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fierce panda 13th birthday hoo hah
big ol' press release follows. yeah.
fierce panda celebrates thirteen years of seismic melodic rumblings
Some people - possibly manufacturers of warm bread - call it the Baker's Dozen. Other people - possibly not creators of tasty cakes - call it the Devil's Dozen. Either way, renowned and poorly nouned independent label fierce panda has reached the ripe young age of thirteen and it is throwing a thirteenth birthday party and it is throwing it right like this:
fierce panda presents: SHITDISCO + XEROX TEENS + BOLT ACTION FIVE + DJs Daughters Of Kaos + Baseball Furies + The Cleft Palettes.
The Place: LONDON ELECTROWERKZ (7 Torrens Street, Islington, London EC1V 1NQ. 020 7837 6419)
The Date: FRIDAY FEBRUARY 23RD 2007
The Doors: 9.00pm until 3.00am. The Damage: £8.00 on the door / £6.00 advance from www.wegottickets.com (age limit 16+, kiddoes!)
The Story: the fierce panda crew likes a birthday party and, as luck would have it, as purveyors of a litany of classic one-off single releases over the years they haven't been short of a cool friend or three to hang out with on those special occasions: on our twelfth anniversary we had The Maccabees play at the Bull & Gate. The year before saw Keane return to and ram out the same Kentish Town establishment. Other celebratory highlights have seen 2004 bring forth Death Cab For Cutie at a sold out ULU, while 1999 witnessed a rising Coldplay pack out - you guessed it - the Bull & Gate at Club Panda. There have been many, many more but we were too drunk to pay too much attention.
What we do know is that it all started way back in February 1994 when the first ever fierce panda release, the 'Shagging In The Streets' New Wave Of New Wave-themed double vinyl EP, was celebrated with an unfeasibly successful launch night at Islington's Powerhaus. As is traditional with most of fierce panda's favourite drinkin' and a-fightin' haunts from 1994, the Powerhaus has long since been shut down and sold off and is now a building society at the top end of Liverpool Road. Rather pithily however, the panda's thirteenth birthday party is going to take place in Islington's Electrowerkz, just behind the Angel tube station over the road. Which means that in thirteen long whole years fierce panda has come roughly 645 yards. Well played, Cap'n Blackeyes!
Tonight's entertainment will be spread over a club-tastic two rooms: for starters a veritable jamboree of the capital's neatest DJs will filling the floor in room two, which will in turn be hosted by the debonair shadowy figures behind the vivacious brand new 7" singles venture called Cool For Cats. Next door is the live action where colour-crazed techno mavericks BOLT ACTION FIVE open proceedings, followed by the feverishly in-demand punk scramblings of XEROX TEENS and the bar-crashing electro-rucking noises of SHITDISCO, who headline the main room in a panda stylee. This in itself is a small but not inconsiderable footnote to fierce panda's history as during 2006 the label retired from releasing its fairly seminal one-off singles by the likes of Idlewild, Placebo, Embrace, Kenickie and Boy Kill Boy to concentrate on longterm projects.
SHITDISCO are one of those precious longterm projects: otherwise known as four rapscallions from Glasgow they have been delighting the drugcrazed hordes with a string of illegal parties and moderately legal live shows over the past two years. A vibrant tour with Klaxons last October set the band up for the top 75 success of their 'Reactor Party' single and a month in the studio recording their debut album with Luke Smith from Clor. Tonight's show steers the good ship SHITDISCO towards their new single called 'OK' (out April 30th) and a tour with The Rapture as well as the release of the aforementioned elpee, 'Kingdom Of Fear', on April 16th 2007. 'Kingdom Of Fear' will be fierce panda's 49th album release in thirteen years. Not such a singles club anymore, eh pandaboy?
www.electrowerkz.co.uk / www.fiercepanda.co.uk
www.myspace.com/shitdisco / www.myspace.com/xeroxteens / www.myspace.com/boltactionfive