The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
The Decemberists discard the costumes and dispense with the theatre slipping into more familiar musical threads on album number 6.
Factory Floor – Interview (Static, 2010)
Part extreme noise terror, part euphoria, East London’s Factory Floor have made a name for themselves as being loud and uncompromising, or as they stress in the interview below "brutal". Having walked half-way in during their set supporting American synth act Cold Cave earlier this year, Factory Floor's performance was very much a "what the fuck?" moment, unsure as to either quickly vacate the room or take stock of the diffused electronic/industrial free-form concotions they were composing. We stayed, with reservations... Chris Berkley of Static caught up with Gabriel Gurnsey and Nik Colk from Factory Floor shortly after their appearance at the Offset Festival in London in September to find out more.
Spoon – Interview with Britt Daniel and Jim Eno (Static, 2010)
Spoon's latest album, Transference, seemed to show the band finding new ways to tie their own shoelaces, searching out their own "Mystery Zone" or what Britt Daniel will later say in the interview "we gotta try to please ourselves first". Notable for being our first interview where the band asks us the questions, Spoon have perhaps realised there's more to making music than pleasing yourself. You've still got to please your Mom too...
The Low Anthem – Smart Flesh
Providence, Rhode Island indie-folksters The Low Anthem fail to im-press the smart flesh on their sophomore release.
Rat vs Possum – Interview (2010)
I'd heard murmurings of a Melbourne band who subscribed to the "let's give them a real show" theory of concert performance - glitter, paint bombs and bubble wrap - along with a huge wall of
Detektivbyrån – Hemvägen
Danarkia, 2006 [8/10] With glockenspiel, accordion and toy-piano Detektivbyrån (Dee-tek-teeve-bu-ron, "The Detective Agency") take their audience on an imaginative musical journey through the urban streets of Paris and the forests of Värmland, the Swedish province