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email: [email protected] website: nightshift.oxfordmusic.net Free every month. NIGHTSHIFT Issue 163 February Oxford’s Music Magazine 2009 BabyBaby GravyGravyOxford’sOxford’s electro-punkelectro-punk starletsstarlets proveprove thatthat lessless isis moremore -- interviewinterview insideinside Ahren Roland photo: 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 CONFUSION SURROUNDS the THE FAMOUS MONDAY fate of The Regal, with BLUES will celebrate its silver unconfirmed reports that the venue anniversary this year with a has gone into liquidation last special weekend of live blues. The month. The venue, which celebrations will take place on the underwent a massive 19th, 20th and 21st September. redevelopment last year and looked Promoter Philip Guy Davis set to become one of Oxford’s started the blues club up in 1984 premier live music venues, was at the Red Lion (later the closed over the Christmas and New Brewhouse) on Gloucester Green, Year period but has subsequently before moving to Jongleurs and failed to reopen. No-one at the then the Bullingdon, attracting venue has been available to confirm some of the biggest names on the or deny the rumours circulating on British, European and American the local music scene. A spokesman touring circuit. Visit for Ka:pow! Events, who are www.famousmondayblues.co.uk planning a series of live music and for all blues news and listings. club promotions at the Regal this year told Nightshift that as far as SEVERAL VENUES IN they were concerned the venue was OXFORD are still looking for still operating. Hopefully more promoters to host nights or bands news next month. to play. Borders bookstore are Zavvi, meanwhile, as has been keen to hear from any acts on the widely reported, went into mellower side of things, from DAVID BYRNE comes to the New Theatre in Oxford on Thursday 9th administration before Christmas classical and folk to jazz, brass April as part of his `Songs Of David Byrne And Brian Eno’ tour. The following the collapse of its bands or solo artists. Email tour features songs culled from all of Byrne’s collaborations with Eno, suppliers. Many branches of Zavvi [email protected]. Thirst including Talking Heads material, the pair’s 1981 album, `My Life In across the UK have now closed Lodge in St Ebbes is looking for The Bush Of Ghosts’, as well as their most recent `Everything That down but for now the Oxford store bands and promoters of all kinds Happens Will Happen Today’ release. remains open, though stock is for its basement venue. Anyone Tickets for the show are on sale now, priced £35, from the 24-hour limited. Zavvi’s collapse follows interested should called Rob on credit card booking line on 0844 847 1585, or online from that of Fopp in 2007, leaving only 01865 242 044 or at www.ticketmaster.co.uk HMV and Borders as major [email protected]. stockists of music in Oxford. Any electronic acts looking for a AS EVER, DON’T FORGET to show is available to listen to all gig should contact The Response tune into BBC Oxford Introducing week at bbc.co.uk/oxford. BANDS WISHING TO PLAY AT Collective via their website at every Saturday evening between 6- THIS YEAR’S OXFORD PUNT www.responsecollective.co.uk. 7pm on 95.2fm. The dedicated th A REMINDER TOO that the on Wednesday 13 May have until The band are hosting a series of local music show plays the best th deadline for all Nightshift listings Monday 16 March to send in monthly club nights showcasing new Oxford releases as well as th th and adverts is the 20 of each demos. The Punt, now in its 13 all types of electronic music and featuring interviews with local and month. Absolutely no exceptions. year, is Oxford’s premier showcase DJs. The next show is at the touring bands, a demo review and a No, not even for you. st of local unsigned music. Previous Jericho Tavern on Saturday 21 local gig and clubbing guide. The stars of the event include Young February. Knives, Little Fish and Elizabeth – Yannis and Jack from Foals’ first OXFORD BAND PRACTICE band. The Punt will feature 17 acts is a new project aimed at getting across six city centre venues in one local musicians together. The night, starting off at Borders scheme is aimed at musicians bookstore and continuing at the who maybe feel they’re not Purple Turtle, the Cellar, the ready for a full band yet, or Wheatsheaf and Thirst Lodge. don’t have the time to commit to Bands or solo artists interested a band full-time, or simply want should email Myspace links to to meet other musicians to form Nightshift, clearly marked Punt, to a band. It takes the form of a [email protected] or monthly live performance send a CD – again clearly marked workshop where musicians learn Punt – to Nightshift, PO Box 312, a new song together and then Kidlington, OX5 1ZU. Acts must practice at home to record the be unsigned and from Oxfordshire. song in a studio. The scheme is Please include a contact number run on a non-profit basis, and brief biog. Unfortunately we attendance is free. Visit the site cannot accept submissions from at oxfordbandpractice.org.uk any under-age bands. to learn more. A quiet word with Baby Gravy instruments competently And he has a car! We were able to make the dual bass more of a feature, which helps us stand out a bit more.” Baby Gravy’s sound and performance is now certainly much more disciplined and cohesive than before. ZAHRA: “When it comes to songwriting we write a lot more than we used to, things come out a lot more easily, cuz we all listen to each other’s opinions. Playing live comes before practice. I know this isn’t how the average band would work but we learn a lot more from playing gigs than practicing two or three times a week. That’s why our stage presence stands out. Getting in the studio is what we try to practice for more than gigs. Live and recordings are two completely different things to us.” Pleasingly, despite Baby Gravy’s new Ahren Roland cohesiveness, there still remains that primitivism about their sound. Is there a desire to keep the sound photo: stripped down and raw? IONA: “Yeah, we’d like to layer up SOMETIME BACK IN 2006 WE hip hop and the playfulness of early Me’, indulging the band’s chief love the recordings to give some variation stumbled across Baby Gravy playing a synth-pop. of hip hop. on our live sound. Over-producing shambolic soundcheck at the old Musos will still balk at Baby Gravy’s things can be quite fun. I thought Zodiac. But, ramshackle though they BABY GRAVY THESE DAYS primitive approach to music making, we’d mainly grown out of our punky were, we were struck by their sheer consists of singer Iona Roisin, but for simple pop pleasures, they’re roots, though. Punk as part of our wayward invention and, at a time drummer Zahra Tehrani, her brother hard to beat. sound is a total accident; it’s the when every other teenage band was David on bass and newcomer Dale sound that works best with getting trying too hard to fit the emo White on keyboards and bass. Gone NIGHTSHIFT TALKED TO IONA, across what we want to say.” blueprint, their bizarre mash-up of are guitarist Adam Whitley, Zahra, David and Dale, and asked Zahra: “One of our biggest influences punk, dub, synth-pop and proggy saxophonist Cecilia White and them first how we reached Baby is hip hop and the majority of hip weirdness was both refreshing and keyboard player Freddy Mason. Gravy Mk.II. How did the split in the hop we listen to doesn’t involve a beguiling. When Nightshift last caught the band original line-up come about? guitar; it’s very sparse. But as most At the time Baby Gravy were a six- live, we were struck by the way Baby IONA: “We weren’t rock’n’roll hip hop is designed not to play live, strong bundle of contradictions, but Gravy have managed to retain that enough. We wanted to sleep and eat and there are different genres and we stuck them on the front cover of old freshness and sparky attitude, and we don’t understand minimal influences integrated into what we Nightshift as an example of what while no longer sounding like two techno.” play, not to mention all the young bands could do with the right bands playing different songs ZAHRA: “We were all completely aggression, it comes across as punk.” mix of imagination and anything- simultaneously or threatening to different people and when we started goes attitude, never really expecting collapse in an untidy heap any out that was a great thing. It was once ‘I HATE YOUR GIRLFRIEND’ them to go the distance but happy to moment. said we sounded like two bands wasn’t released in the end; what enjoy their wobbly-headed pop. The biggest shift though is Dale playing at once, and this spilled out happened with the Quickfix deal? taking a lead role with his arcane into our personal lives. We wanted ZAHRA: “The single was released AND THEY DIDN’T LAST. NOT IN Alesis synth, which buzzes like an different things. David, Iona and I without our legal consent. Verbal their original incarnation anyway.