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ALAN McGEE "I'VE SIGNED JOHN LENNON"
10 August 2013 £2.40
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Show Me The Wonder
and Destiny's Child for the eye-rolling hipster with the sort of deeply soulful late-night bass that appears on this – finally a creation all of his own. Eve Barlow, Deputy Editor
Bumpy Road
Don't let mentions of "exile" and "cruelty" fool you – 'Show Me The Wonder' is an unashamedly brilliant pop song with parping horns and a ridiculously catchy chorus that suggests the Welsh band are still going for the radio hits. It's nothing like the Richard Hawley-helmed track we've already heard, but it's another positive sign for the new album. Lucy Jones, Deputy Editor, NME.COM
This Arizona lot were one of the breakout acts at this year's SXSW, and 'Bumpy Road' certifies why. They get loads of love from touring buddies Merchandise and Milk Music – but, crucially, sound nothing like either of them. Instead, they skirt the line between hardcore and psych with a sense of dilapidated DIY perfection. Matt Wilkinson, New Music Editor
Another Day
Love In The Sky
Looks like nowhere is safe from the gaze of bands looking for new and exciting ways to announce their return. Kanye West did it via a projector on the walls of various buildings around the world. Arcade Fire recently announced they were back in a tweet to a fan. Now, with New York titans TV On The Radio's surprise re-emergence, Instagram's usual feed of cats and gourmet burgers has been interrupted to signal Kyp Malone and co's imminent comeback. While they haven't announced details of a full LP just yet, 'Mercy' gives us a small window of hope that one might soon be on its way, while showing they've still got that knack for delivering a killer tune. "I fell in love with professional evil on the day you left my side", reveals Tunde Adebimpe over jerky, staccato rushes of post-punk guitars, before observing "tons of people looking lost and lethal ". 'Mercy' sounds like a group completely refreshed, and ready to pour their energy back onto tape. The results are dripping with urgency and pentup tension, reminiscent of the fraught magic Bloc Party had when they first arrived with 'Silent Alarm'. Whether or not a new album follows the track in the coming months, it's more than enough to reignite our love affair with the Brooklyn band. And if an LP does appear? All signs so far point to it being another cast-iron classic. Rhian Daly, writer
R&B's sleaziest, Abel Tesfaye, counts his Air Miles glumly on this rain-soaked, Prince-like guitar slink as he sings, "I've been flying around the world/I've been killing these shows/But I'm always getting high/'Cos my confidence is low". You could call it navelgazing, but we suspect he prefers the sight of something a little lower on his anatomy. David Renshaw, News Reporter
Let's forget Beady Eye's 'BE' ever happened and remember the days when everything Dave Sitek did was genius. Now he's started a record label – Federal Prism – and he's releasing this masterclass in nailgun-to-the-genitals febrile fuzz-rock from Ballzy on the B-side to their 'City's Girl' single. All is right with the world. Mark Beaumont, writer
Released By The Movement
Games Without Frontiers
Every morning I open a window on my Arcade Fire calendar, counting the days until their new record arrives. This faithful cover of a Peter Gabriel tune from a new compilation paying tribute to the Genesis icon is a tasty, glisteningly grand chocolate behind a door – but I wish they'd hurry up with the presents. Kevin EG Perry, Assistant Editor, NME.COM
Islet's last album, 2012's 'Illuminated People' was hyperactive enough to provoke extreme bogling. The first single from its follow-up, 'Released By The Movement', is much more static – a dank psychedelic creep towards a twisted lullaby that makes your surroundings seem unfamiliar. Laura Snapes, Features Editor
It sounds like a group completely refreshed, pouring out energy
Age Limits
The other project of former Wu Lyf bassist Tom McClung (besides Los Porcos) beautifully evokes the nighttime guitar strum of The xx. It's a swooping ballad that crashes into a screaming crescendo, as beguiling as it is brilliant. Jenny Stevens, Deputy News Editor
Hood Pope
Raw Cut
The term 'guilty pleasure' should be banned. Cyril Hahn understands that you either like a tune or you don't – why feel bad? He's made a name for himself by re-tooling the likes of Mariah Carey
Having previously stayed in A$AP Rocky's shadow, A$AP Ferg is finally making his own claim for glory on 'Hood Pope'. Shedding the urge to hire collaborators, this is the Harlem rapper fixing the spotlight firmly on himself, firing out lines about "drinking Jesus juice" and being there for his people over whomping bass and gunshot beats. Justine Matthews, writer
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The first thing you notice about Steve Coogan, so distracted by a text message that he hasn't noticed NME entering his suite at a Soho hotel, then stutteringly befuddled when he realises we have, is quite how much like Alan Partridge he is. Coogan agrees. "People say, 'Steve Coogan is becoming Alan Partridge.' Actually, Alan Partridge is becoming more like me, because I've put more of me in him as he's developed," he says. Partridge – Coogan's best-loved, bestloathed, most brilliant comic character – is finally making his big-screen debut in a feature-length film that hits cinemas this week. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa sees the regional radio DJ and former TV star embroiled in a tense hostage situation. Today, the main thing causing Coogan tension is the imminent arrival of the royal baby. We meet a day before Prince George is born, and Coogan is concerned
that it will steal the thunder of Alpha Papa's double-whammy premiere in Norwich and London a day later. "The problem is, pages one to 10 of the papers will be full of baby news," says Coogan – no stranger to the machinations of the press following his crucial role as the popular celebrity face of the Leveson Inquiry. "I've been trying to work out ways to hijack it." Before then, NME has an inquiry of its own to conduct… It's more than two decades since Alan first appeared on the radio. Why did you decide to do a film now? "One reason was so people would stop asking me if there was ever going to be an Alan Partridge film. The second is I wanted to do something else with Alan, but not just a TV series. Rob and Neil Gibbons, the new writers, were the key. If they hadn't come along there wouldn't be a Partridge film. I kept reading in the press that Armando Iannucci and Peter Baynham have written this film. They haven't: it's written by Rob and Neil Gibbons." So what involvement did Armando and Peter have? "Armando was involved early on to talk about the plot and later in the editing process, but not in the shooting at all. Peter was in America with Sacha Baron Cohen." It's quite a risk giving a sitcom character the feature-length treatment… "That was the biggest concern: could we make a film that lifted it to another dimension, rather than a 90-minute sitcom? But you sort of think to yourself, 'We're different. We'll make it work.' There's always a risk with anything new. When we did spoof chat show Knowing Me Knowing You, I said to Patrick [Marber, co-creator], 'You won't sustain it for half an hour.' I was wrong." How did you make sure Alpha Papa wouldn't suffer the pitfalls that plague so many sitcom-based films? "Well, they're always about the characters going on holiday to Spain or going on a road trip around America, so we decided not to do that. We wanted to hinge the
Welcome to Norwich for the premiere of Alpha Papa. Aha!
film around a significant event, for Norwich at least, so we came up with the idea of a guy taking people hostage in a radio station and continuing to broadcast. It's odd, but it's believable that it could happen." Alan seems different in the film. He's almost nice… "He has to reflect changes in society. He's gone from being a reactionary Tory to a slightly more liberal Tory, a David Cameron Tory who tends to like gay people and The Smiths. He's developed into someone who could well be chosen to be a parliamentary candidate for a marginal constituency." He looks younger too. Why's that? "We've decided to say he's had a blast scrape, a new treatment which takes
"What's my favourite Beatles album? Probably 'The Best Of The Beatles'."
Oooh, just look at Alan's big chopper
Come to Papa… Partridge fans (l–r) Alan, Alan and Alan
"They're only the band The Beatles could have been."
"Who's this beautiful man with a lovely voice? It's Annie Lennox!"
"That was 'Big Yellow Taxi' by Joni Mitchell, a song in which Joni complains they 'Paved paradise to put up a parking lot', a measure which actually would have alleviated traffic congestion on the outskirts of paradise, something which Joni singularly fails to point out, perhaps because it doesn't quite fit in with her blinkered view of the world. Nevertheless, nice song."
Back of the set! Behind the scenes of Alpha Papa Colm Meany, Steve Coogan and Pizza Gogo star in the movie
"Kommen sie bitte und listen to Kraftwerk!"
rock. Years later I could admit I did like off the lines round your eyes. The real some of that stuff secretly via Alan." reason is that I couldn't be bothered to So did you already know all the words put aging make-up on every day of filming. to 'Cuddly Toy'? I've got crow's feet around my eyes where "No, I had to learn it. I would just sit I used to have make-up to create them. I'm down at home and keep putting it on. 47 now, and Alan is 55. So if he looks young, I actually don't get it quite right in the it's because I'm seven years younger than film – there are two tiny little syllables Alan should be." that I miss. Most people won't notice Is Alan's new wardrobe part of that? them, but they are there." His new bomber jacket is relatively Are you aware wearable… you've ruined "Yeah, we music festivals wanted him for people called to have been Dan, thanks to through his the much-copied midlife crisis scene in I'm Alan and come out STEVE COOGAN Partridge where trying to be, in Alan shouts "Dan! Dan! Dan! Dan!" at inverted commas, 'hip', by wearing kitchen salesman Dan Moody? Us Dans trainers and jeans and bomber jackets now spend the whole weekend thinking rather than still be wearing the old people are shouting at us. blazer and tie." "Really? I actually wasn't aware of that. It The film starts with Alan miming could be worse: Stephen Mangan, the actor Roachford's 'Cuddly Toy' in his car. who played Dan, gets it about 70 times a Why that track? day. But I'm quite glad about that because "It's one of those songs that's slightly he gets some good parts now and he needs forgotten but still kind of catchy. We don't to pay the price." use bad music for Alan, we just use music You tellingly called your last tour Alan that's slightly obscure." Partridge And Other Less Successful Does your own music taste overlap Characters. Was there any temptation with Alan's much? to kill him off in this film? "Yeah. When I was growing up I liked "No, because if it was really successful there all the post-punk and new wave stuff, and would be no sequel. Although we could because I was very try-hard – like everyone have Alan dying and it all be a dream, like was that time –I didn't like disco, I didn't in Dallas…" like ELO and I didn't like any kind of tired
"I'm not like Alan. Alan's like me!"
Is Alan Partridge bigger than you? "Well, he's probably more famous than me. If I wasn't creatively doing anything else I think I'd feel a bit like it was a burden, but I've got lots going on. I've just done The Trip 2, which is coming out in January. It's me and Rob Brydon tracing the steps of the romantics down the coast of Italy." Are you aware of Accidental Partridge on Twitter? It's where people let an Alan-ism slip. Here's one from Simon Cowell: "Currently flying over Arizona, drinking a delicious cup of tea." "That's staggering! What a weird guy. I had heard about the Accidental Partridge thing, but I've not checked it out." Do you have Accidental Partridge moments? "Of course, all the time. And it's hard because his voice is so close to mine, which was a bit of a bad idea." You played Factory Records' Tony Wilson in 24 Hour Party People. Are there any other musical figures you'd like to take on at any point? "David Byrne, because he hasn't done what lots of rock stars do, which is just conform to what they do and what everyone wants them to be. He does his own thing and hopefully enough people like it to sustain it. It'd be fun wearing his big suits too." Final question: who would Alan put on the cover of NME next week? "Probably Marillion. It's not likely to happen, is it?"
"Big fan of all the Irish stuff. Love your pop music: Enya and the other one; ripped up the Pope. Bald chap. And I think that's it. U2? Oh fantastic. 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. Really encapsulates the frustration of a Sunday, doesn't it?"
"Forget Jesus – Neil Diamond is king of the Jews."
"I'd spend hours in HMVs, Virgin Megastores and second-hand record shops staffed by greasyhaired 40-year-olds dressed as 20-year-olds, listening to contemporary music of every genre – Britrock, heavy maiden, gang rap, breakbeat. And I came to a startling but unshakeable conclusion: no genuinely good music has been created since 1988."
"That was sweating lunatic Iggy Pop."
kid called John Lennon McCullagh – that's his real name – playing Dylan covers in a pub there. At that point, I had no idea I wanted to set up a new label, but I told him to send me some songs anyway." A seed was sown. By April, McGee had done a deal with cult London label Cherry Red. In May, he announced 359 was accepting demos. He got 2,500 submissions. "There were at least 100 things you'd listen to twice and 15 really good things," he says. "I already had five good things that I'd picked up over the last few years." McGee thought it would take 18 months to build up a roster, but in the end he's done it in three months. That's testament to the power of the McGee myth. The bands he signed to Creation read like a Who's Who of British music of the last 30 years – Oasis, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Teenage Fanclub, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Super Furry Animals, Ride. The only thing that eclipsed that list of names was the drug-fuelled hedonism at the label, led by McGee. When Creation folded in 1999, he launched grassroots indie label Poptones and signed The Hives. He is very much the definition of a music industry Svengali. The new label does represent a turnaround, however. When McGee retired in 2008 he said he "didn't like music any more" and that it "bored the shit out of him". "I never thought I would come back," he says, a little sheepishly, adding hastily, "I'm not coming back because I need the money. I never needed to think about music ever again. I just started
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t the height of Creation Records' success, founder Alan McGee had a running joke about releasing the myriad bad demos he was sent on a label called Pure Rotherham – in his mind Rotherham was a metaphor for crapness. Ironic, then, that part of the inspiration for his new label, 359 Music, came from the South Yorkshire town. "I've been taking the piss out of Rotherham for 30 years," says McGee. "But last October I saw this then 14-year-old
SIX OF 359 McGee talks us through the first new signings out of the traps
MCGEE SAYS: "I met Chris through Myspace in 2007. He sent me a cheeky email saying, 'McGee, fucking put me on at [club night] Death Disco,' so I did. His album is one of the best records I've ever been involved with. He made it on an £80 laptop for no money. It shouldn't by rights be that good." Look out for: Chris Grant's album 'It's Not About War!' will be released in October.
MCGEE SAYS: "I knew Craig Walker from Archive, who are successful in Europe. When I announced I was doing the label, he sent me a finished album by his new project, a French electronic band. I said, 'Should you not be signing this to a major?' But no, he wanted to sign with me. They're all big MBV fans." LOOK OUT FOR: Mineral's album 'Plastic Ekphrastic' will be released in October.
MCGEE SAYS: "I became pals with John's dad, who also plays guitar. He asked me to come and DJ at a gig in a pub in Rotherham. His son went on after him and did four Dylan covers. He was 14 and he absolutely nailed 'She Belongs To Me' and 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue'. An amazing talent." LOOK OUT FOR: John Lennon McCullagh's album 'North South Divide' will be released in October.
MCGEE SAYS: "Pete is one of my best mates. He more than anybody is responsible for talking me into doing a new label. When I met him in 2007, he was a hyperactive kid – I could only handle him for an hour at a time – but now he's a real friend. He's a rock'n'roll star in the making." LOOK OUT FOR: Pete MacLeod's single 'Rolling Stone' will be released in November.
is ultimately to find bands, but it's also enjoying music again and I'm shocked fun." At 52, isn't he a bit old for all that? I'm enjoying running a label again." "I'm not a young buck," he says. "These Part of the attraction is that Cherry days I enjoy going out once a month." Red take care of the business side of McGee's ambitions for 359 are modest things, leaving McGee to concentrate – and he's not trying to find the next on finding bands. It's very different Oasis. "It's different from Creation, from the Creation days, when he man," he says. "It'll be whatever it turns travelled the country searching for out to be. We're not trying to be the new talent. "The great thing about technology is that you can literally live in the middle of nowhere like I do – I live in south Wales, 40 minutes from Hereford station – and people send you YouTube clips. It's a phenomenal way to run ALAN MCGEE things." It also means he doesn't have to deal with biggest. It's a launch pad for new artists "the whole bullshit showbiz side of and maybe older artists who've been things" or the "gigs in London where ignored. We've got kids that are 15 people are more interested in their [John Lennon McCullagh] and someone trousers than music". who's 44 [Alex Lowe from Gun Club That explains why his new monthly Cemetery]. Nobody's giving anybody a club night is located in Liverpool. chance in Britain at the moment. I want "Liverpool is alive; London always to give people that chance. What we're seems dead to me," he says. "The idea doing is a good thing." Phenomenal success or catastrophic flop: either way, music is a vastly more colourful place with Alan McGee around.
"I'm just really shocked I'm enjoying running a label again"
MCGEE SAYS: "I'm in this film called Svengali, out later this year. I play myself. Tess came up to me between scenes and gave me a CD. Most of the time those kind of things aren't very good, but she sounded like Mazzy Star. She's gone a bit more rock'n'roll since then, like Mazzy Star meets The Brian Jonestown Massacre." LOOK OUT FOR: Tess Parks' as yet untitled album will be released in November.
hat do you get when Chaz Chance And The Prophets: you put members of (clockwise from top) Gaz Coombes, Mat Osman, Johnny Daukes, Phil The Smiths, Suede, Roxy Manzanera and Mike Joyce Music and Supergrass together in a studio? Chaz Chance And The Prophets, of course – a fictional the players – heroes, y'know – it'd be mad 1970s glam-rock band set to feature in not to do it. And the tracks are genuinely forthcoming three-part mini drama The good. They sound Bowie-ish, but they're Records. Written by Johnny Daukes of minor- not a pastiche. Meeting other musicians league '90s indie types Fin and featuring and playing a song all in a day is quite an musical guest spots from Smiths drummer old-fashioned and unusual thing to do." Mike Joyce, Suede bassist Mat Osman, The tracks – at the moment consisting of Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes, Roxy 'Ghost Of A Chance', 'She's A Queen' and 'So Music guitarist Phil Far Away', all recorded at south Manzanera and London studio Miloco on July 11 Daukes himself, the – will feature alongside several series tells the story others throughout the show, of talent agent Mark with the band performing Chance, son of one "some mocked-up Old Grey of The Prophets. Whistle Test footage" as The Johnny and Gaz go But how do you get Prophets. And, though as yet all Band Aid on us so much lofty talent uncommissioned, they all in one room? "I'd seem pretty hopeful about written some demos the project. "Sometimes for The Prophets. projects get bogged down I met Mat about with trying to get financing, a year ago, played them to him but you can't do anything one day and he said it'd be great unless people are prepared to to do them with a full band," explains do a favour," smiles Manzanera. Daukes. "I love Suede, I love Roxy Music, "I did think, 'What if it doesn't work?'" I love The Smiths and I love Supergrass, and shrugs Joyce. "But when you're in the luckily they loved the songs. So here we are." capable hands of these players… well, it Joyce is similarly enthused: "The calibre of was never going to be shit, was it?"
here's nothing 32 will play Glee Club in better than Birmingham on September watching your 18. Finally, Camden rockers favourite artists Tribes will bring things to in tiny venues. That's why a close at London's Bush we've teamed up with Hall on October 9. We've got Durex to put on a series five pairs of tickets for each of Intimate Sessions. date to give away. AlunaGeorge will Entrants must be kick things off at over 18. London's 100 Club HOW on August 14. TO Indie threeENTER piece Little Go to your Comets play smartphone's Manchester's app store. Ruby Lounge Download a on August 29, See AlunaGeorge in an intimate venue QR reader for and Wretch
your smartphone and scan the QR code below. You'll be automatically redirected to exclusive NME features, info and video footage. Mobile network and/or wi-fi charges may apply. No smartphone? Go to NME.COM/extra to enter.
MCGEE SAYS: "I've got a bit of history with them. Alex Lowe, the singer, used to be in Hurricane #1. They were a rock'n'roll band so that's what I thought he was doing. Then he sent me these massive ballads. I thought that was quite interesting coming from a guy who is an ex-boxer." LOOK OUT FOR: Gun Club Cemetery's self-titled album will be released in November.
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NME says: Already a familiar highlight of their live sets, 'Melody Calling' shows a subtler side to The Vaccines. Justin says: "I wrote this at Christmas. I'd built loads of vocal stuff around the main chorus vocal, and then ended up muting the main part so all that's left is the harmonies – that's why they're all falsetto. It moves in a different way. It's not one you bang your head to; maybe you sway a bit more."
a strong sentiment even though it's pretty negative. A song is a snapshot of a feeling and a time, and when we were recording it, it still resonated."
NME says: It's like the original track's been taken on a Hawaiian holiday and come back a whole new, er, man. Justin says: "It was John and Rich's idea. We used a drum sample from this song called 'Heaven & Hell' by William Onyeabor, and I just said they should have fun with it and think outside the box."
NME says: A song of two halves – part melodically developed verse, part hummable, simple chorus. Justin says: "I think melodically it's pretty straight up, but that the vocals move quite fluidly. There are elements of it that show a different side to our writing and arranging,
which, for us, was one of the points of this EP."
NME says: Another one to add to The Vaccines' self-deprecating, melancholy canon (see 'Teenage Icon', 'Weirdo', 'I Wish I Was A Girl'). Justin says: "I was trying to be honest, but not matter-of-fact. I think it's
Moving to Atlanta, where she took modelling jobs for cash, Azalea became friends with Backbone, a rapper in the Dungeon Family collective alongside OutKast and Cee Lo Green. "I went to his mum's house and saw the platinum discs for his verses on 'Aquemini', my favourite OutKast album," Azalea says. "I was like, 'Fucking hell, this is the coolest thing in the world.'"
attoos and rock'n'roll go hand in hand. Whether it's the feathers Dave Grohl has inked onto his forearms, or Grimes' selection of DIY etchings, the two have been synonymous for decades. That's why Converse are putting on a series of gigs in central London tattoo parlour The Circle. Transforming the studio's tiny basement into a temporary music venue, 100 lucky fans will see Canadian hardcore punks Metz (pictured) on August 7. Ex-Gallows frontman and tattoo enthusiast Frank Carter will bring his latest project Pure Love to play their debut album 'Anthems' on August 17, while Sheffield's metalcore heroes Bring Me The Horizon will perform tracks from their latest album 'Sempiternal' on August 22.
That's why I came over here," she says.
You can win tickets to these special, intimate gigs from the Converse UK website at getloud.converse.co.uk. With only a seriously limited number available, get online to register for your chance to be down the front. And with a host of renowned tattoo artists on hand, you could also be in with a chance of winning one of 60 free tattoos. Sign up now!
"No money, no family, 16 in the middle of Miami", Azalea raps on 'Work', a track about how many floors she had to scrub in rural Mullumbimby, Australia, back when she was the equally starry-named Amethyst Kelly. Azaela was barely 16 years old when she packed her bags for Miami, Florida, never to return. "I'll never go back to Australia," she tells NME. "I can't! Everyone would say 'I told you so!'"
With several big-budget videos on YouTube and an album, September's 'The New Classic', on the way, things are looking up for Azalea. Each clip is a candy-coloured pastiche of US hip-hop, and her image falls somewhere between Lady Gaga and Gwen Stefani – one minute she's pole-dancing, the next she's fluttering her eyelashes. Her motto? "Fuck you, I'm a fighter and I'm going to make it happen." Look out, world.
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When they heard her music online, US major Interscope invited Azalea to LA. She met Dre in the studio and they battled it out for who could work the hardest. "One day Dre said, 'Iggy, I beat you last night, I didn't go home 'til 7am.' And I said, 'Dre, see what I'm wearing, I've been here for four days!'"
Despite comprising just three songs and a remix, 'Melody Calling' is a 13-minute middle-finger to anyone who heard 'Post Break-Up Sex' and thought they had The Vaccines nailed as masters of the throwaway. Full of iridescent guitar lines and warm vocals, The Vaccines show they're capable of something longer-lasting. Lisa Wright BEST TRACK: 'Do You Want A Man?'
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Mick Farren died as he lived: onstage, in a spotlight, leading a band of Deviants. The former NME writer was 69 when he collapsed at London's Borderline on July 27. He leaves behind a righteous body of work, including a dozen or so records with The Deviants and a mountain of countercultural writing that includes a startingly prescient NME column from 1976: 'The Titanic Sails At Dawn'. In it, Farren set his sights on the "dazzlingly lit, wonderfully appointed Titanic that is big-time, rock-pop, taxexile, jet-set show business". Punctuated by his own capitalised exhortations from the 'editor', he predicted that this floating mausoleum, represented by the likes of The Stones, The Who and Rod Stewart, would soon be wrecked against the coming iceberg of punk. Yet 37 years on, how much has changed? Has anything? At the time he quoted readers' letters that rejected the Stones, because who'd want to see "five middle-aged millionaires poncing around," or pay "three quid to be bent, mutilated, crushed or seated behind a pillar or PA stack, all in the name of modern, '70s-style super rock"? He lived to see five elderly millionaires carve Hyde Park into extortionately priced plots, and charge The original £95 for the cheapest.
Elton John has reportedly been offered a fight scene cameo in an upcoming film from the writer of Kick-Ass. He may not be Van Damme, but Madonna will testify that you wouldn't like Elton when he's angry.
Mick Farren at Weeley Festival, Essex, August 1971
Elton: musical heavyweight
Leeds City Council apologised after a parking attendant ticketed Bruce Springsteen's trucks outside Leeds Arena. First he has the plug pulled in Hyde Park, now this – Bruce must be realising that in Britain, bureaucracy is The Boss.
Heard about James Blunt's new album? If not, lucky you. A 'clerical error' at Warner Bros records meant an email regarding the singer's latest masterpiece was sent to tens of thousands of unsuspecting inboxes by mistake. Blunt tweeted: "Oops… Just emailed the whole of the UK by mistake! Ha!"
article in NME, June 19, 1976
No, he predicted all that too. He saw the danger in bands and promoters turning rock into a "safe, establishment form of entertainment". When he asked whether rock'n'roll had become "another mindless consumer product that plays footsie with jet-set and royalty", he was foreshadowing the day when Prince Harry would be at the side of the Pyramid Stage bopping along to 'Paint It, Black'. Punk arrived, as he knew it would, but this Titanic proved unsinkable. He lifted his title from Dylan's 'Desolation Row', and the iconoclastic spirit of the piece is captured in the lines: "The Titanic sails at dawn/And everybody's shouting/'Which side are you on?'" Farren wanted us to pick sides. He wanted punk's safety pins to puncture the inflated egos of heritage
rock once and for all. In the end, we got both. The only thing that will stop the Stones' circus is the same mortal fate that has taken Farren.
It should. Even in the '70s Farren was arguing that the real question was "not whether to compromise or not, but how much, and in what way". Those are words to live by for a generation of musicians who have seen their income from record sales all but extinguished by the dawn of the internet era. Farren wasn't just a musician and a writer, he was also a militant political radical. He believed that rock music and writing could be a vehicle for real social change. He argued that rock's salvation would only arrive when a new generation produced their own ideas to push out the old farts. Farren concluded his column with the words: "Putting The Beatles back together isn't going to be the salvation of rock'n'roll. Four kids playing to their contemporaries in a dirty cellar club might." Same as it ever was. "And that, gentle reader," said Farren, then as now, "is where you come in."
Liam Gallagher's neighbour, classical music critic Michael White, says he's only had to complain once about the Beady Eye man – for playing loud music in his garden. Apparently Liam was listening to his own music.
The point is that even if mainstream rock'n'roll has become toothless, primetime entertainment, it doesn't have to be the only option. Farren believed above all that rock'n'roll could stay dangerous. Even then, and as a '60s mover and shaker himself, he was resisting the atavistic urge to simply ape the sounds and styles of that most tediously retrodden of decades. He had seen the golden era from the inside, and knew that it existed in the "tiny margin of a still affluent economy, a margin that doesn't exist today".
Puddle Of Mudd frontman Wes Scantlin was arrested for attacking the patio of pop-singer neighbour Sasha Gradiva with a circular saw. It's the latest in a series of antagonistic acts, claims Gradiva. "He [once] put a huge flag on the border of my wall. On my side, it had the name of his band."
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a person and as an artist," says Chance. "It was a big Chicago record and a big hip-hop record at the same time. When it came out it was taboo to have a majority soul-sampled rap record. Everything about Kanye's style, his fashion sense and his music felt new. When I heard that record I knew I was going to be a rapper." While Chance has picked up Kanye's ability to turn out funny, unforgettable phrases (his habit of dipping cigarettes in codeine becomes "Lean on a square, that's a fuckin' rhombus") he's not afraid to speak about heavy issues like his hometown's spate of gun violence. "There's a responsibility that comes with being an artist," he says. "There are probably two or three kids who got killed last night in Chicago. That's kids. Under 19. I thought it would be weird if I didn't talk about it." Still happily unsigned, his first trip to Europe this month is keeping him busy. He'll probably keep putting out music for free. "It's the way of the world," he says. "Paying a dollar for music is kind of ridiculous. It's worth so much more than a dollar. You can't put a price on it." Kevin EG Perry
n all honesty, I can't remember the first time I took acid," says Chancellor Bennett, known to the 50,000 people who downloaded his mixtape in a single day as Chance The Rapper, "but I do remember when I started taking acid way too much!" The laidback 20-year-old was tripping two or three times a week when he recorded the unsurprisingly titled 'Acid Rap', but he didn't set out to make a 'drug record'. "I didn't do it to show people what it's like to rap on acid," he explains. "I did it because of how altered my mind was and how deeply I could analyse situations." The result is an album full of soulful samples and a varied palette of musical influences. He namedrops jazz greats like Roy Ayers, John Coltrane and Jamiroquai. Wait, Jamiroquai? "I got really into acid jazz and disco," Chance says. "Then someone showed me 'Virtual Insanity'. I was just like, 'This music is sick as fuck. This video is sick as fuck.'" A more obvious influence is the early work of the man they now call Yeezus. "'The College Dropout' shaped me as
BASED: Chicago FOR FANS OF: OutKast, early Kanye West DOWNLOAD NOW: His mixtape 'Acid Rap' is available as a free download from Chanceraps.com SEE HIM LIVE: BBC 1Xtra Stage, Reading Festival (Aug 24), Leeds Festival (25) and London XOYO (26) BELIEVE IT OR NOT: Chance has inherited a patch of land in a small town in North Carolina. It's currently a tobacco field, but he's quite insistent that's not the reason he wrote 'Chain Smoker'
WorldMags.net The Buzz
to get money from an arts competition last year, which would enable them to tour Europe and the States, but they're weren't successful. "The organisers ditched us," he says. "I don't think there's many bands from here touring America, so they should have given us some fucking money." Spetze adds that the band's current dire financial position could spell problems for their long-term future. "We'll see at the end of the year. If we're not making money on touring, it will be hard for us to continue doing it as we are now." But there is some hope for the band. Having recently applied for a Swedish arts grant and signed up with a new management company, Spetze thinks Holograms' luck could be about to change. "We're gonna try to get benefits from the state in Sweden, at least, so we can afford the visas [to tour abroad]," he says. 'Forever' is released on September 9 – and Radar hopes it won't be too long before the band can make it back to the UK. Lisa Wright
"Have you ever been hurt by someone?" ask All We Are on their debut single 'Utmost Good' – which means that pretty much everyone on Earth can relate to the song. Describing their sound as like "The Bee Gees on diazepam", All We Are are based in Liverpool, but originally hail from further afield – Norway, Ireland and Brazil, to be precise. Alumni of the Liverpool Institute Of Performing Arts (co-founded by Paul McCartney), they play live at the city's International Music Festival this month (August 25), as well as in London on August 13 at The Social. 'Utmost Good' is out now on Obscenic – the label co-run by recent Radar star (and fellow LIPA graduate) Mikhael Paskalev.
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Naming your forthcoming album 'Forever' might be a hint towards a longterm future, but for Sweden's Holograms the title seems more of a questioning plea than a prophecy. Having used up all their cash touring last year's critically acclaimed, self-titled debut LP with little management aid or financial backing, the punk quartet have wound up in dire straits – so much so that they can't afford to play 'Forever' much further afield than their own country. "In some ways the title is hopeful – maybe because we're in a much worse place than on our first album. Maybe it's a personal mantra," says singer Anton Spetze. "Financially we're so fucking out there. It's really bad. Fuck, it sounds like I'm complaining and it's not like that, but we have a lot of debt and we're trying to get jobs. It's pretty hard. We don't have any money at all." The frontman adds that the band tried
Formerly the less Google-friendly Preachers, this Sydney five-piece make pristine Fleetwood Mac-style rock. The single 'Is This How You Feel?' is already in the top five most-played tracks on Aussie alt radio. In August, they release an EP and tour Oz with Haim. In October, they visit London.
Band Crush
"If we're not making money, it will be hard for us to continue"
He might be named Marr, but Andrew Marr of Ski Lodge sounds distinctly like a certain Stephen Patrick Morrissey. 'Boy', taken from the NYC band's debut album 'Big Heart' (due in August), is particularly striking – packed full of bookish lyrics, open-hearted emotion and guitars that jangle in all the right places.
Tarik Badwan from Loom on his new favourite artist
"I like Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats. There's something really authentic about them, like their music could have been made 30 years ago. That's really refreshing in the midst of all this modern production." It's not just their next-level distortion that makes this London trio's songs stand out – it's also the sweet melodies and lulling, mumbled vocals buried underneath. Their debut EP, 'If It Is', is the sort of fuzzy, surging, gloom-tinged stuff that'll seep into and fill up every corner of your brain.
In a world growing ever tired of Mumfords clones, Blinded Bird offer welcome respite. Their 'Through The Fields' EP doesn't set out to reinvent the folk wheel. But with honest, melodic simplicity, the band convey an elegance and modesty that's severely lacking in so many others.
Young Fathers released their second EP recently. Titled 'Tape 2', it's one of those things where you don't know why you like it: you can't pin it down, but it suits you. Rap beats with soulful vocals over wellcrafted instrumentals – if this was a fulllength they'd deserve the Mercury Prize. The songwriting is second to none. Some more rap for you, with El-P and Killer Mike's Run The Jewels. I usually don't listen to much rap due to the hokum that's often in the lyrics. Run The Jewels seem more focused on the instrumental. There are beats with barely anything but a kick and snare, which is all you need sometimes. Their selftitled album is free online – put it on at a party and you're golden. Butch Clancy just released a new mix on his SoundCloud. For people who are just getting into dubstep and want more, I'd recommend this and the mix he did for MistaJam on BBC Radio. It's playful and adventurous, with new ideas and sounds to be taken seriously. I love DJing it, as it never fails. Go online and search for RL Grime's 'Satisfaction' remix. I got pretty into trap music a while ago and RL Grime stood out as one of my favourite producers, alongside TNGHT. He's just released an Thom's EP titled 'High Beams'. It's really good Top 5 party/dance music, basically. Some things are just naturally cool, Young Fathers and Arca's cool. I know next to nothing 'I Heard' about him but that doesn't matter. Download the latest mix '&&&&&' Run The Jewels from SoundCloud. It's not the easiest of 'Run The Jewels' listens, but it's worth it if you're feeling energetic. It kind of sounds like a mix Butch Clancy 'Mix For MistaJam' between Philip Glass and Death Grips. It has a good amount of soul to it during the sparser sections and there's a lot of room RL Grime 'Satisfaction (Remix)' and confidence in the production. Arca '&&&&&' NEXT WEEK'S COLUMNIST: Trash Talk's Lee Spielman
To See
This week's unmissable new music shows
FLOWERS Old Blue Last, London, Aug 7 VICTORIES AT SEA Bulls Head, Birmingham, Aug 8 THE SOFT MOON The Haunt, Brighton, Aug 9 SCOTT & CHARLENE'S WEDDING Head Of Steam, Newcastle, Aug 9 THE SUNDOWNERS (pictured) Queen Of Hoxton, London, Aug 10
The man-sized crows get in a flap over the gothictinged 'Bad Dream'. The men in dresses race to the front to swing their pretty petticoats along to the power-synth 'Girls & Boys'. The silver space people appreciate the upbeat galaxy-pop of 'Paper Heart', which welcomes the gathering thunderclouds with its talk of "stormy weather''. The surrealist fancy-dress freaks, genies and Robocops of Secret Garden Party take Maidenhead's headstrong maiden Chlöe Howl to their stimulant-bulging hearts – perhaps because, popping up on a stage festooned with branches like the roots of a tree, she looks for all the world like a flame-haired, disco-dancing wood pixie. What Chlöe actually is, is the latest contender for Lily Allen's slipped crown of New Lahndan Laureate, all clipped 'street' enunciation and urb-pop skippery-pokery about pressing youth issues like "going downtown'', getting pregnant from one-night-stands, and, inexplicably, nothing at all about library
closures or the property ladder. But unlike more R&B types such as Jessie Ware, Howl's pop culture references are impeccable: there are hints of Depeche Mode and The Cure in 'Bad Dream'; a sly reference to Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain' in the rousing 'This Song's Not About You'. The dub dollops of 'Downtown', meanwhile, are as Clash as they are King Krule. Only on 'No Strings' does she overstep the mark.
Chloe is after Lily Allen's slipped crown of Lahndan Laureate
A seductive tale of casual sex and its double-buggy consequences ("fuck your 'no strings'… kinda hope I have twins''), it works because it sounds so similar to Foster The People's 'Pumped Up Kicks' smattered with twiddly noises akin to the ones in Talking Heads' 'Once In A Lifetime'. But if Howl is racing straight to the frontline of cultural plagiarism, she does it with a panache that, bar one grumpy man-panda, SGP appreciates in spades. Mark Beaumont
Young Fathers: great beats, bad snot problem
Forty years ago – on August 11, 1973 – hip-hop was invented at a block party in the Bronx. Angus Batey speaks to the pioneers about the unlikely circumstances that spawned a genre which would change the world
ow do you start a revolution? You could take up arms against a sea of troubles, spread word of your cause on social media – or you could throw a party in your apartment block with your brother DJing, charge 50 cents admission (half price for girls), rope in mum and dad to help sell hot dogs and pop, and advertise it with a flyer hand-drawn in pencil. Cindy Campbell's ambitions for her "back to school jam" did not include kickstarting a global cultural movement that would become known as hip-hop. All she wanted was to make a little money for new school clothes to wear at the start of next term. Yet that party, on August 11, 1973, in the first floor recreation room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, in the Bronx, New York, became the epicentre of a cultural explosion that continues to shake the world today. Her brother was the one who lit the fuse. Then 16, so tall and well-built he'd earned the nickname Hercules, Clive Campbell had grown
up in Jamaica. The family moved to New York in 1967, but not before the future DJ Kool Herc had seen enough of the island's soundsystem culture to absorb the concept of music booming from homemade speaker rigs. The Campbells moved to Sedgwick Avenue in 1970. "The building had a recreation room," Herc recalls, "with two bathrooms, a kitchen, a little coat-checkin' booth. It was for wedding receptions, birthday parties – so people didn't have to worry about their house gettin' messed up. I got some steel milk crates and put some two-by-four on top so you could sit down, and we had a fan up in there. We tried to make people comfortable. We got some franks and some soda, some Olde English 800 [malt liquor] that my mom was sellin'." Cindy made her clothes money, but everyone had such a good time that word about Herc's DJ set began to spread. Soon the teenager with the booming system was in demand for similar events across the Bronx – often outside, during the summer, with power for the sound equipment "liberated" from the city authorities
by wiring the decks up to lampposts. People were hooked by the unique selection of music he'd decided to play. "Hip-hop is a kind of a rebellion, the next generation's disco," says Grandmaster Caz, who began DJing after attending Herc parties and later became lead MC of The Cold Crush Brothers. "Disco was goin' on, but it was in the clubs, and the younger generation couldn't really participate. We found the music that we were gonna groove to in our parents' crates. This is music that came before us: we took the music that we grew up listening to. I know I was exposed to it before hip-hop, but I never saw a DJ put it in perspective that way until Kool Herc started playing these records." The tracks that became favourites of the early hip-hop crowd shared several traits. They had to be funky, whatever the genre; they preferably had sections where everything broke down to a few bars of nothing but drums; they may have been hits at one time, but they weren't all that well-known to the young partygoers; and, often, there was a message in the music which would
Grandmaster Caz (right) with Kool Moe Dee at Harlem World, 1981
speak subtly and urgently, like a kind of sonic samizdat, spreading ideas and attitudes between the beats. "Herc was playing obscure records," KRS-One told me a few years ago. As a pre-teen, the future rap icon had attended many Herc parties. "After the Vietnam War was over, and Nixon resigned, and the country changed during the Carter era, all that music from the late '60s and early '70s became relevant in the mid-to-late '70s. People couldn't hear it on the radio, but Kool Herc was playing that music in the park." "The thing that the music had in common is that it was dance music, like disco was, but it was street, it was edgy," says Caz. "It was not the whole song, it was just parts of songs; just the breakdown parts, the beats. A lot of times, you never heard the rest of the song – all you heard was the drum break. And that's the music that you look for, as a DJ and as a party-goer: you wanted to go to the DJ who had all the breaks." Records now synonymous with Herc's sets include relative obscurities by his favourite artist, James Brown, such as 'Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose', and 'The Mexican', a song by the British prog-rock band Babe Ruth. His signature tracks were by the Incredible Bongo Band, a mysterious studio collective whose amazing story is told in a new film, Sample This!, due out this year. Their 'Bongo Rock', a cover of an old Latin pop hit, and 'Apache', an instrumental inspired by cowboy films first recorded by Cliff Richard's backing band, The Shadows, became early hip-hop anthems. "The significance of the records Herc would play was that they represented the rebellion of the community," argued KRS. "'Bongo Rock' represented Latino frustration – that was a war call! 'Apache'? That's scalping music! Radio wasn't playing that, and neither were the other DJs that were doing block parties. Herc had sets of turntables and big speakers. It was like a spaceship landed in the ghetto and started KRS-ONE teaching the people."
musical ideologue. Grandmaster Flash, by contrast, was a bookish kid, keen on electronics and science, who heard Herc DJing and fell in love with the scene. He brought science and showmanship to the turntables. "I loved what Herc was doing, but I noticed that his style was disarray and unison," Flash says. "He'd have duplicate copies but it wasn't seamless, where you'd go from one to the other on time. I thought, 'There's got to be a way you can do this and go into the next song and keep people dancing without missing a step.'" With his friend and record-finding partner, Disco B, Flash searched high and Blondie's low for a record deck with sufficient 'Rapture' torque to get the record playing at video the right speed immediately after pressing the start button. By adding a switch to a mixing console, he was able to listen to one deck on We all know the words, 'And you don't stop, sure shot/Go out to the headphones while the other was parking lot'. But just how did 'Rapture' and its rap come about? playing to the crowd. Together, these innovations allowed him to "We were there as part of the event, yet complete seamless mixes of the When Fab 5 Freddy started working out we were observing, on this little balcony. soundtrack to the epochal Wild Style type disco DJs like Pete DJ Jones which people outside of hip-hop would be It was so new and so novel and it was so movie, and fed into a song which would were doing in the clubs. receptive to it, he knew where to start. "I cooking – everybody was just doing it, become Blondie's fourth US Number One. Another breakthrough was made knew people in the punk and new wave and it was really exciting and inspiring." 'Rapture' included a rap written by Stein by a 12-year-old boy. In 1975, 'Grand scene were open to reggae and other "The punk scene was a rock revival and delivered by Harry (in a single take), Wizard' Theodore Livingstone – the cultures," he says. "I had become good thing, but it was also about the which namechecked Freddy and Flash. brother of Flash's associate, 'Mean' friends with Blondie. It was a very open, deconstruction of existing forms – making Debbie Harry may not consider herself Gene – was making a cassette receptive scene, and I felt they would them new and more raw," says Stein. a rapper, but the record was undeniably mix to play during lunch break at listen to us." "So hip-hop made perfect sense: it was influential. "What's shocking to me is that school. Just as he was about to let So Freddy took Chris Stein and Debbie deconstructivist, where they sampled and heavy-duty rappers like Mobb Deep have another record start spinning, he Harry of Blondie to an early hip-hop party, broke things down." The experience led come up to us and said that 'Rapture' was was interrupted by his mother. at the Police Athletic League in The Bronx. to Stein working on the groundbreaking the first rap song they ever heard." "I thought she was gonna wring my "It was kind of funny," recalls Harry. neck, because the music was maybe a little bit loud that particular day," he recalls. "She was cursin' me out
little after the Sedgwick Avenue party, Herc hit upon the idea of taking two copies of 'Bongo Rock' and, when the break had finished on one, he would immediately switch to the breakbeat on the other. By doing this he invented the concept of the looped drum break, ushering in the era of sampling technology and changing the way music was made forever. Meanwhile, his friends Coke La Rock, Timmy Tim and Klark Kent would take turns with Herc on the microphone, making announcements, shouting greetings to people at the party and, eventually, speaking little rhyming couplets over the breaks. Together, Herc and his masters of ceremony codified the art of MCing – or, to use the more widespread term, rapping. One of his stock phrases – "Hip-hop, you don't stop" – gave the new sound a name. Other DJs were quick to follow his lead. In a crowded field, two rose to pre-eminence. Afrika Bambaataa founded the Universal Zulu Nation to provide an alternative to gangs for Bronx youngsters: preaching a gospel of "Peace, Love, Unity, and Having Fun", the supremely eclectic Bambaataa became hiphop's most imaginative
Fab 5 Freddy (second right) chilling in the Bronx, 1980
Afrika Bambaataa at the Kips Bay Boys Club, the Bronx, 1981
Kool Herc (right) with DJ Tony Tone, backstage at T-Connection, 1979
from the doorway, and I was just holding the record to stop it from playin', but I was movin' it back and forth a little bit. When she left the room I finished my cassette tape, and when I rewound it and played back the part where she came in the room, I heard myself scratchin' – and the rest is history." Bambaataa, meanwhile, was expanding hip-hop's musical vocabulary radically. "There's certain things in songs that you can feel if it's funky or not," he says. "So when I heard the sounds on Kraftwerk, I said, 'That's some funky shit.' And I started jammin' it to my audience." At his parties in the Bronx River Center, Bam added the electronic pop of Kraftwerk and Gary Numan to the beat-heavy Herc-style cuts. He also threw in '60s rock and pop like The Rolling Stones or The Monkees, and curiosities such as
1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where hip-hop began
the ridiculously tough breakbeat that kicked off the 'Mickey Mouse Club Theme'. "If a certain crew didn't like a certain sound I played, I rammed that record so much and kept comin' back to it until I forced them to start gettin' into it!" he chuckles. "With [the Stones'] 'Honky Tonk Women', I hit them first with the beats, then let the guitar roll in, then after a while I played the whole song because it was funky enough to play." The final piece of the puzzle was slotted into place by an artist called Fred Brathwaite. Even before Herc started playing breaks, a new kind of Chic's Nile Rodgers on hip-hop's first hit – and its first, painting style had developed in New but by no means last, copyright dispute York. Artists using aerosol car paints had begun to "tag" their nicknames "The first time I heard attitude was not, 'Don't take the piss' – on Bronx walls, and in an effort to 'Rapper's Delight' I was it was just, 'Pay us and put my name on spread their reputations city-wide had in a nightclub. I thought what I wrote.' taken to spray-painting increasingly another band had cut "A few months into the future elaborate murals on the outside of 'Good Times', which is Debbie Harry and Chris Stein took us subway trains. fine to me, I did it all the time. Then to a playground in the Bronx and I saw "Painting was my main interest, but I thought that the DJ had a couple of them play 'Good Times' over and over I was a fan of these DJs who were friends in the booth that were rapping, again, as a procession of MCs came up doing something really interesting but I looked and didn't see anybody. onstage and did their thing. At that and unique," Brathwaite – known to So I talked to the DJ and he said he'd point, how can you feel anything but everyone in the early hip-hop world picked it up that morning – the hottest some sort of adulation? They're not as Fab 5 Freddy – explains. "Many thing on the street. He showed me it: seeing it as stealing, they're thinking people doin' graffiti knew nothing Sugar Hill Records. Sugarhill Gang. of it as the bedrock of their craft, about rap; many people rapping or 'Rapper's Delight'. No sign of my name. of taking images that you love and DJing were not really into graffiti. But "I had a series of reactions. First, reforming them into something else. I sensed a common thread, so I began 'Wow, this is great.' Then, 'How are you Basically, it was like meeting someone to develop the idea that this could doing this? This is magic!' And then, for the first time who you dislike at be one thing. I wanted it to look like 'Wait, this is a record?' My relationship first, then you get to know them and a culture, primarily because I knew, with it changed over five minutes. My they become your best friend." with the myopic vision and inherent racism of mainstream media, that the things I was doing and what was going on around me would be written
off because there was no precedent for it." Freddy moved as seamlessly as a Flash mix between the graffiti writers in the Bronx and the art gallery crowd in Manhattan. He knew filmmakers and producers, and musicians from the punk and new wave crowds. So Freddy introduced people like Chris Stein and Debbie Harry of Blondie, and filmmaker Charlie Ahearn, to what he had now decided were the "four elements" of hip-hop culture – DJing and
The Cold Crush Brothers at the Dixie Club, 1981, during the filming of Wild Style
The early hip-hop gatherings were a clarion call for the community, says KRS-One
"You'd hear the music pounding in the air, and you'd walk in the direction of the sound. Nobody needed to know where the party was, it was a loud noise happening in the community and you just gravitated towards it. Native Americans used to have that drum, and they used to just start that 'BOOM, boom-boom BOOM', and based on that, you knew what was going on. You knew when the ancestors were coming, you knew when it was a war cry, you knew when it was a party, you knew when somebody was being born, healed, getting married or when someone died. Europeans used to get out on the top of a mountain and blow these big ridiculous horns and alert their whole community, and based on what horn was blown at that time you knew what was going on."
MCing, breakdancing and graffiti art. He and Ahearn began work on 1983's Wild Style – a film that would become the best surviving example GRANDMASTER CAZ of the pre-record era of hip-hop. And so Cindy's party had given birth not just to a musical genre, but an entire culture. Fab 5 Freddy rode the wave successfully, hosting the first and best hip-hop show on MTV, Yo! MTV Raps, for seven of the music's most exciting years. Both Bam and Flash made it as musicians, hits like 'Planet Rock' and 'The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel' helping to build a firm enough
Grandmaster Flash and Disco B describe what it was like at an early block party
"I remember people said, 'We're going to a party on Brown Place.' So I get to Brown Place, and I hear music, but I don't see no people! Then someone opened the door, and you had to go into the closet and down a ladder!"
below was equal the size of the apartment but there was no ventilation. It was dark, grimy…"
DISCO B: "We
"The apartment had a hole in the floor, and down
jumped through the hole in the closet, and Flash was down there with his system. It was homemade but it was loud. And everybody was there! You were like, 'Damn! There's a whole lotta people in here!' It was really nice."
fanbase to keep them touring to this day. Caz's tale, though, was tougher. When his manager, Big Bank Hank, was asked to join the group that became the Sugarhill Gang, Caz said he could take his pick of lyrics from his bulging books of rhymes – but Caz is yet to receive royalties for co-writing the first hip-hop hit, 'Rapper's Delight'. His group, the Cold Crush Brothers, made records that include the first rock-rap hybrid (1983's 'Punk Rock Rap'), but they never sold enough to make Caz a household name. "I had to find other avenues," Caz says. "So, for 11 years now, I've been running hip-hop sightseeing tours. A young lady named Debra Harris started the whole thing, called Hush Tours, and she pulled me in. I put people from all around the world on a bus in midtown Manhattan, take 'em uptown, play music for 'em, and teach 'em about the culture of hip-hop. I show 'em historical landmarks, where hip-hop happened. And they really seem to enjoy it." But the roughest ride of all was experienced by the man who started it all. Herc was stabbed during one of his parties and stopped DJing before the first rap records were made. After years struggling with drug addiction, he made a comeback in the 1990s, doing DJ dates in the US and Europe, and he and Theodore appeared on a Chemical Brothers album. But unlike Flash, he wasn't a showman or a very technical DJ; and unlike Bam, he didn't have a back catalogue of his own hits to perform. I first met him in New York in the mid-'90s, just after he'd been to the rap radio station Hot 97 to see his friend, DJ Red Alert. The staff had never heard of him, and kept him waiting in the lobby. At the time, the station's slogan was "Where hiphop lives". A frustrated Herc growled: "They say that's where hip-hop lives – but I built their house, and they won't even let me through the door." arly in 2011, Herc was hospitalised with a relatively minor illness which nevertheless required surgery. He had no health insurance, so the creator of a multi-billion-dollar business was forced to seek donations from fans and well-wishers to pay his
Fab 5 Freddy presenting Yo! MTV Raps
medical bills. "I'm outta dry dock now," he says today. "And I thank people every day for sendin' their support." He wants to tour – "put the word out! I'd like to come over there again" – and feels he still has a part to play in the industry for which he laid the foundations. "I'm a patient person," he says. "I cook, and what a cook likes to see is people appreciate his food. But there's a bigger picture here. I'm still livin' – I'm not in the crackhouse, I'm not in the bullpen; I ride the train, I ride my bicycle, I fly my kite. I'm the George Washington of this! I'm the first ghetto superstar in hip-hop! I'm rap's first MVP! And I ain't goin' away until you get to know me!" By 1979, when the first rap records were released, the block party scene was over. Rap music was the easiest part of hip-hop culture to sell, and after 'Rapper's Delight' opened the floodgates, the music began to take hold across the globe. Within 20 years it was the world's highest-selling genre, unstoppable and anything but a flash in the pan. These were hip-hop's origins. Over the course of the following pages, NME reassesses the next era of hip-hop, when the artists were beginning to make genre-defining full-length albums. Some of the UK's finest hip-hop minds single out the records that changed it all forever.
RUN-DMC 'RAISING HELL' Mass consumption and the
Out of the old school came a fresh breed, producing groundbreaking albums that would grab worldwide attention. Pete Cashmore looks at the start of of hip-hop's golden age
p until the mid-'80s, the culture of hip-hop, block parties and rapping wasn't album-orientated, so the world had to wait a while for a truly classic long player. But when it came it tore up the rulebook and fed the scraps into a shredder. 'Raising Hell' wasn't the first record that blended rock and rap – indeed, Run-DMC had done it themselves two years before with tracks like 'King Of Rock' and 'Rock Box' – but it was the first album to bring the rap-rock fusion to a gigantic mass market. That was merely the start of its significance, however. Through DMC
natural extension of the blues to me. I just missed the fact that there was no guitars in it. Great beats to play to." "We didn't even know who Aerosmith was," recounts Run. "Rick Rubin got in touch with them. We had started making it in a street way, very raw, and Rick said, 'Why don't we just make the whole thing over?'" Run-DMC in '86 The group's DMC (l–r): Jam Master recalls: "We took Jay, Run, DMC the beat from the street and put it on TV. There was hip-hop before Run-DMC so we we wanted to drop beats and rhymes, beatboxes and cuts that we'd hear in the basements. At its heart, 'Raising Hell' was a 1980 cassette tape of a hip-hop crew doing it live. When I was a teenager, I bought cassettes like that album with my allowance." A teenage cassette tape that just happened to usher in the video age, the new school and rap-rock in one fell swoop.
beginning of the new school
the monolithic success of their Aerosmith collaboration 'Walk This Way', the subsequent LP introduced many of the several million who bought it to hardcore hip-hop and the human beatbox ('Hit It Run'), not to mention the culture's obsession with quality sportswear on 'My Adidas'. It's likely that 'Peter Piper', Jam Master Jay's deft decimation of the breakbeat from Bob James' classic 'Take Me To The Mardi Gras', was their first inkling of the potentials of turntablism. Even among such colossal bangers, 'Walk This Way' towered. And yet it's not so odd that a rock song should spawn a rap monster. "I was into The Meters and R&B," says Aerosmith's Joe Perry. "I wanted to write something that was in that groove, only with more of a rock edge. [Years later] I was listening to rap. I was aware of Run-DMC, it sounded like a very
"IT'S LIKE A LIVE TAPE OF A 1980s HIP-HOP CREW"
The fine details
RELEASE DATE July 21, 1986 WHAT WE SAID "Their raps magnify the little man's hopes and ambitions." TRACKLIST • Peter Piper • It's Tricky • My Adidas • Walk This Way • Is It Live • Perfection • Hit It Run • Raising Hell • You Be Illin' • Dumb Girl • Son Of Byford • Proud To Be Black GUEST SPOTS Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith PRODUCER Rick Rubin UK CHART ENTRY 41 GEEKY FACT At the time when 'Walk This Way' was recorded, Run-DMC thought Aerosmith were called Toys In The Attic, the name of the 1975 album that the original track came from.
Aerosmith's Steven Tyler on 'Walk This Way''s crosscultural phenomenon
"The original recording had no real melody at all. It kind of lent itself to rap. At the time, you had guys selling their tapes on the street corner, but I didn't really know much about that at the time. It was [producer] Rick Rubin who told me, 'These guys are rapping over that beat. You and Joe, jump on a plane.' So they were rapping to the track, but Joe added some guitar and some bass to it and I got to sing with them. The lyrics were kind of stream of consciousness. I kind of talked them, it was the first time I'd done that. It begged for the rap treatment – and it worked. I'd love to say, 'Well, I know what rap was, hell yeah! I figured I'd coin it!' But that would be horseshit. It was a piece that got grabbed because of the rhythm and I love that. The real genius, though, was the video director – knocking down the walls between black and white. Me sticking my head through the wall and being like, 'Rock meets… What the fuck? What are you guys?' I'm honoured beyond belief by the effect it had."
backdrop. 'Paid In Full', however, was built on a sampler bulging with loops from a range of vintage vinyl. The combination of slick samples fitted Rakim's iron fist of a delivery perfectly – probably because he'd handpicked the wax from the stacks he'd used to hone his lyrical craft over. "I always knew what I wanted to write to," says Rakim today. "Like Dennis Edwards' 'Don't Look Any Further' – we used to rhyme off of that at parties, so that became the beat on 'Paid In Full'. These are records I grew up with, so I knew they'd work. We'd also come fresh out of the B-boy era, where DJs would be playing James Brown breakbeats. We was feeding off that too." The match was made: 'Paid In Full' represented a new unity of beats and rhymes. "This is one album that really raised the bar," says hip-hop radio legend Bobbito García, who anchored one of the most influential hip-hop shows ever from 1990 to 1998 with Stretch Armstrong, providing a showcase for a host of unsigned artists on the airwaves – it was here that the likes of Jay Z, The Notorious BIG and Nas were given a platform to showcase their burgeoning talents. García adds: "The beats were bananas, but lyrically Rakim set a standard that all MCs ever since have used as a measure." Indeed, the influence of the record on the hip-hop community is as clear as day: Nas released a track called 'UBR (Unauthorized Biography Of Rakim)' and Eminem flipped lyrics from 'Paid In Full''s 'As The Rhyme Goes On' for his 2000 worldwide hit single 'The Way I Am'. But Rakim's biggest admirer is probably Buckshot from the Black Moon clique, who released a cover ('No Joke') of album opener 'I Ain't No Joke' 10 years later. "Rakim is the seed," says Buckshot. "A seed is the purest form of the tree. It all grew from there. Me and a lot of other MCs are the fruit of that tree." Rakim himself also has high praise for the record. "As far as me progressing as an MC, I think I got a little better as time went on," he says. "But 'Paid in Full' – that was the first impression. The landmark. You Eric B and Rakim onstage during the can't deny that."
'Paid In Full' era
The fine details
RELEASE DATE July 7, 1987 WHAT WE SAID "This boy Rakim has a helluva style on the mic." TRACKLIST • I Ain't No Joke • Eric B Is On The Cut • My Melody • I Know You Got Soul • Move The Crowd • Paid In Full • As The Rhyme Goes On • Chinese Arithmetic • Eric B Is President • Extended Beat GUEST SPOTS None PRODUCERS Eric B & Rakim, Marley Marl (remixing) UK CHART ENTRY 85 GEEKY FACT Rakim apparently never thought to memorise any of his lyrics before working in the studio. He simply read them off his notepad in the recording booth.
ERIC B & RAKIM 'PAID IN FULL' The evolution of sampling and the
rise of the forthright MC
With his groundbreaking studio techniques and undeniable presence of personality, in Rakim hip-hop had found one of its finest voices. Roy Spencer waxes lyrical
came in the door/I said it before/ I never let the mic magnetise me no more". With that, the world was introduced to Rakim. The single in question was 'Eric B Is President'. The album was the utterly seminal 'Paid In Full'. The rhyme, like everything Rakim has touched before or since, was deadly serious. Like the man himself, this statement was firm with intent. You knew he wasn't about to tell you to throw your RAKIM hands in the air. Rap fans and pundits alike were quick to hail Rakim as the new master rapper, and when the album was eventually released, a new chapter began in what was rapidly becoming an increasingly weighty history of hip-hop. Not only were his lyrics next level, incorporating hitherto unheard-of complexities and internal rhyme structures (as in these lines, from 'Move The Crowd': "Standing by the speaker, suddenly I had this/Fever, was it me or either summer madness"), but the production had a trick up its sleeve too. Hip-hop up to that point had a habit of using in-house bands to provide backing (such as Sugarhill Gang's stable), or using drum machines like the Oberheim DMX for a devastating
The fine details
RELEASE DATE April 14, 1988
Public Enemy in 1988
PUBLIC ENEMY 'IT TAKES A NATION OF MILLIONS TO HOLD US BACK' The game-changing record with
a punk attitude to shake the globe
Designed to echo the sonic attack of their live shows, Public Enemy's second album came raging out of the speakers. Angus Batey recalls the creation of a masterpiece
ublic Enemy's second album had an astonishing, world-changing impact. After an excellent but somewhat reined-in debut, and an intense period of global touring, the creative core of the band – lead rapper, graphic designer, sloganeer CHUCK D and conceptualiser
Chuck D, and producers Hank Shocklee, Bill Stephney and Eric 'Vietnam' Sadler – hit their straps on a record that combines revolutionary politics and radical poetics with righteous anger and the exhilaration and noisy exuberance of a live rock show. The ideas and attitudes behind the record crystallised while PE toured the UK in 1987. They had already released the terrifying squeal of 'Rebel Without A Pause'. Then, energised by the response to their support slot with LL Cool J in Britain –
where, to many fans weaned on Tim Westwood's Capital Rap Show, PE were the biggest draw on the bill – the concept of a rap LP constructed as if it was a live album took shape. Then there was a fast, experimental track called 'Bring The Noise', which the group didn't like very much and had put out on a film soundtrack album. "We were playing Nottingham Rock City, and I happened to call back to the United States," Chuck told me in 2004. "And my wife at the time said, 'What's that record you got on the radio – something about noise?' So when I went to do the soundcheck, I said to Griff, 'Yo, let's do "Bring The Noise". But let's do it first, and get it out of the way.' Westwood had already been on it, because he had a way to get the fuckin' tapes off the mastering plant or something. So we played that first in Nottingham, and they went motherfucking berserk." Back in the studio, the new LP took its cues from 'Bring The Noise' and 'Rebel…', trying to capture the frenetic pace of PE's live performance. "A band usually will play their songs faster to keep up with the intensity of the crowd," Chuck said. "So we made 'It Takes A Nation Of Millions…' with all the eclectic sounds but at a high rate of speed, because it would be applicable to performance." In a nod to the record's British influence, the intro and various live interludes came from tapes of a London gig. The sonics were unprecedented, but vocally, '…Nation…' was peerless. In between Flav's hip-hop Bo Diddley routines, Chuck achieved MC greatness. He had come a long way in a very short time, from the simplistic cadences of the debut album ("You go 'Ooh' and A ' ah' when I jump in my car") to '…Nation…'s polysyllabic patterns ("Used, abused/Without clues/I refused to blow a fuse/They even had it on the news"). Two years later, though, he took the art form even higher ("Raw, metaphysically bold/Never followed a code/ Still dropped a load") and in the 21st century he continues to show everyone else how it should be done ("So let the young sing and rap to the young/As long as y'all don't think 'freedom' is 'free to be dumb' "). See page 44 for a Public Enemy live review
WHAT WE SAID "They're proving themselves to be to rap what The Clash were to punk." TRACKLIST • Countdown To Armageddon • Bring The Noise • Don't Believe The Hype • Cold Lampin With Flavor • Terminator X To The Edge Of Panic • Mind Terrorist • Louder Than A Bomb • Caught, Can We Get A Witness? • Show Em Whatcha Got • She Watch Channel Zero?! • Night Of The Living Baseheads • Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos • Security Of The First World • Rebel Without A Pause • Prophets Of Rage • Party For Your Right To Fight GUEST SPOTS Harry Allen PRODUCERS Rick Rubin, Bill Stephney, Hank Shocklee/ Carl Ryder, Eric 'Vietnam' Sadler UK CHART ENTRY 8 GEEKY FACT No less than four songs on 'It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back' sample 'The Grunt', a 1970 single by James Brown's backing band, The JB's. The track has also been sampled by many other hip-hop artists.
The East Coast fights back and a new crew prepares to dominate
The fine details
RELEASE DATE November 9, 1993 WHAT WE SAID "Gives the atmosphere of a neverending cypher, a rap battle." TRACKLIST • Bring Da Ruckus • Shame On A Nigga • Clan In Da Front • Wu-Tang: 7th Chamber • Can It Be All So Simple • Protect Ya Neck Intermission • Da Mystery Of Chessboxin' • Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing Ta Fuck Wit • CREAM • Method Man • Tearz • Wu-Tang: 7th Chamber – Part II • Conclusion GUEST SPOTS None PRODUCERS RZA, Method Man, ODB UK CHART ENTRY Did not chart GEEKY FACT The insult "I'll cut your ears off and sew them to the back of your head" didn't make the final cut.
Wu-Tang Clan's debut bolted out of the gates like nothing else on Earth. It shouldn't have worked at all, but it sowed the seeds for an illustrious career. Pete Cashmore remembers da ruckus
t's fitting that Wu-Tang's debut album 'Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)' falls at the halfway mark in this celebration, because it served as a turning point in hip-hop. Everything before it sounded quaint and nothing has been the same since. If you were to pitch the idea of the record to a label boss, you would be laughed out of the office. "There are nine rappers. They're going to mix up samples with dialogue very oddly. They will be unmanageable. After their debut, they will pursue solo projects. They're not from the West Coast, which is dominating hip-hop. Oh and you're not going to see any of their faces, so nobody will know what they look like. Cool?" 'Enter The Wu-Tang…''s attack was sneaky. In 1993, as Inspectah Deck confesses today, things were done "by shaking hands and telling people". The
album was a wordof-mouth sensation – people had to really acclimatise to it because there was just too much stuff that had never been done before in music. They rapped about fallibility, growing pains, absent parents. "There was nothing else like that in the world," Masta Killa concurs. "The chances of that being successful? Zip. But we found something unique." "I'm still amazed by it," Deck continues. "Name me three groups who are still going 20 years later. And yet all of the shit we did on that album, from the karate chops to the crazy dialogue…" He shakes his head. "Just listen for the mistakes. You can hear parts where the tapes fuck up.
It wasn't rehearsed or choreographed, just a case of, 'Oh, that sounds dope! Don't fuck with that!'" Thank Wu, nobody did. See page 45 for a Wu-Tang live review
The Wu in the video for 'Da Mystery Of Chessboxin''
From aspirational prodigy to world-renowned hip-hop poet
In 'Illmatic', the genre had found its benchmark record – a blueprint that future stars would be measured against. Angus Batey unravels what made it so perfect
ooking for perfection in art is a fool's errand. But 'Illmatic' is pretty much as close to flawless as it gets. The debut from a gifted teenager, it arrived as New York hip-hop was re-establishing itself, after the music's centre had shifted to LA. The album's enduring greatness lies in the way it transcends time. As the work of a singular talent given space to find his voice, it's as astounding today as it ever was. Musically, it's peerless. It was one of the first albums to see an all-star cast of producers supporting an MC. Nas' lyrical jewels were given lustrous settings by DJ Premier, Large Professor and Pete Rock, all then at their peak. But none of Premier's beats sound like his previous work. Large Pro's efforts might evoke his earlier stuff, but it needs
The fine details
RELEASE DATE April 19, 1994 WHAT WE SAID "There's a whole short life in these tunes, a tense, hurt existence… the grooves are easy but being alive is hard." TRACKLIST • The Genesis • NY State Of Mind • Life's A Bitch • The World Is Yours • Halftime • Memory Lane (Sittin' In Da Park) • One Love • One Time 4 Your Mind • Represent • It Ain't Hard To Tell GUEST SPOTS AZ, Olu Dara, Pete Rock PRODUCERS DJ Premier, LES, Pete Rock, Large Professor, Q-Tip UK CHART ENTRY Did not chart GEEKY FACT The opening to 'The Genesis' samples from the movie Wild Style.
Nas to soar. These aren't off-the-shelf beats delivered by producers hired for the star power; it's a collaboration between musicians working to a unified purpose. None of this would have mattered had Nas not elevated the art of rap to that 'next level'. He's a poet soaring metaphysically even as he stands in his Queensbridge projects home. Here was an MC who saw it all, took notes, then turned it into an indelible, never-to-bebettered verbal image. He began writing raps because of the cost barrier to becoming a filmmaker. "I did alright at school for a little
while," he told me in 1996. "But after I got better at writing rhymes I looked at the rhymes as more promising than a complete education. My mother bought me a typewriter, so I just stayed in the house to write. I listened to rap, so I would write poems, and I'd also write scripts. I went for rap: it was cheaper and easier to rhyme on a beat than to make a movie." For a film turned into a record by a self-educated kid with a typewriter, 'Illmatic' is as good as it'll ever get.
as uncommercial as you liked and still make a living." Fledgling labels Fondle 'Em, Rawkus and Stones Throw set about unleashing fresh new takes on the genre by young upstarts such as Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch, The High & Mighty, Blackalicious and Lootpack. Headspinning wordplay and eccentric beats were backpack's hallmarks – suddenly, the thugged-out likes of Biggie and 2Pac sounded like yesterday's men. Backpack's finest hour came courtesy of Company Flow, a three-man Brooklyn crew led by the prodigiously talented El-P. The trio's debut album, 'Funcrusher Plus', was an astonishing blast of abstract flows and sci-fi beats that was smarter and stranger than anything hip-hop had thrown up before. Oft imitated, never bettered, it's since lost none of its power to dazzle and disorientate. "'Funcrusher Plus' blew my mind," says Talib Kweli today. "It changed my entire perspective on what hip-hop could be." Across the Atlantic, London's Mo' Wax imprint was pushing the hip-hop aesthetic into uncharted territory, jettisoning MCs and placing turntablists front-andcentre to create a woozy, cinematic sound that would be dubbed trip-hop. And if 'Funcrusher Plus' was backpack's defining release, DJ Shadow's 'Endtroducing' was triphop's. "Obviously 'Endtroducing' wasn't a rap album," says Shadow, "but that's what informed it." Hip-hop's dalliance with wild experimentalism didn't last. By the early noughties, both backpack and trip-hop had become derisory terms: the former shorthand for pseudy sulk-rap, the latter for wine-bar muzak. "Most trip-hop was made by people who weren't grounded in hip-hop," says DJ Shadow. "They were imitating a sound, and saying nothing new." While backpack's punk-hop revolution faded away, its restless spirit lives on in the class of 2013: it's hard to imagine Danny Brown, Mr Muthafuckin' eXquire or Chance The Rapper sounding the way they do without backpack having first paved the way for their freewheeling eccentricities.
The fine details
RELEASE DATE July 28, 1997 WHAT WE SAID "A direct reaction to gangsta rap and the Puff Daddy-dominated mainstream, they have re-established hip-hop's credibility and social agenda." TRACKLIST • Bad Touch • Example • 8 Steps To Perfection • Collude/Intrude • Blind • Silence • Legends • Help Wanted • Population Control • Lune TNS • Definitive • Lencorcism • 89.9 Detrimental • Vital Nerve • Tragedy Of War (In III Parts) • The Fire in Which You Burn • Krazy Kings • Last Good Sleep • Info Kill II • Funcrush Scratch GUEST SPOTS J-Treds, Breeze Brewin', RA The Rugged Man PRODUCERS El-P, Mr Len, Bigg Jus UK CHART ENTRY Did not chart GEEKY FACT 'Funcrusher Plus' was the first major success for Rawkus, a label that El-P would later attack over its alleged defrauding of artists. His 2002 solo single 'Deep Space 9mm' featured the nowinfamous line, "Sign to Rawkus?/ I'd rather be mouthfucked by Nazis".
COMPANY FLOW 'FUNCRUSHER PLUS' Hip-hop's leftfield moment kicks
off the backpack revolution
Mainstream hip-hop had lost its spark – but the DIY underground was thriving. Joe Madden reflects on the album that defined the mid-'90s experimental period
y 1996, hip-hop was in a rut, the genre's once-rapid evolution having slowed to a crawl. New York was myopically fixated on the playedout boom-bap sound, while the West Coast was smoking its G-funk era right down to the roach. Hip-hop badly needed its punk-rock moment – and that's what it got. Between 1996 and 1999, hip-hop was gleefully overrun by bar-raising, boundarytrouncing new artists, breaking through via TALIB KWELI a tightly knit network
of underground clubs and independent labels. "We were all so uncommercial that going the DIY route wasn't a political statement for us, it was a necessity," says DJ Shadow, who helped kick-start 'backpack rap' (nicknamed after its fans' fondness for rucksacks) with his Solesides imprint. For this new school of hip-hop nonconformists, the lack of interest from major labels coincided, serendipitously, with exciting new opportunities at a grassroots level. "The mid '90s were a 'sweet spot' for independent hiphop," says Shadow. "Music was cheap to make, in terms of studio time and the duplication of cassettes and vinyl, and you could be
Company Flow in their Brooklyn hood
EMINEM 'THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP' Misogyny and violence hit
the mainstream
Eminem's third album launched him into the commercial stratosphere, turning lurid tales of domestic abuse into pop. Is this his lasting legacy, asks Adam Narkiewicz
is debut album 'Infinite', released in 1996, established him as a credible MC; three years later, 'The Slim Shady LP' gave him fame via a major-label hit record. But it was 2000's 'The Marshall Mathers LP' that made Eminem a megastar. In the US, the LP sold nearly two million copies in a week, smashing Snoop's existing record for first-week rap LP sales, and Eminem would soon be competing
The fine details
RELEASE DATE May 23, 2000 for arena gigs with the same Mickey Mouse Club pop acts he came out the door swinging for. Some say he created unrealistic expectations, cursing a wayward, antiestablishment artform forever by turning it into a business. Eminem was white, cute and unarguably gifted. But how did this new kid from Detroit who came straight out of leftfield manage to sit at the same table as Biggie and Puff Daddy? At the time, they were the mega artists of Death Row and Bad Boy records (despite the fact that Biggie had been shot dead in 1997), and they had come to personify what was expected from a top-tier gangsta rapper. The fans, the industry, and its gatekeepers expected a certain level WHAT WE SAID "Storytelling of breathtaking skill and dexterity… [a] gruelling assault course of lyrical genius. The product of a talent that's supremely untouchable." TRACKLIST • Public Service Announcement • 2000 • Kill You • Stan • Paul • Who Knew • Steve Berman • The Way I Am • The Real Slim Shady • Remember Me? • I'm Back • Marshall Mathers • Ken Kaniff • Drug Ballad • Amityville • Bitch Please II • Kim • Under The Influence • Criminal GUEST SPOTS RBX, Sticky Fingaz, Dido, Dina Rae, Bizarre, Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, Nate Dogg PRODUCERS Dr Dre, Mel-Man, The 45 King, Bass Brothers, Eminem UK CHART ENTRY 1 GEEKY FACTS Eminem is the only white person to ever appear on the cover of The Source and XXL magazines. He was also made an honorary priest by the Raelians Religious Movement, who are a non-violent religious group.
Eminem's iconic 'Slim Shady' look
of turbo-masculine hardcore from rap. Back in his days with NWA, Ice Cube could rage against racist police brutality, complain about how crack was wiping out a generation of black youth and fulminate about how slavery had now been replaced by the mass incarceration of young black Americans. He could drop the n-word every other bar. What could Eminem possibly do to compete? He twisted it. He turned all the rage and resentment that so many rappers had harnessed before onto women. Despite being a father to daughters, Em took his anger inside the home, and railed against his mother and his wife harder than Ice Cube ever went at the cops. In a 2001 study examining 490 songs from 13 artists, including NWA and Ice-T, Professor Edward Armstrong from Murray State University in Kentucky found that 22 per cent of those songs contained violent and misogynistic lyrics. 'The Marshall Mathers LP', however, contained a whopping 78 per cent. Armstrong discovered that of the entire LP, 11 tracks contained violent and misogynistic lyrics, while nine featured the choking, stabbing, drowning, shooting and throat-slitting of women. Rape fantasies were nothing new in rap, certainly not in the scene Eminem came from, but he took an underground niche and turned it into pop, with nearly 11 million albums sold by 2012. This influence continues. In 2013, Action Bronson raps about hookers and sluts, while Mac Miller, famed for songs about snapbacks, has integrated himself with the likes of Odd Future and Black Hippy proclaiming, "I will punch a bitch in the face", and spitting choruses like "Suck my dick before I slap you with it". It's a very unsettling legacy to be left with, and what Marshall Mathers makes of it is anyone's guess. But, no doubt, his vicious alter ego Slim Shady would certainly be proud.
3000 as he picked up his gong. "That's all I got to say." In the same year, the Goodie Mob – Cee Lo Green's first group – released their debut, 'Soul Food'. "What you niggas know about the Dirty South? " they asked with menace, introducing the phrase for the first time. The battle lines were drawn and, over the next five years, under cover of the East and West Coasts slugging it out for imagined supremacy, the South would rise, culminating in the knockout punch of OutKast's fourth album, 2000's 'Stankonia'. Being slighted by the mainstream forced the South to forge its own identity. Key cities created splinter genres (crunk in Memphis, bounce in New Orleans, chopped and screwed in Houston), start-up labels such as Cash Money and Master P's No Limit flourished and producers road-tested new jams in strip clubs. "If the girls' butts move to a record, I got a record," says Floridian producer Michael 'Taz' Williams in the documentary Dirty States Of America. OutKast, as their name suggests, were different. "They told our story in a more hip-hop, less booty-shake way," says rapper Bubba Sparxxx today, who grew up 70 miles from Atlanta and is famed for the hugely successful 'Ugly'. "Kilo Ali, who was the first king of Atlanta, was more like 2 Live Crew – strippers in the shake club dancing to it – whereas OutKast was more representing for Atlanta hip-hop. 'Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik' [OutKast's 1994 debut] was huge in Georgia, so was their second album 'ATLiens' [1996], then with 'Aquemini' [1998], they really crossed over." Buoyed by success, OutKast bought R&B legend Bobby Brown's studio in Atlanta, named it Stankonia ('stank' meaning 'funky; '-onia' taken from 'Plutonia', a futuristic city) and began sessions for their fourth album. "Stankonia is the place I imagined where you can open yourself up and be free to express anything," said André 3000 – and it was there, with Big Boi and a cast of local musicians, that Southern hip-hop was re-imagined. Single 'BOB' was a sonic blitzkrieg, which they followed with their anthem of remorse, 'Ms Jackson' – the force that would help drive 'Stankonia' to quadruple platinum sales in the US. "By the time they did 'Stankonia' and 'Speakerboxxx'/'The Love Below' [2003], OutKast were outta here," says Bubba. "Five million, 10 million… they were gone – straight into the history books."
The fine details
RELEASE DATE October 31, 2000 WHAT WE SAID "It has eternal qualities that will unravel in time on an emotional, intellectual and spiritual level." TRACKLIST • Intro • Gasoline Dreams • I'm Cool (Interlude) • So Fresh, So Clean • Ms Jackson • Snappin' & Trappin' • DF • Spaghetti Junction • Kim & Cookie • I'll Call Before I Come • BOB • Xplosion • Good Hair • We Luv Deez Hoez • Humble Mumble • Drinkin' Again (Interlude) •? • Red Velvet • Cruisin' In The ATL (Interlude) • Gangsta Shit • Toilet Tisha • Slum Beautiful • Pre-Nump • Stankonia (Stanklove) GUEST SPOTS Backbone, Erykah Badu, Big Gipp, Big Rube, Blackowned C-Bone, B-Real, Eco, Gangsta Boo, Cee Lo Green, J-Sweet, Khujo, Killer Mike, Sleepy Brown, T-Mo, Slimm Calhoun PRODUCERS OutKast, David 'Mr DJ' Sheats, Organized Noize (Rico Wade, Ray Murray, Sleepy Brown) UK CHART ENTRY 10 GEEKY FACT André 3000 once said: "What punk was to rock, crunk is to rap."
OUTKAST 'STANKONIA' The album that proved the
Dirty South would rise again
The East and West Coasts aren't the only US hip-hop breeding grounds. As Phil Hebblethwaite argues, the South played a crucial role in its birth – and 'Stankonia' is its crowning glory
n 1988, Daddy-O from New York's Stetsasonic rapped the following lines on 'Talkin' All That Jazz': "Tell the truth, James Brown was old/'Til Eric And Rakim came out with 'I Got Soul' ". He was talking about sampling and how it "brings back old R&B", but he was also recognising the crucial role that the South (James Brown's homeland) played in the birth of hip-hop. In his book Country Fried Soul: Adventures In Dirty South Hip-Hop, Mississippi MC/ producer David Banner goes one step further: "There are all these groups that people sampled and made ANDRE 3000 millions of records off…
all Southern records." He adds: "But we never get credit for it." That lack of respect plagued the South as its own groups emerged in the '80s and early '90s. Luther Campbell from Miami's 2 Live Crew took an obscenity charge all the way to the Supreme Court in the early '90s, winning a freedom of expression case for all of hip-hop, yet to the New York and LAbased industry his music was forever 'regional'. Atlanta's OutKast were booed when they won New Artist Of The Year, Group at the 1995 Source Awards in Manhattan. "The South got something to say," said André
André and Big Boi in the 'Ms Jackson' promo video
MISSY ELLIOTT 'MISS E… SO ADDICTIVE' Ecstasy, attitude and
breaking the mould
Her futuristic blend of rap, R&B and techno made Missy a bona fide superstar – and took hip-hop into uncharted territory, says Charlotte Richardson Andrews
ip-hop's chemical romance with MDMA began more than a decade ago, referenced with gurningface subtlety in the title of Missy 'Misdemeanour' Elliott's groundbreaking 2001 album, 'Miss E… So Addictive'. After her inventive platinum-bagging 1997 debut, 'Supa Dupa Fly', and the darker 1999 follow-up 'Da Real World', Elliott was all about experimentation, fusing her leftfield palette of R&B hip-hop with
While Jay Z and Nas were busy stoking a diss track feud that would last 'til 2005, Missy was out to unify: the club vibe on '4 My People' extolled a loved-up togetherness – recasting the block-party spirit for a club-happy Missy gets generation. Elliott, rejected her freak on by the industry during her early days for being "too fat", was frank and empowered, flouting all the usual video-vixen conventions with gusto, discharging heat-seeking spitballs and Matrix– style moves in the 'Get Ur Freak On' video. By the time 'Miss E…' came out, Elliott was a peerless polymath: a rapper, singer, dancer, mentor and in-demand songwriter and producer, heading her own label, The Goldmind Inc. Together with co-producer Tim 'Timbaland' Mosley, Elliott had created a game-changing blueprint of eerie beatsmithing that influenced the fabric of late'90s/early-'00s rap and R&B, helping to propel the likes of Ginuwine, Nicole Wray, Tweet, Destiny's Child and the late Aaliyah to success. In an era that produced alpha-male rapper-moguls such as Jay Z and P Diddy, Elliott held it down. And with 'Miss E…', she showed how, in the right hands, hip-hop could be reconfigured for a new age.
Asian tabla, sitars and hopped-up dance beats. The result was an album studded with irresistible crossover hit singles that dropped (and charted) on urban, pop and club dancefloors around the globe. '4 My People', which Missy dubbed "techno meets hip-hop", became an international club anthem, remixed to ubiquitous success by Basement Jaxx, while the eerie 'Get Ur Freak On' (remixed with a guest spot by Canadian pop star Nelly Furtado) earned Elliott her first Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance. 'Miss E…''s hybrid percussion and spacey R&B electronica felt positively futuristic after the glowering, murderous gangsta rap and East/ West Coast rivalries of the previous decade.
The fine details
RELEASE DATE May 15, 2001 WHAT WE SAID "Pills and thrills from hip-hop's First Lady." TRACKLIST • …So Addictive • Dog In Heat • One Minute Man • Lick Shots • Get Ur Freak On • Scream AKA Itchin' • Old School Joint • Take Away • 4 My People • Bus-A-Bus Interlude • Whatcha Gon' Do • Step Off • X-Tasy • Slap! Slap! Slap! • I've Changed • One Minute Man (Remix) GUEST SPOTS Redman & Method Man, Ludacris, Ginuwine, Eve, Kameelah Williams, Busta Rhymes, Timbaland, Da Brat, Ms Jade, Lil' Mo, Jay Z, Kim Burrell PRODUCERS Missy Elliott, Timbaland, D Man, Big Tank, Craig Brockman UK CHART ENTRY 10 GEEKY FACT Missy won the short-lived Best Female Rap Solo Performance Grammy Award in 2003 and 2004.
From Roxanne Shanté to Azealia Banks
Hip-hop may be a male-dominated world, but don't get it twisted – the ladies have always been present. Rap's diss-record trope began in 1984, when 14-year-old NYC native Roxanne Shanté began a call-and-response feud with rap group UTFO. Two years later, Salt-N-Pepa released the taboo-busting LP 'Hot, Cool & Vicious'. Inspired by it, Brooklyn's MC Lyte put out 'Lyte As A Rock' in '88, the same year that LA crew JJ Fad released their Dre-produced LP, 'Supersonic'. Queen Latifah struck out as a feminist icon with '89's 'All Hail The Queen', while her Blighty-born Native Tongues crew sister Monie Love earned UK and US success with her 1990 debut, 'Down To Earth'. As the '90s dawned, Ladybug Mecca repped for the coffee-shop poets in NYC's Digable Planets, while Death Row's Lady Of Rage added a welcome riposte to Snoop's Dogg Pound empire. Chi-town's Da Brat was the first solo female rapper to go platinum, with her debut 'Funkdafied', and promptly hooked up with Lil' Kim on 'Not Tonight' (Ladies Night Remix). Missy Elliott then took hip-hop to next-level heights with 'Supa Dupa Fly' in '97. Fugees' Lauryn Hill gifted the world 'The Miseducation Of…' in 1998, and Jean Grae debuted 'Attack Of The Attacking Things' in 2002. A decade later, a new crop of femcees – Azealia Banks, Nicki Minaj, Angel Haze – are making good on those matriarchal rap legacies.
WorldMags.net Salt-N-Pepa
in 1988
ROOTS MANUVA 'RUN COME SAVE ME' UK hip-hop finds its voice
Britain's early attempts at the genre were cheesy and derivative. But, says Roy Spencer, home-grown sounds soon gave the UK its own flavour
ike its big brother across the pond, UK hip-hop has had to draw on the cultures around it to adapt and survive. Over the many years since the first tapes from the States circulated, it's slowly but surely developed a style all of its own, with a distinctly British twang. The classic of the modern British era is Roots Manuva's second LP, 'Run Come Save Me'. It would join the dots between UK rap's history, and strengthen its DNA for a generation to come. Someone listening to British hip-hop for the first time might baulk ROOTS MANUVA at the sound of early
Rodney Smith stayed true to his Roots
The fine details
RELEASE DATE August 13, 2001 behind the mixing desk. The blueprint was set, so when it became time for 'Run…', he knew what he had to do. "I was absorbing everything," Smith says. "I captured that cross-section of early electronic, rave and hip-hop. The whole album was a massive experiment, but I wanted to be true to the sounds and sonics around me." It signalled a new dawn for UK rap, and featured guest spots from its finest (including London Posse's Rodney P). Benchmark albums by Skinnyman and Jehst followed. Roots Manuva had opened the door and snapped the key in the lock. Not that he would ever take that credit. "UK rap had reached a sweet spot," he says. "I feel sensitive saying it was the best time for the music… it was just another day down at the coal face, really." Indeed. Respect to all the UK rap miners out there. WHAT WE SAID "Brit-rap's finest hour to date." TRACKLIST • …No Strings • Bashment Boogie • Witness (1 Hope) • Join The Dots • Black Box Interlude • Ital Visions • Kicking The Cack • Dub Styles • Trim Body • Artical • Hol' It Up • Stone The Crows • Sinny Sin Sins • Evil Rabbit • Swords In The Dirt • Highest Grade • Dreamy Days GUEST SPOTS MK (cuts), Seanie T, Niara, Pastor Lee, The Lingalong Tecknishun, Riddla, Big P, Blackitude, Danny Vicious, Rodney P, Skeme , Chali 2na, Ricky Rankin, Prabjote Osahn PRODUCERS Roots Manuva (aka Lord Gosh & Hylton Smythe), Lotek, Al Mono, Skillamanjaro UK CHART ENTRY 33 GEEKY FACT Like the title of his debut album, all of Roots Manuva's studio gear was 'Brand New Second Hand'. "When I first got my Atari 1040 ST computer, I brought it home in two Sainsbury's carrier bags," he says. "It didn't need a shiny box. It was new in my head."
'80s rappers such as MC Merlin or Derek B (RIP) trying to mimic Yankee stylings. Roots Manuva didn't follow suit. "Some of the early stuff had a cheesy, transatlantic, 'homeboy' style," says Rodney Smith, aka Roots Manuva. "It didn't matter. It wasn't about authenticity then, it was about how bad you were." Times changed and UK rappers became braver with their own dialects. Roots cites rappers like Goldtop and crews such as Demon Boyz, Massive Attack and the mighty London Posse as pioneers of that style. Smith himself wove a career through the mid-'90s on a string of killer singles and his debut album, 'Brand New Second Hand'. Repping his own cultural make-up was vital. He blended cockney with patois on the mic, and hip-hop with sound system, dub, rave and jungle frequencies
Beastie Boys and Public Enemy bring the noise to our shores
One had huge political balls. The other had cage-dancers and a massive inflatable cock. Together, Public Enemy and Beastie Boys brought hip-hop to the UK in the late '80s, first by provoking tabloid outrage, then by producing some of the most inspired music of the age. Beasties' Licensed To Ill tour (1987), with PE supporting, was the highestprofile rap tour of the UK, largely due to press disgust at the behaviour of the Beasties in the wake of their hit '(You Gotta) Fight…'. "That song was meant to be a weird B-side," said Adam Yauch in 2007. "We'd have preferred some other shit to be the flagship." But it made the Beasties so successful that their childish streaks were given free rein. "Someone from the record label said, 'You can have anything you want onstage for this tour,''' Mike D recalled. "Then we became like Beavis & Butt-Head: 'Huhhuh, can we get a giant dick onstage?" Each night, Public Enemy were learning how best to bum rush such a big show. "They made me rethink what Public Enemy was supposed to be doing," said Chuck D. "The Beasties literally helped us get our act together by more than living up to their name." Both dangerous and accessible, the tour turned a whole generation of kids on to their own brand of nefarious rebel sounds.
Beastie Boys play Brixton in 1987
The ultimate realisation of hip-hop's most grotesque star
The fine details
RELEASE DATE November 22, 2010 WHAT WE SAID "The best thing he's done since his gamechanging debut, and heartening evidence to suggest the selfprofessed Louis Vuitton don is in a good place." TRACKLIST • Dark Fantasy • Gorgeous • Power • All Of The Lights (Interlude) • All Of The Lights • Monster • So Appalled • Devil In A New Dress • Runaway • Hell Of A Life • Blame Game • Lost In The World • Who Will Survive In America GUEST SPOTS Kid Cudi, Raekwon, Jay Z Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, Bon Iver, Swizz Beatz, Pusha T, Prynce CyHi, RZA, John Legend PRODUCERS RZA, Kanye West No ID, Jeff Bhasker, Mike Dean, S1, Andrew Dawson, Plain Pat Bink!, Emile Haynie, Mike Caren, DJ Frank E, Rihanna UK CHART ENTRY 16 GEEKY FACT We haven't seen Kanye's bank statement, but it's rumoured that the album cost $3million to make.
One artist is still the most talked-about in the genre 40 years after its birth, and he's a total renaissance man. Tom Howard reviews just what it is about Kanye that makes him so extraordinary
guess every superhero needs his theme music," says Kanye West on 'Power', the gloriously self-indulgent lead single from the rapper's fifth album. The same song ends with West ruminating on his own suicide: "I'm jumping out the window/I'm letting everything go/Now this'll be a beautiful death". Moments like these – which juxtapose the most dramatic aspects of West's personality against each other – are exactly why Kanye is the most grotesque star in modern hip-hop. And 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' is full of these moments. They incorporate every aspect of Kanye: asshole, Kanye in genius, weirdo, egomaniac, typically understated nerd, pop star, gobshite, mode "jackass" (so says Barack
Obama). Here is a man who bumps headfirst into lampposts, attacks photographers, stagebombs Taylor Swift, has a child with Kim Kardashian. A man who's friends with Jay Z, Rihanna, Rick Ross, Justin Vernon, Raekwon and RZA. And, crucially, a man willing to use these facets of his personality to create the most ambitious mainstream rap album ever made. Check the grand and absurd pop statement 'All Of The Lights'. The rampant and nasty 'Monster'. The sad and scared 'Lost In The
World'. And then 'Runaway', which opens with the rap: "She find pictures in my email/ I sent this girl a picture of my dick" like the magnificent moron that he is. Even in a world where what was started on 'MBDTF' has been taken to an extreme on 'Yeezus', this record is the ultimate realisation of one pop star's outrageous persona. And everything Kanye West does from now on will just be another plot twist in his always beautiful, endlessly dark and forever-twisted fantasy.
The "new king of the West Coast" is young but wise beyond his years
In 2012, a new star rose in the form of California's Kendrick Lamar. Phil Hebblethwaite reasseses a debut that proves the future is bright
he shock of the new counts for everything in hip-hop. When, in 2010, Waka Flocka Flame released his brilliant grunt of a debut album, 'Flockaveli', adding that lyrical rap was over ("Nobody want to hear that damn dictionary rap," he said), Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man foolishly responded, and in doing so instantly became a hip-hop grandad. The shock of Kendrick Lamar's masterful 2012 debut, 'Good Kid, MAAD City', was that it stole the youth, just like 'Flockaveli' had, without alienating the old guard. A year before its release, Snoop, Dre and The Game had publicly endorsed Lamar live onstage, calling him the "new king of the West Coast", and perhaps that's understandable: Lamar isn't the prodigal son of gangsta rap, he's the perfect son – supremely talented, wise beyond
The fine details
RELEASE DATE October 22, 2012 WHAT WE SAID "A big-budget reminder that the 25-year-old hasn't forgotten his roots." TRACKLIST • Sherane aka Master Splinter's Daughter • Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe • Backseat Freestyle • The Art Of Peer Pressure • Money Trees • Poetic Justice • Good Kid • MAAD city • Swimming Pools (Drank) • Sing About Me/ I'm Dying Of Thirst • Real • Compton GUEST SPOTS Drake, Dr Dre, MC Eiht, Jay Rock, Anna Wise PRODUCERS The Bizness, DJ Dahi, Hit-Boy, Just Blaze, Like Of, Pac Div, Terrace Martin, Scoop DeVille, Skhye Hutch, Pharrell, Sounwave, Tabu, THC, T-Minus UK CHART ENTRY 16 GEEKY FACT One album in, and Kendrick is already making diva-esque demands. He requests Fruity Pebbles, baked chicken, a bottle of Hennessy cognac and polo socks on his rider.
his years and yet, as fellow LA-native Dâm-Funk would say, he keeps his hood pass intact. He's the good kid in the mad city of Compton. His album made for a sweet one-two with Frank Ocean's 'Channel Orange' last year, both records mining gold from the rich history of African-American music and taking the tradition of autobiographical storytelling down wonderful, imaginative new avenues. Clearly, Waka was wrong. 'Good Kid, MAAD City' was an instant commercial success, too. Former Bad Boy rapper Shyne, however, took to Twitter to declare the album "traaaaash". The West Coast jumped to Lamar's defence, particularly The Game. Shyne countered, calling The Game "my son,
my student… I threw weapons to this zombie", to which The Game chucked back a diss freestyle The future titled 'Cough of hip-hop Up A Lung'. is in safe hands And that was the end of that.
NME asked the experts and legends what it is about rapping that's so brilliant, how they developed their flow, and why it's changed their lives
"The style that me and Sen Dog use was developed during our first album – we didn't sound anything like that on our demo. We developed this high-and-low style, which is what Public Enemy did, except in reverse. Personally, hip-hop enabled me to make something of myself. It allowed us to achieve something bigger and better than what was offered to us in life."
"When you speak about the art of hip-hop you think about the lyrical content and poetry. Rappers are poets. I love to hear rappers with really good flows. Biggie will be known forever for his flows. When he got on a beat he almost melted into it. That's what makes great rappers, an understanding of that art."
"I do not consider myself a rapper by any stretch of the imagination, although I would love to be one. But I'm not. [On 'Rapture'] I didn't look to anyone to get a 'flow'. I was enamoured with this beautiful girl who was in the Funky 4+1 – they all shared raps. I don't think there were a huge number of girls rapping at the time. I remember the party up at the Bronx, but I don't remember seeing any girls that night either scratching or rapping. But I think the power of it was that it was this voice, a thunderous outcry, this outpouring of emotion and ideas. I think it's about a lot of great wordplay… it's just brilliant, you know? I like things that baffle me. And you know, because I'm so white-bread – even though I think I'm not sometimes, I'm not as white-bread as other people – but you know, when it comes down to really thinking like a rapper I am totally white-bread."
"The more we show skills and the artform of hip-hop, the more it stays alive. It helps people understand that we are serious about this, and makes them take us seriously."
"The art of rapping is beyond. A good rap can make you want to watch GRANDMASTER CAZ a film, read a good book. It can make you want to study science. The art of rapping is as important as talking."
"You should always rap for the art of hip-hop. You don't have to have an album in the charts to justify how good you are. I put people like Roots Manuva, Ty and Akala (who is a supreme MC) together. Those guys are different. They don't comply with what it is to be a commercial artist. They play by their own rules. Akala has just come back from Cambodia. He works with young people. Old people. That's what art is. Hip-hop isn't just having an album – it's a whole culture."
"My influences when I started to rhyme were dudes like Cappadonna. They were the people
Qbert: head of the Piklz crew
that I looked to, local cats. It was the local cats around the way who were our Big Daddy Kane, our Public Enemy, our Rakim; these were really the people we looked up to, our legends, so I listened to them."
"Salt-N-Pepa inspired me to begin rapping. They had something to say that would help my generation. I practised my flow and looked for varying ways to put words together. Every evening after school I practised my breath control, while using Salt-N-Pepa's hits. Rakim was my MC hero but I didn't try to emulate anyone. In terms of rapping as a whole, my connection is to the culture that allowed the community to have a voice. A voice that perpetuated truth!"
Proof Space Hamsters and Piklz, who were held together by Qbert. An alumni of both the Junkies and Piklz is Shortkut – a DJ that Cut Chemist holds dear to his heart. "Out of all the guys, he's my favourite," says Cut. "He can just glue right into the rhythm of whatever music is playing. It's just… funky. That's one DJ who really can scratch."
A brief history, courtesy of turntablist Cut Chemist
"What is a DJ if he can't scratch?" asked Egyptian Lover in 1984. As a contemporary of DJ Shadow and the musical backbone of Jurassic 5, Cut Chemist is more than qualified to answer this question. "I love scratching," he says. "The turntable is our instrument. Like a guitar is to rock, a turntable is to hip-hop." As a musical style, scratching has come a long way from Grand Wizard Theodore rubbing on his decks in the '70s. Cut recognises the originators, but prefers to talk up the San Francisco Bay Area as a breeding ground of style. "Philadelphia was it in the mid-'80s, but a lot of talent came outta San Francisco. They had a culture of mobile DJs. The Bay Area was similar to LA – DJs would drive to house parties, set up and scratch. New York had park jams; we had house parties to show off in. Another influence was the LA Mixmasters on radio station KDAY. A lot of the Bay Area DJs were listening." Crews who picked up that baton included the Beat Junkies, Bullet
"Don't ask me the rapper question. Ask me the MC question! MCing is rhythmic rhyming over hip-hop beats. That's a technical term for it. But it's the stage show, it's a mindset, it's entertainment – it's so many different things. You can't just be an MC and not be an entertainer – anybody could talk on
MC Lyte: inspired by Salt-N-Pepa
Run-DMC's DMC originally wanted to be a DJ
"It's weird. I wanted to be a DJ. I had a cassette of Music and graff are entwined in hip-hop culture Grandmaster Flash fast-cutting 'Good Drum'n'bass pioneer Goldie we needed a new aesthetic. Times' and I wanted started out as a graffiti artist. It became my life. Street art to do that. Then "There's a sense of abandonment always finds a way." I found out he had in graffiti and hip-hop," he says. a crew of MCs and "Like with the music, the people I heard their track were doing it for themselves. It 'Superrappin''. That's was easy to make something if when I started you had nothing. A lot of graffiti writing rhymes. writers had been rejected by At the time I was society, so we got together to do buying cassettes something for ourselves. With Graffiti in the every week from all this degradation and decay, Bronx, 1975 a guy I knew at high school, and I just started paying attention to the rhymers. On the cassettes they rhymed about things that weren't making it onto records – the clothes, the streets, economics, politics, history. I studied those cassettes and thought, 'This is me. This is who I am. This is what's relevant to my existence, not throwing your hands in the air, party everywhere.'"
Crate-digging for breaks is the bedrock of hip-hop
Sampling's origins can be traced back to the musique concrète movement of the 1940s, and its experiments with spliced audio tape. Hip-hop's love affair with samples, however, began in the late '80s, when the Akai MPC60 and E-mu SP-1200 samplers helped to define the sound. Scorching '70s funk breakdowns provided much of the raw material – until 1989, when Beastie Boys' 'Paul's Boutique' and De La Soul's '3 Feet High And Rising' ushered in Master a new era of anything-goes sampler DJ Shadow sampling. Unfortunately, both albums fell foul of the music industry's newfound vigilance regarding unauthorised samples, and expensive lawsuits followed. As the '90s rolled around, producers changed tack. "That DJ Premier school of production was all about chopping the shit out of a sample," says Mark Ronson. By the early noughties, Madlib and J Dilla were moving sampling into soulful but surreal new territories. "Funky beats happened in ways you'd never heard before," says DJ Shadow. And now we've come full circle: golden-age breaks are making a comeback, via producers such as Hit-Boy and Harry Fraud.
"There's different elements to rapping, and one is the actual ability to project. One time, I went over to [co-founder of Def Jam] Russell Simmons' place – I took a British rapper over there to get some tips from him – and he said it's about your enunciation and the clarity and that people can actually hear your message, the delivery of it. And then obviously having something to say – it doesn't necessarily have to be political or whatever. The ones that have something to say are the ones whose records will stay with people a long time."
Rakim works his magic onstage
the mic or make records in the studio, but the art of being an MC is selling yourself. To me, there's a difference between what an MC is, and what a rapper is, but the interpretation has changed a lot since then. I adapt to the times, but my heart, mind and soul is still for where I come from. I still got the same old-school principles and old-school values. Just 'cos things have changed doesn't mean my shit's changed. It's so many different things."
"My flow came from me being a writer first. I'd filled notebook after notebook with rhymes that hadn't been written to a beat, but to music in my head – some kind of inner music. So then it was a case of fitting these rhymes onto beats that actually existed; and I was also try to put words in places that they didn't 'belong'."
"You have to let the music take you on a ride, or you're not going to let your soul be free. For B-boys, the art is not just technique and rhythm, it's passion. Battling is probably the most honest thing a B-boy can do. When I was coming up, to protect my reputation, I had to put it on the line. And the youth are still energised – they see the competitive nature of this thing and they're like, 'I can be better than everyone else.' It's something great. B-boying is still alive."
Home taping helped take hip-hop worldwide
In the '80s, hip-hop spread across the globe via endlessly re-copied cassette recordings of New York radio shows by pioneering DJs such as Mr Magic and Kool DJ Red Alert. By 1990, the likes of Tony Touch were going straight to cassette, mixing up 90 minutes of box-fresh bangers for $5 a pop. The mixtape was born. Soon mixtapes became big business: Rawkus Records' 1997 mixtape 'Soundbombing' single-handedly launched the careers of Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Company Flow. The mixtape has evolved again: Action Bronson, Danny Brown and Chance The Rapper all owe their careers to buzz generated by their early mixtapes.
Tony Touch: this man had it taped
"It's a creative collaging of everyday life, of the particular culture you come from, your influences and whatever else you're trying to get across when you lay a song down."
Richard 'Crazy Legs' Colón, the world's most famous breakdancer, on the artform he's dedicated his life to
"You can be really simple or you can be really complex in what you rap, it's all about the perspective you're coming from. You can not be lyrical and still be as dope as someone who's a really technical lyrical rapper. It's all about where you're coming from and your own voice. Sometimes you just hear it – like that Dr Dre verse on that Kendrick Lamar song 'Compton' – I don't know what exactly it is but there's something in his voice that's reminiscent of how shit used to be."
Richard 'Crazy Legs' Colón in action
From Daisy Age to gangsta, G-funk to flute loops – the records that altered the genre forever NWA
Dre ruled hip-hop behind a cloud of smoke after this pungent dose of G-funk hit the shelves. NWA had screeched to a halt, and he'd ventured out on his own to show the world that he was the brain behind the beats all along. The sheen from his solid-gold production would send 'The Chronic' four times platinum in a year. "Before I got with Interscope, everybody was slamming doors on me," Dre told Vibe years later. "I remember listening to my record on my balcony with Nate Dogg, like, 'Is this shit good or not?' I had no idea it would do what it did." Soon the whole world was wishing their cars had a threewheel motion, and every barbecue they attended was in the city of Compton. Notable also for the introduction of his protégé, Snoop Doggy Dogg.
Built around a title track that remains one of the most intoxicatingly sociopathic hip-hop singles ever released, 'Straight Outta Compton' represented a watershed moment, both defining and popularising the gangsta-rap template: profane rhymes over thunderous funk, shot through with a heady atmosphere of danger and nihilism. Whether the album was an authentic reflection of America's inner-city woes, or merely a dubious exploitation of them, would be debated for years to come, but group member Ice Cube considered it an honest expression of West Coast individualism. "Maybe I'm over-romanticising this,'' he said, "but I think NWA made every artist feel like they could be themselves."
Snoop Dogg became a superstar nine months before his debut, when Dr Dre gave him a starring role on 'The Chronic'. Snoop stood out because Dre can't rap. He's oafish, whereas Snoop flows around beats like a river over jagged rocks. He defined the lazy genius of early-'90s West Coast hip-hop, and when the Dre-produced 'Doggystyle' dropped it became the fastest-selling album ever. The subject matter was hard, but the delivery was irresistible. 'Gin And Juice' and 'Who Am I (What's My Name)?' became instant classics, and their creator a rap legend. He's never been as menacing or cool since. But, then again, neither has anyone else.
"We're really learning our craft in the studio,'' said Ad-Rock in 1994, "We're really experimenting a lot." Hence 'Sabotage' – the perfect blend of punk and rap. But that's just one reason why the trio's fourth record is seminal. First up, there's Q-Tip's run-out on 'Get It Together'. Then there are the jams ('Futterman's Rule', 'Eugene's Lament') as a live band. That's not forgetting Adam 'MCA' Yauch challenging misogyny in hip-hop on 'Sure Shot'. And how about the trio sampling a flute on that same song (and on 'Flute Loop')? When all this is taken as a whole, 'Ill Communication' makes most bands look as imaginative as a pavement.
Cypress Hill's second album was to become hip-hop's most comprehensive crossover success to date. It was the record that sneaked gun-talk and blunt-smoke into the bedrooms of white suburban teens, offering them a deceptively accessible peek into a lurid world where "I smoke shit straight off the roach clip" and "A to the motherfuckin' K, homeboy". Its all-conquering lead single 'Insane In The Brain' hooked in everyone from ravers to grunge kids, and established itself as a generational anthem. It was the perfect showcase for Cypress Hill's threeway interplay: DJ Muggs' low-slung funk, Sen Dog's skunk-dried holler and B-Real's psycho-ringmaster cackle. "I didn't think it was a hit single," admits B-Real. "It was the record company who pushed for it – turns out they were right on the money!"
And so dawned the Daisy Age. The sounds were provided by the Lee Perry of the sampler, Prince Paul, his production representing the kind of rare alchemy that could be achieved by fusing 50 years' worth of recorded music with a gift for sonic collage. And the class clowns (who secretly read all the books) were Posdnuos, Maseo and Dave aka Trugoy The Dove. On the mic, they spoke in riddles that were immediately quotable, yet a puzzle to crack. "A lot of rappers like Public Enemy are putting messages into their songs but people are more attracted by the music," explained Trugoy at the time. "If you've got a puzzle for them to pay attention to they'll listen to what's being said instead of just passing on the words." Here was hip-hop's first 3D world, open for visitors.
Following years of domination by the West Coast's gangstarap contingent, The Notorious BIG's debut was the release that reinvigorated hip-hop within the city that had birthed it: New York. A street-level battle-rapper since his mid-teens, Biggie had developed into one of hip-hop's most dazzling stylists, capable of delivering endless quotables via an extraordinary and monumentally stoned flow. Throw in career-peak beats from the likes of DJ Premier, Trackmasters and Sean 'Puffy' Combs and it's little wonder that 'Ready To Die' has become one of hip-hop's most enduring touchstones.
Ice Cube's second album established him as hip-hop's most wilfully provocative motormouth, effortlessly capable of generating moral outrage among politicians, the press and parents' groups. Here, he articulates the frustration felt by many young black men trapped in the ghetto. "Political rap music serves as information,'' he said. "Once you have enough information to be able to understand people, you begin to respect them. And that's where prejudice ends. I hope people can understand my point of view." Whether tearing into the police ('Alive On Arrival'), the US government ('I Wanna Kill Sam') or his ex-NWA bandmates ('No Vaseline'), Cube is electrifying, and backed up by some of the filthiest gangstafunk beats the West Coast ever produced.
The third straight masterpiece from Tribe – a success rate that is pretty much an anomaly in hip-hop. It was buoyed by a triumvirate of instantly classic singles ('Award Tour', 'Electric Relaxation' and 'Oh My God'), and proved that the East was most definitely in the house. The team further explored their dusty sample crates with a low-end theory that made fans beam like the faces on the album's cover. On the mic, Phife and Q-Tip were sharp as ever, trading verses and trading the spotlight. "We hope you find our A young Snoop Doggy Dogg, presentation just right", chirps the Dre's protégé album's soothing narrator. We did.
Together on 2011's 'Watch The Throne', the world's biggest rap stars reinvigorated the hip-hop collaboration album. Essentially an exercise in two very rich men rapping about being very rich men, it features grandiose flourishes such as the pair rapping over a sample of Otis Redding's 'Try A Little Tenderness' on 'Otis', plus guest-spots from an aboutto-be-a-thing Frank Ocean ('No Church In The Wild') and an already-a-thing Beyoncé ('Lift Off') while never getting carried away with its own luxuriousness. Real classy.
A new Public Enemy? More social empowerment? What's next for the music that's "bigger than rock'n'roll"?
"The stuff that you hear on the radio – people talkin' about bitches and hos, glorifying drugs and disrespecting women – that's rap. That's not hip-hop. People get the two mixed up. Rap music is the bastard child of hip-hop. Record companies are only putting out that stuff because they don't want the inner-city people to get educated on anything. When Melle Mel did 'The Message', he was explaining to people about the rats and the hustlers and the pimps, and how he was trying to get out of all that. People can learn from that. Then you have 'White Lines', talking about cocaine and what it's done to society: that's the good hip-hop. But some of these rap guys, they're selling crack to their own people. People just have to understand what hip-hop is and what rap music is, and make sure that they can define both. Hip-hop is gonna always be here, because we – Bambaataa, Flash, Herc, myself – are still here. These rap guys are running out of ideas. That's why they're sampling all the old '80s and '90s hip-hop records – so they can go back to that mindset when hip-hop was real and not watered down."
"It's like Martin Luther King's dream: white boys, little black boys, DJing together, breakdancing together, graffitiing together, sharing the same clothes an' all that together. And the culture gone round the world! It's big! We have a hip-hop president. He [Obama] got two young kids! They know who Lil Wayne is! But right now I need to focus on some things that we could have some say-so in. First, politics – get involved, you know? And also I'd like to see the dancing get incorporated into the Olympics. That's where it needs to be at. I seen some of the gymnastic people incorporate some breakdance moves. They come from the hip-hop era. It's bigger than rock'n'roll, man!"
"I feel like hip-hop's pretty healthy right now, but then maybe I'm biased. You can turn off the radio, go on a blog and find tons of great hip-hop. There's great hip-hop being made all the time, and it's actually very disrespectful and dismissive to say otherwise."
"We're at a turning point again. The consumers are starting to understand their part in hip-hop now. They realise that their voice is important and, because of the mad communication we got now, their voices are being heard. Also, it's turning from that period where everyone has had a little fun from it – with all the money and flossing. Hip-hop has always been big boasting, ego-tripping and exaggeration. That was fly at a point. Soon we are gonna get into some new things, and people will start putting a little thought into what they're doing."
"Hip-hop production has become so democratised now that anybody, using readily available equipment, can make beats. It does mean that there's going to be a ton of beats out there, but the good stuff, the really good stuff, will always find its way to the top. I also think rap is becoming much less regional. A$AP Rocky showed that a New York MC could become massive while rapping over Houston-sounding beats, Dallas-sounding beats, New York-sounding beats… I think people are much more open now, in terms of their influences, and that's only going to continue."
"A lot of hip-hop in this day and age is quite materialistic and sexist. It's a reflection of the society we're in. Hip-hop has been a tool for addressing things in the past like social issues and struggles. Hip-hop empowers people – the kind of people that politicians and teachers can't reach. I'd like to see a return to that in the future. There will be another Lauryn Hill or Public Enemy to redress that balance."
"Hip-hop always goes in cycles. One year you have that poppy sound everywhere, the next year some dark shit from the underground might break through to the mainstream, like 50 Cent did for a while. But who knows who's going to come through next and fucking drive things forward?"
"Every music has its golden age, and for hip-hop that was the late '80s and early '90s. Hip-hop will keep moving, keep growing, because that's how music works. But it waters down the essence of what hip-hop once meant if we all act like it's still exactly the same as it once was. The main thing is, we just need to keep hip-hop moving forwards, because I don't think any genre benefits from incessantly trying to recreate its heyday."
"It's evolving in different ways. If you know what links and sites to plug into, you'll find interesting things going on: you've just got to dig for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Will that needle be enough to spawn something? That's what we're waiting for, always. But I'm very pleased with things that Kanye just did on his new album 'Yeezus'. 'New Slaves', I feel, was Public Enemy-esque in terms of really going at things in the system, and addressing things that you don't hear enough of any more at that level of the game."
"Hip-hop is in desperate need of balance. We need to hear real stories that can somehow influence the younger generation to be better and do more. I see another generation taking it back to the essence."
"Hip-hop can only get better. The rap industry is gonna keep following the same pattern it's in, because it's an industry. But the culture of hip-hop? Everything is open. I think the next thing is for us to start appreciating hip-hop that comes from other places in the world, and start integrating some of that into the fabric of the culture. I don't know who the hell is hot in Australia, but I know that there's some hot cats out there – and in other places."
Grandmaster Caz thinks hip-hop can only get better
"The interesting thing about hiphop is that when it started, it really did come off the streets. It wasn't signed to a major label – that took ages. All the great records had been made in small studios and it was very raw and rough. It was about giving a voice. With the 'blingness', hip-hop culture got exploited, so this is time for someone new to come through. In its early transition, every week you'd hear a record like you'd never heard before, completely new sounds, new ideas, new styles. It would be great to hear something completely new and exciting come through again but whether that will happen or not I don't know."
Head over to NME.COM for hip-hop galleries, buyers' guides, more interviews featuring all the big-name artists and a special video Q&A with the Wu-Tang Clan. Plus: Have your own say and vote for the greatest hip-hop track of all time!
The Killers, are a band who could truly benefit from giving up on taking it seriously and grabbing their ridiculously anthemic nature with both fists. As a whole, though, the album's overall feel is still deadeningly generic. 'Change' takes the mood of the 'Space' instrumentals and balls it up into an atmospheric (and, yes, Joy Division's LYRICIST 'Atmosphere'-like) ballad that has CHARLES CA VE your finger itching for the remote. ON 'BIG TV''S 'Tricky To Love' is all brooding BIG THEMES bass and Dave Gahan vocals paired with an incongruously pretty wash and shimmer of A RELATIONSHIP synths.And so it goes on. Part "The album loosely focuses around a situation of the problem is that White in which a girl who's in a Lies come to the party dressed, relationship with a guy in as always, in threadbare and an unidentified provincial borrowed clothes. Derivativeness, even of the most obvious of European area moves influences, needn't be a problem if to a much bigger, more glamorous city, and what you animate your borrowings with happens to those people." gusto or give them a good sonic freshen-up. The production here, A RADIO DJ courtesy of regular Suede cohort "This girl moves to a new Ed Buller, doesn't help, with city. One of the reasons painfully nafforama '80s guitar she goes there is that tones, and some frankly ludicrous she believes her absent drum sounds to boot. It's all father is working there shimmer and vapour, thin tracings as a late-night radio of Depeche Mode and Ultravox, DJ, giving relationship U2 and The Cure. advice to callers. She What's underneath, though, looks him up, then goes is a considerable improvement. to see him, but bottles it Charles Cave's lyrics benefit from at the last minute." being tied to a theme, and are far less wince-worthy than on the A CAR PARK "The girl is sat alone in previous two albums as they delve the car park, being kept into the delicate dynamics of love. (Special mention, though, has to on hold by her father's producer, who's saying go to 'Tricky To Love': "My love 'You can speak to him changes with the weather/And my 'Big TV' is the album in which in a minute.' When she heart, red imitation leather/I'd give they start, but don't quite finish, does talk to him, she the world/But the world is never to address that problem. There pours her heart out: enough"). Harry McVeigh's vocal, are stronger, subtler songs on here 'This is who I am, this is while it still tends towards a man than on 2011's 'Ritual' or 2009's who I think you are.'" playing The Ghost Of Christmas debut 'To Lose My Life…', songs Past in a Surrey village hall, in with more thought put into them A RECKLESS AND other places throbs with real that don't just race to the climactic RESTLESS GIRL passion. So they're getting better. air-clutch like a gauche lover. "'There Goes Our Love They're clearly trying extremely 'First Time Caller''s slow, A-haAgain' is a general song hard. Here is a band unafraid to ish grandeur doesn't over-egg its about this girl running reach for the most epic apple on pudding, and has a formidable off and her boyfriend or vocal hook. 'Space I' and 'Space partner saying he kind of the most wind-blown branch, and II' add a bit of experimental cred expects it. She's reckless that's to be lauded. If they were with a stab at Berlin-era Bowieand restless. She does this just a bit more concerned with making themselves bigger on the style expansive instrumentals. kind of thing a lot. She's And even though the likes of not satisfied with her life inside, rather than placing all the sonic importance on the shiny 'Mother Tongue' and 'Goldmine' or her relationship." surfaces, they might – might – be sound familiar to the point of on to something. For now we'll probably déjà vu with their shimmer and doom, more just see what else is on. Maybe read exuberant tracks such as first single proper a book. Emily Mackay 'There Goes Our Love Again' – a giddy rush that totally forgets to be portentous – and the genuinely great 'Be Your Man' connect BEST TRACKS: 'There Goes Our Love Again', far better. It suggests that White Lies, like 'Big TV', 'Be Your Man'
'm bored. Tell you what, shall we put the TV on? Take a second to admire the set, though, because White Lies' third album is a 55-inch beast of a thing, solid and well crafted by a band wholly confident in their songwriting. There's a film on, too: a loose concept about a young woman who moves from the provinces of an Eastern European country to a big Western city, and the pressures it puts on her relationship. Arty, intelligent, tasteful. Subtitled, most likely. But somehow, we're still a bit restless. The home-cinema experience isn't quite what it should be. Gadget gurus talk of "optimal viewing distance" – the wider your screen, the further back from it you have to be to focus on what's happening. Too often in the past, White Lies' off-the-peg widescreen bluster has forced a bit of a distance between the London threepiece and the listener that they've struggled to break through completely, dressing themselves in the mannerisms and motions of the epic while neglecting the core of tunes, substance and conviction.
Future Of The Left have enjoyed a first-rate summer. Finding themselves without a label after 2012 album 'The Plot Against Common Sense', they crowdfunded its follow-up in the space of just five hours (this 10-minute ball of elastic and nails is just to tide fans over). Oh, and singer Andy Falkous married bassist Julia Ruzicka last month – though chances are the EP's title is not a reference to this event. The sleeve art, by curdled cartoonist Krent Able, is FOTL's finest yet. Keyboards, much as they've been used splendidly by the group at times, are marginal, when they're present at all. Each song runs at an energetic clip, the rhythmic thunder indulging the band's Chicago noise-rock side. It's not so much back to basics as creating new basics – they're rarely as punkishly orthodox as they are on 'An Idiot's Idea Of Ireland' – and while it may not be their definitive work, 'Love Songs For Our Husbands' is superlative. Noel Gardner BEST TRACK: 'An Idiot's Idea Of Ireland'
Faces To Names…
Three reviewers, three questions
As band names go, the one chosen by Joy Williams and John Paul White has turned out to be pretty prophetic. Halfway through recording this follow-up to 'Barton Hollow', their 2011 winner of two Grammy Awards, the duo, citing "internal discord and irreconcilable differences", went on indefinite hiatus. They finished the record, though, using their antipathy as a muse. The result is 12 songs that wear their beaten but still-beating hearts on their sleeves. Sometimes those heightened emotions work well – as on the brooding countryfolk of 'The One That Got Away' and the dusty gospel blues of 'Devil's Backbone' – but too often their over-earnest delivery is unbearable. That's true most of all on 'Disarm', a cringeworthy cover of the Smashing Pumpkins classic. Tailor-made for a post-Mumfords world, the duo's overwrought vocals zap the song of all passion, rendering it limp, lifeless and insincere. That, given the very real turmoil that inspired this record, is the ultimate irony. Mischa Pearlman BEST TRACK: 'The One That Got Away'
Favourite album right now? "Chance The Rapper's funny, smart and wildly inventive 'Acid Rap'; the hip-hop kids are tripping out!"
Come the final analysis, chillwave will be seen as a genre that seldom outgrew its status as muzak for the Panda Bear generation. It was raised on a diet of the Animal Collective man's ambient and warped Beach Boy sounds, but managed to say nothing to anyone about anything. Some of the acts branded with the chillwave tag, such as Neon Indian or Toro Y Moi, tried to resist it at every turn. Others just went with it. And although he was one of the later arrivals to the chillwave party, Ernest Greene, aka Washed Out, soon became the genre's pin-up (as much as a genre chiefly created by anonymous-looking blokes in Aztec-print shirts from obscure American towns can have a pin-up). Gene Simmons he was not. In fact, he was a shy library science college grad living with his parents. His debut, 2010's 'Within And Without', was enjoyable enough. But after a while you just thought, "Why don't I put on something with a bit of heart instead?" On this, his second album, Ernest Greene has a target on his back. How does he outrun that? The answer is simple: he doesn't. He just stands and dies by the chillwave fort. His approach to 'Paracosm' is an age-old one: do the same thing as before, but make everything sound pricier. There's more live instrumentation, and 'Entrance' is promising with its classy hamper of incidental sounds that combine like nature's orchestra pit tuning up. But then you hit first single 'It All Feels Right' and realise that it's 2013's answer to Morcheeba's 'The Sea', and that whatever fine line there may have been between chillout and chillwave has long since been eroded. This is even more disappointing when you realise nothing here is of the calibre of Zero 7's 'Destiny', even though the title track sounds like it might have been stretched from a wonky cassette of that song. 'Falling Back' wants to be Greene's own personal 'Where The Streets Have No Name', but is smothered by endless overdubs before it gets anywhere. And after a while 'Paracosm' becomes like trying to psychoanalyse a bloke who never finishes his sentences. Where it works is in flashes of production dazzle rather than whole songs: the slo-mo stabby synths of 'Weightless', or the clever use of channels on 'All I Know'. But mostly, 'Paracosm' is Chromatics if their nocturnal danger was replaced by nocturnal emissions, or Beach House if they got so stoned they forgot to change chords for minutes at a time. For a genre that was all about nostalgia for the recent past, it's going to be hard to look back fondly on chillwave's passing into history. Gavin Haynes
BEST TRACKS: 'All I Know', 'Weightless', 'Entrance'
When Earl Sweatshirt's tonguetwistingly brilliant mixtape 'Earl' dropped in 2010, his reputation as Odd Future's wayward wünderkind was sealed. Three years later, to say anticipation for his debut album 'Doris' is fevered is like claiming Tyler, The Creator enjoys a tantrum. 'Earl Part II: The Road To Doris' comprises snippets of new album tracks, outtakes and previously released songs, and will only fuel this frenzy. Viewed on its own, 'Earl Part II…' is one of the year's best mixtapes, a grab bag of dread beats, maze-like wordplay and queasy synths that peaks on the cough-syrup nightmare of 'Yacht Lash'. But it will inevitably be judged as a taster for 'Doris', half of which is previewed here. It doesn't disappoint: Earl's newly mature flow – as heard on Frank Ocean's 'Super Rich Kids' – shows an ever-evolving talent, while the production (courtesy of Pharrell, RZA and Tyler, among others) matches this with its sparse, gloomy brilliance. Ben Cardew BEST TRACK: 'Yacht Lash'
Favourite song right now? "'Let It Out' off the new Sebadoh album is great. I'm a sucker for sad songs and this is pure heartbroken despondency."
Favourite ever hip-hop album? "Public Enemy's '…Nation Of Millions…' – the hip-hop album for people who don't really listen to hip-hop. With beats like these, why listen to anything else?"
PORCELAIN RAFT WorldMags.net
Rome-born, but a citizen of London and New York, Mauro Remiddi is preoccupied with rootlessness and lost connections, but 'Permanent Signal' finds beauty in loneliness. It's as bathed in electronics as last year's debut, 'Strange Weekend', only this time members of Yuck and The Antlers – and a cellist – augment Remiddi's vision, giving 'Minor Pleasure' a steadily intensifying rock build amid all the overlapping synths. Remiddi himself has a tremulous, feminine voice that works well on shoegazey tracks like 'Night Birds' and 'Cluster', but his real speciality lies in making the machine sound vulnerable and human. Matthew Horton BEST TRACK: 'Minor Pleasure'
Sleeve Notes
The Night VI may sound like a dodgy horror sequel, but it's actually an Anglo-French six-piece fronted by Sophie Rose-Harper, whose voice is as wholesome as her name. 'Thinking Of You' has a guitar intro reminiscent of The xx, and the folky 'Mother' seems influenced by Laura Marling, but more often this debut EP brings to mind Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac: the songs are a slick mix of melody and melancholy, and Rose-Harper knows the power of romantic intrigue. On 'Trouble', she reels us in with the tantalising couplet: "How can I love you? You know where I've been". Nick Levine
BEST TRACK: 'Trouble'
Impotent storytellers hunt for weird experiences to compensate for their inability to pick meat from the bones of the humdrum. Sadie Dupuis, singer and guitarist with Speedy Ortiz, is not one of those people – but she's met them. "He wants to burn all my candles/ No, that isn't love/He wants a burn on his fingers/ He thinks I'm the one to give it", she sings of a manipulative dick who wants her to mark his "virgin parchment" on 'Plough', the penultimate track on the Massachusetts band's ironclad, gnarled college rock debut, 'Major Arcana'. "He wants a burn, and it's freaking me out". Someone wanting her to hurt them so they have something interesting to write about freaks Dupuis out because, as 'Major Arcana' makes clear, she's never had to seek out such scenarios. Her quarter-century alive has been one of morally broken power struggles in which ex-friends and fancies double-dare each other (she's complicit, too) until they're crippled by dependence. The poison is already in her. On this record she exercises a zit-picker's eye for knowing exactly how to get it out. At the lighter end of this diabolical story is 'Casper (1995)', a seething guitar rumble with Dupuis recounting how "kids keep trading spectre stories just to keep each other horny". She sounds like a part-time poetry lecturer chewing on her taste for language as she brags, "The sicko police
BEST TRACKS: 'No Below', 'Fun', 'MKVI'
BEST TRACK: 'Bad Kingdom'
gave me perfect marks at the sycophant academy". On 'Tiger Tank', Dupuis uses nihilism to laugh off attempts to leave her powerless, declaring, "Don't even care if they break my legs/I've limped before, I can limp again" while the band plummet into the conniving danger best found on Slint's 'Spiderland'. When she asks, "Is that a challenge or something? " on 'Hitch' – an ode to mutual destruction – she stretches the words like chewing gum wound from tongue to finger. These songs are about destructive bottomfeeders, but you wouldn't know it without paying close attention to the lyric sheet. One of the reasons 'Major Arcana' works so well is because it's addictive and fun, which could explain how these characters got into such a mess in the first place. The guitars and bass sound incredible, like the last Deerhunter album without the Yankee Doodle Dandy, often turning from skittish fretboard harmonics to boulder-heavy crush on a knife's edge. 'Fun' comes at you from all angles like a chaotic game of dodgeball, while 'Cash Cab' swaggers like Sonic Youth's 'Kool Thing'. Only on 'No Below', the tale of a friendless childhood, does Dupuis sound like the fight's been knocked out of her – but she's not asking for your sympathy. If 'Major Arcana' makes one thing clear, it's that Speedy Ortiz never expect anything less than your absolute worst – something they're very, very good at. Laura Snapes
Best Sleeve Of The Week
Future Of The Left – 'Love Songs For Our Husbands' EP Just take a moment to drink in the gleeful horror of it all.
Turn back, Skrillex fans. This is not the drop you are looking for. Come on in, the rest of you: there's much to love in these ecstatic bursts of spaced-out energy that drop and shift in pitch in ways the EDM kids can only dream of. Don't be fooled by the stylised Japanese name; the fourpiece hail from Denmark and recorded this, their second LP, in Copenhagen – although the sinister drone of opener 'The Great Pacific Garbage Patch' surely originated from Mars. By 'Moped', the band have shaken themselves out of their daze and are shouting call-outs to 'Smoke On The Water'. This is folk music transmitted from the far corner of the universe. Kevin EG Perry BEST TRACK: 'Tin Can Valley'
Worst Sleeve Of The Week
Dawes – 'Stories Don't End' Gathered around a campfire, Dawes are in celebratory mood. Maybe it's because they've managed to create what looks like a dreary '70s folk-rock record cover. They might as well display the album under a neon sign that says 'AVOID'.
Mood-setter 'The Mark (Interlude)' might sound like spending Halloween on nitrazepam, but to the dedicated aficionado of Berlin electronica, 'II' is the noise of all their Christmases turning up at once. The second collaboration between Modeselektor and Apparat, it swiftly transforms into a series of nocturnal funk swells and echoes occasionally adorned with choruses that sound like a blitzed 'Get Lucky'. 'Let In The Light' is all pitchshifted underwater vocals and crustaceans for xylophones, 'Damage Done' is delicate soultronica, 'Milk' is a melodic 10-minute spin cycle, and 'Gita' resembles will.i.am being sprayed with air jets. Hypnotically hip. Mark Beaumont
WorldMags.net THIS WEEK'S SINGLES
Reviewed by NME's
The Rider
What we're reading and sticking on our walls this week
Mudhoney: The Sound And Fury From Seattle The first biog to be given the grunge legends' official approval, this new book tells the story of one of Kurt Cobain's favourite bands. BUY: £13.46, Amazon.co.uk
If you look at this song title and imagine a Nick Cave-and-PJ Harvey-licking-each-others'-legsstyle murder ballad, come join me on the dejected bench of disappointment. If, on the other hand, you think of a folk-stompy Irish feint at Arcade Fire fronted by a Florence impression so bad it sounds like she's trying to swallow her own voice, step right this way.
Rudimental and Foxes do the classy, moody, female-vocal jungle-pop thing so well you might mistake it for Katy B, until they fluff it with a rocky wig-out ending. Our Katy wouldn't do that.
Bloc Party aren't very good at dealing with pressure. When the London band are up against it, they do silly things like follow up their seminal debut album, 2005's 'Silent Alarm', with an anxious-sounding record like 2007's 'A Weekend In The City; or tell NME their bandmates are recording without them and then attempt to deny the entire conversation, as frontman Kele Okereke did in 2011. But when Bloc Party are relaxed (well, as relaxed as the notoriously po-faced quartet ever really get), they make records like last year's visceral and forward-looking 'Four', which was written after a lengthy, friendship-restoring hiatus. Or records like this EP – five confused but confident tracks that constitute the band's final release before they take another break. 'The Nextwave Sessions' EP careers wildly between moods and atmospheres, and sounds like a band happy to let go and experiment because they're comfortable with who they are. Opener 'Ratchet' is, wait for it, fun. Full of the playfulness and cheeky winks notably absent from the Bloc Party of old, it finds Okereke spitting about wanting to get "half-cut" and "fucked up" and genuinely uses the line "Tell your bitch to get off my shit". 'French Exit' is an aggressive array of staccato vocals and growling guitar lines that could easily have slotted into 'Four', and closer 'Children Of The Future' has a hopeful message: "Be all that you can be" Okereke emotes, like he really means it. Of course it wouldn't be a Bloc Party release without a healthy dose of depression, and 'Obscene' and 'Montreal' do their bit to lower the serotonin levels. But even in the downbeat moments, there's a loose and seductive quality to the band's brand of blues. It's a shame that Bloc Party are going to disappear after an EP like this and a debut UK headlining slot at Latitude. But every now and then, slow and steady wins the race. Lisa Wright
Brummies can be sexy too, and these boys are out to melt more than genre boundaries. The grooves are laidback, lightly caressed by garage glitches and sultry guitar, like Wild Beasts' most slow-jam moments by way of a horny SBTRKT. Extra kudos for the archaic come-on: "Let's break bread tonight". We'd make sandwiches with them. Right there on the dancefloor.
Odd Future/ZI Odd Future have teamed up with Volkswagen and Milan-based creatives ZI to produce a capsule collection of posters. There are Volkswagen Golf Wang stickers too. BUY: £20, Zi.bigcartel.com
As if the failed transition from child star to credibly sexy adult female pop star wasn't embarrassing enough, avert your eyes from the car-crash of Miley talking ghetto on this Rihanna rip-off. "We run ting/Nobody run we/All my ladies with the big butts", stuff like that. Some props are due for what seems like a stand for gay rights ("It's our house we can love who we want"), but you will cringe so hard your shoulders will meet in the middle.
BEST TRACKS: 'Ratchet', 'French Exit', 'Obscene'
When Captured Tracks achieved wider recognition a few years back, Minks were perhaps the US indie label's archetypal act. Fuzzy-edged, romantic swooners who mined 1980s Britain for inspiration, Minks – formed in New York, now based in Long Island – take sideways steps into retro synth-pop on second album 'Tides End'. Over drum machines and wispy electro pulses, Sonny Kilfoyle intones such Morrissey-sour quips as "Happy birthday/Can I poison your drink?". Musically it's akin to the recent Neon Neon album, but Kilfoyle's musings on romance and class are all his own. Noel Gardner BEST TRACK: 'Playboys Of The Western World'
Despite having a name that forces you to spell it aloud lest everyone assumes you've just discovered Jim Morrison, LA's jaunty Americanapeddling mates of Mumford have made it to their third album. Working with Kings Of Leon producer Jacquire King, 'Stories Don't End' is smoother than a drive down to Malibu with the Eagles chilling in the back seat. So if it's earthy fireside folk you're craving, you'd best look elsewhere, because the harmony-steeped likes of 'From A Window Seat', Blake Mills cover 'Hey Lover' and yearning highlight 'Most People' are all about retro, grit-free Hollywood gloss. Leonie Cooper BEST TRACK: 'Most People'
We hoped for a cataclysmic, platerending dance-pop beast, but instead it's another one of Diplo's increasingly dated, charmless and grating rent-a-bangers with minimal input from the other two. I mean, I'm sure it'd seem fine if you're clubbing, but a lot of things seem fine if you're clubbing, don't they?
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The sweet muse of tune calls, and Justin Young, for once, listens. The result is an oddly unramshackle, non-jaunty, smooth and even mellow version of The Vaccines, with shades of Teenage Fanclub and Big Star. It's… nice. We could get used to it. But who are you people, and what have you done with The Vaccines? Well, that's that third album title taken care of, at least.
arlier this year, Primal Scream released the most righteous sign-of-the-times album since PJ Harvey's 'Let England Shake' in 2011. And even though 'More Light' might not be full of obvious festival hits in the way 'Screamadelica' is, for the 90 minutes that a silver-shirted Bobby Gillespie and the rest of the Scream are onstage tonight, they're almost perfect. Gillespie knows the importance of tackling social and political issues, but he also knows how to put on a life-changingly great rock show. The guy's a professional. As such, Kendal Calling gets a carefully constructed set that dips frequently into both the darker and brighter moments from 'More Light', but never forces the record onto people. Deeper new cuts give
Bobby G simply asked for "more light"
way to classic bangers and it all flows as easily as the languid frontman's dandyish dance moves. Opening track '2013' has barely begun when a bunch of pink and yellow smoke flares go off
in the crowd, after which we're straight into 'Movin' On Up'. Another newie, 'Hit Void', is proof that even at their most fiery, Primal Scream know how to make people dance. 'Shoot Speed/
curate a festival, but I want to hear Deerhunter or Kurt Vile at festivals like this."
making a noise to piss people off, but trying to play something that's a bit out of the norm."
"They make things less centralised. They are a little bit more daring with their programming. It's funny, because you get things like ATP, where Deerhunter will
"As a music fan, I'd love to go and see a band play a song like 'River Of Pain' live. Festivals should be places where you challenge people a little. Not just
"We tried to kidnap this girl last night. I heard her singing a couple of years ago and she was working at Stockton Weekender. We wanted her to sing backing vocals, but they wouldn't let her leave."
Kill Light' keeps the tempo up, turning the field into an aggressive, scatter-shot rave with new bassist Simone Butler providing the song's dangerous sleaze. Then comes an introverted moment. The woman in a banana suit bobbing up and down on a man's shoulders might not fully appreciate the working-class despair at the heart of 'River Of Pain', but as its sombre rumbles give way to an apocalyptic sax solo and Gillespie looks lost in thought at the front of the stage, it creates as much of a moment as any of the hits. And, oh my, the hits. 'Swastika Eyes' is, as Gillespie calls it tonight, "anti-fascist disco". And 'I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have' finds Bobby looking winded from the weight of his own emotional purge. "I betrayed you/You trusted me and
WorldMags.net ATOMS FOR PEACE KENDAL CALLING: BEST OF THE REST ROUNDHOUSE, LONDON
The Loveless brothers do not phone it in. Despite the torrential rain swamping the Main Stage, Eoin and Rory's snarling, two-minute thrashes pack enough of a sneer to swell the initial crowd from miniscule to respectable. 'People In Love Make Me Feel Yuck' and 'I Don't Wanna Make Love To You' are both brilliantly disenfranchised odes to outsiderdom. New tune 'Favourite Son', meanwhile, clocks in at just over 60 seconds, making it their punkiest number yet.
It's an injustice that Mystery Jets, unlike their late2000s peers (The Maccabees and Bombay Bicycle Club, to name just two), aren't a massive band. The proof: their 50-minute slot today isn't nearly long enough. They play the crowd-pleasing hits ('Two Doors Down' and 'Young Love' never fail to shine) and a handful of dimly lit gems from last year's 'Radlands'. But by the time closer 'Alice Springs' comes along – a romantic epic with enough rock-god clout to prove the band are a cut above – it's clear they could (and should) play for double the time.
I betrayed you" he forces out before staggering back to the drumkit. And just like that the heavens open, another pink flare lights up the sky and a familiar voice pricks the air: "Just what is it that you want to do?" Every single one of the 10,000 people gathered wants to get loaded. From here on in, the Scream don't let up. Current single 'It's Alright, It's OK' sounds as classic as their actual classics, and is the launchpad for the show's finale. The more confrontational politics of 'More Light' may be lost in the enormity of a festival stage, but the unifying message of 'Come Together' rings out like gospel. The same goes for the sparkling hoedown of 'Country Girl' and a bone-shaking 'Rocks', the latter complete with heavy riffs and a solo from guitarist Andrew Innes. The night finishes with Gillespie's looped yells of "Alright!" hanging in the air long after the band leave the stage. It's more than alright, Bobby. And it's definitely more than OK. Lisa Wright
London's Public Service Broadcasting create intrigue rather than impact. Comprising drummer Wrigglesworth and multi-instrumentalist J Willgoose, the duo play live but use computer-generated vocals. 'Everest' is backed by grainy TV footage and keeps people moving, but you only need to watch four minutes to have seen it all.
eneath neon strip-lights set in uneven zigzags across the back of the stage, Flea, bassist from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, stalks like an ape, grooving so hard it looks like his spine is made of rubber. Beside him a ponytailed Thom Yorke is in a vest, doing his best snake impression while shaking a maraca. Behind, Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco and drummer Joey Waronker, the latter of whom plays with Beck and REM, seem to be locked in a cosmic battle over who gets to play the strangest time signature. Refosco is playing a mad selection of instruments, including what looks like a tree made out of tambourines. This is Atoms For Peace, the unlikely electronic supergroup formed in LA. Or, as Yorke said: "We were at Flea's house. We got wasted, played pool and listened to Fela Kuti all night." If that doesn't set your wankery meter to high alert, then good luck to you. How they pull off what has the potential to be a massive musical circle-jerk is simply this: these are mid-career musicians, comfortable millionaires who stumble around in political debates about gun laws (Flea) and climate change (Yorke) and tonight, they're having to scrap to keep these monstrously complex songs together. They've finally found something to challenge them. And they look like they're having the time of their lives. It's not perfect. Yorke fudges 'Ingenue' on an upright piano. Behind him, Flea
Thom Yorke: vest in show
stands straight and attentive, waiting for a cue to pluck an elegant, baroque bassline. 'Stuck Together Pieces' is better, the heavy track pared down a little so the bass comes through. The tension between Flea's loose, rhythmic funk, Yorke's obsession with precision, and those ferociously talented percussionists raising hell at the rear is sending everyone mad. In the crowd, people dance until the sweat is dripping off them. If the afrobeat that inspired Atoms For Peace's debut album 'Amok' is present anywhere, it's in this music's ability to make people move involuntarily. You'd never see this at a Radiohead gig – even the biggest Radiohead dance track, 'Idioteque', inspires more head-nodding than hip-shaking. There's no Radiohead at the Roundhouse tonight, although the best tracks from Yorke's 2006 solo album, 'The Eraser' are present, including 'Harrowdown Hill', 'The Clock', 'Atoms For Peace' and 'Black Swan', which closes the second of two encores. They sound safer. 'Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses' and 'Hollow Earth', Yorke's 2009 double A-side, are both squeezed into the first encore, as is 'Rabbit In Your Headlights', his 1998 collaboration with UNKLE, with Yorke hammering the chords on the upright and Flea mumbling the spoken word interlude into the mic. But it's on the 'Amok' tracks that things get gloriously, dangerously messy. And Yorke looks, for once, like he's actually having fun. Hazel Sheffield
"This one's for all of you… and no-one fucking else." Despite spending a career closer to the side than the front of the stage, Johnny Marr has become a classy frontman. Most people are here to hear Smiths classics, but Marr's own 'The Messenger' and 'Generate! Generate!' ensure the energy never dips. He finishes with 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out', during which the sun goes down. Such is the power of a Godlike Genius.
Chuck D (left) and Flavor Flav (right) onstage in London, July 2013
Still fighting the power at KOKO
race yourself, London," announces DJ Lord, "for Public Enemy." Sound advice, as it goes. Because Chuck D and the gang, who 26 years ago set out to become, in their words, "The Clash of hip-hop", have lost none of their power to enthrall and incite. As those big Public Enemy sirens go off inside London's KOKO, several thousand Londoners raise their fists in the air and Brooklyn's favourite militant radicals stride onstage like living monuments of granite, to the sound of 'Lost At Birth'. What happens next is live hip-hop of pitiless intensity and riotous fun, where dancing is a political act, where fight and funk are one, and where the vitality and incendiary politics of hip-hop wash over you in an awesome wave of sample-punk and atomic jazz. Heritage acts? Nostalgia market? Bullshit. This is how you keep the fire.
The politics are fresh (Chuck's polemics focus on social media and the Trayvon Martin murder case) and the music, even now, sounds futuristic. "Twenty-six years spent tellin' the truth," hollers Chuck, at which point everyone in KOKO is ready to storm Downing Street. By the time the hits arrive – 'Don't Believe The Hype', 'Fight The Power' – things are next level. Flavor Flav is screaming "Fuck the United States!" and dancing clownfaced like James Brown. He's flanked by security-team-cum-stage prop the S1Ws who, expressionless and garbed in full Desert Storm fatigues, enact their famous cyborg-soldier dance or do press-ups during 'Bring The Noise''s exploding breakdown, itself bolstered by a guitarist playing Van Halen-grade solos using his Public Enemy's KOKO setlist teeth. DJ Lord
scratches like Michelangelo paints, and then there's Chuck, who is a revelation. The 52-year-old is a grinning party monster who, when not throwing his mic in the air or boyband dancing with Flavor Flav, is running around like a puppy. Between the harmonica solos, his moshing to Nirvana's 'Come As You Are' and some eloquent, righteous speeches, he does everything in his power to guarantee a good time, short of handing out balloons.
What began with angry defiance ends in love, as a final one-two comprising 'He Got Game' and 'Harder Than You Think' is a reminder that beneath the rage is true compassion, social concern and a word to the coke-rap materialists of today to say the dispossessed need a voice. As 'He Got Game''s chorus has it: "It might feel good, it might sound a little somethin', but fuck the game if it ain't sayin' nothin' ". This is real hip-hop. Here's to another 26 years. John Calvert
View From The Crowd
Robert Thompson, 24, London "Insane night. Highlight for me: the S1W soldiers."
Sean Doody, 25, London "Infectious energy, and Chuck D's stage presence is electric."
Sara Afshar, 29, London "Energy levels were off the scale. Amazing night."
Jesse, 27, Dallas "Beautiful. It was all about unity and positivity tonight."
WU-TANGWorldMags.net CLAN
The Amazing Snakeheads' Dale Barclay in The Amazing Shirt
It's a proper lads' night. Raekwon is ast time Wu-Tang Clan swigging a bottle of Hennessy. RZA played London, in June is pouring champagne over the crowd. 2011, it was a cock-up. Not only did founding members GZA is pointing his mic like a gat. And the material, overall, is classicsRaekwon, Inspectah Deck only: 'Shame On A Nigga', 'CREAM', and RZA not show, the performance 'Protect Ya Neck'. There was ropey and fans were left are blasts from solo projects, with an uneasy feeling that What such as Raekwon's 'Ice hearts weren't in it. So this Twitter evening has a lot riding on it. Thought Cream' from 'Only Built 4 Cuban Linx' and GZA's Billed as a 20th anniversary 'Liquid Swords'. And there's celebration of their debut @timchipping even a medley dedicated to LP 'Enter The Wu-Tang "Wu-Tang Clan at deceased member Ol' Dirty (36 Chambers)' – the record Brixton Academy. Bastard, encompassing 'Got that not only defined the Not moshed that Your Money', 'Shimmy Clan's career but arguably much since Shimmy Ya' and chartthe genre of hardcore Moose at ULU" stomper 'Gravel Pit'. rap itself – this outing is ODB's parts are dealt both a celebration of their @lornashtonscott with conspicuous respect career and an apology "Wu-Tang were by playing recordings of his to the UK for previous awesome last vocals over the performance, dodgy performances. night. Academy despite recently released It doesn't disappoint. needs to sort FBI files implicating him Everyone is present and out air con and in three murders. On correct: the RZA. The acoustics" a new song tip, 'Family GZA. Masta Killa. Method Reunion' from Wu-Tang's Man. Raekwon. Inspectah. @chrismutterr forthcoming album 'A U-God. Ghostface. As "Wu-Tang at Better Tomorrow' is rolled an added bonus, 'killah Brixton further out with confidence. At one bees' (Wu-Tang affiliates) consolidated point, Allah Mathematics Cappadonna and DJ Allah my love for true sticks his feet on his decks Mathematics are here hip-hop" to do some scratching. too. They even arrive on And, by the end, Method time, opening with 'Bring @DJMelodyKane Man is crowdsurfing. It's Da Ruckus', the track "Wu-Tang on at a triumphant response to that introduced the world Brixton. Nando's three years of bad vibes. to their vicious strain of is madness Huw Nesbitt NYC hip-hop in 1993. right now"
RZA (left) and Ghostface Killah give Brixton Academy the Formula One treatment
A tender instrumental is worlds apart s Iggy Pop's 'Nightclubbing' from the jagged edges populating the cuts out Arcade Fire on the rest of the set. It silences the crowd, who PA, three sharply dressed hang on every drawn-out note before men emerge from a side it escalates back into more familiar, door and lope onto the portentous territory. And there are hints stage. Without a word they tear into the at grander steps to be taken further 64-second debut single 'Testifying Time'. down the line, as a new song opens with It's that song, accompanied by tales of shrill guitar lines that are straight out frontman Dale Barclay's terrifying stage of some intergalactic stadium show. presence, that's pushed Glaswegian trio Futuristic alien intros or not, there's The Amazing Snakeheads to the forefront still something that doesn't click of music lovers' minds as a tantalising tonight. It's not the Snakeheads' fault, new prospect. It should – as it has at as they pour all their energies into their previous shows – spark chaos in the dingy performance. And, although tonight room. But instead, the audience remains isn't as exhilarating as some of their stationary, choosing instead to voice their previous gigs, it still positions the appreciation with cheers and hollers. band as one full of menacing thrills As the set progresses, the sweat drips faster and drummer Jordon Hutchinson and raw passion. Rhian Daly removes his shirt and starts waving a towel around. The crowd, though, remain largely motionless, save for a couple who find romance in Dale's barks of "Come on child, there's no need …LOOKING SHARP to fucking hide" on WILLIAM: "I always iron 'Truth Serum'. my shirts." A weird reaction Pop, man. It's one of the DALE: "Do you fuck! You get given the hostility best songs ever." them pressed! But anyone coursing through who knows anything about every syllable, but …INSPIRING INTIMACY rock'n'roll knows you've got then TAS aren't THROUGH INTIMIDATION to look good, simple as that." about rose-tinted JORDON: "It's showbusiness!" WILLIAM: "It's beautifully love affairs. They're dark." primal, carnal, …COMING ON TO IGGY POP'S DALE: "It's fucking music. filling every crack 'NIGHTCLUBBING' If people want to get in their skeletal DALE: "It's a tradition." down, bang on." rock'n'roll with an JORDON: "It's fucking Iggy WILLIAM: "Get jiggy, man!" instinctive urgency.
SNAKEHEADS on…
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STARTS: Stradbally Estate, Co Laois, Ireland, Aug 30
STARTS: London Black Heart, Sep 4
STARTS: Hull Freedom Festival, Sep 7
STARTS: Glasgow O2 ABC, Oct 3
Fatboy Slim, Björk (pictured) and Arctic Monkeys headline the Irish festival, which is now in its 10th year.
The supremely nihilistic grunge band curate the line-ups as they get up close and personal at what promises to be a highly chaotic four-date residency.
Birmingham's newest heroes hit the road in Hull for a mammoth 22-date tour of the UK and Ireland, ending in Dublin (Oct 6).
Pop-star-in-waiting Louisa Rose Allen packs her synths for her first UK tour in Birmingham (Oct 4), Manchester (6), Bristol (7) and London (8).
STARTS: London The Lexington, Oct 3
STARTS: Manchester Academy 3, Oct 15
STARTS: Brighton St George's Church, Nov 1
STARTS: London XOYO, Nov 5
STARTS: Glasgow O2 ABC, Oct 10
They've spent the last few months Stateside, playing their biggest-ever show in New York and appearing on US TV mainstay Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. Now, Scotland's Chvrches are returning to home soil for six shows in the UK. But while America has instantly taken to the band and the sparkling electropop of 'The Mother We Share', things have progressed more slowly over here. By October, however, their debut album 'The Bones Of What You Believe' will have been out for a couple of weeks, and could be the catalyst for us Brits to start showing them a bit more love. Opening with two hometown shows in Glasgow (Oct 10, 11), all questions will be answered when the trio arrive at Sheffield Leadmill (12), Manchester Ritz (14), Bristol Anson Rooms (15) and London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire (17).
The Leeds duo celebrate the release of their debut album with dates starting in London and continuing to seven more cities before finishing in Sheffield (19).
Lou Barlow's legendary indie band come back to the UK for two very special dates in Manchester and London (Oct 16).
The QOTSA collaborator takes guest Duke Garwood out on tour, with seven more stops culminating in a show at London Union Chapel (8).
The week-long series of gigs returns with MØ (Nov 5, pictured), Money (6), Unknown Mortal Orchestra (7) and Field Music (9) all confirmed.
STARTS: London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire, Nov 5
STARTS: Edinburgh Queen's Hall, Nov 5
STARTS: London Heaven, Nov 27
STARTS: London venue TBC, date TBC
New York's dream-pop duo bring 'Second Hand Rapture' to the UK with a nine-date tour concluding in Norwich (Nov 26).
Conor J O'Brien plays tracks from current album 'Awaylands' in Edinburgh, Hebden Bridge (Nov 6), London (7), Oxford (10), Bath (12) and Norwich (13).
Elizabeth Sankey and Jeremy Warmsley showcase their new album at this one-off London show. Keep an eye out for more dates.
Solange, Disclosure and Savages (pictured) played this year. Details for 2014 haven't been announced, but you can buy superearly-bird tickets now.
WorldMags.net of the WEDNESDAY PICK WEEK
BATH Anta/Pigshackle Moles 01225 404445 BIRMINGHAM James Summerfield/Owen Tromans/World Of Fox Kitchen Garden Cafe 0121 443 4725 Souljazz Orchestra/Sam Redmore Hare & Hounds 0870 264 3333 BRIGHTON Gareth Stephens Fishbowl 01273 777 505 BRISTOL Mondo Generator/Valient Thorr/ Prosperina Fleece 0117 945 0996 CARDIFF Bevan/The Tundra/Delyth McLean Gwdihw Cafe Bar 029 2039 7933 EDINBURGH Ded Rabbit/The Mickey 9s/Steve Heron Electric Circus 0131 226 4224 Martha Reeves & The Vandellas Assembly Rooms 0131 220 4348 The Menzingers Bannermans 0131 556 3254 Titus Pullo Hard Rock Cafe 0131 260 3000 GLASGOW Windings/Generationals Broadcast 0141 332 7304 LEEDS Call Me When You're Famous/ Discretion Is Advised Eiger 0113 244 4105 The Dead Pets Brudenell Social Club 0113 243 5866 Liferuiner Packhorse 0113 245 3980 Make Your Mark Carpe Diem 0113 243 6264 LEICESTER Nancy Dawkins Musician 0116 251 0080 LIVERPOOL Hatebreed O2 Academy 0870 477 2000 Scott & Charlene's Wedding Shipping Forecast 0151 709 6901 LONDON Bronze Medallists/Nicholas Stevenson/The Pierrots Surya 020 7561 0030 Butch Walker Borderline 020 7734 5547 Chester Watson Birthdays 020 7923 1680 The Cruxshadows Purple Turtle 020 7383 4976 Eddie Spaghetti Upstairs At The Garage 020 7607 1818 Ellie Rose Half Moon 020 7274 2733 Fallen Leaves/Sid Sings/The Pests/Mandeville 12 Bar Club 020 7240 2622 Hatcham Social/Flowers Old Blue Last 020 7613 2478 Havanna Affair Embassy Club 0871 230 1094 The Hours/MoCara/Branches Scream Lounge 020 8667 0155 Jim Rattigan/Liam Noble/Dylan Bates Quartet Vortex Jazz Club 020 7254 6516 Josephine Foster Cafe Oto 0871 230 1094 Josh Record/Steph Fraser Slaughtered Lamb 020 8682 4080 Leftover Crack/Chewing On Tinfoil Underworld 020 7482 1932 The Lucy Ward Band St Pancras Old Church Marco Mestichella/The Day I Killed My Ego/Black Ink Monto Water Rats 020 7837 4412 Melange Collective Ritzy Cinema 020 7733 2229 Naomi Nuti band Spice Of Life 020 7437 7013 NYPC Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen 020 7613 0709 Night Works/Thumpers/SIVU Barfly 0870 907 0999 Orianthi 100 Club 020 7636 0933 Philm Garage 020 7607 1818
STARTS: London, various venues, Aug 10
Some festivals in east London, such as Field Day and The 1-2-3-4, take over local parks. But new one-day event Visions has decided to make its home in three separate venues – Oval Space, The Brewhouse and Netil House, all of which surround hipster hangout London Fields – in the hope of recreating the electric atmosphere of small club shows. On their last visit to the UK, headliners Fucked Up (pictured) revealed the end might soon be nigh for the band, so this could be one last chance to catch the Canadians. Jeffrey Lewis and !!! also top the bill, while the eclectic line-up features some of the best new bands around, with the likes of The Wytches, East India Youth and Jackson Scott all thrown into the mix. Producers Koreless and The Haxan Cloak provide something to dance to, while Danish punks Iceage return to the capital in their usual confrontational style.
Rap 6/Charlie Sloth/Manny Norte Scala 020 7833 2022 Salvation Fleet/Bobby Good/ Letters To Daisy Troubadour Club 020 7370 1434 Sam Sallon The Elgin Food Pub & Music House Seams Servant Jazz Quarters Shit And Shine The Lexington 020 7837 5387 Shlomo Battersea Arts Centre 020 7223 2223 Tiny T/Asher G/Oxman Lockside Lounge 020 7284 0007 Tommy Ludgate Bar Music Hall 020 7613 5951 Tor Miller Lock Tavern 020 7485 0909 The Vulz/Ooparts/The Junkhearts Zigfrid Von Underbelly 020 7613 1988 Wara/Ruby & The Vines Jazz Cafe 020 7916 6060 MANCHESTER Molly Nilsson/Terror Bird The Bay Horse 0161 661 1041 NEWCASTLE Boycott City Hall 0191 261 2606 NORWICH The Flatliners/Gnarwolves Waterfront 01603 632 717 NOTTINGHAM The Adicts Rescue Rooms 0115 958 8484 PORTSMOUTH The Nightporters Cellars 0871 230 1094 READING The Damned Sub89 0871 230 1094 SHEFFIELD The Broken Saints/Lauren Faith/Jamie Heawood The Hop 01142 781000 ST ALBANS Citylights Horn 01727 853 143 SWANSEA Daniel & The Scandals Sin City 01792654226 NYPC (formerly New Young Pony Club), Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, London
Everyone's Talking About BAT FOR LASHES
STARTS: London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire, Aug 13
Don't Miss PATTI SMITH
STARTS: Brighton St George's Church, Aug 9
Radar Stars CHILDHOOD
STARTS: Glasgow Broadcast, Aug 12
After taking a break from her own material to collaborate with Toy, Natasha Khan turns her attention back to third album 'The Haunted Man' and her earlier work for this one-off London show. Coming between a handful of European festival dates, it's Natasha's only UK gig this summer.
Even at the age of 66, Patti Smith – regularly cited as punk's poet laureate – shows no sign of losing her edge. To prove it, she follows her recent appearance at Yoko Ono's Meltdown Festival in London by playing three dates in Brighton, St Albans Arena (Aug 10) and Glasgow Oran Mor (12).
Since Leo Dobsen and Ben Romans-Hopcraft started making music together in their university dorms, they've become one of the most promising purveyors of dreampop. With fellow band members Daniel Salamons and Chris O'Driscoll, they play a single date in Glasgow before heading to Manchester and Beacons Festival next week.
The Wytches, Green Door Store, Brighton ABERDEEN Bar Room Crawl/The Joliet Moorings Bar 01224 587602 BELFAST Jordan O'Keefe Oh Yeah Music Centre 028 90 310 845 BIRMINGHAM Demi Marriner O2 Academy 0870 477 2000 Drive To The Lincoln Flapper 0121 236 2421 Dumb/LSA Victoria Bar 0121 633 9439 Guy Jones Rainbow 0121 772 8174 King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys Roadhouse 0121 624 2920 BRIGHTON Call Me Jolene/The Lanes Sticky Mike's Frog Bar 01273 749 465 Channel One Sound System/ Mungo's Hi-Fi Soundsystem Concorde 2 01273 673 311 General Panic/Leon C/Maxi McGoo Komedia 01273 647 100 The Parkinsons/Atomic Suplex Prince Albert 01273 730 499 Patti Smith/Tony Shanahan St George's Church 01273 279448 Scouting For Girls Racecourse 01273 709709 The Soft Moon The Haunt 01273 770 847 Unity Hi Fi/Richard Ranks/King Spinnie World's End 01273 692311 BRISTOL Cigarette Crossfire/Personal Best/ Galapagos Now! Stag & Hounds 0117 929 7048 Delphic/Seasfire Fleece 0117 945 0996 Pat McIntyre Smoke & Mirrors Walter Lure/Healthy Junkies Exchange 0117 9304538 CARDIFF The Menzingers Clwb Ifor Bach 029 2023 2199 Miss May & The Magic The Yard 029 2025 5520 DERBY A Traditional Goodbye/Sort It Out/ Filthy Kicks The Vic Inn 01332 740091 EDINBURGH Midland/Will Saul/Atlus Cabaret Voltaire 0131 220 6176 Randolph's Leap/Teen Canteen Electric Circus 0131 226 4224 EXETER Stark Phoenix 01392 667080 GLASGOW Emma's Imagination Nice'n'Sleazy 0141 333 9637 Last In Line Cathouse 0141 248 6606 Molly Nilsson Centre For Contemporary Arts 0141 352 4900 HULL Martha Reeves & The Vandellas The Welly 01482 221113 LEAMINGTON SPA Color Three The Assembly 01926 313774 LEEDS Bad Manners Brudenell Social Club 0113 243 5866 Cherry Stone Jam New Roscoe 0113 246 0778 Crooked Tongues Cockpit Room 3 0113 2441573 Otiks The Library 0113 2440794 LEICESTER Carol Leeming/Mellow Harmony/ Mike Sole Musician 0116 251 0080 LIVERPOOL Cold Cave East Village Arts Club
Hannah Rose Platt View Two 0151 236 9555 LONDON Astrohenge/Anta/Pigshackle Black Heart 020 7428 9730 Babeshadow/The Young Aviators/ Life The Finsbury 020 8809 1142 Bitches/Furrow/Horsefight Macbeth 020 7739 5095 Bleed From Within/Heart Of A Coward/Shields/ZOAX Peel 020 8546 3516 Brandyn Shaw/Palais De Danse Welsh Centre 020 7837 3722 Carus Thompson Half Moon 020 7274 2733 Catfish & The Bottlemen/Kid Champion Club NME @ KOKO 0870 4325527 Charli XCX Proud Galleries 020 7482 3867 Citadel Rattlesnake Of Angel 020 7354 0471 Daniel & The Scandals Upstairs At The Garage 020 7607 1818 Dark Stares Barfly 0870 907 0999 Pine Barrens/Art Of Burning Water/ Silent Front/Employed To Serve The Unicorn 020 7485 3073 Rootikal West The Flyover Ross Roberts Egg 020 7428 7574 Sealings/Is Bliss/Boneyards Old Blue Last 020 7613 2478 Skream/Simian Mobile Disco/ Ikonika/Lawson/Cooly G/Kode 9/ Morgan Zarate/Scratcha Dva Fabric 020 7336 8898 Swain Borderline 020 7734 5547 Twinkle Brothers/Askala Selassie/ Reuben Mystik Jamm 020 7274 5537 T Williams/Shenoda Nest 020 7354 9993 MANCHESTER Cleft/Lost In The Riots/Flat Stanley Kraak 07855 939 129 Curious Me Deaf Institute 0161 330 4019 The Jade Assembly Sound Control 0161 236 0340 Mohawk Radio/Cultures/Lunar Fire Deaf Institute 0161 330 4019 NEWCASTLE The Casinos Old Fox Kredo Cluny 0191 230 4474 Lulu James O2 Academy 0870 477 2000 Scott & Charlene's Wedding/Fawn Spots Head Of Steam 0191 232 4379 NEWQUAY BOARDMASTERS The Vaccines/ Everything Everything/Frightened Rabbit/The Other Tribe/Drenge/ Nina Nesbitt/Benga/Redlight Watergate Bay 0871 220 0260 NORWICH Hours Brickmakers 01603 441 118 The Indebtors/Jon Christophers/ Naked Horses Waterfront 01603 632 717 Pout At The Devil Brickmakers 01603 441 118 NOTTINGHAM Artful Dodger Stealth 08713 100000 OXFORD Chancery Blame & The Gadjo Club Cellar 01865 244 761 Knights Of Mentis Jericho Tavern 01865 311 775 Penryn The Brains/Coyotes/The Skimmity Hitchers Miss Peapods Kitchen Cafe PLYMOUTH Fearless Vampire Killers/Lost Alone White Rabbit 01752 227522 Noel Harrison/Phil Rossiter The B-Bar 01752 242021 PORTSMOUTH Matt McGowan/Nathan Newman Square Tower 07519 505 785 PRESTON Hard Skin/The Nightingales Continental 01772 499 425 SHEFFIELD Disclosure Corporation 0114 276 0262 Walkway New Barrack Tavern 0114 234 9148 SOUTHAMPTON Hi-On Maiden/The Summers Brook 023 8055 5366 Little Comets Joiners 023 8022 5612 STOKE ON TRENT Faux Feet/Troops Of Mafekings Sugarmill 01782 214 991 WAKEFIELD Hawk Eyes The Hop 0871 230 1094 YORK The Article/The Wilde Fibbers 01904 651 250 Cornerstone/Morpheus Rising/ Scream Arena The Duchess 01904 641 413
BELFAST Last In Line Limelight 028 9032 5942 The Raglans McHugh's 028 9050 9999 BIRMINGHAM Arbor Lights/Constant Waves/ Karhide/Ludovico Flapper 0121 236 2421 Dr Feelgood Jam House 0121 236 6677 The Mistakings/Che Cartwright MAC 0121 440 3838 Victories At Sea Bulls Head Wax Futures/Enquiry/Panda Watch Actress & Bishop 0121 236 7426 BRIGHTON The Cracklin' Griffins Fiddler's Elbow 01273 325850 Daniel & The Scandals Audio 01273 624343 Funky Flirt/MC Shockin/Candon Rush Volks Tavern 01273 682828 The Wytches Green Door Store 01273 770 685 BRISTOL The Casualties Fleece 0117 945 0996 Hannah Macleod Exchange 0117 9304538 The Intermission Project YHA CAMBRIDGE I Am I/Unit 9/The Simpletone/ We Are Godzilla Portland Arms 01223 357268 CARDIFF Nice Peter Clwb Ifor Bach 029 2023 2199 EDINBURGH Alan R Davison Hard Rock Cafe 0131 260 3000 Justin Robertson/Beta & Kappa/ DJ Greenman Cabaret Voltaire 0131 220 6176 EXETER The Carrivick Sisters Phoenix 01392 667080 Chris Murray/Chas Palmer Williams/Jak's Caravan/Josh Bickley Cavern Club 01392 495 370 EXMOUTH Stark Famous Old Barrel 01395 268226 GLASGOW Tigers Jaw Audio
LEEDS BB Blackdog/Dirt Royal/Damaged Packhorse 0113 245 3980 The Salt Water Brothers Milo 0113 245 7101 LEICESTER Mia & The Moon Musician 0116 251 0080 Surrender The Coast Soundhouse 07830 425555 LONDON Abby Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen 020 7613 0709 Alex Haynes & The Fever Blues Kitchen 020 7387 5277 Altered Sky Barfly 0870 907 0999 Bipolar Sunshine/Benin City/Tuesday Born Birthdays 020 7923 1680 Birdskulls/Sheen/Albert Albert Queen Of Hoxton 020 7422 0958 Blackbeard's Tea Party/Light Falls Forward/Robinson The Finsbury 020 8809 1142 Cold Cave Electrowerkz 020 7837 6419 Daniels & The Gold Seal Arch Angel 020 7938 4137 Darren Hayman Vortex Jazz Club 020 7254 6516 Duke Garwood/Agathe Max & Cyril M/Tomaga Cafe Oto 0871 230 1094 For The Boys/Ruby Venezuela/ Divine Miss Em George Tavern 020 7790 1763 Ides/King Of Cats Buffalo Bar 020 7359 6191 Jont/Eska Slaughtered Lamb 020 8682 4080 Jordan Laughlin Bar Music Hall 020 7613 5951 Labyrinth Ear Old Queen's Head 020 7354 9993 Lampwick/JB Newman The Waiting Room 020 7241 5511 Laura Jansen St Pancras Old Church Listener Black Heart 020 7428 9730 Lulu James XOYO 020 7729 5959 The Lunar Pilots Garage 020 7607 1818 Marc Maingard/Nate Maingard Inspiral Lounge 020 7428 5875
Mondo Generator/Steak/Valient Thorr Underworld 020 7482 1932 Natalie Duncan/Julie Hawk The Elgin Food Pub & Music House Phil Lee/Boss Caine/Hamish Roberts Green Note 0871 230 1094 Purr/From The Ashes/Kid On Acid Monto Water Rats 020 7837 4412 Ru1/Afrikan Revolution Jazz Cafe 020 7916 6060 Starkey Dance Tunnel 020 7254 2273 Stoneface Travellers Boogaloo 020 8340 2928 Tako Lako Windmill 020 8671 0700 Terminal Cheesecake/Bad Guys Corsica Studios 020 7703 4760 Under The Influence/The Leading Edge Nambucca 020 7272 7366 MANCHESTER Generationals/Windings The Castle 0161 237 9485 Jaimie Wren Thirsty Scholar 0161 273 7543 Leftover Crack NQ Live 0161 834 8180 Pine Barrens/Blastronaut/Wode The Bay Horse 0161 661 1041 NEWCASTLE Zeerox/The Ghost Tours/Circle Of Reason The Globe 0191 478 3913 NORWICH Death Before Dishonour Waterfront 01603 632 717 John Christophers/Graham Stacey/ Kayleigh Watson Epic Studios 01603 727727 Sweet Transistor Brickmakers 01603 441 118 NOTTINGHAM The Flatliners/Gnarwolves Rock City 08713 100000 SHEFFIELD Oh My Darling Greystones 0114 266 5599 ST ALBANS The Young Aviators/Broken Boat/ The Shallows Horn 01727 853 143 WAKEFIELD Cornerstone/Scream Arena Snooty Fox 01924 374455 YORK Rebekah Findlay Black Swan Inn 01904 686 911
Darling Farah/Seb Wildblood/Apes/ Rumah/The Viers/James Fox Corsica Studios 020 7703 4760 David Morales/Disco Bloodbath XOYO 020 7729 5959 EDX/Paul Thomas/Danny Howard Ministry Of Sound 020 7378 6528 Halves/The Dying Seconds/The Dreams Of Ridiculous Men Monto Water Rats 020 7837 4412 Hannah White Union Chapel 020 7226 1686 The Hillbilly Moon Explosion Underworld 020 7482 1932 Jackson Scott Rough Trade West 020 7229 8541 Jenny Said Yes 229 Club 020 7631 8310 Korda Marshall/Future Rock 100 Club 020 7636 0933 Las Kellies Windmill 020 8671 0700 Listener/Johnny Foreigner/Katie Malco The Lexington 020 7837 5387 Maleficent Martini/Janette Slack/David TG/Marnie Scarlet Electrowerkz 020 7837 6419 Maxixe/Jack Allett/Phil Maguire/ Roundhouse 020 7482 7318 The Misfits Garage 020 7607 1818 Montmartre Dublin Castle 020 7485 1773 Native Roses Monarch 0871 230 1094
Veronica Falls, Moustache Bar, London
ABERDEEN Perduramo/Bloodnut Moorings Bar 01224 587602 BEDFORD Public Service Broadcasting Esquires 01234 340120 BELFAST Move D/Samaan & The Superior Inferior/Bustard Stiff Kitten 028 9023 8700 BIRMINGHAM Black Sun Roof/Iron Fist Of The Sun/Z'ev Meets Doors To Nowhere Wagon & Horses 0121 772 1403 Fight The Bear/Reap/Alavano/ The Borgias O2 Academy 0870 477 2000 Laced/Leopard/Prayers Sunflower Lounge 0121 632 6756 Nerve Centre/Blakcan/ Passengers/Hope For Return Actress & Bishop 0121 236 7426 BRADFORD Vamp Bridge Tavern 01274 722853
BRIGHTON The Beatpack Blind Tiger 01273 681228 Departure From Normal Coalition 01273 726858 Ed Meme/Beatwell Fishbowl 01273 777 505 Ektronics World's End 01273 692311 The King Zoots/Audio Mime/ The Repeat Offenders/ This Modern Youth Sticky Mike's Frog Bar 01273 749 465 Loma Prieta/Me & Goliath/ Crows-An-Wra The Hope 01273 723 568 Owen Pallett The Haunt 01273 770 847 Riko Dan/Tyke Akak Retronym/ Spooky Bizzle Volks Tavern 01273 682828 BRISTOL db Band/The Veneer/John The Mod The Lanes 0117 325 1979 Chris Murray/Hayley Rozelle/Sam Eason/Chicken Legs Weaver Stag & Hounds 0117 929 7048
Stone Cold Thunderbolt 07791 319 614 TedZed Thekla 08713 100000 Toby Jo Reilly Smoke & Mirrors 0117 9290362 CAMBRIDGE Cherry White/Metropolis/ Subset/Beat Magnets/Cemetery Junction Corner House 01223 352 047 Lonely The Brave Portland Arms 01223 357268 EDINBURGH Art Brut/The Nature Boys Electric Circus 0131 226 4224 Kid Canaveral/Ballboy Liquid Room 0131 225 2564 GLASGOW Chad Palestine/Plasmatron Centre For Contemporary Arts 0141 352 4900 Cold Cave Broadcast 0141 332 7304 GUILDFORD Hammerjack/Nine Miles South/ Stone Giants Boileroom 01483 539 539
LEEDS Back Issue New Roscoe 0113 246 0778 Monster Killed By Laser/Himself/ Superintendent Fox & Newt 0113 243612 The Red Cockpit 0113 244 3446 This Combo Seven Arts 0113 262 6777 LEICESTER Porter Robinson Musician 0116 251 0080 LONDON Cryogenica Nambucca 020 7272 7366 Danny Rampling Scala 020 7833 2022 The Dark Tides/Tape Runs Out 229 Club 020 7631 8310 The Dirty Truth Underbelly 0207 613 3105 Donavon Frankenreiter O2 Academy Islington 0870 477 2000 Dubplate Pearl/Naoko The Rock/Texas Ranger Silver Bullet 020 7619 3639
The East Collective/Cleo/Waltzer Rattlesnake Of Angel 020 7354 0471 The Escape Club 100 Club 020 7636 0933 Face To Face O2 Academy Islington 0870 477 2000 Fedde Le Grand/Michael Woods/ Chris Avantgarde Ministry Of Sound 020 7378 6528 Galapagos Now! Hope & Anchor 020 7354 1312 George Fitzgerald/Silicone Soul/ Klartraum/Nadja Lind Fabric 020 7336 8898 Horse Meat Disco/Dimitri From Paris/DOP/Luke Howard XOYO 020 7729 5959 Jon Anderson Under The Bridge 020 7957 8261 Krankbrothers/Clive Henry/ Julien Chaptal The Lightbox 020 3242 0040 Krystall Roxx Proud Galleries 020 7482 3867 Lost and Found Madame Jojo's 020 7734 2473 Magrudergrind/Coffins/ The Atrocity Exhibit/ Oblivionized The Unicorn 020 7485 3073 Makka/Corsini Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes 020 7691 2610 Native Tongue/Lemmy Ashton Nest 020 7354 9993 Need For Mirrors/Pennygiles/Rkive Surya 020 7561 0030 Nice Peter Bush Hall 020 8222 6955 Playhouse The Waiting Room 020 7241 5511 The Pretty Things/Stay/Sendelica Borderline 020 7734 5547 Redeye Barfly 0870 907 0999 Shoshin Dublin Castle 020 7485 1773 Springh/Dust Coda/The Otherness The Finsbury 020 8809 1142 The Sundowners/Selective Service/ The Rising Queen Of Hoxton 020 7422 0958 Tinmen/LUXE/Dressmaker/Vera Monto Water Rats 020 7837 4412 The Tuts/Perkie & The Perkettes Buffalo Bar 020 7359 6191 TSOL Boston Arms 020 7272 8153 Veronica Falls Moustache Bar 07507 152 047 Walter Lure/Electric River Underworld 020 7482 1932 Welcome Pariah/The Anydays/ Rhonda The Lexington 020 7837 5387 Werewolves On Motorcycles/ The Lies/Man Hands The Attic VISIONS FESTIVAL !!!/Cloud Nothings/Fucked Up/Jeffrey Lewis/ Still Corners/Iceage/The Soft Moon/Koreless Oval Space/The Brewhouse/Netil House 93 Million Miles From The Sun Windmill 020 8671 0700 MANCHESTER Archives/Jolanga/Rain City/ Psychic Strangers Academy 0161 832 1111 Bernard & Edith Big Hands 07931 135365
Brain's All Gone/Moose Patrol/ Degeneration Fuzz/Anarchy Allstars Retro Bar 0161 274 4892 Knievel/Plantagenet 3 Trof Fallowfield 0161 224 0467 The Lottery Winners Academy 0161 832 1111 Martha Reeves & The Vandellas The Ritz 0161 2364355 Soma Dark/Below The Depths/ Skies Are Dawning Dry Bar 0161 236 5920 NEWCASTLE Disclosure O2 Academy 0870 477 2000 James Allan & Co Cluny 0191 230 4474 NEWQUAY BOARDMASTERS Basement Jaxx/ Miles Kane/Delphic/Little Comets/ Clean Bandit/Man Like Me/Simian Mobile Disco (DJ set)/Fenech-Soler Watergate Bay 0871 220 0260 NORWICH Eddie & The Hot Rods Epic Studios 01603 727727 Enigma/Storm/Dead Until Dusk Waterfront 01603 632 717 Raw Edge Brickmakers 01603 441 118 NOTTINGHAM Anta/Pigshackle JT Soar 07854 889034 Fields/The Swiines/House Of Thieves Rescue Rooms 0115 958 8484 The Stitches Doghouse Studios 0871 210 2040 OXFORD Bleed From Within O2 Academy 0870 477 2000 READING The Polysonic/Terrics/Heroic I Swear Plug'n'Play 0118 958 1447 SALFORD Jeramiah Ferrari/The Hugo Kensdale Band/Soul Saboteur King's Arms 0161 839 4951 SHEFFIELD Ivardensphere Corporation 0114 276 0262 SOUTHAMPTON World Famous Redsox Brook 023 8055 5366 SOUTHSEA The Alistair Goodwin Band Bandstand STOCKTON The Panoramic/Billy Vincent/ Comin' Up Easy Georgian Theatre 01642 674115 STOKE ON TRENT The Sherry Counsellors Sugarmill 01782 214 991 ST ALBANS Patti Smith/Tony Shanahan Alban Arena 01727 844 488 SWANSEA Peter Bruntnell Chattery 01792 463980 TUNBRIDGE WELLS Listener The Forum 0871 277 7101 WAKEFIELD Tribal Hammerhead Snooty Fox 01924 374455 YORK The Damned Fibbers 01904 651 250 Pip Mountjoy Black Swan Inn 01904 686 911
Laura Marling, Royal Albert Hall, London NEWQUAY BOARDMASTERS Ben Howard/ The Joy Formidable/ Tom Odell/Swim Deep/Hudson Taylor/Temples/Little Barrie/ The Computers Watergate Bay 0871 220 0260 NORWICH March On Rome Brickmakers 01603 441 118 SALTBURN BY THE SEA The Kill The Victoria SHEFFIELD The Broken Saints Forum 0114 2720964 PLYMOUTH When We Were Wolves/Our Hollow Our Home/Now We Burn White Rabbit 01752 227522 STOURBRIDGE Fozzy/Breed 77/Voodoo Vegas The River Rooms 01384397177 The Vaccines Corn Exchange 0131 443 0404 GATESHEAD Xero/Karnival Kids Three Tuns 0191 487 0666 GLASGOW Loma Prieta Audio HATFIELD Toots & The Maytals The Forum 0844 477 2000 LEEDS Fozzy/Breed 77/Voodoo Vegas Brudenell Social Club 0113 243 5866 Scott & Charlene's Wedding Wharf Chambers LONDON Basia Bulat Servant Jazz Quarters Bat For Lashes/Nadine Shah O2 Shepherds Bush Empire 0870 771 2000 Beasts Barfly 0870 907 0999 Beth White Monto Water Rats 020 7837 4412 Dan Croll The Lexington 020 7837 5387 Die Mason Die/Spry Buffalo Bar 020 7359 6191 Enjoyed Social 020 7636 4992 Eric Arn/Jon Collin Cafe Oto 0871 230 1094 Exodus Underworld 020 7482 1932 Gelacius Half Moon 020 7274 2733 Gideon Conn/Mouth 4 Rusty/ Jasmine Rodgers The Finsbury 020 8809 1142 Kacey Musgraves Arts Club 020 7460 4459 Karina Berry/Mark Matthews/ Rusty Buckets New Cross Inn 020 8692 1866 Kassassin Street/The Rapscallions Dublin Castle 020 7485 1773 Kirsten Thien Riverside Studios 020 8237 1111 The Nightporters Blues Kitchen 020 7387 5277 Plaids/Bloomer/Mars To Stay Power Lunches Arts Cafe Ruth Royall Alley Cat 020 7836 1451 Temporal Twins/Steve Waterman/ Christian Oschem/Andreas Genschel/Andy Crowdy 606 Club 020 7352 5953 Velcro Hooks/You Walk Through Walls Shacklewell Arms 020 7249 0810 MANCHESTER The B-52's Academy 0161 832 1111 NEWCASTLE Freddie McGregor Cluny 0191 230 4474 Jaya The Cat/Chris Murray Trillians 0191 232 1619 NORWICH The Creepshow/The Peacocks/ Gravedale High Waterfront 01603 632 717 My Forever Brickmakers 01603 441 118 Riff Raff Brickmakers 01603 441 118 TUNBRIDGE WELLS Fucked Up The Forum 0871 277 7101 YORK Belvedere/The Fear/The Human Project The Duchess 01904 641 413 The Vaccines, Corn Exchange, Edinburgh
BELFAST Slayer Limelight 028 9032 5942 BIRMINGHAM Disclosure O2 Academy 0870 477 2000 BRIGHTON Black Uhuru/Samsara/Unity Hi Fi Concorde 2 01273 673 311 Bosnian Rainbows Sticky Mike's Frog Bar 01273 749 465 Samurai/The Dead Life/ Edityourhometown Blind Tiger 01273 681228 BRISTOL Cult Of Luna/Blueneck/Sonance Fleece 0117 945 0996 Whales In Cubicles Start The Bus 0117 930 4370 Will McNicol/Mark Abis/Tori Maries The Birdcage EDINBURGH The Hanovers Hard Rock Cafe 0131 260 3000 Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer Voodoo Rooms 0131 556 7060 Swans Liquid Room 0131 225 2564 Tennaich Picture House 0844 847 1740
BELFAST Lamb Of God Limelight 028 9032 5942 BRIGHTON Cult Of Luna/Blueneck The Haunt 01273 770 847 BRISTOL Face To Face/Street Dogs/The Hook Line Riot/Criminal Mind Exchange 0117 9304538 EDINBURGH Emma's Imagination Voodoo Rooms 0131 556 7060 Ewen Forfar Captain's Bar 01316 682312 Josh Kemp Hard Rock Cafe 0131 260 3000 Martha Wainwright/Luke SitalSingh Picture House 0844 847 1740 GLASGOW Atlas:Empire/Halo Tora O2 ABC2 0141 204 5151 The B-52's O2 ABC 0870 903 3444 Childhood Broadcast 0141 332 7304 Patti Smith/Tony Shanahan Oran Mor 0141 552 9224 LEEDS Pseudonympho Santiago 0113 244 4472 LEICESTER Loma Prieta/Bastions The Cookie Jar 0116 2531212 LONDON Belvedere/Fear Rhythm Factory 020 7247 9386 Bosnian Rainbows Old Blue Last 020 7613 2478 The Casualties/The Adolescents Underworld 020 7482 1932 Dying Fetus/Desecration/ Basement Torture Killings/ Regurgitate Life Barfly 0870 907 0999 Jello Biafra And The Guantanamo School Of Medicine Dingwalls 020 7267 1577 Las Kellies Shacklewell Arms 020 7249 0810 Laura Marling/The Stranglers/ Cerys Matthews Royal Albert Hall 020 7589 8212 My Forever O2 Academy Islington 0870 477 2000 Public Service Broadcasting Banquet Records Quiet As A Mouse Birthdays 020 7923 1680 The Young 'Uns Green Note 0871 230 1094 MANCHESTER The Creepshow Star & Garter 0161 273 6726 Owen Pallett/Buke & Gase Band On The Wall 0161 832 6625 NEWCASTLE The Toasters Hoults Yard 0191 265 4282 OXFORD Revelators Jericho Tavern 01865 311 775
BATH Dan Ashton Green Park Tavern 01225 400050 BIRMINGHAM Bella Diem Actress & Bishop 0121 236 7426 Sevendaze/Arrows/My Great Affliction Flapper 0121 236 2421 BRIGHTON Fearless Vampire Killers/Lost Alone Audio 01273 624343 BRISTOL Blaxar Horseshoe 0117 956 0471 The Crystal Skulls/Day Of A Thousand/The Noble Experiment/ Sleeping Through Disaster Fleece 0117 945 0996 DERBY Jaya The Cat The Hairy Dog EDINBURGH Moon Boots/Cheap Picasso/ Rob Ralston Cabaret Voltaire 0131 220 6176 GATESHEAD Allegro Bay/Unholy Concoction/ Exit Route The Central 0191 478 2543 GLOUCESTER The Damned Guildhall Arts Centre 01452 503050 LEEDS Guttersluts New Roscoe 0113 246 0778 Loma Prieta Fenton 0113 245 3908 PaperPlane The Library 0113 2440794 The Rich O'Brien Project HiFi Club 0113 242 7353 T-Shirt Weather Wharf Chambers LEICESTER KGB Donkey 0116 270 5042 The Nightporters Musician 0116 251 0080 LONDON Cassie Graves New Cross Inn 020 8692 1866
Emile Bernard/The Cellophane Flowers/The Paper Shades The Finsbury 020 8809 1142 Jelly/The Pre New/Atomic Suplex/ Los Pepes Windmill 020 8671 0700 Last In Line O2 Academy Islington 0870 477 2000 Long Teeth/Mano's Daughter/ Thank Pablo Old Queen's Head 020 7354 9993 Louie Vega & The Elements Of Life Jazz Cafe 020 7916 6060 The Mahones/The Lagan Black Heart 020 7428 9730 Mary Coughlan Ronnie Scott's 020 7439 0747 Owen Pallett/Buke & Gase Village Underground 020 7422 7505 Peter Brotzmann/John Edwards Trio/Steve Noble Cafe Oto 0871 230 1094 Peter Pixzel/Cormac/Jacob Husley Fabric 020 7336 8898 Polly Gibbons 606 Club 020 7352 5953 Rampue/Equals/Rob Shields/Oli Petit Oval Space 0 20 7033 9932 UA/Hot Casandra/Haraket Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen 020 7613 0709 Victoria & Jacob/Azure Blue/ Cosines The Lexington 020 7837 5387 Wolvespirit Nambucca 020 7272 7366 MANCHESTER The Amistad/Cigarette Crossfire/ Droves/Don Blake Tiger Lounge 0161 236 6007 Cold Cave Deaf Institute 0161 330 4019 Jonny Brown/Last Party/The Minx/Deadbeat Echoes Sound Control 0161 236 0340 NEWCASTLE Delta Dog/Spanish Battery/Poplar Jake/BadBob Bates/Trevor Sewell Cumberland Arms 0191 265 6151 Warm Digits Cluny 0191 230 4474
Win! A BAG OF NME SW AG
1+19A Are Swim Deep lost up the shallow end? This would usually be a hellish question (5-3-6-3-2) 8 A naughty thought from AlunaGeorge? (3-4) 9+26A In 2010 they recorded a complete cover of Pink Floyd's 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' (7-4) 10 But prank goes wrong as Phoenix bring out an album (8) 11 A single photograph used on Jesus Lizard album (4) 12 "Outside their lives go on much faster/Oh, we won't give in, we'll keep living in the ____", Jethro Tull (4) 16+14A Cliff Richard hit that inspired an '80s sitcom (3-5-4) 17 "Gonna sing you an old country song from the _____", Jake Bugg (5) 19 (See 1 across) 21 There is a change made to album by Fischer-Z (5) 22 Bill _______, wastes away on a 'Lovely Day' when there 'Ain't No Sunshine' (7) 24 (See 5 down) 26 (See 9 across) 27 Bee Gees album shows up, as does a remix (6) 29 New Glasvegas single recorded during the nightshift (2) 30 (See 6 down) 31 Member of Buzzcocks who would dig Glee, but in the end loses direction (6) 5+24A Somehow enable hate to come from Foster The People (6-4) 6+30A Nearly got down on my knees to plead for number by Creation label band The Weather Prophets (6-6) 7 Never fight about an old disco classic of the '70s (5-5) 8 Primal Scream man on the beat? (5) 12+20D OK! Lyrics help somehow on this Talking Heads' song (6-6) 13 Man who makes huge cuts with Scissor Sisters (6) 15 Album that shows Jeff Buckley to be elegant with beauty of movement (5) 16 Just a number from Forward, Russia! (6) 18+25D Over 10 years on, do The Crescent still sound OK? Have they passed? (4-2-4) 20 (See 12 down) 23+28D Album that shows Tim Buckley to be up in the air and then down in the dumps (5-3) 24 Pop music wasn't loud enough for Blur (4) 25 (See 18 down) 28 (See 23 down) 29 I'd quite obviously be able to complete Macy Gray's album 'The __' (2)
1 A Ton Of Love, 7+10A The Red Wing, 11 Falling, 12 Hat, 13 Vines, 14+29A Hoochie Coochie Man, 16 Be, 19 Slayed, 21 Magic, 25+3D Bed Of Nails, 27 The Throw, 31 Afro, 33 Sister, 34+18A My Life Story
2 That's it, I can't take any more from The Enemy (3-6) 3 A bit of unnecessary derision from Happy Mondays (5) 4 MP gets in train with Patti Smith album (7)
2 TV Dinners, 4+17A Fight The Power, 5 Off The, 6 Elliott Smith, 7 This Here Giraffe, 8 Eagles, 9 Gravity, 15 Sway, 16 Brad, 20 Alf, 22 Cowboy, 24+23D A Heavy Abacus, 26 Doors, 28 REM, 30 Hue, 32 GI
Normal NME terms and conditions apply, available at NME.COM/terms. Simply cut out the crossword and send it, along with your name, address and email, marking the envelope with the issue date, before Tuesday, August 20, 2013, to: Crossword, NME, 9th Floor, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU. First correct one out of the hat wins a bag of CDs, T-shirts and books!
Collectors' corner
The musical gems that no Stereolab fan should be without
After forming the previous year, the group released their vinyl-only debut single in a strictly limited run of less than 900 copies. It was sold at the band's gigs, via mail order and at the Rough Trade record stores in London's Notting Hill and Covent Garden, and is now one of the most sought-after of their many collectable records. Need To Know: The four tracks on 'Super 45' all featured on the band's first compilation, 1992's 'Switched On', on the Too Pure label.
Released on 10-inch vinyl only, this was the first collaboration between Stereolab and British experimental outfit Nurse With Wound, whose sole permanent member Steven Stapleton had declined the offer to produce Stereolab's debut album 'Peng!'. But he agreed to remix some of the group's material on the condition that Stereolab would not hear the results until the record was released. Need To Know: The acts joined forces again on 1997's 'Simple Headphone Mind'.
Released at the height of Stereolab's commercial success, the seven tracks on this EP were created as backing music for an exhibition of works by New York sculptor Charles Long. It was initially released in a limited run of 1,500 and was later briefly re-released. Copies are now hard to find. Need To Know: All seven tracks went on to appear on 'Aluminum Tunes', the third volume in their 'Switched On' compilation series.
This EP was significant in the group's history as it was the first to be released after longterm member Mary Hansen was killed in a road accident in London in 2002, aged just 36. The six tracks were released on CD and across three seven-inch singles. It's also the last EP the band released before going on hiatus in 2009, although they have never officially split. Need To Know: The EP was recorded in singer Laetitia Sadier's native France.
Letter of the week
From: Pete Wyeth To: NME I give up with The Libertines. It seems that Carl is too up himself to work with Pete again. It was, like, 10 years ago, you have to let it go now! At least Babyshambles write good songs, too. If the new album is as good as it seems then they will be around for a long time and that's fine by me. From: Chelo Bodhi Aguirre To: NME Babyshambles are a good band but they don't excite me at all. Now, if The Libertines were to reunite then I'd be jumping for joy…
the main reason I use Spotify: my love and interest in music and the discovery of new music. Being a subscriber for over a year now I have really benefited from the service. Without Spotify there would be a lot of bands I would never have listened to, including Radiohead and Atoms For Peace. I think, and hope, as the streaming industry grows, more money will be paid out to artists for their content. Maybe there's more to music than making riches, maybe artists are happy that their music is listened to and enjoyed and the lives they're touching, as opposed to the amount of money they receive per play of a single song. From: NME To: Jack Whitehead The Spotify debate is hard. On the one hand, it's undeniably amazing to have almost every album ever made at your fingertips, just waiting to be discovered. On the other, you want your favourite bands to be able to afford shoes and a pint of milk. I think Thom's on pretty shaky ground by accusing people of devaluing music – but he's not alone in his anti-streaming stance. Ultimately it's up to Spotify to ensure that they pay artists a fair share of the money they make, right? Surely that's something everyone needs to agree on? – DR
From: NME To: Pete Wyeth, Chelo Bodhi Aguirre While I struggle to see how Carl Barât is "up himself", Pete Wyeth has the right idea here. What more could The Libertines hope to achieve in 2013 that they didn't S IN wrap up perfectly in W K E WE OF THE 2010? New material is LETTER unlikely to be better than their classics and the chances of the band completing a full tour and festival DING RECOR MOBILE PHONE season seems, well, MICRO ambitious at best. If The .com bluemic Libertines did anything, they made me excited to listen to new bands with youth on their From: Robert Hemingway side and big dreams. They were To: NME never about nostalgia. Let's I've been a massive Pete Doherty fan for years now, and I, like most fans, absolutely fucking love his music (whether it's keep things focused on the new The Libertines, Babyshambles or his solo work). However, this constant talk of him 'getting clean' frustrates me. In his Babyshambles record and recent interview (NME, July 27), he says that he's on the road to recovery and maybe another trip to Thailand might do the Carl's next solo album – DR trick. How many years has it been now when he's been close to sorting himself out? Don't get me wrong, Pete is an idol, but it's hard to keep faith as every gig I've bought tickets to in the last two years, he hasn't turned up (most recently being in Stoke, about a month ago) due to some drug-related incident. OK, maybe I'm the thick shit for buying tickets to see him with SPOT'S THOM'S Babyshambles in September, but surely Pete can't let me down again. I hope Pete does one day overcome his drug problem, PROBLEM? but in all honesty, we all know he won't. Stop kidding yourself and stop kidding us, Pete. From: Jack Whitehead To: NME NME's response... Reading Thom Yorke's I want my heroes to be around the time of isn't it? Reaching 34 Like Nick Cotton promising comments on music streaming glamorous, exciting and Babyshambles' first album and looking back over his ma that he was (NME, July 27) I understand alien – not stopping mid(or was it Dirty Pretty a decade as a drug addict, back on the straight the downside of services such interview to mop up an Things' second? So many Doherty can't really be and narrow every time as Spotify. However, I think exploded abscess. It's errors, so little time), I do that pleased with how he had hatched a new there is one point he is a sad situation, but still hope he somehow his life has turned out. plot to steal her life missing. And that is that not one you never give up manages to beat his Even though I personally savings, Peter Doherty's everyone can afford to buy hoping there's a happy demons once and for all. clocked out from being talk of getting clean is every single album of every ending to – DR Call me superficial, but one of his biggest fans somewhat familiar now, single band/musician they like or want to listen to, and also
From: Louis Kempson-Seaton To: NME Just the title to One Direction's 'Best Song Ever' is enough to make you dismember your own face with a pair of child's scissors. Now, I don't profess to know the words. However, irritatingly, my mind recollects A 'chorus' that goes: "We danced all night to the best song ever/And we whipped each other dressed in chains and leather/And Harry got spanked by this guy called Trevor". Then there's some "eh"s and "oh"s that
accompany every second-rate pop song. But that chorus! Honestly, NME, I cannot believe these idiots are allowed to run around singing these sorts of songs! What kind of message is it sending to young people?! Exposing them to the dark corners of the world of S&M at such an early age! What's even more worrying is that the band probably didn't even write it themselves. Which brings me to the theory that if you have a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters, one day one of them will write enough gobshite to fill a One Direction 'song'. From: NME To: Louis Kempson-Seaton I see what you have done here, Louis. You've pretended something is more offensive than it actually is for the sake of critcising someone you don't like. May I recommend you a) get a Twitter account; and b) subscribe to the Daily Mail. Those are not the lyrics to the song. In any case, I take your point – One Direction are a bunch of schmucks who hire only the most talented monkeys with the best typewriters to craft their hits for them. Please, let's make it stop – DR
Web Slinging
From: Rowan To: NME Here's Doug Castle from Peace and me after their show in Edinburgh. He had just dropped a bottle of expensive whiskey and was telling me how short I am. Great guy.
It was recently announced that Mistajam and Charlie Sloth will be the new Saturday night hosts on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra. This, in turn, means that the legendary Tim 'Big Dawg' Westwood's time at Radio 1 is over, after a hefty 19 years in the hot seat. NME.COM editor Greg Cochrane argued that Westwood is one of radio's most memorable personalities, and someone who's enormous shoes will be hard to fill. The 55-year-old son of a vicar can bow out safe in the knowledge that he's become something of a legend, regardless of how seriously he was ever taken – not to mention being the first port of call for the likes of Eminem, Nas and Jay Z when they land in the UK. Here's how NME readers reacted when Radio 1 dropped the bomb…
an artist. All the bad artists were ones who thought they were Superman and the best ones were the vulnerable ones with human failings who expressed how we all felt and didn't take themselves too seriously. The conditions that led to punk have arrived again – here's hoping someone can come along and make music exciting and meaningful again. From: NME To: Owen Martin I dunno Owen, I mean for every tortured emo genius like Elliott Smith or Kurt Cobain you're going to get a bunch of wimpy losers like The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, just as for every egotistical lunatic like Johnny Borrell we get a charismatic demigod like Kanye West, who believes his own hype and actually runs with it. We need
Best of the responses…
Love him or hate him, no-one can question Westwood's knowledge and passion for hip-hop. He knows what he's talking about and he's massively respected in his field. He's been a massive part of hip-hop for decades and I personally have a lot of respect for him. Ben Willison Laugh at him all you want (and there's a lot to laugh at) but he introduced lots of young people to all sides of hip-hop. I hope his new job recognises his talent and background. Good luck, you silly old fool! Luke Smith I loved Westwood's show. His TV and radio shows introduced me to so much great music. Steve Hart Finally. Most annoying man on radio. Does nothing but interrupt songs!!! Stephanie Von Pratt At least he can spend more time walking his big dogs now. Chris Morley
From: Owen Martin To: NME Reading things like "Jay Z is superman" shows how we've lost the plot, culturally. Being a superman is like kryptonite to
to appreciate the mix and realise that when someone revels in their own talent, it's not always a reason to hate them – DR
From: Nick Stone To: NME Bloc Party are not nearing the end! I think especially with the release of 'The Nextwave Sessions' EP and extensive touring for the last year they can't be that sick of each other and they've said there are no negative feelings in the band. However, they have been known to not completely tell the truth in the past and the fact that Matt Tong has not been playing with them recently worries me. Whether they decide to come back in six months, a year, four years or never again, I and thousands of other people will remember them as one of the great bands the whole post-punk revival thing brought out. From: NME To: Nick Stone Right now Bloc Party seem like a couple who try to pretend
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everything is like it was when they first met but maybe need to admit that it's just not working. 'Silent Alarm' is a classic but they're in danger of being remembered for being a band who didn't know when to quit. I'd rather hear four happy solo projects from Kele, Matt, Russell and Gordon than compromised Bloc Party tunes and an endless debate about the future of the band – DR
From: Jake Smith To: NME In my personal opinion, Foals really deserved to headline Latitude. They are a fantastic band and their songs suit the mood and feel of a festival. I saw them recently and the way they interact with the crowd is fantastic – this is something some bands lack. I am surprised that Yannis and co have never headlined any festivals before. However, they have raised their game with each album and I believe that this is their year. From: NME To: Jake Smith One of the first things I did when I got home from
Glastonbury this year was have a massive shower and order a takeaway. After that though I watched Foals' set on TV (I missed their slot, sadly). It was amazing, as good as anything I saw in the flesh that weekend. It's all well and good having enough fans to fill an arena or a field, but you need the live show to justify the space and Foals seem to have it sorted. Yannis and co have stepped up this summer and I can't wait to see where they go from here – DR
From: Tom Wells To: NME I met Matt Bellamy at a BRMC gig after being escorted offstage when I climbed up with the band. Brilliant!
Or call now on 0844 848 0848 quoting code MDXR Lines are open between 8am and 9pm, 7 days a week
From: Richard Hairyes To: NME Just had a brilliant weekend at Benicàssim. Watched great performances from the Arctic Monkeys, The Courteeners and Dizzee Rascal to name a few. Beady Eye were awful, though, their songs are so average. Liam knows it too, it's obvious onstage he knows they're bad. He needs Noel! From: NME To: Richard Hairyes Liam's in the middle of his own personal annus horribilis right now, and it's total car-crash viewing. Really, I think what's
saddest about everything that's happened – the average album, all the tabloid stuff of late – is that one of the greatest voices of his generation has been reduced to the status of an embarrassing mess in the eyes of the majority. Regardless of whether the tabloid stories are true, the fact that so many people seem to have the knives out for Liam right now must surely be having an effect on him. An Oasis reunion? It might just be the only thing to save him now… – DR
Which band did you support at the first Razorlight gig? "The Von Bondies at Dingwalls in Camden." Correct "I accidentally broke Jason [Stollsteimer]'s amp. I didn't realise there was no back to the stage, it was just a curtain. I thought I'd bump into the amp where it was rested on the wall and the fucker dropped about four feet. It was an expensive support slot."
This Week
What drink is the blue superhero drinking at the start of the video for 'Before I Fall To Pieces'? "Do you know who the blue superhero is? No-one does. That's Guy Pearce! He's such a good actor that he just pulled it off – we got Guy Pearce in the video and nobody fucking recognised him! That's fucking Guy-LA Confidential-fucking-Pearce. He's this old Superman and he looks too convincing with his rotten teeth. No-one knew it was Guy Pearce. What was he drinking? I don't know, Coca-Cola." Wrong. Beer and wine
According to Wikipedia, on what form of transport did you cross the English Channel for charity? "Crossing the Channel for charity? I don't think I have." Wrong. A hovercraft, apparently "Wow, how adventurous!"
Definitely not the hovercraft Borrell crossed the Channel in
Guy Pearce starring in Razorlight's video 'Before I Fall To Pieces'
Which song did you perform in front of Tom Cruise on Michael Parkinson's show in 2004? "'Golden Touch'." Correct
In which US city did you cut short a 2005 gig after five songs with the statement, "I'm going to kill myself now''? "I don't think I said that, but you're talking about Denver." Correct "It's the classic story of the hyped NME indie band goes to America, gets their ass kicked and falls apart. It was just the fragile mind-state of certain substances and alienation from home. It was just like stagefright, the one time in my life I just couldn't stay onstage."
You've had singles reach Numbers One, Two and Three in the UK chart – which single reached which number? "Gosh! 'Somewhere Else' was two because that was first; 'America' was one; so maybe 'In The Morning' made three." Correct
Complete the following lyric: "Let's just get the whole thing straight…'' "'…I don't wanna kidnap the truth or negotiate'. I read somewhere that they had it as 'I don't wanna kidnap the truth or the ghost that she ate'. That was in a review of 'Before I Fall To Pieces' and it said, 'That's a brilliant lyric, almost worthy of Robbie Williams.''' Correct
Total Score
"That's not bad. Let's try again in 10 years."
Which supermodel stood beside you on the cover of Vogue in 2007? "Natalia Vodianova." Correct
What role did you play in the 2006 Mighty Boosh stage show? "In the stage show I was a raping bunny." Correct "My girlfriend and I dressed as bunnies and they said we had to go out in the crowd and molest the audience. Did anyone know it was me? No, course not, I had a full bunny suit on. We'd just played Brixton the week before, then suddenly I was a sex bunny."
Borrell as a sex bunny and (right) The Mighty Boosh
Why were Razorlight hospitalised after a flight in November 2006? "No-one was hospitalised, but one of the planes that the rest of the guys and the crew came back on was one that had been used to go and poison [Russian secret service agent Alexander] Litvinenko, so they thought it had a trace of uranium on it." Correct "How Spinal Tap is this chat? It's fantastic!"
"They asked if I wanted to be on the front of Vogue and I said, 'Yeah, of course I do, that's been my dream ever since I was a little girl.'"
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