As previously reported, Leeds University will be hosting Constellations Festival on November 14th. Alongside Broken Social Scene, Four Tet, Los Campesinos!, Les Savy Fav and Local Natives, some further acts have been announced this week as well as stage times.
Click on the new line-up flyer below to download a PDF file listing the stage times, then go and get your tickets sorted here.
The second trailer for Krooked’s upcoming 3-D video ‘Krook3d‘ has dropped online so get your 3-D glasses ready and be prepared to rub your eyes a lot afterwards. This still looks like it’s gonna be absolutely awesome.
The video will be released on October 15th and will have appearances from Mark Gonzales, Dan Drehobl, Bobby Worrest, Mike Anderson, Brad Cromer, Luke Croker and David Clark.
Since Gravity gave Cardiff its long-overdue concrete skate plaza the video edits have been coming in as if the skatepark builders had bought everyone in Cardiff a camera too.
Some of the latest clips to emerge are a five minute collection of footage featuring Sam Pulley, Daniel Kavanagh, Sean Barnes and more filmed by Drew Sutton and a super-slo-mo 1000 FPS Test from Nick Richards. Nick previously filmed the amazing Spot Check edit which you can see here.
Watch both below.
550D 1000 FPS Test from LovePaste on Vimeo.
Guillaume Périmony has posted his latest edit of skateboard-heavy excursions to cities he loves. Brussels is the latest to get 5 days of wonderful skateboarders doing great stuff to its streets.
Watch the entire thing below. The clip features Julien Ribeiro and Vincent Dallemagne and contains guest appearances from Idris Jani, Simon Grassard, Pierre Anquetil, Malaka and Youssef Abaoud.
Science’s Sam Taylor will be premiering his fifth Earth Pain edit at Elephant and Castle’s Corsica Studios on October 14th (Thursday).
Watch the trailer below for the mobile phone / digital camera clips of Sam and his friends in a video that’s set up to be a testament for why we go out skating in the first place: to have fun. See you Thursday!
Sam Bailey has posted up a superbly shot video of Jake Snelling giving one of Witchcraft’s new decks a thrashing.
Designed by Murdoch Stafford, the ‘Summon The Legions‘ model gets shredded on some gnarly concrete and Skaterham’s vert ramp. You can peep the gnar below.
If you’re hyped on this then be sure to check out the full Second Coming range in this month’s Line Check and then go get one from your local SOS. Join the coven!
Witchcraft Skateboards – Second Coming – Jake Snelling from Sam Bailey on Vimeo.
There Is A Hell Believe Me I’ve Seen It, There Is A Heaven Let’s Keep It A Secret
Visible Noise
After their previous album Suicide Season well and truly stamped BMTH as bonafide heavyweights in the UK [and then beyond], it was always going to be interesting to see what they were going to come up with next. Juggernaut songs like Chelsea Smile and The Comedown weren’t easy to follow and yet, from the very first drop on opening track Crucify Me, the message has been confirmed: This album is going to be huge.
Not only do the Sheffield band open with a track over six minutes long, but they mix into the track acoustic guitars, strings, female vocals and crescendos like never before. But if that wasn’t enough to whet the whistle, The Anthem which follows is an unrelenting banger which will surely go down as a crowd favourite in years to come with the battle cry “hate to say I told you so, but fuck yeah I told you so!” and raucous “get the fuck up!” on the breakdown.
The more electronic side of production that appeared in the previous album has been ramped up here too to great effect in a way that adds to the guitars, rather than juxtaposing awkwardly, a trap that they could easily have fallen into. Not to say that it overwhelms the guitars in anyway, as Fuck and Alligator Blood prove with visceral intent. The band are able to mix things up though with It Never Ends and Home Sweet Hole both showcasing songwriting talent for melody and Don’t Go utilising the vocals of Lights to perfect effect.
With this album, the five piece show absolutely no signs of letting up and indeed promise to dominate the metal landscape for a good while to come. Any detractors they may have had need to clam up, ramp the volume on this and let is destroy their cynicism. This one is fucking huge.
Abjekt
ZZafrika
Turbo Recordings
ZZafrika is the third release to come from ZZT in four years, an analogue-heavy leftfield techno project that resulted from the collaboration of two headachingly awesome omnidancemusic producers Zombie Nation and Tiga. This less-is-more release pattern is often as hard to wrap your head around as the records themselves. ‘Lower State Of Consciousness‘ blew up thanks to heavy inclusion on mixes during 2007’s electro takeover and sowed the seeds of anticipation for ‘The Worm‘ which cemented their current reputation of releasing the most refreshing tech-house record (that’s confidently lightyears away from the saturated minimalstepwave scene) every year they release something. I’ll forgive them for slacking in 2009, as Tiga’s Mind Dimension 2, Zombie Nation’s Mystery Meat Affair and his remix of Tiga’s ‘What You Need‘ collectively made up for it. I should probably be demanding an official apology from the pair to compensate for the amount of the braincells I lost freaking out to each.
The hype for ZZafrika was on the enormous Merriweather Post Pavillion scale of hyperbole and fanboy circlejerks. But the live rips just couldn’t be wrong, and as the gorgeously warm chords sift around an expertly crafted beat (as with any record the disco-sampling, MPC-wizard Florian Senfter appears on) it almost feels like they’re making a sly poke at the hype machine’s nature to build up things more tediously than a self-proclaimed progressive house producer. But when the Motherland inspired funk comes in the club should already be punching the air. As for the drop – even twenty or thirty listens later it still feels like being stung by a swarm of killer bees whose stings contain liquid awesome. I can actually feel my brain melting when the final switch up comes around the four and half minute mark. Oh my word. Wo-WOO indeed.
So far, ZZT have made my favourite record of the year every time they release something. ZZafrika does not break this trend and the hyperbolic build up courtesy of the blogosphere is just part of the ultimate ride to a drop only these two can deliver.
Stanley
When a truck is tried, tested and approved by Arto Saari then it is a truck I hope will somehow give me the confidence to stop slacking and learn some new ledge tricks. It was the original D2 prototype that was given the thumbs up by the only man who can get away with skating to two Bowie songs one year and popular math-rock another. The D2 Lite is a lightweight (duh) construction achieved mostly through hollowpoint kingpins and a lighter design shaped through the same D2 geometry that helped Arto fluidly carve around a corner and backlip a double kinked rail. The addition of the inconspicuous East-Coast killer Jake Johnson earlier this year was a good move too. Their job on Destructo is to sell me a product and they have done a good job: hitherto Jake Johnson’s welcome clip, Destructo never really came to mind when buying trucks, and I found myself excited to try something new.
A snapped kingpin troubled my younger self frequently so I was overjoyed to find that a month of regular night sessions through the city has done little to no damage. So don’t let the term ‘Lite‘ fool you into thinking by choosing this design you are compromising a truck’s necessary strength. These are solid. And that is not to say that I haven’t been shredding the shit out of these! Doubters gonna doubt, sure, but you readers better be recognising that I have taken all five of my ledge tricks to the D2. I even learnt a new trick for the first time in years! Once they were fully worn and grooved into my awkward stance I found they provided a smooth, consistent turn (which given how slow-footed I am, is an absolute necessity) with a genuinely noticeable lightness and somehow made grinding feel radder than usual. Like butter.
The D2 Lite is relatively inexpensive for a simple lightweight truck, and I can only recommend that you give these a try too.
Bellend Sebastian
Islington Academy
07.10.10
Having already brought his Gallic flair to Koko earlier this year as well as playing Glastonbury Festival, Jean-Christophe Le Saoût, the man known to most as Wax Tailor returned to the UK with a host of his friends to bring the party to North London on a grey and otherwise drab night.
Taking to the stage with a cellist, violinist and flautist and backed with a cityscape complete with three screens displaying moving animation, videos and other visual treats, the chapeau’d producer and DJ got proceedings underway with the bumping No Pity before introducing his long-time collaborator Charlotte Savary; who looked every inch the unassuming yet totally in control Amelie figure the fans have come to know and love for Dragon Chasers.
Whilst always showing his dexterity on the turntables, Tailor made sure that it was a show that was being viewed, rather than just a showcase of his own talents. With MC Mattic joining the fray, beanie pulled down over one eye and playful sneer on his face, the energy levels were ramped up that extra notch as hands pumped the air and feet got to stamping. The two worlds collided on the track Fireflies with a hypnotic backdrop mesmerising the crowd before the two MCs of ASM hit the stage for Say Yes, much to the delight of everyone in attendance.
The set, which lasted an hour and half, continued to enthrall, with Tailor taking centre stage for a medley of tracks and letting his live band do their thing, always imploring the crowd to give them the applause they deserved whilst calling for more call and response. The crowd interaction raised to fever pitch when Tailor asked for a singalong to Que Sera, a track which even the most hardened of football fans are happy to ring out loudly.
As the night ended, all the MCs and singers returned to the stage, each giving their own take on the hip hop beats and ended with a mass theatrical bow. The cheers and yelling that sounded out were very much deserved and showed Wax Tailor that he’d be welcomed back to the city anytime.
Abjekt