Faith No More have reformed, but it’s for his extensive solo work that this man deserves a Patton the back.
Latest Features
Mike Patton
The Melvins
After 26 years of solid work the sludge rock survivors have finally smashed the Billboard Top 200. At number 200.
Chrome Hoof
‘Knobbly and weird’ 34-legged megagroup would love to cue up a collaboration with snooker ace Steve Davis.
Alan Moore
Unearthing the magical world of the comic book genius.
Holy Fuck
These Canadian electro punks are devoted to the free spirit of uncompromised music, and they curse bands who need to be liked.
Features
I’ll flirt with y’all
The other day I was hustlin’ my way down a quiet road in east London when suddenly, as if the voice of God was booming down from above, a divine melody came wailing out of the window of a house a couple blocks up: “A dog on the prowl when I’m walkin’ through the mall / If I could, man, I probably would flirt wit all of y’all.”It was, of course, the seminal R Kelly remix of ‘I’m a Flirt’. Having just inhaled a tampon-sized spliff, I found myself singing The R’s evocative lyrics aloud, just as I noticed a couple singing them from the ledge of their third storey flat. Further up the street, two schoolgirls passed me. Our eyes locked and we belted out T-Pain’s vocoder-heavy verse together. And, as I busted round the corner, I heard the driver of an oncoming car sing along: “She be callin’ you Kelly, when your name is Tommy!” Shit, Kells brings more people together in Dalston than a Pentecostal church. It was enough to make me close my eyes and cross my chest with a K.
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Levitate Me
Charles Thompson IV says here that “there is no tour or record – it’s all one big giant tour, and it’s all one big giant record”, but the longer he goes on, the easier it is to identify patterns in his life as a musician. There’s 1986 to 1993 when, as Black Francis, he fronted the greatest American alternative rock band of the age, the Pixies; the 10-year period after when he became Frank Black and released nine solo albums, songs from which were recently collected together on a compilation, 93-03; the Pixies reunion years of 2003 to early 2007; and a new era begins with his new album, Bluefinger. For that, he’s not only left behind the gently rolling Nashville sound of his last two albums (Honeycomb and Fast Man, Raider Man), he’s unexpectedly resurrected Black Francis.
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Devil May Care
It can be difficult to separate the music and artwork of Daniel Johnston. Listening to his raw, thumped piano, you picture those bright inks; in the boggle-eyed, tactile drawings, you hear that quivering voice. But a retrospective currently on display at Newcastle’s alt.gallery – the first UK outing of such a large body of Daniel’s creations – reminds us that visual art was his primary method of expression.
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On The Edge
When I came to Ukraine 12 months ago, I expected to find grim ex-Soviet cities and drab ex-Soviet people living off potatoes and dancing to guys playing accordions and singing about cabbages (well, not quite, but you get the picture). Instead I found crumbling tenements, communist memorials, a gazillion casinos, friendly people and a music scene that ranges from revolutionist rock to drag queen pop. Whatever the genre, Ukrainian music is bound by one theme: politics. Music and… politics? Boring? Actually… no.
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Acoustic Anarchy
I was walking around Smith College today taking photos of myself hanging out with the trees,” says an exuberant Thurston Moore. He’s driving down Route 91 from Massachusetts to New York with a mobile phone glued to his ear. “It’s an all women’s college in the neighbourhood where I live. Sylvia Plath went to school there. It’s where she used to stay up all night listening to the screams from the mental institution a mile down the road and, according to legend, she used to make love with some of the local professors in the backyard of our house.”
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Pure Unevil
The music industry and press couldn’t get enough of telling us that summer 2007 belonged to the teenager. The broadsheets frothed over the supposed “phenomenon” of underage gigs and the legions of fresh-faced bands writing spasms of ADD for their MySpace profiles, then The Teenagers turned those years into songs all cheap deodorant and school disco erections.
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Jello Fever
Jello Biafra’s answerphone message runs thus: “Just what does our president George Bush mean by a troop surge? Well, if it means adding another 21,000 troops or so, that would mean bringing them up to the level that they were already at in November of 2005. The last time, that many troops surging apparently didn’t work… and what nobody’s telling you is, if we sent 20-25,000 more troops over to Iraq in a surge, the Pentagon estimates that we will need another 28-30,000 troops on top of that for logistical support of the surgery troops…”
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Right By Conquest
The Fiery Furnaces live for music. Sat in a traditional Shepherd’s Bush boozer with the band, I almost feel as though the two Friedberger siblings long ago entered into some solemn childhood pact to remain locked into their secret, fantastical kingdom of song to the near-absolute exclusion of anything else. Eleanor, a positively possessed presence onstage, is quiet and demure, letting big brother Matthew do most of the talking. But he’s softly spoken almost to the point of inaudibility, his greying Byrds-cut belying an almost childlike fascination with interlocking systems of information, random facts, stratagems of behaviour and, above all, music. Widow City is the sixth Fiery Furnaces album in four years, a period in which Matthew’s also found time to release two solo albums. Yet neither of them considers this to be unreasonably prolific.
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