Unkle Tickets

Rock: progressive. Electronica: leftfield. Beats: edgy. All this and more dwells within the one amazing act: UNKLE. And now BIG DAY OUT 2008 brings you UNKLE as you've never seen UNKLE before: a fully-fledged live band, able to leap multiple musical genres in a single bound (and blow your mind in the process).

Revolving around the unshakeable pillar of James Lavelle for over a decade, UNKLE has always been a shapeshifting affair. UNKLE soundtrack. UNKLE remix. UNKLE DJ. UNKLE make albums - 1998's foundation-shaking Psyence Fiction, 2004's intense Never, Never, Land and 2007's War Stories. Albums that defy musical categorization, and make the most of an amazing cast of guest vocalists: Thom Yorke, Richard Ashcroft, Ian Brown, Mike D...

Since Never, Never, Land, Lavelle's other half in UNKLE has been singer/songwriter Richard File. On their latest effort, War Stories, the Brits took inspiration from the prog-metal and stoner rock of the Californian desert, drafting the services of producer Chris Goss, vocalists Josh Homme, The Cult's Ian Astbury, Massive Attack's 3D, and even Lavelle himself making his singing debut. The album has been described as ominous. Apocalyptic. Stormy... In other words, War Stories is the soundtrack to now.

"The sound is big, bold and badass...Aggressive yet soulful, War Stories doesn't just straddle the line between rock and electronica - it destroys it." (Billboard, July 2007)

"When people say to me, ‘Oh you've made a rock record', I'm like, yeah, it kind of is, but actually the bottom line is it's more of a dance than a rock record in the way that it's been made," Lavelle told the Herald Sun. "It comes from more of a DJ than a live-band aesthetic."

Now, however, UNKLE have flipped the script. To bring War Stories to life, Lavelle has dreamed up a unique audiovisual experience incorporating a seven-piece band, lights, screens and (probably) bells and whistles. The band features File, Gavin Clark of Clayhill (the voice of War Stories' Keys to the Kingdom and Broken), South's Joel Cadbury, plus James, Matt and Mike of ethereal Baltimore big beaters Big in Japan. "It's Chemical Brothers meets Nine Inch Nails," Lavelle told Rip it Up. "It's pretty intense and pretty heavy."

"UNKLE flipped through a history of British rock pomp, from psychedelia to Radiohead. With UNKLE working as a band rather than a studio project, the texture of the songs metamorphosed as they went, from keyboards and beats to guitar turbulence, and the more frenetic they got the better they sounded." (New York Times, October 2007)

So, is it a band? A group? A collective? A cluster? Is it rock? Electronica? Hip hop? Just face it - it's UNKLE. And to experience this one-of-a-kind musical tour de force, BIG DAY OUT's yer UNKLE.