CRACK Issue 43

FKA twigs + BLACK LIPS BICEP WHITE LUNG LA SERA ANSWER CODE REQUEST LOWER MR. TIES SPEEDY ORTIZ DAVID RUDNICK SÉBASTIEN TELLIER SHARON JONES

43

Opening Party

Caribou (Live) Jessy Lanza

SIMPLE TH

Friday 24 October Motion, Bristol

crackmagazine.net/tickets

Festival

Mogwai . DJ Harvey Zomby . Evian Christ . Onra Nightmares On Wax . Kode9 . DVS1 The Haxan Cloak . Turbowolf DJ Sprinkles . Eagulls . Laurel Halo

HINGS 2014

Hidden Orchestra . Ron Morelli . Max Graef Seven Davis Jr . Esben & The Witch . Terekke Svengalisghost . DJ October . Scratcha DVA Thought Forms . Eaux . God Damn . Cooly G Oliver Wilde . Lovepark . Eugene Quell + Many more TBA

Saturday 25 October Various Venues, Bristol

BRECAN BEACONS � WALES

GREEN MAN BEST MEDIUM SIZED FESTIVAL È UK FESTIVAL AWARDS 2�10 Ç

14Ð17 AUGUST

GRASS RGTS FESTIVAL AWARD È UK FESTIVAL AWARDS 2�12 Ç

BEIRUT C NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL C MERCURY REV C THE WATERB�YS C FIRST AID KIT � BILL CALLAHAN C CARIBOU � DAUGHTER � THE WAR ON DRUGS SLINT � PALICA � KURT VILE & THE VIOLATARS � PANDA BEAR � ANNA CALVI � SHARAN VAN ETTEN � NEKO CASE � REAL ESTATE � AUGUSTINES � ANGEL OLSEN � MAC DEMARCO � SUN KIL M�N � NICK MULVEY � OTHER LIVES � BAY & BEAR � JONATHAN WILSON � HAMILTON LEITHAUSER � TUNNG � JIMI G�DWIN � MICHAEL CHAPMAN � TOY � SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO PERFORM WHORL � THE 2 BEARS � JEFFREY LEWIS & THE JRAMS � WOMANÔS HOUR � I BREAK HORSES � FAT WHITE FAMILY � SPEEDY ORTIZ � EAST INDIA YOUTH � THE FIELD � TELEMAN � |OUGHT � MUTUAL BENEFIT � ADULT JAZZ � ALEXIS TAYLAR � ALL WE ARE � RY X � JAANNA GRUESOME � STANLEY BRINKS � FRANCOIS & THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS � LANTERNS ON THE LAKE � FRANK FAIRFIELD | WILLIAM TYLER � THE PICTISH TRAIL � 9BACH � PLUS MUCH MARE TEN ENTERTAINMENT AREAS IN LUSH WELSH WILDERNESS C15G PERFARMERS C 24 HOUR WONDER C FUN FAR LITTLE ONES (AND BIG ONES) C LITERATURE C SCIENCE C COMEDY C LOCAL ALE & CIDER C DUSK ’TIL DAWN BONFIRES

2O14 #GREENMAN14 C GREENMAN.NET TICKETLINE.C0M/GREEN-MAN

CRACk MAgAzinE

’S

5Th BiRThDAy

BROuGHT TO yOu By blu E-Cigarettes

ThEkLA, FRIDAy 10TH OcTOBER 2014 fREE EnTRy. Register at blucigs.co.uk/tickets

LinE Up TO BE AnnOUnCED Thekla, The Grove, East Mud Dock, Bristol, BS1 4RB

Open from 10pm – 4am

TOUR DATES 19 July/LOnDOn // 26 July/BRighTOn // 09 AuGuST/MAnChESTER 20 SEPTEMBER/gLASgOW // 26 July/BRighTOn // 04 OcTOBER/DUBLin 10 OcTOBER/BRiSTOL // 18 OcTOBER/ShEffiELD // 25 OcTOBER/nEWCASTLE 22 NOvEMBER/LEEDS // 29 NOvEMBER/BiRMinghAM

#BLUfREEDOM E-cigarettes are an over 18s product. This event is for those aged 18 and over. E-cigarettes contain nicotine.

BEACONS FESTIVAL 7TH - 10TH AUGUST 2014 - FUNKIRK ESTATE, SKIPTON

DAUGHTER / DARKSIDE / ACTION BRONSON DUSKY / THE FALL / DIXON / JON HOPKINS NENEH CHERRY WITH ROCKETNUMBERNINE + SPECIAL GUESTS BRITISH SEA POWER PERFORMING ‘FROM THE SEA TO THE LAND BEYOND’

65DAYSOFSTATIC / A LOVE FROM OUTER SPACE - ANDREW WEATHERALL + SEAN JOHNSTON CATE LE BON / CHARLI XCX / CRAZY P SOUNDSYSTEM / DAM-FUNK / DANIEL AVERY DAPHNI / EAGULLS / EROL ALKAN / HOOKWORMS / HUXLEY / INDIANA / JACKMASTER JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN / JOY ORBISON / MANO LE TOUGH / NIGHTMARES ON WAX RALPH LAWSON / REJJIE SNOW / ROMAN FLÜGEL / SPECIAL REQUEST (PAUL WOOLFORD) SUBMOTION ORCHESTRA / THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART / TOY / XXYYXX AARTEKT / ADULT JAZZ / ARTHUR BARR / AUTOBAHN / BABYSTRANGE / BEATY HEART BIGGER THAN BARRY / BODYTONIC / BROTHERHOOD SOUND / BUGGED OUT BUTTER SIDE UP DJS / CAPUA COLLECTIVE / CHARLIE STRAW / CHEATAHS / DAN SHAKE DAVE HASLAM / DEEP FEVER / DZ DEATHRAYS / EAST INDIA YOUTH / EAVES / FAMY FAT WHITE FAMILY / FICKLE FRIENDS / FLUX / FUTUREBOOGIE / GALAXIANS / GIN N JUICE GIRL BAND / GLASS ANIMALS / GOLD TEETH / GOLDEN TEACHER / GOODBYE CHANEL GREG WILSON / JAMES BAY / JARBIRD / JAWS / JOANNA GRUESOME / JOE MORRIS / JOE’S BAKERY JOHN WIZARDS / KAG KATUMBA / KING CREOSOTE / KULT COUNTRY / LOCO / LOVEPARK LUV*JAM / MAX GRAEF / MELT YOURSELF DOWN / METZ / MENACE BEACH / MONEY / MOKO MOSCHINO HOE / NADINE CARINA / NAI HARVEST / NIGHT FANTASY / NIGHT FLOWERS / OPTIMO OSCILLATE WILDLY / PARIS XY / PARIAH / PAUL THOMAS SAUNDERS / PAWWS / PBR STREETGANG PLANK! / POST WAR GLAMOUR GIRLS / PUBLIC ACCESS TV / RACING GLACIERS / SEPTEMBER GIRLS SERIOUS SAM BARRETT/ SET ONE TWENTY / SHAPES / SIVU / SLAVES / SLEAFORD MODS SPEEDY ORTIZ / STEPHEN HOWE / SWEET BABOO / SWAYS RECORDS / TALL SHIPS / TASKER TEMPLE SONGS / THE GARDEN / THE HORN THE HUNT / THE MENENDEZ BROTHERS / THE WITCH HUNT THE WYTCHES / TOM OLIVER / TRAAMS / TRISTAN DA CHUNA / VAULTS / VESSELS / VOLTE-FACE WAYWARD / WILL TRAMP / WINTER NORTH ATLANTIC / WOMANS HOUR / YEARS AND YEARS YUMI ZOUMA + MUCH MORE ARTS & CULTURE / DIDDY RASCALS KIDS AREA / STREET FOOD & REAL ALE FESTIVAL NEW HUNTERS FIELD WITH OUTDOOR STAGE / INSTALLATION ART / £109.50 INCLUDING 4 DAYS CAMPING, STUDENT DISCOUNT AVAILABLE, DAY TICKETS FROM £35 ALL AVAILABLE AT WWW.GREETINGSFROMBEACONS.COM

MAINSTAGE PRESENTED BY:

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“ beautiful, captivating stuff, a perfectly formed festival The Guardian beautiful, captivating stuff, a perfectly formed festival

The Guardian

THE FLAMING LIPS WILD BEASTS

THE GENE CLARK NO OTHER BAND JOHN GRANT ST VINCENT THE HORRORS YO LA TENGO STEPHEN MALKMUS AND THE JICKS WHITE DENIM TINARIWEN GRUFF RHYS

RICHARD THOMPSON TUNE-YARDS TEMPLES JENNY LEWIS BLACK LIPS BRITISH SEA POWER

CONNAN MOCKASIN JOHN COOPER CLARKE MARK KOZELEK JOHNNY FLYNN & THE SUSSEX WIT UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA

EZRA FURMAN FELICE BROTHERS ARCHIE BRONSON OUTFIT PERFUME GENIUS CATE LE BON RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP MARISSA NADLER JUANA MOLINA ELECTRIC WÜRMS WOODS PINK MOUNTAINTOPS ROBERT ELLIS CHAD VANGAALEN HORSE THIEF THE BARR BROTHERS DAVID THOMAS BROUGHTON ALEXIS TAYLOR WYTCHES THE DISTRICTS ADULT JAZZ COLD SPECKS DRENGE LAU DEER TICK BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE ST PAUL & THE BROKEN BONES LILY & MADELEINE HOOKWORMS EAGULLS ARC IRIS STEALING SHEEP TRAAMS LAPLAND TINY RUINS KIRAN LEONARD THE MELODIC NICK WATERHOUSE ALL WE ARE LONNIE HOLLEY THREE TRAPPED TIGERS CELEBRATION WAVE PICTURES ARROWS OF LOVE SWEET BABOO ROSIE LOWE BALLET SCHOOL LUCIUS & MANY MORE

THE FLAMING LIPS WILD BEASTS - plus -

ROUGH TRADE, COMEDY, CINEMA & FILM TALKS, LITERATURE, WORKSHOPS, ART INSTALLATIONS, LOADS OF AMAZING FOOD & ALE

ENDOFTHEROADFESTIVAL.COM

ICA

Highlights Highlights Journal Journal 25 Jun – 7 Sep Jun – Galleries 7 Sep Upper 25 & Lower Upper & Lower Galleries

Tove Jansson: Tove Jansson: Tales from the Nordic Tales from the Nordic Archipelago Archipelago 15 Jul – 24 Aug Fox15 Reading Room Jul – 24 Aug Fox Reading Room

Journal Highlights Journal Highlights Koki Tanaka Event Koki Tanaka Precarious Tasks #9 – 24hrs Gathering Event Fri 27 Jun Precarious Tasks #9 – 24hrs Gathering Fri 27 Jun Duncan Campbell Artists’ Film Club Duncan Campbell Wed 9 Jul, 6.45pm Artists’ Film Club Wed 9 Jul, 6.45pm Paul Elliman Walking Tour Paul Elliman Sirens Taken for Wonders (Invisible in the Walking Tour Field, London, 2014) Sirens Taken for Wonders (Invisible in the Fri 18 Jul, 6.30pm Field, London, 2014) Fri 18 Jul, 6.30pm Joshua Simon Talk Joshua Simon Shockwork: The Selfie and the Labour Talk of the Overqualified Shockwork: The Selfie and the Labour Wed 23 Jul, 7pm of the Overqualified Wed 23 Jul, 7pm Institute of Contemporary Arts The Mall London SW1Y 5AH Institute Contemporary Arts 020 7930of3647, www.ica.org.uk The Mall London SW1Y 5AH 020 7930 3647, www.ica.org.uk

Ahmet Öğüt Artists’ Club Performance AhmetFilm Öğüt Wed 6 Aug, 6.45pm Artists’ Film Club Performance

Wed 6 Aug, 6.45pm Bouchra Khalili Artists’ Film Club Bouchra Khalili Sat 16 Aug, 6.45pm Artists’ Film Club Sat 16 Aug, 6.45pm Marlie Mul Artist Talk Marlie Mul Wed 20 Aug, 7pm Artist Talk Wed 20 Aug, 7pm Richard Sides: don’t blow it in the vector Event Richard Sides: don’t blow it in the vector Sat 6 – Sun 7 Sep Event Sat 6 – Sun 7 Sep Visit the Journal website for exclusive online commissions and contextual information Visit the Journal website for exclusive online related to the programme: commissions and journal.ica.org.uk contextual information related to the programme: journal.ica.org.uk With thanks to all Journal sponsors and partners With thanks to all Journal sponsors and partners

Films Films ICA Cinematheque: WeICA must discuss, we must invent!

Cinematheque: 8 Jul – 2 Sep We must discuss, we must invent!

8 Jul – 2 Sep Norte From 18 Jul Norte From 18 Jul Elio Petro Retrospective: The Forgotten Genius Elio Petro Retrospective: 5 – 11 Sep The Forgotten Genius 5 – 11 Sep

The ICA is a registered charity no. 236848

The ICA is a registered charity no. 236848

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Contents

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BICEP The Northern Irish 4/4 duo discuss balancing shirtless party mayhem and reclusive studio graft with Thomas Frost

34

WHITE LUNG Thomas Howells defines the personal and political realms with the Canadian punks. Just don’t call them Riot Grrrl

15

EDITORIAL We used to wait

16

RECOMMENDED A guide to what’s happening in your area

19

NEW MUSIC From the periphery

24

ANSWER CODE REQUEST The Berghain resident talks shifting techno expectations with Thomas Painter

33

TURNING POINTS: SHARON JONES The legendary Dap-Kings frontwoman talks Josie Roberts through the trials and triumphs of her remarkable life

37

LOWER Desconstructing punk rock paradigms with the Danish kids come good. By Billy Black

42

FASTFORWARD COLLECTIVE Hannah Mullen places the nature of Youth itself beneath the microscope

46

MARINA ABR AMOVIĆ Augustin Macellari succumbs to the latest exhibition from the definitive performance artist of an era

59

SPEEDY ORTIZ Why the neo-grunge four-piece relish an excuse to get back on the road

60

L A SER A Katy Goodman’s breezy indie pop outfit know all about mending broken hearts and, more unfortunately, trying to sit down on broken chairs

62

REVIEWS Gig reports, product reviews and our verdict on the latest releases in film and music

82

DIGRESSIONS Don’t Give Up The Day Job, Vince's last laugh, the crossword and advice from Denzil Schnifferman

85

20 QUESTIONS: SÉBASTIEN TELLIER The ultimate Parisian Lothario takes his place in the interrogation seat

86

MEDIASPANK How YouTube’s new licencing rules could be holding our favourite record labels to ransom

38

DAVID RUDNICK The Evian Christ collaborator considers the aural and visual sensations that have inspired his fascinating design style

20

FK A TWIGS In the lead up to releasing one of 2014’s definitive albums, the enigmatic chanteuse grants us a rare glimpse into her world FKA twigs shot for Crack Magazine by Mari Sarai, Styled by Karen Clarkson London: June 2014

48

AESTHETIC The latest installment of our fashion series interrogates style, sexuality and binary gender definitions with Istanbul-viaBerlin-via-Italy DJ Mr. Ties

56

BLACK LIPS We talk late nights, the ATL Twins and Boy George with the longstanding garage-punk badasses

fabric SuMMer 2014

12th July

19th July

26th July

2nd august

9th august

R•1

R•1

R•1

R•1

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Superfreq Mr C Jay Haze (Live) Jay Tripwire STark (Live) Xo CHiC

Craig riCHardS zip SouL CapSuLe: BaBy ford & THoMaS MeLCHior

R•2

Terry franCiS aLan fiTzpaTriCk Jon rundeLL

CorreSpondanT reCordS andrew weaTHeraLL Jennifer Cardini Man power andre BraTTen (Live)

R•2

M.a.n.d.y.

TiM green (Live) BLond:iSH R•2

Terry franCiS MadTeo XenogearS (Live) MarCoS CaBraL

MinuS riCHie HawTin wHyT noyz MarC faenger R•2

JoSepH CapriaTi (6 Hour SeT) Terry franCiS

Craig riCHardS riCardo viLLaLoBoS pearSon Sound vakuLa R•2

Terry franCiS San proper ToM Trago (Live)

R•3

fina reCordS Leif adeSSe verSionS SiMon MoreLL

www.fabriclondon.com

R•3

SuBCuLTure 20TH anniverSary Tour Harri & doMeniC neviLLe waTSon (Live)

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Issue 43

Executive Editors Thomas Frost tom@crackmagazine.net Jake Applebee jake@crackmagazine.net

CRACK WAS CREATED USING: EUGENE QUELL Hell Presidente JESSIE WARE Tough Love THEE OH SEES Burning Spear CHARLES MINGUS Freedom WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Celestite Mirror SUN RA ARKESTRA Retrospekt GRIMES

Editor Geraint Davies geraint@crackmagazine.net

Go ft. Blood Diamonds

Marketing / Events Manager Luke Sutton luke@crackmagazine.net

ARCADE FIRE

Junior Editor Davy Reed Editorial Assistants Anna Tehabsim Billy Black Creative Director Jake Applebee Art Direction & Design Alfie Allen

LAID BACK Sunshine Reggae Keep The Car Running J MASCIS Me Again SEVEN DAVIS JR. Friends CARIBOU Can't Do Without You TOURIST Patterns feat Lianne La Havas FOUR TET Pinnacles JULIEN JABRE

Design Graeme Bateman Film Editor Tim Oxley Smith Art Editor Augustin Macellari Fashion Dexter Lander, Dean Davies, Hannah Coorg, Charlotte James Contributors Christopher Goodfellow, Josh Baines, Duncan Harrison, Tom Watson, Steven Dores, Adam Corner, Leah Connolly, Thomas Howells, James Balmont, Jon Clark, Thomas Painter, Kane Aaron, Rich Bitt, James F. Thompson, James Balmont, Henry Johns, Hannah Mullen, Josie Roberts, Nathan Westley, Oliver Pickup, Gareth Thomas, Rachel Mann Photography Mari Sarai, Tom Weatherill, Alex De Mora Dexter Lander, Jake Applebee, Hannah Godley James Lavelle, Thanasis Karatzas Victor Frankowski, Nacho G Riaza Carolina Faruolo, Ed Walsh, Luke Taylor Illustration Lee Nutland Louis Labron-Johnson Advertising To enquire about advertising and to request a media pack: advertising@crackmagazine.net 0117 2391219 CRACK is published by Crack Industries Ltd © All rights reserved.

All material in Crack magazine may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of Crack Industries Ltd. Crack Magazine and its contributors cannot accept any liability for reader discontent arising from the editorial features. Crack Magazine reserves the right to accept or reject any article or material supplied for publication or to edit this material prior to publishing. Crack magazine cannot be held responsible for loss or damage to supplied materials. The opinions expressed or recommendations given in the magazine are the views of the individual author and do not necessarily represent the views of Crack Industries Ltd. We accept no liability for any misprints or mistakes and no responsibility can be taken for the contents of these pages.

That Day LONELY BOY

Crack rarely needs more than a gentle nudge to embark on a curmudgeonly tirade about the soul-sapping ubiquity of technology in this god-forsaken ‘digital age’.

OK, we’re obviously as helplessly, comically addicted to/reliant on the internet as everyone else (our server went down one afternoon and, no exaggeration, within two hours we’d abandoned desks, the place had utterly collapsed, we’d invented a game called ‘Save Maya’ where a ball was thrown at the blown-up Maya Jane Coles cover on the office wall and we had to dive, full-length, to prevent it reaching its target – we were wild, feral, idiotic children, lost in a lawless world). But we also crave the simple things.

Y’know, like the ability to do something, anything, without a fucking mobile phone being thrust in your face, forming an instant portal to the infinite static hiss of the online realm.

So in our ongoing quest to keep the tiniest analogue influence in our computerised existence, for our summer exploits we decided to invest in the biggest box of disposable cameras you’ve ever seen. Massive, it is.

No more carting around clunky digital cameras like a load of chumps; no more clumsily waving camera phones like pricks. No, far more naive and humiliating, but somehow more exciting, than that.

Cause yeah, it may make us look like complete and utter amateurs. But there’s a nostalgic thrill to the process; people are somehow more prepared to succumb, to relax in front of something so benign, so unthreatening, so wonderfully archaic as a flimsy, cardboard disposable camera.

And the most important thing we’ve reclaimed is the sense of anticipation, apprehension; the patience and reflection that taking photos used to entail. Remember going to Boots and waiting to see what the results would be? Perhaps the whole thing would be an overexposed clusterfuck of fluid shapes and clumsy fingers with a patronising sticker slapped on them; but there’d surely be at least one. One gem, one you’d forgotten you’d taken, or a moment someone else had surreptitiously captured. There was a magic, an alchemy. And we’ve taken that back. In a world where everything must happen now, where instant gratification is taken as read, we’re reclaiming the slowburn, the aching but essential pause between question and answer.

In a way, it reminds us of the figure on the cover of this issue; the alreadyicon, the cult of personality left to gestate and flourish at its own pace for a gaping two years; the way twigs was a word, an idea, a concept. The girl who kept us waiting.

It’s time for the reveal. The photos have been developed, the alchemy’s occurred. We can’t wait a second longer; we’re delving in before we’ve even stepped out into the streets.

Geraint Davies

Take Your Time GOAT Run To Your Mama (Cage & Aviary remix) LANA DEL REY Ultraviolence FKA TWIGS Two Weeks SADE Never Thought I'd See The Day (L-Vis 1990 Sunrise Edit) KID ANTOINE Expected Encounter VESSEL Red Sex DENZEL CURRY Parents RIFF RAFF Introducing The Icon SUZANNE KRAFT 4:46 CALLAWAY I Wanna Be Rich PRINCE RAPID Prince SYCLOPS Jump Bugs FREDDIE GIBBS, YOUNG THUG + ASAP FERG Olde English PEE WEE LONGWAY Energy Kit RUSTIE Attak ft. Danny Brown THE BUG Function ft. Manga

Issue 43 | crackmagazine.net

Respect Daisy Godfrey The Chicken Brothers Lloyd Parker Luke Shaw David Beckham Angie Towse Dan Crouch Ben Price Zinnia Mary Murdoch Rory McKenna Ali Nation Josie Roberts

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Recommended

O ur g uid e t o w ha t 's g o ing o n in y o ur cit y

CHRISTIAN LÖFFLER Dance Tunnel 19 July

AUSTRA Oval Space 10 July

SLEAFORD MODS Lexington 18 July

MODESELEKTOR Village Underground 18 July

Look, if you haven’t seen Wild Zero yet, address it, yeah? It stars Japan’s spectacular leather-clad rock’n’roll trio just being fucking rad guys, killing zombies with their guitars and blaring out brash, bombastic, in-your-face-and-outthe-other-side garage punk, where no matter how hard the drums are getting hit you’ll still strain to hear them over the cloud-caving power of leader Guitar Wolf himself’s thunderous axe. They’re mythical punk rock overlords, and they’re playing in your city.

CRACK STAGE @ LOVEBOX Adam Beyer, Scuba, Ben Pearce Victoria Park, London 19 July £60.95 Crack is returning to Victoria Park this month. Still fresh from our glorious stint at Field Day, the manic stylings of Danny Brown are to be replaced by a darker, more uncompromising soundtrack. Teaming up with Krankbrother, our Saturday stage sees Hotflush stars Dense & Pika join label boss Scuba for some fresh techno, while UK don Ben Pearce brings house with splashes of colour. Swedish techno maven Adam Beyer is sure to keep things on the tough side, while US party bros Visionquest and The Martinez Brothers will certainly liven up proceedings. Elsewhere across the festival you can see the likes of M.I.A., A$AP Rocky, Theo Parrish’s awesome new live project and that much feted Nas performance of Illmatic in full … what you waiting for?

GUITAR WOLF 100 Club 1 August £10 + BF

THEO PARRISH Barbican 12 July

CAITLIN MORAN Union Chapel 22 July Having released a string of bestselling books including How To Be A Woman and Moranology, Caitlin Moran is one of the country’s most celebrated comic writers. Her frank approach to topics like celebrity culture, femininity and even cystitis (we’re not lying, it’s in the latest book) has won her a legion of readers and fans. Her live show is an extension of the all-round Moran experience. Expect ice-cold critiques of adult life and a frank assessment of the way things are. As Moran puts it, “Blueprints for changing the world WILL be issued. And then lost in nightclubs later.”

CONOR OBERST Koko 9 July

CHILLY GONZALES The Roundhouse 29 July £22.50

ZIP fabric 19 July From £14 Co-founder of Perlon and one of the most educated and intuitive selectors around, Zip still grins from ear to ear as he plays to crowds worldwide. After acting as a minimal tastemaker for the past two decades, Zip brings a sense of class to everything he plays out, produces and everything he puts out on the revered label. A staple of electronic music, be sure to catch him alongside Craig Richards and Nicole Moudaber this month.

NEIL YOUNG Hyde Park 12 July

VISIONS Poliça, Andrew W.K., Eagulls Multiple Venues, East London 2 August £25

DJ SPRINKLES Dance Tunnel 11 July

Spread across some of our favourite intimate venues in East London, Visions returns this year for another installment of venue-hopping goodness.

Live performers range from the chamber pop charm of Perfume Genius through to the Edinburgh-bred communal hip-hop of Young Fathers. Also, Andrew W.K. is doing a special solo show for the festival and when we spoke to him about it he told us he’s never been arrested and he makes a good omelette. That’s a winning formula for a headliner. As one of the capital’s best-priced one-dayers, Visions definitely won’t disappoint.

With the modern classic Solo Piano sitting snugly in his catalogue, and having spent the last few years providing keys for the likes of Drake, Daft Punk and Odd Future's Domo Genesis, the forward thinking approach of Canadian Chilli Gonzales knows no bounds. He’s heading to London in support of Re-Introduction Etudes, a collection of easy-to-play piano numbers built specifically for those who learnt the instrument as children then let it go.

This London date will see Gonzales discuss the intricacies of his craft, stage one-on-one onstage lessons and demonstrate his own considerable skills. If there’s one man that can breathe life back into a forgotten hobby, this is your guy.

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GHOSTFACE KILLAH Scala 13 July

SUMMER IN THE CITY Groove Armada, Mathew Jonson, Metro Area Tobacco Dock, East London 9 August £35 Not to be confused with the UK YouTube convention of the same name, Summer in the City takes place among the idyllic surroundings of East London’s Tobacco Dock, a Grade 1 listed building complete with summer rooftop garden and a unique view of the London skyline. Sounds better than stomping away on sticky floors; and you’ll no doubt be stomping, with a line-up including the house gangster himself DJ Sneak, the distinctive Mathew Jonson, disco innovators Metro Area, and the boss Lee Foss.

TYLER, THE CREATOR Forum 23 July

JULIA HOLTER St John at Hackney 21 July

FLOW FESTIVAL OutKast, The National, Little Dragon Helsingfors, Helsinki 8-10 August 159 Euros KELIS Somerset House 14 July

Last time Crack headed to Flow, we were taken aback by stunning surroundings, intricate attention to detail and a carefully curated line-up that kept us entertained all weekend. The good news is, that’s not about to change. With headline spots from The National and ATLien founding fathers OutKast, the festival have also managed to book a range of heavyweights from all corners of the contemporary spectrum. As in, Slint are opening for Pusha T and stuff. There’s a rumour knocking about that direct flights from London are starting at £100 so get to one of Europe’s most forward thinking cities for a truly different kind of festival.

TELEVISION Shepherd’s Bush Empire 27 July

TEEN The Lexington 22 July

TAURON NOWA MUZYKA Kelis, Neneh Cherry, The Field Katowice, Poland 21-24 August £36 (3 Days) We could sit here and reel off a million reasons we loved Tauron Nowa Muzyka last year but let’s face it, it’s a four day festival that costs next to nothing in a country where you can get a pint of lager for the same amount as a loaf of bread, with a line-up that plumbs the depths of obscure electronica and reaches up to the heady heights of pop royalty. You can see Kelis and Nozinja on the same day all whilst gazing, slack jawed at the crumbling factory that surrounds you. That’s just, like, four reasons, do you really need, like, 999,996 more?

CONVERGE Scala 6 August

YUMI ZOUMA Shacklewell Arms 5 August

BEACONS Action Bronson, Roman Flügel, The Fall, Darkside Skipton, North Yorkshire 7-10 August £99.50 + BF JOURNAL ICA Until 7 September Entry with Day Membership A multidisciplinary show from a web of contributors utilising both the physical spaces of the Upper and Lower galleries, as well as the ICA’s online space which will itself see dedicated commissions, Journal encompasses all the sprawling ambition we’ve come to expect from the ICA. As the open-ended title would suggest, the ICA’s internationally invited artists, writers and theorists are asked to address the morphing world in a loose, malleable manner; be that reacting to specific events, or broader social shifts. As unknowable as it is enticing, Journal is certain to welcome intrigue and interpretation.

TERRY FRANCIS Egg London 29 July

It’s been great to see Beacons grow year after year, and with every wave of acts they’ve announced in 2014, we’ve all found ourselves gathered around the computer and nodding with approval. This year they’ve pulled together a line-up that includes the likes of Action Bronson, Darkside, Charli XCX, Hookworms, Sleaford Mods, Daphni, Roman Flügel, Dixon and Dam-Funk. If you haven’t seen the full bill yet, we suggest checking it out on their website right now, and if there’s nothing there that appeals to you, we reckon you might have picked up the wrong mag.

STEVE REICH Royal Albert Hall 13 August

RICARDO VILLALOBOS fabric 9 August

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New Music SHANGHAI DEN

CROATIAN AMOR “Ultimately everyone has a tendency to value culture based on how many people you reach with it. If you take that further, it would mean that Rihanna would rule the world. I don't want that.” Despite what it might sound like, Loke Rahbek is not a staunchly underground artist; however, his latest EP as Croatian Amor is only available if you send him a naked selfie. “I wanted to create something that was only for a few people”, he says. If you promise not to share the music, he won’t share the selfie.

Croatian Amor sees Rahbek, who also plays in Lust For Youth and Vår, creating industrial soundscapes that he describes as "too pop to be noise and too noise to be pop." At turns cute and aggressive, he expresses this creative hyperactivity by constantly working under various different guises and with several groups. "I don't want to wear the same clothes every day”, he says, “I don't want to eat the same food everyday, I don't want to sleep with the same girl every day. I don't want to make the same music every day."

With a background in the experimental noise scene, Rahbek understands that his constructions are an acquired taste. "It's a training of the ears, it requires a lot of work and a lot of listening. You can't just make a cool riff. The main thing you do when making noise music is listen. The task is in listening." With his own label Posh Isolation, a release on Helm's Alter Records under his Damien Dubrovnik moniker, and a collaboration with Puce Mary on the way, Rahbek’s once-esoteric circle of listening seems set to keep widening.

O LA Hills Burn At the Peak Of Winter 1

VIET CONG Following a messy onstage breakup in 2010 and the subsequent untimely death of guitarist Chris Reimer, in Calgary’s Women we lost one of the most exciting bands of recent times. Former members Matt Flegel and Mike Wallace look set to pick up where their old band left off though. Their latest project Viet Cong have released a few tracks of bright, hazy garage pop that we can’t stop listening to. Just a few months ago they dropped the wonderfully ecstatic Bunker Buster and they’ve now revealed Static Walls, a post-punk-indebted wall of noise that shimmers with the Beach Boys harmonies and lo-fi guitars we loved so much in Women. We can’t wait to hear more.

O Static Stills Male Bonding \ The Velvet Underground : vietcong.bandcamp.com

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Pharmakon \ Sutcliffe Jügend : poshisolation.net

MIRROR TALK

HEALING POWERS Little is known about the elusive genre known as ‘skramz’, except that it basically existed to stop l33t internet kids getting annoyed by non l33t internet kids calling bands screamo when they *caps lock* weren’t screamo. Sadly, some of those l33t internet kids ended up working at music magazines when they grew up and now they’re giving column inches to some of the best (and only) skramz revivalists they’ve heard in years.

It was only a matter of time before the genre came back full force, and Healing Powers could be just the band to give the movement the kick up the arse it needs. Hailing from the Midlands, their excellent new 7” on Wolf Town DIY is an absolute triumph in unadulterated screamo reverence.

:

O Weirdos At Work 1 Orchid \ La Quiete healingpowers.bandcamp.com

Berlin’s Mirror Talk is the one man synth-based project of Dominik Noe. His compositions mimic 80s goth and post-punk with heavily layered swirling patterns and blissful arpeggios playing gently against grainy repetitive bass lines and buried vocals. Coming across something like a Disney soundtrack reinterpreted by Suicide, Noe flirts with intensity. Dark themes emerge and guttural croons fluctuate between prophetic commentary and unadulterated weirdness while decidedly hardware-created beats and stabs guide the chaos to charmingly familiar conclusions.

Mirror Talk explores the woeful, heartfelt climes of pop music, emotion tailing synthesis, never missing a beat. It’s not often something so unabashedly retro can come across as entirely vital; yet Mirror Talk, for whatever reason, does.

1

O Secret Homes Pet Shop Boys \ Joy Division : facebook.com/mirrortalk

Solid information about Shanghai Den is hard to come by; the only previous glimpse of a production credit is a guest spot on Falty DL track King Brute. Though rumours suggest this may actually be a side project from the Ninja Tune artist, you would never guess that off the back of the erratic, rapidly disorienting R&S debut. Lead track The Sun never settles, swerving dramatically through chopped up moving parts as it switches from sweeping pads to intermittent broken beat grooves.

Vale W. Group Bench is similarly propulsive, warped by incessant filter effects, searing chords and a recurring string sample almost cartoonish in its nightmarish impact.

It’s a brief, thrilling and seriously demanding debut.

O Valè W. Group Bench :

1 Max D \ Falty DL soundcloud.com/shanghaiden

HILANG CHILD Hilang Child is the moniker of London’s Ed Riman, a man whose musical output sounds so tortured it’s hard to imagine how he prised himself away from sobbing and texting ex-girlfriends for long enough to pen a tune. Combining overblown theatrical emotion with a penchant for a memorable hook, his sometimes poetic lyrics recall melancholic snapshots in time; profoundly mesmeric, deeply captivating.

Riman’s rare talent as a songwriter defies genre and would sit well alongside any number of Scandinavian bands, echoing the coupling of post-rock structure and gently sung vocal melodies that seems to thrive so well amongst our friends in the icy, expansive North.

O The Garth Waterman 1 Jens Lekman \ Perfume Genius : soundcloud.com/hilang-child ORLANDO VOLCANO The precedent has been set for ambient electronic music ever since Martin Rev started messing about with weird noises and dragging, subtle beats. What makes Irish-born, Brooklyn-based Orlando Volcano different is that his take incorporates a tuneful, tasteful approach to tumblr-ready electronica.

Rolling 4/4 beats over glassy crackles and huge synth pads, he embraces pop whilst remaining loyal to an overarching base of measured, relaxing noise.

His first EP is an eclectic collection of thoroughly modern tracks that straddle Balearic house, postrock, EDM and beatless ambience.

Reverb-heavy guitars clash with waterfall sound effects, glitches, bleeps and effortless changes in time signature. It’s streaming for free online right now, and we’d strongly advise you to put down your latté and listen.

O Lost Chance (ft. Brendan 1

William Jenkinson) Wave Racer \ Phillip Glass : @orlandovolcano

20

With her debut album due for imminent release, FKA twigs is set to thrill this generation with futuristic nocturnes for the body and the heart Words: Davy Reed Photography: Mari Sarai Styling: Karen Clarkson Styling Assistant: Giulia Bottari

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Issue 43 | crackmagazine.net

23

“I don’t have time to think about how much of myself I’m exposing. If you’re self-conscious, then you’re not giving yourself”

Let’s step back for a second and size up the condition of new music in 2014.

How many of the emerging acts are archaeologists, forming mosaics from fragments found in the rubble that is postmillennial pop culture? Sure, there’s an innate joy in an orchestrated frenzy that’s been conjured up by a group of individuals carrying stringed instruments, but the problem with nostalgic aesthetics is that they’re often limited to imitating ideas, feelings and desires of the past. And while innovative machine music continues to thrive in underground channels, there need to be sources of future music that have a voice, a face and a human heartbeat.

An artist showcases this kind of potential on a summer’s night at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. Under minimal lighting and in front of a blank backdrop, FKA twigs flexes her limbs precisely in unison with a soundscape of hefty sub bass, warm sustained chords and fluttering hi-hats that are twisted into weird and unpredictable rhythms. When she performs Two Weeks, the anthemic and typically lustful single which was first aired barely 72 hours before the show, it already sounds like a contender for the best song of the year.

“The hour was over in what felt like minutes”, one reviewer reports, while another website suddenly implements a scoring system for live reviews just so they can rate the performance with a 10/10 score. So who exactly is FKA twigs, and why is she leaving those who attend her shows so hopelessly spellbound?

Growing up in Cheltenham, Tahliah Barnett was always different from the rest

of the kids at school. While others would be listening to Take That and The Spice Girls, Barnett spent much of her time alone, falling in love with Billie Holiday, Marvin Gaye and Ella Fitzgerald. Under the guidance of her mother, a creativelyminded salsa teacher, Barnett embraced performance-based arts from a young age.

At the age of 17 she moved to London, where she continued to master ballet, hip-hop, krump and contemporary styles of dance while working on an agile vocal style that’s now drawing comparisons to Aaliyah and Kate Bush in equal measure.

The fuse was lit in 2012, when FKA twigs began her ongoing series of thoughtprovoking music videos with the sexually upfront, gender-mutating visuals for her song Hide. The following year twigs recorded her outstanding sophomore EP with the Venezuela-born experimental producer Arca, who’d just found himself under the spotlight after being enlisted as a production consultant for Yeezus. By this stage, FKA twigs was widely declared the Next Big Thing.

Two days after the ICA gig, we’re invited to meet with twigs and her team at a studio in Shoreditch where a marathon photo shoot is taking place. Over the course of the afternoon, the lounge area becomes increasingly flooded with bags of clothes sent by high profile designers desperate to align their brand with the era-defining chanteuse. But twigs keeps the atmosphere light. She dances playfully to a soundtrack of Drake and UK garage classics, cuddles a well-groomed dog named Hector and remains totally unfazed by the news that tickets for her next London

show are nearly gone within hours of going on sale. It also turns out that she’s approachable, funny and unflinchingly honest.

“I actually had a terrible singing voice when I was young”, she tells me as she’s getting her make-up done, “I remember I was in a play and I had to sing a lullaby. It was in a proper theatre, and it was so bad that people were laughing while I was singing because I was completely out of tune. And I can remember my mum being like ‘OK Tahliah, I love you... but we need to practice that song!’”. Although Tahliah Barnett’s voice began to evolve into something unique during her teens, she suggests that it would be some time before the sultry sophistication of FKA twigs developed.

“One of the first songs I wrote, I think I was like 16 or something, was about going on holiday and meeting a boy”, she laughs. “I wrote it to a really bad samba beat on a Yamaha keyboard, and it was like: [sings] ‘Holiday romance of my dre-ee-eams!’”

For those who’ve been hooked on FKA twigs since she first emerged online in 2012, her disarmingly friendly and selfdeprecating personality could seem at odds with the mysterious, otherworldly seductress she transforms into as a performer. Up until this point, much of the hype has been sustained with a meticulously crafted promo strategy and a subsequent air of mythology. When her first videos were doing the rounds, it initially seemed unclear whether Twigs (the FKA came later following legal complications with another act) was a solo artist or a full band, an absence of biographical info online and her reluctance to do interviews then further fed the curiosity about the big-eyed, eccentrically beautiful girl on the now-iconic cover of i-D magazine. For a lot of fans, their first glimpse of her live performance was watching the gorgeouslyfilmed footage of her singing Hide amongst Mayan ruins near Tulum, Mexico while befuddled locals look on with amazement.

But the truth is that twigs has been working towards this project with her manager for years, and during our conversation she’s eager to debunk the perception that she somehow appeared out of thin air. “I’m not a spring chicken, you know what I mean? I’m 26, I’ve been in the studio four or five times a week since I was 19 years old, I’d just never put out any music, I was always making it behind the scenes”.

After years spent labouring at the desk, twigs certainly seems to have developed a studio geek’s passion for equipment.

She spends a good ten minutes enthusing about the settings of her Tempest drum machine and her techniques of embedding percussive noises with musical scales at a pace that becomes hard to keep up with.

She also speaks affectionately about her bandmates Tic – who introduced her to the aforementioned Tempest – and Cyan,

24 who she claims has always been willing to answer her panicky 3am phone calls about whatever Ableton-related malfunction has been keeping her awake.

“Being a female artist, everyone’s constantly trying to turn you into a pop star. But pop stars don’t write their own music, and they don’t direct their own videos”

Like all aspects of twigs’ work, her approach to making music sees her being collaborative while maintaining control.

While she’s worked with the likes of Arca, Emile Haynie, Dev Hynes, neo-RnB brother duo inc. and Clams Casino (who, much to twigs’ dismay, was incorrectly credited as producing Two Weeks by countless music websites), LP1’s list of producers probably wont be shared before release so that the album is digested as twigs’ cohesive project. She’s also co-directed most of her videos and – according to her stylist and close friend Karen Clarkson – turned down some pretty lucrative offers in order to protect her image. “Obviously a lot of designers have been very keen, there’s been a lot of buzz around twigs, and naturally she suits that world. But you don’t want to fall into the thing of her being a fashion show pony”, Clarkson tells me. “And it’s not like [her style] is what’s fashionable now, we do what suits her and what’s natural and what we like”.

Maybe it’s because opportunities to discuss twigs’ working processes have so far been scarce, or maybe it’s just down to plain old patriarchal assumptions that there’s a discrepancy between autonomy and expressing vulnerable emotions from a feminine perspective, but either way, you could argue that the press have downplayed her twigs’ as an active agent.

“It [production and directorial work] hasn’t been covered enough and I think that’s unfortunately partly down to me being a female artist; everyone’s constantly trying to turn you into a pop star. Pop stars don’t write their own music, they don’t produce their own music and they don’t direct their own videos. With a lot of people it’s just like ‘So, who’s your favourite designer?’.”

I ask her if she’s ever felt under pressure to compromise, to comply with the aforementioned ‘pop star’ demand, and she recalls her sessions with Paul Epworth, the producer who’s recently worked with Azealia Banks, Coldplay and Paul McCartney. “I remember before I went in the studio with him I had this moment of fear. I was thinking like ‘What am I doing?

This isn’t me, why am I going into the studio with this massive producer? Everything’s going to sound like Adele or something’”, she confesses. “I was really stalling all morning, I was already an hour late for the session, and I called him on the train like ‘Hi, do you mind if we meet for lunch?’. I thought ‘he’s got kids, he’s going to be popping off at around eight. It’s fine, I can handle three hours in the studio of bullshit, of pretending to like something’”.

Fortunately, Epworth had no intention of

ironing out her eccentricities: “So we went to get some lunch and the first thing he said was ‘I’ve got to be honest, I was a bit hesitant about this session, I feel a bit nervous!’” After the ice was broken, it was fine. We went in the studio and he was so sweet, he really listened to everything that I said, he let me have full range. It was an amazing session, we did Pendulum together, which is probably one of my favourite songs on the record”.

Like a lot of twigs’ material, Pendulum explores the themes of psychosexual power struggles and the desires that are enhanced when a lover evades, denies or withdraws emotional commitment. And testament to her skill as a songwriter, she’s got a knack of flipping between passive and dominant roles with subtle adjustments in her lyrics.

“I love doing that”, she says. “I’d say a good example would be [LP1’s final track] Kicks.

The lyrics go “tell me, what do I do when you’re not here?” And in the beginning it seems quite desperate. But in the end it’s like “What do I do when you’re not here? I get myself off. And I’m better at it than you.

I’m busy!”, she laughs. Does she ever feel uncomfortable singing about such personal subjects in public, I ask. She shakes her head. “I work quickly, I don’t have time to think about how much of myself I’m exposing. If you’re self-conscious, then you’re not giving yourself, are you?”

Her makeup, hair and nails are complete, and now it’s time for FKA twigs to position herself in front of the camera. Previously, twigs has been portrayed as reclusive and media-shy, and now the silence is truly broken, surely a gruelling press grind is impending. So how does she really find interviews? “It’s fine, I’m down to talk about what I do, but it’s really boring talking about me”, she insists. “It’s not about me, it’s about my music, it’s about my visuals, it’s about the feeling, it’s about the atmosphere. It’s not about what my mum did for a job when I was between eight and twelve or, like, my relationship with my granddad ... but my relationship with my granddad is fine, for the record!”

She has a point. It’s natural that we’ve been curious to know more about the enigmatic singer who’s been carving new pathways for pop music over the last two years.

But at this stage, the veil is off. The world knows FKA twigs’ story, and they also know that she’s made a boundary-pushing debut album for the lovesick kids of 2014. Now they’re ready to hear it.

LP1 is out 12 August via Young Turks

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Shirt | Each x Other Trousers | Each x Other Bra | Agent Provocateur Jewellery | Pebble

26

When Answer Code Request first emerged in 2011, the likes of Shed and Marcel Dettmann were rumoured to be behind this shadowy persona.

Words: Thomas Painter Photography: Valeria Haase

The tight, stepping techno that defined the debut Subway Into EP was also the first release on a label under the Answer Code Request name, and its assurance immediately sparked intrigue. But the man responsible for the work was, in fact, Patrick Gräser, a respected but little-known Berlin DJ. Gräser has since gone from strength to strength, releasing a handful of EPs on Marcel Dettmann’s MDR label, devising highly rated remixes and becoming a resident at Berghain. When we meet Gräser in a busy café in Mitte, Berlin, it’s just a few days before he is due to appear at that residence to celebrate the launch of his album Code on Berghain’s Ostgut Ton label. Though a little weary he’s clearly delighted to be busy, and quietly thrilled at the critical acclaim his album has been building over the last month.

“I’m actually more of an album producer, I would say,” muses Gräser when probed on the motivation for shifting to the fulllength format. “My music is always a bit different, more to listen to, not always for a dancefloor. My fourth EP, Breathe, was released in February, and this seems like the next step. It’s time for an album, I think.”

That EP marked the beginning of ACR’s affiliation with Ostgut Ton, one which has since flourished. “It’s a great label” Gräser enthuses with little prompting. “Ostgut gives me more opportunity to show people what I can do. The label is good for albums, the artists being able to express themselves, in the sense that music is not necessarily just ‘four to the floor’. DJs and residents play more dance tunes in the

club, but when they produce they all have their own style.”

For me, all Aphex Twin is perfect: Polygon Window, AFX.

The release of Code feels like a grand achievement for the Answer Code Request moniker, but also for Gräser himself.

“When I started producing in 2008 or 2007, I wasn’t too happy because I was still new to it and it was not my sound, as I was producing with friends”, he reveals.

“I began to work on my first Answer Code Request track, Escape Myself, in early 2010 as more of an experiment, and it was like ‘OK, I know what I want, I know which way to go’. It has to be timeless. I thought maybe it could be something from my experience from the 90s as well as the influences I have now.”

“Most of the people that go to Berghain want hard techno” he sighs. “But Berghain offers more than that. There’s house in Panorama Bar, concerts, live acts and art exhibitions on any other day. I know it doesn’t work when you play one hour of ambient tracks, but I think sometimes you have to play something different.”

Gräser’s DJ sets and live shows are steeped in the history of house and techno, incorporating aspects from across his love of classic dance music. The music he releases as Answer Code Request is no different. Patrick Gräser has absorbed his influences from half a lifetime involved in the scene he now fully inhabits, and when it’s suggested that there might be elements of Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series (released between 92-94) and Aphex Twin within Code, he’s quick to elaborate. “[Aphex Twin] is one of my biggest influences.” Gräser is again eager to contextualise his music outside of the club setting. “I want to be musical. I always go back to these tracks, like Aphex Twin or Autechre; they are more special.” These are the influences he earlier referred to as ‘timeless’. “I go back, sure, but I try to mix it with some new sounds. A kind of mix of breakbeats and dancefloor tracks and more experimental, IDM tracks like Autechre.

It’s as if this passion and understanding for Berlin techno culture was embedded in Gräser from birth, but his roots lie a little further afield. “I grew up in Fürstenwalde, the same hometown as Marcel Dettmann and Marcel Fengler. We sometimes call it the ‘Detroit of Germany!’” he laughs. At this point our waitress returns to our table to ask if we’d like anything else to drink.

“Maybe I shouldn’t – at the moment I drink a lot of coffee!” laughs Patrick. “Sometimes I need it, it’s like a cigarette, but I don’t smoke. You always see DJs” – he mimes intense chain smoking – “but me, I drink coffee when I play.”

A few days later, and we’re at the aforementioned launch party. Presumably wired up on copious amounts of caffeine, Answer Code Request opens his set with one of his own tracks, Odyssey Sequence - four minutes of drifting, ravetinged ambience. Such confidence builds momentum, patiently developed with a style suited ideally for the ‘big room’. It all seems like second nature.

Code is out now via Ostgut Ton

ACR

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Issue 43 | crackmagazine.net

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Retro-loving party taskforce Bicep invite us into their cluttered beat laboratory Words: Thomas Frost Photography: Tom Weatherill

Back in 2013, Crack descended once again on Worthy Farm and, by nature, the delirious hinterland that is Block 9, The Common and Shangri La. After watching Bicep on the then-brand-new Genosys stage, we ended up spending a large proportion of the morning with them courtesy of a mutual friend, sucking in the haze of a dry Glastonbury morning at The Stone Circle; blissful ambience punctuated by balloons and the humour of two affable Northern Irishmen.

Our second meeting with the Bicep boys is in their new Shoreditch studio, a space with pieces of hardware and Expedits rammed full of vinyl everywhere your eye rests. If hedonism characterised our first meeting, this is a more relaxed affair. Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson are in wonderful contrast to one another. The former is the distinct mouthpiece for the duo, while the other reclines, intently chipping in when appropriate with amusing quips.

Surfacing from beneath a blog that exposed them as studious hunters of all things disco, Italo and ultimately rare, Bicep’s production sound initially owed a debt to 90s piano house as much as any other more convoluted genre strain. This retro fetishism was hugely refreshing at a time when every other UK producer worth their salt was making house music with lashings of bottom end heft attached. The good prevail, and the result is a label, an image and a touring schedule that has for the last year cemented their place as leaders of their field.

Oh … and they like taking their tops off as much as we do.

So does the studio represent a bit of a respite from the relentless tour schedule? Is that whole lifestyle beginning to take its toll?

Matt: I wish I could take some time off.

I’m just rolling from one thing to the next, and it’s got to the point now where sitting around listening to a load of people talk about fucking coke before a gig is my idea of hell. So now I just try and arrive at gigs as late as possible and then split.

Andy: When you’re tired in here [the studio] and you can’t even move a wire around despite needing to get shit done, it’s not good.

M: You hear a lot of the music produced these days from DJs who are pretty good, and it just passes by. You can tell there's no decent quality gear being used. The more we’ve bought this stuff and developed an ear to listen to it, the more we’ve dug further back into time to achieve a good sound.

How long has the studio taken to assemble then?

M: It started last October. Prior to that we’ve been buying bits and pieces over the last two years.

A: It’s like a wormhole, you start buying this stuff and it just keeps going, there’s always something we want. This over here [Arp Odyssey analogue modular synthesizer] is semi-modular so there are literally no presets, so you have to turn it on in the morning and leave it for a bit while the oscillators heat up, and then you have to tune it. It was made in 1976.

What’s the end game from all this equipment investment then? Are we looking at a full-length record?

M: There’s no point in having another house music album with a couple of female vocal bits that work in a nightclub. We do singles that are aimed at the dance floor, they aren’t meant to be life-changing pieces of music.

A: You need a vision for an album. Space Dimension Controller for instance, his vision for his album is that he thinks of a story and the songs almost write themselves. If we did an album it would definitely contain a concept and I know Matt has talked about going to Scandinavia and just sitting there for six months in the winter and writing an album.

So taking it back, what were your first partying experiences in Northern Ireland?

A: Basically there was one club called Shine. When we were growing up in school together we were surrounded by commercial hip-hop and shit Euro music.

Belfast has got a very cool little punk scene and I got into a bit of that. I wanted to be in bands but I played sport and committed to that. I played rugby and I nearly played cricket professionally. It was a case of choosing cricket or music, but I chose music and started going out more.

M: I remember stumbling across Shine one night, Umek was playing, and I didn’t understand the concept of music being part of a bigger set. Up until then it was always a case of going to a club and the guy would play one anthem and then another and that was music to me. So when I heard this repetitive rumbling techno with no vocal and 800 people going mental, I was like ‘Woah!’.

I got a set of decks immediately and started buying loads of hard techno and going out at every single weekend to see Dave Clarke, Green Velvet, Underground Resistance.

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"It was fun when we were DJing and there would be 50 people with their top off. Then it got to the stage where people expected us to do it. So we stopped" - Matt

Dave Clarke often talks about Belfast being a proper hotbed for that kind of music.

M: It was in the SU building and it could hold between 1000-1500 people and they sold ice lollies on the door. People were smoking indoors and every time you walked back into that room was like going straight back into battle.

A: I’d have a Twister in one hand and a Stella in the other.

M: I went to university and that instantly died away. Minimal techno got really big and I fell out with it. I stopped DJing and stopped music. That era in the UK was awful, there was no musicality involved and it was just dry.

A: It was the musical sound of a cappuccino machine.

M: That’s why we started the blog, we just put up loads of weird 70s music and Italo disco. Anything that was strange, weird and off centre, basically.

So did you used to visit each other at university?

A: Matt was in Liverpool and I used to go up and see him all the time.

M: While I was at uni I also had no interest in DJing out and I didn’t have decks. Before I started Bicep I hadn’t DJed in seven years.

I was still buying vinyl but I wasn’t trying to DJ out.

That was the starting block for the blog though, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a case of you guys posting mixes, it was more of an educational tool, weird music and humour.

M: But we were making bits of music on the side. Just messing around and making edits and stuff. So we had one or two records out, and then I moved to Dubai.

Dubai?

M: I got offered a graphic design job in the UK mid-recession. It’s the easiest place

to get your head down and get locked into music as there’s nothing else to do other than go to the beach. I brought some equipment into my office and just practiced after work on Ableton. Things just came together when I came back to London, so we quit our jobs and said we’d just starve for a year. When your first gigs come in and you’re staying in a hotel for the first time you’re like ‘Woah!’

A: It was fucking tough for a year. Next level broke. I was sleeping on his couch and waking up at seven each day to go to Tesco, cause that was when the reduced section came out!

2013 was the unequivocal year of ‘Taps Aff’ in the Crack office. That’s your shit though, what are the origins?

A: It’s not even our shit, it’s more of an Irish saying. The Revenge also had a record label called Tops Off and he used to put edits out on there that were tunes to take your top off to. There were friends I used to say it to at university, I’d be like ‘you coming down for some Tops Off?’ If you were doing ‘Tops Off’ you’d just be playing party bangers.

M: It’s a Glasgow and Belfast thing.

Basically places with really shit weather and the idea is the minute there is a little bit of sunshine you whip it off. Belfast and Glasgow are two places you are least likely to take your top off, so it becomes a cheer!

It was fun when we were DJing and there would be 50 people with their top off. Then it got to the stage where people expected us to do it. So we stopped.

A: You’d get one really creepy guy coming up to the decks and being like [creepy old man voice] ‘tops off?’

Bicep appear at Bestival, Isle of Wight, 4-7 September

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Turning Points: Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

In 2002, Dap Dippin’ with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings was released on Daptone Records, with grainy analogue production and scorching rhythms transcending its 60s roots. At the forefront was Sharon Jones herself, and as the vinyl sleeve made clear, ‘this sister is B-A-D!’ Now five albums into her career, she and the band keep that Stax and Motown sound thriving: Jones isn’t retro, but she most certainly is soul. With a voice that soars and sails through tenderness and triumph, every inch of the leading lady exudes energy and resilience, and after battling – and beating – pancreatic cancer, she’s back on stage with the Daptone Super Soul Revue, giving the people what they want. Picking six snapshots from the past 20 or so years, Jones spoke to us about how she became the frontwoman of classic soul revivalism.

1988-1990: Working as a Corrections Officer at Rikers Island, NY Oh my god, I was at Rikers from ’88 to ’90.` I knew it wasn’t meant for me to be there.

One night, though, I told the men in my block I was a singer, and they refused to be locked in their cells until I sang Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love of All! That’s one of my most memorable experiences, singing Greatest Love.

1996: Desco Records and singing with The Soul Providers That Soul Providers thing came along because my ex-fiancé at the time was playing with them. These guys, they were doing afrobeat music, putting a different date on the 45 so people would think they were done in the late 60s. And all these guys changed their names, making up African names! And, through him, that's how I got to meet The Soul Providers. When they needed background singers for Lee Fields, that’s how I got involved with Desco [Records]. Everything started from the afrobeats.

2001: Residency in Barcelona and the beginnings of Sharon Jones & The DapKings We had bootlegs out in like ‘99/’98, that’s when Daptone Records was getting started. We had to bootleg our own LP

Dap Dippin’ just to get started. We went through a lot to get started out. Right now, we have publicists, we got managers, we got all kind of crap! But at the beginning, we would come over to Europe and do all these shows, making like $50 a night, or $25, or whatever. But we did what we had to do.

December 2006 – Providing vocals for Lou Reed’s Berlin performance at St Ann’s Warehouse, NY Believe it or not, I have a picture on my phone now, it was taken by Hal Willner in Lou’s house on a Wednesday night, of him watching the live recording of Berlin. They were watching that movie that Wednesday, and Lou died that Sunday. Hal told me, he said ‘Sharon, Lou sat there, and we watched that movie, and he was so proud of you. Lou loved you’. So that means something to me.

January 2014: Last chemo treatment and returning to the stage You gotta realise that New Year’s Eve was my last chemo, then January 5th I was on Jimmy Fallon with the Dap Kings. I was very weak doing those first gigs, I then ended up doing Ellen, Leno, Kimmel, Queen Latifah, CBS. For me, my physiotherapy was being on TV and being on the road. And when February came [their gig at the Beacon Theatre, NY] the band were like ‘OK, we’ve got a stool for you, if you ever get tired you can sit down, the girls can take over some songs’. But I never saw that stool, I got back up on the stage. I had to pace myself a little, but it was like I never left.

Present: Daptone Super Soul Revue There’s 14 dates on this tour, so we still got more to go. In the grand finale of each gig, we arranged for every one of the musicians to come up on stage; Charles Bradley, everyone’s together, at the end of the night there’s 27 musicians up on stage.

The song we choose to end with is Family Affair. That’s the highlight for me. We’ve got all the songs poppin’ poppin’ poppin’, keeping it moving, everything was keeping moving. It’s such a great show.

For more information on the Daptone Super Soul Revue visit daptonerecords.com

"For me, my physiotherapy was being on TV and being on the road"

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Shunning lazily draped tags, White Lung summon searing punk on their own terms

Words: Thomas Howells Photography: Alex Del Mora

“They’re like, ‘You’re not forthcoming about Riot Grrrl!?!’ and I’m like ‘Noooooo!’. I get it because that’s how you have to categorise stuff – you have to make things easy for people to go ‘this fits here, this fits here.’

I know how the fucking story goes, but it gets a bit irritating.”

Crack is sitting in a Wandsworth pub with Mish Way and Kenneth William of the ascendant Canadian punk group White Lung, a couple of weeks prior to the release of the band’s highly anticipated third record, Deep Fantasy. We’d been careful in our preparation for this interview to avoid the obvious question of that scene, but the elephant in the room quickly rears its ungainly head as we move on to the topic of Way’s deep personal interest in feminism and feminist theory. It’s something which has come across more overtly and frequently in her writing for sites such as Vice, The Talkhouse and Hearty, amongst many others, as well in her vocal enthusiasm for the work of individuals such as Jessica Valenti, bell hooks, Simone De Beauvoir and Tracie Egan Morrissey over the course of our conversation. We do, though, consciously attempt to maintain an air of cynicism when bringing it up: as well as the easy access via frequent focus on Way’s alternate career, punk rock is a movement often built around cyclical self-reference and enthusiastic homage, whether sonically or socially, and we’re well aware that many writers’ first reference point for the group is an erroneously quick skip and a jump back to Bikini Kill et al.

“Our band has always been a band,” Way states. “No one’s sitting around saying ‘this is a political thing blah blah blah….’

Whatever I have to say is what I have to say, that’s my thing. The attachment to people referencing something like Riot Grrrl

when they talk about us is ridiculous. That’s a movement that started very specifically in a very specific place out of politics; the music came as a way of expressing those politics.” She continues, “We have nothing to do with that. It can get a little irritating but that’s also why I value that fact that I am able to put my opinions out there in other ways aside from interviews and music, by publishing my own work, so if anyone cares to read it or comes across it I can speak about it. I’m lucky that I have that. But like I said, our band formed because we just want to play music. But that’s how this shit goes. It’s a way they can separate me from everyone else. ‘There’s the feminist one!'”

Way and Anne-Marie Vassiliou (handling vocals and drums, respectively, and the band’s two existing original members) formed White Lung in 2006: “When it first started it was us two, and these other two girls,” says Way. “We didn’t do anything, just put out a seven inch, played a few shows. We didn’t take it very seriously at all.

We were just having fun.” Kenneth William, a familiar face from Vancouver’s Emergency Room (then a hub for the city’s DIY punk community), joined on guitar in 2009, a move that would see an explicit seachange in the direction of the band. “We knew Kenny just from being around, from music and the scene and stuff,” she continues, “and he just e-mailed us one day because we were looking for a new guitar player.

I didn’t even know he played guitar; he played in other bands but he never played guitar. So he came and played, and we were like ‘Whoah, what? You’re so good!’

We got our act in gear and made our first record [2010’s It’s The Evil], did a lot of punk tours and played around. And then we did that record [2012’s] Sorry, and that got a lot of attention. More than we ever expected.”

“So good” is something of an understatement, and that attention was entirely warranted. Though Way’s eloquent soul-searching and undeniable charisma as a frontwoman and lyricist are White Lung’s inadvertent blog hooks, William’s relentlessly gratifying playing is the band’s sonic crux and most definitive component, a thrilling mess of melodic hardcore riffing and unrelentingly frantic leads; “It is,” he states, “a reflection of my personality – I’m a stresscase.” “Look at how he’s shuffling his legs!” Way interjects. “He’s super anxious and that’s how he plays, it’s like panic.” It’s also the aspect most keenly streamlined on their incoming new fulllength; where It’s The Evil and Sorry were excellent records and evidence of a band quickly finding an idiosyncratic niche in a saturated scene, Deep Fantasy is a step up entirely: a concise, fat-free and wholly consistent statement of intent, a fact made extra impressive given that the band managed to write the record over a mere five months (ish), whilst touring, with no bassist (Wax Idols’ Heather Fortune tours with the band but Williams is responsible for all of Deep Fantasy’s bass parts) and with members disparately located between the LA and Vancouver.

The result is ten tracks of unrelentingly electrifying punk fury, eloquently exploring topics such as diverse as sexual dynamism (Down It Goes), drug use (Just For You) and heartfelt platonic affection (on the record highlight Wrong Star, by Way’s admission “probably the only loving song I’ve ever written for anyone”) and an early standout for one of the records of the year.

“We are,” she fittingly concludes, “the kids that did our homework the night before but still got an A.” Deep Fantasy is out now via Domino

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Copenhagen’s Lower are marching on the front line for punk rock’s intellectualised youth Words: Billy Black Photographer: Hannah Godley

Seek Warmer Climes is a defining moment for Lower. A debut album, a crystallising of their obvious talents, they are no longer lunkheaded teenagers. They are a formidable post-punk band.

Death rock, jangly lo-fi, intelligence and scathing; intense personal experiences permeate the poetic lyricism that lies beneath a calculated, reflective hyperrealist aesthetic. Each track tangles with tension; relationships gone awry, African travelogues gone awry and, well, life gone awry. The album has landed them a spot on a tour with hardcore titans Fucked Up and a place on that hallowed indie Mecca; the Matador Records roster. We caught up with them before their show at Scala to talk about coming of age and how it feels to be batting in the major leagues.

“We didn’t have any specific goal as to who was to put the record out”, guitarist Simon Formann says of that pivotal signing. “We decided to finish it completely and then see who would be interested in putting it out, rather than signing and then having to work for it to sound how a specific label would want it.” “It was like a natural progression, it’s not anything we decided” singer Adrian Toubro continues when we suggest their success may have been impacted by their evolved sound, a reproach from their earlier hardcore influences. Simon meditates on this new approach: “When we started we didn’t agree on being a hardcore band.

One thing we did agree was to play loud and fast, and we did that. This time round

we just kinda played what we felt like and developed it from there.”

Adrian’s deeply introspective lyrics are a key aspect to Lower’s appeal. “Life experiences, relationships, the human condition, lyrics about being a human being, you know? I’m sure the issues I approach are things everyone has approached, or at least that’s the goal.”

Simon quickly adds, “it’s poetic without being mysterious.”

Aesthetic is clearly important to Lower, it’s essential to them that their image reflect their sound. The band’s bassist Kristian Emdal is dressed impeccably, intimidatingly, head to toe in white as he talks about his vision for their recent music video Soft Option. “The basic idea was to get the four of us round a table and discuss something that would inspire some degree of frustration or aggression” he says, emphatically. “That was my romantic idea of us sitting round a table like you’d see in a movie about an Italian family or something…” A Michael Haneke film, we suggest. He smiles. “Yeah, definitely! Like in a Haneke film, you see not the actions but the reactions.” Simon nods in agreement.

“We wanted to avoid all the normal things you’d have in a music video, like leaves falling or a horse running or whatever. We wanted something that just shows us.”

Simon explains that the reality of their success hit home when they recently played a show at LA’s Church on

York along with 14 other bands from Copenhagen, “It was a lot of fun, very chaotic.” He glances at Kristian who holds back a smirk as he tells us, “it was like … an avalanche of Danish people.” Their recent touring schedule has been relentless – and their set that evening at Scala displayed an intensely committed live band – but when they do get a chance to rest, they’re never resting for long. “It’s important to keep doing different stuff”, Simon sounds off on his own techno side project Yen Towers and Kristian’s noise output as Age Coin.

“You learn from what you’re doing, if you do something down one lane you might learn something you want to take into another.

It’s like in life: if you can function in a certain situation then you can take that into another relationship or social context.”

Lower are deeply confident young men and rightly so; they are, along with a handful of other young bands (Perfect Pussy as role models for feminine rebellion, or Copenhagen’s other princes of intellectual confrontation Iceage) deconstructing punk. As the band pile out one by one to soundcheck, we ask Adrian what’s next. “I guess we’ll tour” he says, “then we’ll record another album in six months or so and it will sound completely different but it will work...”

A wryness crosses his face. “Perfectly.”

Seek Warmer Climes is out now via Matador

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Merging parallel qualities observed in club culture and design, David Rudnick presents a heavily contextualised and aesthetically lean vision

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Finding a mode of self-expression through founding his own music magazine, Volume, and a now mythical club night while studying at Yale, Rudnick values the contributions of the past while facing firmly towards the future. It’s an approach most vividly realised in his collaboration with Evian Christ on the recent Waterfall EP, where wistful raindrops envelop amorphous abstractions and brutalist, post-gothic typography.

He’s a man with refreshingly considered and aware views towards graphic design, a field that often finds itself trapped in selfreferential, superficial circle-jerking. In short, he talks a strong game. So we caught up with Rudnick to discuss the current state of design, and how he got to where he is.

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“Those who venerate the act alone fail to understand the significance of the pedestal.”

What made you want to start Volume magazine? Is that how you taught yourself design?

Volume started in the Autumn of 2006, my second year of college. I’d left London to go to college a year earlier, found myself in America, at Yale, and I just remember thinking – naively – that there wouldn’t be any significant culture shock involved in that transition, which wasn’t the case at all.

I missed music a huge amount, I missed clubs, dance music, the idea of night as a cultural space, a place where you could experiment with sounds, visuals, identities.

Before leaving I was experiencing clubs like Trash in London which were musically unrestricted, straight and gay, rich and poor.

I’d had a taste of something that had felt so rich in possibility. I was very influenced by my experiences at Trash and felt strongly that there should be an inclusive focus for the magazine, that we should open up to old and new music, all genres. I think my dream was for something a bit like The Wire. Because it was a student magazine and there was no expected quality level, I didn’t really have anything to lose in terms of not knowing what I was doing design-wise.

Designing the Volume logo was the first time I ever worked with a vector and I remember that for the first few issues I didn’t know how to join shapes together, so for example the base of the L just sat on top of its stem. I loved designing that logo, and I remembered hating the illustrations – I would insist on doing a lot of them because I wanted them to be ambitious, high quality, and then would struggle horribly to actually create that high quality, sophisticated effect. I grew less comfortable drawing the object inside the frame. I became fascinated by the expressive potential that the framing device, the publication itself, could lend to the work, the opportunities it could create. It was funny being able to recognise that, and looking back now in retrospect what that consideration really amounted to was teaching myself some of the basics of ‘Graphic Design’.

Iteration and reiteration, and systems that recur that are designed for you to encounter them more than once; I think it predicates a different language than art demands. For me strategies of art tended towards rupture, towards moments of where the world demands recognition, and language must be mustered by the viewer to make sense of it; whereas design, there was an antagonistic motion towards moments where the viewer is allowed to become familiar, to not require language to explain. I started seeing similarities in architecture too: buildings you would return to, every day, and in the possibility

of domesticities, familiarities that become languages that repeat themselves so that you don’t have to build the world from start every day. A form of manifested intelligence, outsourced memory. I think that’s why, in a very fundamental sense, starting the magazines and starting a nightclub were very primal expressions of what I was starting to think design could be; not a strategy geared towards the possibility of objects or cultural forms but rather a strategy that can preserve phenomenal languages, and a strategy that can preserve states of possibility, that you can return to without undue risk or danger – like the way Church was designed to emancipate you from the danger of getting close to God. Same thing with Frankie Knuckles or Larry Levan at the Warehouse or the Garage. I wanted to make platforms where people could explore ideas that they could be confident supported them.

The idea about safe space in which to create is an interesting one.

Architecture’s really the point where anarchism or libertarianism meets its match.

That’s to say, without the colosseum, the gladiator match is simply murder. Look at transgressive art from the 60s, 70s: often it is only made possible by the white cube.

A man or woman strips down, wails, shouts in the street it’s madness, it’s despair, it’s disorder; but on stage it’s a phrase…

Formal limits justify the action.

Those who venerate the act alone fail to understand the significance of the pedestal. Maybe that’s why I’m not comfortable sometimes being praised for some of the more showy or spectacular work that more easily catches the eye. Socially, and in terms of time, I think real cultural value comes from things that can speak and iterate again and again, and be used by others, like buildings and formats. I think that’s why I felt this enormous, total sense of relief when I found type design.

Because typography is the designed container of words’ meaning?

No, I would say that it’s closer to the stage upon which the word acts. The word can perform as it sees fit, but you can create a multitude of theatres that the word can perform in. I think designing typefaces for me is a very pure, true statement of what I want design to be, in that it’s creating this architecture that others can use to express their meaning, and yet it recognises that there’s always a context to expression: it’s not pretending to emancipate people from that.

For more information visit davidrudnick.org

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‘If we weren’t young, youth would have killed us’; US photography network FastForWord Collective have merged to interrogate this most intangible state of being

You There is nothing linear about youth.

It’s a chaotic mess of who we actually are and who we’re trying to be. The lines between our own experience and the experiences of those caught on camera are often blurred. Would we be happy with an experience if we couldn’t put a filter on it and post it? If nobody knows that something happened, does it matter? Did it ever even really happen?

Whether something ever actually happened is a question this generation asks itself increasingly frequently. Late nights and narcotics – natural, chemical and social – are expanding our minds and warping our realities. Social media and the internet do nothing to help us pin down this coveted time. A memory is snapped and shared,

remaining relevant for hardly any time at all before the noise of the internet washes it away. Cue FastForWord Collective presenting YOUTH. In the summer of 2012, Carolina Cavalli, Tatiana De Pahlen, Sodia De Pahlen and Elizabeth Giplin were living in an apartment in Berlin. More than just a living space, it became what the accommodations of so many creatives tend to become. Elizabeth describes it as “an airport lounge, a gallery, a common space”. A place where youth can be realised, expressed and captured.

The establishment of FastForWord Collective was organic and YOUTH is their first project. YOUTH is a book of photography by 16 artists who are each embodying how Generation Y is living, or should be living, or wants to be living.

Issue 43 | crackmagazine.net

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opposed to a myriad of digital platforms.

How can an image from last month or last year be classic? These images are classic because they are not necessarily a genre of images you have never seen before.

You probably have. Only the ones you are familiar with were taken in the 60s and 70s – a time when youth was meant for roaming.

The images featured in YOUTH mainly follow the trend of freedom. The evasion of responsibility and ability to travel and enjoy a no-strings lifestyle is a yearning that lurks in most of us. Freedom through the road trips taken by Yougo Jeberg that span across America. An old campervan trundles across state highways as friends each more beautiful than his or her predecessor jump naked from sand dunes and laugh and fall and remind us that they are free. Free from the constraints of society. Free from worry. Free to come and go as they please.

Free to love and be loved. But maybe most importantly, they are free to be confused and free to discover. Climbing the career ladder leaves no room for self discovery, except for maybe a well structured gap year.

Words: Hannah Mullen

uth When asked, Tatiana describes each of the contributors as having nothing in common other than a “general aesthetic” and the fact they’re all internet babies, but even then each artist is all consumingly existing in their “own universe”. Up until now, their images have been virgin. Untouched by human hands yet devoured by eyes on screens. Now the works of Coco Young, Coco Captain, Coni Dietrich, Florian Ferrier Grusch, Matt Fry, Phillipe Gerlach, Yougo Gerberg, Elena Kholkina, Alex Khudokon, Magdelena Pardo, Elle Perez, Tatjana Radicevic, Colin Michael Simmons, Sophie Van Der Perre, Logan White and Ryan Young have been immortalised between the covers of a book. It could be your youth looking out at you, or at least the one you think you’re having.

When we reached out to Tatiana about YOUTH, we were invited to its New York launch which doubled up as an exhibition of YOUTH contributor Coco Young’s work. On the walls were her photographs.

Again there were open roads and neon lights and a definite sense of journey as opposed to destination – the journey of youth and discovery. When Coco began to speak about her work it was a stream of consciousness. Not that her work isn’t structured, but rather than being helmed by Before the images have even been seen, the tagline draws you in. “If we weren’t young, youth would have killed us”. It puts into a simple sentence the narcissism and perceived indestructibility of being twenty-something and the nostalgia you might already be feeling for the present.

You’re desperate to make the most of youth, to capture it and remember it. Before any given moment of it has even fully passed, you miss it, crave its return with unnecessary intensity. It’s an infectious emotion, and the transience of the internet is rubbing off on others as well. Finally somebody, or a few somebodies, have taken classic images of today’s youth – which, by the way, is not hostage to an age bracket – and made it concrete. It’s about time there was something tangible recording these fast fading moments as

Issue 43 | crackmagazine.net

logic it is driven by feeling and experience.

She spoke of the likeness between “getting fucked up and dreaming”, the suspended state of haze that Generation Y exists in.

We are constantly straddling borders. Our productivity is born out of procrastination and a burning need to express and experiment and remember. Coco’s work is a log of her own experience. The scrawlings of 5am epiphanies and self deprecation are embroidered on canvases that hang between her photographs. Embroidered to remind the spectator that these words are feelings. “I wanted them to be multi dimensional,” Coco explained, “they’re not flat.” A statement that embodies the YOUTH manifesto; the least 2D generation one might imagine.

These images are diary entries, a representation of lives being lived today.

We’re caught in a haze of new technology and it is both a blessing and a curse. We may be capturing more memories but we’re not remembering them. YOUTH is an attempt to put down on paper the golden age of Generation Y. A reminder from past us to future us – look how much fun we had.

For more information about YOUTH visit fastforword.co

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Created exclusively for CRACK by Eliot Wyatt | www.eliotwyatt.co.uk

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46 10,000 hours put in, they say, makes you a master. 10,000 hours of cello practice, 10,000 hours of sushi making, or 10,000 hours of art.

Consciously or not, the title for Marina Abramović’s latest durational, immersive performance piece at the Serpentine alludes to this concept. 512 Hours is, according to the press bumf, the defining performance of Abramović’s career to date; the culmination of what must be at least 10,000 hours’ practice; time spent refining her performance, bringing her to a point of (what shouldn’t be termed as ease, but for ease) ease with her audience who here become props, foil and collaborator.

Abramović’s five-decade career has seen her performances mellow – physical intensity pared down, emotional intensity amped up. With early work comparable to the macho stunts of Chris Burden (he who was shot, crawled over broken glass, was crucified on a car, blah, blah, blah) her line of inquiry gradually refocused. As Senior Curator of the Serpentine Sophie O’Brien puts it in her foreword to the exhibition catalogue, Abramović has “turn[ed] from self containment to complete engagement.”

The sparse, meditative ritual of Marina Abramovic’s 512 Hours

In terms of audience engagement, this work segues nicely from her last major durational performance, where for three months she occupied a table where the public were invited to sit, one by one, and sustain eyecontact with her for an indeterminate period of time. In 512 Hours the directness of the performance is diffused across 160-odd members of the public who simultaneously occupy the space, through her assistants, and performance collaborator Lynsey Peisinger. These usher the audience around, sometimes like nurses, exam invigilators, alternative therapists or shepherds.

Our experience of it went thus: a 15 minute wait (if you want to dodge those queues get down there in the early afternoon on a weekday), a slightly awkward glass of water in the locker room from Ewan McGregor flick The Island, and then immersion.

That day (it changes), the main room seemed like an exam hall; a grid of tables laid out, with a gallery assistant prowling the edges. On each table a pile of dry basmati rice, a pile of black beans, a pencil and a piece of paper. The tables were occupied with people engaging in tasks so Sisyphean it was almost unbearably anxious. To the right of this exam room, was a ward. Camp beds were filled with people, tucked in, noise-excluding headphones on. These people were being tended to

by Abramović herself, their expressions ranging from tranquil to haunted. This room, too, was jarring. All arranged the public seemed to be undergoing some sort of psychic nursing, treatment for an illness they didn’t know they had.

The third room seemed to go a stage further than the camp-bed ward. If that was A&E, this was recovery; members of the public convalesced on chairs before the windows facing a view of drawn blinds,

ears for the most part covered, eyes largely shut. Around the place, gallery assistants, Abramović and Peisinger led audience members to and fro, like children, by the hand.

Not every member of the public was participating, mind. Many were there politely, observing, waiting to be assigned a duty. Walking around, taking this in as an exhibition seemed a bit off – it felt frowned upon, or facetious. The artist seemed to have co-opted the entrenched gallery conventions for her own purposes; the hush that pervades the white cube seemed to become the hush that accompanies a religious service.

Clearly, what is taking place in 512 Hours is a ritual, of sorts; but one divorced totally from the tradition of [a] church. This is a secular service, but the congregation are no less spiritual for that. The perceived quality of the art, also, seems to depend on one’s predisposition to like it, in the same way as communion is only more than symbolism if it’s already been decided to be.

And so it comes, in a way, back to the 10,000 hours; Marina Abramović has clearly been up to something for the last 40-odd years. The time put into her practice does translate, but not necessarily into more than the weight of authority. In this exhibition she becomes, as fully as any artist has, shaman, priest, sufi. The net effect depends on propensity for belief, or trust. Counting grains of rice is not something worth bothering with, yet the audience does because she tells them to.

Whether it feels like a kind of brainwashing, psychic self-murder, or an opportunity to transcend the everyday through repetitive action hinges on a commitment to participation, and an internal decision made; do you find this sort of thing poignant, spiritual and emancipating, or a bit creepy?

Engaging fully means relinquishing, for the duration of your visit, agency as an audience. To view the show, for there to be a show to view, requires deference to and respect for the artist as something other than artist. To accept Abramović as the kind of guide she’s trying to be is not for everyone. The reward, potentially, is a moment of stillness, meditation, peace. A real, Rothko style, ‘art-experience’.

Marina Abramović’s 512 Hours runs at Serpentine Gallery, London until 25 August

Words: Augustin Macellari

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Dungarees | Dickies at BLITZ T-shirt | TSV Warzen at BLITZ Shoes | Timberland

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Aesthetic: Mr. Ties Photography | Dexter Lander Styling | Dean Davies Assistant Stylist | Hannah Coorg Words | Anna Tehabsim

Homopatik is a Berlin party quickly becoming infamous for its hedonistic attitude and devoted crowd. Mr. Ties isn’t listed on the line-up – neither are any other DJs for that matter – because Francesco De Nittis doesn’t believe in the idolisation of the DJ, the expectation, or the restriction that comes with outlining particular ideas with certainty. Declaring himself ‘over politics’ and ‘over gender’, although Homopatik’s queer origins inform much of the goings on there, it’s essentially a party for everyone.

Despite being against the increasing prominence of the DJ-as-icon dynamic, the Italian-born, Istanbulbased selector has gained quite the following for his fiercely individualistic skills on the decks. Anyone who’s seen him play speaks passionately of the charisma in his sets, eulogising the unique experience as if they had witnessed something sacred.

Through visceral twists and turns and layers of unexpected rhythms, Nittis is at ease mercilessly working three decks and often mixing without headphones. As he tells us, it’s his ceaseless quest for music that informs his adventurous approach to DJing: “I guess my veritable love and devotion to records are almost tangible in my mixing.”

Our intimate shoot with De Nittis is informed by rugged comfort, and the scuffed normality of digitised sexuality. In our interview, he speaks passionately about his penchant for workwear, the ideology of Homopatik, his “Homopatikers”, and their compulsion to abandon prejudice.

Vest | NBA at BLITZ Shorts | Vidur Shoes | Christopher Shannon for Kickers

Issue 43 | crackmagazine.net

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Describe your personal style.

Casual, punk, functional, arty.

Who are some of your biggest style inspirations?

The ‘worker’ look – workers from construction site or workers from fields – is definitely the one I’ve always loved the most out of any style or culture.

Where does your passion for workwear stem from?

I’ve always looked at the workers in any city I’ve been in. In Berlin, for instance, you have a lot of work in progress constantly, and some of the workers have a kind of flair that gives some sense of style to their outfits. I like the garments to be functional, resistant and timeless.

What inspired your move from Berlin to Istanbul?

I visited Istanbul two years ago and had a total crush for the town. It’s the perfect balance between history and modernity and the energy is incredible; all your senses are awake and amplified. It’s a great place to feed your inspiration.

Although it’s just revolting to see that political interests are poisoning the lives of the people, often in a very violent way.

Your approach to DJing has attracted considerable attention over the past few years. How would you describe your DJing style?

I guess my veritable love and devotion to records are almost tangible in my mixing. The mixing also depends on the nature of the gig; the approach can be more experimental and ‘dramatic’ if I can build a story for 12 hours. Then I can offer a wide range of my taste and also transpose the vibe I get off the people travelling with me into it.

Boiler Suit | Alex Bottenberg

Issue 43 | crackmagazine.net

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Sweatshirt | New Love Club

Jumper | Pic de Nore Shorts | Trine Lindegaard

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What’s so special about the crowd at Homopatik?

The Homopatik crowd is unique as the party is unique too. If you come to the party it’s probably something that stands out on the first look; Homopatikers are listeners, dancers, and they come because they feel free to be whoever they are in total safety and I think they enjoy the fact that they are fully ‘actors’ of the party.

We don’t just put them in front of the DJs and make the DJs stand above them like some kind of God-like figure. They are with them.

We do it all together. The crowd also gambles on the party as we have no line-up announcement and I think they like to come to the party and just find out what the vibe is like once they’re there.

You’ve previously spoken out against binary gender definitions and their harmful effects on society. Why do you think we should reframe these ideas of sexuality?

I just think it’s archaic and we should move forward to embrace a new vision of what humanity should be. Over the history of the world, politically or socially, this binary type has shown more lack of efficiency and put to the side so many people who feel left alone with no keys to blossom as just a person. I do think it’s wrong and we should have conscience that the human race needs to evaluate and quit the old and poor gender type in order to live together, looking at each other not for what sex we represent but just for our heart and brain.

Jumper | Pic de Nore

Issue 43 | crackmagazine.net

54 How does Homopatik react to the idea of traditional gender roles? If ‘the personal is political’, do you see the culture at Homopatik as a form of activism?

Homopatik is over ‘gender’; if you come to the party you should be aware of this. I believe we participate in making this idea and this way of seeing things concrete for anyone who experiences it without putting any pressure on the minds of everyone.

You’ve spoken out against bad sound in clubs, how does a bad soundsystem restrict your DJing and how do you think we can tackle the issue?

It’s really important for me to make it clear to people, and most of all promoters, that the sound is obviously tightly linked to the art of DJing; as a sound engineer myself the quality of the sound is non-negotiable and if I put all my heart and soul into my mixing I expect to be provided the best tools to make it work; in the end it is just very logical.

Educating is the key, I guess, but when you are being requested for a gig you find out sometimes that people are not even able to answer and understand your needs, which is a real problem. My manager, for instance, is aware of what I want and need to play in the best conditions and that there is no flexibility on it; touring teaches you a lot about this as well. A lot of people interact for a gig and all those people need to listen to each other carefully in order to offer a real quality set.

Boiler Suit | Alex Bottenberg

Mr. Ties appears at the Warehouse Project Opening Party, Store Street Warehouse, Manchester, 27 September

Issue 43 | crackmagazine.net

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Jumper - Pic de Nore Shorts - Vidur

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It’s been some time since they first caused a ruckus onstage, and garage punk delinquents the Black Lips still refuse to clean up their act

Words: Davy Reed Photography: Nacho G Riaza

We’re sat with all four members of the Black Lips in the lobby of their Barcelona hotel.

They’ve just arrived from France, dumped their bags in their rooms and they’re now figuring out how they’re going to kill the next 10 hours before they arrive onstage at 3am for their set. “We’ve actually done that time slot before, it was awesome”, their husky-voiced guitarist and singer Cole Alexander enthuses. “I think they see us as the ‘party band’, that’s why they wanna put us on so late.”

He’s probably right. It’s not hard to understand why the Primavera Sound organisers have attached that label to the Atlanta garage-punk outfit. You’ve probably heard some of the stories over the years: puking, instigating stage invasions, making out with each other, exposing themselves and urinating into their own mouths during shows and having to abandon a tour of India due to genuine fears of arrest for such antics, being banned from ATP and branded ‘arseholes’ by founder Barry Hogan after robbing a chalet (they were later ‘pardoned’ once their friends

Deerhunter pulled some strings), the legend of Cole setting off a military smoke grenade in their manager’s LA club, and so on. In recent years the band’s rebellious spirit has also inspired them to do something very cool indeed: connect with fans in the Middle East by touring across countries with ‘unstable’ political climates such as Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq.

But alongside all the hype-generating stunts, there’s another reason Black Lips are able to demolish a crowd’s inhibitions.

Since putting out their first 7” in 2002, they’ve consistently fed the eternal demand for deliciously raw, direct and dirty guitar music with a sincere intensity that few other bands can match. This year they released their seventh studio album, Underneath The Rainbow, around half of which was produced by the Black Keys’ Patrick Carney. And no matter how much budget is scraped together for their recording sessions (2011’s Arabia Mountain was produced by Mark Ronson), Black Lips’ music

57 always remains satisfyingly rough. “Usually [producers] are pretty into us keeping our sound and not messing with it too much, and so far no one’s ever come in and tried to overhaul that”, co-frontman and bassist Jared Swilley assures us.

And while the sensationalism surrounding Black Lips seems to have cooled a touch, an air of notoriety comes naturally to them.

The video for Underneath The Rainbow’s lead track Boys In The Wood was directed by the Sidney and Thurman Sewell, aka the social norm-defying ATL Twins. If you didn’t manage to see these guys star in Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers alongside James Franco, Selena Gomez and Gucci Mane last year, here’s the deal: they’re identical twins who came from nothing and – now famous and fitted with gold grills – they’re living out a hedonistic deviation of the American Dream. The part that seems to shock even the most liberal-minded is the fact that they always share everything – including their many, many sexual partners.

“Oh yeah we’re good buddies”, Cole says of the twins with audible affection, “we actually asked them to do it [direct the video], I think they did a good job.” For the record, the video depicts meth smoking, bloody violence and – yes – someone urinating in another person’s face. “We hang out with them pretty frequently in Atlanta, it’s a small town” Jared adds, “they like to party and stay up late, but they’re just real nice guys.

Y’know, I guess people think they’re all weird and crazy and stuff, but they’re pretty down to earth. And they’re really good at skateboarding too”.

“They’re really not that different to us, they just want to party like everyone else”, Cole continues, “I mean they’re pretty open about their sexuality”. “They’re real open with it” Jared chips in, “like, you go to their house and there’s only one bed. But we’re living in modern times, Facebook has like 25 or 30 different settings for your sexual preferences now”, he shrugs. “Yeah, like

hitting a girl from the back is nothing revolutionary now, there’s no need to be puritanical about it”, argues Cole.

It’s at this point that we realise that the interview has, you could argue, gone a little off-track. But before it’s time to go, we’ve got to ask one more thing: what series of occurrences led to them covering T. Rex’s Bang A Gong (Get It On) with Boy George during a recent trip to Philadelphia? “We were playing the same radio show, it was totally random”, Jared explains. “He actually sent us a message a few days ago wanting to know if we wanted to do something in the studio...” “He said he would have sex with all of us on Twitter”, Cole interrupts. It feels like we didn’t quite get that scoop. But then again, it wouldn’t be a Black Lips story if it wasn’t smothered with a little dirt.

Underneath the Rainbow is out now via Vice Records. Catch Black Lips at End Of The Road Festival, Salisbury, 29-31 August

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Tour tales: Speedy Ortiz seize any chance to get in the van

Words: Davy Reed & Billy Black Photography: Jake Applebee

Meeting the bands you’re into can sometimes suck. The endless cycle of departure gates, strangers’ sofas and service station breakfasts is enough to potentially dampen the spirits of even the most inspired individuals. So no matter how hard you try to impress these guys with your knowledge of those early Bandcamp demos, often there’s no way of shaking them out of their bleary-eyed stupor.

But the same can’t be said for Massachussetts four-piece Speedy Ortiz, whose only complaint seems to be that tonight’s line-up involves a clash between Deafheaven and Slint, despite the fact that they don’t appear to have had a proper break in months. Inexplicably, they’re looking fresh and healthy too. So what’s the secret? “Say no to drugs”, their bassist Darl advises. “Well except coffee”, says guitarist and singer Sadie. “Except for good drugs” Darl pipes up; “hang on,” he says, “Isn’t this interview for Crack?” We nod.

“Well yeah, say yes to Crack too. Always.

Crack is back. Crack’s not whack.”

Since evolving from Sadie’s summer camp laptop project to a fleshed-out group, Speedy Ortiz have become a thrillingly agile noise pop unit who can fluctuate from restrained, palm-muted power chords to raucous grunge riffage at the flick of a

wrist. Their momentum, which has been steadily increasing since last year’s Major Arcana album, recently earned them a support slot with former Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus and his band The Jicks.

Something of a dream come true we guess, considering Sadie once fronted an all-female Pavement tribute band called Babement. “I guess Steve had heard about it, but he wasn’t telling me so I wouldn’t be embarrassed, which was nice of him. But on the second last night of the tour he was like ‘You wanna do a Babement reunion tomorrow?’. So I got to sing In The Mouth of A Desert. The Jicks played back up, Steve sang the ‘oo-oo-oo-oo-ooh’ bit, it was pretty special.”

While the band would never deny their love for certain indie rock legends, they’re getting a little tired of all the incessant 90s comparisons that smother their reviews.

And according to Sadie, Malkmus was able to offer some decent advice. “Steve said we’re just a continuation of a certain type of rock. He also said that when Pavement started, they were always compared to The Fall and Swell Maps. Now no one talks about Pavement being like a Fall rip-off band, but that was the press they got in the first few years.”

There’s a new face in Speedy Ortiz. Their

guitarist Matt Robidoux was recently replaced by Devin McKnight, a switchup which their drummer Mike believes has given the songs a new lease of life.

“Now Devin’s joined the band, a lot of our songs are sounding different, which is cool because they were getting a little tiring.

Maybe that’s why bands get so exhausted, because they’re sick of playing the same 20 songs they put out a million times.” And maybe that’s why Mark E. Smith keeps firing his band members, we suggest.

“We actually saw The Fall last night, it was like thee best shit I’ve seen”, Sadie enthuses. “[Mark E Smith] is a hysterical stage presence. He was unplugging amps and like, turning guitars up completely full.

Someone hit him on the head with a beer and he didn’t even react. He looks like the coolest monster I’ve ever seen.

“I don’t want to play guitar any more”, she declares, “so I can walk around unplugging people's amps and shit”. But if Sadie Dupuis is really going take inspiration from Smith, then she’s going to struggle to find grounds for fair dismissal, because the Speedy Ortiz line-up she’s got behind her right now is looking as solid as a rock.

The Real Hair EP is out now via Carpark.

Catch Speedy Ortiz at Green Man, Glanusk, Wales, 14-17 August

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Once a part-time pursuit, La Sera has become Katy Goodman’s primary vehicle for documenting the trials/triumphs of love/life. Who’d think a simple plastic chair could floor them?

Words: Davy Reed Photography: Jake Applebee

“We wanted to write songs that are high energy. And there’s nothing quite as high energy as a ‘fuck you’ song”, Katy Goodman explains, referring to the new found ferocity in La Sera’s otherwise tender indie pop. Since forming the project as a part-time solo pursuit alongside her main band – the now sadly defunct Vivian Girls – Goodman has primarily used La Sera as a platform for a particular artform: the break up song.

After a cloud of feedback settles, La Sera’s latest album Hour of the Dawn kicks in with a minor key, punkish tune that’s aimed at Goodman’s douchebag ex. “How about you have another drink so that you can pass out in the backseat of my car?”, she snarls sarcastically in the opening verse.

“I think this was the record where I made myself feel angry, angrier than I’ve ever got before about things that had taken place years prior”, she says. “The other albums were a bit like ‘Ohhhh, we broke up, things are sad... but I’ll but be OK’. But this one is more like ‘Fuck you, aaarrrgh!’, she growls with a gnarly expression and her middle fingers raised. “It’s about new beginnings and starting over. It’s like, if the other albums were about breaking up, then this one is like ‘Now we’re moving on, the next stage begins’.”

But it’s not like the album is all about malicious texts, awkward encounters and clothes thrown out onto the street. “There are songs like ‘I’m stoked, life rules!’”, Goodman insists, ‘“so the whole spectrum of emotion on this album is a little wilder”.

The album’s title-track also channels a sense of bittersweet nostalgia (“summer time was the time of my life, now it’s the

hour of the dawn”, goes the chorus) that’s presumably inspired by memories of growing up Ridgewood, New Jersey – a town which also homed members of Real Estate, Titus Andronicus and her former Vivian Girl bandmates.

enthusiastically bounding over and plunging onto the flimsy chair, smashing it and tumbling to the floor.

Speaking of the Vivian Girls, how was the vibe at those farewell shows earlier this year? “It [splitting up] was a decision we made over like two years. So it was good, celebratory but, y’know, kinda sad.” From 2007 onwards, the Vivian Girls were seen as a primary force in the wave of late-00s lo-fi indie rock. But despite their absence, their spirit lives on in vintage shops across the land, and Goodman assures us that the girls are still buds. “I mean, Cassie lives in New York and I live in LA. But Ali lives in LA so I see her all the time. So yeah, we’re still all friends. Who knows, at some point maybe we’ll all play together again.”

Everyones looks around awkwardly, unsure of whether to laugh or offer him a hand.

In contrast to Vivian Girls’ distortionsmothered guitars and breezy harmonies, La Sera’s music has always sparkled with clear, bright melody. Hour of the Dawn bears influences of 80s new wave acts like The Pretenders, The Cars and Blondie, and there’s a healthy number of guitar solos thrown in for good measure. It’s a sound that Goodman credits to La Sera’s guitarist Todd Wisenbaker. “Yeah, Todd’s a shredder, he helped a lot in terms of the writing and production. And since we selfproduced this album ... oh wait, there he is!”. Sure enough, Todd himself walks past the press area, and Goodman beckons him over.

Hour of the Dawn is out now via Hardly Art

“Todd, you just came up in the interview”, she tells him. “Oh cool” he says,

“AAAARRGGH SHIT... ARRGGH MOTHERFUCKER”, he groans.

“My ... butt”, he croaks, still lying spreadeagled on the ground, mangled chair beside him.

But, eventually, Todd picks himself up. He’ll be fine, he assures us, their next set at Primavera is an unplugged show – he can play sitting down if needs be. There’s a lot of people out in Barcelona tonight who’d like to feel the charm of Katy Goodman’s songs. And so for La Sera, the show must go on.

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Primavera Sound 2014

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Live

PRIMAVERA SOUND Barcelona | 28-31 May A Primavera Sound wristband grants you entry to a beachside festival site which hosts one of the greatest line-ups of the year, gigs across Barcelona’s best venues and the opportunity to make friends with people who know more about Pere Ubu than Pendulum. So if you’re reading this, it’s likely that you either attend the festival every year, you’ve been before and you regret not doing it this year, or you’ve never been but you’ve always been tempted.

We’d like to wholeheartedly confirm the hype. It’s worth making this an annual ritual, you missed out if you didn’t make it this year and if you’ve never been, you should give next year some serious consideration.

Here’s a run down of the highlights of Crack’s Primavera 2014.

Primavera’s rep for generating and satisfying large-scale demand for what would otherwise be peripheral music presents itself on Wednesday night, when our attempts to see Shellac are stifled by the sight of an enormous crowd spilling out of the doors of the BARTS venue and onto the street. And even though the long-suffering staff are trying to tell the throng that capacity is hit, everyone seems prepared to wait in the rain for a chance of getting inside. Fortunately, the Apollo is situated directly opposite, and we slip in in time to see The Brian Jonestown Massacre deliver an immaculate set in the packed, red-lit venue, populated with a healthy proportion of under 25s who seem to know every lyric. The number of crowd members who own a copy of Dig is made clear by the chaosencouraging jeers when Anton Newcombe orders the band to stop mid-song. No punch-ups ensue, however, and the band resume their set of anthemic, trend-defying psych-rock.

Thankfully the sun is back out by Thursday, and while the appeal of Real Estate’s music is that it makes you feel nostalgic for a suburban summer you probably never had, it turns out their jangly indie pop works pretty fucking well when it’s played on an outdoor stage by the beach on Barcelona too. But our sense of tranquility is soon blown away by the immense power of the longstanding Dutch punk experimentalists and threequarter-length short wearers The Ex. Tying themselves up in knots of polyrhythmic madness before bursting into berserk walls of noise with a level of precision which proves a telepathic union, there are simply no words in the English language hyperbolic enough to describe how awesome these guys are live.

Once The Ex’s rally cry Theme From Konono signifies sundown, we check out Brooklyn outfit Antibalas, whose 70s-inspired afrobeat has the crowd at the Ray-Ban Stage going nuts. As we’ll learn during veteran soulman Charles Bradley and self-proclaimed ‘International Mother Fucker’ Seun Kuti’s sets later during the festival, it’s actually this stage which seems to generate the best party atmosphere on the whole site. It also turns out that having the colossal Heineken and Sony stages facing each is pretty handy; all we have to do after chugging lager and grunting with approval to Queens Of the Stone Age’s set is turn 180 degrees and suddenly we’re all hugging and pouring our hearts out during Arcade Fire’s euphoric rendition of Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels).

Primavera’s nocturnal schedule lends itself well to the danceorientated artists on the bill, and our old friend Julio Bashmore sees the crowd for his 3:00-5:30am DJ set gradually build up before he lets us drink in his greenroom until the hotels begin serving up breakfast.

The staff at our accommodation firmly decline to hand over the roof terrace keys for our impromptu pool party and, in hindsight, we’d like to thank them for it.

Every festival line-up has its main ‘talking point’, and the expectations of FKA twigs’ show on Friday night are so high that there’s a palpable sense of nervous excitement in the crowd before she arrives on stage. After two EPs, a series of jaw-dropping music videos and just a handful of live performances, twigs has caused a seismic wave in the music industry. They’re not just hoping for a unique artist, they’re hoping for a new female icon who will redefine beauty and creatively break into uncharted territory. And, you know what? The performance is perfect. Backed by a three piece band, the music is sultry, sparse and intense, while twigs’ dancing and siren-like voice magnetises the crowd’s attention so much that it momentarily feels like the rest of the planet has disappeared. ‘I was so nervous, I was like ‘what if no one turns up?’’, she claims, and the crowd can’t help but laugh.

It feels like there’s always someone waiting around to criticise Pixies’ post-reformation career. OK, so the new album isn’t exactly Surfer Rosa, no one can replace Kim Deal and they’re obviously making it rain. But if you don’t recognise the perverse beauty of thousands of people screaming lyrics about dissected eyeballs and cheering with joy while Joey Santiago plays a feedbackdrenched solo with a guitar stand on a warm night in Spain, then you’ve got a heart of fucking stone and we’re probably not going to be mates. Another act who shun the notion that band reformations are little more than soulless cash-ins is Slint, who perform songs from their recently reissued, understated 1991 masterpiece Spiderland to a deservedly huge audience. Sat down and sage-like for most of the set, they don’t play a note out of place, and the crowd bond over the songs they’ve probably all listened to alone during anxiety-induced spells of insomnia. And although dancing is the last thing we feel like doing after their set, Darkside’s big drops, when followed by the duo’s beautifully orchestrated exercises in restraint, have the power to cause mass hysteria, and it’s impossible to resist.

“Crack-a-lacking, like snap, crackle, popping your ammo off”, Earl Sweatshirt spits on the Pitchfork stage on Saturday with a welcomed aggression unlike the sunken-eyed slur of his album.

He’s clearly having fun, as if he’s overcome the self-deprecation to become a confident, crowdrousing performer, all that initial sensationalism – the mysterious absence and the subsequent ‘Free Earl’ campaign, the controversystirring lyricism and the thinkpieces obsessing over it – feels distantly in the past. Speaking of lyrically gifted but vertically-challenged rappers, Kendrick Lamar’s show over at the Heineken stage is a blast. 99.967% of the time, hip-hop backing bands are just too cheesy to handle, but actually, these guys give the wellworn good kid material more heft and flexibility, and his guitarist’s decision to wear a Barcelona FC shirt is a nice touch too.

And after we witness a performance from Blood Orange that’s so passionate, fun and immaculate sounding that we regret ever grumbling about some of his songs sounding like George Michael, we select the eternally epic soundscapes of Mogwai to soundtrack the finale of our week.

As the final chords melt, it’s time to head back to the hotel before a 7am flight. And during the 90 minutes we spend doing something that vaguely resembles sleep, it’s painful to think about all the music we missed out on at the site. Such is the insanely appealing, relentless nature of Primavera Sound.

Primavera Sound 2014

63 Words: Davy Reed Photography: Jake Applebee

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B E C O M E YO U R I N N E R C H A R AC T E R A N D COMPLETELY IMMERSE YOURSELF IN ONE OFT H E M O S T S P E C TAC U L A R S H OW S O N E A R T H !

THE CAT EMPIRE * NOFX * JIMMY CLIFF * THE WAILERS

THE SKATALITES * TINARIWEN * SHAGGY * BELLOWHEAD RAGGASONIC * LADY SAW * AFRO CELT SOUND SYSTEM

PLAYING FOR CHANGE * BABYLON CIRCUS * ALABAMA 3 UK ALLSTARS (WORLD DEBUT) FEAT. CONGO NATTY & FRIENDS

RUSSKAJA * TIPPER * EATS EVERYTHING * BODDIKA * SPECIAL REQUEST CHRONIXX & ZINC FENCE REDEMPTION * WARRIOR KING * DUB FX EASY STAR ALL STARS * HAYSEED DIXIE * CHAS N DAVE * HOT 8 BRASS BAND

THE TOASTERS * VOODOO GLOW SKULLS * DEMENTED ARE GO * MAD SIN TAPE FIVE * [DUNKLEBUNT] & THE SECRET SWING SOCIETY * THE SKINTS MUNGO’S HIFI * JOHNNY FLYNN & THE SUSSEX WIT * ELIZA CARTHY THE BAD SHEPHERDS * TREACHEROUS ORCHESTRA * SONIC BOOM SIX MOLOTOV JUKEBOX * FRIEND WITHIN * DUB PHIZIX & STRATEGY * MS DYNAMITE KRY WOLF * STANTON WARRIORS * BLACK SUN EMPIRE * DAWN PENN SAM LEE & FRIENDS * JOE DRISCOLL & SEKOU KOUYATE * DIZRAELI & THE SMALL GODS APHRODITE * ROCKWELL * PROXY * AUDIO * OPTIV & BTK * MELÉ & SLICK DON CLEAR SOUL FORCES * SON OF DAVE * THE DREADNOUGHTS * ALGORHYTHMIK * BABYHEAD HACKNEY COLLIERY BAND * MORNING GLORY * MACKA B & THE ROOTS RAGGA BAND ROBBO RANX W * STYLO G + SISTER NANCY * HOLLIE COOK * BRUSHY ONE STRING RUSSKAJA * WOOHOO REVUE * THE DESTROYERS * LA SELVA SUR * ALTERN8 * RAY KEITH SLIPMATT & BILLY BUNTER * 2 BAD MICE * SLAMBOREE SOUNDSYSTEM T H O U S A N D S O F P E R F O R M E R S , 8 I N T E R AC T I V E D I S T R I C T S , 4 0 S TAG E S A N D OV E R 2 K M O F W I N D I N G S T R E E T S E T C R E AT E T H E WO R L D ’ S BIGGEST POP-UP CITY

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Live

PLISSKËN Athens, Greece 6-7 June

JAMES LAVELLE’S MELTDOWN Southbank Centre, London 18-22 June DJ Harvey’s show was always going to be the highlight of Mo’Wax main man James Lavelle’s turn at throwing a Meltdown: disco’s prodigal son returning to London for an intimate set in a gorgeous environment.

And the only star at a DJ Harvey set is the man behind the decks; the charisma he sweats out in interviews has an ability to transmit itself into his performances. Watching him – and watching the crowd react to him and in turn watching him react to the crowd’s reactions – is a genuine privilige: you aren’t just watching a man play disco records, you’re watching a master at work, a DJ capable of turning the myth of club-transcendence into a sticky, blissful reality. DJ Harvey is in another league. He’s the greatest.

Following Wednesday night’s screening of arty sci-fi thriller Under The Skin – which was accompanied by a 21 – piece string orchestra performing Mica Levi’s abstract, detuned and unnerving soundtrack live - Meltdown’s theme of merging music and film continued in the Barbican with ‘In Dreams’, a concert based around the best moments of David Lynch’s greatest works. Mysteries of Love and an astounding Blue Velvet, both of the same-titled Lynch benchmark, are a warm welcome to the acoustic guitar-led Conor O’Brien of Villagers. He later returns to re-enact one of the film’s most powerful scenes, where Roy Orbison’s ballad In Dreams humanises Dennis Hopper’s monstrous Frank Booth for but a few precious seconds. In Heaven, the surreal ode of the Lady In The Radiator in Eraserhead, is sung by Mick Harvey, whose gravelly voice is a major asset of this show. Pauline Haas’ solo harp performance of Laura Palmer’s Theme is one of many Twin Peaksrelated highlights.

Lavelle’s Meltdown climaxes with Jeff Mills; possibly the most esoteric, most contentious, most rebellious act of this season. The Trip, as Mills indicates, is an audiovisual show in which he converges improvised electronic sketches with more than 60 clips from sci-fi movies from the 1930s to the 1970s live on stage. It’s the type of grandiose visionary experience the Detroit techno luminary has been perfecting for over a decade.

Double-exposed images of distressed faces are synched with stuttered synth-sweeps and off-kilter clicks. At times, it’s euphoric. At other times, it’s harsh and dispiriting. He had no intention of appealling to academic techno gurners, but to probe the artistic capacity of modern electronic music, which is everything James Lavelle could have asked for. ! Josh Baines, James Balmont, Tom Watson & Gareth Thomas N Victor Frankowski

GOTTWOOD FESTIVAL Carregewlyd Estate, Wales 19-22 June Based at the idyllic Carregewlyd Estate on the north west coast of Wales, Gottwood is now in its fifth year and is arguably morphing into one of the most beloved boutique dance festivals that the UK has to offer.

On the Friday night, the Wigflex stage in the woods stole the show, with their amphitheatre of hay bales under colourfully-lit trees providing the perfect canopy for Spam Chop’s tech-house before his final record When the Going Is Smooth & Good by William Onyeabor received a particularly appreciative response from the assembled throng.

It’s worth mentioning that one of the defining factors of Gottwood as a festival is the atmosphere during the daytime, mostly due to the beauty of the estate itself. The perfect weather throughout the weekend certainly helped, especially when all that most could manage was a gentle dance to the early sounds of disco and funk next to the lake or laying back down and soaking in the weather with friends.

But when the skies darkened on Saturday night, Gottwood dropped its chilled daytime demeanour and brought a full scale assault on the senses, and many of the punters wouldn’t look out of place in Boomtown or Burning Man. Gerd Janson clocked in with a typically excellent set, with the duel Futureboogie rush of PBR Streetgang and Crazy P Soundsystem, and Back 2 Basics’ Tristan Da Cunha, Denney and Ralph Lawson bringing rave reviews from revellers who had managed to catch their sets. Margaret Dygas had our full attention for two hours, with frankly one of the best sets of the weekend, until the otherwise chilled out security killed the music at 4:01am - one of the only disappointments of our Gottwood experience.

We’re thrilled to hear from the organisers that they’ve decided they have reached their ideal capacity, and won’t be expanding further to pocket some coin. If only more festivals and parties shared the mentality of Gottwood.

!+N

Kane Rich

WE LOVE GREEN Parc De Bagatelle, Paris 31 June + 1 May The ‘eco-friendly’ tag can be a somewhat exhausted, and misused, paradigm in the festival world.

We’ve all seen the occasional dance mat powered by a bloke on a push bike, or paid over the odds for a rain poncho made of old forks.

But every time we made our way through the technicolor gates of Parc de Bagatelle, we couldn’t help but notice the attention to detail.

Organiser Emmanuel de Buretel showed us round his additive-free wonderland and got us all familiar with the grounds for this scenic celebration of food, music, art and nature.

Our Saturday started with an acoustic set from Cat Power. Having experienced a turbulent few years in the industry, she performed with a refreshing carelessness and liberty. After deciding that he was having too much fun in Ibiza, Numbers bossman Jackmaster parred us off horribly, leaving Pedro Winter and Riton to pick up the pieces. The duo handled proceedings till the sun went down, but Crack dipped out slightly early to catch the main stage headline offering from SBTRKT, who dragged Wildfire out for all it’s worth and rounded off day one in true super-producer fashion.

On the second and final night, it was time to come to a conclusion about Jungle. Like many others, we were trying to reserve judgement, but due to the disco hit-makers’unfailing, incredible tightness, we reckon it’s OK to believe the hype. Co-headliner Lorde then bounded on stage for Glory and Gore and almost stole the entire weekend. Channeling the bewitched performance style of Kate Bush with the stark creative approach of Majical Cloudz, it was a truly remarkable pop show.

As we headed back to the car, we noticed the festival’s approach to keeping clean was both carefully controlled but totally in the hands of the punter. Their line-up was curated on the basis of who’d had a good few years rather than who’s prepared to reunite if the price is right (see: Hyde Park, 5 July). And that’s what made the weekend so fascinating – We Love Green is an event that is still exploring possibilities, something far too many festivals fail to do.

! Duncan Harrison N Thomas Lavelle

It’s not often you have something akin to an epiphany in an Athenian car park, but on a balmy Greek night, the sun having just set over the ever present Parthenon, stood with our new friends George and Giannias, all of us clutching quadruple vodka lemonades, chests puffed with bass from the nearby club room, it happened.

In some ways Plisskën is a selfcontained centre of pleasure. The site is easily traversable after your fifth shot of dirt-track-distributed ouzo, the predominately local crowd are happy to dole out high fives, handshakes, hugs and cigarettes, there’s foosball, air hockey and portions of the robustly named Meat And Bread.

And happily for us, Plisskën had booked a solid bill over the two days too. A brief taste of Djuma Soundsystem’s big-room-techhouse hyped us up before No Age drew us back out into the night.

No Age, in case you’re wondering, still sound like No Age, so three songs was enough. Ducking back into the club was a wise choice as recent Crack cover star Fatima Al Qadiri absolutely smashed it with a headphoneless blend of dancehall, UKG, bashment, techno, house and hip-hop. The British contingent may have found themselves unironically throwing gun fingers at the hordes of bemused, unmoving Greeks (Athenians, as a general rule, don’t dance) but the less said about that the better.

Refreshed and rejuvenated after a pleasant stroll through outer Athens, Saturday started with Dirty Beaches’ snarling Suicide-esque howl: the fuzz and roughness of their material was a good partner for a knackered PA. We later check out Cooly G, who played minimal techno, UK Funky, house and footwork. Easily the highlight of the weekend and a prime reminder that, actually, DJs are usually more entertaining than bands when you’ve had a few and you’re in a foreign country. She was followed immediately by Shackleton who played a far harder, far more direct set than any of us would have predicted.

And with a heavy heart, we left just before 6am, hoping we might return to both Athens and Plisskën, this time next year.

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! Josh Baines Thanasis Karatzas

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GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL Worthy Farm, Pilton | 25 - 29 June The habitual hot air pre-Glastonbury chat was this year propelled by none other than Iron Maiden’s insanely wealthy front man Bruce Dickinson, who argued that Glastonbury had become ‘the most bourgeois place on the planet’, concluding that the great unwashed would head to metal festival Sonisphere instead.

Other developments that may have irked the middle-class loathing Dickinson – who is also a pilot, a fencer and has previously described himself as a ‘conservative’ – may have included mobile phone company EE making the site 4G compatible, the increase in yurts and VIP camping areas, or the money spent on improving the toilets. Or maybe it was because his band, who surely rank as one of the most gallingly uncool of all time, have never been asked to play, and Metallica have?

So where could you find the great unwashed at 4am? They were everywhere, lining the hills, the alleys and the ditches of Glastonbury; there were thousands of them. No one's making you watch Ellie Goulding or The 1975.

Our musical highlights came thick and fast. As opening forays into the festival proper go, you could have done far worse than drag yourself through the drizzle to West Holts to witness Jonny Greenwood muster looping magic from his Les Paul for Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, before introducing the London Sinfonietta to segue into Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians, gently undulating and filling the damp air, lulling us through our first cider of the day.

After making the initial error to go and see Blondie instead of The War On Drugs (they attracted the biggest Other Stage crowd we’ve ever seen, and in the process forced us back as far as the Socks stand), our mid-morning search for astral enlightenment drew us back over to West Holts, where the singular interplanetary jazz of Sun Ra Arkestra was sparking into life, drenched in sunlight. Celebrating the centenary of the man himself’s birth as he looked on benevolently

from a projection, as well as 90 years of the master saxophonist Marshall Allen who beamed proudly on the stage, it was an indefinable, frankly remarkable journey through brass wigouts, sheer astronomical ambition and unplaceable, unknowable energies. Incredible.

So on to Arcade Fire to steal the weekend. The enormous scale of the show, from dancers, to canons, to the giant reflecting suit man, to the whole sense of euphoria that accompanied, cemented a monumental victory for arguably the greatest band of this generation.

Ghosts of previous performances were banished from the moment the opening four tracks of Reflektor, Flashbulb Eyes, Rebellion (Lies) and Neighbourhood #2 (Power Out) have us reaching for our nearest mate.

By the time we made it to see some music on the Saturday, our eyes were completely transfixed

by Lana Del Rey’s film noir cinemascapes, sonically amongst the most engaging spectacles of the weekend. Criticised in some quarters for showing a lack of interest, Del Rey’s marauding of the stage with an opaque look in her eyes showed all the hallmarks of a stunning femme fatale.

It quickly became clear that this year The Glade was the place to go in search of a curveball, and Saturday offered a hell of a run.

YBA icon Dinos Chapman blurred into DJ Spinn & Taso with their entire Chicago footwork troupe in tow, before Machinedrum Live and the ever-reliable Jon Hopkins kept standards sky high.

We can’t remember seeing Manic Street Preachers on such thrilling form. Latest effort Futurology is their best record since Everything Must Go and what’s more, it’s been 20 years since the seminal The Holy Bible, which means renditions of the searing nihilism of PCP and the achingly poignant Die In The Summertime. With barely a breath between, the reborn and rejuvenated Pixies deliver a sublime deluge of greatest hits. Now, whose idea was it to put Jake Bugg on next? Let us at ‘em.

2014 has been good to Mogwai, and headlining The Park was an

ideal setting for their divine swells and crepuscular hum. With the crowd extending into the distance, the sonic ritual came heavy on the heavily-effected electronics of Rave Tapes, heavy on the way down, heavy on the way up, and filling the heavy night air with a heavy sense of unadulterated triumph.

Arguably the most talked-about, inarguably the most well-attended set of the weekend was Dame Dolly Parton’s Sunday afternoon sermon.

After setting up camp way, way back, further back than the tree where everyone meets, the entire spectacle became a joyous memory being made. Her vocals were pitchperfect (we’ve since heard rumours she mimed; we call that sacrilege), and even the new, totally alien tracks were hugely enjoyable. The classics, meanwhile – Islands In The Stream, Jolene, 9 to 5 – were, without fail, utterly phenomenal. We fell in love.

A foray to The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s set was rewarding, but by this point focus was firmly on the Massive Attack finale. A much needed re-jigging of Teardrop gave the track new lease of life, while Angel retained all its raw power. So on to Unfinished Sympathy to close the weekend, and melt everything in sight with its devestating beauty.

A national treasure of alternative British music.

But perhaps the final words should go to the chap at the Stone Circle who brought a trolly with his Traktor system at 5am Monday morning, or the people who built Shangrila, or the thousands of people who organise the incredulously smooth logistics that underpin the entire thing. Rabbit holes and acid trips aside, it’s the en masse amalgamation of people that provides the largest factor in Glastonbury’s addictive wanderlust.

For those who want a lesser festival experience, there are a number of other options available, but for all the so-called ‘bourgeois’ who attended, returning will be of paramount concern next year.

Words: Thomas Frost Photography: Ed Walsh, Luke Taylor

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FIELD DAY Victoria Park, London | 7 + 8 June For a fresh pair of eyes, one of the first things to hit you on eagerly entering Victoria Park for the now institutionalised Field Day is the scale. Growing year-on-year for eight of them, it's the capital’s foremost showcase of bold, contemporary, alternative music.

With eight stages including the outdoor focal point of the Eat Your Own Ears stage, this year the expansion stepped up a notch with the addition of a second day built around pretty much the biggest headliner out there.

But for us, what makes today different to previous Field Days is that this time Crack’s been granted a stage; and a pretty fucking amazing stage at that; a representation of both the festival as a whole, and of the music we love. It’s A Big Deal. So on entering the Field, we hotfoot over to witness these-days-local Thurston Moore jangling and slackering all godlike next to our logo, looking around and pinching each other. At the Shacklewell Arms stage, Jaakko Eino Kalevi serenades us with smoke-hazed jams, before SOHN offers a moving, deeply personal performance, somewhat at odds with the sun-soaked atmosphere outside.

On the expansive plains of the Eat Your Own Ears stage, Blood Orange presents his highly stylised and enticingly loved-up nu-romantic indie-funk jams, and once you’re in, it’s nigh on impossible to drag your eyes from. Skepta’s surprise appearance is a total highlight, snapping Dev out of his ecstatic homecoming blur for a moment, he tempers the washed-out dreamscapes and brings some real heavy vibe to proceedings.

It’s with a great deal of pleasure that we can declare Neneh Cherry’s set on the Crack stage a total triumph. Clearly galvanised by the overwhelmingly positive response to her recent album Blank Project, she dances frenetically, making frequent trips to the barrier to hype an adoring crowd. The RA tent is heaving for Todd Terje but negotiation your way through it is worth the effort. Delorean Dynamite is dragged out for an age, loungey number Svenk Sås starts out like a supermarket jingle then becomes a big room belter, and while we’ve heard countless DJs drop Inspector Norse over the last couple of years, today, that key change still feels very, very special.

There’s time for brief recuperation, before we bolt to the Crack Stage's headliner. DJ Skywalker bounds onstage as the imposing opening peals of Waka Flocka Flame’s Hard in da Paint burst from the speakers.

It’s a foolproof hyping method, and by the time Danny Brown strides onstage it’s safe to say fever pitch has been attained.

As the beer settles on our hair and clothes, and probably DB’s

Ramones shirt too, the crowd seethes, struggling to remain upright amongst the gunfingers. He barrels through an Old-heavy set, conducting the chaos to the chorus of Purity Ring collab 25 Bucks, but it’s on XXX cuts like Lie4 and I Will that things go fully ballistic. The pitched vocal of Dip drops, everyone leaves the ground at the same time.

It’s over in a beautiful blur.

The rest of our night is spent at Oval Space, where a run of Gerd Janson, an outstanding Daniel Avery, and Jackmaster soundtrack a deeply involving night into morning, the turns of which can be witnessed through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows.

69 Sunday is treated as a day of recuperation, the crowd beginning to slowly unfurl, like pouring water on a sponge, gathering and spreading across the green as The Horrors take the stage.

Opening with Chasing Shadow, Faris Badwan’s 100 mile stare is palpable behind oversized sunglasses, but it’s guitarist Joshua Hayward who is quickly becoming the group’s centrepoint.

His amp rewiring and equipment customisation has come to define the band’s gushing sonic aesthetic, and the uniformity of his bleary guitar is the outstanding feature here. An eerily muted crowd still struggle to muster too much enthusiasm for a Luminous-heavy setlist, but older tracks like Sea Within a Sea and Moving Further Away summon a more enamoured response.

As expected, Future Islands are more rapturously received, performing to a bulging Shacklewell Arms stage. Their addictive melodrama is punctuated by vocalist Samuel T. Herring’s drunken ramblings and flailing torso: the simple flow of a sincere glare and fist to the chest into a gyrating booty rotation is a microcosm of the dynamic – the sincerity, the caring, is constantly underpinned by a pervasive sense of carefree fun. And the songs are there too, particularly cuts from latest album Singles which are custom-designed to work in this type of celebratory setting.

Words: Geraint Davies Steven Dores, Billy Black Photography: Carolina Faruolo

And so, climactically, it’s on to the Pixies. Some will tell you they’re the greatest band ever, and they blow away even the highest expectations with a 27-song set including quite a few of the finest indie rock songs ever written.

Set against an austere, mirrored background, the foursome immediately sound supreme; Santiago’s skewed guitar lines cut through the balmy Sunday night air, Black Francis segueing from tuneful sighs to abrasive hollers. Paz fits snugly at stage left, a steady hand with her own distinguished and dignified sense of flair.

Opening with Wave of Mutilation, it’s an onslaught of titanic songs without a word between – U-Mass tumbles into the unmistakable opening bars of Debaser, greeted by piercing screams and, soon, an ubiquitous clenched fist and howl of “Chien! Andalusia…” By the peerless, staggered solo of Hey, the excitement begins to give way to a realisation of the significance of what Field Day have achieved here. Goosebumps are rife, eyes are wiped.

The new material holds up soundly; a jagged Bagboy stands tall and proud amongst Bone Machine, Mr Grieves and the ever-stunning Velouria. And God bless Here Comes Your Man: a bouncing, swaying triumph which has the thousands yelling along to monosyllables and twisting and turning on the worn grass, before David Lovering milks his moment in the spotlight for all it's worth in a blissfully silly La La Love You. Then, as darkness falls, Monkey Gone To Heaven, Caribou and a closing Where Is My Mind? are pure, peerless oddball euphoria.

The band stay on stage for an age waving and (finally) smiling, before departing one-by-one as heroes.

Continuously expanding, continuously nailing it, the highest compliment which can be paid to Field Day is that they’ve maintained the perfect balance of their own creation: huge and intimate; hands-on and untouchable; social occasion and cutting-edge musical showcase. It remains pretty much peerless, and you just know they’ve still got their eyes set skywards.

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Products

NEW CASQUETTE A.P.C. £69 oipolloi.com It’s ok to write things backwards if they only made arbitrary sense in the first place. Hence, you should not feel embarrassed about wearing this lovely A.P.C. cap with ‘C.P.A.’ across its frontage. Why not? For the exact same reason that ‘poop’ upside down spells ‘boob’.

DUNGAREES P.A.M. x Carhartt WIP £200 carhartt-wip.com You only need to peep at our shoot with Mr.Ties in this issue to know that dungarees are rad, and most certainly not just for kids. They’re also not just for men like Mr Ties, as this snappy denim collab from the effervescent geniuses that are P.A.M. and the international masters of beige Carhartt prove.

ARIZONA BIRKO-FLOR Birkenstock £76 birkenstock.co.uk Are Birkenstocks cool now? Some jurys are still out, but the ones that are in are already wearing them feeling very comfortable indeed.

Plus now they’re available in white, to match the socks you’re inevitably going to wear them with.

BUDDHA4 FM3 £14.99 bleep.com Now on their 4th edition of these cult noise boxes, Chinese synth wizards FM3 have offset the ambient loopscapes contained within by wrapping them in some vividly bright day-glo. Don’t let that put you off (why would it?!) as they’ve been praised by the most knowledgeable of those that know, namely the music Gods at The Wire magazine and Mr David Byrne himself.

COLLECTOR’S EDITION Stuart Tolley £29.95 the-collectors-edition.com A large, beautifully designed book about large, beautifully designed books was always going to be up our street. We lie; there’s so much more than books covered here. It’s a document of the best in contemporary graphic design and packaging, with a focus on limitededition, large-format pieces of the highest quality. If that doesn’t grab you, the cover's got shiny foil on it.

PRETTY FUCKING NIGH COLLECTION Donuts £30 / £35 donutsthestore.co.uk

URBAN OUTFITTERS COMPETITION Two heads are better than one, but that doesn’t always apply when brands get together. Luckily, Herschel and Champion are both sick in their own right, which makes this rucksack from their recent collaborative capsule collection, available exclusively at Urban Outfitters, double-sick. We like them so much we want to give you one for free, along with £150 to spend at urbanoutfitters.com. Just answer the question below for a chance to win. Triple-sick.

Which of the following is a popular slang term for tracksuit bottoms? a) Trackies b) Crackies c) Jamie Jonesies Send your answers with the subject “UO” to competitions@crackmagazine.net

Donuts is dead! Long live Donuts!

The physical shop may be no more, but Donuts lives on in the form of a sharp new website, updated stock and (finally!) their own garms.

And as you’d expect from two dudes who’ve lived the streetwear life inside and out, they’re dope.

Referencing their own birth, death and rebirth over a concise twopiece drop, it’s a solid (re)start for a company yet to put a foot wrong.

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14 WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Celestite Artemisia

EAUX Plastics ATP Recordings ANUSHKA Broken Circuit Brownswood Recordings

Eaux have a difficult-to-define quality that acts like The Field or Fuck Buttons possess in spades. It’s something to do with the pace, and the measured intensity of the transmissions they create. It’s something to do with an ability to change gear mid-song, and move from pulsing ambience to a punishing plateau.

And, crucially, it’s about the almost addictive essence of the simple, sweeping melodies that gradually burrow into your audio memory bank until you’re fidgeting to hear them again. Plastics is characterised by the spooky, sensual, but disaffected vocals of Sian Ahern (not unlike the duelling voices in School of Seven Bells), set against a sombre electronic aesthetic.

The gothic arpeggios of Movers and Shakers evoke Zomby or Illumsphere’s darker material, while layered eruptions of sound and texture are a regular feature. Pressure Points nails the industrial disco chug of Factory Floor, The Light Falls Through Itself is hypnotic and genuinely haunting, and the powerful, ethereal and majestic Peace Makes Plenty is perhaps the crowning moment: gently psychedelic in a muted, dark kind of way. The juxtaposition of the hymnal – almost operatic – vocals with the industrial rhythms and melodies could have been overkill: a Trent Reznor/Enya side-project no-one wanted to hear.

But in fact the dynamic is perfect.

Turn it up loud, throw on a hooded cloak and let the darkness in.

It wasn’t until everything felt so right on Ultraviolence that the missteps of 2012’s Born To Die became so clear. Lana Del Rey’s debut was a high-definition spectacular, where heartache was stretched out of shape for the sake of a deluxe edition and the nuances of her dreamt up persona were hard to find because ASAP Rocky was in the music video. By working so hard on trying to sound abandoned, Del Rey ended up sounding like half the industry was rooting for her.

No such mistakes are made on Ultraviolence. The anguished falsetto on the chorus of Money Power Glory arrives with no armour. The lovesick wooziness of The Other Woman tells the story of the defeated rather than the saga of the fight.

On Born To Die, desolation was the subject matter, but on Ultraviolence it is the method. This record is stark, isolated and at times unnervingly frozen. No track embodies this palpable hopelessness quite like Pretty When You Cry as Del Rey sings “I’ll wait for you babe / It’s all I do babe”, swinging her voice and hanging onto the luxurious production by a thread. Loneliness sounds good when you’re fighting against it, but it sounds totally devastating when you decide to let it stay.

Broken Circuit, the debut album from Brighton-based duo Anushka, plays out like the course of a turbulent affair with an incredibly-hot-butcapricious siren. It’s a frustrating business, but not without its ravishing moments. Song titles like Never Can Decide, Down in Flames and This Time hint pretty obviously – like an slow wink, scarlet lippie and a cleavage-revealing top – at the heady theme of this record: fractured romance. Taken in isolation, elements of the record are magical, like honied memories of water-high marks in love, or perhaps steamy lust. The first single from the album, jazz-inflected dance-floor killer Never Can Decide, is dreamily beautiful, for instance. And Atom Bombs should be a summer anthem with its soulfulness and flirty nod to drum-and-bass. As a whole, however, Broken Circuit is extremely cloying. While Victoria Port, the singer-songwriter (Max Wheeler deals with the production) undoubtedly has a wonderful voice, there’s just something lacking in her lyrics that leaves you feeling like you’ve just read a teenager’s bad poetry.

After letting the slightly childish lyrics slide, you may find yourself wanting to consciously uncouple, before going back for a dirty thrill and you won’t even be that disappointed. Still, here’s hoping for a more mature follow-up eh?

! Adam Corner

! Duncan Harrison

! Oliver Pickup

LANA DEL REY Ultraviolence Polydor

JUNGLE Jungle XL Recordings Since the once-anonymous collective Jungle released the firework of funk that was 2013’s The Heat EP, their bubbling presence across the UK gig scene and arsenal of infectious anthems has sent the hype machine into overdrive, raising the expectations for this debut album to outrageously high levels. But from feeding that flamboyant, tracksuit-clad illusion during those formative stages, the question still lingers: is the talent of Jungle a case of smoke and mirrors?

The Heat, is a scintillating introduction, and as the already-familiar single Busy Earnin’ kicks in, the sky-high falsettos and oh-so-victorious trumpets make way for a beaming pop-filtered chorus that could plausibly be plastered over every celebratory BBC Sports package for the rest of the summer season. By choosing to keep these releases on the record, for better or worse, they are cemented as staples of the Jungle blueprint.

Last year’s Drops is irrefutably their finest work, with its shaded, rich-ascoffee textures and “I’ve been lovin’ you too long” croons emulsifying into a sensual listen. Smoking Pixels takes on a twist of Western whistles, and at first it seems like it could take an eccentric turn, but when the two-minute instrumental section arrives, it just ends up sounding downright peculiar.

Tracks like Julia and Lucky I Got What I Want feel like breathers between the hits, and if you’re not paying attention, they might just fail to land.

Otherwise, urgency isn’t an issue. Primary album teaser Time is razor-sharp, and Crumbler attests they can maintain the groove even when they’ve turned the gas down. Overall, Jungle will melt over your auditory senses, and its highlights make for a bold package that will permit the producers to continue surfing the wave of hype for a little while yet. ! Leah Connolly

Wolves in The Throne Room have never really been a black metal band, yet somehow they’ve found themselves being stalked by that all too ambiguous tag. Celestite is probably their most genre-dismissive work to date; they’ve eschewed drums and vocals in favour of rumbling, low frequency dark ambience and grim, humming pastoral folk, all created on synthesisers and downtuned guitars to provide five lengthy tracks of theatrical meandering.

The newly condensed line-up of sibling duo Aaron and Nathan Weaver bears one obvious comparison; Stephen O’Malley’s drone behemoth Sunn O))). There’s something brighter about Celestite though, sharing more perhaps with O’Malley’s rare moments of ecstasy like Alice than his darker more recognisable material from Black One et al. Crystalline synth pads and pulsing guitar drones provide an atmospheric depth that resonates and actually rings truer to the brothers’ frequently chanted mantra (to create “meditative, non aggressive” music) than anything they have released previously.

Celestite isn’t a complete departure for the pair though, they have retained the brooding intensity that has always been a part of their sound and extended it to new heights of almost unbearably stirring tension. Horns ring out over Ever Turning Towards The Sun, evoking a military march before Celestite Mirror builds and swirls; landscapes appear and waves crash. Initiation at Neudeg Alm even opens with some none-too-restrained arpeggiator usage. OK, yeah, sonically it probably is a massive departure.

The album as a whole though? Well it’s not welcoming and it’s certainly not like anything we’ve heard from WITTR before but it’s intense and arcane, nearly New Age; an absorbing exercise in pensive synth led ambience. ! Billy Black

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14 09 LUKE ABBOTT Wysing Forest Border Community

HONEYBLOOD Honeyblood FatCat

Woman’s Hour have been bothering the blogosphere for some time now, and press speculation is often more of a hindrance than a help. Not all bands can live up to the hype; but thankfully, the debut from Woman’s Hour rises to the occasion with a delicate, forlorn, but nonetheless resilient, aptitude. Conversations is a record that balances melodrama with subtlety; a penchant for infectious 80s synth-pop weighing up with glacial, gloomy textures. Rather than this making for any sort of messiness or incohesiveness, it is as unpredictably uplifting as it is enduringly sad. Our Love Has No Rhythm is a dark, pulsating lament on making mistakes in a relationship and forgiving them, making for a far better track than the closing number of a doomed-disco-romance musical that the title suggests.

Elsewhere, the titular track is comparatively upbeat pop; pondering further the nature of relationships; the habitual joint-weirdness and the in-jokes. The whole record, in fact, is one long ponder, but it is executed with such lyrical honesty and musical grace that it is in no way flimsy or self-indulgent. A fine record.

Are the 1990s the ‘new’ 1980s? If the noughties wore an anginainducing t-shirt and drainpipe jeans in perpetual homage to the decade of decadence, 2014 is looking at a flannel-shirted slacker in the mirror.

Fortunately, while Honeyblood are openly in admiration of the Seattle sound, they’re not beholden to it.

Sure, the Glaswegian girls point to the Breeders and PJ Harvey as influences but they play a bright and noisy brand of Americana that sounds closer to early Best Coast or an up-tempo Real Estate. Just as well, too, since a lot of revivalist outfits spend so long obsessing over some retro aesthetic that they forget to write any actual songs.

No such concerns here as the twosome – sans bass player – serve up enough hook-laden angst to get even the most jaded Generation X-er to look up from his battered old Doc Martens and take notice.

New single Super Rat captures the essence of the record perfectly; scuzzy mid-tempo riffs paired with a sweet & sour roar. Singer and guitarist Stina Marie Claire deploys her wide-range huskiness to excellent effect, navigating from painful remembrance on Braid Burn Valley to contemptuous excoriation on All Dragged Up via everything in between. The catchy, bittersweet Joey is arguably the standout on an album with half a dozen contenders; a wistful, lulling chorus ratcheting up to an unexpectedly bombastic finish. As for Honeyblood, they’re just getting started.

The first fruits from Taylor McFerrin’s debut album Early Riser fell from the tree way back in 2012.

If you gathered any of them at the time (such as the hypnotic Place in my Heart, featuring the otherworldly voice of Ryat), you’ve probably spent the last 18 months waiting patiently to find out whether the rest of the album would live up to the early promise. Brilliantly, it does. The gentle, warm, opener Postpartum sets the tone: undulating electronic soul, beats that are somehow blunted and razor-sharp, and Taylor McFerrin’s life-affirming vocal style, part Thundercat wail, part Dwele drawl. Like audio origami, McFerrin crafts three-dimensional soul out of flat-pack components, and makes it sound effortless. Highlights are Florasia, which whispers along the back of your spine, and the aforementioned Place in my Heart, a song with a subtle majesty that no amount of repeated listens can wear away. FlyLo has had a run of outstanding releases on Brainfeeder recently (this coming hot on the heels of Teebs’ Estara). The only downside? These other cats combine jazz aesthetics, soulful melodies, electronic textures and killer hooks in a way that might even surpass the maestro himself.

It’s easy to approach the music of performing arts school alumni with scepticism; it can come across as contrived and overly studied, lacking the grit and romance that we want music to be steeped in; a collection of songs composed for a project years before in collaboration with their tutor Felicity. The Kooks were a perfect example of this; they never lived down their BIMM degrees, the dross that they churned out subsequently doing them little in the way of favours. LIPA graduate Eugene McGuinness seems to have got the best of both worlds: he isn’t well-known enough to be scorned, and his musical education has done exactly what it should’ve: he knows how to write decent songs. This collection, his third, is subdued by comparison to 2012’s The Invitation To The Voyage, instead treading a line that is somewhere between Smashy and Nicey ‘poptastic’ cheese and Nuggets-era garage rock. I Drink Your Milkshake is at first listen a Bay City Rollers smirk-inducer, becoming increasingly infectious and accomplished as time passes, elsewhere Amazing Grace swaggers along with real buoyancy; a perfectly structured post-Merseybeat (if such a genre exists) pop track. An enjoyable listen, and if he’d only stop collaborating with Miles Kane then there’d be no problem.

! Jon Clark

! James F. Thompson

! Adam Corner

! Jon Clark

WOMAN’S HOUR Conversations Secretly Canadian

EUGENE MCGUINNESS Chroma Domino Records TAYLOR MCFERRIN Early Riser Brainfeeder

We really wanted to like this album.

Luke Abbott’s debut – the warm and sparkling Holkham Drones – rightfully received fawning acclaim.

When he followed it up with the streamlined neo-trance stylings of Modern Driveway, it looked very much as if James Holden’s Border Community had a shining new star.

But Wysing Forest is a nebulous and incoherent second album, containing none of the tactile aesthetics of his debut or the icy composure of Modern Driveway. There’s an indefinable knack to avant-garde music (or art of any kind): in the absence of a more convoluted analysis, you know the good shit when you hear it, but the bad stuff is really bad. Sadly, this is not the good shit. The album fidgets into life with the ambient strains of Two Degrees and Amphis. The latter is 12 minutes long, sounds a little bit like a guided tour around a zoo inhabited by robotic reptiles, and is unreasonably reprised for another six minutes at the end of the album.

On Free Migration the groove arrives, and not a minute too soon. As the blurry synths melt into the floor and the high-hats crumble into dust, the album sounds like it's going to finally take off – but it doesn’t.

The Balance of Power has a fuzzy appeal, with a soft-focus drum track and shimmery melodic blanket. But tellingly, the album’s best moments come when the material is reminiscent of Abbot’s previous work.

Mostly though, it’s sub-standard and self-indulgent, a major blip in an otherwise unblemished upwards trajectory.

The curse of the difficult second album is a well-worn cliché we’re all too familiar with, and two years after their debut album boosted their reputation as a fast, thrashy and juvenile party band; DZ Deathrays return with a record which unfortunately brings the aforementioned dilemma to mind.

Previously, the Aussie thrash pop duo’s ferocity has attracted regular comparisons to Death From Above 1979, but Black Rat sees them unafraid to tone down the high-octane aggression slightly, and the songs now often arrive with an overly rich and melodic sensibility. Gina Works At Hearts is a slab of staid and by-the-numbers take on American alt-rock, whilst the muscular riffage and yelped vocals of Reflective Skull isn’t a million miles away from the kind of racket conjured up by Pulled Apart By Horses. While it’d be unfair to dismiss Black Rat as a severe disappointment, it feels like DZ Deathrays are lacking enough fuel to keep the party going.

! Adam Corner

! Nathan Westley

DZ DEATHRAYS Black Rat I OH YOU

Watch_Dogs

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MASTODON Once More ‘Round The Sun Reprise Records

WHITE FENCE For the Recently Found Innocent Drag City Tim Presley might be innocent of a lot, but he’s certainly guilty of being derivative. Throughout the past five years, the California native has been using his White Fence project to channel ‘60s garage and Haight-Ashbury psych-rock via the lo-fi prism of Ariel Pink with varying degrees of success. Presley’s prodigious work rate – six studio albums alone since 2010 – means it’s difficult to make a more detailed assessment of his oeuvre here and in any case probably isn’t necessary; you’ll either like everything

by White Fence or you won’t like any of it. That being said, 2012’s collaborative effort with Ty Segall, Hair, stands out as a step towards mass accessibility, if only for sounding like it was recorded in a slightly roomier toilet cubicle than the rest of Presley’s back catalogue. The journey continues here with For the Recently Found Innocent, this time produced by Segall. Fortunately, Presley’s songwriting stands up to the increased scrutiny of the studio.

If anything, peeling back the layers of fuzz and claustrophobia allows the pop sensibility of songs such as Like That and Actor to make a bigger impact than might have been previously possible. Afraid of What It’s Worth is an excellent piece of swirling jangle-pop and the riffheavy title track is even better, like a modern take on rambunctious Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. For sure, Presley isn’t exactly pushing new frontiers here but, when the past sounds this good, why bother? ! James F. Thompson

With vast, hirsute legs straddling credibility and popularity, Mastodon are by some definitions the most significant metal band of their era.

The beast that went before – the squealing, sludgy brute who kicked the world in the gut with 2002’s Remission – is now long gone; the journey since has been a gradual foray into the tangled, knotted undergrowth of classic prog rock.

They’ve hit stunning heights, but 2011’s The Hunter hinted that the evolution may be hitting expiration point, and while Once More ‘Round The Sun fares better, it’s difficult to shake the feeling.

That said, first single High Road is the one, built around a stop-youin-your-tracks jaw-dropper of a HFM riff and a clean chorus hook which is totally forgivable when it feels this right. Aunt Lisa is mulched up and nasty and wonderfully weird, while freaked-out, chugging closer Diamond In The Witch House descends into the depthiest pits of fiery fucking damnation never to return.

But the studio-pristine vocals of The Motherload will reduce you to a cringing heap, the cocky swagger of the title track feels decidedly safe, and while there’s technical mastery everywhere you look – Brann Dailor continues to carve his niche as the most musical metal drummer in the world, possibly ever – those switches in time signature and voyages to nowhere and beyond too often feel uninspired, even impotent.

It’s not about commerciality.

This is, in almost every instance, dense, difficult and daring music.

Mastodon’s expansion is a journey that should have been taken, executed without compromise. Their body of work is a fine achievement, and one for which they should be applauded: they are, by most definitions, the most significant metal band of their era.

But that doesn’t stop you missing the beast that went before. ! Rich Bitt

THROWING SNOW Mosaic Houndstooth

The concepts behind his albums are what make them complete and concise. With the help of, electronic monoliths Phillipe Zdar and Jean MichelJarre, an orb of inspiration expands into a playful, engaging landscape that’s rich and smooth and free. The phased voice and the strings are thicker than ever and the bongos and beats are subtler and more precise. The Brazilian 'Cuica' drum honks happily around the lush synth stabs of Ambiance Rio before the mood calms. As the night falls, slow burn Commen Revoir Ourniset levitates slowly upward with sparkling pads before abrupt silence leads into convulsing mutatitions along phrases on a journey to find Ourniset the bear, a figure of French children’s stories. The album is French spoken entirely and, undiminished, the Godly baritone is solely an instrument; another aspect of the mystery. Moods and instruments come and go like characters as the album harmlessly tinkers along its cinematic fairytale concourse. By being quarantined in the mind of Tellier and apart from real Brazil, an album is born that leaps alive with vibrancy and a clarity that only exists in the world of immaculate phenomenal forms.

With Annabel Dream Reader, Brighton’s surf doom dons The Wytches have crafted an enticingly ominous debut LP. The dark psychedelia hinted at in the title manifests itself in waves of reverb, strained vocals and doom metal riffs. And by the time the distorted surfer licks kick in, you’ll be hooked by their peculiar concoction.

Tracks like Crying Clown show a band musically and lyrically flirting with sensual moments, yet colouring them black with frustration: “In his car she finally/tampers with his sexuality/scratching at each others’ minds until they’re in the nude”. Vocalist Kristian Bell leaves phrases hanging in the mind as distorted riffs drop in, and his twisted delivery creates a crucial tension that ultimately makes the entire record so engaging. Spend some time with Annabel Dream Reader and you’ll begin to feel like you’re listening to an album with your head submerged in a pool of mercury: it’s heavy; wavy; you’ll feel very high and a little sick.

Ross Tones, the man intent on doing everything – running multiple labels, producing a confounding catalogue of EPs and single releases, remixing the likes of Gold Panda and maintaining a busy schedule of live DJ sets – finally releases the full-length his approach seemed primed for. And it’s an album which also does, well, everything. Those accustomed to Tones’ palatable variations and both tonal and rhythmic range won’t be surprised that Mosaic stuns and satisfies on every level, a piece of music which forms solid forms from a state of flux.

From crackling, delicate opener Avarice through the haunting The Tempest featuring Adda Kaleh and the more dancefloor-applicable Maera, Mosaic delicately treads the line of tension between cultured melody and edgy breaks. Vocal contributors come thick and fast, from Keleh’s aforementioned star turn through Kid A, Py, Knox and Jassy Grez; the guest element is used perhaps more freely than anticipated, and while always a struggle to maintain a tangible linearity, is handled with skill – the fragments brought together to form the Mosaic of the title.

The album welcomes comparisons to artists as disparate as Amon Tobin, Mount Kimbie, Moderat, or even earlier work from The Knife; in fact, what defines the record is its ability to clutch a palpable unity from the jaws of disjointedness.

It’s testament to Throwing Snow’s attention to detail, his creative hyperactivity, and ultimately, his overarching vision.

! Henry Johns

! Aaron Z. Willson

! Claude Barbé-Brown

SÉBASTIEN TELLIER L’Aventura Record Makers A beautiful nude dives into a particular Parisian roof-terrace pool; a splashed droplet settles on the weathered lip of one particularly full-bearded Parisian.

He calmly awakens on his sun lounger. An unfamiliar record is starting up in the corner and the back of an unfamiliar orange-suited man is disappearing along the winding cobbles below into the sunset. Sébastien Tellier’s latest gift, L’Aventura, is the dream of a Brazilian childhood he might have had and a celebration of the purity of naivety, similar in concept to how Gauguin might have painted Hawaii before he actually arrived there. This album tells the story of the beginnings of the mystical, metamorphosing character of Tellier, like a cartoon character in the ‘Brazil’ of children’s books – He’s a conceptual kinda guy, alright?! Anyway, it’s nice to have a multi-dimensional backdrop as such a succinct album patters along. The external narrative that underlies his last two albums makes them unfalsifiable because any nuance in the music can be said to reflect an element of the protagonist or the story behind it. The listener is gently bopped along on a magical tour of one more cul-de-sac of a beautiful, strange brain that demands close attention.

THE WYTCHES Annabel Dream Reader Heavenly Recordings

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Film Der was Ali G Indahouse, Dick and Dom in da Bungalow and now Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie. But does it signal da death of British comedy? Well, as long as Armando Ianucci keeps writing we’re probably safe, but the low art of Carry On-style camp tomfoolery is a genre probably best left in the past, and Brendan O’Carroll has driven that point home, and drove us towards the cinema fire exit. That aside, we’ve generally been left underwhelmed by Movieworld this last month.

The one exception came in the form of the beautiful examination of life and all its wonders Chinese Puzzle, an expert exploration of family, love and hardship. Clint Eastwood’s musical Jersey Boys was a worthy watch but far too cute to impress, macho modern western Cold in July provided us with some almost-exciting action and Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet left us feeling less than enamoured with his latest effort. It’s been one of those months where we’ve found ourselves gawping at trailers and yawning through features, but then again, in a year where we’ve been treated to an abundance of great films we can excuse a month of down-time. Brendan O’Carroll, on the other hand...

COLD IN JULY dir. Jim Mickle Starring: Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard, Don Johnson

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01 JERSEY BOYS dir. Clint Eastwood Starring: Vincent Piazza, John Lloyd Young, Christopher Walken

MRS BROWN’S BOYS D’MOVIE dir. Brendan O’Carroll Starring: Brendan O’Carroll, David Armand, Richard Attlee, Robert Bathurst As if the British collective psyche wasn’t wounded enough by the recent years of social and economic decay, it seems one of our greatest cinematic institutions has just perished too: the overtly camp but inexplicably brilliant Brit-com romp. Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie really is as ignorant as its title suggests. Not only is this piece of tripe depressing in the sense of filmmaking, clogging up the cinema as it has BBC2 for the last couple of years with barely a new trick; it’s far more concerning to see its narrow minded sub texts being warranted a general release at a time where there’s very little British cinema to be invigorated by. Its ideas, the kind that would help justify anyone’s decision to vote UKIP, are precisely the ideas that are closing Britain off to the world. Low, low comedy playing on fears and ignorance of the modern age offers as much to society as 2 Girls, 1 Cup. Even though we feel this film should be deleted, Nineteen Eighty-Four style, purged from the public consciousness, we do also adhere to the notion of free speech (and distancing ourselves from shit to feel superior). But when free speech gets its punctuation right, we might just think again. It’s saddening, depressing even, to see a staple mode of British entertainment gutted and destroyed by variety show drops outs. Horrendous, dangerous filmmaking that only serves to throw an already lost society further into the wilderness.

So, Clint Eastwood has at last directed that longthreatened musical biopic of Frankie Valli’s band The Four Seasons. Adapted from the hugely (like, hugely) successful Broadway musical of the same name, Eastwood’s depiction of the story of The Four Seasons’ rise from ‘the neighbourhood’ remains lovingly loyal to the stage show – to a fault. Endorsed by a local Mafia boss, played by Christopher Walken, Frankie squeaks his way to fame with the other band members Tommy, Bob and Nick. Unsurprisingly, you can expect the film to be crammed to the brim with finger clickin’ renditions of all the hits complete with cringe-inducing smirks and jazz hands. There are also the mid-song monologues which become utterly tiresome and illuminate Eastwood’s testing adherence to the Broadway original. Clint’s typically strong directorial presence does carry the story through despite the goofy tenets forced upon him by the stage. Jersey Boys is a safe, senior film but falls short of the intense character study the biopic format can offer. We only need look back to last year’s Behind the Candelabra for a far more compelling insight into the music scene of the 1950s and 60s. However, Eastwood can now finally say he’s made Jersey Boys, even if it only provides similar levels of enjoyment to a particularly strong episode of the Antiques Roadshow.

There’s a lot of crime in Texas, so it’s always going to be a good bet setting a crime thriller there. Cold in July channels all the grit and bitterness of the contents of a spittoon into a cleverly wound up Western where there’s the law, and then there’s the law. Michael C. Hall (who you may recognise from TV’s Dexter) plays a family man who shoots and kills an unarmed intruder in his home leading to a serious prang of guilt. If this wasn’t enough, the father of the man he killed (Shepard) is seeking revenge and needless to say; he’s a fucking hardman.

But wait, there’s a twist… Cold in July shifts from a domestic terror into a good ole’ fashioned Texan hoe down. Like a trashy novel (like the trashy novel it was based on, in fact), it rolls on into different landscapes and our connection with our main protagonist falls victim to a transformed narrative – though we reconnect for his brutally entertaining final act. There are also enjoyable tweaks of dark humour throughout, but the story’s themes aren’t convincingly conceived and the film’s structure is most likely hampered somewhere in the transition between page and screen – leaving our interest tailing off at the halfway mark. But still, you can’t go wrong with a blood splattering finale.

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CHINESE PUZZLE dir. Cédric Klapisch Starring: Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou, Cécile De France In our experience, romance and reflection are two silver screen themes best left in the capable hands of the French. Klapisch’s Chinese Puzzle successfully negates the uplifting and the naff with this ultramodern transatlantic fable. Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) plays Xavier, a Parisian writer who makes a bold decision to follow his ex-wife and kids as they move to New York.

Full of beautiful French people, charm and honesty, Chinese Puzzle is a warm and compelling life/romance story. The seemingly tried and tested formula of the twists and turns of life is delivered with great love and precision by Klapisch. Duris delivers an extremely strong performance in the lead, bolstered with support from Audrey Tautou and Cécile De France, who help steer the film away from over-sentimental schmaltz and toward genuine emotion. Although Chinese Puzzle stands out in its class it falls short of being entirely original, with an all-too-familiar last minute ‘don’t let her go’ moment as Xavier sprints through blocks. But hey, we all need some smush once in a while and Chinese Puzzle delivered this particular guilty pleasure without having to sacrifice our integrity. Delightful.

05

THE YOUNG AND PRODIGIOUS T.S SPIVET dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet Starring: Kyle Catlett, Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis Our admiration of director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s past work is what prompted us to take a look at his latest film, The Young and Prodigious T.S Spivet. The brandystained bizarro tale of Delicatessen, the whimsically naughty Amelie and then profoundly ... err ... watchable Alien: Resurrection had all gone down warmly with us.

The titiular Master Spivet is a boy genius of around eight years of age who lives on a ranch in Montana with his dysfunctional family. He’s invented the perpetual motion machine (a machine that can power itself through its own movement) and he’s invited to receive a prize at the Smithsonian for which he’ll have to travel across America.

The first thing we noted about T.S Spivet is its parallels to Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, both films sharing a stark European assessment of North America.

As the film winds through the first act, we also become all too aware that Jeunet has been watching and very much enjoying the works of Wes Anderson. The storybook nature of T.S’s journey works well at first, but a serious lack of direction from Jeunet leaves the film in an odd limbo, somewhere between decent kids movie and hackneyed indie comedy. It’s really not as funny as it thinks it is either and the quirky comedic moments leaving us reeling, like watching a drunk uncle remorselessly fumbling at a wedding. When it comes to the inevitable moment of emotional payoff the film stumbles too, only adding to the overall annoyance of this over-fanciful and ultimately forgettable soup.

Words: Tim Oxley Smith

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82 Touching base with...

Denzil Schniffermann

Dear Denzil,

Oh Denzil,

Dear Denz,

I’ve just got my tickets for The Libertines’ reunion gig! I haven’t really been bothered about much new music since Bilo and Biggles tore their love apart, and after years of soppy indie RnB crap, it’ll be good to get stuck into some old fashioned, no-frills rock n roll. Can’t wait to brush the dust off my old red tunic.

How about you Denzil, are you gonna be boarding the Good Ship Albion once again?

I met a boy, what a boy he was. Fair and gentle, his skin was faintly freckled and his hair was fair. He smiled across the Healing Fields, I smiled back.

Across five days we came to know each other spiritually and physically. But come Monday morn the camp where our union had once flowered was naught but a patch of grass, a fairer, greener shade than that which surrounded it.

He had flown, as if on the wind. Where did my fair sweetheart go?

I’m worried that I’m not buff enough. With it being the summer and that, all the rest of the lads keep getting their tops off, and every time I do it they all take the piss. I don’t know how everyone got so massive all of a sudden. Have you got any work out tips?

Josh, 31, Arcadia

A Modern Day Dali

by Josh Baines

He slipped out of the party quietly. His knees hurt. His back hurt. His head hurt.

That turban had been heavier than he’d expected. It’d been a mistake. The whole thing had been a mistake.

Glastonbury had scared him this year. All those people, all that noise, all that rushing and waiting, all that exertion for nothing. One day, we’ll all be forgotten anyway.

He thought about this when he made small talk with Phil.

Danny, 26, Leeds Denzil says: I feel sorry for the young men of your generation, I really do. Back in my playboy heyday all it’d take was the occasional jog around the rugby pitch to keep my gut in check, regardless of how many glasses of Baileys and glace cherries I’d indulged in over the weekend. I’d advise you not to fall to the pressure of your peers, Danny. After all, The Bay City Rollers didn’t need to make their torsos look like a giant pieces of chewed toffee to get the ladies, did they?

Denzil says: To be honest Ken, I resent the mere suggestion. One of my sons got carried away with that nonsense around 2004, and the next thing I knew he’d taken up smoking, made holes in his jeans with a cheese grater and started speaking like a cockney street urchin from the 1800s. But to give those chaps some credit, I watched Pretty Dirty Things’ support slot at a Paul Weller gig once, and I did find myself whistling Bang Bang You’re Dead on the drive home.

Lara, Eternally Pilton

He thought about this while he listlessly fucked another nineteen year old art foundation student he’d met at Matt Horne’s indie disco.

flagellation, “spotted wearing a cape and feather boa in Tesco, quirkily fondling two avocados and a banana.” They hadn’t printed it.

under his eyes. He felt the rumblings of an irreversible paunch. He felt the ever increasing bald patch under his sombrero.

God, how he ached. He sat in the grass hoping he’d be recognised. That was all he had left at this point; the week before he’d used a psuedonym to report himself as spotted in a glossy gossip magazine. “Surreal TV funnyman,” it began - each word another lash of self-

An hour passed and no one had approached him.

Ambling towards a dance tent, occasionally pausing to impersonate exotic animals in ear shot of teenagers – noises that went ignored, that hung in the air – he stopped and took stock of it all. He felt the bags

A tap on his shoulder. A large hand grasping his shoulder. A whisper in his ear.

Denzil says: Bless you Lara. We’ve all gotten a little bit carried away with a festival romance, but what happens within those 12 foot tall metal fences (I know the chap who runs the company who makes them actually, good egg) has to stay within their man-made, reinforced (he really doesn’t spare a penny, they’re top notch) confines. Remember the good times and try to move on. Go back to work. Drink some water.

Pull yourself together, for christ’s sake.

“You’re fucking shit mate.”

Recognition at last.

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The Crack Magazine Crossword Across 01. Brand of refreshing Polish lager (6) 02. Model/TV presenter who always seems to be saying “fierce” (4,5) 04. Defunct TV chart show. Remember that time Nirvana were on? They mimed, didn’t they. That was brilliant.

Wasn’t it? (3,2,3,4) 05. Shape-shifting robotic being (11) 06. Lean towards; look after (4) 08. Fad (5) 09. A form of government where authority exercises absolute power (12) 12. Bike for a couple (6) 13. Paper for wiping (6) 14. Filled pastry case (4) Down 01. A team assembled to GET SHIT DONE (4,5) 03. Conical tent (4) 04. One time member of Ruff Sqwad, now sort of a pop star (6,7) 05. Sweet confectionary treat/special lunchbox (6) 06. Kettledrum (7) 07. Type of flying dinosaur (11) 10. Tuareg rebel musicians (9) 11. Renowned Serbian-American inventor Nicola (5) Solutions to last issue’s crossword: ACROSS: 03. SHAG, 04. STAN-LAUREL, 05. SOMALIA, 09. SARAH-PALIN, 10. SAG, 12. SEMOLINA, 13.

SARTORIAL, 14. SALT-N-PEPA, 15. THE-SILMARILLION DOWN: 01. SHELLAC, 02. SPUNK, 04. STOCKHOLM-SYNDROME, 06. SPLINTER 07. SCUMBAG, 08. SAAG, 10. SPELLING-BEE, 11. SANDPAPER, 12. STOKE

Belle & Sebastian may never have become the beloved indie romanticists we now so revere if it hadn’t been for lead singer Stuart Murdoch’s spell as caretaker of a small Glaswegian church hall. Having been stricken by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Murdoch found solace and healing in spirituality in the mid-90s, and having discovered he quite enjoyed going to church, decided to set up camp there and do a little professional pottering. The time spent with broom in hand, changing fuses and trimming verges happened to coincide with a huge swell in creativity, leading directly to the formation and rise of B&S, and despite giving up the job in 2003, we’ll always think of Murdoch as the fey, fragile indie genius in the paint-splattered overalls.

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OUT NOW ‘Joe Mount has come to define 21st-Century British Pop’ ‘ADDICTIVE DANCE-POP’ THE THE SUNDAY SUNDAY TIMES TIMES

MOJO MOJO

NME

‘Metronomy’s Best LP Yet’ Q MAGAZINE

Q MAGAZINE

NEW ALBUM OUT NOW

9/10

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9/10

LOUD & QUIET

“Want excitement passion and expression in guitar playing. This is it!”

Guitarist

Sebastien Tellier L’AVENTURA New Album - 14th July Vinyl. CD. Digital

“Astonishing” MOJO

“Mind blowing Guitar Action” Clash magazine

NEW ALBUM - OUT NOW - includes live dvd www.rodgab.com

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20 Questions: Sebastien Tellier When we got hold of legendary Parisian lothario and emperor of chic pop Sébastian Tellier, he was in Jamaica. We don’t know why he was in Jamaica. He also asked us to call him at 4:20. Coincidence? We’re not sure on that either. All we know is that he was clearly having ‘a nice time’ when we spoke across a crackling phone line.

Tellier’s latest album L’Aventura is a beautiful, conceptual piece set in a mythical Brazil, a record that further enhances his status as an intelligent, thoughtful musician.

What we really wanted was an insight into a unique mind, a truly idiosyncratic imagination. Instead we decided to ask him a bunch of really silly questions … and not in his native tongue.

What was your favourite cartoon when you were a child?

The Mysterious Cities of Gold. My most beautiful childhood memories are the cartoons I watched.

Who’s your favourite Spice Girl?

The ginger. It was the most attractive, sexually talking.

“ I'm wearing a flower t-shirt and flower shorts. I’m in Jamaica!”

Do you support a football team?

The ugliness of today’s football jerseys stops me from touching this.

What are you wearing?

A flower t-shirt, flower shorts. I’m in Jamaica!

Favourite game?

GTA 5 online, you can create your own races and missions. Please play all the missions from OREO_LA_CLASSE! What’s your worst habit?

GTA 5 online. Too addicted. It’s ridiculous.

What’s the worst hotel you’ve ever stayed in?

Le Marmotte Hotel, the first on the Sexuality Tour. There was shit in my bed. I slept on the floor.

Happy hardcore or jump-up drum ‘n’ bass?

Ouch, not a big fan of these types!

Hmm ... I think I prefer the concept of happy hardcore.

Favourite cereal?

I don’t like that at all.

If you were trying to seduce a potential lover, what music would you play?

Ancora Tu by Lucio Battisti. It will work directly.

Ever taken acid?

I took about 20 acids, it was hard, but I was young. It took me a lot of time to recover a liking for life after that.

Is there a piece of advice you wish you’d given yourself ten years ago?

Stop looking for a goal.

When is the last time you sprinted as fast as you can?

It was in front of a mouse, in my previous apartment.

Have you ever been arrested?

Yes, always almost for nothing, like little weed problems.

Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met?

Jean-Michel Jarre, one of my heroes!

At what age did you lose your virginity?

During the night of my 16th birthday.

Would you go for a pint with Kanye West?

Why not? He seems super crazy and cool!

If you could choose your grandparents, who would you choose?

Kim and Kanye.

Rate these Dannys in order of how much you like them: Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, Danny Dyer.

One and then two, I don’t know this Dyer guy, but I really like the two others.

Describe yourself in 3 words.

Beard, hair, sunglasses.

L’Aventura is released 14 July via Because Music

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MediaSpank

FUCK THE MAN, SAVE THE EMPIRE

YouTube’s launching a premium music service. It makes sense for the world’s biggest streaming site to try and ape the success of subscription offerings, but it’s unfortunate Google’s going to do so by strong-arming independent record labels like Domino and XL into taking shitty deals.

The problem affects musicians Crack loves, from FKA twigs, Julia Holter and How To Dress Well to household names like The xx and Arctic Monkeys.

Yet independent labels are being offered terms that put them on the back foot; sign up to a deal that’s less favourable than that offered to majors or your music will be blocked and you’ll lose the audience altogether.

Music Pass will show content advert free.

YouTube could have chosen to play the songs from labels that didn’t sign-up without the new features, but allowing free streams of tracks while not offering them on the paid service would erode its value. And it still doesn’t feel the need to negotiate contracts the American Association of Independent Music describe as “highly unfavourable, and in many cases, unworkable”.

It threatens to undermine the already low royalty rates paid to musicians. One clause highlighted in analysis of a contract leaked under the headline ‘F*&K It: Here’s the Entire YouTube Contract for Indies…’ says there’s potential for larger labels to take lower rates in exchange for advances.

Indies would then have to accept the lower per-stream rates without benefitting from the upfront payment.

Another clause forces them to include entire back catalogues of music and videos, removing the option to provide exclusivity to other platforms. And, if they don’t take part, blocked songs could appear in usersubmitted content, leaving the company playing whack a track when copyrighted content’s posted by well-intentioned fans, while YouTube continues to make revenue on the unsanctioned posts.

The situation reminds me of an Oatmeal cartoon called The State of the Music Industry.

It charts the evolution from record labels that sat between fans and musicians screaming “Halt! You must pay!” to different generations of online services that are taking over and democratising the gatekeeper role.

The How it is Now panel shows services like YouTube, Spotify and others moving into this position; YouTube was part of the solution, one of various different services which allowed musicians to take advantage of digital distribution.

Instead, effectively forcing companies to accept these terms and conditions is dragging the company backwards. YouTube’s using its market share to become a digital version of the same kind of monopolistic gatekeeper that dictates its terms to the market regardless of what fans and musicians want.

The company has a habit of using its dominance to draw exorbitant profits from copyrighted work, “parasitic” behaviour that led post-mask-reveal Scooby Doo villain Rupert Murdoch to brand it as a “content kleptomaniac”.

Maybe the Dirty Digger was right?

It continues to scan millions of books and list content online without permission, to the outcry of the publishing world. In the end Google won there too, after a pro-

longed lawsuit that redefined the concept of fair use.

It might seem hopeless, but the internet does a great job of providing options. We have the potential to vote with our wallets, with our clicks, to force Google to treat content creators fairly. And the court of public opinion does impact a company that’s trying to maintain its ‘cool’ while taking over the world, as long as we make a fuss.

The final panel in The Oatmeal’s cartoon is titled Where it Needs To Go From Here and shows the musician talking directly to the fan, evoking a kind of Bandcamp-style model. Hopefully we can push the industry further and further towards that point to support the music we love, not take a step backward.

Words: Christopher Goodfellow mediaspank.net @MediaSpank Illustration: Lee Nutland leenutland.com

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