The Trades has been buzzing all weekend with one sell-out gig after another and by now the Heavenly merchandise table is looking fairly depleted, but fortunately the beers are still flowing.
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REPOSTING FROM 2015! Heavenly Records are celebrating their 25th anniversary by taking over the Trades Club for the weekend with a packed programme of shows. In order to cram it all in, they’re adding matinee performances as well as the usual evening ones. It feels slightly odd and indulgent to leave the snow, busy shops and cafes…
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Year 2013 saw David Bowie and Daft Punk creating a buzz with their new albums, making the world sit up and listen. In 2014, things all seem a bit more low key – well, maybe apart from Pink Floyd’s The Endless River. It’s been more a case of having to go and seek out for yourself what’s around. There’s a…
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Alabama 3 had plenty to celebrate last Saturday night. The band were scheduled to play the final gig of their 2014 tour back on their home turf in Brixton, at the Electric. Then, for those of hardy constitution, there’s the after party at Brixton Jamm. For some reason, Alabama 3 have always stayed slightly under the radar. Not…
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There’s nothing Gourmet Gigs likes more than a combination of music accompanied by interesting culinary or alcoholic refreshment. Last Tuesday offered such an occasion, with the added mystery of a location in the heart of an industrial estate in Walthamstow. Just to rewind: The End festival in Crouch End two weeks previously had featured a band called Firestations, who caught the…
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Oslo, the new(ish) restaurant, bar and music venue is one of the latest new destinations after the avalanche of closures of grimy, characterful music venues in north, west and central London over the past few years. (Actually, make that countrywide, with Liverpool currently undergoing selfsame problems). So it’s been heartening to see a new wave of well-thought out, spruced up venues…
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“I’ve never seen so many weak bladders,” said my partner, as yet another silhouette shuffled out, blocking the screen during Northern Soul, the film by Elaine Constantine. “It’s because everyone here is ‘of a certain age’ ”, I replied. Indeed, about 90 per cent of the audience did look as if they could remember Northern Soul,…
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If David Bowie was to tour again, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t play The Man Who Sold the World even though he reintroduced that title track on later tours. There would be a choice of tracks from The Next Day (of which I’m a huge fan), one or two nods to the past… and the rest would be the next, much…
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Over the summer of 2014, London’s Southbank Centre held a Festival of Love, exhibiting pieces of hippy iconography which remained dotted around the complex long after the event. They created a suitably fitting portal to one particular event: an evening of psychedelic films at the BFI called Flower Children in the Blinding Light: the 60s…
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Portmeirion is awe-inspiring on even the gloomiest, most drizzly day in January. So last weekend’s vision of the Italianate village set against a blue sky, fizzing with all the music, energy and colour of Festival No 6 2014, made it even more spectacular. The combination of Portmeirion’s ridiculously seductive charms combined with the glow of the Indian summer…
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