2. CONTENTS
PG NO.
FEATURES
48
AURORA STORM
72
THE 1975
80
TWO DOOR CINEMA
CLUB VS (MAG)
85
Q&A ED SHEERAN
90
THE DRUMS
The woman who has landed herself
as the most controversial artistof our
generation lays herself bare.
How much fun can beiung a member
of The 1975 be? This much.
We go head to head against one of
Britain’s favourite indie bands.
Picking apart the guitar-toting, celeb-squiring, worldwide chart-topper.
A short, tactical guideto preening and
prouncing about.
92 HANDWRITTEN
Expert analyses behind the scribblings of your favourite Indie artists.
101
50 GIGS IN 10 YEARS
The top 50 gigs of the decade that you
must see!
PG NO.
3. ISSUE NO
SOCIAL
NETWORK
REGULARS
08
YOU’VE GOT MAIL!
10
THE TOP 50
This months essential songs.
15 NOW
48
Dandit, ulpa sin corio vendem
hillecum re platqui ad quiatemCabor-
32
ON LOCATION:
Hello Camden! We visit one of
London’s most popular urban areas
to hunt down what’s going on in the
world of Indie.
34
NEW TO (MAG)
Greetings Passenger, London Grammar and Imagine Dragons. Make
yourself at ome.
PG NO.
PG NO.
42
32
REVIEW
PG NAME
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sus, cum sum rehendel iusaeres
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ACCESS ALL AREAS
The best seat in the house behind the
scenes of Arctic Monkey’s hit new
album - AM.
78
RECORD COLLEC
TIONS
Indie’s finest, Chris Martin, takes us
back to his musical beginnings.
96 SUBSCRIBE
Oh, go on, you know you want to!
161 QUIZ
Your regular dose of brain food. Win
a guitar and amp worth £1,200.
162
LAST REQUESTS
Final thoughts from Kodaline.
5. S
INTRO
What with her eccentric, controversial yet iconic style
- and music and match - 20-year-old Aurora Storm
is currently causing a sensation in the UK, where her
vivid indie-edge debut single ‘Smother’ has charted
in the Top 10. Her sassy, bad-girl act echoes that of
childhood idols Janis Joplin and Madonna. “I look to
Madonna for her philosophy about music and fashion,” she admits. “If I’m going to get compared to any
music artist, I sure as fuck want it to be her.”
Raised in the heart of London, Aurora attended
the £17,000-a-year Sylvia Young Theatre School in
Marylebone, where she studied music and performing arts alongside Rita Ora and Tom Fletcher. ‘I didn’t
hang out with all the popular girls,” she says, claiming
to have kept her head down and focused on her art
and theatre studies. To the humiliation of her parents – extremely successful lawyers - she ended up
moving downtown at just 17 years old following a
serious argument she had with her family. Aurora did
everything she could to get by – working in a small
café at minimal wage and occasionally partaking in
nude modeling and busking on the streets of London
to songs that she had written in her spare time, just so
she could have a roof over her head and place food on
her plate every night. “I was doing drugs, I was really
out of control,” she says. “But what made me different
was that I was making music, too. I wasn’t just doing
drugs.”
Her antics caught the eye of
musical-director Caius Pawson,
(Founder of The XX, Sampha)
who found her busking at Camden
Lock, before bringing her to the
attention of Young Turks Records.
Aurora’s debut album Porcelain
is released in the UK this month,
and she plans to take just herself,
her guitar and her music worldwide. But Aurora insists that
it’s not all about the marketing
and publicity. “I could end up
in America selling thousands of
records or I could go back to how
things were before when no one
really knew my name and few
people purchased my music, and
it wouldn’t matter to me. All that
matters is the music. I don’t give
a shit about how many records
are sold – as long as I am making
music for the people I love, then
I’m happy.”
There’s no denying the fact that
Aurora is all that everyone is talking about right now – her seemingly overnight success is what has
got her to where she is now. When
asked if this is the “most insane
year” of her life so far, the singer-song writer says, “Everything
is so chaotic and crazy right now
and it’s so much all at once, but
I’m living for it. I’m just having
the best time ever and everything’s
falling into place like it’s supposed
to. I don’t really care if people hate
me. I think anyone wanting to
pursue a music career would have
given anything to be me at that
very moment where I blew up,
because I was being one hundred
percent true to myself… and not
many people can say that.”
But it’s not all hate for Aurora.
This fact is a kind of icing on the
cake for some, who have greeted
Aurora not just as the latest, new,
indie sensation to appear freshly
6. baked off the assembly line, but
as a kind of Trojan horse come
to deliver us from the saccharine
smiles and full-frontal sexual
provocation clogging the charts.
“The charts are constantly filled up
with pop songs with no meaning,
no real passion… just a different
combination of the 26 letters in
our alphabet accompanied by a
stupid tune. Who wants to listen
to that?! That’s what I want to
change.” Aurora’s sharp narrative
observations – on both the single, and her critically acclaimed
follow-up album, Porcelain – have
led to her being labeled the voice
of her generation.
When we meet, Aurora can barely
sit upright. “I came down with
a kidney infection just as I was
about to get on a plane here,” she
says. “They took me into hospital
and put me on a drip and now I’m
on heavy-duty antibiotics.” With
her gothically pale skin offset
by dark, red lips, black-rimmed
wide-set eyes and her bold, statement full fringe, it’s not hard to
see why she attracts the attention
that she does – even when she’s ill
she manages to look flawless. She
looks much older than she is, a
perception reinforced by the deep,
commanding timbre of her sonorous voice.
On stage the previous night at
Brixton Academy, Aurora had
betrayed no sign of her illness, or
PULL
QUOTE
that she had only 20 live performances under her belt. Aurora
performed a mix of emotional
ballads and when she reached the
dramatic climax of the song, she
vaults to the top of her range and
produces a piercing sound that
shakes you to the core. That is the
power of the whistle register; the
ability to control that part of the
human voice is quite rare (think
Mariah Carey) and even when ill,
Aurora is able to hit way beyond
the whistle register. In performance, Aurora has a goofy theatricality: one minute she is indulging
in closed-eyed singing whilst simply sat with her guitar, shaking her
hair and flicking her hands out;
the next, she’s all broad smiles and
wisecracks, jokily mocking her audience. Aurora was born with the
ability to be a performer and that’s
quite hard to find these days.
‘‘Songwriting is so weird because
you are writing down intimate
things and then you go into a
studio with someone you have
never met,” she says. “But it was a
strange situation where something
just clicked. My team were very
good at being perceptive and figuring out what I do, which is quite
a raw, impulsive thing.”
Over the past year and a half,
from 2011, Aurora and her team
came up with the 10 songs for her
debut album, but Aurora says it
never crossed her mind that one
might become a worldwide hit.
She insisted her first songs be
put out on free streaming service
SoundCloud without any videos
or photographs to promote them.
“I put my music out with no kind
of commercial expectation, and
found out I was a ‘star’. I didn’t
see my music as number-one
Billboard chart selling music,” she
says. “I tried
to market my
music the way
my favourite
indie producers did. I care
more about
giving back to
my fans and
the people that
I love than
selling my
music worldwide – don’t
get me wrong,
it’s an absolute
honour to be
doing what
I’m doing but
I don’t want to
become a marketing product
like most pop
artists these
days. I’m much
deeper than that.”
While other mainstream pop acts
such as Katy Perry, One Direction
and Britney Spears turn to the
same small pool of producers in
London, Stockholm and LA who
deal in radio-friendly generic
dance styles, more-experimental
acts such as Kanye West or Lady
Gaga elect complicated, flamboyant and ostentatious compositions.
By contrast, Aurora’s sound is
simple yet cinematic, spinning
tales of real teenage realities –
penniless but happy nights out full
of longing and loneliness – that
reject clichés of mindless fun and
decadence.
“I don’t intend on selling dreams
to young people. We’re now
brought up believing that you have
to live and behave in a certain way
to get the best out of life – but
that’s completely wrong. Look at
Disney for example; as a child I
7. thought I was going to be a princess, just like most little girls do…
but that’s not going to happen. Being a teenager and growing up in
this generation isn’t what people
expect. Y’know, constant partying,
your first kiss, being prom queen,
falling in love… it’s not what it
seems. It’s all bullshit. Growing up
is one of the most difficult periods
of time that you can experience
– yes, it can be great, but just like
everything there’s a downfall and
people need to be more aware of
that. That’s why I write about my
experiences. I’ve gone from rock
bottom right to the top; I want
my music to reflect on this – not
everyone is perfect and I want my
music to help people through the
reality of life… not this perfect
picture that generic music seems
to constantly portray.”
Aurora possesses a maturity that
is, for now, inoculating her from
the madness growing around
her. “What I am doing now, I am
learning so much that
I couldn’t learn at any
university at any age,”
she says. “Every time
I get on stage I learn
something new. I’m
evolving all the time.
My next record could
sound completely different.”
Aurora’s album, Porcelaine, is out November
26th.
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