Southbank Centre in association with trouble tune is proud to announce the first in a new season of club shows inside 750-capacity standing venue, The Front Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Specially curated by London-based live events producers, trouble tune, this first programme presents an intersection of exciting live performance and cutting edge electronic music. Two further shows in the series will be announced shortly for Ether 2011.
This new season aims to provide a platform for left-field dance and electronic music, operating late hours, and making use of Queen Elizabeth Hall’s stunning foyer space, which plays host to a lively programme of events across the year and contains its own PA/lighting system. Programming will be reflective of popular trends in dance music, with an aim to keep spirits high and get people dancing to keep warm through the winter months ahead.
To launch this special new partnership and series, trouble tune presents a UK exclusive DJ set from DFA Records mainstay Juan McLean; a special live performance from Kompakt Records’ Matias Aguayo with his Coméme band mate and close collaborator Daniel Maloso, created especially for this event; a performance from Brooklyn-based band on Warp, The Hundred in the Hands playing their only UK date in a European tour; and sets from rising DJ Stopmakingme.
Making a special UK appearance, Juan MacLean is a mainstay on dance-punk label DFA Records (LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip) and founder of the New York dance band, The Juan MacLean. Touring internationally as a DJ, MacLean released a mix album for !K7’s prestigious DJ-Kicks series in 2010. It featured the single “Feel So Good” (link) McLean is currently working a series of singles to be released by DFA called Juan MacLean's “Love Acid”.
Though mostly known for his productions and live performances, Maclean has been a DJ on the side for years, and his new mix reveals a diverse collection of high-energy club records. Over the course of its seventy-two minutes, classic tracks like Rick White's “Get On Up!” rub elbows with recent disco cuts by Shit Robot, Still Going and 6th Borough Project, while European tech-house artists like Florian Meindland Alex Niggemann rear their heads from time to time. The mix will also feature two new remixes of “Happy House”–trickily renamed “Feliz Casa”–and an exclusive track by The Juan Maclean called “Feel So Good,” featuring frequent vocal collaborator Nancy Wang and the late Jerry Fuchs, who died tragically in an accident last November after years of drumming for Maclean and LCD Soundsystem.
The compilation was mixed live with two turntables, a couple of filters and a tape delay. Though happy with the end result, Maclean says recording DJ Kicks threw him into what he describes as an “existential tailspin.” His debut as The Juan McLean, “Happy House”, was re-released in the summer of 2009. It was promoted with a video directed by The Wilderness featuring singer Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem and a collection of back-up dancers including members of other DFA bands.
On the heels of their critically acclaimed EP, This Desert, “Brooklyn-based pop alchemists” The Hundred in the Hands released their self-titled debut for Warp records in September 2010 and supported dance-punk band !!! at Koko soon after. Expect the sounds of early synth music, mixed with classic disco and French pop. Rarely performing in the UK, this will be THITH’s only UK date as part of their European tour.
The band’s self-titled debut album is an epic collection of adventurously crafted, perfectly manufactured and deceptively complex pop songs that embrace the duality between the electronic and the organic, between night and day. Equal parts mutant disco, 80’s pop queen and Yé Yé girl, Eleanore’s epic vocals and lavish synths—both full and flirty, desperate and demanding—belie a naturalism that’s intensified and offset by Jason’s bass lines, programmed beats and guitars that swerve from angular, full-throttle riffs to vaporous and ephemeral shadows. Jason and Eleanore trade menacing metallic, razor sharp, turns, assembling towering melodies atop pulsing rhythms.
Matias Aguayo lives between Paris and Buenos Aries as techno DJ, musician, and impromptu party maker signed to Cologne label, Kompakt. Coméme is Aguayo’s live band project, bringing together techno, house, and the sounds of a Latin American street party onto the dance floor. Aguayo and Maloso have created a special one-off Coméme set for the purpose of this event. Breaking the boundaries between electronic music and live performance, Aguayo sings, claps and plays percussion as part of his Coméme shows and is unique to electronic music as a DJ with a voice.
One of Kompakt Record's most prolific producers for the past 10 years, founder of the Comeme label and author of “AY AY AY” – easily one of the most acclaimed albums of 2009 – Matias Aguayo has formed a band only for the duration of this summer with his two South American friends. They ventured on a tour around the world with a new electrifying performance bringing together house, disco, pop and world music with added latin-influenced romanticism and the spirit of Comeme's spontaneous BumBumBox street parties. Coméme bandmember Daniel Maloso is famed for his collabs with Mexican musician and fellow label signing Rebolledo. Maloso is responsible for one of the biggest records in our box of the last year, Ritmo Especial.
Make no mistake, this is a UK debut for Matias Aguayo & Band and the only live show the boys are playing in London this year!
Rising DJ, Stopmakingme, holds residencies at Fabric, and is a fixture at London parties Bugged Out and Durrr. His debut EP “Wrapped In Plastic” was released on Kill Em All Records in November 2010.
Stopmakingme is well known for his residency at London institution Fabric as well as regular appearances at nights such as Bugged Out and Durrr. Now his star is set to rise further as Erol Alkan has hand picked him to be the resident DJ for his Phantasy Sound label, hosting their radio show and helming their new club night.
The EP is culmination of all things he loves about the dancefloor and influences he’s absorbed from London life. Arpeggiators and analogue synths; oddball Italo Disco big enough to work in main rooms; rolling Krautrock basslines and current bands like Factory Floor who have helped resurrect them; Hot Mix 5 hand claps; pulsing electroclash with camp vocals; the simplicity of ESG and every other early Factory Records release as well as the modern day electro he’s grown up on like Simian Mobile Disco, The Chemical Brothers, Erol and Tiga, all of whom he’s had the chance to warm up for, hands shaking uncontrollably every time.
Trouble Tune Presents the First in a Season of Club Shows at Southbank Centre
The Juan MacLean (DJ set) + Matias Aguayo and Daniel Maloso Coméme (live) + The Hundred in the Hands (live) + Stopmakingme (DJ)
Friday 25 February, Queen Elizabeth Front Room
Tickets: £12.00, Doors: 8.30pm