A couple of Friday’s back I was invited to play at Superdisco at the small but perfectly formed Gold Bar in Stoke Newington. Painkillers, copious amounts of booze and kebebs were consumed, disco music was played, lots of fun was had by all and  like Boswell to my Johnson, Tom was present to record it all with his magic soul capturing lantern.

 

If you ever want to stalk our own Tom Medwell, then a good place to start is Dice Club, seeing as he’s always going on about just how good it is.

Hosted by Heidi Heelz, it all goes down on the third Thursday of every month at The Legion in Old Street and is possibly the only club in London where you can let the roll of a die decide both your choice of drink and how much you pay for it.

Last month saw The Vichy Government and Joy Rides tread the boards and Tom was there to record it all for future generations of Shoreditch anthropologists.

 

Despite the general impression we give off, you may be surprised to find that our nights don’t entirely consist of hanging around  in penthouse apartments, nailing models and listening to italo disco.

In fact quite often we like nothing more than to slip on the trusty denim jacket, grease back our hair and rock the fuck out and when the urge does overcome us we can think of nowhere better to scratch that itch than Skill Wizard.

To document the madness we sent Tom Medwell down there last month to risk life, limb and lens as Salute and Nebukadnezza took to the stage at The Old Blue Last.

 

Having been utterly underwhelmed the last few times I’d seen New Young Pony Club in larger venues I was looking forward to seeing them in a club the size of Madame Jojos.

Unfortunately such are the vagaries of the music industry that when we turned up around 9ish to check out the support band it turns out we’d already missed them. Ah well they were probably shit anyway.

Anyway White Heat is always a fairly safe bet for both a fun night out and an evil hangover the next day so we took this as a good opportunity to focus our attention on getting drunk and checking out the other acts,  Brighton’s superbly hirsuite Pope Joan and (I think…) We Are Animal.

Sadly the aforementioned booze makes all attempts at a review based on anything vaguely resembling reality a little difficult, though I’d like to say Pope Joan were good. I’m kind of recollecting fuzzing, buzzing synths, scratchy guitars and urgent drums, all things that would generally earn a big thumbs up from my position in the gutter.

Luckily for the sake of our journalistic credibility our in-house paparazzo Tom Medwell’s camera was a tad more reliable…

 

Some pictures from the Unlucky For Some party at Corsica Studios a couple of weeks back. Slutty Fringe were present in full effect supplying weird and wonderful afro-psyche-metal-disco interludes in between the likes of The Emperor Machine, The Present, Higamos Hogamos and The Oscillation.

I dont think I’ve ever got to play so many strange records that I’ve never been able to play in a club before, including the full 20 minutes of Niagara’s Sangandongo, much aceness.

Tom Medwell followed us down the rabbit hole with his trusty camera.

 

We came, we saw, we conkered. Last Tuesday we took over the roof of The Queen of Hoxton for the first annual Slutty Fringe Conker Tournament and despite it being pretty much the chaotic shambles that we were expecting it was also a stupidly fun night out.

After several rounds of hardcore conkering the eventual winner was one Mr Graeme Ross, you can see his smug visage framed by his champions necklace in the pictures below.

Most of the pictures were taken by the talented Mr Medwell, but as he had to shoot off to snap No Age’s secret gig for the NME, we took a couple ourselves. I’m sure you’ll be able to work out which…

Special thanks to Havana Cultura, Mien Tay and Lipstickandlaceboutique.com for supplying the prizes and the wonderful David and Krista at The Neon Hub for all their help. Now you better start getting in training for next year, as we’ll be back bigger and better.

 

Noisy hardcore tykes No Age were over from LA last week to tear the Scala a new hole and by all accounts their mission was accomplished.

Our legendary band paparazzo Tom Medwell caught them in action, though as I actually spent that evening drilling holes in 150 conkers (yes ladies, that’s how I roll) those looking for some words on the night should probably cast their eyes in the direction of The Line of Best Fit.

 

Shoreditch boozer The Legion decided to host their own mini five day festival, Disco Not Disco, the other week. Thinking this could be fun but not actually wanting to leave the xbox for a night (I was almost at the end of Fallout 3, come on!) we forced Tom Medwell to give up a night of watching Eastenders and go shoot the likes of Drums of Death, We Have Band and The French Horn Rebellion with his magic camera.

 

Well we’re a bit late with these ones. Blame it on a week in an internet free cottage in Cornwall, a weekend at Bestival and the subsequent week’s illness.

Anyway,  the subject of this gallery is Offset, a rather nice little festival that’s been running for a couple of years now down at the end of the Central Line.

With a lineup that tends to feature the likes of Kap Bambino, Kasms, Drum Eyes and The Horrors, we figured we should pack off our own Lord Snowden, Tom Medwell, to catch the chaos.

 

As you have hopefully noticed we’ve had a bit of a relaunch this week. Never ones to miss a chance to drink  free beers and have a party we took over Cargo last Saturday to celebrate.

Thankfully whilst our memory of the night might have been obliterated by the aforementioned free booze (except oddly enough one curious Frankie Goes To Hollywood nipple tweaking incident), Tom Medwell was on hand with his trusty camera to record the night for historians to ponder over.

Big thanks to everyone who came down, to Cargo for hosting us and especially to Trevor Jackson, Leo Zero, Grovesnor, I Haunt Wizards and Kinema (new favourite band!) for playing.

 

Personally here at the Fringe we like nothing better than to kick back on a Sunday and check out the latest crop of hard faced strippers sliding down the greasy pole of success at London’s finest gentleman’s clubs.

So you can only imagine our horror last weekend to find our live grumble show at Metropolis had been given the boot to make way for  the not particularly erotic sounding Margaret and her arty electro  mates.

Hard to believe I know, luckily Tom Medwell was on hand to capture the filth. I’ll be writing to my MP you know.

 

Whilst Sunday’s siren call of sofa and post roast snooze is busy seducing most of London, those looking for a truly decadent end to the weekend have been flocking to a refurbished Victorian bath house in the city where the likes of Roxy Velvet, Miss Vicky Butterfly, Kitty Bang Bang and friends hold court at the Boom Boom Club each week.

We dispatched Tom Medwell down camera in hand to catch the action.

 

Last Saturday Vice threw themselves a ‘warehouse’ party in Shoreditch with the likes of LA hardcore punks The Bronx, (also moonlighting as El Bronx), Crystal Fighters, Lovvers and Lovefoxxx from CSS playing. Slutty Fringe photographer-in-chief Tom Medwell braved the moshpit to report back.