In musical terms, Iceland is probably still best known for its 1980s export, the Sugarcubes, featuring pop oddity Bjork. In recent years, Sigur Rós (pronounced See’er Rose) have been adding their name to the list of famous Icelandic exports with their freaky trip rock featuring songs with lyrics comprised of a language they made up themselves.
“Follow your heart. Don’t do shit if it don’t feel right!” Yarah Bravo probably has best been discovered in recent years as member of One Self alongside Dj Vadim and Mc Blu Rum. She also works as the sometimes front woman for ‘The Soundcatcher Soundsystem’ and live group ‘The Russian Percussion’.
Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky was born in 1970 in Washington DC, to academic parents. Following his college years spent amidst the ‘whispering pines’ of Bowdoin College, Main, and having picked up degrees in French literature and philosophy, Spooky began writing science fiction. In the mid-nineties he began his recording career with a series of singles and the ’96 album, ‘Songs of a Dead Dreamer’.
Well, not much has changed in ten years. That’s still the goal and the band clearly went some way to achieving it at this years Rock a Field where, if not exactly a Utopia, there was no scarcity of boys and girls drinking and dancing. If the Queens had some difficulties in getting to the field, it was as nothing compared with getting into the backstage area for journos. However, Upfront is nothing if not persistent, and persist we did. We managed to track down Queens guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen to ask him about new album ‘Era Vulgaris‘, working with ‘guests’, competition on the road and the importance of twiddling.
Principal members Maxi Jazz, Sister Bliss and Rollo have been concocting a combination of politically infused electronica/trip-hop for what will be 12 years this coming October. 5 albums and 4 compilations later and despite speculation of a split, Faithless are as strong as ever headlining several Festivals throughout Europe this summer. UPFRONT caught up with Maxi Jazz whilst he was in a car on his way to a gig in Norwich (UK).
Rarer still, in such situations, was my decision to follow my head. Predictably enough, it was a decision I lived to regret. The bands in question were, of course, The Arctic Monkeys and The Drones. One playing in the sold out Atelier (LU) and the other in, as it turned out, an embarrassingly empty Kulturfabrik (LU). When I spoke to Drones front man Gareth Liddiard, after an early sound check, he seemed resigned, and a bit pissed off, to have had the bad luck to be involved in such a fixture clash.
Would you believe me if I told you that FUJIYA & MIYAGI are closet R Kelly fans? If nothing else we ‘outed’ them during our interview with the trio who look set to fill dance floors around the globe either in person or by means of digital playback. Touring on the back of the latest release ‘Transparent Things’, Steve Lewis, David Best and Matt Hainsby from Brighton (UK) spoke candidly with UPFRONT about finally quitting the day jobs, the long road to this release and why their live show doesn’t suck!
Eternal Tango are a young band from the south of Luxembourg who are currently making very audible noise accross the Duchy. Having only been together, in their current formation for just over a year they head of to the Printemps du Bourges Festival, in France, this April (2007) to represent the Lorraine/Luxembourg region. David Moreira [...]