Sweet and sad times: an interview with singer songwriter Luca Wilding

On the release of his debut sin­gle Heartachers, Luca Wild­ing took time out for an inter­view. Released today via Abbey Records, Heartachers is a poignant and emo­tion­al song with a strong depth of feel­ing. It is described as ‘dream folk’ which does go some way to pin­ning a genre on to Luca’s unique and thoughtful…

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Interview with Leeds art-rock band Fehlt

The first track I heard by art rock­ers Fehlt was Clo­sure and it had an instant appeal. Lik­ing that first lis­ten can go one of two ways: it might stick with you or it might just be a brief flir­ta­tion. For­tu­nate­ly it’s the for­mer and the con­fi­dent, expan­sive, sound­scapey lush­ness of Clo­sure, out now via…

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Modern Studies: The Weight of the Sun

One Sat­ur­day after­noon last Decem­ber I made my way to east Lon­don venue Stu­dio 9294 for Fire Records’ chilled, friend­ly Christ­mas event called Out­er Lim­its. With a ros­ter of about sev­en per­for­mances, it unex­pect­ed­ly turned out to be one of my top gigs of 2019. One of the new (to me) bands who were an…

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Interview: The Lounge Society

There must be some­thing in the water, or the ale, in West York­shire’s Calder Val­ley these days, judg­ing by the sur­feit of young musi­cal tal­ent ema­nat­ing from the crag­gy moors and val­leys around Heb­den Bridge. Oth­er fac­tors that play a part are a clued up, sup­port­ive net­work and a hand­ful of local venues will­ing to…

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Sea Change online festival

Take a trip, vir­tu­al­ly speak­ing, to Devon and immerse your­self in Sea Change fes­ti­val this week­end 25th and 26th April.  The dis­tinc­tive and inde­pen­dent event, now into its fifth year, had to be post­poned, much to every­one’s dis­ap­point­ment. Sea Change have organ­ised a spe­cial ver­sion of the fes­ti­val. Tak­ing part are: Yann Tiersen, Shirley Collins,…

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Latest release: Warm Digits Flight of Ideas

Anoth­er ener­­gy-filled album from Warm Dig­its. On Flight of Ideas Warm Dig­its “make a call to arms: when we all think our ideas are right, what are the costs of nev­er believ­ing you could be wrong?” And so the explo­ration begins, with the duo plus a selec­tion of guest vocal­ists step­ping back in time and…

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One Day, After School new release

Out today is the impres­sive new release by One Day, After School enti­tled Are You Awake? It’s a melan­cholic track in which the vocals, left low in the mix, act like an anchor in the mul­ti-lay­ered com­po­si­tion. It starts from a soli­tary piano note through to a nervy clock tick­ing sound before the track starts…

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Van Morrison for Wickham Festival 2020

Wick­ham Fes­ti­val does­n’t do things by halves. The line­up of the friend­ly, small 4‑day event has con­sis­tent­ly aimed for the top, and this year has man­aged to secure Van Mor­ri­son for its Sat­ur­day head­lin­er. Van’s the Wick­ham man Organ­is­er Peter Cheg­wyn said: “This is absolute­ly mas­sive for us – and for the vil­lage. It will…

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Elephant Stone: powerful beauty of new album Hollow

Mon­tre­al psy­che­del­ic band Ele­phant Stone released their lat­est album Hol­low on Feb­ru­ary 14th. I first saw them at The Lex­ing­ton in 2011 and their stun­ning set remains etched on my mem­o­ry, the pow­er­ful and hyp­not­ic set clos­er Don’t You Know cement­ing an ongo­ing love for this band, and in par­tic­u­lar, Rishi Dhir’s thrilling sitar playing.…

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