“More of what we love, a relentless, never-ending blown out fuzzy groove, all warm whirring organ, fuzz guitar, and throbbing bass, the drums a super solid motorik framework, the vocals sort of sung / spoken, reverb and delay EVERYWHERE, the strangest addition is the haunting horns on the A side, that drift and moan ghost like over the fuzz jam below. One song spread out over two sides, by side 2, the band have locked it in and sound like they are never gonna stop. A looped cyclical minimal fuzzrock jam that sounds almost like some crazy crossbreeding of the Doors and Spacemen 3, which should appeal to Circle, Salvatore and Magyar Posse fans as much as all the druggy psychrock dronesters out there.” -Aquarius Records
http://www.woodenshjips.com

Cutting Pink With Knives
I put last year’s album in my top ten at work and cause I’m lazy this is what I said: ‘I am officially too old to listen to this record. It reminds me of hanging out in Red House Park as a kid, drinking MD 2020, smoking and generally being a bit of a nuisance. Musically it’s total spazzy Blood Brothers casio core. Snotty, noisy and with nursery rhyme vocals. Also some of it sounds like you played Killdozer at 45 rpm. We’re honored that this will be their final UK show before an amicable split.
www.myspace.com/cuttingpinkwithknives

Dälek
These guys make the densest hip hop using it as a starting point to mash up as many genres as they feel appropriate incorporating jazz noise and every thing in between. Live they are astounding, and this is a welcome return to Supersonic for them.
www.myspace.com/dalek

DJ /rupture feat. Jah dan Blakkamoore
An awesome sound clash, an MC driven turntable bass end party set. A groundbreaking collaboration, combining the ‘singjay’ style practiced by Jah Dan with the kind of bashment via dubstep via inflected beats Rupture is laying down in his re-styled sets. Rupture is not a DJ to rest on previous highs, but who looks for new ones. This is a USA / Caribbean response to the sound taking over the basements and re-jigged, fattened up and dexterous.
www.myspace.com/deejayrupture

feat. DJ Scotch Egg /Bogulta /Ove Naxx/ Maruosa/ Dokkebi Q/ Drumize

An extraordinary group of artists from Osaka, Japan, are about to invade Birmingham!

The notorious DJ Scotch Egg, who’s about to release an album on Load Records will spearhead the invasion with his unique gameboy madness. Joining him will be Ove-Naxx, also playing live. His fucked up breakcore jungle set is unforgetable to those who have seen him before. Headbanging never looked so good! Marousa will be thrashing his long black hair at you as well as his demented grindcore metal breakcore sounds. And last but definetly not least, and playing outside Japan for the first time, Bogulta, insane Osaka new wave party punk.

www.myspace.com/djscotchegg
www.myspace.com/ovenaxx
www.myspace.com/bogulta
www.myspace.com/maruosa
www.myspace.com/kikihitomi

5.15pm Saturday 12th July
Theatre Space

For too long Birmingham and the West Midlands have failed to celebrate what is rightfully theirs, to claim the city and the region as home of “Heavy Metal”. 2008 is the 40th anniversary of when the phrase “Heavy Metal” was first coined by journalist Lester Bangs. To follow on from last year’s series of talks and round table discussion we continue the exploration with a pair of presentations from experts in the field:

Mark Pilkington 

‘From Heretics To Headbangers: Occultism, Rock and Pop Music in the UK’

Exploring the roots of contemporary British occultism and considering its baleful influence on 20th century popular music.

Mark Pilkington publishes and edits Strange Attractor Journal, an irregular anthology of cultural marginalia and ethnographic esoterica, and curates events under the Strange Attractor banner. His writing has appeared in The Guardian/ Fortean Times/ Arthur/ The Wire and Plan B amongst others.

Nicholas Bullen

‘The Aesthetics of Grindcore’
Nicholas (b/1968) is a musician and sound artist whose work explores approaches at the extremes of sound. In his twenty-five year history as a musician (as a founder member of Napalm Death – creators of the ‘Grindcore’ genre – and Scorn), he has appeared on numerous recordings and performed extensively across the globe. He maintains a number of ongoing musical projects including the electronic group Black Galaxy and the Monium label.

Home Of Metal

www.homeofmetal.com
Home Of Metal began in 2007 with a Metal Symposium held at New Art Gallery Walsall and continues with the development of an online archive mapping the regions heritage, Metal memorabilia, collections and oral histories will be collated through a series of 3 public open days held at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and New Art Gallery Walsall.

Capsule invited the following six artists to create illustrations in response to this years festival theme ‘Creatures Of The Night’ the title of the 1982 album from U.S. band Kiss and continuing our exploration of Birmingham and the Black Country as ‘Home of Metal’. These works will be exhibited within the Custard Factory.

Justin Bartlett

www.wearetherobots.com
Black ink warlock from the grim and frostbitten raven realm of Southern California. He enjoys thee grimm riffs, vberkvlt metals, and other dark musick, times of solitude, skulls, and scotch. Inspired by religious and theological conflicts, environmental decay, and man’s inhumanity, the pen-wielder spends hours and hours obsessing on every last detail. He has worked with many including SUNN O))), Gravetemple and Norway’s Gorgoroth, Apoptygma Berzerk, tons of underground bands.

Karen Constance

www.myspace.com/smackmusic7
Born in Scotland’s hellhole central belt & escaped down south to Brighton in 1997, she is influenced by encyclopedias, diagrams and schoolgirls.

Steve Ingram

www.forhumourandhope.com
Aka Forhumourandhope is just 24 years old and hails from Birmingham, UK. He designed the artwork and packaging for the Capsule Beestung Lips release amongst other things.

Conny Prantera

www.myspace.com/connywithloveandsqualor
A painter and illustrator and one of the artists promoted by street-ware label Silas and Maria. Conny’s work reaches back from her training as a portrait artist in the torn political background of the Italian “anni di piombo” to today’s London underground culture, mixing the mirage of aesthetic beauty with a morbid obsession with decay.

James Quigley

www.gunsho.com
Gunsho is an art moniker for James Quigley. Somewhere between nursing on goat’s milk as a baby and his teenage summers spent sifting through flea market arcana, James began to find fascination in the strange and magical vastness of the marginal fringe. A regard for the toxic forces that transform humans into monsters shaped his early drawings and set him on a path into a surreal artistic thicket of beasts, demons, and mutants. He sees the scores of odd creatures he creates today not as being pulled from thin air or simple imagination, but from a continuum of mythology, or of ancient currents that have persisted into modernity.

Francesca “Bunny” Williams

www.wonderleague.co.uk
Also known as Bunny Bissoux, is an artist, illustrator, collector, fanatic, musician and aspiring wrestling valet. Bunny makes fanzines, costumes, plush toys and cupcakes and runs an online store and weekly market stall. She has previously produced CONQUISTADOR fanzine and a poster size “Map of Hair Metal” painstakingly charting the movement of band members between groups across the genre. Bunny enjoys drawing naked ladies, rock stars, wrestlers and her never-ending supply of imaginary friends.

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Supersonic just wouldn’t be the same without PCM  performing on Friday night, they are the dark lords of Drum n Bass. PCM were formed in 1990 by Neil Harvey and Nik Wells in Birmingham,UK Starting life as PCM Soundsystem, they began hosting parties in warehouses and empty buildings in the B’ham area and travelling to free festivals and outdoor parties with their sound. Playing an eclectic range of music from acid to hardcore to early jungle and often performing their own material live, they soon built up a large following in the emerging underground dance scene in the Midlands.
www.myspace.com/p_c_m

4pm Thrill Jockey Archive
A grab-bag of music videos plucked from the vaults of Chicago’s Thrill Jockey records, including work by Fiery Furnaces, Tortoise, Tunng, Mouse on Mars and OOIOO.
www.thrilljockey.com

4.30 VBS Soft Focus
Edited highlights from Vice’s interview series, with Ian Svenonius talking to rock luminaries including Ian MacKaye, Penny Rimbaud, Henry Rollins, Mark E. Smith, Kevin Shields and Will Oldham.
www.vbs.tv/shows/soft-focus/

5.15 Talk: ‘From Heretics To Headbangers: Occultism, Rock and Pop Music in the UK’
Mark Pilkington takes a look at the roots of contemporary British occultism and their baleful influence on 20th century music. Pilkington publishes and edits Strange Attractor, ‘an irregular anthology of cultural.
www.strangeattractor.co.uk

6.15 Talk: ‘The Aesthetics of Grindcore’ – Nicholas Bullen
The work of bands like Napalm Death and Carcass grew out of a stew of influences including horror culture and 70s agit prop as well as hardcore punk. Nicholas Bullen, a founder member of Napalm Death, will be exploring some of the tropes and themes that have informed the grindcore movement since its explosion in the mid-80s.
www.monium.org.uk

7.30 Heavy Metal in Baghdad (Dir: Suroosh Alvi/Eddy Morett US 2007)
First feature documentary to emerge from Vice Films. Beginning with the fall of Saddam Hussein, this is the tale of Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda and their heroic efforts to stay together and keep making music while their country disintegrated around them.
www.heavymetalinbaghdad.com/uk

9.00 Artist picks
Two short films selected by acts playing at Supersonic today. First off, Efterklang present ‘The Symphony of Jessica Noise’ by regular collaborator Karim Ghahwagi, with music by Mads Brauer from the group.. Then Daniel O’Sullivan of Guapo will introduce Magic Sun, Phill Niblock’s abstract 1968 gem featuring the Sun Ra Arkestra.

9.35 Encyclopedia Pictura
Selection of work by a San Francisco production outfit who count Cryptozoology, Psychedelic Shamanism and Fruit Sandwiches among their interests. Includes a special 3D presentation of their recent video for Bjork, Wanderlust.

Plus a selection of other shorts and promos compiled by 7 Inch Cinema.
www.encyclopediapictura.com
www.7inch.org.uk

10.35 Supersonic Shreds
Or: Does Music Belong in Humour?
VJ Hooker (Filmficciones) has been voyaging across the outer reaches of the internet and various cinematic archives, and here presents the fruits of his quest. Includes shredded works by StSanders, aka Finnish video artist Santeri Ojala.
www.youtube.com/user/filmficciones70

11.35 Kipple
After creating a laff riot in the theatre at last year’s Supersonic, cut-up duo Kipple return with more modified video from the wrong side of the tracks.

12.05 Lost and Found Video Night
Full to bursting with clips and oddities from junkshops and skips across the world, the nine DVDs in the Lost and Found series attained a new high in home entertainment. Here you find some of the best bits; expect Bollywood numbers, penis songs and Crispin Glover.
With thanks to Chunklet and 5 Minutes to Live.
www.5mtl.com
www.chunklet.com

12.30 Southern Records Archive
A screening of the rarely seen documentary on THE OBSESSED made by JOE LALLY (Fugazi) in 1994. Featuring interviews with Ian Mackaye, Henry Rollins and others.
www.southern.net

1.00 Soft Focus
Edited highlights from Vice’s interview series, with Ian Svenonius talking to rock luminaries including Ian MacKaye, Penny Rimbaud, Henry Rollins, Mark E. Smith, Kevin Shields and Will Oldham.
www.vbs.tv/shows/soft-focus/

1.30 Southern Records Archive
Rare live footage and videos from Southern’s past and present, everything from Boris to Mothlite.
www.southern.net

Yukio Fujimoto + Brian Duffy
Presented in collaboration with IKON
Introduction by Jonathan Watkins, Ikon Director

www.ikon-gallery.co.uk

4.00pm Sunday 13th July, Theatre Space

Japanese artist Yukio Fujimoto is renowned for his experimental use of sound. In a variety of ways, minimally, unpretentiously, his work demonstrates the nature of human perception, engaging his audience with a strange familiarity. He explains, “An aural experience consists not merely of listening to sounds, but also of perceiving momentarily a world hidden below the everyday, which cannot be captured by the eyes alone. When you make works using sound you are, as a matter of course, tempted into the realm of the philosophical.” For Supersonic, Fujimoto will give a talk about his artistic practice overall, and make a performance “on a table”.

Brian Duffy is a conceptual artist, whose work involves live performance/installations/original music composition/and the creation of new musical instruments. He is the brains behind the Modified Toy Orchestra and one half of the ZX Spectrum Orchestra which explores the hidden potential and surplus value latent inside redundant technology; a process creating sophisticated new electronic instruments from abandoned children’s toys.

French

www.tapedcopies.com
Aldershot is a part of the UK known for it’s army base, French’s home town. A good place to start an interest in torn body parts I suppose. French loves depicting all things evil, grotesque and morbid. An obsession with death metal music informs French’s work that literally draws the line between the magnificent and the repulsive. French’s sensitive and detailed line work shows the beauty in the revolting.

French has interpreted the ‘Creatures Of The Night’ theme this year by painting the entrance to the newly built skate ramp as well an exhibition housed within Ideal Skate shop along with a selection of his T Shirts, zines and prints which are all for sale.

Ideal Skateboard Supply have been a big part of Birmingham Skateboarding for over 17 years and counting. This summer they have re-locating to a new store and building a gem of a ramp right next door.

All part of the plan to keep skateboarding moving forward and keep our city on the map. www.idealbirmingham.co.uk

Far more evolved than the constraints of ‘jazzy noise’ or ‘synth-screamo’, Rolo Tomassi leap confidently from genre to genre. Moments of oddly-timed chaos flow comfortably into sanguine prog-rock workouts, otherworldly, alien noises sit happily alongside bass-led doom riffs. It’s eclectic stuff – without ever sounding disjointed.
And yes the majority of the band may only just be adults in the eyes of the law, but any issues people might have with this have been abolished by the bands obvious talent, drive and work-ethic.
www.myspace.com/rolotomassi

The Outcrowd Collective have become a regular fixture at the Supersonic Festival, contributing some kind of strange scribbled visual backdrop to compliment the delightfull noises drifting through the air.

Their shambolic visual network continues to evolve and this year they spread their tentacles a little further by inviting some other arty friends via Studio4 Gallery to come and do a bit of colouring in.

So look out for our Studio4 stall, a skate ramp installation with Ideal as well as some live painting going on over the weekend all based around this years theme, ‘Creatures Of The Night!’. So do come and give us a painty fingered high five if you the taste of our eye candy.
www.studio4gallery.blogspot.com
www.outcrowdcollective.com

2.15 Thrill Jockey Archive
A grab-bag of music videos plucked from the vaults of Chicago’s Thrill Jockey records, including work by Fiery Furnaces, Tortoise, Tunng, Mouse on Mars and OOIOO.
www.thrilljockey.com

2.45 Existing Conditions, part one
A short series of films and talks presented by Eastside Projects, a new artist run space opening in Birmingham later this year.
www.eastsideprojects.org

Ivy Meet Mike (Mark Titchner, 2007)
Video work by the Turner-nominated artist, overlaying archive footage of Atomic bomb tests to create an orgasm-like release of energy.

File Under Sacred Music (Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, 2003)
London-based duo Forsyth and Pollard restaged the mythical 1978 gig played by the Cramps at Napa Mental Institute in California, and then created this blurred, grainy document of the event.

4.00 Talk/performance: Boys And Their Toys
Three presentations by sound artists with a common interest in modifying and repurposing musical instruments or music-making devices.

Yukio Fujimoto
This Osaka-based artist describes his interactive artworks as ‘philosophical toys’, using music-boxes, treated vinyl and electronic equipment to explore the way we receive music.
www.shugoarts.com

Brian Duffy
Through work with Modified Toy Orchestra and ZX Spectrum Orchestra, as well as his own circuit-bending practice, Duffy mines the hidden potential of redundant technology.
www.warmcircuit.com

In collaboration with Ikon

6.00 Performance: Pierre Bastien
French composer who built his own instruments from an early age; his Mecanium Orchestra was entirely made up of Meccano machines which play a range of instruments from around the world. Today Bastien presents a performance and installation as part of Vivid’s Flux-Fest season.
www.pierrebastien.com

In collaboration with Vivid

7.00 Nosferatu (dir: FW Murnau, Germany 1922)
A new live soundtrack to Murnau’s classic expressionist horror, written by Matthew Eaton (Pram, Micronormous) and Grandmaster Gareth (Misty’s Big Adventure) and performed alongside other members of Misty’s.
www.myspace.com/theshadowofthevampire

8.45 Existing Conditions, part two

The Limit (Laureana Toledo, 2005-8)
World premiere of a film about The Limit, a Mexican cover band formed by Laureana Toledo who only play songs from bands native to Sheffield; Def Leppard, The Human League, Joe Cocker, Pulp, ABC and The Arctic Monkeys. Based in Mexico City, Toledo is currently on a residency at Eastside Projects working on a project called Wanted: Bass Players Called John. (If you’re called John and play the bass, get in touch.)
www.eastsideprojects.org

9.45 Fantomas-Melvins Big Band
London, 2006. A unique coming-together of Mike Patton’s metal ‘supergroup’ Fantomas and big-haired sludge trio The Melvins, for one unique performance. Supersonic presents the first ever public screening of the live movie which emerged from the event, released on DVD this August with a commentary by none other than Danny DeVito.
www.southern.net

10.30 Kipple
Extra slices of video offal

11.00 Soft Focus
More highlights from the Vice interview series with Ian Svenonius asking the questions.
www.vbs.tv

Pierre Bastien

www.pierrebastien.com
Installation as part of FLUX FEST at Vivid 24th June – 13th July

Performance Sunday 13th July

Theatre Space

At VIVID French composer and multi-instrumentalist Pierre Bastien presents a robotic ensemble comprised of household object. Instead of music instruments, the robots creates sounds out of an array of household objects including a teapot, comb, toothbrushes, a saw, an ashtray, scissors, a letter-scale and a hammer.

In collaboration with Vivid. Dedicated to the development of contemporary media art and interdisciplinary practice, VIVID supports and commissions research, new works, publications and provides a resource for artists and curators.

Opening 12-5.30 Wed to Sun Free Admission
140 Heath Mill Lane . Birmingham
www.vivid.org.uk

Bee Stung Lips
Spewed up from the murky depths of Birmingham at some point in mid 2006, Bee Stung Lips is a four-headed hideous beast, with blood-shot eyes and tentacles stretching far back into the Midlands music scene. They create a provocative mixture of wilfully abrasive noise and viscera-shredding rock n roll. Rapidly garnering a sizeable reputation for their infamous live performances, they are currently rampaging across the UK in a whirlwind of chaos, phlegm, and bare flesh. It’s only right that they will be our first release on Capsule Records.
www.myspace.com/beestunglips1

Calvados Beam Trio
Whenever people mention Calvados they always throw in the term post rock but for me this Brummie three piece have their roots in experimental jazz and dub as much as taking influence from the likes of Slint or Tortoise, always exciting their rhythmic post everything improv is always a joy to watch.
http://www.myspace.com/calvadosbeamtrio

Chrome Hoof
Features CATHEDRAL bassist Leo Smee who has brought together a veritable orchestra of musicians decked out in futuristic monk’s robes kicking it like some unholy hybrid of SUN RA, GOBLIN, PARLIAMENT/FUNKADELIC and BLACK SABBATH, complete with choreographed dancers, actors taking vaudeville interludes, and a twelve foot tall metallic ram dominating the dance floor.
http://www.myspace.com/chromehoof

Crippled Black Phoenix
Brainchild of ex – Electric Wizard drummer Justin Greaves who enlisted the help of Mogwai bassist Dominic Aitchison as well as a myriad of gifted musicians. Together they produce amazing film score inspired chamber music; epic in scope and slow burning. This resonates with emotion and a passion that transports you away to times forgotten.
www.myspace.com/crippledblackphoenix

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Duracell
Andrew Dymond, is a one-man band from Lyon, France. Initially an artist that only played live with a drum set, a trigger machine, and a synthesizer, Andre said he started Duracell because “he didn’t exactly think about starting a one man band, just the music was there,” and he was heavily influenced by US noise rock act Lightning Bolt.
www.myspace.com/andreduracell

Esquilax
This performance at Supersonic will be their last ever live show. Usually a duo, their unpredictable nature has often created the possibility of any number of people playing any form of music, with live sets sometimes ascending to a beautiful chaos where people are compelled to shake, scream, walkout or even threaten the band.
This is not the end for these brothers, other projects will continue including Horror Pillow, Dream Dreams The Dreamer to name but a few.
http://www.myspace.com/esquilax666

Jazkamer
Since 1998 Norwegians John Hegre and Lasse Marhaug have been making sound together as Jazzkammer. Ex members of Enslaved and Manngard and for this performance they will be enlisting the help of Noxagt member Anders Hana. Utterly vast in it’s unrelenting scope, their music collides grindcore, extreme doom, 80’s thrash and Glenn Branca-like black metal soundscapes into a seething hulk of pulsating vitriol that is nowhere near as savage as that description would lead you to believe.
www.jazzkammer.com/

Miasma and The Carousel Of Headless Horses
Featuring members of British band Guapo this instrumental quintet plays dark, antiquated sounding music encompassing elements of Eastern European folk, avant-rock, neo-classical film composition and elements of progressive bands such as Goblin. Their music is exciting and could easily be the soundtrack to an Alejandro Jodorowsky film.
www.myspace.com/headlesshorses

OM
Formed by Al Cisneros (bass/vocals) and Chris Hakius (drums), both founding members of legendary doom pioneers Sleep. OM released their album – Conference of the Birds in 2005. Comprised of two songs that build on their use of cyclical rhythm, riff and vocal intonation, the duo’s new album blends metal, chant, drone, dub and psychedelia. The band’s lyrics expound upon the structure of the universe, potentiality and freedom from the physical body.
www.myspace.com/variationsontheme