Street Fighting Man: DiS meets Rage Against The Machine's Tim Commerford
The powerhouse bassist speaks about his old band’s limbo, Wakrat’s Election fury, and jamming with Chuck D»
Articles
HugoAGoGo has written the following articles:
Coachella: DiS' 2008 Review
From the archive... Powering through the desert at as close to 666mph as laws allow, DiS wonders exactly how this Coachella will surpass the mania of last year»
DiS meets Mastodon
As part of our Countdown to ATP's A Nightmare Before Christmas DiS caught up with seminal rock behemoths Mastodon who say they “scream like banshees being stuck in the ass with a knife”, but new album Crack the Skye signals a change of tack... »
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - My Bloody Underground
Much as previous incarnations of BJM have effortlessly projected the spirit of The Byrds, Dylan and the Stones, this particular version walks, talks and breathes the aesthetic of its influences with satisfying grit»
Here comes the rain: Buck 65 reads DiS the weather
DiS gives iconoclastic MC, DJ, producer and rumpled troubadour Rich Terfry a penny for his thoughts on Elvis, Malcolm McLaren and the zeitgeist before the 'hip-hop hobo' AKA Buck 65 tours this week»
From down in the dark: The Gutter Twins step into the light
The ‘Fire and Ice’ analogy that Mark Lanegan tears straight out of a James Ellroy novel to describe the bluesy tag team he’s created with Greg Dulli leaves nobody guessing who’s who. DiS inhales deep and dives into The Gutter Twins' world of no regrets»
Blowing kisses to disinterested bitches: Yoni Wolf considers Why?
With the luscious Alopecia, San Francisco's Why? are about to deliver the silver-tongued LP that seduces the ear of anyone impervious to their advances to date. DiS steps inside Yoni Wolf’s melodic realm of motivated defeatism»
N.W.A – Straight Outta Compton (Expanded 20th Anniversary Edition)
On N.W.A's second LP, the expletive-ridden syntax wrapped around Dre and Yella’s dextrous forays into soul would eschew the cerebral bombast of Chuck D and KRS-One to plumb new depths of foulmouthed agitation and coin the immortal mantra: "Life ain't nothin’ but bitches and money"»
anticon: ten years after it hit the prism
2007 has solidified San Franciscan label anticon's position as a vital independant force. DiS sacks off the conjecture that's all been said already to meet with the chairmen of the board»
El-P at Glasgow King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Fri 05 Oct
“Oh, it’s gonna be one of those shows tonight?” El-P cracks a satisfied grin in the general direction of the carnage. With fake blood trickling from his brow, he surveys the damage already on the ground, ignores the quickly peeling masking tape which seems to hold the sound monitor above his head together and instead chooses to focus on the horizon of flailing arms and ranting faces placed somewhere in-between...»
sole: both sides of the brain
Tim Holland, aka sole, spills to DiS on big ambition, artistic schizophrenia and life as battle rap's answer to Kwai Chang Caine. Y'know, the vagabond bloke from Kung Fu...»
El-P: the overly dramatic truth
Once DiS tempers his harsh - but we pray comical - demand for imminent hari-kari by loading a fresh AAA into a Dictaphone, Def Jux CEO extraordinaire El-P tells tales about the trials of keeping one of the most consistent underground hip-hop record labels on the planet afloat while he ups the ante on his own solo career and – what's this? – whispers the potential of a white label Company Flow comeback...»
Songs in the Qui of David Yow
"There were some weird rumours going around; I had read that I was a murderer, I had read that I was a junkie and I had read that I was dead." After eight years away from the music scene, Qui's David Yow awakes from a drunken stupor to fill DiS's Dave Kerr in on the much less ridiculous truth and to talk about his continued denial of pop stardom...»
Aesop Rock: Isolated, biological phenomenon
In any given artist’s lifetime, the progress of a good idea is often stunted by the appeal of another that could be much bigger. Dynamite designs are tossed aside for the sake of pursuing some newer, more daring revelation and the scope for entering a cycle of indefinite distraction becomes full blown. Not the case, it seems, for Aesop Rock...»
Sleeping States - I Wonder/Under A Capricorn Sky
The techniques pique the interest, yet the result is a double A-side with minimal spark or vibrancy, suffering at the hands of a stubborn, resolutely anti-climactic approach.»
CocoRosie at Glasgow Arches, Fri 15 Jun
Three albums in and they're still an enigma; with nothing much finite about them, the attraction to CocoRosie's neurotic blend of folk-hop remains simple: it's easy to get caught up in a good mystery...»
Bright Eyes - Hot Knives / If The Brakeman Turns My Way
The unfair burden placed upon Oberst's shoulders by the Wyld Stallyns type hype could - save his pending single handed resolution of all Middle Eatern conflict - prove to be as misplaced as Jim Davidson's OBE. But don't let this detract from the allure of his schizophrenic whimsy...»
The Pistolas - Take It With A Kiss
Similar to the way in which any £1 party worth its salt achieves its ends by revealing shit-faced punters in various states of temporary euphoria when the lights go up, this is a carefree indie disco affair that, at the very least, achieves its Kick Stepping objective in the short term. But, any fire damage inflicted on this particular roof is purely cosmetic...»
Elvis Perkins - Ash Wednesday
That an album which appears so harrowing on its surface can bring some strange sense of calm by the end of its sixth play is testament to both Elvis Perkins' skill as a songwriter and the cathartic, unenviable road he must have travelled to achieve it...»
Tom Morello: all along the Nightwatchman's Tower
Given the fairly overwhelming level of attention being placed on Rage Against The Machine's resurgence in the aftermath of Audioslave’s demise, maverick guitarist Tom Morello – AKA The Nightwatchman – has been free to slink in through the back door, with little fanfare, to let loose his debut solo LP, One Man Revolution...»
heartbeats
Beyond confirming their Lynchian credentials, this begs an encore applause for The Knife’s near alien ability to take up the well worn baton of Goth pop with a minimum of thigh slapping irony...»
Good Shoes - Morden
Morden life sounds rubbish, but where’s the fruit to wallowing in such soul destroying defeat...»
Stephen Fretwell at Edinburgh Henry's Cellar Bar, Wed 16 May
Although the shotgun sloganeering of “Chris Martin with big hair” threatens to lurch over Stephen Fretwell like a menace, he simply doesn’t have the Bono complex or the shit written all over his hands to justify it...»
DiS @ Coachella: RATM, Arcade Fire, Björk and... Crowded House?!
Harnessing the energy of a rare minute in which a disparate range of artists from the past and present can look to the future and plausibly congregate on the same bill, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California has steadily become world renowned as the proverbial melting pot, tripping over itself with cultural icons both obscure and ubiquitous...»
Maximo Park, The Dykeenies at Edinburgh Liquid Rooms, Fri 30 Mar
Soaring tunes young and younger are augmented by Smith's trademark animated splendour and the immediacy of Maximo Park's unspoken 'pogo' mantra hits this Liquid Room legion with a quickness...»
CocoRosie: Once in a Lifetime
"All the fantasy's gone out of music, 'cos everything's too f*cking real," so sayeth Noel Gallagher. But the mono-browed Manc maverick surely neglected to share this insight with CocoRosie...»
This Is Music presents... at Edinburgh Henry's Cellar Bar, Thu 22 Feb
"You don't have an opinion!" he screams with a reveller as the carefree misadventure of his limbs sees him boot an unmanned smoothie across the dance floor...»
The Melvins, Big Business, Flipper at Glasgow Garage, Thu 14 Dec
They might have been at it for over 20 years and have almost as many albums to their name, rinsing the world's supply of bass players in the process, but tonight The Melvins kick around the hypothesis that they're not only peerless nowadays, but they've still got the beating heart of a band in its prime...»