July 2008
Beatmag’s rundown of the best to throw your hard-earned money at.
Beatmag Album of the Issue
Late Of The Pier
Fantasy Black Channel (Parlophone) (more…)
Filed under: Reviews - Albums by Flexmaster Nylon
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July 2008
SINGLE OF THE ISSUE
Monosurround
Cocked, Locked And Ready To Rock (Citizen) (more…)
Filed under: Reviews - Singles by Flexmaster Nylon
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Visage – Rusty Egan
In the recent popular sci-fi/cop drama ‘Ashes to Ashes’, a group of detectives go under cover at a London nightclub. Since the narrative is set in 1981, the venue is frequented by (what became termed that same year) ‘New Romantics’. It’s a scene that’s a homage to the Blitz club, a London location where, back in 1981, Steve Strange and Rusty Egan ran a new kind of night club that stridently moved away from the spitting and brawling of the entropic punk scene. The music and fashions were sophisticated, cool and danceable. This wasn’t a clientele in clothes appropriated from bin liners and toilet chains. Such a grouping celebrated the flamboyant, the narcisstic, and the eccentric as exemplified by the dandified Regency designs by Vivienne Westwood which were seen later with the likes of Adam Ant. The bands under this journalistic label – Spandau Ballet, Visage, Ultravox, Japan, Culture Club, Duran Duran – offered up a new style of synth-pop that was as bombastic as a box set of Sky albums and as pretentious as Tara Palmer-Tomkinson’s Swiss apartment in Klosters. (more…)
Filed under: Interviews, Old Friends Electric by Flexmaster Nylon
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Juggaknots interview
The Juggaknots are Breeze Brewin, Queen Herawin, Buddy Slim and DJ Boo. Their second album ‘Use Your Confusion’ got joyful reviews in Beatmag a while back and since then we’ve been trying to track them down to squeeze some further info out of their busy heads. It’s been quite a mission but we eventually made it, and they’ve even been kind enough to donate a free download (link below). Beatmag hip-hop heads – get your teeth into this; (more…)
Filed under: Interviews by Flexmaster Nylon
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Beatmag’s Khalid Mallassi quizzes the nonchalant, comeback kings.
The Shortwave Set are perhaps the luckiest band in the UK. After their debut 2005 album “The Debt Collection” won them critical acclaim, radio support from tastemakers like Zane Lowe and Lauren Lavern as well as remixing the likes of Moby, Scissor Sisters and Goldfrapp… then they were unceremoniously dropped by their record label. They were down, but not out. Now, with a brand new record deal and help from the biggest record producer in the world, they are back with the epic “Replica Sun Machine”. (more…)
Filed under: Interviews by Flexmaster Nylon
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Catherine Pryce talks to Wales’ premier drum and bass survivor.
Beatmag caught up with High Contrast, the golden boy of Hospital Records, before he jetted off to Prague on a schedule that’s as messy as his hair – “Some quality time in the Eastern European scene”, he says – and he’s an eloquent, charming boy from Wales yet to “make the digression to London”. (more…)
Filed under: Interviews by Flexmaster Nylon
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