Amelia’s Magazine | Peggy Sueâ

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“It’s nice everyone getting dressed up and making an effort, hospital stomach round Christmas time ‘n that”, generic slurred an old man at the bar after telling me this was his local. Halloween did he mean? A gaze and a nod.

Peggy Sue (there were some pirates but they’ve long since fled to the Caribbean to find themselves) have a knack of adding a distinct flavour to everything they do. Brewed in soulfulness and peppered with giggles, they are an intoxicating concoction of many lovely things; compared to the likes of Lauryn Hill and Regina Spektor in a single breath, all manner of genres tossed in their direction.

But references aside, that tend to reduce everybody to something regurgitated, there’s lots of other good stuff – like a compilation CD released for every month (100 copies only, complete with artwork), like how their voices emulate astonishing power and soft effortlessness all at once; or that their low-fi sound is brought together with honeyed harmonies, punctuated Spektor-like noises and an unending supply of bizarre percussion instruments. It is finally exquisitely tied together with lyrics that detach our body-parts as things to be stolen, tell stories of the woes of superheroes, and give life to ‘those fragile little things’ that live inside. It all feels very refreshing, and nicely homemade – ‘Peggy Who?’ asks the drum-face.

The Horror Movie Marathon had the Peggy stamp all over it, made apparent in its details. A projection screen hung behind them playing classic horror gems; a new horror song, complete with screams had been written for the occasion; and the widely acclaimed ‘superman’ was illustrated by a live puppet-show on stage. The wide-eyed Alessi’s Ark and feet-shuffling Derek Meins were there to support, marking the beginning of the Triptych Tour – one bus, two weeks, three acts. Catch them if you can in a venue near you! But what oh what does Triptych mean?

Categories ,Alessi’s Ark, ,Derek Meins, ,Live, ,Music, ,Peggy Sue

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Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with Sue Denim, talking about debut solo album And The Unicorn:

Sue Denim by Louise Bennetts
Sue Denim by Louise Bennetts.

Sue Denim is one half of electroclash duo Robots in Disguise, who launched with a bang in the same year that I began making Amelia’s Magazine: in fact they were featured in the first ever issue. Eight years and several albums down the line RiD have built a huge fanbase, particularly in Europe, where they are much loved. But for now Sue is taking a break: leaving the busy London streets for a simpler life in Wales, where she has lovingly crafted her acoustic debut solo album. And The Unicorn is a world away from the bleeps and shouts of RiD but it nonetheless bears her hallmark bounce in a series of incredibly catchy tunes which wonderfully showcase her sweet soprano voice.

SUE_Denim-CD_FRONT
Your debut solo album eschews the electronica of Robots in Disguise in favour of a much warmer lo fi sound. How did this radical departure come about?
I wanted it to sound very different from RiD, wanted it to be simple and warm in terms of sound. Then I found producer David Wrench, warm simplicity in recording being one of his trademarks!

sue_denim_by_angela_lamb
Sue Denim by Angela Lamb.

When did you start working on your solo material, and what was the biggest difference to working together with Dee Plume?
I started writing songs on my own about 5 years ago, just after the recording of RiD‘s 3rd album, ‘Get RiD!‘, when I had a lot of time alone in Berlin, and found I loved writing on my own. Biggest difference – I was able to express myself fully without any compromise and get songs finished quickly!  Less arguments! But also, less laughing. Good and bad points to working alone. 

When did you leave London and what prompted the change of scene?
I had been living in Wales to make the album and I just couldn’t move back, for various reasons (see next Q!)

Sue Denim by Louise Bennetts
Sue Denim by Louise Bennetts.

I believe you fell in love in Wales, not just with the land but with a person… can you tell us more about what happened?
Love at first sight happened. Amazing! And then we made a record together. It’s been a very wonderful year.

What inspired the lyrics and feel of the album?
All sorts really. Some love, some loss of love, books, bikes, fresh air. Many changes – changes in relationships, including me and Dee not writing together, some death, some fantasy. Just my life I guess.

YouTube Preview Image
I love your animated video for the first single Bicycle – can you tell us more about the making of this.
I worked with the brilliant Graeme Maguire, who’s been a friend for years, we met in Berlin, and have worked together twice before – to make RiD’s ‘We’re In The Music Biz‘ and ‘The Tears‘. It was originally not going to be an animation, but just as we were about to shoot it all fell apart as our ideas were too ambitious for our budget. As it turned out, it was the best thing that could’ve happened – I think it’s an amazing animation, I couldn’t be happier with it!

Sue Denim by Lea Rimoux
Sue Denim by Lea Rimoux.

What has been the biggest surprise about living in Wales? 
The biggest surprise was how bored I have been on occasion!! I really thought ‘only boring people get bored’. Hmmm. You gotta be SO much more creative about finding interesting things to do in Bangor. I’m used to London/Berlin, where amazing cultural opportunities are everywhere. But I love so many things about it, too. The fresh air, the water, mountains, beaches..all the proper nature you just can’t get in a big city. And there’s a really exciting music scene. Check out Y Niwl, they’re  my fave Welsh rave at the moment!
I’m over my bored phase now! 
Gonna be learning Welsh in a week or two, very excited!

Sue and the Unicorn by Emli Bendixen
Any top tips for a trip to Anglesey?
Yeah. Spend a night in Barclodiad Y Gawres (Apronful Of The Giantess!) – it’s a Neolithic burial chamber – I haven’t done it yet but I plan to! Let me know how it goes! And then, of course, Llanddwyn Island – totally beautiful.

sue denim
What next for your solo project… where does it all go from here and what’s happening with Robots in Disguise?
I’ll be recording a second solo album soon, I can’t wait! And there’ll be some gigs coming up from us RiD playing all the golden oldies but no new music planned as yet. Nothing ruled out though, we may well get around to album 5 in the future!

And The Unicorn is out now on Sue’s own label, Superhealthy. Sue Denim plays Islington Academy on Friday 14th September.

Categories ,And The Unicorn, ,Angela Lamb, ,Bangor, ,Barclodiad Y Gawres, ,berlin, ,bicycle, ,David Wrench, ,Dee Plume, ,Get RiD!, ,Graeme Maguire, ,Islington Academy, ,Lea Rimoux, ,Llanddwyn Island, ,Louise Bennetts, ,RID, ,Robots in Disguise, ,Superhealthy, ,The Tears, ,wales, ,We’re In The Music Biz, ,Y Niwl

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Amelia’s Magazine | Latitude 2010: Thursday Night Review

Feelin’ hot hot hot… we arrived at the field with a blanket and straw hat, viagra stuff and headed straight to the bar. Queuing for what felt like a life-time in the blistering heat, price cheap sounds of Johnny Flynn drifted through the air along with the smells of barbecued sausages. Queuing aside, we were happy.

Ciders in hand we weaved through camping chairs and stepped apologetically over blankets, occasionally catching the odd sandaled foot or splashing a little cider over a resting head… all part of the joy of festivalling, we found a spot, lay the blanket on the ground just in time for Laura Marling to take to the stage. ‘Afternoon everyone!’ Laura’s soothing voice echoed over the masses, ‘what a day!’…. people woo’d and clapped and cheered. In two years, Marling’s voice and lyrics have matured from pretty ditties to soulful folk… and her performance this weekend reeled in an eclectic crowd. Folk of all ages stood, eyes fixed and humming and Marling’s voice resonated. Songs from Marling’s latest album I Speak Because I Can mixed with original tracks from My Manic and I had us reminiscing, spinning around and singing-along.

Between sets we ate, drank and lay gazing into the brilliant blue ether… catching a bit of celebrity football, Mumford & Sons giving it their best. Seasick Steve was next up, and took to the stage with crowds-a-roaring. Unfortunately, due to minor sunstroke, we weren’t around for the whole set, but from what we saw, as always Seasick gave a cracking performance.

Mumford & Sons belted out there emotive country-inspired folk, now well-known from their vast radio coverage, and had the audience fixed. Looking and sounding the part, and slotting in perfectly to the Hop Farm scene.

Whilst queuing for a lamb kofta and chatting to a wonderful lady who lives on a pig farm in Cambridgeshire, who told me stories of her days as a festival queen in the 70s… (she was so small she used to crouch on the loo seat, feet on the seat – to avoid sitting on it… little ladies – take note!) Ray Davies performed and it came as pleasant surprise to hear the well-known Kinks records: Lola, You Really Got Me and all the rest. At the age of 66, Ray’s voice carried across fields, still very much in tact.

Last but not least, good old Bob Dylan appeared on stage, his (very) husky tones hooking the expectant field of fans, and taking them on a tumultuous journey through a plethora of songs steeped in sentiment.

Finally, an incredible set from Devendra Banhart ensued; no longer the long-haired folky-dolky guy that once plucked at our heartstrings, Devendra has completely reinvented his style: short-back-and-sides, checked shirt and long yellow cardie buttoned up; the sounds were funky and playful, his voice endearing and still with that jagged edge that made him famous. Even a few Roxy Music covers were thrown in to get us grooving. We danced until the cows came home.

All in all, a grand day out. Thank you Hop Farm!


Illustrations by Jenny Costello

With businesses struggling to survive through the recession armageddon, this site a few innovative individuals are thriving, using their imagination and collaborations with other creatives to succeed. Sarah Bagner, or ‘Supermarket Sarah‘ transformed a wall of her own home into a window dresser’s dream; featuring both vintage finds and handmade creations from the likes of Donna Wilson. Inviting shoppers into her home for tea and cake has gained her such a following that Selfridges even invited her to curate a wall for them.


Supermarket Sarah, illustrated by Emma Block

Her latest collaboration is with the queens of cool, Tatty Devine, whose Brick Lane store has been transformed into an Aladdin’s cave of Sarah’s goodies. Tatty Devine is also famous for pioneering the collaborative spirit, teaming up with the likes of Rob Ryan, Charlie le Mindu and Mrs Jones to make their iconic statement jewellery ranges. Last night fellow creatives Fred Butler and Anna Murray were spinning some tunes on the decks, whilst cupcakes were supplied by Fifi and Lola.

I snapped Sarah wearing her Tatty Devine ‘Supermarket Sarah’ necklace in front of her wall which will soon be online here. The installation will be in store until the 16th August, alongside Tatty Devine’s regular stock which is currently on sale. This is your one stop shop for sorting your festival outfits; grab some neck candy from Tatty Devine and something from Sarah’s vintage dressing up box and you’re set! 

Photographs by Katie Antoniou

With businesses struggling to survive through the recession armageddon, site a few innovative individuals are thriving, order using their imagination and collaborations with other creatives to succeed. Sarah Bagner, store or ‘Supermarket Sarah’ transformed a wall of her own home into a window dresser’s dream; featuring both vintage finds and handmade creations from the likes of Donna Wilson. Inviting shoppers into her home for tea and cake has gained her such a following that Selfridges even invited her to curate a wall for them.

Her latest collaboration is with the queens of cool, Tatty Devine, whose Brick Lane store has been transformed into an Aladdin’s cave of Sarah’s goodies. Tatty Devine is also famous for pioneering the collaborative spirit, teaming up with the likes of Rob Ryan, Charlie le Mindu and Mrs Jones to make their iconic statement jewellery ranges. Last night  fellow creatives Fred Butler and Anna Murray were spinning some tunes on the decks, whilst cupcakes were supplied by Fifi and Lola. I snapped Sarah wearing her Tatty Devine ‘Supermarket Sarah’ necklace in front of her wall which will soon be online here. The installation will be in store until the 16th August, alongside Tatty Devine’s regular stock which is currently on sale. This is your one stop shop for sorting your festival outfits; grab some neck candy from Tatty Devine and  something from Sarah’s vintage dressing up box and you’re set! 
Sheep Latitude Tim Adey
Photography by Tim Adey.

Last time I went to Latitude it was a mere toddler of a festival… way back in 2007 it was still possible to roam freely amongst thin crowds and I remember commenting back then that the secret wouldn’t last long. 30, treat 000 people attended the fifth Latitude, drug held in the rolling wooded grounds of Henham Park which belong to an eccentric sheepfarming millionaire known as the Aussie Earl. Every year the sheep are famously dyed various shades of pastel then penned into small enclosures surrounded by signs Do Not Feed The Sheep. There’s something quite ironic in the exoticisation of such a common animal, stomach but then again most middle class urbanites have little cause for close contact with their food. Reading through tweets on my way to the festival I laughed at one suggestion that a bunch of hippies were clogging up the local roads… nothing could be further from the truth. Latitude is famously the home of the well read intellectual classes, a fact which was mentioned on repeat throughout the whole festival.

Nigel kennedy by Jenny Costello
Nigel Kennedy by Jenny Costello.

Despite a lack of line up on Thursday evening most punters had already set up camp by the time we arrived. Like Glastonbury, early crowds baying for entertainment guaranteed a packed audience for the few shows being staged. Our first stop was Nigel Kennedy, playing with The Orchestra of Life and visiting Polish musicians on the Lake Stage: the gig was attended by an all age crowd, a significant feature of the entire festival. Nigel romped through a selection of Duke Ellington jazz standards before crashing into a barndancing favourite that had the crowd hooting in delight. In between he flirted salaciously with a lady in the crowd and swore copiously. As Radio 1 DJ Colin Murray was later overheard saying – it’s a pity Nigel has to open his mouth. It was a bit like Madonna at the Turner Prize trying a bit too hard to be hard. But I liked the ceilidh classic – more of that please. Try as I might I just can’t get into the jazz thing.

Paul-Shinn-Latitude-crowds
Latitude crowds by Paul Shinn.

Large parts of Henham Park forest have been opened up to accommodate more theatre, and down amongst the towering trees we were ushered into the heaving theatre arena for Les Enfants Terribles: The Vaudevillians. It was certainly terrible. Despite being billed as “a unique and exciting night out” I was only able to watch ten minutes before I was so bored and unexcited out of my brain that we had to leave.

Latitude flags Tim Adey
A pretty picture of flags at Latitude. Photography by Tim Adey.

Instead we paid a visit to Robin Ince in the Literary Arena. Robin Ince is the literary high priest of Latitude – he was holding court whenever I went past despite his assertion (in my recent interview with him) that he would be spending less time on stage this year. Joining him were a wide range of comedians and writers over the course of the festival, and it made me smile to hear him delivering more of his climate change material to a packed audience.

Abby-Wright-Tom-Jones
Tom Jones by Abby Wright.

Tom Jones sans hair dye was of course the big act to appear on Thursday night – clearly a last minute addition designed to promote his new album Praise & Blame. Even before we approached the lake I realised we might have trouble attending his bijoux gig on the In The Woods stage. Many thousands of people + small stage = frustrated pile up. We took the back route up to the guest area where we listened from behind the fence once they had sorted out screeching feedback, and could just discern a frenzy of enthusiastic front row teenagers screaming Sex Bomb. There was to be no Sex Bomb. One man was overheard commenting that his new bluesy songs sounded “like Johnny Cash on a downer”, but I quite liked them. Security spent the whole gig shining torches at anyone who dared get close the fence. Since I couldn’t see anything I fell asleep on the ground. Thanks for the soothing lullabies Tom.

I’ve reviewed all other days according to genre. Why not get started on my Friday Music Review here?

Categories ,Abby Wright, ,Barndancing, ,blues, ,ceilidh, ,Duke Ellington, ,In The Woods, ,jazz, ,Jenny Costello, ,Johnny Cash, ,Lake Stage, ,Latitude Festival, ,Literary Arena, ,Madonna, ,Nigel Kennedy, ,Paul Shinn, ,Praise & Blame, ,Robin Ince, ,Sex Bomb, ,The Orchestra of Life, ,Tim Adey, ,Tom Jones, ,Turner Prize

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Amelia’s Magazine | Polar Bear – Peepers – Album Review

I thought I’d gone wrong. I pressed play and… drums (so far so good), stuff then (wait for it) a guitar!?! Have I put on a Maccabees CD by mistake? No, thumb the drumming’s too, too wowsome. My confusion lasted for a full 15 seconds before the sax hit me. But still, a guitar? Polar Bear are opening an album with twang rock guitar?

Maybe you don’t know Polar Bear. Maybe you need to change your friends. If my friends hadn’t told me about Polar Bear, I would have ditched them. Except that I wouldn’t have known what they hadn’t told me about, obviously. Polar Bear are a jazz outfit of indistinct number. Let’s say five, which includes Leafcutter John, who’s like Aphex Bez. It’s complicated. Their last proper album, ‘Held On The Tips Of Fingers’, was the token jazz nomination for the Mercuries a while back and should have won because it’s one of the best four things jazz has done since 1963 and it pisses on anything that ever wins a Mercury Prize.

Band background: part 2. Sigh. There’s a body of bands. Effectively, Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland are each other’s opposite ventricle, sharing a drummer and a saxophonist. And then there’s the F-ire skin, the Teversham spleen, blah blah blah blah. What you need to know is whether you should buy this record: you’re not adopting sextuplets. The short answer is “Yes, It’s excellent”. The long answer is “I wouldn’t start my Polar Bear collection with this”.

The really long answer is that this is their most Ladyland-like album yet. There’s less emphasis on finding complex beauty and arranging it cleverly, a la Duke Ellington or Charlie Mingus. There’s more emphasis on finding a groove and a handful of notes and getting a stink on, a la Acoustic Ladyland. Interplay is discarded in favour of immediacy. Drum yogi Seb Rochford is chief songwriter in Polar Bear and his new songwriting mantra is, “let’s not write it, let’s just feel it”. Bap Bap Bap, indeed. So we’re left with a performance album, and the performances are stunning. Pete Wareham is on top form (I’m assuming I can tell the difference between the two saxophonists, like I can tell Cab Sav from Merlot), and I might even call this some of his best work. Tom Herbert on double bass is lovably sturdy, yet cuddly. Seb Rochford is brilliant, but not showy. There’s no risk of him ever turning Billy Cobham (limitless ability and diminishing soul) on us. And it’s probably on the album’s more tender moments that we discover what a delicate and sensitive collaboration this is. Ego is not an issue in the least.

But it’s not just one flavour. Think smorgasbord. We find lively bouncy grooves like “Happy For You” and “Peepers”. Stocking-filler curiousities like “Drunken Pharoah” and “Bump”. Romantic tearjerkers like “The Love Didn’t Go Anywhere” and “Want To Believe Everything”. And impressively, hypnotically, boldly, we have “A New Morning Will Come” and “Finding Our Feet”, which sound like nods toward Boards Of Canada or Plaid fortified with jazz wisdom.

The spread of guitar-infection from Acoustic Ladyland’s last album is hardly the most significant development in fact. It’s the lean toward simplicity and punch. It’s not something I’d hoped for. Rochford is as good a composer, songwriter even, as he is a drummer (which is really really good, by the way, thus no offense to the Maccabees earlier), so it seems daft to put that strength to one side until he next thinks of a spare bandname. All the same, this is a brilliant album by the only first rate act of their kind around. A band totally on top of their Bap Bap Bap.

But I wouldn’t start my Polar Bear collection with this…

Categories ,acoustic ladyland, ,jazz, ,london, ,pete wareham, ,polar bear, ,seb rochford

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Amelia’s Magazine | Jeniferever launch their new album Silesia at The Lexington

Jeniferever by Liam McMahon
Jeniferever by Liam McMahon.

It was never a good idea to make an effort to see a support band without first checking up on them. This I really should know after many years of gig going. But sometimes you just don’t learn, help you know? So it was that I found myself facing the most excruciating half naked squall in the upstairs venue at The Lexington in Islington. I had rather presumed that as the support band for the Jeniferever Silesia album launch These Monsters might echo their soporific post rock nuances, prescription but their particular brand of ‘Regressive Rock’ could not have been more different. So I removed myself from the noise and waited in the downstairs pub until it was time to return for Jeniferever.

Silesia Jeniferever

I first profiled Jeniferever in Amelia’s Magazine many years ago, and I remember well the band asking me if I knew of anywhere for them to stay as they set off on a tour of UK cities, an anecdote which demonstrates well their tenacious nature. They are now onto their third album, Silesia, which was recorded in the wake of the death of singer Kristofer Jönson’s father, and was named for the former name of Berlin’s Ostbahnhof because he was nearby when he learnt of the news.

Jeniferever by Liam McMahon
Jeniferever by Liam McMahon.

From the moment it opens with the deeply reverberating echoes of Silesia it’s clear that we are on familiar territory – hypnotic vocals wrapped around a simple but deeply engaging tune. The following tune Waifs and Strays feels like a protracted yearning, but The Beat of Our Own Blood moves the familiar Jeniferever sound onto an altogether different level, the curling melody a sure fire contender for mainstream radio play where even the lyrics “goodbye to bright spotlights” are discernible.

Jeniferever by Sky Nash
Jeniferever by Sky Nash.

A Drink to Remember starts with the simple pickings of a guitar but nearly seven minutes later finishes with an incredible wall of sound. Deception Pass is frantic, all shadowy reflections as Kristofer traverses “the darkest hours of hope”. By Dover there is a lighter feel, a sense of climbing out of troubles… moving forward with the help of friends. The album finishes on the slightly more pensive and questioning sound of Hearths.

Jeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia GregoryJeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia GregoryJeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia GregoryJeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia GregoryJeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia Gregory
Jeniferever at The Lexington, all photography by Amelia Gregory.

For their album launch Jeniferever peppered new songs with a smattering of older goodies, each member effortlessly swapping between instruments. Guitarist Martin Sandström swung his asymmetric blonde hair elegantly against the beautiful ruby red backglow as I drifted off to Jeniferever land, the emotions reverberating across the floor and up through my legs.

Jeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia GregoryJeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia GregoryJeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia Gregory
Guitarist Martin Sandström.

Jeniferever have always done it their way, and Silesia is no exception: it’s a must have album for anyone who loves the otherworldly end of the musical spectrum.

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Grab your free tracks Dover and Waif and Strays from Soundcloud. Silesia is out now on Monotreme Records.

Jeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia GregoryJeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia GregoryJeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia GregoryJeniferever, Lexington-Photography by Amelia Gregory
Kristofer Jönson of Jeniferever.

Categories ,album, ,berlin, ,Broken Pixel, ,Dover, ,Islington, ,Jeniferever, ,Kristofer Jönson, ,Liam McMahon, ,Martin Sandström, ,Monotreme Records, ,Ostbahnhof, ,post-rock, ,Regressive Rock, ,review, ,Silesia, ,Sky Nash, ,SoundCloud, ,The Beat of Our Own Blood, ,The Lexington, ,These Monsters, ,Waifs and Strays

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Amelia’s Magazine | A post Tin Tabernacle interview with Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou

Jesca Hoop by Rebecca Strickson
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly.

I love Jesca Hoop‘s new song City Bird and the accompanying video so much so that I decided to get in touch with both Jesca and Elia Petridis, side effects the director of her recent videos, sildenafil to find out what makes them tick. Elia Petridis runs boutique production company Filmatics in Los Angeles, California. After making several award winning shorts and music videos he is about to start shooting his first full length feature The Man Who Shook The Hand Of Vicente Fernandez. I think his incredibly detailed answers throw an intriguing light on what goes into the creation of a very considered and beautiful music video.

Jesca-Hoop-by-Liam-McMahon
Jesca Hoop by Liam McMahon.

When did you start working with director Elia Petridis?

Jesca: Elia is an old friend. We met in Los Angeles at one of my shows. He would say that he forced me to be his friend, which is kind of true though I would say that he used his clever imagination to lure me in. I’m glad that he did. The Kingdom was our first video adventure together.

Elia: A producer I’m working closely with these days said to me recently that humans are “meaning making machines” (a soundbite from some career seminar) but that phrase really resonated with me. I’m infatuated with screenwriting and personal mythologies, sometimes to the detriment of my own mental health. I grew up in Dubai for 18 years before moving to LA for film school – although Dubai had a lot of its own magic it didn’t have a music scene to speak of so I’m always a little astonished by the talent I find in LA. When I saw Jesca perform live I really felt her music was very special and otherworldly, and tried to do my best to see if, as human planets, we could potentially orbit each other and become friends. 

I would venture to say that the first time I saw Jesca Hoop live was one of the most astonishing musical moments I have ever witnessed. It was the night before Halloween and she came out in a marionette outfit, complete with rosy cheeks, and stood motionless while her back up players wound her up to life. For a visualist like me, a storyteller, it really had an impact. The whole endeavour of courting a friendship with her was kind of a lark for me because I honestly thought she had better things to do. It was just a matter of pushing the boundary between fan and friend and seeing how much I could get away with. Suddenly, unexpectedly, as with most of life’s wonder, we had some mileage behind us and had transformed into friends. I will tell you that the first *official* conversation, the ice breaker, was when she was writing Tulip – from the Hunting my Dress album – and I was writing a screenplay dealing with Tulip Fever in Holland so I leant her my reference material. I knew I had two opportunities to wiggle my way in there – one to give her the book, and one to get it back!   

Hunting my Dress
The Hunting My Dress album cover.

Where was City Bird shot and where did the inspiration come from?

Jesca: It was shot in a miniature haunted house in downtown LA. We both wanted it to be a ghost story and Elia was the one to bring the children’s narrative into it.

Elia: FALSE! The video was shot in a garage in Riverside, Ca. The whole thing was fractal – an infinite amount of information in a finite space, as the garage is attached to an 18th century ‘Painted Lady’ Victorian house owned by my fiance. So in essence, it was shot in a miniature dollhouse inside a bigger dollhouse which made the shoot utterly magic. I think what Jesca is communicating is that the story takes place in a miniature dollhouse in downtown LA. The whole thing was lit using candles and christmas lights. 

Where did the idea for an animated video come from?

Jesca: It came out of limitation really. We had very very little money for this video so we just mused about what we could do with what time and money we did have. I set a pretty hard task considering the resources available and I am delighted with what Elia and his team came through with.

Elia: To me, the track is seance folk. That’s the sonic iconography that City Bird evokes – a ghostly seance. When it comes to music and music videos I am not a literal thinker so although my mind knows the song is about the fright and sadness associated with homelessness that’s not what my heart feels when I hear the song, and it’s not what the dream theatre in my mind projects over it either. But here Jesca’s mastery shines through, because the sonic landscape, right down to the very physical shape her mouth is making around the lyric is just as important as what she’s trying to say; the two are organically woven together. The magic of Jesca’s music lies in the alchemy that exists between form and content. All my artistic heroes do this, from Chabon, to Spielberg; they use genre to sugar coat the pill. So here she uses the disguise of seance music to coat the literal message of homelessness she’s trying to communicate. 

Now, narrative is something I am always running away from when directing a music video. Whenever I read a music video treatment from some kid that went to film school it makes me cringe and I think the best music videos come from documentary filmmakers who get a chance to put forward a psychology of form rather than one of narrative. But, having said that, my instincts on City Bird were narrative, perhaps because it’s a kind of lilting waltz so it felt right to have a narrative to pull you through it.  So, for the treatment, I sat down and wrote an entire ghost story from scratch, in the style of Poe or Hawthorne. I even wrote nursery rhymes about the ghost, because ghost stories are mostly aural traditions.

On The Kingdom video Jesca had a ton of input because I quickly realised that it would only reach its full potential if I pretended to be a paint brush and let her grab hold of the crew through me and paint. Once I took my ego out of the equation I realised there was something special there I was meant to service, and honestly, that’s the best method of working with an artist on a music video, that’s what you really cross your fingers for, isn’t it? You can see a little more of that process on the behind-the-scenes doc of the kingdom here:

But for City Bird Jesca was in Manchester and we were in LA shooting. Her schedule was tight, and I was really flattered that she had enough faith in me to let me just go and shoot because I know how much she loves her songs and how much faith it took for her to let go a little. I had originally submitted an entirely different treatment to her and had kind of resigned myself to the fact I wasn’t going to do it, which was cool enough for me because god only knows how many talented people Jesca comes across in her travels. Surely, I thought, she can find people in the UK to make amazing videos, and surely, as an artist, she wants to go and do cool stuff with other cool people. So I thought I would just give it a shot. I submitted this treatment about metaphorical ghosts, which dealt with mis-en-scene of places that had just been left and abandoned – an unmade bed, plates on a table after dinner, a toilet still running, stuff like that, where humans had vacated the frame only seconds ago and you’d just missed them – kind of pretentious honestly. Then I came across my fiancée’s childhood dollhouse and started taking video and snapping pictures and all of a sudden this whole new idea came to mind of the dollhouse and miniatures and stop motion and ghosts. I sent the examples to Jesca and she totally fell for it! 

City Bird house
City Bird house.

Ghost stories are tricky because they are incredibly emotional stories surrounded in gothic imagery. Ghost stories like The Others, The Orphanage, The Sixth Sense, are rite of passage stories – they’re about letting go. About the dead letting go of the living and the living letting go of the dead. They’re NOT about the living being punished for a sin like horror movies, but about forgiveness of that sin from all parties, the relinquishing of unfinished business. And I wanted to nail that, I really did. In City Bird it is the boy who is at the centre of the story and has the rite of passage: the ghost is a sort of Frankenstein or Edward Scissorhands character. 

The boy has nightmares and makes up ghastly stories that paint the ghost as a demon, then something happens to the boy on his bike and he dies. We get those silent movie inter-titles: his tower (the city) is turned to a tomb. Shadows loom over his white coffin and he becomes a ghost, set into the underworld where he is refused and becomes a refugee with nowhere to go. It’s scary out there for a little boy so he returns to the ghost’s house and we realise that’s her purpose – she is a host for waywardly spirits like the dead boy. But he has been so scared of her, will he change? Can he let go of his fear of her? Can he muster up the courage to enter as she beckons him in? The song ends unresolved sonically so I wanted to leave the audience there just as the music does. The theme is that of judging a book by its cover and misunderstanding something: just as we pass the homeless on the street and pretend they are invisible like ghosts when they all have a real inner life. Can we let go of our prejudices and see beyond the stereotypes to see that the issues that made them homeless are ones that could very well come to prey on and haunt us at any time? That’s kind of the metaphor I was trying to get at. 

City Bird ghost
The City Bird ghost.

Who made the puppets and how long did the video take to make?

Jesca: I’m not quite sure actually… I should ask.

Elia: Everyone who was involved in making the City Bird video knew there was a finite time of ten days in which to create this beautiful, creative thing so necessity was to be the mother of invention due to the time constraints, and everyone really fed on that and brought their best to the project. My fiancee, Maranatha Hay, is an Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker who is piped into the most creative, kind, and daring community of filmmakers and her best friend Natalie Apodaca is an artist with experience in installations. I showed her Metropolis and told her we were going to build a monotone city from cardboard and she just went for it. Cosmin Cosma was my left hand man who insisted we use the Dragon Stop Motion software, which honestly was the main reason we were able to get the shots we needed in the time we had. 

The crew never lost faith in my direction, even when I had no idea how we would do it just ten minutes before the shoot. In the opening shot of the video there is a city cardboard diorama, the dollhouse, the puppet of the ghost AND the moon projected over the city! All those elements came into play because we just broke down the shot we had in mind element by element: that’s real filmmaking in a pure form. 99% of this video was done IN-CAMERA, like The Lumière Brothers! Then it was given that incredible aged look by Dan Geis, our after effects genius.

Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson
Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson.

I can tell you how the puppets were made, but I urge you to remember that cinema is like a magic trick. The home made feel is part of the fun of the viewing experience, especially the joy in realising that things like hair are actually twine. The doll’s arms are made of tiny painted tree branches, her spine is metal wire and her dress is made of muslin. Her face is tracing paper and is removable so that we could change her expressions from shot to shot. The part where the fork floats across the table had to be done with tweezers! (nudged lovingly one frame at a time by Maranatha)

The house was a nightmare. It is three feet tall and it took us 3 days to put it together from a flat box. We painted every part, so we had to know what the end product would look like before we even started. Luckily an architect friend, Dannon Rampton, showed up just to check out what was going on and got so enamoured with the dolls house that he ended up putting it together which is just as well since Natalie and I were clueless as to how we were going to do it. We painted it and then we had to DILAPIDATE IT so it looked old and haunted! We scrubbed it with metal brush, we broke its steeple and we stuffed miniature moss in all its crevices so that the ghost story would feel real and lived in. 

My motto is: make movies that can only be movies! Make movies that need that final step of the medium to fully realise the vision, because it’s such an expensive, time consuming endeavour that the content had better deserve and earn the medium. If it can be a song, a book, a play, let it be that. But film, film is reserved for the special stories that need the seven arts to make them whole. SO don’t give away our secrets if you don’t have to. 
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly.

I love Jesca Hoop‘s new song City Bird and the accompanying video so much so that I decided to get in touch with both Jesca and Elia Petridis, drug the director of her recent videos, hospital to find out what makes them tick. Elia Petridis runs boutique production company Filmatics in Los Angeles, California. After making several award winning shorts and music videos he is about to start shooting his first full length feature The Man Who Shook The Hand Of Vicente Fernandez. I think his incredibly detailed answers throw an intriguing light on what goes into the creation of a very considered and beautiful music video.

Jesca-Hoop-by-Liam-McMahon
Jesca Hoop by Liam McMahon.

When did you start working with director Elia Petridis?

Jesca: Elia is an old friend. We met in Los Angeles at one of my shows. He would say that he forced me to be his friend, which is kind of true though I would say that he used his clever imagination to lure me in. I’m glad that he did. The Kingdom was our first video adventure together.

Elia: A producer I’m working closely with these days said to me recently that humans are “meaning making machines” (a soundbite from some career seminar) but that phrase really resonated with me. I’m infatuated with screenwriting and personal mythologies, sometimes to the detriment of my own mental health. I grew up in Dubai for 18 years before moving to LA for film school – although Dubai had a lot of its own magic it didn’t have a music scene to speak of so I’m always a little astonished by the talent I find in LA. When I saw Jesca perform live I really felt her music was very special and otherworldly, and tried to do my best to see if, as human planets, we could potentially orbit each other and become friends. 

Jesca Hoop by Rebecca Strickson
Jesca Hoop by Rebecca Strickson.

I would venture to say that the first time I saw Jesca Hoop live was one of the most astonishing musical moments I have ever witnessed. It was the night before Halloween and she came out in a marionette outfit, complete with rosy cheeks, and stood motionless while her back up players wound her up to life. For a visualist like me, a storyteller, it really had an impact. The whole endeavour of courting a friendship with her was kind of a lark for me because I honestly thought she had better things to do. It was just a matter of pushing the boundary between fan and friend and seeing how much I could get away with. Suddenly, unexpectedly, as with most of life’s wonder, we had some mileage behind us and had transformed into friends. I will tell you that the first *official* conversation, the ice breaker, was when she was writing Tulip – from the Hunting my Dress album – and I was writing a screenplay dealing with Tulip Fever in Holland so I leant her my reference material. I knew I had two opportunities to wiggle my way in there – one to give her the book, and one to get it back!   

Hunting my Dress
The Hunting My Dress album cover.

Where was City Bird shot and where did the inspiration come from?

Jesca: It was shot in a miniature haunted house in downtown LA. We both wanted it to be a ghost story and Elia was the one to bring the children’s narrative into it.

Elia: FALSE! The video was shot in a garage in Riverside, Ca. The whole thing was fractal – an infinite amount of information in a finite space, as the garage is attached to an 18th century ‘Painted Lady’ Victorian house owned by my fiance. So in essence, it was shot in a miniature dollhouse inside a bigger dollhouse which made the shoot utterly magic. I think what Jesca is communicating is that the story takes place in a miniature dollhouse in downtown LA. The whole thing was lit using candles and christmas lights. 

Where did the idea for an animated video come from?

Jesca: It came out of limitation really. We had very very little money for this video so we just mused about what we could do with what time and money we did have. I set a pretty hard task considering the resources available and I am delighted with what Elia and his team came through with.

Elia: To me, the track is seance folk. That’s the sonic iconography that City Bird evokes – a ghostly seance. When it comes to music and music videos I am not a literal thinker so although my mind knows the song is about the fright and sadness associated with homelessness that’s not what my heart feels when I hear the song, and it’s not what the dream theatre in my mind projects over it either. But here Jesca’s mastery shines through, because the sonic landscape, right down to the very physical shape her mouth is making around the lyric is just as important as what she’s trying to say; the two are organically woven together. The magic of Jesca’s music lies in the alchemy that exists between form and content. All my artistic heroes do this, from Chabon, to Spielberg; they use genre to sugar coat the pill. So here she uses the disguise of seance music to coat the literal message of homelessness she’s trying to communicate. 

Now, narrative is something I am always running away from when directing a music video. Whenever I read a music video treatment from some kid that went to film school it makes me cringe and I think the best music videos come from documentary filmmakers who get a chance to put forward a psychology of form rather than one of narrative. But, having said that, my instincts on City Bird were narrative, perhaps because it’s a kind of lilting waltz so it felt right to have a narrative to pull you through it.  So, for the treatment, I sat down and wrote an entire ghost story from scratch, in the style of Poe or Hawthorne. I even wrote nursery rhymes about the ghost, because ghost stories are mostly aural traditions.

On The Kingdom video Jesca had a ton of input because I quickly realised that it would only reach its full potential if I pretended to be a paint brush and let her grab hold of the crew through me and paint. Once I took my ego out of the equation I realised there was something special there I was meant to service, and honestly, that’s the best method of working with an artist on a music video, that’s what you really cross your fingers for, isn’t it? You can see a little more of that process on the behind-the-scenes doc of the kingdom here:

But for City Bird Jesca was in Manchester and we were in LA shooting. Her schedule was tight, and I was really flattered that she had enough faith in me to let me just go and shoot because I know how much she loves her songs and how much faith it took for her to let go a little. I had originally submitted an entirely different treatment to her and had kind of resigned myself to the fact I wasn’t going to do it, which was cool enough for me because god only knows how many talented people Jesca comes across in her travels. Surely, I thought, she can find people in the UK to make amazing videos, and surely, as an artist, she wants to go and do cool stuff with other cool people. So I thought I would just give it a shot. I submitted this treatment about metaphorical ghosts, which dealt with mis-en-scene of places that had just been left and abandoned – an unmade bed, plates on a table after dinner, a toilet still running, stuff like that, where humans had vacated the frame only seconds ago and you’d just missed them – kind of pretentious honestly. Then I came across my fiancée’s childhood dollhouse and started taking video and snapping pictures and all of a sudden this whole new idea came to mind of the dollhouse and miniatures and stop motion and ghosts. I sent the examples to Jesca and she totally fell for it! 

City Bird house
City Bird house.

Ghost stories are tricky because they are incredibly emotional stories surrounded in gothic imagery. Ghost stories like The Others, The Orphanage, The Sixth Sense, are rite of passage stories – they’re about letting go. About the dead letting go of the living and the living letting go of the dead. They’re NOT about the living being punished for a sin like horror movies, but about forgiveness of that sin from all parties, the relinquishing of unfinished business. And I wanted to nail that, I really did. In City Bird it is the boy who is at the centre of the story and has the rite of passage: the ghost is a sort of Frankenstein or Edward Scissorhands character. 

The boy has nightmares and makes up ghastly stories that paint the ghost as a demon, then something happens to the boy on his bike and he dies. We get those silent movie inter-titles: his tower (the city) is turned to a tomb. Shadows loom over his white coffin and he becomes a ghost, set into the underworld where he is refused and becomes a refugee with nowhere to go. It’s scary out there for a little boy so he returns to the ghost’s house and we realise that’s her purpose – she is a host for waywardly spirits like the dead boy. But he has been so scared of her, will he change? Can he let go of his fear of her? Can he muster up the courage to enter as she beckons him in? The song ends unresolved sonically so I wanted to leave the audience there just as the music does. The theme is that of judging a book by its cover and misunderstanding something: just as we pass the homeless on the street and pretend they are invisible like ghosts when they all have a real inner life. Can we let go of our prejudices and see beyond the stereotypes to see that the issues that made them homeless are ones that could very well come to prey on and haunt us at any time? That’s kind of the metaphor I was trying to get at. 

City Bird ghost
The City Bird ghost.

Who made the puppets and how long did the video take to make?

Jesca: I’m not quite sure actually… I should ask.

Elia: Everyone who was involved in making the City Bird video knew there was a finite time of ten days in which to create this beautiful, creative thing so necessity was to be the mother of invention due to the time constraints, and everyone really fed on that and brought their best to the project. My fiancee, Maranatha Hay, is an Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker who is piped into the most creative, kind, and daring community of filmmakers and her best friend Natalie Apodaca is an artist with experience in installations. I showed her Metropolis and told her we were going to build a monotone city from cardboard and she just went for it. Cosmin Cosma was my left hand man who insisted we use the Dragon Stop Motion software, which honestly was the main reason we were able to get the shots we needed in the time we had. 

The crew never lost faith in my direction, even when I had no idea how we would do it just ten minutes before the shoot. In the opening shot of the video there is a city cardboard diorama, the dollhouse, the puppet of the ghost AND the moon projected over the city! All those elements came into play because we just broke down the shot we had in mind element by element: that’s real filmmaking in a pure form. 99% of this video was done IN-CAMERA, like The Lumière Brothers! Then it was given that incredible aged look by Dan Geis, our after effects genius.

Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson
Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson.

I can tell you how the puppets were made, but I urge you to remember that cinema is like a magic trick. The home made feel is part of the fun of the viewing experience, especially the joy in realising that things like hair are actually twine. The doll’s arms are made of tiny painted tree branches, her spine is metal wire and her dress is made of muslin. Her face is tracing paper and is removable so that we could change her expressions from shot to shot. The part where the fork floats across the table had to be done with tweezers! (nudged lovingly one frame at a time by Maranatha)

The house was a nightmare. It is three feet tall and it took us 3 days to put it together from a flat box. We painted every part, so we had to know what the end product would look like before we even started. Luckily an architect friend, Dannon Rampton, showed up just to check out what was going on and got so enamoured with the dolls house that he ended up putting it together which is just as well since Natalie and I were clueless as to how we were going to do it. We painted it and then we had to DILAPIDATE IT so it looked old and haunted! We scrubbed it with metal brush, we broke its steeple and we stuffed miniature moss in all its crevices so that the ghost story would feel real and lived in. 

My motto is: make movies that can only be movies! Make movies that need that final step of the medium to fully realise the vision, because it’s such an expensive, time consuming endeavour that the content had better deserve and earn the medium. If it can be a song, a book, a play, let it be that. But film, film is reserved for the special stories that need the seven arts to make them whole. SO don’t give away our secrets if you don’t have to. 
TM AND HL-Jan 11-photography by Amelia Gregory
Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou, viagra dosage all photography by Amelia Gregory.

Last week Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou held a preview screening for their Tin Tabernacle tour video, viagra sale titled 11 Nights Under Tin. I caught up with them at Bush Hall a few weeks ago to find out more about this talented couple.

Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou, all photography by Amelia GregoryTrevor Moss and Hannah Lou, all photography by Amelia Gregory

The Tin Tabernacle tour followed on from Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou’s Village Hall tour of last year. To pull it off they found approximately fifty churches through the Tin Tabernacles website, got details of about thirty of them and managed to stage concerts in eleven of them. The website often listed the nearest town or they enterprisingly zoomed in on the google street view: sometimes a contact number would be visible on a noticeboard, and at other times they phoned the local pub. Most people were really enthusiastic, but some were overwhelmed by the idea and worried by the commitment. “We wanted to get out into the community and play for people who don’t have much access to music,” they told me when I spoke to them at Bush Hall. “We went to those who were keen.” It seems to have been a successful venture: the audiences were mostly comprised of locals.

Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester
Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester.

The Tin Tabernacle churches all vary in size, though they have a few things in common. They are all made of corrugated iron, and were invented circa 1840, when the scattering of God fearing British citizens across the British Empire hastened the need for an easily transportable place of worship. Mining communities sprung up in all sorts of remote corners of the globe so the churches often had to be carried for long distances overland. “They warm up fast because they are wooden clad inside,” explained Trevor and Hannah, “but some had no electricity so we played by candlelight.” The smallest church held only about 40 people, all squashed into the pews, but the average capacity was between 70-120. What with Trevor, Hannah and their two support acts it was still quite a squish.

Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester
Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester.

I spotted a tin church on my visit to the Cornish village of Cadgwith earlier this year, but sadly this was not one that they managed to include on the tour, despite Trevor’s Cornish heritage. Many were nevertheless located in amazing locations, including on cliff tops.


11 Nights Under Tin, a film by Trevor Moss, can be watched in full above.

Why did they chose such an innovative way of touring? “We had toured the same venues for years and they are all the same, painted black inside.” Trevor and Hannah hope that with their Arts Council funded tours their audiences will experience an event, instead of just standing in the shadows. “It’s no wonder that so many bands’ later records are rubbish when they live in such a strange parallel reality.” So they have chosen places that will open their eyes to other communities. They always stay in independent B&Bs and sometimes with the local vicar – it’s also a carefully considered way for them to have an interesting time whilst peddling an album. “We get to play in places we would never have seen otherwise.”

Tin Tabernacle by Alison Day
Tin Tabernacle by Alison Day.

I can totally relate to this idea – half the reason I was so attracted to fashion photography as a creative medium was the possibility of visiting interesting locations to take photos. During my nascent fashion photography career I went to South Africa and America before I began to realise the environmental problems of excessive air travel.

Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou by Sarah Matthews
Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou by Sarah Matthews.

The *world* premiere of the resulting Tin Tabernacle film was shown at The Social on Wednesday 16th March. It was entirely shot on an old 80s Hi 8 camera in three seconds bursts three or four times an hour, so it is basically what they describe as “a collection of moving photos” with mostly in-camera sound.

Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou - Tin Churches by Emmeline Pidgen
Tin Churches by Emmeline Pidgen.

This interactive approach to playing and documenting music is a result of Hannah and Trevor’s art college career. They both met at Goldsmiths, where Trevor was studying fine art and Hannah was doing theatre studies. By the time they reached their third year they were signed as the band Indigo Moss, which we profiled on Amelia’s Magazine. By this point they were spending so much time immersed in music that Trevor had to enlist the rest of the band to help get his degree show up on time.

Tin Tabernacles by Reena Makwana
Tin Tabernacles by Reena Makwana.

The couple have now been writing songs together for 8 years and seem a lot older and wiser than their 25 years of age, a fact which they attribute to having lots of older friends. They met whilst living in halls but did not start going out together until Indigo Moss, and managed to keep their relationship secret from other band members for two months. They got married in 2008.


There’s Something Happening Somewhere, a film by Trevor Moss.

Indigo Moss eventually broke up because they didn’t enjoy it anymore, especially the way the label was pushing the band. Inevitably, they were pulling bigger audiences as a duet. At that point Tom from Lewis Music saw them and they signed a one album deal. After that Jeff of Heavenly saw a couple of shows and as they put it “it all happened quite naturally. We had a cup of tea and the Tin Tabernacle tour really caught his imagination.” Heavenly Recordings have parted ways with megalith EMI and are now part of the Universal funded Cooperative Music initiative which supports independent labels such as Transgressive, Moshi Moshi, Bella Union and Domino. It means they can share PR costs and everyone knows when the others are releasing records so they don’t step on toes, which seems to make brilliant sense. These are amongst my favourite labels and between them they host some fabulous musicians – why would they want to deliberately compete with each other?

Trevor-Moss-Hannah-Lou-by-LJG-Art-Illustration
Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou by LJG Art & Illustration.

Ever prolific, Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou aim to put out one album a year from now on. The next record will be out in May and then comes the festival season, starting at Wood Festival on 21st May, and moving onto Truck Festival, Port Eliot and of course Glastonbury – where they played on my Climate Camp stage last year alongside Danny and the Champions of the World.


Performing at Wood Festival in 2009.

What to expect from the upcoming record? “There will be drums and a much bigger sound.” But as always all guitar and voices will be recorded together. I can’t imagine there will be much room in their van for more band members, and they agree that it is perfectly sized for just them. Although Trevor jokes that Hannah gets on his nerves it’s clear that this is very much a twosome. What happens when a family enters the equation? “Trevor wants to be a house husband,” laughs Hannah. “It will be a nice quiet time to write!” For now what they really want is a pet whippet. “They are lovely; so skinny and frail,” says Trevor. “It could travel in a hammock in the van.” The main trouble would be taking a dog into festivals, but I’m sure they could find an interesting series of venues that would accept a canine companion. Did someone mention lighthouses?

Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou, all photography by Amelia Gregory

Categories ,11 Nights Under Tin, ,Alison Day, ,Arts Council, ,Bella Union, ,British Empire, ,Bush Hall, ,Cadgwith, ,Climate Camp, ,Cooperative Music, ,Cornish village, ,Cornwall, ,Danny and the Champions of the World, ,Domino Records, ,EMI, ,Emmeline Pidgen, ,Gilly Rochester, ,glastonbury, ,goldsmiths, ,Hannah Lou, ,Heavenly Recordings, ,Heavenly Social, ,Hi 8 camera, ,Indigo Moss, ,Lewis Music, ,LJG Art & Illustration, ,mining, ,Moshi Moshi, ,Port Eliot, ,Port Elliot, ,Reena Makwana, ,Sarah Matthews, ,The Social, ,There’s Something Happening Somewhere, ,Tin Tabernacle, ,Tin Tabernacle Tour, ,Transgressive, ,Trevor Moss, ,Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou, ,Tripod Stage, ,Truck Festival, ,Universal, ,Village Hall, ,Whippet, ,Wood Festival

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Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with Adrian Edmondson: introducing new album Mud, Blood and Beer by his band The Bad Shepherds

The-Bad-Shepherds-by-Lizzie-Donegan-at-New-Good-Studio
The Bad Shepherds by Lizzie Donegan at New Good Studio.

Readers of my generation will no doubt best know Adrian Edmondson for his role in the seminal 80s TV comedy The Young Ones, but it turns out that this polymath is also an accomplished musician. The Bad Shepherds was formed in 2008, infusing classic 80s punk tunes with a riotous folk sensibility, and this August they released their third album on Adrian’s own Monsoon Music label. Snarfle and I have spent many a morning dancing around the living room to Mud, Blood and Beer – a foot stomping pean to festival culture and all that it entails. I asked Adrian some questions…

Mud Blood & Beer Cover Art
I love your festival folk re workings of classic pop tunes form the likes of Madness, the Stranglers and The Jam – how did you these come about? I imagine them as the result of a late night jamming session with friends and ale on hand, much as suggested by the album title. 
It’s true that modest and occasionally not so modest quantities of real ale can help to lubricate the creative process. It goes a bit like this: Troy and I meet socially rather than ‘to work’, we chat, we discuss the world, we might nip down the boozer for a quick couple of pints. Then we sit in a room with instruments and talk about songs we really like. If we both feel enthusiastic about a song we try and remember the lyrics. WE DO NOT PLAY A RECORDING OF THE SONG – this is very important, otherwise we’d just end up copying. Instead we try and remember the emotional impact the song had on us when it originally came out. Then we might pick up an instrument or two and play around with some chords that might fit the melody, we don’t care if they’re the original chords or not, sometimes we reduce things to a simple drone, sometimes we change the melody – what matters is that we develop a version of the song that fits who we are and how we feel about it. We might record a demo so that we remember what we’ve done. A few weeks later we’ll listen to the backlog of demos we’ve built up with fresh ears and pick out the ones that sort of work, and work on them some more. It’s a hit and miss process. Quite a few songs don’t work out at all. Some get to go through the treatment two or three times – the version of ‘No More Heroes‘ on the album is actually the third version we’ve done of that song.

The Bad Shepherds by Jardley Jean-Louis
The Bad Shepherds by Jardley Jean-Louis.

How did the Bad Shepherds form, and how long have you been playing music like this?
Just before Christmas 2007 I went on my annual pre-christmas booze up with some friends in London. Traditionally we end up in Denmark Street – the street with all the old second hand guitar shops – it’s like porn for middle-aged men. I can’t remember the particular details of what happened but when I awoke the next morning there was a mandolin on the kitchen table. A rather nice one made by Paul Hathway. I collect stringed instruments but I didn’t have anything tuned like a mandolin (GDAE) so I set about working out a few chords. Most strummers have a repertoire of songs they play instinctively when they pick up an instrument – mine are all punk a new wave – so I started working out ‘London Calling‘. As it progressed I had a kind of Eureka moment. I could sense that I was onto something different. It sounded so bright, it sounded so different, it made me sing in a different way, it sort of forced me not to COPY but to INTERPRET. I was working with Neil Innes and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band at the time. I played him what I’d discovered. He was immediately interested. We went round to his house and started working on the idea. After an enjoyable weekend he turned to me and said ‘You know what? I’m not right for this idea. What you need are some shit hot folk musicians‘. It was sad but true. What a glorious idea! I’d always had an interest in folk. I’d been at Uni in Manchester in the mid 70′s when the Students Union regularly put on punk bands, whilst 100 yards away, the Ducie Arms, an Irish pub, regularly held sessions where fiddle, pipe and banjo would come out. It struck me even then that there was something equally exciting about the raw energy of punk and the raw energy of a reel or a jig kicking off.

Bad Shepherds
Where to find ‘shit hot folk musicians’? And ones that wouldn’t mind bastardising their art to play with a twat like me? Well… I remembered seeing Troy playing the uilleann pipes with Finnish prog/metal band Nightwish at the Astoria (now sadly gone!). I badgered people for his contact details and got his phone number. I rang… ‘Hello, you don’t know me, I’m Ade Edmondson, the bloke off the telly, I’ve got an idea for a new kind of folk band that does covers of punk and new wave songs in a folk style…‘ The line seemed to go dead… Eventually, after what seemed like 5 minutes, Troy said ‘That’s a fantastic idea, I’m in, can we play The Model by Kraftwerk as well? I’ve always wanted to play that on the pipes‘. And so the band was born. We went through a few fiddlers before we settled on Andy, and a few bass players and percussionists before ending up without a bass player or a percussionist. Live we fill in the bottom end by Andy occasionally playing the octave fiddle, and me occasionally playing octave mandolin, it’s a much more dynamic sound. Though Tim Harries plays double bass on the album. Tim was in the band at one stage. When he joined he said ‘I’ll play with you until you discover I’m a cunt‘. He isn’t one, but we mutually agreed that touring with him wasn’t the best fun.

Bad Shepherds Promo 2013
Your title track Mud, Blood and Beer is your first original track – how many years have you been playing at festivals and what are the best and worst aspects of the festival circuit?
We done loads and loads of festivals, it’s our favourite thing to do. We even like playing the shit ones, and there’s quite a few of them. There’s something incredible about the human spirit in the way festivals spring up. It’s by sheer force of will, and a kind of group psychosis, that a small field, or a barn, or a derelict building get converted into something so beautiful. It’s hit and miss obviously – the one’s where people are primarily interested in making money are by and large quite dull, and the one’s where people have thought about what they want it to FEEL like are usually brilliant. Though you should never forget that most festivals are a kind of refugee camp. I remember playing Glastonbury on a Sunday, we’d been playing anther festival the night before, so we arrived around Sunday lunchtime – from five miles away the smell of human excrement was overpowering.

What we love most about festivals is that we generally manage to convert people. The people who are only marginally interested – ‘What’s this Ade Edmondson punk/folk thing, sounds like a crap vanity/novelty idea, let’s go along and sneer for a couple of numbers‘ – they wouldn’t pay to come and see a solo gig, but they’re at a festival, they’ve paid already, they might as well have a quick look to confirm their suspicions… those are the ones we like. It’s like fly fishing. We used to kick off with a version of Anarchy In The UK. We’d start it with a lament on the pipes building into a drone on the octave mandolin, the words would kick in (I am an antichrist…) and you’d see people’s heads roll back, then Andy would start scrubbing away at the fiddle and the song would get more and more urgent (in fly fishing terms this is when you cast the fly), the final choruses break out of the long drone into an epic set of harmonies and pull back on the rod and you’ve got ‘em. We’ve always enjoyed seeing our audience build during a festival set, we’ve never seen it get smaller. It’s thrilling. 

I can honestly say the best gigs I’ve ever done in my life in any art form have been with The Bad Shepherds. Comedy and music are very different beasts. Comedy is quite aggressive, you take the audience on. With music you invite them to join you. It only works if you meet in the middle. It makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck when everyone really connects. Our two best ever gigs – Avalon Stage at Glastonbury 2010 and Beautiful Days 2011 – had us in tears as we came off stage.

Bad Shepherds Tour Poster
In November you embark on a major tour of the UK, how does this fit in with your other commitments? And what else are you working on at the moment?
I keep my hand in making documentaries like Ade In Britain, but mostly I think of myself as a musician with The Bad Shepherds. Everything else has to fit around the band.

What next for The Bad Shepherds? Can we expect a full album of your own tunes, now that you’ve ‘tasted the forbidden fruit?’
I think our next album will contain more of our own stuff but might also shoot off in some other directions. All artistic endeavours are best one they keep shifting. I’m not sure you could call it ‘going forward’ but it’s definitely going somewhere. Sideways, probably.

Categories ,Ade Edmondson, ,Ade In Britain, ,Adrian Edmondson, ,Anarchy In The UK, ,astoria, ,Avalon Stage, ,Beautiful Days 2011, ,Bonzo Dog Doo Dah, ,Denmark Street, ,Ducie Arms, ,folk, ,glastonbury, ,Glastonbury 2010, ,Jardley Jean-Louis, ,Kraftwerk, ,Lizzie Donegan, ,London Calling, ,Madness, ,Monsoon Music, ,Mud Blood and Beer, ,Neil Innes, ,New Good Studio, ,Nightwish, ,No More Heroes, ,Paul Hathway, ,punk, ,Stranglers, ,The Bad Shepherds, ,The Jam, ,The Model, ,The Young Ones, ,Tim Harries

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Amelia’s Magazine | Port O’Brien – All We Could Do Was Sing

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As I packed for my first ever Glastonbury, sildenafil information pills I thought PRACTICAL and WARM. My long time friend and side kick had relayed stories of the year before being a torrent of mud and rain. What dedication. She and 136, buy 999 others had traipsed through thigh high mud for 5 days all in the name of music.

So when I asked the veteran Glastonbury go-er what on earth should I pack? she could not stress enough how many thermals, fleecies, and things that can be destroyed, I should take. And don’t forget your wellies! Having just moved here from NZ and lacking all the essentials, I was pointed in the direction of the camping store and left to my own devices! I hit Katmandu for a completely uncool but practical fleece jumper and Primark to stock up on tights and cheapie things that can be thrashed – after all, you don’t go to Glastonbury to hide from the elements.

As I arrived and joined the queue for international ticket pick up I was instantly struck by gumboot envy! An array of colors and patterns strutted past and I rarely saw the same pair twice. Fortunately my own pair was black and decorated with cute pink flowers and pink soles so they made the cut.

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Check mine out on the right

We arrived 2 days early purely to get the best campsite in all of fair Glastonbury, and after setting up tent we ventured down to explore and make the most of the sunshine – after all it wasn’t going to last, right?! The market stalls were already bustling, and the scene was a feast for the eyes! Girls in vintage dresses, colored tights, floral patterns -everything high street and everything fashion was on display.

Thursday evening bought the rain and Friday saw drizzle turning the once dust bowl farm into a thick mud that threatened to steal your boots with each step. But this did not hinder efforts from the crowd to look every bit like the glossy photos we see each year of celebrities looking effortlessly cool.

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The boldest looks seemed to appear directly from the onsite costume stalls in Shangri la. Super heroes, brides, cows, video game characters and even a banana competed on the muddy catwalk.

Of course when it comes down to it, after a couple of pear ciders you’re so excited to be jumping and shaking in front of your favorite band, you forget about your own mish mash of uncoordinated practical warm things and have just want to have a damn good time!

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Me attempting the effortlessly cool look

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Today we received great news that the issues we sent to Tokyo record shop Escalator Records three months ago have finally arrived. Why it took so long we have no idea, dosage perhaps the Royal Mail staff had a good read of them before they even got on the plane.

Escalator Records is a label based record store that was opened in 2002 in Harajuku Tokyo, and has stocked the most wonderful and limited records ever since. The store is very well respected and even has some famous fans. Haruka from the store told us, “Daft Punk, the people at Ed Banger, Modular People, Annie and CSS all give big love to the store”.

They also run an internet radio show, through which they aim to spread the word about as yet unknown Japanese bands.

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Haruka was nice enough to send us some photos to prove their arrival, as we had previously believed they had been lost forever.

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With a hint of sea air, try this folksy group from the deep dark depths of Kodiak Island, remedy Alaska, have created a relaxing but catchy and almost addictive new album. It’s a move away from the acoustic sounds of their first but Port O’Brien has managed to retain a sense of their previous identity.

The album as a whole creates a brilliant relaxed nautical atmosphere, not surprisingly as most of it was written whilst the lead dude was out solo in the Gulf of Alaska fishing months of his life away. Their Arcade Fire type passion is quite mesmerising and each song did leave me wanting more.

A splash of The Go! Team style shouting/village singing on their first track draws you in with excitement although the remainder of the album is not quite so uplifting. There is a woody, dusty feel to each song, I couldn’t help but imagine sitting round a camp fire with a few old chums, a guitar and everyone singing until their heart’s were content. Maybe even a porch, a straw hat and that trusty guitar would do the trick.

Quite a good album over all, indeed, all I could do was sing along (to the first track anyway). It won’t be making history any time soon, but a nice little listen.

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Amelia’s Magazine | Nadine Shah at the Lexington: Live Review

Nadine Shah by Tetsuya Toshima

Nadine Shah by Tetsuya Toshima

It was a bakingly hot day, even by the sweltering standards of the past week or so, and the upstairs venue of the venerable Lexington offered cool, air conditioned sanctuary. It was already pretty busy, with Newcastle’s Retriever coming to the end of a pounding post-punk infused set as I arrived, and from what I heard it’s a shame I didn’t get there earlier to catch more of them.

By the time Nadine Shah was due to come on stage, the Lexington was pretty much a full house, and judging by the accents I could pick up, I got the impression that there was quite a sizeable Northeast presence.

Nadine Shah by Avril Kelly

Nadine Shah by Avril Kelly

Hailing from Whitburn, a small coastal village in South Tyneside (which has links to both Lewis Carroll and, improbably, the Spanish Armada), Nadine Shah came to everyone’s attention last year with her darkly dazzling Aching Bones EP. Following a lot of positive press, two recent singles heralded the impending release of her debut album, Love Your Dum and Mad, which itself has been receiving rave reviews. I’d seen her play a spellbinding set at the Old Blue Last in April, so knew that tonight would be something special.

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Taking to the stage dressed all in black, Shah and her band (featuring her producer, Ben Hillier, on drums) were accompanied for the opening part of the set by a horn section, running through tracks from the album like Remember and Used It All. The unsettling Aching Bones, with its clanging percussion and insistent bass riff, got an early airing and a lot of cheers from the crowd.

Nadine Shah by Jessica Buie

Nadine Shah by Jessica Buie

PJ Harvey is a comparison that crops up a lot in articles about Shah, and though I suppose there are some similarities, I think she ploughs her own particularly intense furrow. Shah’s rich, haunting voice fills her quite often dark lyrics, which deal with loss, regret and, in the case of new single Runaway, the bitterness of the wronged wife. As a performer, Shah always seems transfixed on some point in the near distance, seemingly trying to contain the emotions rising within her. Between songs, she is a complete contrast, both chatty and witty (she jokes about the irony of singing a song called Winter Reigns on the hottest day of the year), and there are plenty of thankyous to various friends and family in between sips of red wine.

Nadine Shah by Gareth A Hopkins

Nadine Shah by Gareth A Hopkins

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Tonight’s set covered pretty much the whole of Love Your Dum and Mad, so we also got the simple synth patterns of All I Want, the delicately mournful Dreary Town (which puts me in mind of the second Tindersticks album) and the brooding To Be A Young Man. Closing the evening, Shah played a reworked version of that old torch song Cry Me A River, her tortured vocals soaring through the room, before leaving the stage to resounding cheers from the crowd.

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With her UK tour to promote the album resuming in September, after a spot supporting Bat For Lashes at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in August, things are looking bright for this rising Northeast star.

Categories ,Avril Kelly, ,Bat for Lashes, ,Ben Hillier, ,Gareth A Hopkins, ,Jessica Buie, ,Lewis Carroll, ,Nadine Shah, ,PJ Harvey, ,Retriever, ,Shepherd’s Bush Empire, ,Tetsuya Toshima, ,The Lexington, ,The Old Blue Last, ,Tindersticks

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Amelia’s Magazine | Plastic Mermaids: Inhale the Universe Interview

Plastic Mermaids by Kat Hassan_3
Plastic Mermaids by Kat Hassan.

Plastic Mermaids are a five piece band from the Isle of Wight. Since their 2014 release of debut EP ‘Drømtorp’ they have rightfully been earning comparisons to the likes of Animal Collective, British Sea Power, The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev. After sold-out headline shows last year Plastic Mermaids have become notable for their eye catching stage production, which involves handmade sets, lasers, projections and samples from films. I caught up with multi-instrumentalist Jamie Richards to find out more…


How did Plastic Mermaids come together and how has your home in Isle of Wight shaped your sound?
Doug, Chris N. and I (Jamie) used to be in a sort of thrash-electro-punk band called Magic Octagon. Really loud fast trashy music, it baffles me that we ever did it to be honest. Anyway we stopped that and decided to form Plastic Mermaids. We did one gig without a drummer with the most outrageous electronic setup ever and it was a complete disaster. We knew Chris J through surfing so got him to play some drums, and eventually decided that it also made more sense to have a bassist who could actually play the bass (I was pretty crap) so Tom joined us. I reckon being on the Island has definitely had an effect on our sound as we’re less subjected to the latest musical trends than we would be in a city, so we just kind of do our own thing. Being by the sea is pretty great for inspiration too.

Plastic Mermaids_portait
What is the process of creating new music as a band? Is there one person more in control and if so how does that work?
There’s no one person in control, we all write music and bring ideas to the table. It’s not a simple process though. I guess it usually goes something like this –
Someone has an idea that we all get excited about and start recording it before we really know where we’re going, we drink a lot of tea, everyone decides they want to take the song different places, we argue about it, record multiple versions, change it around until it bears no resemblance to the initial idea, decide we hate it, abandon it for months, throw away everything, start again, change the tempo by 20bpm in one direction then the other, drink some more tea, argue some more, change the key, throw it all away again, decide the original idea was actually quite good, drink some more tea, call it finished. Every now and then we get lucky and a song actually comes together pretty quickly. We wrote and recorded most of ‘Polaroids’ in one evening – Doug had a piano piece, which he had a completely different vision for and the rest of us totally butchered it while he was out of the room having dinner.

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Plastic Mermaids by Kat Hassan.

Playing In Your Mind -Plastic Mermaids
Playing In Your Mind - Plastic Mermaids 2 copy
What is happening in the Playing in Your Mind video? What inspired all the ideas and how did you achieve them?
Ha! Well we followed Doug with a camera which was lucky because when he got attacked by that mannequin it made a pretty good intro..

Plastic Mermaids_EP COVER
If you could describe the inspiration behind the new Inhale the Universe EP in one sentence what would it be?
Tom had a dream he could inhale the universe so we tried to replicate it in music.

Playing In Your Mind - Plastic Mermaids 1
How often do you get to surf and do you ever surf together as a group or is it always a very individual pursuit?
Doug, Chris and I (Jamie) surf as often as the waves permit. Unfortunately being on an island half way up the English channel that’s not very often in summer. We do get some good waves in winter though, and it’s hardly ever crowded which is a bonus. There’s something really nice about sitting in the sea with a few friends in the middle of winter with snow on the ground watching the sunrise and getting some great waves, knowing that everyone else is still in bed.

PlasticMermaidsByKat Hassan_1
Plastic Mermaids by Kat Hassan.

The visual aspect of performance is very important to you – what do you hope to do with your live sets in the coming years? Any ideas you can share with us?
Obviously lights/projections/stage props etc do add a lot to the live experience, but I think a lot of what’s exciting about watching us play is just the fact that we’re doing it completely live. It’s become almost a rarity nowadays to see a band playing without a backing track. I swear I’ve seen bands recently that could stop playing their instruments and you wouldn’t notice. What we’re trying to do at the moment is to push things as far as we can technologically with samplers and sequencers etc whilst still remaining completely live and not being locked into a click track. There’s been so much of it around recently and I think audiences are starting to realise that gigs with backing tracks become stale pretty quickly. In our sets things can (and sometimes do) go wrong, and I think that adds an element of excitement. In future we just want to see how far we can keep pushing it and not play it too safe. And we’d like some big lasers of course.

Plastic Mermaids
Where can we see you live this year?
We’ve got a couple of headline gigs coming up, The Louisiana (Bristol) 23rd Feb and The Lexington (London) 24th Feb. We’ve just had a couple of festival bookings too, Wychwood Festival (31st May), Isle of Wight Festival (12th June) and Bestival (September). We’ve also got a nice slot on the main stage at Rob da Bank’s new Common People festival in Southampton 23rd May which is pretty exciting. Hopefully we’ll get a few more booked in soon as well.

Playing In Your Mind and Inhale The Universe are released on 9 March via Cross Keys Records.

Categories ,bestival, ,Common People festival, ,Cross Keys Records, ,Drømtorp, ,Inhale the Universe, ,interview, ,Isle of Wight Festival, ,Jamie Richards, ,Kat Hassan, ,Magic Octagon, ,Plastic Mermaids, ,Playing in Your Mind, ,Polaroids, ,The Lexington, ,The Louisiana, ,Wychwood Festival

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