My midlands adventure began in the tearooms with sonic sculptors Growing.
Their performance tonight would be the last of their UK tour and they were wondering if they would clear the room. I very much doubted it.

Surrounded by teacakes and muffins I quickly became enamoured by the Brooklyn threesome as they began to reveal how they were bored of being categorised by the drone heads and journo’s who were desperate to label their music. For a newcomer to this world, this was music to my ears. I suddenly fell in love with the attitude and individuality of Growing and their plight to stay true to their sound and produce music that didn’t do want it said on the tin.

With third member Sadie turning the original duo into a magic three, Kevin and Joe revealed how they were keen to introduce more vocals and get their sound as crazy and interesting as possible. When asked how they thought people would react to this, I fell in love a little more. They didn’t care if they didn’t fit the categories and were more content with moving forward with their sound and vision than they were satisfying or defining the drone/ambient stereotype.

That evening when I lost myself to the music of Growing, it seemed quite obvious that Sadie was bringing something extra to the experience I was enveloped in. With more layers and soundscapes to travel on, the dynamics of the sound felt greater and freer than before. And when I noticed her rainbow coloured psychedelic DM’s, it really did seem that the shoes were starting to fit.

Sunn Oh... Oh, oh... Yes!

Written By Joe McCabe

At just £15 for such an exciting, eclectic and generous offering, tickets for Friday night were sold out weeks in advance, with thousands eager to catch promoter Capsule's 10th Supersonic Festival first night line-up. On the Outside Stage, an incredible opening set saw Custard Factory stalwart, DJ Scotch Egg, along with cohorts hailing from the likes of Trencher and Boredoms, present their own blend of electro-stoner trip-hop and noisy psychedelic jazz through project, Drum Eyes. These multifarious-minded miscreants of music set the tone of the night which was as tight and well put together as it was diverse, innovative and interesting. There was 'something for everyone', from the shouty hardcore of Army of Flying Robots and the riff-pulverising Taint, to the dubsteping sounds of Scorn, the home-grown blend of PCM's drum and bass and the glitch-tastic breaks and samples of Venetian Snares. It seems inevitable that such a mingled assortment of acts would at times polarise opinion and whilst there was 'something for everyone', with each of the acts mentioned above, at times it looked as though at least half the crowd were left feeling confused and alienated by the unfamiliar spectacle they were observing. Perhaps it should be obvious that this esoteric dilemma is inherent whenever 'art', attempting to be radical, pioneering and multiform, is 'mass-marketed' to an audience which has such wide-ranging but individual tastes?
This being said, none would divide opinion on the night as much as my personal highlight, the mighty and ever so slightly ridiculous, Sunn O))). These warlocks of drone were, quite simply, the most terrifying and most probably the silliest performers of the night (narrowly beating Best Name Award winner Kylie Minoise, whose insane noise-drenched writhing-around-on-the-floor-like-a-lunatic routine came a close second). Friday night on the Outside Stage was a rare opportunity to witness Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson exclusively, without collaborators, perform material from their debut touring album, The GrimmRobe demos (a choice which to many may have appeared like a retroactive contradiction of the band's progress over the last decade and indeed their most recent release, Monoliths & Dimensions). As the two hooded heathens of heavy emerged through thick layers of dry ice to the sounds of haunting Gregorian chants I half expected a Spinal Tap-esque miniature model of Stonehenge to lower itself into the midst of this most serious of ceremonies. The proceedings' bathos continued to amuse as I found myself beard-stroking in austere thoughtfulness at this incredible spectacle whilst simultaneously breaking out in occasional fits of hysterical laughter at how farcically theatrical it all was. Could I really guffaw in the face of an awesome force so powerful, it actually rattles your ribcage and bruises your internal organs with its sonic assault!?
The answer to this question, I came to discover was, “Yes”. The monolithic power of Sunn O)))'s sound in its purest, most brutal, stripped-down, 2-guitar form, has the profound primeval ability to simultaneously evoke all extremes of human emotion, from happiness and sadness, to pleasure and pain. Through this visceral exploration of the human animal all are equal, reduced to their basest level and all are connected in the strength of their various reactions to the brutal onslaught of noise against them. Even if the reaction were, as it was for some, an overwhelming urge to go next door and dance to the Industrial Dub of Scorn instead! Here we see the fantastic organisation of the festival working to create a balanced harmony, offering the spectrum of punters a choice of seemingly dichotic yet equally innovative niche-interest performers to enjoy. So there really was 'something for everyone' as long as you made the 'right' choices. The moment I became almost certain I had made the 'right' choice with Sunn O))) was when, sat in front of centre stage at the end of the set, I believe I may well have experienced the indulgent delights of Anderson and O'Malley reaching, what Dr. Roger Schwenke et al might describe as the orgasm inducing 'Pink Note'! However, I think they may well have dropped the infamous 'Brown Note' in there too at the same time, which I must say was a bit of an anticlimax!

The Kooks
Empress Ballroom, Blackpool, 08-12-08

A gig that can be summed up in one simple word: unexpected. Okay, so maybe not so simple but I’ll endeavour to explain. It was like a bedroom full of perspiration and big tits (courtesy of Jackie). There were multi-coloured lights, strobes, dripping drapes. It was a basically a bloody great show.

The Empress Ballroom is hidden and when you find it, beautiful. Decked out in gold, cream and red, the black-sheeted backdrop and metallic rig juxtapose with the Victorian building, the chandeliers and the canopied balconies. It’s definitely fit for kings…

Those kings? The Kooks. After a surprise support by Mystery Jets, Luke Pritchard comes out onto the stage and boy is he a tiny guy. He thanks the crowd for coming and listening to them play in this “beautiful building” and the show gets kick-started with a John Wayne Western-style intro.

First single, ‘Always Where I Need To Be’ off latest album ‘Konk’, goes down a storm. At one point the floorboards were actually bowing underfoot. It was manic. The heat gets turned up with ‘Do You Wanna’ and as Pritchard creeps over the crowd, drummer Garred grits his teeth and Denton showcases his intricate finger work. It’s a bravura display of stamina and energy and the bass seeps into our blood streams.

‘Shine’ provided us with the reggae influences we have become accustomed to, while old classics, ‘Naïve’ and ‘She Moves In Her Own Way’ brought a bounce and some rather big cheers. As one girl put it, The Kooks are the “accessible” band. I suggest everyone access them, immediately.

Adam Mallaby

Ida Maria
Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
22/10/08

The Rescue Rooms is a little gem, hidden away from the prying public. In its sultry and sexy canopied layout , the cheery bounce of Nouvelle Vague’s ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ set the mood for a nicely eclectic crowd of older gentlemen and a smattering of student types (oh, and a plastic parrot).

“Nottingham! What you got for me?” Ida Maria and her gorgeous band enter the poky stage. She’s distinctive, dressed in red, blue and orange and sporting her trademark bobbed hair. ‘Queen of the World’, as we are informed, is “all about drinking” and her husky, rasping vocals curl around the guitar strums and banging beats as she spins in circles on stage.

Ida Maria – arms outstretched – commands the stage. “Please can you turn up my guitar? I’d really like to hear more of it,” she screams. And this goes on throughout ‘Stella’, a song full of passion and zeal during which she places her hands to her chest so we know she means it.

‘Keep Me Warm” “is the only love song (she) has” and, although there are many microphone difficulties, it manages to show a subtler side to this lady whilst retaining that quiet determination she shows in her eyes.

With her broken-doll legs and the complimentary red and blue lights flashing, Ida Maria ends the show with an encore of ‘Better When You’re Naked.’ “That’s what I like to see,” she cries against the crowd’s manic whoops. And I would definitely like to see that again.

Adam Mallaby

oN THE TELLY BoX:

GONZO ON TOUR 08 WEEKEND
Tonight from 7pm and all weekend!
Dear viewers, the wait is finally over. For weeks now, the MTV TWO team have toiled to the ends of the earth and back (OK, Aberdeen - but close enough) to shoot the finest bands in the country who joined us on the mammoth, era-defining (too much? Nah…) GONZO ON TOUR ’08.

Tonight and across the weekend, bolt the door, put your phone on silent and settle down to feast your eyes on Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Glasvegas, Foals, Mystery Jets, The Automatic, Late Of The Pier, Friendly Fires, Esser, Magistrates, Iglu and Hartly, Noah and the Whale and, of course, your host Zane Lowe. We’ve got breath-taking live performances. We’ve got insightful interviews. We’ve got funny stuff. What more could you possibly want?

TONIGHT’S LINE-UP:
19:00 GONZO ON TOUR 2008 PART 1
20:00 GONZO ON TOUR 2008 PART 2
21:00 BEST OF GONZO ON TOUR
21:30 KAISER CHIEFS: GONZO TOUR LIVE
22:00 GONZO ON TOUR 2008: THE LIVE STUFF
23:00 BLOC PARTY: GONZO TOUR LIVE

You can also see coverage from 11am – 4pm and 9pm – 1am on Saturday and Sunday. So absolutely NO EXCUSES!!

Elsewhere on MTV TWO this week:

KINGS OF LEON: GONZO SPECIAL
Sunday 16 November, 6pm (rpt. Monday at noon)
With the doors of Studio G firmly barred against the rabid, screaming fans (and that’s just the MTV TWO boys!), Zane settled down for a lengthy chat with possibly the hottest band in the world right now: Kings of Leon. They talk about bad YouTube renditions of their songs, having their record leaked by a guy called Pedro in Mexico, meeting strippers in Madame Jojo’s and being told to act sexy in their videos. It’s a frank, funny and revealing interview with Caleb and Nathan – the dudes that guys wanna be and girls wanna be with.

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE vs FALL OUT BOY
GREEN DAY vs LINKIN PARK
KINGS OF LEON vs MUSE
ARCTICS vs KAISERS
KILLERS vs WHITE STRIPES
Monday 17 – Friday 21, 4pm
It’s Superstars Week on MTV and in amongst the celebration of the biggest, bestest names in music we’re pitting some of your favourites against each other, head to head in a battle to the death. Or to prove whose riffs are best. Who gets your vote?

NIRVANA: MTV UNPLUGGED
Tuesday 18 November, 11pm
Relive Nirvana’s legendary MTV Unplugged performance from 1993, including influential classics like Come As You Are and All Apologies.

oN THE INTERWEB:
WATCH EXCLUSIVE GONZO ON TOUR FOOTAGE!
Live tracks from Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Glasvegas, Foals, Mystery Jets, The Automatic, Late of the Pier, Esser and Iglu & Hartly as captured on October’s awesome Gonzo Tour
www.mtv.co.uk/gonzo

WATCH EVEN MORE GONZO ON TOUR FOOTAGE!!
Not content with the above? Watch Bloc Party’s a-MAY-zing performance of Mercury plus Magistrates and Friendly Fires on the MTV TWO Myspace
www.myspace.com/mtvtwo

GIG REVIEWS: ENTER SHIKARI
Read Sophie Keys’ review of the band’s end-of-tour gig at The Astoria on 3 November
http://www.mtv.co.uk/channel/mtv2/457280-gonzo-on-tour-2008-reviews

IN THE NEWS:

BLUR TO REFORM?
http://www.mtv.co.uk/channel/mtvuk/news/460380-blur-to-reform

YEAH YEAH YEAHS ANNOUNCE ALBUM
http://www.mtv.co.uk/channel/mtvuk/news/459960-yeah-yeah-yeahs-announce-...

TEAM TWO xx

Today is the day of days. Well, that's what they'd have you believe anyway. Will anything actually change??? Who knows, but it'll be fun waiting to find out.

Thank god that there are still artists willing to put their nuts on the line and make ANY kind of statement about ting and ting, even if it is in an ever-so-slightly odd way...

"The Story" is the first track taken from The Matthew Herbert Big Band "There's Me And There's You" album – a highly politically charged album, released on Matthews's own Accidental Records on 10th November.

For "The Story" Herbert sampled 70 copies of the Sun newspaper. 70 celebrity gossip magazines. one copy of the nme. one madonna album. one copy of wallpaper magazine. one copy of the sun (aye, like, the real sun).

You can download an edit of the track from here. You can hear him wax political too, and he kinda knows his beans.

The album's theme is power and its abusers in the 21st Century. The lyrics tackle issues such as the Iraq war, torture, Guantanamo, Palestine, AIDS, climate change, the monarchy, and religion. Beats Kerry Katona's boobs any day.

Last Monday, MTV TWO reviewer Emmet Mannion braved the unseasonable weather to see The Walkmen at London's ULU.

**********

75% of the ULU crowd tonight will have seen American band The Walkmen before and followed their path intently since influential album ‘Bows + Arrows’. The other 25% will have either tapped into their wall of sound via the route of the O.C’s sickening dross, or discovered The Walkmen through indie anthem, ‘The Rat’.

This may go some way towards explaining why the tightly packed crowd are so tight-lipped and docile. After all, it’s like Moscow outside so let’s embrace each other for the body heat at least, if not the music.

The reflective and dour start to the gig is perfect. ‘New Country’ from their new album ‘You and Me’ starts off like a funeral procession and eases you into the gig like an opening hymn would at church - the congregation are now fully engaged. ‘On The Water’ is dictated by a jazz tempo, picking up pace and aggression en route, steered beautifully by the control of Hamilton Leithauser’s voice.

Palpable tension incited by albums past is replaced with a reflective directive. Sandwiched between the new stuff is ‘All Hands + The Cook’, like a truffle filling flanked by two thin slices of economy bread. They get the ratio of old and new just right, but there’s a remnant of embarrassment attached to harking back to past glories.

The opening chords of ‘The Rat’ whip up anger and rage for this savage four-minute attack. The crowd are still in ironing board mode and it’s increasingly looking like a core stability class with the resident physio. It could be the result of paying Leithauser’s voice absolute reverence though. Its sheer power and gusto has everyone nailed to the floor. The width of open mouths has replaced fist-pumping and raucous stomping as the barometer for measuring excitement.

With an encore bereft of ‘Little House Of Savages’ it’s clear to see The Walkmen have moved on. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Emmet Mannion

We despatched Emmet Mannion, one of MTV TWO's team of intrepid gig reviewers, to Hammersmith Apollo on Monday to review them there Last Shadow Puppets on the last date of their UK tour. Herewith his ponderings...

Last Shadow Puppets
Hammersmith Apollo
26/10/08

The Last Shadow Puppets fanfare rolled into London for their one and only date with the ‘Big Smoke’ on their first and possibly last tour. Yeah right. In the grand setting of Hammersmith Apollo, The Last Shadow Puppets are here to entertain their Sunday evening guests. This is the musical equivalent of Sunday at The Palladium, this is auld entertainment folks. Sharp suits, wise cracks and Bruce Forsyth-style tap dancing? Almost.

Alex Turner and Miles Kane are welcomed onto the stage by their 16-piece orchestra to the score from ‘Calm Like You’. A “Good evening” and a nonchalant wave to the crowd with their royal hands, they kick off with ‘In My Room’, the signature tune from the album and the perfect opener.

The cinematic, orchestral accompaniment instantly encapsulates and captivates. It’s threatening and purposeful. The white light show from the stage set against the royally red Last Shadow Puppets backdrop completes the theatrics. To say that they put attention into detail would be an understatement. This segues into hit single ‘The Age Of The Understatement’. It receives the reception of a raucous stomper. The galloping drums by James Ford incite beer throwing bedlam fit for an Arctic Monkeys gig. The bedlam is suitably diffused by the crooning lyrics of Alex Turner on ‘Calm Like You’.

The halfway point of the gig is preserved for some exquisite and perfectly executed covers. With tongue placed firmly in cheek they play ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ by The Beatles. Kane tackles the demanding vocal like a tenacious central midfielder, battling and hustling for every note., while Turner delivers his vocal with sickening ease, like a midfielder who has time on the ball to look up and play a precision pass.

This is followed by ‘Paris Summer’ and David Bowie’s ‘In The Heat Of The Morning’, harking back to the 60s theme again. The Bowie cover is dominated by Turner. It surpasses Bowie’s version and it’s the Bowies and The Beatles that he has his sights firmly on when the legacies are rounded up at the end of a career.

The last part of the set is filled with the weaker songs from the album as the stronger moments have been spent. Banter and biscuits keep the show ticking over. Biscuits eh? Instead of the mandatory undergarment of a bra and knickers to adorn a stage floor, Turner and Kane have nicely wrapped biscuits flying onto the stage as gifts. And no, they were not ‘plane’ biscuits.

The band exit stage left for a much needed reprieve and an encore ensues. A cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Memories’ and ‘Standing Next To Me’ make up the encore. ‘Standing Next To Me’ has curiously become a fans favourite. It gives Turner a break from lead vocals and a chance to saunter around with a tambourine.

For the time being at least it’s back to their respective bases for Alex Turner and Miles Kane, sure to return to the sultry mistress that is The Last Shadow Puppets for another wonderful journey.

Emmet Mannion

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Just wanted make a song and a dance about ILLEGITIMATE SONS OF THE KING (I.S.K.)
They will be playing 333 on the 24th of October so if you like what you hear go check them out!

http://www.myspace.com/iskmusic