Pop Scene // Cambridge

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Look beneath the surface of most medium-sized towns and cities in the UK and you are likely to find some of the more left-field, sometimes bizarre and frankly more interesting music than which is immediately apparent. In the first instalment of this new monthly series, Jude Clarke gives us the lowdown on the musicians in her home town of Cambridge that she thinks you may like – or even need – to know more about.

Think ‘Cambridge’ and ‘Music’, and the chances are that most people are likely to just think of Pink Floyd, or even, lord help us, Hamfatter (yeah, thanks for that, Dragons Den…). Having lived in this fine and compact city for nigh-on twenty years, though, I am pleased to say that, with a bit of ferreting around, and a lot of devoted gig-attendance at The Best Small Venue in Town™ The Portland Arms, things here are a lot more diverse, experimental, challenging and just at times outright fun than that. Things that range from the shambolic indiepop cardicore of The Puncture Repair Kit to The Resistance‘s confrontational noise-drone (with psychedelic backdrops); from the scene’s own supergroup, of sorts, in the form of Canaveral, with their high-concept Bill Drummond-isms and ever-changing line up, to the righteous (and Kerrang-endorsed) intelli-post-hardcore of Tupolev Ghost and Cathode Ray Syndrome‘s Cambridge/Brighton (prog-post-) Rock; taking in some gorgeous string-flecked loveliness from Fuzzy Lights, pared-down electronics and vitriol from The Vichy Government, The Last Dinosaur‘s warm acoustics, layered harmonies and ‘kitchen sink’ aesthetic, and last but not least the one-man enigma that is Um, for whom I’ve just spent the last five minutes trying to construct a snappy soundbite description, and resolutely failing so to do…

This is intended to be more a summary of those bands and artists that I rate and enjoy, then, rather than anything purporting to be an overview of the entire Cambridge music scene. I put the same set of questions to each of the bands concerned and they all answered in their own individual and often entertaining way. They’ve also each donated a track so that you can take a listen for yourself.

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Cathode Ray Syndrome*

Who’s in your band?
Tom, Matt, David and Arthur, four geographically dislocated chums.

Describe your music.
We play a strange barrage of musical ideas, usually in an order that makes people dance jerkily. It’s somewhere in the realms of post, noise, math or prog rock.

Which of the other bands on this list do you a) know b) rate c) share members with?
a) We’ve either played or shared dance floor space with all of these bands. This is the nature of Cambridge. Vic and Jake were neighbours for a bit, and we met James TTG when he put CRS* on in 2002. In fact we’d claim a somewhat incestuous link with most of the list – where’s the rock family tree when it’s needed?

b) Tuppy Ghost are well worthy of carrying the ‘Cambridge’s Big Hope’ title for a while. We feel like their big, albeit less successful brothers. Vic and Jake are impressively different from the Cambridge norm, and are also great people to lose a night with, which we endorse. Um’s the daddy really, isn’t he? Every scene needs a savant poet father figure.

c) Whilst we’ve been guilty of straddling bands – 4 at one point – we’re all currently focussed on being CRS*, unless any of us have accidentally joined Canaveral.

What band/artist should have been on this list, that isn’t?
Scrotal Threat.

How is your music (if at all) informed by your Cambridgeness?
I think the wilful awkwardness of our music was borne of a desire to stick out of the Cambridge scene around when we started. Gradually there have been bands pop up that we can identify with musically, and we’re not the black sheep of the scene we maybe once were. Even to us lowly townies Cambridge has a lofty vibe, and we started off with ideas that we’d make cerebral, intellectual music before discovering we preferred being in a cock-rock band.

What has been the best thing your band has achieved, to date?
Staying together for so many years despite hating each other intensely.

What are your musical aspirations for the future?
We’re writing new tunes at the moment with the intention of holing up in a barn or office block and recording again. Hopefully we can find someone that has an interest in putting it out. We’ll also be touring primary schools of East Anglia with The Tupolev Ghost, baffling young minds.

Who are your musical influences?
We’re quite influenced (or maybe limited) by the stupid method we established for our tunes – cram as much into the music as possible without overdoing repetition. Personally, we cover a gamut of taste, but I’m not sure we could claim to have squeezed much Grime or Tango influence into our tunes. The usual post-rock suspects, along with The Fucking Champs, King Crimson, Hella, Yes, Cursive and Dillinger Escape Plan are usually on when we’re together.

What’s good, bad and indifferent about the Cambridge music scene
The scene’s like a family – you get sick of seeing the same people every so often, but it’s quite supportive and bands collaborate a lot. The Portland Arms has remained a constant in the tide of closing venues and I think will always be central to the scene. There’s a mass of promoters with their own niches which seems to foster interesting nights all the time, united by the common goal of giving cake away.

Why should we care about you?
We promise to never, ever bore you – but that’s all we can promise.

Give us the background or an introduction to your track
This tune is a kind of homage to the Audrey Hepburn / Alan Arkin film, with the intro ripped straight from the original score. We recorded this live then started exploring the studio we were in. When we found a stack of old organs we were in prog heaven.

mp3:> Cathode Ray Syndrome*: ‘Wait Until Dark’

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Canaveral

Who’s in your band?
My name is FreshHell (aka Latahs, Giel Peet, French Pete (I’m not French)). I am the remaining founder member of three, more on this later. Anyone can be a member of Canaveral and we have had certain performances with over ten members. You simply need belief, a pure heart and an e-mail account which you can BLOODY check at least twice a day. That said we have people who consistently take part in our aktions and the ceremonial position of being both Canaveral and Fuzzy Lights drummer. We’re now on our second incumbent due to losing the last one to Canada.

Describe your music.
Crusader jams, Gravitational waves, Plasma, Lamé and the focused rays of Sol our infallible sun.

Which of the other bands on this list do you a) know b) rate c) share members with?
Who do I know?: I know them all in my personal capacity as scene slut and member of crushing death and grief promotions save for Victoria and Jacob whose poor organisational skills I thank for enabling us to support Volcano!

We have/had shared members with:
On the list: The Resistance, Puncture Repair Kit, The Tupolev Ghost and The Fuzzy Lights. Off the list: Micropenis, Ripping Yarns, Model Village, Betty and the Werewolves, Odins Bong, Last Rites and Blaklava. Also Ian Scanlon/ Dan Carney who were members of Hey Colossus and Eye Hai respectively

What band/artist should have been on this list, that isn’t?
If I just get one I’ll say Micropenis.

How is your music (if at all) informed by your Cambridgeness?
It supplies a pool of ghoulish perverts who either play at or attend our shows.

What has been the best thing your band has achieved, to date?
Deary me, well I’d probably say either the vocal performance at Cambridgebands or the drum performance supporting Rolo Tomassi.

What are your musical aspirations for the future?
The Canaveral we are talking about here is the Cambridge Canaveral or Canaveral.cam. We have a new department forming in Canada (Canaveral.ca), hopefully one in London formed by the other founder members Steve Duggins (of Tupolev Ghost/Fuzzy Lights) and James Parrish (of Tupolev Ghost). I’m off to the Far East in January and then going to the States so who knows what my terror-forming activities will produce. All I can say is the Canaveral movement needs to be global and I shall be passing the torch of Cambridge Canaveral very shortly. May the illumination continue.

If anyone wishes to form a new Canaveral visit our link and know this….

Who are your musical influences?
Mine are Throbbing Gristle, Coil, BBBlood, Current 93 and SunnO))). I can’t speak for the other members or anyone else for that matter. Canaveral’s influences are the raw materials provided by whomsoever is taking part in the specific performance.

What’s good, bad and indifferent about the Cambridge music scene?
Wow, I could riff on this shit for hours as people regularly do on WAN (local Cambridge messageboard). My thoughts are thus, whilst there are a number of loyal supporters of the Cambridge scene their number is too few. The structure and the materials for an extensive, innovative and vibrant scene are largely in place but this needs more support/funding. Largely promoters of the sort of music your readership are interested in are finding it increasingly difficult to organise shows and pay bands whilst keeping door prices reasonable. Happily local music gets a better reception on balance but ‘we are not an island’. Also some more venues like the Portland wouldn’t hurt including cloned bar staff!

Why should we care about you?
Because you wish to live (again).

Give us the background or an introduction to your track
This is a link to the practice session before our massive drum performance including 6 drummers. It’s bad – please visit the website to see extensive live footage and mp3′s of other aktions. All Canaveral recorded material is recorded live and unadulterated!

mp3:> Canaveral: ’16.11.08 Practice Session’

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Fuzzy Lights

Who’s in your band?
Rachel: violin/mandolin/voice, Xavier: guitar/voice/keyboard, Chris: guitar/laptop/bass, Eric: bass, Mark: drums/zither/melodica/keyboard

Describe your music.
Noisy psych-folk.

Which of the other bands on this list do you a) know b) rate c) share members with?
I think we’ve seen or heard most of these bands a couple of times. Um writes amazing (and usually very short) pop gems with clever tongue in cheek lyrics. Rachel plays violin in the Puncture Repair Kit and Mark and I are regular Canaveral members.

What band/artist should have been on this list, that isn’t?
MFU (Man From Uranus), The Doozer, Chris Joynes

How is your music (if at all) informed by your Cambridgeness?
None of us are from Cambridge originally, and Chris lives in London (although he’s lived in Cambridge for about 11 years), but I guess we all have in common the fact that we all grew up in the countryside, and Cambridge is a pretty green city, and you don’t have to walk much before you find yourself surrounded by fields, and that aspect of Cambridge and its surroundings probably nourish the more folksy elements of our music. One of the other striking things about the area is its flatness, wide spaces and big skies, which are maybe reflected in the amount of reverb we use..

What has been the best thing your band has achieved, to date?
Probably releasing our first album last week. I was a long process but we enjoyed every minute of it.

What are your musical aspirations for the future?
Record / Tour / Play / Write / Repeat

Who are your musical influences?
There are an awful lot… from the west coast of America in the 60′s like Neil Young and David Crosby to British Folk like Pentangle and Comus to New York sounds like Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo to bands like Can. If we gave you a list it would change every week.

What’s good, bad and indifferent about the Cambridge music scene?
Over the last couple of years, it’s increasingly felt like the Cambridge scene has been gluing together. This is probably because Cambridge is relatively quite small and a lot of bands have members in common, but pretty much everybody knows everybody and it’s great to have a community of musicians bouncing ideas of each other, sharing music, organising gigs… There is a broad range of sounds and influences there, so the variety makes it exciting too.

What’s bad about the Cambridge scene?
Well, there seems to be a prejudice about music made in Cambridge. I seems that a lot of people have an image of Cambridge which is a bit like a caricature, with posh students in gowns and archaic collegiate traditions, and although they can be right, they forget that after all Cambridge is like any other place. Ok, it’s a pretty nice place to live in, but it doesn’t mean no good music can come out of it. Check out Nick Drake. Check out Pink Floyd. Whether you’re making music in a block of flats in London, a town house in Versailles or a river boat in Phnom Penh, you’re making music and that’s a reflection and representation of who you are, of your culture, your thoughts, your personal history whether the place you live in had a big impact on it or not.

Why should we care about you?
Our haircuts are genuinely terrible. We have pictures to prove it.

Give us the background or an introduction to your track.
This is a track we wrote for a Xmas compilation last year called Arctic Circle Presents… That Fuzzy Feeling released by LOAF. We were late for the deadline and wrote/recorded it/mixed it in about three evenings…

mp3:> Fuzzy Lights: ‘Snowstorm In A Snow Globe’

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The Last Dinosaur

Who’s in your band?
Jamie Cameron and Luke Hayden with Jenny Hall, Ben Bennett, Mat Simper and James Slade live.

Describe your music.
My favourite description has been by The PRK before a gig we played together – (“tremulous, whimsical and majestic tunes”)

Which of the other bands on this list do you a) know b) rate c) share members with?
We have played with The Puncture Repair Kit, Fuzzy Lights, Cathode Ray Syndrome* and Victoria and Jacob at one point or another and rate them all highly, and The Tupolev Ghost are one of our favourite bands and feature some of our best friends.

What band/artist should have been on this list, that isn’t?
Jenny Hall

How is your music (if at all) informed by your Cambridgeness?
We are very much a product of our environment, only completely subconsciously.

What has been the best thing your band has achieved, to date?
Some wonderful words from Simon Raymonde (Bella Union), lots of amazing write ups and a forthcoming album release.

What are your musical aspirations for the future?
At the moment, to play SXSW but mainly just to be able to live doing only music.

Who are your musical inspirations?
Talk Talk, Broken Social Scene, 4AD, Max Richter, Mount Eerie/The Microphones, folk I was brought up on, kd lang, Deftones, Fatcat, very quiet stuff and very loud stuff.

What’s good, bad and indifferent about the Cambridge music scene?
The good = all of these bands, playing together & supporting each other.
The bad = The severe lack of places to play and the loss of the Barfly.
Indifferent = The general perception of Cambridge from holier-than-thou people and places.

Why should we care about you?
Because we’d be making music either way, but people caring makes us less insecure.

Give us the background or an introduction to your track.
This song – ‘I Found My Voice’ – is about coming to terms with a traumatic experience.

mp3:> The Last Dinosaur: ‘I Found My Voice’

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The Puncture Repair Kit

Who’s in your band?
The Puncture Repair Kit are Becky, Matt, Lozzy, Rachel, Mark and Kellye.

Describe your music.
“Orchestral pop on a budget” apparently.

Which of the other bands on this list do you a) know b) rate c) share members with?
Rachel is also a founder member of the wonderful and astonishing Fuzzy Lights. Parts of the Puncture Repair Kit have also appeared in Canaveral and we used to share a member with The Tupolev Ghost. Cambridge has a lot of good things happening and bands of many disparate hues mix in the same circles. It’s unhealthy, incestuous and, overall, a lot of fun.

What band/artist should have been on this list, that isn’t?
Chris Joynes, The Regency Array, Micropenis.

How is your music (if at all) informed by your Cambridgeness?
Erm… Well our music smells faintly bookish I suppose and Cambridge has a lot of libraries. I think I’m clutching at straws…

What has been the best thing your band has achieved, to date?
Our EP will be out in some form or other early in 2009. It was engineered and produced by Xavier from Fuzzy Lights and is easily the best thing we’ve recorded. It will be good to find out if everyone else likes it as much as we do.

What are your musical aspirations for the future?
We’d like to be sustainably obscure so nobody has to leave.

Who are your musical influences?
When we started it was mostly Scottish indie like The Delgados but I can’t tell who it is now, it’s all over the place and listing every band that each of us likes would be painfully boring.

What’s good, bad and indifferent about the Cambridge music scene?
The people are helpful and generally kind and The Portland Arms has a great atmosphere. The town is full of high achievers who are interested in lots of different things which gives less time for world domination and its associated trappings. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don’t know.

Why should we care about you?
Because Our Glaswegian Drummer will get stabby if you don’t, and no-one wants to see that.

Give us the background or an introduction to your track
‘Little Strange’ – This was one of our first recordings, from long before Rachel and Mark joined. Steven, our old violinist, recorded and mixed it on a little 8 track. It gives a good idea of where we started. The song is a collection of stolen stories, half truths and lies written down in a morning when the band didn’t yet exist. It’s about not falling in love. It usually starts our set because it’s both fun and, more importantly, very easy to play.

mp3:> The Puncture Repair Kit: ‘Little Strange’

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The Resistance

Who’s in your band?
Em (guitar, music), Rob (guitar, noise), Susan (bass, programming, production) and myself (text, organ, direction). That’s an oversimplification, but it’s the basic who-does-what…

Describe your music.
We are a rock ‘n’ roll band.

Which of the other bands on this list do you a) know b) rate c) share members with?
I occasionally contribute synth and bass stuff to Canaveral, Susan has produced plenty of the Vichy Government’s recorded output, but aside from that we’re pretty much independent… The Vichy Government, Um, Fuzzy Lights and the Puncture Repair Kit are the ones I’d direct people to first.

What band/artist should have been on this list, that isn’t?
If London/Cambridge collaborations are allowed, then Betty and the Werewolves. Also Alice Wroe. And, in spite of, yet because of everything, Micropenis.

How is your music (if at all) informed by your Cambridgeness?
Not in the slightest, apart from the fact that we all live here and we met here. It isn’t a particularly advantageous place to make music. We have no songs called ‘There Are No Hills Here, Jeremy’, ‘I Haven’t Been Mugged (Since I Stopped Living In Mile End)’ or ‘My Bikelights Cane Batteries Something Chronic’. Still, there’s very little in the way of distraction here, so we generally spend most of our spare time and money (gin and cigs aside) on The Resistance, rather than on going to all of the wonderful bars and clubs and venues that apparently exist in New York/Barcelona/Antwerp/Berlin/Paris/wherever. Maybe it’s fuelled our sense of urgency, given us a desperation we wouldn’t have elsewhere.

What has been the best thing your band has achieved, to date?
Achievement’s a total misnomer. You achieve what you create – end of story. The best songs and shows – it isn’t for me to say. It’s hard to objectively critique your own work. There’s a fuckton of songs on Dead Media and our myspace – take your pick. Besides, it’s of negligible interest to me compared to what we will write and create in future.

What are your musical aspirations for the future?
I reckon we’ve written about 20 songs this year, probably nearly two hours of material as much of it is quite long. It’d be really satisfying if we can generate another 2 hours next year but distil many more ideas into that time, many more ephemeral, unabashed pop songs whilst keeping the texture and rigor of what we currently do.

To make the energy of our live performances translate better to the things we record. To become more sophisticated in the way we arrange songs, and to try to break away from the linear verse-chorus approach more successfully whilst maintaining an accessibility. To write more songs that listeners can empathise with, rather than merely think about. To keep re-evaluating our methods of songwriting and performance and stop things becoming staid and formulaic. To create more space and dynamic within our songs, stop being completely maximalistic all the time and let the things breathe… So, yeah. To try to communicate these ideas with a little more brevity than we have in the past. This paragraph suggests that I’ll struggle.

Also, to get much better at the process of making other people give a fuck. That’s been a problem. It’s skyrocketing up our to-do list, though. We aspire to greater giveafuckinducingability.

Who are your musical influences?
The answer I want to give is here. The answer you want to receive: The KLF, The Stooges, Stereolab, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, The Teardrop Explodes, The Velvet Underground, Throbbing Gristle, The Byrds, Suicide, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, The Beatles, Neu!, Electrelane, The Fall.

What’s good, bad and indifferent about the Cambridge music scene?
The place suffers from complacency, a chilling lack of ambition and a collective procrastinatory apathy to the point of complete inertia. There’s also a paucity of venues, and it’s a really small town in terms of gig-going crowds. Fighting against this we have some wonderful independent music promoters, probably more good bands than we realise and a great pub-back-room venue in the Portland Arms. And Russell from Micropenis, the one true pop star of our generation. We just hope the world realises before it’s too late.

Why should we care about you?
I will answer this question later. Right now I’m off to bed.

Give us the background or an introduction to your track
This is our Christmas single. It’s called ‘Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell: A Christmas Gift To You From The Resistance’..

It was recorded on to half-inch tape by our friend Robbie Barr in one take on the evening of December 9th. Normally we’re very meticulous in our recording but we wanted to make and release something quickly, as our 7″ single (‘Stevie Nicks/Snowflakes Falling On The International Dateline’), which we’d slaved over, is still not back from the record pressing plant 11 weeks after the deadline we imposed and has been reluctantly shitcanned. We just wanted to get something out before the end of the year, and here it is….

The title came first. It comes from a Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’, when Julia says “you see, I can’t get that sort of thing out of my mind, quite – Death, Judgement, Heaven, Hell…and the catechism…it becomes part of oneself.” We decided to keep the song secular so I wrote a kind of existentialist catechism celebrating the ephemeral nature of everything. If everything in life is ephemeral and life itself is ephemeral, then everything is as important as life. That sounds like pantheistic wank to an extent, but it means that the love and hate and hope and disappointment and whatever extremities that make up life are in effect our own Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. Sartre’s hackneyed “hell is other people” quote is kind of therefore worth celebrating as it means that heaven is other people, too. Which kind of makes everyone an angel, if you follow this logic through. And that sentiment is kind of Christmassy.

Also, there’s a sample of a LearJet. LearJets are fucking cool. Much better for augmenting Christmas singles than sleighbells.

mp3:> The Resistance: ‘Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell: A Christmas Gift To You From The Resistance’

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The Tupolev Ghost

Who’s in your band?
Chris Bradshaw (guitar), Greg Hilson (bass), James Parrish (guitar/vocals), Andy Jenkin (drums)

Describe your music.
First and foremost we’re a rock band. We’ve been pencilled in as post-hardcore, hardcore, indie-rock, post-rock, noise-pop, punk, even metal at times. I suppose in reality we’re a mix of all of those genres and influences, so it just seems easier to say rock. We try and avoid the cliches that are sometimes associated with the term, but we’re still as interested in being accessible as much as we’ve ever been interested in doing something a little different.

Which of the other bands on this list do you a) know b) rate c) share members with?
I think on a certain level we all know, or know of, each other. Cambridge is a small town. But we’re close to The Puncture Repair Kit, Victoria & Jacob and Cathode Ray Syndrome* as people, and some of our best friends are in The Last Dinosaur. Andy and I have both played in Canaveral at various times. I was a “founding member” if such a thing exists; Steven, Pete and I were at a Wolf Eyes gig and we just wanted to excitedly mimic what we’d just heard. The name is a straight rip-off of a track from a Shellac record I was listening to at the time. Now that I’m in London, I’ve kind of left Canaveral up to Pete. He’s the one pulling the strings now. In regards to your last question – to some extent we rate all the bands you’ve mentioned. Put the best track by all of us on a compilation CD and I think most people would agree you’ve got a very good one.

What band/artist should have been on this list, that isn’t?
Lonely The Brave. Epic alt-rock band with the best vocalist in the city.

How is your music (if at all) informed by your Cambridgeness?
It probably isn’t really. We listen to a lot of US music – Andy and myself are fans of most artists on Dischord, Desoto and Touch & Go and also listen to a lot of indie-rock and folk, Greg has an encyclopaedic knowledge of underground punk-rock and Chris is more into metal. Having said that, we listen to a lot of British artists also, and do our best to support the underground. We don’t have a song called ‘Grafton Centre Nights’ or ‘Bradwells Court’, sorry.

What has been the best thing your band has achieved, to date?
We’ve been very lucky to have won fans in the press but our Introducing feature in Kerrang! has probably been the best piece of coverage we’ve received so far. Apart from that we’ve played some great gigs, including a very messy one in Huddersfield on a bill of 20 bands and a gig in Ipswich where the venue had no stage, no one knew who we were, and we started playing to 2 people on a Thursday. By the end of the gig there were 50 people watching. That was great fun. Playing with Milloy was fantastic too as they were a band Andy and I had liked for years and it was at our favourite venue, The Portland Arms. Which just feels like home every time we play there.

What are your musical aspirations for the future?
We’re currently in discussions with a few labels so we’re excited about 2009. We have a couple of tours in the pipeline and hopefully a new record out in March. Beyond that, we just want to play our music to as many people as possible.

Who are your musical influences?
Too many to count. We’re total music geeks. Greg, Andy and myself own over 1000 records each. We get compared to Fugazi a lot but I don’t think any of us dote over them unhealthily. In my personal experience the bands that do something for me are those who can push the boundaries but still include some kind of memorable melody, guitar line, rhythm etc. Something that is exciting on both levels.

What’s good, bad and indifferent about the Cambridge music scene?
The Cambridge scene is far better than people give it credit for, but I don’t think enough of the music escapes from locality and makes it elsewhere. There are friendly faces, maybe we could do with a little fresh blood but that will come with time.

Why should we care about you?
You shouldn’t, you should care about your everyday lives and ringing your mother more often. But if you want to be distracted by music, maybe you’ll care for some of our songs.

Give us the background or an introduction to your track.
We recorded this song ourselves, and it’s a transitional one because it was recorded with Ben and Steven before they moved abroad, but then finished with another guitar line from Chris and his backing vocals. We fluked it a little. I came to record the vocals and changed the chorus completely on the day and thankfully it worked out for the better. It sounds loud – Andy did a better job on production than the producer we actually paid to do our last two EP’s.

mp3:> The Tupolev Ghost: ‘Diagrams’

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Um

Who’s in your band?
Just Pete Um and the various machines.

Describe your music.
Still can’t do this question. Kinda structureless miniatures of gnostic electronic rock married with metaphysical protest poems. Dada haiku fortune cookie wisdom/Christmas cracker jokes. The pursuit of the ineffable since 1996. Or, to paraphrase Steve Adams’ summarisation: it’s just singing over tapes (of songs that sound like they’ve broken on the way to the speakers).

Which of the other bands on this list do you a) know b) rate c) share members with?
I don’t know The Last Dinosaur, Puncture Repair Kit, The Tupolev Ghost, or Victoria and Jacob, but I know the rest to a greater or lesser extent. Obviously I think all the bands are fabulous and all that but if I was about to be shot and I was allowed to pick one band to play a set in my cell I know I would still smile when Jamie and Andrew (The Vichy Government) shuffled in.

What band/artist should have been on this list, that isn’t?
All my mates that are in bands that you haven’t listed, which I have to say for reasons of diplomacy.

How is your music (if at all) informed by your Cambridgeness?
By osmotic transference. Cambridge appears in my songs now and then, and vice versa.

What has been the best thing your band has achieved, to date?
Puh. Uh… well apart from just getting up and doing it and keeping doing it I suppose I’m proud to have played a lot of gigs over a long time. It’s been nice to play in Europe and have it go well, and it’s great to have done some music that I still feel good about several years down the line. And I’m proud to have produced such a large body or work, even if, as someone once said, they are short songs.

What are your musical aspirations for the future?
I don’t really do aspirational. I would just like to make small runs of records and have similar numbers of people buy them.

Who are your musical influences?
It would be a very long list. Sometimes I think the best musicians sound like themselves though.

What’s good, bad and indifferent about the Cambridge music scene?
It’s a tricky one. I sort of like the localness of being in a band in Cambridge, because there isn’t really a scene in the negative sense of the word. I used to describe myself as a Community Popstar as a jokey comment on Cambridge’s possible insularity and/or my woeful failure to break out of it. There isn’t too much ego or bullshit to being in a band in Cambridge, and audiences are pretty accepting and supporting. The bad thing is that a lot of potential gig-goers are a transient population of students etc, and they may never even make it to The Portland in the first place! Also, you rarely get a sense of energy at Cambridge gigs, or the ones I go to anyway.

Why should we care about you?
You said I should imagine Janet Street-Porter was asking me these questions. To this one I would reply “Shut your teeth, Janet.” Who says I care if you care, even if I do?

Give us the background or an introduction to your track
I like this track because, like some of the best songs, it sort of seemed to almost make itself. I did the music in about 45 minutes and wrote some words about this woman who’d approached me after a gig I’d played the night before to tell me my songs were too short. I have a motto which is “It’s all grist” which means that I would like to think I can co-opt anything for Um purposes. In this case I cheekily provide my attractive critic with her own song, and even though I spent only five minutes in her company I have been told by those who know her well that I captured something about her. Even though there is a sense that the joke is ultimately on the sad musician in the song there is a note of rueful defiance struck by the song’s 1:18 track length.

mp3:> Um: ‘That’s Too Close’

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The Vichy Government

Who’s in your band?
Jamie (words) and Andrew (music). Andrew lives in Cambridge and we met when I was a student.

Describe your music.
I couldn’t possibly, you’ll have to buy one of our albums or come to a gig..

Which of the other bands on this list do you a) know b)rate c) share members with?
I know about half of them and rate Um and The Resistance. As far as cross-pollination, Susan from The Resistance has produced some of our stuff and Andrew has returned the favour.

What band/artist should have been on this list, that isn’t?
Micropenis and Dave Jago.

How is your music (if at all) informed by your Cambridgeness?
My Cambridge days were occupied by Pythonesque academic ceremonies. It can be a fairly odd place, so maybe that’s where we get it from.

What has been the best thing your band has achieved, to date?
In my opinion it’s White Elephant, the double album we released this year.

What are your musical aspirations for the future?
I’ve been trying to learn the piano this year but it’s been slow and laborious. My ambitions for Vichy are that we keep writing the best songs we are able, and keep getting to put out records.

Who are your musical influences?
We listen to all sorts and none of it sounds much like us. I think we appreciate anyone who can put together a good pop song, whether it be The Birthday Party or The Carpenters.

What’s good, bad and indifferent about the Cambridge music scene?
It’s fairly self-contained and parochial, but things seem less dictated by musical trends. You can do your own thing and you might be dismissed right away if you’re shit, but you won’t be dismissed right away for not sounding like <insert flavour of the week>. There’s a dearth of venues and a dearth of people willing to look beyond their local meat market, but the few who do are quite enthusiastic.

Why should we care about you?
I’m not bothered if you don’t. I’m not going to go wading into a Foals moshpit, trying to save people’s souls. Listen to whatever music you enjoy most.

Give us the background or an introduction to your track
This is track is from our last album and it’s called ‘The Exterminating Angel of Greek Street’. A lot of my lyrics are little stories, delivered in character, and this one imagines the thankless task of being a barman in one of those private members’ bars in Soho. And it’s a great tune.

mp3:> The Vichy Government: ‘The Exterminating Angel of Greek Street’

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Victoria and Jacob

Who’s in your band?
Victoria Harrison and Jacob Mayfield

Describe your music.
It’s constantly evolving, but there has always been a pop sensibility to it. We tend to focus more on texture than melody, and this is probably due to our educational background in electronic music. We combine electro glitches and laptop beats with acoustic guitar and glockenspiel and a range of various child like toys and gadgets. Recent press has likened us to Postal Service, Bjork and Joanna Newsom.

Which of the other bands on this list do you a) know b) rate c) share members with?
We are friends with The Last Dinosaur, Cathode Ray Syndrome* and The Tupolev Ghost and are fans of all three. Although our musical styles differ I feel we all share a similar attitude and approach to music. We have followed Fuzzy Lights for a few years now and have always seen them as the forerunners of the alternative Cambridge scene. We saw Um last year at a Harvest Time event at the Portland Arms and it was very refreshing to see someone using alternative ways of performing sounds, and deliver a humorous and interesting performance.

What band/artist should have been on this list, that isn’t?
We are not really in touch with new bands in Cambridge at the moment but we have recently discovered Jellica, who are a Cambridge based game boy glitchy electonic band who look fun and we’d like to see them live.

How is your music (if at all) informed by your Cambridgeness?
Well we are slightly hypocritical as we now live in London, but a lot of our music was written in Cambridge and I guess our ‘Cambridgeness’ and surroundings had some influence. The music was a lot folkier then, we also did a photoshoot with ice cream and bikes, but I feel that we wanted to almost get away from the twee Cambridgeness, and our music for whatever reason has become more electronic based now.

What has been the best thing your band has achieved, to date?
The biggest achievement was seeing through the idea of moving from Cambridge to London this August, and leaving behind a close community of friends and musicians and start a new life. We are really excited about the music we are writing now, and it has become much more of a focal point in our lives.

What are your musical aspirations for the future?
To write our debut album with a lot more patience than before and to focus on seeing the album as a complete piece of work. We want to experiment more with structure and alternative production techniques.

Who are your musical influences?
We both listen to a lot of new music, we are especially big fans of current folktronica artist like Tunng, Four Tet and James Yuill but are more influenced by people’s approach to sound that actual bands. Our University lecturers Julio D’escrivan and Richard Hoadley were a huge influence as they opened us up to new ways of exploring and creating sounds, and made us aware of experimental composers such as John Cage, Pierre Schaeffer and Denis Smalley. We don’t particularly share many musical similarities to these but we are influenced by their attitude, dedication and intrigue of sound. We are also influenced by new technology and fresh way of manipulating sound.

What’s good, bad and indifferent about the Cambridge music scene?
The bands listed are a great example that there is an exciting Cambridge scene, but it is still only a niche scene, and one which only really exists in one venue with only a handful of promoters. These bands are still relatively unknown to the average Cambridge resident music fan. There seems to be a real lack of good venues in Cambridge for new bands to play. It’s a difficult city for scenes to arise because of the passing of students. There is almost not enough time for scenes to develop, and there lacks a consistency that you are more likely to find in other cities , with a bigger population.

Why should we care about you?
Because we make a toy sheep sound like a dying robot with cancer.

Give us the background or an introduction to this track
This I guess is our pop hit, and is one of the few songs we have written which we have no desire to alter in any way, it just wrote itself so effortlessly.

mp3:> Victoria and Jacob: ‘Clash’