Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

Grinspoon, the original winners of Triple J Unearthed, and one of the godfathers of Australian grunge rock. Promoting their new album “Black Rabbit’s”, the boys from Lismore were ready to entertain a sell out crowd at The Tivoli.

In typical Grinspoon fashion the night began explosively, with a brief wave to the crowd before creating their huge wall of sound opening with their 1998 smash hit “Black Friday” and cult favorite “Dead Cat” (affectionately labeled DCX3 on their onstage set list). This left no room for the crowd to warm up, this band required immediate attention.

Phil Jameson was at his best, his usual flamboyancy winning everyone over, myself included even though he may have used his cups of water to wet my camera a few times...

Posted in Press Releases

Orange up the World and win 3 tickets to Roskilde Festival 2013 for your camp
We need to put up our Roskilde posters abroad, and we need your help! But wouldn’t it be too easy just to put up posters? We thought so and decided to make a contest out of it.

Which camp can put up 100 posters in the most creative and innovative way?

It could be anything from posing as one huge human poster to doing a projection on a wall. The only limit is your imagination – and the law, of course!

How to enter

Write up a description of how you and your camp will put up the posters here no later than 8 April 2013. Be creative and innovative. At 12 April we choose the camps with the most fun or alternative ideas for the poster setup, and they will receive 100 posters from us and orange up the World.

How is the...

Posted in Press Releases

Ladies and Gentleman! A marvelous and brand new venue is enriching the colorful
programs of Sziget Festival this year. The Cirque du Sziget will host breath-taking “newcircus” productions and also some impressive shows of young Hungarian acrobats, put together exclusively for the event. Because Sziget is so much more than just a music festival!

Among the rich programs of Sziget Festival, this year a brand new and very spectacular venue is
born. Fruzsina Szép, Program Director of Sziget, said: “The audience of Sziget could enjoy many
circus productions in the previous years. Because of the huge success we decided to dedicate an
own location for this popular art form. We would like to have everything that is circus every day at
one location.”

The idea was born last year, at the 20th...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Skarlett Riot are a young band from North Lincolnshire. The band only formed in 2010 but have already released two EPs – a self title release, and the Villain EP. Now they’re about to release their debut album – Tear me down. The band have already shared stages with bands including Heavens Basement, Reckless love, Firewind, Black Spiders, Crashdiet and many more as well as playing festivals including last year’s Bloodstock festival.

Two of the tracks on the new album will be familiar to fans who bought the band’s Villain EP – ”Villain” and ”Party hard”, so if you haven’t got the EP then buying a copy is a good way to get an early listen to two of the songs from the album.

Brief comments on a few tracks

The album starts with ”Faded memory”, the first single to be taken from the album...

Posted in Cd Reviews

After the releasing his last studio album “Doctor Faith“, Christopher Cross embarked on one of his biggest tours in Europe in the last 15 years. His show at the Theatre Le Trianon in Paris, France was filmed by nine cameras in HD and recorded, and it is now being released as his first live album. It’s surprising that it’s taken him 34 years since the release of his first studio album to release a live album, but it’s good that he’s chosen to release one now. The album will be released on April 8th, 2013 via earMUSIC.

For the ‘Doctor Faith’ tour Christopher Cross has expanded his band to include a more classical “rock line-up“: Andy Suzuki (keyboards, sax), Dave Beyer (drums), Chazz Frichtel (bass, vocals), Kiki Ebsen (keyboards, vocals), Richie Gajate Garcia (percussion).

The...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Latin Grammy-winning band Bajofondo release their new album, Presente at the start of April. The album’s title refers to what the band is at the present moment – ”a stirring mix of tango, milonga, folklore, rock, hip-hop, electronica, jazz, classical, and a world of sounds from the Río de la Plata, the river that separates and unites Argentina and Uruguay”. That’s certainly an unusual list of sounds to lend together, and it’s that interesting mix that made me keen to listen to and review the album.

Brief comments on a few tracks..

The album opens with ’Intro’, a gentle string instrumental. Next up comes ’Codigo de barra’ which ramps up the pace and power with a strong Tango flavour. Again this is an instremental track, one of several on the album. It’s a lovel piece of music.

’Oigo...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Black is singer and songwriter Colin Vearncombe. Released in 1987, ’Wonderful life’ is best known for the title track which reached number 8 in the singles charts and stayed in the charts for 9 weeks – indeed it’s a song you still hear on TV or radio now. A second single, ’Sweetest smile’ had similar success – spending ten weeks in the charts and reaching number 8. The album had great success reaching number 3 in the album charts and selling well over 1.5 million copies.

This deluxe edition includes the original album on one CD plus a second CD containing 14 bonus tracks, including the original Ugly Man version of the Wonderful Life single plus a selection of B-sides and four songs from a 1986 Janice Long session.
The album’s liner notes come complete with a specially commissioned inter...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Faustus evolved in 2006 from the band Dr Faustus and released their debut album in 2008 and following this were nominated as the Best Group in the 2009 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. The three members of Faustus have a strong folk background, having been in well known bands before – the members are Saul Rose (Waterson:Carthy, Whapweasel), Benji Kirkpatrick (Seth Lakeman Band, Bellowhead) and Paul Sartin (Bellowhead, Belshazzar’s Feast).

After a two year break, the band returned to touring in Autumn 2012 and worked on finishing their new album, Broken down gentlemen which has just been released, and the band will be on tour in April.

I’m certainly not an expert in folk music but one thing I do know is that Folk music is such a diverse range of sounds (a day at the Cambridge folk festival will...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

Metal Female Voices Fest, October 2012

Late October once again saw thousands of fans of female fronted metal descend on the Belgian town of Aalst for the Metal Female Voices Fest, which is held at the Oktoberhallen in Wieze, on the outskirts of Aalst. This year was the tenth MFVF, and as with the past few years was to consist of a Friday evening followed by long days on Saturday and Sunday.

Normally the friday night see’s three bands performing, but this year we were in for something special – the Eve’s Apple group of singers putting on a one-off show. The evening started later than normal which gave fans chance to shop for merchandise, enjoy a few beers and meet friends from around the world...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

If there was ever a band to single handedly represent Australia’s “pub rock” scene over the years it would undoubtedly be The Angels. Amidst there Australian tour promoting their new album “Take It To The Streets”, the group hosted a buzzing Acacia Ridge Hotel to create a remarkable 70’s rock vibe that could only be felt to be believed. The audience were covered, their faces with smiles and most of their bodies with tattoos. The venue itself was generous, ignoring the need for a crowd barrier to host a truly personal experience.

Combine these attributes with some ‘old-school’ guitar tones and the constant anticipation for the string of hits to come, the atmosphere was set and ready to take even new fans right back to a night of pub rock in 1974 when The Angels were formed...