Sunday 31 July 2011

Street Summer.

LADYTRON New single " White Elephant"



Stay tuned for more news from Ladytron, including the release of a fourth album track from Gravity The Seducer.

Festibelly announce more acts.





LIVE:
New Young Pony Club | myspace.com/newyoungponyclub
Howard Marks | howardmarks.name
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs | totallyenormousextinctdinosaurs.tumblr.com
Ghostpoet | myspace.com/ghostpoet
Drums of Death | myspace.com/drumsofdeath4eva
Man Like Me | manlikeme.net
Hollie Cook | holliecook.com
Lulu And The Lampshades | myspace.com/helouisamusic
Kyla La Grange | kylalagrange.com
My Sad Captains | mysadcaptains.co.uk
The Operators | myspace.com/theoperatorsrock
Skinny Lister | skinnylister.com
She Keeps Bees | shekeepsbees.com
Dimbleby & Capper | soundcloud.com/dimblebyandcapper
This Is The Kit | myspace.com/thisisthekit
Channel Swimmer | channelswimmer.com
Francis Day | myspace.com/francisdayband
Oh Ruin | myspace.com/ohruin
Chancery Blame & The Gadjo Club | myspace.com/thegadjoclub
Marmaduke Dando | marmadukedando.com
Dicejar | myspace.com/dicejar
Adam Street Singers | adamstreetsingers.com

DJS:
James Yuill DJ | myspace.com/jamesyuill
Batty Bass - Hannah Holland, Mama & Deboa | battybass.blogspot.com
Greco-Roman Sound System | myspace.com/grecoromanmusic
Psychemagik | soundcloud.com/psychemagik
Reggae Roast | reggaeroast.co.uk
Figures (James Delay & Jamie Blanco) | soundcloud.com/figures
Fear Of Theydon | fearoftheydon.com
Sombrero Sound System | myspace.com/sombrerosoundsystem
Mojo Filter | mojofiltered.com
Low-Fro | soundcloud.com/low-fro



I am looking forward to this!!

Saturday 30 July 2011

NEW BAND ALERT- Discopolis




Three teenagers from Edinburgh are starting to make a name for themselves as the new electronic kids on the block otherwise known as Discopolis.

They release their debut single ‘Lofty Ambitions’ on 15th August through Scottish label Eli and Oz.

At only 19, they already they have played slots at some of Scotland’s biggest music festivals, including T in the Park and Wickerman and have received support from NME, Rob Da Bank and Nick Grimshaw alongside numerous blogs.

Discopolis, made up of Fergus (vocals, synth and guitar), Lawrie (synth, guitar and samples) and Dave (synth and drum effects), only formed in 2010 and cames to people’s attention in March this year after they were chosen to play T Break at T in the Park and within a few months they have become one of Scotland’s favourite new bands and are starting the stretch their wings further afield.

They are definitely a band to keep an eye on and will undoubtably join the ‘Scotland’s most loved’ list of bands.

Lofty Ambitions is released digitally on 15th August through Eli and Oz Records

www.facebook.com/discopolismusic

By Jen Anderson



Please take a listen

Discopolis - Lofty Ambitions by eliandoz

Fancy your chance being in The Subways new video?




The Subways are asking fans to appear in their next video for brand new single 'We Don't Need Money to have a Good Time' - taken from their forthcoming album ''Money And Celebrity'.

If you would like to appear in The Subways next video, please send a picture of yourself and your contact details to castings@daveyinc.com

We are looking for individuals and groups of friends.

Do you have a talent, can you dance, do tricks or do you just have lots of energy and a sense of fun we want to hear from you.

We are filming in both London and Brighton on the 1st and 2nd of August.

Monday 25 July 2011

Kayne West and Jay-Z become a duo.




Performing as The Throne, the pair's ‘Watch the Throne’ tour will begin in Detroit on September 22 and continue through October, ending at Boston TD Garden on November 3.


The duo will release the album 'Watch the Throne' on August 8. .

The Throne will play:


Detroit MI Palace of Auburn Hills (September 22)
Toronto ON Air Canada Centre (24)
Montreal QC Bell Centre (25)
East Rutherford NJ Izod Centre (27, 28)
Philadelphia PA Wells Fargo Centre (October 4)
Chicago IL United Centre (6,7)
Minneapolis MN Target Centre (8)
Denver CO Pepsi Centre (10)
Tacoma WA Tacoma Dome (13)
Vancouver BC Rogers Arena (14)
San Jose CA HP Pavilion (16)
Sacramento CA Power Balance Pavilion (17)
Los Angeles CA Staples Centre (19, 20)
Las Vegas NV MGM Grand Garden Arena (21)
Dallas TX American Airlines Centre (25)
Houston TX Toyota Centre (26)
Atlanta GA Philips Arena (29)
Greensboro NC Greensboro Coliseum (30)
Baltimore MD First Mariner Arena (1 November)
Boston MA TD Garden (3)

The Twang are back.



Following on from the sold out success of their homegrown Guapa EP in March, The Twang’s next album is now complete. To celebrate the announcement of the new record, they are announcing a full UK Tour and their next single Paradise is now available for free download at facebook.com /thetwang

The UK tour spans mainly weekends throughout September and October. As Phil Etheridge, lead singer, explains. “Twang shows have always been more like a party than a gig. The best gigs are always the weekend shows, so we thought, “let’s just do weekends” - with the odd exception. Well, Thursday is the new Friday afterall!”

The currently untitled album will be the third from the Twang and is set for release in January 2012. It follows the success of their first two records (their debut clocking in excess of 200,000 sales bearing hits Either Way and Wide Awake, and second album delivering massive fan favourite Barney Rubble), which firmly cemented the band’s place in UK indie history.

Recorded in the band’s own studio facility, in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, the new album continues a story now into it’s second decade. Prior to their emergence as the most discussed ‘new’ band in 2006 the Twang had been writing, rehearsing and playing around the Midlands for five years. Following the frenzy of debate and ensuing hit singles, the Twang continue to do what they’ve always done - with the creative hub of Phil Etheridge and Jon Watkin continuing to create and the band continuing to take the Twang party out on the road.

By Alex Fordham

Tickets are available now from seetickets.com, dates are as follows...

Friday 23 September Luton – Charlie Browns
Saturday 24 September Bristol – Fleece
Wednesday 28 September York – Duchess
Thursday 29 September Glasgow – King Tuts
Friday 30 September Dundee – Beat Generator Live!
Saturday 1 October Dunfermline – Malloys
Wednesday 5 October London – Electric Ballroom

Download Paradise now at http://facebook. com/thetwang

Brand writes a moving letter for Amy

For Amy

When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.

Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.

I’ve known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that “Winehouse” (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; “Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric” I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.

I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.

From time to time I’d bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was “a character” but that world was riddled with half cut, doped up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn’t especially register.

Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I’d not experienced her work and this not being the 1950’s I wondered how a “jazz singer” had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn’t curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.

I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a fucking genius.

Shallow fool that I am I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that youtube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.

Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.

Amy Winehouse- The legend she is.

I have always been a particular fan of Amy Winehouse, from her days of music in 2003 to her most current style of jazz and soul. Over the years her career has soured and I'm sure it will continue to do the same. She will be remembered for her trademark beehive, her passion for music and her addictive character. Her lyrics have captured many people who have been through the same pain, love, happiness and so forth.

I want to share my favourite times of Amy and how how she has influenced the music scene and she will still remain a UK legend. It is devastating how her life has come to an end when it was only just beginning.

My love goes out to her family and friends at this very sad time x x









Friday 1 July 2011

Bestival announce new headliner...



Yes you heard it right..... Bjork is headlining alongside The Cure and Pendulum at this year's Bestival. The festival is taking place in Isle of Wight from 8-11th Sept and unbelievable some tickets are still available... So go grab them before it's too late.

http://www.bestival.net/