marc bachmann Tour and Music News

The Vryll Society discuss their imminent plans for starting a debut album and more as Live4ever’s coverage from the 2017 South By Southwest Festival continues today.

Shame‘s Gold Hole arrived on Live4ever’s radar fairly late in 2016, but its sharp-edged post-punk layout comfortably made it one of our top tracks of last year.

“It feels like it’s been a while since there’s been a band like LIFE,” was Live4ever’s opening gambit upon our first chat with the band at the start of this year.

“We could make chocolate dildos, made from our own penises. Erect of course.” Read what you like into that, misinterpret it or spell it out. It’s what Idles would want people to do.

Want to know how Idles came together? You might not like the answer: “I pissed on his car.” It’s not how most bands find kindred spirits, but at 3am like minds are easier to find.

Idles seem to have an unshakeable sense of self, already aware of their place within the industry. They’re the band standing ready to smash it apart with music that speaks to the fears and concerns of their audience because they are the very same ones the band are facing as frontman Joe Talbot explained to Live4ever at our 2017 SXSW Media Lounge sponsored by our colleagues at Pirate Studios:

Exclusive: Cotton Mather mastermind Robert Harrison talks to us about the making of seminal art rock album KONTIKI, his I Ching project, and touring with Oasis.

“We had the most interesting story of any band you’ve ever met. We have the weirdest story. We’re not going to other places, but we’re going to Russia. That’s so Cotton Mather. When we first went to Japan it’s because our song ‘Lost My Motto’ had become a fixture at the Japanese Denny’s all over the country. That’s our story.” – Robert Harrison, Cotton Mather

The story of Cotton Mather is indeed a strange one, following an unlikely trajectory from its origins as an Austin, Texas art-rock outfit through a still-obscure-yet-generation-shaking album, with fans among the Rolling Stones and Oasis, and following an extended break, a prolific return with music inspired by the I Ching.

Brian Bell likes to keep busy. A Weezer mainstay since the recording of the group’s blue debut album, Bell uses downtime from his day job on projects like The Relationship, a band he started a decade ago which will release its second album, Clara Obscura, on April 14.

During a chat at Live4ever’s Media Lounge, sponsored by Pirate Studios, at SXSW last month, Bell said the difference between the Relationship and Weezer is that while the latter are largely driven by the group’s mercurial leader, Rivers Cuomo, the former is very much his own thing.

Austin’s annual SXSW extravaganza – so much more than a music festival these days – never fails to give us the opportunity to chat with the best young artists. True to form, at the Pirate Studios-sponsored Live4ever Media Lounge, we got a rare chance to sit down with Sundara Karma, who we reckon may not be the saviors of Rock n’ Roll but seem on immediate standby to give it some much-needed CPR.

The band’s debut album Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect was released just over a year ago, making us say things like “Part hymnal, part soul-searching, big emotions are up for sale..” and “They’re tapping into our device-obsessed culture and seeing it for the void that it is, which takes maturity.” As you might guess, we were very happy to catch up with their singer, the super exotically named Oscar Lulu and the rest of the band, prising out the skinny on a soft spot for Biggie Smalls, the vicissitudes of social media and tripping with U2.

Who are your influences?

Lee Blackwell: “I didn’t grow up in a musical family. I grew up with a brother that messed around with the sitar. I’m half-Indian so there’s a lot of Indian classical music like Ravi Shankar stuff. I heard that for first time when I was ten and saw him when I was eleven. I’ve been surrounded by that kind of music, and my brother played with The Doors when I was around 9 or so, and then I just got obsessed with the blues. Being a child of the 90’s, being around the Napster age, and being able to download music, to steal a little bit, the beautiful part about that is I got to all of The Velvet Underground, Jesus and Mary Chain, stuff like that at a pretty early age.”

Introduce yourselves and describe your talents…

I sing and play guitar, and attempt to hit a keyboard occasionally, my name’s Oli. I’m Elliott, I play drums. I’m Leo on bass.

There’s a Slaves attempt at a ballad; a ‘salad’, as they call it.

Backstage at the Irving Plaza during their recent trip to New York, and with tour-mates Wolf Alice booming out a soundcheck just a floorboard’s width above them, Laurie Vincent and Isaac Holman renewed acquaintances with Live4ever to talk us through their second studio album.