Premiers
Video Premiere: Not Punk – LiVES (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
‘Not Punk’ is, ironically, very punk. However, you might find it hard to find two people who agree on what punk actually is. But...
Rock/Punk/Metal
Video Premiere: Not Punk – LiVES (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
‘Not Punk’ is, ironically, very punk. However, you might find it hard to find two people who agree on what punk actually is. But...
Post Punk/Goth
Haunt You – French Inhaler (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Grassroots music scenes: those small yet vital cultural oases in a sea of conformity, comfort zoning, and passionless mediocrity are always more than the...
Shoegaze/Dreampop
Stars – Waves Crashing (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
As they gear up for their first UK tour in November, Waves Crashing have dropped a cool new single to get you in the...
Indie
FAMILY – The Race (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
We might start out thinking rock and roll is all about rebellion and changing the world, that we should wield our guitars like gunslingers...
Pop/Power Pop
Social Touch – Sacha Mullin (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Sacha Mullin might make pop records, but it is pop that comes from a much more discerning place than most of the competition. After...
Folk/Country
Storm – Tom Hartman (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Too many folk artists, for want of a better word, head for the extremes of the genre when trying to make music that they...
Singer-Songwriter/Acoustica
Fix This Mess – Rebecca Aadland (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
‘Fix This Mess’ isn’t a political song, but it gets to the heart of how we begin the healing process in this increasingly divided...
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
A Day of Unrest – Eleven 76 (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
In a world where gatekeepers of taste and style seem hell-bent on shoehorning music into this fad or that fashion, labelling it a certain...
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 Highs and The Low: a conversation with Sean Kiely about...
With his latest album Long Live the Low now out, a tour lined up, and memories of sharing stages with some iconic names still...
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
Gloom – Cabbage Patch Kill Dolls (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
There is something about the repetitiveness of the lyrics and the restlessness of the music that sets up an inherent tension at the heart...
You loved the cage – Spinors (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
You gotta love Spinors, I mean, any band that looks like a bunch of steampunk anarchists and sounds like they have taken all the...
Ozark Moon – Jonivan Jones (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
There is something old, honest and authentic about the music found on these two tracks that make up Jonivan Jones new offering, something at...
Stars – Waves Crashing (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
As they gear up for their first UK tour in November, Waves Crashing have dropped a cool new single to get you in the...
What I’ve Been Missing – Talk in Code (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Everything sounds like something else. That is not a criticism; it’s just the way it is: there are only so many notes, keys, and...
Civilization – Forgotten Garden (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Such a poised song, such a poignant theme. As the title perhaps suggests, this latest song from this Scottish-Portuguese duo takes a look at...
