Roadburn 2009 poster by Malleus

We’re just back from Roadburn Festival in Tilburg and had a blast, saw some amazing bands and caught up with friends from all corners of the globe.  Highlights included being kindly invited by Walter to put a panel together as part of the networking event, we discussed the uniqueness, inspiration and similarities of festivals such as Roadburn, Supersonic, Beyond The Pale & Equinox, this was chaired by Louise editor of Terrorizer Magazine. It was a totally surreal experience sitting on a panel with Steve & Kristin Von Till and Scott Kelly from Neurosis as well as being  the curators of Beyond The Pale, sometimes you just have to pinch yourself!
Me, Walter & LouiseScott & Steve from Neurosis

The 013 venue which houses the Roadburn festival is an inspirational space, run mainly by volunteers, with 3 different size venues with in one – ranging from 150  to 2000 capacity (2750 all in), friendly staff, cherry beer, fantastic sound, also sells vegan food and most importantly is independtly run . Its exactly the sort of flexiable music venue Birmingham needs. Birmingham City Council please take note this is an excellent example of a state subsidised building, used for a range of events and is totally unique to it’s city – no need for a Bar Fly or Academy chain!

013 the host venue for Roadburn Festival

Music wise – highlights over the 3 days were Rose Kemp who mixes the heaviest sound with the most incredible folk vocals, the whole room was mesmerized by her performance and her shiny dress, if you don’t know her work you should check her out. Neurosis were fantastic, kinda goes without saying, they always give their all with their performances – totally focused. Mono managed to move grown men to a state of emotional bliss, a strange experience being surrounded by all these men of metal whom seemed melted by Mono’s emotional performance, Black Sun joined Eugene from Oxbow as part of his spoken word, which really put in context his stage persona, Zeni Geva were however the band of the weekend for me, everything that I hoped for as we were starting to flag by the third day, they rocked out and exuded some much needed energy by that point, think the heaviness of the Melvins with moments of free jazz. They finished their set with Deadsunrising…treats of treats! (and even better KK Null and I discussed our love of small dogs in broken English – indeed a subject that can unite folks).
Rose Kemp
As with all good festivals its a chance to catch up with friends from far away places and also meet new ones, of course a lot of this is done over a drink or three…David (+1 Magazine), Paul (Una Corda), Jamie (Guardian) + the guys from Baroness enjoying a good game of trying on found sun glasses by night – they were blinding.

With Yvonne our host for the weekend and also Supersonic international press person, clearly having fun backstage with the free beer!
And finally me doing me Keiji Haino impression

A massive thanks to Walter & Jurgen, Yvonne, the 013 team and all the artists that performed, it was our third visit to the festival and we hope to be back next year, was a wonderful weekend and would highly recommend a visit. (best get in quick though as this years festival sold out in 45 mins of going on sale)

please note Jenny does not feature in any of these photos because she is always taking them

We have some pretty amazing shows in the lead up to Supersonic Festival, which include a welcome return of Japanese band Melt Banana, who sweat out a super-adrenalized, maxi-caffeinated collision of frenzied drum rhythms and torturous guitar squeals they are joined by a special performance by  Lash Frenzy (members of Einstellung) Vs Mort and circuit-bender extraordinaire Glatze – this show takes place at the Rainbow Warehouse in Digbeth.

Melt Banana

Followed by the first ever Sublime Frequencies tour with Group Doueh (from the Western Sahara) and Omar Souleyman (from Syria) plus Sublime Frequencies DJ set and on certain dates Sublime Frequencies film screenings – this will be a truely unique evening taking place at the Hare & Hounds – not to be missed!

On the 23rd of May Capsule will be taking over Vivid, an arts venue located in deepest darkest Digbeth. Bring ear plugs its going to be a loud one with live performances by  one man noise outfit Prurient playing in collaboration with Cold Cave (members of -Some Girls, Give Up The Ghost, Xiu Xiu), with support from rowdy locals Beestung Lips, Nicholas Bullen & Iron Fist Of The Sun.

Then to round off May we invite back silver clad doom disco divas Chrome Hoof who were one of the highlights of Supersonic 07, for those of you not familiar with these guys think Grace Jones meets Sabbath with a little Sun Ra for good measure!

to follow info our June shows…coming soon
Tickets for all the above shows can be purchased from www.theticketsellers.co.uk
Polar Bear on York Road in Kings Heath + Swordfish in Birmingham city centre

Our Home Of Metal project was featured in +1 magazine after editor David Hopkins came up for our last open day at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery…some amusing thoughts of possible future souvenirs and branding Birmingham and the Black Country as the birth place of Metal

“Though the The Home Of Metal is a tailor made vehicle for fanboys’ adoration for all things Page, Plant, Butler, Broadrick and Halford the project ultimately aims to repackage Birmingham in musical, tourist-friendly wrapping paper. Just like  Manchester and Liverpool have so successfully done with Madchester/The Smiths and The Beatles respectively. But the Black Country’s considerable musical pedigree is arguably going to be harder to sell to their local authority as a potential money spinner. As even with the best will in the world Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Napalm Death and Godflesh aren’t quite as brochure friendly as the fab four. ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off’ souvenir pencil case anyone?”
By David Hopkins

Lucy is one of our favourite Birmingham based artists as well as our neighbour, just situated in a studio next door to our office, this is a short film directed by Matt Watkins featuring Lucy McLauchlan’s improvised painting process and the harvesting of urban detritus. Tacit was filmed between locations in Birmingham and New Art Gallery Walsall .
www.beat13.co.uk/ First shown at Flatpack Festival.

Lucy and Matt have just finished working on the album cover for our next Capsule records release of Einstellungs ‘Wings Of Desire’, this will be a limited edition double vinyl, its due out in the next couple of months, we can’t wait!
This is a photo of the promo cds, Lucys design hand screen printed by the rather talented Mr Ben Javens


We’ve had a long standing relationship with Beat 13, most notably was the Supersonic Festival logo which Matt designed way back in 2004, and which we think still feels pretty darn fresh.

Beestung Lips talk about doing it for themselves!!!
They play with Prurient + Cold Cave + Iron Fist Of The Sun + Nicholas Bullen at Vivid in May

So here is a little run down of what we saw while at SXSW in Austin Texas,  it might be useful to get a bit of background info on the festival which began in 1987. The reason for starting the festival came out of a frustration and isolation that was felt by musicians based in Austin, what with them being located in the middle of Texas they wanted to reach out to a global market and bring business to them. To do that successfully, SXSW needed to appeal to people other than local artists whether they were from Austin, Ft. Worth, Chicago, Toronto, Munich or Tokyo. The music event has grown from 700 professional registrants in 1987 to nearly 12,000 registrants, people now come from all over the world in order to network, check out new bands and to showcase labels.

This is our fourth year at SXSW and we have found it invaluable in terms of finding interesting acts for both our year round programme and also for curating Supersonic Festival, it also gives us the opportunity to meet with agents and labels that we work with face to face. Each year we try and approach our time at SXSW slightly differently in order to have new experiences. Of course this is where we had our showcase with Oxbow in 2007 which turned into a full blown bar room brawl (you can read all about that here).

So here is a little run down of what we did at SXSW Music:
Firstly and I guess most importantly was the cupcake van, no festival is complete without some kind of baked delights, this ingenious van was located at convenient places over the course of the week, which meant that I had to try a carrot cake cup cake with cream cheese topping purely as research.
We went and checked out HR from Bad Brains solo project, having been a big fan of Bad Brains we were curious to see what this was going to be like…unfortunately it was a little dull a bit too dub.

This is Flatstock, a huge poster art fair, presented by the American Poster Institute, a truely overwhelming experience when you first enter a huge warehouse type space filled with music related screen prints. Over the years we have purchased many a print, to the point where we no longer have wall space at home. Flatstock features groups such as Burlesque Of North America, Mexican Chocolate Design and Engine House 13.

Teepee records showcase, the highlight was a band called  Black Math Horseman these guys are from Los Angeles and have a female vocalist with a similar vibe to OM in that they are pretty heavy & repetitive, Tee Pee describe them as ambient post-doom.  Also playing were Earthless (who will be at Supersonic this year and feature proloific drummer and skateboarder Mario Rubalcaba, he’s played with Rocket From The Crypt, went on to bang away for the Hot Snakes, was the drummer for hardcore art-punks Clikatat Ikatowi and previously was in the Black Heart Procession.) We first saw Earthless at a Teepee showcase 3 years ago and have been hassling them to play Supersonic ever since, so we’re really excited that they’ll be over in July.

We were lucky enough to catch the Flower Travellin’ Band and wig out to Endless Boogie at the Knitting Factory showcase, it was a real privilege to witness the antics of the Flower Travellin Band from Japan, they were originally meant to open for the Rolling Stones in 1973 but due to visa issues were not allowed into States, so better late that never, they must have been a really big influence on Acid Mothers Temple.

“Their particular brand of psychedelic rock is delightfully heavy and strange, emphasized by the fact that they have abandoned the electric guitar in favor of the hugely complex, wide-necked sitarla. Vocalist Akira “Joe” Yamanaka’s voice is jarring and alien, but somehow suits the band’s style quite well. I don’t often think of this sound as having thrived across the world in Japan, but FTB’s extensive discography says otherwise.” [JDub Records blog]

More to come…

A selection of photos of fans from our last Home Of Metal open day at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery were featured in last weekends Guardian Magazine. The photos were taken by photographer Barry Lewis. As you can see there was a real cross section of fans in attendance old and young, Sabbath to Napalm fans coming together to share their passion for Birmingham & The Black Country.
As a result of the last open day Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery have committed to a large scale exhibition in Gas Hall for 2011, as have Wolverhampton Art Gallery and New Art Gallery Walsall – keep watching this space for further news.

This Saturday we have Japanese band Mono performing at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath, tickets have now sold out online but there are a handful at Swordfish & Polar Bear and we will be keeping a limited amount available on the door. (doors are at 8pm)
support comes from Ihora, featuring current and former members of Jesu, Cable Regime and Final