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Wilco and the return of Bill Fay

John Mulvey
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A small bit of history, last night, that I was honoured to witness. Wilco played at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in West London, the scene of some pretty fractious shows by Jeff Tweedy - a fact which made him both self-conscious and extremely funny when he found the courage to open his mouth. Wilco were great, of course. I'm currently going through an intense Grateful Dead phase, and so consequently a lot of music reminds me of them. But when Wilco started with "Side With The Seeds", I'm fairly sure the comparison is valid here. It's a kinship with early '70s Dead, I think: that rootsy, soulful feel; the way the band play with such a relaxed and intricate swagger; the easygoing virtuosity, focused on the astonishing lead guitarist, Nels Cline. The new Wilco album, "Sky Blue Sky", has been accorded some rather middling reviews over here, with a bunch of critics bemoaning that Tweedy has abandoned the experimental imperative (wrongly, I'd argue, and did here). But the new songs fit in just fine alongside great workouts like "Handshake Drugs" and "Via Chicago". Pat Sansone now seems to be playing more guitar than keyboards, and there's a fantastic passage towards the end of "Impossible Germany" when he and Tweedy play twin lead while Cline, a lanky and juddering eccentric in waistcoat and half-mast trousers, steps up for a scrabbling, high-frequency solo. If I have a criticism, though (and it seems churlish, given the general excellence of the gig), it's that Wilco are a little bit too tight and economical. They might have the feel of the Dead, but they rarely really let themselves go. Occasionally, I want these songs to loosen up and stretch out, to move in ways unpredictable even to the band. "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" remains the highlight, because it shows how this superlative band can combine great, tight songwriting with a little more improvisational risk. Petty gripes aside, I should get to the most important thing. After nearly two hours, Tweedy called on a special guest, and a slightly sheepish looking greybeard came on. This, amazingly, was Bill Fay - a big hero of mine, as regular readers of Wild Mercury Sound will know. Fay's three albums are incredible treasures of British music, which I could vaguely describe as a cross between Syd Barrett and Scott Walker, though such simplification does them a gross disservice. I think we have a track from his first album on the next free Uncut CD. Anyway, Fay hasn't been on a stage for over 30 years, though an ongoing mutual appreciation between him and Wilco meant they almost talked him into a duet at Hammersmith Apollo on the "Ghost Is Born" tour. Both Tweedy and Fay have talked to me about all this, and I feared that their anxious desire not to disturb each other might mean they would never get it together. But they do. Fay duets on a version of his own, gorgeous "Be Not So Fearful", his warm and quavering vocals buried a little behind those of Tweedy - I suspect because Fay was too nervous to sing on his own. It's a wonderful moment, though. Let's hope that one of our greatest and most neglected singer-songwriters can be gently eased back into the spotlight now - like another auspicious recluse, Vashti Bunyan, was a couple of years ago. I wonder if Fay will turn up again tonight? Allan is going along, so I'm sure he'll file something if he does. I'll be elsewhere, watching the mighty Ghost. See you tomorrow.

A small bit of history, last night, that I was honoured to witness. Wilco played at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in West London, the scene of some pretty fractious shows by Jeff Tweedy – a fact which made him both self-conscious and extremely funny when he found the courage to open his mouth.

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Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration

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Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration

Motown boasts more hits and the greater legend, but Stax, ‘the little label that could’, has proved a more enduring influence than its arch-rival. Its success is also more improbable; where Berry Gordy started out to make black music mainstream, Jim Stewart’s Stax began as a country label that almost accidentally developed an interest in soul. Even then there was little idea that Stax’s punchy R’n’B and gospel-drenched vocals could develop into a national, let alone international force – the Stax sound was deemed too down-south and raw. Stewart held two ace cards in his roster of local talent. The first was a demon house band, Booker T & The MGs, that stoked the fires through endless sessions. The MGs did dirty funk – “Green Onions” was a bombshell of a debut – but developed a tuneful, slinky minimalism that won a wider audience; “Soul Limbo” still rocks cricket crowds. Augmented by the Memphis Horns, they became a pocket-sized big band, the brass often assuming the role of gospel chorus. Then there was Otis Redding, a singer touched with genius, who embodied black America’s new confidence. Otis could growl, sob and emote, but he also wrote great originals like “Respect” and when the Stones covered him, he versioned them right back on “Satisfaction”. With talent like William Bell and Eddie Floyd, bluesman Albert King and court jester Rufus Thomas, the Stax roster quickly cooked up hits. Redding’s death in 1968, and the souring of Stax’s association with Atlantic, might have killed the label. Instead, under the command of Al Bell, Stax kicked on, selling millions of Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul and Shaft albums, and successfully marketing The Staple Singers, classy local turns (Johnnie Taylor) and wonderful one-offs like Jean “Mr Big Stuff” Knight. Bolstered by Hayes’ “blaxpoitation” chic and the Staples’ gospel dignity, Stax became an antidote to black America’s political disillusion, an ambition that delivered 1972’s Wattstax festival and film. It was a brilliant peak – soon after the label conflagrated in allegations of financial corruption. Remarked MG bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn: “I knew it was all over when they signed Lena Zavaroni”. Best remember Stax this way – big-hearted, sexy, soulful. NEIL SPENCER Pic credit: Redferns

Motown boasts more hits and the greater legend, but Stax, ‘the little label that could’, has proved a more enduring influence than

its arch-rival. Its success is also more improbable; where Berry Gordy started out to make black music mainstream, Jim Stewart’s Stax began as a country label that almost accidentally developed an interest in soul. Even then there was little idea that Stax’s punchy R’n’B and gospel-drenched vocals could develop into a national, let alone international force – the Stax sound was deemed too down-south and raw.

Stewart held two ace cards in his roster of local talent. The first was a demon house band, Booker T & The MGs, that stoked the fires through endless sessions. The MGs did dirty funk – “Green Onions” was a bombshell of a debut – but developed a tuneful, slinky minimalism that won a wider audience; “Soul Limbo” still rocks cricket crowds. Augmented by the Memphis Horns, they became a pocket-sized big band, the brass often assuming the role of gospel chorus.

Then there was Otis Redding, a singer touched with genius, who embodied black America’s new confidence. Otis could growl, sob and emote, but he also wrote great originals like “Respect” and when the Stones covered him, he versioned them right back on “Satisfaction”.

With talent like William Bell and Eddie Floyd, bluesman Albert King and court jester Rufus Thomas, the Stax roster quickly cooked up hits. Redding’s death in 1968, and the souring of Stax’s association with Atlantic, might have killed the label.

Instead, under the command of Al Bell, Stax kicked on, selling millions of Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul and Shaft albums, and successfully marketing The Staple Singers, classy local turns (Johnnie Taylor) and wonderful one-offs like Jean “Mr Big Stuff” Knight.

Bolstered by Hayes’ “blaxpoitation” chic and the Staples’ gospel dignity, Stax became an antidote to black America’s political disillusion, an ambition that delivered 1972’s Wattstax festival and film. It was a brilliant peak – soon after the label conflagrated in allegations of financial corruption. Remarked MG bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn: “I knew it was all over when they signed Lena Zavaroni”. Best remember Stax this way – big-hearted, sexy, soulful.

NEIL SPENCER

Pic credit: Redferns

Feist – The Reminder

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Feist – The Reminder

An inveterate collaborator (with Broken Social Scene, Peaches and Kings Of Convenience among others), Canadian expat Leslie Feist belatedly took centre stage with 2004’s "Let It Die", and made you wonder why she left it so long. If the presiding spirit of her debut was the breezy bittersweet “Blossom Dearie”, "The Reminder" draws on Nina Simone (particularly on the testifying “Sea Lion Woman” and “Limit To Your Love”). It’s a darker, deeper affair, but its latent power flares up to stunning effect on the despair of “Intuition”. STEPHEN TROUSSÉ

An inveterate collaborator (with Broken Social Scene, Peaches and Kings Of Convenience among others), Canadian expat Leslie Feist belatedly took centre stage with 2004’s “Let It Die”, and made you wonder why she left it so long.

If the presiding spirit of her debut was the breezy bittersweet “Blossom Dearie”, “The Reminder” draws on Nina Simone (particularly on the testifying “Sea Lion Woman” and “Limit To Your Love”).

It’s a darker, deeper affair, but its latent power flares up to stunning effect on the despair of “Intuition”.

STEPHEN TROUSSÉ

Von Sudenfed – Tromatic Reflexxions

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Von Sudenfed – Tromatic Reflexxions

With his insistence on “repetition, repetition, repetition”, The Fall’s embrace of Teutonic trance on Hex Enduction Hour and the nifty cover of Sister Sledge’s disco masterpiece “Lost in Music” on Infotainment Scam, Mark E Smith has always intimated that he would make very fine, if a bit oddball, dance music. Smith’s coy long-distance flirtation with the dancefloor finally becomes a full-on crush on Von Südenfed’s Tromatic Reflexxions, the first album by Smith and Mouse on Mars’ Andi Toma and Jan St Werner. On the face of it, this may seem like an odd pairing – Mouse On Mars’ tactile and complex digitalia with Smith’s cantankerousness. But as Mouse On Mars have proved with their records with percussionist/vocalist Dodo Nshiki, electronica often works best with a bit of grit in the machinery. Smith, of course, is not just a bit of grit, but full-on abrasion – which Toma and St Werner use to good effect. Opening track “Can’t Get Enough” is the snarling disco-punk sound that LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy has had in his head for the past six or seven years. “The Young The Faceless And The Codes” shows what a perfect foil a good old-fashioned acid squelch is to Smith’s free associative rambling, while on “That Sound Wiped” Smith’s ranting and raving becomes nothing but raving. The album also showcases a more nuanced vision of Smith the vocalist than we usually get to see. “The Rhinohead” is all bopping bubblegum Northern Soul filtered through techno (and the closest Smith gets to sweetness and light), while the rather wonderful “Dear Dead Friends” features Smith delivering a wistful, drunken-sounding elegy over music that is halfway between Nigerian juju and Van Dyke Parks. Without the focus of The Fall’s coiled rhythms, Smith can veer a little too much into Shaun Ryder territory and Toma and St Werner don’t do enough to rein him in. That aside, this is the kind of exploration of space and motivation that the dance-punk scene is supposed to be about. PETER SHAPIRO Q&A - Jann St Werner UNCUT:How did the project come about? Jan St Werner: The initial spark was a concert that Mark attended that we played in London as Mouse On Mars. It was quite a harsh set and quite ecstatic. I think he was quite into the music and said it was one of the best gigs he saw in the last couple of years. We didn’t take it too seriously, but he had this idea to do something together. Are you a “band” then? It’s a weird project because it doesn’t have the usual procedure of how you form a band, because it’s very unconventional. In the end we define ourselves as a soundsystem basically. We would be like a huge boombox and Mark is the MC. How was Mark to work with because he has a reputation as a bit of a control freak? I think the reason this record exists is that it was easy. Mark is incredibly efficient. I don’t know what it’s like with The Fall, but this was all easy. Maybe by the third album when we become prog, it will be more complicated.

With his insistence on “repetition, repetition, repetition”, The Fall’s embrace of Teutonic trance on Hex Enduction Hour and the nifty cover of Sister Sledge’s disco masterpiece “Lost in Music” on Infotainment Scam, Mark E Smith has always intimated that he would make very fine, if a bit oddball, dance music. Smith’s coy long-distance flirtation with the dancefloor finally becomes a full-on crush on Von Südenfed’s Tromatic Reflexxions, the first album by Smith and Mouse on Mars’ Andi Toma and Jan St Werner.

On the face of it, this may seem like an odd pairing – Mouse On Mars’ tactile and complex digitalia with Smith’s cantankerousness. But as Mouse On Mars have proved with their records with percussionist/vocalist Dodo Nshiki, electronica often works best with a bit of grit in the machinery. Smith, of course, is not just a bit of grit, but full-on abrasion – which Toma and St Werner use to good effect.

Opening track “Can’t Get Enough” is the snarling disco-punk sound that LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy has had in his head for the past six or seven years. “The Young The Faceless And The Codes” shows what a perfect foil a good old-fashioned acid squelch is to Smith’s free associative rambling, while on “That Sound Wiped” Smith’s ranting and raving becomes nothing but raving.

The album also showcases a more nuanced vision of Smith the vocalist than we usually get to see. “The Rhinohead” is all bopping bubblegum Northern Soul filtered through techno (and the closest Smith gets to sweetness and light), while the rather wonderful “Dear Dead Friends” features Smith delivering a wistful, drunken-sounding elegy over music that is halfway between Nigerian juju and Van Dyke Parks.

Without the focus of The Fall’s coiled rhythms, Smith can veer a little too much into Shaun Ryder territory and Toma and St Werner don’t do enough to rein him in. That aside, this is the kind of exploration of space and motivation that the dance-punk scene is supposed to be about.

PETER SHAPIRO

Q&A – Jann St Werner

UNCUT:How did the project come about?

Jan St Werner: The initial spark was a concert that Mark attended that we played in London as Mouse On Mars. It was quite a harsh set and quite ecstatic. I think he was quite into the music and said it was one of the best gigs he saw in the last couple of years. We didn’t take it too seriously, but he had this idea to do something together.

Are you a “band” then?

It’s a weird project because it doesn’t have the usual procedure of how you form

a band, because it’s very unconventional. In the end we define ourselves as a soundsystem basically. We would be like a huge boombox and Mark is the MC.

How was Mark to work with because he has a reputation as a bit of a control freak?

I think the reason this record exists is that it was easy. Mark is incredibly efficient. I don’t know what it’s like with The Fall, but this was all easy. Maybe by the third album when we become prog, it will be more complicated.

Blanche – Little Amber Bottles

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Blanche – Little Amber Bottles

When Blanche first emerged in 2004, their mystique was part-rooted in how leader Dan Miller had previously spent time in a couple of late-’90s garage bands that included Jack White. For a while, they seemed happy to ride on the back of that connection. White strummed guitar on first single “Who’s To Say”, while Dan Miller’s creepy, often funny, countryphiles supported the Stripes on a major British tour. The three-year interim has found Blanche in various states of health: backing Loretta Lynn on Van Lear Rose, sidelined by Miller’s new film career (he was in Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line) and fielding rumours of a serious split. Thankfully, Little Amber Bottles is the work of a band recharged. Feeding off country’s primal impulse, they’re still the embodiment of Old Weird America. Visually, too, they’re spot on. The sort of shock-haired oddballs you’d expect to find stalking the back of the revival tent in O Brother, Where Art Thou?. “What This Town Needs” finds both Dan and wife Tracee Mae in killer form – like Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood cavorting with The Gun Club. His voice is hard, hers oozes an odd warmth. Mrs Miller is best heard on “A Year From Now”, a gorgeous, loping ballad in which banjo and strings are eventually smacked aside by fat guitars. Her own “No Matter Where You Go” is eloquently plucked, aided by guest Isobel Campbell’s serene cello. Resident Blanche banjoist (and Raconteur) Jack Lawrence also offers his own fare, the heavily Gram Parsons-influenced “Death, Where Is Thy Sting?” For the most part though, these are Dan Miller’s musings. The songs allude to hurdles overcome and demons placated, if hardly cast out. “We Didn’t Quit” is a dark relationship tale, while the initial calm of “The World I Used To Be Afraid Of” suddenly heads into murder ballad territory: “To let you turn your back on true love would have been a mortal sin/So I held you underwater until you finally gave in”. Unsettling to the last, it’s Blanche all over. ROB HUGHES

When Blanche first emerged in 2004, their mystique was part-rooted in how leader Dan Miller had previously spent time in a couple of late-’90s garage bands that included Jack White. For a while, they seemed happy to ride on the back of that connection. White strummed guitar on first single “Who’s To Say”, while Dan Miller’s creepy, often funny, countryphiles supported the Stripes on a major British tour.

The three-year interim has found Blanche in various states of health: backing Loretta Lynn on Van Lear Rose, sidelined by Miller’s new film career (he was in Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line) and fielding rumours of a serious split. Thankfully, Little Amber Bottles is the work of a band recharged. Feeding off country’s primal impulse, they’re still the embodiment of Old Weird America. Visually, too, they’re spot on. The sort of shock-haired oddballs you’d expect to find stalking the back of the revival tent in O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

“What This Town Needs” finds both Dan and wife Tracee Mae in killer form – like Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood cavorting with The Gun Club. His voice is hard, hers oozes an odd warmth. Mrs Miller is best heard on “A Year From Now”, a gorgeous, loping ballad in which banjo and strings are eventually smacked aside by fat guitars. Her own “No Matter Where You Go” is eloquently plucked, aided by guest Isobel Campbell’s serene cello. Resident Blanche banjoist (and Raconteur) Jack Lawrence also offers his own fare, the heavily Gram Parsons-influenced “Death, Where Is Thy Sting?”

For the most part though, these are Dan Miller’s musings. The songs allude to hurdles overcome and demons placated, if hardly cast out. “We Didn’t Quit” is a dark relationship tale, while the initial calm of “The World I Used To Be Afraid Of” suddenly heads into murder ballad territory: “To let you turn your back on true love would have been a mortal sin/So I held you underwater until you finally gave in”. Unsettling to the last, it’s Blanche all over.

ROB HUGHES

The Thick Of It – Series One

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The Thick Of It – Series One

"The Thick Of It" turns on its head something we were all told when we were young - at times this is a programme that seems specifically designed to prove that swearing isn't just big, it's also very clever. In this first series of Armando Iannucci's political comedy, it's also nearly impossible to escape. Here the show's cast of beleaguered politicos are not left holding the baby, they're left to "mop up a hurricane of piss". They're not being overruled by a colleague, so much as they are "fisted up to the gall bladder by a bald man". It's hilarious, occasionally terrifying stuff, and it gives additional momentum, to what is undoubtedly, the fastest paced, most highly satirical, not to mention funniest British political show of recent years. Based in the newly-created Department of Social Affairs, "The Thick Of It" is essentially the tale of one minister's fight to keep his head above water in a fast-paced political environment. Anxious to remain visible, but troubled by the notion that his "lack of click" with the Prime Minister's wife may halt his rise through the ranks, Hugh Abbot (Chris Langham) has to run a department that's essentially the dumping ground for poorly-conceived policies from other departments. In his constant fight to remain on message he's aided by civil servants Glen, Ollie and Terri, but he still remains under the constant threat of verbal assault from the Prime Minister's enforcer, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi). "I don't know what's worse," says Abbott of Tucker. "Seeing him rumble towards you, like prostate cancer. Or have him suddenly surprise you, like a stroke." It's this element of the unpredictable, and the immoderate that gives "The Thick Of It" much of its edge. Though it's traditionally a week that's a long time in politics, spending even a half an hour watching the proceedings here can feel pretty nerve-racking - as the team's efforts fail to live up to Tucker's high standards, we live in a delighted kind of dread of his next foul-mouthed explosion. There have been political comedies before, of course, but Ianucci's show strips away the smugness, and adds a wobbly mockumentary naturalism to proceedings, and as such a discernible air of panic becomes the x-factor in this occasionally farcical world. In the Department of Social Affairs, this panic will often lead to the creation of policies "on the hoof". This ad hoc, improvisational atmosphere isn't just "The Thick Of it"'s subject - it's analogous to the show's creation. Initially given a budget for a single pilot show, Ianucci reasoned that if it they were shot quicky enough, there would actually be enough money for three programmes. There are also plenty of occasions where the cast simply improvise - and this similarity between TV and political life is a relationship the show clearly relishes. In one episode, Malcolm berates a minister for "not knowing the lines". It's hard not to recall how in a recent documentary, Clare Short praised Tony Blair, though primarily as an actor. What's most impressive about this show is how lightly all its satire is worn. Contained within the six episodes here are comments on how the news is made and then repressed, funding for hospitals, how bureaucracy holds up government, and how focus groups can help pin down a target individual that doesn't actually exist. So well is it all done, however, that one never feels even slightly hectored. What you remember are the jokes and the story, which as a TV news editor in one episode points out, is an old one, and a good one: "It's called 'Minister looks a tit'." JOHN ROBINSON Q&A - Armando Iannucci UNCUT: Did you have any ideas who you wanted to play these roles? IANNUCCI: Chris Langham I had in mind for the role of the minister, because I'd seen him as George Orwell, and he was very good. I didn't have anyone in mind for Malcolm, but the casting director said "You (i)have(i) to see Peter Capaldi." He said he normally plays kindly barristers, but we improvised this scenario and he was horrific, so instantly I knew. Since then he's been given jobs as mass murderers. Could you tell me about your "swearing consultant"? That's not his only job, but he's sort of become that. He's a guy called Ian Martin. It's become traditional that when we've sort of finalised the script, which he contributes to anyway, I send it to him in Lancaster and he sends it back and it's got all this baroque swearing in it. "Hurricane of piss" and all that - that's Ian, so he's become known as our swearing consultant. Did you think the show was going to be full of laughs? Or was your intention more satirical? I wanted to do something that felt very real and was shot very quickly, and wasn't big budget, that didn't look like a glossy drama, that had jump cuts. Something that didn't pay attention to the sheen of TV drama. And somewhere in all that, we bury the standard comedy/farce structure. We take two unrelated stories and see if we can make one affect the other. INTERVIEW: JOHN ROBINSON

“The Thick Of It” turns on its head something we were all told when we were young – at times this is a programme that seems specifically designed to prove that swearing isn’t just big, it’s also very clever.

In this first series of Armando Iannucci’s political comedy, it’s also nearly impossible to escape. Here the show’s cast of beleaguered politicos are not left holding the baby, they’re left to “mop up a hurricane of piss”. They’re not being overruled by a colleague, so much as they are “fisted up to the gall bladder by a bald man”. It’s hilarious, occasionally terrifying stuff, and it gives additional momentum, to what is undoubtedly, the fastest paced, most highly satirical, not to mention funniest British political show of recent years.

Based in the newly-created Department of Social Affairs, “The Thick Of It” is essentially the tale of one minister’s fight to keep his head above water in a fast-paced political environment. Anxious to remain visible, but troubled by the notion that his “lack of click” with the Prime Minister’s wife may halt his rise through the ranks, Hugh Abbot (Chris Langham) has to run a department that’s essentially the dumping ground for poorly-conceived policies from other departments.

In his constant fight to remain on message he’s aided by civil servants Glen, Ollie and Terri, but he still remains under the constant threat of verbal assault from the Prime Minister’s enforcer, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi). “I don’t know what’s worse,” says Abbott of Tucker. “Seeing him rumble towards you, like prostate cancer. Or have him suddenly surprise you, like a stroke.”

It’s this element of the unpredictable, and the immoderate that gives “The Thick Of It” much of its edge. Though it’s traditionally a week that’s a long time in politics, spending even a half an hour watching the proceedings here can feel pretty nerve-racking – as the team’s efforts fail to live up to Tucker’s high standards, we live in a delighted kind of dread of his next foul-mouthed explosion. There have been political comedies before, of course, but Ianucci’s show strips away the smugness, and adds a wobbly mockumentary naturalism to proceedings, and as such a discernible air of panic becomes the x-factor in this occasionally farcical world.

In the Department of Social Affairs, this panic will often lead to the creation of policies “on the hoof”. This ad hoc, improvisational atmosphere isn’t just “The Thick Of it”‘s subject – it’s analogous to the show’s creation. Initially given a budget for a single pilot show, Ianucci reasoned that if it they were shot quicky enough, there would actually be enough money for three programmes. There are also plenty of occasions where the cast simply improvise – and this similarity between TV and political life is a relationship the show clearly relishes. In one episode, Malcolm berates a minister for “not knowing the lines”. It’s hard not to recall how in a recent documentary, Clare Short praised Tony Blair, though primarily as an actor.

What’s most impressive about this show is how lightly all its satire is worn. Contained within the six episodes here are comments on how the news is made and then repressed, funding for hospitals, how bureaucracy holds up government, and how focus groups can help pin down a target individual that doesn’t actually exist. So well is it all done, however, that one never feels even slightly hectored. What you remember are the jokes and the story, which as a TV news editor in one episode points out, is an old one, and a good one: “It’s called ‘Minister looks a tit’.”

JOHN ROBINSON

Q&A – Armando Iannucci

UNCUT: Did you have any ideas who you wanted to play these roles?

IANNUCCI: Chris Langham I had in mind for the role of the minister, because I’d seen him as George Orwell, and he was very good. I didn’t have anyone in mind for Malcolm, but the casting director said “You (i)have(i) to see Peter Capaldi.” He said he normally plays kindly barristers, but we improvised this scenario and he was horrific, so instantly I knew. Since then he’s been given jobs as mass murderers.

Could you tell me about your “swearing consultant”?

That’s not his only job, but he’s sort of become that. He’s a guy called Ian Martin. It’s become traditional that when we’ve sort of finalised the script, which he contributes to anyway, I send it to him in Lancaster and he sends it back and it’s got all this baroque swearing in it. “Hurricane of piss” and all that – that’s Ian, so he’s become known as our swearing consultant.

Did you think the show was going to be full of laughs? Or was your intention more satirical?

I wanted to do something that felt very real and was shot very quickly, and wasn’t big budget, that didn’t look like a glossy drama, that had jump cuts. Something that didn’t pay attention to the sheen of TV drama. And somewhere in all that, we bury the standard comedy/farce structure. We take two unrelated stories and see if we can make one affect the other.

INTERVIEW: JOHN ROBINSON

The Alexandro Jodorowsky Collection

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The Alexandro Jodorowsky Collection

In 1971, the Chilean-born Alejandro Jodorowsky arrived in New York from Mexico carrying the only print of a film he'd written, directed, scored, and starred in: El Topo. A surreal Zen-western, it instantly became the first phenomenon of the city's midnight movie scene, attracting a cult of freaks and faces including John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Bob Dylan and Dennis Hopper. Although this set also resurrects Jodorowsky's first feature, 1968's avant-garde parable Fando And Lis, El Topo is where his legend begins. Thirty six years on, the movie retains all its freak-out power. It starts like Leone, with Jodorowsky's black-clad gunslinger riding the desert. By the time he goes looking for four mystic gun gurus, it's like Monkey by Fellini. The final third - with Jodorowsky transformed into a humbled, bald albino messiah, tunnelling through a mountain - is like nothing you've seen before. Few would have believed he could top El Topo. They figured without 1973's The Holy Mountain. Working with a much bigger budget, courtesy of Lennon, Jodorowsky sets his vision free in a fried New Age fable, shot like a Technicolor comic-book. He plays guru to a group of would-be immortals - including, apparently, Christ - seeking to scale the Holy Mountain and replace the illuminati at the top. You'll have no idea what's happening, but there's plenty to see, including toads and lizards re-enacting the conquest of Mexico. In costume. These films are grotesque, haunted warehouses, filled with references to religion, the occult, philosophy, psychology, art history, other movies. They could be dismissed as addled, pretentious products of their time, were it not for a cruel, ambiguous humour, and the violent, searing power of Jodorowsky's imagery and imagination. Whatever else they are, they're unforgettable. Now 77, Jodorowsky's cult remains. He's threatened to return with a gangster movie starring Marilyn Manson as a 300-year-old Pope. You wouldn't put it past him. EXTRAS: Jodorowsky commentaries; his 1957 mime short, La Cravate, documentaries, deleted scenes, soundtrack CDs. 5* DAMIEN LOVE Q&A ALEXANDRO JODOROWSKY UNCUT: Where did the idea for El Topo come from? JODOROWSKY: In the beginning it was a fairy story. I was meditating five years with a Japanese monk, and I decided not to make a Western, but an Eastern. When I was a child going to see cowboy pictures, I was never seeing the history of North America. I thought the cowboy's country was a fairy country. That's what I wanted. Is it true George Harrison was lined up to play the Christ figure in The Holy Mountain? He wanted to play the thief. Bob Dylan also; but they also offered to Dylan in that moment Peckinpah, and Dylan said "I feel more Peckinpah." But Harrison was interested. He read the script and said: "The script was very good, but there is shot I don't want to do: you show on screen my bottom, they are cleaning my bottom." I say, "You don't want to show your bottom? I cannot do a picture with you!" And so I take a guy, an unknown person from Mexico. Maybe I make the mistake of my life, I don't know. But I don't want to make one concession. I want to do what I want.

In 1971, the Chilean-born Alejandro Jodorowsky arrived in New York from Mexico carrying the only print of a film he’d written, directed, scored, and starred in: El Topo. A surreal Zen-western, it instantly became the first phenomenon of the city’s midnight movie scene, attracting a cult of freaks and faces including John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Bob Dylan and Dennis Hopper.

Although this set also resurrects Jodorowsky’s first feature, 1968’s avant-garde parable Fando And Lis, El Topo is where his legend begins. Thirty six years on, the movie retains all its freak-out power.

It starts like Leone, with Jodorowsky’s black-clad gunslinger riding the desert. By the time he goes looking for four mystic gun gurus, it’s like Monkey by Fellini. The final third – with Jodorowsky transformed into a humbled, bald albino messiah, tunnelling through a mountain – is like nothing you’ve seen before.

Few would have believed he could top El Topo. They figured without 1973’s The Holy Mountain. Working with a much bigger budget, courtesy of Lennon, Jodorowsky sets his vision free in a fried New Age fable, shot like a Technicolor comic-book. He plays guru to a group of would-be immortals – including, apparently, Christ – seeking to scale the Holy Mountain and replace the illuminati at the top. You’ll have no idea what’s happening, but there’s plenty to see, including toads and lizards re-enacting the conquest of Mexico. In costume.

These films are grotesque, haunted warehouses, filled with references to religion, the occult, philosophy, psychology, art history, other movies. They could be dismissed as addled, pretentious products of their time, were it not for a cruel, ambiguous humour, and the violent, searing power of Jodorowsky’s imagery and imagination. Whatever else they are, they’re unforgettable. Now 77, Jodorowsky’s cult remains. He’s threatened to return with a gangster movie starring Marilyn Manson as a 300-year-old Pope. You wouldn’t put it past him.

EXTRAS: Jodorowsky commentaries; his 1957 mime short, La Cravate, documentaries, deleted scenes, soundtrack CDs.

5*

DAMIEN LOVE

Q&A ALEXANDRO JODOROWSKY

UNCUT: Where did the idea for El Topo come from?

JODOROWSKY: In the beginning it was a fairy story. I was meditating five years with a Japanese monk, and I decided not to make a Western, but an Eastern. When I was a child going to see cowboy pictures, I was never seeing the history of North America. I thought the cowboy’s country was a fairy country. That’s what I wanted.

Is it true George Harrison was lined up to play the Christ figure in The Holy Mountain?

He wanted to play the thief. Bob Dylan also; but they also offered to Dylan in that moment Peckinpah, and Dylan said “I feel more Peckinpah.” But Harrison was interested. He read the script and said: “The script was very good, but there is shot I don’t want to do: you show on screen my bottom, they are cleaning my bottom.” I say, “You don’t want to show your bottom? I cannot do a picture with you!” And so I take a guy, an unknown person from Mexico. Maybe I make the mistake of my life, I don’t know. But I don’t want to make one concession. I want to do what I want.

Joy Division, the Coen Brothers and Michael Moore

Michael Bonner
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0

In which Stephen Dalton files his first report from this year's Cannes Film Festival... Look! U2 playing a mini-gig on the red carpet! New Order shunning their own party! Roman Polanski storming off in a huff from a supergroup gathering of legendary directors! Leonardo DiCaprio and Angelina Jolie igniting the kind of savage media frenzy not seen since Beatlemania! All in punishing 80-degree heat! And thronged by a perpetual crush of leather-skinned, Versace-clad Eurotrash! Yes, it’s Cannes again. Greetings from your slightly frazzled Uncut reporter at the world’s most glamorous and sense-battering film festival, which turns 60 this year but shows no sign of midlife burn-out. Whatever you say about New Order, their sense of timing has always been dramatic. Making its world premier at Cannes is Control, Anton Corbijn’s elegant film about the troubled life and early death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. Shot in crisp monochrome and starring newcomer Sam Riley as Curtis, this is a beautiful and admirably restrained piece of work, and one of the key festival highlights so far. But just days before the screening, Peter Hook announced that New Order are splitting for good. The only problem is, nobody told his bandmates and fellow Joy Division survivors Bernard Sumner and Steven Morris. “We’ve not discussed splitting up, he’s decided were splitting up,” a bemused Sumner tells Uncut. “He’s been acting a bit strange lately, let’s leave it at that. He’s done it unilaterally. Hooky has had a few problems over the last two years of a personal nature, which I can’t go into. It would really be up to him to answer. He’s got ego problems, that’s the most critical I’ll get.” Speaking of giant egos, Michael Moore is back in Cannes with his new blockbuster documentary polemic three years after winning the Palme d’Or for Fahrenheit 9/11. Less bombastic than its predecessor, Sicko exposes the flaws and failings of the United States health care system with a classic Moore mix of interviews, old footage and satirical stunts. It opens with an excoriating attack on health insurance companies which, the director alleges, routinely refuse to pay for legitimate treatment on flimsy and legally dubious grounds. But it is the segment shot in Cuba, with its hilarious cloak-and-dagger launch on Guantanamo Bay that has landed the director in his own serious legal problems at home. Learning he is under investigation for possibly breaking US law forbidding trade or travel to Cuba was not, he told Cannes reporters, a publicity stunt. “Our decision was to come here quietly, I’d said nothing about the film,” Moore insisted after the Cannes screening. “I am the one who is personally liable, who is facing fines or jail. I don’t take it so lightly. But to me, the fact we are discussing this is insane. I live in the United States of America. It is a free country; we should be able to travel freely and do what we want.” Besides the Corbijn and Moore movies, Uncut’s pick of the festival so far has to be the latest Coen brothers collaboration, No Country For Old Men. Adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel, this noir-ish neo-western is a stylish and sombre chase thriller about desperate men and indestructible killers framed against the almost Biblical landscape of West Texas. This is the most straight-faced and irony-free film to date from the deadpan brothers, and also the most violent. Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin, the tone is more Blood Simple than Fargo, with a dash of Sam Peckinpah in its merciless depiction of cruel fate and frontier justice. Like the sound of gunshot on a lonely highway, it stays with you. Got to rush now, off to interview the Coens now… more Cannes news coming soon.

In which Stephen Dalton files his first report from this year’s Cannes Film Festival…

Continue

John Lennon Festival Lights Up Highlands Village

Uncut
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John Lennon Festival Lights Up Highlands Village

The John Lennon Northern Lights Festival has been given the go-ahead to take place in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands. Durness, with a population of 356, will host a three day festival in tribute to the late Beatle from September 28 -30, featuring top music artists, playwrights and authors. Artists so far confirmed include jazz performer Joe Stilgoe, Nizpoli, King Creosote and Mr Hudson & The Library. Poets attending include John Cooper Clarke and carol Ann Duffy. Writer Alastair McIntosh, who has inspired Radiohead's Thom Yorke among others, will also be appearing at the festival. One special event will se him rapping with Nizlopi in Smoo Cave, Britain's biggest sea cave. Festival director Mike Merritt has also confirmed that Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Queen's Master of Music, will lead lead the classical programme and present a world premiere of a Beatles Prom with the Royal Academy of Music. The village of Durness was an area that greatly inspired Lennon - he spent his childhood holidays between the ages of 9 and 13 in the village and returned with his son Julian, wife Yoko Ono, and her daughter Kyoko in 1969. It is also believed that Lennon asked relatives to try and buy the village, shortly before his death in 1980. The village is also said to be part of the inspiration his song "In My Life." The festival has been endorsed by Lennon's family, and sister Julia Baird will be taking part in the events. She says she's "delighted to be involved in what is a high quality event which has taste and respect at its core. We are all looking forward very much to coming again to a place that meant so much to my brother." The announcement about the festival comes just prior to the 40th anniversary of iconic Beatles LP "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Tickets for the festival are now available here from the North Highland Tourism board

The John Lennon Northern Lights Festival has been given the go-ahead to take place in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands.

Durness, with a population of 356, will host a three day festival in tribute to the late Beatle from September 28 -30, featuring top music artists, playwrights and authors.

Artists so far confirmed include jazz performer Joe Stilgoe, Nizpoli, King Creosote and Mr Hudson & The Library. Poets attending include John Cooper Clarke and carol Ann Duffy.

Writer Alastair McIntosh, who has inspired Radiohead’s Thom Yorke among others, will also be appearing at the festival. One special event will se him rapping with Nizlopi in Smoo Cave, Britain’s biggest sea cave.

Festival director Mike Merritt has also confirmed that Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Queen’s Master of Music, will lead lead the classical programme and present a world premiere of a Beatles Prom with the Royal Academy of Music.

The village of Durness was an area that greatly inspired Lennon – he spent his childhood holidays between the ages of 9 and 13 in the village and returned with his son Julian, wife Yoko Ono, and her daughter Kyoko in 1969.

It is also believed that Lennon asked relatives to try and buy the village, shortly before his death in 1980. The village is also said to be part of the inspiration his song “In My Life.”

The festival has been endorsed by Lennon’s family, and sister Julia Baird will be taking part in the events. She says she’s “delighted to be involved in what is a high quality event which has taste and respect at its core. We are all looking forward very much to coming again to a place that meant so much to my brother.”

The announcement about the festival comes just prior to the 40th anniversary of iconic Beatles LP “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Tickets for the festival are now available here from the North Highland Tourism board

Musical Skinny Dipping In Brighton

Uncut
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Musical Skinny Dipping In Brighton

And so to day three of The Great Escape. It’s a late start to the day, and Uncut is awoken to a message to get down to the Theatre Royal, where The Noisettes are playing a secret show ahead of their gig tonight at the Beach Club. There is dancing on the Theatre’s balcony. Unfortunately, the Cup Final has just started, and it’ll be over before I can get there. Apparently they were brilliant fun. The surprise shows that have been springing up all over Brighton have been a treat, and make it feel more like a proper festival, just in a concrete town-shaped field. Though it’s annoying when you miss something cool! Trying to cover the whole festival, and getting a taste of as many bands as possible has not been the easiest of tasks. It would be possible to come down and just see bands, actually stay for entire sets and just relax and enjoy it. But where’s the fun in that? These are short showcases (bands play for a maximum of 30 minutes). The festival is an opportunity for new bands to get exposure, and for old bands with new material to test. Dipping in and out of venues is kinda how it’s meant to be. I think. Tonight there are a couple of fairly established bands playing amongst the 100 new acts, like The Magic Numbers and British Sea Power, but I have an inkling I’ll be spending quite a bit of time at the Uncut café tonight. The haunting Alberta Cross and country maverick Micah P Hinson are both appearing. And I’m definitely intending to make time to take a pew to see all what they have to offer. But as they are not on till a bit later, I go out of my way to immerse myself in a random selection of genres. First up, I see an electro outfit called Neoon Plastix, a bunch of kids from Doncaster. The singer with his shouty vocals and random rave noise-making machine definitely looks and sounds the epitomy of hi-NRG nu-rave by numbers. The guitarist wears polka dots and the drummer a t-shirt with a big neon ‘OK!’ written on it. When they stop to talk between songs, they sound ignorant, shattering the illusion of the great mouthy arrogance of the songs. They’re OK, but enough of that. I head up to the Red Roaster, which I keep mistakenly calling the Red Rooster. Opening act for the final night is singer Dan Mangan and he has just finished. Trio Alberta Cross are setting up their equipment at the front of the room, and the place is full to capacity yet again. People are coming up with all sorts of excuses as to why they should be let in ahead of the queue, and the ones inside are all scrambling to get copies of the band's album autographed. They play an acoustic set, moving unannounced from their quiet jamming soundcheck straight into the start of the set with ease. The bareness of the instruments makes their songs seem even more startling and starkly brilliant. The floppy-haired, hat-wearing singer stops between songs to gulp down red wine which is located beneath the Viscount keyboard/organ. By the end of the second track, the room feels like a church, with us all sitting on the floor or at tables, listening to the country gospel hymns that Petter and Terry sing. He’s often compared to a younger Neil Young, and the similarities in voice are definitely present. They play shortened, stripped-down versions of “Lucy Rider” and “Hard Breaks” because they don’t have a lot of time left to play. Both songs are absolutely heartbreakingly good. They finish with “Old Man Chicago” with a plug for their debut album “The Thief & The Heartbreaker” and leave the whole room foot tapping with delight. It’s 9.15pm now, and I have a difficult decision to make, I want to see the electronic indie of Maps at the Udderbelly, yesterday's Uncut headliner Jack Penate is playing a second show at the Beach Club, and tipped band Mumm-ra are on at 9.30 down by the sea. Practically, I head for Maps as it’s just across the road from the Red Roaster. I’ve wanted to come to the Udderbelly since Thursday, assuming it’s an outdoor stage because it’s a giant inflatable purple cow. Alas, no. Once through the Moo Garden with its Moo Bar and Moo Loos, I’m lead up a ramp and into the BELLY of the cow. It’s brilliant inside, and a bit disconcerting. It’s dark, apart from the purple and pink lights in the pseudo-smoke, and it turns out the venue is running behind schedule. New EMI signings Tiny Dancers are still performing, and the singer’s peroxide blonde hair is the giveaway. They play a track called “Ashes And Diamonds” which is a bog standard indie track dressed up with a twang of country. It starts off nice enough, but doesn’t seem to go anywhere. They finish and dismantling their equipment seems to take a very long time. As well as the usual instruments, too many cuddly animal toys and balloons seem to have been used as props. Nottingham music man Maps I really want to see, but now I’m completely off schedule if I want to see other bands. There’s a lot of keyboards and pedals etc that the band need and I’m getting restless watching everything get plugged in, I’ll just have to skip it and hope that Mumm-ra are running late too. So I dash to Audio, back on Marine Parade. As expected, it’s a ‘one in one out’ gig, and the bouncers say no, so now I’m off to Kabuki at the farthest end of the seafront. Neil’s Children are on at the venue hosted by Artrocker magazine. The band who don’t consist of anyone called Neil, are playing in the corner of the downstairs of the bar. The bar is packed. And none of us can see anything. Every now and then I glimpse a fringe or their drummer’s fantastically huge black hair style. Good job their music is loud and full of strong guitar riffs. “Another Day” is very thrashy Clash-y and “Window Shopping” is pretty good too. They also play upcoming single “You Didn’t Care”, which apparently former Creation Records owner Alan McGee has described as “the Cure for the now generation.” Not quite sure they sound like the Cure, though. Neil’s Children stickers are stuck to everyone in the room by the time I leave the sweatpit. I have to dash back to the Red Roaster, ‘cos Texan guitarist Micah P Hinson is due on shortly and I’ve been warned it’s going to be busy. I see some strange road signs on the way; I chuckle at indie band Good Shoes' “Morden Life Is Rubbish” the first time I see it. The indie band are playing tonight at the Pavilion Theatre, I might have time to get there after Micah. The other is “This way to Cirque Surreal” – turns out to be the Bangkok Lady Boys show in a circus tent that’s been sold out every night this week. 10.26pm. Café is crammed again, right down to the front, the anticipation-charged hush is a strange feeling after just rocking at Kabuki. Micah P Hinson, with his name embroidered on a leather guitar strap, and navy trucker's cap is joined by musicians Nick Phelps on banjo and Jason Nevilles on drums. The laidback atmosphere is brilliant. Micah plays acoustic tales of abstract woe, and transports the people in the room to somewhere in the desert wastelands in the old days. He plays a song, “Beneath The Road”, which he says when he first recorded it, came out sounding like a hip-hop record. This gets a massive laugh, and is the beginning of a constant interaction with his audience. He sings a short, almost ode-like song about having ‘no worries now’ before warming up to playing real twangy country notes on his guitar, with a song inspired by the Carter Family. Micah starts mumbling to the crowd that “the Carter Family practically invented Country & Western music. If you’ve never heard of them, you really should check them out.” His Southern drawl whilst he’s tuning his guitar is amusing as he says, “Oh am I rambling. I do apologise.” The enthralled fans giggle. He plays an old track, “Digging The Grave”, before he stops to light a cigarette. He smokes using a small black holder and he places it in the side of his mouth. And then he carries on singing the next track. Whilst still puffing smoke. A very bizarre but clever sight. He sounds grittier and more bluesy now. Alas, the show is about to end, and Micah claims he only has three minutes left to play. ‘Oh No’ shout back the crowd. Bartering goes on between the crowd, Micah and the sound engineer, and eventually it’s agreed that two more songs can be had. Great! He sings “Leaning Guides” then treats us to a brand new track, that they’ve practised live only once before. “There’s Only One Name” is a really countrified song, with great lyrics, and for the last track of the night – is nicely upbeat. But yes! They’re squeezing in another song for us! More precious time is being lost with Micah lighting a cigarette for Nevilles and himself and still bantering about feeling like ‘the three Stooges’ up there. They then play the brilliantly named song “The Day Texas Sank To The Bottom Of The Sea.” And that’s it, no more singers or bands on my agenda tonight. It's 11.20 and there are some Great Escape gigs still not finished and plenty of parties erupting all across Saturday night Brighton. However, I feel far too chilled out from the brilliant musical treats of the Uncut café tonight. I think going to a party at the Ocean Rooms where I hear Razorlight are DJing would just spoil it a little. Brighton, it’s been a blast. FARAH ISHAQ

And so to day three of The Great Escape.

It’s a late start to the day, and Uncut is awoken to a message to get down to the Theatre Royal, where The Noisettes are playing a secret show ahead of their gig tonight at the Beach Club. There is dancing on the Theatre’s balcony. Unfortunately, the Cup Final has just started, and it’ll be over before I can get there. Apparently they were brilliant fun. The surprise shows that have been springing up all over Brighton have been a treat, and make it feel more like a proper festival, just in a concrete town-shaped field. Though it’s annoying when you miss something cool!

Trying to cover the whole festival, and getting a taste of as many bands as possible has not been the easiest of tasks. It would be possible to come down and just see bands, actually stay for entire sets and just relax and enjoy it. But where’s the fun in that? These are short showcases (bands play for a maximum of 30 minutes). The festival is an opportunity for new bands to get exposure, and for old bands with new material to test. Dipping in and out of venues is kinda how it’s meant to be. I think.

Tonight there are a couple of fairly established bands playing amongst the 100 new acts, like The Magic Numbers and British Sea Power, but I have an inkling I’ll be spending quite a bit of time at the Uncut café tonight. The haunting Alberta Cross and country maverick Micah P Hinson are both appearing. And I’m definitely intending to make time to take a pew to see all what they have to offer. But as they are not on till a bit later, I go out of my way to immerse myself in a random selection of genres.

First up, I see an electro outfit called Neoon Plastix, a bunch of kids from Doncaster. The singer with his shouty vocals and random rave noise-making machine definitely looks and sounds the epitomy of hi-NRG nu-rave by numbers. The guitarist wears polka dots and the drummer a t-shirt with a big neon ‘OK!’ written on it. When they stop to talk between songs, they sound ignorant, shattering the illusion of the great mouthy arrogance of the songs.

They’re OK, but enough of that. I head up to the Red Roaster, which I keep mistakenly calling the Red Rooster. Opening act for the final night is singer Dan Mangan and he has just finished. Trio Alberta Cross are setting up their equipment at the front of the room, and the place is full to capacity yet again. People are coming up with all sorts of excuses as to why they should be let in ahead of the queue, and the ones inside are all scrambling to get copies of the band’s album autographed.

They play an acoustic set, moving unannounced from their quiet jamming soundcheck straight into the start of the set with ease. The bareness of the instruments makes their songs seem even more startling and starkly brilliant. The floppy-haired, hat-wearing singer stops between songs to gulp down red wine which is located beneath the Viscount keyboard/organ. By the end of the second track, the room feels like a church, with us all sitting on the floor or at tables, listening to the country gospel hymns that Petter and Terry sing.

He’s often compared to a younger Neil Young, and the similarities in voice are definitely present. They play shortened, stripped-down versions of “Lucy Rider” and “Hard Breaks” because they don’t have a lot of time left to play. Both songs are absolutely heartbreakingly good. They finish with “Old Man Chicago” with a plug for their debut album “The Thief & The Heartbreaker” and leave the whole room foot tapping with delight.

It’s 9.15pm now, and I have a difficult decision to make, I want to see the electronic indie of Maps at the Udderbelly, yesterday’s Uncut headliner Jack Penate is playing a second show at the Beach Club, and tipped band Mumm-ra are on at 9.30 down by the sea. Practically, I head for Maps as it’s just across the road from the Red Roaster.

I’ve wanted to come to the Udderbelly since Thursday, assuming it’s an outdoor stage because it’s a giant inflatable purple cow. Alas, no. Once through the Moo Garden with its Moo Bar and Moo Loos, I’m lead up a ramp and into the BELLY of the cow. It’s brilliant inside, and a bit disconcerting. It’s dark, apart from the purple and pink lights in the pseudo-smoke, and it turns out the venue is running behind schedule. New EMI signings Tiny Dancers are still performing, and the singer’s peroxide blonde hair is the giveaway. They play a track called “Ashes And Diamonds” which is a bog standard indie track dressed up with a twang of country. It starts off nice enough, but doesn’t seem to go anywhere. They finish and dismantling their equipment seems to take a very long time. As well as the usual instruments, too many cuddly animal toys and balloons seem to have been used as props.

Nottingham music man Maps I really want to see, but now I’m completely off schedule if I want to see other bands. There’s a lot of keyboards and pedals etc that the band need and I’m getting restless watching everything get plugged in, I’ll just have to skip it and hope that Mumm-ra are running late too. So I dash to Audio, back on Marine Parade.

As expected, it’s a ‘one in one out’ gig, and the bouncers say no, so now I’m off to Kabuki at the farthest end of the seafront. Neil’s Children are on at the venue hosted by Artrocker magazine. The band who don’t consist of anyone called Neil, are playing in the corner of the downstairs of the bar. The bar is packed. And none of us can see anything. Every now and then I glimpse a fringe or their drummer’s fantastically huge black hair style. Good job their music is loud and full of strong guitar riffs. “Another Day” is very thrashy Clash-y and “Window Shopping” is pretty good too. They also play upcoming single “You Didn’t Care”, which apparently former Creation Records owner Alan McGee has described as “the Cure for the now generation.” Not quite sure they sound like the Cure, though. Neil’s Children stickers are stuck to everyone in the room by the time I leave the sweatpit. I have to dash back to the Red Roaster, ‘cos Texan guitarist Micah P Hinson is due on shortly and I’ve been warned it’s going to be busy.

I see some strange road signs on the way; I chuckle at indie band Good Shoes’ “Morden Life Is Rubbish” the first time I see it. The indie band are playing tonight at the Pavilion Theatre, I might have time to get there after Micah. The other is “This way to Cirque Surreal” – turns out to be the Bangkok Lady Boys show in a circus tent that’s been sold out every night this week.

10.26pm. Café is crammed again, right down to the front, the anticipation-charged hush is a strange feeling after just rocking at Kabuki. Micah P Hinson, with his name embroidered on a leather guitar strap, and navy trucker’s cap is joined by musicians Nick Phelps on banjo and Jason Nevilles on drums.

The laidback atmosphere is brilliant. Micah plays acoustic tales of abstract woe, and transports the people in the room to somewhere in the desert wastelands in the old days. He plays a song, “Beneath The Road”, which he says when he first recorded it, came out sounding like a hip-hop record. This gets a massive laugh, and is the beginning of a constant interaction with his audience.

He sings a short, almost ode-like song about having ‘no worries now’ before warming up to playing real twangy country notes on his guitar, with a song inspired by the Carter Family. Micah starts mumbling to the crowd that “the Carter Family practically invented Country & Western music. If you’ve never heard of them, you really should check them out.” His Southern drawl whilst he’s tuning his guitar is amusing as he says, “Oh am I rambling. I do apologise.” The enthralled fans giggle.

He plays an old track, “Digging The Grave”, before he stops to light a cigarette. He smokes using a small black holder and he places it in the side of his mouth. And then he carries on singing the next track. Whilst still puffing smoke. A very bizarre but clever sight. He sounds grittier and more bluesy now.

Alas, the show is about to end, and Micah claims he only has three minutes left to play. ‘Oh No’ shout back the crowd. Bartering goes on between the crowd, Micah and the sound engineer, and eventually it’s agreed that two more songs can be had. Great!

He sings “Leaning Guides” then treats us to a brand new track, that they’ve practised live only once before. “There’s Only One Name” is a really countrified song, with great lyrics, and for the last track of the night – is nicely upbeat. But yes! They’re squeezing in another song for us! More precious time is being lost with Micah lighting a cigarette for Nevilles and himself and still bantering about feeling like ‘the three Stooges’ up there. They then play the brilliantly named song “The Day Texas Sank To The Bottom Of The Sea.”

And that’s it, no more singers or bands on my agenda tonight. It’s 11.20 and there are some Great Escape gigs still not finished and plenty of parties erupting all across Saturday night Brighton. However, I feel far too chilled out from the brilliant musical treats of the Uncut café tonight. I think going to a party at the Ocean Rooms where I hear Razorlight are DJing would just spoil it a little.

Brighton, it’s been a blast.

FARAH ISHAQ

There’s No Escaping The Great Escape

Uncut
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There’s No Escaping The Great Escape

Hello from an incredibly windswept Brighton. Uncut is back for more musical action on the seafront. Feeling rather frazzled from the late night yesterday, I think I have pulled myself together enough to pound the streets for one more night. Tonight I desperately want to see Gallows after missing the dangerous scrum that ensued last night - guitarist Steph Carter had "his head sliced open from his own guitar" after opening track "In The Belly Of A Shark", as his brother and band vocalist Frank so aptly put it. We hear that Steph has been carted (boom tish) off to hospital, and has had five stitches. I want to see him play with what I can only imagine is a very sore head, but alas no, tight timings again mean that there's no way I'll be able to get down to the Zap club in time for kick off at 9 o'clock. The Uncut stage at the Red Roaster is bustling with anticipation tonight, queues are forming well before doors open at 8pm, and for good reason. We are hosting an XL Recordings night - label home to the White Stripes amongst others, and tonight will see the buzz boy of the night Jack Penate headline. Simply everyone in Brighton wants to see him play. We can't wait. The Red Roaster will also see singers Elvis Perkins, son of Anthony Perkins, and Kid Harpoon play. But before they do, I have just enough time, according to the festival timetable, to catch some bands down on the beach. The Beach Club is a wicked venue, and obviously usually more akin to hosting raves. And so first things first; the piles of glo-sticks that line the column edges swiftly line the inside of my handbag. The neon multicoloured glow that now emanates means I'll be able to find my pen quickly in any dark venue tonight. A girl's gotta be prepared! And so, attention is diverted slightly by The Midway State, an emotive, piano-led, softly softly rock group hailing from Toronto, Canada. The four-piece have hugely soulful vocals, but the two songs I hear seem lacking in something. The single "Unaware", as heard on US teen soap The O.C., is good but bland. Their set closer "What You Need Is Love" is an '80s style power-ballad with high pitched vocals. But the midtempo-ness of it all is not what we need to kick off the night. We decline the offer of drinks with the band - we are here to see bands, afterall! Next up is Oh No Ono - I know I saw them yesterday. But as they are due on next, I want to hang around, to see if what I witnessed yesterday was actually what they are like! And hang around I do, the longest set-up and testing of mics I have had to endure in quite some time. The bassist is wearing a clown style jester's jacket, and their hair is still big, and they are still very handsome Danish boys, so I wait... The missing lead on the mixing desk is found by glo-stick torchlight and the show is on - the first song is like some kind of futuristic but retro synth pop with Japanese-style wailing vocals. Very bizarre. They then do The Beatles cover again - and in this venue it simply doesn't convey the same. And so to next door, Arc, where Help She Can't Swim are on. The performance area is up a steep flight of stairs and in what can only be described as a tunnel. A long strip of space in a arch, with the band at one end and a rectangular mass of bodies that stretches back into darkness. We squeeze into the back, and can only see the tips of their heads, singer Tom Denney has his dark hair flopped over one eye in traditional punk-style school way. They are halfway through the brilliantly poppy punk track "Ferme La Bouche" and I like it. The energy is radiant and I feel like pogoing, but it's still early. The Brighton band finish on a high with new single "Hospital Drama", and I'm now ready to go see if I can catch a bit of Elvis Perkins. Crossing over the roundabout opposite the Pier, I overhear a festival-goer exclaiming down her mobile that there's no way in to the Red Roaster. Uh oh, better hurry up and go see what the fuss is about. The queue is staggered all the way up the street with people literally attempting to claw their way in. I panic, then realise I have a magic pass that I can wave to get in. The boos are incredible, the girls at the front of the queue hiss 'it's one in one out.' But still I'm in, Kid Harpoon is whipping up the crowd into a well-behaved frenzy. Compared to the hush and quiet of the artists yesterday, today is positively noisy. There are whoops and clapping, in time with a piano romp through real uptempo, saloon style bar tunes. Before sitting down at the "cool as fuck" piano, the from-Medway kid declared that he was once told "people don't want to be annoyed with guitars any more, so I thought fuck it I'll learn to play the piano then". The room erupted with laughter - he's a confident sassy performer and put on a great show. Whilst enjoying the feeling of sitting cross-legged at the front of the room, I'm thinking about the next couple of bands and how to plot my route around with the most efficiency. I work out that I can get up to the Corn Exchange and catch buzz band The Heights, maybe a bit of Art Brut, before going to see hyped rockers Electric City over at Hector's House, possibly swinging by The Ocean Rooms to see Johnny Panic. Walking past the Pavillion, the queue is immense, Willy Mason is playing there in an hour's time, wow that's a long wait for those fans if they get into the venue! I make it to the Corn Exchange, but the band onstage in the cavernously huge place don't resemble the rock outfit I've been led to believe. Not least the fact that they are from Wales, and not Canada, I don't know how I confused that one! I thought they would be a bit rocker than they are, the guitars and music is good, but the songs just don't fill me up. Perhaps it was the venue that was just too big. I'll try and see them another time, they have potential, I think. Pop fact; The Heights have played more Barfly shows around the country than any other band. The Corn Exchange is filling up with Art Brut fans, girls outnumber boys about six to one, bizarre. I go and see what's happening down at the Red Roaster - I have already heard that it's going mental, and that the desire to see Jack Penate is causing fights outside the venue! Not even my magic pass is going to get me into this one. I give it up for a lost cause, safe in the knowledge that Jack's just announced a full UK tour starting next month. I'll catch up with him then. So I trundle off over to Hector's House to see Electric City. The bluesy bar is a brilliant place-warp, I'm suddenly transported to a bar somewhere at South By Southwest, the Texan equivalent of The Great Escape. Pool tables are slung at the back of the dark wooded bar, and the jukebox is pumping out great tracks like "Tutti Frutti." The London four-piece are headlining the Topman New Talent Stage, and the good-looking skinny-jeaned boys take to stage, plug in and just play proper rock riffs with brilliant rock vocals. Think Sabbath meets Kings Of Leon meets Duran Duran meets Muse. And with simultaneous tuning between songs that would make Quo's Rick Parfitt look on proudly. Singer Andy has a voice that crosses eras, it's hard to fathom quite how he does it, he sounds far older than his tender age of 21. They play a short set of six songs to a room filled with music industry types, and even they can feel the rifftastic vibe. Third track "Dark Skies" is pretty proggy but dressed up with pop, like speeded-up Cream. "Devil In My Head," "Siren" and new single "Sleeping With The Enemy" prove that this band are definitely ones to watch. They sound slick, like they've been playing huge concerts and not bars. Did I mention they're incredibly good looking (said in mock Zoolander accent)? They're being hounded by fashion labels, and last night they went to a launch for Armani, hence the beautiful black and white top that bassist Jon is wearing, but apparently when they played at the party, they were told off for being too loud! Really! Fashionistas eh? I attempt to down tools at this point - the night has been long, and I am very tired, and the jukebox is playing some kind of compilation of reggae and soul tunes, feeling relaxed now, and a bottle of beer is thrust in my direction. However just as I'm about to head back down to the media hub bar back at the hotel, I'm convinced that The Airborne Toxic Event are more than worth watching over at Club NME's Komedia home. Touted as a cross between Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand, the LA based five piece include violins and tambourines amongst their multi-tasking instrumentation. Airborne Toxic whatnot are good staple fare, and are indeed very much like Arcade Fire, and some of the tracks are pretty good. The twiddly musical bits are great, the Pixies-style backing vocals nicely eerie, and there are nice stomping pianos in tracks like "Wishing Well" and "Papillon." They even come back on for an encore. The audience is huge, but I think largely because there are very few gigs on this late into the night, a lot of the kids are down at Beach front raves in Brightons neon clubs. I slip away into the fresh air, the night is much cooler than last, and there's a threat of wetness in the air, but luckily the rain has held off - it's meant to be sunny tomorrow - woo hoo! Heard earlier that Yoko Ono is in town? The local paper the Argus said she's down here checking out bands! See what great company we keep. Also heard that despite what I thought was Happy Mondays on particular;y weirdly normal form yesterday, news reaches me that Bez apparently punched a Channel 4 cameraman before the pier party yesterday. He thought Shaun Ryder was setting him up to be late for the gig, and ended with fisticuffs- apparently Bez was frosty with Ryder at the start of the show - I can't say I noticed anything amiss though. Tomorrow seems to be getting closer by the minute - i hope tiredness doesn't kick in too badly - I gotta be up in time for the Cup Final! More bands ahoy tomorrow night. Much looking forward to the Neil Young sounding half-Scandinavians Alberta Cross on at 8.45 at the Uncut cafe. And Palladium and Mumm-Ra are the hot-tips too. If you're in Brighton, come on down. FARAH ISHAQ

Hello from an incredibly windswept Brighton. Uncut is back for more musical action on the seafront. Feeling rather frazzled from the late night yesterday, I think I have pulled myself together enough to pound the streets for one more night.

Tonight I desperately want to see Gallows after missing the dangerous scrum that ensued last night – guitarist Steph Carter had “his head sliced open from his own guitar” after opening track “In The Belly Of A Shark”, as his brother and band vocalist Frank so aptly put it. We hear that Steph has been carted (boom tish) off to hospital, and has had five stitches. I want to see him play with what I can only imagine is a very sore head, but alas no, tight timings again mean that there’s no way I’ll be able to get down to the Zap club in time for kick off at 9 o’clock.

The Uncut stage at the Red Roaster is bustling with anticipation tonight, queues are forming well before doors open at 8pm, and for good reason. We are hosting an XL Recordings night – label home to the White Stripes amongst others, and tonight will see the buzz boy of the night Jack Penate headline. Simply everyone in Brighton wants to see him play. We can’t wait. The Red Roaster will also see singers Elvis Perkins, son of Anthony Perkins, and Kid Harpoon play. But before they do, I have just enough time, according to the festival timetable, to catch some bands down on the beach.

The Beach Club is a wicked venue, and obviously usually more akin to hosting raves. And so first things first; the piles of glo-sticks that line the column edges swiftly line the inside of my handbag. The neon multicoloured glow that now emanates means I’ll be able to find my pen quickly in any dark venue tonight. A girl’s gotta be prepared!

And so, attention is diverted slightly by The Midway State, an emotive, piano-led, softly softly rock group hailing from Toronto, Canada. The four-piece have hugely soulful vocals, but the two songs I hear seem lacking in something. The single “Unaware”, as heard on US teen soap The O.C., is good but bland. Their set closer “What You Need Is Love” is an ’80s style power-ballad with high pitched vocals. But the midtempo-ness of it all is not what we need to kick off the night. We decline the offer of drinks with the band – we are here to see bands, afterall!

Next up is Oh No Ono – I know I saw them yesterday. But as they are due on next, I want to hang around, to see if what I witnessed yesterday was actually what they are like! And hang around I do, the longest set-up and testing of mics I have had to endure in quite some time. The bassist is wearing a clown style jester’s jacket, and their hair is still big, and they are still very handsome Danish boys, so I wait…

The missing lead on the mixing desk is found by glo-stick torchlight and the show is on – the first song is like some kind of futuristic but retro synth pop with Japanese-style wailing vocals. Very bizarre. They then do The Beatles cover again – and in this venue it simply doesn’t convey the same. And so to next door, Arc, where Help She Can’t Swim are on.

The performance area is up a steep flight of stairs and in what can only be described as a tunnel. A long strip of space in a arch, with the band at one end and a rectangular mass of bodies that stretches back into darkness.

We squeeze into the back, and can only see the tips of their heads, singer Tom Denney has his dark hair flopped over one eye in traditional punk-style school way. They are halfway through the brilliantly poppy punk track “Ferme La Bouche” and I like it. The energy is radiant and I feel like pogoing, but it’s still early. The Brighton band finish on a high with new single “Hospital Drama”, and I’m now ready to go see if I can catch a bit of Elvis Perkins.

Crossing over the roundabout opposite the Pier, I overhear a festival-goer exclaiming down her mobile that there’s no way in to the Red Roaster. Uh oh, better hurry up and go see what the fuss is about.

The queue is staggered all the way up the street with people literally attempting to claw their way in. I panic, then realise I have a magic pass that I can wave to get in. The boos are incredible, the girls at the front of the queue hiss ‘it’s one in one out.’ But still I’m in, Kid Harpoon is whipping up the crowd into a well-behaved frenzy. Compared to the hush and quiet of the artists yesterday, today is positively noisy. There are whoops and clapping, in time with a piano romp through real uptempo, saloon style bar tunes.

Before sitting down at the “cool as fuck” piano, the from-Medway kid declared that he was once told “people don’t want to be annoyed with guitars any more, so I thought fuck it I’ll learn to play the piano then”. The room erupted with laughter – he’s a confident sassy performer and put on a great show.

Whilst enjoying the feeling of sitting cross-legged at the front of the room, I’m thinking about the next couple of bands and how to plot my route around with the most efficiency. I work out that I can get up to the Corn Exchange and catch buzz band The Heights, maybe a bit of Art Brut, before going to see hyped rockers Electric City over at Hector’s House, possibly swinging by The Ocean Rooms to see Johnny Panic.

Walking past the Pavillion, the queue is immense, Willy Mason is playing there in an hour’s time, wow that’s a long wait for those fans if they get into the venue! I make it to the Corn Exchange, but the band onstage in the cavernously huge place don’t resemble the rock outfit I’ve been led to believe. Not least the fact that they are from Wales, and not Canada, I don’t know how I confused that one! I thought they would be a bit rocker than they are, the guitars and music is good, but the songs just don’t fill me up. Perhaps it was the venue that was just too big. I’ll try and see them another time, they have potential, I think. Pop fact; The Heights have played more Barfly shows around the country than any other band.

The Corn Exchange is filling up with Art Brut fans, girls outnumber boys about six to one, bizarre.

I go and see what’s happening down at the Red Roaster – I have already heard that it’s going mental, and that the desire to see Jack Penate is causing fights outside the venue! Not even my magic pass is going to get me into this one. I give it up for a lost cause, safe in the knowledge that Jack’s just announced a full UK tour starting next month. I’ll catch up with him then.

So I trundle off over to Hector’s House to see Electric City. The bluesy bar is a brilliant place-warp, I’m suddenly transported to a bar somewhere at South By Southwest, the Texan equivalent of The Great Escape. Pool tables are slung at the back of the dark wooded bar, and the jukebox is pumping out great tracks like “Tutti Frutti.”

The London four-piece are headlining the Topman New Talent Stage, and the good-looking skinny-jeaned boys take to stage, plug in and just play proper rock riffs with brilliant rock vocals. Think Sabbath meets Kings Of Leon meets Duran Duran meets Muse. And with simultaneous tuning between songs that would make Quo’s Rick Parfitt look on proudly. Singer Andy has a voice that crosses eras, it’s hard to fathom quite how he does it, he sounds far older than his tender age of 21.

They play a short set of six songs to a room filled with music industry types, and even they can feel the rifftastic vibe. Third track “Dark Skies” is pretty proggy but dressed up with pop, like speeded-up Cream. “Devil In My Head,” “Siren” and new single “Sleeping With The Enemy” prove that this band are definitely ones to watch. They sound slick, like they’ve been playing huge concerts and not bars. Did I mention they’re incredibly good looking (said in mock Zoolander accent)? They’re being hounded by fashion labels, and last night they went to a launch for Armani, hence the beautiful black and white top that bassist Jon is wearing, but apparently when they played at the party, they were told off for being too loud! Really! Fashionistas eh?

I attempt to down tools at this point – the night has been long, and I am very tired, and the jukebox is playing some kind of compilation of reggae and soul tunes, feeling relaxed now, and a bottle of beer is thrust in my direction. However just as I’m about to head back down to the media hub bar back at the hotel, I’m convinced that The Airborne Toxic Event are more than worth watching over at Club NME’s Komedia home.

Touted as a cross between Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand, the LA based five piece include violins and tambourines amongst their multi-tasking instrumentation. Airborne Toxic whatnot are good staple fare, and are indeed very much like Arcade Fire, and some of the tracks are pretty good. The twiddly musical bits are great, the Pixies-style backing vocals nicely eerie, and there are nice stomping pianos in tracks like “Wishing Well” and “Papillon.” They even come back on for an encore.

The audience is huge, but I think largely because there are very few gigs on this late into the night, a lot of the kids are down at Beach front raves in Brightons neon clubs. I slip away into the fresh air, the night is much cooler than last, and there’s a threat of wetness in the air, but luckily the rain has held off – it’s meant to be sunny tomorrow – woo hoo!

Heard earlier that Yoko Ono is in town? The local paper the Argus said she’s down here checking out bands! See what great company we keep. Also heard that despite what I thought was Happy Mondays on particular;y weirdly normal form yesterday, news reaches me that Bez apparently punched a Channel 4 cameraman before the pier party yesterday. He thought Shaun Ryder was setting him up to be late for the gig, and ended with fisticuffs- apparently Bez was frosty with Ryder at the start of the show – I can’t say I noticed anything amiss though.

Tomorrow seems to be getting closer by the minute – i hope tiredness doesn’t kick in too badly – I gotta be up in time for the Cup Final! More bands ahoy tomorrow night.

Much looking forward to the Neil Young sounding half-Scandinavians Alberta Cross on at 8.45 at the Uncut cafe. And Palladium and Mumm-Ra are the hot-tips too. If you’re in Brighton, come on down.

FARAH ISHAQ

Happy Mondays Step On Brighton Pier

Uncut
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Happy Mondays Step On Brighton Pier

Leaving a wet and dreary London, Uncut sets off to Brighton to find an incredibly surprisingly sunny seaside town, calmly awaiting the incoming music storm that is 2007's Great Escape Festival. The south coast town's attempt at staging a 'music export' convention - showcasing the best new music around - will see 150 bands playing across 20 venues, plus impromptu acoustic sessions sprouting up all over the place by new artists and special guests. All we need is an all-inclusive neon pink wristband and we're in. The opening night's buzz is that the Happy Mondays will be playing a party at the end of the pier, showcasing new material and hopefully dancing through the hits. The other big buzz is a Club NME show by The Gallows, the most controversial new rock band straight out of Watford. The only problem is they're not on 'till 1am and we've been advised to get there by 11 if we want to get into the venue - better get a move on - there's a lot of ground to cover before we can get there. First up, we check out the Uncut venue - Uncut is hosting three nights at the Red Roaster Cafe, marking our debut year with a presence at the festival. Tonight will see singer-songwriters Kate Walsh, Jersey Budd, Findlay Brown and Aussie brother and sister duo Angus & Julia Stone perform in the laid-back coffee shop surroundings. We leave the venue as the queue builds for opener Jersey Budd, to check out the early bands down at Audio, where the Barfly promoters have got The 1990s playing. However the queue is already a 'one in one out' system and we haven't got time to hang about. Head to the Ocean Rooms, a fantastically confusing venue with a massive Blondie pop art painting above the front door with the slogan "Get Up" - we catch Hertfordshire band Look See Proof play jangly plain indie - their closing song and single "Start Again" is OK if only just that. Upstairs is far better, where Danish five-piece Oh No Ono are concocting a funky psychedelic storm. They have huge hair and huger grins, and track "Practical Money Skills" causes much whirling funky dancing from the incredibly sweaty room that have gathered. They end on a brave but perfectly executed version of "a song from Great Britain" - a pitch-perfect cover of The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows." A great set closer, but now desperate to get some fresh air, and maybe a beer. This running up and down the streets of Brighton is thirsty work. Its still daylight, amazing. Walking back down past the big giant upside down purple cow stage, aptly named the Udderbelly stage, we kick ourselves - we've just missed a T-Mobile surprise 'street gig'. The Gossip have just ended a set and hordes of grinning sweaty indie guys and gals are spilling out into the streets clutching goodie bags and looking at their Great Escape maps looking for the next music fix. We hear a rumour that the Scissor Sisters will be the next surprise band on - hoping that's true - they'd be perfect on a balmy evening like this. Pop back to the Red Roaster, and catch the opening songs by Angus & Julia Stone. Compared to the madness outside, the hush and quiet of the cafe is startling. Fragile, beautiful songs with the bare minimum of strings and drum beats. Heartbreaking songs, but my heart is still racing so need to get out and attempt to break in to the Happy Mondays showcase on the pier. 9.57pm and the Mondays are due on in three minutes - Uncut is hoping that Shaun Ryder doesn't break the habit of a lifetime and is a few minutes late - but no joy! The Mondays appear to have been cloned and replaced by a band that are definitely not a shambles at all! We make it in time for the opening sirens - they are here to showcase material from their new album "Uncle Dysfunktional" - their first in 14 years. And the songs are amazing - tuneful, dancey, silly lyrics but you don't care. "Jelly Bean" is especially brilliant - with the crowd singing along, waving their baggy-era hats in the hair. Ryder and co also don't dare disappoint the 200-capacity Horatio's Bar by playing brilliant versions of hits "Loose Fit", "Kinky Afro" and "Rev Black Grape" too. Ryder proclaimed before the show that if "anyone didn't like the new stuff, he'd chuck them in the sea". I can't see that being a problem tonight; swimming seems a good idea, considering how hot it is in the tiny disco-ball dressed bar on the pier. I leave the Baggy boys to it before the end to make a mad dash back to the Red Roaster - Uncut hears that the diminutive singer Kate Walsh is going down a storm as the night's closing performer. We squeeze into the cafe to find the crowd sitting crosslegged on the floor right up to the performance space at the front. Everyone looks completely mesmerised, floating on Kate's pure and stunning vocals. Set closer "Your Song" is simply brilliant. Apparently Kate has a very sore throat, she had to cancel a gig earlier in the evening due to illness - but if what Uncut witnesses is the sound of illness, we can only imagine what she sounds like when she's healthy. Uncut is knackered now, and we hear that Gallows over at the Komedia is already oversubscribed, so we take our leave to sit on the beach eating proper seaside chips, watching festival-goers who've had a long evening out attempt to go skinny-dipping in the icy waters. We'll be back tomorrow for what will be another top night of musical adventure on the streets of Brigho - as the locals might call it. Uncut is hosting an XL Recordings night with Elvis Perkins, Kid Harpoon and Jamie T-esque Jack Penate all doing their thing in the Red Roaster. Elsewhere we'll try and catch up with Canadian's The Heights, who are meant to be fantastic, and Air Traffic. The Gallows are also playing again, at the more Uncut-friendly time of 9.30, so hopefully we'll catch them this time, and Friendly Fires might be worth a shot too - we have a craving for some glo-stick fun. FARAH ISHAQ

Leaving a wet and dreary London, Uncut sets off to Brighton to find an incredibly surprisingly sunny seaside town, calmly awaiting the incoming music storm that is 2007’s Great Escape Festival.

The south coast town’s attempt at staging a ‘music export’ convention – showcasing the best new music around – will see 150 bands playing across 20 venues, plus impromptu acoustic sessions sprouting up all over the place by new artists and special guests. All we need is an all-inclusive neon pink wristband and we’re in.

The opening night’s buzz is that the Happy Mondays will be playing a party at the end of the pier, showcasing new material and hopefully dancing through the hits. The other big buzz is a Club NME show by The Gallows, the most controversial new rock band straight out of Watford. The only problem is they’re not on ’till 1am and we’ve been advised to get there by 11 if we want to get into the venue – better get a move on – there’s a lot of ground to cover before we can get there.

First up, we check out the Uncut venue – Uncut is hosting three nights at the Red Roaster Cafe, marking our debut year with a presence at the festival. Tonight will see singer-songwriters Kate Walsh, Jersey Budd, Findlay Brown and Aussie brother and sister duo Angus & Julia Stone perform in the laid-back coffee shop surroundings.

We leave the venue as the queue builds for opener Jersey Budd, to check out the early bands down at Audio, where the Barfly promoters have got The 1990s playing. However the queue is already a ‘one in one out’ system and we haven’t got time to hang about.

Head to the Ocean Rooms, a fantastically confusing venue with a massive Blondie pop art painting above the front door with the slogan “Get Up” – we catch Hertfordshire band Look See Proof play jangly plain indie – their closing song and single “Start Again” is OK if only just that. Upstairs is far better, where Danish five-piece Oh No Ono are concocting a funky psychedelic storm. They have huge hair and huger grins, and track “Practical Money Skills” causes much whirling funky dancing from the incredibly sweaty room that have gathered. They end on a brave but perfectly executed version of “a song from Great Britain” – a pitch-perfect cover of The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows.” A great set closer, but now desperate to get some fresh air, and maybe a beer. This running up and down the streets of Brighton is thirsty work.

Its still daylight, amazing. Walking back down past the big giant upside down purple cow stage, aptly named the Udderbelly stage, we kick ourselves – we’ve just missed a T-Mobile surprise ‘street gig’. The Gossip have just ended a set and hordes of grinning sweaty indie guys and gals are spilling out into the streets clutching goodie bags and looking at their Great Escape maps looking for the next music fix. We hear a rumour that the Scissor Sisters will be the next surprise band on – hoping that’s true – they’d be perfect on a balmy evening like this.

Pop back to the Red Roaster, and catch the opening songs by Angus & Julia Stone. Compared to the madness outside, the hush and quiet of the cafe is startling. Fragile, beautiful songs with the bare minimum of strings and drum beats. Heartbreaking songs, but my heart is still racing so need to get out and attempt to break in to the Happy Mondays showcase on the pier.

9.57pm and the Mondays are due on in three minutes – Uncut is hoping that Shaun Ryder doesn’t break the habit of a lifetime and is a few minutes late – but no joy! The Mondays appear to have been cloned and replaced by a band that are definitely not a shambles at all! We make it in time for the opening sirens – they are here to showcase material from their new album “Uncle Dysfunktional” – their first in 14 years. And the songs are amazing – tuneful, dancey, silly lyrics but you don’t care. “Jelly Bean” is especially brilliant – with the crowd singing along, waving their baggy-era hats in the hair.

Ryder and co also don’t dare disappoint the 200-capacity Horatio’s Bar by playing brilliant versions of hits “Loose Fit”, “Kinky Afro” and “Rev Black Grape” too.

Ryder proclaimed before the show that if “anyone didn’t like the new stuff, he’d chuck them in the sea”. I can’t see that being a problem tonight; swimming seems a good idea, considering how hot it is in the tiny disco-ball dressed bar on the pier.

I leave the Baggy boys to it before the end to make a mad dash back to the Red Roaster – Uncut hears that the diminutive singer Kate Walsh is going down a storm as the night’s closing performer. We squeeze into the cafe to find the crowd sitting crosslegged on the floor right up to the performance space at the front. Everyone looks completely mesmerised, floating on Kate’s pure and stunning vocals. Set closer “Your Song” is simply brilliant. Apparently Kate has a very sore throat, she had to cancel a gig earlier in the evening due to illness – but if what Uncut witnesses is the sound of illness, we can only imagine what she sounds like when she’s healthy.

Uncut is knackered now, and we hear that Gallows over at the Komedia is already oversubscribed, so we take our leave to sit on the beach eating proper seaside chips, watching festival-goers who’ve had a long evening out attempt to go skinny-dipping in the icy waters.

We’ll be back tomorrow for what will be another top night of musical adventure on the streets of Brigho – as the locals might call it. Uncut is hosting an XL Recordings night with Elvis Perkins, Kid Harpoon and Jamie T-esque Jack Penate all doing their thing in the Red Roaster.

Elsewhere we’ll try and catch up with Canadian’s The Heights, who are meant to be fantastic, and Air Traffic. The Gallows are also playing again, at the more Uncut-friendly time of 9.30, so hopefully we’ll catch them this time, and Friendly Fires might be worth a shot too – we have a craving for some glo-stick fun.

FARAH ISHAQ

Ozzy Osbourne Gets Birmingham Star

Uncut
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0
Ozzy Osbourne Gets Birmingham Star

Veteran prince of darkness Ozzy Osbourne is to be honoured with the first star on Birmingham city's new Walk Of Fame on Broad Street on July 6. The singer's induction will be on the same day he plays a hometown show at Birmingham's National Indoor Arena, part of his biggest solo European tour ever. Ozzy has already been inducted in a Walk Of Fame Before, he was honoured with a star on Hollywood's version in 2002. However, being given the Brum star makes Ozzy far happier. He commented: “I have a star in Hollywood on their Walk of Fame but having a Star in my home town means so much more to me. A personal thanks goes out to Lord Mayor Randal Brew.” The Birmingham Walk of Stars will honour those people who have made a significant contribution in the categories of music, television, film, radio, theatre, sport and literacy. Future stars are likely to be given to comedian Jasper Carrot and actress Julie Walters. The public are now being asked to get involved and to nominate and vote for the stars they would like to see honoured, Nominate your choices here at walkofstars.co.uk Uncut would like Dexy's Midnight Runners front man Kevin Rowland to not be forgotten!

Veteran prince of darkness Ozzy Osbourne is to be honoured with the first star on Birmingham city’s new Walk Of Fame on Broad Street on July 6.

The singer’s induction will be on the same day he plays a hometown show at Birmingham’s National Indoor Arena, part of his biggest solo European tour ever.

Ozzy has already been inducted in a Walk Of Fame Before, he was honoured with a star on Hollywood’s version in 2002. However, being given the Brum star makes Ozzy far happier. He commented: “I have a star in Hollywood on their Walk of Fame but having a Star in my home town means so much more to me. A personal thanks goes out to Lord Mayor Randal Brew.”

The Birmingham Walk of Stars will honour those people who have made a significant contribution in the categories of music, television, film, radio, theatre, sport and literacy.

Future stars are likely to be given to comedian Jasper Carrot and actress Julie Walters.

The public are now being asked to get involved and to nominate and vote for the stars they would like to see honoured,

Nominate your choices here at walkofstars.co.uk

Uncut would like Dexy’s Midnight Runners front man Kevin Rowland to not be forgotten!

The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Zeitgeist”

John Mulvey
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Billy Corgan is not an easy man to like, but from time to time in his career he's made some pretty good records. I should make it clear from the start that I'm hardly a Smashing Pumpkins obsessive: I liked the psych-grunge of "Gish" a lot, and I was distinctly impressed by the translation of ambitio...

Billy Corgan is not an easy man to like, but from time to time in his career he’s made some pretty good records. I should make it clear from the start that I’m hardly a Smashing Pumpkins obsessive: I liked the psych-grunge of “Gish” a lot, and I was distinctly impressed by the translation of ambition into a new kind of stadium rock on “Siamese Dream”.

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The Thrills Added To Knowsley Hall Event

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The Thrills Added To Knowsley Hall Event

West Coast influenced Irish group The Thrills are one of the latest artists to be confirmed for the Uncut-sponsored Knowsley Hall music festival. The event, the biggest of its kind in the North West, runs over two days, June 23 and 24, the same weekend as Glastonbury and is headlined by The Who and Keane, as well featuring a host of other big acts. The Thrills have just completed recording their third album "Teenager," and will be previewing new material at the Liverpool show, as well as playing songs from their million selling back catalogue. Local Radio 1 championed band The Wombats have also been added to the line-up. The Knowsley Hall bill includes several bands that hail from Liverpool including Shack, The Coral, The Zutons and Icicle Works. Day tickets start from £37.50 and weekend tickets are £70. More details about the line-up and tickets are available here from knowsleyhallmusicfestival.co.uk The full line-up confirmed so far is: Saturday June 23 Main Stage The Who /The Coral / The View/ The Thrills / Shack / Pete Wylie & The Mighty Wah MySpace Stage The Black Velvets/ The Loungs / The Alones / The Maybes / Miss King & The Kougars / The Quarter / Delta Fiasco/ Battle Of The Bands Winner Sunday June 24 Main Stage Keane / The Zutons/ Madness / Joss Stone / Ross Copperman / The Icicle Works/ The Wombats / The Orange Lights MySpace Candie Payne / The Aeroplanes / I Am Finn / Battle Of The Bands Winner

West Coast influenced Irish group The Thrills are one of the latest artists to be confirmed for the Uncut-sponsored Knowsley Hall music festival.

The event, the biggest of its kind in the North West, runs over two days, June 23 and 24, the same weekend as Glastonbury and is headlined by The Who and Keane, as well featuring a host of other big acts.

The Thrills have just completed recording their third album “Teenager,” and will be previewing new material at the Liverpool show, as well as playing songs from their million selling back catalogue.

Local Radio 1 championed band The Wombats have also been added to the line-up. The Knowsley Hall bill includes several bands that hail from Liverpool including Shack, The Coral, The Zutons and Icicle Works.

Day tickets start from £37.50 and weekend tickets are £70.

More details about the line-up and tickets are available here from knowsleyhallmusicfestival.co.uk

The full line-up confirmed so far is:

Saturday June 23

Main Stage

The Who /The Coral / The View/ The Thrills / Shack / Pete Wylie & The Mighty Wah

MySpace Stage

The Black Velvets/ The Loungs / The Alones / The Maybes / Miss King & The Kougars / The Quarter / Delta Fiasco/ Battle Of The Bands Winner

Sunday June 24

Main Stage

Keane / The Zutons/ Madness / Joss Stone / Ross Copperman / The Icicle Works/ The Wombats / The Orange Lights

MySpace

Candie Payne / The Aeroplanes / I Am Finn / Battle Of The Bands Winner

The Beastie Boys’ “The Mix-Up”

John Mulvey
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We're partying like it's 1994 here at Uncut this afternoon, because the new Beastie Boys album has arrived. It's called "The Mix-Up", and we're just grooving amiably to track seven, "Off The Grid". Actually, "Off The Grid" has just stepped up a grade and now sounds rather hefty, by the standards of this record so far. The good news about "The Mix-Up" is that it seems to be a big improvement on the last Beasties album, 2004's "To The Five Boroughs": if you remember, a stiff and uncomfortably worthy attempt to honour the precepts of early hip-hop. The bad news about "The Mix-Up", though, is that it's an all-instrumental album. At their best, Beasties albums have always felt like a slightly crazed mix'n'match: that sense of a band of hip dilettantes who'll get bored of straight hip-hop after ten minutes and work out their tensions with some bratty hardcore punk, then chill out with a bit of burbling jazz-funk. "The Mix-Up", like "To The 5 Boroughs", is not an eclectic record. Instead, it consists of 12 workouts, often led by Money Mark at the organ, which locate mellow, goatee-stroking grooves that were probably first traversed 30 or 40 years ago by The Meters. They're jams, I guess, though not quite so sloppy and loose as the ones - in very much the same style - which provided interludes on "Check Your Head" and "Ill Communications". "Suco De Tangerina" chucks a bit of dub into the mix. One song title - "Freaky Hijiki" - has the obligatory healthfood (in this case a quite nice seaweed) reference. And they're extremely pleasant tunes, being the work of three guys of a certain age and their mates, who've reached an unexpected level of technical competence, want to kick back in the rehearsal room, and clearly feel they have nothing to prove to anyone any more. There's an endearing warmth to tracks like "14th St Break", even when the Beasties are aping that '70s blaxploitation funk. I guess I was prepared to be disappointed by this record, and, even though it sounds a bit dated and self-indulgent, it's a lot more enjoyable than I expected. I'll try and write something more on it when I've listened to it properly. Still, though, should the Beasties really settle for this, when they can do so much more?

We’re partying like it’s 1994 here at Uncut this afternoon, because the new Beastie Boys album has arrived. It’s called “The Mix-Up”, and we’re just grooving amiably to track seven, “Off The Grid”.

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Picking A Fight With Jeff Tweedy

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“I can’t for the life of me understand how 50-year-old rock critics can pretend to like Babyshambles,” thunders Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy in the current issue of Uncut. “It just drives me nuts,” he goes on, building up a fairly impressive head of indignant steam. “I’m like: ‘How can you pretend to like that? What the fuck, are you serious?’ There’s now way,” he continues, not done yet. “You can’t – you have to be young. You have to be that age to do that, because you should know better by now?” Hey, really, Jeff? Well, thanks for sharing that with us. I don’t want to sound too sensitive here, and I’m absolutely sure Jeff doesn’t keep such close tabs on stuff I write to know how much Babyshambles mean to me – even at my advanced age, decrepitude and drool obviously now a messy part of my life as the sun sinks on what’s left of it – so perhaps I should also be careful about taking any of this personally. But what Jeff has to say – them’s fighting words, man. Over the last 14 months or so, I’ve seen Pete solo and Babyshambles in full-on band mode maybe 10 times, or almost once a month and I haven’t had to PRETEND on a single occasion that I’ve enjoyed them, I just have. So, yes, I guess I must be fucking serious about them. And I don’t listen to the staggeringly misrepresented Down In Albion or go to see them as often as I can in some ghastly attempt to recapture some fading aspect of youth, my own or anybody else’s. I listen to them because this is the kind of rock’n’roll I’ve always loved – rowdy, lyrical, ramshackle, euphoric, heartbreaking, brutal, beautiful, every so often unhinged, troubled, redemptive and always exciting and unpredictable. I have tons of time for Tweedy and the music he makes with Wilco, hence their serial appearances in Uncut where they have a lot of fans. But I’d have to say that great Babyshambles tracks like “Fuck Forever”, “Pipedown”, “Killamangiro”, “Eight Dead Boys”, “What Katie Did Next”, “Loyalty Song”, “Up The Morning” and “Merry Go Round” mean as much – probably more – to me than anything Wilco have done. And live, Babyshambles are increasingly amazing, inciting scenes of joyous rapture perhaps alien to Jeff, whose audience generally tend to be a bit more on the chin-stroking side, a lot less combustible than the rabid hordes who adore Pete and let him know it, loudly. What would Jeff prefer people like me – the mature Pete fan, that is, and there are a lot of us – to listen to? Would he think it more decorous if I meekly succumbed to the exasperating worthiness of Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible instead of the noisy exhilaration of Down In Albion or the biting clatter, for instance, of Favourite Worst Nightmare, The Arctic Monkeys presumably also being off limits? It’s not going to fucking happen, Jeff. Don’t even think about it.

“I can’t for the life of me understand how 50-year-old rock critics can pretend to like Babyshambles,” thunders Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy in the current issue of Uncut.

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Sly Stone Brings The Family Stone To Europe

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Sly Stone Brings The Family Stone To Europe

Sly Stone is to join the Family Stone for their first European tour in over twenty years. The funk group are to play a one-off date in the UK - at the unlikely venue of The Opera House in Bournemouth on England's South Coast. The show on July 28 will be Sly's first show with the family in Britain since 1987. The reclusive musical genius has made very few appearances in the last few years, though he did join the group for a very short performance at last year's Grammy Awards. Sly Stone joins original family members, trumpeter Cynthia Robinson, and sister Vet Stone on the nine-date European tour. The full line-up reported by the Guardian newspaper includes: Lisa Stone, Skyler Jett, Anthony Yates, Joseph Yates, Stefon Dubose, Mike Rinta, Johnnie Bamont, Tony Stead, Alfia Fisher and Funn Robertson. See Sly at the following events and shows this July: Umbria Jazz - Umbria, Perugia, Italy (12) Montreux Jazz Festival - Montreux, Switzerland (13) Blue Note Festival - Gent, Belgium (14) North Sea Jazz Festival - Rotterdam, Holland (15) Nice Jazz - Nice, France (19) Pori Jazz festival - Pori, Finland (20) Olympia Hall - Paris, France (23) Jazzaldia - San Sebastian, Spain (27) Opera House, Bournemouth Opera House (28) Tickets for all venues are on sale now.

Sly Stone is to join the Family Stone for their first European tour in over twenty years.

The funk group are to play a one-off date in the UK – at the unlikely venue of The Opera House in Bournemouth on England’s South Coast.

The show on July 28 will be Sly’s first show with the family in Britain since 1987.

The reclusive musical genius has made very few appearances in the last few years, though he did join the group for a very short performance at last year’s Grammy Awards.

Sly Stone joins original family members, trumpeter Cynthia Robinson, and sister Vet Stone on the nine-date European tour.

The full line-up reported by the Guardian newspaper includes: Lisa Stone, Skyler Jett, Anthony Yates, Joseph Yates, Stefon Dubose, Mike Rinta, Johnnie Bamont, Tony Stead, Alfia Fisher and Funn Robertson.

See Sly at the following events and shows this July:

Umbria Jazz – Umbria, Perugia, Italy (12)

Montreux Jazz Festival – Montreux, Switzerland (13)

Blue Note Festival – Gent, Belgium (14)

North Sea Jazz Festival – Rotterdam, Holland (15)

Nice Jazz – Nice, France (19)

Pori Jazz festival – Pori, Finland (20)

Olympia Hall – Paris, France (23)

Jazzaldia – San Sebastian, Spain (27)

Opera House, Bournemouth Opera House (28)

Tickets for all venues are on sale now.

Raccoo-oo-oon, The Go! Team and more chinstroking about Justice, Dubstep etc

John Mulvey
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A nice post from Tunetribe about yesterday's blog on Justice. Not least because he/she seems to have picked some sense out of my gibberish. "Odd that dance music is so prone to excessive analysis though," they write. "Isn't all that discursive net babble about Dubstep a little wearing? At least this sort of stuff [Justice], achingly hip as it may currently be, is meant to be fun." It's an interesting point. My suspicion is that dance music lends itself to theorising for two reasons: one,the artists often lack the sort of backstory or self-aggrandising profile that gives journalists something to write about other than the music - or, at best, that places the music in a marketable context. My second hunch is that dance music, thanks to its notional futurism and its frequent lack of subtext, often attracts writers who are interested in constructing a progressive agenda which can accommodate a bunch of records they like at the time. This seems particularly true of dubstep, which is something I've never quite developed a taste for, in spite of many friends proselytising about stuff like the Burial album. It strikes me that this is music which is gagging to be theorised about: lots of urban dystopia, grimy Ballardian futurism, a potentially intriguing mixture of dancefloor codes and morbid alienation etc. But to be honest, it all seems a bit corny and obvious to me, reminiscent of those studiously bleak "Isolationist" comps from the early '90s, when someone (Kevin Martin from Techno Animal, if memory serves) worked out that the paranoia-inducing aspects of dopesmoking could be aligned to dub. Anyway, this is Burial's Myspace, so have a listen and let me know what you think. Onto today's favourite tunes. I'm just into the third play of the day of the new album by Raccoo-oo-oon, which is a thoroughly bracing 40 minutes of Iowa City noiseniks enacting some kind of prankish tribal rituals. "Behold Secret Kingdom" is a wayward and splattery racket that infrequently resembles "Funhouse" Stooges (a saxophone is involved) running naked through some woods and hitting each other with sticks. It has tunes of a sort, though, and is a lot more accessible than other noise-based stuff from the New Weird America psych scene (like the Magik Markers, I guess) because, as my colleague John Robinson, put it, "They're Raccoo-oo-oon, and they're rocky." In other words, they're not just avant-garde cacophony jockeys, they're exhilarating punks, too. Finally, a quick mention for the impressively jolly new Go! Team single, "Grip Like A Vice", which proves me wrong when I thought their '80s rap/riot grrl/garage rock/big beat hybrid would only work for a single album. Great version of Sonic Youth's "Bull In The Heather", too.

A nice post from Tunetribe about yesterday’s blog on Justice. Not least because he/she seems to have picked some sense out of my gibberish.

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Gruff Rhys Amongst Latest Additions For Latitude

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Gruff Rhys Amongst Latest Additions For Latitude
More artists have been added to the music line-up for this year's Uncut-sponsored Latitude festival in July. The four day muisc and arts festival that takes place at Henham Park in Suffolk from July 12 - 15, will now see performances from the likes of Turin Brakes, Hot Club De Paris, Super 'solo'...

More artists have been added to the music line-up for this year’s Uncut-sponsored Latitude festival in July.

The four day muisc and arts festival that takes place at Henham Park in Suffolk from July 12 – 15, will now see performances from the likes of Turin Brakes, Hot Club De Paris, Super ‘solo’ Furry Animal Gruff Rhys and Soulsavers with Mark Lanegan.

The Uncut stage has new additions to the bill including Aqualung and EMI’s new West London pop signings Grace. The bands join the Gotan Project and Patrick Wolf.

Previously confirmed headliners on the Uncut stage, Explosions In The Sky, have unfortunately had to cancel their entire European touring schedule due to family illness. A very special replacement headliner will be announced on Monday – rest assured they are a sheer Uncut favourite!

Main stage headliners at this year’s festival, now in it’s second year are the Arcade Fire, The Good, The Bad And The Queen and Damien Rice.

Other artists confirmed to play also include Jarvis, Midlake, Wilco, and Tinariwen.

The festival, billing itself as the alternative to Glastonbury will also host a wide and diverse array of music, film, comedy and theatre areas across the four-day event.

Weekend tickets cost £112, day tickets are £45.

The latest music announcements are listed here:

Obelisk Stage
Friday
HOT CLUB de PARIS

Sunday
ANDREW BIRD

Uncut Stage
Friday
AQUALUNG
SONIC HEARTS
GRACE

Saturday
TURIN BRAKES
RICKIE LEE JONES
SCOTT MATTHEWS
JULIAN VELARD
SATIN PEACHES

Sunday
SOULSAVERS
GRUFF RHYS
THE DEARS
RA RA RIOT
THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND

Sunrise Stage
Friday
NEW YOUNG PONY CLUB
RUARI JOSEPH

Saturday
TERRA NAOMI
JEREMY WARMSLEY
MAKE MODEL
PASSENGERS
GET WELL SOON
ANDY GOWER

Sunday
HOWLING BELLS
FINAL FANTASY
THE LEA SHORES
HOW I BECAME A BOMB
HELLO SAFERIDE
PARIS MOTEL

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