email: [email protected] website: nightshift.oxfordmusic.net Free every month. NIGHTSHIFT Issue 157 August Oxford’s Music Magazine 2008

OCKOCK OXFORDOXFORD FESTIVALFESTIVALYY ANDAND WAKESTWAKEST TRUCK,TRUCK, CORNBURCORNBUR FEVERFEVER REVIEWED.REVIEWED. ZAPFESTZAPFEST CANCELLEDCANCELLED

NIGHTSHIFT: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU. Phone: 01865 372255 oung Knives at Wakestock. Photo by rphimages oung Knives at Wakestock. Y

NEWNEWSS Nightshift: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU Phone: 01865 372255 email: [email protected] Online: nightshift.oxfordmusic.net

ZAPFEST was cancelled with a week’s notice last month. The live music festival, featuring the cream of Oxford’s emerging rock and dance talent, was due to take place in South Park on Saturday 12th July but the event’s organisers posted a notice on the festival website on Friday 4th announcing that it was cancelled. August Initially no specific details were given for the cancellation, other than “unforeseen circumstances”. However, since then organiser Lance Cowan Every Monday has spoken to Nightshift to explain what happened. THE FAMOUS MONDAY NIGHT BLUES “There were a combination of reasons that forced me into the final The best in UK, European and US blues. 8-12. decision. Probably the most powerful of them being money. There were th some costings that increased dramatically since the original quotes, due to 4 BIG MAMA’S DOOR (UK) the increase of diesel and site problems with South Park. 11th BLUE BISHOPS (UK) “Due to a lot of festivals going bankrupt last year, all the companies 18th 3rd DEGREE LEBURN (UK) within the trade are very nervous now. They all require full payment in th advance of an event, which puts a lot pressure on the organisers. 25 No show – Bank Holiday This might have been overcome if it wasn’t for an error at Natwest Bank, who have now taken over a month to set up my business account. It still Every Tuesday isn’t set up, by the way. Added to the financial problems, Youthmovies pulled out at the last minute and there was also a very high risk of severe THE OXFORD JAZZ CLUB weather for the week running up to the event. Free live jazz plus DJs playing r’n’b, funk and soul until 2am “I tried to come up with a downsized event just so we could have it go 5th / 19th THE HUGH TURNER BAND ahead but it wasn’t feasible, unfortunately. The only way forward was to 12th THE HUGH TURNER BAND cut my losses and pull the plug on the event. Maybe next year.” th As well as Youthmovies, bands set to perform included Little Fish, A 26 KATYA GORRIE ft DENNY ILETT Jr Silent Film, Witches, Stornoway and Jonquil. Ticket holders can obtain refunds from point of purchase. Wednesday 13th THE STRATEGY The Winchell Riots headline the last ever Oxfordbands.com gig at the Thursday 7th Wheatsheaf. Local music website Oxfordbands began promoting local MOSKA presents BEELZEBOZO / DEDLOK gigs back in February 2003 when Young Knives were the headliners. Every Friday Since then the gigs have showcased some of the best leftfield and BACKROOM BOOGIE underground acts from around the Funk, soul and R&B. 10.30pm-2am; £4. world, including Deerhoof, Mark Eitzel and Part Chimp, but work and band commitments have made it Friday Early Shows impossible to continue. The final gig 8th COO COO CLUB presents JASON comes a year to the day that RINGENBERG / PINEY GIR / EMIT BLOCH Oxfordbands.com gave Winchell £7adv. Doors 7.30pm Riots their first ever show. Support th comes from Staffordshire’s Epic 45. 15 THE SCRIBES £5. Doors 8pm WINCHELL RIOTS play two 22nd MOSHKA presents INTERNATIONAL special gigs this month. On Friday THE HOBGOBLIN in Bicester has JETSETTERS / DYING ANIMALS 8th August they play an intimate got its music licence back and starts Includes entry to Backroom Boogie afterwards acoustic show at the Port Mahon in hosting gigs again from this month. aid of the Accord Hospice in The pub plays host to Boot Led Renfrewshire, Scotland. The Zeppelin on Sunday 3rd August. A Saturdays hospice is where Winchell Riots six-band event on Sunday 7th 2nd SIMPLE – Funky House 10-4am. frontman Phil McMinn’s mother September follows, featuring Beard 9th A NIGHT OF AFRICAN MUSIC passed away last year. Speaking Of Zeuss, Frowser, Eduard 16th SOCA SLAM – Caribbean soca/calypso/reggae about the gig Phil told Nightshift, Soundingblock and more. “We wanted to get some cash raised from DJ J1. 9-3 £3 b4 10pm £5 after for it as a thank you from me. I’m STUDIO 45 have recently 23rd DOCUMENT ONE / TOTALLY not a fan of charity gigs unless the upgraded their CD printer and can ENORMOUS EXTINCT DINOSAURS / cause is something close to the offer runs of 100+ full-colour CDs SIKORSKI. Plus DJs playing dub style and drum’n’bass. band’s heart but I guess this one is from only 85p per unit. The studio pretty close to our hearts.” Support is also now able to provide state of on the night comes from The Half the art Taiyo Yudens Watershield Sundays Rabbits, playing their first ever CDs from £1.09 per unit. Call BULLINGDON COMEDY CLUB with compere SILKY acoustic show. Cheryl on 01865 457000 for details, On Friday 29th July, meanwhile, or visit www.studio45.org.uk. DR SHOTOVER: Out, Demons, Out! More gin, Bedingfield! I have a hangover which is fiercer than the Bengal tiger, and just to put the lid on things, it is the Festival Season. The buggers are multiplying these days, it seems, they’re all called “Something”-stock, and they’re full of bouncy castles and re-formed bore-bands from the 1980s. Now, I hate to repeat myself - MORE GIN, The Stones in the Park Bedingfield! - but why o why do they have to be so bloody SAFE these days? MORE GIN, I say, and why don’t you pop a measure of Irn-Bru in there too... will this SETH LAKEMAN returns to the Academy on Tuesday 28th October as part hangover never cease? Where was I? Ah yes, as any fool knows, all of a tour to promote his new album, `Poor Man’s Heaven’. The rising star of festivals should feature the following: a) the Edgar Broughton Band the UK folk scene sold out his previous show at the venue. Tickets are on sale and/or the Pink Fairies headlining b) nasty 70s drugs c) greasy now, priced £14, from wegottickets. com or from the Academy box office. hamburgers d) outbreaks of trench-foot and/or beri-beri .... and finally of course, the experience is barely worth having without e) being beaten up by bikers. Lefty Lethbridge (stalwart of the East Indies MANYEUNG are set to reform for a Forms, Dial F For Frankenstein, E Club Entertainments Committee) has had some sound thoughts on one-off gig in September to celebrate For Echo, Les Valentine and this. Why don’t we organise our own East Indies Club Festival next the tenth anniversary of their initial Harlequinn. For more details and summer, and make sure it ticks all the necessary boxes? If the Pink split. The band, including Phill ticket information visit www.under- Fairies won’t re-form, I’m sure we could always get Juicy Lucy, who Honey who went on to form The the-oak.co.uk are doing the rounds again... drugs, mud and poor-quality snacks are always easy to come by... and so are bikers. Venue? Lefty reckons Rock Of Travolta and Boywithatoy, he can pull a few strings and get us a patch of scrubland just near emerged from the then vibrant TUNE INTO BBC Oxford Blenheim Palace. As for the name of the festival, given the location, Witney music scene. The gig takes Introducing every Saturday evening we were briefly thinking of calling it Woodstock-stock. But, as we pace at the Jericho Tavern on between 6-7pm on 95.2fm. The hate to repeat ourselves, we’ve decided to reference another festival Saturday 27th September. dedicated local music show features which happened in 1969, complete with Hell’s Angels, dodgy acid, new tracks from local acts as well as stabbings and bad vibes. Yes. You’ve got it. We’re going to call it UNDER THE OAK is a new one- interviews, features, a gig and club Woodstock-amont. Something for everyone, I’m sure you’ll agree. day festival taking place in North guide and a demo review. The show is Next month: Gimme (Bus-) Shelter Aston on Saturday 30th August. Acts available to listen to online all week confirmed include Forms Forms at bbc.co.uk/oxford.

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Obviously it’s Andy’s voice that is central to the ANDY YORKE whole album and, not surprisingly, the mood ‘Simple’ remains sombre throughout, accentuated on two of the album’s strongest tracks, ‘Simple’ and (Aktiv) ‘Diamant’, by softly weeping cello, a deep, Back in the late-1990s Andy Yorke fronted local resonant counterpoint to Andy’s lighter vocal band Unbelievable Truth, who scored a handful moments. That’s not to say it’s a morbid trawl. of Top 40 hits from their debut album, ‘Almost Listen to the waltzing ‘Let It Be True’ with its There’, on Virgin. The band were hampered accordion flourish and tell us it makes you feel sad somewhat by a section of the music press being and we’ll bludgeon you to death with a whoopee intent on maligning Andy for being Thom cushion. Then again, the wracked, emotive Yorke’s younger brother rather than judging wanderings of ‘Always By Your Side’ and them on their many musical merits (gosh, ‘Mathilda’ aim squarely towards the bleak side of they’re brothers! They have similar voices and maudlin, while the appropriately-named ‘Lay they’re neither of them graduates of the Timmy Down’ seems resigned to surrender to its demons. Mallet school of zany craziness! Perhaps it’s a ‘Simple’ was never going to be a party album, conspiracy!). Andy left the band in 2000 to though. Andy’s strength is his impassioned, work as a translator in Moscow, declaring he follow-up to Unbelievable Truth’s romantic melancholy and he has a voice with was leaving music behind for good. ‘Sorrythankyou’ second album. An air of the strength to convey this with both power It’s in the blood though, and now he’s back, expectant melancholy hangs over the album and a delicate touch. How ‘Simple’ will fare ten and on this solo debut reunited with erstwhile with Andy’s reflective, downbeat lyrics riding years after Unbelievable Truth’s commercial Unbelievable Truth bandmates Nigel Powell airily over the delicate, uncluttered guitar lines peak is hard to judge. You can only hope that (now playing drums with Dive Dive) and Jason of songs like ‘Twist Of The Knife’, while ‘Rise this time around Andy is allowed to compete on Moulster. Time seems to have stood still & Fall’ has a similar driving, oddly uplifting and his own terms and be judged purely on his own musically for Andy in the intervening eight almost hymnal feel to Truth hits like ‘Stone’ merits. It’s all any musician deserves. years and ‘Simple’ might well be a direct and ‘Higher Than Reason’. Dale Kattack

and start kicking out the old warhorse fading, “Daisy… Daisy…”. Such densely MODERN CLICHÉS powerchords again. The press release describes textured, industrialised landscaping continues ‘Falseness & Fairytales these as “Tarantino-style guitars”, although into the next track but then the album dips into we’re buggered if we’ve ever heard Tarantino ambient noodling, music for coffee table-gazing (Crash) play guitar. Maybe he should give it a go. He stoners to drift off to, before eventually Giving your band a name like Modern Clichés, could hardly do much worse than this. returning to life with a rattling android freight however ironically, is the musical equivalent of Dale Kattack train ride that owes more than a cursory nod to slapping a Kick Me sticker on your own back. Kraftwerk’s `Trans-Europe Express’. The Bicester-based trio then provide ample ‘Interzone Recordings’ holds together as an ammunition to enable their critical execution, album, although it could easily do to lose ten chugging out a brand of flashy rockaboogie that DIE_FUNKT minutes of its more aimless middle section (just screams of a desire to play third on the bill to because CDs can squeeze 70 minutes of music Dirty Pretty Things or something equally ‘Interzone Recordings’ onto them, doesn’t mean artists have to go the glamorous. Actually, their press release boasts (Eyeless) full hog). More time spent watching cult sci-fi movies and less time sucking up bong smoke that they supported Joe Lean & The Jing Jang The latest monthly release from the excellently and Die_Funkt is on to something. Jong, which by comparison makes propping up esoteric Eyeless label (run by local electro Victoria Waterfield Carl Barat’s band look like jamming with noisemaker David K Frampton) introduces Hendrix and Cobain in God’s own boozer. Oxford producer Die_Funkt, with a sprawling From the nominally 60s-styled power-pop of 70-minute album of ambient electro wobbliness opener ‘You Don’t Know What You Want To that at times comes close to Luke Slater’s Be’, Modern Clichés tick all boxes marked minimalist explorations. “classic indie rock” (i.e. following a straight Opening with a slice of genial synthetic fluff lineage from The Beatles to Oasis with over shifting electronic beats and a flutter of absolutely no recognition of anything beyond), noise that could pass for robot popcorn, the led by a keening, adenoidal vocal reciting album’s standout piece is the ten-minute second disingenuous lines about “The pressure is track (hey, no track titles – how futuristic is cooking” and the like; the end result sounding that?), based around a looped sample of Hal, like a watered down version of former local the super-computer from 2001: A Space 009 favourites The Samurai Seven but stripped of Odyssey. Here is exactly what can make post- their punky vim or moddish, melodic charm. acid house electro so fascinating, an extended, ‘Exactly The Same As Always’ finds the band hypnotic clang and pulse that grates and trying to come on a bit sensitive, only to realise squiggles and hints at sinister dehumanised in an angry epiphany that it just ain’t working menace, finally dying, like Hal itself, with a Selected Oxford releases are now available on the ground floor HMV Oxford supports local music Open Sundays 11-5pm & late Thursdays till 7pm. 10% student discount every day thethe portport mmahonahon Live Music in August

1st Ear Popping Candy with guests 2nd Smilex 6th Ladybridge 8th Charity for Accord Hospice with Winchell Riots (acoustic) + The Half Rabbits (acoustic) 9th Dirty Boys presents All-Day Festival 10th All day festival with Twat Daddies + Black Powder + DJs. etc 11th The Shanks 15th Dirty Boys presents… 17th Buy A Lung Fundraiser with Black Powder + Twat Daddies + Nine Stone Cowboy + Cease To Draw Breath 22nd Permanent Vacation presents Spectre Folk System + Beach Fuzz + guests 23rd The Port presents All-Day Summer Festival 28th Young Playthings 29th The Strategy 31st Zangryus + Sacred Divide

82 St Clements, Oxford. Tel: 01865 202067 gig guide

FRIDAY 1st Thirst Lodge BALLBOY + STORNOWAY + THE BOOT LED ZEPPELIN: The Hobgoblin, ZEBRAS: The X, Cowley – Edinburgh indie AUGUST Bicester – Welcome return to live action for stalwarts return south of the border – see main Bicester’s premier pub venue, tonight with Led Zep tribute band. preview BAND: The Jericho Tavern – Prog-pop VULTURES + INSPECTED BY TEN: The from the headliners, plus epic indie rocking in th Wheatsheaf – Indie-punk from Vultures, a U2-meets-Athlete fashion from Satellite MONDAY 4 formed by various members of The Quarter State. BIG MAMA’S DOOR: The Bullingdon – Finals, Raggasaurus and Gunnbunny, plus BACKPOCKET PROPHET + EVIL Blues jamming, soul and r’n’b inspired by rising young rockers Inspected By Ten. SCARECROW + MY SHIKOME: Bicester Billie Holiday and T-Bone Walker from the TWELVE SIGNS + SATELLITE STATE + Town FC – Heavyweight triple bill with London band fronted by Fiona McElroy and RED VALVE + SERIOUS LEGO DANCE Bicester thrash merchants BPP going up Mal Barclay against Nottingham’s black metallers Evil REVEREND HORTON HEAT: The Friday 1st Scarecrow and rap-inflected metalcore from Academy – Texan rockabilly cult hero hits My Shikome. town – see main preview BALLBOY / GLORIFIED JUKEBOX: The Cellar – Hip th hop, reggae, dancehall, dub, funk and soul club TUESDAY 5 STORNOWAY: The X night. GLAMOUR FOR BETTER Vs Swiss Concrete continue to champion EAR-POPPING CANDY: The Port Mahon – PARTYSHANK: The Academy – Jerky everything that is most indie about indie Live music club night. electro-pop party music from Reading’s music, tonight enticing Scottish jangle BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon – Glamour For Better, possibly the only band heroes Ballboy back south of the border Classic funk, soul and disco every week. ever to be inspired to get together after seeing after too long an absence. Almost the SHAKE: The Academy – Weekly dose of Test Icicles. This tour finds them going head to epitome of under-achieving lo-fi indie twee, funk, reggae, soul, rock’n’roll and jazz with head with London’s frantic electro-disco-punk the Edinburgh quartet, fronted by the oddly, Count Skylarkin’ and crew. duo Partyskank. awkwardly enigmatic Gordon McIntyre, are GET DOWN: The Brickworks – Disco, JAZZ CLUB: The Bullingdon – Free weekly utterly charming in every respect, capable Latin and funk DJ set every week. live jazz. Tonight upbeat funky keyboard of mixing dry, downbeat humour with great player Howard Peacock and his Quintet are pathos as they document faintly ridiculous SATURDAY 2nd the guest band. observational takes (‘Donald in The Bushes ARCANE FESTIVAL: Horsenden Meadow, th With A Bag Of Glue’; ‘I Wonder If You’re Tetsworth – First day of the East Oxfordshire WEDNESDAY 6 Drunk Enough To Sleep With Me Tonight’) minifest – see main preview 303 DID THIS TO ME + I AM THIEVES + with a yearning for a lost working class BRAINLOVE FESTIVAL: The Jericho MEWGATZ: The Wheatsheaf – Retro- community. As such they’re direct Tavern – Full day of quirky electronic music futurist electro-pop from Hampshire’s 303 antecedents of Glasvegas, although in turn from Brainlove Records in conjunction with Did This To Me, plus oddball electronic they owe great debt to The Smiths, The Coo Coo Club. Local synth orchestra The experimentation and soldering iron mischief Wedding Present and The Go-Betweens. Keyboard Choir headline with support from from local fella Mewgatz. Romantic and naïve, yet world weary, and fey electro-folk chap Pagan Wanderer Lu, OWEN TROMANS + THE BLACK HATS intimately anthemic, Ballboy make their bubblegum synth-pop weirdoes Retro + THE DEPUTEES: The X, Cowley – own glamour out of cheap Casios and navel- Spankees, post-punk hysteria from Former frontman of lo-fi post-punkers San gazing monologues; they also do the single Applicants, plus sets from Dead Singer, Lorenzo Owen Tromans takes a more pastoral greatest version of Springsteen’s ‘Born in Pseudo Nippon, Team Brick and Ratface. solo path, mixing brooding suburban folk The USA’ ever. After a recent hiatus the SMILEX: The Port Mahon – Sex-mad ballads with more jaunty country pop and band are set to release their fifth album, ‘I sleazeball heavy rocking. latterly collaborating with Goldrush’s Joe Worked On The Ships’, and the people who PAIGE + BLAST STEREO LOUD + NOT Bennett. 60s-inspired pop from Black Hats work as teachers by day will once again get ADVISED + COLLISIONS & and rootsy folk, blues and country rock from a chance to turn into the children of the CONSEQUENCES + SOUTH CENTRAL Deputees in support. revolution. A band to cherish. And, as an HEROES: The X, Cowley ECLECTRICITY: The Cellar – House and extra, extra bonus, support comes from the DJ LUCK & MC NEAT: The Regal electro club night. rather wonderful Stornoway, with their SIMPLE: The Bullingdon – Funky house LADYBRIDGE: The Port Mahon blend of romantic celtic-tinged folk-pop and club night. cheerily daft showmanship. TRANSFORMATION / TRASHY / ROOM THURSDAY 7th 101: The Academy – Three clubs in one night THE RYES: The Academy – Fast-rising with classic and contemporary indie at London power-poppers out on tour to Transformation; 80s and glam pop at Trashy, promote new Who-meets-Libertines single plus hardcore, metal and alt.rock at Room 101. ‘How Come Loretta’. THE PETE FRYER BAND: The Magdalen BEELZEBOZO + DEDLOK: The Bullingdon – Moshka club night with twin rd SUNDAY 3 metal titans Beelzebozo and Dedlok doing ARCANE FESTIVAL: Horsenden Meadow, their doomy and thrash things. Tetsworth – Second day of the festival. NITKOWSKI + ELAPSE-O + HREDA + THE LINES + INLIGHT + THE JELAS: EUHEDRAL The Cellar – London’s Nitkowski mix up oblique math-rocking, jazzy THE STANLEY BLACKS + THE experimentation and ambient hardcore, while SCARLETTS + KANGO BILL + JOHN Elapse-O thrash out a vicious, rhythm-heavy PEACOCK: The Jericho Tavern – blend of Liars and Suicide. There’s also artful Crosstown Traffic club night with rootsy math-rocking from Hreda and ambient country rockers The Stanley Blacks, plus new electronic experimentation from Euhedral. local ska-punk band The Scarletts and acoustic LITTLE FISH + THE FAMILY MACHINE + duo Kango Bill. BABY GRAVY: Thirst Lodge – Oxford’s CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford hottest rock property crank out the raw, Community Centre – Longstanding weekly soulful garage noise with all the spiky open performance club night with singers, exuberance of a young Patti Smith Band, with musicians, storytellers, performance artists more than able support from lachrymose and more. rockers Family Machine and bubbly, shouty OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon electro-punkers Baby Gravy. SMASH DISCO: The Academy

th Saturday 2nd – Sunday 3rd FRIDAY 8 DODGY + THE CANDYSKINS + A ARCANE FESTIVAL: SILENT FILM + FRANK TURNER: The Academy – Britpop revival heaven in aid of Horsenden Meadow, cancer research – see main preview WINCHELL RIOTS + THE HALF Tetsworth RABBITS: The Port Mahon – Acoustic Another one of those dinky little mini- charity gig in aid of Accord Hospice with festivals that are dotting the local landscape rising local stadium pop starlets Winchell Monday 4th this summer, now in its second year Arcane Riots offering a more intimate take on their ticks all the right rustic boxes, taking pace on epic squall, plus a first ever acoustic show REVEREND HORTON Horsenden Meadow in Tetsworth, on from dark-minded indie types The Half HEAT: The Academy Oxfordshire’s eastern border, not far from Rabbits. Thame, while musically the bill features JASON RINGENBERG + PINEY GIR + The world is awash with cult bands but few such exotic names as The Rabbit Foot EMIT BLOCH: The Bullingdon – cult followings run as long and as deep as Spasm Band and Holton’s Opulant Oog. It’s Alt.country pioneer and former Jason & The that of Reverend Horton Heat, Texan a good, mixed bill of mostly local acts over Scorchers frontman hits town to celebrate 30 rockabilly legends whose chief goal in life two stages, with InLight, Witches, Nagatha years of country rocking – see main preview seems to keep the flame of classic 50s Krusti, Shirley, The Gullivers, The Gog, FARMER JASON + NICK COPE: Fusion rock’n’roll alive by touring forever. They’ve Souljacker and The Youngs Plan among Arts Centre, Princes Street (2pm) – Special been on the road for nigh on 25 years now, those playing the main stage while the children’s show from Jason Ringenberg’s alter- releasing a dozen albums along the way but second jazz and folk-leaning second stage ego, performing special kiddie-friendly it’s their live shows that keep on packing the sees sets from Danny & The Champions of country songs about farm animals and the like. fans in. Fronted by founder Jim ‘Reverend the World, Stornoway (pictured), Maria Unlikely to include detailed mention of bolt Horton’ Heath, the three-piece are rooted in Ilett, The New Moon, Anton Barbeau and guns, abattoirs or potentially harmful growth country, blues, swing and rock’n’roll but get Bethany Weimers amongst others. There’s hormones. their energy and drive from punk. Heath also hard house and hardcore from Square 1, BORDERVILLE + THE FAMILY earned his musical dues on the Texan bar dubstep, techno, drum&bass and breakbeats MACHINE + SMILEX: The Wheatsheaf – circuit, mainly playing covers, until exposed with Pure Alchemy; reggae and jungle from Triple bill of quality local rocking, with to the likes of The Cramps and becoming Desta*nation and house from Facefunk. vaudevillian gothic glam from Borderville, plus immersed in the Austin punk scene. Since Mixing a festival vibe with the feel of a darkly humorous countrified indie from Family then their myriad releases have featured on village fete and a green gathering, Arcane Machine and scuzzy all-action garage punk such labels as Sub Pop and Interscope and comes with a homely post-Truck Festival from Smilex. while a major break into the mainstream has appeal. Full details and tickets at CITIZENS OF EARTH + MY FIRST never been forthcoming they’ve achieved www.arcane-festival.com TOOTH + GOODBYE STEREO + SELF- wider exposure through various movie and MADE MANIAC: The Jericho Tavern – advert uses of their songs, including Levi’s. Meandering funk-rock from local outfit Lyrically witty, or just plain daft (check out Citizens of Earth, plus alt.country and skiffle his divorce song, ‘Where The Hell Did You in the mould of Willy Mason from Go With My Toothbrush?’), two decades on Northampton’s My First Tooth and pop-punk they’re as taut and exhilarating as ever, a from Self-Made Maniac. high-octane psychobilly storm, and with his BOSSAPHONIK: The Cellar – Live jazz slicked-up hair and signature Gretch guitar, dance featuring a set from afro-dance band Heath himself is like a throwback to a golden Edenhight, mixing highlife, Afrobeat, jazz, age of rock’n’roll. Cuban and reggae influences. BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon SHAKE: The Academy SUNDAY 10th GET DOWN: The Brickworks DOEI + THE GRENOBLE ALLSTARS + PERM QUINTET: The Cellar – Special gig SATURDAY 9th to celebrate the International Bands Festival, RUE THE DAY + DESERT STORM: with French electronic dub group Doei; The Wheatsheaf – Local metal double Oxford-based funk and hip hop collective bill. Grenoble Allstars, plus Russia’s balalaika A NIGHT OF AFRICAN MUSIC: The groovers Perm Quintet. Bullingdon – What it says. TWAT DADDIES + BLACK POWDER: The TRANSFORMATION / TRASHY / ROOM Port Mahon – All-day music event with local 101: The Academy bands. BLUES BISHOPS: The Bullingdon – Hard- wells of noise to blissed-out dreamscapes. rocking blues in the style of Jimi Hendrix, Former Factory and Dirty Sci-Fi chaps Spiral Muddy Waters and Peter Green from the 25 add their own brand of dark-minded European festival favourites, recently joined psychedelia to the evening’s fun and by former-Argent and Zombies bassist Jim festivities. Rodford. ELDER STUBBS FESTIVAL: Elder Stubbs THE SHANKS: The Port Mahon Allotments – Afternoon of live music amid the market garden produce. Huw Lloyd TUESDAY 12th Langton, Assassins of Silence, Brickwork JAZZ CLUB: The Bullingdon – Free live Lizards and Roundheels are among the acts jazz with guests The Hugh Turner Band. playing live. INTRUSION: The Cellar – Goth, industrial MAGIC – A KIND OF QUEEN: The New and darkwave club night Theatre – Theatrical tribute to Queen. SOCA SLAM: The Bullingdon – Soca, th Calypso and reggae club night. WEDNESDAY 13 TRANSFORMATION / TRASHY / ROOM THE STRATEGY: The Bullingdon – 101: The Academy Belligerently angular pop. ECLECTRICITY: The Cellar SUNDAY 17th th BUY A LUNG FUNDRAISER: The Port THURSDAY 14 Mahon – Charity gig with Black Powder, THE STIFF LIPS + JOE ALLEN + Twat Daddies, Nine-Stone Cowboy and Cease COGWHEEL DOGS: The Cellar – Big Hair To Draw Breath. Friday 8th club night with Rebecca Mosley’s twisted acoustic duo Cogwheel Dogs and emotive th singer-songwriter Joe Allen. MONDAY 18 JASON RINGENBERG rd SHIRLEY + CHRIS LACEY & DAN 3 DEGREE LEBURN: The Bullingdon – / PINEY GIR: AUSTIN: The Jericho Tavern – 60s-styled Electric blues and boogie from the British harmony-heavy pop with a Latin twist from guitar veteran. The Bullingdon Shirley at tonight’s Crosstown Traffic night. CLUTCH: The Academy – Another trip to As leader of Jason & The Scorchers in the CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford town for the ever-gigging heavyweight cult 1980s, Nashville singer-songwriter Jason Community Centre stars, set to release a new live album, ‘Full Ringenberg laid the foundation of what was OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon Fathom Five’, having gradually shifted their to be known as alt.country, taking the SMASH DISCO: The Academy stance from metallic hardcore and punk traditional country sound to a more through stoner rock to a more bluesy and alternative culture where it found a whole FRIDAY 15th southern rock-inspired current sound. new life. This year Jason celebrates 30 years THE SCRIBES: The Bullingdon – Witty, playing music with the release of a career- th angry and inventive hip hop from Bristol’s TUESDAY 19 spanning compilation, ‘Best Tracks and Side rising rap act, out on the road to promote SERJ TANKIAN: The Academy – Re- Tracks’, the railroad imagery included in its debut album, ‘The Sky Is Falling’, after arranged gig for the former-System Of A Down title something that the former railroad supporting the likes of Skinnyman, Blade and frontman after illness forced the cancellation of labourer has continually referred to in song. Roll Deep. his gig back in April. Now out on a solo trip From full-on cowpunk rocking to more UNDERCOVER SLUT + VANITY BEACH: and a new album, ‘Elect The Dead’, Serj seems pathos-laden prairie porch ballads, his songs The Wheatsheaf – Mascara and panstick- to have lost none of his operatic flamboyance, are steeped in down-home tradition and he spattered industrial-glam punks Undercover still playing the fire and brimstone preacher sports a rhinestone cowboy hat, but he’s Slut sleaze their ghoulish way out of Paris to even when planted behind a piano. Yes, no equally happy to acknowledge the influence promote new album, ‘Amerikkka Macht Frei’, poncy acoustic change of direction here, with The Ramones and more along the way and in now 13 years on the road, still revolving all the rage, eccentricity, colour and propulsion his time he’s collaborated with The around frontman O, but boasting current and as in his nu-metal days. Yes he might seem a Wildhearts as well as Steve Earle. Live, former members with names like Incest, bit over-serious at times, but hell, it’s because Ringenberg’s experience, charisma and Disease, Porn and Date Rape. Nice. Support he actually cares! humour allows him draw in the largest or comes from Finland’s Vanity Beach, pumping JAZZ CLUB: The Bullingdon – Free live smallest crowd and make every gig feel like a out a form of gothic electro-rock that somehow jazz with The Howard Peacock Quintet. singalong in your living room. Support for finds a meeting pint between Skid Row and the evening’s show at the Bully comes from th Depeche Mode. WEDNESDAY 20 Truck favourite Piney Gir with her Patsy THE STRATEGY + DEADBEAT CAVALIER THE LAST SHADOW PUPPETS: The New Cline-styled Country Roadshow. In the + ZHAIN + GOLD DIGGER: The Jericho Theatre – Expansive orchestral pop from Alex afternoon, meanwhile, Ringenberg plays a Tavern – Jerky, jangly indie noise from Bucks’ Turner and chums – see main preview special children’s gig at the Fusion Arts Strategy at the Tavern tonight with local WE ARE SCIENTISTS: The Academy – The Centre in Princes Street under his Farmer political punkers Deadbeat Cavalier and ballsy New York post-punk faves return to town Jason alter-ego, performing his specially- classic rockers Zhain in support. after last November’s Brookes show, still in written farmyard country songs. Here he’s FRESH OUT OF THE BOX: The Cellar the ascendancy after the success of second joined by Candyskins frontman Nick Cope BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon album ‘Brain Thrust Mastery’ in March and SHAKE: The Academy running the whole gamut of cool and not so MONDAY 11th GET DOWN: The Brickworks cool 80s references. GUTTER TWINS: The Academy – INCARNA: The Wheatsheaf – Abingdon- th Monstrously portentous folk-rocking from SATURDAY 16 based metalcore monsters. grunge survivors Lanegan and Dulli – see main WHITE NOISE SOUND + SPIRAL 25: The ECLECTRICITY: The Cellar preview Cellar – Seriously good psychedelic drone- st GO AUDIO: The Academy – Synth-pop- rocking in the vein of Spacemen 3, Suicide and THURSDAY 21 tinged pop-punkers hit the road in support of The Jesus & Mary Chain from Swansea’s MGMT: The Academy – Spaced-out debut album ‘Made Up Stories’. White Noise Sound, veering from vicious, dirty psychedelic electro-pop from the New York newcomers – see main preview forgotten musical gems in the pop firmament. WITCHES + ALPHABET BACKWARDS: Tonight’s gig tends towards the former side of The Cellar – Sweetly exotic pop from things with Birmingham’s excellent Lazarus Witches, touching on everything from glitchy Clamp who deftly mix up Slint-like post-rock alt.country to mariachi to post-hardcore noise stylings with a gentle folky melodicism, while conjuring the dreamiest pop melodies occasionally coming on like the meeting point imaginable. Highly-promising new indie between Sonic Youth and Sparklehorse. starlets Alphabet Backwards support. Cardiff’s Spencer McGarry Season evoke the LAZARUS CLAMP + SPENCER McGARRY spirit of Super Furry Animals with their SEASON + PALACE MUSIC: The summery psychedelic folk-pop, while local Wheatsheaf – Swiss Concrete celebrate their strange ones Palace Music make with the second birthday – two years of promoting wibbly wobbly lo-fi noodling sounds. some of the best undiscovered and half- OFF THE RADAR + THE DEPUTEES: The Jericho Tavern – Return of Reading’s indie rockers. th Friday 8 ROCK COVERS NIGHT: The Hobgoblin, Monday 11th MUSIC FOR LIFE Bicester CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford THE GUTTER TWINS: CONCERT: Community Centre OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon The Academy The Academy SMASH DISCO: The Academy Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan bring their A special benefit gig to raise money for singularly downtrodden gothic folk project Cancer Research, featuring a bill brought FRIDAY 22nd to town to inject a little bit of gloom and a together by Dave Holt, the man who used BEACH FUZZ + SPECTRE FOLK whole lot of doom into our summer. With to manage Unbelievable Truth and organised SYSTEM + BLEEDING HEAD Dulli formerly fronting Afghan Whigs and a series of Oxfam charity gigs back in the NARRATIVE + LATAHS: The Port Mahon Lanegan providing buffalo-disembowelling 90s at the Abingdon Old Gaol (back before – Excellent night of experimental noise from vocals for Screaming Trees and more they turned it, along with everything else in Permanent Vacation – see main preview recently Queens Of The Stone Age, the pair Abingdon, into flats) featuring the likes of THE TRAVELLING BAND + THE EPSTEIN have seen a fair bit of the rock and roll life Radiohead, Ride and Supergrass. Diagnosed + STORNOWAY: The Jacqueline du Pre but together as The Gutter Twins they take with cancer at the start of this year, Building – Manchester’s psychedelic country an understated approach to its seedier side. thankfully Dave is now on the road to and folk rockers come to town for this special The pair’s debut album, ‘Saturnalia’, recovery and tonight’s benefit is a thank concert at the JDP with local country types released on Sub Pop, a perfect home for two you for the care he received. Helping him The Epstein and celtic-folk popstrels of grunge’s great survivors, comes shrouded raise money will be local pop legends The Stornoway. in layers of portent and regret, at times Candyskins, reforming once again after their INTERNATIONAL JETSETTERS + DYING recalling Swans’ later-period introspective triumphant show at the Zodiac farewell ANIMALS: The Bullingdon – Moshka club menace, but leavened by Dulli and party last year to show why they are still night with cathedral of sound psych-rock indie Lanegan’s switching vocal styles. For all its so fondly remembered by local gig veterans. types International Jetsetters mixing up brooding, unsettling mood (typical song If you’re already a fan, they’ll need no Wedding Present and Spacemen 3 type noise. title: ‘All Misery’) The Gutter Twins’ introduction; newcomers should come along THE YOUNGS PLAN + TALK IN CODE + music is melodically delicate, subtle string and marvel at timeless, harmony-heavy FREAKISHLY LONG MIRRORS + THE arrangements competing with churning guitar anthems that straddle the divide SHAKELLERS: The Jericho Tavern – guitars and imposing vocal performances; between 60s sunshine pop and melodic Twinkling math-pop and post-hardcore in the it’s a fine balancing act that only two such punk vim. Peerless. Joining them are fellow vein of Youthmovies and Dive Dive from The talents could pull off, dancing an elegant Britpop hitmakers Dodgy, now back in Youngs Plan, plus heavyweight jangle-rock waltz between the abandoned whisky their original three-piece line-up and fronted from FLM. bottles and overflowing ashtrays. If you can by Nigel Clark and set to relive old hits like BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon imagine The Everly Brothers reinvented by ‘Staying Out For The Summer’ and ‘In A SHAKE: The Academy Satan, you’ve got a decent frame of Room’. Million Dead firebrand-turned- GET DOWN: The Brickworks reference for the Gutter Twins, so get your travelling folk troubadour Frank Turner party shoes on. plays an acoustic set, while class stadium- SATURDAY 23rd pop starlets a Silent Film complete an DOCUMENT ONE + TOTALLY impressive bill that offers a glimpse of both ENORMOUS EXTINCT DINOSAURS + Oxford’s past and future pop glory. SIKORSKI: The Bullingdon – Synth-dance night with twitchy electro-poppers TEED and industrial-strength synth-rockers Sikorsky. BRICKWORK LIZARDS: The Wheatsheaf – Eclectic mix of 40s jazz, Arabic folk, blues and hip hop from the talented Lizards. MINISTRY OF SOUND ANTHEMS TOUR: The Regal – Dance extravaganza from the London super club DJs. KING FURNACE + BABY GRAVY + THE REPEATS: The Cellar – Ballsy rock’n’roll and scuzzy showmanship from the rock monster that is King Furnace, with support from rinky-dink electro-punk kids Baby Gravy. PORT SUMMER ALL-DAYER: The Port Mahon – Full day of live music with bands to be confirmed. TRANSFORMATION / TRASHY / ROOM TUESDAY 26th 101: The Academy JAZZ CLUB: The Bullingdon – Free live ASHES TO ASHES: The Jericho Tavern - jazz with singer Katya Gorrie and guitarist 80s night with bands and DJs. Denny Ilett Jr.

th SUNDAY 24 WEDNESDAY 27th GARAGE NATION: The Regal – A night of ECLECTRICITY: The Cellar UK garage. THE MIGHTY REDOX + THE PETE th FRYER BAND: Watlington Memorial Club THURSDAY 28 – Festival funk, swamp rock and witchy HENRY ROLLINS SPOKEN WORD: The psychedelia from The Mighty Redox, plus Academy – The one-time Black Flag-fronting madcap rocking from Pete Fryer. hardcore hardman continues to pack a mighty th punch even without the guitars, continuing his MONDAY 25 spoken word tour, mixing in autobiographical Nowt on. Have a day off, why don’tcha. Oh stories with political observations, the hey, it’s a Bank Holiday. We all get a day off. informed polemic complementing Rollins’ Let’s drink! surprisingly amiable wit and self-effacing humour. th THE WARLOCKS: The Academy – Narcotic Wednesday 20 groove-rock from the San Francisco bad boys, THE LAST SHADOW the band whose starting point appears to be Spacemen 3’s motto, “Taking drugs to make Thursday 21st PUPPETS: music to take drugs to”, and whose chemical intake apparently makes Pete Doherty look MGMT: The Academy The New Theatre like Ian MacKaye. Twenty-plus band We’ve been waiting for this moment ever Funny thing, side projects, they can go members have come and gone in the ensuing since we fell head over heels in love with wrong or right in so many ways; in the chaos, the line-up constantly redrawn around the New York duo’s debut single, ‘Time To former case, old lags retreading the blues riffs singer-guitarist Bobby Heckster, himself a Pretend’, earlier this year, an almost of their youth; in the latter, Thom Yorke temporary member of The Brian Jonestown spiritually euphoric slab of electro-prog- taking Radiohead’s outré musings to new Massacre. The musical debt to Spacemen 3 too pop. MGMT – Andrew VanWyngarden and extremes of despair. Arctic Monkeys is huge – all flanged guitars, psychedelic Ben Goldwasser – followed that up with frontman Alex Turner’s foray into pet drones and relentless guitar riffs, but homage possibly the year’s most eclectic album, project – where he’s teamed up with Rascals is also paid to The Velvet Underground, ‘Oracular Spectacular’, whose title alone singer Miles Kane – never looked like The Stones, Ride and The Jesus & Mary tells you much about the pair’s promising too much, especially after the Chain, and at their best The Warlocks are as psychedelically-enhanced approach to pop. pedestrian disappointment of the last savage a wall of rock sound as you’ll Produced by Dave Fridmann, it Monkeys album. But in reality, it’s a corker. find. unsurprisingly captures some of Flaming In fact The Last Shadow Puppets are a far DJ DEREK: The Academy – Classic ska, Lips and Mercury Rev’s star-gazing, acid- more ambitious, expansive and sophisticated reggae and soul from the legendary Bristolian frazzled rootsy space-rock, switching from proposition than Turner’s day job. Having DJ. 60s West Coast to synth-rocking retro- recruited singer-songwriter Stephen Fretwell YOUNG PLAYTHINGS: The Port Mahon – futurism at will, a swirling, stomping blend on bass and Arctic Monkeys producer James Chirpy, sunshine power-pop in the vein of of prog, disco, country, psychedelia and Ford on drums, they hit paydirt by inviting Weezer. more that references everything from Arcade Fire collaborator Owen Pallett to DESMOND CHANCER & THE LONG Bowie and Pink Floyd through The Beatles arrange the string parts and immediately MEMORIES + RORY ELLIS + FRANCIS and Incredible String Band to Todd we’re in a musical world that recalls Scott PUGH & THE WHISKY SINGERS: The Rundgren and Hall & Oates. Check out the Walker, John Barry and Love. Dynamic Jericho Tavern – Funereal gutter jazz in an band garbed in bandannas and tie-dye debut single ‘The Age Of The after-hours Tom Waits fashion from Mr shirts gabbing on about the universe and Understatement’ set the scene and the band’s Chancer and chums, plus slightly sozzled chaos theory and they come on like crazed album fulfilled most of its promise. It’s songs about, yes, whisky, from Francis and hippy sound explorers but the pop gems classically elegant 60s pop and swing with a friends. hidden on the album can’t be argued with. modern swagger and even confirmed CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford Live, with a full band, there’s a tendency to Monkeys haters should be won over. The Community Centre drift into extended jam sessions, but having band played a semi-secret set at OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon been picked to support Radiohead last Glastonbury in June and were joined by Jack SMASH DISCO: The Academy month, soundtracking the last series of White on guitar; not just a side project then, Skins and being hailed as the next big thing but a genuine super-group. FRIDAY 29th by everyone from Rolling Stone to The THE WINCHELL RIOTS + EPIC 45 + Guardian, the substance is obvious beyond HREDA: The Wheatsheaf – Last ever the style and the hype. Oxfordbands.com gig with the mighty Winchell Riots, a band they have championed since the days of Fell City Girl and a suitably heroic THE STRATEGY: The Port Mahon show to go out on. Intimate, yet epic stadium- THE REPEATS + WHISKY BLITZ + sized guitar pop from Winchell Riots, tipping HARLEQUIN + THE HI & LO: The Jericho a nod to Sigur Ros, Muse and Echo & The Tavern – Local bands night with indie rockers Bunnymen, plus spangled jangle-pop and The Repeats and good-time classic rockers ambient electronica from Stafforshire’s Epic Whisky Blitz. 45 and elaborate jazz-core and math-rock from HQ: The Cellar – Drum&bass club night. Hreda in support. BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon TIM WESTWOOD: The Regal – The Radio SHAKE: The Academy 1 hip hop mouthpiece hit the Regal decks. GET DOWN: The Brickworks th SATURDAY 30 Friday 22nd UNDER THE OAK: North Aston – One-day music festival featuring Forms Forms Forms, BEACH FUZZ / Dial F For Frankenstein, E For Echo, Les Valentine, Harlequinn, Jonathan Oakley and SPECTRE FOLK more. GAPPY TOOTH INDUSTRIES with SYSTEM / BLEEDING JESSICA GOYDER + DENISE MARIE + HEART NARRATIVE : THE PLUGS: The Wheatsheaf – Fluffy, tree- hugging acoustic pop from Jessica Goyder at The Port Mahon tonight’s GTI, plus Bayou blues and funky folk Another impressively challenging bill from from New Orleans’ Denise Marie and Elbow- local champions of experimental noise, influenced pop grandeur from The Plugs. Permanent Vacation, tonight, featuring folk. Bleeding Heart Narrative is the solo work SMILEX + THE BLACK HATS + TRISTAN Manchester’s semi-improvised trio Beach of London-based composer Oliver Barrett & THE TROUBADOURS: The Cellar – Fuzz, combining drums, vocals and guitar and who utilises layered piano, cello and vocals to Garage punk and glam-metal rocking from lots and lots of effects pedals to create a create complex shifting patterns of alternately Smilex, with support from 60s-inspired pop musical landscape of feedback, vocal abrasive and seductive noise, which you can types Black Hats and Velvet Underground- manipulation and freeform tribal rhythms that imagine being appreciated in the grand influenced teen rockers Tristan & The mixes in various bits of The Velvet surroundings of the Holywell Music Room, Troubadours. Underground, Sonic Youth, Vibracathedral given some wider exposure. Completing the TRANSFORMATION / TRASHY / ROOM Orchestra and krautrock pioneers Popol Vuh. bill is Cambridge’s Latahs, again a one-man, 101: The Academy Likely star of the show is Pete Nolan, multi-instrumental show, creating clanging drummer with Sonic Youth-affiliated industrial dissonance of the sort that in a more st SUNDAY 31 noisemakers Magik Markers, tonight perfect world would be causing Kooks fans to ZANGRYUS + SACRED DIVIDE: The Port presenting his solo side project, Spectre Folk spontaneously haemorrhage what passes for Mahon System, a haunting, intense flurry of avant- their brains into a large bucket.

Nightshift listings are free. Deadline for VENUE PHONE NUMBERS inclusion in the gig guide is the 20th of each Oxford Academy: 0844 477 2000 (ticketweb) The Port Mahon: 01865 202067 month - no exceptions. Call 01865 372255 The Bullingdon: 01865 244516 The Jericho Tavern: 01865 311775 (10am-6pm) or email listings to The Wheatsheaf: 01865 721156 Brookes Union: 01865 484750 [email protected]. All listings are The X: 01865 776431 The Purple Turtle: 01865 247086 copyright of Nightshift and may not be The Cellar: 01865 244761 The Temple: 01865 243251 reproduced without permission The New Theatre: 0870 606 3500 East Oxford Community Centre: 01865 792168 WAKESTOCK Happy Mondays FRIDAY The last thing you really need when you turn up at a festival and find the arena closed for another two hours because the organisers want you to go and watch a selection of beefy blokes doing incredible but Darwin-challenging stunts while attached to the back of speedboats is to bump into a mate who’s armed with a three-litre box of Merlot. It means thing start out messy and quickly go downhill faster than one of the blokes being pulled across a skate ramp-cum-swimming pool called the Billabong by a mechanised wire later in the afternoon. Still, maybe a messed-up state is the best way to appreciate Wakestock which seems – to be kind – to suffer from teething troubles. Situated in the farthest corner of Blenheim Palace’s expansive grounds, Wakestock is still a picturesque affair with a trek down to the lake to watch the sport a healthy, wholesome alternative to sitting in front of the telly watching Euro 2008. But even once the main music arena opens there’s a palpable feeling of not much going on. Partly this is due to a low turnout for the Compared to Cazals Trophy Twins’ twitchy, and the first band we catch are REEMA. We opening day (all festivals seem to have suffered uncluttered and uplifting funky house is proof quickly wish we were back at the bus stop. By- this summer from a combination of overkill and a that there’s possibly some life here tonight. rote emota-rock that ticks all boxes marked Oasis fear of rubbish weather) but it takes an age for through to Stones Roses, performed with cock- things to warm up and with the various music We – unprofessionally – completely miss rock posturing and featuring a bass player in a tents badly marked out we spend twenty GROOVE ARMADA, and we’re still not sure hopefully ironic Anarchy t-shirt. minutes watching HYPER in the belief that how or why. It might have something to do with And then things go wrong. We head off to catch they’re Devil’s Gun. Actually Hyper, if that’s going back to the campsite to neck as much red recent Trangressive singing ESSER only to find who they indeed are, aren’t half bad, if a little wine as possible rather than pay £3.50 for a can he’s just finished. Set times have been forced to cheesy, in their mix of heavy-duty, grungy of Red Stripe in the arena, or maybe we were just change, but you wouldn’t know because no electro-funk and wandering hip hop standing underneath the giant windmill fairground bastard is telling anyone and they’re still flogging pontificating. They’re far better when piling on ride, wondering why anyone would pay good mini programmes for a fiver at the gate with the the pressure, less good when sounding a bit like money to make the contents of their stomach wrong times in. Faithless; they come on stage to a crowd of reappear through centrifugal force. Which Emergency strategic planning means we do make about 15 and leave to the cheers of twenty times doubtless makes us the sort of wimps who it in time for OPERATOR PLEASE, who turn that number and if you can’t imagine them selling would get sand kicked in their face by beefy out to be the highlight of the day, surpassing any huge amounts of CDs a bright future on the wakeboarders. novelty teeny-pop label with a set that’s fifty festival circuit seems likely. We do, however, have our expectations shoved times more punk rock than all the rock lads with down our cynical throast by PENDULUM who their Anarchy t-shirts and yet pretends to be The familiar strains of ‘Man In The Machine’ are really bloody good, managing to lift a nothing more than silly, throwaway bubblegum draws into what we now know is the main stage surprisingly lairy (what do you expect if you’re fun. Like Be Your Own Pet raised on Toni Basil tent for ROYWORLD’s set which, as ever, gets only selling premium-strength lager?) crowd’s and Britney Spears, they chew their way through us to wondering why we enjoy a band who spirits. Pendulum’s stadium-sized, rock-friendly, half an hour of frothy, frenzied held-together- remind us of Supertramp so much. Later on we populist take on drum&bass has made them with-spit-and-string disco-punk that climaxes play ‘Man In The Machine’ to a friend and something of a bête noir in underground dance with ace debut smash ‘Just a Song About Ping convince him it’s a lost Sparks track. So that’s circles but faced with a tent full of pissed people Pong’ why we like them. who just want to dance and don’t give a shit We try ever so, ever so hard to like FRIENDLY about looking cool, they fit the bill perfectly. Those in the know (ie. Music industry types) FIRES but just can’t summon up the And against the odds, Friday ends on a high. are promising great things from IN CASE OF enthusiasm. Perhaps it’s because they can’t Dale Kattack FIRE. They are, we’re told, The New Muse. summon up the enthusiasm to write more than They’re not, of course. They’re a bombastic one tune. That tune is ‘Paris’ and it sounds like cross between Ultravox and Bon Jovi with a some meeting point between Hot Chip and SATURDAY barely-disguised power rock ballad that might as Cameo, but the rest of their set sounds exactly Outside Blenheim Palace gates some 100 people well be Poison. Still, unlike, say, Reema, they the same – lightweight, skittish disco-house that are waiting for the promised shuttle bus. Some play with some conviction and a bit of showbiz might sound a bit more exciting anywhere other have been here for over an hour. Some are flair and you think that maybe Wembley glory than a quarter-full marquee. throwing themselves in front of passing taxis in isn’t beyond them. To be honest we don’t even attempt to like desperation. A forlorn steward with no radio If Pendulum defied expectations, CALVIN CAZALS. Partly because we remember them a contact to the outside world shrugs his shoulders HARRIS shreds them and magically makes a couple of years ago as a band that could make and says “It was meant to be here ages ago”. decorative paper chain from their remains. We’d Pigeon Detectives sound like futuristic android Eventually a twelve-seater minibus turns up. We come with only the sour knowledge of his awful, hardcore demons, but mostly because their don’t know whether to laugh or riot. Dammit, knowingly retro album to fuel our nominally electro-infused pub rock stodge is so we’re English. We squeeze into the luggage preconceptions but twenty minutes into his big meat-and-potatoes it should be sold not in a compartment and make do. At least we’re getting beat techno squiggle, with its side order of plastic CD case but a thick layer of pastry. there in the end. feelgood electro-pop and we’re dancing badly, Like a lot of stuff today TROPHY TWINS’ set We negotiate the police sniffer dog (possibly madly but mostly gladly. Harris is a natural born lacks impact by being played out to such a small employed by the Marquis of Blandford to bandleader and his brand of happy electro-dance crowd who are at least all packed to the front and confiscate him a new stash), who fails to notice - where Tubeway Army meets Ottowan – is determined to have something resembling fun. that our trousers are tailored from pure cocaine, simple and irresistible. He ruins it a bit at the photos by rphimages The Streets Futureheads Estelle

end with ‘The Girls’ but we leave the tent thought a boy and a girl could make so much ESTELLE is on the sassier end of cool. She’s repenting our earlier cynicism. noise? Especially a girl as tiny as ‘Juju’. Every brought a huge band with her, but this The same can’t be said of HAPPY MONDAYS inch the rock’n’roller in her white skinny jeans grandiosity is dampened the moment she starts who we thought might be past it and don’t even and red braces, she’s an instrument in herself – chatting to the audience (apparently, men are try to confound us with a lazy, decrepit set that her voice creates everything and her guitar getting on her nerves so much that she’s written a finds a barely comprehensible Shaun Ryder and a follows. PJ Harvey or Suzi Quatro are fair song about it). She toasts and raps as well as floppy, grizzled Bez going through the motions comparisons. The repertoire is varied, from blues sings, and it’s not an r’n’b bore-fest – there’s (notionally a greatest hits set) like cynical has- to rock via soul, with a lot of bravery, pain, anger even some reggae and grime in there (but not, beens on the chicken-in-a-basket circuit. Any and compassion thrown in. Occasionally it gets a alas, any Kanye). She puts her heart into it, and swagger, chaos or menace they had back in their bit frighteningly yelpy, but it’s mostly it’s quite a refreshing contrast to most the rest of 80s heyday is long gone. And then we remember challenging and intriguing. today’s guitar-orientated line-up. the best thing about The Mondays was always Completing a trio of new local talents are A the remixes. SILENT FILM. How annoying – a local band I Back to local matter and YOUNG KNIVES. But If we have to say anything positive about haven’t bothered seeing before because I didn’t oh no! They don’t sound so quirky anymore. Happy Mondays it’s that they’re better than think they’d be this good. Epic, layered, synthy, Except when they play their older stuff. The ELLIOT MINOR, a gaggle of ex-choristers who earnest – their sound is great. Their songs sound stage presence is still eccentric, so they’ve not make McFly look and sound like The Stranglers, amazing, but I have no idea how commercial they deserted us completely, despite Henry’s and criminally awful cover-versions maestro are – I’m just enjoying the interesting sound declaration that ‘Hot Summer’ made them MARK RONSON, who makes pop music for they’re making. Not heard anything as inventive, multimillionaires. The Beatles-y harmonies and people who have had their brains scooped out yet accessible as this in quite a while. And their guitar interplay are still in evidence, too, and with a ladle and replaced by a family of cover of ‘Born Slippy’ is amazing. ‘Turn Tail’ is lovely. The crowd are somewhat twittering, shitting budgies. distracted during their set by a giant red WKD And if that isn’t enough to put us in a bad mood, After all that early excitement come THE beach ball, though. Which probably says a whole it takes two hours to get back to Oxford because DYKEENIES. They’re pretty standard teen lot more about the crowd than it does the band. the shuttle buses have been stolen by aliens. Or pop/rock/indie. Very popular with the ‘youth’ Your reviewer doesn’t like THE STREETS. No at least they might as well have for all the help who have appeared out of nowhere (and are amount of lazy, soul-destroying, endlessly the information tent people can offer. surely too young to be here). I’m reliably repetitive basslines smothered by Mike Skinner’s Dale Kattack informed that they’re a cross between Fall Out arrogant, posturing, rambling, uninspired, self- Boy and Busted; I wouldn’t know. I’m aggrandising, boorish boasting – conspicuously obviously too old. devoid of any rhyme, rhythm or anything else SUNDAY I think I’m being won over by the BLACK interesting whatsoever – would persuade her There’s little doubt that Sunday’s line-up is the KIDS’ catchiness. Their sheer, unadulterated otherwise. And so it transpires. strongest of the three days and it’s no poppiness irritated me at first, but the influences But hold on to your heart-rate, it’s THE coincidence it’s the day featuring the most local have been showing through – rock, disco, early FUTUREHEADS! Never knowingly laid-back, acts, including headliners SUPERGRASS, who 80s pop-funk, Motown. They’re still not the their marriage of frenetic punkery and beautiful we end up missing simply because doing so is tightest band live I’ve ever seen, but tunes like harmonies would be charming if that description the only way we can feasibly get home without recent single ‘Hurricane Jane’ whip the crowd up didn’t seem a bit too odd to apply to them. The another epic trek across Oxfordshire’s wilder anyway, so they’re doing something right. ever-popular ‘Skip To The End’ requires outskirts, possibly involving an air ambulance or synchronised crowd jumping, the mere sight of a fight with grizzly bears. Look! It’s the bloke who used to be in Test which exhausts me into taking my leave. I only catch two songs of WINCHELL RIOTS’ Icicles and he’s wearing a furry hat! He’s got a set, which is a shame, as I like what I hear. Being female drummer! And a violin player! So And so ends the first Wakestock. An interesting rather early in the day, the arena is still only half automatically cool, obviously. It’s experiment and a generally welcome addition to full, but the band fill it with their epic, reverb- LIGHTSPEED CHAMPION and it’s all a quite Oxfordshire’s summer calendar that maybe didn’t laden rock. I don’t hear enough to really be able jolly singer-songwriter-with-wry-observations- live up to expectations. There is work to be done to tell, but my initial impressions are that they about-life type of affair, but not twee, despite if it’s to return next year, and it’s to be hope it sound like what Keane would sound like if they excursions towards 60s surf rock (which win me does as the potential of the event, particularly in were actually any good. over with the quirky chord changes). He seems such a picturesque setting, is great. And then to LITTLE FISH. Who’d have like a nice guy, and it’s all quite appealing. Kirsten Etheridge photo by Miles Walkden CORNBURY FESTIVAL Half Man Half Biscuit SATURDAY Cornbury makes no pretence to ‘Eternal Flame’, they were a pretty being hip or trendy, and therein lies bloody great band at times, and its greatest strength. For the most ‘Going Down To Liverpool’, from part it’s a festival for hits. More when they were part of the specifically Saturday seems to be a burgeoning Paisley Underground festival of 70s and 80s hits, with a scene, sounds as fresh as the band crowd assured of a youth-reliving look even after all this time. They comfort zone. open with a cover of ‘Hazy Shade It’s a zone into which THE BEAT Of Winter’ in tribute to tonight’s skank with consummate ease, firing headliner Paul Simon, while ‘Manic out their big numbers - ‘Too Nice Monday’ is as bright as the sunshine To Talk To’; ‘Hands Off She’s which hasn’t yet succumbed to the Mine’; ‘Tears Of A Clown’ – to a encroaching clouds. Sadly as soon as sunshine-enthused audience, in the band start on their new songs it between loping ska and reggae jams, all becomes overblown, synthetic the only minor blip being a crowd- stadium MOR bluster and the lure of pleasing but stilted take on ‘Rock the curry stalls is too much to The Casbah’ – always The Clash’s resist, managing to catch the last least inspiring moment. few minutes of JULIAN VELARD’s After which we wander past an self-congratulatory honky tonk exotic array of Caribbean, Lebanese cabaret on the Word stage as we go. and Goan food stalls to catch a glimpse of how the other half lives: If The Beat and The Bangles are a the other half being the VIP festival one-way ticket back to the early- goers who get their own stage-left 80s, so too is the display of kids’ enclosure and tent with comfy breakdancing on the arena podium, sofas, flushing loos and a Pimm’s an impressive if anachronistic reception. Whatever happened to reminder of a time before standing in the rain drinking weak Glastonbury headliner Jay-Z was lager and crapping in a ditch? even out of nappies. IMELDA MAY is well suited to ERIC BIBB looks like Kid Creole such polite company, her nominally in his white suit and wide-brimmed celtic-tinged acoustic folk-pop hat, but musically he’s far more in occasionally dipping into showtune tune with Robert Johnson’s salesman and sings like Buzzcock’s Sound Of Breaking Glass’. Or indeed brassiness or a country twang. She lonesome porch blues, and if most of Pete Shelley with a blocked nose anything interesting. covers Patsy Cline’s ‘Walking After his material is unfamiliar to anyone and initially they do sound like they We are guaranteed hits from PAUL Midnight’, but after a while she who’s not a fully-fledged blues could eat most of their young SIMON, though. C’mon, he’s had so comes on a bit too much like aficionado, he keeps hold of the acolytes for breakfast, but there’s a many over the last 30 years he could Michelle Shocked without any large crowd for the entirety of his creeping music hall feel to the set, surely trip over a dozen of them just semblance of attitude. hour-long set. And for extra cool and together they bypass their glory walking on stage. And so it is, for the points we learn that Bibb’s godfather years altogether and bash out most part, backed by a seven-piece Attitude is something HALF MAN is none other than Paul Robeson. reheated mid-70s pub-rock and band and giving a large chunk of HALF BISCUIT have in spades, From the Word stage it’s only a r’n’b that’s solid enough but not ‘Gracelands’ an outing, along with a even when they’re singing about the minute’s lazy lager and sunshine- enough to lift our slightly soggy couple of oldies like ‘Mrs Robinson’ difficulties of washing sieves, or addled amble to the Riverside stage spirits. and a hushed ‘Sound Of Silence’ that taking problem chimps to the Ideal where hometown comfort is The weather does little to help perhaps miss Art Garfunkel’s Home Exhibition. Two decades on available in the shape of the reliably TOOTS & THE MAYTALS either, tremulous touch. Simon does from their inception the band still inclusive EPSTEIN, today who on a sunnier day would succumb to festival rock out look like middle-ranking public meandering between country doubtless be a triumph. But the wind syndrome mid-set and he seems to be sector workers and patently still waltzes and blues cabin laments. steals half the sound and, let’s face trying to please everyone – those spend too much time watching crap it, reggae just doesn’t sound the that only know the big hits and the daytime telly. Frontman Nigel The wind has picked up, the sun has same in the rain. more fanatical obscurists. Any Blackwell is a poet genius with gone into hiding and the rain has Strangely, neither do SMILEX, who disappointment is redeemed late on lyrics sharp enough to slash started. It’s a barely noticeable you’d bank on revelling in a bit of with a drizzle-defying ‘Diamonds On Razorlight’s throats, veering from drizzle for now but soon the bars mud and misery. Instead they’re The Soles Of Her Shoes’ and an sardonic to satirical to surreal, and marquees will be thronged by oddly restrained today on the almost inevitable encore of ‘You taking aim at everything from folks who suddenly wished they’d Riverside stage, saving their punky Can Call Me Al’, both of which send cynical blue badge abusers to over- splashed out on VIP tickets. Or garage snarl for the last couple of everyone back to their tents (or sensitive bands on ‘Bad Review’. A simply remembered to bring numbers and instead offering a mix luxury VIP five-star yurts, which chorus of “You’re going on after something waterproof to wear. of Radiohead-style wooziness and doubtless come complete with fully Crispy Ambulance” raises a cheer It don’t bother us none right now Guns’n’Roses’ more considered fitted kitchen and en-suite comfy from every indie obscurist present, though, because here’s CARBON / outings. Still, Lee Christian’s ‘I love crapper) happy, but also get us to while the band themselves sound SILICON who feature not one, but the Bangles’ slogan, daubed across pondering Paul Simon’s generally like nothing so much as a wiry, two gen-you-ine punk rock legends his torso, is rather sweet compared unremarked-up influence on acts as skiffle-inflected Fall, and as they in the form of Mick Jones and to his usual filth. diverse as Battles and Vampire encore with classic debut single Tony James. Sadly they’re not Weekend. Maybe Cornbury simply ‘Trumpton Riots’ we know we’ve going to be playing a set of their old Soaked from our knees to our boots doesn’t need to try for the new, cool already witnessed the band of the hits since it means we don’t get the now we discover that NICK LOWE sounds. They just go straight for the weekend. chance to shout out for ‘Love has turned into an ageing lounge great granddady. But hey, THE BANGLES are up Missile F1-11’. Sadly too, they’re crooner and we’d be wasting And then. And then it really starts next and we remember that once not really very punk rock either. valuable drinking time waiting to piss down. upon a time, before the execrable Jones is like a camp, cockney car around for him to play ‘I Love The Dale Kattack photos by Marc West Toots & The Maytals Carbon / Silicon

The Epstein

across ARMALEGGAN, a group of you don’t like you’re pretty stuck. prompting a downpour that barely SUNDAY contemporary Border Morris Eventually, though, JAUNE lets up. The mood is brightened by After the incredible high of seeing dancers. The costumes are a sight to TOUJOURS appear on the folk SALSA CELTICA whose upbeat set Half Man Half Biscuit yesterday, behold, Kiss-style make up and a stage and things brighten up lifts the crowd’s spirits. The name could Sunday possibly live up to distinct gothic element. It’s a nice considerably. They evoke the gives away what they do, and that start? Taking a cursory glance twist on the usual Morris dancing French gypsy spirit with plenty of whether they deliver salsa rhythms at the timetable, it doesn’t appear and intriguing stuff. accordion, bright clothes and or Scottish jigs it’s all done with an to have much chance. bountiful brass. It provides a much amazing passion. Some Jamaican However on the walk to the arena I When they have done it’s down to needed party vibe but can lack a bit elements then get thrown in along pass through beautiful woodland and the main stage and the festival of variation. with some frenetic toasting, but it’s lakes and hear LUKE SMITH equivalent of Henman Hill. The At least the Riverside stage seems the Celtic elements that really get playing ‘Luke’s National Anthem’ slope is awash with Tesco’s to be getting through a good number people going and make them one of on the Folk Festival stage and all collapsible chairs (only because of acts, even if they appear to be the highlights of the day. seems well in the world. The rest of Waitrose don’t make them) which chucking them on randomly, Luke’s set is as charming as ever, make it perilous negotiating your probably in the order they arrive. To round off the day KT the jokes a variation on a theme way down near the stage. Luckily So after checking the program and TUNSTALL does what’s expected of we’ve heard a million times before, TOM BAXTER doesn’t require doing some detective work I realise her and nothing more, which in this but will never tire of hearing as anyone to get too close, as his I’m watching BACK TO THE instance is fine and exactly what the they’re delivered in such a humble, range projects across the whole site. BORDER, a wholly unenthralling crowd want. She probably would have sweet way. Luke wraps things up So I stand at the top of the slope country blues duo. That’s matched been more interesting to see in an with ‘Out With The Old, In With with a delicious mince beef pie and soon after on the Folk Festival acoustic setting, though. The New’, his protest song against marvel at his blustery rock. At first stage by TIFT MERRITT, who has a CROWDED HOUSE plough a the inexorable march of progress. it seems to have the gravitas of lovely old country voice, but sings similar furrow, but also prove why It’s so eloquent that when he slips a Elbow but feels lacking. Prolonged songs devoid of any real character. they’re one of the more underrated reading from Betjeman in the exposure wins me over to his Jeff big acts. Melodies abound and you middle you wouldn’t notice the join. Buckley-style voice and windswept To show my desperation I’m start to realise just how many of melodies, his vocals standing out starting to wonder if 10CC will their tunes you actually know but After such a splendid start it’s over now the other Buckley soundalikes provide a merciful release from all never realised it, and that the tunes to the Riverside stage where have gone. Fittingly one of the this. Of course, my optimism is are much better than you originally MODOU DIOUF and his band are huge bubbles people have been misplaced, and thenCD some. single They `MONDAYthought, the warm MORNING’ hug needed at the giving a display of Senegalese sabar making floats ridiculously high in deliver a crowd-pleasing greatest end of the long day. And while it’s drumming. It’s energetic, the sky as his set comes to a close hits set, but by Godat it’s Polar insipid, Bear Records,not earth shattering Cowley stuff, Road it’s infectiously happy and has and pops on the last drum crash. bland rubbish. I have to take refuge certainly a pleasant enough way to everyone from small children to during ‘The Things We Do For close the festival and sums Cornbury granddads up and dancing. I can There follows one of those Love’ as the song and crowd reaction up quite neatly. It’s certainly one think of no greater compliment. interminable gaps caused by the is making me physically sick. At of the sweetest and most Unfortunately I’ve arrived towards rotating stage policy (the two main least things can’t get any worse. carefully crafted festivals, and the end of his set but as I head off stages have an act roughly every In fact they get much better, for that it should be applauded. to find something else I stumble two hours) so if there’s something despite the start of 10CC’s set Russell Barker Photos: Little Fish by Terri Bonham, all other photos by Sam Shepherd TRUCK FESTIVAL Alphabet Backwards SATURDAY After last year’s festival, people really thought show becomes a valiant, but ultimately unsatisfying Truck had jumped the shark. Naturally, mash-up; we would have stuck it out to the end rescheduling was out of their control, but the anyway, if the falsetto vocals weren’t so tooth- general feeling was that the line-up was predictable pullingly terrible. and uninspired, and that Truck had been gradually ossifying into a noisy convalescent home for Richard Walters is over on the main stage. We tedious country musicians. know this because his voice is carried on the wind This year, however, turns out to be the best Truck like the skeleton of a recently deceased butterfly. for a long time. The line-up is pruned of some of From a distance it’s ethereal; up close it seems to the incumbents, but there is still a pleasant lose it’s impact. Many would argue that a man of smattering of favourites on offer; the site had been Richard’s talents deserves to be on a big stage, but rethought but still kept to the familiar blueprint, we can’t help but feel that his set would benefit and, most importantly, the atmosphere is from a more intimate setting. Buttonhead wonderful. Also on the main stage, Little Fish are winning a It’s so gladdening to see people going rubber-limb small army of new fans. Aside from being musically loopy in The Beat Hive before eating doughnuts spotless, Juju and Nez are rare in looking as though and then sitting quietly to enjoy something they were born to be onstage – even on the main acoustic at the Market Stage. More than anything stage, it’s rare to see an act that you can’t tear else this year we get the impression that Truckers your eyes from. Another Fish victory. are open to all manner of different performances, and this is reflected in some surprising, but Part of the Truck experience is overhearing a refreshing thematic booking policies, such as conversation and picking out enough information Crossword Records’ abstract hip-hop showcase, or about a band to persuade you to stop lounging on the Sonic Cathedral shoegazing celebration. It is the grass quaffing cider and go check them out the sort of weekend to make anyone wax lyrical. instead. Lovvers are tearing the Barn a new Anyone apart from Evan Dando, anyway… backside, lurching around the stage bristling with energy and ear-shatteringly fuzzed up guitars. It’s a Implausibly, our festival begins with a band from definite injection of much needed vigour. Special Hong Kong. DP is a guitar-and-drums scuzz riffing credit too for being the first band of the festival to concoction, who make a great noise, but feel like climb the speaker stacks at the side of the stage. half of a good rock band. AC without the DC. Vacuous Pop’s well received line-up begins with “Who’s ready for some ramshackle, drunken, Load.Click.Shoot whose bandy-legged disco pop atonal, clueless, shambolic, dated indie, then?!” sends hordes of kids in horrible plastic shades, who Perhaps it’s a good thing they don’t really go for look like extras from Weird Science, into a dancing MCs at Truck, as there’d be no real way of frenzy. Is this because the band are good (which introducing “pop legends” The Television they are, with their snotty take on Foals-esque Personalities and their agonising set. Imagine a puzzle pop and excellent naughty schoolboy bad Go Betweens rip-off encoded, bounced off the keyboards), or because these guys have been surface of Mars, and then reassembled in a brewery cocked for some Day-Glo musical fun all morning? with half the data missing or corrupt. Beat Hive – the tent that replaces the lounge tent Load, click, shoot indeed. “Embarrassing” is the only word that serves. When this year. Mr ShaoDow is holding court and the Hey, the naughty schoolboy has been doing his we bump into frontman Dan Treacy (quite crowd in the palm of his hand, simultaneously homework. Alphabet Backwards’ keyboard literally) later, he mumbles something about going proving himself to be a consummate performer player shares a cheeky Korg buzz with the previous off to do drugs with Amy Winehouse and staggers and British rap/hip-hop to be an easy equal to band, but plays it spiced with nonchalantly adept off with a carrier bag dangling from his hand. American efforts. Having read some embarrassing arpeggios and Herbie Hancock twiddles. The two “That man is a genius,” says a bystander with no nonsense following Jay-Z’s Glastonbury booking singers may look like a cut-budget children’s hint of irony in his voice. It’s not quite the that music festivals aren’t the place for hip hop, presenters, but they play impossibly, gorgeously, adjective we’d have chosen. it’s a joy to see ShaoDow’s frenetic set. He’s heart-burstingly jolly acoustic-led pop that would Much better are Rolo Tomassi, who are bursting clearly happy too: much as we love his music, sound as at home in the Top 40 as it would at a with even more fire and brimstone than usual and we’ve always felt that his shows can be somewhat drunken barndance. their energy and expressiveness are a genuine nervous and twitchy. Clearly the adoring delight. It might well be true that most of their reception has pushed him to greater things, as he A spot of lunch later The European Union songs do sound exactly the same, but then when all prowls the stage, ranting into two mikes provides our first visit to The Market Stage, once of your songs channel the spirit of the The simultaneously and generally sending a tent full of again the most comfy part of Truck, with the Birthday Party through the synth-fuelled jerkiness dancers insane, whilst never missing a syllable of most reliable sound. Sadly, although European of Numbers and the outright bombast and his excellent lyrics. Asher Dust helps out with the Union are billed as sounding like Nirvana, we turn aggression of the Dillinger Escape Plan, you’re not odd piece of singing and a nice red hat, but this is up to a minimal folk pop song played by sleepy really doing a whole lot wrong. At last year’s Truck ShaoDow’s hour, and he deserves it. robots. Thereafter they step up into a trudge down they were a definite highlight that confused more The Band’s avenue, good ol’ boys chord people than they delighted. This year the audience Having found ourselves caught between two progressions overlaid with hammered elementary is primed and restless before they hit the stage. It’s randomly scurrying children who appear to be piano and drawled self-conscious vocals. Passable. incredible and heartening that something so demonstrating Brownian Motion for the deaf on Admittedly it’s not our dream of a collaboration extreme can be so widely accepted. Breakneck riffs the way back from the tea tent, we return to the between Bellowhead and Fuck Buttons, but and time changes, St Vitus dancing, and a main stage for Emmy The Great, who was a Buttonhead’s set starts incredibly, a repeated frontwoman whose roar puts most screamo highlight of Truck 06. Sadly her music’s become wordless three note vocal motif over some frontmen to shame, Rolo Tomassi are a more polite and tidy in the interim and this set complex pomp rock that sounds like Philip Glass’ challenging band. Fortunately they’re also one of turns into a nondescript wash of general ‘Einsten On The Beach’ played by Magma. Except the most entertaining acts you’re likely to see at pleasantness. Still, she’s retained an ear-catching that it also sounds like Godspeed You! Black the moment. although you will need to have a sit literacy in her lyrics, and a delivery that seems to Emperor played by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. down and a nice cup of sweet tea afterwards. be intelligently hectoring and monstrously cute Amazing. However, after a while the focus gets lost Sadly lacking in tea, but brimming over with cider, simultaneously, rather like losing a theological somewhere to the left of the kitchen sink, and the we take a gulp and try to push our way into The debate to a Care Bear. Little Fish The Family Lemonheads Machine

Dead Kids Mr ShaoDow

Rolo Tomassi

In place of the Trailer Park tent (oh how we miss it’s a bit of harmless fun; but if anyone over the as Red House Painters, and some of the sense of you) is a tiny little stage that serves as an add on age of 14 tries to tell you this is punk attitude, kill joyous dynamism that’s been brought into the to the bar. Niftily titled The Village Pub, there’s them. Kill them, for they shall never know better. mainstream of late by Arcade Fire. At their most barely enough room to swing a kitten inside. Martin Simpson has a taste for language, dramatic it’s no great leap of the imagination to Squeezing in to catch The Family Machine is introducing his set with a discussion of the see Conor Oberst belting these tunes out, while well worth the effort. Beset by technical adjectives “bucolic” and “crepuscular”, and clearly their more thoughtful pieces bring to mind the difficulties, the band take it all in their stride and relishing the visceral imagery of his opening plaintive beauty of Songs:Ohia. turn in what might be one of the sets of the traditional ballad, lingering over the phrase “the weekend. Self-effacing to the end, and good bloody steel”. He also languidly enjoys every line We’re slightly suspicious of the Don’t Look Back humoured throughout, it would be easy to miss the of a bottleneck tune, which reminds us that the movement in which acts perform their pivotal fact that Family Machine also have great tunes by blues is an intelligent narrative music, not just an albums. When it was announced that The the truck load. `Flowers By The Roadside’ is excuse to show your beery market town mates how Lemonheads would do the excellent ‘It’s a Shame splendid but it’s `The Do Song’ that inspires the fast your left hand can go. Of course, Simpson’s About Ray’ at Truck, the first thing that sprang to most smiles and with lyrics that consist solely of guitar playing is also phenomenal, varying from mind is that it’s 27-minutes long: in their billed “do” it’s impossible not to join in. lute-like delicacy to swift percussive passages via show they could have played it three times, and sleazy Chicago blues, but he never milks it, always left space to mime turning over the record. As it is, When you see someone in a scarlet astronaut suit letting the song lead the way. He was playing The they crack through the album, minus a couple of playing limp, Bowie-ish country songs out of tune Albert Hall for the Proms the day after, so we feel tracks, in record time, and it feels something like a and saying garbage like “I fell in the whoop-de- lucky to have caught him somewhere this intimate. contractual obligation. After a couple of minutes, doo” and, “show me love, you kitty cats”, you Evan Dando comes on for a solo reading of begin to think that it must be an elaborate musical These New Puritans are more of an irritant than Smudge’s excellent ‘Outdoor Type’ and ‘Being prank. We still don’t know if Y is a serious an entertainment, from the singer’s inexplicable Around’, before the band return in a seemingly musician or a practical joker – either way, it’s a desire to dress in fake gold chain mail to their much more relaxed frame of mind for another shit way to spend your life. calculated, vacuous music that’s so achingly thirty minutes or so of superior playing. The “Next on ITV3, When Irony Goes Bad, this week Hoxton that it almost has a different sharp haircut problem is that these were never main stage songs, featuring rubbish band Dead Kids”. The spectacle for every song, and that says nothing more about they’re vulnerable, retiring, loveable (and probably of men dressed like The Quireboy who play songs their ambitions than NME track of the week. stoned) little tunes that are most likely happier out that all sound like Van Halen’s `Jump’ without the Okkervil River, though, are perhaps the of the limelight: as is Evan, noticeably rolling his subtlety, and smothered with crap synths and tinny highlight of the day, if nothing else then for filling eyes, who seems unappreciative of the crowd and guitars is enough to sap the strength. Dead Kids that traditional sunset main stage slot with mutters barely a word. Not really a look like something that was cut from Nathan something country-tinged and laid-back that isn’t disappointment, then, but great as these songs are, Barley as being too awful to even satirise. Terrible soporific and deathly dull. Quite the opposite, in the show adds nothing to them. shouty singer too. Okay, we’re prepared to believe fact – this is Americana with the same dark heart David Murphy, Stuart Fowkes, Sam Shepherd photo: Winchell Riots, Borderville, Get Cape by Terri Bonham. Maps, Early Years, Spectrum by Sam Shepherd TRUCK FESTIVAL The Winchell Riots SUNDAY Chefs will tell you that many different dishes can to draw us in for some lessons in “woooing” (sic) be created with the same base sauce. Mephisto whilst scratchy easy listening plays. We also get to Grande are like that. As a duo they’ve got the see the large number of Truckers who like to hang basic recipe down – free reed drones, brimstone out in the campsite all day, playing footie and Beefheart growls and bludgeoning rhythms – but strumming guitars: quite an expensive way to camp today they’re augmented with skronking sax and out with your mates, but each to their own. In members of The Oxford Gospel Choir for a dense search of another subset of Truckers, some children slab of Pentecostal rock, featuring the best cover explain that the playbus is fun, but would be better if of ‘Frere Jacques’ ever. If The vicar of Steventon it drove around, and that Truck is a good festival had got on stage during this and announced we were because they “saw a tractor”. all going to hell, the local church would have been We return in time for Bordervillle, who are filled with repentant sinners by tea time. excellently dressed as if they’ve come from a time In fact that’s exactly where we’re heading for a travelling wedding, except Joe Swarbrick who looks little salvation. The vicar has been doling out ice- like a boy band Edward Scissorhands. Dead Kids cream since the festival began 11 years ago, so we should be watching this outstanding set – this is how feel it’s time to give a little bit of love back to you do pastiche and genre melding. In some ways God. There’s also a sign outside the church that it’s a parody of 70s pomp bands and Broadway says something along the lines of “2pm Rock in musicals, but also a celebration of what can be great Maps the Church”, so how could we not investigate? about those things, presented with imagination and a There’s not a lot of rocking going on as it turns well-rehearsed flow. The sort of arch and theatrical out, although the sermon does revolve around act that makes you want to describe them like a some of the Vicar’s favourite tunes. Once you’re in Victorian playbill: “A vaudevillian confection of though, it’s pretty hard to leave without feeling sonorous majesty” it is, then. guilty so we’re here for the duration. Shaking hands with Rev Colin Patching after the service, it’s Spectrum, one of the many aliases of Sonic pleasing to note that he’s wearing a Jesus t-shirt, in Boom (you know, him out of Spacemen 3 that the same way that everyone wears their favourite didn’t go on to form the world-conquering band’s merch with pride. Spiritualized), don’t seem to know what they want to sound like. Starting off with an extended, The Winchell Riots have a few metaphorical burbling synth piece that’s actually rather lovely in demons to exorcise, as by their own admission last an Ochre Records-in-2001 kind of way, they move year’s appearance on the Barn Stage didn’t go as on to drudge their way through a tedious walking- planned. By way of atonement, they put in a pace exercise that’s about as psychedelic as a performance little short of flawless, right down to tortoise. But before we can lose faith, they close indie sound soon draws in passers by, however, the sun appearing on cue as singer Phil McMinn with a slab of magical, meandering guitar trance because nobody could resist that mix of syrupy belts out ‘I’ve not seen a Truck this bright for that brings to mind Spacemen 3’s ‘Dreamweapon’. vocal, French accordion and fluid bass. Also, that’s years’ during ‘Red Square’. ‘Hymn 24’ and With their set curtailed to just three songs, it’s hard Peter Momtchiloff from Talulah Gosh and ‘Kandahar Road’ are touching and emotive without to tell which of these is their defining direction, Heavenly on guitar, should you have your I Spy being crass or obvious, and ‘Histories’, as ever, and actually we wonder if they know themselves. Book Of Jangle Pop on you. provides the change of pace necessary to stop their Elsewhere on the triumphant Sonic Cathedral set from descending into a series of mid-paced stage, The Early Years are putting in one of the “Come and see The Nuns tomorrow”, says a flier chokers. But really, it’s as good a performance as performances of the weekend, managing to out- tout on Saturday. Your smug reviewer answers, they’ve ever put on, and the clearest indication yet Spacemen 3 even the return to the guitar-bass- “Okay, as long as they’re an all female tribute to that they should eclipse former glories at least to drums format from Sonic Boom himself. The The Monks”. “Yes,” she replies, “yes they are.” the extent that people stop referencing Fell City keyboard-led moments are pure ‘Playing With Put us in our place, didn’t it? If you don’t know Girl in all their review. Umm, like we just did. Fire’, the extended sections of repetitive riffs are who The Monks are, you’re stupid. They are one shoegaze-gone-krautrock providence, and half hour of the finest alternative rock bands, and quite If anyone wasn’t sure what a kora was, Jali Filli seems to be over in five minutes. Mesmerising. possibly the first. They started in Germany in the Cissokho explains it to us; he then explains how If Truck is still around in 2020, we can count on early 60s in an attempt to create an anti-matter one plays it with four digits, just in case nobody Thomas Truax still to be there, playing his songs Beatles, and they’ve influenced approximately was yet floored by the man’s talents. The rippling on a range of madcap (and possibly, by that stage, everyone who’s any good, ever. They’re the only cascades of notes he plucks from this African harp- robot-powered) contraptions. The festival band better than The Fall, according to Mark E like instrument are as succulent as they are wouldn’t be the same without him winning a legion Smith, which is unprecedented praise. The Nuns’ impressive, and can seem heartbeat simple or of new fans with the help of the Hornicator and set is good, but doesn’t quite capture the full cortex complex depending on where one focuses. Mother Superior (if you don’t know what we’re distorted grandeur of the originals. A celebration of, Perhaps his voice, though sweet, is a little limited, talking about, you need to see him). But while his rather than an alternative to, The Monks. but then again as he comes from the story-telling home-made gadgets and dry on-stage banter draw Over on the main stage Johnny Foreigner have griot tradition, maybe understanding the lyrics you in, he has some killer songs at his disposal too, been attacking everyone with their angular metal/ would have helped. It hardly matters when you can to keep the faithful coming back year on year. punk for long enough, and it’s the turn of lose your Sunday afternoon exhaustion in this Fighting With Wire to provide back to basic impeccable playing. If you saw anyone walking We’ve always admired KTB, but never really been thrills. They may only be a three piece but the round Truck with their jaws dangling open, they that excited by her. Good, therefore, to see her as noise they produce is vast and visceral. Frank probably hadn’t got over Cissokho’s set yet. part of the excellent folk quartet Little Sister, Turner will later refer to them in terms of being doling out melismatic harmonies, acoustic not dissimilar to early Foo Fighters (and earning a On Sunday the Pavilion is given over to Piney tapestries and hot Appalachian fiddle licks. They poorly aimed bottle launched in his direction as a Gir. Not wanting to venture in between sets in somehow manage to get some of the audience result) but he’s not too far from the truth. Big riffs case she makes us do cross stitch or dress up as a doing forward rolls round the field, which is no and big choruses and an energetic show might not racoon, we edge into a strange hinterland at the mean feat when we’re this tired. make Fighting With Wire the most original thing edge of the campsite, full of non-musical Les Clochards are sadly not mentioned in the you’ll ever see, but for mindless thrills you won’t attractions, including craft demonstrations, a cycle programme, and misadvertised outside the Pub go far wrong. powered entertainment system (sadly closed) and a Tent, so it’s not surprising they start playing to a Scotland’s Camera Obscura are so twee and little hut where a frankly petrifying man attempts mere scattering of listeners. Their tasty Gallic café melodic, we imagine that Swiss Concrete are The Early Years Borderville

Spectrum

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.

The Purple Turtle Oxford’s Best Student bar backstage with their diary open ready to of guitar pedals replaced by banks of synths, Live Bands and DJs catch them. At times they’re like The to incredible effect. ‘Elouise’ and ‘Back And Sundays, but more twee, or like The Cowboy Forth’, like the Queen in her heyday, Open until 3am Junkies, but more twee. They’re good, but combine beauty with massive power, and they’re really twee. There’s no synonym for Maps are the perfect band to help bring a Happy Hour between 5.30 – 8pm “twee” so we’d better stop now. festival to a close, nodding to the music that £1 pints and spirits got them where they are today, but resolutely If Sonic Cathedral is at least partially about forward-looking in approach. By their finale, Frewin Court, opposite Zavvi celebrating shoegaze and all things alternative a cover of Ride’s `Leave The All Behind’, the from the early nineties, then it’s fitting that wall of noise is so great you can almost feel Ulrich Schnauss’ brand of electronica your ribs snapping under the weight of the seems to sit squarely in that time period, all sonic wave emanating from the stage. It’s not Future Sound of London simplistic beat so much an aural experience as a physical patterns and plodding synth progressions one. It’s rare to pinpoint the best fifteen straight out of 1993. What he does well are seconds of a festival, but that gigantic big, enveloping washes of sound, which sit grinding blitz was the highlight of Truck. beneath the body of the tracks, pulsating That, and the guy who’d fallen asleep in a ominously but unfortunately rarely taking foetal position eating his ice cream, smearing centre stage. Minus points too, sadly, for it all over his beard. possibly the worst stage presence of the Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly could never weekend – Schnauss sits sideways on at a hope to follow that but he’s giving it a go. 876084 table, staring at his laptop and prodding The main stage is by now looking pretty buttons, and doesn’t even look up to spectacular in the dark. The dry ice is being acknowledge the audience during his set. lit up perfectly and pink clouds are floating What a performer. past Sam Duckworth and his horn section as he tries to give the last few Truckers standing We wait for a while for Cats In Paris. something memorable. Presumably they’re still there, as after ten minutes there’s not even mike or lead The overall music quality this year was brought onstage. Good DJs and amusingly phenomenally high, and the ambience was wrecked dancers to entertain us, luckily. always friendly and tolerant. Yes, the ticket On record, much of Maps’ Mercury- price has gone up, but it’s still peanuts nominated album can sound thin and compared to the huge cost of Weakstock, for inconsequential, gossamer synth washes and example – and it has a vicar serving ice ROCK-POP-DANCE-GOLDEN OLDIES-INDIE- techno-twee arrangements sometimes cream instead of a giant drinks logo; which SOUL-TECHNO-HIP-HOP-JAZZ-LATIN-REGGAE- obscuring the excellent songs underneath. would you prefer? We’re sorry we doubted DRUM&BASS-GARAGE—R&B-DISCO-1950s- With a six-piece live band to bolster the you, Truck; see you next year. Brand new back catalogue CDs £4 - £7 songs live, though, they’re a different David Murphy, Stuart Fowkes, Sam 2000s. proposition – a shoegaze band with the racks Shepherd each. Brand new chart CDs £5 - £10 each DEMOSDEMOS Sponsored by Demo of the Month wins a free half day’s recording at Keynote. Call 01189 599944 to claim your prize and get special deals for local bands!

DEMO OF summer sunshine? These are rare DEMO OF commodities on the demo pages sometimes. THE MONTH LUTECE CONSTANT Lutece is a 13-year-old Peers School student GTA featuring who gives us her dad’s mobile number as a contact and as such we just can’t be our JADA PEARL normal horrible selves, even if this demo Previously Kidlington rap duo GTA found does find her covering ‘Better In Time’ by themselves in the Demo Dumper after Leone Lewis and Adele’s ‘Chasing furnishing us with an elongated freestyle Pavements’, along with singing a couple of demo whose highlight was a song about songs she got off the peg from Songs 4 Sale. Scotland being full of haggis. They apologise The main reason we can’t be anything other for upsetting us and hope we enjoy this than nice is that Lutece has a great voice for team-up with local soulstress Jada Pearl, her age, occasionally sounding like she’s whose recent demo suggested a great singer already an established member of Girls in search of a great song. The lead track here, Aloud or Eternal. In fact if we hadn’t looked ‘The Way’, goes a long way to redressing her up on Youtube we’d have been the balance on every level, a funk-disco suspicious that we were being duped by dancefloor filler that kicks in threatening to some scallywag and she was actually a be Shakatak but struts around amid the glitz fully-grown, major-label signed soul diva. and mirror balls like a rapped-up Because we wouldn’t know either way since Grooverider, Jada’s powerful wail adding we only ever listen to scratchy, lo-fi post- depth to a smooth rap performance. It’s punk and obscure synth-pop and the charts pure chart fodder, although one half of tend to pass us by. But anyway, she’s not GTA, Ineffable’s slightly clipped, plummy the finished article yet but at 13 Lutece vocal performance sounds incongruous in surely has a future on Britain’s Got Talent or the middle of the song. Further in the pair the X Factor and by 18 we fully expect her trade rhymes in accomplished fashion, to be an established global r’n’b icon living smooth and commercial sounding, oddly in in a giant mansion with a menagerie of thrall to the American rap big guns but strange hairless dogs for company. Go girl. distinctly English in their delivery. But it sounds like they need Jada, or someone similar, to give them that extra edge in a JESUS KNIVES saturated marketplace. Then they’ll really Phew, back to reality and some scratchy, hit their stride. angular post-punk rampaging after all that popular music madness. We seem to remember reviewing this lot a few months back when they professed to exist solely to MONICA Y CARLOS play aggressive feedback-style noise, and This duo nearly snatch this month’s Demo little has changed since that time, The Jesus Of The Month title from GTA and Jada Knives still very much in thrall to Fugazi, with an unexpectedly oddball mix of Shellac and The Jesus Lizard – a spasticated Chemical Brothers-style android beats, cute hardcore clatter with pockets of post-rock Latin-American coos and chants and an broodniess that twists, turns and mostly obvious love for the band Magnetic Fields churns its spindly way along with no little (in fact they even cover Yeah, Oh Yeah!). haste, the singer shouting until his lungs are They also cite as their main influences fit to burst and the veins on his head stand photocopiers, magazine cuttings and shop out. An heroic, if not entirely original effort windows, which would normally come that is never, ever going to sell more than across as pure pretension but as ‘Quieréme about six copies of a limited-edition hand- Más’ thrums and bubbles with steely etched 7” single. mechanical determination we reckon there might be something in it. Even better, we log onto their MySpace site while we’re CABEZA listening to the CD and get a slight time- More clattering lo-fi noise here, though of a lapse delay which sounds bloody great. more bluesy-inclined indie-punk type and Further in they become a bit more organic, featuring a song called ‘The Flower Queen’s with added Latin pop swing before veering Daughter’, which must the most into a mess of My Bloody Valentine-style inappropriate song of that title ever since it textures and lost voices with odd Stereolab- doesn’t sound anything like Marillion. It like retro-future lounge music intermissions. should be called ‘Piss In The Gutter With 07967 229 102 Variety, sparkle, inventiveness and a bit of The Devil At My Side’ at the very least. Cabeza’s problem is that this whole demo is still umastered and really suffers as a THE LAST ARMY consequence – the gothabilly fuzz of Cute girls who occasionally sing in French ‘Abhorrent Visage’ (the title is a bit more are always a pop winner and so The Last like it, unless it’s a savage attack on Steve Army charm us immediately with their Strange’s new romantic supergroup) feckless gothic baroque pop, their first promises much but ends up sounding like a song, ‘Dead’, going something like Fun sprawling mess of separate parts than a Boy Three’s ‘Tunnel Of Love’ but with butt-kicking whisky monster. Towards the the guitar line to ‘London Calling’ end of the demo they sound like they’re powering it along behind the seductive running out of breath but amid the vocal lead. The more flowery ‘A Day Like haphazard recording there are enough signs Any Other’ comes on all breathless and of promise to make us want to hear them girly and Catatonia-like before the band again when they’ve sorted their act out a bit. switch lanes completely for a male vocal- led Toytown synth-pop waltz. After that there’s a bit of a dip into some Sleeper-lite THE PICTURE SHOW indie chugging until the lady upfront starts THE COURTYARD STUDIO Looking at the picture of the band on the with the coy French singing stuff – more front of the CD we’re expecting another Vanessa Paradis than Jane Birkin, it has to PROTOOLS HD2, MTA 980 CONSOLE 32/24/ trawl through common-or-garden indie rock, be said – and sounding like she’s ever so 24, OTARI MTR90 MK2 24 TRACK TAPE so the vicious spit of harsh electronic noise slightly wasted (on drugs and a lack of MACHINE, 2 TRACKING ROOMS, SUPERB and aural snow that hits us is a bit of a sleep rather than wasted on this band). CONTROL ROOM WITH GOOD SELECTION shock to say the least. And for ten minutes Y’see, you don’t need to be all mad and OF MICS & OUTBOARD GEAR, + MIDI it goes on. And on. And on. Brutally crazy and way-out to win our hearts. Just FACILITIES (INC LOGIC AUDIO, AKAI uncompromising stuff that threatens to rival sweet and sexy and armed with a S1000, OLD SKOOL ROLAND ETC.) Lou Reed’s ‘Metal Machine Music’ for pure pocketful of simple pop choons. Is that Residential facilities included. unlistenability. But, alas, it turns out it’s just too much to ask for? a fault at the pressing plant, because come www.courtyardrecordingstudio.com track two we’re back in the more mundane PHONE PIPPA FOR DETAILS world of lacklustre, semi-acoustic indie-folk ON 01235 845800 rock that covers all bases from earnest and THE DEMO epic to, erm, earnest and epic. Did we mention that it sounds very earnest? And DUMPER three songs later they’re still here, still sounding very earnest, U2-style guitars doing their best to kick the Midge Ure-style RED VALVE vocals into shape. Next time, lads, get the This album-length demo (Oh. Joy.) comes pressing plant to fuck up the whole CD. So accompanied by a very nice, glossy press much more interesting. pack, with lots of slightly blurred photos and all held together by a neat little string tie thing. From the band’s mission THE A TRAIN statement we learnt that 1. Red Valve is a This lot were formerly Nightshift Demo Of rock band. 4. They love playing live. 9. The Monthers under their previous guise as They are always willing to try out new The Others. But on this evidence we’re sounds an ideas, and 10. There is little good seriously thinking of retrospectively music in the charts at the moment and they stripping them of the title, like Robert will change that. Oh, and they like Velvet Mugabe having his Knighthood revoked for Revolver but hate indie bands like The bad behaviour. More piano-led stadium pop, Killers and The Last Shadow Puppets, here put together so clinically that any which doesn’t bode well in the taste stakes. semblance of soul or character has been But it’s point 9 we’ll pick them up on, polished away to a faint smear on its because across the stultifying sprawl of otherwise pristine, bland, generic surface. this CD there is not one single iota of It’s all very well executed – from the close evidence that Red Valve have any new ideas vocal harmonies to the many, many or sounds other than badly rehashed AC/ wandering guitar solos – but like Keane or DC and Deep Purple riffs, all churned out the least interesting corners of Crowded with a shocking lack of attitude, direction House’s catalogue it comes and goes leaving or sense of adventure. Instead they’re as no impression whatsoever, other than the limp and predictable as any hoary old pub feeling that someone not very interesting rock band hacking it out to no-one in may or may not have just been in the room particular on a Tuesday evening in the with you. ‘Black & White Memories’ hints middle of fucking nowhere. It’s so utterly ever so slightly at The Mavericks and is devoid of character but goes on so long that delivered with a cheesy, shit-eating grin, listening to it is like trying to get an while ‘Why Would He Leave?’ is a laborious injunction against a faceless stalker who trudge when it should be a bolshy, showbiz keeps calling you to recite discarded Axl swagger. The answer to the question, of Rose lyrics at you in a dull monotone for course, being, he left because he feared he’d several hours on end. At least they can rest be bored into a catatonic state if he stuck assured they’ll never have to go through the around for any more of this treatment. effort of fulfilling point 10 of their letter.

Send demos for review to: Nightshift, PO Box 312, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1ZU. Or email MySpace link to [email protected], clearly marked Demo for review. IMPORTANT: no review without a contact address and phone number. No more than four tracks on a demo. If you can’t handle criticism, please don’t send us your demo.