skinslife

Take a look at the Northampton Secret Skins Party! Add your own photo's if you fancy and we'll have a video for you in a bit.

Middlesbrough photo's and video coming soon...

I love Grime. Toby loves Grime even more than me. Superstar in the making Daniel Kaluuya loves Grime even more than Toby.

So let it be said that Daniel’s episode is likely to include an upcoming British based MC. We’ve already asked MC Toby Welch but he’s too busy with his beef with Lil Wayne to come back and do something for Skins. We have some other MC’s in mind but perhaps you know about an upcoming MC that even Daniel and Toby don’t know about.

Give some props to your favourite new MC below and you may even see them in the new series of Skins.

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Everyone in the SkinsLife office has been working fucking hard over the last few months whilst taking the country’s best upcoming bands on tour and getting releases ready for Paper Heroes and Edinburgh's The Unicorn Kid.

We’ve been working so hard that Toby’s been unable to sit in his dressing gown and slippers next to a roaring fire in his Hampstead mansion to catch up on the gossip about his old chums in the Financial Times; Chris has only spent half of his salary on upcoming hair products and I’ve only been going to one or two gigs a week. (Alex's holiday has now been cancelled. Ed.)

However, as of today I’m getting back into going to gigs to prepare to pick some awesome music for Skins series 3. Tonight I’m seeing My Bloody Valentine’s first show in ages at the ICA. Hopefully they won’t be awful as this band have been pretty special to me since I was a 15 year old stuck in a Stoke on Trent suburb.

Tomorrow I’m going to the Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder showcase at Hearne Street Car Park. His debut album ‘Los Angeles’ is out now and is available in a lovely gatefold 2LP format. It’s my album of the year so far and FlyLo is always awesome live: I can't recommend it highly enough. Also playing on that night are Rustie, Hudson Mohawke, Kode9, Mala, Gaslamp Killer, Samiyam and quite a few other cool acts which makes it a night to look forward to.

Then on Sunday night Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Yellow Magic Orchestra are playing their first UK show since 1980 at Massive Attack’s Meltdown festival. Sakamoto is a bit of a hero of mine and I even managed to get his most famous track ‘Forbidden Colours’ in Chris’ episode in the last series (That was the funny one where the writer Ben merged the scripts from Rocky and Trainspotting and hoped no one would realise.) Supporting him will be Warp’s awesome new signing Pivot.

Then’s it’s off to Barcelona for Sonar festival where I’ll be seeing pretty much everyone who is important in music including Ricardo Villalobos, Pan Sonic, Buraka Som Sistema (of Skins episode 6 fame), Richie Hawtin, Pram, Shackleton, Jeff Mills (of Skins episode 7 fame) and tons more.

When I’m back from that and after tearful reunion with Toby I’ll be ready to keep looking out for the best upcoming music in the country, both for the SkinsLife label, the tour and a little TV series called Skins.

Keep posting your tracks and I’ll listen to them when I’m back.

Alex

Check out the SkinsLife Label to get the track on limited edition Vinyl!

Available on download soon...

Directed and Edited by Jack Clough.
Ably assisted by the beautiful Gavin Kaps and Chris Lynd.
Thanks to the crowd (who were just brilliant) and, of course, to Jenny...

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Up in leafy North London, we've stumbled upon the rather obvious solution to the 'festival's are far too expensive problem': Do it yourself.

So in time honoured, Blue Peter fashion, you will need:

ONE HOUSE, GARDEN or FIELD… preferably with understanding neighbours. Maybe not parents’ houses, especially while the Daily Mail survives. They'd have you on the front page as 'Skins Horror Teen' at the first hint of fun.

MUSICALLY MINDED FRIENDS… Most people can play the guitar. After a couple of drinks, the rest think they can. Three hours in and magically, everyone's a DJ. Music; done.

AND FINALLY, PEOPLE. Obviously.

And here’s one we made earlier…

May 30th and 31st saw the first ‘Manorfest’, a two day extravanganza of live music and all good festival activites (ie. face painting). With three different areas and music from Alice Young and others, Salmaan Bhutta and Joe Brooks on the decks...

The festival goers were a wide ranging group and, to my stylistic delight, wearing a wide range of festival outfits.

Forget wellies, forget Kate Moss style hot pants and make up by ‘mud’. Despite being indoors there were still the chewed-looking straw trilbys, sunglasses and visors and of course… a glittery cowboy hat! There was even an eye patch, but I didn’t like to ask if it was authentic or just an accessory. In fact, hats were the order of the day. Even Couch was spotted running around like Oliver Twist in a train driver cap...

Back in 2004 it was trucker caps, this lasted for a couple of years until cowboy hats became the festival sunshade of choice.

The Doherty effect has led to thr profusion of the trilby, but what's next? Boho head scarves???…

Anyway, let me know and all home-made festival stories welcome...

We are already looking for our next signing so if you think we should be looking at you, post your tracks under this article. This will be the first place we look...

Anyway, this is how it happened for Paper Heroes: a few months ago, 19 year old Matt Weedon posted his track on the site for the competition to play at SkinsLive Cardiff. When Alex heard Jenny Jones he liked it so much that he put the track in episode nine. After that they played the Cardiff party (obviously..) and wowed an audience at the early time of 9 in the evening. Even proper bands signed to huge labels with a large marketing budget behind them rarely got a reaction like they did. When a slot opened up for the London leg of the tour, we snapped up the opportunity for the band to play again.

Knowing we were onto something big at a very early stage, the next step was to set up a Skins Life label. So from Wednesday you’ll be able to pre-order the brilliant Jenny Jones on 7” and MP3 download.

Paper Heroes already have enough material for a solid album and we reckon they will be snapped up by a much larger label in the near future, which is why we want to find our next signing now...

Be sure to pick up the limited edition single to be part of both Skins and Paper Heroes history.