Danny and the Champions of the World played the Green Door Store last night and rocked the house.
The band have dropped any semblance of folkism and gone all out for a rockin’ set, with a sound and pace as big as Springsteen’s.
Support was from the excellent The Lucky Strikes, a great live band reminiscent of The Frames with some fabulous songs and a lively show. We look forward to seeing them again in Brighton!
Photographs by Jon Southcoasting
Brighton has a new record label in it’s midst – it’s called Love Thy Neighbour, and it’s been set up by Daniel Copeman from Esben & The Witch and Brighton Promoter Andy Rossiter. Their first EP has just just hit the shops (I picked it up from Resident last saturday), and is by local cellist singer songwriter Abi Wade, entitled “And Blood And Air”:
Before I even start to describe the music, I have to say how impressed I was with the packaging. The “air” is cut out from the sleeve, there’s a separate band around the outside, and the text on the main part of the cover is hand printed. I’m a sucker for nice packaging, and this is pushing all my buttons.
And then the music – it’s a little bit folky, and quite minimal, mostly with just Abi singing and playing the cello, sometimes with the vocal doubled up to give harmonies, and sometimes with some light percussion. The cello is used to great effect, not just bowed, but plucked in a manner of styles to fill the some of the gaps where a bigger band might have guitars or bass or drums. You can listen to one of the tracks off of the EP on soundcloud here:
There’s more details on her myspace, and occasional updates on twitter. I’ll keep an eye out for some links for the label and post them when I find them.
One of the best things about living in Brighton, and one thing I really can’t ignore on this blog, is the fantastic live music scene. However, one thing I’m not going to try and do is put together a comprehensive list of who’s playing where. I could put in a lot of time and effort, but inevitably I would miss things, and there are other places you could look which already do the same thing – One of the best sites for this is The Source, or if you would rather someone read things out to you, Juice do a round up of the gigs in the evenings too. I will mention the odd gig here and there when they come onto my radar, and there’s some more bloggers joining me soon, who no doubt will be able to talk about some of the bands and gigs that I’ve missed.
Cate Ferris
It is worth mentioning the Source and Juice monthly new music nights though – The next Source New Music night is tomorrow (Thursday 10th November) at the Pavilion Theatre, and is headlined by AK/DK with The Woo!Worths, June Deer and Cate Ferris (the photo above was taken by me and is on the flyer for the event). More details here. The next Juice New Music Showcase is on the 30th November at the Green Door Store and is headlined by Ice Black Birds. More details here.
Rizzle Kicks performing at Great Escape 2011
I saw Rizzle Kicks at the Great Escape Festival earlier this year, before they’d even had any singles out. Nobody had heard of them, and I don’t think they benefited from the outside stage or the time they were playing. While I was there, I bumped into James Kendall from the Source who had just interviewed them for their June issue – he told me to watch out for them, because in a few months, they’d be huge. And he was right. After several successful singles, the album got released this week and went top 10. Congratulations!
The Maccabees are off on tour in January to promote their upcoming album Given To The Wild. The dates are:
23rd – Glasgow QMU
24th – Newcastle Academy
26th – Brixton Academy
27th – Birmingham Institute
28th – Manchester Ritz
(what no Brighton date?)
Tickets go on sale tomorrow morning at 9am through HMV. More details on the band’s tumblr.
One of the reasons I started this blog was because there was so much music coming from Brighton. And not only was there so much, but a large proportion of it was passing me by. From now on I’ll be giving local bands more of an ear and sharing it with you along the way.
So, only four posts into the blog, a new video from a Brighton Band I hadn’t heard of until tonight, when I saw them being retweeted on Twitter:
They’re on Facebook here, and on Twitter as @FLASHBANGBAND
Kovak have just their launched their new official website. Head over to http://kovak.co.uk/ and take a look!
Everyone in Brighton seems to have a Nick Cave story. He sat next to me briefly at the Beth Orton gig the other week at St George’s church before moving for a better view. Anyway, I heard earlier of a Nick Cave story to trump all Nick Cave stories – apparently, he was out Trick or Treating (with his kids, obviously) and knocked on a friend of a friend’s door. Fantastic!
Hello!
Welcome to Brighton Music Blog, a new blog devoted to Brighton music artists. There are other blogs out there written about bands who play in Brighton, and there are music blogs written in Brighton but no blogs until now (so far as I know) about Brighton bands, from small unsigned bands, to upcoming bands like Rizzle Kicks, all the way up to big established acts like The Maccabees or Fatboy Slim. Watch this space for news, reviews and interviews, or just random ramblings from our contributors.
See you soon!
Rob
Brighton Music Blog 