Puttin’ On The Ritz are on tour in the UK at the moment. They’re from Brooklyn and I think they share members with that band Talibam! who you may have read about in the last Plan B (and will read more about in the next issue). Apropos of little, here’s a YouTube video of them playing a gig in the Atlantic ocean.

Posted by Louis Pattison on Friday, November 23rd, 2007
(No Comments)

i am, of course, more than aware, that after a heavily exciting few weeks of relentless updates approximating the forward momentum one wd hope for from a ‘music blog’ we have since drooped rather. this is because (secretly) we are busier then cyanide on a nervous system. on, y’know, the magazine…

we hope and pray the weekly updates may become an unstinting reality sometime soon, but it’s contingent on time, energy and love. no, wait, it’s nothing to do with that last one.

annnnyway - here is a joyful post made all the more precious by its rarity. it’s all about these dudes…

Describe yr club in ONE SENTENCE.
Two ongoing life’s works of musical sifting and excavation distilled into a DJ set.

Give us yr top five current club hits? (and a sentence - or even TWO - about each please?)

Simian Mobile Disco - ‘Hustler’ (Shackleton remix)
I totally appreciate what SMD do, but it really doesn’t push my buttons, so it’s great fun to hear this Salt-n-Pepa style new rave party track turned into a glacial, skin crawling dubstep monster. What Shackleton’s done has totally subverts the context of the original lyrics and feel…

Eric Copeland - ‘La Booly Boo’
Eric Copeland is a member of Black Dice and his recent solo album ‘Hermaphrodite’ is a work of wonky genius that really deserves a lot more attention. This is one of my favourite tracks - starting off with a blast of fried noise, Copeland shoves you down an acid filter.

Ennio Morricone - La Moda (International Pony We Love Ennio mix)
This is just pure joy… International Pony (who include Kompakt’s DJ Koze in their ranks) give the original a cheeky twist and add a singalong chorus, but are wise enough to leave alone the happy clappy guitars and strutting brass…makes you want to do cartwheels…

Animal Collective - Peacebone (Pantha Du Prince Remix)
One of my favourite bands, remixed by one of my favourite producers… PDP turns the original electro/bounce/krautrock into a sleek, shimmering morphing techno groove, apparently only using the original track as source material plus a kick drum sample!

Yeasayer ‘Wait For Summer’
Majesting goose-bump inducing acid folk, with yearning vocal harmonies and a lead melody line that swiftly gets coded into your DNA…

Artistes or outfits you?ll hear at yr club but not (m)any others?
A few at random.. Terrestrial Tones, Faust, Sleeparchive, Theo Parrish, Isolee.

The most common look/accessory amongst yr audience?
Square glasses?!

Without yr night, the ______ of yr town wd have nowhere to go? (um, fill in gap please).
…unheathily obsessed music fiends…

Describe the atmosphere you strive for.
Unbridled hedonism with a musical conscience.

Best night ever?
Probably at Kompakt’s Total Confusion party in Cologne in 2003, Michael Mayer and Tobias Thomas were playing to a crowd of about 250 people, I was off my head, and it was a pretty awesome experience… We spent the rest of the weekend wandering around the city in a beautiful, dreamy daze.

The weirdest request you ever had?
Playing a bar set in Islington, a pair of pissed-up girls came over and asked for ‘Strings Of Life’. I was stunned until I later was told it got re-released recently with a dodgy vocal?

The most common?
Daft Punk.

The most important nugget of advice to people looking to start their own night/happening is…
Do something that excites you first and foremost, don’t do it for other people, or as the old proverb goes ‘don’t look at the finger, look at the moooooon’!

aaand laaast: “…and finally don’t forget its our 1st birthday party at the amersham this saturday with shackleton (live), basteroid (live). appleblim and us dj-ing. its start as 9 and is free before 9.30pm ?2 before 10.30pm, then ?7 (?5 NUS). see you there.”

Posted by kicking_k on Friday, November 16th, 2007
(No Comments)

OK, so it was a week ago now but I’m stuck in PLAN B XMAS ISSUE DEADLINE HELL… but I couldn’t let the week go without writing a quick something about Cardiff’s inaugural Swn festival. Being a sort of wristbands and venues affair in the vein of SXSW, there’s no way you can catch the vast bulk of bands, so sorry Edwyn Collins, Beirut, The Cribs, didn’t make it. We did put on an Antifolk (UK) show at Clwb Ifor Bach on the Friday night, though.

ET’s been going on about this lot all year, actually, but it was my first time catching a lot of them in the flesh. Winston Echo played wide-eyed naif indie-pop songs about bureau de changes and wanting a new job. There was mertle and Larry Pickleman, Antifolk UK’s Posh and Becks, her cute and introspective, him abrasive and shouty and blackly funny. There was Crayola Lectern and friend, with their deeply wrong synth experiments, and Cardiff’s Le B (pictured) with a set of intricate guitar minatures including a old folk song about a woman marrying a 14-year old boy. Oh, and ET, who did his The Legend thing and topped off the night with a righteous DJ set back to back with Simon Price.

Best way to get an idea of what Swn was about, though, is probably through the 44-page Swn Festival Flickr page, put together by Plan B photographer Mei Lewis and friends. Here’s some of the best - credits to Mei, Maciej Dakowicz, Kirsten McTernan, Laura Charlotte and anyone I might have forgotten.

Bobby Conn

The Duloks

Beirut

The Bobby McGees

And… White Mice

Posted by Louis Pattison on Friday, November 16th, 2007
(2 Comments)

i have two new solo recordings available as free downloads from www.infinitechug.com one is called Crap Hologram and the other is called It Was Better Before.

?

Posted by Andrew Clare on Sunday, November 4th, 2007
(2 Comments)