Review: The Besnard Lakes, London

The Besnard Lakes closed the UK leg of their tour with a tri­umphant, beau­ti­ful and emo­tion­al per­for­mance at The Assem­bly Hall, Isling­ton. The space was per­fect for The Besnard Lakes. It’s a medi­um-sized venue with a grand feel, and that Besnard sound swirled around and filled the space, the mir­ror­ball on the ceil­ing look­ing like an escapee from their last album cover,…

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Review: Broken Witt Rebels at The Water Rats

There’s a real buzz, a sense of antic­i­pa­tion in the lead-up to the Bro­ken Witt Rebels head­ing on stage at The Water Rats. The audi­ence are crowd­ing to the front and there’s a bank of pho­tog­ra­phers jostling for posi­tion. It’s great to observe this young band mak­ing such head­way. I spend more time than I should watch­ing bands per­form their socks off – musi­cians who so…

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Eight reasons to love Bearded Theory festival

1  It’s the per­fect fes­ti­val sea­son open­er  three (and a bit) days of music with a choice of stages and two new ones for 2016,  plus the infa­mous dance tent. And there’s plen­ty more going on besides. Tick­ets are only just over £100 and Beard­ed The­o­ry fes­ti­val is, as usu­al, on the way to sell­ing out, so don’t wait too long. 2  Magical…

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Pitt Cue at Devonshire Square

In order to eat at the for­mer site of Pitt Cue restau­rant just off Carn­a­by Street, din­ers had to queue in the street, some­times for hours. The reward was a cov­et­ed place down­stairs in the 5‑table poky cel­lar space, or perched at the cosy bar upstairs. The rea­son peo­ple were pre­pared to wait was due…

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Green and pleasant: the ultimate festival guide 2016

If you’re a fes­ti­val fan, by now you’re dream­ing of a green field, ban­ners wav­ing in the breeze, the sound of a band on the main stage… yes, fes­ti­val sea­son is near­ly upon us again, and here is my Ulti­mate Fes­ti­val Guide. Most have been per­son­al­ly tried and test­ed, some on a year­ly basis – plus there’s…

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Review: James at Scala

James show­cased their new album Girl at the End of the World at Scala, Kings Cross. We’re hop­ing we’ll hear one or two old favourites scat­tered here and there, but this show is real­ly the launch of the new album and the first time they’ll be play­ing the mate­r­i­al in front of an audi­ence. Tim Booth comes on…

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Do you own the dance floor? This Hacienda fan does

One Haçien­da devo­tee and DJ loved the place so much, he bought a bit of the dance­floor. And a flat exact­ly where the famous Man­ches­ter club’s DJ booth was sit­u­at­ed. The film Do You Own the Dançe­floor? went on release in June 2015. It’s an affec­tion­ate, some­times hilar­i­ous, and decid­ed­ly good-natured account of the sell-off…

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Review: Seamus Fogarty, Meilyr Jones, Field Music; Gwenno, LoneLady

Sea­mus Fog­a­r­ty, Meilyr Jones, Field Music Fri­day’s line­up at The Trades Heb­den Bridge con­sists of three acts who one might not ini­tial­ly think, ‘Well, these three are going to work well togeth­er’. What actu­al­ly tran­spired was an evening of thought­ful and chal­leng­ing music, each act com­ple­ment­ing the oth­er in such a way to cre­ate a satisfying…

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Field Music – The Noisy Days are starting

Field Music have stayed some­what under the radar despite sev­er­al com­mend­able albums, but they are about to head out on tour and they appeared at the Radio 6 music fes­ti­val in Bris­tol. There are a few fes­ti­val dates lined up too so the band are get­ting lots of expo­sure.  Here’s my review of their gig in Jan­u­ary. Here’s  The…

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