email: [email protected] NIGHTSHIFTwebsite: nightshift.oxfordmusic.net Oxford’s Music Magazine Free every month. Issue 159 October 2008 GimmeGimme Shelter!Shelter! XMASXMASXMASXMASXMASXMAS LIGHTSLIGHTSLIGHTSLIGHTSLIGHTSLIGHTS Oxford’s metal storm erupts. - interview inside Plus News, reviews and seven pages of local gigs! NIGHTSHIFT: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU. Phone: 01865 372255 NEWNEWSS Nightshift: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU Phone: 01865 372255 email: [email protected] Online: nightshift.oxfordmusic.net HEADCOUNT HAVE SPLIT. THE REGAL launches a new The local punk-metal veterans weekly live music club night this called it a day last month after month. You! Me! Dancing! takes almost a decade together. The place every Wednesday night, 8.30- perennial Nightshift favourites late, featuring some of the best up were always the most authentic and coming bands around. punk noise in Oxford, with a October’s line up features This malevolently melodic sound that City (1st); Data.Select.Party (8th); took in Killing Joke, Adam & The Rolo Tomassi, Xmas Lights and Ants and Therapy? as prime Ivy’s Itch, plus Youthmovies DJs influences. Headcount released (22nd) and Pulled Apart By Horses three albums, ‘It’s Business Doing (29th). Visit www.the-regal.com for Pleasure With You’, ‘Die Monkey more details. Die’ and ‘To The Point’, working with the likes of Marco Pirroni IN A VAGUE ATTEMPT to catch from Adam and The Ants, and up with the 21st Century, Raven from Killing Joke along the Nightshift can now accept demos way. from Oxford acts online. We held Foul-mouthed frontman Rob on to our old wax cylinder and Moss told Nightshift, “Yeah. compact cassette player for as long Headcount’s dead cos we got as we could but it seems that fucking bored playing to no-one young people today prefer to email and then we finally realised what a MySpace or BeBo link rather everyone else has known for the than go to all the effort of actually last nine years - people don’t like posting a CD. So anyway, if you fat noisy c***s. But we’re all want your tracks reviewed by our friends and are actually going to famously even-handed demo panel, WINCHELL RIOTS, A Silent Film, Stornoway, Raggasaurus and The try writing songs that we actually send a link over, clearly marked Half Rabbits head the On A Saturday series of gigs at the Academy in like and might enjoy playing, if we Demo for review, to November. On A Saturday is a collaboration between Nightshift and can get Stef away from the dinner [email protected]. We Oxford’s leading gig promoters TCT Music, and aims to showcase the table long enough. So Headcount’s will, of course, still be accepting best up and coming bands in Oxford in a series of high-profile shows. dead, but we’re not, if you know CDs. And bribes. But proper ones, The shows, which take place every Saturday throughout November worra mean. We’re going to try mind, none of yer cheap, tacky provide a great mix of established local favourites and many of the best and get a few copies of the album chewy sweets and stuff. new acts to emerge on the scene in recent months. The full line-up is: sold by doing a free single download and make a demo BBC OXFORD INTRODUCING Sat 1st The Winchell Riots + 50ft Panda + Elapse-O available of the last Headcount are set to release a special CD of Sat 8th Stornoway + The Keyboard Choir + Alphabet Backwards song written which, in my James Bond covers in aid of Sat 15th Raggasaurus + Confidential Collective + Loose Grip opinion, was one of the best Children In Need later this year. Sat 22nd A Silent Film + International Jetsetters + Motion In things we did. Not that anyone Show presenters Dave Gilyeat and Colour would care!” Tim Bearder approached a number Sat 29th The Half Rabbits + Tristan & The Troubadours + of Oxford acts to contribute and Spaceheroes Of The People YOUTHMOVIES release a new the album, entitled ‘A Quantum Of EP on the legendary Blast First Covers’, will feature Xmas Lights, Tickets for each show are priced £6 and are on sale now from label on 3rd November. ‘The Polyp The Family Machine, Witches, wegottickets.com or direct from the Academy box office. EP’ features five brand new tracks Maria Ilett, The Epstein, Sikorski plus a remix of ‘Magdalen Bridge’ and Eleanor Glynn, 50ft Panda, by Jonquil’s Hugo Manuel. Other Boywithatoy, Stornoway, guests on the EP are Portland, Straightjacket and Borderville, available to listen to online all week and artists with quality Oregon poet Adam Gnade, Joe tackling assorted classic Bond at bbc.co.uk/oxford recordings who are interested in Shrewsbury from 65Daysofstatic themes. The album will be on sale obtaining promotional music videos and Blanket’s Vicky Steer. Full in time for the annual BBC YAKUZA STUDIOS is a three- with high-end production values. tracklisting for the EP is, ‘Magic Children In Need appeal and man video production company For more information please email Diamond’; ‘Sad Trash’; ‘Thazn’; should be available on iTunes. based in Oxford. They have made them at [email protected] ‘Become An Island’; ‘Magdalen As ever, don’t forget to tune into music videos for a number of or visit Bridge’ and ‘Polyp’. The band BBC Oxford Introducing every Oxford based acts including, www.yakuzastudios.com. head off on a nationwide tour to Saturday night between 6-7pm on Confidential Collective, Greenacre, promote the new CD, calling at 95.2fm. The dedicated local music Xmas Lights, Mounted Insanity VIDEOSYNCRATIC on Cowley the Oxford Academy on Thursday show plays the best new Oxford Cannon and DJ Fu Vs Jungle Road are still keen to sell CDs, 13th November. Adam Gnade is releases as well as featuring Drummer. Yakuza are currently vinyl and DVDs by local bands. All support for the tour. Tickets, interviews with local and touring looking for videographers to join Oxford acts are welcome to take priced £7, are on sale now from acts, news, demo reviews and a gig their production team, and also in their stock along to Jon at the wegottickets.com and clubbing guide. The show is working with wide range of tbands shop. A quiet word with XMAS LIGHTS The arrival of Nick has obviously brought an influential new element to the band; how in particular has this affected the band’s live sound and how the album was recorded? JAMES: “With Nick we were after losing the notion of being a five-piece with a vocalist and wanted to become simply six musicians. His electronic-aided take on vocals has really helped us achieve that. Equally he’s a pushy bastard, so we get a lot done!” UMAIR: “It has created a situation where live you don’t have a clue where the noises are coming from, they just batter you left right and centre.” And how has Nick found working with Xmas Lights different from what he was doing before? NICK: “I hadn’t performed live in nearly seven years, not since my days as a small boy in Centre Negative, and bit parts with Coma Kai, so getting back into the habit of that was a big shock, though incredibly satisfying. In that time I’ve been a studio-hermit, either doing other projects like Mounted Insanity Cannon with my brother, or my day job making sounds for video-games, neither of METAL IN TO FLESH. FUTURE FACTORY butchered, eaten or incinerated. Bassist Simon which really involve working in such a sizeable brutality. Screaming. Always the screaming. All is Tierney left to become a dad, guitarist Luke group of musicians, all with different approaches to pain. But you love it. You love it because it’s the followed, before the band parted company with this kind of thing.” sound of Xmas Lights and you’ve got your head vocalist Marco Ruggiero due to musical differences Despite Marco’s departure, Umair is currently stuck in the speakers so you can experience it all (“The largest issue we had was that of melodic working with his old singer on a new side project, one louder. Up to eleven, and beyond. vocals: Marco was keen to add more, whereas we which is reviewed in this month’s demo pages. wanted to lose them entirely. We felt melodic UMAIR: “The project’s called Monday Morning XMAS LIGHTS ARE A METAL BAND THAT vocals suddenly become lead vocals, as opposed to Sun and came out of a desire to make beat driven have moved so far beyond standard metal and being one-sixth of a musical tapestry – but less music with trippy, dubby elements. We were hardcore noise making that they’ve become a pretentiously than that sounds!”). In their places listening to a lot of artists at the time which force for pure musical violence: squalling, virulent came bassist Matthew Mooney, guitarist Charlie inspired us, like King Tubby, Portishead, Lycia, guitars, spasmodic time changes, punishing Cunningham, and, perhaps most significantly, Scorn and My Bloody Valentine. I play guitar and keyboard drones and, yes, the screaming. Brutal, vocalist and electronics wizard Nick B, formerly of sing, Marco sings and plays bass. Vocals-wise it yet intricately textured, Xmas Lights write local metal faves Centre Negative. This trio have may sound similar to some moments of early industrial symphonies that take you through teamed up with remaining drummer Dave Xmas Lights, or comparable to bands like Joy brooding, doom-laden ambience into sharp, McDonald, guitarist James Gray-King and Division and Swans.” unexpected passages of hysterical violence that electronics chap and vocalist Umair Chaudhry.