It had to happen at some point.. For the first time in TLOBF history we’ve got an artist to do the 20Q’s for the second time! “Why the hell would you possbily do such a thing?” I hear you scream. Well, to be honest it was a total oversight on my part, but I’ll lie and say it’s because we love Jeremy Warmsley so much. Hang on, that sounds like we don’t love Jeremy Warmsley, which isn’t the case.. We’re really quite fond of him. Oh, fuck it. The questions and answers are totally different anyway - see. So let’s move on…

Our girl out in “The Valleys” Amy Pay caught up with Warmsley at a recent show in Cardiff. She had the 20Q’s printed out in her pocket and thought “why the hell not!”. Warmsley graciously accepted. Incidentally, his new album How We Became is out on Monday (29th September) via Transgressive Records. Continue Reading

Before their gig in Cardiff last week, New Zealand’s masters of bleeps and beeps, So So Modern, chatted to TLOBF about their mammoth recent tour, coordinating outfits and possible plans to be radiation therapists and child educators.

Tell us a bit about yourselves and your band.
[Daniel] Hello. My name is Daniel Nagels and I play drums.
[Aidan] My name is Aidan and I play two synthesisers and sing.
[Mark] I’m Mark. I sing, I play guitar and synthesisers and push buttons.
[Grayson] I’m Grayson. I do pretty much what Mark does; I play guitar, play keyboards, play the sampler and do some singing, but I look a bit better.
[A] So So Modern is a band from a city called Wellington in New Zealand. We started just before Christmas 2004. We were just jamming with different people at different times in the same city, but the city is so small that you can’t really avoid anyone that displays similar interests as one’s self and so we just got together. Continue Reading

Photograph by Paul Wilcock

Jude Clarke has a long, fairly analytical phone conversation with folky-electronica wizz kid and all round nice chap Jeremy Warmsley, covering the new album, the benefits of a Cambridge education and whether it’s better making music for yourself or your audience.

Hello Jeremy I’ve just got a few questions to ask you, so thank you for giving us the time for the interview.
Of course.

How did your Transgressive tour go? That’s just finished now, has it?
Yeah, oh - it was brilliant, it was so much fun. All the bands on the tour were just super-talented and really nice and it was great to make some new friends and play a bunch of shows. Things couldn’t have gone better, really. Continue Reading

When Frank Sinatra gave advice to Nancy about embarking on a singing career, he said the one thing she shouldn’t do was to stay in the same genre: the comparisons would always be negative. Well, Liam Finn never seems to have got the same advice from his Dad - Crowded House’s Neil Finn. A blindfolded listener might often struggle to differentiate between the two, but that’s no bad thing of course. Despite understandably sounding uncannily like his father (and Uncle Tim on double tracked harmonies) he has managed to escape a case of Julian Lennon syndrome. Liam Finn has produced a debut album that stands alone without being overshadowed, if alongside rather than diverging away from the template of the family collection. No mean achievement. Continue Reading