Pete Simonelli / Felix / Insect Ark / Rattle - Feb 25 2012

DAMN YOU! & GRINGO RECORDS PRESENTS:

A lot of people we've spoken to have said that Enablers at Chameleon was their gig of 2011. Can't disagree with that. They enjoyed themselves so much that vocalist Pete is coming all the way back again for this solo show with a stellar supporting cast...

PETE SIMONELLI

"In addition to being the vocalist and co-founder of the San Francisco-based band, Enablers, Simonelli is a published poet, writer, and playwright. A native Californian, Simonelli spent eighteen formative years in San Francisco, documenting, observing, drinking, reading, loving, betraying, working, and writing--- attributes and setbacks that, over the years, have led to many a Second Chance, for which he is very grateful. And call it birthright, boon, or bane, but as one who too often veered in westerly directions (much to the amusement of his friends and bandmates), Simonelli moved east in 2008 and now makes his home in Brooklyn, New York. These shows will see Pete reading from his past book 'One Brittle Nerve' and he will also have new material on offer."

If you saw his spoken-word performance at Lee Rosy's just over a year ago you'll know you're in for a rare treat.

www.lancashireandsomerset.co.uk


FELIX

Felix is the musical pseudonym for Lucinda Chua, joined now (in classic power trio style) by Neil Turpin (Yann Tiersen, Bilge Pump, Quack Quack, Enablers) on drums and long-time collaborator Chris Summerlin (Lords, Kogumaza) on electric guitar.
This 3 piece line-up has just recorded the second Felix record, entitled Oh Holy Molar to be released on the Kranky label in April 2012 after which the band embarks on a US tour with Yann Tiersen.

www.felixtheband.com


INSECT ARK

"INSECT ARK (NYC) is the brand-new solo project from Dana Schechter (Bee and Flower, Angels
of Light, American Music Club). Drawing from her decidedly more aggressive and experimental
musical side, INSECT ARK is composed and performed as an analog-electronic hybrid: one
woman, a sampler, a bass, a lap steel, and a keyboard. Just off a Fall 2011 European tour with
Enablers, she is currently recording her first EP"

http://insectark.tumblr.com/


RATTLE

If the idea of a band consisting of just 2 drummers brings to mind a hippy bongo nightmare then you've obviously never heard Rattle. Comprising of 2 of Nottingham's most unique and recognisable drummers (Theresa Wrigley of Fists and Katharine Brown of Kogumaza) and aided by Kogumaza's Mark Spivey they create a hypnotic and danceable music form that recalls This Heat or ESG even whilst remaining completely their own.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rattle/196974100379051?v=info


What a line up eh? We're going to decide on running order on the night. The thinking is to perhaps have Pete's spoken word going on throughout the evening between bands or to somehow mix it up differently to a normal gig. We'll keep you posted on that one.

As usual, we're keeping this cheap and cheerful so it's FIVE POUNDS ON THE DOOR.

DOORS ARE AT 8.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Shield Yr Eyes / I'm Being Good / Grey Hairs - Jan 20 2012

Damn You! & Gringo Records present a true winter warmer to kick off 2012 with

SHIELD YR EYES

With a tireless workrate that sees albums flying out seemingly by the week and constant touring, SYE have built up a deserved reputation as one of the UK's most remarkable bands. Centred around the dizzying interplay between the scattershot rhythms of drummer Henri and the bizarre, unique guitar style of Stef the results are truly impossible to classify. Yeah, their rhythms are crazy and yeah this is hard to play but it's never math rock. Underneath the complexities beats a heart of genuine beauty that infuses the urgency and clatter with a sense of epic-ness (in the original sense of the world) that recalls Neil Young.
True story - first time I saw these guys was at The Chameleon. I went down the front figuring I'd last a few mins, it'd be OK but it'd probably not be my thing. They blew my mind. Afterwards I pestered Stef to tell me how he did certain tricks on his guitar like a nervous kid. I've never seen anything like it before or since. I have every confidence they'll blow you away the same way too.

http://functionrecords.bandcamp.com/album/volume-4

I'M BEING GOOD

A welcome return to Nottingham for Brighton's premier noise rock outfit, now celebrating their 408th year in the business. IBG are most frequently compared to contemporaries like Trumans Water or Polvo but recent LP Mountain Language (Gringo) sees them draw out their addictive riffing and make time elastic. If you dig it when Harvey Milk tease out the greatest songs at glacial pace then you'll dig I'm Being Good in their current 2 guitar and drums formation. Not just heavy but HEAVY. Man.

http://imbeinggood.bandcamp.com/album/mountain-language

GREY HAIRS

Ex-members of Pissy Leg, Skulltanker, Harvey Half Devoured, Nerve Bomb and Reynolds (and Fists, Cult Of Dom Keller, Fonda 500, Lords) play slightly-too-loud, slightly-too-fuzzy rock music that steals riffs from Skull Kontrol, Nirvana and Status Quo. They should probably know better.

http://vimeo.com/31950012

All this starts usual time on a Friday at Chameleon so we're looking at 8pm for doors, maybe 8.40 for first band? You know the drill. It's a mere £5 on the door. Get there early.

Grey Hairs' First Gig

2 songs from the first Grey Hairs gig on Nov 18 2011, kindly filmed by Nick from Hello Thor Records. No titles yet.

For Sale - 70s Lawsuit Set Neck Les Paul Custom

Financial ruin means I'm selling this CMI Les Paul. I bought it in a bit of a state and have invested a lot of time and effort getting it right but last-in/first-out is always the way and it's got to go. Click the photos to head to Flickr where you can read the relevant info. If you're interested drop me a line at honeyisfunny(AT)fastmail(DOT)fm

Pics:

Grey Hairs

Just started doing a new band with some local types. It might be a mid-life crisis. I'm not sure and my hearing is kind of iffy so I can't hear what anyone says to me about it anyway.
Making a demo seemed a bit like hard work so we asked our friend Andy (aka brandnewbadidea) to bring his budget video camera down to where we practise (in a cave) and film a couple of "songs". Here they are:





Not content with making a video before we play a gig, we did an interview too which is largely gibberish: HERE

Then we thought it might be an idea to play live so here's our first 2 gigs:

NOVEMBER
FRIDAY 18: SPANKY VAN DYKES, NOTTINGHAM w/ULYSSES STORM, 8MM ORCHESTRA
WEDNESDAY 23: RESCUE ROOMS, NOTTINGHAM: VICE LAUNCH PARTY w/BEATY HEART, PEACE, CANTALOUPE (FREE ENTRY, FREE BOOZE: INFO)

Lords - Live 2005

Whole show by Lords at The Freebutt in Brighton, April 2 2005 (Red Monkey, The Sticks and Designer Babies were also on the bill) filmed by Dusty Bible. Goes in and out of synch a bit but then so did we.

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.