It’s one of those occasions that reminds you of why you love going to the cinema so much.  It doesn’t happen often – if you’re pretty choosey about what films you go out to see, chances are you generally leave the cinema feeling fairly satisfied with the experience – give or take the occasional disappointment or pleasant surprise – as you’ll often have a good idea what to expect from the experience if you’re a regular reader of film press and reviews – you’ll also know to temper your expectations for movies that attract a flood of hyperbole.

And hyperbole is certainly something that Kick Ass has attracted – ever since the screening of a segment of the movie at last year’s Comic Con, the general consensus has been that this movie is going to be something very special indeed.  Up until that initial screening, it had been noted by comic movie fans as a little movie with a lot of potential.  But since then, the word of mouth – particularly in this Twitter age – has been consistently breathless in its praise of Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of Scottish comic book icon Mark Millar’s graphic novel (which was optioned before the first issue had even been published).

Adapted by Vaughan and Jane Goldman, the British duo’s script was roundly rejected by major Hollywood studios, who baulked at the violence – mainly that eminating from the 11-year-old girl character Hit Girl.  So Vaughan took to raising the financing for the film himself, making its resultant success a triumph for British independent film-making despite being set across the pond, with it also including a host of British acting talent: Aaron Johnson, Mark Strong, Jason Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher and Tamer Hassan are among a cast that’s clearly having an inordinate amount of fun – a feeling that’s effortlessly transmitted to the audience.

What Millar, Vaughan and Goldman have come up with is one of the all time great comic book movies – one that revels in its origins, and that – coming at a point when we’re all in danger of getting extremely bored of endless graphic novel and comic book adaptations – reminds us of the vitality that the comic world can bring movies when they’re done as well as this.  Whereas most mainstream Hollywood movies – even the very best comic adaptations – will pull their punches at the last, Kick-Ass is thrilling in its willingness to go all the way.  The best part of watching Kick-Ass in a packed cinema was in being part of an audience reacting to lines being crossed that we’re accustomed to others stopping short of – the most talked about example would be that much talked about deployment of the C-word, but there’s also the upshot of Kick-Ass’ first attempt at crime-fighting – one that underlines the tangible sense of danger that you just don’t get in 99% of modern action movies.

What starts out as Superbad-meets-Spider-Man in the movie’s first half, ends up being The Dark Knight-meets-Kill Bill in the second – the violence is pure comic-book (and shot brilliantly by Vaughan, who could teach many other modern directors a thing or two about shooting coherent action scenes), but there’s always a sense of peril, of genuine threat to the protaganists, that gives Kick-Ass the same edge that made The Dark Knight so exhilarating.  That’s of course not to mention how funny the movie is – it’s possibly the funniest teen comedy since Superbad, with Mark Strong as Kick-Ass’ gangster nemesis Frank D’Amico getting probably the most laughs from his permanent bemusement at these masked nut-cases who are constantly disrupting his operation.

It’s not often a movie as hyped as this exceeds expectations – the last time I left the cinema with the sense that I could immediately pay to watch the same movie again is one I haven’t had since The Dark Knight (and there hadn’t been many other movies before that either).  For all the fuss about 3D – and I’m a supporter of it if done correctly – it’s movies like Kick-Ass, the ones that so reward being watched as part of an audience being left breathless by its audacity, that will always keep cinema alive.

In summary then: I liked it.

10/10 : If there’s a better cinema experience out there right now, I haven’t seen it.

Kick-Ass is in cinemas now, rated 15

Milk – London’s top warehouse party promoters and the city’s noisiest cassette label – have put out their fourth release, a split tape of Glasgow shredders Divorce and Ultimate Thrush.

It followers Teeth’s ‘Jammers’ album of a couple of months back (as well cassettes from other awesome thrashy types Bloody Knees and Chaps) and only cost £4.50.

Get it now from milkrecords.bigcartel.com

It’s early 2010 and the Class of ’07 Reunion is underway. These New Puritans are blanking the buffet, stoic as ever but un-recognisable to their ex-piers, an extra vanilla Sunshine Underground have turned up without dates, past their prime, Klaxons are “on their way” and NYPC are still wearing their old uniforms, sounding exactly as they did when we last saw them, which means they’re equipped with little more than two killer hits (‘Lost A Girl’ and the Metronomy Vs Girls Aloud-sounding ‘We Want To’). As ‘The Optimist’ fires 8 more largely forgettable synth-laden tracks it’s as impossible to muster contempt for them as feign excitement, even if there is an overall feeling that the band are desperately clawing at mainstream success via mediocrity. In the hardened disco drums of Sarah Jones, ‘The Optimist’ is, at times, better than OK, but ultimately it’s just that.

By Stuart Stubbs

Photography by Simon Leak

The Internet may be ‘killing the music industry’ but it’s giving us some brilliant, insular weirdos along the way

Along with all the terrifying potential consequences of technology-driven music consumption – a peerage for Simon Cowell, compulsory adverts in choruses, Ellie Goulding: The Videogame – there will no doubt be some changes that are as exciting as well as scary and super futuristic. Thanks to the written-to-death phenomenon of web 2.0 (the phase in internet development halfway between 1.0 and 3.0 in which people slowly begin to use Facebook and Wikipedia more than porn sites), we’ve been given a whole heap of brilliant new music that would have otherwise been taped over or left to rot in attics. This is because the dawn of file sharing has revealed a teeming mass of nervy bedroom musicians, now given the freedom to air their art without the torturous rigmarole of forming a band, performing night after night for peanuts and crumbs of appreciation, before getting signed, dropped, killed and then eaten by EMI. Whether it’s the dubstep that leaked out of hot-boxed bedrooms in Croydon or riotous no-fi from Brooklyn lofts and LA basements, our current musical appetite has been lead from the back by reclusive, brilliant weirdos.

Sitting opposite me in Jaguar Shoes’ basement is Dayve Hawk. He’s soft-spoken, considered and friendly with just a trace of reclusive, weirdo brilliance and last September, as ‘Memory Tapes’, he took the latest, most impressive, forward-thinking and fantastic-sounding step in a thirty year dialogue between guitars and synthesizers.

“Basically I was doing Weird Tapes and I was doing the, umm, the Memory Cassette stuff,” says Dayve, delving back in time “and both of them were sort of half-assed. There was a lot of samples and it was really just me fucking around but when blogs started picking up on it, labels came and wanted a record.” Hence Memory Tapes and ‘Seek Magic’, a shimmering debut that sewed together dreampop, low-key beatscapes, and euphoric space disco; a masterpiece that gatecrashed autumn with the promise of a painful, sunless winter. In fact it’s so good that it’s been re-released this month on special colourful vinyl.

Before the cultish hype set in though, and paid for the dye and the forthcoming tours, Hawk erratically released free mp3s on his blog as Weird Tapes and Memory Cassette for anyone who cared to listen. By virtue of them being quite good, they didn’t go unnoticed and he quickly caught the ears of Diplo’s Mad Decent (who’ve got him remixing jobs with Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, Gucci and Britney Spears), DFA and countless other hip labels.

Just as the interest in him has followed a similar pattern to successful bedroom-compiled hip-hop mixtapes – the kind of organic, passive marketing that T-Mobile suits would sell their nans for – so the album itself is doused in a bedroom aesthetic; a self-contained 40 minutes, it’s deeply personal, evocative, and yet feels isolated and disconnected. In common with the best bedroom music, from Burial to Sparklehorse, it sounds like being alone and, when Dayve describes his hometown, you can understand why.

“It’s a kind of semi-rural area of New Jersey. Generally New Jersey is extremely populated, with stripmalls and it’s kind of a Hellscape. But the area I’m from is the Pine Barrens, which is all just pine trees, and cedar lakes, things like that, a bit like Twin Peaks, so I wouldn’t say I’m in the middle of some sort cultural scene or anything out there,” he laughs. “My whole family lives in the laundry room of my in-laws house. I have a pile of synthesizers and guitars and things in the corner and that’s my studio so it’s definitely a sort of bedroom project and it’s not a very happy record.”

Where does that come from?

“Me, being a miserable bastard,” he laughs. “I mean I don’t think of myself as a very easy-going, happy-go-lucky guy, so I think it comes from my basic personality. That’s why the whole ‘Chillwave’ tag has never seemed right to me.”

Chillwave, a word he says with thinly veiled contempt, is not something he has listened to much. He doesn’t listen to much new music at all. ‘Seek Magic’ might sound at least partially indebted to the endeavours of LCD Soundsystem and Animal Collective but Dayve attributes it to a lucky triangulation of tape music, classic rock and freestyle.

“There are no record stores round me, but when I was a kid I had a little plastic Fisher Price record player. Anytime I’d be at somebody’s house I’d go find their parents’ vinyl down in the basement, things they had bought in the sixties and stuff. I used to sneak them up into my coat or whatever and take them home. So I like a lot of that kind of old, electronic music, yeah, Stockhausen and Steve Reich, Terry Riley. I feel like a lot of the dance music influence comes from a roller-skating rink, which in the town that I live in was kind of the closest thing to a nightclub when I was a kid. For some reason they played a lot of electro and freestyle, like Connie and Lisa Lisa, which I’ll always have a soft spot for. Then there was maybe in the 90’s a Tommy Boy comp. called ‘Perfect Beats’, you know and things like New Order.”

Where his heart really lies though, plain to hear in Memory Tape’s vocal harmonies and occasional forays into down-tempo funk, is in guitar music from a more innocent time. “I’m a sucker for things like, I don’t know, fucking ‘Stairway To Heaven’! Ha, ‘Close to the Edge’ and that. I love Fleetwood Mac and I like Hall And Oates a lot too. The thing I like about that sort of thing is I really like 60’s pop music and those euphoric choruses. Modern music, when the chorus comes in it seems like ‘This is extremely easy to memorise’. I like music that leads to a peak, that doesn’t just seem designed. Modern pop music seems designed; it might be catchy but it’s also annoying, older pop music seems genuinely inspired.”

He does have a few nice words to say about the accompanying contemporary background though, and the new, enabling distribution methods that he can thank for selling-out his three January gigs in the UK, his first ever shows.

“It’s cool because we do have this culture in place now where you can make music and it can get out instantly, it’s almost like the 50’s or 60’s where you’d cut an acetate and take it down to the radio station and they’d play it the day that you’d cut it. I think as horrifying as it is for record labels, I think in the long run it’s good for music.”

Is there a chance interest this system has garnered him ruin though? It’s hard to think how his brand of distanced, melancholic music will survive the transition to live shows. At the Luminaire the night before this interview, Memory Tapes deal with the problem by creatively re-clothing the record and lacing it together in a different formation.

“I went back and rearranged the entire record, I looked at it kind of like a DJ set and remixed every track, recorded myself playing new keyboard parts and everything, then we play along to that.”

He says it wasn’t his favourite of these first shows as he was on a stage, something that, like awkward chatting between songs, he learned to hate in his former band, the synth pop outfit Hail Social. The Luminaire gig ended with a reprise of fan-favourite ‘Bicycle’, winding to a halt long after Dayve and his drummer have left the stage without saying a word. You get the feeling he takes the bedroom with him.

———–

Originally published in issue 14 (vol 3) of Loud And Quiet. February 2010

Garage rock with pop hooks and songs to actually get addicted to; mid-fi starts here

BEN COOK WAS A CHILD STAR! After countless attempts to put it cleverly, there it is, blurted out and in capital letters. And while we’re at it – BEN COOK IS A KLEPTOMANIAC. Okay, WAS, Ben Cook was a kleptomaniac, but, as he told Australian blog NoGuvNoLuv last year, all that tealeaf-ing stopped when it made members of Fucked Up – his pretty decent hardcore band – feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless, neither revelation is easy to keep in once known, and now both are out.

“I guess you missed the Goosebumps and Little Men hits on IMDB?” half questions Aerin Fogel. “Or the Coco Puffs commercial. I recommend getting a hold of Little Men if you can. Ben pretends like he hates it but I think he still knows all his lines, including the amazing a cappella rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’ near the end.”

Aerin, a fractured-voiced Suicide Girl-type, purse-lipped here in a tyre yard “because I look good in black”, has clearly studied her band mate’s onscreen work and so impressed was she with that amazing ‘Amazing Grace’ performance that she and Ben formed The Bitters as a reason to hang out (“We wanted to hang out all the time but we both had too much pride to say it,” she says “so ‘writing a song’ became a plausible excuse. This mostly involved scribing detailed treasure maps on the studio walls in gold ink.”).

In the east end of Toronto – their hometown and a city that Aerin is particularly proud of – the pair determinedly found time for their new project, between Aerin’s ongoing degree studies (she’s currently writing her first novel also) and Ben’s commitments to Pink Eyes and the gang. “Anything is ‘hard’ if you think about it that way,” reasons the singer “so the same goes for thinking your commitments are easy to sort out.”

The walls covered in doodles of snake-back ridge and the like, Aerin and Ben wrote, among other things, ‘Warrior’, which is why they’re here in Loud And Quiet. Indecently, the rest of The Bitters’ limited 12” EP, ‘Wooden Glove’, is very nearly as good as ‘Warrior’, as is the current Captured Tracks 7”. For now though, even having obsessed over it for the past six months, the size of this song’s anthemic pop chorus, delivered in semi-cracked, him’n’her duel vocals, remains completely thrilling like nothing else. It doesn’t even seem to matter that no one can make out the whole of the first line.

“It’s ‘…your sword goes straight through my heart,’” says Aerin, ending months of mumbles to the stuttering, swaying melody. “It’s about a warrior who has slain so many victims he is no longer able to take off his armour (skin), because he couldn’t remember how even if he wanted to (which he doesn’t). It’s a story. [All of our songs] are stories. Everything is a story. But a good story has to be told in different words. Worlds. Otherwise it’s hard for the listener to find any way to relate. There’s negligible value in relating a story directly from the experience. No one cares about your break-up ten years ago, they’re too busy mourning their own.

“Anyway, all the songs are about bridges,” she continues. “There’s truth (real experiences, breathing characters, tangible thoughts) at one end of the bridge, and a world of fiction and fantasy on the other. A good song is simply a matter of building the proper bridge between these two worlds – one that anyone is entitled to walk across, and one that doesn’t crumble when you’re halfway along; one that isn’t too hard underfoot, and one that doesn’t rock too much in either direction. And one that is not too long, because a person can get tired walking across a long bridge – you may as well have just gone around the long way in that case.”

Golden-inked treasure maps don’t seem too alien now – Aerin, and no doubt ex-child star/ex-klepto Ben, has a deep and vivid imagination, which isn’t the first trait that springs to mind when looking at a super cool garage band in a tyre yard. But while The Bitters are essentially just that, it’s not as if that’s all they are. They don’t worship at the alter of Billy Childish like so many others, for one (melody virtuoso Burt Bacharach is their demigod – “We recently drove to a casino in one of the most depressing towns in Northern Ontario to witness a confusing medley of his songs done mostly by Vegas-style, TV-dinner vocalists,” explains Aerin. “This also featured Burt himself, tucked up to the piano, and single tears during ‘Make It Easy On Yourself.’), nor do they seek out lo-fi aesthetics as if analogue is a badge of honour – if anything it finds them, out of necessity and thin resources. They make ‘Cave Pop’, a sub-genre they’ve self-coined, which is “murkier and more mystical than Sidewalk Pop and filthier and darker than Dank Pop, which usually originates from the mouth of a cave as opposed to the slimy gut within,” lets on Aerin, which we totally knew anyway.

We also knew, way before this little chat, that this band don’t let little things like interviews prevent them from spinning a yarn and expanding their storytelling skills (Google that NoGuvNoLuv interview for Ben’s description of how he’d have sound tracked Planet Earth) but just in case we had forgotten, Aerin offers, “Cave Pop is not to be confused with Wave Pop (music written while lying on a sunny beach and enjoyed strictly during barbecue sessions) or Knave Pop (music written by, and exclusively for, kleptomaniacs).”

Knave Pop, one presumes is played only on half-inched equipment. As for ‘Cave Pop’, though (remember?), it’s worth paying attention to the three-letter word. “There’s always going to be a straight up pop hook in there somewhere,” say Aerin, which is Bacharach’s doing and the reason we’re ‘Warrior’ junkies; the reason The Bitters are not so comfortably filed between The Strange Boys and Thee Oh Seas.

“Lo-fi bands are creating a sound, not a song,” argues Aerin. “If you took a lot of those songs into a different recording context and tried to re-create them, they would lose their appeal altogether. There would be nothing left. We did two releases with a pretty lo-fi recording quality to them, but it was a question of resources. We don’t listen to lo-fi or really care about the recent onslaught. I’m confident that if our songs were redone in a better studio or without a slew of pedals and makeshift instruments they would sound just as good. ‘East General’, our upcoming album, is mid-fi quality. This is the direction things are headed. Lo-fi is already fading because there’s nothing to sustain it. People want something more interesting out of their music. There has to be a song to back up the sound.”

———–

Originally published in issue 14 (vol 3) of Loud And Quiet. February 2010

‘We Can’t Handle This’ – track one on this sapling Bay Area duo’s debut album – sounds like a Belle & Sebastian Dictaphone demo. Its tape hiss is almost as loud as its parts and yet its sweet, forlorn melody couldn’t be drowned out by jet engines. So yes, these San Fran-ers, who’ve been playing together for just 6 months, are packing a fair chunk of charm, and that’s before their 60’s-leaning psyche begins to flirt heavily with The Byrds and Love. Josh Alper and Glenn Donaldson coo in harmony and particularly on the sub-2-minute ‘Paris Cafe’ and prove that beautiful melodies are lo-fi in their very nature, and can thus be recorded so. That static “hisssss” doesn’t take long to become extremely annoying though, and a two-dollar drum machine adds to the ‘Rough Frame’’s woes, but if these songs were recorded properly this tie-dyed pop would be faultless.

By Stuart Stubbs

It’s very rare that new albums don’t get leaked these days. God knows who’s doing it (Perez Hilton probably), but the latest victim to the evil internet is The Golden Filter. The New York duo’s debut isn’t scheduled to be out until April 26th and yet it’s now been splashed about the web a month early. They’ve kept a cool head about the matter though, putting the record on sale immediately and giving away intergalactic real estate with a select few CDs.

The band have this to say about the whole frustrating affair…

Hello…

Yes, our beloved debut album has been leaked…
Such is life in the digital age, but a wise seeress could have seen it coming from miles away…

So the good news is that you can now pre-order VOLUSPA on CD (with a lovely 12 page booklet) or on Vinyl LP (a double record set) at our website www.thegoldenfilter.com and IMMEDIATELY receive the digital MP3 version, along with two bonus songs that are NOT on the album.  Also included are a couple of unseen video teasers we made for 2 of the songs on the album.

20 random albums (CD and Vinyl) will also contain a personalized Polaroid photo that we took, and ownership of a unique star in the sky…seriously.

Love,
The Golden Filter

Live videos… they’re not what they used to be, are they? Maybe it’s because bands don’t look like they used to. There’s rarely the same flamboyance of Axl Rose’s bandanna, as Guns’n'Roses play to a billion people in a super stadium, seen these days. And Bon Jovi could certainly teach Arctic Monkeys a thing or two about how to pout at the camera whilst holding down a hook as big as ‘Keep The Faith”s (NOT ‘Living On A Prayer’ – we like the rare stuff here at Loud And Quiet).

Bo Ningen have given it a shot though, as this hair-flinging video of bonkers psych monster ‘Koroshitai Kimochi’ proves, whilst keeping things as DIY as touring on a skateboard.

Bo Ningen- Koroshitai Kimochi from Stolen Recordings on Vimeo.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that Scots like their liquor. Born of infinite nights hard drinking in Selkirk outposts, third Frightened Rabbit album, ‘The Winter of Mixed Drinks’, blends neither subtlety nor irony. The jarring guitars of ‘Things’ shift the morning after scales from the eyes, before sweeping into the serene soundscapes of ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’. While lacking some of the raw, tearing urgency of ‘Midnight Organ Fight’, ‘The Winter…’ is still heartbreaking in its intent. By far their most sonically challenging at its beginning, ‘Skip The Youth’’s white noise synths carve out little hollows in your eardrums, while the charging drums and soaring harmonies of ‘Not Miserable’ could fell countless festival fields. Repeating ‘I am’ into the horizon, Frightened Rabbit still demand you acknowledge their existence, or at least lend them a friendly ear.

By Kate Parkin

On their emergence a decade ago, Black Rebel defied the zeitgeist by being a proper rock’n’roll band – all black leathers, dry ice and sleazy riffage. But since then, the trio have somewhat lost their way creatively. ‘Beat The Devil’s Tattoo’ sees a shift back to the fiery songwriting of their debut. The title track and opener is BRMC at their finest: hooky, lazily cool and pleasingly heavy. Sadly it’s a false dawn; from here on, the record descends into a semi-continuous, grinding dirge. ‘Evol’ typifies this: overlong, one-paced and self-indulgent. In the album’s midst, the folky, gospel-like ‘Sweet Feeling’s Gone’ is like throwing open the windows of a dark, smoky room and letting the music breathe; ‘Aya’, meanwhile, is a blistering, acerbic aural assault. But it’s just not enough. The dreary ‘Half-State’ drags the record to a long-overdue close.

By Chris Watkeys

Almost two years after the pulsating gloom of ‘It’s Not Something…’, you could be excused for having forgotten all about Errors’ shimmering shoe gaze and rumbling bass-driven beats. If they did happen to slip off and under your radar though, their second album is more of a polite reintroduction. Sidestepping the electronic menace of their debut, ‘Come Down With Me’ is an album inspired by contrast. Intent on avoiding replication, what it lacks in immediacy, it makes up for with contemplative, slow burning depth. Book ended by the dreamy ‘Bridge or Cloud’ and triumphant ‘Beards’, tracks like ‘Supertribe’ and ‘The Black Tent’ fall the right side of Squarepusher’s dark imagination, but it’s the ambient howl of ‘The Erskine Bridge’ that characterises Errors’ rich ambition best. It’s nice to be reminded.

By Reef Younis

LoneLady, or Julie Campbell to her mum, is a solo Mancunian with a debt to her home city. Her debut album is built from the monochrome, sparse bricks of Manchester’s Factory Records, with echoes of New Order and A Certain Ratio, and also from the one-finger riffs of early 90’s Manc electro. Instrumentally, it’s a Spartan record (most tracks feature just drum machine and solo guitar) and Campbell’s vocal frostiness makes her very difficult to love initially. But what at first appears to be all spike and guardedness – the skittering, clipped singing, the arid production, the mechanical percussion – becomes strangely muscular and warm over time. Like The XX last year, ‘Nerve Up’ is a record that only improves with repeated listens. It may only be February, but it could well be the sleeper hit of the year.

By Sam Walton

If you’ve been to any of the past summer shows in the courtyard of London’s Somerset House you’ll know that the regal surrounds of the uncovered space adds such a strong sense of majesty to an otherwise okay gig that even staring at Adele in torrential rain seems like not a totally crap idea. This year, N-Dubz, Mystery Jets and The xx ‘go posh’.

Tickets for all shows go on sale at 9am this Friday (March 27th)

Thursday 8 July       Mystery Jets
Friday 9 July      Air
Saturday 10 July      Noah and the Whale
Sunday 11 July           N-Dubz
Monday 12 July         The Temper Trap
Tuesday 13 July      The xx
Wednesday 14 July    TBC
Thursday 15 July      Florence and the Machine
Friday 16 July             Corinne Bailey Rae
Saturday 17 July         TBC
Sunday 18 July           Soul II Soul

You may have heard (namely from us) that to celebrate Loud And Quiet turning 5 this year we’re going to be releasing a limited 12″ compilation of bands that have graced our past covers and that we’ve enjoyed featuring in the paper over the past half a decade. And we’ve gotta say, it’s shaping up very nicely indeed. In fact, we’ve very nearly got all the tracks for the album and ready to send off to the pressing plant. Now all we need is some kick-ass artwork.

That’s where you come in, hopefully. We’re looking for a front cover so tasty that it even makes this one by The Faith Tones look shit. We can tell you now that the record is going be called I AM V: Five Years of Loud And Quiet magazine, but we’re not necessarily saying that that title needs to be on the cover. It can be, or not. Your design can be a photograph (we do love photographs), an illustration or text based. Whatever you like really. I simply needs to sum up what Loud And Quiet and the bands we feature are all about. The winner will of course have their design printed on all 500 copies of the strictly limited compilation, will receive their own copy and get a year’s free subscription to the paper.

As for the record, that’s going to feature 10 exclusive/super rare tracks and cost just a tenner. More details on the track-listing to follow shortly.

But first, get your entries in by April 2nd to info@loudandquiet.com, with ‘I AM V’ in the subject box.

Photography by Elinor Jones

“WE LIKE THE IDEA OF MAKING A REALLY SNAPPY FIRST ALBUM”

Where’s the fun in a fact? Broadly limited by the dullness of reality, it’s got a tough ride of it when up against make believe. Fiction trail-blazes its way about town making shit up, mooning science and generally kicking the crap out of fact’s well-pruned hedge of homogeny. Fiction, the band, though, embrace their limitations but that’s not to say that boundaries aren’t for breaking.

“If you come up against something and you’re getting resistance you have to work around it and that’s what we do,” says James Howard, sat sandwiched between his three other band mates. The multi-faceted vocalist, guitarist and drummer is talking about his group’s willingness to adapt. They have two drummers for a start, James being one, Mike Barrett the other. “We couldn’t find a drummer but having a commercial drummer doesn’t work for us as they are too inclined to use cymbals,” explains Mike. “We prefer our drums to be more succinct and precise, so James and I played as a joke in rehearsal one day, realised we could get away with it and it went from there.” Mike’s brother Nick plays the guitar but he’s quick to point out the importance of the rhythm section in Fiction – “The percussion is the heart and soul of the band,” he says “all the bands we admire are the same.” Beaten tracks or unchartered waters, that’s Fiction’s style. Lumbered with a drum machine for a while, it clearly didn’t suit. “That became limiting because you have to stay in time, with a machine, you can’t go off on one!” Always evolving, you get the impression all four of them could be addicted to The Sticks by the summer.

Their clean cuts, wry lyrics and dark pop sensibilities were quickly noticed by Offset Festival’s Kieran Delaney who picked them up for Offset Recording’s (and Fiction’s) debut release. “That’s actually meant to be a secret!” blurts out Nick, although he looks elated that the news is finally out there. It’s clearly an honour for the band but no-one can deny how well suited they are.

“I went to Offset in the first year and really thought it was perfect,” continues Nick. “We had a plan to play in the second year and we were asked to play the main stage”.

James butts in: “We shat ourselves!”

They needn’t have – a live set that teeters on the brink and a willingness to fuck with their own system continually catches the eye. “I guess that’s what people find exciting about our live set,” adds Daniel Djan, bassist and sometime vocalist “it always feels shaky. It could fall apart any minute, and we hope it’s intriguing to watch. You wait for that moment when it falls apart and it doesn’t… hopefully!”

Nick murmurs something about reflecting their personalities and a bell goes off; that’s exactly what Fiction manage to create. A vulnerable front, delicately walking the line of chaos but with big confident songs behind them, they are an enigma waiting to be revealed. “We are definitely getting more confident in ourselves although we’re certainly not conscious of it,” muses James.

A self-assured band with solid tunes all sounds a bit bland but this is Fiction, remember, not no-friends Fact. “We don’t force ourselves to have a certain image or play a certain way,” says Dan as Mike brings us back to the music. “It’s become a lot poppier and hookier,” he admits. “The songs’ times have come down from ten minutes to three,” he notes, perhaps because the band are already thinking about an album, or at least James is.

“We all like the idea of making a really snappy first album,” he enthuses “…and then fart in a bottle for an hour for the second one.” Now that’d be an Offset release we’d all like to see, split with No Bra, please. But Fiction’s debut single, ‘Curiosity’, will be rolling out early spring. Influenced by …don’t ask.

“We’ve heard the Joy Division comparison,” warns James “and frankly that’s just lazy.”

“Every band’s influenced by them,” reasons Mike. “We’re into XTC at the moment, err the band of course”.

Dan enthusiastically jumps in: “Talking Heads, obviously. Mystery Jets we like, Yeasayer, Wild Beasts.”

“Yeah, reel them off Dan!” shouts Nick from the other side of the room. But Fiction obviously listen to a lot of music.

“But none of us really listen to singles,” says Dan. “Who does anymore? Albums are so important to us as a band. We were talking the other day about how interesting it is when you discover a band; it’s quite a personal thing. James likes the Wave Pictures and it’s become sort of his band. Same with me and Little Boots,” he laughs Dan. A jovial contemplation no doubt, but Fiction hit the rhythmic, post punk nail on the head on so many levels. Fact.

By Ian Roebuck

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Originally published in issue 14 (vol 3) of Loud And Quiet. February 2010

Our leading award ceremony could learn a lot or nothing from America’s

Did you watch this year’s Grammy’s? It was, as ever, the (pimp) daddy of award ceremonies: the aloof Oscars’ sexy, platinum-dipped sister. Like the States itself, it was big, expensive, impressive, ridiculous, glamorous, ambitious, boastful, shameless and self-congratulatory. It was flawless; from its close ups of Beyonce and her man to its Eminem/Little Wayne collaboration. And then came our chance to return the ball by presenting The Brit Awards 2010: a comparable caricature, trying brother of The Grammy’s, hosted this year by a comedian as relevant as Friendsreunited.com.

As well as the obvious advantage of tonnes of cash (note how The Grammy’s need no sponsorship while the red carpet of The Brits is forever beneath a giant MasterCard logo that then spins about your screen throughout the coverage), America’s annual back-slap gives itself an edge by not employing an anchorman for the evening. They employ a rather stern sounding ‘voice of God’ to instruct, “Please welcome multi-Grammy winner Lionel Richie to the stage.” It’s then up to Lionel to do his thing, which, this year, was to introduce a Michael Jackson tribute performance of ‘Earth Song’ by Celine Dion, Usher, Carrie Underwood and Jennifer Hudson. Unlike at the Brits tradition, there’s no tired observational humour thrust upon on a crowd too pissed or too sober to hear or care. The Grammy’s is respectful and knowing of its class; The Brits is Sarah Harding announcing that she’s just pissed herself. The voice of God – not unlike the fleeting hosts it announces – doesn’t adlib or show off, or associate itself with the wet-pant-ed; it’s key to The Grammy’s pooping on our parade.

The awards themselves hardly ever go to deserving winners at either event, but the calibre of unworthy gong-snatchers in the States (‘celebrity’ is their bread and butter after all) is undeniably impressive. The same goes for the losers, givers, takers and, most notably, the performers. Over there they get not just Marshall Mathers and Little Wayne performing with and proving that Drake is hip-hop’s one-to-watch this year, but also that Celine and Usher MJ homage, Taylor Swift and Stevie Nicks, Beyonce and no one (it’s just not needed), Jamie Fox, Pink, The Black Eyed Peas and Bon Jovi, joined by a women in leather trouser which were out-frightened by her dance moves (we can only presume she was some super successful country star). Perhaps none of these are ‘your thing’ but they are some of the biggest names in the world.

The Brits always give good chase on the performers front (JT and Kylie, Klaxons and Rhiana, this year’s Jigga and Alicia), but with most of the superstars being American and living in the LA area where The Grammy’s are held, keeping up is a tiring, ultimately impossible feat, leaving us to plug GaGa-less holes with Kasabian and JLS, introduced by an adlibbing non-voice of God.

The solution seems clear – if the Brits can’t emulate the all-bragging Grammy’s to a standard higher than its current, amateurish state (not that it consciously tries to, although it’s safe to say that we’ve always longs to be loved by America where all of our musical achievements are concerned) perhaps we should change tact and play to our Hugh Grant-bumbling, slightly tacky strengths.

Forget Earls Court, we could hold it on the set of Hole In The Wall, or The Jeremy Kyle Show. We could broadcast it on Dave, and our ‘voice of God’ could be provided by Alan Carr. And forget pleading Jay-Z to perform in front of a hundred thousand pounds of pyrotechnics when Dizzy Rascal can do ‘Bonkers’ beside a roman candle in the car park.

It all sounds a little ‘Inner City Sumo’, a la Alan Partridge, but what I mean is, why don’t we present the Brits in a typically British way: with a knowing smirk of stupidity and silliness? Because let’s face it, we’re not very good playing Hollywood.

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Originally published in issue 14 (vol 3) of Loud And Quiet. February 2010

Arch exponents of furious folk-punk, Archie Bronson Outfit have always been a grim-faced but aggressively inventive band. Two excellent albums precede ‘Coconut’, on which the trio incorporate dashes of electronica to their druid beats and serrated guitars. Abrasive and oblique, ‘Magnetic Warrior’ sounds like Sleater-Kinney covering Xtrmntr-era Primal Scream at the bottom of a lift shaft, ‘Shark’s Tooth’ has bleak echoes of Joy Division, while ‘Wild Strawberries’ is high velocity, twisted punk. Meanwhile ‘Chunk’ – and I never thought I’d write this of ABO – is something akin to bubblegum pop. While many of the individual elements of ‘Coconut’ are superb, they form an incoherent whole. But despite the varying stylistic angles, and a couple of tracks which almost literally scream ‘filler’, ABO’s unique watermark runs through this record like DNA. Which makes it pretty damn good.

By Chris Watkeys

Photography by Phil Sharp

Last year, Erol Alkan broke an umpteenth year tradition of refusing to release music under his own name by unleashing a double A side with Boys Noize. We were so impressed with how uncompromising ‘Waves’ and ‘Death Suite’ were that the lord of the indie dance appeared on our cover that month, and now the pair are releasing a follow up, ‘Avalanche’/'Lemonade’.

The record is out already on Alkan’s own Phantasy label, an what’s more it’s even better than last year’s effort (especially the deranged but playful ‘Lemonade’). And once again you’ll find no indie star guest vocals here, as a lot of us expected with last year’s release, simply the cleverest ravey synths you’ve heard in a while.

Previews of both tracks are at www.myspace.com/erolalkan

What with winter going out the window just in time, before all that snow had you google-ing Dignitas, I thought I’d kick this blog off in the slightly warmer spirit of spring, on a deflating return to reality after ones-to-watch season, and slag off a band that’s set the BBC and the newspapers on fire with their stunning potential to do something, once they do get round to doing something. Like make a record or, what about it, play a gig. There’s plenty to choose from (Ellie Goulding, Marina and The Diamonds, Owl-fucking-City) but I’m going to be nasty about Hurts. They’ve now played at least two shows, but at the time of all that next-big-thingarama in January, they’d managed exactly zero. Still, the tastemakers/media drones (how ever you want to look at it) knew all they needed to from the following:

Hurts are from Manchester, a City that last decade gave us enough good bands to count on one hand. Hurts rock the kind of suave inter-war years look that that fourteen-year-old boy on Brick Lane has made his own, and which is just about ready to find its way onto the shelves in Topman. Hurts “construct… 1980s-inspired electro-pop”.

Hmm. If that isn’t evidence enough to convince you that they’re the boundary-smashing vanguard of the cutting edge, you might want to listen to their music – something which I’m guessing no one has done, because Hurts sound like Spandau Ballet. Here’s the video you get on their Monument To Emptiness of a myspace page:

Not really any beats or bleeps to speak of, it’s closer to X-factor contestant Brit-schmaltz with a subtle twist of ‘lets be The Big Pink’ than to Yazoo, but then ‘Electro-pop’ was probably just a deaf generalisation, the kind of ‘uhUKmumuhmstep’ panic-term the beeb yells across the dancefloor to its better informed friends.

Nevermind his hamster-expressive face and their great legs, Hurts are worse than Coldplay – if only for the fact that they lack that bands’ knowledge of where they belong. They’ll probably harness, then lose the hype-eating cool-kid following fairly soon – it has been quite a while since Control was released on DVD – after which they’ll either say something to the effect of ‘Hey, we’re just a pop band! Don’t judge, buy’ or carry on much the same and be astronomically huge either way. So, go and see them before you’re hopelessly out of the loop and make sure to pre-order that album, once it actually exists.

Photography by Elinor Jones

There is a flush of freshness about London three piece Blue on Blue; a newness that is only partially due to having played a handful of gigs. With the opening bass tolls of ‘Summer Daze’ the climate seems to alter slightly, Dee and Billy’s soft, childlike voices floating dreamily over austere guitar chimes reminiscent of Young Marble Giants, while Mark keeps pace on drums, adding texture to the mix of drowsy melody and clear, wide-eyed treble. The songs are stripped back and exposed, the lyrics reflective, painting a vignette of tarnished innocence. ‘Fallen’, a gentle splash of rainy day pop, is infused with a beautiful bass lull and Dee’s ethereal Mazzy Star-like vocals, melting into a soft haze of lithium reverb. However, when Billy takes his turn at the mic, he delivers a slice of ’90’s sweetness in the form of ‘Cinnamon Swirl’; bright and upbeat but washed with a slight patina of Smithsy sadness. They finish off their set with a simple, haunting cover of the Nancy & Lee duet, ‘Summer Wine’, adding a touch of melancholy to the song’s low-slung 1960’s vibe. This is an intriguing, evocative new band, still a bit wet behind the ears but in a way, that’s one of the greatest attractions of their sound.

After a good year of ’80s DIY fans forming punk bands to pay forward that fanatical excitement they felt when first hearing Black Flag or Husker Du, Nottingham’s Prize Pets arrive with an all-too-absent ingredient – anti-stardom. Amongst the recent glut of hardcore/lo-fi bands, many are quite brilliant, but most are also too cool to ever give you that ‘this band is just for me’ feeling. Prize Pets’ front man – neat quiff up top, plain blue hoodie in the middle and non-descript coffee coloured trousers below – won’t even face the audience, instead watching his band from within the crowd, shaking his shoulders and occasionally hopping in a circle. He’s out-dressed – as are his band – by the east London regulars who, cleaners or bankers, look more like rock stars than him. But they are not yelling a deep and refreshingly non-faux American, Bryan Ferry-esque yell, piecing together pop melodies one minute and ranting in reverb to Misson of Burma garage riffs the next. They’re not Good Shoes and The Stooges. They’re not awkward but likable, or baffling but definitely compelling. That’s what the great DIY bands were and is why Prize Pets – a band before they are models for carefully constructed ‘vintage’ looks – could easily be your favourite new guitar band.

By Stuart Stubbs

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Originally published in issue 14 (vol 3) of Loud And Quiet. February 2010

Photography by Owen Richards

It’s been a bit of a shit day, maybe even a shit week. You go and see a band, in the hope to find some relief or distraction from the perceived blandness of your life. You wait for two hours for them to come on, during which your mood gets worse – who do they think they are? Luckily for you, the first band on tonight are Surfer Blood, five young dudes from Florida who have made it their mission to throw everything that’s awesome about guitar rock together and improve your life through sheer exuberance. There’s Pixies bass lines (‘Twin Peaks’), Malkmus-esque slacker lyrics (‘Floating Vibes’) and singer/Michael Cera-lookalike John Paul Pitts whoops and pleads like a young Rivers Cuomo. This is far from cobbled-together idea rock, though – there are incongruous moments of tropical percussion, but nothing about Surfer Blood feels forced or insincere. Who cares if the band look like rabbits caught in the headlights of a freight train, or that the biggest part of the audience doesn’t seem to be paying much attention – they’re missing one hell of a show. Oh, and the fist-pumping, bro-mantic set closer ‘Swim’ really is one of the best songs of the year.

By Matthias Scherer

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Originally published in issue 14 (vol 3) of Loud And Quiet. February 2010

Photography by Owen Richards

“Wish that I was cool/wish I was surfing.” That’s how the chorus of one of the songs on Fenix TX’s eponymous album went. Back in 1999, those (in some camps) sorely missed American pop-punkers were expressing a sentiment that seems to be widely spread among the late-noughties indie/noise-pop scene. Wavves moan about surf and beach goths, The Drums owe much of their hype to whistled ode to the water sport, while in the UK, exciting acts like Spectrals and Veronica Falls have audibly been paying attention to the licks of Dick Dale & Co as well as the dusty doo-wop 7”s they draw inspiration from.

Real Estate might hail from the Garden State of New Jersey rather than the west coast, but their light-footed, introspective approach to surf rock sets them apart from their more noisy and exuberant contemporaries. The word has clearly spread, judging by the packed upstairs bit of the Lexington pub (Male Bonding are also in attendance), and the quartet look a bit nervy as they finally grab their instruments after loitering by the side of the stage for a few minutes. They needn’t have worried, however, because their so-laid-back-it’s-horizontal sound could tranquilise a raging bulldog with one bell-like guitar riff, and there are plenty of those in tonight’s set, for example in teasingly meandering opener ‘Green River’. The sound is attuned nicely, balancing the rhythm section’s smooth workings with frontman Martin Courtney and Mathew Mondanile’s guitar interplay, but more important is the fact that Courtney’s vocals are a lot more prominent than on record. On their debut album, the singing often takes a back seat, whereas tonight, Courtney & Co. prove they are capable of nailing a three-way harmony Fleet Foxes would scratch their beards at in approval.

None of the band are sporting facial hair, unless you count the five o’clock shadow on huggable teddy-bear-turned-bassist Alex Beeker’s face. The exquisitely named Etienne Duguay looks like a music teacher from two decades ago, helping out his high school jazz band. But what they may lack in stage presence, they certainly make up for in visual unorthodoxy.

In terms of audible influences, Real Estate are more than the sum of Brian Wilson and a few Budweisers too many for breakfast – there are echoes of the Red House Painters’ slow-mo indie (‘Black Lake’) and a more country Pearl Jam (on EP track ‘Younger Than Yesterday’), while the second of two new songs has a more straightforward late-80s-indie feel (think The Wedding Present) to it, which has something to do with Mondanile’s endearing but mainly tune-less crooning being worlds away from Courtney’s more measured intonation. The most striking aspect of the band’s performance, however, is the way Courtney’s and Mondanile’s guitars weave around each other, mimicking each other’s lines one minute, finishing each other’s riffs the next – and all with an ease that borders on the contemptuous. They are such a likable bunch, though, that by the time crowd favourite ‘Beach Comber’ comes around, we’d all follow them anywhere – even to the Jersey shore.

By Matthias Scherer

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Originally published in issue 14 (vol 3) of Loud And Quiet. February 2010

Photography by Owen Richards

“I have a question,” announces Ali Koehler from behind her drum kit. “How long does it take English people to dance?” A good few songs if you’ve been thrown in with a boat-load of London hipsters who want to make sure they’re mussing their hair – and not to mention their nonchalant exteriors – for a worthy cause. And what better reason than Brooklyn’s delicate, female-trio, Vivian Girls?

Pushing through various swing-doors of Trinity Hall, the main area feels like the underside of an upturned boat. The high ceilings and arched beams add to the girls’ ethereal acoustics, with Koehler, Cassie Ramone’s (guitar) and Kickball Katy’s (bass) harmonies echoing as far as their gigantic shadows that tower over the crowd from the back wall.

The mantra of ‘Wild Eyes’ is repeated like gospel, sung proudly by fans of the self-titled debut album. Koehler lays a galloping rhythm alongside Ramone’s Gories-sprinkled riff, creating a hoedown in the bow before things slow down for a Chantels cover of ‘He’s Gone’. Sharing one mic, they drop their instruments and go a cappella, filling the empty room with their chorale.

A glance at the track listing of new album ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ (featuring ‘Can’t Get Over You’, ‘The End’), tells of despondency, but the tone takes a less “mosh” and more “sway” note too. New song, ‘The Other Girl’ incorporates both with a hard intro involving a ferocious metal beat that instantly melts away into poignant Interpol guitars and the girls deprive us of their striking voices for a minute-long instrumental. It would seem that with a new year Vivian Girls are bringing with them a mature sound with a clear variety of experience crammed in.

By D. Goldstein

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Originally published in issue 14 (vol 3) of Loud And Quiet. February 2010