2011 has been Warpaint year.

An all-girls Californian rock band, is already a nice news in its own. But there’s much more. Let’s see.

Some bad.
John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers liking them to the point of being involved in the production. He’s the most genuine of the ‘peppers’ yet not the group you want to sponsor you.

Some good.
Warpaint are one of those bands that needs time to grew. They slowly enter the subconscious with a mixture of Beach House inspired dream-pop infused with some sunny west coast guitar arpeggios curated by someone in love with art-rock and art whatsoever.

At least in UK Warpaint took some time to grow into people minds. Included myself. A significative sign is that
Fopp price for the CD which rose from 6£ to 10£ while its contemporary records were going the opposite direction.

My first listenings to The Fool, Warpaint debut weren’t very successful. I wasn’t caught by the music, maybe distracted by too many things going on in my life to get seduced by 4 LA mermaids playing dreamy choruses and delicate guitars.
I archived the album on my CDteque without much troubles.

Then?
Then it happened that I has a small slice of Warpaint set at Primavera festival in Barcelona in May. They weren’t on my list of must-see acts but playing close to Yuck stage I went for few songs and left before the end to walk the mile to the main stage where Fleet Foxes were about to starting.

I was impressed by those few moments. In one of my very rare admission of being wrong I promised myself to give Warpaint a double chance. My mood and my life must have shifted into a scenario fitting their sound better.

Back home I gave the Fool a second chance and it sounded as it was a first time. Has it ever happened to you to relisten an album you didn’t like and fall in love with it? Some songs sounded ace and I didn’t really know how I couldn’t see that just few months before.

Undertow at those times would have been one of my track of the year. Too late to rank with 2010 list.
It’d be fun to review my best of lists after years and check what still stays there and what replaces forgotten music, but this is maybe going to be another post.

Newly excited by the LP, I checked the summer tour to find Warpaint were going to play Cambridge on the 11th of May. That was a perfect time and perfect venue to see and photograph them on their own tour in a small venue close to home.
Only after my first e-mail to chase a PR to ask for a photopass I realized that was the day Josh T Pearson was scheduled to play the Union Chapel. Tickets in one hand and photopass in the other, I wouldn’t have missed it for no reason.

Especially because it was also a nice night out with friends and an occasion to shoot side by side with Steve Gullick.
Don’t know whether because of my competitive soul or Josh T or the Union Chapel but I know that is one of my favourite photosets of the year.

On the backside, I missed Warpaint Cambridge gig and, I was told, it had been brilliant.

These images of the Californians came from their third appearance in my proximity in that couple of months. London, 6th of August. Field Day Festival. Victoria Park.

Shooting and seeing them on a big stage of a Festival isn’t the same thing, especially considering how many stages there where with “first three songs” rules to chase.
In the end I caught another small set of their show. Enough to have the confirmation of a nice band.

With the amount of show I photographed last year it took me few more months to post these photos.

Weird enough, I am now listening to the Fool special edition on Spotify while writing this. It includes the album plus their first EP I haven’t heard before. (Why do they make deluxe editions if not to rip fans off? I hate this.)

I am now sitting and not as convinced as I was this summer about the record. It must be a mood related thing.
My appreciation of Warpaint has always been related to my spirit. It’s the perfect band on a summer day with friends and sun. It’s less effective in winter times and a troubled mind.

From the moment Warpaint album was released to the moment I have found the time to write about them and post my photographs (mostly unpublished) the entire 2011 slipped away. And many things went with it.

Hopefully 2012 will bring some more of Warpaint music, and I’ll be there ready to emotionally react to their sound.

While we all wait, you can find Warpaint on the net here: [website][facebook][twitter][spotify][myspace]

Photo tip

Shooting festival gigs is very different from shooting a concert in a venue. I discussed this in several of my hundreds of tips on the pit.

Maybe of all differences the most useful is available light. Since there is no debate that photography is something else than picturing with light and, given that concert photography doesn’t allow the photographer much freedom of move and stage setting, shooting a stage lit by sunlight gives different images from a stage shot in a dark venue.

There are, as in everything, pros and cons. It is wise to get there prepared.

The main advantage is that you will not struggle with darkness. There will be light.
At summer festivals some shows are early enough to happen with plenty of daylight. Occasion for some changes.
It could be the time to use a slow telephoto. There’s less need of fast lenses easy to shoot at f/8 or more.
I am quite obsessed with the background noise of images so I take the advantage not really in a potential f/16 shot but in a potential 1/500s which means, if you have a fast lens, to shoot wide open with a fast shutter.
If you get the focus right a sharp image even of someone jumping is guaranteed.
Light also allows lower ISO which helps the ones with older DSLR, film and wanting some low noise raw files to get printed very large.

Disadvantage of much light is too much light. Too much light often means too much contrast. It’s really up to festival organizers (and the country where it happens). Worst case scenario if the sun sets right on the stage it’s trouble. Dark shadow and high contrast isn’t good for portraits.
One easy solution, if you are close enough, is to use flash. Even the one on the top of your camera body will do. I is forbidden but No one will notice the flash with daylight. The effect it has is to lower the contrast lighting up the dark shadows. It will save some images without changing the natural light that will still be the main source.

One unpredictable thing is the mixture of coloured and natural lights. It is difficult to control. Depending on several factors either one or the other will dominate, as you can see in some of these shots.
White balance in post production surely helps and is difficult to give a better advice than your taste. What I learnt is that the camera is much more sensible to the colours than the human eye is.
Those coloured spots that looks useless for a lightshow, will be much more visible on your photos. Consider including them for some special effects. Plain light image are usually not as dramatic as a gig shot under a multicolour light-show against a dark stage.

There may be much more to say, if it comes to my mind I’ll add them, if you do, please feel free to contribute.

Assuming this is also valid for a music photographer with blogging ambitions (me), time has come to post James Blake set shot last year and, more difficult, find some words to go with it.

I don’t like to publish a set of images about an artist without words. Internet is plenty and I like reading something about a gallery when I came across it, so I believe my reader would like that too.

I basically used 100 words to say nothing. Good try.

James Blake has been with few doubts (mine) a 2011 phenomenon. Since BBC voted it at the second place for the Sound of 2011 poll, his rise has been unstoppable.
Marginal observation, number one was Jessie J, number three the Vaccines.
If I had to follow BBC I’d give up music and start collecting butterflies. Thankfully there have been options.

The release of James Blake, his self title debut, last february, gave not only the music writers material to dance about architecture, which is pretty common. That record gave the music world enough inspiration and creativity to give birth to a plethora of albums blossoming by his debut.
Something not that common, must be acknowledged.

Who reads liveon35mm knows I am not a lover of electronica and sounds created on computers.
I am getting old, I am close-minded, I am conservative. I’ve been insulted with any sort of English and Italian word because of this.
Point is, I still haven’t found a music that is able to touch my feelings which is not composed through analogical instruments.

I appreciate some electronica, I prefer it when it gets extreme and is as far as possible from 80s and dance.
Nevertheless if it is old guitar rock’n’roll, or thoughtful songwriting I feel better.

To write this few lines I gave Blake another chance. I listened to the album several times. With scarce success.
I am still not getting the balance of dubstep, electronica, soul and Bon Iver he puts into his record.
After the third or fourth repeat of James Blake deluxe edition I needed an injection of SteveAlbinian Rock’n’Roll and I spotified the entire Slint discography.

I will do a surgical intervention here, to split the music from the singing.

James Blake Music is a balance of minimalism, electronica, samples and beat that underline his background as a producer.
Nothing very new, this blends go back in time several years. Even a totally ignorant person on dubstep (me) and a pretty much virgin on ambient (still me) can hear these influences. From Portishead to the cool bars of East and South London from pop minimalism to Feist, whose cover Limit To Your Love make him famous, Blake work is a revised mix of this sort of sound.

The magic mix comes with Blake voice. He loves soul. No doubt about this. I don’t. Soul it is probably the only other genre of music, with electronica and reggae that I can tolerate for no more than 15 minutes. I guess it explains many things.
Reviews keep citing Stevie Wonder as an obvious reference to me it is all about Justin Vernon and Bon Iver circa Emma Forever, Ago.

The combination of the coolest electronic music from South London, with a shaved version of Justin Vernon‘s intimate singing, is the secret of his success, especially in the second most trendy neighbourhood in the world after New York Greenwich Village: East London.

Those who don’t sympathize with mountains, bears and beards will sympathise with James Blake songs as much as some flanned shirt beardy man from Colorado loves Bon Iver.

Expectedly James Blake music soundtracked London throughout the year. Platoons of youngsters with moustaches, sunglasses and large headphones squeezed into any of his appearances.

His album has been ripped into any iTunes playlist and played at the opening of all the vintage photo exhibition happened in Shoreditch.

I met Blake live a couple of times. This set is from the Field Day festival happened in Victoria Park in August.

His fans packed the tent well before the concert started and stayed till the end despite the gzillions of simultaneous shows going on in the surroundings.
People were hypnotized by the combination of vocals and piano. I wasn’t.
I walked out before the end to chase the next interesting act beginning her set in the next stage: Anna Calvi, the other hype of 2011.

For James Blake as much as for Anna Calvi, history will tell if I am wrong and their fire will keep burning or I was right and both will vanish.
The feeling I have is that it won’t be their fault.
The second album is surely going to be the key event for both, but the consumption of music nowadays is so fast, genres change so quickly, people taste varies from one album of the month to the next album of the month that before Blake finishes his next collection of songs his fans may be heading to a heavy metal gig.

I do’t have more words, if I made you curious, you can follow James Blake online: [website][facebook][myspace][twitter][spotify]

Photo tip

It was plenty of photographers shooting James Blake. It was a festival which has loads of shooters and he was a key act.
Three songs in such conditions require a quick understanding of the situation and mutual respect between photographers.

Blake sits behind keys, which means position fixed. He sings, which means mic often covering the face.
There was a double set of backlights forcing the composition in a symmetrical way.

All summed up translates in: there was basically one spot where the right photo was possible.

Assuming promoters will never understand that dropping the three songs rule would help the artist as well as photographers with better images, the only way to shoot this show was to queue. Just one photographer staying there longer would be enough to block someone else getting their photos.

Tip is: if you are a photographer, don’t only be respectful for the artists on stage, keep an eye on the situation and on your colleagues and let them shoot too. Selfishness doesn’t pay. It can be your good chance one time but you’ll find a gig where your spot is the wrong one and would love to find a kind friend next to you.
Respect.

In the thirty years Sonic Youth changed the relationship between noise and rock, the 34th guitarist of all times (courtesy of Rolling Stone), has always been a busy man.

Thurston Moore discography goes well beyond the official (and already rich) Sonic Youth albums and solo production. It expands in a myriad of collaborations which have a cult following and would require an experienced archivist to be discussed here. Tapes only releases, strictly limited and coloured vinyls, soundtracks for unknown movies and whatever is needed to build up a mythological fame.

This is the last post of the year on liveon35mm. It has been a busy and difficult year, and I won’t speak about what I am not qualified. This 180th post on this little blog, will rotate around Demolished Thoughts, his latest solo work and one of my favourite albums of the year which surely contains my favourite song of the year: Benediction.

The photos, instead, were taken at a very special London date. For the first time Moore played his debut solo album, Psychic Hearts (1995) in its entirety, well almost, I will touch on this in a sec, stay with me.

Also last week, Thurston Moore did a reading of his poems at the University of Cambridge. Not being part of the hardcore fans, I actually didn’t know this further facet of his personality: poet.

I went and was happy to discover his deep passion for poetry, his knowledge for the underground poetry movement int the States (he owns a collection of thousands of soft published poems stapled and self released). Thurston read some old stuff to a cosy crowd of 50-ish people, most more into poetry than into Sonic Youth, which was interesting to see. He also premiered part of a diary he wrote in the (last?) Sonic Youth tour in South America few weeks ago. There is an hilarious poem on Julian Casablanca in it I’d love to share. Over a glass of red wine kindly offered by the University of Cambridge we had a chat about his large archive, the way the material gets revised, trashed, parked for future releases.
I couldn’t resist asking to sign the CDs (after I took them with me, you know), not so sure he was pleased by that. Don’t know if they were CDs or I was being a fan. Nevermind.

To end the intro, and not very relevant to his music production (Is it not? Maybe it is), Moore personal life marked a key moment in 2011.
He split up with Kim Gordon. Not only his wife for 25 years and mother of his daugther, but also Sonic Youth bassists who stood next to him for thirty years of stages and studios.

At present it is pretty much impossible to predict what’s going to happen to the band, but it would also be quite narrow-minded to think it will not have some sort of effect. Lee Ranaldo, his mate and fellow guitarist in Sonic Youth has a solo album to promote and said recently that the band is taking some time to think.

Demolished Thought (you can stream it here) is pretty much an acoustic album full of personal, intense, intimate songs. Yes real, beautiful songs. With Beck at the production it is easier to listen, nevertheless a jewel. Moore sings quietly and plays acoustic guitar throughout. Together with J Mascis solo debut, Several Shades of Why, also out this year, also beautiful, the nineties revival is demonstrating how much master songwriting there is and there was behind the layers of distortion and noise that characterised the alternative scene at the end of last century.

The first song Benediction, is an acoustic ballad, filled with violins and angelic arrangements and the rest of the album doesn’t move much from the formula. Most songs sound as conversations between Thurston guitar, with an electric violin and a harp responding to the opening chords. There’s plenty of instrumental bridges that he loves and his calm voice would not upset the customer of a quiet zone carriage.

The same band is on stage at the Electric Ballroom, harp and violin included.
This show follows another at the Union Chapel the night before. That was part of the Demolished Thoughts tour.

Tonight Thurston Moore gig is one of the ATP Don’t Look Back series. He is planning to play Psychic Hearts in its entirety.

Where Demolished Thought is about arpeggios on acoustic guitars, Psychic Hearts is more an electric affair where you can reconnect with Moore landmark bouncing guitar who defined his style and a genre with Sonic Youth.

Psychihc Hearts is not as easy listening as is not that easy to find. The merchandise desk, despite there is plenty of obscure stuff, has no copies of the album on any support.
There are even tapes (remember that?). They are bouncing back from being a discontinued to a collector’s items. Thanks to the lo-fi revival of the bands that used to record demos and writing the demos philosophy and are back on track.

What to expect tonight isn’t predictable. I see at least three options on the table. Psychic Hearts unplugged? Psychic Hearts faithful? Psychic Hearts revised?

Thurston Moore knows his job and goes for the third. He finds the balance in playing the album on acoustic guitar with the band touring with him, which comes handy.

The result is terrific.
After few funny minutes introducing the concert explaining that some songs will be not included because aren’t so interesting and the tracklist will be revised, Thurston Moore plugs the acoustic guitar and there’ll be nothing but the music.

He plunges into the opening track of Psychic Hearts, Queen Bee and Her Pals and by the time the song ends, the energy is high enough to make him crash against microphone and the sheets with all those handwritten lyrics are flying all over the photographers’ pit.

Two things emerge during this show.
An incredible guitarist can get even an acoustic guitar on fire.
Psychic Hearts isn’t going to be played from start to end, which is not disappointing. With this band the two albums merge nicely into a wonderful cocktail of songs and ‘acoustic sonicism’.

It’s less than a hour of music when Moore salutes, this is pretty disappointing, but it is the usual theatre bit of rock concerts.

A couple of minutes and Moore is back for another bunch of songs from both albums with a Sonic Youth cameo.
Then he goes and comes back again for a second encore. Being one encore the standard, the exception to confirm the rule says that either you don’t play an encore or you must play at least two.

All I am waiting now are two songs.
One is the obvious Elegy for All the Dead Rock Stars, the 20 minutes of sonic delirium closing Psychic Hearts. It arrives translated in 20 minute of awesome live noise delirium on stage, surely the best moment of the night.

This is the real bonus the people at the Electric Ballroom get tonight compared to the Demolished Thoughts tour.

The other desire was, of course, Benediction. Which fails to happen. Flipping through the setlists of his recent gigs I am less disappointed. For some reasons Thurston Moore is not playing that song since he restarted the tour this autumn.

Benediction was a constant presence on the first dates in the spring/summer.
In the middle there have been some Sonic Youth shows and the split with Kim. If this has anything to do with the the song, I don’t know. I didn’t dare to ask him at the Cambridge Lecture.

With benediction in her eyes,
Our dearest gods are not surprised.
You better hold your lover down,
Tie him to the ground.
Whisper “I love you,”
One thousand times into his ear, kiss his eyes,
And don’t you cry girl, he won’t disappear.
But I know better than to let you down.

With benediction in her mind,
She’ll never get you back in time.
You better hold your lover down,
And tie her to the ground.
Simple pleasures strike like lighting,
Scratches spell her name.
Thunder demons swipe her halo,
And then they run away.
But I know better than to let her go.

With benediction in her eyes,
Our dearest gods are not surprised.
You better hold your lover down,
And tie her to the ground.
Simple pleasures strike like lightening,
Scratches cross her name.
Whisper “I love you my darling, life is just a fling.”
But I know better than to let her go.

More on Thurston Moore can be found on:
[His section on Sonic Youth website] [sonic youth website] [facebook] [Twitter]

Photo tip

2011 concert wise is over, time for some end of the year considerations.

A key year for my concert photography. It has been the first since I started photography that I shot fully on digital.
Not a single roll of film developed in my darkroom throughout winter and summer months. To write this feels pretty sad. Said that, the amount of time, money and dedication film photography requires doesn’t pay anymore.

If I had even a single magazine wanting negatives (because they are film) end willing to pay for them, I’d load my Contax and be back on spending my nights in the company of smelly darkness.

Truth is, no one cares. Vintage is cool, film is cool, true, as long as it is shot on digital with Hipsamatic filters and uploaded on twitter through a smartphone. Ask how many of todays film lovers have ever developed a roll. Ask how many have even loaded a film camera.

I did more festivals and less single shows, and learnt that if shooting a concert is fun, shooting a festival is a profession.

So said the profession of music photographers isn’t in a nice position. Music Photography will always stay, but music photographers will not be professionals. With professional I don’t mean having a pro camera but that their income comes from (and only from) their music photography activity.

There are probably not more than 30 people (thirty) earning a life only from a music photography activity. With 30.000 (thirty thousands) members of the Concert Photography FlickR group, you do the math. Whether those 29970 earn money with weddings or a daytime office job or are just passionate, it doesn’t really matter.
What it says is that earning 50£ for a stamp size image once a month on a newspaper, with new pro bodies costing  100 times that price, photographer’s money has to come elsewhere.

The reason is only partially because there are not money in editorial budgets. A big part plays the fact that the budget shrank since within the music industry has passed the concept that photography can be available for free.

This is possible because plenty of wannabe concert shooters feed it. They do not only provide their image for free to no-profit blogs (which could be ok at a sensible pace) but, and this is the critical bit, they provide free images to magazines, managements, bands and artists that indeed work for a profit and have a budget that must include the costs of photography.

It’s plenty of articles and debates on the web about this, Music Photographers Facebook page is very active on the issue, especially on the battle against grab release forms, so I won’t bother you more.

I will end the year suggesting you a link:

Reasons Why Professional Photographers Cannot Work for Free

It is a letter written as a response to anyone asking to a photographer to work for free. It has been translated in several languages. Bookmark and send it to the next person who asks for your images in change of credits and visibility. It’ll explain why this is not possible and not sustainable anymore.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, see you in 2012 with some missing gems I didn’t find space to publish this year.
In the meanwhile you can enjoy my Music Portfolio HERE and if you wish order one one of the images as a fine-art print delivered straight to your door.

Ciao
Valerio

It’s more than 10 years Okkervil River are at the centre of attention of anyone interested into Americana flavoured indie-rock.
Whether you call it folk-rock or alt.country, they are part of it. They are one of the seminal bands for the genre.

It’s this week news the announcement of 2011 Grammy’s nomination list.
No, don’t get me wrong, Okkervil River are not among the nominees, but that is not the point. The point is that they could have well been. Which is as breaking news as if they were.

Scrolling through the endless (beyond the limit of ridicule) best >>put-the-genre-here<< record of the year list, there is something interesting.
The most attentive readers have noticed that, among the usual pop, soul and hip-hop bland stars built in a studio to make Grammy’s albums and take part at the Grammy’s grand gala, there’s a validation of a trend.

With the inertia that a corporation as big as a blue whale needs to move, the alternative folk rock scene has been accepted into the mainstream music world of the Grammy’s.

Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, My Morning Jacket, Wilco, The Decemberists and the Civil Wars are all nominated for one or more awards.
The groovier the Black Keys are back after last year prize.
Rockstars as Eddie Vedder, leader of Pearl Jam, approached the vein with an improbable project titled Ukulele which also got a classic “you’re-famous-so-you’re-in” Grammy’s nomination.

Last year Grammy’s it was Arcade Fire‘s turn to enter the elite club. It made all the orchestral, ‘pompous-pop’, grand ensembles rock a reality for the humans reading beyond Pitchfork.

This year not a single band but several examples of rock music inspired, a way or another, by American roots is in and some (Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes I would predict) have real chances to win the prestigious (?) award.

Last decade the independent scene was lead by indie-guitar art-rock bands and leather jackets such as the Strokes, followed in the UK by the likes of The Libertines.

This decade, or at least these last 5 years, saw the implosion of those indie-guitar bands due to an overcrowded scene and lacklustre ideas. Simultaneously the acoustic/folk affair grew both side of the Atlantic.
From Fleet Foxes to Noah and The Whale, from Emmy the Great to Band of Horses from Bon Iver to Wilco all grew exponentially and set the standard. No surprise big labels wanted their slice of the cake. Chart-pop edulcorated versions arrived including what the Guardian beautifully described as the ‘New Boring’ scene cashing on the likes of Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling and, above all, Adele. So far the biggest selling artist of the century. Loads of Grammys nominations this year to her too, acoustic music is about to conquering the world.

Okkervil River are not among the bands nominated to the Grammys because they have been more pioneering. Their best albums were released four or five years ago, at the sunrise of this vein (hence pioneers) and far too early to be noticed by the Grammy’s blue whale.

Okkervil River music is somewhere at the meeting point between the indie scene of the beginning of the decade and the folk infuse setting that followed.
They were too late (and too Southern) for the first and too early for the latter.

Formed in Austin, Texas, by Will Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg their first appearances, needless to say, were at the SXSW, the festival showcasing new music and happening in their town.
It was the end of the nineties, of that original line-up probably only Will Sheff, the singer and undisputed leader, is still in the group.

Sheff and Meiburg have been working together also on another project: Shearwater.
With a more psychedelic infused sound, Shearwater success caused the departure of Meiburg from Okkervil River and of Sheff from Shearwater. The two basically took one band each and went their own ways after about 10 years.

Back to Okkervil River, it needed a big effort to break through a restrict group of hardcore fans. That day arrived with the release of Black Sheep Boy in 2005, to me, still their masterpiece. A concept album set around the heroin addiction of country singer Tim Hardin is a record full of emotionally intense songs.
It captures at the first listening and never go away.

From that album Okkervil River journey has been on a much more comfortable stream bed. Black Sheep Boy sold in the tenths of thousands, charted Billboard and opened the doors to the following albums. In the meantime the scene became more welcoming to this music, Pitchfork started being called PitchfoLk and praised most of their releases since.

A legend as big as Roky Erickson, 13th Floor Elevators legendary leader, asked them to be the backing band for his 2010 True Love Cast Out All Evil LP. Not a very convincing record, surely not Okkervil River fault. It would have been even less convincing without Will Sheff and friends contribution.

Okkervil River arrive at Koko on a November night after almost a year continuously touring their latest record, I Am Very Far, one of their more folkier and another big success.

As soon as Will Sheff gains the Koko stage to set his instruments the crowd show love. His nerdy intellectual look, including a brown suit and thick spectacles, reminds me of a Texan version of Jarvis Cocker.
He is the frontman, the other members are part of his project.
Lauren Gurgiolo, who has joined the group only few years ago, has become the most important and effective member. Her guitar parts work perfectly along Sheff‘s most melodramatic vocals.

Concert formulas and set-lists are nowadays standardised. Unsurprisingly the show rotates around the last album with insertion of tunes from the past catalogue that become more concentrate towards the end.

Nevertheless a nice version of For Real happens while I am still shooting in the pit. When the show gets to the end the more crowd pleasing songs arrive together with the shivers going through people’s spine. As a good wine, they spread their intense flavour in the air.

The band comes back for an encore that goes back in time. It opens with a cover of Ted Lucas It Is So Nice To Get Stoned and closes with Westfall, picked from the 10 years old debut album, Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You See.
Such a perfect show, that proves how important is to be playing live, relentlessly, for months.

I now understand why I hadn’t loved this band enough. Because I haven’t seen them live. Now, who reads liveon35mm could say that it is not the first time I say this, and you’re right. Reason is that I choose to see mainly bands that are renowned to play great live sets. So it’s not coincidence just a bit of lazy writing.

Okkervil River will now have a deserved break, enjoy Christmas festivity and celebrate the new year in style, thinking over a whisky or two what to do next.

To please the fans they have just released a free EP, Golden Opportunities 2, containing some covers. It opens with Ted Lucas It Is So Nice To Get Stoned played at this gig, it can be downloaded in high quality mp3 from their website (link here).
One more reason you can can stay in touch with the band at the following links: [website][facebook][twitter][spotify][myspace]

Photo tip

If Annie Leibovitz wasn’t enough, backing iPhone 4S camera as a proper camera replacement, her financial problems must have caused a sell-out of her proper gear, yesterday on the Observer there was an interesting comparison daring the unspeakable.

The Observer put together iPhone shots vs Canon Mark II pro DSLR and concludes in some condition a phone is better.
Seen through a careful eye of who knows the subject (read: a photographer) there is nothing to compare between the two.
If some of the iPhone pictures (especially the ones taken in tricky light conditions) seem better than the Canon DSLR it is because the iPhone does on the spot what a DSLR user is expected to control in front of a proper monitor. Post-Editing. No photographer would pay a couple of thousands pounds to have a camera taking control.

What the article, instead, fails to say is where the iPhone is indeed better than the DSLR. It’s not on quality, it’s on versatility.
These Okkervil River photos above, proper shot on a DSLR and edited on a computer, took me some time downloading and editing to be ready.
A few shots taken in sequence on my phone, stitched into a panoramic set (below click to enlarge) and uploaded on facebook, twitter and G+ all at the same time, took the outro of one of the Okkervil River less interesting songs to be online.

Both the iPhone and the pro DSLRs take pictures and they can take the same subject but they are not the same photo.
As you wouldn’t use instagram to show your portfolio, you wouldn’t enter a pit with an iPhone to cover a gig.

I have been after Other Lives in concert for months, so when I read about a Shepherds Bush appearance I started all my PR seducing techniques to get a pass… and a ticket to stay, which is a must-have thing at the Empire.

It wasn’t a big hassle, considering their online press is the best, kindest in UK. Nevertheless when I was approved I was overexcited.
I thought this would have been a very big show for them. Very deserved.

The day of the gig I got my e-mail printed, I got off work a bit earlier, I got to the station, took the train to London, tube… usual stuff. Shepherd’s Bush Empire is 2 hours away from Cambridge so I limit my journeys there to bands very important to me. Other Lives checks that box.

I also avoid arriving to gigs last minute, just in case there’s a nice support or to hang out with fellow photographers or friends.

So easy was to get a pass, so pain-in-the-back is dealing with Shepherd Bush Empire crew. I arrive and stand in front of the tiny box office window with the same feeling of being interviewed at the border by a police officer convinced you are a criminal trying to flee the country

The girl stares undecided whether I am a terrorist wishing to blow out the building or a mythomaniac pretending to be a famous photographer to stab the band leader.
I go: “There should be a photopass in my name, Valerio”. This is to hear back, behind a cynic smile while searching hand written lists: “I am sorry there is nothing for you”. My name is NEVER on the list there.

I search for the e-mail, show it, all cleared. Photopass sticker sorted and usual end of the drama. “I told you” “I’m sorry there has been an error it’s not my fault if your name isn’t hear I can’t let you in”. “My name was there” and the cynic smile travels back from me to the owner.

Out on the street, I head to the venue’s back door. They allow photographers in the pit only seconds before the band arrives. I get kicked off (the venue) after the third song; I leave the camera gear backstage and take the receipt/number to claim it back (one day I will lose that micro-piece of paper and will have to leave my gear to Empire’s security, I know it will happen).
I walk back into the venue (a missed song later, at least) only because I could show a proper ticket.
This was all for Elephant, the support band.

In fact, it was only when I noticed the stage times sheet on the Shepherd Bush Empire backdoor while waiting for the number/receipt that I realized Chapel Club were the main act tonight, playing after Other Lives, a second support.

Chapel Club, pretty unknown, headlining. Other Lives one of my favourite bands of the year, supporting them? My perception of the music scene is severely biased.

All this journey for a meagre 30-40 minutes/six songs set (minus one song to leave the bag, details above)!
Would this be worth? Was my big question around 8PM
Yes, It was! The easy answer around 9PM

Other Lives are otherworldly. Untrue on a literal sense, but it gives the idea of something special.

They gets inspired from Fleet Foxes harmonies and have the same impact of them on stage. Which is a big statement not a music comparison.
I think musically they owe more to the late Midlake from the songwriting perspective, but surely in the philosophy and the stage attitude they reminded me of Seattle new heroes.
Put the two together, expect something big.

Other Lives music has not a lot to compare with what you listen to on the album, despite their latest Tamer Animals is brilliant, live it improves.

The band five members bring such a huge sound on stage. The songs levitate as if the venue was a hot oven (it actually was tonight) where you’re baking your homemade muffins.

From the dough, you already know they will taste good, but it’s when they rise, when the heat propagate the smell, that moment you can’t resist.
You also know you can’t open the oven otherwise they got flabby.

Translating, this stupid metaphor means you want to listen to Other Lives live set in religious silence. The sophisticated arrangements they bring on stage develop the songs and require no distraction.

Unfortunately London isn’t the best place to listen to a concert in silence. Unless it’s jazz at Barbican or classical at the RFH, these days sport is to chat, drink, snap, video, upload or do every other activity smartphones can do except putting attention and pointing the ears and the eyes onto the music.

Imagine this projected on a gig where Other Lives are not even the headliners: bad. A gig at which they are opening for a band (I will discover later) with nothing in common musically with them: worse.

For once I enjoyed the gig more during the three songs allocated for the shooting than for the other three (minus one) songs I could stand in the audience.

All the same, nothing could release me from the perception that I was in front of a great band performing in the wrong… oven, erm, place.

Unfortunately I missed their gig at Giles in The Field a couple of days ago. With the news that they will be opening for Radiohead American tour in 2012, I feel the occasions to catch this band in an intimate venue are running short.

Maybe I will meet them again headlining Shepherds Bush Empire next year. It would be a nice way to celebrate and delete… I mean… forget this night.

This is the web places to be in touch with them [website] [facebook] [twitter] [myspace]

Photo tip

Mobile phones turned into smart phones sometime few years ago and became everything but phones. Mainly compact (video)cameras connected to the web full time.

Social networks boomed. The need of gratification coming from recognition (nowadays called “to like” “to retweet” “to follow” “to +1″) today is more important than the gratification from having fun at a concert.
It is about being cool and climb the coolness peak. It’s about hearing from our cooler friends how cool we are (so to increase our coolness factor) and make the less cool friends jealous (so to confirm our cooler position)

We moved from living life to sharing life. (shall I tweet this? I will)
We moved from watching life to recording life. (and this)

Anything we do today has a urge to be shared. Shared to get feedback. Feedback is a new kind of currency. Often a surrogate that fulfills the lack of payment. It goes like “I don’t earn as a photographer/writer/musician/blogger but I am cool because I have xxxx followers”. Klout.com score epitomize this. The New York parties (waiting for the East London leg) allowing you in only whether you have a Klout score above a certain number takes the Social Network addiction to a pathological level.

Let’s be clear, I’m not being snobby. I’m not immune, I don’t deny progress, I’m part of this. I am omnipresent on every social networks, I sign to them, check them, some I enjoy, some I neglect. This site would be much less visited without them. So they are indeed useful for visibility (not to earn an income but this is a different matter) and for plain fun.

I am interested to these psychological patterns. I’d like to read an essay on “the need of recognition and the satisfaction obtained by feedback from social networks”. If you are aware of something like this being written or want to write I will buy a copy.

Instagram is the iPhone-only photo social network. Being iPhone it is not a limit (million of iPhone users out there) and has the advantage that all its members have at least one thing in common: an iPhone. Genius.

Second it has a sort of old fashion, vintage film camera photos appeal that embodies the “hipsters” community. With the advantage of being digital and on your phone it easily went viral. So at UK indie gigs it is a must have thing.

The end point or my reflection is: social networks rise is unstoppable. We have to deal with it. The relevance of one network against the other will change (remember Myspace?) but there will always be a mass of people out there in need of recognition using YouTube or YouSomethingelse.

Where’s the photo tip?
Here: Please, whatever you do with your smartphone at concerts, try to do it unobtrusively and silently. I will follow you!

This was taken with Instagr.am at this gig.

In the stalls it’s sweating hot. The legion of people that didn’t leave a single ticket to the league of touts desperate outside to buy one, make it clear how the Girls concert in Camden is the hottest tonight, regardless the other 4, 5 big names playing in town.

In the pit is freezing cold. The air conditioned blows over my neck at an Icelandic temperature during the set of the support, provided by the inspired Spectrals. Shame the cute bass player had to cover her sexy red dress with an heavy coat.

Girls are from San Francisco, and the relaxed hippie Californian look of someone who’s used to live under the sun permeates their music since the debut album titled… Album.

The image they send is positive. Colourful. The smell of the real flowers taped on microphones on stage make me forget the air-con with memories of Frisco sunny streets.

Reading into the life of the band and in particular of Christopher Owens, the lead singer, mentor, writer; the ‘hippie’ influence takes a quite dramatic U turn from the flower power cliché we European are used to put on Californians.

As reported in this beautiful interview in the Guardian (and in Led Zep lyrics) all that glitters ain’t gold!

Owens past is a novel in itself, not always a nice one. He was raised in the sect of Children of God, one of those New Religions making up a cult mixing up alternative views of the Bible, some (in this case) hippie philosophy from the 60s and someone who believes to be a prophet enough to convince some others.

In Owens words: “Imagine being told everybody else in the world is bad, rejecting technology, rejecting medical research, being devoted to God and believing America was evil and the end of the world was coming: all the same principles.”
But also “I don’t like talking about the Children of God experience as entirely bad, because it wasn’t. I miss the sound of 300 people together singing in a room spanning from age two to 50. That’s something I’ll never have again.” There may be some gold in the glitters, as he will point out later.

From his biography to Girls music there’s enough material to make Freudian psychoanalysts at ease with a couple of essays on sublimation.

What started as peace, love and freedom to be emancipated from an evil world, to Owens and his cult became a prison where even music wasn’t allowed when not performed by Children of Gods’ members.
He had been trapped into this parallel reality until his teenage years when he someway managed to get out.
Expectedly he didn’t reject the principle of refusing the world he grew up with. Owens just used a different, alternative, antiparallel route to avoid society: Punk, sex and drugs.
He says: “(Heroin) never lets anyone go, that changes everybody’s life. The drug you can only relate to as the warmest hug you’ve ever received.”

Sublimation into music of such a difficult background could only produce great results.

Girls were born when Chris met with Chet “JR” White, the band bassist.
The turning point that saved his life much more the Children of God pretended.

“We’d fall asleep during takes, playing the guitar. Very dark. But that drug helped me a lot. I was in a lot of pain.”

The sense of freedom coming from not having any boundaries, either (pseudo)religious or chemical, the hippie communal cheerful background, the hardcore punk listening together ended up into the songs they recorded.

It’s no surprise Album, the debut LP came as a breathe of fresh air in 2009 music landscape. Those songs are immediately classic, they are classic rock. They are contemporary rock.

There’s the west coast of the sixties, there’s rock’n'roll, there’s soul but there is also noise, coarse guitars. There is everything that made rock great and all that everything springs out fresh also because of the segregation Christopher Owens was trapped. As when Roger Daltrey in Tommy runs wild singing I’m Free.

I don’t know the origin of band’s name. Judging from the advantageous position of the Electric Ballroom pit, I’d say it refers to the fans. Inverting the indie/alternative trend, the first row and most of the audience is a girls-only affair tonight. All screaming after their idol. I haven’t seen such devotion since I shot some post-teen indie-pop .

With his angel blonde look, Chris Owens instantly recalls the last of rock heroes: Kurt Cobain. The weird bio, the screaming fans and most of all, the songs, Girls have all the ingredients. A new rock myth is ready to start.

Who was lucky to be in tonight, witnessed it.

Girls are touring their second full length album: Father, Son, Holy Ghost.
If I hadn’t already bought the CD version I’d buy it on vinyl just because of the brilliant cover with all the lyrics printed on the front. It doesn’t happen that often anymore to see seminal record covers.

On the cover there’s also a “Record 3″ in capital.
A statements highlighting how much the band considers the EP, Broken Dreams Club as a proper record despite it’s just 6 songs long.
It’s a sensible statement. Most bands would be desperate to write six songs as those in their career.

It’s not surprise that tonight’s set opens with one of those songs. Heartbreaker it’s like a punch in the stomach. It breaks all the broken hearts gathered in the front rows. Heads wave at the rhythm of an electric guitars ballad lullaby-ed by the sweet voice of Christopher Owens.

U turn and the waving become dancing at the upbeat rhythm of Laura. The cheerful mood from the song, taken from the debut LP, seems to get a smile in everyone’s face which projects onto the band members. They seem surprised to be so enthusiastically received. “This is a tour highlight” one of them whispers.

Girls are an emotional band. Emotional is Owens, emotional the songs, emotional the playing. Throughout the concert they scan a whole rainbow of emotions. The lyrics touch all aspects of ours life. Love, death, delusion and happiness. Touch all the hot-buttons were an indie fan likes to be touched.

Love Like a River is basically Beatles’ Oh! Darling revisited by Otis Redding. This justifies the three back vocalists adding so much soul into that tune to send shivers on everyone’s spine for the next 5 minutes.

In over 90 minutes there wasn’t a weak moment. I could carry on with a song by song review, I won’t. Some mention are obliged.
Honey Bunny’s sunny mood brings happyness. Lust 4 life brings that vintage west coast 60s sound so in fashion in the last five years to have started a surf-revival. None of the other bands in the league, Best Coast, Drums, Cults, Tennis… are any close to be half as good.

The epic new single, Vomit, beyond the unpleasant title is a touching ballad interlaced with one of the most cracking guitar sound I heard this year. If you wanted the proof Stephen O’Malley has been studied well beyond is experimental niche, you are served.

Despite all of this and more, my best moment of the night goes to Die. Without doubts among my favourite songs of the year. A riff for which Ritchie Blackmore would have killed for. A song that annihilate anything hard rock and psychedelia have tried to put into a trip song since Deep Purple’s Highway Star.

I was left awestruck in admiration, in front of 5 guys playing so naturally the best set of the year.

Girls is a band at his peak. It is touring its greatest hits 25 years before their reunion.
With three albums scoring a 9+ mark over Pitchfork database (I don’t think anyone else can claim such a record), there’s no need of more of my words to convince you to chase them.

Girls don’t seem to have an official website but they are quite active on social networks, find them on [facebook] [twitter] [myspace]

Photo tip

Can’t remember if I said something about white balance in my 160+ tips on concert photography, but I want to say something related.
Actually, I’d like to know what fellow photographers do.

Concert lights are coloured. Everyone knows.
If the photographer doesn’t opt for a B&W set, there will be lot of colourful pictures in your flow.

There will also be a lot of colour dominants. Like all-red, all-blue, all-magenta. Now, this is what the camera records assuming what is white and what is not.
If you shoot raw (instead of jpeg which you should never use), it is possible to reverse that with a wide margin.

With any post-editing software you pick a “should be white” area (I find the eye of a performer is the best when available, but there’s always some white/grey/black in a frame) and you revert it deciding what should have been really a grey area despite the coloured spot.

Now, this is not a faithful representation of the reality.
That magenta light, was indeed magenta. A white guitar becomes magenta during that song.
Making it white (and changing every other tint accordingly) changes the mood of the image. It creates something that didn’t exist.
Extrapolating the concept, something the band didn’t want to be like that.

Point it that often it it looks more balanced, more real in a word: better.

So what’s your professional ethic? Do you change white balance cheating on the original light scheme to achieve a better composed colour spectrum?

This is Emmy then. Shot on B&W 35mm film. I never published this shots anywhere, never even scanned until today.

She hadn’t published any album too, at that time.
She wasn’t very much known, surely I hadn’t heard of her.
But I never forgot such a “bold” name. I misread it as desire of an ambitious future, which is not, it intrigued me.

What I remember of that short set, was that Emmy was… erm… great. Great, cheerful and funny. Very funny.

I loved the self-confident, brave attitude of a twenty-something girl, alone on stage, strumming her acoustic guitar and telling funny stories in front of an audience that hadn’t heard of her.
I remember of going online to know more, finding some photos or videos or something (can’t remember now) with kitten. I love cats, so that bound me to her.

Not too tight, really. It took until 2011 before our paths crossed again. I wanted to see her own, solo live show.

In the years Emmy kept playing, touring and recording. She made two albums and found her place in the crowded London singer-songwriter area.

First Love, her debut, made the Top Ten album of New York Times, which is an achievement for an English young artist.
Virtue, her sophomore LP out for a few months now, confirmed the many virtues of this young artist.

…and this is Emmy today.

She finally arrived at the tiny, yet sold-out, Junction2 in Cambridge.
The situation is different now. People come to listen to her.
Thanks to its renowned Folk Festival, Cambridge is a kind of UK capital of acoustic and folk music. Audience is demanding and the setting is important.

Emmy (Lee-Moss, her real name) knows. She arrives on the big stage elegantly dressed. Backed by her full band. The audience is in a cavity in the stalls so that, for a change, the all-seated area is below the stage level.

The show opens with Eastern Maria, follows with Dinosaur Sex and goes on for a while without speaking a word outside the lyrics.
I thought something changed in the years. That young girls became a woman, that jaunty cheerful attitude I remembered got lost in the smokes of success.

I was wrong. Emmy only needed to break the ice (maybe this is an Italian only expression? Whatever).
Few songs melted it. The chats, the jokes and funny anecdotes arrived to complete the night and made the show as entertaining as I remembered. More.

Emmy surprised me with her music. Her songwriting is bright, the songs tell simple stories but are beautifully written.

The apparently frivolous Dinosaur Sex, the opening song in Virtue isn’t as light as its lullaby suggests. I think “…and dinosaur sex led to nothing” is a brilliant verse.

As everyone is emotional about first love, but few managed to talk about it so candidly “Now the thought of you is burnt on my body from the first time you did rewind that line from Hallelujah. The original Leonard Cohen version.” It seems to be in that room. To hear that Cohen line.

Emmy words are never banal. Plus Emmy the Great music has melody. Songs are arranged and sophisticated and her guitarist does a superlative work on guitar to move away from clichés.

Cliché? Yes, because the music press easily confined (and confused) Emmy as a member of the anti-folk (alt.folk, whatever.folk) scene. A mistake. It doesn’t always work as: a girl plays acoustic guitar, the Guardian loves it, bang! It is alt.folk stuff. No, it’s not.

Emmy goes beyond. She may start from somewhere close to Jony Mitchell or Martha Wainwright but she goes further. The declared love for Weezers, which reads ‘the alternative american scene of late eighties early nineties so crucial to rock history’ permeates the soul of her music. And is in the chords of her band.

Emmy was born in Hong Kong and grew up in London. Out of this exotic cocktail the songs come as juicy and unpredictable as picking Dim Sums at random from a menu written in Chinese. They are all different, they all taste good.

There is no reason to compare Emmy the Great to Laura Marling (who is much less original in her songs’ structure) or Lily Allen (whose lyrics may be as direct but talks about a different world). Emmy Lee-Moss is a different artist.

In a bright balance between sensuality and feminism her voice knows how to reach unexpected height, as when the band leaves her singing an almost a-cappella version of Trellick Tower. Intense to the point of being touching. A rarity.

She left her most autobiographical song for the encore.

We Almost Had a Baby is a girl manifesto. Simple as a manifesto must be, not banal as such arguments risk to be.

And this is Emmy best virtue. She sounds a very down-to-heart person, as a girl and for the stories she sings, but she is never obvious in the way she does it.

“well you didn’t stop, when I told you to stop
and there was a month when I wasn’t sure
if the next time I saw you out on the road
I’d have something to say, other than pay
all of the money that you owe.
and I would have liked to have something above you
to have something to hold
and know I could choose to let it grow
and I would have called you and I’d have said hey
you know I’m in control and I’ll let you know
if you have to come and choose a name
and I will think of you now that we are apart
I put my hand across my gut I plan to feed it with a heart
I ‘m not the girl that you remember from the start
I was only a baby now I am what you made me
and once you left me in the spring
and twice you left in fall
and once I tried to make a life
to keep myself in yours
do you think of me when you are playing the one and five in four
is country music what your life is for?
We Almost Had a Baby”

It doesn’t happen often that I buy a CD after a gig; it rarely happened that I have bought two. This was the very first time I got out of the venue only after Emmy signed both of my copies.

If live music was always so good on surprising me I’d go to a concert a night.

Emmy The Great is an avid [twitterer] follow her. She is also on [facebook] [myspace] [website]  plenty of way to be in touch.

Photo tip

This was a bit unusual.
It is normal that a stage is elevated compared to the audience, but it is not normal that this happens because the stalls are below the theatre level.

When the Junction 2 ‘The Shed’ is set into its all-seated option, this is what happens.
From the audience, the perspective doesn’t really change much, from the photographer it does a lot.

I was on the same level of the stage, which is good to have a non tilted perspective, but I couldn’t stand central without blocking audience’s view.
With the addition of the delicate, almost acoustic sound of Emmy’s music, the situation gets trickier.

What to do?

Stand on one side. Choose in advance, I mean before the show starts, the best. It’s not nice to walk in front of the artist while she’s on playing. Don’t.
With a right handed guitarist, usually the left side (looking at the stage) is better.
Luckily enough I was allowed to shoot for the entire show, so I waited for the encore to change side. Just in case, the last couple of songs were taken from the right.

Bring your long telephoto. Being close doesn’t always translate in wide-angle. Actually I used my 70-200mm most of the set. It is a good lens for solo artists, when single portraits are more important that full band shots.

Wait for the loud moments. First important rule of concert photography, one that amateur often miss is: Best photos are not happening during the best songs. There is no correlation at all. Second the most annoying photographer is the one shooting in the quiet moments. You disturb everyone, from the artist to the audience. Theatre’s acoustic amplify every sound, the shutter become an irritating automatic weapon. For a couple of songs can be acceptable, but when staying there for the entire show it’s e no.
Wait for the louder bits and snap during those moments.
You may miss some good shots but surely you gain the respect of the musicians and their fans. Which is more important than any concert picture.

Despite they already hinted at a more accessible sound with her sophomore album, Primary Colours, it is Skying that brought the Southend band into serious contender for the best UK art-rock group in years.

When the Horrors appeared first time they were an image/fashion kind of phenomenon. Dressed as character from a comedy horror B-movie, they gained the cover of NME after just a single: Sheena is a parasite.
Something no other band had ever achieved.

Before the debut album arrived, the Horrors toured with the NME Awards tour. It is where I first caught them live. It was February 2007. It was the worst line-up NME ever put together: Mumm-Ra (disbanded), The View (forgotten) and headlined by the Automatic (who? Indeed).

‘No surprise I was surprised’ by the Horrors despite a dark, dirty and very short set.

Not in a completely positive way yet there was something interesting beyond the photogenic image NME was trying to sell to angry and depressed teenagers.
I always doubted of bands getting into Birthday Party territory, can’t name a single one succeeding. The Horrors, if visually were close to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, musically were, more than any other bands in recent years, into Birthday Party punk screaming about death, night and (literally) Jack the ripper.

Strange House, the debut, came out those days. I guess I am one of the few owners of the special edition with a bonus DVD. I can’t remember what sort of sale I found but, listened in a new light 5 years later to write this post, it doesn’t sound as the greatest album ever but hints are in it of a band that, once dismissed the costumes, could make some very good things.

Incessantly touring, I met the (same) Horrors again supporting Jesus and Mary Chain at the end of 2007.

The breakthrough happened about 2 years later when the Horrors released, to the surprise of literally everyone, Primary Colours.
From a NME sensation, no one was expecting such an album. The screams disappeared, the keyboards arrived. The sound got bigger with inluences of all the post Velvet Underground bands from Spacemen 3 to psychedelia and shoegaze.

A brave album. It keeps the dark shadows of the beginning but starts showing hints of lights. Which also helped to get me some decent photos of a band that the previous two occasions was un-photographable.

Produced by Geoff Barrow of Portishead, Primary Colours debuted live at an Electric Ballroom gig in 2009. The venue was packed, guestlist full of Musicbiz VIP. When you meet at the same show Jim Sclavonus and Bobby Gillespie be sure you are in the right place.

The third album is notoriously a band “live or die” moment. Maybe in this produce/consume/die era the key milestone for a band comes before, yet for the Horrors this third album was long awaited.

Skying arrived July 2011 and turned out to be the album of the affirmation.

There are bands that make astonishing debuts and then have to struggle to keep the pace, easily falling at a certain point of their path (Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Tori Amos or Alanis Morissette to name the first four coming to my mind) then there are bands that start slow, build up a cult following which causes the avalanche effect.

In this category fall most of the commercially successful artists who kept delivering consistent quality piece of works. Manic Street Preachers, Bruce Springsteen, REM and even U2 started slow to become universal stars.

When the success comes slowly it means the band has the key factors needed.
It’s motivated, it believes in what it does, it’s tenacious and, more important, it’s creative. If you have ideas you can’t be boring.

The Horrors have made three albums that preserve their identity but haven’t stopped on the same idea since. They moved from fast post-punk to keyboards psychedelia to the guitar anthems of Skying that reminded the world Simple Minds had been also a great band.

Cleverly those teenagers in 2006 are now graduating. The shift from grrrr-days to artistic phase helps keeping those early followers while recruiting new ones.

In no more than 5 years, with about two hours of recorded music and 30ish songs, the Horrors went from Jack The Ripper to Oceans Burning.

Try this exercise. Go to iTunes/Spotify/whatever library containing Horrors’ three albums.
Make a playlist with only two songs: their first, Jack The Ripper, followed by their last, Oceans Burning. Play it to a friend who doesn’t know them. (S)he will tell they are two different bands.

Then add to the playlist Sheena is a Parasite, Mirror’s Image, the epic Sea Within a Sea and latest Changing the Rain. Your friend and yourself will be amazed on how the passage feels gradual. The sound grows without loosing its way.

There are not many discographies where you can play the same game with such a consistent output.

I shot the Horrors for the fourth time at the Field Day festival in London last August.
Apart of a showcase, this was the first time for Skying live in London, ahead of the proper headlining UK tour happening this week. It was the most awaited set of the day and, despite the tight line-up, the tent was overtly packed.

Centred on the latest album I saw a band at the peak of its self-confidence.
No need anymore to hide behind a clever dress-up.
All the Horrors needed to play a wonderful set was their instruments.

They have the songs, they have the skills, they have the faithful fans (a UK rarity). Nothing can stop them now and for few years ahead.
Faris Badwan in three albums moved from screamer to singer to undisputed frontman. Easy to recognise his silhouette among many bands.
Keys and guitars build up the vintage 80s sound that today instantly transforms any band into an art-(the east London way)-rock act.

The Horrors are one of the few bands who I am not worried about next album. Actually I’m already impatient to know what will come out of their hat.

PS: They don’t wear hats either.

Discover the Horrors on the web [website] [myspace] [facebook] [twitter] [spotify]

Photo tip

Backlights throughout isn’t the easier for concert photography but with a bit of luck and if in control of the camera, it can deliver some out of the ordinary shots.

As the Horrors changed their style during the years, I have greatly changed mine. Not only technically but dogmatically I started to challenge my convictions.
One of my Cartier-Bresson-era legacy was the absolute intransigence in cropping negatives. With the added complicacy of using prime lenses, my film shots used to be a continuous struggle to avoid messy tangled cables on stage.

I don’t know if I got lazier or wiser. I know I am now using zoom lenses and also came to the conclusion that some cropping can make a good picture better.

Sometimes is unavoidable, as when they sent me shooting Thom Yorke from the balcony without telling I’d needed a 600mm f4. Some others it just makes photos clearer.

One position I haven’t changed in years: Selected photos have to be good photos, the very best of the set.
To be a severe judge of myself is paramount. I prefer not to publish rather than delivering mediocre images.

Cropping helps. It helps more at concerts because stages are full of crap. Crap doesn’t add anything to the image. Reframing a picture leaving out useless elements doesn’t contradict the integrity of the image, doesn’t send a false message, doesn’t hurt. It’s what studio photographers do everyday. It’s what concert photographers are not allowed to do but would like.
(Ever dreamt of moving that mic pole away from the view?)

There’s no way to make a bad image good through cropping but there are no reason to not reframe a good image to make it better.
Your ethic will decrease a bit, which is not always a bad thing. You have a reason to bring it back up.

“Swans are Dead”.
This is the title of Swans’ 1998 double live album. It documents fifteen years of the band’s history recorded in what was (supposed to be) their last world tour.
At the turn of the millennium Michael Gira’s band passed away.
Michael Gira, instead, passed from the brutal soniscapes of his creature to the melodic, gentle approaches of a new band: Angel of Lights.
He will play and record seven albums with them in the following ten years.

Rewind.
Since the early eighties Swans have been one of the most influential bands of the underground American scene. From post-punk to post-rock, Swans experimented any genre where loudness is the essential element. They target ears with the honest, candid aim of making them bleed to death.

More intellectual than Killing Joke, less mainstream than Sonic Youth (Thurston Moore used to play bass at their beginning) Swans are a reference to any group who sets the volume to 11 before plugging the instrument.

Wikipedia summarise, the history reads: 11 studio albums, 9 live albums, 7 compilation albums, 11 EPs, 3 singles and 4 videos.

Swans albums cover art are statements in their own. They contain a set of recurring images, graphic and symbols it would require a criminology or semiotic expert to interpret. Dollar-like, bunnies, crosses and more enigmatic signs to introduce to the music inside. How? I have no idea.

Put the record on and the music between the vinyls’ grooves takes possession of your mind. Turn up the volume and you are abducted.

The millennium started on 9/11 when the apocalyptic Hollywood visions became a reality. Technology made the world smaller. Medicine made life longer.

Wars never ended and life indeed still ends. Resurrection is neither achievable nor buyable. Not for human.
On the contrary, one of the breakthroughs of the millennium is the discovery that bands don’t die. Resurrection exists. It’s not perfect science. It’s perfect marketing.
Have a band? Tired of playing? Hybernate it, you’ll get it back when you feel the time has come to wake it up.

“Swans are dead”.
This is their myspace address. Truth is, Myspace is dying and Swans resurrected.

“Swans are not Dead”.
This was the MySpace status displayed by Michael Gira at the beginning of 2010.
The first hint of the return. The evidence that in rock music you can die, bury yourself, reincarnate, live an afterlife and then comeback in full shape. Handy, isn’t it?

Michael Gira is the responsible. He gave birth and he has resurrected Swans.
After 3 lustres a Swans album saw the light. My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky, was released in September 2010.
A monster tour followed and, about a year later these days, it still has to stop.

The album is a step forward from the past. It has Swans classic sound but also gentler songs that unveil the influence of the ten years spent with Angel of Lights.

You Fucking People Make Me Sick opens as a sweet melody, Michael Gira sings a “lullaby” with his little daughter:
“I love you. I need you. Oh, show me how to shine.
I love you. Your flower. Now give me what is mine.”
before the band irrupts with frightening noise. Norman Wetsberg guitars increase the tension to a point anxiety is unbearable.
Swans are back.

There’s a missing person in this story. Marketing, artistic choice, busy schedule… whatever the reason Swans came back without Jarboe.

Jarboe is the only person to have taken part to all Swans album but this. Her dark crepuscular contributions, her backing vocals has been essential to define the band. The more tense moments bear her presence.
It is as saying Dead Can Dance comeback without Lisa Gerrard, but Jarboe has never been mentioned since the come back. Michael Gira nowadays is the one and only Mr Swans.

I was on the photopass guestlist for what was Swans first gig in London in ages. It was at Koko, it was last October, I can still remember the day: Thursday the 28th.
I got a cold. I was in bed, 38.5° my temperature, I couldn’t go.
The same temperature reached inside Koko. Michael Gira wants the air-con switched off during concerts. Sweat, heat is part of the performance.

Since that day my mission has been to see and shoot Swans live.

I got another occasion at Primavera Sound in Barcellona. Swans set began with the sonic earthquake of No Words/No Thoughts. Distracted people walking by, stopped to understand what was happening.
The nine minutes recorded in the album opener expanded to over 20.

I “had to” leave after that.
The presence of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, one of my never-miss-this-for-no-reasons acts on an adjacent stage captured me and I skipped the Swans set just after Michael Gira preach. Supporting the “Indignados” that were occupying Plaja De Catalunja and other Spanish places, he went like:
“Thank you very much. Spanish people rise up!! Overthrow your government! now!! Rise up! Overthrow the capitalists! Long live socialism now!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you Spanish people”.

Radical politic, the Michael Gira way, underlies all his art and couldn’t miss this occasion.

I knew I played it safe. It was public knowledge Swans were on the ATP I’ll Be Your Mirror line-up in London a couple of months later. I gambled I was going to shoot them there. Bet won, images from that gig on this post, including one of Michael Gira with a big hat wandering next to Alexandra Palace red doors. Was he thinking about bringing socialism to UK?

Surely he managed to bring volume to Alexandra palace. Gig was played at unbearable loudness. It’s their statement. It’s not a show-off there’s no other way to listen to them.

Swans don’t use volume as Boris to name another loud one. The Japanese band uses loudness to expose their audience to sound waves that become a physical experience. You feel it with your body, your organs.
Swans volume targets the ears. They want you to listen, then to not listen anything else.

It is a conceptual passage. “I am the Apocalypse, after me there’s nothing” it’s a quote I heard somewhere in Italian, don’t know who said but it fits the philosophy

Michael Gira is possessed during the performance. He falls on his knee with his BB King landmark Gibson Lucille. He spits, screams, eyes closed. He’s the first fan of his band. He loves it as a child and believes in what he does. More, he is what he does. The empathy with the band comes natural. Muscular musicians, two huge drummers, keyboards, guitars all at his service.

Swans continued touring the album during the summer and arrived, last week, in their New York. Actually Asbury Park in New Jersey. They played the American leg of the Portishead curated I’ll Be Your Mirror. The twin festival of this in London.

Same songs, different “indignados”. The movement is now occupying Wall Street. Uprising is blossoming even in USA cities. If anything, Swans comeback have pulled revolution from social networks and threw it back into the streets. Including USA. That is quite an achievement.

Gira addressed the American lazy crowd his way: “Stand up, you lard-ass Americans. Stand the fuck up and get some exercise. I am not your polite act.”

Musically there is another achievement. Swans have been recording new songs during the tour. New material is being played at recent gigs.

My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, surely is one of my favourite albums of the last year. An amazing band back to life with a bunch of songs that seemed to resurrect the apocalyptic, missing spirit of the early Bad Seeds mixed with streams of radical noise.

What is in the next album is unknown. What is known is that it will be called The Seer and it has just been described on Facebook by Michael Gira as: “Half of the new album is severe and pummeling, but kinda groovy too. The other half is intentionally quite pretty. Pink is the new brown. Like putting lipstick on an anus”.

As The Quietus put it clear in a couple of reviews “Swans are the greatest rock band on this planet”, if it sounds a bit stretched, move your lard-ass and go judge yourself.

Swans are alive on the [website][myspace][facebook]

Photo tip

Every music photographer hates microphones. There’s no question about it. About 50% of music pictures are binned because a mic covering artists’ face and instruments.

If you happen to be in a pit of a large big stage, there’s another hurdle there to bother you. Stage Monitors.
Monitors are an essential part of a stage setting. Essential to musicians because, differently from the audience, they can’t properly listen to the other instruments from the main speakers. They need them in order to avoid disastrous out of tempo situations.
(how many time have you seen an artist indicating the soundboard up or down? He was asking to set the proper monitor’s volume)

If the stage is low is easy to avoid them, but when the stage is high, as in big concerts and festival, they are a problem.
As I often suggest in unavoidable situations you got to try to take advantage of them. It is not always possible, but sometime it is.

There is often a space between two monitors, a space that takes the shape of an arrow pointing a the musicians on the back. If you are lucky and ready for the right moment you can frame the image using the monitor as a indicator to the subject of the photo.
This way what was the obstacle become a key part of the photo, driving the viewer eyes straight to the point.

To do this you need to get close and use a wideangle that exaggerates the perspective giving the image both the right shape and that sense of presence that make the viewer feel part of the moment.

Remember, a good photo must have a main point. Roland Barthes called it fulcrum. A key element that keep viewers stuck to it.
All other factors must be complementary and help pushing the eyes to this fulcrum. When this is in place, you have a killer shot. Guaranteed.

If Portishead for some Somerset farmers still referred to a coastal town, for the rest of the world it meant the Bristol band who was going to change the balance between rock and electronica once again.

That was probably the last time rock music could still be localized geographically.
California had funk-rock, UK Midlands Brit-pop. There was the Seattle’s so-called grunge scene and, back in England, Bristol offering Trip-hop.

Musicians in Bristol merged together dance loops, ethereal singing, slow tempos and electronic samples in a music never heard before. They created atmospheres that were good both to dance and to sip a tea on a lazy Sunday afternoon. A transversal genre that was liked by the most different listeners.

Few years later, Internet arrived. The music world (the entire world) became one single big place.
Cultural geography has been cancelled since. Distances erased. New York, London, Cape Town, Melbourne and Montreal have not anymore been miles but only ‘clicks’ away.

It must be acknowledged, U2 foresaw it first. In Stay (Faraway, So Close), their last great song, Bono sings: “With satelite television, You can go anywhere, Miami, New Orleans, London, Belfast and Berlin…”
Globalization was born. Satellite televisions was joined by computers, browsers, telephones, iPads.

Portishead recorded a masterpiece debut: Dummy. It was 1994. That is one of the landmark albums of the nineties. A must have album for every CD collection regardless the music you listen.
Song as Wandering Stars, Numb, Glory Box define the period and have been inspiring for a plethora of me-to bands who rarely matched those magic.

An eagerly waited self-titled follow up, arrived in 1997. Being on the same line of the debut it wasn’t any better and the wait didn’t help. Still is a good album if you like Dummy.

Signs of fatigue showed up the following year. Portishead released a live album with the New York Philharmonic orchestra. Roseland NYC Live just rearranges their best songs with the help of a full orchestra. As often happens, the orchestra doesn’t make those tunes any lighter.
A sense of pretentiousness permeates the music, which seems to have lost Bristol’s fresh air of decadence to gain some American coffee-table-office-in-a-steel-and-glass-skyscraper feel.

The decade came to the end. The wind of change travelled over modems and telephone lines. Internet first, mp3 second, broadband third and social networks fourth made the fruition of music a new experience.
Portishead were too much of a peculiar band to adapt. They wisely stopped and stepped back to have a look and wait.

For about ten years nothing major happened apart from side projects, short appearances and endless rumours of a third album being planned.

It was 2008 when, a decade after, Portishead released Third which is, erm, their third full length album.

I must be frank. I was lazy and not enough open minded to desire listening to a new Portishead record in 2008. During the hiatus’ decade I moved country, changed job, partner, got adult and the 90s Bristol scene mirrored the previous me.

I read excited reviews about their comeback and multiple stars to any of the (few) live shows. I still I didn’t manage to catch the band live. Until last July.

Portishead have been invited to curate the ATP I’ll Be Your Mirror festival in London.
Line up included most of my favourite acts, as PJ Harvey, Grinderman, Swans, Beach House, Godspeed You! Black Emperorto name a few, and a lot of bands I always wanted to check. Time was perfect for me to give them a try.

A perfect weekend up and down the Muswell Hill to reach the sumptuous Alexandra Palace.

This first weekend of October 2011 Portishead are repating it. They curate the American branch of I’ll Be Your Mirror, in New York. Different, yet amazing line-up, the will be headlining both Saturday and Sunday nights in a similar fashion.

I take this occasion to show photos from the London festival, most of which haven’t been published.

Before the concert, I was afraid that a ten years break then a comeback could be ruinous for the band. Maybe I was more afraid of my emotional response than the band capacity to deliver.

Were stories of such a golden past going to be diluted by a band trying to relive an “ancient era” and cash over the hits?

All fears vanished during the first song.

Not only because of the giant, sumptuous stage they entered. A multimedia installation perfectly complementing the music.
Not only because that music was mixed and engineered so well that I forgot to be at Alexandra Palace and sounded like the Royal Festival Hall.
Not only because of the amazing… AMAZING… voice of Beth Gibbons. It stands out so impressively. She can make a difference even if decides to sing TV adv jingles.
Not only because Geoff Barrow multi instruments platform has been update to be a multi instrument platform for the next millennium. He saves Portishead from any revivalism.
Not only because Adrian Utley guitar is something I never acknowledged as it deserves. He is the backbone of Portishead live show.

No. It’s all these things together that made the show an heavenly experience for eyes and ears.
Portishead songs are intense, deep, emotional and most important of all timeless. They worked in 1993, 2011 and will work in 2045. It’s only the great music that doesn’t get caught in their times.

Portishead didn’t even get caught in space. From London to New York to the world, these songs ride the wave, the net, the (electronic) mice and can touch people hearts everywhere.

It happens a lot to me to see bands multiple times on the same tour. When attending concerts few days apart, almost automatically the ‘wow effect’ goes by. The second time is automatically less exciting than the first.

Portishead played two shows in a row. Two quite identical sets. With many more amazing bands before them. Well, the Sunday show, who was scheduled in the tastier Sunday’s line-up of the IBYM festival, was as magnetic as the Saturday.

Eye-catching to the point that I got trapped into another late Sunday night-late at work Monday morning.

If you are lucky to be in NYC this weekend don’t miss a second of both of their shows.
If you happen to be close to the USA and Canada’s cities they are about to touring in October try to get there in some legal or illegal way.

Otherwise this is where to stay tuned with Portishead and chase them: [website][myspace][facebook][twitter]

Photo tip

I have discussed few times about the advantages of shooting a gig from the beginning to the end. What about shooting the same gig, even if for the first three songs, two nights in a row?

My rule is that more chances are better than few. It sounds obvious but it is not.
I know several photographers that don’t bother how many songs they have. They go in the pit, bursts many shots, walk out.
Back home, edit those 3-4 that looks above average and ftp to the agency straight away to get a quick sell.

If this is the approach going back to shoot the same show is a loss of time. There is nothing wrong with it. Actually if the aim is selling a single for a newspaper next-day review, it is more important to concentrate on speed (yours must be the first image to land on the photoeditor desk) and good communication skills (you must get networked to the best photo agency and they appreciate reliability as much as quality).

I am an outsider for many reasons, not only because I have been shooting on film. I focus on the artists and the show. I want tell a story about a concert. I don’t mind selling a single photo (those 40£ every 2 months won’t change my life), I aim to sell a story.

That is why there are hundreds of my galleries online spread over music websites. Galleries have a wider breath, don’t only decorate reviews.

If this is your philosophy, it is better to take any opportunity to shoot a concert you have been given.
Three songs are more than enough to deliver a frame, but a concert doesn’t last three songs so you cannot tell a story of it in three songs.
I dream the day that musicians, tour manager, promoters, venues and photographers will all work together to make a concert report as “in depth” as any other event of photojournalism deserves.

White Denim have been one of those comets orbiting around my galaxy without ever winning the gravitational force needed to land on my planet.
This was until D, their latest album, was properly released. To stay within this nerdy astronomical terminology D is a stellar piece of work. An adjective much in fashion on recent reviews.

I go defensive when I try to find out a reason outside my prejudices to justify White Denim absence in my CDs collection. I attribute it to the tumultuous managing of their releases.
Behind the (unoriginal nowadays) philosophy of “the CD doesn’t count a lot to us” White Denim discography is, to be kind, confusing.

The debut came out few years ago with a different title and different song list on the two sides of Atlantic. Here it was called Workout Holidays, there Explosion. Here came out with Full Time Hobby (a name a warranty) there was self produced, copied on CD-R sold at gigs (no warranty whatsoever!). It was around 2007.

just to make things more complex, in the following months, several more songs were released in a sequence of rare-to-find EPs.

Round about mid 2009 they released the second album: Fits. Still on two different labels between USA and UK (don’t ask me about the rest of the world) but a more traditional promotion managed to get the band name to people into independent music. Including myself. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to see them live and I kind of forget to give the album a proper listening.

2010 has seen a third album: Last day of Summer. It is another sort of self-produced for fun LP, I learn from Wikipedia while writing this. The band says: “This record is something we made as a little summer retreat from our ongoing work on the third full length [album]. Many of these tunes have been bouncing around since the formation of the band back in 06. We were super pumped to utilize a few fresh and casual musical approaches on this record.”
The nice bit is that Wiki says it is downloadable for free. The bad one is that this isn’t true anymore.

Then it’s May 2011 when D arrives. It was streaming somewhere online when I came across it. Instantly I realized I was in front of a totally different band. I had to go back and double check fits to be sure they where the same folks.

Unique label, unique release date and, overall, a unique clarity of intent. Despite May was the months of Fleet Foxes, Okkervil River and other delights, D has been in heavy rotation and full volume on my CD player.

Comparing D with their previous material few things become clearer. OK with garage music, OK with lo-fi approach, OK with psychedelic trips but when it comes the time to make a record that has a defined sound, a sound rotating around guitars tangled up together, there’s no improvisation.
You need the production, the attitude and more than anything else you need a second guitarist!
To record D White Denim changed studio, instruments, left the chaos behind and add another guitar to the original trio. It is the turning point.

Not all bands have a Pete Townshend and a John Entwistle able to control and domate a Keith Moon.
If in the last four years the unruled drumming of Joshua Block left James Petralli guitar and Steven Terebecky bass sometimes disoriented, the arrive of the second guitar of Austin Jenkins brought order and discipline. Whatever these two words means in a rock band from Austin, Texas.

White Denim are not seeking the inspiration far away. Austin is the artistic and cultural oasis in the hyper conservative Texas. Here where SXSW festival happens (and where they were noticed first time). White Denim desire of experimenting, being inspired, jamming comes from the music of their home and reflects into the music they play.

It’s hot in Austin, much hotter than Camden town tonight.
When James Petralli gets his Gibson out of the black “Gibson – Memphis” case it looks like a cloud of dust was lit up by the yellow and orange spotlights trying to recreate the warm atmosphere. They didn’t succeed.
The music did.

Joshua Block drumming is unstoppable, it is the fulcrum.
As if they were a seesaw, the second guitar allows the band to balance over that fulcrum. Terebecki bass behind his funny glasses draws bass lines that are the lever over which everything resides.
As four kids in a playground for over a hour and half White Denim ride lands of notes.

The gig, thankfully, is D-centric.
The music is inspired by the southern-rock legacy and from there move onward.
They hint at history, from Allmann Brothers band to 13th Floor Elevators but know the contemporary pals Black Angels and get inspired by anything they like.

At The Farm is an amazing song from start to finish with the awesome instrumental break in the middle designed to get any crowd mad at any live rendition.
Street Joy has a guitar bridge that make me thing of a Pink Floyd songs which I still have to identify. If you had, please tell me.

White Denim know how to play. Very well. A tradition often forgotten and not considered essential in UK is unavoidable to survive as a professional band in USA.

I could not find a weak moment in White Denim set tonight, as I couldn’t in the album. It is reassuring to see how a band can still have the chance to insist and insist until they found their path before being swallowed, digested and forgotten by the ever expanding, unstoppable, music industry always eager of a next-big-thing.

It’s not of everyone to spend 4 years in a chaotic stream of ideas, floating in space to land in style and deliver a stunning album.

White Denim managed to get up there. Now the path should be comfortably downward, let’s hope they don’t stumble in the way to the next step.
Going back home I am surprised at how the speed of my doubts and prejudices vanished in few months. If only the train was half as quick.

It may be worth tracking White Denim online: [website][myspace][facebook][twitter]

Photo tip

I started putting together a colour portfolio summing up the digital stuff I did in the last couple of here to go along with my film stuff I have been doing in the past 10 and more.

I uploaded a wider selection of my favourite pictures on 500px, a fast expanding photo database you may have stumbled upon.
What’s your favourite photo sharing social network?

500px is modern. As any web 2.0 social network requires it allows to browse the photos in a portfolio elegant style. As this:

500px Portfolio

A link useful to send to your clients, bands, PR not bothered to see what’s going on the background but only interested of the selection of your work.

Then 500px allows people on the network to comment, favourite, like and dislike the images on your collection using a slightly separate platform (and web url).

500px Social Network

To let other photographers help in the selection of your portfolio images has advantages.
“Photographers”, this is the main point.

Differently from flickR or Instagram (not even mentioning Facebook) where everyone is on, regardless their photo experience, 500px has an impressive photographic quality and it is represented mostly by serious snappers. (may change in the future if it gets very popular as it seems).

Differently from flickR where comments and favourites tends to be biasied towards the name of the artist more than the photo, on 500px what people votes is the quality of the image.

One of my White Denim photos is in there too and made its way into the portfolio.
All the pictures who got a nice feedback have been included in my final selection that you can also browse on my

main website, on photoshelter,

which allows you to order fine-art prints delivered straight to your door. But I’ll praise photoshelter in another photo tip.
Christmas is dramatically getting close, help yourself and tell your friends!

To write about PJ Harvey is easy and difficult at the same time. I am a fan, know all her production and I am biased.
I wrote extensively about her being a contemporary artist in a previous post that went along with the photos from her tour with John Parish, few years ago.

This post is to celebrate her Mercury prize. It wasn’t planned I wasn’t sure she had won. I wanted to post images from her ATP I’ll Be Your Mirror show since July. The prize comes with perfect timing.
Being a very early fan I can only be happy. So congratulations Polly.

Mercury Prize is a strange beast within the British music scene. It is highly rewarded for being a prize awarded by professionals. Its jury is made only of people working in the music industry.
The album of the year is chosen only on the basis of the actual record, regardless the artist’s career. It is selected among a shortlist of 12 albums picked out of a large list of participants.

Here there is a first hurdle to point out. To take part in the selection you have to pay a quite high fee (~200£) which is made worse by the many physical CDs each band must send to the jury. Bands says the overall cost to take part in it can adds up to 500+ £, a price too high for many groups playing music outside the mainstream and trying to build a career in such a difficult age for music.
From this perspective the prize is not as democratic as it sells itself. On the other side, surely, it doesn’t leave out familiar and big names.

The list of the previous prize winners is a bizarre cocktail of very famous names and quickly vanished artist.

PJ Harvey scored several records within the prize.
She has been nominated four times. Rid of Me and To Bring You My Love failed to win. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea gave her the first prize. It was ten years ago just after the 9/11/01 attacks and she was caught in Washington overlooking the Pentagon in flames. She also was the first solo female artist to win.
Let England Shake, this year got her nominated for the 4th, joining Radiohead, and marked her second prize victory.
PJ Harvey is the first ever artist to win the Mercury prize twice.

Musically, these 4 albums design well the different styles that have defined her career. From the coarse guitar recorded by Steve Albini in Rid of Me to the dark bluesy ballads in To Bring You My Love; from Stories from the Citiy, Stories from the Sea, her easier, lighter almost pop album to her latest fatigue, her first non autobiographical piece.

Let England Shake has been ecstatically received everywhere. It’s got full marks throughout the music press. From a rare 10/10 in NME to an impressive 86% at Metacritic that puts together 42 reviews. Only the cryptic experimental taste of The Wire and the out-of-touch-with-contemporary-music, Rolling Stone, have not jumped on it.

Too much has been written about these songs and there are some outstanding reviews out there as this on the Quietus to try to add something meaningful.
Let England Shake more than anything else shows what it means to be inspired.
PJ Harvey never released an album for the market or the fans demand. She can hold years or produce two in a rows. When she heads to a studio is because she has the material.

She never recorded the same album twice, actually she recorded the same album differently as Rid of Me and 4 tracks demos show.

In the years PJ grew up with her music, became adult, abandoned her anxieties, discovered her femininity, acquired self-confidence.

Not sure if any reviewers noticed it but Let England Shake is also the only album where PJ doesn’t appear on the cover. Instead of photographing her inner self, she is finally able to look out at the windows and photograph the world.

On Let England Shake PJ wrote lyrics about English distressing history and composed music to match them. An album that is utterly political without preaching any ideology. An album which is incredibly modern despite the music and the instruments are inspired from the past. An album brilliantly produced despite being recorded over five weeks in an old church in Dorset.

Harvey never had a proper supporting band. She chose her musicians album after album. Apart of her mentor, John Parish which features in many of them including two they co-sign.

This album has been recorded with Parish and with the addition of Mick Harvey who just left Nick Cave court after almost 30 years to join his ex lover. I start believing Mick Harvey did the right move. I have discussed a lot about Cave and Harvey on my previous post on Grinderman if you’re curious.

It doesn’t come by coincidence that to go along with any of the songs on the album Harvey chose Seamus Murphy as a video director. Murphy is an outstanding and awarded war photojournalist. Their collaboration reinforces the strong political message the album is launching.

My images come from PJ set at the I’ll Be Your Mirror festival in London. The ATP organized a two days festival at Alexandra Palace curated by Portishead (which arrive on live on 35mm in the near future).

I also caught PJ Harvey live at Primavera Sound in Barcelona earlier in May.
The difference between the two sets was mainly in her dress’ colour.
White in Spain, black in London.
Not sure it had any link with Amy Winehouse death announced minutes before her show. I like to think it is a reason, it but likely it’s just my fantasy.

Who has ever attended a PJ concert knows she is not the most outgoing person on stage. Which is why people is divided.
Either you tolerate her strong personality (arrogance, shyness? Nevermind) or you are likely to mark the attitude as snobbish, diva and hate her. Harvey doesn’t fit with the indie music philosophy which wants the artist ‘human’, far from stardom, close to its audience.

From this perspective PJ Harvey has never been indie. It should also be noted that she has recorded 9 out of her 10 LPs on a major: Island.
This doesn’t make her mainstream, in fact it does make these definitions meaningless.
To discard PJ on the basis of her musical genre is the error many do. She never belonged to any genre.

No middle ground with PJ Harvey. No middle ground on stage too. She stands isolated on the left, with her autoharps, playing and singing. She is focused for the entire performance on the music and the lyrics. Not conceding more than a “thank you” to the fans and not needing to communicate with a band that knows what to do.

The band is on the right. John Parish on guitars, Mick Harvey divides between bass more guitar and a retro organ and a drummer who I am not sure whether is the same Jean-Marc Butty signing the album credits.

Her set rotates around Let England Shake. She rearranges some of her back catalogue to fit with the new sound. C’Mon Billy and Down by the Water, classics from To Bring You My Love, and Angelene from that unsettling masterpiece that is Is This Desire? All fit with the autoharp. Her voice lost the rebellious anger and moved to an angelic almost heavenly tone. Still when she plays her distorted guitar, shivers go down my spine.

As well as with the album, the tour has been acclaimed everywhere and anyone who saw one of these gigs has felt the wonderful and rare sensation of having being in front of something that is going to be remembered forever or, better, till the next album.

You can follow PJ Harvey on the [website][fansite][myspace][facebook] unsurprisingly she doesn’t tweet.

Photo tip

When the artist on (a large) stage is separated from the band there is a problem for a concert photographer. It is impossible to take a picture of the band and the artist together unless you stand on the soundboard or in the crowd.

Many people have seen PJ Harvey stage set-up in this tour irritating, not only from a photographic perspective. Detaching herself from the band is seen as putting herself on a pedestal. Another evidence for the detractors that consider her behaviour superior.
That is exactly what PJ wanted. She wanted to be on a pedestal, but what she put on the pedestal isn’t her person but the character she embodies.
Everything from the dress, the autoharp, the rose and the feathers depict a statue.

PJ on stage shines of her own light (especially when dressed in white – the white silhouette is a shot from the crows in Barcelona) but it is not PJ Harvey that shines. That is the icon.
PJ is also a performance artist. As an actress she plays a role. Call it whatever you want but that superior figure is not her person, it is all she wanted her music to be.

From this point of view it helps photographers. Standing on the left on her own, make portraits easier, with a neutral background, as a statue demands. It also helps to have a high stage. The low angle emphasizes the feeling of grandiosity that this figure deserves.
As photographer we are required not to emphasize a self-important artist, but to highlight the message the artist is transmitting through her music.

From the title of the album she aims to shake England. She works hard, music and stage presence, to achieve it. Photographer role is to keep up with it.

I saw Nick Cave live seven times no one else more then him. Three with the Bad Seeds, three with Grinderman, one in that proto-Grinderman tour called Nick Cave solo. Basically it was Grinderman still playing Bad Seeds songs and Nick Cave testing his rusty guitar skills after many years far from the six strings.

I also regret missing a free Bad Seeds gig back in the nineties because of the simultaneous wedding of the brother of my ex happening the other side of Italy. I will never forgive them getting married the day I had a chance to see the Bad Seeds with Blixa Bargeld and without Warren Ellis.

This intro is needed to say that if Pink Floyd were my teenager fixation, Nick Cave surely is the artist I have admired most since I turned twenty, about… erm… twenty years ago. I am not a fan(atic) person I betray easily my favourite bands when they delude me, Nick Cave never did.

I backed Nick Cave when he was singing about his addiction problems, his emotional breakdowns and his new unearthed happiness.
I saw him in the gloom and coming back to form, till he got the deserved commercial success and survived it.

Nick Cave, turned fifty a couple of years ago, and has never been in such a good shape. Full of energy, ideas, songs.

I saw one of the first shows for Grinderman, back at the Forum in London in 2007. Seasick Steve and Suicide opened for them. Suicide also joined them for the encore.
They still sounded rough, unfinished. It was shocking to see Nick Cave leaving his reassuring gothic ballads to go back to his angry, guitar, punk-ish, noisy, bluesy roots. I enjoyed that gig, but it wasn’t as good as a Bad Seeds concert.

Grinderman are the right place where the Cave/Ellis pair feel free to put their musical intimacy.
With Jim Sclavunos and Martyn P Casey offering an unmatched rhythm session, that has been playing with Cave for years in the Bad Seeds, there is no risk of failure and it felt plenty of space for improvement.

Four years on, Grinderman are back with a second tighter album, unoriginally titled Grinderman 2, and a much bigger worldwide tour that I caught twice.
The first time for their headlining set at Primavera Sound in Barcelona in May.
A fantastic show. A band having fun playing together. A band in full control, without the hesitation of that first time. Nick Cave in amazing shape, narcissistically enjoying the tens of thousands fans in front of him. Ellis wildly abusing his instruments.

Grinderman shows always made me think that albums are recorded as sketches to be developed on stage. A way to keep an idea, an idea that is to be expanded.
If music industry didn’t have its silly rules, Grinderman should tour an entire year before putting the new material on record, it would sound much better. Instead Grinderman 2 was recorded a whole year before it was released and had to wait for the end of Dig, Lazarus Dig!!! tour.

Nick Cave is a unique frontman, no question about that. He is an impressive singer and an amazing songwriter. He also plays guitar and mistreat keyboards. Warren Ellis fill any gap, he leaves his violin aside most of the time to get his mini and standard size collection of Fender guitars on fire.

When Warren Ellis started collaborating with the Bad Seeds he was the man that saved the band and Nick Cave from his derive into gloomy gothic ballads.
Cave with Ellis finds inspiration, optimism and a new vitality.
Ellis appears first time in Bad Seeds’ No More Shall We Part, ten years ago. The two never separated since.

Nick Cave has fun and found a humour in Grinderman who was unknown.
No Pussy Blues, from their first album, tells the story of an old rocker not able to impress his groupies anymore. It is the most exhilarating set of lyrics I came across in a couple of decades. Self humour at his best.

No Pussy Blues

My face is finished, my body’s gone.
And I can’t help but think standin’ up here in all this applause and gazin’ down at all the young and the beautiful.
With their questioning eyes.
That I must above all things love myself.

I saw a girl in the crowd,
I ran over I shouted out,
I asked if I could take her out,
But she said that she didn’t want to.

I changed the sheets on my bed,
I combed the hairs across my head,
I sucked in my gut and still she said
That she just didn’t want to.

I read her Eliot, read her Yeats,
I tried my best to stay up late,
I fixed the hinges on her gate,
But still she just never wanted to.

I bought her a dozen snow-white doves,
I did her dishes in rubber gloves,
I called her Honeybee, I called her Love,
But she just still didn’t want to. She just never wants to.

I sent her every type of flower,
I played her guitar by the hour,
I patted her revolting little chihuahua,
But still she just didn’t want to.

I wrote a song with a hundred lines,
I picked a bunch of dandelions,
I walked her through the trembling pines,
But she just even then didn’t want to. She just never wants to.

I thought I’d try another tack,
I drank a litre of cognac,
I threw her down upon her back,
But she just lay up and said that she just didn’t want to.

I thought I’d have another go,
I called her my little ho,
I felt like Marcel Marceau
must feel when she said that she just never wanted to. She just didn’t want to.

I got the no pussy blues.

So far so good, but?
There are downsides on having a genius musicians in your band.
Ellis unstoppable and unmanageable creativity had an impact.

The first victim was Blixa Bargeld who, after a short cohabitation left Bad Seeds to dedicate full time to Einsturzende Neubauten.
It was no difficult to see an “either me or him” situation. The attempt to keep them together in Nocturama ended up in one of the less convincing albums.

Those days the natural choice for the Bad Seeds was to let Bargeld go and let Ellis in.

Last year the other long time Cave partner, Mick Harvey, left the Bad Seeds too.
I wasn’t surprised. When I saw Harvey with the band the last time, he looked marginalized and bored. It felt like the end of love. Still having a huge role on the band’s sound. Cave was all up to Ellis extravagance snubbing Harvey familiar seriousness.

For the records, Mick Harvey and Nick Cave have been playing together since the Birthday Party at the end of the seventies. To keep it in perspective, this is not just a line-up change, it is like Keith Richard leaving the Rolling Stones, few years after Brian Jones departure!

Since Mick Harvey left (to join the court of her majesty PJ Harvey with whom he has recorded and toured Let England Shake) there hasn’t been a Bad Seeds album.
I don’t really know what direction the band will take. I struggle to think at something very different from Grinderman to be honest.

There have been announcement that Bad Seeds are going to record new material in the future.
I am optimistic, confident in Nick Cave brilliant song-writing form and the fact that it has never existed such a thing as a bad Bad Seeds album.

So what is this worrying mood permeating these lines?
It’s something I started ruminating at the second Grinderman gig I attended this year at their ATP I’ll Be Your Mirror slot: Warren Ellis.

I may be controversial to universal plaudit but I am convincing myself that Warren Ellis from being Nick Cave saviour is turning into his burden.
Differently from the amazing work he does on Dirty Tree, his other and original band, in Nick Cave’s projects Ellis seems more and more self-referential. Like a virus, his presence is ever expanding into Nick Cave’s music.

This expansion is in quantity rather than quality. Ellis does one single thing, he messes up Nick Cave melodic and sugary inclination. He is, pretty much as Bargeld before him, transversal. Distorsion, noise, screamy violins arrange the music avoiding that Nick Cave songs drift into Morrissey-sque stuff.

For the first couple of albums on two different bands, Ellis contribution sounded perfect and fresher than Bargeld. On the long run it begins being redundant.
His anarchic approach levels Grinderman songs that, originally, are not similar at all.

With Dirty Tree and Bad Seeds both planning to record new material in 2012 my wish is that the pair will disengage for a while to detoxify.

It would bring to the fantastic scenario of having, at the same time, a new Dirty Tree album, Bad Seeds doing the Bad Seeds and, in few years, Grinderman coming back together at full speed. Bargain!

Grinderman are on the net here: [website] [myspace] [facebook] [twitter]

Photo tip

Nick Cave requires a photo tip all for himself.
Nick Cave hates photographers. I don’t know if this is public knowledge, but any concert photographer knows.

He makes things difficult for us.
Out of my seven gigs, I managed to get a photopass twice.
This year ATP festival, where these pics were shot, and some years ago for the “solo tour”.

Nick Cave restrictions are always harsh. That first time it was hilarious.
We were allowed to shoot the first song only, only from the back of the venue, on the far left. Cave sat at the piano for the entire song and the piano was unusually positioned on the right. All in the dark.
With my film cameras and a 200mm I didn’t manage to get anything usable. I had a seat in a front row and managed to steal some better shots from there but nothing good enough to my criteria to post here.

At a Bad Seeds gig I attended at the Apollo Hammersmith, he had an argument with a photographer. Similar reason. Photographers were allowed to shoot the first song only that was performed in complete darkness. As soon as the song ended and photographers were escorted out, lights went on bright and beautiful. A photographer insulted Cave, he replied.

Grinderman this year were rumoured to have a rights grab release form to sign. Thankfully there was nothing at this show. I wouldn’t have shot them.

Pit conditions still are harsh. Photographers were split in two groups, some on the left, others on the right of the pit. First song only, as usual.
I got the left side, wrong choice since Warren Ellis stands on the right and Cave flirts mostly with him. A telephoto affair throughout, thankfully with enough light to take some shots.

After the song he started interacting and being amusing. I took some photos from the crowd, something I also suggest doing where possible.

If you get to shoot Nick Cave, be ready to have a short, hard time.

Evil Urges was out and My Morning Jacket were touring it.
It had been the most disappointing album of that year, probably of the past decade. Having missed their Astoria gig during Z tour, this was my first time with their live show.

Z was a masterpiece. This is also the band that, probably unique during record industry worst crisis ever, convinced a label to issue a double live album: Okonokos, which chronicles the Z tour.

That Forum gig was spectacular. My Morning Jacket showed that live they are a different entity compared to what you hear from the record. An incredible bunch of musicians, energy from any pore, long jams and wonderful tunes. Still those Evil Urges falsettos sounded odd.

There has been a long break since. Jim James went sideways with the (pretty disappointing considering the expectations) all-star project: Monsters of Folk. An album and few gigs in the company of Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes and other alt.folk legends.

More months of waiting than Circuital, their sixth album, was out.
I had a strange reaction to this record.
I falled in love with it, not at a first listen but quite quickly it went under my skin. I don’t recollect when and I don’t know why this happened.
In a matter of days from being a new album, Circuital became one of my classics.

I love it from start to finish and surely it’ll end up in my albums of the year list. It sold well but I don’t have the feeling the overall perception is similar to my excitement.

The strange thing is that I don’t really know why I ended up loving this so much. I must be unconsciously sympathetic with those songs.

Musically Circuital is not a step to pre- Evil Urges era, as many reviews claimed. It is a step ahead.

My Morning Jacket haven’t avoided the “experimentation”, they just avoided the wrong bit of it. They removed their sound from any funky Prince-esque approach which, in the last 20 years hasn’t been of help to anyone including Prince himself.

They wrote songs paying attention to song’s architecture. Pop songs of crystalline melodies, balanced harmonies, nice sound. That is what Circuital is.

If I have to define it I would put it close close to the latest Band of Horses record, their most commercial album, Infinite Arms. Circuital is not far from that approach. Nice easy-listening songs with an edge.

The other album I compared it to, is the latest Iron and Wine, Kiss Each Other Clear.
With a difference. I find Iron and Wine album very sugary. To the point that some of those songs would work well as a Take That single.
I said it, I argued with friends about this, but every time I listen to Me and Lazarus I am convinced of what I am saying.

Circuital seems to have managed to square the circle.
My Morning Jacket found the balance between writing pop songs (in the most positive meaning you can think of pop) that sounds real, believable. Songs that are not built to chart or to be aired but that come from the heart. Still, they will sound great listened to on the radio.

Music criticism often struggles to find a way to describe why a song is great. It can be simpler then you think.
Songs that contains ideas, melodies, bridges, music. Songs that have nice lyrics which go with the music and don’t look out of place. Equilibrium.

This is not an avant-garde record, it will not be on The Wire albums of 2011, it is not there to be cited on your tweets to make them cool.
Despite My Morning Jacket are too often defined as “experimental”, they are not. Using a vintage effect on the microphone doesn’t set you into the avant-garde scene.

They are a rock band of our times. They know the past, love Neil Young, have ideas, and they are brave and skilled to put them in the music the play. Sometime it doesn’t work, Evil Urges falsettos are an example, most times it does as Z and Circuital show.

I can’t really name a weak song on Circuital. I am in love with all of them. I believe that Wonderful (The Way I feel) would be an all times classic if it was recorded in the pre-internet era, but from this ballad to the rockier tunes any of them has its reason to exist.

Somerset House series is a set of concerts happening in London every July. I am personally attached to it being the place where I saw PJ Harvey for the first time. I will not forget a Bat For Lashes gig there too, shot and attended under a thunderstorm.

I am back aftera couple of years for My Morning Jacket. It’s another rainy July day in London but thankfully the sky is clear when the gig starts.

The large, neoclassic building of the house frames a squared, large courtyard which is where summer concerts happen. With coloured lights highlighting the architecture it is a pretty epic place for concerts. Jim James, My Morning Jacket singer, realizes it defining what it sees ”truly epic”. Epic as the fame of My Morning Jacket live shows. They match the place.

Being in love with Circuital, I’d be very happy to listen to all of it without complaint, and the concert starts that direction.
Typical these days, the first two songs of the show are also the album openers. Victory Dance and the title track shine through. The security reminds me that my photographer’s duty are over at the end of Gideon, the third song taken from Z. Enough to remind me of how great this band is and how much I would love to keep photographing.

While all photographers heads back to the press area to check the results in the DSLR monitors, I go in the middle of the crowd to watch the show and see if there are more pics to take. I wouldn’t be a music photographer if I didn’t like live music so much. From the day I started photographying concert, about ten years ago, I have never been to a concert without staying for the rest of the gig. I think it is disrespectful for the band that invites me to take pictures, but most of all I photograph the music I love so that I love to stay to listen to it.

I know, agencies, newspapers want the photos sent as soon as the gig is over. Modern technology makes this possible. I don’t mind. I need to experience the show and the way the show goes. It also helps me to choose the pictures I think better represent it. I can’t give you a picture of a smiling singer if he just played a melancholic set. I am naïve, out of the system. Surely I am using photography as a medium to tell stories not to make stories up.

Outta My System, ironically enough, is one of the missing songs from Circuital tonight. The other is my favourite, Wonderful (the way I feel). Despite I can understand a ballad wasn’t propably fitting in this setlist, I am slightly disappointed to leave Somerset House not listening to the best two songs of the album.

As a counterpart there is the rest. Beauties from the past, a storming version of  Holdin’ on to Black Metal in the encore and the unmissable One Big Holiday as closure.

Exactly the one big holiday I’d need right now after this quite amazing year of live music.

I will be back sooner that you think, with more tasty concerts for you in September, so stay tuned and ready that an impressive set of acts from the Alexandra Palace I’ll be your Mirror ATP and Field Day festival will keep you company till the autumn. Plus all the rest that will happen in the meanwhile. You won’t get rid of me.

My Morning Jacket neither. They have already planned a November UK tour and will be touring the album worldwide, so keep in touch with them on the web:
[website] [myspace] [facebook] [twitter] are all up and running.

Photo tip

It doesn’t happen often that, covering a concert, the location is not a dark venue with a dark stage lit by coloured lights.

So when this is the case, when a concert is in an amazing place, it’s worth working some extra minutes to include some shots of the place.

Somerset House is the perfect occasion. Photography wise the extremely high stage doesn’t make it possible to take any image of the surrounding from the pit.

This is why, after the three songs, I walked into the courtyard and took some shots of the stage, the crowd including the courtyard and the “House”. From the pit images you wouldn’t differentiate this concert from a normal venue show and, as you can see, reality was quite a different thing. This is what I mean by telling a story using photography as a medium.

A perfect, unvolountary timing also set this moment in the “blue hour”, a big plus.
There is not a better moment to take night photos that in the blue hour.
The sky is still blue, the remaining light after the sunset (or before the sunrise) helps to show details in the shadows but the overall sensation of night, warm lights and darkness stays. It doesn’t last long. From too-clear to too-dark is not more than fifteen minutes. Anticipation is important. Be ready.

I had two main issues in this situation.
One was to get a nice, central spot where I could raise my camera + telephoto over most of people’s heads (there is always a basketball champion in front of me at gigs!) to take some symmetric shots before the sky turned black. To work with a tripod in the middle of a crowd is impossible. To frame the symmetric image that architecture photography rules require isn’t easy. I suggest to move around to try few different locations then choose the best angle at home. I know it is easier zooming in and out, which is also an option, but not being lazy and move to get to the right spot, in photography, is always more rewarding than standing still and using your zoom extension.

The other problem in this situation is to get the right exposure. Despite the light of the blue sky, the stage was still much brighter than the rest. Thankfully digital cameras have a much better exposure latitude than film slides so it is possible to shoot in these conditions.

What I suggest is to spot measure the brighter part, the stage in this case, and check if the blue of the sky is still blue or becomes black. Since the lights of the stage change continuously it is key to wait the right moment which is when the lights are low so is the contrast. Important suggestion, don’t wait for the best music. At concerts there is absolutely no correlation between the best song and the best moment to take pictures.

An eye on colour temperature is of more help. The sky is blue so a warm colour scheme, yellow/orange/red works better than a cold one to focus the viewer look at the centre. Be patient and be ready.

Ah the nineties.
I am a 90s guy. I lived my twenties in those years and this is the music I am most attached. It’s personal, emotional, memories.
I hope when 80s mania will end (will it ever?) there will be a nineties revival. Yuck could be driving that, there are good signs. In the meanwhile, when I have the occasion, I can’t resist going back to the real thing.

I lived my teens in the eighties. This is probably the reason why I hate them.
Love and hate, it’s a bit strong I know, just to make my point clear.

The way the nineties brought guitars back into rock music was to me fresh air. Was actually what took me into music.

Either it happened in Seattle, in Manchester or in California it didn’t matter. The fact is that with the new decade the synth, plastic era of the eighties was stormed by the return of Gibson, Fender and Marshall amplification.

Much before Google+, even before internet, those times you had to declare yourself part of a circle.

Either you were into flannel shirts and follow Nirvana, SubPop and the Seattle scene; or you loved the post mod era and hang around into parka listening to Gallaghers’ Oasis or opted for bright colours as a dress scheme and LA hard funk scene was your music. Whatever you choose, the early nineties were all about guitars.

Despite I never put on bright colours and jeans + t-shirt is pretty much what I have been wearing for the last 35 years, I was more into the LA scene than the others. I listened to Brit Pop and…erm.. “grunge” a lot but I liked this more.
It probably started with Living Colour or the day I was introduced to Blood Sugar Sex Magik .

Love blossomed with Rage Against the Machine, though. They added politic activism and I loved the energy of the music and the innovation of Tom Morello guitar style.
As I loved Primus because of Les Claypool out of ordinary bass playing.
In Italy technique is considered a key element in judging music and I grew up there.

I haven’t seen many of Seattle’s band live, despite I now regret having missed those Nirvana gigs, I haven’t seen many Brit-Pop acts, actually my first Brit-pop live gig has been Pulp last May at Primavera sound, but I saw all of these Californian folks back in the years. Except one: Primus.

When I heard Primus were getting back together and touring, I bought a ticket straight away. I then started worrying the minute after.
Worrying because I haven’t been into their music anymore and their music isn’t that much into our times either.
I dislike revivalism and I am candid about reunions. I see them all as a way to cash a big cheque and build up a pension. There’s not an artistic drive in putting a band together when you’re approaching your 50s and you haven’t done a gig as a band in London in 14 years. There’s not rock’n'roll in it.

Nevertheless if it goes ahead, I have no problem. Transparency and honesty are the first bits. Do your job, I will come along to listen to the music I loved but, please, don’t build up a barely believable “artistic” reason.

All said, I wanted to listen to Les Claypool playing live once, before closing my 90s (and my youth altogether).
To see him with Primus instead of one of his myriad of side projects is a plus. Actually several pluses.

Larry “Ler” LaLonde on guitar.
Having those songs and not the side projects odd stuff.
The return of early drummer Jay Lane in the line-up. Yes, anyone would prefer Tim Alexander, the one credited on Primus best albums, but to have everything is impossible.

Time to head back to Brixton Academy on my journey back into my past.
On my way I was wondering which version of Primus to expect. My favourite Primus are the ones of the early nineties. The band of Suck on This, Frizzle Fry and Sailing the Seas of Cheeses. Those are Primus to me.
Humour, technique, creativity, madness. Frank Zappa meets Tom Waits. Circus meets Rock and Roll. Noisy guitar trying to cope with Claypool slapped bass, reinventing funk. Fun, personality and great music.

I never got my head into the Brown Album and Antipop. Despite Tom Morello cameos, those heavy-funk riffs go out of date after a couple of listening. I love Brain as a drummer but he gives his best when is contained by a strong character, as Tom Waits.

I had the answer at the very opening of the set. While I was still in the pit trying to catch a rare glimpse of light, Primus opened with two of the three singles from Sailing the Seas of Cheese.

Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers and the massive hit Tommy The Cat pleased the crowd. The first of Les Claypool bass solo was jaw-dropping. A must see even to the most uncompromising indie fan that has to “despise solos” in line with the alternative-music manifesto.

With no songs from Antipop and Pork Soda and many from Suck on This, Frizzle Fry and Sailing the Seas of Cheese the intent is clear. Primus are looking back at their earlier material. Lucky me

There is a large amount of new tracks from Green Naugahyde, the new album coming out in September. At a first listening the tracks don’t differ too much from the favourite early period. As any of their stuff it needs to deposit and get used. Primus are not a pop band writing verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus songs.

With them, it is not even a matter of which song. Claypool is a clever person, he must perceive what music is in the air. Primus are so skilled they can play anything and transform it into a Primus song.
Their cover of Pink Floyd Have a Cigar is just an example.

Jay Lane seems to have a key role, he slows down the tempo.
So the concert explored more psychedelic, dreamy atmospheres. Songs got diluted into jam sessions and the public seem to love it. Judging from the (forbidden) surf-crowd attempted by old and young fans packing the sold-out academy, they are indeed.

John The Fisherman and Jerry Was a Race Car Driver are my highlights of an incredible night which contained many great moments.

After about 80 minutes of music, the encore was the icing on the cake. A storming medley with Here Come The Bastards, Pudding Time, Too Many Puppies and Is It Luck?
The closing track, I reckon the only from the Brown Album they played, Duchess and the Proverbial Mind Spread, is a bit unexpected. It wasn’t out of place but you want a gig to close on a high.

100+ minutes later people’s face are happily surprised by what they have just experienced.
Primus are the only band (I am aware of) that released a live album as debut. It took 22 years to me to confirm why. These three guys are an awesome live act.

I missed the last fast train to Cambridge, condemned to a very short sleep and another long night out, I sat on the slowest train ever eating a sandwich and reflecting on the origin of their weird songs’ titles.

To tired to find the solution, I fall asleep and leave it to historians.

Primus are expected to tour in Autumn the new album, Green Naugahyde, so stay tuned with them if you want to see a great show.

Web here [website] [myspace] [facebook] [twitter]

Photo tip

I have managed to photograph Primus.
To get into the Brixton academy pit this night has been a chase that I wasn’t sure would happen until the show began.

My only contact for Primus didn’t manage to get me a photopass, declined it politely: “I’m really sorry but I’m not going to be able to sort out a pass – tickets are so limited and the gig is sold out. Sorry I can’t help”
I didn’t give up. I used a trick that sometime works some other doesn’t.

Trying to get shooting the main band through the support.

Getting a photo pass for a support act isn’t a tricky thing. Usually no one requires to photograph supports and supports are very keen on being photographed. I had a contact for Hot Head Show.

The hurdle here is that the support photopass rarely gives you access to the main act. Especially in a place such as the Brixton Academy that has a strict policy with photographers.

I tried. I had a ticket, I knew I was going to be there anyway.
I got easily through for the support.
But before the gig, via e-mail and telephone, both the press person and the tour manager called me to let me know my pass for the Hot Head Show wasn’t including Primus set. Tight and full list, no chances.
I said OK, I’ll shoot the support and enjoy the gig. I pointed out that with just the photos of the support there are few chances to have them published on a webzines. “Sorry mate, I can’t do anything”.

I arrive at the Brixton academy, enter the backstage door, ask for my photopass. I was hoping to be given a Primus photopass sticker. It happened, it’s rare photopass stickers are different.

I still believed my plan was right and there was a chance to sneak in the pit. Nowhere was written that I was allowed to photograph the support only. The security surely don’t have these kind of information.

I waited Hot Head Show to start, took my pics, finished, waited in the Brixton shell shaped stalls. When Primus were to star I walked in the pit, showed my photopass and I was in. No complaint. No one told me otherwise. To my surprise the pit wasn’t packed at all, there were only 3 or 4 of us.

Lights were the trickiest ever, the band standing far on the back. Telephoto territory, but I have made a teenage dream a reality.
Twenty years ago I was a Primus fan dreaming of seeing them one day in concert. Tonight I am shooting them in one of the temples of rock music.

Thanks to the Hot Head Show for that pass. They are also a great band which I strongly suggest, if you like Primus you will love them. This last picture breaks the rule of liveon35mm and is for them.

To get to the Shoreditch Park isn’t easy. Hidden among strands of council houses, what years ago was a no-entry London area nowadays it is a “you’re out if you do not enter” place.
Getting there on the festival day is as easy as finding the Samba schools parade during Rio de Janeiro carnival.

A girl from New Zealand arrived with some friends and candidly utters: “Why is everyone in fancy dress?”.
I wouldn’t want to be in her place listening to the “fancy-dressed” friends attempting to explain to her that those are not costumes but properly dressed people depicting a new urban figure blossoming in the East-London area.

To be cool to the philosophy, implies some key points. Mainly to work in new media, music, artistic and creative positions and devote yourself to the mission of being different.
The aim is to look as if they don’t care how they look.
Surreally enough the consequence is that they all look identical and care very much.

Worldwide they are better known as Hipster. In this particular area it is devaluated to Shoreditch twats.

Attitude is snob. If you’re out and don’t embody the culture and the look and the music, they snub you.

I have been wandering all day among guys wearing blue and white horizontal striped T-shirts, something between Pat Metheny in the 80s and a sailor in the 30s. The have curly moustaches, Ray Ban sunglasses (a must have item), cubist haircut, very low waist, skinny jeans regardless of the presence or not of a beer belly. Tore down converse All-Stars.
It is very important to look poor. The (expensive) All Saints shop in Spitafield is their fashion-temple but if you ask where they bought that cool t-shirt there is only one answer allowed: “I got it for a fiver from a charity shop”.
Which has to be read “I am poor but so clever and cool that I can dress very trendy spotting beautiful things that normal people give away.”
How different is that? Very, isn’t it?

In psychological terms, Transactional Analysis would categorize this into the “I am OK, you are not OK script” (I won’t get there).

They all have a cotton bag. It replaces the (too mainstream) t-shirt to hold the manifesto. Differentiation within the group is achieved choosing your cotton bag of choice. Unsurprisingly it is an added item to all bands’ merchandise.
Mission unaccomplished, though. The bag frequently is Rough Trade, rigorously East and inevitably made of Fair-trade, organic cotton.

It was probably since Punk heydays that London didn’t see a community so uniform in their… erm.. uniforms. With two key differences.

First, this fashion seems to be a male thing. Or maybe guys are just more easily distinguishable because of a less creative mind. Don’t know, Fact is men contradict the basis of their “philosophy”: “Being different” and are strolling Shoreditch park all looking identical. I must be missing some conceptual passage.

From the outside it appears a narcissistic world that unconsciously aims to hide a lack of self-confidence. It searches for recognition among its own group. Recognition that more often than not happens through a Twitter mention, a “like” on Facebook and… listen here, be cool, a +1 on Google+. To avoid the eye contact that they don’t seem to be able to keep, they spend most of their time interacting through smart phones.

Second, culturally more interesting, this phenomenon follows an opposite direction. Punk “revolution” was born with the music and brought the rebellion in the streets. This fashion brings its own idea of coolness, doesn’t aim at any revolution. The indie/being different works only if you are part of a small circle (google+ anyone?). No revolution, no mass recruitment, the opposite jealousy of their own items, music, places. Reluctance to admit newbie.
It was not not born with its music. It went out there looking for a music to identify with.

It’s indie, is not well known, it is hi-tech but sounds vintage and lo-fi.
From the bands’ perspective the sensation I get reading interviews is of detachment, when not run away. Most of the interviews I read of “east-London-approved” bands they state they are not part of any culture and do not want to be associated with any youth movement. The classic response you get from who realizes that it is in their interest not to be part of something that in a year time can be replaced by something different, likely opposite. Remember “Emo”?

To reject my eccentric theory on indie-bands personality and to stop me writing nonsense sociology arrived, punctual, the American insolence.

From the moment Black Lips enter the stage and throw beer cans to the audience I get back in touch with the importance of the transfer between the artist and its audience.

Black Lips arrive in London with a critically acclaimed new album, Arabia Mountain. I must admit I wasn’t particularly struck by this LP.
As the legend wants, I saw the light listening to it live.

Black Lips are a rare band. The funniest live act I saw in the indie stratosphere since Hives’ decline.

Their lo-fi punk-rock and the theatrical body language get the entire crowd jumping in seconds. Their songs have the power to wipe all those coloured Ray-Ban much quicker than the setting sun.
A relentless army of crowd-surfers takes off riding the wave of raised hands from the soundboard to land in the arms of security standing in the pit.

Black Lips play all songs at the fast rhythm that characterize their sound and the excitement does never have the options to slow down.

If this is not enough, midway through the show several people materialize on stage and start throwing hundreds of rolls of toilet paper.
The fans don’t ask for permission to hit back sending those three plies of softness back onto the stage. The carnivalesque consequence is a battle of toilet rolls going on for minutes soundtracked by Black Lips insolent tunes.
Brilliant!

Unsurprisingly at the end of the show Code Alexander, one of the guitarists, jumps off the high stage to salute the first row fans and kiss the lips of all the girls one after the other. Rock’n'roll!
He stops sharing phone numbers and fixing after-show party meetings with more than a few of them.

All happens in front of the eyes of the moustached (boy-)friends, shocked and nervously smiling into their vintage t-shirts.
The tale ends with the expected moral. Substance wins over appearance or, put it this way, 2011 groupies believe there is a time for façade and one for matter. Ray-Ban sunglasses are back on. It’s dark.

More about the Black Lips impertinence here [website][myspace][facebook][twitter]

Photo tip

From a concert photographer perspective this year organization was perfect.
Myself and all credited photographers could shoot the entire festival.

Black Lips were the headliners and there where no limits whatsoever. “Policy is very relaxed” told the press girl at the box office handing the photopass with a smile.

There was not a three songs limit, not a “no-flash” restriction, not a single rights grab form in place.

Who knows if it was lesson learnt from last year 1234 Shoreditch. Peter Hook, the Joy Division bassist, had a rights grab form and many photographers turned him down covering the rest of the event but his show.

Has this policy killed the music?
Has this ruined bands reputation?
Has this turned us, concert photographers into billionaire exploiting the band and earning millions selling their exclusive prints?
Of cours it hasn’t. Not at all.

No one has asked to buy a single of my Black Lips shots despite these being among my favourites concert pics ever.

The only consequence this policy had is very simple. There are much better photos of the 1234 2011 edition around.
The coverage, photographically, is much better than average.

Try to Google for reviews and images on music magazines (official images not fans iphone photos) and judge yourself.
It is not because concert photographers were all of a sudden inspired by the atmosphere or the bands more spectacular than usual. No, not at all.

It is because we had time to photograph the shows without pressure. Time to wait for the moment.

As everyone following live music knows well (and bands, managers and tour crew should know better) the best concerts’ moment never happens in the first three songs (unless a performer is doing it on purpose for the photographers). In fact most of the shots of this selection have been taken from the middle to the end.
If I had to post this with a three songs limit, there would not be any of these images just worse.

Having time to study the body language of the musicians, their moves, their behaviour and wait they got in the mood with the audience is of enormous help.

With a “three songs no flash policy in place” apart from the extent of my portfolio, who would have paid the price? Me or the Black Lips?

Discuss…

It is a two part review because I basically saw two different bands, maybe three.

Part One

Boris performance at the ATP was the most physical music experience I ever attended.
Actually, both of them.
First one was a “standard” set. The second show they delighted the audience with a rendition of Feedbacker. Their 2003 seminal album. One theme, a unique piece of music that goes for about 45 minutes.

Boris music is literally physical, it’s a music you hear with your body.

Once the compulsory earplugs (unless you want to become deaf midway through) are into your ears, the sonic waves bursting out of the amplifiers pervade all your internal organs. They penetrate skin pores as no other musician I have seen can do.

It shifts from listening to feeling. Experience. A live Boris set becomes an art performance in the way that, as a listener, you’re not passive. Bodies resonate, your guts vibrate and are an active part of the act.

The band, the lights, the smokes, the sound and the audience all merge into a single piece that is slowly dismantled during the set by these four Japanese musicians.
At the end of the gig the sensation is not too different from coming out of Thai massage at the Wat Pho.

This was my first two encounters with Boris, this was Feedbacker, and this was utterly astonishing.
Whatever music you like, Boris shows are about experiencing something eventful.

Japan is a fascinating country, it has a strange feel imagined to a European. I need to go to Japan. Actually I’d live in Japan some time if I could, if anything to get them, to understand. To enter a culture that from the outside looks bizarre. As anything coming from far away probably more than the other things.

Contrasts.
Japan is Zen philosophy and hara-kiri, tea ceremony and Hi-Technology, shōji (the traditional translucent room dividers) and capsule hotel, Geishas and fetish bondage.
Musically, seen from my prejudice, Japan is the land of Classical Music and Avant-gardes, Progressive rock and Grind-Core Jazz, plastic Hello Kitty pop and Keiji Haino.
How to read a country and its people from that? No idea. It looks like the land of extremes. Japan looks like the oddity that manages to harmonize someway. I would like to investigate that way.

When I read that Boris were about to publishing two albums at the same time I was nothing but curious to listen.
Number one, Attention Please, is a “pop” album sang by Wata, the girl usually drenching crowds with feedback.
Number two, Heavy Rocks, same title same cover and similar philosophy to their 2004 exploration of stoner rock.

At first listening I wasn’t particularly impressed by the Pop conversion. There are some unexpected dance-ish loops in the songs that give it a different pop-twist from the seducing, sexy turn I was expecting. Why I was expecting something, no idea, must be prejudice about Japan, again.

Part two

At this point I knew Boris are a hell of a live band. I learnt that they must be seen, at full steam, on a stage.
A good excuse to head to the Student Union of the University of London a.k.a ULU well in advance. There’s no press pit there and to take pictures I like to be close, very close.

Expectedly the show was a mixture of the latest two albums with few more tracks from the recent past. (Boris have made 17 studio albums in about the same number of years).
Heavy Rocks is the opening choice. And the heavy riff of opening song, Riot Sugar, would be a favourite for any Kyuss fan.

Midway through the gig, Wata took control and sang three of the Attention Please songs, including the title track. It wasn’t my preferred moment. Keyboards and a drum-machine beat take the place of guitar, noice and feedback. Wata sings somewhere between Asobi Seksu and Goldfrapp and just sounds out of place.

Things got much, much better when the third song finished and the feedback kicked back. Ears bleeding volume for Windows Shopping from the recent Heavy Rocks then even more epic guitar stuff for 1970 from the original 2004 Heavy Rocks album.

My Neighbour Satan follows. A great title regardless of it being or not a mention of My Neighbour Totoro, the wonderful Miyazaki movie.

The concert close with the two longer suites of Heavy Rocks. Missing Pieces and Aileron create a more atmospheric, post-rock half hour. They don’t have the sparks and the brilliancy of the best moment of their Japan fellows Mono, but ultimately they manage to summarize all what Boris are and excluded the pop bits which, sincerely, is what Boris are not.

Boris cult is well present on the net, these are good places to begin: [website][facebook][myspace]

Photo tip

Photographically I am a background freak.
I pay a lot of attention to the background and how it balances the composition of the photo.
It is an essential part of my photography. I noticed that my eyes often tend to concentrate on minimizing the effect of disturbing elements on the back more than looking at the subject. It is also one of the reasons why I limitate my clicks and don’t use burst options. I believe it produces, in my hands at least, worse photos. Too many shots put your mind somewhere else. They don’t leave enough time to think at the composition, at what’s on the background.

One of the reasons Boris is a favourite live bands to photograph is their use of smoke mixed with coloured lights.
Smoke makes the difference, a big difference.
Smoke is like having a white canvas. The lights are the brushes that paint their abstract, dreamy shapes.

Smoke also acts as an eraser. It gets in the way between the performer and the stage, deletes most of the cables, poles, plugs and interfering non informative things that make a rock stage a very messy place.

There are two different uses of smokes and colour lights and, as most of things in concert photography, is out of photographers control. It is related to what kind of light hits the subject.
The ideal situation is what happened ad the second Boris gig at ULU. Wata and the other member where still lit so that while the coloured canvas provided a neutral back, the subject was still discernible.
To control this situation isn’t very difficult, light is there, contrast is not excessive so cameras would generally perform OK.

The other option is trickier. It happens when the smoke on the back is lit but the band members are not. As you can see in the first set of pictures shot at the ATP.
Nice silhouettes are guaranteed but control of the situation is not as straightforward.

Be quick, better to go manual, important to know how to compensate the exposition without leaving the eye from the viewfinder. Know how the camera reacts to strong lights, some overexpose some underexpose.
Know how to switch from matrix to spot metering, then how spot metering works. Don’t point the highlight, spot is all about recognizing a mid tone somewhere. Learn how to read the histograms, far more useful than chimping at your LCD.

Focus.
One of the main failure in a silhouette is if it is out of focus. A nice silhouette must be perfectly in focus. The black subject in the foreground must have sharp edges in at least a part of the image.
It is not difficult (for the camera) to focus in such condition as long as you know how the autofocus works.
It perceives difference in contrast so if you put the AF point at the margin between the black and the colourful back it’ll work well.

It goes without saying that if you want to try manual focus too it will not take many gigs to realize it is not difficult at all but often it is also quicker and more accurate than the camera AF. Give it a try.

Sharpness filter do quite a good job on sharpening strong contrast situation in post editing and can help someway, but getting it right at first place is the right way.

I learnt Tobin is a Brazilian musician, DJ, overall famous for sampling, just few hours before the gig.
I can’t understand sampling because I don’t listen to enough electronica. Simple. I can’t understand seeing a live gig of sampled music either. I find it bizarre. I’m old school (or just old), I’m linked to instruments, tools, devices to make music, sound, noise.
As a theoretical/philosophical thing I find fascinating the use of a piece of music as instrument to create other music but, put it into practice, I don’t get it.

What Tobin was playing inside is multi-cubic, giant sculpture is something I can only trust. I don’t know what was happening in there, I have to believe he was live performing and not putting a vinyl on a turntable then watch it it spinning.

Sorry, I am just exaggerating my ignorance to divert this review somewhere else.

Must be added he has an album, Bricolage, that got the rare pleasure of a Pitchfork full 10.0 mark. Very few artists managed to get it, kudos to him.

All said, when The Quietus asked me if I wanted to go shooting Amon Tobin one-off live UK representation of his latest album, ISAM, it needed nothing more than a YouTube video to get me jumping onto the train to London.
A tube journey, a walk under the pouring rain and I was inside Camden’s Roundhouse. Sold out for an event which, until the day before, I was not aware of its existence.

What I want to write, instead, it is about the installation related to Tobin’s last album starting from mentioning the people who worked at it.
Because they are worth mentioning and rarely are. It may be because they are many and it is difficult to understand the different roles within the project but it is without doubt this entire team of visual artist that makes ISAM memorable.

Leviathan is the studio working at it, headed by Vello E Virkhaus who, if I got it right, is the mind behind the concept. Alex Lazarus of Blasthouse is at the creative direction. Heather Shaw from another (Vitamotous design) studio is the responsible of the amazing efficacious yet simple set design and Stefano Novelli (name is Italian at least I don’t get him wrong) is the one that built it. Without these people and their team Amon Tobin gig would have not been as mesmerizing.

What Tobin’s collaborators built around his music piece is nothing less than a conceptual art installation. Probably weak on the “conceptual” side (but it doesn’t pretend to be such a thing) but surely big as installation.
A huge 3D multimedia sculpture made out of two walls of white cubes piled up and scattered one over the other. A pyramidal shape pointing one angle at the audience. A bigger glass cube in the centre hosts Amon Tobin.

Visually it reminds me a lit up version of Embankment, Rachel Whiteread installation inside the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, back few years.
Conceptually ISAM is miles away.
Whiteread work was about bringing the inside out, those plastic translucent cubes at a closer inspection were casts of the interior of cardboard boxes, giving emptiness a mass, a shape.
Tobin piece is made of cubes that rejects their own shape. They pretend to be simple motionless blocks. They become containers put there to receive the impalpable mass of lights (and videos) projected onto them.
Matter in Embankment was made out of void, in ISAM is made out of light.

Cleverly set at an angle, with empty spaces and multiple surfaces, the oeuvre offers two sides doubling the surface and the power of the lights effects it amplifies.

These pictures due to the sad “three songs no flash” rule are limited to the first 15 minutes of the show. The entire exhibit lasted about two hours and it was relentlessly changing and visually astonishing throughout.

From Op(tical) Art traditional illusions, Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley can be frequently referenced, to Dan Flavin neon art, every time art dealt with lights and moving objects seem to be quoted over Tobin‘s giant sculpture.

Sci-Fi movies (as The Matrix) are a big influence. The outer space landscapes probably are the most recurrent during the soundscapes Tobin performs.
Green Laser beams and computer monitors simulator alternate with old style videos, all constantly soundtracked by the ambient infused music coming out of Tobin central block.

Amon Tobin must be a modest man, he keeps is superstar role hidden. Standing inside is box for the entire performance appears only a handful of times. In the minutes I was allowed in the pit to photograph he appeared out of the smokes and the backlights for less than a minute, than he disappeared again submerged by the lights galore.
Most of the time his installation is not about him but all about the sound and light performance that goes on.

This truly spectacular event kept the thousands people packing the venue glued and staring at the stage for almost two hours.
If you happen to read that “ISAM by Amon Tobin” is coming to one of the theatres of your city, don’t think twice, buy a ticket whatever you think of electronic music.

Even if you don’t listen to DJs and can’t bear sampled music (likely if you follow this blog) this is something which is worth seeing. Because it is not only about Tobin music but it is about the amazing crew of creative artists that helped him to put on such a spectacle.

Follow the tour here [website] [myspace] [facebook] [twitter]

Photo tip

Believe it or not this is the first show I shot at the Roundhouse in London.
The Roundhouse is a quite large venue with a capacity of over 3000. Flat stalls with a round shape, as you can imagine from the name, and a circle on the first floor.

The pit and the stage are quite large, moderately high and there is enough space for a few photographers. On average standard for this kind of venues.
There is a inner circle of columns that isn’t nice because it obstructs the visual if you stand in the wrong place.

What isn’t a standard situation was the ISAM installation. With access to the pit just few minutes before and a black curtain hiding it from sight we didn’t really know what to expect.

In the end I believe that part of the success of the pictures is due to it not me. Once I decided the lens to use, mostly an ultra-wide angle zoom, the rest was an issue of catching the moment. An important issue.

I noticed (I always do) many photographer tend to burst many frames a second, shooting about 1000 shots in 10 minutes. I rarely reach 150. I still believe that it is much more efficient (read: I am much more efficient) going the old way and shooting only when I feel the proper moment.

I may lose an unexpected frame but I know I will not lose key ones. Having time to see and think is as important than clicking on the shutter button.

Follow the music, see the way the lights respond to it. Music in songs comes back and very likely that amazing light scheme will be back with it.
The all colour picture I took was taken with that logic and was not by accident. I haven’t seen it if not partially in other live ISAM set.

To not lose my fame, I moved upstair after the three songs to catch some telephoto shots of the stage from there. It took Amon Tobin security less then a song to stop me, yet I managed to get some interesting perspective and different colour schemes from there.

I was neither hindering anyone visual nor, disturbing the show from up there, though there were no exception.
I was kicked out with what become one of my most retweeted rants

Security:”Do you have a photopass?“
Me:”Yes“
Security:”You must stop now, after the 3rd song“
Me:”and them?“
Security:”They don’t have it, they can snap all gig“

As a partial consolation Tobin Management after seeing the shots wrote: “yep very strict in there, but your persistence has got some of the most original shots from the gig“.

I look forward for the day photographers will be allowed back to work with musicians freely.

This is only a part of the truth. The same legend status, achieved because it is repeated on second album reviews 7 out of 10 times, forgets the other half of the story involved in making an album into a success: the reviewers. I wonder how many second albums where understated not at the band’s fault but because of reviewers’ prejudice.

I’m not leaving myself out. Often we don’t expect a lot from the second album for irrational reasons. Preconceptions are fatal, instead of placing the listener in the right open-minded attitude it bias his judgement ahead of pressing play.

It is not risky to like a debut, even easier a single or an EP. It is compromising for your status of “music journalist, music blogger, music lover” to fail on the follow up. How many time have you heard someone saying “I loved them at the beginning, not anymore”? Go figure.

I liked Pains of Being Pure at Heart first album, I had been attracted by the B&W design of the cover then I loved the album. Classic indie-pop guitar tunes talking about life of a post-teen age.

A couple of years ago I was photographing one of their early gigs. It was in a packed, small venue with an inadequate acoustic. I still remember those delicate pop songs shining shy out of the sweat. Perfectly part of their times, great at managing new media and marketing, with echoes of the black and whites sound of the eighties.
The black silhouette on the album cover and the white of the vinyl they sold for 10£.

A lo-fi approach friendly and open communication with their public. They gathered fans and entered the precious space dedicated to cult bands. Not (yet) too many followers but all people that will not forget you for the next big thing just because you have to stop touring to record new material.

Musically the songs of that album put together the freshness of contemporary New York scene with the less apocalyptic of the Cure heritage. All spiced all up with drops of Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine controlled feedback.

Two years, many gigs and with new freshly mixed tunes, Pains of Being Pure at Heart are back with Belong, their second LP.
The album expands its sound. Part merit of the band, that doesn’t seem to have lost any inspiration, part a more professional production.
Maintaining their distinctive sound and vocally still centred on the calm and relaxed voice of Kip Berman, the palette the band uses to paint the new oeuvre has leaved the greyscale to move into multicolour.

Flood produces the album and expectedly makes it sound bigger. Songs are polished, guitars don’t clank raw but emerge crystalline. So do the keys, clean, shine to emphasize new dazzling pop melodies.
Alan Moulder, known to the public for the outstanding contribution to Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine (not chosen by chance, I guess), mixed Belong creating the perfect alchemy that doesn’t allow the new big sound to appear impersonal.

With a new glossy visit card in their pockets, from that tiny place where Pains of Being Pure at Heart stood hiding shy in the shadows in 2009, tonight enter comfortably under the colourful lights of a bigger stage.

The optimistic attitude present on the record is naturally transferred onto the live show.
They may have disappointed the purists of lo-fi and the detractors of the structured pop-song (and NME, which rated the album 3/10 and, sincerely, isn’t clear anymore what consider good beyond being British and emphasizing anyone that gets excited with the Union Jack) but surely TPOBPAH seduced lovers of melody and choruses.
Belong from the cover to the live show switches on the light.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart tonight breathe new life and sing new wonderful song to a very excited audience.

A positive feeling of Love in its largest sense infuses the songs and the beginning of the set. Belong the title track is a killer and is followed by two from the debut This Love is Fucking Right and A Teenager in Love.
The click with the fans is achieved. The first important step of the indie concert ritual: the connection, checked.

With a new member on stage adding a second guitar, Pains of Being Pure at Heart are now a quintet and have a more solid sound.
Berman’s voice reminds of the best Stone Roses. The bouncy rhythm of Heart in Your Heartbreak shows how skilled drummer can make the difference between a song and a hit.
The burst of optimism opening Heaven’s Gonna Happen Now and the ethereal keyboards of Peggy Wang match her sensual moves and her dancing long hair.

One of the night’s highlight is My Terrible Friend.
The dialogue between the keyboard launching the melody and the pulsing bass reminding of the Cure at their ‘Disintegration’ success. Then change of pace, a break in the beat and Kip singing “everyone is just everyone”. Surely shortlisted for the best pop song of the year.

The disappointment of the night, Pains of Being Pure at Heart didn’t play the slower, lovely, Anne With an E and the wonderful Even in Dreams, the one containing another winning verse for the Facebook age: “I wonder what is like to be liked”.

As it started, the concert closes as the album, with Too Tough and Strange, leaving the hot hits from the debut, Contender and Everything with You, to the encore. Not a brave move but the move to please those hardcore fans waiting for those songs at the barrier for what seemed not two hours but two years.

A great night, from a band on which I would have not put much of my money few months ago, considering how many beautiful debuts I have seen missing a decent follow-up. I put away my prejudice and admit that Belong is now listing high on my favourite albums of the year.

If that was a debut everyone would be shouting at the miracle, but since is the sophomore release, it needs twice the effort and it is not half the band’s fault. The album will get the Pains of Being Pure at Heart bigger stages, they thoroughly deserve it. Give them a chance.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are (very) active on the web [website][myspace][facebook][twitter]

Photo tip

It is difficult to make pictures of one show different from the other when all you have is a band on stage and some coloured, and never bright enough, lights.

If the band is not bringing a particular light scheme, and few can afford special effects, it is very important to put attention at any details and search for anything that gives a different feel.

This is why is quite helpful to enter the pit few minutes in advance to study perspectives and any device that may be of use.
At this gig I noticed that the usual vertical led-lights the Junction deploys on the back were moved forward to both sides of the stage, close to the left guitarist and to Peggy’s keys.

Once the show started I looked for the right angle and I spent some of the 3 songs (were 4 in the end to be fair) to shoot some photos were the led-lights act as main source isolating one of the members.

I had to wait the spare moments they were not too annoying blue but to avoid an unpleasant dominant.

Nothing special or outstanding, just a couple of different shots to make a photo set a bit more “electric”.

The amount of similar bands may be one of the reasons my path haven’t came across them until this tiny gig in Cambridge. A mini pre-tour to check some of the songs of the new album that they are recording. It is their third, it will be called Bruiser, it is scheduled for in September.

I always heard nice words about Duke Spirit very entertaining and energetic live act. Indeed they rock!
On stage a classic quintet line up, two guitars a bass, drums and the flamboyant singer, Liela Moss that undoubtedly is the centre of gravity of the ensemble.

There must be something related to surnames containing ‘Moss’ and sexiness.
With Kate Moss going to get marry with Jamie Hince, the band mate of Alison Mosshart rock’n’roll sexiest act, the Kills, it is a nice period for the sex, fashion and rock’n’roll bands.

Liela Moss, may well be Kate Moss secret sister, surely she puts on a damn sexy live show.
She has studied her moves, poses have been learnt from flipping through hundreds of fashion photo-shootings. Liela knows how to catch the attention of the audience.

Playing with the microphone poles, the monitors, percussion and a column in the middle of the stage. Flirting with the other band members, with the fans. Her body language is set on “hot and sexy”. The boots, dark skinny jeans and glittery jacket make her part of the group of cool model rockstars in company of Juliette Lewis, Karen O and Alison Mosshart.

If there is a weak point in Liela Moss attitude is that she looks too convinced of being sexy which make her much less sexy than she would be keeping a less confident approach. It is the subtle balance between looking special and looking real. The need of fans to sympathise with a star and seeing her unique at the same time.

A show wouldn’t hold up if the music wasn’t good and the music is good. We’re not on a catwalk but on a small and dark pub stage with a couple of hundreds people squeezed to dance singing along guitar loaded tunes.

Duke Spirit have the hits and also have the new songs. Being my Duke Spirit experience limited to few listening of the first two albums on Spotify I am not biased by their old hits. During the show there are a couple of moments when Liela sits on a keyboard to play new songs which are easily my best moments of the night. Good signs for the upcoming album.

Musically they have a love for the early nineties golden era of shoegaze, writing melodic tunes then submerge them in guitar waves.
The bearded guitarist standing on the right (it should be Toby Butler but I am not sure), contributes massively to the sonic-scapes transforming many of the songs with his feedback into more courageous journeys than NME indie-pop hits.

It may be the place, or the direction they are taking, the sound is very lo-fi garage. Hopping bass and guitar lines in the Sonic Youth way.
A sound closer to the debut album, Cuts Across the Land, with Liela soulful voice balancing the rawness of the guitars than the more commercial, elaborated Neptune.

Surely this is one of the most entertaining and energizing gigs you can pick up live in the ongoing soporific folky, electro, hipster UK scene.
The Duke Spirit are fun to watch, fun to photograph, fun to listen to and fun to dream on.

Duke Spirit on the web are here [website][myspace][twitter][facebook]

Photo tip

Since I moved to digital I shoot with zoom lenses, something of a heresy for years, from my Zeiss primes I use on film.

Undoubtedly digital photography, colour, high ISO and zooms gave me a lot more to experiment with my concert photography.
In order to find new ways to shoot a concert that doesn’t look the same boring band standing in front of microphone poles, I am enjoying some of the old zoom tricks known on photography manuals since the first zoom was invented.

Shooting while Zooming technique is damn easy. The problem is that the result is not easy to predict and multiple attempts and patience are needed. At a gig you’ll encounter other problems too.

You should be able to use flash (it is not essential but it helps) so a small pub gigs is the place to start, where no one, from the band bothers if you flash.

Duke Spirit show was perfect in this contest. Given the energy of the band, the dynamism of these approach represents them better than others, as when I first tried it on the acoustic folk of Alessi’s Ark.

Set your camera on manual or shutter priority mode. Set a shutter time around half a second or a second, it depends how long you take to zoom the entire focal length.
Then take your picture and at the same time zoom throughout trying to be as smooth as you can. Ideally a tripod would make this procedure more controllable but I don’t see many live concerts where you can use a tripod so try to hold as firm as you can, some blur would be unavoidable.

Depending on the way you do it, zoom in or zoom out, you get a different effect.
If you are using a flash, it will freeze a moment in the zooming. Synchronising the flash with the front or the rear curtain gives two more ways to change the result.
The front curtain flashes at the beginning, then the blurred scene is recorded by the zooming afterward. If you synchronize with the rear curtain the last moment of the action is flashed.

It is also fun and entirely possible for the ones with non fast lenses and cheaper cameras. With a 1” shutter speed easily you shoot at f/5.6-8 at a gig something achievable even on cheap standard zooms and non high iso performing bodies.

Composition wise, you better keep the subject at the centre of the frame, because that is the region of the frame which will be less blurred by the zooming. You can consider cropping in the post-editing if you want the subject in the rule of third.
About which zoom to use, it is up to what photos you want to achieve. I prefer the 24-70 that on the wide position gives information about the place and than closes up on the singer.

Last, but not least, this photos get quickly boring if repeated, so for a band or a portfolio don’t overuse it. A couple of shots are OK, ten would look redundant.