Aroe Paints Buildings /December 29, 2018 by James Kendall

Graffiti artists paint walls. Aroe paints buildings. Here’s version 2 of his MCA tribute.

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Here's my dissertation from my MA in Photography. An argument about beauty: when it pacifies, when it dignifies, and why the same country can produce both Boris Mikhailov's brutal Case History and Yelena Yemchuk's sunlit Odesa. Written in 2022, with the war already changing how the work reads.

Foals Interview

This is Foals first ever cover story. Even then Yannis was an intense guy. I knew I had to go in with good questions, even though they were just one single in at the time. It was obvious from the get go that they were special.

““We played a squat in Elephant & Castle – there’s a photo of it on our myspace – and this entire wall got hit through with a fire extinguisher,” Yannis remembers with a smile. “There was a whole wall and a doorway into the basement where we were playing when we started. By the time we finished our set there was just a beam and rumble, and ketamine and squat juice. That was pretty exciting.”

Foals might like to play with the walls literally removed between them and the audience but Yannis also likes these house parties – and inviting the fans on stage for proper gigs – as they remove the metaphorical barriers around the band, the way that the hardcore punks would. At the Camden Crawl 60 kids shared the stage with the group.

With all those complex layers of melody it’s a surprise that they could tolerate a nudge against their musicianship. Is that extreme musicality something they work at? Yannis says not – they never make things more complicated for the sake of it. But it’s a dangerous game to play, being talented at your instrument – just look what happened to prog rock.

“Dangerous? No,” he says sternly, “because we have a modicum of taste. There are some amazing prog records and there are some terrible fucking punk records. Predominately we like communicating with people.””

Bat For Lashes Interview

Within about five minutes of Bat For Lashes first single arriving on my desk I was on the phone to get her on the cover, her first. This was the final of three times I interviewed her - a Q&A but she was on good form.

“You’ve collaborated in your songwriting for the first time on ‘Laura’. Was that a difficult decision to make?
It was quite hard. I think I’ve always been quite snobbish about it in the past but I wanted to see what it was like to work with someone that would push me a little bit in a direction, and teach me something that I didn’t know already. I feel that it was really nice to be collaborating with Justin [Parker, who has also worked with Lana Del Rey]. I had a brief. I wanted to write a piano song that was harkening back to those old 70s ballads, with a middle eight and traditional structure. But I always like to put my own angle on it, so the dark subject matter or whatever came through. And together we navigated it and came up with something that still sounded very much like me. I think it turned out really well. I’m happy with that song.”

James Lavelle Interview

I had a great night out with Mo Wax’s James Lavelle in Romania. I know he’s got a bit of a, er, reputation, but we got on like a house on fire. This report is from DJmag.

“But the experience hasn’t been all plain sailing. Waiting for James to turn up in the less than glamorous Bucharest airport earlier in the day, he’s easy to spot, decked head to foot in Bathing Ape clothing and Futura scribbles. He’s also weighted down with a brace of the coolest record bags available. He smiles his way through a Fabric-fueled hangover, but it isn’t long before the lack of sleep helps shift his mood. There’s been a mix up, and Lavelle isn’t in the least bit happy. His favourite mixer isn’t at the club as planned, and instead he’ll have to make do with his most hated bit of equipment. For someone who claims to be ‘not much of a DJ, no Sasha’ it seems a bit much as angry phone calls are made.

Somewhere around the UNKLE album Lavelle started to get a regular kicking from the press. His ‘overblown’ longplayer ‘Psyence Fiction’ – featuring mates like Massive Attack’s 3D, Badly Drawn Boy and Thom Yorke – dared to go beyond the underground hip hop clubs where he was worshiped. The media had spent the last few years asking Lavelle what they should tell their readers was cool (“Star Wars figures? Great. Futura graffiti? OK!”), but now they’d changed their minds. The Mo Wax boss was getting too big for his boots, they said, he was arrogant and needed taking down a peg or two.”

Best Daft Punk Lost Classics

Vice liked this article so much they invited Brighton Source to be part of the Vice Blog Network. I turned them down because one day Brighton Source will be bigger than Vice and Vice will be part of the Source Blog Network.

“A simple piece of 90s filter disco, ‘Club Soda’ is rather more refreshing than the gritty, jacking stuff usually found on Bangalter’s ‘Tracks On Da Rocks’ 12”s. A sliver of an old disco guitar riff is pitched right down to a very ‘now’ 120bpm for a sexy minimal groove. Warm and euphoric, it should find favour with anyone that liked ‘Get Lucky’. Like most of the stuff on Bangalter’s peerless Roulé imprint, this is firmly made for club play but is sexy and melodic enough to groove around your bedroom to.”