Articles by Simon Roche
Author of 163 posts.
Simon is State's Art Director as well as running his own graphic design studio (Smoke & Mirrors) out of Copenhagen, where he has tolerated pickled herring and very pretty girls for almost five years. He spends his days designing album covers, magazines, books and maps and can often be found eating the local roasted hot dogs and pursuing his quest to find the perfect pint of Classic.
Website:http://smokeandmirrorsstudio.dk/
His years with the Beta Band behind him, Steve Mason‘s remarkably impressive solo album, Boys Outside, was released in 2010 as he climbed out of years of depression. Many of the State… team were converted after his small Electric Picnic performance 2009, his pop sensibilities mixed with some serious themes was the perfect present
Four days seems like a great idea on paper but the pressure on the legs alone makes standing for the final day a triumph of will. You look on those people with the fold-up chairs sitting in the middle of a jumping crowd with a little less scorn (though it must be said, still with…
Nothing if not creatures of habit, the State team make the pilgrimage to the bleak campsite landscape to see the annual Festival Radio Naked Race. It really wouldn’t be a Roskilde proper without it and our arrival is perfectly timed with the starters orders. There’s a wall of water this year, sponsored by the very…
The sun has its hat on. Blue skies stretch over us this morning and you don’t need to tell the Danes twice to get their legs out. Suddenly it’s summer everywhere. It’s a strange cocktail that opens up the morning, but a perfect one for anyone with day two tent sweat and maybe a small…
Bags packed and car loaded with fine wine, an electric fridge and two bikes (well, it’s Denmark and accommodation is almost a kilometre from the entrance) – we’re off to Roskilde, Denmark’s annual four-day festival. Our memory of last year is all music, sun and cold Tuborg – except on the drive out of Copenhagen…
Futureperfect is a new festival kicking off its first year in Karlstad, Sweden on the 28-31 July, being billed as “the festival that explores what’s possible. It celebrates the many ways that ordinary people can individually and collectively create lifestyles for better personal and planetary health. It’s time to go beyond recycling!”
There are plenty…
Recently State made a foray over to Malmo, in the south of Sweden to catch early ’90s golden boys The Charlatans run through an intimate set of classics, and by doing so showed our age. We’d totally forgot about songs like ‘One To Another’, which sounded damn good for a tune over 15 years old.…
It’s been a long wait. When Justin Vernon rose to success, and ultimately sold 300,000 copies of For Emma, Forever Ago…, Bush was in the White House and the Olympics were taking place in Beijing. The token solo offering since then (though Vernon has been busy), was a more experimental recording of four songs
Merrill Garbus’ second release as the typographically confused tUnE-yArDs is nothing short of an adventure. Almost every song takes you down a different road of sonic peculiarity but for every one angular, discordant turn, there’s ten more that take you back into some curiously soulful grooves.
Garbus has admitted to a youth full of radio…
After almost three years, a number of blind alleys, recording studios and some failed experiments with what the frontman Robin Pecknold describes as “non-songwriter type music” Seattle’s Fleet Foxes finally found a home to record their second album in, a water-side studio where Nirvana put together Bleach….
Whatever about those musical detours, Fleet Foxes
Coming out of New York City, Wesley Eisold is the centre-piece of this synth-rock band; singer, writer and programmer – he does almost everything on this, his second album as Cold Cave, save some guest vocals. His own vocals are in the mould of ’80s monochromatic male pop voices, from Bryan Ferry to Dave Gahn…
There’s a lot of pleasure to be found in a live band who have an album in the bag and are playing small shows before its release. There’s no weight of people hoping to hear their favourites, the venues are more intimate and you’d imagine there’d be a hunger for the cut and thrust of…
There’s no hanging about at the Unthank household. Just over a year since The Tender Coming, we are presented with a new album, Last…. It is another part of their continued re-imagining of British folk and, as their successful 2010 live collaboration with the songs of Antony & the Johnsons attests, their approach
