D'Angelo @London's Roundhouse

'Rising from the dead' would be one (incredibly cliched) way of describing muscular soul dude D'Angelo's 2015. But it could be construed as accurate, for even by a holy fella's standards, he's enjoyed a pretty remarkable resurrection over the last year or so. 

In December 2014 he released Black Messiah, an album that while not arriving wrapped in hubris, came 14 years after its predecessor and with enough sass, charisma and funk to allow even his most ardent fan to forgive him for the delay. How come it had taken so long? Well D'Angelo has been through the bloody mill mate - there have been deaths, drug taking, binge drinking, doughnut eating - pretty much owt bad that could happen to a gent happened over the preceding years, meaning its amazing that Black Messiah is as ace as it is. It also meant that the Roundhouse was cheering him on despite being an hour and a half late for his Monday night showing at the start of July. 

Late he was but thankfully, he was willing to wave aside the curfew to play on and on, plucking hits from his previous releases, Brown Sugar and Voodoo. He might not have been as ripped when he stripped off for the Untitled video but he and his band The VanGuard came packing some serious heat a la prime time Prince or the Roots without the jazz interludes. We were so impressed that we even bought a t-shirt off a man outside for a fiver, summat we haven't done since we went to go and watch the Verve at Manchester Apollo almost 14 years ago. Swings and roundabouts as some (might) say... 

Fuck work love disco

Shitttttttttttttttt has been really real, as you just know it's just gonna go when the days heat up, become longer and start getting their pins out for all the world to see.

We've been living life like its golden, with plenty of night times, weekends away and musical endeavours. So where we've been? Well you'll find our footprints at Dalston Superstore (thanks Tusk!), the Lambeth Country Fair (thanks Odyssey!) and the Walthamstow Garden Party (thanks to Jen and Andrew for letting us jump their fence into the park). We've been carried to an inflatable bed in York after going a long way for a BBQ, been house hunting and had more contactless transactions at the Marquis of Lansdowne than is really acceptable. Whoopsy daisy...

Records

'I take my style tips from everything, even kids and homeless people'

Teklife in Hackney Primark. RIP DJ Rashad.

Yeahhhhh

Friday one in one out at Micky's Chippy. 

3 train journeys, 31 train tickets

The science of procreation and the ensuing child birth as drawn by really, really shit faced people

WKDDDDDDDDDD

 

EROL can keep your kiddy dancing

Odyssey at full pelt at the Lambeth Country Fair

The youf of today like dere balloons, so they do

A rare vintage

Femi Kuti doing it in Walthamstow

Tom Daley crying toe nail tears

Big weekend mate? Send grapes

Yagga yagga

Said it on Instagram, let's say it again - that's £18ks worth of kebab technology

Pembury Tav - wrong side of midnight

Glastonbury - love the farm, leave your tents

This year marked our first Glastonbury Festival experience. I know. For those who realise how much we love a good pillage it must seem weird that we've left it until now to visit but previously the organisational demands have always proved too much. Plus when you're left with the BBC experience and think the festival is mainly about the hemp-stuffed, mumsy gnatterings of Jo Wiley, and Mark Radcliffe from the BBC hot tub it's not that appealing. But the reality is a more full on experience than the wildness equivalent of choosing a different kind of hummus from Ocado.

Our recent jaunt to Worthy Farm was through the filter of work. But that in its own way had a weird charm. It didn't get in the way of drinking heavily throughout or really going for it once dark had fallen. Plus our tents were fully erected (weeeeeeeeeyyy) when we arrived, there was a free air bed, plus they even sorted out the choo choos there and back. Shitloads of things went down and we saw shed loads of great stuff. Here are just a handful of the many thing we learned...

Cider - it's delicious!

The festival offers one official lager and one official cider - Tuborg and Thatchers respectively. Outside of events such as this, the former would be the slightly more appealing choice but here on the farm, cider is the only thing worth necking. Somehow it's an inconspicuous drinking friend for days on end, although when it eventually explodes inside your mind, you (and everyone around you) knows about it...

Let's get gnarly

It's not all about healing, the Dalai Lama and love. Although his mightiness was there to bless the festival. But a lot of night time Glastonbury (and subsequently the early mornings) are given over to 'going large mate' and as such you see all sorts of weird and not so wonderful things. A puddle of blood on the bus queue on the way out was prangworthy. The strange party with the gimp flamingo and bearded man miming anal sex with a fake polar bear on Monday morning was well trippy.

Hot Chip are one of the best things ever

Like the best bits of Prince, Talking Heads, LCD and Chic all rolled up into five nerdy white nerds, Hot Chip stopped being geeks and brought the funk on the Friday night of Glastonbury. Their bro-in with Caribou over the Boss's Dancing in the Dark was one of the greatest tings ever. Bravo Hot Chip.
 
It's (a bit) massive

Before you go all you hear is everyone bleating on about how huge Glastonbury is, how many people there are and how many different types of falafel one might be able to procure. It is indeed gigantic compared to any other festival you've been to meaning finding chums can be tough once you've enjoyed 15 ciders or night's curtain has dropped. At the same time, if you wait for everything to wear off and daylight to land, then you can get from one side to the other in ten minutes. Fact.

Lionel Richie has got it in spades

This year's old fogey's slot was taken by the man himself Lionel Richie. After the let down that was some of Kanye the night before it was down to the Commodores dude to bring the party. And party he did. If there had been a ceiling, the whole Pyramid stage field would have been dancing on it. Instead it felt like the greatest wedding disco ever...

Libertines

Night

Morning Pimm's

Arcadia Sunday night

Glastonbury early Monday morning

The back of a gurning Idris Elba

Falling off the bike and getting back up again

One fell off the bike back in June going round a corner really, really hungover. It hurt, it was a bit embarrassing and the road rash was gnarly. You'll be pleased to know that the wheels (aka 'Jon Benet') is okay.

Fried bacon cheese toastie

There's another ad doing the rounds at the moment, except this one is to broadcast the existence of a thing of wonder and mouth watering beauty - a cheese toastie wrapped in bacon being given a fucking good frying.

It looked so amazing from the ad that one hungover Sunday we tried to recreate it with some watery bacon and a shitload of cheese. It didn't quite work as it's tricky to make the bacon stick plus it also makes you feel deeply weird after you've eaten it as it's about 40,000 calories. But we did it anyway. Check out the peculiar results...

The cringey curse of Cortana

The wild combo of being in a band, being young and posh plus having your roots in the classical music gene pool is never going to do too much for your kudos.

So in some ways, it might be nice to feel a slight amount of pity for Clean Bandit, a group who are all that and more. A teeny, weeny, weeny smidge of sympathy. A micro dot. A smudge. A glimmer.

This band of Cambridge classical music graduates are posh and smug but thanks to a winning way with a pop hook and a string sample, they've managed to get pretty far over the last two years, blitzing the charts, selling shitloads of records and playing rammoed gigs to loads of kids who mistakenly think their hybrid of club and concert hall is edgy. In fact they were literally flying until they had the misfortune of meeting Microsoft's answer to Siri, the mealy mouthed Cortana, in a telly advert so bad it's pretty much put a bag over the head of their career.

Microsoft must have waved a considerably sized cheque in front of their faces for them to do it - one so big that it dislodged the silver spoon wedged in their collective arsecake, blew up their synapses and convinced them that speaking to a servant voice coming out of a phone was a good thing to do. Well the fuck nuts were wrong. Every time you hear the word 'Cortana', it's now in a faux posh accent combined with a jutting, tanned chin aping the magical dialogue and acting of the ad. Then followed by the words 'cunts'. It's fucking awful and unsurprisingly the band have kept stum ever since, possibly because they're too embarrassed to fan by the flames of hatred via further interviews or adverts. Their press people are crossing their fingers, wisely hoping that by saying nothing, the group will someone claw back enough credibility to continue.

While Clean Bandit are now letting their increasingly shite music do the talking, what of Cortana? Well we keep spotting the bastard out on the streets. Answering increasingly shitty, smug questions. Shoot to kill!

For the shade of it all

Here's some of the musical shapes which have been floating our boat over recent weeks. Turns out Ariana Grande has some bare tunes bruv...