Four Demons is an EP of superstitious caterwauling from Ruby Tingle, a beautiful garden variety witch who has created an artistic outlet for her strange intentions. She makes handmade collages, sculptures and puppets of animals and humans in unusual scenes. These lean towards her macabre fascinations. Peruse her artwork; it exhibits a grotesque and vaudevillian [...]

The night was a symbiosis between man, machine and music. The Narrows carved a noisy electro rut, using computer hardware to provide rhythm and synthesis. The man on the keyboard was controlling drums and some synthesizer patches. I spent a portion of their set trying to locate the fourth man they appeared to be using. [...]

Live: Band of Skulls@ HMV Ritz-5th December 2012 After the release of their second album Sweet Sour in February 2012, Band of Skulls have been touring extensively across the globe. This time it was Manchester’s turn to feel their rumbling desert-rock riffs. First up was Manchester locals Folks which quite frankly seemed like a bit [...]

There are a couple of things you need to know about brothers David and Neil Newport. Firstly, they come from Manchester. Secondly, they don’t play guitars. And, finally, they create commanding electronic arrangements from old school analogue synths. Or at least they do under the Shmoo guise, with critical comparisons already being drawn to an [...]

It still feels like yesterday when I used to go to varies open mics around Manchester and the North-West and I would see Josephine tuning up ready to play. It has been great to see her go from beginning to where she is now. I would hazard a guess that this is only the beginning [...]

Since its madder days, the Manchester music scene appears to have lost much of its buzz with London and Birmingham seemingly leading the way with a brief early naughties emergence in the North of the country. Stalagmites from Salford are bringing the scene back to where it should be with a post Oasis style that [...]

Manchester Academy. Don’t you just, hate it?  Don’t get me wrong, as multifaceted venues come, Manchester Academy beats the rest hands down. Catering to an array of music and events with a venue to suit any occasion, it’s the chameleon of the live gig and Student’s Union world. And that’s what annoys me. Having attended [...]

Lets just clear one thing up before we get started. I’m not the same Johnny Lewis that’s the creative force behind Douga. For one thing, he’s got a much cooler addition to his last name than me in the form of ‘Winbolt’. It’s a name that seems to be a combination of ‘Winning’ and Usain [...]

I stepped down into a pit of depravity. In the far left corner was darkness. Then there was a man working at a table set with cd players. In front of the darkness and working man was a set of speakers moving bodies. It was very loud. In the room, people moved out of sync. [...]

Hot Chip is hardly a band full of rebellious characters, most of the members are now fully fledged family men. They recently swapped their family homes for a recording studio, when they continued their everlasting success with the making of In Our Heads. But now they have swapped their family homes for a tour bus and [...]