LIVE: THE SUBWAYS – 24/03/2015

– ACADEMY 3, MANCHESTER – The house lights come down and 3 revolving police lights come on, two blue and one red. The room fills with dramatic introduction music and voices greet us in many different languages. It’s not long before The Subways walk out into the flashing light. They receive an enthusiastic welcome and […]
– MARTIN HARRIS CENTRE, MANCHESTER – Go online, check out any Sonic Youth video from the 1990s with Kim Gordon in it and observe her. Any reasonable woman who was a teenager in the 1990s would want to be Kim Gordon. Everything about her was cool: cool band, cool music. We thought she did not […]

REVIEW: KIM GORDON IN CONVERSATION WITH DAVE HASLAM – 18/03/2015

LIVE: NICK MULVEY – 23/03/2015

– THE ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – What a magical thing it is to hold a room like the Albert Hall in the very palm of your very hand.  To own the eyes and ears of everyone present.  To fill this cavernous room with a sound constructed entirely from your voice and six strings stretched over […]
– ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER – An energetic aura surrounds Warpaint – these 4 ladies from LA have together developed a way of conveying a message with deep sincerity and emotion, whether it be about darker times, or simply about having fun. Their spirit of adventure is evidently infectious – there’s disappointment at the door for many, at this, one […]

LIVE: WARPAINT – 22/03/2015

LIVE: CLOUD CASTLE LAKE – 18/03/2015

-GULLIVERS, MANCHESTER – On Tuesday night, Gullivers was heaving as the crowds swarmed to watch their hometown prodigy Kiran Leonard. Tonight it feel as if the crowd has just left to the last drones of ‘Geraldo’s Farm’ as barely 20 people stand in the audience for Cloud Castle Lake. The hype for this band which […]
– GULLIVERS, MANCHESTER – Tonight, we are part of a chosen few who are lucky enough to hear songs from Kiran Leonard’s new album Grapefruit, coming later this year, for the first time. There is no better audience to unleash a set of new songs at like a hometown audience and that is exactly what […]

LIVE: KIRAN LEONARD – 17/03/2015

LIVE: VESSELS – 16/03/2015

– SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER – Vessels’ recently released album Dilate is something of a departure from their lean, guitar-focussed Slint-via-Radiohead post-rock stylings. Previous record Helioscope is a brilliant, greyscale exercise in tension and release and where Dilate still uses similar dynamics in terms of building layers to a dramatic climax, this time it’s in glorious […]
– ACADEMY 2, MANCHESTER – It could be that I’m biased in favour of anything Nordic, but it seems to me that Northern Europe always walks proudly on an independent path, away from mainstream styles, genres and attitudes. Tonight at the Academy 2 (justifiably sold out) I am blessed with the experience of Swedish-Argentinian singer […]

LIVE: JOSE GONZALEZ / OLOF ARNALDS – 14/03/2015

LIVE: COSMOSIS – 14/03/2015

– ANTWERP MANSION, MANCHESTER – The website insists that this venue didn’t used to be a squat… to be honest, it looks as though it still is a squat. Graffiti covers  any area that’s reachable, inside and out – electric extension leads twist through holes in the walls and ceiling like overgrown vines – the […]
– THE NIGHT & DAY CAFE, MANCHESTER – As I make the trip to Manchester tonight to finally see Clinic perform, it occurs to me that the Liverpool band of electro-psyche obscurists have always been on the periphery of my musical ‘default setting’. What I mean is, I listen to quite a lot of music […]

LIVE: CLINIC – 13/03/2015