Features
-
Don’t Cut the Crap
Why the NOW! Yearbook series is preserving the good AND bad taste of our times – and all the better for it To paraphrase something Simon Bates may well have said if 1980 was the ‘Golden Hour’ on his Radio 1 “mid-morning matters” style show – “It was the year we lost John Lennon, but…
Music Reviews
-
Anthony Moore has an extraordinary CV that brilliantly straddles the deeply experimental vs some of the most mainstream Pop musical imaginable (of it’s time). How about this – he was part of the collective around the serious-as-your-life avant-rockers Henry Cow and formed the offshoot Slapp Happy – a huge influence on groups like The Fall.…
-
Tapete Records : TR516 Just when you think you’d found all your favourite music along comes something that was right under your nose all along and a new world opens up. I remember reading about Louis Phillipe and the curious world of él Records (for which he was a sort of in-house songwriter) in Record…
-
Cherry Red Records QECLEC102888 Tonight’s entertainment is a monumental 10 disc box set of the enigmatic, hard to pin down Kevin Ayers. If you’re unfamiliar, imagine if Nick Drake had suddenly developed a taste for expensive wine and women and decided to strap on a electric guitar, dye his hair blonde and ‘wig out’. He’s…
-
Dial-a-disc
What’s on heavy rotation at Pii HQ in Autumn 2024 Highlight of this year’s Manchester Psych Fest the ridiculously good Plantoid – seemingly beamed in direct from a damp, 1970s rehearsal room with a distinctly 2020s crunch – RIYL Cardiacs, Gong etc Terrapath by plantoid The onomatopoeiacally named THRAA enthraalled (sic) me this year with…
Gig Reviews
-
Seefeel In Dub
We reported from Seefeel’s spellbinding in peformance in Manchester last year (read all about it here) and since then there has been more activity, not least a stunning reissue of their early EPs collected along with the legendary Aphex Twin remixes as ‘Pure Impure’ which means their incredible back catalogue is pretty much all ‘back…
-
Cabaret Voltaire
Just outside the city limits of Sheffield, Forge is a relatively new music venue. It is reached by crossing the Tinsley Canal, ducking under a railway arch, passing still functioning industries, the twinkling lights of the city in the distance until you reach the converted Victorian steel forge – it’s an almost too perfect setting…
-
No Joy – with Crimewave
A double bill to thrill tonight in the bestest of basements. Montreal’s No Joy are back in town after a long 8 year gap, but first up is local artist Crimewave. There’s only one person on stage, sporting a red beret, literally a one-man Crimewave. I’m immediately struck by the trouser-flapping bass and the term…
-
Milan.W and Tristanne
I first became aware of Milan W. (aka Milan Warmoeskerken) when the Flemish polymath was awarded 2024 album of the year by Manchester’s enigmatic Boomkat – an online record store that can be relied upon to sift out record releases that no algorithm on earth would put your way. They praised ‘Leave Another Day’ to…