Crack Issue 92

Crack Magazine | Issue 92

An independent platform for contemporary culture

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GIGS Whyte Horses Experience + special guests Badly Drawn Boy, La Roux, members of The Go! Team and more

Moses Sumney + support from ESKA 21 Sep Royal Festival Hall

Concrete Lates x Spiritland: Jane Fitz & Lovefingers 27 Sep Queen Elizabeth Hall

13 Sep Royal Festival Hall

James Holden & The Animal Spirits

Lost Horizons Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins) and Richie Thomas (Dif Juz) + special guests Tim Smith (Midlake), Ghostpoet, Marissa Nadler and more

Masayoshi Fujita 23 Sep Purcell Room

+ support from Free Love Devotional Ceremony 4 Oct Queen Elizabeth Hall

14 Sep Queen Elizabeth Hall

Bill Ryder-Jones + support from Our Girl

Iglooghost

20 Sep Queen Elizabeth Hall

30 Oct Purcell Room

Visit southbankcentre.co.uk for tickets and to sign up for the latest announcements

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BUGGED OUT PRESENTS: TO THE RHYTHM EROL ALKAN [ALL NIGHT LONG]

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GEORGE FITZGERALD [LIVE] + SPECIAL GUESTS

FRI 02 NOV

COMMON GROUND ABOVE & BEYOND OLIVER SMITH SPENCER BROWN & MORE

FRI 02 NOV

JUST JACK HALLOWEEN: RETURN TO THE LASERDOME BEN UFO DJ BONE TAMA SUMO VLADIMIR IVKOVIC BUFIMAN TOM RIO JETHRO DAN WILD

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PATRICK TOPPING [ALL NIGHT LONG]

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CHROMEO

THU 01 NOV

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CHASE & STATUS MY NU LENG W/ DREAD MC RANDALL W/ GQ BROCKIE W/ DET & SKIBADEE BENNY L JUBEI W/ MANTMAST DJ RON SAXON SOUNDSYSTEM SEANI B REGGAE ROAST W/ NATTY RAGE DJ DARK ROOM

SPECIAL REQUEST PREDITAH WOOKIE CHIMPO MADAM X STICKY JAMZ SUPERNOVA + MORE

DARK ROOM

OCTO OCTA DJ VIRGINIA CINNAMAN

MAU5TRAP

FRI 16 NOV

DEADMAU5 SPECIAL GUESTS TBA

THE HYDRA: MOUNT KIMBIE CURATE

SAT 17 NOV

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KASSEM MOSSE LIVE ANTHONY NAPLES DJ PYTHON LIVE DEBONAIR OBJECT BLUE

BICEP

21/22/23 NOV

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SAT 24 NOV

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TALE OF US RECONDITE LIVE ADRIATIQUE AGENTS OF TIME LIVE WOO YORK LIVE VAAL FIDELES DARK ROOM

SIGHA ANTIGONE AMANDRA LIVE

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SAT 15 DEC

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015 Crack Magazine is a free and independent platform for contemporary culture Published and distributed monthly

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Words Chal Ravens, Emily Reynolds, Jake Boyer, Jack Needham, Charli XCX, Victoria Ruiz, Julie Adenuga, Tim Noakes, Lotic, Mist, Gilles Peterson, Balraj Samrai, Nan Kolè, Buttechno, Courtesy, Parris OH, Luke Turner, Cherie Hu, Taylor Glasby, Yemi Abiade, Briana Younger, Joe Howard, Ruban Nielson, Ruth Saxelby, Cameron Cook, Joe Goggins, Jon Clark, Danny Wright, Adam Corner, Mikaella Clements, Tom Connick, Katie Hawthorne, Josie Roberts, Emma Robertson, Joe Talbot, Joshua Winning, Beth Webb, Douglas Greenwood, Kambole Campbell

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Charli XCX:

What's next for the music industry 48

Lava La Rue 30

crackmagazine.net

22

017

Contents

Editor's Letter – p.19 Reviews – p.73

Is Generation Z delivering Electronic Music’s Queer Utopia?

60

Recommended – p.20

20 Questions: Jake Shears – p.91

Tomorrow's protest music 64

Sounds like the future – p.39 A Love Letter To: the NHS – p.92

CONTENTS

Fearing the Fembot 54

a celebration of sound Art Ensemble of Chicago The Breeders Devendra Banhart Sons of Kemet XL Future Feminism Ebo Taylor RP Boo Saul Williams & King Britt present ‘Unanimous Goldmine’ JPEGMAFIA Georgia Anne Muldrow GAIKA Serpentwithfeet Kojey Radical Joe Coleman 700 Bliss Irreversible Entanglements feat. Pat Thomas AMMAR 808 Pan Daijing presents: ‘Fist Piece’ Hailu Mergia Islam Chipsy & EEK Ras_G & The Afrikan Space Program Katey Red Kelman Duran LYZZA Eartheater Bo Ningen Rizan Said + many more 8 - 11 november 2018 Utrecht Netherlands leguesswho.com

September 2018

Crack Magazine Was Made Using

Do you believe in the future of music? At Crack Magazine, we’ve always kept the faith. Since day one, these pages have been shaped by our confidence in the power of artists to take us to undiscovered places. They can, and do, shock us with music that feels like a transmission from another planet.

Aphex Twin T69 Collapse Laura Misch I Adore E-Unity Tallarita Stefflon Don Pretty Girl Skepta Stay with It slowthai Drug Dealer Rina Sawayama Cherry Mac Miller Self Care Travis Scott R.I.P SCREW Frank Ocean Self Control Christian S Chevy Bounce DJ Normal 4 La Arabia Gently Tender Avez-vous déjà Kim Petras Heart To Break

So what does the future sound like? In this issue, artists and industry insiders spotlight the next generation of daring musicians for our list of 25 acts changing the game. Elsewhere, we explore the utopian and dystopian worlds being created in music culture and offer a primer on how technology is altering the listening experience.

In a cultural landscape so informed by the familiar, new ideas are more important than ever. Increasingly, today’s musicians are prising spaces open for more voices to flood through.

One woman committed to these ideals is Charli XCX. Having hacked into the mainstream with a collective of musical misfits in tow, this year her DIY party-pop fantasy has been fully realised. It’s been a wild ride. As she unpacks in our cover story, she’s pushing her vision into the future with such intensity that she can barely catch her breath. That’s the spirit.

crackmagazine.net

Blood Orange ft. Diddy and Tei Shi Hope

019

Issue 92

Outkast Prototype

Charli XCX shot exclusively for Crack Magazine by Yavez Anthonio in London, June 2018

EDITORIAL

Anna Tehabsim, Editor

020

Recommended O ur g ui d e to wh at's goi n g on i n y ou r c i ty

Semibreve Various venues, Braga 26 - 28 October In just seven years, Semibreve has crafted a reputation as one of the finest small festivals Europe has to offer right now, in a location that few will fail to develop a deep fondness for. The somewhat minimal line-up – centred on the electronic avant-garde – gives visitors plenty of time to see the small city’s innumerable churches, and wander its sleepy, cobbled streets. This year’s typically adventurous offering includes electro mainstay DJ Stingray, master of gloom Grouper, the fiercely experimental producer Jlin, footwork OG RP Boo and the ambient daddy, William Basinski.

Kylie O2 Arena 26 September Club to Club Turin 1–4 November

Four Tet & Friends The Warehouse Project 6 October

Aphex Twin has been up to no good again. In July a cryptic campaign for a new, typically mischievous project was spotted on the streets of London, LA and Turin. The latter city is home to Italian festival Club to Club, who have secured the man, the myth, the legend himself to unleash the surreal on their esteemed weekender.

It’s quite the coup for the exploratory festival, and he appears alongside a who’s who of artists on rotation in our office stereo, as tastemaking DJs Courtesy, Josey Rebelle and Skee Mask join top tier left-field bookings Blood Orange, Fever Ray, Iceage and serpentwithfeet. Icons past and present collide.

Janelle Monáe Roundhouse 11 September

The latest instalment of Four Tet's '& Friends' series sees him take over The Warehouse Project’s main space as he brings fellow selectors and producers Ben UFO, Willow, Flava D, Anthony Naples and Hidden Spheres. Here you can expect to dance to everything from crushing techno to party house to bouncy garage – whatever it is you’re into, Heb’s got your back.

Lets Eat Grandma Heaven 27 September

James Holden & the Animal Spirits Queen Elizabeth Hall 4 October

Crack Magazine at ADE Garage Noord 17 October Amsterdam Dance Event is a colossal summit of the biggest players in the dance music industry. As such, the options for partying across the week are pretty overwhelming. So allow us to invite you to our little corner of ADE: an intimate event with a triumvirate of fierce, fun-loving DJs. Joining us are Peach Discs boss Shanti Celeste, Rinse FM staple Josey Rebelle and rising Amsterdammer upsammy.

Kickstart your ADE right with vibrant, electrifying sounds in a firmly pretension-free zone.

Neneh Cherry Village Underground 12 September

There was a time when James Holden was lauded for his unique ability to breathe life into rigidly sequenced digital music. With his latest project, Holden has come full circle, acting as band leader for a collection of musicians who create improvised psychedelic compositions which still retain Holden’s dancefloor DNA. The band itself is comprised of several long-term collaborators: Tom Page of RocketNumberNine and Etienne Jaumet of Zombie Zombie. As stage shows go, it’s a pretty unique arrangement, incorporating an eclectic selection of shimmering percussion, a haunting brass section, live drums, and Holden sat cross-legged centrestage hunched over analogue hardware. Majestic.

EVENTS

Kero Kero Bonito Village Underground 11 September

Afropunk Akala, BBZ Collective, Laura Mvula Various venues, London 1-8 September Moving from its former home at Printworks, Afropunk is taking its third instalment to multiple venues in Brixton across the first week of September. A celebration of blackness, creativity, unity and inclusivity in music and the arts, this year’s week-long event will see performances from poet and scholar Akala, garage originator DJ Spoony, Laura Mvula, Jazzie B and many more. Alongside a schedule of DJ sets and live performances, the extensive programme will host a series of multidisciplinary events and exhibitions, spanning from art to fashion, film and education.

021

Infinite Bisous Moth Club 9 September

Arctic Monkeys O2 Arena 9 September

(Sandy) Alex G Islington Assembly Hall 5 September

Skinny Pelembe Corsica Studios 27 September

Tim Hecker Barbican Centre 6 October Canadian composer and experimental electronic musician Tim Hecker is the master of moods. He creates them, builds them, manipulates them. From therapeutic, ambient minimalism to more textured electronic sounds, Hecker propels dissonance and melody into otherworldly territory, making him one of the most unique and versatile artists around. Ahead of the release of his new album Konoyo, he’s teaming up with traditional Japanese Gagaku musicians to bring these sounds to life at the Barbican Centre.

Soccer Mommy Scala 13 September

GAS The Jazz Cafe 19 September

Dimitri From Paris XOYO 1 September

Mitski Shepherds Bush 26 September

Lee Ranaldo Cafe Oto 10 September

Crack Magazine at No Bounds Various venues, Sheffield 12 October Beyond Warp, bleep and bassline, Sheffield’s musical makeup has always been one which encourages outliers. So No Bounds Festival – a venture from the team behind the much-loved Hope Works Venue, now in its second year – is a natural product of that environment. A three-day programme of art, music, discussion and workshops united by an experimental nature. Crack Magazine is touching down at the event with a bunch of esteemed noisemakers.

On top of a line-up including Mike Paradinas, Afrodeutsche and a showcase of the key players in the Algorave movement, catch Demdike Stare, Minor Science and live sets from Errorsmith, Aïsha Devi, Objekt Blue on our stage at Sheffield’s most daring festival.

You may know Wolfgang Voigt under one of his many pseudonyms – GAS, Mike Ink, Studio1, M:I:5, Love Inc., Freiland, Wassermann. The list goes on and on. For this special night at Camden’s Jazz Cafe, though, he’s bringing the minimalist techno of GAS to the dance floor. Regarded as one of the most influential techno producers of the 20th century, Voigt’s exploration in dense and hypnotic sounds combines hardline techno with folk music, making for the unmistakable sound that he’s cemented since the early 90s. Playing material from his new record Rausch against a backdrop of dark visuals, this isn’t one to miss.

Lady Leshurr XOYO 21 September

Lapalux Hackney Arts Centre 22 September

Into the Valley Peggy Gou, Omar-S, Amelie Lens Fuengirola, Spain 28–30 September

Ross From Friends Village Underground 26 September

After being forced to cancel events in Sweden and South Africa in 2017 and 2018, Into the Valley festival is setting up camp in the picturesque 1000-year-old Sohail Castle on the Andalusian coast in Spain.

The stunning site will host the festival's daytime programme, split across three stages. The nighttime festivities will take place at an industrial venue, with Amelie Lens, Omar-S, Peggy Gou, Acid Pauli, Anastasia Kristensen, Young Marco and Elena Colombi all set to play stomping sets.

Yaeji Serpentine Sackler Gallery 7 September

Oasis Festival Mount Kimbie, The Black Madonna, Peggy Gou Fellah Hotel, Marrakech 14–16 September €180 When you’re scouring the summer festival circuit for a new rave destination, we don’t blame you for not immediately thinking of Marrakech – but think again, because Morocco is where it’s at. Set over three days at the Fellah Hotel, the fourth installment of Oasis Festival is back with one of its strongest line-ups yet. You can catch sets from Mr Fingers, Actress b2b Mount Kimbie, Carl Cox, Honey Dijon, Jessy Lanza and more spread across the intimate site. Oh, and did we mention there’s a stage with a pool as a dancefloor?

Lao Ra The Pickle Factory 12 September

EVENTS

Oscar Jerome Village Underground 25 September

Charli XCX has hijacked the pop machine and she's taking it on a thrilling joyride into the future

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Top: Christoper Kane Bra: Stylist's Own Earring: Stylist's Own

Dress: Raf Simons at Selfridges Boots: Zimmerman Necklace: Alessandra Rich Earrings: Stylist's Own

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Words: Chal Ravens Photography: Yavez Anthonio Lighting Assistant: Robin Lambert Stylist: Rebecca Grice Stylist’s Assistant: Bongeka Dube Hair Stylist: Nicole Kahlani Make Up: Danielle Kahlani using MAC Cosmetics

A few years back, a typical Charli XCX interview might include a rolling backdrop of karaoke bars, cab rides and backstage parties, a few buckets of champagne and a splash of drunkdialling. Today, in a windowless studio on a north London industrial estate, pop’s patron saint of the sesh – a woman who sings After the Afterparty with autobiographical conviction – is steaming herself over a herbal tea. “I don't look after my voice at all,” she tries to whisper. “People tell me that I'll be fucked by the time I'm 30...”

It’s been a long afternoon under hot studio lights and, honestly, I’m disappointed not to be boarding Charli’s party bus and knocking back Moët until dawn. But what our scene lacks in glamour it makes up for in realism. Behind the high-shine, emoji-strewn exterior of Charli XCX: Pop Juggernaut is a fuckload of toil happening on our behalf, as one woman digs her heels in and hauls us all towards the future of pop. It’s a heavy load to bear.

Charli is in the UK for 15 days, during which she’ll support Taylor Swift on her stadium tour, give several interviews, shoot a video, say a quick hi to her parents, and – most importantly – play her third ever show supporting Pop 2, one of two career-defining mixtapes she put out last year after finally ripping

through the major label red tape (“You have no idea how fucking hard it is to just release a free fucking mixtape in 2017,” she tweeted at the time).

Between them, the mixtapes are Charli’s manifesto for a new pop vanguard, binding her commercial nous and experimental instincts together in an unbreakable double helix. On Number 1 Angel, she brings in a squad of left-field pop artists (Abra, MØ, her Ed Banger-era hero Uffie) to enlarge the XCX universe while her pop songcraft hits delirious new heights; every word is engineered to stick like glue as we hitch a ride in her “beemers” and “limousin-uhhs” between 3am booty calls. Pop 2 takes the formula and doubles the dose with an even bigger army of guests, mixing modern divas (Carly Rae Jepsen, Caroline Polachek) with outsider rappers (Tommy Cash, Mykki Blanco, CupcakKe) as PC Music production mastermind A. G. Cook plugs J-pop, hip-hop, trance and Eurodance into one glowing-hot, fibre-optic-speed pop machine.

Since last year’s non-album single Boys (and its celebrity-packed video, directed by Charli and starring Diplo, Riz Ahmed and Mac DeMarco, among others), another four loosies have appeared: the James Bond-in-the-trapstyle 5 in the Morning, ultra-peppy fan fave Focus, bad girl anthem No Angel, and, most recently, the Cyndi Lauperesque Girls Night Out, a tribute to the silliest, spiciest pre-millennium pop.

Charli Aitchison signed to Atlantic Records 10 years ago, just after her

16th birthday, but the Hertfordshire public schoolgirl was never destined to become a malleable teen starlet.

Her pre-fame tracks were cynical and precocious (“You wear glitter on your face, you look like a mess,” she tuts on the endearingly scrappy Art Bitch) and after several years cycling through studios and songwriters, dropping a couple of patchy mixtapes along the way, she delivered 2013’s True Romance – a debut album of hands-inthe-air alt-pop with a scuzzy undertone.

Critics liked it, but sales were modest.

In the meantime, she wrote a bratty pop tune called I Love It and watched it become the biggest hit of 2012 in the hands of Icona Pop, before giving Iggy Azalea a leg-up to superstardom as a co-writer and singer on the rapper’s 2014 smash Fancy.

The door was open for Charli’s solo breakthrough – so, in typical XCX fashion, she slammed into reverse and recorded a second album of backcombed punk-pop. Propelled by the stadium-shaking single Boom Clap, Sucker did big numbers – but there was no I Love It-scale hit to make her a household name.

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We're three minutes into the interview and Charli XCX is making me inspect her insides. “Look at my tonsils!” she croaks, flipping her head back. Christ, wow. They are possibly the biggest tonsils I’ve ever seen.

026 Jumpsuit: Ashish Shoes: Miu Miu Earrings: Stylist's Own

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029 In hindsight, Charli’s contrarian streak has always been her superpower.

Her recalibration into the futureshock fembot of Pop 2 began on 2016’s Vroom Vroom, a four-track EP of latex-snapping club pop made with Glasgow-via-LA producer SOPHIE. Coolly received at the time, vinyl copies now go for up to £500. A bond between the two musicians was formed instantly, each of them challenging each other to work faster and harder. “SOPHIE is the future,” gushes Charli. “She's one of those people who I wanna impress.”

The admiration is mutual. “What I think the world will see more and more over the next few years,” suggests SOPHIE, speaking to Crack Magazine earlier this year, “is just how aggressive and raw she is. When I’ve been in the studio with her it’s just so powerful – the way she feels music, the way she’s dancing when we’re making stuff, the way she’s delivering ideas. It’s coming across more now on all of the music she releases.”

Sensing the chemistry between herself, SOPHIE and Cook – “the trifecta,”

as she calls them – Charli started plotting a creative overhaul, free from her label’s interference. Both mixtapes came together rapidly, recorded in miniscule bursts of studio time. “Pop 2 took exactly three months to make, from the moment Charli mentioned it to everything being mastered,” explains Cook over email. “It was a ridiculous exercise.” Both of them share a belief that pop music “can be radical and accessible at the same time”, he adds: “Charli doesn’t really deal with the notion of compromises.” In return, Cook has a “very good barometer for what’s shit”. “He’s someone I will always go to for a first opinion on anything I do.”

As a songwriter, Charli has hit her stride – and she knows it. “Sorry to sound... arrogant, I suppose,” she ventures, “but they're so good, those mixtapes! No one else could do what we do. No one else can really capture that energy.” But her main talent, she believes, is being “a great curator” – combining the avant-pop impulses of the trifecta with the chart-topping track record of super-producers like Stargate and the Invisible Men, while giving a platform to vocalists like Brazilian drag superstar Pabllo Vittar – new stars who can match her energy.

And the energy is relentless.

Even watching her Insta Stories is exhausting – a constant carousel of new cities, parties, performances and photo shoots. But, she explains, “I’m a fucking wreck when I’m not doing anything. One day [off]? Cool.

Two days? Cool. Three days? I’m freaking out. That’s when I'll start ringing people and sending a thousand emails. Sometimes I feel good when I’m stressed, when there's pressure – I love the fucking drama of what I do.”

Being at the centre of the whirlwind can be alienating too. “Sometimes I feel very alone, even though I’m constantly surrounded by hundreds of people. I still maintain that when I party there isn't really any sadness behind it, but, you know... there is a comedown.

And I do feel fucking emo sometimes,” she says with half a laugh. “Power can be a really lonely thing.”

Despite the 24/7 social media presence, Charli doesn’t always crave the spotlight. She hates being in videos, for instance. “It’s my worst thing. I feel really insecure. I don’t love photo shoots either. When I’m on stage I don’t care what I look like, because I know that I’m so fucking badass that it doesn’t matter. But the second there’s a camera in my face I just feel this pressure to be perfect, and I’m not perfect. I know I’m not supposed to say that – I’m supposed to be body confident,” she scoffs.

“It makes me become all the things I hate – it makes me compare myself and it makes me think I’m not good enough.

But that’s just being a girl now. That shit’s everywhere, it’s toxic. So I would rather not be on Instagram and not ever have to do a photo shoot. I’d love to be in Daft Punk – fucking helmet, go!”

In time, and if her voice gives out, she’ll be done with being a pop star and retreat into the studio to write songs for other people. (As a convincing alternative, she’s also considered a career as a party planner: “I’d be so good! I can really work with a budget.”)

In the meantime, she’s starting to feel like her status is assured: “If I died tomorrow, I’d be so happy with the artist I’ve become in the last year.”

In the end, the Pop 2 show feels like a milestone. Village Underground is

too small, the fans are too many, and everyone fries in the summer heat.

Every song is a hit and there still aren’t enough of them for us. Tommy Cash and Hannah Diamond drop in, A. G. Cook and SOPHIE dance behind the decks, the stage fills up with drag queens. Charli’s plastic trousers rip and she finishes the show in bra and pants. Everything is a mosh pit. Someone throws up on the photographer. “It was a mess down there,” she boasts afterwards.

The show feels like the culmination of years of testing and refinement in pop’s R&D department by the best in her field. But there’s no time to bask in the adulation. After the show it’s the afterparty: Charli’s DJing at Shoreditch House, playing TLC and Gwen Stefani between cig breaks on the roof. At 2am she glides past me, chatting loudly as she hustles a group of fans into the lift with her. The party planner. Tomorrow, she’ll do it all again in Paris.

Girls Night Out is out now via Asylum Records

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Even now, with big singles like Boys under her belt, Charli still hasn’t quite cracked the A-list. When she and Rita Ora featured alongside Cardi B on Girls earlier this year, the rapper introduced them as “not big but soo talented”. Is it frustrating to still be considered “not big” at this point?

“Absolutely,” she says quickly. “But to be commercially successful on that level there are sacrifices that you have to make – and I’m not really ready to make those sacrifices.” Being a palatable, media-trained pop darling is not in her repertoire. “I’m just too... volatile to be like that at the moment. I can’t play the fucking game!”

Lava La Rue

Words: Douglas Greenwood Photography: Eleanor Hardwick Photographer's Assistant: Melissa Arras Styling: Neesha Tulsi Champaneria Stylist's assistant: Renee Saliba Hair: Akiko Kawasaki Makeup: Lauren Reynolds

The heatwave makes everything in this studio feel like it’s sweating.

Lava La Rue sits in the steam, almost unbothered, sinking into a sea of mesh fabric and carrying a helmet of chainmail on her head. “Feel how heavy that is!” the 20-year-old rapper says, eyes wide, passing it my way midchange to feel its weight.

Lava La Rue isn’t used to this. An artist who has made her name by creating an entirely self-sufficient style of art, the multi-hyphenate – real name Ava Laurel – has a personal style that she seldom strays from; a byproduct of her desire to cover all creative bases.

From photography, to music-making, to designing her own “garms”, this girl proudly does it all.

At the end of her Crack Magazine shoot, she switches back into her more low-key get-up – some of which she’d incorporated into her looks: a net vest, a crochet Jamaican bikini and some wide-legged orangeadecoloured skater shorts. We walk out of the Brixton studio to find a spot to chat. “How do you find living in west London?” I ask, making small talk with someone who comes across as a little shy. Lava launches onto her skateboard, hurtling 10 paces ahead, proving me wrong. “It’s home, innit?” she shouts back.

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Home is a council flat in Ladbroke Grove: something that stands in stark contrast to her wealthy, upper-class neighbours. It’s a dichotomy that’s not gone unnoticed by someone who's spent much of her teenage and adult life watching the hallmarks of her upbringing – as a queer woman of colour with a working

class background – become creative fodder for those who didn’t grow up like she did. Having spent much of her childhood in spots across the capital, raised by her grandmother before falling in and out of the foster care system, it spurred Lava on to spread her roots in a different way, gathering an artistic family to confide in. She’s now the founding member of nine8collective: a group of young Londoners who are using their talents to switch up London’s underground art scene from the inside. “Everybody’s absolutely bonkers in nine8!” she laughs, describing her group of cocreators. “We’re a family of outcasts, but not in a [exclusionary] way – we’re all about accepting everyone and positive vibes.”

Lava knew her love of art and music would become her livelihood when she was 16 and still in college. What she had was both hustle and a bunch of creative favours she could trade with those closest to her. They’re instrumental when it comes to the creation of her music: both her debut EP, LETRA and the mixtape nine8 collection debuted at their Tate London show last month. On the latter, Lava’s cadence (as soft as her speaking voice) carries confident flows, and acts as the vehicle for stories about everything from vying for a lover’s approval to the fucked up state of the country she lives in.

The warm and woozy production lying beneath it is something Lava takes seriously too; she doesn’t do half measures. “As a female musician, you’re often surrounded by a bunch of male sound engineers who are telling you to ‘do it like that’, even

Coat: Mashama Leggings: Mashama T-shirt: Blouse Socks: Puma Shin pads: Nike Rings: Maria Black and Lava's own

when you came in with a vision.” She shouts a little to be heard over passing sirens. “There’s a difference between collaboration and compromise, and for me, I don’t feel good leaving the studio without being proud of the outcome.

It’s like seeing your crush at a party and leaving before telling them what you wanted to say.”

Her music carries messages so many young people today want to emulate.

We circle back to the conversation starter; about Lava’s culture and upbringing transforming into somebody else’s throwaway creative aesthetic. “A lot of the shit these kids preach in their bars, when they get bored of it, they can swap their Adidas for a white collar shirt and vote for the same parties they were dissing,” she tells me. “What I say and speak about in my music, I’ve experienced. Kids that spit about stuff they haven’t been through – it’s not cool. I’ve had family members in pen.

It’s not ‘sick’” – she punctuates with air quotes – “It’s traumatic.”

But Lava La Rue – independent, intelligent, bigger than this – isn’t willing to waste too much breath spreading negativity. She has better, more positive things to do. “People who want to make ignorant music, that’s fine,” she concludes. “Just make space for those who want to make a difference. Make their dreams a reality.”

Shirt: Paula Knorr Knickers: Wolford customised by stylist Shorts: Topshop Socks: Puma Sliders: Kappa Boxing gloves: Stylist's own Jewellery: Maria Black and Lava's own

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Sunglasses: Gentle Monster Shirt: Paula Knorr Jewellery: Maria Black

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Armour headpiece: Stylist's own Gloved top: Poster Girl Sheer top: 1683 Atelier Shorts: Lava's own Jewellery: Lava's own

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08 08 AUGUSTGREENE GREENE AUGUST (ROBERT GLASPER, COMMON (ROBERT COMMON & KARRIEMGLASPER, RIGGINS) W/ GUEST LAURA MVULA & MORE. &SPECIAL KARRIEM RIGGINS) BAKAR GUESTS +AKALA VERY&SPECIAL BEATS & RIDDIMS BY SHABBA AND RECESS

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Produced exclusively for Crack Magazine by Alexander Dueckminor - @ thecrystalbeach

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Thursday 13 September London The Waiting Room

Thursday 18 October London Heaven

LUKE BURR LEMAITRE + Antigoni

Monday 24 September London The Lexington

& DAGNY

WILD YOUTH HARVEY CAUSON LUNA Tuesday 23 October Brighton Latest Music Bar

Tuesday 25 September London The Borderline

Tuesday 23 October London Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen

Tuesday 6 November Manchester Soup Kitchen Wednesday 7 November London Omeara

STELLA DONNELLY Monday 12 November Manchester Soup Kitchen Wednesday 14 November London Islington Assembly Hall

JOEY STEVIE APPLETON ANNA DOSIK CALVI CC SMUGGLERS LAKE HUNTAR STREET HER’S DIVE RIVER JENNIE WHYLESS STU LARSEN & NATSUKI KURAI ABRAHAMSON Thursday 4 October Birmingham Town Hall

Tuesday 23 October London Omeara

Tuesday 20 November London Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen

Thursday 11 October London O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Wednesday 24 October London The Dome

+ Baywaves + Honey Moon

+ Jodie Abacus

Thursday 11 October London Courtyard Theatre

Monday 15 October London The Lexington

Friday 30 November London Sebright Armsn

Monday 29 October London Rich Mix

Thursday 1 November London O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Friday 7 December Manchester The Deaf Institute Thursday 13 December London The Camden Assembly

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Live

Dekmantel Amsterdamse Bos 1 - 5 August

performances – set around the Muziekgebouw complex, Shelter and Tolhuistuin – paved the way for the kind of juxtapositions you rarely find at other festivals. The brutal sonics and vocals of Aïsha Devi were a particular highlight and Actress’ musical complexities made for a talking point all weekend. The minimalism of Terry Riley performing with his son Gyan, by contrast, provided a moment of nostalgia from a true originator.

At the festival weekend proper, colourful diversity was key. From the tougher abstractions and jungle (including Ed Rush’s What’s Up) championed by Objekt to the low-key brilliance of

David Vunk and Carista in the Boiler Room, to the electric flow of Miss Red and The Bug in The Greenhouse, finding fresh sounds from old and new names was never tough.

Ultimately the weekend was rounded off by Helena Hauff’s killer Main Stage headline performance that saw her fully cross over into the A-League – another example of Dekmantel supporting those who have earned their stripes.

Elsewhere, Shanti Celeste’s Main Stage performance justified her unstoppable rise; the lighter touch to her set reflected the weather perfectly, finishing on Cassandra by Donato Dozzy, the perfect segue into two hours of

Ricardo Villalobos. His playful set included a soaring edit of Justify My Love by Madonna at one end and a totally pointless drop of Floorplan’s Never Grow Old on the other. But, taken as a whole, the Chilean’s yearly two-hour slot on the Main Stage is a wildly entertaining Dekmantel staple.

One of the other noticeable characteristics to Dekmantel this year was the lack of snobbery when it came to the booking. While Mr Scruff, Orbital and a full Selectors Stage line-up boasting Jamie xx, Floating Points and Daphni might not represent the kind of esoteric bookings that some crave, Dekmantel’s ability to traverse the spectrum guilt-

free is representative of the kind of inclusiveness keeping the electronic music world in extremely rude health. For every Four Tet there is a Phase Fatale, DVS1 or a Lena Willikens to keep the disparate tribes happy. This year was testament to colour and curation at an event that is still at the top of its game. ! Thomas Frost N Bart Heemskerk

REVIEWS

Dekmantel exists within its own framework. Through its sister festivals, labels and commitment to the homegrown talent it voraciously champions in The Netherlands and beyond, the brand has become ferociously popular in recent years due to its distinctive ethos.

The festival might take curation very seriously, but this year the mood was a little more lighthearted. Less austere than previously, the black-on-black techno uniform was ditched by much of the crowd in favour of a more colourful outlook to match the weather – a vibe that was also reflected in the music.

Thursday’s wonderfully curated series of live

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Certain tried-and-tested crowd-pleasers should be sentenced to an early retirement and never heard again: Floorplan’s Aretha-sampling Never Grow Old and Charlie’s Italo classic Spacer Woman, for example, should to be met with no more than an eye-roll from you, the discerning raver.

Still, when Ricardo Villalobos throws out the bait after a night of monochrome doof-doofery at Portugal’s biggest techno festival, it feels like we’ve just crash-landed in Oz. Situated within the walls of a 16th century fort in Viana Do Castelo, a historic seaside town just north of Porto, Neopop Festival is an annual focal point for the whole country’s techno scene, with world class headliners joined by national stalwarts like Tiago, resident at Lisbon’s Lux, and booker, DJ and festival director Gusta-vo.

The line-up is characterised by a certain techno purism; this year, the Detroit tradition is represented by Jeff Mills, who reminds us how it all began armed with a 909 and his usual effortless elan, and Dopplereffekt, whose austere electro-chemistry doesn’t seem to ring any cowbells for their sparse audience.

Too much of the rest of the line-up is occupied by wipe-clean tech-house from the Beatport big league, which is probably why Villalobos’ set hits the spot so squarely. After 10 hours of 4/4 orthodoxy, the sniff of a piano sample is enough to make the morning crew lose their shit completely.

It’s hardly a historic set in the Villalobos canon, but no one’s complaining when we’re jacking to Paul Johnson under a cloudless Atlantic sky. The final victory of the four-day marathon is claimed by Nina Kraviz, whose subtly unpredictable set demonstrates why she’s one of the finest techno headliners money can buy. Dark, raw and flawlessly executed, there’s even a significant dose of trance – perhaps 2018’s definitive dance festival trend, second only to those pointy sunglasses. ! Chal Ravens N Diogo Lima

DGTL 2018 Parc del Fòrum, Barcelona 10 - 11 August

Everything you’ve heard about Houghton Festival is most likely true. Curated by Craig Richards and run by the team behind Gottwood, the festival felt somehow private, like the scene’s best kept secret that everyone knows about.

Taking place on the grounds of Houghton Hall in Norfolk, stages were nestled in small clearings in the forest, with one secretly tucked away in a valley.

Thanks to a lack of cell signal and the trust between artist and crowd, the entire event was like its own little world.

This was the kind of environment that made it easy for artists to explore and experiment. Longer set times, in contrast to the typical twohour festival billing, provided space for DJs to properly build a set or invite the crowd on a journey. Friday took the top spot for live acts with artists like Burnt Friedman, Mathew Jonson, Deadbeat and Monolake delivering sets that were unique and thoughtful in later time slots normally reserved for headlining DJs. Another one of Houghton’s best features was that most artists got the chance to play multiple times over the course of the weekend. Craig Richards himself played various sets, but his real shining moment was a back-to-back with Nicolas Lutz at the Terminus stage on Sunday morning. This so-called “secret stage” in the forest got packed enough by Sunday midday that the only low point of the festival was waiting an hour to get back in. Not that we’re complaining, as easily the festival’s most memorable sets, from Binh, Margaret Dygas and Sonja Moonear, went down at Terminus. Meanwhile, Ben UFO, and Helena Hauff were closing things down at the Pavillion Stage. True to form, Hauff was a machine behind the booth, and if the minutes long roar from the crowd at the end of her set was any indication, Hauff proved once again why 2018 seems to be her year.

Out on the angular platforms of the Parc del Fòrum, DGTL is a futuristic extension of Barcelona’s industrial coastline.

Amongst the steel pipework, shipping containers and concrete pillars, four stages take their names from modular synthesisers (AMP, Modular, Generator and Frequency).

DGTL is a spectacle for the 30,000 or so punters who journey to the city’s outskirts in the thick August heat. Best imagined at night and from above, the site is a circuit board of pulsating and flashing colour, connected by the ceaseless electric fizz of crowds which move in and out of its attractions.

All this talk of circuits and synthesisers considered, that the line-up is situated firmly within the vast spectrum of electronic music comes as little surprise. House and mainly techno continue to be the anchors of DGTL’s musical programming. For every international big-room booking like Ben Klock, or tech house giant like Jamie Jones, you had local names championed like ISAbella and DJ Fra. By the time Amelie Lens had taken over with one of the most densely packed crowds of the weekend, her barrage of barrelling techno had the devoted thousands flinging their hands into the air at her every twist and turn.

For those looking for a respite, the Frequency stage was your leafy sanctuary.

Taking up the closing slot the next night, Motor City Drum Ensemble transformed the stage into a temple of disco rare-cuts and smooth crowd-pleasers like Soichi Terada and Manabu Nagayama’s Low Tension, surrounded by strips of LEDs glowing like stained glass. After two blissed-out days of some of dance music’s brightest stars on the Spanish coast, you needed nothing more.

Ortigia Sound Isola di Ortigia, Sicily 25 - 29 July There’s no point in trying to hurry anything when you’re in Ortigia in July. The searing sun that beats down on the Syracuse island renders most labour – physical, mental, emotional – to be sweat-inducing. Phones cease working and brains quickly follow, while foreigners who express difficulty in adjusting to the pace of life will inevitably be greeted with a “Hey, it’s Sicily.”

Ortigia Sound System, the multi-venue festival now in its fifth edition, benefits from the same laid-back ethos that makes Ortigia so seductive. It looks like a well-curated travel Instagram, and feels like a dream. Helpfully, the programming is linear and spread out, drawing focus to just one stage at any one time – a smart move when night-time temperatures rarely drop beneath the high 20s. And a sympathetic one, allowing plenty of time to refresh your Campari Spritz without spilling a drop.

The preternaturally chill vibes of OSS took a turn for the astronomical on Saturday night, when even the planets fell into easy alignment: the blood moon and full lunar eclipse, reflected over the Gulf of Syracuse, certainly added an eerie complexion to Lee Scratch Perry’s Friday night set in the concrete concourse of the Castello Maniace. A long-time resident of some higher plane, the dub pioneer took on the aspect of a wizened preacher in the dry ice and strange light.

Unfortunately, the spell was broken later that same evening by a rare lapse in organisation: the shuttle chartered to take us into the Sicilian countryside for the after party never materialised, leaving hundreds of festival-goers scrambling for a handful of taxis. But the beauty of the final destination, all fragrant pines and Call Me By Your Name atmospherics, made it difficult to stay cross – though it was surely avoidable.

Here, Tunisian DJ Deena Abdelwahed held forth, plotting her strain of agitated, bass music in the rural darkness.

Sunday night, by contrast, was dedicated to sounds a little closer to home. The Napoli Sound Showcase offered a pin-drop on the music coming out of the emergent Naples scene. It was a suitable coda to a festival where attendees are steeped, almost by osmosis, in Italian culture: the food, the vistas, the people, the interval DJ’s frequent deployments of the pop hits of icon Franco Battiato. As the sounds of an Italian cover of Psycho Killer reverberated off the castle walls, you’d be forgiven for feeling an overpowering desire stay a little longer. No stress though. No stress. ! Louise Brailey N Jon Bronxl

! Josie Roberts N Tim Buiting

! Emma Robertson N Here & Now

REVIEWS

Neopop Festival Viana Do Castelo, Portugal 8-11 August

Houghton Houghton Hall, Norfolk 9 - 12 August

p h o t o : Jaco b Kh r i st - sam e d i m an ch e 2 018

IT’S A LOVELEE DAE ... ...AND THE SUN IS SHINING

Concrete Port de la Rap ée 7 501 2 Pari s

www. c onc re te pa ri s . fr

P H O N O X

E SA : N E W SAT U R DAY N I G H T R E S I D E N T f ro m s a t u rd a y 0 6 o c t o b e r

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Another tender chapter in Dev Hynes’ legacy

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Words: Cameron Cook

Unsurprisingly, the line sticks out because of the word “negroes” – not “niggas”, a reclaimed word black artists often use, but “negroes” – clinical, raw, historical. My mother, who was born on the South Side of Chicago in 1950, bears the word “negro” on her official birth certificate. In this context, the past isn’t the past at all for black communities. And as such you can’t help but pause to digest the title of Hynes’ fourth studio album as Blood Orange, Negro Swan, as a stark comment on the complexity of expressing natural beauty in a world where your very status as a human being can, at times, seem more precarious than it ever ought to.

Hynes has described Negro Swan as “an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/ people of color.” The interesting thing about the album is that musically, it doesn’t actually sound dark. It’s not necessarily uplifting either, it just feels real, like a mainline straight into Hynes’ psyche. Lead single Charcoal Baby is an ambling pop-funk tune that pits Hynes’ insecurities against a disjointed, catchy guitar riff. The track is cut through with languorous keyboards, smooth flutes and lush

saxophones, lulling the listener into a warm embrace that belies the song’s message. “No one wants to be the odd one out at times/ No one wants to be the negro swan,” Hynes croons, recalling the fable of the ugly duckling. Only in this retelling, even the duckling’s transformation isn’t enough to assuage the judgement it feels. However, it also echoes African American comedian Paul Mooney’s infamous saying: “Everybody wanna be a nigga, but nobody wanna be a nigga.” Negro Swan is, above all else, unapologetically black, and its magic lies in finding the celebration amidst the struggle.

Blood Orange is one of the very small handful of artists for which a Prince comparison isn’t unwarranted – not only for his virtuosic musicianship, but also for the way he uniquely married his race with his talent. Saint is the song that most vividly summons the spirit of the Purple One, its sparse ‘80s backbeat skittering under Hynes’ crystal clear tenor. There’s something quasi-spiritual about the way he delivers his lines: on Hope, a track notable for including additional vocals

by Tei Shi and Puff Daddy, his voice sounds angelic in the intro, echoing towards the heavens. The juxtaposition between Hynes and Puff Daddy, once the posterboy for ‘90s hip-hop extravagance, works exceptionally well, peeling away Diddy's macho exterior.

“What is it going to take for me not to be afraid to be loved the way I really want to be loved?” is not how one would expect the CEO of Bad Boy Records to close out a feature, but Hynes’ subtly beautiful production gives him the space to break down his own barriers.

Hynes’ knack for collaboration also lends Negro Swan its collective, communal aspect – few others artists could put Puff and someone like transgender writer and activist Janet Mock on the same record. Mock’s track is an interlude called Family, where she muses on the connection between traditional family units and the communities that minorities build out of social necessity. “I think they’re the spaces where you don’t have to shrink yourself,” she posits, over (even more) improvised saxophones. “Where you don’t have to pretend, or perform.”

It’s clear that through this album’s 16 introspective, tender and heart-rending tracks, this is the kind of world Dev Hynes is striving to create through his music: one where the negro swan isn’t only desired, but allowed to soar.

Blood Orange Negro Swan Domino

REVIEWS

Ten years ago, Devonté Hynes released a song called Tell Me What It’s Worth as the orchestral pop project Lightspeed Champion. The song is a mid-’00s indie staple, but one lyric has stood the test of time: “Negroes turn a blueish grey when they're dead/ Well that's funny 'cos I've just turned bright red,” Hynes sings in his signature East London accent.

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Ron Morelli Disappearer Hospital Productions

REVIEWS

For the best part of a decade, DJ, producer, and record label owner Ron Morelli has been probing deep into the darker reaches of the dance music spectrum, with his imprint L.I.E.S. responsible for some of the most abrasive – and often awesome – club records around.

The tough-talking New Yorker’s own output is no less caustic, as his trio of LPs for Domnick Fernow’s Hospital Productions attests.

Disappearer, the follow-up to clanking, churning, corrosive A Gathering Together sees Morelli on typically disgusting form, bludgeoning his way through an hour’s worth of noise skree and avant-EBM skronk with predictably punishing results.

Though it can occasionally veer into the teenage – Golden Oldies, in particular, is the tired sound of an adolescent revenge fantasy that’s the result of too many watches of Driller Killer and a few Wolf Eyes albums – there’s enough material on Disappearer that is genuinely disquieting and disturbing to consider it a nasty, repugnant, success. Material like the underwater body horror of Re-Runs, and the title track’s Voices From the Lake-meetsWhitehouse is Morelli at his malignant best; he makes broken music for broken people in broken times.

Christine and the Queens Chris Because Music

Anna Calvi Hunter Domino Records

Check out the public output of the artist-still-kinda-known as Christine and The Queens and one emoji keeps cropping up: three drops of water, mid-arc.

It’s fitting imagery for Chris.

Sweat so noticeable as to be impeccably framed, so blue as to be pure. Chris is a hot, sultry album, one to put on when you’ve already been dancing through a long afternoon and need a second wind. It’s an album for endurance, no dips or dives, just a steady and beating pulse of synths and sex.

By no means is it boring: Chris swoops and soars.

Subterranean gloom builds into something cascading and enveloping on What’s-her-face; a bassline warps and shimmers on infectious “crisis single” Doesn’t Matter. This is an album that navigates the ambiguous waters of sexuality and identity, relationships and selfhood, with a steady, sure hand. It’s been a long, hot summer, made for wading through endless afternoons. Chris rewards the effort.

Anna Calvi sets out her stall early on her third LP; Hunter wrestles conceptually with what it means to be a queer feminist in 2018 and the playful opener, As a Man, swiftly sets about rebuking heteronormativity.

She’s extended that fluidity to her musical outlook, too.

Hunter is scored through with a spacey, electronic feel. On the title track, flickers of the formidable guitar prowess that defined Calvi’s first two albums hover like a ghost, with a thumping beat doing most of the heavy lifting instead, whilst the operatic drama of centrepiece Swimming Pool relies on synths to mimic strings. Calvi does find room, elsewhere, to flex her shredding muscles, particularly on the poppy riff of Don’t Beat the Girl Out of My Boy and the chaotic closing moments of Alpha.

But the fact that a guitarist of Calvi’s calibre has chosen to keep the instrument firmly in the background on Hunter speaks to its adventurousness, both musically and thematically.

It’s been a long year for Ariana Grande. At 25, the singer has long graduated her debut as a Nickelodeon teen sweetheart-turned-pop star, and her third album Sweetener finds the effusive chanteuse at her most adventurous.

Grande’s voice is forever without fault, navigating powerful, stratospheric highs and airy runs effortlessly. But Sweetener sees Grande explore a middle-range voice that was easily lost in the brassy belting of her earlier hits. Love-soaked title track sweetener and classic R&B croon-along get well soon, for example, threaten to build into a full-blown storm before retreating back into a well of runs and ad libs. That’s not to say that Grande’s kept herself restrained: God is a woman burns slowly before giving way for her signature octave-spanning belt. Lead single no tears left to cry treads a similar track, with Grande convincingly pulling herself together over a strut-ready backing track while declaring: I’m loving, I’m living, I’m picking it up.

The album’s smokey late-night, lights-dimmed pop-R&B crossover is with just a few mistakes: blazed with Pharrell should have been left on the cutting-room floor, and the Zedd-esque synths in goodnight n go are dull and disappointing. Perhaps it’s because for a hitmaker like Grande, the bar has always been high — for Sweetener especially, which comes just over a year after her concert in Manchester was the site of a bombing. The album is laced with references to the aftermath of the tragedy, but none are more powerful than the album’s stellar centerpiece breathin. “Time goes by and I can’t control my mind,” she sings before launching into a moving refrain: “Just keep breathin’, and breathin’, and breathin’ and breathin’”.

Slowly and unassumingly, BEAK> have built up a pretty remarkable catalogue of sludgy motorik, bleak psychedelia, and low-slung oddities. Their latest album, >>>, is perhaps their most melodic and crisply defined work yet – maybe, as their label Invada Records suggest, in response to “the infinite cut & paste fuzz pedal kraut bands on the planet.”

Lead single Brean Down is sullen but strangely anthemic, a two note bassline and gently squalling guitars sitting underneath a wistful vocal melody. Birthday Suit nods to the soundtrack aesthetic that has (explicitly or implicitly) informed much of BEAK> member Geoff Barrow’s post Portishead output. RSI has the same jittery, washed out, sensuality that reverberates through Dutch producer Dollkraut’s excellently unsettling output. And Where We Fall is a vocal-led, rhythmic piece of folk-noir, and is an evocative and striking conclusion to the album, drawing on the oddball occultism that DIY labels like Devon Folklore Tapes shine a murky light on.

! Josh Baines

! Jack Needham

! Joe Goggins

! Nathan Ma

! Adam Corner

BEAK> >>> Invada Records

Ariana Grande Sweetener Republic

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alt-J Reduxer BMG

Sauna Youth sure have stuck to their guns. This is their third album of aloof noise punk. They even released an extra record as a ‘side project’ in which they played other aloof noise punk tunes they’d written but all switched instruments – that’s how much they love it. And, luckily, said records are always pretty good. Sauna Youth songs are genuinely urgent, and Deaths sees them more urgent than ever.

Deaths wears its intellectualism on its sleeve.

The songs may be fast and shouty, but we’re a long way from Slaves here. No Personal Space features continual interruptions from feedback and noise recorded in the band’s fraught practice sessions – creating a self-referential, claustrophobic reminder of this record’s self-imposed difficulties.

Deaths’ agitated ruminations and sheer screechfactor makes for a rough but compelling listen – reflecting noisily on the anxieties that have come to embody this torrid era: cynical political manoeuvring, having no time and no money, being lost. It’s an astute study in hopelessness.

! Jack Needham

! Tom Connick

! Jon Clark

Maribou State Kingdoms In Colour Counter Records

Low Double Negative Sub Pop Sauna Youth Deaths Upset The Rhythm

Cat Power Wanderer Domino

Waxahatchee Great Thunder EP Merge Records

Your twenty-fifth year as a band is a brave, if not strange, time to choose to release perhaps the most challenging album of your career. But Minnesota trio Low have always been an unflinching and uncompromising band.

From the moment it begins, Double Negative sounds like being inside a violent storm, holding up a mirror to the turbulence of the world right now. It’s an abrasive and overwhelming maelstrom of seething static, high-in-the-mix pounding drums and uneasy, dissonant textures. That’s to say: it veers further into the more experimental side of post-rock than Low have ever gone before.

It doesn’t always make for an easy listen of course.

Moments of transcendent beauty are rarely glimpsed through the dark clouds – aside from the enchanting Fly, Mimi Parker’s beautiful voice is often swallowed up by the noise, the heaviness of what’s at stake, while The Son, the Sun sounds like scorched earth and Tempest nearly dissolves under the weight of all the intense static. As you come out of the other end you find Disarray, a burbling, beautiful beat. A moment to take stock. The storm is still raging but there’s a glimpse of light on the horizon.

Cat Power’s tenth album maintains Chan Marshall’s status as a stateswoman of great American songwriting.

Her first record in six years, Wanderer speaks of pulling closer and stretching apart, returning only to leave again.

Marshall’s breath punctuates sparse ballads, driven by rolling piano, expansive guitar and a lyrical map of riddles and wisdoms.

Horizon, an epic at the heart of the album, explores familial ties and the desire for distance; how it feels when you need to find your own space in relation to another person, with one eye on that far-off point where the sea blurs into blue sky.

Tripping, ticking hi-hats keep a steady pace, one foot in front of the other, as electronically distorted vocals inject an alien strangeness into Marshall’s folk.

Lana Del Ray’s cameo on Woman adds understated support to a song that doubles as a mission statement.

“Doctor said […] I was fully free,” Marshall sings, slow and victorious, confronting evergreen rumours about her wellbeing. But it is on the tender, piano-based version of Rihanna’s iconic hit Stay that Marshall’s return is most triumphant and contemporary, reasserting her talent as an astute listener as well as an inimitable voice.

After the anthemic indie of last year’s Out In the Storm, Waxahatchee returns quickly with this EP, made up of tender, intimate songs closer in spirit to her roundly-adored debut, American Weekend. Where that first record confessed in a hushed, lo-fi crackle, Great Thunder boldly highlights Katie Crutchfield’s voice in crystal clarity. It’s bookended by two very good songs in Singers and Take So Much, both built around stripped-back piano, each melody like a mirror image of the other. Drifting friendships or wallowing in the toxicity of a relationship are typically melancholy themes, while Crutchfield nails that mark of a good pop song in writing lyrics to project onto (her howl of "take it all out on me baby" on Take So Much fits this bill perfectly).

The rest of the record disappoints by comparison, the arrangement's forgettable and lyrics straying too close to genericism. Despite how small, almost hidden, she sounded on American Weekend, the directness of her words, pulling no punches, gave it an arresting power. Songwriters evolve, and Crutchfield’s voice is more than good enough to sit brightly, front and centre, but on Great Thunder at least, that enchantment is missing.

Danny Wright

! Katie Hawthorne

! Theo Kotz

!

REVIEWS

Maribou State have grown beyond the pressures that come with immediate hype, something that’s led many a ‘next big thing’ to where-arethey-now pub chats a few years later. On Kingdoms In Colour they diverge from the ‘bass music’ tag that umbrella-termed UK club music at the turn of 2010 and instead cherry pick the global influences they’ve discovered since their 2015 debut LP Portraits.

Maribou State’s eye for collaborative talent shines through. London singer Holly Walker, featuring on Nervous Tics, effortlessly channels golden-era R&B, and Feel Good, a collaboration with Houston trio Khruangbin, broods with Middle Eastern guitar riffs and pitched soulful vocal samples; Erkin Koray meets Diana Ross.

While Kingdoms In Colour holds the ability to be huge, the album never quite realises its potential, often trembling under the weight of its own ambition.

The folk sentimentalities of Kingdoms... resonate at hollow frequencies, even if it will fill festival stages for the next few summers, the album’s bowing out, struggles to be the anthemic curtain closer it hopes to be. Praise is due, however, to Maribou State for trying out new ideas and maturing their sound.

And lo, Britain’s whitest band wades into hip-hop. A reworking of last year’s Relaxer LP, Reduxer finds alt-J enlisting a who’s-who of trendy modern rappers throughout. As such, it veers far too close to a ‘fellow kids’ meme on multiple occasions; a jarring, Little Simz-featuring opening rework of 3WW makes for a stumbling start. It’s a trend that defines the record, the crowbarringin of rapper after rapper coming off like a snatch at true innovation, from a group whose identity revolves on weirdness for weirdness’ sake.

Amongst the multiple mishaps, though, there’s occasional flashes of greatness. Twin Shadow and Pusha T’s take on In Cold Blood manages to tart up a turd that literally uses binary code as lyrics, while Danny Brown continues his trend of turning everything he touches to gold, his jackrabbit vocal and penchant for moulding his flow onto ever-stranger beats making him the perfect bedfellow for alt-J’s weirdopop. On his version of Hit Me Like That Snare, meanwhile, Jimi Charles Moody (the blues rock moniker of Harley Sylvester from Rizzle Kicks) manages the unthinkable, adding a sultry soul to the missionary sexuality of the original. alt-J’s penchant for hip-hop is long storied, but Reduxer is far from essential for all but the most die-hard fans. With international hip-hop at an alltime artistic high, it feels more like an exercise in coattailriding than a necessary creative endeavour.

For tickets, info and full event line-up

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Film

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The Miseducation Of Cameron Post dir: Desiree Akhavan Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Sasha Lane, Jennifer Ehle It's difficult to comprehend that, even today, gay conversion camps are a thing that exist in the world. Despite generally greater queer acceptance globally, homophobia hasn’t gone away, remaining particularly virulent in places where religion holds sway. The Miseducation of Cameron Post beautifully captures the insidious, unsettling nature of organisations that condemn and attempt to 'convert' queer individuals.

American teen Cameron Post (Chloë Grace Moretz) is sent to one such organisation after she's caught having a backseat fumble with a prom queen. It's 1993, and gay rights are a distant dream as Cameron is shipped off to the remote God's Promise, a woodland retreat that wouldn't look out of place in a Friday the 13th film. Overseen by the glacially tyrannical Dr. Lydia Marsh (a fierce Jennifer Ehle), it's a place where queer teenagers wrestle with their same-sex attraction, which they're told is an unacceptable perversion rooted in trauma.

Entering this world in a bemused daze, Moretz delivers her most grown-up performance to date, effectively executing an 'every girl' who just wants to survive high school. Meanwhile, the bond she forms with a couple of outsiders (impishly played

by American Honey’s Sasha Lane and impressive newcomer Forrest Goodluck) is quietly affecting.

Capturing all of this with a matter-of-fact visual style, director Desiree Akhavan (Appropriate Behaviour) unflinchingly confronts the stark reality of conversion camps and the harm they cause. Here, the pretence of counsellors 'helping' vulnerable teenagers comes heavy with the threat of punishment if they fail to conform. That understated horror cuts deep in a drama that's subdued and dreamy, but savagely incisive where it counts. ! Joshua Winning

Few musicians have lives that justify the documentary treatment; even less have experienced enough to work with while they’re still living. But the story of Mathangi Arulpragasam – the rapper and activist known better as M.I.A. – is one that’s more fascinating than even the artist herself knows. It’s no surprise that her close friend, filmmaker Steve Loveridge, decided to make a film about it.

Formed of hundreds of hours of archive footage, much of it shot by Maya herself, MATANGI/MAYA/ M.I.A. follows the Tamil star from her tumultuous childhood as a Sri Lankan refugee raised in the midst of a civil war through to her ascent to experimental pop stardom. But instead of shifting its focus towards M.I.A.’s creative process – a trait so sporadic and singular that it deserves its own spin-off doc – Loveridge’s film humanises an artist often painted as an abrasive or controversystirring character. But that’s not even necessarily a reflection of Loveridge as a director. Instead, this film feels subconsciously influenced by Maya’s personal lens, something that Loveridge, the one who sifted through her tapes, has merely shaped into a cohesive film.

With its constantly-flitting structure, the film might struggle to capture every aspect of M.I.A.’s creative process, but it provides brilliant, emotional context to the work she’s made from her early student films to her latest LPs. Without ever seeming like a showy political siren, it elaborates on how her heritage imbues her creative output not out of choice, but necessity.

That said, there’s something about this that feels like the perfect representation of an artist who’s successfully skirted the mainstream. MATANGI/ MAYA/M.I.A. has more in common with something made by Laura Poitras, something essential, than a throwaway fluff music doc – and it’s far stronger and more affecting for it. ! Douglas Greenwood

07

Skate Kitchen dir: Crystal Moselle Starring: Rachelle Vinberg, Jaden Smith, Elizabeth Rodriguez In the opening minutes of Skate Kitchen, protagonist Camille misjudges a jump, and falls in a way that will later be referred to as “credit carding.”

She’s stitched up and gingerly tries skating home from the hospital. Her mother worries that next time she sustains that particular injury, she might not be able to have children. Camille can’t wait to get back on her board; unintentionally shunning what is expected of her.

Crystal Moselle’s first feature follows a group of girl skateboarders – the titular Skate Kitchen – with outsider Camille (played by newcomer Rachelle Vinberg) acting as our gateway to an idyllic, vital subculture. But while skating is a crucial thread in the movie, it’s the camaraderie that emanates from this fully-formed gang of girls that you remember most.

Draped across each other in their homes, at parties and in parks, the friends talk about gaslighting, troubled families and misshapen vaginas. They smoke weed through bananas and support each other unquestioningly. Jaden Smith, who plays a skater boy brought in to cause trouble, is the weak link in the film. He lends to its alt aesthetic with his red hair and ethereal complexion, but doesn’t deliver as a plausible disruption in the girls’ self-made paradise.

Female friendships on film have taken a pleasing turn in late years – gone are the ruthless, even deadly relationships from teen movies past, paving the way for a more forgiving, free-spirited genre with Skate Kitchen right at the heart of it.

Pawel Pawlikowski’s latest almost feels like a sister act to the director’s previous work, the Oscar-winning Ida. Cold War certainly begins as another stark tale of repression in a remote part of Poland, though it quickly opts for a broader scope, expanding into an epic, elliptical love story taking place all over Europe, exploring all the joy and misery of a relationship doomed by its context.

The central couple, loosely based on Pawlikowski’s parents, meet at an audition for a group that that seems innocuous enough – a troupe specialising in traditional folk songs and dance. Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), the man holding the auditions, ‘sees something’ in Zula (Joanna Kulig, who you may recognise as the jazz singer from Ida), and the two fall in love. The affair seemingly ends as fast as it begins – the troupe is forced to perform propagandistic songs about Stalin, and Wiktor escapes for West Berlin in rejection of the authoritarian regime. Zula doesn’t join him. From here the film bounces across years and borders, showing us the (few) moments of solace the two find in their music and each other.

The tragic yearning between Wiktor and Zula is expressed with far more volatility than Ida, and makes Cold War a more engaging, fiery film; the latter could be accused of being somewhat cold despite its stunning photography. The two are magnetic, despite bickering and breaking up as much as they love – making the few moments when they completely click all the more affecting.

Like that previous film, Cold War is shot in a tight academy ratio in luscious monochrome; the direction of the musical sequences is simply enrapturing, a glorious, temporary escape from the oppressiveness of the regime that bears down on the two. It’s almost enough to fool you into believing that everything will work out in the end. ! Kambole Campbell

! Beth Webb

REVIEWS

MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. dir: Steve Loveridge Starring: M.I.A.

Cold War dir: Pawel Pawlikowski Starring: Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc

09—18 MOTH Club

Lanzarote

lanzaroteworks.com #lanzaroteworks

Programming

The Waiting Room

Shacklewell Arms

Valette St London E8

175 Stoke Newington High St N16

71 Shacklewell Lane London E8

mothclub.co.uk

waitingroomn16.com

shacklewellarms.com

Thursday 6 September

PROLAPSE Friday 7 September

FENSTER Sunday 9 September

INFINITE BISOUS Tuesday 11 September

HOLY WAVE Thursday 13 September ESCAPE-ISM (IAN SVENONIUS) Tuesday 18 September

TERRY Friday 21 September

MIEN Tuesday 25 September

AMYL & THE SNIFFERS Friday 28 September PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS Monday 1 October

KING DUDE Friday 12 October

NIGHT FLOWERS Wednesday 17 October

BO NINGEN Friday 19 October

THE COATHANGERS

Friday 7 September

SOLID BLAKE Saturday 8 September

WILDHART Friday 14 September

TAX FREE VS APRON Saturday 15 September

AUTUMNS Tuesday 18 September

BREATHE PANEL Wednesday 19 September

DIE WILD JAGD Thursday 27 September

HONEY MOON Friday 28 September

WHO’S THE TECHNICIAN? Saturday 29 September

SALARY BOY Thursday 4 October

WASUREMONO Wednesday 10 October

BED RUGS Thursday 11 October

TERTIA MAY Saturday 13 October

LUC MAST

Thursday 6 September

ACID TONGUE Friday 7 September

NEW CANDYS Sunday 9 September

PRINCESS CHELSEA Monday 10 September

STRANGE CAGES Tuesday 11 September

PRETTIEST EYES Friday 14 September

XAVIERS Sunday 16 September

CHICOS DE NAZCA Tuesday 25 September

ADULT MOM Thursday 27 September

CREATURES Saturday 29 September

VIAGRA BOYS Thursday 4 October

JUICEBOXXX

Various venues Tottenham & Seven Sisters Saturday 27 April 2019

TEST PRESSING FESTIVAL

NINES

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Crop Circle Tour Pt.2 2018

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14 SEPT 15 SEPT 16 SEPT 18 SEPT 19 SEPT 20 SEPT E X T R A

21 SEPT

GLASGOW MANCHESTER birmingham BRIGHTON cardiff LONDON L O N D O N

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LONDON

O2 ABC ACADEMY O2 academy CONCORDE 2 tramshed O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN

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BRIGHTON CONCORDE 2 BIRMINGHAM O2 INSTITUTE BRISTOL MOTION MANCHESTER O2 RITZ NORWICH WATERFRONT LEICESTER O2 ACADEMY SOUTHAMPTON ENGINE ROOMS LONDON O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN

CAN I SPEAK UK TOUR + SPECIAL GUESTS

14 NOV MANCHESTER 15 NOV BIRMINGHAM 16 NOV LEEDS 18 NOV BRISTOL 20 NOV LONDON

GORILLA O2 ACADEMY2 BELGRAVE MUSIC HALL THEKLA KOKO

D E M A N D

O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH CODA AGENCY

A Metropolis Music, SJM Concerts & DF Concerts presentation by arrangement with WME

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YUSSEF DAYES

TUE 25 SEP

THURSDAY 13th SEPTEMBER

MANCHESTER GORILLA FRIDAY 14th SEPTEMBER

LONDON O2 SHEPHERDS BUSH EMPIRE

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH UTA

K - TRAP THU 27 SEPT

LONDON ELECTRIC BRIXTON By arrangement with CODA

WED 26 SEP THU 27 SEP FRI

28 SEP

SUN 30 SEP TUE 02 OCT

BRISTOL BRIGHTON MANCHESTER LEEDS BIRMINGHAM LONDON

THE EXCHANGE THE HAUNT YES BELGRAVE MUSIC HALL HARE & HOUNDS SCALA

by arrangement with Primary Talent International

M O N 15 O C T O BE R

LONDON VILL AGE UNDERGROUND

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH CODA

WED 03 THU 04 FRI 05 SAT 06 SUN 07 TUE 09 WED 10 THU 11 FRI 12 SAT 13

OCTOBER 2018 TOUR LONDON SCALA NORWICH EPIC STUDIO BRIGHTON CONCORDE 2 COVENTRY THE KASBAH NEWCASTLE RIVERSIDE LIVERPOOL HANGAR 34 BRISTOL TRINITY MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2 OXFORD O2 ACADEMY PORTSMOUTH WEDGEWOOD ROOMS

NEW ALBUM ‘VESSEL OF LOVE’ OUT NOW

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH UTA

THU 6 DEC LONDON ELECTRIC BRIXTON

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH CAA

Crack Magazine at ADE Wednesday 17 October 2018 Garage Noord, Amsterdam Tickets: crackm.ag/ADE

Shanti Celeste Josey Rebelle upsammy

Patterns 1BTN Alexander Nut British Sea Power Cassia Champion Charles Green Chimpo Chris Headcount Conducta Daniel Avery Dead Meadow DJ Boring DJ Haus DJ Normal 4 Eivor Faro Fatherson Felix Dickinson Fourth World Franc Moody

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September

LOYAL LSDXOXO Max Milian Mor Elian Mr Bongo Nu Guinea Live/DJ Octavian Ovre Puma Blue Ramos Saoirse Shanti Celeste Sick Joy Sophie Hunger Speedy Ortiz SpringHill Stranger Tash LC Tove Styrke Wild Fantasy Zed Bias

October 18

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THU.29.NOV.18 THU.01.NOV.18 WED.26.SEP.18 FRI.30.NOV.18 THU.01.NOV.18 MON.01.OCT.18 TUE.04.DEC.18 THU.08.NOV.18 WED.03.OCT.18

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FRI.25.JAN.19

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DISCO V E R TH E B EST N E W I N DE P E N DE NT SHORTS, FEATU RES, DOCS, W E B SE RI ES, M USIC V I DEOS, AN D V R PASSES AN D TICKETS AVAI LAB LE NO W WWW.RAI N DANCE.ORG / FESTI VAL

Saturday 8 December 2018 Bristol In:Motion

Tickets: crackm.ag/MOTION

Jeff Mills Motor City Drum Ensemble Courtesy Umfang Powder Gideรถn Izabel Facta Danielle David J Bull

the NHS, by IDLES’ Joe Talbot Words: Joe Talbot Illustration: Turbo Island

I was born in the NHS in 1984. I was born with club feet, I returned to hospital for check-ups and surgeries regularly for years. Then when I was 12 my mum’s health deteriorated for the remaining years of her life until I was 30 when she passed. My stepfather died of cancer when I was 19 and then my partner and I were expecting a baby which we sadly lost just last year: not your regular narrative for a 33 year old but that is life whether I like it or not.

You see, that is the true nature of the universe; it is random and brutal and the world keeps spinning whether we have a good day or bad. Our mortality is what levels us all. Whether we are the Queen or are homeless we can all get ill or we can all get hit by a bus tomorrow.

The NHS was created in 1948 as a systemic response to the near obliteration of human welfare in Britain as a result of the Second World War. The only logical reaction to totalitarian and fascistic chaos was a unification of the people; to see the people within the state as equals, devoid of class and race and instead as flesh and bone. Healthcare was changed from a disjointed cluster of charity organisations to a basic British right.

A solemn practice of treating others as you would want to be treated.

How humane!

OPINION

In all the traumas I have been through, it was of course the surgeries and the research and the nurses that immediately kept myself or family members intact. But the residing factor in my love for the NHS was the dignity we were allowed as humans; the consultant gently holding my mother’s

hand, the “YOU WERE BRAVE” stickers I proudly wore, the nurses brushing my mum’s hair, the surgeon making me laugh or the midwife visiting my partner and I 12 months after we lost our daughter and shedding a tear for our pains. It was a reminder that what fuels the NHS, rather than science or taxes, is compassion from the people for the people.

The NHS is the FIFTH largest employer in the world (!). Even more impressive is the compassion from the employees that built and sustained that gigantic vessel. My partner, who is a nurse, has shown me from the inside just what it takes as a person to maintain the innards of the NHS. And it’s not pretty.

She would come home 14 hours after the start of her shift in tears as she had to keep a brave face for a mother who lost her baby, or calmly deal with an abusive drunk, or keep a patient calm who is senile or speaks no English whilst getting the job (on paper) done.

There is no rest for the nurses or the junior doctors or the porters or the cleaners because as they become more and more overworked and underpaid, the ones that stay, stay because they believe in the

philosophical leveller of human welfare as a right. That duty of care, because it is a state-funded infrastructure, doesn’t end at the individual either: it is an organisation with all people’s interest in mind. The NHS will care for people who may abuse the system and come back without caring for themselves or taking their prescriptions because they are seen as patients not customers; they need empathy as well as drugs.

Every patient that leaves their bed is monitored in many different ways that continue until that person is seen fit: All for free because the NHS was built on the understanding that all humans were born and die equal and that human welfare is a right. Beyond those rights, at the core of the NHS is a sustained practice of human kindness and good will.

On behalf of my daughter, my mother and everyone in this country, I say without any hesitation, to my partner and everyone who has helped build and sustain the NHS, I love you.

IDLES' album Joy as an Act of Resistance is out now via Partisan Records