PAGE 35 quid a show. We said, we'll do it!” “Yeah it was absolutely ridiculous!” shouts Matt.
“It was bizarre, playing with that size of an audience”, says Rosie. “[The audience] were bemused every night of the tour. Utterly bemused!”, she exclaims
“THEY OBVIOUSLY
GOT PICKED UP WITH THE BRITPOP THING” -
BILLY BAINBRIDGE
Optophonic Lunaphone [which allows him to make music from listening to the stars], to Brian Duffy's latest project, which limits “We had a phone call one day, do his output through using only a Roland System 100 synth [manuyou want to support Pulp in factured in 1979]. Okay, so that's Brighton?”, says Billy from Plone. all just Brian Duffy! There's also “It was a big concert, and we [ex-Broadcast] Tim Felton's band turned it down. We were thinking, Seeland, which was formed “WE WERE MR with Billy Bainbridge COCKER’S CHOICE!” [ex-Plone] in 2004. And - MAX SIMPSON Tim Felton's other project Hintermass, which is a solo effort that oh what's the audience going to he releases through the Ghost be like? oh well, we'll probably box label. And Pram's new project support Pulp again next year....... “But we should have took that op- with Joachim Irmler [from the krautrock band Faust]. And finally, portunity”, admits Billy. “Then one day, Pulp were DJing on Radio 1, playing their favourite records, and Jarvis Cocker was like, that was Plone there, which was great that they played us! [Pulp] were definitely the most interesting Britpop band and they didn't really come from that mentality at all.They seemed to have that same cheap keyboards and charity shop aesthetics as us. But they obviously got picked up with the Britpop thing”, he says.
Magnetophone have now become part of a whole new Birmingham experimental music scene, releasing material through the Brum based label/collective First Fold. So Brummies rejoice! We have a jam-packed flourishing music scene that's waiting to captivate your ears! You just have to do a little bit of digging to find those hidden gems.......
By Ross Cotton Illustration by Gareth Corage
With many of our retro-futurists such as Avrocar, Novak, L'Augmentation and Magnetophone yet to be mentioned, it is clear that this specific Birmingham music scene has remained everprotruding since the late eighties.
Today still see's the echo of such a diverse, thriving, unique oddity. From Brian Duffy's Modified Toy Orchestra [utilising the sixtie's invented circuit bending technique to obtain music from toys], to Brian Duffy's pioneering
Magnetophone. (Left to right) Matt Saunders, John Hanson