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Pictures from some recent gigs we've hosted:

29 March 2013 - Brixton, London

Viv Albertine, VuVuVultures, Left Leg, Mickey Gloss, Big Wave, No Cars, Arthur Gunn, Simon Love (Pictures)

8 March 2013 - Lexington, London

R.Ring, Golden Grrrls, Slushy Guts and Equinox (Pictures)

On Our iPod

Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (album)

Antony Harding - Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear (album)

Black Angels - Indigo Meadow (album)

Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin (album)

Still Corners - Strange Pleasures (album)

Savages - Silence Yourself (album)

Mikal Cronin - MC II (album)

Can’s Ege Bamyasi played by Stephen Malkmus and Friends(album)

Victoria and Jacob - Festival 7"

Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City (album)

Sauna Youth - False Jesii Part II 7”

Lightning Bolt - Oblivion Hunter

Robyn Hitchcock - There Goes The Ice (2x 12")

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Gig Review

Fortuna Pop 15th birthday: Darren Hayman & the Secondary Modern, the Ladybug Transistor, Cinema Red & Blue, Aislers Set and more
London, Scala

Article written by Ged M - Nov 14, 2011

Gary Olson claims to have been on stage as headliner or guest eight times over the three days, Kyle Forrester seems to perform as a member of every other band, and former Lucksmith Mark Monnone appears at least three times on stage although, being an Australian, he’s probably serving behind the bar between sets. These familiar faces are marking the 15th birthday of the wonderful Fortuna Pop! label, celebrated over three nights at the Scala.

It’s a bit of a school reunion, with bands associated for Fortuna Pop for various degrees of time appearing (with only new boys Evans the Death missing, but they send a note from their mum) and bands inviting old friends onto the stage in cameo roles. Having seen all these bands under the FPop! banner many, many times before, I don’t bother to see them all again but the nights sit in the memory hole as a series of highlights.

Cinema Red and Blue are unrehearsed but sound amazing, a group of current and former Comet Gainers plus a couple of Crystal Stilts. It’s the spirit of punk but accompanying a set of diverse psych-pop, mod-rock and Merseybeat. Their cover of the melancholy country-pop ‘Rattler’ by Herman’s Hermits is beyond inspired and their own songs hold their own, like the kitchen sink melodrama of ‘Melanie Down’, and spirits lift with the psychotic garage riffs and Halloween howls of ‘Walking to the Cemetery’. And then, instead of an Aislers Set cameo by Linton, Wyatt and Yoshi, backed by CRAB, it’s a proper Aislers Set greatest hits show (five songs and then ‘The Walk’ which they’d prepared as a spare). They play Tuesday and people are still talking in awed tones about it on Thursday.

Bearsuit have me hooked as soon as they start with the turbo-techno shouty pop of ‘Foxy Boxer’. Though I have reservations about the new sound on record, their live performance – featuring Lisa Horton looking like “a drunken chicken” (according to bandmate Ian) and bouncing around like a helium balloon in a hurricane - is one to cherish.

Watching Ladybug Transistor transports me back a decade when they play the honeyed chamber-pop of ‘Today Knows’ and ‘Like A Summer Rain’ from 1999’s The Albemarle Sound. While personnel have changed, they still play the same elegant, unfussy, classic pop, typified by ‘Oh Christina’ and ‘Breaking Up On The Beat’ from the new record. And I’ll never grow tired of Gary Olson’s sonorous, Walker-esque baritone. The highlight of this highlight is when they force Sean Price on stage to sing the Cut Outs’ ‘Danelectro Guitar’. It’s fair to say that it’s the worst performance at any Fortuna Pop event ever (the band sound fine but tune and Mr Price’s voice have as much in common as vampire and crucifix) but it’s all part of the jamboree mood.

The tributes are another highlight; you’d have thought Sean Price was as dead as Jimmy Saville for all the videos submitted by his roster past and present, which includes a harrowing moment with a naked Simon Love, an equally naked Kermit the Frog, and what appears to be interspecies love.

Darren Hayman & The Secondary Modern adopt the party atmosphere, Darren singing in a pool of spilled claret and Dan Mayfield fiddling manaically through a set which might properly be called “greatest hits”. They electrify a packed Scala with their quick-stepping tunes, slowing down slightly only when Amelia Fletcher steps up to duet on ‘Good Fruit’. The rest of the set delights, from the tales of the Harlow music scene in ‘Amy & Rachel’, teacher training in ‘Art & Design’ and new single ‘I Taught You How To Dance’. On this performance, Len Goodman and the judges would have scored perfect 10s all round.

Happy Birthday, Pop!

Links:
http://www.fortunapop.com/