Black Daniel

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Black Daniel hail from South London and comprise of two Londoners, one New Yorker and ‘three visions stitched up with love and blood’

They describe their own sound as; ‘Pulling tape off a hairy chest mixed in with a little bit of Old Spice leftover from Grandpa’s treasure chest’.

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PETER HOOK (Joy Division/New Order)

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Former Joy Division bass player Peter Hook is set to perform ‘Unknown Pleasures’ at The 1234 Festival.

Released in 1979, ‘Unknown Pleasures’ has had an enormous effect on British rock music. Its bass-led sense of dread and intense production shifted the way rock was made, breaking new ground in the process.

Turning thirty last year, bass player Peter Hook re-visited the album in a series of shows. Dedicated to late frontman Ian Curtis the Manchester dates were an emotional occasion, with the bass player being joined by a host of guest stars.

Set to be a one off, Peter Hook is now set to take the ‘Unknown Pleasures’ show to London for the 1234 Festival.

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Nuke Them ALL

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

Straddling the line between club and political movement, Nuke Them All is a party in both senses of the word. It’s a clubland factory churning out the most talked about DJs, artists and fashion designers of the early 21st century. Adorned by cult imagery and historically documented on a regular basis, Nuke is fast becoming a pop art institution in its own right. Having both killed their previous nights at their peaks, Nuke Them All promoters Fonteyn and Buster Bennett formed Nuke as a defiant assault on nanny state Europe. With their fingers on the pulse and plugged firmly into a broadband connection, they were the first to cause
a stir organising Facebook-generated secret warehouse raves. Quickly growing in size, Nuke events now attract hordes of the coolest clubbers.

FONTEYN – DJ
A shadowy and elusive character, Fonteyn has been a highly influential figure on London’s underground clubbing scene for most of the Naughties. A pop culture obsessive, he’s developed a reputation for spinning killer sets at everywhere from hip fashion parties to art gallery openings and clubs and festivals all over Europe. Recently Fonteyn has shared billings with SebastiAn (Ed Banger), Matt Walsh (Turbo), Zombie Disco Squad (Made to Play), Foals (Transgressive) and many more.
His debut single, ‘La Cienega’, completely sold out and since then he’s remixed a diverse range of artists from Dragonette and Atomizer to Melynk and PIXEL82. 2010 also sees the launch of his new ‘tropical techno’ project, Banished to Frigia. As a DJ, his sets travel from electro-pop to sinister minimal taking in Italo disco, leftfield rave and new wave house.

BUSTER BENNETT – DJ
Buster frequently draws media attention with his experimental clubs and inventive DJ sets. With a reputation for being “One step ahead of the world” (New York Times), he never fails to take clubbers in a new musical direction whenever he plays. Buster has played many press-hyped parties across Europe headlining alongside the Bloody Beetroots in Paris, Frankmusik in Moscow, Drums of Death in London and Sweat X in Berlin. His sets are highly orchestrated championing the tropical bass sound currently emanating from London’s grimy East Side scene.

ALEX SEDANO – Nuke’s Resident Live VJ
Alex Sedano is Nuke Them All’s resident live VJ and graphic designer. Alex spearheads the visual direction of Nuke Them All and has been acclaimed as one of the leading VJs in the world.

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MIM (Black Cab Sessions)

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

The Black Cab Sessions is a series of one song performances by the likes of Death Cab For Cutie and My Morning Jacket in the back of a black cab. Other performances have included poetry and beat boxing. MIM takes this eclecticism and uses it in his DJ sets, showcasing his mix of soul, disco, latin and house that sets the dance floor on fire.

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Islington Boys Club

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

Islington boys’ club is a musical club consisting of boys from Islington. The four of them have been writing and practicing together in a ramshackle converted church in the North London borough. With their sound jumping between the murky puddles of the Post Punk and New-Wave to the filthy Pop sounds of modern four to the floor Rock music they can only be described as a performance that cannot be missed!

They’ve recently supported the likes of: O.Children, Chew Lips, Chapman Family, Dark Horses, Pure Reason Revolution, Grammatics, and Electricity in Our Homes.

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Le Volume Courbe

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

A sweetly sinister river of lights and shadows, whispers and screams, the first album by Le Volume Courbe is the work of Charlotte Marionneau. Eclectic, experimental and strangely compelling, it’s been described as “impossible to describe”, which is a very good thing, unless you’re the guy writing this.

Inspired by the do-your-own-thing ethos of Nico, The Ramones and Yoko Ono, Charlotte muses, “I think it’s a punk record, in many ways. But not rock. I don’t feel like a proper musician, or a proper singer either. I guess I’m somebody that has ideas, puts things together. If you’re trying to do your own thing, without caring what’s going on around you, it can actually help if you sometimes don’t know exactly what you’re doing. Then it’s automatically original. I can’t copy anyone else, I don’t have the technical know-how, so it’s unique. Not being experienced gives you more freedom.” Once heard, Le Volume Courbe’s playful, powerful songs of innocence and intrigue are not easily forgotten.

Charlotte moved to London fourteen years ago, after growing up in a small town in Pays de la Loire. She had a brief spell in a band there, but found that in London, “music is just so much more a part of the culture, unselfconsciously. Here, music comes to you.” In ‘97, two years after she arrived, she recorded a duet with Simon Raymonde (a single, “In My Place” – a Robert Mitchum cover).

Le Volume Courbe – it means “the volume curve” – is the name of a sculpture by an old friend in France. “When I was a teenager, this painter inspired me to be creative. I’d loved this sculpture, and when I needed a band name it suddenly hit me. The beauty is, it can mean so many different things. I also dream of converting the waves of the curves on an electrocardiogram machine, from someone in a coma, into music – I’m still looking into the practicalities of that.”

Settling in England, Charlotte began composing and making tracks, receiving vital encouragement from musicians like Hope Sandoval, Kevin Shields, David Roback and Colm O’Ciosoig, all of whom contribute to the record. Most of it was recorded at home. “Kevin and Hope have been very important to this project. They were the first artists that I respected to say I should make it happen, and I trusted their opinion. These people gave me confidence.” A single – “Harmony” – with Alan McGee’s Poptones label ensued; giving Charlotte the opportunity to craft slowly but surely on her distinctive material, a breathless band apart.

Serge Gainsbourg was her mother’s favourite artist, so the first record Charlotte was given was his “Love On The Beat” (“full of orgasms – what was she thinking?”), before the more artful designs of David Bowie, The Velvet Underground and The Stooges captured her blossoming imagination. The first song she ever wrote has survived to become the title track on this first personal salvo.

“”I Killed My Best Friend” was actually an improvisation when I first sang it. I didn’t speak English well at the time; in fact I don’t remember writing it. But I do remember being annoyed at my mother and my best friend, and thinking: I must kill them, at least in my head, at least for a while! A lot of these songs were recorded at different times, in different states of mind, so the voices and atmospheres vary…”

Would you agree that it’s at times a scary record?

“No! That’s funny! I don’t find it scary at all. It may be nostalgic, but I want people to get the humour as well. It may be intense at times, but I hope the elements of dark comedy come across…”

After spells studying film and photography, Charlotte concedes suggestions of cinematic influences are inevitable. Though they may not be the obvious nouvelle vague ones you’d predict. “When mixing “Harmony”, I was thinking about the structure and editing of Citizen Kane. I’m a fan of Polanski (The Tenant, Repulsion), Cocteau (Orpheus), and the way Harmony Korine creates a mood.” Andy Warhol’s grainy footage of Edie Sedgwick and the Factory superstars also made an impression.

“Ain’t Got No…I Got Life” is a radical interpretation of the Nina Simone classic. “She’s one of my favourite women singers. I asked Martin Duffy to play the piano, and it was mindblowing, but then I realised she was one of the hardest people to cover, and perhaps this was a stupid idea! It took me two years to sing it – eventually I just thought, well, I just have to try to make it mine…”

You’re not a traditional chanteuse then?

“That’s not the way I see myself…”

“”The Mind Is A Horse” – all heartbeat and crackle – “is about panic attacks. They’re quite surreal things to have. I took the title from an exhibition poster. If that track’s scary, then that’s the whole point…” “I Shall Skip Your Judgement” is a song about a friend which involves wordplay around Alexander “Skip” Spence; “Locarno” was recorded in the titular Swiss town.

The Le Volume Courbe album – hard to describe indeed – isn’t rock’n’roll, and isn’t world music. It’s out of this world music. It’s in your own world music, what-in-the-world music. It’s just a few seconds longer than Chris Marker’s seminal 1962 film La Jetee. It comes to you with the “I Killed My Best Friend” video – “the quickest, cheapest video ever made” – which with delicious, tongue-in-chic noir style involves a girl, a gun and a cigarette. And is Bonnie And Clyde meeting Pierrot Le Fou, only much shorter, and more mischievous.

Patti Smith recently handed Charlotte her socks, which is something that doesn’t happen every day. “I admire the likes of Patti, Nico, Yoko Ono for sticking to what they do, for their attitude as artists. I hope I’ll always be doing something creative, something aesthetic.”

Enchanting and elusive, this diary of dreams is one of the year’s most extraordinary debuts. Listen close.

Chris Roberts

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Civil Civic

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

When CIVIL CIVIC unleashed their début EP ‘1’ and follow up single ‘Run Overdrive’/’Fuck Youth’ in the early months of 2010, they triggered a tsunami that swept (drowned?) the blogoshpere. Mixing jaggedly progressive post-punk guitar, jamming melodic fuzz-bass and pummelling drum machine beats, delivered in a no-frills lo-fi-pop package, this Australian instrumental duo (via London and Barcelona) have tapped their own original sound… original enough to leave reviewers short of any comparisons, and resorting to getting really excited and saying stuff like:

“Trust us when we say you really need to hear this lot” – NME

“Never less than clever, intricate and complex, this is intelligent, exciting stuff.”
- The Guardian

“Civil Civic will get you by the balls. I haven’t come across anything this year that brings the party like this.” – Shattered Satellite

“Their fuzzy distortion and crooked sounds are a totally unique take on synth-led
compostitions.” – The Fly

“Are you listening to this? Seriously, are you? Cause you should be. Distortion has never sounded this good” – The Burning Ear

“This is a fucking great song. Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn’t know their music or lives under ten million rocks.” – The Photon God

“This mix is insane on so many levels, it makes me cream my pants – every time” – A-Life

““Mosh” breaks out a “rave” party event. 6 seriously hurt.” – Sydney Morning Herald

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No Cars

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

No Cars are three Japanese girls who met in London to sing cute songs for farmers, vegitables and foods. ”No cars” means farmers in Japanese. They are the pop idol band who also farm (or pretend to farm).

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