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Sydney's very own hard-biting rockers; C.O.F.F.I.N are a four piece, full force, boogie rock ‘n’ roll band featuring snarling lead vocals from behind the drum kit, high voltage lead guitars, and steady rhythms that keep you stomping along.

With an infectious hip-shaking groove, a chaotic, punk live show and a commanding voice of political activism, C.O.F.F.I.N has captivated a passionate following and widespread acclaim across the globe. They’ve clocked hundreds of high velocity performances, countless headline tours and unforgettable festival appearances, and has shared the stage with iconic and influential bands such as Amyl and the Sniffers, Tropical F*ck Storm, TSOL, Celibate Rifles, Dead Kennedys, Misfits, and the Hard-Ons to name a few.

Exploring song themes on their own Australian experience, C.O.F.F.I.N voice their juxtaposition between the serenity and beauty of the stolen lands we walk and live, as well as the harrowing social injustices and prejudice that is deeply ingrained within Australian culture. Every performance is a platform and an opportunity to voice for positive cultural change and there is never a stage too large or small to challenge and confront outdated, yet modern Australian-ideals.

C.O.F.F.I.N have recorded and released five studio albums, one live album, and three EPs, all of which have sold out globally. Their most recent LP entitled ‘Australia Stops’, was released through Goner Records (US), Bad Vibrations (UK) and Damaged Record Co. (AU) in September 2023, debuting at #2 on the Australian ARIA Charts, winning ‘Best Hard Rock/Heavy Album’ at the National Live Music Awards and an end-of-year appearance at the highly cherished Meredith Music Festival.

Internationally, the band received higher global recognition and acclaim, reaching #5 in Vive Le Rock’s top 50 albums of the year of 2023 (UK), plus features in Rolling Stone (France) and Visions Magazine (Germany). With an unquenchable thirst for adventure and discovery, C.O.F.F.I.N have set out on several international tours across the USA, Europe, UK and Asia. They’ve joined esteemed international
festival bills such as Wide Awake Festival (UK), Binic Folks Blues Festival (France), Goner Fest (USA), Palp Festival (Switzerland) and SonicBlast Festival (Portugal) amongst many others.

Age restriction: 14+ / 14 - 16s accompanied by an adult

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Heavy Glory is the first solo record by Elias Rønnenfelt, who for the past 16 years has been the singer of Iceage, a band he co-founded when he was 16 years old. Heavy Glory is the sound of growing up by throwing oneself into the world, made by someone whose only constant companions have been a pen and a guitar. The album tells tales of inspiration and perseverance in the face of chaos, isolation and excess. Villains are poetic, crocodiles and rats without names or shapes, while banal details evoke a sharp, lived ennui, from the perfume of a urinal to the mere fact of Luton, London’s loneliest airport. The world it describes is a bright mess, and Rønnenfelt is in it. He knows how to be in it. 

Heavy Glory was recorded in Copenhagen, in chapters and moments, over the course of a year. Rønnenfelt plays the guitars. Iceage’s Dan Kjær Nielsen plays drums. Forever collaborators including Iceage and Danish ’77 punk godfather Peter Peterdrop drop in, and two songs feature distinctive vocal counterpoints from Joanne Robertson and Fauzia. “I’ve done this a bunch of times,” Rønnenfelt explains, speaking of the process of crafting a long player, “but capturing and crystallizing an album remains a singular ritual, just with different circumstances. We are capturing something that is hard to hold down.”

The circumstances of this record are notable. Its songwriting first took shape in the spring of 2022, during the curious coda of the pandemic, when the world felt neither open nor closed. Rønnenfelt, “sick and tired of not being able to do what I do,” announced to his fans and friends that he would play shows anywhere in Europe, in any venue, to whoever wanted to hear his music. On the road, Rønnenfelt would write songs and play them the next day. These songs, which form the heart of this LP, were designed to be played anywhere, and they had to be: they were christened in forests and living rooms, bookstores and chapels.

Heavy Glory is a record that examines all the things that lovers do, from the most desperate to the most pure. The album’s crooked path is threaded through by a lover. Maybe more than one lover, the timeline shifts constantly—she’s spectral and ever-changing, like the women of Mickey Newbury’s Looks Like Rain or Townes Van Zandt’s Our Mother the Mountain. The lover haunts the record, reappearing and provoking Rønnenfelt, pulling him in and pushing him away. 

“Like Lovers Do,” the album’s emphatic opener, pleads with the lover to spin him around “like lovers do.” “Close” describes the line between jealousy and protectiveness. “Unarmed” is a song of surrender. With an energizing steam-engine chug on a drum machine, “Worm Grew a Spine” paints a picture of an “empress” at the blade of opportunism. It isa knotty flash of words and themes reminiscent of the ornate amphetamine jams on Blonde on Blonde, delivered with a certain earned arrogance, “an attempt to show that no one can fuck with me, lyrically speaking.” 

“River of Madeleine” is as soft as “Worm” is hard as he harnesses that toughness in the name of preservation, staying up all night to protect his lover’s dreams. “No One Else” litigates the feelings of love that arrive too late, leaving only memories. “Stalker” is an epic third-person story song in the tradition of the murder ballad, describing a woman whose kindness, whose mere existence, results in death. It is total fiction, boiled down from a scrapped novel Rønnenfelt wrote years earlier.  

On “Doomsday Childsplay,” a lilting lament with a Warren Ellis-esque violin line obscured by hammered guitar chords, Rønnenfelt tells of “a parasitic high,” but he’s still alive. Rønnenfelt’s fluency and comfort in music creates a sound that wobbles and rocks but never loses its center, both fragile and super tough, and always moving forward. It is dreamy, sketchy, provisional, bombastic, held together by the passion of certainty.

The record closes with two covers. The first, Spacemen 3’s “Sound of Confusion,” is a mission statement of the life Rønnenfelt has found and inherited in music. “Here it comes,” the song famously promises, and flares out into noise. It is a joyful noise, because this life, in all its grit, is the life he chose. A personal anthem since his early teen years, “Sound of Confusion” became a statement that Rønnenfelt would finally make out loud on that journey in the summer of 2022, when he entreated Pete Kember, aka Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom, to play the song with him at a show in Lisbon.

The second, Townes Van Zandt’s “No Place to Fall,” is a sweet plea, Rønnenfelt’s final invitation to join him on his journey. It is also a waltz, a one-two-three that whirls in a circle. This journey—this story, this record—will repeat and continue. It never stops. These are the circumstances enshrined in ritual through the creation of this album. “Hit the bottle, wash it down, while there’s still time for another round,“ he sings on “Another Round.” Such is Heavy Glory.

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Since the mid-late 1990s, Kenny Anderson's DIY pop alter-ego King Creosote has released over 100 records (at a relatively conservative guess), and his songs have been covered and performed by artists including Simple Minds and Patti Smith.

Many of his LPs, EPs and CDRs were self-released via Anderson’s homegrown Fife imprint, Fence-amid major label dalliances (2005’s KC Rules OK and 2007’s Bombshell on Warners), and a long-standing kinship with Domino Records, whose KC dispatches include Kenny and Beth’s Musakal Boat Rides (2003), the Mercury Prize-shortlisted Jon Hopkins union Diamond Mine (2011), and 2014’s From Scotland With Love, which soundtracked the award-winning film of the same name.

Anderson’s latest King Creosote outing is I, Des, an album that characteristically digs deep into his previous work - revisiting and recycling lyrics, home-made tapes, half-spun songs- and continues his quest to navigate mortality, ardour, stormy waters, the moon in the sky, and the East Neuk of Fife.

I, Des is a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and co-producer Derek O’Neill, aka Des Lawson (2016’s Astronaut Meets Appleman, From Scotland With Love), which upholds an enduring tradition: Anderson has long had an affinity for joining forces with other musicians, including his 90s bluegrass punk rabbles the Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra and Khartoum Heroes; insurgent pop cabal The Fence Collective (James Yorkston, KT Tunstall, HMS Ginafore, The Pictish Trail); and indie-folk supergroup the Burns Unit (Emma Pollock, Karine Polwart, Sushil Dade).

He’s equally commanding whether playing live to capacity crowds at London’s Barbican, Edinburgh’s Usher Hall and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, or serenading fans in the fishing pubs and pottery shops of Crail and An struther; whether playing guitar, banjo, accordion, modular synths or wine glass drones. The common threads are KC’s singular voice, and his roguish, roving, ever-evolving, gorgeous songs in the key of Fife.

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Skiddle, Seetickets, Dice

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From the first listening to Héritage, the much-awaited fourth album by Songhoy Blues, it is clear that the rock band from northern Mali are in a new frame of mind. With Héritage, they move into a more acoustic, creative re-imagining of the “desert blues” style that has brought them to world fame.

The Songhoy are an ethnicity living along the bend of the Niger river in northern Mali (their language is Songhai, hence the two spellings that are often used interchangeably). Songhoy music is one of the backbones of the “desert blues” sound. Songhoy Blues pay tribute to some of the great musicians of the past, whose work continues to inspire them, giving ‘a big thank you to the ancestors who bequeathed works of art so that future generations could orient themselves’.

For over a decade, when not on tour, the four members of Songhoy Blues, three of whom are originally from the north, have been based in Bamako, capital of Mali, unable to return to their homeland, where musicians are in real danger of their lives because of religious fanaticism that sees music as ‘haram’ (a sin).

Charismatic, articulate and creative, the band burst onto the scene in 2013 with a powerful style and stage manner once described as “Timbuktu Punk”. Their songs deal with issues of life and love in Mali, and are based on five-note scales, rock rhythms, gritty vocals, and glittering guitar. These elements are ever present in their new albumHéritage, but with a more intimate groove laced with other sounds from different ethnic traditions from around the country. Migration and forced displacement bring new perspectives to the notion of heritage in their music.

The experience of being in Bamako, an intensely musical city, with a melting pot of musics, has led Songhoy Blues to rethink their own understanding of the concept of tradition. It does not come from one single source. “The mixing up of cultures didn’t begin today!” comments lead guitarist Garba Touré.

Héritage was recorded in the Remote Records Studio and Studio Moffou in Bamako, with producer Paul Chandler, and draws on the remarkable wealth of musical talent in the city. The album presents new compositions and reworkings of old classics. It is infused with the ethereal sounds of various traditional instruments, all in the hands of great Malian masters: kora (harp), soku (one-string fiddle), kamalengoni (8 string youth harp), flute, Senufo xylophone, and calabash percussion, plus guest vocalists. Floating in and out are traces of takamba, the wondrous dance of the Tuareg; plus wassoulou music, Mande griot music, Senufo dance and more.

Unexpectedly, a steel guitar wanders in, sounding eerily like the voice of the desert. All these tone colours are brilliantly woven into a rich tapestry which is both familiar and unexpected. All their songs have some element of social critique. “We are artists, we observe our society and we comment on it, giving advice and critiquing where necessary. This is our role.” says the guitarist Garba Touré.

Héritageis compulsive listening for Songhoy Blues’ fans – at home and abroad - and more widely, fans of desert blues, rock, or just good music.

Age restriction: 14+ / 14 - 16s accompanied by an adult

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Two decades since debuting as the masked-and-nicknamed drummer and vocalist of Animal Collective, Noah Lennox has led so many creative lives, navigated so many different styles, and been part of so many beloved recordings, that it can be easy to overlook just how consistent his creative vision has remained. From landmarks solo albums like 2007’s Person Pitch and 2015’s Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, to breakthroughs with Animal Collective like 2004’s Sung Tongs and 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, to his boundary-pushing collaborations with Daft Punk and Solange, Dean Blunt and Paramore, all of his work followed an instantly identifiable emotional throughline while influencing multiple generations and genres of artists.

On Sinister Grift, Lennox’s first solo album in five years, he has returned with another statement that feels equally cumulative and unprecedented in his catalog. While his solo records have ranged from starkly intimate expressions of grief to colorful, electronic opuses, his music has never before sounded so warm and immediate. Working in his Lisbon, Portugal home studio with Animal Collective bandmate Josh “Deakin” Dibb, Lennox transforms Panda Bear into something resembling an old-school rock ensemble, playing nearly all the instruments himself and inviting kindred spirits into the process such as Cindy Lee, Spirit of the Beehive’s Rivka Ravede, and—for the first time on a Panda Bear solo album—each of his Animal Collective bandmates.

Age restriction: 14+ / 14 - 16s accompanied by an adult

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If you tune your ears to the cracks in the San Andreas and listen in for the world gurgling grind, you might come close to the tectonic thunder that’s been beaming out of L.A. for the past few years under the banner of Frankie and the Witch Fingers. Hashed and hardened in the Midwest Indy enclave of Bloomington and catching the ear of the Chicago psych contingent with their early singles, the band headed West around the same time that the crew at Permanent put up shop in the Golden State. With records spread across labels like Hypnotic Bridge, Permanent, Greenway, and The Reverberation Appreciation Society, the band has been an ever-evolving force of rhythm-ripped rock 'n roll pummel ever since. Anchored by songwriters Dylan Sizemore and Josh Menashe, the band has kept a rotating door of friends and collaborators moving through their midst along the way, with each bringing their own particular melt to the mountain of sound the Witch Fingers maintain.

Age restriction: 14+ / 14 - 16s accompanied by an adult

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Some bands find their groove and stick to it while others choose to reinvent themselves and keep on moving. Sextile can attest to the thrill of an ever-changing road map. The LA duo comprising Melissa Scaduto and Brady Keehn ply their trade with a lust for life and a love of everything from no wave to hardstyle, having merged some of these influences on their striking 2023 debut for Sacred Bones, 'Push'.

The group’s new LP, 'yes, please.’, set to release May 2nd, fuses anarchic electro fire with raw personal recollections —and enough beefed-up bass to bust a speaker or two. It is an album of contrasts: a vulnerable record that bares its soul as much as it revels in excess, showing just how far you can push your sound when you shake off your inhibitions. Together, the pair betray a confidence that never wavers, making a bold splash. 'yes, please.' is an action-packed dance record stuffed with wild, heady roof-raisers but is in the same breath a testament to living, and never looking back.

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He’s older now, more thoughtful and wise. He’s travelled the world and he’s seen some things. Time passes, and he matures like the finer things in life: behold the timeless, elegant, sophisticated man that is Donny Benét.

More than a decade since the world first fell for his charms, Donny Benét is taking charge of his destiny like never before. His new album, number six, is called Infinite Desires, and it’s his most complete musical statement yet.

The songs on this album are playful and potent. Passionate and self-assured. He’s talking about romance but he’s also talking about respect. He’s talking about intimacy and gratification but he’s also talking about consent. And he’s bringing it all to life with the same display of muscular musicality that’s been electrifying audiences around the globe for years.

Drop a pin anywhere on a map and chances are you’ll find Donny fans. From Prague to Portland, Bratislava to Brooklyn, they know his name and they know what he represents. Here’s a man who transcends borders with smooth beats, deep grooves and lyrics that speak to our most fundamental desires.

With maturity comes an artist in control. The release of Infinite Desires coincides with the launch of Donnyland Records, a bold new direction for a most distinctive, seductive entertainer. The new label gives Donny the power to preserve a legacy he’s been building since 2011 and empowers him to follow his creative path long into the future.

Be sure to join Donny and his band as they perform Infinite Desires in its entirety, along with all your favourite Benét hits.

Age restriction: 14+ / 14 - 16s accompanied by an adult

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Totorro is a French instrumental rock band that has carved a niche for itself with its energetic and melodic compositions, blending elements of math rock, post-rock, and pop with a distinctly euphoric and accessible vibe. Formed in Rennes, France, the band has been known to defy the language barrier through their music, creating wordless narratives that resonate with a global audience.

With their 2014 release "Home Alone," Totorro established a sound characterized by playful guitar lines, dynamic rhythms, and an uplifting spirit. The album was well-received for its polished production and the band's ability to convey emotion and storytelling without the presence of lyrics. Their follow-up album "Come to Mexico," released in 2016, saw the band expanding their sonic palette and exploring more diverse musical landscapes, further securing their position in the European indie music scene. In their recent work, such as the single "Et si l'amour c'était aimer ?," Totorro continues to showcase their unique ability to fuse intricate musicality with catchy, expansive soundscapes. Despite the lack of conventional vocals, Totorro manages to create a rich, emotive experience that has built a strong following and positioned them as one of the intriguing acts in the instrumental music sphere.

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Noisy and experimental, Britain's Swell Maps experienced little commercial success during the course of their chaotic career, but in hindsight they stand as one of the pivotal acts of the new wave: not only was the group an acknowledged inspiration to the likes of Sonic Youth and Pavement, but their alumni -- most notably brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks-- continued on as key players in the underground music community.

Although Sudden(vocals/guitar) and Soundtracks(piano/drums) formed the first incarnation of the Swell Maps (named after the charts used by surfers to gauge wave intensities) as far back as 1972, the group did not begin to truly take shape until 1976, when the siblings enlisted bassist Jowe Head and guitarist Richard Earl. In the spirit of punk's D.I.Y. mentality, they formed their own label,Rather Records, and issued their debut single -- the brief, jarring "Read About Seymour" -- in the early weeks of 1978. Local media support soon won the Swell Maps a distribution pact withRough Trade, but they did not resurface until over a year later with the single "Dresden Style."

In mid-1979, the band released its full-length debut, A Trip to Marineville, a crazy quilt of punk energy and Krautrock-influenced clatter. After the release of the speaker-shredding single "Let's Build a Car," the group recorded one final studio LP, Jane from Occupied Europe, before breaking up. 

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Today Glasgow/London duo Sacred Paws return to the fold after a five year hiatus, announcing their new album ‘Jump Into Life’ for release on March 28th, 2025, via Rock Action Records (Merge in North America). Along with the album news, they have announced new live dates and shared a first single entitled “Turn Me Down”.

When the band broke through with their debut record they did so with firm intent and rousing success. The duo of Ray Aggs (Trash Kit, Shopping) and Eilidh Rodgers (Golden Grrrls) took their roots in the punk world and wound it together with myriad influences, from Afrobeat, through pop and post-punk, to create a glorious and unique hybrid. 

‘Strike A Match’, the band’s urgent and infectious first offering, was released on Mogwai’s Rock Action label in 2017 and won the prestigious Scottish Album of the Year Award that same year. That success was quickly capitalised on with another full-length effort, the band’s second LP ‘Run Around The Sun’, which was released in 2019. More than five years have now passed since that release, and while Sacred Paws’ absence wasn’t necessarily deliberate it was certainly intentional - Ray and Eilidh deciding that rather than force the work, they would take as long as they felt they needed to produce the album they knew they were capable of.

‘Jump Into Life’, the lush and layered new album is proof that such a journey was both necessary and significant. Formed of eleven new songs, it takes the roots of the Sacred Paws project and breathes fresh life into it, blossoming into something both abundant and more colourful than has come before; a gentle skewing of their signature sound that feels wildly thrilling.

Late last year first single “Another Day” introduced the thematic thread, of remaining positive in the face of heartbreak, that weaves throughout the record and it breeds affection the more explicitly it reveals itself - both in sound and sentiment.

It's a theme that continues on today's new single "Turn Me Down" - a track the band say is "about the rawness of rejection" where the refrain "do you even feel the pain?" juxtaposes against jubilant handclaps and guitars that burst with vitality. They add: "It’s something I reckon everyone feels at some point in their life - those moments when however irrational it might seem to feel so deeply the feeling is still there. It felt cathartic to write a song about it with quite dramatic rhythms and a big vocal melody."

Sonically, The track ripples with the unyielding spirit of their more recognisable African and roots influences, the vocal harmonies again lending the track a world-weary edge that allows the whole thing to linger long after the song is wrapped up. “We really loved working on the vocal melodies for this song,” they say. “The harmonies took a while to figure out as it’s not something we have done a lot in the past but the singing added something really epic. The lyrics are so simple and raw that it really needed to pack a punch as a song.”

Though Sacred Paws never really took a break from writing during the time since their last record, for a band that have always thrived in the tangible real world, the restrictions imposed by being constrained to Eilidh’s flat led to a stagnation that they were happy to wait out, to not let it get the better of them. It was a relocation to Mogwai’s practice room that sparked the album’s genesis, the pair soon excitedly listening to sketches and demos in the car, to and from the studio space, pinpointing the spark they create together, finding it pouring out of the crackling car speakers and into the wider city that was once again opening up.

Having been so patient for so long, Ray and Eilidh found form in that sudden lightning-bolt of inspiration and brought together the songs that would make up ‘Jump Into Life’ with a wide-eyed, thrilling sense of abandon. Such honesty is reflected in the finished record, the band embracing a more open-hearted sincerity in the songs rather than hiding such sentiments behind their more characteristic riffs and rhythms.

Personal catharsis through music is nothing new, but Sacred Paws attack their own demons with a gutsy, characterful heft across ‘Jump Into Life’. It’s still every bit as infectious and vital as what’s come before but it funnels those moments of heady release through feelings of heartbreak, healing and renewal. “It’s definitely a Sacred Paws record but it feels a bit older and wiser,” the pair explain of their new chapter. “We took a few years working on the songwriting and pushed ourselves creatively. We wrote a lot in that time, but we made sure every song had something that we fell in love with.”

With their emblematic, signature sense of fervour, Sacred Paws continue to hurtle forward, jumping into life, embracing that forward motion that stops lingering in the shadows of life’s messiness. Full of endearing energy, and buoyed by new sounds, textures, and character, ‘Jump Into Life’ is both a call-back and an evolution; unafraid to reveal its warm and heavy beating heart, even with all the anxiety such a thing entails.

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BIIG TIME is a new project by Sydney brother/songwriters Johnny and Matty Took. Seeking an avenue to share music that doesn’t quite fit their regular bands - Johnny is the guitarist in DMA’S and Matty is the frontman of PLANET - the duo have joined forces in between touring/recording commitments to bring life to their 100+ demos.

Marrying ‘80s US rock and roll with British shoegaze, BIIG TIME are keenly exploring the boundaries of indie-rock and bringing along their unwavering knack for writing melodies that crawl inside your head and refuse to leave.

Complete with steezy vocals and a wall of verbed-out guitars, ‘It’s You’ is the first taste of their swelling catalog of tunes, and it won’t be their last. BIIG TIME have clocked on.

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The brainchild of Wooden Shjips guitarist Erik Johnson, Rose City Band’s sun-blushed country psychedelic rock invites listeners on an exploration of California’s diverse terrain. On 2021’s Earth Trip and 2020’s Summer Long, Johnson pairs lulling vocals with flickers of ’70s country. A joyous organic groove underpins his entire catalogue, which is brought to life on stage with a live ensemble.

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After three years of silence, the Canadian band Nap Eyes have returned with their own meditations on the monstrous and familiar (or the monstrously familiar). The Neon Gate, their metamorphic fifth long-player, collects a cache of nine fascinating reveries recorded over the four years since their last album, Snapshot of a Beginner(five of which were released episodically throughout the spring and summer of 2024). “I See Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness,” the album’s colossal penultimate track, is, along with “Demons,” their languorous adaptation of a phantasmagorical poem by Russian Romantic Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), one of two ambitious but adept adaptations in which singer and principal songwriter Nigel Chapman unravels knotty, century-old verse into a fluid, memorable melodies across the loom of the band’s pulsing instrumental syncretism.

This fresh engagement with narrative and lyric formality complements the seven original songs on the record, which reveal classic Naps touchstones (the uneasy interplay of physics and philosophy, the nexus of fantasy and science fiction, perambulatory descriptions of landscape and weather, self-interrogating soliloquies, apertures of surreality, technological anxiety, video games), but also evidence of divergent impulses toward nonlinear abstraction and longform improvisational composition (resulting in their most discursive, deconstructed, and deliquescent songs to date). With The Neon Gate Nap Eyes have transmuted, as has their understanding of what a song is, what it can do, where it might go.

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With love and pride, Preoccupations present to you: Ill at Ease, our 5th long play and our first on the Born Losers record label. 

After thousands of hours of scrutinizing over every last detail of this record, I find myself with the unenviable task of now trying to explain why we made the thing, what the thing is, and who we are.

We’ve been defining and redefining for a mostly very lucky 13 years. Lucky if not counting all of the broken bones, broken vehicles, exploding gear, stolen gear, lost baggage, lost friends, lost hearing, and lost minds. We once thought some of these misfortunes might be exceptional, but getting older we realize these are all just things that come with the territory, and the rewards we get for the passing of time. We’ve played 400+ shows across the globe, usually living and working together in claustrophobic quarters. We’ve aged together, making albums along the way. Some have even been reasonably acclaimed, others have been merely tolerated. 

Which brings us to the now and our album Ill at Ease. It’s hard to say how it fits into our canon, but it’s definitely drawing from places or genres that we haven’t drawn from in the past. Whether we want to admit it or not, any music we’re currently listening to is, I’m sure, always informing our collective subconscious. 

The well of dark things to write about seemingly has not dried up, and lyrically, it’s where I still tend to draw from. Draining all my anxieties into a song is often the only way I can get through a day. Some songs exist in a world with barren plains of burnt earth, covered in a dust of shame, dread, death, where all the things I love are things that kill me. Some come from the perspective of another distant world, looking skyward into a science fiction ocean of space, solitude, slight hope. Sometimes I’m looking around at the world that we live in now with incredulity, hilariously dissatisfied with how it’s all turned out, and assuming that it can’t be long before it’s all over. Some songs are just a reflection of me looking down at my feet while I trudge along wondering what I’m doing with myself, and if the ground is going to fall out from underneath me at any given moment. 

At the end of it all though, this is simply another collection of new songs, and after 13 years, it is our pleasure and our privilege to still be making new things and to be sharing these new worlds we’ve created. For now, the ground is still firmly beneath us, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that it might not be for long, and we will forever be, Ill at Ease.

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Death Valley Girls, LA's finest purveyors of otherworldly rock n roll, have left little time between their 2023 LP Islands in the Sky and their rollicking new single, "I Am a Wave." The band, which consists of Bonnie Bloomgarden (vocals, organ, Wurlitzer), Larry Schemel (guitar), Sarah Linton (bass), and Rikki Styxx (drums), builds off the strength of their critically acclaimed new project while introducing exciting new sonic terrain. Blending prog, shoegaze, pop, and psych-rock elements, the group lands thrillingly in its own world.

Age restriction: 14+ / 14 - 16s accompanied by an adult

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Alt/country with a slacker twang, we're delighted to have the wonderful Brown Horse live in Birmingham on May 5th.

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Cerys Hafana is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who mangles, mutates, and transforms traditional music. She explores the creative possibilities and unique qualities of the triple harp, and is also interested in found sounds, archival materials and electronic processing. She comes from Machynlleth, Wales, where rivers and roads meet on the way to the sea.

Cerys has won over audiences from Green Man to the Eisteddfod and from BBC 6 Music Festival to Celtic Connections with her magical, progressive sound. Edyf, her second album, drew inspiration from material found in the Welsh National Library’s online archive, including fragments of Psalm tunes, hymns about doomsday and philosophical musings on the length of eternity, along with some original compositions, and was selected as one of The Guardian’s Top Ten folk albums of 2022. Cerys’ latest EP, The Bitter, released earlier in 2024 is an innovative exploration of some dark English and Scottish ballads.

“eerie folk fusion and creative use of harp and found sounds. Innovation abounds…. likely to take a song that we all know so well and tilt it to one side.”
Tradfolk
 
"…she’s an adept shapeshifter, entwining tradition with direct and personal
interpretations to create music that’s both progressive, profound and inspiring."
Alex Gallagher, Folk Radio UK
 
"Hafana explores resonances from the past that connect with the modern day in a contemporary, creative way... she uses her harp as a percussive, jagged-toothed tool… sings movingly, her high voice like an indie-pop soprano shorn of its sweetness.’ Jude Rogers, The Guardian.

Age restriction: 14+ / 14 - 16s accompanied by an adult

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Viagra Boys are a band that weaponizes absurdity—tossing firecrackers into the middle of the room and standing around to see the reaction.

Led by frontman Sebastian Murphy, whose voice is a compelling blend of impish smirk and smoker's rasp, the band is known for its seething satire and darkly comic edge, encapsulating a unique blend of grit and sleaze.

Murphy's lyrics often reflect on the absurdity and backwardness of the modern world, though he avoids prescribing beliefs or taking sides. Therefore, the band's music is marked by a playful yet incisive critique of societal follies and contradictions, set to heavy-weight, explosive production.

Viagra Boys have garnered significant success and acclaim, performing sold-out shows worldwide, including prestigious gigs at Coachella and Jimmy Kimmel. The band has received high ratings from Pitchfork, NME and Kerrang!, and notable recognitions, including album of the year from The Needle Drop. Their impact extends to the Swedish music scene, where they've won awards such as Album of the Year and Best Live Act at the Swedish Grammis & P3 Guld Awards, highlighting their widespread appeal and influence.

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An extraordinary, nocturnally-inclined modernist rock band drenched in Southern Gothic, Brooklyn trio Bambara have evolved their macabre vision to perfection over their previous five albums.

The three members of Bambara – singer-guitarist Reid Bateh, his twin brother Blaze
Bateh (drums), and bassist William Brookshire – first started playing together in junior high school in Atlanta, GA and pretty much every moment ever since then have been obsessively honing their sound and vision; first moving to Athens, GA and finally heading to Brooklyn where they’ve established their long-term base.

Their story really picks up pace after 2020’s breakthrough Stray album – a record whose volatile and frequently explosive wall of sound offered a gnarly backdrop for Reid’s typically twisted midnight narratives. Having toured with Idles and Gilla Band pre-pandemic (both big fans), this was the record – powered by their propulsive ‘Serafina single’ and widespread 6Music support – that really put them on the map on both sides of the Atlantic. They were duly signed to Bella Union (Wharf Cat in the US and today announce a major UK and European tour for 2025.

Age restriction: 14+ / 14 - 16s accompanied by an adult

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Formed of 5 life-long friends that have cut their teeth in different acts in the Birmingham music scene, Gingham blend the sweet songwriting and harmonies of the 60s and 70s with the dreamy noise of modern alternative and shoegaze.

They're joined by local legends Jazzcat, Layla Tutt and Gans (DJ set) and Liverpool's Astles.

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There are few contemporary bands who can do musical reinvention quite as consistently as Black Country, New Road. From their Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut For the First Time, which touched upon everything from jazz to post-rock via klezmer music, to the art-rock meets chamber pop follow up Ants From Up There (both top 5 charting albums). Then when singer Isaac Wood amicably left shortly after, they wrote an entire set of new songs to tour which ended up on Live at Bush Hall, an album The Guardian claimed was a “magical resurgence” in a triumphant five-star review. Now, on studio album three, the band are once again building from the ground up in yet another miraculous musical transformation.

“Bush Hall was a really fun project to find our feet in,” says Charlie Wayne. “But we toured it to death and we were done with those songs. This album is a new statement of intent for us as a six-piece.” The band have now settled into a new shape in which vocal duties – and most of the songwriting – is split between Tyler Hyde, Georgia Ellery, and May Kershaw. “It created a real through line for the album, having three girls singing," says Ellery. "It's definitely very different to Ants From Up There, because of the female perspective - and the music we've made also compliments that."

The band’s ability to respond to changing circumstances is not only down to their close-knit friendship but due to their talent, adaptability and long-standing relationship together as musicians. A mix of classically trained and self-taught, the multi-instrumentalists gathered steam as a band in the late 2010s, regularly playing The Windmill in Brixton alongside friends and peers such as Squid and Black Midi, and soon found themselves being labelled "the best band in the world" by The Quietus.

Despite moving swiftly on after each record, and never having conventionally toured in support of a studio album, the band’s fervent following has only grown and grown regardless. By the time they found themselves in front of an ecstatic audience to record their live album, they were singing songs that reflected on the profound friendship that had steered them this far through an unpredictable journey, as they hollered in unison: “look at what we did together / BC,NR, friends forever!”

 That deep-rooted attachment and connection are the foundations of their latest. And it’s also a hugely ambitious and singular record, which is glisteningly produced by James Ford (Fontaines D.C., Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Blur). “It's pretty big and bold,” says Wayne. “There's a lot of very full and rich creative decisions that went into it. Making this we were considering every single option and really opening up every possibility as we figured out how to operate in a totally different framework.”

 It’s a framework that includes everything from folk to prog via baroque pop and touches of alt rock – with nods to a variety of artists such as Joanna Newsom, Randy Newman, Fiona Apple and Janis Ian – yet all the while retaining that unmistakably unique sound that only this combination of musicians can come up with. Although hugely varied and expansive, the album also feels deeply cohesive and focused, as it takes three distinct voices and styles and seamlessly intersperses them into a new collective sound. “At the beginning, it was very random,” says Hyde. “We went in a few different directions just to see what we enjoyed and what happened but you soon realise how to chisel a certain sound or direction to sound cohesive.”

 However, while the band may have unconsciously been tapping into older reference points, everything about the album feels, both musically and lyrically, undeniably contemporary and fresh. The opening ‘Besties’ sets the tone for an album that is as accessible and melodic as it is nuanced and progressive. It’s a rousing yet delicate piece of chamber folk pop that is an ode to a particular kind of friendship. “It’s about creative flow, the importance of, and commitment to, female friendships in your twenties,” says Ellery. Musically, it’s something of a partner song, “a response” to following track ‘The Big Spin’ which was written by Kershaw and, explains Ellery, “was a song that just felt really easy going and so I kind of just ran with that same feeling.”

 With Hyde, Ellery, and Kershaw bringing individual songs to rehearsal sessions, what soon began to take shape was a kind of domino effect, with each person feeling inspired by one another’s songs and that in turn shaping their own. And so what quickly occurred was these three individual and unique talents, with distinct vocal styles, began to slowly coalesce to form a kind of intuitive songwriting relationship. “We play the songs through a lot,” explains Kershaw. “So after a rehearsal the songs would just be going around and around in my head. And things that are spinning around up there will come out in my songwriting, whether it's conscious or not.” Hyde echoes this. “They're just really good songs that get stuck in your head,” she says. “When I wrote ‘Happy Birthday’ I had Georgia’s song ‘Besties’ in my head while I was writing it. And therefore, the structure of it is heavily influenced by it.”

 ‘Happy Birthday’ being inspired by ‘Besties’ is a perfect example of how songs on the album are connected in spirit and tone but still feel like very standalone pieces of work. The former slowly builds over sprightly piano keys and laid-back guitar, with Hyde lyrically tapping into the frustrations of generational differences with younger people and their need to wake up from their own self-absorption, before it creeps into something quietly yet potently euphoric. Elsewhere there’s equally impressive range: ‘Two Horses’ grows from something that has an almost Americana meets dream pop feel into a propulsive and hypnotic folk-jazz-prog groove. ‘Nancy Tries to Take the Night’ has a Steve Reich-esque loop pulsing through it, while ‘Mary’ is a stripped back and tender track that beautifully and powerfully captures the three singers joining forces.

 However, while this is a record teeming with new ideas, instruments, voices and sounds, it works because the group also understands the importance of restraint. “We kept talking about The Band all the time,” says Hyde of the 1960s folk-rock outfit. “We haven't made an album that sounds anything like them but I'm so grateful to them because they helped us play slower. We've tried to groove as much as possible on this album, to really sit back and make a conscious effort to not rush anything.” You can hear this in the slower approach to playing in parts too, as Luke Mark explains. “I'm trying to be a more mature musician and not be too excitable,” he says. “To try and make the song that someone brings in better, and not more about me. So that meant playing a lot more acoustic guitar to best serve the needs of the song.”

 Though, as Evans points out, when you have a group of musicians as talented as this bunch, even if you are stepping into bold new terrain and experimenting, there’s always going to be an inescapable identity to what they do. “Our musicianship is distinctive and characteristic,” he says. “So, no matter what the source material is, the way that we play with each other means it’s going to have a bit of a stamp on it. It is an individual sound.”

 This feeling of individualism sprouting into collective creativity is one that ultimately underpins the album. Evans recalls it being a beautiful thing to watch unfold and seeing the album find its stride and purpose. “The three of them just started to take more and more inspiration from each other's writing,” he says. “And you could see their confidence grow.” Kershaw recalls that on the band’s debut album she “couldn't even sing the backing vocals in front of everyone because it was too much.” And Mark recalls seeing a shift take place as faith and conviction grew. “The craft of the songwriting was so strong that it allowed their confidence as singers to blossom too,” he says. “It’s been cool to see not only the confidence grow but also the bravery to come up with new artistic ideas in such interesting ways.”

 Forever Howlong is an album that once again proves no records of theirs will ever sound the same, while also cementing the fact that there’s nobody coming even remotely close to making music that sounds like BC,NR right now.

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South London trio Honeyglaze move from psychedelic-tinged post-punk to alternative folk to create their distinct DIY sound. Described by Clash as “an evocative punch in the gut in the best way”, the band – led by vocalist and guitarist Anouska Sokolow – pairs poetic storytelling with meticulous production. Forming shortly before the pandemic began, the band quickly made Brixton’s The Windmill their stomping ground and supported Wet Leg on their 2022 UK tour.