ALBUM: Liars – Sisterworld

I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that opening track ‘Scissor’ from Liars latest release ‘Sisterworld’ is nothing short of genius. In fact I could probably write a review of this track alone but I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible, this is an album review after all. The track […]
Too many collaborations sound like a match made in heaven, but end up in purgatory. They disappoint because the individual musician owes more to his band than he or she (or we) might think, and they have to compromise their own artistic vision to fit in with someone else’s leading to a product that is […]

ALBUM: Broken Bells – Broken Bells

ALBUM: Lemar – The Hits

Along with loss and love, unrequited love has long been one of the great themes of literature and music.  Unrequited love lacks any of the beauty or purity of real love. It is dark, obsessive and can destroy those who dwell in it.  In music, however, many songs about this love are often poignantly beautiful […]
New Young Pony Club, who play Manchester’s Mojo Live on Saturday 20th March as part of a tour of several Euopean countries, have just released their second album – the optimistically-titled ‘The Optimist’. When you live in the middle of a recession in a United Kingdom whose Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have not spoken […]

ALBUM: New Young Pony Club – The Optimist

ALBUM: Boogybytes Vol. 5 – Mixed by Seth Troxler

For those of you that didn’t know, Seth Troxler started out DJing at 16 years old in Detroit (alongside working in a local record store) when he developed what he now likes to coin as, “A preternatural understanding of rave, and dance music history, that now allows him to conjures up mixes and tracks like […]
This first full release by the Smoking Hearts is bad, it is very bad, and it is quite possibly the worst music I have ever heard. It is so bad it even fails to be laughable. Its only possible use is as an aide to interrogators of terror suspects, but it is most likely forbidden by […]

ALBUM: The Smoking Hearts – Pride of Nowhere

SINGLE: Goldfrapp – Rocket

After being widely maligned since its beheading, the 80s is now back. 2008 saw Neon Neon release their blinding album Stainless Style. It allowed us to revel in 80s power pop once again, with the added incentive that you could like it without shame because of its semi-ironic nature. If challenged you could shrug it […]
Upon hearing Machine Gun my initial reaction was one of mirth. I looked at my friend, he looked at me, and we both laughed. A few listens later and I’m less certain. Is this ridiculously good or just ridiculous? The dirty drum and bass intro I like, but the drop into a sort of electro-metal […]

SINGLE: Noisia – Machine Gun

LIVE: THE PHENOMENAL HANDCLAP BAND – 03/03/2010

– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – It’s great to see The Deaf Institute almost full to capacity. Most are probably here to listen to the song with lots of numbers in it, but there’s much more to The Phenomenal Handclap Band than their Tings Tings-style smash hit. It’s worth mentioning the support band to put things […]
– THE RITZ BALLROOM, MANCHESTER – When it was rumoured that Groove Armada’s latest album, Black Light, was a homage to the 80s, I feared the worst. As one of Thatcher’s children, born in 1975, I hated the 80s and I’m finding it pretty hard to stomach all this nostalgia, especially from bands that I […]

LIVE: GROOVE ARMADA – 02/03/2010