Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - Koko, London (8 July 2016)

I have been a fan of Japan's J-Pop megastar Kyary Pamyu Pamyu since early 2014 when I visited Japan on a work trip and asked an associate to recommend me some Japanese pop music. 

Since that fateful day I have been an avid listener, buying her music and enjoying her always weird and wonderful music videos. As soon as she announced her '5ive Years A Monster' tour in support of the just released KPP Best best-of and saw that a date in the UK had been scheduled at Koko in London, I had to buy a ticket. Especially as I dithered over her last appearance in the UK, at the Roundhouse last October, and decided not to go. 

This was the first time I had see Kyary Pamyu Pamyu live and she didn't disappoint. It was a joy from beginning to end; a hyper explosion of music and colour. I wrote about what I thought of her show in what is a part gig review and part appreciation of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu for LeftLion. 

Below (and above) are a few photos in grainy iPhone quality and a short clip that I took...

Setlist
Cosmetic Coaster
5iVE YEARS MONSTER
Kyary An-An
Cherry BONBON
Furisodeshon
Candy Candy
Pon Pon Pon
Ninja Re Bang Bang
do do pi do
Interlude
Fashion Monster
Mottai Night Land
Crazy Party Night
Mondai Girl
Invader Invader
Saigo no Ice Cream
Kira Kira Killer
Sai & Kou

Encore:
Kimi ni 100 PERCENT
Tsukematsukeru 

#kirakirakiller #kyarypamyupamyu #5iveyearsmonster #kpp #kokolondon #livemusic #jpop @kyary_pp

A video posted by Pawl (@heypawl) on Jul 9, 2016 at 12:46am PDT

Takeshi Terauchi & Blue Jeans - Shinjuku Kento's (22 May 2016)

A couple of weeks ago I was in Japan visiting Osaka and Tokyo as part of an overseas business trip. 

As previously mentioned on this blog, mainly when I have bought his records, I am a fan of the Japanese surf guitarist Takeshi Terauchi, and when thinking about things that I could do during some free time, I thought that I would look to see if Takeshi Terauchi would be preforming as I understood that he had a semi-regular residency at a cabaret place in Tokyo. 

Due to a stroke of extremely good fortune, fortuitous timing, the stars aligning etc. he had two shows scheduled at a venue called Kento’s in the Shinjuku are of Tokyo the day after I was due to arrive in the city. 

I arrived in to Tokyo from Osaka in the late afternoon of the Saturday, the day before the gig. After checking in at my hotel, I did a Google Maps search to find the venue and proceeded to leg it across Shinkuku to try and buy a ticket as I was due to meet a friend for dinner in the evening. I was a little worried that there wouldn’t be any tickets left as I was leaving it very late and the venue looked pretty tiny judging from a few photos I looked at online and the venue’s floor plan. 

I found the building that Kento’s is in and got in the lift to the 6th floor. Thinking that I may have language issues when trying to buy the tickets, I grabbed a flyer for the gig that was on a stand outside of the lift and took it in to the venue with me. After some initial confusion, obvious bewilderment that I was even asking about tickets for Takeshi Terauchi, and a moment where I thought they might be all gone, I now had a pair of tickets to see him live.

I go to a lot of gigs and Kento’s certainly isn’t the type of venue I usually go to for live music. A cabaret venue and judging by the flyers and posters one that specialises in nostalgic and tribute acts. You sat at a table and waiting staff then bought out your drinks and food to you. I should also note at this point that as well as the cost of the tickets, food and drink, they slap a ‘live music charge’ on to your bill when paying at the end.

It’s hard to say what I was expecting from the gig itself. I was certainly excited to actually have the opportunity to see Takeshi Terauchi live as I thought the opportunity would never come about. But part of me was concerned that it would be terrible and I feared that I had spent a fair bit of money on a show that clearly wouldn’t be able to live up to my expectations. 

My friend who was accompanying was able to translate any onstage chat from ‘Terry’ and apparently 2016 marked his 50th year as a performer and tonight he was performing with his long-time backing band, Blue Jeans.  

Takeshi Terauchi and Blue Jeans were on stage at exactly 19:30 and played until just gone 21:00. He was really good even if the set felt a little too steady and one-paced at times. I think listening to many of those 60s and 70s LPs that I have bought made me think that it would be completely wild forgetting that he is now in his late 70s. 

The band performed mainly versions of old Japanese folk songs, songs he said that he finds himself always returning to and that remind him of mother, and their performance wasn’t that energetic if I am to be totally honest. I also had no nostalgic frame of reference for the songs, so to me they just sounded ‘pleasant’, whereas the rest of the Japanese audience knew what they were and seemed massively appreciative. 

There were times when Terry would step back from taking the lead and the other guitarist in the band took over and even if energy levels dipped at times – keep in mind that this was the band’s second set of the evening – Takeshi Terauchi and Blue Jeans played with a timeless elegance and respect for the songs they were performing. It was obvious that these interpretations were important and meant a lot to them. It wasn’t a touristy appropriation of Japanese culture. I felt that it could have done without the two keyboard players constant use of the ‘Panpipe Moods’ setting though.  

To provide respite for the now 77 year old guitarist, and I guess to inject some variation in to the mostly instrumental set, the band were joined by a female singer for much of the latter part of the evening giving Terry the chance to catch his breath – though he did remain on stage playing guitar.

There were some moments that were genuinely exciting; like when Takeshi Terauchi played through his delay pedal and it sounded like the notes were pinging across our heads and near the end when he started doing these fast palm-muted runs up and down the fretboard. He looked totally exhausted by the end. 

Asking him for his signature at the end turned out to be extremely awkward. I sort of had to pounce on him as he walked past my table barging loads of Japanese out of the way in the process. He then held the pen upside down and I had to grab it out of his hands and turn it the right way for him. 

I’m eternally grateful to have been to catch Takeshi Terauchi live and there something almost serendipitous about him finally seeing him play in the city where I have obsessively searched for and bought his records. 

Takeshi Terauchi website

Be: One - The Soundtrack Written For Wolfgang Buttress' Beehive Installation

Be: One article for LeftLion magazine

At the start of January I was lucky enough to interview the main creative minds behind Be: One, the soundtrack that was written specifically for Wolfgang Buttress' beehive installation that he designed for the UK Pavilion at last year's World Expo in Milan. 

The email came in at the last minute and following a couple of days of hasty organising,  the following weekend on a crisp and bright Sunday morning I found myself on the outskirts of Nottingham city centre getting ready to interview the artist Wolfgang Buttress, his daughter and vocalist Camille Buttress, and the musicians and Spiritualized members Tony Foster (aka Doggen) and Kev Bales. Wolfgang had known Tony and Kev for a few years as he used to have a studio close to where Tony's is. It is at Tony's studio where they have all agreed to speak to me. 

Speaking to all of them together was far-and-away one of the most enjoyable experiences I have had during my time writing for LeftLion. They couldn't have been any more welcoming and talkative. And it was really interesting being sat in a room with them hearing them discuss the creative process about how they created the soundtrack. I could have happily chatted to them for the rest of the day. It was really obvious that they were all pleased with how the soundtrack came out. 

Weirdly, after years of trying to interview Tony Foster / Doggen and never getting anywhere, I have now interviewed him twice in less than 12 months. It's funny how things somtimes work out.

As I was overseas with work a couple of days immediately after doing the interview, I found myself typing up my copy in various Starbucks around Seoul. It's not often that I can say this, but I am quite pleased with how the finished article came out. The article, as it appears in the above photograph, was published in LeftLion Magazine #75. 

The online version of my Be: One article can be read here. 

The collective premiered their soundtrack over two sold-out nights at Nottingham Arts Theatre on 18 and 19 February. I was fortunate enough to go the first night and you can read what I thought about it here. 

Wolfgang's hive installation has been shipped back to the UK from Italy and will be at Kew Gardens from June with the collective planning on performing their soundtrack live when it opens.

More about Be: One on Wolfgang Buttress' website 

Ryan Adams - De Montfort Hall, Leicester (21 February 2015)

#RyanAdams #NataliePrass #DeMontfortHall #Leicester #CrazyHorseWantTheirAmpsBack

A photo posted by Pawl K (@heypawl) on Feb 22, 2015 at 1:27am PST

The reason why I reactivated this blog last summer was to give myself a place to practice writing and force myself to be disciplined enough to make myself write something on a semi-regular basis. So far this year I have been in a start-of-the-year fug and haven’t felt very inspired or motivated to do much writing, either here or for LeftLion. I didn’t want a month to go by where I hadn’t written anything on this blog, as I have managed at least one post a month since last June, therefore I thought I would pen a few words about the Ryan Adams gig that I went to last Saturday night. 

Being a long-time Ryan Adams fan and having caught him on every UK tour since 2006, in London or in Nottingham, I know what to expect when it comes to him as a performer. Sometimes he can be amazing and other times really frustrating. Tonight was the later. 

I don’t know if something happens when he plays in a band, but  I’ve seen him both solo and as part of a band (The Cardinals), and the truly outstanding performances have been those where it has just been him along on stage playing guitar and piano. When I’ve seen him with The Cardinals his music often felt bogged down and stodgy with no room to breathe. He was playing with a band at this show, so the signs weren’t good. 

A prolific singer-songwriter with so many released and un-released albums under his belt, I’ve always thought as Ryan Adams as a modern day Neil Young. Someone doing his own thing and releasing musically that veers wildly between extraordinary and downright awful, and with such an extensive back catalogue, when you go and see him play live there is no guarantee that he’ll play everything that you want. 

#RyanAdams #NataliePrass #DeMontfortHall #Leicester

A photo posted by Pawl K (@heypawl) on Feb 22, 2015 at 1:29am PST

It was a gig of two halves. It started off really promising, opening with the reverb-saturated Tom Petty 80s rock of Gimmie Something Good, the show mined the more countrified-rock aspect of Ryan’s musical personality, with a rolling version of Let It Ride following. There was also room for a sumptuous Dirty Rain from Ashes & Fire, while the bar-band take on This House Is Not For Sale really lifted the Love Is Hell song. Wrecking Ball, from his new eponymously titled new LP, sounded like classic Ryan Adams. While the run of Magnolia Mountain, New York, New York, Dear Chicago and When The Stars Go Blue was unbeatable. The first half finished with a brand new and (so-far) unreleased song titled Blue Light that jangled like The Smiths attempting to cover Ryan’s beloved The Replacements. 

Next-up was a cover of the support act Natalie Prass. Although I’m sure it was well intended it was also the moment where the show lost momentum and took a nose-dive from which it never really recovered. After this it felt like the show meandered along and needed an injection of pace. There was some stand out moments with My Winding Wheel, Oh My Sweet Carolina, La Cienga Just Smiled. But these were interspersed with drudgery like a lengthy Peacefull Valley and the dreary Everybody Knows. 

I See Monsters is always something special, and in fact much of Love Is Hell often seem overlooked by Ryan Adams when I’ve seen him live. The song eventually descended in to a wall of guitars that must surely be a nod to Oasis, a band Ryan is a vocal fan of. There wasn’t any encore and Natalie Prass joined Ryan and the rest of the band onstage for the closing Come Pick Me Up. 

Setlist
Gimme Something Good 
Let It Ride 
Stay With Me 
Dirty Rain 
This House Is Not For Sale 
My Wrecking Ball 
Magnolia Mountain 
New York, New York 
Dear Chicago 
When the Stars Go Blue 
Blue Light 
Your Fool (Natalie Prass cover)
Shadows 
Everybody Knows 
My Winding Wheel 
Peaceful Valley 
Oh My Sweet Carolina (with Natalie Prass)
La Cienega Just Smiled 
I See Monsters 
Come Pick Me Up (with Natalie Prass)

Ryan Adams website

Alvvays - The Bodega, Nottingham (26 January 2015)

Classic back of audience member's head shot of @alvvaysband at @bodeganotts tonight #Alvvays #TheBodega #livemusic #Nottingham

A photo posted by Pawl K (@heypawl) on Jan 26, 2015 at 2:44pm PST

I was late coming to the Alvvays album, only really listening to it at the back end of 2014, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's an album packed full of natural sounding songwriting that's awash with jangly guitars, love-lorn lyrics and saturated in a hazy reverb that makes the whole record feel like one of those late summer evenings which are heavy with some kind of intangible sadness hanging heavy in the air. 

The band from Toronto have been slowly winning plaudits since the album's release last summer, with the song Archie, Marry Me becoming a 6 Music fave, getting named 'Track of the Year' by Drowned In Sound  and even being covered by Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard. All this is testament to the quality of the band's songs. 

Reaching Nottingham in the middle of their first headline tour of the UK, what was refreshing to see and pleasing for a band currently generating something of a 'buzz' is how pleasant and genuinely excited they appeared to be playing their songs for the sold out Bodega crowd. There was lots of talk from lead singer Milly Rankin including the best UK chocolate bars and how the band were looking forward to having a pint in the "UK oldest pub" The Trip To Jerusalem after the show. 

If some of the album can feel a little affected in its attempts to ape the lo-fi C86 sound of the late 80s, live, the songs stripped of the studio production, feel re-invigorated and get the chance breath. With only one 32 minute album to their name tonight's set was always going to be pretty short. All of the album tracks are enthusiastically received by the crowd, while the band pad out the show with a couple of covers - Nosebleed by Deerhunter and The Primitives' Out Of Reach - that are clear touchstones for the type of thoughtful indie-pop that Alvvays are striving to produce. 

Their set ended with a new song called Haircut - a melodic and fuzzy slice of power-pop that, fingers-crossed, points towards a second album that builds upon the promise of their debut and shows that the band are here for the long run. 

Alvvays website

The Cure - Hammersmith Apollo (21 December 2014)

A photo posted by Pawl K (@heypawl) on Dec 12, 2014 at 4:57pm PST

The merchandise adorned with an image of a spinning top should have given it away, but even that couldn’t prepare us for what a special night The Cure’s first of a three night residency at the Hammersmith Apollo would be.

Seeing The Cure in relatively ‘intimate’ surroundings was a refreshing change from the larger shows that they most often find themselves playing. I’ve seen them at outdoor festivals, the Royal Albert Hall, and at Wembley Arena - they were all great shows and spectacles, but nothing quite like tonight’s performance. Playing in this theatre to a majority hardcore Cure fan contingent really seemed to focus the band’s sound and they look and felt energised – Robert was playful, Simon was throwing shapes, and the whole band looked more relaxed than I’ve ever seen them before and it made for a stunning show. For all of the image of The Cure – big hair, eyeliner, black clothes – you can easily forget that lurking behind all that is a powerful rock band who have been harnessing their sound for over 35 years.

A photo posted by Pawl K (@heypawl) on Dec 12, 2014 at 5:04pm PST

If tonight The Cure sounded invigorated, so was their setlist. Away from festival headline slots, the band took the opportunity at this ‘Christmas show’ to dig deep and reunite themselves and their audience with some long forgotten treasures. Over a mammoth 40 song set what what we were essentially treated to was a 30th Anniversary Show for The Top.

Throughout the three hour long show, starting with the claustrophobic swirl of Shake Dog Shake, the band played all of 1984’s The Top, not in order but with tracks from the album scattered throughout the set, something the band probably hasn’t done since the album was released. Robert Smith had promised surprises during this run of shows, but I don’t think the sold out Hammersmith Apollo crowd has been expecting something quite like this.

A photo posted by Pawl K (@heypawl) on Dec 12, 2014 at 5:07pm PST

The songs from The Top sounded mighty as well, you would never have thought that many of the songs hadn’t been regularly performed. The album is an under-appreciated, and due to being largely ignored by the band in recent years, largely long-forgotten part of The Cure’s back catalogue. But the band did it justice, and in this setting it sounded full blooded, striking the right balance between the murky psychedelia, oddball weirdness and oppressive playfulness that runs throughout the songs. All in all the vibe was the right kind of heavy.

The Cure have mentioned doing a third set of Trilogy shows involving The Top, Head on the Door and Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. These not-yet-announced trilogy shows must be in the back of the band’s mind as they play these Hammersmith Apollo dates. While we were treated to The Top in its entirety, the band also dusted off a couple of Head On The Door-era gems in the shape of Kyoto Song and the B-side A Man Inside My Mouth, with the Kiss Me… pick being a dusting-off of Like Cockatoos, which fitted in perfectly alongside the strangeness of The Top tracks.

A photo posted by Pawl K (@heypawl) on Dec 12, 2014 at 5:09pm PST

Keeping in mind that not everyone in attendance will be a hardcore Cure fan, the remainder of the main set tread a familiar path of hits, although played with renewed vigour; while the inclusion of Before Three was a personal highlight – a gorgeous song from the 2004 Ross Robinson produced The Cure LP.

After playing for two hours the band left the stage to return for four sets of encores that lasted well over an hour and felt like another show. The encores mainly focussed on The Cure’s early post-punk / pre-Pornography output. Charlotte Sometimes and M were pleasing inclusions, while the remaining The Top songs that featured were the first performance of The Empty World since 1984, Dressing Up, and Piggy In The Mirror (not played since ’97). The final set of encores made sure the night ended on an upbeat note as the band ran through some of their more poppy numbers ending on a blazing Hey You with its apt refrain of “Your the one that looks like Christmas”.

A photo posted by Pawl K (@heypawl) on Dec 12, 2014 at 5:11pm PST

 

As ever, Chain Of Flowers has a decent roundup of the show.

Setlist: The Cure, Eventim Apollo, London, UK, 12/21/14
1. “Shake Dog Shake”

2. “Kyoto Song”

3. “A Night Like This”

4. “alt.end”

5. “Wailing Wall” (First time since 1984)

6. “Bananafishbones”

7. “The Caterpillar”

8. “The Walk”

9. “A Man Inside My Mouth” (Live debut)

10. Close to Me”

11. Lullaby”

12. “High”

13. “Birdmad Girl”

14. “Just Like Heaven”

15. “Pictures of You”

16. “Before Three”

17. “Lovesong”

18. “Like Cockatoos” (First time since 2004)

19. “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea”

20. “Want”

21. “The Hungry Ghost”

22. “One Hundred Years”

23. “Give Me It”
Encore:

24. “The Empty World” (First time since 1984)

25. “Charlotte Sometimes”

26. “Primary”

27. “The Top”
Encore 2:

28. “Dressing Up”

29. “Piggy in the Mirror” (First time since 1997)

30. “Never Enough”

31. “Wrong Number”
Encore 3:

32. “Three Imaginary Boys”

33. “M”

34. “Play for Today”

35. “A Forest”
Encore 4:

36. “The Lovecats”

37. “Let’s Go to Bed”

38. “Why Can’t I Be You?”

39. “Boys Don’t Cry”

40. “Hey You!” (First time since 2004)

This Ain't A Hate Thing, It's A Love Thing

Early last week the band Lords put their entire back catalogue with the addition of loads of unreleased tracks and an entire live album up on Bandcamp. I started to compose this post on my birthday, and I'm not sure if this has caused me to get a bit nostalgic, but I it has compelled me to write about a particular gig of theirs that I attended.

2004 and 2005 was a pretty weird time for me. Like a lot of people of my generation and younger I graduated from university and stumbled in to some sort of vacuum where I didn't really know what I wanted to do with myself. Up to that point my life had been dictated by education, moving from one school to the other and then eventually to university without much of a plan for when I would do when it would end. Then in June 2004 it did end. I was now expected to think and fend for myself. What school and university don't prepare you for is the overwhelming sense of despair and misery that you will experience upon graduating.

I returned to Nottingham and moved three times between July 2004 and March 2005, and with the nagging emptiness I was feeling since finishing uni, it was a pretty strange time of my life. I was feeling anchorless and not really knowing what I wanted to do with myself. It was a period of transition and I was in a state of flux, neither here nor there.

My first priority was getting some money. So I did a series of temp jobs within various Nottingham City Council departments where I soon realised the much of the council is run by people who don't really know what they are doing and I was able to piss away most of the day posting on a Smashing Pumpkins forum and doing crosswords in the paper.

It was during one of these temp positions where I became friends with someone in the department I was working in. I can't remember how we first got talking, but I used to buy the NME every Wednesday and bring it in to the office, so we probably got talking about music over that. It transpired that we were in to a lot of the same things, and him being a bit older than me, he would also recommend bands and albums to me and was even able to score me a discount at Selectadisc. 

Nick was the drummer in a band he was in with his brother Andy called Clambake. I eventually started going to see Clambake play around Nottingham. Some of the nights got very drunk, but I remember watching them at various venues including Junktion 7, supporting Bob Logg III at The Bodega (then still The Social) and playing Drop In The Ocean in Rock City basement. It was my first introduction to a particular music scene in Nottingham, an underground DIY movement, and this was at the time where the indie-rock and garage-rock scenes briefly overlapped.

I soon left the department where Nick worked but we still stayed in touch and would meet up from time to time. He then invited me to a gig that even though I didn't know it at the time looking back would have a big impact on my life. It was one of those nights where things happened unexpectedly that would go on to affect my life much later on. A foreshadowing of some sort perhaps might be the best way to describe it. 

He invited me along to a gig that some of his friends were putting on. It was in an old Scout Hut / Community Centre in Sneinton and Nick also knew the guys in one of the bands that was playing that night called Lords. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists were also playing along with a third band who I couldn't for the life of me remember until I took a look on the internet. Turns out it was Red Monkey. 

Poster by @Sumlin

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Red Monkey
Lords
Date: Saturday 5 March 2005
Venue: Green's Mill School Hall, Sneinton, Nottingham

I don't really remember that much about the bands if I'm honest. Lords were loud and I seem to recall the bands playing on a stage that had a white sheet hanging as a backdrop. There may or may not have been projections on that sheet. 

This was probably the first gig that I attended that truly exposed me to Nottingham's underground and DIY music scene. It made me realise that there was some sort of scene going on in Nottingham. And there were many people in the that night who would somehow indirectly or directly have some sort of presence and influence on my life, even if at the time I did not know it.

The show was put on by the Damn You! collective who seemed to deal in putting on interesting American indie rock acts and teaming them up with British bands of a similar spirit. Even for me as an outsider it was obvious that this was all motivated by the love of the music and making sure that everyone, both bands and audience, had the best experience possible. After this night if I wanted to go to a gig I would take a look at what Damn You! were organising and try and go along. I was exposed to numerous bands and nights including the legendary Annual Damn You Christmas Covers gigs where local bands would drunkenly wrestle songs by much more famous bands all for charity. It opened a door to a world that both appealed to me and that I felt connected to, I was amongst kindred spirits. I think I made my first foray in to writing gig reviews for LeftLion covering a few of these shows for the website. It definitely broadened my knowledge of what was going on in the local music scene.

At this gig I was introduced to a guy who I thought was going for an early 90s Neil Young look - big sideburns, kind of curtainy hair and plaid shirts. His name was Anton. I would eventually learn that Anton was something of a shit-hot promoter both with his own nights, that I think he was still doing at the time, and with local promotion company and venue owners DHP.

There was a table to the back of the room selling LPs and CDs. Nick showed be his band's album that was for sale that night called Gator In the Pool. It was on a label called Gringo Records. Even though I didn't really know who Gringo Records was, my interest was piqued, and like with Damn You! shows, Gringo Records became known to me as a signifier of music of a particular persuasion. I would check out Gringo Records bands and started to notice that many of them would play Damn You! nights and that this scene was interlinked, related and overlapping.

I went to an afterparty that night and stuck on how to get home one of the guitarists from Lords called Chris let me sleep on his sofa. As time went on and I attended more gigs, got involved with LeftLion, our paths would cross and we became more pally until the point where the other week he was helping me collect a sofa for my new house. There were probably a handful of other people in the room that night who I didn't know then, but now I know in some way. 

This post has been written over a few days and I'm probably not doing the best to explain how important that night was. But it was. Essentially in that room that night were a bunch of people that I would eventually become friends with and who helped influence (whether directly or indirectly) particular life decisions of mine. For one thing I do not think that I would have gotten involved with LeftLion if it wasn't for going along to that show. It's telling that my first piece of writing for LeftLion was only one month later, Quasi at the Rescue Rooms. Another odd coincidence is that the support band that night for Quasi was fronted by the host of the house party I went to after the gig at Green's Mill.   

I'm not really sure what the whole point of this post is except to document this particular moment in my life and to say that it's probably the gigs that you aren't expecting that turn out to be life-changing in some small way the way this show was. Going to watch Lords in a scout hut in Sneinton did change my life. 

Listen to Lords on Bandcamp
Lords Facebook page

Quoted By The Fish Police

This is exciting and very rarely happens. One of my gig reviews have been used as a quote by the band I was writing about. Currently, The Fish Police are using a banner on their website that uses a quote pulled from my review of their show at Nottingham Contemporary on 4 April this year. 

The Fish Police are a hugely entertaining band and were touring thanks to an organisation called Constant Flux who work with and create opportunities for learning disabled musicians on the UK's DIY music scene. 

Live Review of Remember Remember and Kogumaza / Recent Album Reviews For LeftLion

Remember Remember are signed to Mogwai's Rock Action record label and have just released their wonderful third album titled Forgetting The Present. Graeme, who the band revolves around, has recently moved to Nottingham and they played a gig in the city at The Chameleon with Kogumaza. You can read my review of the show on the LeftLion website. 

Also up on the LeftLion website are the Nottingham Music Reviews from issue #59 of the magazine. I reviewed recent releases from Grey Hairs, Sleaford Mods, Kundalini, and Timothy J Simpson.

Live Review of Supersonic Festival 2014 for LeftLion

Click on the image of Sleaford Mods to read my review for LeftLion of Supersonic Festival 2014. 

Two weeks ago today I was in Birmingham for the weekend attending the Supersonic Festival, which is held at the Custard Factory in the Digbeth area of the city. 

The festival is now in its 11th year and prides itself on having an eccentric and eclectic line-up. It was my first time attending and It certainly didn't disappoint, it was the most fun I've had at a festival for a long time and I will definitely be trying to attend future events.

Live Review of Flaming Lips and Young Knives for LeftLion

Click the image of Wayne Coyne to go to my recent review for LeftLion of Flaming Lips and Young Knives at Rock City in Nottingham. 

The recent Flaming Lips show in Nottingham was downsized from the Arena to Rock City, which still holds 2000 people so it is not exactly tiny. I did think it was a little optimistic to be booking Nottingham Arena for a band who are little more than a very big cult band. 

As with a lot of these things, I managed to wrangle tickets via the support act, Young Knives, in exchange for agreeing to review their set. I wasn't too enamored with Young Knives, I couldn't get on with their attitude and 'kookiness'. Flaming Lips on the other hand were an enormous amount of fun.