Issue 11 / May 2011

26
Bido Lito! May 2011
Words: Pete Charles
Illustration: Michael Cottage
Pink Eyes, lead singer of Canadian hardcore band,
Fucked Up, said during their recent Liverpool show
that, “There’s some great music coming out of this
city. Cold Ones, SSS, The Down and Outs ... fuck it,
all the best bands are from Liverpool.” He will soon
be able to add a few more to his list as MUGSTAR,
STEALING SHEEP and DOGSHOW fire their creative
rockets beyond our stars, having been headhunted
by influential booking agency Elastic Artists. Bido
Lito! caught up with Jason from Mugstar, Becky from
Stealing Sheep and Sam from Dogshow, over a cup
of tea in Mello Mello and found three musicians
clearly enjoying having some promotional muscle
behind their respective bands.
“They’ve got us on tours and given us opportunities
that we wouldn’t otherwise have,” says Sam. “They’re
negotiators; that’s what they do.”
Elastic Artists’ roster reads like a who’s who of
hip, innovative and original acts not specific to any
particular genre. Animal Collective, The Black Lips,
Coldcut, Deerhunter, Dum Dum Girls, The Fresh And
Onlys, and No Age all reside on their eclectic books.
In terms of what their latest additions are trying to
achieve musically, they couldn’t be further apart.
“I don’t know too many other bands that really
sound like us,” says Sam of his synth and drums
electro-disco machine Dogshow. “We often find
ourselves lumped in with DJs or weird mixes of
bands and I quite like playing to audiences that
aren’t really expecting us.” In case you’re unfamiliar
with Mugstar, their creative bent is a guitardriven
exploration of the dynamic possibilities
of repetition and volume, cacophonous at worst,
spine-tingling at best and like Dogshow, they see
vocals either as superfluous to music, or as Jason
puts it, “just another instrument.” By contrast,
Stealing Sheep reside on a cotton wool plain of
melody, their floating, delicate vocals being one
of their most prized assets (demonstrated neatly
by Becky singing absently to herself throughout
the interview). So, it is perhaps more the creative
energy flowing through the three bands that has
piqued the London-based agency’s interest, rather
than a common theme within their music.
www.bidolito.co.uk
nestled
Firmly
under the wing of Elastic
Artists, this is clearly a pivotal moment for the three
bands, not least for Stealing Sheep, whose gig
calendar will see them embark on a European tour
this summer - not bad for a band that began plying
its trade less than a year ago. At the other end of
the spectrum, scene veterans and Peel-favourites
Mugstar
have shown themselves
to be late bloomers.
“We’d been trying to hook up with a booking
agency for a couple of years without success,” says
Jason. “Then Mike [Mike Deane, Liverpool Music
Week Director] just sent us an e-mail saying he had
a proposal for us. We thought he was going to offer
us a gig or something, but he asked us to come on
the books with Elastic.”
In an unprecedented move, whilst continuing