Art's Cool

MEMORIALS is the new band of Verity Susman (Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (Wire, Better Corners, It Hugs Back, UUUU). As a duo these multi-instrumentalists cover plenty of ground on stage, juggling instruments in a set up resembling that of a 5-piece band. Their sound touches on the many points for which they are known, veering from melodic songwriting to psychedelic noise, free jazz freakouts, tape loops and drones, and then back again. Their debut double album - Music For Film: Tramps! & Women Against The Bomb - is out on 12 May 2023 via The state51 Conspiracy label.

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Memorials

Gigs

Margate

Whereelse?

In 2022 Twang-Pop Post Yacht-Rock Soft Psychers Hutch had an astounding first year releasing three singles, picking up a strong organic following, hitting the festival circuit, receiving BBC and international radio attention, making the glastonbury longlist 2022 and selling out both of their headline shows.  
  
2023 has already seen Hutch on tour, taking their Brighton-crafted twang to all new cities and audiences. As well as securing festival slots for the summer and playing sold out shows across the first few months of the year, they are busy writing and recording new material as well as creating live sessions in staple Brighton venues. As the bands sound becomes more mature and refined, their local and national following marches on: stronger in numbers. If you want to see “a band as good as ‘Rumors’-era Fleetwood Mac” jump aboard the train to twang town and strap in, we’re going to the moon.

“Ultimately we’re left grinning from ear to ear having witnessed a band as good as ‘Rumours’-era Fleetwood Mac” - Nick Mcallister, Brighton Source

ALL AGES EVENT

Hutch

Mechanical Bull

"one of Britain’s best-kept musical secrets" - NME  
  
While the world became socially distanced in 2020, Hull’s post-shoegaze, dream pop, heavy guitar effects quartet bdrmm made the kind of impact with their debut album any young band would dream about. Released on the small Sonic Cathedral label in July that year, Bedroom was hailed as “a heady, forward-thinking shoegaze distillation” by Clash magazine.

Three years on, the band’s new album I Don’t Know takes the adventure somewhere else. It’s contemporary shoegaze in a way but much, much more. Again recorded at The Nave studio in Leeds with producer Alex Greaves (Working Men’s Club, Bo Ningen), the band’s trademark effects-laden guitars and motorik Neu! grooves have now been augmented by piano, strings, electronica, sampling and even occasional dance beats. Fragile ambient pieces line up against pulverising guitar chords, sometimes within the same song. There are ambient washes and delicate piano pieces, while influences or reference points veer from Radiohead to My Bloody Valentine to the Cure to Brian Eno - perhaps - the minimalist classical of the likes of Erik Satie. Whatever has produced it, it’s a bigger-sounding, more tuneful, really rather fantastic second statement by four young men who are rightly sure about what they’re doing and loving every minute of it.

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bdrmm

Gush

Bdrmm - Question Mark

Having graduated from his early, Mercury Music Prize-nominated incarnation as East India Youth, William Doyle has since emerged under his own name as one of the most experimental and exciting British songwriters and world builders working today. His most recent records, 2021’s art-pop masterpiece ‘Great Spans of Muddy Time’ and 2019’s dizzyingly ambitious ‘Your Wilderness Revisited’ drew comparisons to Radiohead and Brian Eno and claimed their place on end of year lists, with the Metro ranking the latter “among the best albums of the century”. 2024’s hotly anticipated follow-up is Doyle’s most ambitious, dynamic and immediate record yet.

William Doyle

William Doyle - Millersdale

A force of the unnatural. A pop-star fed through a Nutribullet. A human bag of speed. The fourth horseman of the queer apocalypse. Lynks is here.

There is nothing quite like Lynks. An unpasteurized shot of electro-punk chaos compressed into the shape of a human man, wrapped up in a gimp mask, creating tiny queer utopias wherever they goes. And what utopias they are; sub-blowing, criminally danceable beats, anthemically witty lyrics about the darkest corners of modern life, and pure, unapologetic, camp excess colliding in a fog of sweat and confetti.

While evoking the electro-clash roots of Peaches, the industrial chant of M.I.A., the sardonic drawl of Courtney Barnett, and the theatrics of Lady GaGa, Lynks’ music stands alone as something totally unique. And this uniqueness has earned them acclaim from the best; support tours with Metronomy and Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, guest-host spots on Lauren Laverne’s BBC 6Music show, and personal praise from Elton John, to name just a few.

Off the back of instant classic ‘USE IT OR LOSE IT’, which fueled Lynks’ ascent to new heights, landing them a Spotify billboard, their own New Music Fix show with BBC6Music who lent the track 15+ spins, and thousands of new fans from viral music video clips, Lynks is doubling down with the anthemic ‘NEW BOYFRIEND’.

A twisted, queer lovechild of LCD Soundsystem, Metronomy and Confidence Man, ‘NEW BOYFRIEND’ struts into your headphones like a Scissor Sister on shrooms. An irresistible four on the floor beat, meets a swaggering nu-disco bassline, while crunching guitars, distorted drum fills and plucked analog synths wrestle for the spotlight. It’s over this disrespectfully earworm-y backdrop that Lynks lays out a tale as old as time in a Murphy-esque drawl; codependent exes trying, and failing, to achieve a clean break-up. Night-out ambushes, knee-jerk lashings out and “just stay on my sofa” deceptions collide as Lynks implores their ex to “get a new boyfriend”, so they can finally move on with their life. It’s brutal and hilarious (“friends DON’T give each other head”), yet still maintains the beating human heart that charges all Lynks’ music. Underneath all the bravado, this is a song about two people who love each other deeply, and yet can never be together.

This is an all ages event. 

Elsewhere Margate

Lynks

Lynks - Pedestrian at Best

Lynks - Use It Or Lose It

Bingo Fury conjures a glitzy - altogether seedy - Broadway sheen. Although very much a solo songwriter, Bingo’s compositional process relies on contributions from his entire band - bassist Megan Jenkins, and drummer Henry Terrett have been playing together since their teens. In one of their various incarnations, they recruited local avant-jazz legend, cornet player Harry ‘Iceman’ Furniss, with guitarist and percussionist Rafi Cohen later completing the line-up.

Influenced by classic songwriters as much as pioneers of alternative experimentation, the songs can often land like a jazz standard that got lost multiple times on its journey to the present day. Some pit stops are obvious: the haunting balladry of Nina Simone and Leonard Cohen, and the arresting no-wave of James Chance and The Lounge Lizards.

this is an all ages event

Bingo Fury

Bingo Fury - Power Drill

The music of Atlanta trio Omni has always swung fast and hit hard. And Souvenir, their fourth album and second for Sub Pop, packs their biggest punch yet. Inactive during the majority of the pandemic–the longest downtime in their history–they approached this recording with lots of pent-up energy. Guitarist Frankie Broyles, singer/bassist Philip Frobos, and drummer Chris Yonker converted their creative fuel into sharp, driving songs that land immediately, sporting chopping riffs, staccato beats, and wiry melodies.

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