First Look: Magistrates
It seems like only months ago that everyone was beginning to lose their shit about “Gravity’s Rainbow”, “Atlantis To Interzone” and Klaxons’ whole futurelove dance-rock sound, but the influence of the Great Klaxons Takeover of 2007 has already begun to manifest itself in a new wave of like-minded British rock acts. First there was the Author bursting onto the scene with “Taxi” late last year, and now here we have Magistrates, who sound like Klaxons squaring off with Prince, all frantic group vocals and glossy falsettos. The Essex-based quartet remain relatively unknown in the London indie scene, but with a slot supporting Black Kids’ sold-out ICA show later this week and their name skipping across the radar of more and more A&R folks around the industry, you better believe this is a band to keep a close eye on in 2008. I’ve even heard one industry head say he thinks they’re the best new band he’s heard since Vampire Weekend, but I’ll leave that for you to decide. Here’s “The Inbetweens”, the finest cut off the band’s phenomenal three-track demo, the rest of which you can and should check out on their MySpace.
MP3: “The Inbetweens” (Demo) - Magistrates [exclusive]
In other news, we DJ’d Apocalypso at the Old Queen’s Head last Saturday and I think it’s safe to say we made a pretty excellent debut. Things were helped significantly by the fact that we got 20 or so of our friends heavily boozed up and had them pad the audience and dance their balls off, but we held our own on the decks too despite some initial technical difficulties. We played a good 15 tracks or so including a few easy crowd favorites, but this one in particular went off unexpectedly well. Sadly we had to play it in 128 kbps because as far as I can tell it doesn’t exist in 320 anywhere, so if you’ve somehow got the hook up drop us a line, will you?
MP3: “What Am I Fighting For?” (LA Priest Remix) - Unklejam