La La Vasquez formed before any of them could play instruments. They are all girls and they live in Brighton. On the internet they say there’s three of them but when I went to take their photo them they insisted on having a forth girl in the photo, which was sweet. Their names are Merida, Freya and Rachael and they seem like they’re really good friends.
I spoke to Freya (who also runs a label called Twingrrl Records and is doing a comp of girl groups, FYI) and she reckons they’re influenced by girl punk, I can hear 60’s girl groups in there as well though, but maybe it’s just that sometimes two of them look kind of 60’s. Freya told me how they felt about being lo-fi: ‘we definitely don’t wanna be hi-fi, we just prefer the sound, it’s not over-produced bullshit, and that’s genuine. We’re not trying to be trendy’.
La La Vasquez are great to watch, you can tell they’ve only just learnt to play, but in the best way. They play a lot of shows with the other bands in this article but they’re not keen to be a snoot about it. ‘I don’t like to think of it being a ‘scene’, the word makes it seem exclusive and the more people coming to hang the merrier!’
PDAphile by La La Vasquez
Teen Sheikhs are from Brighton and mainly go out with members of La La Vasquez. It’s adorable. There are three members, Andy, James and Will. Andy and James run a label called Sex Is Disgusting, they’ve put out a Mazes 7inch and a Human Hair 7inch so far, and they run a great blog there too.
Andy from Sheikhs wrote this thing called the Dude Culture Manifesto, when I first heard about it I thought it was going to be a long academic tract, because he does something really heavy at university, but when he read it out at the DudeFest show that he put on in a pub in Brighton a few months ago it was a list of rules about sharing pizza and drinking, which was way better/more interesting. Along with a bunch of guys from all these bands, he started a great blog dedicated to Dude Culture called Now That’s What I Call Dude Culture, it’s really funny.
I hate it when people make musical equations (‘this sounds like Nirvana fighting Ghostface Killah in James Brown’s toilet’ etc etc) but Teen Sheikhs sound a bit like a bad tape recording of the Ramones jamming with The Germs. I wanted them to talk a bit about their sound, I think James was being funny a bit when he said this to me: “We knew lo-fi was “in”, so we went with that. There were some heated discussions cos Andy fancied doing something a bit more theatrical. I think he mentioned something called baroque punk or something.”
Cracked by Teen Sheikhs
Male Bonding are a pretty big deal because they just signed to Sub Pop, which is a label you may have heard of. They are from Dalston, where a lot of the bands in this feature live. Their names are Kevin, John and Robin, and they are good friends: ‘we have our own language’, Kevin claims.
They are really good, one of my faves out of these bands, but I’m no good at talking about music, you can hear how great they sound on the mp3. Together they also do a label called Paradise Vendors Inc, which they’ve put out a bunch of their own and other band’s records, ‘We’ve just made all our own decisions about everything we do, like everyone else. We have put out our own records and records by other people. We can operate a minidisc and garageband and do basic bike repairs.’ Kevin says, which is a pretty straightforward definition of what it is to be DIY among these bands I suppose.
They’re pretty into what they do and seem to have been given a golden ticket to just get on with what they need to do to make it work for them. I don’t think they’re going to let anyone, least of all themselves, down, Kevin sounded pretty convincing when he said this: ‘we will turn ourselves inside out for this band. We will do whatever we can. We will bleed.’
Year’s Not Long by Male Bonding
This is my housemate on the right. We live in Dalston and Roy Bundy has a bunch of instruments in his room. Him and his pals Karen and Bahaama bash away at them all weekend and I absolutely promise I don’t mind, because I’m pretty into what they’re doing and all I’m doing in my room is watching porno or The Wire.
Hype Williams are the least musically straightforward out of all these bands, they just did a mixtape with Hounds Of Hate where they fiddled with/remixed each others tracks. Plus they make these amazing videos for everything they do that are made up of opulent hip hop videos, witch doctors and traditional African dancers. They do 20 minute jams onto a cassette 4-track and distribute them via email about once a month.
MVP ’94 by Hype Williams
