ALBUM: Officer Kicks – Citywide Curfew

Several things annoy me deeply about this album. Firstly there’s the typeface ripped off the Libertines. It suggests, correctly, a complete lack of originality, and worse still that we’re faced with yet another imitation landfill indie band. It was a depressing prospect two years ago, and now it’s reached suicidal levels. And then there’s the […]
– THE RUBY LOUNGE, MANCHESTER – With all the ’80s nostalgia going on at the moment, I was fully expecting a dose of it at the Ruby Lounge tonight. Rolled up jeans, hairbands, there was even a Bananarama-style jump suit on offer. I don’t condone it, but maybe that is because I suffered it the […]

LIVE: DARWIN DEEZ – 15/04/2010

LIVE: ROLO TOMASSI – 12/04/2010

– THE ROADHOUSE, MANCHESTER – What, with having a job, and enjoying things like showers and evening meals, I can’t make the 6pm doors at the Roadhouse. I’ve missed ‘Throats’, but a friend tells me it was ‘like being sonically raped’, so maybe that pie wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Alex, the singer […]
– CLUB ACADEMY, MANCHESTER – Although Robyn Hitchcock has been releasing records since 1981, I have to be honest that he has only just come to my attention with the release of his latest album, ‘Propeller Time’. I heard ‘Sickie Boy’ – the latest single from the album – on BBC 6 Music, and the […]

LIVE: ROBYN HITCHCOCK & THE VENUS 3 – 11/04/2010

EP: We were Promised Jetpacks – The Last Place You’ll Look

What’s happening to Scottish music nowadays? Scottish bands seem to have developed a real identity within guitar music – perhaps seeking to make amends after the turd that was Franz Ferdninand plopped, steaming onto the British music scene. Bleak, melancholy and down-beat, yet without being depressing – like the last rays of sun on a […]
Hyperdub’s first lady Ikonika steps forward with the first in a series of 12”s featuring tracks from her forthcoming album and remixes by some of the best producers around. April’s release sees “Idiot” drop, backed with a remix from Altered Natives. With the full album “Contact, Love, Want, Have” out on Hyperdub on the 6th […]

SINGLE: Ikonika – Idiot /Altered Natives Remix

SINGLE: THE HORNBLOWER BROTHERS – GIVE & RECEIVERS/GHOST OF KEROUAC

Damn, blast and bother! The Hornblower Brothers have gone and given me a bit of a dilemma (no not one of those cars similar to a Jaguar, although that would be nice). I have a playlist on my Ipod for my walk to work every morning and there is only one rule, and that rule […]
– THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – With the students at home on their Easter break, and some football match in Salford apparently piquing the interest of anyone left behind, Oxford Road is deathly quiet. So too is the normally heaving Deaf Institute, and it’s to a practically deserted ballroom that tight-trousered local foursome, Hey Zeus! […]

LIVE: ROYAL BANGS – 07/04/2010

ALBUM: Starkey – Ear Drums & Black Holes

Starkey raises the bar to new heights with this release. His second studio album to date “Ear Drums & Black Holes” is nothing short of perfect and reinforces why Starkey, the pioneer of his self coined “Street Bass” sound, is at the top of his game right now. The album shines through the saturated world of […]
In Jules Verne’s famed novel Phileas Fogg is an isolated character, a man obsessed by routine and order who breaks from a lifetime of conformity to win a twenty thousand pound wager.  He is a cold character who rarely displays any emotion but full belief in his cause.  It is therefore appropriate that a man […]

ALBUM: Mr Fogg – Moving Parts