Champione – Home EP

Posted on 28/06/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Tucked in at the end of this week’s gigs picks was an artist who we hadn’t written about before on the blog. Champione are playing a late gig at Sticky Mike’s to support the launch of their new EP which came out yesterday.

The Home EP features an incredibly generous eight tracks of Electro House. Opener MshMshMsh has a fizzy, effervescent introduction, before bubbling into a French House banger. The next couple of tracks, Unicorns and Bear vs Bear, follow suit with a ravey electro house that would sit nicely alongside MSTRKRFTS finest. The View brings female vocals into the equation, sounding a bit like Katy B produced by Justice. Things go a bit dubstep on title track Home, which features vocals by Danny McGurn, and The End uses elements from each of the preceding five tracks to make something new. The EP also has two remixes of The View by Burenze and Dirty Purity.

Home is available through iTunes and Champione’s Bandcamp page, and the launch night is at Sticky Mike’s from 11pm-3am on Saturday night.

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.

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.

Brighton Rocks

Posted on 29/07/2012 by brightonmusicblog

This isn’t a blog post about Graham Greene’s novel, or either of the films made about it. Nor is it a post about the bar in Kemptown. Brighton Rocks in this case refers to a series of gigs put on by Lout Promotions, featuring exclusively local bands.

In the early days of Lout, they put on all-dayers at the Concorde featuring the likes of British Sea Power, Electric Soft Parade, and Eighties Matchbox B-Line disaster, and now they’re reviving the concept. They’re all going to be on friday or saturday nights – so no moaning about work the following day, and instead of the Concorde, they’ll be at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar.

One great thing for bands is that Lout are open to the idea of curated nights, so a band could put together their own bill, for a single launch or label showcase.

The first night is next friday (3rd August – Facebook event here), headlined by Run Young Lovers, and there are another half a dozen lined up already. If you want to get involved, drop a mail to info@loutpromotions.co.uk.

Friday, August 3rd, 2012
Run Young Lovers, Alice, The Watermelons & The Querelles

Saturday, August 11th, 2012
MOK, Ubertone, 0:00 & Coco Alice

Friday, August 17th, 2012
Dollface, The Denim, As It Is & Sweet Jonny

Friday, August 24th, 2012
The Beautiful Word, Our Colour Company, Elk & Tarq Bowen

Friday, September 7th, 2012
Emersis, Samurai, The Dead Celebs & In Dynamics

Saturday, September 8th, 2012
Ham Legion, The Creaking Chair, Seadog & Dog Legs

Friday, September 14th, 2012
Tin Palace, Wild Cat Strike, This Modern Life & Black Fire Rising

Time and Space Machine live at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar 1/6/12

Posted on 02/06/2012 by brightonmusicblog

It’s not often you get to see a band’s debut gig. But then it’s not often that a band doesn’t play their debut gig until after their second album is released, as Time & Space Machine did last night. Time and Space Machine is Richard Norris’ band based project – a twin brother to Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve, his psychedelic remix / re-edits project with Erol Alkan. The records are mostly Richard’s own work (with a little help on drums), but for their debut gig, they’d grown to a five piece.

Richard Norris / Time and Space Machine

If you haven’t heard the new album Taste The Lazer, it’s mostly psychedelia, with a bit of krautrock and garage thrown into the mix. Live they gave the impression of being the band Oasis could have been – if only they’d taken LSD rather than cocaine and listened to the Beatles later albums rather than stopping somewhere around Rubber Soul – or maybe they were a bit like current music industry darlings Toy if their record collection wasn’t just experimental German records from the early seventies. While it’s mostly instrumental, there is a smattering of vocals across their work. In Richard’s own words “sometimes it sounds like Crosby, Stills & Nash, sometimes it sounds like we’ve just come back from the pub”. According to people I was with, things might have sounded a bit better if they’d had decent vocal monitors onstage.

But you don’t go and see Time and Space Machine for the vocals – it’s all about the amazing accompanying visuals, the swirling hammond, the really tight drumming and the great musicianship that never strays into showing off. The band left the stage after an hour that went far too quick and didn’t come back for an encore, leaving us wanting more. Hopefully it won’t be long before they’re back.

Astro Physics @ Sticky Mike’s / Bitbin @ The Blind Tiger

Posted on 11/03/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Friday night was a big night for gigs in Brighton. Biggest of the lot was the Maccabees homecoming gig, which will no doubt get quite a few write ups in the local press. I decided to head to a couple of other gigs which might not get so much media attention, but are no less deserving.

First up was the Road To Blissfields gig at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar. It was a bit of a battle of the bands type affair, with a winner from each of a number of towns in the South of England getting a set at the festival near Winchester at the end of June. I missed the first few bands, and turned up to a group whose lead singer had a mullet. Not the most auspicious entry. I only heard one of their songs before they left the stage to make for the act I’d come to see, Astro Physics. Astro Physics are a six piece hip hop collective, who are as much about the rest of the band as they are MC Skilf and singer Rachel Mosleh. They’ve been gigging a lot recently (and are supporting Derriere at the Blind Tiger next friday), and did a fantastic job of bringing the party to Sticky Mike’s. No idea what the results were, or if they’ve even been decided yet, but I’ll do my best to find out.

Astro Physics

After a quick pint between gigs, I then headed over to The Blind Tiger Club, where Tru Thoughts latest signing, Anchorsong, was headlining. Live, Anchorsong was much more dancey than on record, pumping out a great set of stunning, deep, bass heavy tunes. I was there for the support though – I am meant to be covering local bands, after all. Thanks to their late licence, the Blind Tiger can put bands on after the main act. I’ve known Matt Hodson, who turns into Bitbin onstage, for a few months, but as a photographer rather than a musician – tonight was his live solo debut, but he’s been putting out some lovely electronica himself through his website (you can download his recent Alias EP here). There’s a lot more to his set than watching a man prod a laptop – he was accompanied by some beautiful visuals, and for one of his songs he even played his bass with a violin bow! It was a very accomplished debut, and I’m sure it’s only going to be a matter of time before he’s headlining his own gigs.

Bitbin

Shrag at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar

Posted on 25/02/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Last night, Shrag kicked off the first date of their tour to promote their new album Canines (due for release in May). It’s a double headliner tour with Tunabunny and to celebrate there’s a split single with each band taking on a side of the 7″. Shrag’s track is Tendons in the Night, which you can watch the video for here:

None of the supports were from Brighton, so I’ll rattle through them quickly – Dogtooth are the new project from Shrag’s original Canadian drummer Leigh Anne Walter, who’s teamed up with singer-songwriter Kate Gerrard, and the Metatrons were like a day-glo version of Shrag. If you didn’t know that co-Headliners Tunabunny were from Athens, Georgia you could have guessed from the opening song which sounded an awful lot like one of their hometown’s most famous bands (and I’m not talking about the B52s here). Over the course of their set though they ended up sounding a lot more like the Breeders, and that was no bad thing at all.

Dogtooth, The Metatrons and Tunabunny

Shrag arrived onstage later than advertised, which is kind of inevitable with four bands on the bill, and wasted no time in treating the audience to a set which was mainly made up of tracks from the upcoming album, with only a handful of tracks from 2010s Life! Death! Prizes! Last month, Shrag posted up a new track called Chasing Consummations which hinted that the band might be maturing a little – while they might be developing on their recorded output, live they were still just as full of energy, and the banter inbetween songs was anything but mature. After forty five minutes which had me sold on the new album, the band were off, without an encore.

Shrag

The split single is being sold on the tour, but can be bought from the usual places (Well, Resident have it on their website)