The Future Fest ethos punches up!

“There are SO many amazing and exciting bands within the UK alone, if anything the hard task is narrowing it down!” says Ghost Road Fest, an exciting new addition to the independent rock music festival circuit that debuts this November. More on that to follow.

Ah, but mainstream festivals…

Generic fame reflects society at mainstream level - and sells tickets.  The pandora's box of pandemica exposed so much socially and politically, music industry included, that without change from the top, an eternal circle of conversations about rebuilding better, go nowhere. With fear and loathing in las plagus, we’re a nation that needs to party, sing and dance together. Tickets will still sell if some credible curve balls thrown in, enhance reputation.

Corporate sponsors of the biggest events may see otherwise to the statements of good intent or presume that us DIY girlies ain't as good at entertaining or scouting.  The fact is, smaller festivals activate the cultural shift guidelines. “Cro Cro Land felt like a platform for tomorrow’s headliners to play a festival crowd. You know; the ones who haven’t necessarily come to see you but who fall in love with your band regardless.” (London In Stereo, whose reviewer fell for Nova Twins April 2019 - they play the main stage at Reading/Leeds Festivals this autumn)

There is often dismay at post lockdown bill announcements at a time when even next level talent is struggling. With up to three decades of the same names, old guard thinking looks dated without emerging star-turns injected as lifeblood. “Ironic there is a band on there called Scouting For Girls, which is how I feel every time I look at a festival poster.” noted Tiger Mimic of one event. This band (on the forthcoming Brits & Pieces II CD) are a face-the-stage commanding, alt-rock proposition who mix a little Queen into their tempo tangent punk. They play Jam On The Farm festival in July (tickets)

By 2021, when artists deserve acclaim for just surviving, the friction of mixing in a little risk invites extra thrill. Cosmic new discoveries please, or it's not a festival - it's just an outdoor concert in cosplay.

Impassioned independent media can decry, but still enjoy, major events. Mainstream journalists don't write/(know?) about art punky party love via a spectrum of scenes. True festival spirit is here:

019 09 TheZineUK Summer 71.png

Organic pioneers, the previously mentioned CroCroLand (2019, pix above), DecoloniseFest, Kick Out The Jams, This Feeling Club, Loud Women Fest etc. gift a (proven succesful) wealth of possibilities.

Eventually the “prickstock” mentality will go tits up as audiences change. “We are the future, stop fucking ignoring us”, Ms Mohammed told The Guardian newspaper (a clip from her set at the awesome and inclusively welcoming DecoloniseFest) - or, ignore and bore.

Bigger bookers, select your 2022 entry level artists with guitars from ground level curators. There’s wide acclaim to select. Hard work, talent (and (r)evolution) has EARNED it. #SaveOurVenues alumni contain (disproportionately fab) future heritage acts. Thank you John Kennedy (Radio X), a swathe of BBC Introducing/6 Music and a wealth of independent  music media who are getting this noticed.

Also take note of how the fresh scenes fizz femme power. Never mind the bollocks, here's all the genitals. At the skint bottom of some imaginary heap, largely being talked over. But… being talked about in crossbreeding spaces.  

021 04 lwf.jpg

Our voices are 4REAL. Agreeing to disagree, keeps it interesting, an all happening flourish of diversity in adversity amidst an array of achievements, often for good causes. Interdependence is where the true thrills-and-results-per-week exist. Says a DIY documentary of the action fraction.

Flavouring this surreal decade are affordable festivals with cracking guitars inclusion. Jam On The Farm (July 30th-31st) looks like a wow-some pick n mixed mix.

021 07 30 JOTF.png

Autumn includes Wide Awake, (3rd September) Modern Age Music’s Soma Fest (4th) and before then, rad female fronted new ventures: ReclaimTheseStreetsFest in Sheffield on 7th August and No Man’s Land in Manchester on 14h August.

At #TheZineUK doc we are stoked to be involved in this Leeds and London weekender debuting in November…

“Ghost Road Fest was born out of an excitement to change how things are done post lockdown. I feel like with this much time off there's a real scope for change in how the industry is run. It's really disappointing there is still in 2021 an outcry for (god forbid) inclusivity within line-ups.

I've seen a few festival line ups released and it's still very male heavy - and it's not like there is only a handful of bands with female and trans representation that are 'good enough' to be playing these events! There are SO many amazing and exciting bands within the UK alone, if anything the hard task is narrowing it down!

Our festival has an 82% balance of acts with female or trans representation in - and I'd love to say I'm proud of that - but that should simply be the norm and not something to be highlighted. Alongside the festival we are also running a mentoring programme to encourage young adults to pursue their career within the music industry - something I think is very important - as they are the future of this industry and I strongly believe if you're educated within the correct surroundings then that is how you'll carry on that ethos.”

Lori of #GhostRoadFest

Ghost Road Fest Final.jpg

Written by a vintage West Indian rock chick who has promoted/booked artists and events at all levels, and is excited by the Fertile Environment.

Hot New Tunes - Vol: 11

Here we go again…. It’s your #HotNewTunes

021-end-of-the-trail-hot-new-t.png

Chosen by Music Industry insider, 
Kelly Munro (End Of The Trail Creative). 

Got (HOT!) tunes, want featuring? 
Scroll down for contact.

Remington super 60 - Talk with you

Post PMF Pre (r)Evolution

Our post-post modern fairytale, post-"Post-Punk" (and long post fascist coup) documentary is an artist powered blueprint of a courteous and compassionate recovery - for the many.

This includes the imperfect but mostly kind humanity of planet and peace, as well as the alien-hearted, ingreeding hate-mongers of war. There’s no Planet B. There is no Britain B, either. Even though it cost less to start littering Mars, than to steal from a nation while ensuring enough of them died to save even more on pensions etc. Black Lives Matter gifted an instant major history lesson for us to rebuild a #GR8BRTN with equity for equality. (Tyler Challenger's front cover image for the Autumn 2019 upload of this doc is reprised later in that issue as Post Modern Scary Tale. We are now in a groundhog day Stockholm Syndrome situation of All Fools Day x Halloween).

This is actually how we already operate and inspired TheZineUK from ArtBeat gatherings at the end of 2013. Uploading mid-March 2014 we could have NO idea. The last page of Chapter 1 is from a scene in TryLifeTV at the grassroots venue which spawned us, Amersham Arms. Half of Nova Twins represented in Floodliners photographed by Rupert Hitchcox.

Screenshot_20210323-075828_Chrome.jpg

How the wonderful Zeenagers (generation tremorists of creativity and performance) have come through this, is a heroic story of it's own making. DIY power is real.

It’s Spring 2021

The Dystopian Future is a reality beyond the twisted sick imaginings of fiction to screaming divided friction. Cast and crew from our pages have stepped up with kindness, courage, exceptional albums, digital adaption, charitable hearts and collaborative goodwill. (Oops, guys, we were supposed to have been divided and conquered!!! - Fuck that, our voices are 4REAL)

The Newer Wave of music industrious who rock the #SaveOurVenues circuit have organically laid the foundations of the next public service announcements - with guitars.

Screenshot_20210323-080554_Chrome.jpg
Screenshot_20210323-080016_Chrome.jpg

Between us we love - and are influenced by - every genre of music. As humans shag new beauty into the world, Nature style, our sixth sense fused heritages bloom like the living globe who gives birth to us.

Screenshot_20210323-080232_Chrome.jpg

Mother Earth, Father Time, Sister Moon and Brother Sun interact with the one race: Living Water Based Meat Machines. We can't live in water, live without it. We sing and dance before we can talk and walk. Laughter, romance and poetry can stay in the hearts of lifelong children, despite the 21st century being misruled by the few; Blue Meanies.

I Now Live In A (virtual) Yellow Submarine

Rock n Roll is tribal, queer and fun. Anybody can be magnetised. When TheZineUK started, sofa-critics stated that guitar bands "are over". Bollocks. What STARS from our tale are achieving over our collective seven year (w)itch, is genuinely unreal.

Screenshot_20210323-080530_Chrome.jpg

There is no huge wealth investment financing this. Everything is a fucking struggle. I won't lie, I was in such a bad head space this weekend that I've cancelled an online appearance. I can't face people yet, but I can type and my family friend circle is inspirational, so HALLO! - I'm gonna allow myself to breathe good vibrations in, to share the joy again. Everybody we know is in a bad place. It's called Capitalist Earth. 2020 Vision turned out to mean seeing things clearly so Evil's Empire appropriated "woke" to fashion a weapon against being aware.

Sixth sense human instinct cares for planet and people. The force is weak in alien hearts who worship money, statues, flags and position. They are sad fucks, wasting their time on Eden.

 Every day humans ROCK, quite literally, in our case.

Uniqulture: The day after Lockdown 2020 began, the aptly named Joyzine had assembled Balcony Online Fest to broadcast and raise charity funds.

balcony festival.jpg

It's the first quarter of 2021

Let SEVEN #SaveOurVenues rocking promoters speak for themselves

Then we SO want Reading and Leeds Festivals to happen so that Nova Twins can rightly take their place on the main stage.

'Play Fair' Single Out Now: https://NovaTwins.lnk.to/PlayFairReloaded Tour 2021 Tickets: https://NovaTwins.lnk.to/ReloadedTour21Director: Harry LindleyConcep...

 Look to the future now, it's only just begun.

‘Today We’re The Greatest’ by Middle Kids

in

Middle Kids - ‘Today We’re The Greatest’ (new album)

Review by Alan Neilson

unnamed.jpg

I hate being late to a party and having only discovered the majesty of the band Middle Kids recently, I feel  I am years late to this particular knees up, as they have been releasing great records since 2017/18.  Although the upside to that is having fallen immediately in love with the lead single releases from the forthcoming ‘Today We’re The Greatest’ album (‘R U 4 Me?’, ‘Questions’ and ‘Cellophane (Brain)’) I now have their previous album and eps to listen to immediately… and it is all good; even lead singer and songwriter Hannah Joy’s solo releases from 2013.  I know the band is from Australia, but why does it take the rest of the world so long to catch up?  A problem I am acutely aware of from following their countrymen Gang of Youths, another spectacularly good Australian band that was lost somewhere over the Atlantic.

Middle Kids’ latest release ‘Today We’re The Greatest’ starts in a low key mid-tempo way with opening tracks ‘Bad Neighbours’ and ‘Cellophane (Brain)’, only kicking in halfway through the second song before ramping up the energy again on the blissed out indie-pop of ‘R U 4 Me?’ with its insistent driving rhythm and call to arms “Do not ignore me!”.


If anyone ever needed a lesson in writing a definitive pop song, then next track ‘Questions’ would be an example of how to do it.  The build up is like a perfect mathematical equation for an upwards curve, but it never feels as if that was a deliberate intention, it just naturally gathers momentum; most good pop songs sound effortlessly brilliant and this is no exception.  The release of tension almost exactly halfway through when the drums and brass burst in sends tingles across my brain and as such it fulfils the prime function of a pop song, when it ends, you want to hear that build up all over again.  Still, this is not a simple arrangement, use of syncopated claps and offbeat snare hits give it a jerky feel that may confuse or excite first-time listeners.  I am always excited to hear songs that don’t use a standard four on the floor rhythm.

The momentum built up with these banging tracks is soon halted and there is a lull after the pop rocket that is ‘Questions’, but what ‘Lost in Los Angeles’ and ‘Golden Star’ lose in vitality they more than makeup for in melody.  It does feel that the album peaks with the three lead singles coming one after another as tracks 2-4, and then there is a slow descent to the end because the dynamics in the album’s sequencing are shaped like a scalene obtuse triangle (there are those in the industry who say this is the best way to sequence an album these days but I think it is wrong).  There is still some energy in the tumbling toms of ‘Summer Hill’ and there are echoes of the wonderful Courtney Barnett in the beautiful ‘Some People Stay In Our Hearts Forever’ with the way Middle Kids also effortlessly allow a song to unravel before a listener.   ‘Run With You’ picks up the pace from the pedestrian but it doesn’t initially sparkle or leave a lasting impression.


There is a short punky burst in the song ‘I Don’t Care’ but it feels quite out of character when they throw the F bomb into the chorus and repeat the line over and over.  It is odd because everything else Middle Kids do is clever and intentional, whereas this feels dumb and naïve.  I don’t believe the phrase ‘I don’t care’ is made more powerful by the addition of ‘fucking’ (“I don’t fucking care, I gotta do what I want to”) – it just sounds like a child trying to shock.  Maybe younger fans will love screaming this out at gigs (when live music eventually happens again) and feel like they are sticking it to the man, but Middle Kids are much more rebellious than this.


‘Stacking Chairs’ also does not stand out particularly with its overused trope: ‘if the world falls apart I will be there’ – strangely this does sound less clichéd the more often you hear it.
They close the album in an understated way with the title track ‘Today We’re The Greatest’, almost as a way of subverting the arrogance in the title.  You would expect Hannah to be shouting the lyrics in a song called this, but she sings in her beautifully fragile falsetto voice and the phrase feels more like a reluctant battle cry as she follows that statement with the line, “even though we feel so small”.  It is an interesting choice of arrangement as you would expect the title song to be apex of the album rather than a polite shuffling out the door, but the album is full of surprises and unexpected turns, so showing this kind of artistic bravery has to be applauded.  The honesty of the final lyrics is “Life is gory and boring sometimes”

Having lived with the album for a few weeks now, it is clear that when you get beyond the singles, the other songs are slow burners – and these are the ones that you almost rediscover with multiple listens.  They don’t have an immediate impact it is true and many listeners might find themselves skipping them or wrongly classifying them as filler.  Just listen again for the shuffling drum beat and banjo on ‘Lost in Los Angeles’; the choir like outro of ‘Golden Star’ and its nod to Turin Breaks’ ‘Feeling Oblivion’; the nod to Stevie Nicks’ vocal and Mick’s drums in ‘Summer Hill’; and the real heartbeats at the end of ‘Run With You’.

I guess the issue for me is the track order, when I started the album at ‘Lost in Los Angeles’, with the first four tracks coming in after ‘Stacking Chairs’, there felt more of a build up to the life affirming final song .  Maybe these days labels want to grab the listener quickly rather than risk a more leisurely meandering build up. 

There is an clear progression in the band’s sound and this album sees a slight move away from the overdriven guitars of their early work.  The echoes of 90’s indie rock bands like Belly and Bettie Seveert have morphed into a more sophisticated use of instrumentation, with guitars, although present not always the focal point.  Also on previous recordings I felt that Hannah had overdone a heavy vibrato on her vocal, which seemed a little contrived, but on ‘Today We’re The Greatest’ she has found her true voice and it resonates with a rawness, an energy and total conviction.  I would place her alongside some of indie’s greatest vocalists: Carol van Dijk; Nina Persson; Harriet Wheeler; Aimee Mann; and Courtney Barnett.

Hannah has sited one of her main songwriting influences as Neil Finn and although their styles may differ, at the heart of their work is really well constructed songs; and like Crowded House, there is depth with great intelligence and emotion in the lyrics.  The band speaks of making music that loves the listener (whatever that means) and how complex making that happen actually is, when words can often be misconstrued.  They kind of clarify this by saying: “It can be easier to live dualistically, splitting the world in two -we want to be able say it’s this or it’s that, but sometimes it’s both — and can we hold both?  Can we hold the brokenness?  Can we hold the beauty?  That has definitely been a defining bit of this album, the fragility in that dance.”  If feels then that the Middles Kids are championing the grey areas in life, the difficult places where others are afraid to go because there is never anything certain there.  I applaud them for that and will watch where they explore next.

‘Today We’re The Greatest’ by Middle Kids is available from 19 March 2021 on Lucky Number

Track-list: Bad Neighbours, Cellophane (Brain), R U 4 Me?, Questions, Lost in Los Angeles, Golden Star, Summer Hill, Some People Stay In Our Hearts Forever, Run With You, I Don’t Care, Stacking Chairs, Today We’re The Greatest

021 03 18 Middle Kids by Daphne Nguyen.jpg

Today We’re The Greatest follows the release of Middle Kids’ critically acclaimed 2018 debut, Lost Friends, which was awarded Album of the Year by Australia’s Triple J Radio and nominated for Best Rock Album at the ARIA Awards. The record also earned them support slots with the likes of Bloc Party, War on Drugs and Cold War Kids as well as several US TV show performances including Conan, Jimmy Kimmel and The Late, Late Show with James Corden.