With exactly one week to go until we open the doors to the 10th edition of Supersonic Festival, we partnered with the wonderful Network Awesome to put a selection of related films together from the last decade of Supersonic. It contains rare footage of Coil from our first ever festival as well as tracks by Broadcast, Nisenenemondai, Zu and a whole host of interviews. Enjoy!

Network Awesome is a new online TV site that curates the media film, documentaries, and video collections from all eras of broadcast history. It’s free, not full of junk, and it broadcasts 6 new shows each day. The archives are stand-alone repositories of media, available anytime and are, like, totally social so you can share it with your friends. Root around in there! You’ll be amazed at what you find.

If you haven’t bought tickets yet now is your chance, they can be purchased HERE

Here’s the third and final edition of our festival podcasts, an awesome selection of Supersonic related artists loving chosen by Chris Downing. If you missed out on them beforehand, the first and second editions are still available for streaming!

Playlist

1. Jarboe – Ascend

2. Mothertrucker – Festival Strength

3. Lau Nau – Painovoimaa, Valoa

4. Hype Williams – Businessline

5. Hey Colossus – Almeria, Spain

6. Doomsday Student – Ape In Love

7. Napalm Death – The Crucifixion Of Possessions

8. Stian Westerhus – Trailer Trash Ballad

9. Nicholas Bullen – Proximity

10. Merzbow – Slave New Desart

11. My Disco – A Turreted Berg

12. Oxbow – S Bar X

13. Modified Toy Orchestra – Monkey Hands

14. Moonn – Night Of The Vampire

15. Gnod – Why Don’t You Smile Like The Other Children

16. Body/Head – Live

Weekend tickets are just £80 and available from HERE

We’re very pleased to announce that tuba duo ORE will support OM at their gig at the Rainbow Warehouse on Tuesday 25 September, adding to the abstract doom theme of the night. Tickets are selling fast, don’t miss out – https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk

They have recently released their first EP ‘Beyond Tree and Stone’, which can be purchased digitally via http://oretubadoom.bandcamp.com/

You can also catch ORE in a special collaboration with Japanese noise maestro KK Null at this year’s Supersonic Festival. Read more about that here http://www.supersonicfestival.com/line-up/special-performances/ore-and-kk-null

Day tickets are available now via https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk and of course weekend tickets can still be purchased for £80. Not bad for three days of adventurous music, art, film, workshops, talks and more!

And here’s a reminder of some events that are free to weekend ticket holders, but require booking.

Counting In: The Art of Listening

In partnership with Sound and Music, we are presenting an intriguing panel exploring contexts for the presentation of sound works and performances and approaches to listening. The panel will include artist Lucas Abela (aka Justice Yeldham and creator of the Vinyl Rally), music writer Frances Morgan, Curator Irene Revell (Electra) and composer Dr Simon Hall. An excellent way to start the weekend, the event will take place Friday 19 October, 1.30pm-5.00pm at Birmingham City University’s School of Art. This event is free to weekend ticket holders, but you do need to book a place by emailing [email protected] with ‘Listening’ in the title. Otherwise, tickets can be purchased for £10 via https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk

Imperfect Cinema: Hallide Oxide

An amazing opportunity to learn DIY cinema techniques, participants will also contribute visuals to Drunk in Hell’s set. Imperfect Cinema will be joined by renowned sonic and visual artist Nicholas Bullen to discuss Imperfect Cinema and its influences, including the seminal Crass Records ‘Bullshit Detector’ compilation albums which featured the first vinyl appearance of Napalm Death. The workshop is free to weekend ticket holders but capacity is limited, to book a place email [email protected],uk with ‘Imperfect Cinema’ in the subject line.

Supersonic audience by Mark R Rhodes

Want to feature in our Zine…well Supersonic is doing a call out for all previous festival attendees to share their memories of the festival with us. The question we have chosen is “How would you describe your favourite Supersonic experience in a tweet of no more than 140 characters?”

In those 140 characters, we want you to sum up your experiences of previous festivals, highlighting key moments and memorable performances. You could even comment on your experiences in the legendary Supersonic tea room, marketplace or elsewhere!

Send your posts to either [email protected] or [email protected] by the 14th September and we will do our best to print as many as possible. We look forward to hearing from you! And of course feel free to tweet us your response @supersonicfest

We Are Eastside presents Birmingham – The Magic City as part of ‘City States’ at the 7th Liverpool Biennial – welcome to the hidden undergrounds, blushing civic pride and future visions of our ‘magic’ city.

‘The Magic City’ is borrowed from a proposed artwork by BAZ, inspired by the sign that originally welcomed visitors to Birmingham, Alabama, USA. BAZ want to build a new version of the sign next to the planned hi-speed rail station destined for Eastside, Birmingham, UK. BAZ believe everything Birmingham does is magic.

As part of the exhibition, Capsule will present a collage of 1980s Grindcore fanzines from the birthplace of Heavy Metal and a snapashot of the formation of the one of the most extreme bands in the genre’s history – Napalm Death.

We Are Eastside is a consortium of Birmingham based arts organisations, flying the flag for the very outer edges of the city’s culture.

The Liverpool Biennial runs 15 September – 25 November and Birmingham – the Magic City can be found at Liverpool John Moore University Copperas Hill Building. More info here

MV & EE with the Home Comfort Sound System

Vermont is perhaps best known as a leading producer of maple syrup and for being the birthplace of a certain ice cream company. It is also the home of another ‘sweet thing’, MV & EE, a musical collective focused on Matt “MV” Valentine and his partner Erika “EE” Elder.

With past contributions from musicians such as J. Mascis and Chris Corsano, the past decade has seen MV & EE release an impressive number of albums. Their latest, ‘Space Homestead’ (on Woodsist, 2012) is a wall of sound applied through DIY sensibilities recorded over the course of a year in 9 different studios. Sometimes lunar blues, sometimes fingerstyle space noise, sometimes lonesome frontier folk…always environments.

It makes sense then that the duo have decided to construct and tour with their very own handcrafted environment in the form of their ‘Home Comfort Sound System’. In this special one-off tour, hand-built PA and analogue visuals will be installed to beautifully twisted effect, immersing the audience in MV & EE’s other-wordly aesthetic. Built in blissful collaboration with sound engineer Tall of Suffolk’s Ambush Cinema, the performance space constructed will combine 16mm projections, slides, oils, and customised lighting devised by Hogge of Bristol’s infamous Cube Cinema. Created will be a unique sonic and visual experience capturing the curious and exploratory DIY nature embodied by this free spirited musical partnership. Acoustic folk is experimentally combined with spaced out acid rock jams and psychedelic vibes à la Grateful Dead.

Listen to “Sweet Sure Gone” from the new album streaming on adhoc.fm here.

http://mvandee.blogspot.com/

Health & Efficiency

Support comes from Health & Efficiency who have a penchant for using effects and loops pedals to create inspired novel post-rock electro-folk compositions. Banjo, bass and guitar feature heavily in this experimental noise collective.

Listen and download their 3-track album for free here.

http://music.healthandefficiency.net/

MV & EE with the Home Comfort Sound System + Health & Efficiency will perform at Birmingham’s Custard Factory Gallery on Wednesday 19th September. For tickets visit: https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk/

Sleepy Sun, San Francisco’s answer to sweet psych rock arrive this Monday 10th of September to play Birmingham’s very own Hare & Hounds. The self-proclaimed ‘rambling band’ are fresh from a summer tour which saw them take to the stage at ATP’s I’ll Be Your Mirror festival and both Primavera festivals in Spain and Portugal.

After years of honing their skills in the van, this collective of dreamer-vagabonds have finally released an album which captures something of both the beautiful and the brutal in the form of this year’s ‘Spine Hits’. Recorded against a desert backdrop with Dave Catching (QOTSA, Eagles of Death Metal) producing, Sleepy Sun have managed to fuse the heavy jams they became known for with saccharine laced pop melodies that are hard for anyone to resist.

ATP netted a snapshot of the recording process viewable below:

You can also listen to the new album ‘Spine Hits’ streaming in its entirety courtesy of Clash Music here.

Support comes from Mustard Tiger and a new band featuring ex members of Mothwasp and Stinky Wizzleteat. Tickets for Sleepy Sun’s show on Monday 10th September are available now via https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk