[email protected] @NightshiftMag NightshiftMag nightshiftmag.co.uk Free every month NIGHTSHIFT Issue 245 December Oxford’s Music Magazine 2015

Oxford’s road warriors keep it proper heavy. Also in this issue Introducing WATER PAGEANT Oxford’s songs of the year plus COMMON PEOPLE comes to Oxford! NIGHTSHIFT: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU. Phone: 01865 372255 COWLEY ROAD CARNIVAL BAD COVER VERSION host is back again next year on Sunday their latest charity music quiz at 10th July. The annual celebration The Big Society on Cowley Road of east Oxford life, music, food, on Tuesday 15th December. The NEWSdance and more, attracted 45,000 multi-media quiz will raise money people to Cowley Road this year. for Oxford Homeless Pathways and Nightshift: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU To get involved, volunteer or Aspire. It starts at 7.30pm. Phone: 01865 372255 just find out more, go to www. cowleyroadcarnival.co.uk. AS EVER, don’t forget to tune email: [email protected] into BBC Oxford Introducing Online: nightshiftmag.co.uk EARLYBIRD TICKETS FOR every Saturday night between CORNBURY FESTIVAL 2016 8-9pm on 95.2fm. The dedicated are on sale for a limited time now. local music show plays the best Next year’s event takes place Oxford releases and demos as over the weekend of the 8th-10th well as featuring interviews and July at Great Tew Estate. Adult sessions with local acts. The show camping tickets are £165, with is available to stream or download discounts for under-16s and over- as a podcast at bbc.co.uk/oxford. 70s. You can also now become a Cornbury Friend, with an annual OXFORD GIGBOT provides a £100 standing order giving you a regular local gig listing update on 30% discount on up to eight adult Twitter (@oxgigbot), bringing festival tickets, offering a potential you new gigs as soon as they go saving of £480. To find out more live. They also provide a free and book your tickets, visit weekly listings email. Just contact www.cornburyfestival.com. [email protected] to join.

RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL will Much as your bank / privatised take place over the weekend of the utility company / phone provider 23rd-24th July 2016. Oxfordshire’s are “experiencing a high volume of largest free music festival takes calls right now,” here at Nightshift OXFORD IS SET TO HOST COMMON PEOPLE NEXT YEAR. The place on Mill Field in Charlbury, we’re experiencing a high number two-day music festival will take place in South Park over the weekend of with two days of local bands across of releases and demos by local the 28th – 29th May. three stages. Stick it in your diary. acts. Which is great – don’t get us Common People is organised by the same team that runs Bestival on the wrong, this makes us very happy Isle of Wight, and Camp Bestival in Dorset every year, consistently hailed SUPERNORMAL is back again that you’re busy making music. as two of the best festivals in the UK. in 2016. The music and art festival But it does mean we don’t always The first Common People event took place in Southampton this year and returns to Braziers Park, near have room to review everything will be twinned with the Oxford event in 2016, both events taking place Wallingford, over the weekend as quickly as we’d like. If you are simultaneously with the main stage line-ups, curated by DJ Rob da Bank, of the 5th-7th August. The artist- planning on releasing something likely to be swapped between the cities. This year’s event featured sets curated, not-for-profit event is please let us have it in plenty of from Fat Boy Slim, Clean Bandit, Band of Skulls, De la Soul and Jaguar renowned for its leftfield line-up, time. If we get a release on deadline Skills, amongst others. with this year’s sold-out event day with a note saying “this came The South Park event, run in conjunction with Oxford City Council, will featuring sets from Trembling out yesterday,” you’re pretty much have a capacity of 30,000 and feature three stages, including a local bands Bells, AR Kane, Charles Hayward buggered. Also, we reserve the stage, curated by Nightshift, and a DJ stage. It will be the largest music and Necro Deathmort. Find out right to decide if something is a event to take place in South Park since Radiohead’s homecoming show in more at release or a demo. A couple of 2001. www.supernormalfestival.co.uk. tracks stuck up on Soundcloud is One of Bestival’s directors involved in the organisation of Common a demo, whether you think so or People is Ben Turner, who grew up in Oxford, is familiar with the local MARTIN CARTHY will headline not. Oh, and the usual stuff – make music scene and is keen to make local acts an integral part of the event. the Oxford Folk Weekend in sure you include a contact number Talking to Nightshift about the announcement of the festival he said, “With 2016. The annual festival returns with releases and demos, and make Common People, we’re trying to support the smaller cities in the UK who over the 15th-17th April, at venues sure you stick enough stamps on contribute a huge amount to the music landscape but often get little back. in the city centre. Earlybird tickets the envelope if it’s a CD. This will Oxford has an incredible history with music on many levels and I’ve been are already on sale at put us in a good mood before we lucky enough to have grown up in one of its most exciting eras –when www.folkweekendoxford.co.uk start reviewing. And that’s what you hanging out at the Manic Hedgehog record store, going to the Co-Op want, right? Hall or Oxford Poly for gigs was as valuable as listening to John Peel or UPRISING returns reading the Melody Maker, where I then went on to work and start my for a second outing this career in the music industry. I’ve been travelling and spreading my vision month. The unsigned of music around the world for 20 plus years through various mediums, but bands showcase, run our team’s collective success and contribution with Bestival has been a jointly between the O2 high-point. We decided to do a metropolitan festival in Southampton with Academy and BBC Oxford Common People and we all found the experience inspiring and rewarding, Introducing, takes place on and when thinking of a second city, there was honestly only one option Friday 11th December at the we considered: Oxford. A lot of this was subconsciously because of South O2 with sets from My Grey Park, which I’ve been saying for many years is one of the best festival Horse, Tremorheart and The sites in the world. We all believe it is, and we hope to bring Oxfordshire Fixation, with more acts to together for our unique combination of fun and creativity.” be added. Acts wanting to Common People will be a non-camping event with tickets on sale for play future Uprising nights each day. Prices are set to be a bargain £27.50 per day, while everyone should upload their songs who signs up for the festival’s mailing list will be put in a draw to get their to the BBC Uploader at ticket for just £10. www.bbc.co.uk/music/ The first set of acts due to play will be announced in early December. To introducing/uploader. sign up to the mailing list and find out more, visit commonpeople.net.

A Quiet Word With go back. It was great to visit Poland; Poznan is a we probably did longer tours around the release rock and metal bands to Oxford. Given their beautiful city and incredibly cheap. Hard to pick a of `Horizontal Life’ though, and shifted a lot of increasing success, do they ever feel like local scene favourite. I guess out of all of the places we got to copies. `Omniscient’ was a bit slow at first; the tours leaders? see more of Poznan and Oss, which was cool, but weren’t in place really, but things are going better RYAN: “No, not at all; we do our thing and maybe the best shows were Berlin, Oss and Antwerp.” now we’ve been playing more shows again, and the venture out of town more than some local bands, MATT: “Every night was a success, and the UK leg vinyl really seems to sell well in Europe.” but there are a lot of good bands here, it’s just a was just as fun. It was our first venture into Poland Desert Storm never sit still for long, though. question of how hard they push themselves. We just and it’s always exciting to play new cities. That Despite so much time out on tour, they’re already have a lot of drive, passion and commitment and said, returning to venues we’ve performed at before thinking ahead to album number four, writing and a lot of the opportunities Desert Storm have had featured them. “Last year we did an eighteen-date and seeing familiar faces after hours on the road playing new songs on recent dates. have been because we’ve made them happen by UK and Ireland tour with Karma To Burn, and a is always a pleasure. It’s tough to pick a favourite ELLIOT: “We have plans to go back into the studio organising tours etc.” five-date UK tour with Nashville Pussy; this year when there are so many aspects to consider – with Jamie Dodd in January. We have pretty much MATT: “Shows in Oxford are when we are in our we went out for a week in the UK with Hang The turnout and crowd response; the venue itself; written most of the next album now, so it should all element; it’s the familiarity of it all, it’s home. I Bastard, and then a two-week headline tour where how we do on merch; how accommodating the be ready to record come the New Year.” wouldn’t say that we’re leaders as such, but young we played Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany promoters are; how much rock and roll is involved. MATT: “We’ve got new material which is lined fans approaching the merch stand and telling you and Poland. I think the highlights were the shows in Certain nights we can party and some we have to up and is steadily being introduced into our sets, their favourite song or how long they’ve been Berlin and Oss; both were really well attended and rest up for the long drives ahead. What I really liked but we are jamming out tunes from `Omniscient’ listening to you is really rewarding. It gives us great we partied hard. The lowlight was when we missed was the variety of venues we are able to play: bars, as they are real crowd pleasers. It’ll be a while yet pleasure to hear that we’ve been inspirations to the Nottingham show on the Nashville Pussy tour; cafes, halls, squats. Every night is a new adventure before we turn a new album out.” people as we ourselves are influenced and inspired we ran out of annual leave so were touring and and a new experience as the bus pulls up outside an How do you feel that might turn out? by artists out there.” working every day, which was brutal. We hit bad unfamiliar location.” ELLIOT: “We’re feeling confident with how While metal and heavy rock has always been very traffic and missed the show.” it’s sounding. It’s definitely got a lot heavier and popular in Oxfordshire, we don’t have a local band “It’s becoming difficult to discern between all the Having earned so much of their slightly more progressive. It still has that Desert from the scene that can seriously pack out venues tours, it all kind of rolls into one big party,” adds reputation supporting bigger names, we wonder if it Storm sound though, and carries on from where like the local indie scene does. Matt Ryan, the lava’n’bourbon-voiced singer whose felt daunting to go out – so far from home CHRIS W: “I don’t know, it is strange. malevolent growl and startling lyrical imagery – as a headline act. It baffles me how a cool band like helps propel Desert Storm’s eclectic, heavyweight RYAN: “It was a bit daunting, but I think “Any night where we’ve had to sleep on Undersmile can get loads of hype blend of stoner rock, old school metal, sludge, this last tour showed that we are building worldwide and play to big crowds at psychedelia and blues. “The magic of the Dover to a profile and are able to headline shows a steering wheel or underneath a kitchen Roadburn festival, yet struggle in Oxford. Calais ferry has waned a little, and the crap ferry now. It’s always great doing big supports table after days on the road is a lowlight. We generally do pretty well in Oxford, food has become something of a ritual. I think any as it usually means bigger venues and like last time we headlined the O2 it was night where we’ve had to sleep on a steering wheel more people, and we love that, but we Stand still traffic, stairs in venues and packed. But I think it helps when you play or underneath a kitchen table after days on the road don’t want to be seen as a support band only a couple of times a year in this city. is a lowlight. Stand still traffic, stairs in venues and all the time.” getting grilled by police is down there too.” Indie is definitely more popular here. As getting grilled by police is down there too. Also, MATT: “It’s important to go it alone. for who might change things in Oxford, every member of the band became ill at some point. You can find yourself in a `forever the bridesmaid, `Omniscient’ left off. We’ve been dropping a few of I’m not sure; there are plenty of cool bands but I’m But taking to the stage is always the highlight of never the bride’ type situation if you don’t brave it the new tracks into our live sets since the summer not sure that will change any time soon.” any night, and you find that getting up there and and take the plunge on headline shows and tours. and they seem to be going down really well, which How differently do you feel Desert Storm are blasting through a set is not only therapeutic but It’s important to get a balance really; festivals are is a good sign.” viewed outside of Oxford compared to in? also helps to sweat out any cold you might have.” important too. We’re just as capable of delivering MATT: “We’re still slightly undecided on what CHRIS W: “We have a lot of incredible fans from the finale performance of an evening as the opening format the next album will take, whether we should all over the UK, overseas too. I feel that our Oxford While life on the road, with the performance and we absolutely decimate the venue keep the same varied style with the genres all fans feel that we are representing them and the freedom and potential for adventure, is the very wherever we are on the bill.” mixed, or separate our sounds on different releases, heritage of the Oxford scene whenever we play, essence of the rock and roll dream, it is rarely Did you find you’d won new fans from those or multiple disks. We don’t want to pigeonhole which we are very proud to be able to do. People glamorous, particularly if you’ve got a day job to previous tours? ourselves because we love playing bluesy stuff, outside of Oxford maybe don’t have that same factor in – something that has prevented Desert ELLIOT: “Definitely; when we played in Antwerp heavy stuff and riffy stuff, but it’s a question of how sense of ownership over the band. Until we play Storm spending even more time out on tour over the and Oss we had a lot of people coming out to see best to put it all out there.” abroad of course, when we represent the UK!” last few years. The band (alongside Ryan and Matt us that had seen us on previous visits. In the UK I One of the absolute highlights of `Omniscient’ are guitarist Chris White, bassist Chris Benoist and think we had built up quite a solid fan base from is the song `Home’, which, as with `Gaia’ on the Oxford should be very, very proud drummer – and Ryan’s twin brother – Elliot Cole) previous tours and high profile support slots.” previous album, shows a very different side to to have Desert Storm representing us. And as the are no strangers to hard graft, ready and willing to MATT: “That’s the purpose of going out on support the band’s heavier, more stoner sound. It’s slow, band climb closer and closer to that rock summit, put in the hours, and miles, that have, step by step, tours: you’re out there in the hope that there may be acoustic, almost tender, closer to Leonard Cohen or the UK scene will equally learn to be proud of earned Desert Storm a reputation that extends far a few fans of the headline band that dig what you’re Mark Lanegan in its dark, gravelly introspection. them. But for now we have to let the boys go – beyond their native Oxford. doing. It’s like the difference between performing in Could Desert Storm foresee maybe doing a full EP they’re off to another round of gigs, unsurprisingly. ELLIOT: “None of us get enough holiday to be familiar and unfamiliar territories. You play a new or mini album of songs in a similar style? Dates with Mondo Generator and Atomic Bitchwax able to tour as much as we’d like. We still have to town and it’s a proving ground where maybe only ELLIOT: “We do always like to drop at least one for starters, then a brace of shows with Orange do some tours whilst working. In that case, we try a handful of people have listened to you online, acoustic track onto our records, just to give the Goblin, including that O2 show. And then it’s to make sure all the dates are relatively close to and it’s an opportunity to make new fans out of listener’s ears a rest from the brutality.” back over to Germany and The Netherlands before “I think we’ve improved on hygiene Almost two years on Desert Storm Oxford so we don’t end up getting back at 4 or 5 in everyone in the venue. Returning to play the same MATT: “Never say never. I think this sort of harks Christmas. Hey, hey, rock and roll will never die. since the last tour. I don’t remember anybody are still on the road. But now things have moved the morning before starting work.” venues or towns is an opportunity to re-affirm your back to the previous point about how best to release It’s not getting much by way of sleep neither. urinating into a bottle whilst driving this time, up a few levels, and not just in the hygiene stakes. MATT: “It can be tough; we all have commitments ability to deliver on stage, with at least one or two our mix of styles; if we start to dissect and pull But lastly, if their poor, long-suffering tour van or taking a slash out of the van whilst on the While they’ve gone out as tour support to Nashville in Oxford so inevitably have to return from people to win over who have never heard you.” apart all of our sounds we could end up with five were to break down in an actual desert, which motorway. We stopped on hard shoulders and Pussy and long-term touring partners Karma To whatever corner of the world we find ourselves in. or six albums. There’s a danger of stifling what we member of the band would survive the longest? service stations this time.” Burn, they’re also revisiting many of their previous Returning to work after late nights and exhaustion, Of course the big step up for Desert do, because we can’t have metal creeping in on CHRIS W: “I don’t know who would survive, but stop-offs as headliners, with a Terrorizer-sponsored as the post-tour blues begin to set in can be a bit Storm came with the release of `Omniscient’ in the blues album, or stoner in on the folk. Look at a Benoist would be the first to go; he would commit Desert Storm’s all-conquering European tour their most recent expedition. depressing. All our annual leave goes on tours January – the band’s most fully released album yet, track like ‘The Void’ or ‘Sway of the Tides’, which suicide due to not being able to take a shower.” road trip continues, taking the gospel of Oxford This on the back of the across-the-board acclaim or recording, so it’s been a while since we got a staying true to their beastly stoner-rock sound while both have softly sung and clean sections amongst MATT: “If our bus broke down we could just rock music to the world. But thankfully our very accorded their third album, `Omniscient’, released holiday. This industry is notoriously difficult to get strengthening their melodic edge and burrowing the heavy. We’ve done a few acoustic shows in the siphon off the remaining petrol into a generator own noisy-bastard barbarians are honing their on- at the start of 2015 and recently released on vinyl. right, but hey, it’s a long way to the top if you want deeper into the blues and psychedelic elements of past which have been interesting; it’s not quite as and set up on the sand and blow chunks out of the tour behaviour as well as their music. In the last couple of months they have headlined to rock and roll.” their music. energetic or frantic but it’s more intimate and raw.” landscape with some crushing jams. We’d play until Last time we interviewed the band for the front the O2 Academy and played with Hang the Bastard It earned them a KKKK review in Kerrang! as well we were all dead but that sustain would last forever. cover, following the release of their second studio at The Wheatsheaf, and this month they will open Maybe not at the summit yet, as excellent reviews in Metal Hammer, Terrorizer While Desert Storm’s star I guess the sustain lasts the longest in that scenario.” album, `Horizontal Life’, the quintet were enjoying for stoner veterans Orange Goblin at the O2 – a Desert Storm’s graft is paying dividends. In and Zero Tolerance. continues to rise across the UK and Europe, their some of the squalor and debauchery that life on band they’ve played with in the past. particular, their extensive European jaunt has won RYAN: “It’s been great; the press has been good, roots remain firmly in Oxford, both with their `Omniscient’ is out now on Secret Law/Plastic the road brings, including the spectacle of their “We’ve been touring a lot in the UK and Europe,” them a whole new army of fans. lots of positive reviews and some radio play and a regular hometown shows, and with Ryan and head. Desert Storm support Orange Goblin at manager pissing out of the door of a moving van on says guitarist Ryan Cole, bringing Nightshift up RYAN: “Europe was a lot of fun. We’ve been to few features. `Horizontal Life’ was well received Elliot’s fantastic Buried In Smoke Promotions the O2 Academy on Monday 7th December. Visit the motorway. to date on Desert Storm’s activities since we last Antwerp, Oss and Berlin before and it was cool to too but probably didn’t get quite as many reviews; shows, which bring some of the best underground www.desertstormband.com for more dates. Sponsored by

facebook.com/o2academyoxford twitter.com/o2academyoxford instagram.com/o2academyoxford RELEASED youtube.com/o2academytv WATER PAGEANT HEADINGTON `Outlines’ HILLBILLIES (Glide) Sat 28th Nov • £11 adv • 6pm Fri 18th Dec • £8 adv • 8pm Thurs 11th Feb • £23.50 adv Fri 29th April • £12.50 adv While there is a danger that this brand of `The Promised Land’ Antarctic Monkeys Rabbit Foot Spasm An Evening With The Hip Hop plaintive, sensitive record can appear reedy (Self released) + Youth Club for Rich Kids Band Knees Up 2015 Fun Lovin’ Criminals Shakespeare and inconsequential, Water Pageant’s debut It’s almost beyond cliché nowadays for many + Haze + The Balkan Wanderers Company Presents folk, roots, jazz or even classical acts to claim + The Knights Of Mentis Sun 14th Feb • £13 adv • 7.30pm Richard II is a very fine album indeed. In common with Sat 28th Nov • £5 adv • 11pm they’re playing classic sounds with punk rock + Bang Tail Feathers Nathaniel Rateliff the best of the genre – Sufjan Stevens, Bon Fairytale of spirit. It’s as if they don’t have the courage of & The Night Sweats Sun 1st May • £16.50 adv Iver and Oxford’s own Liu Bei – there is a Cowley Road // Fri 18th Dec • £16 adv • 9pm Lethal Bizzle richness to the band’s sound, embellished by their convictions that traditional music can’t The Ox Events Craig Charles stand the test of time, or bring itself up to date Sun 14th Feb • £14 adv lush keyboards, elegant brass and ornate guitar Christmas Party Funk & Soul Club Wed 4th May • £21 adv The Ghost Inside patterns which, while far from rococo, lend real in more inventive ways, particularly when + Temple Funk Collective The Bluetones lushness, depth and body to the music. almost invariably the result is as punk rock as a Sun 29th Nov • £13.50 adv + DJ Tony Nanton Every track repays attention. ‘Patterns’ recalls pair of crushed velvet flares. Zebrahead + Count Skylarkin’ Mon 15th Feb • £12.50 adv Wed 11th May • £18 adv • 6.30pm the unfairly underrated oeuvre of mid-noughties We get it again with Headington Hillbillies, + Patent Pending Ezra Furman Rend Collective an eight-piece ensemble who’ve been bringing Sat 19th Dec • £16 adv • 11pm + Urban Rescue band Joy Zipper; ‘Creatures of Your Thoughts’ throughout and Lizzy McBain’s similar Sun 29th Nov • £14 adv is partly sung in French and, given its contribution to ‘Cavalry’ is up there with the their own little piece of the bluegrass states to Klass Vybz Pre Xmas Sat 20th Feb • £12 adv • 6pm Modestep & New Year Party Little Comets Sat 16th July • £10 adv • 6.30pm enveloping trumpet refrain, would have slotted best of them. Oxford’s taverns for almost a decade now. Any + Culprate + Hippo Campus The Southmartins in nicely into the most recent Beirut album, link to punk is misleading, since these nine songs Lyrically, there is also much to enjoy and Sat 19th Dec • £25 adv • 6.30pm (Tribute To The while ‘Wave is Due’ inevitably recalls Warpaint’s ‘Furniture in the Road’ in particular resonates are as steeped in century-old tradition as it’s Fri 4th Dec • £12 adv • 11pm Switch Presents: The Darkness: Thurs 25th Feb • £18.50 adv Beautiful South & ‘Undertow’ before launching into a luscious with me as a resident of Oxford’s East possible to get. Instead, they simply bring some Blast of Our Kind The Housemartins) Oxford referencing lyrics to their down-home Champagne Steam Stiff Little Fingers sequence of baroque instrumentation that would Avenue. Appearances at the recent Oxjam Rooms Ft. Kurupt FM 2015 not have disgraced Felt in their prime. folk in a similar way to The Original Rabbit Foot + These Raven Skies event as well as the most recent edition of the & Barely Legal Fri 26th Feb • £11 adv • 6pm Sat 8th Oct • £22.50 adv • 6.30pm With ‘Layers’, Water Pageant vocalist Nick Punt have really served to bolster the band’s Spasm Band’s Shire r’n’b (incidentally, one of + The River 68’s CASH From The Jam the few acts who really do bring some punk spirit Tingay sings of forming layers to protect reputation. This outstanding album is a further Sat 5th Dec • £12 adv • 6pm (Payin’ Respect to oneself and his voice, in a deeply affecting breakthrough. On their website, they describe to play), as well a hefty dose of Home Counties Sat 31th Dec • £13 adv • 12am Sat 17th Dec • £12 adv The Doors Alive Switch the Man In Black) but never whining way, reaches that breaking their predicament as “fragile”. It’s up to us to folk whimsy. In the former camp is `Cheat The + Spank The Monkey With Full Live Band Leatherat Christmas Reaper of Jericho’, while in the latter is the twee NYE 2015/16 Party point that stays just short of becoming over ensure that doesn’t remain the case. ft. Shy FX emotional. It’s a remarkable vocal performance Rob Langham `How Green Are You?’. Sun 6th Dec • £28.50 adv Sat 5th March • £17.50 adv • 6pm Where Headington Hillbillies could really do Happy Mondays Reef with a bit of punk rock energy is in the stilted 25th Anniversary Tour Sat 9th Jan • £13 adv • 8pm +Alias Kid Quadrophenia Night `Rollin Down the Road’, which feels like a Sun 13th Mar • £17 adv sounding like soundtrack pieces to past science + The Atlantics hoedown on slow down, with perhaps the least + DJ Drew Stanstall Wolf Alice fiction films, though ‘Latitudes’ throws some Mon 7th Dec • £15 adv convincing “I say Whoa! I Say yeah” call and Orange Goblin - 20th (The Specials) lightweight drum&bass into the mix. Things response we’ve heard. Thing is, while musically Anniversary Tour Mon 14th Mar • £22 adv then get glitchy and discordant and the album the band feel rootsy and vaguely authentic, + Gentlemans Pistols Sat 16th Jan • £16.50 adv • 6.30pm Scott Bradlee’s risks losing its way, ‘Upside Down Sea’ a lead singer Howard Taylor lacks the gritty + Desert Storm Daughter Postmodern series of sweeping chords that end up nowhere authority to make this kind of tribute to the old Jukebox in particular. ‘Jack-O’-Lantern’ is little more ways work, and he’s often shown up by his Fri 11th Dec • £7 adv Sun 31st Jan • £18.50 adv than filler, another soundtrack to something backing vocalists, notably on album opener and Uprising - BBC FM Tue 15th Mar • £17.50 adv you didn’t want to watch in the first place, but highlight `The Promised Land’, with its distinct Introducing The Coral My Grey Horse + Tremorheart ‘Chameleon’ brings back the d&b, this time echoes of Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss, as Fri 5th Feb • £12 adv • 10:30pm + The Fixation + More TBC with a harder edge and some darting sub-bass Fluid Sat 9th April • £23.50 adv • 6:30pm well as the real star of the album, fiddler and + Royal T. that recalls the wonderful Omni Trio. banjo player Alan Fowler. Sat 12th Dec • £12.50 adv • 6.30pm + TQD Ben Haenow ‘Haunted Canyon’ has a Celtic feel that brings Overall, `The Promised Land’ is passable but UK Foo Fighters + DJ Q to mind some of Van Morrison’s more esoteric far too polite; not sure polite was ever part of + Elijah + Skilliam Wed 13th April • £21.50 adv excursions, but by now the album seems punk’s spirit. Tues 15th Dec • £10 adv • 7pm Newton Faulkner to have found some cohesion and purpose; Dale Kattack Jaws Mon 8th Feb • £15 adv ‘Jaime’ is the focal point, a fifteen-minute + Homeplanetearth Villagers Fri 22nd April • £16 adv • 6:00pm ESCHATON AND excursion immediately conjuring up a journey, The Icicle Works with alluring rhythmic and percussive patterns Thurs 17th Dec • £8 adv • 6pm Tue 9th Feb • £16.50 adv FOCI’S LEFT mixed in and out and a sample reversing It’s All About The Gabrielle Aplin Fri 22nd April • £25 adv • 6:30pm

halfway through. With more sophisticated Music Billy Ocean - `Ultraviolet’ + The Quentins Wed 10th Feb • £13 adv “When The Going programming the whole piece could have come + The Russian Cowboys TesseracT Gets Tough” 30th (Omni Music) from the mind of Underground Resistance’s + Esther Joy Lane + The Contortionist Anniversary Tour A visit to Omni Music’s website is a trip back Robert Hood, though the lightness of the beats + Strike One to an era in the 90s of ambient electronics and displays an almost pastoral side that stops short drum&bass, with artist names like Cycom and of actual techno. Cavernous Space. The artwork is all gaudy new That the album holds the attention for a full o2academyoxford.co.uk age and sci-fi imagery, with dozens of releases 67 minutes is the easiest but greatest plaudit 190 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1UE • Doors 7pm unless stated from seventy bands or individuals, all now so to bestow. In an age where electronic music is Venue box offi ce opening hours: Mon-Sat 12pm-4pm easy with internet distribution. created and shared in countless bedrooms every ticketweb.co.uk • wegottickets.com • seetickets.com • gigantic.com This album, a collaboration between the label’s hour of every day it’s not difficult to spot genuine boss Eschaton and local musician Foci’s Left, talent, and there’s more than enough here. begins a little uncertainly, with a few tracks Art Lagun Sponsored by AFTER THE THOUGHT JULIA MEIJER `Dregs’ `Ocean’ / `England’ (Self released) (Self released) I sometimes feel that I’d like post-rock- Hailing from Sweden, Julia Meijer moved to RELEASED Oxford a few years ago and has carved out an instrumental-indie-ambient types to either cheer up, lighten up or both. That’s not to suggest that enviable reputation for herself, from playing LITTLE RED THE BALKAN Matt Chapman-Jones – aka After The Thought the Punt to performing at the launch of the `The Huntsman’ / `Teeth WANDERERS – is either down in the dumps or takes himself Andy Warhol and William Morris exhibition a too seriously, but… an album called `Dregs’ Modern Art, as well as to a packed folk barn at We Have’ ‘So It Goes’ wrapped in monochrome artwork, showing Wilderness Festival. (All Will Be Well) (Tigmus) moodily burning embers just doesn’t scream Her debut single finds her casting a wistful “Hey! Colourful fun party time over here!” eye over her homeland and her new home, Like fairytales, good music is best when a As pointed out previously in Nightshift, it’s a Should it? Not really. There’s nothing wrong `Ocean’, about Sweden, suitably elegant, little darkness creeps into the story – Brothers mistake to pigeonhole this Balkan influenced/ with a bit of sullen navel-gazing. It’s not as Julia’s voice equally airy and pensive, with a Grimm rather than Walt Disney every time. gypsy/klezmer and ska/punk group as merely if the eleven pieces that make up `Dregs’ are simple, irresistible purity about it, managing Local folk trio Little Red don’t go the full a high energy Balkan mash-up band. Balkan a downward spiral into darkness and despair. ‘river’ are a delicious (off-)centrepiece to the to be simultaneously breathless, questing and gothic murder ballad hog, but there are shadows Wanderers’ instinct for an appealing tune, the Indeed, while the album meanders along at a album: perhaps its highlight in their purity and something approaching playful – a difficult aplenty across these twin EPs. wonderfully warm and sinuous clarinet of Clare mellow pace, and although it features little in the clarity with a small number of carefully-chosen trick to pull off on a song that seems to question `The Huntsman’ is the band’s straight-ahead Heaviside, and the nuanced voice of Antica way of boom-bap melodic shock and surprise, sounds. ‘samplistic’ picks up the pace and the the singer’s very identity. But it’s `England’ EP, four songs of black dogs, unfaithful boys, Culina, whether singing Croatian or English, it’s a calming and engaging piece of work. mood as the most upbeat track on the album, that shows her at her best, her voice spreading unseen dread and even a big bad wolf. The first have all been cited as lifting the band out of the Opener ‘cr 2.0’ sets the scene: repeated waves before ‘the road goes over on’ seems designed to its wings tentatively at first but with increasing of these is an obvious metaphor for depression ordinary. of electronic sound given life and structure by remind us that darkness and cold are endlessly confidence over a sparse, tidy bed of synth and its ceaseless pursuit of the writer (“This All these attractive elements and more are mixes of Little Red’s songs, the best of which simple drumbeats and subtle harmonic layers. around the corner. hums and slowly tumbling drums – unobtrusive black dog follows me home / This black dog is st present along with some pulsating Balkan bring them blinking into the 21 Century but It’s like minimal, relaxing IDM – music to In all, this is a nice-sounding album, albeit one quality from a band that features Guillemots’ everywhere I go”), while the wolf equally sticks keep the darkness about them. Best of these are rhythm on this new five-song EP, `So It Goes’ wash over you rather than demand attention at that feels slightly unsure of its motives; does Greig Stewart and Flights of Helios and Epstein around to add a hint of menace to proceedings Tiger Mendoza’s two mixes, Ian de Quatros’ (the title being perhaps a nod towards Kurt every twist and turn. ‘hollow stars’ introduces it want to be relaxing? Or tense? Or tuneful? synthmeister Seb Reynolds. across two songs. The wonderful beauty-and- ear for a scene-setting soundtrack helping Vonnegut, or maybe The Verve, or Nick Lowe). guitar arpeggios to the mix; ‘tealeaves’ reduces Perhaps this lack of clarity is always going to Perhaps unusually, a song about England the-beast contrast between the female and bring a nervy, cyborg edge to `The Huntsman’, Across the whole EP there’s pleasing variety things to more minimal washes of sound, while be at the core of music that has no vocals or feels darker than one about Scandinavia, but male vocals (Hayley Bell and Ben Gosling while `Petals’ is a woozy Lemon Jelly-like and not a weak track. ‘I Fell For You’ has the ‘fearless (the bells 2.0)’ is maybe the album’s strongly traditional song structures, and that feels it’s a gentle, reflective darkness rather than plus guest Jack Cade for `Mr Wolf’) brings to trip, the song filtered through a lysergic haze. band exploring unusual territory for them as its most song-like piece, due to some contextually more often than not like blurred half-memories. ruminative. Like `Oceans’ it sounds like Julia mind both Tindersticks and Isobel Campbell’s Foci’s Left’s take on `OTDG’ is heavy and sparse, measured, almost minimalist setting is a strident chord and structure progressions. Focussing on the less defined pieces, dropping is uncertain of her place in the world, but on albums with Mark Lanegan, and for all the disorientating but leaves too little of the original break with the Balkan influence. Add Antica’s The 76-second ‘string’ is another shifting tonal some of the beats and melodies and moving into the strength of this debut, we’ll happily claim songs’ sweet, limpid nature there are no sun- song in the mix. appealing, heavily-accented English vocal, piece, leading into ‘looking down’, which an even more pure, simplistic and meditative her for Oxford. If she feels lost, that’s our kissed meadows here, only dark, foreboding When Little Red released their debut album clever lyrics and an earworm of a tune and reintroduces guitar and in doing so reminds me space could see After The Thought really shine. gain. woods. The breathless `Chapters’ sings softly of last year we wondered if they were quite strong you have a track which reels you in. Almost a little of The Workhouse. ‘antilles’, ‘#7’ and Simon Minter Dale Kattack something wicked this way coming, urging us enough for a full album. These collections as engaging is the lovely, lilting ‘Jovano to hide the children away, while the EP’s title of songs prove just how far they’ve come on Jovanke’, a traditional folk song, on which track, nominally the lightest song here, quickly since then; their own material finds a neat Antica’s Croatian vocal and Clare’s clarinet finds its opening couplet, “I once knew a boy balance between simple, traditional songwriting duet beautifully. with eyes of the sea / He loved me and gave and darkness, while working with inventive Flair with lyrics is a feature of most tracks. me such jewels,” descending into a cursed life producers like Tiger Mendoza shines a fresh ‘Land’ is a powerful and timely song opposing of sadness and drink as the boy is off in “other light on their music. Or more appropriately, prejudice against migrants. Its seriousness girls’ chambers.” casts a starker shadow across them. A band well contrasts with the droll, catchy, ska-influenced If `The Huntsman’ is folk-pop of an old world worth following. Just not into the woods. ‘Lost at Sea’, which proposes a Reggie Perrin- bent, `Teeth We Have’ is a set of electronic Dale Kattack type solution to personal financial crisis. On both tracks Stu Wigby takes the lead vocal, providing a further twist to the band’s sound. Spider on vocals – is old-skool drum&bass; This new release is a step up from the band’s DUBWISER any similarity with the beat of early jungle no. debut EP. It’s a pity though that we need to `Dubwiser Dancehall EP 1 ‘Original Nuttah’ by Apache Indian is maybe strain to make out some of the vocal on opener not entirely coincidental, as Spider J co-wrote ‘Clouds’, but if you require any reminder that II’ that bad boy. ’It’s On’ sees Spider J joined by we’re lucky that Balkan Wanderers found their main man Jonas Torrance and his inimitable way into the Oxford scene, just put on this (Self released) classy EP. `Dubwiser Dancehall EP II’ is the second in home counties patois, ARA and Jhordan Colin May the stalwart Oxford reggae(ish) band’s DD Romaine; it’s a frenetic mash up, with scattery releases. A self-release, this sonic initiative synth, strangely reminiscent of Eddy Grant’s is notable both for providing a platform for ‘Electric Avenue’. Out of the whole EP, it’s the young guest artists, and denoting a certain most obviously dancehall in style. branching out from their traditional sound. This is very much a release of two halves, The two are, of course, related. Depending blending traditional and contemporary urban on one’s perspective, this move is either to roots, and things slow down a bit for the be expected by those acquainted with the second half of the EP. Being a confirmed dub band’s similarly experimental first EP, and addict, my personal favourite track, ‘Reggae previously rhythm driven – but not necessarily Dubman’, finds Dubwiser back on more reggae based – excursions, or challenging and familiar ground with fat bass line, rootsy unexpected. In any case opener ‘Ready Steady drums, snippets of delayed horns and heavy Go, Yeah’, is a dubstep-esque, UK hip-hop/ skanking guitar. ‘Slowly Dub’ is a remix of grime style crossover offering; it has a moody, `A Crack in Paradise’ album track ‘Slowly’, warmly threatening feel, and features funky a sunny, rolling lovers rock gem with sultry newcomers Captn K and ARA. ‘Boom a Rang’, vocals by Natalie Maddix. with veteran Killa Kela and Dubwiser drummer Leo Bowder into a stripped-down, pissed-off, two-man double- Space Heroes added that vital human element to breaking the furniture along to this splenetic wee barrelled bile attack that sounded like Drenge, their silicon pop dream, paying due homage to belter of a tune. Iceage and Slaves scrapping over who’s going to electro godfather Giorgio Moroder on this high TRACKS OF OUR YEAR chuck the first petrol bomb and who necked the last point of their debut album, Tim Day’s cracked, 21. DEATH OF H-FI can of Scrumpy Jack. They’ve lit the touchpaper, almost plaintive voice a neat counterpoint to the So we come to the end of yet another year in Oxford music, and while we’ve a tendency 5. STORNOWAY `The let’s hope 2016 sees them explode. song’s impassive incessant synth and bass pulse. `Swim Away’ to say this every time, it has been a pretty fantastic year. On the one hand we’ve seen The great man would doubtless approve. As singer Lucy Cropper has taken a more some of our favourite local bands of yore reform, not least Ride, the band who first put Road You Didn’t Take’ 10. CAMERON A.G. prominent role in the band, Death Of Hi-Fi have Oxford on the world’s musical map. On the other, there continues to be a groundswell of Stornoway too found themselves looking back on 16. VIENNA DITTO delved deeper into their trip-hop side, as this excellent new acts around who promise to keep local pride running high. And of course this single from their third album, `Bonxie’. Again `Lost Direction’ swoonsome single displayed, Lucy’s appropriately taking the natural world as a metaphor for life, we have more than our fair share of genuine big name stars, taking Oxford music to With a quavering, almost keening, voice, `Hammer & A Nail’ breathless voice dreamily conjures images of Brian Briggs stands atop a mountain and looks Cameron Grote sounds suitably lost at sea on this Vienna Ditto have a rare talent for chaotic finesse. drowning and being weightless amid a luxurious the masses. Not least Foals, who recently won Best Act In The World at the Q Awards. down on the different paths he could have taken recent single, so simple and yet so strong you They also have better songs than you and a singer, and languorous wash of ambient electronics and If you’ve ever seen them live, you’ll know just why they deserve such an accolade. to the summit. As with much of `Bonxie’ the song wonder if it wasn’t spun from spiders’ silk. Its Hattie Taylor, who could be Oxford’s answer to spaced-out guitars. Perfect chill-out music, just Their fourth album, `What Went Down’ , saw them getting bigger and bolder and it’s no paints humans and their concerns as something sense of hopelessness – all plangent strings and Nina Simone. This slice of retro-futuristic sci-fi not while you’re having a bath – we’ll not be surprise that the title track from that album sits proudly atop this year’s Nightshift end of tiny amid the enormity of nature, but the sense of piano – is offset by a melody as pretty and fragile soul sounds like a torch song from a Mars colony responsible for the consequences. year Top 25. As is traditional we’ve compiled our favourite songs from local acts from longing spreads as far and wide as the horizon. as morning dew. jazz bar, sounding wonderfully like ‘House Of The th 2015, to give you a snapshot of what’s been great and good over the past 12 months. Rising Sun’ through the dual lens of 19 Century 22. LITTLE BROTHER bawdy French sing-songs and 21st Century post- Head over to the Nightshift Facebook page to offer your own suggestions. And maybe 6. UNDERSMILE ` 11. BALLOON everything muso culture. ELI `Who Do You’ make it your mission to go out and discover some of these acts for yourself. Emmenagogue’ ASCENTS `Someone’ From getting Demo Dumped for sounding like If the universe moves slowly, Undersmile have Leading the charge of Oxford’s young generation, 17. MERMAID NOISES “Jamiroquai playing nursery rhymes” to topping always kept pace, as powerful and insistent as a Balloon Ascents continue to mix and match styles the demo pile, being picked for the Punt and being lava flow. Second album `Anhedonia’ kept the and influences into an eclectic and intelligent `Stay Young Long’ declared one of the most fun live bands in town, stately pace, the haunted dolls house sense of form of not quite proggy electro-folk-pop, here, A Numan-sampling sunshiny synth-pop song about Little Brother Eli certainly turned themselves round menace and the outbreaks of sheer brutality, but on the b-side of new single `Don’t Look Down’, wasps? There is nothing here not to love, and this year, casting a sartorially dapper figure across also introduced a greater degree of nuance, subtlety sounding close to zonked on ketamine as Thomas with the combined classy talents of Karen Cleave the city’s stages as they brought The Blues with and – whisper it (in a ghostly fashion) – tenderness, Roberts’ dreamily questing voice floats amid sweet from Les Clochards, and ATL?/Hot Hooves living an authenticity and freshness, not to mention some which made those moments of musical violence all harmonies and electronic wows. Well sweet. legend Mac running the show, Mermaid Noises smart moves from singer Alex Grew. Here’s where the more terrifying. It’s an album that needs to be was always going to be a joy. `Mermaid Noise’ Led Zep get jiggy with Red Hot Chili Peppers. Feel listened to in its entirety to fully absorb its power, 12. KONE was one of Oxford’s most unassumingly great pop free to drink to excess and dance all night. but this particular highlight condenses everything releases this year, packed with mischief, sweetness that is glorious about Oxfordshire’s most `No Colour World’ and just a little bit of bile. Discover them; love them. 23. THE BIG SUN uncompromising band into a (relatively) compact Sparse, downbeat, monochrome post-punk pop twelve minutes. Spellbinding. from Kone, who, with this debut single, sounded 18. ASHER DUST `Bruiser’ like they’d stumbled through a fog of cigarette One of the many great things about the internet 7. MAIIANS `Sionara’ smoke from a studio where they’d just recorded `This Life’ age is being able to discover stuff like this How do you follow a debut single as good as a Peel session sometime around 1980, all set to Oxford’s most consistently reliable musical that’d you’d never find treading one of Oxford’s `Lemon’ – last year’s end of year runner-up? You head off on tour with The Passions or Young maverick, Asher Dust’s restless imagination sticky pub stages, mainly because most of the keep on driving along that same highway is how. Marble Giants, heroically oblivious to the last three continues to give us genre-blending rough band have never actually met each other. Out of On `Sionara’ Maiians worked the classic layer- decades. Perfect shadowy music for dark autumnal diamonds, his most recent album, `Righteous Eynsham came young singer Berry Brown, her added-upon-layer-upon-delicate-layer dynamic, evenings under an uncaring Tory government. Boombox’, revealing his mercurial talent at its blossom and candyfloss voice melting into Dave 1. FOALS `What Went Down’ synth hums, guitar loops and disembodied vocal best, with this squelching, militantly ska-flavoured Pemberton’s summery house production to make What a beast of a band Foals have become. The taut, muscular figure of Yannis Phillipakis in the snatches repeated in almost idly rhythmic fashion, 13. WATER PAGEANT electronica bounce a particular favourite as we for a bittersweet slice of synth-pop that could be video for `What Went Down’ perfectly reflected the song, with its breathlessly tense build-up and everything gradually morphing, becoming compiled this list. Ask us tomorrow and we’ll pick St Etienne dancing their sorrows away. sublimely violent explosion at the point the dam could no longer hold the building pressure. What distorted, coruscating synths weaving around `Cavalry’ a different track. We’re just trying to keep up with `Inhaler’ and `Providence’ had started, `What Went Down’ piled in to finish, with interest. There’s no overdriven guitars, the intensity ratcheted up in Recognising the power of quietness and stillness the man himself, okay. 24. THE BALKAN holding Foals back, and no standing in their way – you’ll only get hurt. And so, after a hat-trick of increments until you’re hooked. It’s musical heroin, in music, electronic folk-pop duo Water Pageant’s second places since `Hummer’ topped this list at the end of 2007, Foals find themselves back on top lulling you into a becalmed, idyllic stupor from debut album `Outlines’ was perfectly timed for 19. BUG PRENTICE WANDERERS `Pride’ of the pile. It’s exactly where Oxford’s most consistently exciting band deserve to be. where you can only hope there’s more to come. the onset of autumn, its melancholic reflection and Bringing a ray of eastern European folk-dance insularity coming in amber and red shades like `Nebraska Admiral’ light to the local scene, Balkan Wanderers spread 8. DESERT STORM fallen leaves, Nick Tingay and Lizzie McBain’s With a gorgeous, dry, delicate voice, like the their cultural smorgasbord of sounds to take in 2. DUOTONE EP. Putting a lie to any ideas that purely electronic delicate voices slowly and softy swirling around smoked-out ghost of Jeff Buckley, Ally Craig influences from Russia and Turkey as much as the music can’t fully convey emotion, she mixes the `Queen Reefer’ each other on this stark centrepiece. It’s simply can make the most lopsided of songs feel like Balkans, and while they’re simply immense fun `Little White Caravan’ DIY invention of Grimes with Sade’s soft-as-silk And just in case you were worried this Top 25 gorgeous. Like a hug on a cold winter’s night. heartache’s sharpest arrow. On this particular live, this highlight of their EP of the same name Like the proverbial swan gliding on a lake, soul and London Grammar’s misty atmospherics was getting a bit maudlin or touchy-feely, here’s highpoint of Bug Prentice’s album `The Way is a melancholic and righteous nod to Ukrainian Duotone’s music is all elegance and serenity on and conjures a gloriously sad-eyed anthem for a band who’re only likely to touch you with a 14. A SILENT FILM It Crumbles’, he conjures a beautiful, brooding tunesmithery and particularly poignant given the surface, but furiously busy paddling beneath. late-night reflection and at least three bottles of claw hammer, doubtless at full force on the back lament that teeters on the edge of atonality and current geopolitics. Fact: it is impossible to see Barney Morse-Brown constructs his songs by wine. of your skull. With their third album `Omniscient’ `Paralyse’ features unselfconsciously cornball rhyming The Balkan Wanderers live and not leave with a himself from loops and live playing, but his helping them break through to major national press Built for stadiums, it’s no surprise that A Silent couplets that could be a ghostly Kristin Hersh song huge grin on your face. virtuosity still plays second bow to the gorgeous, 4. GAZ COOMBES `The acclaim and a European headline tour (sponsored Film are proper huge in the States, playing far rewritten by Ian Dury. raw emotion of his songs, as this simply breath- by Terrorizer) Desert Storm’s Cro-Magnon stoner- bigger venues there than they ever can back 25. VERA GRACE taking ode to love, loss and hope demonstrates. Girl Who Fell To Earth’ blues upped its ante a couple of notches with this in Blighty. Each and every song on their third, 20. BEING EUGENE As a tune `Little White Caravan’ is almost lullaby Freed from the increasingly constrained rumble of rock thunder galloping over the horizon eponymous, album was an anthem, even the quiet `Exposition’ simple but within its multi-layered duvet of words expectations of Supergrass, Gaz’s second solo to carry you off on some wild, whisky-soaked ones, and not least this punchy electro rock slab of `The Desolation of a Place And what better way to close this list than with and music is a song of stunning beauty. album `Matador’ found him free to explore adventure. Possibly involving Vikings. polished pop granite. It’s epic. Everything about some decidedly unfestive bile and fury, the like of middle-aged reflection, dadhood and more, which A Silent Film is epic. Hands in the air, everyone. We Call Home’ which we’ve been rather blessed in Oxford this 3. ESTHER JOY LANE mightn’t sound like a barrel of pop fun, but 9. CASSELS Lighters aloft. This one is going stratospheric. Fucking great pummelling, nagging, stomping year. Witney’s Vera Grace have been kicking about actually made for his best music in a decade, the groove-core beastliness from Abingdon metalcore for a while now but with new EP `Novella’ went `You Know’ album emerging from a haze of cigarette smoke `Hating Is Easy’ 15. SPACE HEROES newcomers Being Eugene on their Demo of the national, displaying their versatility as they veered More beautiful sorrow, here from the brightest and Oxford drizzle to lay the man’s soul bare. Easy to hate the world and its wife when you’re Month-winning debut, the band packing some into industrial/gothic moodiness but never far from new star to shine in the local pop firmament in This ode to his daughter is a gently frazzled mix a teenager living in Chipping Norton, a town OF THE PEOPLE serious fury, which they tempered just right with a some seriously opulent metalcore mayhem as on 2015. Esther takes a whole raft of conflicting of electronic wow and flutter, woozy psychedelia that’s nowhere near as posh as Cameron, Brookes, subtle, supple tech-metal edge. Not that there was this EP opener, reminding us rather splendidly of emotions and makes the sound as pure as cut and simple, soulful acoustic balladry and possibly Moss and co. might have you imagine. And so, `Moroderhead’ much time to stand admire their skills, since you Fucked Up. Anything that reminds us of Fucked diamond on this highlight from her superb debut Gaz’s finest vocal performance to date. brothers Jim and Loz Beck loaded all that bile Quality synth-pop in a world of insipid pretenders, were too busy dodging each killer blow and merrily Up being A Very Good Thing Indeed. Surrey, bespectacled, besuited and elegantly EVIL EYE + ALAN JAGGS + SWEET PINK moustachioed chap-rapper Mr B gives hip hop + FLEXI: The Wheatsheaf – It’s All About a run through with the Queen’s English, coming the Music show with indie rockers 31Hours, in at that point where De la Soul meets Noel psychedelic indie pop from Charms Against the Coward and Flanders & Swann. Or maybe NWA Evil Eye, funky rock from Sweet Pink and more. if they’d grown up in Hove and been more SHEPHERD’S PIE: Fat Lil’s, Witney – interested in cricket and fine tea. Hard rock and metal covers, from Maiden and GIG GUIDE SIMPLE with BODDIKA: The Bullingdon – Metallica to Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath. House and techno club night with Boddika, the PAUL McLURE + COLIN MacNEE: The TUESDAY 1st FRIDAY 4th solo guise of Al Bleek, one half of drum&bass Swan, Ascott-under-Wychwood – The faves Instra:mental and head honcho of Nonplus Wychwood Folk club hosts Rutland troubadour DOT’S FUNKY ODYSSEY: The Cellar – IRREGULAR FOLK WINTER SPECIAL: St Records. Paul McClure, touring his new `Smiling From the Soulful tunes, Latin vibes and funky grooves DECEMBER Barnabas Church – You Are Wolf heads up this DOORS ALIVE: O2 Academy – Tribute band. Floor Up’ album. from the local funk and soul band, playing Aretha KARIMA FRANCIS + CHARLIE HOLE + year’s celebration of experimental folk and more th DEF CON ONE + CRASHGATE + HIDDEN: THE MIGHTY CADILLACS: The Three Monday 7 Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson ROBERTO Y JUAN: The Library – Tigmus – see main preview The Cellar – OxRox host Newcastle’s metal Horseshoes, Long Hanborough – Blues and among other classics and originals. host Blackpool singer Karima Francis’ first KLUB KAKOFANNEY with UK:ID + behemoths Def Con One, taking elements of classic rock’n’roll. ORANGE GOBLIN / ALVIN ROY & REEDS UNLIMITED: The Oxford show since her 2012 performance at PHYAL + SILK ROAD: The Wheatsheaf – thrash, metalcore and punk and sounding like a Bullingdon – Trad jazz, swing and bop from Gathering Festival, out on tour to promote her Excellent rap-rave-electro-punk craziness from DESERT STORM: mash-up of Slayer, Pantera and Machine Head. th veteran clarinettist Alvin Roy and his Reeds. third album, the follow-up to `The Remedy’, Glastonbury’s UK:ID, back at tonight’s Klub SUNDAY 6 Support from Kent’s melodic hard rockers her striking voice having seen her compared to Kak after a storming set here in September, the HAPPY MONDAYS: O2 Academy – The O2 Academy Crashgate, drawing on influences like Black Damien Rice and Jeff Buckley as well as Tracy festival regulars reminiscent of early-90s rave Madchester reunion caravan continues to roll It’s five years since Orange Goblin last came th Stone Cherry and Guns’n’Roses Friday 4 Chapman and Joni Mitchell. Support comes from crossover acts like Senser and The Shaman. on, the original, and definitive, line-up of to Oxford, and it’s been a quieter place for EXTRA CURRICULAR: The Cellar – Techno Charlie Hole, which isn’t a euphemism for a coke The local supporting cast includes longstanding Manchester’s baddest gang back round again to their absence, so it’s good to have them back. club night with OBJEKT, Batu and Katiusha. th IRREGULAR addict’s nostril, but a heartfelt piano balladeer grungers Phyal and new young heavy rockers celebrate the 25 anniversary of `Thrills’n’Pills Nightshift’s ribcage needs a good shake-up. 31HOURS + CHARMS AGAINST THE from Bournemouth, and Latin-pop-flavoured Silk Road and Bellyaches. Orange Goblin have been cult heroes on the FOLK CHRISTMAS Balloon Ascents offshoot Roberto y Juan. THE MAGIC GANG: The Bullingdon – ROBERT FORSTER: Friends Meeting House, UK metal scene for 20 years now, continually ploughing a very singular path around the SPECIAL: OPEN MIC SESSION: The James Street Psyche-tinged grunge-pop from Brighton’s new th St Giles – The former Go-Betweens songmeister Tavern indie hopefuls, coming in somewhere between Sunday 6 makes an intimate return to town – see main globe in that time while every couple of St Barnabas Church Weezer, Peace and recent tourmates Wolf Alice. ROBERT FORSTER: preview years finding time to unleash a new album Such a shame Irregular Folk is no longer a WEDNESDAY 2nd THE RE-UP: The Cellar – Bass, grime and hip STEAMROLLER: The Bullingdon – Heavy- of characteristically thunderous doom-laden regular gig club night (though how could it hop club night with DJs James Waddell, from duty blues-rock in the vein of Cream and Hendrix metal. Inspired by Sabbath, Led Zep, Iron THE EPSTEIN + GREAT WESTERN TEARS Quaker Meeting House Maiden and Motorhead, they’ve taken forays be regular with a name like that?), as those Isis magazine, Oli C b2b MCBD, Dub Fusc and For indie fans of a certain vintage, The Go- from the local survivors. + ROBERT CHANEY: The Handlebar, The into psychedelia, punk and thrash while shows at The Cellar and beyond a couple of Fabian Fatodu. Betweens are as important as The Smiths or AFTER THE THOUGHT + KID KIN + Bike Zone, St Michael Street – Two of Oxford’s always remaining at their core a sludgy years ago really were a gateway into a very TEN FÉ + SALVATION BILL + THE Buzzcocks, and their influence endures in LEE RILEY: The Library – Great triple bill leading Americana lights launch singles from doom-blues act, one that fits in bullishly different world of music as well an intimate AUREATE ACT: The Jericho Tavern – Tigmus myriad literate, heart-on-sleeve guitar-wielding of three of Oxford’s leading electronic music forthcoming albums at tonight’s Pindrop show. alongside Monster Magnet, Kyuss and Clutch early introduction to future stars of folk music bring London duo Ten Fe to town for the first romantics and dreamers. The band was formed protagonists, with atmospheric electronica, Alt.country rockers The Epstein prepare to follow but that has continued to spread its wings (Mercury Prize nominee C Duncan played time, Ben Moorhouse and Leo Duncan having in 1977 at the University of Queensland by shoegaze and drone from After The Thought; up their excellent `Murmurations’, continuing with each new album. While the band are for them not long ago). Organiser Vez Hoper made their name playing a series of low-key Grant McLennan and Robert Forster and alternately ambient and punishing electro-math- their widescreen Appalachian journey, while celebrating their twentieth anniversary this still brings the night back to life for summer shows in unusual settings – including a former released six albums of increasingly glorious rock from Kid Kin and extreme drone-age from Great Western Tears’ country folk is more year, they almost didn’t make it, the follow- and winter specials though and tonight’s industrial meat container – as well as relocating pop music until they disbanded in 1989, and Lee Riley. intimate and bittersweet, a rootsy journey into up to 2007’s critically-acclaimed `Healing pre-Christmas concert features one of our to Berlin for a year, that city’s elegant electronica another three in the noughties after briefly MONKEY FISTS + GEORGIE BIRD + DES some lost prairie saloon bar. Through Fire’ repeatedly stalled to the point absolute favourite performers from those scene bringing itself to bear on their epic, reforming. Sadly McLennan’s death from a BARKUS & FRIENDS + SINFICTION + BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: The Cellar the band looked like they might be finished, early shows, You Are Wolf, a band formed orchestral pop. Following the acclaim accorded heart attack in 2006 put an end once and for COSMOSIS: The Wheatsheaf (2.30pm) – Klub – 80s, new wave, disco, synth-pop and glam club but `A Eulogy For the Damned’ saw the light around the multifaceted talents of singer, to summer single `Make Me Better’, they’re set all to the band but Forster remains a potent Kakofanney host an afternoon of free live music night, playing cool stuff, from Kate Bush and The of day in 2012 and last year they released songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kerry to release their debut album, produced by Ewan songwriter, a self-assured dandy who’s both in the Sheaf’s downstairs bar. Smiths to Madonna and Talking Heads. the aptly- titled `Back From the Abyss, Andrew. Inspired by everything from Dolly Pearson, who’s worked with M83 and Jagwa Ma. knowing and arch, and warmly romantic, both ARTHUR + THE JESTERS + MOON which saw the band exploring a more soulful Parton to Catalonian poetry, her songs, mostly Support from darkly humorous blues-pop man sides of his character coming out on new solo LEOPARD + OXFORD UKULELES + rd acoustic sound. Only kidding. It rocked like about birds, often featuring birdsong, put THURSDAY 3 Salvation Bill, and inventive local electro-prog album `Songs To Play’ (sample song title: `I RIVERSIDE VOICES + TONY BATEY: A RELUCTANT ARROW + THE PINK a bloody great bastard and has riffs as big her own and sometimes ancient traditional starlets The Aureate Act. Love Myself and I Always Have’), his voice Donnington Community Centre (5-9pm) – DIAMOND REVUE + NELSON & THE as giant redwoods, “the definitive Orange compositions through the technological ROOTS RAMBLE: East Oxford – Francis still one of the most distinctive in indie. And Donnington Community Christmas party, with COLUMNS: The Bullingdon – It’s All About Goblin album,” according to frontman Ben mangler – all loops and electronic magic Pugh & the Whisky Singers host another of their while the man – who earlier this year was free live unplugged music from Donnington the Music and All Will Be Well team up to bring Ward. – to create genuinely spellbinding music. excellent travelling roots roadshows around awarded an honorary degree by his alma mater session regulars Jeremy Hughes with his Moon together dark bluesy/folk-rock crew a Reluctant In particular her voice is something special assorted hostelries in east oxford. Meet at The – might easily have played a venue several Leopard, alongside Ukulele orchestra Oxford Arrow, Reading’s superb acid-surf-psych people – gorgeously pure, its various clicks, purrs, Half Moon at 8pm before heading off to hear times the size of this, he’s chosen (courtesy of Ukuleles, bluesman Tony Batey and more. club. The Pink Diamond Revue and local folksters chirrups, whistles and tuts looped to create a Americana, folk and blues sets from The Whisky rejuvenated veteran promoters Swiss Concrete) STRINGFEVER: The Cornerstone, Didcot INTRUSION: The Cellar – Monthly goth, Nelson and the Columns. murmuration of sounds for the songs to fly Singers, Great Western Tears, Swindlestock and somewhere both intimate and off the beaten – Inventive, genetically-modified string quartet, industrial and ebm club night with Doktor Joy WILLIE J HEALEY + GNARWHALS: The within. And if that weren’t enough, Kerry The Knights of Mentis. track to perform. It’s already sold out of playing classical, pop and showtunes. and Bookhouse. Cellar – Easy, loping “rock’n’stroll” from fast- is also one of our favourite football writers. FLIGHTS OF HELIOS: The Cornerstone, course, but if you’re not one of the lucky 100 OPEN MIC SESSION: The James Street rising local indie balladeer Willie, playing a Joining You Are Wolf will be experimental Didcot – Spaced-out psychedelia, prog and or so who snapped up a ticket as soon as the th Tavern hometown show to promote new single `Saturday MONDAY 7 vocalist Ben See and local folk/blues singer shoegaze noise from the local faves, all set to gig was announced, go and buy the new album ORANGE GOBLIN + DESERT STORM: O2 Night Feeling’, and drawing comparisons to Claire le Master, while poet and wit George release their debut album. anyway. And if you never heard The Go- Academy – Riffs. Riffs as big as mountains – see th Jonathan Richman, War on Drugs and Jeff WEDNESDAY 9 Chopping acts as compère for the evening. BON GIOVI: Fat Lil’s, Witney – Bon Jovi tribute. Betweens before, or you simply crave some main preview BAD MANNERS + MAX SPLODGE: The Healey. Lovely music in a lovely – and suitably FIREGAZER + TONY BATEY + DUNCAN joyously poetic pop, go and investigate their Cellar – Super-heavyweight ska and punk PATCHWORK: The Cellar – Disco, house and irregular – setting. Pour yourself a large HARTLEY: James Street Tavern – CD launch entire catalogue immediately. th from Buster Bloodvessel and chums – see main techno club night. TUESDAY 8 goblet of mulled wine and drink it all in. gig for local Cajun-flavoured folk act Firegazer. preview THE MIGHTY REDOX: The Wheatsheaf JULIA MEIJER + KONE + WATER DISCO MUTANTES: The Library – Disco, WAY UP! WEDNESDAY: The Cellar – R’n’b, – Free gig in the downstairs bar from the swamp- PAGEANT + RICHARD NEUBERG: The funk, acid house and afrobeat club night. hip hop, reggae, UK garage and grime club night, blues, psych-funk and ska veterans. Jericho Tavern – Swedish ex-pat singer Julia STEAMROLLER: Kidlington FC – First of with DJ Likkle Platinum and Young Linx. CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford Meijer returns to live action ahead of her new half a dozen shows around the county for the THE SWEET + MUD 2 + THE RUBETTES: Community Centre – Oxford’s longest running EP, her haunting, soulful acoustic pop drawing veteran local blues rockers, keeping the spirit of The New Theatre – It’s Christmas! It’s glam and best open club night, showcasing singers, comparisons to Julia Holter and Vashti Bunyan. Hendrix and Cream alive. time! It’s a blockbuster! – see main preview musicians, poets, storytellers and performance Top-drawer local support from sparse post-punk RATTLE + WITCHING WAVES + artists every Thursday. starlets Kone and luxuriantly intimate electro- th ALNEGATOR: The Wheatsheaf – Quality OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon SATURDAY 5 folk-pop duo Water Pageant. MR B THE GENTLEMAN RHYMER + noise as ever from Burn the Jukebox, tonight ACOUSTIC THURSDAY: Jude the Obscure BULLINGDON HOT CLUB: The Bullingdon CORKY: The Bullingdon – Straight outta with Nottingham’s stripped-back experimentalists BLUES JAM: The Catherine Wheel, Sandford – Hot jazz and swing at the Bully’s weekly jazz virtuosity to old English dance tunes, ballads, war from Stratford’s Gehtika, coming in somewhere WEDNESDAY 16th OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon poems and folk standards. between Emperor and Lamb of God in support. CRYSTALLITE + KHAMSINA + MYTHS ACOUSTIC THURSDAY: Jude the Obscure CHANNEL ONE + ROOTS GUIDANCE: + LOUISE PETIT: The Wheatsheaf – Let the BLUES JAM: The Catherine Wheel, Sandford THURSDAY 10th The Bullingdon – Top-drawer roots reggae and Lady Sings showcase show for female-fronted THE PETE FRYER BAND: The Wheatsheaf dub with Channel One Soundsystem, run by acts, with old-school soft rockers Crystallite, FRIDAY 18th – Free gig in the downstairs bar from the veteran legendary selector Mikey Dread and MC Ras electro and piano pop from Khamsina, and more. GAPPY TOOTH INDUSTRIES with local blues-rocker. Kayleb, and tonight joined by dub professor WAY UP! WEDNESDAY: The Cellar – R’n’b, BALLOON ASCENTS + ZURICH + THE THE SHADES + TANNERS POOL Roots Guidance. hip hop, reggae and more. JON COHEN EXPERIMENTAL + AFTER + TRITONESUBS + THE MISSING UK FOO FIGHTERS: O2 Academy – Foos SPARKY’S JAM NIGHT: James Street THE THOUGHT: The Wheatsheaf – PERSIANS + ANDY ROBBINS: The Jericho tribute. Tavern – Open mic and jam night. Celebrating the end of another year of going Tavern – 60s-styled r’n’b covers and originals ALL TAMARA’S PARTIES with CAMERON where few other promoters dare to tread, GTI th from the local rockers, inspired by The Stones, A.G. + CRANDLE + TAMARA + GEORGE th collect four of their favourite acts from the last Saturday 12 CHOPPING: The Bear & The Bean, Cowley THURSDAY 17 early Beatles and Yardbirds. THE QUENTINS + RUSSIAN COWBOYS few months. Headliners Balloon Ascents should – Bleakly brilliant gothic balladeer Tamara HIP HOP CLUB NIGHT: The Cellar – Club + ESTHER JOY LANE + STRIKE ONE: need little introduction to Oxford audiences now CHAD VALLEY / Parsons-Baker rocks up at another off-the-beaten- night in aid of Syrian refugees. O2 Academy – Fidgety guitar pop and indie – just read the bloody review, okay. Great support track intimate venue, tonight with wonderfully MAIIANS / ESTHER BLAKE: The Cornerstone, Didcot – Yuletide funk from newcomers The Quentins, plus funk- from Banbury’s dark-minded indie-electro-pop lost’n’lonely songsmith Cameron AG, plus the songs from the classical male voice group and pop from Russian Cowboys and heart-melting crew Zurich, inspired by Editors, Killers and The sweetly quirky electro-acoustic Crandle, with JOY LANE / OSLO BRIT winners. electro-pop and r’n’b from Esther Joy Lane at National, plus Montreal’s one-man psychedelic master of ceremonies George Chopping. CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford tonight’s It’s All About the Music showcase. pop and loop-based experimentalist Jon Cohen, RAN KAN KAN + DJ SI: Old Fire Station PARK: The Bullingdon Community Centre STORYTELLER + PAPA NUI: The Cellar and electronica soundscapist and beatmaker After As far as local electronic music goes, tonight’s – Son Montuno and mambo classics from local OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon – Funky rock and reggae from Storyteller at the Thought. gig is as unmissable as unmissable gets. Cuban big band Ran Kan Kan, plus Kwassa ACOUSTIC THURSDAY: Jude the Obscure tonight’s It’s All About the Music show. THE ORIGINAL RABBIT FOOT SPASM Chiefly it’s a rare hometown show for Chad th Kwassa’s DJ Si, playing African, Caribbean and Wednesday 9 BLUES JAM: The Catherine Wheel, Sandford CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford BAND + BALKAN WANDERERS + THE Valley, aka Hugo Manuel of Jonquil in his Latin dance tunes into the night. Community Centre KNIGHTS OF MENTIS + BANG TAIL solo tropical house guise, coming to the end THE SWEET / MUD 2 / CALLOW SAINTS + CHEROKEE + th FEATHERS: O2 Academy – The Rabbits host of a major American and European tour to FRIDAY 11 BAWS + PHAT CARDINALS + PUPPET their traditional Christmas jazz riot – see main promote second album `Entirely New Blue’. THE RUBETTES: UPRISING with MY GREY HORSE + MECHANIC: The Jericho Tavern – It’s All th Wednesday 9 preview The album’s honed his blend of 80s pop, r’n’b, TREMORHEART + THE FIXATION: About the Music night with Aylesbury’s soft CRAIG CHARLES’ FUNK & SOUL CLUB: introverted house and fidgety sunshine flavours The New Theatre O2 Academy – The O2 showcase event in rockers Callow Saints, garage-rock duo Cherokee BAD MANNERS / O2 Academy – BBC Radio’s most infectiously into a more commercial sound, particularly “It’s CHRISTMAS!” bellows Noddy Holder conjunction with BBC Oxford Introducing and Baws, the new band fronted by ATL? and enthusiastic DJ brings his party-starting with its increased leaning towards autotuned by way of introduction to the festive season brings Stratford-upon-Avon’s My Grey Horse Hot Hooves man Mac. MAX SPLODGE: collection of soul, funk and rare grooves back to vocals. Like kindred Oxford spirit Totally on Slade’s enduring Yuletide supermarket back to town, the band currently recording their EXTRA CURRICULAR: The Cellar – House town, including a live set from local funksters Enormous Extinct Dinosaur, it’s understated favourite `Merry Xmas, Everyone’, and since second album with Supergrass producer Sam and techno club night. The Cellar The Temple Funk Collective and DJ sets from club music, more suited to early-hours it really is that time of year again, let’s put Williams and mixing up lo-fi American indie with OXFORD GOSPEL CHOIR: The Seems tonight really is the night for Tony Nanton and Count Skylarkin’. comedown and emotional break-up as hitting aside any pretence of being cool and simply Americana in the style of Swell and occasionally Cornerstone, Didcot – Traditional and abandoning all vestiges of cool and getting LITTLE BROTHER ELI + FACTORY the dancefloor. Like Chad Valley, Maiians’ indulge our base instinct to eat, drink and be Pavement. There’s also 80s-fuelled pop in a contemporary gospel, pop and Christmas songs fully into the festive spirit. While glam LIGHTS: The Bullingdon – Soulful blues- origins lie in Ibiza, but while the former is as merry. And what better company to do so in similar style to Future Islands from Tremorheart from the local choir. veterans The Sweet and co. are rocking the rockers Little Brother Eli round off a successful reflective as sunset at a beachfront café, the than this trio of Slade’s contemporaries in and Oxford-London rockers The Fixation. SYNTRONIX: Fat Lil’s, Witney – 80s synth- New Theatre, down in The Cellar, there’ll year, breaking through to become one of Oxford’s latter is a hazy, motorik drive into dawn by way 1970s glam-pop, going out under the Glitz, PEERLESS PIRATES + SKA MEISTERS + pop hits, from Duran Duran and Human League be some serious moonstomping going on favourite young live bands, bringing a fresh of some sleek, linear Krautrock highway, lush, Blitz and 70s Hitz tour title. The Sweet, now THE SHAPES + CHASING DAYLIGHT: The to Depeche Mode and Gary Numan. with ska-punk heavyweights Bad Manners approach to classic blues in the vein of White hypnotic synth swells and melodies powered helmed by original guitarist Andy Scott, sold Bullingdon – It’s All About the Music present THE PETE FRYER BAND: The Dolphin, bringing skanking good cheer to town for 55million records in the 70s and enjoyed 34 swashbuckling indie, rockabilly, Tex-Mex and Denim and White Stripes, married to a funky Red by some serious double-drummer rhythms. Wallingford their first visit in some years. Led by larger Hot Chili Peppers vibe. Surf-pop from Shapes number 1 singles across the world, including spaghetti western-styled pop fun from Peerless than life (though lately slimmed-down) singer Any worries that electronic instrumental music era-defining hits `Blockbuster’, `Ballroom Pirates, alongside ska crew Ska Meisters; eclectic side project Factory Lights in support. might be a sterile live experience are blown out SUNDAY 13th Buster Bloodvessel, the band were part of the DOLLY MAVIES + MATT CARTER + SAM Blitz’ and `Fox On the Run’, so it’s no r’n’b, 80s alt.rock and new wave popsters The early-80s ska revival alongside The Specials, of the water with extreme prejudice. Sterility is surprise they’ve endured over five decades. Shapes and more. STEAMROLLER & FRIENDS: The Cellar MARTIN: The Cellar – Intimate acoustic pop something that doesn’t register on Esther Joy – Charity Christmas show from the local blues- Madness and Selecter, and very much the from local singer Dolly Mavies, launching her This will be their final tour though, as they’re BOSSAPHONIK: The Cellar – Dancefloor jokers in the pack with their covers of `My Lane’s horizon either, her sultry, introspective hanging up their catsuits and stack heels, Latin, Afrobeat, Balkan beats, global grooves and rock veterans, kicking out the jams in the vein debut single. synth-pop and r’n’b packing soul to spare as of Cream and Hendrix. The band are joined by Girl Lollipop’ and `The Can Can’, as well as MOVE CHRISTMAS PARTY: The Cellar – so make the most of them. They’re joined nu-jazz club night, with a live set from London’s hits like `Special Brew’ and `Lip Up Fatty’. she’s revealed herself to be one of the brightest by Mud 2, still going a decade after singer eight-piece fusion band Gypsy Butter, mixing up members of former Dolly faves Sunfly and Fraud House, garage and grime club night, with garage young talents Oxford has produced in recent Squad, with all profits going to the Oxford Food Although never signed to Two Tone, they and bass breakthrough star Royal T, plus Lazcru Les Gray’s death, old faves like `Tiger Feet’ flamenco, jazz, Latin and gypsy jazz. Plus DJ sets were very much part of that scene and have times. Completing a quality bill are Brighton’s and `Lonely This Christmas’ a reminder from Giles Strother and club host Dan Ofer. Bank. and B-Ill. bright and breezy electro-pop/alt.rock crew NO HORSES + OSPREY + ADY DAVEY similarly endured even while the hits long ago OSPREY: The Marsh Harrier – Christmas that kitsch didn’t always mean crap. And INVISIBLE VEGAS + TANNERS POOL: The dried up. There’s suitably irreverent support Oslo Park. completing this holy trinity of retro fun are Wheatsheaf – Americana, roadhouse rocking & SHAKIN’ LIPS + MEGAN JOSPEHY + songs and jollity from the veteran local singer PURPLE MAY: The Wheatsheaf (3.30-7pm) – from Max Splodge, sometime frontman of and promoter. The Rubettes, Alan Williams, alongside and blues from Invisible Vegas. OXROX CHRISTMAS PARTY / DOLLY Free afternoon of unplugged music from Giddyup punk loons Splodgenessabounds – alongside DIRTY EARTH BAND: Fat Lil’s, Witney – fellow original members John Richardson THE OXLEY-MEIER PROJECT: St John the REUNION: The Cellar – Rocking through til the Music in the downstairs bar. the likes of Peter and the Test Tube Babies, Classic and contemporary rock and pop covers. and Mick Clarke, veterans of over 30 million Evangelist – Virtuoso guitar display from Nick wee small hours with OxRox reviving The Cellar’s part of the so-called punk pathetique scene, THE MIGHTY CADILLACS + GET LOOSE: sales and timeless classic `Sugar Baby Love’. Meier, from Jeff Beck’s band, and Pete Oxley, providing the boozy, irreverent flipside to rock legacy with live sets from Terminus, playing th Red Hot Blues Club, Didcot Even Nightshift can, for one night, forget from world jazz group Curious Paradise, together MONDAY 14 classic heavy rock covers and Hard Rock Highway much of the genre’s political message. Expect STEAMROLLER: Kidlington FC extreme sludge-metal and minimal leftfield playing music inspired by Turkish and Latin THE TEDDY WHITE BAND + GWYNN cult classics like `Two Pints of Lager and to Hell band competition winners Big foot, plus DJ electro-pop and simply wallow in nostalgia, American sounds, on a variety of guitars. ASHTON + THE BLUE BISHOPS: The John Chadwick. a Packet of Crisps’ and `Michael Booth’s th mulled wine and a little bit of glam rock THE MIGHTY REDOX: Mad Hatter’s Jericho Tavern – The Famous Monday Blues Talking Bum’. SATURDAY 19 FLUID: The Cellar – Bassline, garage and grime silliness. CASH: Fat Lil’s, Witney – Johnny Cash tribute. Christmas party. THE DARKNESS: O2 Academy – If it’s nearly club night with Murlo, Masp, VLVT and Zyclon Christmas, it must be time for another Darkness Sound. Rattles, mixing vocal harmonies with inventive th th tour, the old-school rockers continuing their RED HOT CHICKEN DIPPERS: The percussion and featuring members of Fists SATURDAY 12 TUESDAY 15 CHAD VALLEY + MAIIANS + ESTHER JAWS: O2 Academy – Back in the reunion travels having kissed and made up a Wheatsheaf –Local psychedelic rockers Jabroni’s and Kogumaza. They’re joined by indie punks few years back, singer Justin Hawkins having Sandwich play Chili Peppers songs under their Witching Waves and post-hardcore noisemakers JOY LANE + OSLO PARK: The Bullingdon neighbourhood after their showing at Truck, – Homecoming gig for the local electro-pop star Birmingham’s now slimmed-down Jaws temper undergone rehab following a bit too much on tour alter-ego. Alnegator. fun following the mega success of debut album BEDROCK: The Bullingdon – Skeletor’s BELSHAZZA’S FEAST: Thomas Hughes – see main preview their Madchester grooves with considered REIGN OF FURY + GEHTIKA + shoegaze and Foals-y fidget-pop. `Permission To Land’ and its accompanying monthly rock and metal club night. Memorial Hall, Uffington – Best known as hit single, `I Believe In A Thing Called Love’. FUSED: Fat Lil’s, Witney – 90s and noughties fiddle and oboe player with Bellowhead, Paul RETRIBUTION: The Wheatsheaf – Classic HUGH TURNER QUARTET: The Bullingdon thrash in the vein of Nuclear Assault and – Funky jazz from Turner and chums at the Supports to Robbie Williams and more recently alt.rock covers, from Weezer and Kings of Leon to Sartin has been a staple on the English folk Lady Gaga point to their pop-friendly appeal and Killers and Chili Peppers. circuit for nigh on twenty years and together Megadeth from West Midlands’ Reign of Fury, Bully’s free weekly jazz club. back in town to promote new album, `Death Be OPEN MIC SESSION: The James Street they bring a little bit of panto fun to their classic THE HUT PEOPLE + SETH BYE & with accordion player Paul Hutchison makes Led Zep, AC/DC and Queen influences. KATIE GRIFFIN: Tiddy Hall, Ascott-under- up Belshazza’s Feast, bringing humour and Thy Shepherd’. Black metal/thrash crossover Tavern Gazelle Twin photo by Sam Shepherd Wychwood – Wychwood Folk club host world anti-Christmas party brings you more quality free folk duo The Hut People, accordionist Sam noise, with theatrical thrash merchants Agness Pirt, who’s played alongside Kathryn Tickell Pike; doomy crust-punk from Undersmile/ and Sharon Shannon as well his band 422, and Mutagenocide/Girl Power offshoot Drore, and no- LIVE percussionist Gary Hammond, best known for wave/gutter electro chap Robert Shackleton. being part of The Beautiful South, as well as working with Nina Simone, together playing a MONDAY 21st lively instrumental form of folk music, informed by British, Nordic and south European traditions. TUESDAY 22nd THE MIGHTY CADILLACS: The Swan, th Eynsham THE MARTIN PICKETT ORGANISATION: Thursday 24 STEAMROLLER: Shepherd’s Hat, Ewelme The Bullingdon – Free live jazz. PMT CHRISTMAS PARTY: The Library – OXFORD’S REGGAE th Live music and more, courtesy of your friendly SUNDAY 20 neighbourhood music store. CHRISTMAS: PETE LOCK & MARK BOSLEY + THE OPEN MIC SESSION: The James Street ILLUMINATI + MARK ATHERTON Tavern The Bullingdon & FRIENDS + CALLOW SAINTS: The Reggae might have a reputation in the UK as summertime music, but really it’s here Wheatsheaf (2.30pm) – Klub Kakofanney host rd an afternoon of free unplugged music in the WEDNESDAY 23 to warm the cockles of your heart all year downstairs bar, with Moiety duo Pete and Mark, THE AUREATE ACT + 31HOURS + LUKE round. And one of Oxford music’s great and more. ALLMOND: The Jericho Tavern – Atmospheric longstanding traditions has been the Christmas AGNESS PIKE + DRORE + ROBERT prog-rock and electronic soundscaping from rising Eve reggae party. It ran at the Zodiac and later SHACKLETON: The Library – Smash Disco’s starlets The Aureate Act. the Academy for almost 20 years and now it’s WAY UP! WEDNESDAY: The Cellar moved just down the Cowley Road to The Bully, but the idea is the same – to welcome Friday 18th THURSDAY 24th Santa and the Yuletide spirit to town with good THE ORIGINAL OXFORD REGGAE CHRISTMAS: The vibes and some serious bass. Tonight there’s Bullingdon – Skank into Christmas morning with a live set from Bristol’s seven-strong party RABBIT FOOT SPASM Laid Blak, Count Skylarkin’ and co. – see main reggae outfit Laid Blak, who have earned preview themselves a reputation as one of, if not the, BAND / BALKAN STEAMROLLER: Three Horseshoes, Long best live reggae band in Europe. Smash hits Hanborough like `Bristol Love’ and the near-anthemic `My WANDERERS / Eyes Are Red’ have raised their profile yet th higher, while they’ve shared stages with The THE KNIGHTS OF FRIDAY 25 Wailers, Massive Attack, John Legend and Merry Christmas everyone. If you’re stuck for Julian Marley along the way. They’re joined MENTIS: O2 Academy what to get us this year, we’d quite like a cat that by some of the best DJs in the area, including The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band crack looks like a llama. Thanks. Desta*Nation, Oxford’s original rebel sound – the musical incarnation of Brighton singer and open the port, the whisky, the advocaat, the system; Count Skylarkin’ – Trojan Selector, AUDIOSCOPE musician Elizabeth Bernholz, tonight, alongside gin, the wine and anything else they can find Wailers warm-up, Disco Shed creator and her anonymous electronics operator, dressed at the back of the drinks cabinet for their curator of Skylarkin’ Soundsystem and The The Bullingdon It’s bitterly appropriate that this year’s Audioscope in a hoodie, her facial features blanked out by traditional Christmas speakeasy hoedown. Big Ten Inch, and DJ Bunjy & MC Joe Peng, to truly compelling, while in an abrupt left turn in coincides with the first arctic blast of cold of mood for the day so far MARCONI UNION, who a skin-coloured stocking to macabre effect. Since they emerged, drunken and riotously founding members of Laid Blak. Two rooms winter. It’s freezing out there; who’d be homeless claim to have written the most relaxing piece of Stripped of identifiable human characteristics entertaining on the local scene, with a show- of serious roots, rocksteady, dancehall and on a day like this? Plenty of people sadly, music ever, drift through genteel Kosmiche before and expressions, she stalks the stage like an stealing headline set at the Punt back in 2009, dub riddims and tunes for you to skank into thousands condemned to inadequate (or no) discovering a heartbeat rhythm and becoming unnaturally limbed feline, her music a queasy, with their blend of classic 1920s and 30s Christmas with. And remember – reggae isn’t housing while the property portfolio parasites get gently but irresistibly hypnotic. discordant form of mutant hip hop and synth-pop, jump blues, r’n’b and hot jazz given a bit of just for Christmas either – it’ll be here to keep richer by the day. Since its inception 14 years ago, As frontman for psych-grunge rockers Arbouretum a sort of evil-urban soundtrack that might be The punk rock vim and vigour and some delicious th you partying all through 2016 too. SATURDAY 26 Audioscope has raised in excess of £35,000 for DAVE HEUMANN has headlined Audioscope Knife’s twisted sister, or Bjӧrk ripped from her Oxfordshire flavouring, they’ve undoubtedly THE PETE FRYER BAND: Seacourt Bridge homeless charity Shelter, in the process bringing before but now cast adrift from his band, and Icelandic idyll and into a bad acid trip in some become the best party band in town, with Inn – Local blues veteran Pete plays his traditional sudden, overwhelming moments of profound some genuine musical legends to town for its joined today by members of Trembling Bells, he nightmarish high rise sprawl. Amid all this, her singer and pianist (and increasingly an Oxford Boxing Day show at his local boozer. loneliness. Don’t worry, the professionals will be annual one-day mini-festival. looks, and often sounds, like he’s dropped in from voice remains an eye of purity, even sweetness, historian of note) Stuart MacBeth the Louis back on the town again just as soon as the vomit After KONE’s sweetly lo-fi post-punk opening a Grateful Dead gig somewhere around 1972, his while retaining a hint of outright evil. Did we Armstrong / Cab Calloway-like host with and silly string have been swept up. th set, The Oscillation’s DEMIAN CASTELLANOS West Coast country rock tinged with a touch of mention it’s probably the most astonishing forty the most. And if the band themselves aren’t SUNDAY 27 SWITCH with SHY FX: O2 Academy – Into BLUES JAM: Fat Lil’s, Witney brings his set of drone-based guitar instrumentals to English folk and psychedelia, nudging into blues at minutes of music we’ve witnessed all year? Best as drunk as the audience these days, it hasn’t 2016 with drum&bass and jungle maestro Shy the party, his deep, brooding textures conjured from times, and even if he tends to wander too far from to just come out and say it: Gazelle Twin is a diminished their desire or ability to get the FX, back in the shire after hosting Truck Festival’s th myriad pedals to produce something unexpectedly the melodic core of his songs on occasions, his genius. joint seriously rocking. They’re joined by MONDAY 28 dance barn in the summer. pastoral, as if John Renbourn had been born forty voice – pure and quavering – wraps everything in a So credit to headliners PLAID for following that spiky, sparky eastern European folk dance- THE MIGHTY REDOX + THE PETE FRYER years later and grown up listening to Explosions in warm blanket of wistful reverie. and coming out triumphant: two guys sat behind cum-indie crew The Balkan Wanderers, one th BAND + DES BARKUS + CHEROKEE + TUESDAY 29 the Sky. The last time they were in Oxford – back in 2006 laptops might not initially seem much to sing – of the most enjoyable new bands to emerge BILBO BAGGINS SOUND SYSTEM: The STUART HENDERSON: The Bullingdon – Drones of a far darker hue fro TAMAN SHUD, – PART CHIMP earned themselves a reputation or dance – about, but once they introduce some on the local scene in 2015, plus Americana Wheatsheaf – Local swamp blues-psych-funk Free live jazz from trumpeter Stuart Henderson a band who describe themselves as “necro-psych” as the loudest band ever to visit town, so plenty of guitar into proceedings and up the beats, they’re ensemble The Knights of Mentis and soul, veterans The Mighty Redox host their traditional and band. and don’t disappoint on that score. In fact they’re the packed crowd have come armed with earplugs. off into full-on Orbital territory by way of Autchre rock&roll, swing, blues and smooch from NYE party, with stalwart local bluesman Pete OPEN MIC SESSION: The James Street astonishing: haunting incantations hovering above Not Nightshift of course – we welcome tinnitus and even a bit of Jean Michel Jarre, providing a Bicester’s Bang Tail Feathers. Fryer and more along for company. Tavern metronomic beats, scouring synths and dark wells like an old friend – and we needn’t have worried, rousing finale to the day. FREE RANGE: The Cellar – New Year’s Eve of gothic guitar noise, variously reminding us of for they remain just about within the realms of Ten hours of live music without a duff act, and party club night with Charris and Dubloke, Zyklon WEDNESDAY 30th Hawkwind, Clinic, Evil Blizzard and Hookworms, decency volume-wise, while reminding us of three that are genuine world beaters, now seems Sound & VLVT, Baughty Nath and Oli C – hosted but more than that sounding like a call to prayer what a superbly orchestrated noise machine they to be par for the course for Audioscope, which by Macular, Fio and Sandman. should surely be an essential date in every local st in a land far beyond redemption. Within minutes are – molten, supercharged riff after riff flows THURSDAY 31 HEADINGTON HILLBILLIES: The White of their set ending they’ve sold out of albums and from the stage, a sense of something weird and music lover’s calendar. That it’s in aid of such an Amateur Drinkers Night returns once again for Hart, Old Headington – NYE party gig with the they’re so good we wonder if Audioscope hasn’t trippy underpinning it all, in a similar way to how essential cause makes it all the more special, and more late-night enforced jollity, self-loathing and local Americana crew. peaked too early today. We’re more than happy to Butthole Surfers toyed with Black Sabbath’s tower as we stand shivering at the bus stop we consider be proved wrong later. of sound, and having suffered a stinking cold for ourselves lucky to have a warm house to go home Nightshift listings are free. Deadline for inclusion is the 20th of each month - no exceptions. Email KOGUMAZA’s sludgy, slow-mo dronescapes most of the week, afterwards we feel scoured and to as much as we’re thankful to have music like listings to [email protected]. All listings are copyright Nightshift Magazine and may keep things dirty in a La Dusseldorf sort of way, cleansed. Really, it doesn’t get better than this. this brought to our doorstep. not be reproduced without permission. but lack the impetus to take them from engaging Except it does. In the form of GAZELLE TWIN Dale Kattack stage, particularly singer Alex Grew, possessed of a phenomenal soul voice and a stage presence TWENTY ONE PILOTS that suggests he’s no shrinking violet on the O2 Academy LIVE dancefloor at weddings. The band’s sound is Live pop music is nothing without around the stage while dressed in rooted in Led Zeppelin’s take on the blues, but screaming and explosions. Twenty full skeleton costume. The duo’s while thousands of old gits hack out BB King One Pilots have both by the balancing of boy band melody photo: Jonny Moto riffs in pub corners the world over, Little Brother bucketload at tonight’s sold-out and choreography and something Eli ooze freshness and festival-size potential. If show, from the hysterical chorus altogether harder and cooler is one Grew occasionally looks and sounds like he’d that welcomes the Ohio duo neat trick, but it’s been well earned, fit a little too comfortably on X-Factor, and the onstage, to the spectacular smoke with years of touring under their band tread dangerously (albeit rarely) close to geysers that create a momentarily belts. So `Tear In My Heart is that Jamiroquai territory, mostly they’re infectious impenetrable fog at the front of the place where One Direction meets fun, and when Grew hollers “Grab me by the stage at regular intervals. So-Cal pop-punk, while elsewhere shoulders / We can dance all night,” you’re in no This is pure pop theatre from start songs are stretched between Keane mood to refuse. to finish, one carried off with a and Skrillex, or lead into cheesy, Esther Joy Lane – alone on stage bar a bank of surfeit of class by two versatile hands-in-the-air cabaret that electronic gadgetry – might be a comedown after musicians and professional show- wouldn’t shame Elton John. Other that but she’s similarly soulful, and she manages offs currently enjoying a seemingly than an unforgivable – though to turn her performance into a breathless flurry unstoppable skyward ride to thankfully brief – cover of `Can’t of button pushing as she coaxes her songs stadium-sized glory on the back of Help Falling In Love’, the only completely live from her synths and loops. If their fourth album, `Blurryface’, moments when the set dips are Little Brother Eli are going to keep you up all a US Number 1 – even in these on those occasional full-on piano night dancing, Esther’s going to sit you down straightened times, a serious ballads or semi-acoustic songs, like and break your heart, the rust and silk sultriness achievement. `The Judge’. of her voice plucking heartstrings with dark It’s easy to see why they’re so Highlight of the set is a beefed- night of the soul intensity, and if there’s an successful and yet so critically up `Lane Boy’ from `Blurryface’, overwhelming air of sadness about set highlight acclaimed; within the first two and a spectacular finale to `Trees’ `You Know’, we’d die happy if we could write a numbers - `Dirtyheavysoul’ and that sees Tyler and drummer Josh song half as good. `Stressed Out’, we’ve gone from Dun stop atop the front few rows The O2 is packed by the time Balloon Ascents crushing bass to loping reggae hammering out a tattoo on a pair arrive on stage to headline their own party, groove by way of some almost of floor toms before an explosion launching new single `Don’t Look Down’. Numanesque electro, rapid-fire of confetti cannons. Followed, of Thomas Roberts, in a dazzling shiny shirt, rap and giddy stadium pop, course, by plenty more screaming. contorts himself around the stage in a manner singer and pianist Tyler Joseph Next stop Wembley, surely. that’d shame Future Islands’ Samuel T Herring throwing himself acrobatically Dale Kattack even as his band drift through the languid groove of early set highlight `Cutout’. He’s a great, natural frontman, equal parts Marc Bolan, Jonny Greenwood, Gary Numan and Harry Styles, BEWARETHISBOY / 150 FRIENDS and his presence turns each song into a rock drama, allowing the band to get on with the task CLUB / LUKE KEEGAN of creating deceptively catchy pop songs from The Wheatsheaf shifting patterns and textures. There are still a A subdued Gappy Tooth Industries of the Depp-like charisma that few rough edges about the band, moments when gig night, as MC Richard Luke Keegan doesn’t, as we are BALLOON ASCENTS / ESTHER JOY LANE / the set threatens to run aground, but easy to proclaims it “an anti-Halloween unfailingly amused by songs like forget the band are still so young and have been party,” and we happily leave all `Sluts R Us’ and `I Don’t Believe LITTLE BROTHER ELI / LOUD MOUNTAINS together barely two years, and with each gig they the skeletons and ghouls in tricorn in Atheists’, and his idea for a O2 Academy seem to move up a few notches. The increasing hats to un-live it up in the bar and Reverse Kickstarter is a Spinal strength of their songs is evident in the new alley below. Tap hoot, where he’d use his own Does Oxford need another Americana act? alt.country to give us a short set of good ol’ boy single, a fidgeting electro-pop clamour, and its Luke Keegan, erstwhile bassist money to create an album, then Probably not, but given that Loud Mountains country rock that’s pitched partway between The more airy b-side, `Someone’. Already they’re for Robot Swans, is making his people can donate a set amount of are actually American (brothers Sean and Kevin Eagles and Bob Dylan. moving above and beyond the promise of those own bid for troubadour limelight, money to receive it. (“I’ll leave Duggan) we’ll let them off. They’re too likable Characteristically dapper in their waistcoats and early shows. and has the crowd warming to Neil that with you a moment”). to cast aside anyway, eschewing the alt. bit of suits, Little Brother Eli look born for the big Dale Kattack Finn chord changes and an excellent Talking of doing stuff in reverse, Paul Simon rolling pick technique Bewaretheboy seem to be pushing (think `Kathy’s Song’) during his for stardom after they’ve retired HOLLIS BROWN / BRUCE SUDANO solo acoustic set. What I’m not from work. Forming in 2014, sensing is any stardust despite an album due out in 2015 and The Bullingdon his strong voice, as he brings a UK tour and festivals booked Just a few doors up the road at the Academy tonight Killing Joke, punk full of melody, each telling a story. us songs from his debut album for 2016, they are setting their legends now in their mid-50s, are brutalising their audience’s ears and Having recently supported Counting Crows and now on the road for `Conker & The Wheel’, while the sights for the toppermost of the senses. Here at the Backroom a man a decade older, and also a legend, is over four months it’s their turn to headline. Lead singer Mike Montali woven CSN&Y vibe leads me to OAP poppermost. There’s a broad enthralling his audience in rather more gentle fashion. resembling, in looks at least, a young Elvis Costello, opens the set with want to see him set up a duo or trio. element of Billy Bragg joining Bruce Sudano, singer, songwriter, record producer, arranger and the vignettes of love lost and found, all with accompanying harmonies from We definitely need more acoustic the Dubliners in their un-Celtic spouse of Donna Summer for 32 years until her death in 2012, is on stage. the bassist Mike Wosczyk. They then ramp things up with songs from male trios in this world. Celticness, and live they do have He has co-written songs for Dolly Parton and Jermaine and Michael their new, fourth album `3 Shots’, such as album opener `Cathedral’ Someone who already has a band a twinkling roustaboutness that Jackson amongst others but tonight he sits with an acoustic guitar and and the title track, a comment on youth violence in America from the in 150 Friends Club but tonight belies their age, as Sue Mallet’s friends to sing songs of faith and personal crisis. perspective of a young teenager. Their set continues with Lou Reed is going solo is David Goo, from fine violin swoops and follows It’s just the beginning of another great night for Empty Rooms covers `Train Round The Bend’ and `Sweet Jane’, with a Neil Young Finsbury Park, who’s vaulting the melodies with uncanny grace Promotions, as Sudano is followed by New York’s Hollis Brown. The song thrown in for good measure. None of the covers feels out of place cabaret style of rock riff Spanish and emotion. On the night of the band, named after a Bob Dylan track, class themselves as an indie rock amongst their own material, and tonight’s show is as musically uplifting guitar and Jonathan Richman-style undead, zombie ceilidh could well band but are far more than that. They are a tight band who can move easily as the gig up the road is apocalyptic. Fantastic. No Joke. wryness utilises 150FC’s humorous be a new genre. between indie, pop, rock, Americana, blues and sweet acoustic, with songs Brett Silver raga-dub songs. He has much Paul Carrera COLTSBLOOD / FROM THE BOGS OF AUGHISKA / CHAINSAW ENEMA The Wheatsheaf There’s plenty of scope for debate as to player stops working and we get a semi what’s the bleakest time of the year – when comedic view of a computer screen error photo by Sam Shepherd the clocks go back and it’s suddenly dark menu before it’s finally turned off, leaving the before teatime; Christmas for those not band in appropriate darkness. It breaks a spell blessed with a happy home or family to call that they’ve so adeptly woven, though finale their own; the post-festive period when panto `Aod Si’, which sees the trio stood stock and pudding is but a memory and there’s still still as their drones loom ominously around two months of winter to come. But there can them, redresses the balance. People around be no denying tonight’s gig is the bleakest us seeing them for the first time are suitably show in Oxford this year. awestruck. Even on a difficult night, From Even the recently reformed Chainsaw the Bogs of Aughiska are bleakly brilliant. GUITAR / SONGWRITING TUITION Enema’s scatological punk won’t hold the Coltsblood bring the bleak in a very different later darkness at bay. If middle-aged men fashion, an endless, onward dirge that’s equal shouting stuff about poo over buzzsaw parts black metal and sheer sonic terror, Most styles, acoustic and electric, and bass guitars is your idea of musical heaven, Jemma McNulty casually unleashing hell Beginners welcome - full-time teacher here’s the band for you. Only the most po- from her guitar, while bassist John McNulty faced puritan couldn’t love a Beatles tribute growls, rasps and bawls in tormented author of How to Write Songs on Guitar number called `Front To Back Wiper’, and syncopation with the galley-slave beats. That and many other guitar books the discarded copy of Viz on the merch table they have tracks entitled `Valhalla Awaits’ seems an appropriate substitute for any CDs. and `Abyss of Aching Insanity’ suggests From The Bogs of Aughiska’s last visit they have a keen awareness of black metal’s www.rikkyrooksby.com to the Sheaf was a majestic masterclass in preposterousness, and they look nothing like [email protected] bleakness. Since then the band, from western the genre’s clichéd corpse paint clowns, but Tel. 01865 765847 Ireland, have expanded to a three-piece, they’re still utterly astonishing – intense and taking in heftier elements of black metal – a unrelenting, their forty-minute set played out genre they’ve never sat easily with – but as a single piece of music, sludgy, molten their sound remains resolutely desolate – riffs oozing from the PA at terrifying volume THE OXFORD RECORD as desolate as the monochrome footage to the point where when they finally finish of rugged cliff faces, ruined churches and you involuntarily stagger forward a step: the DVD & CD FAIR doomed wildlife that play out behind them. sheer brute force of the music having kept St ALDATES PARISH CENTRE TITUS ANDRONICUS / WASHINGTON IRVING arena there’s nothing to them beyond being a And for the most part it’s still magnificent you upright. 40 Pembroke St, St Aldates, OX1 1BP phenomenal rock band. – monstrous industrial drones, tales of And then of course, as we step out into the th The Bullingdon If there’s a story here, it’s simply that music, banshees and faeries, and barely-there death night it’s dark, and cold. It’s nowhere near Saturday 19 December when played with this level of passion and rasps reflecting the claustrophobic brutality midwinter yet, but the bleakness is well and 10am-4pm One look at tonight’s line-up on paper suggests song that manages to deal with grief and loss intensity, can make the soul soar. Frontman of the landscapes behind them. But then truly upon us. a literary festival rather than a gig, but judging whilst also sounding like bloody minded triumph Patrick Stickles is a ball of energy; sometimes technical issues come into play: the video Dale Kattack Rock/pop/jazz/soul/reggae/indie/all other genres by the massed amps on the backline, everything in adversity. There’s a strange kind of polite he’s a damaged soul, at others a firebrand Accessories/memoriabillia/books. seems to be in order. aggression entwined in their songs, so while preacher or a rambling barroom raconteur. The Brand new and back catalogue/Rare Vinyl Washington Irving have been making a name for Washingtom Irving might well spill your pint, it’ll common theme is a series of songs that crackle www.usrfairs.co.uk themselves recently, drawing comparisons to The only be because you’re dancing about a bit too with belief and the force of will. THE BREW Sex Pistols, The Clash, and, er, Mumford And much. There’s little in the way of subtlety tonight; The Bullingdon tigmus 2 Sons; evidently they’re a hard act to pin down. If As if naming themselves after a Shakespearian `Fatal Flaw’ hints at Springsteen, `Stranded’ flails Led Zeppelin were one of the greatest vocals are in such a “cummawn airboddih!” anything, they sound like the earliest incarnation tragedy wasn’t enough, Titus Andronicus’ like New York Dolls at their most inebriated, groups that rock music has ever seen, panto drawl, that when asked to sing along of Idlewild, when their blend of rock and folk latest album is a triple vinyl rock opera that and the bug-eyed `Dimed Out’ roars with barely exhibiting levels of intuitive ensemble to one tune nobody can make out the words was at its most potent. There’s no doubting that skirts around fact and fiction, and toys with the contained anger. There’s no pretention here at all, playing generally only found in the very (we alternated between “I’ve seen your there’s an element of Celtic folk to their songs and band’s own back catalogue. It’s fair to say Titus just abandonment in the majesty and history of best classical and jazz outfits, whilst face” and “1, Semen Place”). they possess a fine pop sensibility that is evident Andronicus have the potential to be the most passionate rock and roll. retaining an air of unhurried looseness But, that’s the bad side, and as we say, on the storming `We Are All Going To Die’, a pretentious band in existence, yet in a live Sam Shepherd and still sounding like Satan’s convoy this comes with the territory to a certain delivering juggernaut-loads of haunted extent, like greed in hip hop, homophobia pig iron direct to your eardrums. Trouble in reggae, and horrible bloody hairclips in HANG THE BASTARD / DESERT STORM / DRORE is, they were also not that bright, and so indie. The fact is that The Brew are a hugely many classic rock acts get the good mixed enjoyable band, with gallons of talent and a The Wheatsheaf up with the bad, proffering chunky riffs fair few ideas bubbling through. And energy. The night before this gig a gang of sick maniacs from some perverted death on the road in recent times. They’re both brutal and instantly accessible: and elegant licks alongside all that shit Blimey, you don’t see a band, grown-up cult had murdered 130 people in Paris, including 90 at an Eagles of Death classic rock influences from Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin forming the about hobbits and big willies and sex with classic rock or otherwise, having this much Metal gig in the city. There’s a quiet realisation among the audience for base upon which they spread a thick layer of sludgy stoner tar and brutish schoolgirls. fun onstage too often, leaping about like tonight’s Buried In Smoke show that any of us could have been any of them blues. There’s an Iron Maiden-like gallop about `Outlander’, while `Queen Grimsby trio The Brew are clearly heavily loons and infectiously buoying up the quiet – people killed simply for going out and enjoying live music, the unifying Reefer’ – a stand-outtrack from most recent album `Omniscient’ – allows influenced by vintage Zep and Cream, Monday night Haven Club crowd: we enjoyment of which is anathema to twisted zealots of all persuasions. Matt Ryan ample room to unleash his ogreish growl. and for the most part are outstanding, but wouldn’t be surprised if there was a reverse As such Drore’s debut performance feels suitably defiant: a sludgy, doom- Hang The Bastard up the brutality while dispensing with Desert Storm’s they do come with a side salad of cliché. phantom power set-up, and the band were laden outpouring of beastly riffage and gnarly vocals. Made up of two parts sense of melody. Their death-grind burrows into the earth down similarly There are little things like the drummer’s actually powering the venue. Plus there are Undersmile, one part Mutagenocide and one part Girl Power, the quartet’s dark tunnels to Eyehategod and Iron Monkey at times, while it can be easy obsession with holding one stick in the addictive grooves, from double-ply Deep pedigree is indisputable and they don’t disappoint, Taz Corona-Brown and to compare them to Oxford’s own masters of grinding glory Sextodecimo, air, like he’s acting out the poster for Star Purple stomps to elastic mid-era Floyd Tom Greenaway leading a line that veers into crust-punk at times and at its and if they can’t match that band’s bleak majesty you can hope that their Wars IV, or the singer and guitarist’s loose landscapes, in which you can easily lose ten best sounds like Dinosaur Jr’s `Don’t’ re-imagined with Linda Blair from unrelenting noise terror follows that pathetic gang of killers into the very neckerchief, which is probably supposed minutes. The Brew might be too frivolous The Exorcist on leads vocals. Stick that up your arse ISIS, and fuck off bowels of Hell and sticks around to torment them for all eternity. Because to conjure Jimi or Jimmy but mostly for some desiccated old Mojo readers, and while you’re about it. it doesn’t matter what vile, miserable doctrine they choose try to inflict on resembles Fred from Scooby-Doo, and too traditional for cutting edge kids, but if With Desert Storm drummer Elliot Cole due to fly to Paris the next day for everyone else, they’ll never kill rock and roll. It’s bigger and better and some more serious niggles, like a singing you relish old-fashioned rock music, volume a Marilyn Manson gig, you might forgive a few nerves but this is a bravura badder than they’ll ever be, and it will crush them. voice that is too thin to last 90 minutes of and fun, then you could hardly do better. performance from a band at the top of their game, reflecting their months Dale Kattack chest-beating rock action. Amusingly, the David Murphy THE ETHICAL DEBATING TEETH OF THE SEA / YOUNG KILLING JOKE MY CROOKED TEETH / SOCIETY / THE BECKONING FAIR CONSERVATIVE / LEE RILEY O2 Academy THE AUGUST LIST It doesn’t matter how many times you has always been the wonderfully euphoric ONES / TAULARD / JULIET & THE Modern Art Oxford witness Killing Joke live, nothing will ever sense of melody that underpins even The Jericho Tavern In a poorly lit former-industrial Headliners at tonight’s Burn the fully prepare you for just how awesome their most brutal moment, so `I Am the Reflecting the hushed atmosphere of the room, The RAGING ROMEOS basement tonight’s aural Jukebox show Teeth Of The Sea are they are. Where many of their old punk Virus’, the rasping, driving high point of August List’s opener could hardly be more stark or insular, The Library spectacular unravels first with an assault of cacophony and artistry contemporaries are cuddly national `Pylon’ becomes something of a singalong and the enthusiastic applause that follows it feels oddly Lee Riley. Accompanied by the that is equal measures krautrock, treasures, Killing Joke remain dangerous incantation, while their biggest hit, `Love incongruous. Straight after, though, they into `Forty Rod of Juliet and the Raging Romeos’ tonight, but their set is so fluid and opening scenes of Texas Chainsaw Fucked Up and Fuck Buttons. Epic outsiders. Where irony has done its best to Like Blood’, a rare moment of respite Lightning’, a rollicking, bordering on rockabilly, country frontwoman moves her body confident that no-one would guess. Massacre Riley’s enveloping concepts are rendered in distorted ruin rock music, Jaz Coleman and co. still from the oncoming storm, feels as delicate stomp, and a reminder of why they’re increasingly a aggressively across the stage in Creating beautiful harmonies off his drones take a more sinister waves that build and crash like the believe the apocalypse is imminent and are in this company as the rose in full bloom lot of people’s favourite local band. The contrasting yet awkwardly jagged movements. Her guitar strings with a screwdriver, turn. He’s taken a more delicate tide in a storm. The psychedelic acting accordingly. of its lyrics. complementary singing and playing styles of married voice is a well-developed carrier frontman Niall is a magnetic approach to his usual practice of tones of the guitar and trumpet float But while such singular vision might There are unexpected treats in the set, couple Kerraleigh and Martin Childs is what makes them of angry words that draws more presence in a room that barely torturing defenceless guitars for and weave through indeterminate have shunted them to the margins, their not least `Exorcism’, from their last Top an often magical experience. That and the simple but people off the cold Cowley Road fits his full height. Caressing the this outing and it’s all the more walls of noise that are occasionally popularity, and influence, have grown 20 album, `Pandemonium’, but it’s `War carefully considered arrangements of songs, where even the into the Library’s basement room. ceiling, he sings out over aching powerful for it. At times he creates punctuated by screaming vocals lately – tonight’s gig is in the O2’s larger Dance’, `Eighties’ and `Pssyche’ that fuel shake of a tambourine evokes images of rattlesnakes as they By the time the band clear the stage yet driven post-punk structures what could be an intentional of such ferocity that I am glad of downstairs venue following their two the moshpit’s fire and fury the most; from reflect the desoltauion of the American dustbowl on songs for Taulard it’s already physically of synth, bass and drums. Their foley track for the horror depicted the fuzz pedal between me and the previous visits upstairs, while new album Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails to Metallica, like `High Town Crow’. Martin’s dulcet voice plays off impossible for any more people music has yet to be released into behind him, at others he seemingly singer. `Pylon’ is their highest chart placing Killing Joke’s molten industrial noise Kerraleigh’s sharper tones, while his light-fingered acoustic to squash into the small packed harsh wilds of the internet so their renders the fear and panic of the Teeth of the Sea are a band that for over 20 years. If you imagine such has captured the imaginations of rock strumming heightens the quiet menace of her drone box. room, new audience members next outing should be eagerly film’s characters into an organic have changed dramatically over renewed success would make them happy, music’s finest savages and still sounds When Martin announces a cover of a 1930s country gospel instead cheerfully sitting on the anticipated. dronescape. I may never sleep the years, but all their elements you obviously don’t know Killing Joke. irresistible. Peerless amid even these number, “because we want to to keep up with what the kids stairs before the entrance and trying The Ethical Debating Society again, but I sure will have a come together into one continuous The original line-up – Jaz, alongside though is `Requiem’, a majestic hymn to are listening to,” it’s a self-depracating appreciation that The to translate this energetic French are a colourfully dressed trio of pleasant ringing in my ears. tapestry that even without Youth, Geordie and `Big’Paul Ferguson the end of days and a song that sounds like August List are lost in their own world. That they allow us to synth-punk and catch a glimpse of Londoners with a riot grrrl heart More horror soundtracking from (intelligible) lyrics conveys some – are all in their mid-50s now, but age nuclear conflagration warming up for its peep into it at times is a privilege. the action past the tattooed arms of who call out various forms of Young Conservative. If you have idea of narrative and intention. will never mellow them. They slam into big finale. Self-deprecation is something Jack Olchawski – aka My the person the next step down. bullshit for twenty minutes of loud, ever seen an 80s Hollywood There are quiet post-rock-y their set with the force and intent of a tank One day, inevitably, Killing Joke will die. Crooked Teeth – similarly specialises in, and in doing so Having made a reputation for angry DIY pop. Jagged guitars horror film, you know what YC moments that draw the audience through a house, with `The Wait’ from But they will never fade away. This is one avoids the self-pity that marks out too many solo acoustic putting on free punk, noise and and frenzied drums underscore sounds like. Every trope is there: closer but for every one of those their seminal debut album, and things band that is going out in a blaze of glory, songsmiths. He even apologises for playing a love song – generally alternative acts Smash their loud narratives as the crowd minor chord organ, Terminator there is a section that could easily rarely let up from there. brighter than a thousand suns. “falling in love can do terrible things to songwriters,” he Disco nights are bound to be well- sweats from head-banging and pulsing synth bass and artificial be described as happy hardcore Perhaps Killing Joke’s greatest strength Dale Kattack notes, but when he sings the lines “I mean everything to attended, but its tight organisation polite apologies are swapped for the drum sounds like those on from hell. someone,” you’re right there on his side. Jack’s at his best and exciting selection of new coats trampled underfoot. It seems your Fisher Price ‘My First They’re hugely enjoyable, if a when he cranks things up a notch though; his opener about bands from all over are a massive something special is stirring in Keyboard’. YC’s set isn’t bad; in little baffling at times. Bands this a road trip that he didn’t go on finds his voice dancing over draw. The Beckoning Fair Ones Oxford’s loudest Library. fact as a homage to those lauded noisy and obtuse don’t usually KESTON COBBLERS CLUB the guitar melody, and he can be passionate without being are playing one of their first gigs Celina MacDonald soundtracks it’s near flawless, vary their sound this much but if overwrought, altogether an engaging performer. Even when but without the matching slasher you have broad horizons and want The Bullingdon he does slip into the tropes of too many acoustic artists, his movie and ill-fated high school something decidedly different, you One of the joys of going to a live jolly, however, would be to do the band voice just about carries him through, and we’ll always have PRIDES stereotypes it’s a little naff, and not really should try Teeth Of The Sea. performance is that you get a clear glimpse a severe injustice. Tracks such as ‘Lazy time for anyone who sings songs about the fear of one day the nostalgia it’s aiming for. Matt Chapman Jones of what it is, truly, that informs an artist’s Days’, taken from 2012’s `One, For becoming an inanimate object, without dipping into trite O2 Academy sound. Seeing The Wytches for the first Words’, is a more subdued affair than the observational comedy. There’s a lot to be said for the your heart.” time, for example, asserted their carnal, majority of the set, offering a moment Dale Kattack publicity a television appearance Where Prides really shine live is in STRIKING MATCHES volatile tendencies, proving their real of respite and reflecting the band’s more can give musicians. Following the glistening production and the strength emanates from their sheer force, nuanced side. ‘Won’t Look Back’, on the the 2014 Commonwealth Games interweaving jittering guitar and O2 Academy while Foxygen earlier this year emphasised other hand, forcefully showcases Matthew in Glasgow, Prides performed synth lines. Although sometimes it Country music and the Academy when an artist is so good in that their wild psychedelic inclinations in place Lowe’s vocal talents, proving preferable `Messiah’ at the Closing Ceremony, feels like the members are out of don’t usually mix so it’s pleasing arena it’s hard to bring it across of their more restrained aesthetic on record. to his harmonising with his sister Julia, and were thus exposed to thousands kilter, when they pull it back together to see the upstairs room venue on studio recordings, and I can’t Expressing neither of the above sentiments, and giving the performance a polished and of new fans across the globe. they show what a polished machine looking like it’s at capacity. help but feel a bit let down with Keston Cobblers Club tonight instead well-practised kick. It is the songs featured Fifteen months on, the band have they are. Highlights came in a cover The PR wagon has obviously their debut album on that basis reinforce that, for all of the pop and indie from their newest release which feel the released their debut album, `The of Ellie Goulding’s `On My Mind’, been successfully rolling off (probably unfairly). It didn’t finding a place on their most recent album, strongest, aside from, oddly, the title track, Way Back Up’, and have a song where guitar riffs are allowed to the back of Striking Matches’ feel like the duo I’d seen almost `Wildfire’, their roots lie are firmly in folk, ‘Wildfire’, which disintegrates into little featured on the coveted FIFA 15 fly free over humming synths, and songwriting credits on Nashville a year before, and herein also and all the joyous eccentricities that genre more than a blunted sing-a-long. Maybe soundtrack. Not bad for just over a when they strip the music down and their appearances at C2C lies the problem with their show brings with it. it’s suited to a larger venue, but regardless, year’s work. Tonight’s Oxford show for tracks like the spectacular ‘I Festival, capitalising on the UK’s tonight. When you’ve got a really Such a defined area of influence doesn’t it betrays the considered melodies which is one in a string of 23 dates around Should Know You Better By Now’. burgeoning country and roots accomplished live acoustic act you dampen tonight’s proceedings, however. typically exist at the heart of everything the UK, but they show no signs of With such production-heavy music scene. want to enjoy the quality but it’s Rather, it informs the vitality and the band do, and doesn’t do them any flagging anytime soon. bands sometimes disguise scruffy Having seen them blow Martina severely degraded when the sound excitement that’s ingrained in everything justice on this occasion. Thankfully, such Bounding onstage after an songwriting and pitchy vocals, McBride out of the water with system is seemingly set up to blow Keston Cobblers Club do. Fittingly an oversight is rare, as the band prove introduction by the way of ‘I Just but by including this in their set their CMA Songwriters Circle ear-drums with loud pop and rock supported by Wildflowers, who sport a themselves more than adept at relaying Can’t Wait To Be King’ from The Prides quash such suspicions, performance in London last year acts. more traditional, Americana-inspired form their spirited brand of folk to this evening’s Lion King, the trio have energy demonstrating bucketloads of I was really looking forward to Usually I’d be moaning that they of folk, Keston Cobblers Club initiate an audience. levels turned up from the get go. genuine talent. more of the same. Take away all only played a short set, which acts atmosphere of joviality seemingly with Closing amid a rousing rendition of ‘Toto Launching into ‘Higher Love’ they Closing with the track that the commercial success with the as a sort of whirlwind tour of their total ease. From the upbeat, exuberant Africa’, in which both Keston Cobblers set the tone for the entire evening catapulted theme into the spotlight, Nashville songwriting credits and debut album supplemented with aesthetic of ‘Contrails’, which could have Club and Wildflowers form a circle within with an exuberant, uplifting chorus ‘Messiah’, you leave assured that they are genuinely superb guitarists covers of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Never sat comfortably on the last Fun record, to the belly of the crowd to perform, the night and whirring electronics. Prides are trying hard to make and musicians, not country-pop Going Back Again’ and Robert the excitable ‘lift-off’ competition among ends as effortlessly jubilant as it had begun. Their short set is scattered with sure they’re not just a flash in the wannabes struggling to master Johnson/Cream’s ‘Crossroads’, but crowd members, the band successfully The Cobblers are indeed no one trick pony, awkward on stage banter, including pan, and doing a damned good more than three chords and a bit of in this case I’ll be glad and stick to adopt the atmosphere within the though they are a true folk band. And when robot imitations and the declaration job at ensuring they’re a name to a strum. being selective about where I see Bullingdon, and transform it into their own it’s this much fun, why would they ever that “there’s no reason you can’t remember. Part of the excitement at seeing them next time. ecstatic Cobblers party. choose to deviate. write a sexy song about breaking Hannah Mylrea Hemmings them live again is that inevitably Jo Cox To purely describe this evening as a wild Ben Lynch INTRODUCING.... Nightshift’s monthly guide to the best local music bubbling under WATER PAGEANT Who are they? Electro-folk-pop duo Water Pageant are Nick Tingay (vocals / guitar), and Lizzy McBain (keyboards / vocals). The band began as Nick’s solo act in 2012, playing low-key gigs in and around Oxford. Tiring of the solitary musician life, he expanded to a three-piece with Lizzy and drummer Mike Monnaghan from The Ralfe Band, though “austerity measures” have since lead to them downsizing to their current two-piece format. 2015 was the year the band finally came into their own, being played on BBC Introducing, 6Music and Radio 3’s Late Junction, being picked to play The Punt, Truck Festival and Oxjam, playing at the O2 Academy and this month releasing their debut album, `Outlines’. What do they sound like? event at Fusion Arts – a hidden gem of a venue. Two years later he has Pensive, haunting, atmospheric electronic folk-pop to which such poncy played The Royal Albert Hall. We take no responsibility for that.” music journo words like ethereal and rarefied might aptly be applied. Nick’s If they could only keep one album in the world, it would be: sweet, almost keening voice mixes with Lizzie’s gentle harmonies and “`Hounds of Love’ by Kate Bush. `The Ninth Wave’ is probably the most subtle keyboard hums and swirls and it’s deceptively passionate for all its varied, yet conceptually complete piece of music I’ve encountered. It takes innate stillness. In Nick’s own words, “we specialise in a realm that lurks up the whole of the second side of the album and I never tire of it.” somewhere between alt-folk and 80s synth dreamscape.” When is their next local gig and what can newcomers expect? What inspires them? “Tuesday the 8th December, supporting Julia Meijer’s single launch at the “From a writing perspective I’m often pulling on ideas surrounding Jericho Tavern. Expect a minimalistic approach to begin with – essentially, Enlightenment era science as well as meteorological and agricultural silence – followed by a bit of sound, then a bit more sound, gradually themes. The idea behind `Catchpenny Tides’ was inspired by a Seamus swelling into sumptuous soundscapes that fill horizon and heart with Heaney poem combined with a visit to a retro amusement arcade on rainbow-like glee.” Southwold pier; very quirky.” Their favourite and least favourite things about Oxford music are: Career highlight so far: “Favourite thing: its intimacy. Least favourite: its intimacy.” “Being played on Radio 3’s Late Junction last month….twice!” You might love them if you love: And lowlight: The Low Anthem; Bon Iver; Beach House, Joy Zipper; Papercuts, Sharon “Playing to zero people at a local gig. A few years ago, thankfully.” Van Etten, Jeff Buckley. Their favourite other Oxfordshire act is: Hear them here: “Charlie Cunningham. We helped put his first gig on at a pop-up art/music waterpageant.co.uk

DR SHOTOVER: Christmas Stockings THIS MONTH IN OXFORD T H E W H E A T S H E A F Well hell-EAU, my dear young lady, and welcome to the East Indies Club bar. ALL OUR YESTERDAYS MUSIC HISTORY Friday 4th December – KLUB KAKOFANNEY I say, warm in here, isn’t it? Pull up a PHEW. [Dr S runs a finger round his collar in the manner of Kenneth Connor in Carry On Ogling, while leaving his 20 YEARS AGO The Hobgoblin. Local names in the gig guide can’t actually remember what we did yesterday. included Age of Bonsai, Soulcraft, Charlie Don’t UK:ID PHYAL + SILK ROAD 8pm/£5 other hand just a little too long on the barstool in question]. Oops, SO sorry, All good things must come to an end, and so it was Saturday 5th December – IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC ah-ha-ha… silly me. Comfy now? Are those stockings or tights? Good, good that in a press release from Creation Records just Surf, Manic Mind Circus, Loopy and Swim the 5 YEARS AGO – thought so. Just checking. Now, what can I get you to drink, you luscious before Christmas in 1995, Ride announced they were Atlantic – who are making a one-off comeback next month. Sticking with end of year Top 20 thingies, 2005’s CHARMS AGAINST THE EVIL EYE little peach princess…? A festive Madeira, m’dear? Or will you join me in a to split up after the release of their fourth album, was a controversial, close-call, with the Nightshift tumbler of Chateau Starkers with some powdered rhino horn on the side? `Tarantula’. Tensions between Mark Gardener and editor’s favourite, `Spanish Sahara’ by Foals, beaten SWEET PINK + 31 HOURS + FLEXI + ALAN JAGGS 8pm/£6 Bedingfield, I say BEDINGFIELD, bring Miss Popsy a stiff drink while I adjust Andy Bell has been simmering for a while over the Wednesday 9th December – BURN THE JUKEBOK 10 YEARS AGO by the writing team’s popular choice, `Heroin my clothing. Ahh, that’s better. Say what, Bedingfield? Why are you looking direction of the band’s sound, with Mark having More farewells from bands who would later come Dance’ by Little Fish. In truth it was something of so f***ing gormless? What do you mean, Dr Shotover never, ever buys been working with dance producer Paul Oakenfold, back in December 2005; this time it was Sexy a vintage year with Stornoway’s `Fuel Up’ in third WITCHING WAVES + ALNEGATOR 8pm/£5 RATTLE anyone a drink??? How dare you, you insolent snivelling bar-steward? Just and came to a head when neither would allow their Breakfast, bowing out with a final hurrah at The place, and top 10 placings for The Epstein (`Held Friday 11th December for that, I shall buy a round for every f***er in the bar! Oh hang on - chiz, songs to be mixed in alongside the other’s on the Zodiac, the quintet making their reunion return last You Once’); Fixers (`Amsterdam’); Dead Jerichos CURSES, what am I saying??? Quick, Gleeson, help me create a diversion! forthcoming album. It spelled the end for the band month with a sold-out show at The Wheatsheaf. (`She Says the Word’); The Winchell Riots (`These INVISIBLE VEGAS TANNERS POOL 8pm/£6 Um, ah, I say… isn’t that Thom Yorke over there playing darts with Bono? that first took Oxford music to the global stage, A band we’d dearly love to see just one more time Young Arms’); Black Hats `(Just Fall’); Dial F th Saturday 12 December [Heads turn… Dr S hastily dons an ill-fitting Santa Claus onesie and legs it although we now know the story has a happy ending, are Fell City Girl, whose `Weaker Light’ topped For Frankenstein (`Wes Vega’), and Trophy Wife out of the back door, leaving Miss Popsy looking sultry at the East Indies with the quartet’s reformation exactly a year ago. Nightshift’s end of year Top 20, sitting majestically (`Microlite’). Club bar… This being December Nightshift compiled its REIGN OF FURYGEHTIKA + RETRIBUTION 8pm/£5 atop a pile that included Harry Angel’s `Death Plenty of big names in town this month, with Wednesday 16th December – IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC meanwhile traditional end of year Top Tracks, topped this Valley of the Dolls’; Young Knives’ `Coastguard’; indie veterans Echo & the Bunnymen and The The Aureate time round by Radiohead’s awesome `Street The Relationships’ `English Blues’ and The Wedding Present at the O2 Academy, along with Act appear Spirit (Fade Out)’ – “monumentally chilling,” KHAMSINA + MYTHHS 8pm/£6 Factory’s `Servant’s Hand’, as well as entries for Neville Staples and Hawkwind, while Frank CRYSTALLITE dressed as according to the write-up. Pipped to the post was Friday 18th December – GAPPY TOOTH WINTER WARMER Supergrass, Junkie Brush, Dive Dive, Deguello, Turner and Martha & the Vandellas were at The festive elves The Mystics’ `Star’, followed by `Mrs Hoover’ by Big Speakers, Nervous_Testpilot, Sextodecimo, Regal, giving it one last go at being Oxford’s largest and launch The Candyskins; `Ulcer’ by Skydrive; `Desert’ by AFTER THE THOUGHT Holiday Stabbings, The Walk Off, Twizz dedicated music venue before it would become a BALLOON ASCENTS into a cover Wonderland; `I’d Like to Know’ by Supergrass; Twangle & Patsy Decline, The Mighty Redox, Christian Life centre. ZURICH + THE JON COHEN EXPERIMENTAL 8pm/£5 of Greg Lake’s `Miss Pritchard’ by The Bigger the God; `Arc Asher Dust, Eliot and The Evenings. Wall-to-wall Amid all this glamour, Nightshift’s abiding Saturday 19th December – XMAS PARTY with JABRONI SANDWICH PERFORMING AS… I Believe Weld’ by Blue Kite and `Yeah’ by Dustball, quality, innit? memory of the month was the doomed Gappy In Father alongside entries for Ether, Arthur Turner’s In a light month for news, it was announced that Tooth Industries Winter Warmer weekend, which Christmas… Lovechild?, Dubwiser, Thurman, Beaker and Elton John would play a show at The Kassam saw the heaviest snowfall in the county for over a THE RED HOT CHICKEN DIPPERS Pretend Friends. MORE TBC 8pm/£6 fake snow Stadium next summer, while highlights of a decade, and involved a six-mile trudge back home Thursday 31st December – KLUB KAKOFANNEY NEW YEARS EVE PARTY falls… all is With the local venue scene back on the up after relatively quiet gigging month included Opeth up to Kidlington through the white-out after all the right with the months of issues, notable gigs this month including at Brookes Union, Skunk Anansie’s Skin at The buses were cancelled and only three of the booked THE MIGHTY REDOX THE PETE FRYER BAND world]. synth-pop stars The Human League at The Apollo Zodiac, as well as Skindred at the same venue. acts could make it to the venue. We did, however, Next month: (as it was then); Welsh psych-pop heroes Gorky’s Meanwhile, who remembers Corvids, The Green, have a small bottle of brandy for company and the CHEROKEE + DES BARKUS & FRIENDS 8pm/£8 Bing Sings. Miss Popsy: ‘Sorry, Mr Lee, not interested. I’m awaiting Zygotic Mynci at The Zodiac, and leading UK Bombshoe, Chinese Finger Trap, 20/20 Vision and walk along Queen’s Lane was a bit like being in a The Wheatsheaf 129 High Street, Oxford OX1 4DF / www.facebook.com/wheatsheaf.oxford Walt Disnae. …The Return of Dr Shotover’. straight-edge hardcore bruisers Understand at The Mon£yshots? Suffice to say, we do. Even if we Dickens novel for fifteen minutes bridge connecting New York and Yarnton. hurl Martha the new Nightshift kitten (who’s taken to chewing on the speaker cable, perhaps as a way to make it all go away) SAMUEL EDWARDS out of the office window if it would make DEMOS Did we briefly mention it was all getting it all stop just for a few minutes. Instead it Sponsored by Demo of the Month wins a free half day a bit dark a few minutes ago? Well, hey, goes on. And on. And fucking on. For hours. at Soundworks studio in Oxford, right on time here’s a young fellow with a Days. Years. Mountain ranges rise and fall. courtesy of Umair Chaudhry. Visit song called `Darkness’. The wintry gothic Ancient species of crustaceans develop www.umairchaudhry.co.uk/nightshift splendour just keeps coming. Erm, except sentience and depart for Mars. Oxford it doesn’t. This is less bleak, icy beauty, United finally get promotion to League more sullen, drizzle-soaked trudge. “Never crimes, so you’re damn lucky you haven’t 1 and still it goes on, noodling away like sleeps / Has no feelings, never sleeps / suffered the same fate, Rob, old chap. And a twat. Actually, we jest; it finished long DEMO OF Feeds on young souls / Loves the theory of the only reason you haven’t is because we before Oxford United got anywhere near 01865 240250 black holes,” mumbles Samuel in an ode really rather like this. Musically it’s lushly- promotion. And Henry, we’ve rung the rest to something that’s, like, really bad, right? THE MONTH orchestrated homebaked semi-acoustic of the band and they’ve agreed that at least This thing, or person, or indeterminate goth-pop but when he starts singing it all one of them will always stay with you from force, has “got pain in his right hand / goes a bit Ian Curtis, and we’re almost now on, just to make sure this kind of thing Sorrow in his left.” So, like, be careful TOO MANY POETS tempted to use the word Stentorian for a never happens again. out there, kids. It’s all an insipid, torpid Was it only last month we reviewed Too second time in a single demo page. It takes drone, truth be told, about a trillionth Many Poets’ one-song demo and said it was some skill to come over all SERIOUS and as meaningful or intense as we imagine okay if nothing wildly special? Well here’s GRIEFY and GOTHIC and still sound it’s meant to be. But let’s not dwell on a more fulsome follow-up, and it’s a far poetic and have great tunes and not be in THE DEMO this initial misfire, but move swiftly on darker and shinier beast. TMP are a band any way pompous, but it’s something Rob to some more of Daniels songs. Come who do seem to provoke a fervent reaction carries off for the most part, particularly on on, there’s approximately 120 of them to DUMPER one way or another for some strange reason the quite gorgeous `Bottom Of The Glass’, choose from on his Revernation page. 120 – a good friend of ours whose opinion we a song you could almost imagine Andrew songs! We could be here all night, and into respect described them as her favourite Eldritch coming up with on an old acoustic THE WRONG WAY tomorrow. But surely at least one of them live band in Oxford, while one scribe of guitar and a small choir of banshees in his must be good, right? And it’s our, frankly this parish was so reviled by them he could kitchen after a long night on the Shiraz. BACK Herculean, task to unearth that diamond Christ Alfuckingmighty, is some fucker only describe them by using the foulest of In fact, the whole five-song demo is so in the rough. But where to start? Where to deliberately trying to take advantage of toilet language. We guess much of what impressive that Nightshift’s new kitten, you make of them depends on whether finish? And what happens if Daniel goes our pre-Christmas good cheer and feelings Martha McSqueak, sits serenely next to the .co.uk you like portentous, gothy indie-rock. and adds more songs while we’re in the of goodwill to all men? It’s the only TURAN AUDIO speaker for its entirety, a look of wistful Professional, independent CD mastering middle of listening to all these ones? What explanation we can think of for getting Regular readers will remember we tend to contemplation on her normally impish if it never ends? You know when you’re a sent two demos of bedroom-made ambient feel fondly towards such stuff, particularly face. So anyway, Bright Young Nothing. Artists mastered in the studio last month include; kid and you get told to tidy your bedroom jazz-funk in the same month. As with at this time of year when it’s dark before Maybe not all that bright when it comes to but it’s such a filthy midden that you simply Henry previously, we know Rob Mitchell SANGUINE HUM, KANADIA, JC FENTON, THE dinner time and we’ve got so much red following simple instructions, but on this don’t know where to begin? That’s how we – the man behind this and a vaguely near DRUNKEN RAMBLINGS, GAVIN HAMMOND, wine in our bloodstream we’re in a state rare occasion we’re prepared to forgive and feel. So we’re going to go and lie down for neighbour of ours – to be a fine fellow, of perma drunk-depression. Which makes forget, because you’ve made us very happy, PINK FAIRIES, JEFFERSON STARSHIP, JETHRO a bit instead and hope it all goes away by one who’s played in some decent bands demo opener `Immobile’ here something in a sad kind of way. We’d still like our TULL, RUNAWAYS, JOHNNY CASH, LOU REED, the time we come back. previously, but we also remember he’s of a jump around the office anthem, an £1.11 back, though. overwrought gothic scowl of a song sent us some music before that ended up STONE TEMPLE PILOTS, THE METEORS, that could be The Twilight Sad with the in the Demo Dumper, and he’s fully aware SWEET, THE DUEL, MICHAEL LEE. Scottish accent replaced by some Stentorian LOFTY of our unbending loathing for this sort of THE NEW YOUTH Being in a good band does not and never musical filth, so he’s got no excuses and 01865 716466 [email protected] groan and a heady sense of despair. Did “A hardcore band based in Yarnton and will excuse shit, patience-testing side we feel no need to apologise to him for we say “jump around the office”? We New York City” isn’t something you projects. Particularly shit, patience-testing landing him in the review toilet once again meant “collapse into a quivering, weeping read very often, the mid-Oxfordshire side projects that involve ambient jazz- as he first attempts some kind of half-arsed heap.” `The Worst Intention’, meanwhile metropolis hardly renowned for its thriving funk. Henry Soothill, the chap behind Lofty, `Theme From Shaft’ abomination, vaguely COURTYARD is nominally lighter, but only in the way punk scene in the same way America’s plays guitar in Balloon Ascents, for which crossed with some even more half-arsed that Echo & the Bunnymen are lighter bustling east coast township is. Even more RECORDING STUDIO we thank him and admire him. But left Herbie Hancock kind of electro-jazz, 2 Tracking Rooms. Superb Control Room with: than Bauhaus. It’s still the middle of the intriguing is the fact that guitarist Patrick alone for only a few hours by his bandmates before going the full James Taylor Quartet NEVE 5106 32 Channel Console. ProTools HD3 night music-wise. Talking of which, there’s Alexander – who seems to be the Yarnton Henry turns into Mr Bontempi Funk Monty, polishing off any last semblance MTR 90 2” 24 Track Tape Machine. Vintage EMT Plate Reverb goblets of blood-red wine to be drunk and connection here – briefly played in The Loads of Brilliant Outboard Gear Beast, something that mustn’t be allowed of dirt the funk might have under its howling at the moon to be done. Cheers to Wedding Present. That band seems to be Loads of Great Mics, Vintage and Modern to continue. Having previously sent us a fingernails and replacing it with a photo Old School Akai/Roland Synth Modules Too Many Poets for providing a suitably a bit of an influence on this set of songs, solo instrumental demo of glitchy ambient of Mary Whitehouse’s idea of a nice quiet Upright Piano, Fender Rhodes, Amps and great vibes. witchy soundtrack. The New Youth’s punk more in line with electronica in need of a suitably eerie horror Sunday afternoon. Imagine the most inane, Residential recording studio in Sutton Courtenay. the noisier end of 90s indie noise than film to soundtrack, we’d hoped for far unnatural thing you might ever see for sale www.courtyardrecordingstudio.co.uk anything too militant or terrifying. There’s In-house producer: Ian Davenport www.ian-davenport.co.uk better than this collection of stultifyingly – kale yogurt, or hessian scatter cushions or a bit of Ramones in `Bikinis Not Bras Email: [email protected] sterile noodling. Opener `Bag For Life a Rosemary & Thyme DVD boxset. Yeah? BRIGHT YOUNG (It’s The Summer)’ but even here it tends Phone: Kate on 01235 845800 In A Bin’ is vaguely passable, even if it Well this is the soundtrack music for the more towards the gruffly melodic than a sounds like a bedroom-bound attempt to advert for all of them. All at once. And if NOTHING speedfreak rampage, while you might even And hey, since we’re feeling so wintry ape Goldie’s mid-90s ambient drum&bass, you tolerate this, you’re getting all of those detect a hint of Half Man Half Biscuit and midnighty, let’s keep the gothic mood but thereafter we’re into soporific jazz-funk things for Christmas, while we get a six- about their genially rough-hewn pop thrash, going with this elegantly forlorn offering wandering of the sort you people know litre bottle of vintage port and a fucking or Idlewild in their occasionally doleful from a chap called Rob Mead, a fellow Nightshift absolutely fucking adores. He’s huge straw to drink it through. The resulting demeanour. Truth be told you’d probably who, having obviously neglected to read even got a track called `Mindless Groove’, hangover can’t be anywhere near as painful never guess they were American if you’d the instructions at the bottom of the page as if he’s deliberately taunting us, pushing as having to sit through those last two not been told, and we like the idea of a properly has forgotten to include a contact us to a breaking point where we’d gladly demos again. gang of Shire-born indie kids pitching up Three state of the art rehearsal rooms. number with his CD, and then compounded in the Big Apple and teaching the city’s his mistake by failing to put enough For bookings. pierced and tattooed hardcore crowd about postage on the envelope, so we’re forced Send demos for review to: Nightshift, PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU, or email links to Call Jamie on 07917685935 tea-drinking etiquette and how complaining to pay £1.11 for the privilege of listening [email protected], clearly marked Demos. IMPORTANT: no review without about the weather is as valid as railing Glasshouse studios, Cumnor, Oxford to his music. Some poor fucker landed in a contact address and phone number; no more than four tracks on a demo please. If you against The System. Take it from us, twenty glasshousestudios.org the Demo Dumper last month for similar can’t handle criticism, please don’t send us your demo. And don’t fucking whine about your years from now there’ll be a six-lane sky review on Twitter either, else we’ll print a screenshot and make you look like a prize tit. the venue collective present

Wed 27th January sat 20th february the bullingdon, oxford the bullingdon, oxford

Fri 18th March Wed 26th October the bullingdon, oxford the bullingdon, oxford

Wed 4th May o 2 academy, oxford

/thevenuecollective @TheVenueCollect For tickets for all shows visit www.seetickets.com