Premiers
Single Premiere: The Greatest Gift – Leem of Earth (reviewed by...
Taken from the band’s forthcoming album, SEE, an ambitious concept album inspired by George MacDonald’s Victorian-era fairy tale The Princess and Curdie, ‘The Greatest Gift’...
Rock/Punk/Metal
November Shadows – Bad Valentines (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Hats maan! You can tell a lot about a band from the hats they wear. So when I see the cover of ‘November Shadows,’...
Post Punk/Goth
Kissing Lions – Ghost Painted Sky (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
You always know something good is going to happen when you drop the needle and are greeted by a bass line that is all...
Shoegaze/Dreampop
Edge of the World – Korda Korder (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Although often immersed in a more cinematic, wide-screen, dream-pop sound, this latest one, from Korda Korder, ‘Edge of the World’, is a song whose...
Indie
Running Out of Time – SirenBlue (reviewed by Dave Frankin)
If there is a sweet spot between rock weight, pop infectiousness, and indie cool, and the annals of history suggest there is (otherwise how...
Pop/Power Pop
Save You Now – The Summertimes (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
With a sound as warm and welcoming as the band name, ‘Save You Now’ is a shimmering slice of indie meets old-school power-pop –...
Folk/Country
Reclaimation – Lurleen Ladd (reviewed by Dave Frankin)
Artists might write songs for very personal and individual reasons, as a way of sharing experiences and thoughts or perhaps to exorcise demons or...
Singer-Songwriter/Acoustica
Scenes From a Well-Worn Path (Side Two) – Music By Jeremy...
If debut albums are supposed to be the sound of an artist finding their feet, finding their sound, finding their way into the musical...
R&B/Soul
Funkin Days – Made Retro (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Made Retro is, on reflection, a great name for the music made here, suggesting something being constructed in the here and now, but with...
Reggae/Ska/Dub
A Fistful of Covers – The Hempolics (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
A band releasing an EP of recordings covering their favorite songs is nothing new. A band doing that while also offering a dub reworking...
Dance/EDM
Walk On The Fire – Mr B (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
It's always refreshing to see artists making music that fits very much into the modern dance-popscape, making songs with instantly apparent commercial appeal and...
Hip-hop/Rap
Snap, Crackle & Bop – Us3 (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Hip-hop and the myriad styles and sounds that it spawned have moved a long way from the soul and funk and jazz and pop...
Jazz/Blues
Ghosts – Mark Newman (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Blues spans a broad spectrum, from the spacious roots sound of a simple, battered acoustic to the full-on electric band sounds made by superstars...
Classical/Instrumental
Get Together – Summer Fades Away/Vaudlow (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
The modern world is a marvellous place. Not many years ago, the idea of a Chinese band and a US duo collaborating on a record would have been...
Avant Garde
Phantoms of Nagasaki – Vantablack (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Nick Hudson has been responsible for some of the most moving, eclectic, devastatingly beautiful, beguiling, exciting and adventurous music of recent times, probably because...
Interviews
The Truth is out there: A conversation with Larsa Dahlén of...
Under the name Yeah Baby Yeah, Larsa Dahlén has just dropped ‘The Truth’, a timeless message wrapped in wonderfully nostalgic music that explores fact...
Live
Deadlight Dance/Flowers of Sacrifice @ The Tuppenny, Swindon 17th Sep ’26
Ahh, those were the days, my formative years spent in basement rock clubs drenched in dry ice, the smell of patchouli, the floor sticky...
Swindon
My River – M3G (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Trying to stand out in a world of guitar-slinging folk-popsters and would-be hipster troubadours when you make music with just voice and guitar is...
News
Latest single ‘So Keen’ from Indie punk band Poets Corner is...
Following a great bunch of reviews & a host of radio plays for previous single She’s Got You Now, Hull’s authentic indie outfit Poets Corner are back with...
Playlist
That Was The Music Week That Was – 080825
Another busy week at Dancing Towers, plenty of cool grassroots artists put under the pen, lots of great music mused over, and lots of...
Books
How Not To Write About Music – III: Starting the Week...
One of the joys of writing about new music is that it stops you from getting trapped in the past. Of course, bands like...
6 of the best
Refinement 2026 – Poke A Brain (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
If you needed any further proof that sounds and styles and genres and scenes are all pointless demarcations, and that the best things happen...
Holding On – The Snow Ponies (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Last time I wrote about music from Phil Dean he was a folk-rocker from Gelong. Now he is an indie kid from The Shire…well,...
In the Silence of the Hills – Moon and Aries (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
The music that this intercontinental duo makes does, by its very nature, err on the side of drifting and ambient, effortless and elegant. But...
Sunrise State of Mind – Dave Hill Jr. (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Sometimes it is best not to overthink things, so when Dave Hill Jr. says “let’s start again”, he isn’t talking about big relationship crises...
The Fuzzy End of the Lollipop – the black watch (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
When John Andrew Fredrick says that he intends this to be the last black watch album, he does add the caveat that he has...
Funkin Days – Made Retro (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Made Retro is, on reflection, a great name for the music made here, suggesting something being constructed in the here and now, but with...
