Premiers
Video Premiere: Sweeter Than Before – Scott Allen & The List...
As I probably said when reviewing their splendid album, June, Scott Allen & The List has a timeless, almost genreless sound, or at least...
Rock/Punk/Metal
The Longest Time – Laura Musgrave (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
They say you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, and The Longest Time, the debut EP from Laura Musgrave, is...
Post Punk/Goth
Bel Esprit – Canary Complex (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
The world of Canary Complex is one built from a collage of all the most beautiful and romantic aspects of the modern age, not...
Shoegaze/Dreampop
Inevitable – Awake & Dreaming (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
What’s in a name? Well, in the case of Awake & Dreaming, quite a lot. It not only reflects co-founder and co-songwriter Sasha Kristoff’s...
Indie
Off-Ramp – Alex Catchings (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Seattle musician Alex Catchings, perhaps inadvertently, makes an interesting point, challenging the idea that to be a serious musician you have to come up...
Pop/Power Pop
She’d Tell Me Over and Over – Duane Hoover (reviewed...
Even if you didn’t do your research on Duane Hoover (although I definitely did, honestly), you would learn a lot about him by simply...
Folk/Country
Walk Away – Willow Layne (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
There is wisdom in knowing when to call it a day, a maturity in realising when enough is enough. Sometimes, recognising that your efforts...
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
The Powers That Be – J-Dynamite (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Jeff Silverman might not be a household name, but he has been a guiding hand in the soul and funk scene for over three...
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
Cry For Love – The Heard Eye (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
You have to admire the way that The Heard Eye effortlessly mix optimism and hope with the grooviest of music. And you can tell...
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
I Remember When All This Was Fields…of the Nephilim: A chat...
With a new single, ‘Glass Walls,’ just dropped and a flurry of activity planned, both in terms of recordings and live shows, I sat...
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
Cocoon – Steve Stinson (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Any music that carries meaning will always reflect something about the person making it. Those who make music just for the sake of it,...
Terrestrial Pulmonate Gastropod Molluscs (Olympics) – BeaVoys (self-released)
What would happen if the titular Terrestrial Pulmonate Gastropod Molluscs, that's snails to you and me, got together and decided to hold their own...
No (Country For Old) Kings – The Sean Shiff Project (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
At the heart of Sean Shiff’s songwriting is a great philosophy: before you add all the whistles and bells the recording studio offers, a...
Inevitable – Awake & Dreaming (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
What’s in a name? Well, in the case of Awake & Dreaming, quite a lot. It not only reflects co-founder and co-songwriter Sasha Kristoff’s...
Old New Feelings – Felix Rockey (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Rock and soul and heartache and memory all mix and merge in this new one from Felix Rockey; opposites attract, and emotions that should...
Cry For Love – The Heard Eye (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
You have to admire the way that The Heard Eye effortlessly mix optimism and hope with the grooviest of music. And you can tell...
