Do you find there’s much of a difference between your typical festival and specialist dance festivals?
Yeah, but not really a positive or negative difference. If you do more of a rock festival, the crowd are a little less educated – but that’s a good thing and they still love it.

We’ve noticed that festivals like this have almost taken over clubbing. Would you agree?
Your standard club like Fabric will always be busy and will always do well, but there are less and less clubs like that as time goes on. But now there seems to be more one-off events with big line-ups. But Fabric is the only place now where you can go at five o’clock in the morning and it will be packed and everyone there is up for it.

Do you reckon the rise in popularity of the one-off event is due to the recession?
For sure. It’s harder for the promoters to put shows on, because they have to spend more to get a profit – the competition between different nights is bigger.

Have you seen any significant changes in the dance music scene over the past ten years?
A few years back, guitar music was very popular; but last year saw a rise in dance music. It got to a point where I swear every dance track had an element of trance in it. But the music scene always changes.

Is rock music dead?
No, I think it’s going to come back around again and in six months guitar music will be back in popularity. Enter Shikari being mid-week number one is the start of things to come.

How did you find your first time playing a Bugged Out event?
Tonight was wicked and everything was organised smoothly! Really good crowd as well.

What would you suggest someone do first if they wanted to start DJing?
Get CDJs or decks, or be really retro and play vinyl. Play music that you like.

Are you a DJ purist? Do you solely play vinyl?
I did until about four months ago.

What made you switch?
Set-ups aren’t really capable of playing vinyl any more – it’s a very tricky thing to use because you get feedback and jumping needles. It’s still my favourite format  – hearing a track played on vinyl is the best way to hear a tune. These days, though, everything’s digital.

Do you reckon DJing with an iPod is pretty much cheating?
It depends. Cheating is playing in a set that’s been premade. DJing with two iPods or with a laptop is still DJing – it’s 2012 so you’ve got to make the most of what new technology has to offer.

When you’re playing music do you just play what you love or do you tactically pick a couple of crowd-pleasers to put into your set?
I love playing crowd-pleasers because they make the crowd happy! I won’t listen to that type of music when I’m chilling and listening to my iPod, though.

What are your plans for 2012?
On April 2nd I start my Sunday night drum n bass show on Radio 1, taking over Fabio and Grooverider. And my single ‘Led Astray’ is out on February 27th.

-Bronya Francis

www.ellesse.com

- Ailie Robertson

The first band to take to stage on the new weekly night was five-piece up-starts Dexters who played a storming set showcasing their fresh sound with confidence and a swagger whilst displaying charm and warmth to the baying crowd. The youngsters are full of energy and enthusiasm, they are definitely ones to watch with promise shining through. It was the headliners who were the centre of the buzz in the heaving venue, as local boys Tribes warmed-up for the NME Tour with a very special acoustic set.

2012 is going to be a big year for the four-piece who released their critically acclaimed album, Baby last month. Tomorrow they take on the UK with the NME Tour before a jaunt around Europe, then a headline UK tour before the festival season kicks off, this will be the smallest gig for a long long time. The band left their drummer at home but gave a rare outing for their acoustics as they played a short set, opening up with live favourite, Coming Of Age. The buzz amongst the spectators was electrifying as the band then went into the radio-friendly Sappho before the anthemic sounding Nightdriving. The performance concluded with a sing-a-long to the nostalgic single, We Were Children before bowing out to what will be their last home-time show for a while.

Tins On Toast returns to the Purple Turtle every Monday with the best new bands around.

This is their debut record, combining a trilogy of two track 12”s ‘documenting their evolution’ released last year plus two new tracks and a second disc of remixes. There’s a sophistication, intelligence and artistry underlying them that separates it from most music you’ll find raved about and raved to on Hype Machine. Those 12”s over 2011 – the first track centred on a Meredith Monk sample, a primal scream symbolising their rebirth; the second a struggle for individuality in a commercial world, while stylistically referencing time in the UK; and the final, debating alternately excess and restraint. However pleasurable the experience of listening, this wasn’t arrived at easily.

But really, though, no amount of intellectualising or context will match the sheer EXPERIENCE of listening to these compositions. Take the sublime ‘Wine’, the opening track of the final 12 in that trilogy and I think their best track. It exists in the sort of happy maudlin state that plenty of a good version of its namesake might incur – maudlin, yes, and somewhat distant and removed, sentimental in the faint piano house key s line which opens it yet propulsive, throbbing richly with life, a little yearning, the distorted vocal moan embedded in its tapestry of sounds the mark of pleasure ever dimming and receding as oblivion takes hold.

Wine, then, is rich and hedonistic; it’s flip ‘Water’ is obviously an exercise in abstention: holding back from their usual central glowing melodies and leaving a beautifully absent space, a vortex that sucks you in.

This is absorbing, transcendental techno – though it is so much more than that limiting term. They are certainly born in a place that values a thick, bodily-enthralling 4/4 beat as their foundation – but then, these pristine, beautiful, intense adornments of lapping synth melodies take us to a sensual, sexual, spiritual place. Blondes is a record of eight enduring tracks. They’re like ink blots, prior to blotting and drying – rich, liquid, infinite and possible, beautiful, brilliant.

-Michael C Lewin

Find this review in Notion Issue 56, in WH Smiths and all fab independent newsagents on Thursday 16th February.

- Ailie Robertson

Samey vocal “na-na-na” can contain the musical nuts of a progressive cashew and with this handful of plain, dainty airiness – it chokes out shell dance-moves in stable stomached neutrality, easing acid build-up with an Alka-Seltzer spoonful ofsound-as-a-pound smoothie disco.

Form & Control is a good-time musical recording, so pop down your street-scribe’s prescription of scuffed trainers and lead-poisoned regionalism.Instead laze to these easy sounds of hippy(ish) idealism. And whilst it might not be real cool quite yet, ‘cos here in Britannia’sdiscoloured conservative cartoon, scowls sag atus the morally munch-skinned, it does prefacecheeks ofbare-faced variety toward new moods.

Best bits include guest bassist Pier Pappalardo’s masterful bass groove on “The Right One”, runny communal stickiness from “The Written Word” and soap opera swaggeryin laughably camp, tea-time slow burner “The Unknown Faces At Father James Park”. There are bad bits though. “Afterglow” is useless, sinking the second half to a bed of banality. “Mirror” doesn’t help, pandering a mock-Justice karaoke-cum-carpark performance.

The album doesn’t work in singularity – it’s an effort from the colony’s nest. The Phenomenal Handclap are like ants, but they aren’t queens, just workers. The division of labour is split to form something, which beneath the mud is expansive, unexpected and stolid. The band play Manchester’s Night & Day Cafe on 4th March, I’ve got a feeling they’ll be pretty fucking good. Try it.

- Ben Magill

After deciding to record his life on camera, Andrew (Dane DeHaan), his cousin Matt (Alex Russell) and friend Steve (Michael B. Jordan) find a mysterious object in the ground that gives them telekinetic abilities. Chiefly used for their amusement, the three’s powers grow stronger with regular use; but events turn dark when Andrew struggles to control his old doubts and new skills.

There’ve been plenty of found-footage films since the genre was popularised by The Blair Witch Project (1999). The shaky 1st person perspective can make something seem more real and immersive, which could’ve been useful for the odd circumstances found in Chronicle, yet the camera just adds another barrier, constantly reminding me I was watching a film. There also needed to be reasons for the characters to have the camera, which didn’t get any better than “he films everything” or “she has a blog.” The idea gets especially strained during the more dangerous and high stakes predicaments. Nevertheless always having a camera did give the leads an actual reason to keep talking to the audience, in a manner similar to the style of narration in superhero films and comics.

Although not as stylised, Chronicle shares much with superhero origin tales. Adolescents learn to deal with new powers, whilst at the same time dealing with puberty. Andrew begins the film like young heroes often do; a shy recluse with issues. But Chronicle separates itself from nearly all those films by focusing on what superpowered teens probably would do, instead of fighting crime, pranking people and beer pong. It however makes an awkward dramatic shift when it reaches its conclusion. The increased use of larger special effects and superpowered people battling make it seem more akin to a conventional, not necessarily better, superhero film.

Going in to Chronicle I had little to expect, only to find it to be an interesting and inventive blend of genres, whilst also being a nice alternative to them. It doesn’t always balance their contrasting aspects well, which is understandable with those genres being so different. The acting is generally strong and the opening that shows all the superpowered hijinkery is particularly enjoyable. The film stumbles at the end but overall it proved to be a very pleasant surprise. Like their powers after the teens have first discovered them, Chronicle provides solid entertainment.

- Jon Bartholomew

This is not to belittle the album. There’s nothing wrong with writing Pop Songs. A pop song implies a verse, a chorus, a strong sense of structure. These are not bad things. Do not pour scorn on the Pop Song. It is no less worthy simply by virtue of it having a hook. Hadreas takes the Pop Song format and twists it into something much more fragile, yet retains that essence that makes something Pop. Take for example, ‘Shed No Tears’. It’s a pop song by way of a New Orleans funeral march. A choir of voices swells as Hadreas croons “I will shed no tears”, a hook that packs a punch and will stay in your head for days. It’s pretty bleak stuff, but that doesn’t stop it from being catchy.

This album is melodramatic in the truest sense of the word – it is sensationalised and overemotional at every turn. From the shaky vocals, to the forlorn sounding piano and the rising string; they’re all designed to tug at your heartstrings and make you empathise with the singer. Put Your Back N 2 It is an insight into the struggles of Perfume Genius. It is not easy listening at all. Take Me Home features a protagonist who begins by telling us that he’ll “work the corner” and later on that he’ll “lie still/like a corpse”. Yet this is what makes it so arresting.

It appeals to our voyeuristic nature, our desire to know what everyone else is up to. It’s the same idea behind the misery fiction section in WH Smiths. People enjoy hearing about other people’s pain. In fact, pop music is pretty much built on this emotional soul baring. For that is what Put Your Back N 2 It is – a direct appeal to the emotions of the listener. Luckily, Hareas is capable of writing a good song, so even at its bleakest there remains a Pop Song to hold everything together. It’s good, but you may want a hug afterwards.

- David Pott-Negrine

What you mightn’t have seen is how they made it: litres of latex, metres of plaster of Paris, blowtorches, scissors, paint and a team of – well, not thousands, but certainly a good load of very hardworking elves. We always like these videos; they;re less ‘Behind the magic’ than a fascinating mini-documentary into what it takes to make a 3 and a half minute music vid. Anywa, judge for yourselves, but it’s defo worth a few minutes of your browsing time:

WE HAVE BAND – WHERE ARE YOUR PEOPLE? – MAKING OF from Alex Turvey on Vimeo.

Astrid&Miyu.com brings you quite charming costume jewellery sourced from all over the world. The kind of jewellery that makes you feels pink on the inside. Intricate, delicate trinkets that reminisce of eras gone by sold alongside bold statement golds. All sold at affordable prices ranging between £12 and £300 and with new pieces available every week thank you founders, Connie Nam and Jenny Orlova for your bewitching jewels.

- Kathryn Duncan