Secret Garden Party – Page 3

Amelia’s Magazine | Festival Preview: Secret Garden Party

secret garden party

Out of all the festivals that fill the calendar over the British summer, medical none are quite like the Secret Garden Party. Every year friends come back, page wide-eyed, stories tumbling from their mouths about the fantastical things that they have seen and experienced. Last year’s festival had a whole stage on a boat in the middle of the lake on site (above) – as the festival was brought to close on the final night the ship was fully exploded in a mad orgy of fiery violence. It sounds like it was brilliant. Every year they have things like this.

It’s a strange festival in that the attraction is not so much the lineup (good as it may be), or the site (beautiful though it is), but the other people who attend. The organisers explain it best:

“We provide the Garden and plant the seeds, but you nurture its life and allow it to blossom. It is your party – your creative participation allows the festival to rejuvenate & regenerate. Our number one rule is that the festival must facilitate your participation.”

Simple, eh? This means that there’s a very blurred line between performers and attendees, leading to a merry atmosphere that’s had people deliriously happy since 2004. It may not have the ‘big’ names that characterise the larger, more corporate festivals, but that’s not the point (and, as the four friends who run the festival say, “there’s something unsettling about relaxing in a field in the summer underneath a giant Pepsi logo”). This sharing, communal atmosphere is largely responsible for the festival’s grand reputation amongst the partying people of Britain.

There are still stages and tents and acts and headliners, of course. This year there will be performanes from artists as diverse as Mercury Rev, Fionn Regan, Eliza Doolittle, Mr Fogg, Marina & the Diamonds, and Crystal Fighters (but that’s just scratching the surface of the lineup). They’ll be appearing on the different stages and in the different tents across the site – wonderfully-named things, they are. There’s The Great Stage (aka the main stage), or the Wild Stage (bands play to the audience from a treehouse), or The Pagoda (a DJ arena, backed by a Peter Foster-designed pagoda), or The Feast of Fools (a medieval banquet experience underneath a huge, ancient oak), or… well, take your pick, there are 14 different locations to choose from, all of them suitably wacky and enticing.

This year’s theme (for there is always a theme) is ‘Fact or Fiction’. Again, in the festival’s own words:

“In 2010 The Secret Garden Party will be prizing open the chinks in man’s most carefully constructed edifice: Reality. The Garden will be exploring the illusions, visions, theories, fantasies, mysteries and legends that have created a rich world between Fact and Fiction.”

The idea is to come in a costume that’s stranger than fiction. Whether that is entirely logically possible is a moot point – it’s all about having as much of a party as possible by exploring the inventive ideas of the past, present, and future. Plus it’s a chance to dance in a field dressed like Bowie in Labyrinth. No?

Ah, Secret Garden Party. Between the hippie girls with flowers in their hair to the massive raves in the woods at night, there’s a lot of space to do your own thing. It’s a festival all about doing what you want to let yourself have a good time, and in the process get other people to enjoy themselves more through the power of community. It’s all very excellent.

Written by Ian Steadman on Tuesday May 4th, 2010 9:10 pm

Categories ,Bowie, ,Britain, ,crystal fighters, ,Eliza Doolittle, ,festival, ,Fionn Regan, ,ian steadman, ,Marina & the Diamonds, ,Mercury Rev, ,Mr Fogg, ,Secret Garden Party, ,summer

Amelia’s Magazine | Secret Garden Party

Aided in no uncertain terms by a show stopping performance at Texas’ recent South By Southwest festival, order case Portland three-piece Menomena present their debut UK release. This is in fact the bands third release – with their two previous albums available in the US exclusively. School friends Danny Seim, mind Justin Harris and Brent Knopf have derived a creative process of much interest that has resulted in a work that is both experimental and forward thinking without being inaccessible.

The bands sound is essentially a combination of looped sounds which are selected from a computer programme called Deeler. The Deeler Sessions culminate in the layering of these looped sounds and vocal addition. The good news is that for the most part this results in songs of sonic density that are out of left field but rich in melody. It is a combination that makes ‘Friend and Foe’ a compelling listen.

Often the fragmented nature of the songs will result in a messy, disjointed sound to begin with. But cohesion arises from moments of inspiration that morph abstract noises into quasi – pop melodies. It maybe a gorgeous piano line, delicate vocal harmony or obscure drum loop. Whatever, these songs keep you guessing, and aside from the odd ill judged inclusion (notably at the tail end of the album) they are nothing less than enthralling.

There are echoes of Mercury Rev on the defiant ‘Rotten Hell’, whilst howling guitars and brooding Saxophone characterise ‘Weird’. Elsewhere Menomena take ‘Up’ era REM as a reference point on ‘My My’- A brilliantly structured song defined by its paradoxical use of warm keyboards and choppy, industrial beats. It is one of many gems.

It’s a shame that the record falls away so badly in its last quarter. The final three songs appear to be an afterthought – lumped on at the end to pad things out when there really is no need for their presence. It leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mouth, but spin straight back to the start and all is forgotten. Friend and Foe deserves attention.

It’s always a danger to be overly vocal about your influences, ambulance it invariably leads people to compare you to those you have cited as inspiration, more about and with a band name taken from a Wilco song, dosage Cherry Ghost have set the bar a little too high. Thirst for Romance is positioned firmly in the folk/country influenced indie rock category and despite not being a spectacular record it has some nice moments, even if they are a little bit uninspired.

Amelia’s Magazine | Festival Review: Secret Garden Party

Since Ewan MacGregor sang to Nicole Kidman to the light of a Moulin Rouge, viagra information pills or perhaps since Don Quixote tilted heroically over the hills to La Mancha at those giant-like shapes, cialis 40mg they’ve caught our hearts as surely as Windy Miller once did, waving to us from the music box as an episode of Camberwick Green came on telly. Given the topicality of their gleaming three-pronged younger brothers, the turbines bedecking our beloved bemoorlands, eyes turned to Vestas’ factory on the Isle of Wight, I thought I’d glance back a little, to quieter ages.

0729%20jeffrey%20windmills.jpg
Illustrations by Jeffrey Bowman

They were the great technological innovation of the twelth century, at least in Northern Europe. The Persians had been happily pumping water with wind power 1500 or so years earlier, and the Greeks on the Cyclades out-sourced their grain grinding expertise to the mainland, charging a nifty 1/10 of the flour fee. Their three pronged modern successors are the best developed shot at renewable energy we’ve properly developed yet.

When you scratch the surface of windmill history, you come across the attractively-named International Molinological Society, whose members meet every four years or so to talk over anything from ‘oblique scoopwheels’ to industrial espionage – mill technology from the USA in the early 19th century was carried across the ocean by the German spies Ganzel and Wulff to form the start of a new development in european mill technology. Can you imagine the excitement and tension in that debriefing room?

Darrell M Dodge (of Littleton, Colorado)’s Illustrated History of Wind Power Development calls windmills ‘the electrical motor of pre-industrial Europe’. They did all sorts : pumping water from wells, for irrigation, or drainage using a scoop wheel, grain-grinding, saw-milling wood, and processing spices, cocoa, paints and dyes, and tobacco.

0729%20jeffrey%20houses.jpg

To see the first main kind of northern european windmill, you can take a trip down to Outwood, Britain’s oldest still-functioning windmill, built in 1665 by Thomas Budgen of Nutfield. It’s a post mill : the whole body, weighing around 25 tons, rotates on a central post made of a single enormous oak tree, to bring the mill round into the wind.

The post mill was the most common design in the twelfth century, when they were just getting going (the first reference to a British windmill is in 1191). By the end of the thirteenth century, though, the masonry tower mill had been introduced. These had the neat innovation of a turning timber cap, built on a stone tower – so the moving bit was lighter, and the windmill could be built taller with larger sails to get more power.

William Cubitt was a curious engineer from Norfolk, obsessed with the efficient use of energy. He straightened out an unsatisfactory bit of canal north of Oxford, and invented the prison treadwheel, a device which perhaps sums up that mechanical, peculiarly Victorian vision that every cog and wheel of society should find its place, in workhouse, town house or courthouse. He installed the first one in Bury St Edmunds Gaol in 1819, followed enthusiastically by ones at Cold Bath Fields (London), Swaffham, Worcester, Liverpool and probably more besides.

On the more picturesque side of his engineering, in 1807, he invented and swiftly patented a new type of sail, known from then on as ‘Patent Sails’, which combined the innovations of a Scottish millwright, Andrew Meikle (‘descended from a line of ingenious mechanics’ according to his tombstone) and Stephen Hooper. Meikle developed spring sails in 1772 made of a series of parallel shutters that could be adjusted according to windspeed, and had springs which let them open a little more if the wind gusted. Hooper invented a device in 1789 which let the sails be adjusted without ever stopping – he called it the roller reefing sail. Patent Sails became the basis of self-regulating sails, avoiding the need for tiresome constant supervision – and proved successful. Windmills on this design outlasted steam power and the industrial revolution – they were still in use as drainage pumps on the Norfolk Broads until 1959.

So, though grinding grain for bread has mostly been swapped for juicing up the national grid, some of the old guard hold on. And though I’d love to get confused about upwind turbines and Betz limits – why exactly the new wind power is generated from only three pretty fine blades slicing through the sky, we’d best leave it there for now.

0729%20jeffrey%20hand.jpg

What is the magic formula that the Secret Garden Party have got their bejeweled mitts on? Having just spent a weekend with them – and 6, for sale 000 happy, friendly campers – I would go so far as to say that there are cosmic forces at work which have taken all the ingredients needed to turn a great festival into a glorious one. For those who are as yet uninitiated, The Secret Garden Party is ever so much more than a weekend away listening to top tunes. It’s a soul liberating free fall of wonderment and the bizarre; a playground for grown up children to indulge in fairy tales and fantasy. I succumbed to such an extent that I feared returning to the harsher edges of reality would be a painful bump, but it turned out that the magic dust managed to stick and I awoke Monday morning with a serious dose of the happy’s.

Our arrival didn’t have the most auspicious beginning. What should have been a mornings car journey turned into a 6 hour stint on the M25 and M11, where roadworks defied us at every turn. By the time we dragged our sorry selves to the camp site we were tired, hot and irritable. “This better be bloody brilliant” I muttered to myself as I hastily assembled my tent. (minor lie – my wonderful Amelia’s Magazine colleagues assembled it; I couldn’t erect a tent if my life depended on it). Yet, as we walked into the site, all grumblings melted away.

The afternoons dark clouds had gave way to a glowing sunset which bathed everyone in a soft light. Not knowing what to expect, we were instantly struck by how beautifully visual our new surroundings were. Every inch of the vast grounds are designed in a way that your senses take a direct hit every time you turn your head. The activities take place around a great lake; lit up at dark, and open for swimming by day. At the centre is a floating island, home to the Tower of Babel (which serves a very important purpose later on in the weekend). Feeling very much like a group of Alice’s heading down the rabbit hole to a more peculiar, colourful world, we ventured over bridges, through patches of woodland, past strange sculptures, finding cosy hiding spots wherever we went. And the outfits we saw! It is common knowledge that dressing up is encouraged at SGP, but I wasn’t prepared for the dizzy heights that many had taken their creativity. Thousands of people had clearly had a determined rummage in the dressing up box; glitter adorned most, fairies mixed with pirates who consorted with mythical creatures who hung out with boys in dresses and feathers who were making friends with girls in top hats and tails.

Eventually, our adventures took us to the main stage, which was perfect timing, because Phoenix were headlining, and they were one of the must-see bands on my list for the weekend. Grabbing a delicious dinner to go (think Moroccan Mezze rather than greasy noodles or burgers), we found a patch on the hill to watch the French alternative rockers have such a great rapport with their audience that they invited a couple of hundred to get up on stage and sing along, until the stage was so full that the band had to climb up equipment to make themselves seen.

The rest of the night was a heady mix of dancing, drinking, sometimes being spectators and sometimes participating. Our packed schedule of what to see gave way to a more relaxed amble, stopping off when something took our fancy. Translated – we stopped every 10 feet. As we found ourselves in the ‘salacious hothouse of Babylon’ (the region south of the lake), it was only to be expected that we were treated to earthy pleasures of the flesh; once we found the pole dancers, we were transfixed. The boys around us were almost too incredulous to be turned on. “My God, that girl must have thighs of steel!” I heard one marvel to his girlfriend.

It’s hard to recall too much more about the night, but pictures document wild dancing on bales of hay to seventies disco tunes in a heaving tent, and discovering that the party was clearly going on in the wildly popular One Taste venue, home to a mixture of live beat-boxing and ska, cheering crowds, and a bar dispensing deliciously spicy chai teas. We watched night turn into morning on the Eden side of the lake, (also known as the oasis) in the Laa of Soft Things, a tent where straw bales doubled as fluffy clouds and turned us into rag dolls. Limbs entwined, friendships were quickly formed over the common ground of happy tiredness and sensory overload.

Saturday dawned to brilliant sunshine, which made swimming in the lake an extra special and necessary experience. For those who wanted more than music, a multitude of informative events and discussions had been laid on, such as The Bohemian Artists Studio, The Poetry Playhouse, and the Dodge Ball Tournament, to name but a few. Early birds could participate in the yoga sanctuary, ( I think you can guess that we didn’t make that one). Instead, we lazed the afternoon away watching some of our favourite bands; Soku, The Dø, Slow Club (interviewed in Issue 9 of Amelia’s Magazine) and Noah and The Whale, as well as our newest discovery, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, described as acoustic folk rock metal, with a Spanish flamenco twist.

The highlight of the weekend had to be the events of Saturday night. As dark descended, Thai lanterns were released into the air, floating away and burning bright. We followed the crowds towards the lake to witness the epic spectacle of The Burn; the wooden Tower of Babel set ablaze and lighting up the night sky. As the organisers of SGP explained, this was the marriage and the end of the divide between Babylon & Eden. The SGP team had obviously learnt a lot from their trips into the Nevada desert to take part in The Burning Man Festival, and this union of art, nature and performance was the perfect example of the box of tricks which the Secret Garden Party have up their sleeve.

The weekend drew to a close for us in the sweetest way possible – getting to watch Au Revoir Simone play their beautifully crafted melodies to a rapt audience. The girls sound more divine with each listen, and treated us to the songs from their sublime new album Still Night, Still Bright. As our regular readers know, Au Revoir bring out the fangirl in Amelia’s Magazine, so I shamelessly sang along at the top of my lungs to their harmonies. Thank God their keyboards were loud enough to drown me out is all that I can say in sober hindsight. By the way, I thought the guy that I was standing next to was absolutely adorable, but I was a little shy about saying hello, so if you were wearing a straw hat and a baggy red jumper, and are reading this, then get in touch!

All that is left to add is to encourage you all to do whatever you can to get your hands on a ticket to 2010′s SGP. The organisers are already promising that they will ‘blow our minds’ with what they have in store. I don’t doubt that for a moment. From now on, I have complete faith that what whatever the Secret Garden Party organises, it will be like nothing that you have ever experienced. Now if you will excuse me, I’m off to plan my outfits for next years festivities.

Written by Cari Steel on Wednesday July 29th, 2009 9:56 am

Categories ,festival, ,phoenix, ,review, ,Secret Garden Party, ,summer

Amelia’s Magazine | Wild Beasts – Limbo Panto

glastonbury%20crowd.jpg

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.

my%20wellies.jpg
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.

girl%20with%20glasses%20at%20glatonburyjpg

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!

Me attempting the effortlessly cool look

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.

Escalator%20Records.jpg
Haruka was nice enough to send us some photos to prove their arrival, as we had previously believed they had been lost forever.

port-o%27brien.jpg

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.

Monday 7th July

Jeremy Warmsley, sales Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man, sale So So Modern, Esser and Liam Finn – Plug, Sheffield
Mumford & Sons, Jessie Quinn And The Mets, Davie Fiddle And The Lucky Egg and Derek Meins – The Luminaire, London
White Denim – Bodega Social Club, Nottingham

It’s safe to say White Denim are one of the most talked about bands of 2008 so far. So catch them while they’re in the UK, they’re ace.

Tuesday 8th July

Band Of Horses – Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London
The National – Mandela Hall, Belfast
Interpol – Manchester Apollo, Manchester
Frightened Rabbit, Esau Mwamwaya/ Radioclit and Collapsing Cities @ White Heat – Madame Jo Jo’s, London

Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit pretty much showcase a run down of the most interesting aspects of modern world music. Absolutely guaranteed to get you dancing.

Gnarls Barkley – Astoria 2, London

Wednesday 9th July

Howling Bells and Chief – Hoxton Bar and Kitchen, London
Jaguar Love – Cockpit, Leeds
Magnetic Fields – Cadogan Hall, London

Thursday 10th July

Annie, The Clik Clik and Heloise And The Savoir Faire @ The Wonky Pop Club – Cargo, London

Friday 11th July

These New Puritans, Nelson and Zombie Zombie – Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

I don’t know why I’ve never seen These New Puritans live, I really would like to catch them at this, mainly because it would give me a chance to see Zombie Zombie again as well.

My Morning Jacket – Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
Blindfold, Capitol K and Jo Harrop – The Roundhouse, London
Cocknbullkid – Proud Galleries, London
Justice – Somerset House, London

Saturday 12th July

Bearsuit, Paul Vickers And The Leg, What Would Jesus Drive and Speccy Ginger – Buffalo Bar, London
Ghost Frequency and KASMs – Astoria 2, London
Ipso Facto and Stricken City – Be at Proud Galleries, London
Pete Doherty – Royal Albert Hall London

Sunday 13th July

Gig Of The Week
Wooden Shjips and The Heads – Cargo, London

Both of these bands are awesome, and I can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday evening than a little bit of a freak out to some psychedelic garage.

Ben Folds – Bristol Academy, Bristol

MONDAY 7th JULY:
Monika Bobinska, viagra ‘Ambivalent Landscape’: Adam King: 20th June-13thJuly.
Cambridge Heath Road, more about London E2 9DA (Thursday-Sunday 1-6pm, Sunday 2-5pm).
New two and three dimensional collages by Adam King explore the dreams and fears of urban consumer society and its relationship to the natural world. King’s kaleiderscopic collages are made from wallpaper, pipe cleaners and print images, creating a tidal wave of debris – flowers, anatomical imagery, consumer items, broken cars, images of war – which threatens to burst out, confusing your sense of dimensions.

normal_3Safe.as.Houses_Adam.King.jpg

Serpentine Gallery, ‘Continuation’: Richard Prince: 26th June-7th September.
Painter, photographer, sculptor and collector, Richard Prince’s work explores American pop culture, literature and art in his follow up of Spiritual America. A direct dialogue with space, the exhibition includes an eclectic range of photography, sculptures, books, artworks to classic American ‘muscle cars’.

TUESDAY 8th JULY:
Spacex Gallery, ‘Structures for the unseen’:Axel Antas: 12 May-12 July.
45 Preston Street?, Exeter?, EX1 1DF.
Film, large scale drawings and a series of photographs taken in the vast Catalan Pyrenees, shown alongside a selection of earlier works from Antas’ ‘Intervention’ series. ‘Catalan Pyrenees’ includes bird boxes placed amongst the landscape that stand alone on a mountain tops, whilst ‘Intervention’ series features landscapes covered in artificially created low lying mist.

Contemporary Art Projects, ‘Cut n shunt’: Craig Fisher, Debra Swann, J.A.Nicholls: 20th June-27th July.
20 Rivington Street, London, EC2A 3DU.
Urban life, history and nature are touched upon with an injected twist of the abnormal. Transcending material boundaries with desire, playfulness gives the exhibition a sense of new possibilities.

cut%20n%20shunt.jpg

WEDNESDAY 9th JULY:
Penny school Gallery,‘New Talents: Fashion & Photography’: 9th July-3rd October: tues-fri 11-4pm.
55 richmond rd, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, KT2 5BP.
Dynamic & exciting collaboration between ND Fashion & HNC Photography students; to launch the New Degree in Fashion & textiles starting at Kingston College.

WHATIFTHEWORLD/GALLERY, ‘Hypocrite’s Lament & the drain of progress’: Zander Blom and Julia Rosa Clark: 9th -26th July.
Lower Ground Floor, 23 Charlotte Road, Shoreditch, EC2A 3P8.
The remnants of art, modernism and culture are explored as well as the influence of South African life where both artists originate. Coming from a country that is often seen as dismal, brutal and segregated, this informs their fractured work.

THURSDAY 10th JULY:
ICA, ‘A recent history of writing and drawing’: Jurg Lehni & Alex Rich: 9th July-31st August.
ICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH.
Features examples of machines that enable writing and drawing as well as mechanisms which create giant wall drawings, punch messages in paper and make images on screen. Based on the misuse and reuse of modern technology.

FRIDAY 11th JULY:
The Old Truman Brewery, ‘Interiors’: Nottingham Trent University, Kingston University, Ravenbourne College, university of Brighton, Kingston University, University of Portsmouth, Cambridge School of Art and Design: 11th-14th July.
91 Brick Lane, London E1 6QL.
The 7th week focuses on interiors. Why not take a stroll in this huge open space and view some groovy graphics, haunting photos and model homes?

Brick Lane Gallery, ‘Free for Wall: Part 2′:artists to be confirmed:11th-28th July.
196 Brick Lane, London, E1 6SA.
Still compiling raw talent from the streets, The Brick Lane Gallery presents it’s second installment of some fresh ‘n funky art. If you’re a street artist eager to showcase your work, get your skates on and send some images to: brice@thebricklanegallery.com- who knows..maybe you’ll be viewing your own work in a few days!

Vice’s Pub, ‘Cup Rocking’: Andy Uprock: 11th July.
Old Blue Last, 38 Great Eastern St Storeditch EG2A 3ES
Using aroung 2,500 cups and mapping out large areas of cyclone fencing and sticking plastic cups into the existing diamond shaped holes, Andy transforms streets and public areas into places of interest. Cups are recycled and used for another project-now that’s what you call inspirational yet sustainable art!

SATURDAY 12th JULY:
The Museum for objects of Vertu, ‘Dust jacket…A cover for the voyage of the beagle’: Rosie Cooper, Richard Gray, Sonja Howick , Piers Jamson , Rachael Mathews , Fleur Oakes , Matthew Robins , Audrey Reynolds , Tim Spooner: 12-13th July, 12-6pm, by appointment thereafter until 27th July.
Fleur Oakes studio, 89 Park road, New Barnet.
(Piccadilly line , cockfosters station
The museum for objects, nestled in the cosy studio of Miss Fleur Oakes, presents objects that are described as ‘compelling ;the bits and bobs that get pushed to the back of a dressing table drawer, that then find their way to a flea market’. Expect obscure objects that contain lost tales, all set within a woody wonderland.

Copy%20of%20dust%20jacket%20invite.jpg

SUNDAY 13th JULY:
Faggionato Fine Arts, ‘National Geographic’: Maria Von Kohler, Alain Miller, John Summers, John Tiney 9th July- 21st August.
49 Albemarle Street W1S 4JR.
Four artists use source material and imagery that encapsulates a moment that bridges identity and location.

Photos by Lucy Johnston

After hearing dribs and drabs about Pivot I was conscious of them, this site but not to the extent where I had actually checked them out. Then I heard their album, troche and I simply couldn’t fail to take notice any longer. It’s so fresh and marvelously creepy that I instantly found myself proclaiming it my album of the month. To who I have no idea, viagra order it’s not like I’m the presenter of ‘hit, miss or maybe’ on live and kicking (god I wish I was though), but I continued to proclaim none the less.

The venue was practically empty when I arrived and the support band (who i couldn’t find out the name of) received almost no love, with most people opting to bask in the sun outside. The crowd seemed to escalate nine fold in the 5 minutes before Pivot were due to appear, and the place was rammed by the time they moderately made their way on stage.

As they unleashed their barrage of musical experiments, I was intrigued by the undecided response most people seemed to adopt. Some began to dance, while most just watched intently. By the end of the first track though everyone was applauding.

Their tracks are made up of instrumentals that leap between timings, volumes and moods to create something that can’t be pigeonholed to any genre. Vocals are used, but lyrics and melodies are cast aside in favor of woops and other primal outbursts. They sound intelligent, but in a way that isn’t brash or confusing. It simply sounds good because so much thought has gone into each little section of every track.

They end their set with the ominous ‘O Soundtrack My Heart’, which sounds like it should be soundtracking some very confusing art house movie, and in many ways I think they make art house music. If such a term could exist. Half the time, you’ve no idea what’s going on, but you continue to watch anyway. You can’t help yourself, because songs become more and more intriguing as they go on.

Do you open up Grazia, this web see Alexa Chung in the ‘latest’ starry ensemble and think, “Oo! Where can I get me one of those?” Yeah, I thought not. That’s exactly what Hadley Freeman, Deputy Fashion Editor at The Guardian, thought too. However Bronwyn Cosgrave, author of Made for Each Other: Fashion & The Academy Awards, appeared to think us a more sheepish bunch at The Red Carpet: Fashion and Celebrity talk at the Barbican on Thursday 3rd July.

Andy Warhol foresaw the ‘famous for 15 minutes’ culture which we now find ourselves knee-deep in, and it was talk of reality TV that opened up this topical, lively and at times quite bitchy discussion about celebrities (French president’s wife Carla Bruni certainly won’t be getting a Christmas card from Cosgrave) and their hold over a designer’s success.

Forget being scouted as a model, fancy being scouted to be a designer’s new best friend? It would seem relationships between celebrity and stylist, stylist and designer and designer and celebrity (put in print in this months InStyle magazine) are as fickle as we thought. Marketing constructs? Really?

From Big Brother stars, to the mutual money making success of celeb/designer friendships, the conversation soon turned to the Oscars, where Cosgrave got rather too much into her stride. Resembling the host of an empowering self-help seminar, all very ‘breathe in the positive, release the negative’, Cosgrave lost my interest and it was left to Freeman to regain it with her belief that designers are today blinded by celebrity moments, and often forget that real people have to wear their clothes. It is after all ironically the customer who pays, and not the multi-million pound celebrity.

So do celebrities hold the key to designer success? Well, with the enticement of publicity and increased sales vying against the importance of brand image (Amy Winehouse and Karl Lagerfeld anyone?), it’s a tricky one to call. But with the recent credit crunch and the vast array of new, young design talent coming out of London, perhaps we are more inclined to buy what we like, what suits us and what we haven’t seen someone else wearing on Oxford Street that afternoon.

barbican%20viktor%20and%20rolf%20dolls.jpg

Larry%20Jon%20Wilson.jpg

Cast your mind back to the 1970s Nashville… don’t remember it? Well neither do I. But if you attended barn dances back then, dosage you may have heard the new sounds of the “Outlaw” movement, and one of those ushering it in was Larry Jon Wilson. Like all the best things in life, he did it with friends, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, to name but two. Helping to bring in a more soulful sound, to the previous honky tonk twang sound of country music (which might have signalled the end of your barn dance fun). He was compared favourably to noted singer songwriter talents and released 4 albums before curtailing his recording career.

Now he’s back with his fifth album, which is an introspective story telling affair. Delivered in a baritone growl, Larry Jon Wilson’s weary stories pluck at the heart strings, and his reminiscing subtly hints to regretful mistakes. It is an album that is highly personal and was recorded with the tape left playing between songs, enabling us to hear comments; “I like that song, ever since I first heard it. In strange, very strange circumstances”, referring to Heartland, a well known Willie Nelson tune that Wilson succeeds in making his own.

Dealing with love, loss, and everything in between, the album weaves a very listenable narrative. ‘Losers Trilogy’ goes from personal romantic loss to an acknowledgment of losers everywhere. The 11-minute ‘Whore Trilogy’ tells three despairing stories, and on ‘Where From’, Wilson poses existential questions which remain unanswered, its last words asking: “where to?”

It is a dying breed of storytelling, with age, authenticity and an individual sound that would normally have you rummaging in your dad’s record collection to hear, but now, you don’t have to.

Do you remember a blog I posted a couple of week ago raving about a little yellow t-shirt that I received from t-shirt design company Graniph? Well they have officially announced the winners of their international T-shirt Design Awards vol.2.

The competition started on the 1st Feb and ran until the 31st March. Designers, visit artists, illustrators and photographers worldwide were asked to send in their ideas for t-shirt designs. Graniph managed to sift through 15000 entries from over 40 countries before finally selecting 21 winners. The gold prize went to Taiwanese illustrator, Cho Jo Tzu, whose artwork consisted of the words ‘peace love, Rabbit foot’, constructed entirely from illustrations of rabbits performing interesting yoga type poses.

CHU%20JO%20TZU%20graniph%20design.jpg

10 other designs were awarded the silver prize. My favourite among them definitely has to be a skillful pencil drawing submitted by Rik Lee, who states his influences as Art Noveau, classic American tattoo art, 1980/90′s skateboarding, BMX, fashion and tight deadlines.

All of the winners now have their work printed on tee’s, which are available to buy online or in Graniph stores worldwide.

EcoMag is calling for artists, case illustrators and designers to get their pens at the ready and to respond to future climate scenarios in Mark Lynas’ book Six Degrees.
EcoMag will be an bi-annual magazine about art, design and sustainability. It’s aim is to ‘create an alternative cultural vision that can drive transformational change to meet the goals of a fully sustainable society.’ Wow! Sounds inspirational. So check it out and get scribbling all you talented artists!

Six Degrees

An open entry project for artists, illustrators & designers

Artists, illustrators and designers are invited to participate in the EcoLabs’ Six Degrees project. Respond to the future climate scenarios in Mark Lynas’ book Six Degrees.

The brief
1. Read Mark Lynas’ Six Degrees.
2. Select one degree.
3. Make an image to represent this degree. Use the template below.
4. Submit by September 1, 2008.

Mark Lynas’ book Six Degrees uses evidence compiled from hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers to describe the projected changes with each degree of climate warming. Divided into six chapters (covering one degree each) the book makes the science of climate change tangible and specific. The Six Degrees project challenges artists to use this book as the catalyze for a dialogue about future climate scenarios (and what we cannot allow to happen). By making these scenarios visible – we hope to initiate sustained dialogue & action.

Selected work will be published in the first issue of EcoMag.

ali%20hodgson.jpg

Wild%20Beasts%20Limbo%20Panto.jpg

A statement as direct as Queen’s ancient no-synthesizers decree emblazons the inner sleeve of this debut: “The four boys of Wild Beasts aren’t concerned with being of the modern, shop or being of the renaissance, link being baggy pantsed or being tight pantsed, purchase being in a scene or being in a place. Wild Beasts’ music, being what it is, just is.”

The first thing that hits you is probably the most decisive element of the album to whether it’ll suit ones pallet: Hayden Thorpe’s voice. A hollering, Grande dame of a voice swooping drunkenly like a bee at an evening barbecue practically without taking a single breath through the whole album. His vocals waltz through a series of often fractious, yet lush, songs.

A number like ‘Old Dog’ is unfathomably expansive: I can hear a murmur of the midnight soul of Al Green; a guy in some New York bar playing piano; a little of Jeff Buckley’s conjuring of vast feeling out of simplicity and, dare I say it, even a little Doors. The fact that none of these comparisons matter, that it doesn’t seem to build any clearer picture of the band, is the band’s most prominent strength. For some, Thorpe nears a line far too close to high camp to blend with the epic stature of the music. However, I think they’re missing the point, or rather gloriously, the lack of point in a linear way. Wild Beasts are a band who don’t add up, evading the sum of their parts, existing outside A + B = C. Their inner sleeve statement is less arrogant claim of uniqueness, more like cigarette packet warning: Be prepared!

Limbo, Panto conjures a hopeless, English romanticism existing in a well-thumbed second hand novel. From start to end it may need a little diluting but it’s well worth the extra work.

Written by Paul Hanford on Tuesday July 8th, 2008 2:05 pm

Amelia’s Magazine | Meet Submotion Orchestra, a new musical collective from Leeds

Submotion Orchestra by Clive McFarland.

Submotion Orchestra are a Leeds based seven piece who fuse jazz, purchase dubstep and soul: a modern day musical collective in the style of those 90s greats: Soul 2 Soul and Massive Attack. Their debut album Finest Hour is a unique combination of these sounds and it comes out in June. Let’s find out more…

Submotion Orchestra by Gareth A Hopkins.

You came together under curious circumstances. How does that work and how do you function as a large band? What are the ups and downs of this arrangement?
The band was started by Tommy Evans and Dom Ruckspin after an amazing commission at the Yorkminster in York which bought together classical musicians and dubstep for the first time. The hardest thing about being a pretty large band is rehearsing, no rx especially as we are now based between London and Leeds. We write and share a lot of ideas by email – throwing ideas around and demo-ing ideas etc. It seems to be working so far although if someone wants to lend us a private Carribean island to record the second album on then we wouldn’t say no.

Submotion Orchestra by Catherine Askew.

How has living in Leeds affected the way you work and create music?
The band was formed in Leeds and we owe a great deal to many people and places there. Leeds is a brilliant city which seems to attract amazing musicians and it’s an important place in the UK for jazz – without doubt seen as the city with the best scene outside of London, order and this is also the same of the dub and dubstep scenes.

Submotion_Orchestra

You’ve been likened to some pretty heavy duty bands, including Massive Attack and Soul 2 Soul. How do you feel about this? Do you think these are apt comparisons?
The idea of Submotion is that it sits somewhere in between jazz and soul, and dubstep. We have an infinite number of influences as everyone in the band is very different stylistically. The Massive Attack comparison has come up a few times which is incredibly flattering, as is Soul 2 Soul!

Finest Hour

What kind of venues do you perform at? And what are your favourite kind?
One of the most interesting things about the band, which we have learnt as we have developed, is that the music works in any kind of venue. We have played everything from jazz clubs to dubstep raves and everything in between and the music doesn’t seem out of place anywhere.

All Night.

What are your plans for the upcoming year? What’s next for Submotion Orchestra?
Our debut album Finest Hour comes out on Exceptional Records at the start of June. We have a very exciting summer coming up with big shows at most of the UK and European festivals including Glastonbury, Big Chill, Secret Garden Party, Outlook, Jazz:Re:Found and Soundwave. We will be touring in October through in the UK and through Europe.

Written by Amelia Gregory on Tuesday May 17th, 2011 10:10 am

Categories ,All Night, ,Big Chill, ,Catherine Askew, ,Clive McFarland, ,Dom Ruckspin, ,dubstep, ,Finest Hour, ,Gareth A Hopkins, ,glastonbury, ,jazz, ,Jazz:Re:Found, ,leeds, ,Massive Attack, ,Outlook, ,Secret Garden Party, ,Soul 2 Soul, ,Soundwave, ,Submotion Orchestra, ,Tommy Evans, ,York, ,Yorkminster

Amelia’s Magazine | Soko- So Kool

0729%20jeffrey%20windmills.jpg
Illustrations by Jeffrey Bowman

0729%20jeffrey%20houses.jpg

0729%20jeffrey%20hand.jpg

We owe a great deal to the 1970s. I shudder to think where we might be today without the post it note, pill without Punk, symptoms and of course without the phenomena that is The Roller Disco. Every element of the theme has triumphantly survived the three decades since it first hit the dancefloors and is still as much of a thrill today as it was then; pumping nightspot glam pop tunes serenading couples holding hands circuiting the room gripping to each other equal parts lust and fear; the wallflowers carefully inching along the handrails with unsure feet, the solo regulars strutting their fierce routines with every right to be showing off; everyone dressed in all that is spangly and sequined, flared and cropped; fuelled by diner dogs and sugary slushies, it was and still is the perfect night out.

Tonight sees a huge homage to the roller disco down at Shoreditch’s top warehouse venue Village Underground, hosted by Vauxhall Skate and it promises to knock our knee high socks off. The all important music accompaniment is in the very capable hands of DJs ex Libertines Carl Barat, Smash and Grab darlings Queens of Noize, recently Mercury Prize nominated Florence Welch of ‘& the Machines’ fame, Alfie Allen, Sophie Ellis Bextor, Richard Jones and a last minute addition to the bill, NYC’s Cory Kennedy.

Florence Welch

Queens of Noize

The roller skating part is pitched as entirely optional, but for those who are concerned that having not been on a pair of skates since childhood might result in rather a lot of shameful cringing better watch out for the fabulous Jonny Woo, who will be hosting a ‘car-aoke’ sing song courtesy of Lucky Voice, with a brimming dressing up box full of props. No event would be complete without the option to update or completely overhaul one’s look, so thank the lord that the very talented Lyndell Mansfield will be joining the crew for the night with her ‘pit-stop salon’ for free hairstyling.

Jonny Woo

Kate Moross

In terms of visuals the guests are for a real treat. Kate Moross who has designed shop windows for Diesel, poster artwork for Animal Collective and covers for Vice and Fact magazines, has customised her first car, a Vauxhall Corsa, especially for the party in her signature cutting edge style. The Vauxhall Corsa was wrapped in white vinyl while Kate painted directly onto it with acrylic paint and Posca semi permanent markers. The colours were chosen because of the rainbow spectrums and light fields used in SciFi imagery, a key influence in the ‘Vauxhall Skate’ set design. ‘Vauxhall Skate’ extends Vauxhall‘s commitment to driving excitement on four wheels. the car company has also created a unique pair of roller boots, in true Corsa style, which will be showcased in all their glory on the evening. Other cars to be on show include a Car-aoke Vauxhall Corsa adorned with retro green UV wire frames and a rotating mirror-ball Vauxhall Tigra, most recently seen at the Vauxhall Style catwalk shows.

Catering includes free hot dogs and cupcakes, and the all important bar is kindly provided by Bacardi Mojito. Tickets for the evening were solely allocated on a lottery basis to all those that RSVPed and entered the draw. If you managed to get your hands on a pair then congratulations are in order. If you were less lucky, then panic ye not- Dazed Digital and Vauxhall have partnered up to give away 35 pairs of free tickets. Click here to enter your email address for a chance to win. Alternatively, have a go here.

The Village Underground

Vauxhall Skate

The Village Underground
54 Holywell Lane
London, EC2A

Wednesday July 29th
8pm – 1am

Free, but invitation only.

It might be worth arguing that more than any form of artistic expression, page fashion can be indicative of the societal state of mind. In particular we can witness changing attitudes towards gender norms within different social spheres – this is one of the premises that the exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery ‘When You’re a Boy: Men’s Fashion Styled by Simon Foxton’ grounds itself in, diagnosis and indeed one that Foxton has worked with throughout his whole career.

The fact that it’s rare to for a stylist’s work to be put on show like this denotes that it’s a role that’s underrated by many, diagnosis but here’s a retrospective that vindicates the work of a stylist as a real agent of social commentary, working with ideas as well as clothes. Foxton in particular has admitted to “using clothes as a tool” to make a statement, paradoxically suggesting that while these are examples of photographs that might appear in fashion magazines, they are not necessarily about the clothes themselves.

Taking its title from the David Bowie song, ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ the tight selection of images span Foxton’s collaborations with photographers Nick Knight, Alasdair McLellan and Jason Evans. Addressing issues of gender, race and class amongst others, we see our attitudes mirrored often by sartorial contradiction, through a process of revealing and concealing.

Take the images from i-D magazine (shot by Nick Knight) under the title ‘English Heritage’, with one showing an image of the traditional English couple ‘Mr & Mrs Andrews’ with the husband standing dutifully behind his wife perched in an armchair. Yet in their place two muscular black male models, wearing leather bondage gear and a gimp suit respectively, subverting our preconceptions of hegemonic masculinity and femininity that are implicitly nothing more than societal constructs.

Elsewhere, by continually addressing issues of butchness and effeminateness through the references to gay subcultures, we see the capacity of visual media to reconstruct and recreate by using fantasy (potentially) as a weapon.

Foxton seems to share with Oscar Wilde a wry amusement about the way masculinity has been appropriated historically, by juxtaposing strange images and affronting us with a sense of disorder and fantasy to ask us questions about what we understand as normal. Race is also explored, with Jason Evans’ ‘Strictly’ series, uncannily presenting black models wearing plus fours and hunting jackets against urban backdrops, posing questions about ethnicity and Englishness, as well as masculinity at the start of the 1990s.

The extensive and indiscriminate cultural references evident in Foxton’s scrapbooks are striking, with torn out images of tribal warriors wrestling in the dust sharing page space with flyers for gay leather club nights. Foxton is definitely a visionary, and one of fashion’s black sheep as somebody who has never followed trends, instead preferring to choose garments with a cultural reference. Styling here proves itself as an intellectual platform, a means of capitalising on what a readership attaches to a particular fashion – questioning our subscription to their ideals by playing on discrepancies. Fashion has been said to be about fiction and fantasy – but Foxton has proven that a far more interesting arena to be explored is, in fact, reality.
Are you tired yet, abortion of all the hazy environmental terms that are all too easily tossed around – adding green kudos like spinach to a red pepper salad? Well, to every sustainably developing ethically permacultured carbon footprint, reduce, reuse, recycle, ten easy ways to save the planet before breakfast, I throw down a musky oil-stained leather glove and ask : what do you mean?

0730%20faye%20mug.jpg
Illustrations by Faye Katirai

Politics and the English language are a combination sure to bewitch, bother and bewilder. That’s been clear enough since well before George Orwell wrote his essay all about it. The green politics is especially prone to obfuscation – greenspeak gets unclear easily.

Partly, this is useful for compromise : if tree-huggers and lumberjacks both agree that ‘sustainable forestry’ is the way forward, that’s wonderful – even if one thinks of preserving nature and the other of a guaranteed income. If words like ‘ethical’ ‘environmentally friendly’ and ‘sustainable’ stay vague, then they are the politician’s ideal toolkit. If what you say can mean anything from mild to moderate or radical, you need never have to go back on a promise again.

So when Gordon Brown calls something an ‘eco-town’ and rolls out the green carpet for ‘exemplar new developments, which have the opportunity to boost their neighbouring communities through their investment in new infrastructure and transport services and provide a stimulus to make existing towns more sustainable’ (that’s according to Gideon Amos, chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association) – we have most every right to be sceptical and wait on some solid details before judging.

0730%20faye%20bear.jpg

Also, the science behind the theory that certain gas emissions (for which we are responsible) are heating up the planet, melting ice sheets and glaciers, slowly killing coral reefs, raising sea levels and spreading deserts – the science all seems so very distant. How could flicking a light switch possibly help my garden’s lettuce in five years time?

This is where the ‘seven things you can do to lead a greener life’ come in. Bitesize chunks of attitude for easy absorbtion. Tweak your lifestyle, join the club. Trendy, perhaps, but I am more than happy to see this trend. Just watch it rush on through, if it does, and see if, when the glossies stop chattering about it, there’s not a whole bunch more people quietly walking the walk.

Have you noticed at all how this has turned into something of an apology – perhaps not the wittily poised crushing attack the fiery-bellied might have been hoping to hear. You see, as much of a fan as anyone can be of good old fashioned plain speaking, that’s as much of a persuasive strategy as the estate agent’s patter as he tried to sell me a ‘cosy basement studio with original installations in an area with local colour’ (a tiny underground box room that had never been redecorated next door to a rowdy pub). I am writing a blog post, and language is kind of my game. So I can’t quite condemn it, slippery though words can be.

0730%20faye%20boots.jpg

Here, then is what I notice about green sensibility – what I notice about how it looks and feels and talks and acts with an eye on the environment. An aside, just quickly – the words ‘green’ and ‘environment’ could do with a bit of a look at. So, a bitesize chunk to take home and keep. Well, I mostly notice that to look and feel and talk and act this way means paying attention to the stuff that we get and use, the stuff we keep and where it goes. Everything is a gift : we didn’t bring anything with us when we first turned up here. But enough with the nearly-zen, the point to end with is a whole heap more down to earth. The way this green thing goes kind of calls back something I’m proud of in the British attitude – quite simply : make do and mend.
She’s been on the Grand Stage at The Secret Garden Party not ten minutes and Soko‘s fallen out with the sound man. After unsuccessfully trying to get his attention so he can turn up the levels of her guitar she spits, store “Maybe he’s gone for a piss.” She’s also fallen out with a member of the audience, medical one of the 100 strong crowd sitting near to Soko on the stage. “I don’t have any songs in French. Sorry that’s the other stage – go on!” She deadpans. And despite being best known as a French actress Soko has fallen out with Paris. Something she tells us all about in the song Goodbye Paris “It’s funny how you can break up with a city like you can break up with a lover/Paris is not so romantic when you have no romance to share.” A zealous vegan one of the chief issues she seems to have with Paris is that she can’t live in a city that treats vegetarians like weirdoes (or as she says treats vegetarians “like a dork”).

The truth is Soko is weird. But why shouldn’t she sing a song about how much she loves peanut butter or another about how much she wants to be a tiger? There’s no competition normal gives you Pixie Lott whereas Soko gives you, approved in heavily accented English, songs about killing love rivals (in I’ll Kill Her). Or rather she doesn’t. Despite numerous requests from the crowd Soko refuses to play her most famous song, the one which earned her radio coverage in various European countries and a number one in Denmark. Firstly she tells the audience, “I can’t play the killing people song anymore, I’m dead because I killed too many people” – which makes marginally more sense if you already know that she recently caused controversy by writing “Soko is dead” as her Myspace tagline. After more shouts for the song Soko admits that she can’t play it because her keyboard was too heavy to bring from LA. But third time’s a charm and the next person to heckle gets treated to an “Err, fuck off!” from the feisty singer.

Although this might seem hostile it’s the antithesis between this onstage diva behaviour mixed with the honesty and vulnerability of her songs that makes her so special. Ok so some of her lyrics are downright filthy but the rest have a genuine sweetness and naivety. Take my favourite song of the set It’s Not Going to Work, a story about a potential lover rejecting her advances, the lyrics swing between “What if I grab you and pull you in the bathroom and I could.. tell you I love you and I’ve loved you forever, even before forever” to “please stick it in I’m sure it’ll be great.”

Soko has recorded a full length album but isn’t releasing it because “it sounded too much like a studio record and not enough like my Garage Band crap that I like more”. The only way that you can listen to Soko is to download her EP or root around Youtube or Myspace for the odd song. The exciting thing about seeing her play live is that you know this could be the only time that you hear each song, Soko is the only artist I know to whom popularity doesn’t seem to have any impression on the set lists.

And when the audience is still wondering whether Soko enjoyed her time onstage at all she ends her set by dispelling any “Soko is Dead” rumours of quitting music, shouting to the crowd, “Thank you for making me alive again”. C’est Magnifique!

Written by Chloe Stead on Thursday July 30th, 2009 12:12 pm

Categories ,Folk, ,France, ,Paris, ,Secret Garden Party, ,Singer-Songwriter

Amelia’s Magazine | Soko- So Kool

0729%20jeffrey%20windmills.jpg
Illustrations by Jeffrey Bowman

0729%20jeffrey%20houses.jpg

0729%20jeffrey%20hand.jpg

Florence Welch

Queens of Noize

Jonny Woo

Kate Moross

The Village Underground

Vauxhall Skate

The Village Underground
54 Holywell Lane
London, EC2A

Wednesday July 29th
8pm – 1am

Free, but invitation only.

0730%20faye%20mug.jpg
Illustrations by Faye Katirai

0730%20faye%20bear.jpg

0730%20faye%20boots.jpg

Written by Chloe Stead on Thursday July 30th, 2009 12:12 pm

Categories ,Folk, ,France, ,Paris, ,Secret Garden Party, ,Singer-Songwriter

Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with singer songwriter Phildel

Phildel by Laura Hickman.

Singer songwriter Phildel celebrates the imminent launch of her debut album The Disappearance of a Girl with the launch of a special remix of her song Union Stone, created to accompany a video collaboration with ethical fashion designer Henrietta Ludgate (read more about her here), artist Sam Birch and choreographer Rachel Riveros. The film reinterprets the aeons old ritual of the Maypole dance, and will be performed live on 15th May during a gig at Bush Hall in west London. Watch it here:

I asked Phildel a few questions:

How do you create your music?
It involves quite a process – as I write the songs, compose the arrangements and map out the production before we go into the studio to record everything, each of those steps takes a while. I don’t try to write a song unless I feel overwhelmed by a strong kind of emotion, but when I am – I sit down at the piano, play the first note – and the melody just unfolds in my mind, I ‘hear’ what should come next…it’s organic and feels quite cathartic. Then the lyrics come to me in fragments – I don’t consciously try to think up lyric topics – I just let my subconscious or deeper ‘dreaming mind’ communicate. Often, the lyrics make no sense to me at first…but once a few months have gone by, I look back at the same lyrics and they make total sense in relation to what I was going through at the time. Whereas in the beginning I’d look at the lyric fragments and just think…“Really!? This makes so little sense to me!” Now I just trust it. I think that’s the amazing thing about psychology – we often don’t see our own patterns in the eye of the storm…but our dreaming minds, our imaginations – what some would call the subconscious – tends to be more aware and lets us know, through our dreams – how we’re feeling (resulting in things like stress dreams etc). But it’s not until we look back on it all through time that we have more conscious awareness.

Phildel - Press Shot
Once the song is written, I can start really imagining the kind of space, the colour, the world that the song exists in. And I begin to hear the spaces around the melody which I can fill with sounds that to me, represent key things about that song world. So for example, in The Disappearance of the Girl – the choirs towards the end represent ethereal water spirits. Choirs tend to represent loving ethereal spirits to me apart from in The Wolf and Storm Song where they represent the ‘chorus’ in a more Greek mythology kind of way…I don’t really pay much attention to genre – I’m more interested in finding the right sounds to paint the picture of the album world. Really, my main priority is to use sounds and instrumentation that serve the ‘spirit’ of each song.

Phildel Maypole Exclusive All
As we have a world full of possibilities – the process of selecting the best sounds for the job, then bringing them together and making them work together is a long one. Because some of these sounds are not conventionally used together and getting their frequencies to sit well in a mix, presents another range of challenges. It’s not like working with a conventional arrangement using say, a bass, a guitar and a drum-kit – where the way those sounds sit together in terms of frequencies is reasonably well mapped out. There are all kinds of different obstacles in achieving a great sound with an unconventional arrangement. So there’s a lot involved in the process on both creative and technical levels.

May rituals by Briony Jose.

Your debut album contains songs of resistance and escape, what inspired these themes?
From the age of 8 until 17 I lived in a house where I had no access to music. My mother re-married a religious fundamentalist, where as we had lived in a very liberal household with my father up until then – so there was a massive culture shock for me. I was forced to change my culture and identity completely. As well as the cultural change, my mother’s new husband was abusive. And so the experiences I had to contend with were dark – so I became used to escaping into my own imagination from a young age. I played piano at school lunchtimes, which I loved and so was able to nurture my passion for music that way.

Phildel
I suppose I always felt like I was living three different lives simultaneously – the lie of a life where I was forced to accept all these religious principles that I didn’t believe in and was told to remain silent about the abuse I was experiencing and witnessing, then the hours at school where I could preserve myself and my identity, and thirdly, my own identity within the world of my imagination – which was what really saved me. In that dream-world I could do anything I liked, I could exact revenge for everything I’d been put through. Songs like The Wolf capture that element of my world. Where as songs like Beside You capture the lighter, more enchanting side. The title of the album The Disappearance of the Girl for me represents disappearing from the liberal world of my birth, into a world of silence and restriction. It also represents my disappearance from reality into the refuge of my imagination. I think disappearing is a major theme for me.

Phildel Maypole Stag
What made you decide to reinterpret the May Day rituals?
For a while now, I’ve wanted to explore the concept of the ‘ritual’ and how it manifests in communities as well as individuals lives. It’s a massive part of our psychology and comes up all over the place. I asked my supporters on facebook what rituals they had as individuals and I looked through cultures at various ritual celebrations. As May was approaching, it felt like the right time to explore the Maypole dancing ritual. It’s something that’s appeared through history and even popular culture in cult-classic films such as The Wicker Man. On top of this, I’ve always felt a deep connection to the land and nature. And so, I thought it would be interesting to create a re-interpretation of the Maypole dance in collaboration with other artists.

Phildel Maypole Exclusive
Rachel Riveros choreographed the movements beautifully, Henrietta Ludgate adorned the dancers in her amazing collection, artist Sam Birch designed the set and Maypole and I created a bespoke arrangement of my track Union Stone to soundtrack the film. We ended up capturing many authentic details so in fact, we stayed quite true to tradition. I had a response from a Wiccan high-priestess in the US who said she was so pleased to see so much attention paid to detail, which was lovely.

Phildel Stag Girl
What prompted the collaboration with Henrietta Ludgate?
Henrietta Ludgate is an incredibly creative and visionary fashion designer. I’ve worked with her for a number of things, namely her first London Fashion Week presentation for which she asked me to supply the music for the catwalk – which I performed live for the runway. Her catwalk theme was an indoor installation of an enchanted forest. Her designs are beautifully structured – I really feel there’s a sense of the iconic about them – but they maintain a playful edge so have this really extraordinary balance. So, I felt like her collection would be perfect for the project as it would add a sense of iconic, sculptured form to the dancers whilst looking very fresh and playful. I asked her if she’d like to be involved and she and artist Sam Birch (who designed the set and Maypole), were both really excited about it. The Maypole was actually created by Sam Birch entirely out of ‘found’ items – and he crafted it to replicate a Birch tree which is what is traditionally used as the Maypole.

Storm Song

What were the logistics of filming and when did you find such fine weather?
It’s actually a little cosmic. Because we all had Friday 3rd May down in our diaries for the filming…but it was overcast and rainy every single day of the week except for Wednesday 1st May – traditionally the day to dance around the Maypole. And it was a truly glorious day, the sky was blue the entire time and loads of people came up to us to say how lovely it was to see the Maypole up on May 1st and on such a perfect day. With the glory of the weather, the date and performing the dance, everything felt so right, we were overjoyed with how well it all turned out.

Beside You

What next for Phildel?
We’re about to perform the Maypole dance live for my show at Bush Hall on Weds 15th May – so we’ll be erecting the 15 foot Maypole in the venue. After that, I’ll be performing live in Manchester and Bristol as part of Dot-to-Dot Festival followed by a performance at How The Light Gets In Festival of art, music and philosophy at Hay-on-ohe-Wye. Then I’ll be off to the USA in July for a collaboration with a great artist called Sleepthief amongst a few USA live dates. I’m also really looking forward to performing at Vancouver Folk Festival and Secret Garden Party both in July, before a show at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August.

Phildel_headpiece
Randomly, my album track Holes In Your Coffin is on the Hollyoaks trailer on tv at the moment and a few radio stations will be giving it a spin over the next few weeks, so listen out for that one – I’m actually currently creating the music video for Holes In Your Coffin which will be a compilation of footage submissions from my supporters, who are helping me create the video, some outstanding submissions from those as young as 10 and 11 – so I can’t wait to make the video public.

The Wolf

The Disappearance of a Girl is released on 3rd June, featuring twelve magical songs of resistance and escape, inspired by a period during Phildel‘s childhood when music of all kinds was forbidden in an oppressive household.

Written by Amelia Gregory on Tuesday May 14th, 2013 8:15 pm

Categories ,Briony Jose, ,Bush Hall, ,dance, ,Dot-to-Dot Festival, ,edinburgh fringe festival, ,Henrietta Ludgate, ,Holes In Your Coffin, ,Hollyoaks, ,How The Light Gets In Festival, ,Laura Hickman, ,London Fashion Week, ,Maypole, ,Phildel, ,Rachel Riveros, ,Sam Birch, ,Secret Garden Party, ,Sleepthief, ,The Disappearance of a Girl, ,Union Stone, ,Vancouver Folk Festival, ,video, ,Wiccan

Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with The Magic Lantern

Still Corners by Nicholas Stevenson

Still Corners by Nicholas Stevenson.

Still Corners are as elusive as they are beautiful, malady but I managed to track down songwriter and keyboardist Greg Hughes to answer a few finely tuned questions. Delve into the enigmatic Still Corners world…

Who are you?
We’re ghosts, viagra approved but if you close your eyes and listen carefully to the music you’ll find out who we are.

Still Corners by Sandra Contreras.

You’ve managed to create an impressive amount of hype already… have you intentionally pursued press or has this just come about of it’s own accord? ?
We mostly keep our heads down working as hard as possible. However the press has been fantastic and we all feel very lucky and happy that people are enjoying the music and shows. It’s a wonderful feeling.

?Would you like to stay independent or you would you like to sign to a major label?
We’ve always been a DIY band and we don’t use producers – I record it all and we do all our own artwork. These are things that major labels usually like to have a say about and that probably wouldn’t work very well with our ethos.

You have said “Everything is handmade” – what does this mean in practice?
That means that all our output is created by our little circle of friends. I have a little studio where I do the recordings, then we rope in friends and like minded artists to take photos and help with the artwork. It’s just that we have a very definite idea of everything, a vibe of how things should be. So it’s just easier to do it ourselves, to take what’s in our heads and make it a reality.

Your stage shows are characterised by a wash of deep colours that hides your faces… how did you decide upon this feel, and how important is the look and ambience of your performance? ?
We’re not actually trying to hide or anything, we just don’t think that what we’re doing on stage is all that critical to observe. We like to use projections because we think they are beautiful to watch and they bring more out of the music. Projections are best seen in the dark so we usually turn the lights down to create an atmosphere, maybe something you don’t always get in your typical smaller venue.

What is it that so appeals to you in the creation of such a woozy atmosphere?
?Whether recording or playing live we want to go off into another world, something we see in our heads and feel in our hearts. We want to make our audience feel something.

Wish is just beautiful. How was the video made??
Thank you. Lucy Dyson made that video for us – she came up with the idea and filmed it all on 16 mm film which lends a sort of dreamy washed out feeling to the visual quality of it. We shot it all over 2 days on a nice summer stretch of green in London.

What inspires the lyrics to your songs??
The English countryside, a sunset, a romance, films of yesteryear, a photograph, a painting, a story, lying in the grass watching the stars, the little moments of life.

What has been your gigging highlight of the year and why?
?We recently played in a castle in Berlin and in the most incredible opera house in Toulon in France. The people, places, and response was amazing – both definitely stand out moments for us.

Are there any other up and coming bands that you recommend that we check out?
A band we think are just magical are Twin Sister, and they are lovely people as well.

?What are your plans for 2011? Can we expect to see you at any festivals?
We hope to have a single out with Sub Pop early this year and we’re working on a full record for release mid-next year so fingers crossed we’ll find a nice home for it!

Still Corners by Nicholas Stevenson.

I discovered Still Corners when they supported Our Broken Garden late last year. The band are as elusive as they are beautiful, adiposity but I managed to track down songwriter and keyboardist Greg Hughes to answer a few finely tuned questions. Delve into the enigmatic Still Corners world…

Who are you?
We’re ghosts, visit web but if you close your eyes and listen carefully to the music you’ll find out who we are.

Still Corners by Sandra Contreras.

Still Corners by Karina Yarv.

Still Corners by Alison Day.

Still Corners by Nicholas Stevenson.

Are there any other up and coming bands that you recommend that we check out?
A band we think are just magical are Twin Sister, and they are lovely people as well.

I discovered Still Corners when they supported Our Broken Garden late last year. The band are as elusive as they are beautiful, what is ed but I managed to track down songwriter and keyboardist Greg Hughes to answer a few finely tuned questions. Delve into the enigmatic Still Corners world…

Who are you?
We’re ghosts, patient but if you close your eyes and listen carefully to the music you’ll find out who we are.

Still Corners by Sandra Contreras.

Still Corners by Karina Yarv.

You have said “Everything is handmade” – what does this mean in practice?
That means that all our output is created by our little circle of friends. I have a little studio where I do the recordings, page then we rope in friends and like minded artists to take photos and help with the artwork. It’s just that we have a very definite idea of everything, a vibe of how things should be. So it’s just easier to do it ourselves, to take what’s in our heads and make it a reality.

Still Corners by Alison Day.

Still Corners by Nicholas Stevenson.

Are there any other up and coming bands that you recommend that we check out?
A band we think are just magical are Twin Sister, and they are lovely people as well.

When Jamie Doe of The Magic Lantern contacted me about reviewing latest single Cut From Stone it was a no brainer to ask for an interview. The Magic Lantern are friends of Gabby Young and Other Animals, sildenafil but they’ve been busy forging a sound that is uniquely their own, so it’s time to get the low down…

Aside from having a great name, what else is special about The Magic Lantern?
The Magic Lantern: I’m glad you like the name for starters! Well, I guess what’s makes us special is the combination of different music that we meld into a sort of chamber music sound. Our other less musical claim to specialness is our group capacity to demolish chocolate during rehearsals – it’s scary!

Who are you all? And what are your other lives outside the band?
The Magic Lantern: Well there are five of us; Jamie Doe on vocals, Fred Thomas on percussion, Lucy Railton on cello, Dave Shulman on clarinets and Phil Stevenson on guitar. We all do quite different things outside of the band. Apart from Jamie everyone else works as professional musicians in different capacities. Lucy’s been playing a lot on tour with contemporary dancer Akram Khan. Fred plays in a number of bands from blues in Sister Mary and the Choir Boys to world music with Ladino singer Mor Kabasi. Dave plays a lot of klezmer music and in a great band called The Gadjo Club. Phil plays jazz and lots of Brazilian music and funk. Apart from music we’re all really into David Attenborough documentaries so they’ll always be on the tour bus or put on after a late rehearsal.

The Magic Lantern by Andrea Peterson.

How did you get together and come up with your sound?
Jamie: Fred and I went to school together in Birmingham then Fred went to study music in London and I went to Bristol. I started writing songs in Bristol and when I finished studying I decided to move to London and try and put a band together. I hooked up with Fred who was playing a lot of jazz and he seemed to know all these super cool musicians so we just started hanging out and I moved into this house full of musos from different backgrounds and the band slowly took shape above a north london post office.
Phil: Musically a lot of us came from different backgrounds. Jamie’s a singer songwriter but listens to a lot of jazz. Dave plays a lot of klezmer and gypsy music so he’s got a really interesting clarinet sound. Both Fred and Lucy are really into contemporary classical music and chamber music and iIthink that’s been a huge influence on how the songs develop from simple folk songs into chamber group meets jazz improvisation sound. Myself, I’m really into funk and african music and I think I’ve brought that kind of groove to some of the tunes. So it’s a real melting pot and I think we just keep on getting better at making a really unique sound around these great tunes that Jamie writes.

What are the limited edition hand made copies of the single Cut From Stone like?
Jamie: Well when we decided to release the single ourselves, it gave us a lot more scope to think about exactly how we wanted the single to look and feel. We knew that for the hard copies would mainly be for fans who came to gigs so we wanted to make them something special. Also, now that everyone downloads music from the internet, iIthink it’s kind of important to fetishise the product, you know, get back to craft, to something that people want to hold in their hands and that they can see the work that’s obviously gone into it. For that reason we didn’t just want to go to a printer and get them done. Instead we decided to work with some friends of ours, Ollie Hamick and Nicky Peart, who designed some stamps and stencils.
Lucy: Each CD then had three individual stamps and a hand painted stencil along with a hand printed and folded insert. We only made 150 and we’ve only got 8 left so I think people liked them – but it took about a week to make them all! I don’t know what we’ll do for the album yet – I can’t bear to think of it right now… But it’s going to be fun.

How did you hook up with jazz vocalist Emilia? What was the process of working with her like?
Fred: Emilia’s a really good friend of ours from the jazz scene, and she’s an amazing singer. When we went into the studio we realised that there were a number of backing vocal parts that would be great to get a female voice on and we couldn’t really think of anyone better than Emilia. Working with her was a breeze, she’s a great musician and was able to come in and knock out an album’s worth of pitch perfect backing parts in a day.
Jamie: Around the corner from the studio we recorded in is this amazing Italian restaurant called Corelli’s – we took her for lunch there as a thank you!

The Magic Lantern by Andrea Peterson.

What is the F-IRE Collective? can you tell us a bit more about it?
Dave: We joined the F-IRE collective last year through Fred our percussionist, who was invited to become a member. In essence, it’s a really diverse community of musicians from all sorts of different backgrounds from circus to electronica, free-improv to classical composition. The uniting factor is probably a real interest in rhythmic expression and in supporting creative music. It’s a pretty loose collective but everyone’s very supportive of each other.
Jamie: We’re also members of The Hectic Eclectic which is a group of musicians and songwriters who all met at one time or another in Birmingham. Now spread around the country we still get together and collaborate on different projects whenever we can. One of the main members, Triple Rosie, have just opened a cafe called Railroad in Hackney, which is awesome and where we’ve started putting some nights on.

Why has it taken so long to release your next single? What have you been up to?
Jamie: Well I guess it has taken a while. The thing is we recorded our album over the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 and then we had a bit an issue getting it mixed because we wanted our friend Leo Abrahams to do it but he’s pretty busy and wasn’t able to finish it all off until these last few months.
Phil: We took the decision that it was worth getting it done really properly and waiting and then releasing things when they were finished rather than rushing stuff out. It also worked out as Lucy was travelling quite a lot through the year playing with Akram Khan so we obviously wanted to wait until she was here before the release. The waiting has been really good though because we’ve had longer to work on our sound, write some new material, go on tour, play in Sweden with Little Dragon – all these things have really strengthened what we’re doing and how we do it. So I’m happy with where we are and all the exciting things that 2011 holds.

The Magic Lantern by Karolina Burdon.

What instruments do you play and how do you manage the swapping around when you are on stage?
The Magic Lantern: Normally Jamie sings and sometimes plays acoustic guitar, Phil plays electric guitar and cavaco which is like a little Brazilian ukelele. Lucy plays cello, Dave plays a bass clarinet as well as a normal B flat clarinet and Fred normally plays a sort of percussion drum kit. The swapping kind of happens as a result of which songs need which vibes. Fred sometimes plays the guitar or cavaco and Phil is forever changing to different guitars and then having to change the tunings between them which takes quite a long time on stage. We’ve got a few songs where Dave has to change between clarinets and he’s pretty protective of them so that’s not always seamless. I guess the stages we normally play on aren’t exactly Wembley sized so we always seem impossibly squashed in and when we have to swap or change instruments between songs it can get pretty hairy. We haven’t had too many disasters yet but it certainly feels like a matter of time….

Plans for next year? Festivals, tours etc? where can we see you?
Fred: We’re pretty excited about next year. The album’s going to be coming out, probably in May followed by a UK tour. Maybe one day we’ll also get to do a soundtrack to a David Attenborough documentary!
Lucy: We’re doing a residency at the Green Note in Camden (ticket info here) through out January, February and March which is going to be great. We played there a few times last year and the atmosphere was amazing. It’s tiny, but when everyone’s crammed and listening its a special feeling.
Jamie: We’re also really excited to be playing at the Southbank Centre (more info here, it’s FREE) in February. I think we’ll probably play a few festivals in the summer; there’s nothing confirmed yet but probably Secret Garden Party, Green Man and a few others, we’ll have to wait and see!

Written by Amelia Gregory on Thursday January 13th, 2011 5:05 pm

Categories ,Akram Khan, ,Andrea Peterson, ,classical, ,Cut From Stone, ,Darren Fletcher, ,Dave Shulman, ,David Attenborough, ,F-IRE collective, ,Fred Thomas, ,Gabby Young and Other Animals, ,Green Man, ,Green Note, ,hackney, ,Jamie Doe, ,jazz, ,Karolina Burdon, ,Leo Abrahams, ,Little Dragon, ,Lucy Railton, ,Railroad, ,Residency, ,Secret Garden Party, ,Sister Mary and the Choir Boys, ,Southbank centre, ,The Gadjo Club, ,The Hectic Eclectic, ,The Magic Lantern, ,Triple Rosie

Amelia’s Magazine | Festival Preview: Secret Garden Party

Similar Posts:

Amelia’s Magazine | Secret Garden Party

Amelia’s Magazine | Festival Review: Secret Garden Party

Similar Posts:

Amelia’s Magazine | Wild Beasts – Limbo Panto

Similar Posts:

Amelia’s Magazine | Meet Submotion Orchestra, a new musical collective from Leeds

Similar Posts:

Amelia’s Magazine | Soko- So Kool

Similar Posts:

Amelia’s Magazine | Soko- So Kool

Similar Posts:

Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with singer songwriter Phildel

Similar Posts:

Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with The Magic Lantern

Similar Posts:

Amelia’s Magazine | Secret Garden Party