It is with a heavy heart that Capsule say goodbye to co-founder Jenny Moore at the end of the year. Her creative passion and inspiring level of commitment have driven Capsule forward over the years and been central to the organisation’s ethos. All who have worked alongside her will miss her enormously. We wish her the best in her future endeavours, and anyone who has enjoyed a Capsule gig or a Supersonic Festival should raise a glass to her.
The much loved Hare & Hounds venue in the Kings Heath area of Birmingham is currently under threat as a hub for live music due to plans to build residential property directly behind the venue. You can show your support by signing the petition.
“It has come to our attention that an application for planning permission to build a flat behind the Hare and Hounds has been submitted to Birmingham City Council. If granted it could pose a real threat to us continuing to host live music and club nights due to it’s proximity to the main live venue. Although nothing has been confirmed yet we have decided to appeal against this application before it has the chance to be accepted.
To make our case stronger we need your help. Please sign this petition to show your support.”
Capsule have a long and happy relationship with this venue, with artists like Earth, Mono, Bardo Pond, Melt Banana, Emeralds, Prefuse 73, Merzbow and Efterklang all performing there. Sign the petition and show your support!
Just one of the bands we’re stupidly excited about playing Supersonic Festival is year is Goat. Afro heavy psych punk from a remote Swedish village? Gotta be good! You can read a review of their album ‘World Music’ on Norman Records
Everything is perfectly in place here from well-segued samples and the odd field recording to the breathless running order. It’s hit after flipping hit with this band, they’ve concocted an alarmingly poppy creation filled with nine all-too brief excursions into a voodoo world where Swedish psychedelia meets belting Afro-rock and parties like there’s no tomorrow. Please, like with all your favourite albums, play it ridiculously loud, then, undoubtedly, re-rewind and crank it up again till dawn and beyond. Goat are worth falling out with your neighbours for. Read the full review via http://www.normanrecords.com/records/135427-goat—world-music
And if you’re into your psych rock, you’ll have a fab time at Supersonic, with the likes of Carlton Melton, Six Organs of Admittance and Hookworms all planning to turn us all inside out.
The Guardian today described
Supersonic is an excellent small festival of boundary-chafing music that takes place at Birmingham’s Custard Factory every October. As a hint of what to expect, the organisers are hosting a couple of “taster” nights this week, with acts from the electronic end of their wide-ranging brief. Godflesh’s Justin Broadrick and Kevin Martin, aka The Bug, have collaborated many times over the years – most significantly throughout the 90s as industrial hip-hop outfit Techno Animal – and these two nights find them showcasing their latest projects. Martin appears as part of heavyweight future-dub soundsystem King Midas Sound, while Broadrick performs as JK Flesh, a new beat-oriented guise that bridges Godflesh’s malefic grind and Jesu’s snowblind soundscapes. In Birmingham you can also catch the power electronics of Iron Fist Of The Sun, while “Romany surf-step” chap Glatze provides a bit of light relief in London.
Tickets for tonight can be purchased from HERE doors are at 7.30pm – we’ll be running a lovely real ale bar too
Eastside Projects can be found – 86 Heath Mill Lane Birmingham, West Midlands B9 4AR
For tickets to the London show on Thursday see HERE
For full line up of Supersonic Festival 19-21 October see HERE & tickets are available from HERE
As well as getting you hyped for Supersonic Festival with the heavy sounds of Kevin Martin (as King Midas Sound System, performing as The Bug in October) and JK Flesh, we’ve taken the opportunity to programme some exciting sounds from some of Birmingham’s own experimental sound artists.
Sarah M Farmer is a Birmingham based artist exploring various sound techniques and home made instrumentation. For this event she will be performing a new piece entitled ‘An Array of Events’. “In a bid to overcome the problem of being a lone performer with only the usual number of hands and limited instrumental skill” Sarah will perform orchestral pieces using a variety of DIY instruments.
Check out some of her other work:
The event takes place on Saturday 4th August at Eastside Projects from 7.30pm. Tickets are available via https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk/ 
Y Music is a consortium between a number of UK based experimental music promoters/agencies, made up of Qu Junktions (Bristol), Tusk (Newcastle) and yours truly, Capsule (Birmingham). The lovely Chris of Brumcast has skillfully put together a brilliant podcast featuring some of the artists Y Music are currently working with, either together or separately. Featuring Meg Baird, Aki Onda, Sleepy Sun and many more eclectic artists we passionately showcase.
Chris has also released the first of three Supersonic Festival podcasts, giving you a taster of some of the artists playing at the 2012 edition of the event, which just so happens to be its 10th year – how exciting.
Cast your mind back a few weeks, when Capsule and Fierce Festival were asking you to entrust us with one night of your life. We co-commissioned a mysterious and memorable experience where an undisclosed artist performed in an undisclosed venue. Thanks to all who came to the sell out show.
So, what actually did happen at the Secret Show? According to the Wire magazine…
“A kind hand leads me to the car transporting me to who knows where. It comes to a halt after ten minutes. We might not have
phone.
gone far, but, disorientated, I lose balance and start feeling deeply scared. Other hands lead me in complete silence to the designated space. The surface beneath my feet feels like grass or fur. Remembering I’m wearing an S&M like mask, I wonder if this is a porn movie set…
…Finally, a long synth sound emanates from the abyss: as if from a forest, sounds emerge one by one. They’re probably generated by a computer, but in my mind I see green trolls belching fire. The wisps of sound thicken into a fog; clicks and drones tremble over basses; guitars squeal, making me think of Norwegian Black Metallers in leather and painted faces. I lose hope and take refuge in childhood memories. Then a voice enters, an animalistic, asthmatic, death rattle. It’s like someone was being killed right in front of me. Unable to do anything, I slump in my seat, helpless. But having got this far, I must survive…
…I preferred not to know who had done this to me. Hearing an unknown performer in an unseen space had altered the way I experienced sound…But for the purposes of this review I must reveal the perpetrator was Francsico Lopez.
Supersonic Festival 2012 Preview Podcast 1 by Brumcast Presents…. on Mixcloud
