Before you even start listening to this CD – and particularly if you know XP8’s recent history – it is plainly obvious the band have some scores to settle. And indeed, perhaps they have – previous album HRS:MIN:SEC, while it had it’s moments, was a little derivative and at points, er, a bit soft.
This week's Tuesday Ten has been "in the works" for a few weeks, as after I had first conceived the idea it took me some time to complete the list. So what is it? It is the idea of my musical heroes. Obviously this is likely to be a contentious list: and those in it […]
Is it a cheap shot to blame the Prodigy for what Pendulum have become? Or maybe it isn’t. After all, although they were already rising stars in the drum’n’bass scene, it was their simply awesome reworking of Voodoo People that thrust them into the limelight, and since then their insistence on merging the ideals of […]
Last night was utterly, utterly insane. In all of the best possible ways. DJing at the Wendyhouse 10th Birthday last night provided me with one of the biggest buzzes of my life, and nearly floored me in the process, as many of you who saw me inbetween DJ sets will attest. The metal room seemed […]
Here is my usual run-down of ten tracks that I think are worthy of mention from the past month. Some might note a lack of “metal” in this list: mainly because there is little new stuff that I have heard that has inspired me to write about in any way. So, here goes.
First band on were Skinjob, an act that have been around for a while but somehow I have managed to miss every single time they have played locally to me. So, I was looking forward to this. And immediately I was disappointed by the dreadful sound: somehow the sound was a muddy mess, with the […]
As promised last week, here is the second part of my favourite albums of the 90s. Same rules as before, this time the list takes a more metallic edge, perhaps. These ten are in chronological order, just about, by the way.
The venue was a very odd one. The Grosvenor House Hotel on Charter Square, a hotel that has clearly seen better days, and indeed will soon be gone forever when the block in which it resides is demolished for the new Sevenstone retail quarter. The oh-so-slightly tatty interior was like a relic from the seventies, […]
A few weeks ago I covered ten of my favourite 80s albums. The 90s were the decade where I seriously got into music, and because of the disparate genres I listen to, there is simply no way that I can narrow this down to ten. So, my favourite albums of the 90s is split into […]
It is now over three years since a friend first suggested I go see this band live, and it has been interesting to see their development over this time. They were an impressive live band three years hence, and they are still one now. In just thirty-five minutes they played an intricately constructed set that […]
…with a lot of attention paid to catching up with a number of old friends there, I paid little or no attention to the support acts at all (which is reasonably rare for me). So I’ll skip them and move onto the main event.
Another month, another quick run-down of my favourite tracks of the past month.
So that can only mean that it’s time for me to do another Tuesday Ten – I haven’t done one in a while. And this week’s is all the fault of Infest, really – and more to the point their announcements last week.
After a few weeks off from writing the Tuesday Ten, it's time for it to return. I canned last week's one after I simply couldn't get it to work properly, so this week I'm on more familiar ground with a roundup of ten of my favourite tracks of the month. So here goes…
.Sideshow Symphonies last night was interesting. Everything was running rather late, so I got home later than I would have liked, but with me having pretty much free reign to play what I wanted, I decided to go in a particular direction…
Note: An edited version of this review appeared in Alternative Magazine Issue 09
A different TT this week, in that it is not exactly about the bands themselves (although they do come into this). Instead, it is my favourite live venues to go and see bands at. I’ve been going to see live bands for over thirteen years now, and I’ve lost count of how many I’ve actually […]
So, the first monthly roundup of 2008 – and with there not having been an equivalent for December, this is perhaps covering a longer period than normal, meaning that tracks I would have liked to include have not made the cut to keep it at ten.
Due to all kinds of issues with getting across the pennines (both Snake and Woodhead were shut on Saturday afternoon), friends staying with us weren’t at ours ’til six, and with food to eat and then the need to get ready before heading out, we almost totally missed Uberbyte.
It’s time, perhaps, to address the cliche of the “difficult second album”. Well, here is the perfect chance, really – the debut by ESA was so good that it is difficult not to be having memories of that in the back of one’s mind when reviewing the new one. One similarity becomes immediately obvious – […]
