The lineup for the Quietus’ Stage at next year’s Desertfest festival in Camden has been announced and, as was the case last year, it’s a blaster: The bands to play under our gently flapping banner at Underworld, Camden, on 25 April are: Obake, BONG, Shit and Shine, Sly & the Family Drone, Palehorse, SEX SWING and Anthroprophh. We first ran a stage at Desertfest this year – a TRUE PLEASURE as we basically said "yeah we’d like to see Slabdragger, Dragged Into Sunlight, The Body, Hey Colossus and Årabrot" and festival organisers Jake and Reece made it so with no fuss no pain. As Toby ‘Columnus Metallicus’ Cook wrote afterwards, "It was a good fucking time, and that is what Desertfest is about, ya shitters!" Also playing at Desertfest 2014 are Sleep, Red Fang, Ufomammut, Acid King, Orange Goblin and much more to shake Camden unto the tunnels of the Northern Line. For more information and tickets, please visit the Desertfest website.
Italian-Bulgarian avant-metal band,Obake, are best described as a "cross pollination of everything from oppressive doom riffs and prickly waves of ambient noise to almost operatic cadences", aka. the most fun you can have with clothes on. They headline the Quietus Stage on the Saturday. Read our live report of Obake’s 2012 Wroclaw, Poland show here.
BONG, are next on the bill and promise a strong set of hazy, acrid riffs and lots of heavy, metallic noise-rock. Says Toby Cook: "On releases like 2009’s self titled LP and even up to last year’s Beyond Ancient Space their lengthy, BONG’s doom based drones, along with Dave Terry’s hollow, resonating vocals, sounded something like the reverberating hum of a vast cosmic army physically heaving the sun over ancient pyramids." Read our interview with BONG frontman Dave Terry here.
Shit and Shine, the brain child of Todd impresario Craig Clouse, "have been churning out hulking sonic spasms of unrelenting, loosely structured noise since 2004’s limited edition LP You’re Lucky To Have Friends Like Us… frequently featuring no more than guitars, oh, and about ten drummers." Says Cook: "SAS have crafted a real exploration of what it is to be alive; brutal, uncomfortable, often vial and deranged." Read our review of Shit and Shine’s 2012 album, Jream Baby Jream here
Sly & The Family Drone are a psychedelic panto-rock band whose live gigs are some of "the most inclusive and ‘egalitarian’ noise performances you are likely to witness or more likely participate in". Says Lisa Lavery: "Sly & The Family Drone gigs are chaotic, incoherent, aggressive and provocative…There is a singular driving force behind Sly which has been there from the start, an enthusiastic ego for whom barriers do not exist." Read Lisa Lavery’s essay on Sly and the Family Drone’s "Psychic Demolition" here.
In the Bible’s Book of Revelation, the ‘Pale Horse’ is the steed of death, the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, this should tell you something aboutPalehorse. Says Cook: "Palehorse’s sound might best be liked to that of the originators of atmospheric post-metal Neurosis if you caught them playing Iron Monkey songs slowed to the pace of a London bus in a tar pit." Read Ben Dawson, Palehorse drummer, and his raucous rant against public ‘stingeyness’ here.
SEX SWING played a fantastic set at tQ’s Christmas bash at Hackney’s Oslo on Wednesday. It was They’re a new band formed from the ashes of the dearly departed Dethscalator. John Doran describes them thus: "Dan Chandler isn’t roaring like a minotaur who’s just stepped on an upturned plug with bare feet, he’s actually singing, and he sounds a little bit like Ian Curtis. Jase Stoll (Mugstar) adds chunky guitar, while Tim Cedar (Part Chimp) plays a mean Alan Vega style organ and Colin Webster is on a giant saxophone, itchily skronking away somewhere between Fela Kuti and Colin Stetson. I mean, I don’t want to jinx it or anything but they might actually be superb…"
Anthroprophh is the new(ish) project of Paul Allen of legendary stoner-rock band, The Heads. Their sound is a brilliant fusion of "kosmische drone and acid-frazzled guitar workouts" and is sure to be a hit in the intimate Underworld venue on Camden High Street. Says Joseph Burnett: "Anthroprophh essentially encapsulate the sound of modern psych-rock, as espoused by all those bands: it’s heavy but subtle, driving but fleet-footed, taking in a range of moods and atmospheres, the kind of music you can head-bang to gleefully in a mosh pit, or be serenaded by as you while away a sleepless, hash-hazed night."
Read our interview with Anthroprophh here.
