Lakai are persisting the Lakai Or Die attitude by shredding night and day on tour. As the crew are currently heading out for the Voltage tour the edit of the Getting Nordical Tour has been posted online to keep that hype flowing through your veins. It’s a nice long one too so kick back while the summer continues to linger a little while longer and enjoy it.
Smooth operator Kelley Dawson has been recruited into the Heathen Minion Division and will be repping their gear while hardflipping down countless slabs of concrete.
Check out his welcome video below but be warned: the following video contains a potentially offensive amount of nonchalance.
Countless skaters turned up to Emerica’s Stay Gold premiere last night with faces as dark as the clouds that opened up over all of the UK. After huddling as close to the cinema as possible the efforts were rewarding by the stair-jumping, rail-chomping skating approach of the Emerica team being taken to completely new levels.
Though still miserable and wet outside afterwards the faces were a little more golden and the murmurs were replaced by a consistent echoing of ‘Reynolds, Reynolds, Reynolds, Reynolds, Reynolds, Reynolds…’
Make sure you pick this one up when you can to see why The Boss is called The Boss…
Wearing a helmet has, in my ten-years of stubbornly skating nothing but multi-storey carpark curbs and this thing, rarely been appropriate. It’s almost certainly been necessary as I suck and fall over a lot but the only time I’ve accepted that my head is to look that much more like the end of one of Ed Bowen’s fingers is when it’s been enforced. Suffice to say, that massive hunk of plastic has always saved my bacon if I ever kid myself into thinking that skating the bowl at Rom is a good idea.
Here’s the dilemma, skating bowls IS a good idea because it’s the raddest, purest form of search and destroy skateboarding that everyone should man up and have a butchers at doing at least once, but it’s impossible to protect ya neck without, you know, looking like a bellend. And none of us here are Grant Taylor, whose head I hear is reportedly made of reinforced concrete; we need as much black plastic on our heads if we don’t want to end up like my good friend chimpy who couldn’t skate a curb last weekend as he was waking up in hospital after taking a slam to the noggin.
There is some good news from super helmet makers Bell, who since day one regularly succeeded in stopping people from dying and managed to make a few look like Daft Punk while flying through the air towards that hard, loving concrete. They’ve summoned Jim Phillips’ Sun God to put on this helmet, who you may (and should) recognise from Jason Jesse’s infamous deck run way back when helmets were so necessary they were kind of cool. They’ve certainly developed a sort of nostalgic coolness recently through the assistance of rad-tinted blogs like Chrome Ball and Vert Is Dead, much in the same way that baggy chinos and flannel shirts will always look awesome when listening to 36 Chambers.
So scope out a bowl, put on some shorts, pull your socks right up and go and try something new. But there aint a damn thing changed boy, protect ya head!
Bellend Sebastian
In ‘Symptoms and Cures’, Comeback Kid have written what is arguably their best work to date. Vocalist (previously guitarist) Andrew Neufeld has really come into his own as the voice of the band. The band’s last record ‘Broadcasting…’ was a bold effort that strayed away from the straight-up old-school hardcore style of the band’s first albums and saw the band adopt a more epic sound with a thicker texture and depth. With ‘Symptoms and Cures’, Comeback Kid have retained that forward-thinking sound but have incorporated a much rawer, old-school sound more akin to their early work. The resulting record is something that fans of all stages of CBK’s career should be able to get on board with. And it should gain them some new fans along the way.
We caught up with Neufeld for a quick update on the new album and the various processes behind it.
Interview: Winegums
Live Photos: Eric Levin
When did you start writing the new record?
Maybe like a year ago. But it’s like a lot of times throughout the last few years we’ve had ideas… Sometimes you just have ideas that you just store away and think ‘I’ll have that for the future. I have that in my back pocket.’ You know?
Do you think you’ve had some ideas that have been forgotten about along the way?
Definitely. And what I do a lot of the time is if I just have some random idea I’ll sing it into the voice recorder of my phone. And I have a few phones because I travel a lot and they get lost sometimes so there’s probably some awesome Comeback Kid ideas that are just lost in space somewhere.
Are there any times you listen back to the snippets and you can’t remember what the fuck you were thinking?
Sometimes. Usually when I get stoned though. But that’s also usually when the best ideas come up (laughs)!
And how and when did you hook up with producer Eric Ratz?
Um we’ve been talking to him for a while. We wanted to record in Canada because we haven’t done that with Comeback Kid since the first record. So we hooked up with this guy Eric Ratz and his partner Kenny Long and they’d just done the new Cancer Bats and we’d met them through those guys. They’ve done some other cool stuff up here in Canada and we thought we’d just give it a shot! It went super rad. It’s always nice when you’re in the studio and really feel comfortable with the guys you’re working with. And you can kind of vibe a little bit with them. Sometimes when you have bigger names or whatever involved it’s kind of like you’re paying for that name and sometimes the process isn’t an enjoyable one. But it was really important for us to just vibe with the guys. We really loved working with Bill Stevenson when we did our last couple of records but we just kind of wanted a change you know?
What was the reason behind the name of the album ‘Symptoms and Cures’?
That’s just a lyric from one of the songs. The title track. The song just deals with how sometimes living in a transient lifestyle and moving around all the time and going through borders all the time, you just get a sense of the walls pushing in around you at times and security tightening up and just a lot of falsities that the powers of be like to force upon us. The lyric that it comes from is me talking about the positive mindset in the face of all this. And I’d hope that as we go on in this life we have a better future and people come together with a positive attitude. With a PMA, you know?! (chuckles a little) The lyrics are just about how the world’s really focused on and saturated with people telling us what we’re supposed to be afraid of and sometimes people jump onto those fears. And that’s why we have an album cover with a guy kind of jumping headfirst in to the unknown because that’s what we do sometimes and what a lot of people do without always knowing the facts. You know?
So how do you think the new songs are going to translate live and fit into the set?
Well we’ve only played one new song live so far and we’re going to be rehearsing over the summer a little bit. Getting it all ready. All the songs are more straight-up and up the live alley and we have a lot of really harder songs that are going to be fun to play – straight-up hardcore songs. And then some kind of like red-cup-with-beer-spilling-over-anthem-type-songs.
Maybe you’ll need a little help on those gang vocals when playing live?
Everyone has to sing. I’ve got to make sure all of the band are singing! Get Kyle (the drummer) a headset or something like that…
Surfing The Void
(Polydor)
klaxons.net
The wait for the follow-up of Myths Of The Near Future, even for those not interested in the second step in the on-going journey through sound and space for London’s 2007 hot-topic Klaxons, was made all the more lengthy by talks of a radical shift in sound. For those of you expecting another series of hang tens on the new-rave wave can leave those hopes at the door now, go home and listen to the first album and forget Klaxons exist in another context. Those that will be disappointed with the new sound (and those people WILL be disappointed) are also victim to being ignorant towards the natural progression all band should make. From beginning to end, Surfing The Void is an album that – amazing spacecat artwork aside – oozes maturity, a refreshing lack of arrogance but maintains the meteor crashes of personality and that same childlike exploration that made their first demos so special.
Though the sense of humour is lost, those that withstand the galactic waves of intentionally messy guitar tapestries, soaring harmonies and good old fashioned noise will be greatly rewarded. The intergalactic pussy on the front guards a shiny disc that’s vacuum packed with curious Midnight Juggernauts-inspired electro-space-rock. There aren’t any laughs here, but if we accept Gravity’s Rainbow and Atlantis To Interzone both have their own cemented purpose in the past and accept the fluid songwriting that’s moulded into Echoes, Flashover and the title track then you’ll be left with a warm collection of music that may not be groundbreaking, but why break ground when you can surf the void and float through the motherfucking universe?
Bellend Sebastian
Unfairly tagged as ‘hipster’ metal by those that consider themselves to be ‘real’ metal, Texan metal warriors The Sword may be cooler than most metal bands but they are without doubt 100% genuine and irony free heavy fucking metal.
Back with a new album – ‘Warp Riders’ through Kemado Records – The Sword have created a sci-fi heavy metal concept album that recounts the saga of Ereth the archer, banished from his tribe on the planet Acheron, which is scorched on one side by the heat of three suns and the landscape for a battle between pure good and evil. The frankly bewildering story is back up by some of the best Metal riffs of all time. And that’s The Sword all over. A constant barrage of bulldozer riffs that threaten to flatten you at any point. Metal Hammer magazine were moved to state recently that The Sword ‘shit planetoid-size riffs with ease’, which sums it up better than I could. The Sword are the real deal. Start polishing yours now.
You can see our interview filmed by Alan Christensen with the band about their new album ‘Warp Riders‘ below back stage at The Barfly Club in Camden in July this summer, but be sure to make note of the UK live dates below and make plans to see them, you won’t be disappointed.
November
29th – Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms
30th – Bristol, Fleece & Firkin
December
1st – Birmingham, Bar Academy
3rd – Leeds, Cockpit
4th – Glasgow, G2
5th – Newcastle Academy 2
6th – Manchester, Academy 3
8th – Nottingham, Rescue Rooms
9th – London, Islington Academy
10th – Brighton, Audio
The Sword continue their cosmic Warp Riders journey with Tres Brujas, the latest video from the Texan rockers.
It’s as awesome as you’d expect. Watch it below! Stay tuned for a video interview with the band about their new album coming online very soon.
To follow up this year’s absolutely wonderful Stridulum EP, Zola Jesus will be releasing a brand new EP, titled Valusiai on October 12th.
Check below to download their superb ‘Sea Talk‘ (which will soon be getting an official music video) and be sure to catch them when they come to the UK (XOYO, London) on November 1st and on the following dates…
August 31st Brighton, England – Freebutt
September 1st London, England – Camp Basement
September 2nd Manchester, England – Deaf Institute
September 3rd Leeds, England – Nation of Shopkeepers
September 4th Glasgow, Scotland – Indian Summer Festival
September 5th Edinburgh, Scotland – Roxy Art House
Die Antwoord (the group responsible for that video down there below…) are to be joining the godfather of electronic music, Aphex Twin at L.E.D Festival during his performance on Saturday.
Straight from the South African rappers’ mouths themselves…
‘Yo NINJA and YO-LANDI are going to bum rush APHEX TWINS set at LED to kick some next-level raps with the Grand Master himself…in your fokken face poes.‘
Get hyped for the weekend.