ALBUM REVIEW – VARIOUS: SOMETHING FOR THE LONGING – SCOTTISH INDEPENDENT POP 1985-1999

Ask a music fan to choose a band that personified the Scottish independent scene and it is likely that there would be lots of different answers. Perhaps it would be the feedback drenched pop of The Jesus and Mary Chain or the trad rockisms of Primal Scream. Alternatively, it could be Belle and Sebastian’s literate […]
Electronic pioneers System 7 (Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy) return with a new album, Flower of Life. The duo lean more into the house side of their music on this record, with a fresh and positive sound. Hillage has been involved in multiple genres over the decades, recording with Soft Machine and joining Gong in […]

ALBUM REVIEW – SYSTEM 7: FLOWER OF LIFE

LIVE REVIEW – ART SCHOOL GIRLFRIEND: MANCHESTER GORILLA – 16/04/2026

As I stand in the relatively small space of Gorilla in Manchester tonight, the thumping bass and house beat of ‘L.Y.A.T.T’ blasts through the room, the whole crowd lost in a trance of colourful lights and bright visuals on a screen behind Art School Girlfriend. But that comes later. At the start of the show, […]
Penny Arcade                 Double Exposure          The album harks somewhere between the restless experimentation of Syd Barrett and the uninhibited analogue innovations of Tim Presley as White Fence, doing so with great panache. Teen Suicide    Nude descending staircase headless              With artists such as Pixies, Melvins and Radiohead as touchstones, ‘Nude descending staircase headless’ is an aggressive, […]

ALBUM ROUNDUP WEEK ENDING 17 APRIL 2026

LIVE REVIEW – BELLE AND SEBASTIAN: MANCHESTER ALBERT HALL – 11/04/2026

When linking the concept of nostalgia and music, my brain heads straight to one of those 80s music festival, where, tucked away off-the-beaten-track, thousands latch on to their youth by listening to Nik Kershaw perform his greatest hits (if you dare call them that). But as anniversary tours pledge to trapse through deep cuts and […]
When you think of ambient music, I can guess one of the first names you think of is Aphex Twin, followed by Boards Of Canada probably. Hora Lunga are even more strange and far out sounding than those two combined in this collection of ambient tunes. Think of white noise paired with strange, slowed down […]

ALBUM REVIEW – HORA LUNGA: NEW AGE MUSIC VOL. 2-3

ALBUM REVIEW – CHROMA: 25 FOREVER

From the post-industrial landscape of Pontypridd, South Wales, CHROMA emerged not just as a band, but as a voice – urgent, unfiltered, and impossible to ignore. The trio KT Hall, Liam Bevan, and Zac Mather, built their identity on tension: between melody and distortion, vulnerability and defiance, introspection and confrontation. Their sound feels lived-in, shaped […]
Calling himself ‘The Devil’s Prime Minister”, Antoine Dougbe had a fearsome reputation. The son of a Vodún priest, he was initiated into the religion which while it acknowledges the existence of a single creator is more concerned with minor deities (the Vodúns) who live in the spirit world. This includes figures known as kovitos, spirits […]

ALBUM REVIEW – ANTOINE DOUGBE & L’ORCHESTRA POLY-RYTHMO DE COTONOU: S/T

ALBUM REVIEW – POLICE DOG HOGAN: THE LIGHT AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS

Police Dog Hogan, the British band that is firmly rooted in bluegrass and Americana, are back with their seventh album, The Light At The Top Of The Stairs. The band are in touch with their elder selves on this LP, with even the title being a nod to the afterlife, the themes of mortality and […]
There’s something inherently strange about a Gorillaz gig, like you’re never just watching a band, you’re stepping into a fully formed world that’s been ticking over long before you arrived. On March 21st at the Co-op Live Arena, that world didn’t just open up, it swallowed the room whole. No radio-friendly warm-up, no predictable pre-show playlist. Instead, the […]

LIVE REVIEW – GORILLAZ: MANCHESTER CO-OP LIVE – 21/03/2026