We are really pleased to announce that one of Brighton’s most hyped bands of the moment The Gaa Gaa’s will be playing at Teen Creeps on the 28th May. Their new EP Repulsion Seminar, produced by James Aparicio who has also produced the likes of Nick Cave and Mogwai, sounds really fucking cool and will be out anytime soon. You can check out a few of their tracks on their Myspace page, but you should really be coming down to the Jazz Place on Ship Street on the 28th to see them in their only live show in the UK for a long long time. Hopefully see you all down there, it’s going to be mEnTaL. xoxox

Photos by: Nima Elm

Photos by : Milo Belgrove and Nima Elm

Support came in the form of brighton band Esben and The Witch. I was quite looking forward to seeing them as id heard nothing but good stuff about their goffik reverb shenanigans and although i wasnt disappointed as such, it wasnt quite as good as id thought it might be. The songs all seemed quite shambolic and unfinished, and 2 minute moments of brilliance would be followed by 7 minutes of pissing about with FX pedals and banging a floor tom over and over. Basically it was quite pretentious but at the same time, they were pretty mesmerising and there is definitely some potential there. The birds quite fit aswell…

The Xx album, simply titled “xx”, is quite possibly my favourite record of the year so far so i was really looking forward to this gig and they didnt let me down. The Xx have had an extremely quick rise to fame since their album was released by Young Turks in late August and have since toured with The Big Pink and Florence WENCH to name a few. They also went to the same school as Hot Chip, Fourtet and Burial which is kinda quite cool i guess….

They came on to ‘Intro’ which was to be expected and continued to play the album song by song which definitely seemed to work in this case. It was basically a perfect rendition of the album without any surprises or new bits and if im honest, this was exactly what i was hoping for as i love the album so much. If you havent heard it yet its full of insular, glacial pop tunes which are hauntingly brilliant and weirdly uplifting at the same time, id even go as far as to say its the ‘Dummy’ of the Noughties… Goosebump moments were “Crystalised”, new single “Islands”, the Chris Isaac – Wicked Game-esque “Infinity’ and the amazing cover of ‘Teardrops’ by Womack and Womack so all in all pretty much spot on. Im looking forward to March already…

The Xx – Islands – Live on Jools Holland

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From an Argus article.

11:04am Wednesday 28th October 2009

A house was trashed by gatecrashers after a private party was advertised on the internet.

Kimi Watkiss won a competition to have her favourite band Brighton-based Doll And The Kicks play at her house.

But her elation soon turned into a nightmare as the private gig was stormed by more than 100 uninvited guests.

Pictures given to The Argus show revelers half naked in the family’s hot tub, kicking computer monitors and having fights with armchairs.

The group of intruders described as ‘half of Brighton’ caused thousands of pounds of damage to the Hove property.

Used condoms on the floor, shattered glass, a cracked plasma television and a smashed sound system were found the next morning.

News of the secret gig at the Hove property is believed to have broken out through social networking site Facebook.

Revellers have been boasting about the party on the internet.

Kimi’s brother Dane, 23, said he came home from university in London at the weekend to see a skip outside the house.

The band, currently touring with Morrissey, have said the family do not blame them for the damage.

They gave Kimi’s parents a free pair of tickets for their concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London last night as an apology.

Lead singer Hannah told The Argus: “Unfortunately there were a lot of uninvited guests.

“While obviously we’re pleased that so many people wanted to come to see us play, it did get very out of hand and the property had some extensive damage.

“We’ve been sorting things out with Kimi’s parents for the past few days and have promised to repair or replace damaged goods as a goodwill gesture even though they have made it clear they understand we’re not to blame.”

Photographs courtesy of  Deano Harrington

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Brighton favourites Doll and the Kicks have just begun their world tour supporting Morrisey through Europe and the United States. Before they left though they decided to have a super fun party/music video shoot at a random girls amazingly swanky house over in Hove. We were invited just because we were, and so we went and took advantage of the ‘free’ booze, jacuzzi and live music, even if they did play the same song about fifteen times in a row. Here’s the evidence…

We arrived at the house, which was pretty sick. As you can see.

The band were still setting up as more and more Brighton trendies arrived.

Oh, the crowd.

Hulk Rogan arrived.

So did Disco Deeks. Bless him.

Doll and the Kicks played, blah blah blah.

More importantly. I used a square toilet.

Then everyone got pissed and jumped in the hot tub.

Then everyone got even more pissed in the hot tub.

But then, Murley Bassey did this. Everyone got a bit freaked out, and we were asked to leave.

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If you don’t know, Mumford & Sons are a four-piece folk band from the Big Smoke who play lovely Irish-tinged ditties with accordions and banjo’s and stuff. I think they’re dope and it was only a matter of time before they crossed over into the mainstream and made middle class mothers cry into their glasses of wine after reading about them in the Observer Music Monthly. They were personally invited to support The Pogues at their Christmas shows last winter and any band who can manage to wake Shane McGowan out of his whiskey and cheap hash slumber for long enough to actually make a judgment on their music gets some props from me.

If my slightly drunk memory serves me correct they opened with “Awake my Soul” and started plouging through favourites such as “Little Lion Man”, the new single that is on BBC6 seemingly every 5 fucking minutes. It was a lot dancier than i was expecting which was definitely a good thing, but halfway through they brought the tempo down and started playing some new songs. GREAT. Nah, new songs sounded good but it just seemed an odd set list in my opinion. Things picked up at the end though and they even used a real life drum kit in a few songs (!). They finished with the brilliant “Roll Away My Stone” and although they didn’t play “Liar”, this was only a minor glitch. Id been wanting to see this lot for ages now, having missed their last Brighton gig exactly a year ago and it definitely wasnt a disappointment. It seemed like a band on the cusp of something pretty special and they’ve certainly got the songwriting talent to take the potential further. Expect some pretty impressive festival shows next summer id imagine…

Its funny, i really don’t see myself as a folk/acoustic fan, but two of my favourite shows of the last year have been this and Bon Iver…Maybe I’m becoming a middle class mother? Oh well, rather that than some brainless little twat who’s still banging on about dub step i guess….

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Outside the venue, maybe five minutes after they had played, Devin Booze shows me his State of North Carolina driving license to prove to me his name. Devin Andrew Booze. “I spell it the same as the store Planet Booze, that you guys have over here.”

Unfortunately Sarah Reynolds his female counter part can’t be here right now because “she has either a sore throat or swine flu, which would be awesome, but she isn’t a child or an elderly person, so it’s probably just a sore throat” Devin insists.

After sometime discussing what to call the decade we are living in, the Naughties or the twenty hundreds, we begin to talk about music.

EAR PWR, pronounced Ear Power began 4 years ago in a small town in North Carolina, where their main export is cigarettes. Devin points to a Camel Light, which my friend is smoking and says “that’s where I am from”.

Devin explains that he tries to make perfect pop music mixed with noise. This is done by fading between the music being played on the instruments and the noise cassette also being played along with the whole of their set.

We ask Devin about the scene in Baltimore, who tells us that it all seems to be dying off right now. He compares it to Shoreditch and East London over the last 10 years. Dan Deacon moved to Baltimore a few years back, it was cheap to live and he started a whole scene there. More and more people noticed this, who then followed suit and the whole Art and Music scene in Baltimore ended up becoming really diluted. Plus all the original bands that started the whole Wham City collective have been off on tour, leaving the city with nothing more than copycat bands.

Devin has built his own Synthesizer, is most influenced by the band Numbers and has a flesh coloured seven inch coming out soon.

Later on we record him talking in an English accent and buy him too many shots of Tuaca. He gave us a free album and even invited us to stay in his wire style low-rise house next summer. See you then Devin.

Words: Lutworth

Photos: Lutworth

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Their recent gig at the Concorde 2 sold out pretty easily as can be expected I guess and was full of “cool” parents standing at the back and “cool” 15 year olds jumping around and drinking cheap vodka out of water bottles. Oh to be 15 again…

Anyway, onto the music. Passion Pit started getting some recognition with the release of their ‘Chunk of Change’ EP last year with its “pop gems” and its perfect-for-adverts beats. Personally I was really under whelmed and slightly irritated by the record, but that was nothing until I heard the full length LP ‘Manners’. Ok, so I do like ‘Sleepyhead’ but since when was fusing Friendly Fires, Mika and the worst parts of Nu Rave a good idea? GROW A PAIR LAD. The live performance was hit and miss. Songs such as the aforementioned ‘Sleepyhead’ and ‘I’ve Got Your Number’ weren’t the worst live renditions I’ve ever heard, and I even found myself bopping my head to songs like ‘The Reeling’ but mostly I stood there generally hating the general public and wondering if 3 cigarettes during one 40 minute set was too many.

Passion Pit? PASSION THE PITS MORE LIKE. MAD LOLS.

Words: Hulk Rogan

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