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Press Rlease for Massive Attack's Meltdown - it's got to be one of the first Meltdown programmes that's genuinely excited me. In particular Massive Attack (live), Grace Jones (live), Heritage Orchestra doing Bladerunner soundtrack, and the future hip hop night with Flying Lotus, that man's everywhere and for good reason - word is his wonky, future soultronica has seen Erykah Badu and Gorillaz enquire as to his availability.
SOUTHBANK CENTRE ANNOUNCES LINE-UP FOR
MASSIVE ATTACK’S MELTDOWN
Saturday 14 – Sunday 22 June 2008, Southbank Centre, London
Between 14–22 June, one of the most influential bands of the past 20 years take control of one of the UK’s most unique festivals. For eight days in June, SOUTHBANK CENTRE’s riverside venues and spaces will buzz with unmissable concerts, provocative films, hard-hitting talks, interactive sound and light installations and rocking soundsystems - all programmed by MASSIVE ATTACK, the first band to take the helm in this prestigious festival’s 15 year history.
MASSIVE ATTACK’s era-defining music has provided the soundtrack for a generation. Their instinctive embrace of technology, groundbreaking use of live visuals and distinctly dystopian vision has had a pervasive influence on contemporary culture. And, while they have increasingly used their international profile to draw attention to global issues close to their heart, their reputation for throwing a rocking party is legendary - sealing their credentials as perfect candidates to curate SOUTHBANK CENTRE’s annual MELTDOWN FESTIVAL.
The MELTDOWN programme for 2008 gives us a fascinating insight into the aesthetic, stylistic, thematic, political and musical influences that drive the band that emerged from Bristol collective The Wild Bunch at the end of the 1980s. From roots legend HORACE ANDY to hip hop futurists DALEK. From rising stars FLEET FOXES and ALOE BLACC to peerless international diva GRACE JONES. From firebrand punks STIFF LITTLE FINGERS to legal action charity REPRIEVE, with whom MASSIVE ATTACK have formed a close alliance in recent months. REPRIEVE provides frontline investigation and legal representation to prisoners denied justice by powerful governments across the world. (More information on REPRIEVE in Notes To Editors)
MELTDOWN LINE-UP:
MASSIVE ATTACK will open and close SOUTHBANK CENTRE’s MELTDOWN FESTIVAL with two different concerts in the Royal Festival Hall on Saturday 14 & Sunday 22 June. Meanwhile, over in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, mythic, proto-trance collective GONG, make a very rare appearance on Saturday 14 June. The following night sees a performance in the Royal Festival Hall by revered Japanese ‘technopop’ pioneers YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA. This will be the first UK performance by the band (recently voted No. 2 in HMV’s list of Japan’s top 100 musicians) since 1980, and will feature the original line-up of Harry Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi and Ruichi Sakamoto.
On Saturday 15 June, Meltdown Directors for 2008 introduce the REGGAE ACOUSTIC SONGBOOK, a very special night in the Queen Elizabeth Hall of unplugged performances by renowned roots and reggae artists JOHNNY CLARKE, EARL 16, PRINCE MALACHAI and long time MASSIVE ATTACK collaborator, HORACE ANDY. ELBOW, renowned for their uncompromising approach and thrilling live performances, play on Monday 16 April. On Tuesday 17 June, MASSIVE ATTACK live mix a unique performance in the Queen Elizabeth Hall by HERITAGE ORCHESTRA of Vangelis’ majestic, glacial soundtrack to dystopian classic BLADE RUNNER – a thematic and stylistic influence on MASSIVE ATTACK albums Mezzanine and 100th Window. On Thursday 19th June, in the Royal Festival Hall, ROBERT DEL NAJA and GRANT MARSHALL pay their respects to the returning queen of electro-soul and all-round international style diva, GRACE JONES, whose stunning turn as The Snake in Jarvis Cocker’s Disney tribute was one of the unforgettable highlights of MELTDOWN in 2007.
TERRY CALLIER – hero to the 70s Northern Soul scene and 90s dance hall revival –received 5-star reviews for his recent gig at The Jazz Café. On Friday 20 June, the jazz, folk and blues guitarist, vocalist and MASSIVE ATTACK collaborator plays the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Given MASSIVE ATTACK’s genius at creating deeply affecting electronic textures, it is no surprise that the mighty alchemists of pastoral electronica, TUNNG have been invited to play on 21 June alongside Warp favourite LEILA in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, or that psych-pop eccentrics SHORTWAVE SET play a double bill with Mercury-nominated, fellow Bristolian MARTINA TOPLEY-BIRD in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Wednesday 18 June.
Also on Wednesday 18 June, Belfast punk legends STIFF LITTLE FINGERS share a bill on the Royal Festival Hall stage with MARK STEWART AND THE MAFFIA - an explosive combination of Mark’s wayward genius and ex Sugar Hill musicians. While Nick Cave and Daddy G have recently stated that Mark is their all time favourite artist, Tricky tellingly says of the godfather of Bristol’s trip hop scene: “he’s chaos”. Add to that GANG OF FOUR, whose urgent delivery and defiant stance has influenced everyone from Red Hot Chilli Peppers to Franz Ferdinand, and the hugely influential TOM TOM CLUB, and it becomes clear that MASSIVE ATTACK’s MELTDOWN is as much about attitude as musical genres.
MASSIVE ATTACK’s idiosyncratic take on hip hop is well known. On Thursday 19 June, in The Queen Elizabeth Hall, the band present their pick of some of the most innovative hip hop around today, including DALEK, currently hot US sensations COOL KIDS, SHAPE OF BROAD MINDS and FLYING LOTUS.
MELTDOWN is renowned for showcasing emerging talents. The Polyphonic Spree, Fischerspooner and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in DAVID BOWIE’s MELTDOWN (2002). Brian Jonestown Massacre in PATTI SMITH’s MELTDOWN (2005). While the talk of this year’s SXSW, FLEET FOXES, support ELBOW on Monday 16 June, and the hotly tipped ALOE BLACC supports TERRY CALLIER, the Clore Ballroom Stage will be the place to see rising stars in pre and post show sets throughout the festival.
MELTDOWN FILMS AND DEBATE:
Between Thursday 19 and Sunday 22 June, there will be a series of MELTDOWN FILMS, including several screened at BFI Southbank, who partner MELTDOWN for the first time in 2008.The series includes the first London screening ofSHANE MEADOWS'Somers Town, an acclaimed film following the friendship of two young boys in North London due for release in the autumn;In Prison My Whole Life, William Francome’s remarkable investigation into the case of a death row prisoner Mumia Abul Jamal; BUG – Massive Attack Special, gives festival-goers a rare chance to see some of the band’s iconic videos on the big screen, including Unfinished Sympathy and the stunning Tear Drop, as part of BFI SOUTHBANK’s hugely popular music video strand. And, in a real treat for fans of Ridley Scott’s neo-noir masterpiece, BFI IMAX will be screening Blade Runner: The Final Cut.
Showing in the Purcell Room on 15 June will be Taxi To The Dark Side, the Academy Award-winning documentary on the controversial death of an Afghan taxi driver, programmed in conjunction with legal action charity REPRIEVE. This special event will include a post screening discussion with ex-Guantánamo Bay prisoner MOAZZAM BEGG and Reprieve’s director and founder CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH.
MELTDOWN PARTY:
While there are issues of serious import to debate, let us not forget that MELTDOWN is also a week long PARTY, and the place to hang out by the Thames this summer. While the excellent TROJAN SOUNDSYSTEM will set up for several pre-concert sets, SAXON SOUNDSYSTEM and guest MCs will take over the Riverside Terrace on Sunday 22 June. And, for five nights during the festival, SILENT DISCO – a huge hit during SOUTHBANK CENTRE’S opening celebrations - will include sets by guest DJs including Fourtet’s KIERON HEBDEN, PEACHES and more to be confirmed.
MASSIVE ATTACK have commissioned long-time collaborators UVA (United Visual Artists) to transform the exterior of the Royal Festival Hall with a powerful and possibly controversial series of projections conceived in collaboration with campaigning charity REPRIEVE. UVA’s visionary, award-winning interactive light and sound installation VOLUME will be set up on the Riverside Terrace.
For fuller press information contact Miles Evans on 0207 921 0676, 07812 985 993
email:miles.evans@southbankcentre.co.uk
Or, contact Sabine Kindel on 0207 921 0917 or email:
Sabine.kindel@southbankcentre.co.uk
Programme updates will be posted on Southbank Centre web site
Web address:www.southbankcentre.co.uk/meltdown
Meltdown number: 0871 663 2520
Tickets on sale to Southbank Centre Members 9am, Thursday 24 April.
Tickets on sale to all at 9am, Friday 25 April
For more information about joining the Southbank Centre membership scheme please visitwww.southbankcentre.co.uk/membership
Meltdown 2008 will be Partnered by Eurostar
The Observer is Media Partner of Meltdown 2008
Notes To Editors:
Southbank Centre is the UK’s largest arts centre, occupying a 21-acre site that sits in the midst of London’s most vibrant cultural quarter on the South Bank of the Thames. The site has an extraordinary creative and architectural history stretching back to the 1951Festival of Britain. Southbank Centre is home to the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and The Hayward as well as The Saison Poetry Library and the Arts Council Collection. The Hayward manages Hayward Touring exhibitions; and the Arts Council Collection on behalf of Arts Council England.
Reprieve uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve investigates, litigates and educates, working on the frontline, to provide legal support to prisoners unable to pay for it themselves. The organization promotes the rule of law around the world, securing each person’s right to a fair trial and saving lives. Clive Stafford Smith is the founder of Reprieve and has spent 25 years working on behalf of people facing the death penalty in the USA and now represents more than forty prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay.
Previous Southbank Centre Meltdown Directors are Jarivs Cocker (2007), Patti Smith (2005), Morrissey (2004), Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry (2003), David Bowie (2002), Robert Wyatt (2001), Scott Walker (2000), Nick Cave (1999), John Peel (1998), Laurie Anderson (1997), Magnus Lindberg (1996), Elvis Costello (1995), Louis Andriessen (1994) and George Benjamin (1993).The roster of artists who have taken part in earlier Meltdowns includes: Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, Elliot Smith, Nina Simone, David Gilmour, Coldplay, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Macy Gray, Alan Bennett, Nancy Sinatra, New York Dolls, Tori Amos, Lee Hazlewood, Fuckhead, Rachid Taha, Yoko Ono, Sinead O'Connor, Beth Orton, Kristin Hersh, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, Melanie, Roky Erickson, Pete Doherty, Motorhead, Iggy Pop and The Jesus and Mary Chain.
MASSIVE ATTACK’S MELTDOWN LISTINGS
Saturday 14 June – Sunday 22 June 2008
MASSIVE ATTACK
Royal Festival Hall, Saturday 14 June, 7.30pm, Tickets£35 £30 £25
This year’s Directors perform songs from their wide-ranging career live on stage.
GONG
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Saturday 14 June, 7.30pm, Tickets£22.50 and £19.50
Gong weave their unique magic with an imaginative mix of psychedelic jazz fusion, Eastern world music, synths, loops and deep space funk. Forty years on, their underground influence is massive.
YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA
Royal Festival Hall, Sunday 15 June, 7.30pm, Tickets
£35 £30 £25 £20
Seminal Japanese trio, Yellow Magic Orchestra, brought synth-pop to the world along with Kraftwerk in the 1980s. Now they play their first UK show since 1980.
REGGAE ACOUSTIC SONGBOOK:
HORACE ANDY, JOHNNY CLARKE, EARL 16 & PRINCE MALACHAI
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Sunday 15 June, 7.45pm, Tickets £20 £17.50
Massive Attack host this special performance by renowned names in roots and reggae.
REPRIEVE: TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE SCREENING WITH CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH
Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Sunday 15 June, 7.30pm, Tickets £7
This screening of Academy Award-winning documentary on the controversial death of an Afghan taxi driver while in the custody of American troops is followed by post-screening discussion with US-based civil rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith and former Guantánamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg. (Further Reprieve talks TBA)
ELBOW
PLUS FLEET FOXES
Royal Festival Hall, Monday 16 June, 7.30pm, Tickets£22.50 £20 £17.50
Top 5 album artists and critical godheads continue their forceful return to the UK scene with
this exclusive show.
THE NIGHT JAMES BROWN SAVED BOSTON
Screening
Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Monday 16 June, 7.45pm, Tickets £7
This new documentary about James Brown’s Boston concert in 1968, which happened directly
after Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination, and is credited with quelling the riots around the city.
VANGELIS’ BLADE RUNNER SOUNDTRACK
performed live by the HERITAGE ORCHESTRA, mixed by MASSIVE ATTACK
Royal Festival Hall, Tuesday 17 June, 7.30pm
£20 £17.50
The retro-future score for the iconic science fiction filmBlade Runner is played live by the Heritage Orchestra, with live mixing by Massive Attack.
STIFF LITTLE FINGERS + MARK STEWART & THE MAFFIA + ADRIAN SHERWOOD
Royal Festival Hall, Wednesday 18 June, 7.30pm, Tickets£20 £17.50 £15
Explosive Belfast punk band Stiff Little Fingers performInflammable Material. The darkly post-punk Mark Stewart & The Maffia perform their album Edit. Adrian Sherwood just confirmed.
THE SHORTWAVE SET + MARTINA TOPLEY-BIRD
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Wednesday 18 June, 7.45pm, Tickets £15
Sample-based popsters and self-desribed masters of Victorian funk, The Shortwave Set, bring their distinctive sound to Meltdown. Mercury Prize-nominated Martina Topley-Bird, known for her collaborations with Tricky, performs songs from her new albumThe Blue God.
GRACE JONES
Royal Festival Hall, Thursday 19 June, 7.30pm, Tickets£45 £35 £25
The statuesque and seemingly ageless Grace Jones performs, including songs from her as yet untitled new album.
Massive Attack Presents
FUTURE SOUND OF HIP HOP:
DALEK + COOL KIDS + SHAPE OF BROAD MINDS + FLYING LOTUS
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Thursday 19 June, 7.45pm, Tickets£15 £12.50
Dalek, Cool Kids and Shape of Broad Minds come together in this showcase of new hip-hop talent.
GANG OF FOUR + TOM TOM CLUB
Royal Festival Hall, Friday 20 June, 7.30pm, Tickets£22.50 £20 £17.50
Fueled by radical politics and punk rock fury, Gang of Four is one of the seminal post-punk bands, their stripped-down sound going on to inspire and influence everyone from The Rapture to Bloc Party. Support comes from hugely influential New Wave band Tom Tom Club.
TERRY CALLIER + ALOE BLACC
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Friday 20 June, 7.45pm, Tickets
£22.50 £20
American jazz, soul and folk guitarist Terry Callier has collaborated with UK musicians since the 1990s. His vocals feature on Massive Attack’s ‘Live With Me’ and Beth Orton’s ‘Central Reservation’ and ‘Dolphins’.
TUNNG + LEILA
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Saturday 21 June, 7.45pm, Tickets£15 £12.50
Tunng are a musical collective, combining folk, electronica and underground art music to make darkly beautiful pastoral pop. Dreamy electronic popster Leila plays songs from her first new album in seven years -Blood, Looms & Bloomsis to be releases on 9 June (Warp).
MASSIVE ATTACK
Royal Festival Hall, Sunday 22 June, 7.30pm, Tickets
£35 £30 £25
This year’s Meltdown Directors close the festival with a special performance.
UNITED VISUAL ARTISTS AT MELTDOWN
VOLUME
Riverside Terrace, Saturday 14 June – Sunday 22 June, Admission FREE
Meltdown curators Massive Attack have invited United Visual Artists to create an installation at Southbank Centre as part of Meltdown. Volume is a luminous array of light and sound emitting columns on Riverside Terrace. The facade of Southbank Centre is also transformed by light and the projection of a new collaboration with the charity organisation Reprieve.
SILENT DISCO
Outdoors with guest DJs
Riverside Terrace, Friday 13 June, Saturday 14 June & Thursday 19 – Saturday 21 June
Following on from a successful New Year’s Eve Party at The Front Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Silent Disco returns to Southbank Centre for five nights during Meltdown. Guest DJs include Kieron Hebdon aka Four Tet and Peaches.
DAY OF THE FIGURINES
Thursday 19 June - Saturday 12 July, Level 1 Foyer at Royal Festival Hall, 12 noon – 8pm, Admission FREE
Day Of The Figurines is an SMS game set in a grimy English town by internationally renowned artists’ group Blast Theory. Sign on at Royal Festival Hall and choose a figurine, then explore the town day by day. Fancy the death metal gig at the Locarno, or will you hang out at the cinema? From the Gasometer to the Rat Research Institute, up to 1,000 players roam the streets.
MELTDOWN FILM SCREENINGS
BFI Southbank, BFI IMAX, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room
Meltdown screenings include Shane Meadow’s Somers Town, In Prison My Whole Life, BUG: Massive Attack’s Videos at BFI Southbank, Blade Runner: The Final Cut at BFI IMAX, Taxi to the Dark Side at Queen Elizabeth Hall and The Night James Brown Saved Boston at Purcell Room.
BFI Southbank 020 7928 3232
BFI IMAX Office 0870 787 2525
www.bfi.org.uk/meltdown
PRE AND POSTSHOW SETS & OUTDOOR STAGE
There will be a number of pre and post show DJ sets, including pre-show sessions with Trojan Sound System and Saxon Sound System on the Outdoor Stage on Sunday 22 June. Further details tba.
More artists and events to be confirmed soon. Check websitewww.southbankcentre.co.uk/meltdownfor programme updates.
