We’ve written before a lot about the excellent Mood Swings nights at Yes Manchester. Hot Take is a variation on that – same deal – 3 bands for less than 1 pint of overpriced lager in The Albert Hall or the arenas – except that Hot Take is all about local Manchester based artists. Same…

It’s like Britpop never happened. We are up in the excellent new venue Kamera Ballroom above the Lloyds pub in Chorlton and we appear to have stumbled across an Indie Pop gig to party like it’s 1987. There is a stall selling fanzines, stickers, badges and there are two bands on the bill which have…

In live music terms, July in the UK is the silly season. Music goes outdoors, festival bills and outdoor enormogigs hoover up a lot of the touring bands and fans cash and there tends to be less going on in basements and back rooms for those who prefer their music up close and personal. Bucking…

Hard to believe it is 18 years since Lone (aka Matt Cutler) and his 2nd album ‘Lemurian’ appeared on our reconnaissance radar. That record saw Nottingham’s finest beatmaker serve up a remarkable cut & shut of hazy Boards Of Canada sunbaked chords with Madlib/Flying Lotus influenced breakbeat science. Not dissuaded by the comically awful cover…

I first became aware of Magazine during what Tony Wilson and Factory Records billed ‘The 10th Summer’ – a series of events marking the 10th anniversary of the infamous Sex Pistols gig June 4th 1976 at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall . I swear, I wasn’t there – but it was in the music…

Now that Shoegaze is regarded as a genre rather than a perjorative term and Slowdive have gone from pariahs of the 90s music press to headlining enormodomes you might be forgiven for wondering whatever happened to their old pals Chapterhouse – not least because the two were always lumped together back in the early 90s.…

Soft Machine are a strange proposition. They were at the epicentre of the Canterbury scene, which looks ever more unfathomable and strange the further we hurtle away from the late 1960s. At the start in 1966 the Softs were defined by very charismatic and singular talents – Robert Wyatt, Daevid Allen and Kevin Ayers who…

Back in my favourite cellarful of noise and seeing as headliners, Goon, have swapped LA for Manchester rain it would be rude not to check them out wouldn’t it? Sadly, the billed support act, the wonderfully C86-tastic Autocamper are out of action due to injury. In their place at very short notice we’re in for…

I don’t think there’s such a thing as a casual Cardiacs fan. Nobody ‘quite likes’ them. You’re either in, or you’re not and in a packed out Albert Hall tonight everyone is very much ‘in’. They are the very definition of an acquired taste. I first encountered them in 1987 when seeing a now infamous…

Like Artie Fufkin from Spinal Tap, I go back with these. I first saw them in 2023 at a Sonic Cathedral event at The White Hotel where they quietly raised the roof. I bought a tape of their debut single at the merch table and chatted to the band about working with Rudy Tambala (of…