LIVE: TUSKS / ALPINES – 17/02/2017

– SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER – Tusks is the solo project of Emily Underhill. The Hastings-born singer-songwriter shifts from genre to genre, at one moment making a tense electronic song and at others channeling her inner King Krule as she aggressively strums her guitar whilst delivering a faultless vocal. Tusks is signed to the same label […]
– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Since 2001, German ambient techno master Ulrich Schnauss has been making the kind of music that sounds incredible through headphones; particularly when you’re on a long train journey, when you’re just staring out of the window watching the beautiful/bleak (delete as appropriate) landscapes of England’s sometimes green and pleasant land […]

LIVE: ULRICH SCHNAUSS – 15/02/2017

LIVE: DUKE GARWOOD – 12/02/2017

– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – It’s been a while since the Deaf Institute, with its adapted original features and perfect gig ambience, committed cultural harakiri and was eclipsed by the apparently more original-feature-featuring, more perfectly ambient and notably larger Albert Hall. Once the hottest alt gig venue in town, the good old Deafy could no […]
– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – When you decide you like a band, you listen to their music and decide, “I like that”. You don’t need their influences listed and what they’ve done previously to decide if you like them. However if that was all I had to go on without listening to Boxed In, I […]

LIVE: BOXED IN – 09/02/2017

LIVE: TOM HICKOX – 10/02/2017

– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – Support slots are a funny thing. Important in the development of any musician’s career, and often arriving with the inherited prestige of the headline artist. When I ask Tom Hickox, London singer-songwriter, about the prospect of supporting former Teardrop Explodes frontman and all-round eccentric Julian Cope, his face lights up. “An […]
– NIGHT & DAY CAFE, MANCHESTER – I don’t revel in the idea of giving a band a bad review, but in this case I feel it’s necessary to highlight a few negative features of the support band’s performances, in order to emphasise my admiration for our headliners. Locals Witch Fever kick things off in […]

LIVE: L.A. WITCH – 14/02/2017

LIVE: LADYHAWKE / ISLE – 11/02/2017

-ACADEMY 3, MANCHESTER – I’ve possibly not listened to Ladyhawke in about 5 years or more, not because I stopped liking her music or because she had stopped releasing music, it was just that it hadn’t appeared on my radar and I’d kind of forgotten about her. But Ladyhawke, or ‘Pip’ Brown, has in fact […]
– SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER – Cymbals Eat Guitars (CEG for brevity’s sake) are an odd band, and odd bands, as we well know, are the best. Frontman Joseph D’Agostino has a voice that can best be described as sounding like a guy with a brilliant voice but who is suffering from laryngitis – a kind of […]

LIVE: CYMBALS EAT GUITARS – 08/02/2017

LIVE: KATE NASH – 07/02/2017

– GORILLA, MANCHESTER – To say I am excited for tonight is an understatement – I am thrilled to be going to watch Kate Nash at Gorilla in Manchester. Having not released any new material for some time, or an album in an even longer time, to see Kate Nash shimmy on stage in full length […]
– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – Vaults’ rise to fame is one that epitomises today’s musical landscape. The electronic trio first pricked the ears of listeners when they uploaded ‘Cry No More’ to Soundcloud. The viral hit soon amassed 100,000 plays in just one week and they were soon fielding calls to appear on the soundtrack […]

LIVE: VAULTS – 06/02/2017