Thanks to recessionomics the development of Coney Island has been postponed yet again, leaving the boardwalk open for another year of New York City's best free festival. You know the drill - take the Brooklyn bound orange or yellow trains to the end of the line, turn left out of the station and follow the noise. Map and set times are below, and we'll see you on the Cyclone (or Shoot the Freak, in line for Nathan's hot dogs, or slouching in the shade of the Warriors mural)...

GRAND DUCHY ///
INTERVIEW BY LOU WRIGHT ///

During which Lou skypes with Black Francis and Violet Clark (!!!), who were kind enough to touch base w/ 'Sup from the road. Grand Duchy is touring in support of their debut album Petits Fours out now on Cooking Vinyl with their three youngest children in tow. As you can see nothing was off limits - drum machine, diapers and dinosaur discussions abound. Tour dates listed below.

GRAND DUCHY/BLACK FRANCIS DATES:

JULY:

16 Washington, DC, Black Cat
17 Hoboken, NJ, Maxwells
18 Coney Island, New York, NY, Siren Festival
19 Cambridge, MA, Middle East
20 Wellfleet, MA , Beachcomber
23 Cleveland, OH, Grog Shop (Black Francis show)
24 Chicago, IL, Subterranean
25 Chicago, IL, Wicker Park Festival
29 Denver, CO, Walnut Room (Black Francis show)

AUGUST:

2 Seattle, WA, Triple Door (Black Francis show)
4 Portland, OR, Aladdin Theatre (Black Francis show)

RUMBLE STRIPS ///
WORDS: JOSH JONES ///
PHOTOS: DAN WILTON ///

Rumble Strips charged like an English fox hunt into our ears with their debut album Girls & Weather in 2007. With a notable horn section, their music was a raucous, live music fiesta of noise.

Then they went off radar a bit to take stock and make another record.

Now they're back. Recruiting a fifth member to swell their sound, they were hand-picked by Mark Ronson for him to produce their sophomore record, Welcome To The Walk Alone. A match made in horn section heaven? Not at all, instead this offering has cut right back on the brass and has moved into a much more layered, string heavy, sophisticated sound.

'SUP caught up with lead singer Charlie Waller, new boy (but old friend) bassist Sam Mansbridge, trumpet and pianist Henry Clark, Tom Gorbutt (sax and guitar) and drummer Matthew Wheeler, in east London as they prepared to hit virtually every festival in the UK this summer, and their new album hits the shops.

You’ve changed from a four-piece to a five-piece since the last album. How’s that changed things?
Charlie – it’s been a strain… lots of tension!
Tom – It’s been nice. It’s filled our sound out.
Charlie – we’ve known Sam for years and years and we’ve been in bands with him before, so it was kind of natural for us.

Now there are five, you’ve got a nice voting mechanism for a majority rules type of affair.
Charlie: Oh yeah! I never thought of that. Although, to be fair, we live in a dictatorship anyway. Whatever Henry says, goes.

Now, Charlie, I heard that the video for ‘Not The Only Person’, was about the time you got mugged and your wife chased the muggers away. Is this true?
Charlie: Yep. It’s all true. We got mugged – this isn’t the longest of stories – and she sent them away you know. She’s not that fearsome, I think they were quite scared anyway and quite often if someone doesn’t give in straight away then they’re a bit like ‘Shit, this isn’t meant to happen.’ They were probably just kids who aren’t that scary. Yet. Give them a couple of years… my goodness me

Talking of your videos, they’re all pretty stylistic – doesn’t one of your old bandmate’s direct them?
Charlie: Yeah, it was me, Tom and him – Harry. When Henry moved to London we swapped Henry for Harry. He’s really good at videos, I think that’s what he really wanted to do anyway. We always got him in to do our videos and it worked out really well. I think the videos for the later records on that album, where we didn’t use him are far weaker. If we’d got our own way we would have stuck with him much more. They may have been slightly odd and less likely, in the record companies eyes, to get on mainstream television. Which I think that most people watch them on the internet now, so that shouldn’t really matter.

Radio 1’s Zane Lowe has described this new album as ‘Phil Spectoresque’. Now, he’s a convicted murderer – how does that make you feel?
Sam: I think that’s the angle he was aiming at. That we make music like murderers.

Was the whole Wall of Sound thing what you were after?
Charlie: Yeah I think so.
Tom: We really wanted to make a sound that was big.
Charlie: Sonically, I suppose, not anything to do with stylisticly or song-wise, but sonically. We wanted that big sound and that old drum sound that’s only recorded on a few microphones.

Other than gaining Sam, how would you say you guys have changed since debut alum Girls and Weather?
Tom: We’ve got a lot less brass now. There’s a lot more guitar and piano.
Charlie: Tom’s playing guitar now. Tom used to play guitar in a band and was always a very good guitar player.
Henry: Having Sam in the band now playing bass permanently has opened up the scope for us now. If Tom had played guitar before, we wouldn’t have had any bass. So I guess it’s also changed the way we write now as well.
Tom: It’s widened out the things we can do now.
Charlie: Things have got more room to breathe now as well. Before we were cramming everything in.

To put it one way, you guys were quite ‘horny’ on your last record, and you enlisted Mark Ronson to produce it who’s famed for his ‘horn’ button on albums. But this album isn’t like that at all.
Sam: I think we cancelled each other out!
Charlie: I don’t think it was a totally conscious decision between us. I think he really wanted to do something that wasn’t horns.
Henry: The way we approached the first album was to make all the songs for live performances. Playing brass live has quite an impact.
Charlie: It as quite exciting playing it live – bands at that time weren’t using that kind of line up. Now everybody’s got a bloody brass section. Also, Henry knocked out his front teeth. There was one part of the tour we did where he couldn’t play the trumpet because he didn’t have any teeth. So he played his parts on piano and I remember thinking that it sounded really nice. It was a stranger sound rather than the rocky sound of the trumpet. Maybe that wouldn’t’ have happened if he hadn’t done that.

How did you knock your teeth out?
Henry: I fell down some concrete stairs.

Oh – it wasn’t a trumpet blow to the teeth then?
Henry: It was some Strongbow and some stairs. I didn’t really realised how bad it was. I got home and all the girls I live with were cleaning up my face. Then I woke up in the morning and I was pulling these big shards of tooth out of my bottom lip. Then I went to dentist and they sorted it out. It cost a lot of money to sort that out.

I did that once, my old flatmate elbowed me in the face and knocked half of my front tooth out. I stuck it in a glass of milk and went to the emergency dentist the next day. And they were amazed I’d done that.
Sam: Milk? Why did you do that?
Tom: They said that was a good thing?

Yeah, they said it’s the best thing you can do if you lose a tooth. Or in really cold water if you haven’t got that.
Sam: What do they suggest if you lose a limb?

I dunno – put it in minced pork?
[All fall about laughing]

You’re gonna get asked this all the time, but what did Mark Ronson bring to the album?
Charlie: He was pretty keen and into it, and I think that brought us a bit more confidence at that time. He’s a pretty positive guy, and I think we can be quite negative.
Tom: It gives you confidence when you’ve got someone who’s got an overall idea of what’s going on and it means we could just concentrate on the songs and the parts we were playing. When we came back into the control room and it all sounded good it really lifts you up. And he recorded it all with three mics
Sam: Three mics, a sharp suit, and a gold card. That’s pretty much what he brought to the recording.
Tom: He also had the idea to bring Owen Pallet (Arcade Fire, Last Of The Sahdow Puppets) in to do strings. We were into the ideas to do strings but not just for the sake of it. It needed to be orchestrated.
Charlie: I think he’s good at bringing people together. He knew a guy who could get a specific drum sound, so he came in for a bit.
Henry: He’s really good at delegating things that he might not necessarily know how to do to people who do, which is brilliant. A lot of producers want to keep their project completely as their project.

I don’t want to talk about him to much as it’s your record, not his, but he said that ‘Welcome To The Walk Alone’ is his proudest achievement. That must be nice to hear…
All: Yeah. It’s really nice to hear that.
Charlie: It’s definitely one of our favourite tracks on the record.
Sam: Was he talking about the album?
Charlie: No, the track.
Sam: Oh… I thought he meant the album.
Tom: We always thought that was an important song and was always going to be the first song released.
Charlie: That was always the starting point that song. It was the first one I thought when I was sitting in the studio listening back to the album, ‘Ah yeah, definitely.’

Welcome To The Walk Alone is out now on Island Records/Allido

THE POOL PARTIES WK 1 ///
EAST RIVER PARK BROOKLYN ///
WORDS BY LOU WRIGHT ///
PHOTOS AND VIDEO BY ABBEY BRADEN ///

Sunday's sunny weather and white, fluffy clouds practically begged for an outdoor show. The Pool Parties people at East River Park were cool enough to comply, but may have given the powers that be a little more than they bargained for. No blissed-out, sunshine dazed psychedelia or calm sunbathers to be seen - the streets were thoroughly shaken. The energy permeating the whole scene was so high-octane and brimming with good vibes of the raucous kind. Jemina Pearl and Ponytail freaked out, Fucked Up brought their best sense of destructive humor, and Mission of Burma kicked out the old jams to a crowd of kids probably too young to remember who these old guys were - but fuck it, they were having a great time. We walked away sweaty, smiling, and covered in Damian Abraham's sweat - concert-goers 1, summer heat 0.

Jemina Pearl

Ponytail

Fucked Up

Mission of Burma

SUPERSONIC 2009 ///
CUSTARD FACTORY, BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND ///
JULY 24th – 26th ///
WORDS BY MAREK STEVEN ///

When it comes to the musically minded, curated ‘progressive’ music festivals in the UK, All Tomorrows Parties gets most of the attention. And no two-ways about it, ATP is fantastic in almost every way. However, there is another! A comparable gem of a noisy weekend has been happening every July for a number of years. It’s name is Supersonic, it takes place in Birmingham, and this year they have their best line-up ever.

Supersonic started as a music and art showcase by the award winning pair of ladies that run the successful promoting team Capsule. This year it once again takes places at the appealing, three stage venue, The Custard Factory in Birmingham. As well as some fantastic films art and cakes, they have specialised in the musical crossroads where the heaviest metal, avant noise and folk meet. Supersonic has gone with the flow over the years and they have increasingly booked heavier bands as true metal becomes cooler and more popular. Whatever bands they choose it’s has a fantastic atmosphere and is one of the best weekends out there for music lovers. Capsule’s amazing reputation has allowed them to book some insanely rare acts and persuaded a variety of legends out of retirement.

Here are some highlights:

Robed, drone legends Sunno))) are playing a rare, raw set of early material, The Grimm Robe Demos, as a core member only, two-piece. A stripped down Sunno)))? See you at the front (with thumbs down and ear plugs in).

The Accüsed guitarist and founding member Tommy Niemeyer has resurrected his massively influential ‘crossover’ thrash band which he formed in the very earliest ‘80s. Promoting their face devouring new album The Curse of Martha Splatterhead we can expect brutal throat shredding and riff laden madness.

Amazingly, Sunno)))’s Greg Anderson & Stephen O'Malley have also reformed their earliest act – the classic raw black doom of Thorr's Hammer. The band features the gutteral vocals of Norwegian goddess Runhild Gammelsæter. She contrasts the heavier sounds with some hauntingly beautiful and atmospheric singing.

Italian legends Goblin bring their classic and much imitated soundtrack-prog to the UK for the first time in 20 years. Their popularity is bigger than ever – this should be a mammoth show. Supersonic also sees the reformation of the original line up of Head of David, who bring their own driving bombast to proceedings for the first time in 23 years. Most of my friends are particularly excited to see the notorious Japanese doom band Corrupted play their first ever show in the UK.

If you’re into heavy music then the Supersonic line-up is literally beyond belief. Some other bands to look out for are the 60’s influenced song-writing genius of Caribou, the insane live antics of Israel’s Monotonix, the mind expanding drone-noise of Growing, Brighton’s talented prog youngsters, Diagonal and the super tight psych-riffing of Earthless.

VEGA ///

INTERVIEW BY MIAMI HORROR ///

PHOTOS BY CAROLINE MORT ///

MELBOURNE, AUS ///

If you happened to catch 'Sup's last party at Cameo Gallery for Issue #19, you might have caught a set by what was listed on the flyer as In! Visions! VISIONS! - aka VEGA. The nom de plume was instated because Alan Palomo and company had a gig the following night at Studio B and obvs wanted to do the right thing. What up exclusivity clauses! Still 'Sup gets the bragging rights for technically hosting VEGA's NYC debut. Man, what a show. Such an instant response to the magnetic force of an opening band is a rarity, but VEGA has the mystical X factor (perhaps it's the hair?) and people straight up rushed the stage. Fists were pumped, drinks were sloshed and a good time was had by all in the name of airtight synth driven pop.

Before we could ask him about his old band (Ghosthustler), his dad (Mexican pop legend Jorge Palomo), hair products, or why this band still exists (*head explodes*), Alan headed to Australia and we were left to wander around with giant sad faces. Needless to say we were pretty psyched when we heard that the reason he headed down under was to collaborate with none other than Miami Horror. MH (née Benjamin Vanguarde) produced select tracks on Vega's upcoming Well Known Pleasures EP, and then asked Alan to lend some vox to his own full length album. With the two of them tucked away in studio working their magic, who better to interview Alan than the uber producer himself. Please read on to enjoy the fruits of their (doodling) labors and more of Caroline's ace photographs. Click on the image twice to enlarge.

No. Words.

See photos from Michael Jackson's memorial service at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem *HERE*

I’m beside myself excited. Patti Smith at the Royal Festival Hall. Patti. Freakin’. Smith. She’s a rare soul, a legend yet alive, a tangible piece of musical history, and the divine inspiration for our own goddess of diamond-hewn rock and roll, Ms Polly Jean Harvey. Although I’m a long standing fan, I’ve never seen Patti Smith live. I’m unarmed for the assault of the senses that are to come.

The gig is part of the Meltdown Festival, a series of gigs at the South Bank centre. To give it some verve they’ve slapped a ‘festival’ sticker on it, which the middle class like, as it makes their lives feel more exciting but without the danger and the fun of the fields, and without pesky drug-fucked kids swerving about. This is a sophisticated event my friend.

Patti Smith takes the stage to uproarious applause, and as the cheers fade, begins her poem Piss Factory, an angry tirade against the monotony of factory work. It’s an uncomfortable, all absorbing experience to hear Patti Smith’s spoken word. Her poems are raw, unnerving, and her delivery insistent and rhythmic. She transcends the plush environs of Royal Festival Hall to deliver gritty American realism; evocative, provocative and earnest.

Smith introduces her daughter Jesse, who pulls up a pew at an enormous grand piano to accompany her mother. In the quiet moment at the end of the applause, Smith, momentarily unaware of the audience, looks over to wave and tenderly squeaks, “Hi sweetie”. It’s a touching glimpse of what real life means to her.

The focus tonight is emphatically on the spoken word. Smith eschews material from her seminal debut, Horses, to take a more free form approach to the evening. Tonight is about collaboration, and it makes for a thrilling and fascinating viewing, with a roll call of incredible musicians brought to the spotlight. She casually introduces the bass playing behemoth that is Flea (dressed in spats and trilby and debonair as hell) perches near her and riffs along with Portishead’s Adrian Utley on guitar. The accompaniments are mostly loose jams, almost like free jazz. It’s something special to see Flea masterful in such an incongruous setting.

Best of all this evening is the way Patti connects with the audience. As her band trot off stage and the sound crew reset the stage, she looks scattily around at the stage and remarks, “Uh, I think I was supposed to go off stage for a break just then... But I’m still here.” She looks around at her crew who are busily setting the stage, then back to the audience. “Well, I don’t know what to say, so I’m just gonna stare at you.” And she peers out at the auditorium. It’s a relief, the juxtaposition of the serious, often bleak imagery of her words, and her interspersed relief of her deadpan joshing.

Ordinarily if you told me I was going to get to see Patti Smith, but she wouldn’t be playing her epic track Land, I’d have stamped my feet and trounced it as a travesty, but as she leaves the stage at the end of her encore, and I know she won’t come back, it’s an entirely cope-able feeling of regret. I’m satisfied. My soul is enriched with her words, I feel so happy I could cry a little bit. In the short time she’s been on this stage she’s become more to me than a pinnacle of rock and roll history, and who could ask more than that?

Singer, songwriter, and composer Jannis Noya Makrigiannis ditched his Copenhagen digs and headed for the Greek island of Samos to craft the sound which became Choir of Young Believers’ This is For The White In Your Eyes. This, weirdly enough, makes sense.

There’s something of that expansive, epic world in the record. But that’s not what makes sense. What makes sense is that a man would retreat to the greens, blues, and scorching heats of ancient Samos to craft an idea, and then come back to Copenhagen and the world of concrete, rain, and the new West’s curious neuroses to make a record out of it. It adds up an apt description for This is For The Whites in Your Eyes: a grand, flowing sound filtered through the narrow and dirty filter, which lends its own peculiar beauty, to create something both sprawling and contained.

The record relies heavily on thudding, heavy percussion arrangements and soaring strings to bring Makrigiannis’ simple imagery and folky songwriting onto a higher plane. Again, names somehow suffice – The Choir of Young Believers has the feel of a band saying simple things in complex ways, perhaps complex beyond even their own understanding. A boys’ choir harmonizing lyrically about a god they have not yet come to know, striving only for the sound they know would please someone if only he would make himself known.

The record is not perfect. It leans too heavily on its orchestration and sometimes the songwriter suffers from having too comfortable a sonic bed to fall back on. The sound is also very consistent, leaving little room for variation. Standouts include “Next Summer,” which soars somehow higher than the rest of the record, possibly because of its hopeful tone. There is also “Action/Reaction.” The beatiest track and Choir’s clear bid for radio recognition, it strings the familiar rangy instrumentation over a stable, bouncy beat that lends new spirit to the sound. These two tracks are, however, confined to the first half of the record.

Then again, what would the record be if it were perfect? Who knows. For the moment, it’s enough to listen to a man and his friends driving hard towards a specific sound with single-minded concentration. It speaks, for lack of a better word, of faith.

Ghostly International is set to release Choir of Young Believers' This is For The White In Your Eyes on August 18, 2009.

PHOENIX ///
BROOKLYN, NY ///
WORDS & PHOTOS BY ABBEY BRADEN ///

For reasons beyond explanation, the night before Phoenix's sold out show at NYC's Terminal 5 (a cavernous 3,000 person capacity venue) the boys hopped the East River and unleashed a full set in the much more intimate Music Hall of Williamsburg. Both tickets were hot commodities obvs, but the Brooklyn gig had people just about offering up their firstborns for admission (shout out to Bumpershine). Let's just say whatever manner one had to resort to for entry - it was 100% justified. Thomas Mars and co opened with "Lisztomania" and closed with an up uptempo version of "Everything is Everything." Apart from United, we've caught these guys touring in support of every subsequent album and this time around was the tightest show yet.

THE COATHANGERS ///

INTERVIEW BY LOU WRIGHT ///

PHOTOS BY LEIA JOSPE ///

JUNE 13, 2009 ///

This June the Coathangers blew into Brooklyn, and ‘Sup was there to see it. There were, in fact, two interviews conducted. The first was legendary – so legendary, in fact, that the recorder died. The salient details of that interview are as follows: The Coathangers do in fact eat children and adult cats and use their remains for arts and crafts, they have no musical influences, and they all have a lingering distrust and/or contempt for dude named George. The rest is history. Having revived the recorder, we redid the interview, giving the band a chance to weigh in on clouds, dinosaurs, Soulja Boy, and what bands to watch for in the ATL.

There’s a new cloud and it’s huge and it looks heavy fucking metal. What do the Coathangers want to name a new kind of cloud?
Candice: Cercumbus. Ominous.
Stephanie: Cumulo, cumulo-ominous.
Julia: Inter-uterine.
Meredith: Inter-uterine-cumulo-ominous.
Julia: So we could look up and say “Hey! There goes inter-uterine!”

What are some of your non-musical influences?
Meredith: Cupcakes.
Julia: Your mom!
Candice: Garlic.
Meredith: Turkey!
Stephanie: Snapple.
Meredith: People in Singapore.

Singapore?
Stephanie: We just found out we have this über-fan in Singapore.
Julia: Ridiculously good-looking umbrellas.
Candice: Skull-caps. Definitely skull-caps.
Julia: Snow cones!
Meredith: Teabags? Teabags.
Julia: Vaginas.
Stephanie: Experiences with bad boyfriends.

What are some of the bands we should know about in Atlanta? Give some shout-outs.
All: Customers, Predator, Stolen Hearts, Sea Lions. Tag! (uncontrollable laughter)

Who is Tag and why is that funny?
Meredith: My brother does these kids songs, and that’s what it is, he calls it Tag. He played at this festival, you know, no big deal. There are songs about peanut butter and jelly, and colors… “PB&J All Day”…
All: [General shouts of confusion] …Baby dinosaur Ringo Starr! ... [more confusion] Are we going to Mexico? No, wait. Baby Dinosaur vs Ninja is another band from Atlanta, and so is Gringo Star. And of course Black Lips, you guys know them.
Stephanie: Oh, there’s Bobby and the Soft Spots.
Julia: We’re sorry, it’s a shame, we don’t know bands anymore. We’re not in the scene.

Have you really been gone that long on tour?
Meredith: 4 days.

How much longer?
Julia: Four weeks. We’re going to Canada, then west, then back. We plan to eat at Outback.
Stephanie: It’s our first time in Canada, we’re super excited. Plus, my cousin just got married and lives there now.
Julia: And they say “eh”. So that’s cool.
Candice: But not the French ones.

No, they don’t say “eh” at all.
Julia: Schneigel-schneigelizer!

What? I’m lost.
Julia: Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean anything.

If you were dinosaurs, what kind of dinosaurs would you be?
Meredith: I would be a T. Rex.
Julia: I’d be one of the spitting ones. I don’t know what they’re called.

Last question. What are the Coathangers listening to right now?
Stephanie: The Fray. Public Image. Lots of rap.
Meredith: Soulja Boy.

Well, he’s just awesome, and he’s like 9 years old.
Meredith: And he doesn’t rap, he just talks.
Stephanie: [As the rest of the band breaks into some sort Soulja Boy – influenced freak-out] We should do these kinds of songs. It’s where the money’s at.

Next Coathangers record is gonna be a crunk record?
All: Yeah!
Julia: I did sell Cee-Lo shoes, so we’re already halfway there.

You’re close.
Julia: Well, he didn’t buy them, he just tried them on. They’re only 30 dollars, he doesn’t have a reason to not buy them. I think he wanted cleaner ones, but he was really nice.

There’s something extremely theatrical about Patrick Wolf’s fourth album, The Bachelor. Not in the sense of jazz hands and glitter jumpsuits but in the way that biblical characters are used in his lyrics, accompanied by a powerful stream of violins, chorus, and Wolf’s own interpretation of poetic justice to his words. That to me is a shebang.

Compared to Wolf’s prior album The Magic Position, The Bachelor has the same kind of Bowie-esque Gothic undertones. It’s very Romantic, over flowing sometimes because of Wolf’s self-indulgence in his talent. The album’s title in song begins with the violins then dominated by heavy handclaps and a clear message repeated over and over again. We get you, Wolf, you don’t want to get married. This song has a lot of character, a kind of vintage reference to the bonfire golden days of folk music. I feel like I’m sitting in a circle and clapping my hands in a farm, wearing a prairie outfit. It takes a lot to get me feeling this way.

"Hard Times" was Wolf’s first single of this new album. From this one song, pretty much the epitome of The Bachelor, is a combination of the aforementioned techniques. A computer like beginning, a poetic allure of his voice, a climax including a chorus to the word Revolution, and then a prolonged note of what could be describe as tension if to be described by sounds. To say Wolf is pretentious would not be wrong. It’s easy to put him into this category because of his clever use of mythology, Greek or Biblical, in song. I honestly had to Wikipedia many of Wolf’s titles to understand what he was singing about. In his song "Theseus" the actress Tilda Swinton begins with a spoken interlude. The beauty of Wolf’s words makes the Wikipedia search worth it. The album flows.

To say Wolf is swimming in a pool of indulgence would not be wrong. "Vulture" is one of the strangest tracks of the album. Electro-synths and distortion combine to reflect the skeleton of this song. There is an attack of video game beats and a cool stuttering effect of words. The last song "The Messenger" follows the same eeriness. The entire album reminds of a modern take of something old and nostalgic. Wolf produces these sounds of universality in the sense that his music is emotionally charged and classical. Yet Wolf’s ability to add in fun - sometimes freaky - synths brings it back into reality.

Leave it to the FoTP boyz to hit the next YIKES!!! lineup out of the park. This Friday Grum will be making his Studio B debut and he'll be joined by 'SUP #20 supastars House of Ladosha. Hostage (straight outta Edinburg) and Chicago's very own Local Hero will round out this fantabulous lineup. We of course want as many people to hit the dancefloor as possible - because the more minds blown the better - and therefore are giving away tix. However we're gonna try a little something different with the contest this time. 'SUP is operating in the Twitterverse so add us as a friend (twitter.com/supmag) and keep an eye peeled for tweets!

It’s nearly summer in New York - by the time this posts we’ll really be in the shit – and everything is moving too goddamn slow. Luckily, I just got The Coathangers' Scramble. A record that crackles with nervous, static electricity and sci-fi sound clips, firing off short, razor-sharp rounds. It’s a record that delivers the kind of shock treatment a sleepwalker needs in the dog days, the kind of molasses hours these Atlanta girls are no doubt acquainted with. About fucking time.

Scramble works like this. There is a band with a love of broken guitar strings and screaming. They are very far away from you, and they are playing at maximum volume into one end of a very long air-hose. The hose is full of small, moving insects and broken television sets which only show early-60’s shocker movies and Soviet propaganda tapes. The other end is directly attached to your ear. At first, it is simply painful. Almost too much. Punishing.

Seductive.

You keep listening. Slowly, songs start to be recognizable. Melodies, harmonies, and solid, creative bass lines make themselves known. The wretchings of lead vocalist Crook Kid Coathanger form wicked, restive words, bringing you back to the simplistic, gut-wrenching screams of art-punk past. Slowed-down, freaked out lounge numbers like “Dreamboat” and “Sonic You” lull your fractured nerves to sleep, so you’re caught unawares when the record comes flying back at F-16 speeds. With all the half-fueled, unrehearsed killer style of a live show, the album warms up, hits heights, dips down, comes back, and finishes strong with “Cheap Cheap.” Suddenly, everything starts to make sense.

That’s how the record works.

Crook Kid says it herself – “Bury me, bury me in analogies.” And I could. Start at Sonic Youth and work in all directions from there. At this point, it’s unnecessary and detrimental to play the comparison game with The Coathangers, because it makes everything less fun. So screw that, let’s leave it at: they’re a band that sounds like the band that they are, no more and certainly no less. So if you like blood in your ears, guts on the ground, and Big Muffs on the stereo, this may just be your ticket for a summer that ends in the hospital. See you all this summer when these kids hit the ground with Mika Miko and the always-amazing Strange Boys. I’ll be the guy with the broken legs and the big smile.