2 Music


Satriani to wowwith wild guitar


AndyHowells talks to ChrisMontague of


Troyka ahead of their Cardiff shownext week


TROYKA are an experimental British trio who make rich and enthralling instrumental music. Featuring Kit Downes (once Mercury


nominated in his own right) on hammond/ synths, Chris Montague on guitar/loops and Josh Blackmore on drums, Troyka is far more than the sum of its parts and is definitely not your usual Hammond organ trio. Ornithophobia is the London three-


SHOW: Joe Satriani Picture: Stephen Fourie


LEGENDARY artist and per- former and the hardest work- ing guitarist in the business, Joe Satriani, is proud to an- nounce The Shockwave UK Tour which he will bring to Cardiff’s St David’s Hall on No- vember 5. The highly-anticipated tour promotes Joe’s upcoming new studio album (released in July), and will also be the first time since he last toured the UK with his critically acclaimed Unstoppable Momentum album in 2013. Joe’s touring band will include Bryan Beller (bass), Mike Keneally (keyboards, gui- tars) and Marco Minnemann (drums). For two decades, Satriani has


travelled the world, playing to sold-out crowds as both a head- liner and as founder of the all- star G3 guitar extravaganza. His studio and live recordings have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide to date. Of his many solo albums, two have gone platinum and four others went gold, with 15 Grammy nominations between them. In addition to Suring With


The Alien and Black Swans And Wormhole Wizards, he has released such classics as The Extremist (1992), Crystal Planet (1998) and Super Colossal (2006), and havingmoved 10 million al- bums and counting, he’s now the biggest-selling instrumen- tal rock guitarist of all time. Tickets, priced £38 and £34.50,


go on sale to the general public from today from the 24-hour box office: 0844 888 991 and tick- etline.co.uk/joe-satriani


Contact Us


EDITOR: Nicole Garnon 01633 777203 nicole.garnon@gwent-wales.co.uk


EDITORIAL AND DESIGN: Andy Howells andrew.howells@gwent-wales.co.uk


ADVERTISING: Andrea Hall 01633 777285 andrea.hall@gwent-wales.co.uk


ONLINE: www.southwalesaargus.co.uk www.twitter.com/argus_theguide


piece’s third studio album – their first for Naim – and truly marks the fruition of five years’ worth of musical experimenta- tion. Influenced by the likes of Tim Berne, Aphex Twin, Deerhoof, Albert King and Flying Lotus, their music is intense, am- bitious and iconoclastic. Unpredictable, yet catchy, melodies woven into complex time signatures may be a trademark of the trio at full swing, but it is the flavours of textural beds, polyrhythmic post-dance, haunting trip-hop and atmospheric post- rock that make this record a sensation of the heart as well as the mind. Chris Montague recently answered Andy Howells questions


Who are you and how did you start playing music? I’m Chris Montague and I play guitar


and write music for Troyka. I started play- ing music when I was 9 years old. I was in the car with my Dad and Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix came on the radio and my head nearly fell off. I told my Dad that I wanted a guitar for Christmas and that I was gong to be a guitar player. I soon realised school was a living nightmare so began to play the guitar endlessly along with my Mumand Dad’s record collection, they had loads of BB King, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Chic, Doobie Brothers, Police, Prince, all really good guitar stuff. I’d sit for hours trying to play the parts note for note and getting it com- pletely wrong. I was lucky to meet a very inspirational teacher called Jimi Savage (he still teaches in Newcastle) who would get me to go along and sit in with bands he was playing with at the time. I was still a kid and it was a very big deal for me.


Where are you from? Im from Gateshead and grew up in that


area. Josh Blackmore who plays drums is from Derby and Kit Downes is from Nor- wich. We live in London now.


How would you describe your style? NEW ALBUM: Troyka I call it jazz because we improvise a lot


and I associate that with jazz, although it’s harder to answer than that. We’re all into tons of different music and steal the bits we like the best. It could be rock, funk, blues, electronic, dance, avant-garde, it really doesn’t matter too much for us as long as we can use it.


What’s been your best live experience? There have been so many with this band. Maybe the most memorable for me was performing with the Troyk-estra (our big band version of this music) at Chel- tenham in 2013. We had only played the music once before and the gig was being broadcast on the BBC, it was incredibly terrifying as the music is very challeng- ing. It felt like it could go horrendously wrong, but it didn’t and ended up being released as a live album. Big risks some- times pay off and Im so glad that one was documented like it was.


You have a new album, can you tell us more about that? The album is called Ornithophobia


and it’s on Naim. We took our time re- cording this music and we collaborated with the producer Petter Eldh who brings


a very new aesthetic to the production side of things. The album was partly in- spired by my genuine phobia of birds, it embraces all of the macabre elements of this but at times has great beauty and tenderness in there too. It’s a new direc- tion for us and we felt we didn’t have to document how we do things live, we’d done that on the previous albums. This album has a higher production value to it and embraces more of the electronic and ambient music we like, but it still has the Troyka wonky, wrong vibe to it.


You’re touring shortly are you looking


forward to that? I always love touring with this music and


the guys in the band, we’ve known each other a long time so it feels very familiar (a bit too familiar sometimes). Touring in any situation is very tiring and being away from home is often tough, but if the music is good it’s very rewarding. We also have an amazing sound engineer called Alex Fiennes with us and we will be recording all of the gigs, maybe for a potential live album in the future. We have some gigs in Europe too which is always fun and we’re going to some new places like Istanbul and Trondheim.


Phenomenal band is ‘one of best in the business’


WITH their highly-anticipat- ed new album Smoke + Mir- rors out imminently, US chart phenomenon Imagine Drag- ons play ten UK arena shows this November including Car- diff’s Motorpoint Arena on November 11. Imagine Dragons first ex- ploded onto the global arena with their huge hit Radioac- tive, following it up with hits It’s Time, Demons and Top Of


The World, selling sold over 22 million singles worldwide and 4 million copies of their debut album Night Visions. Smoke + Mirrors, out Febru-


ary 16, uses the frenetic ener- gy of life on the road to infuse their music with raw tension and intense vulnerability. Live, the band are fast be- coming one of the best in the business. Having last toured the UK in 2013 (playing three


sold out Brixton Academies, Glastonbury and Reading/ Leeds), they garnered some amazing reviews with the Standard saying they were on “citadel storming form,” Q that “the anticipation resembled a typhoon in a sardine tin” and The Times that they were “in a class of their own.” Tickets on sale now from livenation.co.uk.


PHENOMENON: Imagine Dragons


What can people expect from your forthcoming Cardiff gig? It’s at the Royal Welsh College of Mu-


sic, the space we play in there has a re- ally great sound and the crowd in Cardiff is always up for it, they have been great with us in the past when we have played Dempsey’s (a great venue and a vital stop on the jazz circuit). We will have played 4 or 5 nights previous to this one and it’s after the album launch at Richmix in London on the 12th so we will be very well rehearsed and slick hopefully, we will also be very relaxed as it’s the last night before a short break.


Where can people hear your music? You can hear a teaser of the album


and then buy it here naimlabel.com/ news-Troykanew.aspx for tour dates visit: troyka.co.uk.


• Catch Trokya at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama on February 13


Friday, February 6, 2015 Follow us on Twitter @Argus_The Guide Meet The Band : Troyka


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12