Marianne Faithfull Songs of Innocence and Experience release

Mar­i­anne Faith­full has been a last­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing fig­ure since the 60s when she first rose to promi­nence with As Tears Go By. And now UMC have announced the release of Songs of Inno­cence and Expe­ri­ence 1965–1995, the defin­i­tive overview of the first 30 years of Mar­i­anne Faithfull’s record­ing career on the Dec­ca and Island labels.…

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Sylvette share new single called Single Thread

Here at Gourmet Gigs we’ve been stead­fast fans of Man­ches­ter out­fit Syl­vette. It start­ed with a ‘love at first lis­ten’ moment, when the star­tling and orig­i­nal sin­gle Kelpius was unveiled on Chris Hawkins’ morn­ing show on BBC 6 music. The band have pro­duced three stu­dio albums and recent­ly com­plet­ed a sold-out mini tour held in small…

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Pale Blue Eyes share Star Vehicle ahead of album launch

I first heard Pale Blue Eyes ear­li­er this year when they released a sin­gle called Dr Pong – an addic­tive, chunky, upbeat num­ber some­what rem­i­nis­cent of Djan­go Djan­go, that instant­ly had me excit­ed­ly rootling around to check out the rest of their mate­r­i­al. Oh – and the song’s about play­ing table ten­nis all night in…

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New Single Rarely Been So Long by As We Leave

Isle of Wight band As We Leave has a new sin­gle out called Rarely Been So Long. On its sur­face there’s a sun-dap­­pled, lazy sum­mery aura going on as it opens on a gen­tle scene-set­ter: a gui­tar chord gen­tly thrum­ming. This hazy con­fec­tion has a nos­tal­gic feel, the vocals reveal­ing a wist­ful qual­i­ty, uncer­tain­ty in…

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Pictish Trail head out on tour

Pic­tish Trail have plen­ty of tour dates lined up for this year, includ­ing some fes­ti­val appear­ances – Green Man fes­ti­val fea­tures, as always. Walk the Line and Lost Map present: Ley­line Shows in South West of Eng­land with sup­port from Lost Map artist Bas Jan, plus a DJ set by Guto Pryce of Super Furry…

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Keston Cobblers Club: Lullaby for the Wide Awake

For any­one strug­gling with insom­nia, this new song may help. Lul­la­by for the Wide Awake is writ­ten by vocal­ist Julia Lowe of folk out­fit, the Keston Cob­blers Club. She suf­fers from insom­nia her­self and the song was writ­ten to help those of us who find them­selves star­ing at the ceil­ing at 3am, turn­ing minor niggles…

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Sylvette announce track Marble Stone and gigs

Man­ch­es­ter-based band Syl­vette have announced a new track called Mar­ble Stone, which was released on Mon­day 25th. It is from their upcom­ing third stu­dio album. In keep­ing with their music released so far, it’s very atmos­pher­ic and imag­i­na­tive – Mar­ble Stone is accom­pa­nied by rich strings and del­i­cate vocals. The band describe it as “using…

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Jo Schornikow new release ‘Lose Yr Love’

Jo Schornikow releas­es Lose Yr Love, a shim­mer­ing beau­ty of a track, and the sec­ond share from her upcom­ing album. In com­mon with her recent release, Visions, reviewed here, this song has a feel of War on Drugs.  Lose Yr Love is Schornikow’s explo­ration of “fear and beau­ty in loss” which “grew from a real-life nightmare…

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The Battery Farm release ‘We’re At The Top’

We’re At The Top is the clos­ing track from The Bat­tery Far­m’s 2nd EP Dirty Den’s March of Suf­fer­ing. It is a song about “lone­li­ness and a song about for­got­ten peo­ple”. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it’s suf­fused with melan­choly – but so heart­felt and so raw it stopped me in my tracks. It’s a beau­ti­ful­ly paced num­ber, commanding…

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Vanishing Point: Richard Walters and Pølaroit

Some­times a fusion between two seem­ing­ly dif­fer­ent and dis­parate ele­ments can pro­duce some­thing that radi­ates a new and unique ener­gy. The new­ly released track Van­ish­ing Point is a case in point. One half of this col­lab­o­ra­tion is Richard Wal­ters: solo singer song­writer and a band mem­ber of LYR with poet lau­re­ate Simon Armitage. He teamed…

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