News: Gary Numan announces new album Splinter (Songs From A Broken Mind), plus tour dates
My first gig was seeing Gary Numan (with Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark as support) at a sold out Birmingham Odeon on his first major tour in 1979. He was riding high with his Pleasure Principle album at number one and the accompanying single, Cars in the top ten after having already hit the top …
Feature: David Bowie is… exhibition, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
It was with some excitement, and a little trepidation, that I took the first train down to London for the David Bowie exhibition at the V&A. To start with I did not have a ticket and hoped that the queue for the daily release of tickets would not be too well formed when I got …
Live Review: Pissed Jeans/ Hookworms, Brudenell Social Club, Leeds 04.07.2013
Punk, it appears, is not dead after all. This is the conclusion I came to while driving back home to Sheffield after this gig. Not the 1977 punk aesthetic, but that raw on the edge punk that thrills, revolts (in both meanings of the word), assaults, and, basically, does not give a shit. Last night’s …
Album Review – The Orb (feat. Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry) – More Tales from the Orbservatory
The Orb are very reminiscent of a time in my life when, it is fair to say, I did a lot of chillin’. I was a research student but, unlike most of my peers, used to get up very early and get my work done by lunchtime. I would then spend long afternoons listening to …
Album Review: Saltland – I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us
There are some record labels, and Seattle’s Sub Pop comes immediately to mind, where you know that whatever they release is going to be at the very least interesting. Others have the sort of design style where you only have to look at the artwork to know what label is behind it, such as Germany’s …
Say Psych: Live – Besnard Lakes, Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, 25th May 2013
I have found that every so often in my life I have reached a musical turning point. A moment when I have heard something that has opened a completely new front in terms of what I listen to. I find this exciting because all of a sudden there are a whole raft of new bands …
Live: The Handsome Family – Greystones, Sheffield 21.05.2013
It is difficult to describe a Handsome Family gig because is it so much more than the sum of its parts. It’s not just the marvellous music, or the magnificent lyrics. It’s not just the humour or the bonhomie tinged with darkness, nor is it the fact that your are watching a couple, Rennie and …
Album Review: Killing Joke – Singles Collection 1979-2012
First up I need to declare an interest. I think Killing Joke are an amazing band. I loved them when they first emerged as part of that morass of styles that has been termed ‘post-punk’, and they are probably currently my favourite band. In between times I have lost touch with them, found them, and …
Album Review: White People and the Damage Done by Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
I first came across The Dead Kennedys when I was in my early teens, I was obsessed with the singles chart at the time and they were a band who, somehow, did not get their records played so much on the chart rundown on BBC Radio 1 on Sundays. I guess if Frankie’s Relax got …
Say Psych: Album Review – Pearl Mystic by The Hookworms
I find it hard to think of any band who I have seen live more often over recent years than The Hookworms. They have been on the live scene in Leeds, where I have lived for most of the previous twenty years before my move to Sheffield last year, for a few years now. Strangely …