The new edition of Big Shot is here with none other than dance artist of the moment Robyn on our cover. Big Shot chatted with Robyn about her success and scored an exclusive photo shoot in Australia. Issue 22 also features interviews with Gnarls Barkley, Cut Copy, Portishead, Jamie Lidell, Dizzee Rascal, and more. Watch this space for more info.
Reader Natalie Capuozzo (one of the three lovely ladies in the picture above) checks in with a cool buddy shot taken with Danny Tenaglia at Coachella.
This is Natalie from the picture with Danny. Were you able to take a look at it and possibly get it in your magazine? If so I would like to know which issue and when so I can pick up a copy for my records.
Tangopolis: Bajofondo Tango Club and Melingo
Royal Festival Hall, London
My first brush with tango was a night to remember, metaphorically thrusting me into the depths of a Buenos Aires tango neighborhood. However, I was in London, and you cannot get much more in London than the Royal Festival Hall, which the river Thames laps against. Unfortunately, despite recently spending over a month in Buenos Aires, it had taken me until tonight to actually watch tango.
The show Tangopolis was billed as a fusion of new and old, of classic tango and a postmodern take on the music form. Bajofondo, a band that sounds like Gotan Project, were scheduled to play alongside Daniel Melingo, who is the epitome of cool, although you may question this statement upon first site. Melingo is old enough to be my father. At 51, he looks a little like a mad artist and the uncle that you wished that you had, but your parents are glad you didn’t. Hailing from Buenos Aires, Melingo has had various focuses during his fascinating career. First a rock musician, then a writer of film music and now purveyor of tango around the world.
Considering I am not able speak a word of Spanish apart from being able to order a few beers with tacos, I was surprised at how Melingo’s lyrics and music affected me. In particular “Cha Digo” was heart-wrenching. But it was Melingo’s more comical songs that had the crowd lapping it up, especially the song based on the life of a drunk, “Muleta,” which begins with Melingo wandering around the stage—like a child looking for his mother—with shoes and socks in his hands, singing about trying to find a stone in his shoe.
Interestingly, Malingo’s producer is Eduardo Makaroff, who is also the guitarist for Gotan Project, and strangely connected (in sound at least) to the act to follow Malingo, Bajofondo. Bajofondo is in many respects about as tango as The Chemical Brothers. However, it is the little glimpses of tango influences on the electronic band Bajofondo which soon had the crowd jumping up and down like Jack-in-the-boxes. This change in vibe after Malingo quickly dissipated my belief that I was experiencing a refined night out in the Royal Festival Hall. And the night was better for it. Bajofondo combines tango with electronics, with club-beats as well as even rap-style lyrics (sung in Spanish), and is led by Gustavo Santaolalla, who is the double Oscar-winning composer of the soundtracks to Babel and Brokeback Mountain. (He is also the director behind the forthcoming Cafe de los Maestros tango film.)
With an assortment of instruments featured in the band, Bajofondo are as unique as Camden. ith its free-tyle rap “Miles Pasajeros” is as catchy as a Christmas song, and “Perfume” is just pure tango funk. Unfortunately, too often tunes sounded overly-similar, but the band is definitely at its best when out-on-a-limb (such as Gustavo’s beautiful solo song).
I left the Royal Festival Hall as exhausted as if I had performed tango myself, and began dreaming my return to Buenos Aires.
Words & Image: Tim Kernutt
Big Shot has spoken exclusively to Portishead about their new album, Third, which will be released next month. The fourth release from the Bristol based trip-hop pioneers (their third studio album, overall) is a less claustrophobic body of work that sees Beth Gibbons utilize the softer vocal style she perfected with her solo album that perforated their ten-year absence from the music industry. Geoff Barrows and Adrian Utley sat down with us to talk through the eleven-track release that steers away from their previous inclination for samples and ventures into a broader sonic pastiche.
The three-piece act will be joined by a similar lineup of musicians to those who have played with them in the past; however, DJ Andy Smith is not appearing at the live dates. Barrows explains that this is due to the new processes the band utilized. “As we haven’t used many samples with Third, the live shows are more about a band. We all swap around instruments. When the lights go out between songs, we are madly running around trying to prepare for the next one. Swapping snare drums, things like that.”
Barrows is excited by the prospect of coming to the US to play at Coachella. “We’ve never done it before, and yes it’s quite funny that The Verve are the other headliners,” he says. “When they split we had to step into their shoes and fill a number of festival slots they had been booked for. So now, although we never went away really, we are going to play Coachella at the same time as them.’
Portishead have indeed never really gone away. They took a well-earned break after a massive promotional tour for second self-titled album and began recording again in 2004 in Sydney. According to Barrows, the tapes were “okay,” but not considered good enough by the band to be classed as new Portishead material. So it came to pass that now, in 2008, the British band who captured the hearts of millions worldwide in the 1990s, arrive back in a music industry that has changed but will surely welcome them with open arms.
A full length exclusive interview with Barrows and Utley will feature in Issue 23 of Big Shot, where the band discuss their live album, PNYC, the influence of Bristol on their music, the changes in the technology between albums, and the plethora of fan made videos that have cropped up on the Web. OGW