Dropped right before Christmas last year, Rose Coloured’s Doorstep Volume 2 compilation doubtless made great stocking filler for a number of Surrey and Hampshire’s resident music fans. It also offers plenty of great reasons to get excited about the Guildford- and Aldershot-centred music scenes in 2015. Read more…
The Borderline – a cramped basement located around the corner from London’s infamous Crobar – is the perfect venue for a night of unrelenting rock. This time out, it’s safe to say that every band on the bill delivered exactly that. Read more…
Variety is the spice of life – and Demob Happy are living, breathing proof of that fact. Press-ganging almost every grunge-related rock subgenre into a wickedly unpredictable set, Demob Happy spread buckets of good cheer and solid rock riffs around the Boileroom’s main room. If you fancy the musical equivalent of an early Christmas, look no further than the links below. Read more…
Although Bypolar and In Tyler We Trust gave decent showings and played their hearts out, this show was definitively all about Reeves Gabrels & His Imaginary Friends. Bypolar have improved significantly since their support slot under DZ Deathrays, and In Tyler We Trust offered a ton of hard-rocking energy twinned with the occasional flamboyant display – but it was clear from each support’s tentative and uncertain experimentations that both acts are still testing the water and building their confidence. Reeves and his über-solid band, on the other hand, are old pros at this sort of thing – and, as you’d expect, it really showed here. Read more…
Last night was a reset-hitting moment for a venue whose continued survival was confirmed just over 24 hours previously. Vintage swing music played in the background while earlycomers gathered around a table laden with instruments, effect boxes, microphones, an iPad, and even fairy lights to await the arrival of first act, A R T E L S. Read more…
If you were to walk into The Boileroom today, you wouldn’t be able to tell that said widely loved and respected venue is currently under threat of closure from a couple of local residents. The staff and management are nothing if not professional, and last night’s show – the result of a collaboration between The Boileroom, promoters Noise Theory, and local music school ACM – went off without any externally obvious hitches. Read more…
A week after The Boileroom first announced its status as a newly threatened independent live music venue, it’s great to see the team there aren’t letting the stress and pressure get in the way of still more amazing shows. Tonight ran as smoothly as ever, and any raw and agitated nerves were most likely soothed (if temporarily) by the following acts: Read more…
Scrappy. Rough around the edges. Grooves like a hard-rocking, JD-fuelled badass. Opening track Edge of the Bed is (and/or does) all of these things. Strike takes a more laid-back approach, grinding slinky soul and unforgiving backbeats into fine powder and exhaling it into a thick cloud of cigar smoke. Even my laptop’s on-the-hour spoken time updates want in on the action, dropping in in perfect time as if this digital stream were pressing a knife made of ones and zeroes into Apple-branded circuitry. Read more…
Time and patience are beautiful things. Without time, you’re screwed: You’ll wind up late for everything, faced with angry people at every turn, and you won’t get anything done. Without patience, you won’t use the time you do have effectively, squandering it instead on the pursuit of instant gratification and doing nothing of any lasting usefulness.
When you have both time and patience on your side, however, you will be duly rewarded. And that’s what has happened to London-based songwriter Marcus Rexford. This EP shows all the telltale signs of relentless drive and obsessive attention to detail that inevitably result in positive reviews and happy listeners. Track-by-track breakdown below: Read more…
Opinion
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: If you write a song that would fit perfectly into a Tarantino soundtrack, I am going to like your song. Although Rouge’s new single Wilderness would fit a little better behind something by Robert Rodriguez, I’m still going to apply the same rule here and tell you that this track is downright awesome. Read more…