www.arthurandalbert.com

If you’re too broke to go to Field Day (or you think the line-up is a bit lacking, whatevs) or you’re on the hunt for a decent after-party then look no further….

Press Release.

Vulture Garden Party ‘east’ moves to a East London location.

Venue: AAA Studios 65 Scrutton Street, Shoreditch London, NW1 8AH

Date: 31.7.10, 3pm-4am

Door Fee £15 in advance, tickets at www.vulturegardenparty.com

Bands: Tribes : Kurran & The Wolfnotes : Kyla La Grange : Mark Hole : Eric Ness : Up.

DJ sets: House Of Mirrors (Julianna ss-nisbett) : Skip Skip Jump : Soldiers of the Knight : Tomfoolery : Tom Frog : My Panda Shall Fly : Ronojoy : Black Heart

The Vulture Garden party is in its third year and has made the bold and brave move to pick up it’s stage, hay bales and bbq and move to east London. For this year only, we plan to broaden our horizons and promote awareness in trendy East London.

The Vulture Garden Party is brought to you by Vulture House which utilizes it’s event promotion, production and creative agency in order to bring together the best of talent and inspiration. This year, the 500 strong festival has joined forces with the team behind Arthur And Albert magazine and Photographic Studio in order to bring you a London based country event.

Vulture House is the firm behind such nights as Ban*Jam – a three year old event, supporting artist such as Luck Pritchard and Eliie Goulding – which recently re-launched at Proud Camden with William Orbit and Katie Melua. Other initiatives include collaboration with Black Heart in the running of the Indie Mood section of London’s Premier night club, Mo*vida.

This year’s line up has something for everyone. Headlining the party will be Tribes, recently seen supporting Mystery Jets at Summerset House. They are breaking into the industry with great force. Signed to Global and sporting a fantastic sound, they are soon to be everywhere. Look out for their first single ‘Whenever’, coming this summer. Supporting Tribes will be Kurran and the Wolfnotes, sitting somewhere between Jose Gonzalez, Elliot Smith and Brighteyes; NME says – “The new school of Brit-Folk has arrived”. The beautiful Kyla La Grange, who works with the likes of Faithless and I Blame Coco, combined with her fantastic rustic voice is an un-missable and highly sought after act. Accompanied by the rest of her band, they are an absolute must see.

Due to huge demand, Mark Hole will be returning to the VGP stage. His well-known theatrical and engaging sets are absolutely fantastic and sure to put a smile on your face. Also on stage is the lovely Norwegian singer/songwriter Eric Ness. Eric and his 7-piece band brilliantly fuse glam jazz, pop and swing, which will have you dancing around in the beaming sunshine in no time. Last, but by no means least, we have the band called UP, with influences like Wham! and Queen, this new band is causing quite the stir. They received interest from various record labels and are in high demand for London venues. Our fantastic line up of DJs will keep you going, playing some fun oldies as well as contemporary and never heard dance tracks.

Thanks to Vulture House for their awesome press release! Check out the Facebook event [here], read my previous blog entry about Arthur & Albert [here] and check out pictures from the content party I blogged about [here].

www.arthurandalbert.com // www.vulturegardenparty.com

Soz if some of these vids aren’t working, YouTube doesn’t seem to realise I’m blogging for the first time in over a month [sob!] …. oh and about that, sorreeee June has been like the busiest month ever with Berlin, birthday and Glasto. Big love. x

A little while ago I pointed out that the DAB radio station BBC 6 Music was in danger of being shutdown [read that blog here]. Hopefully, you followed my advice and wrote to the BBC asking them WTF they thought they were doing. Hopefully, you filled out the petitions and the BBC’s consultation thing.
If you didn’t then SHAME ON YOU! Nah, I’m only joking, peeps are lazy, I get it. But in all seriousness, tomorrow is the very last day you can do all this. So, please, make that last stand count.

For non-UK readers: you are probably thinking that this has absolutely no impact on you whatsoever. Well, you’d be wrong about that. 6 Music is listened to all around the globe because it’s just that fucking good (that and the fact the iplayer for BBC music radio isn’t restricted to the UK). It’s actually just a great everyday station for those with eclectic music tastes. Go on, give it a whirl!

One just has to to hope that enough people made their voices heard and that the listener increase the station has had, Jarvis picking up a Sony, Adam Buxton returning to the airwaves and the media furor surrounding the proposed closure will have an impact. Fingers crossed eh.

http://www.love6music.com/

https://consultations.external.bbc.co.uk/departments/bbc/bbc-strategy-review/consultation/consult_view

https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/

A while ago, after a failed attempt to see Metronomy in Kentish Town, my friend and I made a life rule not to go out in North London (it’s life rule #2, don’t ask what #1 is). Tuesday night’s Atari Teenage Riot gig at the Electric Ballroom further enforced this. I’m not saying that ATR was bad; in fact I have no idea whether they were any good or not because the sound was SO FUCKING SHIT all I could really hear was the backing tracks and occasional shouting from Alec, Nic and CX. The lighting was abysmal as well as it was just flashing out on the crowd and just added insult to injury as not only could you not hear what was going on, neither could you see. Bands like Atari Teenage Riot need to have some level of clarity otherwise it simply becomes a mess of noise. Frankly, it sounded like what I imagine non-fans probably hear when they listen to it on record!

I actually really like ATR and have been a fan since I was about 17. I saw Alec Empire perform CD1 of Intelligence & Sacrifice at the ICA in London in 2002 and it was completely amazing. Tuesday night, was not. The Electric Ballroom leaves a lot to be desired as a venue. The closed off the smoking patio at some point during the gig so no-one was allowed a cigarette throughout the entireity of ATR. Luckily it was open whilst the support act was on as I’m not particularly keen on emo-drone.

What we found quite interesting at the gig was how confused a lot of people looked. The average age of the crowd was somewhere in their 30’s and they’d clearly come for nostalgia reasons. BUT, it was a Tuesday night, which is obvs a school night, meaning all these kids were grown-ups and y’know fairly sensible, and, mostly sober. I have never been stood around so many bewildered ex-drug addicts in my life.

One thing I couldn’t work out at the time was whether Hanin Elias was with them. I could only make out Nic Endo jumping about, Alec Empire strutting around bare-chested and CX Kidtronix (who I actually thought was great) getting huge height in his jumps at points. I did a bit of research and came up with this Art Rocker interview with Alec concerning the reunion. Read the interview for sure, but the really juicy bits are in the comments section where Hanin lays into Alec quite viciously. So nastily in fact that quite a few German musicians chuck in their tuppence as well! Fucking drama!

Edit: listen to their new single Activate for free on Soundcloud (or watch the YouTube vids below for their best songs from back in the day)

Last Saturday I had the distinct pleasure of finding myself at the launch of Spacebox, a night run by Luca C and Damon Martin of Disco Bloodbath. It was in Stoke Newington (my old stomping ground) in this lovely little basement club underneath The Three Crowns. You don’t really expect to have good nightclubs in Stoke Newington so this venue is a real gem.

Whilst the music was exceptionally good, the real pleasure of the night lay in Ali Love’s live performance. Some of you may remember him from his hits a few years previous, ‘K-hole‘ and ‘Secret Sunday Lover‘ but this set was focused on his new material. It was quite simply great and I whole-heartedly recommend that you find an opportunity to see him live wherever and whenever you can.

You may recognise one of his new songs from having featured on a Skins advert on e4 recently (which you can see here). I’ve posted the full music video underneath for you to judge for yourself. I’d like to add that he was wearing the chainmail you can see in the video below and it does not take anything from how hot he is. He’s also a very nice and friendly gentleman actually, so it’s an all-round win basically. Afterwards, someone I know who had not come with us said “Ali Love played? Siiiiiiiick!” And that’s how you should feel too.

Back in 2007 I helped to organise a gig in my hometown where some friends of mine performed a cover version of the Bobby De Niro Calypso. Somehow it caught the attention of Adam Buxton and he wrote about it on his blog!

Bobby Deniro from Mike Somerset on Vimeo.

Here’s the original from The Adam & Joe for comparison…

And one last little #save6music plug, here is a video I watched 45 minutes ago (I’d decided to do an Adam&Joe blog last night so I was chuffed to find this!) of Adam Buxton challenging Mark Thompson to a fight live on Channel Four news with regards to the closure of BBC 6Music radio station. Fucking brill.

Last night I DJ’ed at a friend’s 30th birthday. The theme was ’80s prom so as you can see I went a bit New Romantic. It was really fun but I did experience a bit of rudeness that shocked me. I’ve DJ’ed on and off for about 5 years and never has what happened last night, happened to me before. I was so pissed off I unplugged my headphones and refused to continue playing. In my defence I wasn’t being paid and it takes *a lot* to hack me off when I’m playing. I’ve taken a lot of shit over the years from drunken idiots but last night took the biscuit.

People were coming into the DJ booth and standing in my way in front of the decks and not leaving when I asked them to. People were getting annoyed when I didn’t have a particular tune they requested (I had over 7 hours of ’80s music). And one girl asked if she could put a song off her ipod and when I told she could after the song I had queued up she had a tantrum and called me a liar. To my face. And wouldn’t get out of the DJ booth.

Despite all this I did have a really good time and actually not taking their shit was the best thing ever because sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself. It’s taken me a long, long, long time to realise that I don’t have to take shit from anyone. God, I wish I’d learnt that years ago.

Anyway, enough ranting. Here’s all that babble summed up into two crucial points:

• Respect DJs
• Don’t take shit from anyone

To end this blog post on a light note, here’s the surprise hit from last night that I kinda expected to bomb (haha, and yet I played it regardless) but went down a storm…

Peace out. x

What I fear is going to happen is that despite all the initial hubbub we will lose 6music. And it will be down to sheer laziness. People are happy to click ‘Join Fanpage/Group‘ on Facebook or happy to follow a Twitter account but when it comes to filling out a form explaining why we need to keep the station, people simply can’t be fucked.

Shit like that really annoys me because people have such shallow convictions. Either believe in something or don’t. Don’t fucking half-arse it. Now, this actually means quite a bit to me as I proper love this station and I’d be gutted if it went. Granted I’d get over it but I’d stop listening to the radio and nuture a mild hatred for the BBC for a while.

I filled out the consultation thingy and signed a few petitions and shit and so received this email telling me you can do an official submission to the consultation in under 1 minute. Clicky click here okay: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/email-the-BBC

Here are some reasons why I love 6Music:

• Adam & Joe (sadly on sabbatical but it still counts alright).
• Weekly shows from people like Craig Charles, Huey from Fun Lovin’ Criminals and Jarvis Cocker.
• Being able to turn the radio on and hear Public Enemy.
• Being able to turn the radio on 2 hours later and hear Dolly Parton.
• Hearing fucking weird shit that freaks me out a little but still makes me glad that someone somewhere is playing it on a proper radio station (NB that’s mostly Stuart Maconie but hey).
• Being able to turn the radio on and not hearing Leona Lewis, N-Dubz, Cheryl Cole, Black Eyed Peas or any other sick-inducing pop.

Anyway, I reckon I’m actually going to cry when it goes. So kids, if you’d like to stop me from crying here are some super-important links for y’all.

http://www.love6music.com/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/

g-o-o-d