ALBUM: STEEPLE REMOVE – VONAL AXIS

There’s always bands who like to turn the fuzztone up, step on the phase pedal and blast off into hyperspace, and there’s so many bands around doing the shoegazy dream pop thing, it’s often hard to find the decent stuff. So, thank your lava lamps for Steeple Remove, a band from Rouen in France, who […]
-ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER- When indie-rock mavericks The Maccabees played their final shows last summer, I did wonder if we’d hear from any of them again. But it was only a matter of months before frontman Orlando Weeks announced a project he’d been working on for quite some time, The Gritterman. Starting life from a song, […]

LIVE: ORLANDO WEEKS – 12/12/2018

LIVE: PURPLE HEART PARADE / BLANKETMAN – 08/12/2018

-NIGHT PEOPLE, MANCHESTER- More often than not, when a band attempts to surgically graft differing influences together, the difficulty in pulling it off can present a scenario of grave inconsistency. Typically, the final product emerges as a badly rearranged skeletal entity, the kind of which would be best left in some remote, poorly lit cave […]
-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Julia Holter is incredible. The LA-based musician is just 33 years of age, and she released her fifth (5th!) astonishing album Aviary to much acclaim last month, a 90 minute magnum opus that dazzles with its range of styles from atonal experimental noise to some of the best pop songs she’s composed so […]

LIVE: JULIA HOLTER – 06/12/2018

ALBUM: HOLYGRAM – MODERN CULTS

This lot from Cologne have definitely heard a few My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Cure records in their time, yet Holygram go for an overall shoegaze shimmer on their tunes, giving each one an overall feel of hazy guitar tones. Recorded in Cologne’s Amen Studios, the band’s debut is awash with that early 90’s British […]
“You learn a couple of things when you get to my age,” Matty Healy projects in the 1975’s third studio album. Whether or not this was delivered with a bit of cheekiness, the statement is something most people can relate to, especially Healy himself. Following the success of the bands previous album,’ I Like It […]

ALBUM REVIEW: THE 1975 – A BRIEF ENQUIRY INTO ONLINE RELATIONSHIPS

LIVE: THE FIELD – 28/11/2018

-YES, MANCHESTER- Axel Willner, AKA The Field, is an absolute dude. He’s probably the coolest person in Manchester at this very moment, despite the high hipster quotient currently in Yes waiting for him to come on and do his ambient, minimal techno thing. You see, Willner is Swedish, which immediately makes him cool, but now […]
There’s a lot going on in the world of Bauhaus these days, celebrating forty years since they first formed, and by way of celebration, they’re releasing this special E.P. of their first ever recording session. If the word Bauhaus conjures up images of goths, incense sticks, and dark moodiness, think again – they may be […]

EP: BAUHAUS – THE BELA SESSIONS EP

LIVE: ISAAC GRACIE – 19/11/2018

-YES, MANCHESTER- YES. YES. YES. I am confused as I enter the new music venue in Manchester. I mean, I’ve been in venues where the local drunk is propping up the bar with a crowd of around 20 people. But walking into a pizzeria bar hybrid is something bizarre… After being ushered up the stairs […]
-ACADEMY, MANCHESTER- When it comes to deciding on a support band, Miles Kane couldn’t have gone for a better choice than Manchester’s own Cabbage – especially in a Mancunian venue in which their energetic, self-proclaimed ‘semi punk’ performance has the crowd on each other’s shoulders and pitting within two songs of their set. Somehow they […]

LIVE: MILES KANE / CABBAGE – 23/11/2018