Dominant Dominos
Chit Chat with Miike Snow
Prepare to meet your new favourite band: two parts Swedish, one part New Yorker, songwriters behind Britney’s Toxic and fond supporters of genetically engineered horned rabbits. Front man Andrew Wyatt talks tales of the Jackalope, pop controversy and Oasis growing old and going through the motions...
Dots: Your Myspace page features a rabbit with horns. Have you been fiddling with genetics as well as knobs and keyboards?
Andrew Wyatt: Well, it’s not us directly but we as a band have invested in a genetic replicating organisation. They helped the pioneers of cloning and they were the ones who came up with the whole Jackalope concept. They’re based in Silicon Valley and they do a load of genetic research. So the horned rabbit is a living legend. We’re trying to kill two birds with one stone in a sense, getting a logo for Miike Snow and then also promoting our stakes in the company.
Dashes: Given your American roots and Pontus and Christian being of Swedish descent, is it naïve to class Miike Snow as a conventional band?
AW: We would I guess because we don’t spend much time at home right at this moment in time. We’ve really become a band; because we were in different places to begin with, once you insert yourself into the maelstrom of performance and promo you’re never really at home anyway.
Dots: Have you ever done an interview that’s skirted around Christian and Pontus’ masterpiece, Toxic?
AW: Yeah, we’ve done a bunch. It’s probably about half and half.
Dashes: Has it been damaging to the career of Miike Snow thus far or vice versa?
AW: To be honest, I don’t think it has mattered one way or the other; speculating whether it’s something completely different or not is kind of a mute point as it is doubtlessly something entirely different, being judged on its own merits. Most of the people aware of Miike Snow solely know of the songs that they’ve been fed by blogs. Those kinds of ancillary things don’t matter so much unless you’re Timbaland or Kanye West, who’ve already promoted themselves and have publicists to jumpstart their careers.
Dots: Do you wish you had it for yourselves in your own setlist?
AW: It could be if we wanted it to but I don’t think it’s musically relevant at this point...
Dashes: What can the UK expect following the aftermath of Animal?
AW: It seems to be going well and there’s a load of enthusiasm surrounding the next single, Black and Blue, which we just finished shooting the video for. Working the festivals has worked for us as before you classify us you should come down and catch the live show because there’s a load of dimensions there that don’t exist on the album. For example, we play the songs for a lot longer, for eight or nine minutes. They’re pretty much twelve inch cuts of our songs.
Dots: The instrumentation featured particularly on Animal and Burial sound androgynous in the sense that it’s almost impossible to decipher what’s being played when and how much instrumentation there actually is...
AW: There’s not much but I think the thing is those songs didn’t really need anything else and its success lies in its simplicity. And live, rather than cowering behind laptops we do everything live; no laptops, all the synths are sequenced and played out there and then. We pretty much utilise the technology of the seventies on stage, we don’t have anything computerised.
Dashes: Predominantly, this is an introduction to Miike Snow for most. In the live setting, do you feel that your six members detract from the band dynamic that would otherwise exist?
AW: I don’t think so; one of the guys is Pontus’ brother, another played the drums on the record and has been friends with Pontus and his brother for years so we’ve got something of a band vibe. Maybe I’m the one on the fringes as it were.
Dots: How did your integration come about?
AW: I met Christian in New York in 2005 in a studio whilst I was writing and producing other people and we just kept in touch. Then I happened to be in Sweden for another project and we got together and went from there. We’ve had a great dynamic as individuals and people so being in a band’s something we were all desperate to get back to ever since we’ve got increasingly busy as producers. They gave me a ring and because I’ve got so much respect for them as musicians, I could hardly turn it down. We honestly didn’t feel it was going to blow up nor get a load of attention, we just wanted to do it and put the project on Myspace. We just wanted to make some cool shit and then people we’d worked with in the industry were begging to hear it and that takes us up to now.
Dashes: The majority of the people aware of Miike Snow this side of the pond it seems learned of you through blogs, predominantly perhaps through your remixes, from Vampire Weekend to Passion Pit. Where is the true domain for Miike Snow when comparing remixing to original material?
AW: I don’t think there needs to be segregation between those two worlds, it’s just that our sound that resonates in our own work carries over when we remix other people’s work. Of course the priority is to conjure up our own material but in a day and age where so much remixing is being done, there’s so much interest in it and it serves as another yardstick to demonstrate popularity. We enjoy putting out remixes and I don’t see why we shouldn’t as long as we like the original version.
Dots: Would you classify yourselves as a straight-up pop act, distinctly rooted in the genre?
AW: Certainly that seems to be how we’ve been seeing things for a while and that may have shaped our perspective. What can be said about this record is that the songs are strongly structured, the lyrics are for the most part fairly straightforward and the melodies are prominent so I guess those traits are all attributed to pop music. Having said that, I don’t necessarily see the word pop to be dirty in any way.
Dashes: Does pop still have its controversies away from Britney’s botox and hair loss?
AW: I wouldn’t necessarily say that Miike Snow is straight pop music as it doesn’t conform to certain criteria as pop seems often to do, it’s just the music that we naturally make rather than something engineered to become popular. I think the current problem with American pop is that everything that makes it to the radio was engineered specifically to be on the radio, done so in a very transparent manner and so therefore there’s something rather soulless about most of it so if there is controversy in pop music, it doesn’t exist in America. Take Klaxons for instance, they were colossal although their music was incredibly irreverent and I see those guys as being in some way truly out of control. Jamie’s kind of a friend and I think they bring something to the table which is in fact frightening and dangerous and that’s controversy.
Dots: Sticking with pop music, playing V Festival this weekend surrounded by British pop currently clogging the airwaves, what are your expectations?
AW: I really don’t know much about the festival itself but what I would say is that when we play live, all of our instruments could break at any one moment as they’re so old and I think that I try to contact a Shamanistic, pagan ritual all the time as the front man. I try to lose consciousness and evaporate time so you won’t find me transfixed by Liam Gallagher and Oasis. We played a festival with them and I was disappointed to see that they’ve hardly regenerated at all. He dances a little, stands in front of the mic and seems to be going through the motions with his eyes on the pay check. Which is a shame because in the early nineties they were the shit.
Miike Snow's debut self-titled LP is released on 26th October.
Offset Festival '09
Next stop: Hainault. Alight here for pretence, debauchery and the hidden gem of the UK festival circuit just half an hour outside of London on the Central Line. Emerging from the forest last year like a children’s pop-up book featuring weird and wonderful circus-like sights and sounds from the likes of metallic glamsters Chrome Hoof, pitch-perfect indie from The Maccabees and heroic microwave-slaughtering from wiry heroes Gang of Four. Melding together inspiration and the inspired, this year Offset returns with a line up bursting with everything essential in antagonising, quintessentially British post-punk past and present, with the likes of stalwarts The Slits and A Certain Ratio jostling for attention with prepubescent upstarts Bombay Bicycle Club, the sultry slump of The xx and the rejuvenated kaleidoscopic stylings of Southend’s doom poppers The Horrors. Transforming the forest’s plateaued oasis into something of a Shoreditch amongst shrubbery, the whole affair’s as barkingly brilliant as cherry blossom candy floss dyed dark and shrouded in thorns; The Chapman Family grace Artrocker’s Main Stage, plastering their intense, visceral snarl over every dandelion in earshot whilst Metronomy return to the festival as part of their Nights Out victory lap, chest light bulbs in tow.
Tickets are a snip at £45 for the weekend, with a square metre of idyllic bladed grass costing £10
extra. Most certainly a credit-crunching bargain, they're available here.
Full line up over seven rammed stages includes:
THE HORRORS | THE SLITS | THE FUTUREHEADS
A CERTAIN RATIO | BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB | GOOD SHOES
FUTURE OF THE LEFT | DANANANANAYKROYD | S.C.U.M
DIE!DIE!DIE! | KASMS | THE CHAPMAN FAMILY | ULTERIOR
OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT | PULLED APART BY HORSES
PANICO | LET'S WRESTLE | WILD PALMS | JOHN AND JEHN
FICTION | AN EXPERIMENT ON A BIRD IN THE AIR PUMP
KAP BAMBINO | HATCHAM SOCIAL | FACTORY FLOOR
R O M A N C E | CHEVAL SOMBRE | TEETH OF THE SEA
CONNAN MOCKASIN | GYRATORY SYSTEM | DISCONCERTS
TIM BURGESS (DJ set) | DOUGLAS HART (DJ set)
THE GHOST OF A THOUSAND | DEVIL SOLD HIS SOUL
ROLO TOMASSI | BLACKHOLE | THE STUPIDS
THROATS | DEAD SWANS | SHAPED BY FATE | TORTUGA
OUTCRY COLLECTIVE | EYES OF A TRAITOR | MATHS
WILD BEASTS | THE XX | MAPS | IPSO FACTO
TUBELORD | GOLD PANDA | SIAN ALICE GROUP
SHE KEEPS BEES| SHRAG | SUNDERBANS
METRONOMY | DAMO SUZUKI | DRUM EYES | MALE BONDING
COLD PUMAS | TEEN SHEIKHS | MAZES
SPEAK & THE SPELLS | SPECTRALS
DEAD KIDS | THE RAYOGRAPHS | BO NINGEN | DETACHMENTS
BEARSUIT | FRIENDSHIP | QUAD THROW SALCHOW | WETDOG
STRANGER SON OF WB | MAGIC & FUR | TULIPOMANIA
THE DULOKS | ARTEFACTS FOR SPACE TRAVEL | NEWISLANDS
FABLES | BERLIN BRIDES | THE NUNS | NULLIFIER
DEATH CIGARETTES | LR ROCKETS | BRONTOSAURUS CHORUS
For more info head to the Offset Festival official site.
Photo by Mike Burnell.
Can the Artistic Romantic Survive The Internet?
The Rolling Stones - Cocksucker Blues Part 1 sélectionné dans Rock / Pop
Following 37 years of internet hibernation, The Rolling Stones’ Cocksucker Blues finally sees the light of day this week. Hacked down into nine segments, the first installation of the film that threatened to ban their access to those United States of Whatever has leaked. Directed by acclaimed photographer Robert Frank, a court order imposed on the film stated that it could not be shown unless Frank were physically present, thus sectioning its viewing to organised screenings and bootleg copies, one of which allegedly belongs to doom popster/ goth rocker Marilyn Manson. Art house shots of Keif plodding away on the piano of all things, overt sexualisation not too far from Almodóvar and harmless bumbling, mumbled interviews make it stereotypically Stones without the Scorsese twist and yet it’s destined to be removed from Dots & Dashes, only to be reinstated on blogs higher up the food chain within the technological kingdom of internet music before the process repeats itself ad infinitum.
Similarly, Danish romantic fringe flickers Mew release their highly-anticipated fifth record next week, despite its leak months back. The success of music and its viable saleability over the past few decades has seemingly been largely accredited to the physicality of essentially what is a sensual product, from vinyl on to tape and then on to CDs and reinforced vinyl resistant to the chocolate-coated fingers of kids fiddling through record collections. Through acquiring leaked records online, there’s no question of the theft of money, ambition and livelihood but it is the subsequent loss of romance that is most damaging. For music aficionados, the majority look back nostalgically at the first Kylie, Clash or Velvet Underground record they saved their pocket money up for a month for to go and splash it all in one fell swoop in a smoky basement. I can’t. But I’d bet my pocket money it was something crap. Almost every record bought before my fourteenth birthday was nonsense; Limp Bizkit’s Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavoured Water from Virgin Megastores New York, Alien Ant Farm’s ANThology from the now-defunct dodgy independent shop down the road, etcetera. Even Humbug, the retro-tinged new one from Alex Turner’s Arctic Monkeys has slipped through Domino’s clutches, spewing out far and wide within them wires o' t’internet. The temptation’s always there and in answer to Brandon Flower’s inquisitive questioning, we are human and therefore designed to give in. Which is a terrible shame, as Humbug is perhaps the record of 2009 thus far, filled with swirling guitars and howling Hammonds. Slipping into the surrealist spectrum, Mew’s (breath) No More Stories/Are Told Today/I'm Sorry/They Washed Away//No More Stories/The World Is Grey/I'm Tired/Let's Wash Away flings shards of barking brilliance down the tunnels that line the alternative underground scene of the world, linking like-minded bloggers across seas and M3s.
Of course, for Mew to release anything short of a masterpiece is a ridiculous concept in itself and No More Stories... is no exception; from the disorientating opening reversed contortions of New Terrain it becomes painstakingly apparent that their ambition’s still intact, even though their sales may never peak as highly as their desire to perplex. Entirely impossible to decipher, it’s a work of astonishing beauty as choruses crash down harder than Hawaiian waves. Beach paints swathes of dreamily disconcerting vocals over gleaning guitars, glistening like pearls beneath a crystal clear sea of slick Rich Costey production whilst the jolting drum patterns of Introducing Palace Prayers combines with computer game keys before the chorus crescendo grows into the beast to the trio’s beauty, barely contained within the plastic of a promo CD. Repeater Beater lets loose the pounding aggression contained within previous twisting, towering tracks Apocalypso and Snow Brigade before Vaccine injects the hardest hitter of No More Stories... Provided it gets called in from the waiting room. No doubt, Mew will be left to wait, and wait and procrastinate until the gaudy, greedy world of indie implodes on itself, leaving in its wake hoards of post-NME depression and from its flaming glossy pages arise divinely inspired phoenixes, led by Denmark’s prime purveyors of post-rock perfection.
Olé Olé: Forget the Reunion, It's Time for Reinvention
Remember The Bronx? The Californian punksters who epitomised the sensation that is grime and grunge only fully appreciated by seething, sweating, snotty teens cooped up in a bedroom for two years too long with nothing but a guitar, a filthy fop of cropped Cobain hair and a sneering mentality against that flowing flume perpetually bursting its banks going by the name of the mainstream? Well, there's no need for mourning their demise. It's just that that hardcore tinge has eroded away. And in it's place all set for their next trick: Spanish guitars and Cuban cigars; they've opted for pastures new and transformed into a mariachi band. The Enemy this aint...Mariachi El Bronx is as wondrous a concoction as you'd expect from mellowed punks armed with horns and colloquial Spanish dictionaries as you'd envisage in your wildest dreams. It's as if Ibrahim Ferrer and his Buena Vista Social Club grew up living off street rats in the gutter of Sunset Boulevard and Ricky Martin records. In the most eloquent of ways. Blur may have put their demons to rest and cashed in on their highly lucrative history but would they have the bravado and belief to piece together a stomping, brassy Latino affair a mere four records in? About as probable as Dave Rowntree becoming Britain's next PM. Quite how Matt Caughthran's kronies pull off the swooning swoops of Quinceniera, the whimsical fanfare of Cell Mates or the swaying big top circus choral clambers of Clown Powder is unfathomable. It's undoubtedly about to divide opinions like Moses before his crashing waves but if Marmite's lasted this long on the shelves, there's a place in HMV and hardcore hearts alike for this year's most adventurous excursion.
Losing That Abrasive Edge?
This week sees the return of the godfathers of the Brit remix, Simian Mobile Disco as they unleash their second LP proper, Temporary Pleasure, a record brimming with cameos from underground heroes, cold-shoulder strobing synths and their most mashed trash hit since Sleep Deprivation. Giving in to the commercialist ways of the world this ain't but just how Temporary is the Pleasure this time around? Blasting off into orbit is opener Cream Dream, with its spiralling, surreal loops bouncing frenetically off of Gruff Rhys' forever divine vocals. Lyrically, there's not a golden retriever nor snow-tipped Japanese mountain in earshot but as collaborations go, it's almost seamless. Breath is well and truly baited for a SMD-produced Super Furry Animals outing... Elsewhere, the subdued, vocoded disco destroyer in-waiting, Audacity of Huge is what Smash Hits was made for aeons back. Featuring Yeasayer's Chris Keating, whether or not it'd have made as many covers as Ronan is about as dubious as the barking effects around 2 minutes in but it's about as audacious a voyage as James Ford and Jas Shaw have dared to assume. Beth Ditto belts nostalgically and poignantly on Cruel Intentions, a retro heartbreaker in the vein of MSTRKRFT's Legend-featuring slab of electro genius. The filthy, trashy keys of Off the Map are alluringly dangerous, as if they'd whisk you away into the dingiest SoHo corner and feed you mind-wrecking nameless substances whilst Synthesise follows on with darkly nostalgic 90s humming radar blips. Pinball pangs, tribal trips and the deadpan contribution of Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor transform the whirring circus madness of Bad Blood into the most uneasy full-blooded naughties track yet to be devoured by one more NBC/ Fox/ ABC/ CBS (delete as appropriate) vampire show. Leaving it late however, the understated Brooklyn charm of Telepathe batters closer Pinball into a hallucinatory state of submission, stars winding their way round confused charicatures before the memory of the duo's darkest, dirtiest doings to date disintegrate into subconscious memory. Whilst Temporary Pleasure may not linger about for as long as The Lemonheads, it's pure pleasurable ecstasy in parts, while it lasts...
Over the Hills and Far Away: The Big Chill
Trendy aren’t they, those weekends of farmhouse dereliction and destruction whilst a consistently crazed traveling carousel of buzz bands and harrowed has-beens soundtrack nocturnal debauchery and substance-induced morning sickness? Where The Big Chill seamlessly transcends trends and opens the widest of appreciative ears, you find yourself at the secluded heart of a deer park in amongst sumptuous sounds and quite possibly the paradisiacal oasis of the British festival season. It’s untouched by corporate desecration and carries about as much prejudice as a pack of peanuts. Oh and as if it needed any other ephemeral distancing from the hoards of festivals that litter an English summer like strawberries and Moet at Wimbledon, the Big Chill offers fraella (a hybrid of paella and the traditional fry-up), enchanted gardens filled with hanging hammocks and a Dereliction Drive-Thru cinema filled with mashed Mondeos and perhaps even more mashed minds. The dubious onscreen content becomes immaterial as brains are ejected out the sunroof into a sense of endless elation. This is true, majestic relaxation.
Not quite as relaxing is the London line down to Great Malvern and the trains take an ice age, although all is forgotten as drenched revellers trudge away to a superlative late-night Mr. Scruff set. Awaking to a sweltering, filthy tent and a throbbing skull are essentially to be expected, although nothing of the sort is endured in this picturesque Herefordshire valley and Scruff’s tea sends the ethanol demons away. Much has been slapped on Welsh goddess Marina’s face, as make-up and acclaim compete for advertising space although her Diamonds still aren’t shining as bright as the frontrunners in the female foray currently throttling music sections the length of the country. Not gracing the covers of quite as many quarterlies is James Yuill, a gawky, awkward acoustic songsmith with a penchant for pioneering bedroom beats. A diamond in the rough, however, he is; This Sweet Love washes wondrously over the lulling lakes of Eastnor whilst the synthetic loops of No Surprise are terrifically shocking. The underdogs are on top. Kanye West protégé Mr. Hudson is no such breed of canine and his delayed set in the Coop is filled with electrifyingly executed electro soul and closer Supernova is as out of this world as his straight-edged show suggests. Elsewhere, St. Albarns upstarts Friendly Fires grin and gurn their way through an NME-endorsed carnival filled to bursting point with calypso drums, polished horns and dubious dance-offs and as the sun sets, Ed McFarlane gazes out victoriously over his conquered lands of indie-dance crossover. Chrome Hoof are as demented as ever, with glimmering glam metal colliding head-on with violins cavorting with filthy bass lines and outdo Basement Jaxx who rattle off a greatest hits set lacking style and panache. Backdrops of nodding pandas wrecking Love Hearts liven up an otherwise avoidable set before it’s off to the back seat of a random couple’s car for the foreseeable future...
Saturday afternoon is jumpstarted by Albarn-approved Brooklyn brass boys Hypnotic Brass Ensemble who thrill the Open Air Stage, impeccably cobbling together a cacophony of kaleidoscopic horns Miles would admire, all suspended in time and harmony by the dirty bass of, wait for it, a tuba. As soon as the fanfare of War startles their sizeable following, they get the party started and keep it jumping. Question: name the ultimate hectically chilled evening of sterling great British artists. Answer? You’d be hard pushed to concoct a more majestic mix than the gospel twangs of Jason Pierce’s Spiritualized, who dazzle in the dark behind oily black sunglasses, Brighton’s brass-blasting Bonobo and the rejuvenated return of electro pioneer bros Orbital. Putting your finger on quite what makes Phil and Paul Hartnoll quite so spectacular is as implausible as finding the heartbeat within an airplane hangar, yet their minimal ambient techno pushes all the right buttons and Belfast is utterly earth shattering.
Waking up for one final hurrah, it becomes devastatingly apparent that the Big Chill breezes by in a state of blissful subconscious delight and the spectacular becomes superlative when artistic maestro Pete Fowler turns his hand to putting on the most marvellous midday retro disco party not seen since 1969. A cosmic jamboree indeed. Yet another breathtaking experience comes in the form of Milanese classical genius Ludovico Einaudi’s latest collaboration with Berlin experimental electro duo, Robert and Ronald Lippok, under the moniker Whitetree. Hardly a far cry from the advert-engulfing previous work of Einaudi, his minimalist tinklings compliment unfathomably the subtle snyth swathes of the brothers Lippok and combined with outstanding visuals, it’s the highlight of the day, if not the weekend. Whilst Fowler continues to belt out forgotten gems of the past few decades from under the peak of a sailor’s hat, The Coop’s comedy invasion is set to be side-splitting. The floor’s lined with seated spectators where blades of grace once stood as the likes of Russell Howard, Noel Fielding and Dylan Moran regale the masses with tales of rage, scorn, concern and ultimately, sex. Howard bangs on about the big bang and Fielding harks on about clambering up to the moon in a pirate ship having forgotten to prepare any material for his hour-long slot, all of which leaves Moran with an open goal, into which he scores emphatically. Happiness seems to suit him about as aptly as etiquette does Liam Gallagher, and his delicately delivered odes to parenting gone awry and the destruction of the English language set Moran apart as the pied pier of Eastnor. As tents are collapsed and packed into a vast array of bags, bottles and cans recycled and weary bodies trudge over to their getaway cars, Andrew Bird secretes his looping melodramatic magnificence over the hills and far away, to a land that thrives on imagination and wellbeing. Next summer forget the yoga classes, sounds of the sea CDs and those god-awful wellington boots and scuttle down to the Big Chill, the home of elation and eccentricity.
Festival Frolics: Sonisphere '09
Not all that indebted to Zack de la Rocha’s anti-corporate nude activist statements are Alien Ant Farm; essentially one-hit wonders with a hit they in fact owe credit and the entailed royalties to the late, great MJ, they once appeared to sink without trace like Bud Light at a frat party. Tearing and gurning their way through ancient hard-hitters Movies and of course the aforementioned Smooth Criminal, Dryden Mitchell’s outdated but never outgunned whine provides a nostalgic trip back into adolescent angst that’s about as welcome as a shower come Sunday. Next stop: Spotify scouring. Rewinding a fair few years further are Björn Again, playing their four thousand and first show in perhaps the shock slot of the weekend. Taking to the somewhat subdued, sun-drenched Saturn Stage their impeccable musicianship, choreographed-within-an-inch-of-its-life routine and Enter Sandman cover give the heftiest of hell raising guitar slingers a run for their money. Secret sing-alongs and guilty pleasures well and truly unearthed, the likes of opener Waterloo, a reinvigorated Mamma Mia and the 80s electro thunder of Gimme Gimme Gimme throw up an early show-stealer from the prime purveyors of validated impersonation. Who needs an ABBA reunion these days?
Playing at the heart of a Jagermeister truck and later in the eye of the storming crowd, Watford scamps Blackhole thrill a modest mound of revellers with their brand of suburban screamo. Front man Rich Carter may well have bro Frank hanging from the Gallows too if they carry on ripping grass and hair out of festival circuits with such visceral enthrallment. Coheed & Cambria ought to be penning the next saga to their apocalyptic comic book wizardry on the Apollo Stage right about now although they’re stranded on a ferry. When they do finally burst through Sonisphere’s heralded gates of steel, they gaze out onto a humid full house within the Bohemia tent. Opening with juggernaut Welcome Home, perhaps they required another ferry to carry their monstrous metal across to Blighty from wherever it was they got stuck in the mud. Up next, Ten Speed pretty much cements such a theory before monotony begins to set in amongst Iron Maiden covers and outstayed, ongoing guitar solos as the foundations crumble and a watered-down Blood Red Summer winds up the disappointment of all that could have been.
Overblown but far from outstayed are Californian "nu-metal" megastars Linkin Park, whirring through an elated hour of jilted scratches, cracked violin screeches and blasts from the past with as much throwback impact as 10p liquorice and Space Invaders. From the bombasts of Numb, Bleed It Out and What I’ve Done to the beautifully basic balladry of Breaking the Habit, they’re faultless. Up until front man Chester Bennington quenches his urge to let solo project Dead By Sunrise loose, at which point the crowd duly disperses. The ‘Park eventually return to belt out Transformers thrasher New Divide as well as a beefed-up re-run of One Step Closer. Whether Metallica will favour their subtle set or flame throw and melt the Knebworth sky only time will tell although as the festival’s house band, what’s the likelihood of the princes of ironic heavy metal renouncing their crown that easily?
Far less certain is the extent to which Killing Joke have in fact become a jovial parody of themselves; garbed in Polartech sweat shirts, every wonky electro metal gem trundles along gracefully, from the Robert Smith swagger of Love Like Blood to the gritty howls of Requiem. Undoubtedly out of this world both mentally and musically. Equally barking are Atlanta, Georgia’s mythic enthusiasts Mastodon. Opening with the most breathtakingly twisted kaleidoscopic metallic anthem this side of dodgems and ferris wheels, twin guitars and synchronised shrieks offer the perfect respite to the often turgid arthritis-inducing desert composed of Jackson guitars and Mesa Boogie amplifiers. Over in Bohemia, Slipknot’s Corey Taylor has rammed the tent to the rafters, with lines of hoodie-clad devotees swarming around its innumerable entrances. Unfortunately, masks aside Taylor’s pathless acoustic meanderings infuriate rather than soothe battered ear drums. Bridging the gaping black hole between metal and the mainstream alongside The Prodigy and Pendulum (both can be previewed blaring out of every tent and iPod over the weekend) are Grant Nicholas’ Feeder who attract melancholic mellowers with a lethargic set littered with quintessential British indie linchpins Seven Days in the Sun and Buck Rogers. Some things are destined never to change it seems.
Further proof required? Look no further than Fred Durst’s Limp Bizkit; having lost out on court cases to NIN having seen his deprecation of Reznor’s Closer, Hot Dog, sued to breaking point and forced Machine Head to reconsider their Sonisphere appearance, Durst’s still the immature imbecile he never disproved himself to be. Stomping across the colossal Apollo stage like a rabid chimp in a reversed baseball cap, he throws himself onto guitarist Wes Borland who, for some unknown reason, is splattered with talcum powder as he distorts his way through the lost trash of My Generation, My Way and every other apathetically hopeless rap-metal horror they’ve ever spawned. Durst’s vocabulary could still fit on the back of a postage stamp as he vulgarly spits and swears his way through a hideous hour of disaffected dread. The only vaguely significant altercation to his ignorance is his seeming desire to build bridges burned at a time when he could afford a beer, a luxury he now allegedly lacks, by heaping praise on both Machine Head (as they “don’t give a fuck and their shit‘s harder than a motherfucker”) and later Nine Inch Nails, for inspiring the work of his soggier-than-ever Limp Bizkit. Trent Reznor watches through aviators stage right planning his razor-edged vengeance and whilst Borland’s dressed up as the Joker, the real clown of this show is Durst. At least Jacksonville must be delighted to have offloaded the village’s idiot…
What with Sonisphere marking the beginning of what’s set to be a two-year hiatus for Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails, they’d bow out with a rollickingly rocking greatest hits set, wouldn’t they? After all, this is the man that once demanded animalesque fornication whilst feeling from the inside and backed up Nietzsche by proclaiming the death of God. Yet sandwiched in between nemesis Durst and Hetfield’s impending onslaught and final hurrah of the best new festival to grace this year’s circuit, Reznor serves up quite the opposite: a delicate, touching farewell to entice the tears out as the sun sets on the horizon. Throughout the Wave Goodbye tour he’d promised to lace his subdued sets with fan favourites, ditching the glitz and glamour of previous light shows only to replace them with the sheer raw charm that began to drill his nails into hearts and minds two decades ago. As the hospital electronics of Wish kick in, he flicks a glimpse into all that could have been were we to experience the expected yet the ambulances swerve off course, taking us away into a vague land of genuine ambient genius. Reznor seemingly pained and emotionally imbalanced, the hauntingly vacuous piano opening of Something I Can Never Have makes NIN seem about as out of place on the running order as Fred Durst in a graduation gown, before the beautiful lilt of The Frail swathes headlong into a brutal Kalimba-led enhancement of The Wretched. It may not have turned out the way you wanted it to but by God, Hurt provides the climax to the closest an hour can humanly come to musical perfection.
All that remains is for Metallica to rip open the cellophane to the fireworks and fulfil expectations, hopes and dreams, shredding through unfathomably ideal heavy metal that every (Rock)band has covered all weekend long, from Master of Puppets to One and then on to Nothing Else Matters and Enter Sandman. Nine Inch Nails did everything to demonstrate how alive and well the beating heart to the heavier end of the musical spectrum is and whilst NME may veer a few thousand miles clear of it, Sonisphere can be sure of injecting itself into its coursing veins.
Nine Inch Nails- Now I'm Nothing (Wave Goodbye: O2 Arena 15.07.09)
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