Mimi Soya – ‘I Can’t Stand Pop Bands’

By Phil Micallef Before getting round to even listening to this EP from Brighton quartet Mimi Soya, there are several pre-conceptions that I can’t help but notice upon looking at the CD artwork.  The bright, mainly pink-orientated, cartoon-like colour scheme, along with a photo of a female vocalist with dyed red hair to boot (never   →

The Sonic Boom hits Sheffield

Last night I went along to The Academy in Sheffield to see one of my favourite bands – Sonic Boom Six – after an email from Laila reminding me it was on. Plus it coincided nicely with my wife‘s birthday, so she got dragged along too. Arriving fashionably late, about 40 minutes after doors opened,   →

Sheffield Green Room gig

This Thursday (the 15th April) Names Not Numbers are hosting a night of excitement at the Green Room in Sheffield. With two exceptional musicians all the way from London town!!! – Roxanne Emery and Mariam Razak – and the resident singer-songwriter-poet-writer Phil Ugochukwu, this is going to be a night of fun, laughter and delightful   →

Orange UK tour with Zebrahead and MC Lars

Hellcat power-pop punk rockers Orange announce spring 2010 UK tour with Zebrahead and MC Lars! Straight out of LA and raring to go, Hellcat’s finest ORANGE hit the UK’s shores on a two week tour with pop punk favourites Zebrahead and MC Lars from March 16th. Touring material from their hugely well received third album   →

CHEW LiPS – Unicorn [Album Sampler] (Kitsuné)

One of the first bands announced for next year’s SXSW in Austin, Texas, CHEW LiPS are quite literally a band going places. Signed to the unimaginably hip French electronica label Kitsuné, they seem to be perched right a-top the cutting edge.  At this point one might be imagining the next Crystal Castles; a blaring cacophony incomprehensible to   →

Johnny Foreigner – Grace And The Bigger Picture (Best Before)

Johnny Foreigner is doing all the things that no-one else will do. In Waited Up ‘Til It Was Light JoFo [as they have been affectionately abbreviated] released one of the best records of 2008 and the best debut from a British band in many a year. Grace And The Bigger Picture still has everything the   →

Bane – Camden Underworld, London (02/09/09)

Old-school hardcore from the Massachusetts crew and touring partners Down to Nothing aimed to decimate a less-than-timid London crowd. Gold Kids from Cagliari, Italy were to set the precedent for the evening’s entertainment.  It was to be all about loud, aggressive hardcore.  Theirs was a mix of the technical incisiveness of Converge and a looser   →

The Chemists – ‘A Love Like No-One Else’ (Distiller)

Budding Bristol pop-rockers strive to fill stadiums. It’s too easy to criticise a band that plays with a foot in both rock and pop camps. The age-old adage for music writers is to bear frustration at ‘yet another band that hardly treads new ground’. With a well-trodden and stale genre concern, it is better to   →

A Wilhelm Scream, Polar Bear Club, A New Day – Camden Underworld, London (05/09/2009)

By Phil Micallef. Having missed the Reading festival a week earlier for the first time in five years, I took some scant consolation in the fact that two of the bands that I would have wanted to see the most there were both barnstorming the stage tonight in Camden Town. Before tonight’s all-American co-headlining duel   →

Suicide Bid, The Filaments, The Grit, Mouthwash – Garage, London (15/08/2009)

UK dub/ska/punk ‘super-group’ collective return along with the re-union of one of Essex’s finest exports. By Phil Micallef. Due to a concoction of rushing into London straight from work and somebody’s ingenious idea to shut down the Victoria line (for arguments sake, let’s just blame Boris Johnson – it’s easier that way), I unfortunately only   →