At this year’s Field Day, we say farewell to patch of grass where The Quietus Village Mentality Stage stood – due to site rearrangement, and 2014’s ace and timely change of focus on the best in contemporary electronic music, it is no more. We’ve many ace memories from the years of working with Field Day on that stage (Omar Souleyman blowing the minds of a few thousand Grimes fans, a roadie having to peg it to the nearest DIY shop to get an angle grinder for Faust, East India Youth making us weep) but it’s time to move on to bigger and better things. Which is why we’re more than pleased to announce that at this year’s Festival, which takes place on June 7th and 8th, we’re partnering up with Eat Your Own Ears to present the main stage which of course is on the Sunday headlined by one of our very favourite ever bands, Pixies. If they play that cover of The Fall we’ll probably fall over. We’ve put together details of the main stage bill, and links to Quietus content about it, below – check out the new edition of Field Day radio, featuring an interview with Seun Kuti down there too. For tickets and the rest of the beltingly good line-up
Metronomy
Joe Mount speaking to Daniel Ross:
"Music is the language of dancing and movement, so you always have to have that. Pop music works best if musically it’s connecting with your body and lyrically it’s giving something you can relate to or listen to as a story. It can be quite manipulative, but I don’t think that matters. Even if you’re being manipulated, your body can’t argue."
Read the rest of the interview here
Jon Hopkins
Laurie Tuffrey on Jon Hopkins live:
"Hopkins’ set dissembles his records’ tracks, flaying the edges of the samples and loops, ripping the drum patterns off the grid, catalysing and recasting them into one heaving hour-long behemoth. Immunity’s ‘Open Eye Signal’ retains the surging, pulsating rhythm that it’s founded on, but the gilding vocal samples are brought to the front of the mix more, pacifying the crowd into a false calm before he rends everything, pulling the kicks and snares, flailing, out in a series of drops, crushing them into a dubstep-like climax. The set pushes forward, Immunity’s mechanistic, rhythmic door creaks and field samples, snatched from real life, get transmuted into vital dance floor components and corralled into the surge, with Hopkins’ fingers skittering frenetically across a computer screen, mesmerically out of sync with the emerging sounds, all the while."
Read the rest of the piece on last year’s performance at Pitchfork Paris here
Warpaint
Mof Gimmers on Warpaint’s latest album:
"Sonically, many of the songs exude an intense, intoxicated arousal, with lip-fattening blood rushes, grotty cinematic witching-hour horniness and David Lynchian daydream fucks. It sounds a bit far-fetched, but in an age when guitar-based music has become almost entirely devoid of libido, Warpaint have given everyone a timely reminder that rock & roll’s lifeblood is in the groin and, even if you’re not talking about sex (or the lack of it), the music should be carnal, as so effectively captured by PJ Harvey or Nine Inch Nails."
Read the rest of the review here
Blood Orange
Amy Pettifer on Dev Hynes:
"Since 2004, Devonté ‘Dev’ Hynes has been similarly searching for the persona that he wears most comfortably. He played a convincing nu rave hipster with Test Icicles, a bonafide craftsman of jangling, acoustic melodies as Lightspeed Champion and, most recently, has emerged with seamless grace as a lithe, soulful specimen under the moniker Blood Orange; an achingly clever songsmith and producer, in possession of the iconic moves of Willi Ninja and the satin smooth groove of early Prince. Call it ‘mid-tempo realness’, if you like – and no one can say he’s not a dedicated study."
Read the review of Blood Orange’s latest here
Sky Ferreira
Amy Pettifer on Sky Ferreira:
"My opinion of Sky Ferreira’s long awaited debut album has gone from pre-disposed hatred to ambivalence; from wanting to pick it apart to being unable to remove its hooks from my brain; from balking at its oddly passive bio-rhythms to recognising it as darkly clever. From thinking of her existence as fatally mired in the contradictions of 21st century celebrity to applauding her defiance against the system that contains her."
Read the review of Sky Ferreira’s latest here
Seun Kuti & Fela’s Egypt 80
Seun Kuti speaking to Richie Troughton:
"It’s not only about just entertainment. I believe Afrobeat is also a statement. If you choose to be an Afrobeat musician, it is a statement on its own. People come to expect a certain level of consciousness from you. And I don’t think it’s too much for people to expect that. I believe it is the responsibility of artists to give this kind of social relevance to their art. And for one reason and one reason only: people love you when you play music. When you have the gift of music, people give you their hearts, they give you love."
Read the rest of the interview here
Arthur Beatrice
Eat Your Own Ears/The Quietus Main stage – Sunday
Pixies
Mic Wright on Pixies live:
"Black Francis still sounds fiery, the brimstone preacher from a psychotic church, David Lovering has the back beat locked down and Joey Santiago is still one of the most astounding guitar players ever to put his hands to work on wood and wire. Of course Kim Deal is missed but Kim Shattuck is a great bass player with simmering stage presence. Is this Pixies or some heritage revival act with the same chubby face at the front but no soul to back it up? On tonight’s evidence, a defiant ‘no’."
Read the full report here
The Horrors
Ben Graham on The Horror’s new album, Luminous:
"It reminds me of when I used to stay up all night on speed and acid and then go to sign on, and how paradoxically speed can make everything seem really slow-moving, and you feel like you’re ten feet tall but only an inch wide and your cheekbones could sculpt skyscrapers from ice and you haven’t slept and everything is starting to blur around the edges and keeps going out of focus and you sway in the slight breeze and could topple over at any moment and your wasted life yawns in front of you like an abyss but still you’re on top of the world, right?"
Read the full review here
Temples
Temples’ Tom Warmsley speaking to Laurie Tuffrey:
"I think a mutual love was all those psychedelic records. Years ago, we shared that stuff and tastes kind of develop, but I think the songwriting from that era, that style sticks with you. Anything that we do now, although there’s other influences in there, more experimental and electronic, stuff from the ’70s and even the sampling from the ’90s, there’s still that ’60s crafting of a pop song that remains. But the challenge is to avoid any pastiche, so it sounds fresh and original while borrowing from that [period]. It’s a very fine line, I think."
Read the rest of the feature here
Pond
Barnaby Smith on Pond’s latest album:
"Pond, led by the eccentric man-boy Nick Allbrook who left Tame Impala in May 2013, are a band exaggerated, forever young, and in some ways a bit preposterous with their high camp theatre and psychedelic rock that seems like a soundtrack to a kitsch rock opera at times. It may be garish, but it is entertaining, and Hobo Rocket is a more compact, direct and even shameless statement of all the things that make Pond so attractive."
Read the full review here
The Wytches
Paul Tucker on The Wytches’ live appearance supporting Chelsea Wolfe:
"The Wytches take to the stage and burst forth with a combination of tortured, dark psychedelia and even more tortured riffs that at times take inspiration from the early Cobain playbook, which in this context is more than OK. Frontman Kristian Bell peers from behind a veil of straggly black hair, his vocals a blend of unhinged Jack White evangelicalism and the cracked warble once employed by Davey MacManus of angst-ridden late 90s Welsh act The Crocketts. The Wytches display plenty of angst themselves tonight – more than they do poise. "You sit there and laugh while my dignity collapses," stutters Bell at one point, and poise, you sense, is not really the point."
Read the rest of the piece here
