Arctic Monkeys | 19/03/10
Hi there, very pleased to announce the arrival of the new video for Arctic Monkeys’ My Propeller. Directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern, it’s a feast for the eyes. My Propeller is released on Monday the 22nd of March, and sees Arctic Monkeys continuing their relationship with Oxfam, who will be exclusively selling the 10” version of the single at their 148 stores nationwide.
Arctic Monkeys’ next London show is at The Royal Albert Hall on Saturday the 27th of March, as part of the Teenage Cancer Trust series of concerts.
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Eugene McGuinness | 19/03/10
A collaboration between 'mesmerising' (The Independent) Eugene McGuinness and one of the Times' top rising stars of literature, performance poet Ross Sutherland, forms the centre piece of Mercy's return to London after December's sell-out show in Shoreditch Church.
These unique happenings feature new poetry, music, multimedia and fine arts from some of the country's top emerging talent. At turns hilarious, dramatic, heart-rending and impressive, Mercy events reinvent the showcase, blending boundaries between literature, performance, multimedia and music, within a tightly orchestrated and dramatic whole.
Mercy's creative partners for these shows, pop-experimentalists Wave Machines, will also be presenting brand new collaborative work with poet Nathan Jones (“stridant, dramatic and compelling” The Londonist), along with work from London's hottest literary-salon, Book Club Boutique, host Salena Godden, and South Bank-resident and Warp contemporary-classical piano innovator Sarah Nicolls.
Referencing the heritage of ceremony in churches, after shows based on Marriage and Funerals, WIYRT#06 is a showcase themed around the rituals, iconography and mythology of Baptism. From the modern coming of age story, to the cleansing of mortal sin, to the dance of the seven veils, this theme will form the basis of a modern master-piece of entertainment, where the very best artistry and entertainment finds a new site of worship.
ACTS
Live acts are supported by a team of Mercy's artists in residence, Scott Spencer, Adam Sloan and Becky Grove, providing new multimedia, illustration and set-design work.
Music
Wave Machines
Co-hosts Wave Machines make instinctive art-pop with an energy, complexity and intimacy that gives their live performances the feel of epic experience. With their English melancholia pricked by impudent promise, they are part of that eccentric lineage of home grown musical adventurers XTC, The Beta Band and Hot Chip. The Wave Machines/Mercy relationship has grown and developed as their collective stars have risen, and WIYRT#06 promises to be a new climax in what has been a groundbreaking series of shows.
Eugene + The Lizards
Unstoppable vocal impresario uniting the styles of Wainright, Morrissey, Dylan and the proverbial fat lady, is joined by his new band to burn up the stage for a set featuring new material, and tunes from his recently released EP ‘Glue’, along with a new collaboration with Ross Sutherland. Eugene is one of the most distinctive performers on the scene, and this setting will be perfect for this unique brand of neo-pop.
“Bedroom guitar-geeks and aspiring song-stars unite; your supreme superhero has landed!” CLASH
Gary Daly
Lead singer of 1980's pop-ballad superstars China Crisis, performs new solo material from his limited release e.p. on Polite, and presents a series of new artworks as part of the setting for this magical event.
myspace.com/thevisionarymindsetexperience
Sarah Nicolls
Sarah Nicolls is a pianist specialising in contemporary music. She has performed concerti with the London Sinfonietta, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, appearing in solo recital over a dozen times on Radio 3, and receiving consistent critical acclaim since her South Bank debut in 2001. Sarah will be presenting her work exploring the expansion of the grand piano with electronics and pre-recorded sound alongside new poetic work from Mercy.
Poetics
Ross Sutherland with Eugene McGuinness
One of The Times’s Top Ten Literary Stars of 2008 and Time Out Award-winner. Ross's new solo show The Three Stigmata of Pacman, has received rave reviews across the board. For this collaboration with Eugene McGuinness, Ross will be directing a musical of his own life, where he is played by a female lead. Absurd, touching and hilarious.
Salena Godden
Hostess of top literary salon Book Club Boutique, Salena is one of the best writer-performers in the game. Her poetry sets veer from the heart-warming to the downright filthy. For this show, Salena will be exploring sin, purity and heavenly delights.
David J
“The Vocal Pugilist” remains one of the most powerful and original performers in spoken word. A heritage of r&b, rap, poetry and theatre, matched with a dedication to technical excellence, provide David J with a integrity of purpose and dexterity of delivery that will bring the even the big man's house down.
http://www.myspace.com/davidj14
Nathan Jones with Wave Machines
This hugely inventive and ambitious resident partnership for the WIYRT events provides the dramatic setting for the shows. Nathan's distinctive delivery style is set off perfectly by Wave Machines' epic and responsive interpretations.
Wave If You're Really There #06: BAPTISM
Total immersion in poetry, music and the arts
“Spectacular... a happening” The Guardian
Saturday 10th April, 2009
7 – 11pm
Shoreditch Church, London
Adv. tickets £10
Four Tet | 18/03/10
FOUR TET
Releases SING (Remix 12”) – 29th March 2010
Following the release of Sing (Extended mix b/w Floating Points Remix), Four Tet is to release a remix 12” (RUG358TX) on 29th March.
Track list is as follows:
A - Sing – Mosca remix
B - Sing – Banton’s Indian Chants Remix (by Hardhouse Banton)
Four Tet’s much acclaimed fifth LP, There Is Love In You, is available now.
Four Tet will perform a three date UK tour in March followed by a rescheduled London show at Village Underground on the 30th May (Bank holiday Sunday).
Full live dates are as follows:
Thursday 11th March: Manchester – Club Academy
Friday 12th March: Leeds – TJs
Saturday 13th March: Edinburgh
Sunday 14th March: Anstruther, Homegame Festival
Wednesday 17th March: Brighton - Concorde 2
Thursday 18th March: Sheffield - Plug
Friday 19th March: Birmingham - Custard Factory
Saturday 20th March: Bristol - Fiddlers
(Bank holiday weekend) Sunday 30th May: London – Village Underground (rescheduled from 10th April – same ticket still valid) with Roska
Press for There Is Love In You:
‘Kieran Hebden’s fifth album as Four Tet is a career high’ – The Times – 5*
‘Brims with a playful sense of wonder […] it’s a masterclass in how to make machine music pulse with subtle twinges of human emotion’ – Q – lead review
‘…as if the primitive and the modern were folded into each other’ – Financial Times – 5*
‘Demonstrates both Hebden’s lightness of touch and his innate sense of allusion and textural darkness’ – Sunday Times – 4*
http://www.myspace.com/fourtetkieranhebden
Steve Mason | 18/03/10
Having recently signed to Domino imprint Double Six, Steve Mason has announced the release of a new single, Lost & Found, on Monday April 19th 2010.
The single, available digitally and featuring the B-side Its Never You, is taken from his forthcoming album, Boys Outside, which is released on May 3rd.
Having previously recorded as both King Biscuit Time and Black Affair, both largely electronic based projects, Steve Mason enlisted the help of producer Richard X and consciously made a decision to go back to basics; the album was written entirely on acoustic guitar with many of the finished tracks stripped back to reveal his undoubted songwriting talent.
Loops | 15/03/10
Loops 2 is the second issue of a landmark collaboration between Domino and Faber – a twice-yearly journal dedicated to engaging and diverse writing about music.
The following is an edited extract of Matt Thorne's piece for Loops 2.
‘Gigolos Get Lonely Too’: Prince, His Protégées, Side-Projects and Their Influence (Part One: ’78-‘84)
As with Prince’s own releases, the records that his protégées and friends have put out over the last thirty years have been of variable quality. This strand of Prince’s music is driven by two major motivations: Prince’s delight in hiding from public view, and the fact that enjoys being in a studio or on stage over anything else. But it’s more than a straightforward desire to release as much as possible. In fact, it isn’t stretching things too far to see ‘Vanity’, ‘Apollonia’ and ‘Sister Fate’ as Prince’s characters, part of the novel he sings about trying to write in the unreleased ‘Moonbeam Levels.’ Others have suggested it makes more sense to see them as Prince’s alter egos, the name ‘Vanity’ believed to have been inspired by the physical similarity between Denise Matthews and Prince.
In the summer of ’79 Prince took his band of the era to Boulder, Colorado to work on his first planned side-project, a New Wave band named The Rebels. Although the nine Rebels songs are cherished by collectors, it’s disappointing the record wasn’t released, as just as his recordings as Madhouse reveal Prince the jazz musician, the rock underpinnings of several of Prince’s Rebels songs reveal Prince the New Waver but also Prince the rockabilly. It’s also the only album Prince has been involved in where he really is just one of the band rather than merely trying to give this impression; from now on he’d always remain in command.
Instead of The Rebels, Prince’s most significant early side-project was the first album by The Time. The six-track album features Prince in deep disguise, co-producing under the pseudonym Jamie Starr. The Time would evolve into a band with a very clear identity, but the project initially grew out of, Lisa Coleman told me, jokes and silliness. She was living with Prince at the time, and her contribution to the album was greater than has previously been acknowledged. “My room was upstairs, so he would call me down, 'Lisa, would you help me do this string part? What about these lyrics? Can you finish this verse?' He involved me, I punched him in while he was playing the drums, whatever it was.”
She wasn’t there the night they decided to make Morris Day the front-man, but remembers him as a cute freckle-faced boy with a big ‘fro who would run and get them hamburgers. Lisa says Prince never doubted that Morris would rise to the challenge, although she felt, “The guy had had a huge responsibility thrust upon him and what seemed like fun and games at first became a big deal.’”
Vanity 6, Prince’s first female-fronted side-project, was closer to Dirty Prince. The band started out as the Hookers, and very nearly had a lead singer named ‘Vagina’, but Vanity 6 were always a pop band. What gives Prince’s earliest work much of its charm is his tireless subservience before unkind, promiscuous or uninterested women, and it seems surprising but sweet that when writing his first songs for women to sing he didn’t take on the persona of the unavailable lover, but imagined instead a sister to his poor sexually frustrated brothers. The band’s most famous song, ‘Nasty Girl,’ may be less well-known than Prince’s greatest hits, but it’s among the most influential songs Prince has written.
While working on the Vanity 6 album, Prince had also been preparing The Time’s second album, released a fortnight later. Morris Day stands alone on What Time Is It?, checking his watch in front of a wall covered with clocks. The record has more character than its predecessor, and although it is structured similarly, with three long dance tracks and three shorter songs, the lyrics are sharper and less generic, the concept now clearly in focus. It’d be the hits from the third Time album that’d truly fix the band in the public consciousness, but this is just as good.
Prince took these two bands on tour as support when promoting 1999, happy to reveal himself as puppet-master. The friction between the various camps spilt out beyond the shows and Lisa remembers there being no doubt as to who was in charge. “There were three buses. Our bus had a video-machine on it, and we stopped at a truck stop and the video machine was gone. Me and Dez went onto Vanity 6's bus and Prince was on the bus watching something with Vanity. And we said ‘hey, that's from our bus’ and he said, 'they're all my buses.’”
Almost two years would pass between the second Time album and Prince’s next full-length project with a protégée, Sheila E’s The Glamorous Life (1984). Prince presented Sheila E with songs that he’d already recorded, allowing her to replace his scratch vocal and then building up most songs around her percussion. Prince often experiments with techniques and styles in his side-projects that don’t reach full fruition in his own work until several years later and the first Sheila E album has less in common with the very mainstream rock record he’d just completed than their later collaborations on Sign O’The Times and Lovesexy.
The Time’s third album, ‘Ice Cream Castle’ features the two songs for which the band are now best known, ‘Jungle Love’ and ‘The Bird’ (they perform both in Purple Rain (1984)), but the first single was ‘Ice Cream Castles’, in which Morris Day drops his usual ‘bring me a mirror’ schtick to sing about falling in love with a white woman. Nothing else on side one of ‘Ice Cream Castles’ is as powerful, but it’s the three songs on Side Two that make this The Time’s most commercially and artistically successful album. Nevertheless, for all his love of party-time, Prince’s musical experimentation would soon get more serious, and the events surrounding his next project, The Family, would ultimately change the direction of his music, and the course of his career, forever.
Villagers | 12/03/10
We are delighted to announce details of Villagers’ gorgeous debut album, Becoming a Jackal, which will be released on 24th May 2010 on CD (WIGCD253), LP (WIGLP253) and via digital download (WIG253D).
Villagers is the brainchild of Conor J. O'Brien, who has already toured Ireland, the UK and US and opened for Neil Young, Wild Beasts and Cass McCombs amongst others. Becoming a Jackal introduces us to Villagers’ vivid narratives, gripping poetry and melodic depth. Conor J. O’Brien’s clear and distinctive voice weaves a remarkable spell, delivering an album of rare, alarming beauty. From restrained to unleashed, from a whisper to a literal howl, Becoming a Jackal mutates, intrigues and beguiles in equal measure.
The lead single of the same name will be available on 7” from Record Store Day (17th April) and via digital download from 26th April. The accompanying, Ferry Gouw, directed video is available to watch here:
The full album tracklisting is as follows:
1 – I Saw the Dead
2 – Becoming a Jackal
3 – Ship of Promises
4 – The Meaning of the Ritual
5 – Home
6 – That Day
7 – The Pact (I’ll be your Fever)
8 – Set the Tigers Free
9 – Twenty-Seven Strangers
10 – Pieces
11 – To Be Counted Among Men
Villagers (Conor solo) will perform at this year’s SXSW festival in the US and will join Tindersticks as special guests on their March UK tour. Villagers (full band) will be supporting Wild Beasts in Ireland at the end March, returning to London and then performing a series of headlining shows in Ireland in April.
Full UK, Irish and SXSW dates are as follows:
17 Mar SXSW – 3pm show; Urban Outfitters stage; 6.30pm: Rare magazine party @ Old Fader Fort; 11pm show; Music from Ireland showcase@ ‘Friends’
18 Mar SXSW - 4.45pm: Hill 16 Day Party @ Bull McCabes
19 Mar SXSW – 1.30pm: Full Irish Breakfast @ BD Riley’s
20 Mar SXSW – 1.30pm: Domino Publishing/ Press Here Party@ French Legation; 4.30pm; Mojo magazine BBQ @ Mean Eyed Cat; 6.30pm: Kevchino.com party@ Café Mundi
22 Mar Queens Hall, supporting Tindersticks Edinburgh, UK
23 Mar Manchester Cathedral, supporting Tindersticks Manchester, UK
24 Mar Shepherds Bush Empire, supporting Tindersticks London, UK
25 Mar Roisin Dubh, supporting Wild Beasts Galway, Ireland
26 Mar Cyprus Avenue, supporting Wild Beasts Cork, Ireland
27 Mar The Academy, supporting Wild Beasts Dublin, Ireland
26 Apr Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, London, supporting Shout Out Louds (8.30pm)
27 Apr Madame Jojos - White Heat, London (9.15pm stage time)
29 Apr Old Blue Last, London (9.45pm – headline show)
1 May Camden Crawl, London, venue TBA
2 May Camden Crawl, London, venue TBA
19 May Set Theatre, Kilkenny, Ireland
20 May Cyprus Avenue, Cork, Ireland
21 May Roisin Dubh, Galway, Ireland
22 May The Button Factory, Dublin, Ireland
www.myspace.com/wearevillagers http://wearevillagers.com http://twitter.com/wearevillagers
She & Him | 11/03/10
In The Sun will be available via digital download (DS025D) from March 29th. A limited edition 7” (DS025) will be released exclusively through independent record shops in a special edition Volume Two artworked tote bag, as part of Record Store day on April 17th.
Video directed by Peyton Reed (Yes Man, The Break-Up) is below:
The Magnetic Fields | 08/03/10
"Whoop-di-do: the eagerly-anticipated issue #2 of Loops magazine … Quake in boggled awe before Paul Morley’s essay on Michael Jackson. They don’t make music magazines like this anymore." - Dazed & Confused
The second issue of a wonderfully exciting, landmark collaboration between Domino and Faber – a twice-yearly journal dedicated to engaging, intelligent and diverse writing about music.
Issue 2 of Loops, the biannual journal dedicated to music writing from Faber and Domino, hosts essays from Andy Miller (Est-ce, est-ce ce bon?: on Serge Gainsbourg's flirtation with Nazi chic on Rock Around the Bunker), Dan Franklin (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Fast: on Napalm Death and the Possibility of Life's Destruction) and Frances Morgan on Red Square's Thirty Three and the resonance of rediscovery after the event.
And then there's An Awfully Big Adventure, Paul Morley's spectacularly honest and exposing portrait of Michael Jackson and his debated legacy. Book shelves and tabloid columns have been blasting the ears of fans and critics alike since Jackson’s death, yet very little has been heard. Morley corrects this by unravelling and indulging the myth to ask just who he was, how we came to piece him together through our collective desires and fears, and why his destiny so inevitably reflected the dysfunctionality of the culture. This expansive essay takes a refreshingly imaginative perspective on a story that too often focused on the apocryphal fantasy rather than the magic of the man himself. Morley’s fascinating essay inclines us not just to look at Michael Jackson but to look at ourselves – the very forces implicit in making the man The King of Pop.
Morley sits alongside Simon Reynolds, Nick Kent, Lavinia Greenlaw, Owen Hatherley, Dan Franklin, Matt Thorne and Rob Chapman in Loops' second outing.
Loops II can be ordered from >>HERE
Loops is edited by Lee Brackstone and Richard King. Lee Brackstone is Publishing Director at Faber and Faber for pop culture titles and fiction. The Faber pop culture list has published such influential works as Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming, Simon Reynolds’s Rip It Up and Start Again and Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces.
Richard King has worked at Domino, the UK's leading independent music label for 15 years. In that time he has seen the label release records by Arctic Monkeys, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Franz Ferdinand, Pavement, Sebadoh and Robert Wyatt and build an incredible history and reputation. He is currently working on How Soon Is Now?, an access all areas history of the UK independent music business 1975 - 2005.
Wild Beasts, These New Puritans, The Kills, Lightspeed Champion and Four Tet | 08/03/10
A message from Domino Recording Co. Ltd…
We would like to make it clear that we are extremely concerned by BBC plans to cut BBC 6 Music from its schedule. BBC 6 Music is an extremely important and rare outlet for much of the music that we release on Domino. For many of us who grew up listening to, and learning about music from John Peel, we've come to appreciate this station of mostly free playlists, diversity, new things, old things, the unexpected. Indeed we'd argue that the BBC should be making this fantastic station more readily available via the masses of unused FM bandwidth.
There's information on this all over the Internet (BBC, Times and Guardian online are good start points). The BBC is currently inviting feedback to the proposals here: SRconsultation@bbc.co.uk. We urge you to email in, and let the BBC know your feelings on this matter.
A good general resource is the Save BBC 6Music facebook page to be found >>>HERE:
Please make the effort to do this.
Comments from just a few of our artists…
Noah Lennox (Animal Collective/Panda Bear)
“When I was a lot younger radio used to be the place I’d go to find new music and I feel like I would find it everywhere on the dial. Since then it seems like less and less stations are willing to or have the means to play new music. I miss unpredictable radio. Please support these guys…”
Alison Mosshart (The Kills/The Dead Weather)
“Please don't leave us musicians and music lovers with such a void. We need BBC6. It is the only radio station we all listen too, and seemingly, the only station that plays anything worth listening too. It would be culturally damaging to lose this station. I highly doubt I would ever listen to radio in England again, if it were gone. And that goes for a great many friends and colleagues of mine. BBC6 has been very supportive to the bands that I have been in and supportive of my friends and label mates. We are all greatly appreciative of the fine work they do, and the open minds that they have. It baffles me why art and culture must always suffer and get the boot before sport or the generic music which EVERYONE plays already, anyway. We can get these trashy things anywhere. But we're relying on BBC6 to encourage and inspire. To shut it down would be a real shame and a real mistake. Think of it as the Tate Modern of radio. We want it; we need it... because it's unique and culturally significant.
Please save BBC 6 Music.”
Hayden Thorpe (Wild Beasts)
“The closure of BBC6 music would be a huge blow to British arts in general. I don't know any other established vehicle, which allows for inventive and contemporary music to reach such a wide audience. I'm in no doubt the unrelenting support we have had from BBC6 has massively helped our career. This sends out a damning message to creative young people.”
Jack Barnett (These New Puritans)
“BBC6 was and is incredibly important to bands like us. In the world of 'independent music', where it can be difficult to survive by your ideas, it really is a unique and completely positive force. Its closure would be a massive blow to the possibilities of creative people doing creative things in this country.”
Dev Hynes (Lightspeed Champion)
“The end of 6Music is such a disgrace and catastrophe, I learnt so much from it, and imagine that if I was younger I would have learnt more. A lot of people are going to remember this. This is so upsetting for music fans across the country.”
Kieran Hebden (Four Tet)
"Please don't close down 6 music and Asian network. It's important to have stations on the radio that don't just play mainstream music."
Steve Mason | 08/03/10
Having recently signed to Domino imprint Double Six, Steve Mason has announced the release of a new single, Lost & Found, on Monday April 19th 2010.
The single, available digitally and featuring the B-side It’s Never You, is taken from his forthcoming album, Boys Outside, which will be released on May 3rd.
The full tracklisting for the album is as follows:
1. Understand My Heart
2. Am I Just A Man
3. The Letter
4. Yesterday
5. Lost & Found
6. I Let Her In
7. Stress Position
8. All Come Down
9. Boys Outside
10. Hound On My Heel
Having previously recorded as both King Biscuit Time and Black Affair, both largely electronic based projects, Steve Mason enlisted the help of producer Richard X and consciously made a decision to go back to basics; the album was written entirely on acoustic guitar with many of the finished tracks stripped back to reveal his undoubted songwriting talent.
Live shows are planned for 2010 after the album release. For further information prior to the release and all the social & media links, mailing lists, free stuff and info is www.stevemasontheartist.com
In the studio footage, filmed during the making of the album, is available to view via the following link:
Further studio clips are available via www.youtube.com/pittenweem12
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