email: [email protected] website: nightshift.oxfordmusic.net Free every month. NIGHTSHIFT Issue 135 October ’s Music Magazine 2006 Photo:Ben Freeman

ivy’sivy’s itchitch InterviewInterview insideinside

Also in this issue: County’s venues in crisis! plus: Six pages of local gigs

NIGHTSHIFT: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU. Phone: 01865 372255

NEWNEWSS Nightshift: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU Phone: 01865 372255 email: [email protected]

bands wanting to play at the new-look Ex should send a demo to Al, c/o The Exeter Hall, Oxford Road, Cowley. LAB4 have decided to split. The local hardcore THE WHEATSHEAF looks set to continue trance duo, based in Abingdon, issued a hosting live music until Christmas at least after statement on their website confirming that they a proposed buy-out of the pub put on hold are calling it a day after twelve years together. last month. The Wheatsheaf’s owners, Greene “At the beginning of this year we discussed King, had expected the sale to go through by our intentions of taking 2007 off to be able to now, with rumours suggesting that the current recuperate physically and mentally, as well as owners of Freud’s were to be the new to take stock of the past 15 years of our lives. proprietors and that the upstairs venue was to We also felt that if we were to continue be turned into a wine bar or restaurant. While onwards with our music, that we need to be the future of the Wheatsheaf is still uncertain able to focus for longer without every studio THE EXETER HALL re-opened its doors to and the current management are unsure of plans session being disrupted by our gig schedule. live music after a major refurbishment at the end for the place other than that its sale is on hold, “2006 has been a really hard year for us, what of September. The opening night featured sets for now at least one of the most important with the endless delays with the `None Of Us from The Drug Squad and The Epstein amongst small venues in town can carry on. Are Saints’ , followed by being others. The Ex now features a brand new stage, threatened with legal action over a certain cover PA system and lighting rig. Having established FELL CITY GIRL play an in-store show at the version, the Live Extreme productions in Japan itself as one of the best live music venues in Virgin Megastore on Cornmarket Street on and at Brixton Academy and all the extra rd Oxford since landlady Al took over, it can now Monday 23 October (5pm) to launch their planning, rehearsing and production work provide an even better quality of gigs. Klub new EP, ‘February Snow’. The CD, released on needed to pull off such big shows. After lots of Kakofanney has moved its monthly club night Lavolta Records features four songs, ‘February soul searching and reflecting we have decided from the Wheatsheaf to the Ex as of November. Snow’, ‘These Are The Heart Attacks’, that it is time to call it a day with Lab4. The last Klub Kak at the Wheatsheaf takes ‘Helplines’ and ‘The Helicopters Overhead’. We have had an amazing trip over the last 12 th place on Friday 6 October with a headline set ‘Helplines has never been played live before years, that has been a constant roller coaster and is described by singer Phil McMinn as “the from recent Nightshift Demo Of The Monthers ride of unbelievable highs and lows (mostly most personal thing I’ve ever done”. On the Mary Bendy Toy. Klub Kakofanney host an highs) that has taken us all round the world and st opposite end of the scale, ‘Helicopters…’ is a Oxfam benefit gig at the Ex on Saturday 21 put us in front of crowds of upwards of six-minute epic in three parts that Phil describes October, part of a month of Oxjam events 15,000 in a single room, but we both know as “Us trying to be as over the top as we could. around the country aiming to raise money for that the time has come to step off and let Lab4 I think we succeeded”. the charity. The event kicks off at 6pm with Ed be, and to move on to whatever may be ahead As well as the in-store show, Fell City Girl McGregor and also features Raggasaurus, for us both. play a headline gig at the Zodiac on Saturday 7th Redox, Les Clochards and Twizz Twangle “We will be playing live up until NYE which October as part of a national tour to promote amongst others. The Ex also hosts two special is being discussed with possible promoters at th the new EP. Support for the night are local John Peel Day gigs on Thursday 12 and the moment and from thereon anyone who is th instrumental rock heroes The Rock Of Travolta Friday 13 October. Shirley and Ally Craig are on our mailing list will be informed of what we and experimental electro stars The Keyboard the respective headline acts for the gigs. Local will be up to into 2007.Thanks to everyone Choir. Tickets are on sale now from the Zodiac who has supported us over the years at gigs box office – 01865 420042. and via email, it has made all the difference.” Lab4 will play one final Oxford show on SOUNDWORKS RECORDING STUDIOS Friday 3rd November at the Zodiac. Tickets in Blackbird Leys are holding open days on are on sale now, priced £10, from the Zodiac Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th of October, box office (01865 420042). As well as a live following a refurbishment and a substantial set from Adam and Lez there will be sets investment in new equipment. Anyone is welcome to come and view the studio, and as from Proteus, Sterling Moss and Grady D. an enticement there is a 25% saving if you Check out the Lab4 website for more news: book on the day. See the Soundworks website www.lab4.com for more details: www.soundworks-oxford.co.uk. of the Liver Promotions?). The new night kicks off on Friday 10th November at the newly- GAPPY TOOTH INDUSTRIES celebrate refurbished Exeter Hall pub and features Script, their 50th gig this month. The monthly live The Smallteasers and Dan Morgan. Check out music club night, which started life at the www.myspace.com/gammylegproductions for IMOGEN HEAP plays at the New Theatre on Jericho Tavern before moving to the Zodiac on more details or if your want to play. Saturday 7th October as part of a tour to the last Friday of every month, prides itself on promote her ‘Speak For Yourself’ album, and its eclectic music bills and well as putting on art THIS YEAR’S WITTSTOCK FESTIVAL she is offering one local band the chance to and photography displays in the venue to raised £947 for Motor Neurone Disease support her. Bands should visit Imogen’s compliment the music. The 50th gig features research. The free festival, run over three days MySpace site – www.myspace.com/imogenheap local rapper Zuby, plus AmberState, Life With at the Romany Inn in Bampton in August, was – for full instructions and the best band to link Bears and Delta. In addition, GTI are starting a forced into a last-minute change of venue after to her site will be playing to 1,700 fans at new monthly live music night under the guise of its planned venue, the General Elliot in Oxford’s largest live music venue. Gammy Leg Productions (what next, Sclerosis Hinksey, proved unsafe. Market Town Soul-less Live music in Oxfordshire’s market towns is in danger of extinction, due to public apathy, police interference and poperty development.

WITH THE WHEATSHEAF GRANTED A playing poker with Elvis and Osama Bin Laden temporary stay of execution this month, Oxford than a regular local bands night. gig-goers can breath a sigh of relief, for now at least, and maybe content themselves with the SO HOW AND WHY HAVE THINGS knowledge that even if we do lose one of our best gotten so bad? All those towns mentioned have and most established live music venues, we have previously enjoyed regular, sometimes thriving, plenty more to choose from. Not so gig-goers in local live music scenes and provided the county the rest of the county. with many of its best young bands and musicians. As ever the reasons are many and the AT THE END OF AUGUST THE PIT IN solutions rarely simple. Witney closed forever as a music venue. The Local audience apathy is obviously a factor as Si Hollybush pub in Corn Street, which hosted the Giant from I Am Giant points out: tiny but excellent Pit venue – which at its peak “I’m on the verge of giving up. It’s not a was hosting three gigs a week, featuring the monetary thing, more of an attitude problem. cream of Oxford talent as well as up and coming The trouble with trying to do a night focused on Sow, whose reputation has been built on gigging Witney bands – has changed hands and is to be Oxfordshire bands is that whilst nationally around the county and who are now involved in turned into a restaurant. With the neighbouring Oxford might be recognised as a great place for plans to save Witney’s live music Red Lion pub currently undergoing major up and coming bands, county-wise the sphere of refurbishment and set to concentrate on covers influence certainly doesn’t really extend out too and tribute bands when it does return to action, far. there is absolutely nowhere for aspiring Witney “If you look at the line ups I’ve had here you “The Bleeding Ears night is largely about getting bands to play. would have to agree I’ve had some of the best some decent quality, varied, original music acts In Abingdon, meanwhile, the past couple of bands that Oxford has to offer playing, yet I’ve on, once a month, in a venue that doesn’t charge. years have seen the town’s two regular live music struggled to fill a 100-capacity venue in a town Luckily the pub supports this, while also often venues, The Red Lion and The Horse and where and tribute bands rule. And it’s putting on live bands other than my night, often Jockey, demolished to make way for housing. not for the want of trying. The young kids seem two or three times a month. My main concern is Currently the only way for fans of local bands to to be fixated on bands like just the usual worry of getting people through see them without travelling to Oxford is the et al, so the fact that Fell City Girl or Harry the door, so it’s worthwhile for the pub, which King’s Head and Bell’s monthly bands night, Angel or The Half Rabbits are playing doesn’t we seem to be doing okay on at the moment.” which is limited to acoustic acts due to noise seem to make much difference. Bicester is lucky too to have a youth centre like restrictions. Not so long ago the Skittle Alley (a “I can’t fault the Mill; I get it for a bargain price the Courtyard, who can give younger bands an collective of Abingdon musicians and music fans) and they are tolerant of some of the behaviour outlet, even just once a month, as centre co- were promoting two nights of gigs every that takes place. It was the only logical place ordinator Louise Wiggins explains: weekend, while the Net youth centre was because Banbury isn’t geared up for live music. I “The music scene at The Courtyard is very providing regular under-18s gigs featuring local can’t think of a single pub which could lively. Many of the bands that rehearse here and touring bands. accommodate live music in a separate room and I perform at our monthly gigs, which regularly Even Banbury, Oxfordshire’s largest town don’t think that the crowds here would justify attract a large crowd. The gigs are organised by a outside of Oxford itself, is almost completely endangering that Saturday night pub crawl group of young musicians who are responsible bereft of live music beyond the standard covers crowd.” for choosing the line up and listening to demos. acts. The heroic exception is the monthly I Am Recent headline bands include Sow. The centre Giant night at the town’s Mill Arts Centre. But OBVIOUSLY IN ANY SMALL TOWN, has recently refurbished its sound production even here the promoter is considering his future live music will only appeal to a limited number studio which will give bands the opportunity to in the face of audience apathy. The picture is a of people but the way things are now, those record their music.” little better in Bicester where the Hobgoblin fans and bands will be forced more and more to hosts one band night and one open mic session a travel to gigs or remain isolated. BUT NOT EVERY TOWN FARES AS WELL month, while the Courtyard Youth Arts Centre Promoters face the daunting obstacle of finding as Bicester. It doesn’t help when pubs are sold provides a once-a-month outlet for local teenage a venue or pub that is prepared to take a off to property developers to be turned into musicians. As for other Oxfordshire towns like financial risk on hosting live music. On a housing, as happened in Abingdon. Where once Thame, Didcot, Henley and Wantage – forget it. weekend night landlords understandably need to the town had a busy local live scene that You’re as likely to stumble across Lord Lucan maximise custom. A jukebox or DJ playing well- provided a fertile breeding ground for bands, with known music tends to keep the majority of two venues putting on regular gigs, now drinkers happier than a young rock band, Abingdon has to do with a single acoustic gig a especially when, since last year’s public month, courtesy of the Skittle Alley collective. entertainment law revamp, they’d have to Jamie Cotmore and Martin Kelley from the stump up a few thousand pound for a licence in Skittle Alley are justifiably angry with the way the first place. For most pub owners and they have been treated over the years: managers it’s simply not worth the effort or “The Skittle Alley started life about five years expense and so finding anywhere to even put ago and after much searching stumbled across a bands on, never mind get anyone to come and little back street boozer called The Horse & see them, is a huge battle. Jockey, who had a landlord who was as keen as The Hobgoblin in Bicester is one pub where us to bring live music to the town. It was not they are prepared to give live music a go, on a without its problems, both from the local weekday at least. Promoter Russ, who also council, neighbours and the police – one over plays in Bicester punk band Phyal, is grateful zealous officer once visited the pub personally to A block of flats, yesterday. that he is being given a chance: issue a `We are going to close you down’ threat to the landlord. It battled on and introduced to licenses are expensive and hard to come by, with for a new venue, but faced with a long, hard slog. Abingdon a scene that had previously never not only the council seemingly reluctant to Sow bassist Tom is one of the people involved: existed. Another local pub, The Red Lion, support live bands, but also a generally negative “With the scene in Witney bursting at the already ran regular live nights but their focus was attitude from the local police. Apparently it can seams, the closing of the Pit couldn’t have more on cover and tribute bands - which take just one complaint from a neighbour about happened at a worse time. Possibly the smallest nevertheless saw packed crowds most weekends. noise levels for the local Environmental Health venue in the UK, it was a haven to local talent Pretty healthy, you might think. But then the Department to get actively involved. The result: like Greenacre, Skull Thrash and many more. But breweries sold them off for housing no more bands. No `let’s get together and find a the demise of the Hollybush pub leaves the once developments! And unfortunately, this scenario solution. No `I’m sure it’s not an obstacle that acclaimed Pit a mere storage room and nowhere is endemic in many places across the country, as cannot be overcome’. Just a big, fat no more for the younger bands to play. the corporate money machine that is the modern bands! In a society where you can now get an “We’re on the case to sort some form of Pit brewery doesn’t give a stuff about the impact ASBO for organising a rave, it quite naturally Mark 2. There are venues about here: the Barn at such closures have on the community - just makes many a licensee a touch nervous. The Red Lion for example, but with their age maximising profits from every property on its “The Skittle Alley will continue breaking its restrictions and emphasis on covers bands, kids estate. And the sad fact is, it’s the smaller pubs balls to bring the Abingdon public as much live have nowhere to go. The Palace is the next venue that are often seen as disposable; they are the music as it can. And The Kings Head & Bell are to crack. It has a bad rep as a Phoenix Nights- ones more likely to entertain the idea of live keen to promote this, but up until now, the style club at the moment, but it’s got potential to music as an option to increase trade. While odd council just will not allow live, amplified music.” accommodate gig goers outside of Oxford.” pubs in Abingdon are still prepared to have the occasional band night, the truth is that if you THE GREAT FRUSTRATION OF EACH OF FOR OXFORDSHIRE’S TOWNS, THIS IS regularly watch bands live your only real option these cases is that in every town there is always the worst it’s been for live music in years. And is a trip to Oxford. someone willing to try and bring live music to a without the hard work of this small band of “Without the Skittle Alley, there would not have local audience, and with plenty of hard work promoters and handful of supportive landlords, been one single venue promoting local music in they can attract an audience, maybe even one it could get even worse. Local councils, brewery Abingdon. And yet we now find ourselves with that is prepared to come back on a regular basis chains and the police need to adopt a more the means and desire to continue promoting but and create a local music community. supportive attitude towards people who are with the seemingly impossible task of persuading For many years the Pit in Witney was run by doing something positive for their communities the local council that there is a real demand for Dan Goddard – previously drummer with local instead of blocking them or threatening them at the type of live music night that people in bands The Nubiles and The Four Storeys – but every turn. Most importantly, gig goers need to Oxford take for granted. You only have to glance when he, due to work and family commitments, support local venues and bands. Local bands at venues like the Exeter Hall to see that even a was no longer able to carry on, the music nights nights can be as much fun, and are much cheaper, medium sized pub can create an atmosphere lacked a cohesive force. And now, thanks to the than going to see a big name band. These are, conducive to live music. take-over they’re gone for good. potentially, the stars of tomorrow. But only if “Abingdon’s biggest problem, however, seems There may be a chink of light for Witney though they’re given the chance to show what they can to lie with the `powers that be’. Entertainment with a group of musicians now actively looking do. Will you give them that chance?

OXFORD CONTEMPORARY MUSIC NEWNEWSS launches its Autumn Season this month as well as a new guide to buying, playing and listening PARTS & LABOR (pictured) are the last band to music in Oxford, which acts as a directory of to be added to the bill for this year’s music groups, venues, shops and plenty more Audioscope mini-festival, which takes place in the city. The guide is available to download, upstairs at the Zodiac on Saturday 28th in PDF format, at www.ocmevents.org as well October, running from 2pm through to 11pm. as oxfordbands.com. OCM’s new season of The New -based math-rockers have concerts includes a celebration of Steve Reich’s toured with Melt Banana and Lightning Bolt as 70th birthday with a performance from Three well as releasing a split CD with Battles’ Strange Angels at the Jacqueline Du Pre Building Tyondai Braxton. They join headliners Clinic on Wednesday 25th October as well as a multi- as well as Sonic Boom and Magnetophone, I’m media show involving Pram, Blissbody and Being Good, Magic , Kids In Tracksuits, Project Dark at the Zodiac on Thursday 2nd Trencher, The Rock Of Travolta and November plus Kitchen Motors, a night of Sunnyvale Noise Sub-Element at what has experimental Icelandic music, again at the Zodiac become one of the best leftfield and on Sunday 26th November. Info and tickets for all underground music events in the country, and shows is available at the OCM website. all in aid of Shelter. Audioscope organiser Stuart Fowkes told Nightshift how excited he HARLETTE have split. The local all-girl punk was about this year’s festival: band who were one of the highlights of this “Musically, we think it’s the best and most just come for the entire day.” year’s Punt, bowed out with a gig at the varied yet. Last year’s event was a whole Tickets for Audioscope are on sale now, priced Wheatsheaf. University commitments are cited weekend to celebrate reaching our fifth £10 from the Zodiac box office. as the main reason. birthday, and this year we’re back to one day but moving the event upstairs. And since THE CATWEAZLE CLUB is looking for Audioscope’s been growing every year since it THE ROCK OF TRAVOLTA and Meanwhile, volunteer bar staff to help at its Thursday night began, moving upstairs seemed like the natural Back In Communist Russia are included on a open mic sessions at East Oxford Community thing to do. The obvious delights of Clinic new double-CD compilation celebrating fifteen Centre. The Community Centre bar is owned by aside, I’m really looking forward to Piano years of Rough trade Publishing. ‘Sweet its members and bar takings are essential for the Magic, who don’t play live often and who are Fifteen’, which features 32 tracks, also includes continuation of the Catweazle Club, which this a truly fantastic band, and Parts & Labor, who contributions from , month celebrates its 12th birthday (5th October). are going to take the roof off. And of course Tindersticks, Rocket From The Crypt, Trans Anyone willing to lend an hour behind the bar we’re contractually obliged to inform you that Am, Tortoise, Godspeed You Emperor! should contact Matt at [email protected] all of the bands are going to be awesome, so Futureheads and Smog. in return for free club entry. TTThehehe ExExEx

Exeter Hall Pub Corner Cowley / Marsh Road isisis Back!Back!Back! 01865 776431 EVERY TUESDAY LIVE MUSIC IN Sush Open Mic 8.30pm Come Sing / Play / Listen FREE ENTRY SEPTEMBER EVERY WEDNESDAY Thu 28th Sush Night – An Evening Folk Session 8.30pm – All Welcome – Come Play / Sing / Listen FREE ENTRY of Acoustic Performance - Sam Pope / James Sergeant / Jesse LIVE MUSIC IN OCTOBER Gamage th Sun 1st Synaesthesia Art & Music Thu 12th 1st of Two Day John Peel Fri 29 Grinning Spider presents, – Acoustic songs alongside an Nights - Shirley plus More TBC 8.30pm from , Blue Stone Suns exhibition of artworks, all inspired by FREE ENTRY plus support and inspiration for one another. Art Fri 13th 2nd John Peel Night - Ally th inspired by music; music inspired by Craig / Kaned Citizen / The Mighty Sat 30 Assassins Of Silence art. 8pm; £3 Roars / The Ruins ( tribute) / Breathe 8pm FREE ENTRY (performing ’s ‘Dark Side Fri 6th *XPosure At The X* Of The Moon’) presents Narcissism (wired grungy/ Sat 14th TBC Check the website for punk from Banbury) / Vestibule missing dates www.theX.co.uk (poppy post-rock from Witney) / support TBC. 8pm £4 Sun 15th TBC Fri 27th The Inflatables - Best Ska/ / Soul Band in Oxford Sat 7th The Cheesegraters (eclectic Fri 20th Grinning Spider presents mix of , soul, rock ‘n’ roll, Latin Reservoir Cats / Rat / Sat 28th Halloween Party with and country) 8.30pm £4 Soular (from Albuquerque, New Bombshoe / Junkie Brush / Fork / Mexico) 8.30pm; £4 Sow / The Walk Off / The Taste Sun 8th Electric Jam - All Welcome (from Germany) 8pm £4 - Come Jam with The X Men 8.00pm Sun 22nd Electric Jam - All Welcome - FREE ENTRY Jam with The X Men 8pm FREE ENTRY Sun 30th TBC

EVERY THURSDAY IN OCTOBER Oxfam. Classical, club night, mambo Sat 21st Klub Kakofanny Presents will be a fund raising night for and metal, it’ll add up to one huge, UK- OXJAM in Aid of OXFAM Oxjam (except for Thursday 12th wide, Oxjam festival – raising 11pm RAGGASAURUS which is BBC John Peel Day). Klub thousands of pounds to fight poverty. 10pm REDOX Kakofanny are also presenting an More info available 9.15 LES CLOCHARDS Oxjam Night on Saturday 21st. www.myspace.com/oxjam_oxford 8.30 SU JORDAN AND FRIENDS Oxjam is Oxfam’s biggest, most or www.oxjamoxford.co.uk. 8pm NEW MOON ambitious, music event ever. They 7.30 TWIZZ TWANGLE are asking musicians and We have several act TBC for various 7pm STRANGE VINTAGE promoters (in fact everyone!) to Thursdays, but there is room for a little 6.30 MAEVE BAYTON put on all kinds of music events more. If you want a slot email 6pm ED MC GREGOR during October to raise money for [email protected] Door 5.30pm £4.00 FRESH OUT OF YOUR BOX A Quick Freshers’ Guide To Oxford Music experimental nights at the around Oxford, with prices to suit Wheatsheaf and Port Mahon, while most budgets – most studios NEW HERE, YOU SAY? OXFORD IS FANTASTICALLY it’s worth checking out Oxford advertise in Nightshift so ring round Like a good gig but feeling a bit lost? served by some of the best venues Contemporary Music’s website to find the best for you. Well come in, make yourself in the country. Depending what (www.ocmevents.org). Their welcome. you’re into there’s something for seasonal programmes feature a wide IF YOU’RE AFTER BUYING CDs It’s a easy to forget, as we merrily everyone. Bigger name touring variety of contemporary classical, by bands you’ve seen live, HMV hobnob with the inner sanctum of bands tend to play at the New jazz, improvisational and and Virgin dominate the city the Oxford Music Scene Clique that Theatre in the city centre experimental artists. centre, both with a decent selection this time of year brings a huge influx (upcoming names include Kate Oxford also hosts a wide range of of specialist stuff, while the newly- of new faces to the city, and we’d Rusby, Motorhead and Imogen open mic sessions, most of them opened Fopp in Gloucester Green hate to think any of them might end Heap), Brookes University weekly. The best are the Exeter can beat most places for price. Just up trapped in some Mitchell’s & Union on Headington Hill( coming Hall’s Tuesday night sessions, off Gloucester Green is Avid Butlers-owned hell hole, when they up: Divine Comedy, Plan B, The Delicious Music’s Sunday nights at Records, a second-hand record could be watching Sextodecimo tear Automatic, Guillemots) or the the Market Tavern and the lovers’ paradise, though sadly due to a new hole in the fabric of the Zodiac on Cowley Road. Probably Marlborough House’s Wednesday close within the next few months. universe in some darkened pub Oxford’s best known, and best live session with a £50 prize. Across from the Zodiac on Cowley backroom, or be bouncing for joy on venue, the Zodiac has two gig Road is Polar Bear which as well as their sofa to the sounds of Fell City rooms and features live music FOR MUSICIANS FORMING plenty of specialist releases also Girl. virtually every night, from the best bands there’s a wealth of local music stocks the widest range of local So, to help the newcomers on their up and coming indie, metal and shops to choose from: PMT on releases, while Vinyl Frontier on way, here’s a (very) brief and hardcore bands to folk, Cowley Road is the biggest and with Rectory Street also sells second possibly flawed introduction to and reggae. The biggest local acts can the widest range of stock, although hand records with a good dance getting the best out of Oxford’s also be seen here (this month alone it’s worth a short trip to Abingdon selection. vibrant live music scene. Obviously, you’ll catch The , Fell to check out Dawsons. The Music simply by picking up this copy of City Girl, Suitable Case For Box at the bottom of Cowley Road THERE’S PROBABLY MORE – Nightshift you’re halfway there Treatment and Winnebago Deal) A manages to squeeze a phenomenal and we couldn’t even start to go already. Nightshift comes out every major refit is planned next year. amount of second hand gear into a into which local bands are best month and features interviews, For local bands and newer touring tiny space, while for guitarists, head worth checking out – that’s reviews and news about local bands bands try the Wheatsheaf off the straight to the Gallery on something for you to discover for and events as well as the most High Street (whose long-term future South Parade in Summertown. yourself. Suffice to say, if there’s comprehensive local gig guide is currently in doubt due to a Delicious Music Emporium on St nothing for you out there, you anywhere. It’s free from every music potential buy-out), the tiny but Aldates sells instruments and has a probably are best off stuck in some and record shop, venue or decent pub brilliant Port Mahon on St huge range of sheet music. Mitchell’s and Butler-owned in the area, but if you can’t find a Clements, the Cellar, underneath There are dozens of decent hellhole. Well away from decent copy, it’s online in PDF format too Cornmarket, the Music Market recording and rehearsal studios folk like us. Welcome to Oxford. at nightshift.oxfordmusic.net. on Market Street and the newly- There’s also a lively discussion refurbished Exeter Hall at the far forum where you can find end of Cowley Road. DR SHOTOVER IS 100 bandmates, plug your gigs, have The best place for is the You know what someone said to me the other day? “Oh, Dr S, now furious arguments about which Bullingdon on Cowley Road whose you’re 100 years old, perhaps you’ll start to like hip-hop...”. Yes, member of Headcount is the sexiest Monday nights attract the cream of it’s true. No, not about liking hip-hop, dunderhead - the other thing. (it’s Stef, by the way; Rob’s a fat old American and European acts, while Well of COURSE I look well-preserved for my age; who wouldn’t hippy). There’s also an extensive list the Exeter Hall features regular of links to local bands’ MySpace local and international blues acts. after all that neat alcohol...? Trouble is, one loses track due to one’s sites so you can listen to them The Bullingdon also hosts Oxford’s misspent youth lasting so long. In my time I’ve been (in some order before spending your hard-earned most popular live jazz night, a free or other): a mod, a teddy boy, a Crombie, a zoot-suiter, a Carnaby cash watching them in their full ear- session every Tuesday featuring St dandy, a Goth, a commissioned officer, and a member of bothering live glory. Other websites resident band The Tom Grey Hawkwind. Mmm, the worth checking out include Quintet as well as regular guests. electric spoons on Oxfordbands.com which carries Thursday nights at the Wheatsheaf `Psychedelic Warlords up-to-date news and reviews, a hosts the Spin Jazz Club with (Disappear in Smoke)’, discussion board, an extensive local renowned performers playing with that was me... funny thing, bands guide, a photo gallery and a the club’s in-house band, while I’d just come out of the handy introduction to being in a Pizza Express in Golden Cross (off Burmese jungle at the time, band in Oxford. These guys also Cornmarket Street) has a Tuesday was still dressed as a organise the excellent annual night jazz session. Chindit... the chaps didn’t Audioscope festival in aid of Shelter For hip hop, breakbeat and notice anything out of the as well as monthly gigs featuring drum&bass the Cellar is probably ordinary. Interesting place, local and touring bands. The the first port of call with weekly Ladbroke Grove in those .co.uk/oxford site has a good club nights and occasional live acts, days... Where was I? Ah music page and links to Oxford’s while the monthly Source at the only local music radio show, The Zodiac is the biggest drum&bass yes, about to receive a Download, which is broadcast every night around. The monthly Slide belated birthday brandy Saturday night from 6-7pm on night at the Zodiac and Simple at off you at the Old Youth 95.2fm as well as being streamed the Bullingdon cater for House, Club bar. Splendid idea. throughout the week online. The while Skylarkin hosts a monthly Splen-did. Cheers! show, presented by Tim Bearder and ska and reggae night at the Zodiac Dave Gillyeat, plays local releases with regular guest DJ Derek as well Next month: Ash Ra and interviews local and touring as big name ska and reggae acts. Tempel Unplugged - bands as well as featuring a gig and For more esoteric sounds, Vacuous Dr S explores the “Take that, enemies of a free and clubbing guide and a local demo vote. Pop and MyAnalog promote concept of Krautfolk drug-addled democracy!” Tune in and keep it on the air! regular post-rock, electronica and A Quiet Word With ivy’s itch

IN ANY NORMAL lasting impact on me than anything circumstances it would be bad form I’ve heard since.” to suggest that a young lady had a The music, the words and the voice that sounded like Hell performances obviously don’t come vomiting up its breakfast. But then from a contented individual – what this is Ivy’s Itch frontwoman Eliza drives Ivy’s Itch? Gregory we’re talking about; her Eliza: “Two words: Northern. Grit.” voice is anything but normal. Eliza has one of, if not the most ‘ROSES’ HAS BEEN OUT FOR remarkable voice on the local music a couple of months now. What’s the scene: a savage roar, a lupine howl, a reaction been like, particularly from ghostly whisper, a primal scream outside of Oxford, where the band and a childlike coo, all often within have been far more conspicuous? the same song. Listening to Ivy’s Eliza: “As far as I can gather it’s Itch’s new single, ‘Roses’, a been great. Really well received, newcomer would believe the band we’ve had so much press from it! had at least two singers. Both of Especially through the underground them unhinged in their own sweet Ivy’s Itch (l-r): Jo, Pawel, Jimmy, Eliza fanzine scene. I felt that making this ways. record was a real turning point – it was kind of make or break. A test of ELIZA ORIGINALLY FORMED third EP, but, in true Spinal Tap started to front a band was as an `if this doesn’t turn out like I want Ivy’s Itch in 1998 after moving to fashion, they again lost drummer exercise to cure myself of being shy. it to, then maybe I can’t do this Oxford from Yorkshire. Backed by Pete (for the third and seemingly It doesn’t feel like it’s me up there anymore’. I wasn’t very happy drummer Pete Ward and bassist Kat final time), who has been replaced most of the time. I have a lot of out- with our last recording and I thought Bond this original incarnation of the by Polish-born Pawel Kuterba, a of-body experiences on stage and that `Roses’ meant that we’re band quickly made an impression on talented multi-instrumentalist best then have no recollection of our totally on the right track, as we the local scene with their harsh, known in Oxford for his performances. should sound and it feels like a right stripped-down punk sound. An interpretations of Joe Satriani songs. “People are wary of us but that’s of passage to say that we’ve finally early NME review raved about alright, I quite like it that way. I arrived.” Eliza’s ferocious vocal style, SO, EVERYTHING FINALLY think the boys get more people There’s a real darkness, drawing comparisons to Kat settled and comfortable? Oh come coming up to talk to them than me occasionally even a spookiness, Bjelland of Babes In Toyland, and off it: this is Ivy’s Itch – comfort is and Jo, as they appear more about your songs. You’re preceded a planned EP , but the enemy! Listen to ‘Roses’ (go on approachable. People will make of it uncomfortable with the term gothic the band split acrimoniously before – listen to it on their MySpace site) all what they will but that doesn’t but would you agree there is that it saw the light of day and it wasn’t and you’ll see that emotional mean they know us just because edge to your music? until 2001 that the band really turbulence and musical demolition they’ve watched Ivy’s Itch. Do Eliza: “Gothic has a lot of pre- started to come together as a force are the order of the day (or dead of people think I walk round the house conceived notions about it and to reckon with. night to be more accurate). Behind singing like that the whole time? I people so often get the wrong end Eliza was introduced to bass player Eliza’s excoriating voice are sullenly can think of many examples of of the stick. It automatically makes Jo Reid, who had played with local bullish basslines, pummelling, tom- people who sing ballads and MOR people think of those terrible all-girl punk-metal legends Death heavy drums and alternately creepy stuff that scare the shit out of me.” classical/metal crossovers that have By Crimpers in the 90s. A mutual and molten guitar lines. Somewhere How much strain do you put your come into fashion over the past few desire to create heavy music between hardcore, early and voice under – could it stand up to a years, therefore it’s misleading. encouraged them both to shake off (whisper it) , Ivy’s Itch month-long tour? Certainly there’s an aspect of the disillusionment with playing in have been compared to the equally Eliza: “I dunno, but we’re about to included in what we do but bands and Eliza even managed to musically and vocally disturbed find out. Come ask me that in the it also comes down to a common bury the hatchet with Pete who Queen Adreena, whom they have New Year. I think my voice is a sense of humour that the four of us returned on drums. supported on occasions, but really pretty strong thing. At least I hope share. A bit dark, a bit sick…. I find Ivy’s Itch were further bolstered by there are few bands around at the it is or I / we are up the proverbial people who are chirpy all the time the addition of guitarist Jimmy moment who sound anything like creek!” unsettling and are probably heavily Hetherington, also of Suitable Case them. With the band set to embark Who are the singers and performers medicated.” For Treatment and now Jo’s on a national tour to promote you most admire? Jimmy: “And there’s a difference husband. Gigs around the country – ‘Roses’, Nightshift asked Ivy’s Itch Eliza: “I have respect for loads of between being a goth and a although precious few in Oxford which particularly darkened corner performers. I was brought up miserable bastard!” where their reception beyond a of hell they’re coming from, and in listening to a real hotchpotch of hardcore following, and Nightshift’s particular that schizophrenic voice. music as I have an older sister who AS WELL AS BEING OUT ON pages, has been muted – quickly Eliza: “I’m not sure if that’s the was into the glam/punk thing: Adam their own musically, Ivy’s Itch are a drew attention from the burgeoning right word for it. I’d agree on the and the Ants, Siouxsie, , rare thing in Oxford – a female-led goth and hardcore fanzine scene and word vulnerable, as a person’s voice Kiss etc. and the rest of the family band, and not just vocally. At a time Metal Hammer featured them in is a piece of them and being asked to record collection was loads of jazz, when there are fewer female their Ones To Watch section. sing is like stripping away all your big band swing, the Supremes and musicians in bands than for many With things very much on the up defences whilst everybody is soundtracks to musicals like Porgy years (and with Harlette, Oxford’s the band released ‘Roses’, their watching. One of the reasons I and Bess. That’s had more of a sole all-female band of any note having just split up), Ivy’s Itch offer a more known but the music was so much better emotionally complex flipside to so much than before. She taught me not to be afraid: macho hardcore and teen-boy angst. of my voice or of people’s reactions to us. Eliza: “I think it may be a generational We agreed we wanted to do something thing as when we were teenagers, we had heavy, as that came natural to us both. She quite a lot of female role models in the has an amazing ear for what sounds right alternative genre who broke the mould and and we share the same philosophy of 5K flew the flag for musical equilibrium, like simplicity being the way forward. It was 32 Patty Smith, Diamanda Galas, Kim Deal, weird when we did meet, as she had come Kim Gordon, Kristen Hersh, Polly Harvey, to see a gig we played at The Point in ’99, , , Billie when I didn’t know her and she had Holliday, Janis Joplin… Not to mention commented to somebody `I never want to and Kat Bjelland. Now with be in a band again, but if I had to it would the new wave of bands a lot of girls seem to be one like that’. Weird eh?” want be an accessory as opposed to Death By Crimpers, Jo’s former band, forming groups themselves, which is really remain one of the most fondly-remembered sad. The worst thing is that some of the bad groups to come out of Oxford, despite attitudes that Jo and I have experienced as having split up over a decade ago. An all-girl musicians doesn’t just come from boys. five-piece fronted by a singer, Karen Nolan, “There are a lot of girls in indie bands but with a ferocious lava-gargling voice to not enough for it to stop being a novelty. match Eliza’s, they toured relentlessly, built What really distresses me and has me turn up a fanatical fanbase and were signed to a into a ranting lunatic are all-girl `kitsch’ acts, German before being torn apart which is infuriating because you can see by music industry machinations. How does that they play well and could do something Jo remember that time now and how does it great but instead they choose the cabaret compare to playing with Ivy’s Itch? band route. It looks like a defence tactic, so Jo: “I can’t remember half of it as I’d if people didn’t like it, they could say, `It drunk too much cider most of the time and wasn’t a serious project anyway’, which was stuck in the back of a van! I don’t speaks volumes in lacking self-confidence. think much has changed now… But Locally, as far as I’m aware, there are quite seriously, the Crimpers was a very steep a few girls who play in mixed bands, which learning curve as we were all very young I think is fantastic. Harlette have split and and it certainly opened my eyes to the that’s a shame, but those girls will probably music industry. There were a lot of highs go into doing other things musically – I and a lot of lows but I wouldn’t have hope they do anyway.” changed anything. It’s different in some Jo: “There do seem to be less female ways in Ivy’s Itch as Eliza and I have a musicians now but perhaps it’s deceptive, strong musical partnership. It’s really because there are fewer all-female bands and brilliant to work with the boys and to have more mixed bands. I think that’s a good their musical perspective as well. In other ROCK-POP-DANCE-GOLDEN OLDIES-INDIE- thing because men and women in my ways it’s quite similar. We gigged endlessly SOUL--HIP-HOP-JAZZ-LATIN-REGGAE- opinion approach music in different ways, in the Crimpers and had a lot of people DRUM&BASS-GARAGE—R&B-DISCO-1950s- both are equally valid and the two from around the country that followed the 2000s. Brand new back catalogue CDs £4 - £7 compliment each other well. band to every gig. I think things are each. Brand new chart CDs £5 - £10 each “I think that it’s tough to survive as a different now, especially with the internet. woman in a predominantly male industry, Ivy’s Itch seems a bit harder to categorise in especially when you don’t fit into the the current music scene, as it has become Rehearsal studios in Central Bicester stereotype so a lot of women lose heart and more mainstream and we fit in everywhere give up. Maybe it has something to do with and nowhere. The underground fanzine Pearl Export Drum Kit, PA, lack of confidence as well, as you are often culture seems to be having a revival too Guitar & Bass Amps provided judged a lot more on your technical ability recently, which is great for bands that are a FREE * Cheap rates available than originality and on your looks from the bit different.” * Free parking after 6pm start rather than the final product of the weekdays * Gear storage music. That’s hard when you are a young COME ON THEN, BEFORE WE GO - available woman and are still finding your own what’s it like having a married couple in the identity. I was lucky as I started playing band? Do Jo and Jimmy bicker endlessly? The Courtyard Youth Arts Centre bass when Riot Girrl was at its height and Pawel: “It’s fun, because they are very Launton Road, Bicester OX26 6DJ as Eliza has said there were a lot of strong cute when they do!” female role models to aspire to, which made Eliza: “I don’t know what he’s talking Contact [email protected] or 01869 602555 me determined to discover my own style about! We are a tantrum free band. and to try and shrug off any criticism.” Ahem…” Jimmy: “We don’t really bicker about AFTER ELIZA’S FIRST ATTEMPT TO music, more about moving the gear about! get Ivy’s Itch off the ground, and getting so It’s pretty cool me and Jo being in the band THE ANY DAYS close to succeeding, only to find the band together as it’s something else we work well falling apart around her, meeting a like- at as a couple.” CD single `MONDAY MORNING’ minded soul like Jo must have been some Jo: “Is this an interview for Nightshift or kind of Godsend. Hello magazine?” at Polar Bear Records, Cowley Road Eliza: “Jo rescued the band from the wreckage. We both weren’t sure when we met that we wanted to get into it all again. I `Roses’ is out now: buy it online at www.theanydays.com was told that she’d need heavy persuasion www.lineoutrecords.com. Ivy’s Itch to pick up her bass and play as she’d been headline the Zodiac on Saturday 21st www.myspace.com/theanydays out of the band scene for quite a while. We October. Check out www.myspace.com/ (check websites for local gig dates) decided to use the same name as it was ivys-itch for news and tracks. Sponsored RELEASED by FELL CITY GIRL THIS TOWN NEEDS ‘February Snow’ GUNS (Lavolta) ‘Hippy Jam Fest (The After the genuinely superlative ‘Swim’ earlier this year, Fell City Girl return with another Likes Of Which Has limited-edition four-song EP. Where its predecessor was extravagant and glacial, Never Been Seen ‘February Snow’ is more introverted, infused with bewildered and lyrical Before)’ imagery similar to . It’s still typical (Big Scary Monsters) Fell City Girl widescreen pop though, For so long destined to dwell in the shadows eventually rising to a crescendo of shimmering of Fell City Girl, whom they emerged before making way for the spikier ‘These alongside a while back, This Town Needs Are The Heart Attacks’. ‘Helplines’ is, according Guns now find themselves dubbed The Most to frontman Phil McMinn, the most personal mantra-like feel before dissolving into ambient Improved Band In Oxford after a series of song he has written; recorded in his bedroom in chaos; it still feels reigned in, lending it subtle battling live shows across the city. Musically the middle of the night its gentle synth hums and tension. The elegance and emotional complexity there are comparisons to be drawn with Fell tip-toeing guitar allow Phil’s voice that we’ve come to associate with Fell City Girl City Girl, notably the stadium pop intent contemplative centre stage. ‘The Helicopters remain throughout as well as their luxuriant and the mixture of plaintive, almost lullaby- Overhead’ is the closest the EP comes to epic command of melody. There’s no getting away like melody and epic noise. This debut single, proportions, a three-part song with a six- from it - Fell City Girl are something special. though, finds them closer to another great minute wingspan that takes on an almost Sue Foreman Oxford rock export, Dive Dive. Stuart Smith’s voice has the same keening, cracked feel as Jamie Stuart’s, while the jagged shards it some propulsion. ‘Taking Myself Home of guitar that combust out of delicate piano- WITCHES Again’ touches on Sparklehorse’s lonesome led hymns are born of the same mould. ‘Taking Myself Home wildwoods folktronica, with its countrified The single’s lead track never lives up to its guitar shimmer and sweet glockenspiel, but grand title, promising a firework finale that Again’ ‘Dead As A Ghost’ is a more gregarious beast, fizzles out before it’s even taken flight. horns flailing around like a scrap at a Mexican ‘Denial Adams’ carries a greater sense of (Within The Woods) wedding. Witches are perhaps a bit too drama, while repeating ‘Hippy Jam Fest”s Pleasingly understated glitch-pop charm from mannered at times and need to let go string coda and it’s only with ‘Like Romeo Witches on this their second release, a two-song emotionally on both ends of their musical scale and Juliet’ that they hit harder ground (or CD that demonstrates the band’s ability to – the trumpet storm finale shows what they sky, depending on which way you look at it). marry a studious folky ambience with more can do – but this is Cotswold-flavoured country They sound assured and their grasp of abrasive rock and electronica. Dave Griffiths rock with a side order of Welsh valleys we’re texture is sharp, with strings and piano sounds alternately like a campfire choirboy and talking about here so maybe a bit of British woven deftly into the guitar lines; what This a pensive mouse on vocals and sometimes you reserve is well in order. Town Needs Guns need now is an emotional wish he’d grasp the song by its thorns and lend Sue Foreman depth to match. Dale Kattack

as well sticking a CD of Tony Blair’s Commons MY FATHER THE BEAT speeches on at a rave if you wanted anyone to ‘El Diego’ dance. Former MBICR man Tim Croston tries his hardest with some skewed electronic backing (Vinyl Interstate) and machine beats but the feeble guitar grooves, Like and , baggy is the painfully wracked intensity of the vocals and something that really doesn’t cry out for a ambling pace mark this whole project out as revival. There’s always someone chancing their doomed as Sean Ryder attempting to string arm though, most recently Kasabian with their together a coherent sentence. My Father The hopelessly contrived Stone Roses rip-offs. Beat are simply too fey and too uptight to be Perhaps with an eye on joining such hallowed funky. Even ‘Whiskey’, an attempt at electro- ranks, My Father The Beat, a band made up of funk dissonance, ends up sounding like Shakatak former members of Mr Duck and Meanwhile, on a morphine drip. If My Father The Beat ever Back In Communist Russia, here attempt to to invite you to a party just stay in with a warm resurrect the spirit of Happy Mondays. Such is cup of Horlicks. You’ll have bags more fun. the stilted nature of these five tracks, you’d be Victoria Waterfield Selected Oxford releases are now available on the ground floor HMV Oxford supports local music Open Sundays 11-5pm & late Thursdays till 7pm. 10% student discount every day

gig guide Sponsored by

st SUNDAY 1 back-up from , now signed to Nuclear EMBRACE: Brookes University Union – OCTOBER Blast Records. After the ignominy of writing probably the SABOTAGE: The Zodiac – Weekly club night most turgid World Cup anthem of all time, the SYNAESTHESIA ART & MOVEMNT: The playing the latest metal, hardcore and brothers MacNamara return to what they do Exeter Hall, Cowley – Acoustic music-art alternative sounds. best – soulful, symphonic indie rocking of a interface performance. RANDOMNUMBER: Modern Art, Oxford – slightly dirge-like nature. Them kids love it, so ELECTRIC OPEN JAM: The Music Market Electronic experimentation and soundscaping they do. MONDAY 2nd from Matthew Robson, mixing up glitchy, : The Zodiac – Lycanthropic disorientating noise with atmospheric drones PRIMO BLUES BAND: The Bullingdon – songsmith gears up for the release of his third and drifting. Funky blues, Hendrix-style rock, reggae and 70s album – see main preview OXJAM: The Exeter Hall, Cowley – First of soul from the offshoot project of Station a month of Oxfam benefit gigs, featuring a wide House, the band built around award-winning range of local acts – check out blues drummer Sam Kelly, here giving his band’s st www.oxjamoxford.co.uk for line-up details. Sunday 1 backing singers a lead role. BIG JOAN + SUNNYVALE NOISE SUB- BELLOWHEAD: The Zodiac – Spiers and PATRICK WOLF: ELEMENT: The Cellar – Bass-heavy post- Boden’s brass and fiddle-driven eleven-piece punk heavyweights out of , making an folk party band, recent winners of the BBC The Zodiac abrasive old racket somewhere between PiL, Radio 2 Folk Awards Best Live Act prize Folktronica doesn’t quite cut it as an Venetian Snares and Swans. JOHN KIRKPATRICK & ROY BAILEY: adequate description of London-based DOMES OF SILENCE + GOOD COP, BAD Nettlebed Folk Club COP + BEARD OF ZEUSS: The Hobgoblin, songsmith Patrick Wolf. Sure he writes rd pastoral hymns cut through with analogue TUESDAY 3 Bicester – Return to action for local darkwave sounds and electronic beats but the often THE RIFLES + THE QUARTER-FINALS: rockers, mixing up Doors and Primal Scream, sweeping elegance of the songs, particularly The Zodiac – Jam-like indie rocking from plus support from stoner metallers Beard Of those from last album ‘’, Walthamstow. Zeuss as well as his yearning, doomed lyrics and JAZZ CLUB with KATYA GORRIE & PHOTO: Po Na Na – Darkly-inclined indie- wonderfully limpid voice draw him closer to DENNY ILETT Jr: The Bullingdon – Guest punk rocking from Photo. or John Cale. At the moment he’s appearance at the Bully’s weekly free live jazz SKYLARKIN: The Brickworks – Dub, ska, one of the country’s greatest pop secrets, night from singer Katya and renowned jazz Latin, funk and Afrobeat sounds every week guitarist Denny. although he should be no stranger to local from DJ Aidan Larkin and guests. STEFAN GROSSMAN & DAVY GRAHAM: SPIN JAZZ CLUB with ROGER audiences after appearances at Truck Holywell Music Room – Acoustic blues and BEAUJOLAIS: The Wheatsheaf Festival. A talented multi-instrumentalist, folk guitarist renowned for his finger-picking OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon Wolf tends to lead with violin, viola or style. CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford piano, but utilises more exotic instruments, SUSH OPEN MIC SESSION: The Exeter community Centre such as a Finnish kantele, but it’s his voice Hall, Cowley – The Ex’s weekly open mic FRIDAY 6th and lyrics that really grab you, searching for session returns with all musicians welcome. PARAMORE + CUTE IS WHAT WE AIM eternal childhood, feeling lost in the city or DELICIOUS MUSIC JAZZ NIGHT: Bar FOR: The Zodiac – The wagon just discovering the beauty of isolation while Milano, Pizza Express – With jazz carries on rolling, tonight featuring Tennessee recording in a Cornish shack. Now signed to instrumentalist Eddie Thompson. teens Paramore, coming on like a marginally Loog Records, he’s set to release his third ACOUSTIC OPEN MIC SESSION: The more raucous version of Avril Lavigne. Fuelled album, ‘Magic Position’, featuring Hobgoblin, Bicester By Ramen labelmates Cute Is What We Aim collaborations with Marianne Faithfull and OPEN MIC SESSION: Mangoes, Cowley For are currently one of the States’ indie Larrikin Love and mainstream success Road sensations, providing their label with its fastest finally looks like his for the taking. th WEDNESDAY 4 selling release to date. THOMAS TRUAX + MUNCH MUNCH: KATE RUSBY: The New Theatre – Leading The Port Mahon – electronica from lady of new folk goes for the big theatre show – Truck Festival favourite Thomas Truax, plus see main preview off-kilter indie noise in a Deerhoof vein from NARCISSISM + VESTIBULE: The Exeter Munch Munch at tonight’s MyAnalog night. Hall, Cowley – Banbury heavy rockers in a FOLK SESSION: The Exeter Hall, Cowley Tool vein. OPEN MIC SESSION: Marlborough House KLUB KAKOFANNEY with MARY THURSDAY 5th BENDYTOY + THE BRICKWORK : The Zodiac (upstairs) LIZARDS + MARK BOSLEY & SUE – Former Catatonia singer tours in support of JORDAN + MOEITY: The Wheatsheaf – her second solo album – see main preview Crazed industrial pop-punk from Mary Bendy MENDEED + KINGSIZE BLUES + Toy, plus eclectic world soul from Brickwork SANCTORUM: The Zodiac (downstairs) – Lizards at tonight’s Klub Kak. Classic Maiden-style metal with thrash artillery ACOUSTIC NIGHT: The Victoria Audioscope on the 28th. One-time shoegazing Bone Walker, BB King and Jeff Beck. cult stars Telescopes are a very different THE ANSWER + ROADSTAR + musical beast these days, now stripped down AIRBOURNE: The Zodiac – Wild and hairy to a two-piece, featuring founder members old-fashioned cock-rock that sounds a lot like Stephen Lawrie and Jo Doran and carving out Thunder from Ireland’s The Answer, currently atmospheric guitar drone soundtracks. promoting debut album ‘Rise’, basking in the Shoegazers Sennen evoke memories of My glory of being nominated as Best British Bloody Valentine, while ’s Simon Scott Newcomers at the Kerrang! Awards and being returns with his new band Televise. handpicked to support veteran rocker Paul IMOGEN HEAP: The New Theatre – The Rodgers at the Albert Hall this month. Essex singer- prepares to finally hit LAST NIGHT’S FUN: Nettlebed Folk Club Thursday 5th the big-time with her biggest UK tour to date TUESDAY 10th after a summer that saw her playing both THE LEMONHEADS: Brookes University CERYS MATTHEWS: Coachella and V Festivals. Though probably Union – Evan Dando returns to full band action more successful in the States, Japan and after an eight-year hiatus – see main preview The Zodiac Australia, she’s hit the charts here in the past, Ah, Cerys. Lovely Cerys. Cherryade-voiced notably with the band Frou Frou, a chanteuse with the majestic Catatonia, collaboration with Guy Gigsworth. With the re- Friday 6th possibly the best pop act ever to come out release of last year’s ‘Speak For Yourself’ of Wales, and one that could have the most album, part Madonna-ish dancefloor-friendly KATE RUSBY: Saxon-blooded of Englishmen braying pop, part Laurie Anderson-influenced electronic “Every day when I wake up / I thank the strangeness, a full break into the mainstream The New Theatre Lord I’m Welsh”. Purveyors of often divine beckons. The leading lady of the English folk revival SIMPLE: The Bullingdon – Funky house that could leap from cutely doe- plays her biggest Oxford show to date, club night. eyed (`Lost Cat’) to fabulously bombastic proving that, six solo in, her THE CHEEGRATERS: The Exeter Hall, (`I Am The Mob’), they rose from humble popularity just carries on growing. With new Cowley – Funk, soul, Latin pop, country and beginning (including many fondly- album, ‘The Girl Who Couldn’t Fly’, Kate rock’n’roll mix. Rusby continues her trick of breathing remembered visits to The Point and Oxford SHIRLEY COLLINS + DAVY GRAHAM: freshness and vitality into traditional folk United Social Club) to sell about fifty billion Holywell Music Room – Rare chance to see ballads as well as penning an increasing records before they split up amid tales of 60s folk revivalist Shirley Collins live, percentage of songs herself. As well as long- alcoholic over-indulgence and mental accompanied by Davy Graham with whom she instability. Seemingly forgotten as quickly as recorded her seminal ‘Folk Roots, New Routes’ time collaborator and producer (as well as they became huge, but now Cerys album. That along with ‘Anthems In Eden’ husband) John McCusker (formerly of The Matthews is back with a new album, `Never made her one of the most innovative and Battlefield Band who in the 80s gave Said Goodbye’ – her second solo outing – subsequently influential trad folk singers of the similarly new life to traditional Scottish and a proper UK tour. The new songs are period, inspiring acts as diverse as , music), the new album finds Kate teaming up less extravagant than Catatonia’s, tending Current 93 and The Decemberists. with Idlewild’s Roddy Woomble (who duets towards folkier singer-songwriter stuff, and WINGBACK + THE SUNRAYS + with her on three tracks) and Graham Coxon she won’t be playing any of the old hits CRANEFLY: The Port Mahon (who designed the album’s sleeve artwork). tonight, but it’ll be worth it just to hear that ACOUSTIC NIGHT with LAGRIMA + As ever it’s a charming, disarmingly simple voice again – truly a force of nature, one that OPAQUE + EVERY OTHER SUNDAY: The affair, Kate’s pure, dreamy voice the main can melt a man’s heart at fifty paces. King’s Head & Bell, Abingdon – The Skittle focus with the songs either simple acoustic Alley presents their monthly unplugged local guitar ballads or more elaborate and lively LES CLOCHARDS: Chester Arms – Gallic- bands night. fiddle and accordion-led jigs. After a flavoured jazz-pop. SAPPHIRES: Wolvercote British Legion – succession of folk awards as well as a BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon – Blues rock. Mercury Prize nomination, Kate is now a Weekly dose of classic soul, funk and disco. PETE FRYER BAND: of Wales, fully-fledged chart star after her collaboration THE DUGOUT: The Cellar – Soul and funk Didcot with Ronan Keating, ‘All Over Again’, went grooves from DJs Aidan Larkin, Fabulous SUNDAY 8th Top 10 earlier this summer. At 31 she’s still a Hand, Jon Kemp, Cuban John and Green-T. FIELDS + GOODBOOKS + KID youngster in trad folk circles but already OXFORD FOLK CLUB: The Port Mahon HARPOON: The Zodiac – Acid folk-inspired Kate Rusby feels like an old hand. One that SATURDAY 7th pastoral pop from London’s Fields, fresh from keeps on getting better. FELL CITY GIRL + THE ROCK OF supporting Mystery Jets on tour and drawing TRAVOLTA: The Zodiac – Local rising rock inspiration from the likes of My Bloody starlets return to the Zodiac to promote new Valentine and Magic Numbers into their single, ‘February Snow’ – see main preview psychedelic folk world. Support comes from ANTI NOWHERE LEAGUE + GUNS ON ace Transgressive signings Goodbooks, mixing THE ROOF + HEADCOUNT: The Zodiac – up haunting, pretty acoustic folk with jangly Veteran early-80s punk monsters, best known guitar pop and synths. for their cover of ‘Streets Of London’ (and even LIBRARY TAPES + IMPURE THEATRE + more so for its infamous b-side ‘So What?’, SLEEPS IN OYSTERS: The Port Mahon – possibly the most misanthropic song ever to More leftfield rock action from MyAnalog, grace the Top 40). Re-animated after tonight with Swedish post-rockers Library took to covering ‘So What?’ live, frontman Tapes giving it some in a Godspeed style, plus Animal even joining Hetfield and co. onstage, tense prose, scruffy beats and atmospheric prompting him to reform the band. Bloody- electronics from ex-Meanwhile, Back In minded, foul-mouthed punk like what it used to Communist Russia chaps Tim and Emily’s new be made. Local punk-metal beefcakes band Impure Theatre and electronic Headcount bring their collision of experimentation from Sleeps In Oysters. and Therapy? along in support. And hey, ELECTRIC OPEN JAM: The Music Market th Discharge are in town next month. We’re getting MONDAY 9 excited already. THE JIMMY GRISWOLD BAND: The TELESCOPES + SENNEN + TELEVISE: Bullingdon – Energetic blues rock from the The Wheatsheaf – Warm-up gig for Tampa Bay guitarist, playing in the style of T- from mainland Europe with France’s Gojira songsmith Ally Craig displaying his unique making an evil old racket in a Morbid Angel / lyrical and musical style, mixing up influences Messhugga vein having impressed everyone at as diverse as Jeff Buckley and Sonic Youth. Download this year, while Denmark’s SEXTODECIMO + SOW + BEARD OF Hatesphere give it some in the brutality stakes. ZEUSS + COBRA: The Music Market – JAZZ CLUB with THE TOM GREY Top-notch night of local hardcore and metal QUINTET: The Bullingdon with ultra-grindcore stoner-rock behemoths JON FLETCHER + A PINT & A HALF OF Sextodecimo heading once more into the darkest BLUES + DAVE NOBLE & JALIFILY of musical black holes, while Sow crank up the CISSOKHU: The Port Mahon – Folk and Meshugga-inspired riffs, Beard Of Zeuss hit a jazz from finger-picking guitarist and singer Jon stoner-rock groove and Cobra fire out prime Fletcher, plus guitar’n’harp blues duo A Pint & grunge. Saturday 7th A Half and Senegalese folk-blues fusion from CHRIS DIFFORD: The Zodiac – Former- Dave and Jalifily. Squeeze frontman and lyricist, these days a FELL CITY GIRL / THE SUSH OPEN MIC SESSION: The Exeter byword in cool after musical homages from The Hall, Cowley Libertines et al. Since the demise of Squeeze ROCK OF TRAVOLTA DELICIOUS MUSIC JAZZ NIGHT: Bar he’s worked with Elton John, Lamont Dozier Thursday 12th / Tuesday 31st Milano, Pizza Express – With guests and most recently Marty Pellow as well as Desfinado. winning an Ivor Novello award for his THE YOUNG KNIVES INTRUSION: The Cellar – Goth and soundtrack to Still Crazy. Tuesday 31st industrial club night. SLIDE: The Zodiac – House club night. WEDNESDAY 11th SMILEX + BILLY ENGLAND + MISSING SUITABLE CASE FOR OXFORD IMPROVISORS: The Port LEG COMPARTMENT: The Wheatsheaf – Mahon – Renowned drummer Steve Noble, All-action sleaze-rocking from Smilex, due to TREATMENT: who has played with Derek Bailey and Rip, Rig release their debut album soon, plus angular The Zodiac and Panic amongst others, teams up with guitarist Otto Fischer and keyboard player th Quite a month for Oxford’s musical elite as Alexander Hawkins for a night of improvised Tuesday 10 three of the biggest and best bands in town music. THE LEMONHEADS: headline the Zodiac (plus you could add in FOLK SESSION: The Exeter Hall, Cowley Winnebago Deal’s support to The Bronx on CLARK WISEMAN: The Wheatsheaf th Brookes Union the 14 ), though with rather different levels OPEN MIC SESSION: Marlborough House Now here’s something we never thought of celebration. Fell City Girl prepare to THURSDAY 12th release a new single, ‘February Snow’, later we’d ever see: The Lemonheads back and JOHN PEEL NIGHT with SHIRLEY: The this month, their upward trajectory looking gigging. And coming to Oxford! To be honest Exeter Hall, Cowley – First of two nights of in no doubt. They’re just getting better and you could have been forgiven for thinking gigs celebrating the life of the legendary Peel; better as and performers and a Evan Dando was long since lost to the world tonight 60s-styled pop fellas Shirley give it break into the commercial mainstream in after his steady spiral into crack-induced some party-friendly action in an early Beatles- unpredictability in the late-90s; the 2007 looks inevitable; support band The meets-The Housemartins style. intervening solo comeback shows even Rock Of Travolta are now seemingly back THE YOUNG KNIVES: The Zodiac – First accentuating the feeling that he would never on creative track after a series of typically of two headline dates at the Zodiac for the local recapture that past magic when The impressive gigs including a show-stealing heroes – see main preview Lemonheads – preceding the grunge performance at Truck this summer. The SEKOU KEITA: The Zodiac – Afro- Young Knives’ breakthrough came this year Mandinka music, blending sounds from Senegal, explosion – were indie rock’s bitter-sweet with the release of ‘Voices Of Animals And Italy, Egypt and Gambia into a melodic, dancey heroes and Dando was a genuine sex Men’, one of the most critically-acclaimed whole. symbol. The reformed Lemonheads features albums of the year, while the band have JOHN OTWAY BIG BAND: The Port former-Descendants Bill Stevenson and Karl found themselves cast as standard bearers Mahon – More musical madness from the Alverez, while the likes of Chris Brokaw for a new line in sartorial elegance. They clown prince of pop. and Julianna Hatfield have supplemented bookend their latest national tour with two SABOTAGE: The Zodiac the line-up since last year’s relaunch. Now Zodiac gigs, no doubt anticipating the OXFORD UNIVERSITY JAZZ SOCIETY signed to Vagrant Records there’s a new number of folks who’ll want to see them in NIGHT: The Music Market album out this month, featuring another all their hometown glory. Maverick pop SPIN JAZZ CLUB with THE DIERDRIE grunge survivor, J Mascis, and tonight’s gig genius at its best. But sadly it’s goodbye to CARTWRIGHT GROUP: The Wheatsheaf will feature plenty of old favourites from Suitable Case For Treatment, one of the INACUN + MEAN POPPA LEAN + GIRLS the ‘Shame About Ray’ and ‘Come On Feel most original and awe-inspiring bands ARE LOUDER: The Three Horseshoes, The Lemonheads’ period, when the band Oxford has produced. They’re splitting up Towersey – Hoodwink Promotions attempt to were at their commercial peak. So sing along after tonight’s Halloween gig, an kick some life into Towersey with to ‘Big Gay Heart’ and be thankful that appropriately ghoulish date for their a monthly local bands night. while Dando’s old buddy Kurt Cobain monstrous spazz-jazz-prog-death-metal- KING FURNACE + BLACK ALLEY didn’t make it, this story at least has a gospel-blues racket, leaving us with plenty SCREENS + DIATRIBE + CHANTELLE happy ending. of great musical memories, not least the PIKE: The Cellar – Chili Peppers-influenced bizarre spectacle of them performing with hairy rocking from King Furnace, plus Jam-like Jon Snow on the Richard & Judy Show. A new wave noise from Ireland’s Black Alley month that proves just how far local music Screens. SKYLARKIN: The Brickworks has come on in the last couple of years. OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford PAOLO NUTINI: The Zodiac (upstairs) – Community Centre Long-since sold-out gig from Paisley’s chart- th busting teenage singer-songwriter, mixing up FRIDAY 13 string-drenched ballads, Stones-y swagger and JOHN PEEL NIGHT with ALLY CRAIG + 70s soul-pop. KANED CITIZEN + THE MIGHTY ROARS GOJIRA + HATESPHERE: The Zodiac + THE RUINS: The Exeter Hall, Cowley – (downstairs) – Double bill of extreme metal Second Peel night, tonight seeing ace local punk noise from Billy England and bluesy metal ELECTRIC OPEN JAM: The Music Market from Missing Leg. MONDAY 16th BOSSAPHONIC: The Cellar – Live jazz THE KYLA BROX BAND: The Bullingdon – dance. Powerful blues vocalist out of , BOBO STEPHENSON TRIO: Holywell daughter of renowned bluesman Victor Brox, Music Room – Swedish jazz pianist whose band she first started her career singing Stephenson, plus drummer Anders Jormin and with. Out on her own she reprises classic r’n’b bass player Jon Falt, displays the intense, as well as original blues material. minimalist virtuosity that has seen him KLAXONS + SHIT DISCO + DATAROCK: collaborate with Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz in The Zodiac – Glowsticks aloft, kids as NME the past. presents the so-called New Wave Of New Rave ACOUSTIC NIGHT: The Victoria JAZZ GROOVE: The Port Mahon OXFORD FOLK CLUB: The Port Mahon MADDY PRIOR: Nettlebed Folk Club BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon th SATURDAY 14th TUESDAY 17 SETH LAKEMAN: The Zodiac (upstairs) – ROOSTER: The Zodiac – Sony-signed pop- Champion of the British folk new wave – see friendly rockers tout their new album, ‘Circles main preview And Satellites, with its trademark manufactured THE BRONX + WINNEBAGO DEAL + raucousness that sounds like a cross between LADY FINGER: The Zodiac (downstairs) – Pearl Jam and Blue. You lucky, lucky people. LA punkers in a Husker Du-meets-Black Flag JAZZ CLUB with THE TOM GREY th vein hit town after supports to Converge and QUINTET: The Bullingdon Saturday 14 Mastodon. Local speed-crazed hard rockers SUSH OPEN MIC SESSION: The Exeter Winnebago Deal, rising high on the critical Hall, Cowley SETH LAKEMAN: acclaim accorded new album ‘Flight Of The DELICIOUS MUSIC JAZZ NIGHT: Bar The Zodiac Raven’ provide support. Milano, Pizza Express – With regular duo The MESAPLEX + DARK PHASE: The Jazz Emporium. Ghost stories from Dartmoor, tales of Civil Wheatsheaf – Atmospheric electronics and SIKORSKI: The Port Mahon War battles and handsome soldiers courting gothic ambience from Mesaplex, plus tripped- VERTIGO: The Cellar – Indie club night with young maidens? Surely this sort of stuff out electro-pop from Dark Phase. live music from The Victorian English went out with the folk music ark? Well, if it FUNK ELECTRIC MASH-UP: The Bullingdon Gentlemen’s Club, Untitled Musical Project and did no-one told Seth Lakeman, and thank the DIVINITY SCHOOL + NOT MY DAY + Figment. lord for that. The Cornish singer-songwriter THE IDEA: The Music Market – Local rock OPEN MIC SESSION: Mangoes returns to Oxford after his excellent showing th bands night. WEDNESDAY 18 at Truck Festival in July and doubtless his COTTON BLONDE: The Port Mahon – PHOEBE KREUTZ + AARON STOUT: The following will have grown yet again. Seth is Melodic indie punk from local rockers Cotton Port Mahon – Double bill of New York very definitely an artist on the up. Following Blonde. acoustic anti-folk singers. on from last year’s Mercury Prize-nominated BASSMENTALITY: The Cellar – Ten-piece KEITH JAMES & RICH FOOT: Phoenix ‘Kitty Jay’, new album ‘Freedom Fields’ ska and hip hop collective. Picture House – The songs of . continues his storytelling journey through MIKE NELSON: Wolvercote British Legion FOLK SESSION: The Exeter Hall, Cowley West Country legend and romantic historical – Favourites from the 50s and 60s. OPEN MIC SESSION: Marlborough House tales. Despite the very traditional subject SUNDAY 15th THURSDAY 19th matter, the music can be as urgent and I, LUDICROUS + THE WOMBATS + NICK KELLY: The Port Mahon – Dreamy, energetic as any punk band, highly HUMDRUM EXPRESS: The Port Mahon – melodic pop from the award-winning Irish rhythmical in style, led by dynamic fiddle A band we thought had long since died and gone singer and former Fat Lady Sings frontman. playing and Lakeman’s powerful voice. to obscure 80s heaven, now BILLY COBHAM & ASERE: The Zodiac – Given that Cornwall historically has more in resurrected and coming to town courtesy of the Spanish guitars meet African rhythms as world- common with Scotland and Wales than the monthly Swiss Concrete club. A London duo renowned drummer Billy Cobham - who’s rest of England, the deep Celtic roots in his formed by John Procter and Dave Rippingale, worked with Miles Davis as well as the music aren’t surprising and now the man they first gained John Peel-endorsed notoriety Mahavishnu Orchestra, teams up with Cuban who once backed up Kate Rusby and Cara with their debut flexi disc (yes, it was that long Son band Asere, part of Oxford Contemporary Dillon is about to become a fully-fledged star ago) ‘Preposterous Tales’ before going onto Music’s new Autumn season. in his own right. document all manner of humdrum trivia in a OXJAM: The Exeter Hall, Cowley – Bands style somewhere between The Fall and Half to be confirmed. Man, Half Biscuit. Dry, hangdog lo-fi pop at its WHERE I’M CALLING FROM: QI Club – INLIGHT + THE SIRENS CALL + THE best. Support from pop-punkers The Wombats Belle & Sebastian and Only Ones-inspired indie RUINS: The Zodiac – Local bands night. and ‘insensitive singer-songwriter’ Humdrum pop from promising local starlets WICF. MUGSTAR + MEET ME IN ST LOUIS + Express. OXFORD UNIVERSITY JAZZ SOCIETY AND NO STAR: The Wheatsheaf – Fantastic GET CAPE, WEAR CAPE, FLY: The Zodiac NIGHT: The Music Market hypno-jazz-core soundscaping from (upstairs) – Tender, melodic acoustic guitar and NICK KELLY: The Port Mahon ’s Mugstar, ripping into Hawkwind, laptop action from Sam Duckworth, currently ZELEGA + MIMAS + WITCHES: The Sun Ra, Sonic Youth and Can with moody reaping the rewards of years of slogging around Cellar – Post-rock from Zelega plus gusto. Surrey’s Meet Me In St. Louis provide the toilet circuit with the press and radio latching Sparklehorse-meets-Calexico-style rocking from complex, schizophrenic support. onto his funny, clever brand of folk-pop, picking Witches. RESERVOIR CATS + LEATHER RAT + SABOTAGE: The Zodiac up on the details of humdrum everyday life as SOULAR + ALLY CRAIG: The Exeter Hall, SKYLARKIN: The Brickworks well as wider political commentaries. Cowley – Grinning Spider Promotions night OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon THE LONG BLONDES: The Zodiac with hard rocking local bluesmen Reservoir CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford (downstairs) – Delightfully summery pop from Cats, plus New Mexico’s Soular and local singer Community Centre Ally Craig. ’s stylish Long Blondes, last seen in th town on the NME Tour at Brookes. Out on tour FRIDAY 20 ACOUSTIC NIGHT: The Victoria to promote debut album, ‘Someone To Drive JAMES DEAN BRADFIELD: The Zodiac – FRESH OUT OF THE BOX: The Cellar – You Home’ following a string of critically-lauded The Manic Street Preacher frontman plugs his With DJ Remirez, on the up after this summer’s singles and mixing up the zest of early Blondie first solo album, ‘The Great Western’, with his hit remix of Bodyrox’s ‘Yeah Yeah’. with the joyful fun of 60s girl group pop and 80s trademark mix of personal and political OXFORD FOLK CLUB: The Port Mahon indie jangle. lyricism. Long since sold out. BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon IVY’S ITCH + PHYAL + DEGUELLO: The SUSH OPEN MIC SESSION: The Exeter Zodiac (downstairs) – This month’s Nightshift Hall, Cowley cover stars peel the paint from the walls with DELICIOUS MUSIC JAZZ NIGHT: Bar their haunted gothic grunge exorcism. Milano, Pizza Express – With guests The PLAN B: Brookes University Union – Brutal Franz Frauke Duo. slice-of East London life from upstart UK WEDNESDAY 25th rapper – see main preview THREE STRANGE ANGELS: Jacqueline du THE RELATIONSHIPS + LOZ COLBERT: Pre Music Building – Celebrating composer The Port Mahon – Sweetly melancholic Steve Reich’s 70th birthday, the pioneering psychedelic jangle pop from local veterans The percussion ensemble reinterpret Reich’s ‘Sextet’ Relationships, plus acoustic pop from former- piece. Ride drummer Loz. FOLK SESSION: The Exeter Hall, Cowley PRETTY DEAD THINGS + MOOCHER + OPEN MIC SESSION: Marlborough House SECTION 3: The Music Market – Local th bands showcase. THURSDAY 26 THE DRUG SQUAD + ALEXANDRA: The HUNDRED REASONS: The Zodiac – Swift Wheatsheaf – Ska-punk from The Drug Squad return to town for Surrey emo heroes Hundred at tonight’s Grinning Spider club night. Reasons after their show here in April. This tour REGGAE MIX NIGHT: The Bullingdon sees them without guitarist Paul Townsend who BLACK JACK TABAC: The Duke, left after the band’s Japanese tour in support of Saturday 21st St.Clements – Blues, funk, soul, 70s rock and third album ‘Kill Your Own’. A band who never punk. seem to be off the road, they spent the summer PLAN B: SUNDAY 22nd playing every festival going, including Truck, and big, sweaty post-grunge anthems are their stock INME: The Zodiac (upstairs) – Bleedin’ ‘eck, Brookes Union in trade. Once more into the moshpit then, dear first Rooster, now InMe. What a month for If Ben Drew – aka Plan B – spoke like he glossy corporate rock pigswill. Angst-toting raps he’d doubtless have an Asbo to his teen rockers out of Essex still clinging gamely Saturday 28th name by now. Foul-mouthed in the extreme, onto the coattails of Funeral For A Friend and Drew just happens to be the most brutally Lostprophets while sounding suspiciously, and AUDIOSCOPE honest and verbally dextrous documenter of rather unpleasantly, like Silverchair. Save your East London ghetto life you’re likely to hear. ticket money and treat yourself to a potato The Zodiac From knife fights, teenage pregnancy, crack peeler to gouge your ears out with instead. For the first time Audioscope, the annual addiction, mugging and, er, catching genital HOWLING BELLS: The Zodiac (downstairs) mini-festival in aid of homeless charity warts from a corpse, he doesn’t spare any – Dreamy countrified indie rocking coated in Shelter, moves upstairs at the Zodiac, after imagery and it’s unlikely he’ll be up for a gothic gloom from Australia’s Howling Bells previously packing out the downstairs Mercury Prize any time soon, but he’s whose picturesque melancholy recalls Mazzy venue with an ever-reliable selection of some almost certainly the equal of Dizzee Rascal, Star and Cowboy Junkies as well as Dolly of music’s more esoteric marvels. Previous although his brand of hip hop comes from Parton’s more downbeat moments. And we highlights have seen Can legend Damo another direction altogether – more often thought it was year-round summer barbies and Suzuki headline, while last year Luke Vibert than not based on acoustic guitar melodies garage rocking down under. was sensational. This year’s headliners are and acoustic beats rather than samples. The EMMY THE GREAT: The Port Mahon – Clinic, a band out of time and magnificently New York anti-folk singer-songwriter. songs from his debut album, ‘Who Needs so. Like something dark and deranged ELECTRIC OPEN JAM: The Music Market Actions When You’ve Got Words’, are both dragged out of the New York musical HITCHMO: The Bullingdon bleak and visceral; while you’re never underground sometime in 1976, they mangle entirely sure whether Drew is condemning ELECTRIC JAM: The Exeter Hall, Cowley – Electric open play session with in-house band robotic synth-rock with an arty psychedelic the subjects of his stories or revelling in their pop sensibility and dress like the surgical gory activities, his braggadocio is equalled The X men. rd team from hell. And they’ll make you dance by his horror at all that surrounds him. Now MONDAY 23 like a bastard. Also on today’s superb bill is signed to 679 Records – alongside The MEMO GONZALEZ & THE a collaboration between Birmingham Streets – he’s all set to enter UK hip hop’s BLUESCASTERS: The Bullingdon – 300lb krautrockers Magnetophone and Spacemen uppermost echelons, and if that seems like of Tex-Mex dynamite is how Memo describes 3 legend Sonic Boom; angular art-rock from himself and with over 1,000 gigs under his belt faint praise, it shouldn’t. Want a slice of life? Brighton’s I’m Being Good; ambient his reputation isn’t in doubt. The -based You got it, just don’t be surprised if you’re electronica and post-rock from Piano Magic, singer covers classic Texan roadhouse blues as terrorised by what you get. making a rare live appearance; skewed, well as swing and r’n’b; tonight’s gig is part of a tour to promote new album, ‘Live In The UK’. sample-heavy electro-dance from REDOX + STRANGE VINTAGE: The THE RYE COALITION: The Zodiac ’s Kids In Tracksuits, and some Magdalen Arms Casio grindcore from Trencher. Add in local st (upstairs) – Swaggering New Jersey metallers SATURDAY 21 hit the UK to promote their - stars The Rock Of Travolta and Sunnyvale OXJAM FUNDRAISER with produced ‘Chariots Of Fire’ EP. Noise Sub-Element and that’s a full day of RAGGASAURUS + REDOX + LES AIR TRAFFIC + THE RACE: The Zodiac leftfield music that should thrill and confuse CLOCHARDS + SUE JORDAN + THE (downstairs) – Lively piano-led indie rocking in equal measures. And all for charity, you NEW MOON + TWIZZ TWANGLE + from Bournemouth band who’ve just released say? Get in there! STRANGE VINTAGE + MAEVE BAYTON + the much-praised ‘Just Abuse Me’ on Fierce ED McGREGOR: The Exeter Hall, Cowley Panda’s new download singles club, Fandango. (6pm) – Part of a nationwide series of gigs in aid THE CARNIVAL BAND Nettlebed Folk of Oxfam, tonight featuring a selection of Klub Club Kakofanney faves, including dub-rockers TUESDAY 24th Raggasaurus, acid-pop crazies Redox, and Gallic THE PADDINGTONS: The Zodiac – pop act Les Clochards. Inexplicably popular indie punk raggamuffins KILLA KELA: The Zodiac (upstairs) – Return out of Hull or some such benighted northern of the human beatboxer after his sold-out gig at hellhole. the Cellar a couple of months ago, tonight JAZZ CLUB with THE TOM GREY accompanied by Trip Rookwood, DJ Skeletrik QUINTET: The Bullingdon and Spider J. friends. Bring your lighter with you, they even duo Delta who have supported The Coral and do slow songs these days. . THE AUTOMATIC + ALTERKICKS: PINK MARINES: The Music Market Brookes University Union – Third visit to THE DOMES OF SILENCE: The town in six months for the NME darlings, Wheatsheaf – Doors and Primal Scream- armed with at least one cracking pop hit – influenced dark rockers. ‘Monster’ – and a man with a voice like a ACOUSTIC NIGHT: The Victoria strangled Chihuahua on vocals. Such are the OXFORD FOLK CLUB: The Port Mahon things that pop stardom is made of these days. BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon SABOTAGE: The Zodiac th DELICIOUS MUSIC CHARITY BALL: SATURDAY 28 Oxford Town Hall – Live jazz and DJs plus AUDIOSCOPE 2006: The Zodiac (2pm) – various luxury ball attractions courtesy of the Annual all-day festival, featuring the best in Delicious Music crew. leftfield and underground music in aid of Shelter OXJAM: The Exeter Hall, Cowley – see main preview REBECCA MOSLEY: QI Club – Sweet and BOMBSHOE + JUNKIE BRUSH + THE sultry acoustic folk-pop from the local WALK OFF + FORK + SOW + THE th songstress. TASTE: The Exeter Hall, Cowley – Monday 30 OXFORD UNIVERSITY JAZZ SOCIETY Heavyweight pre-Halloween party at the Ex NIGHT: The Music Market featuring local metal titans Sow and Bombshoe, THE DIVINE SPIN JAZZ CLUB with ROB TOWNSEND: plus punk rocking action from Junkie Brush, The Wheatsheaf punishing from The Walk Off COMEDY: THE DELTA FREQUENCY + and prog noise from Fork. Brookes Union TWENTYSIXFEET + IMMUNE: The Cellar HOLIDAY IN VIETNAM + CAPTAIN – Gothic electro-rocking from The Delta PYRTAES + THE BIG TURNOUT: The Is it possible, we wonder, to write about Frequency, plus moody indie rock from Music Market – Local bands showcase night. The Divine Comedy without resorting to the Twentysixfeet MOVE IT: Wolvercote British Legion description “arch”? Still that’s what you get th SKYLARKIN: The Brickworks SUNDAY 29 if you’re a clever fellow with a dry sense of OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon JAMIE T: The Zodiac – Fresh’n’easy folk-rap humour and a predilection for F Scott CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford from West London troubadour Jamie T, poised Fitzgerald and William Wordsworth as well Community Centre to make the big time with his Beck-meets- as Scott Walker, Bert Bacharach and Nik FRIDAY 27th Streets style of electro-folk storytelling. Post- Kershaw. Since his breakthrough album, `Liberation’, in 1993, has THE INFLATABLES: The Exeter Hall, punk hip hop as it is should be, with little managed to write brilliantly catchy pop with Cowley – Classic ska, reggae and soul. regard for convention or self-imposed musical SALMONELLA DUB: The Zodiac – Return limits. wit, intelligence and an array of unusual of the New Zealand reggae collective, mixing up ELECTRIC OPEN JAM: The Music Market instruments that in his hands belie their roots and dub with drum&bass and trancey BEARD MUSEUM with EARNEST COX + arcane origins. After some serious chart grooves. OCTOBERMAN + MATT WINKWORTH + action in the 90s, with the likes of GAPPY TOOTH INDUSTRIES presents THE MIGHTY TANGERINE MONK + NAN `Something For The Weekend’ and ZUBY + AMBERSTATE + LIFE WITH MUGGER: The Purple Turtle – Cheltenham’s `Becoming More Like Alfie’, Hannon split BEARS + DELTA: The Zodiac – GTI eclectic new wave-cum-synth-pop sweeties the band up, only to re-emerge with his own celebrate their 50th gig with another typically Earnest Cox headline tonight’s Beard Museum label and now a purely solo project. 2004’s mixed bill. Headlining is local hip hop talent gathering. `Absent Friends’ found him back on Zuby with a fine line in slick, free-flowing rap OXJAM: The Bullingdon – Oxfam fundraiser. commercial and creative track, especially th in the style of Nas and Jay-Z. Ambient jazz- MONDAY 30 with the album’s title track and the superb pop act AmberState support along with synth- ENTER SHIKARI: The Zodiac – St Albans `Come Home Billy Bird’, and now there’s pop cabaret band Life With Bears and acoustic hardcore crew mixing in a good dose of 90s no looking back with new album, `Victory trance in with their guitar and screaming storms, For The Comic Muse’ and its associated hit earning a Kerrang! Best Newcomer nomination single, `To Die A Virgin’, rarely off the radio. and a slot at this year’s Download along the Still remembered best as something of a pop way. dandy, or a rock’n’roll Noel Coward, THE MATT SCHOFIELD TRIO: The Hannon will probably continue to come in Bullingdon – Young British blues guitarist who and out of fashion for years to come but his started off playing with Lee Sankey and Dana status as a deft pop protagonist is always Gillespie as well as the Lester Butler Tribute assured. Band, now going out with his own band, playing blues and funky jazz inspired by BB King, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert Collins. their own, never mind vote or breed. ALTAN: Nettlebed Folk Club – Sublime Irish VERTIGO with PHOTO: The Cellar – The folk music with a strong Scottish feel, fronted indie rock club night celebrates Halloween with by the divine vocal talents of Mairéad Ní rockers Photo. Mhaonaigh, mixing up haunting traditional JAZZ CLUB with PADDY MILNER: The songs with lively jigs and reels. Bullingdon TUESDAY 31st SUSH OPEN MIC SESSION: The Exeter THE YOUNG KNIVES: The Zodiac (upstairs) Hall, Cowley – Second date at the Zodiac this month for the DELICIOUS MUSIC JAZZ NIGHT: Bar local chart heroes – see main preview Milano, Pizza Express – With Pawel Kuterba. SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT: The DELICIOUS MUSIC HALLOWEEN PARTY: Zodiac (downstairs) – And it’s goodbye from The Music Market – Live bands and DJs. them. Very loudly – see live preview LEVEL 42: The New Theatre – When people Nightshift listings are free. Deadline for tell you the 80s were rubbish for music they’re inclusion in the gig guide is the 20th of each probably thinking of this lot. Level 42’s month - no exceptions. Call 01865 372255 enduring popularity strongly suggests that (10am-6pm) or email listings to some people shouldn’t be allowed to go out on [email protected]. photo: Richard Hounslow LIVE

SUPERGRASS The Zodiac In the thirteen years since the band’s inception, have developed from cheeky young Britpop-baiting, Chopper-riding scamps into more complex personalities and songwriters – and for me, seeing the band tonight for the first time since 1995, they seem obviously a different proposition to that which they once were. On the basis of the bursting-at-the-seams Zodiac this evening, however – albeit bursting mainly with overweight, shaven-headed forty-year old men, for some reason – they’re still a popular proposition. Ostensibly showcasing a batch of new songs tonight, Supergrass still sprinkle their forty-five-minutes-or-so appearance with a few of the old familiar ones, and prove that songs like ‘Caught By The Fuzz’ and ‘Strange Ones’ retain an infectious, bubbling charm that it’s hard not to like. However, where they were once jittery and excitable songs, they now seem a touch like grown-up readings of obviously old songs: somehow slightly tired, and lacking a certain vitality and shiny-eyed enthusiasm. Whilst not utterly charmless by any means, they perhaps suggest that the band prefer to move on. Songs like ‘Lemmy’ and, from later albums, ‘Sun Hits The Sky’ and ‘Moving’ bolster the Jam/ fun with more T-Rex/Faces- influenced structure and dynamics. More recently-written songs move the band’s sound in familiar, but strange, directions – at certain times the newer acoustic-guitar-and-lapsteel-over-keyboard-wash sounds recall Pink Floyd, and at others the giant riffs recall The Who at their stadium-busting rockiest. So it seems that Supergrass are a band intent on compiling music from throughout the seventies into a selection of songs that still manages to sound all their own. In part this is probably due to the unique, recognisable voice of Gaz Coombes, and in part it might be due to the comfortable feeling of a local-band-done-good mixing with a variety of well-loved reference points. Whatever Supergrass do, they seem to win over the crowd, and it’s good – although strange – that they don’t seem to treat a still exploring their live sound rather than a lazy complacency: at times ‘homecoming’ gig as anything more than another date on a tour. There are tonight it’s hard to tell, but as a whole I’m at least left with a grin on my no “It’s good to be back, Oxford”s – and not even a blast through ‘Alright’ face and a few melodies in my head. for good crowd-pleasing measure. I’m hoping that this is a sign of a band Simon Minter

BARRY ‘THE FISH’ Country Joe and the Fish has made them the way for the guest vocalist. Here his playing stuff of myth for the Woodstock generation. weaves into the music as opposed to MELTON Boasting an appearance by co-founder and blanketing it and the whole thing sounds much lead guitarist Barry ‘The Fish’ Melton, better for it. The Bullingdon tonight’s Famous Monday Blues evening is Also featuring are versions of old Country Joe Pioneers of late 60s psychedelia, the musical an intriguing chance to see what becomes of a and the Fish standards. Almost inevitably, the experimentalism and political polemicising of former revolutionary over the space of four music which had a fresh, eccentric edge at the decades. time of its inception has since ossified into The answer seems to be that he wallows in stolid worthiness and lost its cultural his own legacy. Drawn out to a ridiculously relevance. long three hours, the set is self-indulgent in This is particularly highlighted in an updating the extreme. Melton shares the stage with of ‘Superbird’. Originally about Lyndon long-time associates The Green Ray whose Johnson, the lyrics have been reworked – via numbers are spliced with his own, bassist an audience call-and-response – to refer to Kevin Whaley’s rather characterless vocal George W Bush. Whilst the parallel itself may performances alternating with his much be pertinent, a reliance on earlier materials to meatier beltings. make it suggests not only political enervation However, the whole thing is essentially a but also imaginative stagnation. showcase for the Melton’s technical There is something rather sad about all this, virtuosity. Inscribing noodly guitar squiggles like watching an aged starlet squeezing her over every spare centimetre of the band’s sagging body into the gladrags of her glory chugging brand of proggy psychedelia, it is his days. playing that dominates the sound. The skill is A guy behind me remarks that they just don’t undeniable, but the overall effect is swamped make music like this anymore. An observation and overcrowded, with the rest of the band as tired as the music itself, it is perhaps the allowed no breathing space. It is not until a most encouraging thing that can be taken from of Dylan’s ‘Not Dark Yet’ that tonight’s show. Melton steps back from the spotlight, making Emily Gray FOALS / THE SWARM / DEGÜELLO / The Wheatsheaf KID HARPOON / JONQUIL Intensity is tonight’s watchword. Three bands, all very different, each united in a struggle to hit that absolute zenith of rock fervour. The Zodiac West Oxfordshire three-piece Degüello appear to be fronted by Thing from We start the night regretting arriving late for the brilliant Jonquil, yet , a young man with no face, just hair, going under the immediately manage to lose ourselves in the floral accordion and heavy moniker Rusty Needles, who barks ferociously as the girl calling herself violin repetitions. Their set reverberates with slide guitar and The Earwig batters rack-mounted guitars in a bleakly angular fashion. At uncomplicated melodies, endlessly repeated to hypnotic effect. Jonquil times they could give Swans a run for their money in the sheer bloody play pleasant, trouble-free but intelligent music, and are Oxford’s best brutality stakes and we always come away from watching Degüello answer to the upcoming end-of-summer blues and rainy afternoons. content that the future of Oxford music is in such safe young hands. Kid Harpoon is, however, the polar opposite: a bedraggled acoustic The Swarm are, incredibly, even more brutal. Dressed in almost fascistic guitar pouring out the most generic jagged rock/acoustic music possible. black uniform and armbands, they embrace melody up to a point, but turn A faked gravelly voice sings pitifully weak lyrics, like that of `Colours’: it into a repeated sonic hammer blow until it becomes a relentless clanging “Red is the colour of blood when I cut myself / The colour of stickered- cacophony, backed by, and perfectly reflecting, the video screens playing up items you can purchase from most major stores”. Pathetic. footage of torrential storms, floods, WWI tank battles and innards. As loud “Sunshiny 60s indie-pop”. You may have heard that description many and uncompromising as the previous loudest band we’ve seen at the a time concerning disposable acts like Aberfeldy or The Magic Wheatsheaf, Geisha, they manage to drive almost the entire audience out of Numbers, yet have you ever heard of sunshiny 60s indie-pop plus tap- the room. Given that tonight is promoted by Oxfordbands.com, famous for dancing? Well, Terence, now you have. Clip-clopping all the way from their championing of extreme music, that’s quite a feat. Absolutely brilliant Omaha, Nebraska, Tilly And The Wall greet the Zodiac audience so stuff. affectionately it’s as if they’ve just made everyone a cup of warm tea. Foals may not have volume on their side, but their armoury contains more The boy/girl five-piece initially survive dodgy monitors and poor hem- stealth weaponry. Two guitarists, bassist and keyboard player all face each work on dresses and perform with wonderfully genuine pop zeal, other, like a counselling group for musicians unable to find anyone able to resonating feel-good vibes from corner to corner of the Zodiac. High keep up with them, they lock horns and hit the funk button, freewheeling handclaps and maracas fill the tango-tinged `Bad Education’, while high through many-angled spazz-jazz math-rock, a form of tumultuous, tightly- school anthem `Night Of The Living Dead’ finishes the encore, the orchestrated chaos that recalls post-punk mavericks like The Pop Group lyrics, “We’re bored to death, we’ve got a bottle of wine, a fresh pack and Shriekback. Former Edmund Fitzgerald members Yannis and Jack seem of smokes”, encapsulating adolescent ennui perfectly. Tilly rise above to have taken a complete sideways step away from their previous current indie-pop niches and the potential novelty act status and charm incarnation and maybe decided that dancing can be fun after all. You’ll be the socks off everyone. needing some serious amphetamines to get on down to this soundtrack, but If only every hyper Britney fan or moody Arcade Fire kid would listen Foals have very definitely got the funk. to Tilly And The Wall. How the world would mend. Dale Kattack Pascal Ansell Photo: Richard Hounslow LOVE IS ALL / JAKOBINARINA The Zodiac Jackobinarina are a six-piece band from Iceland who look barely old enough to have been allowed out of the country without accompaniment of a responsible adult, someone to carry the heavy luggage and show them how to unwrap their in-flight meals. It’s become easy to stereotype Icelandic bands of late but Jackobinarina go against their native grain, straight-up synth-driven punk-pop relatively free of musical idiosyncrasies or glaciers. It is, however, wonderfully infectious, especially the ebullient synth that leads the carefree canter that’s equal parts punk enthusiasm, synth-pop freshness and grunge fuzzstorm, while the singer’s hectoring vocal style makes the whole thing sound like a teenage Fall tribute at times. As well as reminding us how ashamed we always feel in the face of foreign bands’ excellent grasp of English, we love Jackobinarina’s song titles, like ‘His Lyrics Are A Disaster’, and in particular, ‘Nice Guys Don’t Play Good Music’. In which case, these guys must be a right bunch of bastards. And by the same token, Sweden’s Love Is All must be a bunch of Hitler- worshipping kitten killers, so artfully, lopsidedly, exuberantly brilliant is their recent debut album, ‘Nine Times The Same Song’. Mind you, sax player Fredrik might well fit the Hitler-worshipping kitten killer mould tonight. A scrawny geek in a hooped shirt and specs and sporting a pudding bowl haircut, he’s got some serious anger issues, convinced his instrument doesn’t work (it sounds fine to everyone else in the room) he starts attacking the equipment before taking a fire door off its hinges (no mean feat) and finally being ordered to leave the stage by the rest of the band and thrown out of the venue by security. It somewhat spoils what could have been a brilliant gig, removing a crucial edge from a band whose innate mania is subsequently subdued. Still, it’s not all lost. The first half of the set is fantastic, like from such a narrow part of post-punk, Love Is All capture more of the lost and ready to party inside ’s first album, diminutive and free-for-all individuality of the period, closer to the synth-funk party croaky singer Josephine, armed with a cowbell and unruly mop of hair, sounds of Rip, Rig and Panic, Kissing The Pink or even . yelping and shrieking amid the clamour of guitars and sax on tracks like Tonight’s gig comes at the end of a long tour, with all the strains that can ‘Ageing Had Never Been His Friend’, where wobbly, leftfield jazz entail. Maybe when Fredrik’s calmed down a bit – he’s later spotted suddenly careers into pure sunshine pop and back again without pausing skulking in a doorway down Cowley Road muttering sheepishly into his for breath. Even at the end, a man down, they can melt your heart with the mobile – they can come back and really tear the roof off the place. devilishly pretty ‘Turn The Radio Off’. While so many bands plunder Dale Kattack

AMP FIDDLER The Zodiac Two years ago, nine hours late and seem to struggle amid murky sound on the wrong stage, Amp Fiddler on the clunky opener ‘Afro Strut’. strode out into the Glastonbury Things quickly improve though, rain and delivered possibly the and with the fly frontman best live funk performance I’ve demanding your attention with ever seen. Even the legions of every languid movement as he baffled-looking hoodies waiting for switches between keyboard and Aphex Twin seemed to agree! In vocal duties it’s not long before a the country to promote his first rapt crowd are grooving to the solo long-player, ‘Waltz Of A liquid bassline of newie ‘Faith’ and Ghetto Fly’, the loose-limbed, chanting every word of ‘Soul understated -soul work-outs Vibration’. seemed to take flight in the live It’s still Amp’s older material that arena, not least because of Amp’s stands out, emphasised by a hypnotic stage presence and stunning encore of ‘If You Can’t surprisingly strong voice. Get Me Off Your Mind’. Alone at Fast-forward to The Zodiac in his piano, the ‘fro’d father of funk, September 2006. Amp’s got a new looking deceptively youthful and record out - Afro Strut - which disarmingly handsome for a man trades the minimalism of his debut who in his late forties has spent a for a broader sound - still deeply- good portion of his life touring the rooted in 70s ghetto funk but world as a George Clinton All-Star, taking in dancehall reggae, house, is at his crooning, swooning best as and (courtesy of Fela Kuti his throaty Sly Stone-whisper lifts sideman Tony Allen) afrobeat. It’s to become a bruised Bobby a big precedent for his sparse band Womack-wail. The jury may be (comprising keys, guitar, bass, still out on some of the new tunes, drums and Amp’s own vintage but the Fiddler is still a class act. clavinet) to live up to, and they Aidan Larkin MY MEGA-MELODIC ALL-DAYER Rehearsal Rooms Port Mahon Recording db Promoting gigs is often more a matter of starts singing his Americana-brushed blind hope than financial certainty, but songs, any concerns are forgotten. His Photography hosting over nine hours of lo-fi tiny nylon strung guitar and high reedy Decibel Studios performance on Bank Holiday Saturday voice are so thin and delicate it sounds Artwork is simply commercial suicide. like someone’s spinning a Depression-era Chalgrove Oxfordshire Still, we pop along for the first half of 78 onstage, to surprisingly engrossing Video Transfer 01460 221541 MyAnalog and Melodic Oxford’s effect. 07774 228440 marathon, and discovered some gems, Twee will rock you! Synth-poppers Life Filming/Editing www.decibelstudios.co.uk even though we’re pretty sure we were With Bears have grabbed the guitars to email: [email protected] the only non-performing audience become Socks & Shoes for some inept PA/Lighting Hire members for at least half the time. three chord proto-punk with childlike Dave Griffiths in acoustic mode raises lyrics, something like The Shaggs meets eyebrows from the off, revealing Rod, Jane & Freddy. It’s bloody great emotional subtleties in his voice rarely fun, but probably not much else. THE MUSIC MARKET evident in Witches’ sonic maelstrom. HIV apologise for their offensive name, (formerly the Charisma Bar, City Tavern) Upstairs @ The Market Tavern, 8 Market St, off Cornmarket St Arresting, but we still live for sonic but they needn’t worry, their tedious Tel: 01865 248388 Email: [email protected] maelstroms round here. improv rock is offensive enough on its Proffering rustic guitar strums own, a dire mirror image of The Evenings’ October augmented with frail melodica and brilliance, which is tragic as the members 7th: PRIVATE PARTY glockenspiel, Blanket are never likely to are in wonderful bands too numerous to 12th: OXFORD UNI JAZZ SOCIETY Free Entry satiate this particular need, but their mention. Some light-hearted 13th: BEARD OF ZEUS + SEXTODECIMO + COBRA + SOW £4 featherweight pastoralia is lovely. Rather unpretentious banter softens the blow, 14th: DIVINITY SCHOOL + THE IDEA + NOT MY DAY gorgeous on the ear it may be, but trying but HIV could have internet moles Delicious Music & Up n Coming present / £4 19th: OXFORD UNI JAZZ SOCIETY Free Entry to actually focus on the music and feverishly typing “Clique”. Caps lock on, 20th: BREAK BEAT feat. RESIDENT DJ SHAKER criticise it proves as tricky as climbing a naturally. Delicious Music presents / £4 Entry rice paper staircase. Things fare better Warbly crooner Wolf Tracks is so ear- 21st: PRETTY DEAD THINGS + MOOCHER + SECTION 3 on their evocative (and reasonably manglingly awful we’re ecstatic that we DMR & UNC present / £4 priced) album. catch a few minutes of Onions For Eyes 26th: OXFORD UNI JAZZ SOCIETY Free Entry When Robh Hokum takes to the stage before departure, and leaving during their 27th: PINK MARINES + SUPPORT £4 Entry with his acoustic he seems even more carny roustabout 2 Unlimited cover 28th: HOLIDAY IN VIETNAM + CAPTAIN PYRATES + THE BIG TURNOUT £4 Entry awkward than Blanket’s singer, who had makes us want to stay awhile. Which, 31st: DELICIOUS MUSIC HALLOWEEN HAUNT! Live the air of a five-year-old forced to play an after over five hours in The Port, is really bands, DJ Shaker, fancy dress contest, witches brew, angel in the infants’ nativity. Quick stage the biggest compliment we can give this ghouls, freaks + more! £5 Entry - 8 til late school tip: “I’m this close to vomiting” intriguing, if uneven festival. isn’t an ideal greeting. However, once he David Murphy DELICIOUS MUSIC ECLECTIC JAM NIGHT EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT 7.30-10.30 All musicians welcome...come & have a jam! Free Entry Bring your own instruments. PA/amps/drums provided. WANT TO PLAY HERE? Just drop in a demo to the Market SPLEEN Vs IDEAL / Tavern FAO Charis with your band name & number on. MAI MAYO MAI The Cellar They probably call it math-rock, we call into the night with an Eno-ish coda. it jazz. What has happened to the world Anglo-French duo Spleen Vs Ideal are a that so many young men are growing more straightforward proposition, a beards, trying to look twice their age, drummer and a bassist, both seated and playing their guitars up by their chests wearing ski masks and white boilersuits like dodgy 80s funk bands used to and that make them look like a nightmarish making music that has more in common cross between the skinny kid brothers of with complex logarithms than anything the Michelin Man and extras from resembling a tune and seems intended Blake’s 7. Musically they’re no less solely to impress similarly-minded disturbing, pummelling chamber music to studious young men whose idea of a wild a hardcore pulp, the bassist chanting and Saturday night is dissecting the intricacies mumbling through is mask like a mad of Miles Davis’ rhythm section while Mullah, or, as on ‘Wunderbar’, sounding reading a biochemistry encyclopaedia? like ‘Hey Jude’ after a dose of radiation It’s enough to make you neck a bucket- sickness. ‘Atreopitheque’ weirds its way load of pills and beg S Club 7 to reform. into north African folk music by way of Almost. much industrial clanging and clatter. Mai Mayo Mai’s brand of jazz-rock is Spleen Vs Ideal make challenging, urgent, technical, staccato, treble-heavy unusual music without any kind of self- and occasionally disorientating. But while conscious cleverness. Along their it can all be frustratingly highbrow for a personal path to the rock and roll -loving monkey like me, there vivisection lab they’ve never forgotten are plenty of visceral thrills to enjoy, that music is for entertainment and not a notably the last number which careers reminder that you haven’t done your along in a blur of speed-addled funk and maths homework. discordant saxophone before drifting off John Leeson Photo: Richard Hounslow NIZLOPI The Zodiac Thankfully the Nizlopi live I’ve never been so irritated a band experience isn’t just a rehashing of so accomplished and so loved by the Westlife Christmas single- their crowd. I just can’t help feeling thrashing ‘JCB Song’ all night. that they’re more suited to a pitch Leamington Spa’s Luke Concannon at Tottenham Court Road tube (main vocals, guitar and occasionally station. Both their lyrics and a bodhran hand drum) and John musical style come across as an Parker (double bass, rather loud awkward combination of beatbox and occasional guitar and earnestness and lightheartedness, vocals) make far more of a noise and it doesn’t really work for me. than you’d think. The anti-Blair/Brown/Bush/BNP Their multi-personnel-recorded politics of the chirpy ‘Part of You (like on ‘ExtraOrdinary’), it all a microsecond reminds me more of sound is rather impressively Is Gay’ sound like a naïve mixture smacks of trying too hard to bend Craig David, albeit sitting far less rendered on stage by just the two of of the brave and contrived. There’s genres and be different. comfortably with the them as an enthusiastic, meandering no doubt that they mean well – It’s a shame, as those are also the accompaniment than Craig’s voice. funk/soul/folk/skiffle amalgamation. they use recycled card and organic main things they have going for I do want to like them; everyone Maybe I should laud Nizlopi for cotton for their CDs and t-shirts, them. else here tonight certainly loves their originality, passion, musicality, and champion their home-town Luke’s soulful and versatile voice them. In time, perhaps, they’ll rapport and interaction with label FDM Records – has been compared to Tracy settle into a groove and iron out audience, social awareness etc. But I but, combined with their cod hip Chapman’s; however, his refusal the awkwardness. just can’t. hop and embarrassing rapping to stick to one note for more than Kirsten Etheridge

GREAT ESKIMO HOAX ANTON BARBEAU & ABERFELDY / PHOTO / TOY #1 SU JORDAN / THE The Zodiac The Port Mahon BUENA VISTA This Edinburgh five piece are an unassuming but quirky bunch. One of those square pegs in It’s a Sunday, so I suppose it would be the right thing to do to forgive everyone for staying in SOCIALISTS a round but large cushioned hole. They, for the and watching Songs of Praise, or having their most part, keep to their folk sensibilities but once-a-week pre-work bath. It is a bit of a The Music Market throw in more than a few conversation killers shame for the bands here tonight though It’s all go tonight at the newly re-branded Music and head-turning moments. because as Toy #1 take to the stage they are Market, which has the nostalgic feel of a rat pack True it would be easy to say Aberfeldy, with playing to an audience of chairs. That said, they speakeasy: groups of people, musicians and their almost inhumanly luscious three-part don’t let it dampen their performance one iota. assorted riff-raff surround tables, chatting harmonies (courtesy of bandmates Sarah They make an entirely pleasurable noise that convivially and imbibing to excess. And if the McFadyen and keyboardist Ruth Barrie), West calls upon the grimiest of Melvins riffs, and mood is one of casual abandon, the entertainment Coast sentiments combined with occasional occasionally steals from ‘Bleach’-era Nirvana. If is certainly apt. 60s-style doo-wop bubblegum pop, are just the proverbial man and his dog were here, no The first act, Buena Vista Socialists, grab us by hitchin’ a ride on the MOR highway. (Er, can doubt the little mutt would cock his leg by way our ideologies and don’t let go. They even whack you have a ‘middle of the road’ highway? of a salute. out some rousing covers (‘Baker Street’, ‘Easy’) hmmm…). Photo take to the stage draped in Cramps t- that keep the small crowd on a retro tip. Original But Aberfeldy aren’t going to make it that shirts and a lovely shade of black. Black being numbers warrant a greater degree of attention and easy for you to pigeon hole them. Yes they the ideal colour for a band that trade in first- range from the sublime proletariat anthem have overtones, yes they class rock and roll with a sizeable dollop of ‘Temporary Worker’ through to the ridiculous are like Scissor Sisters’ much tamer (and horror mixed in for good measure. We can’t help ‘Bush Fire’, which could be guilty of indulging in straighter) cousins. Yes The Magic Numbers but think of the likes of Misfits and Rocket a spot of Anton baiting (if he even gave a shit). would probably like to have them round for From The Crypt, which is a good thing, A short interlude of numbers from the Socialists’ tea, but their pleasant, chirpiness, as seen in obviously. Drummer TJ finally pounds the kit front man Pete, followed by a startling-at-first ‘You Dress As If It Were The 1970s’, is tinged into submission before sending it flying across appearance by a Jesus-like figure named Dave, with something a tiny bit sinister and an edge the stage, and then they’re gone into the dark who plays an impromptu Vietnamese mouth that Bono would envy. Think Stereolab or The night to party with the undead. But only if the organ ditty, heralds the dynamic duo of Mr B52s on Prozac. undead have the fashion sense of The Stokes Barbeau and Su Jordan. Those unfamiliar with It also doesn’t hurt that Riley Briggs, and bring their own beer, obviously. the Sacramento local may be surprised to learn frontman and songwriter, is an entertainer as Great Eskimo Hoax are more angular than an that he is a singer/songwriter of considerable well as a talented singer. He empathetically hexagonal box full of set-squares that come with output (twelve albums at last count). His back keeps the crowd laughing in between songs; instructions from Pythagoras. There’s a bit of catalogue is matched only by his exuberant, okay, so it’s mostly at James Blunt’s expense. post-rock here, a smattering of math-rock there, ‘stick it to the man’ attitude and all the songs But it really is the twee folk and pop and a keyboard played with the pointy toe right presented are highly melodic, structurally simple combined with what is obviously an obsession there at the edge of the stage. and with messages that are fantastically direct. with late 70s bands – mainly Devo – that Elements of The Paper Chase’s panic-stricken Mixing a large dollop of Simon and Garfunkel make the band stand out. ‘Whatever Turns jazz workouts are in evidence, but these songs earnestness with a dash of Tenacious D mania is You On’ and their cover of Devo’s ‘Beautiful fluctuate between total paranoia and the kind of never going to be boring and tonight’s World’ are highlights, not to leave out the bass- peace you might be experiencing if you farted in rollercoaster set is performed at a by and large pumping ‘Poetry’ which has a distinct Chic a Jacuzzi full of strangers. If there’s a formula breakneck pace. Su chimes in superbly without feel to it. to writing their songs, you can be sure it’s got ever overcooking the mix, to the point where you Aberfeldy won’t be selling out Wembley too more x’s in it than a hardcore xylophone movie. can’t help but feel that this is the complete soon. But you get the impression that they are A great night all round then; I hope Songs of anathema to a phoned-in set: personal, content, as are their fans, to do things their Praise was worth staying in for. enthusiastic but above all engaging. way thank you very much. Sam Shepherd Matt Bayliss Katy Jerome October’s Tastiest Gigs Saturdays @ The Music Market Delicious Music Entertainment in association with Up’n’Coming Entertainment presents 14 DIVINITY SCHOOL + NOT MY DAY + THE IDEA 21 PRETTY DEAD THINGS + MOOCHER + SECTION 3 28 HOLIDAY IN VIETNAM + CAPTAIN PYRATES + THE BIG TURNOUT 4 quid entry Sundays @ Market Tavern Weekly Electric Open Mic Jam / 8pm Free! October Tuesdays @ Pizza Express, Cornmarket Every Monday LIVE JAZZ & MORE – Downstairs in Bar Milano / 8pm / Free Entry THE FAMOUS MONDAY NIGHT BLUES 03 EDDIE THOMPSON The best in UK, European and US blues. 8-12. £6 10 DESFINADO 2nd PRIMO BLUES BAND (UK) 17 THE JAZZ EMPORIUM th 24 FRANZ FRAUKE JAZZ DUO 9 THE JIMMY GRISWOLD BAND (USA) th 31 PAWEL KUTERBA 16 THE KYLA BROX BAND (UK) 23rd MEMO GONZALEZ & THE th Thurs 26 THE CHARITY BALL BLUESCASTERS (USA) – Launch gig for ‘Live In The UK’ Oxford Town Hall, St. Aldates. Tickets available @ 30th THE MATT SCHOFIELD TRIO (UK) DMR Music 99 St Aldates. Dress: Black Tie. Cocktails & Canapés. Live Jazz & DJ Shaker. Charity Auction, Chocolate Fountains, Vodka Ice Luge & Cash Bars. Ticket £25 All Every Tuesday proceeds to Cancer Research UK THE OXFORD JAZZ CLUB Free live jazz plus DJs playing r’n’b, funk and soul until 2am DEMOS to: DMR LTD 99 St ALDATES – rd T 01865 242784 M 07876 184623 3 KATYA GORRIE feat. DENNY ILETT Jr FOR BOOKINGS email [email protected] 10th THE TOM GREY QUINTET 17th THE TOM GREY QUINTET 24th THE TOM GREY QUINTET thethe portport mmahonahon 31st PADDY MILNER Every Friday Live Music in October BACKROOM BOOGIE Funk, soul and R&B. 9-2am Free B4 10pm; £4 after. Wed 4th Munch, Munch + Thomas Truax Thu 5th National Poetry Day - The Poets th Plus Fri 6 Oxford Folk Club st Sat 7th Wingback + The Sunrays + Cranefly Sun 1 THE BULLINGDON COMEDY CLUB – Sun 8th Library Tape Live stand-up with BRENDAN DEMPSEY + Tue 10th Jon Fletcher + Pint And A Half Of Blues JAMES GOULDSBURY + KEITH Wed 11th Oxford Improvisers ANDERSON, plus compere Silky. 8-11pm; Thu 12th John Otway Big Band th £6.50 Fri 13 Oxford Folk Club th Sat 14th Cotton Blonde Thu 5 ANTIDOTE – Student Night with live Sun 15th Swiss Concrete – presents I, Ludicrous + Wombats bands and DJs. 9-2am; £4 + Hum Drum Express Sat 7th SIMPLE – Funky House with Switch Mon 16th Jazz Groove (AKA Solid Groove). 9pm-3am th Tue 17 Sikorski Thu 12th TOXIN – Student Night – Drum’n’bass Wed 18th Phoebe Kreutz and Aaron Stout Thu 19th Nick Kelly / hip hop / soul / dub / reggae. 9-2am; £4 th Fri 20th Oxford Folk Club Sat 14 FUNK ECLECTIC MASK UP – Oxfam Sat 21st The Relationships + Loz Colbert Fundraiser. 9pm-3am Sun 22nd Emmy the Great Thu 19th ANTIDOTE (as above) rd Mon 23 Mahemo + Right In Pictures st th Sat 21 REGGAE MIX NIGHT. 9pm-3am Tue 24 Swiss Concrete presents Blood Music + support nd Wed 25th Money Duck + Arc Angels + Ashes of Steel Sun 22 LIVE BANDS – featuring HITCHMO Fri 27th Oxford Folk Club + support. 8.30-11pm; £3 Sun 29th Pindrop Performance 5-8pm Thu 26th TOXIN (as above) Tue 31st Hangman Joe Sun 29th OXFAM Fundraiser Book your band into play at Oxford’s best small music venue! 82 St Clements, Oxford. Tel: 01865 202067

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DEMO OF PHOTO Something of a disappointment this, given THE MONTH Photo’s showing at the recent University Battle Of The Bands final (which they won). That night the identically-dressed and groomed trio looked like refugees from a MARY’S GARDEN Strokes convention and sounded like a more Boasting a fine pedigree (singer Laima Bite mannered New York Dolls. But while their and guitarist Moty Dimant were in narcotic MySpace site boasts an impressive array of goth-rock starlets The Factory; keyboard pre- and post-punk influences, few of them player Colin McKinnon fronted promising appear to leave a mark on the finished folksters Bridge) Mary’s Garden here tread a product. Initially from Birmingham, they fine line between misty gothic pop and seem to have ambitions towards Los Angeles overblown Euro-rock. At any one time with the trans-Atlantic vocals recalling any they’re only a couple of degrees off being number of pumped-up 80s American college Bonnie Tyler or Belinda Carlisle, but even a rock bands, while tune-wise they sound like short distance can make a big difference and The Cars (or The Knack if we’re being less particularly on CD opener ‘Gasoline’ – which kind). Further in and it all becomes a bit of a recalls the heavily-loaded atmosphere of The melange of hairy American rock (Aerosmith) Factory’s sublime ‘Servant’s Hand’ – they’re and 70s British (Eddie & The coolly powerful and delicate by turns. Colin’s Hotrods), gruff and accomplished but never stern synth leads the line, buzzing over tom- really inspiring. A somewhat incongruous heavy drums and billowing guitars while Mexican-style flourish during the last song Laima’s striking voice holds sway, pitched lifts the mood but it never lives up to our neatly between Grace Slick and Sinead expectations. O’Connor. ‘Live In Your Head’ comes with a heavy dose of campy melodrama, not to mention a sly steal from Ultravox’s AMBERSTATE ‘Vienna’, while closer ‘Mary’s Garden’ builds While it’s customary to the point of cliché to from gothic lullaby to moody barnstormer suggest a singer can have dogs howling in pain over an epic seven minutes. Perhaps they’re for miles around, in AmberState’s case it really a bit stuck in the 80s stylistically, but with is true. Emma De Lacey’s voice is shrill and the right mix of pomp, portent and sweet sharp and she wails lavishly over an aimless melody, Mary’s Garden deliver on all the pond of wobbly electro doodling and potential their line-up promised. squelching that seems to bare little resemblance to music and more to random noise generation. Her chorus line-style over- acting would dominate any band but with the LIND OPTICAL music invariably little more than innocuous Might have scraped Demo Of The Month if ambient synthetics or acoustic strum, there’s they had continued the promise of their first nothing at all to latch onto. ‘Doesn’t Matter’ track across the whole demo but Lind Optical comes closest to a song, a soul-lite wander appear to have put all their eggs in a single that might harbour vague ambitions of being musical basket with ‘The Devil Rides Out’, Swing Out Sister in another life, but soon with its carouselling organ (a la Supergrass’ enough it’s back to the whooping and ‘Going Out’) and veritable flood of warbling, like a breathless refugee from a local synthesized orchestration. Conjuring up a amateur dramatic production of Cats. sweeping, cinematic wall of sound, they belie their humble four-man band line-up, getting Pink Floyd, The Verve and Flaming Lips to FORUM lock horns. Thereafter they start pissing Bands shouldn’t list their influences when about a bit with a couple of truncated they submit demos. If the list is full of cool instrumental tracks that go precisely stuff it’s odds on the band won’t live up to nowhere after much huffing and puffing, your hopes. Less inspiring influences will have although ‘The Red Room’ does sound like it you turning off before the CD even starts. could be the theme tune to some long-lost Come on, are we really meant to be jumping 1970s BBC espionage serial. Lind Optical around the room in anticipation of Hundred (who apparently take their name from 19th Reasons, Biffy Clyro, Million Dead and Century Swedish singer Jenny Lind as well as Incubus? Still, apparently this lot got to the Isaac Newton’s dissertation, ‘Opticks’) also final of a bands competition that was judged offer up a dozen journalistic self descriptions, by and Mark and Lard amongst including ‘Tori Amos recreating the final half others (though whether those luminaries hour of Kubrick’s 2001’, and ‘the childhood judged the heats that got Forum to the final dreams and nightmares of Isaac Newton’. which they apparently didn’t win is another Very good, lads, but maybe less time on self- matter). And so, after noodling about for a analysis and more time writing proper pop few minutes in faux-ominous fashion songs in future, eh? (ostensibly to build up an atmosphere) they rumble and clatter through three lumps of stuff, Blue-meets-, which may or standard post-grunge soft rock with some may not be an improvement on the Gillan b- bloke wailing about how shit the world is or side-style rock gruel they previously did or something, while no-one in particular cares. didn’t proffer. It’s a lot more professional and He’s probably moaning about townies and not now only sounds a decade less past its sell by being understood or something. One day soon date. Essentially McFly with a couple of we’re going to build a time machine and go knocked-off old Iron Maiden riffs and fewer back and make damn sure Pearl Jam never tunes. And they’ve nicked the band A’s logo. exist and thus save civilisation from a decade The blimmin’ cheek of it. of adolescent torment. HANGMAN’S JOE SHED SOUND Can’t help but think of Hangman’s Joke from From the wilds of Thame and boasting a love The Crow every time we hear this band’s of all things grunge, the appallingly-named name; maybe they’re just trying to avoid Shed Sound grasp the opposing worlds of litigation with this slight perversion of the grunge and space rock and make them cuddle original moniker. Citing all manner of classic THE COURTYARD STUDIO each other like playful bunnies. Well that’s heavy rock and post-grunge names as the idea anyway and sometimes it actually influences Hangman’s Joe thrash out a steady PROTOOLS HD2, MTA 980 CONSOLE 32/24/ works. You get the shouty fuzz storm of if unremarkable brand of melodic rock, best of 24, OTARI MTR90 MK2 24 TRACK TAPE Mudhoney and Nirvana stopping and starting the lot here being the almost poppy ‘Dead MACHINE, 2 TRACKING ROOMS, SUPERB and taking elongated lunch-breaks in the land Stars Everywhere’. Bigger on solid rocking CONTROL ROOM WITH GOOD SELECTION of Pink Floyd on ‘Follow The Leader’, while power than creative enterprise they’re OF MICS & OUTBOARD GEAR, + MIDI ‘Wishful Thinking’ spends a greater amount entertaining enough when they’re keeping it FACILITIES (INC LOGIC AUDIO, AKAI of time floating in space with the magic simple, or flying off on Hendrix-style solos, S1000, OLD SKOOL ROLAND ETC.) mushroom tea and post-rock CD collection. but their attempt at a ballad, ‘Someday’, is just Their aims and ideas are often better than WRONG, with its wounded dog vocals and Residential facilities included. their execution, need some editing at times. A echoes of rancid old crap like Poison or Ugly www.courtyardrecordingstudio.com bit of brevity and they might sound less like a Kid Joe. PHONE PIPPA FOR DETAILS stoner jam session and more like a band going ON 01235 845800 places. Saturn, perhaps. THE DEMO THE SIRENS CALL THE DEMO Previous recipients of a particularly ferocious DUMPER Demo Dumper mauling (which prompted them to call up and ask if we were serious about having them shot by a paramilitary TRISHA AND THE death squad), credit is due to The Sirens Call for re-entering the musical firing line. And TROUBADOURS credit to for a sizeable leap in quality from Ah the wonders of modern education. Trisha that previous offering. Lurching in with forty and the Troubadours have obviously spent too seconds of heavily-flanged guitar, they much time dreaming of pop stardom and being promise to go all on us but as the mates with Pete Doherty and not enough time vocals wade in it’s more like an Oasis-style concentrating on learning basic English and grunge storm, the Liam-alike vocals just about understanding simple instructions. Apart from managing to hold their own, though it’d be their accompanying letter being written in the good to hear the guitars swamp them as untidy scrawl of a caffeine-addled chimp and they’re not really strong enough to hold the therefore mostly illegible, they say (and we lead role. Second track, ‘Out Of Luck’, leans quote): “You said you wanted contact back a bit more, content to coast on an old Bo addresses… not sure what you meant!” Come Diddley riff, while the more melodic vocals aim on! What part of we need a contact address is for anthem stature but can’t quite achieve full so difficult to comprehend? Perhaps they lift off. A lesson here for any band of the sharp should include it as a future GCSE exam end of a critical lambasting: don’t moan or cry question since it’s caused so much confusion. about it, just get back in the saddle and try and Anyway, they then neglect to provide a get better. And no, we don’t really have bands contact address, thus rendering their demo shot, though sometimes it’s tempting. ineligible for review. Except we’ve decided to make an example of them now. Suffice to say it’s absolute pig swill, proving they haven’t ARMSTRONG paid enough attention in music lessons either, Another previous denizen of the Demo particularly the bits about writing melodies, Dumper, although maybe that was just being able to sing or not sounding like Pete another band called Armstrong since this lot fucking Doherty. There’s some weak attempts claim to have formed after that review was to get a bit skanky which tend to make written. Maybe we should keep better records. Larrikin Love sound like The Specials but it’s Maybe Armstrong should make better records all so rudimentary we expect next month’s (did you see what we did there. Did you? Did demo pile to include a heavily-bearded man you see?). Anyway, if it is the same Armstrong wearing a dirty old mammoth skin banging a then they, like The Sirens Call, have got a bit couple of rocks together while shouting better in the interim, but again it’s all guttural nonsense at the moon. It’ll almost be relative. This is typical emo-cum-boyband like progress.

Send demos for review to: Nightshift, PO Box 312, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1ZU. IMPORTANT: no review without a contact address and phone number (no email or mobile- only). No more than four tracks on a demo. If you can’t handle criticism, please don’t send us your demo. Aw heck, you’re not taking the slightest bit of notice of this are you?