Battles of Winter
Oct 26

Battles of Winter – At Once with Tattered Sails

Bat­tles of Winter’s sec­ond album At Once with Tat­tered Sails was released (down­load only) on Sep­tem­ber 23. “The dif­fi­cult sec­ond album?” the band announce on their Face­book page. Hav­ing giv­en the album a metaphor­i­cal spin (actu­al­ly, about ten), my answer to that is a def­i­nite no. This new offer­ing from BoW exudes con­fi­dence – the…

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Oct 21

Fightback! against venue closures at The Roundhouse

Fight­back! tick­ets went on sale at the early­bird price of £10 before any line-up was announced. About half the tick­ets sold out, and around 800 acts came for­ward to offer their ser­vices to play at the gig, which was set up by the Music Venue Trust as a protest against the recent aston­ish­ing­ly high num­ber of…

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Oct 17

Desert Trip festival 2016 – view from an English perspective

Desert Trip fes­ti­val, in the Cal­i­for­nia desert: some of the heavy­weights from my teens in one palm-tree-fringed, sun-soaked par­adise. Nor­mal­ly I steer clear of any­thing of this ilk but nev­er­the­less this sound­ed some­what appeal­ing. I remind­ed myself that I’d far rather hang out at my sort of UK fes­ti­vals, hear­ing plen­ty of emerg­ing artists in a friend­ly atmos­phere, all…

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Oct 11

A Heavenly January on its way in Hebden Bridge

The Trades, Heb­den Bridge 2017. Drea­ry old Jan­u­ary. Dark rainy nights, emp­ty bank account, bud­dies off the alco­hol… is there any­thing the wretched first month has going for it? Well, yes! A Heav­en­ly week­end at The Trades in Heb­den Bridge, where the esteemed venue hosts a mini fest of musi­cal delights. Last Jan­u­ary 2016, we saw…

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Sep 29

Fightback: Music Venue Trust Roundhouse gig

If you care about live music, it’s time to put your full sup­port behind it – which means going to as many live gigs as you can! The amount on venues which are clos­ing coun­try­wide is tru­ly heart­break­ing. The Round­house is host­ing a Music Venue Trust gig at The Round­house in Cam­den on 18th October…

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Festival 6 pontoon
Sep 8

Review: Festival Number 6 2016

The good, the bad and the mud­dy… On a pos­i­tive note, Fes­ti­val Num­ber 6 yet again had its moments of music, mag­ic  and dis­cov­ery.  The loca­tion is Port­meiri­on, the beau­ti­ful and quirky Ital­ian vil­lage in north Wales. And it was com­mend­able to note just how many of the artists appear­ing on Fes­ti­val No 6’s var­i­ous stages were from…

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Aug 24

Green Man 2016 review: indie and lots of weather

Fore­casts were for gales, thun­der and tor­ren­tial rain. What we actu­al­ly got were tan­ta­lis­ing peeks of sun, and show­ers which float­ed down with clock­work reg­u­lar­i­ty like a sprin­kler sys­tem. If you’ve ever want­ed a qui­et word with the Met Office when they get things wrong, by for­tu­nate coin­ci­dence there they were, at Ein­stein’s Gar­den, Green Man’s science /…

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Jul 21

World music and world food at Womad

In the third of my ‘fes­ti­vals and food’ series, Gourmet Gigs this week takes a look at the gor­geous glob­al food treats at Wom­ad. The fes­ti­val might be known pri­mar­i­ly for world music, but it has steadi­ly built a name for itself in the food are­na too, and the Taste the World stage has proved pop­u­lar over the…

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Accumul8 exhib 02
Jul 18

Moving Forward: photo exhibition by homeless young people

The pri­vate view of Mov­ing For­ward pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion took place on Thurs­day 14th July at the glam­orous offices of The Guardian in Kings Cross, on a rare sun­ny evening with sun flood­ing into the space. Mov­ing For­ward fea­tures beau­ti­ful pho­tographs by a group of young stu­dents who have been tak­ing cre­ative work­shops at Ravens­bourne Col­lege, but what makes this exhi­bi­tion all the more…

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