The first time you see a band that you don’t know at all, and two guys appear on the stage, you wait like five minutes expecting the other two weirdos that are supposed to play in a good rock band. But, after half an hour with ZzZ, you lose that expectation and you slowly realise that those two guys are enough to keep your attention up with drums and organ(!!!), shouts and a lot of dark energy.

Being ‘half a band’ doesn’t mean that they play halfway. The give all of themselves, creating something live that is not captured in the studio. Fresh but sticky sounds, really dark and deep, sometimes trembling psychedelia. I didn’t see anybody going anywhere while these guys were on the stage. Nobody moved either! We were as stunned as you can be watching one of your favorite never-heard-before bands of all times. They’re becoming very popular in the Netherlands, just because of the word of mouth effect coming from concertgoers who never returned to the real world.

They sound very similar to bands like Morphine or The Doors, but these two names are not included in their influences list at the band Myspace profile. Surprisingly, they claim to be influenced by artists like Fela Kuti, Funkadelic and Django Reinhardt!!

zZz will play at Supersonic on 26th July 2009

http://www.last.fm/music/zZz

http://www.myspace.com/zzz

http://www.excelsior-recordings.com/artists/zzz/

By Nicolás Gómez

Tickets – Weekend tickets – £70 / Friday Ticket – £15 / Saturday Ticket – £35 /Sunday Ticket – £35

available from: www.theticketsellers.co.uk
24 hr order line – 0844 870 0000 – Calls cost max 5p per min from BT landline

Also available from
Polar Bear + Swordfish – Birmingham
Rough Trade East – London
Plugd Records – Cork

Please Note:
This show has been changed to Monday July 6th at the Hare & Hounds instead of the 16th of July.

All tickets for the 16th are valid for Monday the 6th show

Tickets from: https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk/buy_tickets/organisers/?id=185
Polar Bear – Kings Heath
Swordfish – Birmingham city centre

www.prefuse73.com

“A range of emotional grappling usually foreign to instrumental hip-hop“ Pitchfork

Mark Ryden

On Wednesday 24th June Jenny & I have been invited to do a talk at the Ikon Gallery as part of their ‘These are a few of my favourite things’ series. Whereby a number of well-known individuals undertake a series of talks inspired by Desert Island Discs. Asked to select their eight favourite works of art,  speakers will reveal their personal inspirations, illustrated by a slide show.

Places are free but should be reserved by calling Ikon on tel. 0121 248 0708.
6.30–7.30pm Free

http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk

David Hockney

Highly recommended  – The first ever Equinox Festival kicks of this Friday in London, a three day media arts festival based on modern spirituality, culture and the occult with film, performance, lectures and music including John Zorn, Z’ev, Aethenor, Burial Hex, K11, Kinit Her, Threshold House Boys Choir (aka Sleazy of Throbbing Gristle and Coil) as well as many others.  Comus, the legendary acid folk pioneers, will be performing their seminal ‘First Utterance’ album in their first UK performance in 30 years!

Some tickets are still available from http://wegottickets.com as well as Treadwell’s Bookshop and Rough Trade East.  Limited tickets will be available on the door.
For full details check http://www.equinoxfestival.org

We have Aethenor (members of Sunn 0)))+ Guapo + Ulver + Shora) performing in Birmingham on Saturday 13th June with Einstellung + very special guests more details here

Rock A Rolla – May/June 2009

Thorr’s Hammer, the cult doom outfit featuring Sunn0))) duo Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson, have reformed for a very special performance at this year’s Supersonic Festival in Birmingham, UK. The band, active for a total of 6 weeks in 1994/1995, produced an EP and a demo, and disbanded once vocalist Runhild Gammelsæter aka Ozma, returned to her native Norway, ensuring their cult status and remaining the stuff of legend – until now. Runhild fills us in on underground metal’s unlikeliest comebacks.

How did this reunion happen?
We have talked about doing a reunion on and off for the last 10 years. Earlier I was negative, as I didn’t like new versions of bands who did ‘reunions’ years after. Sometimes the imaginary, epic memory of an old band can be disturbed by waking it back up to life – and the once handsome musicians are now old and wrinkly. But I am older now, and a bit more flexible in my thinking, and perhaps more nostalgic. Last year, Stephen brought up the reunion idea and all of us felt it was a good idea, that it, most of all, would be fun to play together again. Stephen really likes Supersonic festival and approached them about it. So it’s not like we had offers to play for big money or anything. Actually, I would like to point out that we are making no money on this.

It’s almost the same line-up: yourself, Stephen, Greg, Jamie Sykes and Guy Pinhas. What happened to original bassist James Hale?
Frankly, I don’t know. I lost touch with him when I left the states.

Why, do you think, given such a short lifespan and hardly any recordings, did the band go on to be such cult favourites amongst the extreme metal underground?
Four things. One: the music is quite good, if I may say so. Our stuff was different from other metal bands then and I can’t think of another band with the same sound since. I don’t believe we would be cult today if people didn’t enjoy the music. Two: a small teenage girl with very long blonde hair growling like a man is very noticeable amongst the bands composed of dudes in black t-shirts. Three: being in the right place at the right time. TH is a child of its time, and a cross-cultural band. We made a new mix of different genres: grungy doom, which was born in Seattle at the time by bands like Earth and Tad, together with Norwegian vocals about Vikings, which was used by the Norwegian black metal bands. To sum it up, we were into Norwegian black metal, from all parts of the world, and lived in Seattle when grunge and doom were born. Four: Steve and Greg went on to become big rock stars with Sunn0))), so people started looking into their other projects. That being said, the surprising thing for me is that the record has sold evenly through all these years. It hasn’t sold a lot, but we keep selling copies after 15 years, without any promotion or touring, which I think is quite rare. I am very grateful to the people who like our music and have kept the word of mouth of TH alive for all these years.

Are you planning to do anything more after Supersonic? Any new music maybe?
We might make some new music, I don’t know yet. TH is friends having fun; we’ll do whatever we like. But we will never be a tight band doing tours. Our jobs and other projects don’t allow it, and TH is and always will be old school and low key. I like that we are cult, it makes me proud.

Thorr’s Hammer play Supersonic Festival on Saturday 25th of July alongside Corrupted, The Accused, Iron Lung, Monotonix, Skullflower and many more
Tickets: https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk
24 hr order line – 0844 870 0000 – Calls cost max 5p per min from BT landline

A massive thanks to all of you that turned out to see Omar Souleyman + Group Doueh last week as part of the Sublime Frequencies tour, it has to be one of our favorite shows of the year and I was particularly enjoying the fact that so many of us non dancing types were unable to stop ourselves shimmying – the music was just so infectious.
I urge anyone who gets the chance to try and catch the tour:

Wed 27 MANCHESTER, MINT LOUNGE (Promoted by Faktion)
9pm-1am / £8 adv/£10 door (£9 NUS concession on door only) / 0161 839 8008 / www.boomkat.com / www.faktionmcr.blogspot.com
Thu 28 NORWICH, ARTS CENTRE
8pm-11pm / £10/£8 concessions / 01603 660352 / www.norwichartscentre.co.uk
Fri 29 LONDON, TUFNELL PARK DOME (Promoted by Upset The Rhythm)
8pm-2am / £10 / www.wegottickets.com / www.upsettherhythm.co.uk
Sat 30 CAMBRIDGE, UNITARIAN CHURCH (Note – change of venue)
7pm-11pm / £10 adv / www.fadedwords.co.uk / www.palimpsest-festival.co.uk

A huge well done to Qu Junktions for putting the tour together and bring these guys over to the UK, it was very much appreciated and well worth all your hard work planning!

We are delighted to add a few more extraordinary acts to perform at this years Supersonic Festival, including Japanese all girl band NISSENMONDAI, a 10 piece collaborative project in the form of DRUMIZE (feat. DJ SCOTCH EGG + ex members of the BOREDOMS + TRENCHER), TWEAK BIRD a brother duo who produce heavy experimental prog and psych-infused rock (a definite one for fans of the MELVINS), LIGHT TRAP which is the latest project of Nicholas Bullen (original member of Napalm Death + Scorn) in collaboration with none other than Johnny Doom and the drummer from Una Corda.

Full line up:
Head Of David (first show in 23 years) / 65 Days of Static / The Accused / Arbouretum / Atomized/ Bobby Previte / Caribou / Corrupted / Chris Herbert / Diagonal /Drumize /  Earthless /Flower  Corsano Duo / Goblin / Growing / Iron Lung / Jarboe / Khyam Allami / Kim Hiorthøy / Kylie Minoise / Light Trap / Master Musicians Of Bukkake/ Monotonix / Nancy Wallace / Nissenmondai / Pontiak / Pram / PRE / Remember Remember/ Rose Kemp/ Scorn / Skullflower/  Taint / Theo / Thorr‚s Hammer / Tweak Bird / Venetian Snares / Zu / ZzZ

Tickets – Weekend tickets – £70 / Friday Ticket – £15 / Saturday Ticket – £35 /Sunday Ticket – £35

available from: www.theticketsellers.co.uk
24 hr order line – 0844 870 0000 – Calls cost max 5p per min from BT landline

We are delighted to have confirmed some more amazing additions to this years Supersonic Festival line up, which include the unruly trio MONOTONIX, the enchanting ROSE KEMP and the latest Rock Action signing REMEMBER REMEMBER as well as the multi talented Norwegian electronic musician, graphic designer, illustrator & filmmaker KIM HIORTHøY (Kim will be both performing and showing some of his films at this years festival).

Monotonix
Monotonix are a punk trio from Tel Aviv, They formed in November 2005, set up on the floor of the club with the audience, and the party began. But the party usually got too
wild, the power got cut, the cops were called and Monotonix were banned from playing again almost everywhere. Before long, they were looking for good places to play outside of Israel — and they were delighted to find that there are more rock and roll party places outside of Israel than inside!  Who knows what antics might occur with these guys at Supersonic!

Rose Kemp
Part of folk-rock heritage, Rose is the daughter of Maddy Prior and Rick Kemp from seminal, Pioneering British band Steeleye Span.  Rose’s unique powerful vocal is sometimes operatic, sometimes fierce but equally haunting, her musical style is extremely difficult to categorize, folk-esque /heavy rock has previously been cited but doesn’t really sum up this exceptional artist.  Lyrically her songs are compelling and their content somewhat mysterious but backed up with heavy rock guitars, oversized drums, old synths and organs, they are infectious and thought provoking.   Rose’s influences are numerous but include the classic rock of Black Sabbath, alternative rock legends The Melvins and drone artists such as Earth and Om. She is also influenced by classic Black Metal, Doom and 70’s prog right through to timeless songwriters including Kate Bush and Tom Waits, amongst many others.

Remember Remember (AKA multi-instrumentalist Graeme Ronald), is the newest signing to Mogwai’s Rock Action Records,  A kaleidoscope of sonic textures taking in Krautrock, drone, modern classical, found sound collage, primitive techno, gushing melodies and free noise, the debut album met with glowing praise from such disparate sources as experimental music blogs and the NME.
A Remember Remember live show can be Graeme alone with a loopstation, a guitar and a box of toys, an eleven piece quasi-classical ensemble and various permutations in between. Expect layers of echoing guitars, bubblewrap bio-rhythms, chamber-pop flourishes and perhaps a musical shark.

Kim Hiorthoy
A Norwegian electronic musician, graphic designer, illustrator, filmmaker and writer. Hiorthøy’s musical style is difficult to classify; the Smalltown Supersound website offers the following description: “On his records Kim Hiorthøy combines weird beats, lo-fi/leftfield electronics, field recordings, electro-acoustic sounds and samples, resulting in a sound all his own.” His live sets, however, differ from his recordings, with louder, faster beats and a techno undertone.

They join:
Head Of David (first show in 23 years) / 65 Days of Static / The Accused / Arbouretum / Atomized/ Berg Sans Nipple / Caribou / Corrupted / Chris Herbert / Diagonal / Earthless /Flower & Corsano Duo / Goblin/ Growing / Iron Lung / Jarboe / Khyam Allami / Kim Hiorthøy / Kylie Minoise / Master Musicians Of Bukkake/ Monotonix / Nancy Wallace / Pontiak / Pram / PRE / Remember Remember/ Rose Kemp/ Scorn / Skullflower/  Taint / Theo / Thorr’s Hammer / Venetian Snares / Zu / ZzZ

Weekend Tickets from: www.theticketsellers.co.uk 24 hr hotline 0844 870 0000
Polar Bear + Swordfish – Birmingham
Rough Trade East – London
Plugd Records – Cork