Nighty Night

Here it is, my last ever review for Nightshift. Just last night I was in a sold-out Bully to celebrate Ronan's achievements with the mag, and his impact on the local music scene. I don't know where I'll find an editor who is so open and supportive and who likes my sense of humour, writing style and opinions that sometimes push against his own. Actually, I do: nowhere. Sad days.

I may have been a tad generous with this review, but what the hell, last ever, let's all be chums.

LUNAR KITES – THE DOOMSTAR CHRONICLES (Self-release) 

 “This is my last ever Nightshift review, I hope it’s not meandering strums from some bloke lamenting how his girlfriend has sodded off, or a sloppy indie band drawling about fights at the chip shop when you know they rarely leave the public school common room.” 

“No. It’s about space wizards.” 

“Result!” 

Yes, as befits a record called The DoomStar Chronicles, this is overblown, preposterous space rock. The opener ‘Interstellar Shout’ is so silly and puffed up it could be waving its arms outside a car dealership, but it’s also red giant-sized fun, from the morse code intro to the impeccably pitched inhuman calm of the AI-hostess spoken section, to the chest-beating chorus banging on about “destiny and fate”.   

Lunar Kites are not subtle, existing somewhere between the wonkier end of Eurovision and Ozric Tentacles in panto, but one can be monstrously unsubtle and still be a great listen, that’s the beauty of pop music. ‘Avoid All Droids’ is possible the pick of the bunch, a Hawkwind hoedown with a brilliantly deranged cyborg repeating the title, but there’s plenty to pick out elsewhere, like the 80s ambient intro to ‘The Final Voyage Of The P7E’, the spacious Dave Gilmour guitar on ‘Rivers’, or the bassline to ‘Pink Lounge’, which sounds like Primus-funk in a syrup jacuzzi. Maybe the foursquare Floyd of ‘Heavy Air’ is inessential, but over all The DoomStar Chronicles is the perfect grooving soundtrack for an intergalactic road trip. Two thumbs (and an few alien pseudopods) up! 

Planet Municipal

My second review from the latest Nutshaft. I'm listening to Rossini's Armida, of which I'd never heard before. I think I know why, it's not essential. Still, Callas, innit?

WARRINGTON-RUNCORN NEW TOWN DEVELOPMENT PLAN/ U/ CITIES & MEMORY, Divine Schism, Bully, 19/3/26 

Cities & Memory is more a global field recording fellowship than a musical act, though founder Stuart Fowkes (previously of The Evenings, Sunnyvale Noise Sub-Element, Listing Ships and other inventive bands) shares his own material from the vast archive. The tagline is “remixing the world one sound at a time”, but this set might surprise casual listeners with its smooth cohesive electronica: yes, the stories behind the sampled elements are fascinating, but the elegantly spangling synths would work in isolation, from the controlled crunch of B12-style techno at one end of the set to the 80s Tangerine Dream sequencer swirls at the other. 

Turns out we’re not the only people who missed U’s presence on the posters for this gig, mistaking their credit for a painterly squiggle in Divine Schism’s house style. Anonymity probably suits them, though, as the shadowy U controls the sonics from the darkness of the crowd, whilst a laptop independently projects some impressive visuals. Musically it’s one long collage of folk tunes, archival documentary discussions, abstract tones, and a few oddities – we certainly don’t expect extracts from 14th-century allegorical poem Piers Plowman at electronica gigs – with similarly smooshed together vintage images giving a Ghost Box vibe. There’s a spectral feel throughout, both from the hauntological vintage TV snippets and the tales of actual paranormal jiggery-pokery, and the set is somewhere between a British take on Irish folk-doomers From The Bogs Of Aughiska and a 70s schools programme broadcast from Borley Rectory. 

Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan continue the visual immersion, treating us to a non-stop barrage of colour-saturated film clips showing that brief period of Modernist urban optimism from the 60s and 70s: brutalist architecture, shiny automated factories, and social projects, many of which are now crumbling, literally or otherwise. Fittingly, the music is all Tomorrow’s World techno, big clunky beats underneath stately and slightly sinister synth lines and arpeggios. At its best the music captures the retro-futurist mystery of Aphex Twin’s ‘On’, or sounds like the Radiophonic Workshop having a crack at EBM, but by the end of a very long set one more slab of mid-paced John Carpenter industrial plodding does become wearing and we feel like we’re stuck on an endless concrete ring road . The austere aesthetic is strong, but we wish that this plan had included a bit more development.  

  

 

 

 

 

 

DScalations

As it's the penultimate issue, I have done two reviews for the May Nightshift, here's the first.

HARESS/ CARAUSIAS ARISE!/ CODIAD Y MÔR, Divine Schism, Common Ground, 9/4/26 

Codiad Y Môr is Ibs, a member of Spaceman & The Spaceband, space apparently being the driving force behind his acoustic guitar pieces. Each delicate instrumental is sparse and simple, referencing British 60s folk and US mountain plucking, but also perhaps the calm stillness of composers like Satie and Mompou. We’d call the spare opening piece the bare skeleton of a John Fahey number, except this makes it sound too sturdy and resilient. Maybe it’s American primitivism’s lymphatic system. Some will find the music too elementary, and a broken string seems to break Ibs’s concentration, but on this quiet, chilly evening the "If John Renbourn studied ikebana” vibe fits perfectly. 

At first Carausias Arise! continues the cold elegance, windswept synth sounding like a diffuse Vangelis piece. But it’s noteworthy that Dafydd Roberts resembles Harry Hill as Geography teacher, because there’s a lofi surrealism to the set. We get the approachable abstraction of 90s ambience à la Pete Namlook, and playfully wibbly improv electronica – a lovely section sounds like pitch-bent babies gurgling – but this is only half the story. One minute Roberts has a patch cable in his mouth, another he’s rubbing a handheld spring reverb device on a piece of slate, but it’s the vocals that are truly mystifying, being tremulous, high-pitched and stately, like a monk swallowing his tongue. When he intones “Take a seed, expose it to the sun” it’s like Scott Walker played by a Gregorian gonk. Two extra-musical moments sum up this set: someone takes photos from the crowd with a Nintendo DS, a self-consciously odd hardware choice, and at the set’s end an eerie drifting tone is drowned out by the venue’s creaky toilet door: absurd, yet slightly sinister. 

Shropshire’s Haress apparently open with ‘Variations on a Toilet Door’, a thicket of bowed cymbals and softly grating guitar tones, but they settle to a more straightforward post-rockers-do-folk structure. This is not to say that they are not excellent, layering malleted drums and entwined guitars over shruti drones – the second track boasts a lovely intricate guitar halfway between English folk dance and gnawa blues, a sort of Moroccan morris. Elsewhere we have folk rock with doom logic, as if we're at Zombie Cropredy. Vocals are added sparingly, and all the stronger for that. The last song’s the live debut of an outstandingly noisy bluster, dropping to a haunted but jaunty coda about “Somerset girls” which sounds like Bellowhead in the underworld. Get us a flagon of spectral scrumpy and a demonic DS charger, we don’t want this unusual evening to end. 

Two For Just Over A Tenor

Kind of an odd one, this. I thought the EP was basically nice but harmless, and had a review sketched out in my head, but when I gave the record the final (virtual) spin before writing, I found I really liked some of it. Had I given myself pseudo-Stockholm Syndrome? Or was I confusing familiarity with enjoyment? Or had I just listened long enough to let the artistry seep through into my consciousness? Bit of all three, probably.

ALTO ALTO – ALTO ALTO (Self-release) 

This EP pulls an enjoyable trick, sounding restrained and sinister yet also coming off as energetic and emotional. ‘Broken Fin’ opens the collection with a metronomic rhythm, wheedling lead guitar, and vocals that are somehow both an impassioned cry and a sneering playground chant (“I am running out of air”), giving a strong flavour of Psychedelic Furs, with an aftertaste  of Echo & The Bunnymen. ‘Honeycomb’ also starts with everything under tight rein, building on a hobbled yet sprightly beat which might remind Oxford pop archivists of Spring Offensive, though it lets go a little more as the song progresses, ending with some insistent guitar riffing.   

The rest of the EP doesn’t quite live up to this pairing, but ‘Mediterranean Sun’ and ‘Spanish Procession’ are still warmly winning melodic indie tunes, although the latter doesn’t have the fleetness of foot of the former, and the lyrics to both sound as though they were cribbed from a Hoseasons brochure. ‘Lift Your Heart’ is a suitably rousing/ not rousing finish, a discreetly churning guitar pop tune with long wafting lead lines like the work of an introspective British Wannadies. Despite this being a self-titled release, it feels as though Alto Alto never quite show their full hand, and the record is all the better for it.  

Motion Colour Seen

Some of this was not published in the latest Nightshift, presumably for reasons of space. Inevitably, it was the more negative elements that were omitted, so if you're craving some light criticism, you're in luck, bucko.

MOVEMENTS, Bully/ Truck Store/ Library/ James St Tavern, 14/2/26 

Mount St Helen open this multi-venue all-dayer, but they may also have opened a black hole in the corner of The Bully, so huge and dense is their sound. From a rich drone swelling behind malleted cymbals at the outset the music continues to build constantly, as do the blinding and intricately programmed strobes. The ostensible reference point might be the blustery noughties indie of Editors and Interpol, but really they’re more like the most intense chunks of Mogwai colliding epically with the vastest peaks of Waters-era Floyd. Talk about stadium-ready, Mount St Helen make Kanadia look like a back-yard skiffle combo, and in Aris they have a born frontman from whom it’s hard to look away.  

Down the road at Truck Store, Philippe Nash’s mournful grunge-influenced balladry is a strong contrast, with spidery guitar twisting around sepulchral cello. Their final number reminds us of Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way’, and is rather lovely. Later in the same room, Mazawattee’s stripped back acoustic pop is also delightful, with a brace of excellent vocalists, and if their breezy songs are only an artisanal macchiato away from ‘Kumbaya’ they’re still the band whose tunes we’re humming at the bus stop hours later. Genevieve Miles offers a similarly light and airy set of pop tunes at the Bully, albeit in a somewhat chunkier format, with plenty of guitar and keyboard to bolster the sound. She has a pleasingly pure, smiling voice that reminds us of Edie Brickell, but the overall effect is cloying after a while. Perhaps this is music best experienced in a sunny festival field, not on a cold February afternoon, even one warmed by the romance of Valentine’s Day, as about a third of the acts jokily point out (you’re right, this does get old very quickly). Joining them in camp Fine But Forgettable are Fawlers, who open The Library’s stage with a set of cohesive and well played tracks with a mid-90s feel – are they Foo Fighters playing Shed Seven, or Cast channelling Semisonic? - that would probably make someone’s day but which fails to make any meaningful impression on us. 

Objectively, Slow Lane and Suspire aren't as good, being messier round the edges and less fully formed, but both have enough character to make them far more fun. The former bring a shoegaze fuzz and just a dash of Stone Roses swager to their chunky rock whilst the latter bundle through their songs with the energy of a good-natured punch-up behind a youth club. No such criticism could be made of Premium Leisure, probably the most skilled set of musicians on the bill, who could doubtless play anything. We suppose with that much talent on tap they might stretch further than lightly countryish jams and 70s AM rock that falls between Gram Parsons and Three Dog Night, but it’s still an enjoyable ride, especially the breathy vocals which evoke both Marc Bolan and Evan Dando. Bristol’s Grack Mack & The Pack could challenge Premium Leisure in a battle of the chops though, and we love the complex but restrained jazz patterns the drummer brings to their smooth folky pop, as well as the strident yet soft singing which is pure Dolores O’Riordan. We just wish the band could let themselves go and be a little less bloody nice and bleeding tasteful. Hopefully they popped down to the James Street Tavern to see Max Blansjaar, another act peopled with technically top-notch musicians, but whose set is, as ever, bursting with tunes and charm. 

Also at James Street are Shock Horror, a band we’ve loved watching evolve from grunge slobs through slacker experimentalists to the assured act we see today, making music that is spacious and controlled, introspective but in your face, angular and enveloping by turns. At one point a taut, chilly rhythm reminds us of cerebral post-rockers Ui, which we never would have predicted from the band’s early shows. Tonight they surprisingly have more in common with Baby Maker than you might expect. Ruairi Kester has added a second member to the band – it takes two to make babies, as he points out – but the set retains the understated wit and low-slung grooves of the solo shows. Sometimes the music sounds like a bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived take on industrial - Up-All-Nightzer Ebb, perhaps – whereas at others there’s an impressive head-nodding groove under the lo-fi, nerdy exterior, and crowd favourite ‘Rather Be In Berlin’ sounds like a band we’ve invented called Sebadub. More explicitly infectious dancefloor action from a very different duo, No Worries If Not, who meld sleek French house and vibrant Italo disco with very English smut and irony. Every onstage movement, every eyebrow arch is meticulously planned and choreographed, but they still exude joyful energy. 

A contender for favourite set of the day comes from Manchester’s Sweet Gene. Their drummer sports a Geese T-shirt, and like that feted band they take vintage Radiohead vibes, throw in a bit of Talking Heads artfulness, and then hone the resultant alloy ruthlessly to a razor’s edge – if this set were a physical entity, you wouldn’t be allowed to take it through airport security. We love exciting, unexpected new music forms, but sometimes a rock fourpiece playing like their lives depend on it in a tiny pub basement is more than enough. We’re not sure exactly what the name Movements implies, but Sweet Gene certainly made our heart beat faster (you’re right, a Valentine’s Day joke here would have been cheesy). 

 

Swarm of Locus

Second review from the latest Nightshift. These are my thoughts on some of the acts at December's In A Different Place all-dayer, and a bunch of this copy was interleaved in with the editor's review. This actually sort of stands up as cohesive on its own, though.

IN A DIFFERENT PLACE, Bully, 14/12/25 

Opening an all-dayer can be a tough task, but Antonia’s song ‘White Rabbit’ eases us into a long day with gorgeous wispy candyfloss sweetness. The whole of her lilting set is bright and delicate like sunshine through clouds, and our only criticism it’s that she’s too self-deprecating. 

A good festival will always feature some choice covers, but who had vintage hymn ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’ on their bingo card? The setting of Bunyan’s 17th-century verses popped up as part of Pea Sea’s long opening number, along with fluent guitar runs somewhere between the folky intelligence of Richard Thompson and the chilly elegance of Papa M. ‘Silloth Green’ is a more concise tune, gnarly poetic lyrics against chugging guitar giving indie Dylan vibes.

Barrelhaus had to cancel their place at both the first two IADP festivals. They’re here today though. They play one of their melodic riffing rock tunes and it sounds amazing. They start a second. They start it again. After the third time the backing track packs up, the set is abandoned – for Christ’s sake, can someone join the band on drums so they can play in 2026? 

Part of a strong scene is that is provides fertile ground for collaboration, and Ian de Quadros is probably Oxford’s premier sonic connector, so it’s no surprise that a six-song Tiger Mendoza set features 4 guest vocalists. Emma Hunter, Octavia Freud and Helen Pearson all feature elsewhere on today’s bill, but it’s a treat to see Mark, Restructure’s erstwhile ranter onstage again, giving some revolutionary Sleaford mob provocation over a DJ Shadowy beat. On the big Bully stage Tom Martin’s restless visuals have never looked better. 

There’s plenty of party music in the world, but not enough hangover music. The Pink Diamond Revue have cornered this market, their menacing instrumental rock a mixture of acid house wooziness, elementary thumping drums and Duane Eddy guitar twangs which feels euphoric at first, but soon curdles to a queasy paranoia. In case it’s not obvious, this is a very good thing. 

Zarbi also loves the sour times. Their early work was all post-dubstep spaciousness but today the reverbed vocals and scuzzy guitar bury shoegaze sonics beneath a mushroom mulch. Led Zep gave us ‘Misty Mountain Hop’ but Zarbi – wrapped in a dressing gown like the Arthur Dent of underground soundscaping – sounds more like a trudging ‘Mirkwood March’. 

There’s a constant pull between uplifting pop and intense rock to In-Flight Movie’s set. The guitar, synth and drums trio sound like Joy Division one moment, and Numan the next, and even manage to chart a course from Depeche Mode to Explosions In The Sky in one song. This powerful and energetic set might be their best we’ve witnessed, with clear, yearning vocals. 

31hours played the first IADP, and Jo from that band now trades under the name The Cloud, adding his supple falsetto to glitchy guitar and synth parts, sometimes gnarly, with drums as crunchy as Corn Flake pilates, and sometimes surprisingly sweet and jazzy. Inevitably there’s a Radiohead connection, but the reference point that really feels best is noughties Björk, with intricate ideas bombarding songs but never destroying their tuneful catchiness.  

Many people may find Silent Weapon the event's most challenging act, but not us, we love the sound of pummelling industrial electronics that sound like electrified girders sliding down a digital scree slope onto irascible hornets. Anyway, once you attune yourself to the demonic barrage, much of the music can be oddly blissful especially when arpeggios spiral beneath white noise waves. 

Octavia Freud claims that one song tonight is “existential electronica” but it’s a damned sight more fun that this implies. His lairy godfather Mancunian diatribes are sweetened by Emma Hunter’s lovely vocals and bolstered by Ian de Quadros’s chunky guitar. The setlist ranges from therapy to alcohol abuse, but it’s ‘No Venue Situation’ that feels most apposite: “sing our songs until we’re famous”, he sings, but in this room, at least, he already is. 

End on a high is strong advice, so the buoyant sprightliness of Balkan Wanderers is the perfect end to a busy day. Some of the pounding rhythms would feel at home in a speed metal song, but the elegant lightness of the rest of the band keeps the music joyous. Recently recruited vocalist Becs has slotted in seamlessly, and the accordion has given new textures, but it’s still Clare Heaviside’s eloquent clarinet that steals the show. Ending an all-dayer can be a tough task, but only because after bobbing about to ‘Sleep Around’, the best pubic lice ditty ever, nobody wants the band to stop for the night.  Or possibly ever. 

 

Peachy Keen

Nowadays there's no January Nightshift, so as the writing period stretched over two months, I wrote two reviews (I think the maths works out). Here's the first, a review of a very strong EP, go seek it out.

HANNAH LOU LARSEN – PEACH PINE OCEAN (self-release) 

There’s a tendency towards low-level sexism in music criticism in which even positive reviews of female artists tend toward the diminutive, annexing work in a paddock of ornamental prettiness which keeps it away from the citadel of Big Artistic Statements. This is the world in which a towering, mercurial talent like Björk can still be routinely called a charming elfin chanteuse. So, if we describe Hannah Lou Larsen’s new EP as “enchanting”, we’re not using it the way a lounge lizard might describe his Belgravia hostess, but to express how this record feels like a magic(k)al ritual - yes, it’s delicate and airy at times, but the references to the natural world, but lyrically and via field recordings sliced and sprinkled throughout, say more about powerful elemental forces than well-kept gardens and scenic views. 

‘Move Like Rivers’ is the poppiest offering, but even this is unhurried and incantatory, like the mechanical ghost of a Bat For Lashes tune, and shares the mysterious and slightly disorientating air of the whole collection: the title track is underpinned by reverby flaps that sound like someone riffling playing cards in a black hole and which are the sonic equivalent of a confusing labyrinth (it also has some gorgeous snatches of clarinet, as if caught from across a chilly moor, reminding us of Mark Hollis’s glorious solo album). 

‘Memorials’ is amniotic folk, a limpid, melodic autoharp strum, with intimate vocals reminiscent of Stina Nordenstam, whereas ‘I’m Sorry’ foregrounds electronica, giving us a brittle synthesised pizzicato skirmish that sounds like Alex Kidd snapping icicles in a cavern. The vocals here, with their slightly wry tone and subtle treatments, bring to mind Laurie Anderson. Listen to this EP and you’ll fall under its spell...but just maybe not in the cosy way, more in the way in which you check your soul is still all there. 

Gwan Tuwizmo?

Bit of a funny one, this. I'm not 100% sure whether I thought Mazawattee were good, the sound was so dire it was impossible to tell. That's odd, The Bully is normally great for sound. So, I decided to assume they were good, because they clearly know what a tune is.

MAZAWATTEE/ NO WORRIES IF NOT/ RICH RAINFORD, Bully, 13/11/25 

Rich Rainford’s songs are unashamedly big and emotional. Everything he plays tonight has a huge melodic vocal lines and warm earnest lyrics that immediately grab the listener. Structurally the songs are relatively simple, but they’re also light, soft and inviting, like a ziggurat made from Duplo bricks and marshmallows, hitting like stripped back Snow Patrol tunes, and even jaded cynical music reviewer realise that in an increasingly bitter and unhappy world a rousing anthem like ‘Raise Your Voice’ is a lovely thing. 

Another lovely thing is fresh French bread, although, unlike No Worries If Not, we prefer to eat it rather than wave it around in choreographed shapes over sleek electro. This boulangerie banger of an opener sets the tone, being musically shiny and enticing, but also irreverently humorous (hint: they’re not really singing about baguettes). The tracks hark back to the turn-of-the-century camp club pop of Trouser Enthusiasts, and the vocals are delivered with deadpan exuberance, if that’s not a complete paradox. Pitched somewhere between Confidence Man and the Footlights revue, No Worries If Not will make you dance, and have you enter a world of pain. 

Mazawattee play rootsy indie something akin to a soft-focus Hothouse Flowers, or The Daintees with a penchant for smooth Californian classic rock textures. ‘Waterslide’ is a gently skipping quavery pop tune that feels as though it's been beamed directly from Truck 2002, and is typical of the band’s natural melodic sense. Perhaps because there are some technical problems tonight, a brace of simple acoustic tracks sound best, showcasing how the strong the two vocalists are. A gig where the sound only really sems to balance for the last number may not be the one on which to judge Mazawattee, but even in these circumstances we can tell they have a winning breezy naturalness. Is it summer yet?  

Fraud Focus

 Perhaps not an outstanding review, in journalistic terms, but the gigs was very good. Confession: until the days after the gig I thought the middle band were called Archers.

FRAUDS/ ACHERS/ SINEWS, Divine Schism, Library, 5/9/25 

Their name suggests something taut and wiry, but Sinews’ sound is chunky, stodgy and misshapen, in the best way. Their opening numbers tonight unspool thick ropes of sludgy bass with clotted guitar that could probably mend all east Oxford’s potholes. This would be sufficiently pleasing for a Friday night, but the set extends grunge tentacles in various directions as it develops. A trio of previously unplayed songs adds some light and shade, one niggling us with a nagging high guitar line which shadows the vocal melody, adding a pedigree Mclusky sneer to their armory. 

London’s Achers are, to be honest, far more sinewy in nature, with a clean, almost emo edge to their post-punk songs. Their best tracks are built on – or is that, teeter above? - a lazily spinning bass and drums vortex, swirling, hypnotic and clattering like a bunch of mandalas in a cement mixer. Their post-hardcore/alt-punk sound is less angular than Drive Like Jehu, and more jittery than Slint, and it’s enjoyable, though some more character and a hook or two wouldn’t have gone amiss by the end. 

The instinct to compare guitar and drums duo Frauds with John is strong, but with their noisy intensity and mordant wit they’re really Big John, Big Bad John. They bombard us with serrated riffs and choppy cantering drums, but for every passionate maelstrom there’s a moment of reflection or a light-heartedly accented fill (and if the music can be witty, the band are outright hilarious between numbers, suggesting we embrace each silent interlude of tuning as “a chance to better yourselves”, like passive-aggressive life coaches). The vocals are surprisingly agile, gliding smoothly over the uneven broken ground of the rhythms, and they even drop in one or two semi-raps which sound like they’re left over from a nu metal song. Never mind sinews, this duo is a full heart, a big brain, and a well-booted foot to the backside. More please. 

Supernormal 2025 part 2

Nadeem Din-Gabisi, dressed in a lion mask like Tiger Mendoza’s cousin, may be Saturday’s highlight. This low-slung Brit-hop set (key reference: Roots Manuva) is glorious, and the lyrics eruditely explore everything that is good and bad about this country - the track title ‘Pub Lunch’ sums that up, and it sounds something like one of the lighter productions on Skull Disco. He samples the Parry’s ‘Jersualem’ and even quotes Morrissey - if he wanted an example of something from Britain that’s both great and an absolute embarrassment, he hit the bullseye. 

The Supernormal cabaret makes a welcome return, and this year we get lip-synching divas, absurd comedic turns, and some surprisingly earnest and lovely Moroccan song, but MC Ginny Lemon is still the highlight, managing to make slurring a tune with a fish on your head seem like the funniest and most subversive act ever. 

Kalkin are a highly original drums and fiddle duo. Their first number has snatches of jigs but tears along relentlessly, as if the film Speed had been set in a folk club. There is also a whiff of Velvet Underground in a churning mid-paced track, but they peak with a wistful Gavin Bryars-type exploration accompanying a 6-note piano loop, which finds new angles on every repetition, some murky and dark, some bright and soaring. Meat Strap on Friday cover equally broad terrain, sometimes fragmented funk we christen Wacko Pastorius, sometimes like a sashimi chef slicing up Slint with James Blood Ulmer seasoning. They also have inscrutable dedications, including “for the man who invented athlete’s foot”. They add a double bass player, then a flautist - we leave wondering whether they'll continue to expand exponentially and burst the Red Kite tent. Zoh Amba is even more unpredictable, a few opening minutes of solo sax skronk acting as a Wire-reader's Trojan horse to sneak some acoustic songs somewhere between Michaelle Shocked and Neil Young ont the main stage. 

Rainham Sheds invert the Lixenberg Performer-Audience Gambit. Their set starts with a hand-stitched alt groove which is partly like 90s Fall, but mostly like a bladdered and belligerent Bis, whilst vocalist Kate Mahony rolls through the crowd towards the stage with a chair she is part wearing, part fighting. When she gets to a mic, she screeches and wails like an ill-tempered baby, before letting the audience take over the honours. This is pop music as late-night pub car park argy-bargy, terribly messy but open to all. 

Coffin Mulch on Sunday play death metal, and they like playing death metal, and we like hearing them play death metal, because they play death metal really well. Sometimes, you don’t need to do anything new, you just need to do it monstrously loudly. Contrast this with the slightly more stately Meatdripper, a stoner/doom quartet who can hit quite a surprising groove: have you ever had the urge to shimmy your hips whilst the loud overtones trouble your bowels? In true Supernormal fashion, as we enjoy this onslaught a man in a Greggs onesie outside the tent is helping someone dressed as a tea table rearrange pink wafers. Probably they were dislodged running away from furniture scourge Kate Mahony. 

We’re expecting Big Farmer, a band featuring members of Supernormal’s build crew, to be a good honest garage racket, but although they have a hardcore heart, there’s a lot of wit and space on display. The nearly spoken vocals lean slightly towards Idles, but they’re less gruff, and the second number’s delivery sounds weirdly like Eddie Argos, if Art Brut took more cues from Fugazi.  

Brìghde Chaimbeul plays the Scottish smallpipes, and although all compositions are sourced from Skye, she makes intriguing arrangement decisions. One piece is so slow it is probably counted in beats-per-month, whilst another swirls round and round a couple of motifs like bellows-blown techno. Is that a smoke machine wreathing her head or mists magically transported from a Munro? We don’t know enough to say where the trad tunes end and Chaimbeul’s inventions begin, but we know this is exceptionally beautiful - and being blasé about boundaries is where we came in, right? 

If we’re being true to ourselves, Supernormal is our favourite festival. Looking out for others, we strongly advise you all attend next year. Make it happen! Hell, it even only rained for about 20 minutes... 

Scud Missive

I have now reviewed Supernormal so many times I think I might take a rest next year and let someone else have a crack...course, I'll still attend, it's the best festival ever.

SUPERNORMAL, Braziers Park, 1-3/8/25 

“Come onstage with me if you want to get out of the rain”. When did you ever hear a festival act propose that? But, it's Sunday lunchtime and Loré Lixenberg is opening her performance space to the damp people of Braziers Park, which just about sums up Supernormal, a festival where the line between artist and audience is often blurred, broken, or moshed into oblivion. We should mention that Lixenberg is a highly trained operatic mezzo-soprano and her invitation arose whilst she was interviewing a random member of the public in a sprechgesang style (discovery: the phrase “that’s so bloody typical” is astonishing when delivered like Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder). The interviewee is called Scud, and is an actual legend, talking with wit and passion about the value of public libraries, going full Phil Minton in an impromptu bout of vocal improv, and telling stories of inventing parkour (disputed) and discovering punk as a nipper. Punk acts feature elsewhere this weekend, but the whole event embodies punk’s central tenets “Make it happen!”, “Look out for each other”, and “Be true to yourself”, and is as incredible as ever. 

Our Friday starts with Distraxi, who sounds pleasingly like someone howling with rage whilst faxing a kazoo, before we visit The Vortex for the first time. This wonky shed space hosts plenty of multimedia business over the weekend, but the simple show by The Panama Papers is one of the best. The music is mostly lugubrious sax and electronics, with some low intoned vocals somewhere between Swans and Crash Test Dummies, but the magic is in the slideshow projected behind them, in which the Dept of Improvised Investigations hilariously claims that noise and improv are a front or tax dodge – can selling 20 home-made tapes be a viable business model?  

Rory Salter suggests it can, perhaps, because the Barn stage is so packed we can’t see what on earth he’s doing, but we love the drifting tones that sound by turns like Snap, Crackle & Pop doing plumbing in Twin Peaks, a Woookiee crèche, and To Rococo Rot making balloon animals.  

Folk is a large part of Supernormal, tapping into the spirit of homegrown rebellion that’s existed for centuries. The Charmers are a coven folk quintet with a “Song for the dykes...a spell for the banished”. Milkweed perform a cosmic folk horspiel based on an Ulster Cycle tale which we admittedly can’t follow, but the fuzzy rustic lope is a delight. They introduce a pair of vocalists for one passage, who turn out to be Bridget & Kitty, from the Round Table folk club in London. They perform unaccompanied duets in Braziers House on Saturday which are unfussy and beautifully controlled and crystalline, a world away from that theatrical barleymow “folk-singer accent” we’ve all heard. That an apparently unrelated song is dedicated to Palestine without any stretch shows the communicative power of these old compositions.  

If folk music is earthy, immediate, and deeply bloodthirsty, Gorgon Vomit are a folk band, being an excellently intense old-school metal pummel party, with guitars whinnying like rabid Kazakh horses. They have a Jamaican vocalist, and track names like ‘Babylon Detonator’, but this actually makes very little difference – possibly because metal is universal and inclusive of everyone, and possibly because you can never hear the lyrics, anyway.  Headbanging with dreads makes you look like a metal Medusa, though, so props for that.  

Quieter pleasures are on offer, though, like Judith Hamann whose wordless vocals and cello are ECM ambience meets Arvo Pärt meets a gate swinging in the wind. Slow bowing like a calm but wintry sea alternates with quick light taps on the neck, hypnotically.  

A Widget is something small, oddly shaped, but useful, which fits this band, featuring a guitarist from Big Joanie, and our own Zahra Haji Fath Ali Tehrani on drums. They make a strangely lopsided funk pop, somewhere between ESG and Hall & Oates, with one tune even sounding like a cheeky Chic. The vocals are blokey and spoken, but with a wry warmth taking us to the sunny side of The Streets. They’re a pier-end, market-stall British version of a knowing post-post-punk groove band - Elsie Tanner Soundsystem, anyone? 

There's another local win on Sunday, when Oxford’s improv hero Pat Thomas duets with drummer Dan Johnson, eschewing keys in favour of...maybe a tablet? All we can see is Pat sitting studiously in a beret like a French professor at a ludicrously vast table. Regardless of how the noises are generated, they sound fantastic, electronic chitters intertwining with skittering drums. Later in the set the beats get chunkier and we are strafed with blurts and clatters – this is probably what it’s like to play Donkey Kong from inside one of the barrels. 

En Creux is the solo work of Lucia H Chung, a London-based Taiwanese artist, with no-input mixer. Listen for a few seconds and it’s just static and crackle; listen for two minutes and spotty rhythms emerge; after 10 we hear classic electro grooves crossed with manic squeaks, like Egyptian Lover rogering a bouncy castle. Remember Eddie Large’s routine about celebs starting their cars? Imagine that covered by Autechre.

Abstraction is physical not aural at the BRUK UP dance workshop. It’s fascinating to learn about the avant-dancehall moves – think a middle ground between breakdance, the Thriller video, and trying to cross a ropebridge whilst wankered – but it seems Nightshift doesn’t have as many shoulder muscles as the instructor... 

Given its ostensibly inclusive can-do nature, it’s a surprise you don’t see more physically disabled punk performers, as this music comes from spirit and rage, not the corporeal (with the occasional exception of blood alcohol content). Sublux are a churning hardcore band fronted by two wheelchair users, one of whom has a proper incandescent shriek, and the other of whom has a little machine that makes bleepy noises almost without cessation, whether a song is playing or not. Feral. 

Soundart Radio’s shack allows anyone to sign up and broadcast sounds online, and through small speakers near the main gate. Counter-intuitively, the shows that work the best are those that veer away from Supernormal styles: local noise artist Plague Arish layers up some excellent tape hisses and hums, with thudding submerged rhythms that sound like a helicopter trying to take off in a blancmange, but draws a sparse audience, whereas a handstand competition and Vengaboys tunes get the crowds going. Context is everything, we guess. 

Paper Money

I wasn't best happy with this review. It's all fine, but I'm not sure I captured the last band very well, and teetered too much between liking and disliking the opener. Still, it's Supernormal this weekend, and I have a review pass, so expect a very long review before too long!

DAILY TOLL/ MYSTERY BISCUIT/ FIVER, OMS, Library, 11/7/25 

It’s like a game you might play after Christmas dinner, describe Fiver without using the word “Nirvana”. The solution, saying “”Mudhoney, might be considered gamesmanship and cause Granny to stomp off to the sherry decanter in a huff, but it’s actually a smart move, because Fiver’s take on US grunge has a rootsier, warmer heart that aligns them with the second in command in Seattle’s 90s army. There are even a couple of needling atonal moments which recall Dinosaur Jr, though in fairness, there are also times when Fiver remind us what side of the Atlantic they’re from, delivering bouncy rock somewhere between Wildhearts with a healthier lifestyle and Therapy? without the library cards. Inverting the adage, Fiver tonight suggest that the destination is more important than the journey, and to get to pleasingly chunky climaxes and rousing choruses we have to start each song with slightly clunky, chugging rhythms.  

Mind you there’s chugging and there’s chugging. Forget sub-Oasis pedestrian rockers, think of the steady heartbeat of John Lee Hooker, the relentless greasy grooves of ZZ Top, and the sleek kraut repetition of Can. Mystery Biscuit chug like a sleek silver machine rather than a rumbling old banger, painting bright Edgar Froese synth lines over modern psych tunes. They are experts at knowing when to build, and whenever it feels as though the rhythms couldn’t get more intense Marc Burgess switches from keys to second guitar and the music soars even higher. Perhaps the best track tonight is a slower burn, featuring a long recording of poet e e cummings, which is great with a capital G (somewhat ironically). 

Australia’s Daily Toll seem like the sort of band who’d appreciate a gag about the orthographical preferences of Modernist writers, they have a bookish indie air which makes one think of hand-illustrated C90s of Peel sessions and annotated paperbacks. Although their opening number swims into view from a miasma of bowed bass, their vintage introspective indie isn’t aggressively lofi, but neither is it prettily twee and toothless. Perhaps the best reference point is Yo La Tengo at their subtlest, with a touch of Mazzy Star around the glistening guitar, in handmade Sebadoh wrapping. Despite harking back to a very specific era, there’s plenty of variation, from a surprisingly insistent Jah Wobble bassline in one number to a bit of Dry Cleaning recitation in another, and even a studiously rocking cousin of ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’. Their name evokes enrvating chores, but this inventive band is quietly invigorating. 

Axis Of Dawson

Why doesn't hurt Siobhan Fahey if you throw fruit at her?

Banana Armour

NB The word "readers" was inadvertently omitted form the printed version of this review - my error, I fear - so now you can read it in fully idiomatic English for the first time.

RICHARD DAWSON/ ONE LEG ONE EYE, Divine Schism, Cowley Workers Club, 12/6/25  

Anyone who relishes the expansive bleakness of Lankum should immediately seek out Ian Lynch’s side-project One Leg One Eye, a duo focusing on drone, texture, and oppressive sonic fugs. Tonight's excellent set opens with metaphysical observations about the nature of God from sampled Irish voices atop thick, dark tones in a way that recalls the haunting atmospherics of From The Bogs Of Aughiska. Later a cortège-paced folk song is joined by buzzsaw drones and massed organ notes until it sounds like a spectral Luke Kelly guesting on Scott Walker’s Tilt with Charlemagne Palestine on keys. The track – in as much as elements can be extracted from the sonic blanket that overlays us for forty minutes – ends with what might be a bucket of cutlery emptied in a chapel. Both hurdy-gurdy and uillean pipes are played, but anyone expecting Séamus Ennis sprightliness or bouncy jigs will be confused – mind you, with the venue’s mobile disco LEDs twinkling behind the stage giving Phoenix Nights flavours, the whole set feels like a twisted dream. 

If One Leg sketch landscapes with sound, Richard Dawson captures characters with words. His songs are impeccably economical vignettes in the vein of Hemingway stories or the cool illustrations of Joyce’s Dubliners, except they’re almost impossibly English, with opener ‘Polytunnel’ asking “Could you manage a slice of toast/ Or a little bit of soup, my flower?”. Into this celebration of turnip-pulling a tiny line is almost hidden, “It's Karen who was always the green-fingered one”, offering a glimpse into a deep history for the narrator, and so many of tonight’s songs are about hobbyists – allotment diggers, YouTube ufologists, sponsored runners – undertaking tiny activities as if in defiance of a vast, and often unfriendly, world.  

This isn’t a poetry recital, though, and Dawson’s guitar playing is as fascinating as it is adept, swapping between elegant picking and crunchy abstraction like a hybrid of Davey Graham and Gary Lucas. Those who have trouble with his voice would find that the Dawson mannerisms – argue amongst yourselves whether they’re unconscious tics or a stylistic signature – even more pronounced tonight, especially the octave-leaping swoops to strangled falsetto or husky chest voice. But, like Dylan, he swaps melodic fluency for dramatic power, with ‘Jogging’ tonight being especially visceral, somehow a howl of rage and a clarion call for being alive simultaneously. In a way Dawson is Richard Thompson for socially awkward literature students; in another, he’s Chris Wood for Wire readers; but perhaps he’s simply unique. 

Thrust Never Sleeps

This is one of those gigs performed by old friends, which you go to out of loyalty, but which actually turn out to be excellent.

ANTON BARBEAU & THRUST/ CHARMS AGAINST THE EVIL EYE, Common Ground, 16/5/25 

Charms Against The Evil Eye inhabit that sweet spot characterised by free festivals at the turn of the 80s, in which laidback hippies rubbed against nascent new-wavers, mellowing proggers started to think about adding more tunes, and rock took on jazz influences without the self-conscious fusion fanfare. Many of Charms’ songs sound as though they may have started as bucolic John Martyn reveries before being sharpened and sped up with amphetamine intensity, all rubbery bass and hyperstrummed guitar. Set closer ‘Terry Walpole’s Camera’ chucks 60s psych-pop at us with punk energy, like Buzzcocks in kaftans, and more whimsical numbers still come with a caffeine jolt, putting extra canter into the Canterbury sound; even ‘Green’, the set’s most stoned and wide-eyed track is Caravan with go-faster stripes. It’s a delightful set, the band having quietly become a great proposition whilst you weren’t looking. 

Charms become THRUST to back Anton Barbeau, a prolific Californian songwriter who resided in Oxford for a few years in the noughties. Although he is keen to stress that it has been 7 years since he and the band have been in the same country, let alone room, concerns  on- and offstage about rustiness evaporate as they fly into live favourite ‘This Is Why They Call Me Guru 7’, a sort of bubblegum kraut-rock mantra. Barbeau’s best material balances literate surrealist troubadouring with drug-pumped spaciness and pure pop hooks - think Robyn Hitchcock Presents Popol Vuh Vs ABBA – and tonight is a glistening string of classics, from the compact chug of ‘Dust Beneath My Wings’ to the Eurovision–inspired sex-romp that is ‘Milk Churn In The Morning’, via the abstract collapse of ‘Banana Song’ (which might be the only moment the set veers towards egregiously wacky). Local folker Susanna Starling joins for a couple of excellent numbers, including ‘Leave It With Me, I’m Always Gentle’, one of Barbeau’s most elliptically lovely lyrics. It may have been years since he played in Oxford, but tonight may be the best set we've seen. To apply twisted Ant-logic, he should definitely visit less frequently more often. 

Stigmata Catch-up

Here's your bonus minireview. The editor of Nigthshift couldn't turn up in time to this gig, so I reviewed the first act.  You can find their review of the other acts, Traidora and Distraxi, at nightshiftmag.co.uk/2025/may.pdf.

HOLY WOUNDS, Whiplash, The Bully, 9/4/25 

It might just be suggestion because Holy Wounds feature Taz Corona from the mighty Undersmile, but we seem to detect a doom underpinning to their ritualistic abstract noise - even the most untethered section of screech and drone seems to come with an unspoken trudging beat. Taz plays guitar, growls and does that ghost-of-an-evil-child-monk voice she's so adept at, whilst Kieran Wakeman crawls on the floor doing...indefinable noise things. At one point he plays a horrific rusty scythe with a violin bow, and if it makes no discernible sound, we aren't about to dare tell him. 

Mothers of Inventory

This is my main review for Nightshift this month, but there's actually a tiny uncredited review in there as well.  Think of it as a secret track. I'll post soon. How exciting, eh.

INDEX FOR WORKING MUSIK/ BEDD/ MYSTERY BISCUIT, Divine Schism, FPCC, 6/4/25 

Mystery Biscuit’s cosy kosmische sound melds disco-kraut drums, spacy synths, and subdued indie vocals. ‘Balthasar’ is a thoroughly pleasing chug which inhabits a zone labelled “Pink Floyd funk” but perhaps the best encapsulation of the band is new track ‘Someone Killed My Dog’ - we hear youth culture is helping the police with their enquiries – which is 50% Lou Reed, 40% Hawkwind, and 30% Wooden Shjips...and if you think the maths don’t work, you might not be in the right dimension. 

We steer clear of talking too much about technique, there are vast, dusty swathes of the internet for that sort of thing, where every fourth word is “tone” (and the other three are Stevie, Ray, and Vaughan). But still, we must point out the incredible control of sextet Bedd, playing on a cramped stage through a relatively elementary PA, and yet always sounding beautifully tempered and effortlessly airy. Tonight’s set takes in sweet jangle pop, lofi trip-hop, epic surges of spangly post-shoegaze guitar noise, and even something like Animal Collective without the goofy stoned FX, but the songs are balanced and organic, even when the end feels a hundred miles from where they started. Jamie Hyatt’s vocals come from the unhurried 90s indie school, though there’s enough vulnerability to avoid Britpop smugness, and some of the harmonies bolstering the lead lines are quite gorgeous. The last song even has a keyboard line that recalls Daft Punk’s ‘Da Funk’, of all things. 

We hear someone describe London’s Index For Working Musik as “dark surf”, which isn’t a bad shot. Whilst they unfortunately don’t sound like a vampiric goth band doing twangy instrumentals (a concept that gives What We Do In The Shadows a new meaning), they do add a Nick Cave austerity to scuzzy hypnotic rock, whilst the prominent cello parts sometimes turn them into a chamber-music Cramps. There’s an apparently unintended, but pretty enjoyable hot mix on said cello, which either has the scraping intensity of John Cale’s viola, or hangs a Jesus & Mary Chain noise curtain in front of the band. In contrast to this, the best pieces are actually the most refined, with warm twinned vocals recalling country laments or even Pentangle. This slightly muddy set might be the one on which they’d like to be judged, but it’s still enticing, and perfect dour entertainment for some of Oxford’s dark serfs.   

Digs Your Own Whole

 This review went over the word count, but the editor kindly kept it all in. 

HOUSE OF ALL/ THE PLAN/ TOP SHORTAGE, Divine Schism, Florence Park Community Centre, 15/3/25 

When we first saw Top Shortage we tentatively labelled them “avant-grunge”, and although the set was spirited, we were equally tentative about calling them “any good”. A lot can happen in just over a year, however, and tonight they are excellently gnarled and weighty, the opening number dark, oppressive and grimy like an abandoned underground carpark, through which the ululating punk-yodel vocals drift like a suspicious wraith: think Metal Box with the dub extracted. At other times they resemble a twisted Francophone Television, and a new song sounds as though someone tried to reconstruct a fragmented Devo tune without looking at the pieces in a round on The Krypton Factor. The band is still sometimes scrappy, but this merely highlights the mocking sneers as they take aim at suburban bigotry. 

Southend’s The Plan have a warmer disposition. Their sprightly twin vocals and twangy little guitar parts make them a stick-man sketch of The B-52s, whilst a cute dinkiness in the keys gives them an air of Pram at their most ramshackle. A tendency towards 2/4 country rhythms is intriguing, but not as much as the lead vocalist’s rectangular Diddley-style guitar, which looks as though it was hewn from some ancient cellar door. Perhaps some of the songs are over too quickly, and the set never quite achieves full momentum, but it is nonetheless chirpy and likable. 

There are two reliable ways to make your post-punk band sound great. Firstly, have two drummers (some practical drawbacks here), and secondly, have Steve Hanley on bass (best of luck with that one). House Of All, a band formed entirely of ex-Fall musicians – plus a stand-in for guitarist Pete Greenway who cannot currently tour – actually have three drummers trading places on two stools, and there are a few old faces beaming happily at the sight of Paul Hanley and Karl Burns bashing away together for the first time since 1984, but even those not versed in Fall history will concede that the band sounds like a twitchy thunder god hot-wiring a juggernaut.  

Unless you’re one of Mark E Smith’s sisters, everyone agrees that the one person justified in making Fall-style music is Martin Bramah, founder member of the group and teenage friend of MES. Although there has been a Stalinist rewriting of history to claim that every element of The Fall was under Smith’s control, it is likely that Bramah was responsible for bringing many of the influences squashed together to birth the Fall sound. We hear a lot of those tonight, from the scuffed garage psych evident in opener ‘Aim Higher’ to the Lovecraftian grotesqueries in the lyrics to ‘Harlequin Duke’. Bramah’s declamatory vocals somewhat resemble those of Smith, but there’s a liturgical air to his gnomic utterances, and by the end the gig feels like one long fractal sermon. In a late-career inspiration burst, House Of All have released 3 albums, plus 2 full-length collections of live tracks and reworkings, in a mere two years. Tonight’s honed set has a strong sonic blueprint, but enough ideas and variations to make each track exciting and unique. Always the same, always different, might we say? No, actually, that sounds stupid... 

I'm sure it's not the intention, but this headline band's name just made me think of peanut butter

I felt more at home with this small gig - I even got to sit on an old sofa for a lot of it, which is certainly nicer than being crushed in the O2.

THE LAST WHOLE EARTH CATALOG/ SUNGLASZ VENDOR/ BIGHANDSANDALLGRISTLY, Divine Schism, Common Ground, 6/2/25 

You know a band will be ungainly with an awkward name like bighandsandallgristly, but at the outset their hesitant tinkly confections with timid violin and quavery vocals barely cohere at all. As the set progresses they shape up like a cross between Dirty Three and Penguin Cafe Orchestra, whilst still resembling very shy baby otters who have found some instruments (all except the drummer who is unusually busy and who brings a Broadcast bounce which is lovely but does tend to drown out the rest of the band). Their best track is like bossa nova in the shape of a lumpily crocheted cardigan, and we find the set ultimately unconvincing whilst being oddly fascinated to see them play again. 

Perhaps bighands... were invited onto the bill by The Last Whole Earth Catalog who were fed up with having the stupidest name within a three-mile radius. They share a low-key eclecticism although TLWEC’s music is far more cogent, often bringing Vanishing Twin vibes with 60s soundtrack keys, sugary boogaloo vocals and crisp, tidy rhythms. Despite it being a grimly cold evening, they warm the room with summery lilo pop that has enough intimacy to feel direct and honest, and enough textural savvy to hold the attention. Occasionally it feels like there are one too many people with one too many ideas on stage, and maybe a jazzoid instrumental sounding like a Kia-Ora-fueled Matt Bianco is a bad call, but overall this is a strong set. 

Bristol’s Sunglasz Vendor have a name that is only mildly infuriating and so let the side down, but are definitely the pick of the night sonically. Again, they bring different styles together, from the most spartan of slowcore minimalism to rasping Sonic Youth noise rock via some gnarly wired Pixies pop but it’s all so much more organic, partly due to the excellent bassist anchoring everything with unflashy lines whilst barely blinking, let alone rocking out. ‘Ice Cream Tubs’ switches gears again at the end of the set, with Cassels-like rant-rock disenchantment, but even this reduces to a strangely arid desert of tiny tones and tics half-way through. We might have had very little idea what was coming next for most of tonight, but with Sunglasz Vendor it was invariably a pleasant  discovery. 

I Like Big Mutts!

One of two reviews in the latest Nightshift, this is the review of the famous band (or famous enough to fill Oxford's largest venue, anyway...my mum's not heard of them).

FAT DOG/ ZIPLOCK, O2, 16/2/25 

With two sets of bright ravey keyboards, sprightly drums, and inscrutable, deadpan vocals Ziplock probably shouldn’t be funky, but they deliver a slice of Happy Meal electro bounce-pop which is part ESG, part EMF, and part whatever sounds good on an E. Halfway through the set they swap the Hoover synth lines for a thicker buzzing bass clomp and couple it with some surprisingly intricate and tricksy drum patterns until they sound rather wonderfully like Add N To (X) doused in cherry cola.  

They share members with Fat Dog, but in the thirty minutes between sets any desire for concepts like delicacy and elegance are presumably scoured out of them in some  backstage ritual, possibly involving dogs' heads and Tennent’s Extra. Their dance-punk attack is far more intense on stage than on record, Joe Love’s vocals rarely dropping below a nasal bellow, and the pounding gabber-adjacent electronic pulses often drowning out the live drums. The sound is elementary and elemental, not so much broad strokes as hard slaps. And it certainly galvanises the crowd to frenzied moshing within four bars flat. On the downside, the fiddle and sax are almost entirely inaudible for the whole gig, and a tendency to smother the vocals in unchanging delay turns the gig into a giant enveloping thump-hum, like being harangued by a totalitarian DustBuster. As non-stop pummelling goes, though, it’s all good clean (dirty) fun, and a larger stage than their last Oxford visit has not leeched the infectious energy from the band. 

There’s a clear line to be drawn back to the sleaze rock of Fat White Family – or more accurately, their chunkier sick-sequin spin-off Moonlandingz – but in some ways Fat Dog are more like a diseased glam version of Laibach, all joke jackboots and coked-up EBM, spiced with the controlled chaos antics of Gogol Bordello. What they lose in depth tonight they gain in potency, and if we long for some of the Ziplock quirkiness to vary the tone a little, the majority of a teeming Academy clearly couldn’t disagree more, howling along with every word, leaping like loons and hollering appreciation at every possible juncture: fair play, nothing wrong with a night of hedonistic noise (but do stop doing that woof-woof chant, you sound like the audience on The Word, and that runny dollop of lad culture is best left in the 90s).   

Outstanding In Afield

Here's my second review for this month's Nightshift. The editor reviewed the In A Different Place all-dayer, but as he was one of the organisers and had shifts on the door and so on, I wrote some copy. You'll find the text below interpolated into the review at feb.pdf.

IN A DIFFERENT PLACE, 1512/24 

Whilst one might expect the front bar to host acoustic acts, there’s a surprising array of styles and genres on display throughout the afternoon. However, opening act Aphra Taylor is a textbook example of a guitar-wielding singer-songwriter. This is definitely not to say that her set is generic, though, her voice full of smoke and sweetness, and her delivery enlivened by tiny trills and ornaments that make the performance unique. 

The merch table is surprisingly sparsely utilised during the day, but Sinews are selling a  “horseface T-shirt". Considering their set is like having your face trampled by rabid stampeding stallions, this seems fitting. Their post-hardcore flagellation draws obvious comparisons to Fugazi or Drive Like Jehu, but there’s a sensitive heart beating somewhere within the maelstrom. 

Baby Maker’s songs are like the flayed and brittle skeletons of new wave pop, with bouncy tunes reduced to chugging drum machines, cheeky guitar twangs, and wry vocals, offering hints of Arab Strap’s laconic lofi story-telling. The set is sometimes more intriguing than successful, but the character shines through. 

The most intense set of the day is possibly delivered by Pet Twin, whose music has morphed over the last year from sparse confessional pop to huge theatrical workouts, which seem to be cathartic rituals for Gallagher as much they are spectacles for the audience. A typical track merges thick treacly bass, heart-wrenching vocals, and euphoric keys, so that you’re not sure whether to dance, weep, or collapse in the corner. One or two tracks have slightly messy endings, but really who cares about the landing once you’ve soared in flight? And, just at the point we think things couldn’t get any better, The Bobo comes onstage for the subaquatic ghost rave that is ‘No To Dread’. 

Like Baby Maker, Lord Bug’s songs are sparse and idiosyncratic, more like half-remembered dreams than pop tunes, and like Aphra Taylor, Libby Peet’s vocals lift them to spellbinding new places, her voice warm and jazzy yet introspective and mysterious, and her delivery full of wonderful slurs and rubati, so that she comes off like a strange melding of Amy Winehouse and Lou Barlow. For an act with a track called ‘Dog’s Dinner’ this is a beautiful and balanced set. 

The sound levels for GIGSY are perhaps a little low, but Khloë’s explosive stage energy would be enough for a gig to sound epic if the PA were rolled up newspaper attached to a dictaphone. Her music is a crunchy electronica take on dark-minded 80s synth – EDM meets EBM? - but the melodically aggressive vocal lines are built from club pop fun and burning rage, in equal measure  

Two of the themes running through today’s event are vocalists with wired stage presence, and music with a stoned psych groove. Both of these come together for local favourites Flights Of Helios, whose set is an eclectic melange of post-punk wiriness and expansive folky textures. Chris Beard is an imposing frontman, swaying at the front of the stage, screaming, crooning, cajoling and entreating by turns like a cross between a fundamentalist preacher, a Dickensian villain, and a praying mantis. There are touches of adventurous acts such as Spiritualized or Ultrasound in their set, but as a nod to Christmas, they turn ‘Good King Wenceslas’ into a psych-punk mantra, perfect for anyone whose Christmas dinner is composed solely of brandy butter and brown acid. 

The Subtheory bring back the classic trip hop sound, with low-slung beats, slinky bass,  and hazy late-night vocals (plus, unexpectedly, some excellent restrained guitar solos). Whilst it might be fair to accuse them of cosy 90s revivalism, they do it so incredibly well, and this set has the greatest spaciousness and poise of any on the bill. Cate Debu’s vocals are cool and clear, sitting unhurried at the centre of the chunky grooves, and with James from Pet Twin joining in the singers supply a softly spoken personality to the songs, so that they’re as much Portisheart and they are Portishead (sorry). 

As with Mandrake Handshake at last year’s festival, In A Different Place is headlined by a band who have moved from Oxford to London and found great success. Pecq might play their biggest gigs as part of touring bands for Barry Can’t Swim and Arlo Parks, but they more than own the stage as a trio, coming on to near darkness and launching into some understated tech-pop tunes that might convince you that “crepuscular bangers” is a genre. They take us on a slick, sleek ride through well tooled dreamy electro, but actually it i  the subtlest moments that they truly bewitch, and a hushed bleepy cover of ‘Wichita Linesman’ morphs into one of their own songs in a bubbling pool of squelchy synthtones.