A: Hi, Ah I’m very good and very busy. I’m working on something with Disney at the moment, for Rapuntzel: their new movie. There’s an exclusive for you.

Q: Ah it all sounds very lucrative and exciting. Have you always had the fascination with hair?

A: Yes, since I was a young boy and used to see all the lovely women’s hair in my mother’s pub. They all looked so fantastic and glamorous.

Q: I’m picturing your mother as being a hybrid somewhere between Bet Lynch and Peggy Mitchell. Did you find it difficult to get where you are now, career wise?

A: I don’t think I’m at the peak or at the top of my profession in any way. I think I’m far from it. You just need to test yourself all the time…and have sex with the right people.

Q: Describe your own personal style?

A: I’m a gypsy. I don’t have a style. It shifts around a lot. I mix it up a lot, I’m fortunate enough to have a creative set of friends so I wear a lot of their designs too.

Q: I loved your lips collection, how did you manage to think of a project that was so outlandish?

A: I think that just the pure thought of having hair on and around your lips is disgusting, so that’s why I chose to do it. The models looked amazing walking down the catwalk with these huge fucking lips stuck to the tops of their head. So sleek.

Q: Your first collection at London Fashion Week was only last year: what do you find, style wise, that is so unique about London?

A: It’s meant to be such a hub for creativity but lately it’s just boring. I loved everything about London a few years ago, everyone was dressing up and living for the night-time, but now everyone has their heads down. We need a new generation to come through to fire things up a little.

Q: Are you planning on staying in London for the meantime, and if you had to live anywhere else, where would that be?

A: I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I like London but I want to see other places, a place that houses more freaks! I like Berlin a lot. It’s like the new Dalston.

Q: What is the worst hairstyle that you have ever had?

A: I once had a cross on my forehead. It wasn’t bad, it was just an acquired taste. I loved it but it got frowned upon by the general public.

Q: What direction do you predict men’s grooming to go?

A: It’s going to go forward. Men will soon be more groomed than the most elegant of ladies. Everyone should just wear wigs.

Q: What hair products do you use?

A: Shu Eumura. It has an amazing scent and it leaves the texture of my hair in beautiful condition. My hair is constantly morphing into something else so I like to give it a good rest sometimes. I might just shave it all off and keep the cuttings for a future wig.

Q: I heard that you used to cut the hair of Barbie dolls when you were a young boy. Do you prefer to work with long hair or shorter crops?

A: I prefer longer hair, especially longer hair on boys. I still have Barbies but my muses to me are like the human equivalent.

 Q: Was it a lot of fun doing your ‘pop up salon’ in Berlin and Soho’s Machine-A boutique? I can imagine that to get pretty messy?

 A: Oh it was amazing. We all had so much fun but when it came to the end of the day we were hardly cutting any hair and just dancing around, drinking and being crazy.

 Q: You’ve worked with some amazing creatives and artists, if you could cut anyone’s hair who’s would that be?

 A: I love working with everyone, if they’re interesting and individual. They don’t have to be famous, wealthy or popular. All I ask is that they have an open mind, a creative eye and a wild imagination. I love Jodie Harsh and singer, Peaches, they’re both so outspoken and full of character. They take risks and trust my ideas. I love to have a great relationship with my muses. I make them look good and they make me look good. They promote me..on their heads.

By Shane Hawkins

There has never been a shortage on the theoretical breakdown of the vampire’s place in social terms, from sexuality to disease, but Vampire Lover’s gives anything academic a fair swerve other than to give props to a few female vamps bucking the trend (Kate Beckinsale and her big guns in Underworld) and concentrates far more on short and sweet anecdotes from various actors who have played blood sucking roles.

A vamp book in 2010 wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, and True Blood but this is the sticking point; while a cultural phenomenon, there is currently little to be said about the impact of these that hasn’t already been shallowly explored in the gossip rags and film magazines. I say ‘shallowly’ because it’s near impossible to have real insight while the sagas are still being played out.

Thus they feel like necessary but ultimately hollow additions to this “book of undead pinups”. Where this book could have shone is in exploring those films and TV shows that really changed the face of the vampire legend. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Hammer films could (and do) each have their own minutely detailed explorations by other authors, but here their incredible influence is melted down to why the ladies love Spike (maybe cos he looks like Billy Idol) and Angel (he has a heart which negates his parental-eating past).

Baddeley’s choices are hit and miss; Richard Roxbrough in the truly atrocious Van Helsing (bad), Udo Keir in Blood For Dracula (good). Salma Hayek in From Dusk Til Dawn (interesting), Tom Cruise as Lestat (over it).

The crux is, if you’re going to do a book of pinups… then make it coffee table sized and on gloss perforated paper so those of us that dream of a nip in the night can rip them out and frame them. Even better, choose lesser known stills to make us want to buy it for new drooling action; most of these images can be found on Google.

If you want to write about the vampires that made us weak at the knees then do something more than just give us some sketchy details we as fans already know. Because even if you’re 13 and new to the genre because of that (un)dead boring jessie Edward Cullen or you’re a little late on the scene and coming round to the vampire way because Alexander Skarsgard gives you the panty moisture, there’s not much here that will convince you to explore outside the 21^st century vamp.

The album will be available on download, vinyl and two CD configurations – standard as well as a deluxe version that will include several live
tracks recorded at the band’s legendary Hyde Park show on June 30th of this year. It was their biggest headlining show to date, as they played to 60,000 fans in the historic London park.

The tracklisting for Come Around Sundown is:

The End
Radioactive
Pyro
Mary
The Face
The Immortals
Back Down South
Beach Side
No Money
Pony Up
Birthday
Mi Amigo
Pickup Truck

We had a chat with LA’s premier garden entertainment…

(and, like our short n sweet journo, they turned out to be so succinct that they do a natty take on Ellroy’s telegraphic prose. Mostly because we’re pretty sure this is the well cool thing to do when you’re from the land of palm trees and The Hills, and it’s not just sheer laziness but probably the hipster version of hepcat jive talk, daddy-o, you dig?

Just so you collar, we’re leaving this interview just as we found it, all the butter right there so you can lamp the goods for yourself.)

Just for those who aren’t aware of you yet could we have a quick mini history of the band?

We’re from LA been playing together at backyard parties and skate parks Swimming pools burned out buildings

You are on tour now, how’s that going?

Just finished a us tour that lasted a little over a month seems like we have been touring all year somewhere. Its going great meeting lots of new fans and getting to play festivals all over the world

Did you enjoy your trip round the UK with Surfer Blood earlier in the year?

Yea that was cool

What was the best city to play in?

Glasgow was good London is always strong

Any stories?

Not really we did seem to be following Kiss around on that tour and managed to find our way into a few after parties

Your influences seem to be very British and synth-related; how did you get into the likes of The Normal and Human League?

We just found them in the record collections of our parents and older brothers

You have played Download already and are set to play Reading and Leeds, what are your impressions of the UK festival scene?

Its great such a mix of bands / we played the same day as ACDC =at download that’s nuts

Are there any bands that you are listening to more than most right now, who do you admire?

Listening to all kinds of stuff Prince Radio head lots of indie bands we meet on the road

We know you hate being categorized but what can we expect from the new single and the forthcoming album?

Rock disco Guitars and Cowbell 

We hear you used to have to borrow equipment in the early days, what’s the best bit of gear you have bought since your success?

Are you kidding we still borrow this stuff

Final question, which is better playing music or skating?

Depends on how hard you hit the ground in both

Words by Jonathan Heath

Intro additions by tg.

Hey really good thanks yeah, been gigging a lot and recording new material.  I’m working on a free mixtape and second album stuff, also plugging the T shirts.

Now, starting at the beginning, how long have you been writing music for? And why did you decide to start taking it more seriously? Am I right in thinking that you have a degree in Media?

I started writing poems/songs when I was about 12, back then it was more crappy pop songs, but then when I was about 16 I really found my passion for hip-hop, Nas was the main catalyst in that. Just the truth of it made it so much more powerful than anything else I had been listening to, I got into the battle scene built a name for myself and then started recording, it all sort of just happened, it’s always been serious for me I guess ’cause it’s all I really wanted to do. I went to uni though (always have a back up plan) and yeah I did Media & Communications Bsc.

Did you ever want to pursue the degree or did you do what I did post-grad and become a little out of practice with your future profession? Rapping and academia are pretty different.

At the time when I was finishing my degree there was a lot going on in my life, my mum was really ill, and my music life had become a lot busier too, so I was never really on a job hunt so to speak, the music had snowballed enough by that point to keep me going, I think i got more life experience from uni than academic knowledge… 

Has Envy always been a sort of alter ego? And what would you say differs Nikki from MC Envy?

Yeah I guess, ENVY is all the extremes of my personality, it’s kind of like my inner problem child too, I changed at uni through moving away from Manchester & meeting people from so many different backgrounds it kind of opened my eyes, I matured and calmed down. Envy’s my excuse to still say what I think regardless of the consequences, she’s the little scrapper that used to battle & win against all the boys back in the day. I think everyone has a bit of a split personality. When I was younger I think I was JUST what ‘envy’ is now, whereas now I’ve learned to separate the two. 

You have a rapid-fire projection of your lyrics, which is amazing. Have you ever MC’d so quickly that you’ve got ‘tongue twisted’ and forgotten your own riddles?

Haha, I have forgotten my lyrics on stage before but that’s more been a result of alcohol rather than the speed of my delivery, people always say my brain goes at like 100mph so I guess it’s only normal that my tongue follows suit.

How did the collaborations with Akira the Don and Medasyn come about?

Medasyn found me on Myspace actually, many moons ago & asked if I was up for doing a track, when we hooked up we had such good chemistry in the studio we just kept on making songs. Akira & I met through a guy I was in a crew with called Dego, & it was the same thing really, we got on so well, personally & creatively we just continued to work together.

It seems lazy plucking Lady Sovereign as an easy comparison but are you bothered about being compared to Sov? You two are friends, right?

It does get annoying sometimes, especially now with my album out & everything I feel I’ve earned my own place in the industry & we are two quite different artists, but yeah we’re mates so it’s kind of funny.

She has recently ‘come out’ as being gay. Do you find that there’s a generalisation of female emcees in such a male dominated industry?

I think in any male dominated space there is the assumption that a woman must be gay to be involved, I’m also into boxing & it’s a similar story. But at the same time there’s a lot of more feminine girls taking over the scene now too. I’m all for girl power out ‘ere.

You give a heads up to a hoard of females in album track ‘Put Ya Game Face On’. Are all the names mentioned big influences on you and your music?

Yeah, definitely, it’s always inspiring to see females representing in, like I said before, such a male space. Women also offer a perspective that’s not represented in male hip-hop so it’s always good to listen to other females. But don’t get it twisted I’m not like some militant feminist, LOL .I just like to rep it for my girls

Your album is definitely in my top 5 of the past 12 months. Are you happy with the way it eventually came out?

Awww thank you! I’m really proud of the album & I’ve had great feedback from it, it’s really personal but also has mass appeal so I think it hits the nail on the head. The BBC even suggested it should be shortlisted for the Mercury Music prize, which, even though it didn’t, was a massive thing for me to even be thought of.

 Were you a bid disappointed that you didn’t get a nomination at the Mercurys? 

I’m not gonna lie YEAH! that’s one thing I have always wanted to achieve since I started writing ten years ago, BUT to even have my name thrown around when people were speculating the shortlist is surreal enough! There’s always the next album though…

What will the rest of this year and 2011 bring for Envy? 

Continue to do lots of gigs & recording, the new single EYE ON YOU will be out in November, followed by a load of free stuff on the net for the fans & then second album hopefully summer next year! Oh & hopefully

the merchandise will have grown by then too!

 www.iluvenvy.com

Words by Shane Hawkins

* UK HEADLINE TOUR with David E Sugar Supporting*

Fenech-Soler announce the release of their eagerly anticipated debut album and a maiden headline tour, both kicking off at the end of September.

Borne of a true faith in pop and fermented in the spirit of self-determination, Fenech-Soler’s radio-friendly nous and festival verve has brought them to the gates of an explosive debut. Having seen their independently released single Stop & Stare

playlisted at Radio 1 in May, and reach the Top 10 of the Dance and Indie singles charts, the band have signed to B-Unique for the release of their album on 27th September.

It’s an album that begins with a blast, its opener Battlefields launching with a heavenly chorus of voices, before shooting into stratospheres of glistening synths and dirty brass. Forthcoming single Lies – released 20th September – rises slowly from the deep, a tale of lust and paranoia that becomes a glittery explosion of foot-stomping melancholy. Golden Sun plays with rhythms that summon up the sultriness of desert heat; The Great Unknown takes a distant echo of French house in new, dizzying directions. And of cause Stop And Stare is their club and festival anthem ready and waiting, full of twitchy, urgent riffs, and hands-to-the-air vitality. It is the sound of a band at the starting gate, ready to fire their gun.

UK TOUR DATES:
29 Sep: Inverness, Ironworks
30 Sep: Edinburgh, Electric Circus
1 Oct: Aberdeen, The Warehouse
2 Oct: Stirling, Stirling Festival (club show)
3 Oct: Dundee, The Doghouse
5 Oct: Glasgow, King Tut’s
7 Oct: Newcastle, The Other Rooms
8 Oct: York, Fibbers
9 Oct: Preston, 53Degrees (club show)
10 Oct: Liverpool, The Shipping Forecast
12 Oct: Wolverhampton, The Little Civic
13 Oct: Nottingham, Stealth
14 Oct: Leicester, Lock
15 Oct: Coventry, Kasbah
16 Oct: Sheffield, The Plug (club show)
17 Oct: Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
25 Oct: Bristol, Thekla
26 Oct: Cardiff, Barfly
27 Oct: Huddersfield, Tokyo
28 Oct: Wrexham, Central Station
29 Oct: Stoke, Sugarmill
30 Oct: Manchester, The Warehouse Project (club show)
1 Nov: Exeter, Cavern Club
2 Nov: Brighton, Audio
3 Nov: Tunbridge Wells, The Forum
4 Nov: Peterborough, Met Lounge
6 Nov: Norwich, Arts Centre
7 Nov: Portsmouth, The Kraken Wakes
9Nov: Oxford, Jericho
10 Nov: London, Heaven

Tickets available for all shows from:
 WWW.FENECHSOLER.CO.UK

You can almost see the headline splashed on the front of the newspapers now: Target Audience In Shock As Film Specifically Tailored For Them Turns Out To Be Amazing. In other news, the Pope is a Catholic.

Okay, but this film is excellent. It is really excellent. Michael ‘The Walking Typecast’ Cera gives a mean performance as dopey-but-likeable Scott, who, if you don’t know the story by now, meets Ramona Flowers after seeing her skating through a subspace highway that runs through his head, and, blah blah blah, happy ever after. The ‘blah blah blah’ bit is him having to fight her Seven Evil Exes first, obviously.

Edgar Wright has pulled off the elusive trick of ‘staying true to the source material and not making it wholly crappy’ with aplomb*. Whittling the six volumes of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series down into 112 minutes meant some of the subtleties were going to get a little diluted: the Scott getting a job storyline, the true nature of Ramona and Gideon’s relationship and the complexities of hers and Scott’s, a lot of the backstory between him and Envy Adams, etc., etc. It’s entirely unreasonable to expect all of these things to be crammed into a film for general consumption (isn’t it…?), but some of the bits that have been left in might not make any sense to those coming into this fresh – Scott’s superstitious aversion to haircuts being a prime example.

It is hard to care, though, when a film is so enjoyable and dryly funny as this. Watching the characters become flesh on the screen – Chris Evans, in a warm-up for Captain American, plays the cocky movie star who ends up exploding, and Keiran Culkin is superb as Scott’s gay room- and-bed-mate, Wallace Wells – is enough to make up for the loss of a few details, especially surrounded as they are by comic books touches, like light-up ‘Gets it!’ signs, punching people to death so hard they shed coins in their wake, and bleeped out swearing (“how are you doing that with your mouth?”).

If you like cherries on top of your ice-cream, get this: the Nigel Godrich plus Beck plus Metric plus Broken Social Scene soundtrack is exactly as excellent as you’d expect it to be. People applauded at the end of the film when I went to see it, which is beyond unnecessary, but if you’re not getting the subtle message this (and pretty much every other) review is trying to convey: this film is really good and if you are under thirty you should GO AND WATCH IT.

*Along with the trick of ‘not casting Simon Pegg in the titular role’

Words by Joel Golby

Tom Sowerby: Now, you guys have been so busy over the last few months, particularly on the back of your American tour with MGMT.

Kevin Parker: Yeah, it’s been pretty busy but we got some time at home and it doesn’t feel like we’ve been permanently busy because when we do go home our lives go straight back to being exactly as they were before, so we just kind of swan around Perth.

TS: You guys have been popular in Australia for a while but over the last year or so you’ve got a lot bigger worldwide, were you expecting it?

KP: It’s always a surprise, but when you’re on the inside and you see everything happening, like the label doing their little ‘spiels’ and all the marketing and stuff, it’s pretty different to what you’d expect. We don’t disagree with it, they have to do what they have to do, but it’s like less mystical and mysterious when you see it as steps happening. It doesn’t feel the same as when I was following a band that got bigger and bigger, there’s so much calculation, not on our part but by the people who manage us. I never realised that it was anything more than the music. It’s romantic to think that it’s only the music that’s propelling the band, but it’s not. Like if your music is on a TV show or something it’s like a boost to your career. But we’re enjoying it, I’m grateful for the lives we have; it’s a pretty sweet deal when you think about. We complain a lot but we get to travel and when we don’t we don’t have to do anything else, just record music.

TS: Now, following some problems, I think ‘Innerspeaker’ is finally coming out here?!

KP: I don’t know! I don’t know what the hell’s happening!

TS: Well one of the things that I really liked about Innerspeaker is that if you strip down all the production quality it’s an album that could be straight from ’67 or ’68. What was your intention when you made it?

KP: Well, I wanted it to sound, sonic-wise, as though it was kind of electronic but played by real people, and that’s where the Krautrock thing comes in. Because that kind of music is incessantly repetitious and regular, but it has that hypnotic thing that electronic music has but it’s a little bit more human, I just love that idea. I’d like people to think of it as an electronic ‘60s album. I definitely was trying to find a way to join the gap between ‘60s pop and modern electronic music. But there is this big misconception that it’s a ‘band’ album, because there’s really just one track where the whole band play on it at the same time, it’s mainly just me recording. It’s always just been my bedroom recordings.

TS: So you did it all yourself?

KP: Yeah, it’s just the way I’ve always done it, it’s what I’ve been doing for years and years and slowly I’ve been getting better at it.

TS: Now, a fairly regular argument in the music industry is that labels don’t give bands enough time and interfere too much, particularly with recording albums. Were you given much creative control when you recorded Innerspeaker?

KP: The label’s really good with letting me craft the music the way we want to, so they let me record the whole thing the way I like to do it, which is good. They let me go over and mix it with the guy too, because a lot albums get mixed away from the band; it just gets put on someone’s desk and he does it and sends it back. But we feel like a large part of our music is how the sound affects the ears and how the different instruments connect with each other so it’s good that we’re allowed to have such an input.

TS: And I heard you guys built a recording studio in your tour bus?

KP: Yeah, that’s a bit of an elaborate name for it, but it’s basically my 8-track with a bunch of jacks that convert into whatever we want to plug into it. We just did excessively long highway jams and we set up a drum machine on four chords; drums aren’t the easiest thing to set up in my mobile recording studio.

TS: Is it all working towards a new album?

KP: Yeah we’ve got all the songs worked out and we’ve recorded a lot of it. We were just working on the track listing for it yesterday; I’m so excited about it I can’t even explain. Everything feels just a lot more free flowing now the first album’s done. I was a bit uptight about getting the first album done because it had to be this and that and perfect in every way, now everything has opened up, I feel like we can do whatever we want now.

TS: So what can we expect from the new album?

KP: I don’t want to say anything because it’ll give the wrong idea, but it sounds pretty different. We’re using a few more toys, some gadgets and I’ve got a better studio set up that I used to, it used to just be my bedroom and I’ve got a better idea of how to record sound now so I can whip up a sonic storm anytime that it needs doing. So yeah all I can say is that the sound of it is ten times better than the last one.

This weekend Tame Impala will be performing at Reading and Leeds festivals and plans are currently underway to arrange a UK tour, hopefully later this year.

www.myspace.com/tameimpala

Words by Tom Sowerby

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