Video Debut: Alarmist Live @ Gullivers, Manchester
Dublin’s Alarmist have been making waves recently, and with good reason. The three piece’s debut LP ‘Popular Domain’ is an expansive, bright and deep piece of work, and one that continues to unravel over more listens.
We’re delighted to share with you an exclusive live video of Alarmist performing one of their earlier tunes recently in Manchester, courtesy of The Drum Tamer. You can check it out below!
Links:
Kusanagi – “Yugen” Album Review
I’ve always felt that Post-Rock music, particularly of the instrumental variety, is hard to get right. It’s why I always enjoy writing about musicians who have found a creative approach that works for them. As a genre it requires patience, an attention to detail, and an understanding of how to use an instrument that is often detached from technicality, ego, and the more standard fare progression that you’d find in other genres with typically shorter songs and vocal lines for a listener to latch on to. It’s also a genre that rewards ambitious projects, significant steps into the unknown, and an appreciation and attention to wider concepts outside of just the seconds that make a riff, or passage, or even whole song. All of this, while making an effort to sound not nearly as pretentious as that paragraph.
Vasa – “Colours” Album Review
Ask anyone who’s tried it – writing instrumental music is hard work. It forces you to throw out the typical structure, hooks and vocal melodies that would otherwise guide the listener through a song. It puts much greater onus on the paths the instruments take, and how they interact with one another. Being able to put together a cohesive few minutes of this is one thing, but to make it stand out is another entirely.
There’s also a fine tightrope to walk with regards to technicality and simplicity, and just how much you allow these lines to create their own distinct space and voice. If things get too wild, as things are warrant to do when trying to create something as exciting as possible, you run the risk of losing the emotional core of what the music is trying to indescribably express in the first place. With Glaswegian quartet Vasa‘s debut album, Colours, the way these two distinct elements work in tandem with one another is more than a little impressive, and the result is a breathtaking listen that, over the course of ten tracks, not only celebrates its dizzying technical and melodic highs, but also never forgets that sometimes there’s beauty in simplicity.
In Colours, Vasa have an demonstrated that they have incredible pallet to paint with. Wonderfully executed guitar effects serve to beef up, warp, or dynamically alter songs from one second to another, all changes clearly thought out and considered in how they will affect the balance of instrumentation as the tracks progress. This effect is compounded further by the range and depth afforded by the presence of a six-string bass guitar. Make no mistake – this is more than just having a large, varied pedal board at one’s disposal; this is about understanding what drives a song, and here the band have created something that is faultlessly textured throughout.
The album’s many scattershot mathy blasts, modal chord progressions and eternally cheery hooks create a consistent forward momentum that doesn’t let up for its duration, made all the better by a brilliant flow of tracks (personal highlights ‘The Angry Dome‘ and ‘Poseidon’s Kiss‘ appear in the latter half and the very end of the album, respectfully). There’s a wonderful use of light and shade, here. It’s an album that can visit some very dark places, but never keeps its head out of the sun for too long. It makes for a relentlessly cheery, engaging, addictive listen, and one that exudes confidence and grace in a way that few bands truly manage on record.
Reviewed by Sam Jones
‘Colours’ is released on the 16th of October. You can pre-order the album in both physical and digital formats from the band’s Bandcamp page, linked below.
Live Review – Mathiolympics (PROBO Titans – Bristol) – ft. Dialects, Waking Aida, Quadrupède & More
A brilliant, diverse, weekend-spanning lineup in two fantastic venues in one of my favourite cities seemed like a no-brainer of a way to spend a weekend. PROBO Titans‘s aptly named Mathiolympics was filled to the brim with exciting acts at the Stag & Hounds and Mother’s Ruin on Friday and Saturday night, respectively.
Charlie Barnes opened the Friday evening with a beautiful solo acoustic set, showcasing his powerful voice and keen ear for interesting songwriting at its basest level. His most recent album, More Stately Mansions, was an exercise in huge, vocally ambitious and melodic pop, so to hear these songs in a completely different context was wonderfully interesting and enjoyable.
Having the chance to see Iran Iran in their home city and outside of a festival tent was, needless to say, fantastic. The angular, disorientating compositions, the likes of many which can be heard on their most recent EP, Milk time for Spiders, blasted across the downstairs room and were a pleasure to watch. The band continue to be a relentlessly engaging live show, and it’s exciting to think about what comes next for the four-piece.
Upstairs in the double venue of the Stag & Hounds, Copenhagen-based Town Portal delivered a flawless performance of their dark, twisted, progressive metal formula. Having listened to their studio work a great deal, it was wonderful to have the opportunity to hear the songs as they were meant to be heard, and nothing at all was lost in translation.
A particular highlight at this year’s ArcTanGent Festival, Quadrupède closed the first night with a set of exceptionally tight, dizzyingly complex songs, crafted and played by a duo with care and an attention to detail with their loops and triggers that few other bands would be able to accomplish.
A change of lineup resulted in Warrior Pope beginning the following evening’s lineup at the Mother’s Ruin, a short walk across town in Bristol’s city centre. The three piece made noise enough for a band double their size, the bone shaking frequencies pumped out by the bassist doubling with some elaborate guitar lines creating a harmonically dense wall of sound that reverberated around the small floors of the venue.
Waking Aida were next up, hot on the release of their brilliant sophomore effort, Full Heal. Coming to the end of their recent tour, the band were on brilliant form, creating a commanding atmosphere that was as dynamically rich as it was varied. The increased presence of electronics on their later work shone through brilliantly here – this is a band that continue to develop and impress at every turn, and show absolutely no signs of slowing down.
Glasgow’s Dialects closed out the night, their gloriously intense stage show overpowering the audience with a set that was unmatched in energy and ferocity the whole weekend. Their enormous, double tapped riffs and chord progressions fused with a gargantuan sounding rhythm section to deliver song after song of dizzying and immensely enjoyable instrumental math-rock.
Credit to acts I haven’t had the time to mention here – Cousin, Porshyne and Hoggs Bison were all immensely enjoyable on the Friday night as well, and I’ll be sure to try and catch all of them again in the near future. I suppose, perhaps, it speaks to just how many brilliant acts were playing in the two venues over the weekend that I’ve not been able to cover them all here. Bravo, PROBO Titans. This one was certainly worth the trip over.
Reviewed by Sam Jones
Photo from PROBO Titans
Links:
An Interview with Delta Sleep
As performers and artists, Delta Sleep are a band on an unstoppable upward trajectory, and represent some of the best that the UK Math-Rock scene has to offer. I sat down with the Brighton four-piece after their stellar performance at ArcTanGent Festival to talk about their brilliant new album, “Twin Galaxies” (which you can read about in more detail HERE), as well as some of their future plans.
So it’s been a few months since you dropped ‘Twin Galaxies’. How has the reception been for you?
It’s been amazing. We’ve had so many nice messages from people, and everyone seems to love it. It’s quite overwhelming. It’s nice to get that reaction when we’ve been sitting on it for a year, you know? Those songs are old for us, now!
A focus on lyricism is something that’s not often found in Math-Rock. As a genre quite dedicated to instrumentalism and a lot of confusing pieces coming together, to hear an album which has an in-line focus on the lyricism, as well as the music, from start to finish was very refreshing. Was that something that you considered from the start when writing it?
It just happened naturally, really. I thought it would be a fun thing to come up with a concept around the lyrics, just to have some kind of theme to keep it all cohesive. I love albums that flow into each other, and in the same way I like the lyrics to have that cohesiveness as well.
And did that mean that every song has to be its right place on the album, lyrically and conceptually?
No, not really. It just so happens that some of the songs do follow on as the narrative progresses in the lyrics. But it’s not all in a specific order.
An obvious highlight of the record for me was ‘Spy Turtles’, with it having that electronic element that both breaks up the music and flows really well. Does that influence come from any of you in particular?
We all like electronic music – that’s the kind of thing that we listen to in a more leisurely capacity. We’ve had electronic songs before, and ideas or elements that were electronic. I think when we first started the band we envisioned having an extra person to focus on the electronic stuff, but it’s a pretty a tricky thing to carry over to a live show. I think if you have too many samples and you’re too reliant on that side of things, if something goes down you’re totally screwed, and it’s nice to be able to rely on yourself plugged into an amp.
We’ve tried it in the past. Whenever we tried to reinterpret an electronic song it always ends up sounding completely different to when we recorded it. We did that with Camp Adventure, and that sounds like a live band song now. It’ll be the same with Spy Turtles I think – it won’t be fully electronic live, we’ll just reinterpret it somehow.
How do you find the blend between the tracks on the Management EP and the tracks on Twin Galaxies when picking a set to play live? They’re quite distinct from one another in a lot of ways, and obviously they have a different set of performers on them.
We try and keep a decent balance between old and new, really. Obviously the new record has just come out so we’re trying to keep the set fresh with the more recent material. As a new rhythm section we’ve brought our sound with it, so it smooths that transition between the old and new stuff.
We just play the hits!
Speaking of which, as far as bands go at ArcTanGent it’s quite rare to see bands having a crowd singing along with them…
Yeah! I haven’t heard many bands with vocals yet. But that’s the thing, going back to what you were saying earlier – if you were to place how much vocals there actually were on the album, from track to track, they probably only make up about 25% in all. So it is more instrumental anyway, but the fact that everything written vocally is like a sing-along, it makes it feel like there’s more than there actually are.
The first two tracks on the album have about.. four lines between them!
It’s clever songwriting, though – Dev has managed to write these massive sing-alongs for the only bits that have vocals.
I saw recently that Twin Galaxies has been released in Japan. How did that come about?
We’d been in touch with a label in Japan for a while to potentially release Management over there, but that never happened because they needed extra bonus tracks and things like that. But we stayed in touch with the guy and once the album was done we asked if they wanted to help us release it. We had to do two bonus tracks for the album, but he pretty much just sorted everything out. And then he sent us an amazing picture of it on display in Tower Records!
Are you aiming to go out there and play? What are your plans in the coming few months?
That’s the dream! Hopefully. We’re kind of working on setting it all up at the moment, and fingers crossed, but we’re just laying the foundations out there at the moment, really.
Laying an egg.
Fertilising the scene!
It would be great to go next year. I don’t know if it’s even possible, but we’ll see. Or to see if we can go somewhere like America. Play at something like SXSW.
We’ve got a European tour at the end of October, as well as some UK dates around then. After that we’ll probably just start writing new stuff, really. We’ve got a few new ideas so we’d like to start getting a couple of new songs together.
And we’ve got a day booked in the studio so we can get some demos down and play around with it.
We’re kind of looking at the next thing really.
I suppose it’s like you said – at this point the new album isn’t so new to you four any more.
Exactly. And that’s the healthy cycle, I think. You write the album, sit on it for a little while, and by the time it’s come out it’s fresh to everyone else but you’re already busy working on the new stuff. It’s exciting, though – we’ve been working really hard on the set itself, getting it tight, and you go through those songs so many times that it’s really refreshing to start writing new things and getting creative again.
Interviewed by Sam Jones
Photography by Leigh-Angel Bevan
“Twin Galaxies” is available now through Big Scary Monsters. You can stream and download the album from the band’s official Bandcamp page below:
An Interview with 65daysofstatic
As a band who have never been able to stay still for very long, 65daysofstatic have made a name for themselves in the Post-Rock and Electronic scene after writing and performing all over the world for the past decade. I got the opportunity to speak to guitarists Joe Shrewsbury and Paul Wolinski ahead of their headline set at this year’s ArcTanGent Festival, to find out their thoughts on how they’ve grown as a band and individual musicians, and about their upcoming work on the exciting video game No Man’s Sky, among other topics.
Hi guys, thanks very much for taking the time to have a chat with me. One thing I’ve always enjoyed about your work is the variance between the different records. How do you consider the balance between electronics and the more guitar-based, post-rock elements from recording to recording. Is that an intentional decision?
Joe : I don’t think we think in those terms any more. I think we had an early period where we stumbled across a sound that was quite raw, quite smashed together, using electronic samples and programming that Paul is a highly auto-didactic practitioner of, and very very good at. We also had a guitar/pedal naievity to noise making, and a drummer who sort of helped those two things merge. And that became a dead end, at around the time we made a record called The Destruction of Small Ideas. We thought about this quite a lot and made a conscious decision after that record to stop worrying about those things, and to start worrying about what we were going to do musically for the rest of our lives that wasn’t in thrall to any genre or opinion.
Paul : Or instrument, or ego in the band. Just separating players from their instruments and the instruments from their values or weighting within a regular band.
Joe : And that was definitely present before. When you’re kids and you make a record and loads of people suddenly respond to it, then you make another one of them. That was back in the day when Zane Lowe used to play music like ours, and I mean, that doesn’t happen as much any more.
Less so.
Joe : Yeah, absolutely. And all that stuff happens and you go on tour for 6/7 years and your life changes. So we re-evaluated in 2009/10 what was important, and what was also possible, and decided that 65daysofstatic wasn’t really going to be a band, but more of an umbrella for our ideas. And everything’s changed since then. We sort of wrote a much more dancey record, but only in a sense that we made a conscious production decision on that record. That went really well, we enjoyed that, we learned the lessons from it, and moved on. But we no longer think ‘This guitar part’ or ‘This synth part’ – we more think about how this thing should sound that describes accurately the indescribable emotion that we are trying to describe! And that becomes very freeing because you can then just play on something else and do whatever you want.
That’s something I’ve definitely thought about while listening to your records. Even though there’s a similar balance and use of samples and guitars between The Fall of Math and Wild Light, there’s a much more mature and relaxed approach to the latter. More settled, as it were.
Paul : I think you’re right. I’m glad that you hear that, as well. We didn’t want to be chasing that youthful naïvety of that first record. There’s a sort of energy there, and the danger of trying to constantly recreate that energy is that you either start to sound like a diluted version of yourself, or you just don’t have it. We’re not old, but we’re getting older, and we’ve been going for more than a decade, and we want to get better and be more in control of what we’re doing. But the danger is that you can fall into complacency and plateau with your sound. And it can always sound pristine and you can know what you’re doing, but it’s lost that chaos of uncertainty. And part of that is deliberately trying to approach each record differently, because you need that element of progression, and also that danger or pushing yourself, or just not being very good at something. I think that’s really crucial.
Joe : I think it’s the greatest talent a musician can posses, to be unfamiliar. Tom Waits says it actually, around the time he made Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs. When asked why he stopped making piano ballads, he said “because my hands always do the same thing”. To get away from that is scary, but also always more rewarding. But you sort of have to accept that you’re going to burn any formulae you found. That’s not to say you don’t take lessons with you.
Paul : You can’t have the urgency of a 20/21 year old forever, because you are visibly a 32 year old man on a stage, sweating. You can’t physically have that urgency.
Joe : I think there is a way to keep the important bits, but it’s just not always about the relentlessness. There’s a great Refused documentary about when they broke up, where they say that “we realised far too late that we strangled our songs to death”. They played every show like At The Drive-In played every show, just throwing everything into it. And we used to do that, and we still play every show as hard as we can, but you understand more about what you can keep back, and that makes those big moments so much more vicious. Whereas playing an hour of, you know, The Fall of Math… those records are relentless. And that’s what we were into at the time, but we realised that you can make a record that breathes and has space for a moment of such vicious relentlessness that it far transcends the impact of those early records. So I think it’s just age and you start to understand things more.
Paul : And also volume versus loudness. I saw this noise act recently and it would’ve been wonderful, but it was just too loud. And it’s supposed to be loud, because it’s noise, but if it had been just a few decibels quieter…
It would’ve been more impactful because it would’ve been less punishing.
Paul : Exactly. And then we saw Tim Hecker, and that was the total opposite, because you get in it, and lose all sense of volume.
Speaking of new challenges, I wanted to ask how your experience has been with Hello Games and “No Man’s Sky” in terms of creating something for a completely different medium. A layered soundtrack, as it were. Something that instead of being mastered for a stereo mix is begin given to programmers to build upon and to create with. What’s your experience been like recording that.
Joe : We’ve had an amazing time. High pressure! It’s still very much in progress, although we have reached a stage in that process where the pressure has become less and we’ve achieved some things we wanted to achieve. We’ve done some recording – we’re still very much in the middle of the sound design element, working with the software that the game is gonna use. We’ve written a lot of linear music now, and we’re now at a glorious point where we can indulge in quite pure, textural sound design and feed that into the game. We’ve now done 10 months of background work and we know where those sounds are coming from – we’ve sort of created the head space that they’re in, and found the focus that the music for the game needs to be sat in.
I thought Mogwai had a lot of success recently with sound tracking the TV show “The Returned”.
Paul : Absolutely, that soundtrack is fantastic.
I think there’s this element with Post-Rock that suits other mediums extremely well. Not as just background music, but being an integral part to the whole thing. Do you think that’s something you’d agree with, and something you’d want to explore more?
Paul : Absolutely. It’s such a big question, though. For us, what we’ve learned with the Hello Games work, and also doing a live soundtrack to the film Silent Running… the difference between writing instrumental songs and soundtracks is a world away. Just because they’re instrumental, they’re designed to exist in their own right, whereas soundtracks are all about serving another idea, and sometimes it needs to be completely unobtrusive and unnoticed. It’s about creating the mood without letting on that you’re even present. And then the difference between writing for films, where the action is always the same no matter how many times you watch it, and then on a game, changing it to suit an agency you can’t guess – it’s all in a player’s hands, you can’t anticipate what’s going to happen. Which makes it really hard composing a phrase or progression that’s longer than an instant. It might need to change at any given moment. And that’s pretty much untested. There’s a few different approaches that seem to be becoming standard in the games world, but I don’t think any of them have found the magic formula yet. So it’s really exciting for us to be involved in this, in something that’s trying it in a different way.
And from the sounds of it you’ve been involved with it for a long time, now. And from what I’ve read it’s still very much in the process of being formed as a whole. So to be there during that process as creative musicians…
Joe : We’ve been there since they had nothing other than a description of what they wanted to make, so we’ve had a good relationship with them in that sense as well. They’ve had an insane journey which we haven’t seen all of, but we knew them when they were 8 people in an office starting out, and they’re now with Sony and we went to Las Vegas with them. So we’ve seen this thing change.
Paul : You say starting out, but they’d done a year and a half of work already! Listening to our back catalogue, it turned out…
Joe : There’ a mutual appreciation there which has been quite unique to the project, because I imagine that doesn’t happen very often. We’re composers for hire, in some sense.
Paul : I don’t think they counted on how geeky we actually are and how interested we would be. We could’ve just written them some songs and moved on, just given them the stems for the audio director to just pick apart and sort it out. There was no obligation for us to be more than that, but as we got to know each other we thought “This sounds brilliant! Let us in!” We really wanted to know how to do this. We started doing sound installations in the past few years, like live soundtracks. There’s so many new forms to put music in that haven’t been explored by bands. Unless you’re like Björk or something, and you have the funds and the attention to do it, where you get to explore anything. It’s frustrating for us, because we’re never gonna be that big a band, we’ve faced up to that now. Hopefully we’ll continue being a band for as long as we can; as long as we feel like we’re able to make interesting music, but I don’t think we’re gonna sell a million records or anything like that. But that doesn’t feel like a reason why we should be limited to just making records and touring like most bands are, just because of the logistics of being a band.
And that’s a refreshing thought, surely. Knowing that you’re able to do it, and explore what you want to explore as musicians.
Joe : Yeah! I think the band had to become that for us at one point. As I said before, it was becoming quite closed down, but now it has possibilities.
Paul : I’s like finding new rooms in a house that you didn’t know were there.
Joe : Absolutely.
Interviewed by Sam Jones
All photography by Leigh-Angel Bevan
ArcTanGent Festival 2015 Review
The recipe for ArcTanGent was good from its inception. It had been proven a success over the last couple of years, and had gained an incredible momentum considering its relative infancy. It very quickly became a home for its bands and punters alike – an important cornerstone in the UK’s Math/Post-Rock scene. This was the festival these musicians, their identifying genres so often marginalized in the more mainstream summer circuits, wanted to play; in front of their friends, their fellow performers, and thousands of fans from all over the world. They all come to ArcTanGent because there’s nowhere else quite like it; because this is the cream of the crop.
In this respect, ArcTanGent 2015 didn’t need an overhaul; instead, organisers James, Si and Goc have clearly gone to great lengths to refine and strengthen what makes the festival tick. Meticulous planning to ensure a diverse, well paced lineup from the largest stage right down to the smallest, combined with subtle changes to the site, timings and services cemented this year’s as the best thus far.
Alpha Male Tea Party
Thursday’s festivities started the weekend off with two extremely memorable sets on the Yohkai stage from fan-favourites Alpha Male Tea Party and Cleft, with all five members having set up their gear together on stage simultaneously and allowing them to cap off their respective sets with enormous sounding tunes (including, in a similar fashion to Cleft’s show the previous year, a brilliant, riff-intensive medley with songs from Fleetwood Mac, Slayer, Deftones and Daft Punk, to name but a few). This sort of close friendship between bands clearly exhibited from the get-go is part of what makes the whole festival so special. The positivity in the atmosphere was palpable, and this was something that never went away throughout the whole weekend.
In a welcome contrast to last year, the smaller PX3 stage was utilized fully in between Yohkai slots, serving as a space for a number of brief interviews as well as a lineup of stellar bands, including Memory of Elephants and Iran Iran, two local Math-Rock outfits at the top of their game, and ones who thoroughly deserve the platform a festival like ArcTanGent can provide.
65daysofstatic
With such a strong returning lineup for this year’s Thursday it is almost impossible to single out highlights – subsequent acts AK/DK, Mylets, Mutiny on the Bounty and LITE all demonstrated a level of musical diversity and undeniable quality in their performance, and with a larger tent structure and stage to house them, even more fans were able to get in close to the action than before. It was 65daysofstatic, however, who pulled the biggest crowd, their career-spanning set-list containing something to please newcomers and older fans alike. With their soundtrack work for No Man’s Sky still awaiting a release date, it may be some time before hearing more than a few snippets of new material from the electronic/post-rock pioneers, but performances such as those exhibited here demonstrate that this is a band who are currently operating at their very best.
As with previous years, a number of bands displayed prominent multi-instrumentalist and role-switching qualities, with acts like Quadrupède and Steve Strong receiving huge, well-deserved responses from the crowds in their breakfast slots on Friday and Saturday respectively. Friday’s afternoon was peppered with a breadth and diversity of acts across all stages that arguably hadn’t been seen quite at this level at the festival over the past couple of years. The delicate breezy music of Quadrilles proved a brilliantly suited late addition to the lineup on the PX3 stage. Similarly, Delta Sleep‘s incredible flurry of singalong hits and amazing instrumental work from their new record packed out the Bixler stage, their set further cementing their status as one of the most interesting, appealing bands in the Math-Rock genre at the moment.
The memorable sets continued throughout the afternoon and into the evening. As a band already known for their amazingly tight and impactful live presence, Maybeshewill‘s performance was particularly strong. The addition of a five-piece classical section brought the band’s more recent material up to a new level of quality in the live sphere. Similarly, The Fall of Troy were easily one of the most captivating and impressive shows of the whole weekend, with Thomas Erak’s mind-blowing guitar-work in particular just as exceptional and thrilling as it was before their hiatus.
Vennart
It was the final two acts we saw, however, that made the evening truly memorable; Vennart‘s performance, playing the same set as he had at 2000 Trees earlier in the summer, was made even stronger when accompanied by a beautiful stage and light show at dusk. As a songwriter, his material is profound, delicate and vibrant, his solo material and Oceansize hits alike causing just as much impact as when heard for the first time. Headliners The Dillinger Escape Plan caused a raucous, unforgettable uproar when they took the stage, wasting no time in blasting through as many hits as they could from all across their back-catalogue. Their bizarre, intense, homegrown Math core was a cathartic and perfect end to a day that was filled wall-to-wall with incredible music.
Despite some unfortunate scheduling difficulties caused by missed flights, the Main stage lineup on Saturday was particularly strong, with the enormous riffage and huge hooks of Black Peaks, the maniacal, sublime Math-Rock attack of Axes, and the brooding, monstrous Post-Rock of six-piece Talons all perfectly suited for the beautiful outdoor Arc tent in their own ways. Meanwhile, on the Bixler stage, Brighton’s Polymath played a huge-sounding run of their brilliantly dense, schizophrenic compositions, acccompanied by hordes of flailing inflatable bananas and lunchtime tequila shots – all things told, it was an astoundingly good way to get some energy back.
Later on, Glaswegian quartet Vasa played a furious, booming set on the PX3 to a sizeable audience, with a number of cuts from their upcoming album showcasing their huge talent and live presence. Vessels took to the Yohkai and shifted gears significantly to a more dancey, hypnotic mood, creating an atmosphere that would later be continued with the always brilliant Silent Disco. In a sense, it would have been perfect for such an act to meld seamlessly into the dancing later on, and the switch of going back into more regular band performances (and the different type of attention that taking in these shows encompasses) was admittedly jarring, albeit forgotten in moments as the day came to a close and some of the festival’s biggest hitters emerged from backstage.
Alright the Captain
It was a day rammed with brilliant music and agonising choices of who to go see, made all the more difficult by Cult of Luna, Deafheaven and Alright the Captain sharing the headline slot after the aforementioned scheduling changes. Thankfully, no bands were slighted or left unattended, with the consistently brilliant Alright the Captain, a stalwart of the UK scene, managing to fill out the Bixler tent with their bizarre, riff-heavy, electro-math chaos and playing a show that managed to stand alongside the other two Saturday headliners.
It’s a strange experience, not being able to walk more than five meters on a festival site and running into someone you know. It’s a quality of ArcTanGent and the community that supports it that’s unheard of at larger gatherings, to be sure, and such a wonderful experience that makes it hard to think of how it could be better. It’s that warm feeling of mutual support and friendship you get at the smallest, most intimate gigs, magnified to the size of a three day romp in the Mendips with thousands of other people who wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. The way ArcTanGent has grown and refined to consistently top itself leads me to believe that next year is going to be better again. It was the definitive highlight of my year thus far, and I have faith that next year is going to be even more memorable. We’re already counting the days.
Reviewed by Sam Jones
Photography by Leigh-Angel Bevan
Band Links:
ArcTanGent Festival 2015 – 7 Bands to See
Chances are, if you’ve been on this blog before then you’ve heard of ArcTanGent Festival. As one of the country’s leading festival bookers of left-of-centre music, it stands as an essential pilgrimage for fans of Post/Math-Rock. Now in it’s third year, ArcTanGent is continuing to grow in stature, and is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down. As with last year, we’re heading out to the beautiful Mendips next week to catch as many incredible bands as possible and take as many photos as we can fit on our memory cards for what promises to be an unforgettable three days of music.
With such a strong lineup catered towards a specific range of music, there are bound to be some unavoidable clashes over the weekend; to this end, we’ve put together a brief list of bands that we’re especially excited to see next week.
The Dillinger Escape Plan
Where: The Arc Stage
When: Friday 21st
Why: As one of the most influential, chaotic, heavy and downright brilliant bands in the world, The Dillinger Escape Plan are not to be missed. Expect massive songs, ridiculous stage antics and some of the most bizzare, messed up heavy music currently being performed live today. See you in the pit!
Axes
Where: The Arc Stage
When: Saturday 22nd
Why: Because Axes make some of the most unequivocally fun, energetic instrumental music around, that spans a huge range of styles and never lets up. Having released their sophomore album, “Glory”, last year, they’re at the top of their game, and are sure to make a lot of new fans when they start pummeling people’s eardrums on Saturday.
Delta Sleep
Where: The Bixler Stage
When: Saturday 22nd
Why: Hot on the heels of their stellar album, “Twin Galaxies”, of which you can read more about HERE, the Brighton four-piece are bound to pull a huge crowd to witness their arsenal of unique, powerful and earnest Math-Rock belters.
Vasa
Where: The PX3 Stage
When: Saturday 22nd
Why: This Glaswegian four-piece are gaining a lot of momentum, and it’s not hard to see why. Their dark, huge sounding instrumental compositions are a masterclass in atmosphere, technicality and groove, and with their new album “Colours” due for release in October they’re showing absolutely no signs of slowing down.
LITE
Where: The Yohkai Stage
When: Thursday 20th
Why: Because their set at last year’s festival blew our little minds open, and then some. This is immaculately composed Math-Rock with huge amounts of cathartic, dancey energy, all the way from Tokyo.
Polymath
Where: The Bixler Stage
When: Saturday 22nd
Why: Dense, vast, interesting, frankly insane compositions performed by a three piece who are tight as all hell and consistently stand as some of the most entertaining performers we’ve seen in years. Their set will, without a doubt, rank as one of the most hypnotic and fascinating sets of the weekend.
Alright the Captain
Where: The PX3 Stage
When: Saturday 22nd
Why: As arguably one of the hardest working bands in the UK scene at the moment, Alright The Captain have more than earned their headline slot on the PX3 stage on Saturday Night. They’re a band that make a lot noise more than you would imagine possible with just three people, thanks to their brilliant use of guitar loops and supplementary electronics. Completely bizarre, while at the same time impossibly catchy – it’s a good combination, trust us.
By Sam Jones
ArcTanGent Festival takes place from the 20th-22nd August. There are a few remaining tickets available from the Official Website. Don’t miss out!
An interview with Human Pyramids – 2000 Trees Festival 2015
Sixteen performers and a thirty piece choir working together towards a single goal is not something that you see every day, and an even rarer sight at a music festival. Human Pyramids‘ fusion of rock instrumentation with classical elements creates a beautiful fusion of upbeat, layered music that is as otherworldly as it is grounded. I sat down with Paul Russell, the man behind this enormous project, after their performance at 2000 Trees this year, to ask him more about where this unique and exciting show came from, and about his role as conductor and arranger of the band.
Hi Paul, thanks so much for having a chat with me. How was the show today?
It was absolutely fantastic. Human Pyramids gigs are always very exciting and always on the verge of collapse. There’s 46 people in total, and you can only really rehearse 8. I rehearse the traditional rock band element, and the traditional string element, and they never meet until the concert – and you’ve got one moment where everybody’s together! It’s always mega exciting and chaotic and crazy.
How do you find that role as the conductor?
This is maybe our 6th or 7th gig, so it’s a role that I’m learning about. I first and foremost come from a punk background of playing guitar and shouting, and playing really fast music. And to go from that to conducting a sixteen-piece band… I’m still learning! I’ve got amazing players – Amelia plays in the London Sinfonia, and a lot of the brass players play in Balkan bands in Glasgow, so more and more recently I’ve learned to actually conduct. It’s an intersting role, and a learning curve – it’s difficult but I’m getting there, slowly but surely!
I’d love you to tell me a bit about how Human Pyramids came to be Human Pyramids.
It’s a bit of a weird story, really! Before Human Pyramids I did a breakcore thing called Project Serendipity, which was basically crazy, super fast electronic music. So I started writing the third Project Serendipity album – the previous album was pure electronics, so on the next album I thought I’d write it on acoustic guitar, and then add in mass synths and crazy beats. So I wrote the whole thing on the guitar and started adding the beats, before thinking ‘this is shit’ – the whole thing sounded like a Mumford and Sons remix! So I was thinking about it, and decided to add a real drum kit, and then began putting in the mad synth lines, and it was crap again, it started sounding like some weird dubstep band. So I then thought that instead of the synth lines I’d use a tuba, or instead of the crazy trance lead I’d use strings.
Primarily, it was a recording project. I thought “I’m gonna make this album that’s never gonna be performed live” – so I spent about 3 years doing that, and then I put that out a couple of years ago. And then Matt from A Carefully Planned Festival asked if we wanted to play, so I spent about a week or two arranging it for the live set, and so that’s when it becomes what it is now. It’s a different beast, and now I consider Human Pyramids to be that band rather than a recording project. So when I’m writing the new album it’ll be for these elements now. I never, ever imagined it to be a live thing, because I just wanted to make a record that was majestic, no holds barred, and maximalist. I wasn’t interested in the live thing at all, really, that was something that came after and it turned out to be really good fun!
How much fluidity would you say you have with such a large group of people? Do you think you’d be able to do it with a smaller or larger amount?
Quite often I get asked to strip things down, or do an acoustic session, or play a gig with fewer people, and I just say no. I would say there’s no fluidity whatsoever! To me, what the band is is a massive band. I could do acoustic sessions where I arrange things, but there’s never enough time to do anything but this. I feel like to strip it down and do a smaller gig is like a different band altogether. Sometimes we do it without a choir, and involve the crowd a lot more. The choir is definitely different every time. It’s quite fluid there, but with strings and brass it’s pretty set.
So as you say, it’s a larger group where you’re playing a lot of instruments, but primarily inhabiting that conductor/arranger role. How does this compare to your more ‘mad’ performances with your band Axes?
It’s funny how the brain has a way of making things that are insane completely normal. We’ve been doing Axes for about 2 years, and it feels very normal to me! Human Pyramids kinda feels chaotic in the true sense of the word with all the people, whereas with Axes we’re four best friends who play every week. We know each other so well, and the chaos is very well controlled. To the outside ear it sounds crazy, but it’s very set.
Between the two projects, and having Human Pyramids play live now, do you think you’ve learned lessons?
I think with Human Pyramids I’ve learned how to count better, and understand more of the interaction between people – keeping eye contact, cuing people in, and keep things flowing well. Whereas with with Axes I’ve probably just learned to be fucking mental all the time!
With having the members of Axes perform along side you in Human Pyramids, is that a different experience with regards to interaction with them?
They have a lot more freedom – with Axes everyone is so invested within the time, and everyone is really crafting the songs and it’s really intense, whereas with Human Pyramids they can have a little more fun with it, do their own thing and express themselves in their own way. And it’s less difficult, and they can relax into performing. When in Axes, Stacey (bassist) is more like a lead instrument, whereas in Human Pyramids she’s sitting back in the groove with Al (Drummer) and keeping it steady. Jeion has the hardest job in Human Pyramids, much harder than mine, and Al is just my rock who keeps everything in time! I’ve done gigs without Al behind the drums and it’s just not been good!
So what are you plans with Human Pyramids over the coming months?
I’m between a lot of projects – I do this and Axes, I do sound for The Skints, and I’m doing a lot of film composing – I did a lot of work on the last Ridley Scott film – so I’m doing lots of things, and not rushing anything. I’m currently recording ideas on my iPhone – January is a quiet time of the year for me, so next year I’m probably going up to the Highlands where my sister lives to write and take it from there! This next album will probably have a more classical approach – getting a concert hall, scoring it, rehearsing it and recording it. Now that I know how to do it!
Thanks so much for talking to me – one last question. If Human Pyramids was a monster, how would you describe it?
It would probably be very large, and have lots of searching hands… something with several arms that go off in a lot of different directions… something Shiva-esque, but less religious and more punk-rock!
Interview by Sam Jones
Photography by Leigh-Angel Bevan
You can find out more about Human Pyramids at their Official Facebook Page. And while you’re at it, why not check out the brilliant Axes as well!
2000 Trees Festival 2015 Review
Another year, another festival season. The weather forecast for the coming 3 days was immaculate as we gleefully packed our car full of boxed wine and cereal bars and headed over to Upcote Farm, near Cheltenham, for another fantastic weekend at 2000 Trees Festival. While there were many favourites I was looking forward to seeing, there were fewer names on the bill overall that I recognised, giving me greater liberty to amble around and follow my nose to what seemed interesting at the time. The result was a chaotic, hilarious mess of experiencing a huge amount of new music, taking home the names of a number of new bands that were still ringing in my ears.
The festival began just as it did the year previously – with the St. Pierre Snake Invasion kicking things off in The Cave with immense amounts of attitude and an improved arsenal of huge riffs. It was my first time seeing them since last August, and it was immediately clear that the already impressive five-piece had upped their performance and songwriting another level in the interim. Front man Damien seemed particularly in his element, playing the entire half-hour set entrenched in the middle of a screaming audience, without letting up for a second.
Turbowolf
As more people began to set up their tents up and activity began to stir over in the Forest Sessions and at the Croft, the festival had begun to gain momentum. Turbowolf powered through a breathless set of hits from their latest album, ‘Two Hands’. Huge, heavily octaved riffs pummeled through the Cave’s ecstatic crowd as they witnessed a band that seemed determined to rip the tent in half. It was exhilarating, to say the least.
Later, Arcane Roots took the stage to a rapturous applause and powered through a set of hits, including a couple of new songs that, with luck, are going to be heard on their upcoming record. Having seen Arcane Roots many times now, it’s interesting to see how their set is beginning to change and incorporate these new ideas – much of their new material is arguably a lot more accessible than what they’ve released before, although it does still retain the chunky riffs, bizzare technical passages and catchy sensibilities that the London three-piece are best known for.
As a surprising highlight for us last year – and one that we all regretted not experiencing more of – we decided to spend some time at the Croft’s comedy stage later that evening. Our hopes were not misplaced, and a number of hilarious acts including Andrew O’Neil and Allyson June Smith proved to be an excellent, chilled out way to begin winding down the first day of festivities. The end of the evening was fast approaching, but not before we headed to a hilarious, bizarre set in the Forest Sessions by Thrill Collins. The three-piece played a breathless run of extended mash-ups in their signature skiffle-pop-rap style, managing marathon songs without dropping a single note and remaining fully committed to the insanity they had created; it made for a definitely early festival highlight.
WOAHNOWS
Friday saw the opening of the entire site, an influx of new faces and the beginning of the festival proper. The show tents provided a welcome relief from the scorching midday heat, and the first part of our day was spent in the Axiom stage, which had doubled in size from last year. Woahnows, Allusondrugs and Fatherson all performed to an extremely high standard, their energy unwavering and their enthusiasm infectious. While all three acts clearly hailed from different genres and influences, there was enough stylistic similarity to make them fit perfectly one after the other, and this is one of the things I enjoy most about visiting a festival and seeing bands live for the first time.
Later in the day on the Main Stage, the (aptly named) Tax the Heat were a surprise delight – their throwback Rock n’ Roll / Blues sound with a brilliant modern twist worked perfectly for basking in the intense mid-afternoon sun. As someone who cynicism comes to quite easily when talking about music that specifically tries to recapture the past, this was a band I particularly enjoyed for their successful efforts in making their music feel relevant, while still wearing their influences on their sleeve.
Cleft
After a late-hour time slot swap, ArcTanGent favourites Cleft found themselves setting up on the main stage in front of a huge audience. Their set, one of their first in some time, was met with a rapturous reception, their mad, two-piece instrumental insanity no doubt winning over a number of new fans. The Manchester duo played a wonderful mix of songs from their previous releases, as well as opening with a new, darker song that left us incredibly excited to hear what they are currently working on.
Later, things got decidedly heavier, with Future of the Left taking the stage and storming through a number of awesomely bizzare, chunky, mechanical hits from across their discography, and Pulled Apart by Horses wreaking havoc in the Cave with their brash, grunge-tinged riffs taking on a new, more volatile form altogether when played live.
With the end of the day fast approaching, some of the bigger acts like Idlewild and Deaf Havana began to draw huge crowds towards the main stage. However, Solemn Sun‘s presence on the Axiom certainly did not go unnoticed, Jim Lockey’s rebranded, restyled four-piece creating a stir of dark, atmospheric rock from their new EP, ‘§’.
Saturday saw a calmer atmosphere, many of the punters exhausted from the previous night’s Silent Disco, which ran well into the early hours. Human Pyramids were the first to take the main stage, the huge 30-piece orchestra/band/choir project spearheaded by Paul Russell (best known for his work in the Math-Rock four-piece Axes). Layers upon layers built up time and time again, creating something otherworldly and cathartic for everyone bearing witness to it.
Human Pyramids
Later, the moody, proggy and hugely energetic Samoans stormed the Axiom, evoking a general feeling that was not unlike a band such as Deftones, albeit standing on their own feet with their enourmous riffs spliced with mathy fretwork and tireless drumming. Operating in a similar sphere, Black Peaks later stormed the Cave with a huge presence, brutal force and infectious energy levels, the Brighton four-piece wasting no time in proving why they are one of the most exciting up-and-coming rock bands in the country.
A personal festival highlight was Vennart, who was met with a huge crowd in the Axiom tent as he played through a number of songs from his brilliant new album, ‘The Demon Joke’, as well as a couple of fan favourites from his (now-dissolved) previous band Oceansize. With his new solo band being composed of 3/5 of the former Oceansize lineup, hearing them play these older songs was an incredibly impactful and emotional experience, and resonated with the crowd substantially.
And So I Watch You From Afar
As the afternoon began to turn into evening, we returned to the Main Stage to see And So I Watch You From Afar, the brilliant instrumental outfit who recently dropped their fourth album, ‘Heirs’. As a band who typically suit enormous light shows and huge silhouetted crowds screaming along to their music, seeing them play in the broad daylight was an interesting experience, and one that they pulled off with the confidence and experience expected of a band of such calibre. It was fantastic to hear how their newer material blended almost seamlessly into their older records, with songs from their second album ‘Gangs’ making a particularly strong showing in their time on stage.
The Skints later shook things up significantly, providing a musical platform for which people could start dancing with their upbeat, immaculately arranged, eclectic mix of reggae, ska and hip-hop. On the other side of the site, however, things were taking a far heavier turn, with Mclusky*, Andrew Falkous’ Hardcore band prior to Future of the Left, appearing as a new incarnation with support from Damien of The St. Pierre Snake Invasion. The result was total chaos, and it was immediately apparent that some people had been waiting to hear these songs live again for a very long time. The set was loud, brutal, and hugely entertaining to witness. Things wrapped up with Alkaline Trio on the Main Stage – a legendary band in their own right, who wasted no time in entertaining the masses with a string of hits from their decades long career. It was a bizarre end to the festival from a personal perspective, hearing songs that I hadn’t heard for many, many years, but one that I enjoyed thoroughly nonetheless.
It hit me pretty quickly – at this year’s 2000 Trees Festival I had discovered just as many wonderful new bands to listen to as I had gone to watch old favourites; a wonderful, exciting consequence of putting this many listening opportunities in a field and letting the cogs move by themselves. And, as ever, it was gone too quickly. 2000 Trees was exhiliarating, profound and riotous fun for the second year running, and I’m already itching to get back to Upcote Farm to do it all again next year.
Reviewed by Sam Jones
Photography by Leigh-Angel Bevan
Tickets for next year’s 2000 Trees Festival are now on sale for reduced prices at their official website. Get em’ while they’re hot!
Band links:
Monster Sound Collective Blog 
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