There’s a strange wistful melancholy to the final afternoon of a festival. The knowledge that the tent is down, the car is loaded and that there is a long drive home looming near weighs heavy. There’s no more pizza left. It feels like the crowd has already begun to thin as people start to drift…

When a 12 piece Romani Balkan Brass band renowned for their funky, fast, high-energy sound and driving crowds completely wild are unleashed on the Saturday night of a festival in front of an utterly packed main stage, there’s only one place to photograph from. The front. That means jumping off front-of-house where Lampy is in…

Having last encountered the Catalan trio, The Parrots, in the Shapes Warehouse a couple of months back as part of Fluffer Records largest pit party to date I was very much intrigued to see them play in the rather more gentile environs of Rough Trade East… A very pleasant evening of hazy, garage rock ensued,…

The thing about the chaps from Fluffer Records is that they’re always up to something new… First it was the Pit Parties, then they super-sized the pit, creating an incredible vista of utter mayhem with the Black Lips. Selecting new music from small and up-and-coming bands based on their sound alone and not the hype…

It has to be said that I was suffering from a few mixed emotions as I bimbled through the backstreets of Brixton on my way to the Windmill on a particularly sunny Saturday afternoon last weekend. A little trepidation as I’d never shot at the Windmill and I expected it to be really tough from…

You know it’s going to be an interesting evening when the frontman of the bad you’re about to see sidles over to Lampy, Grant the sound-man and myself who were nattering by the sound desk as the band unpacks their kit and asks innocently, “Is there anywhere I can put the inflatable?” With the CD…

A matter of days after releasing her new album, “The Bride”, Bat For Lashes (Natasha Khan) popped by Rough Trade East to perform tracks from the album and one or two oldies. As an album, “The Bride” is an intriguing and brave concept album telling, as it does, a story of a woman whose fiancé…

I first encountered Bad Bad Not Good’s music through Jamie Cullum’s jazz show on Radio Two soon after the release of their album “III”. The trio of Matthew Tavares on keyboard, Chester Hansen on bass and Alex Sowinski on drums were playing something new and exciting, deeply rooted in jazz, but blended with hip-hop rhythms…

Following the extravaganza out east that was Pit Party No.7 with its incredible performances from the likes of Heck, BoNigen and the Black Lips, an event so epic it took the concept of the Pit Party to a whole new scale, Fluffer Records’ brought the Pit back to its (more modestly sized) spiritual home in…

The splendid and very nattily dressed Slug playing on the South Bank as part of the Meltdown festival with guest drummer (Peter Brewis of Field Music fame) and very special guest star guitarist for the last track! It’s always a joy to see Slug play and this formed a great warm-up for Pit Party No.8…

Parquet Courts started their set at Rough Trade with a very poignant moment, dedicating it to the victims of the Orlando Night Club shooting in which 49 people were killed only one day earlier. that was the same day that Parquet Courts, and a good portion of the RT crowd were enjoying Field Day in…

Weird Dreams play some of the more unusual and enchanting music I’ve heard at Rough Trade for a little while. Vocals rich in dreamy Beach Boys-inspired harmonies combine with synthesiser lightly-infused with the wandering ghosts of early 80’s New Romanticism, and more urgent and rockier, yet sympathetically delivered guitar to create delicate, almost fairytale melodies…