Two exciting discussion panels have been announced as part of the ongoing Home of Metal season of events. Both panels cost only £5 each and will take place at Lighthouse in Wolverhampton.
Budding writers will find invaluable insights into the world of music journalism. The panel will explore ways in which journalism has been informed by the ongoing evolution of Heavy Metal as well as the move from print to the use of digital media. Featuring Alex Milas (editor of Metal Hammer), Frances Morgan (Plan B, Terrorizer, New Statesman), John Doran (The Quietus) and Malcolm Dome (TotalRock).
The relationship between fans and music has been explored throughout the Home of Metal project; this panel of artists will investigate that dynamic further. Nicholas Bullen is a Birmingham based sound and visual artist, he founded the band Napalm Death, creating the Grindcore genre and taking Heavy Metal in a unique direction. This panel will invite discussion between Bullen and visual artists who draw upon the genre in their work.
Both panels are part of the Home of Metal Conference 1 – 4 September 2011
Exploring Heavy Metal; the music, its heritage and global influence www.homeofmetalconference.com
Matmos – the electronic duo comprised of Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt – have been creating, constructing and collaging sonic ephemera since the mid 90s. With each album they release, Daniel and Schmidt seem to have thrown each other a gauntlet, between them creating compositions based around the collection and processing of particularly unorthodox sounds. Sometimes compared to artists like Steve Reich, and certainly to Pierre Henry (the ‘father’ of Musique Concrete), Matmos have created albums entirely from the sounds of surgery (A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure), used the sound of a bovine uterus (on their venerative album The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of A Beast which pays tribute to notable queers), and on their first self-titled effort sampled the nerve signals of a crayfish.
Read the full interview by Nix Lowrey HERE
Matmos perform with J Lesser at themacin Birmingham this Sunday tickets are available HERE
We’re intrigued and so should you be – see you there.
The Quietus recently interview Kevin Martin and he had lots of lovely things to say about his time at Supersonic last year, and about the festival in general – follow the link to read more.
In a weird sort of way Supersonic were responsible for me rethinking what I wanted to do with King Midas Sound. I’d seen Corrupted play a year or two before and they helped me remember the roots of where I’d come from musically…To be honest we just love the festival. It’s an extremely positive experience to just wander around and check out all the other bands.
Rob Haynes speaks to avant metal pioneer Justin Broadrick about getting the gang back together for a series of hellish shows…
The thunderous rock heritage bequested the world by the Midlands of England took a startlingly effective turn for the brutal in the late 1980s. Taking the genetic strain of genre progenitors Black Sabbath and the magnificent yob-metal/ punk blend that was Stoke’s Discharge, in 1987 Birmingham’s Napalm Death announced their arrival by inserting the rocket-fueled suppository of their Scum album into the extreme scene. Guitarist on that debut was Justin Broadrick, whose fidgety musical imagination led him to depart after one side of their debut release, first to the drum stool of cult alt-noisers Head of David and then on to a project he could call his own – the mighty Godflesh. Amid the fertile noise scene as it stood, Godflesh – with Broadrick on guitar and vocals, GC Green (Benny to his friends) on bass, and an appropriately relentless drum machine – hit a midway point between the neurotic spite of Big Black and the death-knell hammer blows of Swans.
Ben Graham from The Quietus talks to Einstellung, Birmingham based Apache beat, interstellar overlords
Formed in Birmingham in 2003 by ex-members of stoner rock band Sally, industrial metal titans Godflesh, Kat Bjelland’s Katastrophy Wife and post-rock/ shoegaze outfit Grover, Einstellung have stripped the motorik chassis of the first Neu! Album down to its essential cogs and gears, and fitted it to a custom-built hot rod roadster, equal parts Sonic Youth skronk, My Bloody Valentine narcotic noise and Black Sabbath hard rock. The resulting album, Wings of Desire, is finally available in the UK as one of the first releases on Capsule Records, brought to you by the fine people behind Birmingham’s unspeakably excellent Supersonic Festival. Released as an exquisitely-designed limited edition of 500 heavyweight vinyl double albums, Wings of Desire is a record that needs to be listened to loud, its six lengthy instrumental tracks (all given cod-German titles) building from droning, lazily melodic beginnings to monstrous, fuzz-blasted raptures and epiphanies, via sonorous avalanches of warped and clanging sturm und drang. We spoke to Einstellung guitarist Andrew Parker on the eve of a major show opening for Cluster at Birmingham Town Hall on the February 11, where the band will play their forthcoming second album, And The Rest Are Thunder, in its entirety.
Einstellung support legendary Krautrock duo CLUSTER on Thursday 11th Feb at Town Hall Birmingham
Tickets available from https://tickets.thsh.co.uk 0121 780 3333
You can purchase ‘Wings Of Desire‘ limited edition double vinyl from our SHOP – cover designed by artist Lucy McLauchlan (only 500 ever made)
Our favourite extreme music festival – Supersonic – is almost here. We look forward to the treats in store and Jimmy Martin talks to Italian psych/prog horror legends Goblin
Not so long ago, Brian May was heard to remark that Queen’s soundtrack to Flash Gordon marked the first instance of a rock band providing the score to a motion picture. Much as we all love Flash Gordon and the glorious bombast that accompanies it, such a claim is plainly nonsense. Not only does it ignore the frequently meandering and inconsequential work that Pink Floyd delivered to score films like Zabriskie Point, More and La Vallee, and the work of Can on the numerous celluloid projects that led to their Soundtracks album, but it also fails to take into account the twin titans of 70s rockscore lore, whose startlingly vivid work looms large over not only much else of a similar disposition, but sometimes the very films themselves: Florian Fricke’s Popol Vuh, and the Italian maestros of florid grand guignol, the band synonymous with horror auteur Dario Argento, Goblin.
Goblin’s cult following originally began around the time that their score to Profondo Rosso became a chart hit in their native land, somehow taking a sound which occupied similar territory to the ill-reputed likes of Mike Oldfield and Emerson Lake And Palmer, yet injecting it with a dynamism and drama that places them well outside the more self-regarding and indulgent spheres of mid-seventies experimentation
Indeed, such was the impact of Goblin’s music, that the symbiotic relationship between film and soundtrack was often thrown beyond its usual metier. During the making of Argento’s heavenly bloodbath Suspiria, for instance, much of the music was recorded before any of the film was actually shot, and played on set to build up the requisite atmosphere. True to form, it’s genuinely hard to imagine that film’s otherworldly allure being anything like as potent without Goblin’s dark, deliciously overwrought blend of progressive baroque and wild, raw experimentation blasting away in tandem.
Goblin perform for the first time in the UK at Supersonic Festival on Sunday 26th of July and also at the Scala in London on Monday 27th of July
Tickets for Supersonic Festival are available from www.theticketsellers.co.uk
and for the London show from www.ticketweb.co.uk
These were sent to us by our friend John, editor of the Quietus, produced by his partner photographer Maria at http://www.shot2bits.net/
Pretty damn special!!!
