Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner: 'I want another shot at headlining Glastonbury'

Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner has declared that he wants to headline Glastonbury festival again.

In an interview with GQ, the singer said that he wanted "another shot" at taking the top slot at Worthy Farm, as he didn't think the band had been at their best when they played the Pyramid Stage in 2007.

When asked what he'd like to do in his career that he hadn't yet achieved, he replied: "I mean, there's many things. There's a lot left, yeah. I'd really like another shot at headling Glastonbury. I don't think we got that quite right when we did it."

Turner also insisted that the rest of Arctic Monkeys weren't concerned about his growing number of side-projects.

As well as The Last Shadow Puppets, Turner's band with Miles Kane, he also wrote the soundtrack to Richard Ayoade's 2010 film Submarine, but said his bandmates supported his individual output.

"They were supportive, and Miles is a friend of all ours," he said. "We met him at the first show we ever did, with his old band, The Rascals. We glide past a lot of band bullshit because we've known each other since we were seven years old or whatever.

"The Submarine soundtrack wasn't me having aspirations to make a solo record and conquer the fucking world," he added. "My friend, Richard, had directed this wonderful film and he asked me to first of all do a few covers for it, and then it turned into a couple of original songs, and they weren't going anywhere in an Arctic Monkeys sorta world."

 Source: nme.com

City Reign - Numbers For Street Names EP

For the four members of CITY REIGN – Chris Bull (vocals, guitar), Michael Grice (guitar), Glaze (bass) & Sam Jones (Drums) – Numbers For Street Names is the culmination of 3 years of dedication and hard work, from the first days of teaching Glaze to play his £30 battered bass from ebay, rehearsing in the spare bedroom of their shared house, resulting in this comprehensive body of work. The record features songs spanning from their initial demo Daybreak EP to the closing track recorded a mere day before pressing the CD.

Time has been spent perfecting their songcraft and musicianship to rework older songs whilst continually writing newer material. The band’s focus has always been to let the music and lyrics speak for the band better than anything else.

Since recording the EP, Sam Jones has decided to pursue other projects outside music and has since been replaced with the fiery Scottish powerhouse Duncan Bolton who studied at the Royal Northern College of Music.

The EP includes their first single ‘Making Plans’, which caught the attention of BBC6Music’s Steve Lamacq upon its release in October 2010, as well as ‘Out In The Cold’, which received a raving recommendation from The Independent when it was released earlier this year.

‘We’re extremely proud of these 5 songs. It’s a good mix of the punchier pop songs like the singles Making Plans and Out In The Cold, alongside bigger ‘anthemic’ songs like The Line. It closes nicely with a new song called Anywhere Anyway recorded at the 11^th hour that we knew instantly had to close the record. Although the song is stripped back, the vocal layers give it depth and shows the attention to detail we put into everything we do says singer Chris Bull.

The band is due to promote the record with dates both nationally and internationally with a string of dates.

‘We’ve made a lot of friends from all over the place through releasing the first few singles. We were keen to get out and meet these people and play our songs live, so we’re really looking forward to these dates.’

This EP is out next Monday, 21st November, and you can buy it here: http://www.cityreign.net/

Biffy Clyro working on 'really obscure' new material

Biffy Clyro have revealed that the new material they have been writing for their sixth studio album is "really obscure".

The Scottish rockers, who first hinted that they were planning to start work on a new LP in March of this year and promised to "bring different elements" to their sound, told BBC 6 Music that their new tracks touched upon influences including country-prog and goth-rock.

Speaking about the sessions for the new record, frontman Simon Neil said: "We've got some really obscure things going on. We've got a kind of prog country song, which we never thought we'd do, and some weird kind of math rock stuff meets almost goth rock. It's hard to explain just yet but there are moments that are odd."

The singer also joked that the band had so much new material that they might be unable to fit it on a single LP, adding: "We're working pretty hard. We're now up to about 30 songs so maybe a double album, the dreaded 'D' word."

Source: nme.com