CULT OF THE MICRO SCOOTER
We remember skateboards. We remember when they were cool and we used to be sort of proud to own one, we also remember the BMX and we certainly remember them being two different things. It seems though now they're not, they're the same thing... only they're called micro-scooters and in certain impoverished areas they're bigger than the production on a post-Genesis Phil Collins' drum solo. I'm convinced that in a few years time we'll see an entire generation of teenagers with one massive, muscly leg and a body to rival that of a Peruvian swamp troll (if you haven't seen one, they're fucking fat). Let's face it, it's going to be fucking rubbish. When I'm 50 I don't want my 16 year-old Daughter to be a chubber with a comically bulging leg.
The immediate effect is bad enough, I can't even walk from my house to Bargain Booze without having my feet run over by heedless little darlings, only to be apologised to by their equally heedless hippy parents "Oscar/Alfie/Moonbeam, apologise to the nice man." Will it never end? I have seen fully grown adults using them to get to work. I say adults, but what I really mean is one man on multiple occasions. He's obviously a little bit of a dickhead and I'm sure that when he arrives at his chichi "synergetic media solutions" company, his work mates will all laugh at him behind his back and call him peado Steve when he folds up his little metal twatmobile. They have whole shops dedicated to them, every colour under the sun, every possible design. Will it all get too much? Swastika scooter anyone? Yeah, we thought not.
When skateboards first started gaining popularity back in the day, grumpy, cynical old dunderheads said it was just a fad, a passing phase. Well I'm neither old nor dunderheaded and I'm not saying it's a fad either, I'm just saying that if you ride a scooter beyond your childhood you're a nonce, and if you're still a child then godspeed, but please ride your scooter somewhere more sensible than the pavement, like the middle of the M5.
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WOW, 2012, YEAH!
2011 is dead (yeah I know, so last week). What happened there then? There were some super injunctions - which apparently didn't come off all that well, a certain sleazed out Sunday soft porn rag met its grizzly end after getting its greasy mitts into Hugh Grant's probably exceptionally uninteresting voicemail and we were introduced to Will 'Fresh Prince' Smith's daughter as she whipped her hair back, and eventually and inevitably forth.
Aside from all the tweets, twits and tweens you could shake an iPhone at, the year was huge. British music seemed to find it's feet (again) with the likes of Wu Lyf, The Horrors and Yuck jizzing their musical loads all over the world wide web and, occasionally, even further afield.
Bristol made a staggering contribution with Crack's personal favourites The Naturals and Idles effortlessly (har har) making some of the coolest noises we've ever heard and some ginger dude named Julio Bashmore and a whole army of Bristol house producers went hard in the motherfuckin' paint - whatever that means (I think it's a good thing).
On the world stage a bunch of perverted L.A creeps dubbed Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All spat things you wouldn't tell to your mum about, unless of course your mum is A) Young B) Highly desensitised and C) Prone to blacking out and waking up naked, wearing someone else's lungs as a scarf and screaming "Rah is Life" at the night sky. In which case, can we have her number?
We got hooked on Charlie Brooker's mesmerising Black Mirror on the tele-box and started getting freaked out by the future and the fact the fittest Blue Peter presenter from our kiddyhood co-wrote a dystopian fucking masterpiece. On a slightly bigger screen, indie waffle-fest-puzzler The Tree Of Life confused the fuck out of everyone who watched it and frankly it just wasn't as good as The Thin Red Line. Sorry Mr Mallick but if we didn't have such strong morals about sitting through utter shite just in case something interesting happens we would have walked out, like everyone else in the audience. 'Submarine', was pretty cool if you like Wes Anderson themed (yes, we did) Brit-coms with a nice bit of heartfelt girly shit thrown in for the super-mega-cutesie puke factor. But let's face facts, it was really all about that Hobo With A Shotgun brutalising every facet of all we know is wrong with modern society and making a right old mess along the way.
Hopefully 2012 is going to be massive, because apparently somewhere towards the end of it we're all getting exploded, unless you happen to have built a hefty underground fortress filled with enough Spam and cat food to survive during the time it will take the plague-ridden, desolate wasteland formerly known as Earth to repair itself or die uncontrollably in a big ball of molten fuck.
Do have yourself a happy new year though yeah?
2011 is dead (yeah I know, so last week). What happened there then? There were some super injunctions - which apparently didn't come off all that well, a certain sleazed out Sunday soft porn rag met its grizzly end after getting its greasy mitts into Hugh Grant's probably exceptionally uninteresting voicemail and we were introduced to Will 'Fresh Prince' Smith's daughter as she whipped her hair back, and eventually and inevitably forth.
Aside from all the tweets, twits and tweens you could shake an iPhone at, the year was huge. British music seemed to find it's feet (again) with the likes of Wu Lyf, The Horrors and Yuck jizzing their musical loads all over the world wide web and, occasionally, even further afield.
Bristol made a staggering contribution with Crack's personal favourites The Naturals and Idles effortlessly (har har) making some of the coolest noises we've ever heard and some ginger dude named Julio Bashmore and a whole army of Bristol house producers went hard in the motherfuckin' paint - whatever that means (I think it's a good thing).
On the world stage a bunch of perverted L.A creeps dubbed Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All spat things you wouldn't tell to your mum about, unless of course your mum is A) Young B) Highly desensitised and C) Prone to blacking out and waking up naked, wearing someone else's lungs as a scarf and screaming "Rah is Life" at the night sky. In which case, can we have her number?
We got hooked on Charlie Brooker's mesmerising Black Mirror on the tele-box and started getting freaked out by the future and the fact the fittest Blue Peter presenter from our kiddyhood co-wrote a dystopian fucking masterpiece. On a slightly bigger screen, indie waffle-fest-puzzler The Tree Of Life confused the fuck out of everyone who watched it and frankly it just wasn't as good as The Thin Red Line. Sorry Mr Mallick but if we didn't have such strong morals about sitting through utter shite just in case something interesting happens we would have walked out, like everyone else in the audience. 'Submarine', was pretty cool if you like Wes Anderson themed (yes, we did) Brit-coms with a nice bit of heartfelt girly shit thrown in for the super-mega-cutesie puke factor. But let's face facts, it was really all about that Hobo With A Shotgun brutalising every facet of all we know is wrong with modern society and making a right old mess along the way.
Hopefully 2012 is going to be massive, because apparently somewhere towards the end of it we're all getting exploded, unless you happen to have built a hefty underground fortress filled with enough Spam and cat food to survive during the time it will take the plague-ridden, desolate wasteland formerly known as Earth to repair itself or die uncontrollably in a big ball of molten fuck.
Do have yourself a happy new year though yeah?
SWN FESTIVAL
Now in its 5th year, Sŵn has, under the more than capable guidance of Huw Stephens and John Rostron, firmly established itself as one of the most enduringly forward-thinking and diverse urban festivals in the UK, a scruffy little sibling to the likes of SXSW. The heart of the Welsh capital is once again due to be taken over by a staggering array of talent; bars, pubs, clubs and venues overrun by legions of people eager to catch everything from the freshest new artists to legends in their field for four days from October 20th.
The festival starts with a bang on Thursday. Undertone, the basement of 10 Feet Tall, is taken over for an evening of high class punk rock. From some fine young talent in the form of Dividers and Caves, to Cardiff heroes Bedford Falls and Exeter’s very finest, the magnificent Cut Ups, all headlined by Oklahomans Red City Radio, this is guaranteed to be a fist-pumping and anthemic evening’s music.
For those of a bassier persuasion, Buffalo Bar boasts an equally impressive array of UK and international talent that same evening. From 23:00, Cardiff scamps CRST smash out an array of house and electro rhythms, followed up by Dutch figurehead Martyn and rounded off by the stupidly talented young duo Disclosure.
If this none-more-diverse pair of options isn’t quite floating universal boats, such is the nature of Sŵn that you can just pop across town to another venue. From Herman Dune’s appearance upstairs at Clwb Ifor Bach, to Tubelord downstairs in the very same building, or Fixers at Dempsey’s, if you can’t find something you love here then you’re either very fussy or a bit confused.
Friday follows Thursday, as is tradition, with the added thrill of the Crack Stage which, despite what was stated in the last magazine will be held upstairs at Clwb Ifor Bach due to the sad demise of Cardiff Arts Institute. It will, however, still feature Ifan Dafydd’s much-lauded, James Blake-esque beats, experimental Manchester boys Stay+ (formerly knows as Christian AIDS) and phenomenal young producer Seams, finished off in pummelling fashion by Asteroid Boys vs. Kaptin. Around the corner at O’Neill’s you will find the excellent Visions of Trees and Niki and the Dove, but most exciting of all is among the most eagerly-anticipated sets of the weekend: Other Lives at 22:00. Their recent second record, Tamer Animals, is a stunning exercise in warmth and atmosphere which has had us rapt for weeks, and pretty much forced us to feature them in our last issue. It will be intriguing to see how their textured sound translates in the flesh.
There are plenty of highlights on Saturday: the likes of Crack favourites Three Trapped Tigers downstairs at Clwb at 20:45, followed by a hurried, two-at-a-time jog upstairs to catch the Jim Jones Revue at 21:30. But it’s all about one band, or in fact one man: Mark E. Smith. The Fall stand out as one of the most influential bands of the modern era in a career spanning over 30 years and almost as many studio albums. Despite being at it forever, Smith has managed to maintain the same intensity and vitality as day one, so this appearance from the post-punk icon is set to be a stunner.
While festivities wind down somewhat on Sunday, there are still plenty of cracking shows to keep you entertained. Schizophrenic post-rock duo Right Hand Left Hand are on at Dempsey’s at the not-ideal hour of 16:00, while a little later on transatlantic boy/girl duo Big Deal and raucous Londoners The History of Apple Pie light up the CAI and eclectic/mental Bristolians Zun Zun Egui appear at Gwdi Hw.
All in all, a breathless, inspiring and unmissable long weekend to spend in the brilliant little city that is Cardiff. Get to Sŵn please. We’ll see you there.
http://www.swnfest.com/
The festival starts with a bang on Thursday. Undertone, the basement of 10 Feet Tall, is taken over for an evening of high class punk rock. From some fine young talent in the form of Dividers and Caves, to Cardiff heroes Bedford Falls and Exeter’s very finest, the magnificent Cut Ups, all headlined by Oklahomans Red City Radio, this is guaranteed to be a fist-pumping and anthemic evening’s music.
For those of a bassier persuasion, Buffalo Bar boasts an equally impressive array of UK and international talent that same evening. From 23:00, Cardiff scamps CRST smash out an array of house and electro rhythms, followed up by Dutch figurehead Martyn and rounded off by the stupidly talented young duo Disclosure.
If this none-more-diverse pair of options isn’t quite floating universal boats, such is the nature of Sŵn that you can just pop across town to another venue. From Herman Dune’s appearance upstairs at Clwb Ifor Bach, to Tubelord downstairs in the very same building, or Fixers at Dempsey’s, if you can’t find something you love here then you’re either very fussy or a bit confused.
Friday follows Thursday, as is tradition, with the added thrill of the Crack Stage which, despite what was stated in the last magazine will be held upstairs at Clwb Ifor Bach due to the sad demise of Cardiff Arts Institute. It will, however, still feature Ifan Dafydd’s much-lauded, James Blake-esque beats, experimental Manchester boys Stay+ (formerly knows as Christian AIDS) and phenomenal young producer Seams, finished off in pummelling fashion by Asteroid Boys vs. Kaptin. Around the corner at O’Neill’s you will find the excellent Visions of Trees and Niki and the Dove, but most exciting of all is among the most eagerly-anticipated sets of the weekend: Other Lives at 22:00. Their recent second record, Tamer Animals, is a stunning exercise in warmth and atmosphere which has had us rapt for weeks, and pretty much forced us to feature them in our last issue. It will be intriguing to see how their textured sound translates in the flesh.
There are plenty of highlights on Saturday: the likes of Crack favourites Three Trapped Tigers downstairs at Clwb at 20:45, followed by a hurried, two-at-a-time jog upstairs to catch the Jim Jones Revue at 21:30. But it’s all about one band, or in fact one man: Mark E. Smith. The Fall stand out as one of the most influential bands of the modern era in a career spanning over 30 years and almost as many studio albums. Despite being at it forever, Smith has managed to maintain the same intensity and vitality as day one, so this appearance from the post-punk icon is set to be a stunner.
While festivities wind down somewhat on Sunday, there are still plenty of cracking shows to keep you entertained. Schizophrenic post-rock duo Right Hand Left Hand are on at Dempsey’s at the not-ideal hour of 16:00, while a little later on transatlantic boy/girl duo Big Deal and raucous Londoners The History of Apple Pie light up the CAI and eclectic/mental Bristolians Zun Zun Egui appear at Gwdi Hw.
All in all, a breathless, inspiring and unmissable long weekend to spend in the brilliant little city that is Cardiff. Get to Sŵn please. We’ll see you there.
http://www.swnfest.com/
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STORIES WITH MUSIC TO TELL
Have you heard the one about Aphex Twin being Welsh/dead/responsible for every piece of unattributed electronic music for the past half a century? And what about the ‘real’ identity of two-steppin’ masked producer Sbtrkt? (Clue: it’s a bloke called Aaron Jerome, but don’t let that stop the rumour mill).
Electronic music loves a good yarn – be it fact or fiction. And if it isn’t implausible myths and racy rumours doing the rounds, there’s plenty of elaborate characterisation to get your teeth into. By night, Drums of Death is a bizarre voodoo techno clown with a drum machine and a winning growl. By day, he’s an amiable, chubby Scottish guy. MF Doom has built a career on being a masked mystery (although having a suitcase full of killer rhymes has helped too).
Alter-egos and stage personas are nothing new – for bands or electronic acts. But electronic music has always seemed to lend itself more willingly to secrecy and anonymity. Why is it easier to hide behind pseudonyms, aliases, multiple recording names, masks and banks of equipment when playing with your computer than thrashing around with a guitar? Why do myths and elaborate, fictional back-stories have such an appeal in electronic music?
New label Dramatic Records shows just how far the blurring of fact and fiction can go – it only puts out music from fictional artists. All the releases come with elaborate, embellished and totally made-up back-stories, and whether or not the label even has different artists is questionable.
Endless House Foundation, for example, is supposedly an act dedicated to a club that only existed for a few weeks in a Czech forest. The fact that the club never existed in the first place for anything (let alone a further fictional creation) to be dedicated to, only adds to the fun. And in an age where a perma-avalanche of information is available around the clock – tweeting out at you from the blower in your grubby mitts, or seeping in by osmosis through the ether – a bit of made-up nonsense is a strangely refreshing antidote to the hyper-reality of the cold light of day.
The clean lines of a carefully constructed lie make the hodgepodge of truth look boring by comparison. You can clog your brain with the most tedious titbits about your favourite celeb: what they had for breakfast (Twitter); where they went out for lunch (FourSquare); what songs they listened to on their Ipod (Last.FM). With a bit of digging around on Google you can zoom in and peer through their window.
Some argue that this level of access to artists is a good thing for music fans. It means you get unprecedented access to people you admire and look up to. It means you can track them as they disappear from the ‘scene’ for recording sessions that can take years – follow their blogs, see how their work is progressing. You can listen to demos as they’re worked on, see artwork and behind the scenes shots of videos. You can send them messages on Facebook, and sometimes they’ll even reply. The distance between fan and artist has reduced to the click of a mouse button.
But is this empowering? Is it fuck. The banality of the hero under constant observation makes you long for a dose of make-believe, where nothing (and everything) happens. Artists have lost their intrigue. No longer are they mysterious, ethereal beings – connected to the creative source of the universe through their talents. There’s no space any more for us to create narratives around our favourite artists, or around the music they make. Everything is spelled out for us, letter by nauseating letter. And the closer you get to your favourite artist, the more you realise how very far apart you are.
There was a mystique that surrounded artists before the age of the internet. A mysterious fan club at the end of an anonymous PO Box address in Leamington Spa was the closest you could get to obtaining personalised news about your favourite band. But lest this sound like Luddite nostalgia for an age of badly tuned FM radios and a packet of salt n shake crisps, consider how much we seem to lust after the lure of the fictional, the fantasy information that can never be fully assimilated because it doesn’t actually exist. Part of art is appreciating the work without the overbearing influence of the artist. Without hearing about their moans and groans about public transport, wiring plugs, or various fungal infections. Leave us alone to love you from a distance: or at least make up some bullshit and let us roll around in that for a while.
The potential for getting lost in a fake Czech forest and stumbling across an imaginary club is more interesting than a 24 hour live feed from Bono’s beach pad. But what’s even more fascinating than the fictional biographies of the Dramatic characters is that like it or not, actual-factuality is gradually bleeding in. The press and blogosphere are actively developing the Dramatic storylines, blurring even further the boundary between fact and fiction. One blogger claims to have covered the opening of the fictional club that Endless House Foundation is ‘dedicated’ to: it is low-tech augmented reality, constantly evolving as people join in the conversation.
Intentionally or not, labels like Dramatic have stepped into the zone of unadulterated fan-dom, reacting against the banality of the overly familiar by removing entirely any sense of reality from their artists. And in ditching all the excess hyper-reality, fans can once again insert themselves into the narrative. As Dramatic Records put it, they’re stories with music to tell.
Words: Helia Phoenix & Adam Corner
Have you heard the one about Aphex Twin being Welsh/dead/responsible for every piece of unattributed electronic music for the past half a century? And what about the ‘real’ identity of two-steppin’ masked producer Sbtrkt? (Clue: it’s a bloke called Aaron Jerome, but don’t let that stop the rumour mill).
Electronic music loves a good yarn – be it fact or fiction. And if it isn’t implausible myths and racy rumours doing the rounds, there’s plenty of elaborate characterisation to get your teeth into. By night, Drums of Death is a bizarre voodoo techno clown with a drum machine and a winning growl. By day, he’s an amiable, chubby Scottish guy. MF Doom has built a career on being a masked mystery (although having a suitcase full of killer rhymes has helped too).
Alter-egos and stage personas are nothing new – for bands or electronic acts. But electronic music has always seemed to lend itself more willingly to secrecy and anonymity. Why is it easier to hide behind pseudonyms, aliases, multiple recording names, masks and banks of equipment when playing with your computer than thrashing around with a guitar? Why do myths and elaborate, fictional back-stories have such an appeal in electronic music?
New label Dramatic Records shows just how far the blurring of fact and fiction can go – it only puts out music from fictional artists. All the releases come with elaborate, embellished and totally made-up back-stories, and whether or not the label even has different artists is questionable.
Endless House Foundation, for example, is supposedly an act dedicated to a club that only existed for a few weeks in a Czech forest. The fact that the club never existed in the first place for anything (let alone a further fictional creation) to be dedicated to, only adds to the fun. And in an age where a perma-avalanche of information is available around the clock – tweeting out at you from the blower in your grubby mitts, or seeping in by osmosis through the ether – a bit of made-up nonsense is a strangely refreshing antidote to the hyper-reality of the cold light of day.
The clean lines of a carefully constructed lie make the hodgepodge of truth look boring by comparison. You can clog your brain with the most tedious titbits about your favourite celeb: what they had for breakfast (Twitter); where they went out for lunch (FourSquare); what songs they listened to on their Ipod (Last.FM). With a bit of digging around on Google you can zoom in and peer through their window.
Some argue that this level of access to artists is a good thing for music fans. It means you get unprecedented access to people you admire and look up to. It means you can track them as they disappear from the ‘scene’ for recording sessions that can take years – follow their blogs, see how their work is progressing. You can listen to demos as they’re worked on, see artwork and behind the scenes shots of videos. You can send them messages on Facebook, and sometimes they’ll even reply. The distance between fan and artist has reduced to the click of a mouse button.
But is this empowering? Is it fuck. The banality of the hero under constant observation makes you long for a dose of make-believe, where nothing (and everything) happens. Artists have lost their intrigue. No longer are they mysterious, ethereal beings – connected to the creative source of the universe through their talents. There’s no space any more for us to create narratives around our favourite artists, or around the music they make. Everything is spelled out for us, letter by nauseating letter. And the closer you get to your favourite artist, the more you realise how very far apart you are.
There was a mystique that surrounded artists before the age of the internet. A mysterious fan club at the end of an anonymous PO Box address in Leamington Spa was the closest you could get to obtaining personalised news about your favourite band. But lest this sound like Luddite nostalgia for an age of badly tuned FM radios and a packet of salt n shake crisps, consider how much we seem to lust after the lure of the fictional, the fantasy information that can never be fully assimilated because it doesn’t actually exist. Part of art is appreciating the work without the overbearing influence of the artist. Without hearing about their moans and groans about public transport, wiring plugs, or various fungal infections. Leave us alone to love you from a distance: or at least make up some bullshit and let us roll around in that for a while.
The potential for getting lost in a fake Czech forest and stumbling across an imaginary club is more interesting than a 24 hour live feed from Bono’s beach pad. But what’s even more fascinating than the fictional biographies of the Dramatic characters is that like it or not, actual-factuality is gradually bleeding in. The press and blogosphere are actively developing the Dramatic storylines, blurring even further the boundary between fact and fiction. One blogger claims to have covered the opening of the fictional club that Endless House Foundation is ‘dedicated’ to: it is low-tech augmented reality, constantly evolving as people join in the conversation.
Intentionally or not, labels like Dramatic have stepped into the zone of unadulterated fan-dom, reacting against the banality of the overly familiar by removing entirely any sense of reality from their artists. And in ditching all the excess hyper-reality, fans can once again insert themselves into the narrative. As Dramatic Records put it, they’re stories with music to tell.
Words: Helia Phoenix & Adam Corner
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FESTIVAL FROLICS #9 - BERLIN FESTIVAL
9/10 September, Tempelhof Airport, Berlin - €81.40
Berlin is an amazing place. The Germans know how to party. Why not go party with some Germans in an aircraft hanger of Berlin's abandoned Tempelhof airport, slap bang in the middle of Berlin Music Week. If the great line up is not enough to fulfill your musical needs then take the time to lap up the city's diverse offerings and have a day chilling out in Tiergarten.
Top 5 Must Sees:
1. Battles
2. Apparat Band
3. Pantha Du Prince
4. Mount Kimbie
5. OFWGKTA
http://www.berlinfestival.de/
9/10 September, Tempelhof Airport, Berlin - €81.40
Berlin is an amazing place. The Germans know how to party. Why not go party with some Germans in an aircraft hanger of Berlin's abandoned Tempelhof airport, slap bang in the middle of Berlin Music Week. If the great line up is not enough to fulfill your musical needs then take the time to lap up the city's diverse offerings and have a day chilling out in Tiergarten.
Top 5 Must Sees:
1. Battles
2. Apparat Band
3. Pantha Du Prince
4. Mount Kimbie
5. OFWGKTA
http://www.berlinfestival.de/
