Enablers Footage

Had the great pleasure of a few days in the company of Enablers recently and I had the presence of mind to take my camera. Here's Tundra from Nottingham Chameleon and New Moon from The Hope in Brighton.

On My Walls

Damn You! Christmas Covers Party 2011

It's that time of year again when bands in Nottingham scurry to secret practise rooms to heatedly discuss which pop classics they're going to murder in front of a paying audience in the name of good tidings. Yep, the 10th Annual Damn You! Christmas Covers Party is happening at The Bodega in Nottingham on December 17th.
If you socially network you can read all about it here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=153536504743034
And if you don't then the local paper The Evening Post grilled me about it last year here:
http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/nottingham-evening-post/mi_8158/is_20101217/gig-damn-christmas-covers-party/ai_n56509476/
All proceeds from this year's event go to Nottinghamshire Hospice as if all the tomfoolery wasn't reason enough to attend. See you there...

And if you're too young to understand why Santa is eating a piece of salmon from his beard then catch up here:

Recent Poster Work

No updates for a while so here are a few recent poster designs:

Sack The Headline Writer

Spiritual Unity - Vimeo

Back in November 2006 I saw Marc Ribot's tribute to Albert Ayler Spiritual Unity play in one of the rooms at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Due to a traffic jam, I got there 10 mins after doors to find the doors closed and had to pretty much beg the stewards to get let in. When they finally relented I found my front row seat taken by someone else and the band whipping up a euphoric storm already. No matter, I perched at the side of the stage and left my crappy little Minolta camera running as well, so here's the 3 snippets it captured. Doesn't capture the volume but it'll do.

Comets On Fire - Vimeo

Jaybird and Holy Teeth from 7th October 2006 at Nottingham Boat Club






Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157594318810090/

The Monorchid - Vimeo

Back in September 2006 a few of us from Nottingham made a last-minute decision to go to Chicago for the Touch & Go 25th Anniversary. It was great fun, it looked a bit like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157594314716448/with/261746806/

The last band to get added was The Monorchid. I'm a fan. I got asked to write something for Careless Talk Costs Lives magazine a few years ago. The plan was to interview vocalist Chris Thomson about the various bands he's been involved in but with an eye on deflating the whole revivalist/reunion culture that was on the rise at the time and now seems to have killed music stone dead. To quote Chris from another interview:

"It’s not that this music existed in some vacuum. We toured, we played out, and we did our best to make the performances accessible. So, if you’re upset you never got to see Monorchid or Lupus, I really don’t give a shit, there were plenty of opportunities"

It would have been good. Seems like every band the guy is in gets progressively less interested in referencing the past. If anyone can stick a banana in the exhaust pipe of the whole Michael Azzerad, Our Band Could Be Your Life, re-assessment of gut-instinct-events-as-carefully-planned-socio-political-plans then I figured it'd be Thomson.

The editor thought it was a shit idea. Oh well.

On the Friday, after the first day of the festival, they played a warm-up for their Sunday slot at The Note. Here's 2 poorly-lit, horrific-quality snippets of X Marks The Spot Something Dull Happened Here and The Warmers.






Woke up on Saturday morning with a bad head and about $2 in my pocket together with this covered in what looks like dogshit:



Here's how Sunday went:

Felix - Vimeo

A few bits of Felix footage uploaded to Vimeo:




"Oh Holy Molar" from The Betsy Trotwood in London, April 21st 2011





"What I Learned From TV" from Cardiff Arts Centre, January 24th 2010





"Death To Everyone But Us" from Cambridge St Paul's Church, February 12th 2010





"Bernard St" from Liverpool Wolstenholme Projects, January 22nd 2010

Nathan Bell - Vimeo

Nathan Bell, Bristol Cube Cinema, May 7th 2011

Vimeo

Right. My external hard drive is collapsing in on itself like anti-matter under the weight of hundreds of snippets of footage I have taken on digital cameras of varying qualities (usually of the "not that good" quality) of gigs over the last 5 years or so.
I posted a lot to You Tube a while ago but there's something about having to select "Do Not Allow Users To Add Comments" each time I upload that reminds me about how the world's going to end so I'm going to reassemble them all in Vimeo.
Most of the footage isn't that great quality but I'm an excited gig-goer with a beer not a cameraman.
The whole list (being added to weekly) is here: http://www.vimeo.com/user2333244/videos

Kogumaza Interview

Jack Chuter at ATTN: Magazine interviewed Katy and myself in advance of this year's Supersonic Festival.

Read it here: http://www.attnmagazine.co.uk/feature/4313

Photo is by the lovely Mark Rietveld in Antwerp.

Next up: photos from our May tour with Zomes.

New Design Work - September 2011

First up is this poster for the Gunpowder Treason & Pot! night of spoken word, lyricism and poetry that Nottingham Culture magazine Left Lion is putting on with Dealmaker Records. They wanted something bold and iconic to catch the eye in print and in poster form and get people interested in what is a pretty unusual event. You can read more about it here:
http://www.thedealmakerlabel.com/2011/11/gunpowder-treason-pot-a-scribal-gathering-of-poetical-dissent/



Second is this "Moonpack" CD digipack for Diamonds & Hearts by singer-songwriter James Deane. I'd previously worked on some album graphics for James' band Clearfield and he asked me to work on his first solo album too. James wanted to combine a feeling of Americana with more English feeling touches with reference to Victorian sheet music illustration and lettering. As before, James was a pleasure to work with and had clear ideas about how to bring everything together and hopefully the results speak for themselves. More images from the package here at Flickr.



Finally, back in June, Sustrans commissioned me to design this artwork for their Carnival Of Cycling at the Nottingham Trent Uni. It had to be bright and summery and above all it had to quickly communicate what the Carnival was about to anyone viewing it. This type of poster can often present problems in striking a balance between necessary information, fulfilling corporate obligations (logos etc) and making the thing look appealing and uncluttered. I think the end result does the job nicely though. And what typeface says "transport" better than Gill Sans? Eric Gill saves the day again...

Nathan Bell - 26 Oct

DAMN YOU! PROUDLY PRESENTS; FROM BALTIMORE MD:

NATHAN BELL

Nathan Scott Bell is a banjo player hailing from Baltimore, Maryland via Brazil.

You may have seen Nathan play in Nottingham before as ½ of Human Bell with Bonnie Prince Billy sidekick (and now Arboreteum frontman) Dave Heumann, who we had the pleasure of putting on a few years back.

We tried to put him on last year but UK border control weren't so keen though they did enjoy his impromptu gig in the holding cell at Heathrow.
Now he's back at the invitation of Capsule for the Supersonic Festival and we've asked him back to Nottingham.

Nathan is perhaps best known for his bass playing in legendary Dischord Records band Lungfish. He manned the low-end from 1996 to 2003, meaning when you put on Artificial Horizon or The Unanimous Hour and find yourself transported to alien, subquatic lands where your balance has been flipped upside down and you get the feeling of “I-should-probably-just-lay-back-down-here-that’s-better” it’s this man you should be thanking.

That this ability to alter perception should continue will come as no surprise if you’ve heard the music Nathan makes on his own and as part of the Brassa Bell ensemble.
Those same transformative qualities are richly abundant but now, instead of the bass, Nathan uses the banjo.
Whereas former Lungfish bandmate Daniel Higgs uses his own banjo as a grounding point for his vocals or as a raga-like instrument that always insists upon the moment, Nathan uses it’s spectral tones to explore melodic possibilities that hang in the air and bury into the brain.
Whether picked, bowed, sung into, scraped or drummed-on, he uses the banjo to somehow dislocate you from the present.
But this is no flashback or nostalgia trip. He might use tools from a past century but it’s the future you’ll be hearing.
Don’t be afraid.

http://www.myspace.com/osmodiusbell
http://nathanscottbell.bandcamp.com/


THE HORSE LOOM

Where to start to describe The Horse Loom?
The best acoustic guitar player in the country? Maybe.
The most unique marriage between British folk music, avant garde guitar playing and punk rock spirit? Certainly.
Wonderful? Definitely.
Under-rated?
You’ll have to ask him about that.

Northumbrian guitarist and singer Steve Malley would doubtless be extremely embarrassed to read any of these things. That says a lot. Steve played guitar in Crane in the early 90s, whose post-Husker Du take on The Byrds-meets-DC hardcore earned them a deserving reputation as one of the UK's finest live bands. He would go on to play in Kodiak, Four Frame and then most notably The Unit Ama.
The Unit Ama existed in direct contrast to their (musical) peers from America. Whereas a cold and cool approach was favoured by the bands from across the pond, The Ama dropped any of this façade and opened themselves and their music to possibilities of accident and misfortune creating a live experience that was truly inspiring. I say with total sincerity that they changed a lot of people’s musical outlook forever.

The Horse Loom sees Steve take this approach and apply it to his love of folk music. Combining folk structures and melodies with his incredible guitar playing has made The Horse Loom something truly unique. Getting Steve (a fireman by day) to play gigs these days is next to impossible so don’t miss this rare adventure to Nottingham.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWUcdN-2-MI


BLACK OCTAGON

Black Octagon brings together musicians from the same bubbling underground music world in Liverpool that brought you bands like Mugstar and Kling Klang. Take that sense of unravelling psychedelia and export it to the wilds of the countryside and you might start to imagine what sounds would occur. 2 guitars intertwine over bobbing drum patterns recalling something somewhere between the Neil Young “Dead Man” soundtrackisms of later Earth and the beautiful, layered melodies of Aerial M. But always sounding distinctly British and distinctly rural.

http://blackoctagon.bandcamp.com/



This is all happening at Lee Rosy’s Tea Room. We’ll open at 8pm and kick it off at 8.30 and try and bring things to a close at 11. Lee Rosy’s will be serving teas, coffees and the usual waistband-disaster that is their cake display. There will be a full Lancashire & Somerset record stall with limited vinyl releases, books and artwork: http://www.lancashireandsomerset.co.uk/

It’s a fiver.

Enablers - Oct 13

DAMN YOU! AND GRINGO RECORDS VERY PROUDLY PRESENTS; FROM SAN FRANCISCO:

ENABLERS

ENABLERS are from San Fransisco, CA and are without doubt one of the most powerful and amazing live bands on the planet right now and one of only a tiny handful of bands that we all agree on as being truly something special.
They combine a sinister tautness (somewhat akin to Slint maybe - and by that I mean dark, heavy, dry, bare, economical and not the dreaded "post rock" tag) with a love of heaviosity and weird riffery that sits them somewhere between the ritualistic displays of the mighty Lungfish and the more cathartic explosions of Nottingham's own Bob Tilton .
They employ a 2 guitars and drums set up to maximum effect whilst vocalist Pete Simonelli delivers spoken-word beat monologues and moods that either whisper below the surface or fight hard to be heard over the band's righteous racket.
The addition of drummer Doug Scharin (Codeine, June Of 44, HiM etc) and an increase in activity culminating in the new LP "Blown Realms And Stalled Explosions" (on Exile On Mainstream/Lancashire & Somerset) and a genuinely triumphant final-night set at the Pavement-curated ATP has seen Enablers hone and perfect their already considerable skills to the point where they are truly unstoppable.

http://enablers.bandcamp.com/


KOGUMAZA

Kogumaza formed in Nottingham in 2009. They use primitive rhythms, patterns and riffs to create dense and mesmeric song-cycles. The band’s live sound is manipulated through dub delays and echoes, allowing what is basically a heavy rock trio to expand and willingly lose control of the sound they make as they make it.

The resulting music marries fuzzed-out psychedelia to an ambient aesthetic, placing the band somewhere between the infinite repetition of Moondog and the thick gloop of Master Of Reality-era Sabbath.
They have recently released their first LP on the Low Point label and toured Europe with Zomes. A split 7" with Hookworms is in the pipeline and October sees shows with Nathan Bell, Enablers and an appearance at the Supersonic Festival.

“At times Kogumaza sounds like the future or the strange murmurings of the universe; at others, the cyclical pounding of drums conjures ghosts of ancient rituals, as if drawn from the very centre of the earth” Fluid Radio

http://kogumaza.bandcamp.com/


WITHOUT MAPS

"Without Maps hail from Nottingham, they consist of four people who sing, play guitars and drum. They came about through a desire to create music that was as direct as it was engaging. Initial practices began in late 2010 with three mutual friends mapping out their first creations. A decision was made after these first sessions that these songs needed to sound as big as possible and a fourth member was subsequently added. Late January this year saw the band making their first trip to the studio to record their first audio offering “The Cellar Tapes EP” and February marked the bands first live appearances. In the coming months the band hope to see themselves playing many more shows and write and record as much as possible whilst holding down low paid jobs"

http://withoutmaps.bandcamp.com/


All this excellence starts with the doors to Chameleon opening at 8.00 and the first band on at 8.30.

£5 ADVANCE FROM : http://www.wegottickets.com/event/132541

£6 DOOR. Buy a ticket as this will be busy...

DO NOT MISS!

Abandoned House

Now showing on Flickr

Coffin Pricks

Wouldn't mind being in Chicago tomorrow night for the first show by new band Coffin Pricks. Former Bob Tilton guitarist Chay Lawrence is manning the low end and Monorchid/Skull Kontrol/Red Eyed Legends/Circus Lupus man Chris Thomson does the vocals. Sounds about right to me. To be listened to back-to-back with the Eddy Current Suppression Ring song in the previous post. Then "Stranded" by The Saints maybe? You can make your own comp, I'm rubbish at them.

Group Home Haircut by impastah-rasta

Which Way To Go

Can someone do the right thing and import/release/re-release the Eddy Current Suppression Ring albums on vinyl in the UK so I don't have to sell a ball to pay for the postage?

Kogumaza Upcoming

Apologies for lack of updates if anyone cares. Been doing lots of music-related things. More of which to follow but here's a load of upcoming shows for KGMZ:

AUGUST
19 OXFORD WHEATSHEAF w/Dive Dive, Richard Walters, Seabuckthorn

OCTOBER
13 NOTTINGHAM CHAMELEON w/Enablers
14 BIRMINGHAM HARE & HOUNDS w/Enablers, Backwards
15 LONDON POWER LUNCHES w/TBC
16 BRIGHTON HOPE w/Enablers, Sweet Williams
22 SUPERSONIC FESTIVAL at The Custard Factory, Birmingham w/Turbonegro, Bardo Pond, Tony Conrad, Nathan Bell, Part Chimp, Skull Defekts and more

Here's an interview on the Supersonic website: http://www.supersonicfestival.com/news/kogumaza-qa/2011/

There are tentative plans for a split single in the pipeline with Leeds friends Hookworms as well.

Picore Posters

2 new posters for shows in Derby and Nottingham for the mighty Picore from Zaragoza.
Both are of the very slight in-joke variety but hopefully still look nice to those of you who haven't seen this Spanish gas commercial and who also know Michael Cross and those of you unfamiliar with this review of Picore's last show in Nottingham that makes particular reference to some of their facial foliage...





Go to both!