Fin Greenall, who is the voice and heart behind Fink, often gets mistaken for other people.
At the BMI Awards in the US, a ‘roomful of gangstas and playas’ were convinced the Cornwall-born, Bristol-raised Englishman was a lawyer, and not a songwriter picking up an ‘American Urban’ gong – one of three BMIs he received for his work with John Legend on the soul singer’s Evolver album.
In Berlin, clubbing capital of the world, they think he helps run a small minimal techno label. In certain London circles he’s known as the hardworking insider whose past roles at DefJam, Sony Music, Talkin’ Loud, and Source saw him work with a range of artists longer than the horizon. At the BBC, they imagine Fink as perhaps the only musician who has played both the Electric Proms and the actual Proms (was that really the same guy leading a 120-piece orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in an ‘immense’ cover of Roy Ayers’ Everybody Loves The Sunshine?).
In record company circles, he’s the producer who worked on the first demos by Amy Winehouse and the writer who’s been crafting hooks for Professor Green. In big-room booths around the world, he’s the internationally-renowned DJ and Ninja Tune stalwart who finally hung up his Sennheisers with a valedictory set at London’s Fabric in 2003. ‘My skillset just seemed so old compared to these guys that could DJ for six hours without one high-hat out of place using Ableton or something,’ he notes admiringly.
Who is Fin Greenall? All of the above.
Yes, the now-Brighton-based musician acknowledges, he has done – does do – all of those things. ‘But none of that is as important as how I feel when I write songs like "Fear is Like Fire" and "Perfect Darkness". The Fink thing is my main thing.’
As a kid, the one thing of his dad’s that Fin Greenall wasn’t allowed to touch was the old Martin acoustic guitar. ‘It was his one possession where he said, “everything in this house is owned by everybody – apart from that.”’ But with age – and the burgeoning of his son’s skills as a player – came a relaxation of the exclusion zone: Greenall plays the Martin on the punchy, Jeff Buckley-covering-Radiohead-esque "Fear Is Like Fire". It’s sure to become a live stand-out on Fink’s upcoming, 18-month-long world tour. ‘It’s all about trying to look at fear and be optimistic – you can be really negative or fucking embrace it and use it.
‘The great thing about growing up in a house where music is a big factor,’ he continues, ‘was the fact that music being part of your life was a perfectly natural thing.’
Music, it seems, became more than that: it was Greenall’s life. He hoovered up the sounds he heard on John Peel: ‘The Cure, The Smiths, The Orb, African music, Japanese hardcore’. He embraced skateboarding, the music and the fashion – ‘it was an awesome way to grow your own culture’. At university in Leeds, electronic and dance music became everything.
‘It was definitely about wanting to be part of a revolution that I could call my own,’ he recalls. ‘A couple of friends and I clubbed together our student loans and bought equipment to make ambient techno – we were really inspired by Aphex Twin and The Orb and Moby. We were amazed at how fucking easy it was to make ambient techno. It wasn’t easy to make good ambient techno,’ he laughs. ‘But it was easy enough to make techno good enough to get us signed after six months of mucking around at uni.’
The young techno warrior was messianic.
‘I thought the song was dead, the chorus was dead, playing drums and guitar and bass was so old-school and outdated and why would you want to do that? Dylan did that 50 years ago! We should be part of this new revolution, instrumentalism, acid house, rave culture, techno – this stuff is a brave new avant-garde frontier and you should be involved.’
His ardour and his skills saw Greenall become part of the Ninja Tune family – first signed on the back of a cassette-tape demo - as artist, DJ, writer, producer, and remixer.
‘Brilliant times,’ he sighs nostalgically. ‘Sometimes you’d just have to pinch yourself. Then, other times, you wake up in Bratislava on a Tuesday morning and you’re reminded that there is hard work to all of this.’ All that crate-digging wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be either: ‘You can’t be shit!’ Greenall grins. ‘And because of the community that Ninja has worldwide, if you are shit everybody knows about it the next day. Eight years of DJing have given me an obscenely huge record collection. I just cleared out the breaks section – four crates of twelves that were total pony!’
So the wheels of steel started to fall off.
‘It wasn’t until I’d run that right the way through to its natural conclusion – I’m an international DJ on the biggest DJ label in the world – that I thought: I’m kinda over it. And it was actually working with a young artist straight out of school called Amy Winehouse that inspired me to go, “wow, songs are great! Now I get how difficult it is, and how much talent there is involved in this. It’s more of a challenge than clubbing.”’
Greenall melted down his turntables and recast them as a guitar and a stool. Metaphorically speaking. His parents were pleased. ‘My career only made sense to them when I picked up a guitar and started to sing,’ he says. ‘All of a sudden I was doing music, I wasn’t just mucking around. But in my rave days, DJing techno and breaks, they didn’t get that at all. That’s probably why I did it in the first place.
‘But I realised: if your music had songs in it, it had a much greater reach. Not in business terms, but if a singer of, say, Amy’s calibre sings over this beat, it becomes so much bigger than just a beat. I can’t get rid of my clubbing past, not that I’d want to. But the linear nature of some of my music is definitely because of all those years spent clubbing and DJing, when a very simple idea can make the best club record. And it’s the same with songs – I’m after a really simple riff or really simple lyric or melody. And it’s about keeping that beautiful moment going for as long as you can.’
[links] => [image_upload_id] => 15102 [label_id] => 1 [twitter_username] => Finkmusic [instagram_id] => [instagram_username] => [link] => [listed] => 1 [sortname] => Fink [created] => 2010-07-17 22:15:58 [modified] => 2013-01-07 16:15:06 [slug] => fink [fuga_id] => [description_clean] =>Fin Greenall, who is the voice and heart behind Fink, often gets mistaken for other people.
At the BMI Awards in the US, a ‘roomful of gangstas and playas’ were convinced the Cornwall-born, Bristol-raised Englishman was a lawyer, and not a songwriter picking up an ‘American Urban’ gong – one of three BMIs he received for his work with John Legend on the soul singer’s Evolver album.
In Berlin, clubbing capital of the world, they think he helps run a small minimal techno label. In certain London circles he’s known as the hardworking insider whose past roles at DefJam, Sony Music, Talkin’ Loud, and Source saw him work with a range of artists longer than the horizon. At the BBC, they imagine Fink as perhaps the only musician who has played both the Electric Proms and the actual Proms (was that really the same guy leading a 120-piece orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in an ‘immense’ cover of Roy Ayers’ Everybody Loves The Sunshine?).
In record company circles, he’s the producer who worked on the first demos by Amy Winehouse and the writer who’s been crafting hooks for Professor Green. In big-room booths around the world, he’s the internationally-renowned DJ and Ninja Tune stalwart who finally hung up his Sennheisers with a valedictory set at London’s Fabric in 2003. ‘My skillset just seemed so old compared to these guys that could DJ for six hours without one high-hat out of place using Ableton or something,’ he notes admiringly.
Who is Fin Greenall? All of the above.
Yes, the now-Brighton-based musician acknowledges, he has done – does do – all of those things. ‘But none of that is as important as how I feel when I write songs like "Fear is Like Fire" and "Perfect Darkness". The Fink thing is my main thing.’
As a kid, the one thing of his dad’s that Fin Greenall wasn’t allowed to touch was the old Martin acoustic guitar. ‘It was his one possession where he said, “everything in this house is owned by everybody – apart from that.”’ But with age – and the burgeoning of his son’s skills as a player – came a relaxation of the exclusion zone: Greenall plays the Martin on the punchy, Jeff Buckley-covering-Radiohead-esque "Fear Is Like Fire". It’s sure to become a live stand-out on Fink’s upcoming, 18-month-long world tour. ‘It’s all about trying to look at fear and be optimistic – you can be really negative or fucking embrace it and use it.
‘The great thing about growing up in a house where music is a big factor,’ he continues, ‘was the fact that music being part of your life was a perfectly natural thing.’
Music, it seems, became more than that: it was Greenall’s life. He hoovered up the sounds he heard on John Peel: ‘The Cure, The Smiths, The Orb, African music, Japanese hardcore’. He embraced skateboarding, the music and the fashion – ‘it was an awesome way to grow your own culture’. At university in Leeds, electronic and dance music became everything.
‘It was definitely about wanting to be part of a revolution that I could call my own,’ he recalls. ‘A couple of friends and I clubbed together our student loans and bought equipment to make ambient techno – we were really inspired by Aphex Twin and The Orb and Moby. We were amazed at how fucking easy it was to make ambient techno. It wasn’t easy to make good ambient techno,’ he laughs. ‘But it was easy enough to make techno good enough to get us signed after six months of mucking around at uni.’
The young techno warrior was messianic.
‘I thought the song was dead, the chorus was dead, playing drums and guitar and bass was so old-school and outdated and why would you want to do that? Dylan did that 50 years ago! We should be part of this new revolution, instrumentalism, acid house, rave culture, techno – this stuff is a brave new avant-garde frontier and you should be involved.’
His ardour and his skills saw Greenall become part of the Ninja Tune family – first signed on the back of a cassette-tape demo - as artist, DJ, writer, producer, and remixer.
‘Brilliant times,’ he sighs nostalgically. ‘Sometimes you’d just have to pinch yourself. Then, other times, you wake up in Bratislava on a Tuesday morning and you’re reminded that there is hard work to all of this.’ All that crate-digging wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be either: ‘You can’t be shit!’ Greenall grins. ‘And because of the community that Ninja has worldwide, if you are shit everybody knows about it the next day. Eight years of DJing have given me an obscenely huge record collection. I just cleared out the breaks section – four crates of twelves that were total pony!’
So the wheels of steel started to fall off.
‘It wasn’t until I’d run that right the way through to its natural conclusion – I’m an international DJ on the biggest DJ label in the world – that I thought: I’m kinda over it. And it was actually working with a young artist straight out of school called Amy Winehouse that inspired me to go, “wow, songs are great! Now I get how difficult it is, and how much talent there is involved in this. It’s more of a challenge than clubbing.”’
Greenall melted down his turntables and recast them as a guitar and a stool. Metaphorically speaking. His parents were pleased. ‘My career only made sense to them when I picked up a guitar and started to sing,’ he says. ‘All of a sudden I was doing music, I wasn’t just mucking around. But in my rave days, DJing techno and breaks, they didn’t get that at all. That’s probably why I did it in the first place.
‘But I realised: if your music had songs in it, it had a much greater reach. Not in business terms, but if a singer of, say, Amy’s calibre sings over this beat, it becomes so much bigger than just a beat. I can’t get rid of my clubbing past, not that I’d want to. But the linear nature of some of my music is definitely because of all those years spent clubbing and DJing, when a very simple idea can make the best club record. And it’s the same with songs – I’m after a really simple riff or really simple lyric or melody. And it’s about keeping that beautiful moment going for as long as you can.’
[links_clean] => ) ) ) [1] => Array ( [Event] => Array ( [id] => 10591 [date] => 2012-11-11 [artist] => The Heavy [city] => Milan [state] => [country] => IT [venue] => La Salumeria della Musica [promoter] => [description] => [ticket_url] => [image_upload_id] => 16903 [created] => 2012-09-12 17:03:08 [modified] => 2012-09-20 14:24:43 [year_slug] => 2012 [month_slug] => nov [day_slug] => 11 [slug] => the-heavy-milan-la-salumeria-della-musica [description_clean] => [products_count] => 0 [hidden] => 0 ) [Image] => Array ( [id] => 16903 [media_type] => image [artist] => The Heavy [title] => Heavy Artist Shot 2012 1 [credits] => [buy_link] => [filename] => images/the-heavy/theheavy-promoshot1.jpg [checksum] => 333ca971966ac881a09d97d3ec798fb0 [mime_type] => image/jpeg [size] => 76818 [external_url] => http://media.ninjatune.net/images/the-heavy/theheavy-promoshot1.jpg [image_upload_id] => [first_track_id] => [first_release_id] => [listed] => 0 [active] => 1 [processed] => 1 [artist_slug] => the-heavy [slug] => heavy-artist-shot-2012-1 [created] => 2012-05-23 13:49:14 [modified] => 2012-05-23 13:49:21 [embed] => ) [Country] => Array ( [id] => 217 [name] => Italy [longname] => Italy [numcode] => 380 [iso] => IT [iso3] => ITA [currency] => EUR [active] => 1 [parent_id] => 209 [lft] => 431 [rght] => 432 [level] => 2 ) [Product] => Array ( ) [Artist] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [id] => 71 [name] => The Heavy [description] =>“What the hell were we thinking?,” exclaims Dan Taylor, guitarist for U.K. indie soul-rock titans The Heavy, of the band’s audacious new album, The Glorious Dead, to be released on Counter/Ninja Tune on 21 August 2012. “We wanted to make a bold statement – it’s not shy.”
“It’s over the top, in a good way,” adds Heavy frontman Kelvin Swaby. “We went pretty cinematic, setting out to score a film that hasn’t been written.” As such, The Glorious Dead proves The Heavy’s most ambitious effort: Frankensteining swampy voodoo and b-movie zombies with garage rock and Gospel-soaked soul, it’s unlike anything you’ll hear this year.
The Glorious Dead builds off momentum from The Heavy’s international smash single “How You Like Me Now?,” off acclaimed 2009 album, The House That Dirt Built. “How You Like Me Now?” became the first song David Letterman’s ever requested an encore for when The Heavy played the “Late Show,” and appeared everywhere from “Entourage,” Academy Award-nominated film The Fighter, and the trailer for the new Mark Wahlberg comedy Ted – and was even performed by contestant Tony Lucca on NBC’s hit show “The Voice.” “It’s become such a big tune, people ask, ‘How are you going to top that?’,” Swaby says. The Glorious Dead provides the answer with supernatural force. Album opener “Can’t Play Dead” thunders as if Jack White remixed “Ghost Town” by The Specials; “Curse Me Good,” meanwhile, balances sweet whistled hooks and acoustic strum with heartbreaking vocals. “It’s good to have a bit of light and shade,” Taylor explains. As such, the album’s soaring centerpiece “What Makes A Good Man?” contrasts Swaby’s gritty soul searching with girl-group backgrounds and epic strings. “Think vintage, but keep it contemporary – that’s our approach,” Swaby explains. “…Good Man?” proved the album’s breakthrough. Searching for inspiration, The Heavy traveled from their Bath, England hometown to Columbus, Georgia, hooking up with local church-trained singers and players for some Southern Gothic sublimity. Taking the material to yet another level was Gabriel “Bosco Mann” Roth of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, who added string and horn parts to four songs. “He’s such a talent,” Swaby enthuses.
The Glorious Dead also represents the first time The Heavy’s members – which in addition to Taylor and Swaby include Spencer Page (bass) and Chris Ellul (drums) – chose to produce themselves. To mix the results, the band first worked with longtime associate Jim Abbiss (Adele, Arctic Monkeys) at Peter Gabriel’s famed Real World complex, then finished up with Paul Corkett (The Cure, Nick Cave, Björk). “Self-producing was all about being self-sufficient in realizing our vision,” Taylor says. “It’s our third record, which is when you’re judged if you’re here to stay, or sliding off the face of the earth. We want to stick around, so we took our balls out and went for it.” “I love what we’ve done,” adds Swaby. “We got our deadpan heartbreak down. This record suggests how we continue to walk among the dead – now just in a few more places, and with more of a swagger.”
[links] => [image_upload_id] => 16903 [label_id] => 5 [twitter_username] => theheavy [instagram_id] => 217232350 [instagram_username] => theheavy [link] => [listed] => 1 [sortname] => Heavy [created] => 2010-07-17 22:15:59 [modified] => 2013-05-03 14:56:03 [slug] => the-heavy [fuga_id] => [description_clean] =>“What the hell were we thinking?,” exclaims Dan Taylor, guitarist for U.K. indie soul-rock titans The Heavy, of the band’s audacious new album, The Glorious Dead, to be released on Counter/Ninja Tune on 21 August 2012. “We wanted to make a bold statement – it’s not shy.”
“It’s over the top, in a good way,” adds Heavy frontman Kelvin Swaby. “We went pretty cinematic, setting out to score a film that hasn’t been written.” As such, The Glorious Dead proves The Heavy’s most ambitious effort: Frankensteining swampy voodoo and b-movie zombies with garage rock and Gospel-soaked soul, it’s unlike anything you’ll hear this year.
The Glorious Dead builds off momentum from The Heavy’s international smash single “How You Like Me Now?,” off acclaimed 2009 album, The House That Dirt Built. “How You Like Me Now?” became the first song David Letterman’s ever requested an encore for when The Heavy played the “Late Show,” and appeared everywhere from “Entourage,” Academy Award-nominated film The Fighter, and the trailer for the new Mark Wahlberg comedy Ted – and was even performed by contestant Tony Lucca on NBC’s hit show “The Voice.” “It’s become such a big tune, people ask, ‘How are you going to top that?’,” Swaby says. The Glorious Dead provides the answer with supernatural force. Album opener “Can’t Play Dead” thunders as if Jack White remixed “Ghost Town” by The Specials; “Curse Me Good,” meanwhile, balances sweet whistled hooks and acoustic strum with heartbreaking vocals. “It’s good to have a bit of light and shade,” Taylor explains. As such, the album’s soaring centerpiece “What Makes A Good Man?” contrasts Swaby’s gritty soul searching with girl-group backgrounds and epic strings. “Think vintage, but keep it contemporary – that’s our approach,” Swaby explains. “…Good Man?” proved the album’s breakthrough. Searching for inspiration, The Heavy traveled from their Bath, England hometown to Columbus, Georgia, hooking up with local church-trained singers and players for some Southern Gothic sublimity. Taking the material to yet another level was Gabriel “Bosco Mann” Roth of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, who added string and horn parts to four songs. “He’s such a talent,” Swaby enthuses.
The Glorious Dead also represents the first time The Heavy’s members – which in addition to Taylor and Swaby include Spencer Page (bass) and Chris Ellul (drums) – chose to produce themselves. To mix the results, the band first worked with longtime associate Jim Abbiss (Adele, Arctic Monkeys) at Peter Gabriel’s famed Real World complex, then finished up with Paul Corkett (The Cure, Nick Cave, Björk). “Self-producing was all about being self-sufficient in realizing our vision,” Taylor says. “It’s our third record, which is when you’re judged if you’re here to stay, or sliding off the face of the earth. We want to stick around, so we took our balls out and went for it.” “I love what we’ve done,” adds Swaby. “We got our deadpan heartbreak down. This record suggests how we continue to walk among the dead – now just in a few more places, and with more of a swagger.”
[links_clean] => ) ) ) [2] => Array ( [Event] => Array ( [id] => 10743 [date] => 2012-11-11 [artist] => Pop Levi [city] => Los Angeles, CA [state] => [country] => US [venue] => Space 15 Twenty [promoter] => [description] => An Emergency Benefit for New York's Hardest Hit.More Info on the Facebook event.
[ticket_url] => [image_upload_id] => 17258 [created] => 2012-11-09 17:23:22 [modified] => 2012-11-09 17:23:22 [year_slug] => 2012 [month_slug] => nov [day_slug] => 11 [slug] => pop-levi-los-angeles-ca-space-15-twenty [description_clean] =>An Emergency Benefit for New York's Hardest Hit.
More Info on the Facebook event.
[products_count] => 0 [hidden] => 0 ) [Image] => Array ( [id] => 17258 [media_type] => image [artist] => Pop Levi [title] => Artist Shot 2012 [credits] => [buy_link] => [filename] => images/pop-levi/PopLeviChainSelfPortraiMozambiqueCourier.jpg [checksum] => baf0d4da11bd2de68b6ee711405a7555 [mime_type] => image/jpeg [size] => 128741 [external_url] => http://media.ninjatune.net/images/pop-levi/PopLeviChainSelfPortraiMozambiqueCourier.jpg [image_upload_id] => [first_track_id] => [first_release_id] => [listed] => 0 [active] => 1 [processed] => 1 [artist_slug] => pop-levi [slug] => artist-shot-2012-4 [created] => 2012-09-07 14:46:44 [modified] => 2012-09-07 14:46:51 [embed] => ) [Country] => Array ( [id] => 122 [name] => United States [longname] => United States of America [numcode] => 840 [iso] => US [iso3] => USA [currency] => USD [active] => 1 [parent_id] => 117 [lft] => 241 [rght] => 242 [level] => 2 ) [Product] => Array ( ) [Artist] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [id] => 66 [name] => Pop Levi [description] =>Having been conceived in a London hospital, Pop Levi's childhood was steeped in music rather than medicine. He studied piano at three, joined a gospel choir at seven, started collecting records at nine and wrote his first song that same year: a 12 bar creation, 'Through The Window Of My Life,' that came right out of the ether. In the 90s, he moved to Liverpool, lived on the breadline and took his chances. After forming a commune with new pals Snap Ant and Karl Webb, the trio conceived Super Numeri, whose two albums for Ninja Tune, 'Great Aviaries' (2003) and 'The Welcome Table' (2005), showcased a contemporary take on the cyclical-groove mechanics of Can and the amorphous fluidity of jazz.
In between Super Numeri opuses, Pop's solo quest began with two 7" singles, 'Rude Kinda Love' and the Christmas single 'Reindeer In My Heart', both for Danny Hunt's Invicta Hi-Fi label. Hunt, a good friend of Pop's and one of the male members of the electro-pop-orientated Ladytron, had invited him to join the band on bass guitar, so during 2003 and 2004, Pop found himself on Ladytron's world tour and contributing to their third album 'Witching Hour'.
But having served an apprenticeship - including performing in a Nazi fallout bunker and been rendered penniless, topless and lost in Bulgaria - Pop knew he needed focus on himself. He'd tried to release an album (with the working title 'Foxwatch') in 2004, but no matter; it wasn't the right time - nor the right place. He was to find that shortly after. "I went to Los Angeles with Ladytron, and within a minute of waking up there, I wanted to live there. It had blue skies, palm trees, and they've made some serious records here. LA truly is the land of make-believe. And it was a challenge."
Pop returned to Liverpool, rounded up his current four piece band and then shipped them out to LA, too. The band, plus a few guests, helped record Pop's first EP, 'Blue Honey', released by Counter Records in September 2006 and also 'The Return To Form Black Magick Party', though Pop laid down great chunks of it single-handedly. The album was released in February 2007 to considerable critical acclaim and Pop found himself picking up celebrity supporters as diverse as Jarvis Cocker, Lauren Laverne, Noel Gallagher and Kasabian, who he was asked to support at Somerset House in London.
In July 2008 the avant-pop masterpiece "Never Never Love" album was released. The following year, Pop released double A-Side single "Police $ign/Terrifying (For Kenneth Anger)", before travelling to a mountain-side converted barn in Norway to begin recording his third album, “Medicine”. Sessions were to continue the following year at his newly built White Arc studio in LA, before concluding recording on a secret Greek island. In between, he released the mixtape "Levitation Vol. 1," toured China and directed the music video for former N.W.A. star Arabian Prince's "Let's Hit The Beach" single, as well as unleashing a torrent of crazed short films, all of which can be found here: worldempireinc.com/filmettes
Pop Levi, a true cult hero.
[links] => [image_upload_id] => 17258 [label_id] => 5 [twitter_username] => Pop_Levi [instagram_id] => [instagram_username] => [link] => [listed] => 1 [sortname] => Pop Levi [created] => 2010-07-17 22:15:59 [modified] => 2013-01-07 12:56:20 [slug] => pop-levi [fuga_id] => [description_clean] =>Having been conceived in a London hospital, Pop Levi's childhood was steeped in music rather than medicine. He studied piano at three, joined a gospel choir at seven, started collecting records at nine and wrote his first song that same year: a 12 bar creation, 'Through The Window Of My Life,' that came right out of the ether. In the 90s, he moved to Liverpool, lived on the breadline and took his chances. After forming a commune with new pals Snap Ant and Karl Webb, the trio conceived Super Numeri, whose two albums for Ninja Tune, 'Great Aviaries' (2003) and 'The Welcome Table' (2005), showcased a contemporary take on the cyclical-groove mechanics of Can and the amorphous fluidity of jazz.
In between Super Numeri opuses, Pop's solo quest began with two 7" singles, 'Rude Kinda Love' and the Christmas single 'Reindeer In My Heart', both for Danny Hunt's Invicta Hi-Fi label. Hunt, a good friend of Pop's and one of the male members of the electro-pop-orientated Ladytron, had invited him to join the band on bass guitar, so during 2003 and 2004, Pop found himself on Ladytron's world tour and contributing to their third album 'Witching Hour'.
But having served an apprenticeship - including performing in a Nazi fallout bunker and been rendered penniless, topless and lost in Bulgaria - Pop knew he needed focus on himself. He'd tried to release an album (with the working title 'Foxwatch') in 2004, but no matter; it wasn't the right time - nor the right place. He was to find that shortly after. "I went to Los Angeles with Ladytron, and within a minute of waking up there, I wanted to live there. It had blue skies, palm trees, and they've made some serious records here. LA truly is the land of make-believe. And it was a challenge."
Pop returned to Liverpool, rounded up his current four piece band and then shipped them out to LA, too. The band, plus a few guests, helped record Pop's first EP, 'Blue Honey', released by Counter Records in September 2006 and also 'The Return To Form Black Magick Party', though Pop laid down great chunks of it single-handedly. The album was released in February 2007 to considerable critical acclaim and Pop found himself picking up celebrity supporters as diverse as Jarvis Cocker, Lauren Laverne, Noel Gallagher and Kasabian, who he was asked to support at Somerset House in London.
In July 2008 the avant-pop masterpiece "Never Never Love" album was released. The following year, Pop released double A-Side single "Police $ign/Terrifying (For Kenneth Anger)", before travelling to a mountain-side converted barn in Norway to begin recording his third album, “Medicine”. Sessions were to continue the following year at his newly built White Arc studio in LA, before concluding recording on a secret Greek island. In between, he released the mixtape "Levitation Vol. 1," toured China and directed the music video for former N.W.A. star Arabian Prince's "Let's Hit The Beach" single, as well as unleashing a torrent of crazed short films, all of which can be found here: worldempireinc.com/filmettes
Pop Levi, a true cult hero.
[links_clean] => ) ) ) )| Artist | Date | City | Venue | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fink | Sunday, Nov 11th | Munich, DE | Muffathale | Buy |
| The Heavy | Sunday, Nov 11th | Milan, IT | La Salumeria della Musica | |
| Pop Levi | Sunday, Nov 11th | Los Angeles, CA, US | Space 15 Twenty |