email: [email protected] NIGHTSHIFTwebsite: nightshift.oxfordmusic.net Free every Oxford’s Music Magazine month. Issue 189 April 2011 YYYYYYoungoungoungoung KnivesKnivesKnivesKnives Go Pop! Out on their own and back with a brilliant new album photo: Cat Stevens NIGHTSHIFT: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU. Phone: 01865 372255 NEWNEWSS Nightshift: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU Phone: 01865 372255 email: [email protected] Online: nightshift.oxfordmusic.net WILCO JOHNSON AND listings for the weekend, plus ticket DEACON BLUE are the latest details, are online at names added to this year’s www.oxfordjazzfestival.co.uk Cornbury Festival bill. The pair join already-announced headliners WITNEY MUSIC FESTIVAL returns James Blunt, The Faces and for its fifth annual run this month. Status Quo on a big-name bill that The festival runs from 24th April also includes Ray Davies, Cyndi through to 2nd May, featuring a Lauper, Bellowhead, Olly Murs, selection of mostly local acts across a GRUFF RHYS AND BELLOWHEAD have been announced as headliners The Like and Sophie Ellis-Bextor. dozen venues in the town. Amongst a at this year’s TRUCK FESTIVAL. Other new names on the bill are host of acts confirmed are Johnson For the first time Truck will run over three full days, over the weekend of prog-folksters Stackridge, Ben Smith and the Cadillac Blues Jam, 22nd-24th July at Hill Farm in Steventon. The festival will also enjoy an Montague & Pete Lawrie, Toy Phousa, Alice Messenger, Black Hats, increased capacity and the entire site has been redesigned to accommodate Hearts, Saint Jude and Jack Deer Chicago, Prohibition Smokers new stages. Bruce & The Stax. Club, Samuel Zasada and Bethany Multi-award-winning folk big band Bellowhead top the Friday night bill This year’s Cornbury Festival takes Weimers, while the Witchwood having stolen the show at last year’s Truck, while Super Furry Animals place over the weekend of 1st-3rd School Of Rock will be running music frontman Rhys heads the Saturday line-up, playing his first ever Truck and July at its new home of The Great workshops for young musicians. Visit showcasing songs from his new ‘Hotel Shampoo’ album. Tews Estate, near Charlbury. Tickets www.witneymusicfestival.co.uk Other acts already confirmed include electro-pop stars St Etienne; indie are on sale now, priced £160 for an for a full programme of gigs. supergroup Jonny, formed by Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and adult weekend camping pass, with Gorky’s Euros Childs; folk-pop troubadour Johnny Flynn; former-Czars concessions for under-18s and under- OXFORD CONTEMPORARY frontman John Grant; soul and country ensemble The Duke & The 16s and over-70s admitted free. Visit MUSIC are inviting local acts to King; local psychedelic dance faves Fixers; Blessing Force trio Trophy www.cornburyfestival.com for submit demos for this year’s OCM Wife, Jonquil and Chad Valley, plus Caitlin Rose, Marques Toliver, more details. Open Talent night. This year’s event Treefight For Sunlight, Marcus Foster, Richmond Fontaine and is being run in conjunction with the Dreaming Spires. SOWETO KINCH, NORMA Pegasus Theatre and Oxfringe. For Talking about the new-look festival, organiser Robin Bennett said, WINSTONE and BOBBY the first time there will be a separate “We’ve experimented with partial Friday opening over the last two years WELLINS headline the 2011 young musicians event. The OCM and it feels like this year is the right time to make Friday a full day. We Oxford Jazz Festival this month. takes place on Saturday 11th June at have headliners and acts on all the stages including the main stage. People Running over the Easter weekend the Pegasus, as part of a county-wide can arrive from midday Friday with music starting shortly after that. And (21st-24th April) and featuring 60 music and arts event called as we’ll all be camping for longer, this is the first year there will be acts across 30 venues, the festival Something For the Weekend, with showers at Truck! We’ve also taken the opportunity to redesign the site plans to celebrate British jazz with a the under-18s concert at 1.30 and and use some of the more attractive fields for new camping areas and a rolling series of “jazz over-18s event at 6.30. Original acts family field. neighbourhoods” across the city. of any style can submit demos as “We’re teaming up with three of the best independent labels to Thursday’s events will concentrate on MP3s or weblinks to programme the 2nd stage this year, Transgressive, Heavenly and Bella Cowley Road, Friday’s around Jericho, [email protected]. Deadline for Union. For licensing reasons we’d had to reduce the capacity of the barn Saturday’s up in Summertown and submissions is Friday 15th April. Visit over the last few years, so we’ve decided to start afresh with a much larger Sunday’s in the city centre. www.ocmevents.org for more details. marquee.” Festival co-founder Alissa Robinson Tickets for Truck are priced £99 for an adult camping ticket and £79 for explained: “We are growing to such APPLETREE STUDIOS celebrates a under-18s. Under-12s go free. They’re available from the new Truck Store an extent that each area of the city is quarter century of recording this year on Cowley Road or via See Tickets at www.seetickets.com. Visit developing its own jazz culture around with a major refit. Run by Phill Goss www.thisistruck.com for more details and line-up news. the Festival. It makes perfect sense in Ludgershall since 1986, Appletree to help this along by allocating a is one of the longest-running studios festival day to each neighbourhood so in the region. Visit 95.2fm. The dedicated local music TRUCK STORE is still keen to sell visitors and residents can enjoy www.appletreestudios.com to see show, presented by Dave Gilyeat, local bands’ releases. The new music performances that are very close to the new-look studio. plays the best new Oxford releases shop at 101 Cowley Road, co-run by each other throughout the day.” and demos and well as featuring live Truck and Rapture, opened in Soweto Kinch’s show at Oxford AS EVER, don’t forget to tune into sessions and interviews by local bands. February on the site of the old Town Hall will be the central BBC Oxford Introducing every The show is available as a podcast or Videosyncratic store. Bands can drop attraction of the festival but full Saturday evening between 6-7pm on to stream on the BBC iPlayer. CDs or vinyl into the shop. THEA GILMORE, MAMA ROSIN and UISCEDWR are among the new set of acts to be announced for this year’s WOOD FESTIVAL. They join headliners Willy Mason and Eliza Carthy (pictured) over the weekend of 20th- 22nd May at Braziers Park, near Wallingford. This year is the fourth Wood Festival and with the eco-friendly festival having picked up a number of awards for its innovative approach to festival organisation, including a Gold Green Festival Award, tickets for this year’s event are already on the way to selling out. Other acts already confirmed include The Dreaming Spires, Treetop Flyers, Jali Fily Cissokho and The Epstein. Aside from live music on the solar-powered stages there will be the usual workshops and talks, a cycle-powered cinema and disco and family-friendly activities. Tickets, priced £95 for adults, £65 for under-18s and free for under-12s, are on sale from the Truck Store on Cowley Road as well as www.thisistruck.com a quiet word with YYYoungoungoung KnivesKnivesKnives photo: Cat Stevens “THE USE OF THE WORD and there’s a more prominent funk know I am being general but we felt a to make a go of their band – back poppy makes me defensive. I know edge to some tracks. The use of pressure in a way to write darker and then called Ponyclub – and use the we are often a pop band, but `poppy’ horns and female backing vocals add more serious songs so that we would fertile soil of the local scene to grow makes it sound like we tried to make to the general feeling of exuberance be taken seriously. Some of my into a critically-acclaimed, a Keane record, or a Feeling record, on standout tracks like ‘Vision In favourite artists from pop history – internationally-loved chart act. and that suddenly we though `shit, Rags’. One song, ‘Woman’, sounds Beefheart, Zappa, The Kinks – have Three years on from the success of we need to make a record that like it could be Young Knives’ disco written joyful songs and have been ‘Superabundance’ and five on from actually sells a load’. We didn’t. We hit. Was there a conscious effort, we credible, so we wanted to make songs the Mercury-nominated ‘Of Animals couldn’t have done it even if we had wonder, to make a relatively more that had some genuine joy in them. & Men’, Young Knives are at a tried. First and foremost we had to poppy record? We have written some pretty cynical crossroads in their musical career. make a record that we felt happy HENRY: “It wasn’t a conscious songs in the past and it’s easy to be How to follow up two such lauded with and to feel like it had kicked us decision to make a poppy record; it grumpy old men and make jokes at and loved albums? More of the same out of the rut you inevitably fall into was a conscious decision to make a other people’s expense.