list.co.uk/music Previews | MUSIC
D N A L E C Y R B N A C N U D
HIP HOP AZEALIA BANKS O2 Academy, Glasgow, Mon 15 Sep WEEKEND FESTIVAL LAST BIG WEEKEND Richmond Park, Glasgow, Sat 30 Aug
Having weathered the ignominy of her most famous song, ‘212’, then becoming an expert in Twitter beefs (she’s had a go at A$AP Rocky, Pharell, Lady Gaga and Lil' Kim among others; Google is full of articles dedicated to her prolific trolling), Azealia Banks is not a girl to be trifled with. With a capacity for braggadocio that would make Charlie Sheen wince and a habit of cancelling gigs like they’re taxi orders, the potty-mouthed NYC rapper has just split with her label, Universal, after a bitter Twitter spat. These protracted battles with industry hucksters and hip hop’s great and good have somewhat stalled Banks’ path to superstardom. Now, free from the tyranny of major label bean counters, Banks might finally be on course to release her long-mooted debut album Broke with Expensive Taste and fulfil her claim that it is ‘the most innovative hip hop record that hip hop has seen in the last ten years and for the next 25 years’. If her new self-released single, ‘Heavy Metal and Reflective’ is anything to go by then this might be more than mere hot air. It’s a menacing profanity-strewn ride with stripped down beats.
Born in 1991, Banks seems to look at that decade as a diamond mine for ideas as she samples A Tribe Called Quest, the Prodigy and Snoop Dog. Stalking the margins between rap, house, rave and free jazz, the self-styled Yung Rapunxel goes back to the future to cultivate a scintillating new voice in hip hop. (Alex Neilson)
When you’re interviewing Stuart Braithwaite, Mogwai's wise and notoriously outspoken guitar player, about the summer that Glasgow’s just had, the first thing you want to know is what he thought of the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. In which case, disappointment looms. ‘Do you know what? We were away, so I didn’t see it,’ he says. ‘I followed it online, but I don’t want to be unfair and talk about it just from that.’
Damn. Although if we were to take a guess, he might believe that the sound of young Scotland was to be found elsewhere in the city over the summer, at the small venues to the east of Glasgow Cross being used as part of the East End Social, rather than at Celtic Park or Hampden. ‘I think it’s been brilliant,’ he says of the Social, curated by his band’s old label Chemikal Underground. ‘There were complaints about the cultural relevance of the music at the ceremonies, and the East End Social has picked up the slack in a lot of ways’ The core summer programme of EES events ends here, with a two-day
festival at Richmond Park. Mogwai headline a rockier Saturday bill which also comprises locals the Twilight Sad, Young Fathers, Holy Mountain (pictured) and Honeyblood alongside touring artists including Fuck Buttons and the Wedding Present. ‘I’m most looking forward to Swervedriver,’ says Braithwaite. ‘James Holden too, his album’s one of the best I’ve heard this year.’ (David Pollock) ■ See a preview of Sun 31 Aug lineup for the Last Big Weekend, page 50.
LEFTFIELD POP ST. VINCENT ABC, Glasgow, Tue 26 Aug
Originality is not an accolade bandied about so much these days but Texan musical innovator Annie Clark in ice-queen / guitar hero guise as St. Vincent is surely a one-off, with a unique, serrated, superfuzz playing style which she has developed across four quirky chamber rock albums. The Smithsonian Institution certainly thinks so, awarding Clark their American Ingenuity Award for Performing Arts last year. Clark credits her single-minded creative vision in part to
an obsessive nature. It recently came to light that she is no slouch with a football, having developed her sweet soccer skills through constant practice as a child growing up in Texas. When she ditched football for guitar in her early teens, she applied herself just as rigorously to her new passion. Her uncle Tuck Andress, who played in a jazz duo with his
wife Patti, was a huge formative influence, introducing Clark to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, and for a while she pursued her own training in jazz before dropping out of Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music and returning to Texas to play with indie acts Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree. But Clark has resisted categorisation when it comes to her own music. She has always had a taste for heavy sounds, whether playing in a high school Metallica covers band or opening for Queens of the Stone Age and the Black Keys. Most recently, she has sung on the latest Swans album and with the surviving members of Nirvana at the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.
St. Vincent’s playing isn’t especially heavy but it is enormously potent, a volatile marriage of what she calls ‘serene calmness and bristling aggression’ which she has exploited on her self-titled fourth album and in her wonderfully eccentric live show. (Fiona Shepherd)
21 Aug–18 Sep 2014 THE LIST 69