HaLLonpLock: 01/01/2009

Oj vad fint !!! se nedan...

hursomhelst ska vi dit pa bloomsbury pa valentines day den 14:e och festa med Rosie and the goldbug.Varat kara band som vi ivrigt foljer haha!!!/Mindy

Out on the wilds of Bodmin Moor, little Rosie Vanier was wrestling with obsession.There were her eccentric parents obsessions: extrovert mum (from Bristol) and cosmic dad (a part-Native American lovechild from South America) were self-taught folk musicians who decided they had to take their music round Europe on a tandem. Then, in search of the good life, they moved to deepest Cornwall, to the moors, to a plot of a land with no electricity. The only heat came from chasing the chickens (for food) and riding the horses (for fun). For Rosie and her older sister, TV was nothing more than a rumour. At the local primary, the entire school roll Rosie, her sister and one other girl spent long days copying calligraphy cards. The school didnt have much, but what it did have was a profusion of shiny red metallic paper. I spent a lot of time making things out of that, Rosie recalls brightly. Anything sparkly became an obsession in this barren landscape. To this day, Rosie red. By the time the tiny school closed down three pupils werent enough to justify a staff of six and Rosie moved to a proper school, she was hopelessly behind in bog-standard learnin stuff. (But if you wanted a beautifully inscribed and designed Valentines card, Rosie was your chick.)Meanwhile, back home at cold comfort farm, Rosie was being locked away in her bedroom. Her musician parents were self-taught; perhaps unwilling to condemn their daughters to a career pedaling around Europe (if Rosie ever went on tour, it would be transit van or nothing), they insisted they have piano lessons, and that they spend hours in their room practicing. A resentful Rosie, never one to take anything sitting down, would spend most of her practice time hovering over the keys, attacking it! Thats one of the reasons I beat up the piano on stage now revenge! she laughs. Rosie mentions her song Butterfly, a punchy two-fingers (imagine Kate Bush fronting Goldfrapp) to a boy who was a real maggot. She says there are a lot of boys like that in Launceston, the small Cornwall town in which she spent her teens. They drive these fancy chav cars and they add all the alloys and stuff. But all thats inside is this gross little maggot driving. And I just want to stamp on them! Its venting an aggression but also a love for all that cause its so ridiculous.And anyway, that aggression has deeper roots: Butterfly was one of the first songs I wrote and I was getting really pissed off, and I started smacking the shit out of the piano. That was something I used to do at piano practice, and then eventually something I did at gigs as well. Ive cut back a bit now. Im not quite so angry these days.And no wonder. These days, Rosies obsessions find form in the glam-stomp pop dramas that make her band one of the most exciting young bands in Britain, and that make her an excitingly glamazon frontwoman. These days Rosies got the Goldbug aka drummer Plums and bass player Pixie with whom to fight her battles. These days, Rosies escaped Cornwall and found a new obsession: recording the most thrilling debut album of 2008.Under the glasscrete pavements of Fitzrovia, Rosie And The Goldbug are beavering away. Squirreled into a tiny basement studio in central London, Rosie, Pixie and Plums and the occasional cellist pal are working with producer Jim Eliot. Hes the sonic wunderkind whos half of Kish Mauve, the electro-pop duo whose song 2 Hearts Kylie Minogue covered for her comeback single. Theyre like a really cool Blondie with an electronic twist, offers Pixie by way of explaining why the West Country trio chose to work with Eliot. Thats what fascinated us we wanted to bring a bit of that into our music.Hes young as well, adds Plums, so it feels like hes on the same wavelength as well.Its a dream partnership, the fruits of which are immediately obvious on Lover and War Of The Roses. The former is an epic, boogie-down anthem of lust; the latter is a hammering synth-pop belter. As if Giorgio Moroder was rebooted as a noughties Cornish indie-diva (instead of being an old Italian bloke). Rosie: Its really feisty, like a kick in the balls not that I have any balls. Its great to play live. Its about being pissed off with someone not coming home and throwing away the stuff you made for their dinner. Although its less about the lyrics than the emotion of making a fuck-off noise.Plums: If youre a bit pissed off, put it on and jump around for a bit. Thatll sort you out.Pixie: Its almost like a Thin Lizzy tune but on a synth. Its quite heavy actually.Rosie: Its definitely got a bit of metal in it.The energy and excitement of both songs betray the serious amount of gigging the band have put in during their short existence: they spent most of last year gigging like maniacs, performing some 150 shows all over the south-west and in London, attracting the interest of management, promoters, publishers and labels in the process. They formed in early 2007: Rosie, whod studied music at Roehampton University outside London the course was all about studying pretentious jazz modes and it made me realise I wanted to just write three chord pop tunes and rebel had returned to Cornwall to start a band. Pixie is her sisters boyfriend; his compact stature and to be frank his pointy ears account for his nickname. But theres nothing petite about his playing: he wallops out big fat bass sounds. Its as if hes channelling the pound and roar of the sea he grew up with, courtesy of hippie-surfer parents and a childhood/youth that was largely spent in a beachside caravan. Plums and Pixie were at university in Exmouth together (in fact, they still are). Then, Plums old band supported Rosies old band. Rosie, fed up fronting a band full of belchin n fartin lads who seemed intent on playing boring old indie-guitar wank, saw an escape route. After all, Plums is like no other drummer youve ever seen. Shes mesmerising onstage, all Keith Moon limbs and Aladdin Sane attitude. Maybe some of that comes from her time as a teenage member of Kagemusha Taiko, an internationally renowned Exeter-based Japanese drumming group, maybe it just comes from the fact that Plums is, like both her band-mates, a full-force character. Rosie And The Goldbug are a trio with three razor-sharp points.I saw Plums on the drums, recalls Rosie, and I was like, I have to be in a band with her! I kept on phoning and texting her and eventually she said yes.There was an immediate connection one that deepened when Rosie wrote Heartbreak. Its a robo-disco throbber, propelled by a rich, sob-in-the-throat vocals from the frontwoman, plus a beautifully evocative middle-eight built round cello.Its actually about Plums when she came out about being a lezzer, says the spades-a-fricking-spade singer in this profoundly close-knit band. And it was such a sweet moment, cause it was all very hard for her - she actually thought we were gonna kick her out the band for it!I thought theyd think I was spreading disease or something, laughs Plums. And I just thought it was so beautiful - she blossomed into this little flower. So the lyrics are really basic but its all about saying, what does it matter? Nothing else matters but love.How does Plums feel about this? Chuffed to bits, it seems. I think its really cool - I feel empowered as a gay!Rosies writing has been blossoming in other ways too. Last year, in between all those gigs, at the suggestion of London music publishers, Rosie spent time writing with Marcella Detroit (formerly of Shakespears Sister) and Glasgow band El Presidente.I learnt a lot from Marcella. One thing I didnt realise is, I find it hard to write about myself I like writing about other people and telling stories, she notes, something her wild Cornish upbringing perhaps made inevitable. She picked up on that and made me write some songs about myself. I know it seems quite an obvious thing but I was quite insecure about it. Some artists write about themselves so much it makes me wanna vomit, its just disgusting, so I was steering well away from that. But she said, at the end of the day, people do want to ear a little about you. We wrote one song together like that, Soldier Blues.El Presidente, meanwhile, brought something else to the party. For all her love of Kate Bush and Tori Amos, Rosie also loves cheesy Eighties nonsense the bands cover of Duran Durans Planet Earth is a highlight of their live set and a bit of a party. And some of our stuff had gotten a bit heavy and complicated, admits this ever-candid pop-star-in-waiting, and El Presidentes music is just up and having it I felt I wanted a bit of that, so we wrote Youve Changed together.Its time to get back to work, to get back beneath the pavement, back into the tiny hive of creativity in which Rosie And The Goldbug are finishing off an album that manages to be both slinky and throbby, intimate and powerful, emotional and hedonistic, big and clever. Backed by her two kindred spirits Rosie the little girl who had to explore her own imagination out in the empty wilds of Bodmin Moor is determined to see out her own vision, no compromise nor short-cuts nor interference allowed. So much so that the band are forming their own label to release their album.The Goldbug name, meanwhile, comes from a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, whose gothic grandeur Rosie has long felt an affinity for. The imagery he conjured up, I could really relate to it from where I grew up the darkness hit home. I just carry a lot of my weird childhood with me wherever I go. Also, I liked the idea of having a name like Siouxsie and the Banshees or Adam and the Ants. And I like a lot of Egyptian and 1920s imagery, so the scarab beetle really fitted with that.And also, Plums and Pixie together this noise just like a goldbug: this big bass and drums, which are the driving force behind my piano. Together, the three of us are just rocking it.The battered piano, throbbing beats, buzzpop psychodrama and disco-diva magic of Rosie and the Goldbug coming soon