BLACK Box RECoRDER

“My job consists of basically masking my contempt...”
20th March 2003
CRASH
LANDING
The Edge gets the lowdown
on Britain’s sickest popstars,
Black Box Recorder
Kinesis... The Kills... Scarlet Soho... Brick Awards Results... Har Mar Superstar
20th March 2003
EDITORIAL
Oh dear - it looks like the democratic process has been
hijacked yet again, and no I’m
not talking about the recent
Student Union elections which
I have no doubt were run in an
entirely fair, uncorrupt and
unbiased manner. At least,
that’s what I’ve been told to
say by my lawyers. No, I am
referring of course to the
annual Edge Brick Awards. Of
course The Edge did receive
thousands upon thousands of
votes for your favourite bands,
singers, films and all the rest of
it, it turns out that all of them
had been filled in by young
Rich’s team of electoral campaigners - allowing that band
of dubious quality (I refer of
course to Queens of the Stone
Age) to be catapulted to the
lead in more than one important award race. I guess the
only recompense is that my
lawyers now inform me that it
would be entirely legal to
smash their heads in with a
large brick as long as it has an
Edge logo printed on the side.
Oh well, I guess it could have
been worse - if you’d all bothered to vote we might have
had Toploader winning or
something.
Just in case anyone’s interested (which I am coming to seriously doubt) my vote for best
live act of the year goes to
Blair and Blunkett for their
entirely miscalculated jam session at that primary school.
Oh well,‘til next time
Tim
THE EDGE TEAM
Editor: Tim Houghton
Assistant Editor: Rich Heap
Film: Nina Dubravec
Dance: Rich Madgwick
With: Alex Mattinson, Rob
Barbour, Chloe Williams, Kerry
Patterson, Joe Wiggins,
Jonathan Curtis-Brignell, Luke
Crisell, James Graham, Antony
Nicholls, Mike Cole, Russell
Wood, Ian Brewer, Felicity Hull,
Lucinda Wilkinson, Phil Hoile,
Max McGee, Ricky Spaven,
Purdy Wickham, Sarah Pearce,
Johnnie Macson, Bridie
Ashton, Jake Smokcum, Ben
Bratchell
The Edge
S.U.S.U
Highfield
Southampton
S017 1BJ
PA G E 2
NEWS
with EDGE 3am Girl Rich Heap
Porcelain-faced
bassist
HILLARY WOODS has left JJ72,
which kind of means that no-one
will be that interested in them
anymore. Apparently her decision
to quit was something to do with
MARK GREANEY not being interested in girls or any input from
anyone else. Or did I just make
that up?
On less important news,
TONY BLAIR attempted to convince the younger generations,
via MTV, that war in Iraq is justified. The hour long debate show,
Is War The Answer?, was shown on
6th April, where he took questions from a representative sample of 40 18-24 worlds. He looked
like an arse, however, when he
had to give vague answers to the
questions that people actually
wanted to ask (a.k.a. “Is the war for
oil?”, “Will you go to war without a
second UN resolution?”, “What are
the moral implications of all the
civilian tragedies?”, “What will the
Iraqi regime be replaced with?”
etc.) Whether this has actually
changed anyone’s opinions or,
crucially, given Blair any credibility amongst ‘the kids’ is sketchy...
actually, it’s not. They still think
he’s America’s lapdog, just like
everyone else...
And on that subject, EMILY EAVIS
(daughter of Glastonbury dictator
and beard-no-moustache wearer
Michael) has put on a ‘One Big No’
protest gig, against the forthcoming war (oh come on, like it’s not
going to happen...) Acts at the
Shepherds Bush Empire on 15th
March included (well, if it happened... this went to press before
the actual event) PAUL WELLER,
GARBAGE,
FRAN HEALY,
EVAN DANDO,
BETH ORTON,
F A I T H L E S S ,
MARK THOMAS,IAN MCCULLOCH
and possibly others. But where
are Blur? And Massive Attack? I
mean, they’re been in the news a
lot campaigning against the war.
Now, I’m not saying they’re hypocrites... I’m just stating a fact...after
all, even white rap idiots
THE BEASTIE BOYS released an
anti-war song, In A World Gone
Mad, through their official website.
On lighter news, RYAN ADAMS
has ended his feud with
THE WHITE STRIPES by saying that
The Stripes’ forthcoming album,
Elephant, “may be the best rock
and roll record ever made.” Jack
White has always refused to comment on the spat that started
when Adams covered White’s
songs, changing some of the lyrics, and, when Jack complained,
called him “a little girl.” Ooooh...
it’s like Liam and Robbie all over
again.
SHAVO ODADJIAN, bassist with
SYSTEM OF A DOWN, is filing a
lawsuit against a security company who, apparently, assaulted him
during a SLIPKNOT gig on, err,
20th October 2001. God, that’s
ages ago. Can’t be bothered going
into any more detail. After
all,being 28 and in a rock band, he
should be able to look after himself. Not like the fan at Norwegian
death metal band MAYHEM’s gig,
who had his head fractured by a
flying sheep skull. PER KRISTIAN
HAGEN, 25, was struck by the flying animal skull after MANIAC (the
lead singer... probably not his real
name) carved up a sheep and the
head just flew off. The incident
has been called unfortunate and
the injured fan has been promised a ticket to a forthcoming
Mayhem gig. Nice.
COMPETITION
As conclusively proved by The Edge, wins.
our announcement of this year’s
Brick Awards Poll, The Edge is everybody’s favourite music mag.
However, just to show that
here at The Edge we aren’t afraid to
let someone else have a try at this
whole music journalism lark, we’re
gonna help brand new music magazine ‘BANG’ on their way by giving
away
One
Year’s
Free
Subscription to one lucky Edge
reader, (not to mention the associated free publicity in the hallowed
Edge pages.). We also have five Bang
goody bags to give away to runners
up. All you have to do to stand a
chance of winning is complete the
following sentence in no more than
25 words...
I LOVE CRAIG DAVID BECAUSE...
Most original entry, as voted for by
THE EDGE
TOP 10
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS IN SONG TITLES
1. WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG
BAD WOLF? - Unknown
Mainly small mammals and
birds, both of which are secondary food sources for both the
grey and the red wolf.
2. WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? Baha Men
Whoever had the key to the
kennel when they went missing.
3.
THE BIG GIG GUIDE
20th March 2003
THE SOUTH COAST MAY NOT BE GREAT, BUT IT’S NOT THE CULTURAL WASTELAND THAT EVERYONE THINKS...
Wed 26th Mar - Pitchshifter @
S.U.S.U.
Thu 27th Mar - Liberty X @
Portsmouth Guildhall
The losers from Popstars or one
of those sort of Pete Waterman
peddling ITV shows for talentless egocentric chancers.
Fri 28th Mar - Finch @
Portsmouth Pyramids
My CLOSE (‘slose’ was a mistake,
so shoot me pedants) personal
friend Rob Barbour recommends them highly.
Sun 30th Mar - Beth Orton +
Brendan Benson @ Portsmouth
Guildhall
Okay, so Beth Orton is boring,
but Brendan Benson is a Jack
White favourite, which may
mean nowt to you but is, in fact,
a good thing.
Sun 30th Mar - Wheatus @
Portmsouth
Wedgewood
Rooms
Whiny voiced ‘Teenage Dirtbag’
peddlers are near where they
belong after 2001’s inexplicable
success. Twunts.
Mon 31st Apr - The Faint @
Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
Simply fantastic. Go. Go. Go.
Tues 1st Apr - Sugababes @
Southampton Guildhall
I’ve been told they’re quite big so
put on your bright white clothes
and fake gold jewellery and get
some R ‘n’ B.
Wed 2nd Apr - The 22-20s
@ Joiners
Blues for the modern era. And
good. You really should see them
(well, so I’ve been told.)
Wed 2nd Apr - Daniel Bedingfield
@ Southampton Guildhall
Professional testicleless tosser
makes it big with some rubbish
pseudo urban songs.
Wed 2nd Apr - The Blockheads @
The Brook
Mon 7th Apr - My Deaf Audio @
Joiners
Wed 9th Apr - Burning Brides @
Joiners
Queens Of The Stone Age like
them.
Mon 14th Apr - The Bandits @
Joiners
Coral-esque quirksome pot-influenced Scouse indie. Try it, you
might like it.
Mon 14th Apr - The Rapture @
Portmsouth Wedgewood Rooms
It was meant to be at the Joiners,
but moved. Boycott it on principle.
Wed 16th Apr - The Basement @
Joiners
Thurs 17th Apr - The Warlocks @
Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
Overrated and boring...
Sat 19th Apr - Placebo @
Southampton Guildhall
I don’t like Placebo. I have never
liked Placebo. I will never like
Placebo. There are always antiPlacebo jokes in The Edge and I’ve
run out now...
Tue 29th Apr - Less Than Jake @
Southampton Guildhall
Weds 30th Apr - The Soledad
Brothers @ Joiners
One of Phil Datsun’s favourite
bands. He advised me to go and
see them, and he’d advise you the
same. But he hasn’t spoken to
you. And I’ve met him. Please forgive my smugness
Sat 3rd May - The Wildhearts @
Portsmouth Pyramids
Sun 4th May - Nada Surf @
Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
Nice, but a bit too boring for my
hardcore rockin’ ass. If you like
melodic indie, then you could
well love ‘em.
Tues 6th May - Hell Is For Heroes @
Portsmouth Pyramids
Emo, with a great live show. And
nice guys as well. Actually, me and
them have a mutual acquaintance
in an Ealing based Armenian classical pianist. And that’s not even
an elaborate lie. It’s the truth I tells
ya.
Wed 7th May - Melanie C @
Southampton Guildhall
Apparently she’s the most successful former Spice Girl and
she’s still crap. Well, at least she’s
the main one against a reunion
tour so it can’t be all bad.
Sun 11th May - The Raveonettes
@ Portsmout Wedgewood
Rooms
It’s really beginning to piss me
off that The Wedgewood Rooms
is getting all of the good bands
doing the rounds on the toilet
circuit (except The 22-20s and
The Soledad Brothers) and it
should really annoy you too. I’m
going to go and sulk now.
Mon 12th May - Violent Delight
@ Joiners
This isn’t enough to placate me.
I’m still in a strop...
Mon 9th Jun - Tony Hadley @
Southampton Guildhall
He’s on ‘Reborn In The USA’
which means he’s a washout
but people’ll see what a nice
guy he is and feel sorry and buy
Do you know how much we have to write for each issue? Well, if you do, then you should expect some mistakes. So check details with venues. Okay?
PA G E 3
20th March 2003
SINGLES
ALBUMS
HAR MAR SUPERSTAR - One
for the laydeez
FC/KAHUNA
Hayling
(Skint Records)
What with weeks filled with
the anticipation of war, a little
peace wouldn't go amiss. This
track, thank God, provides a
welcome time-out from the
aggression that's consuming
the media at the moment.
Taking inspiration from both
Portishead and Radiohead's Kid
A, Hayling is a tune that tempts
the listener into the summer
mentality of carelessness and
lures you into the slumber of
sheer relaxation. Perhaps someone should recommend this to
the American government.
8/10
CW
CRADLE OF FILTH
Babylon AD
(Epic)
BLUR
Out Of Time
(EMI Records)
Described as the antithesis
of the nu-metal bollox that just
won't f**king die, Dani Filth provides light entertainment with
this track in the form of random
noises resembling a goblin
overdosing on speed. To be
honest, all COF songs sound the
same to me, and I swear they've
nicked the backing track from
the haunted house ride at Alton
Towers. Still better than Craig
David tho.
5/10
CW
THE D4
Ladies Man
(Flying Nun)
So, here we are. Coxon’s left,
Fatboy’s in, Blur are back. And,
well…it begins so promisingly.
Jazzy bass and percussion are
well deployed by the lads from
Essex, but the vocal line eventually trails off into mediocrity.
And then some. The fact that
they think they can gloss over a
predominantly dull tune with
flashy Spanish guitar and shoddy electro-sampling is disappointing.
5/10
JM
HOT HOT HEAT
Bandages
(Sub Pop)
The D4 release their latest
offering proving that rock and
roll is well and truly alive in New
Zealand. As singles go it’s pretty
good, even if it does sound
uncannily like Robbie William’s
Man Machine...
7/10
AN
FINCH
Letters To You
(Drive-thru records)
If The Coral began to rock and
got a pubescent Jack White to
sing over an organ reinvention
of Lump then it would sound
like Bandages, a feelgood record
that irritates quickly.
6/10
RH
ZWAN
Honestly
(Wea)
To produce formulaic modern
metal music these days can be
crushing. To employ the basic
elements of metal in a modern
fashion can be enhancing. Finch
have seemingly accomplished
the latter here. The typically
heavy percussion, vocal screaming (pleasingly restrained) and
crunching guitar are all present.
And what’s more, it’s done damn
well.
8/10
JM
Honestly is an uninspiring
‘nice’, melodic song probably
definable as ‘arena psychedelia’.
Zwan, the eclectic super group
fronted by Billy Corgan and featuring ex-Smashing Pumkins,
Slint, Skunk and A Perfect Circle
members., have been described
as a happy Smashing Pumpkins.
Unfortunately they are actually
a pretty poor and a tame
Smashing Pumpkins, or even a
lame Smashing Pumpkins.
5/10
PA G E 4
HAR MAR SUPERSTAR
You Can Feel Me
(b-unique)
On SM:TV a few weeks ago I
saw a feature whereby children
got their elder and slightly portly
(to put it nicely) elder male relatives to dress up in their underwear and humiliate themselves
under the auspices of being a
wrestling related competition.
Well, essentially, that’s Har Mar
Superstar’s stage show and so it
would seem natural that You Can
Feel Me has a slight emphasis on
sex. Actually, it’s all about sex,
with Har Mar admitting on We
Could Be Heavy that "I can’t control these dirty thoughts that are
running through my head." No
s**t; on the title track he knobs a
woman who, shock, already has a
boyfriend, whereas on No Chorus
he’s busily knobbing a woman on
the mixing desk before he has to
rush home to knob his masturbating girlfriend and, on the way,
knob a policewoman. On Power
Lunch he’s knobbing a woman on
her lunch break, on One Dirty
Minute he’s just got so many
women to knob and so little time,
on EZ Pass he’s knobbing women
in Soho but, crucially, for the
Catholics, he takes the level up on
Let’s Get This Party Kickin’ where
he’s "makin’ babies." But what
does all that prove? Well, that he’s
an unhealthy mixture of Peaches
and Ron Jeremy for a start but,
crucially, his cheap, simple and
addictive minimalist electro beats
make this album surprisingly
good and as catchy as syphilis.
2/10
RH
ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION
Enemy of the Enemy
(Labels)
8/10
RH
THE MOLDY PEACHES
Unreleased Cutz and Live Jamz
(Rough Trade)
For a band whose distortion
fest album sounded like it was
recorded through a wall (an
album, it must be said, that I like),
it’s hard to see exactly how a double album of whatever crap they
can scrape together, including
ansaphone messages, will appeal,
especially when most of it is
screamed, unlistenably distorted
or both. This is brain bleedingly
grating and, uncomfortable in the
extreme, devoid of the childish
charm that has kept them afloat
thus far. There are a few good
moments over the 55 tracks (if
you throw enough s**t etc.), like
the acoustic version of Steak For
Chicken or the hilariously butchered cover of Big Girls Don’t Cry,
but all of the best lyrics can be
found on their eponymous 2001
offering. In fact, the only thing
that’s amazing about this is how
such an apparently charmingly
puerile bunch can be quite so
cynically corporate. It just shows
that, no matter how D.I.Y. a band
appears, they’re all just cunningly
disguised businessmen/women
without the nous or energy to
give anyone the new songs that
they actually want, lazy bastards.
And after all the hard work I’ve
done defending them to cynical
friends, it’s also personally embarrassing that I can’t even be arsed
making up a redeeming quality as
I frantically swim through this
relentless river of w**k.
If you Rage Against the
Machine fans aren’t having thine
political souls satisfied by the allnew Chris Cornell/Zach De la
Rocha replacement, then why not
try something a little different? As
an avid fan of all things rock, I was
dubious I was going to like this
new release from ADF, a BritishAsian-jungle-ragga-band doing
jump-up dancehall Bollywood
punk. But my mate’s sister is married to one of the MC’s so I thought
I’d give him a chance. I was pleasantly disrupted from my comfortable world of rock, and hurled
into another galaxy of diverse
sound…. Riddled with hectoring
politics, this album unreservedly
covers many musical genres,
which is immediately appealing
to any album. There are the orthodox rap tunes like Blowback and
Two Face, which would give
Eminem a run for his money.
Dance tunes that make your body
want to move and join the crowd
like 19 Rebellious (a tune that tells
the true story of inhumane prison
conditions and prisoner’s uprising…….in Portuguese…) There
are stoned, chilled, rhythmical
masterpieces like Basta, and DholRinse, the single from the album
which seems to include all of the
traits mentioned above;. plenty of
mind-twisting electro bhangra
here to fathom and delight even
the most musically closed minds.
1000 Mirrors is most definitely the
highlight of the album. It seems
to be one of those rare tracks that
you actually want to listen to
properly. Blessed with Sinead
O’Connor’s voice this beautiful
trip hop tune deserves a top ten
and, if they don’t release it as a
single, then I will. A very strong
album, which deserves a bigger
public profile. Hmmmm…I wonder what would happen if Chris
Cornell paired up with Asian Dub
Foundation?
8/10
BA
THE DURUTTI COLUMN
Someone Else’ Party
(Artful)
What an interesting album.
Sounding like a chilled out version of the stone Roses and Ian
Brown with a Spanish twist. Vinni
Reilly has been going for years
and is one of the lesser known artists who featured on the infamous
Factory Records label. There is a
melancholic feeling to the whole
record, unsurprisingly so, as his
inspiration came form the period
of time when his mother fell ill
and later died. The whole album
is in fact dedicated to his mother
and there are many tributes to her
including the haunting Requiem
For My Mother. Reilly combines
an incredible range of musical
styles on this album from the dub
like beats and wailing vocals on
Woman to the operatic sound of
Rebekah Del Rio’s vocals on
Spanish Lament. The vocals of
Reilly form a subtle backdrop to
the music but his lyrics are often
indistinguishable and get lost in
the other sounds. This is a shame
because when you can understand what his singing, the lyrics
are incredibly poetic and poignant "I don’t believe in anything,
but I pray for a friend". There are
some incredible tracks on this
album including Somewhere with
its warbling bass line and Paul
Simon esc steel guitars. This
album is a definite grower and the
more I listen the more I like it.
8/10
AN
CLEARLAKE
Cedars
(Domino)
Clearlake are very much a
homegrown talent. Lead singer
Jason Pegg couldn’t sound more
endearingly English if his name
actually was Union Jack and he
slept wrapped in our nation’s flag
outside the gates of Buckingham
Palace clasping his Golden Jubilee
commemorative mug for people
to throw change in.
Musically, too, the band play a
kind of squalid indie-rock that I
imagine is quite similar to what a
collaboration between Morrissey,
Idlewild and The Coral at their
most dour might sound like. I’m
not entirely convinced by this
album to be honest with you. I get
the awful feeling that the moreEnglish-than-English-itself
impression this band projects is
more than a little contrived, and
on songs like Just Off The Coast
and I’d Like To Hurt You it is difficult to distinguish where exactly it
is that the band has tried to vary
their sound. Too much on this
album crawls along happily
enough, but like a pensioner driving a three-wheeler, never really
gets out of second gear. Dull
attempts at sounding mysterious
fail where the pulsing strings
begin to be plucked and the
moaning guitars start to grate
ALBUMS
20th March 2003
!
e
s
l
E
r
O
BUY THIS...
Autechre
Draft 7.30
(Warp)
Despite being almost
impenetrable to the average
human ear, there can be little
doubt that Autechre’s 2001
album ‘Confield’ ranks as one of
the most important electronic
recordings since Caberet
Voltaire railed against the fabric
of Thatcherite Britain with their
seminal Eighties album Red
Mecca.
Throughout
their
career, Sheffield duo Autechre
have constantly pushed at the
boundaries and bettered themselves rather than being content to sit back on former glories. With their 1993 debut
album ‘Incunabula’ they threw
in their lot with other minimal
techno experimenters B12 or
the Black Dog. But rather than
simply fading away (like the forrelentlessly, and unfortunately
nothing on this album gives you
the impression that the band are
really capable of going somewhere different and interesting
with their music. A disappointing
album, then, but one that suggests that if Clearlake try a little
harder to actually make a catchy
tune, they are well-equipped to
succeed in the future.
5/10
AM
KELLY OSBOURNE
Shut Up
(Epic)
Forsooth, I must get
into character:
I hate you and I’m not going to
do what you say because I’m a
teenager and that’s my job and I
want to go out and drive a car and
snort ants and stay out late with
my friends and I don’t care what
you say because you’re so out of
touch and you don’t want me to
have any fun and you’re ruining
my life and you’re so embarrassing biting the heads of animals
and showing me up on our TV
Autechres Rob Brown and Sean Booth
poed electro-beats, ‘Draft 7.30’ of hyperspeed drum loops, but
sets out its stall early on. Whereas the focus is more on the transmulabelmate duo Boards of Canada tation of the percussive qualities
legitimately concern themselves than on the notes themselves.
with the powers of melody, Occasionally, like a ray of light do
Autechre prefer to explore the the synths take centre stage, but
dark netherworlds of rhythm and/ then only briefly before the
or lack of it, although the two swarming clouds of pulsing beats
states appear to seamlessly col- subsume them once more.
lide. Other (unpronounceable)
It has to be said that, like
tracks such as ‘6ie.cr’ and ‘P.:Ntil’ it’s forerunners, ‘Draft 7.30’ is rareseem to carve out imaginings of ly a comfortable listen, but, once
melody through the pitchshifting it takes hold it’s a difficult poison
Shadow feel at points as well, with
sample laden sound collages such
as on Baby Elephant Rock-A-Bye
which features a war-time crooning style vocal sample, or Sonnet
No.3 (Like A Duck)s mix of
Shakespearian sonnet and physical fitness training instruction.
The album does have a great light
and uplifting feel to it though
overall it’s not outstanding and
not especially new or interesting.
If you like the Eels cheery funky
blues, or Beck’s Midnite Vultures
then you might be interested, but
not surprised.
6/10
PH
DANNII MINOGUE
Neon Nights
(London Records)
Neon Nights? Isn’t that the
name of a porn film? Oh come on.
it must be. Anyway, poppy 80s
electro with orgasmic moans over
the top is very much in keeping
with the general atmosphere, as
are the numerous gratuitous pictures of Kylie’s younger sister, with
her scary female Tom Jones-esque
hair metal horse s**t.
I’d say that’s fairly accurate.
4/10
RH
MC HONKY
I Am The Messiah
(b-unique)
MC Honky is an interesting
man; you are led to believe. He
started out as a janitor at Capitol
studios in 1959, so the story goes,
working up to become second
engineer in the late sixties but
soon after quit the industry to
concentrate on his other main
interest: pottery. Eighties electronic music inspired him to start
producing again though and now
he has perfected his self-dubbed
"self-help rock" and released his
first album. It could be a big joke
though and is probably all done
by "E" from the Eels, who stars on
and produces the album. All that
aside, I Am The Messiah is not a
bad album though its blend of
funky rock over hip-hop beats
and breakbeats is not new. It
often sounds like disco-Beck and
has a very Mr Scruff or lighter DJ
mer) or rehashing tried and tested formulas (like the latter),
Autechre have constantly
mutated and evolved to be one
step ahead of the game.
Ambient stylings gave way to
undanceable beat thrashings
which conceeded to playful
electronica which was superseded by dense synth ‘n’ beats
gunfire.
‘Draft 7.30’, Autechre’s
seventh full length album picks
up the loose thread left by
‘Confield’ and runs in about fifty
directions
simultaneously.
Probably the most important of
these is the advances (or regression, depending on how you
look at it) that the album makes
towards listenability . Decidedly
easier on the ear than ‘Confield’,
‘Draft 7.30’ gives itself more
room to manouvre than its predecessor - it’s the hovering
Apache helicopter to Confield’s
raging Tornado.
Beginning with the
echoing industrial clanging of
‘Xylin Room’, complemented by
a liberal smattering of un-tem-
show and I hate you but I love you
but I hate you, y’know? Anyway,
I’m going to go out and record
and album and I don’t care what
you say because I’m not a kid anymore. I’m, like, a teenager and I
should be allowed to do what I
want, y’know. Like rip off guitar
work from just about everywhere
and record a whiny voiced bubblegum punk album and get big
off the back of saying that I don’t
care about anything and pretend
I’ve got an attitude despite crying
my eyes out when I’ve got a particularly bad hangover and when
you stop me from going to the
NME awards so there. And it
doesn’t matter to me that my
album sounds like I recorded it
while taking a particularly large
dump (possible over Avril Lavigne)
because I’m so cool and I don’t
care what anyone else says so f**k
you. And y’know why? ‘Cos I’m a
spoilt little talentless brat who’s
riding this fame thing for as far as
it, and my image as a teenage
Courtney Love, will take me so
there. And it’ll sell loads anyway
because I’m on TV and I swear at
my parents. After all, it’s done
wonders for my Dad’s over-rated
PA G E 5
ALBUMS
20th March 2003
THE HIDDEN CAMERAS
The Smell Of Our Own
(Rough Trade)
There are large sections of
society who would respond to
The Hidden Cameras with hostility, revulsion, or laughter purely
because of their sexual persuasion (watch out homophobes,
they’re gay… and they sing about
it… shocking I know) but, in your
humble author’s opinion, these
large sections of society can piss
off because the plain fact is that
The Smell Of Our Own is a beautiful, amazing and inspirational
record that will captivate anyone
with its undeniable beauty. But,
oh my God, they’ve got a song
called The Man That I Am With My
Man that’s about, like, homosexual sex. So? It’s the 21st Century
and, in any case, its lyrical celebration of love, whether homosexual,
heterosexual or whatever, is perfectly set off by some amazing
harp work and understated violins. The chances are that, by then,
any listener will have been drawn
into this record. Drawn in by the
soft rain-like quality of Golden
Streams, or the joyous echoes in
Shame, or the bird song on Boys
Of Melody, or any of this album’s
other evocative facets. It’s joy
inspiring like listening to The
Polyphonic Spree, on Prozac, post
coitus. In summer. Crucially,
though, it isn’t as grand as the
mighty ‘Spree, instead favouring
subtlety and an easy, natural
beauty that renders categorisation of the authors’ sexual preferences obsolete. And there’s a song
called Ban Marriage too. Spec…
tacular.
8/10
RH
A.R.E. WEAPONS
A.R.E. Weapons
(Rough Trade)
Already home to The Libertines
and The Strokes, Rough Trade has
added yet another string to its
bow with hotly tipped samplerock mentalists A.R.E. Weapons,
and with this their debut album
they look set to hit the music-loving public where it hurts. Half the
songs on this album will not only
make your ears bleed, they will
tear you apart and drain every
other body fluid from what
is left of your body. Opener Don’t
Be Scared starts off innocently
enough, all swinging synths and
pounding beats, but the minute
the chorus kicks in and the grinding guitars set about their work,
you know things are about to get
PA G E 6
THE HIDDEN CAMERAS
really, really interesting. ‘Don’t be
scared, motherf****r’ they chant,
but it’s too late for warnings. Over
the next ten songs, A.R.E. Weapons
grab you by whatever hair is left
on your head after you’ve torn it
out, and drag you kicking and
screaming into their world of
screw-ups, drugs and dirty dancing. F**k You Pay Me sleazes along
on a drum and bass-style beat
with some ridiculously sleazy
synths going on in the background, and reminds us that
‘money makes the world go
round’. Amongst some brilliantly
titled songs (Black Mercedes,
Street Gang, Strange Dust) the
one that really stands out is
Headbanger Face - pure white
noise and barely audible vocals, a
kind of Pete Libertine cokehead
mumble, most
likely recorded in the cellar of a
Soho strip club surrounded by
illegal gambling and Lock Stockstyle gangster types. This is a dirty,
dirty album. Filthy, even, but
believe me when I say that this is
a good thing when faced with the
prospect of next having to review
the new Matchbox 20 album.
Listen to this for inspiration if you
are an aspiring heroin addict and/
or alcoholic, but
not if you are recovering from said
addictions,
because
A.R.E.
Weapons will probably screw you
up more than you were before.
7/10
AM
MULL HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Us
(Blanco y Negro)
Mull Historical Society are
essentially comprised of one man
and his band, a sort of wistful,
wandering minstrel type of bloke
with acoustic guitar slung over his
back and a copy of the ‘Doe-Eyed
Pop For Beginners’ handbook in
his back pocket. Fair enough if
you like that sort of thing, and
some of what is here is extraordinarily beautiful, but on first listen
you can’t help but get the feeling
that NAM has come and gone.
Album opener and first single The
Final Arrears is good solid jinglyjangly guitar pop complete with a
crazy breakdown bit towards the
end, and at this point everything
is looking peachy. Four songs
later, and MHS are viciously
molesting the corpse of a
Starsailor B-side on Asylum. We
then get early nineties rock on
Live Like The Automatics, David
Gray on the next one, political
comment over a stolen Radiohead
drum beat and horribly clichéd
chord sequences on the next,
then…
Oh, what’s the use? This album
is sapping me of the ability to
write and I can’t even be bothered
to criticise it any more. Here’s the
run-down. Lyrically, this album
discusses modern life and the way
it conflicts with Mr. MHS’s desires
for a more peaceful, archaic lifestyle, probably somewhere in
Yorkshire where everything has a
golden brown tint and people
make bread. Musically, this album
is 70% trumpets and acoustic guitars, 20% horribly clichéd lyrics
and 10% weirdy
noises and recorded radio weather reports. Many people will like
this album, and in places it can be
endearing and even beautiful, but
there is too much filler here for my
taste. Sorry.
4/10
AM
OOBERMAN
Hey Petrunko
(Rotodisc)
Ooberman have the ability to
change their musical direction
faster than a post-OK Computer
Radiohead, and it’s to their credit
that on Hey Petrunko they show
themselves to be entirely competent at writing beautiful expansive music that actually means
something. Or perhaps the point
of Ooberman is that things don’t
have to mean anything. I mean,
any band who can get the word
‘Petrunko’ in the album title has
got to have a sense of humour,
hasn’t it? Anyway, this album is as
close as you can come to writing a
film soundtrack without actually
writing one, with orchestral opuses and strangely endearing mediaeval-sounding acoustic balladry
lulling the listener into a state of
ethereal calm. Dreams In The Air is
a touching male-female duet over
barely audible guitar and string
accompaniment, whilst on tracks
like Where Did I Go Wrong and
Hands That Gets
Burnt a more upbeat Ooberman
serenade us with tales of broken
dreams and lost love. What with
the rise of bands like Grandaddy
and The Polyphonic Spree it’s
hard to be out-weirded these
days, but I challenge any band to
come up with a stranger (and
indeed better) version of an
Indian dance than SnakeDance
which, wait for it, combines AC/
DC guitars with Beatles-esque
strings and a sort of
Whirling Dervish, street-market in
Delhi-type musical adventure that
is as hilariously tongue in cheek as
it is brilliantly clever. Hey Petrunko
is an incredible journey that takes
in numerous rock, classical and
world influences on the way, and
creates a musical tapestry so complex, layered and interesting that
you cannot fail to be charmed.
More importantly, however, the
album challenges its listeners
without isolating or patronising
them, and the result is easily a
contender for best album of the
year so far.
9/10
AM
Lesser
LS-MP3CD-R
(Tigerbeat6)
Clocking in at a whopping 12
hours this single MP3 CD contains
just under 300 tracks charting the
history of Bay-Area electronics
abuser J. Lesser. Arranged into 18
vaguely chronological directories,
with titles ranging from the likes
of the epiphetic "Ballad_to_
those_lost_in_wars" to the mundane "Unreleased_94-01", the CD
covers the entire Lesser story from
ugly cassette deck lo-fi recordings
through to the grinding IDMdestroying noise thrashes that
characterise his more recent work
for the Matador label.
Of most interest on this
CD is the transition between
Lesser's slacker rock attempts
(occasionally in association with
members of early nineties bands
such as A Minor Forest) and his
current beat crunching persona.
The first of his forays into
electronica, Excommunicate the
Cult of the Live Band, is included
here and is self described in the
liner notes as "Not for the faint of
heart or anyone who expects real
jungle".
Other highlights include
"Welcome to the American
Experience" featuring a fantastic
glitchcore track provocatively
titled "Markus Popp Can Kiss My
Redneck Ass", referring to
Germany's legendary CD skipper.
Freesound, a cassete made in
1999, allegedly in collaboration
with a Japanese con-artist is
another of the better offerings.
This CD isn't so much a
'Best of' as a 'Complete Works of'
but instead of being a ridiculously
over-priced box set the MP3 format keeps the price down. If
you’re an aficionado of Lesser,
Matmos, Kid 606 and their ilk you
could do worse than spend 15
quid on this - assuming you have
the means to play it, that is.
MP3/10
TH
CALEXICO
Feast of Wire
(City Slang)
Calexico are that rare item, a side
project that has achieved greater
fame and recognition than it’s
mother ship. While Giant Sand
and its chief songwriter Howe
Gelb remain largely overlooked
(although that is beginning to
change) Joey Burns and John
Convertino, the rhythm section
from that band have achieved
much greater success with this
mariachi flavoured brand of musicianship.
Feast of Wire, Calexico’s
fourth full length album falls
somewhere between 2000’s Hot
Rail and their best record to date
The Black Light. While it avoids
some of the more obvious pitfalls
of Hot Rail, which although a
pleasant listen was undeniably
samey, it doesn’t quite live up to
the eclecticism and bloody-minded originality of The Black Light.
While the longest song
on the album, ‘Black Heart’ distills
and refines Calexico’s coveted
spaghetti-western style approach,
Some of the shorter songs pack a
greater punch, however, particu-
BRICK AWARD WINNERS
20th March 2003
I KNOW IT’S BEEN TENSE BUT NOW WE CAN EXCLUSIVELY REVEAL THE RESULTS OF THE AWARD CEREMONY THAT LITERALLY NO-ONE COULD CARE LESS ABOUT, APPARENTLY (VOTER APATHY
AND ALL). TO MAINTAIN THE ILLUSION OF IMPORTANCE, THOUGH, WE’LL JUST SAY THAT WE’VE BEEN UP FOR THREE WEEKS SOLID COUNTING THE VOTES THAT HAVE BEEN ARRIVING BY THE
SKIPLOAD
EVERY
DAY.
WHICH
IS
JUST
ONE
BIG
HUGE
LIE.
OH
WELL...
Queens Of The Stone
Age - Songs For The
Deaf
us the privilege of calling ourselves “your award-winning Edge”
because I think we deserve it goddamit. And we’re never going to
get entered for any sort of meaningful award (despite dicking on
every other uni newspaper’s
music section... ) so this will just
BEST SINGLE
have to do.
Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Master EP
BEST MALE
Tony Blackburn
BEST BAND
He won some TV programme
about living in the jungle, really
near a really big hotel, and with
loads of celebrity luxuries but, for
pretending to rough it and blatantly wearing a wig, he deserves
Queens Of The Stone
Age
For the very fact that they are one
of the biggest and best bands in
the world and still played in our
humble city is surely Brick-worthy
enough. And also the fact that
Songs For The Deaf was the best
something.
BEST SOUTHAMPTON
VENUE
album of last year...
Jack White
Okay, so this is my own personal
choice and, even though he isn’t a
solo artist per se, he’s done so
much for rock over the last couple
of years and has done it his own
way that you can’t help respect
him. Although you’ll all probably
BEST NEW BAND
BEST FEMALE
City Of God
BEST TV PROGRAMME
Blind Date
psychotic.
BEST LIVE ACT
Bjork
The Polyphonic Spree
want bloody Kylie to win a Brick.
Tim says she’s good, and we don’t
BEST DJ
We have not completely ignored
any good bands and so this section is rendered obsolete. If you
have any strong opinions about
our content then feel free to send
us some Hate Mail, if only so we
can slag you off and prove, once
and for all, that we’re always right.
BEST EDGE TEAM
MEMBER
If only because the new ‘Ditch Or
Date’ theory has worked wonders
for this classic piece of Saturday
night television. Basically, if you
pick a right moose then you can
trade her in for the second choice
who is usually a moose too, only
with a worse personality. Wicked.
But at least you can ditch the mad
one.
Joe ‘The
Enigma’ Wiggins
We haven’t seen him and the
chances are that neither have you,
as he’s currently in hiding from
the extremist wing of the Craig
David fan club. We hear he’s kind
of like Keyser Soze, only far, far
scarier.
BEST HAIR-RELATED
FEATURE
BEST MUSIC MAG
Mohair Hate Mail
The Edge
BEST BRITISH
MONARCH EVER
Okay, it was a fix, but this allows
Henry VIII
I’ve always been a big fan of the
Tudors, but let’s look at the evidence. (1) He had six wives and (2)
changed the system of organised
religion forever just to suit his
own means. And (3) he was a lardy
bastard. And (4) a ginger (err,
okay, scrap that one, but he must
have been brave to attempt to
popularise ginger facial hair).
Respect.
BEST-IALITY
?
out on.
disagree but I couldn’t care less.
Not just because one of them,
Sym Gharial, went to my old
school, or because one of them,
Guy McKnight, bought me a drink,
but because they are one of the
most intense bands around,
released one of the best debut
albums of last year, and are totally
< no winner >
Well, to be honest, where else is
there? It’s just a shame that so
many bands decide that
Portsmouth is where it’s at. They
don’t know what they’re missing
BEST FILM
The Eighties Matchbox
B-Line Disaster
BEST ALBUM
The Joiner’s Arms
BEST BAND WE’VE
IGNORED
Craig David
If only because he sounds like
Daniel Bedingfield savaging a
sheep while listening to Stevie
Wonder. Only worse.
IF YOU HAD ONE
BULLET...
Saddam Hussein
To stop this whole annoying war
malarkey and Iraqi suffering.
PA G E 7
BLACK BOX DECODER
20th March 2003
BLACK BOX RECORDER’S LUKE HAINES AND JOHN MOORE TALK ABOUT THEIR AS YET UNREALSISED MEGA-STARDOM with the edge
terms) he struck out on a new
project ‘Baader-Meinhof’, named
after the German terrorist group
and featuring an array of tabla
players and strings. The group
produced one eponymous album
of disturbing dark funk, which
Haines himself ranks as one of the
“great unheard albums”.
Yet again, not content to
rest on his laurels, he struck out in
yet another direction, this time
with guitarist (and former Jesus
and Mary Chain drummer) John
Moore, and vocalist Sarah Nixey.
The resulting album ‘England
Made Me’, released under the
Black Box Recorder moniker, was a
perfect combination of Haines’
unrelenting bleak streak with a
group love of all things pop.
Although
Haines
returned to The Auteurs for one
final album, it was BBR who were
to become his primary interest.
Black Box Recorder’s 2000 album
The Facts of Life scored Haines his
first UK hit single with the sardonic but melodic title track – an
incongruous Top Of The Pops performance soon followed. In the
break between second and third
BBR albums Haines found the
time to record his first solo album,
the awesome and unpredictable
Oliver Twist Manifesto plus the
soundtrack to the still unreleased
brit-flick Christie Malry’s Own
Double Entry.
And so that brings us
stumbling into the light of the
present. With third BBR album
Passionoia having just hit the
shops, I find myself face to face
with the protagonist himself,
along with his faithful cohort
Moore. Given Haines’ numerous
brushes with full-blown fame, I
ask whether stardom is important
to them.
“I think we’re kind of past
the whole fame bit, in a way”
replies Haines “ We kind of exist in
our own vacuum that we’ve created for ourselves. When people
start out in bands when they’re 17
they think that they’re going to
sell a million records. I realised
early on that all the bands I’ve
ever liked had sold no records at
all.”
PA G E 8
To understand the story Banbury had been added to the
of Black Box Recorder, you have to line-up. Neither gained control of
understand the story of some of any songwriting responsibilities,
the minds behind it. One of these, however, as Haines retained sole
an embittered young chap by the control over the band. Life on the
name of Luke Haines, began his promoting the album took its toll
search for fame and stardom back however, and Haines proceeded
in 1988, when he served time as to break both his ankles by halfguitarist in The Servants, one of a deliberately jumping off a wall to
collection of bands picked out on allow the band to claim back the
the NME’s C-86 collection but who costs of touring on insurance.
Whilst
housebound,
never really amounted to much
more than an album
or two steeped in Misery Guts: Luke Haines at London’s Mean Fiddler
mediocrity.
In 1992,
determined
to
make it on his own,
and inspired to
write his own songs
this time round,
Haines formed his
own
trio
The
Auteurs, with thengirlfriend
Alice
Readman on bass
and Glenn Collins
on drums. Through
a couple of breaks
that Haines himself
admits were “lucky”,
The
Auteurs
secured themselves
a deal with ‘Hut’
records and in 1993
they put out the
malignant guitar
pop debut, New
Wave. A cracked
reflection of faded
glamour (the album
contains the word
‘star’ no less than 26
times) it caught the
attention of the
prestigious Mercury
Music Prize panel. When it was Haines songwriting took a distinct
announced that Suede had stylistic turn, looking to darker
scooped the prize, an alcohol subject matter such as aircrashes
fuelled Haines went ballistic, and child murder for inspiration.
demanding of the Suede drum- The result was the critically laudmer that he hand over the prize ed (read poor selling) album ‘After
money. It later transpired that Murder Park’, for many Auteurs
only one panel vote had separat- fans Haines defining moment.
Produced by Shellac’s master of
ed the two albums.
A second album, ‘Now destruction Steve Albini, the
I’m A Cowboy’, with class division album also signalled a new matuvery much the theme, followed in rity in Haines. Deciding that the
1994, by which time Collins had one thing the Auteurs weren’t was
been replaced by Barney C. a “regular band” (the type of band
Rockford and cellist James that Haines refers to in scathing
“If we made a thousand
records, we could probably sell a
million if we were lucky” adds
Moore.
“Most [musician’s] retirement plan consists of making six
albums which sell well, but ours
consists of fifty poorly selling
albums” Haines continues.
Haines’ almost schizophrenic switches between projects and bands is another thing
that your average
rock musician would
shy away from. How
does he shift his
attention so easily I
wonder?
“Changing
names is all a bit of a
laugh”
replies
Haines “You don’t
want to be stuck in
the same band for
27 years or something”
So
what
about the rumours
that Black Box
Recorder was originally going to be a
noise-terrorist
record in the same
vein as Lou Reed’s
Metal
Machine
Music.
“We got rid
of that idea pretty
quickly after we
banged a few
objects together
and it didn’t sound
too good” laughs
Moore.
“The reson
for its conception as
a noise project was purely pragmatic. Someone offered us a bit of
money to record a load of old
noise, but they ended up pulling
out of the deal so we started
thinking we might as well record a
bloody song.”
It turns out that Sarah
Nixey, now the inimitable frontwoman for BBR was singing in a
folk-group for whom Moore occasionally played the saw.
“I’d just made the Baader
Meinhof record which hadn’t
taken over the entire entertain-
ment industry as I’d originally
planned”, says Haines wryly “so I
ended up playing in a bloody folk
group dreaming about making
noise records with a guy who
played the saw.”
In the liner notes to the
Christy Malry album, Haines gives
the listener a list of his pet hates,
in keeping with the theme of the
film. I ask why items such as
‘British Artists – Post 1988’ and
(Warp records video artist) ‘Chris
Cunningham’ had featured.
“I don’t want to get
myself into a litigious position but
I’d been ripped off by some of the
artists, that’s why they were there
– I can’t get into it more than that.
Chris Cunningham and I are actually on speaking terms again now
though.”
Haines dislike, or should
that be disgust, for British pop
music is well known, but given
that one of his records, Now I’m A
Cowboy’ was remixed by electronic artist Mu-Ziq – friend of the
likes of Aphex Twin and
Squarepusher – I wondered what
he though of the British electronic
scene.
“I don’t really have any
opinion on them at all. Mike
Paradinas got paid 500 quid to do
that album which he thought was
fantastic because it gave him the
deposit to move out of his mum’s
house, it sold really well in America
and I got all the royalties from it. I
guess that stuff isn’t really aimed
at me”
While Haines lyrics seem
now to have moved away from
the death theme, one track on the
new album, ‘The New Diana’ deals
with one very public death.
“It isn’t really about her
death” counters Haines.
“It’s more a celebration of
her life” claims Moore, although I
feel uneasily certain that he’s
lying.
To finish, I ask them
whether they can see any future
for BBR.
“We were talking just
before the interview” says Moore
“how it would be good if our relationship is continued to death, so
we can visit one another while
POETRY IN MOTION
20th March 2003
KINESIS’S TOM AND CONOR TALK TO THE EDGE ABOUT THE WORLD, POLITICAL APATHY AND WORKSHY STUDENTS
Meeting Kinesis is an interesting and stimulating affair, so
much so that my first couple of
drafts of this piece inspired a flood
of anti-people vitriol not seen
since the first draft of my school
yearbook page.
But we couldn’t print that for
one main reason; it was offensive
to everyone. Truthful, self-consciously hypocritical, but offensive so, rather than preaching and
grinding my own moral axe, I’ll
just let Kinesis speak for themselves, well, for the time being at
least, so let’s go back to the beginning, back to Bolton:
"Well," begins Conor, "where we
come from there’s no sort of music
scene, no sort of alternative culture and because we were all the
same age and grew up around the
same area we didn’t need to work
hard to find each other. It was
quite obvious to us that we should
be into a band."
So was forming Kinesis a conscious reaction to the mainstream
culture?
"Yeah," interjects Tom. "I mean,
everyone else went out on a
Friday night, took drugs and
whatever, but we went and practised on a Friday night and were
really diligent. I guess we were
kind of reacting to the people
around us, but I think we were
mainly reacting to the ritual of
going out. I mean, Friday night
comes, it’s the end of the week,
you’ve finished five days of work,
you can’t think of anything else to
do, so let’s go and get pissed and
pull a girl who you would otherwise not pull. It’s that sort of thing
that gets to us, and that’s what we
wanted to react against."
Angry young men drawn
together by a similar sort of usagainst-the-world mentality that
drew four young men in
Blackwood,
Manic
Street
Preachers, together a decade
before. Four young men reacting
against the pointless, meaningless, mindless cyclicism of mainstream binge culture and, though
I could read an extra level of
morality-driven vitriol into this, it
wouldn’t be in keeping with what
they actually said (though would
be interesting for further probing). And whether you like it or
not they have a point, a point that
may make mainstream disciples
question their piss and puke and
PA G E 1 0
f**k and fight lifestyle but, more
importantly, may help to draw the
disenfranchised, disaffected social
outsiders together and not allow
themselves to be cast as lepers.
But aside from questioning this
way of life, is there any way of
changing that deeply engrained
start questioning…"
But surely in a world where
George Michael and Madonna are
making the ‘controversial’ political
statements then something’s
going wrong?
"I know what you mean, but I
think it says more about young
communist.
"Well it’s not purposely that
way," says Tom. "That’s just how it
happens and we believe in equality and we’re all in it together…"
"We split all the money equally," adds Conor, "so it’s not like the
songwriter gets 85% and all the
others get 5% each. Every
member is as equal as the
next person and it sounds
like a cliché but that’s how
it is."
Fantastic. So to mix
with the Manics’ angry
young mentality you’ve
got traces of The Clash
practising as they preach.
Now you might criticise
them for having Shopping
Is Not Creating as a T-shirt
slogan yet still selling
numerous pieces of
Kinesis-related paraphernalia on their merchandise stall (as, indeed, our
beautiful gig reviewer
has). Err, okay, tricky one
that but my argument
would be that they are
part of a system and thus
have to appropriate the
methods of that system in
order to try and change it.
It’s like when the big corporations point out that
anti-capitalist protestors
use mobile phones and
wear trainers in order to
protest against the capitalist system, like they
assume that protestors
should wear moccasins
and communicate with
homing pigeons.
KINESIS - Conor... without “silly black hat”
And just like these
protestors are a product
people being apathetic. I mean, of society’s system, so are Kinesis,
culture?
"Well we’d like to change it but more people vote in Big Brother and that’s my justification of their
we’re musicians, we’re a band, and than in the local elections, but I merch stall, part product and part
I think what we’re trying to do is think it’s also about the way poli- commentary, though maybe
find an interesting way to put tics is put across because it doesn’t that’s just a rationalisation. In any
across our opinions and that’s seem like it has any relation to case, I’m not sure they ever wholetheir lives. It seems like it doesn’t heartedly adopt a political system
what the band is."
Do you think there’s enough matter who you vote for, whether apart from capitalism so perhaps
it’s Tory or Labour, because they’re it’s not so seemingly hypocritical.
politics in music?
"Well," begins Conor, "no-one pretty much the same party. I Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah,
seems to be singing about any- think people just need to realise while similarities to other bands
thing other than love and I think that it’s alright to have a set of exist, they’re just incidental
you have to have a broader world- beliefs and express them in the because Kinesis are doing it on
view. You can’t just see your own way you live your life."
their own terms, and this shows
Right on, brother. We got our- through in their loud, angular
little world and think that’s it, and
though we never aim to preach selves some angry young men indie rock. I just find it sad that
down people’s throats, we just who all pull together in a song- bands that are confident in their
want to show people that they writing process that keeps the strong opinions break through so
can make a difference if they just music exciting but sounds kinda rarely, but it is for this reason that
we should treasure Kinesis and all
that entails, including a developed political line on war in Iraq, a
desire to keep up with current
affairs while on tour, and a reiteration of their beliefs on freedom in
reaction to David Blunkett’s propositions for music censorship.
"It’s like when you’ve got the
mainstream bark of a tree and any
branches that come out from that
just seem to be cut off. (Hmmm...
using a tree as an analogy sounds
kinda hippie... burn them) I mean,
anything that’s coming out that’s
different they want to have it controlled… (Ooooh, that’s better. At
least they’re not f**king treehuggers)"
"Yeah," says Conor. "He’s a culture minister who hates culture.
He hates culture that isn’t highbrow opera. They just want everyone to listen to one type of music,
classical music, and it’s because
they don’t understand the culture,
they don’t understand So Solid
Crew, and they’re scared of what
they don’t know.
"And how can a country like
Britain that’s supposed to stand
for freedom not allow some black
guys from South London who
have a different view of the world?
It’s about freedom."
And that seems like the perfect place to leave it but, before
they rush off to soundcheck, there
is time to cram in one final question, so would you have ever considered going to university?
"It just seems like the thing
you do, but I would’ve gone to uni
to study politics. And if I had, I
wouldn’t have been like one of
those people who just pissed
around."
Oooh, nice. A direct challenge
to all the lazy students amongst
you (and me… I am aware of my
own hypocrisy here so I thought
I’d get that in before y’all complain) who are only at uni for the
pot of employment gold at the
other end of the educational rainbow, with an insulting disrespect
for every inner city kid who would
kill for this chance for escape and
self-improvement.
Perhaps
Kinesis will make you question
this if nothing else, but that’s what
they’re here for. They’re not here
to piss about. They’re serious, and
it’s going to be hard for you to
resist.
And hopefully they’ll make you
kills and spills
20th March 2003
THE KILLS
Joiners
Monday 3rd March
KINESIS
Joiners
Tuesday 25th February
It’s 9.30pm and the walls of
the Joiners are already dripping
with condensation and, judging
by the large number of gymslip
wannabes, things are going to
get much hotter. Having only
heard one single, I’m unsure of
what to expect of a young band
hailing from Bolton, and my
arm-candy for the evening
loosely describes them as ‘political rock’. I am even more baffled.
On stage, Kinesis are four
teenagers, each donning a
white T-shirt. It’s unclear if this
statement is in the name of politics or fashion, but the effect is
quite striking. After a brief
shout out to an enthusiastic
crowd, Kinesis bungee into a
refreshingly heavy cacophony
of meaty drums and
fizzing, grinding guitars.
Throughout their set they tease
the audience with the classic
recipe of push and pull, from
drums that shake you to the
bone, halt and drop to a lull,
and then… wait for it, wait for
it… ROCK. They storm through
several songs, old and new, all
infused with a childlike energy
which is very catching, and
recent single And They Obey
proves to be a fantastic throbbing number in a live arena. The
lead singer (a Dave Grohl prehaircut look-a-like) talks to the
crowd between songs, telling
us we have restored their faith
in the South. You can’t beat a
good bit of band-crowd banter,
I say.
By the third song they have
acquired themselves an impressive-sized mosh-pit for such a
small venue. There were too
many young-‘uns present for
my
liking but, then again, I am a
miserable fart and jealous of
the ease with which they enjoy
themselves. And clearly their
delight and senseless jumping
pleased the band, who very
generously donated bottles of
water to them throughout the
gig. To top it off, the gig’s finale
involved a rather pissed young
man climbing onto the stage
and trying to wrestle the guitar
from the hat-clad guitarist, and
then, the best bit of all, promptly being thrown
with great force off the stage.
Very rock ‘n’ roll.
Kinesis are tight and sophisticated for a band so young, but
of course there’s always room
for improvement. Like the guitarist should make up his mind
whether to wear the silly black
hat or not wear the silly black
hat. On, off, on, off all night like
a
bloody yo-yo. Although their
music contains an element of
the bubblegum punk that I personally shrink away from,
Kinesis have distanced themselves from this, giving their
songs greater depth and harmony. That said, they need to
be careful not to rely too much
on that heavy-soft-heavy formula I mentioned.
However, with songs borrowing from Radiohead’s The Bends
for those crunchy Greenwood
guitars, and nodding to their
stated favourites And You Will
Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, it
is unsurprising that their music
received such an enthused
reaction this evening, while stirring the embers of my distant
heavy rock days, and I felt enlivened; these guys are cool, they
are punky and edgy and I love
it. However, I have just one
bone to pick with this lot; they
are anti-corporate (or at least so
I would guess from their lyrics)
and so chose Independente
label over the offer from EMI.
Why, then, do they insist on
charging extortionate prices for
merchandise, most of which I
could knock up in my bedroom
(probably)? Well?
Apart from that though, the
gig provided throbbing music,
an up-for-it crowd, a friendly,
talkative band. All in all a won-
I blame the confusion about
the date that led to an under full
Joiners for such a hyped band but,
hey ho, that’s just the way things
go (apologies to anyone who
missed out on the basis of our
incorrect gig guide… we just got
the incorrect info from the Joiners
website). Apologies also for the
missed opportunity for seeing
former Elastica member Donna
Matthews’ new band that sounded like middle aged Elastica as,
whereas mid 90s Donna Matthews
would stop the song after, say,
two and a half minutes, here the
pace is much slower and so, consequently, the songs go on for
four or five minutes. Though it
sounds just like you’d expect, only
not as good, though is made up
for, in part, by the drummer’s
porkpie hat, an interesting choice
of headwear not spotted in St.
Mary’s since, ooh, 1931, when the
wearer got attacked but consequently gave the rascals a clip
round the ear and told ‘em to be
on their way cos he knew their
mothers. Or did I just make that
up? Well, whatever, as long as you
don’t try that sort of vigilantism
now or you’ll get lynched by some
fake gold wearing, while clothed,
Reebok Classic wearing bastards.
Err, yeah. I’ve just completely
lost the thread of this whole
review now. Who was at the gig
again? Oh yeah, The Kills. Now,
The Kills are an interesting proposition, a bluesy two-piece (yeah,
where have we heard that before?)
whose Spartan amp layout can be
attributed, in part at least, to their
use of a drum machine and the
fact that only one of them, Hotel
(real name Jamie Hince), plays his
geeeetarrrrrr all the way through
the set. It’s just a shame that this
cool new ‘band’ is too misanthropic to give us an interview. Oh well.
There’s nowt we can do about
that. There’s nowt we can do if
they don’t like talking to people.
But it just all seems so different
when they get up there.
Hotel, Jamie, whatever, just
seems really happy on home turf
(by which I mean, well, the U.K.)
and manages to keep the crowd
onside even when they have a flat
battery after their opener,
Superstition. To be honest,
though, regardless of how charming The Kills’ main instrument
merchant is, no-one’s looking at
him when, stage right, we have VV
(real name Alison Mosshart), a
super thin compulsive smoker
who once survived for six months
on a diet of, err, lemon-flavoured
drinks (apparently, so the NME
says, but they also said that The
White Stripes are siblings). But
intermittently, between smoking
an absurd amount of menthol
cigarettes and dancing like a
blues pole dancer imitating Uma
Thurman in Pulp Fiction, keeping
the slack-jawed male population
of the audience transfixed for the
set’s duration, she sings perfectly,
just like on the album. She is, simply, the perfect physical embodiment of the album’s throbbing,
pulsing sexuality. Mmmmmm…
anyway, though the set perhaps
suffers from this being one of
their first U.K. shows and the audience’s non-familiarity with the
material (though eager punters
will have a basic insight from
2002’s Black Rooster EP). But this
doesn’t seem to matter as the
audience responds as you’d
imagine. This ain’t no balls out
AC/DC moshpit inspiring long
hair cover band, or whatever
cheesy crap that y’all dance to
at The Cube. No, The Kills very
much inspire the cool people’s
dance, a.k.a. the indie dance, a
dance that isn’t so much a
dance and more a nodding and
foot tapping combination with
drink in hand. It’s just the sort of
thing you’d expect, in fact. After
all, when was the last time you
saw a crowd surfer at a blues
gig? (and I ain’t talking no White
Stripes blues… I’m talkin’ John
Lee Hooker, B.B. King and all
those other artists that me pa
brought me up on.) But that’s
The Kills in a nutshell. Transfixing
but cooler than all that horrible
sweating business, and with a
bristling tension and paranoia
underlying their simple minimalist blues riffs.
RICH HEAP
PA G E 1 1
WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU SOHO
20th March 2003
SCARLET SOHO’S LEE AND JIM TALK MCDONALDS, MIDGE URE AND MISS BLACK AMERICA
world and how nice it looks and
you decide to give it a pat and
then it rips your arm off for no
reason and then pretend that it’s
done nothing wrong. And then,
allegedly, they didn’t touch anything."
Sorry, what’s this all about?
"Well we had a bit of trouble at
our gig in Exeter because we left
our Minidisc player behind and
the band who played there the
next night, who will remain nameless (put two and two together
readers) stole our disc and out
leads and just left the player there.
But they handed the player in. I
just don’t like the fakery. I mean, if
you’re going to be an arsehole
then just be an arsehole then at
let everyone knows where they
stand, but if you’re going to pretend to be nice then don’t do
something like that. I hope they
jump out of a very fast train. That
would be a good idea. Especially if
your band’s as s**t as his (Seymour
Glass) as well. He had to bring in a
load of sumo wrestlers because
his band ditched him. And his
wife ditched him as well. You can
print all this, I don’t care."
But not to bitch about anyone,
though.
"No. Well that’s not bitching.
I’m just informing the rest of the
local bands for their own safety,
really."
Err, anyway, moving on. What
inspires your song writing?
"I don’t know. I really like the
live element of playing and want
to try and inject as much energy
into it as I can… actually (to Jim)
Jim, do you want to answer a bit
of this question?"
"What is it?" he asks, while on
the prowl for some of the salad
cream drenched lettuce (that’s,
like, so hedonistically rock and roll
it’s untrue... sorry, I’m just being
facetious) in the middle of the
floor.
""What inspires your writing?""
"Well," begins Jim. "I like to make
things quite angular, and try and
sound like (pause) a car accident.
Lyrically we’re very detached but
focused…"
How do you mean?
"Err… well you can conjure a
few images in your head but we’re
a bit Bowie-esque lyrically, um,
but, yeah… we want to be angular but songy."
"We want it to be challenging
but still keeping it as a song. I
mean, you can want to challenge
yourself to write a pop song to be
PA G E 1 2
not a pop song but making sure
that it’s still a pop song."
"A top ten smash for the alternative fan," says Jim. "There you
go."
Right, so a bit hazy, then. Oh,
just read the gig review and it’ll
give you a better idea (well, hopefully), but how do they feel about
how they’re perceived in the
press?
"Well the press we get is get-
Getting taken upstairs at the
Joiners is a rare treat. No graffitied
Underworld this time. Instead we
have the comparable luxury of
Scarlet Soho’s lounge, a sparse yet
large room with a sofa, cushions
and beer crates for seating. It
looks a bit like a ‘squat’ (their
word) yet Scarlet is particularly
impressed by the light bulb, presumably a new addition since
they left Southampton to go on
"No."
"Ferdinand Magellan (postColumbus Portugese explorer,
born in 1480, who led the first
nautical circumnavigation of the
globe and was killed in battle, in
Guam, on April 27th 1521... I
think).”
"No… f**k it. Move onto the
next question. No, wait, Dancing
With Tears In My Eyes."
"Ultravox."
SCARLET SOHO - go on... look at the camera
ting better. I mean, we had one
bad review in Kerrang! and we
never wanted Kerrang! to like us
anyway…" begins Jim.
"I mean," Lee interrupts, "though
there’s a guitar element in out
music, there’s not a metal element
and if they’re going to turn around
and say that it’s a bit floppy
fringed s**tty then fine…"
"We can’t help the way we look,"
says Jim, looking like a more
angular Nicky Wire, "and that’s
why everyone chucks us in the
glam bracket which then switches
everyone off ‘cos when you hear
that a band’s glam you don’t want
to hear what they’ve got to offer. I
mean, we’re not a glam band, we
just look good. There’s got to be
some difference between Steve
Strange and (long pause)…"
"David Gray," throws in
Whitetown (creator of, err, some
song in the distant past, or so I’m
told), relaxing in the corner.
"No."
"(whiny voiced banjo playing
Northern gimp) George Formby ?"
"No… I was thinking of…"
"Imelda Marcos (former Miss
Manila and wife of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, charhed
in October 2001 of illegally amassing wealth during her husband’s
dictatorship)."
their latest glamorous tour. So
Lee, are there any interesting tour
stories?
"Well, we went into
McDonalds today wearing dressing gowns and ‘Michael Barrymore’
written on my forehead, and Jim
had ‘Paul Gadd’ written on his and
just acted like there was nothing
wrong. And the driver went in
with no shoes on and a dressing
gown and filmed it, and kids kept
coming up and asking "Why are
“I like to try and make
things quite angular
like... a car accident.”
you wearing dressing gowns" and
(to Jim) what did you say?"
"That we were Buddhists."
"I think the cabin fever had just
kicked in. I mean, we should be
fine because we’ve had days off
here and there but we’re just not.
No-one’s coping particularly well,
or bearing up very well. Oh, we
got paid in chicken last night as
well.."
So what’s the best band you’ve
played with?
"Miss Black America," throws in
the driver.
"Oh no, not Miss Black America.
They’re like, if you imagine having
the sweetest little bunny in the
"Midge Ure. There’s got to be a
difference between class and a
look and a look with no class.
We’re perceived as a glam band
when we have more to offer than
a glam band because a glam band
look good and play s**t and we
look good and play well."
You’ve signed to an American
label. How have they been?
"Oh, they’ve been cool, and
they’re far more honest and far
more willing to take a risk on
something that may offer something to the scene. I mean, wherever we’ve been every sound
engineer, who’s working seven
nights a week, says "I’ve never
seen a band like you before" and
I’m sure he wouldn’t be able to say
anything like that to all the nothing bands like Reuben and The
Kills and The Datsuns and The
f**king Libertines and The Strokes
who are just regurgitating the
same old rock stuff from the last
45 years. It just seems that only
that stuff is allowed to come
round again and anything with a
smatter of British 80s style to it,
like The Cure and Depeche Mode,
is just overlooked and it’s a disgrace because Depeche Mode
have sold 50 million albums
worldwide, beating The Smiths,
but NME says that The Smiths are
SCARLET SOHO
Joiners
Thursday 27th February
In a half full Joiners Scarlet
Soho make their return to
Southampton. They’re on
home turf but, much to Jim’s
consternation, their usual
hardcore South Coast support
isn’t out at full strength. So in a
half full venue, the three-piece
take to the stage and, flitting
between keyboards and guitars, do what they’re here to
do. And what are they here to
do? Well, give some indication
of what Placebo would sound
like if they brought in synths
and kicked out Brian Molko,
electronic yet soaring. Banish
all thoughts of electronic
music as intentionally soulless
(this ain’t no goddam Kraftwerk
after all) and unfailingly crap
(there will be good and bad
bands in every genre). Luckily
Scarlet Soho don’t fall into
either of these traps as, though
it can all get a bit 80s in places,
it’s good, better than you’d
expect from a band who, let’s
not forget, comes from
Southampton (no wonder they
wanted to go on tour). And, 50
minutes later, it had all passed,
surprisingy quickly, and well
worth a look if you’re after
some local talent in order to
boost your elitist credibility.
RICH HEAP
cool. I mean, you go to a venue
and look in their hall of fame, and
who’s there? Jimi Hendrix, The
Who, The Clash… where’s f**king
Depeche Mode, The Cure, any
band who ever offered this country any style?"
And with that Jim’s rant
endeth and sums up Scarlet
Soho’s approach, which though
not necessarily fitting into a preestablished genre, is no less valid
or any less good because of it,
though is definitely less clichéd.
And with that the interview
needn’t carry on, giving me all I
need for a decent transcript (well,
two decent transcripts actually)
so I accept the hospitality on offer
(can of lager, chicken microwaved
to perfection, and chips), kick
back, listen to The Faint’s fantastic
new album, and wait ‘til it’s time
to go downstairs for the Scarlet
Soho live experience...
SWANSONG
20th March 2003
THE EDGE DISCOVERS THE HIDDEN DEPTHS OF FORMER SWAN MICHAEL GIRA
Michael Gira
+ Devendra Banhart
Bush Hall, London
Tuesday 11th March
San Francisco’s Devendra
Banhart is an utter original.
Perched cross legged and shoeless atop a folding table, which is
placed centre-stage of West
London’s austere Bush Hall, he
appears less than fully compos
mentis.
Think of all the stories
you ever read about Syd Barrett,
wide-eyed and lysergically
demented, howling to the moon
about god-knows-what, and then
imagine that Barrett is here right
in front of you – except that his
vegetable men lyrics have
Americanized themselves into
stream-of-conciousness tales of
unvisited States, and dentally
reckless souls (whom Banhart
most likely knows personally), not
to mention the black babies growing from between his Chinese
children’s toes.
His acoustic guitar, lain
skewed across his lap is alternately coaxed then battered into submission, while his mind – the real
tour de force of his whole being –
wanders freely through the candy
shop that is his imagination.
Banhart is the person that every
kid who ever picked up an acoustic guitar subconsciously wishes
they could be if only they had
either the wit or the intelligience.
They’d probably sing in his deliberately warbled demi-yodel too, if
only they had the charisma to pull
it off.
When Michael Gira, then
leader of seminal nihil-rock legends Swans, picked up an acoustic guitar in 1988 an hammered
out his version of “Love Will Tear
Us Apart” he set the precedent
which was to guide the rest of his
career, and with the induction of
his Angels of Light project in 1999,
he established himself as fully
reborn Yet despite the fact that he
has now left behind him the
throbbing metallic stasis that
characterized Swan’s early work,
his music could hardly be said to
have mellowed. On the contrary,
as his solitary figure occupies the
stage in front of a crowd mainly
made up of ageing Swans devotees, his person is positively glowering.
Plunging into the very
core of his volatile being, Gira
spews forth an incredible range of
emotions, from brooding anger to
passionate joy to weary acceptance to demented terror. The guitar playing may not be accomplished, or even pretty, but it’s
sheer uncompromising brutality
is enough to break either the
heart or the will of the most hardened souls.
The majority of Gira’s
material is taken from his brand
new Angels of Light CD. Whereas
there extensive use is made of a
wide range of instrumentation, in
this live context his songs are rendered bare. Particularly effective
MICHAEL GIRA
is the moving track ‘The Family
God’ which plays on the themes
of isolation and All Souls’ Rising
which is almost defines the physical manifestation of human misery.
Michael Gira has now
been producing his distinctive
brand of harrowing music for the
last 20 years and still shows no
signs of stopping.
ble.
It’s true that Black Box
Recorder’s music doesn’t automatically lend itself to a live situation, partly because of Moore’s
bizzare synth-guitar interpretations of the album tracks and
partly because of Nixey’s cutglass whisperings. Furthermore,
seeing as the Black Box Recorder
audience is mainly made up of
former Auteurs die-hards, the
atmosphere is simultaneously
adoring and sceptical. At least
twice requests for Auteurs tracks
dating from 9 or 10 years ago
came shouted from the audience, although Haines stoutly
ignored them.
With an encore of one
of Passionoia’s most endearing
tracks, ‘Andrew Ridgely’, a tale of
mocking love for George
Michael’s trusty Wham! Sidekick,
Black Box Recorder affirm themselves as Britains rightful (and
spiteful) heirs to the pop crown.
SHADOW BOXING
Black Box Recorder
Mean Fiddler, London
Sunday 9th March
Taking the stage clad in
white suits which wouldn’t look
entirely out of place in the long
room at Lords, Luke Haines and
John Moore seem unusually
upbeat - if not happy then certainly mischevious. Singer Sarah
Nixey, for her part, plays the enigmatic femme fatale par excellence, although her undoubtedly
‘ironic’ dress sense (the foulest
pair of red PVC trousers you ever
saw) leaves a lot to be desired.
Launching straight into
the title track from their first
album, ‘England Made Me’, an
subtle tirade against the conservatisms of English life, Black Box
Recorder instantly hush the crowd
into submission. While their undeniably ‘pop’ songs aren’t filled with
the same bile that characterized
Haines’ former band ‘The Auteurs’,
the bleak sense of humour which
seethes from every lyric is palpa-
During their set comprised mainly of songs from their
new album ‘Passionoia’, Black Box
Recorder also find the time to dig
out their now classic top twenty
single, ‘The Facts of Life’, their perverted All Saints soundalike tale
of underage teenage sex, the
Radio One-banned single ‘Child
Psychology’ (featuring the line
‘Life is unfair/Kill yourself or get
over it’) and their first ever song
‘Girl Singing in the Wreckage’.
The purpose of this evening is chiefly to showcase their
new album, however, and they do
that admirably. With tracks such
as the seductive ‘School Song’,
with Nixey as adolescents’ fantasy
teacher, and ‘These Are The
Things’, perhaps an caustic analysis of Moore and Nixey’s marriage, Black Box Recorder demonstrate that they are yet again moving in a new direction, to a place
where synth pop is king and stubborness is the new irony.
Tim Houghton
PA G E 1 3
20th March 2003
27th FEBRUARY 2003
PUSSY GALORE
The Edge speaks to Brighton’s newest young talents, Cat On Form
Cat On Form formed in Brighton
in December 2001 and since then
have grown a big fan base in their
hometown and also further a field
through gigs played nationwide.
They have been highly praised by
the NME among others and especially for their support slot with
Fugazi last year. Their hardcore
style is attracting attention and
with their constant stream of
explosive live shows and their
debut album being released later
in the summer this could be a
great year for them. The Edge
spoke to Steve, one of the bands
two singer/guitarists:
Why 'Cat on Form' as a name?
Well, we like the sound of it. and
cats are pretty cool, kinda like jazz
speak or sommat. but also
it's the kind of name that
you don't know what the
band is like - some names
you hear and you just
KNOW they're gonna be
some lame indierock stuff,
or you just KNOW it's gonna
be metal. hopefully cat on
form doesn't sound like a
particular genre.
on is that there are lots of things
in this world which are very VERY
wrong and they need changing.
we are all defiantly anti-capitalist
and are sickened by consumer
society and everything that
comes with it. we are repulsed by
racism, fascism, sexism, homophobia, war...the list is endless. our
basic premise is like this: people
need to take better care of each
other. all the rest stems from that,
we just feel like the world we live
in makes people treat themselves
and other people like utter shit
and that's fucking evil.
We get called a "political" band
which is weird because every
band should be political. there's
this idea that politics is Politics, it's
Who would you cite as
main influences on the
band: musically, politically
or in any form?
There are no main influences. between the four of us
we listen to so much different stuff (and things that
each other hates). musically
i guess we're influenced by
punk rock generally, since
we play guitars and drums.
in terms of who we're
INSPIRED by (which is different to influenced by)
then that's an endless question. just anything that has
soul or passion in it, regardless of what "type" of music
Quicker than the eye: CAT ON FORM
it is...the same thing goes
politically, we are just
inspired by things we think and something up there with -isms
feel, things we see around us. any- and parties and books and things.
thing that moves us...sometimes i mean, that's the intellectual end
you read a book and you think of things and it's very valuable but
"fuck!" and it opens yr eyes to it hides the fact that politics is just
something and then you write another word for life. everything
some words about it. same thing you do is politics...you go to
if you hear a band that kicks yr ass, school, how you get treated in
or if you just get annoyed at your family, what you get paid at
things in your life and you want to work, the fact that as a girl you
get that out.
were given different toys to a boy,
everything. all these little things
Cat on Form appear very opinion- ARE politics and in that sense
ated and political, what are your
every band that talks about life is
ideological beliefs?
talking about politics. the sad fact
We have a whole bunch of differ- is that we don't hear many bands
ent beliefs. for example, jamie, talking about life, they're just full
dan and eva are all vegan but i eat of shit. like I say, we just address
meat. so we don't all agree on things that we think and feel,
everything. but what we do agree things we experience in our daily
PA G E 1 4
lives that we want to express and
get free from. sometimes that
comes out in talking about a relationship between two people,
sometimes it comes out in a tirade
about capitalism and war. it's
almost like what we talk about is a
by-product of our personalities:
first and foremost we are a band
that plays music, then what we
make music about is what we as
people are interested in.
Do you believe that music is a
good medium through which to
draw attention to ideas, spread
messages, or make statements?
Yes. it's one of many good media,
the thing is that music is really
wasted a lot of the time! for us,
music has been a hugely powerful
force in our lives, it has
changed how all of us
live and i think that's
proof enough of what
you can achieve with
music. if we can introduce people to new
ideas on whatever level,
through
shows
or
through records then
that's really cool and I
think we do that, and will
continue to do that with
more force.
Much has been said
recently about Brighton’s
music scene after the
successes on different
stages of the Eighties
Matchbox, British Sea
Power, Electric Soft
Parade, Electrelane and
others, do you believe
there is something special about Brighton and
its scene? is it producing
the best new bands at
the moment for you?
I don't think there's anything special about
Brighton, no. I mean, it
doesn't have a particularly helpful
infrastructure - there are only really 2 venues etc! but the bands that
do exist are supportive of each
other which is awesome..I
wouldn't go so far as to say it's like
a proper community, people
aren't playing together every
night or living together or anything, but certainly those bands
you mention all know and like
each other and help each other
out. all of them have been cool to
us, come to our shows or asked us
to play with them, and that's really cool.
Phil Hoile
ed with the crowd the better the
vibe got, and their slick tracks
were well received, a highlight
being Mystro’s take on Blak
Twang’s Half and Half. Harry Love
(who now has his own collectivethe Extended Players) provided
decent backup.
At midnight Stapleton
took to the decks, accompanied
by an unscheduled open mic slot,
consisting of MC’s from around
the area, some whom appeared
to be more suited to garage or
d+b than hip hop. During the set
we managed to get a couple of
words from Defikew; "Nexus is a
wicked venue for hip hop,
although we needed a few more
heads to liven it up. The scene is
definitely finding its feet, there’s a
lot of talent here, and its growing",
and from Mystro; "There’s a bigger
scene for hip hop down here than
I thought, a growing potential
from what I’ve heard from open
mic, and although Southampton’s
further away from London than I
estimated, I’m hoping to come
back. I’m loving it!"
Intalex took over the
decks for the next half hour, starting off with chilled breakbeat
then upping the pace with a
damn good old skool jungle set,
fantastic tracks seamlessly mixed
and mashed up, with most people
on the dance floor (including the
DJs and MCs). Following on the
tempo Stapleton re-emerged at
1am and finished off the night
with a good deal of mainstream
d+b floor-fillers, Peshay’s U Got
Me Burning, Marky and Patife’s LK,
and Dillinga’s Twist ‘Em Out, whilst
the open mic MC’s took to the
stage once more. I was a bit disappointed by Stapleton’s use of
the ‘rewind’ although most of his
set was pretty well done. It would
have been good to hear a few
newer tracks too, since I could
recognise half of them from DJ
Hype’s compilations of last year.
Overall it was a good,
smooth-running night, the highlights for us being Koob, MI5 and
Intalex, who weren’t promoted
that well on the flyers. With a few
more nights and bigger names,
Triple 2 has the potential to make
its mark as a major hip hop promoter in Southampton, and local
support can really make this happen.
Purdy Wickham
Triple 2 are looking to recruit people to help out with promotion
and organisation for next year; if
you’re interested, contact David
Jenkins on 07881 624153.
Solipsis Launch night
The Joiners Arms
17/03/03
As a result of the huge
success of the Skitz new years eve
night at the Joiners, the weekend
music style has shifted, with a
host of regular weekend dance
nights set to bang the joiners to
its foundations. With a distinct
lack of underground club nights
in Southampton, Solipsis makes a
welcome appearance on the first
Friday of every month.
My
arrival
found
Hampshire based Aum-3 performing a live set on stage.
Talented volcalists were combined with a keyboard & drum
machine to produce a quality set,
with stage dancers adding a touch
of visual entertainment. Aum-3
played through a range of music
styles, accelerating from a fairly
slow drum & bass style beat combined with trancey rifs into some
more uplifting hard/psy trance
with epic note changes. In the
later part of the set the pace really
started rising and the underground crowd responded well to
the introduction of a pumping
fast beat, inducing maximum
energy on the dance-floor. The
end of the set was comprised of
the fast, energetic music for which
Aum 3 are known, a twisted mix
of acid metal/nu energy providing
a wicked sound track to get down
to. The performance was interesting and impressive, with expert
musical ability demonstrated
throughout.
Southampton star, Nik
Denton delivered a storming
offering from his start at 11. The
toolbox recordings owner continued with the fast pace set by Aum
3, launching into some pumping
hard dance with B.K’s mix of Tony
de Vit’s I don’t care. Denton kept
the bass pounding, his choice of
c.d decks allowing the tunes to be
pitched up far beyond the boundaries of +8% imposed by turntables. The set continued on the
hard dance theme, alternating
between tougher beats & pumping hard trance such as Miss
behavin’s such a good feelin, with
seamless mixing throughout. The
local hero went on to bang out a
quality mix of hard, fast N.R.G./
hard house combining recent
anthems with older classic tunes
such as Dj Misjah & Dj Tim’s Access.
Denton’s mix was flawless & professional demonstrating why his
name is on the line up of most of
Southampton’s top underground
dance nights.
London star, Fabry, of
Antiworld fame took over at 12.15.
27th FEBRUARY 2003
20th March 2003
dance
Unfortunately, due to the limitations of pitch control on vinyl
decks, there was no way that
Fabry could progress from
Denton’s set at similar speed.
That meant an abrupt drop in the
pace & energy of the music which
is not good, especially at peak
time. The set was begun with
pumping, bouncy psy trance &
progressed through some excellent Mark E.G style bouncy hard
trance. The crowd quickly got
back into stomp mode, warming
to the uplifting breaks & quality
bouncy beats of the German style
hard trance such as the awesome
Futlicht mix of Marc dawn’s
Expander. Fabry continued with
an offering of pumping German
hard trance/techno with expert
mixing skill, the only problem
was a skipped record due to people dancing too hard on the
stage!
The front bar was hosted
by the Mush crew who provided
an alternative to the hard dance
in the main room with a soundtrack of top quality drum & bass
to chill or drink to. The Joiners
makes a good venue for an
underground night, the fairly
small main room creating an intimate atmosphere in which to get
down. The Solipsis promoters
had done well, with decoration of
the venue and a varied & interesting line up providing top quality
music. More thought could have
gone into the order of the line up,
so as to keep the pace & energy
increasing through the night & it
was a shame that that the attendance was quite small. The night
has all the makings of a top quality underground night. Catch the
Zen Terrorists next month live on
stage, I’ll see you there.
Ian Brewer
Triple 2 Cartel
The Nexus
26/02/03
Over the past couple of
years Southampton has seen Hip
Hop come to the forefront of the
music scene, with The Nexus in
particular playing host to a
number of pretty large promoters. Tonight Triple 2 promised an
adventurous line-up of MC’s and
DJ’s, combining a smattering of
London middleweights with
some of Southampton’s talented
locals.
The night kicked off with
Southampton regular Defikew
mixing up a selection of wellknown numbers, including a
remix of Roots Manuva’s Witness,
and a fantastic scratch-up of Jean
Pauls’s Gimme da Light, which
gave a refreshing twist to a particularly over-played track. The
easing in worked- after getting
the crowd out of their seats and
onto the dance floor, local human
beat-box Koobs entered the stage
and proceeded to show off his
considerable talents, which could
come to rival those of Rahzel.
Backed by Defikew on the decks,
dressed in a thick duffel coat and
scarf in the packed club. He set
the stage perfectly for his poetic
showpiece with the lights dimmed
to nothing, and him grasping a
red lantern close above his face.
As he set the backing music he
would rhyme confidently, focusing on everyday topics like fast
food, and family rather than the
fast cars and cash that many
American rappers confine themselves to. As the tunes became
more emotive so did the atmosphere as the soloist let shiny
sprinkles drop from his hand
catching the red light as they fell
in front of his face. A masterfully
poetic and original show from a
man who could breath fresh air
into a Hip-Hop of the future.
The Lifesavaz followed to give us a
far more orthodox performance.
The DJ opened alone, combining
some exemplary scratching with
some mediocre rapping, but anyone who can do the pair simultaneously has got serious skills. As
the crowd were primed, on came
the 2 slick rhyming rappers. They
showed real rapport, feeding off
each other and the crowd as the
raps intensified. As the set was
Blackalicious
Squeeze 18 @ Nexus
3/3/03
With top acts like this and more
to come at the Nexus, Squeeze 18
are fast cementing themselves as
the premier Hip-Hop night in
Southampton. After the unqualified success of the Rahzel show
selling out after only 10 days, the
prospect of a top bill, live seven
piece Hip Hop act was cause for
excitement. Some innovative
support came from Buck 65 and
Blackalicious’ Quannum Project
compatriots the Lifesavaz.
Late door opening gave the
crowd little time to wait before
the live action began. The extravagant Canadian, Buck 65 opened
proceedings, coming on stage
MC LATEEF
he started off with some vocal
scratching and beats, then as the
momentum picked up launched
into a brilliant show of his skills of
simultaneously combining beats,
bass and vocals.
Next up were the
London- based hip hop crew MI5
made up of frontman MC Mystro
and backup MC Jargon, supported by ex- Scratch Perverts Harry
Love on the decks. These guys
were clear showmen, creating a
massive presence on stage, incorporating the crowd with call and
responses, and demanding full
participation on the dance floor.
It seemed the more they interact-
climaxing, the vibe was almost
broken by a power failure, but the
Lifesavaz recovered well with near
faultless tag team free-styling as
the crowd clapped the rhythm.
Though not showcasing anything
new in the way Buck 65 did, the
Lifesavaz proved worthy support
for the Hip Hop bombardment
that was to follow.
This UK tour did not start easily for
Blackalicious. Three days before
flying over Gift of Gab (one of the
main components) was taken in
to hospital with diabetic problems. This left the more than capable Lateef to stand in as main MC.
Lateef has collaborated with
PESHAY manages to satisfy his contract with Becks via
subtle advertising techniques
Blackalicious on their most recent
album. His performance was
admiral due to the new stage
show. With gift of the Gab missing
it limited the tracks they were
able to perform, many of the
crowd awaited early classics such
as Alphabet Aerobics but it did
not appear. They rolled on playing
classics such as green light and
4000 miles. The Lifesavas also
joined the stage, working well
with Lateef and the outstanding
backing singers to give the characteristic soulful sound. Chief Xcel
kept it steady at the back with
simple but effective turnatableism. The group interacted well
with the crowd giving a sense of
intimacy between band and audience.
All in all it was a quality night and
the crowds went home more than
satisfied. Watch out for Squeeze
18 part-III Ugly Duckling on 30th
April @ Nexus
Rich Madgwick and Jake
Smokcum
Peshay
Sequence @ Nexus
19/02/03
The last six months have seen
Sequence rise to play an integral
role in every Drum and Bass fans
diary. Some promoters just keep
bringing in the same old names
on the regular circuit, but
Sequence are different reaching
to the corners of the field to provide the fruitiest of line ups.
Peshay is no exception, as a front
runner in jazzy D and B production we could do with seeing a lot
more of him on the South Coast.
We arrived expectantly to a disap-
pointingly empty club as resident
DJ CQ went through the motions
with a selection of little heard
favourites of the last 5 years like
Krust’s Warhead 2000. Switch took
over and prised a few people from
their seats with a well constructed
set blending amen heavy jungle
tunes to more fresher flavas like
Roni Size and Tali’s Lyric on my Lip.
There was always a chance of a
poor turn out due to the sloppy
communication
between
Southampton’s promoters. The
Green Cellar had put a lot of effort
in to promoting their night with
Infrared new boy Danny Wheeler
supported by Bristol regular DJ
Amo and First Rate, and it looked
to have paid off. A line up with
lots of depth but not enough
strength in my opinion so I
hedged my bets on Sequence
delivering the best night. Sadly I
was among the few as the night
went on it became clear that the
turn out was unprecedentedly
small with fewer than 50 present
for Peshays set at 12.30. A name
like Peshay deserves so much
more and you could hardly be
surprised at his unenthusiastic
expression as he walked into a
club devoid of atmosphere.
Though his album of 2002 Fuzion
didn’t quite live up to his debut
Miles from Home there was still
hope to hear the newest beats
before they reach the streets. On
this count Peshay didn’t disappoint, rolling out an array of unreleased tunes from across the
Drum and Bass spectrum. Far
from just relying on his own synonymous jazzy classics, the set
reflected Peshays experiments
with House-like Drum and Bass
and even latin flavas in the form
of Lemon D’s Get on Down. The
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20th March 2003
27th FEBRUARY 2003
FILM
JACKASS:
THE MOVIE
Dir: Jeff Tremaine
Starring:Johnny Knoxville, Bam
Margera, Steve-O, Chris Pontius.
Kate Winslet tries to save the life of David Gale
If you’re one of those people who
can’t stand (or understand) the t.v.
show, or you’re expecting an actual “movie” with a script and plot
etc., then there really is nothing
for you here. For anyone else
though, this is just about the
funniest thing you’ll ever see at
the cinema.
To analyse Jackass in any
way would be to miss the point,
so I won’t even try, but it’s certainly refreshing, in an age of
political correctness and safety
regulations, to see a bunch of
slackers showing such reckless
disregard for their own safety and
dignity. You can’t help but admire
Johnny Knoxville and friends, who
are willing to undergo severe pain
and humiliation in their extreme
and often highly imaginative
stunts, just for our cheap entertainment (although grossing over
$65 million in the US must have
made it worthwhile).
Having said that, however, there isn’t really much here
that’s any more extreme than the
t.v. series, despite what the posters say; so any twisted weirdos
expecting a borderline snuff
movie might be a bit disappointed in that respect. But you can’t
really complain about a movie
that has you laughing non-stop
from start to finish. Highlights
include a spectacular opening
sequence, the klaxon on the golf
course, Spike Jonze in old man
make-up on the mobility scooter,
and all the stuff with the alligators. And whatever you do, don’t
leave before the end credits have
THE RING
Dir.: Gore Verbinski
Starring: Naomi Watts, Martin
Henderson, David Dorfman, Brian
Cox
OK. I'll be honest, I haven't
seen the original recent Japanese
version that this is based on. I
think maybe I should have seen it
before the American remake,
because now, I've kind of been
put off.
The Ring starts with two teenage girls discussing a new urban
myth- a videotape which has disturbing images that are almost
like someone's dream. Once you
finish watching the videotape the
phone rings, and a voice tells you
PA G E 1 6
That Tape in The Ring...
relies more on the chill factor.
However, the rest of the film uses
so much teen horror flick techniques that it seems Verbinski
(Time Machine and The Mexican)
doesn't seem to realise genuine
creepiness does require a certain
deviation from the genre, in more
than one respect. I find the most
frustrating of these, the main
female character, Rachel, played
by Watts, who is irritating and
does not possess any common
sense, despite apparently being a
strong and independent single
mother. My personal favourite
was her being hit in the head by a
TV and hence flying down a well.
The film is not only a
remake, but has elements of
about 4 other horror films within
the plot, those that came to my
mind, were Poltergeist, Scream,
Psycho,to name a few...It also has
a few 'dramatic' soap opera
moments, which probably meant
to shock, but made me and the
people sitting next to me laugh.
What wecould call the second
ending was an improvement on
the first, which was pure American
cheesiness, but the conclusion is
just a tad silly and you are left exiting the cinema saying "What??". I
think more should have beenmade of the boy, who has the
scariest eyes and just generally
really reminded me of The Shining,
and although not exactly great as
an actor was creepier than the
dead girl.
I went to this film expecting to
be scared, and I'll admit it, I was.
But I'm afraid I just wasn't scared
enough to ignore the flaws of this
remake.
you only have 7 days to live. As we
find out, one of the girls has
watched the video,seven days
ago, and the film then takes us
through a fairly tense sequence as
we watch her get killed. Her auntie, played by Naomi Watts, begins
to investigateher death and
decides to find and watch the
video herself. The film follows
Watts, as she tries to find out who
or what is behind the video and
how it can be stopped.
This was meant to be an
original and tense thriller and not
your usual teen horror flick. It
does partly achieve this by not
using guts and gore, but instead
COMING SOON
Just Married- romantic comedy,
starring Brittany Murphy as rich
kid who falls in love and gets married to a surfer dude.
Rules of Attraction- based on Bret
Easton Ellis's novel, this satire is a
teen comedy with a bit of a twist,
as James Van Der Beek (also
known as Dawson) and friends
indulge in copious amounts of
sex, drugs and alcohol.
The Core- another disaster movie,
another life threatening phenomenon, this time the Earth's core
will apparently stop spinning
unless Hilary Swank and Aaron
Eckhart travel to the core in time??
Johhny English- Rowan Atkinson,
makes a comeback as undercover
agent.
Also don’t forget the Oscars on
23rd March.
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