I can’t recall the last time that I headed to a small venue on the “toilet circuit” to check out a barely-known, under-the-radar band. Especially when they are not the headliners. But the marvellous single/EP Confessions – released late last year, and in my top ten tracks of 2010 – had me hooked from the […]
I’ve seen a whole lot more gigs this year than I have in a while. I’m putting it down to being back in the heart of the action (i.e. London) and being able to get out to Montreal this year: plainly and simply I have access to so many more venues, and the reality is […]
I’ve been meaning to go to at least one of the days of Wireless for a couple of years now – but I think really I was awaiting for the right lineup to splash my cash on – and the announcement of Pulp for this back before Christmas (god, that long ago?) sealed the deal. […]
I, like other music lovers, should perhaps be getting very concerned about just how many gigs that I’ve attended in recent years that are a reunion or return of an “old” band. The same goes with re-issues of “old” albums, repackaged, remastered and resold to fans that quite likely already have the original.
I wasn’t going to let a small case of burnout, exhaustion and illness to stop me getting to this gig – after all I’d waited some years to see the headliners. So on my own I went to a venue I’d never attended before.
Like it or not, club gigs during a warm summer can be a real trial. And so it proved on Wednesday night, with the Garage resembling a sauna by the time we got through the doors at about 1945, never mind when the bands were on later and the venue had filled up. Still, I […]
There were points over the weekend that perhaps, just maybe, I was thinking just how completely insane it was to fly a 6800 mile round-trip just to come to an industrial festival. And then there would be another moment that made it crystal clear that it was definitely the right thing to do. So, below […]
I first came across And So I Watch You From Afar at Damnation a couple of years ago – and even for the handful of songs played, I was one of a good number of people suitably blown away by this young and energetic band.
Thursday night was something of a trip into the past. Although not for the venue – somehow despite my fifteen years or so of gig-going in London, I’ve never made it to the Purple Turtle until Thursday night (and of course, in the way these things go, I’m likely to be there at least two […]
Killing Joke are a band that, to many peoples surprise, I have never managed to see previously. So when the chance to go to this came up, there was no way I was going to miss it (even if it meant missing out on Paradise Lost playing all of Draconian Times across ‘town at The […]
Twelve years is a long, long time between visits to the UK for an American artist. Particularly one as loved in the metal scene as Rob Zombie. Or was that “did love”? Let’s be honest, much of his solo material has been, well, kinda half-assed on record, reaching a nadir on the dreadful Educated Horses, […]
The problem with my gig-going in 2010 wasn’t that I went to too few, or too many – although for various reasons I did miss a number of gigs I really wanted to see – but that trying to narrow the best of the year down to ten was probably as difficult as it has […]
Nowadays – and perhaps as always during their twenty-five-year career – the release of a new Young Gods album is an event. A band of unusual standing, a band that don’t really fit in amongst the usual genre descriptions, and frankly have long since had the freedom to record what they like. Which has seen […]
I think it’s pretty fair to say that I wasn’t expecting a support act quite like Daniel Higgs. Having read up since, he’s an ex-member of an influential folk act called Lungfish, and looked initially like he may be as old as the total age of the members of Neurosis, and looking a little like […]
We got there late, and so only caught the second half of Coheed and Cambria‘s set. A band that I’ve never really got into, and having read up since I didn’t realise that all of their albums are concept albums based on sci-fi stories written by one of the band. Well, it explains the prog […]
Next time I do an all-dayer in a city 200 miles from where I live, I won’t be going out clubbing until 0300 the previous night.
My first visit to Koko in about eleven years last night saw me head there for the return to London of Swans, of which more in a moment. But as always, I feel it’s notable to mention the organisation. Doors at 1900 – fine, and they opened on time, not to mention being friendly security […]
There are few bands that could justifiably claim that as they pass thirty years of existence as an active and still-recording unit, they remain a source of reference and perhaps reverence to many music-lovers and indeed other artists. One band that certainly can is Einstürzende Neubauten, whose second stop on their “30th Anniversary tour” was […]
I think it took until the dawn of this year’s Infest until I realised just how much I missed the festival in its year off last year. All it took was a few minutes of being back in (nearly) familiar surroundings, of which more in a moment, with various familiar faces of friends new and […]
I did wonder whether my evening was going to be cursed, after the heavens opened in biblical fashion while standing in the queue, with nowhere to shelter from the pouring rain. And then there was the poorly organised queue, with a lengthy wait to collect tickets that had been pre-booked. Surely, with all the technology […]
