Amelia’s Magazine | Beth Jeans Houghton and the Hooves of Destiny at Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen: Live Review

Beth Jeans Houghton by Gemma Cotterell

Beth Jeans Houghton by Gemma Cotterell

Squeezing past the punters at the bar, I could see that the box-like auditorium of Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen was already full in anticipation at the arrival of Beth Jeans Houghton. This was the last night of the tour supporting her new album, Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose, and, like her most recent appearance in the capital (Upstairs at the Garage), all tickets had long since gone.

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I’d first discovered Beth Jeans Houghton a couple of years ago, playing a set at the Windmill in Brixton. At the time, the young Newcastle singer was a hotly tipped one-to-watch on the nu-folk scene (though she would probably consider herself more un-folk) following the release of the Hot Toast Volume One EP, before she seemingly dropped off the radar. Houghton resurfaced last year, having signed to Mute, and could be spotted playing at the Camden Crawl and, later on, at the Lexington (sporting a tiger stripe onesie, as you do). Gone are the wigs that she used to wear at gigs, the acoustic guitar (she’s now electric, you see) and the battered suitcase that doubled as a bass drum, but that amazing voice is still unchanged.

Beth Jeans Houghton by Sandra Jawad

Beth Jeans Houghton by Sandra Jawad

Taking to the stage with her band, the Hooves of Destiny, there was bit of a jokey keyboard and drums Also Sprach Zarathustra moment before things got underway. The set was basically a run through of tracks from the album, with a few added goodies thrown in. Houghton was very much centre stage, with a sparkly blue dress, bouffant blonde hair and bright red lipstick, and her voice soared through songs like Dodecahedron and Liliputt. Some Afrobeat-style guitar introduced Atlas, which I’m fairly sure had a few subtly altered lyrics, and old favourite I Will Return, I Promise was given a sprightly makeover.

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Houghton was more than capably backed by the band, featuring the imposing Findlay MacAskill on violin and backing vocal duties, Dav Shiel and his galloping drums, Ed Blazey swapping between trumpet, a very posh banjo and guitar and bass player Rory Gibson’s frighteningly loud trousers. It was pretty clear that everyone was enjoying themselves, and a broken string and dodgy guitar strap did little to dampen the onstage banter. Houghton was in impish mood, telling the audience what MacAskill (a doctor) had been doing during the day (repairing some poor unfortunate’s nether regions) before conducting a survey of what people’s favourite words were (“discombobulation” seemed to score quite highly). There was also a prize for “funkiest dancer” up for grabs.

Beth Jeans Houghton by Claire Kearns

Beth Jeans Houghton by Claire Kearns

The set closed with Houghton and the Hooves joined by the support band, Goodnight Lenin, for a fully choreographed rendition of (would you believe) Madonna’s Like A Prayer, before being urged back on stage by the crowd for an encore and ripping through the joyously punky coda to the album finale, Carousel.

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With her much anticipated album finally released (and very well received), and now apparently based full time in Los Angeles, it looks like Beth Jeans Houghton and the Hooves of Destiny will be riding on to bigger and better things.

Categories ,afrobeat, ,beth jeans houghton, ,Brixton, ,Camden Crawl, ,folk, ,Goodnight Lenin, ,Hooves of Destiny, ,Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen, ,Los Angeles, ,Madonna, ,Mute, ,Newcastle, ,The Garage, ,The Lexington, ,The Windmill

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Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with Lavender Diamond and review of new album Incorruptible Heart

Lavender Diamond by Suky Goodfellow
Lavender Diamond by Suky Goodfellow.

Their debut album Imagine Our Love was released in 2007 through Rough Trade to rave reviews, and at last there is a follow up. Hailing all the way from Los Angeles, Lavender Diamond‘s new album Incorruptible Heart is a slice of musical sunshine. With a haunting refrain of ‘I love you I love you I love you‘ recent single Oh My Beautiful World makes me well up with adoration for my darling Snarfle every time I hear it, whilst Everyone’s Hearts Breaking Now conjures up a darkly beautiful world where heartbreak seems somehow manageable. She’s a whirlwind of creativity: I caught up with vocalist Becky Stark to find out more.

Incorruptible Heart - Album Cover
How did Lavender Diamond come together? 
Well I had an idea about the lavender diamond, which was a myth about the original crystal caves deep in the earth and the beautiful sound they made! There is a belief that when one diamond was taken from the cave it silenced the sound, but the soul of the stone lived through the centuries and became the voice of a songbird named Lavender Diamond. I would be that character whenever I would sing or write as Lavender Diamond.  But then I wanted to be a band so I found Ron & Steve & Jeff – well kind of by magic: we just found each other and as soon as we played together it felt very powerful. 

Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond photo Autumn de Wilde
Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond by Autumn de Wilde.

Who has been the biggest influence in your vocal style?
I’m not sure… but I really love Ella Fitzgerald. I think she was the most amazing singer.. but there are many other great singers who have influenced me… Maria Callas, Whitney Houston, Dolly Parton, Cyndi Lauper, Linda Rondstadt. I guess that’s a strange list!

LAVENDER DIAMOND by Clare Corfield Carr
LAVENDER DIAMOND by Clare Corfield Carr.

What have you been doing since the release of your first album Imagine Our Love? I hear you have been particularly busy Becky…
Oh, well, I have mostly been singing and writing music! I joined the Decemberists for a year and sang the role of Margaret in their rock opera, The Hazards of Love. I also made a record with my other band The Living Sisters, and we made an amazing music video with Michel Gondry: The Living Sisters have a new record coming out in January. I also went on the road with She & Him, singing harmonies with Zooey Deschanel and opening their shows. Then I’ve been singing country songs with John C. Reilly & we made a little record that Jack White produced. What else? Oh!  I made a little animation series of uplifting slogans for MTV called Worldword! and also a web series called We Can Do It!

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And I’ve been writing an opera. It sounds like a lot, but there’s always so much to do… 

Your songs are quite epic… what kind of mood are you in when you write them?
Well – different moods. Usually I will write a song to express a feeling, because I need to understand and allow the meaning to change through the expression of the song.

Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond photo by Autumn de Wilde
Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond by Autumn de Wilde.

You speak of the intimate and the global. Are there any things that are especially pressing on your mind and present on this album?
Yes! I think it is so important that everyone realizes that their relationship to everything in the world is direct. 

It’s been a few weeks since your second album came out, who has been raving about it most?
Well – my friends really love it and that means so much to me! 

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There is some stunning cinematography in the Everyone’s Hearts Breaking Now music video: what was the idea behind this?
Oh, well, we had the idea years ago to make a video where I was dancing through the cosmos and falling and galloping through the stars, but we didn’t really know how to pull it off. By chance I ended up in a Doug Aitken video where I had to be in an aerial rig and it was just amazing so it was like I was born to do it! Dancing in the aerial rig was my fantasy come true and I knew we had to find a way to do it. Just a few days after that happened I ran into Maximilla and she had just filmed a test of an aerialist shot in slow motion through a prism, so then we knew we had to make the video like that together. 

Lavender diamond
How was it shot and executed?
Well it was really miraculous: I can’t believe we actually pulled it off. We just asked for help! Our community in LA is really beautiful and supportive. We found the amazing amazing June Zandona, who shot it – and really it was just incredible how it all came together. Our friend Laurel Stearns introduced us to George Augusto who has an artspace called Dilletante and he let us shoot there. Then he introduced us to Elizabeth Newton who is the head of the Circus School in LA. And she agreed to help us because she wanted to help support the expression of the feeling in the dance, which felt so beautiful and heart opening. It was crazy though because I had only ever been in the aerial rig once: but I knew I could do it and Elizabeth believed in me… then it turned out that Elizabeth and I had worked together before because years ago she had been in the Lavender Diamond video for The Garden Rose that Maximilla directed, and she & I had been in a performance of The Citizens Band together in New York when I was a guest together with Amanda Palmer several years ago. So, Elizabeth introduced us to Chobi Gyorgy – who is a flying trapeze artist from Hungary and he builds trapeze schools across the U.S. – and he agreed to build a rig for us and to be my catcher: it was really like a miracle! 

Lavender Dimond By Alia Penner
Lavender Diamond by Alia Penner via instagram.

Our amazing friend Miss KK made a beautiful costume in just one day and everything came together so fast, in about a week, because there was only one day where Elizabeth and Chobi could come and we really weren’t sure we were going to be able to pull it off. We had to figure out how to blow up a crystal, and it was like an action adventure movie. Then editing it was another adventure – but oh I love it so so so much, it was a dream come true. 

Any plans for any new videos and any plans to play in the UK?
Yes, we’re making new videos: I am hoping we will be able to make one for every song because I love making videos. And I hope we will be able to play in the UK but I don’t know when that will be…

Incorruptible Heart by Lavender Diamond is out now on Paracadute. Stream and buy the album here.

Categories ,Alia Penner, ,Amanda Palmer, ,Autumn de Wilde, ,Becky Stark, ,Chobi Gyorgy, ,Circus School, ,Clare Corfield Carr, ,Cyndi Lauper, ,Decemberists, ,Dilletante, ,Dolly Parton, ,Doug Aitken, ,Elizabeth Newton, ,Ella Fitzgerald, ,Everyone’s Hearts Breaking Now, ,George Augusto, ,Imagine Our Love, ,Incorruptible Heart, ,Jack White, ,John C. Reilly, ,June Zandona, ,Laurel Stearns, ,Lavender Diamond, ,Linda Rondstadt, ,Los Angeles, ,Maria Callas, ,Maximilla, ,Michel Gondry, ,Miss KK, ,MTV, ,Oh My Beautiful World, ,Paracadute, ,Rock Opera, ,Rough Trade, ,She & Him, ,Suky Goodfellow, ,The Citizens Band, ,The Garden Rose, ,The Hazards of Love, ,The Living Sisters, ,We Can Do It!, ,Whitney Houston, ,Worldword!, ,Zooey Deschanel

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Amelia’s Magazine | Teebs: Otherworldly Rhythms on debut album Ardour.

South County Dublin boy without the accent or heino addiction, ask fled to Bristol under a desperate attempt to become the next Ally McBeal. Following more pints than points of law it soon became clear this wasnt to be. After a year in Paris, find I found my true calling and went back to being a fresher this time by the sea in Bournemouth and got swept into the world of fashion.

A marriage, a couple of funerals, more parties, and eventually a graduate collection inspired by dandies past and present all led to a move to the capital. Here I design menswear for the high st and dream of a fashion empire developing at my feet.

So having just hit my 30s, which should be noted I am welcoming with open arms, and bizarrely a marathon, (It’s the done thing these days apparently.) I’m designing suits, writing, enduring long runs in the rain and loving London. Other than that I’m most often seen propping up a bar with a group of mates debating the intricacies of politics, fashion, music, and possibly Strictly. Its not a bad life really and hey someone’s gotta do it.

South County Dublin boy without the accent or heino addiction, pharm fled to Bristol under a desperate attempt to become the next Ally McBeal. Following more pints than points of law it soon became clear this wasnt to be. After a year in Paris, this I found my true calling and went back to being a fresher this time by the sea in Bournemouth and got swept into the world of fashion.

A marriage, a couple of funerals, more parties, and eventually a graduate collection inspired by dandies past and present all led to a move to the capital. Here I design menswear and dream of a fashion empire developing at my feet.

So having just hit my 30s, which should be noted I am welcoming with open arms, and bizarrely a marathon (It’s the done thing these days apparently.) I’m designing suits, writing, enduring long runs in the rain and loving London. Other than that I’m most often seen propping up a bar with a group of mates debating the intricacies of politics, fashion, music, and possibly Strictly. Its not a bad life really and hey someone’s gotta do it.

South County Dublin boy without the accent or heino addiction, mind fled to Bristol under a desperate attempt to become the next Ally McBeal. Following more pints than points of law it soon became clear this wasnt to be. After a year in Paris, pill I found my true calling and went back to being a fresher this time by the sea in Bournemouth and got swept into the world of fashion.

A marriage, approved a couple of funerals, more parties, and eventually a graduate collection inspired by dandies past and present all led to a move to the capital. Here I design menswear and dream of a fashion empire developing at my feet.

So having just hit my 30s, which should be noted I am welcoming with open arms, and bizarrely a marathon (It’s the done thing these days apparently.) I’m designing suits, writing, enduring long runs in the rain and loving London. Other than that I’m most often seen propping up a bar with a group of mates debating the intricacies of politics, fashion, music, and possibly Strictly. Its not a bad life really and hey someone’s gotta do it.

bainser.tumblr.com

Matt Bramford is the son of a coal miner and Miss Butlins 1979. A fan of fashion from an early age, abortion Matt could be found sporting Spring/Summer 1988′s pastel pallette on Blackpool’s glorious sands, embarrassing his parents by carrying his matching bucket and spade in the crook of his arm. He can only apologise.

Nowadays, when not designing layouts featuring Stacey Slater or Ronnie Mitchell or, erm, Stacey Slater, at Britain’s favourite TV magazine, he’s usually chained to his desk replying to emails or editing pictures. He takes a hot snap and is a massive fan of Autostitch and Hipstamatic for iPhone, although he gets the occasional pang of guilt for cheating with the latter.

If you want to know what he had for breakfast this morning, find him on twitter @mattbramf. If you want to see some of said ‘hot snaps’ you can here.

Matt is fashion editor of Amelia’s Magazine
Your previous work has explored Poe and Baudelaire – what drew you to their writings and inspire you to visualise their literary landscapes?

They are both writers who utilise the city as a character within their own mythology. They blur the line between the now and another world. There is an atmosphere of insubstantial things, viagra order essences and emanations, viagra dosage of beauty as a manifestation of a perpetual beyond. Of smoke, fogs, shimmering obfuscations and of a moon setting sail over the city. Through their absent, distant world, I can better see my own city, with its scuffed, graffiti-layered surfaces—another forest of symbols, veilings and half-read signs, a world of unstable meanings, porous images which flow into each other.

Your exhibitions contain both the static and moving image, how would you describe your relationship to these two methods of representation?

The drawn images both in the show and the film are an attempt to crystallise a particular idea or thought, the moving three dimensional fimed sections are more about conjuring up a state of mind or world

What possibilities of expression or narrative does film offer over the static image and vice versa?

I can be more open ended with film. when I’m making the images for my film, I create sets and project light and images into them and take hundreds of pictures ,so I often end up with something very different from what I began with film allows me to juxtapose and arrange images and have more than one thing going on at the same time by appealing to both the eyes and the ears, it also overlays images so someones impression of the film is a group of visual memories

The sets of the film resemble Victorian Children’s Theatre, possibly a stage for shadow puppets, is this a design inspired by research or relationship to the themes within the films?

I think my Poe film was more theatrical because his writing is very stagey and melodramatic

How did you discover Swedenborg and what drew you to his dream journals?

I went into the swedenborg society book shop out of curiosity, I like that part of town. it is also near to where Poe lived in London and also The conway hall and I loved the imagery in the dream diary and the struggle between reason and imagination

Which illustrators, artists or filmakers inspire or are used as reference within your work?

The Quay brothers, David Lynch, Kiki Smith, Paul Klee, Marcel Proust, Goya, Leonardo Da Vinci, Henry Darger

The enigmatic mood of the films feel similar to Alice by Jan Svankmajer, have you seen this film?

Yes I have seen it and I very much like it so I’ll take that as a compliment

What interests you with regards to Alchemic Drawings or the relationship between Science and Faith?

I like the use of Heiroglyphic language in Alchemy, the linking of the rational and the irrational and the idea that the smallest thing is linked to the greatest, the idea that the whole universe is a code where everything is both itself and something else.

Where did you study?

Cambridge University and Chelsea

Watercolours are frequently used within your drawings, what attracts you to the medium?

They’re very bright – I use radiant watercolour inks. also I like their irreversableness
teebs

Flying Lotus seems to be a man that can do no wrong at the moment. His latest album, sildenafil Cosmogramma, was met with resounding praise from critics across the globe and his new EP, Pattern + Gridworld, looks set to enjoy the same success. In addition to his personal prominence at present, FlyLo’s Brainfeeder label is enjoying similar notoriety due to some inspired signings that are taking hip hop production to dizzying heights. His latest offering, Teebs, is likely to increase the LA label’s popularity even further.

teebs_ardour_cover

Teebs, real name Mtendere Mandowa, is a 23 year old Californian beat maker who is about to unleash his inspired debut album, Ardour, this month. The elegant piano flourishes and spellbinding harps are closer to the works of Caribou and Bonobo than they are to the works of fellow label mates and beat purveyors Gaslamp Killer and Lorn. This is an album so understated and mystifying that label owner Flying Lotus refers to it as “like an island vacation. The way Avatar looks.” Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs has been heaping praise upon it during her weekly show, calling it “a unique and tender magic.”

The Chino Hills native began producing his own music after he tore his Achilles tendon during a skateboarding accident. Due to the fact that he was not physically able to pursue one of his passions, he simply decided to replace it with another. “I was out for half a year and just made music and art during that time,” says Mandowa. “That’s when I just got stuck, since I got the same feeling I did when I was skating.”

Soon, Teebs’ creations took on a life of their own and resulted in the producer making regular trips to Los Angeles to perform at Low End Theory, the experimental hip hop haven that has produced the likes of Daedelus and Shlohmo. “Low End was the Mecca,” advises the young producer. “I think it still is for a lot of artists coming up in the LA area. It’s freedom in the purest form. Anything goes there as long as it has its own honest feeling to it.” 

It didn’t take long before Flying Lotus became aware of Teebs’ talents and the pair forged a friendship through their similar philosophies about what hip hop should music could be. Says Mandowa: “After a few visits to his old place in the valley and a beat CD that I passed over to him, Lotus just texted me and it read something like, ‘So whatsup, will you join us?’”

This seems like a fairly informal way to score a record deal, but Teebs’ attitude in general tends to give the impression that he takes everything in his stride and tries not to force anything too much. This may just have worked in his favour as his debut album, named after his preferred digital audio workstation, easily ranks as one of the most ambitious releases on Brainfeeder to date.

Despite the fact that Teebs’ first album sounds like a focused collection of works that were meticulously threaded together, he is happy to confess that none of it was intentional. “It’s definitely just a collection of tunes that I pulled together after I was asked to make a record,” confesses the 23 year old. “I never thought my music would get pressed or that I would ever really put stuff out seriously until I got on Brainfeeder. It was a strange feeling like, ‘Oh I need to make this work as a single record now.’”

Ardour is out now on Brainfeeder.

Categories ,album review, ,Ardour, ,Avatar, ,Bonobo, ,Brainfeeder, ,caribou, ,Cosmogramma, ,Daedelus, ,Flying Lotus, ,Gaslamp Killer, ,Lorn, ,Los Angeles, ,Mary Anne Hobbs, ,Mtendere Mandowa, ,Pattern + Gridworld, ,Shlohmo, ,Teebs

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