Summer may be over, but festival season most certainly isn’t, and we have yet another welcome return to celebrate after the lengthy drought imposed by Covid restrictions. Sŵn Festival, the largest multi-venue festival in Wales, is coming back with a bang and taking over the clubs of Cardiff with three days of events celebrating alternative […]
After the end of the lockdowns and the return of live gigs there has been a number of new bands making waves in the alternative rock scene, and Manchester’s own Pyncher are among those leading the charge. With a debut EP seeing the light in July, following a serious of successful shows in their home […]
The weekend festival is a staple of the summer season, coming in hot with their first-ever staging outdoors, Live at Leeds gave us their In the Park edition. For one incredible day of live music, they took over the grounds of Temple Newsam—a Tudor-Jacobean-era estate hemmed by rolling hills and sprawling vistas of the West […]
Independent Venue Week rolls in around this time every year, where the breaking yawns of a new year are gifted some sweet relief by the comings of a celebration, of the UK’s grassroots music venues. Together with the great Can You CIC It? and local promoters and venue owners up and down the country, IVW […]
My first encounter with Jessica Winter’s solo work was at a day festival in London, shortly after the lifting of Covid measures, which turned out, by the way, to be somewhat plagued by organisational woes. In the rather palpable frustration that accompanied said issues, then, it was even more remarkable that her set stood out […]
Partly because of the later relaxation of COVID rules in Wales, partly because of a series of personal circumstances, this early-October serving of alternative rock was my very first live music event in Cardiff in nearly two years; it felt odd, comforting, and slightly tense to be back queuing outside the familiar door of Clwb […]
Even from its very first beats, Awake and Hungry, the debut EP by London-based collective Folly Group, sets out to challenge its listeners. Out this June for So Young Records, this is a hugely ambitious work by a group of artists who have a very clear idea of where they’re going and what they want to […]
Exeter based Jess McAllister has been busy through lockdown, not only releasing a full-length album in the last year but also sharing a magnitude of excellent homemade videos (including an inspired take on Sugababes classic ‘Overload’) and performing live wherever and whenever possible. Owning your own narrative and voicing personal experience is a large focus […]
2021 is already gearing up to be a very interesting year for the British punk scene. While some of the more established names in the genre have been delivering new music at a very high level of quality, it is just as interesting to take a look at the up-and-coming names and what they have […]
A lot of art has been made since the start of global lockdown, some in spite of it, and some directly because of it. Chillin in the Void feels very much the latter. Even the title recalls the cheerful nihilism characterizing lockdown memes on the Internet. It’s a situation of “imagine Sisyphus happy,” or at […]
It’s often said that the second album is the hardest in the career of any artist, and it’s even harder when it follows a debut album that has propelled you to being one of the highlights in the current rock scene. The Blinders have definitely enjoyed such a spot since the release of their first […]
The sun’s been shining for weeks, the sky’s remaining blue – we should be on the cusp of a spectacular festival season. However, the exceptional circumstances that 2020 will always be remembered for has sadly put thoughts of gathering in fields and tents and taking away special memories of performances and artists we caught up […]
Bitter Sweet Symphonies was founded on the basis of two elements: music and community. The want (but more accurately, the need) to share good music with more than just oneself, to foster a collective space in order to start conversations, to spread the word about underground gems and celebrate this communal medium.
Shimmering into view like a late ’60s teleportation effect, Damsen’s new tune ‘Something Good’ evokes the anxiety of our times and soundtracks it with sliding jazzy guitars and oceanic instrumentation. And also it alleviates the boredom for a bit. It’s a song about bettering oneself, shaking the dust off of an old relationship, and it […]
If there’s a band in the British alternative music scene right now that has had an impressive growing curve in the last couple of years, that band has to be Sorry.
After five years on the scene, October Drift released their largest body of work yet, with January’s drop of long-awaited debut album, Forever Whatever. A high octane melange of grunge, hard rock, pop hooks and shoegaze; the songs enclosed offer a focussed lens on the band’s career to date: from the revelrous ‘Oh the Silence’ […]
Debut albums often combine a collage of songs written and collected over a period of time, stitched together with the eagerness of infancy and the latitude to dream big, a first record can be anything it wants to be. Here in 2020, after many years of building the mechanics through endless streams of touring and […]
Live music on the small band circuit can be a real mixed bag. Many people who don’t regularly attend small gigs often get dragged by friends to see burgeoning bands in sweaty venues with expensive drinks prices and questionable sound quality, and come away from the whole experience with a profoundly negative view of the […]
From day one Yonaka embraced originality, displaying a fierceness that is breathtaking to behold and a formidable talent that any fresh-faced band would seize if they had the chance. Brighton has been the band’s home base from the start, and it seems that it was always meant to be like that, offering the four-piece freedom […]
In celebration of International Women’s Day this Friday 8th of March, we asked one of our favourite singer-songwriters if they would be open to writing a piece surrounding women in music. Thankfully, for us, they liked the idea and made the creative their own. In this Op-Ed piece Caoilfhionn Rose writes about the power of […]