• American Heritage – chicago
• Foe – ex geiger counter
• Art of burning water – mevinesque style
• Sinners vs Swimmers – deadsunrisng meets solway fifth
  (literally)

American Heritage – www.americanfuckingheritage.com
Formed in Chicago during the spring on 1997 by Adam Norden, American Heritage were an instrumental group trying to challenge traditional song writing styles and structures without being lumped in the over used “Art Rock” bracket. In no time AH became one of chicagos most original, respected and triumphant underground bands. Crippelingly heavy, insanely complex and stupidly infectious they seamlessly bound unconventional riffing with pure brute force. Recently AH have opted for an even heavier sound and have added vocals to the mix, something they always wanted but couldnt before figure out how to encorporate. 

Foe – www.foemusic.co.uk
London based power trio formed in November 2001 after the split of mathrock band Geiger Counter. This previous incarnation had already cut itself a sizeable niche in the underground artrock scene after support slots with the likes of Tortoise, June of 44 and Sweet The Leg Johnny. They also had a record produced by Bob Western of Shellac. Foe’s formation was born out of a strong desire by it’s members to broaden their already complex songwriting style with new levels of mental endurance. They set about wirting the most dark and warped instrumental pieces of music they could, discovering and honing their sound as they went. They are known for mystifying their audiences with their cold and intricate song structures.

Art Of Burning Water – www.artofburningwater.co.uk
Their influences are eclectic and their sound has been influenced and inspired by, Iraqi and Irish folk music, Killing Joke, Swans, Palastine, Melvins, Neurosis, Zeni Geva, Rush and The Who. They are complicated progressive (not Prog) rock – mathy and heavy and doomy. “Absolutely disregarding the book entitled ‘How to write a catchy song’ and instead divulging the ‘How to baffle, confuse and intrigue’ notebook instead. … tight, dynamic and original with good sound. Art of Burning Water aren’t heavy, they aren’t even amazingly technical, but they are damn intelligent musicians, throwing in weird idea after odd moment, polyrhythmic as well, just to mess with the mind some more. For those who like their sludge, and their math-rock, and their odd chaotic metal and Neurosis-esque bands, this will appeal all round. This is clever music from disjointed, intricate people, for clever people who like disjointed, intricate music.”

• Why?
• Iacon
• Coldrice and Capsule DJs

Event Details:

why? grew up in Cincinnati playing kickball in the cul de sac and watching 8-bit Nintendo in his big brother’s attic bedroom. The minor key melodies of religious music and the tight belt, tight-laced shoes of his soft-spoken middle childhood in part provide the impetus for why?’s candy-time-dissonant, singsong-suicide style.

In addition to his membership in cLOUDDEAD and reaching quiet, why? has collaborated with Hood, Fog, boombip, jel and sole; he has toured the world twice, performed two Peel Sessions under the cLOUDDEAD moniker, and is admired by Boards of Canada, Mum, Stereolab, Daniel-son Famile, The Notwist and Mogwai.

why?’s quirky production and infectious melodies are merely sugar coating for the contents of a young man with unbuttoned lips and a gut spitting words.

For further info, check:

http://www.anticon.com
http://www.coldrice.com/

• Sightings
• Death of a Champion
• Altamont

Event Details:
Screaming out of New York City is the shit hot sounds that stretch the 3-piece rock format out like a molten piece of taffy. 11 songs, real short and frothing at the mouth. You can hear a three piece band in the classic guitar-bass-drums format make the kind of noise others would need electronics for. Fans of Mainliner, free rock like Wolf Eyes, quiet walks in the park, Harry Pussy, Yoko Ono and herbal tea will really dig this slippery slab. This is a complete baaad-ass hate fest with sub-dermal bass, paper thin razor guitar and Axis of Evil drumfuckery.

The band has toured with Load acts Lightning Bolt and Pink and Brown and played with Van Halen, Guns and Roses, and Creed. They are superstars of the noisy rock mafia, have quick tempers, and unflinching instincts. The songs are fast, the levels in-the-red, and lyrics unintelligible.

for more info check
www.loadrecords.com/bands/sightings.html

MUZIQ (planet mu/rephlex)
VENETIAN SNARES (planet mu)
the CHURCH of GARY BUSEY (experimental seafood records)
K-FORMATION (experimental seafood records)
FROG POCKET (mouthmoth Records/Planet Mu records)

Dj sets from AUTOMATON (chaoticcity/earko)
LOOPZ (the Brum creative/Ê
www.loopz.co.uk)
DEXTACY (the Brum creative)

Aaron Funk (aka Venetian Snares) hails from Winnipeg in Canada. Since his debut 12″ in 1999 on a small Minneapolis label he has risen out of the drill’n’bass/breakcore mire to become one of the most astonishing (and popular) musicians working in the experimental electronic sphere (alongside Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and boards Of Canad). Each new album from Aaron brings with it a new sound, a new atmosphere, a whole new world – he never repeats what’s gone before. It could be described as a mutant post-punk ragga-jungle pop music for an alternative reality. Aaron just calls his music surrealism.

“Venetian Snares is to Music what Satan is to Christianity: a profoundly malevolent force who looks great, intimidates a lot of boring people and is, despite everything, insanely popular… It’s like experiencing The Empire Strikes Back on 3D IMAX on LSD…” Piers Martin – NME

HECKER
PITA
HIAZ
RUSSELL HASWELL
VD_MOTH

Event Details:
The Austrian label MEGO started in 1994. Regarded as one of the most respected label’s of its time, due to the extreme effort that is put into packaging and artwork, as well as a glorious disregard for being pigeonholed into any one genre… It is the aim that Mego releases and ideas should be collected and experienced for many years to come and not be seen as some fodder for hopeless fashion victimised disc jockeys.

Four MEGO artists present real-time material at this event, they also include some fun games from dreamjackpot. Label boss Peter Rehberg [PITA] states: “its a game of 2 halves really: One half improvised ‘in patch’ audio work outs using SC 2.9 and 2.10 patches developed by Andreas Pieper for Mego, one half playback and manipulation of own and other persons audio works”. The Britsh Artists Russell Haswell uses generative audio software to create audio so physical as to provide a collapsing sculptural like experience. The German Florian Hecker [HECKER] Uses the Computer Hard and Software enviroments, live demonstrations include a broadband mix of historical as well as most recent computer synthesis and file manipulating techniques. [HIAZ] A founding member of Farmersmanual a pan-European, multisensory disturbance conglomerate that had a stream of concerts and performative events since 1995, continuously expanding their performance practice towards environments where the public becomes an essential part of the work. His latest work focuses on creating synesthetical experiences presenting an interconnected, holistic view of the world by cross activating sensual stimuli.

For further info check – www.mego.at

CAPSULE IS A MEMBER OF THE LOGARYHTHM CONSORTIUM, A NEW NATIONWIDE INITIATIVE FOR ELECTRONIC MUSIC
http://www.logarhythm.org.uk

Review from The Wire Magazine

Hecker/Haswell/Pita/Hiaz
The Custard Factory, Digbeth

This was the opening night of Austrian label Mego’s five-date package tour. Its owner Peter Rehberg (alias Pita), Hiaz (a member of Farmers Manual), Florian Hecker (from Germany) and the UK’s own Russell Haswell could all be described as sonic sculptors, using computers to gobble up the very grain of their audio matter, to be spewed out in a heavily altered state.

The whole show wasn’t exactly the embodiment of live entertainment. It’s difficult to discern who’s performing at any given time, with each artist lurking circumspectly in the shadows. In the stretches without video output, we’re just looking at a pair of brooding speaker stacks and four static spotlights. Haswell’s earlier pieces adopted the accepted vocabulary of linear progression, amassing extended rumbles and drones of complementary bass and treble sources, steadily increasing in density and volume. It was Russell who later began to lift the proceedings into a new energy zone, starting to become more agitated, fidgety and fragmented. After Haswell’s throwing down of the gauntlet, Hecker and Hiaz started to engage with dislocation, descending into the lowest bass frequencies that can tickle out what amounts to a near ear-orgasm, even if the price paid is heavy damage to the inner drums.

Even the usually bold Capsule audience was decimated by evening’s end, but my own view was that the greatest pleasure was to be found on a curve that rose gradually upwards during the second, more active, stage of the proceedings.

Martin Longley

 THE RAPTURE
GOLD CHAINS

Currently regarded as one of the finest new acts to emerge from America in the past ten years, The Rapture are set to bring their iconoclastic blend of punk-house-funk-disco to Birmingham. Following a series of highly acclaimed lo-fi singles, EPs and 12″s on respected indie rock and dance labels like Sub Pop, Gold Standard Labs, Output Recordings and DFA, the band have signed a new worldwide deal with ??Vertigo???/// Mercury Records to release their highly anticipated debut album, ‘Echoes’ on 8th September 2003.

The album will be preceded by the release of their seminal classic, ‘House Of Jealous Lovers’ on August 25th, which will be available commercially for the first time, since its limited and highly acclaimed vinyl outing last year. Heralded by club kids, loved by rock fans and embraced by the international music community, the Rapture have found favour from DJ Hell to the Sex Pistols, from Beck to Daft Punk. Their sound is a hybrid of a classic rock’n’roll Molotov, angular guitars and punk rushes, twisted funk and bass pounding electronic experimentalism. The Rapture are a vital, fresh and the only really unique genre-bending force in 2003. The release of ‘House…’ will follow a highly limited edition 12″ version of album standout ‘Killing.’

• DALEK – (USA IPECAC RECORDINGS)
• DESTRUCCTRO SWARMBOTS
• CHURCH OF GARY BUSEY
• NICHOLAS JAMES BULLEN (dj set)
• Capsule djs

Event Details:
Stepping out from behind the dark, ugly shadow of contemporary Hip Hop, Newark, NJ’s Dälek are here to redefine pretenses of the genre now and forever with their challenging new full length on Ipecac Recordings.

By fall of ’98, the young group made yet another uncommon move in the Hip Hop world by committing themselves to a ceaseless, DIY touring ethic which they maintain to this day. It was on the road at a college show that the group met Still. He impressed them by jumping up during their sound check and improvising a 15 minute set on the turntables. While Dälek and the Oktopus are consistently pushing the limits and expectations of the sampler as a musical instrument, Still spends most of his time recreating how audiences hear turntables. Alternately pulling out old school cuts or making the turntable sound like a guitar, a violin, or a wall of white noise, Still aims to be equal parts Grandmaster Flash, Jimi Hendrix, and Merzbow rolled up into one tight afro. The group spent years since meeting Still on the road, captivating audiences across the board opening for such varied groups as Grandmaster Flash, De La Soul, EC8OR, Isis, Prince Paul, DJ Spooky, The Rye Coalition, Lovage, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Pharcyde, Techno Animal, Tomahawk, Funkstrong, and The Roots (to name a few). Not to mention their studio and on-stage collaborations with Avant-Garde Jazz artists like William Hooker and Ravish Momin, to electronic artists like Kid606, Velma, and the legendary Krautrock super-group Faust.

www.ipecac.com
www.deadverse.com 

“Dark and intense, just like the great man himself” is probably what Ben would describe his latest musical project. The church of Gary Busey has been more likened to Detroit and Chicago house producers but with a passion for noise music and grindcore. Melting all these strange musical influences together ,to make experimental music that you can almost dance to is his goal.Creating music with strange techniques with tapes loops,guitars,feedback,drum machines and computers. With a new e.p due out on experimental seafood in the next few months and a series of live dates planed I think it will be a productive year for Mr Busey……and his church of course.
www.experimentalseafood.com

OXBOW – (USA)
MISTRESS
+ FILM SCREENING OF ‘MUSIC FOR ADULTS’ a documentry about oxbows
exploits

OXBOW
the quiet kill off the country road, the time before the time when everything went wrong and the last 16 hours of that great love affair are the seminal beginnings of OXBOW. Designed to be the last aural will and testament of failed humanity, OXBOW actually garnered listeners from among the ranks of the fucked, with their 1990 release FUCKFEST (cfy/pathological). followed by KING OF THE JEWS (cfy), THE BALLS IN THEGREAT MEAT GRINDER COLLECTION (pathological), as well as LET ME BE A WOMAN (brinkman/crippled) and a dizzying travelogue into the land of the lost, SERENADE IN RED (crippled/SST), both recorded by the estimable STEVE ALBINI. And now three years into a new millennial kind of madness, OXBOW releases AN EVIL HEAT (neurot), recorded by GIBBS CHAPMANN (red house painters, faith no more) to an ever increasing critical acclaim.

“As loud as a slaughterhouse and almost as messy, and probably more cathartic than any release you’ll hear this year.” –Alternative Press Magazine

“(A) daredevil dive into the abyss of the abject.” The Wire

“When OXBOW explode it’s with a metaphysical heaviness, drawing in intangible elements, breathing with indescribable import, like a late-periodColtrane freakout” Careless Talk Costs Lives

“The greatest art rock band in the world.” VICE Magazine

www.theoxbow.com/

MISTRESS
“From the writhing social underbelly of darkest Birmingham, monstrous slabs of monolithic grinding doom sludge, drunken chaos, agonising slow mammoth sounds”
Metal Hammer

http://www.geocities.com/stomp666/index2.html