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Music Articles

Live: Two Door Cinema Club @ Manchester Academy

4 Stars Its 7:30pm, and outside the union a group of teenage girls are shelling out £40 each for a ticket. Bearing in mind the normal price was £9.50, it’s not surprising the touts are laughing their heads off. It’s also no surprise to find that at least of half of the crowd is underage, […]

Warehouse Project: Simian Mobile Disco Preview

With a supposed techno-based new album coming out later this year, SMD could be bringing a heavier sound to Warehouse than they ever have before. But still, expect plenty of analogue bleeping, and some of their Kitsuné remixes of Klaxons, Air and Muse. As SMD are in control of the whole line-up, it’s a bit […]

Live: Josh Ritter @ RNCM

4 Stars It’s always heartening to see a musician enjoying a gig as much as the audience, and Josh Ritter, playing to an almost full Royal Northern College of Music last Wednesday, looked positively ecstatic. At several points he literally jumped for joy, and the rest of the time contented himself with grinning wildly, resembling […]

Album: Flamingo – Brandon Flowers

2 Stars The progression from frontman to solo artist is a well documented one. Morrissey, Richard Ashcroft, Sting – all have tried their hand at breaking away from the constraints of a rock band democracy to pursue their own creative interests. But the one thing that the above have in common is that their music […]

Album: Halcyon Digest – Deerhunter

4 Stars     Given their previous associations with so-called ‘garage rock’, this new offering from Deerhunter comes as a bit of surprise. Gone are the discordant soundscapes and experimental noise sessions that denote their previous albums. Their fourth offering has an ambient, dreamy quality to it that make it softer and possibly somewhat more […]

Interview: Two Door Cinema Club

Alex Trimble, Kevin Baird and Sam Halliday, otherwise known as Two Door Cinema Club, are sitting backstage at the Academy 2, admiring the glorious view of the building site in front of the John Rylands library. They may have just driven through the night from Glasgow, but as lead singer Alex starts talking, you can instantly tell they wouldn’t change it for the world.

Album: Disc-Overy – Tinie Tempah

3.5 Stars During the eleven months that it has taken to record his debut, Tinie Tempah’s jocular, no-frills lyrical style has taken him from relative obscurity to being one of the most talked about and promising artists in the charts, and initially, Disc-Overy seems to uphold the momentum of his previous success.   The piercing […]

Album: Man Alive – Everything Everything

4 Stars Without seeming too unsympathetic towards the millions of people across the globe who are fighting tooth and nail to ‘make it’ as musicians in the world of showbiz, the brand of ‘music’ that is espoused by men like Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh is simply the worst thing that has ever happened to […]

Column: The Jonas Brothers Are Good For Music

Recently, I found myself sat in front of a Freeview box with friends and alcohol, begrudgingly watching the worst music channels on TV (You know the ones; channels with titles like Mega Tunes TV or Hit Land). All delightfully cheesy and vaguely tolerable, until, a few beers in, the corner of the screen lit up […]

Column: A Piece of Meat

What separates a drunkard eating a kebab and Lady Gaga? I ask this question on the basis that both will eventually arrive at a party covered in meat.

Album: Surfing The Void – Klaxons

Whether this is an organic evolution, or just an attempt to distinguish themselves from the hoards of skinny-jeaned indie bands dominating the music scene, is uncertain, but it certainly makes for interesting listening.

Interview: Paul van Dyk

Having been twice voted No. 1 DJ in the world, and with a Grammy Award and over five million album sales under his belt, Paul van Dyk is something of a legend in the electronic music world. Music Editor Eoghan Bennett sits down with the trance DJ to discuss playing at The Warehouse Project, his […]

Column: What would Fiddy do?

Twitter is, at times, a beautiful thing. In its short history it has been used to document the horrendous events of the Iranian election, bypass the censorship of several oppressive countries and, perhaps most importantly, keep Stephen Fry entertained whilst he was trapped in a lift. Despite this, there is also a dark side to […]

Songs Sans Frontieres: Brazil

Brazil is big. Not just big, it’s fricking enormous. It’s the fifth largest country in the world, even bigger than Australia. So, what would you expect from a country that big? Well I can tell you – a whole lotta music. There is far too much to talk about for one little box, so I’ve […]

Album: Postcards From A Young Man – Manic Street Preachers

Postcards From A Young Man is the Manic Street Preachers’ 10th studio album. In a music industry in which a band is lucky if their second album makes any kind of impression, this is a major achievement and should make the band something of a national treasure (albeit a Welsh one). So how come the Manic Street Preachers appear to have passed so many music fans by?

Album: Growing Pains – Dinosaur Pile Up

4 and a half stars Every article you’ll ever read about Dinosaur Pile-Up will contain at least one reference to the Foo Fighters, and for understandable reasons. Matt Bigland, singer, lead guitarist, and main driving force of the band has never made secret his love of Dave Grohl’s outfit, and the opening tracks of ‘Growing […]