Miranda & Elektra joining their father, Steve Kilbey, for ‘The Unguarded Moment’ when The Church played The Fonda in Hollywood, September 15th, 2017. Aug was there and it was his favourite musical moment of the year.
‘Insomnia’ by Curious Yellow. Karin Jansson (the twins’ mother) produced by Steve Kilbey (their father).
“There’s always a bit of Bergman when we do anything. Especially because with us being two women, the visual placements of faces together are so Bergman, how he structurally and visually put people in relation to each other…His depiction of women in film is so real, so true.”
Aug Stone talks to Miranda & Elektra Kilbey about The Eternal Spirit of Woman on their gorgeous new Say Lou Lou album Immortelle, Bergman, James Bond, covering their parents’ classic ‘Under The Milky Way’, and much more.
Alex: Tell me that riff doesn’t rule.
Lily: It does rule. But it came from a place of grumpy, instead of a place of love. And it should’ve come from a place of…lumpy.
– Fightmilk on their anthem ‘Your Girlfriend’
Aug Stone talks to Fightmilk about their brilliant debut album Not With That Attitude, ill-fated foreign holidays making great songs, putting Weezer in a blender, romanticizing Scandinavian crime dramas, hayfever being more complicated than you might think, Keith Top Of The Pops’ eternal benevolence in bestowing life to new bands, falling madly in love with music, and much much more.
“I was on the train to work listening to Camper Van Beethoven, thinking what’s gonna be a good direction. In particular, I was listening to the way they were using a lot of different instrumentation, and from that it occurred to me that we really need to stop having a style, stop looking for a sound or a direction, and just do everything. And do it in a very spontaneous way. The idea was to have no real filters on what we were doing, so there’s really no editing on Feral Pop Frenzy. Everything that came into our heads, we’d do it. It’s a record that was ahead of its time in a lot of ways, but at its heart it’s still pop music. It’s the creative process without being limited by what you think you should or shouldn’t do.” – Matt Love, Even As We Speak
Aug Stone talks to Australian POP legends Even As We Speak about creative freedom, America, rock masses, John Peel, their time with such luminous indie labels as Phantom Records, Sarah Records and now Emotional Response, their summer 2018 tour, and much more.
Saint Etienne‘s ‘Good Humor’ is my favourite album of theirs and they are coming to North America to play the 20th anniversary shows in September. Dates on their Facebook page.
‘Sylvie’ on Top Of The Pops 1998:
‘The Bad Photographer’ on the Jack Docherty Show 1998:
‘4:35 In The Morning’:
If you like this episode or The Counterforce Podcast in general and have a couple bucks to spare, I’ve been trying to raise money for this project on DonorsChoose.org all summer. Donors Choose is a great site to help classrooms in need across the country, which, sad to say, America really needs right now. I would LOVE to get this project – MAKE MINE A GREEN THUMB! – funded for these four-year olds in Michigan. Their teacher is raising money to buy them a greenhouse and gardening materials so they can learn about growing healthy food and have food to eat throughout the day. Please help out if you can. I’d really appreciate it. The project needs to be funded by September 11th. Thanks for listening.
“Good Humor is our fantasy America from when we were kids. It’s our vision of what the States was like, probably wholly inaccurate, but it’s our fantasy America.”
Aug Stone talks to Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell about the 20th anniversary of ‘Good Humor’, America, the band’s perceived “quintessential Englishness”, Swedish Pop, the use of the telephone in pop songs, and more.
Ian Button discusses the history of Papernut Cambridge from dreaming the band name to their fifth album, Outstairs Instairs, out June 29th on Gare Du Nord Records. We talk about the label as a collective as well as his time with Death In Vegas,working with Lawrence and Terry Miles on the latest Go-Kart Mozart album, almost joining The Sisters Of Mercy twice, and falling in love with psychedelic pop as a child. WARNING: During the re-telling of a story, the ‘c’ word gets dropped at 40:22, so NSFW or sensitive ears.
In 2013 my friend the poet Kevin Reinhardt made me a mix cd that started out with P.P. Arnold’s amazing ‘Everything’s Gonna Be Alright’ followed by this killer tune that reminded me of classic Mary Chain. It turned out to be ‘Aphrodisiac’ by Papernut Cambridge who had just released their debut album, Cambridge Nutflake, on Gare Du Nord Records, a label collective run by Ian Button, Robert Rotifer, and Ralegh Long.
This is a great rock & roll record. Ian Button may be “haunted by the insects in his dark imaginings”, as he intones on opener ‘The Ghost Of Something Small’, but outside that buzzing hook-laden head of his, it’s a leisurely ride through glittering neon, the fluorescence that illuminates rock’s shadowy nighttime world. The lights that feel like they’re never gonna end whilst terminating all too quickly – there’s 12 songs in 30 minutes here. But no matter, press play again and we’re back amidst the exiled warriors on Electric Main Street. Just as one would never fault T. Rex for being derivative, so here the nods to rock’s past – The Stones, Bolan himself, The Replacements, Kinks, and Mary Chain – are simply the lineage continuing itself. All sung in that sweet sinister voice a la Jim Reid, with just as sharp an ear for melody.
Ian has worked with a lot of great artists as a musician and producer. Notably, he was in Death In Vegas and produced the latest Go-Kart Mozart album, Mozart’s Mini-Mart. During the course of our conversation he introduced me to the Vaughan Thomas record from 1972.
