck-off party before it finished. Now the boom is over, and the after-image of that party can only ever seem dirty.

So indie no longer has confidence in the past on which it has always relied, but finds itself unable to stop mining that past for the symbols it think it needs in order to explain its sadness, simply because it is so creatively exhausted that it cannot make its own. It is in limbo, half shorn of its umbilical link to the thing that simultaneously feeds and kills it.

Meanwhile it has proven itself entirely incapable of imagining what comes next. We are being buffeted by the most significant events in two generations, and these bands are unwilling or unable to engage with them on a level more sophisticated than that of blank dysphoria. Today more than ever, music should function as a cipher for the riddle of what it means to live here, now. Indie can’t survive its inability to recognise this, nor should it.

In 2013, then, we need artists with the ability to turn their gaze not backwards and not even forwards, but rather outwards. Valuable new movements will come only from an interrogation of the sorry state in which we find ourselves – an interrogation that acknowledges our dysphoria but which is willing to push through it, ready to develop the language we need in order to properly articulate our condition. Indie has collapsed under the weight of its own solipsism. Its death is long overdue.

Myspace is back, and it’s all about music. Want to try it out before anyone else? Read on to find out how to explore the new Myspace right now.

“Mr J T. What you got for me?”

“An entirely redesigned version of the social network that came to define the way in which bands connect with their audience.”

“Oh. That’s…unexpected.”

Justin Timberlake is a very modern Renaissance man. Apparently bored with brining sexy back, the Justified man has turned his hand to social networking – and the fruits of his labour can be seen in the fantastic reimagining of Myspace, set to launch next year.

In its salad days, Myspace was the paragon of social networking, the place in which millions of teenage identities were painstakingly honed.

In its new iteration, though, Myspace is going back to what it did best. Music was always the beating heart of the network, and now it is the cornerstone on which the entire structure is based. Mr JT is trying to change the way in which you discover and listen, placing the emphasis back on individual expression – but, crucially, providing a beautiful new interface and a solid new infrastructure on which users can rely.

The new Myspace looks, we must say, absolutely beautiful. With its infinite scroll, genuinely stunning predictive search (just start typing and a search box will fill the screen, ready populated with suggestions for artist, tracks, and more), and huge images, it is as contemporary a design as we could imagine. Gone is the clunky experience that came to define Web 2.0, in which users were expected to adapt to a platform. Instead, this is a network built with the user and the content producer at the very centre.

We’ve quickly come to love the new Myspace. Aside from the design, the platform’s most impressive aspect is its ‘mixes’ function. Mixes allow users to curate different media within a single presentation. You’re not limited to photos, or audio, or video; instead you can combine all of these media into one package. This seems to perfectly reflect the changing nature of music. Artists want to produce multimedia artefacts; they want the visual aspect of their work to be just as prominent as the music. The new Myspace recognises this, and it makes it easier than ever for bands to realise their ambitions.

Try out the new Myspace now

The new Myspace is currently in private beta – but Best Fit readers can sign up right now. All you need to do is send a blank email to thelineofbestfit@myspace-inc.com, and you’ll be sent your login details. You can thank Justin later.

Alt-J‘s win at last night’s Mercury Prize saw the band occupying the rather strange role of simultaneously being the bookies favourites as well as the tipster’s outside pick.

Capping off a remarkable twelve months from the band, which has seen the group’s rapid ascent from mid-bill other-stage festival slots to daytime radio airplays. Such a climb, however, has evoked its detractors – meaning the fourpiece’s win will not be celebrated by many within their traditional fanbase. The decision and the consequential rejoice and dismay it has brought nonetheless shows what impact the Mercurys still have after 20 years.

Having been invited to attend our first ever Mercury ceremony, and the first in its new home of the Roundhouse, we donned our suit we only tend to wear for weddings, funerals and the occasional time we get a bit too serious whilst playing Football Manager, and headed to the Camden venue for the big event, trying not to let it be known that this was finally the night we get to break in our new pair of brogues. The switch can only be a good thing for the awards, as it moves from the industry-orientated Grosvenor Hotel to a location “with rich musical heritage”, as the evening’s host Lauren Laverne points out, and one more fitting to what the night should be celebrating.

And indeed, this shift of focus seems to be helped by the recent series of Mercury Prize live shows taking place at London’s LSO St. Luke’s over the past few months. There seems to be a sense that the Mercury organisers are acknowledging some criticism that has been aimed towards them in recent years, be it that they award too many major label acts or that their choices could often be considered “safe” options.

The fact that the winner of the evening goes to the bookies favourite won’t help the judges in this seemingly new slate after two decades of the trophy. ”The prize nobody really cares about was won by a band nobody really loves,” writes The Daily Telegraph’s Neil McCormick in his blog on Alt-J’s scoop. Continuing: “The victory of Alt-J should be another nail in the coffin of the monumentally irrelevant Barclaycard Mercury Prize, which has, after 20 years of lukewarm controversy and pitiful prize money surely outlived its inscrutable purpose.”

But Alt-J’s success is a surprise if we take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Little over a year ago we ourselves were tipping this youthful-looking Cambridge-via-Leeds fourpiece after witnessing their buzzmaking set at Cardiff’s Swn Festival. Not even the most clued up tipsters back then would have rushed to their Twitter account and predicted such a rapid ascent from the Apple Mac keyboard enthusiasts in twelve months time. Alt-J’s debut is an album that has been heralded by both bloggers and radio listeners alike.

However, the backlash against the group has not been that it isn’t a good album, but that it arguably isn’t a great one either. “Alt-J’s An Awesome Wave combines unexpected shards of sound with mesmerising rhythms, compelling melodies and intriguing songs. A tantalising and delightful album,” said Simon Frith, the chair of Mercury judges, explaining the panel’s decision. For an accolade known for applauding pioneering music, this is hardly groundbreaking praise. At the same time, it could very easily be said that An Awesome Wave is hardly a groundbreaking album, unless you’re the type of person who think it’s “making guitar music cool again” – a phrase so foolish that it sounds like Putin talking about punk music. While it might indeed be a strong record, it will hardly pave the sound of music for years to come like Primal Scream, Pulp and even The Arctic Monkeys did. Even Alt-J themselves, ever down-to-earth, admitted they largely only like the album “because they made it”.

Perhaps the problem was not with Alt-J, though. Perhaps it’s merely down to the fact that no album has come out that has really made us sit up and pay attention. But despite its flurry of middling indie acts, the shortlist wasn’t totally void of innovation however. You won’t find it in the likes of Plan B‘s archaic, misguided and misogynistic lyrics though. Instead it’s in Devotion, the debut album by Jessie Ware that we’ve long champion and to whom we would give the award if only they’d asked us, that you find dub and electronic influences  mixed with soul, funk and pop overtones, all the while managing to exhibit characteristics wholly of its own niche. It’s pop music for a generation who can find an infinite of knowledge at just the click of a button or mouse. With Sam Lee, you lay witness to new life being carved into the well-trodden path of the singer-songwriter, proving the ever-crowded folk scene could still offer strength and eloquence of expression yet. Elsewhere Roller Trio manage the seemingly impossible task of making jazz actually accessible.

This year’s list, however, can be criticised quite reasonably for its lack of diversity. While the Mercury judges protest that their picks are not influenced by genre forms by any means, the lack of electronic-based music within the 2012 nominees cannot be ignored. The judges of the Mercury Prize have never been ones opposed to music of electronic means in the past, shortlisting the likes of Massive Attack, Prodigy, New Order way back to the award’s origins in 1992, even handing the award to Portishead for their trip-hop classic Dummy in 1995. This year sees electronic music at an all-time minimum, following on from last year’s perhaps excessive inclusion of the likes of James Blake, Katy B, Metronomy and Jon Hopkins. Actress and Rustie are only a few to create sonically mesmerising records shunned from a Mercury Prize nod this time round though. We can only hope that 2013 sees Berlin-based Brit producer Gold Panda create a second album so good that it simply cannot be ignored.

As Alt-J celebrate their surprise win, you truly see how much impact the Mercury Prize can have on a band’s career – in terms of money, fame and record sales. You hope they can only capitalise on this opportunity in the same way now-cool-household-names The xx have, rather than heading the same direction as, say, Speech Debelle. While it will always have its critics, it remains an award that gets people talking about the things that matter in music rather than staying at home and tweeting about the X-Factor. And surely, that has to be a good thing.

This year’s Barclaycard Mercury Prize will be announced at a ceremony tonight (1 November) at the Roundhouse in London, and The Line Of Best Fit shall be there, schmoozing, tweeting and probably having one too many glasses of whatever complementary drinks are on offer.

To keep up with all the news live from the event, as well as photos and indie celeb-spotting exclusives, follow @BestFitMusic on Twitter or ‘like’ our official Facebook page.

Who will Best Fit be rooting for on the night, we hear you ask? Well, our money is with Richard Hawley but our heart’s with Jessie Ware.

To help you make your own mind up, here’s a rundown of all the nominated acts:

Alt-J - An Awesome Wave

Little over a year ago we were tipping this youthful-looking Cambridge-via-Leeds fourpiece after witnessing their buzzmaking set at Cardiff’s Swn Festival. Not even the most clued up tipster would have predicted such a rapid ascent from the Apple Mac keyboard enthusiasts, however. While many will shout until their lungs give in that it’s grossly overrated, Alt-J’s debut is nonetheless an album that has largely been heralded by bloggers and radio listeners alike and occupies this year’s spot of ‘Band That Most People Think Should But Admit Probably Won’t Win’.

—–

Ben Howard - Every Kingdom

The realisation that Ben Howard is still only in his mid-twenties comes as a shock to all, not because he’s been around for a while yet – this release is only his first – but that he seems wise beyond his handful of years. Influenced at an early age from a musical education of Bob Dylan and Nina Simone, Howard’s record breathed new life into the well-trodden path of a singer-songwriter, proving the crowded scene could still offer strength and eloquence of expression yet.

—–

Django Django - Django Django

Dropping way back in January, the eponymous release from Scottish quartet Django Django has managed to return repeatedly to our ‘Recently Played’ lists throughout the seasons with help from their unrelenting touring schedule, summer festival highlight performances and an album that’s as fragmented and varying as their artwork and promo shots.

—–

Field Music - Plumb

While 2010′s Measure may be the record most dear to Field Music fans’ hearts, and maybe even to the band itself, 2012′s Plumb saw that the Sunderland sibling pair return after solo outings on their own to recapture some of the form they experienced before they left off. Perhaps not as accessible and coherent as its predecessor, it nonetheless shows the band to be one with many ideas in their cranium whenever you give it a little rattle.

—–

Jessie Ware - Devotion

Having spent the most part of 2011 as dubstep’s favourite female featuring act, having inherited the crown from one Katy B before her, this year has seen Brixton’s Jessie Ware carving out her own career and blossoming into a bonafide popstar in her own right. Devotion blends the singer’s dub and electronic influences with help from producer friend Julio Bashmore with jazz, soul and pop overtones, all the while, however, managing to exhibit characteristics wholly of its own niche. This is our winner, without a doubt.

—–

“I always think there are two routes to Blur. The high street route and this other route round the back, which is a little more interesting.” – Graham Coxon, NME, 2009

So spoke Graham Coxon when quizzed about the setlist for the gigs that saw him return – after a near decade-long absence – to the band he’d started at Goldsmiths College some twenty years prior.  In a sporadic but occasionally exhilarating fashion, it’s a reunion that has continued to the stage where Blur can celebrate the twenty first anniversary of their debut album Leisure with the release of a career-spanning box set, Blur – 21: The Box, as a proper, functioning band, one handed the honour of closing the London 2012 Olympic Games atop a bill that sees them lauded higher even than established national treasures like New Order and The Specials.

Coxon’s ‘high street / route round the back’ analogy is handy when trying to reconcile why it is records by Blur are as likely to exist in collections of those who own around twenty CDs as they are in the vast libraries of fellas obsessively dusting their alphabetised Sonic Youth vinyl.  What the box set ably demonstrates is that there’s more to both sides of the band than anyone other than its members could possibly have guessed before.  Street’s masterful remastering work on what amounts to nigh-on their entire studio recordings not only hangs fresh bunting on the Blur high street, but the wealth of demo versions, alternative takes and rare live footage featured in Blur – 21 points out not only the route round the back, but also the window left slightly ajar on the second floor, the basement lock that gives way if you just jiggle it a bit, and the bookcase that opens up to a secret vault if you gently pull out Damon’s copy of London Fields.  It’s this close to just being, well, a bit much really.

A preface – this article is the work of one whose critical faculties when it comes to Blur are, in honesty, completely shot to shit.  If you told me Damon Albarn would be farting in a box somewhere in the UK, I’d ask you for a presale link.  As such, it’s not really your standard review of Blur – 21, more of a retrospective, or exploration of the darker corners of a discography that contains some of the brightest moments in British guitar music of the Nineties.  Maybe we’ll all learn something, or maybe I’ll prove incapable of containing my fanboy tendencies and go off on one about the audacity of folk referring to this as a ‘complete recordings’ when there’s no sign of any studio take of ‘Day Upon Day’, leaving us still only with the live version recorded at the Bath Moles Club in 1990.  That, friend, is just the risk we’re running here.

Anyhow, obsessives, haters and the ambivalent alike cannot fail to have noticed that Blur are back.  Well, they kind of are.  And also they’re not.  There are new studio recordings, interviews conducted as an amiable four piece, gigs both small and massive.  What we’ve not got however is a new album.  But with the release of Blur 21, we’re provided with what pretty much equates to a good few records’ worth of never before heard material not just culled from their last Coxon-less fumblings around the North African desert, oh no, but a snapshot of a band at the peak of their powers.  It’s enough music for a few new Blur LPs, a fair chunk of it culled from that most purple of patches around Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife and Blur.  Which is arguably better than anything they’re going to come up with now, right?

A studio version of ‘Day Upon Day’ aside (dude, let it go…), Blur – 21 is so comprehensive that it even includes a wealth of material from the band Blur were before Food records sat them down and suggested the name ‘Seymour’ was ‘too student’, imploring them to pick something from a provided list that was more of the times (like, ‘Ride’ or something).  That band was formed of childhood friends Albarn and Coxon and the latter’s Goldsmiths pal Stephen James on bass, who insisted on being called by his middle name Alex upon his arrival at art school.  Joining them for all things drums was Dave Rowntree, who’d previously played in bands with Coxon in Colchester, Essex.

Seymour’s music can accurately be described largely as a bunch of students pissing about; songs very rarely stick to one tempo, the recordings range from lo-fi to lower-fi, and you could either call the lyrics Dadaist or puerile depending on how generous you felt like being.  For much of it, there’s a ramshackle, on the edge of destruction quality that’s oddly reminiscent of the Butthole Surfers if they were smashed on lukewarm lager as opposed to hallucinogenics, the Stone Roses-esque bagginess of their debut album Leisure almost wholly absent.  Much of it, though a hell of a lot of fun, is musically a dead end.  But there are early versions here of songs like ‘Sing’ and ‘Birthday’ that were the reason that Dave Balfe and Andy Ross at Food clocked that, with a bit of guidance, there might just be something special going on after all.

With Blur – 21 including a ten minute-long Seymour rehearsal jam of Blur’s debut single ‘She’s So High’, it’s possible to actually pinpoint the moment when the one band morphed in to the other.  Though only intermittently in tune and seemingly pretty aimless, this thoroughly trying listen for anyone whose interest in the band could only be described as passing is at least of historical importance – it’s the exact recording on which Blur became Blur.  Simplistic though it may be, the final version (thanks largely to Coxon’s gorgeous guitar riff) has stood the test of time better than much of Leisure, an album Albarn deems something of a missed opportunity.  Superior tunes such as ‘Inertia’ and ‘Explain’ were condemned to b-side status at the time in favour of a contemporary, baggy flavour that, though preferred by their label, never really suited the band beyond glorious anomalies like second single ‘There’s No Other Way’.  That number was to propel the band in to the top ten, on to Top Of The Pops and, for a few months, make them a fixture of the high street in such a manner that had indie purists doubting whether they’d put in the ground work – where exactly was the route round the back?

Blur toured the hell out of Leisure, and though the experience nearly killed them, it eventually led to a regrouping and the formation of a gang mentality that would see them produce their first great works. The failure to capture the attention of enough of the public to propel the now-classic ‘Popscene’ single further up the charts than number 32 led to it not being included on the band’s second record (“if you didn’t want it then, you’re not having it now”, remarked Coxon), despite it now being a staple of any Blur set. But it did see Blur’s confidence in their own abilities grow immeasurably, perhaps bolstered by the fact that they were now sharing US bills with the likes of Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine rather than Jesus Jones and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin back home.  Coxon in particular would start revealing just how closely he paid attention to such American guitar bands in his own playing, and in combination with Albarn’s increasingly Anglocentric lyrical and melodic focus, drawing from The Kinks and David Bowie, it all still sounds remarkably fresh.

The record in question, of course, is Modern Life Is Rubbish.  Though again ignored by the high street Blur fan – in fairness, there barely was such a person matching the description left in 1992 – it was a work of which the band were, and remain, justifiably proud. Though a calculated attempt at creating a ‘Big Hit Rock Record’ by getting a fresh-from-Nevermind Butch Vig on board was mooted, the band stuck with Stephen Street (responsible for the finest of Leisure’s sound) for an album that sees Blur displaying the diversity of their capabilities for the first real time.  Anthemic explorations of the London and its effect on the minutiae of human relationships (‘For Tomorrow’) and punky pop culture romps like ‘Advert’ sit alongside songs where characters deal with contemporary life by either becoming obsessed with the details (‘Colin Zeal’ looking at his watch to find “he’s on time yet again”) or get driven mad by the pointlessness of it all (the ‘Pressure On Julian’ of “pushing trolleys in the car park from B to A and back to B”) over music as curiously forward thinking as it is nostalgic for some kind of golden era of songwriting.

The Red Bull Music Academy stage at Sonar 2012. Photo: Landerphoto.net / Red Bull Music Academy

This week a clutch of artists from a brace of countries received emails inviting them to the 2012 Red Bull Music Academy.

The Academy offers producers, DJs, and instrumentalists an opportunity to learn and collaborate in dedicated studios, under the tutelage of some of the world’s musical luminaries.

This year’s Academy will be held in New York, with Best Fit favourites Koreless and Rudi Zygadlo in attendance. At last month’s Sonar we caught up with some Red Bull alumni to find out what the experience meant to them.

Salva

“It was life-changing. The friends I made, I consider them family. And the crew, every time I see them out and about in different cities all over the world, it’s always a big reunion.

The experience itself changed the way I work pretty much immediately, changed my influences pretty much immediately. It really opened me up. It’s awesome to find something else to really enthuse about.

[Before the Academy] I was never one to collaborate at all, but I’ve probably done 15 collaborations this year. Everyone who comes through LA, I get in the lab. That’s the spirit of things in general lately. Everyone’s unified. Everyone’s either on Logic or Ableton. Ableton, especially, is really conducive to collaboration. Red Bull actually changed to Ableton after using for Logic after ten years. Technically that’s a huge thing. And being in the studio with Trevor Horn and all those guys – all the lecturers hung out and enjoyed it as much as we did. Spending time with those guys was life-changing.”

Nightwave

“You wake up around 10, eat, then you have a lecture in the morning. Another lecture in the afternoon, then there’s free time in the studio. And every night there’s a clubnight where one or two of the participants perform, so that’s two weeks of going out then waking up at 10. The tempo is very hard, but you learn a lot and you work very hard. There are about 12 studios and they’re all really well equipped. For me that was amazing. I don’t use hardware, but they had all the possible hardware that you could think of. You take it, play with it, collaborate with people. That’s really important. There aren’t enough studios, so you have to pair up and explore ideas. That was really important for me because I’d never collaborated before. I guess I had no confidence. But that all went away; everyone just blended in.”

Brenmar

“It’s an opportunity to collaborate with people you don’t really know, from all over the world, with different reference points. As a producer it’s usually just you and your computer, but by default you’re forced to collaborate because there are less studios than there are people. So there’s usually at least two, sometimes three or four people in each studio.

They try to mix it up. You’ve got house-heads, you’ve got hip-hop producers, vocalists, people in bands, people who play real instruments. It’s just a mix. Everyone’s excited to be there – they’re giving you all this free gear, this free studio time. Everyone’s enthusiastic about what they’re doing, and about their music. That’s the best part: everyone is there because they’ve earned being there. When you’re around other people in the same scenario, even if you don’t make the same music, you can still find some reference points. We’re all there, we’re all sharing the same experience. It’s like, “You make ragga, and you sing in a punk band, but you like dance music, and I’m down with trying something new.” You all share that same bond, even though musically you might be on a different level.

Most of the Americans that had been accepted, I knew already. It’s an opportunity to spend every day together for two weeks, just making music. I cemented relationships I already had, and then there were new ones that I made.

It’s really intense. Without giving too much away, you’ve got two lectures a day, studio time, and then a party almost every night. Madrid doesn’t close until 6 or 7 in the morning, and they bring in amazing guests. It’s like, “Yes, a free show with Erykah Badu, Jamie Woon, and Hudson Mohawke? I’m tired as shit, I’ve partied for eight days, but I’m going to the show.”

Frankie Knuckles lectured, and had a show that same night, but I was on a bender. You have to wake up at 10, but you don’t go to bed until 6 or 7. You’re cool the first couple of days, but by the fourth or fifth night you need some real sleep. I had to take the night off for Frankie Knuckles.”

Peter Hayes, the drummer with London dream pop band Echo Lake tragically passed away on Thursday 21 June. A long-time personal friend of the site, it fills us with huge sadness that such a talented and gentle soul could have his life cut so short at such a young age.

As well as being an incredibly talented drummer, Pete worked as a camera assistant for various television companies and indeed on occasion for our own Best Fit Sessions – most notably with Oh Land.

Our dearest and deepest thoughts go out to Pete’s family, his girlfriend Caroline – a former editor at Best Fit and of course his loyal band mates Linda, Thom, Steve and Kier.

We will be donating a portion of The Line Of Best Fit’s revenue to the British Heart Foundation in memory of Pete. If you’re able, we urge you to give to the same cause – whether big or small. It would mean the world to Pete and his family at this extremely difficult time. A Just Giving page dedicated to Pete has been created which you can access here.

Echo Lake’s debut album Wild Peace is out Monday 25 June. This is reason to celebrate: massively devoted to the band from day one, we’re certain Pete will be looking down from the heavens with his unforgettable wide eyed smile, proud as punch.

Pete was 25 years old. He will be dearly missed by all.

An official statement from Pete’s friend and band mate Thom Hill can be read here.

Make a donation to the British Heart Foundation via Just Giving.

The countdown is very nearly over. On the evening of the 19 June, the winner of the first ever Scottish Album of the Year Award will be announced in a highly anticipated ceremony at Glasgow’s celebrated Film City. In the run up to this event, a long list of 20 albums was selected by judges from throughout the creative industries, from which a specially selected panel of music minds picked nine to feature on the award’s shortlist, with the tenth album being chosen via public vote.

Now, ten Scottish acts are in with the chance of winning the main prize of £10,000, with each of the runners up receiving £1,000 in what’s proving to be a very interesting competition indeed. Have a closer look at the nominees below to see who you think will be in with a chance of winning the inaugural Scottish Album of the Year Award.

Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat – Everything’s Getting Older

…Their collective experience radiates from every note of every song on this album. Together, the pair achieve a brilliantly exotic yet bleak record with quirky avant-garde asides, moments of profound sadness, some drunken silliness, Glaswegian pathetic fallacy, remote ugliness and snippets of bliss all tied up in narrative packages that treat each subject with a humble reverence and restraint.
- Stephen Smith

Conquering Animal Sound – Kammerspiel

Rarely does anything seem too clear on this album and the manipulation of sounds is magical at points, with reverb drenched vocals enveloping themselves until they become slow crystalline drones, the draped guitar lines stretching out like vast orchestral canvasses. Conquering Animal Sound specialise in layering simple sounds that continually become more inextricably linked, and much more complex to decipher.
- Chris Tapley

Happy Particles – Under Sleeping Waves

Underneath velvet instrumentation and blissful falsetto cooing, Happy Particles create achingly tender soundscapes that aptly embody the gorgeous title Under Sleeping Waves. Comprising ten tracks, beset on all sides with the pattering of dewdrop percussion and humming of masterfully composed strings, the album is breathtakingly elegant and as overpoweringly surrounding as the crashing waves of the deepest, bluest ocean.
- Merlin Jobst 

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine

Diamond Mine isn’t the pair’s first collaboration. The familiarity, though, has bred brilliance. Hopkins has selected his six favourite tracks and set about reworking them to accentuate Anderson’s astonishing vocals. His role here is perhaps more subtle than what he’s been used to recently, but no less important. This album is a (quietly) roaring success.
- Finbarr Bermingham

Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

The most enjoyable moments are when the band embrace their inner kraut. ‘Mexican Grand Prix’ has a resolutely motorik beat, breathy vocodered vocals and that lovely balance between strictness of rhythm and flight-of-fancy that makes this music transcendent. Best of all is ‘George Square Thatcher Death Party’: fast and electronic with high mysterious voices offset by guitars; evocative, energetic, meaningful.
- Jude Clarke

There are few phenomena more likely to cause unsustainable rises in music geeks’ blood pressure than that of the eBay record profiteer. They are an easily identifiable fixture on Record Store Day; a couple of dozen men (always men) in shabby trench coats and military surplus rucksacks, twitchily fingering dogeared lists.

These little parasites are an irritation with which record shops and punters have simply had to learn to deal. But this year the scourge seemed even more egregious – because they were profiting from a cancer charity’s fundraising efforts.

Just up the road from the cash till thrum of Rough Trade East, a gallery called Idea Generation was hosting an exhibition of ‘Secret 7″‘s. Several hundred artists had been invited to create artwork for one of seven tracks. The Cure, DJ Shadow, and Shouty Florence were amongst those who donated tracks; Robert Smith, David Shrigley, and Central Station were amongst the artists. The rules were simple: pick a sleeve you like. You don’t know who the artist is, or which track is inside. All the pieces are £40. All proceeds go to the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Well, with crippling inevitability, some charming chap (I’m willing to bet it’s a chap) calling himself ‘rock-collectibles’ has already had the forethought to put the handmade Robert Smith ‘Friday I’m In Love’ cover up on eBay. The auction has eight days left to run – and it’s up to £1,000. And the fucker has the audacity to charge £4.50 for economy delivery.

Stockholm, December 2011. Photo: Victor Lundmark

“We have always dreamt of those last moments where we’re finishing the last changes of the last song of what could be our first full length record. I don’t know if I’ll ever live to see that day. We are restless people, always wanting to try different things, never able to let a song be.”

If you were ever lucky enough to be in the company of Air France, you’ll know that one of the main questions fired at them was “when” or “if” there was ever going to be a full length album. For the fans it became a guessing game; scouring the internet for clues and trying to decipher from the duo’s increasingly rare interviews whether they were joking around or deadly serious: “Joel has no sense of structure at all and Henrik doesn’t know how to start or finish a song.”

The thing is, sometimes a group can exist in a sense where the music becomes almost secondary. The knowledge that Air France simply ‘exist’ in the first place had the ability to give you a sense of unfiltered joy. Today, sadly, Joel Karlsson and Henrik Markstedt announced that Air France is no more. Coupled with the news from back in January that fellow Gothenburg act Studio cease to be, 2012 marks the end of the Swedish balearic scene. Or at least the end of its two most loved acts.

Whether intentional or not – Air France are (writing in the past tense seems so final) born romantics; every word they write and every note they compose is fuelled by a soft-focused longing to feel loved, or be loved or, well, just love in general. Whether listened to in a packed out club or on the solitude of a nightbus, their music exudes a warmth so pure and real it kinda makes you believe anything is possible in life.

Two EPs – On Trade Winds (2006) and No Way Down (2008) and two internet only singles – ‘GBG Belongs To Us’ (2009) and ‘It Feels Good To Be Around You’ (2011) plus a handful of remixes for the likes of Taken By Trees and Friendly Fires sum up a six year career that turned a couple of fun loving goons from Gothenburg into a much adored enigma. Even now, as I type this, listening back to their brief but magnificent back catalogue, I’m left with a doe-eyed sense of optimism… For what? I don’t know. But just knowing that there are people that exist in this world that can produce music so life affirming and consistently rewarding seem like an accident, you’re left with an ‘anything is possible’ outlook.

New record or not. Air France, It Feels Good To Be Around You. Period.

News of the split in the bands own words, here and at the foot of this post.

Twenty minutes ago on the way to the studio you were on the tram looking fucking top, and you asked: “are you with Air France?”

DJing at The Line Of Best Fit club night, October 2008. Photo: Sonny Malhotra

With 'long-suffering' manager David Laurie. Photo: Sonny Malhotra

'Prepping' for a DJ set. Stockholm, December 2011. Photo: Jamie Harley

With The Line Of Best Fit. Stockholm, December 2011. Photo: Jamie Harley

During the first year of Air France, somewhere in the middle of the last decade, everything seemed to come so easily. At least it feels like that right now. We’d meet on friday nights to drink wine, listen to music and picture ourselves far off, somewhere on the outskirts on the big map Henrik had on his wall. The songs we made during those nights weren’t really supposed to ever leave the hard drive, but somehow they did, and somehow they took us to almost all the places on that big map we had dreamt about. We got to play records at the Rough Trade store in London, we went to the Red Square, we woke up on Iceland during a volcanic eruption, we drank beer at the cliffs of the Niagara, we spent a night in a freezing staircase in Warzaw (otherwise a fantastic weekend), we saw dolphins in the waters of LA, we got a smile from Larry David as he passed us on a street in Paris, watching us trying to open a bottle of wine, we played records for 4 hours under a blistering July sun in New York, we spent a day in the most beautiful spa in Budapest, we’ve heard our nervous voices on radio and TV, we’ve played records after two sold out Saint Etienne shows (but to be honest, only a handful stayed behind to see us), we’ve written a song together with our idol Clare Grogan (although we did managed to botch it) and we got sampled by Lil B. But it’s the little moments that has been the most dear to our hearts, like the days and nights in Brackenbury Village that we spent in our manager’s back yard with his wonderful wife and sons, who made us feel like part of the family, or being drunk on airplanes, just the two of us, and all the people we’ve been fortunate enough to get to know, if only for a night.

And we have probably produced 7 albums since No Way Down; a UK Garage record, a house record, an r ‘n’ b record… but we’ve never been able to finish anything, nothing was ever good enough. We have tried so hard, and we truly gave it all we had. And now we have decided to stop trying, even though it breaks our hearts. But for all the reasons mentioned above, and for a thousand more, we don’t regret a thing.

We wish we could thank all the people who has helped and inspired us, but we’d probably forget to mention half of you, so here’s just a big thank you to those who were involved in the making of the record: Teresa and Kajsa for singing so beautifully, Angelica of Body Language for lending her voice to a song that would have been called “I always think about you when I’m drunk”, our patron Kevin Campbell who helped us in giving this record one last chance (there are no words that can describe just how grateful we are), our Eric of Sincerely Yours, our manager David Laurie, our publisher XL, Joe for running our facebook page.

And much love to Rich Thane, families and girlfriends, sister Hanna, Henning Fürst, Marc Hogan, all of you who sent us letters, all of you who stuck around to watch us play, and all of you who opened your homes and hearts and cars and took us to water falls, big squares, beaches, record stores, monuments, valleys, mountains and zoos.

Goodbye for now. Who knows, maybe we’ll see you again in another shape. After all, we’re people that never stop dreaming.

Henrik and Joel
Gothenburg

Photo by Jamie Lowe

It has been a seismic couple of years worldwide, with ordinary people from Tunis to New York, from Moscow to Cairo stepping – with anger, with optimism, with despair – outside of mainstream processes to demand change, road-test prototype new models for cooperation and political engagement and sometimes, actually bring down governments.

In the UK the “sprawling and growing” Occupy movement first came to people’s attention with the – well – occupation of the grounds of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and has spawned a multitude of projects and offshoots that are still very much active, despite the eventual clearing of the main camp. One of these, particularly close to the hearts of music fans, was the songwriting/recording workshop for young people that was organised by the Occupy Citizenship group last month. With high-profile contributions from both Kate Nash and Sam “Get Cape” Duckworth, we spoke to one of the event’s organisers (and Cardiacs superfan), Jamie Kelsey-Fry about the movement, the School of Rockupy event, and the wider context of this special project.

What is your role in the Occupy movement?

“Like everyone, I arrived on October 15th not knowing what to expect other than a massive rally against the destructive nature of the London Stock Exchange and, like everyone still in Occupy, the last five months have been an extraordinary experience. Literally, completely out of the ordinary but deeply inspiring. It’s a complex creature, with no leaders but the voice of the assembly, where participatory democracy is used to find consensus. Politics has become something we do every day, rather than something you get to do once every five years. There are many arms to the sprawling and growing movement, these are all separate working groups which are all connected with the assembly at the centre. I am in several groups: Corporations, Occupy Citizenship, Press, Outreach. Groups meet on average once a week to focus on Occupy-related projects and they report back to the assembly once a week. I don’t think people have actually realised yet how much work is going on. The level of dedication is intoxicating, we are talking about people who have pretty much suspended ordinary reality since October last year. Many have spent the winter in a tent outside a big church. This means that the people working here are a very rare breed indeed. It also means, of course, that many don’t have children or full time jobs as the time needed to keep all the Occupy projects flourishing is overwhelming.”

Why the musical project – what do you think focusing on musical creativity can specifically bring to the movement?

“Rockupy is connected to the Occupy Citizenship working group and Occupation Records. These groups feel very strongly that young people are going to inherit a world that is in tatters after being wrecked by wars for resources, ignoring climate change, consumerism gone crazy and endless cuts while bankers and corporate  leaders continue to cream more money than anyone could possibly need. The younger generation need to be heard and taken seriously and Rockupy allows this to happen. An economic system based on infinite growth but which relies on finite resources is not only embarrassing, but it signals a disastrous future for our children.”

Do you personally have a musical background?

“I’ve fronted over a dozen bands. The biggest was The Peoples’ Friend. I still do guest vocals occasionally but  literally have no time at the moment due to my ‘occupation’. Incidentally, the best band I have ever heard is Cardiacs. The now legendary Cardiacs live experience were the most exciting and visceral musical experiences I have ever had. Tim Smith is a genius.”

Can you describe how the Rockupy day came about?

“I was a teacher for 23 years so I was able to ring up various schools and get the word out into local communities. As a result, we had a very wide mix of young people. All they knew was that it was organised by Occupy London and that it was going to be a special one-day event where they could learn skills connected to the music industry. They were gobsmacked by what happened, as were we. It was an incredible learning experience for all of us. The small team of Occupiers, along with Kate [Nash] and Sam [Duckworth], were knocked out by how eager the young people were once they were given the opportunity to create a song about what mattered the most to them, collectively, as a group of young people. They were amazing. The subject they chose was ephebiphobia, the fear and loathing of teenagers! All the young people were articulate about what it felt like to be stereotyped, to be maligned, ignored and condescended to (particularly by politicians).”

Did the musicians involved (Kate Nash, Sam Duckworth) approach you, or did you ask them to become involved? Do you have a “wish list” of musicians that you would like to get involved in future?

Sam Duckworth has worked with Occupy for months. He’s an incredible young man. He had discovered that there are a great many artists who support Occupy but they don’t know what to do to help. Kate Nash was one of these people. So Sam suggested she give up a day to work with young people through an Occupy project. We don’t have a wish list but we do have a long list already of artists who want to support Occupy and Rockupy in particular. Rather than simply doing a gig, skill sharing like this, encouraging young people to be heard genuinely is a far more interesting role for a “celebrity” to play within Occupy. Kate Nash was totally open to everything the young people had to say and worked constantly to help them, she was having fun but was completely caring.

What next? How can music enthusiasts get involved?

People need to start following www.occupylsx.org if they are interested in getting involved. The new site makes it easy for people to know what working groups are doing, when they meet, how to get involved. This will be the same for most of the 20 or so camps around the UK and Ireland. Occupy is not just a camp, nor just a bunch of working groups, or simply an activist group… it truly is an idea, and it is for everyone to add to it. That’s the best way for it to grow, for people to come and add their voice at the assemblies.

This week the British Tinnitus Association aims to raise awareness of a condition that affects one in ten people across the UK – and of which musicians, DJs, and music fans are particularly at risk.

My ears have always been iffy. Gigs seem to affect me more than they do my friends. Particularly loud shows disorientate me, producing the odd sensation that I am stuck behind a thick sheet of glass, or wandering around like Travolta in his Plastic Bubble.

Until about a year ago, after virtually every show I would hear that familiar ringing – two frequencies, one slightly higher than the other, one in each ear. It would normally last 24 hours at most. Then one day, I’m not exactly sure when, it just didn’t stop. Now, tinnitus is something that I live with, rather than something that comes to visit.

My tinnitus isn’t particularly debilitating. It’s only really a problem in total silence, making it occasionally difficult to sleep. Luckily I live in the middle of a block of flats, in the middle of a four-block estate, in the middle of the East End. Silence doesn’t happen that frequently.

Tinnitus is one of the UK’s most common medical complaints – and yet it is also one of the most misunderstood. Around 10 per cent of the population suffers from the condition, which can manifest in countless ways. Everyone’s tinnitus is different. Some people hear a buzz, others the noise of waves. Others still hear bird song, or even music – auditory hallucinations which science is still yet to adequately explain.

There is also a significant range of potential causes. While exposure to loud noise is the most commonly cited, for many people the roots of the condition lie in existing complaints like stress, high blood pressure, or depression.

Tinnitus Awareness Week is dedicated to building understanding of the condition amongst GPs – many of whom lack the training to deal appropriately with tinnitus care. According to a new study by the British Tinnitus Association (BTA), there are some 750,000 tinnitus consultations in England every year. The BTA identified inconsistencies in assessment techniques and referral practices amongst GPs, suggesting that the care tinnitus sufferers receive can vary dramatically – despite the existence of clinical best practice guidelines. Following consultations, a third of patients are unsatisfied with their GP’s response – and just 37 per cent are referred for further assistance.

David Stockdale, CEO of the British Tinnitus Association, said: “The BTA has long suspected that tinnitus management offered by GPs throughout the UK varies significantly. This study confirms this and has also identified that, shockingly, a large proportion of people who experience tinnitus are not given information about tinnitus management.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests that GPs’ treatment of musicians and DJs is particularly poor. Doctors reportedly often tell patients that they will have to change their lifestyle – which, in many cases, means changing profession, and leaving behind the thing that you love.

In reality, though, tinnitus can be managed and mitigated such that patients can continue to enjoy and make music. Many of the world’s most successful artists suffer from tinnitus or related conditions. Thom Yorke, Neil Young, and Mike Patton are amongst the countless musicians who have developed strategies that enable them to cope with tinnitus, without having to turn their backs on music.

This year the BTA is focusing its efforts on building awareness of the condition amongst primary care professionals, and encouraging cooperation with specialist audiologists. But, while improving care is a key priority, it is also important to raise awareness of tinnitus and other audiological conditions amongst those who suffer from them, and those who are particularly at risk. Musicians and music lovers need to take seriously the risk of tinnitus – but we also need to develop better strategies for coping with the condition, and for ensuring that tinnitus doesn’t prevent us doing what we love.

Tinnitus tips from the British Tinnitus Association 

The BTA recommends that musicians, DJs, and concertgoers should use ear plugs. Personal experience suggests that you need to invest in good quality, flat response, fitted plugs if you are to reduce the risk to your ears while still maintaining a realistic listening experience. ACS are one of the largest providers of musicians’ plugs. You should speak to a qualified audiologist to make sure you end up with the right product.

The BTA has also compiled some tips for those who have already developed tinnitus, which you can read below. I find troubling their suggestion that homeopathy might be a reasonable response – but potential quackery aside, their recommendations seem useful.  More information is available on the BTA website.

1. Exercise. Exercise regularly to boost “feel-good” endorphins, to gain a sense of well-being and lower stress levels.
2. Relax. It is well documented that stress exacerbates the experience of tinnitus so try to relax as much as possible. Many people try acupuncture, homeopathy and reflexology to help manage stress levels, and in turn improve their experience of tinnitus.
3. Use music. Listening to music can help as it distracts from the tinnitus noises, but be careful to avoid prolonged exposure to high-volume levels which can make tinnitus worse.
4. Consider your diet. Take steps to improve your health through diet so that you are healthier and fitter, which can make you feel better when you experience tinnitus. Stick to soft drinks and herbal teas, and keep well hydrated
5. Investigate products. The BTA sells a range of products which can help. These include sound therapy systems; mood lights; pillow speakers; and CDs – e.g. relaxation and beach sounds
6. Get expert help. The BTA is a world leader in tinnitus support. Use the BTA’s freephone helpline (0800 018 0527) and website. Also visit the BTA’s online forums for further advice, support and help from other people who experience the condition
7. Join a support group. Join a tinnitus support group in your area or start one if there is not an existing group in your locality. Visit www.tinnitus.org.uk/directory to locate the nearest one to you, and for a free copy of the BTA’s ‘Together’ magazine which advises on setting up a support group
8. Talk to family and friends. Make sure your family and friends understand tinnitus. Point them in the direction of the BTA’s website. The more they know, the more they will be able to help you.

“It started with Studio’s ‘The End of Fame’, sounding like a lovesick whale in the depth of the ocean. Try making a ring tone out of this, you bastards, we said. With no particular ambition, but with a strange confidence, some kind of culture was created and (dis)organized, spontaneously but in a certain direction. And Service rapidly took shape as the leader of Swedish pop in the early 21st century.”

And so went the opening quote to mark the celebration of Service’s ten year anniversary last month. A Swedish independent label recognised moreso for the discovery of Jens Lekman, The Tough Alliance and The Embassy, it actually all began back in 2001 with the release of ‘The End Of Fame’ – a baffling six minute ballad with a guitar solo so abrasive and destructive, it beggars belief that its creators would go on to carve (and indeed influence) the genesis of some of the most essential and forward thinking progressive dance music of our generation.

Studio (or The Studio as they were shortly known as) released three 7″ singles on Service. ‘The End Of Fame’ (SERV001), ‘The Jungle’ (SERV002) and ‘Down Here, Like You’ (SERV003) which was backed by the ludicrously titled ‘Popular Women Get What They Deserve’. All three releases sounded like personal love letters to the duo’s inspirations rather than the future of Swedish underground music. Scratchy, spiteful and taught garage rock with Dan Lissvik’s drawl coating the songs with all the passion of an angry teenager, it was the b-side to ‘The Jungle’ that really seemed to kickstart what would become the “Studio sound”. Even today, ‘Shake U Down By The River’ still ignites a curious excitment within its deep veined bass groove and distant melodica chords. It was the sound of paradise. The marriage of Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hägg’s love of early Factory Records  set against the cold abrasive prog of Can and Neu somehow blended into something beautiful. Suddenly, the much talked about but rarely defined ‘balearic sound’ had a new home, nearly 3000 miles north of Ibizia. Gothenburg was all that mattered.

Studio – ‘The End Of Fame’

Lissvik and Hägg split from Service before the official release of their debut (and only ‘official’) album West Coast. Forming their own label, Information, in 2006 and releasing  ‘No Comply’ (INF 001) b/w ‘Radio Edit’ – Studio had metamorphised from awkward geeks to cooler-than-thou shit kickers with hardly any press, sales or indeed fan fare. Coupled by stunning artwork, mystique and of course incredibly crafted songs – when the initial (highly limited) vinyl only release of full length West Coast (INF 002) sold out, it was re-pressed in 2007 and indeed given its offical CD release and in turn birthing a legion of ardent fans.

Eager to embrace this curious sound that Studio had dreamt up, it was only a matter of time before artists started to approach Lissvik and Hägg for remix duties. From Shout Out Louds to Kylie Minogue, Love Is All to A Mountain Of One – they quickly became known moreso for their expertedly executed remixes than their own music. Yearbook 1 (2007 – a collection of singles, re-edits)  and Yearbook 2 (2008 – a collection of remixes) followed, but sign of a new album ‘proper’ became something of a myth in itself as Lissvik and Hägg began working apart more and more.

Studio – ‘West Side’

As the more active of the two, Lissvik’s production credits over the years have piled up, with notable work for Taken By Trees, Lake Heartbeat, The Mary Onettes and Young Galaxy. His remixing abilities remain as in demand now as they were five years ago with Korallreven, ceo, James Yuill andSerenades all benefiting. Not forgetting Lissvik’s own solo album 7 Trx+Intermission from 2008 and 2009′s The Crêpes project – a collaboration with The Embassy’s Fredrik Lindson.

Rasmus Hägg lent his wonderful production techniques to El Perro Del Mar‘s highly acclaimed Love Is Not Pop in 2009 and continues in the production chair on the forthcoming El Perro record Pale Fire.

Today, in an official statement on Dan Lissvik’s website, it was finally stated that Studio (and indeed Information) are no more.

Thank you for the music.

Listen on Spotify:
Studio West Coast
Studio Yearbook 2

Last week or the week before I forgot my closed-back headphones when I was off out to get the train somewhere. The headphones I took instead are these open backed ones that leak sound like crazy. I hate wearing them on the bus or the train because I hate the idea that anyone can hear what I’m listening to, so to be quite honest they served no purpose whatsoever that day, all they did was take up space in my bag, which is already at permanent capacity what with all the important dust and twigs I like to carry around. I wasn’t annoyed though, I was actually relieved not to have to listen to anything, so relieved that I wondered if I hadn’t strategically brought the wrong headphones as some kind of secret favour to myself. Now, I’ve been listening to headphones plugged into one device or another since my earliest years. In the old days it was such a travel necessity that I would steal the batteries out of remote controls, alarm clocks and, notably, other people’s walkman’s in order that I not miss out on “Slave New World” five times in a row on the bus. Over the years I’ve still always taken something to listen to, but choosing what to listen to has become more and more of a problem.

The basic reason is this. Say you’re a friend of mine and at one time or another you have passionately expressed negative views about a band, if I then listen to that band I will irremovably have you in my head going on and on about how bad they are. It doesn’t alter my own opinion of the band, it just damages the listening experience to have someone in the other ear giving you a load of grief about how that band rip off the Fall or how in all honesty they’d rather listen to Nickleback. One way of escaping this is listening to bands that no-one ever says anything bad about. The Nerves, for example. I think I would die of shock if I ever heard anyone really slagging off the Nerves. The problem with this is that it has the effect of making the bands seem “safe”, and this is boring so what I tend to do most is not to listen to seemingly unassailable stuff, like the Nerves or Raekwon, but to listen to things that it seems like it doesn’t really occur to people to think about, not obscure stuff, just things that don’t come up a lot in conversation. For example the song “Bad Reputation” by Thin Lizzy – I probably listen to that song five to ten times a week, or the opening three tracks from At The Gates’ “Slaughter of The Soul” or Big Juss stuff from after Company Flow. However, when I catch myself doing this it seems so stupid that I get down on the whole thing which is how I’ve ended up with these ridiculous situations in which without my knowledge I’m secretly taking the wrong headphones in order that I don’t have to listen to music on the train, all because I’m attempting to avoid getting abuse from a load of imaginary idiots. I should most likely just stop worrying about it, but it’s become habitual.

The one thing that seems to be exempt from this stupid stuff is the Simeon Ten Holt piece “Canto Ostinato”, which is a really amazing minimalist(ish) piece for four pianos which is over an hour long and, to my knowledge, has never been described in the pub as “by the numbers Khanate” or “beyond emo-rap”. In my mind it’s weirdly untouchable. There is literally nothing that anyone could do to it. Which is why it makes me think of Christmas. People are down on Christmas. The same cunts who say that pigeons are “flying rats” or say that Ringo Starr was a bad drummer or declare every funny video on youtube to be definitely fake will tell you that Christmas is awful but they’re wrong. Well, they aren’t wrong, but they’re wrong to think that their bad vibes could have any impact. Christmas is just there, there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s like if people complained about the moon. It’s like if people complained about the moon and how much they hated it and how much the moon puts pressure on people to spend huge amounts of money and how the moon gets earlier every year. That’s why I’ve always been such a big fan of it (Christmas I mean, although the moon has its moments). Obviously I like all the stuff surrounding christmas (mince pies, decorations, that film where Michael Keaton rises from the dead but in the form of a snowman etc), but I think what I like best is that its just this unstoppable force and I don’t have to worry about it. Christmas will never be routinely accused of being “hardcore for people who don’t like hardcore” or be criticised for using valve emulation software on it’s guitar tracks. It’s beyond all that, and when people have a go at it I just stop listening. Maybe a solution to my travel music problem would be to listen to christmas carols all year round, I might make that my news years resolution.

I hope some of that made at least partial sense. Merry Christmas!

Fairewell’s superb debut album Poor, Poor Grendel is out now via Sonic Cathedral.

When it comes to hobbies and obsessions, people have varying tastes. A lot of the people reading this will count music among their main interests, some people pick sports, others like travelling or cooking, or collecting. My personal obsession is Serge Gainsbourg. As a writer, I find him to be an enthralling subject. From the perspective of a music fan, he’s had an untouchable, if often invisible influence over a huge amount of the music that we listen to today. And as someone who’s always up for a bit of controversy and scandal, his life and story is a gossip goldmine.

One of the most interesting things to observe about the legacy of Serge Gainsbourg is the difference in reaction to his presence and work in his home country of France and in the UK. In France, the man was and continues to be regarded as a legend. Without Serge Gainsbourg, the French music scene wouldn’t be what it is today for many reasons; Serge Gainsbourg was amongst the first to release a reggae album in France, he wrote Eurovision winning songs, he got Brigitte Bardot to make noises like these, and he caused worldwide outrage with just one, four minute song.

Back here in the UK, even if he wasn’t particularly well known for the majority of his musical output, he was the first person to have a UK number one single sung in a language other than English, and he was also the first ever artist to have a number one single that had been banned from being broadcast by the BBC, the country’s most influential radio programmers. For a long time, the majority of British people knew of Gainsbourg because of his scandalous antics, but his reputation here in the UK has begun to change over the past few years. This is, in part thanks to Joann Sfar’s wonderful biopic Vie Héroïque which was released in independent cinemas across the UK in 2010, and the fact that his daughter has grown up to be the outstanding actress and musician Charlotte Gainsbourg has also cast a great deal more favour in the French crooner’s direction.

His life was certainly colourful, it was certainly full of controversy and it inspired some incredible music. 2011, more than any other year has been the opportune moment to reflect upon the life and times of this chanteur as the 2nd March was the 20th anniversary of the death of Serge Gainsbourg. This year also marks 40 years since the release of his seminal concept album, Histoire de Melody Nelson which, in commemoration and celebration of this anniversary, has been remastered and reissued.

As is the case with many great albums, when Histoire de Melody Nelson was released back in 1971, it wasn’t a huge commercial success. This wasn’t of particular concern to Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, who provided the voice of the main character Melody Nelson, as in 1971 they were still very much reaping the rewards of the gamble that could potentially have killed both of their careers, the 1969 release of the highly controversial single and album ‘Je t’aime… Moi non plus’. Having awarded his record company substantial success, Gainsbourg was given license to create more or less whatever he wanted to with his next album. The result? An orchestral based concept album, featuring a Lolita-esque story line and some of the most beautifully woven string arrangements to have ever found a home on a pop record.

Serge Gainsbourg – Melody Nelson.

Histoire de Melody Nelson opens with a spoken word, electric guitar led song which introduces the plot and the main character of the album, the young, red headed Melody Nelson who is knocked from her bicycle by the Rolls Royce driving narrator (Gainsbourg). As the album progresses, the listener is taken on a journey through genre and through time, a twisting and sometimes twisted tale of a middle aged man falling in love with a young girl. The relationship develops over a series of 6 stunning tracks, before song seven, ‘Cargo Culte’, delivers the young girl’s untimely death. Poor old accident prone Melody.

Clueless as to what they were hoping to achieve with this new record, Gainsbourg and a bright, young composer named Jean-Claude Vannier embarked upon the creation of Histoire de Melody Nelson, enlisting the intriguing, childlike vocal of Jane Birkin and not allowing themselves to be constrained by any manner of genre constricting practice. The record sold respectably well upon release, but didn’t reach anywhere near the commercial success of Gainsbourg’s previous album. The record company, and to an extent Gainsbourg and Vannier themselves considered the record to be a flop.

What the duo didn’t count on was the enormous influence that the album would have over musicians in the future. Histoire de Melody Nelson is a record which has been cited as hugely inspirational for a large number of modern artists. Beck’s 2002 album Sea Change for example was heavily influenced by Histoire de Melody Nelson, both musically and conceptually. Artists from Portishead right through to De La Soul have either used recording techniques, taken inspiration from or covered tracks from the album. In 2006, the album was reproduced live at the Barbican in London, with chief string arranger Jean-Claude Vannier performing alongside artists such as Gruff Rhys, Mick Harvey and long time Gainsbourg advocate, Jarvis Cocker. A similar project was undertaken at the Hollywood Bowl this summer, featuring performances of tracks from all throughout Gainsbourg’s career, performed by the likes of Zola Jesus, Mike Patton, Beach House’s Victoria Legrand and Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste.

Histoire de Melody Nelson has very quietly, very unexpectedly but very deservedly become heralded as Gainsbourg’s most important work and on its 40th birthday, this reissue is a great way to celebrate that fact. Along with a track that was omitted from the original release of the record, ‘Melody lit Babar’ and plenty of alternative vocal and musical edits, this latest edition of the album provides a real insight into the recording sessions of Histoire de Melody Nelson, as does the 40 minute long DVD that’s included. Featuring interviews with all of the major players on the record, a Gainsbourg super fan is given the chance to witness clips of the recording sessions and to hear about the unwitting path that Gainsbourg and Vannier trod together in Vannier’s very own words.

For an album which many considered to be among Gainsbourg’s least successful releases, Histoire de Melody Nelson has become something of a cult classic. The superb quality of the recordings, enhanced even more on the recently released, remastered edition of the record is remarkable upon each listen, as is the poetry of Gainsbourg’s spoken word. This album is a mere 28 minutes long, but one of the most absorbing journeys that one will travel, one that has stood the test of time, and one that becomes more and more important as time goes by.

The remastered version of Histoire de Melody Nelson is available through Mercury, along with a 40 minute DVD featuring inteviews with those involved with the creation of the record and featuring plenty of brilliant footage of Serge himself.

Like every other self-respecting journal of popular music criticism, The Line of Best Fit was planning on writing glowing reviews of Summer Camp’s outstanding debut album, Welcome To Condale, as well asIcona Pop’s fantastic Nights Like This EP. In the course of research, however, we discovered the following manuscript at the bottom of a trunk in an attic sale following the death of a reclusive filmmaker somewhere in the American Midwest. We decided to cancel the reviews, as there was really nothing more we could add to the literature on these two records.

EXT. DAY. A HIGH SCHOOL IN AMERICA. FRONT STEPS.

It’s the first day of school. ELIZABETH, 16, emerges from a bright yellow school bus and adjusts her neon headband. She unfolds an official-looking paper from her purse and checks it over carefully.

THE GEEK, a gangly teenaged boy with big glasses, comes up behind Elizabeth and reads over her shoulder.

THE GEEK

I see that we have the same teacher for biology. His name is Harold Richard. That means it is within normal parameters to refer to him as… get this… Harry Dick! For real!

ELIZABETH

Um… Okay.

The Geek’s nice-guy friend, JEREMY, intervenes.

JEREMY

Sorry about him, he doesn’t know any better.

ELIZABETH smiles at them both and continues on her way inside.

THE GEEK

Did you see that? Something tells me that before this year is over, I will interface with her.

JEREMY

You’ll interface with your dad’s stack of Playboys.

THE GEEK

You know, I’m getting input here that I’m reading as relatively hostile… Hey… Wait… What’s wrong with this scene?

JEREMY

Besides you being a total embarrassing freak?

THE GEEK

Listen. There’s no theme music.

JEREMY looks at THE GEEK quizzically.

CUT TO:
INT. DAY MR. RICHARD’S CLASSROOM.

MR. RICHARD

…and that is why, class, you should always spare a thought for the mitochondria that work so hard for all your cells, each and every day.

The bell rings. ELIZABETH and CAROLINE snap their heavy textbooks shut.

ELIZABETH

I’m so not ready to be tested on this.

CAROLINE

Aw, really? We studied all this stuff when we were, like, six back home.

ELIZABETH

Home? Where’s that? And by the way, how do you look so happy and good all the time?

CAROLINE

I’m an exchange student from Sweden. Everybody there grows up speaking two languages, kicking the world’s ass in education rankings, and mixing and matching designer apparel with cheap complementary pieces from H&M.

ELIZABETH

Wow.

CAROLINE

Say, I have an idea. Let’s have a study party. You can tell me what life is like in America, and I’ll tell you about the Krebs Cycle.

ELIZABETH

It’s a deal!

THE GEEK approaches the two girls, followed by a very shy JEREMY.

JEREMY

(To THE GEEK) Don’t do this, please.

THE GEEK

Hey ladies, can we come too? I promise I don’t have Krebs.

JEREMY

Dude! Shut up!

CAROLINE

Ummm…. Yeah, sure, why not?

ELIZABETH

(Quietly, to Caroline) Boys? Are you sure that’s a good idea?

CAROLINE

Oh come on. Let’s invite my friend Aino over too, she’s the other mysterious Swedish exchange student in this film.

ELIZABETH

Oh gosh, I don’t know about all this.

JEREMY pauses to collect his thoughts.

JEREMY

You know, now that I think about it, this could be an occasion for young teenagers from different social backgrounds to get randomly thrown together and learn life lessons in hilarious but poignant, sexually awkward circumstances, eventually forming the core filmic narrative of a generation and inspiring the music of European indie pop acts 25 years in the future.

ELIZABETH

Well, when you put it like that, it sounds like a pretty good idea, I guess.

CAROLINE

That’s what I’m trying to get through to you, my dear.

ELIZABETH

Hey, I like the sound of that.

JEREMY

And to think I was going to study alone tonight.

ELIZABETH and JEREMY lock eyes. In a magic moment, young love is born.

ElIZABETH

(To JEREMY) Nights like this, you will never be alone.

CAROLINE

Hey, I like the sound of that.

JEREMY

You know what, gang? I think I sense theme music and a group montage coming on, in which through the magic of editing we establish our unlikely comradery and carefree, youthful joie de vivre.

Suddenly, AINO bursts through the doors and slides into the classroom on one knee.

AINO

Did someone say montage? I’m in.

CAROLINE

You and me had some good montages when we went to summer camp in Sweden together last year, didn’t we?

ELIZABETH

You Swedes are so gorgeous. You’re like my pop icons, or icons of pop. Or something like that.

MR. RICHARD

Well, it looks like you’re all about to start a beautiful friendship. And in a way, you have my class and the bold initiative of The Geek here to thank for it.

THE GEEK

So… whose underpants do I get to sniff?

MR. RICHARD opens a desk drawer and pulls out a big package.

MR. RICHARD

How about, Geek, I give you this box of premium 5.25-inch floppy disks instead?

THE GEEK

Really?

MR. RICHARD

Really.

THE GEEK

Yyyyyyyyeees!

As the gang smiles and THE GEEK jumps for joy, we freeze-frame and cue a rush of synthesizers, drums, and major chords.

END TITLES.

People stream out of the movie theater upbeat and optimistic, ready to purchase large quantities of legwarmers, shoulder pads and cocaine.

Music convention and festival Music & Media/Lost in Music attracts more than  700 delegates and international visitors to Finland each year for seminars and panel discussions. Launched in 1989, it’s frequented by the likes of SubPop, Spotify, Rolling Stone and Beggars Group and more than a hundred acts are showcased, performing in a series of venues scattered around the centre of the city of Tampere.

Located on a narrow piece of land between picturesque lakes Näsijärvi and Pyhäjärvi, Tampere boasts a population of roughly 200,000, making it the country’s third largest. A former centre of textile and metal industries Tampere gradually became known as the ‘Manchester of Finland’, which led to the widespread use of its Finnish nickname ‘Manse’. Similarly the term ‘Manserock’ was coined in the early 1970s to describe Tampere’s buoyant rock scene ranging from its early musical representatives Juice Leskinen to later arrivals like New Wave accolades Eppu Normaali, and Popedaand and subsequently to the creation of the local label Poko Records that largely contributed to the development of the scene and its reputation all over Finland. Based on this rich musical tradition Tampere naturally became the home of the main music event in Finland.

A unique role of the event is the link between East and West. “In 2011 there were delegates from 24 countries, including territories such as China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Russia and the Baltics, along with a substantial delegation from the UK, Central Europe and North America.” explains Tuomo Tähtinen project manager at Music Export Finland.

Finnish indie and alternative music have always been overshadowed by the success of Finnish heavy metal – therefore this writer had admittedly little knowledge and no preconception of what to expect from the local scene. Following a couple of failed attempts and a handful of mediocre acts Tampere finally revealed some truly interesting discoveries.

Zebra & Snake

Matti Ahopelto and Tapio Viitasaari make honest music from the heart. As Zebra & Snake, they croon their life experiences to the sounds of vintage synthesizer arpeggios reminiscent of Simple Minds, early U2 and Depeche Mode. It’s so difficult to capture the sheer emotions, energy and frustration of their captivating live performances on record. Brilliant stuff.
Zebra & Snake – Empty Love Song

Siinai

One of the newest propositions from local experts Kaiku Studio are the kraut-rockers Siinai that count in their ranks key-members of the renowned phychedelia band Joensuu 1685, as well as from the aforementioned Zebra and Snake. Their epic noise and endless feedback are delivered passionately and with precision, making their live set an intense live experience.

Siinai – Anthem 1 & 2

Vuk

Finnish-American Vuk (stage moniker for Emily Cheeger) is an experimental artist making music true to the legacy of Kate Bush and Björk. Cheeger’s quirky, assertive presence and alien gaze, combined with her unique organic style result into a mysterious chamber pop full of auto-harps, tambourines and Hammond organs.

Vuk – Year of The Gourd

Murmansk

Murmansk provide the missing link between A Place To Bury Strangers and My Bloody Valentine channelled through a Nordic filter. Their brand-new material is heavier and more melodic than ever, yet Murmansk still refuse to introduce choruses in their songs. Still one of the best alternative Finnish bands around.

Murmansk – Before Kitchen Knives

Ewert & The Two Dragons

Ewert & The Two Dragons are not Finnish and actually come from the neighbouring Estonia. Neat-looking and confident, they showcased their carefully crafted folk-pop compositions full of playful soothing tones. Their music is certainly much better than their name.

Ewert & The Two Dragons – Jolene

Want to dig deeper into new Finnish acts? Check out hopeful shoegazers The New Tigers, relentless prog-pop mentalists Kiveskives, haunting electrogoths Nightsatan, and Regina’s catchy indiepop.

With the recent re-issue of The Radio Dept. back catalogue on heavyweight 180g vinyl, The Line Of Best Fit take a look back at the three albums that have shaped and carved an undeniable arc in modern alternate pop culture. Here, Luke Grundy re-appraises Lesser Matters, Pet Grief and Clinging To A Scheme in detail whilst delving deep into the transcript of a lengthy and rare conversation The Radio Dept. founders Johan Duncanson and Martin Larson had alongside TLOBF editor Richard Thane and Sonic Cathedral founder Nathanial Cramp back in the of winter 2010. What follows is a wonderful insight into one of Sweden’s best kept secrets. 

Huge thanks to Johan Angergård of Labrador Records for granting access to the rare photographs used to illustrate this piece.

Scandinavia has undergone something of a renaissance in the last decade or so. Perceptions of its freezing climes have been altered by a surge in cultural significance: its exports in film, music and literature have changed it from ‘that place where it’s dark all the time and people kill themselves’ to a globally recognised hub of ingenuity, intelligence and invention. From the endless reams of commuters reading Steig Larsson’s books to a steady stream of Scandinavian directors migrating to Hollywood’s eternally sunny shores, the ascendance of these northern European nations as artistic powerhouses is as impressive as it is indisputable.

However, the most meteoric rise has surely been that of Scandinavian alternative music. Recognised as a foremost exporter of metal bands – Norway’s early 1990s black metal scene, Swedish acts like Yngwie Malmsteen or Opeth – and pop music, there were precious few Scandinavian bands, outside these two disparate genres, who had found global success. Over the last ten or twelve years, however, the quantity and quality of indie music from Scandinavia, especially Sweden, has steadily risen; alongside it, interest in this sub-genre has exploded. Whereas once your choices were Björk or, well, Björk, now those who carry a torch for Nordic music have a wealth of options, as TLOBF’s Nordic sister site Ja Ja Ja makes abundantly clear.

Indeed, such is the choice now available that every genre is catered for, each imbued with the peculiarly beguiling melancholia of the isolated peninsula: there’s the conversational pop of Jens Lekman; the folk strains of The Tallest Man on Earth; the soaring scope of Sigúr Rós; the minimalist electronica of Röyksopp; the list goes on and on. The unfair musical typecasting of Scandinavia, as a bipolar place where it’s either A-Ha or In Flames, is in the rearview now. Who do we have to thank? Well, certainly we should all raise a glass or two of akvavit to The Radio Dept..

The Radio Dept. began in 1995. Well, sort of. Johan Duncanson, the group’s founder and lead singer, was in a band at the time called The Radio Dept., named after a local gas-station-turned-radio-repair-shop in his hometown of Lund, Sweden. He later began playing with guitarist Martin Larsson, and their new partnership took the same name, although as Duscanson said in an interview with TLOBF founder/editor Rich Thane last year, “it’s not really the same band. We’ve been making songs together since 1998 or something, but we didn’t take it seriously until 2001.”

Were you to draw up a timeline for The Radio Dept., that “take it seriously” moment at the start of the 21st century would be the true starting point. Larsson and Duscanson’s group, at the time with Lisa Carlberg on bass and Per Blomgren on drums, released their debut album Lesser Matters in 2003 on Labrador Records, who’d signed them up after hearing their self-distributed first EP, Against The Tide, just two years before.

The Radio Dept. – Why Won’t You Talk About It

Lesser Matters was met with considerable critical success, its mixture of haunting, mournful synths and lo-fi vocals combining to create one of the year’s most distinctive records; it subsequently made several ‘album of the year’ lists. The appeal of a band intentionally stripping songs back to their essence, choosing to blur and muddy their sound rather than purify it with studio effects and post-production, was strong and refreshing. “If it feels like too much of a song, we definitely try to pull it down,” says Larsson. “We’ve always said that it should be difficult to listen to good music – it shouldn’t just go right through you.”

Duscanson elaborates: “It’s not just about putting some fuzz on top of everything to make it more indie. I like sounds that distort and they almost break… something more happens in that moment. You get pictures in your head from that kind of sound. It’s more poetic to me to listen to music that’s almost out of reach.”

The Radio Dept.’s preference for partially destroying their own music may strike some as a deliberately obtuse decision, one designed to make them more inaccessible and thus narrow their listenership to just a group of knowing aficionados, but listening to Lesser Matters, what becomes most apparent is that, whatever their initial intention, the Swedes turned out a hugely enjoyable and communicative debut LP.

Tracks like the infectious ‘Ewan’ and the contemplative ’1995′ – of which Duncanson remarks, “maybe I had some kind of premature mid-life crisis” – are exemplary on an eminently listenable and re-listenable album which still sounds fresh, even eight years after its release. The rough-by-design edges of songs like ‘Keen On Boys’, which is accompanied by a constant background drone and fuzzy static, give the album a homespun vibe; in a manner befitting the group’s name, it feels like we’ve discovered a poorly-boosted radio signal from another country by chance, as if we’re the only one lucky enough to have found this oasis of hazy musical bliss. As ‘Keen On Boys’ closes, we’re even treated to a few super-clean guitar notes, the signal clearing for a moment until the thudding bass of ‘Why Won’t You Talk About It’ takes us back into this imagined world of songs being eked out through indistinct feedback. Much like the early strains of groups like Pixies or Weezer, The Radio Dept.’s first record – in fact, each of their three studio albums to varying degrees – feels personal, like a friend giving you his band’s badly recorded EP, only for you to find that it’s actually brilliant. The Radio Dept. may be far, far more talented than your average garage band, but they foster that same connection between themselves and their listeners.

Musically, the first album is barely classifiable, combining maybe a half-dozen genres. Dream-pop? Shoegaze? Perhaps both, perhaps neither. Such is the difficulty of placing Lesser Matters in one easy category. Trace it back from 2011, however, and its influence is telling; groups like Beach House and Phoenix, whether they realise it or not, owe a huge debt to The Radio Dept., as do poppier acts like Lykke Li, The xx, even The Killers. Lesser Matters is a benchmark for showing how to combine pop style with post-punk substance without blindly supergluing them to each other, and its unique appeal endures, sounding like a lovechild of Wilco, Beck, Pavement and Sonic Youth. The ’90s revival wouldn’t start in earnest for years, but The Radio Dept. should be credited with helping pioneer a style which would dominate the indie scene six years later.

Elements of electronica, lo-fi rock, post-rock, ambience, even grunge can be found within Matters’ unrefined exterior, like finding rare vinyls buried at the bottom of a box of old blankets in your attic and putting them all on the stereo at once. The Radio Dept. don’t want you finding their brilliance too easily, after all, that would take the point out of it.

The Radio Dept. – The Worst Taste In Music

Three years later, and follow-up album Pet Grief is on record store shelves. Unfortunately for the band, it’s largely staying there. “The band were reluctant to promote or do any tours for the album, as a consequence it made little waves around the world,” as The Radio Dept.’s website explains.

Though it never quite matches the highs of Lesser Matters, it would be churlish to describe the group’s second album as a sophomore slump. It retains the same ethereal ebb and flow which lilts through their debut, but sounds a little clearer, a little less obscured by static and hiss.

The result is a paradoxically more expansive, more introspective and more instrumental record. Carlberg and Blomgren have now gone, and been replaced not by a new rhythm section, but by Daniel Tjäder’s keyboards. We get tracks like the sparse, solo piano ‘Gibraltar’ which bear little resemblance to previous efforts, counterbalanced with the electronic whimsy of familiarly catchy head-nodders like ‘Sleeping In’ or the title track. Duncanson’s breathy vocals and Larsson’s reverberant guitar lines are far cleaner, and thus more audible, for the muting of some of the sonic roadblocks which populate Lesser Matters. Of course, that same self-destructive element is still present – noticeably on ‘Every Time’, certainly the record’s fuzziest track – but it’s impossible to ignore the increased clarity of the recordings. It’s a lot crisper, and musically a departure from the first album, receiving far more mixed reviews than its universally lauded predecessor.

It must be said that Pet Grief is less fun to listen to. Tjäder’s keyboards are deftly deployed, but the band are still re-moulding their sound without a traditional band setup, and don’t find their mark as firmly or as definitively as they did with their debut. To an extent a poppier effort, but simultaneously a more melancholic one, Pet Grief offers a few more questions than answers: parts of it sound like Joy Division, parts of it like ’80s pop.

Duncanson’s thoughts on the record bear this contrast out: “When we released Pet Grief, we thought we’d made a really pop record. We were almost ashamed to release it because it was too pop. But after releasing it we realised other people found it rather depressing and very mellow and calm and then we realised they were right!”

Uncharacteristically awkward in a few places, Pet Grief is cleaner-sounding but less sure of its direction that both Lesser Matters and the group’s third album Clinging To A Scheme. It’s still a good record, helped by injections of uplifting melody (‘A Window’) and sardonic humour (‘The Worst Taste In Music’), but the high standards set by Lesser Matters dictate that it’s a little disappointing by comparison. It’s certainly a transitional record, tracking the movement of the group from their band-oriented beginnings to their current, more electronic guise, and a considerable achievement, but it’s fair to say it’s the weakest of the three albums to date.

The Radio Dept – Heaven’s On Fire

The third of these albums, 2010′s Clinging to a Scheme, might be the best. A product of a mammoth writing and studio process – resulting in “120 or 130 recordings,” estimates Duncanson, and “probably 40 almost-finished songs,” reckons Larsson – the group’s third full album is a triumphant mixture of the styles which preceded it, and features a handful of superb tracks worthy of inclusion on any ‘Best of The Radio Dept.’ mixtape (or perhaps more realistically these days, iTunes playlist) you could fashion.

Kicking off with the wonderfully balanced ‘Domestic Scene’, a track combining the spectral guitar lines of Lesser Matters with Pet Grief’s clean recording style, Clinging to a Scheme follows up a brilliant opening with one of the band’s most accessible, and also perhaps best, songs, the irrepressible ‘Heaven’s On Fire’.

It starts inauspiciously enough, with a sample of Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore urging us to destroy the “bogus capitalist process” he believes is destroying youth culture (a sentiment The Radio Dept. agree with: “We should destroy the bogus capitalist process,” Duscanson says, “but we’re lazy, so we make music instead and leave the destruction to others”). As the first off-beat notes of the synth line drop in, however, the complexion of the song changes entirely.

Fuzzed-up drums and echoey vocals are matched by a duelling synth and bass melody which pretty much demands that you tap your feet, not to mention a brilliant and wholly unexpected sax solo from Mattias Oldén which comes squarely from nowhere and lifts the song to its resounding close. A three-and-a-half minute gem, it’s one of those compulsive songs you’d happily stick on repeat for a couple of hours without thinking anything of it, letting its joyous refrain wash over you time and again.

From the alternative anthem ‘Never Follow Suit’ to the lo-fi sass of ‘David’, Clinging to a Scheme is full of such memorable tracks and moments, incorporating some of the longing wistfulness of Pet Grief, with the pining ‘A Token Of Gratitude’, but not letting it overwhelm the whole album. The amount of effort that’s gone into shaping the sound on Scheme is telling: tonally, it’s the most cohesive record the Swedes have put out thus far, and feels like the crossing of a musical threshold, to a time where you can truly define ‘The Radio Dept. sound’. The lo-fi distortion of Lesser Matters returns but is used more sparingly, to augment the frenzy of ‘Four Months In The Shade’ and the early-90s rhythm parts of ‘This Time Around’. This more considered deployment of The Radio Dept.’s favourite self-destructive weapon increases its effectiveness: we’ve returned to that far-off radio signal we found years before, this time with better reception and a clearer understanding of what we’ve tuned into.

Three albums into what will eventually be five released on Labrador – the group’s record contract is a complex tale not without controversy, best left for the band themselves to explain – and we’ve reached a tipping point, where The Radio Dept. are turning out tunes which tap the upper regions of their talent. Yet, for many, the band themselves remain a mystery.

One reason is their scant press appearances. The media “know what they want from you and want you to fit in,” says Larsson, and The Radio Dept., unsurprisingly, are keen not to be pigeon-holed, as Duncanson explains: “We got a bit tired of every journalist writing Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine in every review, even when we’d just released a single that didn’t sound like any of those bands, or anything from that scene.”

The Radio Dept. – The New Improved Hypocrisy

Their frustration is understandable. Listening to Passive Aggressive, the group’s massive, double-disc singles and rarities compilation released in January 2011, it’s clear that while there are common threads weaving through all the group’s output – extensive use of synths, Duncanson’s resonant vocals, that indistinguishable fuzz – there are a wealth of different sounds on show, from the wailing synth-pop of ‘We Would Fall Against The Tide’ to the mellow strains of ‘The New Improved Hypocrisy’. To offer the group’s catalogue a cursory glance, and make bland holistic judgments about it, is to do the music and the men (and woman) behind it a grave disrespect.

By the same token, placing The Radio Dept. is extremely difficult. They’ve not enjoyed the fiscal success that other Scandinavian exports have – Duncanson and Larsson once worked in a mental hospital “full of people who should have gone to prison but were mentally ill” to make ends meet, and have “been broke for such a long time, even having a little money is like being rich to us”. Yet they have a very solid fanbase, and as much talent as many groups who’ve made the leap from critical to commercial success.

Will it happen? It’s impossible to say, in all honesty. It might even be a year or two before we hear any new material, the band’s extremely high self-set standards sometimes obstructing progress. “We’re quite hard on ourselves, very self-critical,” reflects Duncanson. “I remember fighting over one note on ‘Keen on Boys’. “[We had] this big massive argument for two hours,” continues Larsson. “I just went home afterwards. The day after I had a listen and I couldn’t find the note we were arguing about… Sometimes you just want to fight. Like a sibling relationship.”

Despite the occasionally fractious relationship between the pair, their passion for their craft remains as unquenchable as ever, manifesting itself in side-projects as well as The Radio Dept.’s music: Tjäder is also in Korallreven, and Duncanson maintains other bands in his native land, “some of which aren’t very serious,” he admits. “We could get proper jobs and I would still make pop music,” the singer opines.

For all those who enjoy listening to The Radio Dept., not to mention all those groups who owe a huge debt to the band, it’s comforting to know that someday in the future we’ll be able to find that mystic radio channel once more. And to those who are yet to tune in: re-adjust your antenna. You won’t regret it.

Visit the Labrador shop to view the complete Radio Dept. back catalogue, including the all new 180g vinyl re-issues of Lesser Matters, Pet Grief and Clinging To A Scheme.

Tucked away in a field outside a sleepy village near Oxford, Truck Festival, now in its 14th edition, may have grown in scale a little, and gained a day in length this year, but still retains its local, friendly atmosphere and charm. Buzz Stas send us this festival diary from sleepy Oxfordshire….

Day One

On arrival, the family run Truck feels more like a slightly hippy village fête than anything else. Complete with ‘holistic healing’ tents, stalls selling jewellery made from old spoons (mostly stolen from posh restaurants, we’re reliably informed), and the occasional tent full of children doing arts and crafts, it’s hardly a place you’d expect to be finding the best new music.However, Oxford’s pretty well known for producing musical talent (Radiohead, anyone?) and the presence of BBC Oxford Introducing at the Last FM Stage brings with it a host of exciting up-and-coming bands to the occasion.

On top of this, the new Clash stage, curated by the Bella Union, Transgressive Records and Heavenly Recordings, provides this year’s festival with some of the most interesting acts we’ve seen for a while, along side some of the more established folk acts on the main stage (and the family fun). The festival’s also got the added bonus of being still so endearingly small that it avoids the general festival filth which, although easy to get used to, makes the festival experience noticeably more pleasant for its absence. Clean toilets and the best festival showers you are ever likely to encounter are only small things, but, aside from the music and the general atmosphere, they help make Truck festival such a great little place to while away a weekend.

Having set up, our first musical endeavor is to happily veg in the (slightly unexpected) sunshine, to soak up the sounds of Marcus Foster. His soulful, folksy tunes are nothing we’ve not heard from many other man-with-guitar acts over the summer festivals so far, but it’s still pretty lovely in the sunshine. ‘We’re going to go a bit crazy at the end of this one’ he proclaims near the end of the set, insisting that the lethargic crowd stand, but he’s largely ignored, and the band are left to strum their guitars double time to a slightly bopping mass of very, very relaxed people.

Moving to the Clash stage, the audience are now shaded by a circus-style tent, and starting to be driven out of our sun-induced inertia by the haunting vocals of Mechanical Bride’s Lauren Doss. Eerie, but surrounding and lovely, the violins and glockenspiels blur even the children in the audience into silence, and before we know it, the set’s done, leaving them only to wander off to beg their parents for chips at the Oxford Rotary Club’s charity burger stall.

Next up is Peggy Sue, whose ukuleles and lovely First Aid Kit-like harmonies bring the mood up slightly, their enthusiasm giving ‘I Read It In The Paper’ a more upbeat feel than it has on record. The rhythm here is much more prominent and driving too, making the indie-folk performance exactly what we need to entertain us in the continuing sunshine.

And on to Liam Finn, who thrashes on to the stage like a bearded Robin Williams let loose on Rock Band for xbox. Jumping from mic to prime-positioned drum kit to duo with the band’s drummer. He’s throughly entertaining, and so enthusiastically charming that we barely notice what it all actually sounds like. He may be a little whinier than we might have hoped, but he’s clearly made an impression on the hippy girl behind us, who breathlessly asks ‘Do you know who that was?’ as he finishes, like she’s just discovered Bob Dylan.

Johnny Flynn takes us into more mainstream, chilled-out territory, with his pop/nu-folk offerings, while early teen girls with ‘I ♥ JF’ carefully face-painted on their cheeks clamour to get to the front. Close up though, he’s different from what the press photos would have us believe, with mucky blonde hair making him look almost Kurt Cobain-esque, and his voice husky above the melodic guitar.

Now for the night’s headliners then, and it’s on to the main stage for Bellowhead. None of your nu-folk silliness here, this is proper folk, with the band filling the stage with violins accordions and mandolins for an energetic set of timeworn songs about drinking whiskey and young love.  It’s perfectly entertaining, but not quite enough to keep us from running off to the Last FM stage to catch some Oxford locals, Dead Jerichos, before bedtime, who fill the small tent with satisfying, beat driven post-rock indie.

Day Two

Colorama hit the Clash stage for the early afternoon to begin Saturday’s music. As we enter, front man Carwyn Ellis is singing something sincere sounding in Welsh, and continues (although for the main in the English language) to be pretty much as Welsh as it’s possible to be, (take from that what you will.) Ernest but naive lyrics detailing “dancing to the sugar beat” in ‘Candy Street’, over soft, slightly psychedelic guitar bring a nostalgic ambience to the tent and get us ready for the rest of the afternoon.

Over in the Last FM tent, more local boys Sealings, take us away from the calm atmosphere into harsh experimental guitar noise and fuzzed-out vocals. The duo play amidst old TV sets flickering with unnerving, repetitive images to a much different, much less wholesome looking audience that have appeared from somewhere. Pretty good stuff here, really, but it’s a little jarring, and seems a little out of place in the otherwise chilled atmosphere.

Next comes more Oxford talent, with Wild Swim. Encapsulating, electronic indie from the five-piece fills the tent and has the audience swaying to the beat and ready for more. It’s at this point however, that we discover from two guys standing behind us, about the death of Amy Winehouse – the news apparently coming from a text message from one of their mothers. A quick google search confirms at least that this ins’t something they (or the mother) have made up, and before long the news is spreading through the tent, and the festival as a whole, making for something of a distraction.

We forget about this for the moment, though, and run off to the Truck Store – a tent usually dedicated to selling festival merchandise, but for now hosting an intimate set with Benjamin Francis Leftwich. The silenced crowd sit calmly on the grass and listen intently to his soft renditions of ‘Atlas Hands’ and ‘Pictures’. His mellifluous singer-songwriter voice making for something sweet and lovely in the fading sunshine, and the crowd leave smiling. Only one complaint heard as we leave: ‘it was a bit short.’.

Back to the Last FM stage then, for Jonquil. Former band mates of Trophy Wife and headed up by Hugo Manuel who’s solo project takes the form of Chad Valley. Jonquil are the first of the three, all part of the Oxford based Blessing Force collective, that we’ll see on this stage tonight. Their upbeat floating synth lines and propulsive drumming along side Manuel’s voice is nothing short, really, of brilliant, and the songs power wonderfully through the early evening. The four-piece own the small stage with confidence and enthusiasm and make for an instant highlight so far.

Up next on the Clash stage comes Sea of Bees, the musical moniker of California’s Julie Ann Baenziger. Her tomboyish appearance makes her beautiful, child-like voice somewhat unexpected, despite it’s familiarity, but as the music builds into dark, powerful movements, the strange sounds fill the tent with something very different to much of what we’ve heard this weekend, but something pretty wonderful.

Onwards to more Oxford boys on the Last FM stage. The three ex-Jonquil-ers Trophy Wife propel their unremitting indie-pop into the audience, driving the crowd into motion. Not least, the current Jonquil boys, who are visible bouncing round the tent together. It’s the first time the two bands have shared a stage, or so we’re informed by Jody Prewett, lead singer of the trio, and there’s clearly a strong relationship between the two bands. But whatever’s going on there, musically, there’s no doubt this is a great performance from a band who deserve to, and may well, hit some more mainstream success in the not too distant future.

On to Young Knives on the main stage who provide their pop-rock offerings for the next slice of musical entertainment, causing the only real ‘mosh’ we’ll see this weekend, before a complete change of scene takes us into the far off (not really, it’s a pretty small site) Wood Stage for the Irish offerings of Heidi Talbot. Venturing into the hushed tent, filled mostly with those of an older generation sat crossed legged on the floor, we find ourselves a bit of space and follow suit, without much of an idea what this is going to be like. As it turns out, what it’s like is a little bit wow. Talbot’s voice is sweet and soaring, the violin floats around the tent beautifully and the male harmonies from either side of her on the low stage create a wonderfully chilled out half hour of folk-loveliness.

Next, Gruff Rhys, as the headliner for tonight, takes us back into reality a little on the main stage, for his maverick, funk-pop balladry. Jumping between instruments, he puts on a charming and engaging performance, laden with hooks from his keys, harmonica and guitar, fitting perfectly into the ambience of this enchanting, quirky festival.

This isn’t the night over, though, and we’re soon running back to the Last FM stage to catch the last of the Blessing Force lot in the form of Chad Valley. Looking much the same as he did in front of Jonquil a few hours earlier, his electronic ramblings begin the night shift perfectly, the danceable beats from the drum machine and pulsing synths, along side his still beautiful, but now much more electronically changed voice, making the rest of the Jonquil boys jump around even more than they did to the Trophy Wife set. The man himself is as charismatic as ever, and we couldn’t really ask much more from an electronic act like this.

A quick stop off for a bit of St Etienne’s familiar, flowing synth lines gives us time to join all the people who’ve had a little too much of the official Truck lager in having a bit of a boogie, before we disappear into the Boxford text for some late night dubstep from the DJs.

Day Three

Sunday morning comes with the hot sun through the tent, a quick (and very posh, for a festival) shower, and we’re back on the bands. We begin with the lovely Lanterns on the Lake, who are nothing short of the perfect festival hangover cure. Swelling choruses of violins and bowed guitar topped by powerful female vocals fill our ears and dispel any thoughts we might have had of just going back to bed.

Moving on, Caitlin Rose’s soulful voice over the funky folk fills the main stage with songs about rabbits and clouds. A little naive? Perhaps, but it’s very endearing to see her trying to get a little more reaction out of the crowd, who, like for Marcus Foster’s performance on Friday, are just way too chilled out to stand up and dance. We just want to sit back and listen.

More sweet-voiced, pop-folk on the Clash stage then comes from the wonderful Alessi’s Ark. The project of Hammersmith’s Alessi Laurent-Marke, the band play through much of her recent album Time Travel, and just as it comes across on record, the set is a heartfelt and absorbing detour into her mind.

Tribes then take to the Last FM stage, powering through ‘We Were Children’, with an endearing enthusiasm which is matched by the crowd. As the set progresses, we’re given a choice of songs we want next, and although the crowd is split, ‘Coming of Age’ wins out, and benefits from the full band’s instrumentation which it misses on record, and comes out wonderfully.

From here it all seems to be slowing down a bit. There’s still a few acts on our lists but things are packing up relatively early this evening, assumedly in order to allow the grown up truckers to get to work on Monday morning, and get the less grown up to school.

Nevertheless, Tunng take on the main stage with their danceable brand of ‘folktronica’ which is usually very engaging. It’s a little disappointing, however, that, since seeing them at a few festivals a whole year ago, they haven’t changed their performance or set much at all, and it somehow feels a bit lacklustre – a shame for a band who have produced much interesting stuff in the past. We swing by Radiohead guitarist Philip Selway performing some of his solo material on the Clash stage, backed by two angelic female voices, it’s all very relaxing, if not as enthralling as we might have hoped for from such a man.

Onwards and upwards, to The Go! Team on the main stage. Characteristically full of energy and verve, front woman ‘Ninja’ prances about the stage to exuberant indie, hollering out her rapped lyrics, and convincing the bouncing mass of people in front of her to do the same through receptive chanting of ‘Huddle Formation’.

And it’s all nearly over, but for the final, closing headliners of the festival. There’s nothing that quite displays Truck’s local, family run ideals than the fact that the two brothers who began and run the festival, are in the Sunday headlining band: Dreaming Spires. The band endlessly thank the crowd for their attendance at the festival and display their clear, deserved pride at having put on such a great event. After an hour’s set of rock and roll, the band leave the stage, promising a ‘secret’ performance of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors album, in it’s entirety, on the near by Clash stage soon after. It’s a rather strange idea, but why the hell not? Somehow it’s a rather fitting end to the perfect eccentricity that has been Truck 14.

Givers have just finished their first UK tour – a short jaunt that felt more like a victory lap than an introduction.

Having showed them the sights of London (including such delectable cultural highlights as Dalston’s Shacklewell Arms), we thought they might like to return the favour. Here, then, is each of the band members’ guide to their favourite parts of their hometown – the impossibly romantic sounding Lafayette, Louisiana.

Kirby

Scott’s Drum Center

Scott’s drum center is a local Lafayette, LA owned Drum store, in my opinion one of the coolest music stores I’ve ever been to. He started the business right around the time I began playing drums. I was about 10 years old and I was Scott’s first student he ever taught drums. They not only have an entire building of percussive instruments, but they also run a music school called Acadiana School of the Arts (ASA) which teaches anything musical from vocals to guitar, African hand drumming, even pairing up students into “bands” to teach kids how to play with each other. I actually met Tiff when we were about 14 years old at one of their first “Drum Camps” which has now turned into part of ASA. It is an amazing avenue for kids getting into music at a young age, and it helps that it’s run by some of the sweetest musicians in the world.

Festival International de Louisiane

Festival International de Louisiane is something everyone in Lafayette grows up attending every year. It is the heartbeat of the city; the worldly multi-cultural essence that radiates throughout our hometown constantly. It expands the musical minds of all that attend, the taste buds of the world, and is the perfect example of the Louisiana spirit. It is a Free Francophone festival, meaning it’s completely free to the public and is a French speaking festival. Musicians and artists come from all over the world; any country that speaks French, practically. It is a 5 day festival in the heart of spring. It’s beautiful at that time. Anyone that moves out of Lafayette always makes a point to come back in town for festival. It’s like our Louisiana Christmas holiday, you just can’t miss it.

Nice hat. The Festival International de Louisiane

Taylor

Dockside Studios

Dosckside studios is the amazing studio in Maurice where we recorded our album, In Light. It’s about twenty minutes outside the city limits of Lafayette, our hometown, and overlooks the Vermilion River. It is just about one of the most beautiful places you can find in the area – which makes for an ideal place to make music. The fact that it is outside the city allows you to really be absorbed in the creative process of making an album. Upstairs in the studio, there are a bunch of bedrooms – it sleeps 8 people comfortably so we all just moved in for two weeks and only left to buy groceries really. So many great bands have recorded here – everyone from Dr. John and B.B. King to Arcade Fire and Scarlett Johansson. I think I counted 16 Grammy winning recording certificates on the wall.

BB King. Photo: Jean-Luc Ourlin

And of course the studio is equipped with all the amazing gear you’d expect from a world-class studio, including a 52 input Neve 8058 console, which always helps in the pursuit of recording warm, classic tones. Besides having the perfect location and perfect gear, it also has the perfect people to run it. Steve and Wish Nails, the owners of this piece of paradise, are some of the most generous and down to earth people we’ve got to meet on our path. They are the epitome of southern hospitality – constantly cooking meals for bands and overall going out of their way just to make you feel totally welcome. The studio is a hidden gem of southwest Louisiana and we are so grateful we found it.

Tiffany

KRVS 88.7

This is the primary public-local radio station directly supported by listeners in Lafayette and a large audience in it’s surrounding parishes. Not only do they cater to the Cajun/Zydeco audience but they also widely support NPR programs and diverse local musicians. It is broadcast in the heart of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette campus right next to a cypress bayou swamp reservation. They are very generous in their local programming so you can catch styles of music ranging from the traditional Louisiana roots to new, genre defying sounds. KRVS is always amazingly supportive of local acts and many times have in-station live performances and also artists come in for interviews about upcoming shows or releases – so important for our music community.

Givers – Go Out All Night by The Line Of Best Fit

The Blue Moon Saloon

This is an amazing half-outdoor venue that accommodates many of the musicians you’ll find around town ranging from the traditional styles of Cajun and Zydeco to rock & blues and onward to even the most obscure artists. Almost always you can attend a show there and be greeted by dancing partners of varying ages on the wooden floors – ultimately it is a warm place to be able to dance freely, listen to live music heartily and share libations with friends. It also serves as the only hostel around the area so many people traveling through have a chance to enjoy the downtown area of Lafayette and experience the nightly music that the venue has to offer. It really is the best place to stay; tons of musicians travel through there and often you can hear them jam on the front porch communicating through the universal language of music.

Lafayette from above. Photo: Ken Lund

Josh

Food

Being from south Louisiana it is hard to distinguish between culture and food; they both meld together so beautifully. Food is not only a reflection of the culture, it IS the culture. It is the main focus of nearly every festival we have in Louisiana from the crawfish festival to the cattle festival. So naturally, our food in Louisiana is as diverse as our heritage; which can be traced back to Haiti, Nova Scotia, Africa, and other countries. All of these elements combine in a very complimentary way in southern Louisiana food. It’s the epitome of the American ideal, food is the one of the few things that can combine all these cultures. It brings people together rather than dividing them. If there’s one thing we can agree on in Lafayette, it’s that we love our food. And cooking is one of the few activities in life that can be a vessel for expression. And when you’re expressing love through your food, which most southern Louisiana food is, you provide a heightened sensual experience….and we are very sensual people. Eating is not just a ritual of necessity in Louisiana, it’s an experience.

A good food experience is very hard to come by, but Louisiana food goes deeper than just your stomach, it hits your soul; if you don’t have a spiritual relationship with your food you’re not eating/cooking it right.

Givers – ‘Up Up Up’ (CSS remix) by Stayloose

Nick

UL school of music

Lafayette draws in people of varying age and demographic because of its strong culture, but maintains a large influx of young people due to the University of Louisiana. The school of music, while only formally teaching classical and jazz, attracts students with diverse musical backgrounds and interests, looking to further their knowledge and make connections. All of us were at one time students of this university and some of our first encounters playing music together were within the walls of the music building. Having the facilities to create, rehearse and record music with like-minded individuals was both a valuable and memorable experience.

‘Up Up Up’ is out 1 August on Island.p;

This Summer Oh! Canada is once again hitting the road across Canada, and will be reporting back on the shows and artists it meets along the way. The first stop on our road trip is Vancouver, a city which happens to be celebrating it’s 125th Anniversary. As such, there are plenty of events going on, many of them free, and all of them showcasing the prodigious talents the city has to offer. On arrival, we got word that former Ho! Ho! Ho! Canada featured artist T. Nile was playing a free lunchtime show outside the offices of the CBC Radio building in the downtown area. The reason for the free show? Lunchtime, apparently – a great way of getting people out to enjoy the fresh air and introducing them to new music. With fiddle and fine banjo picking backing up her rootsy sound, it wasn’t difficult to see why she was awarded the best emerging artists at the Canadian Folk Music awards.

Later that day, we headed over to Stanley Park for the Summer Series, a three day event playing host to a vast array of performances ranging from members of Vancouver’s First Nations community, The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and established and rising stars of the local indie-rock community for good measure. Set with the sea to one, side and the city to the other, and in the shadows of the still snow-tipped mountains of the Sunshine Coast, there can be few more picturesque locations for a festival. We arrived just in time to catch local folk roots mainstays The Be Good Tanyas set, which saw them welcomed back with open arms after an extended hiatus since 2006’s Hello Love album. Clearly the time away had done little to dull the close harmonies and fusion of new and traditional that made their name in the first place, as they mixed up traditional songs, covers and originals. With nothing but the spruce of the forest to backdrop the stage, the combination of sounds and location seemed completely natural.

Over at the Trail’s Edge Stage, Fond of Tigers were proving once again to be a force to be reckoned with, their twin drummer attack laying down complex and layered rhythmic riffs for the rest of the bands members to build on, through and over with their melodic guitar runs or treated horns, then flipping for the guitars to take melodic control. Post-rock, post-jazz, call it what you will, it’s a captivating and powerful thing to behold.

From the open expanses of Stanley Park, we headed to Zoo Zhop, a tiny record store/gig space with a single lamp to light the stage to check out the single release party for long time Oh! Canada favourites Apollo Ghosts. If the crowds were busy for openers Duffy and The Doubters and Shotgun Jimmie (who will appear again later in this roadtrip), the crowd that piled in from the sidewalk in to the tiny space were like hot, sweaty sardines by the time Adrian Teacher and his band took the stage. The band have built quite a name for themselves locally on the back of their live show, and didn’t disappoint on this occasion, Teacher twitching and yelping his way through the set, leading the crowd through the sing along part of new free single ‘Money Has No Heart’, drums rumbling, guitars flailing and drummer Amanda Panda unleashing mighty roars that seem to take both the band and herself by surprise. While previous shows have been known for their crowdsurfing, the packed conditions lead to a rather more gentle version, band and audience members being held gentley aloft and passed from side to side in slow motion, which seemed fitting as Apollo Ghosts fluctuated beyond chaotic and sublime guitar lines. By the end of the frenetic set, even the sweat dripping from the walls was sweating, but happy. “Vancouver- Ultra Kool” indeed.

The rest of the weekend was spent back in Stanley Park, taking in accomplished performances by the likes of the energetic We Are The City, Aidan Knight, whose horn drenched, charming take on Canadian quickly won him plenty of new admirers amongst the crowds of picnicers, as well as a runthrough of ‘classic classical’ from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. However, the weekend belonged to returning Vancouver heroes new and old. Saturday night saw Neko Case return to her old stomping ground with full band in tow, debuting a handful of new songs as well as selections from Middle Cyclone and Fox Confessor, the beautiful and familiar surroundings giving the set a gentle ease as her voice cut through the chill night air. She had little time to rest post-set however, as she joined hometown supergroup The New Pornographers to rip through a set that took in tracks from all of their records. Despite the huge crowds packed in to see the band, the show had the feeling of a big yard party, Case and Carl Newman exchanging easy banter between songs, introducing ‘My Descent in to Alcoholism’ as a song about Kathryn Calder’s forthcoming wedding reception, then stopping mid song to say “Do you know how hard it is to play when you all keep clapping?”. Although the abscence of Dan Bejar (just returned from his Euro tour with Destroyer) meant that certain songs were left from the set, each song was greeted by the crowd like a greatest hit, the only dissapointment being the lack of encore due to running over curfew.

While Saturdays headliners are long established city heroes, Sunday nights headline has seen a meteoric rise to prominence in his hometown. Just two years ago Dan Mangan was playing in the small town venues he frequently namechecks in his songs, yet now he stood on stage with a 15 piece band playing to 15,000, at least half of which sang back every word. With Vancouver still hurting from the bad publicity of the riots just a few weeks ago, it is fitting, as Mayor Gregor Robertson noted in his introduction of Mangan, that someone who has done much charity work, and become a musical ambassador for the town, should close the peaceful celebrations in the park. For his part, Mangan did everything that was asked of him, playing almost all of his Polaris shotlisted album Nice, Nice Very Nice to a rapturous reception, as well as debuting new tracks from the forthcoming Oh Fortune before inviting the mayor to join him in singing Happy Birthday to the city. After the weeks of soul-searching and questioning about what it meant to be a city it felt like a moment of catharsis shared amongst 15,000 people.

The advantage of having the mayor on side-stage is that he can sign off on an extension of the curfew, which is exactly what he did. As the Mayor left the stage, Mangan announced that the band would then play Dark Side of The Moon in it’s entirety, his band picking out the intro to ‘Money’ as he spoke. Though there was no Floyd cover, he did take the opportunity to play his cover of ‘Waltz Number’ by Elliot Smith before running to the side stage and bringing out a genuinely bemused looking Aidan Knight to perform his song ‘Jasper’, while Mangan gleefully ran around the stage bashing a tambourine. To close the set, Mangan invited all of the various bands who have played with him during his rapid rise to join him on stage to sing ‘Robots’- members of Said The Whale, Aidan Knight, Hey Ocean and more, Vancouver’s new rising stars joining forces with an overwhelming sense of positivity and community, a fitting and optimistic end to Vancouver’s 125th Anniversary Celebration.

Next stop on the Oh! Canada Road Trip: Dawson City Music Festival in the Yukon for Dawson City Music Festival

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4

“Nervous tensions which derive from… personal frustrations are accentuated by the rapid tempo and the complicated technology under which life in dense areas must be lived.”
Louis Wirth Urbanism as a Way of Life

No Joy, currently an exciting blip on the sprawling roster of Mexican Summer, are currently on an extended tour of Europe, taking in Primavera on their way and ending up at the Lexington on the 20th of June. It is with a sense of excitement that I talk of this news as their music has always deeply interested me following a rather surface-level review of their debut album in Pitchfork. In it Martin Douglass contrived to demonstrate the inferred sense of distance within the record, in which he says the band were founded – this refers to the fact that the two principal writers were situated in Montreal and Los Angeles for a brief period. The concept is sound I think, but, no doubt due to editorial constraints, his argument is a little flat. However, once read, my interest was piqued and the album now holds a certain rosy-eyed splendour in my mind. Distance is a concept that holds a certain amount of uncertainty and vagueness but appears central to me in relation to our unique and isolated location at this alarming nexus of civilisation. Our relationships have managed to fall apart despite increased closeness in a geographical and physical sense. It reminds of the brittle and fragile reality constructed by Chris Petit in his vacillating 2010 documentary Content. We live our lives by the click of a mouse, flitting between one idea to the next, losing our sense of self, our sense of time and, broadly speaking, our sense of reality. And while I dwell upon it we simply move further and further apart, never getting to the centre of this paradox and never allowing ourselves to pull back. This is progress.

It is, however, a concept that I am deeply interested in and and one that I feel the album speaks about in its own particular way and whilst I’m not entirely convinced it comes from this specific instance, it sounds like it is there within the record. Distance, in concrete terms, speaks of separation and physical, geographical boundaries. But where it becomes abstract it loosens this rigidity and becomes a qualitative term addressing subjective responses to situations. It becomes an atmosphere in it’s own right, or even, in Guy Debord’s phrase a “distinct psychic atmosphere.” It achieves a certain level of psychical response that can impact you positively or negatively, effectively drawing out a reaction that is deeply rooted in your situation both emotionally and geographically. Distance is both an abstract and concrete quality, thus, when pertaining to art, it can take hold within the subjective response of the song, or as Douglass explains in relation to No Joy:

“Distance is an ideal that seeps into the pores of every guitar strum and snare hit on the record. Lloyd and White-Glutz’s airy vocals are pushed low into the mix, to the point where their voices resemble conversation from a foggy, half-remembered dream.”

In this half remembered dream the abstractions of distance are explored, and as an alienating and fragmented quality they are expressed physically through the use of noise and immersive reverb. It is in both high artistic conception and in the reality of the instrumentation itself that we are subjected to, are made aware of, and ultimately dwell within distance.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Distance is explored by No Joy in both atmospheres, or ambiences, and in physical character. ‘Take Mediumship’, the opener on Ghost Blonde. Mediumship refers to communicating with the spirits. In channelling you become the organ of this communication, removing the distance between two worlds, or breaking down your own psychic barriers to explore new, unexplored atmospheres. In real and illusory worlds perception is changed by ones’ connection to surroundings; as Theodor Adorno suggests your present constantly reflects and redesigns your surroundings through your changing attitudes and responses to stimuli: “nothing past is proof”. Adorno’s maxim may seem destructive, or reductive, but it actually shows us the ever changing realities of our present. Thus, in ‘Mediumship’, No Joy open up their album and their exploration of distance. Physically though, the album’s shape is in forms that succeed to properly reify these abstractions. It is crafted with an inbuilt wall of oblique tones and artificially effected vocals that seek to show the blurred and nebulous feelings associated with distance. Through mediumship they correlate the abstract and the concrete. It brings together the rational and the spiritual.

“I am infinitely saddened to find myself suddenly surrounded in the West by a sense of terrible loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into – into what? Into Zen Buddhism: into extra-sensory perception and mystery.”
Dr Jacob Brokowski

Further exploration of the album throws up numerous exciting and attractive moments and as the delicate wallpaper of your memories fade you are left to re-evaluate what you think you know. As rightly pointed out by Douglass in the Pitchfork review, it is their originality which is the most attractive thing about them. ‘You Girls Smoke Cigarettes’ goes beyond what many bands can even hope to capture. It’s beautifully raw and strangely passive. It lets you into their world as an objective viewer, discerning the sonic currents and the intent inside. Within it is a turbulent cloud of melody all blended together and dug in deep. This is then repeated time and again. Feedback will burn in, a drum beat will set the pace and then with guitars and bass blaring away the melody will seep in latent and insidious until it tattoos itself on your skin and you’re forced to wear it as a badge of honour. And so it is with great excitement that I welcome them to our shores, perhaps then we can find something more real than broken connections.

No Joy on tour

May
22 – Glasgow, Captains Rest
23 – Manchester, Sound Control
24 – Bristol, Cooler
25 – London, The Social
27 – Spain, Primavera Festival
31 – Zurich, Exil

June
1 – Milan, Magnolia Summer Festival
2 – Rome, Init
4 – Hamburg, Uebel & Gefährlich
5 – Berlin, Monarch
6 – Munich, 59:1
7 – Amsterdam, Paradiso
8 – Rotterdam, Rotown
10 – London, The Lexington

Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All have very little tolerance for rules. Breaking laws – whether actual or perceived – is just part of what they do. From their ungainly moniker to their entirely self-funded and promoted output to their unflinching lyrical content, OFWGKTA, or simply Odd Future, don’t set much store by what has been done before. In a year where they have gone from absolute unknowns to the brink of superstardom, it would seem that their policy of rebellion has worked. And then some.

Little more than a year ago, Odd Future were a bunch of skate punks cruising their hometown LA streets and making music in their spare time. Now, they’ve performed at South by Southwest, the MTV Woodie Awards and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, not to mention a burgeoning diary of small-venue gigs across Europe and the States which included an outdoor set at the Camden Crawl. Suffice to say their popularity is exploding.

Yet most people are still wondering who on earth this crew are, and how they’ve come so far so fast. Producer, rapper and de facto leader Tyler, The Creator is the mainstay, having been involved – as rapper, producer or in many cases both – in nearly every OFWGKTA release, and often speaks on behalf of Odd Future as a whole in interviews. His debut album Bastard received much acclaim for its brutally unrestrained lyrics, and recent single ‘Yonkers’ has found huge viral success, its disturbing video – in which Tyler eats a live cockroach and then hangs himself – clocking up millions of hits on YouTube and heralded by Kanye West as the best music video of 2011. Much of the furore about Odd Future’s depraved content has been directed toward Tyler’s work: his gravelly flow and darker-than-coal subject matter combining to make for memorable, and sometimes plain disturbing, listening.

Click here to view the embedded video.

While Tyler has been receiving by far the most ink, there’s much more to OFWGKTA than just one man. Earl Sweatshirt, Hodgy Beats (both solo and with Left Brain as MellowHype), Mike G and Domo Genesis have all released their own rap albums, but there’s also electronic funk courtesy of The Jet Age of Tomorrow and smooth RnB from Frank Ocean. In a manner befitting the group’s egalitarian approach, every OF release features a host of crossover collaborations, with guest verses from various members of the collective and guest production from Tyler and the group’s two more specialist producers, Syd and Left Brain.

But if OFWGKTA’s music is innovative, the way they distribute it is even more creative. The Odd Future Tumblr blog is the only centralised location where all of the collective’s output can be found, whether you want to download Mike G’s Ali, Jet Age’s Voyager or the group’s Radical mixtape. All of it is free. And not free in the way that Radiohead’s In Rainbows was, where downloaders were encouraged to pay whatever they felt appropriate for the album, but absolutely no-strings-attached gratis. Odd Future do not ask you to donate to their cause, but allow you to pay nothing to to listen their music without even a hint of complaint. Tyler’s upcoming sophomore album Goblin is going to be the first release which is “bigger than our Tumblr” (as the group themselves put it). What that means, as ever with Odd Future, isn’t exactly clear. As Hodgy Beats raps on MellowHype’s ‘Based’: “You can hate it, love it, or like it / Either AIM it, Facebook it or Skype it”.

OFWGTA’s use of technology is progressive, all-inclusive and joyously obvious, and means that they create hype on their own terms. Tellingly, OF has a serious vendetta against perceived ‘hype-maker’ hip-hop blog sites 2DopeBoyz and Nah Right – Tyler mercilessly ripping into them at the start of Bastard – both of whom refused to put Tyler’s work up on their sites when he first submitted them. Tyler and his group have their own hype now, and continue to slam these two sites, even advertising on them both enclosing a message telling them to, well, fuck themselves. The message Tyler’s sending is one of perseverance: keep making music when you’re doubted, and always get the last laugh.

It would be easy to dismiss OF with the argument that “people only like because it’s free”, but to do so would entirely miss the point. Odd Future don’t so much face down convention as gleefully pistol-whip it to death, and this ethos extends way beyond the free distribution of their output.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The controversy regarding their music – most of which swirls around Tyler and Earl – is easy to comprehend, but it too overlooks the meaning behind the menace.

Take ‘Sarah’, perhaps the most controversial track on Tyler’s first album. It weaves a twisted tale from a first-person perspective, as Tyler’s fucked-up rap persona does the following: asks a girl to the prom, gets rejected, kidnaps her, locks her in his basement, repeatedly rapes her, cuts her up and then kills himself when the cops show. The first reaction to this is probably universal: “This guy is a psycho”.

Yet while the lyrics are depraved (to say the least) they’re making bold statements, revealing the darkest inner workings of the human soul and peeling back the curtain on the final taboos of the 21st Century. OF don’t believe in taboos and have no time for compromise or restraint: their lyrics are brutal, even malignant, and relentless. The visceral impact of Tyler’s Bastard or Earl’s self-titled is unparalleled, the sheer fury and force behind every word tangible and meaningful.

Bastard also contextualises its content. The entire record is played out against clips of a lengthy “therapy session” between Tyler’s persona and his doctor, and the final line of the title track reveals that at least part of the reason for Tyler’s violence are memories of an absent father: “I just want my father’s e-mail / So I can tell him how much I fucking hate him in detail”.

Tyler’s gleefully profane style is actually reminiscent of another much publicised rap success story: Eminem. Both handle tough subject matter, play out protracted fantasies of murder and suicide, and have a bruising flow which refuses to let up. They both express their anger through alter-egos – Marshall Mathers/Eminem and Tyler/alt-Tyler – and act as symbols for a disenfranchised, forgotten, furious generation.

For all the furore surrounding Tyler’s content, Eminem’s ‘Stan’ – which was a UK number 1, lest we forget – contains some horrifying images. The closing verses wherein Stan kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend are shocking, but reveal the instability and senseless rage that destroys lives, much as Tyler’s raps unveil the true horror of rape and murder, not to mention the twisted psychology of those who perpetrate such acts.

Whether or not Tyler and Odd Future will ever reach the heights, both critical and fiscal, that Marshall Mathers has done is uncertain, but regardless of the success they go on to attain, their music’s impact cannot be denied. From the free distribution of their tracks, to the kinetic, frantic, stage-diving, mosh-pitting live shows which frequently resemble a cross between a rap concert and a heavy metal show, OFWGKTA are pushing rap in a new direction. Their use of the world’s most powerful promotional tool, the internet, is second to none, and their abilities on the mic or behind the desk are precocious and hugely impressive.

Ready (or more likely) not, Odd Future are coming. And we’d best be prepared.

1. It’s possible to make a whole room fall a bit in love with you, all at once.

2. Dressing your band like a psychotropic Tron orchestra, in ludicrous UV neon, and rehearsing them till they fall over doesn’t make them play any worse. “We didn’t sleep too late…”

3. Three trombones, two drummers and at least six giant wings are the minimum requirements for a chamber-pop show nowadays.

4. Phrases like “a battleship in which inner space and outer space are conjoined” have a rightful place in alternative rock.

5. It’s pronounced Soof-yan*. He said it himself. It’s not that hard.

6. The tough economic climate can be faced off by encouraging your band to multi-task: aerobic synchronised dancing while singing perfect three-part harmony is now expected of all backing singers.

7. Releasing an album significantly different in style from your previous work is no barrier to success as long as you spend half an hour of a 135-minute gig explaining why you did it.

8. Throwing down the live gauntlet to The Flaming Lips with an air of nonchalant triumph is not only possible but laudable. “Don’t be distracted…”

9. Attending a Rudolf Steiner school can turn you into a massive hippie.

10.  Kitchen sinks across the land might bemoan the neglect they feel, but the use of everything else onstage is to be encouraged.

11.  When he was young, Sufjan’s sisters used to taunt him by running around the house while reading his (glowing) school reports out loud.

12.  A sentence such as “A lot of my daily life is cluttered with language. Language is extremely fascist; movement allows us to communicate freely” will not necessarily send audiences sprinting for the exit.

13.  Folk + dubstep + progressive rock + War of the Worlds + feathers = goosestep.

14.  Admitting that your recent chosen method of making songs has proven “arduous, painstaking and inefficient” sounds thunderingly disingenuous when presenting said songs in such audacious style.

15.  The world deserves to know more about American outsider artist Royal Robertson and (we’re guessing here) acid-chomping animator Deborah Johnson.

16.  As a child, Sufjan had phobias about television, the aloe vera plant, heights, “cooked fruit inside of stuff” and hot lava.

17.  Just because the stage is bursting with intellectually and visually taxing, deftly orchestrated joy, doesn’t mean the whole room is going through the same, earnest “second puberty” as the singer.

18.  Dressing like a Blue Peter spaceship/human disco ball doesn’t affect your ability to sing one iota. “Tell me/Do you think of me now?”

19.  When he sings in the lower register recommended by his vocal coach, Sufjan sounds almost exactly like The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt.

20.  Sufjan is either incredibly confident or incredibly shy.

21.  Very occasionally, drum solos work.

22.  There’s no point in Of Montreal ever doing a turn on Glee – any ideas they might have had for their appearance have already been done.

23.  A ticker-tape explosion/balloon drop/standing ovation are both now prerequisites for a rock concert, regardless of location. “Boy, we made such a mess together…”

24.  Judging by the sustained, persistent pre-encore whooping, cheering and stomping, absolutely everything just isn’t enough for some people. “All things go…”

25.  Sometimes, closing a venue down as a mark of “we’ll never match that” respect is the only truly appropriate response to a gig.

26.  Thanking an audience for their “strength and fortitude and patience” at the end of a show might have been better placed at the beginning, as a warning.

27.  Hippie? Oh yeah. This is the dawning of The Age of Adz.

*only half a thing, since we knew it already.

Aldrei’s deliberate emphasis on Icelandic acts, and even artists just from the sparsely populated West Fjords region, means barely anybody on the 2011 line-up has made a whole lot of impact in the UK.

So it’s only fair that we pluck out a handful of favourites from the 30-band bill. Read on, and judge for yourselves: there’s a link to each band’s Aldrei performance at the foot of each entry, thanks to the nice folk at inspiredbyiceland.com…

Mugison
We’d best kick off with the man without whom Aldrei probably wouldn’t exist, at least in its current glorious form. Mugison (aka Örn Guðmundsson) has a killer app in the form of his multi-tentacled synth/sequencer/Teasmade (must be seen to be believed), and the resulting growling electro-blues soundbomb can be heard from space.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sóley
Given half a chance, Morr Music-signed Sóley will carve herself a sizeable bolthole in the downbeat acoustica chalkface, managing effortlessly to silence the hitherto extremely rowdy warehouse with her understated tones.

Kristin Hersh seems to be a touchstone, with Radiohead’s ear for melancholy, and when the piano comes out, hearts leap to mouths as one. That the band might actually be named after the immortal Middle of the Road classic is but a cherry on top of an already tasty cake.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Páll Óskar
Now this is a surprise. Páll Óskar represented Iceland in the 1997 Eurovision Song Contest, belts out pulsating disco anthems, tiptoes through more introspective delights like ‘Þú komst við hjartað í mér’ (covered effectively by whimsy-drenched Icelandic folkies Hjaltalín a couple of years back), and his set features an Icelandic version of ‘I Am What I Am’.

Páll makes Louie Spence look like Brian Blessed. He signed autographs for hours after his show. He is awesome.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sammi Sam
Essentially an Icelandic Arkestra (Midnight Sun Ra, perhaps?), Sammi Sam are a driven collective of mainly brass instrumentalists peddling infectious-as-hell, funksome jazz.

The more observant among you might notice a member of The Sugarcubes on bongos, but to be honest someone had to tell me that (no, it’s not Björk or Einar).

Click here to view the embedded video.

PLX
Because yet another bloody acoustic guitar/ukulele/bassoon solo might cause some audience members to lynch their neighbour, PLX are here to spread the love with a set of pulsing, hoover noise-punctuated electrotech. Such sweet relief are they that we even shake half a leg, for a bit. She bobs, he weaves, they rap after a fashion, and all is well in the world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Prins Póló
Yes, the singer seems to be wearing a cardboard Burger King crown, and yes, his dial would appear to be permanently set to WACKY!!!11, but Prins Póló’s dronefolk betrays a deep love of mid-’90s lo-fi and proves hard to resist.

Named after an Icelandic chocolate bar – one without a legal department, presumably.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yoda Remote
As befits the twilight hour – OK, it was about 11pm – Yoda Remote deliver a welcome slice of housey, breaksy electronica to the festival to wake everyone up a bit after all that folksiness.

Dozens of dancing Icelandic jumpers in a moshpit? Oh go on then…

Click here to view the embedded video.

FM Belfast
Sadly the immensely fun, all-bouncing, all-chanting electro-pop party delivered by these Reykjavík kids isn’t online either, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say it was an absolute Aldrei highlight.

Their 2008 album How To Make Friends sounds a little tame three years on, but they kick ass live – with or without trousers on.

We salute you…
Mr Silla, aka Sigurlaug Gísladóttir from Múm, for her impressive harlequin one-piece; Lars Doppler‘s bassist, for pulling the weekend’s most vomit-worthy sex faces while playing; Mugison‘s orchestra, Lúðrasveit T.Í, featuring people who look about 80 and some who are clearly 15 – truly impressive and rather moving; FM Belfast‘s pre-teen Bez, rumoured to be their keyboard player’s niece, who dances onstage in perfect time for their entire show; Lára Rúnars, whose compelling, Jane Horrocks-does-Sandie-Shaw set at Ísafjörður bar Krusin the night before the festival offered further proof that our weird is Iceland’s normal; the projector screen, showing pics festival-goers have texted in – people quickly realise they’re going unmoderated, with morbidly surreal results (naked man crushed by television, corpse on street etc); and the massed kids, sitting on the lip of the stage throughout the weekend, passing cold judgement using the time-honoured hands-on-ears critique.

2011 is a landmark year for Estonia. This tiny Baltic nation of 1.3 million celebrates 2 decades of independence from Russia, while on 1 January 2011 they adopted the Euro, and the capital city Tallinn became European Capital of Culture. A new sense of dynamism is apparent, based also on the confidence from past successes – Skype is indeed an Estonian brainchild – and this is naturally reflected in its developing music industry.

A bright example for this is Tallinn Music Week. The showcase festival and music industry-networking event boasts 16 stages, 147 artists from 10 countries and it is visited by more than 7,500 fans and 190 international delegates. With conference panels on which delegates from Glastonbury Festival, FatCat Records and Rough Trade – even The Line of Best Fit favourites Brainlove Records – have shared their wisdom, it now has reached its third year and is gradually becoming an established hub between the Baltics, the Nordic region and Russia.

Its young and dynamic organiser Helen Sildna confirms this trend: “I think this is indeed the future for the festival, because there is no such event in Latvia, Lithuania or Russia. Geographically we are a logical link between the Nordic countries, the former Easter European block and Russia. Growing interest from these countries nicely proves that too.”

Traditionally Estonians have always reached out to their northern neighbours. A basic element of Estonia’s post-independence reorientation has been closer ties with the Nordic countries. Estonians consider themselves a Nordic people based on their historical ties with those countries, particularly Finland.

We travelled to the Estonian capital to investigate the role that Tallinn Music Week can play in strengthening those regional ties and invited two acts that had never met before – Estonian alternative trio Aides and Finnish shoegaze quartet Murmansk – to share experiences, talk about common problems and challenges.

Murmansk

Aides

The two bands kicked off by talking about their influences. Despite a slight age difference – Aides are in their mid-twenties and Murmansk in their early thirties – they discovered a lot of common ground.

Aides’ drummer Mikk Simson admits that he got into music “because of Deftones, Nirvana and Korn.” Murmansk vocalist and guitarist Laura Soininen agrees that “Nirvana has been a very big influence.” Simson continues; “the first thing I watched on MTV was Prodigy’s ‘Poison’ and Offspring’s ‘Self Esteem’. At the time we could only watch MTV on illegal cable. MTV launched in Estonia only in ‘93!”

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Finland has been like a big brother to us,” Simson admits. Soininen adds, “I think there’s more solidarity between Finland and Estonia, because we are small countries close to Russia. We’ve both been part of Russia in the past. There’s some solidarity because of that.”

Indeed relations with Russia are being rapidly redefined. Russia is still unchartered territory and it could become a big export market for acts from countries like Estonia and Finland. Both Murmansk and Aides have toured recently in Russia. Their impressions are telling. “We only played three gigs in Russia – Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tver,” Kostja Tsõbulevski (Aides bassist & singer) explains, “but it was an adventure! We were really surprised with people’s reactions.”

“We went to Russia one year ago for five gigs, three of which were in western Siberia,” Laura Soininen adds in the same tone. “The excitement of people was really humbling. There were mass media there too and they were really excited about us and we were completely bemused,”

Simson: “All of us were a bit uneasy going to Russia in the beginning. For our parents and grandparents it’s more about politics and the cold war, but for us not anymore”.

With the handful of Russian industry delegates that attend Tallinn Music Week, the festival can help introduce acts similar to Aides and Murmansk to the Russian market, but also vice-versa: it can facilitate imports. Helen Sildna, Tallinn Music Week organiser, revealed a year ago that “the challenge for the next years is to get bands from Russia.” This year there were two Russian bands on the bill. Things are evolving…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Moving on the conversation, the two bands talke about recording and releasing music. Aides’ Kostja Tsõbulevski observes: “It took us four years to release our debut. We did our own studio room and recorded everything. We went to Tartu and mixed it and released ourselves. We thought we had a record deal, but they pulled out last minute, due to financial problems.“

Laura Soininen agrees: “We have some entities that support bands in Finland but they only support bands that have already accomplished something. Then you pay for your debut album yourself and you release it yourself, and we did that too.”

Again here, going out and doing the odd gig proves to be the most valuable source of income for artists. Murmansk’s Olli Pouttu confirms, “we get most money from gigs. We have to tour in Finland first, in order to collect money and go abroad.”

Aides’ bassist Kostja Tsõbulevski suggests a different solution – running a monthly clubnight to collect money.

Showcase festivals are usually the right platforms for bands to get things going. Olli Pouttu explains that, “it was the conference Musiikki & Media that started pushing us up and all of a sudden there was something going on and we got a record deal and they paid for the next album.“

To facilitate things Tallinn Music Week has established a partnership with its Finnish counterpart. “I am happy for the wonderful collaboration that we have with Music Export Finland and Musiikki & Media in Finland, explains Helen Sildna. “Their showcase festival Musiikki & Media is in fact happening in October, so we can nicely complement each other and work together in developing this market.”

But for events like Tallinn Music Week future funding is crucial. “One main challenge is to work on a stabile funding and development structure for the future,” Sildna continues. “A strategy is needed that would not only cover Tallinn Music Week as such but would also cover relevant investment logic for the music companies and artists. This industry needs to grow in thebigger picture and has to be part of a state-level policy and priorities together with other fields of creative industries.”

For emerging bands with export potential, like Aides and Murmansk, it is vital that an event like Tallinn Music Week remains firmly on the music industry map – also long after the European spotlights of 2011 are gone.

“It’s very hard for Finnish bands to gain recognition outside Finland unless they’re heavy metal,” Murmansk drummer Jaakko Suni summaries. “I think it’s very important to have a showcase festival like this in Tallinn.”

Last week, I discovered that Tad Lancucki, a ubiquitous and much-loved regular of the London gig scene had sadly passed away.

I can’t remember the first time I spoke to Tad (although most likely it was at one of the half-dozen Broken Records sets we’d both attended), but I’d certainly seen him around at countless shows over the years, dependably occupying the front row of the Luminaire or Water Rats or any number of the city’s smaller, more intimate venues. A passionate supporter of local bands, he evangelised about many of London’s up-and-coming talents, including Pete and the Pirates, Lulu and the Lampshades, the Wave Pictures, Revere and the Outside Royalty.

But his tastes certainly weren’t limited to UK bands- as long as they had promise, Tad would give them a shot. If you ever asked him what shows he had lined up, he’d deftly conjure up a piece of paper where he’d neatly noted down perhaps the most comprehensive gig schedule London’s ever seen; I mean, I’m a man who goes to a fair number of shows, but this quiet, good-mannered gent seriously put me to shame.

Indeed, one of the only things that could drag him away from live music was his other great love – marathon-running. Although in his 61st year, he continued to regularly run in events across Europe; it sometimes proved difficult for him to balance his two passions (especially when a race clashed with a particularly tempting gig) but he appeared to manage somehow.

Tad attended shows until the last; a mutual friend had been chatting to him at a Guillemots gig only days before he suddenly and tragically collapsed on 14 March 2011 at his South London home. It’s slightly surreal knowing I’ll never see him stalwartly holding the barrier ever again; a genuine supporter of independent talent, a true music fan and most of all, a thoroughly good bloke, he will be missed.

Tad’s friend John Gleeson contributed the following tribute:

“The first time Tad and I struck up a conversation was at the end of a Broken Records gig when we were both trying to get the band’s set list. Well, the outcome was good for both of us as we both got a copy. This friendly rivalry continued whenever we met at a show; if one of us did not manage to get a set list the other would photograph it.

“I know that Tad much preferred the smaller gigs to the arena type shows, but occasionally he would be spotted at one of the larger vneues. In fact soon after the Broken Records gig I went to see Sigur Ros at Alexandra Palace, rushing in to stake a place at the barrier – I turned to my left and who was there but Tad. I often suggested that he should try going to one of the smaller UK festivals,where his favourite artists would often be performing, but he said camping was not for him.

“I still cannot believe that we will no longer see Tad at future gigs. He had a real passion for live music and was a genuinely nice guy.”

Photograph of Pete and the Pirates by Tad

Having just released their eagerly awaited new album Helioscope, Leeds based post-rock titans Vessels sent us their thoughts on the albums bonus content – a series of rare b-sides and remixes from the likes of Rolo Tomassi, Worriedaboutsatan and Octopus Project.

Helioscope is available to order now on vinyl, CD or download via Cuckundoo Records website.

Ornafives
The middle part of this began life as a section to ‘Wave Those Arms, Airmen’, which was called ‘Ornament’ at the time (hence the name). When it got excised from that tune, it was then going to be a segue between songs on the first album, but during the ‘White Fields…’ sessions we quickly decided it would be better if we fleshed it out into a full track. When we got home from recording that album, we pretty much finished it within a fortnight and we’ve been playing it live ever since, making it by far the oldest tune on this release. It very nearly made it onto the album, but in the end we felt the tracklisting flowed better without it. I still think it’s one of our best tunes, so I’m glad it’s out there.

The Trap (Mild Eyes Aflenz remix)
Mild Eyes is the pseudonym of Steven Hodson from Kong and Oceansize (RIP). He wrote this while we were on tour together, in the town of Aflenz in Austria, and he’d finished it within a couple of days. The guy works fast! This remix is a rolling, synth led beast, which begins with a clacking piano lament, sneaks in with a massive synth-bass and then drops to an awesome distorted bass guitar in the middle. We were lucky enough to have Kong play at our album launch in Leeds recently, which was a lot of fun.

Monoform (Octopus Project remix)
Our producer John Congleton put us onto these guys, as he was about to record there album straight after ours. They’re an awesome indie/electronica band from Austin, Texas This track is a mash-up of double and triple-speed samples, and totally boxed my head in the first time I listened to it! It’s cheeky as fuck, but ridiculously optimistic and happy (like most Octopus Project tunes).

Art/Choke (Lee J. Malcolm remix)
Remixed by our very own multi-talented ginger, this track is pulled along by an absolute stonker of a drum loop, surrounded by swirling atmospherics and loops from the original mix. Not nearly as filthy as the original, but just as kick-ass.

Meatman (Rolo Tomassi remix)
We played a gig with Rolo Tomassi at last year’s Live At Leeds Festival, and got chatting with them then. This is very faithful to the original mix, in that it has an almost identical structure, and the vocals stay in sequence, but instead of being a delicate, trickling affair like the original, it skitters and twists like someone dropped itching powder down the tune’s shirt. I totally love the drum programming on this track. The big kick in at the end sounds like it has been put through an M83-afier. Bliss.

Heal (Earthkeptwarm remix)
Earthkeptwarm is a side project of Matt from the awesome band Nedry. He’s taken the basic ambience of the track and supported it with some supremely tasteful and gentle breakbeat, overlaid with some lovely effects.

Later Than You Think (Worriedaboutsatan remix)
We’ve been friends with these guys for years now, and they have a great vibe about their music. They’ve only taken a few small samples from the original, but they’ve created a lush, spacious and beautiful minimal-electronica tune as a bed underneath them. This track makes me feel like I’m sitting in the departure lounge for a trans-galactic space-shuttle journey.

Recur (Peatronica remix)
This is one of mine. I basically stretched the outro of the original into a full instrumental track, using the different layers of ambience created throughout the track by the guitars and synths to supply the melodies. The first half is based around some feedback that Lee had laid down, which I used as the chords to underpin everything else, and for the kick-in in the second half I did a load of cutting and splicing of the drum-beats to create a more hectic feel. The guitar line at the end is my favourite melody on the whole album, which is probably why I chose this track to remix.

Everything That Wasn’t There Before
This is another live track that didn’t make the album. It was named after we realised that all of the parts that had formed the seed of the tune at it’s inception had been replaced with new sections that worked better. It was never a consideration to be on the album, as we felt we had moved on slightly from this kind of track, but it still has a good tension to it so we wanted to record it. The singing is done through a fast tremolo, which I personally think sounds ace.

Vessels – Meatman (Rolo Tomassi remix)

Sat with beer in hand under the scorching Texan sun, I stare at the surrounding SXSW booklets, guides, maps and various freebies I seem to have amassed in little under an hour. Pulling out my roughly scribbled schedule, compiled from scratch over the past few days, I find myself constantly coming across artists that have slipped by my radar for no other reason than the overwhelmingly large number of them out here this week. Adding in little asterisks here, there and everywhere I soon find myself praying for some Tipp-Ex or an app that doesn’t require I open myself up to astronomical roaming charges.

It’s only Monday, that means it’s not even officially the music portion of SXSW yet, but already down-town Austin is an almost incomprehensible maze of bars, badges and panels. Having arrived inordinately early last Friday I found out that supergroup Gayngs and sun-soaked Silverlake psych folksters Local Natives were playing the infamous Stubbs, whilst No Age and Thee Oh Sees were set to play fellow Red River Street venue Mohawk on Sunday. With Yeasayer lined up to play a massive show at The Moody Theatre tonight it seems that, even before I’ve had the chance to prepare myself for the seemingly infinite number of showcases and official/unofficial parties that will take place from tomorrow until Sunday, Austin’s offerings are mounting up. Already, my much slaved over personal schedule seems somewhat inadequate.

Taking another swig of my warming beer I think back to the days that brought me to Austin. Travelling through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, my cohorts and I consistently flew by the seat of our pants. We somehow ended up in a beautiful campsite by the Gulf-Coast, found somewhere to stay for Mardi-Gras the very morning we left for New Orleans and even now, in the days between them leaving for home and me checking into a hotel, I find myself staying somewhere that was offered to me with only one night to spare. We always had a vague idea of where we wanted to go, and what we wanted to happen but no sure-fire way of knowing if any of it was ever going to work out.

And so, to the 90 plus official venues with limited capacity hosting over 2000 acts in the coming days – I know roughly where I want to go, and who I want to see but flying by the seat of my pants has got me thus far, why mess with a good thing? So with in-depth, rigorous and neatly printed schedules clutched next to my barely legible notebook, I tip my glass to happy accidents before heading off to the bus stop that I know is somewhere around here…right?!

Photograph by Polly Mackey

Trish Keenan, frontwoman of Broadcast, died this morning in hospital from complications with pneumonia following a lengthy stay in intensive care, according to a statement issued by Warp Records this morning. Their statement continued: “Our thoughts go out to James, Martin, her friends and her family and we request that the public respect their wishes for privacy at this time. This is an untimely tragic loss and we will miss Trish dearly – a unique voice, an extraordinary talent and a beautiful human being.”

In the mid to late nineties a select group of fine bands came out of Birmingham with a shared love of psychedelia, film scores, Krautrock, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, library music and the possibilities of analogue electronics – Pram, Plone, Magnétophone, Novak. Broadcast stood out from the crowd as the most approachable while still cleaving to a space age noir sonic world of their own.

While they made no secret of their primary debt to LA electronic pioneers The United States Of America, around that they created a world simultaneously at hock to 1960s retro-futurism and modern aereated circuit bending symphonic ambience in warm, gorgeous pop form. If it was Stereolab who coined the term “space age bachelor pad music”, Broadcast were rewiring the room’s electrics to match the lush mood. The sumptuous elegance of Keenan’s coolly delivered vocals were key to installing the mood, sometimes gentle and wistful, fragile without being slight, at other times somnambulent, haunting and bold. Her lyrics could be cryptic, partly due to her occasional utilisation of automatic writing, but often bore weight as snapshots of love and society.

Broadcast were formed in 1995 by Keenan, James Cargill, Tim Felton, Roj Stevens and Steve Perkins. After singles on Wurlitzer Jukebox and Stereolab’s own Duophonic Records, they signed to Warp in 1997 and compiled that early material onto the debut album Work And Non Work. ‘The Book Lovers’ later found its way onto the Austin Powers soundtrack. Their first album of fresh material, 2000′s The Noise Made By People, was a dreamy wash that attracted the attention of Radio 1 and Later… With Jools Holland. The album featured the single ‘Come On Let’s Go’, a spooked gem that took Joe Meek and Delia Derbyshire’s teachings into a beat pop format so accessible that BBC Sport used it for their Sven-Goran Eriksson tribute montage after he left the England managerial job. 2003′s Haha Sound was more propulsive, more carefully arranged and more in tune with spectral pop abstractions. By 2005, down to Keenan and Cargill, Tender Buttons stripped the sound back to a haze of keyboards and spare beats that put more emphasis on Keenan’s dreamlike vocals. 2006′s The Future Crayon collected rarities released mostly between 1999 to 2003, while 2009′s Broadcast And The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age was a collaborative (with Ghost Box’s Julian House) exercise in library music and spectral ‘hauntology’.

In the last few years Broadcast have been increasingly cited as an influence by pop-minded sonic adventurers. Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox recorded and toured with them in his Atlas Sound guise, of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes listed Haha Sound as his favourite album of the 00s when asked by Ragged Words, and Animal Collective booked them for their curation of All Tomorrow’s Parties this coming May after they played a stand-out set at the Matt Groening curated weekend last year.

Broadcast had reportedly been working on an album of new material alongside a soundtrack score.

The Line Of Best Fit offers its sincere condolences to Keenan’s family and friends.

Broadcast: ‘The Book Lovers’

Click here to view the embedded video.

Broadcast: ‘Come On Let’s Go’

Click here to view the embedded video.

Broadcast: ‘Papercuts’

Click here to view the embedded video.

Broadcast: ‘Black Cat’

Click here to view the embedded video.

Looking back it is safe to say 2010 has been a pretty stellar year for Canadian Music. With new releases from big hitters like The Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, The New Pornographers, Holy Fuck, Black Mountain, Women, The Besnard Lakes and Caribou leading the assult, the rest of the pack wasn’t far behind…with plenty of surprises along the way. Over the course of the year here at Oh! Canada we have tried to introduce you to just some of the great music coming out of the country. It seemed only logical that to sum up the year we should ask some acts and commentators what they thought were the standout records of the year, what record the felt deserved more attention, what their highlight of the year was and what their tips for 2011 are. Some had more to say than others, while others were more than happy to dish out life advice that might help you make it through the year. So without further ado:

Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes)
The Besnard Lakes made a triumphant return this year with The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night winning critical acclaim and a second consecutive Polaris Prize shortlist nomination. If all this wasn’t enough, Lasek’s production work at his Montreal Breakglass studios saw him get his hands on some of the years finest releases.

Canadian Album(s) of the Year:
Land of Talk Cloak and Cipher, Suuns Zeroes, QC and Women Public Strain. Land of Talk and Suuns because my hearts’ with these records since I helped make them (!), and Women, because it’s such a bold, interesting album.

A Canadian record or act from this year that more people need to hear:
USA Out Of Vietnam from Montreal.

Highlight of the year:
Seeing High on Fire at SXSW in March 2010. Just blew my mind.

Canadian Tips for 2011:
Don’t eat yellow snow.

Click here to view the embedded video.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Brian Borcherdt (Holy Fuck)
2010 saw the release of Latin, a record hailed on these very pages as a compelling, beguiling, contempalative and euphoric addition to their already impressive output. The band have spent much of the year out on the road, honing their already stellar live show. Not forgetting the Cat vs Dog car chase video for Red Lights (watch below)…

Canadian Album of the Year
Caribou Swim

A record or act from this year that more people need to hear
Bishop Morocco

Highlight of the year
Getting married.

Canadian Tip for 2011
Learn to use a compass.

Click here to view the embedded video.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Kathryn Calder (The New Pornographers/ Kathryn Calder)
2010 saw two releases for Kathryn. The New Pornographers Together as well as the release of her debut solo album Are You My Mother.

Canadian Album of the Year
Gigi Maintenant.This is definitely my favourite record of 2010. Based on the style of 60′s girl group Brill Building songs, Maintenant is filled with a rotating cast of amazing musicians and wonderful songs. Find it, it’s worth it!

It also got less attention than it deserved!

Highlight of the year
Listening to Beach House play at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona while sitting on a hillside surrounded by thousands and thousands of people on a warm Barcelona evening with friends.

Also, touring with The Dodos, who I adore.

Canadian tips for 2011
Watch out for the new Himalayan Bear – solo work from the mega talented Ryan Beattie of Chet (Chet is also amazing), possibly a new Dan Mangan record in 2011, and the new No Kids record!

Click here to view the embedded video.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Rae Spoon
2010 saw the release of Rae Spoon’s Love is a Hunter, the follow up to his Polaris Prize nominated Superioryouareinferior (2008). Inspired by travels around Europe, the album may have surprised some with its content, but not it’s quality. While previous releases had positioned Spoon as a country crooner, Love is a Hunter saw him mix things up by adding more electro and electronic sounds to the mix, as well as a decidedly more pop edge.

Favourite Canadian Record of the year
Crystal Castles II by Crystal Castles

A Canadian record you feel deserved more attention than it got this year
Emma Mckenna Run For It

Highlight of the Year
Getting to film a music video in the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta with dinosaur fossils all around me.

Canadian tips for 2011
Geoff Berner’s new album Victory Party out in March on Mint Records.

Click here to view the embedded video.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Jake Fairley (Bishop Morocco / Fairmont)
Dreamy melodies, slinky, Factory basslines and big echoey guitars were the order of the day when Bishop Morocco released their debut album earlier this year. The band also remixed Holy Fuck, who returned the favour, remixing the bands single ‘Last Year’s Disco Guitars’.

Canadian Album of the Year
Caribou Swim

A record or act from this year that more people need to hear
Little Girls

Highlight of the year
Our record release party.  We did it ourselves in a warehouse in Toronto. It was a full blown rave with an insane sound system and visuals that we did ourselves. Lots of fun.

Canadian Tips for 2011
Bad Tits

Click here to view the embedded video.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Tim Jones – Artistic Director of Dawson City Music Festival
Dawson City Music Festival is a three day music festival in Dawson City in the Yukon. It has been run by voluneers since 1979. The festival takes place in Mid-July, during which time the sun never sets. Tim Jones is the festivals artistic director.

Canadian Album of the Year
Owen Pallett’s Heartland. It’s the kind of achievement that overcomes my reluctance to throw the term “genius” around.  Heartland is overwhelmingly complex but simultaneously a very easy listen.  It shows a singularity of vision and a total compositional mastery that is unparalleled in Canadian music.

A record or act from this year that more people need to hear
Eric Chenaux with Ryan Driver Warm Weather. This album got under my skin like nothing else in 2010. Something about the pacing and the weird vocal treatments are totally compelling; synth washes, dreamy guitars, and a left-of-centre approach to songwriting that sounds like jazz standards played underwater. I can’t listen to the album while doing something else – I have to either shut it off or give myself over to it completely.  Listening to Eric in the past I’ve always been tempted to do the former 75% of the time. With this one I can’t tear myself away.

Highlight of the year
My highlight of the year was a live performance from tUnE-yArDs at the 2010 Dawson City Music Festival. I was up in the rafters of a gold rush era vaudeville theatre positioned directly over the band. Merrill Garbus’ voice channeled Nina Simone and Odetta, but the songs were about gangsters and sounded like Tropicalia. I hate the word “fusion” even more than I hate the word “genius” but this was both, the best live show I’ve seen in years. Merrill, like Neko Case, is basically an honourary Canadian – the project’s roots are in Montreal – so I feel OK calling it my Canadian highlight of the year.

Canadian Tip for 2011
My Canadian tip for 2011 is no secret, but if you haven’t heard the song ‘Chinatown’ – you need to find it immediately.  This is simultaneously Dan Bejar’s weirdest and best work yet, and if you’re familiar with Destroyer, that’s truly saying something.

Click here to view the embedded video.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Sebastien Grainger (Bad Tits / DFA 1979)
Bad Tits is the new project from Sebastien Grainger, who teams up with ex-Tangiers man Josh Reichmann for a synth heavy, dirty, sweaty, bleeping, garagey beast of a record in the shape of the Garbage Nights EP.

Canadian Album of the Year
Caribou Swim

A record or act from this year that more people need to hear
Trust

Highlight of the year
Getting drunk in the parking lot then watching my friends’ band play in front of a million people.

Canadian tips for 2011
Quit your band, get a job, go to school, you’re not special.

Click here to view the embedded video.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Mika Posen (Timber Timbre)
Timber Timbre’s self titled album got a UK and Europe release this year, and has seen the band steadily travelling around Europe with their subtle, haunting melodies . Their year ended with a handful of european shows with Jonsi.

Canadian Album of the Year
Heartland by Owen Pallett. A truly epic album!

Canadian record that deserved more attention in 2010
Snowblink’s Long Live. Stunning.

Highlight of the year
Heartland festival in vevey, Switzerland! After doing so much touring overseas it was really nice to join a mini-Canadian music community at this fantastic festival.

Canadian Tips for 2011
Bruce Peninsula! I hear they have something new in the works…

Click here to view the embedded video.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

James Keast- Editor of Exclaim!
Exclaim is Canada’s only nationally distributed music publication. A free monthly newspaper, you can pick up a copy for at coffee shops, bars and records stores around the country. James Keast is the editor, and is also a Polaris Music Prize Juror.

Canadian Album of the Year
We don’t always have an obvious answer for this question, but this year, it has to be Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs. Not only did the Montreal crew have the greatest commercial impact of any Canadian album this year, but they are certainly our greatest ambassadors since the emergence of the Broken Social Scene/Arts & Crafts community. But while I feel like BSS had a philosophical/DIY collective impact, Arcade Fire have had a significant sonic one – in the sense that I’m not inundated by bands who sound like them.

A Canadian album from this year people should know about
All my lobbying couldn’t get it enough traction from the magazine or from the Polaris Music Prize, but Brasstronaut’s Mt. Chimaera was my Canadian album of the year. Headed by Edo Van Breemen (who also runs Unfamiliar Records, Canadian home to Japandroids, Paper Cranes, Flowers of Hell, Snailhouse), this Vancouver-based pop band boasts unusual instrumentation (like a clarinet) but their songs are pure pop goodness. ‘Hearts Trompet’ won the Echo Songwriting Prize this year as well.

Highlight of the year
My personal highlight was a summer concert held on Toronto Island (a small island – accessible by ferry – off the southern tip of Canada’s largest city) that featured great country band The Sadies along with soul genius Janelle Monae, and headlined by Arcade Fire. The combination of a beautiful remote setting so close to the city with three of Exclaim!’s favourite acts of the year (all three acts topped Exclaim!’s Year In Review issue in their respective genres: country, soul and pop/rock) made it extremely memorable. The very first time I witnessed the Pied Piper draw of an Arcade Fire show was on this very spot in 2004 when they were playing second on a 10-band bill at 2 in the afternoon; this show brought those memories back full circle.

Canadian Tips for 2011
Early 2011 is already looking like a spectacular year for Canadian music. I’m already excited about new albums from Braids, Destroyer, Buck 65, Young Galaxy, the Dears, Hey Rosetta!, Ron Sexsmith, Rural Alberta Advantage, Christine Fellows, Jenn Grant, Geoff Berner, Ken Mode and a Vic Chesnutt tribute album from Cowboy Junkies. And that’s just up till March…

Click here to view the embedded video.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

James Mejia (Hand Drawn Dracula/ Youlookdeath.ly)
James is one of the founders of Toronto’s Hand Drawn Dracula records. He also contributes to the youlookdeath.ly blog and has produced artwork for the likes of Ron Sexsmith, Wintersleep, Holy Fuck and The Great Lake Swimmers amongst others.

Canadian Album of the Year
Holy Fuck Latin

A record or act from this year that more people need to hear
Bishop Morocco, Postdata, Teenanger, Quest for Fire

Highlight of the year
1. Fucked Up Halloween. Fucked Up played 90′s grunge covers and invited amazing openers including The Sadies (dressed up in full mummy costumes) and Fun as Fuck (Holy Fuck mixed their electro dance and Brian Borcherdt’s shoegaze doom into a set they wrote the day before the show).

2. No Age 2am set at Ruins on Queen St. W. After their gig at the Great Hall, No Age crossed the street to Mikey Apples’ and Josh Reichmann’s boutique and played a full hour set.

3. Holy Fuck Secret Show. After opening for Metric at  Toronto’s Ampitheatre, Holy Fuck played a gig in the low ceiling basement of Parts & Labour. Loud and fun!

4. TimMccready.TV / HDD daylong BBQ during NXNE with 300+ guests. Throughout the day bands played in the backyard and living room including  Bad Tits, Rich Aucoin, Brian Borcherdt and Deloro (Constantines, 100$).

5. The last Wolf Parade show at the Sound Academy in Toronto. They announced “indefinite hiatus” the next day but it was pretty well known at the show.

Canadian Tips for 2011
Austra, Actual Water, Tasseomancy, Trust, Josh Reichmann, Rattail, Foxes in Fiction, Cosmetics, Grimes, No Gold, His Clancyness, Treasure Hunt, also some amazing live bands that are either already in or about to go into the studio: Little Girls, Bad Tits, Metz, Handsome Furs, Brian Borcherdt, Julie Fader… lots more I’m forgetting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

2010 was another stellar year for Shad. The quick fire wordplay, killer beats and flawless rhymes of his album TSOL earned him his second Polaris Prize shortlisting, and marked him as one of hip-hop’s finest wordsmiths. He toured with K’Naan and K-OS in North America and The Herbaliser and even found time to go on a camping trip with fellow Polaris Shortlisters Besnard Lakes as part of the National Parks Project.

Canadian Album of the Year
Caribou Swim… a really cool album. Very different from his last, still great. Danceable, great melodies, and sonically awesome.

A Canadian record or act from this year that more people need to hear
Relic the Oddity… thats my boy right there. He’s made a couple of really solid albums now but he’s still operating under the radar even in the TO scene. Does all the rapping, producing, singing, engineering himself and he does all of it well.

Highlight of the year
Beiber fever… Drake taking over. Arcade fire taking over. K’naan taking over. A lot of Canadian artists had hugely successful years which was great to see.

Canadian Tips for 2011
Watch out for Kamau… brilliant poet/emcee from TO will release an album next year that I’m sure folks will feel. Soulful and heartfelt.

Click here to view the embedded video.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Ro Cemm (TLOBF/ Oh! Canada)
As I said in the intro, it’s been a great year for Canadian music one way or another. While both of last years picks saw (Dan Mangan’s Nice Nice Very Nice and Evening Hymns’ Spirit Guides) saw European releases this year, I’m not going to count them, despite the fact they still get plenty of rotation at my house. Although this list could be very long, there are two records that have really stood out for me, and been in constant rotation since arriving. So….

Canadian Album of the Year
This would be Shad TSOL. Simply some of the best MC-ing I’ve heard for a very very long time. Teamed with great hooks and beats it’s a pretty killer combo. Hopefully he will be back in the UK in 2011.

A very close second was Mount Benson by Apollo Ghosts. Packed full of catchy hooks, whoops and songs that explode into life, I was delighted when it found it’s way to the Polaris Prize longlist. A short sharp shock of a record and undoubtedly one of the years best.

A record or act from this year that more people need to hear
Well, I would probably have Mount Benson here as well….alongside Frederick Squire’s outstanding March 12. I’m also going to say Hooded Fang’s album called Album. It was one of my tips for 2010 last year, and the 7 piece from Toronto didn’t let me down. With Daniel Lee’s low croon, trumpets, straight forward percussion lines and the occasional gang vocals, this is jangle pop done well. Expect to hear more about them here in 2011.

Highlight of the year
This is where I’m lucky that I get to make the rules…the whole year has been full of highlights – Oh! Canada’s road trip in the east of Canada was fantastic, and I would echo Mika from Timber Timbre’s sentiments about Heartland festival in Vevey. A few moments that will stay with me: The Wilderness of Manitoba and Leif Vollebekk playing an unplugged set in the woods in the small hours at End of The Road Festival, and the looks of delight on the faces of the audience and the band, witnessing the power of Do Make Say Think in full flow, without a sound limiter, and Basia Bulat’s decision to play an unplugged and accapella song to bring her show with Nova Scotia Symphony Orchestra to a close at Halifax Pop Explosion

Canadian Tip for 2011
Many of my tips for the coming year seem to be coming out of Montreal: Leif Vollebekk has been recording a new album with Howard Billerman (Arcade Fire. GY!BE) which I am excited to hear. The Suuns record should also turn a few heads in the early part of the year. It feels like an age since I first head Braids, who will finally release Native Speaker in 2011. And of course, we will be bringing you our tips for 2011 all through the year….

Click here to view the embedded video.

With every year that passes, another sorry constellation of musical bright lights see their stars burn out forever, their souls going to join John, Freddie, Jimi and the rest in rock-star Valhalla. Whilst any passing life is distressing to contemplate, at least musicians can continue to touch people posthumously through a legacy which will far outlive them, and may even grow in breadth, stature and popularity in their absence. As 2010 draws to a close, we thought it proper to revisit the work of some of this year’s departed musicians, to remind old fans or downright inspire new recruits. Below are five less heralded but emblematic cuts from artists such as Alex Chilton and Ari Up.

Gregory Isaacs: ‘Let’s Dance’ (available on Cool Ruler, 1978)

Before reggae icon Gregory Isaacs succumbed to lung cancer earlier this year, the “lonely lover” had sighed his way through a 40-year career with such melancholic vocal purity he could make a grown man swoon. When Isaacs signed to Virgin Records in 1978, mainstream stardom beckoned, but beyond a ripple of success for signature track ‘Night Nurse’ his brand of lovers rock never took-off. This loping minor-key masterpiece from his major-label debut epitomises Isaacs’ understated brilliance – a tale of rudimentary dancehall passion brought to life by the tender ache of Isaacs’ delivery and lines like “I want to feel your lips resting my mind”, which said as much about his wearying addiction to crack-cocaine as his need to feel loved.

Click here to view the embedded video.

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -

Big Star: ‘Holocaust’ (available on Third/Sister Lovers, 1978)

Recorded in 1974 but – thanks to the impending bankruptcy of record label Stax and the questionable commercial viability of the material – not available until 1978, Third turned out to be a belated swansong for Alex Chilton’s hugely influential Big Star vehicle. Replacing the catchy subversiveness of Big Star’s first two LPs, Third uncoiled the twisted melodies and slowed the bustling power-pop pace, allowing the songs to wallow in a spacious musical sprawl of devastating foreboding, coursing with the hurt of band strife and personal despair. The ‘Holocaust’ is the fulcrum on which the record uncertainly teeters. Saturated with eerie atmospheric textures which will be easily recognisable to fans of The Antlers’ Hospice, the track paved the way for the unsettling drug-addled lo-fi of Chilton’s late-‘70s output. It also offers a heart-rending epitaph for the underappreciated Chilton and his boundary pushing genius: “Everybody goes / leaving those who fall behind / everybody goes / as far as they can / they just don’t care”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -

Jay Reatard: ‘It Ain’t Gonna Save Me’ (available on Watch Me Fall, 2009)

A leading light of the punk-indebted Southern US garage-rock scene which emerged in the late 90s, Jay Reatard made his name with frantic distortion-drenched two-minute rackets. 2009’s Watch Me Fall was a reinvention, favouring a precise, melodic sound, faultlessly realised on ‘It Ain’t Gonna Save Me’. It sounded like the work of a man comfortable with approaching 30 gracefully, but there was a sting in the tale. Unpredictable to the last, the cocaine and alcohol in Reatard’s bloodstream as he died at his Memphis home this year puts into stark clarity lyrics such as “tired and lonely with no one to blame, in this bedroom where I sit”. Who knew he was writing the script of his own desperate denouement.

Click here to view the embedded video.

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -

Solomon Burke: ‘If You Need Me’ (available on Rock ‘n Soul, 1964)

The self-proclaimed King of Rock ‘n’ Soul’s death from natural causes in October finally called time on a glittering five-decade career in which he had outlasted scores of contemporaries (both in terms of health and commercial longevity) and continued to vocally outperform legions of new pretenders to the throne. Rock ‘n Soul, his fourth album, established the former preacher as an irreplaceable mainstay for Atlantic Records, on which he would have a string of charting hits until 1968. Not his most lauded contribution to the soul canon, the sheer animated dynamism of his hoarse roar on wistful ballad ‘If You Need Me’, coupled with deliciously multi-tracked gospel backing harmonies, encapsulates a man whose natural showmanship meant he never failed to take uncalculated risks from centre stage; they invariably paid off.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Slits: ‘Instant Hit’ (available on Cut, 1979)

German born vocalist and songwriter Ari Up (real name Arianne Forster) had everything required to be one of those inimitable punk legends: a wild, insatiable lust for life; a dreadlocked gutter-style that oozed female empowerment and effortless sexual presence; friends (The Clash, The Sex Pistols) in all the right places. But her crowning glory was her band, The Slits, who’s no frills, minimalist ‘jitterpunk’ clashed tinny, syncopated reggae beats with snaking, treble heavy guitar-lines and Ari’s unique Anglo-German howl. As this opening gambit from their debut record Cut and its “He is / Set to self-destruct /He is / Too good to be true” refrain attests, they also matched forthright feminist undertones with a sense of humour, eschewing the po-faced righteousness of contemporaries and resolving to beat men at their own hard-living game.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Soft Boys’ two most influential and groundbreaking albums will be re-released via Yep Roc Records on November 15. Main man Robyn Hitchcock, along with demon guitarist Kimberley Rew, bassist Matthew Seligman and drummer Morris Windsor managed to craft some psychedelic pop masterpieces during their short life.

We’ve got the chance for you to stream the album, and personal favourite, Underwater Moonlight, which perfectly showcases their wonky pop and killer riffs. Listening to it as part of this package, it’s pretty much some of the best pop music I’ve heard this year. And it’s 30 years old.

Underwater Moonlight will be made available in its 10-song original form on CD and 180 gram vinyl. This re-release features all the bonus tracks (last time taking up 2/3rds of the package) as downloads free with each purchase.

Additionally, the first, and even rarer Soft Boys album, A Can Of Bees is also being released on CD and 180 gram vinyl, with similar bonus downloads. “A red-hot poker up the arse of rock music” was how Julian Cope once described this album.

Here’s the full tracklisting for the reissue:

Underwater Moonlight (CD-YEP-2628 LP-YEP-262)

Tracklisting (physical):
1. I Wanna Destroy You
2. Kingdom of Love
3. Positive Vibrations
4. I Got The Hots
5. Insanely Jealous
6. Tonight
7. You’ll Always Have To Go Sideways
8. Old Pervert
9. The Queen of Eyes
10. Underwater Moonlight

Bonus Tracks (download only)
1.He’s a Reptile
2. Vegetable Man
3. Strange
4. Only The Stones Remain
5. Where are the Prawns
6. Wey Wey Hep Uh Hole
7. Dreams
8. Black Snake Diamond Rock
9. There’s Nobody Like You
10. Song No 4
11. Empty Girl
12. Have a Heart Betty (Mark 2)
13. Rock ‘n’ Roll Toilet (Mark 2)
14. Old Pervert (Section 1)
15. Like a Real Smoothie
16. Alien
17. Bloat (extract)
18. Underwater Moonlight (Early version)
19. She Wears My Hair
20. Wang Dang Pig
21. Old Pervert (Section 2)
22. Insanely Jealous
23. Leave Me Alone
24. Goodbye Maurice or Steve
25. Old Pervert (Section 3)
26. Cherries
27. Amputated
28. Over You
29. I Wanna, Er
30. Old Pervert

With over 130 bands over 5 days in venues spread all over town, Halifax Pop Explosion is quickly becoming one of the most respected festivals in Canada. Under the guidance of new artistic director Jonny Stevens, the festival has grown, and this year includes the Music Matters conference, a handful of label showcases, a mix-tape swap and plenty of extra curricular activities to keep even the most demanding festival goer satisfied. Kicking things off on Tuesday evening are Long Long Long. Having already garnered a strong local following with their former act York Redoubt, the band take the stage, teasing out waspish guitar lines from their guitars while drummer Rob Shedden holds things together with snare hits that boom out as loud as the noon-day gun for which Halifax Citadel is famous. The rougher edges of York Redoubt have been replaced with a more surfy feel, although the infectious rush of energy the band, and their impressively inebriated fanclub, who sing along to every word, puts the ‘pop’ into Pop Explosion. You can, and should, download all their releases here for free.

Long Long Long

After Long Long Long it was time for a trip to the North End of town to Gus’ Pub, a dimly lit bar with a punk spirit that is more a rite of passage than a gig venue. If the tired and torn ‘woodland scene’ wallpaper behind the stage could talk, the tales it could tell would almost certainly be the stuff of legend. Directly opposite the stage lies what resembles a giant aquarium-a room inside a room dedicated to gambling machines whose lights blink in near-synchopation with the clattering drums of Montreal two-piece The Nymphetes, whose frontman strains every sinue as the band tear through their male/female vocal onslaught that harks back to the glory days of the early 90s Pacific coast garage punk scene. Then it was on to the main attraction. Despite suffering from the after-effects of a bad Donair, Mark Sultan still managed to turn in a raucous display of rock n’ soul. Slipping off his shoes to play kick and snare drums with his feet, the man they sometimes call BBQ rampaged through a blistering set of self proclaimed “Rock n’ roll type music”, letting his soulful croon ring out acapella before tumbling in to another riff, speak-snorting like a man possessed,  Before long the floor of Gus’ had turned in to a sweaty mass of bodies. While for the most part this was good natured, Sultan repeatedly had to break off mid-song to calm the audience down, and to get them away from the monitor holding his kit together. By the end of the set the overindulgence added a sour edge to what had been a triumphant dirty garage-soul party.

My Brightest Diamond

Day two of Pop saw an early visit to the lobby of CKDU, the local student radio station for a live radio session from newly returned Haligonians Cursed Arrows, a husband and wife duo who riffed their way through a short set packed full of attitude and swagger, with the occasional sash of righteous fury thrown in for good measure. With the main action really starting on Thursday, Wednesday’s choices were fairly straightforward: The Metal show, The Pop show, The Punk show, the Electro show and the Scumdogs of the Universe show. To the disappointment of my thirteen-year old self, I turned down the chance to get covered in blood at Gwar (although watching the roadies unloading the 18-wheeler full of props before the show was impressive enough), in favour of the Pop show: The New Pornographers (with Neko Case), making the first trip to Halifax of their 13 year career. I arrived just in time to witness My Brightest Diamond working her magic over the air-craft hangar like venue. Switching from swirling round gleefully while playing the kalimba, to indulging in a full foot on the monitor rock out, Shara Worden commended the attention of every eye in the room. Seemingly making up for lost time, Carl Newman and his cohorts hit the ground running with a sparky rendition of ‘Sing Me Spanish Techno’. Pausing just enough to joke about local-boy band member Todd Fancey, the set amounted to a power-pop masterclass, chock full of huge pop-hooks and three way harmonies shared between Newman, Calder and Case.

Neko Case of The New Pornographers

Although The New Pornographers may not have played Halifax before, fellow power-pop merchants Sloan are the local boys who did good. Returning to the city in which they launched their career, the band are one of the big draws of the festival, with a noticeably older crowd lined up to see the band perform seminal album “Twice Removed” in it’s entirety. While openers Amos The Transparent were full of an exuberant energy, Toronto’s Dinosaur Bones seemed a little daunted by the task of opening for Sloan. Beset with technical difficulties, and trying to placate an excitable crowd, the bands brooding songs didn’t quite fit the mood. Surprisingly, they were not the only ones seemingly struggling with the occasion. Although turning in an accomplished performance, Sloan ran through the whole of the ‘Twice Removed’ set without addressing the audience. Returning on stage for the encore, the band seemed relieved to have got the album out of the way, and, laughing and joking with the crowd, ran through other back-catalog hits to the delight of the heaving and sweaty audience.

Sloan

After spending the weekday mornings investigating the historic citadel, the beautiful but freezing Peggy’s Cove lighthouse and learning about the explosion from which the festival takes its name, Friday night was time for one of the most anticipated shows of the whole Oh! Canada road trip. For the last three years Halifax Pop Explosion have teamed up with Symphony Nova Scotia for a special show with a ‘pop’ artist. This year it was the turn of Basia Bulat, who had arrangements produced by last years guest artist Owen Pallett. Starting with a new classical piece by Toronto composer Jordan Pal, the symphony was then joined by Bulat and her bandmate Holly Coish and brother Bobby Bulat. While Bulat is often cited as having an orchestral-pop sound, the success of much of her work relies on the simplicity of the structures of her songs. For the most part Pallett’s undulating scores served to emphasize and heighten the emotions conveyed in Bulat’s songs, weaving in and out of the pieces, adding colour here and there, without attempting to over embellish the sound. While the work with the symphony worked perfectly well, it was with the impromptu encore that Bulat truly made the show her own. Clearly reveling in the experience, she returned to the stage for a second encore of ‘Death Come Creeping’, delivered off-microphone using only her voice and the acoustics of the building as amplification, and a stomping foot as accompaniment. After the lush and beautiful symphonic sound, the sparse simplicity of this unscripted action was a fantastic way to end the evening. Despite plenty of shows going on into the early hours, to attend another show afterwards would have been to the detriment of both Bulat and whoever else was performing.

Basia Bulat and Symphony Nova Scotia

The final day of the festival began early, as I had been invited to take part in a panel discussion alongside Frank Yang of Chromewaves, Matt Jordan of You Ain’t No Picasso and Bryan Acker of Herohill about the power (or otherwise) of the blogosphere. After a spirited and interesting session it was a quick dash across the street for a ‘secret’ show from the Great Lake Swimmers. More used to playing soft seater venues and churches these days, the show saw the band play the decidedly darker Seahorse Tavern. Seemingly refreshed by the change of scene, the band turned in a decidedly rockier set than usual, the chiming guitars of ‘Pulling On A Line’ and ‘Palmistry’ providing the perfect soundtrack for a crisp autumnal afternoon in the Nova Scotian sunshine.


Handsome Furs

If Great Lake Swimmers were more used to churches than sweaty clubs, then the opposite might be said of Handsome Furs, who found themselves in the beautiful surroundings of St. Matthew’s Church. Trying their best (and failing) not to swear, Dan Boeckner and Alexi Perri stalked the stage swathed in smoke and coloured lights, strutting, high kicking and frequently falling over throughout their crazed dance party of a show. Also intent on ending the festival with a party were Polaris prize nominees Radio Radio, whose good time Acadian hip hop filled the tiny Tribeca venue. Be it bouncing across the stage or singing upside down, it was clear that nothing was going to get between the band, or their crowd and a good time. With the question of what to chose between a penny loafer or a deck shoe ringing in my ears, it was time to head home for the final time, and to bring Oh! Canada’s road trip to an end. With a finely crafted blend between established names and up and coming talent Halifax Pop Explosion was a great place to witness the rude health of the Canadian music scene, and the perfect way to end the trip. The only complaint? That it wasn’t physically possible to be at two or more shows at once.

Leaving Montreal behind us, our journey continues through the Quebec countryside, along the edge of Lake Ontario to Toronto. Although for the most part a journey filled with conversation rather than music, it was a trip which served to reveal a lot about much of the music coming out of Canada. With Fall in full affect the countryside is rich with yellows, reds and golds there is a sense of romance and possibility about the place. Viewing houses and barns whizz buy the car window there is a sense of remoteness yet at the same time a connection to the outside world- after all these are places that can be seen from a major road, yet are miles away from any social contact. This sense of remoteness yet connection is something that seems to lie under the surface of the Canadian music scene- While there is enough space to plow your own furrow, there is also a tight support network and enough connection to the outside world to allow those influences to creep in to the music being produced. Although a geographically huge area there are a limited number of routes to traverse Canada- and the chances are, at 3am on some road in the middle of Manitoba, those weary-looking souls in the van passing you by are another band on their way to the next venue.

With various ‘scenes’ emerging in the past few years there is a real sense of support for fellow artists. Bands have grown up on the road together, and the strength of independent record labels has allowed for them to musically develop, rather than forcing artists to produce a hit first time off as often happens in other markets. There is a real feeling that music is a way of life rather than a living- you sense that, label or no label, a lot of these acts will be playing music with each other, to each other or for each other until their dying day. Oh, and that whole ‘Canadian niceness’ thing? Being stuck in a van with the same 5 people for 8 hours a day every day for a month when it’s minus 10 outside with nothing but each others conversation and the occasional cardboard cup of Tim Horton’s coffee to get you through makes ‘being nice’ a vital survival tool, not just a character trait.

On the subject of coffee, from the moment Oh! Canada arrives in Toronto it becmoes abundantly clear that the city is a caffeinated kingdom- teeming with independent coffee houses both staffed and frequented by artists and musicians. As Alan Davey pointed out on these very pages just a few weeks ago, simply stroll in any park or up any street between Queen West and Bloor and the chances are you will bump in to a musician, most likely sipping on a coffee. In fact it may well be this highly caffeinated way of life that leads to record stores opening tll 11 or 12 at night, providing the perfect venue for impromptu hanging out before late night shows which finish in the small hours almost every night of the week. Indeed often these coffee houses or record stores will double as venues themselves: Sonic Boom, Criminal Records and Soundscapes all playing host to a wide variety of in stores for both local and touring artists. The Holy Oak on Bloor also hosts intimate shows around it’s old upright piano and played host to a ‘pass the jar around” show from The Weather Station, Lisa Bozikovic and Daniel Romano and Mischa Bower, who, as in Montreal a few days before, produced an enchanting set, Romano’s skilled picking and storytelling complemented perfectly by Bowers vocals.

It isn’t just coffee shops that get in on the whole live music act either- during the visit Diamond Rings performed a free show in a library as part of a scheme to take music to a wider audience, while Woodpigeon, just returned from a European tour played a free set of his pretty pastoral pop in Younge-Dundas Square to a small but appreciative crowd of damp on-lookers on a wet Wednesday afternoon. The scene was somewhat different a week later however, when the square was transformed to mark the start of the NHL Hockey Season-an event celebrated with a concert from Hey Rosetta! as well as skinny-jeaned stadium pop-rock hearthrobs Hedley, a pierced and tattooed boy-band for the Twilight Generation that had the teenage hordes screaming in delight.

Woodpigeon among the pigeons

Then of course there are the venues themselves, most of whom seem to run live music seven days a week into the wee small hours. The volunteer run Tranzac club, a member-owned not for profit venue that was a home to Blocks Blocks Blocks recording club, who put out early records and hosted shows by Final Fantasy, Fucked Up and more, and now plays host to Toronto’s Zine Library, hosts shows in both it’s Main Hall and smaller room. A chance visit finds the main hall shrouded in darkness and thick with incense smoke for the single launch/ birthday party of Tasseomancy. With a captive audience, their often macabre folk-tales captivate the room from start to finish. Reinforcing the impression that musicians are everywhere in this city, D’Urberville/ Diamond Ring John O does the merch duties, doing a roaring trade on singles (which, in fairness, are released on his Hypelighter label), while simultaneously dishing out pieces of birthday cake.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tasseomancy perform Soft Feet live at The Tranzac (via Hypelighter. Filmed by Colin Medley)

Across town lies The Dakota Tavern, an underground lair done up like a scene from the midwest replete with cattleheads and, er fairy lights. Here we witness Steamboat, kicking up a storm with their good time blend of Canadian heroes the Band and 100 lost organ-driven soul sides. While it may not be the most original sound around it certainly brings the party. Later in the trip the Dakota also plays host to a residency from Peter Elkas, showcasing and working up some material for his forthcoming record of slick, Springsteen infused soul pop in a low key setting. Elkas is quite the performer, and it is clear that he has the respect of everyone in the room. The Dakota is a musicians venue, and there are always members of other bands watching on, and often accepting the invitation to join bands on stage. Steamboat manage to haul Jordan Howard of Skeletones 4/The Acorn up to guest with them, while Elkas recruits a member of Zeus to come up and play extra guitars for a couple of songs (a member of Zeus who just two hours before had been opening for Belle and Sebastian at a packed out Massey Hall, one of the city’s grandest venues), all as Ron Sexsmith watched on. Seriously. Another unexpected guest appearance came in the shape of Alanna Stuart of local dancehall duo Bonjay, who stepped up between Elkas and openers Colleen and Paul to try out some solo material. Far removed from her ‘day-job’, the accapela, multi-looped vocal performance captivated a restless audience, whose reaction ranged from standing open mouthed to hooting and hollering by the end of the set, more than making up for what, by her own admission, had been a frustrating first live performance the week before.

Jordan Howard at the Dakota Tavern

With Oh! Canada’s first Tranna (as the locals would have it) trip coming to a close, it seemed only fitting to end a visit that had been full of music (including the chance to co-host a show on CBC Radio 3, the Canadian equivalent of 6music, but with a remit to play and support independent Canadian artists), with one final show. With this in mind we headed to visit to The Garrison for the launch of Olenka and The Autumn Lovers latest record ‘And Now We Sing”. Having witnessed a solo performance by The Weather Station earlier in the trip, it was good to see Tamara Linderman augmented by her other band members, the extra instrumentation adding another dimension to her already minimal songs. The extra vocal harmonies and bowed banjo lifting the source material and serving as a reminder of the quality of last years record The Line. Next up were Kite Hill, led by Ryan Carley (also of Ohbijou). It would be hard to call a band who numbered so many a ‘side-project’, Kite Hill is more a creative outlet for Carley’s own songwriting and arranging skills. With Carley leading on piano, the band ran through their pretty, melancholy chamber-pop songs with aplomb, despite being short a couple of members (Steve Lappano on tour with The Acorn and Mika Posen on tour with Timber Timbre). Carley’s dynamic and playful arrangements propell the songs along in a restrained manner that always compliments rather than overwhelms the melodies on offer. Closing the evening, Olenka and The Autumn Lovers, from nearby London, ON showcase their Balkan infused sounds, waltzing away into the chill October evening.

Ryan Carley of Kite Hill

An early morning train ride to Ottawa for a listening party of the excellent Jim Bryson and the Weakerthans album at Raw Sugar Cafe and a visit to Kelp Records hq bought the Ontario segment of the Oh! Canada road trip to an end in a blur of vinyl and strong coffee. Clutching said beverage, the next road would lead me to Ottawa airport…and then back to the East Coast and Halifax for the fourth and final stage of the journey.

NB. Due to a combination of financial factors, including a huge property tax rise, The Tranzac Club is being asked to provide $40,000 dollars by 2011 in order to remain open. The Tranzac is one of the few not-for profit venues left in Toronto and has played a key part in the careers of many Toronto acts that have gone on to wider acclaim. A series of concerts is being held to save money, including Oh! Canada favourites Rock Plaza Central, Ohbijou, $100 and Doug Paisley. You can find out more about the plight of The Tranzac, and how you can help over at their website www.tranzac.org

As Oh! Canada arrived in Montreal, the city was in the process of experiencing a rainstorm that, by it’s end, would pour down almost a months worth of rain in just under 24 hours. Yet a little (or a lot) of inclement weather wasn’t enough to bring down the spirits of the plaid shirted hordes that decended upon the city for the annual Pop Montreal Festival. Similar in spirit and approach to the UK’s Great Escape festival, Pop Montreal combines daytime events, lectures and workshops followed by late night shows in a variety of shops, theatres and rooftops around the Plateau area of the city. With most venues just stumbling distance from one another, the festival provided an opportunity to catch both established and new talent from Canada and beyond, all under the glowing cross of Mont Royal itself.

Despite the deluge on Thursday the Metropolis theatre was packed to the ornate rafters for hometown heroes Karkwa, fresh from their Polaris prize triumph. Faced with the unenviable task of opening the show was Leif Vollebekk. While Vollebekk recently toured the UK solo, the full band sound provided the perfect backdrop to allow his songs and vocals to take flight. Unfortunately much of this seemed to be lost on the crowd, who were clearly their for one reason and one reason only. Karkwa. Launching in to a set heavy on tracks from Les Chemins De Verre, the crowed erupted, singing every word back to clearly ecstatic frontman Louis-Jean Cormier. Performing in front of a dazzling wall of lights, the show made for a celebratory spectacle that more than made up for the dampness of the crowd. It remains to be seen if the band can translate their fusion of pastoral folk rock (a la Van Occupanther), sweet guitar hooks and more proggy leanings to a non-Francophone audience, but on the night Karkwa play the role of returning champions to a tee.

Leif Vollebekk

Stepping out into the still pouring rain, a taxi ride takes us to the other end of the Plateau to Cagibi, one of the many Montreal venues operating under the “no food=no beer” system. One grilled cheese sandwich later and it’s in to the Sappyfest showcase featuring Snailhouse (the longtime project of Mike Feurstack of Wooden Stars/ Bell Orchestre), Baby Eagle and Daniel Romano with Misha Bower. Playing in a chilly backroom they may be, but with delicate fingerpicking and a wry sense of humour all three acts turn the room in to a special place. Montreal has many such seemingly secret rooms where musicians perform, almost hidden away. Casa Del Popolo is another venue with such a feeling, and it is there that, the following night Leif Vollebekk and his band (who he announces are yet to be named) turn in an understated yet masterful performance. Unlike the cavernous Metropolis the previous evening, the audience listen in wrapped attention as Vollebekk teases phrases out of his guitar and violin, looping them before delivering heartbreaking vocals that touch on Buckley, Baker and Bird without resorting to cliche or pastiche.

Hollerado’s Van

With a festival with so many acts and venues, part of the pleasure is in stumbling in to a venue and catching a few tracks by lots of different artists: The Golden Dogs, Black Feelings, Bear in Heaven, Baby Eagle (again) and the frantic pop onslaught of Hollerado were all great surprises-the later filling Le Divan Orange with confetti, streamers which got caught in the ceiling fans and an audience of devotees. They also took the party to the streets afterwards, inviting fans to paint on their van outside the venue. Perhaps not the wisest idea should they ever wish to pass through US customs, but certainly memorable, as the band literally left their (paint-smeared) mark on the streets of Montreal. On a more sombre note, Timber Timbre played the Ukrainian Hall. Bathed only in a faint red light, the band turned in a moving and occasionally unsettling performance. Frontman Taylor Kirk’s howls and yelps sounded like those of a wounded animal, and the audience sat in hushed reverence as the band reworked selections from their recently released (in the UK at least) self titled album. Only the sound of bar-goers tripping over bins in the pitch-black venue momentarily broke the spell.

The next days musical entertainment begins with a visit to the rooftop of local software firm Ubisoft, where local boys Malajube play an acoustic set that floats over the rooftops of Montreal as the sun sets behind them. Although the semi-acoustic nature of the set meant the more proggy elements were toned down, the band still managed to demonstrate why their forthcoming album is being so eagerly awaited by many in Canada, Francophone or not.

Evening Hymns

Inhabiting a similar otherworldly realm to Timber Timbre were Tasseomancy (formerly Ghost Bees). Hushed and haunting, it comes as little surprise to learn after the show that the bands latest release is produced by Taylor Kirk. Further proof of the closeness of the Canadian scene comes on the Saturday evening at the Out of This Spark showcase, which features Light Fires, Forest City Lovers, Evening Hymns and The D’Urbervilles. Like a Canadian Wilkommen Collective many of the band members seem to be part of numerous projects, popping up to add different parts to songs, add an instrument here or there. There is a real sense of support for fellow artists at the show, and a clear love of making music. Despite having just flown in from London the day before, Evening Hymns put in a rousing set, frontman Jonas Bonnetta crafting harmonies with himself, hopping around stage in an almost tribal manner. Be it stripped to just Bonetta and his loopstation or with a full band and harmonies from Sylvie Smith (also of The Magic) it is evident that there are many layers that go into Evening Hymns’ finely crafted songsmithery, and tonight they seem to find just the right balance of delicate pastoral folk with surging passages, much to the delight of the assembled crowd.

Kat Burns (Forest City Lovers)

Fresh from covering Green Day at the Mint Records BBQ earlier in the day, Forest City Lovers showcase material from latest release Carriage with a set of playful folk infused indie-pop full of arch lyrics that has the front few rows frugging their hearts out. Lucky then, that Light Fires (the new collaboration of Gentleman Reg (from, er, Gentleman Reg) and James Bunton (of Ohbijou) are next to take the stage. “Do you wanna dance?” asks Reg, knowing full well that the minute the electro-pop starts that is exactly what the crowd will do. “We don’t have anything you can buy, or anything online to steal. All I can give you is my sweat” Reg adds as he and Bunton turn the venue into a heaving, sweaty mass all the way to the merch desk.

Light Fires

Closing the show are the D’Urbervilles, who number a couple of Forest City Lovers (one, of whom, Tim Bruton, is also an Evening Hymn) in their ranks, and who’s frontman John O is perhaps better known in the UK for his Diamond Rings project. Where that project revels in flamboyance and electro-pop, The D’Urbs present a much darker, guitar heavy outlook. Here the synths menace, and the guitars growl as John O intones he delivers his tales of love and loss to the assembled throng. Quite what will become of the D’Urbs as their frontman’s star continues to rise remains to be seen, but on tonight performance we can only hope he can use his success to bring The D’Urbs to the attention of a wider audience.

John O of The D’Urbervilles

With so much going on from night to night, there are any number of parallel festivals that could have been attended-reports of triumphant sets from Van Dyke Parks, Mary Margaret O’Hara and Deerhoof amongst others fill the streets as people pour out of venues up and down the city. As Sunday saw the festival begin to wind down, it was time for the the Oh! Canada road trip to continue.

Next point of call? Toronto.

October has been a busy month for Oh! Canada. A month that saw a logical and long planned trip. To Canada. As a result of my travels there will be no Oh! Canada compilation this month, while we take time to prepare the second edition of Ho! Ho! Ho! Canada for your festive delight in early December. In the meantime, I will be sharing tracks and bands of interest via twitter. Follow @ohcanada_uk for more updates.

Oh! Canada does…..Prince Edward Island

Having flown in to Halifax, NS the night before it was up early to meet driver Mort who would drive the Charlottetown Shuttle (read van) to Canada’s smallest province PEI. With a population of just over 135,000, this predominantly pastoral island has quietly been putting together something of a music scene in the last few years, under the watchful gaze of Music PEI, a non profit organisation dedicated to promoting the careers of the island’s musicians. For the last three years Music PEI have held a two day showcase to present some of the islands leading lights. This year, Oh! Canada was invited to attend.

Before the music started however, a conversation with a local Lobster fisherman gave a little insight in to why music plays such a part in the community. Due to a tight quotas for fishing lobster and crab, and weather conditions that make fishery and agriculture nigh on impossible in the winter months, a culture of music and storytelling helps to pass the cold nights. Throw in the Acadian influence as well and there are outstanding cultural reasons for the vibrancy of the music. Indeed, it is a duo from this Acadian tradition that kick proceedings off, fusing physical comedy with more traditional Acadian dancing and folk song they got to the evening off to an unexpected but enjoyable start. While not to everyone’s tastes, what shines through with Chuck and Albert is their desire to engage the audience with Acadian culture and history in an entertaining way. As Chuck observes while Albert taps while standing on his shoulders “You don’t see this a lot in New Jersey.” Also representing the Acadian tradition, Vishten provide a more ‘straight’ presentation of Acadian roots music. With members from PEI and the neighbouring Magdalen Islands, Vishten fuse traditional folk reels and Acadian fiddling with modern day influences drawn from various other Celtic traditions as well as formative years playing in rock bands. In their brief showcase they demonstrated why they have become a force on the Celtic scene in recent years.

Haunted Hearts

Haunted Hearts wear their hearts (haunted or otherwise), and their influences, on their sleeves. The sound of a lonely bar-room with a battered old piano and assorted down on their luck lovers. Mixing The Band with occasional honky-tonk breakdowns, it is a sound that continues to endure. You can almost hear the clink of the empty whiskey glass on the hard bartop. Another act unafraid of wearing their influences on their sleeves are Nudie and The Turks, who, I am assured, have developed a somewhat legendary status on the island for their trad country chops. A little J. Cash here, a little Hank over there, a whole lot of Willie up front. Indeed the band once followed Nelson’s Maritimes tour, playing shows busking for the audience outside. The band made such an impression that later in the tour various members of Nelson’s band joined them, with the band eventually being invited to play the end of tour party. Those seeking the old school Nashville twang, rather than the big budget sheen that has blighted mainstream country music in recent years could do a lot worse than give Nudie a try.

Where Nudie and the Turks provided straight up country, The Grass Mountain Hobos have a different schtick going on. Decked out in suspender-braces, the band swing into action with their six-piece bluegrass harmonies, fingers plucking at the mandolin and banjo, bows sweeping across the fiddles and generally carousing around the stage in the name of good fun. With their tales of a ‘Coyote on the Farm’ it’s easy to see why they won over audiences at the likes of Warwick Folk Festival and Larmer Tree Festival earlier this year, as well as recording a Bob Harris session. Proving that it isn’t just about folk and roots in PEI Paper Lions take to the stage with plenty of bluster and choppy guitars. Playing selections from their 6 song ‘Trophies’ EP, which clocks in at just under 20 minutes, this is the ideal soundtrack for dancing with your friends in backrooms on autumnal evenings. There is still a charming rough around the edges feel to Paper Lions, but on the evidence of ‘Don’t Touch That Dial’ and ‘We Lost The War’ (whose melody remained stuck in my head for at least two weeks) there are plenty more exciting things to come from the band.

Paper Lions

A more established band on the national Canadian scene are Two Hours Traffic, whose stock has seen a significant rise thanks to the appearance of some of their songs on US series Gossip Girl and The OC and a Polaris Prize shortlisted album in the shape of Little Jabs in 2008. As with Paper Lions, they come to the stage with an armload of hooks, but they have perhaps a little more polish to their act, belying their experience. You can see why their songs have been picked up by TV programmers- theirs is an easy-going guitar pop sound that you imagine soundtracking a thousand high-school romances and pouring over the airwaves of college radio stations all over the country. It’s a particularly North American sound, and one that has frequently had difficulties crossing over to the UK for a variety of reasons- the tight play listing of UK radio stations being a significant one of them.

English Words

With a toy raccoon attached to the mic stand Raccoon Bandit turn in a charmingly ramshackle set, with enough insistent melodies on tracks like ‘Hat’ and ‘Train Song’ to warrant further investigation as their indie folk-rock songwriting skills continue to develop. If Raccoon Bandit provide a friendly, easy going stage presence then English Words are the polar opposite, their frontman staring menacingly in to the middle distance as he twitches his way through a set of taught new-wave influenced pop. There’s an aggressive, confrontational energy to their performance, and extra credit has to go to any band who plays a song about nobody liking their video as part of a twenty minute industry showcase. While they may not have the songs to back up the attitude 100% just yet, the tumbling pianos of “Cold Mercenaries” suggests that they are certainly headed in the right direction. Closing the evening, The Danks bought the scuzzy sound of Brooklyn to downtown Charlottetown. Frontman Brohan Moore plays the part perfectly, his raspy voice equal parts studied boredom and youthful exuberance. The Danks blast through an energetic set, with no song overstaying it’s welcome (or indeed lasting past the three minute mark). It might not be the most original sound around, but its immediate and when the songs are as catchy as “Treaty Connector” and “Die Young” it doesn’t really matter.

The Danks

The fact that neither Boxer The Horse or Milks & Rectangles (whose Dirty Gold EP is yours to download for free over at bandcamp and comes highly recommended) played as part of the showcase just goes to show that there is more to Canada’s smallest province than Lobster, Potatoes and Anne of Green Gables. It is with a heavy heart (and a bottle of moonshine under my arm) that I leave Prince Edward Island.

Next stop… Montreal.

Hello, how are you? Below I’ve attempted to write about a few artists I like that revel in the distorted outer limits of lo-fi. Rather than being confined by the circumstances around them, these guys turn it on its head and proceed into the unknown with reckless abandon.

Part Chimp are a trio (sometimes quartet) I saw round off a noisy all-dayer last year and they were loud. Really, really fucking loud. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sound so thick; forcing huge stoner-pop through their instruments, amps and the PA, all at maximum volume. Creating a juxtaposed combination of feel-good and feedback all the while grinning like lunatics as the elements of their sound struggle to be heard over each other. Intrigued, I purchased their latest album, Thriller, from the very sweaty (but still grinning) band after the show and eagerly anticipated recreating the audio-battle I had just witnessed on stage. Thriller is a bloated juggernaut of feedback, distortion and grit. A worthy studio representation of the chaos produced on stage, but a studio representation none the less. Cleaned up here and there in such a way that it detracted from the raw enthusiastic ignorance of the live show. Most definitely still filthy, but in my opinion lovingly, preciously over-pruned.

It was only when I got my hands on the first two albums, Chart Pimp and I Am Come respectively, that I heard what I wanted to hear. The first two albums serve up all the care-free fuzz, crackle, warp and phase necessary to truly convey the brute force of the music. It doesn’t feel produced or even really mixed, it just is what it is, SOUND. The sincere slacker vocals fight against the loose, perfectly sloppy drums to stay afloat amid a storm of distorted gravel guitars that have made my headphones vibrate themselves off my head on more than one occasion. This noisenoisenoise description may sound rather familiar to my portrayal of Shit & Shine (see TLOBF#2), but in practice they couldn’t be more different. I refer back to the relentless grinning I witnessed during the live show; while Shit & Shine could be regarded narcissistic in their approach to music and relentless dynamic, Part Chimp appear to love the songs they write as much as they love playing them, which just so happens to be at full volume. So turn it up.

Part Chimp – War Machine

Click here to view the embedded video.

Part Chimp Live (AND LOUD)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Liumin by Deepchord presents Echospace is by contrast neither particularly loud nor abrasive, in fact its quite the opposite. An album of fairly indifferent slow-burning minimal techno, it is the ‘bonus’ disc that I initially became interested in. Liumin Reduced is a collection of the field recordings taken by the artist(s)* that are used throughout the album proper. This struck me as unusual in that a lot of electronic artists are stereotypically quite secretive with their methods and samples, so to release them as their own body of work struck me as a bold and honest move. Further still the inclusion of every little splinter of sound, be it a crow cawing or children arguing in the distance, all hidden behind a wash of atmospheric, lo-fi white noise jars with the clean cut, exact-science fixed image most people have of techno music. While I initially cast off Liumin as bland and directionless, Liumin Reduced left me with no option but to retract my preconceptions and re-approach the two collections as one body of work; opening up previously unheard/selectively ignored depths within Liumin and adding a vital sense of narration coupled with eerie premonitions of the artist’s thought process, which all in all leaves me with a thoroughly deserved touch of egg on my face.

*Deepchord is Rod Modell and occasionally Mike Schommer, whereas Echospace is Rod Modell and Stephen Hitchell; it’s all a bit confusing. Ooh err.

Deepchord Presents Echospace – Liumin Reduced Untitled 01

Click here to view the embedded video.

Deepchord Presents Echospace – Burnt Sage

Click here to view the embedded video.

And now, an apology. I’ve only just discovered William Basinski, and it was by accident too, I’m sorry. I found his Variations for Piano and Tape in a pile of my dad’s old CDs and was intrigued by the title, totally unprepared for it’s beauty and simplicity.

A lot of Basinski’s work is focused more on the manipulation of sound and its cumulative progression/deconstruction rather than the sound itself; Variations for Piano and Tape uses a short piano motif looped over and over onto old magnetic tape which, in time, bleeds between the parts of tape in contact with each other creating a slowly evolving delay loop that endlessly repeats but is never the same twice. For me, it is Basinski’s resignation to the supposed ‘flaws’ in his process that make his work so special. He did not strive to create his sound; it happened by accident upon attempting to transfer old recordings from magnetic tape to a more conventional digital format (this became the first in the Disintegration Loops series), and rather than give up when the transfer didn’t go ‘to plan’, Basinski developed it to create something pure and unique, an equal partnership between man and machine, using the taping process as an active collaborator, not just a means of transposition. I have previously referred to Machinefabriek’s work as organic, and I still believe it is, but organic in an overlorded evolutionary sense. William Basinksi’s work is organic in a truly independent sense; it is the music itself that dictates how it grows and in what direction, with Basinski powerless to intervene until he presses stop or, heaven forbid, runs out of tape.

An extract from William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops I

Click here to view the embedded video.

Parkdale is a former working class neighbourhood in West Toronto, long on the cusp of gentrification but perhaps never  quite there –  and home to an astonishingly deep and interconnected community of musical life. Bands like The Beauties, NQ Arbuckle, as well as more established voices like Luke Doucet and Melissa Mclelland resonate around this  fertile musical neighbourhood, creating a rugged and soulful new Canadian twang. There’s clearly something special going on here. Foremost among Parkdale musicians is  roots singer-songwriter Justin Rutledge, who has emerged in the last five years as a major voice in new Canadian music.

At 24 he made a remarkable first album No Never Alone, released first in England. It emerged fully formed and clear in its intent – a lyrical and atmospheric exploration of  love, loss and redemption in a cold landscape – a contemporary  Canadian Winterreisse if you will. The first track – “Too sober to sleep / Too drunk to cry” – sets the tone – drawing  you in with poetic lyrics, a gothic alt-country swirl of pedal steel and a quiet, sometimes cracked, soulful voice. This voice takes you through a journey peppered with Catholic religious imagery (blood, crosses and lambs abound), references to Walt Whitman, loneliness and yearning, and a Mark Twain like wistfulness. It ends with the most beautiful version of the traditional song ‘The Blackest Crow’ I have ever heard – as the banjo and fiddle fade out you can see the isolated footprints in the snow. This was the real thing – Cormac McCarthy meets WB Yeats meets – what? Wintry urban Toronto?  The cold north of  a huge country? It was poetry, soul, and grit.

Three albums later Rutledge has grown more mature but still has a determined  literary edge to his songwriting. His second album The Devil on a Bench in Stanley Park had a more raw sound with songs about bitter relationships set in the far North, huge landscapes and skies and urban life. His third, Man Descending (the title from  a short story by Saskatchewan writer Guy Vandehaeghe) is more mellow and thoughtful even than the first – with the dark, nervous atmosphere set by the first song ‘St Peter’ (“There’s a cross on the wall, crooked and lame / a thief in the night /  buckets of rain / there’s a lion in the street / the city’s alight / St Peter don’t you lock that gate tonight” …).  Literary references pepper the album (love measured with coffee spoons) and it ends with paean to the Canadian wilderness, ‘Alberta Breeze’, with melting ice and bleating (or is it bleeding?) lambs.

Rutledge – who I had first met 2 years ago in a provincial Ontario town on a Canada Council study tour – has arranged to show me Parkdale and its musical life.  From the Cadillac Lounge through to the venerable Dakota Tavern we run into musicians on both sides of the bar – a great way to pick up a great band. The tiny bar Not my Dog – reveals singer–songwriter Daniel Sky (behind) and Juno nominated blues singer Treasa Levasseur (in front, playing later) – talking about their music, their CDs, the guidance and influence of veteran guitarist David Baxter and the small venues in which they play. In the same bar we also meet a member of the Beauties – house band of The  Dakota Tavern who will back Justin at this year’s SXSW. What’s revealed as we wander is a perfect melting pot for alt-country, roots and urban twang, all kinds of music made by artists set on making a living enough to keep on making the music. David Baxter’s name comes up frequently as a guiding force in what is happening here.

I run into  him  at the Dakota Tavern, where I was intent on hearing another Toronto based  alt-country singer, Joshua Cockerill, who originally hails from Calgary.  The Trick With Your Heart I’m Learning To Do is an eloquent first album that he’s put out himself.  He is a young looking 21. But when he takes the stage at the Dakota to do three forty minute sets, growling from behind a twanging semi-acoustic guitar songs of  raw, literate emotion, this is clearly no ordinary boy from Calgary. His band features David Baxter and Burke Carroll, legendary steel guitarist, and the sound they make is the real thing – prairies and drinking, living and loving done hard.

David Baxter looks like an old testament prophet with a sense of fun. He has had a hand in many of the  records emanating from songwriters in Toronto – some coming from his studio – and is proud about what his young people have done. He says he shows them standards and tradition, and feels sorry that there are not more venues for them to play in more often. I tell him my impression of the concentrated musical community here, and that opportunities to play, to put out a CD and make  a living writing and playing music seem to be many.  He says things aren’t the same as ‘the old days’, when he was touring Ontario, pumping out multiple sets every night for six nights in a row. He’s finally made an album of his own (Day and Age) – more laid back than many of the records he plays on by the young people, but you can see the solid tradition and authenticity he brings.

Many of the musicians I meet work in bars to make a living (hence the ease of bumping into them), and the lucky few might get small grants from the Canada Council, the Ontario or Toronto Arts Councils, or a scheme called FACTOR, funded by federal money and levies on the record industry and radio stations to promote Canadian music and musicians in the face of homogenous indifference by the multinationals.  Perhaps we need such a thing in this country.  Combined with a generous and eager community of musicians, ample chances to play live and to record, and the continuity of tradition provided by older pros like David Baxter, and you can begin to see why something is going down here.

While ushering me through this  musical community Rutledge talks about his new album The Early Widows, (released in Canada in early May) which is more edgy in sound  than the others -  but which displays the same intelligent, literary approach to songwriting as before. The opening track, ‘Be a Man’ sets a fretful tone in sound and words as choice of courage or cowardice is pondered – a tone that infuses the whole album from the fine psychological  detail of songs like ‘Jack of Diamonds’ and ‘All Around this World’ to the anxious emotion of ‘Turn Around’.  Many of the songs are part of a project with author Michael Ondaatje to write songs for a play  based on his novel Divisadero – for the character Coop – a characteristically quiet, intense, suffering but redeemed character in the book. He’s pleased with it as a departure from his previous records – there’s more electric guitar and complexity of sound – but it is still recognisable as a Justin Rutledge record – with a reflective emotional journey at its core. It is also clearly rooted in the fertile musical soil of this corner of West Toronto.

How long Parkdale will retain its unique character and nurture musicians and artists in the way it does is open to question.  A loft development called ‘The Bohemian Embassy’ is opening nearby on the site of former artists’ studios. The developers and bankers are moving in and we know what that means.

Alan Davey, Chief Executive of Arts Council England (and champion of Canadian roots music!)

Long-time favourites amongst the TLOBF ranks, it’s taken Copy Haho a fair amount of time to get around to the recording of album number 1. With just an EP and single under their belts since we ‘Introduced’ them back in 2008, what exactly have they been doing with their time? One thing’s for sure, this studio diary isn’t going to tell you. However, if you want to read about their crazy tales of debauchery, tooth-ache and overflowing urinals then you’ve come to the right place.

If you missed part 1, head here first. Here’s the second and (final?) instalment…

Hi there, Internet.

Act II. We’ve now finished the tracking of our album, at the previously mentioned Chem19 studios.

I’m going to try and give you some rough information about the album without revealing too much. As a result you’re either going to find this boring or
aggrivating. We recorded between ten and fifteen songs. There’s additional instrumentation on top of our ‘live setup’, but not to the point where you’ll think “who do these dickheads think they are, Brian Wilson?”. You may have heard a handful of the songs, and you’ll definitely not have heard most of them. Unless anyone else in the band is reading this, of course.

Some observations;

• Rikki made up some really great drum parts on the spot while recording a new song. To me they sound a bit like the drums on the album Tusk by Fleetwood Mac.
• I think everyone really has done a great job, awesome show or whatever the ‘Tim and Eric’ reference is. I should learn to pay compliments to people face to face, and not just in online diaries and semi-ridiculous *be overly-friendly and complimentary to everyone for a day* tour games.

One thing we’ll all miss about Chem19 is the nearby burger van. Calling it a burger van seems a little patronising, as it does everything from cooked breakfasts to sweet chilli chicken dishes. A full cooked breakfast involving egg, bacon, link sausage, lorne sausage, black pudding, beans, friend bread, tea/coffee and a buttered roll (this bit seems unneccessary to me) costs just £2.70. It almost pipped my favourite place for a cooked breakfast – Tuck In Cafe in Cardiff. There’s a cafe right beside the burger van but apparently the owner is an arsehole of the highest order – his previous exploits have involved constructing fencing round the burger van overnight to try prevent custom.

Since we last spoke, the following extra-curricular activities definitely took place, I’m not even joking;

• FINALLY got to see ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. The World’ with Rikki and his brother, Gavin. Though I certainly enjoyed it, I was a little disappointed overall, and I can’t really tell you why. I think it’s definitely a case of the film being overhyped by my friends and I. I’d like to take this opportunity to single out my brother, Jamie, for contributing to this.
• Went record shopping for what felt like the first time in months. I’ve gotten way too used to emusic of late. Both of the releases I picked up, I can VERY HEARTILY recommend. Got a Ducktails 7″ on Ye Olde English Spelling Bee, who are also responsible for releasing one of my favourite albums of this year, ‘Mare’ by Julian Lynch. The other thing I picked up was the new LP by Glasgow’s Moon Unit. It’s really incredible – Ruaridh from the band has been a friend of ours for years and years (he’s from Stonehaven, too!).
• Watched ‘Chocolat’ for the first time. Bit rubbish, right? I was expecting loads scenes involving sex and chocolate, not some semi-mad lady dropping an urn.
• Discovered a full page feature in the FORTEAN TIMES on one of MY NEIGHBOURS. That was really exciting, I love that magazine.

Now that tracking is complete, we’re onto the mixing stage, as you might expect. We’re doing this with the very talented Simon Ward (of Errors fame). I reckon he’s going to try his best. I’m not too sure if I’ll write to you about the mixing proccess as it will probably read along the lines of;

“Got emailed a new version of ‘_________’, but then replied soon after requesting __________ to be turned up just a little bit more”.

What might be a better idea is that the next part of this could cover the putting together of the FINAL PRODUCT! I reckon that bit might
be interesting enough to warrant a read on your lunchbreak at work.

TO BE CONTINUED MAYBE.

The mainstream commercial and critical success of Foals and Stornoway has been unprecedented and a great victory for putting Oxford back on the musical map where it belongs. A city that in the 10 years I’ve been involved in the music scene here has always had a million great bands and a seeming dearth of acts going that next step and making waves on the national (and international) stage. What’s exciting right now is that the two bands to have made the big step are keen on promoting and developing bands and musicians in the scene that they came from. Foals have had more than a minor role in the success of a burgeoning scene now known as Blessing Force. Counting amongst their ranks “ambitionless office disco” trio Trophy Wife, post Animal Collective chill waver Chad Valley, new project from ex Foal and Youthmovie Mr Andrew Mears (Pet Moon)  and trumpeter extraordinaire Sam Scott’s Solid Gold Dragons.

Formerly the focus point for the collective was erstwhile experimental folk ensemble and latterly post Vampire Weekend afro beaters Jonquil. Then the trio of Trophy Wife broke away from the mothership to concentrate on being “ambitionless”, a wise move it seems. What seems to define the aesthetic of Blessing Force is slick as an oil slick production, tight as a gnats ass disco rhythms and more than a nod to math rock greats of old. Hear the spangly post New Order coldness of Trophy Wife’s guitars and Mr Mears’ dizzying polymath assaults. Obviously following in the footsteps of the great Foals, the BF mixture of 70s disco, 80s electro and 90s math rock is a unique brew that has caught the hearts of minds of the small circle of London media that get to say yay or nay, and, so far, the yays have it.

Aside from Blessing Force, there’s another scene that has been in the wings for a while now and is waiting to step forward and get a slightly silly name. Following in the wake of the meteoric rise of post folk chamber pop ensemble Stornoway, bands such as Neil Young meets Granddaddy influenced The Epstein, folk arkestra and newly Brainlove Records signed darlings We Aeronauts, hang dog pop geniuses Family Machine and Oxford formed, Brighton located and forthcoming Stornoway tour supports Foxes!. All of these ace groups, with the support and patronage of Brian Briggs et al, stand to soon find themselves in the limelight. What could be termed as defining this loose collective of bands is, like Blessing Force, a love of retro music, but much more on the folk/country side of things. Imbibed with a hazy, psychedelic, lo-fi edge and a soft focus take on Americana as well as classic British pop, where Blessing Force has minimal techno and chillwave pretensions Ox-Fi acts seemed to go for rousing choruses and a love of earthy humour. If there’s any justice all the acts from both these scenes will go on to spread their wings and fly, hopefully the powers that be will, in each case, see sense.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of other ace Oxfordian musical outfits that don’t fit into this narrow field of vision (honourable mentions to Ute, Borderville and The Gullivers. With Truck’s OX4 Festival this weekend I urge you to get on the Oxford Tube and come find a load of amazing new bands only 50 miles from Shoreditch.

It’s coming up to the sixth anniversary of John Peel‘s death, and after all this time the hole that he left has never really been filled. Other broadcasters in genre specific areas have kept torches burning, but the fountain-of-eternal-great-music-regardless-of-genre has run dry since his passing.

Every army needs a leader; for those with a passion for alternative and interesting music John was without doubt the commander-in-chief. In recent years the influx of media from seemingly never ending sources has bombarded the music fan like never before, but the downside of this vast amount of choice is how to find the needles in the haystack. John, it seemed, could run through the fields and come out looking like a volunteer at the local acupuncture college. Although it may have seemed effortless, his time spent ploughing through mail bags of mediocrity, motivated by an urge to find great stuff alongside a sense of guilt that he wasn’t listening to it all yielded spectacular results throughout his illustrious career.

Some days when I manage to leave my desk for lunch I come back to find my inbox overflowing with details of hundreds of new bands, free downloads, gigs and other requests. Even if there were one-hundred hours in the day I simply couldn’t listen to it all. I often get pangs of guilt that bands have spent hours producing something amazing, but I just never get round to playing them even once, let alone finding the time to listen to it properly. This is just the tip of the iceberg of a day in the life of John Peel – quite how he managed it I will never know.

His broadcasts were a laser piercing through the fog, highlighting what was important and offering some direction. Whether a solitary trusted compass for the music fan was enough (or even fair) could be debated, but the results speak for themselves. He was on the money time after time, year after year. Quite how he would have functioned amongst the information explosion that followed would have been intriguing. One suspects he’d have continued on the same tried and tested path, but with an e-mail inbox replacing a plethora of postman with back problems – incurred after years carrying sacks of vinyl, tapes and CD’s up the drive to Peel acres.

Alongside his heart and amazing character I’d argue that the focal point he offered is sorely missed. Being featured on his show, or even being asked to record a session carried infinitely more weight than being MySpace’s band of the week or getting details of your new single re-tweeted by Lily Allen ever will. But, with so much change in the music industry over such a short period I don’t think anyone’s had the time to stop and actually comprehend what we’ve lost since he departed. Dandelion radio do amazing work, but they don’t get the love they deserve. Where are all those people who tuned in to Peel? Where did a central point of quality control go?

It makes me sad to see how each year the celebrations around his life seem to get downscaled. Who remembers Radio 1’s minute of noise? Or the compilation CD’s of great things he played? Events are going on this year; there is a great line-up for World International John Peel Day at Bloomsbury Lanes, London on Saturday the 9th of October. But more needs to be done by those with greater clout and those people that are making things happen need more support.

I’m hoping his legacy isn’t slowly eroded and people still remember what a unique position he held with dignity and humility. As part of my own Podcast series I’ve recorded a one-off tribute show, to play just a few of the great songs he loved (and I probably wouldn’t have heard without him (plus a couple of new things I think he would have loved)). I could never hope to be inclusive, but I hope you enjoy this selection and it brings back some happy memories of this legend of broadcasting.

Also, if you are organising or involved with Peel related events and want to post details of them below please do.

When it comes to new music, Denmark is one of the most exciting places in Europe right now. The number of great bands coming out of this tiny part of Scandinavia has risen sharply in recent years. Think of Mew’s enigmatic quirkiness, Efterklang’s complex art-pop textures, Raveonettes’ glorious noisepop and Trentemøller’s imposing glacial beats. And yet Denmark – unlike its Nordic neighbours – hasn’t got any massive names to offer, like Björk or The Cardigans, not yet at least. On the other hand, there is a tremendous wealth of bands largely unknown outside their national borders that are begging to be discovered. As Efteterklang’s Rasmus Stolberg puts it: “feels like we have been going through a very creative and blossoming time. Five years ago I often had troubles naming Danish bands I liked. These days its like a new great Danish band pops up every month or so.” So things might be about to change for the scene. TLOBF travelled to the land of delicious pastries and beautiful people and spoke to a handful of its most important music representatives and local industry gurus in order to find out how the scene has been evolving over the years and what the future might hold for it.

It’s sticking that all the people I spoke to agreed that a turning point for the scene was when local bands realised they should stop copying what was going on elsewhere. Mew frontman Jonas Bjerre remembers: “When we started out the Danish scene was pretty bleak. The major labels had made fortunes in the ‘80s with local pop bands singing in Danish, and they had set up a formula for promoting bands that had completely stagnated. They put their money into boring bands that were completely derivative of what was going on in the UK, only 4 years later. So we endured a lot of Blur, Oasis and Radiohead copyists. It’s not that there weren’t any interesting bands – there was a ton of good bands – but they were just so underground that they never got any airplay and had a very hard time booking gigs. Most of them gave up their dreams and after a while, dedicated themselves to school, work, and family.” International dancefloor specialist Anders Trentemøller agrees: “Local bands wanted to sound like the ones from the US and DJs like someone from Berlin. But now Danish artists concentrate more on finding their own sound and doing something unique that often has this northern melancholic vibe, which you can also find in old Nordic folk music from 300 years ago. Now bands trust their own sound.”

Watch // Trentemøller: ’Even Though You’re With Another Girl’

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fallulah

Charming 25-year-old songstress Fallulah (born Maria Apetri) is one of the most interesting representatives of a new breed of Danish sound. She also confirms the trend: “People are getting braver. When I made my album, I really didn’t want to have any influences on it, I just wanted it to be really original. I asked myself what I really wanted to say with my music. More people are doing this nowadays. Therefore I think it’s becoming more real. My music is all about being comfortable with being yourself.” Jonas Bjerre continues: “The Danish scene is thriving, bands have the courage and imagination to be unique, to be themselves. The majors are not doing well, but then this is a worldwide issue. Lots of smaller labels are doing good things with the small means they have.”

Watch // Fallulah: ‘Use It For Good’

Click here to view the embedded video.

A brilliant example of one of these labels is Good Tape Records – home to acts such as Murder and Bodebrixen. On the reasons why she started the label, Good Tape Records co-founder Kamilla Hannibal enthuses: “Our motive is to purely be just good people helping and inspiring other talented good people to do good stuff, and also to maintain an unpretentious way of thinking about music. Music is for sharing, both the sound and the experience. Artistic freedom and playfulness is what we stand for, and we always want to try out something new.”

TLOBF Exclusive // Murder: ‘Picker Of Cotton’

Is it hard for Danish musicians to survive these days? Jonas Bjerre thinks so. “Surviving on making music is harder than ever. The record sales dropping at an exponential rate, newer generations just don’t spend their money on compact discs, the vast majority opt for downloading illegally. Thankfully, the live scene is doing well, and there’s still some revenue in merchandise and touring. But the prospect of signing big deals with advances and great studio budgets is almost non-existent at this point, at least if you’re a relatively new band with a small audience.” Fallulah observes: “It’s not very acceptable here to want to make a living out of creativity. People are very focused on getting an education and making money. It is not very socially acceptable. We don’t have that much creative stuff. In Sweden for instance you can take dance classes in high school. I’m self-taught.”

Bodebrixen

When asked about any movers and shakers in the current scene Kamilla Hannibal comes up with a whole list of names: “A lot is happening right now. One of the big ones is the excellent DJ and booker at Bakken, Djuna Barnes. The label Tigerspring is doing amazing management. The guys behind Svedehytten and Ratpack are developing great concepts and are so positively unpredictable in their DJ bookings. Smash Bang Pow! Booking agency have got such good ears.” Fallulah adds: “Copenhagen is very good for musicians. You get to know people really fast, because it’s such a small community.” Anders Trentemøller agrees: “One of the great things about Copenhagen is that it is such a small city.  Sometimes things happen just like that. You get a text message, and all of a sudden you are at an underground party.” He continues: “Bakken is my favourite place. It’s got a great vibe and a low-key feeling. Also V1 Gallery is great – they’ve even won an award for the best underground gallery in Europe. And Trailerpark Festival – because it’s so small and you can listen to many upcoming bands.”

TLOBF Exclusive // Chimes & Bells: ‘Reasons’

But what are the challenges for such a vibrant scene for the coming years? Anders Trentemøller believes that “it’s very important to continue being so open-minded, like in the last three years. A decade ago electronic and rock musicians were sort of antagonising. People are now much more working across genres. People are not afraid of mixing different styles anymore. I really hope that we will dare to have this open-mindedness in the future too. That’s the unique thing about the Danish scene right now. People have trust in their own sound.” Efterklang’s Rasmus Stolberg adds: “The challenge is to maintain the positiveness and the willingness to collaborate and help each other! This will make the scene stronger.” Jonas Bjerre highlights another issue: “Traditionally, the labels have had a steady flow of revenue from album sales. The biggest challenge now is to find ways of establishing new setups that can function in a world in which people can just take the music they want without paying, and in which there will still be a financial motivation to carry on having a music business. “

Watch // Ghost Society: ‘Under The Sun’

Click here to view the embedded video.

Chimes & Bells

Kamilla Hannibal thinks that a priority should be to keep up internationally: “Denmark is a small country and if we want to get out there in the world, music needs to be played insanely well and bands need to work hard. And most of them do.” Rasmus Stolberg agrees: “We need more Danish bands to establish themselves internationally. More bands with successful international careers will turn more eyes and ears towards Denmark.” There has been a strong industry export push in recent years. Christian Buhl, strategy manager at joint venture between the SPOT Festival (main industry hub in Denmark), Music Export Denmark and the Danish Rock Council explains: “The Danish music industry has gone from being a very strong domestic market in the glory days of CD sales, where the love of local music made it a great business to release Danish CDs in Denmark, to the digital era that has necessitated international touring and activities. Exports and international activities have thus increased in kind. 2009 for example boasted circa 6000 Danish concerts abroad.” There have been many more collaborations with the Danes’ Nordic neighbours: There is a common Nordic music export office in the making (Nomex) and Ja Ja Ja, a monthly Nordic music clubnight was launched for the first time ever in the UK. Kamilla Hannibal underlines the importance of such joint efforts: “It’s great. We had Bodebrixen playing there.  It was so much fun and I think it is a super initiative. That kind of showcase opens up for collaborations that otherwise wouldn’t happen.”

Watch // Giana Factory: ‘Heart Thief’

Click here to view the embedded video.

But the UK still remains a difficult market. Kamilla Hannibal admits: “Of course it is hard to break in to UK – if you aren’t Swedish at least. The rest of Europe is easier.” Christian Buhl confirms:“Danish music has been extremely successful in Germany, but in the UK, where the domestic market is so healthy, it’s been obviously much more difficult to break in, but the UK music press has embraced Danish music.” Anders Trentemøller is hoping that: “more new Danish artists break outside of Denmark because they have something unique to express.” Fallulah sums up: “It’s our own responsibility to get it out there. We need to push harder. People need to believe more in themselves.”

Watch // Mimas: ‘Cats on Fire’

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Line Of Best Fit also recommends:

Our Broken Garden: ‘Garden Grows’

Sleep Party People: ‘10 Feet Up’

Alcoholic Faith Mission: ‘Sobriety Up And Left’

Generally speaking, the British tend to have a curious relationship with their shared history and heritage, almost as if we fear it in some way, see something in that fierce mix of the sacred and the pagan that causes us to share in some collective misrembering and misunderstanding. When there are shared displays of ancient traditions they always seem to be veiled by a great blanket of protective whimsy and a distancing wink of self-knowing. In truth, our shared past isn’t about the gurning nonsense of ‘hey nonny no’ verse forms, or the clown poses of such dumb pageant fare of novelty folk bands. Instead it comes from an immediate and intimate knowledge of the land and of place, from our odd paganisation of the Christ myth, and from an individual and collective response to various personal and cultural woundings – from simple facts of unrequited loves and the personal tragedies of women lost in childbirth and men lost at sea, to the traumas of the Norman yoke, the enclosures act, the industrial revolution and the shattering losses of the First and Second World Wars. This is the well of our folk heritage.

Rob Young’s Electric Eden was originally going to be a study of the folk rock movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and how it acted as a kind of vent for the strange vapours emanating from these (barely) concealed layers of shared history. But during the course of his investigations, it became clear that the (capital F) Folk movement was merely one manifestation among many of this move towards the visionary. In the end that word ‘visionary’ became key for Young and he noticed that the folk rock movement was essentially part of a much broader movement in British art and culture, encompassing the works of Blake, occultists such as John Dee and Aleister Crowley, the millenarian cults of the late 19^th century and onwards and outwards, each using different methods to tap into and explore the possibilities inherent in the deep layers of history. This breadth of scope accounts for why Electric Eden feels like a portion of a much wider work, and why, at times, in its urge to encompass so much it can feel a bit like a baggy monster. It also accounts for why the book is such an important piece of work, and why it has leaves so much unanswered.

If Electric Eden makes anything clear it’s that if you look for a stable location from which to begin a history of folk music you’ll grasp at nothing but a drift of leaves and air: a study of folklore and, particularly, folk music is the study of a non-material art form, it exists as process, a process without a definable beginning and as such it is always already a study of nostalgia. Despite the best efforts of pedantic folklorists and archivists this isn’t a definite science (and this book is as much a history of them as it the phenomenology of music) – each iteration of a song or a ritual (re)creates the piece, the process anew. The object of study inevitably becomes about a method of interpretation, of the ways in which a particular age, or group of people or artists displays their findings, the results of their dowsings. As such, the book is very much about a form of decoding, or a study of style as much as anything else.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And what of that style for the visionaries of the 20^th century? What Young locates at the heart of 20^th century visionary music is what he calls a ‘form of imaginative time travel’: a simultaneous nostalgic urge towards a reconstructed golden age and a projection of this into the future, the green and pleasant land as some Utopian Eden – a placeless place of the imagination. In trying to place the genesis of this style he looks at the work of William Morris, a pioneering socialist and figurehead of the Arts and Crafts movements among other things, and composers such as Delius, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. The link between these disparate artists isn’t arbitrary as they used to mix in the same circles, Holst and Vaughan Williams actually frequenting meetings at Morris’ house in Hammersmith. In all their works he notices both an engagement with the past, whether in the form of a retreat into some rural idyll in the case of Delius (a pattern he sees mirrored throughout the 20^th century – see the various retreats of Peter Warlock, Fairport Convention, Traffic, Heron, Van Morrison etc), or a recourse to some mythic golden era with their compositions incorporating elements of old folk songs and focusing on natural and rural elements. Yet he also notes a Utopian impulse, in Vaughan Williams’ work and especially in William Morris’ novel of 1890 News from Nowhere, in which a time travelling protagonist is thrust into a future in which everyone leads a peaceful communist agrarian existence and revels in simple pleasures of nature and friendship – a future echo of some impossible Edenic past.

The other major contributing factor to this upsurge of interest in the folk heritage was the pioneering work of archivists such as Cecil Sharp and Lucy Broadwood. Sharp in particular had been driven by the derisory words of a visiting German folklorist Oscar Adolf Hermann Schmitz who claimed in 1904 that England was ‘a land without music’. Sharp made dozens of sorties into the countryside collecting and noting down literally hundreds of folk songs and versions of folk songs, with the idea that these should be taught in schools to re-introduce the idea of shared national heritage and inculcate a sense of national identity. In the light of what was happening in Europe at the time, it’s perhaps easy to see in Sharp’s ideals a kind of rabid nationalism, (especially given the BNPs predictably dull, lumpen appropriation of folk forms in recent times) but Sharp’s intentions weren’t necessarily right wing in their makeup, what he really wanted was to simply reconnect us to our heritage. If there was a downside to his work it’s that he sought to petrify the forms he captured, distilling the essence of each song into some impossible authentic original ‘version’, instead of recognising the essentially fluid nature of the form.

That this folk revival petered out, or returned underground, in the light of the monumental slaughter of the First and Second World Wars is perhaps not surprising. There was no need for the intrusions of past tragedies when such cataclysmic ones were occurring in the fields of Europe and beyond. When the revival came, it was very much in reaction to the social needs of those who had suffered most in the wars – the working classes. The likes of Ewan MacColl, AL Lloyd, Woody Guthrie and Peggy Seeger saw tremendous revolutionary potential in the folk songs of the rural and urban working classes, and the feeling in the folk clubs that grew up around these central figures was fervent and empowering. Young is great on how the likes of MacColl and Lloyd were both of the mainstream (with their BBC Radio shows) and yet subtly distanced from it, at least in the extreme left politics. From this distance it seems almost impossibly naïve that such movements were so powerful and so full of potential (indeed, Lloyd’s maxim that ‘poverty is the mother of folklore’ seems like the last flowering of some militant folk mindset in the UK) – that it might be possible to empower the working and rural classes through song. But the idea revolves around a raising of consciousness, the songs acting as a mode of realisation – of a shared past and of present economic conditions. We simply don’t have a way into that sense of living history. When did we turn away? Young sees the progenitor of this turn in the mighty figure of Bob Dylan who initially rode the wave of the protest movement, only to turn against the revolutionary dreams of his idol Woody Guthrie (whose guitar was a machine for killing fascists don’t forget) and instead became a brilliant creature of masks and costumes, prince of nihilism and hedonism. As Young puts it ‘the revolution was in the head’.

And it’s here that the book finds its focal point in the folk rock movement which following Dylan’s lead sought to bring electric instruments to a form which had previously remained acoustic. The likes of Shirley and Dolly Collins, The Young Tradition, The Watersons, Davy Graham, John Renbourn and Bert Jansch, all veterans of the folk club movement made popular by MacColl and his ilk, had laid the foundations for this turn towards the electric with their virtuoso reclamations of traditionals and imported folk songs. Like Holst and Vaughan Williams before them, some of these musicians both used ancient acoustic instruments (Shirley Collins was very much involved with the Early Music movement, with David Munrow as a kind of figurehead) and added Eastern forms to their renditions, both in terms of instrumentation and scales and modes. Young is brilliant at drawing together so many different strands here, and building towards the ‘Fairport moment’ where folk music got its first 4/4 beat, and his capsule biographies of the different figures are illuminating and beautifully written. But somehow it’s here that the book does seem to lose its way a little – and if anything its due to the sheer amount of research Young has carried out. Page after page of these short biographies follow, moving chronologically from the mid 60s to the slow death that occurred around the mid 70s; and though the text is always engaging, the pace which had been exemplary to this point does flag a little.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Essentially, what Young is doing here is carrying out a vast work of decoding – looking to the heart of a movement and trying to locate the temporal anomaly he opened up at the beginning of the text and the ways in which the folk rock movement evinced and displayed this urge towards the nostalgic and the Utopian. And the evidence is more than ample: from sleeve iconography to abstruse lyricisms he adds more and more evidence to back up his central thesis, which is amply proved, time and time again. It’s an astonishing work of archiving and investigation (Young has carried out an extraordinary amount of searching and listening for this book) and I doubt it can be improved upon in terms of depth of research and content, but this section can be a bit of a slog at times. It is lit up however, by some truly excellent thumbnail sketches – sketches that really merit longer expositions: Fairport, Nick Drake, John Martyn, Traffic, Dave and Toni Arthur, the various manifestations of Ashley Hutchings…

And it’s with the Ashley Hutching’s formed Steeleye Span that Young finds something of an end of an era. With their album (long after Hutchings had left) Rocket Cottage the Utopian/nostalgia trip reached some sort of dumb nadir. Here was a record that acted as a simulacrum of the visionary, a very British whimsical take on the magic inherent in the dowsing of the folk heritage. This was the visionary space driven back underground, awaiting the moment of the next coming,

In truth, the rest of the book is Young following his own obsessions a little, and drawing together varying bands and disparate movements – acts he sees as tapping into the visionary space in one way or another. Acts as diverse as Kate Bush, Talk Talk and Julian Cope are mentioned, not (capital F) folk music as such, but all loosely interested in the pastoral and possessed of a will to explore the nature of our relationship to the land and to our mythic (or otherwise) past. What I think the book lacks in the end is a useful coda. This is a book that feels as if it needed to be written, or has somehow found its time. I’m intrigued as to why. If it’s true that it’s when the time is out of joint that the ghosts will walk, then what is it about our own time that is causing this space to open up again? Young mentions the likes of Coil and Current 93, both visionary groups in their own way (and written about in depth in David Keenan’s equally monumental England’s Hidden Reverse), there is also mention of the Ghost Box label and Alasdair Roberts, but no unifying theory as to why there is such a diverse and burgeoning folk underground at present? Maybe it’s enough for Electric Eden to have left a space for that question to be asked; and it maybe that there’s another book in the subject waiting to be written; and if Young’s article on the Scottish folk scene in The Wire would suggest he’s the man for the job. For now it’s enough to ponder this latest rise and wonder if in truth, we simply cannot project into the future in a way that was possible as little as 25 years ago – the future is no longer what it was. Are we instead doomed to a sickness of mere nostalgia instead? A figment of our flattened sense of time, of our flattened culture? Do we have any visionaries to step forward?

A 57-track Electric Eden Spotify Playlist

The band are spending the next couple of weeks holed up in Glasgow making their eagerly awaited debut album. In-between overdubs, they’ll be supplying us with numerous diary entries of their adventures. Here’s part 1.

Hi there,

We – Copy Haho – are currently recording an album, and that’s the purpose of this diary. The purpose of this diary is to tell you about the recording of our album, in as interesting and entertaining a way as possible.

We’re recording the album at Chem19 which is located fairly near Glasgow, to be vague. As the name semi-suggests, the studio is run by the same people who bring you the Chemikal Underground record label. A bunch of records you either do or should like have been recorded at Chem19 – Young Team by Mogwai being one. However, the most exciting example for me is that Any Other City by Life Without Buildings was recorded at the studio. Anyone who has known me for more than two minutes will know that it’s my favourite album ever. It’s also a band favourite, for sure.

So far it’s all been going ‘swimmingly’. Jamie Savage, the gentleman we’re recording with, is making the process relatively pain-free (see section on extracurricular activities), and has been making great suggestions. One of these suggestions is that we visit the local ice cream parlour which is apparently incredible. A hilarious note about this suggestion is that the ice creamery is called ‘Eccies’. Might just be funny for Scottish people, but it’s something that Joe sometimes gets asked for when out and about, on account of him often looking like a drug dealer/addict. In addition to his great musical knowledge, Jamie also seems to have a similar sense of humour and taste in music as us, which is a big help. I often worry about our sense of humour, so it’s a relief not to be weirding out someone we’re spending a lot of time with.

This is what we’re recording to:

and here’s our producer:

and finally, here’s a photo of Mini playing an electric guitar:

Our friends and family will be pleased to know that we’re behaving ourselves out here. Some lads who have been recording in the other studio for the past few days have gone through about four crates of lager. I had a root beer a few days ago, to make a comparison. I’m really pleased with the rest of the band so far. We’re all trying our best.

All work and no play… would have resulted in no instruments being played which would have made the recording difficult. All work and no play… would have also resulted in a serious lack of fun for our collective bones. Some extracurricular activities we’ve indulged in at the end of the day include;

• Watching the recently released movie, ‘Cyrus’. If I wrote a review of this movie I’d comment on how incredible John C. Reilly is as an actor, and how surprisingly serious the tone and subject matter of the movie is. The latter factor sure took a while to get used to, but nevertheless Joe and I really enjoyed it. Recommended.
• Dabbling in a bit of toothache. I don’t think Rikki is enjoying his chosen activity but it’s something he is going to have to deal with. He’s a grown man you know.
• Going to a really fantastic ‘all night’ (22:00 – 04:30) gig/party hosted by the ever-reliable Winning Sperm Party collective. It was held in a practice studio, with different bands set up in each rehearsal room and a DJ in the communal area. Got to hang out with a bunch of friends that we don’t really get to see all that much due to one or both parties being on tour, etc. Rikki crowdsurfed to the music of ABBA (‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’), Mini showed up the whole building with his world class dancing and I saw a urinal overflow in sync with my arrival at the bathroom. A pre-piss welcome fountain would be a really positive spin on this. When we got back Joe had accidentally locked the door from the inside so we kicked it in like the badasses we are.
• Watching the unintentionally hilarious and angering coverage of the Pope’s visit to Edinburgh and Glasgow. A lorra laughs were had at the expense of everyone’s favourite paedophile protector.
• Watching our bros Sky Larkin play an ace show in Glasgow. First time I’ve seen them since hearing the new album, so it was great to hear the new songs. They also brought down my sleeping bag from Stonehaven (where they were staying the previous night, chez my parents), which I am eternally grateful for. Sleeping has been great since the arrival of my sleeping bag. First time seeing Dutch Uncles too, which was awesome!

Part two is going to contain a little section about our living arrangements during recording, a breakdown of eating and drinking habits and maybe a very short video. There’ll probably be a few more extracurricular activities to tell you about. I’ll try to talk about the actual recording, too.

At Bloodshot Records, since 1994, we have championed the music that lurks between genres. We’re drawn to the good stuff nestled in the dark, nebulous cracks where punk, country, soul, pop, bluegrass, blues and rock mix and mingle and mutate. We like artists who work over American roots forms with chains and velvet gloves with little regard for formality or protocol, who aren’t afraid to molest and caress these forms and take music into uncharted and exciting waters.

Today we’re proud to share a sample of our catalog with the good music fans at Spotify. You’ll find new releases and music by artists who tour regularly in the UK and Europe (upcoming UK tours: Deadstring Brothers early October, Justin Townes Earle early November!) . Take a chance on music that is innovative and interesting. Follow your instincts, and enjoy!

Here’s the Spotify link!