Music
New Music: Northern Portrait – Pretty Decent Swimmers EP
It started with The Smiths. When I first heard them, I began to doubt whether I would ever love a band any more than that. After that, I started to buy these bands who had records that came out in plastic sleeves, and made flexi-disc and things, and were on labels like Sarah, and Subway …
Track: Everything Everything – James Rutledge ‘Arc’ Album Remix
They told us we didn’t have many lectures on my music degree because we needed time to immerse ourselves in music, and that we needed three hours practise time per day. In our college there was this mystical place of dreams, and (more pertinently) scores, and books and records (yes, records) and CD’s. And when …
Album Review: Johnny Marr – The Messenger
Jim F finds that despite spending years in the background, there’s always been a frontman in Johnny Marr that’s been fighting to get out. Rather like the end of one of those Rom-Com films when the perennial Bridesmaid suddenly steps forward and becomes the blushing bride, so Johnny Marr, at the ripe old age of …
Track: Beacon – Bring You Back, plus album news
I hate that word you hear people use sometimes ‘chill-ax’. What need is there, ever, to put two words together that essentially mean the same thing. I’m quite prepared to chill-out at any given chance, or indeed relax. Or do one of them and describe it as the other. That’s the kind of live for …
Album Review: Screaming Maldini – Screaming Maldini
Sheffield six-piece Screaming Maldini release album, an incredibly catchy prog-pop collection of songs, cue Jim F fauning almost uncontrollably I’ve been waiting for this. If there were ever a band bringing a dash of colour to the rather pastel shades that pop is painted in at the moment, its Screaming Maldini. The Sheffield six piece’s …
Meet: Capsize interview
Always searching for the new and the exciting, Jim F interviews exciting Californian Melodic Hardcore band Capsize about, well, being new and exciting.. I’ve always liked new music. John Peel said something to the effect of always trying to discover something he hadn’t heard before – Similarly Gilles Peterson, at the other end of the …
Album Review: Martin Rossiter – The Defenestration of St Martin
The early 90’s were a personal feast of ‘Rock n Roll’ music in my life. Things were good… very good indeed. I still had hair. The children were the right age to palm off on the grandparents and the proliferation of quality guitar music was at its height. This was Brit Pop indie heaven and …
News: Y-Prog Festival, 15th – 17th March, Corporation: Sheffield, plus an interview with organiser Kris Hudson-Lee
When I was younger, in those halcyon days shortly after punk, there was a certain word that stuck fear into our very beings, that was only whispered in hushed huddles around the back of the Science block. We feared that, at the very mention of it we would be ostracised by our peers and left …
Meet: Reece Johnson – DJ, Producer, Club Promoter, Record Label Owner
There’s so much music going on, pretty much everywhere, its often difficult to try and keep track of everything. And I like, and we cover, so many different sorts of stuff, its virtually impossible. On my desk there’s notebooks and bits of paper everywhere, with bands, music, DJ’s, labels, artists, exhibitions, records, places and just …
Track: Paper Crows and the electronic pop of Changing Colours
People thing doing nothing is easy. Let me tell you it isn’t. It takes practice, sometimes years to perfect maximizing the nothing, and minimizing the thing. I spent three years at university doing such a thing, until save from the cafe across the road (literally) and the pub round the corner, all I needed was …