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Topman CTRL & Bestival Join Forces!

Bestival is one of the hottest festivals around selling out quicker than ever, if you weren’t lucky enough to get your hands on tickets, never fear! Topman CTRL and Channel 4 are your access to this year’s action. With a blistering line up of headliners including Dizzee Rascal, The Flaming Lips and The Prodigy, if you love music you won’t want to miss it.

 

For your viewing pleasure Topman CTRL has teamed up with Channel 4 to bring you a 60 and a 30-minute special show (Channel 4: Sunday 19^th September 23.50 / T4: Sunday 19^th September 12 noon* - also showing on 4Music and Q) followed by four 15-minute artist specials, featuring September’s Controller Rob Da Bank. Topman CTRL will also feature the best of Bestival 2010, with latest news and festival coverage and the chance to catch exclusive performances at www.topmanctrl.com

 

 

To celebrate Bestival’s boutique brilliance, Topman passes the keys to creator and DJ Pioneer Rob Da Bank as he takes control of www.topmanctrl.com this September. After choosing his favourite acts for the festival he will take you on a musical journey through Bestival 2010, an exclusive tour of backstage life and adding what makes him tick to his blog. Since founding one of the most innovative musical empires, Sunday Best, which incorporates a record label, club nights and festivals, Rob Da Bank has become one of the UK music scene’s most interesting entrepreneurs.

 

And the winner is...

In honour of our Controllers, We Are Scientists, we at Topman conducted an experiment and asked our Stylemail subscribers what they thought of Chris and Keith’s style. It was the style-off of the year with Chris’s smart, suited and booted look versus Keith’s fun, retro look.

 

The votes poured in and it was a very close competition but we can announce the winner, with 57% of the votes is Keith. You loved his look, retro printed tees and sweatshirts, skinny jeans and check shirts. (He is very pleased with the results).

If you missed out on the vote, sign up for Stylemail for more exclusives plus all the latest trends from Topman. You can sign up by submitting your email address at Topman.com.

To celebrate his style-off success, a rather smug Keith has signed 40 of our best-selling Micky Mouse tee shirts. Chris also grudgingly signed them all too.

 
You can get your hands on one of the tees by following Topman CTRL’s Twitter feed. We’ll be giving away all of the signed tees at a secret location in Brighton today (27th)  which we’ll be announcing on Twitter soon.

That’s all before We Are Scientists play their sell-out gig at Audio with their hand picked support acts. We can hardly wait, see you there?

Listen to The Charlatans' new album the week before its release...

‘Who We Touch’ is the latest album by The Charlatans, released on the 6th September. We’re giving you the chance to hear it before its release in selected Topman stores.

For your sneak preview get down to Topman Oxford Circus in London or the following Topman stores in Manchester: Market Street, Arndale Centre and Trafford Centre from 1pm on the 3rd September 2010.

The band’s 11th studio album promises to be their boldest to date. Lead singer Tim Burgess describes it as “a soulful voyage”.

P.S. If you’re a fan of Tim Burgess, keep your eyes and ears glued to Topman CTRL as Tim teams up with the iconic Salford Lads Club in October.
 

We Are Scientists present their Musical Map...

Keith and Chris give us a few tips on places round the world that have a musical connection for them. This time round its their home town of NYC via little detour through Riga, Latvia. Why? Watch the video to find out!

Check out Topman CTRL's site here for the full low down on every 'We Are Scientists'!

Missed the CTRL Tour? Watch it again on Channel 4

Friday the 13th, unlucky for some but not if you’re a music lover as The Topman CTRL Student Tour programmes repeat on Channel 4. Starting tonight relive the Tour which visited Newcastle, Leeds, Exeter, Nottingham and London.

First up we go back to The Other Rooms in Newcastle where The Futureheads, We Have Band and Let's Buy Happiness played an awesome set to a very lucky crowd.

Tune in to Channel 4 tonight at 00:30

CTRL Music Video Exclusive: I Am Arrows

Those lovely chaps at I Am Arrows have dug deep and offered Topman CTRL the exclusive 'Green Grass' animation. A lovely little piece of computer game inspired goodness...

Head on over to Topman CTRL's website here to find out more on I Am Arrows, CTRL and a whole lot more!

We Are Scientists Take CTRL

We’re extremely proud to welcome Chris and Keith of We Are Scientists as controllers this month; they’re a band well known for both their music and their love of a good gag so it’s bound to be a lot of fun at the sold out Brighton gig. (win tickets here) For this, the first week of their tenure we’ll be grilling them on their favourite new music starting with a selection of their top tips from the UK.

 
Where better to start than ex-controllers Chew Lips, who have supported WAS in the past over here. Keith breaks it down for us:

“We like The Chew Lips a lot, famous London trio Chew Lips. Are they famous or are they notorious? We don’t know, but what I like about them is they take the rock trio thing that We Are Scientists have sewn up and they up the game by making one of them a woman. We respect that.”

Moving along Chris is keen to advocate a band that he hasn’t actually heard, but still managed to win his heart, South London rockers The Vaults:

“We had never heard The Vaults. We met them at a party and pretty much fell in love with them as a band. They’re the best British band around at the moment. They were meant to email us some tracks; I think they felt intimidated about actually getting in touch. I feel like this is the first time a band has recommended another band that everyone will learn about with having heard them, this is a rich recommendation.”

Pulling things back towards bands that they have heard they want to move things closer to home, giving some props to their drummer’s side project, of course their drummer happens to be Andy Burrows. Chris tells us why:

“We love I Am Arrows, the new project of Andy Burrows from Razorlight, currently of We Are Scientists. The record came out in July. Andy plays guitar in I Am Arrows, he has been referred to, never by us but by a lot of people as the British Dave Grohl. Our manager and NME both referred to him as the British Dave Grohl.

Its clearly a thing people say about him now, unless it was our management telling NME, our management had a sit down meeting with NME and said he was like Grohl and also that he likes equestrian athletics. Next time Burrows does something with the NME there will be horses involved.”

Keeping things equestrian they name check one band that you will all have heard of, but that they love anyway, here’s Keith:

“I think Foals are probably way too big to be considered a new band, but we like them. Foals don’t need our help so there’s no point recommending to you”

Oops, looks like you still recommended them guys.

We Are scientists are playing at CTRL Live in Brighton on 27th August with I am Arrows. Tickets have sold out but you can still win tickets here.

Topman CTRL talks to Underage Festival stars about festival survival...

Heads up festival goers, this blog post is a must-read! The Topman CTRL guys have been busy chatting to a few of the Underage Festival stars ahead of this weekends entertainment.  Check out the entire article by clicking here. To wet your appetite, we've grabbed some wise words from Professor Green...

“My tip would be don’t crawl into a tent if it’s on a slant and sleep with your head at the bottom cause when you wake up, it’s not a great experience I can tell you.”

Topman CTRL: Exclusive tracks from the CTRL student tour!

Get a glimpse of some exclusively filmed performances from the CTRL Student Tour from all of the bands that played. Don't forget, you can keep up to date with everything CTRL over at www.topmanctrl.com...

Frankie & The Heartstrings - Ungrateful

Ungrateful has a great 1980's influence to it, once again the lads have produced a great rhythmic pop hit, check them out here performing live for the Topman CTRL student tour.

Lonewolf - Soldiers

A dramatic instrumental track, with warm vocals and impressive harmonies, one of the stand out tracks from the album 'The Devil and I' here are LoneWolf playing at the Topman CTRL student tour.

Kassidy - Take Another Ride

Kassidy bring their foot stompin' brand of blues rock to Exeter. This wasn't shown on the Channel 4 TV and you won't find it anywhere else. Enjoy!

Silver Columns - Cavalier

 

The Silver Columns electro sound reverberated round the arches of Shunt under London Bridge in a powerful fashion, experience a litltle of the magic here.

 

Yeasayer - Madder Red

 

Yeasayer perform at the legendary Shunt under London Bridge as part of the Topman CTRL Student tour. This track wasn't shown on the Channel 4 TV show.

 

Darwin Dees - Suicide

 

Disco dancing Darwin Deez plays Suicide live in Nottingham on the Topman CTRL Student Tour. You didn't see this one on the Channel 4 TV show so, enjoy!

 

Everything Everything - My Keys, Your Boyfriend

 

Everything Everything playing 'My Keys Your Boyfriend' live on the Topman CTRL student tour in Leeds at the Brudenell Social. What a venue, what a night!

 

Miike Snow - Animal

 

An exclusive outtake from the Channel 4 TV show, a spine tingling performance of Miike Snow's big hit, 'Animal'. You won't find this anywhere else, almost as good as being there!

 

Futureheads - Struck Dumb

 

Another online exclusive you won't have seen on Channel 4, The Futureheads in their home town (almost) of Newcastle ripping through 'Struck Dumb'. You can really get a feel for the gig here, intimate, rowdy, sweaty. In short, ace.

 

 

Topman CTRL Student Tour in Nottingham - Friday 16th Channel 4

Ah the memories… It seems like an age ago that the CTRL Student Tour van rolled into Nottingham bringing with it Rick Edwards and his chosen line up, Darwin Deez and Frankie & the Hearstrings.

Tonight though, at five minutes past midnight we get to relive the memories on Channel 4, so tune in to catch Rick and his all singing (and dancing) acts.

Find out more about the shows, and catch up on 4OD here.

To get the low down on the latest CTRL Student Tour happenings and to see what we’ve got lined up for you next, log into www.topmanctrl.com

Topman CTRL Student Tour – Friday 11th June 00:05 – Channel 4.