Dot-to-Dot Festival

So, on bank holiday Monday, I attended my first ever Dot-to-Dot festival in Manchester and what an experience it was!

First off, we saw a local band called 'The Heartbreaks', they're doing great considering they've already been played on radio 1 by Huw Stephens and are now playing gigs in lots of London venues. They were quite good actually, very indie. I'm not majorly into indie though as I feel a lot of indie music is a bit lackluster.

Next, we saw 'The Cheek', formally called 'Cheeky Cheeky and the Nosebleeds', they were great, and the lead singer is gorgeous now that he's thinner. I was a bit gutted that they didn't play any of their old stuff though but it was nice to see them. There was a great atmosphere in there. It was like a school assembly hall, there was nothing in the room apart from a stage and a polished wooden floor. Everyone was sitting down too until the band came on and they stood up promptly, and politely.

We then headed off to see 'The Answering Machine' because they are one of my friend's favourite bands and I've heard that Chapel Club, who were the other band on at that time aren't very good live (?), I like their music though. The Answering Machine were pretty good though anyway.

I then went to see one of my favourite bands ever, Blood Red Shoes. Check out the time that I interviewed, Steven, from the band here.
Blood Red Shoes were on fire and the crowd reaction was amazing. It made me feel so proud to have watched them grow and to see how people now appreciate them so much. Manchester Academy 2 (about the same size as Birmingham Academy 1) is the biggest venue I've ever seen them play at and it was brilliant. They pulled in a good crowd that were singing and bouncing along to every lyric.

Next up, in Academy 3 were The Chapman Family. I'd never seen them play live before, in fact, I hadn't heard much from them since their single 'Kids.' That said, they were brilliant live, Kingsley Chapman, the lead singer, was throwing himself all over the stage in a Gothic, tormented kind of way. At one point he even 'attempted' to strangle himself with the microphone lead. The rest of their music is sounding great too, I shall have to invest in some of it.

We then went off to see Liars, in the 'Club Academy' AKA, the sweaty basement of the Academy. This ended up being one of my favourite gigs of the day. There's nothing quite like the release you get from dancing around to dirty rock music is there? It was headbanging and moshing a go-go, liberating stuff. Liars intense build ups and break downs worked well on stage, you could sense everyone in the crowd waiting for the heavy break down to arrive to throw themselves around to. A truly excellent set to say the least.

We then headed off to see Wild Beasts in Academy 2, after a few, quick, refreshing splashes of water and a dismissal from Katy Klaw from Peggy Sue. Though she cannot really be blamed for this, she was probably petrified! She seemed pretty scared of me as I shouted her name at her after whispering to my friend when she came to the sink next to us "ahh, that's Katy from Peggy Sue" and of course splashing water over myself before that saying "ahhh, oh my God, that was so good! That was amazing, ahh!"
Anyway, back to Wild Beasts! Yes, they were great! A lot better than I though they'd be, the crowd liked them and I didn't even realise how many Wild Beasts songs I knew, I didn't even know that I liked them so much but they surprised me, they were fantastic!

We then decided not to go to Beach House or Egyptian Hip Hop but to wait and get a good place for Mystery Jets and drink Red Stripe. It was well worth it. There was such a brilliant atmosphere at the front, everyone was singing along and jumping in unison. The band seemed pretty pleased with this response, there was a great love for Mystery Jets in that room. They split their set well between stand out songs from their album 'Twenty One' and songs from the new album, which, by the way, are sounding great! I cannot wait for the album release in July now!





From Mystery Jets we ran straight to see Los Campesinos! as their set had already started (but only just). I'd like to think that me and Emily made a dramatic entrance as we jumped down the stairs and through the crowd whilst bellowing the lyrics to Death to Los Campesinos! as they played it on stage. We went to join the 'real' Los Campesinos! fans, a large crowd of people who were jumping and singing along to every word as passionately as the band themselves. The onlookers that didn't know who Los Campesinos! were just looked permanently confused. Their set was superb, love and energy gushing through my veins excitedly. Seeing the band live also made me come to terms with exactly how beautifully written their lyrics are. Their set ended with 'Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks' and Gareth in the crowd, surrounded by happy and devoted fans patting him on the back.
This is the crowd, I could seem to get a picture of Gareth himself! I'm such a bad photographer!





From Los Campesinos! I ran all the way down to Deaf Institute to try and catch some of Yuck, but only managed to catch one song as LC! had run over their allotted time in Club Academy so I was really late. The one song I saw was beautiful though, as was the venue itself. It reminded me of a chapel on the inside with its dome structure but with vintage looking wallpaper with birds printed on it and toilets that looked like they'd come straight from a Mexican bar scene in an old film. It was probably my favourite venue that I've ever visited, even if I was only their for 10-15 minutes! From there we went to a take-away entitled 'Babylon' and I ate vinegar saturated chips smothered in tomato ketchup and then went to see Zane Lowe DJ in a tiny club called 'Factory (FAC251)' which was pretty fun, however, everyone else looked spotless, like they'd not been at a festival all day, whilst we looked sweaty and casually dressed. Zane Lowe is certainly a skilled DJ, I i wish I wasn't such a technophobe and could mix like he can. That said, he played too much drum and bass and dubstep. Don't get me wrong, I love drum and base and dubstep, but that's literally all he played! I like to dance to a good mix of music. It was amazing being that close to Zane Lowe though and he really knew how to work the crowd! He did play an Oasis mix though, which, of course, I disliked. I don't understand how people can like the music that comes from such a rude and ugly man, Liam Gallagher.

I would definitely recommend Dot-to-Dot Festival, it was well worth the £28 that I paid for a ticket and judging by this year and previous years, they always seem to manage to get the line-up spot on!

Katie x

Vice's shoot with Kern + The Creators Project talk to Radical Friend

Ok, so I'm writing a bit of a photography based blog, makes a change from just writing about music!

Earlier this month, Richard Kern came to London for casting for his lastest shoot and ended up photographing Akiko Mastuarya from The Big Pink, Comanechi,Pre and Sperm Javelin and Deborah, a bi-sexual nurse from Bristol with very precise pornographic tastes. Here's the result of the casting and photoshoots, look out for the little cameo from Karley Sciortino (the American one), AKA, slutever , I really like her blogs :




Radical Friend are the duo accountable for all of the epic Yeasayer videos that have been released this year. Here, they explain their ideas behind the videos:



Katie
x

I Love Peaches

When I was younger (maybe 14ish?) and I first heard the music of Peaches, I enjoyed it not only because I thought it was utterly brilliant, evolutionary and dangerously honest but because I knew that it was something that would be disapproved by the people of authority around me. I certainly knew that Peaches was special, even at that age and I still do. She pushes boundaries with her electro-punk mélange, her extreme, mesmerising live shows and unique spirit. I'm hoping to go to Lovebox festival this summer (providing I manage to get a press pass as I can't afford a ticket) and she's playing. Her live show is something I'd love to see, so fingers crossed...

Here's an interview that The Creators Project did with her, it's really good, watch it:





Katie x

I forgot to post this last week...

It's the review I did for with drums and colour






Guns and Horses is the 3rd single to come from Ellie’s début album ‘Lights’ and is the opening track. The texture starts off relatively thin with just Ellie, her guitar and a repetitive drum loop. I like this, it reminds her audience of her acoustic roots, as after all, before she met producer, Starsmith, not long ago, her music was just her and her guitar. Ellie and her acoustic guitar are the origin of many of the songs on her album and ‘Guns and Horses’ is one of them.

And then comes the synth. Not overly powerful, just enough to enhance the mood and create an atmosphere of intensity, complimenting the mysterious lyrics that Ellie sings. “Let’s join forces; we’ve got our guns and horses. I know you’ve been burnt but another fire is a lesson learnt.” What does Ellie actually mean by these lyrics? Is this song a cavalry themed song, a song about arson or a love story? Ellie is deliciously shadowy concerning the topic of this song through her lyrics, in fact, admiringly so.

As the song continues Starsmith’s production unfolds, bridges and choruses become bigger. This track is very cleverly produced, from the layered electric violin sounds to the fast flowing drum loops and handclaps. Ellie’s guitar also builds, as do her compassionate lyrics of “I’d do it all for you.” The repetition adds fervour and zeal and makes the listener really believe the words that she sings. Her lyrics are honest, yet not explicit.

This song, as a concept, contains flecks of genius; combining acoustic music with dance music to create a hazy, yet, sophisticated, polished pop song. Ellie and Starsmith have done phenomenally well with this song, their work flattering constantly each other.

8/10


Katie x

New Stuff that I love...

The new Mystery Jets single:




Avi Buffalo

They are a lovely, young, American band, some of them are still at school...




The new M.I.A single- XXXO

I adore this, I don't care that it's more mainstream pop than anything she's ever done before. I'm so glad she's back. Rusko's on the production, hasn't he done a mighty fine job?




Katie x

CREATORS OF THE FUTURE

Vice have teamed up with Intel Computers (and have started 'The Creators Project') which has involved making various documentaries. I rather like this Diplo one as I'm a fan of his work:





Find out more about this project here

Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/thecreatorsproject?v=wall

Twitter : www.twitter.com/creatorsproject

Myspace: www.myspace.com/the-creators-project


Katie
X

Babeshadow Interview

Babeshadow are a band that I’ve loved since about December of last year now. You always know that a bands special if you can remember where you were the first time you heard them. I remember when I first heard Babeshadow I was walking to the library wearing a white fur coat and the ridiculous biker boots that I almost fell over in about ten times during the course of my journey because of the ice.

I seem to have a tendency of interviewing bands in unusual places, a few months ago I interviewed Steven Ansell from Blood Red Shoes in a monochrome shower and now I’m interviewing Tom and Dave from Babeshadow in a vacant disabled lift in Wolverhampton Civic Hall, after the rude security lady in her suit refused to let me go into the dressing room (in case I did a Mark Chapman and shot Florence?). It is here that we cover the topics of Girls Allowed naked, Joe Jackson as a bald guitarist and the band’s desire to move into the Blackpool Pleasure Beach’s ‘Tunnel of Love’ with their caterer. Here's the conversation I had with them...

K: Introduce yourselves
T: I’m Tom Cawte and I play guitar, sing and play keyboards
D: I’m David Thornley and I play guitar and sing...And play keyboards

K: Is the name ‘Babeshadow’ or ’Babe Shadow?’ I’ve seen it written as both.

T: Well, it’s a bit of both at the moment because everyone thinks it’s something different.
K: I was introduced to you as Babe Shadow when I downloaded your demo of Sea Serpents in December from Jamilafuckingdance’s blog, it has the bit on it at the beginning where you’re talking about William Hill
D: Ha, yes

K: How did you come up with the name Babeshadow?

D: We saw a band playing in Shoreditch once who were called Babe Shadow years ago and we thought it was a good name.

K: How did you get involved with LuvLuvLuv records?

T: Hannah, one of the founders of LuvLuvLuv (there’s Hannah and Mairead), heard about us from two different online bloggers in one day so she thought, ‘oh they must be good’ and she came to one of our shows but we know Mairead through other people we know.

K: How long have you been together?

T: Well as a full band, just over half a year, we’ve been together since about October of last year.
K: When did you realise that you could start a band?
T: Well, us two have been playing together forever and we’ve always had whatever band we could gather up and now, we have our current line-up. It’s always changing, we’ll probably quit like next week!
K: Oh no! Don’t say that!
D: But then reform again with the same members!

K: How was the 6music session the other day? Did you enjoy it?

T: That was good, that was at Maida Vale. I snapped a string on the first song but it was still good. It was nice having a live audience there too.
D: The weirdest thing was that we’d been watching the ‘Adam and Joe Show ‘all day and at the venue as the light went out, Adam and Joe did the ‘no smoking announcements.’ It was like Adam and Joe were introducing us to the stage.
K: You’re getting a lot support from 6music, Lauren Laverne played you the other day on her show and my mum was listening and said that she said that she liked you.
T: Yeah, we got played on radio 1 the other day too.
(They were played by Huw Stephen’s on his BBC introducing show)
T: Yeah, when was the Lauren Laverne show?
K: Last week sometime, Monday I think.
D: Ah, well, we’re clearly widening our audience now; we’ve got the 40+ crowd. We fancy Lauren Laverne as well.


K: Are you enjoying being on tour with Florence and The Drums?

T: Yeah, it great. We’ve just spent 3 days in Blackpool and we didn’t know what to do so we went to the theme park and that was fun.
T: Yeah, we wouldn’t want to be at home right now, we’d just be paying rent for now reason when we could be on tour.
K: That sounds fun, but what are you going to do here? There’s nothing here!
T: We’ll probably just drink and then not get up in the morning and then meet some Wolverhampton people.
K: What’s the two nights in the same city thing like? Do you get bored?
D: Easy
T: Amazing because it’s very helpful as it means that we don’t have to leave at night so now we can just sit and relax.


K: Which musicians do you find most inspiring?

T: Buddy Holly
D: And then there’s your slightly embarrassing one
T: Oh yeah, Madonna, I really like Madonna.
D: And Girls Aloud are great naked.
T: Apparently
D: Apparently
T: and there’s Joe Jackson as well, he’s good. *sing’s Joe Jackson’s ‘Don’t you know that it’s different for girls’ *
D: I mean he’s bald, it’s always difficult for bald guitarists but he does it pretty well.
T: Buddy Holly is probably our main influence at the moment but if they all started a band together, “oh my!” We often just listen to the same record about 50 times until we’re sick of it. I just listened to the Beatles for a year and then I moved onto someone else

K: Do you like The Drums?

D: Yeah, I’ve heard mixed reviews about them but I really like them, I like their confidence.

K: Who’s your favourite band at the moment?

D: Maybe it’s The Drums or Is Tropical
K: Yeah, I’d say mine are probably you or ‘Yuck’, have you heard of them?
D: No, I haven’t.
K: They’re really good; they’re like half of Cajun Dance Party. I also like Villagers and Lissie.
D: I don’t know those either, I’ll have to check them out

K: Any future releases?

D: Yeah, we have an EP out at the moment; you can buy it on iTunes now.
K: Which songs are featured on it?
T: ‘Sea Serpents’,’ Darling’,’ Heart’ and ‘For Me’, and then we’re going to be releasing an actual 10” limited edition vinyl and then a 7” after that, so fix your needle!
(I have already told them the story of my broken record player needle.)

K: What are your views on illegal downloading?

T: I think it’s great, I think that it was bound to happen to there’s no point in trying to control it.
D: I’ve done it and I don’t feel bad about it
T: I think that the thing is, now, everyone has got an iPod with iTunes on it and everyone should download it through that and if you don’t want to download a crappy quality one from the internet then you can buy it off iTunes. It’s not as bad as it was at one point, iTunes sales in the past year have gone up by 100%.
D: Yeah, don’t do it, but do it!
T: Vinyl’s are coming back anyway, everyone I know has vinyl records.
D: Yeah, I think iTunes is dated now; vinyls are the new thing


K: Are you playing any festivals this summer?

T: Yeah, we’re playing: Glastonbury, we’re supposed to be doing Reading and Leeds and we’re doing 1234 festival in London and maybe The Secret Garden Party, it’s all in the email process at the moment.

K: Any aspirations for the future?

T: To really, really, really sell out.
D: The caterers that we have on this tour, I just want them to live in my house. And where we were yesterday at the Pleasure beach, we went into the Tunnel of Love which was great; I’d like to live there.
T: So, basically, we want to move into the Tunnel of Love with our caterers.


I then explain that the interview is over and Dave requests a bonus question, I asked him what his favourite Drums song was and he reply’s with ‘Let’s go Surfing’, the song that they are currently playing downstairs, onstage. I tell them mine’s ‘I Feel Stupid’, a less obvious choice, even though it was a single from their ‘Summertime’ EP. Babeshadow’s ‘Sea Serpents’ EP is out now on iTunes.