"I don’t have any delusions of grandeur": DiS meets Kiran Leonard
Kiran Leonard has been recording at an industrial rate since his first ‘proper’ album 'Bowler Hat Soup' was released when he was 16...»
Articles
romanisbetter has written the following articles:
Brass bottomed boat: DiS meets British Sea Power
“What if we went on tour with a load of competition brass bands?..."»
"Mission of Burma is the pivot of my life": DiS meets Roger Miller
On paper, Mission of Burma are only a minor part of Roger Miller’s life...»
"It’s a weird pop music that not many people want to listen to": DiS meets School Of Language
“I’m trying to be a better vegetarian,” says David Brewis...»
"It feels like how I imagine Elton John might feel": DiS meets Metronomy
With the release of their fourth album 'Love Letters', it really feels like Metronomy have arrived...»
Drowned in Sheffield March/April 2014
Rob Cooke rounds up the best sounds coming out of Sheffield right now...»
"I'm trying to find my way home": DiS meets Slint (Part Two)
Slint’s rise to acclaim in their absence, and how they were finally able to reap the rewards of 'Spiderland'...»
"The people of Louisville are crazy": DiS meets Slint (Part One)
As you’ll know if you read any Lou Reed obituary back in October, Brian Eno once said: “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band”. The members of Slint were barely teenagers when this claim was made in 1982, but the same principle applies to their alternative rock masterpiece too.»
Drowned In Sheffield #16
It’s been a bit of a blur since you last heard from us. We think we caught fresher’s flu some time in late September and never quite recovered until this weekend, which was spent sitting on the sofa surrounded by empty Lemsip sachets and Seinfeld DVDs. Sniff.»
"Career? I'll let you know when it starts" – DiS meets Wire
Shamelessly taking influence from their art school backgrounds, Wire saw the punk movement from a sideways perspective. The Sex Pistols might have been set up to destroy rock ‘n’ roll, but even they had guitar solos; Wire crammed 21 tracks into 35 minutes on their debut album Pink Flag, shedding all superfluities to make the most punk music conceivable. Forget post-punk – this was punk because it was defined as much by what it wasn’t, by what it opposed, by what it lacked, rather than by any aggressive attitude, counter-cultural costume or spiky haircut.»
"If we'd been with a label, they would have been like, 'Are you insane?'" – DiS meets Au Revoir Simone
Telling the story of what Au Revoir Simone have been doing for the last four years requires you to tell three. There’s the tale of Annie, who became first a mother, then a rock musician; there’s the tale of Erika, who started making music solo, recording novelty pop covers with her friends in her spare time; and there’s the tale of Heather the scientist, who went back to university to study soil in the Tropics.»
Drowned In Sheffield #15
There’s a whole load of gigs happening in ol’ Sheffers over the next few weeks, and as ever you can find about a million listings down below. However, it’s worth taking this opportunity to draw some attention some great stuff happening outside of the usual live music sphere.»
Beacons Festival 2013: the DiS review
It’s certainly difficult to quantify the common threads that run through this year’s Beacons Festival headliners. What unites Bonobo, Local Natives and Django Django other than the fact that they’re celebrated without being celebrities? »
Beacons Festival – The DiS Preview + win tickets, headphones, records!
DiS had a blast at Beacons last year. With its classy combination of major artists from the leftfield, minor artists from the future and noisy punk bands from the best DIY spaces in the north of England, the festival that nearly never was became pretty much the best live music event Yorkshire’s had in a while.»
Drowned In Sheffield #14
We ranted on about the politics of Tramlines last time. Now we can get to the important stuff - namely, that you could see Alessi’s Ark, Best Friends, Brown Brogues, The Crookes, Department M, Cheatahs , Deaf Club, Dutch Uncles, Sam Forrest, Friends, Grass House, I Like Trains, The Jim Jones Revue, Lanterns On The Lake, Let’s Buy Happiness, Menace Beach, Misty’s Big Adventure, Money, Only Real, Patterns, Paws, Pins, Public Service Broadcasting, Rolo Tomassi, Sky Larkin, Slow Club, Superfood, Summer Camp, Sweet Baboo, Tall Ships, Teleman, Theme Park , Veronica Falls, Weirds, Wet Nuns, Wolf Alice, 2.54 and more, for fifteen quid.»
"It's not arty, it's not crafty. It's genuine - DiS meets John Lydon - Part 2: The Music
If you want to have a nice time talking to John Lydon, ask him about music, sit back and listen. Music, after all, is what he's striven to make for the last four decades and he's still doing it, it would seem, against all odds. It's also the thing that's missing from most of what you'll read about Lydon who, let's face it, whether he means to or not, has a habit of hitting the headlines for things other than that which he does in the studio and onstage.»
Coming soon: DiS meets John Lydon
As Public Image Ltd. prepare for their first UK live dates of 2013, DiS spoke to frontman, founder, musical icon and cultural anti-hero John Lydon.»
DiS meets John Lydon - Part 1: The Man
In his first public address, in the opening seconds of the Sex Pistols' debut single, Johnny Rotten declared himself an antichrist. John Lydon, on the other hand, introduced himself to the record-buying public by saying "Hello". On 'Public Image', Public Image Ltd's debut single, Lydon was starting a new conversation about who he really is. "You never listened to a word that I said / You only seen me for the clothes that I wear", he spat, brilliantly reasserting control over his own public image. This was Lydon ditching the antichrist persona, bringing an end to anarchy in the UK and saying, loudly and clearly, "This is who I really am". The thing is, that was 35 years ago, and unless you're the man himself, the issue of who John Lydon really is remains a matter of opinion.»
Drowned In Sheffield #13
When the first Tramlines festival was held in 2009, I didn’t go. I was on holiday in Europe, desperately trying to find ATMs that still had cash in them. You see, this was at the start of the biggest worldwide financial crisis since the Great Depression, and the banks had run out of money. Now when I think about that, and think about the fact that back home, Sheffield’s music community had decided to organise a giant free music festival on the eve of the biggest age of austerity any of us have ever experienced, it’s tempting to ask whether they might have timed it better.»
A Hawk And A Hacksaw - You Have Already Gone to the Other World
If Gogol Bordello are the Goldie Lookin’ Chain of Eastern European folk, A Hawk and a Hacksaw are its Public Enemy, and You Have Already Gone To the Other Wold is their most legitimate love-letter to the region’s music yet.»
Drowned In Sheffield #12
When it comes to writing this column, we spend an awful lot of time goofing around researching on the internet. Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud and Bandcamp – that’s how we find all the bands we feature here. It also where we learned the sad news recently that several of those bands – Standard Fare, Likes Lions and Les Oeuf Pourri – have called it a day. It’s where we found this surprising video of Lewis from Best Friends being dead good at skateboarding. It’s where we saw whoever runs the Tye Die Tapes Twitter account be a bit rude about another band, and a member of said band not take it that well. It’s where Tye Die Tapes have, hilariously, turned the accusation that they’re hipsters into a very funny bit of DIY branding. And it’s where Offbeat was resurrected.»
"We’ve been alienating millions of people the whole time" - DiS meets Dutch Uncles
Marple’s Dutch Uncles have a quality to them that’s rarer than you'd think – for a guitar band at least. Like Wild Beasts, Menomena, and only a few others doing the rounds at the moment, you can take one of their songs and listen to it ten, fifty, a hundred times, and unless you’re a musician yourself (and a pretty highly-trained one at that) you still won’t be able to fathom how it works.»
Foals return - DiS' Robert Cooke on their comeback gig in Sheffield
There are a few who clearly didn’t get what they expected tonight. After all, this is a small tour of intimate venues (the bingo hall of a working men’s club in this case) ahead of a new album release. The point is to road test new material, right? Not just play four new songs, two of which you can find easily enough on YouTube?»
Drowned In Sheffield #11
It’s always nice to get an award, isn’t it? It’s particularly nice for the Leadmill, which has been awarded at the Live Music Business Awards for the second year running, winning its Best Venue Teamwork category. In fact, Sheffield did rather well at this year’s bash, as the City Hall won the Best Venue Teamwork category for theatres and concert halls. »
Hey Sholay - ((o))
There’s an optimism in Hey Sholay’s music that never comes close to getting on your nerves.»
Deerhoof - Breakup Song
There’s so much fun to be had with Breakup Song, it doesn’t matter a bit that Deerhoof aren’t the pop group they claim to be.»
Drowned In Sheffield #10
A funny thing happened the other night. DIY label Tye Die Tapes were putting on a gig at their recording studio, and after great sets from Pet Rock and Avida Dollars, Cardiff’s Joanna Gruesome were doing their thing. Unfortunately their set was cut short when the noise police showed up, and we can obviously have a debate about whether or not TDT should be putting on gigs when it pisses off the neighbours, but something pretty great happened as a result.»
Wooderson - Let the Man Speak
What Let The Man Speak isn’t is an album of unwieldy aggression bundled together in the name of keeping the DIY punk spirit alive. It’s far more sophisticated than that, with its cleverly overlapping vocals and riffs far sharper and smarter than your bog-standard three-chord punk.»
Holograms - Holograms
An album of razor-sharp irreverence, infectious energy and, beneath its surface, genuinely intelligent songwriting. »
Drowned In Sheffield #9
Welcome to the ninth instalment of Drowned In Sheffield - the unexpectedly bumper-sized summer edition. Hooray!»