Category Archives: Eclectic Mainline

Matters relating to Albert Freeman’s Eclectic Mainline show.

Eclectic Mainline – 9th June 2010

And so it came to pass that it was Hannah Peel who first discovered that a good pop song will also sound good when sung accompanied by a music box.  Her Re-Box EP of covers of Cocteau Twins, New Order, OMD and Gloria Jones (or more likely Soft Cell given the era of her other choices) is well worth getting hold of.  Here’s a full list of what I played tonight:

The Bluetones – “Firefly” (LP – “A New Athens”) (CIA)
Surfer Blood – “Twin Peaks” (LP – “Astro Coast”) (Kanine)
The Acorn – “Crossed Wires” (LP – “No Ghost”) (Bella Union)
Micah P. Hinson – “2’s and 3’s” (single) (Full Time Hobby)
Seahawks – “Fantasy” (free CD with 7″ single – “Astral Winds”/”High Tides”) (Static Caravan)
Roland S. Howard – “(I Know) A Girl Called Jonny” (LP – “Pop Crimes”) (Infectious)
Nina Nastasia – “A Kind Of Courage” (LP – “Outlaster”) (Fat Cat)
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – “Fright Night (Nevermore)” (LP – “Before Today”) (4AD)
2020 Soundsystem – “Dark Matters” (free download from Bleep.com)
Dan Sartain – “Bohemian Grove” (LP – “Dan Sartain Lives”) (One Little Indian)
Wildbirds & Peacedrums – “The Wave” (EP – “Iris”) (Leaf Label)
Bonobo – “Stay The Same” ft. Andreya Triana (single and LP – “Black Sands”) (Ninja Tune)
Faust – “Hit Me” (LP – “Faust Is Last”) (Klangbad)
Hannah Peel – “Blue Monday” (EP – “Re-Box”) (Static Caravan)

Eclectic Mainline – 2nd June 2010

The Love Apple, Bradford.  RIP

The Love Apple, Bradford. RIP

Admittedly the closure of The Love Apple in Bradford isn’t the saddest news I’ve been greated with in the past couple of days. I wish it was, however, and that the shootings in Cumbria hadn’t happened.  However, I’m totally shocked and gutted that The Love Apple had to close, and this is a sad result of what has happened to Bradford in the past few years.  About 5 years ago the place (both Bradford and The Love Apple) was buzzing (quite literally after The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit‘s loud gig there!)  and there was a real vibe around the place.  Now…well, how things have changed.  The Bradford Playhouse is showing promising signs, but if a nice independent bar like The Love Apple can’t make ends meet, well, we’ve got problems.  Other highlights that I’ve seen there include Jeffrey Lewis (at which I was very proud to be part of the support with Wilful Missing), Dufus and The Wave Pictures (a great, yet poorly attended gig, again at which Wilful Missing were lucky enough to be asked to support).  I was also at the Jeremy Warmsley gig at which one Laura Groves made her first appearance, many a moon before blossoming into Blue Roses.  So, thanks must go to Pav and co for giving us The Love Apple, and I wish him and his staff the best of luck for whatever they do next.

Here’s what I played in my show tonight:

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Eclectic Mainline 26th May 2010 – Darren Hayman session

Tonight on BCB we had a special guest in one Darren Hayman. He came into BCB with his band before their gig at Theatre in the Mill on 1st May.

Darren Hayman at BCB

Darren Hayman at BCB

We shared the session between two of this evening’s shows. If you were listening to Too Much Too Young at 6:30pm with Patrick and Keiron, you will have had the delight of hearing Darren Hayman’s BCB session version of “Room To Grow”. I then featured two more tunes by Darren and his band in my show Eclectic Mainline at 8pm:

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Don’t look back, but there’s a band over there playing a whole album

In Phil Cope’s recent review of the ATP Festival we attended, he expressed an aversion to the modern trend of artists performing a seminal album in its entirety at a gig. Phil’s objection was prompted by Spiritualized performing their 1997 album Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space at the festival. I would like to defend this increasingly popular phenomenon.

J Spaceman at ATP: which song shall we do next, band?

J Spaceman at the ATP Festival: "which song shall we do next, band?"

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ATP Festival curated by Matt Groening – Day 3

Matt Groening introducing Daniel Johnston as his favourite songwriter

Matt Groening introducing Daniel Johnston as his "favourite songwriter"

Sunday dawns and Jim becomes my hero twice in ten minutes by making me a fried egg sandwich and telling me he once saw Spike Milligan in a pub in Manchester. Simon rather coyly reveals his affection for Spear of Destiny and I resolve to play the excellent “Do You Believe in the Westworld” on the radio for him, only to forget later and feel like a dick for doing so.

We race to the Centre Stage to see Boredoms again, just to reassure ourselves that we weren’t victim to some kind of mass hallucination yesterday and they are once again, amazing. We then decamp to Reds, the smallest of the Butlins venues to see Viv Albertine’s Limerice who are excellent. Continue reading

ATP Festival curated by Matt Groening – Day 2

Saturday begins with two hours of 70’s kids cartoon Hong Kong Phooey on the excellent ATP TV channel provided for the weekend. Refreshed by the antics of the titular kung fu practicing canine, we venture forth into the unknown. [I ventured forth a little earlier than the others and caught Hello Saferide, in Reds. I was rather impressed by her Swedish knack of finding a good tune, and sentimental lyrics. Ed]

Hello Saferide - melodic and romantic

Hello Saferide - melodic romanticism

Between the four of us (me, Albert, Simon and Jim) we can conjure up little previous knowledge of Boredoms despite the fact that they appear to have been going since about 1942 and have released about half a million records. The notes about them printed in the frankly beautiful programmes (coming with 4 different covers featuring Matt Groening penned caricatures of Iggy, Joanna Newsome, Daniel Johnston and someone we didn’t recognise [either She & Him or Lightning Dust, the jury is still out – ed]) weren’t much help either. In this we simply read a breathless treatise about Boredoms being Japanese, having a penchant for using lots of drummers, and being a bit ace.

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ATP Festival curated by Matt Groening – Day 1

The first thing that hits you when you walk in to the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival is the contrast between the ultra mainstream surroundings of Butlins and the heartening array of freaks who attend. This is demonstrated in microcosm within 5 minutes by a painfully thin young Japanese man wearing a surgical mask and lime green leggings draping himself with impressive languor against a wall featuring a poster for “The Peter Andre Weekend” – three nights at Butlins and a concert featuring the impressively pectoralled housewives’ favourite for a mere £98.

Broadcast

Broadcast - noise, or music?

We will return to bare chested doyens of entertainment in a moment, but our first foray was to see Broadcast, a male/female duo beloved of the hip and the trying-to-be, who amble shyly onto the stage and proceed to stand at two elevated box like contraptions and wrestle out half an hour’s worth of whirrs, drones and howls whist having experimental films “broadcast” (did you see what I did there? ) on top of them. The result is very much an ATP archetype: challenging, startling and beautiful at the same time. The effect is only diluted mid-way through the set when they resort to boring old actual songs. That’s not noise, that’s just music.

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Eclectic Mainline 12th May – Fuck Buttons interview

Well, another May, and another life-changing experience at an All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival.  This year, at the Matt Groening event,  it was Boredoms who turned my life upsite down.  They really were phenomenal.   I hope to have some photos to show you soon.  In the meantime, I can show you the back of my head occasionally popping into view during the start of the Spiritualized set.  Several things brought me close to tears, but this song was the one that actually did it.

Fuck Buttons did a couple of DJ sets at the festival, so it was apt that tonight we had an interview with them in my show.  If there is demand for it, I can make the interview available here on the blog as a podcast.  Here’s the tracklist for tonight’s show:

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Eclectic Mainline 5th May 2010 – Rough Beats Festival preview

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors”
Plato

With that in mind, if you are reading this before the general election (it’s tomorrow at the time of writing) please do one thing for me …..

VOTE!

If you were thinking of not voting at all in protest, i.e. staying away from the polling station, I would like to urge you to still actually go along, but make your protest by instead spoiling your ballot paper. The reason is this: to those counting the votes, there is no difference between your stay-at-home protest and apathy.


Right, now I’ve got that off my chest, on with the show….

Rough Beats Festival 2010 – 4th-6th June

Rough Beats

Rough Beats

“Yorkshire’s best and most original independent music festival” (in their own words, and who’s to disagree?) is back, and to mark it myself and Laura Rawlings previewed the festival in our shows tonight. Partially because Bradford’s Little Attic Records (home to Wilful Missing) are curating one of the stages, there are quite a number of West Yorkshire artists playing. Laura played previous BCB session tracks by some of the artists playing, and I slotted in a few studio recordings by some of the artists too. Full details of the festival can be found on the Rough Beats website.

Here’s the full list of what I played in my show:

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