The problem with lists is they can easily come back and make you look like an arse. Once a list is published, once you’ve claimed something as “best”, you’re always looking over your shoulder. Time is cruel on lists. Hindsight always wins, and hindsight is never over. Have you ever thought how awful it would be to have been a huge Gary Glitter fan, one that had his name or, worse, his face tattooed on them? Christ! This year’s Loud And Quiet Yearly Review is unlikely to embarrass us quite to that extent, but the usual trepidations of the list-maker applies – namely, what if all these things we currently like so much are actually complete balls, we just can’t see it yet? For the record, we’re pretty certain that our top albums, gigs, books, films and tracks of 2011 aren’t complete balls, but you can never really know. It’s another reason why creating these polls seems so childish in a way, and yet we’ve done it anyway in an attempt to make some sense of the past 12 months. The valued contributors of Loud And Quiet have pooled their 2011 highlights and this is what we’ve come up with...
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M AT T HI A S S C HE R E R
C H A R L R AV E NS
D A N K E ND A L L
WRITER
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PHOTOGRAPHER
Matthias was born in Colombia but can neither dance nor will he hook anyone up with cocaine. He grew up in non-descript suburban Germany and moved to England when he was 14. He started writing about music five years ago and has worked for German radio, for whom he covered the Royal Wedding and interviewed Princess Superstar. He has been a republican ever since. He is working on a fanzine about Bruce Springsteen, which will be out next year. He finally got his chance to interview Fucked Up but was left frustrated by the experience. He still loves them, though.
“I mainly write about music to spare other people the effort of listening to anything,” says Chal Ravens, a steadfast contributor to Loud And Quiet as well as DummyMag. com. For this month’s issue she spoke with Christopher Owens of Girls. Of the encounter in a threadbare dressing room at Camden’s Electric Ballroom, she says: “Christopher was drinking milky tea the colour of day-old dishwater, so I wasn’t surprised to be told that touring the UK was “kind of depressing”. If I’d seen him on the street I might’ve given him 50p, but turns out he’s a pretty successful pop star now, and a fairly agreeable interviewee.”
Dan started out assisting a bunch of music photographers before going travelling in Latin America. Upon his return he was awarded the lucrative job of babysitting Brooklyn punks Cerebral Ballzy on their first four UK/European tours. The photos he took during this time got him noticed and he now shoots full time for magazines including Loud And Quiet and NME. His work can be seen at www.dankendallphoto.com. When Dan isn’t taking photos there is nothing he likes better than talking about himself in the third person. His shoot with Ghostpoet can be seen somewhere in the magazine you are currently reading. Dan wrote this himself.
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