Ones to Watch - The Detachments

http://www.clashmusic.com/feature/ones-to-watch-detachments

There’s something deeply enticing about the darkness. Whether it’s the way that the corners of seedy dance floors seem to curl a proverbial index finger and beckon you to come hither, or the way that brooding back alleys cause you to turn and inspect at a second glance, it’s the shadows that are interesting: these varying shades of black stir up something in us that few other things can.

Lurking somewhere beneath the melancholic gloom are Detachments, the London-based quartet who spew-out heavy synths and noise rock, with a smothering of 80’s electro pop and a dreary miserablism, all of which has made lazy comparisons to the likes of Joy Division and New Order an inevitable pain in the arse for the band. “We get called ‘industrial’ a lot – what the fuck? I don’t even know what that means. And Joy Division blah, blah, blah. I think songs like HAL actually come out of my love of Hip Hop,” lead singer and creative force, Bastien Marshal, explained. “In fact, if I was stuck on a desert island and had to bring an album, I’d choose Pet Shop Boys instead of fucking Nine inch Nails.”

Feeling more misunderstood than a thirteen-year-old on the Jeremy Kyle show, Detachments channelled their disenchantment into an enthralling debut. The marriage of sleaze, frustration and seduction on tracks like ‘The Flowers that Fell’ and ‘Circles’ tempt you in a way that is hard to fight—like a hostage with Stockholm Syndrome—and it’s almost impossible to not find this despondency alluring, one of the band’s traits which Marshal is more than aware of. “I don’t take much notice of many other bands but I can’t sense anyone doing quite what we’re doing. The flavour we have is somewhat different, it’s a bitter, an acquired taste perhaps,” he says. “But once people get it they’re hooked.”

Having taken the decision to alter their sound earlier this year, Detachments spent most of 2010 re-establishing themselves as a live band and getting used to their new musical dynamic. “The album was completed in Spring, with the vast majority recorded on synths. As a result, we had to ditch bass and guitars to make the switchover this Summer,” Marshal
explained. “The change meant that we’ve only just got the re-invented live show up and running again and it meant we weren’t ready to play festivals or anything over the Summer.”

Making up for lost time, Detachments kicked off an extensive Autumn UK tour in September to promote the release of their debut. And with future plans for a second album sounding even more eclectic than its predecessor, Detachments look set to carry on enticing us into the shadows of Marshal’s warped, creative mind.

Words by Laura Routledge

Where: North-West London
What: 80’s synths and electro sleaze
Unique fact: Marshal recently made his acting debut in a film by an Italian Director
Get 3 songs: ‘HAL’, ‘The Flowers that Fell’, ‘Circles’

The Big Chill 2010 - Mr Scruff Tea Tent

Us English are renowned for loving a good brew, and for thousands of hungover and dehydrated festival-goers it’s the only remedy to feeling slightly human again. This is where Mr Scruff’s Tea Tent comes in. Like us, when Mr Scruff isn’t DJ-ing, producing or drawing cartoons, there is nothing he likes more than to tuck into a good cup of tea. And if he isn’t drinking it, he’s making it.

Since setting up his own tea company, Mr Scruff’s aim is to provide top quality, great tasting, 100% organic and ethically produced tea for festival-goers to enjoy. Using ingredients including a blend of organic rooibos, sweet pear, cinnamon extracts and valerian (a natural relaxant), Mr Scruff has developed a wide range of popular flavoured tea available at all good festivals, as well as many respected retailers.

While Mr Scruff is better known for his DJ-ing and collaboration with record label Ninja Tune, he began selling tea from a small room at the Music Box, a club in Manchester where he was a resident DJ. Mr Scruff then took his teashop on tour and has appeared at festivals ever since with his online tea company, ‘Make Us a Brew’ and his own range of fair trade teabags and tea-related paraphernalia, having been born from this.

Offering a wide range of innovative and tasty teas, one of Mr Scruff’s proudest cuppa flavours is his ‘English Breakfast’ tea. Hailed as the perfect kick-start to the morning with it’s full-bodied texture, the organic tea originates from Assam, the birthplace of Indian tea and the largest tea-growing area in the world.

‘Look Lively’ is another popular flavour, blending lemongrass, yerba mate and mint. Its high-caffeine levels and uplifting flavour make it the ideal for those looking for a bit of a pick-me-up first thing or something to spur on their second all-nighter.

‘Mint & Chilli’ is perfectly demonstrative of Mr Scruff and co’s creativity; combining peppermint and spearmint for a refreshing base, with a pinch of chilli for an extra kick. Also caffeine free, it’s the perfect late night warmer during the unpredictable weather of UK festivals, But don’t just take our word for it. Whether you are in dire need of some caffeine, you’re experiencing Tetley’s-withdrawal symptoms or you just cant quite get your head around chilli-infused tea, drag your wellies down to Mr Scruff’s tea tent to see and taste for yourself.

The Big Chill 2010 - Words in Motion

Monday mornings are categorically depressing. Whether you’ve had a weekend that rivals the likes of The Hangover or just a chilled one spent eating your body weight in pizza, come Sunday night the resentment starts to creep in and you find yourself feeling thoroughly fed up. And never has this feeling been truer than the miserable Monday that proceeds a music festival. Not only does it follow a weekend of so much escapism that it’s easy to forget that in the real world you aren’t more hippy than Bob Geldoff and you actually work in an office, but to make matters worse, the first few hours of Monday are usually spent in a horrifically smelling car, queuing in traffic jams.

The Big Chill feels your pain and the Words in Motion stage is hoping to soften this inevitable blow, by treating Big Chillers to ‘An Evening of Unknown Pleasures’ on the Sunday night. With co-founder of Joy Division and New Order bassist, Peter Hook and the best selling author and notorious drug smuggler Howard Marks, taking to the stage to talk to the audience about the Hook’s brilliant best-selling book, 'The Haçienda - How Not To Run A Club'.

The popular book takes the reader on a journey through Mark’s unfathomable tales of the aforementioned iconic club, New Order, Joy Division, the 80's acid house to the 90's gangs, drugs and corporate greed. Covering careers that have spanned over three decades, the rock icons will chat candidly about the fame, the high points, the tragedy and everything that came in between. From Mark’s forty-three aliases in the mid 1980s, to his money laundering and dope-dealing, to his Oxford postgraduate course and dealings with MI6 and the CIA – it is guaranteed to be one of the most interesting audience/artist interactions ever experienced.

Let’s face it, your mates’ stories can get pretty boring after living together day in and day out since Friday, so get along to the Words In Motion stage on Sunday to hear some truly incredible anecdotes - they’ll undoubtedly blow your friend Dave’s story about the time he met Kate Moss’s brother in Vodka Revs in Reading out of the water. The evening will also be compered by Mr Nice, as the tales of Hook and Mark’s misadventures inevitably shock, bemuse and whole-heartedly entertain festival-goers. The perfect distraction from the forth-coming Blue Monday.

The Big Chill 2010 - Dereliction Drive in & The Cinema Tent

Now back by popular demand, this year’s movie sets will see each day curated by various big names from the world of film. The BFI will host present a selection of Cinematic and Audiovisual delights on Friday, including highlights from the upcoming BFI Southbank season ‘Future Human’ and an eclectic survey of the human condition in cinema, looking at films from early sci-fi ‘Things to Come’ to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘The Terminator’.

Saturday will be hosted by Warp Films, the sister company of electro label Warp Records, and responsible for Dead Man’s Shoes, This is England and Four Lions. Showing films in the cinema from early morning, Warp will start with family films from the likes of Studio Ghibli, The Cat Returns and The Railway Children. As the day progresses, Indie favourites including ‘You, Me and Everyone We Know’, Dave Chappelle’s ‘Block Party’ and gothic thriller ‘Devil’s Backbone’ will also be shown. The cinema tent’s display will finally round off with their own ‘Donkey Punch’.

Warp Film is also responsible for this year’s Demolition Drive-in space. Dubbed ‘The Wonderful Warped Cinema Circus’, the films shown will include Dead Man’s Shoes, the suicide bomber satire ‘Four Lions’ and Paul King’s (Director of Mighty Boosh) ‘Bunny and the Bull’. “’Bunny and the Bull’ is a road movie that never leaves the flat. It’s about a guy called Steven who’s become completely reclusive and trying to shut out memories of a road trip which keep coming back to him,” explained Peter Carlton, head of Warp Films. “It’s incredibly inventive and all shot in a studio with animation, but the objects in his flat keep animating to tell the story.”

Continuing the theme of audience participation, Warp Film wants you to get involved in this. ‘Bunny and the Bull’ has a reoccurring narrative theme of placing bets. Steven and his friend bet on horse racing, they bet on a bull fight and eating crabs, so during these points in the film, the film will stop and competitions will be run within the audience. Festival-goers will be able to bet on human horse racing, a crabstick eating competition and there will even be an enormous bull pit featuring human bulls where punters will be invited to try their hands at being matadors. In conjunction with performance group, Bearded Kitten, festival-goers will feel as if they’ve stepped into the film with cast actors performing around them. “It will be a real festival, circus atmosphere and God knows what will happen,” laughed Peter. “They’ll probably going to be making it up as they go along! They’ll be all sorts of other mad things going on too with blue cocktails will be being served, again in reference to the film. DJs will also be playing sets between the movies and doing horror mash ups and we’ve even got VHS DJs.”

This brilliant mayhem will all kick off from 8am Saturday morning, with festival-goers able to make their bets and chill out on the twenty or so sofas set out. “Festivals are great but there is the bit of a feeling that you now get the same headliners at all festivals, so festivals can start feels the same. Actually what people will remember from a festival isn’t just the headliners, but it’ll be the different ways people create special little experiences away from the music,” explained Peter. “One of the things we really love about The Big Chill is that they create these little spaces where people can have these experiences. Part of it we lay on but we also allow the punters to invent it a bit for themselves. So the idea is that for an evening, we’ve created a little world with this circus feel where people come and watch mad things, but they can join in and I think that can make festivals a bit more special.”

Sunday will also see Popcorn Caberet bring The Wizard of Oz to life – keep following Clash’s Road to the Big Chill for more information.

Klaxons - Surfing the Void

Four years since the release of their acclaimed debut album, Klaxons return with a fresh offering of space-age noise pop. Dragging you at full force into their deranged fantasy world, the cacophony of ‘ExtraAstronomical’ and racket of the title track sit like the soundtrack to a meteor hurtling into a space-ship.

But this is exactly the chaotic energy and underplayed showmanship that made their debut such a success. Combining this pandemonium with a more polished finish on the cosmic pop of ‘Echoes’ and trademark falsetto chants of ‘Venusia’, it’s safe to say ‘Surfing The Void’ was worth the wait.