[email protected] nightshift.oxfordmusic.net Free every month NIGHTSHIFT Issue 207 October Oxford’s Music Magazine 2012 Alphabet Backwards photo: Jenny Hardcore photo: Jenny Hardcore Go pop! NIGHTSHIFT: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU. Phone: 01865 372255 NEWS Nightshift: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU Phone: 01865 372255 email: [email protected] Online: nightshift.oxfordmusic.net DAMO SUZUKI is set to headline The album is available to download this year’s Audioscope festival. The for a bargain £5 at legendary former Can singer will www.musicforagoodhome.com. play a set with The ODC Drumline at the Jericho Tavern on Saturday NIGHTSHIFT PHOTOGRAPHER 10th November. Damo first headlined Johnny Moto officially launches his Audioscope back in 2003 and has new photo exhibition at the Jericho SUPERGRASS will receive a special Performing Rights Society Heritage made occasional return visits to Tavern with a gig at the same venue Award this month. The band, who formed in 1993, will receive the award Oxford since, including a spectacular this month. at The Jericho Tavern, the legendary venue where they signed their record set at Truck Festival in 2009 backed Johnny has been taking photos of deal back in 1994 before going on to release six studio albums and a string by an all-star cast of Oxfordshire local gigs for over 25 years now, of hit singles, helping to put the Oxford music scene on the world map in the musicians. capturing many of the best local and process. Joining Suzuki at Audioscope, which touring acts to pass through the city Gaz Coombes, Mick Quinn and Danny Goffey will receive the award at the raises money for homeless charity in that time and a remains a familiar Tavern on October 3rd. Previous recipients of a PRS Heritage Award include Shelter, will be Baltimore’s alt. figure down the front of local gigs. Blur, Squeeze, Elton John, Dire Straits, Status Quo and Faithless. folkies Arboretum; Manchester/ A selection of his best shots are now Talking about the Jericho Tavern, Mick said, “Everyone aspired to play the Newcastle krautrock duo Warm framed and hung around the Tavern’s venue back in the day and I remember seeing my brother’s band This Way Up Digits; new Mute Records signings upstairs venue. play there as early as 1983. We received our first positive reviews as Theodore Land Observatory; technical rock The gig takes place on Saturday Supergrass at the Jericho in 1994, when the promoter Maccy burst into the th experimenters Alright The Captain; 6 October and features The dressing room after our gig telling us, `You’ve got it!’ Soon after, the feeding metronomic rockers Baltic Fleet; Goggenheim, The Lamppost frenzy of record company A&R men started.” Elysian Quartet cellist and singer Gullivers – the new band formed by PRS chair Guy Fletcher added, “It’s a rare talent that epitomises the feeling Laura Moody and the brilliantly former-Suitable Case For Treatment and energy of an entire decade. Supergrass were so much a part of our named and fantastically noisy and Mephisto Grande frontman soundtrack to the 90s and the guys worked incredibly hard. Their output was crazies Dethscalator. Local acts Liam Ings-Reeves – Vienna Ditto impressive and it is a genuine privilege to be presenting the group with this Gunning For Tamar, Message To and Francis Pugh & The Whisky well deserved award. Oxford is an important hub for British music and live Bears and Listing Ships complete Singers. music venues like the Jericho Tavern need to be celebrated. It’s going to be a an impressive bill of leftfield really special day.” music. Tickets for the all-day event, GAPPY TOOTH INDUSTRIES Meanwhile, as he continues life after Supergrass, Gaz plays his biggest solo priced £12, are on sale now from are looking for more bands to play hometown show this month, when he headlines the O2 Academy on Saturday Wegottickets. their monthly club nights. GTI, 27th October. Tickets, priced £12.50, are on sale now. Audioscope also have a new which has been running for ten years compilation album out. `Music now, is renowned for its eclectic mix For A Good Home 2’ features 40 and match bills, providing an outlet AS EVER, don’t forget to tune into and demos as well as featuring exclusive tracks from the likes of for unsigned out of town bands as BBC Oxford Introducing every interviews and sessions with local Ride, Wire, Four Tet, Beak>, Karma well as local bands of any and all Sunday night between 9-10pm on acts. To Burn, Warm Digits and SJ Esau, style. Acts can email rcatherall@ 95.2fm. The dedicated local music The show is available as a podcast at as well as a strong local contingent. gappytooth.com. show plays the best Oxford releases bbc.co.uk/oxford. HUGO MANUEL has been talking think when I first finished it I was tuning and the bigger structural and together in the US last year and then to Nightshift about hisnew Chad quite scared about the direction I sequencing decisions seem like a Twin Shadow from a short UK tour Valley album, which is released next had taken the Chad Valley project... distant memory. Which is nice.” and playing at loads of the same month. it’s a dangerous move to make a pop The numerous guest appearances festivals. Then El Perro Del Mar `Young Hunger’ is released on album, because a lot of people don’t across the new album came about by and Glasser were people who I am 19th November on Loose Lips, the like pop music, full stop, which I a combination of chance meetings, massive fans of, so it was just a lot of follow-up to last year’s acclaimed don’t get. But anyway, now it’s a few old friendships and a bit of begging, begging and hassling going on there, `Equatorial Ultravox’ mini- months in the past all the hardship I explained Hugo. “I became friends and it worked! Of course Jack and album. The new album features had whilst making it, the little fine- with Active Child through touring Orlando from TEED I know from contributions from Totally Enormous Oxford.” Extinct Dinosaurs and Fixers’ Jack Hugo also admitted he enjoyed the Goldstein, among others. pressure of balancing his work with “I finished up my debut album a Chad Valley and his other band, couple of months ago,” explained Jonquil. “It keeps me busy, but I’m Hugo, “I was working at Evolution much happier when I am busy! We Studios in Botley, mixing it with take it in turns to an extent. Jonquil are Jonathan Shakhovskoy and then, playing some more shows in October since it’s been finished I’ve been around the country and some more working on my live show, building a European shows too, but then I will be kind of light show for it, and working concentrating on Chad stuff. Easy.” on all the artwork and videos and Chad Valley plays at The Cellar on things like that. Content, y’know. Sunday 25th November as part of his “I feel incredibly proud of the UK tour. Visit www.facebook.com/ album. The more time that passes chadvalleymusic for more news, since making it the more I like it. I music and tour dates. a quiet word with Alphabet Backwards pitch up to see you.” Last summer Alphabet Backwards played eleven different festivals around the UK and, Nightshift having witnessed them at three of them, they do seem to be the natural environment for the band, a little bit photo: Jonny Moto of sunshine seeming to coat every song, fresh air and summer vibes perfect side orders to their effusively melodic brew. THIS SUMMER HAS BEEN equally busy on the live front, including a short tour of Spain, but the central focus for Alphabet Backwards has been the recording of their debut album, `Little Victories’ (see, even the title exudes a sweetly understated sense of positivity), for Highline Records, the follow-up to a series of EP releases, and finally released this month. It’s almost four years now since we first had the band, then a newly emerging talent on the local scene, on the front cover of Nightshift. We wonder what they (James: vocals and guitar; bassist Josh Ward; singer Steph Ward; drummer Paul Townsend, and keyboard player Bob Thomas) have been up to since we “WE JUST want to WRITE the most cynical hacks; their big- gig-going collective consciousness. last interviewed them. songs we enjoy playing and it’s hearted songs are perfect for getting At Cornbury, meanwhile, a wholly “A new sibling, a new drummer, one awesome that potentially we can stuck in your internal jukebox for different crowd instantly took to the university degree, two car crashes, bridge that divide. Josh and I joke days, enormous singalong choruses band, struck by songs that sound three EPs, a new x-reg Citroën. New that we are essentially a metal band demanding to be sung right back at instantly familiar to the point one label, new album, new nickname. underneath. We are a bit heavier the band by enthralled crowds, while punter close to us to was moved to Same outfit, same white socks.” than your average Radio 2 act but often hiding lyrics infused with deep express her astonishment that the You’ve kept your hand in with EP not quite eccentric, hip or indie cynicism or a cute sense of whimsy five-piece weren’t already major releases over the past few years; enough to be, say, Los Campesinos.” that most chart-friendly pop would league chart stars.