ALBUM REVIEW: PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING / BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA / JULES BUCKLEY – THIS NEW NOISE

No band could have been more suited to performing at a Proms celebrating the centenary of the BBC than Public Service Broadcasting. Their name alone, let alone that their 2013 debut album was titled ‘Inform – Educate – Entertain’, the mantra of original BBC Director General, John Reith, as to the Corporation’s role, make them […]
Holy Waters is the second album from London singer-songwriter and producer, Puma Blue. In a few words it’s a sombre and melancholic reflection on life and death, yet it’s less morbid than it may at first appear. Describing the album as a “chronicle of the graciousness within each repeated cycle of life, death and rebirth,” […]

ALBUM REVIEW – PUMA BLUE: HOLY WATERS

LIVE REVIEW: BE YOUR OWN PET – DEAF INSTITUTE 31/08/2023

Attitude, energy and a lack of pants is what Nashville punk band Be Your Own Pet are serving up. And I’ll absolutely be ordering more. Feeling as if I’m in a foreign land outside Deaf Institute in Manchester, I do what anyone would do and take a quick look around. Seems as if I’m in […]
The Autumn release schedule limbering up nicely with this week’s selection summarised here. Lathe of Heaven               Bound by Naked Skies American band taking their name from an Ursula Le Guin novel and their literary influences are balanced with their debt to new wave and post-punk. Puma Blue          Holy Waters A chronicle of the graciousness […]

ALBUM ROUNDUP WEEK ENDING 1 SEPTEMBER 2023

ALBUM REVIEW – P.G. SIX: MURMURS AND WHISPERS

The latest release from P.G. Six, a multi-instrumentalist attached to iconic indie label Drag City, breaks what has been his 12-year hiatus from making music. ‘Murmurs and Whispers,’ comprised of 9 songs, is an album of great sparsity – perhaps contradictory to expectation, the artist ending his silence with a selection of subtle arrangements. However, […]
On Thursday night the legendary John Cale, perhaps mostly known for his role in one of the most iconic and influential acts of the 60s/70s – The Velvet Underground – played an eclectic set of classics and new jams to an intimate and lucky Albert Hall crowd. This famous Manchester venue over the years has […]

LIVE REVIEW: JOHN CALE – ALBERT HALL: 24/08/2023

ALBUM REVIEW – BOWES ROAD BAND: BACK IN THE HCA

When is a reissue not a reissue? Perhaps this can become the music fan’s equivalent of the “if a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound” philosophical conundrum. The original release in 1972 of ‘Back in the HCA’ by Bowes Road Band was limited to […]
August ends on a bumper week with plenty of excellent releases. Here is the Silent Radio guide. Wreckless Eric                   Leisureland        It marks a return to his more ramshackle world of recording – guitars and temperamentally unpredictable analogue keyboards, beatboxes and loops in conjunction with a real drummer. The album considers the idea of seaside towns […]

ALBUM ROUNDUP WEEK ENDING 25 AUGUST 2023

ALBUM REVIEW: SUN’S SIGNATURE: SUN’S SIGNATURE EXTENDED

The first words on Sun Signature’s extended EP, “the opening of a window onto rapture”, are an apt description of what is to follow. When the original EP was released in 2022, it marked the first new music from Elizabeth Fraser for 13 years. Blessed with one of the few voices that could genuinely be […]
 After witnessing OSEES smash it up big style in Liverpool this year, I was excited to hear the latest recording in a constantly evolving discography headed by the prolific and seemingly ageless J. Dwyer. Playing for around 2 hours at Invisible Wind Factory a few months ago, the duelling drummers and wailing guitar boys brought […]

ALBUM REVIEW – OSEES: INTERCEPTED MESSAGE