By now you’ve probably heard all about our Kids Gigs, a series of concerts designed to introduce your young ones to the power and beauty of live music in a safe, child friendly environment (if not, where have you been?). This year we’re proud to present the Flower-Corsano Duo on Saturday 20th, and Islaja on Sunday 21st, but it’s not just art of the musical variety that we’re offering to your kids this year. The fantastic visual arts collective Juneau Projects will be offering a 20 minute animation workshop at both gigs, with the aim of gently introducing your child to the art of creating moving pictures. Using coloured lights and a series of basic images, your children will be encouraged to bring these pictures to life before letting their hair down for the following musical treat.

This combination of visual arts and experimental music is the perfect gift for a precocious child (ideally under the age of 7), and this is a great opportunity to share an artistic experience with your young ones. There are barely any tickets left for Flower-Corsano Duo, but we still have plenty for Islaja; spaces are limited however, so book now to avoid dissapointment!

Tickets cost £10 (parent and child) or £12.50 (parent and two children), and this includes both the gig and the workshop.

Buy Tickets – Saturday with Flower/Corsano
Buy Tickets – Sunday with Islaja

Supersonic’s 10th anniversary celebrations are drawing ever nearer, with only a week and a half remaining until the all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza of avant-garde art that is Supersonic 2012! To mark the occasion, UK music and fashion magazine Clash recently caught up with Capsule co-founder and Supersonic organiser Lisa Meyer to discuss the inner workings of the festival, the inspiration behind Supersonic and what the future has in store for Capsule over the next decade! When discussing the ethos of the festival, Lisa had these wise words to impart –

It’s really important that we make everyone feel welcome. It’s very much at the core of what we do. Ultimately, people are giving up a weekend to come to this, so it shouldn’t feel like a hard slog. They should leave elated that they had a good time and listened to some interesting music.

Given the absolutely stunning lineup that Capsule have prepared for us this year, it’s hard to imagine that the audience will leave feeling anything other than ecstatic! You can read the full interview here, and if you still haven’t secured your Supersonic ticket yet, you can purchase one here.

With exactly one week to go until we open the doors to the 10th edition of Supersonic Festival, we partnered with the wonderful Network Awesome to put a selection of related films together from the last decade of Supersonic. It contains rare footage of Coil from our first ever festival as well as tracks by Broadcast, Nisenenemondai, Zu and a whole host of interviews. Enjoy!

Network Awesome is a new online TV site that curates the media film, documentaries, and video collections from all eras of broadcast history. It’s free, not full of junk, and it broadcasts 6 new shows each day. The archives are stand-alone repositories of media, available anytime and are, like, totally social so you can share it with your friends. Root around in there! You’ll be amazed at what you find.

If you haven’t bought tickets yet now is your chance, they can be purchased HERE

Here’s the third and final edition of our festival podcasts, an awesome selection of Supersonic related artists loving chosen by Chris Downing. If you missed out on them beforehand, the first and second editions are still available for streaming!

Playlist

1. Jarboe – Ascend

2. Mothertrucker – Festival Strength

3. Lau Nau – Painovoimaa, Valoa

4. Hype Williams – Businessline

5. Hey Colossus – Almeria, Spain

6. Doomsday Student – Ape In Love

7. Napalm Death – The Crucifixion Of Possessions

8. Stian Westerhus – Trailer Trash Ballad

9. Nicholas Bullen – Proximity

10. Merzbow – Slave New Desart

11. My Disco – A Turreted Berg

12. Oxbow – S Bar X

13. Modified Toy Orchestra – Monkey Hands

14. Moonn – Night Of The Vampire

15. Gnod – Why Don’t You Smile Like The Other Children

16. Body/Head – Live

Weekend tickets are just £80 and available from HERE

We’re very pleased to announce that tuba duo ORE will support OM at their gig at the Rainbow Warehouse on Tuesday 25 September, adding to the abstract doom theme of the night. Tickets are selling fast, don’t miss out – https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk

They have recently released their first EP ‘Beyond Tree and Stone’, which can be purchased digitally via http://oretubadoom.bandcamp.com/

You can also catch ORE in a special collaboration with Japanese noise maestro KK Null at this year’s Supersonic Festival. Read more about that here http://www.supersonicfestival.com/line-up/special-performances/ore-and-kk-null

Day tickets are available now via https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk and of course weekend tickets can still be purchased for £80. Not bad for three days of adventurous music, art, film, workshops, talks and more!

And here’s a reminder of some events that are free to weekend ticket holders, but require booking.

Counting In: The Art of Listening

In partnership with Sound and Music, we are presenting an intriguing panel exploring contexts for the presentation of sound works and performances and approaches to listening. The panel will include artist Lucas Abela (aka Justice Yeldham and creator of the Vinyl Rally), music writer Frances Morgan, Curator Irene Revell (Electra) and composer Dr Simon Hall. An excellent way to start the weekend, the event will take place Friday 19 October, 1.30pm-5.00pm at Birmingham City University’s School of Art. This event is free to weekend ticket holders, but you do need to book a place by emailing [email protected] with ‘Listening’ in the title. Otherwise, tickets can be purchased for £10 via https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk

Imperfect Cinema: Hallide Oxide

An amazing opportunity to learn DIY cinema techniques, participants will also contribute visuals to Drunk in Hell’s set. Imperfect Cinema will be joined by renowned sonic and visual artist Nicholas Bullen to discuss Imperfect Cinema and its influences, including the seminal Crass Records ‘Bullshit Detector’ compilation albums which featured the first vinyl appearance of Napalm Death. The workshop is free to weekend ticket holders but capacity is limited, to book a place email [email protected],uk with ‘Imperfect Cinema’ in the subject line.

Supersonic audience by Mark R Rhodes

Want to feature in our Zine…well Supersonic is doing a call out for all previous festival attendees to share their memories of the festival with us. The question we have chosen is “How would you describe your favourite Supersonic experience in a tweet of no more than 140 characters?”

In those 140 characters, we want you to sum up your experiences of previous festivals, highlighting key moments and memorable performances. You could even comment on your experiences in the legendary Supersonic tea room, marketplace or elsewhere!

Send your posts to either [email protected] or [email protected] by the 14th September and we will do our best to print as many as possible. We look forward to hearing from you! And of course feel free to tweet us your response @supersonicfest

We Are Eastside presents Birmingham – The Magic City as part of ‘City States’ at the 7th Liverpool Biennial – welcome to the hidden undergrounds, blushing civic pride and future visions of our ‘magic’ city.

‘The Magic City’ is borrowed from a proposed artwork by BAZ, inspired by the sign that originally welcomed visitors to Birmingham, Alabama, USA. BAZ want to build a new version of the sign next to the planned hi-speed rail station destined for Eastside, Birmingham, UK. BAZ believe everything Birmingham does is magic.

As part of the exhibition, Capsule will present a collage of 1980s Grindcore fanzines from the birthplace of Heavy Metal and a snapashot of the formation of the one of the most extreme bands in the genre’s history – Napalm Death.

We Are Eastside is a consortium of Birmingham based arts organisations, flying the flag for the very outer edges of the city’s culture.

The Liverpool Biennial runs 15 September – 25 November and Birmingham – the Magic City can be found at Liverpool John Moore University Copperas Hill Building. More info here