Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 09/10/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Last weekend’s gig pick post was all about quality not quantity, and we promised we’d be back this week bigger than ever. We’re still not scrimping on quality but we’re probably featuring more gigs this week than we ever have done.

We’re going to kick things off with a couple of gigs happening tonight. Normally we treat Thursday as the start of the weekend, but when two of favourite bands are playing we’d be fools not to give them a mention. IYES play their first ever headline show at the Prince Albert, which we’re very excited about. We’ve been huge fans since we first heard Lighthouse at the end of the year, and they haven’t disappointed since. Best of all it’s a free gig! Elsewhere, down at the Blind Tiger, Brighton Music Blog favourites The New Union are supporting Let’s Buy Happiness.

Thursday night is where we normally start our weekend gig round up, and the weekend proper is starting strong with Calico headlining Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar. Support comes from 900 Spaces and Blackwell, and it’s four pounds to get in. Meanwhile, Normanton Street are playing at the Mesmerist.

On Friday some more of our favourite bands are supporting at the same gig. Pawws are supported by the fantastic GAPS and Dog in the Snow (as well as Saint Savanna, who are local and new to us). And it’s a free gig – Green Door Store, you do spoil us. There’s also a free gig at the Blind Tiger, headlined by Transformer, with support from Eagles for Hands, whose new EP we love.

Saturday night’s big gig is the Physics House Party taking place at Sticky Mike’s. As well as the awesome Physics House Band, AK/DK, Alphabets Heaven and Suffer Like G Did are also playing. Over at Fitzherberts, Speak Galactic and Soft Arrows are playing at a night called Ruff Stuff, where Owen from Speak Galactic and some of his old bandmates from Cinemascopes are unveiling a new project called Merlin Tonto.

Rounding off the weekend nicely at Sticky Mike’s, Esben & The Witch play the Brighton leg of their national tour promoting Wash The Sins Not Only The Face. At the Green door store, there’s an event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Gram Parsons early death in 1973, aged only 26. There’s loads of local bands getting involved – the list includes The Self Help Group, Dollboy, and Amy Hill plus various members of Laish, The Repeat Prescriptions, Super U, The Standard Lamps, Woodland Blue, The Pooh Sticks, Lolly & the City of Flies, Redlands Palomino Company, Englemann Spruce, and Lost Dog. Get there early enough and you’ll also get to see Pete Wiggs from Saint Etienne DJing before the live acts.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 04/09/2013 by brightonmusicblog

For this week’s gig picks, we’ve got tie-ins with two different festivals and some local media big hitters putting on gigs, as well as a few other odds and sods.

You may have heard that Brighton Digital Festival is on in town at the moment and as part of that Pop Up Brighton return with their Sound Screen event, bringing together local bands with international visual artists. On Thursday night at the Corn Exchange Phoria, Luo and The Hundredth Anniversary play to a backdrop of visual collaborations that the bands and video artists have been working together on for the last six weeks. Meanwhile Time for T headline at the Hope for Brightonsfinest, with Gypsy Switch, Paper Hawk and Prisoners Cinema also playing, and Monsters Build Mean Robots and Spacenoid are on the bill at Brighton Noise / Nice Weather For Airstrike’s Industroika gig at the Prince Albert.

On Friday Night Lloyd Williams and Ellie Ford launch their debut release at St Mary’s Church, Black Rooster Black Shag headline the Prince Albert, and Bad for Lazarus play Sticky Mike’s.

Saturday night is the third of The Haunt and Juice Brighton’s short run of weekly gigs. This week they have Them The Sky, Garden Heart, and Paper Hawk on the line up. It’s also the first of this month’s two Source New Music Nights (they’re hosting another on 20th as part of Brighton Digital Festival). This one is curated by Wildwood Promotions and is headlined by Alex White’s Interlocutor, with Red River Dialect, Octopuses and Herb Denton’s Last Dime playing too. Finally, it’s the Over The Moon Festival’s pre-party at the Blind Tiger, with a line up that includes Eagles for Hands, Mitch Wade Cole, Platypi, Eone and Murder He Wrote.

Les Enfants Terribles at the Blind Tiger and The Space Agency at the Horse & Groom

Posted on 01/09/2013 by brightonmusicblog

We had big plans for Friday night – we were going to head down to the Blind Tiger for Les Enfants Terribles which I’d read was an early gig, then catch Yumi & The Weather headlining Juice FM’s night at the Haunt. But then it turned out that the Juice night was an early gig too which put pay to that plan. We also wanted to pop into Brighton Electric on the way home for their all night, but that didn’t seem like such a great idea with work in the morning.

So we only made one of the three gigs we wanted to, but it was a good one. My New Favourite Tribe have only just put out their first single, but judging by the rest of their set there are great things to come. I would probably have enjoyed Salt Ashes set more had it been a PA in Audio at 2 o clock in the morning, but what a voice! I’ve been wanting to see Bent Cousin since I first heard them earlier this year and they didn’t disappoint. They’ve got catchy songs which work even better live than the recordings, and on top of that they’ve got heaps more charisma that most local bands.

Saturday night was more of a success, mainly because we had much more achievable ambitions for the evening. We only wanted to see the one band – The Space Agency – who were launching their new single Bombay Potatoes at the Horse and Groom in Hanover. The Space Agency are another band who’ve been on my wish list of bands to see for a while, and they were fantastic. I don’t get to write about Surf Rock nearly enough on the blog, and the band – who also rotated instruments midway through the gig and played a set as their alter ego The Get Smashed – had talent and tunes in great abundance.

Here’s out pics from the gigs. Click through to view large:

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 28/08/2013 by brightonmusicblog

It seems a bit early in the week to be posting up our regular weekend gig picks post, but we normally do it on a Wednesday, so here we are.

Tomorrow night’s gig pick is House of Hats, who are supporting alt folk legend Mark Mulcahy at Latest Music Bar.

There a loads of great gigs on Friday night – Les Enfants Terribles put on one of their regular gigs at the Blind Tiger with Salt Ashes, My New Favourite Tribe and Bent Cousin. Juice FM also have an all Brighton bill at The Haunt, with Yumi & The Weather, Astrid’s Tea Party and Bella Feud playing. Meanwhile Brighton Electric are holding a summer party, with Dog in the Snow, Jungfrau, Momotaro and Dissonants.

Saturday night’s choice is The Space Agency who are launching their new single Bombay Potatoes at the Horse & Groom.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 21/08/2013 by brightonmusicblog

It’s a bank holiday weekend, so we’ve got a bumper round of gigs to tell you about this week, extending all the way out to Monday.

On Thursday night Juice FM return to the Haunt for a series of gigs showcasing local bands that they’re calling IntroJuice-ing. On the first of these DrDr launch their new EP with support from Dirty Damn Humans and Vaude Villains. It’s also the first night of Fragile Creatures residency at The Blind Tiger, and they’re joined by Mynie Moe. As well as that, TigerBiteFever launch their Love Is Strange EP at Latest Music Bar.

There’s another two launches on Friday night. Speak Galactic and P For Persia launch their split 12” at the Green Door Store, and yourgardenday launch their Flat Stream EP at St Andrews Church.

Late night on saturday at Sticky Mikes, The Repeat Prescriptions play their last show for a while, supported by The Space Agency.

At The Edge of the Sea is a festival curated by The Wedding Present which has been running at the Concorde over the August Bank Holiday Weekend for a good few years now. This year The Wedding Present play George Best on Saturday and The Hit Parade A-sides on Sunday. Support comes from his 90s pop incarnation Cinerama playing the two sides of their debut Va Va Voom across both nights, and a whole host of supports including Brightonians Dog In The Snow, Pete Fij & Terry Bickers and Monster Bobby.

Finally, if you’re still standing come Monday night, get down to the Green Door Store where Kill Moon headline, with Puppet Kings, The Hunger Pact and The Downing Street Years also on the bill.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 10/07/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Do you want to see some live music this weekend? Of course you do. So here’s our picks of the best local bands playing around Brighton over the next few days.

Thursday night is all about the support slots – Soccer 96 are at the Blind Tiger supporting Polaroid 85, and The Impellers are opening for Shuggie Otis’ rescheduled show at the Concorde.

Friday Night is the launch of Le Juki’s new album Capillaries which is taking place at the Unitarian Church.

Finally Saturday afternoon is Patchfest, which takes place at William Clarke Park, better known as The Patch – one of Brighton’s hidden gems tucked away behind Elm Grove and Lewes Road. We don’t know much about the rest of the line up, but we do know that Bentcousin are playing at 3pm, which is good enough for us to recommend it.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 19/06/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Here’s our gig picks for this weekend coming up. We’ll keep things short and sweet this week since this isn’t the only post we’ll be putting up tonight.

Thursday night’s pick is Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer, who’s playing at the Prince Albert, supported by Jennifer Left. Meanwhile, at the Pav Tav Luo and Marvin Molina provide support for Sheffield’s Kimmy Yeah.

On Friday night The Resonators headline the Blind Tiger. If dub isn’t your thing then Flash Bang Band are playing for free at Northern Lights. There’s also a Brighton Rocks night at Sticky Mikes, with The Victorian Hunter, The Evil Son and the Frank Melena Band.

Saturday night sees Milk & Biscuits playing a Glastonbury warm up gig at the West Hill Community Centre alongside Traams and Speak Galactic with lighting from Innerstrings Light Show. Unusually, it’s not a BYOB gig and there’ll be a bar. Meanwhile all weekend at The Gladstone it’s their Gladstonebury festival

Cate Ferris at the Blind Tiger

Posted on 22/04/2013 by brightonmusicblog

We’ve written about Cate Ferris loads of times, and we’ll continue to do so all the while that we go along and see her and be impressed as we were last night, when she played at the Blind Tiger in a double headliner gig with Londoner A Little Unsaid.

Cate Ferris

If I’ve understated the power of Cate’s voice in posts in the past, it was easily summed up by the reaction of one audience member, who audibly exclaimed “wow!”, when Cate hit her first big note. It’s not just about the power though – using looping pedals she’ll often harmonise with herself midsong and get the harmonies just right. As she noted herself, just a few years ago she was a technophobe and would seen onstage with nothing more than her guitar. These days she has an array of keyboards, pedals and percussion, none of which are overused, Over time these extra additions to her set have been used in more subtle ways, meaning that the song comes first rather than the gimmicks.

The performance left whole room in the palm of her hand, even those who had seen her before, so much so that there was a shout from the back of “Are you single?” (to which there was a very stern reply of “NO!” from Cate’s boyfriend who was also in the audience!).

The set was made up of mostly new songs, from her recent Get Set Ready Go EP, and some which are going to feature on an upcoming Live EP, and closed with jazzy trip hop future classic “Fly”, which I recommend you go and look up on youtube. It’s a fantastic tube and was a real high to end her set on. If you haven’t seen Cate live, don’t miss out next time!

Cate Ferris

Curxes at the Green Door Store / Milk & Biscuits at the Blind Tiger

Posted on 21/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

As you may have gathered from our posts, we’re big fans of live music here at Brighton Music Blog. In Brighton, we’re incredibly lucky that there are so many great gigs and so much choice. Last night was no exception, so much so that we decided to go to two gigs. We headed to the Green Door Store where Curxes were first on the bill at Danger De Mort’s monthly night, and then moved on to the Blind Tiger where Milk and Biscuits were headlining.

Curxes

Danger De Mort first came to our attention in October last year when they put on a show that Nordic Giants headlined. Since then they’ve been putting on a gig every month with a mix of local and national bands, all with great line ups. Last night Brighton Music Blog approved Curxes opened the show. Where their first few releases had been very much in an industrial electro vein (they opened with Souxsie Sioux fronts Depeche Mode style single Spectre) they showed a new side with their Christmas cover of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and it was this that we were hoping to get get a glimpse of last night. The first part of the set was filled with the early singles – big belting synth epics which only went slightly awry when a lead fell out of the back of the laptop providing the visuals. Because it was cold, because it was midweek, because it was early – for whatever reason – it was a bit quiet, so Roberta took to the middle of the room as her stage, losing herself in the space, giving us an impression of the what the Curxes live show might be like when they’re playing bigger venues. Their new more reflective side was shown at the end of the set, when they closed on quieter aggressive song, showing off Roberta’s voice and showing the band’s newfound versatility.

Milk & Biscuits

While I had heard good reports of the rest of the bands on the bill they weren’t from Brighton, and there was another band playing in town who I was also looking forward to. I had only seen Milk and Biscuits once before, playing a low-key support slow at the Green Door Store around the time of their Balcony Times mini-album back at the tail end of 2011. That it’s taken until now for me to see them again isn’t to say the eight-piece took 2012 off – half of them are also in Restlesslist, whose concept album Coral Island Girl was one of our highlights last year. By the time I arrived at the Blind Tiger, the place was getting busy and I spotted quite a few local musicians amongst the crowd – Mary Hampton, Jennifer Left, Nick Hudson, Adam from Fragile Creatures, and probably a whole load more that I didn’t recognise. The Milk and Biscuits onstage yesterday were far more performance based than the band I saw over a year ago – they’ve transformed from a bunch of great musicians playing amongst each other to a fully fledged band who looked out towards the audience in a formation which showed them off well. Musically things had changed too and their set didn’t feature any tracks from their first release. To these ears their new sound isn’t quite so introspective as before. Last year’s single White Noise still sounds quite pastoral, but Milk and Biscuits rock harder than they used to. Local poet Gary Goodman joined them onstage for a few tracks, which added a different dimension to things, his sometimes-cutting observations showing that they’re more than just a band. Overall though, the gig was hampered with poor sound – there was a lot of feedback from the microphones, and the drummer seemed unhappy throughout, no doubt one of the issues of having such a large band. Let’s hope that next time there aren’t the same issues. Next time they’ve even promised an encore too!

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 20/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Normally our weekly post about which gigs we think you should go to to see some of our favourite local acts starts on a Thursday. Thursday has long replaced Friday as the start of the weekend in the Brighton Music Blog calendar. This week though, we’re starting things even earlier on Wednesday, because there’s two cracking gigs on tonight which we feel deserve a bit of a mention.

Tonight Milk & Biscuits play at the Blind Tiger. We loved last year’s epic White Noise single, and this is a great chance to see them playing their new material for their follow up to 2011’s Balcony Time’s mini-LP. Over at the Green Door Store, Danger De Mort are holding their third event. Their first night had Nordic Giants headlining, and we were gutted to miss last month’s event which had IYES and Us Baby Bear Bones supporting. This month’s local support are Curxes, who have promised to play the new tracks they they’ll be releasing later this year. I don’t know a great deal about the rest of the bill, headlined by a band called Cymbals, but we reckon it’ll be great just on the strength of their previous line ups.

Onto Thursday night, where we normally kick off our weekend. One Inch Badge are putting Doldrums at the Prince Albert. Doldrums are from Toronto, but the supports – Us Baby Bear Bones and Luo are two of our favourite local bands.

On Friday night we’ve spotted four gigs we like the look of. Written in Waters, IYES and Calico are playing at Brighton Electric, Speak Galactic and Cloud are supporting Antibang at the Prince Albert, Catherine Ireton is supporting Stu Larsen at Sticky Mike’s and Anneka is playing at live set at the Traumfrau night at the Haunt. We’re spoiled for choice!

Then on Saturday Professor Elemental is launching his new single at the Marlborough. The single’s called This is My Horse (Show Me Yours), and we’ll be writing a separate post about it sometime next week.