Music
Album Review: Altadore – Golden Hills
Wow. I haven’t been this excited about a new artist for a very long time. Wow. I’m not claiming that this band is doing something that is going to break the world wide open. This isn’t the birth of rock and roll or hip-hop. And that’s not what they are trying to do. But it …
Track: Fat Freddys Drop – Blackbird & the album release show
We have this cleaner. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not one of those rich families that mention to everyone that they’ve got a cleaner because that means we must therefore be middle class. We actually need a cleaner. I seem to have bred (and I know they’ll be some argument about this) two of the …
New Music: Hey Sholay – WDYRWMTB
Odd chap that Walt Disney in many ways, but one thing he did say when he wasn’t accusing, well, just about anyone of being a communist was to say that ‘All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but …
Say Psych: Album Review – Pearl Mystic by The Hookworms
I find it hard to think of any band who I have seen live more often over recent years than The Hookworms. They have been on the live scene in Leeds, where I have lived for most of the previous twenty years before my move to Sheffield last year, for a few years now. Strangely …
Meet – The Last Skeptik, plus new album and video
In my day as a youth, the only producer I knew was that one that Ronnie Corbett used to use to give his funny stories some credence. And even when I started to take notice of what producers really were, then they were all these fancy American types, that drove huge cars and stood in …
Video: Low release new video for ‘Just Make It Stop’
What’s the point of a music video ? Boosting the appeal and reach of the song, yes ? By shock, by scale, by comedy, by dance move, by stunning artistic vision… Low have released the video for “Just Make It Stop” and it doesn’t really tick any of those boxes – but then I suppose …
Exclusive: Dan Clayton records Backseat Mafia a bespoke DJ Mix
There’s something about House music that I find so attractive on a Friday night. Of course in the dim and distant past when I was not too old to look vaguely embarrassing in a night club, I went across to the Hacienda in Manchester, and Passion and outside raves and……ahem, Johnny’s in Huddersfield. And it …
Album Review: Blue Angel – Departures
Fate, it seems played its part with Blue Angel. The first piece of fate happened at rehearsal rooms, the now defunct Backstreet Studios on Holloway Road in London , when producer/Instrumentalist Jason Newton heard Bella Bennett in the next room, rehearsing for a wedding, and he knew he’d found the voice he’d been looking for. The other piece …
News: Tom Hickox to join Richard Hawley, Band Of Horse and others at Somerset House ‘Summer Series’
In my day it was called YTS. When you wanted to learn a ‘trade’ like plumbing, or typewriting, or being a zookeeper (probably) or a footballer, you signed up on a course that was part schooling and part learning on the job, and they (the government that is) paid you something like £17.50 per week …
EP: Ty – Kick Snare and an idea (Part One)
I didn’t come from the slums, in fact there’s very little about me that is even remotely ‘urban’. When I was at school we had to do this tracing your family tree thing. There were others in my class where there parents had been involved in exciting jobs, like in the army or merchant navy, …