Black Honey Live at Manchester Academy 2

LIVE: BLACK HONEY / PHOEBE GREEN / ARXX – 08/10/2021

– Academy 2, Manchester – Back in 2015, Black Honey headlined the first gig I reviewed in my thirties. They were playing a free show, to only a handful of people, at Manchester’s Castle Hotel. In the six years since they’ve hugely grown their fanbase, a prediction it was not hard to make in my […]
I like going to music festivals very much. Not a particularly controversial statement I know, but after twenty-seven months without attending one, I’m pleased I made a last minute decision to travel to the Isle of Wight Festival 2021. The event felt a lot like other large festivals I’ve been to over the years, more […]
Isle of Wight Festival 2021

I FIRST SAW THEM AT ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIVAL 2021

LIVE REVIEW: DAMON ALBARN – MANCHESTER CENTRAL: MANCHESTER INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL

My first gig in eighteen months may have been in a socially distanced seated event, but blimey did it feel great to watch a live performance again. Every two years Manchester International Festival rolls around, and brings with it a feast of unique gigs, but none of us could have predicted just how unusual these […]
-THE MET, BURY- There are only four of them. Not seven, as was previously stated. Also, they don’t even drive tractors. Like, what is going on here? Anyway, The Seven Brave Tractor Drivers performed at The Met in Bury on 31st January 2020. In short, it was a really good gig, organised by Bury Cancer […]

LIVE: THE SEVEN BRAVE TRACTOR DRIVERS – 31/01/2020

LIVE: SPECIAL INTEREST – 10/03/2020

– Yes Basement, Manchester – Humint: The opening act helps to congregate the room without windows with the post-punk-post-hardcore approach of being a mechanism that doesn’t quite work yet still works, the reverse stutter that is the drumming being the pedestal that makes this band the more rhythmically interesting of the 2 performers. Chordal descents […]
– Bridgewater Hall, Manchester – Don’t mention it Don’t mention it Don’t mention it Don’t mention it Don’t mention it There are empty seats due to the coronavirus. There, I’ve addressed it. Some people don’t feel comfortable enough to come to a concert hall full of people who potentially have a world wide pandemic virus, […]

LIVE: JON HOPKINS – 13/03/2020

LIVE: THE ORIELLES – 05/03/2020

– The Ritz, Manchester – This is being billed as a homecoming gig of sorts for The Orielles. By ‘homecoming’, I think people mean ‘big gig up north’, as the band hail from Halifax on the wrong side of the Pennines to Manchester, but we’ll let that slide; the excitement amongst a near to sellout […]
-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- First on stage tonight at Gorilla are Nottingham-based four piece Do Nothing, a post-punk band utilising the talk-singing style that is quickly rising back into fashion within the indie scene. Singer Chris Bailey’s live rambling talk/shout vocal style, along with easy comparisons of Talk Show and Dry Cleaning, reminds me of a mix between […]

LIVE: MARIKA HACKMAN / DO NOTHING – 24/02/2020

LIVE: JULIAN COPE / KEELEY FORSYTH – 21/02/2020

-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Keeley Forsyth It appears minimalism by spook is an effective strategy for the achievement of crowd bamboozlement; the ageing gig-goer prevalent around no doubt expecting a forgettable dilute-Copeian derivative hell bent on attaining das capital, yet not so. Aided only by the wheezing of what probably is a faux-accordion, the vocal adopts the […]
-YES, MANCHESTER- Adam Bainbridge is here for a good time. Entering the Yes stage in pearls, leather chaps and sparkling disco pants clutching a bunch of flowers, they saunter onto to a brilliant disco throb which melds into the stone cold classic ‘Young Hearts Fun Free’, and we all instantly know this is going to […]

LIVE: KINDNESS – 20/02/2020