Tag: Tjinder Singh

Cornershop ‘I’m A Wooden Soldier’ Video

Posted on by ringocortina99

“It’s a Trojan horse of a song. Images of wooden soldiers are playful and harmless but you are suddenly bombarded with real political issues, colonialism, parked elephants, and reclaiming looted uniforms. “Victory is in peace not war.” Tjinder Singh

With the video director Astrid Edwards took a very punk view on the song because of its guitar lines & played with cut-ups and pre-existing photography and fast moving imagery to put the song back in 70s Britain, to bring out the Bolan boogie of the song.

Cornershop ‘I’m A Wooden Soldier‘ from the album ‘England Is A Garden‘

Here is Astrid Edwards the Director of the ‘I’m A Wooden Soldier’ video to outline her thoughts behind it’s making:

“This particular film is a little homage to the elements and themes of punk fanzines…something close to mine and the band’s collective teenage experience. I’d lurched into teenagehood on a steady diet of hand-stapled Sniffin’ Glue, early ID fanzines and Spare Rib. With that and our current Government in mind, I applied my slightly angry DIY punk ethic creating original artwork, cutting it up into photomontages with good old-fashioned scissors, a scalpel, some glue and a lot of paper with the intermittent re-photographing or old school photocopy thrown in. I then hand animated it, shot, and appeared in it (no budget for a performer) and edited it together myself mostly frame by frame. With some of the more complex scenes I worked with the brilliant designer/animator Sim Tennant in afterfx. It was really free-ing to go back to punk basics, really painstaking but fun – and much like the song, it felt apt and relevant to be working in that way. This is my second collaboration with Cornershop. Both films are quite raw but very different – what’s great is that the band are always so trusting and supportive of my ideas – this one particularly, as it literally came together frame by frame by frame. Analog for the digital generation…” Astrid Edwards

CREDITS: ‘Wooden Soldier’ video – conceived, hand animated, directed, produced, edited by Astrid Edwards Rockmother FIlms

Insta: therockmother

Twitter: @rockmother
Additional digital animation: Sim Tennant

http://www.simeontennant.com/Insta: gosh_what_now

‘Wooden Soldier’ is taken from the Cornershop album ‘England is a Garden’, order your copy via our Ample Play site.

Cornershop ‘England Is A Garden’ the new album on ample play records

Posted on by ringocortina99

Many people have asked what does England Is A Garden mean, what does it stand for? Well, as usual its thought provoker, and whilst you provoke thought it grows on you, whether you like it or not. Or is it that there are many types of garden, and the thought is about which – green and tendered or weed and London brick ridden? Maybe it is a garden with a door that leads you to other albums, for as usual the album is peppered with lines and words that have been used before?

Whilst you are on that thought, here is a Mojo piece that Tjinder just did. If you can work out what he is saying, putting meaning to England Is A Garden.

ALBUM PRE-ORDER IN THE FORMAT OF YOUR CHOICE HERE

Burning Morrissey Posters – Staging the Plaguing of the Raised Platform

Posted on by ringocortina99


Cornershop formed whilst me and Benedict were studying at Lancashire Polytechnic, & living in the same house. My brother Avtar and David (HB) C joined us.

Around September 1992, we were were compelled to burn posters of Morrissey at our gigs and also outside his EMI record label to stage against Morrissey’s flamboyant racist overtones. He himself was a fully formed 33 years of age, so we were surprised and disappointed at his quick succession of far right volleys – such as using Richard Allen skinhead imagery to being draped in a Union Jack, at a time when far right sentiment was on the rise & Blacks and Asians were being attacked and murdered.  He was such an influential artist that we needed to try and stamp it out, and it was further compounded because he never responded to discussion about far right wingism as he does today.

Our demonstrations were seen as quaint, people noted the points we were making, but most seemed happier that he was getting a backlash than anything akin to propagating racial hatred. Others simply carried on with their worshipping, slipping away over the years as his rhetoric got worse. It is good that we get more recognition for this anti-Morrissey stance now than we did last century.

We realise now more clearly, especially with the plethora of articles about this bolted horse that the term white privilege has allowed many to oversee such matters until one has a book or article to do.  Why else would such extreme expression have been tolerated for nearly 3 decades?

But times have moved on.  Morrissey has found favour with other twisted fruits like Farage, and Robinson & today the struggle is a general rise in international right-wingedness.  Austerity has broken the resolve of many an industry, times are more difficult for those that work hard and overall we have not had the time to puncture the illusion that Europe is to blame. Europe has really blessed the UK with funds, working standards, general protections and peace.  Without such guidelines the UK will be a tax haven for the few and enslavement for the many, and a great helipad for the US and Russia.  As we said in Staging the Plaguing of the Raised Platform: “The Presidents that you are against, & consequence that it may all go wrong Ananda.” We have it all to fight for and realise our own collective folly before it’s too late.

  

Photo by Pav Modelski.

 

Cornershop X Bloomsbury Festival

Posted on by ringocortina99

Two Cornershop events at Bloomsbury Festival next month this October 2017 if you can get to London.

‘What Did The Hippie Have in His Bag?’ Family Workshop

A family workshop with our friend Peter the Librarian and Tjinder Singh based on the Cornershop song and picture book ‘What Did the Hippie Have in His Bag?’

A session involving crafts, poetry, music and meditation. Come and find out what the Hippie has in his bag, in a session that entertains all ages.

11am Sunday 22 October Bloomsbury London Tickets & details here
The essential 7″ VINYL BOOK can be purchased here via our label Ample Play Records

 

URBAN TURBAN – A WALK THROUGH AN ALBUM
Tjinder has had this ‘Walk Through an Album’ idea for a long time. The album being the much cherished Urban Turban, an album of multiple musical and visual collaborations, which lends itself to becoming a physical experience. Bloomsbury Festival listened to the idea and walked it.

Do come and walk with us 18th October until 4th November.
CRUSH HALL, SENATE HOUSE – FREE ENTRY – Details here


 

The ‘Walk Through an Album’ is produced by Ample Play Records, commissioned by Bloomsbury Festival and supported by Arts Council England.

When I Was Born People Tried Their Damnedest To Kill Me

Posted on by ringocortina99

As time goes by the trade off between being known for one song to the detriment of the rest of our catalogue seems like a fake news item that started afore this century, and being called “the most underrated group in Britain” suddenly takes on some charm.  Then articles like this one in The Guardian appear, and all is rosey again.  Radiohead fans that deny When I Was Born was ever Spin Magazines number 1 in 1997 can do one, and a little balance and truth is back again, many thanks Guy Smith.

 

Cornershop Ft The Mike Flowers Pops ‘Born Disco; Died Heavy Metal’ Hold The Corner EP

Posted on by ringocortina99

Cornershop - Hold The Corner E.P. - ample play records

Last year we released our 1994 debut noisy pop album completely reworked as an easy listening vinyl slab. It came out on our label Ample Play Records and you check it out and order it here.

“Cornershop’s creative highs have sometimes seemed like the result of Tjinder Singh’s desire to prove his critics wrong – never more so than on this instrumental reworking of their debut album.” John Mulvey, Uncut

Some stated the easy lounge was reminiscent of Mike Flowers Pops. In the meantime, Tjinder had got to know Mike Flowers drummer, and it was therefore arranged that Mike would do his take on the original lyrics. The result is something that is augmented and fresh – a solid set of tracks for all the family, they are even still in keeping with the politics of the day, if not more so.

To accompany the song, the UK’s most celebrated hoola hoopers Hoop La La especially created choreographed a piece for the video (film and photography by Phil Miller) – Ooh La La Lemmy.

Out 1st of April via all digital plaftorms, including our own Ample Play.

A Springtime PLAYlist

Posted on by Tjinder

Springtime playlist small image

Selected for you by Tjinder & Ben, the audio equivalent of green shoots, rays of sunshine & pink blossoms. Some punjabi folk, 60’s garage, contemporary psych with The Smoking Trees & Sudden Death of Stars, some Ween, Alabama Shakes, Gap Dream, Jonathan Richman and more.

The Paperhead-Record Collector Review 4/5

Posted on by ringocortina99

The Paperhead release their debut release in the UK, Focus In On The Looking Glass on Ample Play Records on vinyl format only.

On first listen, you may think that you’ve stumbled across some long lost nugget from 1968. In fact, The Paperhead take their name from a lyric in a song by golden-age psychedelic age group July and they deal in lysergic haziness, with a colourfully confusing filter. Yet while the record may have a fairly vintage sound, it was written and recorded in the summer of 2010 by three 18 year old kids from Nashville, Tennessee. It has been championed on a number of occasions by James Endicott and here are what Record Collector and Shindig Magazine say about it: