Field Day – times, talk and tips

Greetings all, I’m back from a lovely Italy trip with lots to catch up on.  Before anything else, though, here are some thoughts on Field Day…

So Field Day returns for its fourth outing tomorrow, having suffered from an absence of any facilities (2007) and terrible weather (2008 & 2009) previously.  Those factors might explain the slow ticket sales, with numerous last-minute deals, promotions and giveaways, as the line-up looks pretty damn strong.  Unlike last year with Mogwai, there’s a genuine good-time headline act in Phoenix, and lots to tempt on the undercard, both musically and generally via the usual village fete activities and rumours of an illicit petanque game.

Field Day wouldn’t be Field Day without some sort of shambolic organisation, though, and this year it seems the stage times are going to be more elusive than ever.  Last year the times were announced on the Friday before on NME.com; this time round, Field Day’s Facebook page has said they will only be available on the day, on two big boards or (probably pricey) laminates.  How crass and profiteering is that?  Luckily, people power has come through – as I posted on Facebook, I found this spreadsheet via LastFM courtesy of one Paul Lambert.   It lists times as they have been variously leaked, and should be pretty accurate.  You’re my hero, Paul.

Who to see then?  My tips (most of which clash, of course) from the lower reaches of the line-up are below, but oracles at DIS and Virgin have also spoken, and you ought to listen.

Erland & the Carnival (EYOE stage, about 1315)
Pioneers of crisp, grunting rock that really should be a lot more famous than it is.  EATC sound mature and phlegmatic, but you’ll still have a damn good time and slap those thighs up good.

Holly Miranda (EYOE, 1400)
Dazzling, floaty dreamscape pop, as pleasant as summer rain (except at Field Day).  People are beginning to wise-up to Holly’s talent, but not fast enough for this to be an early, sparse gem of a gig.

Memory Tapes (Bugged Out, 1415)
Ditto the set from Dayve Hawk, taking place in the hours before the Dance Tent becomes an impenetrable, throbbing legion of sweaty, strobing acid kids, and offering up catchy beats dosed in nostalgia.

Prizes (XOYO, 1430)
I bow to Stereogum’s description: “Prizes is the reverb-soaked one-man band of young London resident Hari Ashurst, a guy who cites Fleetwood Mac and Afro-beat as influences while mentioning he wants to write choruses like Hall & Oates.”

Mount Kimbie (Bloggers’ Delight, 1415)
Nimble decksters who partied The Knife for recent Darwin opera.  If anything can enliven the perennially desolate Bloggers’ Delight tent, it’ll be their long-proved ear for a killer hook.

Yuck (XOYO, 1830)
Former Cajun Dance Party members making curtains-drawn, maudlin pop pretties with the occasional blow-out explosion and guitars as potent and lovely as needlefulls hitting your veins.

Egyptian Hip Hop (Adv in Beetroot Field, 1530)
Manchester teens making weirdsville, unusually indie-edged dance pop typically described with words like ‘sensual’ and ‘lush’ where actually ‘odd’ and ‘raw’ might be better.

I’ve left off Caribou, Phoenix, Toro y Moi, moderat and The Fall, brilliant as they all are, as you no doubt know them by now.

Afterparty?  Hmm.  There is one, but it’s now been moved from the newly-closed Bocking St warehouse to Cable, miles and miles south, just like last year.  Sod that for a sesh on Chatroulette.  There’s a loft thing in Old St, an unrelated night in The Victoria and that’s about it. 

Whatever, though… bring it on!

I’m standing up now

On the train back from the Edinburgh wedding, I was feeling pretty low for a few reasons.   At Newcastle, this old lady, in her 80s I’d say, took the seat next to me.  We didn’t say anything or even acknowledge each other for a while, until I went to get a tea and she had to move aside.  When I returned she asked me croakily, in a firm Geordie accent, if I was from London.  My initial, internal reaction was wtf, why are you talking to me, just shut up! But I am instinctively polite so I replied, and gradually, all-too-slowly, realised it was actually pretty nice talking to this woman.

She told me she was on her way to York for the day; she told me about the free buses in Leeds where I said I’d been at university many moons ago; she confessed she rode the trains a lot using her husband’s old pass, after he died 15 years ago.  “He worked on the tracks” she said, with fond, nostalgic pride.  I sensed he had been a good guy, and was much missed.

Eventually York station trundled into view.  This lady, whose name I never got, stood up.  “I’m standing up now,” she said.  I nodded, and gulped a little, unexpectedly choked.  “It was nice to meet you,” I mustered.  It really had been; a brief rise from my otherwise ugly reverie.  “Nice to meet you too,” she said, matter-of-factly, before striding off into her life, and out of mine.  I sat there, damp-eyed and suddenly, starkly aware of the fragility of things.  Then the train pulled out, and I gradually forgot, returning to my slumber.

That encounter stays with me, though.  It also shows me how things can grow, and how my own first impressions and gut reactions aren’t always great.  This beautiful, rousing song does a little of that, too…

Tim And Sam’s Tim And The Sam Band With Tim And Sam – Choices

Yes Way festival returns in August

Continuing this unexpected spree of newsbites, here’s notice of a return for London festival  Yes Way.  For those who don’t know, this is a weekender (13-15 August) held entirely in a former Peckham car show-room.  That’s now owned by project space Auto-Italia, and it’s they, together with promoter/label Upset The Rhythm who are throwing this celebration of ”the best and brightest of the UK’s art and music underground”.

Some 41 acts will perform across two stages, alongside the work of visual artists.  Musicians lined up this year include Male Bonding, Lovvers, Fair-Ohs, Veronica Falls and Gentle Friendly.  There’ll also be a temporary DIY supermarket, a live TV lab opening the festival up to viewers on the internet, a selection of vegetarian and vegan food and a not-for-profit bar.  It’s £18 for the weekend, or £5/£8 for a day ticket – book them here.

Fool’s Gold to return for White Heat’s birthday

Speaking of birthdays and pioneering clubs, White Heat’s going to be 7 this year.  Marking the day – Tues 10 August - will be a return concert at Madame JoJo’s by Fool’s Gold; their show back in January was sensational, and just about the best gig I’ve ever attended.  Tickets for this celebratory night are a mere £5, but you need to go quick – they will sell out.  Get ‘em here.

Here’s a clip from Fool’s Gold’s previous Madame JoJo’s show that I found on YouTube; it shows the final song, with half the band dancing in the crowd.  Magical, heady and joyful stuff.

Finally, a reminder that Fool’s Gold don’t just do great songs – they also do great remixes.  Check out this imaginative, if concise, reworking of Local Natives’ Wide Eyes…

MP3: Local Natives – Eyes Wide (Fool’s Gold Remix)

Young & Lost Club turns 5

The pioneering Young & Lost Club night has announced a suitably high-quality party to celebrate its 5th Anniversary.  Playing live with be Noah & The Whale and Ex-Lovers, while Good Shoes, Sunderbans and Young & Lost Club themselves will be amongst the disk-spinners.  It’s all taking place at Village Underground on 1 September – advance tix are £11 here.

Skream’s new video

I don’t normally post videos just for the sake of it, but Skream’s new song is a) a bit of a belter, and b) blessed with the best accompanying film I’ve seen in a while.  It’s, like, totally biblical and shit.  Don’t Panic has much more info.

Monday Music – 19 July 2010

I’m back.  Not for the first time, sorry for the silence: it’s partly due to this still being a shitty period in my private life, and also just because I’ve been stupidly busy with other journalism, job applications, weddings and work.   I don’t want this to be a blog where I go quiet for huge gaps and then apologise for various reasons, though; in the end, I need to try harder.  And will.  (All that being said, I am away on a holiday soon…)

Anyway, here’s the first Monday Music for a month or so – five songs that I’m currently seduced by, without the otherwise obligatory London focus:

Violens – Acid Reign
Sounding more UK 80s pop with each deadpan verse, Jorge Elbrecht and his Violens gang (long hailed as MGMT’s heirs) are cranking their electro stylings up a notch, a la Yeasayer.  This one mixes the aforementioned retro tone with some serious dance hooks in the chorus, making for what wanky City boys would call “a proper banger”.  And they’d be right.

Florence & The Machine – Cosmic Love (Short Club Mix)
For once the joy isn’t so much Flo and her fly voice, but the saintly sweetness of her latest’s remix.  Full of frothy keyboard quirks soft as jacuzzi pumps and blessed with a generally spaced-out, unhurried vibe, it’s a song that smacks of long summer dog days and those last delightful dregs of lost, lush weekends.  Blissful it be.

Tobacco – Six Royal Vipers
On Saturday I went to a wedding and it was great: a happy couple, top-notch speeches, illicit joints, all the good stuff.  Trouble was, it was in Edinburgh, and that meant a five-hour, spaced-out train journey back south.  Fields, seas, trees and towns whistled by; my vision blurred and mind floated, lost in zonky memories.  Tobacco‘s pop, fierce and soft like a kind of musical acupuncture, was the perfect tranquiliser.

Bambara – Stay Gray
This one’s wild and guttural, as if it’s the uncensored sound of a broken heart, or pure emotional alcohol let wild in a studio.  Gradually and woozily it climbs, as if Bambara‘s singer is stuck in a square room and getting increasingly frustrated, increasingly panic-stricken and pugnacious. Eventually he resorts to full-pitched, throaty bellows, seemingly at the edge of reason.

School Of Seven Bells – Windstorm
Everyone from the Sunday Times to SOIWT is jerking themselves empty over NYC’s School of Seven Bells, excitingly containing two identical – and identically hot – female twins. Windstorm sees them singing over each other, with a backing track adding glossy euphoria and minimalist guitar hooks lending a arty feel.

MP3s via the song titles

Backseat Heartbeats

New London band Backseat Heartbeats‘ brooding rock-punk sound is like heroin for the analytical diary-writer in me.  Greedily going through the MySpace menu,  I find Death Pleasures fast and murmurous, like a subway ride in an oxygen chamber, Love Stains inexplicably reminiscent of The Kills even though it sounds nothing like them, and 23 so mistily melancholic and journey-like that it makes me think of racing up a motorway, the sun setting and the destination irrelevant.

Catch them at Proud Camden on Tuesday 27 July alongside the also-marvellous Creatures of Love.

Backseat Heartbeats – Our Last Waltz (mp3)

NB: Backstreet Heartbeats have subsequently changed their name to Hold Kiss Kill

I ♥ East London

I ♥ East London is a newish (ie it’s two months old, but I only just found out about it) night in CAMP’s basement promoting the best music from Hackney, Hainault, Homerton and the rest.  It takes place on the first Thursday of every month and tickets are £8 on the door but only a trivial £3 in advance.  Expect lo-fi from Leyton, Dalston dubstep, skiffly scratchings straight outta Stratford, maybe a Betty Green banjo ballad or two and, if you’re really, really lucky, some Maxsta…

Tigercats

How I’m enjoying East London band Tigercats, newly signed to Haircut.   They’ve got a pleasingly naive-sounding singer, guitars that crash along like the latter stages of a Circle Line pub crawl and indie-pop melodies which oddly remind me of 1995 and weird jog-on-the-spot dances performed in my bedroom.  The below is my favourite track: while unsure if it’s deliberately misnamed after the ex-Blue Peter presenter, I’m definitely smitten with the summery grunt on offer, and the mention of beloved Hackney Downs.

MySpace | Buy
MP3: Tigercats – Konny Huck