Artist Interviews
Plan B
After the huge critical success of the Miloco-made Who Needs Actions When You Got Words, we were thrilled to
see the return of one Benjamin Paul Ballance-Drew, who under the moniker of Plan B both shocked and thrilled the
music-listening public with his inspired and explicit potion of acoutstic led Hip-Hop. He was here with us again in
2009 with engineer Mark Rankin who was mixing the follow-up in the Engine Room, which is due for release in the late summer of '09.
So if you have a few spare minutes and want to hear from one of today's most provocative British songwriters, here's a plan... Plan B
Die So Fluid
"Inspirational Rock", is how Die So Fluid describe the material they've been working on for album no. 3, produced
by Mark Williams at Miloco in the first quarter of 2009. The band have been touring the globe maniacally off the back of 2008's
Not Everybody Gets a Happy Ending, and just when you thought they'd stop to catch breath they're back in the studio once more,
with further dates across Europe and Asia due to be played before summer. Now, as far exemplums of old fashioned
hard graft goes, that is inspirational indeed (let's just hope there are no repeat onstage
electrocutions...)
Get to know the band who've been powering through in Assault & Battery 2 and The Square this year. It's Die So Fluid!!
6 Day Riot
From bright and free-flowing folk harmonies through to loud and and brash burping - it was all going on
when the London 5-piece alt-pop outfit 6 Day Riot arrived at our extreme live tracking Room, The Pool, in January
2009 with producer Guy Massey. A brand new album was being mustered up, to follow the band's brilliant 2007 debut record ' Folie a Deux'.
This one too, will no doubt be a great one!
Draw back the curtains! Its 6 Day Riot!
Editors
Birmingham's finest brooding indie band are two albums in and flying higher than ever. After hearing that Editors were turning their attention to the next
batch of new material, we just had to get them into our alluring hall of creativity, aka The Pool, where they've been spending
October with producer/engineer Gavin Monaghan, who, for the benefit of making any sense of the following Q&A, the band have endearingly
nick-named 'Bat'. Only they know why, we hasten to add.
Roll up roll up, it's Editors un-edited!
Artist Interviews
Alphabeat
These uber-cool Danish pop wonders have shot into the stratospheres of fame this year, thanks to their
acclaimed debut album This Is Alphabeat.
Partly-produced at Miloco by our good friend and long-term client Mike Spencer, we very much enjoyed the company of this sprightly-denimed and bubbly-shelled quintet. Here's what they had to say to us when we amicably cornered them one afternoon with a list of questions...
This really is Alphabeat!!!!!
Artist Interviews
Kid Carpet
Meet Kid Carpet, the self-described 'Shit-Hopper' who has a passion for Casio keyboards, and,
better still, FISHER PRICE GUITARS!!!! Yes!
Kid's career so far has seen memorable moments (including a live debut appearing on a bill alongside Willy Mason, Arcade Fire, Badly Drawn Boy and Mylo), to plain mad ones (a bizaar false national rumour that Kid was representing the nation at the 2007 Eurovision Song contest was even followed by one that he'd actually won it!!).
He's been mixing his second album in Miloco's Engine Room in the early parts of 2008 with producer Ben Hillier, which was when we quizzed him on a few things...
Fly the Magic Carpet!!
The Long Blondes
Kate, Emma, Dorian, Reenie and Screech. They're not characters from the latest version of
Worms Armageddon, but in fact the mighty Long Blondes; one of the spearhead acts of
the South Yorkshire rock renaissance.
These multi-gendered, multi-fashioned and multi-talented art-rocking free spirits, like to do things there own way. They self-teach their respective instruments, refuse to listen to Jimi Hendirx and The Beatles, and instead draw their influences from all sorts of intriguing tunesmiths from various parts of the music world, of course including their fellow Sheffield council-tax payer and grand duke of all things geek-chic, Miloco client Jarvis Cocker. They were tracking their second album in The Garden in October 2007 when MILC siezed the day. The Long Blondes talk!
Mystery Jets
When stepping away from their frightening passion for DIY surgery on unfortunate photographers
needing ruthless nose-jobs, The Mystery Jets make some fantastically enchanting music. They dress different,
they think diffent, they play different, they even employ guitar wielding dads to tinker the lead
fretboard, which you might say, is different (very cool, mind).
We've been lucky enough to meet them several times over the last couple of years, and now you can too! Follow the Jets!
Ali Love
Meet the hip-shaking, cider-drinking, stripey vest-sporting wonder that is Ali Love. Of course many will need
no introduction, especially those who have recently been loitering around the boozey buzzing belt
of Shoreditch. Lapping up the
the East London district's razzmatazz in all its blazing glory of late, Mr Love has been scurrying away in his
'bargain shithole' above the On The Rocks punk club in Hackney, spending the last one to two years concoting
a refreshing strand of funk-pop.
The name should ring a bell - Ali maximised the strength of his disco vocals on the Chemical Brothers' Do It Again single earlier in the year. No coincidence then that his debut solo album has had the superior touch of the Chems' long-term engineer and beat-maestro, Steve Dub. Oh, I almost forgot, the soon-to-be-released debut from this shiney electro soul sensation, was conceived, born, raised and made at Miloco, where MILC enters the fold...
Read on to hear what happened when Ali Love met MILC
The Chemical Brothers
When WW2 veterans can recall 1990s rave icons, albeit by the name of 'Those Chemistry Brothers', it is a sign of
true success. The Chemical Brothers, one of the global household names of dance music, have done it all. So it's been a sheer honour that
Miloco has been a part of their story from career day one, when they were using The Toyshop as their own programming room to record their
first album. They love our studios, we love their company, and so it makes perfect sense that Miloco and The Chems have joined forces
in the creation of all six of their pulsating dance album classics.
Ladies and gents, boys and girls. Slip on those block rockin' socks! There's Chemistry in the air...
The Maccabees
The lovely lads that are The Maccabees are destined for great and big things (and they also do a good line
in quirky cartoons, and will rustle dozens of them up if ever they have a spare moment. Giant walls, scraps
of paper, satsumas - nothing is safe from their marker pen of joy).
But back to the tunes... MILC caught up with them during one of their recent visits to The Pool with Ben Hillier, as they continued work on their debut album for Fiction records.
And Felix and Orlando from the band were coaxed into revealing a few nuggets of wisdom re: relocating from London to Brighton, stealing buses, landing safely from great heights and, erm, Kriss-Kross... To Maccabee or not to Maccabee?
Shitdisco
The story starts in Glasgow with a little-known band with a funny name coasting around illegal parties and house
gatherings. The notorious No. 61 West Princes Street (aka "61") - where the band's drummer Darren rented - got busted on a night
filled with debaucheries and Darren sadly was evicted :-(. The band with the funny name moved on to playing
at other people's houses, as well us under old railway bridges, shipping containers and caravans. Hmmm.
They grew from strength to strength, got signed, made a record, and now everybody loves them. The band with the funny name
are in fact called
Shitdisco
The Soho Dolls
Throughout the summer and early autumn of 2006, The Soho Dolls have been busy. They've been hidden away in
Kentish Town (Miloco 7), they've been secreted in Highbury (Miloco 5) and they've even been holed-up in Cornwall
(Miloco, erm...no, not yet).
Robert Harder has been producing and recording their sessions whilst Steve Lyon has been mixing them and all is well and all are happy.
MILC caught up with main Dolls Toni and Maya in between takes at Musikbox and dashing over to The SSL Room, and this is what they had to say... Doll speak.
Jamie T
Pushing the envelope in terms of 'most surreal answers ever provided to an online magazine',
Jamie 'Toyshop' T let us inside his head (which may not have been a good idea...), when he practically moved
in to Miloco 2 in 2006. Since the release of his debut album Panic Prevention, James Traeys has beaten Jarvis Cocker and Thom Yorke to the NME Awards' Best Male and been nominated for the coveted Mercury Music Prize. He runs a well-known indie night at London's prestigious 12 Bar Club, and is dubbed the 'one man Arctic Monkey', only he's not from the steel pits of Sheffield, but the tennis fervent suburbs of SW19. Click where it next says 'Jamie' to discover more about the nation's favourite rock-reggaetron. Jamie.
Klaxons
Just to make it perfectly loud and perfectly clear, this interview was before the Mercury prizes, NME awards, Glastonbury
showdowns, screaming fans, rock n'roll engagements, frantic gigs where Jamie Reynolds breaks his leg and continues to play
in a wheelchair etc etc. Of course we're going to get our dirty journalistic mits on Klaxons again, only the one time we have
as yet, they were merely wee nipper-snappers, nobodys strolling the streets of New Cross. Oh, how they change so quickly...
When Milc met the now kings of Nu Rave all the way back in 2006, this is what was talked about: Klaxons
Skitz
In 2006, longtime friend Skitz spent a week upstairs playing with gadgets in our Toyshop studio, with friends and collaborators
Rodney P and Corin. Havin been a leader of the UK Hip Hop DJ scene for the last decade
and now in his thirties, Skitz has also become an acclaimed Hip Hop producer working some
of Britain's highest-profile Urban artists.
His own album, Country Man, showed off his prolific connections featuring 25 collaborators! Why Country Man? Well he grew up in the country, why else? To read more click here.
Zero 7
As if our love for you were not strong enough, this month we've just gone potty. Yes, we've come to lavish gifts aplenty upon you, dear
friends, and big gifts too. First up, we've an interview with Sam and Henry from Zero 7. The chaps responsible for every cafe-bar soundtrack
of recent years were in Miloco throughout the winter of 2005 warming our weary souls with the follow up album to their gabillion-selling
Simple Things and When It Falls. Click on this to find out more: Zero 7
Fightstar
MILC sat down with 50% of Fightstar - Alex Westaway (guitar & vocals) and Charlie Simpson (guitar & vocals) - as they took time out
from recording with none other than Colin Richardson (legendary producer of Napalm Death, The Mission, Funeral For A Friend, Chimaira, et al).
So for a sneaky peak at the concept that spookily informs and binds their new project, and a whole lot more, click here
