With Real Gone celebrating its fifth anniversary in November 2014, we thought it would be a good time to catch up with a few faces and bands not featured in our columns for some time. Bands move on, bands split, bands plough on… In a first instalment of an ongoing series, we caught up with Brian E. King, mastermind behind Oranjuly to find out about his current activities.
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It is October 21st 1993. An ordinary autumnal evening for many, but for two lads from Kent this is a Thursday night like no other. For these two – at this point aged approximately 17 and 19 and only some six weeks into a friendship – this is to be a very momentous occasion. For both, it is a first gig experience and they are going to see Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, a band with somewhat of a cult following. By this point, Carter USM – still a duo with drum machine and a world of pre-programmed trickery – have scored a run of hit singles and have four hit albums under their belt, including a number one. They’ve rugby tacked Phillip Schofield on live TV (a man still young enough to care about dying his hair) and only within the last couple of weeks have appeared on the long running chart showcase Top of the Pops. Indeed, the very idea that this band would venture into the middle of Kent and play a show in a leisure centre seems like a visit from music royalty. Almost surreal– especially in the eyes of these two teenagers, keen to immerse themselves in a world of live music – but here they are, ready to promote their current full-length release, Post Historic Monsters.
Hailing from England’s North East, The Creep Void are an independent rock band trading in some great post grunge and alternative sounds. While the core of their work owes a debt to the nineties, the quartet’s 2014 EP ‘The Elevation of Idiocy’ isn’t just a throwback to times of khaki colours and plaid shirts. There are certainly a few unavoidably grungy elements within these four tracks, but the song writing and tough sound places them firmly in the twenty first century – ever looking forward as well as drawing from their classic influences.
In the five years of Real Gone’s existence, there have been dozens upon dozens of fine releases. Some we’ve loved instantly, some demanded a little more time before their magic became wholly apparent. To mark five years worth of internet presence and hundreds of reviews written in that time, we present a brief look back at ten of our favourite albums to ever fill Real Gone’s columns. In no particular order…drum roll please!
With a gig coming up in the next week, The 1957 Tail-Fin Fiasco have been hard at work rehearsing. They’ve been kind enough to ensure their work is documented and you can now watch a “live in the studio” performance of their classic ‘Benny Rise & Shine’ below.