Stereo Jealousy

Gig Of The Week – Bat For Lashes, School Of Seven Bells @ Shepherd’s Bush Empire

A week of fantastic gigs, including Ether 09 – a South Bank festival that has drawn the incomparable David Byrne to our shores to play a show based on his two collaborative efforts with Brian Eno. Unfortunately there will be no Eno involved, but still should be fascinating. Also in a festival-style this Saturday sees International Record Store Day, and two of London’s greatest host sparkling instore line-ups. Rough Trade East sees a plethora of new young things including the fantastic Joe Gideon & The Shark. Pure Groove settles for a bit more experience, with Graham Coxon taking a break from the Blur reunion to play a solo set, backed up by Patrick Wolf.

Gig of the week though goes to the sublime Bat For Lashes, with Natasha Khan picking the excellent School Of Seven Bells as support. Two Suns is setting most critics gabbering, including me, and I’m really looking forward to the gig. Her support slot with Radiohead last summer gave glimmers of a special set, and on her own terms I’m expecting a theatrical adventure – it’ll be intriguing to see if she performs as her two aliases! School Of Seven Bells’ Alpinism should have received much greater admiration than it did last year, and they should provide a perfect electric counterpoint to Bat For Lashes’ more traditional instruments.

Bat For Lashes – Siren Song
School Of Seven Bells – Half Asleep

Here’s a glimpse of how the rehearsals are going for Khan and co.

Bat For Lashes – live in Rehearsal

Photo: Rose X

Read on for the rest of the week’s gigs in the capital…

Read more…

Our second stop on the Aural tour of the world brings us to the hometown of Blood Red Shoes, Brighton. A lovely town on the south coast of England, Brighton has a great recent history in music. Socially and politically, the town is quite liberal; promoting art, individuality and performance at every turn. Not only does the town have a lively music scene (venues, record shops, labels as well as bands), the music it produces is pretty damn good.

Bat For Lashes produced one of the albums of the year in 2006, with Fur and Gold, heading to Mercury and Brit nominations. Brighton features heavily throughout my collection, British Sea Power’s Open Season is a particular great, The Go! Team’s debut Thunder Lightning Strike is great fun, as is Brighton don Norman Cook’s Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. Cook is one of Brighton’s favoured sons, with nearly a quarter of a million folk turning up to see his last beach set in 2002. Electrelane, too, make superb electronic music, 2004’s The Power Out is my choice of their back-cat. Not featured in today’s audio selection are other fine bands such as Electric Soft Parade, Brakes, Clearlake, The Levellers, Maccabees and retropop funstrumpets The Pipettes.

So today’s audio choices are all quite modern, and all pretty enjoyable, and demonstrate the variety of the Brighton scene…

Fatboy Slim – Weapon of Choice
British Sea Power – True Adventures (Live in Columbus, Ohio): Thanks to ThaBombShelter for this!
Bat For Lashes – Prescilla
The Go! Team – Fake ID
Electrelane – To The East