LIVE: BAS / AUDIO PUSH / LUTE – 06/03/2019

-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Bas is a New York-raised rapper and disciple of the Dreamville hip-hop troupe, and his fellow teammate J.I.D recently said that collectively, they are striving to go toe-to-toe with Top Dawg Entertainment, the front-running label in the genre this decade. The statement makes sense, especially considering how well the match-ups align: Dreamville head […]
-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- For the celebration of International Women’s Day, Gorilla and The Deaf Institute have come together for SHE PWR, an event to celebrate women artists of every kind: visual arts, spoken word and music. The Deaf Institute welcomes four bands/artists on stage tonight: ILL, WITCH FEVER, Current Mood Girl (who I missed, unfortunately) […]

LIVE: SHE PWR (ILL / WITCH FEVER / JULIA BARDO) – 08/03/2019

LIVE: CALVA LOUISE / KID KAPICHI – 06/03/2019

-NIGHT PEOPLE, MANCHESTER- So when I rock up at Night People, Manchester, a venue filled with character, I find myself mildly disappointed by trying-too-hard-to-be-angsty, slightly pretentious, Radiohead wannabe support band Sugarstone, (who, I strongly believe are clinging onto the ‘moody band who haven’t slept in years’ bandwagon just for the trend of it) showing no […]
-BAND ON THE WALL, MANCHESTER- Free Vibes is a (who would have guessed!) free-entry event at Band On The Wall that seeks to introduce new and emerging artists a few times every month. For this week’s edition, Band On The Wall teamed up with Shell Zenner from Amazing Radio to bring Sugar, Spengler, Haha Sick, […]

LIVE: SUGAR / SPENGLER / HAHA SICK / CYNTHIA’S PERISCOPE – 07/03/2019

ALBUM REVIEW: MEAT PUPPETS – DUSTY NOTES

  Legends of the American underground rock scene and catapulted into more mainstream attention after backing Nirvana on their MTV unplugged gig and album in 1993, songwriters Curt Kirkwood and Cris Kirkwood have been mainstays of the U.S. rock scene for years. Starting off as a hardcore band in the 80s, Meat Puppets evolved into […]
How to fit five albums worth of music into one moderately sized review?  Not an easy task, as there’s one hundred and fifteen songs on this box set compilation, but it’s an aural feast for anyone with even the slightest interest in punk and indie! Although there’s been other compilations pulling together the origins of […]

ALBUM REVIEW: BIG GOLD DREAMS – A STORY OF SCOTTISH INDEPENDENT MUSIC 1977-1989

SINGLE REVIEW: TINFOILS – ROYAL BABY MACHINE

Typically I don’t normally care for socio-political jabs in rock n’ roll; the commentary almost always finds itself doing a literal moon walk straight into the sanctimonious tavern of raised eyebrows (a real venue = nope). In this instance however, the Tinfoils pull an evasive manoeuvre on the aforementioned metaphor by the injecting the lyrics […]
-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Sweet baby Jesus, The Twilight Sad (TTS) are an astonishingly good live band. Scrap that; they’re just an astonishingly good band full stop. Here to support their ridiculously great new album IT WON/T BE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME (which, annoying punctuation and capitals aside, is their best effort since their peerless debut […]

LIVE: THE TWILIGHT SAD – 27/02/2019

LIVE: MOTHERS / BLANKETMAN / CHEW MAGNA – 22/02/2019

-SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER- Chew Magna The first to grace the Soup Kitchen ‘stage’ consists of a band whose central methodology involves making their guitarists clash against one another’s grain, stout basslines whose texture can’t quite pierce the evident sound mixing issues and drums (loose cymbals sink beats) that serve their purpose, perhaps content in their […]
-YES, MANCHESTER- I’ve comprised a theory that Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice and Nick Valensi of The Strokes secretly had four children. They’re stood right in front of me, being blinded by the projector showing images of a trippy nature; disturbing to some viewers but hypnotising to most. They might’ve thrown in some of Ross […]

LIVE: WILLIE J. HEALEY / EGYPTIAN BLUE – 20/02/2019