Ode to Porridge Radio (An artist, a lost soul)

It is hard to tell where my love for Porridge Radio begins and where my love for Dana Margolin (the creative force behind PR, as well as The Spineless Seal clothing company and the Hey Day 'zine) ends. What's easier to tell is that I would definitely still love them both as much as I do now, even if they were completely divorced from each other. That being said, attempting to look at an artists work divorced from the artist, or one's personal relationship to the artist, is completely impossible, so I won't bother trying.

I first heard Porridge Radio's music when she was part of a freak folk duo (supposedly a trio, but actually a duo) called Butter Dust, back in the good old days of 2011. At the time, Porridge Radio was a wee little lass of 18 years. After meeting her at Mad Kid Library Trap's* festive winter get-together, she sent me her incredibly badly recorded songs. I thought they were quite good - they had surreal lyrics and an offbeat (literally, there was almost no sense of rhythm) charm. They played their instruments in the way I like - like people who couldn't really play them. They sang in the way I like - like lost and confused teenagers. Initially it sounded like a contrived quirkiness, a post-Mighty Boosh pop wank. Upon repeat listens, there seemed to be a sprawl of emotionally evocative meaning sown between the words that, on face value, were completely incomprehensible.

In all honesty, I actually didn't like them quite as much then as I do now. I was aware at the time that their music was an acquired taste, as is so often the case with diamonds in the rough, so I appreciated it moderately and quietly. Now, in my wise old age, I can see that they had something special going on. Butter Dust stopped for some reason. You should check out their legacy and weep. They joined soundcloud and put (what I think are) their best songs on there, which I've embedded below. The rest can be found on their tumblr. Hopefully financial pressures in their middle aged lives will force them to do an economically lucrative, but artistically bankrupt, tour in 2033.





At one point we tried to make music together, but for some reason I never finished editing what we started, and that project is lost on a hard drive somewhere (this actually happened again very recently but whatever). Later Porridge Radio sent me burgeoning solo tracks over email and facebook chat with a billion different artist names. Most of the songs were really fucking weird and I spent a lot of time trying to coax her towards something a bit more sensible, a bit more normal, a bit more understandable. I was an idiot. At the time I was playing in a band on the London low level indie circuit, and for some stupid reason thought that my experiences there were of blanket importance to anyone who wanted to make sounds for other people to hear.

Porridge Radio continued making weird music despite me, and it got better and better and better. The music continued to have very little correlation with anything normally described as good songwriting, but - incrementally, accidentally - the abstract combinations of terribly played guitar and hit-and-miss vocals began to amass a heavy emotional weight. A particular stand out track called 'p2', still not publically available, containing the repeated phrase "This is the worst thing to happen in the 20th century". Another project of note from this period is the (still uncompleted) concept album/lo-fi opera about a boy in a hospital who falls in love with a girl with an eating disorder or something. It is, to this day, one of the weirdest fucking things I've ever heard. She eventually set up a soundcloud with the name "Porridge Radio", started sending me songs on that instead, and the name has stuck ever since.



By the upload of the song 'ok', I began to realise that Porridge Radio's songwriting talent definitely went beyond my fetishisation of the obscure. The relentlessly simple chords and sing-song sweet vocal melodies transport the absurdly morbid lyrics straight to the small bit of my brain in which I feel real actual emotions, just like any other real human. The slightly later songs 'Please' (an aborted cover of Neil Young's Danger Bird) and 'Glossy Magazine' made their way on to my record label's incredible debut release because they are incredible sucker punches that couldn't have been written by anyone else.

'eurgh' cycles 3 chords over sweet pop heaven until gradually, the terse and ambiguous darkness creeps in so subtly that it takes a few seconds to realise why you've started to cry. By the time you get your head around it, you're taken (through the multitude of smaller chord pattern circles) in a large circle back to the sweet pop beginning. The musical simplicity allows for the emotional complexity of the conflicting tones existing within a singular plane of reality. With the simplest words, the most haunting terrors are conjured. You think you've heard this kind of thing before, you let your guard down, Porridge Radio goes in for the kill.





Imagine if Porridge Radio followed my advice a year earlier! How worse the world would be! It would be awful!

To my credit, I showed her the Sentridoh (Lou Barlow, from Dino Jr./Sebadoh, to any of you unworthy people reading this who don't have the BASIC KNOWLEDGE required to be a half-sentient human) song Losercore. She liked it, tried to cover it, failed, and then wrote what is (in the right circles) an anthem of our self disgusted '90s revival generation. It's post-modern. It's like the Brian Jonestown Massacre. It's quite '90s really.



'and i was like' strings 3 lyrics together that don't make sense individually, let alone united. It is somehow one of the most perfect pop songs I've ever heard. I've seen Porridge Radio onstage 3 times (I think), and at the most recent time (at the first Fat Dog Party) she played this for the first time and I found myself singing along completely involuntarily. And dancing. I don't normally do that kind of thing, I'm really, really cool.



Come to think of it, I haven't yet expressed the live genius of Porridge Radio. I watched her at two open mic nights in Brighton and she yelled deeply inappropriate (i.e. heartfelt) lyrics at the old men surrounding her with the zealous passion of a suicide bomber. I have no idea what other people thought of this weird show of actual emotion... but I was cathartically burnt to a crisp and then a gust of wind blew me out the window and into the sea. At Fat Dog Party, everyone knew they were seeing something that needed to be happening. Genuinely, I fucking hate and want to kill 99% of acoustic singer/song-writers I see live. With such a limited sonic pallet (and the usual limited imagination it implies) they all sound the fucking same and the only emotion they bring out in me is a very beige kind of murder. Porridge Radio transcends the medium through a pure act of will, a complete lack of respect, and perhaps an element of the idiot savant. She is punk in the way that isn't a cliche. I really can't overstate how vastly brilliant all 3 of those sets were.

I'm going to stop posting tracks now, because you can go listen to the brilliance on your own without my guidance.

Actually, no. Here's another one. If it wasn't so good, I would be upset that she plagiarized not just one, but two of my songs.


What sparked me writing this blog post/essay/public diary entry was hearing some top secret recordings of Porridge Radio practising with her new backing band, The Cosmic Sadness. They did their debut gig at the second Fat Dog Party, which I very very very unfortunately couldn't attend (despite us living in the so-called future). They play with as much beautiful imprecision as Porridge Radio herself, yet somehow play imprecisely together. Just like a band should. They play her relentlessly simple songs relentlessly simply. And just as emotively. I was so excited to hear this latest development that I was forced to write a very long essay to no one in particular, in order to contextualise this great news for no one in particular.

One of the best solo acts alive (Leonard Cohen is actually dead) is now wielding the hefty sledgehammer force of a punk-as-fuck power trio. It won't go to waste. It will smash the system, the patriarchy, the machine, the global capitalist system, the western hegemony, white supremacy, heteronormativity, and all sorts of other smashable shit things, and it won't even be all annoying and self-righteous about it.

Hopefully over the summer Porridge Radio and the Cosmic Sadness will be adequately recorded and then released on Memorials of Distinction. If they don't get the deserved massive positive response they deserve I might kill myself, because it will then be fully evident that the world is a meaningless place full of pain and suffering with all too few decent bits.

*I feel like it's necessary to note that I well and truly believe that Mad Kid Library Trap is one of the greatest artists of our generation. The first, and so far only, gig by the Mad Kid Library Trap Orchestra (at the first Fat Dog Party) proved this without doubt to everybody present. This is no overstatement, it is fact. Ask anyone that was there. Sadly, the full extent of his pure genius has not been captured adequately in any recordings to date. This is something I wish to help rectify in the future - but I am worried that MKLT's genius will be smothered to death by my clammy, foolish, meddling hands if I get too involved. I am a control freak. MKLT needs to be set free with the ability to utilise any resource he wants. Then, and only then, will we get the art we so desperately need.

Satanic Ritual Abuse Presents: Navelgazer

I am currently figuring out how to do my second live performance, after being inspired by reading the whole of Stewart Lee's How I Escaped My Certain Fate (you have to love his ability to subtly show off his knowledge of alternative musics)  and watching ALL OF HIS WORK in two days. I guess in a similar way to Stewart Lee, I'm reflecting on my artistic choices in the past before hopefully developing them further in the future. I'm not saying that I'm the Stewart Lee of pop music... that's for other people to say.

Anyway, at the inaugural Fat Dog Party, at The Green Door Store in Brighton, I handed out 50 copies of the below piece of paper to about 70-80 audience members (some of them shared):

Following this, I instructed them all to sit down. Then I did what I said I would do. I was helped along by a large bank of guitar effects pedals, most of which I never used before. While playing I was washed with alternate waves of self-loathing and pure ecstasy - so much so, that it almost felt like a normal day.

It went quite well and people like it more than I thought they would. At least one person claimed to have their life changed. I was kind of hoping to piss everyone off.

As I am a complete genius, I am now aiming to top this performance in concept, content and form.

About 'Let's Talk About Cancer (1st Draft)'

ABOUT:

The title of this song is based on a MacMillan Cancer Support advert slogan I misremembered. Maybe the one I thought I was quoting was "It's Okay To Talk About Cancer", or maybe it was another one. I guess it doesn't matter. I first saw the slogan when I took my Dad to one of his final radiotherapy sessions. The artwork for this song is a cameraphone picture I took of his radiotherapy mask, an eternal, medically tailored, sculpted scream.

Around six months before that radiotherapy session, he was diagnosed with tongue cancer. This quickly led to extensive surgery, which involved cutting his throat open ear-to-ear, taking out half his teeth and then removing half of his tongue. There were complications in the surgery.

We had an anxiously quiet, tense Christmas period without him, often visiting him in the Intensive Care Unit. He could not speak. Communicating with him through text-based means was difficult, slow and frustrating for both parties, especially as much of what he had to communicate was founded in pain and confusion. The sounds in this song are meant to simulate the sounds that were surrounding my Dad in the ICU, the sounds produced by the machines keeping him alive.

Sonically, this song is an attempt to empathise with my Dad in that period of his life: alone, horrified, dehumanised, pained, numbed, bored, helpless and confused. It goes without saying (so why say it?) that it's not supposed to be beautiful, enjoyable or exciting in any traditional sense. Lyrically, the song is straightforwardly autobiographical, to the point of relentlessly immature emotional solipsism.

My Dad is currently cancer free, and doing well, but the echos of this explosive period in our family's history still quietly rebound between the people who bore witness.

All of the sounds, other than the singing, beeping and snare drum, were produced by an air conditioning unit, and then manipulated. This was the first song I created using Logic, so I didn't really know what I was doing and I'm not entirely happy with the results. If I have a good reason, I'll make it better.

WORDS:

I'm just trying to get my mother drunk,
I'm just trying to help my headache.

While carrying sound my phone rang,
News from outer-space,It stopped my disco dancing then,
I'll never disco dance again.

No one believes I care.

I'M RETURNING TO BLOGGER. IN ORDER TO WRITE TO NOBODY AGAIN.

I'm coming back on here, because I like the blog name and fuck making a tumblr or whatever. (I H8 TUMBLR).

Disregard everything written before this post as a stupid bullshit heap of crap stupid rubbish.

This blog will now purely (or at least mainly) be used for me to write about, and analyse, my own projects, which are already self-obsessed enough to require yet another platform for self-analysis.

...this is that platform...

To clichedly paraphrase some dude that everyone probably misquotes:

MY BULLSHIT WILL EAT ITSELF.

Gig: The Sonics + Wire @ Royal Festival Hall, Southbank 18/6/11

(This is over a week late, but no one reads this so it doesn't matter)

I was incredibly excited about seeing two legendary almost-punk bands in one night, proto-punks The Sonics and post-punks Wire, the only catch being it would be a seated gig. Despite that mislocation, I can now tick both bands off my mental "things to see before I die list", which is probably the most important thing.

Anyway, Wire were really awesome. I'm not such a fan of their newest album (it reminds me of U2 for some reason), but live they really delivered. With the help of a long haired guitarist who appeared to be half the age of the rest of the band, they played a mixture of new material (which was actually really ace live) and old classics and ended with a long noisy electronic sound jam. The noise combined with the lights was completely dazzling throughout, and I was actually pretty glad to be sitting down so I could just absorb what was happening without fear of collapsing with awe.

After a break Ray Davies came on to introduce The Sonics, describing how scary they were to the young and relatively innocent Kinks. The Sonics' set constantly veered between being the rock and roll experience of a life time and making you wonder if they should all go home, get a cup of tea and some rest before they break a hip. They played lots of their old awesome classics, but also some of their new songs (mostly with the new bassist singing) that sounded kinda like AC/DC or Deep Purple. The new songs weren't bad, but no one wanted to hear them, highlighting the fact that these old men were on stage to try to replicate what they had done over 40 years ago - an impossible task.  However, about halfway through people started standing up and going to the front and dancing. Sadly by the time I got there security were blocking access, but the band responded brilliantly and the atmosphere really picked up.

Obviously, I had a great time. Sadly, the fantasies I had of these bands' sets time warping me into 1979 and 1964 respectively were unrealistic.

New Male Bonding music!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Possibly my favourite album of 2010 was Male Bonding's Nothing Hurts. It combined that reverby indie pop sound with a giant dollop of lo fi PUNK ROCK in the best possible way.

They have returned, with promises of a much less lo fi album, Endless Now, coming out on the 30th of August.

They've also put this track out for free download (in exchange for an email address). I think it's pretty awesome, but you can't escape the fact that they now sound like a mixture of their old selves and Blink-182.

It's no bad thing in my book.

Evans The Death are an awesome band that everyone should like

This is Evans The Death's new video for upcoming double a side Threads/I'm So Unclean on Fortuna Pop!. They combine pop brilliance, witty lyrics and a punk rawk attitude reminiscent of all my favourite bands. They are one of my favourite bands.

I've heard that there'll be another video for 'I'm So Unclean', which is probably my favourite of theirs. They're soon to be recording an album with Rory Brattwell (who also did the single and unreleased EP on their MySpace) and I eagerly anticipate what will surely be (judging from demos and songs I've heard live) an incredible debut.

The single release partay is on the 7th of July at the Brixton Windmill. If you don't go, you're an idiot.

New Stephen Malkmus Track

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Senator by DominoRecordCo

It's from Malkmus's upcoming album, Minor Traffic, and is produced by everyone's favourite Scientologist, Beck.You can download it for free off Domino's website here, which is awesome.

Obviously, the track is fairly snazzy and showcases Malkmus's ever interesting lyrics, constantly treading the thin lines between tragedy, sharp wit and complete absurdity.

Obviously, it's nowhere near as good as Pavement. Not even close.

Gig: Low @ Barbican 3/6/11

Yesterday I was a bit nervous about seeing Low: I wasn't a giant fan of the new album, I usually hate being seated at gigs (especially as my seat was right at the back) and, quite frankly, I was a bit worried about being bored.

Oupa (Daniel Blumberg of Yuck) was supporting, and I managed to catch the second half of his set. It's quite clear why he was chosen to support, obviously being influenced by the Slowcore genre Low originated in. His minimalistic keyboard/guitar + voice songs were very nice, and he played them well, but there was an element of self-indulgence in the length and repetition. While being pleasant, it didn't exactly ease my worries about Low's set.

My fears turned out to completely unfounded: last night was definitely one of the most breathtakingly beautiful sets I've ever seen. They opened with a moving rendition of 'Nothing But Heart', a song from their newest album C'mon. To be honest, that was among the songs I didn't like so much from the album but, when played live, the emotional sincerity, beautiful harmonies and awesome crescendo of sound blasted away any doubt in my mind about its brilliance.

From that point on they were on a roll that lasted the remainder of their near 2 hour set. Throughout it, they played lots from Drums and Guns, The Great Destroyer and also the entirety of C'mon. When playing songs that I didn't like so much on their albums, the performance stripped them of their slightly cheesy elements and replaced them with sublime brilliance, completely winning me over. They also did a good mix of long, short, quiet and louder songs that kept my rapt attention much better than a standard rock band ever could. Also, the addition of an extra member (a keyboard/vocalist) added a great element to the awe-inspiring sound.

Particular highlights for me were 'Silver Rider', 'Breaker' and '(That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace'. While I would have preferred them to play more of their early material (especially debut I Could Live In Hope), they're probably really bored of it, and with 9 albums + loads more to their name I'm just glad I knew most of the songs played.

The gig was phenomenal, to the extent that I'm now unsure if I'm more excited to see Low or Jeff Mangum at ATP this December.

Gig: Submotion Orchestra (Album Launch) @ Vibe Bar 31/5/11

Submotion Orchestra make dubsteppy, trip-hop-poppy, slightly-jazzy, souly music very, very well. As a result of that, I went to their awesome and intimate debut album launch at Vibe Bar on Brick Lane.

I got there in time to see support band General Roots play their last few songs. They played a pretty fun reggae/dub/ska set that got most of the audience jumping around and skanking like the Specials. I'm also pretty sure I sure a skinhead guy that disappeared from my secondary school before Sixth Form to everyone's bemusement, but that didn't really affect anything.

Submotion Orchestra came on and started with an awesome instrumental that really got the crowd going. They went on to play a mixture of material from their EP and their great new album Finest Hour, spruced up with instrumental dubstep jams that were definitely the highlights of the night.

Their studio-to-live transition is amazing, and I would definitely advise anyone ambivalent about their studio output to check them live. When actually watching them play, you can't help but marvel at each of the members' musical and technical talents, they're each clearly masters in their individual fields, and if I wasn't busy dancing I would have quite happily gawped for the entire set. The atmosphere was amazing, and I actually feel honoured to have seen them in such a nice and small venue at this stage in what will probably be quite a long and successful career.

Here's a (not brilliant, but thankfully existent) clip that gives you a little taste:

And then my friends and I went to get some disgusting fried chicken that almost killed me.

Gig: Mafia Lights @ The Lock Tavern 29/5/11

I went to this free gig, but only saw Mafia Lights. I'd never heard them before, but they were definitely worth seeing.

Apparently they used to be a pretty boring standard rock band (link), but have since morphed into a drummerless, electronic-loop led, brilliant mess of sound. Despite apparently missing a third member, they put on a full sounding and musically interesting show. Their songs reminded me a bit of a mix between Radiohead, The xx and the less scary bits of Salem.

Here are tracks:

The Hussy

The Hussy are a garagey two-piece punk band. They did a split 7" (here) with one of my favourite bands of all time, Sleeping in the Aviary (who I've written about in these posts), and they're real cool.

This is an awesome live video:

And here's a couple of awesome music videos. IN ONE VIDEO:

Awesome. I can't decide what to buy from them though...

Colourmusic music video - 'Beard'

The ever interesting Colourmusic present the world with a video for their track 'Beard' today, which is the opener of their newest album My ____ Is Pink.

The actual song reminds me of the post-punk, almost post-rock, riffage of Liars, and is generally awesome. The music video reminds us all how disgusting human beings are.

Brilliant.

LCD Soundsystem...

...were way ahead of the game with this whole taking-the-piss-out-of-hipsters-from-such-an-angle-that-the-creator-of-the-satire-would-obviously-stand-up-to-their-own-criteria-of-what-makes-a-hipster thing that's been sweeping the internet for a while.

And that's all James Murphy's good for as far as I'm concerned.

Lodger - 'Honeymoon is Over'

Finnish band Lodger got some viral internet attention as a result of their cynical music videos for songs 'I Love Death' and 'Doorsteps'. However, their third, most recent album, Honeymoon is Over (released 2008) shows that they have the capacity to reach higher heights than mild internet stardom.

The opening track 'Requiem' hints, with a short, Pink Flag-esque punk out, that they have promise to be more interesting than the relatively bland rock/pop of their previous releases. Next, 'Chemicals' goes on to prove that they have the ability to write songs that almost match Sebadoh's Bakesale era depressive output.

The rest of the album is a bit hit-and-miss: 'Hairdo' goes from a bit of a rubbish verse to a spectacular chorus, 'Nostalgia' does the opposite and 'So Long' is not my cup of tea at all. Their main drawback seems to tragically be their Finnish origin. The strong accent and often clunky lyrics occasionally get in the way of what could otherwise be great. Despite this, 'I Was Young I Needed the Money', 'Prefontain' and 'Girlfriend' show a skill at crafting energetic Indie Rock songs with pop hooks Guided By Voices would be proud of.

Lodger seem to have disappeared recently, but apparently there's a new album on the way. Hopefully it'll continue where they left off with 'Honeymoon is Over', and they'll continue their progression towards becoming a really, really awesome band that remind me of other awesome bands.

Some tracks (I couldn't find all the ones I really, really liked, but these will do):

Golden Grrrls - '2011 Tour Cassette'

As far as I can make out, this ace "album" is a tape that Glasgow based Golden Grrrls sold on their tour.

I really like their brand of upbeat lo-fi indie-pop. While kinda sounding similar to many of their surfy, reverby contemporaries, the intricate harmonies, interesting arrangements and general goodness makes me think that their rough-around-the-edges aesthetic may actually be concealing some real musical talent, as opposed to covering up the usual lack of it. They also seem like they can kick up the distortion and rock out a bit (in a slightly Bad Brains-ish way), which is always a major plus.

I'm really looking forward to the possibility of hearing some more, and slightly better recorded, songs. These Grrrls are Golden (sorry).

GET IT HERE FROM BANDCAMP HERE BY CLICKING ON THIS SENTENCE HERE RIGHT HERE NOW

Nas - 'Illmatic'

I haven't written about Hip-Hop on here before, so I may as well jump in with possibly the best Hip-Hop album of all time, Nas' Illmatic.

I checked it out a couple of weeks ago and my mind was blown. From beginning to end it's full of top notch production and rapping mastery. Nas paints a lyrical picture of his everyday reality (up until that point), mixed with the standard rapping boasts, with such dexterity that I had to listen to every song a couple of times to take it all in. His flow reminds me of Rakim's, but it manages to sound much more natural and poetic, which is saying something. What's really interesting lyrically is the bitter-sweet way he looks at ghetto gangsta life: never glorifying it, but also never smugly denying that there's something to glorify.

I'm kinda running out of things to write because the bottom line is: Illmatic is an amazing album that every Hip-Hop fan should hear, and my relatively uneducated blabbering doesn't really do it justice.

Some tracks:

Timber Timbre - 'Cedar Shakes' & 'Medicinals'

I have already rigorously masturbated over Timber Timbre in a couple of other posts (found here), and my love for him/them led me to dig a little deeper. After a lot of hunting, I managed to track down his first two, much folkier albums: Cedar Shakes and Medicinals. (Don't tell anyone, and I definitely don't condone using this route to listen to the albums at all, but they can be found here and here respectively.)

Anyway, Cedar Shakes is lo-fi. Very lo-fi. Volumes jump up and down and there's quite a bit of white noise, but it doesn't take away from the beauty of the songs and, if anything, just makes you feel even luckier to hear them. As with later albums, there's a lot packed into the songs instrumentally, lyrically and atmospherically. There's something solemnly religious about much of Timber Timbre's music (don't worry, not in a bad/mad way), and it especially shines through in Cedar Shakes. On tracks like the gospel-eqsue 'Mercy' you can almost hear his clenched fist passionately shaking at the sky.

Medicinals is also lo-fi, but it seems like a lot more time has been put into making it sound right. It definitely does sound right, and in the last few weeks it has become my favourite Timber Timbre album, even beating the properly released, most recent two. Almost every aspect of it is perfect, there are brilliant lyrics, amazing melodies and arrangements that are even better than the awesome ones on its predecessor. There's also emotional variety: 'It Comes Back To Haunt Us' makes is reminiscent of a tragically beautiful Edith Piaf song while 'Oh Messiah' borrows from 'Twist and Shout', and makes me want to do just that.

Someone really, really needs to re-release these albums and kick up a fuss about them. They are absolutely brilliant. If I could, I would spend money on them, just for the sake of it.

There are so many things I want to write about

But I am so, so lazy.

By not writing stuff for this blog, I'm procrastinating from procrastination.

Gig: Shrag + Grovesnor @ Buffalo Bar 1/5/11

Grovesnor, in all his seductive glory

The Buffalo Bar was really packed when Grovesnor came on the stage. They're the side project of Hot Chip drummer Rob Smoughton, but (luckily for Grovesnor) they're not really comparable. They play the kind of cheesy lounge-jazz-electropop that one can imagine Flight Of The Conchords seducing women with, which isn't really a genre of music I'd ever choose to listen to, or even ever known anyone to listen to. The official biography itself says that the "ambiguity of “is he for real” is where Grovesnor comes in", suggesting that either his management are just as confused about the ridiculousness of his music as everyone else, or, more likely, that it's all a bit of a joke. That being said, it is fun music and they played it really brilliantly. By the last song (complete with drum and sax solos) everyone in the room was at least nodding their heads with a smile.

Shrag

Shrag were very much more up my street. Despite clearly having influences in the twee-pop genre I usually despise, they bring a punkish live element to their set that makes them sound like a more musically proficient early '90s Riot Grrl band. They said they tried out some new songs on the night (they were all new to me, I've never heard them before) and I think they were my favourites of the night, with a combination of shouting vocals, post-punk guitar and some really awesome drumming. There was also a song with a spoken verse reminiscent of that No Trend song I posted that was really ace. More popular with the crowd was their single 'Rabbit Kids', but it's not really my thing. I might try to see them next time they play. You should go see them.

After the bands some DJs played a mixture of classic soul, indie and some Spice Girls. I witnessed some of the strangest dancing ever.