Running Times

18.30 – 19.30 20.00 - 21.00 21.30 – 23.00

Ben's Brother Athlete KT Tunstall

Running times for the rest of the line up to be confirmed. Times are subject to change.

	Three years ago, KT Tunstall stepped out the front door of her flat in Harlesden, north-west London. She was off to work, and to play. She didn't get to go home again until she'd recorded debut album Eye To The Telescope. Wowed the nation with her one-woman blues-stomp 'Black Horse And The Cherry Tree' on Later... With Jools Holland. Toured the world a fair few times. Become a festival favourite from Glastonbury to T In The Park (and back again). Secured a Mercury Music Prize nomination. Outsold every other female artist in the UK in 2005 (bye bye Madonna, see ya Mariah). Won a Brit Award for Best British Female Solo Artist. Won the Ivor Novello Best Song award for writing Suddenly I See. And a Q award for Track of the Year for Black Horse and the Cherry Tree. Landed a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Lent her tunes to choice American films and TV shows (eg, Suddenly I See, used in the opening scene of Meryl Streep flick 'The Devil Wears Prada'). Watched her songs become staple audition material for contestants on American Idol. Found time (OK, it took a day and a half) to record and film her lo-fi 'living room' album, Acoustic Extravaganza, live with her band on the Isle of Skye. Signed up for the GlobalCool campaign, which took her to Tony Blair's house in attempts to put pressure on the government to reduce carbon emissions. Sold almost four million copies of Eye To The Telescope, including over 1.5 million in the UK alone and over 1 million in America. 'The last three years have changed me as an artist,' says the 31-year-old Scotswoman known to her family as Kate. 'I don't think it's altered me as a person. Which is a relief! I think the major part of that change is that my bar has been raised – I've realised what's possible throughout the last three years of making a first album, touring it with a band, seeing how that album can turn into something else on stage, and how we can actually make it better. And that it's imperative to improvise.' In those years Tunstall had become, at least in part, that elusive music business holy grail: a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Commercial success though, as Tunstall is all too aware, can also have its pitfalls. 'You can allow it to become a bit of an albatross if you're not careful – where you think you have to just go out and slavishly recreate what people liked. I heard a theory that you cease to mentally progress from the age at which you become famous! It's easy to be frightened to move on and change what you do. But because I've never really been a studio artist, that's just never really applied. It's always been about getting onstage and trying to do a mindblowing show. And if you're playing the same set night after night, that means playing around with it, you know, and experimenting with what you've got. It's not a cd, it's a gig.' Then, after all that – the tours, the awards, the nightly mixing-it-up, KT Tunstall got to go home and put her feet up. For five minutes. She'd been working on, and with, and for, the tunes on Eye To The Telescope for so long that there was a backlog of new songs needing some attention. And if you'd worked as hard and as long as Tunstall had to secure a record deal in the first place, you wouldn't hang about either. It was time to work on her second album, a collection of thumping pop songs and intimate, oftern mysterious ballads that she's called Drastic Fantastic – a title that popped into her head as she was writing her journal on an aeroplane. 'I'd been blown away by the film 'Sin City', and I'd loved how Frank Miller's imagery came to life. It made me think, doing this for a living is such a comic-book existence. It's a bit like the X-Men minus the actual super powers! You're flying everywhere, you're on stage, you're euphoric, you're down, you're thrown around, you're exhausted to the point where you can't stand up or speak. That's abnormal! Drastic Fantastic sounded like the name of my comic-book life.' KT Tunstall knows a lot about peculiar journeys. She grew up in Fife on Scotland's east coast, the daughter of a primary school teacher and a physicist. It was her childhood trips to the St Andrews University Observatory with her Father that, years later, gave the first album its name. Her physicist father also provided an imaginative environment, often letting her spend time in his laboratory. 'I remember a brilliant game we'd play in the evening when the lights were dimmed. Dad would take a big canister of liquid nitrogen and sloosh it down the linoleum corridor. Me and my big brother would sit huddled together on the canister trolley, dad would say "don't touch! Your fingers'll fall off!" and he'd give us a wee push and we'd sail through low level clouds, watching hundreds of little bubbles bounce off each other.' The family would often take off to go camping or hillwalking, regularly driving to France, and consequently a young Tunstall was instilled with a deep-rooted attachment to landscape and travel. It was an isolated yet vibrant small-town childhood. There wasn't much music in the Tunstall household, nor much telly – her younger brother is deaf and having the tape-player or TV on made it even more difficult for him to join in conversations. But Tunstall found her creative spirit at a young age, joining a local grass-roots theatre club and taking lessons in dance and various musical instruments. 'Performing always felt right; like an electrical circuit being completed and the lights coming on'. Tunstall thinks that the lack of music in her childhood 'stopped me being cornered by anything. If your parents only listen to jazz or folk or something, you're like one of those trees you see in botanic gardens that have wire frames on them – you grow into that shape, you follow it or you have to break away from it. But I didn't have influences to embrace or kick against – I also had no idea what anything was. The whole idea of certain types of music being cool is a relatively new idea to me.' From famine to feast... Aged 16, Tunstall fell in with, and fell in love with, a bunch of Fife musicians. Over the next few years she learnt all about folk music, living in cottages, scraping a living, signing on, eating stolen turnips from neighbouring fields, keeping warm by strumming acoustic guitar extra vigorously. Those musicians became the Fence Collective, nominally led by Kenny Anderson. Now known as well-regarded singer-songwriter King Creosote, Anderson was something of a mentor to Tunstall. 'It was a very formative time for me. Eyes and heart wide open. I learnt about being a musician; not trying to be rich and famous, just about being a musician.' Those years also saw her journey to and fro to America to study for a year, but 'mostly to play and travel'. After Fife, Tunstall's musical journey took her to Edinburgh, where she busked and hosted her own acoustic nights, Acoustic Extravaganza, which gave the Skye album its name and is still put on by friends under the name Acoustic Edinburgh. Finally, after deciding opportunities may be passing her by and with the promise of a publishing deal, she begrudgingly moved to London. That said, Tunstall thinks that London has 'seeped under the door' of Drastic Fantastic, and is glad of it. During the making of Eye To The Telescope she was listening to a lot of Sixties singer-songwriters. This time round, she was listening to the radio, mainly the pop-indie output of London's XFM. The White Stripes, Arcade Fire, The Killers, Bloc Party, as well as all those months touring, have resulted in a hardening, if you like, or a quickening of Tunstall's playing and writing – I Don't Want You Now is a jump-around pop gem, destined to be a huge, hands-in-the-air live favourite. 'Kirsty MacColl doing Teenage Kicks,' as Tunstall describes it with a grin. 'I definitely found my little inner folk-punk on that one'. Her adopted hometown is also there in the album's first single. Hold On is a thumping great hoedown, as infectious as any of Eye To The Telescope's still-ubiquitous brace of hit singles. Underneath the resonant twang of her beloved Gretsch Falcon semi-acoustic fed through a 'really nasty amp', Tunstall has laid a big fat, ferocious beat. 'It was actually born out of this dancehall beat that soaks Harlesden. Every single car is just pumping dancehall out the windows, and I love it. And it sort of feels like I can play around with it now cause I've been around it for long enough.' It took Tunstall and Steve Osborne – the legendary producer with whom she's enjoyed a hugely productive and collaborative relationship on both her studio albums – five months to fix the tune: 'We had to get it right or it could have ended up sounding like the Gypsy Kings or cheesy R&B! The inspiration for the lyrics - "hold on to what you've been given lately/because the world will turn if you're ready or not" – was Bob Marley's 'Judge Not'. 'I'm saying, "don't waste your time pointing at me, look at what you do, look at how you are, maybe you want to spend less time giving me shit." It was about an old relationship I was in. It's always empowering when you come out of something difficult, to keep the parts that have actually taken you somewhere else and moved you on rather than that stuff that's made you feel low about yourself. That's very me. I'm always looking for the shaft of light in a bad situation.' Drastic Fantastic is an album brim-full of powerful lyrics, bold, colourful melodies and the increasingly adventurous musicianship of Tunstall. 'I wanted to be braver,' she says of the mindset and purpose behind Drastic Fantastic. "It's like The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran – that's a beautiful book, and there's a bit where he talks about your heart being like a well. If you have a shallow well, it's always really easy to get the water out of it, but you can never fill it with very much water. And the deeper you dig, the darker it gets, the colder it gets, and the emptier it feels when it's empty. But when it's full, its proper chocka! And it lasts! And I really believe in that.' 'I also wanted to push the musicality on the album,' she continues. 'I really enjoyed playing lead guitar for the first time, as well as piano, Rhodes, ukelele. But also: I felt my vocals were a little safe at times on the first album. I didn't mean that to happen but I was so inexperienced singing in a studio that I couldn't quite get my live voice into the booth. After three years of touring you get so good at just flipping yourself into gig mode; finding whatever underground stream it is inside that provides you with that magical lucidity. I found that now I can tap into that really quickly. And for the first time, being in the studio was another stage.' Other highlights on the record? 'Saving My Face', 'about 50-year-old women trying to look like teenagers' – Tunstall is looking forward to making a video for the rollicking tune, 'something involving plastic surgery, like those before and after tv programmes! They're so compelling.' 'Someday Soon', a quiet, delicate jazz-inflected song, Tunstall's voice fluttering from whisper to hearfelt cry with ease. And perhaps most ambitious of all, 'Beauty Of Uncertainty'. The latter is a close-up ballad and the longest song on the record, Tunstall singing in hushed intimacy over delicate picking, with an ending as wide as a canyon. It's named after an essay by Canadian writer Brian Hendricks. Tunstall borrowed an excerpt for the sleeve of Acoustic Extravaganza. Now she and Hendricks have written a screenplay based on the essay, with Tunstall – on and off-page – playing the role of muse to a burnt-out director. Indeed, she sings the song as the character, 'Sweet Jane'. Conceptual album artwork (wonders of which to be fully explained later on Tunstall's website), will be as carbon neutral as possible and appear on 100 per cent recycled paper. To that end Tunstall's London home is also undergoing an eco-transformation – her new studio and loft extension won't be made of second hand paper, but will use reclaimed wood, sheep's wool wall insulation, spray taps and solar panels. It all fits in with a serious, ongoing, deep-rooted commitment to green issues: Tunstall's tour buses run on bio-fuel, she's a fan - and wearer – of eco-fashion, she doesn't own a car, and she's a prominent supporter of the LiveEarth concerts, appearing on the American line-up at Giants' Stadium in New Jersey. Her 6,000-strong forest of trees in Scotland was planted as the copies of her first album left the stores. But at the heart of all this is Drastic Fantastic. An album rich in beautiful songwriting and beautiful sentiment. An album made in scruffy, comfy environments but that sounds rich, deep and intimate. An album to go round the world but that won't cost the earth.
	On May 28th 2006, the four members of Athlete gathered in the studio they'd just finished building, a short hop from their south east London homes. Three days earlier, the band's 'Wires' single had been named Best Contemporary Song at the Ivor Novello awards. Now it was time for Athlete to make some new music. They picked up their instruments, took a collective deep breath and pressed the record button. Nine months later, in February 2007, they pressed stop. The recording of their third album, 'Beyond The Neighbourhood', was complete. That night, the band went for a meal with some friends to celebrate. Afterwards, they piled back to the studio for more drinks and to listen through the new tracks in one go for the first time. "We all just sat there with these huge grins on our faces," remembers frontman Joel Pott. "When they'd finished playing, we were like, 'Yes!'." 'Beyond The Neighbourhood' is a record of true progression and real quality. Its songs are built around the same effortless hooks and snagging melodies that have been Athlete's trademark since their debut single, 'Westside', was released in March 2002. But the album glows with a newfound musical confidence, its self-produced songs showing big leaps in terms of ambition, scope and creativity. Lyrically, too, the album is a striking success, pinpointing the joys, confusions and uncertainties of living, as drummer Stephen Roberts puts it, "in this amazing world where so many mad things keep happening". The seeds for the new album were sown while the band were on the road with 2005's 'Tourist'. That record was one of an extremely rare breed this century; a second album that outperformed a successful debut. Driven by two Number One radio airplay hits ('Wires' and 'Half Light') 'Tourist's double-platinum sales well exceeded those of the band's 2003 Mercury-nominated, platinum-selling debut, 'Vehicles And Animals'. As the band toured it around the world, hearing their lyrics bellowed back at them each night, talk turned to their next record. For 'Tourist', Athlete had focused on specific albums for inspiration, by acts like Beck, The Flaming Lips, Neil Young and Massive Attack. This time, their ambitions were more general. "We knew we wanted it to sound more 'up' and more playful," says bassplayer Carey Willetts. "But that was as far as it went. We decided we'd write the songs and then see what suited them. We just wanted to have fun with sounds, without any limitations." In that spirit, as the band toured around America on the last leg of the 'Tourist' tour in spring 2006, they began to experiment with the music making programme Reason on their laptops. With European electro acts like Efterklang and Apparat featuring heavily on the tourbus stereo, Athlete found themselves drawn to Reason's synthesisers, loops and beats, firmly embracing the love of electronic music that has always bubbled beneath their tunes. The band were so pleased with the results that one of the tracks which began life on Pott's laptop opens the new album. Created together as their tourbus journeyed across the US (hence its title), the band didn't need to add much in the studio to the dreamy instrumental 'In Between Two States'. "It's got a great mood," says Pott of the track. Instead, the band resolved to push themselves forwards. That drove their decision to record the album in their own studio without the services of a producer. "We'd always had a rehearsal space where we recorded demos," explains the band's keyboard player Tim Wanstall, "And bits of those demos had ended up on both of the first two albums. So we decided that rather than coming off tour, writing a few tunes and then going away to a studio for months to record them, we'd have a go at doing it ourselves, near home, with all our friends and family around us." He adds, "We just felt ready to take control." Having found a suitable premises, the band built the studio themselves and set to work. "It was all a bit of a gamble," says Willetts. "I was incredibly nervous about whether we were actually capable of recording and producing everything ourselves. But as soon as we'd got cracking on a few songs, it was clear we could. That was a pretty amazing feeling." The benefits of having their own space soon became clear. For starters, they could take breaks from recording to watch the 2006 World Cup on the studio telly without that familiar nagging voice at the back of their minds reminding them how expensive the hire of this studio and producer was. But, more importantly, it gave them the freedom to experiment. "We had our gear set up the whole time," says Roberts. "So at any point we could just press record and go. If we were writing a song, we'd press record, play along to a bunch of ideas and see where it went. Then we could listen back to it the next day and see which bits we thought were worth developing and what sort of sounds might suit them." It was quickly obvious that there'd be more guitar on the album (so much so that the band have added former Weevil guitarist Jonny Pilcher to their live line-up). But their electro experimentation continued apace too. "We became a bit obsessed with the concept of 'organic beats'," says Pott. "The idea being that you record sounds from around the studio and then use them for loops." Listen carefully to 'Beyond The Neighbourhood' and you'll hear beats made from doors shutting, switches flicking and equipment being shaken, hit or dropped. Athlete's last album, by Pott's own admission, "was a bit of a moody bastard". In contrast, 'Beyond The Neighbourhood' has a noticeable sonic skip in its stride, as evidenced by the stomping first single 'Hurricane'. But that track is also characteristic of the lyrical theme that runs through the album. "We're tying to figure out what we think about a lot of things," says Willetts. "From war to the environment to falling in love to dealing with death. Y'know, all the issues our generation is concerned and confused about." 'Hurricane' was inspired by an article Pott read in National Geographic about the increase of typhoons on America's east coast. "Within the first paragraph, this guy was quoted as saying, 'It's just something we've gotta get used to'. I was like, 'Is it?'. I think we're all questioning what's happening on this planet at the moment. Is global warming actually going to take us out? And do we really live in a world where millions march against a war and nobody in charge pays any notice?" "But the song is not defeatist," says Willetts. "I like that line that says we're not giving up the coastline so easily. That kind of defiance runs through the album." 'Beyond The Neighbourhood' further establishes Pott as a lyricist of rare imagination and insight. Following 'Hurricane', the stomping 'Tokyo' offers a tail of hypocrisy and the human condition; the claustrophobic 'Airport Disco' imagines a future where airports are used as nightclubs because flying is banned; and the breakbeat-driven 'It's Not Your Fault' finds hope in tragedy. That brings us to the gorgeous but biting 'The Outsiders' which, as Pott wryly puts it, "is about being English"; the skittering electro lullaby 'Flying Over Bus Stops', which is surely the most romantic song ever to be set on a London night bus; and the anthemic 'Second Hand Stores', a song inspired by a story Pott read about nature falling out of synch with itself. The album draws to a close with 'In The Library', which is about "growing up and taking responsibility for yourself" and the tragic 'Best Not To Think About It', which Pott wrote after watching 'Falling Man', the documentary about those who jumped from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The final song is the heart-tearing 'This Is What I Sound Like', a track inspired by one of the Israeli agents in Spielberg's 'Munich' film. "It's about being confused," says Pott. "Not knowing whether you're a good or bad person, or what you're doing is right or wrong. It's really a summing up of the whole album." 'Beyond The Neighbourbood', then, is a guitar record soaked in electronica (so much so that a dub remix version of the album, 'Beyond Dub Neighbourhood', is in the can and due for release later this year). It's an album with big tunes, big ideas and a whopping great heart. And it marks a major leap forward for Athlete, without ever losing sight of what made them special in the first place. "This album is everything we'd hoped it would be," says Pott. "We're ridiculously pleased with it." And rightly so.
	It doesn't take a psychologist to tell you that birth order can have a profound affect on a person's life. One look at the Gallagher Brothers shows in technicolour the impact being the first or second born can have. Such is the case with Jamie Hartman, frontman and founder of Ben's Brother, a five piece from London about to launch their engaging songs of life and love on the British public. Jamie grew up, as second children often do, in the shadow of his elder brother, Ben. "I always felt like the beta male in our home," the Londoner says. "The alpha role definitely went to Ben." While Jamie displayed a precocious musical talent, and started writing songs on the piano as a teenager, it was Ben's brilliance as a sportsman that made the early headlines in the Hartman household. "I soon realised that I was trying to capture in my music the feeling of what it's like not being the automatic centre of attention," says Jamie. "A lot of my songs are about stoicism in the face of insecurity." His first experience of unrequited love at 16 – "I told this girl I loved her and she just said ‘oh' and walked off"- helped to fuel his musical persona as the bard of sturdy also-rans. When he taught cricket for the summer in South Africa in 1997, Ben Hartman took a CD of his kid brother's tunes with him. He gave copies to various friends he met along the way who knew nothing about the boy with the sweetly serrated voice and the heart-meltingly soulful melodies - beyond the fact that he was Ben's brother. As more copies of copies spread further, the name stuck. When Jamie ended up staying with one of Ben's South African buddies in the States in 2000, he saw it written on the sleeve of a CD-R and realised that the band he had always dreamed of playing with had already got a name. After years of scuffling and busking on Portobello Road – "I found I could make £70 in an hour and a half" – Jamie's songs began to turn up on other people's albums. It was when a song he had penned first hit the charts that he decided this beta male supporting role palaver had gone far enough. In 2006 he went out and formed a band of his own. With Kiris Houston (keyboards/guitar), Dan McKinna (bass) Dave Hattee (drums) and Tim Vanderkuil (guitar) completing the line up, the music Ben's Brother play is a passionate riposte to the impersonally neutral, synthesiser-based aural gloop that soundtracked their adolescence. "I couldn't stand the music that was around me at that time," Jamie says, "It always seemed so glossy and pointless." After copping an old Rolling Stones album from his brother's collection, Jamie felt moved to explore the pop and rock archive. The young Rod Stewart caught his ear: "I have no issue with Rod. He's got a great voice and he's still got all his hair." But the vocalist he particularly gravitated to was Rod's main inspiration, one of the founding fathers of soul, the late Sam Cooke. Jamie first heard Wonderful World on a Levi's TV ad in 1996. "Nobody can make the hair on your neck stand up the way Sam could." Well maybe, but that guy who fronts the band Ben's Brother runs him pretty damn close. Jamie Hartman's astounding voice can break your heart in one line and send it soaring in the next. Located somewhere in the middle of a spectrum of emotional conjurers that runs from Sam Cooke to (classic 70s) Elton John to Thom Yorke, Hartman already possesses a style and a timbre that are entirely his own. Ben's Brother's songs are a pure revelation. Most of those on the album Beta Male Fairytales sound like immortal classics that have been hanging around forever just waiting for somebody to turn up and sing them. The miracle is that they have all been written by Jamie Hartman. Ranging from the old school soul of the single Beauty Queen to the gloriously vulnerable ballad I Am Who I Am, the lessons in love of ‘Find Me An Angel' and the emotional brace that is ‘Carry On', to the heartfelt rally-cry of his first commercial single release ‘Rise', they articulate a kind of tenderness that is often sad but never self-pitying. Songs of experience, songs with which everyone can relate to at some point in their life, beautifully articulated and set to soaring music, an aural lifting of the spirits. "Most of my songs start out feeling blue but become more hopeful by the end," says Hartman. And everyone's a winner in this story. For Ben, a glittering cricket career gave way to an even more glittering advertising career, the brainchild behind the Virgin Train ad with the Apache Indians. But now Jamie is proving more than a match for his elder brother. Less than a year after Jamie formed Ben's Brother, he has stepped out of the shadow for good when the record label which gave us multi-platinum selling artists Joss Stone and KT Tunstall heard his songs and couldn't get them out of their heads, giving hope to beta-males everywhere. "Writing songs is my way of dealing with the painful complexities of life. I've realized there's a common theme which seems to unite all the best songs. The one thing we think separates us from everyone else - that sense of not fitting in, of Beta-male (or female) ness – is the one thing we all have in common."
	Royworld's unconventional positivity, coupled with their intensity and musicianship has made them one of the most distinct and disarmingly unique bands in a very long time. Their epic eccentricity in both sound and production has created a bold and new indie rock. A band that draw on influences such as Roxy Music, Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads - Royworld are already being championed by the likes of Jo Whiley at Radio 1 and Dermot O'Leary on Radio 2. Their live following is growing rapidly, captivated by a sense of drama, and Rod Futrille's endearing awkwardness. Introducing Royworld: Rod Futrille (singer), Rob Parkin (guitarist), Tim Miles (keyboards) and Gerry Morgan (drums). Royworld formed at London's Goldsmiths in early 2006. Songwriting partners and Brothers Rod and Crispin Futrille, from Somerset, stuck an advert up on the college notice board. It was a subtle call to arms, and answered by fellow students Morgan and Miles. Parkin, Miles' old schoolmate in Harrogate, quickly completed the line-up. Within weeks they began to gig around London, clocking up the pub-miles on the murky but historic stages of The Dublin Castle, The Barfly, and The Hope and Anchor. 'We were doing three gigs a week,' recalls Futrille, 'playing as much as possible and fairly intensely, just to get the live show working.' Royworld became a fearsomely thrilling buzz-band, losing girlfriends along the way, as Futrille, Parkin, Miles and Morgan get lost in their out-every-night dedication-slash-madness. In the summer of 2007, things began to move quickly: one label came to see them at rehearsals and immediately made them an offer. Bleeding-edge indie label Fierce Panda – first home to everyone from Coldplay to Snow Patrol, iLiKETRAiNS and Art Brut – attended a gig and offered to put out a single, a rites of passage for the stars of tomorrow. Virgin Records and a stack of rivals came to see Royworld at the infamous Purple Turtle in Camden. By the Friday, the band had an offer on the table. It had taken nine days to go from unsigned band to band with a sparkling new record deal. And now, on a dank and damp autumnal day in darkest Sussex, Royworld are ensconced in the legendary Helioscentric Studios, the rural epicentre of edgy-but-warm sonic innovation established by Elvis Costello and Squeeze front man Chris Difford. A few weeks into recording their debut album with producer Andy Green (Keane, KT Tunstall) they are, they think, '80 per cent of the way there'. Today's tasks: working on the synthesised string sweeps and the brilliant, Queen-like, multi-tracked vocals for the sublime 'Wish Ourselves Away', and completing 'Man In The Machine', which is a contender for the title of the album. 'It's about how much we have to compromise ourselves in life,' says Futrille of 'Man In The Machine'. The first line is "Dave, is there something wrong?" Dave, he explains, is the name of the spaceman taunted by computer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. "And Dave is the bloke who's cut off his emotions just to get on with his life. Am I a man or am I part of the machinery? Have I lost all my sensitivity and sensibility in this corporate world?" Rod Futrille is at the head of the band. He is the "driving force" says Tim. But it is the song writing partnership of Rod and brother Crispin and their 'complicated' sibling relationship, that is the creative force behind Royworld. They grew up 'in the middle of nowhere', at the end of a country lane in Somerset. 'It meant there wasn't much to do, but we both love music so that's where it all started' The writing process is one of conflict and resolution. "We're both quite highly strung," says Futrille. "That tends to get amplified when we're together. In some ways writing music is like therapy...We can both get really excited about a new song we're working on, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else in life. Its like Iiving in a temporary dream world where nothing else matters and anything is possible" That manic energy can also lead to clashes but ultimately it is at the core of the Royworld sound. Hence, he explains, a song like 'Brakes', a slow-burning song that, propelled by acoustic guitar, soars from a whisper to a scream – "it's about telling yourself to slow down when you're on the verge of panic.. That feeling of, 'if I can just get through today'... Sometimes things can escalate in your mind out of all proportion., both good and bad". For all the hooky melodies there is a sense of underlying tension to many of Royworld's songs. They've been writing songs since their early teens. At first, messing around with an Akai sampler and Cubase, experimenting with electronic sounds. "It was very hard to develop stuff – you get one good sample but you're bound by the constraints of someone else's music. Then," he grins at Crispin, "We ended up writing proper music." 'Proper music' for the teenage brothers was a grab-bag of things including Fleetwood Mac, Tears for Fears, Kate Bush, Roxy Music and Talking Heads. "I love micro-sections of songs – like, a killer three bars," Rod says. "I never listened to albums either, just songs. I listen to songs on a really micro scale." While acknowledging that, yes, this is a bit weird, there's method in Royworld's madness: when writing songs, this approach means that every single moment in the song matters, it means something, has its own bit of colour. "I think that's where we've ended up," admits Futrille, "which is pretty scary because you're obsessing over every part of the song." While the brothers work together on melody, arrangement and lyrics it is Rod's obsession with every detail that then sees him focus on the production side of Royworld's sound. The demos that Rod produced at home were instrumental in clinching the deal with Virgin and have very much remained the blueprint for recording the album. "Crispin is a bit more macro than me. He likes the bigger picture, the concepts and direction of our songs. He thinks too much." Once the brothers have created a new track the four tight-knit members of Royworld begin shaping it to work live. This is vitally important to Royworld. The band have spent months tweaking every ounce of life, colour and, at times, quirkiness, in these giddily exciting songs. In December 2007 Fierce Panda came good on their early enthusiasm and released 'Elasticity' and 'Tinman' as a limited edition double a-side seven-inch. XFM, Jo Whiley on Radio 1 and Dermot O'Leary on Radio 2 swung behind the songs immediately, and it's no wonder: 'Elasticity' sounds like classic Eighties pop rebooted by New Radicals' song writing guru Gregg Alexander, but all the time staying stoutly, defiantly Royworld-esque. The 'rubber band boy' in 'Elasticity', explains Futrille, "is the guy who's paranoid about getting older, everyone really, He's trying to hang on to his youth but can't, I think we are just saying, to ourselves and everyone else, not worry about it ...' 'Tinman', meanwhile, is a piano'n'synth mini-opera. The opening line was the starting point: 'Grew up in a house on the hill...' almost like a short story. 'We like to paint pictures with the words,' says Futrille. Tinman is reminiscent of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and the "story" lyrics that Bernie Taupin wrote for Elton John.' Royworld's lyrical inventiveness digs inwards too. 'Science' is a love song with a twist. Not just because it evokes the memory of (say it loud, say it proud) Tears For Fears, but because it's more like an anti-love song. 'In songs we're so often in the world of human emotion. But 'Science' is clinical and binary. It doesn't have any emotion – hence "science won't lie, it won't laugh, it won't cry'". "It's what everyone knows but we just wanted to sum up that total coldness. It maybe detached and dispassionate but at least you know where you stand with Science!" Royworld's second single, due in May 2008, will be 'Dust'. It's a glorious piece of piano'n'electronics pop, kicking off with a sonic sunburst. It is, Rod Futrille thinks, a good example of what Royworld are about: a reflective song that, instead of feeling bleak, is rich and accessible and encouraging. 'I'm radioing out, calling anyone, is there anyone around?' he sings, his voice shifting from angular to a rich, belting anthem-friendly holler. 'I think that feeling is in pretty much all of our songs – a feeling of detachment. Not overwhelming misery, but feeling a bit out of the loop – cut off' and 'Dust' has a sense of looking down on things from afar, maybe feeling a bit small. It's that every-man-is-an-island notion. It is about all the distance between people. Life is a lonely process in many ways.' Four weeks later, Rod Futrille is on the phone, radioing in. He reports that Royworld have finished recording – ever-detailed, he had a big hand in the producing alongside Andy Green – and are now getting stuck into mixing. 'Our songs have so many meandering melodies and intricate details – that makes mixing quite a big job.' They've been blowing away the studio cobwebs too by getting back out on the road. There, he says, Royworld and their music burst into life. 'I'm not the most confident guy in world, but the gigs aren't about me – it's about everything you'd like to be. They take you of yourself for 45 minutes, and they should do the same for the audience. There's nothing worse than being fake. The audience have to see the truth in you, and in your songs.' "...but life with the dull bits cut out." Alfred Hitchcock Royworld release their new single 'Dust', through Virgin Records on 19th May. Their debut album 'Dust' is released on 2nd June 2008. www.myspace.com/royworldtheband
	The Sam Isaac show frequently resembles an indie cottage industry. Friends make artwork, do recording, direct music videos and carry clipboards. Perfect strangers sell his CDs. Sam's part of the bargain is donning an acoustic guitar, a Casio keyboard or occasionally just his own voice and making the music that is at the centre of all of this. Counting Bright Eyes, The Spinto Band and Ed Harcourt amongst his influences, twenty-year-old Sam grew up in the sleepy town of Malvern in the West Midlands before moving to East London in 2005. Having self-released two mini albums, both of which recieved glowing reviews and national radio play, December 2007 saw Sam releasing his debut single "Sideways" on Big Scary Monsters. Radio presenters took it to their hearts: it received several plays on Jo Whiley's Radio 1 show, as well as Zane Lowe, Colin Murray and Huw Stephens'. The single could also be heard on Radio 2, Xfm and Virgin Xtreme amongst other stations. He has recently done sessions on Zane Lowe, Colin Murray and Huw Stephens' Radio 1 shows, Janice Long's Radio 2 show and John Kennedy's Xfm show. Sam tours constantly, sometimes solo, sometimes with a full band. In 2007 he was chosen as one of four unsigned acts to play BBC Electric Proms. He played - with a string quartet - as support for Edwyn Collins' comeback gig. He has also played support slots for Scouting For Girls, King Creosote and Ben's Brother and this spring, Sam heads out on tour with Kate Walsh. In March he releases his second single "Fire Fire" on singles label Another Music = Another Kitchen.