Music Writings by CL

Katastrophy Wife - Birmingham Jug Of Ale, 2003. Full Review, Click Here.

Puppetmastaz - Creature Funk, Album Review 2003. Full Review, Click Here. You may have heard of them, you may not have. You may think you know them, you probably won’t. Mr Maloke  is a mole, and he left his home of Crooklyn to move to Berlin to form the congress of puppetry. Why did  Mr Maloke  leave Crooklyn though? Did he mean to start a new musical career in Berlin? Maybe he did, maybe he retired and re-invented himself. Whilst in Berlin,  Mr Maloke  bumped into a couple of puppet frogs, a puppet rhino, and plenty of ideas. This meeting helped form the world's first puppet hip-hop collective,  Puppetmastaz . After two limited EPs, we have the puppet’s first album proper.  'Creature Funk' , is an electro-hip hop masterpiece. We live in a time where hip-hop is allegedly at its highest point, yet all you hear is watered down cliché ridden pop (step up  50 cent ). The  Puppetmastaz  are just the stars we need. For the 60...

V/Vm - It's Fandabidozi, Album Review 2003. Full Review, Click Here. Cast your mind back to early last year. It seemed that Stockport’s  V/Vm Test Records  were knocking out unmistakable platters of genius week after week after week. Then, silence. What was wrong? Had the evil MCPS  [Mechanical Copyright Protection Society, label fans. Best you don't ask - an editor]  caught up with these copyright terrorists? Had they been lynched performing one of their infamous greatest hits sets? Evidently not. V/Vm  have been travelling the world, and have put together a double album of some of their greatest worldwide aural finds.  'It’s Fan-Dabi-Dozi'  is the first release since  V/Vm’s   'Good Things Can Happen'  album, and how times have changed. The blatant mauling of pop’s best/worst contenders isn’t the main focus on this album. In its place we have some fine electronic music, courtesy of such luminaries as  Kevin Blech...

Therapy? - An Abundance Of Therapy? Interview, 2003. Full Interview, Click Here. Therapy?  are back. Again. Time has been kind to the band; it doesn't seem that long ago when they were the darlings of the music press, with their dark hybrid of punk, metal and pop. But times have changed, and Therapy? have changed with the times. Literally. The sound has veered off into rockier territories and members have come and gone. But that hasn’t deterred Therapy?, who are still going strong, and with rock music outselling every other form of music at the moment, they're as relevant as ever. I caught the band at Birmingham Academy, and had a brief chat with vocalist  Andy Cairns  about how their new album is going down live. How's Therapy? doing these days? It’s going really well. We’re all really into it again at the moment. Is this because you have a new drummer? Yeah, Neil Cooper. After Graham left we found out that Neil, who used to be in some bands we ...

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Meet The New Folk Implosion - Interview 2003. Full Interview, Click Here. For over ten years now  Lou Barlow  has been releasing music with  Sebadoh  and the  Folk Implosion . It's been a decade which has seen band members come and go, as well as a constantly evolving sound to his music. Now  Lou  is touring the UK with his new band,  The New Folk Implosion , stripping the music down from the drum machine-laden sound of the old Folk Implosion's later material. I caught up with  Lou  in Nottingham and Leeds to talk about The New Folk Implosion, linguistics, self-discipline, and being  Bob Mould . Since John Davis has left the Folk Implosion, you've got together The New Folk Implosion, what are the main differences between the two bands? Well, I didn't want to do a layered, sample driven record, I wanted to totally cut it down and play live again. When John left, was it an amicable departure? Yeah, he'd been driftin...

Add N To (X) - Birmingham, 2002. Full Review, Click Here, “You’re not singing, you’re not singing, you’re not singing anymore”….. There it is, as sang on Monster Bobby, a song which wasn’t played at Birmingham Academy. In fact, neither were a lot more vocal tracks from the futu-robotic sex noiseniks we know and love as Add N to (X). You see, the problem was a classic one. Half-heartedness. To make the Add N to (X) sound more full on, the band had grown from a three piece to a full on quintet, but this didn’t make up for the lack of interest shown on the bands behalf. So there were five, but still Ann Shenton was missing. Where was she?? When asked by the audience, the reply was telling. A firm “Shut Up”. This was about it for band-audience interaction. What was to follow was some moments of vinyl genius played with the same amount of passion that Shane MacGowan shows for dentistry. Something was amiss. Metal Fingers In My Body, once a wall of sound, now came acros...

Alec Empire Interview 2002 - "Ooh I'm crying, my girlfriend left me, it's raining" Full Interview, Click Here ALEC EMPIRE INTERVIEW 7/10/2002 As the founder of DHR, would you encourage other people in bands to start their own record label? I think there are a lot of people doing their own labels already, and most people don’t realise that it is hard work. Seriously, you are working ALL the time.  I don’t know if I would say that every band should do their own record labels, what I see is that is that a lot of people that I know who own labels, don’t find the time anymore to work on their own music.  On the other side I think it’s the best way to keep the control. That is the reason we’ve done it. We knew we couldn’t get our music out there the way we wanted it because labels would’ve forced us to change, or manipulated it in some ways. So by setting up dhr we avoided that, but you have to do it full time otherwise your wasting...

Full Article Here. Dee Dee Ramone has been found dead in his L.A. home. It is believed that Bassist of  The Ramones , Douglas Glenn Colvin aka  Dee Dee , aged 50, has passed away. He was found by his wife at his hollywood home on Wednesday June 5th . He was pronounced dead at 8.40pm by paramedics and the Los Angeles coroner's office press statement reads:  "The investigator noted drug paraphernalia, including a single syringe on the counter, and we are handling it as a possible accidental overdose" . Former bandmate  Joey Ramone  passed away last April. The Ramones website  carries a statement of the bassist's passing with a quote paraphrased from the Bible  "Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands; sing forth the honor of Dee Dee's name; make his praise glorious." Rest in Peace Dee Dee.