Rozi Plain
ELK
The Crescent, York
Tuesday 22nd October, 7.30pm
'What A Boost is Rozi’s best, most interesting and experimental album to date. It’s what happens when her introversions gather the worldliness and confidence to let others in. There’s all the same tenderness, all the same familiarity, but it’s never sounded this good before.'
9/10 The Line of Best Fit
The music of Rozi Plain has always felt like a freeze-frame. A colourful and graceful snapshot of the world, paused, suspended in time, and then gently toyed with, like stepping out of the linear world as we know it. Wide awake in dreaming. There have been three records over the past decade, each one just like this, alluring and beguiling in the delicate nature through which they exist, as if one wrong move could lead the whole thing to collapse in on itself, sending you tumbling back to the real world at any given moment.
Watch / Watch / Watch
Her brand new album, ‘What A Boost’, carries the same sense of exquisite elegance but is an altogether different, and distinctive, journey. One, in fact, that was inspired and informed by just that: of travel and passage, of the unique inspiration found in different and differing people and places. Of movement and motion. Of journeying.
Tweaked and refined during a year spent touring the world playing bass in This Is The Kit, ‘What A Boost’ nurtures its homely roots and then blooms into a record that isn’t strictly about life on road but is undoubtedly, and beautifully, shaped by it. Textural, repetitive, propulsive, the whole piece plays out like a soundtrack to the world flying past the window; all of the shapes, colours, sights and sounds, flickering fast as we try to take as much of it in as we can.
‘What A Boost’ is also the product of the singular spaces within which it was created. First there was the Old Dentist’s Studio around the corner from Rozi’s home in Clapton, where many of the initial ideas were first conjured. Then there was an RAF base in Suffolk where some of the songs began to come to life. A day off on tour in L.A enabled a fruitful days recording three songs (Swing Shut, Conditions and Trouble) with Chris Cohen (Deerhoof, Cass McCombs, Weyes Blood). Then back to London, where the album really came together at The Total Refreshment Centre, a somewhat legendary fixture in the flourishing London jazz scene. Rozi’s previous album, Friend, was the first to be recorded there. "Since then the TRC became part of my life. A great community of artists and musicians getting stuff done, making proactive moves," enthuses Plain. Naturally she returned there again for ‘What A Boost’, shortly before its closure as a live venue in 2018 due to intervention from Hackney council.
Suitably then, the record is imbued throughout with a sense of freeform adventuring, small seeds that grow into something far greater thanks to repetitive jazz-like patterns of the guitars, and gently shifting tempos that rise and fall and rise again, crafting a record that is both colourful and complex. Lead track Conditions sets a perfect tone, the song as magnetic as Rozi has ever sounded, blending shuffling, skittish percussion with sparkling guitar lines that drive the whole thing forward. Swing Shut is a gleaming concoction of heady groove and jubilant colour, while stand-out Dark Park offers something even more hypnotic, a shifting, fascinating ode to the “wafts of change that can suddenly hit you,” as Rozi herself explains it: “Like when the seasons change and you suddenly remember your whole life at that time of year. The record culminates with a studio recording of When There Is No Sun, Rozi’s much-loved Sun Ra cover; a staple of her live set for the past couple of years and a big influence on her more recent workings
Another key facet of ‘What A Boost’ is collaboration. Inspired by her invitation to participate at 2018’s PEOPLE festival, a week of one-off collaborative performances devised by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner of The National, Rozi opened up her new record to a number of different minds, each of them imbuing the work with little touches of their own magic.
“It's so great to work with other people that you like and trust, and allow yourself to let things be taken to places you wouldn't have been able to,” Rozi says of this process. “I think there's probably a lot of learning and trust you have to do with yourself before you can trust other people. Learning to be brave and not being too attached to certain things is all part of the collaboration curve."
Co-produced by regular drummer Jamie Whitby Coles, the record also features fellow live-band members Neil Smith, Amaury Ranger and Gerard Black. Elsewhere, Rozi opened up her new work to a host of friendly and familiar faces, with ‘What A Boost’ boasting informed playing from the likes of Sam Amidon, Rachel Horwood (Bas Jan, Trash Kit), Joel Wästberg a.k.a. Sir Was, Raphael Desmarets, Yoshino Shigihara (Zun Zun Egui, Yama Warashi) and Dan Leavers from The Comet Is Coming who rec-orded and played on experimental highlight The Gap. The album was subsequently mixed by Ash Workman (Metronomy, Christine and the Queens) at his Electric Beach studio.
Intricate and meandering, enigmatic and ambiguous, ‘What A Boost’ neatly sits alongside Rozi Plain’s past work, while opening up a whole new world to discover. One that sparkles and pricks at the senses. One that gently reveals more about itself with each passing play, rolling on and on through new vistas and pathways, through places to inhabit and leave behind; a succession of sequences that remind you to recall where you’ve been, where you are, and where you mean to go next. “Maybe this is a product of being away so much,” Rozi questions. “I feel like you do a lot of looking back, looking forward, looking at your life, and looking out of the window."
'Seductively off-kilter pop... lovely stuff'
Uncut
'Exquisitely blissed-out'
MOJO
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Molly Tuttle
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Monday 28th October, 7.30pm
A virtuosic, award-winning guitarist with a gift for insightful songwriting, Molly Tuttle evolves her signature sound with boundary-breaking songs on her compelling debut album, When You’re Ready. Already crowned “Instrumentalist of the Year” at the 2018 Americana Music Awards on the strength of her EP, Tuttle has broken boundaries and garnered the respect of her peers, winning fans for her incredible flatpicking guitar technique and confessional songwriting. Graced with a clear, true voice and a keen melodic sense, the 26-year-old seems poised for a long and exciting career. When You’re Ready, produced by Ryan Hewitt (The Avett Brothers, The Lumineers) showcases her astonishing range and versatility and shows that she is more than simply an Americana artist.
Website / Watch / Watch
Since moving to Nashville in 2015, the native Californian has been welcomed into folk music, bluegrass, Americana, and traditional country communities – even as When You’re Ready stretches the boundaries of those genres. Over the past year, Molly has continued to accumulate accolades, winning Folk Alliance International’s honor for Song of the Year for “You Didn’t Call My Name” and taking home her second trophy for the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year (the first woman in the history of the IBMA to win that honor).
'...handsomely crafted melodies that gently insinuate themselves into the memory…'
NPR
'Impressive debut album.... The production, playing and songwriting coalesce into a striking statement that shows an already developed artist well on her way to the next level of her still nascent career.'
American Songwriter
'…a sort of high-wattage Alison Krauss-Taylor Swift hybrid — Tuttle effortlessly delivers a mélange of styles to accompany her powerful guitar licks throughout.'
Rolling Stone
Tickets for this show are £16 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue, Jumbo Records and Crash Records in Leeds, or online from here.
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Warmduscher
Bull + Jerry
The Crescent, York
Friday 1st November, 7.30pm
Oh boy. A party not to miss at The Crescent fir for any Friday night!
Warmduscher return.
Heavy metals. Disco Peanuts. CCTV in the break room.
A little something to get you through the week. There’s enough to go around. Revenge is a dish best served bold. Melt in the mouth disco basslines on a fragrant bed of feedback. Try it with the boom bap tapenade. Here for a good time, not a long time.
If you made your way out of Whale City with your faculties intact, this one’s for you. Clams Baker, Lightnin’ Jack Everett, Mr Salt Fingers Lovecraft and The Witherer have been joined by Quicksand on cutting board and cheese wire and commis chef Cheeks on vibes. They’ve been cooking. Michelin stars. The finest ingredients money can buy: Kool Keith and Iggy Pop. Funk, punk, hip-hop and lounge rock. Love is real.
Band biographer and revered botanist Dr Alan Goldfarb describes the album as “a sample hole through which to taste another universe. A dramatic warning. A gilded aroma. It is a tale of wanton desire and limitless treachery. A tale of disillusionment – the refusal of exploitation.”
Tainted Love was recorded in just four days, with soupe du jour Dan Carey (Kate Tempest, black midi, Fontaines DC). Warmduscher continue to live on their razor-sharp wits. Or as Clams Baker puts it “there’s no way to stop now”. Delivering the goods you never knew you needed.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Warmduscher is:
Clams Baker III
Lightin’ Jack Everett
Mr Salt Fingers Lovecraft
Quicksand
The Witherer
Watch / Watch
Press for Whale City:
'Pure filth'
Lauren Laverne, BBC 6 Music
'This album has seriously got the goods. You owe it to yourself to listen to this one'
Irvine Welsh
'The oddest gang in town'
Mojo Magazine
'Like a grime-funk Sin City, ‘Whale City’ is peopled by a colourful cast of deviants'
NME
'The funkiest collection of speed driven drug tales you’ll hear all year'
GQ
Tickets for this show are £12 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Holy Moly & The Crackers
Snakerattlers
The Crescent, York
Sunday 3rd November, 7.30pm
**ORIGINAL TICKETS FOR THIS SHOW AT FIBBERS STILL VALID. PLEASE NOTE NEW DATE AND NEW TIME! THIS SHOW IS NOW SOLD OUT**
Holy Moly & The Crackers make riotous party music for the masses. Their third album, ‘Take A Bite’ (released April 5th 2019 on the band’s own Pink Lane Records), is concise, passionate take on folk, blues and indie rock. The sound of a band who have been searching and experimenting for several years; arriving at a place where they can say “this who we are and this is where we want to go”.
Website / Watch / Watch / Watch
Formed in Newcastle in 2011, the group began as little more than a laugh, an excuse to busk through some foot-stomping folk pop. They developed from a four piece to a six piece, with Ruth Patterson on vocals/fiddle, Conrad Bird on vocals/guitar/trumpet, Rosie Bristow on accordion, Nick Tyler on electric guitar, Jamie Shields on bass and Tommy Evans on drums/backing vocals. “When we started out we were a real ragtag folk band,” Conrad says. “We want to tell a different story now.”
The first taste from ‘Take A Bite’ that listeners will be treated to arrives in the form of euphoric lead single, ‘All I Got Is You’. Combining deft pop song craft with a stomping, four to the floor backing, it demonstrates the band’s commerciality and ambition, as well as their ability to tackle personal lyrical fare in a two-minute pop song.
Working once again with producer Matt Terry (The Prodigy/The Enemy), the recording process for ‘Take A Bite’ was marked by a shift in technique too. “For this album, we did it song by song,” Conrad explains. “Usually, you’ll record all the drum tracks and then all the bass tracks. But this time we recorded one song at a time and completely lived it”. The band even went one step further during the recording of the Byrds-influenced, folk-rock ‘Can’t Get Enough’, with producer Matt creating an immersive 60s experience in the studio. “Matt’s mad! And for that one he made us dress up in 60s clothes, bandanas, suits, flares,” Conrad laughs. “And it was really silly, but it really got us to live it.”
To that end, while the violin and the accordion remain, the whole thing feels rawer now. Riff-heavy, even. With melodic choruses more in the vein of American rockers such as The Black Keys and Jack White, than the tweed and waistcoats of traditional UK folk. It reflects the diverse tastes of a band, comprised of six friends with six individual music tastes, who come together to make a sound greater than the sum of its parts. “We’ve kept an element of the folk side but just kind of fused it together,” Ruth explains. “We all listen to each other, we all share stuff, but the music’s less about storytelling in the folk tradition now. It’s more observational. More about real experiences.”
“This album is asking the audience to take a chance on us,” explains Ruth. “Obviously we’ve got a bit of a daft name and we look a bit mad, but I think once people actually come to a gig, they’re always swept up in the music and the energy. We get kids, old people, Goths, hippies, whatever. Everyone’s invited, everyone’s part of it. And people seem to lose themselves. No one’s like, “Oh, how do I look?’ while dancing. They don’t care. It brings everyone together.”
“All roads lead to the stage,” Conrad continues. “The arguing, the loving, the making, the listening – it boils down into one manic, riotous party. That's where we connect with the audience and with each other and that’s what we're all about." It’s an all-systems-go mentality. “We’ve arrived at a place here, with this album, where we can start the journey that we want to be on. This is who we are now; this is what we’re doing.”
**THIS SHOW IS NOW SOLD OUT**
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Steve Mason
Pictish Trail
The Crescent, York
Sunday 10th November, 7.30pm
One of the founding members of The Beta Band, Steve has also recorded under the names of King Biscuit Time and Black Affair and since 2010 has released three acclaimed solo albums under his own name.
We've a special bonus too with one of our faves Johnny Lynch aka Mr Lost Map Records aka Pictish Trail in support!
Website / Watch / Listen
“Song writing since the Beta Band had become something I did entirely alone, from the original concept to the full demo and often in the studio it was just myself and a producer.
Although I enjoyed this purist approach for a long time, it really does not reflect who I am anymore and is not something that really excited me. So I decided with this album that I wanted to get my live band involved at every stage to break this cycle, and because I wanted to capture the energy that we produce when we play live shows.
Modern recording techniques often are a kind of piece meal approach to recording (which I have done a lot of) but the energy and excitement is often lacking, so this time the band and myself worked on a collection of 12 songs over the course of last year.
Around July I felt that it was going well enough to approach a producer and I knew very early on who I really wanted to work with. After an initial meeting with Stephen Street and playing him some rehearsal room recordings, he took the job. I have long admired his work, especially The Smiths and the Morrissey solo albums that Stephen wrote and produced.” Steve Mason
“Steve had been on the periphery of my musical knowledge for some time now. I was particularly impressed by his first ‘proper’ solo album Boys Outside back in 2010 and remember always liking his voice whenever I heard it on the radio. So, when he made contact with me in the summer of last year and asked if I would be interested in working with him on his new album I immediately agreed!” Stephen Street
“For this album, electric guitars, heavy brass and gospel backing vocals were the brew that I had in mind and Stephen was fully on board with that plan.” Steve Mason
“Steve explained that he wanted to make this album with his band playing more ‘live’ than on some of his previous offerings and also to augment the songs with Brass and female backing vocalists. I felt this approach of first stripping back the songs to a more ‘live’ feel to create more space for the more ‘soulful’ elements to breathe in was an interesting one and we got down to work!”
“A wonderful productive week of recording the main backing tracks with the band in Brighton was successfully achieved and then Steve and I continued recording his vocal parts up here in London.” Stephen Street
“When I listen to this album it feels and sounds like the first ‘legitimate’ record that I have ever made. It’s hard to explain but it sounds like a ‘real’ album. I think that is partly the production, the playing and the work that I did with the band for all those months in our rehearsal room on the South Coast. “
“Stephen did an extraordinary job with shaping the sound and he was everything that I hoped he would be behind the wheel.” Steve Mason
“I have to say, I was greatly impressed by the quality of the songs we recorded throughout the session and by the time we added the final overdubs of the brass section and backing vocalists, the album had really taken shape!”
“I hope we have managed to fulfil Steve’s vision of what this album would sound like. I certainly am very happy with the results and look back on the making of this record with fond memories!” Stephen Street
“It’s a beautiful, confident, positive, angry, loving and gentle album which once again moves what I do forward. David Bowie said that you should always be slightly out of your comfort zone if you want to achieve greatness, and for the first time perhaps ever; I deliberately pushed myself into that place. Who doesn’t want greatness?” Steve Mason
Tickets for this show are £20 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Molly Linen
Cult Party
Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds
Tuesday 12th November, 7.30pm
Two artists that individually stopped us in our tracks completely about ten seconds into the first song we heard. Together one one bill for a fiver. We can't wait.
These:
Milly Linen's 'Away'
Cult Party's 'I Got The Blues This Morning'
Molly Linen
‘Away’ is the heavenly debut single by Shropshire’s finest Molly Linen – a brand new signing to Lost Map Records. Molly Linen is a songwriter and guitarist from the West Midlands, now based in Glasgow. She creates atmospheric, captivating and personal songs, led by melodic guitar lines and lulling yet hypnotic vocals, drawing influences from artists such as Devon Sproule and Nick Drake. Members of her band include Beth Chalmers, Caio Wheelhouse, Colin Campbell and Liam Chapman (who also drums with C Duncan). ‘Away’ and ‘Over That Hill’ were recorded by Ronan Fay at Green Door Studios in Glasgow. “‘Away’ touches on remembering some feelings of difference between myself and other people at a younger age,” Molly explains, “whilst ‘Over That Hill’ is about how climbing a hill can sometimes help me put things into perspective.”
Molly Linen’s debut EP will be released later this year.
Cult Party
Leo Robinson is one of those rare and special people for whom making music and art seems to be neither pastime nor vocation and not so much compulsion as mere inevitability, a way of living. His most recent album ‘Eternal Love And The Death Of Everything’ (Maybles) was intended to be his last, and the concert to launch it (accompanied by six singers and a singing saw in addition to a full band) the last Cult Party performance. Thankfully for all of us there was a change of heart and a new album is coming this year. Whether accompanying his songs solo with organ, cello or guitar, or playing with any variant of his loose and fluid ensembles Cult Party shows are always deeply affecting and meditative and drenched in the generosity of one attempting to really give something of theirs to you.
'Sounds From the Other City'
Sad hits for all the family (lest there are happy members of it), it's the brand new record by not-at-all-super stars Cult Party! This wonderful band may have been a solitary, self-preserving bedroom band once upon a time, but on And Then There Was This Sound songwriter Leo Robinson opens up his sounds with the help of pals including weirdo rocker Kiran Leonard. Creative and wayward without sacrificing the delicate and skeletal sound of old, this record is bound to be special.
'Norman Records'
Tickets for this show are £5 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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Lankum
John Francis Flynn
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Thursday 14th November, 7.30pm
Tickets go on sale on Friday 5th July at 10:00am!
The Dublin based four-piece present a new live show ahead of their much-anticipated 3rd album which will be released on Rough Trade late Autumn.
Lankum have an alchemical ability to combine traditional folk roots with contemporary undercurrents to forge music that is dark, mysterious and transcendental. Comprising brothers Ian Lynch (uillean pipes, tin whistle, vocals), Daragh Lynch (vocals, guitar) alongside Cormac Mac Diarmada (fiddle) and Radie Peat (harmonium, accordion, vocals), Lankum channel a diverse set of influences and histories to create a beautifully rare thing: a songbook from and for the people.
Website / Watch
Born of years criss-crossing Dublin's folk and experimental scenes, their two albums Cold Old Fire (2013, recorded under former name Lynched) and Rough Trade debut Between The Earth and Sky (2017) breath new life into ancient/modern rituals with urban punk fervour, rural psycho-geography and, underpinning it all, the eternal drone of the uilleann pipes.
'An object lesson in how to perform old songs in new ways'
The Independent
'The most convincing folk band to come out of Ireland in years'
The Guardian
Tickets for this show are £15 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue, Jumbo Records and Crash Records in Leeds, or online from here.
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BC Camplight
Porridge Radio
The Crescent, York
Thursday 21st November, 7.30pm
“You shouldn't have a tough time finding the angle to Deportation Blues,” claims Brian ‘BC Camplight’ Christinzio. “The past few years have been a fucking nightmare.” But what a fucking great record he’s made off the back of his nightmare. His second album for Bella Union, Deportation Blues is an exhilarating, dynamic document of calamity and stress, relayed through richly melodic and bold arrangements spanning singer-songwriter classicism, gnarly synth-pop, ‘50s rock’n’roll and various junctures between, mirroring their maverick creator’s jarred emotions and fractured mindset.
Watch
For the full story, you have to head back to before Christinzio’s Bella Union debut, 2015’s How To Die In The North. Born in New Jersey, but living in Philadelphia, Christinzio had released two albums while battling addiction and mental illness. Both albums won rave reviews and earned Christinzio a reputation as one of independent music’s most forward-thinking artists. Soon after, however, as illness rendered him unable to function as a working songwriter, Christinzio retreated to a life squatting in an abandoned church. Despite some notable appearances as a session pianist (Sharon Van Etten) and occasional live work for Philly faves The War On Drugs (Robbie Bennett and David Hartley were in the original BC live band) he knew a sea change was needed in order to regain his career and sanity.
Feeling he’d be “dead or in jail if I stayed,” he acted on a friend’s suggestion to cross the ocean to Manchester. There, Christinzio found new inspiration, new friends, a girlfriend, a dog, and finally a new album (his first in eight years).
So, imagine his mood when he fell foul of UK immigration. “I’d had such high hopes for How To Die In The North, and I was told I was being deported two days after it came out, and banned from the UK. The next thing I know, I’m playing Pac Man in my parents’ basement, thinking, this is my life now.”
Occasional gigs in Europe, where his Manchester-based band could meet him, and extended sojourns in Dublin and Paris, broke up the monotony, but it was still “living in a constant panic attack.”
But then the cavalry arrived! Courtesy of his grandparents, Christinzio secured Italian citizenship. It cost time, money and a portion of his sanity, “but after a year and a half I could finally shove my Italian papers in their faces at the airport and return to sunny Manchester. The thing is, despite being American, I feel Mancunian, and I couldn’t think about making another record, until I got back.”
To add insult to injury, “Brexit happened, like a day after I got back. Can I get a fucking break here, please?”
Once the dust had settled, Christinzio realised, “I didn’t feel any better, I had so much anger, I felt destroyed. The demons were back and had lost me friends, I’d drunk too much, and I felt nothing but dread and disease. I thought, I can’t wait to hear what this next album is going to sound like.”
Recording in Liverpool’s Whitewood studios, Christinzio locked himself in the windowless studio and recorded almost exclusively in the dark. “The thoughts and sounds that began to flow out of me were pretty scary. I’m pretty sure the engineer started carrying a shiv in his pocket after about the 2nd day. Nothing playful sounding came out. If the last album had elements of whimsy, the thought of any on this album made me want to vomit.”
“A couple of months later we had finished Deportation Blues and emerged from the studio like mole-people”. Christinzio recorded the album mostly on his own, plus drummer Adam Dawson, occasional guitar by Robbie Rush, and a couple of session horn players. The lead track is ‘I’m Desperate’, “an ominous synth burner,” says Christinzio, with a Suicide-style throb and a haunting female vocal counterpoint that underlines the album’s manic, careering edge, fantastic hooks and instrumental verve.
It’s an uncompromising way to introduce Deportation Blues, likewise the album’s title-track opener. Bookended by metallic power chords, cascading synths and a gorgeous downbeat mood lead into slower doo-wop complete with howling falsetto. “It’s instantly a different, darker record than How To Die In The North,” Christinzio notes.
Deportation Blues is also noticeably more electronic than its predecessor. “I was feeling cold so every time something sounded pretty, I replaced it with something that sounded like an ice pick. The apocalyptic nuclear feel really appealed.”
Throughout, Christinzio sounds as if he’s walking a knife-edge. Take second track ‘I’m In A Weird Place Now’, a heady conflagration of Spector and Springsteen, with Christinzio confessing “And there’s something about Manchester town / And the silly little things she makes me do.” “I like the oppressiveness of the weather in Manchester, it brings everyone down to my level” he explains.
The fried mood continues on ‘Hell Or Pennsylvania’, splicing woozy noir jazz lounge-drunk cabaret by way of ‘50s legend Jerry Lee Lewis - Christinzio’s entry point to music through his mother’s record collection. “It’s the first time I’ve reflected that on a record,” he says. “Jerry Lee was this guy bashing at a piano who didn’t give a shit, and I didn’t give a shit.” The lyrical reference to “lemon twirls” meanwhile, represents Brian’s struggle with substance abuse: “The big choruses are a celebration of cocaine whilst the jazz sections represent the lament, the familiar loathsome aftermath.”
The sudden changes of mood and style are also metaphorical. For example, ‘Am I Dead’ embraces cinematic horns, broody pop and synth-bass afro-funk. “I go through highs and lows and have trouble staying entertained,” he admits. “A musical part can state its purpose in fifteen seconds, sometimes it doesn’t need repeating. The trick is tying everything together without it sounding confusing.”
‘Am I Dead’ is segued between ‘When I Think Of My Dog’ and ‘Midnight Ease’, two plush, heart-aching piano ballads with rippling saxophone. After ‘Fire In England’, a greasy, nervy rocker, is a bitter ode to British PM – and former immigration controller (as Home Secretary) Theresa May (“dresses like a bus seat, doesn’t she?”). It’s a complex, bleak record I guess” Christinzio concludes. “As dramatic as it may sound, this album was made by a dude who wasn’t sure he’d be alive the next day. Nothing is there for any other reason than it’s the truth. It’s not trying to sound cool or get on the radio.”
Though Christinzio points out “this is no redemption I-saw-the-light story,” he is allowing himself a little bit of hope for once: “I’ve never been as pleased with where I am artistically as I am right now.”
On top, his new band, “is phenomenal.” Alongside trusted drummer Dawson is Luke Barton (guitars, synths), guitarist Tom Rothery and multi-instrumentalist/ backing singer Ali Bell. Leading them is a man that a bartender in Manchester recently described as, “like Mozart and Tony Soprano had a kid." Brian Christinzio, and BC Camplight, genius and pain, may be here to stay at last.
Tickets for this show are £12.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Big Joanie
Mayshe Mayshe
The Fulford Arms, York
Friday 22nd November, 7.30pm
Big Joanie are a black feminist punk band. They’re like The Ronettes filtered through 80s DIY and 90s riot grrrl, with a sprinkling of dashikis.
Listen
Based in London, UK, Big Joanie formed in the summer of 2013 to play at First Timers (a gig where each band plays their set for the very first time) at the close of the year. The band also functioned as a space where its members (Stephanie Phillips, Chardine Taylor-Stone and Estella Adeyeri) could be completely themselves as black women, and within it discover their own power in creativity.
In 2014 Big Joanie’s Sistah Punk EP was released on Tuff Enuff Records, and in 2016 they self-released their haunting single 'Crooked Room'. Establishing themselves amongst London's thriving DIY punk scene they have since toured the UK and Europe supporting acts such as Downtown Boys, Shopping, Parquet Courts and more.
One evening in June 2018 Big Joanie were discovered by Thurston Moore, Eva Prinz and Abby Banks whilst supporting seminal Dutch punk band The Ex. Numbers were exchanged, a coffee date was set - and by the next morning the trio had confirmed they would release the band’s debut album Sistahs, and that they’d be launching a new label imprint called ‘The Daydream Library Series’ in order to do so.
Big Joanie recorded Sistahs over several sessions from November 2017 to January 2018 at Hermitage Works Studios with producer Margo Broom (who has also worked with Fat White Family, Goat Girl and Meatraffle). It’s a bold record about friendships, melancholy memories, and hope for the future. It was released on the 30th November 2018 to wide acclaim from Rolling Stone , Pitchfork , The Quietus and more, along with copious airplay on BBC Radio 6 Music and KEXP-FM.
Outside of the band all three members have strong community ties, from helping run the festival for punks of colour Decolonise Fest , coaching new talent at Girls Rock London , or launching the ' Stop Rainbow Racism ' campaign which works to stop racist performances in LGBT venues.
Black feminism is at the heart of Big Joanie's music and actions, and with the release of Sistahs the band hope to spread their message even further.
Tickets for this show are £8.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Wolfgang Flür
The Crescent, York
Friday 22nd November, 7.30pm
*TICKETS ARE ON SALE ON WEDNESDAY 21ST AUGUST AT 10AM*
A member of Kraftwerk during the group's golden era, Wolfgang Flur was the band's electronic percussionist from 1973 to 1987.
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Flur became the third member of the band in 1973, replacing a drum machine. He was a member of the group from their international breakthrough with the album Autobahn (1974), and remained as they experimented with proto-techno on albums such as Trans-Europe Express (1977) and Computer World (1981).
Frustrated with the half-a-decade it took to produce Electric Cafe (1986), he left the band after the LP's release -- it wouldn't be until a 2009 reissue that Flur received an artist credit on the album.
In 1997, he launched his solo career under the name Yamo and released Time Pie, an album that featured work with the experimental duo Mouse on Mars. In 2000, he published his memoir I Was a Robot but the book was pulled momentarily, and re-released with revisions after a lawsuit from the remaining members of Kraftwerk. A 12" single named after the book appeared in 2004, and it was included on the 2015 release Eloquence: Total Works, a collection of unreleased Flurtracks dating back to 2002.
Tickets for this show are £18.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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!!!
(Chk Chk Chk)
The Crescent, York
Thursday 28th November, 7.30pm
Doesn't it seem like everyone's freaking out lately? !!! know the feeling well. The NYC dance-punk lifers have been chronicling the perpetual meltdown that is American society for nearly 20 years now, from the clattering full-band thrust of their instantly iconic 2003 single "Me and Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard (A True Story)" to the dark disco of 2017's wonderfully eclectic Shake the Shudder.
Their eighth full-length, Wallop, follows in the band's grand tradition of plugging straight into our collective nervous system and sending funky, rubbery shock waves through the body politic. If you've found yourself rubbing your temples while contemplating the collapse of everything around us? Well, !!! are bringing the soundtrack to your next nervous breakdown.
Watch / Watch
Like an apocalyptic jukebox, Wallop is jam-packed with various sounds and styles from dance music's rich history—from the pie-eyed psychedelia of Madchester-era English dance-rock to tunnel-vision techno and the flashy, bomb-dropping sound of UK grime. The candy-coated sounds of '90s rave loom large in Wallop's playful darkness, a callback to another era when everything felt like it was just about ready to fall apart. Diving into '90s retro nostalgia is good for us," frontman Nic Offer explains while discussing the sonic rediscovery at the beating heart of Wallop. "I know all the '80s stuff already, so it's like, 'What did happen in the '90s?' Because in the '90s, we were just listening to James Brown."
Wallop was recorded over the past year in Offer's Brooklyn apartment—a first for the band, as !!!'s latest was rife with experimentation throughout the creative gestation: "Our process was to get loose and get into uncharted territory," he puts it succinctly. This meant messing around with gear they didn't quite understand, conjuring new sounds and bringing in familiar friends to contribute vocals—including Liars frontman Angus Andrew, Maria Uzor of British dance aesthetes Sink Ya Teeth, and Glasser's synth-pop wizard Cameron Mesirow, who all join Offer and !!! co-vocalist Meah Pace on this barn-burning party of a record.
"We were sitting on these instrumentals that we liked, so we started sending them around to random people," Offer states while discussing the collaborative process streaked across Wallop. "We overwrite and overrecord, and send them out to our friends to vote. We don't know what we're making until it's done. This record could've been completely dark or completely pop."
"We're not the kind of band that sits down and says, 'Let's make a record now,'" producer and multi-instrumentalist Rafael Cohen continues. "We just keep going, which is good because it leads to less of a narrative for each album." With an array of producers lending a hand—including Cole M.G.N. (Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Julia Holter), Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck), and longtime collaborator Patrick Ford—Wallop was eventually stitched together to reflect the colorful, body-moving tapestry that its end result represents.
Work on Wallop took place in understandably different sociopolitical circumstances than what surrounded Shake the Shudder—but addressing those circumstances head-on was initially harder than Offer and Cohen thought. "Every political song we wrote kind of sucked," the former admits, while explaining that the wide-eyed societal paranoia embedded within the record was naturally occuring. "When we stepped away from politics, it seeped its way back into the music.”
Indeed, Wallop chronicles these strange times through !!!’s personal lens, capturing the mere act of existing amidst so many shifting paradigms; the skipping IDM of “Domino” zooms in on the conflicting emotions that come with experiencing gentrification first-hand, while "UR Paranoid" throbs with the type of intensity reserved for existential spiraling and late-night k-holes alike—an urgency that also speaks to !!!'s admiration for club music. "We're always trying to make pure club stuff—that's where we get our sonics," Cohen states, while Offer elaborates, "We're very much classic songwriters, but the music that turns it on is club music. It's always moving, and it's a good well for us."
Meanwhile, "Off the Grid" ripples and pulses in a way not unlike XTRMNTR-era Primal Scream, “Slow Motion” dives headlong into the ecstatic energy of 1990s UK trip-hop and beat-driven rock, “This Is the Door” radiates crisp and effervescent disco, and “Couldn’t Have Known” is pure urban clatter topped off by Cohen’s soothed-out vocals. The splashy beat of "Serbia Drums" in particular comes from a surprising source: an iPhone recording that drummer Chris Egan captured while the band was touring in Serbia. "Chris is from D.C. and so am I, and that groove is so go-go," Cohen marvels on the song's propulsive sound.
Overall, Wallop is a testament not only to the rocky, worldly times it reflects, but !!!'s artistic lifeblood—a constantly-creating ethos that's kept the band going for so long and enables them to constantly innovate their sound. "We just work really hard and try to make the best records we can," Offer proclaims. "We have a strict policy of challenging ourselves—'What haven't we done?'" And if that sense of self-discovery resulted in Wallop's jam-packed, kaleidoscope world of sound, let's hope !!! never stop challenging themselves.
Larry Fitzmaurice
June 2019
Tickets for this show are £15 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Penelope Isles
Cruel World
The Fulford Arms, York
Tuesday 3rd December, 7.30pm
Like breaking open a rock to discover a crystal inside. Shimmering, intimate and beautifully destructive, this is the experience of Penelope Isles. Siblings Jack and Lily Wolter make music that reveals a curiosity and sensitivity to the world around them. The four-piece band from Brighton via the Isle of Man have a sound that unfolds both dramatically and softly. Nostalgic, but undeniably new, Penelope Isles’ debut LP ‘Until The Tide Creeps In’ is released March 2019 on Bella Union Records. For the lovers of early Arcade Fire, Grandaddy and Mogwai.
Website / Watch / Watch
Tickets for this show are £7.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York or online from here.
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Her brand new album, ‘What A Boost’, carries the same sense of exquisite elegance but is an altogether different, and distinctive, journey. One, in fact, that was inspired and informed by just that: of travel and passage, of the unique inspiration found in different and differing people and places. Of movement and motion. Of journeying.
Tweaked and refined during a year spent touring the world playing bass in This Is The Kit, ‘What A Boost’ nurtures its homely roots and then blooms into a record that isn’t strictly about life on road but is undoubtedly, and beautifully, shaped by it. Textural, repetitive, propulsive, the whole piece plays out like a soundtrack to the world flying past the window; all of the shapes, colours, sights and sounds, flickering fast as we try to take as much of it in as we can.
‘What A Boost’ is also the product of the singular spaces within which it was created. First there was the Old Dentist’s Studio around the corner from Rozi’s home in Clapton, where many of the initial ideas were first conjured. Then there was an RAF base in Suffolk where some of the songs began to come to life. A day off on tour in L.A enabled a fruitful days recording three songs (Swing Shut, Conditions and Trouble) with Chris Cohen (Deerhoof, Cass McCombs, Weyes Blood). Then back to London, where the album really came together at The Total Refreshment Centre, a somewhat legendary fixture in the flourishing London jazz scene. Rozi’s previous album, Friend, was the first to be recorded there. "Since then the TRC became part of my life. A great community of artists and musicians getting stuff done, making proactive moves," enthuses Plain. Naturally she returned there again for ‘What A Boost’, shortly before its closure as a live venue in 2018 due to intervention from Hackney council.
Suitably then, the record is imbued throughout with a sense of freeform adventuring, small seeds that grow into something far greater thanks to repetitive jazz-like patterns of the guitars, and gently shifting tempos that rise and fall and rise again, crafting a record that is both colourful and complex. Lead track Conditions sets a perfect tone, the song as magnetic as Rozi has ever sounded, blending shuffling, skittish percussion with sparkling guitar lines that drive the whole thing forward. Swing Shut is a gleaming concoction of heady groove and jubilant colour, while stand-out Dark Park offers something even more hypnotic, a shifting, fascinating ode to the “wafts of change that can suddenly hit you,” as Rozi herself explains it: “Like when the seasons change and you suddenly remember your whole life at that time of year. The record culminates with a studio recording of When There Is No Sun, Rozi’s much-loved Sun Ra cover; a staple of her live set for the past couple of years and a big influence on her more recent workings
Another key facet of ‘What A Boost’ is collaboration. Inspired by her invitation to participate at 2018’s PEOPLE festival, a week of one-off collaborative performances devised by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner of The National, Rozi opened up her new record to a number of different minds, each of them imbuing the work with little touches of their own magic.
“It's so great to work with other people that you like and trust, and allow yourself to let things be taken to places you wouldn't have been able to,” Rozi says of this process. “I think there's probably a lot of learning and trust you have to do with yourself before you can trust other people. Learning to be brave and not being too attached to certain things is all part of the collaboration curve."
Co-produced by regular drummer Jamie Whitby Coles, the record also features fellow live-band members Neil Smith, Amaury Ranger and Gerard Black. Elsewhere, Rozi opened up her new work to a host of friendly and familiar faces, with ‘What A Boost’ boasting informed playing from the likes of Sam Amidon, Rachel Horwood (Bas Jan, Trash Kit), Joel Wästberg a.k.a. Sir Was, Raphael Desmarets, Yoshino Shigihara (Zun Zun Egui, Yama Warashi) and Dan Leavers from The Comet Is Coming who rec-orded and played on experimental highlight The Gap. The album was subsequently mixed by Ash Workman (Metronomy, Christine and the Queens) at his Electric Beach studio.
Intricate and meandering, enigmatic and ambiguous, ‘What A Boost’ neatly sits alongside Rozi Plain’s past work, while opening up a whole new world to discover. One that sparkles and pricks at the senses. One that gently reveals more about itself with each passing play, rolling on and on through new vistas and pathways, through places to inhabit and leave behind; a succession of sequences that remind you to recall where you’ve been, where you are, and where you mean to go next. “Maybe this is a product of being away so much,” Rozi questions. “I feel like you do a lot of looking back, looking forward, looking at your life, and looking out of the window."
'Seductively off-kilter pop... lovely stuff'
Uncut
'Exquisitely blissed-out'
MOJO
Tickets for this show are £10 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Molly Tuttle
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Monday 28th October, 7.30pm
A virtuosic, award-winning guitarist with a gift for insightful songwriting, Molly Tuttle evolves her signature sound with boundary-breaking songs on her compelling debut album, When You’re Ready. Already crowned “Instrumentalist of the Year” at the 2018 Americana Music Awards on the strength of her EP, Tuttle has broken boundaries and garnered the respect of her peers, winning fans for her incredible flatpicking guitar technique and confessional songwriting. Graced with a clear, true voice and a keen melodic sense, the 26-year-old seems poised for a long and exciting career. When You’re Ready, produced by Ryan Hewitt (The Avett Brothers, The Lumineers) showcases her astonishing range and versatility and shows that she is more than simply an Americana artist.
Website / Watch / Watch
Since moving to Nashville in 2015, the native Californian has been welcomed into folk music, bluegrass, Americana, and traditional country communities – even as When You’re Ready stretches the boundaries of those genres. Over the past year, Molly has continued to accumulate accolades, winning Folk Alliance International’s honor for Song of the Year for “You Didn’t Call My Name” and taking home her second trophy for the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year (the first woman in the history of the IBMA to win that honor).
'...handsomely crafted melodies that gently insinuate themselves into the memory…'
NPR
'Impressive debut album.... The production, playing and songwriting coalesce into a striking statement that shows an already developed artist well on her way to the next level of her still nascent career.'
American Songwriter
'…a sort of high-wattage Alison Krauss-Taylor Swift hybrid — Tuttle effortlessly delivers a mélange of styles to accompany her powerful guitar licks throughout.'
Rolling Stone
Tickets for this show are £16 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue, Jumbo Records and Crash Records in Leeds, or online from here.
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Warmduscher
Bull + Jerry
The Crescent, York
Friday 1st November, 7.30pm
Oh boy. A party not to miss at The Crescent fir for any Friday night!
Warmduscher return.
Heavy metals. Disco Peanuts. CCTV in the break room.
A little something to get you through the week. There’s enough to go around. Revenge is a dish best served bold. Melt in the mouth disco basslines on a fragrant bed of feedback. Try it with the boom bap tapenade. Here for a good time, not a long time.
If you made your way out of Whale City with your faculties intact, this one’s for you. Clams Baker, Lightnin’ Jack Everett, Mr Salt Fingers Lovecraft and The Witherer have been joined by Quicksand on cutting board and cheese wire and commis chef Cheeks on vibes. They’ve been cooking. Michelin stars. The finest ingredients money can buy: Kool Keith and Iggy Pop. Funk, punk, hip-hop and lounge rock. Love is real.
Band biographer and revered botanist Dr Alan Goldfarb describes the album as “a sample hole through which to taste another universe. A dramatic warning. A gilded aroma. It is a tale of wanton desire and limitless treachery. A tale of disillusionment – the refusal of exploitation.”
Tainted Love was recorded in just four days, with soupe du jour Dan Carey (Kate Tempest, black midi, Fontaines DC). Warmduscher continue to live on their razor-sharp wits. Or as Clams Baker puts it “there’s no way to stop now”. Delivering the goods you never knew you needed.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Warmduscher is:
Clams Baker III
Lightin’ Jack Everett
Mr Salt Fingers Lovecraft
Quicksand
The Witherer
Watch / Watch
Press for Whale City:
'Pure filth'
Lauren Laverne, BBC 6 Music
'This album has seriously got the goods. You owe it to yourself to listen to this one'
Irvine Welsh
'The oddest gang in town'
Mojo Magazine
'Like a grime-funk Sin City, ‘Whale City’ is peopled by a colourful cast of deviants'
NME
'The funkiest collection of speed driven drug tales you’ll hear all year'
GQ
Tickets for this show are £12 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Holy Moly & The Crackers
Snakerattlers
The Crescent, York
Sunday 3rd November, 7.30pm
**ORIGINAL TICKETS FOR THIS SHOW AT FIBBERS STILL VALID. PLEASE NOTE NEW DATE AND NEW TIME! THIS SHOW IS NOW SOLD OUT**
Holy Moly & The Crackers make riotous party music for the masses. Their third album, ‘Take A Bite’ (released April 5th 2019 on the band’s own Pink Lane Records), is concise, passionate take on folk, blues and indie rock. The sound of a band who have been searching and experimenting for several years; arriving at a place where they can say “this who we are and this is where we want to go”.
Website / Watch / Watch / Watch
Formed in Newcastle in 2011, the group began as little more than a laugh, an excuse to busk through some foot-stomping folk pop. They developed from a four piece to a six piece, with Ruth Patterson on vocals/fiddle, Conrad Bird on vocals/guitar/trumpet, Rosie Bristow on accordion, Nick Tyler on electric guitar, Jamie Shields on bass and Tommy Evans on drums/backing vocals. “When we started out we were a real ragtag folk band,” Conrad says. “We want to tell a different story now.”
The first taste from ‘Take A Bite’ that listeners will be treated to arrives in the form of euphoric lead single, ‘All I Got Is You’. Combining deft pop song craft with a stomping, four to the floor backing, it demonstrates the band’s commerciality and ambition, as well as their ability to tackle personal lyrical fare in a two-minute pop song.
Working once again with producer Matt Terry (The Prodigy/The Enemy), the recording process for ‘Take A Bite’ was marked by a shift in technique too. “For this album, we did it song by song,” Conrad explains. “Usually, you’ll record all the drum tracks and then all the bass tracks. But this time we recorded one song at a time and completely lived it”. The band even went one step further during the recording of the Byrds-influenced, folk-rock ‘Can’t Get Enough’, with producer Matt creating an immersive 60s experience in the studio. “Matt’s mad! And for that one he made us dress up in 60s clothes, bandanas, suits, flares,” Conrad laughs. “And it was really silly, but it really got us to live it.”
To that end, while the violin and the accordion remain, the whole thing feels rawer now. Riff-heavy, even. With melodic choruses more in the vein of American rockers such as The Black Keys and Jack White, than the tweed and waistcoats of traditional UK folk. It reflects the diverse tastes of a band, comprised of six friends with six individual music tastes, who come together to make a sound greater than the sum of its parts. “We’ve kept an element of the folk side but just kind of fused it together,” Ruth explains. “We all listen to each other, we all share stuff, but the music’s less about storytelling in the folk tradition now. It’s more observational. More about real experiences.”
“This album is asking the audience to take a chance on us,” explains Ruth. “Obviously we’ve got a bit of a daft name and we look a bit mad, but I think once people actually come to a gig, they’re always swept up in the music and the energy. We get kids, old people, Goths, hippies, whatever. Everyone’s invited, everyone’s part of it. And people seem to lose themselves. No one’s like, “Oh, how do I look?’ while dancing. They don’t care. It brings everyone together.”
“All roads lead to the stage,” Conrad continues. “The arguing, the loving, the making, the listening – it boils down into one manic, riotous party. That's where we connect with the audience and with each other and that’s what we're all about." It’s an all-systems-go mentality. “We’ve arrived at a place here, with this album, where we can start the journey that we want to be on. This is who we are now; this is what we’re doing.”
**THIS SHOW IS NOW SOLD OUT**
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Steve Mason
Pictish Trail
The Crescent, York
Sunday 10th November, 7.30pm
One of the founding members of The Beta Band, Steve has also recorded under the names of King Biscuit Time and Black Affair and since 2010 has released three acclaimed solo albums under his own name.
We've a special bonus too with one of our faves Johnny Lynch aka Mr Lost Map Records aka Pictish Trail in support!
Website / Watch / Listen
“Song writing since the Beta Band had become something I did entirely alone, from the original concept to the full demo and often in the studio it was just myself and a producer.
Although I enjoyed this purist approach for a long time, it really does not reflect who I am anymore and is not something that really excited me. So I decided with this album that I wanted to get my live band involved at every stage to break this cycle, and because I wanted to capture the energy that we produce when we play live shows.
Modern recording techniques often are a kind of piece meal approach to recording (which I have done a lot of) but the energy and excitement is often lacking, so this time the band and myself worked on a collection of 12 songs over the course of last year.
Around July I felt that it was going well enough to approach a producer and I knew very early on who I really wanted to work with. After an initial meeting with Stephen Street and playing him some rehearsal room recordings, he took the job. I have long admired his work, especially The Smiths and the Morrissey solo albums that Stephen wrote and produced.” Steve Mason
“Steve had been on the periphery of my musical knowledge for some time now. I was particularly impressed by his first ‘proper’ solo album Boys Outside back in 2010 and remember always liking his voice whenever I heard it on the radio. So, when he made contact with me in the summer of last year and asked if I would be interested in working with him on his new album I immediately agreed!” Stephen Street
“For this album, electric guitars, heavy brass and gospel backing vocals were the brew that I had in mind and Stephen was fully on board with that plan.” Steve Mason
“Steve explained that he wanted to make this album with his band playing more ‘live’ than on some of his previous offerings and also to augment the songs with Brass and female backing vocalists. I felt this approach of first stripping back the songs to a more ‘live’ feel to create more space for the more ‘soulful’ elements to breathe in was an interesting one and we got down to work!”
“A wonderful productive week of recording the main backing tracks with the band in Brighton was successfully achieved and then Steve and I continued recording his vocal parts up here in London.” Stephen Street
“When I listen to this album it feels and sounds like the first ‘legitimate’ record that I have ever made. It’s hard to explain but it sounds like a ‘real’ album. I think that is partly the production, the playing and the work that I did with the band for all those months in our rehearsal room on the South Coast. “
“Stephen did an extraordinary job with shaping the sound and he was everything that I hoped he would be behind the wheel.” Steve Mason
“I have to say, I was greatly impressed by the quality of the songs we recorded throughout the session and by the time we added the final overdubs of the brass section and backing vocalists, the album had really taken shape!”
“I hope we have managed to fulfil Steve’s vision of what this album would sound like. I certainly am very happy with the results and look back on the making of this record with fond memories!” Stephen Street
“It’s a beautiful, confident, positive, angry, loving and gentle album which once again moves what I do forward. David Bowie said that you should always be slightly out of your comfort zone if you want to achieve greatness, and for the first time perhaps ever; I deliberately pushed myself into that place. Who doesn’t want greatness?” Steve Mason
Tickets for this show are £20 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Molly Linen
Cult Party
Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds
Tuesday 12th November, 7.30pm
Two artists that individually stopped us in our tracks completely about ten seconds into the first song we heard. Together one one bill for a fiver. We can't wait.
These:
Milly Linen's 'Away'
Cult Party's 'I Got The Blues This Morning'
Molly Linen
‘Away’ is the heavenly debut single by Shropshire’s finest Molly Linen – a brand new signing to Lost Map Records. Molly Linen is a songwriter and guitarist from the West Midlands, now based in Glasgow. She creates atmospheric, captivating and personal songs, led by melodic guitar lines and lulling yet hypnotic vocals, drawing influences from artists such as Devon Sproule and Nick Drake. Members of her band include Beth Chalmers, Caio Wheelhouse, Colin Campbell and Liam Chapman (who also drums with C Duncan). ‘Away’ and ‘Over That Hill’ were recorded by Ronan Fay at Green Door Studios in Glasgow. “‘Away’ touches on remembering some feelings of difference between myself and other people at a younger age,” Molly explains, “whilst ‘Over That Hill’ is about how climbing a hill can sometimes help me put things into perspective.”
Molly Linen’s debut EP will be released later this year.
Cult Party
Leo Robinson is one of those rare and special people for whom making music and art seems to be neither pastime nor vocation and not so much compulsion as mere inevitability, a way of living. His most recent album ‘Eternal Love And The Death Of Everything’ (Maybles) was intended to be his last, and the concert to launch it (accompanied by six singers and a singing saw in addition to a full band) the last Cult Party performance. Thankfully for all of us there was a change of heart and a new album is coming this year. Whether accompanying his songs solo with organ, cello or guitar, or playing with any variant of his loose and fluid ensembles Cult Party shows are always deeply affecting and meditative and drenched in the generosity of one attempting to really give something of theirs to you.
'Sounds From the Other City'
Sad hits for all the family (lest there are happy members of it), it's the brand new record by not-at-all-super stars Cult Party! This wonderful band may have been a solitary, self-preserving bedroom band once upon a time, but on And Then There Was This Sound songwriter Leo Robinson opens up his sounds with the help of pals including weirdo rocker Kiran Leonard. Creative and wayward without sacrificing the delicate and skeletal sound of old, this record is bound to be special.
'Norman Records'
Tickets for this show are £5 in advance.
You can get tickets online from here.
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Lankum
John Francis Flynn
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Thursday 14th November, 7.30pm
Tickets go on sale on Friday 5th July at 10:00am!
The Dublin based four-piece present a new live show ahead of their much-anticipated 3rd album which will be released on Rough Trade late Autumn.
Lankum have an alchemical ability to combine traditional folk roots with contemporary undercurrents to forge music that is dark, mysterious and transcendental. Comprising brothers Ian Lynch (uillean pipes, tin whistle, vocals), Daragh Lynch (vocals, guitar) alongside Cormac Mac Diarmada (fiddle) and Radie Peat (harmonium, accordion, vocals), Lankum channel a diverse set of influences and histories to create a beautifully rare thing: a songbook from and for the people.
Website / Watch
Born of years criss-crossing Dublin's folk and experimental scenes, their two albums Cold Old Fire (2013, recorded under former name Lynched) and Rough Trade debut Between The Earth and Sky (2017) breath new life into ancient/modern rituals with urban punk fervour, rural psycho-geography and, underpinning it all, the eternal drone of the uilleann pipes.
'An object lesson in how to perform old songs in new ways'
The Independent
'The most convincing folk band to come out of Ireland in years'
The Guardian
Tickets for this show are £15 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue, Jumbo Records and Crash Records in Leeds, or online from here.
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BC Camplight
Porridge Radio
The Crescent, York
Thursday 21st November, 7.30pm
“You shouldn't have a tough time finding the angle to Deportation Blues,” claims Brian ‘BC Camplight’ Christinzio. “The past few years have been a fucking nightmare.” But what a fucking great record he’s made off the back of his nightmare. His second album for Bella Union, Deportation Blues is an exhilarating, dynamic document of calamity and stress, relayed through richly melodic and bold arrangements spanning singer-songwriter classicism, gnarly synth-pop, ‘50s rock’n’roll and various junctures between, mirroring their maverick creator’s jarred emotions and fractured mindset.
Watch
For the full story, you have to head back to before Christinzio’s Bella Union debut, 2015’s How To Die In The North. Born in New Jersey, but living in Philadelphia, Christinzio had released two albums while battling addiction and mental illness. Both albums won rave reviews and earned Christinzio a reputation as one of independent music’s most forward-thinking artists. Soon after, however, as illness rendered him unable to function as a working songwriter, Christinzio retreated to a life squatting in an abandoned church. Despite some notable appearances as a session pianist (Sharon Van Etten) and occasional live work for Philly faves The War On Drugs (Robbie Bennett and David Hartley were in the original BC live band) he knew a sea change was needed in order to regain his career and sanity.
Feeling he’d be “dead or in jail if I stayed,” he acted on a friend’s suggestion to cross the ocean to Manchester. There, Christinzio found new inspiration, new friends, a girlfriend, a dog, and finally a new album (his first in eight years).
So, imagine his mood when he fell foul of UK immigration. “I’d had such high hopes for How To Die In The North, and I was told I was being deported two days after it came out, and banned from the UK. The next thing I know, I’m playing Pac Man in my parents’ basement, thinking, this is my life now.”
Occasional gigs in Europe, where his Manchester-based band could meet him, and extended sojourns in Dublin and Paris, broke up the monotony, but it was still “living in a constant panic attack.”
But then the cavalry arrived! Courtesy of his grandparents, Christinzio secured Italian citizenship. It cost time, money and a portion of his sanity, “but after a year and a half I could finally shove my Italian papers in their faces at the airport and return to sunny Manchester. The thing is, despite being American, I feel Mancunian, and I couldn’t think about making another record, until I got back.”
To add insult to injury, “Brexit happened, like a day after I got back. Can I get a fucking break here, please?”
Once the dust had settled, Christinzio realised, “I didn’t feel any better, I had so much anger, I felt destroyed. The demons were back and had lost me friends, I’d drunk too much, and I felt nothing but dread and disease. I thought, I can’t wait to hear what this next album is going to sound like.”
Recording in Liverpool’s Whitewood studios, Christinzio locked himself in the windowless studio and recorded almost exclusively in the dark. “The thoughts and sounds that began to flow out of me were pretty scary. I’m pretty sure the engineer started carrying a shiv in his pocket after about the 2nd day. Nothing playful sounding came out. If the last album had elements of whimsy, the thought of any on this album made me want to vomit.”
“A couple of months later we had finished Deportation Blues and emerged from the studio like mole-people”. Christinzio recorded the album mostly on his own, plus drummer Adam Dawson, occasional guitar by Robbie Rush, and a couple of session horn players. The lead track is ‘I’m Desperate’, “an ominous synth burner,” says Christinzio, with a Suicide-style throb and a haunting female vocal counterpoint that underlines the album’s manic, careering edge, fantastic hooks and instrumental verve.
It’s an uncompromising way to introduce Deportation Blues, likewise the album’s title-track opener. Bookended by metallic power chords, cascading synths and a gorgeous downbeat mood lead into slower doo-wop complete with howling falsetto. “It’s instantly a different, darker record than How To Die In The North,” Christinzio notes.
Deportation Blues is also noticeably more electronic than its predecessor. “I was feeling cold so every time something sounded pretty, I replaced it with something that sounded like an ice pick. The apocalyptic nuclear feel really appealed.”
Throughout, Christinzio sounds as if he’s walking a knife-edge. Take second track ‘I’m In A Weird Place Now’, a heady conflagration of Spector and Springsteen, with Christinzio confessing “And there’s something about Manchester town / And the silly little things she makes me do.” “I like the oppressiveness of the weather in Manchester, it brings everyone down to my level” he explains.
The fried mood continues on ‘Hell Or Pennsylvania’, splicing woozy noir jazz lounge-drunk cabaret by way of ‘50s legend Jerry Lee Lewis - Christinzio’s entry point to music through his mother’s record collection. “It’s the first time I’ve reflected that on a record,” he says. “Jerry Lee was this guy bashing at a piano who didn’t give a shit, and I didn’t give a shit.” The lyrical reference to “lemon twirls” meanwhile, represents Brian’s struggle with substance abuse: “The big choruses are a celebration of cocaine whilst the jazz sections represent the lament, the familiar loathsome aftermath.”
The sudden changes of mood and style are also metaphorical. For example, ‘Am I Dead’ embraces cinematic horns, broody pop and synth-bass afro-funk. “I go through highs and lows and have trouble staying entertained,” he admits. “A musical part can state its purpose in fifteen seconds, sometimes it doesn’t need repeating. The trick is tying everything together without it sounding confusing.”
‘Am I Dead’ is segued between ‘When I Think Of My Dog’ and ‘Midnight Ease’, two plush, heart-aching piano ballads with rippling saxophone. After ‘Fire In England’, a greasy, nervy rocker, is a bitter ode to British PM – and former immigration controller (as Home Secretary) Theresa May (“dresses like a bus seat, doesn’t she?”). It’s a complex, bleak record I guess” Christinzio concludes. “As dramatic as it may sound, this album was made by a dude who wasn’t sure he’d be alive the next day. Nothing is there for any other reason than it’s the truth. It’s not trying to sound cool or get on the radio.”
Though Christinzio points out “this is no redemption I-saw-the-light story,” he is allowing himself a little bit of hope for once: “I’ve never been as pleased with where I am artistically as I am right now.”
On top, his new band, “is phenomenal.” Alongside trusted drummer Dawson is Luke Barton (guitars, synths), guitarist Tom Rothery and multi-instrumentalist/ backing singer Ali Bell. Leading them is a man that a bartender in Manchester recently described as, “like Mozart and Tony Soprano had a kid." Brian Christinzio, and BC Camplight, genius and pain, may be here to stay at last.
Tickets for this show are £12.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Big Joanie
Mayshe Mayshe
The Fulford Arms, York
Friday 22nd November, 7.30pm
Big Joanie are a black feminist punk band. They’re like The Ronettes filtered through 80s DIY and 90s riot grrrl, with a sprinkling of dashikis.
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Based in London, UK, Big Joanie formed in the summer of 2013 to play at First Timers (a gig where each band plays their set for the very first time) at the close of the year. The band also functioned as a space where its members (Stephanie Phillips, Chardine Taylor-Stone and Estella Adeyeri) could be completely themselves as black women, and within it discover their own power in creativity.
In 2014 Big Joanie’s Sistah Punk EP was released on Tuff Enuff Records, and in 2016 they self-released their haunting single 'Crooked Room'. Establishing themselves amongst London's thriving DIY punk scene they have since toured the UK and Europe supporting acts such as Downtown Boys, Shopping, Parquet Courts and more.
One evening in June 2018 Big Joanie were discovered by Thurston Moore, Eva Prinz and Abby Banks whilst supporting seminal Dutch punk band The Ex. Numbers were exchanged, a coffee date was set - and by the next morning the trio had confirmed they would release the band’s debut album Sistahs, and that they’d be launching a new label imprint called ‘The Daydream Library Series’ in order to do so.
Big Joanie recorded Sistahs over several sessions from November 2017 to January 2018 at Hermitage Works Studios with producer Margo Broom (who has also worked with Fat White Family, Goat Girl and Meatraffle). It’s a bold record about friendships, melancholy memories, and hope for the future. It was released on the 30th November 2018 to wide acclaim from Rolling Stone , Pitchfork , The Quietus and more, along with copious airplay on BBC Radio 6 Music and KEXP-FM.
Outside of the band all three members have strong community ties, from helping run the festival for punks of colour Decolonise Fest , coaching new talent at Girls Rock London , or launching the ' Stop Rainbow Racism ' campaign which works to stop racist performances in LGBT venues.
Black feminism is at the heart of Big Joanie's music and actions, and with the release of Sistahs the band hope to spread their message even further.
Tickets for this show are £8.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Wolfgang Flür
The Crescent, York
Friday 22nd November, 7.30pm
*TICKETS ARE ON SALE ON WEDNESDAY 21ST AUGUST AT 10AM*
A member of Kraftwerk during the group's golden era, Wolfgang Flur was the band's electronic percussionist from 1973 to 1987.
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Flur became the third member of the band in 1973, replacing a drum machine. He was a member of the group from their international breakthrough with the album Autobahn (1974), and remained as they experimented with proto-techno on albums such as Trans-Europe Express (1977) and Computer World (1981).
Frustrated with the half-a-decade it took to produce Electric Cafe (1986), he left the band after the LP's release -- it wouldn't be until a 2009 reissue that Flur received an artist credit on the album.
In 1997, he launched his solo career under the name Yamo and released Time Pie, an album that featured work with the experimental duo Mouse on Mars. In 2000, he published his memoir I Was a Robot but the book was pulled momentarily, and re-released with revisions after a lawsuit from the remaining members of Kraftwerk. A 12" single named after the book appeared in 2004, and it was included on the 2015 release Eloquence: Total Works, a collection of unreleased Flurtracks dating back to 2002.
Tickets for this show are £18.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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!!!
(Chk Chk Chk)
The Crescent, York
Thursday 28th November, 7.30pm
Doesn't it seem like everyone's freaking out lately? !!! know the feeling well. The NYC dance-punk lifers have been chronicling the perpetual meltdown that is American society for nearly 20 years now, from the clattering full-band thrust of their instantly iconic 2003 single "Me and Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard (A True Story)" to the dark disco of 2017's wonderfully eclectic Shake the Shudder.
Their eighth full-length, Wallop, follows in the band's grand tradition of plugging straight into our collective nervous system and sending funky, rubbery shock waves through the body politic. If you've found yourself rubbing your temples while contemplating the collapse of everything around us? Well, !!! are bringing the soundtrack to your next nervous breakdown.
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Like an apocalyptic jukebox, Wallop is jam-packed with various sounds and styles from dance music's rich history—from the pie-eyed psychedelia of Madchester-era English dance-rock to tunnel-vision techno and the flashy, bomb-dropping sound of UK grime. The candy-coated sounds of '90s rave loom large in Wallop's playful darkness, a callback to another era when everything felt like it was just about ready to fall apart. Diving into '90s retro nostalgia is good for us," frontman Nic Offer explains while discussing the sonic rediscovery at the beating heart of Wallop. "I know all the '80s stuff already, so it's like, 'What did happen in the '90s?' Because in the '90s, we were just listening to James Brown."
Wallop was recorded over the past year in Offer's Brooklyn apartment—a first for the band, as !!!'s latest was rife with experimentation throughout the creative gestation: "Our process was to get loose and get into uncharted territory," he puts it succinctly. This meant messing around with gear they didn't quite understand, conjuring new sounds and bringing in familiar friends to contribute vocals—including Liars frontman Angus Andrew, Maria Uzor of British dance aesthetes Sink Ya Teeth, and Glasser's synth-pop wizard Cameron Mesirow, who all join Offer and !!! co-vocalist Meah Pace on this barn-burning party of a record.
"We were sitting on these instrumentals that we liked, so we started sending them around to random people," Offer states while discussing the collaborative process streaked across Wallop. "We overwrite and overrecord, and send them out to our friends to vote. We don't know what we're making until it's done. This record could've been completely dark or completely pop."
"We're not the kind of band that sits down and says, 'Let's make a record now,'" producer and multi-instrumentalist Rafael Cohen continues. "We just keep going, which is good because it leads to less of a narrative for each album." With an array of producers lending a hand—including Cole M.G.N. (Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Julia Holter), Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck), and longtime collaborator Patrick Ford—Wallop was eventually stitched together to reflect the colorful, body-moving tapestry that its end result represents.
Work on Wallop took place in understandably different sociopolitical circumstances than what surrounded Shake the Shudder—but addressing those circumstances head-on was initially harder than Offer and Cohen thought. "Every political song we wrote kind of sucked," the former admits, while explaining that the wide-eyed societal paranoia embedded within the record was naturally occuring. "When we stepped away from politics, it seeped its way back into the music.”
Indeed, Wallop chronicles these strange times through !!!’s personal lens, capturing the mere act of existing amidst so many shifting paradigms; the skipping IDM of “Domino” zooms in on the conflicting emotions that come with experiencing gentrification first-hand, while "UR Paranoid" throbs with the type of intensity reserved for existential spiraling and late-night k-holes alike—an urgency that also speaks to !!!'s admiration for club music. "We're always trying to make pure club stuff—that's where we get our sonics," Cohen states, while Offer elaborates, "We're very much classic songwriters, but the music that turns it on is club music. It's always moving, and it's a good well for us."
Meanwhile, "Off the Grid" ripples and pulses in a way not unlike XTRMNTR-era Primal Scream, “Slow Motion” dives headlong into the ecstatic energy of 1990s UK trip-hop and beat-driven rock, “This Is the Door” radiates crisp and effervescent disco, and “Couldn’t Have Known” is pure urban clatter topped off by Cohen’s soothed-out vocals. The splashy beat of "Serbia Drums" in particular comes from a surprising source: an iPhone recording that drummer Chris Egan captured while the band was touring in Serbia. "Chris is from D.C. and so am I, and that groove is so go-go," Cohen marvels on the song's propulsive sound.
Overall, Wallop is a testament not only to the rocky, worldly times it reflects, but !!!'s artistic lifeblood—a constantly-creating ethos that's kept the band going for so long and enables them to constantly innovate their sound. "We just work really hard and try to make the best records we can," Offer proclaims. "We have a strict policy of challenging ourselves—'What haven't we done?'" And if that sense of self-discovery resulted in Wallop's jam-packed, kaleidoscope world of sound, let's hope !!! never stop challenging themselves.
Larry Fitzmaurice
June 2019
Tickets for this show are £15 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York, or online from here.
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Penelope Isles
Cruel World
The Fulford Arms, York
Tuesday 3rd December, 7.30pm
Like breaking open a rock to discover a crystal inside. Shimmering, intimate and beautifully destructive, this is the experience of Penelope Isles. Siblings Jack and Lily Wolter make music that reveals a curiosity and sensitivity to the world around them. The four-piece band from Brighton via the Isle of Man have a sound that unfolds both dramatically and softly. Nostalgic, but undeniably new, Penelope Isles’ debut LP ‘Until The Tide Creeps In’ is released March 2019 on Bella Union Records. For the lovers of early Arcade Fire, Grandaddy and Mogwai.
Website / Watch / Watch
Tickets for this show are £7.50 in advance.
You can get tickets in person from the venue and Earworm Records in York or online from here.
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