Techno Remix at Glastonbury

You’d have to have been living in an internet-less basement in Outer Mongolia to have missed noticing: Festivals are a staple of modern British life now.  No longer the domain exclusively of hardened party animals and alternative hippies the truly new-age festival attendee is often fashion conscious, teched up and may even come with an executive job or children, or both (utter madness).  So with the transformation of the festival crowd comes a timely and truly experience-changing innovation to the 'little timetable on a string round your neck thingy': The Official Glastonbury 2011 app.  

Now I’ve been to Glastonbury a good few times but sadly the last time I went phone apps still meant, to most people, the calculator on your Nokia.  This meant that even while vigilantly checking my soggy programme with the dim light of a pocket torth and asking people in neon jackets where the Leftfield music tent is (those neon jacket wearing folk always turn out to be partygoers who are a lot more lost than you and think wearing a neon jacket is the height of festival fashion) hence even with a passable level of effort I still missed some amazing acts and never did find where the Leftfield stage was.

The Glastonbury 2011 App is basically your super-organized, geekily knowledgeable festival comrade, except it fits in your pocket, looks hot and won’t get moody when the teepee’s a mess.  Complete with the entire schedule (no more squinting at a dusty rag of a programme on the last day), a personalized planner so you know where and when your crucial acts are on, an interactive map, the latest news and the ability to share on Facebook this app is the way of the future for a festival that prides itself on eco-friendly alternatives.  Quite frankly it beats said geeky festival friend hands down, especially at knowing about that secret Radiohead gig, and all updates are available at your grubby little fingers throughout the festival.

I spoke to the guys at Brighton-based digital startup Future Platforms who brought this lovely app into being.

Enter Dominic Travers, 14 times Glastonbury veteran and Product Owner of the project at Future Platforms; '[Orange and Glastonbury] wanted us to keep it simple, for us to bring the core features of a festival app to a user-friendly, clever and effective platform and they wanted it to be available not only on iPhone, but be inclusive of other smart phones and android'- no easy task then.

Designing apps for festivals pose some key challenges anyway, as Future Platforms founder Tom Hume points out; 'In many ways Glastonbury is just an extreme testbed for the constraints of mobile which [digital agencies like Future Platforms] have been working with since day one', battery life and signal connectivity issues at a festival site being a challenge.  Also the sheer scale of Glastonbury provides a unique challenge;  'We had well over 2000 complex items, 55 stages and ever-evolving news to factor into the app which test the platform’s capabilities to the extreme.'  Well you wouldn’t expect anything less from one of the largest festivals in the world. 

The project took in total 3 months to complete but was a labour of love for the team, which included Glastonbury fans, and Dominic stated that Orange were ‘a joy to work with’.  However, to paraphrase a well known saying: the proof was in the mud pie.  Buzz about the app went wild in the week running up to the festival with 56,000 mentions on Twitter before the festival had even officially kicked off and user’s resounding approval and grateful reviews ( the favourite being 'Glastonbury App is Well Good!!') before, during and after the event brought delight to the Future Platforms team.  Guardian Music Editor Tim Jonze even added on Twitter that the app was ‘literally the best thing ever.’ -now that’s praise.  Its easy to see why with something that just works, making life a lot easier during a grueling weekend of fun in Somerset.

Glastonbury is not on in 2012 due to the regular four-yearly land break however should Future Platforms work their magic again on the app for 2013 they already have plenty of ideas up their sleeve.  For now they are elated at the response the 2011 app has got and were surprised when even Police officers at the event told them it had proved invaluable in providing information and taking care of business at the festival this year.  This App is, literally, all you’d need to get around, see those un-missable acts, and share it.  I can’t wait to put this newfound technological aid to good use at the next festival.  Now all I need is an iPhone and a Glastonbury ticket for 2013…anybody?

To Sign or Sing

Interesting, if somewhat sobering, article on the current state of the record industry for budding musicians or fans.

Not really much new.  We all know the days of big ass record deals and crazy money tours just ain't flying no more.

Any thoughts on this?

Beautiful Band Marketing

These days sometimes it seems one has to stand side by side with 'the man' when putting out some rock 'n' roll.    But as these arresting posters promoting new band Dry The River show perhaps art and beauty are sometimes all you need. Certainly are something that grabs your attention as well as being original and just gorgeous.  

Or as these articles lay out, is no publicity the new publicity?

mmm fascinating

yup you might have a point

  

Since Damien Hirst's gratuitous money-loving art hit the YBA scene a growing trend of artists who are also savvy marketers and promoters has coincided with the internet revolution.  Musicians and artists now need a whole new set of skills to make themselves visible in a highly crowded cultural network.  Somehow, though, it feels just a bit incongruous to have our artist cultural commentators engaging in such high level capitalist 'business'.

I feel a little like, I wish just being an artist was still enough.

But has it ever been?

Site of The Day

Three Things to Check out in Your Lunch break Today:

Hype Machine has just added Fast Forward which lets you jump through songs while still reading through music blogs, making keeping up with all your favorite music blogs (yes you, you lovely audio geeks) more time-effective.

Beyonce: First Pop Queen to Scale the Pyramid Stage

Grrrl Power

I don't know about you but I was more than a little bit shocked when Beyonce's headline performance at Glastonbury this year was highlighted for its feministic poignancy.   Beyonce was the first woman to headline the Pyramid Stage, the first in 41 years of the festival.

That her performance was a tour de force of Woman Power, man whipping curved frenzy just hammered the point home.  Where have the sisters been all these years?  What saddened me more was that although its a dire state for a festival to have no female solo headliner in 41 years could anyone really think of someone who'd have fitted the bill before Queen B stormed the Pyramid?

After casually racking my brains I wondered what of Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, Tracy Chapman, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith, Aretha Franklin, hell, Madonna?  Where were these ladies through the years on the most coveted of festival slots?

The Pop-ularization (with emphasis on the 'Pop') of Glastonbury in the last five years has seen a huge shift in the acceptability of festival going as a summer pursuit (er...Torie MPs in toilets were a large sign of the times, tragic deaths aside) and a noticeable shift in Glastonbury's headline slots towards family/middle of the road/sometimes questionable genres of music for the traditionally indie festival crowd.  Jay Z's hip slot showcase was a huge talking point, which quite frankly bored the bling off me.  Beyonce couldn't have dreamed of playing the festival 10 years ago not because of her gender but her style of music and label in the Pop section of the records store.  But perhaps this shift towards wider genres of music as headliners will see a rise in the number of females topping the bill.

That she should be the first female to play the Pyramid Stage of arguably the greatest music festival in the world was sobering.   That she delivered an astounding performance (backed by an equally impressive all-female band) soaked with soul, rock hard power and physical abandon made her a wonderful 'first' lady of Glastonbury history.  I hope we don't wait another 40 years to see a woman top the Pyramid.  After all its been quite a while since Cleopatra.

Read a review of Beyonce at Glastonbury 2011 here

Review: Kaboom

Or How Some Good Old Fashioned Nineties-Lovin' fills The Void 


by Elle Holgate

Kaboom, is quite frankly  bang on.  Trend, that is.  The recently released film from ‘New Queer’ director Greg Araki is a psychedelic smorgasbord of 90s style teen-flick nostalgia with a great big whack of sex and a subversive dollop of conspiracy thrown in for good measure.

As the title suggests everything is done with the comic book camp of vintage Batman violence and it serves a feisty Kapow! to cinema's often dreary portrayals modern sexuality, flying like a sexy superhero in the face of giving a damn.

Kaboom begins laced with the drôle, erotic cynicism that was encapsulated by Rules of Attraction (2002) which capitalised on the glossy façade of a ‘teen flick’ subverted with dark, post modern existentialism.   The 'teen' screen vision is familiar now, always complete with impossibly hot actors largely in their mid-late twenties impersonating still-pubescent college kids, with varying degrees of unconvincing innocence or lack of.   Both films play on the aesthetic of ‘mega-zines’* (you know the thick, expensive arty tomes with ample artistic adverts) that started in the 90s.  The gold in both films lies in the knowing hint of parody and nihilistic abandon, played with in the Scream series of the late 90s.  It all seems to capture a certain brand of sarcastic irony that 90s culture did so well.  In any of these films do we care much for the characters? Not so much.  Are they hot? Uh, hell yeah.  Could we blow them up with not a care in the (cinematic) world? Yup.  This, in the age of instant gratification, video game (can we still call them such an archaic name?) violence, 'gore-porn'* and throw-away human sex toys, seems to hit a nerve.

We watch their over-sexed, under-academic exploits with the varying degrees of whimsy, cynicism and irony-the same traits the characters purport to embody.  If only, we secretly muse, our college experiences were this fraught with misadventure and gorgeousness.  If only sharp and spicy-tongued dialogue took up those days that were, in truth, spent stabbing spell check while drinking cold coffee. But somehow it feels as though this 90s-style orgy of everlasting teenage anarchy was my own mis-spent youth.  My over stimulated synapses lap up films like Kaboom which, like cinematic hash cake, blur us into the perception that we too lived in a perpetual haze of ‘Dazed and Confused’ meets ‘Wild Things’.  Such is the culturally drugged condition of my generation.

 The 90s as this season's favourite 'retro' has been gaining momentum ever since everyone realised that the eighties for the most part sucked, plus who wants to remember the time when your Mom had a perm anyway?  Along with Topshop channeling Kate Moss’ heroin-chic cool circa Depp and CK One, a resurgence of recession-friendly bleached hair with deliberate roots and boys in denim and plaid (always, for me, iconic of Jared Leto in 90’s cult teen angst series, My So-Called Life) the 90s are my generation’s most beloved point of reference.  Close enough for genuine nostalgia; current twenty-somethings remember the days when making a mixtape for your crush’s Walkman was considered hi-tech, Glastonbury was still socially rebellious, and we used words like ‘crush’ and and ‘hi-tech’.  

My generation, who were by and large still children or young teenagers in the nineties, has never-the-less adopted the 90’s as a time that is ours.  It was booming (pardon the pun) economically, began the festival renaissance and made not washing your hair cool.  What’s not to like? The nineties’ was our very own modern twist on the youth counter culture started in the 60’s.  The 60’s has become culturally omnipotent, once a cliché that has now assimilated completely into fashion, music and art.  It’s as if the 60’s never ended, it just bled into a thousand dresses, adverts and festivals.    The 90's had Grunge and Techno, heroin-chic, free-rave rebellion and Ecstasy.  Look I'm not saying all it gave us it is perfect but its ours. Or more importantly, its not our parent’s.

In the hazy afterglow of empathetic amphetamines is it any wonder that with the 90’s ‘second summer of love’ our cultural focus was still on freedom and sex but more about sexual politics than promiscuity as a political act.  A thousand teen ‘dramedys’ were born of this new wave of loved up, horny teenagers who, like the dreary over-eloquence of ‘Dawson’s Creek’, loved nothing better than to jib out, endlessly dissecting the act of bonking in over-sized sweaters.

Yet we hold onto it.  Kaboom plays to the age of the new-youther*, the kids who should be working in serious careers seriously and buying furniture but, post recession, are largely still living the teenage dream (whether they want to or not) in their financially-capped lifestyle. Seeing actors clearly in their twenties playing fresher undergrads gives the recession kids a moment of pure nostalgia woven with current truth.  Have any of us really grown up yet?  Forced dependence on our parent’s economically lucky generation means we may not be able to independently buy a house or contemplate a pension yet but, by golly, we can wear a nose ring and Doc Martins with conviction.

Kaboom is nigh-brilliant.  Its really just a seamless mashup of zietgeist and nostalgia, and it hits the spot nicely.  OK, its attempt at mind bending may not be as psychologically screwed and effective as Twin Peaks but its decided lack of contempt for its ballsy, banging array of characters is refreshing.  No whore’s are punished by death -a la the rules of horror laid out in Scream- no girl simpers quietly through their lip gloss and the gay/bi/whatever girls and boys, who couldn’t give a flying...saucer, inherit the earth.   That is, if earth survives the next big bang. 

The original angst princess Claire Danes in wonderfully grungy My So Called Life with Jared Leto, yup you guessed it, looking stupidly hot and rocking some eye liner and plaid

Guyliner wearer and Jared Leto look-a-like Thomas Dekker gets a lesson in consequence-less banging with Juno Temple in Kaboom

 

Rules of Attraction had it all; quirky, clunky boot-wearing beauty Shannyn Sossamon, stupidly hot gay guy Ian Sommerhaulder and even Dawson-gone bad, James Van De Beek as the resident psychopath

Caped Crusaders

http://www.longstreetstyle.blogspot.com/

Woodstock, Cape Town

                                          Photo by Stiaan Schoeman

His Silver Sun Comes Undone

http://matthewnel.tumblr.com/

Un Masked

Off With Your Head

Brakes Feat Liela Moss - Jackson Johnny Cash Cover

Painting

Live at Water Rats-DUENDE

African Queen Live at Water Rats 2009-DUENDE