Music PREVIEWS
ELECTRONICA, POST-PUNK, NOISE CRY PARROT IS 5! The Glue Factory, Glasgow, Fri 27 Apr
In recent years, Cry Parrot has played a major role in nurturing Glasgow’s vibrant music scene. To celebrate the music promoter’s fifth birthday, the fervently eclectic independent promoters are holding a party at The Glue Factory, featuring Auntie Flo, Dam Mantle, Sacred Paw, Silk Cut, Blue Sabbath Black Fiji, The Rosy Crucifixion and Special Hits.
Artist David Shrigley is a prominent supporter. ‘Cry Parrot represents all that is great about the Glasgow cultural landscape: A DIY attitude towards presenting wonderful, interesting and peculiar musical events to the people of the city based on passion, curiosity and generosity rather than a desire for profit or personal gain. When people ask me why I choose to live in Glasgow, I would cite the fact that people like Cry Parrot do what they do here as one of the reasons’.
‘I started Cry Parrot as I felt there should be more people
supporting grassroots music in Scotland,’ explains head Parrot, Fielding Hope. ‘Over the years I’ve branched out to work on more ambitious projects, but I think the DIY ethos is still there. We make lot of effort to be as open-minded and dynamic as possible with the programming.’
Hope’s favourite shows from Cry Parrot’s first five years
include The Ex with Brass Unbound, Tenniscoats, and Group Inerane, a joint-promotion with Tracer Trails and Braw Gigs, but he feels their biggest achievement to date is 2011’s Music Is The Music Language festival, co-curated with Tracer Trails. ‘It made me realise that we have an incredible music scene in Scotland that deserves to be heard.’ (Stewart Smith)
Y H P A R G O T O H P W O L G N O S M R C I
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REUNITED ELECTRONIC ICONS NEW ORDER O2 Academy, Glasgow, Sat 5 May; Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Sun 6 May; T in the Park, Balado, near Kinross, Fri 6 Jul ONE-DAY FESTIVAL/ EVENING MUSEUM TAKEOVER STAG & DAGGER Various venues, Glasgow, Sat 19 May; Django Django play RBS Museum Lates, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, Fri 18 May
New Order are back, and it’s as if they never went away. Are you enjoying it, Stephen Morris, drummer and longest continuously-serving member alongside Bernard Sumner? ‘Yeah, it’s been great,’ he says from his house/studio near Macclesfield, where he spends his time ‘repairing things’. ‘I wasn’t going to do it if I didn’t enjoy it. I’ve done that before and there’s no point.’ Despite Sumner stating a few years ago that New Order were finished, Peter Hook’s decision not to return seems to have eroded the creative tension: besides, Sumner, Morris and guitarist Phil Cunningham still worked together as Bad Lieutenant.
What about Morris’ wife, original keyboard player Gillian Gilbert, recently returned after a decade spent caring for their daughter, Grace, who suffered from a spinal condition? ‘She’s really happy, because she did really miss it,’ he says, ‘although the rider doesn’t last as long now.’ Originally it was only a two-date reunion to help their old Factory America friend Michael Shamberg with his medical bills, but things just snowballed. They’ve just toured Australia and played Miami, with UK and US tours bookending a festival season which includes T in the Park and an Olympic- closing show alongside Blur in Hyde Park.
‘Nobody sells records any more and the only way you can actually do anything is to go out and play live,’ says Morris. So will they ever record again? ‘That’s the next logical step, but the world’s a very different place to when we started up. So an EP or a download single sometime next year, if it happens at all.’ (David Pollock) ■ See list.co.uk for a longer version of this interview.
Glasgow city festival Stag & Dagger returns in a lower-key format, but there’s abundant quality nevertheless, from Death Grips to White Denim, The Phantom Band and Bear in Heaven. And Django Django, whose uncategorisable distillation of surf, pop and psychedelia has already yielded one of 2012’s most acclaimed debut LPs – the unique product of a band born of the ‘cosmopolitan sound’ of their East London base, but with one foot firmly in Scotland, where they formed at Edinburgh College of Art. Ensconced in a house outside Pittenweem during second album writing
sessions, keys and electronics boffin Tommy Grace (glasses, above) reflects on a whirlwind year that’s taken the four-piece from bedroom project to favourites of, um, Karl Lagerfeld. ‘We played the Chanel party at Paris Fashion Week; it was quite strange,’ Grace reports, ‘he’s a cool dude.’ Stranger still – meeting Chris Isaak on French TV. ‘For a moment, I literally thought I was dreaming.’ The Djangos approach touring cautiously – ‘we’ve all got girlfriends’ – by trying
to pick their live shows and keep them interesting with playful visuals (apt to incorporate all from venetian blinds to medieval smocks). Something special is promised when they precede Stag & Dagger with a set at the National Museum of Scotland, headlining a stage curated by The List. ‘When I lived in Edinburgh my flat looked right into the museum,’ Grace enthuses. ‘It’ll be very much a homecoming, Edinburgh’s where we all met – it’s the birthplace of the band, even if we had our adolescence in London.’ (Malcolm Jack)
80 THE LIST 26 Apr–24 May 2012