LIVE: DEBT AT THE DANCEHOUSE – 16/10/2010

– THE DANCEHOUSE THEATRE, MANCHESTER – Inside the Art Deco interiors of the surreptitiously situated Dancehouse Theatre, something pretty odd is happening. Onstage Alabaster Deplume appears to be having some sort of nervous breakdown/aneurism/? Having moved from a paranoid blaze of gentle strumming on his acoustic guitar, to an old fashioned typewriter where he repeats […]
– SOUND CONTROL, MANCHESTER – Tonight is my first ever gig at Manchester’s Sound Control and as I walk through the door I can hear via the piped PA from upstairs that JJR have just started their first song. As I hurriedly make my way to the stairs, the sound from the ground level bar […]

LIVE: THE JIM JONES REVUE – 15/10/2010

LIVE: IN THE CITY 2010 – DAY TWO – 15/10/2010

– VARIOUS VENUES, MANCHESTER – Day two of the marathon that is In The City 2010 kicks off with, well, a pint. Technical gremlins have descended on erstwhile Oldham St. shithole, Gullivers, pushing Fiction‘s eagerly anticipated set well back, and leaving the Good Ship CityLifers stranded with a pint of Guinness. Egad, the misery of […]
To mark the launch of charitable organisation, The Factory Foundation Recordings, dedicated to the late, great Tony Wilson, the label releases two EPs simultaneously. With no human blood available, in otherwise classic Factory style, the bands are free to fuck off whenever they want i.e. they are only contracted release to release with the label. […]

The Factory Foundation Records Launch

ALBUM: Sparrow and the Workshop – Black to Red EP

Harking back to the folk and folk rock of the late 60s, there is something simultaneously retrogressive and gloriously refreshing about Sparrow and the Workshop. Belfast-born, Chicago-raised Jill O’Sullivan enunciates like Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick on the surf rock/Pixies riffing of ‘Black to Red’, and Sandy Denny on the reverberating tones of ‘Medal Around Your […]
Unusually in these times saturated with the minutiae of celebrity life, there is no superlative press release issued with this EP and little information available on the internet. This paucity of background detail is a predicament faced by those reviewing this EP before me, if the scant online critiques are anything to go by. However, […]

ALBUM: The Dark Sky Singers – Like No English

ALBUM: Broken Records – Let Me Come Home

Refined via demo sessions at an old distillery grain store in the Scottish Highlands, Let Me Come Home has a sound that evokes its gestation – expansive, isolated, desolate and beautiful. Broken Records themselves have the sound of a folk band that gradually augmented into something louder and wider, and indeed these songs began acoustically, written in […]
There’s such a buzz behind Cloud Nothings at the moment that it’s easy to imagine that they could be the next American alternative act to break through big, which makes the release of their debut album Turning Onrather timely. With that in mind, ‘Can’t Stay Awake’ is a fantastic way to open proceedings, very much a […]

ALBUM: Cloud Nothings – Turning On

LIVE: HOMECUT – 13/10/2010

– CLUB ACADEMY, MANCHESTER – In the depths of the basement at The University of Manchester’s Union, a night called Biko Live rumbles and shakes. Previously having held the phenomenal Melodica, Melody & Me, Indian Bangra dancers, a clothes swap shop, it continues to house things fantastic and eclectic – this time it includes various […]
– VARIOUS VENUES, MANCHESTER – The early knockings of In The City are usually underwhelming, mostly empty affairs, so it’s great to see Common so packed for the opening band of this year’s festivities, Advances In Mathematics, that if you squeezed a few extra delegates into the room everyone would be vaporised under the sheer […]

LIVE: IN THE CITY 2010 – DAY ONE – 14/10/2010