Modern Sky Music Festival NYC 2015

UK's legendary post-punk GANG OF FOUR will release a new album, "What Happens Next," on February 24, 2015 on Metropolis Records in the USA and Canada, and Membran in Europe. The follow-up to the critically acclaimed album Content, "What Happens Next" features collaborations with Alison Mosshart from The Kills, Robbie Furze from The Big Pink, Gail Ann Dorsey, German superstar Herbert Grönemeyer and Japanese superstar Hotei.

The first album without vocalist Jon King, "What Happens Next" refers to both the outside world and the band itself: an emphatic commitment to the future. "The focus is more on universal issues, like how individuals behave in certain ways or how our world is constructed, than local issues or current affairs," says founding guitarist and songwriter Andy Gill. "Gang of Four is anything but parochial." When King left the project, a reinvigorated Gill seized the opportunity to re-imagine Gang of Four from the ground up. The new album is an unexpected twist that still operates as the next logical step for the legendary post-punk.

Sandwiched between Joy Division's landmark album "Unknown Pleasures" and Led Zepellin's iconic "IV," Gang of Four's debut "Entertainment!" sits at #8 on Pitchfork's Top 100 of the 1970s, proclaiming it "caustic and bursting with disgust for unethical capitalism, opportunist politicians and consumer society, among other things, but it's also crafted with amazing pop sensibility -- and is, of course, remarkably danceable." Earlier this year, that same album was found on Kurt Cobain's handwritten list of favorite albums. Echoing the singular importance of the band's impact on music, Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello told Rolling Stone this past July 2014 that "there's no one more influential on my guitar playing than Andy Gill." Having been named a massive influence by many artists including Bloc Party, R.E.M., The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails, The Rapture, Franz Ferdinand and LCD Soundsystem, among hundreds of others, Gang of Four's legacy continues not by being frozen in a moment in time, but by constant evolution while remaining true to the original spirit of the band.

"What Happens Next" was written and produced by Andy Gill in London. The lead single from "What Happens Next" is "Broken Talk," which features vocals from Alison Mosshart.

Gang of Four is Andy Gill (guitar), John "Gaoler" Sterry (vocals), Thomas McNiece (bass) and Jonny Finnegan (drums).
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Here's what those in the know are saying about Mark Sultan!!

"The best voice in rock'n'roll. Period."

"There are no gimmicks, and his heart is on the line. This really is art and it may be respectable, but it's got the sexual primitivism of rock'n'roll of old without sacrificing heart, earworms or intensity. Not only does he sound like a whole band, but his disregard for conventional time signatures, uniformity and concert structure, makes the show all the more special, as does his disembodied and soulful vocals. An absolute must." - We Crime, Belgium

"...a criminally underappreciated garage rock cult hero who puts on a one-man-band live show so sincerely passionate that he makes most primitive rock 'n' roll revivalists look like cynical imposters ...anyone who believes in him needs to pick up this one-take improvised stream-of-consciousness limited-edition live album ...deranged but brilliant" - NOW Toronto

"Mark Sultan has been a garage rock stalwart since the later part of the 1990s and seems to get better and better with every album he puts out, either with a band or under one of his solo monikers." - Flavorpill

"...wildly prolific...what differentiates his stuff is his genuine sense of tune-craft...." LA Weekly

"If there's a Patient Zero in garage rock's recent shift from emulating the troglodytic stomp of teenage Stones wannabes in 1965 to embracing the Golden Oldies pop and doo-wop of the years just before Beatlemania, it's probably Mark "BBQ" Sultan, who releases albums of catchy, clever garage-pop more frequently than most people buy shoes."
- Chicago Reader

Mark Sultan has a new album coming out on LA's infamous In The Red records, early fall 2015. He is going by his original monicker 'BBQ' on this album, one he hadn't used on a solo album since Bomp! Records' 'Tie Your Noose' in 2005.
"I kinda left the 'BBQ' name behind for my solo stuff after that album, as I wanted to do recordings with overdubs, so I just figured it was disingenuous to use the name associated with off-the-floor type, one-man-band live recordings. I only used the 'BBQ' name in the context of my other band ('The King Khan & BBQ Show') after that (and since), and soldiered on solo as 'Mark Sultan'."
Mark possesses a singing voice which is widely considered by those in the know to be one of the absolute best in the indie community. Mark has THE VOICE. But he's also a great rock'n'roll songwriter, and absolutely unafraid to explore stylistically, unafraid to push limits. While he's overlooked, sometimes (even within his own bands), his talent and prolific nature is impressive. He's also considered to be one of the world's greatest one-man-bands, a pigeon-hole he was never comfortable with:
"Ah, the 'one-man band'... Yes, I am one. Sure. But I honestly do think the term has been sullied by the recent glut of monotone oompah, costumed shit that has flooded the 'garage scene'. There's some great guys, but lots of stuff I just don't enjoy. I like to focus on good songs. I am a student of music, in that I have spent my whole life consuming and revering the stuff I enjoy. Mostly rock'n'roll and its variants, but a lot of other stuff, too. If I enjoy it, I research and adapt it, love it and live it. When I play, I also focus on melody and singing, because those are my strong points, but also because I really do enjoy that stuff in some of the music I love to listen to. I am a drummer, first and foremost, and honestly, a crummy guitarist. I just want to sound like a whole band playing good, timeless music that I myself would listen to. And I think I do."
Is the renewal of the BBQ personage a step backwards?
"I think people tend to forget or just not know that the 'doo-wop' aesthetic in 'The King Khan & BBQ Show', for example, is MY aesthetic. It's something I was recording and releasing as 'BBQ' before the band existed, like in 2001, onwards. So, no. I mean, ya, unfortunately my contributions to 'garage rock' have really been overlooked in favor of image, even within my own band. I don't think people realize I wrote and and sing on more than half of those KKBBQ tracks! But I can only hope people dig a bit, in the future. I wanted to come back as 'BBQ', on my own, because I had been touring as a one-man band for a long time, ironically enough, billed as 'Mark Sultan', due to my LPs of the same name. So I became disingenuous by trying to be real!"
The new album was recorded in Sultan's Berlin home, also where the last King Khan & BBQ album was done, but he thinks this album sounds better:
"My album was done with a bit more knowledge. When Khan and I did 'Bad News Boys', I had just set up the 4 track, and we had like 2 mics or something... It was quick and very drunk. On my new album, I wanted to record live, off-the-floor in one-man mode, but record everything loud and clear. I wanted to keep everything very simple, down to the basic love/loss lyrics. There is a lot of air in the recording. I would LOVE if people added their own basslines and back-up vocals, guitar solos... whatever, and sent the new track back!"
Is it still the R&B/doo-wop-based rock'n'roll he started?
"There's a bit of that on there, but I had just given up a lot of that (songs like 'Alone Again' and 'Buy Bhai Bye') to the King Khan & BBQ album. For this, I had been getting back into moody garage stuff from the 60s, like minor chord stuff, so I used a lot of those ideas. It (the minor chord) was like a new toy! But ya: VERY simple stuff, very open, basic rock'n'roll. I hope everyone enjoys it."
"I am still BBQ. I am still Mark Sultan. I am still Marco Antonio Pepe. I still wear the same clothes I have worn for 20 years. But I am now at the height of my live powers. I am getting better and better. I hope to take people on a weird personal freakout at my shows, and I seriously try to conjure ghosts. It's cathartic and pretty draining, spiritually and physically."

Mark has released music on Bomp!, Sub Pop, In The Red, Crypt, Goner, Fat Possum, Hozac, Norton, Vice, Sympathy, Dirtnap etc etc
He formed bands including The King Khan & BBQ Show, Almighty Defenders, Ding-Dongs, Les Sexareenos, The Spaceshits, etc...
He has toured the world over, from the US to Israel to Russia to Japan to Brazil to New Zealand to Europe, from Carnegie Hall to The Sydney Opera House.
In a perfect world, his songs would be hits.


Since the band’s earliest incarnation as a Ramones-inspired punk act in 1996, New Pants (?????) has tapped the sounds and styles of China’s youthquake. A staple of the Mainland festival circuit, New Pants is known for synth-heavy dance-punk anthems, a razor-sharp fashion sense (futuristic neons, T-shirts emblazoned with their “double happiness” logo, and Chinese retro sneakers and warm-ups), and unpredictable live shows incorporating animation and the odd robot costume. The band—Beijingers Peng Lei, Pang Kuan, Zhao Meng, Shi Deheng—has toured Australia and the UK, played Coachella, New York’s Mercury Lounge and Brooklyn Bowl, and took part in Vice's Creators Project (San Francisco and Beijing). The Peng Lei–directed video for “She’s Automatic” won the 2003 MTV Asia award for best video. In 2011, New Pants released its seventh studio album, Sex Drugs Internet.


Lower make intense music. Seek Warmer Climes, the Copenhagen quartet's debut album, sparkles with the harmonic dissonance and high-strung urgency of their underground music forebears. But Lower ­– Adrian Toubro (vocals), Simon Formann (guitar), Kristian Emdal (bass) and Anton Rothstein (drums) – also channel the romance and drama of great singer-songwriters, from late-period Scott Walker to Bryan Ferry. The result is a hugely ambitious and affecting rock album that enters deeply personal and unusual sonic and topical spaces.

Certainly, you don't have to dig deep to hear how far Lower's music sits from the traditional concerns of modern rock music. Toubro's lyrics are finely wrought emotional dramas that, in their poetic construction and raw honesty of delivery, gesture to the music of Walker or Leonard Cohen. As inspirations he cites Cornelis Vreeswijk, the half Dutch, half Swedish troubadour whose coarse language and fascination with low society shocked the conservative listeners of the day, and filmmaker John Cassavetes, who made his movies about "real people with real issues". Similarly, "Lost Weight, Perfect Skin" and "Unkempt And Uncaring" gaze unflinchingly at a troubled inner life: the problems of vanity and vulnerability, of suffocating lethargy and men who wear their bravado like a mask. "Every song on the record deals in some way with personal development, be it emotional or cosmetic," says Toubro. "How to act in different social contexts, and to acclimatize oneself into a given situation without losing face."

The extraordinary seven minute-long centerpiece of the album, "Expanding Horizons (Dar Es Salaam)," tells of Toubro's voyage to Tanzania to work at an orphanage in 2009. Setting out with romantic fantasies of changing the world, he found himself alienated by the religious zeal of the dominant missionaries, and went travelling in Africa, where he narrowly escaped a kidnapping in the city of Dar Es Salaam. A document of inner turmoil, here is what happens when youthful idealism meets an uncertain, hostile world: "We travel far/Expand our horizons/But in the process I see/That no horizon will ever benefit me…" Bathed in the cello work of Julie Kühn Riegels and Cæcilie Trier.

The striking cover art of Seek Warmer Climes is a photograph shot by Emdal, who has directed visual material for a lot of Copenhagen groups (he also directed the Vår video 'In Your Arms (Final Fantasy)' and took the photo of a hunting falcon that adorns Iceage's 'You're Nothing.' It's one of several connections between the band and the Copenhagen underground. They are members of other bands including Age Coin, Olymphia, Vår, Marching Church, Sexdrome and more.

All of these projects are an expression of something personal, but in Lower, the four approach something fundamental. "Lower is who we are and what we do. Though making a living and getting by require us to engage elsewhere, this is what we identify ourselves as – an outlet for whatever you might experience through logistic and practical engagements: joy, aggression, defeat and success. The ambition is to express the internal and external influences that make a human, to the truest degree possible. This being our truth, one ambition as well is to function as a group – being able to help, listen, live and work together, to take something away from being Lower. Something that is real and relates to the hard-knit relations that make up life. It is also very important to constantly expand and evolve. Stagnancy is for the lazy."


In 2005, guitarist/vocalist Zo, drummer/singer Atom, and bassist Bo (replaced by Fun in 2010) formed noise-pop act Hedgehog in Beijing, lighting up the underground rock scene centered around university-district haunt D-22. The trio self-produced just 100 copies of the debut album, Happy Idle Kid, which immediately sold out; and Hedgehog was snapped up by Chinese indie label Modern Sky in 2007, putting out Noise Hit World (2007), Blue Daydreaming (2009), Honeyed and Killed (2011), Sun Fun Gun (2012), and Phantom Pop Star (2014). Hedgehog appeared at Singapore’s Baybeats festival and New York’s CMJ festival (both in 2010) and has opened for Shonen Knife, Regurgitator, The Mystery Lights, and Xiu Xiu. This year, the band celebrated its ten-year anniversary by releasing Neurons, a collection of 24 B-sides and previously unreleased tracks.

Members:
Guitar/vocals: Zo
Bass: Fun
Drums/vocals: Atom

Albums:
2006 Happy Idle Kid
2007 Noise Hit World
2009 Blue Daydreaming
2011 Honeyed and Killed
2012 Sun Fun Gun
2014 Phantom Pop Star
2015 Neurons

Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hedgehogband
Official site: http://hedgehogrock.com/
BandCamp: http://hedgehogrock.bandcamp.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hedgehogrock
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/hedgehogband
Photos: http://hedgehogrock.com/photo/


Song Dongye
One of the leaders of Beijing’s singer-songwriter “campus folk” movement, Song Dongye (???) rocketed to fame when Zuo Li performed a cover of his “Miss Dong” on the TV singing competition Super Boy. The lovesick ballad won fans all over China, and Modern Sky quickly signed Song to a record deal, releasing 2003’s Anhe Bridge North, named for the part of Beijing where the 27-year-old grew up. He’s currently collaborating with actress-turned-singer Maggie Cheung on her forthcoming album.

Albums:
•2010 Album
•2012 EP
•2013 Album

Douban link: http://site.douban.com/donye/


Miserable Faith
One of the most influential and longstanding rock bands in China, Miserable Faith (???????) regularly closes out the country’s biggest outdoor music festivals. The band formed in 1999 at Beijing’s Midi School of Music, part of the rising tide of metal acts in the capital, and went on to release This Is a Problem in 2001 and the EP No in 2006. Miserable Faith then shifted to a more melodic indie rock sound, incorporating elements of traditional Chinese music and reggae, and releasing four more albums: 2008’s The Music Won’t Be Stopped, based on their experiences crisscrossing China on tour; a pair of acoustic offerings, Change Your Life and Bloom; and 2014’s folk-leaning May Love Be Without Worries. In 2015, they signed to Mainland indie label Modern Sky, and this fall they tour the U.S. for the first time.

Members
Vocals; Gao Hu
Guitar: Tian Ran
Guitar: Song Jie
Bass: Zhang Jing
Drums: Da Wei

Albums
2001 This Is a Problem
2006 No (EP)
2008 The Music Won’t Be Stopped
2009 Change Your Life
2010 Bloom (EP)
2014 May Love Be Without Worries

Links
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tongkudexinyang
Douban: http://site.douban.com/miserablefaith/
Tudou: http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/Q3e-D1vX4Dw/
LETV: http://www.letv.com/ptv/vplay/2146699.html