Yunioshi - CTRL

Yunioshi - CTRL from Nathan Crawley on Vimeo.

With their latest effort CTRL, Yunioshi have affirmed what many in the glamour-ridden, cultural hive of the East Midlands (really!) that Nottingham's finest popstars really do come in perfectly offbeat forms. Check out this video for the EP, which sees keyboard culprit Anna Suzuki Yunioshi rather spooked out...

Stoke Newington Literary Festival: Stewart Lee and John Hegley

The problem with things that sound pretentious is, well, they’re actually fun. Justifying going to a literary fest to others is a difficult one, like convincing a doubter to climb aboard an errant camel to enjoy the view from the top. But we wouldn’t commit pretentious acts – going to see foreign language films we know will be slow and depressing, attending twee folk gigs where you have to sit on the floor – if it didn’t have an element of raw fun in there somewhere now would we?

The inaugural Stoke Newington lit fest has already garnered an impressive line-up, swelled by the likes of Tony Benn, Jeremy Hardy and incredible author/ShadowPlay contributor Toby Litt, at this early stage. The north London suburb is typified by its poor transport links, slightly yuppyish but charming streets and hoards of goods pubs and eateries.

My experience of the event centred upon two acts, Stewart Lee and John Hegley. Tucked away in a back street, the Stoke Newington International Airport is an instantly engaging venue. Essentially a garage filled with trinkets and mismatched chairs, Lee takes to the stage backed by a haunting painting of horses with a plane overhead and a kitchen dresser any house proud mum would desire. Lee, a Stoke Newington resident, is typically downbeat and modest and the comedian apologises for not being funny today, despite being just that. He proceeds to read a short story, N, by  Arthur Machen fluently and deadpan. Mackan’s tale is fit for this very occasion, a winding tome about visitors to Stoke Newington and perception of the village and its mythical park just four miles from central London. He’s an author for whom there is clearly much love and his gothic, accessible and eloquent 1930s tales are something deserving of further investigation. The heavens open outside as Lee reads, it seems entirely apt, they stop shortly before the end, not sure how much the organisers paid for that one.

Another local, John Hegley offers an entirely different prospect. Backed by double bassist Keith Moore (who also whips out a euphonium – an instrument which he can draw with some speed and skill – during the set), Hegley reads poems, letters and simple quips without breaking stride or hearing a lull in the laughter. The beautiful Assembly Rooms at the top of Church Street have clearly hosted the making and breaking of a hundred hearts over the decades but tonight the glitter ball merely reflected the positive. Urging the crowd to sing, translate French and even throw their glasses in the air, Hegley leads his audience through sidling songs of guillemots, Anglo-French romance and, ahem, hamsters. As the crowd file out, many clutching copies of Hegley’s book (which comes with lots of free space to draw pictures, nice) signed in pastels the smiles are as bright as the volunteer’s pink t-shirts. Stoke Newington, as an outsider, a comparative southerner, I salute you. 

Campaign against BBC cuts gathers pace

So I'm guessing you have all heard about the proposed cuts to vital parts of the BBC's radio offering. I received this update on the campaign to stop the cuts, do donate if you can spare the cash.

"The consultation on cuts to BBC services like 6 Music and Asian Network ends in less than a month. We need to make these last few weeks count. So we're going to put these massive billboard adverts right outside BBC buildings.
So far thousands of us chipping in has raised £13,000 to put these adverts up. That's enough for billboard campaigns around the BBC buildings in Manchester, London, Glasgow, Cardiff and Birmingham. If we reach £20,000 by Monday, we'll be able to reach other cities too including Edinburgh, Leeds, Bristol and Leicester, and also print thousands of flyers to distribute at concerts. Can you help by chipping in?
The more billboards we have, the more pressure we put on the BBC to protect services like Asian Network and 6 Music. Please donate now: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/fight-the-cuts
The billboards are going up on May 10th. BBC bosses pushing the cuts had been hoping our protest would fizzle out as the consultation drew to a close. But these billboards will make sure the pressure just keeps building. The more cities we can put them in, the more people we'll reach and the more powerful the message we'll send.
Together, we're proving that the public wants to save these valued BBC services. Over 35,000 of us have signed the petition, and over 20,000 have emailed the BBC Trust. We've persuaded more than 300 election candidates to pledge to oppose the cuts if they're elected. There are real signs that our pressure is starting to shift the BBC position. Now let's make sure in these final few weeks, our protests reach a real crescendo.

Thanks for getting involved,
The 38 Degrees Team"

Son of Dave: Shake a Bone (Kartel)

Son of Dave has represented an odd entity for some time and this latest outing, produced by the legendary Steve ‘is that a grating sound I can hearing beneath that noise?’ Albini, is no exception. The follow up to 2008’s ‘03’, this is arguably Benjamin Darvill’s most classically blues album yet. Full of slow rhythm, like an ex-con dragging a ball and chain down a Roman road, tracks such as Guilty prove Darvill has the ability to gently cast his harmonica over the top of a beat and enrapture in the process.

He’s warped more into Tom Waits than ever before too. Hell, he even looks like the innocent dreaming stubbly legend on the cover, adorned in a fetching hat and with an earnest stare. The (real) r’n’b blues riffs here, the relative simplicity of the lyrics and the extremely danceable structure to the tunes make it an easily recognisable and accessible record from the anomaly of a modern artist. Highlights include the full on rock out of Revolution Town and the blistering title track which affirms all you ever thought about the wiseness of wearing snakeskin shoes and dancing in the desert. A well-paced record of perfect length, pick it up.
And that’s not to say anything of its published accompaniment. A new book published by those Junko Partners the Stool Pigeon. Two books to commemorate the glorious oversized music paper’s 5th anniversary were released in Islington last month and I was lucky enough to attend the launch. Alongside of a series of incisive and hilarious interviews, Son of Dave’s columns from the paper were released in the form of a new volume entitled We Need You Lazzaro, You Lazy, Greasy Bastard’ – doubtless a hit with the kids section at Waterstones. Funny and fascinating in equal measure, tales of celebrity burials and great music adorn its pages. Quite a character then, and a great musician to boot.

Come Get Felt Up @ The Book Club, near Old Street, London Thursday 22 April

http://www.comegetfeltup.com/

This Thursday ShadowPlay will be hosting an ace gig featuring the wonderful Yunioshi

at The Book Club in Shoreditch, London.

It's free entry and there's a creative competition (materials provided)

with mega prizes!

Be crazy not to come wouldn't it?

Piano Time: Dustin O'Halloran feature

Californian pianist Dustin O'Halloran has carved an excellent career so far and here ShadowPlay examines the mysterious talent in profile.

Hello Thor presents Fists EP launch

Our good friends over at Hello Thor record are promoting an excellent gig in Nottingham this Friday, it's the launch of the glorious new Fists EP Olympic Hits and takes place at The Rescue Rooms where many of ShadowPlay's formative years (great gigs, dubious kissing on purple sofas and bitch slaps) were spent. Here I am rocking a Hello Thor tee in Amelie's cafe in Paris. Details of the gig below, go!

FISTS ‘Olympic Hits EP’ Launch Party! @ The Rescue Rooms
This Friday - 9th April 2010 - 8.30 til late - £5 (+ free EP with advance tickets)

Four of Nottingham’s brightest and best under one roof for one night only!
FISTS - on record their sound shifts from skiffle-punk to country-inflected indie pop. Live, Fists are a woozy, kaleidoscopic and riotously fun affair. "They do DIY and they do it well. Imagine the infectious anthemics of Broken Social Scene arm in arm with the eclecticism of Belle and Sebastian. Underlying this stargazing poppiness is a foundation of razor-edged post-punk." LeftLion
SWIMMING - avant-garde, euphoric and righteously poppy music.
PILGRIM FATHERS - awesome slabs of mind melting psychedelic post-rock.
ESCAPOLOGISTS - synth-heavy, drum machine backed, dark pop.
AFTER-PARTY!!! up in the Red Room featuring special guests:
* APES FIGHT BACK - www.myspace.com/apesfightback
* FRANK’S VINTAGE METAL DISCO featuring early ZZ-Top, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, Led Zep, Black Sabbath, and Judas Priest.

Snap up an Advance Ticket for £5 (from Rock City box office / www.alt-tickets.co.uk) and you’ll get a FREE copy of the brand new ‘Olympic Hits EP’ by FISTS - just swap your ticket stub at the merch stand on the night.

New ShadowPlay: Issue 27

Yep, my scissors (ow) and brain (kinda) have concocted a 27th issue, subtitled Out of the Light, Into the Dark covering the likes of street crime, violence, nightmares and addiction, cheery! But there’s plenty else in there too including African adventures with Debbie Ng, dubious debacles involving some slightly risky interviews from me and musical mischief as ever. For both fact and fiction email (shadowplayfanzine@hotmail.com) me your address for a free copy and distros get in touch for a job lot etc.

Print day: the stresses and strains

Print day for ShadowPlay is always a stressful occasion with last minute adjustments and chopped off edges always standard fare. I’ve been looking for a new print shop for quite some time, since moving to London in fact, and received a great tip off from a fellow zinester about one in the centre of town a couple of months ago.

I’ve started using an annual, How It Was To Be Young Then, about the swing era to keep the master copies flat and it was from this that everything fell immediately on entering the bizarre copy place. Housed in a disturbing quiet school-type atmosphere, it is staffed by a man of indeterminate eastern European origin wearing a large knitted jumper adorned with a Scotland flag on the top floor. After a last minute cut and Blu-tack job on some flyers featuring beautiful artwork from ShadowPlay fave Os Gemeos, everything is ready to go. Thus ensues the most circular conversation of my life:
“I’ve put this next to the edge to make it easier to cut, will it get cut off?”
“No, that’s not a problem. Is this not the finished cover then?”
“Yes, it is the finished cover.”
“Then why do you want to cut it?”
“It’s just the design. I do.”
“But why?”
“It doesn’t matter”

And so on. And so on for literally three minutes before the Groundhog day was broken by a paper jam, thank fuck. Of course there’s problems, missed off headlines that have disappeared, marks on the cover and a change in the price but, on getting the copies home (having skipped down the stairs of the weird building avoiding the lift in a cage and grappling with the heavy box and big umbrella given to me by a potato company on a tube packed tighter than battery hen) and assembling the protype it doesn’t matter. A new ShadowPlay is born and a sense of pride and dread installed. Now for the hard part, pass the long-armed stapler…
ShadowPlay #27 is available by emailing shadowplayfanzine@hotmail.com with your address, simple eh.

Mad March = Great Records

So when Howard Hughes greets the “interplanetary indiepop pickers” in the intro to The Pocket Gods’ new record he isn’t going too far wrong in addressing the average sanity, and musical taste, of potential listeners to Plan Nub, Behind the Fridge. In fact, by the time he invites us to “loosen those space belts and prepare to go down, deep down into Nub country…”, you’re either in or out. Luckily for ShadowPlay, we’ve already ripped off our leather waist strapping (it was purely cosmetic anyway, three quid from the British Heart Foundation) and are rolling in a veritable pig sty of bonkers tunage. Ahem. Billy Childish Enters the Space race gives an excellent early sign of the witticisms, perfect riffs and off key singing in store. Alien Xmas Song displays the indie poppers in a rare contemplative move, coming over all lighters in the air but, before the hankies are out over the irresistible slow strumming they’re singing “there’s a nipple fight in the car park, nipple nipple nipple fight..beautiful manboobs”. Perfect and bizarre, indiepop at its finest.
ShadowPlay’s favourite Barcelona-based ridiculously traditional folksome singer, Peter Loveday, returns with a new album, Standard Ideal, recorded last summer. Always full of erudite phrases and clever little imagery (“As the trucks roll by I step out of the way/I’m in no hurry and there aren’t that many anyway”), Loveday has beguiling, cracked voice now backed with some complementing vocal and violin tones by Naomi Weldman and Sarah Davison. Some of the duets here work better than others but there’s a genuine skill in the songwriting that make him worth investigation for lo-fi fans across Europe.

Talking of lo-fi, the crayon cartoons scribbles across Islands Lost At Sea’s new record (pictured) belie the stylish CD packaging with a bunch of funny bookmarks (sample “Read Thicko”) spilling out from its bambuzzling form on unfolding. It would be easy to get distracted from the music then, but this Staywarm Records release is a particularly charming piece of indiepop wizardry. A mix of plaintive peaens, chirpy tunage and even the odd carefully weaved in beat keeps the island floating on towards success. Oh, and the packaging’s actually a bookend, neat.
Not for the first time, Sunday Best are band on form. Well, more specifically their artist Dub Pistols are, with Rodney P taking some of the limelight on new A-side Ganja. We know what to expect from Dub Pistols – the slight warped reggae, the inevitable catchiness – but the added element of Monsieur P shouting “they got us under prohibition like it’s 1932” gives it an edgy, exciting top layer – to be skimmed off and enjoyed as 2 Bit Thugs and Nitenoise play around with it in subsequent mixes.

Elsewhere Skeletons, aka Nostalgia 77, releases Smile on Impossible Ark Records – a clever ‘act of mindless fun’ combining West African earnest jazz with more fun, upbeat offshoots. The man behind is, Benedic Lamdin, says Skeletons “is a made up band” as the musicians were never together in the studio and, after playing around with what was in vogue, he couldn’t stop. Whatever the process, it sounds good and very, very hard to turn off. Oh, and Alice Russell fans – get this if only for her usual supersonic display on Adam and Eve. Funk and soul act The Bamboos finish us off, Tru Thoughts luminaries they’ve been around for a while now and new album ‘4’ displays perfectly why their stock has risen steadily in the last few years. Turn It Up has the dusty feel of a classic while you can hear the stilettos squeaking on the two tone floor in Like Tears in Rain, retro stylings in its finest. A stellar month then, go forth and multi-buy!