continuing the auto-resurrect of the Plan B blog, every friday there’ll be an annotated playlist from an indieclub, musicblog or recordshop. today, it’s the former - Cardiff’s own Twisted By Design…
(above image is nothing to do with the club, but i cdn’t grab pix from their website, and it came up in Google Images when i typed ‘Twisted By Design’, so it’s probably God/Satan’s will that i use it here…)
Describe yr club in ONE SENTENCE. Twisted by Design is probably the best indie night in Cardiff, yeah?
Give us yr top five current club hits? (and a sentence - or even TWO - about each please?)
1. ‘Heimdalsgate Like A Prometheus Curse’ - Of Montreal
Single of the year for me so far. Just pure pop genius…
2. ‘Sali Mali’ - Threatmantics
Local heroes have produced a stormer of a single which hits you between the eyes from the first note.
3. ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ - Los Campesinos!
Predictable, but the song is about Twisted By Design, and it still whips up a frenzy on the dancefloor. Every single one of us is twisted by design!
4. ‘Young Folk’ - Peter, Bjorn and John
Insanely catchy tune and a dancefloor full of people puckering up…
Artistes or outfits you?ll hear at yr club but not (m)any others? I can only speak locally but there’s nowhere I know which plays stuff like Lee Hazlewood, Herman Dune, Jeff Lewis, Of Montreal, Tom Waits and Rammstein.
The most common look/accessory amongst yr audience? It’s not really a place you expect to see a common look, but obviously you’re a nobody if you ain’t wearing your gindrinker badge.
Without yr night, the ______ of yr town wd have nowhere to go? (um, fill in gap please). The ‘non-scene antiscene got-to-be-seen unseen scene scensters’.
Describe the atmosphere you strive for. Just a relatively safe place playing quality music. Being on womanby street, the indie street of Cardiff and refusing to play stuff like The Stone Roses and Oasis keeps certain people at bay.
Best night ever?
I released a 22-track CD called This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The 22 Of Us (all local bands including Los Campesinos!’ first ever release). We did an eight-band launch gig at Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff - eight bands in six hours with no more than 10 mins changeover between bands. It ran perfectly with all bands giving their all. You can’t get better than that
The weirdest request you ever had? Someone asked for Slipknot, the week that Half Man Half Biscuit released ‘Vatican Broadside’. It was a great pleasure to dedicate it to the requester with the immortal line, “Who the fucking hell are Slipknot?” It’s now become Twisted’s national anthem…
The most common? Probably ‘Boy With The Arab Strap’ by Belle & Sebastian, although I dont tend to play that often anymore.
The most important nugget of advice to people looking to start their own night/happening is… Just do it!
Gary Twisted deejays at The Dude Abides tonight (Clwb Ifor Bach), while the next Twisted By Design proper will be 29th at Dempsey’s (actually, i’ve just been informed this date has been canxed, so next is October 6th. as you were…) details on the Twisted MySpace
Posted
by kicking_k on Friday, September 28th, 2007 (1 Comment)
maaaaaybe a regular feature (maybe no one will like it) BUT every wednesday, SOMETHING or OTHER (or NOTHING) will happen on the Plan B Blog - today’s hyperlink safari regurgitates half-digested blah related to artistes and outfits reviewed in this month’s singles club…
first up, Comanechi’s Akiko takes then-single ‘My Pussy’ to the Vice office for a disarming playback - “rock out,” she commands (quietly)… and look at all the light in the Vice office! they must have windows till Tuesday! damn their American Apparel ad-cash mountain! the Plan B editorial garret is not only the size of a single inflated lung, but has no natural light whatsoever. it’s like a fucking bunker! no wonder we got the war fever! THAT’s why we spend so much of our day wrestling and biting!
“how do people dance in Munich?” asked Frances when confronted with ZZT’s bassbin-fondling psychopath-of-a-song, ‘Lower State Of Consciousness’ (ZZT being Tiga and Zombie Nation, K-I-S-S-I-N-G). the video above sketches a response, being kind of the anti-disney (those who list ants as ‘probably their favourite animal’ - possibly just me - shd look away before the end, oh the humanity, etc).
continuing our drive to take you INSIDE THE MUSIC (and run away and leave you there), the magic box above contains the first of Gang Gang Dance’s tour diaries. other episodes are archived alongside, and i have no idea what they contain or whether they’re good or bad ’cause i didn’t have time to watch them. yay?
lastly, St. Vincent gets back to being a one-woman band, undercutting the oddly-layered lustre of her sometimes frustrating but still engagingly headstrong and charactersome ‘Marry Me’ record (and here’s a bonus video of her playing ‘Dig A Pony’ in the back of a taxi - in transit).
Posted
by kicking_k on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 (1 Comment)
…being the first in what will almost certainly be a weekly feature EVERY MONDAY on the Plan B blog wherein i lob a bunch of insultingly reductive questions toward new talent and they answer with street heat, or something.
the introductory participants in what will doubtless become a historic series of cultural exchanges i fully expect to be propping up the national curriculum in a few decades are buttonhead.
described with heat-seeking precision as ‘The Deerhoof of Peckham’ waaaay(ish) back in Plan B #23 (july 2007) by Frances, the only other thing you need to know before embarking on a MySpace Safari to the tempting link above is that they are currently looking for a singer who sounds sweet and innocent, ruling YOU out, for starters.
but before you go, here are their quizzical answers to my whimsical questions…
Who are you (individually and collectively)? What does each member bring to the group? (musical and familial/friend group role plz)
Eloise Rhubarb Goulder - Violence Kite
Tobias Staffordshire Jaffa Cake Jones - Cutty Cutty Friend
Ross Jackpot Samson - Huge Urine Smoothing Unit
Valentina Skin-Jab Magaletti - Turkey Skip Fit
Where are you from? How did that shape/injure/hurt you? What?s the best thing about there? Where are you aimed next? Ross comes from Cornwall: “The best thing is there are too many Bladders. People have four on average, some have eight”, Eloise is an Oxford lady: “got spoke bladders”, Tobias hails from Staffordshire, “otherwise known as bladder” and Valentina originated in Bari, Italy, born next to Ghandi’s sandal (nearly injuring her): ‘Bari’, of course, is Italian for Bladder. We’d all like to move to Bladder Hampton (Hemp Pimp Whimper).
What is: a) Yr three-point manifesto, b) Yr immediate plan-of-action? c) Yr long-term goal? a) Triangle. b) To prepare for shows coming up in November. c) To be the first band to play in front of an all-canine audience at the Albert Hall.
What are yr songs mostly, y’know, ‘about’? What’s the song (so far) (um, that’s on yr MySpace) that says the most about you and why? We write about the following… Tortoises going to hell with ear disease, Steve, Labradors jumping into cranberry lakes to cure global R.S.I., Prawn men digging up big rats, Forest Dean Incest, Chris Weller, Corgi Booby Traps (by fork in the plug socket), Deported Turkish Immigrants, Piglet Stroking. (None of the above is a lie)
Best gig/tour/rehearsal anecdote goes here: This also happened to us once.
Posted
by kicking_k on Monday, September 24th, 2007 (5 Comments)
…is stillThe Fiery Furnaces. and although i feel mildly juvenile being so, y’know, ‘open’,'earnest’ and ‘truthful’, the continuing lack of fiery fans in my life has driven me to go public (again). so, let’s watch a promo for their predictably unpredictable new album ‘Widow City’! so. much. fun. too much, some (haters) might say….
likewise, this (1!) three-part (2!) video (3!) interview is a pretty sweet virtual meet with a band too often dismissed as being oblique or pretentious by people who haven’t listened hard or long or often enough, dammit (or who have cinders encased in ice where there blood-pump shd be - difficult to tell without performing a tastectomy…)
finally, to make sure this isn’t a music-free post, here’s the video for 2006’s ‘Benton Harbor Blues’. it’s one of their more straightforward numbers, and they are very much an albums band, but all said and still…i remember clambering into a homeward taxi the morning after some party or other, cruising thru dawn streets as this song inexplicably poured from the radio like pink light. it made me feel there was hope for my species, briefly.
fellow furnaceers may wish to leave comments expressing their solidarity. i wd reeeea-a-ally, sincerely welcome that, especially if exclamation marks are pressed into service…
Posted
by kicking_k on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 (12 Comments)
ok, so i don’t usually do this, but i want people to be happy (especially me), so if you’re lost in brighton TONIGHT-NIGHT-IGHT-GHT-HT-T, consider this an option. mwah, etc etc…
IT CAME FROM THE SEA
KOMEDIA * 6/5 POUNDS
11-3 * FRIDAY 14 SEPTEMBER
ALL NEW AND ONLY NEW MUSIC FROM…
M.I.A. > THE GO! TEAM > CRYSTAL CASTLES > CUTTING PINK WITH KNIVES > GANG GANG DANCE > MODESELEKTOR > YELLE > FREE BLOOD > LATE OF THE PIER > SOULWAX VS. JUSTICE/LCD SOUNDSYSTEM > LIARS > BONDE DO ROLE > BATTLES > VON SUDENFED > GLASS CANDY > DAN DEACON > LETHAL BIZZLE > CHROME HOOF > TEPR > TETINE > T.I. > DIZZEE RASCAL > TTC > LES SAVY FAV > ILL EASE > EFFI BRIEST > EVE > STEREO TOTAL > DURRTY GOODZ > R.KELLY & CHAMILLIONAIRE > AMERIE > MEHR LICHT > LES PETIT PILOUS > RIHANNA > GRIZZLY BEAR > HOT CHIP > MIAMI HORROR > DAS WANDERLUST > CHROMEO > THE MICRAGIRLS > MATT & KIM > DON CASH > THE FUTURE OF THE LEFT > KAP BAMBINO > SWITCH > SHY CHILD > TEKI LATEX > XX TEENS > SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO > MR OIZO
oh, and naturally, you can expect the usual smoke, lights, dogbowls, sweets, underwater home movies, LED brain-washing, future music megamixing, strobe, air horn, regular price drinks and other misunderstood souls… ok, wow, yay.
Just got the new Wiley single, ‘No Qualms’, in the mail and it’s actually a re-fix of sorts, putting his new Eskibeat protegee, 16-year old Chipmunk, up the front. And pretty great it is too - see Chipmunk in action below, in action with Westwood.
Posted
by Louis Pattison on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 (8 Comments)
so, there i was using YouTube as a serious and sober tool for research regarding an extremely dour and scholarly article you will read in next month’s Plan B (hopefully thru half-moon spectacles) when i met someone who, well, click here and see for yrself…
her name was Barbara, although she was born (Jewish, in just-about-to-be-occupied Paris) Monique Serf. at ten, she had to go into hiding, and was abused by her father, who wd leave after the war. the song above is ‘Nantes’ (which is where all this transpired) and the lyrics concern an estranged child called back to their father’s death bed so he can make his peace. the almost crippling internal tension of the situation plays out through Barbara’s muted, controlled, but extraordinarily expressive performance as she - like so many of the great French chanteuses - shows the complementary acting ability that made them icons. for all the lyrics, as rendered in hebrew by an admirably casually bare-chested guy (english in subtitles) click here.
bonus: here’s ‘ma plus belle histoire d’amour’, which was, i gather, her biggest hit, trading death for love and stark piano for cafe ambience.
Posted
by kicking_k on Monday, September 10th, 2007 (No Comments)
in a time when promoters around my (and, i’m guessing, yr) ends are hunkering down on the Hollyoaks/NME indie-as-style demographic like quarter-pound leeches, Brighton’s own Do club - as run by a bunch of my fond friends (well, some are only vague acquaintances, to be quite candid) was a defiant anomaly, scorning graphic design sheen and laboured pseudo-cool humour for homemade flyers and playlists which dug deep and gave all. i suggested they call the night ‘identity quest’. they declined.
this blip aside, a suitably (literally) underground venue was soon commandeered and every two weeks, they’d be dragging everyone from Parts & Labor,Crystal Castles,Channels 3×4,Rolo Tomassi,Gay Against You, and Dynasty Handbag down to their level (see above: basement party). i used to go along in 2006 and wander around in the careful grip of sobriety, a little like a ghost haunting the outer limits of the dancefloor (which would usually look, y’know, fast, intense, lots of pinks and reds) hugging the walls as i negotiated between earnest/idiotic face-to-faces.
i stopped going out entirely, anywhere, at the beginning of 2007 ’cause i decided it was high time to mainline all my scraps and ends of days into long-term writing projects. recently, with my work almost done, i’ve been contemplating my upcoming return to the human race with gentle fear, but likewise excitement.
it doesn’t look like i’ll go down to the Do club again. this Friday’s instalment will be the last, and this brave attempt the latest, to be negated by this town’s endemic apathy, crowded out by an abundance of cynical venues pushing generic, indie-as-nostalgia-rock get-togethers (not for nothing did the Do folk place ‘proper indie’ (= independent) atop their music policy…)
so, yup - if you’re in brighton this weekend consider paying them a visit. but more importantly (’cause Friday will be busy, first and last nights always are) if you live here and want an alternative to the fungal infection of easy options, check what they’re doing next (i’ll keep you posted). if we don’t feed the farther branches, they die. it’s a loss for all of us. so: R.E.S.P.E.C.T. to Stu, Juan, Dan, Sam, Eleanor, Charlotte, James, James, Scott & Ed - and don’t dare be disheartened - The Do was totally a success - just not everyone realised it at the time.
…yr next move, plz?
Posted
by kicking_k on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 (No Comments)
apparently i’m late to the imaginary party, but easily my maxxxciting discovery of the past few weeks are japan’s ni hao! - each named and dressed in TV red, green or blue, combining for snappy vocal interchange that veers from bubblegum battle to horror chant, and generally personifying stuff which equals cool cubed. see above for ‘ele-shock ‘06′, which comes from a parallel world where crazy frog mutated punk rock in his own image.
…meanwhile, ‘look at that (peach)’ (formidable titles, too) moves from a gigglish clap circle to obsessive piano pop with the inner confidence of the three-headed genius.
and every time i watch ‘laila/horizontal line II’ i am filled with ineffable pride. i mean, how often d’you actually think: i want to *manage* this band..? (and someone to make a cartoon about our adventures). another killer transition, too - ghost rumble to a tracksuit workout that cd actually make sport cool, shd it ever fall into the wrong hands.
lastly, the band play live and prove to be GLEE VORTICES.
i am in touch with the record comapny, and i hope to have more news soon. until then, blue yukari, red ariko & green leo, i wholly salute you.
Posted
by kicking_k on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 (1 Comment)
