Naomi Scott / Fifi Rong / Geovarn / Princess Slayer / Jungle Doctors / Bella Figura [Live Review – Under The Bridge, London, 26/2/2015]

music week radarAs a music venue embedded into Stamford Bridge (the stadium called home by Chelsea F.C.), Under the Bridge was an appropriately unique venue for this unique show. An industry showcase set up by trade paper Music Week, networking hub MusicConnex, promoters ILUVLIVE, and south coast music school BIMM, it goes without saying that the high-profile nature of this show inevitably brought its own special set of performance pressures. A quality showcase set has the potential to push an act to the next level, while a duff performance can see a band crossed off “Ones To Watch” lists in the blink of an eye.

On top of the potential for mind-freezing attacks of performance anxiety, this was not Read more…

Posted on 27 February 2015

Beardyman [Interview]

beardyman press

Imagine you’re a beatboxer. You’re pretty good, so you enter the UK Beatbox Championships. You win. You eat, breathe, sleep and sweat beatboxing for a solid year before returning. You win again. Things get a bit crazy. A comedy video you made in a kitchen gets uploaded to YouTube (as freshly purchased by Google). In time, it will attract over 5 million views.

Over the next several years, you take solo beatboxing as far as it can possibly be taken. You play underground comedy clubs, TV shows, festivals. Your YouTube presence grows. You begin experimenting with live looping technology, battling not rival MCs but inefficient circuitry and user interfaces in the name of getting the ideas in your head into other people’s earholes. You find yourself in a studio, recording an eclectic collection of tracks that takes in everything from dubstep and hip-hop to almost every international folk music style recorded by history. Your debut album gets released; it sells nicely.

Finally, you hit on a pair of serious problems.  Read more…

Posted on 26 February 2015

Giacomo Pope – ‘Ivory’ [Review]

Screen shot 2015-02-20 at 13.59.28Long-time TMMP readers will remember my endless ranting about Chronographs – one of my favourite bands of 2014. A former tech-metal act experimenting with recording one math-rock-flavoured track per month for a whole year, Chronographs were forced to cut their experiment short due to the departure of their vocalist. Since then, Chronographs have gone on Read more…

Posted on 22 February 2015

Wicked City – ‘So Good (Vocal Mix)’ [Review]

wicked city logoSome tracks just leave you stunned. This is one of them. Deadly-sexy, funky, deep, and gorgeously bass-heavy, So Good is…well… Read more…

Posted on 13 February 2015

Vuurwerk – ‘G.R.I.P. EP’ [Review]

Screen shot 2015-02-09 at 16.43.40G.R.I.P. EP opening track Black Aerial swings through discomfiting moods, a journey from foreboding to relief of a sort via dehumanised urban sexiness and funky bounces laid over threatening synthetic foundations. This EP’s title track traps multiple vocals within Read more…

Posted on 11 February 2015

Incubus – ‘Absolution Calling’ [Review]

incubus absolution callingIncubus are one of my favourite bands of all time – and so this review is subject to a certain level of overexcited-fanboy bias. Oh well. One of my favourite things about Incubus is their willingness to challenge Read more…

Posted on 06 February 2015

Naughty Boy feat. Sam Smith – ‘La La La’ (Princess Slayer Cover) [Review]

princess slayer press b&wI don’t normally review covers – but fuck me, this track is the perfect excuse to break the rules. Princess Slayer have been consistently bettering themselves since I first discovered them back in 2013 – and this version of La La La is still another positive step into the future for this Guildfordian EDM duo. Casey Lim’s vocal on this track is Read more…

Posted on 05 February 2015

Enter Shikari – ‘The Mindsweep’ [Review]

enter shikari the mindsweepBands capable of speaking out intelligently about political issues are few and far between these days. Most seem set on insisting that it’s all about the music and having a good time, rather than encouraging their audiences to educate themselves and act on issues that mean so much to so many, but are often ignored in the age of cheap flatscreens and Xbox Live.

TMMP’s ultimate highlight Read more…

Posted on 24 January 2015

Tusks – ‘Ink EP’ [Review]

tusks ink epSometimes, an EP is so good that you can’t quite get your head around it. So Read more…

Posted on 17 January 2015

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