The Weeknd – Echoes of Silence
Trilogies can be a tricky thing to pull off. If you think about some of the more famous film trilogies – say Star Wars or Lord of the Rings – the first one…
Chibuku w/ Erol Alkan + Fake Blood
As we arrive in the last month of the Warehouse Project’s final season at Store Street, Liverpool based Chibuku came to town with some of the biggest names in electro-dance. Superstar producer, remixer…
VisionQuest + Marco Carola @ The Warehouse Project
If you were looking for explosive, innovative and all-round grooving modern music at the Warehouse Project this Saturday then you shouldn’t have been disappointed. The next generation of house artists has well and…
The Horrors – Skying
It’s a terrible music cliché, but a band radically changing their sound is one hell of a risk, not only does it potentially alienate a fan base, but it can also disrupt band…
Wu-lyf – Go Tell Fire To The Mountain
Forget about the media frenzy, forget the lack of interviews, forget the little online presence and the air of apparent ‘mystery’ drummed up by the band in order to gain our attention. It…
Arctic Monkeys – Suck It And See
Lyrical references to lazerquest, shellsuits, belly button piercings (in the sky), cowboy films, curly straws and dandelion and burdock? Guitar pop with a penchant for an unexpected heavy Queens of the Stone Age…
Review // Aaron Wright – Aaron Wright
Not that we’re complaining, but it’s certainly noticeable that the early days of Spring have a habit of bringing folk-y popsters and singer-songwriters out from whichever twee haunts they’ve been hibernating in, with…
Review // The Strokes – Angles
If ever a band has less need of an introduction, it is The Strokes. It’s understandable, considering that with the release of Is This It in 2001, the five New Yorkers had come…
Review // Rainbow Arabia – Boys and Diamonds
Some people might remember that Rainbow Arabia appeared a couple of years ago back at the height of Brooklyn-mania: those psychedelic, world music-inspired offerings helped to place Rainbow Arabia in some sort of…
Review // Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes
Sweden isn’t a place renowned for musical exports. (It’s unarguable, I tested it. I asked five people to name musicians from Sweden; three couldn’t, one nervously named ABBA, and the fifth, bizarrely, said…
Review // Adele – 21
After early success and general approval, Adele slumped somewhat into the singer-songwriter doldrums; too talented to considered be along the lines of Duffy / Bruno Mars dross but far too Brits-school to be…
Review // White Lies – Ritual
They go so close at times, White Lies, and seem to tear themselves down just as they appear to have done something great. Consider ‘Bigger Than Us’, first single from ‘Ritual’, for example….
Review // Funeral Party – The Golden Age Of Knowhere
Voted one of the best new bands of 2010, finally the LA five piece release their highly anticipated debut ‘The Golden Age of Knowhere’. Teasing us with the highly charged ‘NYC Moves to…
Review // Ringo Deathstarr – Ringo Deathstarr
My Bloody Valentine. There. Now that’s out of the way. The Texas threesome Ringo Deathstarr’s unwavering love for the shoegazing pioneers, along with all things distorted, is evident right from the off. Off-kilter…
Review // Bright Eyes – People’s Key
‘The People’s Key’ has been labelled to be the final studio album from Conor Oberst under the title of ‘Bright Eyes’ and the band’s first album in four years. From start to finish…
Review // Boys Noize- Super Acid
Memory can be triggered with a smell, a taste, a sound. Some sensory triggers lead back to childhood nostalgia, other’s lead to first-times and last times. Hearing Boys Noise’s latest record ‘Super Acid’…
Review // Chapel Club – Palace
Having a few brain cells and doing some genuinely intelligent referencing has been something of a dirty thing in recent British indie: okay, we’ve had Foals and their clever take on the genre,…
Review // Iron and Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean
Kiss Each Other Clean is the fourth album of Sam Beam, more commonly recognised under stage name Iron and Wine and the decade-long pioneer of Sub-Pop’s folk rebirth. There is an instantly recognisable…
Review // Joan As Policewoman – The Deep Field
No-one can accuse Joan Wasser of not being dark – her last two albums were informed by death, and it showed in the sorrowful lyrics and, on To Survive, the haunting use of…
Review // The Joy Formidable – The Big Roar
It’s been a few hard years in the making, but The Joy Formidable have finally released their debut album after periods of being a continual support band and numerous teasers on their MySpace…
Review // Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi
Britain has had its decent share of women dabbling in dark rock: Anna Calvi is just the latest in this line. With her debut album she treads ground that is familiar to fans…
Review // Cloud Nothings – Cloud Nothings
Dylan Baldi, the 19-year-old behind Cloud Nothings, is obsessed with 80′s UK indie bands, so much so that, like his US contemporaries The Drums, it’s hard not to hear the influences in his…
Review // Moshi Moshi – A Christmas Gift For You
“Bah Humbug, no that’s too strong” declares Summer Camp’s Elizabeth Sankey on their take of ‘Christmas Wrapping’. But is it? For any slightly cynical listener the mere mention of a Christmas song, and…
Review // Fabriclive 54 – David Rodigan
Does your reggae knowledge consist of little more than a dusty copy of Bob Marley’s ‘Legend’ collection, a sly toke on your mates spliff in his shed and knowing the chorus to ‘Jammin”…
Review // Girls – Broken Dreams Club
It wouldn’t be overstating it to say Girls’ debut record, the perfect bittersweet nymphomaniac pop of the awkwardly titled Album, was one of the overlooked highlights of last year. Right from the off…
Review // Family Fodder – Classical Music
Formed in London in the late 70′s Family Fodder are the DIY collective behind the Post Punk classic ‘Dinosaur Sex’ and I mean this oddball hit not this (100% NSFW classic internet clip,…
Review // Darkstar – North
In an electronic scene where music is too often labelled and pigeonholed, it’s easy to assume that hoarding artists into genres or sub-genres is a compulsory reaction to the emergence of boundary-bending new…
Music // Beady Eye – Bring The Light
November 10th 2010, and it’s finally here. Oasis is over (at least until the money runs out and a reformation ensues) and the first highly anticipated single from spin-off Beady Eye was made…
Review // Devlin – Bud Sweat and Beers
Pick up any UK urban CD and you’re likely to get quite a familiar vibe from it. Like our American counterparts, a lot of our rappers are clichéd, two dimensional and quite frankly,…
Review // Warpaint – The Fool
After triumphant performances at Reading and Leeds this year which proved that Warpaint had more potentially brilliant material other than free download ‘Billie Holiday’, the music industry was all over Warpaint like a…
