Welcome to the third edition of Capsule’s very own zine where you will find a variety of articles, reviews and rants, doodles, recipes and listings as well as a bit of info on what Capsule are up to. This was meant to come out the weekend of Flatpack festival but unfortunatley there was a problem at the printers, so expect to see the printed version of this beauty in various pubs/ what’s left of our independent record stores and at our gigs. Enjoy!

Flatpack Festival is well under way and a whole host of exciting events are planned for the weekend. We’re particularly excited about:

Friday 26th March / 8pm til late / Rainbow Warehouse, Digbeth

Synth Eastwood: Fast Forward – a night of audio visual revelry

Live sets from:

CLARK (Warp)
performing a one-off set using sounds recorded around Birmingham;
GANGPOL & MIT (Pictoplasma)
Manic French AV duo
HEALTH AND EFFICIENCY
Digbeth-born psych six-piece
Plus the Synth Eastwood band, a man in a box responding to your art requests and a lineup of Dublin and Birmingham DJs into the wee hours.

Tickets: £8

http://www.flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/fast-forward-with-synth-eastwood

Saturday 27th March / 8pm / IKON Eastside

Capsule & Flatpack Festival present a screening of Mogwai film ‘Burning’,  featuring a Q & A with Stuart Braithwaite

Tickets: £6

http://www.flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/burning

Saturday 27th March / 10pm til late / VIVID

A Plasticine Party – an Eastside knees up celebrating the beginning of the end of Flatpack. As well as various guest DJs, punk-dub multi-media threesome Jackdaw with Crowbar and Zappa-infused ten-piece outfit Moon Unit will be performing, plus there will be a DJ set from Stuart ‘Mogwai’ Braithwaite. Presented in association with We Are Eastside.

Tickets: £4

http://www.flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/a-plasticine-party

Capsule have been busy bees just recently and have co-ordinated the WE ARE EASTSIDE initiative, a guide to some of the most exciting creative spaces and projects happening in Eastside (aka Digbeth). As part of the project we have created this beautifully designed brochure (designer James Langdon) as well as a brand new blog to keep people up to date with activity in the area. There will also be a walking tour EAST STRIDE over the weekend of FLATPACK FESTIVAL with local historian Ben Waddington.

This is a really thrilling time for Birmingham as many of the independent creative organisations start working together, we can now really see a cluster of activity. Here’s to the future of collaboration!

As part of Flatpack Festival and the launch of We Are Eastside, local historian Ben Waddington will be conducting walking tours of Eastside. Explore hidden gems, learn more of its industrial heritage and discover the creative explorations in this creative playground.

Saturday 27th March 12pm
Sunday 28th March 12pm
Sunday 28th March 3pm

Meet outside the Old Crown pub.

The tour is FREE, places are limited though so book ahead by emailing [email protected] with ‘East Stride’ in the title.

We Are Eastside; your guide to the organisations that host and produce bold new work across film, digital media, crafts, music, visual arts, literature and photography all based in Eastside, Birmingham, UK.

We are:
7 INCH CINEMA / FLATPACK FESTIVAL – BIRMINGHAM JAZZ – CAPSULE –CRAFTSPACE – THE CUSTARD FACTORY – EASTSIDE PROJECTS – GRAND UNION – IKON EASTSIDE – PROJECT PIGEON – PUNCH – RHUBARB RHUBARB – THE EDGE – TINDAL STREET PRESS – THE LOMBARD METHOD – VIVID – VRU

Thanks to all who came to see Mono on Tuesday at The Asylum – an all consuming perfomance brilliantly opened by the high priestess of folk doom Rose Kemp.

Last Saturday saw the stellar line up of Autechre, Russell Haswell & Rob Hall. Autechre played their usual trick of playing in complete darkness, hence the lack of photographic evidence here but it was great to see so many people braving the cold and raving to the early hours.

Before that Atsuhiro Ito created a phenomenal audio visual spectacle in VIVID, and it was particularly great to see such a great turn out for such a niche show – who says Birmingham’s  shit? Great local support came from Nicholas Bullen and Windscale.

Thanks to Mark Hoy for the above photographs
Next Capsule show? Well it’s only Eyehategod isn’t it? Tickets are selling FAST for this so get them while you can from theticketsellers or our friends at Swordfish Records & Polar Bear

It’s been a bit of a crazy time here at SXSW in Austen Texas, despite having brought a bit of the British weather with us (yip full on rain yesterday) our launch of Home Of Metal has been amazingly well received – in brief here are some photos from our time out here more info coming post a bit of sleep.

Lemmy’s tour bus with the Home Of Metal logo on the side – spreading the word all round Austin.

Lemmy arrives at the world premiere of the film ‘Lemmy’ – a fancy red carpet event

Q & A with the directors of the film Wes Orshoski and Greg Olliver in front of a very enthusiastic audience

Followed the next day by our very own launch of Home Of Metal with Johnny Doom interviewing Lemmy at the British Music Embassy – the man is a living legend and extremely witty.
Check out Home Of Metal

Come on who wouldn’t fly out to LA at the drop of a hat to meet Ozzy Osbourne? well maybe not everyone but Capsule couldn’t miss out on the opportunity so thats exactly what i’ve been up to this past weekend and i can assure you its been possibly one of the most surreal experience’s of my life this far.

Home of Metal have been exchanging emails and phone conversations with a very lovely lady called Lynn at Sharon Osbournes Management for a little while, we finally settled on a date for 8th March .

Not being able to afford to fly our very dedicated film crew (sorry Matt, Ella & Martin – we would’ve if we could!!) we had to rope in some willing volunteers to do the filming and interview and managed to find two lovely chaps Ewan Bowman (filming) and Ally Christie (interviewing) that live in LA. After some slight deliberation we decided it was too good a chance to get to meet the man himself and tell him about the project in person, so we made the decision that one of us should go, i was more than happy to take one for the team, booked the flights on Thursday and flew out on Saturday.

Arriving late Saturday night there wasn’t much chance for exploring so that was left to Sunday when I took the opportunity to indulge in some record shopping at the amazing Amoeba Records (the photos say it all) spending most of the day there I eventually tore myself away to go and meet up with Ewan for some food to figure out our game plan for the following day.

Amoeba Records

Had a lovely evening and all was going to plan, early to bed to get some much needed rest in preparation for the next day only to be awoken in the middle of the night with terrible stomach ache and shivers, spent the next 4 hours being sick at regular intervals, obviously my lovely dinner wasn’t that lovely after all.

Now we can look at this one of two ways, either it was very unfortunate that i was feeling extremely sick and therefor didn’t get any sleep and couldn’t focus on the following day, or – that the fact that I felt so ill stopped me from feeling nervous and therefor meant that I was able to function and get through the interview, i’m going with the second one.

So a half a litre of some disgusting tasting cherry rehydration liquid, lots of water and a couple of bananas and I was ready for action (well as good as i was going to get anyway)

We had a bit of a drive out to meet Ozzy so we arranged to meet early as we were all anxious to get there on time and not get stuck in traffic, this meant that we got there at about 11.20 (little too early as we weren’t due till 1pm) so we spent some time in a near by mall drinking coffee and swapping stories.

At 12pm we decided to bite the bullet and head back over, we found our way easily up to the house. We rang the door bell and Tony (Ozzy’s PA) answered he came to the door to meet us and we were greeted by a small selection of dogs (one had left a little present in the hall way so we felt very at home straight away). We were led down to Ozzy’s home recording studio in the basement via walls lined with gold discs and awards, the studio has deep red walls, dark wood flooring with gold crosses on the door handles. Ally was most impressed that there was a urinal in the bathroom (we all have own personal goals in life) i was impressed by the fridge full of Fiji water bottles and commented on how much they sell them for at Selfridges back home.

After a short while setting up cameras and a bit of time to explain the project in detail to Tony, we were ready for the interview. Ozzy walked in we all shook hands and introduced ourselves.. the strange thing was that it didn’t feel strange at all, i think it has a lot to do with the fact that we were made to feel very welcome by Tony and all of the conversations i’d had with Lynn leading up to it were great too – so thank you very much to both of them for getting us there!!. anyway Ozzy’s first question to me was where was i from – i told him Hall Green – “oh i know it yeah I know it”

So we explained the project and he just started reeling off stories even before we got to the questions! The interview went amazingly from finish to end, although i’m sure we’ve got a lot to learn with not trying to make background noise (sorry Matt) but its difficult not to laugh when Ozzy’s telling you how “a sign of success in Birmingham was being able to drink mid week” or something along those lines!

Prior to me leaving Lisa had been and brought a Brummie t-shirt from the CIB shop to give to Ozzy as a gift so i presented him with this and asked for a photo with me and him, at which point he gave me a  big hug, Ewan taking the photo declared “ah thats beautiful, look at that Brummy love!” the boys had their photies taken too …

and we all got signed photos – so that we have something to add to the archive!!
Interview over, we packed up said our good byes and made our way out, i nearly fainted leaving the house and had to make a sharp exit, think the adrenaline that had kept me going had finally subsided…

shot off to get something to eat, Ewan dropped me at the airport got on the flight at 8.30pm Monday night arrived in London Tuesday 3pm and back in Birmingham in time for tea (well a piece of dry toast for me please) and now.. here we are in Texas about to interview Lemmy, its a hard life but someones got to do it…

check out HOMEOFMETAL.COM

Home Of Metal are delighted to be launching our digital archive out at SXSW in Austin Texas. To help us get this off with a bang the legendary frontman of Motorhead Lemmy will be doing a Q & A with Johnny Doom from Kerrang! Radio in front of loads of music industry folk. Fused Magazine will be doing a podcast of the event and so will Kerrang! Radio so you’ll get the chance to hear all about it.

Lemmy will be a very busy man during his time at SXSW as he is there to help launch a film all about him entitled ‘Lemmy“.

We’re pretty excited that phase two of our Home Of Metal archive is now up and running, a huge thanks to the Tak! Team for doing such an amazing job. Feel free to have a look and get involved. www.homeofmetal.com

For those of you not familiar with the project here is some info:
Home of Metal is a celebration of the music that was created in the West Midlands, its legacy and influence across the world. Bringing people together to share their passion for the music by creating a digital archive, heritage tours, exhibitions and ultimately a permanent collection dedicated to telling the story of Metal and its unique birthplace.

The Home of Metal digital archive is an opportunity for fans from all corners of the globe to share their passion for Heavy Metal music and contribute stories and memorabilia by uploading images, sound files & film footage to www.homeofmetal.com

In the summer of 2011 Capsule will be producing and curating a series of ambitious exhibitions and associated programme under the banner of Home of Metal taking place throughout The Black Country and Birmingham UK. To include exhibitions at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Wolverhampton Art Gallery & The New Art Gallery Walsall throughout June – September 2011, plus a conference, concerts and film programme to take place in The Black Country early September 2011.