CAUGHT BY THE RIVER'S BOOK OF THE MONTH - SAVAGE MESSIAH

CAUGHT BY THE RIVER
FEBRUARY'S BOOK OF THE MONTH

Savage Messiah records drifts through a ruined city, collecting the entire set of Laura Oldfield Ford's acclaimed art fanzine to date. Part graphic novel, part artwork, the book is both an unflinching polemic against the marginalization of the city's officially defeated, and an exploration of the ruptures that open up in everyday life, in urban space and time. An ephemeral, palimpsestic London emerges from the shadow of the looming megalith of 'London 2012.' Savage Messiah takes us on a tour of its landmarks - Kings Cross to Hackney Wick, Elephant and Castle, Westway, North Acton to Canary Wharf - with forays North through memory.

A great review of Savage Messiah can be read here by Iain Sinclair.



Author and Artist of Savage Messiah, Laura Oldfield Ford will be coming in to Rough Trade on Wednesday 15th February to talk about her book followed by an interview and Q&A session with Ken Worpole.

FELT - THE BOOK LAUNCH

On Friday 3rd February at 7pm, Rough Trade is playing host to a special one-off event. For the first time since their split Lawrence and other members of seminal indie group Felt will be on stage talking about their 10 year career, a career which saw them make 10 albums in 10 years, making some of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful pop music of the decade.



This event is to celebrate the release of 'Felt - The Book' - a stunning hardback, limited edition book documenting the band's career using exclusive photography from the archives and Lawrence's text. Before the Q&A Paul Kelly will be screening relevant portions of his Lawrence Of Belgravia documentary and then this event will see the band field questions from both the organisers of the book, director of 'Lawrence Of Belgravia' Paul Kelly and members of the audience. After the event the band will be djing their favourite records and signing copies of the book.

Order tickets are available HERE and we'd advise getting them soon as seats are limited.

Here's a few images taken from the limited book to give you a little taster...


© Paul Hartnett

ROUGH TRADE SHOPS ELECTRONIC 11

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22 TRACKS, FULL SLEEVENOTES. EXCLUSIVE LIMITED EDITION VARNISHED SLEEVE AVAILABLE FROM ROUGH TRADE SHOPS ONLY.

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The new Rough Trade Shops compilation CD is aimed squarely at the New Year. Shiny, fresh, clean and minimal electronic music in your earphones provide the perfect soundtrack for the cold and frosty early January.

Rough Trade Shops Electronic 01 was released 10 years ago and we are revisiting the theme of our first genre compilation in order to share with you some of our favourite artists who have been utilising technology - as a means to an end - in the last year or so. The hardware / software tangibly present, you can almost hear the1’s and 0’s in the compositions here.

As Rob Young writes in the sleevenotes –“ Check, for instance, Emeralds’ Mark McGuire’s glowing “Alma”, which begins with a hymn; or Nicolas Jaar’s incantatory “Space is Only Noise if You Can See”, like a dubbed-out Depeche Mode. At the other end of the scale, Prurient and Keiji Haino (in tandem with Finnish sub-bass spelunkers Pansonic) use the full throated roar and the abject howl of the avant garde and the hardcore. Meanwhile, compare Rustie’s dense “Hyperthrust”, with its micro-events folded up and crammed into milliseconds, with alva noto’s “uni deform” bitcrush collision, which emerges from the rarefied world of conceptual sound art. Marcus Schmickler, who can occasionally be found making exploratory post-rock as Pluramon, sends your ears down a labyrinth of no return with the abstract operations of “Discordance Axis”, closely followed by Ekoplekz’s hallucinatory tone-scrub, jarring and alienating as an MK-ULTRA mind-control experiment.

In “And The World Laughs With You”, Brainfeeder’s shapeshifting boss Flying Lotus invites Thom Yorke to jack into a cybernautical call and response session. Even the most outwardly conventional track here, Hercules & Love Affair, has its House 4/4 scraped and sandblasted with gravelly patches of digital irritant. Ford & Lopatin’s “Emergency Room” is like some unearthly fusion of Scritti Politti and Heaven 17; John Maus’s swooning portamento synthi-fanfares summon up the Fairlight manoeuvres of The Thompson Twins and Blancmange. Azari & III’s “Manhooker” transports you back to sun-up at some orbital rave at the very close of that strange plastic decade.”

Comprising sound art, dubstep, chill-wave, witch house, electro-pop, digital hip hop, tech-minimalism, electro-house, and metal-machine music, supplied by labels such as editions Mego, Warp, Blastfirstpetite, raster-noton, Type, Skam, Tri Angle and more, RTE11 is selected by the staff at both London shops and is as stylistically-varied as would expect from us.

FULL TRACKLISTING...

Rough Trade Shops Electronic 11 CD.
Catalogue # RTE11.

1. Rene Hell - Oxford Meter End
2. Nicolas Jaar - Space is Only Noise If You Can See
3. Flying Lotus - …And The World Laughs With You ft. Thom Yorke
4. Shackleton / King Midas Sound - Deadman, Death Dub Remix
5. Ayshay - WARN-U
6. John Maus - Head For The Country
7. Ford & Lopatin - Emergency Room
8. Rustie - Hyperthrust
9. Hercules & Love Affair - My House
10. Azari & III - Manhooker
11. Modeselektor - Evil Twin feat. Otto von Schirach
12. Death Grips - Guillotine
13. Sensational meets Koyxen - +weekend2 (remix work)
14. alva noto - uni deform
15. anne-james chaton - pop is dead
16. Marcus Schmickler - Discordance Axis
17. Ekoplekz - Critical Condition
18. Pansonic with Keiji Haino - If I could incarnate this feeling would you consider it a creation
19. Prurient - A Meal Can Be Made
20. Solar Bears - Twin Stars
21. Mark McGuire - Alma (Reprise) / Chances Are
22. Ben Frost - Ó God protect me


ON SALE NOW FOR £9.99

BLACK POWER MIXTAPE

On Friday 20th January Rough Trade East in association with Soda Pictures will be screening BLACK POWER MIXTAPE.

Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is a rare film; so rare that most of the footage spent over 30 years languishing in a Swedish basement until discovered by director Goran Hugo Olsson who put it together with contemporary audio featuring artists like Erykah Badu and Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson. Olsson created the ultimate mixtape, an artistic statement that charts the rise of the Civil Rights movement.

The Civil Rights movement came about because the people on the ground level made it happen and part of the success of the movement was due to the universal appeal of the music that represented the eternal fight; from Sam Cooke's 'A Change is Gonna Come' through to the image of Aretha Franklin singing at the funeral of Dr Martin Luther King.

Black Power Mixtape shows us the story of Angela Davis who in 1972 was tried and acquitted for her involvement in the murder of a prominent judge; John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded the song 'Angela' from the album Some Time in New York City and in the same year the Rolling Stones recorded 'Sweet Black Angel' from Exile on Main Street, both songs playing tribute to Davis.

The cultural influence of the 60's/70's music and the Movement's key figures can still be seen today - from their styles, philosophy and politics. Erykah Badu, who features in BLACK POWER MIXTAPE, has long been associated with a proud afro- centricity coupled with determined feminism - in a male dominated music industry. This mirrors the movement's figureheads such as Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver. Other female artists in contemporary music carry on this message of black pride such as India Arie, Jill Scott and the acclaimed rapper, singer-songwriter Lauryn Hill.

For a brief moment in time, a few daring, innovative musicians stood at the crossroads of a revolution in music and culture. Across one of the most turbulent periods in American history -they brought music, medium and message together as never before, composing a soundtrack perfectly tuned to the tempo and pulse of its time and has echoed through the passages of time to today's contemporary rap artists working across the U.S and U.K and still representing a grass roots movement for change and empowerment.

Watch the trailer here...



PLUS Q&A SESSION
We are also joined by writer, broadcaster and activist DARCUS HOWE who will be answering questions by LISA BENT. There will also be an opportunity for the audience to ask Darcus questions in the Q&A session after the screening.

More About Darcus Howe...
'Writer, Broadcaster and Activist; Trinidadian born Darcus Howe moved to America in the 1960s, where he was involved in grass-roots activism and witnessed some of the most defining moments in the struggle for racial justice in the US. After moving to the UK in the early 1970s, he joined the British Black Panthers - the first Black Panther organization outside the US, and came to public attention as one of the Mangrove Nine, to protest against police raids of the Mangrove restaurant. In 1981 he organized a 20,000-strong "Black People's March" in protest at the handling of the investigation into the New Cross Fire, in which 13 black teenagers died.

In recent years, he is known for his social commentary - particularly that of the 2011 Riots and television shows, 'White Tribe,' and 'Son of Mine.' He also writes columns for The New Statesman and The Voice."



THIS IS A FREE SCREENING. NO WRISTBAND IS NEEDED, JUST COME DOWN ON THE NIGHT BUT GET HERE EARLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT.

London Short Film Festival 2012

Last Friday saw the opening launch of the 9th London Short Film Festival. Renowned for its daring cross-arts programming and showcasing the very best of the country's raw talent, this festival is a mecca for the UK's young creative talent and a significant date in the UK film calendar. The festival continues until Sunday 15th January so do not despair, you have time to check out some of the events and screenings that are still to come in the eclectic programme. For those of you who are more sonically stimulated, we've picked out some of the music related events that you should go and check out...

THURSDAY 12TH JANUARY 6.30pm ROXY BAR & SCREEN
New Shorts #16 Music & Video
The marriage of sound and image. A selection of creative music videos and short films featuring music by Esben & The Witch, The Oscillation and Daedelus.



FRIDAY 13TH JANUARY 7.30pm HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSE ATTIC
Branchage Soundtracks... Serafina & Sam Steer - This Side of the Moon
Originally commissioned for the 2011 Branchage Jersey Film Festival, LSFF present the London premiere of harpist and songwriter Serafina Steer and animator Sam Steer’s performance, inspired by Kenneth Anger’s 1950 short film Rabbit’s Moon.

In their bizarre, astounding new animation, Postman’s Familiar, the Steer brother and sister team have re-interpreted the archetypal characters of Anger's avant-garde clown fantasy. Anger’s original soundtrack features mainly doo-wop pop, juxtaposed against his surreal, classical, silent take on 'commedia dell'arte'.

Serafina Steer (Stolen Recordings) creates a live sonic interpretation of this mythical story, using the new sound of 'psychedelic harp'. There will be a programme of classic and recent animations, including other Steer brother and sister collaborations.



SATURDAY 14TH JANUARY 7.30pm THE HORSE HOSPITAL
Analogue Kingdom feat.. OHMMM & Sculpture
Sculpture perform unstable modular collage. An incautious amalgam of mutant electronic forms, mechanical and digital animation techniques, computer sequencing and analogue tape edits, the avant-garde and looney tunes. Dan Hayhurst plays computer, reel-to-reel tape recorder, sampler, effectron and walkman. Reuben Sutherland plays video zoetrope record deck.
The result is a kaleidoscopic sensory overload, process revealed to the audience, experimental yet filled with a deranged sense of joy.

OHMMM (Orchestra of Home Made Musical Machines) are an Art Noise Band consisting of 6 artists who build and perform a collection of home made musical machines that are contained within an instrument case of fixed dimensions.

For LSFF, OHMMM will be performing a live improvised score to a specially commissioned 30 min 'Noise-Umentary' about the band Jazz Kunst.



SUNDAY 15TH JANUARY 7.30pm THE LEXINGTON
Branchage Soundtracks... Teeth Of The Sea - Reaper
Teeth Of The Sea, London's most intrepid and adventurous psychedelic rock band, have always looked to the extraordinary and outlandish for inspiration, and have been as influenced by books and films as by music.

Some of their biggest influences are the films of Neil Marshall, with films like Dog Soldiers and The Descent both leaving their marks on the band's psyche. But by far the closest to the band's collective heart is Doomsday, the hyper-real, volatile and audacious 2008 Frankenstein's monster of a movie that follows a perilous journey to the maws of Armageddon.

In 2011 the band have decided to offer a re-imagining of the movie: the result, Reaper (named after the movie's killer virus), is a kind of psychedelic reconfiguration of the film; something truly original and nightmarishly thrilling.

More information can be found on the LSFF website.

New Year, New Exhibition

DIFFERENT WAYS FOR DIFFERENT DAYS - An Exhibition By Jeb Loy Nichols



Musician, writer and artist Jeb Loy Nichols is currently exhibiting new and recent work at Rough Trade East through the month of January. The exhibition includes woodcuts from his recent series of Jazz and Hip-Hop portraits. The portraits, inspired by Nichols' residency in New York in the late 70's and early 80's, feature, among others, Gil Scot Heron, Africa Bambatta, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, and KRS-1. Also included are new wood cuts and prints focusing on his life in rural Wales.

Jeb's exhibition will be on display at Rough Trade East until Sunday 5th February.



Jeb's latest album "The Jeb Loy Nichols Story" was Rough Trade's Album of The Month for December and comes with an exclusive bonus disc. More information on that here.

To find out more about Jeb, check out his website.