Music
Album Review: Blue Angel – Departures
Fate, it seems played its part with Blue Angel. The first piece of fate happened at rehearsal rooms, the now defunct Backstreet Studios on Holloway Road in London , when producer/Instrumentalist Jason Newton heard Bella Bennett in the next room, rehearsing for a wedding, and he knew he’d found the voice he’d been looking for. The other piece …
News: Tom Hickox to join Richard Hawley, Band Of Horse and others at Somerset House ‘Summer Series’
In my day it was called YTS. When you wanted to learn a ‘trade’ like plumbing, or typewriting, or being a zookeeper (probably) or a footballer, you signed up on a course that was part schooling and part learning on the job, and they (the government that is) paid you something like £17.50 per week …
EP: Ty – Kick Snare and an idea (Part One)
I didn’t come from the slums, in fact there’s very little about me that is even remotely ‘urban’. When I was at school we had to do this tracing your family tree thing. There were others in my class where there parents had been involved in exciting jobs, like in the army or merchant navy, …
Album Review: British Sea Power – Machineries of Joy track by track
Have British Sea Power really been around a decade? It doesn’t seem that since, shortly after the release of their second album, Open Season I saw them in London, as support for the much missed (in my house anyway) Electric Soft Parade. They wore odd costumes, paraded around the stage on each-others shoulders, made a …
Album Review: Johnny Hates Jazz – Magnetized
You heard right: Johnny Hates Jazz have a new album out. Radio 2 are playing their new single. It’s technically their third studio album, although only the second with the original singer, Clark Datchler. This time round they’re a two-piece, just Clark and bassist/producer Mike Nocito, returning without drummer Calvin Hayes. The story of JHJ is …
Meet: A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and You have already gone to the Other World
There’s something unique, and beautiful about A Hawk and a Hacksaw. In these days of X-Factor and formulaic unit-obsessed drivel, the Albuquerque, New Mexico duo have furrowed if not a lonely path, then a reasonably empty one. After playing drums in the much missed Natural Milk Hotel, Jeremy Barnes passed through several bands, before travelling …
EP: Blood Sport reveal new EP ø, and download it for free
One of the things about music is it can create mood. You hear a piece of music and at once it can take you back to a moment in your life, or a mood you felt. I’m sure that when I was younger I had break-up songs and stuff like that, but I can’t remember …
Meet: Leeroy Powell a.k.a. Sir Vinyl Instinct, a.k.a. Itchy Pig
I went on a scout camp once, and we had this (how could he be anything other?) slightly crazy scout leader, that wore shorts all the time, and usually a hat, not a scout beret, but instead a sort of Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee sort of affair. I prided myself on being one of the least …
Past Lives: April 1st 1983, and the death of Marvin Gaye
In some ways, it was almost seems inevitable. On one hand, one of the best and most successful singers, not only in his illustrious record company, Motowns history, but also in the whole of popular music history. He had been having hits since the 1960’s, his breakthrough chart hit being I heard it through the …
Album Review: The Laurels – Plains
I seem to have been to Australia on a few occasions. Its lovely, and my favourite place has always been Sydney. The capital city always seems to have more things going on, feels more bohemian, seems so much prettier. I walked up to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge one (a difficult task since …