Check out VV Brown
I think she’s great! Love both these songs!
White Air Festival
I went to this last year – it was amazing. So much fun – I wish they had something like that over this side of the world. I found this on you tube and had to post it…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3JEf66wSDA
If you’re in the UK for this anytime I would definitely recommend going. This year its held at [...]
The Cribs & Fleet Foxes
The Cribs new album is out soon – the first one with Johnny Marr former guitarist for The Smiths.
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2009/08/the_cribs_-_new.html
Also Fleet Foxes are worth an ear- bit of a folk band but are pretty good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQRS40OKNE&feature=related
#21 Notting Hill Carnival
For two days in August the streets of Notting Hill come alive with up to two million revelers for one of the best street parties in the world; Notting Hill Carnival. There is the parade of bands and floats that is well worth a watch, or if you are feeling more like just getting a [...]
Fake Cavern video evidence
Here’s the video of the Fake Cavern in Liverpool. See Duncan’s posts on this fakery here . If you find yourself in this cavern, go back up the stairs, cross the street and into the real one ‘kay?
In-van entertainment sytem
It seemed like a great idea at the time; eveyone has ten minutes to run into an HMV strore and buy a CD to play in the van. We’d been a little light on the sounds while in the highlands and now we were in the lo-lands it was time to pump out the jams [...]
mono records, Glasgow
While we were on our tour we picked up a whole lot of vinyl. Be ready to do your best number eight at the Air NZ desk when coming home and you should be able to get away with the excess, we did. Among the great record shops we visited one stood out [...]
#19: Oakdale Comprehensive School
Those inauspicious buildings above, squat and purposeful, house Oakdale Comprehensive School, an educational institution I’ve never visited but one which has for one reason or another provided the three key cultural forces to emerge from Wales over the last three decades.
Steve Strange, The Manic Street Preachers and Joe Calzaghe. Strange ran a club night, The [...]
Beachfront Jungle and Walking in the Air
Slipping into Brighton as night was falling, short Kushla and David, it felt like a relatively quiet night was in the offing, a graduated return to normalcy before the epic journey home the next day. We had dinner at a cute Italian just off the waterfront, and it looked like the night might hold nothing [...]
A Night at Brixton Academy.
I was a bit panicked I wasn’t going to get a chance to go to an amazing gig on this trip. This wasn’t for a lack of exciting shows, more just my apparent need to go to bed at 10pm every night. I’m some kind of old man in a 26-year-olds body. Heck, as I type this [...]
On the black market
For as long as I have been a drum and bass DJ I have wanted to visit Black Market records in Soho. It is probably the most famous drum and bass record store in the world, in the spiritual home of bass heavy sounds.
S as in… Sodom
Upon arriving in London you’re bombarded with messages to go out to see a show, a band, a comedian. Or a film. One such omnipresent poster was for Anvil: The Story of Anvil. And it worked.
The trailer plays like it’s mockumentary, but rather than adding to that now rather moribund genre, Anvil is hilariously, heartbreakingly [...]
#17: Rough Trade
Any trip to London for a self-respecting vinyl nerd is incomplete without a trip to Rough Trade records, the shop which gave birth to the label which just owned the early ’80s, putting out masterpieces by the likes of the Young Marble Giants, The Feelies and The Clean. I’ll post clips at the bottom. They are all amazing.
Magazine Invented Manchester
Howard Devoto, a diminutive figure, now with an odd resemblance to Dr Evil, appears at centre stage. It’s dark and green, though it will soon become apparent that he’s in a pink pastel suit and your eyes just devour him.
“Here is the idea. Here is the explanation of what happened,” he intones in that marvellously creepy pantomine voice of his.
#13 Basement Jaxx
Personaly I think Basement Jaxx are the #1 reason to love the UK. On record the are great, but live they are amazing. Video after the jump.
#12 The chemical Brothers
The chemical brothers live at the roundhouse, video after the jump
Things that surprised me about Glasgow.
1. The food.
Restaurants in Glasgow are good. The quality of the meals I ate in Glasgow was probably better than anywhere else. And all of that fried stuff? Well if you go to the right place it’s actually good too, so shut up.
2. A bewildering abundance of charity shops
The streets are littered with second hand, [...]
You Got Me
The original piece I wrote about The Cavern, amongst other things, for the Real Groove website is below, some holds true, some has been overtaken by events. But I’ve unmasked a serious fraud.
The original post:
So I’ve arrived in Liverpool, a little tired after Optimo but otherwise accounted for, and hit the Hard Days Night hotel, [...]
Hoodlums.
When I get to a new place I like to put on my running shoes and go for a run. It’s a good way to have a look around, and get a bit of exercise without feeling as self conscious as prancing about in your native city. Running through Ponsonby… yuck.
Manchester was the perfect run… [...]
#8: Burial
Burial writes some of the most incredible, moody, gritty, emotionally charged music I have ever heard. I didn’t fully understand it until I arrived and experienced this part of the world.
Burial has been my haunting sound track for much of the trip thus far, and I will go home with a toally new appreciation for [...]
Yes! Fab & Kinky
Yes! Optimo truly was.
Seriously, who has a party on a Sunday night. WTF.
I was insanely tired. I didn’t want to go out, not really. Twitch and Wilkes are in Australia, how good could this really be? I thought I was going for an hour or so just to get a feel for Optimo and what [...]
#3: Wuthering Heights
I’m always thinking that at some point I will meet the one. Some kind of combination of Heathcliff and Darcy. Wild, handsome and rich. British novels have pretty much ruined any hope that I will ever be satisfied by a man, in much the same way that Twilight and Edward Cullen has raised a generations [...]
No emos in the UK
Right, so I’m not really one for clubbing, but went along to Optimo last night because it’s the place to be on a Sunday night. The other guys on the team who love that sort of thing will no doubt give a detailed breakdown, but I just wanted to point out one thing: There were [...]
Jilkes and Twitch Optimo
I’m really keen to go to Optimo in Glasgow to see Jilkes and Twitch. Check out this video of the boys in action.
