[email protected] @NightshiftMag nightshift.oxfordmusic.net Free every month NIGHTSHIFT Issue 233 December ’s Music Magazine 2014

“Our riffs would kick Godzilla’s arse” OXFORD DUPLICATION CENTRE Also in this issue: [email protected] Office: 01865 457000 Mobile: 07917 775477 Supporting Oxfordshire Bands with RIDE - Return of the OX 4! Affordable Professional CD Duplication Jonny come home! FANTASTIC BAND RATES star announces Oxford show ON ALL SERVICES Professional Thermal Printed CDs Full Colour/Black & White GAZ IS BACK - second due soon Silver or White Discs

Design Work Support Oxford remembers Philip Guy Davis Digital Printing Packaging Options Introducing Charlie Cunningham Fulfilment plus Recommended by Matchbox Recordings Ltd, Poplar Jake, Undersmile, Desert Storm, Turan Audio Ltd, Nick Cope, Prospeckt, Paul Jeffries, Alvin All your Oxford music news, reviews and gigs Roy, Pete The Temp, Evolution, Coozes, Blue Moon and many more... NIGHTSHIFT: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU. Phone: 01865 372255 NEWS Nightshift: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU Phone: 01865 372255 email: [email protected] Online: nightshift.oxfordmusic.net

THE OXFORD PUNT returns next workshops and children’s activities. year for another showcase of local Tickets from Truck Store or music talent. The annual festival www.woodfestival.com takes place on Wednesday 13th May across five venues in Oxford THE DREAMING SPIRES city centre – The Purple Turtle, release their second album, The Cellar, The Wheatsheaf, The `Searching For The Supertruth’, on RIDE have reformed for a series of shows in 2015. The Turl Street Kitchen and The White February 23rd next year. The new legendary Oxford band will play live together for the first time in 20 years, Rabbit. album, on Clubhouse Records, is the having split in 1996 after the release of their fourth studio album `Tarantula’. The Punt is open to all Oxfordshire follow-up to last year’s `Brothers In The reunion was officially announced by and bands and musicians from any Brooklyn’ debut. The vinyl format on Sean Keaveny’s show on 6Music on the 19th November, although a genre. Any acts wanting to play will be a two-disc, 13- gatefold photo of a banner for Primavera Festival in Barcelona bearing Ride’s should send a link to online music LP, including the three tracks from name had done the rounds on social media the previous day, heightening to [email protected]. the current digital EP, `Darkest anticipation of an announcement. The band will play a series of gigs Please clearly mark your email Before the Dawn’. The album will and festival shows across the UK and Europe next summer, including Punt and include a contact phone also be available as a ten-track CD gigs at The Roundhouse in on the 24th May and a headline set number. All acts should be (at least or download. at Field Day on Sunday 7th June. Other dates include shows in Glasgow, partly) Oxfordshire based, can’t Recorded at their own Truck Manchester, Amsterdam and Paris, as well as an appearance at Primavera have played The Punt before and Studios and mixed by long-time Festival on the 29th May. The Roundhouse show sold out within minutes must be over 18 years old (sorry, associate Rowland Prytherch, of tickets going on sale on the 21st November. not our choice – it’s all down to the Robin and Joe Bennett are joined Formed in 1988 by Mark and Andy, along with Steve Queralt and Loz venue licences). by drummer Jamie Dawson and Colbert, Ride came to define the sound of the time, signing Last year’s sold-out event featured guitarist Nick Fowler, as well as to and scoring the label its first ever chart hit with sets from Vienna Ditto, Rawz, guests including St Etienne’s Sarah their eponymous debut EP. They went on to enjoy further chart success, Balloon Ascents, Flights of Helios, Cracknell, Jackie Oates, and Tony including two Top 5 . Debut album `Nowhere’ has come to be Hannah Bruce, Lee Riley and many Poole of Starry Eyed and Laughing. acknowledged as an indie classic. Intrinsically linked to the Oxford music more, while local acts who have The band play their regular New scene – and managed by Dave Newton whose Local Support magazine enjoyed early local exposure at The Year’s Eve party at the Rusty laid the foundations for Nightshift in the late-80s – they were the band Punt include Stornoway, Foals, Bicycle, Magdalen Road. who more than any put Oxford on the international music map, inspiring Young Knives, Spring Offensive and Radiohead and along the way. The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm DESERT STORM release their While Ride have gone to be an inspiration on subsequent generations of Band. third album on January 26th next year. bands, and have been dogged by questions of a reunion for years, they Deadline for entries is the 10th `Omniscient’ is out on Blindsight have always played down the possibility, their individual careers taking March. As ever a limited number Records, the follow-up to 2013’s precedent. Mark has pursued a solo career as well as running his OX4 (100) of all-venue Punt passes will acclaimed `Horizontal Life’. The ten- Sound production business; Andy formed Hurricane #1 after Ride split be on sale early in the New Year. track album was produced and mixed before joining Oasis and later ’s , while Loz by Jamie Dodd, who has worked has played drums with the reformed Jesus & Mary Chain and latterly Gaz WOOD FESTIVAL 2015 has with Orange Goblin, at Flesh & Bone Coombes. Steve left the music business behind completely. The quartet been confirmed for the 15th-17th Studios in Hackney. A track from did briefly reconvene in 2001 for the recording of a Channel 4 Pioneers May next year at Braziers Park, the new album, `Queen Reefer’, was show in tribute to , recording a twenty-minute jam session, near Ipsden. Early Bird Weekend streamed by Terrorizer this month. while Andy joined Mark and Loz onstage at The Cellar in 2003 for a run- Tickets go on sale on Monday 1st Talking about `Omniscient, the through of `Leave Them All Behind’. It was the disbanding of Beady Eye December. They’ve had a winter band said, “This album is a natural in October, though, that finally paved the way for the reunion so many freeze on the price, held at £65, plus progression from our previous local music fans have dreamed of. booking fee. 2015 will be WOOD’s releases; it has elements of , Year of the Bee, following on from sludge, stoner, and even this year’s Year of the Badger, so a bit of folk. We’ve mixed things up forward to seeing what other people confirmed for next year’s Desert expect plenty of bee-related stuff, a bit for a more interesting album think, come January.” Fest, which takes place across as well as all the usual music, – in our opinion. We’re looking Desert Storm have also been various venues in Camden from the 24th-26th April. They join Sleep, Red GAZ COOMBES releases his second solo album on the 26th January. Fang and Orange Goblin on the bill. `Matador’, the follow up to 2012’s `Here Come The Bombs’, is released on Visit www.desertstormband.com gatefold vinyl, CD and download on Hotfruit. for more news. The album was self-produced by Gaz at his home studio and Courtyard in Sutton Courtney; Gaz also played all the instruments on the ten tracks, HALF DECENT RELEASES A other than drums on four , played by Ride’s Loz Colbert, and synth NEW MIXTAPE this month. The on one song, played by brother Charly Coombes. Full tracklisting for the local rapper’s self-produced `Love album is `Buffalo’; `20/20’; `The English Ruse’; `The Girl Who Fell To Is Dead’ features contributions from Earth’; `Detroit’; `Needle’s Eye’; `Seven Walls’; `Oscillate’; `To The Wire’; Lee Smilex, Theoretical, Inspekta, `Is It On?’, and `Matador’. Nonsensible and Full Spectrum Gaz also plays a hometown show at the O2 Academy on Saturday 7th and is free to download at www. February, as part of a seven-date UK tour. halfdecentmusic.com, or stream Fans can pre-order a signed copy of `Matador’ from Gaz’s website at at soundcloud.com/halfdecent. www.gazcoombes.com. Review next month. ZUBY releases his fourth album this photo:Johnny Moto month. The rapper, who made his Tributes have been paid to Philip Guy Davis, fascinating and disarming. This level of personal name on the Oxford music scene, who ran the Famous Monday Blues club PHILIP GUY DAVIS straight-forwardness and honesty in life matters was remarkable. His love of music and his acts releases `The Year Of Zuby’ on his in Oxford, who has died, aged 78. Philip, NEWS were deeply felt, and were the heartbeat of his own label, and has raised over £9000 affectionately known as Silver Phil on account 1936-2014 of his mane of silver hair and copious amounts life. He came to lots of our gigs in much less through a Kickstarter campaign to of jewellery, passed away from heart failure in salubrious venues and would immediately attract make a video for every track on the the John Radcliffe on the 12th November after a the attention of the crowd. His dry delivery album. Full review next issue but spell of ill health that had forced his retirement and humorous repartee found him very often check it out at www.zubymusic.com FOALS take over the decks at The from promoting live music back in September. surrounded by fascinated women at the end of or find zubymusic on Facebook and Bullingdon on Friday 19th December Phil had celebrated his 50 year anniversary in the night, and he gallantly drove them home in Twitter. for Roadblock’s club night. The bands music with a Famous Monday Blues party at his vintage Merc. He was like a visiting celebrity will be playing “slick’n’funky 80s the Jericho Tavern, featuring a set from long- with the status of a Micheal Winner, and the ROYAL BLOOD’s sold-out inspired synth pop - Alexander O’Neal time friends Never The Bride, a band he had same self-deprecating haughtiness, which show at the O2 Academy has been meets Dam Funk.” Chad Valley will managed and who had regularly played at the cracked us up. We will miss a humorous and th engaging friend – a true Oxford personality.” rescheduled for Thursday 8 January be playing a live set beforehand. renowned blues club. Nick Clack from The Missing Persians, said of after the original November show Tickets are on sale now from Phil’s promoting days began in his native Cheltenham back in 1964, and he went on to his friend, “What I liked about Phil was that he was cancelled due to ill health. Wegottickets.com Tickets remain valid for the new date manage clubs there and in London, working was always supportive of local artists and though or refunds are available from point of with legendary names like Kenny Ball, Tommy a FMB Christmas party at the Bullingdon. “I was one might think he was not really interested, he purchase. OXFORD GIGBOT provides a Steel and Alexis Korner, before relocating to told if I got her a decent bottle of champagne – a came across as being very knowledgeable about regular local gig listing update on Oxford in the 1980s (according to Phil himself, really decent bottle – she would come and sing. the local music scene. He booked the last four to avoid Mafia attention). With his extensive They wouldn’t say for how long but she just kept bands I have been in for The Monday Blues and JONNY GREENWOOD will perform a one-off hometown show at DON’T MAKE A SCENE is Twitter (@oxgigbot), bringing you connections to American contacts he helped going. It was lovely, a great Christmas present.” garnered sessions for me with other acts. I will St John the Evangelist on Iffley Road next year with The London a field guide to putting on DIY new gigs as soon as they go live. They book bands at the Monday blues nights at the Earlier this year Phil was presented with a miss him, he lived for his music.” Contemporary Orchestra. The intimate show on Saturday 21st February gigs, released as an 84-page zine also provide a free weekly listings Red Lion in Gloucester Green run by Bob Foley, Lifetime Achievement Award at the British Blues James Serjeant co-ran the blues nights with this month. The guide has been email. Follow them. Do it now. will see the Radiohead guitarist performing new and previously unheard Tony Jezzard and Jonathan Lee, eventually Awards. Philip for a number of years, and said, “Philip pieces, as well as music from his soundtracks to There Will Be Blood, The put together by Rob St John and taking over running the club in 2001. Over the Among those to pay tribute were Phil Freizinger was an overtly enthusiastic supporter of the Master and Norwegian Wood, plus interpretations of works by Xenakus, Emma Cardwell who promoted the AS EVER, don’t forget to tune into years the FMB moved around town, including and Sue Smith from Klub Kakofanney and The blues and revelled in the opportunity to run Purcell, Messiaen and LSO’s Edmund Finnis. The centrepiece of the Adventures Close To Home shows in BBC Oxford Introducing every stints at Jongleurs and the Bullingdon, before Mighty Redox, who played the FMB a number of the Monday Blues in 2001 having previously concert will be a performance of Steve Reich’s `Electric Counterpoint’. Oxford. It also features contributions Saturday night between 8-9pm on finding its latest home at the Jericho. The club times. “We first got to really know Phil about 16 helped by offering touring bands from his own Jonny will be playing guitar as well as tanpura and a rare ondes Martenot from promoters, booking agents, 95.2fm. The dedicated local music played host to bands from around the world, as years ago after a FMB gig at the Philosopher and promotions. Intensely focussed on the club, he keyboard at the Beard Museum-curated concert. Tickets are on sale from sound engineers and musicians on all show plays the best Oxford releases well as generations of UK blues acts, with Phil Firkin, when we were invited upstairs for an after- was an engaging and humorous soul who lived Truck Store on Cowley Road, priced £30 (£20 for students). aspects of putting on gigs and club and demos as well as featuring the instantly recognisable face of the club. party. Philip – as he preferred to be known – was for live music and the good life.” Jonny, meanwhile, has been working on the soundtrack for Inherent Vice, nights. The zine is available from interviews and sessions with local Talking to Nightshift last month about his accosted by a fairly inebriated Irish woman fan, Philip is survived by his two sons, Marcel and an adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel, with is compositions set www.dontmakeascene.co.uk, priced acts. The show is available to stream retirement, Phil expressed his sadness at having who grilled him about his origins – he was half Jools. Nightshift’s deepest condolences go out to alongside songs by Neil Young, Can and Minnie Riperton. £4. or download as a podcast at to quit, but happy to have gone out on “a lovely Native American – and his love life. Philip politely them and to all of Phil’s friends and family. He He is also back in the studio with Radiohead, working on material for their bbc.co.uk/oxford. party.” He also declared his highlight of all the answered all of her overly personal questions was a man – a true character – who will not be next album. THE THURSDAY BLUES Regularly updated local music news years at club to be Chaka Khan’s appearance at with a breathtaking candidness that was equally quickly forgotten in Oxford. Talking to BBC Oxford’s Dave Gilyeat, Jonny said, “working with JAM has found a new home at the is available online at Radiohead is all about repetition and working slowly. It always feels when Ampleforth Arms pub in Risinghurst www.musicinoxford.co.uk. The we start up like we still don’t know really how to do it, and we don’t know from this month. The long-running site also features interactive reviews, quite what to do. ‘Looking down avenues’ is a very kind way of putting jam was forced to move from its a photo gallery and gig guide. the kind of fumbling that we do, mainly because every time we try and do previous home, The Jack Russell in Nightshift’s online form is open to it like the last time – because that worked – it never seems to work. So we Marston, in September when the pub all local music fans and musicians at talk about different approaches and we’re currently trying a bunch out.” was sold to be turned into flats. nightshift.oxfordmusic.net

BEGINNERS release their debut EP this month. The band, formed by former Fell City Girl and Winchell Riots frontman Phil McMinn and ex- Gunning For Tamar singer and guitarist Dan Pollard, recorded the EP live at the Jacqueline du Pre building and the New Road Baptist Church with the West Oxford Academy Of Performing Arts performing choir duties on the songs. The self-titled EP is being released as a limited number of boxed CDs, designed by local artists Theo Peters and Sarah Hoyle, with every box a different design and containing a 32-page handmade, screen-printed book, with sheet music and photos. The Beginners project follows on from two solo EPs Phil has released since the demise of The Winchell Riots, and the split of Gunning For Tamar. “Dan and I both come from similar places,” explains Phil, “we’ve both been in bands and we’ve both tried doing it the hard way. “It started when Dan sent me a text message in the middle of the night. I had put two EPs out under my own name but I’ve never felt comfortable as a solo artist and was really struggling to play shows on my own. I loved what Dan sent me and it gave me a bit of a lift when I needed it most. We there and put things straight. And the Baptist Church was an amazing place both had the same desire to work quickly and with no expectations. `Show to record, right in the middle of town, so you can hear Oxford all over the your workings,’ Dan said. We’re named after a Raymond Carver book I recordings; we left all the shouting homeless people and angry children in read, about that idea.” the mix.” Explaining the difference between his previous music and Beginners Phil Sadly there are no plans for the pair to play live for now. said, “I listened to a lot of John Martyn over the last few years, and his way “I wanted to make a record like `Vespertine’ or `Ladies & Gentlemen, of singing really sent me on a new path; I’m happy to be incoherent now, so We Are Floating In Space’: something impossible to create live properly. I think the whole thing sounds a lot less thought out, a lot messier, maybe Both Dan and I have been so restricted over the years by broken sound even improvised. And I think these are the first lyrics I’ve written that are systems, broken sound men, and I’ve had enough electric shocks from just direct love songs as opposed to about drowning someone or dying in faulty microphones for one lifetime. So the requirement to recreate these space. songs live was removed at the beginning of the project. That was extremely “The venues were integral to the project. The Jacqueline du Pre was where liberating for us both.” The Winchell Riots played our last ever show, so I felt like I had to go back To download the Beginners EP, visit philmcminn.bandcamp.com. A quiet word with “It was a natural thing for sure; “Didcot isn’t really a hotbed for art Desert Storm, Trippy Wicked, Gurt, thought fuck that, lets’ play from I’ve never been able to scream, so or culture and that’s probably one Tricorn, Grifter, XII Boar, Nomad, the heart and let the idiosyncrasies I just sang, and I suppose growing of the reasons we formed a band, Enos, Bacchus Baracus, to name a pour out of the music. We didn’t sit up listening to classic so we had an excuse to get out of few. They’re all good people and around saying let’s do a massive 15 the singer sang melodies rather there! All the best bands have come cool bands.” track album, man, it just happened. mother corona than screaming. And now with Lee from shitty small towns anyway; it We had a few songs that we had doing more backing vocals and gives you a reason or motivation to Beyond their cult but written even before Mother Corona harmonies it’s taking on a new life, want to better yourself.” growing popularity in Oxfordshire, was about, like `Cut The Rope’ especially on this new album. It’s metal zines like Sludgelord and and `Enough Time Spent’, that we something we’ll be doing more of This raises a significant Sleeping Shaman have championed have been playing live since we in the future.” point. There’s a clichéd idea in Mother Corona to a wider audience, started and wanted to add them There’s a strong melodic edge to some quarters that the Oxford a big factor in helping the band tour to the album. Even though the your songs too; is that particularly music scene is mostly made up further afield. album is pretty much important for you? of academically-minded hipsters “Those zines are great, and it all the way through, the songs are “Absolutely! The melody has to making intellectual indie and does help bands out, spreading the diverse enough for people to know be running through the song to keep , while so many word on a larger scale, and they’ve it isn’t samey, and having some it interesting and something people of the city’s great bands are all been pretty good to us. We’ve beautiful guitar instrumentals like can recognise. A lot of bands today locally-born musicians, often from played the whole of the UK pretty `Hangover’ and `Lily Mae’ gave shy away from melody, I think the country’s peripheral towns much, and usually the reaction has the album some breathing space. because they are afraid of people and villages. This is particularly been pretty good; London’s always `Lily Mae’ is something Lee wrote calling them sell outs, you know? true of heavier bands. Is there a a good show, it’s the place to be. for his daughter that reminds me `Oh, you’re singing now, what are cohesive metal/rock community in There’s a place in Bournemouth of a mantra or some kind of Native you, Take That or something?’ It’s Oxfordshire, and who or what holds called the Anvil; it’s really small American chant.” a kind of silly attitude to have cos it together? but we always get a great reaction I think a lot of bands are selling “Well Desert Storm and the there. Edinburgh, Birmingham, More than anything themselves short by having that Cole twins have always been big Manchester are all great places with though, `Reburn’ has riffs. Did we attitude, but we embrace it. Melody advocates of our band and the cool people.” mention those? The riffs? We did? is very important.” Oxford music scene and have You toured with Abrahma and Enos. Yeah, but did we mention them Timeless thought it might be in pushed the envelope for people “We went on a nine-day tour enough? Because they’re big, you many ways, new album `Reburn’ outside of Oxford to get a little around the UK; it was an eye know. Massive. They’d crush you to sounds like an almighty blast pulp if they landed on you. So come of fresh air. What’s the secret to on then Dave from riffmonster titans keeping heavy rock fresh sounding? Mother Corona – pick us one riff “Being yourself. Everyone has “Mother Corona would have been the that conquers all others. influences, but it’s what you do perfect soundtrack for the demolition “Jesus, that’s a tough one! The best with them that counts. People used riff of all time for me has to be `Into to say that Soundgarden were a of Didcot Power Station.” The Void’ by Black Sabbath: it just rip-off of Led Zeppelin, but I don’t sums up everything about heavy think that’s true. You could hear rock/metal in six minutes; that’s why a lot of Zeppelin in them but they interested in what’s going on here. opening experience for us. You can everyone covers it!” were telling their own story. You People tend to think that ‘cause see why people lose their shit when If your riffs were made from some also have to listen to other styles of we’re from Oxford that we are posh they’re out on the road. But driving kind of solid material, what do you music to keep your palate fresh and and have no place in playing heavy up to Scotland was a beautiful think they would be made from? Or a lot of people just pick a style of music ‘cause we’ve got nothing experience; just seeing the hills would they be a liquid metal, like in “Drinking with Orange ad in a local music shop – are and coated in the scuzz of The the things they were talking about, music and don’t listen to anything to be angry about, but the bands and mountains was amazing – so Terminator 2? Goblin in Manchester was fun; Lee hardened road warriors now, Stooges and the fuzz of Smashing and I suppose that’s the way we see else. We’re all guilty of it; I used that tend to play heavy music in peaceful and untouched by big “Our riffs remind me of the place almost died from swallowing his regularly heading off round the UK Pumpkins, and they’re rich in ourselves today.” to do it a few years ago, but then Oxford are dropout kids or come business; it was perfect! Rob did get where we’re from: low vibration, own tongue. He’d been drinking to preach their message of classic melody, Dave’s voice a measured Heavy rock – Mother Corona I realised the stuff I used to listen from the surrounding towns, like a bit homesick, bless him, and I got dark, vast, kinda like the same like a dog for about four days and super-heavyweight rock music to foil to the onward tide of metal hesitate to call themselves a metal to when I was a kid, like my mum us being from Didcot, which is a a cold on the last few days of the material as the Didcot power station. just loving it. We had to call the the masses, while existing slightly grooves, one of those small but band, although they share much used to love crooners and have that very working class town. So we tour and my voice had packed up, I think Mother Corona would have paramedics out because his body below the radar of the majority of significant elements that makes the of the same terrain as many Black playing around the house, I have gravitated towards where the local but it was a lot of fun with a hell of been the perfect soundtrack for went into some kind of shock. The Oxford gig goers. band stand out from the crowd. Like Sabbath-inspired bands – never an old James Brown album that I scene was, which was about twenty a lot of alcohol consumed.” the recent demolition of the power doctor was pretty sympathetic and Nightshift featured the band in an a monstrous black obelisk. really goes in or out of fashion. had when I was younger that is still miles down the road and the people station.” said it must be hard living this Introducing piece back in 2012 It’s always hugely popular while amazing. Be open to other styles have accepted us even though we Mother Corona’s new Who’d win in a fight between kind of lifestyle with it eventually and they played The Oxford Punt Mother Corona, it’s fair remaining . What’s of music and let it seep into your are townies! Ha ha! So it’s that album `Reburn’ is released this Godzilla and the riff from `Black catching up with you! Then he in 2013 but they’re still an under- to say, rock. Like bastards. They’re the appeal for people of listening to metal, ha ha!” openness that keeps the whole scene month; it’s quite the behemoth– Acid Morning’? asked how long we had been on appreciated force (and we mean also affable Didcot town lads, who huge, fuck-off riffs? together – people coming together both in the music and its length – 15 “Well, being that Godzilla is 60 the road for and we said three days that in every sense) beyond the rock fell in love with Led Zeppelin at an “I’m not too sure, maybe it’s an Hailing from Didcot, a no matter who you are or where tracks clocking in at almost 80 years old I think `Black Acid’ would and the doctor laughed and said and metal fraternity. Now, as they early age and never looked back. empowering thing. Listening to a town better known for its power you’re from.” minutes. Is there a desire for a band kick his arse! He’d put up a good sarcastically `three days! Only three prepare to release their second full- “Me and Lee used to listen to them riff that makes you want to go crazy station and railway connections Oxford does stoner, sludge and that thrives on musical excess to fight though, ha ha!” days!’ Ha ha!” length album, `Reburn’, it’s time to religiously when we were kids,” or perks you up and makes you feel than any kind of cultural heritage, groove pretty well, don’t you think? make everything bigger and badder And finally, bong, booze or acid? spread the word about them further, recalls Dave on the band’s origins. like you can take on anything gives what was it like for Mother Corona We lost Caravan of Whores this than last time? Which is best for listening to Mother Dave Oglesby, the and louder. “I suppose what we’re doing is you a certain confidence I suppose, trying to get gigs early on; is there year but who do you think are the “We recorded the album in the New Corona on? singing drummer from Didcot’s Louder is something Mother timeless, but it’s new to us,” he makes you feel good.” somewhere in town for bands to best other bands of that ilk around Year and it took two days basically, “Whatever your trip is! Don’t matter groove-metal behemoths Mother Corona excel at. says, when Nightshift suggests the play or was it a case of trying to get the county? with a few sessions after that just what you take, if you’re diggin’ the Corona is recounting another on- music they’re playing might have As well as the riffage, into Oxford? “Sometimes things happen in bands for vocals and guitars overdubs. It tunes then more power to you! You the-road highlight from his band’s In Mother Corona’s fitted in as well in the 1970s as it what stood out for Nightshift when “In all honesty we wanted to get that rip bands apart: relationships was all recorded live off the floor; can listen to it stone cold sober or recent history. The man who nearly world The Riff is king. Their does now, and would still in another we first heard Mother Corona were out of town, although early on we get strained and people just can’t we thought that the way music is off your tits, it’s all good! Just leave succumbed to that most rock and songs are beasts, behemoths, 40 years. the vocals – they’re not the usual put on a few gigs on at a couple work with each other anymore. today with it being note-perfect enough Jack Daniel’s for us!” roll of demises is Lee Cressey, the titans. They’re made of mountains “It has been said to us before style you get with so many metal of pubs: the Labour Club and The It’s happened to us too but the key and auto-tuned and all that stuff, band’s guitarist, Dave’s hometown and girders and powered by the that we would have fitted back in bands, closer to at Waterwitch. They were messy and is to be tolerant with each other, that we should have a more organic Mother Corona launch `Reburn’ friend with whom he formed Kraken’s giant beating heart. the 70s; I mean, when the whole times than the typical guttural fun but they are both closed now; and accept people’s virtues and feel to the album as opposed to on Saturday 6th December at Mother Corona in 2006 – originally They’re steeped in the timeless rock thing started in the early roar or hysterical scream of most the Waterwitch got knocked down faults. You’re all fighting for the this false perfection that records Buried in Smoke’s Christmas under the name Nable. music of Led Zeppelin and Blue 90s everyone was saying that it contemporary metal acts. Was that a few years ago and is now a row same cause at the end of the day seem to have these days. Even rock weekender. Visit www.facebook. The trio – completed by bassist Cheer, but also the psychedelic was retro 70s but the attitude was a conscious effort or something that of flats, but there is no real music and we are only human, but there bands are going down that path of com/mothercorona for more news Rob Glenn, who answered an exploration of very much of its day, especially just occurred naturally? venue in Didcot, just pubs. are some killer bands around, like sterile, polished production, so we and gig dates. Sponsored by KID KIN `Holy Youth’ (Self-released) Like Maiians, who he supported at their recent RELEASED EP launch gig, Kid Kin – the musical moniker of Peter Lloyd – takes the fundamental ideas of PADDOX THE DREAMING ambient electronic music and puts them to work in a live band setting. In his case it’s a one-man-band `Aphrodisiaque’ SPIRES but he exerts enough energy on stage for four, (Bear on a Bicycle / One Note Forever) rather than simply relying on laptop and loops. In an Oxford music scene in which `Darkest Before the Dawn’ Live, Peter follows ’ maxim that isn’t exactly the most high-profile element, (Clubhouse) volume can be an extra instrument in itself, mostly limited to a handful of bedroom Long, long before it was de rigueur to grow a conjuring deafening washes of guitar and synth producers, Paddox are something of an anomaly. beard and pretend you were from Mississippi, noise that test the normal expectations and And to be producing synth-based brothers Robin and Joe Bennett were bringing definition of the word ambient, taking over is rarer still. It’s as if they’d overheard me in the a little soul-searching Americana to Oxford, MOTHER CORONA every available molecule of airspace in the BEGINNERS pub complaining about the dearth of local acts both as founders of , always a room in a way that can be as confrontational as taking inspiration from the 1970s kosmische welcoming home to such music, and at the helm `Reburn’ it is calming. `Holy Youth’ prefers to temper `Beginners EP’ movement, and obligingly went off to form a of their band Goldrush. It’s a journey they’ve (When Planets Collide) such sonic extremity with more subtlety, even (Self-released) carried on for close to two decades now, band that in places sound exactly like the early Didcot doesn’t often feel like a churning hotbed tenderness, which allow the four instrumental As with Richard Walters, as soon as you see including stints with Danny & the Champions work of Harmonia. Very public-spirited of them. of rock’n’roll, but `Reburn’, Mother Corona’s tracks here to wash over and around you instead the name Phil McMinn on a record you know of the World and lately Co-Pilgrim. The tides of Not only that, but Paddox have arrived follow-up to 2012’s `Out Of The Dust’, of punching a whole through your midriff. you’re in for a vocal treat. After a couple of fashion have yet to turn them. apparently fully-formed, with a record You get the impression that the tracks have been confirms that there’s at least one band’s worth `Frippery The Villain’ in particular, charming solo releases, the former-Winchell Riots man And why should they when it seems to burrow painstakingly constructed from the oscillations edited down from much longer explorations: of small town stoned troopers flying the flag. and chiming its way skywards via Eno’s laser- has teamed up with erstwhile Gunning For to the very heart and soul of the pair. The and modulations of classic analogue synths, `004’’s brief foray into the heart-lifting territory This is a pretty heavy proposition of an album guided mood music and ’s shoegazey Tamar singer/guitarist Dan Pollard to form Dreaming Spires might be a different name giving them space to breathe and the time they of A Winged Victory For The Sullen is over – it’s 76 minutes in length, and it provides hit shimmer. Stand-out EP title track `Holy Youth’ Beginners. Anyone expecting a new angular to Goldrush (or Whispering Bob as they were need to work their magic. Perhaps surprisingly, all too quickly, while perhaps the coda of the after bludgeoning hit of exceptionally good, pitches itself in just the right place to get a post-rock noise edge to Phil’s music will originally), but that all-enveloping love for given that the vinyl edition comes packaged 18-minute centrepiece `001’ is perhaps the only riff-heavy, rock-inspired guitar schwing. balance of snowstorm sweetness and glitchy be disappointed though, not to say slightly Big Star, The Byrds, The Band and Buffalo in a 3kg slab of concrete, the music’s often section that might have benefited from a tighter Throughout 15 tracks, there are many reference awkwardness, while `Shogun Giant’ proves foolish. Beginners is very much a continuation Springfield remains resolute. Not least on the feather-light and subtle. Its explorations of tone trimming. points to and reminders of music gone by: the man’s got a pretty tune or two amid the of the rarefied, glacial sounds he’s been honing expansive `Hype Bands Parts I & II’, seven and texture are strikingly confident, mining the A release that can live so comfortably the petulant snarl of early Black Sabbath and sumptuous electronic textures as well as a for the last decade. minutes of Robin’s characteristically plaintive, past to create something that sounds oddly out alongside the likes of Tim Hecker or even John prime-era Led Zeppelin; the gliding vocal generous disposition towards the volume dial. That he and Dan recorded this EP at the questing vocals set against rich, warm Stax of its own time and place. The closest analogue Carpenter is always going to be welcome as far whine of Smashing Pumpkins; the unhinged Victoria Waterfield Jacqueline du Pre building and in the New horns, organ buzz and twelve-string . It’s (ho ho) to Paddox is possibly 70s German synth as I’m concerned, and it’s a genuine pleasure chunky riffing of Amphetamine Reptile acts Road Baptist Church with the West Oxford an almost euphoric country-soul canter that pioneers Cluster, whose cavernous swirlings (as to hear something coming out of Oxford that’s like Tad or Killdozer; the artistic psychedelic Academy Of Performing Arts providing makes its way from roadhouse bar, past the well as their straight-faced numeric approach concerned with nothing else but the beauty of thuggery of Melvins. Like many of the best choral backing tells you far more about what embers of last night’s campfire and into a bright to song titling) are lovingly echoed by `001’, sound and space. Possibly my Oxford record of albums – and believe me, this is one of the best to expect: lonely, starlit that’s new dawn. It’s rare to find The Dreaming Spires while at its darkest as on `005’, Paddox are the year. – when the influences are this good, and utilised as delicate as snowflakes and as elegant and sounding so upbeat but it suits them. redolent of Barn Owl’s desolate evocations. Stuart Fowkes with such strength and style as on `Reburn’, majestic as a snow leopard. `Lazer Guided’ Bolder still is `House on Elsinore’, a muscly accusations of familiarity seem trite. There are in particular is gorgeous with its choral but sensitive country-blues march that clutches only a couple of tracks on which the energy crescendo enveloping Phil’s plaintive voice. Tom Petty to its breast and waltzes into a Which isn’t to denigrate The Retros’ new (intentionally) dips below “this one goes up to The spirit of Sigur Ros is invoked but there’s heartbroken starry night. album, which if nothing else, shows decent 11”: as such, `Reburn’ is a veritable long night a more intimate feel to Beginners for all their The EP’s title track tips the mood even more taste (The Easybeats’ `Friday On My Mind’; at the Wheatsheaf of an album. By the end of grandeur; instrumentation is stripped down to fully into one of quiet melancholy, concluding The Move’s `Fire Brigade’; Bowie’s `The Man it, you’ve forgotten where you came in; you’re piano, acoustic guitar and sparse electronics, a linked set of stories about an old friend, Who Sold The World’ amongst other). They’re altered by cheap booze and relentless noise, no beats, no padding. But then, when you have Danny, fallen on hard times. It’s highly personal professional but straight takes, and in the case and you stumble away dazed and joyously a voice like Phil McMinn’s, why would you stuff, but delivered with a warmth and almost of `Friday...’ and `The Man...’, both have been confused. Outstanding. want to hide it under a heap of instruments? heroic sense of positivity that’s as inviting covered better previously, the former by Bowie Simon Minter Dale Kattack himself and the latter by Lulu. We also get The and inclusive as Thanksgiving dinner. The Retros’ takes on The Who (`So Sad About Us’) Dreaming Spires continue to do what they’ve and – surprise! – (`You Can’t Do done best for so many years, and remain the way, simply revealing a workaday acoustic That’, here given a slightly bluesy make-over) benchmark for any and all who would follow in LITTLE RED blues shuffle that even they have probably amongst others, although, sneaked in among their footsteps. `Sticks & Stones’ forgotten already. The genial but anonymous these are a couple of self-penned tracks, `Wait’ Sue Foreman `Out To Get Down’, meanwhile, is and `No Words’, which are similarly steeped in (All Will Be Well) symptomatic of the way they massively under- A recurring issue we find with, predominantly, piece with mixed male/female vocals that stand the 60s and 70s sounds the band so obviously use the vocal talents of Hayley Bell and her but not exclusively, new bands, is the release firm in the rustic and reflective camp. Their love, all chiming guitars and breezy harmonies, interaction with Ian Mitchell and Ben Gosling. of full albums before they’ve developed their songs tend towards the demure and dappled, either of which could be a lost cut from an old THE RETROS sound enough and written enough songs to an early album highlight being `Cures’, which They far better on the likes of `Petal’, where In Our DNA’ Traffic session. merit one. Too often a clutch of good ideas gets barely shows its face through the foliage but those voices combine over the most minimal Hard, then, to direct overt criticism at a lost amid filler that should have been discarded lurks, wraith-like on the margins, and is all the acoustic and slide guitar backing and Hayley (Self-released) band simply – and to a reasonable if hardly or at least left on the backburner until it was better for it. Similarly the pillow-soft romance gets the lead role for once. While a dedicated covers band is as much a inspired standard – indulging in nostalgia for completely cooked. of `Bonnie & Clyde’, which seduces you At their best Little Red can conjure a comfort valid part of a local live scene as any other type their favourite old tunes, but a great cover Little Red are by no means anywhere near the without even pulling back the duvet. blanket of the gentlest of autumn moods, and of band – people will always want to hear old version should always bring something new worst offenders, and have to decency to keep Sometimes, the band’s understated nature we hope they’ll unfurl over the course of time classics of myriad hues played live – an album or unthought-of to the party (This Mortal their debut to a compact 33 minutes, but we’re works against them, though: `The Garden’, to reveal their true capabilities. of those covers only seems to act as a memento Coil’s `Song To The Siren’ being a prime still left with the feeling `Sticks & Stones’ for example, is shimmering and starlit but too For now, take the best half of `Sticks and of an evening out for those who were there, and example) and `In Our DNA’ maybe serves as an would have made a decent four or five-song EP. timid, when just once you’d like to hear them Stones’, and leave the remainder in the even then, unless you’re going to do something introduction to the songs concerned for anyone The band, whose demo was reviewed break out of their comfort zone. `The Cause’, forest for the squirrels to plunder and hide radical with the source material, why not just who’s never heard them before. positively in Nightshift a couple of months ago, meanwhile actively does Little Red a disservice, away. head for the originals? Ian Chesterton are a gentle, intimate folk-pop affair, a three- puncturing that safety bubble in the wrong Dale Kattack hard on the subject matter. Hence the philosophical 14. AGS CONNOLLY restrained vocal acrobatics, forever sounding like musings of `Mary Lamb’ come wrapped in a he’s on the end of a taut leash. comforting blanket of trippy warmth even while its `Trusty Companion’ Ags Connolly is a man with a voice of extraordinary 20. KID KIN `Shogun Giant’ TRACKS OF OUR YEAR core is a desert of fatalism and cynicism. One of Oxford’s most thoughtful and insightful lyricists, power, capable of transporting you from a dank open Like a sunset on Morecambe seafront, Kid Kin’s that might be just as well. That time of year again. Y’know, the endy bit where we look back on all the great music and this nocturnal tale lingers long after sunrise. mic pub in Witney to the Grand Ole Opry. His songs music can be beautiful and overpowering in equal Oxford has produced over the past twelve months and attempt top squeeze it all into are deeply rooted in country, full of hardened wisdom measures. Peter Lloyd’s simultaneously elegant and a fancy list-type thing with the absolute greatest thing at the top. Most of Oxford’s big 4. SPRING OFFENSIVE 9. BALLOON ASCENTS and homespun turns of phrase; he’s a man absolutely glitchy mix of skittering beats, burnished bronze guns were quiet in 2014 – no new recordings from Radiohead, Foals or Stornoway for `Hengelo’ in love with and at home with , into electronics and shoegazey guitar sheen make for `Cutout’ a pretty cherry-blossom soundstorm on tracks like Here at Nightshift we’ve become almost immune If you’re good enough, you’re old enough is a which he pours his heart and soul, none more so than example – but that never seems to matter when there’s so much good stuff going on. And, `Shogun Giant’, a dappled, deceptively melodic cut to losing bands, but not completely immune, rule you could happily apply to Balloon Ascents, on this sad, stately acoustic lament that really allows as ever, the diversity of music around is something that a lot of people fail to appreciate from his recent `Holy Youth’ EP. especially when the band in question has released a band who have been making a serious name for his voice to stand centre stage and make grown men – from hellbastard metal to soothing ambient electronica; from poetic hip hop to pure, weep into their whisky. a debut album that can be genuinely described as themselves locally in venues that, until very recently, 21. GIRL POWER unrefined , and plenty more besides and between. If Oxford produced one great. But so it was with Spring Offensive, whose they weren’t even old enough to drink in. Despite outstanding breakthrough act in 2014 it was GLASS ANIMALS, a band we’ve been recent relocation to London couldn’t stop them that, there’s a wonderfully world-weary feel to 15. UNDERSMILE `Consumers’ The art of hardcore almost seems lost in an being an Oxford band at heart. `Young Animal `Cutout’, from their first demo, where they channel proud to champion from the very start but who have quiet slipped into the big league `Titanaboa’ era of metalcore and what’s laughingly termed Hearts’ was Spring Offensive fulfilling every ounce Radiohead’s oblique pop through Stornoway’s It tells you plenty about Undersmile’s monolithic with their debut album of ghostly, twilight electronic r’n’b. Here are Nightshift’s `post-hardcore’. Girl Power play hardcore. of promise they’d shown in their five-year lifespan questing folk-rock; they’re a band with grace and musical nature that even though they only released favourite Oxfordshire-made tracks of the year. Make your own list. Ours will be best. Music that sounds like several angry bulls in the – clever, intricate, epic, sometimes challenging, poise and a neat magpie touch to their influences, one song in 2014, it was longer than many band’s world’s largest china shop raging against human poetic alt.pop with, at its beating heart, songs to and they’re very much a band with their best still to entire output for the year. 23 minutes to be precise. stupidity. Or, if you’d prefer, Discharge and Blitz die for. Stick a pin in the track listing and you’ll come. It formed one half a of a split album with Bismuth in one godalmighty punch-up with the entire pick a gem each time, but this was our favourite, an and showed that rather than aiming to become a Amphetamine Reptile roster. Who’s the winner? encapsulation of all those rare attributes. 10. MOTHER CORONA bit more accessible any time soon Undersmile are You are, dear listener, you are. Now pick your teeth heading further into the black, by way of an ocean- `Black Acid Morning’ up off the floor, it’s time for round two. 5. JESS HALL `Sea Song’ Sometimes we want to leave all the clever stuff and sized doomscape that makes Mordor look like Jess Hall originally comes from the seaside – sweetness behind and just rock out. Like bastards. Disneyland Paris by comparison. Devon to be precise – and the sea dominates her 22. ADAM BARNES `Green’ Sometimes we need RIFFS. Didcot’s Mother As well as one of the most impressive beards in gorgeous, pure, English folk songs. With a voice Corona have riffs. Big ones cut from granite and 16. HANNAH BRUCE Oxford, Adam Barnes also has one of the best that’s limpid and elegant, as pure as cut crystal, girders and forged in the fires of Black Sabbath’s voices – soulful, plaintive and reflective without Jess explores the shorelines of her native county `Takes A Hold’ psychedelic iron foundry. In the grand, timeless Making music that feels like it’s in focus can be ever lapsing into melodrama or self-pity. His debut across her album `Bookshelves’, most particularly tradition that runs from Blue Cheer to Electric an overrated skill, as Hannah Bruce proved on her album, ` The Land, The Sea & Everything Lost on this highlight. Backed by sparse acoustic guitar Wizard, Mother Corona ride a groove as deep as the debut `Homemade Recordings’ EP, featuring a guest Beneath’, was an autumnal journey with little and Barney Morse-Brown’s simple, solemn cello, it Mariana Trench, stay hard and heavy and dirty, and appearance from fellow musical somnambulist promise of light at the end of the tunnel, but with was a devotional hymn to the sea, and to love in the always, always, keep it ROCK. Rawz on one track. Amid a woozy trip into a the lovely sense of longing conveyed by `Green’, most old fashioned way. A song to drown in. strange pop netherworld, this was the stand-out, no-one would be wishing the sun to come up any 6. VIENNA DITTO 11. LIU BEI `Infatuation’ like taking a particularly hazy approach time too soon. We’re just guessing but we think Richard Walters to an obscure Kate Bush song. The age of the `Feeling Good’ had featured in Nightshift’s end of year chart more understatement is indeed upon us. 23. BLANKDREAD Vienna Ditto got the blues. In fact they got the blues times than any other artist. Because whatever guise far better than any traditional blues band we’ve he goes under – band or solo – he remains a serious ‘We Are Fucked Anyway’ 17. PADDOX Asher Dust is a restless and prolific creative force, encountered in Oxford in recent times. This despite class act, with a voice that angels would die for. a man who doesn’t seem to believe one great idea being a primarily synth-based act and spending With his new band he’s crafted a characteristically `Crescent Moon’ Talking of favourite bands we’ve loved and lost, will suffice when you can stamp, staple, squeeze much of their time on stage laughing like loons bleak study in love lost, intoning “You’re last year it was Trophy Wife who gave up the or weld six into a single track. Which is why his and clowning around like they just don’t care. But everywhere” to the memory of a former lover ghost at the same time as furnishing us with their regular offerings are always a cause for celebration hey, take your music seriously, not yourself, as amid a sparse spangle of guitars that recalls Robin debut album. Fast forward a year and drummer as much as occasional confusion. His Blankdread 1. GLASS ANIMALS `Gooey’ we always say and Vienna Ditto lived up to that Guthrie. Again he finds himself at the sharp end of So subtle and lacking in fanfare was Glass Animals’ move onto the nation’s airwaves and into myriad Kit Monteith has returned with a new band, one album veered frenetically between hip hop, , maxim with bells on. Hattie Taylor’s slinky, sultry romantic fallout, and is such an expert at conveying music tipsters’ lists that even a sizeable contingent of Oxford’s regular gig goers didn’t realise they were made of even more gossamer threads than the last. punk, jazz, electro, dub and blues with scattershot jazz-blues croon snaked around Nigel Firth’s wild- emotional desolation with seemingly effortless one of ours. A quick delve into the Nightshift archive would reveal we had them as our Demo of the Paddox don’t so much head off into space as gently energy, but this elegant slice of blues-inflected soul- abandon guitar flurry, proclaiming “I’m grace the whole song feels like it was stitched Month way back in 2010 and have been keeping a keen eye on them and their woozy, sci-fi r’n’b since. drift star wards on the back of some seriously hop is characteristic of his invention, if far from feeling strained and smoking, chained and choking, together from winter starlight. We were duly rewarded with full-length debut `ZABA’ in May this year, released on Paul Epworth’s finger-licking, pistol-whipping good,” while soporific electronic twinkling, wowing and typical of the sounds he creates. Wolf Tone label, an album of hazy, languid atmospherics and an oblique lyricism that came from referencing “21st Century blues.” Which it damn 12. PHILIP SELWAY fluttering. Music from the Cosmos. Half a galaxy singer David Bayley’s insomniac tendencies (“between those half-wakeful hours and dusk,” as he said well are. With extra bells on. away from what you’d expect from an album that 24. SALVATION BILL himself). A single ahead of the album, `Gooey’ encapsulated Glass Animals’ woozy charm with its talk `Waiting For A Sign’ comes encased in a concrete box. While Tom Yorke’s latest solo opus was `Dead Dog’ of “peanut butter vibes”, David’s breathless vocals and the fragile electronic textures that hover wraith- Ollie Thomas’s first of a brace of singles under 7. CANDY SAYS characteristically bleak and oblique, Radiohead 18. MUTAGENOCIDE his new Salvation Bill guise came encased in a like behind them as enigmatically elusive as a half-remembered dream, and just as alluring. `Hummingbird’ bandmate Philip Selway’s second album was dog food tin, a reminder that for every sad-eyed, With the busyness of a bee hive, Candy Says’ album warm, direct and deeply emotive, revealing `Half-Born’ If the concept that listening to music can resemble bleeding heart acoustic songsmith, there’s one with `Not Kings’ delved deep into a toy box of musical hitherto unknown, or unrecognised talents beyond being verbally and physically assaulted by a a sense of humour, a sense of humour that made its trinkets and tricks and used each and every one of his undisputed drum mastery. The delicacy and 2. MAIIANS `Lemon’ 3. THE AUGUST LIST gibbering mad man, but in a good way, seems way into his music with its morbid lyricism (this them to make for a bargain bucket masterpiece, certainty of `Waiting For A Sign’ showed Phil has a Not since The Rock Of Travolta has an instrumental alien to you, then you’ve probably not heard one was about killing his neighbour’s noisy dog, `Wooden Trunk Blues’ a triumph of ambition and imagination over voice to match any frontman, and you’re left asking band captured the local imagination as much Mutagenocide. You come away from their shows though we know he didn’t mean it really – right?), They came down from the hills. Married couple resources. `Hummingbird’ here was an introverted, not, `why has the drummer made a solo album?’, as Maiians, a band that began almost as a side feeling metaphorically spittle-flecked and bruised, the jaunty piano throwing the subject matter into Kerraleigh and Martin Childs lived in a converted confessional reverie based on a bed of buzzing and rather `why hasn’t he made loads more?’ project (of We Aeronauts) but who now threaten to barn on a hillside in rural east Oxfordshire but organ and a chorus made up of buttercup petals and yet feeling you’ve learned a valuable lesson, in even starker light. eclipse the love felt for that collective. November’s sounded like they’d landed here from a shack in late afternoon sunshine, Julia Sophie’s voice more 13. TIGER MENDOZA their case possibly involving complex mathematical debut EP, `Tokyo’, was a chilled coastal trip with North Carolina or on the banks of the Mississippi. versatile now than it’s ever been and, coupled with formulae for chord changes. They crush thrash, tech, 25. THE RELATIONSHIPS a heart, lead track `Lemon’ propelled Their debut album, `Oh Hinterland’, was a raw, Ben Walker’s intricate, elaborate arrangements, a `Now That Days Are Colder’ death and classic metal into odd, angular shapes and A synthesis of rhythms and orchestra on a `Self-Esteem Flying Machine’ by twin drummers Matt Goolding and Callum rustic joy, even when it dealt with the darkest of song possessed of the sort of naivety that too much hurl it at you with extreme prejudice. Frankly you’d Peaston, which gave the electronic soundtrack claustrophobic scale from Tiger Mendoza on this be a fool to think about getting out of the way. An air of typically English resilience hung over The American gothic subject matter, as this opening pop music has had filleted out. Lovely. a human heart and a dynamic sense of purpose, number, and one of a number of absolute gems latest EP, ditching – other than a spoken word Relationships’ `Phase’ album, the band dreaming of James Cunning and Sam King’s synths veering on the album, proved: a foot-stomping chunk of 8. RAWZ `Mary Lamb’ contribution from poet David Griffiths – vocals, 19. FLIGHTS OF HELIOS 1960s Californian sun while trapped in the Home off Kraftwerk’s autobahn and along to Banco de bluesy regret that finds Kerraleigh accumulating Creatively prolific while often sounding like he’s preferring instead to build a series of synthetic Counties suburbs, heartstrings twitched like the net Gaia’s tropical beach party via Fuck Buttons’ sleek emotional baggage and assessing her life with a barely got the energy to get out of bed, rapper/ mood pieces inspired by computer game music and `Succubus’ curtains of semi-detached houses along faceless cul- The local psych-prog ensemble’s sunflight silicon belligerence and Caribou’s neo-psychedelia. vocal delivered in tones that are an engaging mix poet Rawz follows in Rakim’s footsteps of saying film soundtracks, edging into the darkness with neat de-sacs. This understated highlight was a gorgeous, continued with this single, a characteristically slow- `Lemon’ clocked in around the seven-minute mark. of Kate Pierson and Steve Nicks, and possesses a a lot while barely breaking a sweat, giving his use of cello and violin and transporting the listener, swooning shimmer through a form of psychedelic build, sudden-release trip that could burn up in the In truth we’d have been happy to hear it carry on sublime hook that almost obscures the meaning of mellifluous musings on love, religion and politics briefly, to the dimly-lit deck of a shipwrecked pop so sweetly restrained they must surely have solar glare were it not for Chris Beard’s carefully driving for another hour. what she’s singing about. Given its bleak nature, an air of gentleness even while they bite down spacecraft on a distant, dangerous planet. downed their acid tabs with bone china cups of tea. Lost Beneath’ debut earlier this year was a Wallingford – Blues rocking from the local real treasure of an album. Similarly Jess Hall’s stalwart. stunning `Bookshelves’ debut, with its rich, emotive folk songs about the sea and shore. th Willie J Healey, meanwhile, is looking to be SUNDAY 7 BURIED IN SMOKE CHRISTMAS next year’s bright young local singer- WEEKENDER: The Bullingdon (1.30pm) starlet with the release of his new EP, produced – Second Buried in Smoke all-dayer, with GIG GUIDE by Stornoway’s Oli Steadman and Spring Warwolf, Mine and In The Hills amongst those Offensive’s Pelham. keeping it well ‘eavy – see main preview st SIMPLE: The Bullingdon – House and MONDAY 1 anti-folk songstress Rainbow Reservoir, and ALABAMA 3: O2 Academy – Larry Love and club night. DELTA GIANTS: The Jericho Tavern – sweet, atmospheric electro-acoustic singer Julia the Very Reverend Dr D Wayne Love return TRASHY: O2 Academy – Kitsch pop hits, th Mississippi-style blues at tonight’s Famous DECEMBER Meijer. once more with another dose of Wednesday 10 80s and glam fun at the O2’s weekly pop Monday Blues. THE WALL OF FLOYD: O2 Academy – Pink blues and country medicine, riding the rough nd extravaganza. BOB LOG III: RUMOURS OF FLEETWOOD MAC: The Floyd tribute. highway between Hank Williams and Happy TUESDAY 2 WHAT YOU CALL IT, GARAGE?: The New Theatre – Big-stage tribute. To Fleetwood MYCELIUM: The Old Fire Station – Bruno EMBRACE: O2 Academy – The Mondays, spreading a little bit of worldly wit Britpoppers return, having scored a Top 5 hit Cellar – Garage, grime and house club night. O2 Academy Mac. Guastalla curates Oxford Improvisers’ finale to and chemically-enhanced joy as they go. If your idea of the blues is earnest old men with their eponymous comeback album earlier HONOLULU COWBOYS: St Giles Church DOT’S FUNKY ODYSSEY: The Cellar – their autumn and winter season with a massed THE JESTERS + CALLOW SAINTS BAND taking their fretplay very seriously indeed, this year (their first album in eight years). Prior Hall – Hawaiian tea party with live music from Soulful tunes and funky grooves from the local gathering of string players. + JOHN POTTER & MARK BOSLEY + then Bob Log III probably isn’t for you. to that the band had enjoyed five Top 10 albums, the Honolulu Cowboys. funk and soul band, playing Aretha Franklin, JAZZ CLUB: The Bullingdon – Free live jazz THE FIREGAZERS + MATT SEWELL: The Likewise, if your sense of humour doesn’t including three Number 1s, enjoying the post- QUADROPHONIC LIVE: The Newman Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson among other from trumpeter Stuart Henderson’s Quartet at the Wheatsheaf (2.30-7pm) – Klub Kakofanney involve regular mention of breasts, booze and era’s commercial golden years with Rooms, St Aldates – Classic albums of the classics and originals. Bully’s weekly club. host a free afternoon of unplugged live music in scatological references, the Tucson, Arizona their epic soulful guitar-pop providing a more 1970s played in quadraphonic sound, compèred JACKIE OATES & MEGAN HENWOOD: BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: The Cellar the Sheaf’s downstairs bar. one-man slide-guitar band won’t be up your elegant counterpoint to Oasis and their ilk at by David Freeman and kicking off with Pink Nettlebed Folk Club – Traditional English folk – 80s, new wave, , glam and synth-pop club ARTHUR + BEARD OF DESTINY + street. He’s pleasing someone though, since times. Brothers Danny and Richard McNamara Floyd’s `Dark Side of the Moon’. from the local singers. night. MOON LEOPARD + OXFORD UKULELES he’s been plying his trade for 25 years now, always talked a good fight, which drew regular THE PETE FRYER BAND: The Dolphin, OPEN MIC SESSION: James Street Tavern + RIVERSIDE VOICES: Donnington touring the world, both solo and with his old comparisons to the Gallaghers but the band’s THE CORN POTATO STRING BAND: Community Centre – The monthly Donnington band Doo Rag, opening for Blues Explosion, enduring success suggested they were in Three Horseshoes, Towersey – Hot fiddle th th music sessions celebrate Christmas with an Ween and even Franz Ferdinand along the Friday 5th nobody’s shadow. Saturday 6 – Monday 8 action. extended evening of acoustic live music, with way. Musically he adds some KLUB KAKOFANNEY with FLIGHTS OF blues from Beard of Destiny; folk from Moon attitude to classic Delta blues, Mississippi : HELIOS + PHYAL + NOT TOO SHABBY: BURIED IN SMOKE rd Leopard; ukulele classics from Oxford Ukuleles Fred McDowell and Screaming Jay Hawkins WEDNESDAY 3 The Wheatsheaf – Klub Kak’s monthly CHRISTMAS LONG and Christmas carols from Riverside Voices. by way of , AC/DC and Bo The Bullingdon FROM THE HORSES MOUTH with ROB pick’n’mix of musical fun continues, tonight’s MISSING PERSIANS: The Royal Oak, Diddley. It’s his stage persona that grabs Dreadzone come round this way regularly AUTON + ROSALIND PETERS + FEMI guests being rising electro starlets Flights of WEEKEND: Burford – Americana, blues and rock from the much of the attention, though: aside from his enough to take them for granted, but the NYLANDER: The Cellar – Rap and poetry Helios, with their ambient, slightly proggy local crew. slide guitar and feet-powered drums, he wears fact they’ve endured for so long (they night with in-house band The Horse Band and . They’re joined by refired grunge Various venues a human cannonball suit and a motorcycle formed in 1993) and continue to gig almost guests. rockers Phyal and hard-rocking crew Not Too Oxford’s most consistently quality metal th helmet mic’d up to a telephone receiver, unceasingly, is because they remain a great SIMPLY GERSHWIN: St John the Evangelist Shabby. promoters host their annual pre-Christmas MONDAY 8 keeping his identity semi-secret. He’s prone live band, a genuinely uniting musical force. – Pianist Viv McLean and singer/actress Sarah SKYLARKIN’S SOUNDSYSTEM: The extravaganza, this year stepping it all CATFISH & THE BOTTLEMEN: O2 to getting ladies – and the odd gentleman – up Dreadzone’s is a peculiarly British form of Gabriel celebrate the songwriting genius of Cellar – Your monthly ska, , rocksteady, up another gear to cover three days and Academy – Sold-out show from Llandudno’s onstage to sit on his knee while he plays, or reggae, fusing roots sounds and dub with a George Gershwin in a fundraiser for the church soul and party engagement, hosted, as three venues. Saturday’s all-dayer at the retro-rocking indie stars on the rise, touring their performing from the ladies toilets, and with folky feel, trance and breakbeats. 21 years restoration fund. ever, by Count Skylarkin. He’s joined tonight by Wheatsheaf is headlined by progressive debut album for Island, `the Balcony’, coming song titles like `I Want Your Shit On My Leg’ old this year, veterans of ten albums (plus roots-reggae songstress Jewels & Jacuzzis, and sludge monsters Hark, the band formed by in somewhere between , The and `Clap Your Tits’, you can pretty much a Best of), six Peel sessions and countless th RCA-signed soul boy James Joseph, currently Jimbob Isaac from Taint. Joining them are Manics and The Kooks. imagine the bawdy barroom nature of his tours and festival appearances, Glastonbury THURSDAY 4 recording his debut album with Amy Winehouse Croydon’s sludge/stoner/hardcore riffmongers OLI BROWN’S RAVENEYE: The Bullingdon THE MAGIC OF MOTOWN: The New particular brand of blues. is surely being their spiritual home. Their collaborator Baby J. Ireland’s dancehall party- Slabdragger and Milton Keynes’ sludge- – The Haven Club welcomes back Norfolk’s Theatre – Motown tribute spectacular with classic 1995 album, `Second Light’ spawned starters Dirty Dubstars complete a suitably party- doom crew Seven Hundredth Unicorn, 23-year-old rock wunderkind, his debut album, all the classic Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, their only Top 20 hit, `Little Britain’, but hearty line-up. as well as a seriously heavyweight local `Open Road’, released when he was just 17, of ’s extravagant sonic expeditions Supremes, Isley Brothers, Four Tops and their enduring appeal rests in their ability to SANCTUM: The Varsity Club – Metal club contingent that includes psych-blues heroes marking him out early on as one of the UK’s for their monolithic slabs of eloquent noise – see Jacksons hits, plus more. transform any room, or field, into a reggae night with classics and new releases across the Desert Storm, stoner warriors Beard of Zeus new breed of blues heroes, while drawing main preview THE MIGHTY REDOX: The Wheatsheaf – party. The trippy, spacious, almost rustic genre. and Indica Blues; old-school hardcore types admiring comparisons to Rory Gallagher and LINDISFARNE: Nettlebed Folk Club – Free gig in the downstairs bar from the veteran feel of their sound might feel almost archaic DISCO MUTANTES: The Library – Disco, Girl Power; drone-meister Lee Riley and Steve Cropper. Its 2010 follow-up, `Heads I Win, Newcastle’s enduring folk-rockers, still led local swamp-blues faves. compared to what’s come since but it’s and house night. of course this month’s Nightshift cover stars Tails You Lose’, featured regularly in end of by singer Ray Jackson, return to the intimate CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford following their own path that’s ultimately Mother Corona. year round-ups and found Oli winning Best Male surroundings of Nettlebed’s weekly folk club. Community Centre – The long-running open kept them on top of their game for so long. Sunday is another all-day affair, moving onto Singer and Best Young Artist at the British Blues club continues to showcase singers, musicians, th And it’s weird to think that amongst the SATURDAY 6 the Bullingdon with Brighton’s downtuned Awards. Since then his reputation has continued th band’s earliest backing singers were Alison poets, storytellers and more every week. BURIED IN SMOKE CHRISTMAS hardcore merchants Warwolf (pictured), TUESDAY 9 to grow, winning Best Album at last year’s Blues JAZZ CLUB: The Bullingdon – Trad jazz, Goldfrapp and Melanie Blatt. They could OPEN MIC CLUB: The Half Moon WEEKENDER: The Wheatsheaf (3pm) – ex-Hang the Bastard crew Mine, Dorset Awards and another Best Young Artist gong, bop and swing with veteran clarinettist Alvin so easily have called it a day back in 2006 BLUES JAM: Ampleforth Arms, Risinghurst Hark and Slabdragger top the bill at today’s pre- doomsters In The Hills and Portsmouth’s while `Here I Am’ featured cameos from Paul Roy and his Reeds Unlimited band at tonight’s when guitarist Steve Roberts died, but – The long-running blues jam finds a new home Christmas Buried in Smoke all-dayer – see main heavy-duty blues-metallers Tricorn among a Jones and Dani Wilde among others. He also weekly jazz club. brother and band founder Greg (originally after the closure of The Jack Russell in Marston. preview dozen or so acts. On Monday, if you still have achieved that blues seal of approval when he INTRUSION: The Cellar – Goth, industrial, drummer with ) rallied Open blues jam with the in-house band. UK FOO FIGHTERS: O2 Academy – Foo any sense of hearing left, Justin Greaves’ briefly replaced Rocky Athos in John Mayall’s ebm and darkwave club night with residents together a new band and the band are back Fighters hits rendered with authentic British epic progsters Crippled Black Phoenix band and has drawn praise from the venerable Doktor Joy and Bookhouse out on the road doing what they’ve always FRIDAY 5th pronunciation. are back in town at The Cellar. And if you likes of Johnny Winter, Walter Trout and Joe done best – playing live to packed houses. THE DEVIATED + NOT TOO SHABBY + OPEN MIC SESSION: James Street Tavern DREADZONE: The Bullingdon – Party- survive all three days, you get a medal. And Bonamassa for avoiding the pitfall of displaying SUGAR DARLING + BLUE SHIFT: The starting folk-reggae from the enduring festival a new set of internal organs. clever fret technique over real blues soul, instead Bullingdon – Church of the Heavy presents an th favourites – see main preview relying on simple riffs and rolling grooves to get WEDNESDAY 10 evening of classic heavy rock, metal and noise BALLOON ASCENTS + RAINBOW his music across. THE ENEMY + THE TWANG: O2 Academy with a selection of local bands. RESERVOIR + JULIA MEIJER: Modern Art CRIPPLED BLACK PHOENIX + – Double dose of enduring Midlands rock acts, ADAM BARNES + WILLIE J HEALEY + Oxford – Pindrop curates a special gig to help SEDULUS: The Cellar – Concluding Buried with Coventry’s lustily militant indie punks JESS HALL: The Cellar – Three of Oxford’s launch a new exhibition of Warhol and Morris In Smoke’s Christmas long weekender, Iron The Enemy kicking it out in the tradition of finest singer- come together for an artwork, with recent Nightshift cover stars Monkey, Electric Wizard and man The Clash, The Jam and The Libertines, while evening of musical tenderness. Soulful and Balloon Ascents fusing Radiohead’s understated, Justin Greaves’ grandiose prog-rockers return Birmingham’s The Twang keep the spirit of plaintive acoustic reflection from Adam Barnes, inventive electro-rock and Stornoway’s questing to play another intimate local show ahead of a Britpop and baggie alive. whose `The Land, The Sea and Everything folk. They’re joined by jaunty Anglo-American major European tour, drawing on the darker side BOB LOG III: O2 Academy – Delta blues MIDWINTER DRONE FEST: Modern Art Music local bands showcase with epic stadium affair. Phil was an imposing presence at the Wheatsheaf – Proggy Viking metal from Oxford – Drones, drones, ambience and more pop from Fracture; soulful guitar pop outfit club’s helm and tonight’s party sees the return of Godsbane at tonight’s heavyweight show, drones from Pindrop Performances – see main Stroke of Luck and more. London’s funky blues and soul outfit 24 Pesos, plus Midlands metalcore crew We Fight Like preview THE MIGHTY REDOX + MARK a band Phil hosted a number of times over the Kids, local dissonant electronics and noise- LEWIS WATSON: St. Barnabas Church ATHERTON & FRIENDS: The James Street years. A great occasion to celebrate Silver Phil’s rock newcomers Telegrapher, and old-school – Homecoming show in the suitably ornate Tavern very colourful life. metallers 13 Burning. and genteel environs of St Barnabas Church ST AGNES FOUNTAIN: Nettlebed Folk Club JAZZ CLUB: The Bullingdon – Free live jazz for Bicester’s Lewis Watson, capping off a th – Traditional folk songs with a festive leaning with funky club regulars The Hugh Turner Band. successful year that saw him tour around Europe SATURDAY 13 from Chris While, Julie Mathews, Chris Leslie OPEN MIC SESSION: James Street Tavern and release his debut album, `The Morning’, his METHOD MAN & REDMAN: O2 Academy and David Hughes. – East Coast dope buddy rap royalty come to th soft-centred songs of love and longing owing a th Thursday 11 town – see main preview WEDNESDAY 17 th debt to , Ben Howard and Ed Sheeran, th Saturday 13 while his pure, easy voice has earned him multi- IRREGULAR FOLK CHRISTMAS PARTY TUESDAY 16 ’68: O2 Academy – Stripped-down hardcore FOXES: O2 Academy million Youtube hits along the way. with THE MAGIC LANTERN + FLIGHTS HOZIER: O2 Academy – Already sold-out from Atlanta duo ’68, the latest musical vehicle METHOD MAN & Back in town after her show here in February, OF HELIOS + JORDAN HUNT: East Oxford show from the County Wicklow singer- for former-Norma Jean and Chariot frontman Foxes – the stage name of Southampton’s THE PETE FRYER BAND: The Wheatsheaf – Free gig in the downstairs bar from the veteran Community Centre – While Irregular Folk are songwriter, whose debut EP, `Take Me To The Josh Scogin, over in the UK for a tour to REDMAN: Louisa Allen – has seen her star very much sadly no longer a monthly concern on the local Church’ went to Number 1 in his native Ireland’s promote debut album `In Humour & Sadness’. in the ascendancy since that gig. She’s local blues-rock eccentric. JOHNNY’S SEXUAL KITCHEN + THE scene, they still pop up occasionally to showcase iTunes chart, with its raw, soulful take on Delta IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC O2 Academy released her debut album, `Glorious’, for acts whose approach to folk music is unusual, blues, not a million miles from George Ezra, CHRISTMAS PARTY: The Wheatsheaf –The The East Coast comes to east Oxford tonight starters, which went Top 5, garnering mixed MATT EDWARDS BAND + MAD LARRY as two of rap’s most playfully creative + TOM IVEY BAND + SAL & TONY: The off-beat, inventive and, yes, irregular. Tonight’s but better, while his eponymous debut album the local promotions club hosts its Christmas but generally positive reviews, but most pre-Christmas event features London’s Magic similarly went to the top back home, while going do with The Oxford Beatles, Tranceplant and rappers continue their on/off collaboration. importantly she was on Dr Who. Singing Cellar – It’s All About The Music blues and rock Friends before signing to Def Jam with their night. Lantern, with his warm, pure acoustic folk in Top 5 in the UK. Freddie Phoenix. Queen’s `Don’t Stop Me Now’ on The Orient the vein of and Joanna Newsom; THE WONDERSTUFF ACOUSTIC: O2 SPARKY’S JAM NIGHT: The James Street respective acts – Meth with Wu Tang Clan, Express. In space. How cool is that? Even CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford Red with Def Squad – the pair’s musical Community Centre erstwhile Irrepressibles chap Jordan Hunt, with Academy – Miles Hunt’s Stourbridge hitmakers Tavern – Open mic and jam session. in our most fevered, drug-induced dreams, his fragile, emotive piano-led acoustic pop, go unplugged for a run-through of old favourites, double act came together via regular (good we’ve never done that. But then, it seems to THE COTTONETTES + BEARD OF natured) rap battles, sharing a love of stoner DESTINY + LEPER KING: The Bell Inn, and local ambient space-drone crew Flights of from `Unbearable’ and `It’s Yer Money I’m After th be fully in the nature of a singer who always Helios, tonight unplugging the synths for an baby’, to `Size of a Cow’ and `Don’t Let Me THURSDAY 18 humour that’s seen them starring in stoner seems to be striving for grandeur, the album Bicester – Punk from Guildford’s Cottonettes, SALVATION BILL + KANCHO! + movie How High and a brief, best-forgotten blues from BoD and psychedelic groove acoustic set. Irregular Folk promoter Vez Hoper Down Gently’. polished and sumptuous and awash with epic knows how to make a gig an occasion so expect GODSBANE + WE FIGHT LIKE KIDS JURASSIC POP: The Cellar – Idiot King Fox sitcom Method & Red. Despite first choruses, even while she’s singing about the rock and blues from Leper King at tonight’s hosts its Christmas party with darkly humorous getting together in 1994 it wasn’t until 99 Strummerroom Project show. festive food and décor alongside the music. + 13 BURNING + TELEGRAPHER: The most mundane details of teenage/early-20s AUTUMN SAINTS + SEVEN O’CLOCK folk-bluesman Salvation Bill, plus Jurassic they released their debut album together, OPEN MIC CLUB: The Half Moon Pop – possibly the only band whose songs are life. Where Foxes is coming from, many have JUNKIES + PUPPET MECHANIC + THE th the well-received `Blackout!’, and another been before, notably Ellie Goulding, Marina & BROTHERHOOD OF MACK: Joe Perk’s, St Thursday 11 completely dedicated to the Jurassic Park films. decade before they made a follow-up, 2009’s Clement’s – Lounge lizard blues, playing Delta PINK DIAMOND REVUE: The Bullingdon the Diamonds and Emeli Sandé – bombastic – REM-ish country rocking from Oxford-based VAGUEWORLD + LUNAR GHECKO + `Blackout! 2’. You’d have thought, given yet baroque electro-pop with a theatrical edge, blues through to acoustic Motorhead covers. MIDWINTER IDEAL KOALA + TIM MAYO + PHILLIPA the time to think about it, they’d have come BLUES JAM: Ampleforth Arms, Risinghurst Anglo-American trio Autumn Saints, alongside coupled with an exotic, slightly kooky look acoustic indie crew Puppet Mechanic and DRONEFEST: MORAN: The Bullingdon – Lo-fi noisy up with a slightly more original title. Still, that seems to owe a bit to avowed influence Reading’s psych-surf techno-rock stars The Pink indie rocking from Abingdon’s Vagueworld at they’re busy fellas with myriad commitments, th Bat For Lashes. The pensive `Youth’ and the FRIDAY 12 Diamond Revue. Modern Art Oxford tonight’s It’s All About the Music gig. Support and both albums come with the expected almost stately `Beauty Queen’ show she’s got GAPPY TOOTH INDUSTRIES with THE BEDROCK: The Bullingdon – Classic Subtitled “An evening of sonic proliferation from cello’n’drums duo Ideal Koala. guest appearances from each others’ day the voice and the tunes to make it big in her SHAPES + NON-STOP TANGO + GEMMA metal and rock anthems, plus the best new and mantric ruminations”, tonight’s Pindrop- YOUR SONG: The Library – Smash Disco job bands. The chemistry between the duo own right, though, and right now, upwards is MOSS + VOLKERFUNK: The Wheatsheaf heavyweight releases at Skeleton’s monthly rock curated show simply had to be set in Oxford’s host the annual festive cover version bunfight, is clear for all to hear, their shared humour the only way Foxes is heading. Right up into – The reliably eclectic GTI celebrates the end of club night. premier art gallery. Coming up to their tenth with loads of local sorts massacring your augmented by a love for funky flow and space, on the Orient Express. another year fighting the good fight of bringing BEWARE THIS BOY + BLACKTHORN: year putting on gigs in Oxford, Pindrop favourites and more. Plus the return of Red typical MC braggadocio, all of which should new music to the masses in the company of The Cellar – Folk-punk in a Clash-meets- do excel at out-of-the-ordinary shows, so Death. make for a highly entertaining evening, as hopefully this celebration of the drone will STEAMROLLER & GUESTS: Kidlington well as a rare chance to see two of rap’s big played in a punk rock style by a guy in a human 60s-styled rock’n’soul outfit The Shapes, with a Lindisfarne fashion from Beware This Boy. continue that fine tradition Topping the bill Football Club – Second charity show of the hitters in town. cannonball suit and motorcycle helmet. No, sound that harks back to the classic songwriting EXTRA CURRICULAR: The Cellar – are Petrels, the work of former-Bleeding month from the veteran local blues-rockers, really – see main preview of Van Morrison, Squeeze, and Elvis Costello Techno, bass and house club night. among others. Support comes from Oxford MAMBO MAMBO MAMBO: The Old Fire Heart Narrative frontman Oli Barrett, now raising money for the NSPCC and others in the STEAMROLLER’S ROCKING, ROLLING boundless sense of enthusiasm on the planet Improvisers supergroup Non-Stop Tango, fusing Station – Mambo once, mambo twice, mambo mixing oceanic cello drones with fractious company of guests Rod Crisps from Falling AND BLUES CHRISTMAS: The Bullingdon brings his crates of classic funk and soul to town. jazz, funk, electronica, prog and more; decidedly thrice at tonight’s none-more-mambo show, with electronics and chant-like vocals. His set Leaves, blues guitarists Krissy Matthews and – Heavy-duty 60s-style blues-rocking in the vein You will party. offbeat gothic torch singer Gemma Moss, and sets from Manchester’s Buggalo Foundations, comes accompanied by a visual display by Aaron Keylock and former member John of Hendrix and Cream from the veteran local INVISIBLE VEGAS + BALLOONASCENTS Teutonic-style electro-pop act Volkenfunk. Go bringing the spirit of 1970s New York to Oxford Laid Eyes. He’s joined tonight by Paddox, the Wyvene rockers playing in aid of the NSPCC. They’re + THE FAMILY MACHINE: The Wheatsheaf on, take a chance, you might hear something you with heir fusion of jazz, r’n’b and Latin rhythms, new project of former-Trophy Wife drummer CATWEAZLE CLUB: East Oxford joined on stage by a series of guests, including – Roadhouse power-pop from Invisible Vegas at like. and local twenty-strong Cuban big band Ran Kit Monteith, whose ambient electronica can Community Centre Roy Young, Dave Smith, Mark Freeman, Rory tonight’s Sheaf show. They’re joined by rising BOSSAPHONIK: The Cellar – Dancefloor Kan Kan, with a lively set of classic tunes. be heard on debut album `Aphrodisiaque’, OPEN MIC CLUB: The Half Moon Evans and John Berry. local teen indie starlets Balloon Ascents with Latin, Balkan beats, global grooves and nu-jazz TRASHY: O2 Academy released this month on Bear on a Bicycle inside BLUES JAM: Ampleforth Arms, Risinghurst MONKFISH + SPACE HEROES OF THE their sweetly epic electro-folk-pop, and veteran dance club night, tonight with a live set from a concrete sleeve, and After The Thought, PEOPLE + BURNING BEES + BEAVER heroes The Family Machine. locally-based kora player and Mandinkan griot Matt Chapman-Jones’ collision of four-to-the- th FUEL: The Wheatsheaf – Moshka’s Christmas th FRIDAY 19 FLUID: The Cellar – Bass, garage and house Jali Fili Cissokho and his band, playing funky SUNDAY 14 floor electronica and post-rock guitar ambience. shindig with veterans Monkfish; FOALS DJs + CHAD VALLEY: The club night with DJ Q. TAKING BACK SUNDAY: O2 Academy – In between sets dronemeister extraordinaire techno/synthpop duo Space Heroes of the mbalax Afro grooves. He’s joined by London- Bullingdon –The local stars take to the decks for New York’s enduring post-hardcore crew hit the Lee Riley will be playing his characteristically People, local rock supergroup Burning Bees and based Ghanaian DJ Volta 45, with his extensive a night of 80s-flavoured funk, soul and electro. collection of African , plus host and UK to tour sixth album `Happiness’. menacing microtonal soundscapes. Winter is th lo-fi punk-pop urchins Beaver Fuel. SUPERLOOSE + DALE EASTHOPE + THE ORIGINAL RABBIT FOOT SPASM SATURDAY 20 resident DJ Dan Ofer. upon us, and here’s the perfect soundtrack. THE BEAT: The Bullingdon – Classic ska- OXFORD ACOUSTIC CLUB: The Jericho SONG & SUPPEROOMS + BEARD OF BAND + THE LONG INSIDERS + THE SAXON: O2 Academy – The Barnsley metal flavoured pop hits from Rankin Roger’s version Tavern – Unplugged sets from Adam McMillan, DESTINY + PURPLE MAY + JOHNNY’S SHELLAC COLLECTIVE: O2 Academy – titans return, stars of the NWOBHM scene in the of the 80s veterans – see main preview Ben Avison, Samuel Edwards, Anastasia SEXUAL KITCHEN: The Wheatsheaf (4- The Rabbits host their now traditional festival late-70s and early-80s, going on to sell some 15 SIMPLE & HOUSEWURK presents GRANT Gorbunova, Lee Valentine and Alan Jaggs. 8pm) – Free afternoon of acoustic music on the jazz riot, keeping the sounds and spirit of pre- million albums worldwide, including the genre NELSON: The Bullingdon – Two of Oxford’s OUTER LIMITS: The Cellar – Hip hop, grime Sheaf’s downstairs bar. war r’n’b and jump blues alive and very much and garage club night with Destiny 105 stalwart classic `Wheels Of Steel’. Original singer Biff kicking. They’re joined tonight by The Long leading house club nights team up to host one of Byford and guitarist Paul Quinn still helm the Insiders, inspired by the punked-up rockabilly the true godfathers of UK garage, drum&bass, Dr Erbz and friends. th battleship, so expect all the big MONDAY 15 of The Cramps as much as classic Elvis, while hardcore and 2-step, Nelson at the leading edge hits as well as tracks from their 2013 album, of each genre as it broke since the early 90s, and th THE FAMOUS MONDAY BLUES The Shellac Collective will be keeping the party THURSDAY 11 `Sacrifice’, the group’s twentieth. CHRISTMAS PARTY: The Jericho Tavern rocking with ’n’roll, r’n’b, jump still a leading light of the house scene with his FOXES: O2 Academy – Baroque electro-pop FRACTURE + STROKE OF LUCK + – Coming so soon after the death of FMB blues, rockabilly, swing and jazz. Swing City Records. from Louisa Allen, back from her adventures in STORYTELLER + ROCKY VALLEY + promoter Phil Guy Davis, tonight’s traditional CRAIG CHARLES’ FUNK & SOUL ORANGE VISION + WHITE BEAM + time and space – see main preview RAYZO: O2 Academy – It’s All About the Christmas party is likely to be an emotional SHOW: O2 Academy – The man with the most CAMERON AG: The Wheatsheaf – Alt. Public Service Broadcasting photo: Giulia Biasibetti including Catweazle host Matt Sage, and gothic and Desta*Nation Soundsystem will keep you folkstress Bethany Weimers, to the St Giles dancing from the top til the very last drop. Parish Room. This year the whole event is dedicated to the TRASHY: O2 Academy memory of Mackating bassist and Reggae Xmas LIVE originator David Norland, and in his honour a st donation will be made to The Leys CDI Youth SUNDAY 21 Music Project. MARK SOLLIS + PETE LOCK & MARK BOSLEY + LAIMA BITE + TWIZZ th TWANGLE + BEARD OF DESTINY + THURSDAY 25 MARK ATHERTON & FRIENDS: The Soft-hearted, lifelong vegetarians though we are Wheatsheaf (2.30-7pm) – Klub Kakofanney at Nightshift, we’re looking forward to carving up host an afternoon of free acoustic music, the bloated corpse of the new Pink Floyd album, including Moiety duo Pete Lock and Mark stuffed with the glistening gizzards of Sam Smith Bosley, gothic folkstress Laima Bite and one- and topped with Ed Sheeran’s stupid fat head with man blues army Beard of Destiny. an apple stuffed in its mouth. At least that should SUNDAY SESSIONS with ALICE RUSSELL shut him the fuck up for a few minutes while we & NATUREBOY + SWINDLESTOCK: neck our bottle of Lidl own-brand port in peace. Florence Park Community Centre (2-5pm) – Merry Christmas, everybody! Family-friendly music session with acclaimed soul singer Alice Russell joining host Natureboy, th th plus rootsy Americana outfit Swindlestock. FRIDAY 26 Saturday 20 THE PETE FRYER BAND: The Seacourt Arms – Boxing Day party with the veteran local nd THE BEAT: MONDAY 22 blues rocker. The Bullingdon HAVEN CLUB CHRISTMAS SHINDIG It’s symptomatic of the way the heritage band with THE MATT EDWARDS BAND + MAD th LARRY + CATCH 44 + CAT SHAKERS: The SATURDAY 27 circuit has gone over the years that simply WHITE MAGIC SOUND: The Bullingdon saying The Beat are playing in town isn’t Bullingdon – The Bully’s rock and blues club enough. Which Beat? There are two, without night hosts its festive party, with live sets from th even counting the American band whose rising local bluesman Matt Edwards and band, SUNDAY 28 existence lead to the British Beat having to and Larry Reddington’s new band, mixing blues, change their name to The English Beat in the country, rock and folk. th States (and The British Beat in Australia). BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST: Nettlebed Folk MONDAY 29 ALEXANDER O’NEAL: O2 Academy – The There’s The English Beat starring Dave Club – Best known as fiddle and oboe player veteran soul and r’n’b singer heads out on tour Wakeling, and then there’s The Beat with with Bellowhead, Paul Sartin has been a staple to relaunch his career, which peaked with 1987’s Ranking Roger. Confused? Well, tonight is on the English folk circuit for night on twenty `Hearsay’ and 1991’s `’ albums, the latter. The two acts have the same source years and together with accordion player Paul of course. The Beat were among that mini Hutchison makes up Belshazzar’s Feast, bringing and hit singles `’, revolution of bands in the late-70s/early-80s humour and virtuosity to old English dance `Never Knew Love Like This’ and `Criticise’. tunes, ballads, war poems and folk standards. MILLENNIAL LIVE: The Cellar – Deep bringing ska to the masses, alongside The because when they cut loose they’re Afterwards we shake hands and CLARK & MOORE + THE OTHER house, trap and drum&bass showcase night with Specials, Madness, The Selecter et al. Hits AUDIOSCOPE properly engaging, and if the new have our photo take with him as he DRAMAS: Phoenix Picturehouse – Live music Legion, HDZVP/Arro, Olde English and DJ Nazz. like `Mirror In the Bathroom’, `Too Nice Pink Floyd album was half as good chats genially and we feel genuinely in the cinema’s upstairs bar with country-tinged To Talk To’ and `Hands off, She’s Mine’, as The Jericho Tavern we might actually care about it. humbled. guitar and piano duo Clarke & Moore, plus th well as a cover of `Tears of a Clown’, and TUESDAY 30 It’s pissing down and blowing a an endearingly understated sense of One of Audioscope’s most appealing We similarly turn into simpering a brace of Top 5 albums made them stars, garage-pop duo The Other Dramas. JAZZ CLUB: The Bullingdon gale. Wretched weather; who’d be humour, leaving any between-song facets is the audience who are open fanboys in the company of Stephen before they fractured and split, reforming homeless on days like this? Far too chat to an iMac that talks with an old- minded and respectful throughout, Mallinder, who is as approachable as in the two formats that currently tour on a rd st many people, tragically. Which is school posh accent. so even when You Are Wolf come his music is alienating and austere. regular basis. Joining lead man Roger in this TUESDAY 23 WEDNESDAY 31 TOO MANY POETS + DECOVO + REEJAI why events like Audioscope, in their Much, much earlier in the day perched between two very loud acts As part of Cabaret Voltaire he is an line-up is his son Ranking Junior, as well as SKYLARKIN SOUNDSYSTEM NEW + THE AUREATE ACT: The Jericho Tavern own small way, are so important; psych-rockers The Neon Violets with their gossamer traditional folk, electronic music god, no question. former-Wonderstuff drummer and 90s dance YEAR’S EVE PARTY: The Cellar – Dance – Tightly-wound, Foals-y indie pop from Too in 14 years the annual mini-festival carve out a neat groove of noise, there’s no chatter to detract from their His new band, Wrangler, sounds like hitmaker Fuzz Townsend. All you really need into 2015 in the suitably festive company of has raised getting on for £30,000 for somewhere between Hawkwind and Many Poets, plus fidgety guitar pop from songs. Songs that are mostly about prime Cabs – future factory industrial to know, though, is they’ll be playing the hits, Count Skylarkin. Temple Funk Collective Shelter. Wooden Shjips, while Kid Kin’s birds, taking often ancient stories hiss and clang, electro-primitivism Decovo and spacious, almost proggy pop from and much more. That much is simple enough play live, the New Orleans-style eight-piece Charity gigs are hardly uncommon richly-textured instrumental electro- and songs and adding just the right and abrasive synthetic melodies, The Aureate Act. to predict. brass band taking their cue from the Louisiana but few have the identity and quality shoegaze creates a warmly welcoming twists of modernity to make them occasionally cut through with JAZZ CLUB: The Bullingdon legends, and adding gypsy dance, jungle and hip of Audioscope, which has carved fog of noise to bring the day gently compelling and, at times, absolutely foreboding vocals. It’s music for Dalek OPEN MIC SESSION: James Street Tavern rocking from Orange Vision, alongside goth- hop into the fun gumbo. Disco Shed favourite a niche for itself in the local gig into life. beautiful. . It is, frankly, astonishing. calendar for its ability to bring the Australian seven-piece folk ensemble tinged indie rocking from newcomers White Del Gazeebo serves up bass bin-bothering Far more so than ’s Telescopes, though, are equal to it. th best and underground sounds The Doomed Bird of Providence lumpen acoustic set. The guy was in Last time they played Audioscope Beam, formed by ex-members of Red Star Cycle, WEDNESDAY 24 bashment boogie, Harvey K-Tel picks prime hip to town. are folk music in the same way as for heaven’s they were deliberately contrary and X-1 and Mephisto Grande, plus melancholic REGGAE CHRISTMAS with DUB MAFIA: hop, funk and disco delights, while the Count They’ve pulled off several serious The Pogues and Jacques Brel were, sake – there’s no excuse for being indulgent. Tonight they sound like the singer-songwriter Cameron AG. O2 Academy - The Academy’s traditional plays his characteristically party-starting mix of coups this year, hosting two bona fide exploring the dark, seedy underbelly so dull. storm at the heart of the sun, Stephen OXROX CHRISTMAS PARTY: The Cellar Christmas Eve reggae party returns, this year reggae, hip hop and funk into the New Year. with Bristol’s bashment breakbeat heroes Dub THE MIGHTY REDOX + THE PETE legends and attracting a headline act of life with vim and vigour by way That’s a rare aberration on a day Lawrie hunched centre stage howling – Heavy rock club OxRox hosts local rock and who would otherwise be playing far of dark waltzes and gothic shanties. Mafia returning to town after their showing FRYER BAND + MARK ATHERTON + THE packed with quality and cult heroes. into the void as his band crush rock metal covers band Terminus and DJ Krusher bigger venues than this. It’s deliciously stark, grimy stuff, like One of which is Silver Apples, a music to a point of singularity via at The Cellar back in March. Fronted by the BB DREADSOUND DISCO: The Wheatsheaf Joule (ex-Noisy Mothers) for some serious old- That’ll be Public Service Fisherman’s Friend remodelled by New York duo who laid down the vast psychedelic drones that in the reggae siren Eva Lazarus, the seven-piece have – New Year’s Eve hoe-down in the company school rock action. Broadcasting, whose finale to an Waren Ellis and you can just imagine foundations for so much , malevolent intensity stakes make taken their floor-pounding blend of drum&bass, of swamp-blues crazies The Mighty Redox and FRESH OUT THE BOX: The Cellar – Techno, eleven-hour music marathon is them popping up as the bar band in a electronic music and psychedelia back Begbie from Trainspotting look like dancehall, dubstep, breakbeat and world music chums. house and disco club night, with a live set from sporadically engaging if slightly Nick Cave-scripted movie. in the 60s, now just modulator man The Dude from The Big Lebowski. THE DREAMING SPIRES: The Rusty Bicycle electro-core crazies Coloureds, plus London all over the globe, from Asia to Scandinavia, scrappy. Their shtick – motorik Earthling Society have played Simeon, now in his 70s, and showing They’re like a musical incarnation of – Americana-themed NYE party in the company synthman Infinite Scale live and resident DJs. amassing over 1,000,000 Youtube hits along instrumentals tied to vintage Pathé with Hawkwind and it shows – their no signs of mellowing musically as the deluge outside, but condensed into MATT SAGE + RICHARD NEUBERG + the way. Count Skylarkin, Constant Jammin of Oxfordshire’s godfathers of alt.country. newsreels – may not be hugely spaced-out psych-jazz jams teetering he crafts hypnotic electronic space thirty minutes of sonic catharsis, and BETHANY WEIMERS + PROVINCIALS + original but it’s rarely less than between indulgent noodling and grooves out of an extensive home- there’s no roof in the world can save JAMES BELL + SWINDLESTOCK: St Giles Nightshift listings are free. Deadline for inclusion is the 20th of each mont - no exceptions. Email engaging, particularly on the superb, hypnotic propulsion. They’d do well made board of machines that look you from such a storm. Parish Room – Pindrop’s final show of the listings to [email protected]. All listings are copyright Nightshift Magazine and may not be not to say rather moving, `Spitfire’, to ditch the vocals which drag them like something from the fevered Nor would we want it to. year brings a host of acoustic solo performers, reproduced without permission. and the studiedly bookish duo have down to pub-rock band level at times imagination of Professor Quatermass. Dale Kattack MUTAGENOCIDE / SANITY LOSS / BALKAN WANDERERS / RECKLESS DEVIL INSIDE / TWISTED STATE SLEEPERS / PUPPET MECHANIC LIVE OF MIND The Wheatsheaf photo: Marc West photo: Marc Club Kakofanney head honchos Phil X5 keyboard which, while being this O2 Academy Freizinger and Sue Smith do a brilliant band’s most appealing characteristic, On the way to tonight’s gig it’s manages some decent semi-operatic job promoting all that is eclectic about is only marginally better at doing the announced that Cream’s Jack Bruce, sense of epic but they’re all show and Oxford music and, despite a late pull job than the notoriously inefficient one of the grand old men of British no tell. out from bluesman Beard of Destiny, Oxford to Cambridge bus of the same rock music, has died. Fitting then that Sanity Loss are similarly attired – all we and a ragbag of decidedly varied number. The transport theme continues the first band we hear are Witney’s black leather and silk scarves – but characters are primed for another with ‘Bus to Carfax’, while covers Twisted State of Mind, all of them just they’re a far tighter unit, the goth- musical journey of discovery at The of Midlake’s ‘Roscoe’ and Jefferson 14 years old but belying their tender glam look belying a well-drilled Wheatsheaf. Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’ prove to be years with extreme prejudice. Back in metalcore sound that, if breaking Puppet Mechanic open with a more well chosen. the UK after an American tour, they few musical barriers, makes for indie-oriented sound than the folk Enter Balkan Wanderers, a five-piece look like they should be auditioning 30 minutes of well-choreographed overtones of their recorded output who channel the spirit of the whole for McFly, the Next Generation, but death-tinged fun. Their bassist is the would indicate, although they veer eastern half of the European continent, they’re possessed by the spirit of 80s star of the show: a pouting, peroxide towards Americana a third of the way occasionally plunging deep into the thrash and kick it out full throttle with fretboard-licking poser who spends through while also dabbling in the music of Mother Russia itself but theatrical zeal. Guitarist Luke Ashby one song with a girl’s bra clasped more jaunty pastoralism of English dabbling in Middle Eastern rhythms appears in the crowd to play his solo between his teeth. Metal needs more folk. A volley of covers close the set via opener and best known tune atop a table, while Damon Marshall’s cartoon characters like this. – the Magnetic Fields’ ‘I Need A New ‘Cairo’, as well as singer Antica’s tumultuous drumming propels Mutagenocide, though, are in a class Heart’ giving way to the Jacksons’ native Croatia. Nattily-hatted English everything onward. The trio play up of their own, a growling, rasping ‘Blame It on the Boogie’, the latter guitarists add a twist of Nutty Boys’ to the clichés of the genre, milking speedfreak collision of tech, thrash, starting languidly before morphing madcappery but the secret ingredient is them for all their worth on songs like death and classic metal that’s a into a riotous hoedown. Forced back Clare Heaviside’s clarinet – providing set highlight `Rock and Roll In Hell’, brutally thrilling thing to behold, on stage for an encore, they finish on a gorgeous warmth to a set that can’t tempering the thrash onslaught with like being sonically pummelled by reworking of Kraftwerk’s `The Model’ help but get you moving. Balkan a sense of melody that reminds us a champion kickboxer. Singer Jay’s and jolly fine it is too. Wanderers’ upfront exhibition of of Judas Priest and Accept at times. relentless yapping vocal onslaught Similar enthusiasm greets the their influences shouldn’t see them Rock music, it seems, is in safe hands. is barely decipherable but it matters hardworking Reckless Sleepers, replete pigeonholed as a genre band and songs Follow that, grown-ups. not a jot, and as a small but overly with capes, warbling and a degree of such as ‘Sleep Around’ have as much Devil Inside, sadly, can’t. There enthusiastic pit breaks out, we wackiness that homes in dangerously right to soundtrack the city as any are six of them but they make half remember that tonight marks the close to morris dancing territory. straightforward bunch of Radiohead the noise of Twisted State of Mind. tenth anniversary of the death of John Synths straight out of the soundtrack copyists. Put simply, they are excellent. They look like they want to be Peel. And we imagine him smiling of an Arnie movie come courtesy of an Robert Langham Black Veil Brides, but as soon as the approvingly down on the musical ominous synth intro fades, we’re terror unfurling below. “Louder! MAIIANS / KID KIN / THE CRISIS PROJECT into messy standard metal territory Faster!” as the great man was fond as each member battles to be centre of saying. Instructions Mutagenocide Modern Art Oxford of attention but mostly succeed in follow to the letter. bumping into each other. The singer Dale Kattack There are times when good sounds aren’t the same as good music. The (ironically, as Twin Peaks was projected behind Crisis Project, whereas Kid Crisis Project, a man from Bristol with a rack of tech, certainly knows Kin gets the first 30 minutes of Labyrinth, which rather shoots down the which buttons to punch and which pots to twist to produce a tasty stutter, soaring sonic beauty). lurch or glitch, continually derailing what might just be warm house tracks Maiians, with their sleek yet bouncy double-drummer synth instrumentals, ELLA MARTINI with inventive treatments a la Funkstorung, but sometimes you just want at first seem like an Oxford music throwback, melding The Evenings and him to stop and think about structure for a moment. The second tune Sunnyvale with scrambled bits of The Egg. Even bashing away in a dark The Bullingdon promises hints of early Black Dog, but soon gets swamped by the tricks and basement there’s a seductive smoothness to their music, taking the kick of With her hair covered by a large Lyrically her songs, like `Story’, twiddles, until it’s more like watching a hardware tutorial than a gig. Make funk, but cosmetically covering the sweat and airbrushing out the solos, in headband and a voice that ranges `Dealing With This’ and `Ragdoll’, us feel as though you’re gifting us art, not as though you’re selling us Kaos a manner that recalls disco genius Arthur Russell. Oxford has never been from kittenish and cutesy to slightly tend towards the confessional or pads. short of the arch, the articulate and the impeccably measured – and we’re tigerish, Ella Martini could pass emotional politics – boys who’ve Kid Kin is almost the opposite, setting up surprisingly simple rhythms and not just talking about music – but it’s refreshing to see a band that takes for a young Eartha Kitt at times. done her wrong, or boys who aren’t spicing them with cleanly elegant keyboard lines and swathes of ultra-fuzz controlled eloquence and adds dancefloor nous. By the end of an impressive Certainly the large, noisy throng good enough for her best friends guitar crescendos. The average Kid Kin track sounds like Mogwai jamming set, our reference points have morphed: Maiians are Tortoise at their gathered before the 19-year-old (she seems worried we’ll all think on the tension cues from a mid-afternoon game show, which might have warmest crossed with the sort of post-samba outfit you always see perking singer from Botley seem to think she’s a man-hater, though let’s be ended up an overbalanced mess if he weren’t so adept at arrangement, up the runners half way along the London Marathon... which is far more she’s a new soul sensation in honest, there’s plenty to hate in that constructing solid melodic edifices before swamping them with a deluge satisfying than pressing the machines that make the nice noises, as it turns waiting. department). of warm reverbed strumming. Some moments are overly nice, perhaps, but out. She’s no diva yet, mind. Between There’s a worry, at least here in a even then we’re reminded of Angelo Badalamenti’s knack for studied kitsch David Murphy songs she’s self-effacing and seems live setting, compared to the slick a little taken aback, embarrassed soulfulness of her recent single even, by the enthusiasm directed `You’, that some of her songs fizzle BO NINGEN threatening to reach climax but forever piling on towards her, while in song she’s an out before they’ve got going, and the pressure until they implode under their own understated presence. While she’s we’d like to hear her keyboard O2 Academy mass. not immune to melisma, mostly her player’s strong backing vocals more Once upon a time in a dark Japanese dungeon, incendiary in the extreme, the quartet’s space- Three tracks in thirty minutes tells you much voice is tightly reined in. When she – he’s buried in the mix when what Lemmy from Motorhead and Sadako from riding psychedelic noise blast and propulsive about what you need to know about Bo Ningen: veers close to hip hop, she reminds you can hear adds a whole heap of Ring spawned a quartet of skinny, demonic imp jams not so much music as a sonic torrent of they do nothing by halves and make a laughing us a little of Ms Dynamite’s more depth to the feel of the songs. children. They formed a band called Bo Ningen, noise, its intricacies – of which there are many stock of anyone who says rock music has lost its restrained delivery, while even in Vocally though, Ella’s talent who were taught to played guitar by Satan, who – simply flotsam and jetsam amid the oncoming power to shock and awe. Only Gnod and Mugstar those moments Ella lets her voice is undeniable, and importantly was actually Dave Brock from Hawkwind in storm. of the bands we’ve seen in recent years can unfurl into full soul sister, she’s possesses its own personality rather disguise, and set out to destroy the world with Centre-stage is singer/bassist Taigen Kawabe, a match this show of guitar power. closer to the flitsy sweetness of than overly trained or polished, and sound. gurning, grimacing presence who finishes the set And if you can detect a sulphurous smell in the Minnie Riperton than any of the at her age she certainly has the time Tonight’s short set, opening for Band of Skulls, atop the barrier in front of the crowd, guitar aloft, air today, it’s either the gates of Hell opening up, brazen, smashing-it, sirens X-Factor to work out what’s the best platform who must have cowered in their dressing room shrieking hysterically into the ether as the rest of or Bo Ningen just tore Oxford a new arsehole. continue to foist upon the world. to show it off on. wondering what they’d done to deserve this, is the band play merry hell, cataclysmic crescendos Dale Kattack Which endears us to her all the more. Dale Kattack

Massive photo: Sam Shepherd Kirsten Etheridge distinctive, butultimately triumphant. influences; less divisive, morecontent–less comfortable asa suburban semiwithChicretro décor: invoguebuttransient.Now she’s more 2009 LaRouxwaslikeanewbuild with80s clumsily twistalinefrom`Colourless Colour’, satisfactory waytoexpressherself. To borrowand discovered thataSIDchipmightnot bethemost Music-esque fullersound;itfeels like she’s It’s clearthatElly’s morecontentwiththisRoxy less falsetto;puttingonapersona. (`Sexotheque’), notdecadent–sensibility. There’s Miami Vice-era, seedy–thoughobservant (spiritually ifnotvisually)withamorerelaxed, soundtrack), andthenewstuff isinfused would havefittedsnuglyintotheFlashdance The 80svibeisstillevident(`SilentPartner’ more cry-for-help. `I’m Not Your Toy’ becomeslessmusic-boxand harpischordy chordprogressionsof`Tigerlily’; to theoldstuff –especiallyinthewonderful band giveanewdepthandemotionaldimension Paradise’), EllyisinOxfordwithafullband. This lot –thebestofsecondalbum,`Trouble in Langmaid halfway(thoughhehasco-writtena Fiveyearslater, havingshedherbandmateBen gimmicky. too plinky–andEllyJackson’s falsettowasjust eponymous, albumwasderivative;tootrebley, and retrogaming,buttomethen,LaRoux’s first, thanks tothepopularityofvideogamesoundtracks naff. Chiptunemightbemorewidespreadnow predisposed tothinkLaRouxwasabit,well, who profoundlyreveresDepecheMode,Iwas 80s synthrevivalinthelate2000s,assomeone old DepecheModerecord.” And lo,intheearly- just soundslikeawomanwarbling,badly, overan “People askwhyIdon’t likeLaRouxandIsayit OMD’s Andy McCluskeymemorablyspat, documentary SynthBritanniawasfirstshown, Around thetimeseminal2009BBC O2 Academy LA ROUX O2 Academy Celina Macdonald awesome.” And I’mstillallowed tomakemusicandthat’s amazing night. We’re aliveandthere’s music... man himselfbeautifullysimplifies it:“Whatan his enthusiasmfortheprojectdried out. As the artistic integrityoverforcingout MCR hitsafter It’s safetosayitwasworthhisriskvalue audience. but hasalreadygarneredaloyaland largely new manoeuvre intoaverydifferent styleofmusic, Way hasnotjustmanagedtogracefully FromtonightitcertainlyseemsthatGerard irresistible foritsunplaceabledéjàvu. a songthatfeelsnostalgicfornoreasonandis cry withanunbeatablehookand‘NoShows,’ memorable are‘MayathePsychic,’ arallying they canallstartthenexttrack.Particularly himself withatambourineinhergripandso in questiongrabshimatighthug,hereplaces “Do youwannaplaythetambourine?” The girl get. “You,” Gerardpointsoutakidinthe crowd, American andover-the-top asOxfordshows Sleater-Kinney cover, thisisaboutasendearingly been ditchedforBrit-popinfluencesand a While the`BlackParade’-styletheatricshave song couldbe. catchy andasaggressiveaBrit-popinspired drums andapersistentwhinyguitar, issuper tinge, while‘ZeroZero’,withprimitiveindustrial the mix. The songhasayouthful,pop-punk afterwards ‘ActionCat’ exuberantlyburstsinto obscured byrowdyguitars.Butshortly a songwhosecatchychorusispurposefully dubbed The Hormonesopenwith‘TheBureau’, Way andhisband,afoursomeadolescently- to gathering. contrast tothemass-scalehysteriathatheisused sold-out showmustseemalow-keyaffair in lead singerofMyChemicalRomance,tonight’s solo tour. Comingoutofadramaticcareerasthe This istheseconddateonGerard Way’s firstUK GERARD W A Y sound, butsongslike`Let’s Get a slightgrungeaestheticintotheir aplomb. Sometimestheyincorporate Skamstraddlethe80sand90swith in theshapeofBryant. leathers, there’s aworthysuccessor Should RobHalfordhanguphis of singerColeBryantisastounding. sheer confidenceandvocaldexterity WASP fortheirowngood,butthe when theysoundtoomuchlike into theirsound. There’s onemoment began toinjectalittle American glam majority oftheNWOBHMbands period inthemid-80swhen Their entiresetharksbacktothe discovered areallycoolskullring. fresh-faced archaeologistswho’ve Hell’s Gazellesarelikeabandof defies thelawsofevolution. so primalthat,musicallyatleast,it but essentiallythebasicblueprintis and sometimesit’llpretendtobeNu, know. Itmightgetolder, andbalder, Metal willneverdie,thatmuchwe The Wheatsheaf HELL’S GAZELLES MASSIVE /SKAM Lisa Ward many coffee-flavoured numbersthrowninto themix. the nightfeelinglike abagofRevelswithfartoo meanders through somanydifferent stylesitleaves whole thingtosoundmoreaccomplished. Insteadshe crisp vocals,twostudioalbumsinyou’d expectthe Though thegigisnotadisasterandPeacedelivers that wouldn’t beoutofplaceonaDisneysoundtrack. the liverenditionlosesthisinfavour ofacabaretvibe version of‘Clown’ isstrippedbackandsympathetic, dominating thesong.Elsewhere,thoughalbum ‘The Thin Line’ losespowerwiththedrumbeat over intoloudersounds,thetitletrackofnewalbum Affair withMisery’ highlightsherabilitytocross that allowsthelyricstoshinethrough. Whilst ‘Love guitar tothesoundanddeliveringasimplisticversion is markedlybetter, withPeacebringingheracoustic Me Love You (Until You Learn To Love Yourself)’ to theoriginalnumber. HerversionofNe-Yo’s ‘Let spin onthings,”herdeliverybeingalltoosimilar it failstoliveupPeace’s desireto“put[her]own he thrashesthroughtheendofsong.Nevertheless Way’ servestohighlighttheleadguitarist’s skillas HerversionofFleetwoodMac’s ‘Go Your Own with wildlyvariabledegreesofsuccess. the resultisamixedbagofdifferent stylesperformed Unfortunately, however, shetoofrequentlystraysand it’s the balladnumbersthatareherstrongpoint. Elsewhere ‘Dance With The Devil’ furtherconfirms addition bringingamelancholyvibetothesong. one ofthehighlightsnight,subtleviolin song. The stripped-backpiano-led`Fairytales’ is this isnegatedbyadesiretoshiftsoundswitheach hints ofMelissaEtheridgecomingthrough,but At times hervoiceandmusicianshipdazzlewith night cocktailbar, toattemptsatpopandrock. relaxed music,whichwouldn’t goamissinalate confused Waterloo Roadcharacter. Itmeandersfrom the endresultisevenmoreindecisivethanher from theStatestobeattonight’s show. Sadlythough, something ofacultfollowing,withfanstravelling Unsurprisingly actress/singerHeatherPeacehas O2 Academy HEATHER PEACE Sam Shepherd it’s damnfinefun. got longhair, anditsmellsbad,but auspicious company. It’s generic,it’s own songsholdtheirinsuch almost onesteptoofar, buttheir a coupleof AC/DC numbers,it’s nailed down. When theythrowin got theclassicrockandrollsignifiers choreographed rockingout,they’ve their own good. Downing Fosters and they’re almosttooSpinal Tap for party anditshows. A massofcliché, end oftheirtoursothey’reupfora might justbethatband.It’s the new full-onrockbehemoth.Massive of time before Australia will require a affecting theband,it’s onlyamatter with illhealthand“legalproblems” With AC/DC onborrowedtime professionalism. they worktheaudiencewithassured workman like,buttotheircredit, traditional. At timesit’s alittle Rocked’ keepthingsmuchmore during the frequentquietsections the wayofarelaxing evening. So of ferventfollowing thatcangetin this isabandwho attractthekind and mostsoundgreattonight. But excursions intoelectronicterritory, on thefirstlisten,withsomepleasing more songsthatsoundrecognisable album ‘LaPetiteMort’ containsyet occasional outing during the set. New manic, flailingdancingstillgetsan clarity, despiteafewcracks,andhis singer, buthisvoiceretainsitsurgent shirt, lookingabitlike70spub pointy beardandwide-collared Tim Boothisnowbaldwitha night ofthisten-datetour. Singer present andcorrectfortheopening nice toseemostofthekeymembers chart-topping stadiumfillers. Soit’s through Madchesterfigureheads,to two years,fromjanglyindiekids, breakups andreunionsintheirthirty- predictable milloflabels,producers, James havebeenthroughthe some highprofilesupportslots. by somedecentsongs,leadingto harmonies andguitarsarematched black turtlenecks,the60s-inspired such preconceptions. Resplendentin revival butdeservealookwithout Manchester’s currentpsychedelic found themselveslumpedinwith Stockport’s Blossomshave O2 Academy JAMES /BLOSSOMS torpor thathadbeguntosetindue night downtheCowleyRoadand ever donebutit’s latefora Tuesday most radicalthingDeadPrezhave Enteringthefrayat11.15 isn’t the lively mood. ‘Childhood’ increasinganalready have aball,thereggaeovertonesof Subculture Sagearedeterminedto Enlistedtosetthescene,Britrappers for arepresenttofindout. satisfyingly diverseasyoucouldhope be intriguingandanaudienceas urban surroundsofOxfordwould maintained inthenotparticularly Whether thatfiercenesscouldbe movie DaveChappelle’s BlockParty. Kanye West andanappearanceonthe despite anearlycollaborationwith outside themainstreamasaresult, man andM-1,haveremainedfirmly black communitiesandtheduo,Stic. among whitehipstersasithas It’s ablendthathasachievedfavour a fiercebrandofpan-Africanism. ‘political prisoners’ andadvocating the victimsofwarondrugsas government stance,declaiming a fiercelyanti-corporateandanti- the musicindustrycircus,adopting rap outfits,applyingloftydisdainto most unapologeticallyradicalof made anameforthemselvesasthe Over twodecades,DeadPrezhave O2 Academy DEAD PREZ/SUBCULTURE SAGE Art Lagun could justaboutsum Jamesup. blend ofepicand intimate,which to ‘JustLikeFred Astaire’, aperfect encores buttofinishoff we’retreated Frustration’ arefittingandthrilling ‘Out To Get You’ and‘Born Of like arolled-upcarpet. only tobegentlyloweredthefloor stall andleapsouttosurfthecrowd, Booth climbsontothemerchandise unexpectedly hilariousmomentwhen new albumdisplays. Then comesan for thequirkyexperimentation but thearrangementsdon’t allow incidentally). albums (whicharegreattocookto, intimacy ofalistentotheirbetter along youstarttomissthepoignant towards afootballterracesing- appeal. that partlyexplainstheirenduring beautifully controlledsongs,atrick are upliftingandemotionalyet the tour. ‘Seven’ and‘Sometimes’ ‘Sit Down’,whichisbannedfrom still havethepowertothrill,except Despitethistheoldfavourites cloaking airofreverence. almost becomesincidentaltotheall- but itgetstothepointthatband audibly. “shut thefuckup!”atanyonetalking we getbig,angrymenshouting Rob Langham them intown. Nonetheless, it’s apleasuretohave outlandish stageanticsofthepast. but unequaltosomeofthemore seem relativelyprosaic,raisingspirits with theridiculousbuttonightthey ‘croutons’ soarenotafraidtoflirt DeadPrezoncerhymed‘futon’ with few years. fourth seriesofTheWire byagood of whichpredatedthemagnificent evening byfarandasongthemessage ‘They Schools’,thehighpointof They followupwithaconvincing Oxford audiencehavecometoenjoy. but, unquestionablythedittythis the bestthingtheyhaveeverdone, the millstone-like‘HipHop’:farfrom of byfartheirmostwell-knowntune, Finally, theytreatustoarendition smartphones begintotakeahold. to wanderastherivalattractionsof Get Free’ andattentionspansdobegin from their2000masterpiece‘Let’s That said,thesetislightontracks duo blastouttheirmessagewithgusto. recent LP, ‘TheInformation Age’ asthe ‘neutered newagecrooning’ ofmost sign ofwhatPitchforkdescribedasthe performance fromtheduo. There’s no blown apartbyatypicallyaggressive and onetoomanyvodkasisquickly to aninterminablegapbetweenacts Yet asthegigstartstoveer This shouldn’t beabigdeal The bandplaywell, Throughout the set a naked, limbless Throughout thesetanaked, limbless of DavidLynch’s WildHeart. At it’s escapedfromthesoundtrack languorous `Weird Love’ feelslike death rowinmate,whilethemore breast andcornonthecobofa Request’ feastsonthefriedchicken dank basement.Opener`LastMeal Dale andBoDiddleyinsomedark, In Vegas jammingitoutwithDick that makethebandsoundlikeDeath building upintorockabillydirges samples fromoldb-movies,tracks Rob’s beats,electronicsandvocal hovering wraith-likeoverdrummer 50s, Tim’s subterraneansurfshimmer sound fromthedarkeredgesof the bandoffer anoftenoppressive look ofa1950sthug.Musicallytoo chewing demeanourgivinghimthe him, hissullen,hollowed-out,gum- holds thatairofsubtlemenaceabout Diamond Revue’s guitarist Tim Lane physical damage.ReadingduoPink from thestagetodoyousomeserious with abandyoucanimagineleaping It’s a rare treatwhenyou’refaced Jericho TavernThe DIAMOND REVUE ANIMAL HOUSE/ THE PINK Tonight’s setisprettymuchMercury- BRIT awards. she’s won poetryprizesaswell casually brilliantyoucanseewhy with ideasandawaywordsso a faultlessflowandmindsoalive she’s stunning, arhymemasterwith D hasfallenunderherspell.Simply you canseewhyeventhegreatChuck and puppyishgrin,butonceshe’s off skips onstage,ablurofgingercurls south Londonopenrapsessions,she forged intheunforgiving firesof rap star, probably ever. A slampoet Kate Tempest isthemostunlikely any timesoon. proof they’renotgettingcomfortable single, isalmostold-skoolrave,and Set closer`Lazarus’,aforthcoming enough –coverofLorde’s `Royals’. rap toabrave–andrespectable switch fromhard-assedanti-fascist strength istheirversatility, ableto typically hiphoproots,andtheirchief is areminderoftheirharsher, more before, thoughsethighlight`Bullspit’ of `Swim Away’ aretrippierthan `Anthropocene’ debut. The likes new territoryfromtheirexcellent soulful vocalsaretakingtheminto Lucy Cropperwhosesultry, darkly Dan Clearjoinedfulltimebysinger Hill andguitarist/electronicschap days –rapperandproducer Andy outfit areverymuchatriothese hop hadusbelieving. The Witney not thealienstheirsci-fiinspiredhip onstage atlast,andturnsoutthey’re So DeathofHi-Fiareunmasked O2 Academy KATE TEMPEST /DEATH OF

Dale Kattack out fromthecrowd. have afightontheir handstostand rooted inclassictraditions, they’ll of quality–butwithasoundso act thatfollowsthem,awholeheap compared tothetrulyrisibleheadline fun enoughforhalfanhour–and lot of The Violent Femmes. They’re while theirsetcloserremindsusa the closesttheyrideto The Strokes, and SmallFaces,songslike`Sour’ the classic60ssoundsof but they’vemoreincommonwith describe themselvesasgaragerock quartet relocatedtoBrighton,they by comparison. An Australian barrel oflight-heartednormality After which Animal Housearea fabulously dirtyasitgets. Revue’s acidhousesurf-rockisas two numbers. The PinkDiamond voice overandagainbetween the better,” intones adisembodied traditional frontperson.“Thedirtier the crowdimpassivelyinplaceofa mannequin standscentrestage,eyeing Dale Kattack the goodguyswininend. incredibly likableone.Sometimes presence makeherastar, butan than she’s due;herpoetryand mere decadeincoming–isnomore of asong.Herovernightsuccess– hard, heavy, abrain-scouringbeast but `TheHeist’ istherealhighlight: pub inSunderlandnotsolongago– musing onplayingtosixpeopleina infectious singalongthathasKate biggest cheerofthenight–an Unsurprisingly`Circles’ getsthe electronica. tracks intoslabsofnear-industrial other attimesasthebandbuild The pairpositivelyricochetoff each Tempest’s verbalhurricanedelivery. who providesagreatsoulfulfoilto bobble-hatted backingsinger/dancer tattoo throughout,aswella staggeringly heavyfuture-factory percussionists whohammerouta formed aroundher–abacklineof words ortheincrediblebandshe’s the staroftonight’s showasher down-to-earth honestyisasmuch lesser talents).InfactKate’s simple, cod-philosophy that mightentailin none ofthemawkishaspirational being tobelieveinyourself(butwith and self-doubt,theemerging message company launchpartiestoloneliness conflicts, throughwankyrecord that venturefromtersefamily stories centredonacoreofcharacters in itsentirety, withitsinterlinked nominated album`EverybodyDown’ HI-FI STORNOWAY NONSTOP TANGO / MOMENTO SPRING OFFENSIVE / WILLIE J HEALEY / DIDCOT’S NEW The Sheldonian Theatre The Bullingdon SALVATION BILL COMEDY CLUB It’s five years since Stornoway A good few of the songs showcased On a night when South Park’s though not, ironically, the tango. became the first ever pop band to tonight are from Stornoway’s firework display is lighting up the We get Greek chant and Greek folk O2 Academy Thu 5 Feb 8pm | Thu 5 Mar 8pm | Thu 9 Apr 8pm play the Sheldonian Theatre. Since upcoming third release, and as east Oxford sky, Momento’s world song, riffs that are twisted Arvo The Academy is right royally packed for but Waving’, through a devastatingly then, precisely no other bands such are new to the majority of seems comparatively bleak, with Pärt and Chopin, some wonderful one of Oxford’s most accomplished recent passionate and magnificently delivered salvo THREE TOP COMEDIANS have graced its centuries-old stage, the audience. But they receive as references to shedding skin, flesh, jazz soprano sax playing and, my bands and their farewell show tonight. of ‘Bodylifting’, ‘Hengelo’ and ‘Cut the & AN MC EVERY MONTH Eyeliner is smudged, floppy fringes askew Root’, the emotion of Spring Offensive’s making them also (kind of) the enthusiastic a welcome as much of want(ing) a chemical, and being told favourite, Alex Glasgow’s ‘As Soon Featuring the likes of Matt Richardson, Charlie Baker, second band to play it. They seem, the older material, though – after you smell. Their music is intriguing As This Pub Closes The Revolution and the holes in those artfully distressed set is clear. Singer Lucas Whitworth totters Felicity Ward, Chris Turner and Nathan Caton at most, mildly fazed by the fact an impromptu drum and bass solo though, with an out of the ordinary Starts’ transformed into a goth jeans are just a little bit larger than usual. around manfully on crutches, his ankle that they’re making Oxford history from the brothers Steadman - the line up of mainly djembe, fuzz guitar anthem brimming with menace. First up after a change in the running order the victim of a “shark attack,” while his Book Now. £12, £10.50 (concs) as we watch this evening. “Hello,” rapturous applause and awed respect and harp or accordion all being It’s all integrated into a marvellous, is Salvation Bill, multitasking as ever, the accusatory question as to which members of www.cornerstone-arts.org frontman Brian Briggs announces, that greets the first plucked notes of brilliantly played. It’s the Incredible musically-coherent kaleidoscope percussion recalling Tune-Yards while the audience streamed the album maintains 01235 515144 | 25 Station Road, OX117NE slightly awkwardly, to all 750 `I Saw You Blink’ is unrivalled all String Band meets Nick Cave with a that’s surprisingly highly accessible. he also has time to somewhat cheekily the financial theme underlying many of the members of the capacity audience, evening. dash of Captain Beefheart: a meeting As you would expect from any cover the night’s headliners, a rumbling songs – ‘No Assets’ is another highlight of a “Hope you’re well”. Although there are plenty of you always wanted to happen. We’re band driven along by Chris Hill’s undercurrent of drone providing a new coruscating evening. CRAZY HYBRID? If his conversation is awkward moments the Sheldonian has not averse to the dark side but the drums and Jon Seagroat’s bass, it’s twist on their legacy. The set ends with a Tunes redolent of Sufjan Stevens at his Penguitten? though, his singing is anything but. doubtless never seen before – trio conjure such a relentlessly bleak all kept extremely tight, and it’s of demonic rendition of ‘Dead Dog’ – like best are underlaid by the band’s trademark Opera-core? His clear, dulcet voice swells to fill Briggs’ transitional anecdote about atmosphere, you occasionally want huge credit to the band’s composing ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ delivered in the inventiveness with sound and when Folk-grime? the expanse of the venue, and when Selby Leisure Centre springs to mind them to lighten up just a little. and playing chops that despite style of Tom Waits – while things are they ape Healey by descending among Synthadelia? backed by the other band members, – parallels can definitely be drawn to Desire to eat flesh and bondage being absolutely magnificent as the plunged into even archer territory by the the faithful, ‘Carrier’ is quite perfectly Sports-goth? the resultant vocal harmonies are its usual fare. Not least the addition crop up during Nonstop Tango’s dreamer/protagonist, performance addition of a wolf’s mask and a saxophone. delivered, this reviewer lucky enough to be Then The Oxford Punt needs you! vast and striking. Early favourite of a full orchestra for the latter part part dream / part nightmare journey artist Stavroula Kounadea doesn’t The jaunty, music hall rhythms of Willie within touching distance of Whitworth’s Oxford’s annual showcase of new Oxford music talent takes place on `Here Comes the Blackout’ feels of the set, which is, at the same up the Cowley Road, starting totally dominate. She is, though, J. Healey bring to mind the more tragic shoulder blades. I haven’t been living in Wednesday 13th May. Five venues infinitely bigger than it ever could time, oddly grand and hugely fitting. with buying a wooden leg in The spellbinding as she declaims and, end of 80s indie and the Brilliant Corners’ Oxford for long but the gorgeousness of across the city centre. have done on record, whereas Hearing the wistful lone violin intro Ballroom on St Clement’s and yes, pants her way through the role, `Brian Rix’ is a touchstone, albeit one this play within a play must surely already To apply, send sounds to new song `Josephine’ – entirely of `The Coldharbour Road’ backed ending, it seems, with entering creating several different personas from before the band will have been born. rank high in any litany of the city’s musical [email protected] acoustic and staged around a single by a full string section makes it hard paradise. In the 50 minutes it takes with just a white raincoat, a couple The overall show is more commercial highlights. And make sure you include a phone number! microphone – is notable for the to remember what it could sound they do play almost non-stop as of wigs and a nylon stocking. than that, however, Alan McGee barnet Two encores showcase the band’s earlier very fact it manages to transcend like without one. they stop off at familiar shops and Her and the whole band’s notwithstanding, and an eye is being songs, a nice touch provided by the its acoustic limitations, and is Some bands seem made to play watering holes where the protagonist performance match the spectacular primed for a breakthrough. The tunes are arrival of former member Joe for a cameo, THE OXFORD RECORD afflicted only somewhat by the certain venues, but this evening it has encounters and desires you don’t fireworks outside and if the bands certainly there as the drummer grins like while the gestation of the band’s sound noise of students from a nearby seems like the Sheldonian, with its usually see acted out on the Cowley forthcoming CD comes anywhere an extra from Carry On Up the Khyber and from a Foals-influenced cacophony to DVD & CD FAIR pub, whose raucous voices surge centuries of history, was built solely Road. near, it will be quite something very Healey plunges into the audience for an the individual stamp of album ‘Young into consciousness at every quiet to house Stornoway. The band also, magpie-like, stop special indeed. unremarkable acoustic number, a trick that Animal Hearts’ is strongly detectable. It’s a St ALDATES PARISH CENTRE moment. Caroline Corke off at a variety of musical styles, Colin May will be repeated later in the fray. magnificent send off. 40 Pembroke St, St Aldates, OX1 1BP From the opening hum of ‘Not Drowning Robert Langham Saturday 24th January 10am-4pm TIGER MENDOZA with DAVE GRIFFITHS / Rock/pop/jazz/soul/reggae/indie/all other genres Accessories/memoriabillia/books. MOTION STATIC / PUPPET MECHANIC Brand new and back catalogue/Rare Vinyl www.usrfairs.co.uk The Wheatsheaf “Genre? Genre is over there weeping in perennial gig-enjoyer Leon the Dancing the corner,” says Gappy Tooth Industries Man into working the crowd into making host Richard Catherall, introducing the St Vitus proud. Stonking highlights of acts; “We don’t do genre.” this rabble-rousing show are the much And so it transpires on another night of remixed singles `Tokyo’ and `On The difficult to define, envelope pushing and Edge’. Brutal and brilliant. reviewer-baffling music. Motion Static’s erstwhile producer, the Puppet Mechanic are probably the easiest prolific Ian de Quadros, here in his electro of tonight’s three acts to wrangle with. A beat boffin guise of Tiger Mendoza, has local band of affable, mortgage-paying recently teamed up with David Griffiths guys, plying a well-plucked, chin-stroking (ex of eeebleee and Witches) with tonight alt-pop with a whiff of Morrissey in the the launch of their EP `Along Dangerous vocals and a folky, Relationships-like Roads’, bolstered by The Evenings vibe. At times it gets a bit drowsy and one ringmaster Mark Wilden, increasing the key, with the smooth Irish singer the main body count on drums. culprit, but the group sing-a-long of the The collaboration with Griffiths is a livelier `Shooting the Breeze’ perks up the side step for Tiger Mendoza into a more Saturday night dancers, and makes you sophisticated sound of John Barry-like think maybe a violin or banjo might add cinematic qualities, tempering the heavier something to it. But then they’d become beats, and while previous riffing epics Mumford, and we’d have to shoot them. like `Corporate Responsibility’ and Saturday night needn’t have worried `Something I Should Have Known’ do though; the slamming electro-punk get a wolfish airing, it’s the depth and disco party that is Yaz, Cez and Baz delicacy of new track `Eating Crayons’, from Motion Static brings its hard-hitting and Dave’s tense and carefully enunciated industrio-dubstep from London’s East vocals on `Literature & Life’ that prove End, like Chvrches if they’d gone into the most memorable. Gappy Tooth nitro-grime, but with the dirtiest drops Industries, it seems, really doesn’t do this side of cliff diving into a factory genre. canal, and in doing so they hot wire Paul Carrera INTRODUCING.... Nightshift’s monthly guide to the best local music bubbling under TAKENFans celebrate returnFOR of Oxford A indie RIDE legends Music fans in Oxford and around the world have “committed to a cycling holiday that week. Or reacted excitedly to news that Ride are set to month, or quite frankly whenever it’s meant to WCharlieho is he? Cunningham reform. happen. Sorry. Best of luck, mate.” Charlie Cunningham is a local singer-songwriter. A few years ago he played Undeterred, Andy was quick to comfort Ride fans guitar in electro-industrial metallers Xmas Lights, but since their split he has You are the that Will Pepper would be standing in on bass been working on his solo songs and started posting them on Soundcloud a The band, who put Oxford music on the map duties for the forthcoming tour. “He’s a great bloke year ago. He started gigging around the same time and recently toured with in the early 90s with their incendiary brand of and I know he can really play,” laughed Andy. King Creosote. Last month he supported Stornoway at their Sheldonian , and scored a succession of chart hits Nervously. shows and plays with them again later in the year in Cornwall. This month with their acclaimed EPs, split in 1996 but have he releases his debut EP, `Outside Things’, and heads off on a European tour subsequently been hailed as one of the most I want to be with the band Mighty Oaks. influential bands of the past 20 years and subject Fans quickly took to social media to celebrate What does he sound like? to regular speculation about a reformation. the reunion of their shoegaze heroes. “This If the words `young man with an acoustic guitar’ conjure depressing images And now, following the news last month that is the best news since Chapterhouse got back of some dreary, lovelorn sap who fancies himself as Nick Drake but really Beady Eye have called it a day, singer and guitarist together,” declared lifelong fan Lypton Phewson ought to buck his ideas up, then you can be forgiven. It does us too. But Andy Bell has broken the news Ride fans have on Facebook, “as long as they don’t do anything not in Charlie’s case. He’s possessed of a rather gorgeous voice, his songs, waited almost two decades for – the band are back off `Tarantula’. It’s a shame that Mark won’t be like `In One Out’ wrapped in a sense of wintry desolation. There’s a distinct His favourite other Oxfordshire act is: together and set to play a series of live shows in back in the band. Or Loz. Or Steve. But I’m sure celtic edge to his sound, while elsewhere there’s an almost flamenco flourish “Graeme Murray.” 2015. << Bob, can you check this is the Andy has picked the best musicians around to do to `Outside Things’. If he could only keep one album in the world, it would be: Speaking on Radio Oxford presenter Bill Heine’s right photo please – all those full justice to Ride’s monumental legacy. I’m sure What inspires him? “It’d have to be some kind of compilation, I reckon. I remember I bought show, Andy said, “the four of us have remained shoegaze bands look the same – cheers, all lifelong Ride fans will soon have the same Keith >> “Friends and family. Music that I like. Music that I don’t like. The whole one called ‘Sorted’ in about 1997. It was an indie compilation; it definitely friends since the split so it was always only a affection for Alex, Gareth and Wi… hang on just bloomin’ lot.” had a good old mix of stuff on it; I’ll take that.” matter of time before we got back together, and one fucking moment. Are you telling me I’ve just Career highlight so far: When is his next local gig and what can newcomers expect? now, with mortgage interest rates on the rise, and joining the Ride reunion, he wished Andy and the forked a week’s wages for a Hurricane #1 ticket? “Touring with King Creosote a few weeks ago was definitely a special “I’m mostly touring around Germany until the end of the year now. It’s my Beady Eye pay cheq… I mean commitments band all the best. Mark’s place will be taken by experience. I got to play some amazing venues in parts of the country that acoustic guitar and singing but hopefully something a bit different. It should at an end, it’s the perfect time to rediscover that Scottish singer Alex Lowe. Your relation I’d never seen before. I went to the Lake District for the first time, which still sound quite familiar, though.” old magic. Drummer Loz Colbert was also quick to wish Andy Andy flatly denied the accusation, saying, every success with the reunion tour, despite the fact “actually I’ve just had a phone call from Liam. was brilliant. I knew that it was supposed to be pretty up there but I really His favourite and least favourite things about Oxford music are: Crown of Creation his work with Gaz Coombes will prevent him being Oasis are doing Glastonbury next year, so it looks didn’t know the half of it! Stunning stuff. Kenny is a great guy with a great “There are so many great bands, but it’s hard keeping up with them all.” Fellow frontman Mark Gardener, speaking from involved. Loz’s place behind the kit will be filled by like I’m busy anyway. perspective, so hanging with him was awesome. I joined him and the band on You might love him if you love: the States where he is currently on tour, declared local lad Gareth Farmer, an old friend of Andy’s. “And if that goes tits up again, maybe stage for the last couple of shows too, which felt like a real honour.” Rodrigo y Gabriella; Bon Iver; Beirut; King Creosote; Jamie T; Jose that, while his own solo career would prevent him Bassist Steve Queralt, meanwhile is, unfortunately, will have me back.” And lowlight: Gonzales. “A dodgy festival earlier this year; there was a very persistent barking dog Hear him here: that was so, so much louder than me. That was tricky. Nice dog, though.” soundcloud.com/charliecunningham DR SHOTOVER: all our festive yesterdays T H E W H E A T S H E A F Fifty years ago: The young Shotover plays a festive gig with his happening beat group th KLUB KAKOFANNEY THIS MONTH IN OXFORD Friday 5 December – The Swinging Turtlenecks at the Cowley Tyre Fitters’ and Lube Workers’ Christmas Social. Five hours of non-stop cover versions, fuelled by Sprite and Preludin diet ALL OUR YESTERDAYS MUSIC HISTORY FLIGHTS OF HELIOS pills. All goes well until mop-topped drummer Dennis’s featured vocal slot – an with a strong electro showing from the likes of PHYAL + NOT TOO SHABBY 8pm/£5 exaggeratedly slurry rendition of Blue Christmas in a comical Elvis accent - incites the 20 YEARS AGO Gig highlights of the month included th Logopolis, Faction and Blood Orange. Saturday 6 December – BURIED IN SMOKE ALL DAYER ire of the bequiffed machine-shop grease-monkeys and their bouffanted birds. The “Winter of No Content” ran the headline of Alexisonfire, and band are bottled offstage. The police are called. The Swinging Turtlenecks waive their December 1994’s Curfew magazine as the Ballboy at The Zodiac, with 65Daysofstatic HARK seventeen-and-sixpence fee and skid off into the night in a borrowed Mini Moke, depressing local venue situation reached its nadir at The Wheatsheaf alongside future-Foals SLABDRAGGER + DESERT STORM + MOTHER CORONA + BEARD OF ZEUSS + GIRL POWER 10 YEARS AGO The Edmund Fitzgerald, Youthmovies, The harmonicas and ‘prellies’ flying out of the pockets of their houndstooth jackets. this month, with the news that The Oxford Venue The traditional Nightshift end of year Top 20 is WELCOME TO BLACK DELTA + SEVEN HUNDREDTH UNICORN + LEE RILEY + INDICA BLUES 3pm Forty years ago: Dr S’s prog ensemble Elfglade support patched-denim boogie Relationships, Nought and Sexy Breakfast. Wednesday 10th December - MOSHKA on Cowley Road had shut down. Promoter Nick always a good way to look back on what was merchants Rancid Fat at the Horton-cum-Studley Young Farmers’ Christmas Moorbath had removed his PA and lights from the happening in Oxford in any given year and 2004’s Bash. Elfglade’s setlist consists of one number - Prince Minotaur Sleeps. They venue in protest against the building’s leaseholder, list found The Young Knives atop the pile with MONKFISH are halfway through the third movement (March of the Vestals) when they are with all regular club promoters following his lead. 5 YEARS AGO SPACE HEROES OF THE PEOPLE + BURNING BEES + BEAVER FUEL 7:45pm/£5 Party-Seven-ed off the stage by the headliners and their grebo mates for over- their superb `The Decision’. The year’s runner up Was it really five years ago thatThe Original th The campaign to save live music at The Jericho Friday 12 December – GAPPY TOOTH INDUSTRIES was Laima Bite with `Did You Used To Love’, Rabbit Foot Spasm Band made their debut on running their allotted slot by 90 minutes. The police are called. In the confusion, Tavern was ongoing, but a petition signed by over the members of Elfglade reverse their Afghan coats and creep off into the fields taken from her stunning debut demo. Suitable Case the cover of Nightshift? Seems it was. The band, 2000 music fans, and stories in NME and Melody THE SHAPES baa-ing, thereby blending in with the locals. They waive their five pound fee. But For Treatment (`Dead Pigeon Teacher’); The still relative unknowns on the local scene had 8pm/£4.50 Maker looked to have little impact on the pub’s NON STOP TANGO + GEMMA MOSS + VOLKENFUNK at least they have plenty of Watneys to drink. Evenings (`I Didn’t Remember’) and Winnebago made their reputation with a riotous set at the Punt Tuesday 16th December – MD PROMOTIONS owners, The Firkin chain. A date of January 7th was Thirty years ago: Dr S treads the boards at the St Timothy’s College Christmas Deal (`Knife Chase’) completed the Top 5, with earlier in the year and now talked about hiding given as the pub’s last night. Ball with his proto-Goth outfit Northern Sex Pest. It’s a Dry Ice Promotion Night. entries from Trademark, Boywithatoy, Richard all the Miles Davis CDs in HMV to stop people Additionally, The Hollybush in Osney had closed, GODSBANE During opening number Cold Madonna Mine, lead singer Augustus Bleaklord Walters, Headcount, Youthmovies, Fell City buying, instead encouraging would-be jazz fans to WE FIGHT LIKE KIDS + 13BURNING + TELEGRAPHER 8pm/£5 awaiting demolition, ending gigs there, while over th tries to do a Jim Morrison and unzips his leather kecks. No-one notices in all the Girl, Sextodecimo and October File showing the discover Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Jabbo Wednesday 17 December – IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC at The Brewhouse, blues promoter Bob Foley had onstage smoke. The fashion police are called. They can’t find the band. Nor can ongoing strength of the local band scene. Smith. “The people of Oxford never got their jazz quit and a change of management was due. All of the promoter. Northern Sex Pest waive their twenty pound fee (‘plus all the vodka The cover of this month’s Nightshift featured The riot,” declared band leader Stuart MacBeth. “They THE OXFORD BEATLES and Snapple you can which left Oxford music with its biggest crisis in TRANSPLANT + FREDDIE PHOENIX 8pm Thieves, local rockers who were making waves had to wait for The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm th drink’), due to having memory, and this at a time when homegrown bands Friday 19 December over in the States. Brothers Hal and Sam Stokes band to come and shake it up for them.” re-surfaced in another – who had come up through those same venues – had moved across the Pond two years previously, On the end of year Top 20 front, the divine dimension. They supply were out conquering the world. touring constantly, securing a deal with Papa `Coldharbour Road’ by Stornoway sat proudly at INVISIBLE VEGAS the plot for a Colin This being December, Curfew printed its Top BALLOON ASCENTS + FAMILY MACHINE 8pm/£5 Roach’s management company and were set to the pinnacle, with Borderville’s `Flights’, Kate th Baker-era Dr Who 20 songs of the year by local acts. `Dead’ by Saturday 20 December release their `White Lines’ EP. The band were back Garrett’s `King of the Birds’, Richard Walters’ adventure, Smoke of the The Mystics topped the list, closely followed by Barmi in their native Oxford for a show at The Zodiac. `The Animal’ and Mephisto Grande’s `Sea Life . Sadly it conflicts `Mansized Rooster’ by Supergrass, `Iron Lung’ ORANGE VISION with the laws of time “I love the optimism and space and lifestyle in Part 2’ making up the rest of the Top 5. Other by Radiohead and `Something Blue’ by The WHITE BEAM + CAMERON AG 8pm/£5 and space, thus is never California,” declared Hal, “though the place lacks entries included The Winchell Riots, Alphabet Wednesday 31st December – KLUB KAKOFANNEY NEW YEARS EVE PARTY Anyways. The Mystics featured three times in a shown. the community or self-awareness of Oxford.” Backwards, Tristan & the Troubadours, Mr Top 20 that also featured two Supergrass songs. In local music news, metalcore heroes JOR were Shaodow, Desert Storm, Baby Gravy, The Other names in there included Ride, The Bigger THE MIGHTY REDOX Next month: ‘Make to play their final gig at The Zodiac this month, Black Hats and The Dead Jerichos, the latter’s THE LEGENDARY PETE FRYER BAND + MARK ATHERTON BAND + BB DREADZONE DISCO The God, The Nubiles, Squid and Thurman, as mine a brandy butter - NORTHERN SEX PEST just want to wish all their while synth-pop band Trademark were heading `Red Dancefloor’ also winning this month’s Demo 8pm / £8 Advance or £10 OTD well as Folk The System, Bosley and Skydrive, The Wheatsheaf 129 High Street, Oxford OX1 4DF / www.facebook.com/wheatsheaf.oxford without the butter’ fans a Very Merry Christmas off on tour as support to The Human League. of the Month. moon in a display of ostentatiousness that significant improvement. And well they makes one of Kim Jong-Un’s speeches are to do so. The singer still hasn’t been sound like a solemn word of wisdom from allowed out of his dungeon of eternal fury the Dalai Lama. “You must be exhausted,” to glimpse, even for a moment, the basic DEMOS breathes Rhiannon with the sultry subtlety elements of what normal human beings Sponsored by of a snorting rhino at one point. You have no consider to be the bare essentials of actual Demo of the Month wins a free half day at fucking idea. music, so he shouts and hollers and barks Silver Street Studios in Reading, courtesy a lot over the band’s almost admirably of Umair Chaudhry. directionless metal churn. It’s got a few Visit www.silverstreetstudios.co.uk/ TOO MANY POETS funky bits in it this time but mostly clatters nightshift-demo-of-the-month/ Too Many Poets sent us a link to a video along oblivious to choruses or anything like of some anthropomorphised penguins that, just a man shouting over an endless even bawdy at times, but equally capable of negotiating a puddle by way of putting us guitar solo, the two never having previously swooning and cooing gentle lullabies amid 01865 240250 DEMO OF in a good mood before their new demo. You met. Give them a fancy haircut and a trendy the thrum of often arcane instrumentation see, that’s the sort of care and consideration Hoxton address and a thousand bloggers (come on, everyone has a resonator not enough bands give out these days. would declare it art. Let’s do it. THE MONTH mandolele on their Christmas list, right?). Hell, we’re inclined to say nice stuff about Over the course of six songs such a startling them whatever now, even if they sound GIFT OF voice, with its prominent quaver, can get a like the multi-headed hydra offspring of bit much - `Jekyll & Hyde 4eva’ is a bit too Nickleback, Level 42 and The Vamps. Only THE DEMO BLINDNESS Victoria Wood – but it’s a small price to pay kidding. If they sounded like that, we’d be Umair Chaudhry, Oxfordshire’s very own for the best bits of a musician whose style dead on the floor after self-immolating and Baron of Bleakness, comes in so many and musical aim is pleasingly far removed thus incapable of constructive criticism. DUMPER musical guises it’s sometimes hard to keep from what passes for contemporary round Luckily they aren’t. They do seem, though, track of which one does what. What they all these parts and, like the antique dress she to be in a similar predicament as those poor THE HAZE have in common though, is a dedication to sports on her photo, belongs in another age penguins at times – whether to jump or try Just how much can youth and inexperience a life less jolly. While his Abandon project but holds up remarkably well to the passage and waddle round the perimeter in safety. excuse? A loose grasp on the intricacies of has been much to the fore of late, with of time. Too Many Poets seem to be adept at building global politics and a lack of knowledge of its move toward a more sedate, emotive up a musical mood – twinkling guitars and obscure 1970s funk, for sure. Poor grammar, almost, semi-acoustic dedication to wintry lush synth beds introducing each track here debatably. But doing a cover version of desolation, Gift Of Blindness is a severe CHARLIE LEAVY before flowing into trebly, trilling post-Foals a Beady Eye song? Never. Never, ever, Leeds-via-Hook Norton singer Charlie gear shift back toward pulverising noise, indie pop, and it’s all produced to a tee. But ever. That should be up there with potty Leavy is currently studying for her A-levels in particular the industrial sturm und drang something doesn’t quite stick. Maybe it’s training and not talking with your mouth but is already close to clocking up 100 gigs, TURAN AUDIO.co.uk of early Swans and – galley the vocals – slightly too detached, unwilling full in the list of life essentials. But here we and claims to have written as many songs. Professional, independent CD mastering slave beats, downtuned guitar clang and to leave their pedestrian comfort zone, or a are on Witney teenage rockers The Haze’s Live it’s just her, an acoustic guitar and portentous vocal rage. There’s just the general unwillingness from the band to really Soundcloud and their take on `Flick Of The heart full of soul, but these recording are one song here, `Automaton’, but it clocks kick off from those promising starts. `Red Finger’ sits proudly atop the page, foul and Artists mastered in the studio last month include; perhaps a better indicator of what’s she’s in at the ten-minute mark and consists Dress Cliché’ is their strongest track – tightly slightly smug, like a pile of seagull poo on capable of, from the jazzy, very slightly SATURNIAN MIST, TORI ALLEN-MARTIN, SID of an onward churn and chug of grim, wound as is their stock in trade, but backed the seat of a playground swing. No matter funky soul-pop of `The Way Life Is’, to SIDEBOARD AND THE CHAIRS, , unforgiving that never has to up with a decent melody. `Elegance In that it’s not one of the songs they wanted the sweet and simple unrequited love note THE DAMNED, ICONS OF FILTH, ANGELIC UPSTARTS, move at anything more than a stately pace Decadence’, though, overstays its welcome us to review; the fact is it exists. And we that is `Tongue Tied’, both clear-eyed and DISORDER, INFA RIOT, MAJOR ACCIDENT, 999, UK to bulldoze any resistance you have to offer. by some distance at six and half minutes. It’s can’t un-exist it. We are haunted by its very uncomplicated songs that are polished but SUBS, THE VARUKERS, CHELSEA, , Not that you’d want to, not if you know okay stuff and starts to get its hooks into you existence even as we swiftly move on to not so much they lose their inner naivety; FIELDS OF NEPHILIM, SYRENNE, KIOKO. what’s good for you, however unhealthy it a bit after a few listens but you feel they’re the band’s own songs. And then we start to the more straightforward acoustic `Falter might feel as your sensibilities are crushed capable of something wilder, more original. wonder to what extent we can forgive a band Baby’ is over-egged by contrast, but best and filleted under Gift of Blindness’s sonic Bands – don’t be afraid to take chances. who claim to be aged between 15 and 18 01865 716466 [email protected] of the lot here is the lush, synthy `Summer tank tracks. `Automaton’ is taken from a Take that leap into the unknown like that for sounding like a bunch of fifty-something Day Runaway’, again soulful but simple full-length album, so in a way it’s not even brave little penguin. Maybe you’ll fall flat on old blokes stuck in the corner of a benighted and poppy; the only thing between it and really a demo at all, but since the message your face and we’ll snigger unkindly while market town pub on a Sunday afternoon hit status is a decent publicist. There’s THE COURTYARD here is clear – the world is a stinking pretending to help dust you down, but we’ll knocking out old 1970s rock standards with obviously a strong Alecia Keys influence hellhole and is going to collapse and we always prefer heroic failure over playing all the enthusiasm of a Friday afternoon going on in Charlie’s music, and it’s hardly RECORDING STUDIO shall all die horribly in twisted, screaming safe. production line operative on minimum making a break for rock and roll’s wildest agony – such details seem unimportant. wage. `Hold Up Hold Back’ and `Floating PROTOOLS HD2, MTA 980 CONSOLE 32/24/24, OTARI Best just to enjoy the sweet suffering while hinterlands, but not every musician wants to On By’ could easily have emerged from MTR90 MK2 24 TRACK TAPE MACHINE, 2 TRACKING you can. Cheers everyone, it’s almost tear up the rule book and alienate the entire NOISESCAPE same sulphurous orifice that most of Liam ROOMS, SUPERB CONTROL ROOM WITH GOOD SELEC- Christmas! human race like Scott Walker, and for those Gallagher’s “creative moments”: turgid, TION OF MICS & OUTBOARD GEAR + MIDI FACILITIES (Inc who prefer safer ground, Charlie Leavy’s a landfill indie dirges with any semblance of DISTURBANCE LOGIC AUDIO, AKAI S1000, OLD SKOOL ROLAND etc.) decent outside bet for next local breakout “Thanks for your our last review. To be fair soul replaced by a blurred, beery mumble, artist. you got us pretty well, although you made although `Word Is Out’ does have a certain JESSICA LAW it look like singing badly was a bad thing. hypnotic feel about its relentless pursuit of Residential facilities included. Jessica Law has been reviewed a couple We had no idea,” announce Noisescape one-chord fuzz. Given The Haze www.courtyardrecordingstudio.co.uk of times in the demo pages, a singularly RHIANNON KLOSE Disturbance good naturedly, referring to weren’t even born last time the brothers Phone RICHARD WALSH on 01235 845800 It’s a fine line between decent and dreadful incongruous presence with her often startling their last demo back in June’s issue when Gallagher did anything even half worth when it comes to such things. Whereas mix of 1930s musical hall chanteuse they got knocked out of our Demo World listening to, maybe we shouldn’t be too harsh th Charlie Leavy’s songs are soulful but and 19 Century gin house harpy. This Cup for having a singer with no apparent on their choice of influences, but equally, understated, Rhiannon Klose’s are sterile and latest collection of songs doesn’t see her familiarity with the concept of singing in you’d hope young lads would listen aghast overblown, bombastic r’n’b that sounds like compromising that stance an inch, the tune or time or even the right key. “The to the tired last hurrahs of old buggers whose it was made by a committee. A committee dappled, folky `The Mermaid’s Revenge’ people involved haven’t changed, the spirit time has been and gone and shout, “Fuck that decided “smashing it” as the accepted as sweet as she gets, mandolin and violin hasn’t changed, so now your expectations this, let’s make something new!” And live in current term goes, wasn’t enough and the underpinning her simultaneously plaintive have been set, here you go,” they continue, hope we do, however much reality tries to whole thing needed a welter of deodorant and playful voice which interweaves with careful not to raise our hopes of any crush such simple optimism. Timothy Ledsam’s backing vocals, the whole advert-style grunge guitar ladled over the top thing a softly swirling Arcadian waltz that just so isolated Amazonian tribes would sit feels like being at the middle of a shower of up and notice it. If they could have afforded Send demos for review to: Nightshift, PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU, or email links falling autumn leaves. Lovely. From here it, you imagine everyone involved in this to [email protected], clearly marked Demos. IMPORTANT: no review without she’s off through the trees like a Victorian recording would have clubbed together a contact address and phone number; no more than four tracks on a demo please. If you wood sprite, sometimes shrill and caustic, to hire the Rosetta space probe to splay can’t handle criticism, please don’t send us your demo. And don’t fucking whine about your Rhiannon’s voice across the surface of the review on Twitter either, else we’ll print a screenshot and make you look like a prize tit.