Tag: DJ set

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BPREVIEW: Sonic Gun Weekender @ The Castle & Falcon 17-19.08.18

BPREVIEW: Sonic Gun Weekender @ The Castle & Falcon 17-19.08.18

Words by Ed King

Sonic Gun are hold a mammoth weekend live music event at The Castle & Falcon – running from Friday 17th to Sunday 19th August. And although we’re only giving you a few hours notice… it’s been one of ‘those’ weeks, we still think it’s something worth SHOUTING ABOUT.

Doors open at 6:30pm on Friday, with bands playing from 3:30pm on Saturday and 3pm on Sunday. Tickets are a very kind £15 for the whole kit and caboodle, with individual day tickets also available for £8. Minimum age of entry is 14 years, with anyone under 16 needing a card carrying adult to pop along with them.

For direct information check out the Sonic Gun Weekender Facebook Event Page here, or go to the Castle & Falcon website here.

So, who’s on..? As if getting to spend the weekend in a pub watching live music for £15 wasn’t a compelling enough reason to drag yourself off the sofa. The whole line up is featured on the poster above and looks like a bit of a plate spinning/band booking miracle, especially considering you’ve got Project Soundlounge on one side of this event and the August Bank Holiday weekend on the other.

But hyperbole aside, some of the cream from Birmingham’s live circuit crop are playing at the Sonic Gun Weekender – with each day top, tailed, and stuffed like a pimento olive with bands well worth the daily door charge alone.

On Friday, the somewhat now past ‘rising balloon’ Riscas are headlining a bill, with local pop-rockers The Assist and Spilt Milk Society confidently chasing the top spot. Also appearing on this local yokel Friday night line up are Social State and Echo Beach – the one’s from Shrewsbury, not Liverpool or Quebec. There will also be a DJ set from one side of the main B Town see-saw, Swim Deep.

Saturday sees those cool kids Ivory Wave (…slow editorial hand clap) bring some multifaceted early 90’s indie to the top of the bill. A real Birmingham success story in the making, in my mind Ivory Wave just need to be locked in a room with Andrew Weatherall and given a good old shake. But for now you can watch them share their space with Sugarthief, The Cosmics, Violet, and a smattering of others including Cave Girl – who we are a little keen to see live, loud, and in the flesh. And completing my lazy metaphor, Peace will be delivering a Saturday night DJ set.

Then rounding off a pretty full weekend by any normal human standards, that rockabilly rockstar Harry Jordan will be headlining the Sunday setlists. Joining Jordan in a somewhat eclectic goodbye will be a bite of rhythm and blues from The Surrenders and The Good Water, with the rougher raucous coming from Bad Girlfriend, Kick the Clown (best band name ever) and one of our favourites at Birmingham Review, P.E.T. Paper Buoys will be DJing for the final day, sans wordplay.

There will also be beer from Dig Brew, who (after some extensive research) serve the city’s best rocket fuel in a glass by far, and food from The House of Hen – who we haven’t researched but we’re educated guessing serve chicken. Or houses.

But check out the banner above or visit the Sonic Gun Weekender Facebook Event Page for more details. Or just buy a weekend ticket and throw yourself in eyes wide shut – at £15 for a three day line up you can’t go wrong really.

The Sonic Gun Weekender comes to The Castle & Falcon – running from Friday 17th to Sunday 19th August. For direct event info and links to online ticket sales, click here. 

For more from Sonic Gun, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.facebook.com/sonicgunconcerts

For more on The Castle & Falcon, including venue details and further event listings, visit www.castleandfalcon.com

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NOT NORMAL – NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To sign up to NOT NORMAL – NOT OK, click here. To know more about the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK sticker campaign, click here.

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BPREVIEW: The Academic + Sea Girls @ Mama Roux’s 22.04.18

BPREVIEW: The Academic + Sea Girls @ Mama Roux’s 22.04.18Words by Ed King

On Sunday 22nd April, The Academic perform live at Mama Roux’s, with a support from Sea Girls and a DJ set from Abbie McCarthy.

Doors open at the Digbeth venue from 7pm, with tickets priced at £9.90 (plus bf) – as presented by Good Karma Club and Birmingham Promoters. For online ticket sales, click here. To visit the gig’s Facebook Event Page, click here.

Hailing from Miullingar in County Westmeath, Ireland, The Academic have been firmly embedding themselves into international tour circuits, radio playlists, and music media column inches (or whatever the digital equivalent is… URL rankings?) over the past couple of years.

Forming in 2013, started by school friends Craig Fitzgerald (vocals, guitar) and Dean Gavin (percussion), The Academic embraced Matt (guitar) and Stephen Murtagh (bass) and signed with Global Publishing in 2015 – releasing their debut single, ‘Different’, the same year they joined the media conglomerate that owns half the broadcasters in the UK. Or is it all of them, we lose track. But it wasn’t a bad move for a band who seem to sneeze out uber catchy indie rock, with strong and addictive melodies that scream the more credible end of RADIO FRIENDLY.

An easy win for ‘one to watch’ listicles, The Academic needed to follow up their post-signing momentum with an album and something to drag the rest of the musical landscape into their world. So, in a stroke of genius that sits somewhere between The Matrix and OK GO’s treadmill choreography, they did just that – releasing Tales from the Backseat in January 2018, and deconstructing the first new single from their debut LP using Facebook Live’s 10 second delay as an AV loop.

OK, perhaps the latter doesn’t sound that exciting. But click here or watch the video below and if you’re not laughing, clapping, or singing along by the end of it then you’re probably a bit dead on the inside. Sheer brilliance, sheer joy. Well done lads.

Joining The Academic at Mama Roux’s, and for just over half of their Good Karma Club UK tour dates, are Sea Girls – the indie rock four piece who are neither afraid of CAPITALS LETTERS or ‘apologetic about a bold chorus, especially one that can be sung in unison by thousands of fans together of all walks of life’.

But if you’ve got it then flaunt it, and Sea Girl’s lead singer, Henry Camamile, has the kind of honey dripped husky vocals that are hard to escape from. Plus, this is another band that can churn out tracks that bite down like a bulldog – for a good case study on this, check out Sea Girl’s latest single below, ‘Eat Me Whole’. If you need more, then you can skip your fingers over to that iTunes logo on your taskbar (other music sites are available) and grab a copy of Sea Girl’s latest EP, Heavenly War. Not a bad way to spend your bus fare.

Rounding off an already damn fine Sunday night, there will be a DJ set from Abbie McCarthy – the brains and brawn behind Good Karma Club, and the presenter of BBC Introducing Kent.

McCarthy often steps in for DJs on Radio One and is somewhat of a smarty-pants-know-it-all when it comes to solid, new music. So, having her behind the decks (or whatever the digital equivalent is…) at Mama Roux’s, as well as curating and promoting the gig, is a pretty wise idea.

‘Bear Claws’ – The Academic (deconstructed using Facebook Live)

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‘Eat Me Whole’ – Sea Girls

The Academic + Sea Girls perform live at Mama Roux’s on Sunday 22nd April, with a supporting DJ set from Abbie McCarthy – as presented by Good Karma Club and Birmingham Promoters. For online ticket sales, click here. To visit the gig’s Facebook Event Page, click here.

For more on The Academic, visit www.soundcloud.com/theacademic 

For more on Sea Girls, visit www.seagirls.net 

For more on Abbie McCarthy, visit www.insanitygroup.com/client/abbie-mccarthy

For more from Good Karma Club, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.facebook.GoodKarmaClub1

For more from Birmingham Promoters, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.birminghampromoters.com 

For more on Mama Roux’s, including venue details and further event listings, visit www.facebook.com/mamarouxs

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BREVIEW: Love from Stourbridge – The Wonder Stuff & Ned’s Atomic Dustbin @ O2 Academy 15.04.18

BREVIEW: The Wonder Stuff @ O2 Academy 15.04.18 / Steven Cook - Cook's Eye Photography

Words by Abi Whistance / Pics by Steven Cook

It’s 15th April and the holy trinity of Stourbridge are steadily attracting the masses on a Sunday night, pulling nineties indie veterans out of their local legions and into the doors of the O2 Academy in Birmingham.

Veterans like my own dad, and it didn’t take much more than an invite for him to pull out his Adidas Gazelles and a wad of Ned’s Atomic Dustbin CD’s for the car journey there – and back.

Of course, there are the younger admirers of the West Midlands indie heavyweights like myself, but Love from Stourbridge is ninety-nine percent over forty with a sprinkling of those barely legal that they’ve hauled along with them. Not to bash the nostalgia train though; tonight is the final lap of their grand tour of the UK, ending where things kicked off thirty years ago.

BREVIEW: Ned's Atomic Dustbin @ O2 Academy 15.04.18 / Steven Cook - Cook's Eye PhotographyFirst of the gang is Pop Will Eat Itself’s very own Graham Crabb with his eclectic DJ set, hopping from The Prodigy to Arctic Monkeys at a pace that requires rapid auditory adjustment. But hey, leave the kid alone. “Let’s fucking have it!” he shouts over a questionable dubstep tune, one hand punching the air to the fast-paced rhythm and the other firmly planted on his headphones. Crabb’s having the time of his life, and although no heads are turning away from the direction of the bar it’s pretty clear that he probably won’t notice.

BREVIEW: Ned's Atomic Dustbin @ O2 Academy 15.04.18 / Steven Cook - Cook's Eye PhotographyThrashing like a six-foot fish out of water, Jonn Penney flings himself onto the stage accompanied by the rest of the cohort as they begin their set – 100% Ned’s Atomic Dustbin style. With no signs of age other than the loss of Penney’s mane (rest in peace, you’ll be sorely missed) Ned’s storm through tunes like ‘Suave and Suffocated’ and ‘Until You Find Out’ leaving barely any time for this crowd to rise for air.

BREVIEW: Ned's Atomic Dustbin @ O2 Academy 15.04.18 / Steven Cook - Cook's Eye PhotographyLike a Pogo stick on a shed load of coke (if such a thing were possible) eyes can’t help but to follow Penney as he goes up and down, up and down… and then up and down again. “So, here’s the prediction, you get an affliction” he belts, dangling his lanky torso over the audience and finishing fan favourite ‘Walking Through Syrup’ with a menacing smirk spread across his face. “You’re all very old, to remind you all of that.” He smiles even wider, but despite a middle-aged crowd this clearly isn’t a softly-gently warm up, this is a powerhouse.

BREVIEW: The Wonder Stuff @ O2 Academy 15.04.18 / Steven Cook - Cook's Eye PhotographyThere’s not much time to gather yourself when ‘Terminally Groovy’ isn’t far behind, anticipation generating before the line we’ve all been dying to hear since we got here. “So, come on…” is all it takes to set us off, a thumping bassline carrying the crowd right through till the very end.

Six minutes of dancing, shouting and cavorting is all we have left of Ned’s for tonight. An encore consisting of iconic tracks ‘Kill Your Television’ and ‘Selfish’ is deemed necessary to rejuvenate an exhausted crowd, somehow breathing life back into those gasping for air and gagging for another beer and a fag before the final power chord rings out.

BREVIEW: The Wonder Stuff @ O2 Academy 15.04.18 / Steven Cook - Cook's Eye PhotographyHard to beat? Sure. Impossible to beat? Not according to The Wonder Stuff on a Sunday night. Frontman Miles Hunt is on top form, and the rest of the gang follow suit with the addition of violinist Erica Nockalls as a rather attention-grabbing counterpart. An interesting addition at that, with tunes like ‘Red Berry Joy Town’ and ‘Don’t You Ever’ getting the barnyard treatment thanks to her country-esque style.

BREVIEW: The Wonder Stuff @ O2 Academy 15.04.18 / Steven Cook - Cook's Eye Photography

It doesn’t take long before beers are flying, shirts are removed and tossed above heads, and Hunt has something to say about it. “Are you the guy who didn’t get the selfie in the pub earlier? Bit pissed off are we?” he jeers at the crowd, but essentially just prodding the bear who’ll more than likely just chuck another beer and a middle finger your way, sorry Miles.

Blasting through the next handful of hits, The Stuffies manage to cram ‘Circlesquare’, ‘The Size of a Cow’ and ‘Cartoon Boyfriend’ into about nine minutes and thirty seconds; an impressive achievement and potentially a new record time for them, well done lads and lass.

BREVIEW: The Wonder Stuff @ O2 Academy 15.04.18 / Steven Cook - Cook's Eye PhotographySocial media paves the way for a much-anticipated poll result regarding the next track. Will it be ‘Radio Ass Kiss’ or ‘It’s Yer Money I’m After Baby’? Trick question, the answer is both. The result of the poll did mean that it should have only been the latter, but this wasn’t what The Stuffies wanted and, after all, they’re clearly the ones in charge here.

After a solid eighteen track set, a conclusion in the form of ‘Unbearable’ seems inevitable for the majority, but the rest are happy following up with ‘Ten Trenches Deep’ to say adieu. It’s been as wild of a night as possible for a Sunday, reminiscent of most of the crowd’s teenage years back in 1988 when Ned’s were still normal and the Eight-Legged Groove Machine was still grooving without the responsibility of a mortgage.

For more on The Wonder Stuff, visit www.thewonderstuff.co.uk

For more on Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, visit www.nedsatomicdustbin.com

For more on Pop Will Eat Itself, visit www.popwilleatitself.net/pwei 

For more from the O2 Academy Birmingham, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.academymusicgroup.com/o2academybirmingham

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BPREVIEW: Love from Stourbridge – The Wonder Stuff & Ned’s Atomic Dustbin @ O2 Academy 14/15.04.18

BPREVIEW: Love from Stourbridge – The Wonder Stuff & Ned’s Atomic Dustbin @ O2 Academy 14/15.04.18

Words by Ed King

On Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th April, the Love from Stourbridge Tour comes to the O2 Academy Birmingham – with The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin both playing live, alongside a DJ set from Graham Crabb of Pop Will Eat Itself.

Doors open at the O2 Academy from 7pm, with tickets priced at £34.25 – as presented by Academy Events. For direct gig information, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

Back in the hey days of the late 80’s and early 90s – when Indie meant independent, the NME was still credible, and a singles chart position meant you’d actually sold some records (that were actual records), Britain’s alternative music scene was a pretty awesome place. And whilst Seattle was spewing out Cobain and Cornell (R.I.P. gents xx) slap bang in the middle of it all on this side of the pond was The Midlands, with The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin packing out shows at the Aston Villa Leisure Centre, The Hummingbird, and other 3k capacity venues before they became a haven for jungle and knife crime.

Both hailing from Stourbridge, a place God apparently created one wet Tuesday afternoon, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and The Wonder Stuff ran somewhat parallel to each other – with the former getting their ‘big break’ as the support band on the latter’s tours in 1989 and 1990. And aside from having the best name/t-shirts in music at the time (and possibly for some years afterwards, we’re open to suggestions here) Ned’s Atomic Dustbin are the edgier of the two, with notorious mosh pits, ferocious live shows, and overt murderous intent towards the nation’s goggle-boxes.

The Wonder Stuff, on the other hand, were the top rung of the Indie ladder back in ‘the day’ with consistent chart success, an international fanbase, and headline slots at leading UK music festivals – releasing four albums in five years, until the band’s split in 1994, with three of those LPs breaking the Top 5 in the official UK Album Charts. Their debut, Eight Legged Groove Machine, reached No.18. The Wonder Stuff may not be as angst ridden as Ned’s Atomic Dustbin (may I present Exhibit A, ‘Dizzy’, your honour) but they achieved phenomenal success and stayed rock and roll to the core, even when sharing the mic with Vic Reeves. They dressed a little better than Ned’s back then too.

But the best thing about these two bands is that if you stumble over their music today – regardless of age or naivety/cynicism – it still stands up, nearly 30 years after the first people upturned these Stourbridge stones. But I guess that’s what the Love from Stourbridge Tour is all about, dragging out the old fans for a night of nostalgia whilst gaining new fans by just being solid musicians performing on stage.

And whist there is new/newish material out there on-shelf and on iTunes, it wouldn’t be a bad show if we just sat in the least expensive part of the room and smashed a few Samsung flat screens… don’t worry, the reference points are below.

‘Welcome to the Cheap Seats’ – The Wonder Stuff 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCMCvzPEsFc

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‘Kill Your Television’ – Ned’s Atomic Dustbin 

On Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th, the Love from Stourbridge Tour comes to the O2 Academy Birmingham – with The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. For direct gig information, including venue details and online ticket sales, visit https://bit.ly/2IMaduJ 

For more on The Wonder Stuff, visit www.thewonderstuff.co.uk

For more on Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, visit www.nedsatomicdustbin.com

For more on Pop Will Eat Itself, visit www.popwilleatitself.net

For more from the O2 Academy Birmingham, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.academymusicgroup.com/o2academybirmingham

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ALBUM: Autonomy – Table Scraps 23.02.18

Table Scraps / Meg Lavender

Words by Ed King / Lead pic by Meg Lavender

Reasons to be cheerful: 1) Winter has fucked off, 2) Winter II has also fucked off, 3) It’s Friday, 4) Table Scraps’ new album, Autonomy, has been set free into the wild.

I’m feeling a little spring in my step, pun intended, so the ten-track-quick-hit-monster that is Autonomy could not have come at a better time. Just when I’m starting to plan my Fear & Loathing summer road trips, Table Scraps have come along with the perfect soundtrack to a bit of windows down anarchy.

Opening with ‘Sick of Me’ (which has a gloriously literal video – see below) the repeated riffs and dual vocals punch through with simplicity and style. Ain’t alliteration ace..? Garage rock as its most gorgeous, the 2 ¼ min opener sets us up for the slightly faster and drum punched ‘Always Right’, before a little dark self (kinda/sorta) deprecation with  ‘I’m a Failure’. “I hate everything I do”… surely not. “And it’s all because of you”. Fair enough.

It’s difficult not to review this album track by track, but if you can listen to ‘Takin’ Out the Trash’ without thinking of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club with elephantiasis of the kahunas… awesome stuff. Then just past the midway point we get the album’s lead single, ‘My Obsession’, which Birmingham Review saw smash itself into the world at the Hare & Hounds back in April 2017. ‘Fierce and threatening, in a good way, like some clever simile involving Christian Slater and a Magnum .44’ were the words I used then, and I’m sticking with ‘em.

And whilst the first half of Autonomy was full of summer fun and ferocity, like Day #3 of a barbecue hosted by The Beach Boys and the Ramones, the latter half turns a little more dark and twisted. As David Lynch gatecrashes with “some special meat for the flames… sshhh, just eat”.

Table Scrap - Autonomy album launch party @ Hare & Hounds 02.03.18‘Frankenstein’ leads the charge with some oil drum vocals and good ol’ fashion twisted blues rock, before one of my favourites, ‘Treat Me Like Shit’, stomps out with a heavy drum spinal chord and guitar lead skin from the off. I’m pretty sure there’s a Theremin in there too, but I can’t be certain. ‘More Than You Need Me’ pulls the foot off the gas a tiny, weeny, little bit, but makes up for any perceived loss by stretching it across the longest song on the album – before Autonomy comes to a close with the lighter, almost jangly, ‘Do It All Over Again’. Which is ironically what I did. And again…

A pretty ball out of the park release from one of Birmingham’s best bands (any beyond, but fuck it – a bit of civic pride), Autonomy is a step up from an outfit that didn’t have much room to maneuver in that direction to begin with. And if you didn’t know, Table Scraps will be unleashing this particular beast at an album launch party at the Hare & Hounds on 2nd March – presented by This Is Tmrw, with support from Yo No Se, The Hungry Ghosts, Captain Süün and a DJ set from Black Mekon.

Otherwise, or even as well as, go out and get yourself a copy of this album – for the tiny rays of sunshine expected this year WILL MEAN LITTLE without it. Fast, ferocious, fun fun FUN, Autonomy is full of summer smashing rock and roll goodness. TVs and toll booths beware.

‘Sick of Me’ – Table Scraps

Table Scraps release their latest album, Autonomy, on Friday 23rd February –  with a nationwide tour, kicking off at the Foodhall in Sheffield (23rd Feb) and coming to the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath, Birmingham (2nd Mar). For direct info on the Autonomy album launch party at the Hare and Hounds, click here.

For more on Table Scraps, including full tour dates and online purchase points for Autonomy, visit www.table-scraps.bandcamp.com

For more from This is Tmrw, visit www.thisistmrw.co.uk

For more from the Hare & Hounds (Kings Heath), including full event listing and online ticket sales, visit www.hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk