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Branchage In The Asylum – Pictures

In asylum, bands, branchage festival, film, jersey, live lounge, music on October 6, 2009 at 14:36

Asylum was very pleased to contribute to Branchage International Film Festival 2009 and happy to have attended various screenings and shows. The festival programme was very diverse, the quality of films was extraordinarily high, and the lineup of special guests, producers, directors and media experts was starry. Branchage provides a way for artists, musicians, film makers, writers, and all sorts of talented people to come together, make friends, party, network, plan for future projects, and indulge their passions for artistic diversity and cinematic excellence, and this year’s event delivered all that in spades. There is a very nice review of the festival at The Quietus.

Very big thanks to Justin, Fluff, Leonie, Zach, Flavio, Colin, John, Tobi, Tharindu, Sam, the staff of Live Lounge and the bands for helping to make sure our show was a success. What a great team we made! Thanks to Nina, music programmer, Carla, producer, and Philip, festival programmer, for their great work and support. It was especially thrilling for us to have Philip come to the show and introduce All Tomorrow’s Parties.

Click on the images below to view them large.

Brobots!

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Whitechapel Murders

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Nailed To The Furnace

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Brighton post-rock band British Sea Power performed a live soundtrack to Robert J. Flaherty’s film Man Of Aran at Jersey Opera House. Their music was played with treated guitars, bass, trumpet, keyboards, strings and drums, and made up of little motifs, as if phrases from rock music had been sampled, looped and layered, building in intensity and ebbing away. It was an epic concert. Images of waves smashing into cliffs, schools of sharks, and a hard people living with the barest means under enormous, merciless skies contrasted powerfully with the band’s minimalist drones and metronomic pulses. I think taking photos wasn’t permitted but I managed to get one anyway from my seat in the dress circle.

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Brobots! were back for the final night of the festival greeting audience members at the entrance to the Opera House. Duncan Jones’ new film Moon, an homage to the eerie, existential science fiction of the early seventies, in which themes of loneliness of space and fragility of identity are explored with masterful narrative skill, had to be postponed until later that evening and relocated to another venue. For those that could attend the late screening it felt very clandestine and exclusive, especially as the director was there to introduce his film.

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Branchage In The Asylum – The bands

In asylum, bands, branchage festival, film, jersey, live lounge, music on September 28, 2009 at 17:19

Branchage In The Asylum starts at 7 pm on October 3rd 2009. Tickets are available to buy online from wegottickets.com

When Asylum was asked to recruit three bands from the island’s music scene to perform in between music documentaries at the show, it was hard to know who to ask because of the sheer embarrassment of riches that is the island’s alternative music community.

In the end it was decided that the subjects of the films being shown were the best guide. One of the main film features is about Soulwax, electro band, prolific remixers and pioneers of bastard pop, so it was fairly easy to draw a parallel with Jersey’s Brobots! who have appeared from space recently to get humans dancing and having strange new feelings to their quirky, wonky and charming brand of techno whimsy.

Brobots! - Photo by Ryan Morrison

Brobots! - Photo by Ryan Morrison

Their latest work, Sing Along, has been remixed by likeallstars to accompany a film of them meeting people in St. Helier town centre.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

The last film of the night is All Tomorrow’s Parties, about the famous UK event celebrating the art of post-rock described by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth as ‘the ultimate mix tape’, and the two acts chosen to follow it are in different ways perfect examples of the restless experimentalism and glory to noise that has long been a crucial element in the makeup of Jersey’s bands scene.

Whitechapel Murders - Kyle, Chris and Dave

Whitechapel Murders - Kyle Lopes, Chris Day and Dave Spars

Whitechapel Murders, who debuted their claustrophobic low-end assault at Asylum All Ages on Friday October 25th, have been rehearsing in near-secret for the best part of a year. A listen to their songs previewed at MySpace reveals a unity of purpose to describe the imbalances of power in society and their poetic relationship with the mythic narrative of Jack The Ripper. A literary, eccentric mission, for sure, yet made viscerally manifest by means of violently disrupted bass and drums compositions and vocals of magnificent paroxysm.

Nailed To The Furnace

Nailed To The Furnace

Nailed To The Furnace recently started recording their debut album with Kyle Raffray. The album will contain eight or more songs and is intended for release in late summer 2010. Their song’s themes are alienation, dysmorphia and gothic melodrama, and their music is a seething wall of electric horror and harmonic neo-plasticism built upon a rhythm section of monumental power. With an ever-growing reputation among fans of dark and disturbed music that reaches far beyond the shores of this septic isle, Nailed To The Furnace are, to paraphrase the words of the Branchage press team, Jersey’s kings and queen of grindcore.

Branchage In The Asylum – The films

In asylum, bands, branchage festival, film, jersey, live lounge, music on September 24, 2009 at 19:11

Saturday October 3rd sees Asylum teaming up with Branchage International Film Festival for a night of music film and live performances at Live Lounge starting at 7 pm. The films being shown have been chosen by the Branchage team to represent the very best in modern music cinema.

Bow Selector (7.05 pm)

A short documentary about Mercury Music Prize winning grime artist and recent Jersey Live highlight Dizzee Rascal.

Soulwax: Part Of The Weekend Never Dies (7.40 pm)

Soulwax are a Belgian collective of musicians, producers and remixers famous throughout the world for popularising the bastard pop genre with their 2 Many DJs and Flying Dewaele Brothers projects. This documentary directed by Soulwax and Saam Farahmand follows every hectic step of their audacious Radio Soulwax world tour and ends with a live performance of breathtaking intensity.

Warp Films presents All Tomorrow’s Parties (9.45 pm)

From ATPTheFilm: In an out-of-season holiday camp on the coast of England, music festival All Tomorrow’s Parties serves up a heady combination of alternative music, crazy golf and chalet-living all curated by a single band or artist. This post-punk DIY bricolage uses material generated by the fans and musicians themselves, on a multitude of formats and over the history of ATP, to capture the uncompromising spirit of a parallel music universe.

Tickets are available from wegottickets.com

Holders of those tickets get to watch the films in the top floor, on a big screen, with seats and bar. Three bands will be playing on the middle floor: Brobots! after the Soulwax film, and Whitechapel Murders and Nailed To The Furnace after All Tomorrow’s Parties.

In anticipation of the the event being sold out and more people arriving on the night than there are seats on the top floor, we’ve arranged for the films to be shown on flat screens in the middle floor too.

Branchage In The Asylum, Saturday October 3rd 2009

In asylum, bands, branchage festival, film, jersey, live lounge, music on September 23, 2009 at 16:13
Poster designed by Philip Wiseman

Poster designed by Philip Wiseman

Branchage International Film Festival, the most adventurous and exciting multimedia event in Jersey, in its second year, presents a weekend packed full of unforgettable entertainment, film screenings, workshops, competitions and so much more.

With events taking place in numerous locations around the island between Thursday 1st and Sunday 4th October 2009, there is a lot to plan for. Their website provides a handy calendar of events with detailed descriptions and information on how to obtain tickets and passes.

Asylum is very proud to be working with Branchage this year. We have planned a programme for the Saturday evening with some of the best music documentaries of recent years

All Tomorrow’s Parties

Soulwax: Part Of The Weekend Never Dies

Bow Selector (A film about Dizzee Rascal)

and live performances by three very special bands

Brobots!

Whitechapel Murders

Nailed To The Furnace

More information about the event, which starts at 7 pm, is available from the Branchage in the Asylum page of Branchage Festival’s website.

Tickets are available online from wegottickets.com

Tickets for Branchage in the Asylum purchased online are for the top floor cinema screening room with seating and private bar, and access to the middle floor live bands shows. The films will be simultaneously shown on screens on the middle floor with bar. Tickets purchased from the venue on the night entitle the holder to watch the movies on the middle floor and attend the live bands shows.

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