LIVE: WILLY MASON / NINA VIOLET – 15/02/2018

-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- Nina Violet is the first artist to play this evening at the Deaf Institute. The room is more than half filled, with no more space available on the bleacher style seats, and the floor space populated part way to the stage. No one is yet venturing too close to the front, and […]
-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- It’s Saturday night in blustery Manchester and it’s time for something loud, aggressive yet infectious all the same. Tonight’s supper is a run in with Doncaster’s latest and probably best export (because let’s face it the football team isn’t anything to write home about) which comes in the shape of a psych/punk […]

LIVE: THE BLINDERS / STRANGE BONES – 03/02/2018

LIVE: DEER TICK – 01/02/2018

-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- “Sorry we’re a couple minutes late. We were water skiing.” With that explanation out of the way, the tooth that’s all silver and shiny in the mouth of Deer Tick’s John McCauley might be a fortified one he uses to bite off his beer-bottle top before his exhaled breath propels it up […]
-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- Drawing their name from the Margaret Greaves children’s book Little Jacko and the Wolf People, Wolf People are a psychedelic quartet formed in 2005 in Bedfordshire. Tonight, they play Deaf Institute in Manchester. As the disco ball dangling above the crowd shoots amber and violet hues across the room, four unassuming thirty […]

LIVE: WOLF PEOPLE – 27/01/2018

LIVE: STARCRAWLER – 17/01/2018

-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- “I love L.A.” darks-out of frontwoman Arrow de Wilde’s mouth. Although restrained, the statement speaks to an unchained relationship with glamour and the grotesque that colours the 18-year-old’s presence, and when released, the words don’t simply fall, but are supercharged by an accompanying quarter-pint of blood that spills from Wilde’s lips and […]
-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- It’s already bleak December, but we may have a new festival favourite to watch in 2018. Usually that’s a precipitous view; what, dear reader, can align for the soft whiff of cow fields and the clink of tinnies in a rucksack whilst winter is still nipping our bones? Well, personally, it’s the […]

LIVE: THE ORIELLES / BOY AZOOGA / ILAND TAIPAN – 08/12/2017

LIVE: ALEX CAMERON – 06/12/2017

-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Alex Cameron’s gigs feel like novels. Without doubt one of the best lyricists and storytellers in music at the moment, you spend the time watching him and his band as well as watching his stories unfold in your mind’s eye. A sign of good writing is that you can see everything that is […]
-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- Music isn’t a commodity. It’s a luxury that’s somehow been devalued to the point that a large proportion of the population just stream whatever they want for free and never give the artist a penny themselves. It’s bizarre and it makes me sad, but that’s where we are as a people. Tonight’s […]

LIVE: DESTROYER – 04/12/2017

LIVE: TOPS – 18/11/2017

– DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER – She is buoyant, rolling her shoulders in a red cotton shirt. The stage is pouring with energy, the kind you rarely get – not mad, or athletic, but the feel of an afterglow dance at a house party, when everyone has left the living room and Fleetwood Mac has arrived […]
-DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER- When Donald Trump’s twitter account was recently disabled and the leader of the free world found himself with nothing to do, I’d like to imagine he took the opportunity to have a few minutes, just for himself. That he sent his aides away, went into the Oval Office and closed the door, […]

LIVE: BIG THIEF – 03/11/2017