Music
Live Review: The Staves – The Roundhouse 9.11.15
School night out. Early start in the bar of the Roundhouse. Camden Brewery beer. Hot dogs and ale over the road at Joe’s. More beer back in the venue. Beautiful music from the Staveley-Taylors. Back into the bar for more beer. Urgh. And an über taxi home. Dirt. I think I’ve just about recovered and …
Live Review: Alex G – Sheffield O2 13.11.15
Of all the reasons I listen to the music that Alex G releases (and have so for a number of years), whether they’re covers or originals, well-written compositions or filled with creative hooks, it’s the honesty in her voice that keeps me listening. After seeing her live show in Sheffield last night, this was the …
Not Forgotten: Fleetwood Mac – Tango in the Night
Like many acts who hit their creative peaks in the 60s and 70s, Fleetwood Mac struggled with the 80s. By the middle of the decade, the willingness to experiment with their tried and tested formula that they had demonstrated so definitively on Tusk, had been lost. 1982’s Mirage had been a disappointingly standard Fleetwood Mac …
See: Steel Pulse release video teaser for documentary Dreadtown
Legendary Birmingham reggae band Steel Pulse have teamed up with the director Yoni Gal and the Oscar nominated producer Mile Lerner to launch an Indiegogo site to raise the funds needed to finish a feature documentary about the band, titled Dreadtown. Expected towards the end of 2016, it explores the history of the band, through …
News: Black Crowes reissued on vinyl
The Black Crowes were a band for whom the stars almost aligned. Arriving on the music scene seemingly fully formed with their Faces / Rolling Stones / Humble Pie blues rocking coupled to a type of hard rock that exposed the hair metal hoards as being an exercise in style over substance. Fronted by brothers …
Meet: Rod Argent of The Zombies interview
Its not often you get the chance to speak to a bona fide legend, a real one mind, not just someone to whom we bestowed that title to entice more people into reading it (actually, we don’t do that – but you know, if we did) So when we got the chance to have a …
News: RIP – Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor
Ex-Motörhead sticksman, Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor, has died aged 61. Originally from Chesterfield, Taylor joined the London metal band in 1975, not long after its conception. Alongside Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister and Larry Wallis, Taylor played with the band for a year before guitarist Wallis was fired, to be replaced by Eddie ‘Fast’ Clarke. Following this, …
Premiere: SPC ECO – Let It Be Always
Here at backseat mafia, were very proud to be able to premiere the new video from SPC ECO, Let It Be Always. As some of you (no doubt the hipsters)may know if that the band (pronounced Space Echo) is the project of former Curve member Dean Garcia, alongside singer Eve Berlin. The track is floating, …
Album review Rhoda Dakar – Sings The Bodysnatchers
The Bodysnatchers were signed to the legendary British Ska label 2 Tone after only two gigs and were part of that multi-cultural musical revolution in the late 1970s. Yet surreally they never recorded an album so vocalist Rhoda Dakar has finally put that right some four decades later. To realise this dream of finally making …
Album Review: Singapore Sling – ‘Psych Fuck’
‘Psych Fuck’ by Singapore Sling, buy it, love it, the end… Listen, feel, assimilate, emote, sensate… As a kid, I would have sat with the dictionary for hours, chasing “meanings”, following roots, finding nothing, repeatedly exposing words as empty vessels, crude, devoid approximations, blunt communicative tools, pregnant inadequacies… “I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, …