Blog

Whilst I raved about The Bishops for some time, I’ve always written them off as being fairly light hearted and their lyrics straightforward. After listening to their forthcoming single my opinion has changed, their lyrics may be simple but are extremely dark, it’s a very misleading combination of upbeat music and downbeat lyrics. The Bishops sound and style is unmistakably 60’s influenced, but with a very modern twist, I’m not entirely sure what that twist is, but it makes the sound theirs, the…

The Boyfriends have never been know as the cheeriest of bands, and with their newly confirmed Morrissey support, they’re not putting and end to that reputation. Adult Acne is in a similar vein to previous material, Martin Wallace’s vocals floating above a wall of sometimes jangling, sometime crashing guitars, a slightly funkier than normal bass line and fairly unobtrusive drums. I couldn’t quite catch all the lyrics, but I gather the songs probably about being ignored and overlooked, a good old…

The Angular Recording corporation built it’s reputation on doing what it felt like doing, and putting out bands who had a similar attitude, so it’s a shame that this single from The Lodger is a little generic. The a-side is pleasant enough, a catchy tune and quite danceable, the b-side, sweet with some nice harmonies, but it doesn’t grab me. Though admittedly the more I listen to the single, the more I like it, a grower.

www.thelodger.net…

I have a rule, I always give bands 3 songs before I decide whether to stay or not, I have been to a lot of the gigs, and this was the first time I have ever walked out before the 3 song limit. I didn’t get it, was I missing something? The band took ages to set up, then sounded like a 6th form Punk band learning to play with each other. As I left I heard people asking for their money back and others telling them ‘Oh, give him (Dan Treacy) a chance, he’s had a hard time… That may be true, but if…

‘Hustle’ Describes Jeff’s voice very accurately, it gently ambles about, not looking like it’s up to much, but generally seedy, occasionally sneaking up on you and taking you by surprise. The music fluctuates somewhere between laid back acoustic strumming to mellow soundscapes and even venturing into cool electronica at times, in another twist of synchronicity the album artwork of paisley patterns, cigarettes and out of focus women sums up the whole sound well, appealing, but leaves you feeling…

Ludes sound messy and ear splittingly loud tonight, but with upbeat music comprising equal parts ska, strut, swing and old style dirty rock & roll, a full barfly is pulsating with sweaty bodies and beats. The singer’s in the crowd, the guitarists are all over the place, the drummer’s wild and the crowd are spilling pints on each other, any band who can get most of a London venue dancing on a Tuesday night deserves respect.

Published in Fly magazine, May 2006

Ladyfuzz’s press releases don’t say much, they let the music tell you everything you need to know. Kerfuffle sounds like the band listened to all the hip and cool music from the past year, rolled it all into one and made something that sounded a thousand times better than any of the sub standard, carbon copy angular guitars, pseudo disco beat claptrap rip off bands doing the rounds. Their beats are original and boom and throb, the guitars are sharp, the bass heavy and rumbling, the vocals in th…

3 skinny boys in black and a girl who resembles their teacher bash, screech and holler through a noisy bass led set. What a bass sound, (like an extreme Stranglers ?ƒÚBarracuda Bass?ƒÙ), blooping keyboards that occasionally emerge through the racket adding a perfect accompaniment to the chaos, bound by a tight but messy drummer and capped with inaudible vocals and guitar. It?ƒÙs rough, they need another 6 months of rehearsals, but at the heart is genius waiting to be realised.

<a href=‘h…

Why are so many recent bands from America so gangly? And why do they all seem to wear the same T-shirt’s and shoes? And why do the drummers always have masses of curly hair? Anyway, after conjuring up images of generic American bands, Low vs. Diamond’s sound is far from generic. A strangely enigmatic singer despite his odd dancing and slightly comedic sunglasses, big sweeping keyboards and guitars and a bass player who some how manages to stay in time whilst waving his bass about all over the p…

Wow!

28 Costumes are awesome! Catchy songs, with choruses that leave you singing until you’re tucked up in bed. So tight, I don’t think there was a single note out of place, and full of humour, a song breakdown that involves snoring noises is a new one on me. Bursting to the seams with character and good songs, 28 Costumes are a kick in the face to the pussy footing of lots of bands in the current music scene, definitely one to watch if the scene has any sense.

<a href=’https://www.28co…

I love Milkkan. They’re wonderfully rough, ramshackle at times, but write such catchy, upbeat and lyrically impressive songs that you can forgive them, in the same way that the Libertines used to, but with less pretension. Milkkan have a similar root to their music to, not in style but in attitude. That sort of lovable Londoner, knees up, rough diamond with a heart of gold kind of manner. Their songs vary from hatred of A&R men (a common theme in songs at the moment…) to childish love songs a…

Yo Zushi takes to the stage in a suit resembling a cross between an old school comedian and a golfer, producing a charming set of beautiful love songs and stories, Yo Zushi?ƒÙs smooth voice floating above the finely crafted bed of music. The set is pleasant if a little samey, in fact all a bit too nice, no grit, no balls, like a middle class Leonard Cohen. More ?ƒÚJolly Good?ƒÙ than soul searching stories of suffering.

www.yozushi.net…

The Fades return after a 6-month hiatus, refreshed and rewritten, their Modish riffage doesn’t fit into the modern scene but I doubt they care. They are also at a distinct advantage that their new material is as good if not better than their older material, leaving some of the old favourites sounding a little tired and getting better crowd reactions. The Fades are back, long live the Fades.

Published in Unpublished

I started Aberfeldy’s set in a grumpy mood, intentionally not wanting to enjoy their Scottish tinged Americana. Predominately because at their worst Aberfeldy are twee and twodlesome with songs about 70’s fashions and late night TV presenters, which grates with me, but after three songs I was drawn into their happy go lucky world. Because at their best Aberfeldy pen pure slabs of sugar soaked pop, catchy, full of hooks, superb musicianship and loveably lyrics that are just too damn sweet to res…

First piece of advice to Bearsuit, Buy at least one Tuner between you, second, Play in time. Work on that and your shouty girl, whiny boy vocals, bloopy keyboards, fuzzy guitars, fun lyrics and cute look will show of your catchy melodies 1000 times better. There are plenty of bands in the pop-punk genre (most 5 years ago) so stand out from the rest by buying gear that works and stop being so damn cute.

Published in Fly Magazine, December 2005

Tonight was going to be strange from the outset, attending a gig staged by kids because they were influenced to do so by my (ex) band. The minute I entered I felt awkward and proud simultaneously as I heard the excellent ‘Criminal Housewives’ and their Sham69 fused cover of ‘My Little Brother’. Following them were ‘LeboviciAB84’, ‘The Sam Assortment’ and ‘Space Peacocks’ with their Glam fashions, bouncy tunes and intriguing fusion of ‘Formed a Band’ and ‘Modern Art’ resulting in a motley stage…

Nestled amongst the headliners gear Simon Breed (and the Birthmarks) makes a 3-piece sound like anything from a 5 piece with full brass section to a lone voice. Captivating songs including obscenities aimed at problem bosses to beautiful ditties about Brotherly Love, Simon Breed takes the image of a man with an acoustic guitar and fucks it right up.

Published in Fly Magazine, November 2005

Despite only existing as a band (defacto line up) for 3 years The Specials remain one of the most important and influential acts of their period.Forming in 1977 as the ‘Coventry Automatics’ it took until late 1978 for the band to finally settle on a name, a musical direction, a line up (consisting : Roddy Byers - guitar, John Bradbury - drums, Terry Hall - vocals, Lynval Golding - guitar, Horace Panter - bass, Jerry Dammers - keyboards, Neville Staples - vocals) and most importantly an attitude…

Louis Eliot started his love affair with music at an early age, his influences spanning from the Wild Cornish countryside to the bohemia of Ladbroke grove with pretty much everything you could think of in-between.

His career started in the early 90’s with ‘Kinky Machine’, who’s two albums achieved a reasonable degree of success before (Ironically) the band were overtaken by the likes of the very bands who’d supported them in the past, coupled with problems from their new label MCA, the core of…

Rwanda is one of the many modern tragedies to have occurred in Africa, 1994 is a year that will permanently be etched into the memory of Rwandans, a year when within 3 moths over a million people were killed and the survivors left to fend for themselves despite their suffering and despair.

Whilst I appreciate that this is one horror amongst a horror-filled world, this event has been widely overlooked by the worlds powers and the Rwanda Fund (_…

Pinski Zoo consists of Steve Harris on Drums, Steve Iliffe on Keyboards, Karl Bingham and Stefan Kopinski on bass and Jan Kopinski on Saxophones. The band is more or less Jan Kopinski’s brainchild, born of Polish and Irish origins his career spans from teaching to film score writing. The band as a whole has been performing on and off for 20 years gaining awards, critical acclaim and international recognition along the way.

Not being a Jazz fan or expert (I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the music,…

To me Java is one of the most exciting and promising technologies of the past few years, but it’s potential hasn’t been reached in a lot of circles yet, especially in the consumer field. ThinkFree Office is an exceptional implementation of Java, being a multi platform MS Office compatible office suite. It runs on Windows Mac OS 9/X and varying flavours of UNIX, thus parts of the interface may seem a little un-Mac like but when you?re developing cross platform certain compromises must be taken…

Drawwell is a stripped down version of Workswell, so lets take a quick look at it’s feature first and then focus on the extras in Workswell. Drawwell is a vector based illustration and DTP application, providing a vast array of easy to create objects from squares to shape bursts and doughnuts. All are easily modifiable through an inspector panel where you can set position, size, colours and textual content. Drawwell is Cocoa based, so you get all the features associated with OS X native applica…

There was excitement and enthusiasm in the air of MacExpo 2001, and there was a reason. Perhaps because Apple was exhibiting at a UK show for the first time in five years, or perhaps because Mac users currently have a lot to celebrate, there was one of the largest turnouts of visitors and exhibitors in the history of the show. In a time of economic downturn (especially in the computing market), Apple is one of the very few IT companies currently running at a profit. A major upgrade to an amazin…

European Apple fans have been eagerly awaiting this year’s Apple Expo. As last year’s event was cancelled, and most could not really warrant the cost of travelling to America, this year’s Expo was the first major Apple-related date for Europeans in two years. There were of course a lot of product releases and newsworthy events at the Expo this year but attempting to document them all would be nigh on impossible, so I will now try to present my own personal highlights.

Developing for the Macint…

A few months ago I had a client requirement for PDF generation, in this case to generate certificates that could be viewed online or printed. I spent some time looking into the best Drupal options available and picked up some advice along the way on how best to accomplish these aims. After mentioning my results to several people, it seemed that PDF generation was a common requirement and now I have the same need again on a personal project, so it seemed a good case study to walk you through wha…

API stands for ‘Application Programming Interface’ and as the name implies, creating one is a technical process. This article will talk very little about how to create an API as there are a myriad of methods to undertake that. This article aims to focus on the business side of APIs and supply advice for non-technical folk.

An API is a set of functionality and instructions to allow other software access to services or information you offer. An API is typically (should be) written following stan…