The Star & Shadow presents a night of furious shake & pop of pixelated DIY dance fury, a late night party with Ben Butler & Mousepad, supported by Newcastle’s party groove faithfuls SDF and Jamie Allen.

"That is spot on, and a lot of fun on stage. Their music is loaded with electro beats and syncopated dance grooves that had the crowd doing an awful lot of head-bobbing." - review from one of their gigs in Feb 2011, from altInterstate

Ben Butler & Mousepad is the brain child of Edinburgh-based Joe Howe (from the electro-punk duo Gay Against You; Germlin, Joemus).

Taking as much inspiration from Progressive Rock’s excesses as from the clean, crisp “whoomp” of the Scandinavian club scene, Ben Butler & Mousepad is an electronic mess, teetering on the edge of disaster, reigned in quickly by a persistent pummelling beat or lightning-fast arpeggio, creating a sort of Nintento Disco.

When things slow down,  there is room for more consideration - analog wobble and warmth, weird chords and byzantine structures, all shot through with enthuisiasm and clumsy energy. 

Like their previous projects, Ben Butler & Mousepad is an unpredictable, fun and musically dense project, both live and on record. 

Joe has made remixes for bands including Klaxons, Deerhoof, The Chap, Printed Circuit and Sprutbass. Ben Butler & Mousepad feature in Vic Galloway (BBC Radio 1)’s 50 Scottish bands for 2010 and recorded a mix for Tom Ravenscroft’s (John Peel’s son!) BBC6 Music show in June 2010. 

INTERVIEW AND MORE INFO

You can read an interesting interview with Joe Howe, the man behind Ben Butler & Mousepad, on here http://www.list.co.uk/article/15858-exposure-ben-butler-and-mousepad/ 

And here is an extract:

"What kind of character is Ben? [Ben Butler is like a "stage character" created for this band by Joe Howe, and that Joe Howe came up with through a dream]

Well, in the dream the guy was a Computing Science lecturer that had a band, and the band was Mousepad, and he thought that it was the coolest name ever. I just decided that when your subconscious comes up with something like that it's so much better than thinking of something that's really laboured. You can easily get sick of something that you've actually thought of. He's kind of a geeky, dorky guy who thinks he's really cool but probably isn't.

Ben's been described as nerdcore. Do you think that does him justice?

That's come up before, I quite like that. I think nerdy but mildly sexy (if such a thing is possible).

Ben Butler and Mousepad goes back to basics, evoking Eno and Italodisco and other classic synth music. Why this return?

A lot of the reason why I started Ben Butler is I wanted a band that was about playing. Gay Against You [Joe Howe' other band] is very performance based; it engages the audience and it's dramatic, exciting and sometimes antagonistic - quite an in your face thing - but it's not really about playing. I love to play, and most of my other projects haven't had room for, for example, half-an-hour of keyboard solos. I sat down and literally played it all into my sequencer. It totally comes from a love of performing and improvising."

PRESS

"That is spot on, and a lot of fun on stage. Their music is loaded with electro beats and syncopated dance grooves that had the crowd doing an awful lot of head-bobbing." - review from one of their gigs in Feb 2011, from altInterstate

“4/5” – The Skinny

“Like Prince and Stevie Wonder on your favourite arcade machine”. – neverenoughnotes.co.uk 

MORE INFO, MUSIC AND VIDEOS HERE

http://bbandmp.tumblr.com/

Live video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAr3teGh9Ig

LATEST ALBUM HERE

http://www.l-o-a-f.com/popup3.php?album=224  

+ SUPPORT BANDS: SDF + JAMIE ALLEN + DJs TILL LATE!

SDF 

What can we say about these guys? They always put a massive grin on my face and get the party going. In their own words, “the less said about these purveyors of ‘dancefloor magic’ the better."

Myspace  http://www.myspace.com/sdfcollective

Or
http://soundcloud.com/sdf

JAMIE ALLEN

"Jamie Allen is a Canadian artist currently residing in the UK. With circuitMusic, he uses raw op amp components with minimal effects to experiment and revel in the sound of pure, electric signals. Allen's compositions are streamlined, yet remarkably varied with harsh walls of static, dense drones, and playful rhythms all vying for the listener's headspace." (Foxy Digitalis)

http://www.heavyside.net/index.php

+ DJs until 2am!

After the bands we’ll be partying on till late with DJs Ox & Bull SDF and Kuba Ryniewicz playing exotic gems. Kuba likes early 90s Polish ravecore, Barbara Streisand and believes that you only fall in love once. If you’re into these things then this is the night for you!


Tickets are £6 and you can buy them from RPM, Reflex, Beatdown records, or for £5 from www.wegottickets.com

This event is put on in collaboration with the promoters Tempo Tempo and Prancey Dog.