by Ed Biggs Five albums and nearly ten years into their career without making a single mis-step in artistic terms, Wild Beasts are one of the most trusted musical brand in Britain today. Having dazzled critics and won over new fans with their second and third albums, Two Dancers (2009) and Smother (2011), characterised by sensual, ambient guitar pop and smutty, self-effacing vocals and lyrics. 2014’s Present Tense pitched their sound
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by Ed Biggs and John Tindale The angular, acoustically unfriendly environs of Leeds’ Millennium Square is the setting for The Cribs’ latest homecoming spectacular. The square has always felt quite hemmed in when adapted to be used as an open-air city centre venue, with gigs there never quite feeling large enough to feel like really big events, and the sound invariably ricocheting off the tall buildings that surround it. However, it’s unquestionably a lot
by Ed Biggs Wow. July went past really quickly, didn’t it? Perhaps it’s been because of news and culture in general seeming to move very, very fast post-Brexit, or maybe it’s been our schedule of two major festivals in the space of three weeks, but there’s barely been time to take stock of July.
by Ed Biggs Absolutely everything about post-hardcore punk newcomers Bad Breeding sounds perfect. Hailing from Stevenage, an increasingly anonymous Home Counties satellite town serving London, whose high street is absolutely identical to so many other British nowheresvilles and where the local economy has virtually disappeared from the ground, their guttural music at first glance scans as an existential howl of wasted youth, at the encroaching entrapment imposed by socio-economic dictates of
by Ed Biggs With a pretty impeccable CV of cutting-edge production for the likes of FKA twigs, A$AP Rocky, Vince Staples and ScHoolboy Q dating back to 2008, it’s incredible that it’s taken nearly a decade for Michael Volpe, the electronic magician known by his stage name Clams Casino, to deliver his first proper studio album.
by Ed Biggs Although they hailed from the comparatively affluent neighbourhood of Hollis in Queens, the trio Run-D.M.C., consisting of rappers Joseph “Run” Simmons and Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels and music Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell were arguably the most respected and authentic voices back in the mid-1980s of the then-embryonic genre now known as hip-hop.
by Ed Biggs As the prime mover behind riot-grrl poster band Bikini Kill in the ‘90s and then the electro-pop influenced cult heroes Le Tigre, Kathleen Hanna’s status as an alternative music legend has long since been secured. Having spent many years in the late noughties off the grid, recovering gradually from the debilitating condition Lyme disease, Hanna was musically reinvigorated with the release of 2013’s album Run Fast with her
by Ed Biggs Just like English buses, you wait for what seems like forever for new Aphex Twin material to be released, and suddenly loads come along at the same time. Having dropped the impressive album Syro, his first original material in 13 years, in September 2014, the quixotic and imcomparable Richard James has now released his second EP in 18 months.
by Ed Biggs Back in 2003, while the music world was still feeling the reverberations of the Strokes and Stripes reigniting popular interest in all things guitar, came what should have been one of the epochal indie hits of the decade. ‘Bandages’, a giddy, intoxicating whirlwind of angular guitars and new-wave keyboard riffing by Canadian bright young things Hot Hot Heat, would surely have become a huge Top Ten hit for
by Ed Biggs Following the reformation of his legendary, pioneering no-wave/noise rock outfit Swans at the end of the noughties, Michael Gira has overseen the most powerful, emotional and, arguably melodic sequence of albums in the band’s catalogue. Only hinted at in 2010’s returning effort My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, this monstrously epic iteration of Swans, dealing in songs that more often than not last
