Plug – Plug (Upset The Rhythm)

First of all, this has fuck all to do with Luke Vibert. I was pretty dejected when I realised Upset The Rhythm’s latest offering, drums and bass girly-duo Plug, had just pilfered Lukey V’s side project namesake. That is, until I listened to their self-titled debut release.

The girls are upfront with their influences, and why shouldn’t they be? With obvious record collection appearances from X-Ray Spex, Le Tigre, and M.I.A. Georgie Nettell and Sian Dorrer clearly had one hand fingering through ‘Female Fronted’ whilst the other did a good impression of Thing over in Rap/Hip Hop. Not a million miles away from recent releases by and Sleighbells and Trash Kit, their sound is the meeting point of New York synth-rap and London DIY-indie.

Don’t Forget It is the musical equivalent of that slightly embarrassing middle class student fees protest. A bit of naïve moaning about the state of the country made more interesting by some decent beat(ing)s. Fix Up Look Sharp inspired You Keep The Beats, and Poly Styrene vocal impression Body Story are solid tracks with simplistic vocals layered over even simpler drums and ‘check out this amazing keyboard I got in the charity shop’ keys. Dorrer’s true Brit-girl vocals shout at you matter of factly in Man vs. Machine, and feel strongly reminiscent of Elastica’s Justine Frischmann. Real Girl is the track you’ll keep coming back to. It’s a more authentic version of the fashion-rap they try to produce and sits closer to Fannypack than the Uffie shit they veer into at times. At this point I’d like to commend them for their braveness in including Beatles cover Day Tripper. I don’t even really like listening to The Beatles sing songs by The Beatles, but it’s a softer more dreamy side to the band that otherwise is only really seen on final track, Attractive, which is akin to that single soft and sweet Bikini Kill track, Outta Me.

The thing you have to ask yourself when considering whether Plug will be a ‘free download of the single’ or actual ‘bother to drag your lazy arse to Rough Trade’ kind of album is, Do you have any faith in the London DIY scene? This release could easily be filed away under ‘simplistic drums meets spacey keys brought together by fringed hipsters’. Or, as another important step towards creating a fresh wave of fem-fronted bands that aren’t (albeit successfully) ripping off The Shagri La’s. If they can make a full album of the hints toward social commentary and lyrical honesty shown sporadically here, their next release could be great. I might even find myself pulling a disappointed face when I hungrily sit down to review it, only to be greeted by half an hour of Luke Vibert sampling old ladies over some re-hashed drum & bass.

Words : Maya-Rose Boustany

Indie super group Former Ghosts set to releasee second album

Former Ghosts, featuring the likes of Zola Jesus members of Xiu Xiu and Tearist will be releasing their second album 'New Love' on November the 8th through one of our favourite indie labels Upset The Rhythm. With the recent success of Zola Jesus and the sterling reputations of the others involved, this is bound to be a winner.

Upset The Rhythm interview

Here is the long awaited interview with Upset The Rhythm, these guys run a very successful label, signing the likes of Lucky Dragons and Future Islands and have put on some of the finest shows around London over the past few years. More often than not if you are checking out a new and exciting band these guys will be behind it.


Boop:What was the idea behind upset the rhythm? What was your inspiration?

Chris: Claire was fundamental at the start of it. We came down to uni together and were bored with the type of gigs happening in London at the time.

Claire: Lots of people we loved were coming over but playing really bad shows and you'd speak to the artists and they'd be really bummed. London was getting a really bad reputation, we'd heard on the grapevine that people were missing out the UK on their European tours because of this. Then out of the blue I got a message from a guy in America trying to set up a tour for Deerhoof and I got in touch with him and said we would do it. It was only meant to be a one off party, we hired an Italian wine bar. People spoke to us all night saying what a great show it was and we realized there was an audience for it.

Chris: We had no idea how many people were coming, we only organized the show because we were in to Deerhoof.We thought there would be like 20 people but in the end about 350 showed up, queuing round the block. So from that we decided to put on more shows.

Claire:its always been a tightrope as we were turning up to shows with 100 quid in our back pocket not knowing whether people would show up or if we could pay the bands

Chris: We funded the shows in our first year or so by actually paying to get in ourselves. I don't think it gets more DIY than actually paying to get in to your own shows!

Boop: So this leads into the second question, obviously being around for a few years now, who have been some of your favourite bands to work with?

Chris: For me its the shows that stay in my memory. I really liked working with Smegma. We helped Wavves come over on tour, that's been really awesome, No Age and Kit and Barr, also anyone on the Upset The Rythm label that have put on shows have been cool. A lot of the bands stay with us and we're good friends with a lot of the people we put on, which is kind of the upshot of all of this as we've ended up with like 900 friends that we wouldn't have otherwise.

Boop: If you could book any band, regardless of cost, any venue who would it be and where?

Claire: Alive or dead?
Chris: If I could book anyone it would be Eat Skull
Luke: I have no idea, I'd like to work with Ivor Cutler but he died...
Nirvana would have been good.

Boop: What were your top 5 albums of last year?

Chris: I really like the Women album,
Luke: The No Kids record was really good,
Claire: US girls - introducing, Was the Animal Collective album this year? because that was really cool.

Boop: With your 200th show recently, what have been some of the highlights from the last five years?

Chris: We did a few shows with Frieze art magazine where we did shows with Liars and and band called Sunn O)))

Claire: We bought Sun O))) two cases of wine, which they drank before the show and their tour manager told me before they came on that they couldn't walk properly with their robes on so we had to carry them with their robes down three flights of stairs.

Luke: Maybe, or that massive Italian dinner we had with Deerhoof and I guess that was the first time we were a bit star struck.


Chris: Another highlight would be South By South West

Claire: South By South West was great because it meant we got to meet load of people we were working with in one place. We expected it to be a kind of stuck up industry event and it really wasn't. I mean every show has something amazing about it.

Boop: If you could give advice to aspiring promoters etc what would it be?

Chris: We wanted to create an environment for people so that they could perform, providing help to those people that needed it. We try and give people as much inspiration as possible, we try to be as un cynical as possible.

Boop: In the last five years how do you feel that music has changed?

Luke: The biggest difference has been the internet. Even when we started people were sending us demos through the post on tapes and cds and now its all about Myspace, Blogs, Etc. In a way that's great because it means that the music is more accessible but equally makes it really hard for us as a label, so we make sure our releases are a bit more special, which is why we go down the route of Vinyl releases, really nice packaging, etc to try and get people away from the whole file sharing etc.

Claire: There has been a greater open mindedness, people cross over genre's a lot more, because everything is so 'online' what this has meant for us is that the expectation of an artist has become much greater, you can now take a band who are unsigned and they can become totally different within the space of two months, because the reaction will become so insane. A good example would be No Age, when we first got in touch with them no one was particularly interested in them and all of a sudden there was an insane bidding war and we didn't have the funds to work with them.

Luke: It just means we need to be even more ahead of the game.

Claire: In the UK there is no print media that will really cover us. The underground is a very strange place at the moment. The mainstream doesn't really know what it's looking for.
You have to know what you are doing all of this for.