1 June	Estrella Damm Primavera Sound 2007, Parc del Forum, Barcelona, according to their site.
2 June	Von Südenfed at Link, Bologna, according to the Mouse on Mars site.
9 June	Von Südenfed at The Garden Party, Ballinlough Castle, Athboy, Co. Westmeath, Ireland, according to the festival site.
1 July	The Ritz, Manchester, part of the Manchester International Festival. Tickets on sale. Support: readings from the Perverted by Language short story collection, published the same day.
13-15 July	Von Südenfed at the Melt Festival, Ferropolis, Gräfenhainichen, Germany

The Hamburg date (13 June) has been removed from the Fabrik website.

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added 14 May

Many thanks to Kyle for scanning in the Von Südenfed interview from the May 2007 issue of Wire (it's a 2.5 meg PDF).

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added 9 May

The Reformation promo video on youtube, with lots of MES dancing and TLC signing. I believe this was filmed at the Salutation Inn in Manchester on 6 April. They sent out a message that Friday evening inviting people to come down to watch and perhaps participate -- late notice.

 

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added 9 May

Lionel is doing a 30th anniversary Fall show on Jet FM in Nantes, France. It'll air next Thursday, 2 - 5 p.m French time, and you can listen online at http://www.jetfm.asso.fr/spip/. There's an announcement for the show here (with two of my 1998 photos).

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added 24 April; updated 9 May

9 May: Round 2 is closed, with Hip Priest scraping past No Xmas for John Quays after a mighty battle. Round 3 is underway with several cruel, early matchups: e.g., Joker Hysterical Face vs. Frightened, Neighborhood of Infinity vs. Lie Dream, Dr. Buck's Letter vs. Xyralothep, Fantastic Life vs. Gramme Friday.

2 May: Round 1 is closed with no real surprises, although the race between Various Times and High Tension Line was closer than I'd though it'd be (68-60). Round 2 is now underway with some tough matchups, e.g. Hip Priest vs No Xmas for John Quays.

24 April: Round 1 of Fall Cup 2007 is underway over on the message board. Here's Conway's introduction to the second edition of our knockout tournament. Will Wings squeak past Garden in the final once more?

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added 2 May

Here's Jesus's bit in last night's episode of Ideal, with thanks to Ocelot.

If you're in the UK I believe you can see the whole episode here.

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added 15 April; updated 14 May

14 May: The commenting function is again broken on the official site, and it appears that Elena has taken over posting duties. There's a "misage" from Mark that's prompted much discussion on the forum.

1 May: I thought my Fall News comment of 29 April might do the trick. Clayts has fixed the Track Record and the commenting function on the Official site. Still nothing new added to the latter.

29 April: The Track Record has been hacked to death by another Turkish group and is now unusable. If there's an entry you're looking for, you could try Google's cached page service (e.g., do a search like "fall track record" +levitate and then click the Cached link). I didn't have much success with archive.org's Wayback Machine.

20 April: Still no reply to my email or fix from Clayts, who appears to have abandoned the official Fall site and the Track Record. I've decided to remove the link to the Track Record from the navigation menu on this site. It's still linked from every page of the official Fall site.

15 April: The site's Track Record has been "HaCkeD By TürKPoweR >>> TURKISH HACKERS". I've emailed Clayts about the infiltration but I don't know if or when he'll fix the problem, since he hasn't done anything with the Track Record for several months. Unfortunately I don't have access to the server it's on.

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added 29 April

A rare Fall mention in The Onion (April 19-25, 2007; "Random Rules" column):

English writer Tom McCarthy comments on The Fall's "W.B." which has just come up on his MP3 player.

"I assume the title is a reference to W.B. Yeats, because The Fall are super-literary. Mark E. Smith was basically this working-class boy from Manchester who never had much formal education, but sort of came across Modernist literature in a drug-addled haze and really loved it. Mark E. Smith is like the original classical figure of the poet--he's like Orpheus, you know, who's just halfway dead. He's got one foot in the underworld. He's just picking up some transmission on the threshold between sense and complete nonsense that might contain all these incredible words of wisdom, or might just be complete garbled rubbish. But you know, in Greek plays they have seers and oracles who always talk in riddles. I always get the impression that Mark Smith is like an oracle."

Thanks to Neville for sending it in.

"W.B." refers to William Blake, not W.B. Yeats, and as mentioned on the Lyrics Parade the song's lyrics refer to Blake's The Song of Liberty.

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added 28 April

Brix Smith has an mp3 album, Neurotica, available for download. Samples and purchase on playlouder.com.

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added 24 April; updated 4 May

Here's a couple of minutes of John Peel's 1996 appearance on This Is Your Life, featuring MES and David Gedge.

And many thanks to Stephen for answering my plea for the entire episode, which he's now posted on youtube: part 1, part 2, part 3.

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added 20 April; updated 24 April

There's an interview with Von Südenfed in the May issue of Wire, and "Family Feud" from Tromatic Reflexxions is included on the accompanying Wire Tapper 17. Thanks to Tony for the cover.

From the latest Domino Records newsletter (thanks to Kentaro):

Von Sudenfed are a trio formed by Andi Toma and Jan St Werner of Mouse On Mars and Mark E Smith of The Fall.

Mark E Smith has led The Fall through more than 25 studio albums since their formation in Manchester 31 years ago. His lyrics, delivery, song-writing and attitude have had an incalculable influence on punk, post-punk and as many of their close relations and off-shoots as you care to think of, with artists from Wu Tang’s RZA, to LCD Soundsystem, DJ Shadow, and Pavement all acknowledged fans.

Jan St Werner and Andi Toma are best known for their work together as Mouse on Mars, debuting in 1994 with Vulvaland. On albums like Niun Niggung (their first for Domino), Idiology and Radical Connector they’ve gone on to perfect a signature sound which blends the lateral improvisational moves of jazz with the abstract complexities of electronica and the directness of acoustic instrumentation.

Von Sundenfed [sic] will be releasing a 12" 'Fledermaus Can't Get It' on 14th May and that will be followed by the release of their incredible album 'Tromatic Reflexxions' on 21st May. More details and pre-order opportunities to follow shortly.

Amazon.co.uk pre-order page.

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added 15 April

From today's Observer article on the top 500 British surnames, thanks to Ocelot.

 

And not to be outdone, here's Stewart Lee in today's Sunday Times, with a wonderful photo, thanks to thefrenzexperiment.

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added 14 April

The MES interview from the May 2007 issue of Record Collector, with many thanks to Ocelot.

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added 13 April

A third 2007 French interview (the Rock & Folk and Liberation interviews were in the previous Fall news), this time from the latest issue of Numero. Many thanks to Jean-Philippe for scanning.

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added 13 April

Michael Pollard sent in a virtual tonne of excellent photos from the Holmfirth gig (22 March 2007). Many thanks, Michael.

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added 12 April; updated 14 April

Two Friday the 13th Fall radio specials: one English, one French:

Harley:

http://www.thesoundprojector.com/radio-show/
Friday 13th April 2007, 5.30pm - 7pm BST

Thought you might want to know that this week's edition of Sound Projecting will be a Fall special, our second. This time we're dedicating the show to the avant garde end of The Fall's output, and also presenting some choice selections from the MES solo albums. A show for fans of Mollusc in Tyrol and Das Boat! (I'm not sure that we'll get round to playing Crew Filth though).

As with all Resonance broadcasts, you can tune in on the wireless in Central London on 104.4FM or stream it online via http://www.resonancefm.com.

All being well it'll also be made available as a podcast on the Sound Projector website for a couple of weeks following the show.

Déborah:

Hello, I am doing a show in french at Radio Campus Paris (93.9FM or www.radiocampusparis.org for streaming) about The Fall to celebrate the 30 years of the group's existence and the new album. It is during the night of Friday 13 april to Saturday 14 april at 1am to 4 am.

Although it is in french it is a nice occasion for all fans to hear some Fall's music.

The live stream wasn't working last night, but Déborah's show is now online at http://www.radiocampusparis.org/?p=2719

 

Fall News archive