Classically trained Julian and Kim from The Presets have hit London town bringing in tow half of the world’s Antipodean population as a matter of course. With a longstanding tit fetish, a secret Minogue lust and the ability to fluster the Conway, Eleanor Conway Presents: The Presets in association with music.virgin.com
http://music.virgin.com/author/eleanorconway
http://www.myspace.com/elleuk
http://www.thepresets.com
What happens on tour, stays on tour - until now.
I’ve got 3 signed copies of Justice’s Across The Universe (Live CD + Tour footage) to giveaway - See Trailer.
TO ENTER:
Bribe a mate to leave a comment about you on my fanpage wall. Remember you both have to be fans and the comment must include your name and the word ‘Justice’.
I will choose the 3 most original wall scrawlings and get the boys to sign your swag on the next episode of Eleanor Conway Presents:
Enter before 00.00 GMT 4th DEC
Also congratulations on the three winners of the signed Goldfrapp Seventh Tree competition —- you know who you are! They’re on their way to yoooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu………
Keep updated….. find me online (in a non stalker way please)
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Gangs are generally bad things. Followed by world poverty and a burgeoning crack habit. None of which are true of this week’s guests, Gang Gang Dance. Playing their only UK tour date this year, and set to release deeply lauded album ‘Saint Dymphna’, Eleanor Conway of music.virgin.com chats to Gang Gang Dance about collaborating with grime artist Tinchy Stryder, suprising the contemporary art snobs at the Whitney Biennial and their love of Kylie.
Gang Gang Dance’s new album Saint Dymphna is out now.
www.ganggangdance.com
The musical bastard sons of stunted band ‘Fear of Flying’ are off to the Iceland Airwaves festival next week with deeply lauded and newly formed band ‘White Lies’. They’ll be playing on the same bill as Vampire Weekend, CSS and Simian Mobile Disco.
Eleanor Conway chats to Harry McVeigh, lead singer of White Lies.
EC: What are you guys up to at the moment?
HM: We’ve just been touring around the UK, finished now a couple days ago.
EC: What was the highlight?
HM: Definitely the London show, we all live in West London so we got all of our friends and family down, it was quite a big deal.
EC: Is it true that it’s more nerve wracking performing to people that you know?
HM: In some ways yeah, the only time my parents had seen me perform was at our first show in February and that was shit scary like terrified, this all paled in comparison.
EC: For people that don’t know too much about White Lies, what should they know do you think?
HM: Our music is very epic, ambitious, we try and incorporate different sounds and take our songs into different directions yet they’re all of a very similar subject matter lyrically and sometimes structurally.
EC: You talk of ambition, what would be your ultimate ambition with White Lies?
HM: We’ve already achieved a lot of ambitions as musicians, we’ve made an album we’re really, really proud of, we’ve just finished our first headline tour, and that was a big ambition of mine. It was an amazing feeling to be able to play to people every night that have paid to see you play. So, I think we’ve realized our ambitions already I hope that we can carry on doing it for a number of years and hopefully get out to a wider audience.
EC: White Lies is the musical bastard son of your previous band ‘Fear of Flying’. What happened, why the change?
HM: We started Fear of Flying when we were very young, we were probably 16 or 17 years old, and obviously we had a lot to learn, and we learnt that in Fear of Flying. If you listen to the songs at the beginning to when we started that band and towards the end, there was a huge learning curve, I think we struck upon something unique in White Lies, and we definitely deserved to change the name.
EC: The sound of White Lies is very grandiose and genuinely very cinematic and you’ve been compared to some really amazing people. Does that scare you in the sense that it’s a lot to live up to or does it spur you on?
HM: No it’s a compliment, bands like Echo and The Bunnymen and Interpol we’ve been compared to a lot, are bands that we listen to a lot. I think it’s a really big compliment I’m glad people are making those comparisons it’s a really good thing.
EC: If you could assemble a fantasy band living or dead, who would you put on vocals, on guitar, on drums, on bass?
HM: Oh god that’s a really tough question. Jimi Hendrix has always been our favourite guitarist although you would never hear that in our music, he’s the person that inspired me to pick up the guitar, he was an incredibly talented musician and well ahead of his time so I’d have him on guitar. On drums I’d have Dave Grohl, because one of my favourite bands growing up was Queens of the Stone Age and he made an album with them called ‘Songs for the Deaf’ and his drumming on that is amazing, obviously his drumming in Nirvana was incredible. So Dave Grohl on drums. On bass I’d have….. god it’s a really hard question actually, erm, the Interpol bassist is absolutely amazing he writes very good basslines, I think his name is Carlos Dengler. And on vocals I’d have someone like Bjork, I think she’s an amazing singer.
EC: Ah I love you, I love Bjork…… That brings us to my next question, you’re playing the Iceland Airwaves festival next week, who are you looking forward to seeing?
HM: Oh I timed that in very well….
EC: Yeah good job.
HM: I haven’t seen the lineup, it’s a very mysterious place and festival for me, I’ve never really heard anything about it, I’m really excited to go over, I’m excited to see the country itself….
EC: Well I’ve got the lineup in front of me, CSS, Vampire Weekend, The Young Knives, Robots in Disguise, Simian Mobile Disco, any of those take your fancy?
HM: I’m a fan of Vampire Weekend, Jack our drummer runs a club night and label and introduced them to me early on, I think they are a great band. I think their album is very interesting, they are very clever people. I’ll definitely try and get out and see them.
EC: I think anyone that can write a song about an element of punctuation is definitely good, I didn’t know what an Oxford Comma was before.
HM: I know!
EC: You’re called ‘White Lies’ but what’s the most saintly thing you have done recently?
HM: Oooh that’s a hard question, I’m sure I have done some nice things in the past, I’m not a complete arsehole.
EC: Perhaps expelling your music upon the ears of the youth that’s the nicest thing you have done recently.
HM: (laughs) Yeah, perhaps.
White Lies appear at the Iceland Airwaves Festival on the 18th October 2008.
http://www.icelandairwaves.com/
White Lies site
Words: Eleanor Conway
‘Paris is burning’ songstress Ladyhawke, has been setting off metaphorical smoke alarms all over London in the last month or so. So with the European music press chasing the notoriously shy Pip Brown aka Ladyhawke, she sits down with Eleanor Conway of music.virgin.com and opens up about the concept behind her alt webcam inspired video for the hotly anticipted ‘Dusk ’til Dawn’…. the second single from her debut album Ladyhawke.
Ladyhawke looks good on paper, a hot, multi-talented chick with camera happy appeal, wielding a highly strung guitar as the crotch level musical sword it is. Hot on the trail are a mob of followers waiting to be knighted by this mop of feline, fringed, feistiness, wrapped up with tight songs, a tight look, and a tight band - you would imagine this to be a perfect combination. However, this sweet as candy combo wasn’t enough to ignite the flame coloured walls of Koko at the Kiwi tinged Endeavour event last weekend. Firstly, the sound engineer broke every law of sound engineer/ knob twiddling school. Muddy sound and inaudible vocals were on course, only to straighten out for ‘The Checks’ set immediately after.Riding high on the success of ‘Paris is burning’ she is hot on the tip of the release of her debut solo album later this month— imaginatively entitled ‘Ladyhawke’. Named after ’80’s fantasy Rutger Hauer movie ‘Ladyhawke’, stylistically, Pip Brown looks like a cross between Stevie Nicks and Blondie. LH is no pushover, having been indoctrined into music at age eleven and mastering the same number of instruments. So with this and a crowd full of Kiwi homeboys in mind, one could not help feeling a tad dissapointed at her lack of stage presence at Koko on Saturday, she didn’t command the stage like we all wanted her to.
I’d like to use this opportunity to bring up the personal issue of having to endure ‘unknown track foreplay’, which is an annoying wait for the catchy first single at the end of the set, a condition that oddly became obsolete with Michael Stipe favourites and Ian Broudie produced headliners, ‘The Checks’, who owned the stage like an over zealous stage pimp. Stomping all over Koko’s boards, like a antipodean Jolly Green Giant– top shirt button done up all proper. They owned the venue and the crowd giving a world class, electrifying performance (they’ve toured with REM, Maximo Park, The Cribs), as well as converting (me) non Checks believers into believing they’re the best NZ band in the world.
Word.
Ladyhawke—- Check out ‘Paris s’enflamme’ - it’s Ladyhawke in French and it’s tres belle.
Words: Eleanor Conway
www.elle-online.com
www.myspace.com/elleuk
Okay, on the cusp of going off to watch my fringed up sista’ Ladeee hawk this Saturday at the marvellous Koko’s in olde Camden Tawn (of which I will talk more of on Monday) I though I would regail you of my top five gym accompanying toons (in no particular order) of the week.
5. Pin Me Down ‘Cryptic’= dancefloor meets indie wannabees……. If you like Justice’s vs Simian ‘We are your friends’, you’ll like the ‘Phones materialization remix.
4. The Black Ghosts (Anyway you choose to give it)
A song to get down and dirty to.
3. The Tender Box ‘Mister Sister’– Hot off their well received tour of the UK last year, these LA favourites display annoyingly catchy wordsmith ………….. ‘whooooooooo’.
The Tender on Last Call with Carson Daly
2. Imani Coppola ‘I’m A Tree’. Early promo single from ‘Little Jackie’s’ feisty frontwoman Imani Coppola.
1. Ladyhawke - Fabulously fringed frontwoman’s debut ‘Paris is Burning’ written after a bender gone wrong, in Paris. Funnily enough.
New single from said fringe sporter ‘Dusk Til Dawn‘ available Sept 15th. It’s not as good.
Check out Christoph!’s Flickr photostream for more Ladywhawke pics
If ever there was an event awash with ropey media perceptions, surely it’s the spiffy festival we call V.
Last weekend played host to my first ever V, arriving to Chelmsford expecting to dodge cartoon-sized hampers, happy-go-lucky families, tee-total teenagers, and a sickly plethora of pop, all thanks to an indie rag’s festival guide.
However, within minutes of kicking off a tent-pitching session I discovered the V crowd were a leery, cheery, beery bunch not a million miles away from some of my beloved festival crowds.
From then on it was a sure-footed leap into the arena for a live line-up apropos of today’s top notch music offerings. Next year’s diary will undoubtedly have mid-August marked with a big, red, tick-shaped V.
The weekend’s stories and encounters were appropriately caught on film, but the upcoming Reading Festival throws a proverbial spanner in the editorial works. In the meantime nurse the painful wait with this video postcard, which also delineates my V discoveries.
Do check back soon for more of this sort of thing.
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