Catherine Ireton

Posted on 15/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

It was sheer good luck that we found out about Belle & Sebastian collaborator Catherine Ireton. She’d moved down to Brighton around eighteen months ago and had kept quite a low profile, but some eagle eyes on twitter spotted a mention of a local designer reworking her website and passed the news onto me. An afternoon set at The Great Escape confirmed that the big voice heard on God Help The Girl was just as big when she was playing on her own. In June Catherine kicked off a series of concerts intended to make the audience make a bit more effort in return for something a bit more intimate. The Treasure Tracks gig were real highlights for us, and we look forward to seeing what Catherine has up her sleeve in 2013.

Catherine Ireton

Abi Wade – interview

Posted on 14/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Brighton celloist Abi Wade has just finished a European jaunt supporting Patrick Wolf on his tenth anniversary tour. Her unusual phrasings and rhythms sit well with Patrick Wolf’s set and she even joins him on stage for a couple of songs. We caught up with her for a brief chat before their final gig together in Brighton’s beautiful St Mary’s church.

Any highlights on this tour? I really enjoyed Germany. Amsterdam was amazing as well. I liked Bristol a lot. And the north of England. It’s just all been great and the venues have been beautiful. Lots of churches which were lovely and some crazy places like in Germany an old warehouse that was really cool and had lots of things going on. I liked that one a lot.

How’s the album coming along? (Abi laughs) I just want to put feelers out and see how things go and get an idea of my sound and what I want to do before I turn out an album. Although I want to do it soon I haven’t completely decided what I want to put on it.

Abi played in a duo, the Wellingtons, but now performs solo. So she says the album may be quite sparse like her EPs but also with more electronics.

What are your influences? I love folk and when I started I was writing folky stuff and was influenced by Laura Marling. Always loved Kate Bush and I grew up on the Beach Boys and that kind of thing, so the melodic thing was always there. Then lately I’ve been listening to Grimes and recently went to a Ghost Poet gig, so really eclectic. I love all kinds of music but all I guess on the unusual side. Apart from the Beach Boys maybe, but the Beach Boys were original in their time.

I don’t really think I’m going to write a song ‘like this’, I just write. I don’t get directly influenced by anyone I just listen. But I also love phrasing and think about that a lot.

Abi has been taking advantage of the bigger venues on the Patrick Wolf tour and has been playing a song on piano when her set usually consists of just her and her cello.

How did the piano song come about? My first instrument was the piano and I love it but I don’t normally get to play it because there’s usually no way to bring a piano to the kind of gigs I play. But this tour’s been different. There’s only one piano song at the moment but I may be doing some more tours with Patrick so maybe I will write another one.

You studied in Brighton but not at BIMM? I studied music and visual arts here, but I originally came from Cambridge. I never performed at all before I came to University, so Brighton was really where I started to do that, in small venues, and that’s all I’d really experienced until this tour and seeing and playing in lots of different places. But it’s nice to come home of course.

Any bands in Brighton we should be listening to? All the people I love turn out to be friends, like Jennifer Left (Ed note: our Brighton Music Blog Advent Calender pick today), Aneka – I went to University with her – they’re my key musical fellows at the moment. And Esben and the Witch of course. It’s such a big scene though. I love Brighton, the buzz that it has and the community, the support that gives you.

Thank you Abi, it’s been lovely speaking to you.

Abi Wade will be headlining her next show at the Wednesday slot in the One Inch Badge Seamonsters festival in Brighton next month.

More here at abiwade.com

(Words and pictures: Jon Southcoasting)

Brighton Music Blog Advent Calendar / Day 14 / Jennifer Left

Posted on 14/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

It was a sad day when Gloria Cycles split up back in 2010, but this year Jennifer Left has burst back onto the Brighton music scene. Now fronting her own band, and with a brace of songs written with producer Tim Bidwell and Bonobo’s guitarist Ewan Wallace, Jennifer Left is back. Over the year, they’ve released two singles – Black Dog and Diggory – and grown in confidence with every show they’ve played. They’re also one of two bands in our calendar this year who’ve covered New Order – check out their gorgeous bossa nova cover of Temptation.

Brighton Music Blog Advent Calendar / Day 13 / Bat For Lashes

Posted on 13/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

The Haunted Man was Brighton’s other huge album this year, alongside The Maccabees Given The The Wild. It caused a stir before it’s release with it’s provocative artwork, but lead single Laura showed that Bat For Lashes didn’t need shock tactics to create attention for the album. Natasha Khan’s homecoming concert at The Dome was definitely one of the gigs of the year for us.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 12/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

So, we’ve got a veritable bonanza of weekend gigs for you this week. Last week I was musing that maybe things that might get a bit quieter in the run up to Christmas – how wrong I was.

Holy Vessels Let’s start this with Thursday – it is the start of the weekend after all. We’ll be heading down to the Concorde 2 to see Saint Etienne (with support from Scritti Politti – what a line up, eh?). Also on thursday night there’s Mr B‘s Chap Hop Christmas Ball at the Prince Albert. Holy Vessels play their album launch at the Blind Tiger, with support from Soccer96, Autumn Red, The Common Tongues and Songs For Walter. Last Orders at the Marshall Arms is out now and available from iTunes. Paul Diello plays his annual Christmas party at the Brunswick, and Alice Amelia plays the Constant Service.

Noise Night On Friday British Sea Power return with a special Christmas Krankenhaus at The Haunt. Our friends over at Brighton Noise are putting on their second night at the Green Door Store. They were turning people away from first one, so get their early to see Traams, Bitches and the fantastic Negative Pegasus. Transformer are launching their single Dragonfly at the Blind Tiger. Check out the Facebook event for more details and a look at the video. The last gig on our radar on friday is at the Coach House in Kemptown (not the pub on Middle Street), where Crayola Lectern headlines a “veritable melange of auditory delights”.

binge2poster On Saturday The Impellers hold their Office Christmas Party at The Brunswick, which is cheap to get into if you’ve got a ticket for Craig Charles later that night. If you’d like to start things a bit earlier on in the day, Beatabet kick things off at 1pm. They’ve got twelve bands playing at their Betabet Binge – P for Persia, Spacenoid, Napoleon III, Colectress, Speak Galactic, Laboratoro, Old Man Diode, Scalar Fields, Duot, Operator, Temple Decade and Burnt Toast. Phew!

art noise If you’ve still got any energy left come Sunday, then our top pick is Cate Ferris at The Neptune. There’s also an art event at the Blind Tiger called Wonderland, where Amongst The Pigeons, Them The Sky, Tiny Dragons, and the Elevators and Ribbon play in the evening. In yet another night in town with an above average number of bands on the bill, there’s also Club Criminal at Sticky Mike’s, starting from 5pm, with Trip to Dover, The Flip Flays, The Kut, Thieves by the Code, The Trophy Hearts, Childbrain and King Mews.

Brighton Music Blog Advent Calendar / Day 12 / Your Explosion My Mind

Posted on 12/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

We don’t know very much about Your Explosion My Mind at all. We do know that it’s a project by someone called Barney Douglas, but following him on twitter you’ll learn a lot about cricket and very little about his music. Eyeball Kick came out on a split 7″ with Sparrow’s Move back in August, so we looked it up on YouTube. It’s so good that we’d only got halfway through listening to it before we were on iTunes buying the whole “Under a Heavy Sun” EP that it appeared on. There was an accompanying free download EP of another five tracks too. Eyeball Kick is fizzing motorik kraut-pop that makes you feel alive, but the rest of the tracks across the EPs touched all bases. Your Explosion My Mind were one of those discoveries that make writing the blog so worthwhile for me, and Eyeball Kick is one of my singles of the year.

Melting Vinyl present Roller Trio supported by Physics House Band at Komedia Studio Bar

Posted on 11/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

When I was reading an obituary of jazz legend Dave Brubeck last week, it noted that one of the reasons for his popularity in the 1960s was that he toured college campuses and made sure he reached out to a younger audience. So it was good to see a younger audience in the Komedia for last night’s gig. Sure there was a section of the audience who weren’t so young, dressed in black and looking like they wanted to be smoking gitanes, but on the whole it was a crowd of people who weren’t living out the cliché of the Fast Show Jazz Club.

Physics House Band

One of the reasons was support band (who were who we’d come to see). Physics House Band have already scored themselves a Brighton Source Cover, and are headlining a night at Sea Monsters next month. They’ve been working incredibly hard this year, playing regular gigs (including a slot at Lewes Psychedelic Festival), building their fanbase and writing new songs (some of which were played last night). As their confidence and abilities have grown, they’ve transformed from three guys furiously concentrating on their instruments to a band who are more comfortable onstage and who interact with their audience a bit more. Jazz-prog-math-rock fans have never had it so good.

Roller Trio

Another reason for the younger audience was probably Roller Trio’s Mercury Music Prize nomination. Following the awards ceremony, sales of their album went up by a mammoth 618% according to the Guardian (compared to a rise of 7-9% for our local nominees The Maccabees). It might have been easy to dismiss the band as this year’s token Jazz entry, but Roller Trio were a joy to behold and it was easy to see on the basis of last night’s show, that the nomination wasn’t a token entry at all. Their individual performances were impressive, but more impressive was the way that they all melded together. It wasn’t all just about technical ability though – musically the evening was a triumph too. At two ends of the spectrum, jazz can either end up as coffee table music or as avant garde unlistenable noise. Roller Trio skilfully avoided these two extremes but played a set which at times challenged though never pushed things too far.

Brighton Music Blog Advent Calendar / Day 11 / The New Union

Posted on 11/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

The New Union have only had one single out so far, a guitar pop gem called Without You, released on 7″ back in September. You wouldn’t guess that it was their debut though – their demos on soundcloud sounded like fully formed tracks, they looked the part, and they’d got a Peter Saville inspired designer on board to give their artwork a professional feel which belied their time in the industry so far.

You can catch the band tonight supporting Kins at the Green Door Store.

Woodpecker Wooliams – Gull

Posted on 10/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Since we’re starting to get into the Christmas spirit, we’re going to let you into a little secret – Woodpecker Wooliams is one of the artists still to feature in our Advent Calendar. We’re not going to tell you when yet though. We don’t want to give away all our surprises. You’ll just have to keep reading.

In the meantime though, here’s the video for her new single Gull, which is as bonkers, brilliant and beautiful as her album:

Brighton Music Blog Advent Calendar / Day 10 / Sweet Sweet Lies

Posted on 10/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

This year saw the release of Sweet Sweet Lies’ fantastic debut album The Hare, The Hound, The Tortoise. Don’t just take our word about how good it was – Simon Price gave it five stars in the Independent. With their dark lyrics and sharp suits Sweet Sweet Lies proved that they were a force to be reckoned with.

Sweet Sweet Lies