The tigers that came to Stroud Green

While the coun­try’s gal­leries and art spaces have been closed, it has been incum­bent upon artists to find more inge­nious ways to dis­play their work. Some­one who has been bring­ing artis­tic enjoy­ment and a sense of com­mu­ni­ty to his neigh­bour­hood for sev­er­al years is artist and art project organ­is­er Ahmed Farooqui, togeth­er with his partner…

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Pledge Psychodrama by RKB Vitesse: mystery and beauty

Pledge Psy­chodra­ma is an inter­est­ing and seduc­tive gem of a track which pulled me in with its air of mys­tery. A land­scape of dense, woozy elec­tron­i­ca grad­u­al­ly unfolds, lay­ing down a com­fort­ing wash of sound. It does­n’t sur­prise me that it popped up on Gideon Coe’s show on Radio 6 Music as it’s ide­al material…

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Suzie Ungeleider reveals new video

Suzie Ungelei­der has just released a new track called Baby Blues from her upcom­ing album My Name is Suzie Unger­lei­der. Fans of Amer­i­cana will be famil­iar with Suzie’s for­mer per­sona – she per­formed in the guise of Oh Susan­na for many years, and has toured the UK, with sold out shows at Lon­don’s 100 Club…

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Back to the fields: festivals for 2021

Our fes­ti­val piece looks a lit­tle dif­fer­ent this year. It’s been a dif­fi­cult and rather har­row­ing task putting it togeth­er as many have decid­ed – and are still decid­ing – to can­cel, main­ly due to the lack of Gov­­ern­­ment-backed covid insur­ance. Oper­at­ing on a knife edge is every­day stuff for fes­ti­val organ­is­ers, but this is…

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Manchester Psych Fest 2021 full line up

A stel­lar ros­ter of artists awaits those attend­ing Man­ches­ter Psych Fest this year. And the organ­is­ers are delight­ed to announce their full line­up for this year’s fes­ti­val, which takes place on 4th Sep­tem­ber.  Mali­a’s Tinari­wen are co-head­­lin­ers with Stere­o­lab, plus there’s post-punk out­fit Dry Clean­ing, afrobeat eight-piece Koko­roko and Japan­ese psych vet­er­ans Kik­a­gaku Moyo. Also on the bill Jadu Heart, Bil­ly Nomates,…

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Better in Space: GracieSouz reveals new EP

Lock­down has caused many a col­lab­o­ra­tive project to tem­porar­i­ly frag­ment, result­ing in solo work that may be of a more intense and intro­spec­tive nature. Out today is Grace de Souza­’s excit­ing new solo EP called Bet­ter in Space. Grace is a mem­ber of Lon­­don-based band KIN (see inter­view with KIN band here). Grace found herself…

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Sinka release new single Skies

Alt-rock band SINKA release their new sin­gle Skies on 19th March, the sec­ond track from upcom­ing EP Take Me To The Skies which is released on April 16th. The Wat­­ford-based trio com­pris­es Shaun Sewell-Sears (vocals and gui­tar), Matt Smith (bass) and Jack Wright (drums). They released the first sin­gle ‘Mes­si­ah’  back in Feb­ru­ary. Hav­ing self-pro­­duced their…

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Busty and the Bass: new space grooves

Busty and the Bass met dur­ing their first week as stu­dents in the jazz pro­gramme at Mon­tre­al’s McGill Uni­ver­si­ty back in 2011. I first heard the octet when they released their 2020 album called Eddie, accom­pa­nied by the dis­tinc­tive­ly warm, raspy vocals of Macy Gray. And now there’s a new release – an ‘inter­galac­tic’ EP, The ET Suite via Arts…

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Alex Maas plus The Weather Station livestreams

It was a thrill to dis­cov­er these two artists fair­ly recent­ly and their last albums released recent­ly are haunt­ing, intel­li­gent and thought­ful works that I find I keep return­ing to. Both Alex Maas and The Weath­er Sta­tion have announced livestream per­for­mances com­ing up this month. Alex Maas is a long-time mem­ber of Tex­an neo-psych band The…

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Gwyl 2021 – eight days of music and arts

Excit­ing and inno­v­a­tive new Welsh fes­ti­val Gŵyl 2021 stretch­es over eight days and from the 8th to 12th March, the pro­gramme offers some exclu­sive and unique events. Pre­sent­ed by music-indus­try fes­ti­val Focus Wales, this is a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to lis­ten to live pan­el ses­sions fol­lowed by live show­case per­for­mances. And on Thurs­day, Focus Wales 360°…

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