éS have posted up the first installment of the video coverage of the ‘To Europe With Love‘ tour that occured earlier this year. It’s up on the Trasher website and available to download for free for your iPod of phone or whatever magic portable moving picture device you may have.
Watch below as John Rattray, Ben Raemers, Nicky Howells, Javier Sarmiento, Mark Frolich, Bobby Worrest, Jimmy McDonald, Kevin Terpening, Mike Anderson, Rick McCrank, Justin Eldrige, Kellen James, Josh Matthews and more form a huge line-up that deliver banger after banger after banger.
I remember sitting on the edge of a friend’s questionable and crusty bedspread watching a collection of exciting new scene videos around the time when higher production values didn’t necessarily mean higher costs or higher creativity, and asking the owner of these foul sheets the following question: “mate, are skate videos ruining Belle and Sebastian or are Belle and Sebastian ruining skate videos?” Thankfully, that question isn’t at all relevant now regardless of what the early PWBC episodes may suggest but one thing was for certain, the Scottish band then were becoming a little too twee and to an extent obvious and annoying. Many of us had grew up associating with their pure honesty and irreputably superb songwriting abilities reminiscent of that ‘golden’ era or whatever you want to call it, and to see them actually turn the volume down themselves and fade into clichés of clichés of clichés that even critics couldn’t keep up with was somewhat upsetting. So here we are, four years after their last album which had that shitty little frog song on it (ok, I like it, whatever, but it’s very silly), and with Write About Love it seems that the band have returned to their original maturity with such grace I feel bad for ever doubting them.
Album opener ‘I Didn’t See It Coming‘ more or less argues my own reaction for me in the title. It’s a stunning piece of work, from the shimmering keys to the hopeful drums to Sarah Martin’s sudden and uplifting vocal to intelligent, honest, emotional lyrics that are peppered perfectly across this shiny disc of wonder and aural nostalgia. All the cutesy nonsense that made a certain writer on this very site pen work with an equally cutesy and lame pseudonym has been replaced with something human, something longing and something all fans of tremendously crafted music can relate to. So please, video editors out there, don’t ruin this one. It’s an album that works without any additional context, and that’s a bold statement to be made about any album in the consumer-heavy infomoretion generation. Brilliant, brilliant stuff.
Stephen Delves AKA Joxa is your full-on ‘skate rat’ who never seems to get enough of it. Whether its skating a grubby bowl or discussing the latest Hewitt photo on the web he always seems to have skateboarding on the brain.
Hailing from the industrial town of Barrow he has now found himself stuck at the bomb site in middle earth known as Coventry. A scene well known for having a ‘skate hard and skate fast’ attitude which fits Joxa’s personality perfectly!
Not one scared to travel you will find the tea drinking, flat-cap-wearing Cumbrian at most events around the country with a smile on his face and inevitably making the comedy slam of the day. So here’s a little look into the life of this Japanese loving skate nerd.
Interview: Brewer
So Joxa, let’s start off with the question that seems to start off every interview. Name, Age, Hometown etc
My name is Stephen Delves or Joxa to most. I’m 24 and come from Barrow-In-Furness which is in Cumbria.
You moved from Cumbria down to Coventry. Without meaning to be rude to all the Coventry residents…why?!
Barrow is pretty much stuck in the middle of nowhere and the easiest way to escape was to apply to universities. I didn’t want to do the common thing of applying to places close to home, like Manchester or Lancaster so I applied around the Midlands and got accepted to Coventry. I knew a few heads from down there already and I quite liked the fact that it was a small city, so off to Coventry I went. It was such a massive change from living in Barrow. Coventry seems to be in the middle of everywhere so its easy to travel!
So now you’ve been there a few years do you still think it’s as rad?
It’s pretty good here! I’ve never really had any trouble walking the streets and such and I usually feel pretty safe. It has a lot of good spots and a good crew of skaters too!
I remember the first time I heard of you was on N26 talking about the ‘Skate Shack’. What was that?
The skate shack was Cumbria’s only indoor skatepark. It was around in the 80’s and you can see footage of it in the old Deathbox video. Inevitably, it closed down in the early 90’s but before that it had a whole host of famous pros visiting, like Cardiel and even Tony Hawk!
Rock Fakie (Photo: Jerome Loughran)
What was the scene like growing up in Barrow?
Well Pokemon cards stopped being cool and skateboarding was in. My friend got a board so I started skating with him and a few mates from school. After a couple years they had quit but I had met Iain, Antony and Steve who were older than me and had been skating before the Tony Hawk games made skateboarding popular so I continued to skate with them. We travelled quite a bit up north to places like Bones in Bolton and Stockport. It was usually just us four going places and skating Barrow every night and occasionally meeting up with skaters in other parts of Cumbria. We just went out because there was nothing else that was fun to do.
Would you say the lack of ‘real spots’/’real scene’ lead you to skate as quirky as you do?
I don’t understand what a real spot or real scene is!
Everybody has influences in the way they skate, what gets you excited to go out and shred?
My friends! There’s nothing better than skating with your friends as you all push yourself. Seeing my friends do something rad gets me stoked, so they’re my real influences.
Blunt yank-in (Photo: Jerome Loughran)
Your heavy influence from Japanese skating has lead you to go skate there, how many times have you been now?
I’ve managed to get to Japan three times.
Would you say the skate scene is totally different there, and if so, how?
I would say the skate scene there is certainly unique. They have a lot of crazy spots that just breeds very different skateboarders. They all have such a positive attitude towards skateboarding too.
Below: Judo Block (Photo: Garry Jones)
A few people may have heard the story of you vs Phelps and TNT before but for the people who haven’t, what happened?
Haha. Basically I was in Osaka and I was very drunk. Later that evening we were going to go watch Phelps and Trujillo’s band Bad Shit at a club somewhere downtown. When we got there they were outside so in my drunk state I tried to talk to them. Unfortunately they were both acting like utter knobs. Since I was drunk, I gave them a load of abuse and somewhere between dissing the current American economy and calling Trujillo a turd I punched Phelps in the chest. I think he hugged me after that and I got a photo with him. Later I managed to break into the VIP area, give them more abuse and pass out on the sofa only to be woken up by Trujillo’s girlfriend saying I was about to miss the best gig ever, whilst being handed a t-shirt!
As a well known member of the ‘I attend every event’ club what makes you go to all of them?
Its usually a good place to see friends I haven’t seen in ages and the atmosphere is usually pretty good. I haven’t been to as many this year because I had to pay my Uni fees which sucked!
Living in the Midlands over the past 3 years you will have seen a lot of parks popping up here there and everywhere. How do you feel about this and you got any favourites?
Obviously it’s a good thing, although I’m still waiting for Cov council to realise how important it is for them to build a much more modern park!
Out of all the parks I think Wolverhampton’s Wednesfield plaza is one of my favourites that I’ve been too.
You’ve been known to pad up and skate vert in the past, any plans for a 900 followed by a computer game coming up?
Only if I can have Jef Hartsel and Tim Jackson as playable characters. If you do 100 slappies you could unlock Blender.
Seeing as how we started let’s end this with stereotypical ending. Anybody out there you’d like to thank?
Yeah! First shout outs go to everybody I’ve ever had a skate with! I’d like to thank Iain, Antony and Ste for keeping me skating in Barrow. All the mates I’ve made in Coventry and around the midlands especially Mark ‘Frocker’ Hewitt, Daryl, Burrell, Ade, Slasher Sam, The Hell Crew, Gnargore and the rest. All the lads in Bristol, Bob, The Plews, 80’s street legend Habgood. Scalamere and the Haunting crew, Jim and all at Ride skateshop, Anne Marie, Powley. Rogie. Tyreman. Devo. Frost and Icky. Questions. Zorlac and the Death team. Tsuyoshi and the Felem Pirates. Fos, The Osaka daggers and everybody I probably forgot! Anybody who has basically given me a floor to sleep on, a cup to drink tea from or was just generally up for the shred! Ok I’m going to go skate …
Watch below for a short, sharp edit of Joxa radness courtesy of Andy Rayner.
Like many, our first proper introduction to The Count & Sinden came when the Count used his full ‘of Monte Cristal‘ title and the wobbly, engrossing bassline of ‘Beeper’ was flooding into clubs all over the UK back in 2007. Being big supporters of Sinden and Hervé already we were hooked, and to bring one of our then-upcoming favourites, Kid Sister for a vocal re-release of the track the following year sealed the deal. Combined, The Count & Sinden are a dance music force to be reckoned with.
We caught up with The Count (Hervé) for a Crossfader insight into their debut album Mega Mega Mega, how they started producing music together, their reaction to ‘Beeper‘ blowing up and who they’ve got their ears tuned to.
So, you two have been mates for a long time, how did you first hook up?
We first met at Dave Taylor’s (Switch) studio, got on really well and decided to do some tracks. The first thing we did was the 4 track EP that had ‘Beeper’ as one of the B-sides and it all took off from there!
I suppose the first time most people became aware of you as a production duo was on that very track, ‘Beeper’, with Kid Sister vocalling the track. Did you know at the time that you were making such an anthem? That track was played by everyone when it came out!
No not at all, it was a B-side. We didn’t think many people would play it, we just wanted to do a garage/hiphop tune with crazy warping bass, so it came as a big surprise. When we had to vocal it we really wanted to keep the US hip-hop vibe on the vocal and we had heard some of Kid Sister’s early tracks and A-Trak hooked us up with her. She did a fantastic job and was brilliant in the video.
How did the hook-up with Domino come about?
We knew we wanted a label that would allow us to do a proper album so as soon as we got interest from them they became front runners. We really liked the fact that the label that put out Pavement, Royal Trux, Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand wanted to sign us, it appealed to our sense of doing something different. They support their artists in such a fantastic way, too.
This album has been in the pipeline for a while, was it hard to get it done what with touring separately as DJs?
If you think about it there is a lot of time in between, but we didn’t just want to put out the first bunch of tunes we made. We really wanted to keep going until we had the songs to make the album as good as we wanted it to be. We never had any pressure from the label, and Laurence (the label owner) just encouraged us to keep going until it was right. It was and still is a massive learning curve doing this album, it’s been an excellent experience.
When you first sat down to make the record, did you specifically want certain sounds on there? That is, did you think you wanted a B-More beat, a rock track, a hip hop track? Or did it flow naturally and your tastes just come out as a result?
It was more natural I think. We sat around a lot before going in to the studio soaking up lots of music talking about how we could do things and thinking up interesting ideas. We wanted it to be varied and exciting but sound very ‘Count and Sinden’.
Similarly, there are a number of vocalists featured from Rye Rye and Katy B to Bashy and Mystery Jets. Did you go looking for any of these without having met them before? Or was it more a case of bringing your mates in to help out with the song?
Some of them were friends but it was more about bringing people in on merit, how much we rated them, than just being friends. We didn’t want to put tracks out simply because we made them, they had to be right.
The electronic music scene in the UK is huge right now with artists from Mount Kimbie and James Blake to breakout commercial stuff like Magnetic Man – is it as exciting to be a part of it all as it is for fans to hear?
Yeah totally, it’s great. Some excellent music is coming out across the board and it feels like a great time to be making music.
Being able to DJ your music all around the world, have you had good reactions when you drop tracks from the album. And conversely, were there tracks that you had originally planned for the record that didn’t get a great response from the crowds? Seems like that might be a good litmus test.
Yeah some tracks got changed or dropped because of reactions when in the club. For example Mega just worked from the very first time and wasn’t changed but others got altered because they were too long or the mix needed tweaking.
Horrible questions I’m sure but is there a track on the album you like most of all? Why that particular track?
It changes everyday, but today I think it’s ‘Addicted To You‘ because that’s our next single. Big church organs!
What else do you both have coming up outside of Count & Sinden? Anything forthcoming on Cheap Thrills and/or Grizzly?
We both have loadsa great stuff coming out on our labels! I’m working on my solo Hervé album which I’m hoping it will be out early next year. I have lined up some great singers to guest on a few tracks.
Are there any artists coming through that you think people reading this should know about? What I’ve heard of Mele sounds really big!
Yeah Mele’s doing some great stuff. I’ve signed a kid called Baxta (he also records as Rufio) to Cheap Thrills who has remixed the next Count and Sinden single and also the new Speaker Junk single. He really is great for someone his age, you can grab his Mr Sinister EP at beatport now.
Listen to and grab the mix below and while you’re at it, watch the zombie disco fun of the video for the forthcoming single I’m Addicted To You‘ available on November 8th.
This week’s collection of free droplets of sound from an ever-increasing cloud is absolutely packed with all kinds of riffs, raps, riddims and rollers. They’re all down there ready to perk your music library up a little so what are you waiting for?
Pulled Apart By Horses continue their fantastic year with an awesome cover of a track by fellow Leeds rockers Sky Larkin, Lords Of Falconry recall Hawkwind rocking riffs that’s enough motivation to get out shredding, the ever-adored Stereolab release an exciting new chunk of sunshine, No Age offer another track from their rocking new album and Deerhunter get the Diplo and Lunice treatment with awesome results as expected.
Minimal Mercury Award winners The XX get a similarly minimal-meets-pop treatment from the warm techno activist Matthew Dear, Teebs take fractions and double ’em up, Avey Tare serves up a cut from his crocodile-themed swampy record, Tyler The Creator represents the up and comnig and very angry hip-hop generation and undisputable post-dubstep producers of the year Mount Kimbie offer a slice from one of the year’s best electronic albums.
Jump right in (if we were still web 2.0 we’d be saying ‘after the jump’ but we’re not, so we won’t) as they’re right there below. Get them. Get them now.
After some delays, the release date for Lemmy: The Movie has been confirmed for January 24th 2011.
Over the course of three years, filmmakers Greg Oliver and Wes Orshoski have militantly gathered footage for the forthcoming documentary on the Motorhead frontman, ‘Lemmy‘.
This comes in celebration of the singer/bass players 65th birthday, that’s 65 long years of being the physical manifestation of Rock ‘n’ Roll. In the film we are to witness in-depth interviews with the ever-quotable frontman, insights from peers and friends including Dave Grohl, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, Slash and more, and a full look inside his studio, home and his entire world, on and off stage.
“When it comes to rock n roll you need something to believe in. Integrity means everything. To me, more than any other rock musician, Lemmy is the baddest motherfucker in the world” – Dave Grohl
The band will be going on a UK tour in November in honour of their 35th anniversary. They will play the following dates:
Sam ‘SPT’ Taylor brought the homemade joy to Corsica Studios late last night as he and his buddies bumrushed a student night to get a screening of his latest camera phone omnibus of rad, ‘Earth Pain 5‘.
It’s a testament to how skate videos made by friends should be, plenty of pissing around and plenty of awkwardly captured radness. There’s some really sick skating in here from the likes of SPT himself, Tom Knox, Kyle Platts, Dwayne Coleman, Ali Drummond, Casper Brooker, Ben Cruickshank, Josh Cox, Will Jarvis, Steph Khou, David Yap, Joe Sivell, Boots, Karim and countless more. It provided a clusterfuck of lolz and plenty of drunken cheers at the premiere. Props to all involved!
Watch the whole thing below. Now go out and make your own edits this weekend you awesome bastards.
By now you’re probably pretty clued up on the dramatic rescue story of the 33 Chilean miners stuck underground for two months. Well, on the day that they were finally rescued, Pixies happened to be playing their first ever headline show in Chile. In honour of each miner, they played 33 songs – their longest set ever.
Pixies played the following:
Cecilia Ann
Rock Music
Bone Machine Crackity Jones
River Euphrates
Debaser
Wave of Mutilation
Monkey Gone to Heaven
I Bleed
Caribou
Cactus
Broken Face
Something Against You IsladeEncanta
Tame
Sad Punk
Hey
#13 Baby
Gouge Away
Is She Weird
Dead
U Mass
Break My Body Velouria
Dig for Fire
Allison
Ed Is Dead
Mr. Grieves
Winterlong (Neil Young cover)
Here Comes Your Man
Head On (Jesus and Mary Chain cover)
Holiday Song Vamos
Last night, Pixies played Teatro La Cupula in Santiago, their first-ever headlining show in Chile. Famously, it was the very same day that 33 Chilean miners trapped underground for more than two months were dramatically rescued. That led the band to play their longest show ever: 33 songs, one for each miner rescued.
In a press release, frontman Black Francis says, “We were so moved by this story, by how many lives had been affected by this, and how the Chilean people banded together to support what can only be described as a miracle. We wanted to do something to show how affected we were by this, so we played a special set at tonight’s show, 33 songs for the 33 miners, the longest set we’ve ever played as a band. We found out five minutes before we went on stage that all of the miners had safely reached the surface. This was definitely one of the most meaningful show we’ve ever played.”
Below, you can see the show’ssetlist and a video of Francis introducing the set in Spanish.
Setlist:
Cecilia Ann
Rock Music
Bone Machine Crackity Jones
River Euphrates
Debaser
Wave of Mutilation
Monkey Gone to Heaven
I Bleed
Caribou
Cactus
Broken Face
Something Against You IsladeEncanta
Tame
Sad Punk
Hey
#13 Baby
Gouge Away
Is She Weird
Dead
U Mass
Break My Body Velouria
Dig for Fire
Allison
Ed Is Dead
Mr. Grieves
Winterlong (Neil Young cover)
Here Comes Your Man
Head On (Jesus and Mary Chain cover)
Holiday Song Vamos
The highly anticipated Antwuan Dixon episodes of Epicly Later’d went online this week. Watch below to learn more about one of the most talked about skaters in recent years.
I remember sitting on the edge of a friend’s questionable and crusty bedspread watching a collection of exciting new scene videos around the time when higher production values didn’t necessarily mean higher costs or higher creativity, and asking the owner of these foul sheets the following question: “mate, are skate videos ruining Belle and Sebastian or are Belle and Sebastian ruining skate videos?” Thankfully, that question isn’t at all relevant now regardless of what the early PWBC episodes may suggest but one thing was for certain, the Scottish band then were becoming a little too twee and to an extent obvious and annoying. Many of us had grew up associating with their pure honesty and irreputably superb songwriting abilities reminiscent of that ‘golden’ era or whatever you want to call it, and to see them actually turn the volume down themselves and fade into clichés of clichés of clichés that even critics couldn’t keep up with was somewhat upsetting. So here we are, four years after their last album which had that shitty little frog song on it (ok, I like it, whatever, but it’s very silly), and with Write About Love it seems that the band have returned to their original maturity with such grace I feel bad for ever doubting them.
Stephen Delves AKA Joxa is your full-on ‘skate rat’ who never seems to get enough of it. Whether its skating a grubby bowl or discussing the latest Hewitt photo on the web he always seems to have skateboarding on the brain.
A few people may have heard the story of you vs Phelps and TNT before but for the people who haven’t, what happened?
Like many, our first proper introduction to 
Being able to DJ your music all around the world, have you had good reactions when you drop tracks from the album. And conversely, were there tracks that you had originally planned for the record that didn’t get a great response from the crowds? Seems like that might be a good litmus test.
This week’s collection of free droplets of sound from an ever-increasing cloud is absolutely packed with all kinds of riffs, raps, riddims and rollers. They’re all down there ready to perk your music library up a little so what are you waiting for?
After some delays, the release date for 
Sam ‘SPT’ Taylor
By now you’re probably pretty clued up on the dramatic rescue story of the 33 Chilean miners stuck underground for two months. Well, on the day that they were finally rescued, Pixies happened to be playing their first ever headline show in Chile. In honour of each miner, they played 33 songs – their longest set ever.