Musical Advent Calendar - Recap Days 1 - 5

December 6, 2008 · Filed Under Videos · Comment 

What do you mean, you don ‘t read Music Towers every day? Are you some kind of cretin? Man, you used to be cool.

Well, since it IS getting near Christmas and all, we’ll forgive you. And to show that we really mena it, here’s a recap of all the wonderous Christmas videos from our Musical Advent Calendar (it’s up a bit and on your left) from the first five days. Enjoy.

Day 1 - Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer’ - HemorRhage

Day 2 - ‘Peace On Earth / Little Drummer Boy’ - David Bowie and Bing Crosby

Day 3 - ‘8 Days of Christmas’ - Destiny’s Child

Day 4 - ‘City of Christmas Ghosts’ - Goldblade ft. Poly Styrene

Day 5 - ‘NOT the Cliff Richard Christmas Single’ - Beau Bo Do’r, Doghorse and Eclectech

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I Set My Friends On Fire: the band you never heard of, are coming to sellout a festival near you soon

November 25, 2008 · Filed Under Videos, stuff we like · Comment 

So: the design is perfect, the name and logo are excellent. It seems they have fourteen billion MySpace listens already and 100 date tour. Already no doubt sold more records then Guns N Roses and The Killers combined. And nobody has ever heard of them. I can already see them on main stage at Download or Bloodstock or somesuch, book them up now.

Music Towers can only assume thar this summer, I Set My Friends On Fire will come over here to blow our tiny little minds, with their accomplished mix of hardcore electro, High School Musical pop, and their comedic yet postive outlook.

Here is them putting all of that into practice, in a YouTube video masterclass:


You Can’t Spell Slaughter Without Laughter

Epitaph 2008, Audio CD, £11.99

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TOTP is back….but just for Christmas

November 20, 2008 · Filed Under Allegedly, Blather · 1 Comment 

Silly old BBC. They really don’t “get” how to do music on television. Apart from Jools-bloody-Holland and that abominable Switch yoof-ting of theirs, their schedules are alwatys a bit barren. Okay, so there’s a documentary every now and again, but it’s all a bit tokenistic.

Which is why we’re heaving a big sigh of relief here at Music Towers now the Beeb has announced there will be a Top Of The Pops Xmas Special. The corporation had previously decided against giving the once-mighty pop show its traditional Christmas Special, a tradition that continued last year even though the weekly format of the show ended in 2006.

Simon Cowell, the power behind the X-Factor throne, had offered to buy he dormant brand off the BBC, which helped generate pressure from everyone from MPs to bands to the public for the show to get its Xmas Special banck. So that’s one good thing we can thank the high-waisted trouser’d one for.

TOTP will also get a New Year’s Eve show for the first time ever. DOUBLE-WHOOP.

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Interview: Simian Mobile Disco - a duo in demand

July 23, 2008 · Filed Under Features, Interviews · Comment 

“I saw a few reviews of the records that were all ‘after all the hype …blah blah blah’ – what?” James Ford splurts incredulously. “The press created the fucking hype themselves!”

Ford is talking about The Age of the Understatement, debut record from The Last Shadow Puppets, which he both produced and played drums for. Ford is very much the indie producer of the moment, having taken production duties on Klaxons’ Mercury-winning Myths of the Near Future and Arctic Monkeys’ Favourite Worst Nightmare among others. Now he sounds like he is having trouble in not spitting his lunch out when I ask him about his reaction to the press hysteria over The Last Shadow Puppets record, which he both produced and played drums on.

“I suppose I was a bit naïve, because I supposed anything Alex [Turner, of Arctic Monkeys] touches would cause people to talk about it, but really when we recorded it, it was just like a two-week holiday where we were trying to record an EP,” he recollects. “The original intention was for it just to come out quietly. But I don’t think Domino pushed it too hard – off the back of the Arctics, it was never going to be a quiet affair”.

‘Quiet’ isn’t really one of the things one associates with Ford, or his cohort Jas Shaw with whom he forms electro-devil duo, Simian Mobile Disco. Come August, the pair are set to become the latest act to put out a mix for London über-club, Fabric (it exists somewhere far in excess of what used to be called superclubs) as part of the Fabriclive series.

The promo video for ‘Hustler’:

“We wanted it to be a set that we’d play at Fabric. It’s pretty techno and pretty mean in places”, says Ford. “But we also wanted to try to put stuff that you wouldn’t normally hear at Fabric in there. There’s Raymond Scott and Moon Dog and things like that. But hopefully we’ve put it together in a way that wouldn’t break someone’s stride on the dancefloor, but people will be exposed to a few tracks they wouldn’t normally hear in that context.”

So they weren’t tempted to push something controversial then? There was more than a bit of controversy with Justice’s allegedly ‘rejected’ Fabriclive mix. Ford seems pragmatic on the issue unmoved: “If we were doing a Late Night Tales or something to listen to at home, that’s one thing, but we wanted to do a good reproduction of our DJ set at this point in time”

In addition to the Fabriclive release, Simian Mobile Disco have a packed summer of DJ slots and live performances on the European festival circuit. The pair are hard-picked to come to a decision over which they prefer.

“ Well, our DJ set is really easy,” Jas states matter-of-factly. “You just pick up a big bag of records and just head to the club! With the live show, it’s a lot more involved.” He goes on to describe SMD’s setup: “We’ve designed this system – a fair chunk out of our studio, a mixer and lots of old analogue gear and loads of vintage output and guitar pedals and lots of kind of stuff all plugged in together. It allows us to play the tracks but jump around in terms of the structure and improvise. We can make new stuff up on the spot and there are quite a few bits of the set where we have no idea what’s going to happen.”

For many musicians, that sounds like the idea of a hell. Or Jazz. “The whole idea is to make it fun for us,” explains Jas. “But it’s quite a pain in the arse. We’ve got loads of fragile kit that always takes too long to set up, but it’s worth it in the end.”

The promo video for ‘I Believe’:

“We have sections in the set where there’s planned chaos,” adds Ford. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Basically we can tell pretty quickly if it’s ‘happening’ or if it’s not, and we can skip over it or extend it on the go.”

“ Because we put so into the live show, it’s more rewarding when we do a really good show,” says Ford, weighing up the pros and con’s of live show vs DJ set. “But I wouldn’t want to give up DJ’ing as it’s a lot of fun – you can just go to a lot more far-reach places, you get treated really nice and you can get hammered! Which is more fun in a traditional sense…”

James and Jack’s Essential Records

We asked the duo what records they couldn’t do without when DJ’ing. Their choices were:

  • ‘Erotic Discourse’ - Paul Woolford presents Bobby Peru
  • Spastik’ - Plastikman
  • ‘Huncut Hacuka’ - Fine Cut Bodies
  • The Don’ - Sisters of Transistors
  • Sleep Deprivation (Simon Baker Remix)’ - Simian Mobile Disco

All of which are on their shiny new Fabriclive mix. Which is handy.

‘FABRICLIVE 41: Simian Mobile Disco’ is out on Fabric Records in August. The pair are playing festivals all over Europe this Summer – check here to see if they’re playing at one you’re going to.

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