February 2011
1 post
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January 2011
1 post
2010 - it's been a pleasure
Happy new year my pretties! We’re now in the depths of January. 2010 has been and gone, taking with it my resolution for a gig a week.
You may have noticed there are not 52 gigs recorded.. I failed, dear readers! Well, I actually managed about 48 (Arcade Fire, Pete Roe and Portico Quartet are just some of the bands I never got round to blogging in the final flurry of 2010…) but am...
December 2010
4 posts
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Week 40: Darkness Revisited
Not technically a gig this week, but wanted to post this to ya’ll before it goes off line (only available till 28th December people!)
I’ve just watched Darkness Revisited - a music doc about the making of Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town album - the follow up to 1975’s Born to Run. The album was almost three years in the making - between 1976 and 1978 -...
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Week 39: Zeus @ Queen of Hoxton
Like the Beatles? Especially White album era? You’ll love these guys. One of ‘em even looks like John Lennon. Nuf said really.
They also do a mean cover of Genesis’, How Does it Feel.
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Week 38: Local Natives at the HMV Forum
Do you ever get when you go to a gig of a band that you really like, but there’s so much going on in your own head that it’s impossible to focus? Well sadly that happened with Local Natives, a band who I’m really fond of. I loved their album, Gorilla Manor, when it first came out around this time last year, and even though I feel like it has dated quite a lot since, I have a little soft spot for...
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Week 37: Petrichor Ensemble at Groscenor Chapel
Now this isn’t so much of a review this week - more of a record of one of my gigs I’ve been to. It was in a small chapel in west London, with mince pies and vino a-plenty and a really beautiful gig. However, I don’t really think it’s fair to review, as I know about half the people in the ensemble! Amazing as they all were (and well worth a listen), I’m clearly biased.
That said, I’d def...
November 2010
1 post
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October 2010
3 posts
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Week 35: Yeasayer at the Roundhouse
Ah Yeasayer. The unintentionally hippest of Brooklyn’s hipsters.
The three piece took to the stage at the Roundhouse last week laying on their blend of electro beats with lush vocal harmonies, synths a-plenty and Asian-influenced psychedelic indie-pop.
Anand Wilder is closest to me, wearing what can only be described as your Grandad’s PJs, but with enough toned biceps showing to make sure he’s...
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Week 34: Blonde Redhead at Shepherd's Bush Empire
Setting the scene for this evening was Londoner Porcelain Raft, whose charmingly low-fi dreamy sound paved the way for the main event -revered art-rockers, Blonde Redhead.
The band came on to the stage in a wash of copper orange and purple lights and got straight into the duet, ‘Black Guitar’ from the recently released album Penny Sparkle. Wearing a kind of sci-fi-squid mask, with a...
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Week 33: Worriedaboutsatan at Drowned In Sound's...
Little bit of a jump ahead this week - waiting for another review to appear on another site before I can post it here…
But anyhoo, last Friday, I went along to Drowned In Sound’s 10th Birthday Party celebrations - an occasion definitely worth celebrating. The site is not just a collection of music journalism, but an aggregator of comment and opinion by music lovers, however obscure or...
September 2010
1 post
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Weeks 30, 31, 32..
Well, you know what they say. Time flies when you’re having fun and all that… I mightn’t have writing my weekly updates, but never fear, dear Readers! Come rain, or shine, I have still been going to my weekly gig. Here’s a bit of a round up so far. Week 30: Three Tales by Steve Reich and Beryl KorotPerformed by Ensemble BPM (starring the Ligeti Quartet) as part of the...
August 2010
3 posts
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Week 28: I AM A CLICHE: Echoes of the Punk...
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Week 27: Phantogram at the Lexington
Ok, I know I’ve been in London for a good few years now, but I confess: I’d never been to the Lexington for a gig. My first ever time at the revered music venue, (complete with disco balls and mirrors - who knew?!), was to see Phantogram at the end of July.
The girl/boy electro-pop duo from New York (where else?) only had a guitar, keyboards and a few samplers between them, but they managed some...
July 2010
5 posts
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This single, Leave Everywhere is already one of my...
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Week 26: Toro Y Moi @CAMP basement
It was hot. It was sweaty. It was filled with people wanting to check out the hotly tipped hipster. But the Toro Y Moi gig at CAMP basement was lots of fun.
Chaz Brundick’s debut album Causers of This is full of chilled out electronic pop songs, but the live drums and bass bring a lot more of a dance edge to this set. This is great in theory, but at times the sound balance wasn’t right, with the...
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Week 23: Dirty Projectors at the Barbican
While music lovers from all over the UK flocked to Glastonbury last weekend, I headed to the Barbican to see Dirty Projectors. Glastonbury might have the sunshine and Kylie, but we had one of the most exciting bands making music at the moment PLUS the 20-piece contemporary music ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, all the way from New York.
Dave Longstreth, the daddy of the Dirty Projectors, is...
June 2010
4 posts
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Week 22: tUnE-yArDs at The Scala
This post first appeared here over at For Folks Sake. (It might say it’s by Lynn Roberts but, erm, it’s not..! scroll down and you’ll find me.) I highly recommend this songstress - still buzzing from the gig over almost a week later! Check out her (only) music video for Real Live Flesh for a lil taster.
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Merill Garbus aka tUnE-yArDs, opened her set with a primal,...
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Week 21: Bandstand busking with Oh Ruin @...
A singer-songwriter has to be really bloody good to stand out. There are just hundreds of them out there, all wearing their hearts on their sleeves, all trying to quietly woo the handful of punters out there.
Oh Ruin fit the mould predictably enough, with his checked shirt and his beard and his lyrics about being oh so forlorn. The Irish musician makes his own guitars and he can certainly play...
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May 2010
5 posts
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Week 19: Jon Boden AKA Tom Waits of Folk
As with last week, this review appeared first here on the For Folks Sake website. But now to the point:
As well as the four members of The Remnant Kings, two Edison phonographs with their brass horns accompany Jon Boden at either side of the stage at the Purcell Room.
They help to “preserve memories of what’s gone before,” says Boden as he takes to the stage to the sound of eerie Victorian...
…which first appeared here http://bit.ly/a3eT2u on @forfolkssake
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Week 18: The Big Pink @ HMV Forum
Here’s ma review of The Big Pink, as it appears on the lovely For Folks Sake website:
With her hooded cloak, long hair and slow rocking back and forth, Rachel from Ebsen and the Witch does a good job of living up to the band name. During their set, the bass drum takes centre stage and at one point, all three band members gather round as if performing some ancient ritual around the cauldron....
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Week 17: Elena Tonra
“I powder my nose, he powders his gums”. And so begins Elena Tonra’s set at the Slaughtered Lamb. It comes a bit of a shock from someone so unassuming. With her eyes firmly focused on the floor in front and shoulders slightly hunched over her guitar, the odd jet of venom seems to come from nowhere. But behind the tentative, smiley persona, Elena Tonra doesn’t shy away from saying what she...
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Week 16 - Gil Scott-Heron
I still couldn’t quite believe that I’d be seeing Gil Scott-Heron, even after I bought tickets to his gig at the Southbank Centre. To be completely honest, I wasn’t even sure he was still alive when the word came out that he was releasing a new album this year – the mellow, knowing I’m new here. He was first introduced to me through the track, The Revolution will not be Televised, during a Music...
April 2010
2 posts
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Let's av a bit of a catch-up, shall we?
Phew! Time flies innit. Here’s a quick update on the last few weeks.
Week 13 – For this week, I was part of the gig playing in a quartet at an impromptu pop-up restaurant/house party. This does count in my rules, but so as I don’t have to put myself through a critique of my performance, doesn’t merit a review.
Week 14 – Troubadour Rose at the Windmill; a blue-grass five-piece with fiddle, walking...
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Jesus wept
Last Friday, as you’ll know, was Good Friday. Pubs in Belfast were only serving alcohol between 5 and 11 pm, as the good Lord intended on this holiest of days. While this limited the amount of booze served in my home city, it also opened the door for underground sibín and BYOB establishments, as I discovered last week.
The Conway Mill was hosting the 7th annual Basque Solidarity night in...
March 2010
5 posts
Comments
Feel free to comment on the Black Lips blog here if you like - photos and comments don’t seem to mix very well.
;)
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Belated Bears
I am officially rubbish, for taking so long to get this review down. Won’t bore you with excuses as to why it’s so late.
For what it’s worth, I did go to see the lovely Grizzly Bear last Sunday at the Roundhouse. The bare stage was very rustic-looking with jam jars filled with fairy lights hanging from wooden posts that were staggered across the stage. These were cleverly transformed, glowing...
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Field Music at Scala
Probably shouldn’t admit to this, being an aspiring music writer and all that, but Field Music had formed, split up and got back together again for their new album by the time I’d first heard of them. It was reading Kitty Empire’s review in the Observer that made me think they were a band to look out for and I booked tickets for their gig in Scala this week.
When I got round to listening to the...
February 2010
6 posts
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Kids Love Lies
The Kids Love Lies gig on Thursday felt a bit like crashing an office party. A damn good band compared to the usual dodgy entertainment, true. But it seemed like most of the people there were mates with the band and had popped down to The Rest is Noise after work, suits and chunky belted dresses still intact.
This was the first gig the band had played with new drummer Will, and they were as tight...
(Almost) eight gigs into 2010
The astute among you will have noticed that I didn’t go to a gig last week. And what is the point of this blog if it’s not to be going to a gig every week?! A fair question, I admit. But with a heavy week at work and being away all weekend, I decided to do two this week instead to make up for it. (In case you’re wondering, my weeks according to Heart of Noise house rules run from...
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Come one, come all - Sunday Jazz at the Effra Hall...
This article published in The Times last year made for difficult reading. Columnist, Sathnam Sanghera, argued that different cultures and ethnic minorities in Brixton don’t ‘integrate’, and rather just ‘co-exist’. He describes a Brixton where the White-British community shop at Tescos and the Afro-Caribbean community shop at the market. Apparently it’s the White kids who go to gigs at the Academy...
5 down, 47 gigs to go...
Feels like it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I guess it’ll work out this way depending on when I go to see things… But in the meantime, i’ve been listening to A Fine Frenzy and enjoying her muchly. So I suggest you do the same http://www.myspace.com/afinefrenzy
By the way, I’m doing this from my phone. How exciting is that?!
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Tristram at The Social
My violin came out of its case this week, for the first time in months.
I dug out some Irish fiddle music, turned it up loud and played along with my eyes closed, teaching myself a few new tunes and pretending I was right there with the musicians, playing along.
Going to a gig doesn’t often inspire that kind of music making for me. Especially when the gig isn’t a session in the corner of some...
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Ahhh Tristram
Went to see the lovely Tristram last night at The Social and was blown away. In a very understated way of course. Don’t have time to write a review proper, but take a listen here and enjoy.
January 2010
6 posts
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Vivian Girls, Dalston
Four gigs down, 48 to go.
This week was the first time it felt like a bit of a struggle. Going to gigs is one of my favourite things to do, right, why would it be a challenge? But after a heavy weekend, and O Emperor on Sunday (check it out below), I was slightly regretting booking my Vivian Girls tickets for Monday night. But I managed to coerce a north-of-the-river friend (yes I do have some of...
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All Hail the Emperor
O Emperor have been quietly making waves in Ireland, getting solidly positive reviews in everything from Hot Press, the daddy of Irish music zines, to the Irish Times. They’re now taking in the UK music scene before they release their first album, ‘Hither Thither’ – one which they’ve produced and recorded themselves.
The five-piece came across as a bit meek and mild when they took to the stage...
O Emperor interview link
Sadly not by me, but here’s a little taster to whet your appetite while I get round to writing.
http://entertainment.ie/Music/feature/Interview-with-O-Emperor/1/423.htm
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Wild Palms at Corsica Studios
OK so I’m a bit late off the mark here. Again.
I went to a gig last Thursday and here I am, settling down with a glass of wine to write the review a week later. In my day-job in journalist-dom, this would never be allowed. But bear with me, dear readers. I’ll be better.
I went to see Wild Palms at Corsica studios near Elephant and Castle, who were first up at the OFF MODERN hosted evening. If you...
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Touring ska-land
Seeing as it’s my first gig and first blogpost of 2010, I decided to stay local. And for me, local is Brixton, the pumping heart of south London and home to reggae and ska; riots and attitude. In my quest for a gig a week, I’m hoping to discover new music genres, unsigned bands and new venues. But there’s plenty of time for all that. To ease me in, I thought I’d stick to my (adopted) roots and go...