One of the most visually stunning festivals in the UK is Scotland’s Wickerman Festival. Not to be confused as a copy of Burning Man, Wickerman was inspired by the classic 1973 cult movie with Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward. Like a cheaper, cuter mini-Glasto it is now in its 9th year. Artrocker.com’s Stephen McLeod took some pictures of Teenage Fanclub, The Charlatans, The Futureheads and more.
Read about the festival after the jump
Good news Geordies! The New York Dolls are playing a one off ‘intimate’ show on September 4th at The Cluny. It’s a choice venue - worth the trip from anywhere in the UK I reckon. Here’s hoping locals The Campus Tramps reform to support them.
Details and ticket links after the break.
If my mother had been trite, she would have instilled in me the idiom that I should be the change I wanted to see in the world. I don’t know if Calories are big Ghandi fans, but "You Can Be Honest" is the epitome of its chorus plead: good, solid post-hardcore with a sense of teenage rush sucked from pop-punk’s teenage summers
You know, it’s one of my few many weaknesses, but like any weakness, it’s rooted in pleasure, however dubious. People sometimes ask why I feature video-game-style chiptuning artists with such gleeful abandon on ANBAD, and the simple answer is that I can’t help it.
Plenty of listeners don’t get this kind of music – they think it all sounds the same, or that it is too basic and punctuated, or that it is simply reductive. And to an extent, these are the exact reasons why I like music such as Tristram Burfield‘s.
What is it about this summer that you either have to sound like you’re fucking stoned out of your mind or make music with the intention of shredding the faces off your audience? I applaud such bands. For Crocodiles to be able to achieve both, takes some sort of great insight. Summer of Hate was all about the ear-piercing, screeching feedback, punk drums and sneering vocals.
This Dominant Legs song would be great at a wedding–it’s pretty, easy to dance (badly) to, and generally sounds like something you would want playing while you give someone flowers. (Never mind that lyrically it appears to be about removing oneself from a bad situation.)
This week’s news has been fluffed and plumped into a tasty political paella thanks to Wikileak’s genuinely brave and diligent exposure of what has really been happening in Afghanistan.
We asked the boffins at Wikileaks to run their beady eyes over the ANBAD Donkey, the stubbornly airborne totem that has always aroused suspicions here at ANBAD towers.
Oh come on. Sometimes, a band presents you with an opportunity that makes writing this stuff just too easy. It’s almost embarrassing.
When band provides you with this much ammunition, the exercise becomes not finding things to write about, but an agonising flurry of cuts as the article is snipped down to an acceptable size.
The source of all these trimmed and scattered superlatives? Well, Lenin Was A Zombie, of course. Yep – that’s right. Read it again and scratch your head in wonder that no-one has pulled that name out of the hat before. Perhaps its because anyone owning headwear containing such absurdities would have been committed to secure facilities years ago.
There’s not too many music festivals around that have a single idea or event as their central focal point. More often that not it tends to be a case of the bands on the main-stage being the priority, with any quirks and format changes being tweaked at the edges.
The Wickerman Festival - deep in the gullies of the Scottish borders - reverses that completely. It’s quite simple really: take a big field in the midst of some empty farmland; erect a giant figure ontop of a hill to be burned at the apex of the weekend; get a whole load of people in to drink and listen to some music. Brilliant.
I’m something of a sucker for 3 minute, fuzzy indie pop songs like ‘Completely Fucked!’ by Little Gold. It’s taken from a new 7" out now on NYC label Heart Break Beat.
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