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
Just a little reminder that this Saturday we are hosting the ATP Release The Bats Halloween party in Space 2 at the Custard Factory, with an unmissable line up (only show outside of London): SHELLAC / OM / WOODEN SHJIPS / PISSED JEANS / LIGHTNING BOLT + DJ ANDY WEATHERALL
Doors 6.00pm – Lightning Bolt perform at 6.30pm
There are still a handful of tickets available from: Ideal 18 / 20 Gibb Square, The Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham, B9 4AA Polar Bear 10 York Rd, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7RZ, 0121 441 5202 Swordfish Cheltenham House, 14-16 Temple St, Birmingham, B2 5BG, 0121 633 4859
Now on to competition time:
ATP invite all Release The Bats ticketholders to dress up for Halloween, either as something traditionally spooky or as something to do with one of the bands. Like last year there will be Best Costume and Best Photo competitions, with prices including ATP Chalets, Polaroid PoGoCameras and ATP goodies.
• People wearing costumes should take a picture with either one of our roving photographers or at the Release The Bats Photo Booth. The three best costumes on the night will win prizes including a PoGo. Images of the costumes from all three Bats events will then go onto www.atpfestival.com/releasethebats where people will be able to vote to find the overall chalet winner!
• The best photo competition will be judged after the events through photos uploaded to Flickr at www.flickr.com/groups/releasethebats2008 and the best photo over all three nights as picked by a professional photographer will win the chalet!
And here are some suggestions of costumes should you be a small dog coming along to the event.
Hours of fun to be had searching for dogs in costumes (clearly a favoured past time of mine)
Wednesday night saw the official launch as it were of the HOME OF METAL project with our first training session for our volunteers, to our delight we have a fantastic group of over 20 people, who are all fired up and ready to go, working with us to achieve what is to be a huge and quite honestly, daunting task. No longer is this a just an idea we’ve been toying with over the past 9 years or so, now it’s a reality and we have to see it through!
To kick start the proceedings we invited up the great oracle himeslf, John Doran, a music journalist who writes for a number of publications including Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, WIRE, Plan B, Stool Pigeon, Drowned In Sound, Playlouder, Disorder, Bizarre and more. He also edits his own website The Quietus. John gave us a fascinating potted history of music starting with Black Sabbaths’ early beginnings and blues influences right through to Napalm Death. Despite being rather poorly and suffering from a liver infection he had us all on the edge of our seats.
The group of volunteers will be keeping a record of their experiences on the HOME OF METAL blog, which will be set up next week, so I thought that it would be useful to keep you updated with what we discover and try and keep a record of our journey, as even within the last 7 days we’ve uncovered so much.
* Last week we went to London and met with Julie Weir and Lisa Bardsley, both key members of the music industry whom have been incredibly generous with their time and contacts, and will serve as great advocates to the project. Myk in one of his many Napalm related garments.
* We were put in contact with Myk Bastard, a guy from Vestal, New York, whom has amazingly collected everything Napalm related, with over 200 T-shirts and clothing , not to mention the back catalogue of all their releases and related projects. Myk is now going to start photographing his collection so he can add them to our archive. What a star!
* Midge from DIABOLIK at the Custard Factory, has kept every issue of Sounds Music paper from 1984 – 1991 and has leant them to us to scan and serves as a wonderful archive of news relating to the bands of that period, loads of great reviews and news stories. A legacy of Sounds was the creation of the Heavy Metal/Rock magazine Kerrang!, which was originally issued as a supplement before being spun-off as a separate publication, which continues to this day.
* Richard Short has been in touch, he’s been documenting Digbeth over the past 20 years and has photos from all the venues in the 80’s and 90’s, mainly taken at the coach and horses, barrell organ, kalidiscope and edwards or nameless digbeth pubs and include some fantastic Godflesh photos.
* We went to Nottingham, home of Earache Records, and spent the afternoon with label founder Digby Pearson, luckily for us Digby has been a great hoarder, and has kept a wealth of treasures which relate to Napalm Death and Godflesh. He has kindly agreed to start digitising them for us to add to the archive. Most fascinating was his memories of early shows when people like Vic Reeves were big fans of the bands and the way the late great John Peel was such an advocate for the genre. We’re hoping to go back and see Digby in a couple of weeks to rifle through more of his collection, as well as inviting him to be interviewed at our first open day in Wolverhampton on Saturday 25th of october.
* We have recieved permission from Central TV to show a documentary made in 1992 by Roger Shannon and Jonnie Turpie entitled MOTOR CITY MUSIC YEARS. Part two of the documentary is about the 1970’s. It starts by charting the move from The Move into orchestral based pop music (ELO, Wizard etc) at the start of that decade, and then concentrates on heavy metal with great interviews, and music clips, with Black Sabbath, Ozzy in LA, Judas Priest, Magnum, and then Slade (filmed in the pub at the Black Country Museum).
Exhausting and thats just a weeks worth, the project is now in full swing, no turning back…start searching in your attics!
So what does Black Sabbath, Jasper Carrott and the Capsule Grannies all have in common?
Well we’ve been given a mention under the Custard Factory heading no.37 in the Birmingham Mail’ s 100 Great Things About The West Midlands.
“The campus also contains a first-class music venue, bar and theatre, all of which are fully used by leftfield promoters for nights of alternative mayhem.
Most established of these is Capsule, two switched on women, who constantly host nights of the world’s most cutting edge music and provide a platform for local bands.
Capsule’s Supersonic Festival, held every July at the Custard Factory is a world-class event and perfectly sums up the whole Custard Factory Vibe.”
For those of you based in Birmingham or near by, tickets for ATP Halloween Party with performances by Lightning Bolt, Shellac, OM, Pissed Jeans and Wooden Shjips are on sale at Ideal Skate shop based at the Custard Factory.
Ideal
18 / 20 Gibb Square
The Custard Factory
Digbeth
Birmingham
B9 4AA Opening Times
10.30 am – 6.00 pm Monday through to Saturday.
12 Noon – 4.00 pm Sundays.
Also selling tickets are
Polar Bear
10 York Rd
Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7RZ
0121 441 5202
We’re over joyed to announce that ATP in collaboration with Capsule will present probably the best line up of the year right here in Birmingham.
RELEASE THE BATS 2008 Halloween Party with:
SHELLAC
OM
WOODEN SHJIPS
PISSED JEANS
LIGHTNING BOLT
+ DJ ANDY WEATHERALL
@ Space 2 . Custard Factory . Birmingham
Sat 1st November
Fancy dress welcome: we’d love it if you could come dressed as something inspired by one of the bands (Perhaps you could simulate some Pissed Jeans? Or arrive in a…Shjip?) or as something spooky to help us with creating the Halloween mood.
We put on Lightning Bolt in 2004 in the theatre space at the Custard Factory and for many in the audience it was a night of musical revelation. If you don’t know much about the band check out this documentary ‘The Power of Salad’ and you too will become a convert to the power of the Bolt, easily one of the most exciting live bands of the last 10 years!
and then of course there is Shellac featuring Big Black guitarist Steve Albini, a band that Capsule have been wanting to bring to Birmingham since we started back in 1999. Probably one of the greatest songs ever written ‘`Prayer To God’
Just so you know you can pick up your tickets and/or purchase tickets for Supersonic:
Friday from 9pm
Saturday from 4pm
Sunday from 2pm
The box office is located at the top of Gibb Street, the entrance to the Custard Factory.
and a little taste of things to come, work by Kipple, who will be screening their work on Saturday + Sunday in the Theatre Space
Just one day now till Supersonic and its a hive of activity at the Custard Factory:
We have just got back our Supersonic T-shirt, this year designed by artist Gunsho and they are looking amazing. They are a limited edition of 100 and are on Fly53 T’s who have kindly sponsored us this year.
Also hard at work is artist French who has come to Birmingham to paint the new Ideal skate ramp as part of the festival as well as holding an exhibition along with the Outcrowd.
So here are some top tips for enjoying Supersonic
1. It just might rain (we’re in England and its summer), and although the venues are covered you still might need to queue to get into the festival, so bring along a raincoat.
2. There are no cash points on site at the Custard Factory or anywhere near, so please come with all the money you need, there’s loads to spend it on – merch, beer and cake.
3. Bring some ear plugs, we don’t want to damage your ears:)
4. Try out a band you’ve not heard of before, you might just like them
5. If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, you’re in luck as we still have a limited amount left which will be on sale on the door.
Italian design company Malleus, whom we met earlier in the year at Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands have produced a series of limited edition screen prints for Supersonic Festival 2008. They will be on sale during the weekend in our ‘Market Place’ which will be held in the Old Library at the Custard Factory, along with a great selection of record stalls and other treats for your buying pleasure.
