CRACK Issue 58

Novelist

VILLAGE UNDERGROUND PROUDLY PRESENTS

AN EVENING WITH

FEATURING BOTH ELECTRIC AND ACOUSTIC PERFORMANCES

14 & 15 DECEMBER 2015 VILLAGEUNDERGROUND.CO.UK

In Alphabetical Order

BEN UFO CRAIG RICHARDS DIXON FELIX DICKINSON FORT ROMEAU GERD JANSON HORSE MEAT DISCO HUNEE JOB JOBSE JOY ORBISON KHRUANGBIN LORD OF THE ISLES MIDLAND MOTOR CITY DRUM ENSEMBLE PROSUMER RED AXES TAMA SUMO & MANY MORE STILL TO COME

The brand new Adriatic adventure sets sail First wave of announcements - Plenty more still to come Tickets on sale now at www.loveinternationalfestival.com

15/16/17 January 2016 – Butlins, Bognor Regis New names announced! (in alphabetical order):

ARMAND VAN HELDEN ÂME (LIVE) / BICEP / DJ EZ / DJ KOZE DUSKY / EATS EVERYTHING / EROL ALKAN GEORGE FITZGERALD / GROOVE ARMADA (DJ SET) HANNAH WANTS / HEIDI / JACKMASTER JOY ORBISON / JULIO BASHMORE KERRI CHANDLER / KURUPT FM / SKREAM ANDHIM / ARTWORK / B.TRAITS / BODDIKA / CATZ ‘N DOGZ DEETRON / DJ BARELY LEGAL / GERD JANSON JASPER JAMES / JONAS RATHSMAN / KAMERA LEMMY ASHTON / LIL SILVA / MUMDANCE / NOVELIST PARANOID LONDON (LIVE) / THE BLACK MADONNA / TODDLA T BOOK YOUR PLACE £50 DEPOSIT

3 Nights / 3 dance floors / Pool Parties / DJ competition / Pub Quiz / Rave Karaoke (and you’re only ever metres away from your bed) Accommodation included Tickets available from £169pp / Book in groups of 2/3/4/5/6/7/8

BUGGEDOUTWEEKENDER.NET

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An exciting new colaboration between Crack Magazine & Arbor Ales

For stockists, orders and further information contact: hello@crackhops.com

November 2015 Saturday 7 th November: Groove Odyssey’s 6 th Birthday

Saturday 14th November: Doorly & Friends

Saturday 21st November: Together

Saturday 28th November: Saturday Sessions

Tony Humphries Joey Negro Bobby and Steve Natasha Watts

Darius Syrossian Doorly Doc Daneeka Citizenn

A-Trak T.Williams Fake Blood Oxide & Neutrino

James Zabiela Olivier Giacomotto Jon Rundell Rhythm Masters

ministryofsound.com/club | 103 Gaunt St, Elephant & Castle, London, SE1 6DP

11—15 MOTH Club Valette St London E8 mothclub.co.uk

Lanzarote Thursday 12 November

KELLEY STOLTZ

Friday 13 November

Monday 9 November

JOHNNY FOREIGNER

Tuesday 10 November

CONRAD KEELY (TRAIL OF DEAD)

PORCHES + J FERNANDEZ EKKAH

Wednesday 11 November

OSCAR

Friday 13 November

WILL TRAMP

Saturday 14 November

ANIKA (CAVE CLUB) Monday 16 November

YOUNGHUSBAND

Tuesday 17 November

YAK

Saturday 21 November

TEN FÉ

Monday 23 November

LITTLE WHITE THINGS Monday 30 November

SUNFLOWER BEAN Tuesday 1 December

LANTERNS ON THE LAKE

Shacklewell Arms 71 Shacklewell Lane London E8 shacklewellarms.com

lanzaroteworks.com

presents

Tuesday 17 November

Wednesday 18 November

JOSEFIN ÖHRN & THE LIBERATION Thursday 19 November

WESLEY GONZALES Friday 20 November

SLY & THE FAMILY DRONE

#lanzaroteworks

Tuesday 17 November

CAUSES Wednesday 25 November

EVANS THE DEATH Thursday 26 November

RAIME (ALL NIGHT LONG) Friday 28 November

NUMMER Tuesday 1 December

MANSIONAIR Wednesday 2 December

BAD SOUNDS

Sunday 22 November

KIM AND THE CREATED

Monday 7 December

PIXEL FIX

Wednesday 25 November

COMET IS COMING Monday 30 November

O EMPEROR

Saturday 5 December

TREMBLING BELLS

The Waiting Room 175 Stoke Newington High St London N16 waitingroomn16.com Wednesday 11 November

BO ROCHA

Friday 13 November

IVAN SMAGGHE + NATHAN GREGORY WILKINS

The Lock Tavern 35 Chalk Farm Rd London NW1 lock-tavern.com Sunday 8 November

WITCHING WAVES + MYSTYRYS Thursday 12 November

FRAN LOBO + ABSENT AVERAGE Friday 13 November

LOVE BUZZARD + GHOST CAR Saturday 14 November

FRANK MCWEEKY Thursday 19 November

TAIL FEATHER

Saturday 14 November

Tuesday 10 November

FIELD STUDIES

MIKE SKINNER + MURKAGE DAVE PRESENT TONGA

Thursday 26 November

DAVE SANTOS

Highlights Highlights Exhibitions Exhibitions Prem PremSahib: Sahib:Side SideOn On 2424Sep Sep2015 2015––15 15Nov Nov2015 2015 Lower Lower&&Upper UpperGalleries Galleries

Smiler: Smiler:Photographs Photographsof ofLondon Londonby byMark Mark Cawson Cawson 1212Oct Oct––29 29Nov Nov2015 2015 ICA ICAFox FoxReading ReadingRoom Room

ICA ICAOff-Site: Off-Site:Hannah HannahPerry Perry

1515Oct Oct––15 15Nov Nov2015 2015 Diesel Black Gold FlashipStore: Store:The TheCourtyard, Courtyard,21 21Conduit ConduitStreet, Street,London LondonW1S W1S 2XP 2XP Diesel Black Gold Flaship

BloombergNew NewContemporaries Contemporaries 2015 2015 Bloomberg Nov2015 2015––24 24Jan Jan2016 2016 2525Nov Lower&&Upper UpperGalleries Galleries Lower

Film Film

Events Events Culture Now: Foster Culture Now: HalHal Foster 6 Nov, 1pm Fri Fri 6 Nov, 1pm Nástio Mosquito: The Age I Don’t Nástio Mosquito: The Age I Don’t Remember Remember 6 Nov, 7pm Fri Fri 6 Nov, 7pm

Artist Nástio Mosquito presents a new Artist Nástio Mosquito presents a new performance in the ICA Theatre. performance in the ICA Theatre.

Artists’ Film Club: Transactions Artists’ Film Club: Transactions of of Desire screening + book launch Desire screening + book launch Sun 8 Nov, 12pm Sun 8 Nov, 12pm What really motivates our intimate What really motivates our intimate relationships and actions? relationships and actions?

FieldNiggas Niggas++Q&A Q&A(UK (UK Premiere) Premiere) Currently& &Emotion EmotionPerformances Performancesand and Field Currently Wed44Nov, Nov,8.50pm 8.50pm Panel Discussion Wed Panel Discussion Tue Nov,6pm 6pm Tue 1717Nov, FIlmAfrica: Africa: A series performancesbybypractitioners practitioners FIlm A series ofof performances Thu Nov,6.30pm: 6.30pm: Necktie Necktie Youth Youth whose work and/orwriting writingonontranslation translationisis Thu 77Nov, whose work and/or Sat 7 Nov, 6.30pm: Democrats Sat 7 Nov, 6.30pm: Democrats vital and necessarilypolitically politicallycharged. charged. vital and necessarily Panel Discussion:Lawrence LawrenceAlloway: Alloway: Panel Discussion: Critic Curator Critic ororCurator Wed Nov,6.30pm 6.30pm Wed 1818Nov, Culture Now: Peter Shelton Culture Now: Peter Shelton Fri 20 Nov, 1pm Fri 20 Nov, 1pm

ICA Associates: NINJA TUNE 25th ICA Associates: NINJA TUNE 25th Prem Sahib & Jeffrey Hinton: UNPLUCT Anniversary Prem Sahib & Jeffrey Hinton: UNPLUCT Anniversary Thu 12 Nov, 8pm 20 Nov, 8pm ThuA 12 Nov,one-off 8pm night of live DJ sets and FriFri 20 Nov, 8pm special A special one-off night live DJ sets screenings in the ICAofTheatre.

Wearand white Friday Salon: What makes an Artist an screenings in the ICA Theatre. Wear white Friday Salon: What makes an Artist an on the night.

Artist? on the night.

Artist?

Sat 21 Nov, 2pm Culture Now: Taus Makhacheva Sat 21 Nov, 2pm Culture Fri 13Now: Nov, Taus 1pm Makhacheva Useful and/or Useless: Artists, what is Fri 13 Nov, 1pm Useful and/or Useless: Artists, what is your value?

STOP PLAY RECORD Film Workshop: your Satvalue?

21 Nov, 2pm STOP PLAYFerguson RECORD Film Workshop: Kathryn Sat 21 Nov, 2pmartist Zachary Cahill Chicago-based Kathryn Ferguson Wed 18 Nov, 4pm Chicago-based artist Zachary Cahill discusses his work.

Wed 18 Nov, 4pm discusses his work.

Institute of Contemporary Arts Institute of London Contemporary Arts The Mall SW1Y 5AH The Mall London SW1Y 5AH 020 7930 3647, www.ica.org.uk 020 7930 3647, www.ica.org.uk

LuisBuñuel: Buñuel:Aesthetics Aesthetics of of the the Irrational Irrational Luis 12 Nov – 6 Dec 2015 12 Nov – 6 Dec 2015

retrospectiveof ofthe thefilms films of of Luis Luis Buñuel Buñuel AAretrospective (1900–1983), celebrating his genius, (1900–1983), celebrating his genius, irreverence and unique poetic style. irreverence and unique poetic style.

Attaching The Devil + Q&A Attaching The Devil + Q&A Sun 8 Nov, 2.15pm Sun 8 Nov, 2.15pm

A look into Harold Evans’ investigations and A look into Harold Evans’ investigations and campaigns as editor of The Sunday Times, campaigns as editor of The Sunday Times, before it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch. before it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch.

Onwards and Outwards Onwards and Outwards Until December 2015 at Until December 2015 at nationwide venues nationwide venues A unique programme of films made by

ABritish uniquewomen programme of films made by 50 filmmakers over the last British 50 years. women Includesfilmmakers sreenings, over talks the andlast events, years.

Includes sreenings, talks and events, which draws attention to the conditions of which drawsfor attention the conditions of production womento working in the UK’s production forand women workinga in the UK’s film industry, establishes dialogue film industry, and establishes a dialogue about these key issues. about these key issues.

The ICA is a registered charity no. 236848

The ICA is a registered charity no. 236848

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Contents Features

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36

40

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46

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NOVELIST The young Lewisham MC is an unofficial mouthpiece for disenfranchised youth. Tomas Fraser looks towards a legacy with grime's hardest working newcomer

30

BLACKEST EVER BLACK Digging in the dark nooks of sound, Kiran Sande shapes a label birthed by boredom and fuelled by exclusion. He tells Tom Watson about five wretched years at the helm

36

KODE 9 Mystified by the concept of zero, the Hyperdub boss and sonic expert tells Tom Watson he’s leaving his double life behind

42

JENNYLEE Warpaint bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg has crafted gothically-inspired nocturnes under a new moniker. She tells Suzie McCracken about producing on her own terms

40

MISS RED Aine Devaney discovers how the turmoil of Miss Red’s homeland provided the rebellious nature she needed to spontaneously take to the stage with The Bug

52

NICHOLAS DALEY What is ‘Britishness’? If you’re menswear designer Nicholas Daley, it’s multiracial, subcultural, and always inspiring. Cassandra Kirk-Gould spoke to him about his treasured heritage

35

TRUST FUND Ellis Jones speaks to Billy Black about his band’s ever evolving line-up, the usefulness of record labels and supermarket freak-outs

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ART IN THE CLUB Berghain is synonymous with decadence, but its new book encourages you to take a closer look at the art within its depths. Augustin Macellari explores the function of the gallery and the club as a shared space for subversion

Novelist shot exclusively for Crack by Jack Johnstone London: October 2015

Regulars 17

EDITORIAL You used to call me...

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MARSHALL ALLEN: TURNING POINTS At 91 years old Marshall Allen is a veteran of the afro-futurist movement and lifelong member of Sun-Ra Arkestra. He recounts his fascinating career to Andrew Broaks

54

AESTHETIC: VENUS X The tastemaking DJ redefines goth through her GHE20G0TH1K brand. In our styled shoot, she explores the dark beauty and strength at the core of her work.

82

DIGRESSIONS Baines’ World, Tall Order with Mogwai, the Crossword and advice from Denzil Schniffermann

85

20 QUESTIONS: JEFFREY LEWIS The irreverent anti-folk of musician and comic book artist Jeffrey Lewis has had us half laughing and half thoughtful for years now, so it’s no wonder his answers to our 20 Questions proved just as enlightening

86

PERSPECTIVE: DAVID KEENAN When Berceuse Heroique’s sexist tweet was thrown into the spotlight, people began to question the label’s belligerent image as a whole. Author and critic David Keenan weighs in on what it means to be offensive in 2015

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Issue 58

Executive Editors Thomas Frost tom@crackmagazine.net Jake Applebee jake@crackmagazine.net Editor Davy Reed Marketing / Events Manager Luke Sutton luke@crackmagazine.net Deputy Editor Anna Tehabsim

Online Editor Billy Black Junior Online Editor Sammy Jones Editorial Assistant Duncan Harrison Creative Director Jake Applebee Art Direction & Design Alfie Allen Graphic Design Yasseen Faik Marketing / Events Assistant Lucy Harding Editorial Assistant Duncan Harrison Staff Writer Tom Watson Film Editor Tim Oxley Smith Art Editor Augustin Macellari Fashion Luci Ellis, Bex Day, Teresa Davies, Jennifer Vidler Words Josh Baines, Denzil Schnifferman, Angus Harrison, Thomas Frost, Robert Bates, Gunseli Yalcinkaya, Aine Devaney, Steven Dores, Francis Blagburn, Tamsyn Aurelia-Eros Black, Tomas Fraser, Suzie McCracken, Cassandra Kirk-Gould, Davd Keenan, Andrew Broaks, Ian Ochiltree, Ayesha Linton Whittle, Joe Goggins, Xavier Boucherat Photography Bex Day, Júlia Soler, Iain Anderson, Stephanie Elizabeth Third, Juan Jose Ortiz, Kate Bones, Adrien Missika, Zsu Szabo, Sarah Ginn, Mark Allan, Jack Johnstone, Will Dohrn, Mia Kirby Illustration Toby Leigh, Edward Chambers Advertising To enquire about advertising and to request a media pack: advertising@crackmagazine.net 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.

PATRICK COWLEY Kickin’ In SAVAGES The Answer YG, BLANCO & DB THA GENERAL Driving Like I’m Loco SOICHI TERADA Sun Shower ABBA Voulez Vous BEACH HOUSE All Your Yeahs SHY GLIZZY Out The Block GESLOTEN CIRKEL Acid Stakan RADIATOR HOSPITAL Will You Find Me? FATHER Everybody In The Club Gettin Shot HOT SNAKES If Credit’s What Matters I’ll Take Credit GRIMES Flesh Without Blood

For weeks, there have been images that I can’t escape.

It all started on the night of the Canadian federal election. Following three consecutive terms in power and one of the longest election campaigns in the country’s political history, it transpired that the Conservative’s reign was crumbling due to the resurgence of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party. My Twitter feed became flooded with expressions of shock, elation, cynicism and hope.

But the online buzz around this monumental political event was about to be eclipsed by a force much bigger, a force which would write itself into the history books with infinite memes and pure LOL factor.

The aesthetics were simple yet iconic. A turtle neck. A red puffer jacket.

Timberland boots. Meticulously trimmed, artificial-looking facial hair. But it was the dancing which really did it. Since that day – 19 October, to be precise – I’ve not been able to go 24 hours without seeing a meme, a compilation of the best memes or a compilation of the best meme compilations on my laptop screen. So how are the Liberals actually getting on in Canada? Don’t have a fucking clue mate! Have you seen the one where it looks like Drake’s dancing to the Rugrats theme tune? Hilarious.

Don’t get me wrong – I laughed at the one where it looks like Drake’s got a lightsaber, I cringed when Meek Mill failed to mock the dance moves and I’ve brought up the memes in pub conversations.

But the fact that I’ve felt little urge to actually watch the full video, and lost interest in the election, probably reflects an unhealthy side effect of online consumption. This is why I’m grateful to work in a monthly print cycle.

I’ve noticed a lack of in-depth, thoroughly-researched music features in contemporary online journalism – with the relentless appetite of the internet, the brief is often to churn out a snappy Q&A before anyone else gets there first.

So in conclusion, I’ve decided that it’s foolish to think you’re above the fun stuff, but essential to maintain patience for the longreads. And now this issue’s complete, I’m finally ready to digest the Hotline Bling video in its full glory.

Davy Reed, Editor

JUDGE Fed Up TRUST FUND Big Asda SADE Never Thought I’d See The Day (L-Vis 1990 Sunrise edit) THE WEEKND The Hills DRAKE Hotline Bling LANA DEL REY Honeymoon NOVELIST Endz DJ RICHARD Savage Coast TROPIC OF CANCER Stop Suffering YEAH YEAH YEAHS Y Control BOB DYLAN Girl From The North Country MORGAN LOUIS Only 1 JEFFREY LEWIS & LOS BOLTS Support Tours MICHAEL CHAPMAN Plain Old Bob Has a Hoe Down

Issue 58 | crackmagazine.net

Respect Team Love Alex Horne Angie Towse Katie Louden Anthony Goodison Hannah Priestley-Eaton Helen at Mackenzie’s Carol Black Dina Ntziora Mike from Sprinters

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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

CLOCK STRIKES 13: AWFUL RECORDS Village Underground 14 November £12.50

F WD>>: FA ZE MIYAKE Dance Tunnel 5 November If you’ve ever tuned into one of Faze Miyake’s Rinse FM shows, you’ll know that the concepts of pigeonholing and ‘genre’ don’t mean much to him. He effortlessly journeys through deep bass-laden trap, neon-lit funk and ice cold grime to create a wholly rewarding experience. No surprise then that two of the most exciting figures in electronic music wanted to show up for his album launch. The enduringly enigmatic sounds of Inga Copeland will precede Miyake’s headline outing as well as a DJ set from Lisbon’s finest DJ Marfox. It’s a bill reflective of Faze’s artistic standpoint; eclectic and genuinely exciting.

DISAPPE ARS 100 Club 23 November Churning, hypnotic basslines hum.

Driving motorik percussion thuds and clacks. Chicago’s Disappears are indebted to a bygone era. They peddle a kind of modern krautrock that is utterly retro, combining the clinical repetition and bewitching headiness of bands like Can and Neu with a snarling cynicism and fuzz more akin to the likes of Interpol and Protomartyr. This has got to sound great live.

SMILER: PHOTOGR APHS OF LONDON BY MARK CAWSON ICA 12 October - 29 November

Atlanta’s Awful Records collective are the group of outsiders you dream will one day let you in. In the past few years, reprobate founder Father and his troupe of producers, singers, rappers and artists have gone from being left-field internet sensations on the periphery of Atlanta’s rap scene to a fully fledged global operation – all without the help of any cosigns from major labels or heavyweight artists. For their Shoreditch invasion, prepare to lose your mind to the psychedelic minimal rap of Father, the alt-RnB stylings of ABRA and the skewed club-killers of Keithcharles Spacebar – one of contemporary rap's most exciting armies is coming for you.

LIVIT Y SOUND Phonox 13 November

Smiler, or Mark Cawson, is celebrated for his photographs of London’s squats. This latest exhibition sees the world through Smiler’s lens from the late 70s to the early 90s, his portraits capturing his friends and fellow squatters in their day-to-day lives. Their rebellious outlook, uninhibited approach to sexuality and experience of London from a viewpoint that was, naturally, anti-establishment.

Set against a backdrop of political discontent and personal turmoil Cawson’s Photographs of London is a glimpse of an alternative 80s and an alternative world view.

ONEOTHRIX POINT NEVER Village Underground 8 November

CS13: KODE9 Corsica Studios 7 November

HELENA HAUFF Dance Tunnel 27 November

JENNY HVAL Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen 11 November £10.50

MOVE D Phonox 27 November

THE BL ACK MADONNA Patterns, Brighton 21 November £8

AÏSHA DEVI Birthdays 20 November

Marea Stamper has long been a fixture of Chicago dance music; from pushing her mixtapes to the Midwestern rave scene in the early 90s to more recently becoming the chief talent buyer at Chicago clubbing institution Smart Bar. With her latest output as The Black Madonna, she’s celebrated for more than her gleeful dedication to house music. Her outspoken stance as a feminist and advocate for the queer community aims to erase the idea of female DJs as a novelty, instead highlighting women’s integral role in dance music history, while more recently she delved into the damaging effects of the corporatisation of dance for our Perspective column. Sound good? Get down with this dance music radical at Patterns this month.

“Think big, girl, like a king, think kingsize,“ utter the first words of Jenny Hval’s Apocalypse, girl. The Norwegian artist’s fifth solo record is a lucid experience. Sitting somewhere between hallucination and reality, it brings universal ideas into focus with razor sharp wit, spiralling from childhood dreams to post-feminism via Armageddon. It’s also driven by a nagging frustration – as she explained to us, Hval is “sick of the images that dictate how you are supposed to be as an alternative artist.” We’d say she overcomes these notions with poise, wildly twisting pop-informed ideas around a narrative of introspection and mass destruction. Witness Hval navigate this axis of clarity this month.

ROMAN FLÜGEL fabric 13 November

19 JOEY BADA$$ The Roundhouse 16 November

VINCE STAPLES Cargo 5 November

CHELSE A WOLFE Islington Assembly Hall 22 November £16.50

IBEYI Koko 3 November

Across the sparse trauma of 2010’s The Grime and The Glow and the raw, sinewy drone-folk of Apokalypsis the following year, Californian artist Chelsea Wolfe’s bold, gothic expressions sounded utterly otherworldly and unique. Her breakthrough came in 2013: Pain Is Beauty shared the same deathly purview, but while in the past Wolfe herself felt like a shady silhouette, a figure had now emerged from behind the shroud. While Wolfe’s recent album Abyss saw her embrace bolder, more accessible song structures, her sense of melancholia and doomy vigour remained intact. Expect a captivating performance.

WIDOWSPE AK London Fields Brewery 22 November

LWE NYD Tobacco Dock 1 January £39.50 + BF If you’re one of those headcases that can go hard for two days at a time, here’s the night after NYE sorted for you. London Warehouse Events have stacked the bill at Tobacco Dock with a bundle of renowned DJs to please you, including producers turned label owners Bicep, Canada’s eclectic B. Traits, and a live set from Âme to ring in the new year – so pack enough supplies for 48 hours, or, you know, ease off on New Year’s Eve. Hahaha, good one.

BLONDES The Oval 11 November

JULIA HOLTER Islington Assembly Hall 13 November If you've not considered putting Julia Holter’s fourth LP, Have You In My Wilderness, into your end of year album list then you’ve sadly skipped over one of the most interesting and enchanting releases of the season. Holter’s one in a million vocals, spacious landscapes of sound and love of elegant storytelling blend on record to reimagine classic stories of love and loss that are as catchy as they are clever. It’s sure to translate into a magical live show.

THE UNDER ACHIEVERS Scala 23 November

DISCODROMO The Pickle Factory 28 November

ROME FORTUNE Brewhouse 4 November

MOLLY NILSSON Bethnal Green Working Mens Club 25 November

THE ORB Oval Space 13 November £25

ITALOJOHNSON Dance Tunnel 14 November

CS13: ZOMBY Village Underground 6 November

Ibeyi have been hyped to within an inch of their twin lives and at least a sliver of the shout-outs have been justified. Tripped-out percussion complements bewitching vocals that are tossed between the two with ethereal elegance on record, and they’ve been bagging positive reviews across the board for their live show too. A ticket to an Ibeyi show is a pass into a world of charm, charisma and cleverly clashing culture.

The godfathers of ambient house are making swift work of most of the UK this November with a tour in support of their recent LP release, Moonbuilding 2703 AD. While the duo made themselves a household name in the early nineties (most notably with CD rack classic U.F.Orb), their most recent effort has just as many hallmarks of a modern masterwork, and is just as full of ideas as when the pair were making beats way back in 1990.

A chance to see a pair of true electronic pioneers at work.

PAR ANOID LONDON The Rainbow Venues, Birmingham 21 November

ST GERMAIN Troxy 17 November

21

New Music

AÏSHA DEVI

TERRY

FIELDED OK, so we’ve been sleeping on this – turns out Lindsay A. Powell has been releasing DIY power pop as Fielded for a few years now – but sometimes when you stumble across something truly special and no one around you is aware of it, spreading the word is a matter of duty. Powell has released her first Fielded EP Boy Angel (as a USB necklace!) since 2013, and the songs’ melodies pack enough emotional intensity to totally floor you on your very first listen. Having won the admiration of Perfect Pussy vocalist Meredith Graves, Powell has toured with the band and recently performed at Graves’ recent Honor Press showcase in Brooklyn. At the time of writing, Powell is hoping to recruit a band to play a Kate Bush covers set on Halloween, and we’re confident that she’ll absolutely nail Cloudbusting.

Who is Terry? It’s not exactly clear.

All we know is that Terry can be divided into four parts to make up the Australian musical project that shares her name. Their only song (so far) is called Talk About Terry and it seems to revolve around the narrator’s reluctance to date Terry.

It makes us want to sit in a field with our jumper stretched over our knees while we think about love and stuff. With members of staple Melbourne bands like Total Control and Constant Mongrel among their ranks, Terry are an indie-pop prospect worth keeping an eye on.

:

O Talk About Terry 1 The Pastels / Twerps upsettherhythm.co.uk/terry

Aïsha Devi cuts an unusual figure in electronic music. Her self-described “hi-fi shamanism” swings vicariously from a soft lull to vibrant explosions of colour and genre, stretching her voice around avant-garde electronics.

Through her unpredictable sound, as well as the “ritual music” of her Danse Noir label, Devi has carved a singular approach; fusing the transcendent possibilities of the club with the vibrant force of her own spiritual enlightenment.

The Swiss-Nepalese artist, formerly known as Kate Wax, released EPs and albums for the likes of Border Community before more recently adopting her birth name. This new moniker has been the outlet for a series of releases exploring themes as diverse as throat singing, gabba and the patriarch. As she explains, “taking it back is a kind of self-acceptance, an inner peace deal.”

Following this self-embrace, her sound has harnessed a certain visceral power. Her Conscious Cunt EP was dedicated to her late grandmother who raised her, exploring “sluts, awareness, death and women in a patriarchal society.” In her recent album Of Matter And Spirit, released through fabric-affiliated label Houndstooth, Devi explores “how disharmonised our society is, the obsolescence of our lifestyle, our shortterm vision of contentment and desire fulfillment.” Named after a book by her grandfather, a CERN employed scientist, Of Matter… surveys “how empty and consumerist our modern icons and idolisations are.”

The result is a lucid trance. With metallic clangs jolting you out of its meditative sprawl, and candied vocals against industrial churns, it’s a wild and ambitious effort, one driven by her journey into a new consciousness.

“Meditation helped me find an organic, essential pulse in my music,” she tells us. “I realised how each individual can transcend, rise selfempowerment, politic involvement, ecologic awareness and its impact on the world's mutation.” A talented producer with big ideas, Aisha Devi is crafting something exhilarating and unique. She’s quietly confident too; as she sees it, “the revolution will be spiritual.”

O Mazda 1 Arca / The Knife : @aisha_devi

GAIK A

PILL Veronica Torres’ vocals alone should be enough for you to give Pill a spin – snarling, heavily accented and able to plumb the ultimate depths of deadpan, her perfect take on eye-rolling irony pierces through the saxophonesplit post-punk cacophony the band presents. All Brooklynites, the five-piece released an eponymous EP at the beginning of the year that is reminiscent of a particularly mad and frothing Sonic Youth and tackles predatory phone calls, privilege and social unrest.

Now the band have bounced from Parquet Courts’ Dull Tools over to Mexican Summer for the release of a typically wild new single.

Hopefully this is a harbinger of a full-length on the horizon.

All that can be drawn from the Facebook information section for mysterious vocalist / producer GAIKA is his gender, his email address and a shout-out for everyone’s favourite affordable airline EasyJet. His debut and only sonic offering thus far is Blasphemer, the kind of song that stays in the mind for days on end after a first listen. Through swollen electronic production, barbed auto-tune and a dancehallinfluenced vocal performance, GAIKA has pinned down a sound that is both enigmatic but directly effective: suffocating, exhaustive but deeply authentic balladry all set to a rich instrumental. With a full mixtape readied for November, this puzzling talent won’t stay caged for much longer.

O Blasphemer 1 FKA twigs / Jam City : @gaikasays

O Hot Glue 1 Essential Logic / Teenage Jesus and the Jerks : mexicansummer.com/shop/ pill-hot-glue/

O City of the Dazed 1 Empress Of / Telepathe : fielded.tumblr.com

O Track 1 File Next To : Website

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Turning Points: Marshall Allen Words: Andrew Broaks

With The Sun Ra Arkestra, Marshall Allen has been propelling music into the future for nearly 60 years – firstly as a member, and now as the leader. Born in Kentucky in 1924, Allen first met Sun Ra in Chicago in the late 1950s and soon joined the visionary’s collective of musicians as alto-saxophone, flute and oboe player. The Arkestra’s experimental approach to jazz, which mixed big band with avant-garde compositions, alongside Sun Ra’s claim to be of an “angel race” from Saturn, blazed a trail in jazz music and pioneered the ideology of afrofuturism, influencing artists ranging from George Clinton to techno innovators such as Derrick May. At 91 years old, Allen’s remarkable energy is still intact, and he continues to lead the Arkestra around the world, spreading the word from outer space.

“Sun Ra had a futuristic view of things. All the things that happened, he already knew was gonna happen”

1930s: Discovering jazz They used to have what they call beer gardens; they’d have bands at the beer garden and all the people there drinking beer and the band would be jamming, so we’d stand outside the fence and listen. We’d try and sneak in and hear them any time we could.

That was way back in the 30s, when I was a young guy. That’s the way I fell in love with jazz.

1957: Meeting Sun Ra and joining the Arkestra in Chicago I heard the music before I met Sun Ra, and oh the music! I thought there’s something in there that just… I feel. And a friend of mine told me where Sun Ra could be found, rehearsing with the band, and so I went up there with my horn to investigate if they could use me. It’s like anything else, you don’t just take somebody in, you see where they’re at first, y’know, talk with them and hang out with them and see what they’re talking about. So I guess he was checking to see if I was sincere or not, that’s what he was looking for – somebody who he could deal his ideas with. All he needed was somebody with enough distance to stay in one place and be taught by him. And I said, well I’m gonna quit running and looking for bands – I found one. So that was it.

1960 – 1968: Moving the Arkestra to New York We were gonna stop in New York for a little bit and check out different people, cause a lot of members of the old band was there.

But then a cab hit our transportation. We couldn’t get back, and then the money got funny. We had to work in the coffee houses for a meal and not too much money. So that was that, but then we began to build a new band. Musicians [from] all over the world were in New York. It was like the hub, so that was the right place to be. Sun Ra picked the type of musician that he figured could choose to learn what he was trying to do. We was going back to Chicago and never did get back, so we got a band in New York and we just stayed for 10 years.

1995: Leading the Arkestra after Sun Ra’s passing It was not something I chose, it was something that was handed down. There was nobody left that knows how to do this stuff but me – how to get his music going right – so either I just let it go or take it on.

All them years and all that hard work and all that beautiful music, I’m not gonna let it go to waste, y’know? I had to get some more musicians, some of them had been with Sun Ra before, some of them was new. I had to mix them and train everybody the way to phrase, the way I was taught to phrase music and make it alive.

2014: Sun Ra’s centenary The music’s for the people of the 21st century. So in other words, he was right on time with the circuit change. Our songs are about the same thing – greetings from century 21. Sun Ra... he had a futuristic view of things, of what’s to come. All the things that happen he already knew was gonna happen, you see. So he was preparing for now and for the people in the next generation because that century was a training ground.

So we have something for everyone, those who like the music from the old, and those who like music from the future.

2015: Looking towards the future It’s like, all of man that was, that passed on, their music is still alive. So that’s the same with Sun Ra, he had some songs that will be down in history, in the songbooks, and then every generation can play them. They left those things and we’re playing those.

And then we play Sun Ra and that expands the programme. All the songwriters who wrote their songs are still alive, with every new generation playing them.

To Those and Other Worlds: Gilles Peterson Presents Sun Ra and His Arkestra is released 30 October via Strut

Novelist Next Generation

Novelist, real name Kojo Kankam, is talking to me from his hotel room. He’s currently in Los Angeles, having just shot a video for a track recorded with US super producer Baauer. At 18 years old, his transition from an aspiring young artist to the torchbearer of his scene has been explosive, establishing him as a kind of unofficial, unapologetic voice for the young and disenfranchised. “When I come over to the US though, people know what I’m about straight away,” he insists. “They can see that I’ve got my own style and my own swag, and they respect that.”

Growing up in Brockley, South London was a far cry from the glamour and excess of Beverley Hills. A self-confessed ‘ends man’, Novelist’s early life was punctuated by conflict and hardship but it also provided a solid, musical grounding that he credits his family for. “I had everything played at my house,” he remembers. “East and West Coast gangsta rap, Japanese rap, soulful funk – anything that sounded good, my parents would want to play and listen to.”

It was when he was five or six that he first came into contact with grime, a type of music he, to this day, still considers ‘genreless’. “When I was young, my uncle used to come into the house with different DVDs, tapes, CDs; it was part of the culture back then. It was the first music that I knew that was overwhelmingly UK and that was relevant to myself and my surroundings. It’s just always been there in my life.”

Novelist was 15 years old when myself and others involved in the loose, micro-scene that was developing at the time first came into contact with him – then a hungry, wideeyed MC who was always polite and visibly focused in a way few kids at that age ever are. He’d come along to radio studios and observe everything around him, talk to us

Words: Tomas Fraser Photography: Jack Johnstone

and ask us questions. There was something undoubtedly special about him. People knew it was only a matter of time before he’d break through, but as with everything he seems to turn his mind to, Novelist took his time, a phrase immortalised by the defining record of his career so far.

For those paying attention to the landscape, there was a clear (but rarely discussed) divide between more conventional, MC-led grime and the blossoming, internet-driven instrumental scene. That was, until Novelist and Mumdance addressed it head on with Take Time. “I did it to captivate the industry, I wanted the industry to understand that grime wasn’t just one thing,” Novelist explains boldly. “Mumdance has a whole different demographic of fans, he’s a white, middle-class dude from North and I’m a black yute from South, but the music brought us together. We wanted to make a point.”

And make a point it did. A sparse and urgent belter, it shifted over 3000 units on vinyl released by Rinse’s label arm, the duo following it with the paranoid nocturne 1 Sec, released on XL Recordings on Novelist’s 18th birthday. Take Time was a crucial record, one widely recognised as the first to flip the whole grime continuum on its head and lay the foundations for other artists to make the same leap (see Riko Dan on Rabit’s Black Dragons). It was experimental but raw, intriguing but accessible, new but authentic. It packed a punch all of it’s own.

“I don’t give a fuck what anyone says, I’ve been a big influence on where grime is at now,” he says passionately. “The masses won’t know, but real grime fans saw my come-up and how I did grime properly. I did everything I had to do to become a good MC and producer. I’m not just a guy who’s

big on YouTube, I hopped train barriers to do this shit properly.”

Alongside his recording work, Novelist has also made plenty of headway as a producer, as first evidenced by debut EP Sniper, released by influential label hub Oil Gang in 2014. “I hollered Oil Gang because he was putting out instrumental stuff from producers like Darq E Freaker and Spooky and I wanted to be the first MC and producer of my age to release on vinyl,” he tells me. “I felt it was important and it proved that I could produce as well as MC at a young age”.

Speaking to him on the phone, it’s easy to forget that this is an 18-year-old MC. Confident, collected and passionate, it feels like Novelist has more to offer than just his music, a facet of his recent output that has become a dominant theme. “I don’t wanna be some famous guy, that’s easy,” he says, ”but to make an impact on the public isn’t easy, that’s why I’ve taken things gradually.

I want people who listen to my music to feel like they can be someone and achieve something. If influential people aren’t saying anything then what’s happening? After a while, grime will just get played out again.

That’s no disrespect to people making grime because everyone does their thing, but for me personally, my aim is to captivate

Issue 58 | crackmagazine.net

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26 the youngers and make them understand what’s going on around them.”

What’s happening around them is of great concern to Novelist too. He tells me he’s far from political, but tracks like Ignorant And Wot – a single he made to reinforce the irony of his and others’ situations on the roads, tagged on his Soundcloud with the words ‘don’t give a shit about the law’ – as well as new single Endz are rebellious and empowering, both fuelled with underlying anti-establishment energy. “I speak about what’s around me and I don’t like any of the Tory policies,” he says venomously. “My mates in the ends are getting stabbed and can’t get to A&E because the departments are being closed. There’s no youth clubs.

No one has anywhere to meet any more.

Communities are supposed to have spaces where people can get together and meet each other but slowly that’s going, especially in Lewisham. I get pissed off about people in power talking so condescendingly about issues they don’t understand. All of these dickheads are on the other side of the river too.”

It’s this splintered political rhetoric that seems to have inspired Endz – a gritty, grainy ode to the grime he grew up with.

With a beat and video both produced and directed by Novelist himself, it feels all the more personal too. “That’s how man did it back in the day,” he explains. “I got my young G to do the video, we got the ped and the dog and just did what we usually

“I get pissed off about people in power talking so condescendingly about issues they don’t understand.

All of these dickheads are on the other side of the river too”

do, but with a camera rolling. I did it to show people what life looks like in the ends and anyone who listened to grime back in the day, they’ll understand it. Some people have commented saying I’ve bitten Crazy Titch references or stuff like ‘it looks just like Channel U’ but back in ’04 and ’05, this is what every grime video looked like.

I wasn’t trying to be nostalgic, I wanted to remind people of what it’s like to be a teenager on the block.”

Clearly bound by his roots, but willing to test the waters of grime’s musical possibilities, there is something refreshing about Novelist’s approach. He seems to unite the best of early grime with the best of what it could become, all at 18 years old.

What’s more, as with other grime artists who’ve shunned the industry (Skepta, JME, Stormzy) in favour of self-made, DIY success, Novelist feels the same passion about treading his own path.

“I’m not in this whole grime game. You can’t put me in a box. I’ve always made music that half of these MCs would never make, so in that respect, I’m not in the industry.

People pay me a lot more respect in a different way, they’ll consider what I have to say due to my stance on approaching music. I’m not just an MC to them, they’re looking at me as a producer, a musician.

If grime hit a brick wall, I’m the type of guy to make a whole new genre, based on the same principles we used to make this one.”

Issue 58 | crackmagazine.net

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“I want to remind people of what it’s like to be a teenager on the block”

Bold claims they may be, but lets not forget that Novelist was one of the faces to be spotted sharing a stage with Kanye West at this year’s Brit Awards, his trademark hi-top visible amidst the blacked-out mass of tracksuits that stood behind Kanye while he performed All Day. Also present on stage with him that night were Skepta, Jammer and Krept & Konan, all of whom have welcomed Novelist into grime’s upper reaches, offering him both guidance and support. Where others have found the door to that world closed, Novelist has been welcomed with open arms.

For more fame-hungry MCs, this would surely be a career highlight. But, asking Novelist about his most memorable achievement so far, his answer offers an insight into how he now sees himself. “To be honest, my favourite moment was when everybody doing grime started to dress like me. I’m not arrogant, but I started to notice people copying my style and at that point, I realised I had a certain level of influence – and that made me feel good.”

While he’s left the days of The Square – the Lewisham crew he fronted so proudly

and with whom he recorded viral tracks like Pengaleng and the infamous Lewisham McDeez – behind him to focus on solo pursuits, Novelist’s aims are still just as humble as they were when I first met him back in 2013. Far from a careerist, Novelist wants to inspire, and most importantly leave a legacy that both he and his fans can look back on with pride.

“I want to make music that’s listened to in years to come,” he explains before we draw the interview to a close. “I want the young kids to hear me and understand what I’m trying to tell them, to listen to me because I sound good not because you see me with this guy or that guy. It’s the music that matters.

“What happens when people stop tweeting about me?” he asks aloud. “I don’t care about magazines or social media opinions or false perceptions – I care about the kids and the people. Furthermore, fuck the feds, fuck the rules. Educate yourself, don’t always trust your teachers. Take small steps and you’ll get there. Look at me. My teachers would have told me to do

completely different things, but I’m here. I don’t feel it’s right to only do music, I feel like I need to talk about this shit.”

Novelist appears at The Warehouse Project, Manchester, 11 December. Endz is featured on The Sound of Rinse FM compilation, released 13 November

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Under clouded spotlights, Jac Berrocal cowers to the floor. His sinewy frame jerks beneath a low sunk trilby and thick-rimmed sunglasses. Impulsively, he releases air from his lungs into a trumpet. The sound rattles through the murk of the ICA’s blackened corridors. He convulses on his knees. Beside him, David Fenech writhes around, flippantly twanging guitar strings, appearing and reappearing from the stage shadows. Furthest away is Vincent Epplay who, with one hand, strokes the air above hardwired sound boxes.

Earlier this year the trio released Antigravity on London-born, Berlin-based label Blackest Ever Black. Tonight is their debut London performance, supported by artrock cockney romantics Officer! To open, Finnish autodidact and Officer! label mate Af Ursin manipulated metallic sheets with muffled sticks and slowly exhaled into a microphone. In the wings of the venue, is Kiran Sande – founder of Blackest Ever Black. With the performances being held to celebrate ‘Five Wretched Years’ of the label, he fumbles from one room to the next, overseeing everything.

Since 2010, Sande has been a focal force in forward-thinking avant-gardism.

From the electronic eclecticism of Raime and Regis to the clamorous stridency of Dominick Fernow’s Prurient or Marco del Rio’s Raspberry Bulbs, Sande has used the Blackest Ever Black label to tie together various strands of sensory subversion.

Less than 24 hours previous, Sande is sitting outside. His hot breath chugs clouds of vapour in to the cool September air.

With the ICA event imminent, he seems to be revelling in a moment of peace; a moment to remove himself from the hysteria of managing his label. “It’s like I can’t help myself,” he begins, attempting to articulate

Gothic gaze: Blackest Ever Black unites the dark corners of music

the strain of work he has inflicted on himself over the past five years. “I suppose my work ethic could be comparable to Dominick Fernow in so far as I do have a slight mania about releasing records. I have a compulsion to committing to new projects and new records and new artists.”

As the governing head of a rampant index of artists (currently standing at thirty-seven), Sande is first to highlight the towering responsibilities weighted on his shoulders. He sighs and laughs, “It actually gets harder and harder because the more you take on doesn’t free you of your responsibilities to the artists that you already work with. So there’s always a balancing act between ‘the new’ and keeping the family well intact,” he explains.

“Both are crucially important. And labels only work if they’re extremely pure and limited in their remit, their dedication to their artists and their aesthetic. Or you go in the other direction. Funnily enough if I’d have stopped after about ten releases Blackest Ever Black might have been regarded as the former. But now it’s becoming this sprawling beast that knows no reason or logic.”

Blackest Ever Black, Sande attests, was born out of boredom. Five years ago, his passion for techno had found itself drifting towards inertia. Nothing falling on Sande’s ears was challenging him. He was looking for ‘the shock of the new’, coupled with an aesthetic to mirror London’s municipal severity. Something playful, yet insidious. Something with forceful nods to the gloom of gothic ambience and the experimentalism of industrial power electronics.

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Sande forged the general concept of his label through these stark emotive parameters. Yet it wasn’t until he met Raime that his ideas fleshed out into reality. With Raime came a formula, as Sande puts it, “to make you feel something.” It galvanised the idea of Blackest Ever Black beyond just a ludicrous name. The trio, managed

by Sande, found solace on the fringes of fringes rather than in the latest dance fads.

Monochordic drone, black metal, noise, industrial, goth, ambient, free jazz and postpunk are but a few loosely constructed genres that make up Sande’s roster of outsiders and rogues.

Presently, the label continues to mutate and bulk out its releases from the likes of F Ingers, Tropic of Cancer, Moin and Bremen.

According to Sande, he has so many projects going on at the moment that he’s finding it difficult to fathom what he intends to release next.

Prior to the label’s inception, Sande worked at FACT Magazine as Editor-in-Chief. Here, he eventually grew weary of his former passions, uninspired by the glut of techno flooding his inbox. “I was very bored for a long time,” he laments. “I thought I was bored of what I loved. I had this kind of blind faith that I would always listen to techno and it would evolve at a faster rate than my own interests. There was then that

shocking moment when I realised that it didn’t. Obviously the genre is growing, but at the time I had to look elsewhere. And that’s where the label helped.”

His experience as a music journalist provided Sande with a certain ‘perspective’ on electronic music; “a lack of delusion,” he calls it. FACT gave him a lifelong lesson in criticism and the ability to fine tune his creative virtuosity. “If I hadn’t had that opportunity to basically sit and do nothing but listen to music for five years of my life, both good and bad, I would never have developed an antenna sharp enough to reject anything confidently,” he says. “To state the obvious, whoever immerses themselves in anything, be it politics or film or anything, you become immune to all the spin, all the PR, all the promo. A lot of people are very susceptible to what’s being pushed at them. I’m not just talking about pop pap, I’m talking about what’s pushed as trendy. Being so close to all of that taught me a lifelong wariness which has been infinitely useful.”

33 From this highly calibrated wariness Blackest Ever Black has formed a labyrinthine laboratory of non-genre releases. But does Sande fear that the label’s evolution is almost fractious? And are his followers purely exploiting Sande’s knack for discovery? He pauses, begins and then revises his words somewhat apprehensive of his own success. “People get gripped by the desire for ‘stuff’ and forget to actually sit down and listen to it.

To use a horrible modern metaphor, music can be like one continuous hyperlink.

Everything just a link to something else.

But what I try to do is offer a little map and the map is supposed to guide you. It’s the search that’s important. I omit the noise and provide a blueprint.

Words: Tom Watson Photography: Julia Soler

“And as much as I loathe the word ‘curation’,” he continues, “the one soundbite I adhere to is that the most important part of running a label is exclusion rather than inclusion. It’s about saying no. Establishing limitations. With my early mixes, it was as much being about giving a context for the music as it was about what not to include.

It was so important that there wasn’t any techno. I really did have something to prove.”

The success of the ICA event is a testament to Sande’s ability to bulk out his label without losing its authenticity. As he zips from one space to another, checking on his acts and generally playing boss, can he stop and take pride in his independent empire? “Now that it’s five years and I can look back with some kind of perspective, I can say it’s all pleasure but hard to live off,” he laughs. “Borderline impossible. Living on the edge stuff. But I’m still alive. And what I realise is that I’ve been loitering around long enough that people actually know the name or know that it exists. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a good feeling.”

The Blackest Ever Black compilation I Can’t Give You The Life You Want is out now

“The most important part of running a label is exclusion rather than inclusion. It’s about saying no”

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Trust Fun d: lost in superma t h e rket

Words: Billy Bla ck Photogra phy: Kate Bones

Trust Fund were in a room full of old friends when I first caught them on stage.

They were playing a gig in their singer Ellis Jones’ hometown of Bristol for the first time in what might as well have been forever, and it was obvious from the get-go that he felt at home there. It was like he’d been born right there in that dark, heaving room and he’d be happy to stay there forever. In the front row, Roxy Brennan was belting out the words to each song even more emphatically than the rest of the sweating, beaming assembly. Roxy played bass on the band’s latest album Seems Unfair – a triumph of lo-fi pop punk that sits somewhere between the unfettered energy of Weezer and the melancholic societal reflection of Belle & Sebastian – but that night she was looking up at Ellis’ sister Libby filling in. They were joined by regular drummer Dan as well as Libby’s husband Burt on guitar.

This temporary four piece were constantly catching each other's eyes, laughing off typically awkward between-song banter.

You’d never guess they were a hotchpotch crew of friends and family. That’s the nature of Trust Fund. It’s a revolving cast of friends and family centred on Ellis, who has a sort of preternatural ability to swap and change band members while still keeping everyone happy. In fact, he’s got it so down he even has his old band members singing along in the front row.

“I don’t think it was the live thing that got me into this though,” Ellis says over the phone two months later. He pauses. “I think it was probably more like listening to recordings and sort of wanting to emulate that.”

Ellis has been making music for a long time. We talk at length about an album he made with his sister some eleven years ago that he half hopes to rerelease, recording his first album No One’s Coming For Us entirely on his own and how having a record label has opened up a world of possibilities, including the chance to record his new album with a musician he truly admires.

“I guess I’d call it a band a bit more now,” he muses. “We recorded the album all together with [Hookworms frontman] MJ in Leeds... It’s definitely not just me cause when I play on my own, it’s just shit.”

Ellis is constantly putting himself down and his sense of dark, self-effacing humour really shines through in his songs. “When you’re sad sometimes things seem a bit inescapable, but when you look back you

just wanna laugh about it. I guess it’s just trying to have that perspective.” Perhaps, in some sense, it’s necessary for Ellis to use light to balance out the dark. He insists that his humourously self-critical approach is not conscious, and he’s quick to point out that most of the songs are about relationships with other people. It’s just easier to mock himself than hurt their feelings.

It’s a considerate standpoint and one that he considers a moral alternative to the sort of posturing that makes certain artists seem so insincere. “It’s like the Drake thing of ‘Oh I’m such a dick but what you gonna do cause I’m also very sensitive?’ That’s kind of awful,” he cringes.

A lot of what Trust Fund is about is Ellis’ very personal inner world. He exists in a world of supermarket freak outs, finds comfort in crisps and offsets the banality of life with the banality of footie banter.

Trust Fund songs are often littered with references to the droll, farcical aspects of culture and the dire, humdrum responsibility of daily routine. They are strewn with intensely personal and somehow universal lyrics. All of this is key to the Trust Fund charm.

“You leave from your house / I’ll leave from mine / I’ll meet you in Big Asda in twelve hours time / safe and dry / not wanting to die,” he sings on Seems Unfair track Big Asda. He laughs shyly when I ask him if it’s politically motivated (he’d suggested it was in a recent Facebook status). “It’s kind of about supermarkets being the only place you can go when you feel a bit sad and you don’t want to be at home…” I listen intently, half wondering if he’s pulling my leg. “Where are you gonna go?” he continues. “I guess supermarkets are like a weird public space where you can go and feel safe but at the same time they’re not public at all, they’re owned by big private companies. So actually they don’t want you wondering around there. So in that way, yeah, it’s political.” He pauses one last time to reflect on his statement and eventually rebuffs himself with suitable sarcasm, “Mostly it’s about crisps.”

Seems Unfair is out now via Turnstile

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37 37 Words: Tom Watson Photography: Juan José Ortiz

“Steve Goodman as you may know him doesn’t exist anymore,” says Steve Goodman. His glassy pupils shoot past the table where he is seated. He allows his fingers to tap nimbly in the silence as he revises his words. Goodman’s existence, he explains, is severed in two.

For years, he has been counter-balancing disparate lives. Counter-characters independent from each other. One is Steve Goodman, the academic, the university lecturer in music culture, the author, the regimented intellectual in sonic thought.

The other life is Kode9, an omnipresent pilgrim of electronics, a tastemaker among leftfield club music and owner of Londonbased record label Hyperdub.

The attentive and mild-natured Steve Goodman in his Camberwell flat today has relieved himself from the mechanical academic protocols of his former self. He has now fully succumbed to being Kode9.

“There’s only a certain kind of discipline I’m interested in,” he explains. “I don’t like to be told how to discipline myself.

I’m an independent researcher. Teaching in a university for the last decade wasn’t pleasant. Cuts to departments made everyone paranoid, academics had to take on administrative roles. The space for research was getting squeezed out.”

Since Goodman has left the classroom, he no longer feels the burden of his academic status. “I don’t see myself as a scientist or a philosopher anymore, which is liberating.

I’m now happy to discover inspiration from wherever and I won’t be criticised by disciplinarians telling me I’ve done something wrong. I just don’t give a fuck anymore.”

Following a wealth of mixes and two collaborative albums with poet and MC the Spaceape, Kode9 is prepped to release his debut solo release. Titled Nothing, the record features thirteen tracks of bass-stewed polyrhythms, stark corridors of percussive clacking and crystalline ambience that’s altogether sobering and hostile. Long segments of the record sound empty, almost ghostly. This, Goodman reinforces, is a premeditated homage to his longtime collaborator and friend the Spaceape, real name Stephen Samuel Gordon, who died in October last year to a rare form of cancer.

Originally composed as a follow-up collaborative record to the pair’s 2011 release Black Sun, Nothing is a haunting reminder of the Spaceape’s lack of vocal presence. Goodman was alone, venturing into unknown creative territory as a solo artist. “It was the easiest album I’ve ever made,” he concedes surprisingly. “I think all of the negative energy from 2014 really helped. And it’s not in the sense that I was trying to cleanse myself, but I certainly felt a sense of starting again… without Spaceape. So that’s where the original idea of ‘nothing’ comes from. I assumed it was going to sound empty without him in it.

That’s what the nothing is; an expectation that there would be a big gaping hole in the album. I didn’t want to try and replace his voice with other vocalists or fill in gaps where he would’ve otherwise been.”

Yet this idea of nothing Goodman alludes to branches further than a lack of vocal accompaniment. It’s an idea ingrained in science, the concept of nothing being

Kode9: Nothing is empty

something, an equation equating to zero.

Goodman laughs, “It’s a complicated nothing. It’s a weird story starting with the album sounding empty. I was so overloaded with emotions that I didn’t have words for that the concept of nothing was going to be the replacement for having an album concept. It’s almost like an anti-concept, a non-concept. Like a placeholder.

“This nothing sat in the place where a name for an album would be,” he continues, “I knew I needed a concept to finish the album and towards the end of creating it.

So it started literally as nothing and then I just started noticing everything concerned itself with nothing. Everywhere nothing.

I started reading these articles about nothing. Everything from quantum theory, philosophy, mathematics, physiology, experiments of what’s going in the brain when people are doing nothing.”

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In order to illustrate Goodman’s existential theorising, he has teamed up with artist Lawrence Lek to deliver an immersive audio-visual experiment entitled The Notel, set to be toured early next year. Loosely based on the album, the performance concentrates on the idea of a hotel manned by automated robots built to serve humans. However, they have no humans to serve. The Notel, Goodman suggests, is a dystopic depiction of what machines do when their primary function is useless.

“There’s a sample in the first track that says something like ‘This is the Zero Hotel 9, 0 over.’ So when I met Lawrence and looked at his work, which is loosely about evacuated neoliberal architecture, it immediately resonated because I had obviously been living in this idea of nothing for six months.”

Having explored nothing, Goodman found himself in a position of practicing the act of nothing. He outlines how important doing nothing is to making music. Little things he had never noticed before, like waiting for a track to render, staring into space, “Or just the process you have to go through in making music where you go into this trance of listening to a loop over and over again. You’re literally doing nothing.

You’re listening but actually you’re not even consciously listening anymore. Ten minutes later you’re like ‘Oh shit, I’ve been stuck in a loop.’”

As Goodman started reading about zeroes in mathematics, vacuums in physics, voids in quantum theory and astrophysics, he realised that zeroes, voids and vacuums are not empty in different disciplines. Unlike academia, this discipline Goodman can relate to. “I’ve always been interested in the idea of the number zero not being empty,” he says. “Almost like this full thing that’s overflowing with everything. Zero was established along with the idea of infinity, which supports the idea of nothing not being nothing. So a couple of tracks on the album were named after this concept in quantum theory where a vacuum that tends towards its degree zero energy state has this thing called zero point energy; also referred to as the Casimir effect. That really influenced Nothing.”

It’s hard to calibrate how Goodman has persisted with this notion of nothing considering his asphyxiating work schedule.

Somewhere in the calm of his psyche, he maintains a sturdy equilibrium between collaborating with Lek, touring extensively and managing his Hyperdub imprint. And despite the label’s fertile timetable of releases, Goodman retains his cool as if suggesting that without Hyperdub, Nothing may not have even existed.

From its inception, the label blossomed out of what music critic Simon Reynolds refers to as ‘the hardcore continuum.’ Prior to 2004, Hyperdub was an online webmag for specialists such as Reynolds to be given free reign over their word counts. Long, unedited transcripts with pioneers of the continuum. The label itself pawned from the evolution of jungle and hardcore, becoming a hub for artists and DJs experimenting with grime and early dubstep.

“The music I find progressive goes back to go forward”

Today, Hyperdub is an international base for fringe artists. With a recent catalogue that includes Cooly G, Kyle Hall, DVA, Fatima Al Qadiri, Jessy Lanza and the late DJ Rashad, it’s a label which represents experimentalism in electronic music without neglecting the dancefloor. But does Goodman still find solace in what he does? With all of this nothingness, is he ever shocked by music’s progress? “The music I find progressive usually goes back to go forward,” he says. “To me, that’s more futuristic than music that is self-consciously branding itself futuristic in order to use synthesiser soundscapes. I’m inspired by a different kind of futuristic that doesn’t fit in to the technocratic model of men with their machines in isolation.”

With widespread anxieties about a lack of innovational spirit across musical genres, and serious concerns about the politically sedated nature of retro culture, you could argue Goodman’s musical explorations are driven by a thirst for new sonic possibilities.

“From around 2009 onwards I’ve had to look further afield for influences,” he explains. “I wasn’t really getting it from Britain. America and South Africa offer something else. America seems like its been going through a second summer of love with rave music with EDM being the genre everyone knows. But interestingly, similar to Britain in the 90s, there are all of these local variants of scenes essentially fusing techno, house and hip-hop in the form of jersey club, Baltimore, footwork, juke, and so on. In a sense that’s what early hardcore and acid house were doing.

It’s the fusion that I find myself interested in. That rhythmic collision in hardcore, in garage, in grime, in dubstep.

“Today, the music world is fragmented and influences are coming from here, there and everywhere,” he ponders. “There’s no single sound unifying everything. It’s a messier landscape. You can take it or leave it. Whether it’s a good thing or not, I have no idea. We’re all just going to have to wait and see.”

Nothing is released 6 November via Hyperdub. Kode9 appears at Clock Strikes 13, Corsica Studios, London, 7 November

39

“I was blown away with what Kevin Martin was playing, it was beyond anything I’d heard so far”

41

Through mic duty with The Bug, Miss Red unleashes her sonic power Words: Aine Devaney Photography: Stephanie Elizabeth Third

It’s Liberty Day in Tel Aviv, Israel. A crew of local promoters hustle Kevin Martin, the don of forward-thinking UK dub, into playing a surprise set in a small downtown bar. Meanwhile, following a 12-hour shift at her second job as a bartender, a “drunk as fuck” 20-year-old enters the rammed party.

Enraptured by the bassweight vibrations and emboldened by a surge of pure exaltation, she grabs the mic.

Fast-forward two years, and that woman is sharing a stage at Glastonbury alongside the ferocious grime MC Flowdan as part of The Bug’s explosive live show. Meet Miss Red. With her debut solo mixtape forthcoming, I arrange to meet Miss Red – who currently remains a somewhat enigmatic figure despite her now regular performances with The Bug. On an empty side street in Neukölln, the pint-sized MC, real name Sharon Stern, is draped in an oversized vintage fur coat. She raises her eyes from under carelessly laid red curls, lifts up her headphones as the sounds of Billy Boyo’s Iron Woman muffle out, and smiles. Modest but sure of herself, she speaks with a softly drawling Israeli accent, touched every now and again with a subtle patois hint.

We head to the furthest corner of a dingy snooker bar where she nonchalantly rolls a spliff and nurtures it as we ease into an easy conversational flow.

You may not have heard of Miss Red. Hailing from the sleepy seaside town of Haifa, in the past three years she has gripped the attention of the dub cognoscenti with her ferocious stage presence as well as the authentic Hebrew twist she adds to a distinct Jamaican patois. Due to that one fateful night of Dutch courage in Tel Aviv, Stern has now featured on a string of releases from The Bug, most recently the heavy, hypnotic track Mi Lost from 2014’s masterpiece Angels & Devils, a release illustrating her knack for swinging from softly sung melody to high-pitched chatter that brims with sass.

Haifa’s population generally lived in harmony until the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, which left the city in turmoil. “My parents didn’t allow me to go anywhere, my aunt was dying, I was depressed, hardcore depressed,” she says gravely. “When you live in this environment the last thing you want to be involved [with] for the rest of your life is politics... I used to always run away and make issues for my family and everybody.” It was her rebellious head-on clashes with her father that she credits for her gift of ‘chatting’. “When me and my father fought the whole street would know about it,” she says, laughing.

It was during the declining days of the war that she was introduced to Easy Rider, the dominating sound system in Haifa. “I was blown away by all the reggae,” she remembers. “I kept on coming, but I never thought of grabbing the mic, ever. It never entered my head to sing.”

It wasn’t until Stern turned 17 that her boyfriend at the time convinced her to sing over a tune and her innate talent as an MC was realised. Once heard by the Easy Rider crew, they immediately took her under their wing. From here, Stern would immerse herself into a deep dub education, mentored by the sounds of Sister Ruby, Sister Nancy, Lady Anne and Sister Charmaine.

But at 18, Stern was faced with mandatory military service. “If you didn’t join the army you had to go to jail,” she explains. “What could I do?’’ In a desperate bid to escape her duties, she weighed up her options.

“Either I can say I’m mentally ill or I can try out for the band... if I get in, I get in. If I don't, I’m mental, it will be ok, I can always say I’m mental.” Given that only a tiny percentage of applicants get accepted into the army band, she thought her chances were slim, but as it turns out, she spent the next few years as a “very drunk soldier.”

Making the six-hour drive from her home to the army base daily, the “humiliating

performances” proved too much for her as they toured the bases. “I couldn’t handle it,” she recoils. “What is the worst thing you could do to an artist? Make them make shit art. It was really painful. I tried to make it good, but it was the fucking army, I had to carry a gun, it wasn’t me. I am sensitive too, I couldn’t go there and be cool about it.” After moving to Tel Aviv, she resentfully trudged through her final year in service.

But this rebellious spirit and outsider mentality was what gave Stern the courage to rush the stage at The Bug’s surprise Tel Aviv set and to establish herself as Miss Red. “I was blown away with what he was playing,” she says, recounting that night. “It was beyond anything I’d heard so far. I was thinking for a half hour like ‘should I do it, should I not? I can rock this shit.’ I got so excited.”

And she was right. As fate would have it, a baffled and bemused Kevin Martin was stupefied by the young firebomb’s rhymes and her unique sense of melody.

With Miss Red “hungover as fuck” the next morning, they headed straight for the studio. What resulted was 2012’s Diss Mi Army, booming acid ragga heralding the arrival of her signature sonorous force.

And with Martin at the helm of Miss Red’s forthcoming mixtape Murda, it seems that the rise of the fiery haired MC has just begun.

Murda is expected to be released in December

During a rare respite from Warpaint, jennylee explores her own breathing space

Jenny Lee Lindberg’s debut solo album right on! begins with blind – a sultry bassline, a distant hum of white noise and ghostly vocals emerging as though from the past: “I got no sun.”

It’s an album with elements of darkness, both musically and lyrically, despite its moments of soothing beauty. This shadowy bent makes sense – the Warpaint bassist’s youth was spent discovering gothically-inclined artists from the late 70s and early 80s, and the lines that can be drawn between tracks such as never never, riot and white devil and acts like The Cure and Joy Division are laser straight. “Somebody asked me the other day, ‘do you think that your teenage self would like this album?’

And I was like, ‘for sure’,” she tells me. “It feels very nostalgic to me.”

Issue 58 | crackmagazine.net

Words: Suzie McCracken Photography: Mia Kirby

During the early stages of right on! (a title picked up from Jenny Lee’s mom, whose language is a little stuck in the 70s), Lindberg’s husband, the British video-artist Chris Cunningham, encouraged her to embrace Ableton software in order to realise more of her vision solo. Her eventual producer and engineer, Norm Block, then took her direction effortlessly over the course of two and a half months in the studio while applying the dexterity of a man with years of guitar-playing under his belt – or “some sprinkles,” as Lindberg terms it.

Having assembled a team that allowed her to augment her bass-driven sound with atmospheric instrumentation, Lindberg – who’s adopted the moniker ‘jennylee’ for the album – had no anxieties about her first lone venture. “I didn’t get super hung up on anything at all,” she says with a tone of laidback confidence. “It wasn’t such a ball-bust. I was ready for the next phase of being a musician, and I was able to pull from all the experiences I’ve had over the last twelve years of being in a band and writing music with other people.”

In her absence from the other members of Warpaint, Lindberg discovered she needed a change in direction. “Just because I’m so used to playing with the girls, I was kind of like, ‘Oh, I’m going to bring in some friends!’

All dudes too. I wanted to change that up.

I wanted the record to have a little bit of a masculine feel.”

Although one could (and should) contend that no genre or emotion can be claimed by either gender, there’s something about the propulsive bass driving her new sound that you could argue invokes the traditionally male – a shuddering physicality of those four strings explored across the album’s ten tracks.

However, where there is darkness there is light, and amongst the album’s burning urgency and chilling nocturnes, there’s a lofty spaciousness to be found. It’s doubtful that any of these tracks will be radio hits, despite her obvious affection for disco – Lindberg cites Chic’s Bernard Edwards as one of her bass heroes, for example – but then again, right on!’s decidedly left-ofcentre approach suggests that Warpainteclipsing popularity is not exactly what Lindberg wants.

She does, however, want to be the focal point of her live show, which she’ll take to New York and London in the weeks following the release. The winter will be spent back with “the girls”, writing what will be Warpaint’s third album. “I’m not going to play bass live,” she confirms. “I’m just going to be singing. I was excited to dance. With Warpaint, I’m always playing and singing at the same time and it’s a little restricting.

I didn’t want to do that for this project. I wanted to get rowdy.” right on! is released 11 December via Rough Trade

FiDLAr

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bREAkINg MY PHoNE DowNLoAD AND STREAM Now

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“unabashedly personal pop”

“Their most vitriolic work yet” NME “fIDLAR are officially back at the top of their game” THE LINE of bEST fIT oN ToUR IN NoVEMbER 10th bristol - Academy 11th Manchester - Ritz 12th glasgow - garage 14th London - The forum 15th birmingham - Institute

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“It’s a hell of a ride” LoNDoN IN STEREo

PITCHfoRk

oN ToUR IN NoVEMbER 17th Sheffield - Picture House Social 18th Manchester - Soup kitchen 19th Edinburgh - Sneaky Pete’s 20th Leeds - wharf Chambers 21st brighton - green Door Store

oN ToUR IN NoVEMbER 11th London - Moth Club 14th bristol - o2 Academy * 16th Cardiff - Clwb Ifor bac 17th St Albans - Horn 18th Newcastle - Head of Steam 19th Leeds - brudenell Social Club 20th Manchester - fallow Café

oN ToUR IN JANUARY 19th London, XoYo

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Produced exclusively for Crack by Gaurab Thakali. www.gaurabthakali.com

46

Art In The Club: how Berghain’s walls welcome transcendence

It has been observed that the club and the gallery seem to exist in a state of mutual opposition, where one can almost be defined against the other; a place of quiet contemplation against one of total abandon, stillness against beats, space against bodies and stasis against movement.

Purposes, too, are at odds: the conditions of calm and neutrality in a gallery space reflect a need for a space whose atmosphere is conducive to deep thought, reflection. Where ideas can germinate in the shadow of their visual expressions.

Clubs obliterate that peace, blasted out by music, drugs and sweat.

And yet, in spite of these differences, the increasing frequency with which musical acts are transposed to galleries has seen Kraftwerk perform at the Tate Modern; Ninja Tune's roster appear at the ICA and – after some police intervention – Just Jam host a night at The Barbican.

But what if we consider the inverse of the club/gallery binary; not music in galleries, but art in clubs?

Berghain – world famous techno institution, gay sex club and cornerstone of Berlin nightlife – needs no introduction here.

But a new book, Kunst Im Klub, published

by Hatje Cantz, documents and comments on Berghain’s less well-known engagement with visual art.

All the artists it features are in some way connected to the club. Some, like photographer Sven Marquadt, have worked there since its opening. Others,

like Piotr Nathan, are artists who have work permanently installed there. In its texts and images, it begins to articulate a reflection of the same logic that explains the legitimacy of the gallery as a venue.

The specific cultural conditions that led to the opening of Berghain are too complex to go into here; the unique circumstances of Berlin in the 20th Century, reunification and the fall of the Wall in 1989, the accompanying collision of cultures, plus the influence of Detroit techno, the gay club scene, the hedonism, the unusual conditions of institutional permissiveness and the enduring rejection of pure financial capital, and so on. It’s complicated and fascinating and important enough to be the subject of myriad PhDs and academic studies, and no doubt in fact it is.

Suffice to say that all of these things created a kind of perfect storm; one where art – the arts, music and visual art especially – continues to be treated with the kind of respect and seriousness that can only exist when its actual transformative power and social significance is truly valued and believed in.

And that’s sort of the first point of contact between the two; art and clubbing. It’s true that the intersection between clubbing and art as the UK experiences it looks a little shaky; with superclubs like Oceana as an extreme example of the worst, it’s unfortunately the case that the British club scene is on the ropes at the moment.

Even without the the constant closures and increasingly restrictive licensing which clubs are being subjected to, the

fact that you’re being chucked out at 6am necessarily imposes a limit on the night, a limit which is mostly absent in Berlin.

There’s no doubt that the art world is as riddled with cynics and dilettantes as it is home to genuinely creative, intelligent people, but it is the latter category that really matters. Art is capital, and to some it is status, but Art In The Club reminds us that it's also a deeply important field for interrogation and exploration; a discipline in which people can investigate highly complicated and often taboo questions, reconfigure social boundaries and deconstruct prejudices.

Wolfgang Tillmans is an artist who's has had three sets of work installed in Berghain’s Panorama Bar since the club opened. Each set compromises of two matching abstracts from the same (respective) series, and one figurative image. The first of the figurative photographs, nackt, installed from 2004 to 2009, depicts the lower half of a woman’s torso. She is leaning back and to her left, seated, wearing a grey top. Naked from the waist down, her legs are parted, exposing her vulva to the camera. The second, Phillip, close-up III, installed from 2009 to 2015, is a man, bent at the waist with his trousers lowered, reaching back to expose his anus with his left hand. The third, installed this year, is a close-up of an open mouth. The teeth are almost invisible; the image is focused entirely on the tonsils, the glistening back of the throat.

Tillmans is a Turner-prize winning artist whose work sells for Big Bucks; he’s also a groundbreaking and hugely influential

“There’s something that uncontaminated art and uncontaminated clubbing share: each offers a nonjudgemental platform for the exploration of human identity”

Kiosk by Marc Brandenburg

Hero's Journey (Lamp) by Sarah Schoenfeld

50 photographer, but what’s important here are the images themselves; their frankness – the frankness that mirrors the hedonism of the club, its roots in totally unapologetic gay sexual expression.

clubbing, she says, “Basically, it’s the same desire for transcendence and a shifting of perspective that takes place within religion: the fact that you want to perceive things differently than you do in normal ‘daily life’.”

Because that’s one of the things that uncontaminated art and uncontaminated clubbing share: each offers a nonjudgemental platform for the exploration of human identity. The recurrence of orifices implies a special focus on sexuality, and indeed, one of the things for which Berghain is most notorious is its ‘darkrooms,’ but that’s not the extent of it.

This sentiment is echoed by Nina Lorken elsewhere in the book, who writes “Berghain… is a place where people are able to escape reality for the duration of their stay and concentrate exclusively on their senses… people… are able to surrender themselves unhindered to pleasure and live out fantasies without a chance of them reaching the outside world.”

The contributors to this book repeat this motif to varying extremes. It reaches its apex, and drifts away from contemporary ideas of worship, in a couplet in Hanno Hinkelbein’s poem, Beasts: “…Once madness’s seized you, feral man, then over you is watching Pan, And dances and with abandon sprawls such beauty onto concrete walls.”

Friederike von Rauch

Sarah Schöenfeld is another of the artists featured in the book. She’s perhaps best known for her All You Can Feel series, in which she exposed a range of drugs to film negatives, before enlarging and printing the resulting images. The prints have been exhibited widely, and used as cover art for Answer Code Request on his releases through Berghain’s label, Ostgut Ton. Of

“Art is capital, but it’s also a field for interrogation; a discipline in which people can investigate taboo questions, reconfigure social boundaries and deconstruct prejudices”

Installation view: Sven Marquardt, Marc Brandenburg, Sarah Schöenfeld

This cry for release might jar with the controlled gallery, or any religious institution, but it chimes with certain movements, like the incredibly transgressive Viennese Actionism, which prefigured contemporary performance art, and also with certain ancient rituals – Bacchanals and Dionysian Mysteries. What clubbing seems to offer, these people argue, is a uniquely contemporary response to a fundamental need. Contemporary art at its best, I’d argue, fulfills something similar. A platform for the articulation and expression of controversial or challenging thought. Piotr Nathan describes, “the way techno music dissolves into dance and sex… dissolving into an ecstasy that consequently develops under the protection of a likeminded community.”

That in Berlin, and specifically around the Berghain, this community is shared between both clubs and galleries is exciting but not unique. In the UK too, both draw a similar crowd, with a shared interest in the

subversion of the everyday. What the UK, unfortunately, lacks, is the corresponding break from materialism.

Berghain is successful enough that it doesn’t have to jack up the prices to keep going, but it could. Similarly, while it may or may not be in a decline in this respect, Berlin remains an attractive destination for artists because of a low cost of living that fosters creative endeavors, and allows a success to be measured in more than finance.

You could argue that it’s in the purity of intent that art and clubbing seem to have their most important parallels. When the shared aim is a type of freedom of expression, for its own sake, the gallery and the club become a platform for a genuine bit of independent thought. Catalysed by something external, like music or imagery, but unmediated or governed by institutional systems of control.

Berghain forbids cameras, and has no reflective surfaces; through this it becomes what a gallery should be – a place not to be seen, but to see.

Art In The Club is available now via Hatje Cantz

Words: Augustin Macellari Photography: Zsu Szabó + Adrien Missika

52

Nicholas Daley: celebrating the blended fabric of British culture Words: Cassandra Kirk-Gould Photography: Iain Anderson

At a time when no one is quite sure what “Britishness” is anymore – the concept a rich tangle of different cultures and kitsches – it might be odd to label someone a decidedly British designer. Yet, while ‘British values’ may be a continued point of contention in our current political landscape, Nicholas Daley is proudly embracing the unique and energetic history of this bizarre isle.

For Daley, counterculture groups and subcultures are at the core of his work.

With Afro-Caribbean and Scottish heritage, this combination has played an important part in shaping the Central Saint Martins graduate’s attitude; his menswear designs a direct response to something missing in the industry. “In terms of what I was looking at – my heritage, my perspective – it wasn’t necessarily shown or presented within the context of current men’s fashion, or fashion in general,” he argues. “I think designers do dip into it, but they might do a rude boy thing for one season, but the next they’re doing something else.”

The UK’s multicultural heritage is a continued source of inspiration, from the dandy styles of West-Indian immigrants arriving in post-war Britain to the 70s skinheads dancing to Don Letts’ eclectic DJ sets at the Roxy. Daley was particularly inspired by Letts’ ability to merge cultures, reaching out to the subcultural icon with the hope to further his research. “Straight away it just clicked,” Daley recalls. “We both like reggae, we have the same blood.”

Letts ended up modeling both Daley’s SS15 and AW15 collection, his fusion of aesthetics a tangible outlet for Daley’s ideas. “I picked up on Don to begin with, as an icon, as a character, someone who was going against the grain,” he explains.

“Those first people who tried to cross over within the punk and reggae scene, there he was playing hard dub and rock before punk was even invented. So Don was playing all this heavy dub, all the King Tubby stuff, so that anti-established idea brought everyone together. Don was saying that Bob Marley used to ask him, ‘Why are you hanging out with these guys with piercings? It’s not right’, and Don was like, ‘these people are feeling the same way we are. They’re pissed off, they want to do something about it.’ And then a year or so later, Bob released Punky Reggae Party, so obviously even Bob had accepted this punk mentality.”

The fashion/music/culture crossover fuels the evolution of Daley’s menswear, and multiculturalism is more evident today than it ever has been. “You only have to walk down West Green Road just five minutes from the studio and you’ve got South American, Turkish, Polish, Brazilian, African, Caribbean... all within a single street.

Seeing this variety of people, their religions and beliefs and their clothing, I’m picking up on it all.”

How does all this translate into a menswear wardrobe? Hanging on the rails of his studio are granddad collar shirts and highwaisted double pleat trousers with tapered

53

“Seeing a variety of people, with their religions and beliefs and their clothing – I’m picking up on it all”

legs and turn-ups. There’s a Panama hat made in collaboration with Christy’s from his graduate collection, for which the spec was ‘a Panama big enough for a man with dreads.’ With no existing block to create such a hat, the heritage hat makers took at policeman’s helmet and sat a fedora block on top to create the shape.

Though not anti-fashion, Daley is wary of growing too quickly, of letting his ideas become diluted in the global machine. “I find fashion difficult at times. It’s so fast now, and I’ll put my hands up and say that I’m part of that instagramming culture. But the story, what you’re trying to say, has to be even stronger than before. There are so many designers who want to put out collections season after season but sometimes it feels like there’s just nothing

new; nothing that really says anything.”

This is really the embodiment of Nicholas Daley’s work and what makes his label essentially British: a combination of the prestige of heritage and the spirit of counterculture. “The music thing, one can’t work without the other. Every season I’ll do a mix to go with the collections, which I’m going to keep doing. And again, that’s something that creates more of a full world; all these different mediums I can get involved with only help reinforce what I’m trying to say. It all brings it together.”

Nicholas Daley's AW15 collection is out now

54

Aesthetic: Venus X Photography: Bex Day Stylist: Luci Ellis MUA: Theresa Davies Words: Anna Tehabsim

There are few movements these days where fashion and music evolve together in perfect symbiosis.

GHE20G0TH1K represents one of these rare instances. A future facing platform for the exploration of music, style and identity, the party was born in 2009 in a basement in New York’s Lower East Side. Here, local DJ Venus X provided the soundtrack at parties which would attract influential creatives such as Hood By Air’s Shayne Oliver, Arca, Mykki Blanco and artists who’d later form the Fade To Mind roster.

“I needed a place to grow up, a place to DJ, to be a crazy bitch, and no one was providing it,” Venus explains. “My friends wanted and needed the same type of club so we did it, everyone contributed a talent or a personality and it became GG.” The soundtrack blended local vogue and Jersey club with punk, industrial and gothic rap like Three 6 Mafia alongside rapidly evolving, Internet-born genres. In 2011, a green haired Venus X appeared in A$AP Rocky’s career-launching video for Peso, with the pair applying a similar punk rock twist to a classic hip-hop style. And as GHE20G0TH1K’s sound advanced, so did the vision of its likeminded creative community. “It is honestly all friends helping each other execute visions,” Venus explains.

“Hopefully that’s what the kids come out see, their own vision, not to dress like celebs, but to create a look and then be that person. Dress like a freak, be a freak.”

GHE20G0TH1K is exploratory, punk in its essence and proudly peripheral – the movement was briefly suspended after Rihanna hashtagged #ghettogoth in a series of Instagram posts over a year ago.

A totem of contemporary fashion with a dark edge, Venus channels the immortal beauty of gothic icons across history. “That

could mean Anne Rice or Aaliyah really.

Time is an illusion and that could have just happened yesterday if you meditate on how old the earth is.”

Between trying to find a home for more GHE20G0TH1K events, Venus is evolving her style as a DJ. As well as expanding her sound, she is translating her own raw energy and embracing her sexuality through the platform more and more. “I don't care any more about the traditional expectations that being a woman alone in the world has fortified in me,” she states. “I don't understand what the big issue is with me talking about my pussy in my DJ set. I definitely don't feel my nasty set is welcome everywhere I go, but I’m pushing it as 'sex is all around us.'”

Venus is the queen of the damned-cumJapanese Lolita incarnate for our cinematic shoot, mastering all things beautiful, fashionable and quintessentially dark.

“Clothes are essential to bringing out the character. I like to watch people develop characters and let them out of Pandora's box.” @VENUSXGG

This Page: Jacket by Bimba and Lola, Top Beyond Retro own, Necklace by Prada.

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This Page: Jacket by Christopher Shannon, Top Beyond Retro, Trousers by Marques’Almeida, Shoe stylists own.

Opposite Page:.

Top by Nasir Mazhar, skirt by Nasir Mazhar, Boots

by Topshop, Necklace artists own.

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Issue 58 | crackmagazine.net

This Page: Coat by Emma Brewin Fur, Earrings by Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Opposite Page:.

Coat by Typical Freaks, Boots by Diesel, Earrings artists own.

Savages at Simple Things Festival 2015 Photography: Ro Murphy

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Report: Carhartt WIP at Simple Things

Of all the attractions spread around Bristol for this year’s Simple Things, one of the undeniable highlights was the roster of charismatic, high-octane artists bouncing around the Carhartt WIP stage.

Fans piled in for a glimpse of dub OG Lee “Scratch” Perry. At 79, Perry’s overwhelming gratitude shone as he explored the influential foundations of rocksteady dub. The streets stayed busy as the night grew later and crowds geared up for a showing from grime’s top table. During their medley of old favourites and unheard new weaponry, Ruff Sqwad – who had Future Brown’s J-Cush on DJ duty – were joined on stage by Lee “Scratch” Perry in an electrifying meeting of backgrounds and generations, and the feeling of mutual respect between the two forces was palpable.

After grime classic Functions On The Low took things to an even more explosive level, it was time for Skepta and JME to write another chapter of their monumental year. Bounding on stage to That’s Not Me, the set showed just how much a of hold these two have had on 2015. The hook of Man Don’t Care was sung along to like a national anthem. Even as the masses spilled out into the early hours, that fever stayed. Skepta managed to sum up the near-overwhelming activities of this stage mid-Shutdown. Clad in a Carhartt WIP coach jacket, with one foot on the monitor – “Talk about Bristol? Yo, Jamie. Where should I start?”

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NOVEMBER 2015 FRIDAY 6TH

BLACK BOOGIE NORM TALLEY / THE MICHIGAN MEASURE / NICK GABRIEL

SATURDAY 7TH

DANCE TUNNEL PRESENTS SAN SODA - ALL NIGHT LONG

FRIDAY 13TH

MAKE ME DESERT SOUND COLONY / RUPES / RUBIN / NIC BAIRD

SATURDAY 14TH

DANCE TUNNEL PRESENTS ITALOJOHNSON - ALL NIGHT LONG

FRIDAY 20TH

THUNDER TUFF CITY KIDS / THUNDER RESIDENTS

SATURDAY 21ST

YOUR LOVE LAKUTI & TAMA SUMO

FRIDAY 27TH

DARKROOM HELENA HAUFF / NIC & RUPES

SATURDAY 28TH

DANCE TUNNEL TURNS THREE SOUNDSTREAM / FRANCIS INFERNO ORCHESTRA / DAN BEAUMONT

DANCE TUNNEL 95 KINGSLAND HIGH STREET, LONDON E8 2PB WWW.DANCETUNNEL.COM

UNSOUND Manggha, Krakow 9 -11 October

Surprise! Unsound 2015 was really, really great.

It also provided one of those rare occasions where a festival’s theme adds to, or is indeed integral to its entire experience and not just an excuse to dress up in some questionable gear (this year’s unofficial theme was Wear Black).

While inevitably providing some frustration among the patrons, the theme seemed to have the opposite effect – people were more prepared than ever to simply see where the day, night, or 100m miners’ lift would take them.

It was Revelations, the concert that many of the out-of-towners arrived at first, that would provide the full spectrum of participation-based emotion. Those that made the trip deep into the Polish crust found themselves in a sprawling complex of narrow passageways, elaborate

banquet halls and innumerable places of worship, painstakingly carved from the dense seam of salt that has been mined since the 13th century.

And it was in the largest of these halls, after DJ Richard’s engulfing set of ambience that we saw (or rather, didn’t) someone playing a set of exclusively Burial material.

The stage was empty, pitch black, the only sign of a performance being a few figures skulking around in a separate raised area at the back of the room. Was it Burial? Was it Kode9? Someone knows, but no-one told us. Regardless, to hear these cracked, emotive records reverberate around such a space was worth the trip (and the omnipresent claustrophobia).

Besides these noteworthy excursions, the majority of the festival focused on forward thinking club sounds, with the day program-

ming seemingly taking more of a backseat this time round.

However the inclusion of HEALTH and Liturgy, two of this generation’s most intense live bands, bought some serious weight to the daytime proceedings.

It was at night where Unsound really seemed to come together though. Taking place in the at-once expansive and intimate Hotel Forum – a retired symbol of 80s Soviet hospitality plonked on the bank of the river Vistula, we were witness to everything from the expansive techno-vocalisms of Holly Herndon (complete with Colin Self on hype-man duties) to a rowdy party set from Optimo in the bar. Nidia Minaj’s hyperactive syncopations were an early highlight, blending the rowdiness of peak-era UK funky with the localised kuduro and batacuda sounds of the label’s Portuguese home. Helena Hauff went back-to-black with Koehler

(one of the many surprises across the Forum’s club programming that made a perfect sense) at the end of the evening, sounding like an acid-techno arms race between good friends.

Alessandro Cortini provided an underwhelmingly naive assortment of simple acid lines the following evening (though others I spoke to found his set a particular high point of the festival – such is the nature of experimental music) before we checked back into the Forum for another relentless night of heartpalpitating bass and sub-£1 pints.

Andy Stott, Untold and Aurora Halal all impressed with engrossing live sets before being pummeled into the dawn by the unfuckwithable DJ Bone.

The final night’s closing party saw everyone’s favourite The Black Madonna bringing things to a close with local boys Ptaki, Principe’s DJ

Nigga Fox and Pitchfork’s dance music oracle Philip Sherbourne in tow. She wisely chose to reach for the belters, knocking out Daft Punk’s Burnin’, MMM’s Jack7 and some insane Super Mario Bros sampling pumper seemingly within minutes of each other (time had become a vague concept by this point).

Bailing out of the venue as she bought her set came to a close at 2:30am, it was clear that Unsound has positioned itself right on the line between brain-expanding musical experience and body-melting dance euphoria. That it manages to pull this off so successfully year on year is a testament to both the risks offered up by the organisers and the willingness of the audience to take them.

And Burial? Underground? It’s almost too good to be true.

Words: Steven Dores Photography: Camille Blake

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Live

MUGAKO Vitoria-Gasteiz, Bilbao 9 - 10 October One hour from Bilbao is VitoriaGasteiz, the Basque country’s small but lively capital. A gallery complex near the old town quarter is the setting for Mugako, which in its first year has already established a strong sense of identity – practically every act on the line-up works with a murkier, grittier techno sound.

Demdike Stare are among the first to play, layering glacial synth sweeps and howling drones over blown-out breaks. It’s a very physical listen – the duo sculpt their dense mass of sound in ways that make your eardrums seize up. As a DJ, Objekt’s very good at unsettling the club without clearing the floor. There’s something slightly off about each track in his 3am set, littered with weird synth-squeals, disquieting vocals, and disorientating rhythms.

Day two, and things have moved to a beer garden in the middle of the old town. The suns out, the BBQ’s going, and a Segunda División clash between locals Alavés and Osasuno sees football fans swamp the cobbled streets. Some show up in time to enjoy Andreas Tilliander’s live set, throwing down harder then any ticket-holder in the place.

Dasha Rush rounds things off with the best set of the weekend.

Rush’s preference for slow burning tracks full of breathing space, combined with her patience and technical mastery, makes her one of those DJs who can make time feel meaningless. It’s over in what feels like minutes, the crowd melting as Rush plays out on Jean Michel Jarre’s Equinox. A fine conclusion to a solid debut year for Mugako.

! Xavier Boucherat N Mugako

ESG Fiddlers, Bristol 24 September

SLE AFORD MODS Bierkeller, Bristol 4 October

The expansive Fiddlers Club was buzzing to the sounds of Shopping when we arrived. The three piece, constantly smiling, played cuts from their new album Why Choose and previous album Consumer Complaints. They’re at their best when guitarist Rachel Aggs is playing her guitar at breakneck speed with a calmness that suggests she might as well be actually shopping.

Next up the impressively sprawling Golden Teacher took to the stage for a set that comprised a half hour of dub, punk, techno and everything in between. Their dual singers remained transfixing, battling between screeched wails and soulful restraint whilst the numerous band members frantically swapped instruments behind them. Their set was over before we could even begin to register what we were seeing.

ESG, the night’s headliner, began lacklustre and slowly warmed up to something that resembled effort. Their music sounded great, recalling a simpler time when rhythm alone was enough to command any dance floor. They just seemed to be going through the motions though, only offsetting the listlessness with an ill advised comedy dancer who ended up throwing merch into the crowd.

Perhaps by way of apology.

Sleaford Mods take pride in careering face-first into crushingly recognisable scenes of Britain’s alienation, depression and exploitation. Presented via a quickly snapping flick-book of fevered rhymes and post punk shunts, the collaboration between Jason Williamson and beat-maker Andrew Fearn tackles those things we’d rather not look in the eye.

This aforementioned blink and you’ll miss it approach becomes immediately apparent live, too. Williamson unleashes his dystopian lyrics at unbelievable speed, spitting and tic’ing, and as the sold out venue becomes a sauna, he appears to steam with frustration. Soon people are upside down in the mosh pit and throwing every chorus back at the stage in a fit of frenzied glee.

Williamson seems to think they have their audience pegged, encouraging us to “dad dance” and “get funky – you remember how to do it!’” – but its arguable that the Mods’ brand of disaffected anger is as relatable to a younger, just as politically disenfranchised audience. The mosh pit proves just this point: there are just as many young people thrashing around in there as there are middle-aged skinheads. It’s a striking scene.

The band run through their set almost without pause, and as we’re all getting soaked in our own sweat (as well as whatever’s dripping off the ceiling), it becomes increasingly apparent that we’re all part of the same rallying shout. The duo provide a vital rage against the seemingly unassailable, but tonight, the unconquerable feels just the opposite.

! Billy Black

FABRIC 16th BIRTHDAY fabric, London 19 October Arriving at the club just after midday on Sunday (a full 12 hours into the party) was a decision that felt completely justified, with birthday mainstay Ricardo Villalobos pushing out pulsing, abstract techno. The last two hours are a rough and tough selection, plus the odd obligatory clanged mix: it was the Villalobos we all know and love on birthday party form.

The musical highlight came in the form of Paranoid London’s acid techno wig-out. The duo’s mantra is to very much to let their music do the talking. Very little background information has ever emerged on them so their live performance comes replete with a level of rawness and mystery.

Tough machine music that pulverises – we haven’t seen a live electronic act bang quite this hard in a very long time.

Prosumer’s two hours that follow are perfectly pitched groovers that do the extremely difficult job of taking us back down from the acidic headiness, before the inevitable B2B2B2B2B follows the second outing from Ricardo Villalobos. The inclusive vibe that ends the night is wholly symptomatic of a London clubbing institution that still commands reverence from those at electronic music’s top table. ! Thomas Frost N Sarah Ginn

JEFF MILLS: LIGHT FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD The Barbican 24 October Jeff Mills often argues that techno isn’t solely for dancefloors. To help demonstrate this, he’s scored films, held a residency at the Louvre, and in 2005, performed with the Montpellier Philharmonic Orchestra at Pont du Gard. His recent show at The Barbican with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Light from the Outside World, was another attempt to bring techno into different spaces - literally, and figuratively - with virtuosic orchestral accompaniment.

The pairing of techno with orchestral music may seem incongruous and gimmicky. You might have quite fixed, opposing ideas about what those things are: new vs old, machine vs human, future vs past, whatever.

But, as Mills attests, the only way techno will stay relevant is by defying those stereotypes.

The performance opened with a new composition, then segued into Imagine, a beautifully layered, Martin Bonds-style scene-setter.

Mills then took to the mic to introduce the themes of the performance; futurism, space, and, above all, the more ‘emotional‘ songs of his oeuvre.

Appropriately, included later was The Art of Barrier Breaking, something Mills has been doing for decades. The Bells was always going to be a highlight, and had most of the crowd standing and fist-pumping. This visibly delighted the orchestra, who probably hadn’t seen such scenes since the annual jingoistic and nationalistic tub-thumping that now passes for the BBC Proms.

Just how ground-breaking and experimental it was is moot, as Mills had given a (at least conceptually) similar performance a decade ago. But such concerns seem churlish. Mills’ music often employs futuristic, 'sci-fi' themes, and this, combined with the epic scale dozens of strings and horns, raised it beyond the mundane. I hesitate to say it was ‘out of this world’, but if you can’t say that about Jeff Mills, who can you? !

Robert Bates N Mark Allan

! Sammy Jones

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FUZZ II In The Red

At the time of this review being written, Girl Band have just pulled all of their scheduled tour dates through the end of 2015 due to health issues. Considering the fact that the Dublin natives spent most of last year making a name for themselves with ferociously energetic live shows – the mere concept of one or more of them being laid low for a while seems a touch unfathomable. They displayed plenty of promise over the course of a year or so’s relentless touring, too, and perhaps the only concern about their debut LP, when it did arrive, is that it wouldn’t quite channel the visceral vigour that has made them such an enthralling live prospect.

We needn’t have worried; Holding Hands with Jamie plays like a wholesale translation of the version of the band we’ve seen up on stage, with the fizz largely retained and some neat subtleties and nuanced weaved in throughout.

Opener Umbongo sets the pace by taking a machine-gun attitude to both guitars and percussion, before collapsing into a discordant wall of noise that throbs with real urgency. Elsewhere, Paul, a discordant, noisy punk turn, is among the standouts, and it’s the near-eight-minute Fucking Butter that proves the beating heart of the record – just like Holding Hands with Jamie as a whole, it’s a hellishly noisy odyssey in vicious rock and roll.

If a sickeningly healthy work ethic is a thing, then Ty Segall has one.

Whether it’s a solo album, collaboration, a tour or a production credit, little time passes in between seeing his name on something new. Now his band Fuzz are back with a second album, spanning 14 tracks over a double LP. As their name suggests, Fuzz is ultimately three longhairs headbanging along to distortion.

Segall's on drums and vocals and other busy blokes Charlie Moothart (Moonhearts) and Chad Ubovich (Meatbodies) handle guitar, vocals and bass respectively.

Spliced opener Time Collapse/The 7th Terror sets the tone; all riffs and solos barging against crashing drums and yelps about “the terror”.

Rat Race and Let It Live are stoner rock with traces of Britpop style vocals until they spazz out into uptempo jams part way through.

Silent Sits The Dustbowl drifts in with a psychedelic intro, through a stringed arrangement before peeling back into a shudderingly sludgy riff. Red Flag is punky and concise, while instrumentals Sleestak and II could soundtrack a B movie motorcycle chase.

Someone could easily be fooled into thinking this album was from the early 70s, before metal was called Metal with metal guidelines and wasn't quite blues, rock & roll or psychedelia. And when peppered with Segall’s characteristic touch of bittersweet glam, it creates an occult-y shtick, reminiscent of the proto-metal of that era. This is particularly evident on Pollinate, Bringer Of Light and Say Hello.

II is unfussy, loud and fun.

Though certainly not a game changer, it’s made to turn up and enjoy. Those in adjoining rooms may disagree.

! Joe Goggins

! Ian Ochiltree

GIRL BAND Holding Hands with Jamie Rough Trade

ZOMBY Let's Jam EPs XL Recordings

FLOATING POINTS Elaenia Pluto Elaenia is, to put it simply, one of the most boring records I’ve heard all year. It’s not what I wanted to discover, or report, from finally hearing Floating Points’ debut album, but it’s the sad sorry truth.

I wanted so much from it. I wanted a mountain of Montparnasses, or an archive of ARP3s. What we’ve got, instead, is a record that does pretty much nothing.

Honestly, it is truly, genuinely stultifying. It does almost nothing of interest across its seven tracks of burst-balloon ambient and green corduroy jazz-fusion. You’ve heard everything on it on a thousand better records. It’s constantly striving for some kind of muso gravitas it never reaches.

From the vague drift of opener Nespole to closing track Peroration Six's overcooked jazz-meetsspace-rock, Elaenia is almost entirely without merit — unless you’re in charge of selecting tracks to soundtrack the new series of Coast, where you’ve been gifted with seven lifeless slabs of pseudo-atmosphere to play with.

If this is the kind of album we’re meant to get excited about now, we might as well stuff back issues of the Observer Music Monthly down our throats and be done with the whole thing. Being boring, truly boring, is one of the worst crimes an artist can commit. With Elaenia, Sam Shepherd’s bought himself a life sentence.

! Josh Baines

JANET JACKSON Unbreakable Rhythm Nation On Broken Hearts Heal, Janet Jackson sings, “But our love ain't no material thing / Inshaallah, see you in the next life”. She might be talking about the death of her brother – this is her first record since then. She could be talking about anything. But the most telling aspect of that lyric is the use of ‘Inshaallah’ – Arabic for ‘God willing’.

It is widely believed that Janet Jackson has converted to Islam. It’s not something her or her camp have ever felt the need to confirm or deny, but it would make sense in the landscape of her catalogue. Be it from the expectations of her father, the crippling scrutiny of the media or the age-old limitations surrounding sexualisation for females in pop – Jackson was always trying to break free. Unbreakable, her 11th studio LP, is what comes after. A spiritually settled artist turning the lens out on bigger, albeit vaguer, themes.

At 17 tracks, Unbreakable isn’t a statement in the same way The Velvet Rope was. Tracks like 2 B Loved and Daamn Baby are somewhat muddled interpretations of the DJ Mustard club sound which detract from the record’s overarching timelessness. Similarly, Shoulda Known Better and Night aim for the charts of today and end up landing somewhere inbetween Liberty X and a 2006 Clubland compilation.

These misfires can be forgiven though. No Sleeep is one of her best eyes-wide-shut anthems, the heavenly chorus of the title track is impossible to stay stoney-faced to and Promise – a 60-second samba interlude – shows that she’s still one of our most puzzling pop luminaries. These songs come from a place of tranquility after a lifetime of introspection. Not the most refined comeback record but good enough to polish a crown.

As she whispers on Black Eagle, “You’ll never know, unless you’ve been there”. ! Duncan Harrison

Zomby’s last LP, 2013’s With Love, was a 33 track double album which suggested little desire to capitalise on the promotional power of his then label 4AD. With fragments of eski grime, jungle, trap and classical samples smothered in a kind of aural grey mist, the album was an erratic and poignant collection of sketches with pretty much zero crossover potential. It may have been hard to digest as a whole, but in his refusal to follow the rules musically, Zomby has always carried a sense of integrity.

Now Zomby has delivered this disparate two parter via XL, exploring dangerously familiar and curiously contrary territory across its two parts.

EP 1 explores uncovered ground for Zomby, as he provides a cluster of house tracks with genuine dance floor functionality (with intros missing and outros sliced off, many of Zomby’s previous tracks have been notoriously difficult to mix). The stuttered beat breaking of EP 2, on the other hand, heralds Zomby’s archetypal trademarks. The blinkered synth sampling and corrupted snare work certainly displays a degree of dexterity, but this time it sounds like he’s got a larger audience in mind.

EP 1 shows that Zomby has a new trick up his sleeve, and those who’ve found his previous work slightly too jarring will relish his new found clarity on EP 2.

But although these tracks prove that Zomby’s past lo-fidelity was an aesthetic choice rather than amateurism, an element of rogue charm has been lost now that he’s cleaned up his act. ! Tom Watson

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MANO LE TOUGH Trials Permanent Vacation Niall Mannion has spoken about the precarious stage in which he, like many musicians, found himself during his early career. The Irish house producer has risen up the ranks of international DJs in the past few years with a style that favours rich, melodic sensibility. It’s unfortunate that somewhere along this transition, this series of choices and corridors, he has made an album of clean-cut melodic house, let down by facile lyrics.

Take title track Trails. Mannion sings “And I ask you are you my friend, or my lover until the end?”

These lines are repeated several times. Is Mannion role-playing a Fedora-doffing, friend-zoned Nice Guy who’s finally had enough, demanding to know of his love interest whether their relationship is platonic or sexual? Weird too is The Space Between. The lyrics refer to the distance between himself and another, then list other supposed opposites, while the music builds with a shimmering discordance that ratchets to violent crescendo, the apparently irreconcilable space between them “closing in”. It seems to point to a messy break-up, the schlockhorror instrumentation suggesting some kind of grisly conclusion. It’s unsettling in a way beyond that which Mannion intended. He is on safer ground on the instrumentals, such as I See Myself In You, a moody mid tempo house track, or Sometimes Lost, which could be described very similarly.

Mannion likes to describe his music as ‘Folkal House’. The music is very clean, quantised and compressed. This might make it marketable to the mainstream, but it leaves Trials feeling sterilised. It is funk-less. His talent for producing brooding and emotive music is clear, but his lyrics need work.

They're emblematic of the kind of vacuous pseudo-intellectualism that passes for profundity in (allegedly) ‘underground’ house. Taken together with the undertones of bruised male entitlement, and the average arrangements, this album is a missed opportunity. ! Robert Bates

SHOPPING Why Choose FatCat

KODE9 Nothing Hyperdub

The scene surrounding Dalston's Power Lunches is arguably one of the most exciting cliques in the UK right now. With members having played in many bands (Trash Kit, Wetdog, Golden Grrrls etc), Shopping are the core of this community of artists who range from Burzum-shirted zine makers to Miley Cyrus admiring pop producers. Their drummer Andrew Milk's record label, Milk, is another attribute to their royalty at the venue, considering a vast majority of Milk's releases are relentless Power Lunches residents.

Shopping's debut album Consumer Complaints sat them somewhere between the Burzum and Miley fans, releasing 13 tight and twangy post-punk hits that had every Power Luncher dancing erratically, in turn successfully launching the band’s international status. Their second album Why Choose is equally saturated in sophisticated and sharp melodies, yet riddled with 80s-esque bass lines and production. The album's opener Wind Up insists that you dance, while Sinking Feeling incorporates a 2006 indie pop ambience that has every 20-somethingyear-old brimming with nostalgia.

The debut single Straight Lines has Milk spluttering unvarying vocals over disco-soaked bass lines and comes with a perfectly artsy video embodying naked bodies as pieces of furniture.

This reversed progression into the 80s validates Shopping's cunning strategy to steer from becoming another uninspired indie pop band. While you could accuse Shopping of being archeologists of their genre, Why Choose captures the essence of playful postpunk at its best, and you’ll find no complaints from those blissfully dancing in the front row.

Nothing is the first record Kode9, real name Steve Goodman, has released as an entirely solo venture, and perhaps fittingly, it is at points a lonely project. Deceptively, the bulk of the record is best tentatively described as footwork, and it’s this world that informs the forward facing levity on display — tracks like Wu Wei and Mirage practically sparkle with a syncopated, floor-friendly energy. This warped juke emerges as the record’s dominant dynamic, yet to interpret this energy as optimistic or upbeat would serve to under-represent the aching sentiment that draws its composite parts together.

Undoubtedly, the LP’s focal obsession with absence (most literally final track Nothing Lasts Forever, which concludes the album on a nine minute silence), feels attached to the passing of Goodman’s long time friend and collaborator The Spaceape last year. It’s a loss that is present throughout the record, not just during the one track that does feature the late MC, Third Ear Transmission — a feature as disturbing as it is poignant. Crucially, however, this absence doesn’t translate into despair, and the ultimate source of Nothing’s success is how Goodman refuses to allow the phantoms of emptiness to consume the record completely — even the darker club-leaning tracks, 9 Drones or Vacuum Packed, are relatively lithe. Nothing, for a record concerned with loss, is the sound of a producer far from resigned to those sentiments.

The result is an affecting and arresting marriage between the pace of rhythm passed on to Goodman from Teklife, and the ghostly climate of Hyperdub’s earliest mutant dubstep releases. There might a heavy silence beneath every rhythm, but Nothing never sounds like giving up.

To deconstruct moulds, to reassess stylistic arcs, or to pervert from what is deemed ‘the norm’ can leave many artists exposed.

Yet, for Louis Carnell, aka Visionist, his debut LP not only dismantles perceptions of form but reassembles them in his own austere image. Safe separates Visionist from context. Instead, it restrains you into its echo chamber, calamitous and anxious in its mutations.

Carnell habitually refers to his craft as some form of remedy to mental self-harm. His earlier work – 2013’s I’m Fine and later Can’t Wait – traversed in the familiar textures of grime yet introduced apparitional vocal samples to exhibit a notion of loss. Here, he remodels fragmented RnB harmonies over staggered percussion to connote an unbearable awareness. An anxiety so tangible it quivers.

Yet the frailty of Safe almost depends on its anarchy or its aggression; like the final recoil of a dying animal. Tracks like Tired Tears, Innate Fears and Safe cower from the weight of string patterns. Their sample-based constructions crumble in to some unique matrix of ideas and misery.

The whole product screams allegiances with fellow electronic deconstructionists, Logos, Arca, Rabit, Murlo and Oneohtrix Point Never. But, with Safe, Visionist forcibly confronts his alien self, taking a form of music making and pillaging it to a state of malformation. He has transformed himself from grime’s acquaintance to its spiritual stranger. Safe is an outlander’s triumph.

DJ Paypal has arrived at Brainfeeder after long-standing stints with both LuckyMe and Teklife. It’s an attractive resumé – the glossy hyperrealism of LuckyMe, the authentic credibility of Teklife and a touch of globetrotting futurism from Brainfeeder.

All rolled into one for this double-EP, the end result is an entertaining one. The indelible Teklife stamp is bared most prominently on the frantic urgency of the title track and then again on the deeply soulful We Finally Made It, an irresistible collaboration with DJ Earl – one of the footwork label’s youngest talents. The 160BPM afrobeat reconstruction that goes down on Slim Trak is positively tantalising and the jolting tonal shifts of closer Say Goodbye demonstrate an adeptness and compositional consideration that transcends the post-internet silliness of the Paypal brand.

It’s a wholly enjoyable and promisingly outward-facing effort from Paypal. If the boldly unconventional releases from RP Boo and Jlin showed the malleability of footwork and its ability to create stirring, broken symphonies, then Sold Out is the giddy, loveable cousin of those records – more interested in throwing in random ingredients than testing the recipe itself.

Dilly Dally’s debut LP, Sore, can be most usefully compared to an intake of breath, and then a glorious, restorative exhale. It’s an odd comparison to make, perhaps, as lead singer Katie Monks’ voice has a distinctive wheeze that makes her sound sort of like a heavy smoker about to cough up something bad (and that leaves her sounding more like Courtney Love than even Courtney herself), but this breathe in/breathe out happens, as regular as breath itself, throughout Sore’s eleven songs.

Take, for example, the strains of guitar and whispery groans of vocal that open Get To You. Sighing backing vocals signify a gasp of air in, but it’s a thunder of bass, drums and Monks’ bullshit-draining roar that finally shunts out the bad, leaving room for clean air.

The full effect of this technique is maybe seen most effectively on second single, and the album’s defiant anthem for change, Purple Rage. Most of the songs on Sore are addressed to a specific, sometimes pined after, sometimes reviled individual, but this song seeks to inspire the listener into transforming themselves into someone better than before – and the stop/start punchiness of the song shakes free of shackles and brims with a renewed, self-supplied power.

Without getting too yogic, deliberate deep breathing is meant to heal and calm us, and that’s what Sore both seeks and attains. Raw, gasping, and wincingly emotionally intelligent, this Toronto band’s debut is an exercise in catharsis through the power of unapologetic exaltation.

! Ayesha Linton-Whittle

! Angus Harrison

! Tom Watson

! Duncan Harrison

! Sammy Jones

DILLY DALLY Sore Buzz Records

VISIONIST Safe PAN Records

DJ PAYPAL Sold Out Brainfeeder

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TR A AMS Modern Dancing Fat Cat Records

“Alien. Less on. Alien,” goes the mess of textual coding on TRAAMS’ second LP, the fictional group Kaoss Edge’s krauty-indie-post-punk of Modern official homepage; a rabbit Dancing, is another addition to the hole of deep web reverie. Here, gamut of outstanding sound being embedded in the white noise are filtered through the walls of Leeds’ MIDI files owned and distributed Suburban Home Studio (check

by Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix out Blacklisters’ searing Adult and Point Never. Ezra the alien is an Trust Fund’s deceptively underextra-terrestrial to whom Lopatin stated Seems Unfair as a starting has collaborated with in a series point if you’re behind). of hallucinatory blog posts and Modern Dancing manages questionnaires. The alien, Ezra, to reach both out and in. While conducted an exclusive interview speaking broodingly on the many with Lopatin who consequently refears of the heart, it also offers out, vealed the title of his latest record, via clarity of sound and songwritGarden of Delete. ing, an immediacy that you could This aggrandised type of easily fool yourself is physically artistry, equally as self-aware as tangible. it is introspective, aids in painting Deluxe CD / DLEvery instrument is immediate – no excessive fuzz or reverb Lopatin’s parallel universe. His Contains Re-Covered EPthis economical apis used – and playful PR push is essential in proach is refreshingly visceral. understanding Garden Of Delete’s Out Now To complement this, there’s sonic content. It’s non-music hardly a feeling on the album that’s promoted by non-characters with not demonstrated physically. There downloadable MIDI easter eggs are aching necks, unseeing eyes, woven into a web domain supportcataracts, a dribbling mouth, rough ing a non-band. In full, Garden of hands, a broken chest to contend Delete is something of a machine with, and this raw physicality is malfunction. It’s an anomaly in the not only lyrical – every song begs code. A gremlin in the hardware. to be moved to, much in the way It’s like listening to fiction or like the title suggests. Particular mobcommunicating ideas through rustlers are Costner, a riff-driven a made up alien called Ezra. shout that’s made clever by tickling Loptain’s affiliation with cybernetic bass, and Succulent Thunder drone and awkward ambience has Anthem, a post-punk crash with a been reviewed and reevaluated. dark sense of humour (“you know Consequently, there is now an unthere’s on the road,” taunts vocalist paralleled directness to his music.

Stu Hopkin, “please don’t fall and No Good, Sticky Drama, I Bite break your neck”).

Through It all teeter on lunacy. EvThe shadowier side of the erything overdoses from vocoder human condition is put under sampling and caustic Kronos the microscope repeatedly (the machine manipulation. There is no thoughtful Silver Lining articulately context. No reference. Take what translating the fuggier, vaguer side you will from it. If James Joyce of depression is a standout), but at composed auditory landscapes, it the end of the album it’s the dance would be Garden of Delete.

Ltd. 12” / that CDwins / DLout. An achingly honest antidote to modern angst.

SonGhoy BlueS Music In Exile

alvvayS Alvvays Out Now

! Tom Watson

! Sammy Jones

DEERHUNTER Fading Frontiers 4AD

SOPHIE Product Numbers PATRICK COWLEY If you sell your album in conjuncMuscle Up tion with a promotional dildo, Dark Entries then a cynic could say you might be compensating for something.

To fully appreciate Patrick Cowley’s diverse body of work, you have to That’s not to make a comment understand the context. As detailed in the liner notes of Muscle Up, about anything phallic, rather the Cowley’s world was “a bubble in time and space”, his sound a vibrant time overwhelming sense that this is a capsule for the sexually charged climate of San Francisco in the sevenrecord reliant far too heavily on a ties. During this period, Cowley became widely known for intensifying the legacy of concept. evolution of disco, pioneering his own version of Hi-NRG, and shaping SOPHIE first dropped Bipp / ‘the San Francisco sound’. These efforts launched him toward notoriety Elle in 2013, and in the interim the among disco circles, his work with Sylvester (including hits like You Make world has gone through several 12” Me Feel (Mighty Real)) in particular leading to his much-beloved extended cycles of interest and disinterest Outheavy Now 12” / DL remix of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. in the culture of concept When Cowley first began to experimentOut with synthesizers, San post-pop production. At this 4th December Francisco provided fertile ground for the depth of his genius. The city was stage, to be completely honest, home to a rapidly growing gay scene as well as a new wave of big budget, Product simply isn’t enough. Most artistic pornography. It was here Cowley immersed himself, creating his of the notable tracks have been signature take on sex music made to soundtrack creative gay arts such as in circulation for long enough to theatre and porn films. It is the latter that Muscle Up fixes its gaze upon. sound tired, and anything new is Muscle Up is the second Patrick Cowley compilation from Dark Encut from a tone now so burdened tries, this time a joint venture with Honey Soundsystem. Much like the first, by commentary and analysis it’s 2013’s School Daze, Muscle Up compiles a diverse selection of extended effectively boring. One of the atmospheric pieces, originally crafted as studio experiments before being biggest challenges posed by used by gay porn studio Fox. It also echoes School Daze in that it evokes the record is SOPHIE’s seeming a sophisticated approach to background music, succeeding in being both indecisiveness as to whether the sultry and softly driving; both sweat-soaked and suggestively poised. album is club music, or electronic The carnal drive of upfront funk and prolonged ecstasy of mutant experimentalism. disco runs alongside deep, swirling experiments that graciously set the The former certainly provides pace. A tension between the cosmic and the earthy is revealed, the soft more fruitful rewards. Cuts like suspending of time laid against more urgent senses – the military-like Vyzee and Just Like We Never drums of opener Cat's Eye and thick Amazonian humidity of The Jungle Said Goodbye make for melodic, Dream make way for the stargazing sprawl of Deep Inside You; the futurist nostalgia (which as of now slowly burning funk of Somebody To Love Tonight against its more urgent is a thing, alright?) channeling the counterpart 5oz of Funk. Sensate nocturnes both primal and spiritual, saccharine instrumentation into the tracks also outline the breadth of Cowley’s experimentation, from the genuine dance-floor giddiness or quivering stretches of Mockingbird Dream 2 to the beatless industrial triumphant pop. Yet the latter, the whirr of Uhura. more abrasive stretches of fizzing Muscle Up is not only an artifact of a pioneer taken too soon (Cowley liquid and sticking latex, feel like an tragically died of AIDs at 32) but is also a crucial chapter of queer culture extensive think-piece that doesn’t it. The listener only enters really know how Ltd. to make 12”its/ conCD / DL and the sonic innovation that runs alongsideLtd. 12” / CDnot / DL the lost world of sophisticated porn, but a vanished era of sexual exprescluding point.

Out Now Out Now sion, too. ! Anna Tehabsim ! Angus Harrison

SonGhoy BlueS

Back in August, Bradford Cox released a cryptic link to a GIF picturing his face morphing into a dog. Later that week, Deerhunter announced their new album Fading Frontiers, with a video for lead track Snakeskin which cited everything from macabre skulls to Faustian montages.

Dogs and death imagery aside, Snakeskin was only the first bite into the rotten apple of temptation that is Fading Frontiers. "I've spent all of my time chasing the fading frontiers," cries Cox in Living My Life, his voice glazed by a sunny psych-pop sheen. "I wish I was a mole in the ground," comes the country bop at the end of Ad Astra, before sliding into "It's much too deep / It's too much for me" on Carrion.

Fading Frontiers is the band's seventh album, and the record’s credits include members of Broadcast and Stereolab. More shoegaze surge than the death-rattle garage of 2013’s Monomania, the album is a cleaner call to synths and tapes. The record's drifts seem to sweep through Deerhunter's halcyon dress-wearing days and into a shrewd combination of frail vocals and ripples. But in the lightness of the album's ambient twirls and dream-pop accessibility, lays a darkness reminiscent of Deerhunter's previous works, and Cox's lyrics are fleshed with a range of electronic twitches and warped synths, adding to the altogether sinister tone. Cox may have lost his marbles on this one, but I think I like it.

Re-Covered EP

S t a r G a z e and deerhoof preSent

GenGahr

CoSmo Sheldrake

A Dream Outside

Chamber Variations EP

Pelicans We EP

www.tranSGreSSive.Co.uk

! Gunseli Yalcinkaya

12.12.15 WHP PRESENTS

LEFTFIELD — LIVE GEORGE FITZGERALD PARANOID FRIDAY LONDON — LIVE 11TH DECEMBER CURATED

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73

Film Last month, it was revealed that there was evidence for water on Mars. And if Ridley Scott wasn’t smug enough already, he knew this before NASA made the announcement. His latest film, The Martian, however, doesn’t really give him too much to be smug about. Elsewhere in this issue’s film roundup, we discuss Carey Mulligan leading the march in the history biopic Suffragette, argue that Tangerines explores the pettiness of diplomacy compared to a need for humanity, and find delight in The Lobster – which is completely weird but totally watchable, as director Lanthimos continues to exude violent, crazy and sexy indie cinema. And Spectre... well, we pretty much know what to expect from Bond, don’t we?

SUFFR AGETE dir: Sarah Gavron Starring: Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Brendan Gleeson

06 07 THE MARTIAN dir. Ridely Scott Starring: Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig, Jessica Chasstain

THE LOBSTER dir: Yorgos Lanthimos Starring: Aba Shanti, Jimmy Nail, Nathan Barley etc The latest from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos looks to cross-examine the strange rituals of courtship, in a similarly cerebral fashion as his renowned 2009 film Dogtooth. The Lobster gives the opportunity to collaborate with a cast of well-known actors and, in turn, enhance the typical British awkwardness associated with love.

The Lobster is set in a hotel where the guests are expected to find love, or else be turned into an animal of their choosing. This battleground for courtship is the chosen arena for Lanthimos to pick holes at bourgeoisie conventions, arguing that this strange premise is no less bizarre than the act of chatting someone up or being destined to finding a partner. Of course, this discussion is confined in the vacuum of his own designed world, going by his own set of rules.

However, Lanthimos’ own impressionistic style keeps his ideas challenging while maintaining their familiarity. The Lobster drifts through spaces as the story obsesses over different ideas – going off on tangents rather than following traditional narrative. But the form never parts too far away from the strict laws Lanthimos enforces about the film’s meaning. With a spectrum of great performances, appropriating their own take on deranged singledom, this is grim comedy and subversively satisfying take on modern love.

! Tim Oxley Smith

08

From Castaway to Life of Pi and 127 Hours, there have been a number of films made over the years about extreme isolation, and this sort of narrative is nowhere more a la mode than in the sub-genre of space films.

The loneliness experienced by the protagonists in these movies is usually emphasised through their disconnection from loved ones back home, but with The Martian, Ridley Scott has done away with this crucial factor. Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is an astronaut left for dead on Mars by his crew after a sandstorm derails their mission. During his long journey to survival, no wife is ever mentioned. He doesn’t shed any tears about missing his kids’ birthdays.

Instead of hope or humanity, what motivates Watney to escape certain death is his ego. He consistently shows off about his scientific prowess and engages in lengthy monologues about being the first human to ever climb a hill on Mars.

After two hours of our All American Hero’s selfaggrandisement, it’s clear that this is a film about ambition and self-obsession. While the film is drenched in cliché, it’s refreshing to see a blockbuster which doesn’t pretend its hero is humble. ! Francis Blagburn

Rather than focus on Emmeline Pankhurst, the figurehead of the suffragette movement who’s seen only in a disappointingly brief cameo from Streep here, director Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane) and writer Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady) chose instead to follow the story of Maud Watts (Mulligan), a fictional working class laundry worker. Although initially reluctant, Maud is drawn into the epicentre of the suffragette movement, her fervour bolstered by the notion that “there’s another way of living this life.”

Suffragette has turned up the volume on conversations about the enduring imbalances of gender equality, wage gaps and workplace discrimination, but that’s not all. Uproar was caused by a Time Out shoot featuring the (white, privileged) lead actresses wearing t-shirts bearing famous Pankhurst quote “ I’d rather be a rebel than a slave” and criticised for racial insensitivity, connotations to the American confederacy, and presenting slavery as a ‘choice’. Then, the London premiere was delayed when members of Sisters Uncut staged a ‘die-in’ to draw attention to government cuts affecting domestic abuse services.

Suffragette is a good, if flawed, film that moreover deserves applause for reminding us all how far we have come, and how much further we have to go. ! Tamsyn Aurelia-Eros Black

06

SPECTRE dir. Sam Mendes Starring: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux Finding a place for James Bond in 2015 isn’t easy.

Even Daniel Craig, who has now played 007 since 2006, has described him as a misogynist. In Skyfall Sam Mendes found an ingenious response to this problem, by making Bond a tired pitiful character, forced to look inside himself for answers (or something like that). Basically, it was moody and largely set in Scotland.

Spectre is taking this new found “credibility” of character and re-applying it to the more classically action-packed model of old. The film opens in suitably grand and gritty nature in Mexico City and continues globe-trotting everywhere from Morocco to Austria, taking in the criminally under-used but suitably attractive Lea Seydoux, and eventually leading Bond into the arms of Monica Bellucci’s Lucia. So far, so fast cars, big explosions, and sexy women. Spectre seems to accept that the true home for James Bond is peddling rough and tumble, after-shave flogging, watch-sponsored male fantasy to blokes with mortgages on the cusp of losing their hair. Which actually, for a couple of hours on a Friday evening, isn’t as bad as it sounds ! Angus Harrison

07

TANGERINES dir. Zara Urushadze Starring: Lembit Ulfsak, Elmo Nüganen, Giorgi Nakashidze Far removed from the brash bravado of Hollywood propaganda and Affleck-meets-hot-girl war epics, is the peace-promoting visual triumph Tangerines. Set in 1992, during the Soviet conflict between Georgia and Abkhazia, two Estonian immigrant farmers, Ivo and Margus, are given the roles of peacekeeper when a military shootout leaves two wounded soldiers on their doorstep.

And if director Zara Urushadze wants us to know one thing, it’s that beneath boarders and nationality, we’re all the same. This is drawn together best through the simple photograph of Ivo’s daughter – we all have the same wants, longings and desires.

What’s perhaps most refreshing about the film is the subtlety of its characters: Ivo’s stern yet compassionate presence sees the soldiers treat him with a fatherly respect, while Margus’ constant worrying about the state of the tangerine crops, weaves a comical thread to the otherwise severe fabric of racism seen by the passing troops.

And contrary to the aforementioned Western excess of say, Pearl Harbour, Tangerines settles on a more realist branch. When Ivo and Margus push a soldier’s van down a hill to hide it from passing troops, they are disappointed when it doesn’t burst into flames. “Cinema is a great big fraud,” says Ivo.

! Gunseli Yalcinkaya

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Patrick Cowley is the cherished Hi-NRG pioneer and Moog master who helped shape the ‘San Francisco sound’ in the late 70s, tragically dying of AIDS at the age of 32. To mark the second of two releases compiling his interplanetary compositions for gay porn, Dark Entries have printed this tee featuring the cover of 2013’s instant classic School Daze, so you can bear this legend’s face with pride.

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Following her 2010 must-read memoir Just Kids, Patti Smith has released a new autobiographical book M Train. The idea for the book originated when Patti began scribbling down her thoughts every morning at her local café in Greenwich Village. If you’re feeling inspired and you happen to be reading this in a café right now, then we encourage you to do the same.

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URBAN OUTFITTERS X CROSLEY TURNTABLE Urban Outfitters £250 We figure there are probably a few objects worth getting your head slammed in a door for on Black Friday and and this is definitely one of them. Urban Outfitters and Crosley’s Black Friday collaboration is a limited edition black turntable with detachable legs that is only available for one day. Get your body armour and grab yourself twelve.

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THREE TRAPPED TIGERS & LITURGY EVAN CAMINITI ILLUMINATIONS AT THE DOME

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SILENT HILL LIVE FEAT. AKIRA YAMAOKA PERFORMING HIS LEGENDARY SCORES TO THE SILENT HILL VIDEO GAME SERIES ILLUMINATIONS AT ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL 01/11

The Laundry Sun 01 Nov.

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SILENT HILL LIVE FEAT. AKIRA YAMAOKA

MARIKA HACKMAN

01/11

Union Chapel Fri 06 Nov.

PERFORMING HIS LEGENDARY SCORES TO THE SILENT HILL VIDEO GAME SERIES ILLUMINATIONS AT THE LAUNDRY

THEY WILL HAVE TO KILL US FIRST PLUS Q & A WITH SONGHOY BLUES ILLUMINATIONS AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY 01/11

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MICHAEL RAULT The Victoria Tues 10 Nov.

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MICACHU & THE SHAPES ILLUMINATIONS AT OVAL SPACE 06/11

MYKKI BLANCO PRESENTS C-ORE ILLUMINATIONS AT THE LAUNDRY 07/11

THE ORB

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MYKKI BLANCO The Laundry Fri 06 Nov.

ILLUMINATIONS PRESENTS

ZOLA JESUS

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BILL RYDER JONES The Lexington Weds 11 Nov.

BY THE SEA WITH:

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FOALS

Dreamland, Margate Fri 13 Nov.

Oval Space Fri 13 Nov.

HOLLY HERNDON

LOS CAMPESINOS SCALA Sun 22 Nov.

MELT YOURSELF DOWN

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THUMPERS The Victoria Weds 25 Nov.

SUNFLOWER BEAN

PLUS SPECIAL GUEST RICHARD DAWSON BRIANA MARELA & LET’S EAT GRANDMA ILLUMINATIONS AT ST. JOHN AT HACKNEY

MEAT WAVE

07/11

The Victoria Thurs 26 Nov.

Bussey Building Thurs 26 Nov.

Moth Club Mon 30 Nov.

FLO MORRISSEY

WILLIS EARL BEAL

CHRISTOPHER OWENS

Bush Hall Weds 02 Dec.

Bethnal Green Working Mens Club Thur 03 Dec.

St John on Bethnal Green Thurs 03 Dec.

CHEATAHS

DU BLONDE

SONGHOY BLUES

XOYO Tues 19 Jan.

Village Underground Weds 24 Feb.

Roundhouse Sat 21 May.

ZOLA JESUS

BLANCK MASS ILLUMINATIONS AT ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL 08/11

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER GAZELLE TWIN ILLUMINATIONS AT VILLAGE UNDERGROUND 08/11

RAIN THE COLOR OF BLUE WITH A LITTLE RED IN IT PLUS DIRECTOR Q & A and DJs ILLUMINATIONS AT HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSE

get tickets and full info at www.rockfeedback.com

Metropolis Music by arrangement with Primary Talent International presents

T H U R S DAY 3 D E C E M B E R

H E AV E N

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Yael Naim ALA.NI

Metropolis Music in association with Les InRocKs Philips Festival by arrangement with ATC Live presents

T H E N E W P RO J E C T F RO M

DAN AUERBACH OF THE BLACK KEYS PLUS GUESTS

MARIACHI FLOR DE TOLOACHE

WEDNESDAY 11 NOVEMBER

UT

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A Metropolis Music presentation in association with 13 Artists

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2ND WEDNESDAY OF EVERY MONTH

Goldenvoice Presents

ROME FORTUNE

KYLA LA GRANGE

MEADOWLARK

19.11.15 OVAL SPACE

14.12.15 THE LEXINGTON

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ALABAMA SHAKES

JASON ISBELL

04.11.15 LONDON FIELDS BREWERY

18.11.15 OUT OLDACADEMY BRIXTONS02

ALGIERS

19.11.15 OUT OLDACADEMY BRIXTONS02

22.01.16 02 SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE

+ TWEAKS & JUPITER C

JOHN NEWMAN

09.11.15 THE LEXINGTON

23.11.15 KOKO

EKKAH

LION BABE

10.11.15 MOTH CLUB HACKNEY

24.11.15 HEAVEN

LEO KALYAN

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SAN FERMIN + FARAO

13.11.15 UNION CHAPEL

RYAN O’REILLY + JONNY P TAYLOR 16.11.15 SEBRIGHT ARMS

YAK

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LUCY ROSE + FLYTE & C DUNCAN 18.11.15 FORUM

OUT SOLD

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THE LIBERTINES 30.01.16 THE O2

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MARIBOU STATE 17.02.16 KOKO

WOLF ALICE 27.03.16 FORUM

AUTOBAHN

ELLIE GOULDING

DISCLOSURE

YEARS & YEARS

01.12.15 SEBRIGHT ARMS + EATS EVERYTHING 01.12.15 OUT SOLD PALACE ALEXANDRA 02.12.15 OUT SOLD PALACE ALEXANDRA 03.12.15 ALEXANDRA PALACE

ISLAND + OTZEKI

08.12.15 THE VICTORIA DALSTON

24.03.16 THE O2

08.04.16 THE SSE ARENA WEMBLEY

FATHER JOHN MISTY 18.05.16 THE ROUNDHOUSE

www.goldenvoice.co.uk

04.11.15 BARFLY

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Industrialising Intimacy Sun 29 Nov

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Lulu: A Murder Ballad Mon 30 Nov

Bianca Casady (CocoRosie) & The C.i.A Tue 1 Dec

MITSKI TUES 3 NOV DALSTON VICTORIA NATALIE MCCOOL TUES 3 NOV THE WAITING ROOM DEWY SINATRA WED 4 NOV THE WAITING ROOM THE GARDEN WED 4 NOV DINGWALLS BEAU MON 9 NOV THE WAITING ROOM JOANNA NEWSOM T MON 9 NOV SOLD OU EVENTIM APOLLO JOHN JOSEPH BRILL MON 9 NOV DALSTON VICTORIA

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The #clickbait music news rounded up by Josh Baines OLD MAN “TROLLED” — WORLD MOVES ON Steve Albini is fucking quality mate I love him because I am one of the guys who has equated being into Big Black with something greater than liking an OK band and Shellac are fucking sick too mate I love that Prayer For God one yeah the one about killing someone I like wearing army surplus jackets and I never even speak to women and I agree with Steve Albini that dance music is rubbish and I was very upset when someone called Powell put up a poster trolling him! Grrr!

YOU USED TO CALL ME ON YOUR RINGTONE THAT GOT OLD REALLY QUICKLY Drake is fucking quality mate I love him because I am one of the guys who has become fixated on the idea that Drake would get on really well with me if we ever met because I like Boy Better Know too and I used my mum’s credit card to buy Palace gear and I think we could talk about grime and streetwear and how funny those Vines of Drake’s Hotline Bling dancing combined with the theme tune from Rock and Chips were love me please someone anyone please please love me please.

I thought the Jeff Mills Crack cover was awesome, but when I picked up a copy loads of black ink rubbed off onto my hands.

I wiped them on my new white jeans and now they’re basically fucked. Can you ask someone at the mag if they can give me some compensation? I’ve sent them a Facebook message but they haven’t replied.

Messaged them on Facebook? If you’re genuinely seeking to recover damages Lucy, then I suggest you go down a much more official route. If you require legal services, then I’ve got 22 years of experience under my belt, and if the price is right then I’ll happily file a lawsuit against my own colleagues and then have a good night’s sleep. Call me.

Denzil Schniffermann Love, life and business advice from Crack’s esteemed agony uncle

Dear Denz,

Denz Says:

All these young’s in my neighbourhood keep are playing havoc with my firm grip on fire safety.

Every time I go past these group of ragamuffins they are always talking about this person being “lit” or some rap song being “fire”.

I’m a retired fireman and my instinct just kicks in.

I’ve never this many false alarms since I found out I had an abnormally high sperm count.

Any flagrant disregard for fire safety is enough to make this old warhorse want to bang heads. I once made a prank phone call to the fire brigade at the exact same time someone decided to light up old man Schniff’s homemade outdoor sauna. Our pet ferret died. I’ve never got over it. Congratulations on your fertility.

Paul, 49, Bournemouth

SOMETHING ABOUT THE TECHNO VIKING Techno Viking is fucking quality mate I love him because I am one of the guys who believes that millenials who want to empower themselves to change the world love nothing more than terrible “content” which they are forced to create and consume by people a good 20 years older than them who have no fucking clue about what’s actually interesting or amusing or even noteworthy.

@bain3z

Denzil Says:

Lucy, 24, Manchester

WHY WHY WHY DOYALIETHERE WITH ANOTHER MAN? Tom Jones is fucking quality mate I love him because I am one of the guys who got really into The Voice as a joke even though it’s been revealed that he’s a fucking massive homophobe but still isn’t it funny when Carlton does his funny dance to that Tom Jones song on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air I love nostalgia because I am a pathetic fucking child who lives in abject fear of literally everything around me.

LIB DEM IN INDIE LOVING SHOCK Tim Farron is fucking quality mate I love him because ah fuck I can’t go on like this I have no actual idea who Tim Farron is sorry everyone.

Dear Denz,

Dear Mr Schniffermann,

Denz Says:

An summons has been issued against you due to traffic violations allegedly committed with a personal transportation device on 14 October 2015. You are hereby summoned to appear in the Wimbledon Magistrates Court on 29 November. Failure to attend will result in a warrant for your arrest.

Not this again. How on earth was I supposed to know that hoverboards are illegal in the UK? I deny any accusations of wrongdoing.

See you in court.

Merton Police Force

Problems? email denzil@crackmagazine.net

Crossword Across 03. Pinky’s mate in one of those cartoon series from the 90s that look indefinably grimy and make you feel a little bit sick (5) 04. The Hills have these – v.v. scary hills (4) 06. The red bits around my mouth are on fire, and I think I blame these psychedelic indie wackadoodles with their furry costumes and inflatable balls (4) 07. Nice beans pal, shame they’ve filtered all the bad stuff out of my body and made it into pee lol enjoy your dinner or whatever (6) 09. Julian Casablancas’s is in a cage (how did it get there you silly sausage); Alicia Keys has a hard time dropping off cause hers is knackered; Toni Braxton wants you to reassemble hers (5) 12. Guy Garvey and his mates made tedium an artform (5) 13. Trent Reznor’s need a trim (5) Down 01. Kylie can’t get me out of hers (she’s only human lol); Nai Harvest are holding theirs open (4) 02. Leg joint that sounds like when a Scottish person say ‘no’, e.g. ‘I’ve got no feeling in my leg joint, call an ambulance please, quickly, please, I’m Scottish’ (4) 03. A very silly-sounding word for your stomach; people like to eat this bit of a pork, but I’m a vegetarian so I don’t, I just eat cereal most meals (5) 05. That bloke who plays Captain Kirk in the new Star Trek films. Yes, him. Well – his backbone. No, I haven’t seen them either (5) 08. The _____, 70s LA band who originally recorded the Blondie hit Hanging on the Telephone (6) 10. My Left ___, one of Daniel Day-Lewis’s many Oscar-winning acting jobs (4) 11. I’ve got a baby cow on the back of my leg! Not really I’m just kidding chill out ffs why do you always take things so literally this relationship used to be fun but it’s becoming a job in itself I think I should move out (4) 14. Thom Yorke has an iron respiratory organ (4) Solution to last month’s crossword: THEME: FRANCE + LE FRENCH. ACROSS: 04. JUSTICE, 06. EDITH-PIAF, 07. CANTONA, 09. DAFTPUNK 13. TOUR-DE-FRANCE, 16. TAXI, 17. CAMEMBERT DOWN: 01. FRANCOPHILE 02. OUI, 03. MARCEL, 03. GERARD-DEPARDIEU, 05. SEINE, 08. FRENCHTOAST, 10. FRIES, 11. NON, 12. MONT-BLANC, 14. CHANEL., 15. QUEBEC

SOLDT OU

SOLDT OU

SOLDT OU

85

20 Questions: Jeffrey Lewis

“Has Dr. Dre ever heard a Kimya Dawson record? It would probably blow his mind” The 20 Questions feature doesn’t work for everyone – we’d feel a bit awkward asking Nicolas Jaar if he thinks Gary Oldman is cooler than Gary Numan. But occasionally we’ll be listening to a new record and then – bam – the perfect contender springs to mind. Enter Jeffrey Lewis – the longstanding anti-folk (do people still say that?) songwriter and comic book artist.

Ahead of the new Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts album Manhattan (which is very good, by the way) we called Lewis to ask him about shoplifting, tombstones and the textures of exotic sea food; and at no point was he even vaguely rattled by our line of questioning.

What was your favourite cartoon when you were a kid?

Scooby Doo. What was the last book that you read?

I’m halfway through reading In The Fascist Bathroom by Greil Marcus.

What website do you waste the most time on?

Email. I’m mostly booking my own shows.

And what’s your signature recipe?

I don’t really know how to cook. This is New York city...

So many great places on your doorstep I guess?

Yeah, and whenever I buy groceries I have to throw them out because I’ll go on tour.

What’s the most exotic meal you’ve had on tour?

In Malaysia, I got a plate of string ray. A chunk of roasted ray.

How was it?

It was good. Good sauce. Sort of crispy on top, tender in the inside. Pretty cheap too.

Do you have a number one fan?

The eight, nine or maybe about ten people who still regularly post on the Jeffrey Lewis message board – I consider them my number one fans.

Do you have a nickname?

Some people call me Queso, they think it means “Jeff” in Spanish, but it actually means “cheese”.

Have you ever shoplifted?

Oh yeah, sure. I don’t know if kids do it any more, but when you had Tower Records or HMV or Virgin, that’s where you could shoplift music.

Did you ever get caught?

Yeah, in the Tower Records uptown. I think it was a Grateful Dead cassette. They did the whole thing where they photograph you, then take you into the back room. Now the chain stores are all out of business, does the FBI still hold onto a file of all those youthful shoplifters?

Has that been your only brush with the law?

Every band has been pulled over by the cops at some point. But I’ve never spent the night in jail.

Gary Oldman, or Gary Numan?

Interesting. Gary Numan, because I don’t understand why people give actors that much credit. I mean, if Gary Oldman wrote a script it would be like ‘wow, he really came up with something’. But if he just plays the role of like a tough guy, or a weird guy, then at best he’s an effective tool in a machine someone else is assembling.

Would you go for a beer with Kanye West?

Definitely, I think we’d have a lot to talk about. I’ll see an interview with him, and in my head I’m thinking about a counter argument to some preposterous thing he’s saying.

Do you think you could change his mind about things?

I think he’s probably proud of his own arrogance – that’s not someone who’s

going to have an open mind to new perspectives. But in terms of lyric writing, I have a lot of respect. I think there are artists in rap who don’t realise that there are some great lyrics in other genres. Has Dr. Dre ever heard a Kimya Dawson record? It would probably blow his mind.

What was the worst job you’ve ever had?

I had a job doing surveys.

What were they about?

You know: “How did you hear about this cereal?”, “Are you White/Black/Hispanic/ Native American/Other?” “Are you married/ single/blah blah blah” If you could pick a surrogate grandparent, who would it be?

Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs. He was sort of like a surrogate grandparent. He died a couple of years back. He could have been an older member of my family – an old New Yorker, very funny, political, atheist, jewish, satirical old guy.

Is there a piece of advice you wish you could have given yourself ten years ago?

Don’t ever be deceived into ever relaxing your standards.

And finally, what would you like written on your tombstone?

“What the hell was that?” Maybe should I have a comic book thought bubble as my tombstone.

Manhattan is out now on Rough Trade

Perspective: The Right To Offend London-based label Berceuse Heroique was recently subject to criticism following a tweet from the label’s founder that led to a wide rebuke of the label’s use of extreme imagery. In this column, author and Wire magazine contributor David Keenan compares the use of extreme aesthetics across techno, industrial and punk movements.

where I asked him about his use of violent images of the American military and Middle East news reportage as a backdrop. It’s deliberately ambiguous, he explained, somewhat inevitably. That’s cheap talk, especially when married to the kind of standard issue dance music that has no connection to the imagery whatsoever and that makes it seem like, you know, fun.

The supposed evidence for the linking of straightforward asshole behaviour by Gizmo from the Berceuse Heroique label – via a tweet about following a woman with “the best ass EVER” – to him being a fully-fledged fascist nutcase would seem to hang on the dubious inserts that regularly accompany the label’s releases.

These have featured pictures of the Nazis at the Acropolis in Greece, of the French fascist Jacques Doriot and of eugenic profiling complete with ‘ambiguous’ quotes from Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke and various news sources discussing immigration and racism. Empty ambiguity has become the ultimate middlebrow art practice and one of post-modernism’s most nauseating hangovers; dredge up a couple of shocking or controversial pictures and throw some random text at it and you have the kind of art statement that is impossible to critique because there is no thought behind it, nothing so much as a stance, yet it still passes for a statement of sorts.

Still, I understand where these guys are coming from. When groups like Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse first opened the flood gates and loosed the adolescent id by exposing rock ‘n’ roll as essentially a system of control, there was a concomitant upsurge in what I have come to term ‘night side’ imagery, pop music’s obverse, its dark.

First wave industrial iconography took in Zyklon B gas and Nazi concentration camps alongside fantasies of the desecration of history, of serial murder and sexual violence, often without any fixed context in which to interpret their use. Almost simultaneously, punk rock was engaging with these kinds of ideas but in a more straightforwardly adolescent way. Holidays In The Sun by The Sex Pistols is an incredible track, its matching of the goose-stepping, siegheiling rhythms, the very march of reason that had brought the world to the brink in the first place. But what about the profound stupidity of Belsen Was A Gas? What about Sid Vicious prancing around the Jewish Quarter in Paris with a swastika armband? What about Siouxsie Sioux on stage doing the same?

I recall a conversation I had with Dominik Fernow after a show by Vatican Shadow

Yet no one has ever really questioned The Sex Pistols’ motives the way they have with Throbbing Gristle or, especially, Whitehouse. It seems to me that one of the reasons for that, outside of punk being another version of rock ‘n’ roll as a system of controlled release for these kinds of adolescent energies, is to do with lack of content. An album like Buchenwald by Whitehouse has no chords, no lyrics, no rhythms, no graphics. There is nothing to hold onto, nothing to align yourself with.

It’s not ambiguous; it is very deliberately and precisely put together. Crucially, though, it does not attempt to aestheticise horror or mass murder or the holocaust.

It’s not fun. The music is irreducibly tied up with the subject matter. It sounds as horrifying, as distressing, as barbaric as the scenario it attempts to evoke. No poetry after Buchenwald? Well, there’s no poetry here. In this, Whitehouse dare to take a stand. Yet the boneheaded Belsen Was A Gas has attracted nowhere near the level of controversy that Buchenwald has. Is it simply less horrifying?

Contemporary music does have a duty to engage with problematic, difficult, upsetting and offensive ideas and images and the use and interrogation of these images should no more imply an ideological identification with them than an actor playing a role or a novelist writing a book.

But as an adolescent art form, rock and pop will always have this unsettling shadow self, this disruptive demon that demands

Illustration: Ed Chambers

release. Look in the corner of the insert that comes with Breaker 1 2 vs Ekman’s Ratz In The Back 12” on Berceuse Heroique, the one that features a picture of Jacques Doriot. There’s a typewritten phrase that reads “Boris Is A Fuckboy”. It’s proof of Gizmo’s scattershot attempt to get a reaction, to cause some kind of cheap offence, no matter what.

But there is a right to offend just as there is a right to be offended. Rights exist to protect what ordinarily could never survive, what is most offensive, what is most offmessage, most non-mainstream. There is also, crucially, a right to be irresponsible, a right to say no, to refuse pieties about the sanctity of life and the beauty of love and the achievements of democracy and the reputation of Boris Johnson, to scribble all over them with crayons, if you feel like it.

Gizmo from Berceuse Heroique may be a dick and his art may be weak and adolescent but so was Sid Vicious. And being a dick, too, is a right that we should protect. But we have a duty to take it further, to actively champion truly revolting art and music, art that does not sensationalise and aestheticise horror but that is brave enough to fix its gaze on it long enough to come to some kind of terms with it.

David Keenan's history of the post-industrial underground, England's Hidden Reverse, is reissued this month

by Strange Attractor Press

fabric Nov/Dec 2015

14 Nov ROOM 01

28 Nov

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Detroit Love

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05 Dec ROOM 01

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