Thursday, June 05, 2008

juice Meet Famous Composer On Mad Cool Underground Radio Show, Buy New Outfits And Play Two Gigs, One Of Which Is Particularly Marvellous

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 3
Level of conviction in own genius: 8.8
Reading / Listening: the new edition of Time Out / recordings of juice from last night
Hair Day: bit frilly

juice are on fire at the moment, which is rather fabulous, like it’s our actual CAREER or something... Last week we visited the Dead & Alive boys on Resonance FM’s anarchic contemporary mostly-classical show; Josh and Tim are PRS honcho and avant-garde record store owner respectively by day and mad, hard-drinking, hard-listening DJs by night, and definitely have a much-missed flavour of Mark Russell and Robert Sandall’s deadpan sparky arguments. juice featured on the show most marvellously alongside a slightly sleepy Michael Nyman, just in from some arty European country or other, who popped in to promote his new CD. As we all stuffed our faces full of the chocolate Tim had bought us (we had to save all the free wine for some fun-filled hours after the show), we rather cheekily reminded him of a recent email Sarah had sent, asking him to write us a piece (the rumours were that Trio Medieval turned his offer down a few years ago, and we’ve been working out how to get hold of him ever since). We attempted to charm him with our witty giggliness and turns out it worked - or at least our fabulous singing did: he's emailed saying he'd love to write us a piece!!!! Sarah rang to tell me and I squealed down the phone like a hormonal teenage girl, except an extremely arty one who is excited by artistic offers by, like, right famous British composer-types... Result!

juice then had a gig at the Social for City Showcase in an electronica night. Say it very quickly three times and it becomes ‘Shitty Socase’ which was kind of how it transpired, what with the idea apparently being that CS get tons of insanely important music honchos and media down to be wowed by us, snapping us up for a multi-million-pound record deal which allows us to sing as much silly avant-garde vocal wailings as we like, but actually no-one of any career-boosting significance there at all, only lots of Japanese youths there for the next act putting their hands over the ears. Oh well, we got a chance to test out our fab new All Saints dresses (the shop, not the girl band – no low-slung baggy canvas trousers for US) and got a free Polish Martini.

When would we three meet again? Thunder, lightning and rain were all out because they would ruin our hair and angular new outfits, so to The Macbeth (ouch!) on Hoxton Street it was the next evening for nonclassical, the very ace avant-garde electronic/classical club night for those who like a drink in their hand whilst the DJ plays Berio or Varese. YES! It’s run by Gabriel Prokofiev, man of famous grandfather and owner of at least two alter-egos involving a) moustachioed dance-soul-funk and b) super-cool grime producer. Last night was a vocal special with us as headliners; the place was eventually crammed full of arty musos who were wonderfully quiet while listening to 1) a tenor and guitar premiere (quiet, nice) 2) a soprano and piano duo (slightly amateur, odd), 3) Mikhail (off the wall, brilliantly theatrical vocal histrionics) and 4) us, though the bar staff seemed to throw their glasses and bottles about with rather venomous abandon. It was a lovely relaxed night full of our favourite composers, many of them there, and we were pretty great if I say so myself... A lass from all-important classical/jazz/world promoters Serious came to see us and today I did a phone interview for the Times on classical club nights; shall find out next week whether I come across as juice-promoting sassy genius or goofy tongue-tied fool. Next up for the juicers: Whitechapel Art Gallery, more Resonance, and nice music in a hospital chapel – hhm, maybe have to have less spitting/gargling/shrieking and filthy industro-grimecore electronica in that one...

1 comment:

Joshualine said...

Thanks gals, we loved having you on the show and will do again. Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the description. I'll post the details on our blog (www.dead-and-alive-radio.blogspot.com) soon, but we're dry and informative, lacking your blog's verve and wit.