An ongoing collation of mentions of Supersonic 2009 across the internet. Please feel free to let us know if you’ve taken photos, written a review or blog post or generally want to share your experience of the festival. We’ll be adding to this over the next couple of weeks. (the first incarnation of the Supersonic Memory was created by the rather wonderful mr Pete Ashton ( who was this year responsible for pulling together the Supersonic Twitter feed) – you can check out what folks thought from 2007+ 2008 both sit on the Created In Birminghamblog)
14 albums, more than 1000 concerts, one really doesn’t know what to say about this trio from Rome, Italy. One more record to come by the hand of Dälek, more than 1000 concerts all around the globe, a collaborations list from here to Mars (King Buzzo and Mike Patton from Melvins to mention a sample). That deep sound to their music that goes down to the abyss and further is what makes them so special.
The bass lines maintain a deep, hard structure, over that is chaotic rhythm looking for freedom until it becomes totally lost. These guys don’t waste their time smiling.
Influenced by everything natural, ancestral and imaginary, they never seem to find time to centre on human emotions. Isolated landscapes, remote geological ages, astral forces are part of the compositions that become more obscure each time a new album is released. They are far removed now from the innocent grunge from records like the self-titled Zu, now closer to abyssal and chaotic atmospheres.
While keeping their original line-up since 1999 (drums, bass, saxophone) they have been touring with Mike Patton and King Buzzo from Melvins whom they share a record label with.
Goblin played the Donau festival in Austria back in April and the reviews were good – it’s got us all extra excited for their appearance at this year’s Supersonic Festival.
Italy’s Goblin proposed a world where punk never happened. At their first concert for 30 years, they played a selection of classic material from their 1970s horror film soundtracks, from Profondo Rosso, Suspiria and Zombi, plus material from their 2005 album Return of the Goblin. It was amusing to see the young, trendy crowd rocking out to Goblin – much of their set consisted of precisely the kind of symphonic Prog rock and Gary Moore-style guitar solos long considered the high watermark of cheese. But the exigencies of film soundtrack composition always saved Goblin from Prog’s worst excesses and gave them a unique palette, tempering their more grandiose moments with creepy nursery rhyme melodies and ghoulish whispers – current Black Metal fantasists like Deathspell Omega or Velvet Cacoon (and even NNCK) owe much to Goblin’s pioneering vocal work. The Wire – June 2009
Supersonic are delighted to confirm that SUNN O))) have been confirmed for this year’s festival in Birmingham. The show will be the first SUNN O))) performance in the UK since the release of Monoliths and Dimensions and the ONLY European performance this summer.
SUNN O))) will be playing material from GrimmRobe demos exclusively. Expect pure, raw, uninhibited invocations featuring O)))’s core members: Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson and accompanied by 2 Les Paul guitars, 4 Sunn fullstacks and 4 Ampeg bass stacks. No guests, no vocals, no keyboards. We hope you will join us!
They join: Army Of Flying Robots / Atomized / Drum Eyes / Kylie Minoise / PCM / Scorn / Taint / Venetian Snares / Dialed In – Bobby Previte vs VJ Benton-C Bainbridge / Corrupted / Diaganol / Flower/Corsano Duo / Growing / Iron Lung / Kim Hiorthoy / Light Trap / Marnie Stern / Master Musicians Of Bukkake / Monotonix / Nisenenmondai / Remember Remember / Rose Kemp / Skullflower / Tartufi / The Accused / Thought Forms / Thorr’s Hammer / Tweak Bird / Zu / 65 Days Of Static / Arbouretum / Caribou / Chris Herbert / Earthless / Goblin / Head Of David / Jarboe / Khyam Allami / Nancy Wallace / Pontiak / Pram / Pre / Theo / The Memory Band / zZz
With just 4 weeks until Supersonic Festival is upon us, we have just confirmed a very special surprise performance due to take place during the weekend of the festival…all we can say is that it will be THE ONLY EUROPEAN show for this summer…we shall reveal all in the next couple of weeks in the meantime I’m afraid you’ll just have to keep guessing! 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
Confirmed line up: Friday: Army Of Flying Robots / Atomized / Drum Eyes / Kylie Minoise / PCM / Scorn / Taint / Venetian Snares
Saturday: Bobby Previte / Corrupted / Diaganol / Flower/Corsano Duo / Growing / Iron Lung / Kim Hiorthoy / Light Trap / Marnie Stern / Master Musicians Of Bukkake / Monotonix / Nisenenmondai / Remember Remember / Rose Kemp / Skullflower / Tartufi / The Accused / Thought Forms / Thorr’s Hammer / Tweak Bird / Zu
Sunday: 65 Days Of Static / Arbouretum / Caribou / Chris Herbert / Earthless / Goblin / Head Of David / Jarboe / Khyam Allami / Nancy Wallace / Pontiak / Pram / Pre / Theo / The Memory Band / zZz
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-beforebands 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 Myspaceprofile. Surprisingly, they claim to be influenced by artists like Fela Kuti, Funkadelic and Django Reinhardt!!
Last time Bobby Previte visited Birmingham, he brought together his acclaimed Constellation Ensemble; a jazz orchestra formed of trumpets, keyboards, sax, clarinet, harp, piano and additional drums to compliment the ones of Previte, renowned as much as a jazz drummer as a composer. That concert, commissioned by the City of Birmingham was celebrated in February 2004 at CBSO, 7 other cities in the UK and Teatro Nationale in Milan, Italy in May of 2005.
Previte played what is considered his masterpiece, The 23 Constellations of Joan Miró, a multimedia performance including texts and slide projections, based on the abstract work of the Spanish painter, which stunned Previte as he visited one of the three opportunities in history to see the full collection of 23 paintings together at the New York MOMA, in 1993.
The wide range of musical influences embraced by Previte allows him to travel from free-jazz together with the Constellations Orchestra, to urban funk, interpreted together with two of New York’s most outstanding musicians, Charlie Hunter playing his eight string guitar and DJ Logic at turntables for Previte’s composition Blasticity. Other influences are massively mixed in his music, from Piazzola tango to Latin jazz, through to John Zorn, with whom he has worked in several projects. Some of the musical labels that have been associated to Previte’s music are free-jazz, psychedelia or doom jazz. The plastic arts and visual influence is still present at Previte’s recordings and live performances.
He will be performing at Supersonic, together with VJ Benton-C Bainbridge, an audio-visual performance in which Bobby will trigger his drums in a full direct set, no loops, no overdub, over Benton-C’s light brushstrokes, at their only tour date in the UK, in partnership with Birmingham Jazz.
We’re really pleased to announce the addition of IRON LUNG to this years Supersonic Festivals line up.
For those uninitiated, IRON LUNG are a two-man band from Reno, NV that specialize in a brand of audio violence heretofore unknown in the extreme underground. Bearing marks of grind, power violence, thrash, and even oldschool HC, they are one of the handful of bands that have applied new and innovative approaches (arrangements, chords structures, thematic unities, etc) to their underground musical machinations. If you are one of the handful of people who remember the all-too-brief existence of KRILEZAC, then you know the foundation upon which this was built (IRON LUNG was born of the KRILEZAC ashes, although they have a more measured and sharp sound).
They join the initial Supersonic 09 line up – Head Of David/ 65 Days of Static / Atomized/ Berg Sans Nipple / Caribou / Cave/ Chris Herbert / Diagonal / Earthless /Flower & Corsano Duo / Genghis Tron / Growing / Jarboe / Khyam Allami / Master Musicians Of Bukake/ Nancy Wallace / Pontiak / PRE / Scorn / Skullflower/ Theo / Venetian Snares /Zu / ZzZ’s
Weekend tickets go on sale today exclusively for those on our mailing list – general release in April from
www.theticketsellers.co.uk
SUPERSONIC 2009 24TH – 26TH July Birmingham UK
Crafting extraordinary events for adventurous audiences combining music, art, film & cake.
“Of this welter of well organised, wisely curated festivals (ATP, Faster Than Sound, Sonar, Greenman) perhaps the best organised and most wisely curated was Supersonic. Plotted by Birmingham promoters Capsule, 2007’s Supersonic inhabited the nexus where metal, folk and noise met.”Plan B Magazine
“Supersonic, in our opinion the best festival in the world right now” Rock-A-Rolla Magazine
”AS British music festivals go, Birmingham’s annual Supersonic event is the best kind of mixed musical bag, a dizzying assortment of avant rock textures and Heavy Metal thunder on a bill which swings from the sublime to the ridiculous without once seeming ostentatiously eclectic.”The Wire
We are pleased to announce the first confirmations – including HEAD OF DAVID who bring their driving bombast to proceedings for the first time in 23 years – for this year’s festival, which will take place in Birmingham on 24TH – 26TH of July 2009.
Now in it’s 7th year, the event will once again take place at the Custard Factory utilising the many rooms for music, art, film & of course cake.
Additional confirmations will follow in the upcoming weeks, but the line-up is shaping up to be another extravaganza – the rather incredible former Swan, JARBOE; the expansive drone-noise of GROWING; Brighton’s prog adventure, DIAGONAL; the wild avant futuristic jazz of ZU; the stoned pysch of EARTHLESS, the Virginian sludge rock of PONTIAK, the industrial experiments of 65 DAYS OF STATIC, the immense duo that is FLOWER/CORSANO DUO, KHYAM ALLAMI and one of the finest folk vocalists NANCY WALLACE will be featured in the line-up, once again highlighting the highly eclectic booking policy of the festival.
Initial line up : Head Of David/ 65 Days of Static / Berg Sans Nipple / Caribou / Cave/ Chris Herbert / Diagonal / Earthless /Flower & Corsano Duo / Genghis Tron / Growing / Jarboe / Khyam Allami / Master Musicians Of Bukake/ Nancy Wallace / Pontiak / PRE / Theo / Venetian Snares /Zu / ZzZ’s
Many more to be announced over the coming months
