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Pictures from some recent gigs we've hosted:

29 March 2013 - Brixton, London

Viv Albertine, VuVuVultures, Left Leg, Mickey Gloss, Big Wave, No Cars, Arthur Gunn, Simon Love (Pictures)

8 March 2013 - Lexington, London

R.Ring, Golden Grrrls, Slushy Guts and Equinox (Pictures)

On Our iPod

Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (album)

Antony Harding - Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear (album)

Black Angels - Indigo Meadow (album)

Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin (album)

Still Corners - Strange Pleasures (album)

Savages - Silence Yourself (album)

Mikal Cronin - MC II (album)

Can’s Ege Bamyasi played by Stephen Malkmus and Friends(album)

Victoria and Jacob - Festival 7"

Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City (album)

Sauna Youth - False Jesii Part II 7”

Lightning Bolt - Oblivion Hunter

Robyn Hitchcock - There Goes The Ice (2x 12")

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Album Review

Woodpecker Wooliams
The Bird School of Being Human Robot Elephant Records

Article written by Ged M - Sep 26, 2012

With a set of songs named after birds – some everyday, some exotic – we might have discovered a new species in Brighton’s Gemma Williams, aka Woodpecker Wooliams: a strange and compelling hybrid of folky stylings with dense and droney electronica. Though she grew up in the concrete satellite town of Crawley, her songs are influenced by nature and her own otherworldly imagination and they become a strange juxtaposition of the ordinary and extraordinary, like people cloaked in the most outré fancy dress. ‘Gull’ begins with a suggested hangover cure (“number 23/ egg, chips and beans”) before dissolving into electronic squeals while ‘Red Kite’ floats on waves of twinkling harp as she sings about male physical aggression.

Comparisons are invidious but you could make a case for her as Home Counties cousin of Joanna Newsom and Bjork, especially in her quavering tremolo. The album is frequently odd but obeys its own internal logic, intimate sometimes as on the dreamy ‘Hummingbird’, and a riot of colourful arrangements on ‘Sparrow’, which balances melody and dissonance, acoustic instruments and clattering electronica, to impressive and memorable effect. It’s easy to be won over to her uncommonly inventive way of seeing, and this record – her second – is the fledging of a dramatic new talent.

Links:
http://www.woodpeckerwooliams.com/
http://store.robotelephant.co.uk/products/502507-woodpecker-wooliams-the-bird-school-of-being-human
http://www.facebook.com/woodpeckerwooliamsmusic