Shackleton

Is this the end of the line for Soundboy? Has his bleak penchant for, well, bleakness finally become too much for him?
Soundboy's Suicide Note becomes the latest bassbin biscuit on the Skull Disco imprint to demand instant purchase; four tracks to measure your resilience to murderous low end frequencies by.
Vengeance Tenfold blathers beat-esoterica over the grim 'The Rope Tightens...', '...But the Branch Is Weak' offers brief respite, while the two cuts on the B-side dive into further subterranean duress.
Essential listening.

DJ BONE

CLUBLAND

The term underground gets thrown about like kids toys these days, without meaning, for almost no reason. It has been a long time since dance music could be denoted underground and have that really mean that it was pushing against the trends, forging new ground, remaining true to itself without following a bigger trend. With a recent purchase I was reminded of one artist I truly consider to be underground; evidenced by his longevity (yet relative anonymity) as a DJ and producer, uncompromising ideals and do it yourself spirit.

Ladyhawke

LADYHAWKE


The bar was old; a long ago given a sniff of paint type of boozer that had been providing a scrap of goo-plated carpet and scent-soaked atmosphere for the pint swillers of Lexington and Broadwick streets. Pip said it was meant to be haunted, though who knows why any ghost would hang around in such a dingy outpost of an other-time Soho.
We settle down to a cheap draught lager and Pip Brown starts filling me in on the details of her alter ego Ladyhawke.

Black Kids Interview

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

Party lights are on dude. Florida’s Black Kids are here to show you how.

Reggie Youngblood, sister Ali and drummer Kevin Snow are pretty exhausted. Chatting with three members of Jacksonville, Florida’s pop darling band of the moment Black Kids, I’m getting a grasp on how much work their chance at breaking out of their hometown to an international stage has been. The easiest part apparently was being discovered; the band was playing at the Athens Pop Fest in August of last year to around forty people including several bloggers. After seeing the band they got typing and launched them into the worldwide blogosphere, though not necessarily with all the facts. An early blog mentioned the band sounded like My Bloody Valentine and Arcade Fire and since then almost every article about Black Kids has picked up the same thread. It’s something they are keen to dispel.

Redshape: The Man in the Mask

My monthly column from Real Groove magazine - this month: Redshape


CLUBLAND - AUGUST

For the past two years he’s been prescribing raw slabs of Detroit techno funk to a self-medicating faithful behind the anonymity of a red mask. Little is known about Redshape except that he is of shorn head and European decent. The rumours are many; that he is a well known producer; that he has produced for Delsin and Music Man before he adopted his current guise; that he is in fact Carl Craig/Deetron/Dave Clarke/Luke Slater/Tiesto… okay maybe not Tiesto.

We Have Band

WE HAVE BAND


Some of the best ideas start life as little more than an idealised supposition. So it is with We Have Band, the hotly tipped post-punk funk newcomers who started making music to fit the superlative name they conjured up one day.
Married couple Thomas and Dede Wegg-Prosser wanted a creative venture they could work on together, and thus was born We Have Band. Without any music having been thought up, they told friend Darren Bancroft of the band name, who immediately demanded entry into the group.

BUZZIN' FLY & VILLALOBOS

CLUBLAND JUNE



Listening to the innocuous soft house meanderings of Everything But The Girl (EBTG as a generation of MOR dance music lovers came to know them) it comes as no surprise that Ben Watt needed something a little different from his day job to keep his creativity piqued. Enter his Lazy Dog project with Jay Hannan and more recently his Buzzin' Fly label, which is a continuation and evolution of Watt's club night/label vision and just turned five years old. With his interest in house music gradually exploring the more minimal and synthetic end of the spectrum, the latest Buzzin' Fly release sees German producer (Martin) Stimming contribute a melodic, deep tech house twelve inch that would probably appeal to many of those aforementioned EBTG fans - though it can be fairly said that Stimming crafts his sound sculpture with a great degree more subtlety than the crossover hit artists.

Debbie Harry

I've been lucky enough in my career to interview some of my favourite artists and producers, but interviewing Debbie Harry was one of the coolest things I've done.

DEBBIE HARRY


They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame two years ago, and now, thirty years after the release of their breakthrough album Parallel Lines, Blondie have announced a world tour to celebrate the milestone. No Magazine speaks to singer Debbie Harry whose image stands as legacy to the band, perhaps even more so than the music they created.

Minilogue & Loco Dice

CLUBLAND MAY


The Swedish production team of Minilogue have barely put a foot wrong over the last few years. Originally starting out as Son Kite, producing progressive house and trance, they quickly branched out into more techno and house-centric material, finally abandoning their Son Kite project in 2004 in favour of their Minilogue moniker. Most of the releases have always held some element of this beginning but with ever more stylistic touches they have been refining their art, stripping back the clutter whilst enhancing the overall effect. With their debut album Animals recently released it looks like they have reached the zenith of this process. The album is in two parts; a dance oriented chapter and an ambient one, but let’s just look at the floor fare for now.

Portishead

PORTISHEAD

Back from the hinterland of an eleven year hiatus, Portishead gear up to release the aptly titled Third album; just don’t call it trip hop.

The nineties nostalgia capsule may be filled with rollerblades, Vanilla Ice and more about Jennifer Aniston’s hair than anybody ever wanted to know, but it also gave us musical sustenance (and pigeon-holing terminology) with grunge, drum & bass, brit-pop, and trip hop. The latter was one of those sleight of hand moments in music journalism that sought to define a style of emerging music but generally looked upon by the artists unfavourably.