IYES at the Prince Albert / The New Union at the Blind Tiger live gallery

Posted on 10/10/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Last night The New Union supported Let’s Buy Happiness at the Blind Tiger and IYES played their first headline show at the Prince Albert. We were torn – we’re fans of both bands – which should we go to? And then we figured that since The New Union were supporting and IYES were headlining, we should be able to make it to both.

When we first heard about the New Union gig, we read that they would be on at 8.15. On the day, we read on Facebook that it would be 8.30. We turned up at the gig to see set times that said 8.45, but the support act who was on before them didn’t get onstage until 8.50. In the end The New Union started just after 9.30, so we only caught a few of their songs before we headed to the Prince Albert. But those few songs sounded fantastic. Every time the New Union head into the studio, they come out sounding even better, taking everything they’ve learned and improving their live sound with it, and just recently they’ve been recording at Metway Studios with Matthew Twaites (of Electric Soft Parade, Milk & Biscuits, etc).

The normal career path for a new band is first to get support slots with other local bands, then headline your own small gigs, then get supports with bigger touring bands that visit. It’s testament to the strength of IYES demos that they managed to skip the first two stages, with all their gigs so far playing before more established national acts. As sods law would have it, the IYES gig was running late too, but that meant we got to catch Londoners Rivieras from the back of a packed room. When they were done, we took the opportunity to get to the front so we could make up for all of the photos that we didn’t take at the New Union gig. IYES were on top form, showcasing the demos that the crowd was familiar with as well as a brace of new tracks including the first play of their upcoming single Infinity.

Click pics to view large:

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 11/09/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Just a very quick round up of this weekend’s gigs for you all, since we’re off out to see some live music tonight ourselves.

On Friday night Audio celebrate their ninth birthday. That makes us feel very old indeed. There’s a big club night take place after 10pm, but a gig with local bands before then starting from seven, put on by our friends at Les Enfants Terribles, with Curxes, King Dinosaur and Alphabets Heaven playing. We also spotted that this week’s Brighton Rocks at Sticky Mikes with Alice Amelia, Faux Flux and Lu’Ami.

Saturday sees Brighton Music Blog favourites Bent Cousin are headlining at Prince Albert, which should be good. Elsewhere, Mok and Tiny Dragons play The Haunt, and Crayola Lectern is supporting William Drake at the Komedia.

Our recommendation for Sunday night is Flash Bang Band’s album launch at the Green Door Store. Support comes from P for Persia and Clowns – there’s three great bands to see for free. We’ll have an interview with Andy from Flash Bang Band going up very soon, so look out for that.

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

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 24/04/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Earlier this week we pre-empted our regular weekend gig picks by putting up a separate post about Thursday night’s gigs with a choice of Moulettes, AK/DK or The New Union. Here’s the rest of what we recommend this weekend:

Our choice for Friday Night is Clowns, who are headlining at the Prince Albert. Clowns are a real must-see band. If you haven’t seen them, then this should be your Friday night sorted. Support comes from Mum, Dad & The Kids, Little Bird and Downing Street Years.

We haven’t mentioned Tyrannosaurus Dead for a while on the blog, but they’re on the bill on Saturday night at the Green Door Store (headlined by the Bastards of hate). Also on Saturday at The Hope is Rotait, who we’ve been meaning to catch for a while, supported by Simonne & The Dark Stars, Mishkin Fitzgerald from BirdEatsBaby and Paul Diello.

The big gig on Sunday night is Physics House Band, who are guaranteed to blow the roof off at the Green Door Store. Watch out if you’re catching a train out of town! Support comes from Shrine and Ojo de Gringa. We also spotted that over the road at the Prince Albert, Pete Fij & Terry Bickers are launching their new single, with Al Chamberlain also on the bill.

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.

Luo and IYES at the Prince Albert 30/1/13

Posted on 31/01/2013 by brightonmusicblog

We haven’t even reached the end of January yet, but 2013 is already looking like a great year for new musical discoveries from Brighton. There’s two bands who I hadn’t heard before this year who are already shaping up to be firm favourites – to find two bands in what’s normally quite a fallow month is good, but to find them both on the same bill at a gig was irresistible.

Luo

One of the great things about Sea Monsters was that you got to see so many bands in such a short space of time. This meant reduced turnaround times between them, and shared setups, which meant an element of compromise with the sound. That’s not to say that the sound was bad, more that it could probably have been improved if each band had the time and opportunity to set things up exactly as they’d want. Luo impressed us when they opened at last Saturday’s One Inch Badge vs One Inch Badge – they obviously impressed OIB too, who’ve put them on again so soon after the festival. The sound last night seemed bigger and more brutal – the soporific melodic washes of guitars were still there but caught you unawares by growing like post-rock monsters. Some later songs toyed with time signatures reminiscent of Physic House Band’s modern take on jazz. The beats, which kick off once you’re lulled into a false sense of security, seemed more brutal. In short, Luo confirmed the conclusion we came to at Sea Monsters that they were definitely a band to keep an eye on this year.

IYES

Anyone who’s anyone is talking about IYES and Lighthouse – their demo which has appeared online to huge acclaim. Give it a quick Google and you’ll see over 11,000 results. Most of those pages don’t give you much more than a link to Soundcloud though, and some gushing words about how Lighthouse reminds the writer about the XX but better. Some of them mention that the band are from Brighton, and some mention the IYES are a two piece, made up of Czech singer Melis Soyaslanova and singer and multi-instrumentalist Josh Christopher. Onstage last night they were joined by an additional guitarist to help create their shimmering widescreen pop vision, leaving the duo to focus on the song side of their tracks. Despite their Facebook page only being created in February of last year, IYES look and sound like a fully fledged band. Behind his laptop and with a guitar strapped to him, Josh looks like a re-boot of an eighties pop star, somewhere between one of the Goss brothers from Bros and Chris Lowe from Pet Shop Boys. Melis took the simpler option of a leather jacket over a dress but still looked every bit the pop star. Already the band have plenty of material for a solid half hour set, drawn from the spectrum that ranges from alternative ethereal alt-pop to chart friendly synth pop which if things continue on their current trajectory will have IYES uniting the underground and mainstream before the year’s up. Melis’ vocals complemented the sound perfectly, carrying the melody or dropping to barely a whisper. The big surprise was the power, strength and control of Josh’s voice which only came out at some of the more epic moments. It was good to see it used subtly at the right times. There were a few gremlins at the beginning of the set which led to a false start, but nothing unforgivable and they soon got going again. The gremlins came back just before the final track leaving the laptop silent, so for a finale we were treated to an acoustic version of Lighthouse which sounded just as strong as the original – a testament to the band’s fine songwriting talent.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 31/01/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Here’s our regular pick of where to go and get your fill of local music this weekend.

Tonight we recommend heading to The Brunswick to see some members of bands playing solo sets. Hannah from Moulettes is supporting Sam Walker from The Muel, and door tax is a fiver. If Hove seems a long way away (which it does sometimes), then there’s also Flash Bang Band at the Prince Albert, which is only four pound entrance. Support comes from Lion Bark and The Vinyls.

Our Friday night choice is Transformer, who are playing at the Blind Tiger and is free to get in! Saturday night’s pick is this week’s Brighton Rocks at Sticky Mikes with Running Dogs, The Chances, High Tyde, Clipper and Harting, and will set you back four pounds.

Sea Monsters Day Five – One Inch Badge vs Slip Jam B

Posted on 26/01/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Friday Night was One Inch Badge vs Slip Jam B night at Sea Monsters, which meant a bit of a change from all the bands with guitars we’ve seen all week.

DA-10

DA-10 kicked off proceedings, one of only two dance acts on the bill (the other being AK-DK on Sunday night). I’m a bit surprised by the lack of dance acts across the bill, but as someone pointed out to me last year “if you’ve got any complaints about the line up, why not program a festival yourself?”. So that told me. Anyway, I really enjoyed DA-10 last year, and they were even better this year. Big fat bass, beats made on the fly which have developed from last year’s house to include more two-step and breakbeat rhythms, and big party tunes.

Rum Committee

Slip Jam B nights are run by members of Rum Committee – a collective of MCs and DJs. At one point there were over eight people on stage, which pushed them a little bit closer to the monitors than they were used to causing some ear bleeding feedback. “At our nights we don’t have feedback” said one member, which was a bit disrespectful and showed a lack of understanding as to how feedback happens. It was all a bit of a shambles – during the first song one member looked like they were texting someone, and a random got up onstage and started talking to members of the band who weren’t rapping at the time. Maybe that’s how hip hop nights work, but it wasn’t for me – I ducked out for a bit a nipped over to a free gig taking place at the Green Door Store.

Almighty Planets

I came back for Almighty Planets, and I was glad I did. There’s been a party funk / hip hop shaped hole in the Brighton music scene since Mean Poppa Lean split last year, and Almighty Planets do a pretty good job of filling it, managing to do so without being such a novelty act (let’s overlook the lead singer’s trousers falling down halfway through the set). Bonus points have been awarded for their cover of SBTRKT’s Wild Fire which closed their set.

Suave Deboniare

Last act on was Suave Debonaire, who didn’t seem exceptionally suave or debonaire to me. He was a great rapper though. He was joined onstage by a DJ, and another MC, and rapped with lyrical dexterity worthy of his headline slot. He mentioned that he’ll soon be emigrating to Australia, which will be a big loss to Brighton’s hip hop scene.

Sea Monsters Preview interview with Andy Rossiter of Love They Neighbour

Posted on 17/01/2013 by brightonmusicblog

In advance of next week’s One Inch Badge promoted Sea Monsters seven gig bonanza at the Prince Albert, we caught up with Andy Rossiter of Love They Neighbour, who’s curating Wednesday night’s gig:

Last year’s Sea Monsters wasn’t curated, but this year’s is. How did you come to be hosting an evening?

I’ve known Alex from One Inch Badge for a while now; we owned the Freebutt together and Love Thy Neighbour have done a few co-promotions with One Inch Badge, so when they asked me I had no hesitation in saying yes. The last two Sea Monsters events have been great in showcasing the best of Brighton, so it is a pleasure to be part of it.

The next Love Thy Neighbour release is by Us Baby Bear Bones, who aren’t on the bill. Did you want them to play, or were they already booked to play at the Danger Du Mort night at the Green Door Store already?

Yeah, we’re really excited to be releasing Us Baby Bear Bones debut release ‘What starts with a U ends in an I’, which is out in March. That band are incredibly creative, so expect some great artwork as well as a stellar ep! They would have played this year, but they played Sea Monsters 1 & 2, so One Inch Badge were keen not to have the band play for a third successive year.

Have the other acts on the bill got a chance of recording for Love They Neighbour, or is the night about Love Thy Neighbour as promoters rather than the label?

Love Thy Neighbour is open to all sorts of music, so if we find a band we love who get what we’re about then we’d happily release something by them. After the Us Baby Bear Bones EP we plan to release an EP by A Lily, and we’re in talks with another Brighton band about a release in the summer, but other than that we are free for something new. We see ourselves as a introductory label where acts can release their music and have complete creative control over their music & art, so I anticipate that Abi Wade, Us Baby Bear Bones and A Lily will move onto bigger & better things and we will release music later in the year potentially by acts we haven’t even heard yet.

Who’s Love Thy Neighbour’s tip from the bands playing across the other nights?

Apologies to anyone who knows me personally, because I literally don’t shut up about this band, but if you haven’t seen TRAAMS yet, then you must, they’re amazing. They make slacker lo-fi rock music with elements of Krautrock & US indie. They have an eye for a tune too. Would have loved to have done something with them for Love Thy Neighbour, but they have already moved onto bigger & better things! A close second is Physics House Band, another band who are flipping awesome and an outstanding live proposition.

If you could have got any Brighton band, past or present, to play your night who would you have chosen?

Er wow, that’s a tough one. There were loads of Brighton based bands I loved when I was about 18 like Clearlake, 80’s Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Turncoat, Charlottefield, British Sea Power, Coin-op & Electric Soft Parade, but I think it would have to be Electrelane. For those who don’t know their music, they made alternative, mostly instrumental rock & electronica and their albums were largely produced by Steve Albini. They split up in 2007, but reformed last year for live performances. My favourite album of theirs is ‘No Shouts No Calls’, which gets a lot of play in Sticky Mike’s!

Love Thy Neighbour curate Wednesday night at Sea Monsters, with Abi Wade, Holy Vessels, Plasticine and Jacko Hooper