We’re delighted to be able to announce the dates for Supersonic Festival 2015 11-14 June
Tickets will go on sale at 9am on Friday 13th Feb – when we reveal the first tranche of confirmed artists.
For now here is a little reminder of last years festival which sold out in record time.
Supersonic Festival and Milque & Muhle partner to bring you an explosive Xmas cocktail of aural delights and high-spirited performances across 2 rooms on Sat 13 Dec at the Hare & Hounds in Birmingham
with
Palehorse
Bludgeoning sludge rock from South London , now signed to Candlelight. expect heavy grooves, pounding drums and dual vocals.
Sly and the Family Drone
A primal orchestra of drum rhythms, radiophonic oscillator noise and electronically-abstracted vocals.
Lowest Form
Swirly nasty hardcore from one of britain’s finest ensembles, full length now out on iron lung records.
Ravioli Me Away
Ravioli Me Away are a dangerously ambitious and delusional all girl jazzy post punk, hip funk outfit from london.
Paddy Steer
Sounds like a Swiss cuckoo clock made of egg boxes and horsehair, glued together by an African Moog player in a Vietnamese iron monger’s shop.
Table Scraps
Local Garage Rock. Duo with guitar and stand up drumming with male/female vocals.
Rainbow Grave
Debut show formed from the ashes of Backwards (R.I.P) :’( – think Hate Sludge akin to Stickmen with Rayguns/ Kilslug.
We know you love this bit! Send us your suggestions for next year’s Supersonic. We always like to hear your wishlist, and don’t be afraid of being bold and brazen, heck one year we had Goblin AND Corrupted AND Thorr’s Hammer perform.
Here’s a little taster of our 2014 edition
On Wednesday 12 of Nov we are delighted to present a very special performance which will take place at Eastside Projects –Ben Frost will be joined by Greg Fox (Liturgy) on drums. Capacity is limited so we recommend advance tickets from our friends Milque and Muhle based at the Custard Factory or via theticketsellers.
Born in 1980 in Melbourne, Australia, Ben Frost relocated to Reykjavík Iceland in 2005 and working together with close friends Valgeir Sigurðsson and Nico Muhly, formed the Bedroom Community record label/collective.
In 2010 he was chosen by Brian Eno as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protegé program for a year of collaboration, one of the outcomes of which was Sólaris; a re-scoring of the Tarkovsky classic for Poland’s Sinfonietta Cracovia. Eno and Frost continue to work together on a range of projects.
Frost regularly works with other musicians and artists; in the production of studio albums such as Tim Hecker’s Ravedeath1972 and Virgins, SWANS The Seer, Colin Stetson’s New History Warfare, and on various Bedroom Community releases. On the stage Frost has produced scores for Choreographers including Wayne McGregor/Random Dance, Akram Khan, and german Director Falk Richter. In film, he composed the score for the Palme d ́Or nominated Sleeping Beauty by Julia Leigh, and Djúpið by Icelandic Director Baltasar Kormákur (with Daníel Bjarnason, for which the pair won the Icelandic film award for best score in 2013). And in the visual arts, where, with artist Richard Mosse, Frost travelled deep beyond the frontlines of war-torn Eastern Congo to produce The Enclave; a multi-channel video and sound installation that premiered at the Venice Biennale in 2013.
2013 also marked the première of Frost’s first Opera, based on Iain Bank´s infamous 1984 novel The Wasp Factory. The project also marked his debut as a Director.
These various collaborations and alliances underline Frost’s continuing fascination with finding ways of juxtaposing music, rhythm, technology, the body, performance, text, art -beauty and violence- combining and coalescing the roles and procedures of various artistic disciplines in one place.
We’ve pulled out just a small selection of items to show you from stockroom. All these bits and bobs are available to buy on our online shop, so have a look for yourself HERE. There’s plenty more where that came from!
Need some new music in your life? Then check out our edition of live recordings taken at previous Supersonic Festivals and issued on high quality heavyweight vinyl. Harvey Milk, Tweak Bird, Iron Lung, Capsule’s 10th Birthday 7″ and other items on CD…. these are VERY reasonably priced right now, so now’s the time to christen your deck with something new!
Thanks for all the support to those of you who’ve already gone shopping with us!
We’d like to thank photographer Hugh McCabe for sending through this seductive and striking image of Swans taken at Supersonic last month. Hugh was specially invited by frontman Michael Gira to photograph the band using his unique double exposure technique, in which the film is exposed to different viewpoints for considerable time. This is a simplified explanation, so if you’re interested in hearing more about Hugh’s methods you can do so by reading his blog here.
Hugh, a musician as himself, has also written up an interesting piece on Swan’s latest offering ‘To Be Kind’ which can be read here.
What a weekend Supersonic Festival 2014 “Ltd Edt” was! At Capsule HQ we are all still buzzing from the incredible reviews, kind feedback, fun photos and wicked, wicked memories (Oh, Sly!). Thank you our loyal & lovely audience for the big part you played in making the weekend such a success!
We have a selection of Supersonic treats from our online shop to help you through the slump. There are T-shirts, live recordings on heavyweight vinyl and all sorts of other bits & bobs. Check out all our goodies HERE.
Especially designed by David Hand for this year’s festival, we have a super limited edition tea towel ‘For Curious Audiences’, pic above. It’s so lovely we’ve had people tell us they can’t bear to actually use them. Instead people are opting to hang them up… whatever makes you happy is fine by us! If you are more of an out and about type, then you may prefer to grab one of our rad tote bags. With an orange this bright you can’t fail to get noticed for all the right reasons!
It’s always a proud moment when we see someone supporting us in a tee or looking sharp carrying one of our tote bags! So thank you in advance for supporting what we do.
A massive thank you to all the artists, our incredible team, especially the amazing Supersonic volunteers and of course our audience for making this years Supersonic Festival Ltd Edtn a truly remarkable event. It is always such a pleasure to welcome back old friends and make new ones. Thank you & we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
We will start posting up our Supersonic Collective memory over the next few days, so feel free to send your comments and blog post links and photos to us, let us know your highlights. Supersonic photos should be added to our Flickr group (if you could tag them with band name & supersonic 2014)
Ex Easter Island Head – Katja Ogrin
SUPERSONIC QUESTIONNAIRE
We know that people who come to SUPERSONIC are a knowledgeable and opinionated lot so we’d like to ask for your assistance to develop and improve the next festival by answering a few questions about you and your experience. This should take no more than a few minutes of your time, and your feedback is greatly appreciated.
Your answers here will aid us in keeping our work going and in making sure new and interesting artists will keep coming to the festival – so your input really does matter in making SUPERSONIC work.
I’m Stuart Maconie’s guest on the 6 Musics the Freakier Zone next Sat (7 June) from midnight – so make sure you tune in
Previews Culture 24 -“Annual muso-art factory of wonders Supersonic returns to Birmingham at the end of this month. The line-up is as intriguing as ever.”
The Skinny – “Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival occupies an exalted position at the vanguard of the festival circuit. And rightly so. Since its inception over ten years ago, it has maintained a staggeringly focused and intelligent curatorial policy, transcending the music and art worlds to present a programme teeming with invention, audience participation and a certain amount of unpredictability. It’s also a bloody good knees up.”
Polaroids and Polar Bears – “For over ten years, Supersonic Festival, one of the feathers in Capsule’s eclectic cap, has specialised in provocation and revelled in showcasing some of alternative culture’s most bizarre curios to the world. In its consistent championing of music and visual art’s wackiest, most abrasive and avant-garde performers, Supersonic is a festival re-made and re-modelled for the modern age.
Remaining stoutly averse to the suffocating strictures of the mainstream, Supersonic’s line-ups have always been flavoured with misfit geniuses and musical visionaries. Since its inception, it has become celebrated for providing a platform for those artists who proudly choose to thumb their noses at convention.”
The Quietus– “For a festival to survive it has to keep evolving, challenging itself as much as its audience.”
The Guardian – “Birmingham’s alternative festival goes bespoke this year with a “limited edition” event, a smaller two-dayer with a capacity of just a few hundred, and a stellar lineup.”
Societe Pierre – The 10 Best Festivals You’ve Never Heard Of
Reviews BBC 6 Music – “Lisa Meyer the brains behind Supersonic Festival, one of the leading experimental music events in the UK joins Stuart with some records.”
The Arts Desk – “two days just isn’t enough when the entertainment’s this good.” 5/5
The Times – ” this unique boutique festival has long provided a fertile meeting point between hard rock, experimental techno and avant-garde art. Returning in a new springtime slot after a sabbatical in 2013, the weekend’s streamlined two-day event promised exotic musical genres including “hate sludge”, “fog beat” and “derelict electronics”. Excellent.” 4/5
Ninehertz – “Long may Supersonic reign, there’s nothing like it in the world and we like it that way.”
Left Lion – “a mixture of eclectic, obscure, strange and wonderful sounds for curious audiences.”
The Skinny – “The festival prides itself on multi-disciplinary approach to programming but this surely applies to the bands themselves as much as the staggering range of events on offer; almost every musical performance seesaws – often at ear-shattering levels – between some of the most high-altitude electronica and rock currently being imagineered, and some of the most aesthetically challenging on stage performances currently being thrummed out anywhere.”
The Birmingham Press “their refined curating abilities always reach their peak for Supersonic, where time is allowed for contrasts and combinations.”
Drowned In Sound – “Yet it is an undeniably marvellous and hugely entertaining spectacle.”
The Quietus – “Supersonic 2014 was a revitalising and refreshing weekend of challenging – and incredibly good fun – music in excellent company, and a pleasing air freshener against the stench of nostalgia one all too often encounters elsewhere. Here’s to 2015?
Echoes and Dust – “What’s great about Capsule is how self-effacing they are – they go to great lengths to make clear that this is a limited edition festival, much smaller than it would usually be. They do this while providing two days of what would be a world-class line-up for any festival, let alone one taking place under a railway bridge in Digbeth. ”
All About Jazz – “With all that organizational sensible-ness taken care of, the platform was clear for the controlled chaos of the music, the sculpted anarchy that stands as the majority approach. If acts are making a hellish din, it helps if their loving attention to sonic distress is captured with all its warty textures intact, laid out for targeted cranial bombardment.”
Bass Explorer– “Supersonic does things right, sometimes very right. Sometimes the festival will present you with an act that will stretch your brain across internal spaces while rocking you back and forth to a rhythm that you can’t be sure exists. It seems pretty self-evident that an experimental music festival lives or dies by the ability to find acts that can hold a whole mess of contradictions in constant tension: If an artist armed with a synthesiser can simultaneously wash your soul down with an ocean of bass fuzz and brutalise your body with a sound that forces you to work to find the beat in amongst a forest of disorientating percussive stabs, then they’ve succeeded. Happy to say, Supersonic delivered.”
Brum Notes – “Within this range lays a sublime mix that pushes the boundaries of modern music to the level where superlatives are not sufficient in describing what was about to come.”
Supersonic Festival isn’t just about the music happening on stage: With our Film Programme, Workshops, Market Place, Extracurricular Activity, Talks, Kids Gigs and the inauguration of Capsule Labs (set in motion this year with the presence of If Wet), Capsule has always curated it’s signature event with a mind to creating as exciting and as memorable an overall experience as possible for our audience.
So, poking fun at the idea of even playing on stage at all, we this year welcome Sly & The Family Drone to our main stage area. They won’t be using the stage, however, instead they’re opting to invade the floor space so expect to be well and truly immersed in their act! Come on down to the Main Stage at 8pm on Saturday May 31st to be part of Sly’s party.
In case you’re wondering why they like playing in the middle of the floor, here’s what they had to say when we put that very question to them:
“It’s always been that way for us, the first ever sly show I played was in the middle of the room at the West End Centre in Aldershot. I had tape loops and mess all around me, and some friends set up a scalectrix track surrounding me as I was playing. I like being close to the audience, there’s an immediate reaction and a physicality to our performance that you don’t get with a traditional stage/audience set up. I like being able to feel music, be it from movement from a crowd or from our speakers pushing some air.”
Still wondering what to expect? They went on to describe their sound as: ” Electronics and drums spray machine. BMX-ing along the non-existent line between military-state discipline and complete fucking abandon.”
We reckon you’d better just be there and find out for yourself! Have a great weekend everyone!
We’re gutted to have to announce that sadly Pharmakon has had to postpone her performance at Supersonic.
“It deeply saddens me to announce that I am forced to cancel my tour, due to my passport being stolen. I was very much looking forward to playing for you all, and hope to come back in the near future. I hope you are not as disappointed as I am.” -Margaret
We wish her all the luck in getting home safely and hope that we can re-arrange for the not too distant future. Mick Harris (Scorn/Napalm Death) will be doing a DJ set
***Remember***
Cash Points There is only one cash point on site and they charge for withdrawals but there is one located at Digbeth Coach Station
Food & Drink
Friday:
Gourmet Pizzas in Alfie Birds + Supersonic Tearoom
Supersonic Bar – with Purity Ales + Plantation Rum
Alfie Birds cocktail bar
Saturday:
Gourmet Pizzas in Alfie Birds + Supersonic Tearoom + Mexican Bean + Canoodle (Pan Asian Street food)
Supersonic Bar – with Purity Ales + Plantation Rum
Alfie Birds cocktail bar
Alfie Birds – Custard Factory 1pm – 2pm Saturday 31 May Free
Join Supersonic and Birmingham Loves Photographers for a discussion about the ‘Collective Memory‘. The way in which we experience live events these days is changing, with the vast majority of portable electronic devices possessing some form of recording device and we are often seen to experience events through a viewfinder or screen, rather than simple living in the moment. In this open, drop-in discussion we will be taking several perspectives into account and discussing how we experience live events and how photography plays a part in these experiences.
Ryan Jordan conducts experiments in derelict electronics, possession trance, retro-death-telegraphy and hylozoistic neural computation. He builds crude instruments that replicate fundamental electronic components which are the foundation of current digital technologies. Performing these live alongside high powered stroboscopic light he attempts to induce the hallucinatory and trance like states of the (oc)cult arts.
In this presentation/performance he will demonstrate his self constructed hardware built with raw minerals and metals and then spiral sideways into theories of cybernetics, neuroscience, art, music and physiology in an attempt to piece together our fragmentary daemons and split the nine-fold reality layers of human perception; from communing with the dead to disturbing the holographic brain; from trance states to opening flicker portals in optic nerve fibres; these practitioners practice dark hypnosis in psychoactive hyperventilation clubs.
“Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival occupies an exalted position at the vanguard of the festival circuit. And rightly so. Since its inception over ten years ago, it has maintained a staggeringly focused and intelligent curatorial policy, transcending the music and art worlds to present a programme teeming with invention, audience participation and a certain amount of unpredictability. It’s also a bloody good knees up.” The Skinny
Supersonic Tea Towel
Supersonic Market Place
A space for independent distributors, record labels and peddlers of curiosities to sell their wares, network and for you to meet face to face. The Market Place is also where the bands sell their merchandise. This area is equipped with a tearoom serving a selection of epicurean delights.
Stalls include: Cold Spring The UK’s premier label, mailorder and distributor for Industrial and related music: Esoteric, Dark Ambient, Power Electronics, Noise, Ritual, Japanoise, Soundtrack, Neofolk, Doom and experimental music.
Edgeworld Formerly the Go-To choice for Alternative Vinyl in Brighton, now operating on a Pop-Up basis at select South Coast haunts and a Supersonic regular.
Melophobe Records Buyer and seller of good quality vinyl records specializing in Indie, Post Punk, Noise Rock, Metal and Free Jazz!
Milque & Muhle Independent record shop specializing in new and second hand underground music, books and cassettes.
Food & Drink Throughout the weekend brand new venue Alfie Birds will be serving gourmet pizzas and cocktails. In addition:
Friday
Just a 3 minute walk from the festival, we recommend Digbeth Dining Club. Offering up some of the best, freshest and tastiest street food you can find in the city. Located at: SPOT*LIGHT, UNIT 2 (OPP. AIR NIGHTCLUB), LOWER TRINITY STREET, DIGBETH, B9 4AG
Saturday
We’ll have two street food stalls for you to chose from. The Mexican Bean – Mexican fast food, Healthy and delicious. Canoodle – Pan Asian Food.
Supersonic Bar
We’re delighted to be serving Purity Ales and Addlestons Cider as well as Plantation Rum – remember folks the Supersonic bar helps to subsidise the festival so do your bit.
Cash Machines If you fancy picking up a new record, tee, poster, zine etc. and grabbing some food whilst you are at it, then make sure you have cash on hand to avoid paying ATM charges on site!
There is one cash machine on site at H&S News – this machine will charge you £1.78 per withdrawal. The nearest free cash machines are located near-by (5 minutes walk) at: Nisa | Digbeth High Street | B5 5NR and Birmingham Coach Station.
For those of you arriving slightly earlier on Friday evening and fancy some gourmet street food we’d like to recommend visiting the Digbeth Dining Club which is just round the corner from Supersonic Festival and an excellent way to start your weekend.
On offer will be – Manila Munchies (Filipino), Big Daddies Diner (Gourmet Hot Dogs), Mexican Bean, Jabberwocky (Gourmet Toasties) and platinum Pancakes.
They’re based at Spotlight, Unit 2 Lower Trinity Street in Digbeth B9 4AG
and will be open from 5.30 – 10.30pm so plenty of time to grab yourself a gorgeous snack before the festival kicks off at 9pm
Supersonic will this year be welcoming two acts that have released music on the ever impressive Opal Tapes label, which initially began dealing exclusively in handmade, limited cassette runs of highly unusual and innovative dance, techno, electro and experimental music. Based in Teeside, the label has since embraced other formats, though the love of the cassette is still strong.
The first of these acts is the man behind Opal Tapes himself, cassette enthusiast Stephen Bishop, who will be bringing BASIC HOUSE to our main stage. Basic House in similar territory to Helm and Sewer Election, evoking a feel of a rich and aurally satisfying tapestry that only the more superior end of electronic composition can furnish. It’s worth noting too that Bishop is also vocalist of Drunk In Hell, who played an unforgettable set at Supersonic in 2012. Joining Basic House is KAREN GWYER a US-born Londoner whose music summons the feeling of a warmer, more futuristic Popol Vuh, or even an instrumental, more rhythmic Fever Ray. Sample tracks and read some quotes about both these artists below. Basic House have also made this special mix in the lead up to the festival, so enjoy!
BASIC HOUSE
“Juxtaposing arresting material that doesn’t seem like it could be made to work, Bishop bends and edits parts together with care that belies their aggression. The results feel very much alive; primal, but with the beginnings of emotional understanding. It’s a brilliant experience.” Others draw comparisons from Basic Channel to Vatican Shadow and Fennesz, and you could argue his sonic aesthetics are what really set Basic House apart, his precise attention to sound design taking his compositions through to another level. As Brainwashed put it, his records work “so wonderfully precisely because of Bishop’s unwavering commitment to his broken, crackling aesthetic of cryptic dispatches. Stephen certainly recorded some great individual pieces, but Basic House’s brilliance lies far more in how it sounds than in the actual beats and notes being played.” – Factmag
“Rather than making straight club music, Gwyer assimilates house and techno tropes into oozy, hypnotic slow burners, as in album opener ʻSugar Totsʼ. African beats herald the action, joined by molasses-thick synths and glassy bells that chime finely somewhere in the distance. Similarly, on ʻPikki Kokkuʼ, steamy, diaphanous whispers and minimal drum patterns overlay molten synths and subtle low end. Thereʼs little resolution here; instead we have an internal lambency thatʼs warm and satisfying…. The result is an intimate and beautiful record” – Factmag
Swoomptheeng is a collective of costumed characters who through the elements of Rave Craft, Zombie Bass and Ritualised Punk Technology, seek to create twisted and dynamic live performances, Supersonic are delighted to welcome this colourful collective to host our Saturday night party.
A huge thanks to the very talented Basic House who has created this awesome mix inspired by past and present Supersonic line up’s for Thump. See Basic House perform on Friday 30 May at the festival. There are still a handful of tickets left via theticketsellers
Tracklisting:
Coil – Where Are You?
Crawl Unit – You Suffer
Sleaford Mods – Donkey
Famous Moonking – MK4
Basic House – Canon Lo
Pharmakon – Pitted
Wolf Eyes – Burn Your House Down
Ex-Easter Island Head – Mallet Guitars Three Third Movement
The first commission to come out of the Capsule Lab series in collaboration with Warwick Arts Centre Descent, meaning a flock of woodpeckers, a new sound based installation created by artist duo MortonUnderwood. A series of electronic woodpeckers will be positioned within the public realm. You spot a colourful button. You press it and a note resonates across the space. You press it again and realise that a bird is perched overhead, which percusses the surface of a post as you press the button. You spot other buttons, each triggering a bird that percusses a surface. You get it; someone has exposed the musical potential of this space. You play. The work will be shown as part of Sonic Gorilla at Warwick Arts Centre and then at Millennium Point from 30 May – 14 June
Evil Blizzard have spent the past 12 months or so terrifying and delighting audiences in equal measure. Upon experiencing them live, some people have absolutely no idea what to make them, the rest become instant converts.
Already garnering a healthy grassroots following, they seem well on their way to establishing their own ‘Blizz Army’, whose die-hard devotion is not dissimilar to that seen in for example, Turbonegro‘s Turbojugend. Here, however, denim has been swapped for disturbingly warped latex masks and a penchant for the truly weird. Being in the audience at an Evil Blizzard gig is like being a Peeping-Tom at behind the scenes of a freakshow. Only at some point you get noticed and invited to join the party.
The band were ‘discovered’ at an early gig by Manchester music legend Mark E Smith who promptly asked them to tour along side his band The Fall. Smith has gone on record to say Evil Blizzard“…give me hope that music is alive and kicking”.
Hailing from Preston, Evil Blizzard comprise four bass players – Prowler, Filthydirty, Kav and Stomper, as well as singing Drummer, Side. Originally there had been a guitarist, but following a heart attack , he bailed. Like moths to the eternal flame, bass players continue to be drawn to the band’s masked cult and as such, they frequently play with a 5th guest bassist.
Recently interviewed for The Guardian, Side the band’s vocalist commented: “When we supported the Fall, half of the crowd said: That’s the absolute worst thing I’ve ever seen. The rest thought it was fucking brilliant”. Recent media coverage from just about everywhere has seen the band (deservedly) sell out numerous shows.
Their music itself is reminiscent of grimy, doomy Hawkwind mixed in with Black Sabbath‘s most tripped out moments. There’s a healthy dose of psychedelic electronics and theatricality that the Crazy World of Arthur Brown (circa 1968) would have been proud of. Heavy, hypnotic bass riffs are -obviously- abundant and the sheer level of strange makes you feel at times like you’ve stumbled into a bizarre David Lynch-esque nightmare. All this is topped off with Side’s mournful, demented vocal style. At points in their live show they like to whip out a baby’s head theramin and pounce into the audience getting them to join in. Don’t let the masks fool you though, there is real music here and it’s catchy (in the best possible sense) at that.
“My face began their set stoic and expressionless, and ended up melted. Immense, Al Cisneros-gone-postpunk basslines powered songs ripe-to-bursting with chemical ooze and brainworm vocal mantras; it served, there and then, as a unifying force, but the grotesque latex masks each member wore suggested that a sadistic part of them relished soundtracking someone’s bad trip.” – The Quietus
Capsule first welcomed the band to perform at Bring To Light, our mini-festival for Discovery Season at the end of last year. We are now excited to welcome them back to Supersonic Festival, our signature annual event. For your last chance to get tickets for the festival go HERE.
Evil Blizzard need to be experienced, words alone just don’t do them justice.
Festival headliners Swans are streaming their entire new album, ‘To Be Kind’, online at NPR Music. Listen HERE
Here’s what a few others have had to say about this 121 minute epic, but why not head on over to NPR Music and make up your own mind, before having your mind blown all over again when Swans take to the main stage at this years festival!
“…‘To Be Kind’ is another remarkable achievement from a band that deals in nothing else.”4/5 – TimeOut
“To Be Kind is the kind of record that Jim Morrison never lived long enough to make- a record of maturity after the madness, a record of exploration, extremes and subtle beauty and is the kind of record that the modern loveable Iggy is too scared to immerse himself in. It’s also a great glowering, rumbling two hours plus of music that you can get lost inside. A perfect soundtrack for late night drives and the solitude of the soul and also a very listenable journey into a heart of rumbling darkness.” 10/10 – LouderThanWar
“Frontman Michael Gira’s ever-abstract lyrics give plenty of room for interpretation throughout. Imagine Karlheinz Stockhausen’s jarring classicism, Captain Beefheart’s twisted blues, and the industrialism of Einstürzende Neubauten coalescing into a swirling musical miasma. Near perfection.” 9/10 – Clash Music
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Buy tickets for Supersonic Festival 2014 “Ltd Edt” HERE.
The other ‘Super’ festival Supernormal, present a programme of selected music videos and footage from the Supersonic archives. (also catch the SN team playing some rad tunes from Supernormal’s bill as one of our guest DJ’s)
Over the past two years, Quietusco-editor Luke Turner and director Ethan Reid have wandered the UK making a series of films about the non-musical habits and hobbies of some of The Quietus’ favourite cult musicians. We love them for their art, but what do these people get up to in their spare time, and what can we learn about them from it?
Premiering at Supersonic 2014 are two short films from this series, Steve Ignorant needs no introduction: a righteous son of Dagenham, he was the voice of Crass for years, and with new band Paranoid Visions continues to fly the flag for no compromise punk rock. It’s an attitude that extends to every area of his life – now living in North Norfolk, Steve has managed to find himself on the crew of an autonomous, non-RNLI lifeboat. You might not ordinarily associate indie rock with the macho rough and tumble of American Football, but Alan Sparhawk is a lifelong enthusiast for and player of the sport.
In addition we’ll be screening two further films: Cosey Fanni Tutti (COUM, Throbbing Gristle, Carter Tutti) on vegetable gardening and striving to attain self-sufficiency without using pesticides, and Stephen Morris (Joy Division and New Order) demonstrating and discussing some of his collection of military vehicles
In the Mother of all interviews Michael Gira (legendary frontman of Swans) talks to journalist and music-enthusiastic John Doran of The Quietus (a legend in his own right). This is an extensive and fascinating interview which covers everything from Howlin’ Wolf to Haiti to Francis Bacon and well beyond…
Get a glimpse into Michael Gira head by reading the interview in full over at The Quietus. For fun, we’ve picked out a couple of quotes for you below. Swans bring their monolithic live show to Supersonic’s main stage in just a few weeks. Having just released their thirteenth album in just over three decades, To Be Kind, (which has been received rave reviews: 10/10 – LouderThanWar ; 4/5 – TimeOut etc.) our audience can expect a bold and uncompromising show from one of the world’s most powerful live bands. Don’t miss your chance to see these musical titans, the last few Supersonic tickets are available from HERE.
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JD: Having attended Swans gigs between albums and the Kickstarter-style demo albums, you can hear this natural kind of evolutionary process taking place. What’s interesting to me is that although it’s undeniably an organic growth, there are things that do stand out to me on the new album. Yeah, sure, it’s still monolithic, but I think the grooves are maybe funkier, maybe even sexier… is that kind of a fair comment?
MG: Yeah, that was the intent, we did sit down and say ‘lets make a sexy groove’ because we’re so sexy…[laughs]
JD: Like Alexander O’Neal or something…
MG: What I discovered on the last record was that I wanted to push forward on this one. It was about this groove and how I could really focus on that, not necessarily these big sheets of sound, but more about the possibility to find something that could just keep going forever, without feeling mechanical. So we pushed that aspect. We often focused in on the rhythms, but the idea of us actually getting funky is pretty preposterous. It’s some kind of idiosyncratic version of that I guess, but it’s a fine line for us to tread, because I don’t want to be a white boy trying desperately to grow a big butt.
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JD: Something that I think is really interesting about Swans, is that you clearly came out of New York City, but if you asked most music fans, 99 out of 100 to talk about the continuum of New York groups, people would say Velvet Underground, Television, Modern Lovers, Suicide, Sonic Youth, maybe Glenn Branca, maybe Philip Glass, people usually wouldn’t say Swans. You were obviously from New York but you weren’t really a New York group, if you see the distinction?
MG: Well, I made a point of that. Whether it was career suicide or not, I don’t know, but I made a point of separating ourselves from other people in the scene, very quickly. At first we played with Sonic Youth quite a bit, we were friends, but that didn’t work out after a while and I just wanted to separate ourselves from that because I felt that was just another straitjacket, another cliché, and I wanted to make something that was ‘us’ or ‘me’ and not be attached to that.
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Read in full here. The last few Supersonic tickets can be bought HERE.
