Our recommended gig of the week is this Friday at North London’s New River Studios.
The night will feature:
Adulkt Life, a new band featuring members of the legendary Huggy Bear and Male Bonding (and our Sonny)
Snoozers, a new project from Jon Slade (ex-Huggy Bear, sometime Comet Gain, always good value)
Barry, South London’s quintessential queer guitar pop band
PLUSvery special guests – we’re not allowed to tell you who but trust us when we say we are MEGA excited about them playing, all the way from the other side of the planet.
After all that Daisy and Diva, AKA Token Girl DJs, are gonna share their killer records with us to stop us being sad it’s all over!
Adulkt Life will have brand new zines hot off the press for reading on the bus home too.
Calderdale has been massively devastated by Storm Ciara. Many homes, roads and businesses throughout the region have been flooded and left underwater.
Calderdale is a place very close to our hearts, with The Orielles hailing from Halifax, Working Mens Club hailing from Todmorden, and one of the country’s greatest independent music venues – The Trade’s Club – being situated in Hebden Bridge.
Said venue is hosting a fundraiser event on Friday 28 February to help people hardest hit in their community. More details and tickets are available here.
You can also donate to the Calderdale flood appeal directly here.
Caught by the River are teaming up with Tim Dee for an evening of Greenery in Bristol on April 3rd.
Celebrating the release of Dee’s book of the same name, Greenery will feature readings and conversations from the author himself as well as Will Burns, Luci Gorell Barnes, Alexandra Harris and Michael Malay.
There will also be a talk about the work of Bristol-based artist Greg Poole, the painter of Greenery‘s cover, who sadly died in December 2018.
Working Mens Club have released a brand new single and video – ‘White Rooms & People’.
The video was directed by Kieran Evans, who had this to say about the band, and the video:
I’ve lost count how many people have told me a band will blow my mind when i see them live only for the whole experience to be a huge disappointment. but then again on a warm summer evening last june, that very rare moment where my mind was blown actually did happen and working mens club were responsible. just 40 odd people and me slowly losing our minds in a sweaty basement. fuck they were good. i mean really fucking good.
fast forward 5 months and jeff barrett fires over a soundcloud link to me of white rooms and people and a simple question. promo. interested?… fuck yeah.
so here goes…. i wanted to abstract the idea of what a band should be seen to “do” in a pop video. what is the purpose of performing/miming live in this unreal state? i love the bands attitude especially syds stage persona so i played with the idea of the band showing complete disinterest and nonchalance to this “requirement” to perform to camera. a number of the set-ups were devised on the day of the shoot with the band which made the process even more fun. the stereotypical visuals of cables, amps and paraphernalia were dumped in favour of the band presenting an attitude in the way they ‘performed’ or “mimed” the song.
in terms of the look and feel, the more i listened to the track, the more i wanted the shoot to have an analogue feel. the song is such a hook laden monster i wanted to really set it visually apart from the current crop of indie style guitar bands promo’s set in derelict warehouses. with that in mind, i started looking at early 80’s video art as reference points and especially the slightly off kilter vision fx treatments of footage that somehow gave “meaning” to the art and the messages behind it.. so we worked with a vivid, colourful palette that lent itself more to 80’s style videos…the one request syd had was he wanted the promo to have a weird/unsettling feel to the clip despite the colour and vividness so I devised a simple narrative of framing the presentation of the promo within a strange, unsettling gallery space with a slightly dark twist to the band and protagonists fate. the clue is in the quote at the top of the promo….
ps. working mens club will truly blow your fucking mind. i’m telling you now.
Artist Cold War Steve has released a brand new exhibition which is completely free to download, encouraging people to print and put it up wherever they deem fit.
“The exhibition could run in your local library, a pub, front room, back garden, doctors surgery, music venue . . or even a gallery. “
The first space to announce they’ll be hosting a version of it is Mannakin, a mannequin hire, sales, and recycling shop in Lincolnshire.
Head to Cold War Steve’s website for more details and to download the exhibition for your own showing!
Cold War Steve aka Christopher Spencer is an artist from Birmingham, England who specialises in surreal, satirical and hilarious collages originally made on his phone and iPad. Since 2016 Cold War Steve’s Twitter account with almost daily posts has been a lifeline to many in these dark times with his following increasing by the day. Three solo exhibitions, two books with Thames & Hudson, commissions for the National Galleries of Scotland and the Whitworth in Manchester, a giant billboard installation at Glastonbury Festival and an international TIME magazine cover have all followed in the last year.
Debut London show from ADULT ENTERTAINMENT, the new “erotic beat” project from Adrian Flanagan, maverick synth wizard who brought you The Moonlandingz, International Teachers Of Pop and Eccentronic Research Council.
Fronted by Iconic futuristic Warhol-esque Superstar in the making, Mistress Charlotte Cannon – who lyrically resides somewhere between the cut-ups of William S Burroughs and the ‘readers letters’ page in a 1970’s Adult Magazine.
Expect: deep dubby eccentric basement sounds – somewhere between 1920’s Berlin and late 1980’s Acid house – or as they put it – ‘moist sounds from the Underground!’
On top of that Mushy P (Goat Girl) plays a live support set, and Social stalwarts Carl and Sophie bring the big tunes all night long.
