Our friends at HTF Media have just released this brilliant footage of The Bug live at the last Supersonic. Joined by Miss Red, Daddy Freddy and Flow Dan they closed the Saturday night programme with earth shattering effect…that bass!

We’ve got a sale in the shop of two top-notch releases from Capsule Recordings. Tweak Bird live at Supersonic Festival 2010 and Iron Lung live at Supersonic Festival 2009. They’re both available at £6 – a new year bargain for you!

We’ve just announced a very special show to take place on Saturday 27th April. We’re big fans of Barn Owl over at Capsule, and are thrilled to invite them back to Birmingham, and have them play in the stunning setting of St Paul’s Church. Playing in front of modified super 8 footage, the twin guitars of Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras intertwine instinctively, equal parts slow-burning twang and spaced-out feedback drone.

They’ll be joined by Grumbling Fur, a project by Alexander Tucker and Daniel O’Sullivan and Liverpool based Ex Easter Island Head (for fans of Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca).
Tickets are now on sale via theticketsellers.co.uk

Barn Owl live at Supersonic Festival 2011:

Our friends at The Quietus are celebrating their 5th year this year and and will embarking on a bunch of new projects to mark this. One of those is a ‘new music digest’ on Tumblr – offering a simple breakdown of some key emerging acts they bill it as an ‘ongoing archive of adventurous and exciting new music’.

There’s already lots to read on there, including info on Supersonic 2012 artist Goat, Birmingham born Lee Gamble, and other great new acts like Ex Easter Island Head and Heatsick.Take a look via quietusnewmusic.tumblr.com

In other pleasing Quietus news, Oxbow frontman Eugene Robinson has started a new column, his first one is about English grammar and getting into fights http://thequietus.com/articles/11121-i-was-attacked-by-a-grammarian-by-eugene-s-robinson

Any krautrock fans out there will be pleased to hear that the Einstellung record ‘Wings of Desire’ is available again on the Capsule shop. The limited edition double vinyl comes with gatefold sleeve designed by Lucy McLauchlan www.lucy.beat13.co.uk

“From the deepest depths of the industrial heartlands of Middle England comes a small ray of light. Since late 2003 a warm glow has steadily grown into what can only be described as a fireball. From this point on let this gentle fireball be known as Einstellung.
Blending glorious monotonous Krautrock with melodic tones and heavy slabs of Sabbath riffage, whilst finding time to declare sonic warfare on those tinnitus victims who have passed the point of no return.

At Supersonic Festival 2012 we hosted a Q&A with Savage Pencil aka Edwin Pouncey ahead of the release of his ‘Trip or Squeek’ publication, a collection of comic strips that have featured in the Wire since 2002.

You can see an exhibition of the original Trip or Squeek artwork at London’s Orbital Comics 10th January – 10th February.

One of Savage Pencil’s comic strips was about Home of Metal – quite an honour!

Our friends at Flatpack Festival have set up a Kickstarter campaign, asking people to pledge fund to their festival hub – the Flatpack Palais.

“A lot of what goes on in the Palais is free, and we’d like to keep it that way so that as many people as possible can enjoy a piece of Flatpack. Some of the budget is already in place, but setting up a temporary cinema-cum-music-venue-cum-café-bar isn’t cheap. Your support will help to pay for technical equipment, seating, signage, and most excitingly all the great things that we’re hoping to put on in the building during the festival: from short film programmes to live bands to psychedelic poster shows. In return you’ll have the satisfaction of helping to make a unique cultural event happen.“

One of the most innovative film festivals around, the programme is a treat each year and we can’t wait to see what they’ve got planned for 2013.

Happy new year! Hope you all had an enjoyably gluttonous winter break.

Beard Rock have posted up a review of our show with Boris in December. Nice to see they enjoyed the support slots too, with big compliments going out to Opium Lord and Joe Volk.

“They were dynamic, magnetic, hypnotising, and managed

the difficult twin feats of having a gong and not appearing like dicks, mainly due to the boundless (and shirtless) enthusiasm of Atsuo, miked up seemingly just to shout “WOO” and “YEAH”. Aside from his loud enthusiasms, the rest of the band just went about their business, Wata not even

breaking a sweat when pulling out impressive riff after impressive riff. It was a great show.”

You can read the review in full via beardrock.com

We’ll be announcing news of an exciting event very soon. Meanwhile we’re pulling together an artistic programme for the Library of Birmingham’s opening season. Watch this space for more details.