music@list.co.uk
ELECTRONICA/ROCK QUINN
Arches, Glasgow, Sun 2 Sep.
‘Hi, yeah, Madonna +1 on the Quinn guest list, please.’
‘On you go, Mrs and Mr Ritchie.’
Don’t scoff, this could soon happen at a Quinn gig. Glasgow’s queen of trip-pop, Louise Quinn, has long held a sense of admiration for Madonna, and now it would seem that regard is shared mutually.
From the never-ending stream of wannabes on mp3.com, the mighty Madge herself (who are we to argue?) plucked a Quinn song onto the playlist of her Maverick record company’s internet radio show.
A glowing reference for sure, and it is breaks like this which leave singer Louise feeling a comforting sense of optimism even before her band Quinn’s debut album Inbetween Worlds hits the racks. ‘lt’s already exceeded my expectations,’ says Quinn, ‘just by talking to people and getting a good reaction. I was told that it’s a good album for smokers - I think that’s quite a good audience to have?
Louise, though, admits she isn’t one of them. ‘I can’t. I smoked some hash once and I ended up losing my voice for three weeks and had to walk about with a notepad. It was strange because people then thought I was deaf as well as dumb and started writing notes
back to me.’
Bouts of laryngitis aside, the group which was formed from the remains of Hardbody have also got a rather bizarre side project on the go to keep them financially sound. ‘Chrysalis put up cash for the label, distribution, press and radio,’ she explains, ‘but we don’t have any money to live off after that and so we actually do street
theatre. I know, it sounds madness.’
She’s not wrong. Quinn dresses up as a spoof character of lvana Trump, while Alastair, who produced
EXPOSURE
Motorhead, Radiohead, it’s all the same to me. Give me something new and exciting I can upset my close family members with.
This issue: Lapsus Linguae.
Who are this lot of blouses, the new Manics then?
Au contraire my friend. Despite the Manics' pie-eating, dress-wearing and Commie—patronising, the world is still not ready for another one of them. This is an altogether different proposition. But they look like girls . . . oh she’s nice though...
Ah! Looks can be deceptive my friend. That coy beauty with the flowing golden locks is none other Raga Wu. sticksman with the band who is often mistaken for Catherine Deneuve around the streets of Glasgow. Fucker. You tricked me into fancying a fella.
Nay nay. lad, lust after them all you like, and not just because of the leather trousers. ripped T-shirts and questionable make-up application skills. Those good people down at Fierce Panda/Livid Meerkat Records have been too, enough even to knock out a single, ‘Paradel', and a mini
Stars in her eyes
the group’s album and plays drums, is her main
bodyguard and answers to the name of Bruno.
‘Corporate companies 90 to the theatre company we work for and hire us out for big parties, or we do stuff for the council,’ she says. ‘That’s how we make a living to support our music.’
How about a little taster of Louise’s impersonation of
Ivana for The List? ‘Okay then. [adopts haughty accent] “Darling, how are you doing? Luuurve the dress - where did you get it?” That kind of thing.’
And then, obviously, there’s their ‘Cleaning Elvis’ company . . . ‘Oh yeah, we dress up as Elvis and go out and tell people to keep clean for the King,’ she reveals.
Madonna on one side, Elvis on the other. How can
Li"
album later this year.
What exactly is a Lapsus Linguae then?
lt's Greek for ‘slip of the tongue‘. What’s slippy about them then? Well, when it comes to pigeon—holing them they are veritable conger eels. A number of their rank are classically trained and they have a disturbing habit of exchanging instruments. Lift the lid on them musically and it‘s a bit of a cider and Cinzano-based cocktail of sound - three parts Birthday Party. one part Tom Waits to a half-bottle of Tori Amos piano magic and a couple of squeezes of distilled aggression in a
Quinn possibly lose? (Jason Cranwell) I Inbetween Worlds is out on Mon 3 Sep on Lunar.
Penelope, Gunther, Magaloof and Raga live it large
Shellac stylee. All this is garnished with a Sprig of black humour, hence the comedy monikers and penchant for Kiss and Twisted Sister.
Why should I be arsed going to see them?
On-stage band wrestling contests. the full-on musical assault and also so you can gloat to people at dinner parties in your middle age about how you saw them before they were big.
Good point. (Mark Robertson)
I Lapsus Linguae play a free show with Single Point Of Light at Doctor Bar, Edinburgh on Sat 1 Sep. Parade! is out Mon IO Sep on Livid Meerkat.
ELECTRONIC/ROCK
THE AVALANCHES The Arches, Glasgow, Thu 16 Aug. 0...
We're told that even the densest music contains tiny silences - there's no techno so fast and no metal so heavy that they can proof themselves against these microscopic drops in sound. But if The Avalanches hate anything (their faces, like their records, are broad beams of Sunshine). it’s a moment's pause or a millisecond's peace. And if they‘ve got a mission (besides the musical pursuit of absolute delight), it's to wipe out all those little gaps, to fill in every space with the right shaped noise. Their album, Since / Left You is a frieze. a fresco. a tapestry. every inch covered in colour, an unprecedented QOO-odd samples spliced without dropping a stitch, without missing a breakbeat. Also satisfyineg absent is the studious, Uber-cool self- consciousness of hip hop academics like DJ Shadow (Shadow would disembowel himself before using The Jackson 5).
Superavalanchalisticbreak s’n’beatssonorous
But how the howling hell can they make it work live? Bring fifty sets of decks? Or spin the album over the PA and head for the bar? Guess again. Instead of re-playing the record itself, The Avalanches have found live equivalents for their key qualities — invention, exuberance and the war against any kind of quiet. The opening DJ kicks of Robbie and Dexter (“Is this it? There's supposed to be six of them, right?") bleed into the opening siren whoops of Guns 'n’ Roses peerless ‘Welcome to the Jungle‘, and the rest come on. picking up sticks and guitars and bouncing around like dogs catching Frisbees.
From there. they play a short, giddy flurry of a set that whisks live rock action into just the right records, moving peak to peak across high points of human endeavour like Madonna's ‘Holiday’, Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone' and Cameo's ‘Word Up'. Some of it's off their album - ‘Two Hearts In 3/4 Time' and a crazily exciting 'Electricity’ - but most of it isn‘t, and all of it evokes something close to joy. We knew they had skills. But we didn't know they could actually PLAY. (Stephen Phelan)
91% Aug (3 Sup 2001 THE LIST 2"