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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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Gig Review

NME Awards Tour 2012: Azealia Banks, Tribes, Metronomy, Two Door Cinema Club
Brighton Dome

Article written by Alex S - Feb 25, 2012

Where to start with this shocker of an evening? The list is long and its keeper bitter. First up is the venue, Brighton’s Dome. A lovely setting actually, inspired by the Corn Exchange in Paris and originally the Prince Regent’s riding stables don’t you know; but hardly the place to deliver the NME’s self proclaimed mantra of promoting ‘new music’. This is where Abba won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 and where Pink Floyd first performed Dark Side of the Moon for Christ’s sake. And at over £20 a ticket and with Carlsberg selling at £5 a pint, this is hardly an evening where the disenfranchised and dispossessed youth come to find salvation in the new music of their peers. This town is bursting with such places – The Loft, Sticky Mike’s, Green Door, C2 – all charging less than a tenner, and delivering cutting edge new bands. But corporate NME has us here.

First on stage is Azealia Banks; New York rapper and the closest this evening gets to promoting ‘new music’. Topping the NME’s ‘cool list’ in 2011 (the fact the NME has such a list is probably all you need to know about its approach to music) her set started bleakly, and then plunged downhill. ‘N8gger this, b*tch that’ (these are direct quotes from just about every song) this sounded more like a John Terry promo video than a new take on garage/hip-hop.

Next were Tribes, already one album down and support slots with The Kooks and Kaiser Chiefs (again, that’s probably all you need to know right there, but I’ll continue). They delivered mushy, melodramatic, clichéd, anthemic cock-rock written solely with headlining Sunday night at Glastonbury in mind (cue mobiles swaying gently above the heads of a disappointingly appreciative crowd). When singer Johnny Lloyd leapt from the stage during totemic ‘We were Children’, climbed the barriers and ‘touched’ the hands of his people whilst desperately hoping they would paw at his crotch it all got a bit too much. Such drudgery was illuminated only by the exasperated sighs of men trying to carry wobbly beer to illusive friends in the distance.

I like Metronomy. They deliver infectious dance tunes with funky baselines and a catchy riff. I especially like the push-lights strapped to their chests, bought from the Pound Shop after their first ever gig here in Brighton and the way they pulse to the beat. But you know about this already, because they’ve been around since 1999! Having delivered 3 albums and produced more remixes than Mark Ronson - they played the Royal Albert Hall just before Christmas - again this is hardly ‘new’.

This brings us to the headliners, Two Door Cinema Club who were frankly offensive. An impressive bank of lights meant it was difficult to see the band, which was just as well. When you did, it was like watching the project manager, finance officer, quality assurance and team support put together a ‘show’ for corporate/finance. As the rising stench of blandness filled the auditorium you were left asking yourself if this is what peace in Northern Ireland does then bring back the Troubles. All we kept hearing was how ‘excited’ they were about the new album; how ‘awesome’ the other bands were; how ‘humble’ they felt to be here…Where were the stares from the stage with lazy, hirsute disdain? Where was the attitude, the swagger? This is indie-rock as ‘career’. With tedious riffs and formulaic song writing the buck hasn’t even slowed down in their progression from indie to AOR.

As I walked out before the end I left feeling violent and angry. To think about those trailblazing luminaries that first inspired me to reject the prog-rock of my forefathers in pursuit of up and coming new bands; when the NME meant something – Charles Shaar Murray, Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill, Paul Morley, Danny Baker – they set a marker in the pursuit and promotion of new talent that the current recipients can only dream of. The biggest tragedy is, judging by this evening, I don’t even believe they share that dream. The NME; corporate wh*re, Rest in Peace.

Links:
http://www.nme.com/