Review: Elephant Stone new album Back Into the Dream

Start­ing with a base point of indie-psych, Cana­di­an out­fit Ele­phant Stone’s sound radi­ates out, mor­ph­ing along the way into oth­er gen­res. Rishi Dhir, the band’s front man, sitar and bass play­er plus pro­lif­ic song­writer, remains stead­fast­ly at the helm, con­tin­u­ing to steer their sound in mul­ti­ple direc­tions – not least of all the con­cept album,…

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Independent Venue Week at The Trades Club

While we spend Jan­u­ary snug­gling under duvets lis­ten­ing to lash­ing rain and howl­ing wind, the night time econ­o­my takes a hit. One area that can’t afford to lie dor­mant is grass­roots music venues. Per­fect­ly timed, Inde­pen­dent Venue Week is an annu­al cel­e­bra­tion of these unique, inti­mate places and aims to entice music fans out with…

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Magnetic Skies launch ‘You Shine On’

“You Shine On” is the dream­i­ly anthemic new sin­gle from Lon­don out­fit Mag­net­ic Skies, release date 17th Feb­ru­ary, with accom­pa­ny­ing video. The pop­ping synth open­ing notes imme­di­ate­ly trans­port you back to the 80s, evok­ing shades of Depeche Mode. The vocals are ethe­re­al and shim­mer­ing, open­ing into a rap­tur­ous cho­rus. There’s a over­rid­ing sense of drama…

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Le Junk new single “Midnight Lover” out now

Some­thing for the dance floor: a radi­ant new sin­gle called Mid­night Lover by the Lon­­don-based mul­ti-instru­­men­­tal­ist Le Junk. With spo­ken word vocals, this slinky num­ber, which came out on 12th August, pow­ers along with a dri­ving bass and a cho­rus you’ll want to sing along to. His lyrics are “strewn with sto­ries of sleazy misdemeanours…

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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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Come Down on Jupiter – The Orielles

The Orielles chose to try out new num­ber Come Down on Jupiter at Blue­dot fes­ti­val this sum­mer – maybe they were part­ly inspired by the space-themed fes­ti­val to give this new song a whirl. It’s the first track on their upcom­ing sec­ond album, now named Dis­co Volador. Per­form­ing live, the Calder Val­ley four­some always manage…

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Review: Bluedot 2019: a space celebration

If the sci­en­tists at Jodrell Bank could put their col­lec­tive heads togeth­er, it would be per­fect if they could find a way of tele­port­ing us back to the fields of Blue­dot in order to do the fes­ti­val all over again. That way it might be pos­si­ble to expe­ri­ence the stuff you’d missed first time round.…

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Review: Bearded Theory 2019

Fes­ti­val sea­son kicks off again with Beard­ed The­o­ry at Cat­ton Hall. As always it’s a musi­cal­ly diverse, friend­ly and spir­it­ed event

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Gill Landry and Ian Felice at The Borderline

Gill Landry and Ian Felice at The Bor­der­line. The Bor­der­line used to be an endear­ing­ly scruffy lit­tle venue, not out of place amongst the shab­by streets around Soho. As devel­op­ment began in earnest, the base­ment venue became increas­ing­ly frag­ile look­ing so its smart over­haul in March this year is very wel­come, espe­cial­ly the cosy seating…

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Lloyd Cole at Union Chapel review

I noticed that Lloyd Cole was sport­ing that slight­ly tricky sar­to­r­i­al trend, dou­ble den­im. Lat­er in the set, Cole made ref­er­ence to his out­fit. He relat­ed a sto­ry about a vis­it to Austin, Texas, where at a honky tonk bar he observed “much younger women danc­ing with old­er men… who all wore dou­ble den­im”. Much of Cole’s amus­ing onstage patter…

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