Appreciating racey sounds at a sustainable pace, the right honorable Robert John Gorham is all about wonky, warped mixes and melodies. Championing anti-folk, ambient techno and breakbeat music to the masses via his weekly early morning Radio 1 show, the Hampshire born, father of three first founded legendary club night, turned record label, Sunday Best in a quiet tea room. Frequented by a crowd he describes as “weirdoes, late night freaks and alcoholics” early of an evening, at the same time each Sunday, his vision was niche and is now internationally successful. Well into rave culture Rob and his mate then decided to become DJs, teaching themselves the basics on turntables. Today he is one of the country’s most respected scouts of upcoming, left-of-field talent.

Unbound by genre, this former music journo breaks all the rules placing gentle acoustic tunes next to hard techno and winding down sets with up-beat BPMs. Unconventional by trade, his long flowing locks frequent the Isle of Wight Dales each and every year at Bestival, an event he began organising eight years ago. Currently working on an exciting, under-wraps cinematic DJ’ing side project, Rob keeps busy with the school run and a nice bottle of wine but never at the same time. Here i-D online steals a minute or five with Mr Bank and an i-DJ mix that he dubs, ‘An Imaginary Soundtrack To An Imaginary Film’.

What did you used to get up to as a kid in Hampshire? Riding my BMX, playing trombone in my Dad’s brass band, going to school, sailing and daydreaming.

Where do you source the majority of new material you listen to? About 70% from files sent to me online and the rest from record shops and the four mountainous bags of CDs and records I get sent every week! I wish everyone would go digital for promos!

Where do you go for a good night out? Salty’s Bar on the Isle of Wight. No nonsense mayhem.

How did Radio 1 first come across your work? I suppose they saw what I was doing with Sunday Best, the club and record label, which kind of captured that early morning psychedelic woozy vibe.

Who would be your dreamguest to have on your show? Prince.

Festivals have been in the news this week with critics suggesting that their popularity is on the decline, do you believe this to be the case? Not at all. We’re in the middle of a huge financial mess and depression so obviously people aren’t spending as much dough and to be frank there are probably a few too many festivals. Natural selection will keep the strongest and best. I’m very upbeat about the UK festival market, easily the best in the world

What has been the best outfit of all time worn at Bestival? The lovely Indian girl who came as an Indian takeaway standing in this giant silver takeaway container with £3.50 scribbled on the top.

What was the first festival you went to and what happened? I ashamedly jumped the fence at Glastonbury whilst being chased by men on horseback, landed on my feet and never looked back

Tell us something about you no-one else knows? I used to sail for England.

Where can we find you during Bestival? Everywhere all at once.

twitter.com/robdabank

Text: Milly McMahon

See our full i-DJ archive here.

Yasmina Reza’s play, God of Carnage, toys with the restraints of theatre. Two couples politely discussing what to do about their fighting sons, descend into social barbarianism, without ever leaving the confines of an apartment. The close-quarters of the proceedings lend themselves perfectly to Polanski’s directorial style. Claustrophobia has been a constant presence in his movies, and his adaptation of Reza’s play – Carnage, retains it in aplomb. There are occasions where you’ll be watching through twitching fingers at the levels of tension that arise from an initially relaxed conversation.

With a cast of only four, Carnage relies on solid, meaty performances. It’s fortunate then, that Kate Winslet, Christopher Waltz, Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly all come at the script with gusto, as, due to the incredibly limited environment the film takes place in, the acting is the only thing for the audience to really sink their teeth into. However don’t let the unusually minimal premise fool you into thinking this isn’t a film with depth. There are many layers to the chaos that arises between the couples. Alliances and chasms shift between the individuals as they rally round common ground. Genders, political leanings, classes and child-rearing techniques all become battlegrounds as each character increasingly fights harder and harder to hold their ground.

While the faithfulness the film pays to its source material may deter some viewers, the pitch black comedy and terrific performances should win it even more. Vomit, alcohol and violent children has never felt so sophisticated.

Carnage is released in UK cinemas 3rd February.

Text: Joe Iley

Click images to enlarge.

OCC is a brand new make up brand from New York City, bringing a line of obsessively crafted products, which are 100% vegan and cruelty free. OCC’s range of Lip Tar’s are driving make-up addicts into a frenzy – highly pigmented, long-lasting liquid lipsticks, which are super-duper opaque and glossy! In tune with the SS12 trend for ‘Supersaturated Car Paint Lips’, (Val Garland), OCC lip tars are about to blow! Inspired by kaleidoscopic high shine colours and a love for bold, brash makeup, four completely different looks can be born. Blue lips, Yellow cheeks, Fire Red eyes and a signature coloured brow creates a colour-clashed look ready to start the spring season with!

occmakeup.com

Text and Makeup: Lucy Bridge @Jed Root using OCC
Photography: Louie Banks
Photography Assistance: Eliza Roze Moore
Hair Stylist: Mari Ohashi using Bumble and Bumble
Model: Georgie @ Profile
Camera & Editing: Nikolas Kasinos
Music: Class B Band, Sillycatto

Key Products

Look 1: Loose Colour Concentrates in Cherry Bomb and Glisten. Lip Tar in Pretty Beige and Pretty Boy.
Look 2: Loose Colour Concentrates in Hum, Burning and Red Light. Lip Tar in Stalker.
Look 3: Loose Colour Concentrates in Ironic and Red Light. Lip Tar in Vintage.
Look 4: Loose Colour Concentrate in Iced. Lip Tar in RX.

Baby-darling, doll-faced honeys Matt Hayward, Russell Marsden and Emma Richardson have been sent from Southampton to reignite the anarchic flames of guitar thrash anthems! Arranging effortless melodies, which move tide-like and in time with the anticipation of each track, Band of Skulls’ cold, hard musical scores are designed to bring audiences to their knees. Equally skilled and able to jam out full-on, thrash ballads, Matt, Russell and Emma’s dynamic presence on stage is mesmeric. Conjuring a loud, brash and wistfully aggressive noise that moves organically, beyond the three musicians’ control, the captivating qualities the Skulls possess are outstanding; their sounds unrivalled within the genre of blues-rock right now. Howling, ebbing, crashing and deafening, this is the way the 60’s sounded.

Playing support to the Black Keys at Alexandra Palace next week, the band’s bassist Emma Richardson’s solo art exhibition also opens today at the Londonnewcastle Project Space, entitled Cruisin for a Bruisin. Aptly named considering the Skulls’ next single ‘Bruises’, taken from their forthcoming second album Sweet Sour, comes out via Electric Blues Recordings on Feb 12^st.

Here, the threesome slow it down for an i-N session of a track from the new album.

bandofskulls.com

Text: Milly McMahon
Film and Photography: Dexter Navy

Capturing female beauty like no other in the industry, Paolo Roversi takes photographs that stick in the mind and seduce the soul. Born in Italy, based in Paris, Roversi has spent over three decades establishing himself as one of fashion’s most celebrated and sought-after photographers, and has shot for the likes of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and of course i-D (his most recent cover being the glorious Stella Tennant for The Hedonist Issue in spring 2011). As well as embarking on numerous collaborations with fashion giants such as Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons and Yves Saint Laurent, Roversi has made some of the world’s most beautiful women appear immortal, from Natalia Vodianova and Kate Moss to the entrancing Guinevere, one of his favourite muses. With portraits that range from the ethereal and romantic to the devilishly dark, Roversi is a photographer who favours a natural aesthetic, preferring to work from his austere Parisian studio and often using a simple 8×10 camera and the sunlight from his window to shoot.

Now at London’s innovative Wapping Project Bankside, a collection of Roversi’s finest works will be on display for all to see. Taking material from both his acclaimed Nudi and Studio series, the exhibition will focus on one subject in particular: the perfect Guinevere as she sits perched in his studio, bearing her body and soul against a sombre background of bare timber and creaky stools. i-D Editor-in-Chief Terry Jones sat down with Roversi to discuss memorable moments, muses and the art of romance.

TJ: Getting into fashion and going your own way, when did that start?
PR: That started, not long after I assisted Laurence Sackman. I started with a little still life, a kind of domestic picture because I had no studio. I started doing still life in the kitchen, with my children’s little toys. I remember I did a story, I called it Domestic Accident, it was a little man jumping on a bike out of a jar of marmalade. With this little still life, I showed my director and immediately I got some work. Elle asked me to do a story of shoes. Then from there, little by little I went to fashion, accessories first, then models. I don’t remember exactly the progression.

TJ: Was your wife working in fashion?
PR: Yes my wife was working in fashion. At that point we were living in a little, little apartment, two salons, but my studio was there. There has always been a studio in the house, I don’t know why, but I always have a domestic studio. When I moved 25 years ago, I had a whole floor for my studio. Now the whole building is a studio! It’s funny because, even now when some models or some make-up artists come to the studio, they often say, “It’s nice here, it feels like home, it’s not like a studio.” So it’s a tradition, this domestic feeling. It’s funny, I never did it on purpose, it just happened, I don’t know why.

TJ: Do you think it influenced the type of picture you took?
PR: I think so, I think so, it creates an intimate feeling.

TJ: You get the romances like Stella Tennant…
PR: Yes, many romances like Stella Tennant and Lauren Bacall. She was a famous actress in the United States, did all the TV series, about the Mafia.

TJ: Romance is part of your secret…
PR: Yes, I think so. I am somebody who is very romantic. Since childhood, I have been reading romantic poetry.

TJ: Did you ever write?
PR: I was writing yes. I wanted to be a writer, until I was 18 or 20 years old. I was very involved in literature; I was going to all the meetings and the conferences of writers. Reading all the reviews, I was very interested. Then little by little, I don’t even know why, I moved to the image. I moved from the word to the image. Everything that happened, happened by chance, I never decided I wanted to be a writer or a photographer. I have always gone where the wind has taken me, I am lucky there has always been a good wind, I like what I’ve done.

TJ: Do you make your luck?
PR: Yes, of course. But I think it’s the wind, it’s a good direction. It’s a mixture. But even in my pictures, I like the chance, I like the accidental light in a picture. It’s true when I take a Polaroid, when something happens that wasn’t expected, I love that. But it’s not a real accident…

TJ: It’s a controlled accident… You know what’s going to happen.
PR: I think it’s half and half. Always half and half.

TJ: With Polaroid also you would see quite quickly…
PR: Yes with Polaroid, you provoke an unexpected reaction. The material is harder to control and the mechanics are a little more delicate.

TJ: Did you archive the Polaroids?
PR: Yes, the archive is very important. As you said before, people don’t make negatives anymore. I think it’s a big mistake for a photographer not to. It’s very important, it’s all we have; it’s our treasure in a way. It’s not just our work, it’s our lives.

TJ: What’s going to be in the exhibition at Wapping?
PR: It’s been a long time since I had a solo exhibition and I’m very happy to have another one. It’s not a big exhibition. It’s a little selection of some of my work, some pictures from my book Studio. I like the book because it shows the secret part of my studio; my stool, my blanket, my lens, my tools, which I work with everyday. These tools are never the protagonist. But I like this book because the tools become the subject of the full page. I like my little cable leads to become the star for a moment. I respect my tools very much.

TJ: But if you have to travel do you take the same camera?
PR: Not all the time, but mostly. My blanket is always coming with me; some pieces always come, it’s a bit of superstition.

TJ: Do you get let down with a camera, do you have back ups, if one camera doesn’t work?
PR: Yes and I change. Once I was in New York in the middle of the street with Milla Jovovich working for W, and I was there with my 8 x 10 and suddenly there was a big storm and my camera is wood, very fragile, so I couldn’t work with it. So I thought, “what can I do now, I have only this camera.” So I saw this store, Kodak, ‘Your Picture in On Hour’, so I brought a camera. It was funny because there were lots of Larry Clark pictures in the store, and I said “Do you know Larry Clark?” And he said “oh Larry, he’s my best friend, I do all his prints”. So I was not so scared to work with this camera after that!

TJ: And for the exhibition, you show some of your nudes?
PR: Oui, just 6 nudes of Guinevere [Van Seenus] because there is a studio part and a Guinevere part. It’s not just about a girl in front of the camera, moving and jumping and smiling. It’s a strong relationship that is very important to my work. It’s my dream about beauty and sexuality, and they are very important, some of these girls, they give me the courage and the energy to work.

TJ: How old were they when you started working with them?
PR: They were very young, Kirsten [Owen] was 17, Guinevere was the same, 16, 17. Natalia she was maybe 18, all very young. I am still photographing them now. They are really part of my work and part of my life too. Because there’s no border between life and work. I think it’s very difficult to separate your private life from your work, they are touching all the time.

TJ: Particularly when you have the studio in your house…
PR: Certainly, if you are a photographer, or an artist in general, it’s 24 hours day.

TJ: You have lived in Paris for a long time…
PR: Oui I came in 1972.

TJ: But I remember the picture you gave for the SOUL project, of you with this huge family in Italy.
PR: Ah you remember that picture! Those are my roots. Unfortunately some people in the picture are not there anymore, but new ones are arriving, that’s life. The family is still huge. My roots are very important to me, you can’t forget them. There is a very famous Chinese proverb that says ‘when you don’t know where to go, look at where you’re coming from.’ I think it’s very nice and I will never forget where I came from. I’m a very nostalgic person. I remember once I said to Robert Frank – we were looking at a picture of him – and he said “maybe this picture is a bit nostalgic” and I said “you know Robert, I’m sure I will die of nostalgia. It won’t be a heart attack or cancer, it will be nostalgia!” He was laughing at me!

TJ: You have a lot of connections with Rei Kawakubo and with Yohji Yamamoto. How did you establish such a strong connection with them?
PR: What they do has touched me very deeply, I was always fascinated and since the beginning, I was very touched by the creativity and the elegance and the sense of beauty from Rei and Yohji. I think they felt the same with my pictures so we slowly got in contact. They are of course Japanese so their roots are very far from mine, but they feel my roots and I feel theirs. They are both geniuses, they really are artists, not just fashion designers.

TJ: Although she says she’s a business woman…
PR: She says she’s a businesswoman but she’s an artist, she takes risks all the time, as an artist you do. She always pushes the boundaries a little bit further. I think she’s fantastic. Yohji too.

[…]

TJ: Who was your master?
PR: My real master was an Italian photographer in Ravenna, the place I was born. He did everything: industrial photography, theatre photography, football matches, weddings. So he had a lot, a lot of stuff, all the single 8 x 10s. He had a camera for everything.

TJ: How old were you?
PR: I was 17 or 18 and so every afternoon after school, I went to his studio. He was doing his prints himself, he had a dark room. The studio was not at all like a fashion studio or a professional photographer’s studio. It was an apartment. It was interesting, everything from him was interesting, he was a good teacher. This was my school in a way and then when I came to Paris, I was assisting and, by chance, I went to see Bourdin and Newton but I was not lucky with them. Bourdin asked me which star sign I was, I said I was Libra, and he said, “oh no I don’t like Libras”. Haha! So finally I found Laurence Sackman and he was a young photographer. Crazy guy, but a fantastic photographer. From him I learnt a lot, the professional way to work, very solid. He told me something I will never forget, he said “you know, your camera should be very solid in the tripod; the tripod very solid in the floor. But your mind should be completely free”. And this I think is a good lesson. The technique needs to be strong but the imagination should be completely free and flying all the time.

Paolo Roversi at The Wapping Project – Bankside runs from 3rd February until 31st March 2012.

See all of Paolo Roversi’s i-D covers here.

thewappingprojectbankside.com

Introduction: Rose Poole
Interview: Terry Jones
Images courtesy Paolo Roversi

Tiga and his bro Tom founded Montreal-based, hard-edged club imprint Turbo Records back in ’98 when neither had much else on. Skip forward over a decade, and the duo now front a quality roster which lines up talents to the tune of Gesaffelstein, Jesper Dahlbäck, Jori Hulkkonen, Renaissance Man, Brodinski, Boys Noize, Sei A, Clouds and Crowdpleaser next to dancehall dons Chromeo, Proxy and Azari & III. Turbo has no A & R department and engages their loyal and international following entirely through their brave ethos, which prioritises beats before business. i-D online caught up with the lads behind the label to find out more about their universally objective high standards.

When did you first begin the label? Tiga started the label back in 1998. I got involved when the label re-launched in 2005, after the release of Tiga’s debut album.

Why did you decide to name the label Turbo Recordings? Tiga named it. If there was any clear inspiration, it might have been that he was super into cars. He still is. I just checked.

What distinguishes Turbo from other record labels? For a label that is deeply steeped in Techno, we are very diverse. There aren’t many labels that branch out from Tiga, Chromeo and Azari & III to Proxy, Gesaffelstein, or deeper and more stripped-down stuff like Terence Fixmer and Sei A. I see it as a positive even if it makes for a marketing challenge.

How do you discover the majority of the new music you sign? Most of the new music still comes from unsolicited demos on Facebook, though lately a lot of our new artists have been doing A&R work for us and finding new records, so that’s been a shot in the A&Arm. That always gets a big laugh among other A&R guys. I hope you enjoyed it.

How do you define what you consider to be good music? If we like it, it’s good. I think it’s extremely complicated and ultimately useless to come up with any universal or objective standards. Although the less jazzy, the better.

Who are your strongest musical influences and references? I think the influences that really mean something are the things you listened to as a kid. In my case, that’d be stuff like Depeche Mode and Billy Idol. Technotronic if I’m being completely honest. And Ya Kid K’s solo stuff if I’m being career-damagingly honest.

What are some of the up and coming D.I.Y record labels you tip for 2012? Look out for a new label out of Australia by the Bang Gang gangmember Gus Da Hoodrat. He’s signed some really cool artists (Jagwar Ma) and is generally a great A&R guy. There are loads of great little labels out there… I love Comeme.

What are some the major labels you aspire to build Turbo to the calibre of? Kompakt and Warp for the scope, but all in all I guess R&S, for the simple reason that they’ve managed to sign such amazing music and seemingly have never made any compromises.

What is the strongest band or artist you have signed to the label? That’s like asking me to pick a favourite stepchild, to single him – or her – out for a special day on the tire swing while the others sit at home and wonder what they did wrong. Proxy or Gesaffelstein maybe. For what they do, Azari & III are pretty hard to mess with as well. Clouds are developing a lot as well and are ones to watch out for.

How do describe the aesthetic and ethos of the label? With so much diversity in the sounds we release, this is difficult to pin down. We release hands-in-the-air festival bangers, deep, trippy techno and lifestyle-house with equal passion. We package everything with love and attention to detail and affection for detail and try our best to make beautiful products with modern and elegant design.

What have you got coming up for the label in 2012? Proxy’s debut album. Loads of NEW JACK TECHNO by our core young artists like Duke Dumont, Clouds, Locked Groove, Nautiluss, Gingy & Bordello, Gesaffelstein, and more. ZZT & Renaissance Man remix albums. We did 35 releases in 2011. I don’t think we’ll do quite that many, but there will still be a lot!

Describe a typical day at work at the label? Go through a hundred emails before noon, eat a bagel at noon sharp, listen to tons of new music (post-noon), plan releases, have some Skype meetings and script some phone calls. Then I go home and have intense lucid dreams about the future of the music business, where I and other label heads forage for food and ammo in burnt-out record warehouses. Strangely enough, we still have to answer hundreds of e-mails.

soundcloud.com/turborecordings

Text: Milly McMahon