Bands who mix flamboyant virtuosity with rock-solid songcraft and engaging vibes are truly special. High Cross Society fit that rarified mould perfectly, chucking fine grooves, flashy yet somehow understated technique, confident hip-hop flavourings and exceptional lyrical flows into the kind of musical melting pot that a site like TMMP could never Read more…
I love Camden’s diversity. Step out of Camden Town tube station and you’re a minute away from the Jazz Cafe, punk and hardcore institution the Underworld, and the Stillery – an intimate hole in the wall torn apart last week by Mancunian post-hardcore up and comers, the Hyena Kill. This time around, the Stillery hosted a set of very different musicians.
Lily Oakes is an interesting one. A series of trip-hop-oriented tracks performed in the most Read more…
Muse’s fast-approaching new album Drones is set to be a stunner. Devon’s finest have reached a point of the finest refinement, capable of stripping down to rock’n’roll basics (as on Psycho) or just as easily turning up the sleek, slick electronic sexiness of a tune like Dead Inside. Muse are well known for Read more…
The musical equivalent of a convertible sports car, Snake Skin is compact, sleek, aerodynamic, and pleasing to the senses. It’s also the latest track from fast-rising EDM duo Princess Slayer, who happen to be Read more…
Picture a hip-hop video, and somewhere within that visualisation will be a party sequence. It’ll come complete with the usual ingredients: Endless bottles and glasses and shots and enough debauchery to put Roman orgies to shame. The underlying message will be obvious: Read more…
Last week, I expressed a few reservations about this track. As predicted, they’re all gone now. Passion Alley is officially cemented in my mind as a Read more…
Although I’m a big Princess Slayer fan, and I’m used to instantly loving everything they come out with, this track will take a while to grow on me. Passion Alley has been a PS live set mainstay since I first came across these guys – and this latest on-record version is a lot more Read more…
This show may have been a hard sell for a Sunday, but a sizeable portion of local music fans still made it down to the Boileroom for this show. Earlycomers were treated to Tusks (aka Emily Underhill), a recent discovery who is fast becoming Read more…
As 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…
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…