January 2011
5 posts
1 tag
Primavera Interview // Teenage Fanclub
No matter how cool, how alternative, or how indie a festival claims to be, it always helps to have at least one legendary band on the bill. The cynics would say it’s just to sell tickets, but Noize would argue that it produces an interesting counterpoint to the latest and (allegedly) greatest doing the rounds. Whatever the role, this time it was filled by Teenage Fanclub, once anointed The...
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Primavera Interview // Frankie Rose & The Outs
Having just watched Frankie Rose in a tiny club, in front of a very animated (if someone pathetic) 30 people, we were struck by their poise, their self-assurance, and the fact that nothing seemed to put them off their stride. Despite losing first her capo, then her tambourine, they just carried on regardless. Looking like they’d just come from some 1950’s diner, Noise had the pleasure of a seat...
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Primavera Interview // Male Bonding
As well as all the shoe gazing and electro frippery that has been so dominant recently, there are artists who continue to operate at the noisier end of the spectrum. Artists like Male Bonding. Channelling a particularly raucous type of punk rock (and just a little bit of Nirvana), they signed to legendary label Sub Pop and released one of the albums of the year. Noize got to hear first-hand what...
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Primavera Interview // Wild Nothing
They may well be bringing up the rear end, but Virginia’s own Wild Nothing have proved that there is plenty of mileage to be had in C86-esque dreamy indie pop on the back of outstanding debut Gemini. Noize sat down with a rather ill Jack Tatum, fresh after a 14 hour van ride from Italy, to ask him the burning questions.
Noize: Ever done back to back gigs in the same city before?
Jack: Yes, we...
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Primavera Club Review // A Town Past Indie
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”. Well, judging by the queue for one of the most desired wristbands this side of the Pyrenees, Matthew was just one letter out – swap the “m” for “g” and he’d have been spot on. We’re all familiar with the rise of the hipster – you’d have to be Osama not to be – but seriously, when did everyone start dressing like the weedy kid you used...
September 2010
5 posts
1 tag
Burning Man Full Review // A Desert Disco Inferno
Our Baby’s All Grown Up
Sometimes in life, you need to stand and take it all in. So, standing next to a dusty RV, outside the gates of Burning Man, perhaps the most infamous festival of all, the Black Rock Desert stretching as far as the eyes can see, Noize stood, contemplating a week long denouement to a summer of festivals, excited but nervous about the freak show that lay before us and the...
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Offset Day Three// Better Late Than Never
As Pulled Apart By Horses took to the purple, monolith-like stage, singer Tom Hudson exclaimed ‘Hooray for good time keeping!’ Indeed, due to a slight overrun from Israeli loons Monotonix, and the obligatory time allocated to clear up the carnage left by the Tel Aviv punks’ crazy-mad-fun show earlier in the day, they are slightly late. But rather than launch a Guns...
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Offset Day Two // Guided By The Gods
Emerging from our tent blinking into the morning sun, heads pounding with the sound of the frivolities and Mikki Most’s DJing skills on the Dance stage the night before, we were first struck by how our shambolic efforts at tent construction hadn’t ended in disaster. A heavily processed but stomach lining cheese burger soon sent us on our way, and once the camping gear had been packed...
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Offset Day One // Never Put Off Till Tomorrow...
Offset Festival is that rare thing of beauty - a festival combining the hipster stares and trendies of London festivals with the grotty carousing of larger events. With trepidation Noize queued up, camping gear in hand, expecting the same delights that last year’s edition had for us. With a plethora of wrist-bands secured round our scrawny arms, we rushed to complete putting up our tent, only...
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Rock en Seine Review// La Belle et La Bete
Paris, J’Taime
If you prefer mudpacks to muddy fields, and to drink bubbles not warm beer, then Rock en Seine is the perfect finale to your jet-setting summer. With headline acts starting at a leisurely 3pm, leaving plenty of time for a late-morning rise, shower, and long brunch, and the sights of the City of Lights within a stone’s throw of your tent, this is one of Europe’s more civilised...
August 2010
8 posts
1 tag
SW4 Review // Go West. No, Wait, South.
East London. Mecca for buttoned up, bespectacled mods, lovers of all things cutting edge and underground (not the tube), their preferred choice of travel doesn’t have gears, can’t do hills and rarely strays far from the loving environs of London Fields (just two shootings this year!). South of the river is definitely a no-go zone, and thus a festival that is synonymous with a whole load of...
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Reading Festival // Her Indoors (Now Onstage)
While far from lonely (and still in our prime), Noize often gazes at couples both young and old, ruminating on the lack of a Mrs. Noize. What most tugs at our heart strings are the little gestures; holding hands at the supermarket, opening doors or pulling out chairs, and, the real tear jerker, ordering just one sumptuous, chocolate dessert, to be shared and mutually enjoyed. Ah, wedded...
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Reading Day Three // What’s My Age Again?
As a wise old sage, Noize can look back with fondness on our formative years, and the staging posts along the road to becoming a fully fledged arbiter of all things great and good. Buying our first ever tape with some hard earned pocket money (yes, we‘re that old), our wide-eyed wonder at the genius that was the Walkman, and the shiver of anticipation at arriving at our first ever gig (Shed...
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Reading Day Two // Truly His Brother’s Keeper
Double the fun or double the trouble? Sibling rivalry rarely runs smooth, and all too often it’s the junior partner who’s hard done by and conveniently airbrushed from history. We hear nothing of Abel, slain in a fit of pique by the jealous Cain, and it wasn’t Remus who founded a city and gave birth to one of the greatest Empires of all time. To the victor the spoils, then? And what of Reading...
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Reading Day One // The Great Ol’ Days Of Yore?
History hides a multitude of sins, and nevermore so than while contemplating the past with hushed reverence. “‘Twas always better in the olden days” or so they say, “they” usually being wizened old Luddites with rose-tinted specs firmly in place - and perhaps tongue firmly in cheek. Nostalgia is, after all, nothing more than the past in idealized form, detritus subconsciously filtered out of the...
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Standon Calling Review// All Aboard The Standon...
Bigger Than Shakespeare
Agatha Christie sold a lot of crime books; good for her, since although she had two husbands (not at once, obviously), she looked like a man in drag. In a rather wonderful corollary, Noize is oft considered THE investigative music magazine of choice (at least by ourselves), ergo it was fitting that we donned a well-kept moustache and side slicked our hair to head to this...
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Standon Calling // FUBAR
Noize loves a bit a chaos and craziness, so it was with great anticipation that we barrelled our way right to the front to see Fucked Up - all the more so as an unfortunate semi-conscious-blood-poisioning induced attempt to watch them previously had ended with a scene reminiscent of The Exorcist.
Now, kudos to any band willing to give themselves a name like this, but you’d better be sure...
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Sonisphere Day Three // Ladies And Gentleman,...
There’s nothing quite like “metal” gigs for the sheer effort put into each and every show, for the assorted appendages and curious outfits, the passionate commitment to burst every lung, to give it all, to fly far into the crowd, to climb high. Its more than just music, it’s religion. It’s theatre.Sheffield’s metal core five-piece Bring Me Horizon, were entertaining, if a little...
July 2010
24 posts
1 tag
Sonisphere // The Vikings Have Landed
Thank god this is not a podcast of some kind - that way Noize doesn’t have to get it’s head round awkward Norwegian pronunciation (seriously, can we please have some vowels?). These tattooed Scandanavians were back in the UK having just supported Converge a few weeks ago and it’s clear that Kvelertak took a lot of the fans from that tour with them as the Strongbow tent was...
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Sonisphere Day Two // Cider, Cider, Cider & Girls,...
Free. Everyone’s favourite four-letter word goes well before everything, especially beer, cider, and the like. In between milking the gratis backstage booze cow, the Strongbow tent became our base camp for the day, picked for its line-up of up and coming British bands. Sheffield’s hardcore (faster metal) outfit While She Sleeps delivered a crashing, dramatic performance, before Bury Tomorrow,...
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Sonisphere // The Declining Standards Of Childhood...
The bird. The middle digit. The universal sign understood in any language as meaning “Up yours!” Not many people could provoke an angelic 2 year old kid into giving them the finger but Cars On Fire frontman Ali Ross managed just that when the Bristol four piece pummelled the Strongbow Stage on Saturday. Not put off by the near emptiness of the tent when they started their early slot,...
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Sonisphere // Tomorrow's Men
Being as tech-savy and hip as we are, we know where to go in cyberspace for the news/advice/suggestions given by the movers and shakers that really matter. So, tip for the day on Twitter was Bury Tomorrow and of course, with Noize being the wise old sage that we are, we weren’t wrong. The crowd was massive, if a bit mental, and had packed the tent to the rafters. To be honest, they deserved a...
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Sonisphere // An Unlikely 40 Winks
Part of the joy of festivals is dipping your wick into new and interesting things - kinda like a musical “suck it and see.” Of course, you can get it wrong just as many times as you get it right, but the Gods were clearly smiling on us as Strongbow Saturday saw Noize discover While She Sleeps – a great find, and how we haven’t seen or heard of them before we just don’t know....
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Sonisphere Day One // The Hunt for Tommy Lee
When most people think Sonisphere they think Metal (Heavy, Nu, etc), home of Goths, moshpits, and the flying V, and while Noize has its finger permanently pressed to the pulse of the gods of all music, we, like most, know less of the Dark Arts. So, like Moses in the wilderness, we searched out king of Metal Tommy Lee, discovering on our journey answers to our questions, and, no doubt, yours, at...
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Sonisphere // 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
Noize has never laboured under any Jacques Cousteau illusions, so it was always unlikely we’d ever get to see the fabled lost city of legend. But Lower Than Atlantis (underground, under the sea?), a pop-rock band (although even this doesn’t describe what they call ‘creative core’) from Watford may well make us reach for the frogman’s outfit once more.
Currently making a huge name...
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Secret Garden Party Full Review // Top Hats & Tall...
Abe Lincoln was a dude
Throughout history, top hats (stovepipes or stovies) were the preferred headwear for important people. Uncle Sam, Abraham Lincoln, W.C. Fields, Fred Astaire, and (probably) even eminent German social philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, who believed that humans were ultimately motivated only by their own basic desires, rather than the sort of collective consciousness...
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Secret Garden Party // One Albarn Short Of A Band
Being an esteemed and fully paid up member of the fourth estate, Noize likes to think of itself as well educated in the world of words. We even impressed ourselves by spotting the cleverness behind the name of Damon’s cartoon creations - that is, if we’re barking up the right tree. Onomatology aside, we were just stoked to get down and boogie to Gorillaz Sound System.
With the time well past...
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Secret Garden Party Interview // Filthy Dukes
Picture the scene. If we said that we caught up with one half of Noizes’ favourite electro DJ kings dressed as a dinosaur (or was it a dragon?) right before they played a floating Pagoda, you might say that we’d been experimenting a little too hard with the medicine cabinet. But we weren’t tripping; such happenings are a dime a dozen here at SGP, and so it was that Mr. Olly Dixon filled us...
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Secret Garden Party // Robot Wars
You’ll have noted already that this is not your average shindig – one glance at the line up will tell you that - but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a nod to the mainstream, to the sort of bands that quicken the pulse and get you thinking “Can’t miss that”.
And so Noize found itself in front of a thousand screaming blonde teenagers awaiting Marina and the Diamonds. By God do we love a girl...
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Secret Garden Party // Stage Invaders
Having finally tracked down the person who needed to speak to the person in order to get a photo pass, Noize was surprised to find that many stages didn’t even have a photo pit. We were shoulder to shoulder with the great unwashed, jostling for position, and as a man of the people, we’re normally happy to show solidarity with fellow fans.
That is, until they start stealing your top hat...
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Secret Garden Party // Eel Pie With Chips
Being the stylish, urban sophisticates that we are, we’ve sampled some of the finest culinary creations known to man. Eel Pie was not among them. Nor have we set foot on the famous Island, but wandering through this fairyland of a festival, we happened upon the band who have done more than most to keep that little part of Richmond on the map - Mystery Jets.
Apparently half the festival had the...
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Benicassim Day Four // A Survival Guide
Simplicity abounds at festivals, getting back to nature, taking life easy. In the heatwave at this year’s Shoreditch-on-Sea Festival, daytime activities were distilled to a bare minimum. Like lying prone in a day long stupour, before drinking copious amounts of ice-cold beer in the setting sun to regain some salubrious level of conciousness.
Benicassim was just that hot. Average...
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Benicassim Interview // The Clientele
Recently back from one U.S tour, about to go on another, and with a mini-album called “Minotaur” due out in September, The Clientele still managed time to roast their pyschedelic indie-pop on the Beniccasim BBQ, and Noize was there, twiddling our Hunter S moustache and fiddling with our Sitar, to ask Mel Draisey the right questions, and possibly some wrong ones.
NOIZE: Hi, how was your first...
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Benicassim Day Three // All Surf, No Turf
By Saturday, the Benicàssim barbecue was a sea of pink bodies, strewn across campground and festival tarmac, like superfluous prawns at a two-day old buffet. Rising from some sleep*, Noize hit the best-shower-ever TM (ice cold), donned the Converse and were first in the festival ground like eager beavers on speed.
In the shimmering evening heat, Barcelona outfit Cuchillo spun their psychedelic...
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Benicassim // I Spy Captain Birdseye
Amongst the close cut best-a-boyish-man-can-get features of today’s atypical angular guitar bands, its nice to see one with a healthy respect for face fuzz and muttonchops.
Bigott resembles some Messiah-like figure - straggly, long beard, an authoritative glare and aura of greatness - strumming away on a Spanish guitar, like some long, lost, Iberian cousin of Herman Dune.
Bigott’s band...
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Benicassim // Me Tarzan, You Jane
Everyone loves monkeys and their expressive, forever childlike nature, like a drunk, mute midget. The Beatles, The Kinks, even Warren Zevon sang songs about them. This may be why Ian Brown, the monkey-man himself, still holds a soft spot for us, his notoriously limited but iconic voice a constant reminder of his part in possibly the most definitive British album of the last 20 years.
Now in his...
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Benicassim // Hey Ho The Witch Is Dead
Nothing makes you feel quite as old as a band making a comeback in your lifetime. Warm nostalgia washed over Noize in the last of the Saturday afternoon sun, watching still-youthful-looking Ash take to the stage, just like the summer of 97’, V Festival, Weston Park, when Ash were in their prime.
Initial fears that revisiting this cherished memory, 13 years later, might shatter a...
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Benicassim Day Two // Hot Hot Heat (And Fun In The...
So, we made it. Finally. Due to numerous administrative errors and the vicissitudes of modern life, Noize’s descent into the bowels of indie heaven was delayed by 24 hours. Life’s a bitch, you know, but that’s par for the course at the sharp end of the indie blogosphere. And as every cloud has a silver lining, Noize is hopeful that as others flag, we’ll still be going...
Benicassim // When The Chips Are Down...
Being clever is one thing, but having the talent to back it up quite another. So, you’re playing second on the bill on the main stage? Not quite top of the tree, but close enough to be pretty damn pleased with yourself. Time to crack out the all-white suit and combo? Ordinarily no, but then, Noize isn’t Hot Chip. Sadly, we don’t have the tunes or the talent to pull off such a...
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Benicassim // Down On The Farm
Noize often muses on bygone days. Simpler times. We’d be in braces, the girls in Gingham dresses. Hay all around. Ah, those were the days.
Somewhat reminiscent of a macro-barn dance, Mumford and Sons managed to get the largest crowd to lift their knees and dance like they’d had one too many swift ales at the Irish night down the working men’s club. Full-bodied ballads, made up of crisp...
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Benicassim // Smooth Sailing
Going through the motions doesn’t satisfy anyone - neither punter nor artist. So it was in equal measure surprising and gratifying to see a band on the very last leg of a long tour give it some proper welly.
While many bands would have been content with a well-polished yet formulaic set and running for the plane (or yacht?) home, Yacht, in contrast, come from a very different school of...
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Festival Preview // Sonisphere, 30th Jul-1 Aug
Beginning in Poland on June 16th with Metallica headlining, this year’s Sonisphere is certainly making an impressive mark.
Now heading to Knebworth with Iron Maiden, Motley Crue and Alice Cooper (to name a few) leading the way, the great travelling rock festival line-up reads like a who’s who of the older legendary rockers and is definitely all the more exciting for it.
Of course the bands...
June 2010
17 posts
1 tag
Glastonbury Interview // Frightened Rabbit
Rounding off this years uncharacteristically sun-soaked festival, Frightened Rabbit chatted with Noize ahead of their set on Glastonbury’s Other Stage…
NOIZE: What day are you playing at the festival? FR: Sunday
NOIZE: What can fans expect from your set at this year’s Glastonbury? Any surprises or special features? FR: I think the thing about Glastonbury is it’s...
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Glastonbury Interview // Ash
Playing on the John Peel Stage on the last day of this historic Glastonbury, Noize chatted with Ash ahead of their impressive slot at the festival.
NOIZE: What day are you playing at the festival? ASH: Sunday night.
NOIZE: What can fans expect from your set at this year’s Glastonbury? Any surprises or special features? ASH: We’re gonna have our super sub, Russell Lissack of Bloc...
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Glastonbury Interview // These New Puritans
Noize caught up with These New Puritans ahead of their Sunday set to talk hard drugs, Neneh Cherry and the ‘shit sucking van’…
NOIZE: What day are you playing at the festival? TNP: Sunday on The John Peel Stage
NOIZE: What can fans expect from your set at this year’s Glastonbury? Any surprises or special features? TNP:To let you in on one surprise we will be playing with a...
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Glastonbury Day 3 // Happy Birthday To Ya....
The last day of the festival and for some, the day that England played f**king awful and were elimated from the World Cup. For the others, the day they watched Slash play a slightly disappointing set, due to his rather dominating vocalist, Myles Kennedy. Whilst many were left wanting to hear more from the 44-year old guitar legend and less from his unknown and rather annoying side kick,...
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Glastonbury Interview // Band of Skulls
Having spent the past few months well and truly etching their names into the iTunes playlists of music fans all over the country, Band of Skulls start their series of Summer festival dates with Glastonbury. Seizing this rare moment of stillness in their otherwise manic schedule, Noize sat down to chat with Band of Skulls about Glastonbury and what audiences can expect later today…
NOIZE:...
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Glastonbury Day 2 // 'Mon The Biff!
With the weather feeling even hotter and a serious dent made in the dry shampoo, Kate Nash played The Other Stage to a huge crowd brimming with high expectations. Blasting out tracks from both her new album and her debut, it was often clear that the majority of the audience were more there for the pre-fringe lemon-consuming Kate, than the screaming, flailing version that accompanied her...
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Glastonbury Interview // Peggy Sue
Ahead of their set on The Park Stage, Noize topped up on dry shampoo and caught up with the the relentless tourers that are Peggy Sue to find out how they were feeling about kick starting this year’s festival…
NOIZE: What day are you playing at the festival? PEGGY SUE: We’re playing on the Friday so the first proper day which is good because then we can have too much fun over the...
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Glastonbury Day 1 // All Dizzle, No Drizzle?
Having already spent two days camping in temperatures hotter than Brazil, you could have been forgiven for forgetting you were at a festival at all, let alone at Glastonbury - usually better known for flooding and mud wrestling than bikini clad festival goers and their typically British t-shirt tan lines. So kicking off the first day of music with a surreal early morning set from none other...