Local shows
List past shows >
John Fairhurst, Jill Barber and Richard GodwinFri 16th May 2008, Downstaris at The King's Head
John Fairhurst (Live)
www.myspace.com/johnfairhurst
A stunning debut, Joys of Spring is an eclectic amalgamation of John’s incredible life to date; hazy summertime rhythms with masterful guitar techniques and an underlying sense of the worldwide music community. Guesting on the album are friends Nancy Elizabeth, Dave Rybka and Denis Jones, themselves locally renowned musicians, while James G. Wilson earns a songwriting credit with the poignantly beautiful Friends...
Jill Barber (Live)
www.myspace.com/jillbarbermusic
"Jill Barber is a real songwriter... a damn good songwriter"
- Kris Kristofferson
"This Canadian singer, songwriter and awards magnet is Norah Jones without the bland bits"
- MOJO Magazine
"Delightfully distinctive, bravely unclassifiable, sexy and vulnerable... For All Time is a little masterpiece"
- (**** 4 stars) The Toronto Star
"Jill Barber is part of a breed of foxy and self-assured singer-songwriters... a tribute to an era when a song could be cheeky and sexy without being explicit"
- ***** (5 stars) Maverick Magazine, UK
"For All Time is modest but powerful. Thoughful writing and arrangements draw attention away from themselves and toward Barber's versatile voice."
- NNNN (4 stars) NOW Magazine
"A winning mix of jazz, folk and country... Barber's voice is outstanding, timeless"
- The Irish News, Best Albums of 2006
Richard Godwin (Live)
www.myspace.com/richardgodwinmusic
Born under the sign of Cancer in 1981. Nothing of relevance happened until he picked up a guitar in 1994. Showed aptitude for songwriting immediately, playing with the Contra Band, producing such lost classics as "Limbs", "Wash My Mind" and "The Contra Band Rap".
Later honed his skills playing guitar with the funk band Lucky Benny and the Producers and travelling in Russia and France. Made solo debut in London in 2004, developing a confrontational, expressive style (see the Jacques Brel cover "Next!"), complex melodic progressions (see "I Wonder Whether This Is the End") and narrative lyrics, often inspired by his day job as a journalist ("One of Many", loosely inspired by the royal butlers scandal of 2004).
After a two year sabbatical, he returned to live performance in 2007 - an experience wryly satirised in the song "Variety". Which brings us to the present.
Tickets are £7 from www.wegottickets.co.uk
Liz Green, Birdengine, Speck Mountain, Denis Jones, Woodpigeon, Sammy Decoster, John Fairhurst, Madam, Matt EatonSat 17th May 2008, at the Komedia Cafe
Liz Green (Live)
www.myspace.com/lizgreenmusic
Liz Green spent last year collecting accolades and making friends wherever she played: from winning the Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent competition and playing on the Pyramid stage, to being awarded BBC Manchester’s Single of the Year for her debut Bad Medicine, Liz has been compared to everyone from Judy Garland and Peggy Lee to Karen Dalton and Jolie Holland...So what does 2008 hold? A showcase at SxSW, a second single,
Midnight Blues, due out in April on Humble Soul, and a debut album.
Liz Green has the enviable ability to sound at once like the most vital new musician and one of the long forgotten greats of the early days of music. Bad Medicine is possibly the best song that Nina Simone never sang, a track of sheer, beautiful, astounding quality that has to be heard to be believed. BBC Manchester
Birdengine (Live)
www.myspace.com/birdengine
Birdengine is the name Mr Lawry Joseph Tilbury chooses to make music with. He hails from the Dorset countryside and began making music as a child. Venturing at night into the fields and forests surrounding his childhood home, with a broken nylon guitar, a record player and a couple of carefully scratched and doctored records, performing his ramshackle and melancholy sound for only himself, the woodland creatures and the moon.
‘Like visiting a museum of curiosities packed with shelves of malformed foetuses and two-headed dogs pickled in jars; the songs are full of rustic-mythic backwards weirdness…’ The Independent
Speck Mountain (Live)
www.myspace.com/speckmountain
It’s been a big year for Speck Mountain, their debut, Summer Above, has been a bit of a sleeper, stateside, while reaching the 5 spot in Piccadilly Records influential Year-End Best List (even before being officially released in England!), and subsequently being picked up by Peace Frog for the U.K. and rest of the world. East and West coast U.S. tours, substantial gigging in their newly adopted hometown of Chicago, and a CMJ showcase have allowed them to find a new, loose sound based on the two distinct guitar styles of song-writers Karl Briedrick and Marie-Claire Balabanian, Marie-Claire’s startlingly mature vocal presence, and the plangent drones of Kate Walsh’s vintage organ and piano.
Woodpigeon (Live)
www.myspace.com/woodpigeon
Like Calgary's answer to Sufjan Stevens and his travelling symphonic circus, prairie collective Woodpigeon have a penchant for long-winded song titles (Home As A Romanticized Concept Where Everyone Loves You Always And Forever) and jingly, ramshackle chamber-folk concoctions driven by banjo, glockenspiel, a sprawling choir and quivering male vocals. Though there are sonic similarities, the writing on Songbook suggests repressed longing and romantic fantasies rather than Stevens's hyper-detailed short story narratives, but Mark Hamilton's delightfully whimsical metaphors and imagery (a love song about ninjas! Superheroes sacrificing good deeds for love!) work perfectly in tandem with Woodpigeon's shimmery songs.
Madam (Live)
www.myspace.com/madammusic
CONTENDER FOR THE NOIR NICHE OCCUPIED BY HOPE SANDOVAL (MAZZY STAR) AND CHAN MARSHALL (CAT POWER) - MADAM IS A REAL FIND! The Guardian 4/5 ****
Madam is a name which should be written in bright neon outside big venues in the swanky part of town *****4.5 / 5 THE SUN
A Girl with a taste for the dark stuff NME
She should give Kylie and Alison Goldfrapp a run for their money Caroline Sullivan THE GUARDIAN
An astonishing album of cruel beauty and emotional honesty, an immense talent 5/5***** ROCK AND REEL
Atmospheric and deliciously woozy, it is ghostly, intoxicating pop at it's most inspired
MAVERICK
Champions of sounds soft and subdued. the terrific madam favours sultry, slightly spooked and lusciously late-night Americana noir
TIME OUT
John Fairhurst (Live)
www.myspace.com/johnfairhurst
A stunning debut, Joys of Spring is an eclectic amalgamation of John’s incredible life to date; hazy summertime rhythms with masterful guitar techniques and an underlying sense of the worldwide music community. Guesting on the album are friends Nancy Elizabeth, Dave Rybka and Denis Jones, themselves locally renowned musicians, while James G. Wilson earns a songwriting credit with the poignantly beautiful Friends...
Denis Jones (Live)
www.myspace.com/denisjones
There is no surprise that Denis Jones keeps being invited back to play wherever he goes...he's quite simply one of the most exciting, engaging, inventive and purely entertaining performers you will see this year or next. Humble Soul
Denis' charming voice lends this release the feeling of a stripped-down male version of a Coco Rosie record, if Coco Rosie weren't so disappointingly pretentious. Warprecords
Matt Eaton (Live)
www.myspace.com/driftmatteaton
Having spent the last few years fronting Actress Hands - a noisy guitar pop group who've recently toured alongside the likes of Dinosaur Jr, The Pipettes, The Walkmen and Le Reno Amps amongst others - and playing guitar for Thirty Pounds Of Bone, The Electric Soft Parade and (the UKs number one Jonathan Richman tribute act) The Modern Ovens, Matt has a remarkable view point to strip down from, taking his inspirations of living and touring music and pouring them in his cavernous tones across arrangements that are both simple and complex and indeed equally sparse and warm.
Sammy Decoster (Live)
www.myspace.com/sammydecoster
Tickets £6 from www.wegottickets.com/event/29557
Tom Brosseau plus special guests Sam Amidon and Speck MountainMon 19th May 2008, 12 Bar Club
Tom Brosseau (Live)
www.myspace.com/tombrosseau
There are some singers, a rare few, whom it’s hard to believe are really from this time, such is the otherworldly pull of their voice. Time Out
When Tom Brosseau opens his mouth to sing, it becomes immediately clear that this man is playing for keeps. His music is gentle - and kind of spooky, in a pretty way. Philly Inquirer
Tom Brosseau draws on old-time roots traditions that pre-date both, his delicate voice ranging over gospel, blues and fol staples on subtle, supple story-songs. Deceptively simple fluency is his calling card: these are rich songs, lightly dealt. The Independent
Tom Brosseau’s sixth album sounds like it turned up in a suitcase covered in dust in someone’s attic, marked “folk music - open after my death”. In fact, he’s an LA resident who recorded it in Bristol (with PJ Harvey producer John Parish), and is loved by Bono. The Guardian
Sam Amidon (Live)
www.myspace.com/samamidon
Sam Amidon was raised in Brattleboro, Vermont by folk-musician parents Peter
and Mary Alice Amidon. He sings, plays fiddle, banjo, guitar, and can count in binary code on his hands really fast. “All Is Well,” a collection of reworked
folksongs produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson and featuring chamber-orchestral arrangements by Nico Muhly and contributions from Eyvind Kang, Aaron Siegel, Ben Frost, and Stefan Amidon, is his first album for Bedroom Community.
His previous album of songs, a duo with Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman) under the name Samamidon and called “But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted,” was labeled “the most interesting folk album of 2007” by Stylus magazine. Sam lives in New York City. He plays in the lamprockbands Doveman and Stars Like Fleas, and has also played with Tall Firs, The Swell Season, and Stares. In March, he premiered the Nico Muhly composition “The Only Tune” at Carnegie Hall. His new album All is Well is released on 4th Feb through Bedroom Community.
Speck Mountain (Live)
www.myspace.com/speckmountain
It’s been a big year for Speck Mountain, their debut, Summer Above, has been a bit of a sleeper, stateside, while reaching the 5 spot in Piccadilly Records influential Year-End Best List (even before being officially released in England!), and subsequently being picked up by Peace Frog for the U.K. and rest of the world. East and West coast U.S. tours, substantial gigging in their newly adopted hometown of Chicago, and a CMJ showcase have allowed them to find a new, loose sound based on the two distinct guitar styles of song-writers Karl Briedrick and Marie-Claire Balabanian, Marie-Claire’s startlingly mature vocal presence, and the plangent drones of Kate Walsh’s vintage organ and piano.
Tickets £8 in advance
www.wegottickets.com/event/29422
Paris Motel, Woodpigeon, Sophies PigeonsWed 28th May 2008, at Bush Hall, with End of the Road folks
Paris Motel (Live)
www.myspace.com/parismotel
"a beautiful slice of archaic chamber pop that lifts you somewhere sublime" NME
Despite the Gallic monikor Paris Motel is as English as tuppence and is actually London based Amy May - sometime viola player in various orchestras and quartets as well as with artists as diverse as Circulus and Suggs and arranger and orchestrator for the likes of Jeff Beck and Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures live shows.
Her debut album, “In The Salpetriere”, on which she plays virtually all the instruments, is a haunting collection of tales interwoven with magical and mysterious ladies, from pirates and poets to French erotic novelists and mediaeval witches. The Salpetriere, once an asylum for the mad and the destitute women of Paris, is here used as a handy metaphor to house and collect these weird and wonderful characters.
Recently been lapped up by appreciative audiences at Glastonbury, Latitude and SXSW, Paris Motel musically sits somewhere between the pastoral folk of Fairport Convention and Robert Kirby’s orchestration for Nick Drake.
Woodpigeon (Live)
www.myspace.com/woodpigeon
Moving away from blissed-out orchestral pop to quiet and refined folk, Woodpigeon raises the stakes on Houndstooth. The six-song EP is a departure for the band – moving from big and complex to small and more intimate. The first two tracks in particular ("In Praise of the West Midlothian Bus Service" and "Oberkampf"), showcase strong, deliberate vocals and effective harmonies and meld hymnal-like swells to create these modern lullabies.
Recorded beautifully by another local favourite, Jane Vain, the band has never sounded more crystalline or precise. Track six, recorded by Aaron Booth, emphasizes the band’s confidence in the new material and showcases the lyrics and intricate acoustics – allowing the song to build and retreat effortlessly. By shedding the bells and whistles (literally), Woodpigeon allows the listener to hear its growth in every plucked string. By keeping things simple and stripping down its sound, the band has managed to show on Houndstooth that big things really do come in small packages. 4/5 FWD Magazine
Sophie’s Pigeons (Live)
www.myspace.com/sophienelson
SoPhIeS pIgEoNs take you on a delightful melodic journey, showing fleeting glimpes of Fiona Apple and Tori Amos with a charm of their own. - Flesh Tones, Manchester
An impeccable performace by a band that you could see going a long way. - Listen To Manchester
Four rather happily deranged individuals hammering pianos who clearly enjoy what they are doing. Their overall madness and enthusiasm rubs off onto the audience and brings the night to a successful conclusion. - Sandman Magazine2007
Tickets £5 for the first 50! www.wegottickets.com
a.P.A.t.T plus GlockenspielFri 30th May 2008, at The Whitechapel Gallery
aPAtT (Live)
www.myspace.com/apatt
a.P.A.t.T. sound like the best bits of eveything you've ever heard. File
next to Zappa. Completely original bewildering 2-7 piece band using all the genres possible to create a daft, beautiful mess. Running all over stage
whilst swapping instruments and keeping 5 part harmonies. Eclectic to a fault.
a.P.A.t.T.'s latest album entitled 'Black & White Mass' (Pickled Egg) has
set a new standard in home entertainment The album features some of
a.P.A.t.T.'s most accessable compositions to date whilst still retaining an
element of suprise. Receiving 'Album of the Week' from BBC Radio 1 's Huw
Stevens whilst Plan B mag commented 'No frequency left unturned, no genre
left unwrapped or ignored'
a.P.A.t.T. are a very different act yet they carry on an historical musical
lineage that runs deep in U.K . music: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The
Cardiacs, Radiohead, a.P.A.t.T. ..truly a liverpool act capitalising on culture!
Glockenspiel (Live)
www.myspace.com/glockandspiel
Originally a title for Adrian Dollemore's cd-r collections of minature bedroom experiments, he eventually found it necessary to assemble material for performance. Using tapes, electronics and guitars through chains of effects, his fundamentally earth- ground chords and astrally-projective processing paint a rural tonality with a bristling white afterglow. After issuing a small run of cd-rs via Krayon Recordings, Adrian began playing with Steve d'enton on drum kit. Steve's direct but tactile style drives straight through the x-axis of Adrian's skyward guitar, as cymbals and hi-hats delicately ring and splash over his motorik anchor.
Tickets available soon from www.whitechapel.org
Plants and Animals, Orphans and Vandals
Mon 9th June 2008, at The Big Chill House - FREE!
Plants And Animals (Live)
www.myspace.com/plantsandanimals
The first full-length from Plants and Animals, Parc Avenue, hits shelves in March and exhibits much of the epic orchestration and surging climaxes used by another Montreal band, the Arcade Fire. Depending on where you stand, it may or may not surprise you that Plants and Animals can do it better. Time Out New York
Like a distant Canadian cousin of Blitzen Trapper, this three-piece spins shaggy songs into expansive, genre-bending symphonies. And though last year’s too-brief With/Avec EP hinted at Plants and Animals’ expansiveness, it didn’t fully prepare listeners for Parc Avenue, a sprawling collection of rootsy melodies, majestic arrangements, and classic rock riffs that owes as much to jam-band psychedelia and it does to delicately orchestrated chamber-folk. Pitchfork
If making BIG albums were easy, they’d be a dime a dozen - albums with ambition, spirit, a sense of grandeur, that fill you up and make you excited about life. A handful of bands in Montreal’s thriving indie-music scene have managed the feat in the past few years. Now, make that a handful plus-one. Montreal Gazette
Every tune on Parc Avenue rolls out as if it were handmade on a front porch while the sun was shining. It’s got that warm, easy-going vibe rarely heard on albums made after 1974 and almost never in the digital age. NOW
Orphans And Vandals (Live)
www.myspace.com/orphansandvandals
Front man Al Joshua first imagined Orphans & Vandals two years ago. Escaping the confines of London and the musical limitations of his then band, Al embarked on a Parisian pilgrimage retracing the steps of Arthur Rimbaud. Returning with new resolve, he and musical cohort Raven began eighteen months of recruitment; building a 5 strong band of multi-instrumentalists that would combine the classics with popular song, and reach beyond the restrictions of the prevailing musical mainstream.
To see them live is to be caught in a surrealist gaze upon a humdrum world, narrated, transcribed and re-imagined in the light of Steve Reich, Arthur Rimbaud, and The Langley School Music Project.
FOLK IDOL! - in DORSET
Sat 14th June 2008, at the best pub in the UK!
more soon
Pete Greenwood, Rodney Fisher, Smoke Fairies
Wed 18th June 2008, at the Green Note
Pete Greenwood (Live)
www.myspace.com/petergreenwood
"Calling the London-based singer-songwriter the new Nick Drake would be an unfair tag to live up to, but this fella is folking good all the same." NME
Rodney Fisher (Live)
www.myspace.com/rodneyfisher
A gentle brand of folk music—gossamer-like songs lifted by a sympathetic five-piece combo and Mr. Fisher’s fragile voice...
... Mr. Fisher and his troupe have a humble, winning presence. At one point, he tried to move across the stage and inadvertently bumped into a trumpet at its player’s lips. At the song’s end, he shook the trumpet player’s hand. “We’re having fun,” he said to the audience. “Thanks for being so quiet.”
Jim Fusilli (The Wall Street Journal) from SXSW 2008
The Smoke Fairies (Live)
www.myspace.com/thesmokefairies
"Fragile folk... these girls produce just about the loveliest two part harmonies you're likely to hear" Music Mart
"this is music for the soul - music of the Gods - music from the Gods!" Peter Brown - rbfanzine.co.uk
"Haunting. Tuneful. Musically accomplished. If you want a four-word review for this duo, there it is." Indie-Music.com
"The Fairies were simply magical" (Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown) musiclikedirt.com
"absolutely superb" Lobster Quadrille Mag
"the sounds are so refreshing and new & yet so old" ChaptersMusic.com
Liam Bailey, Sam Carter, Nathalie Nordness, Laura GibsonFri 20th June 2008, Downstairs at The King's Head
More soon
Brakes, plus The Cave Singers, plus more!
Wed 25th June 2008, at Bush Hall, with End of the Road folks
More soon
Pinback, Frightened Rabbit, PregoMon 14th July 2008, at The Scala, Pentonville Road
Pinback (Live)
www.myspace.com/pinback
“That weird smell in the air when you somehow get outside in the morning of the harsh sun is baking the night off of the concrete. It makes you feel as if you’ve been missing something, and of course you have. One wonders how many experiences one will miss during their short time on earth just by doing what they would normally do everyday. There is almost always somewhere that you’d rather be, whether you know it or even think it’s possible or not. I think I’ll sleep on the roof tonight. When I was a kid, I would bring my guitar, my radio, and a couple of pillows up there and watch packs of coyotes invade the neighbor’s backyards chasing rabbits.
There is always so much more going on, even right next to people, than they would ever know about. How many times have you been able to say to yourself that there was absolutely no place you’d rather be? Have you ever thought that and then something even better happened? How about when something horrible happened and you just wish that you had just waited an extra hour before getting out of bed and everything would have turned out different. There are people for whom denying themselves pleasure makes them feel the most alive. I’m not sure if that would make life more or less difficult. This has nothing at all to with Pinback’s new album, Autumn of the Seraphs.” - Rob Crow
Frightened Rabbit (Live)
www.myspace.com/frightenedrabbit
Though the past year has seen Frightened Rabbit finally step into public view, with more extensive touring and some recordings now publicly available, the past few years have largely been about the band quietly, commitedly honing their sound, and cultivating their art. Now a three-piece comprising Scott, Billy and Grant, the origins of the band are rooted in 2003, when Scott began playing solo shows under the name Frightened Rabbit, mostly in support of fellow art-schoolers Shitdisco. Recordings were made on a tascam 4-track recorder, with Scott playing all the instruments (some more proficiently than others). Though looser, sparser, and certainly more lo-fi in terms of production values, their early demo’s still attest to a burgeoning talent with a defined personality, and a now familiar penchant for being able to nail a near perfect pop song.
Prego (Live)
www.myspace.com/pregomusic
2007 saw Prego earmarked and aired by Steve Lamacq, named as one of Rocksound magazine's Hot 100, and celebrated as one of the most talked about new bands at the O2 Wireless Festival. With the release of their debut single 'Cause and Resolve' just around the corner and NME already citing them as one of this years 'Buzz' bands, 2008 promises to be a landmark year.
The sound is one that fiddles with space and fills time with somersaults and trickery hitherto never put to tape...
Get your tickets quick!
Just £12 from We Got Tickets and Ticket Web
www.wegottickets.com/event29421
www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_london&query=detail&event=263045
David Thomas Broughton plus special guests The Owl Service and Directorsound
Fri 18th July 2008, at The Local, Crouch End
More soon
Trembling Bells, Hush Arbours, The Exploits of Elaine
Sat 19th July 2008, at Cafe Oto, Ashwin Street, Dalston
more soon
Liz Green, Beneath Fire and Smoke, and The Miserable Rich
Sun 20th July 2008, at The Bedford, Balham
More soon
Nina Nastasia, O'Death
Wed 13th August 2008, at The Roundhouse Camden NW1
More on this very soon
Localism
Thu 14th August 2008, at Cargo
more soon
The Local in CROATIA - Liz Green, Birdengine, Denis Jones
Sun 24th August 2008, at the Electric Elephant Festival, in Croatia. Croatia.
more soon
Ass and more
Thu 28th August 2008, The Green Note
Ass (Live)
http://www.headspinrecordings.com/index.php
Peering out between the mass of strings, hanging like vines, there must have been a spark of childish curiosity. From the giddy playfulness of youth all the way to the folk hinterland, Andreas Soderstrom has been surrounded by instruments, exposed to the sounds of his father’s bazouki factory – an extraordinary melange of clattering noise and metallic melody.
That natural inquisitiveness has obviously paid off, and it surely can’t be a coincidence that a career in music beckoned. Trading under the pseudonym Ass – it stands for Andreas Soderstrom Solo – for more than a decade he has been the hitherto unknown man of Swedish pop, having played with the likes of electro-pop priestess Jenny Wilson, digital folk stalwarts Tape, offbeat folk-pop minstrel Blood Music, and Taken By Trees, the latest incarnation of former Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman.
Recycled flyersFri 31st December 2010, about time wasn't it
We use only 100% recycled board on our flyers.