TRUST a stranger

Snipe caught up with New Yorker and rising gothic-techno artist TRUST, aka Robert Alfons, amidst the flurry of preparation for the UK release his eponymous debut album.

Adjectives that spring into mind when listening to Trust: dark, heavy, sludge, muffled, gothic, disco. I like the description: “a hit factory buried deep in the mud”… tell us about your aesthetic, and how it was born?
Thanks John. The songs on this record definitely started from a small setting, sometime just a melody or on the piano. It’s also inspired by my odd digestion of pop music. No matter where the songs started, the dream for each song is the stars.

You created this project with the wonderful Maya Postepski – how did the project come about? Did you work in same physical space, or was it an internet-recording project?
It was great to collaborate on this album with Maya, I think we did some great work together. But I’m really excited about all the new stuff I’ve been writing while on tour this year. The next album is really shaping up.

You are probably tired of answering this – but was a difficult decision to start playing shows without Maya? I guess her touring commitments with Austra would have been quite crippling otherwise.
The live show is the best it’s ever been, and I’m so happy with my band! The audiences’ response has been great.

Who are the new personell? Was it fun translating the album to live?
I’ve got two babe lady backup musicians. It’s always a pleasure to rework the material for the live setup, it really reinvigorates the songs.

Tell us about the visual world of TRUST. Do you have specific artists and designers (fashion & visual) you work with, or are inspired by?
I’ve been lucky to work with some very talented people, Petra Collins, Norman Wong, Kristie Muller, to name just a few. I hope that my music brings me more collaborative opportunities in the future.

Do you feel like part of a specific community or scene?
It’s always great when I get away from the insular world of writing music and play shows because I start to feel like I’m a part of a musical community. I feel so lucky to have shared the stage with so many talented performers.

Are there new material, remixes, projects, singles on the way?
I’m going hard on material for the next record, looking forward to sharing some sneak peeks soon.

It seems like the internet has shrunk the distance between bands and their fans. Do you like to talk to your listeners and fans online, or hang back? If you do, where should people reach you?
You can find me on Twitter and Instagram ‘tr_st’ and ‘robertalfons’ respectively.

See TRUST live on 9th October at the Shacklewell Arms. The album is released in the UK on Arts & Crafts on October 22nd.

05 Oct 2012

Dead fish in London's river Lea caused by pollution after a storm

Artists impression of a fatberg on the 4th plinth

London home owners, private renters and social renters 1961-2011

Lilo Evans and Tristan Stocks in the Mikado

Chart showing how Londoners get to work across inner and outer London

Chart showing how Londoners get to work by mode, 2011 data

Chart showing how the way Londoners get to work is changing over time

Map of empty homes or second homes in London

London borough population changes 2011-2012

Map of red kite sightings in London, May 2014

Artists impression of the "Teardrop", as seen from Ridley Rd, Dalston

Poster against Chatsworth Rd market in London

Tim Cresswell's poetry collection Soil, published by Penned in the Margins

Snipe Likes: Become Someone Else's by Jens Lekman

Earnest Swedish troubadour Jens Lekman has a knack for writing acutely observed songs concerning the minutiae of adult relationships. He’s also rather handy with a tune too, as this cut from his recent full-length I know What Love Isn’t – out now on Secretly Canadian – ably demonstrates.

04 Oct 2012

Dan Deacon - Crash Jam

We’ve been in love with Dan Deacon‘s hyper-positive mood-boosting electronic noise since the epic and euphoric track Wham City. His new album America, out now on Domino, keeps the manic energy rolling. Listen to the latest single culled form that collection, Crash Jam (released November 19th on Domino) below.

03 Oct 2012

Snipe Likes: Sparrow by Woodpecker Wooliams

Is there anything more terrifying than dancing paper silhouette puppets? No there isn’t, which is why this video from Brighton’s Woodpecker Wooliams makes for a pretty tough watch, but that shouldn’t detract from the really very cool song contained within. Gemma Williams has been compared to a ‘homicidal Disney heroine, singing songs of violence and desire’ and her new album, The Bird School of Being Human, is available now through Robot Elephant Records. Catch her at the Union Chapel for a lunchtime show, October 13.

02 Oct 2012

The Wheel by SOHN

Those who’ve heard London/Vienna-based SOHN’s previous online-only tracks, Oscillate and Warnings, will be aware the producer and multi-instrumentalist’s weapon of choice is his voice. Vulnerable and quivering, its timbre perfectly suits his fragile songs. On The Wheel, his first single release, SOHN – the character at least – sounds more emotionally confident, chastising his lover with ‘all this fuss over nothing, re-inventing the wheel’ – or is he chastising himself? The Wheel is out Nov 5 through fledgling label Aesop. Head to his website for a free download of those aforementioned online-only tracks.

01 Oct 2012

Snipe Likes: The Silicone Veil by Susanne Sundfør

Glacial Norwegian pop princess Susanne Sundfør plays London’s Communion October 7 and releases her new album, The Silicone Veil, October 15, so we thought we’d post the video for the title track. Check out the equally stunning White Foxes, here.

01 Oct 2012

London housing: The call goes out for lower rents. Chance of that happening, slim

Housing all of its inhabitants may well be the biggest single problem facing London in the next 10 years.

If you want a primer on the problems, I broke down a comprehensive IPPR report back in May 2012 which lays out a lot of the issues. Briefly, these include

a growing population
£1.6bn p.a. currently being spent on housing benefit
Not enough new housing being built
The wrong sort of housing being built

As for solutions, this week I’ve seen two separate cases made for more houses and lower rents, not as an end in themselves but because of the benefits this would have to the economy as a whole.

Peter Jeffreys, of Shelter, provides the above chart in his post at LSE blogs. He argues that high rents are taking money away from the rest of the economy, stifling demand, and impeding a recovery. The solution? More affordable housing.

And London Assembly member Darren Johnson (Green) has put out a document listing, in his view, 10 myths associated with housing benefit. I’ve embedded it below. His sixth point makes the case that lower rents = lower housing benefit payments. The solution? More affordable housing.

How likely is this to happen? Well, in Newham last year they started to build 0 affordable homes. Zero.

This is exactly the sort of serious, complex, long-term, city wide issue that an energetic and committed elected Mayor could really help to solve…

Chart: Via Peter Jeffreys at LSE Blogs – High rents are holding back the recovery

Darren Johnson AM: 10 Myths Housing Benefit Sept 2012

27 Sep 2012

Soul Love (David Bowie cover) by Austra & CFCF

In celebration of their 10th Anniversary Concert Series, the ever-dependable Paper Bag Records have put together a compilation of their own artists’ take on David Bowie’s 1972 masterpiece The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, itself celebrating something of a milestone in 2012. Download Austra (pictured) and CFCF’s dreamy version of Soul Love below; the whole album is available free here. Last year the Canadian label released a similar treatment of another pop classic, Madonna’s True Blue, described by Snipe’s Vancouver-born publisher thus: ‘this couldn’t be more Canadian if it was drowned in maple syrup and rammed up the arse of a polar bear’.

27 Sep 2012

City History: Filmmaker Si Mitchell brilliantly explains the Tottenham Outrage of 1909

View on Vimeo

Si Mitchell’s 10 minute documentary about the Tottenham Outrage, an anarchist murder which shocked Edwardian London, is superb. Talking corpses, blood-spattered maps, dodgy Latvian accents and a narrator wandering in and out of chase scenes…this is a visual style which really, as they say, brings history to life.

Wikipedia has a full run down of the story behind the film. I excerpt the introduction below:

“The Tottenham Outrage is the name given to an armed robbery and double murder which took place in Tottenham, Middlesex and Walthamstow, Essex, on 23 January 1909, which was carried out by two anarchists Paul Helfeld and Jacob Lepidus both Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. The “Outrage” became a cause célèbre in Edwardian London, with the route of the murdered policeman’s funeral cortège being lined by a crowd of half a million people. The event led to the creation of the King’s Police Medal, to reward the gallantry of the police officers involved. It also reinforced a feeling of xenophobia, fear of immigrants, and anti-Semitism.”

Photographer Zed Nelson takes on gentrification in Hackney: A Tale of Two Cities

[Skip to 1.50 in the video above or view all the photos on one page at Zed’s website here]

Zed Nelson’s collection is called Hackney: A Tale of Two Cities. He introduces it by saying:

“The social landscape for an under-privileged teenager growing up in Hackney, one of London’s poorest boroughs, is a million light-years away from the new urban hipsters who frequent the cool bars and expensive cappuccino café’s springing up in the same streets. These worlds co-exist side-by-side but entirely separate, creating bizarre juxtapositions of wealth and poverty, aspiration and hopelessness.”

So while his title harks to Dickens, the thought behind it is pure Disraeli, who said that of England that it was:

“Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.”

Do these thoughts accurately describe two Hackneys which exist today? Or two Londons?

I think there are many more Hackneys and Londons than that.

London Weather

8°

clear sky

Snipe Highlights

Some popular articles from past years