Billy Talent – Ian D’Sa

“…So what I am trying to say is that this here is the real shit, this is the real deal.” Ben Kowalewicz is soaked to the skin and grinning from ear to ear. Looking out over the bowels of Camden’s Underworld surveying a devotional sea of faces rammed to the venues rafters that has spent the last hour screaming back every syllable of the bands back catalogue and even, via the onslaught of internet fan frenzy, songs from their latest record, Billy Talent III, which is still over a month from release.

Skin Benshaw Interview: Dead Or Alive Preview

Monday nights are usually best spent in quite reflection on the events of the weekend, a sort of weekly moment of clarity before beginning the whole cycle again. However, Dead or Alive are now giving you a reason to skip the weekly lull and extend your weekend to a four day extravaganza. The rambunctious promoters have taken over The Old Queens Head in Islington to bring you a night of intoxicating acoustic revelry.

One name slinking his way onto the bill is the supremely talented singer songwriter Skin Benshaw. What began in bands like Oursleepwalkinghero Skin has continued and developed into a burgeoning solo act that after several free demos and gigs across London will see him begin recording his new EP in the high summer. Those of you who get a kick out of Conor Obesrt, Leonard Cohen or Frank turner would be highly advised to head down to the Old Queens Head and catch this rising artist in the most intimate of settings.

In advance of Dead Or Alive we tracked down Skin Benshaw for a few appetite wetting words.

Dinosuar Jr – J Mascis Interview

The notion of interviewing Dinosaur Jr founder and mainstay J Mascis is always adaunting one. Famously reticent in interview Mascis comes across as an otherworldly and aloof professor, reluctant to communicate verbally what he could so easily impart with a simple solo or feedback squall. However, in person, hunched over a west London hotel couch, though never bordering on chatty Mascis is engaging, witty and warm. As well he should be, for life is good for Mascis at the moment, the original line up of Dinosaur Jr are about to drop ‘Farm’ their second album since reforming for ‘Beyond’, they have signed to new home Jagjaguwar and Mascis is also a new father. Though for now he seems far more interested in iPhone apps.

Hitchcock: Matt Droog interview

Those of you who attended Gatecrasher in 2008 may recall the strange sight of a menacing Clockwork Orange inspired ringleader galavanting about the stage in a maroon suit acting like a disgruntled mime who had spent the day shooting speedballs whilst being poked with a stick. Spitting avant garde riffs over ludicrously pulverising beats Hitchcock took the festival by storm despite many in the crowd having no clue who they were watching.

Idlewild: Roddy Womble interview.

It’s 14 years since Idlewild first raged into earshot in a maelstrom of feedback and lost shoes that caused the NME to observe their early shows were, ‘like the sound of a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs.’ Yet what began as a violent, swirling study in angular art punk on the Captain EP has developed into a body of work that has been likened to the folk tinged latter day rock of REM or Pearl Jam, and set up Idlewild as one of the most important bands of the last 20 years. The music they create has grown up with them, from the sheer heart attack of ‘Everyone Says You’re So Fragile’, to the alt-folk of ‘El Capitan’, bringing with them a generation of music fans from puberty to adulthood, without ever sounding as if they have undergone a crass ‘reinvention’. In their second album, 2000’s ‘100 Broken Windows’, they achieved that rarest of feats by recording a contender for the ‘flawless albums’ category, creating one of the most rewarding indie-rock albums in existence.

Crippled Black Phoenix – Justin Greaves Interview

Bristol Feb 2009

Crippled Black Phoenix founder Justin Greaves shakes his head and takes 2 hand marked discs from his bag. He leans in and slides them across the table. ‘These were for one of the band at practise…but I think you really need to here this.’

The 2 discs in question are both the new albums from Crippled Black Phoenix, ‘The Resurrectionists’, and ‘Night Raider’. It has been a difficult, frustrating process to wrench the 19 songs that span the record from the peripatetic being that Crippled Black Phoenix has become. It’s a process that has driven Greaves to the edges of his patience and the limits of his sanity. ‘I’m not quite Axl Rose yet, though I believe I am… I’m a communist, christian version of Axl Rose singing onward christian soldiers in my head every night before I go onstage!’ He notes before cracking a broad grin and breaking into a full bodied laugh.

Florence and the Machine Interview

You could be forgiven for thinking that the future of the very music industry itself depended on the success of Florence Welch and her all conquering machine. The flame haired songstress who has been christened thenextkatebush in reverential tones throughout the land has found herself in the unenviable position of being adopted as the music industries own private tourniquet.

The Bronx – Matt Caughthran Interview

‘I’m the last dinosaur you know, I was born out of time.’ Matt Caughthran, front man of LA sonic insurgents The Bronx, is considering the state of the world and the way in which music is consumed as they traverse the UK in support of their third album, the predictably titled, ‘The Bronx’. The Bronx are a band that can polarise opinion like no other act since Amen, a situation that is unlikely to shift with any seismic certainty following the bands announcement that not only would they be producing their third album, within a fan friendly vein of raw emotion and buzz saw guitars, but that they would also be releasing an album recorded consecutively under the moniker; El Bronx. This Hispanic twist would see the band cranking up The 3 Amigo’s and Desperado on the tour bus to concoct a mariachi album.

Tilly And The Wall – Derek Pressnall interview

 

This article originally appears on Gigwise. 

Tilly and The Wall are members of that unique musical breeding ground Omaha Nebraska that spearheaded by the patriarchal Conor Oberst has produced some of the most engaging and raw music to come out of America in the last decade. The first signings to Obersts Team Love label Tilly and The Wall have spent their last two albums building up a folk dance legacy that has seen thousands of ecstatic kids screaming ‘I Want to fuck it up’ across the globe whilst getting down to the tap dance groove. Returning with new album ‘O’, following on from the one off single ‘Beat Control’ Tilly and The Wall are bringing their most complete work to the world  ‘Team Love are so artist friendly, they really understand what we’re doing as artists, they really believe in what we’re doing as artists and that’s the great thing for us. No matter what, they are there for us to try and make any idea we have, anything we want to do they try and make it happen for us, so it’s perfect and it feels like family…and it is family.’

Nelson – Le Nouvelle Vague

This article originally appeared on Subba Cultcha.

Nelson stumble out of the east London Café with the air of chic Parisian cool you might expect, a collection of sharp fashions, sharper cheekbones and unkempt hair. A collection of 20 something music producers, Nelson came together in order to combat the dearth of intelligent French indie in the wake of the US/UK invasion circa the Strokes et al by fusing the deathly hallow cool of Joy Division to the electro pulses and dance beats more often associated by French dance giants Daft Punk or Cassius. Not content with simply operating as a band they launched a club night to offer young Paris somewhere to get down to a cross of alternative godheads Sonic Youth and the cowbell toting antics of The Rapture…naturally, just as everybody who saw the first Sex Pistols gig (yes including that ginger wanker Hucknal) is rumoured to have done, those who attended went away to form their own bands who were produced by and shared bills with Nelson, setting them up as the fathers of an entire new ‘Nouvelle Vague’ movement in French music.