This month’s Controllers Passion Pit are a ray of multicoloured sunshine from across the Atlantic, much has already been made about how the band came about but such a good story deserves a short re-run. Original creator Michael Angelakos made four tracks in his bedroom as a Valentine’s gift to this girlfriend. The tracks became so popular that they were re-recorded and released on the ‘Chunk Of Change’ EP last year with an expanded line up making the band a five piece.
As this month’s Controllers, the band have selected three of their favourite up and coming bands to play at Korova in Liverpool on 19th November. Check out Little Comets and their unique brand of ‘kitchen sink’ indie. Plus dirty anthemic pop from Airship and newly announced Bicycle Thieves…
If you want to know what to expect than check out this free to download Little Comet’s track from the CTRL Myspace Page.
We've just been handed 3 very limited edition Passion Pit tee's to celebrate the Passion Pit guys taking over Topman CTRL this month. Though we did try and cling on to one or two ourselves we've been told we should give them all to you lovely lot! For your opportunity to win, you need to send an email to contribute@topman.com with the subject header 'I want a Passion Pit Tee' and the correct answer to the following question...
Passion Pit released a full length studio album earlier this year, what was it called?
a) Manners
b) Spanners
c) Hannahs
So! Get emailing, and submit your entries by midday Friday 4th December and most importantly...good luck!
Click the button below to head on over to the Topman CTRL Myspace
Topman CTRL’s Birmingham debut was a hot one, so hot in fact that at
one stage the drums were on fire. More on that later, let’s begin at the
beginning. This month’s CTRL was all about metal, hardcore, thrash and all
things heavy in celebration of October’s controllers, Gallows. The reigning
kings of UK punk rock had handpicked a line-up of their favourite new bands for a
night of mayhem at The Flapper. Right in the heart of Birmingham, home to original metallers Black Sabbath and
generally considered the home of heavy metal, this cosy low-ceilinged venue had
all the ingredients for a perfect sweaty night.
First up were local
boys Soni-Quella, apparently there’s no logic behind the unusual name but the
tunes made perfect sense. Their high energy rock/metal crossover went down a
storm with an obviously loyal local following and their half an hour set went
all too quickly. The fabulously named Terrorike DJs kept the crowd warm in
preparation for Shapes. The band are Birmingham natives but increasingly a name on the
international scene; they can also proudly say they are literally big in Japan having recently toured out there. The Shapes
sound was even heavier than Soni-Quella, built around intricate riffs played
with razor sharp precision and boundless energy.
The scene was
perfectly set for headliners Invasion to do their thing, a different musical
proposition to the first two bands steering more towards classic metal riffs
topped with singer Chan’s almost Beth Ditto-like belting soul vocals. There are
only three of them but they create a huge sound worthy of a much bigger band.
Highlights included the 300mph riff in ‘Moongazer’ and the disco metal of
‘Spells of Deception’. The songs were short and there were plenty of them but
they timed the ending perfectly to leave the crowd on a cliffhanger, but not
before the drummer had set her cymbals on fire. The smell of lighter fluid and
a ringing in the ears accompanied us home but was it worth it? Oh yes.
Topman CTRL have teamed up with top blog The Malcolm to offer you the chance to get your hands on some very limited edition tee's courtesy of this months controllers - Gallows. Click here to head on over to The Malcolmand find out more on how to get one of these for yourself, and click here to go to the CTRL Myspace.
Gallows are in CTRL this month, here they give us an exclusive insight in to their favourite city in the world
They’ve travelled the world several times over and rocked a multitude of exotic locations but this month’s controllers Gallows are united in their love for one place in particular - Austin, Texas.
Gallows, like many other bands have made their name in the US at the South By South West festival, better known as SXSW. Half way between an industry event and the mother of all parties, nothing can prepare you for the scale of SXSW and any true music fan should have it high on their to-do list. Here’s Gallows' guitarist Steph on why he loves it:
“I think SXSW is the best festival that you could ever go to in your life. You wake up in the morning, roll out onto 6th street and there’s a road roughly the size of Oxford street in London where every shop or bar is a venue. There is a different band playing everywhere from 11am straight through until 4am the next morning.
“Its just unbelievable that that so much music can take place in a city for a week straight. You can go and see some of the best bands you will ever see in your life, some of the strangest bands you will ever see in your life, and you can even go and see your idols. I went and saw Metallica play in Stubbs bar last year to 1000 people and it was one of the best shows I have ever seen.”
Fellow guitarist Lags is quick to point out that Austin is just great all year round. “We’ve played there twice at SXSW but also on Warped and our last headline US tour,” he says. “It’s full of awesome punk rock bars, and it’s just a proper music town, there are live bands everywhere all the time.
We’ll leave it there before this starts to read like a transmission from the Texan tourist board, but this is just a taste of Gallows on Topman CTRL. Find out more about their favourite places around the world, their record collections and a whole lot more in the coming weeks on myspace.com/topmanCTRL.
Another month and another fantastic Topman CTRL goes by before we know it. September was the turn of French native electro-rockers Phoenix to curate their dream gig just for fans of Topman CTRL - and they definitely stepped up to the plate. Check out the review from the gig below, and if that wasn't enough we've even stuck some pictures down there for you too. Did we mention there's a video of the gig coming soon? Quench your CTRL thirst with the below and sit patiently for said video - good things come to those who wait!
Stepping out of the gloom under Glasgow Central
station and into the Arches you start to get a feel for why it’s a classic
venue straight away. There’s nothing like a bit of industrial chic and acres of
exposed brick to add an element of cool to proceedings but it’s more than that;
the place just has atmosphere. You could call it the X-Factor but somehow that
doesn’t seem appropriate.
First on stage were locals Paper Planes, showing that
Phoenix have got their finger on the pulse these guys are only just releasing
their debut material but have a well developed sound and a polished live show
that belies approximately one year’s hard gigging on the Glasgow scene. That
hard work is starting to pay dividends, they recently opened for Gang Of Four -
a once in a lifetime opportunity that not many bands are likely to achieve now
the grandfathers of angular post punk grooves play so rarely.
Paper Planes’ sound is hard to pinpoint but all the
better for it, a beguiling mix of jagged surf guitar riffing and grungy
post-punk attitude driven forward by front woman Jennifer Paley - an adopted
Glaswegian via New Jersey that sounds not a million miles from Karen-O.
Wild Beasts appeared with an air of confidence born
out musically from the first chord. Since the early days their show is
noticeably slicker, tighter and more powerful with big hitters from the new LP
like ‘Hooting & Howling’ and the single ‘All The King’s Men’ opening up and
coming alive on stage. What’s best is that you were left with the feeling that
the best might just be yet to come from these romantically inclined Cumbrians.
Top marks to both bands, and a definite ‘dix
points’ to Phoenix for their trans-euro-vision.
Don't forget to keep checking back on the CTRL Myspace for the latest news, info and competitions.
Previous controllers Phoenix have now handed the reigns of Topman CTRL over to UK punk heroes, Gallows. Gallows will be crashing their way onto Topman CTRL for the month of October. Hertfordshire born Frank, Lags, Steph, Stuart and Lee have made a lot of noise in a relatively short time since starting the band in 2005; gaining a well-deserved reputation as one of the most vital and exciting bands in the UK.
As well as taking over CTRL online, the band have hand picked a line-up of scorching hot new UK bands for CTRL live, taking place on October 29th at the Flapper in Birmingham. Headlining the night are NME Future 50 stars, Invasion, followed by Shapes from Gallows’ home turf in Hertfordshire and last but by no means least, Birmingham natives Soni-Quella.. Here's what Gallows have to say about their time in the hot seat...
"Topman CTRL will be sick. Our chance to show the good people of Birmingham what real music is all about, what more could you ask for?! Check it out and see the bands we think you ought to know."
Thomas, Branco, Deck and Chris, otherwise known as Phoenix, are our first French controllers hailing from Versailles, a suburb of Paris famous for its impressive palace.
What the Kings of France would have thought of Phoenix’s unmistakable
brand of dance-rock we’ll never know but they’re no strangers to French
royalty of another kind: the band actually got their break as a backing
band for Air and they also count Daft Punk, Etienne de Crecy and Cassius ‘et al’ amongst their close friends.
We’ll
have more on all that later in the month but we can reveal this snippet
from Chris now, “we have a friendly sense of competition with Air when
we are both working on new albums, sometimes we finish music at the
same time and we get together to listen and see whose album is best,
then have a dinner and some wine and we’re friends again”
That
all sounds very civilised to us, but the sense of brotherly love within
the band and with their friends isn’t all coincidence. Like the Black Lips
last month there are genuine brothers in Phoenix (Branco and Chris) but
they’ve been playing together for so long they may as well all be
siblings. The band started in the early 90s when they were just 13 and
not only does this familiarity help them make beautiful music together
but also affects the way they discover music new and old: a lot of the
music you’re going to hear about in the next month comes filtered
through the minds of four people thinking together as one, at times it
borders on spooky.
They officially became Phoenix in 1996 but
didn’t release their debut album, ‘United’ until 2000. It’s here that
you’ll find what’s arguably their best-loved single here in the UK, ‘If I Ever Feel Better’,
a euphoric slice of feel good electro-rock that hit these shores like a
breath of fresh air when Brit pop had gone stale. Chris from the band
is quick to point out that although the song was widely received as a
happy-go-lucky kind of track there was something darker at work in
there. “On ‘If I Ever Feel Better’ everyone saw it as a party track but
we always found that funny because the lyrics are very sad, like ‘no
one knows me and I’m lonely,’” he explains.
Unexpected
contrasts are looking like a bit of a theme; musically Phoenix have
given us a huge range of stuff to shine a light on , from the bubblegum
R&B of T-Pain to a series of keyboard music based on the twelve apostles its all to come here on CTRL throughout September.
Fast
forward nine years from their debut and the group have enjoyed
worldwide success with three more albums, the most recent being,
‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’ produced by their old mate Philippe Zdar
from Cassius. We have signed copies, gig tickets and other good stuff
coming up as prizes later this month, so add us as a friend if you
haven’t already to be in with a chance of winning those and check back
later this week for a whole load of those new music recommendations.
Find out more about Pheonix and CTRL by visiting our myspace site here.
Lumina, the side-project of The Horrors' Faris Badwan and former Ipso Facto member Cherish Kaye, is the reason why there's so much excitement surrounding the b-side of Black Lips' new single, "Drugs". Badwan has covered the Black Lips song "I'll Be With You" for the release and turned it into an intimate, gothic synth track - wonderfully different to the original.
With Black Lips in charge of Topman CTRL this month, you can hear this unlikely collaboration in full by clicking HERE.
