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SoundsXP Presents

Friday 6th April 2012
All Day BBQ Festival

Bands:

- Sparrow and the Workshop
- 6 Day Riot
- The Nuns
- Colours
- Dignan Porch
- Y Niwl
- Singing Adams (solo)
- The Horses of Instruction

+ free BBQ
+ SoundsXP DJs

The Windmill
Brixton
Price: £7 in advance / £8 on door
Buy tickets from here

On Our iPod

Golden Grrrls - New Pop 7”

Chris Devotion & The Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital (album)

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester (album)

Throwing Up - Mother Knows Best 7”

Howling Wolf - Complete Chess Masters 1951-60

The Ketamines - A Rotten Bond/1 Yr (from Oddbox Singles Club Pt 2)

Cardinal - Hymns (album)

Proper Ornaments - Taking the Gamble Out of Buying 12”

Darren Hayman - January Songs (album)

Various: Marshall Teller EP 12”

Latest Forum Posts

Gig Review

Minny Pops / Rats on Rafts / Jack and the Beanstalks
Plug, Sheffield

Article written by Matt H - Jan 20, 2012

Minny Pops and Rats on Rafts - double Dutch

Where were you Sheffield, eh? Another midweek show, another slightly underwhelming crowd. And for a bill that deserved so much more. In fairness it’s probably wasn’t the most obvious night out: a local band splitting up, a Dutch band very much at the beginning of what will hopefully be an upward curve and a revived Factory band from 30 years ago (also Dutch), who are most likely only on the radar of the devoted and obsessive (they weren’t exactly huge favourites in my primary school even back then…).

The locals were Jack and the Beanstalks, playing their last ever gig, which might be a shame, depending on what they do next. They showed a great garagey-pop energy, plenty of decent songs and boasted a singer with the sort of geeky haircutted chutzpah which has marked out one or two Sheffield frontmen in the past (not to mention a cape – anyone who has the balls to wear a cape playing a gig to an audience in double figures deserves some recognition).

The new(ish) band were Rats on Rafts. It’s quite tricky to vaunt their qualities without sounding like you’re damning them with faint praise. The do echo very strongly much of the best guitar music of the early 80s – at various points you can dig out the synonyms for ‘angular’, ‘chopping’, ‘sweeping’. In trying to get across the quality of their sound it’s difficult to avoid the dread conclusion that they sound, erm, tight. If there’s anything definable which sets them apart from the knock about indie landfill, it’s that they don’t just line up the tunes and knock ‘em out. A number of times they clearly get lost in what they’re doing and build up an impressive sound. But in the end, for all the familiar elements and the temptation to intellectualise them as being insufficiently ground-breaking, it’s a case of some bands have got it, some bands ain’t. And Rats on Rafts have got it.

Also demonstrating that they are in full possession of ‘it’, despite a 30-year hiatus, were Minny Pops. If Rats on Rafts were reminding us of the early 80s, Minny Pops were beaming it to us direct, albeit a very different sort of 80s sound. The North of England has always been the place to appreciate their brand of foreboding semi-industrial sounds. Sounds that are the sort before-the-panto precursor of Goth, built from primitive synth and guitar, layered on top of the sorts of proto-dance rhythms that their contemporaries were perhaps more famous for, but which mean that the ‘pop’ part of their name is far from being ironic. Not unlike Artery (another band who recently reawakened from a similar length of slumber) their reference-free artistic ambition sounds fresher than ever in these post-ironic times.

A small part of the North of England got to appreciate that – hopefully a lot more will over the next couple of days and London gets a chance on Monday. It might not be an obvious night out, but you can be sure it’ll be a good one.

Leeds, Brudenell Social Club - 20 January 2012

Manchester, Gulliver's - 21 January 2012

London, Upstairs at the Garage - 23 January 2012

Links:
http://www.minnypops.com/Minny_Pops/index.html
http://www.ratsonrafts.com/