First, it is its popularity juxtaposed with location. Squeezed behind the bend on Shacklewell Lane, somewhere between the shanky estates of Hackney and the vibrant hipster nightlife of Dalston you’d expect the SA to be infested with lonely old men with bloodshot eyes. Astoundingly, the place is always packed with pleasant, trendy young people. 

As you enter the venue, you get instantly hit by the warm, damp waft bringing to mind your nan’s basement. The front welcomes you with the bar, cool bar staff and most obviously… 80’s arcade games, which haven’t shown me any proof of vitality. Venturing deeper into this catacomb of a venue you discover the live room at the back catering for about 200 people. It features one of the most bizarre stages in London – tiny and embellished with alien arches covered with incomprehensible frescos, dividing the stage in two and creating a secret little cave for the drummer at the back. Finally there is also a beer garden – vast, welcoming and bringing to mind your nan’s backyard - perfect to chill out when the music gets too much. 

The most important thing about the Shacklewell Arms is perhaps the infinitely eclectic mix of music that it offers. It never fails to showcase the coolest up and coming bands before the rest of the world caches up. Aside from live gigs it also hosts club nights and after parties, not excluding any genre known to man, and members of various popular bands can often be spotted partying under its damp, frescoed roof. 

Aside from being a reliable music venue, the SA also offers an impressive food menu and great deals. Following the tradition of English pub cuisine it serves Pie & Mash and great Sunday Roasts to cure your hangover. You can also taste some traditional North American cuisine in the form of Hank’s gourmet hot dogs. 

Overall, the Shacklewell Arms is the ultimate venue according to East London standards. It serves cool music, trustworthy food and good vibes. The only problem with it is that this humid smell kinda gets into your hair and clothes a bit if you spend the whole night there, but hey, that makes you #authentic.

Ax

Set 18th March 2013 in your filofaxes folks. Deptford Goth’s debut album ‘Life After Defo’ will be released on Merok Records.

Daniel Woolhouse a.k.a. Deptford Goth describes his music as ‘sitting somewhere between real and synthetic’. It’s like sonic neo-skeuomorphism. Or something.

I really tried to pick out the singles on the album but came to the conclusion, potentially, they all could be. ‘Feel Real’ is such a treat, with such exquisite production especially on his vocals. Today I’ve been mostly listening to ‘Objects Objects’; a track that eats you whole.

Having already had comparisons to James Blake, as well as fans of The xx falling for him, the album could be the highlight of the year. Drawing those comparisons to Blake might be construed as a sign of lapsing originality. But that is far from the truth. He’s managed to create his own sound within a space/bass culture; it’s a phenomenal feat. 

Here’s the awe-inspiringly doomed ‘Union’:

Jx

In the highly unlikely event that you ever find yourself stuck for something to do one evening in East London, The Old Blue Last can provide. Within walking distance from Liverpool Street, Old Street, Shoreditch High Street and probably many other streets, the venue is easily accessible, the events in the upstairs venue are almost always free entry and there’s usually something happening every night of the week. I have personally been impressed by bands that I would not have seen or heard of but for walking into the Old Blue out of curiosity - seeing 2/3 of the band Yucky Slime wrestling in the middle of the venue is a definite standout for me! - and by that same token I have seen more established bands being put into the cold light of day in the small venue’s environment, some faring well (for instance, The Chapman Family) and others not so well, and let’s leave them unnamed.

The venue itself strikes the perfect balance between being too dingy and dirty and being too clean - satisfyingly grimy, perhaps, and the tiny stage can just barely accommodate the bands it holds every night, but where the venue always excels is in sound quality. For all the noise the regular guitar-based bands that play there make, every note chimes through the system at the Old Blue loud and clear, every kick drum rattles the ribcage and the bass is strong enough to rearrange internal organs. A live music fan honestly could not ask for more than what the Old Blue provides. In fact, I think my only complaint about the venue is that the hand dryer in the upstairs gents is a bit crap, but then I am quite fond of good hand dryers.

DBx

Brixton Academy is a beast. Fail to fill it, and this gaping 5,000 capacity room will echo cold as a chasm. There aren’t many places where a 2,000-strong crowd brings about as much atmosphere as a bee in a library, but this is one of them. Sell it out, though, and the place becomes a sizzling cauldron of electricity: 5,000 shiny happy people bound by the rhythm of doing the same thing at the same time in the same place.

The magic of, to give it its official title, O2 Academy Brixton, is in its ancient aura: the fact that loud music makes the walls shake like they can’t take any more. The grimy, alcohol-soaked carpets. The labyrinthine passages that make up backstage. The old murals found buried behind stacks of plastic-bottled beer. Even when you are alone here in a rare moment of quiet, the place is haunted by the reverberations of that electric atmosphere.

Brixton is a certified rumour mill. There are stories of gun shots and stabbings, power cuts and evacuations, broken legs and burned-down bars. There are memories of kindness and generosity, of photographs with heroes, of mind-blowing light shows, tear-jerking performances and confetti littering the streets. This is the sort of venue that can change your mind about a band you thought were no good, and expose weaknesses in your favourites. It does what a music venue should: it evolves your relationship with music.

SAx

About a month or so ago I was on here raving about Bristol’s Howling Owl Records and the microscene that’s taken over the west country’s musical landscape. No sooner did that article go online than Howling Owl announced an upcoming show at London’s Old Blue Last, featuring The Naturals, Towns (billed as Special Guests, not-at-all-subtly hinted at in the posts leading up to the event), Spectres, and Velcro Hooks. On Thursday, that night finally rolled around and East London was, frankly, just not ready. 

Velcro Hooks kicked off proceedings in style, and I’ve never personally seen the Old Blue this packed out for an opening band at 8:45 on a Thursday evening, but this night was something special. The energy in the room matched the energy onstage, with the crowd screaming along with the lyrics as frontman Jenner Blank yelled, shrieked and occasionally sang his way through songs which will almost inevitably become garage rock classics of the future. Don’t be fooled by their position on the bill; this band knows how to make the room their own, as they had the majority of the crowd in a frenzy, while small pockets of Old Blue regulars watch grinning from the sides of the room at the rare sight of people actually having fun in a London venue.

I have a shameful admission to make at this point. I missed most of Spectres’ set. My proverbial hunger for noisy guitar music was diminished by my literal hunger for food, and so I abandoned the venue for a short time, and returned to catch Spectres’ last song, which was a beautifully intense affair, chock full of guitar noise, and had half the crowd dancing and swaying, the other half utterly mesmerized. I’ve since checked out Spectres and I don’t think I’ve kicked myself so much for missing a band, seriously go and listen to them now before reading another word!

To the surprise of absolutely no-one, ‘Special Guests’ Towns took to the stage. To the surprise and amusement of pretty much everyone, they were accompanied by 4 people wearing Justin Bieber and Jedward masks! At this point, it stopped feeling like a gig at The Old Blue Last, and started feeling like the best house party in Bristol had just teleported itself to Shoreditch. Guitarist JP finds himself in the audience on several occasions and every single song has the crowd going mad from start to finish, until the actual finish of the show at which point a good chunk of the crowd (including this writer) finds itself onstage with the band! It’s a perfect end to their set, full of energy, with the atmosphere of a house party. You are advised to catch them on tour; they play at Birthdays in Dalston on the 23rd October!

Howling Owl’s hostile takeover of East London culminated in a massive sonic assault from a band who are practically veterans in Bristol’s noise army: The Naturals. They began by lighting an incense stick and looping an ambient bass line, but the peace was soon shattered with an aural battering of guitar noise, the aggression and intensity of which was matched only by its intricacy and precision. In certain tracks, their guitarist set up complex rhythmic delay pedal motifs with ease, hammering at his guitar almost carelessly while incredibly intricate, glitchy rhythms jump out of the speakers. Their set, and the Howling Owl Infestation, ended appropriately with the track ‘Finishing Moves’. It’s intensity kept building and building, and by the end there is so much pure, unadulterated noise at such an incredible volume that it felt physically affecting. I’m pretty sure that my hearing range has been significantly reduced following that gig. 

Howling Owl’s bands have it all. They sound great on record, they totally own the place when they play live, and audiences adore them. Their takeover at the Old Blue Last made so many other gigs I’ve seen there look amateurish, substandard and generally a bit shit by comparison. Frankly, when it comes to guitar music, the rest of the UK needs to up its game.

DBx

Last night, I spent time at Selbright Arms in Hackney, fast becoming one of the capital’s hyped music venues. A pitch-black basement with a lighting rig that frankly could beckon Batman. First on was Indians, with more textures than a punk’s denim jacket. It’s an extremely hard thing to pull off a 1 person electronic band and still look like you’re playing, but he did it. Really digging the vibes at the moment with proper songwriting but that sound like their recorded in a massive warehouse.

Headlining the Beggars night was Glass Animals. I’d been at their show at Rough Trade last week, and record store shows I always find a bit weird; swag-dancing in the Krautrock aisle. They really didn’t disappoint. Beautiful bass-tones reminiscent of early dubstep pioneers, spaced beats, heavily fx’d guitars with exquisite vocals. I was getting flickers of Hot Chip, from the vocal harmonies, which is a massive tick in my book. With subtle songwriting like this, it’s only a matter of time before every hipster is all over these guys so get one up on them, see ‘em live next at Leeds’ Nation of Shopkeepers this Saturday.

Word of advice about Selbright Arms, don’t walk down the staircase marked Selbright restaurant thinking that’s how you get into the gig, you’ll end up on stage.

Jx

Throughout it’s history, The Mercury Music Prize has been held in high regard amongst the luddites of the British music industry and the record buying public; it has the ability to make or break an artists career. One only needs to look at Manchurian noise terrorists Elbow who went from supporting Britain’s biggest Cure tribute act Placebo to playing sold out gigs at venues such as The Roundhouse in the space of a year, unarguably due to the success of their 2008 victory at the Mercury’s. Ignoring the fact that the band themselves are a bit shit it shows that the prize is actually nothing more than a huge marketing machine. The idea that it is an ‘alternative’ to the Brit awards is dismissed when you consider the following points:

First of all look at the past industries that have sponsored the event; Panasonic, Nationwide Building Society and currently, the music lovers bank – Barclaycard. It’s all a bit ‘corporate’ for an organisation that claims to be an ‘alternative’.  Not that this is of course a problem; the £20,000 prize money has to come from somewhere (coincidentally the prize money has stayed the same since the prize’s beginning in 1992, surely Barclaycard have heard of inflation?).  Another scrutable observation is that the Mercury’s have a habit of including certain acts to ‘beef up’ their ‘outsider’ status. For example, most years there is the obligatory inclusion of classical acts such as Nicholas Maw in 2000 or purely instrumental groups such as Basquiat Strings or Polar Bear. These acts obviously have no chance of winning the coveted £20,000 cheque but is merely a ruse to keep the British public interested in the what the ‘off beat’ panel of judges will make of said acts.

This leads me to my next problem, at what point was it deemed acceptable for the man who chooses what records get played on Radio 1 to have a say as to what the stand out British album of the year is? All you have to do is glance at the Radio 1 A-list to see what this man thinks the nation should be listening to. For example currently doing the rounds on the self proclaimed ‘Nations Favourite’ are acts such as David Guetta, Conor Maynard, Example, Ne-Yo and The Script. In fact if you look at the whole A,B and C playlist of Radio 1, the only band that appear who are on the shortlist for the award are alt-J. Also, if you look at the list of judges for this years event the only names that have a right to put forward their analysis are Anna Calvi, musicologist Simon Frith and critic for The Independent, Alisa Bray. The rest of the judges are mainly presenters of radio shows or ‘heads of music’ for certain stations. I mean, when was the last time you tuned into Absolute Radio and heard Roller Trio?

However all of these points aren’t exactly deal breakers as to how seriously you should take the Mercury Music Prize, but consider this if you will: the sort of people who take the aforementioned prize seriously are genuine music lovers who see music not just as something to have on in the background whilst you’re doing the ironing, but something that can be genuinely moving and strike an emotional chord within themselves. What I’m sure most of, if not all of these acts see themselves as are artists. High-art practitioners working in a low-art medium. So what do the panel of judges know about art when all they want to do is reduce it into nothing more than a competition where the winner receives a cash prize for gaining their approval?

CB

I spent 1991 living in Bristol, learning to walk, talk and not shit myself. In hindsight I should have skipped the latter in favour of learning to play guitar and joining a noisy band. Now I can only imagine what it might’ve been like to be a part of the flourishing, era-defining music scene at that time - Blur were touring ‘Leisure’, My Bloody Valentine had just released ‘Loveless’, thereby practically inventing the shoegaze genre, and across the Atlantic, Nirvana had just released ‘Nevermind’, the impact of which can still be felt to this day…

21 years later, and no sooner have I left Bristol for the greyer pastures of London than the West Country starts having its own private 1991 renaissance. I know that the whole country, if not the world, has recently gone mad for the alternative scene of the ‘90s for the first time since it actually happened. But believe me when I say that Bristol are doing it better than anyone else, with more authenticity, more original bands with better songs (albeit with familiar sounds) and a real DIY ethic. 

If you move in certain circles you may have heard the name ‘Howling Owl Records’ cropping up once or twice. In fact, for those of you who live in Bristol and even so much as own a guitar, that name, and the acts associated with it, should be pretty familiar by now. People in London might not necessarily know of Howling Owl, but anyone who reads blogs like this one will have heard of their act ‘Towns’, whose single ‘Just Everything’ got just about everyone excited earlier this year with its MBV-meets-Stone Roses, Baggy-meets-Shoegaze aesthetic - all reverberant, languorous guitars and breathy vocals rolled out over a rhythm section designed to liven up even the most dour indie dancefloor.

Their track ‘Heads Off’ is maybe slightly too reminiscent of MBV’s ‘Only Shallow’, but what they lack in sonic originality they make up for by writing some of the most well crafted and memorable songs in their genre. 

London folk may also know, or know of, The Naturals, as they make their way up to the big smoke fairly often. One of my personal favourites from the Howling Owl roster, in their own words they “make guitars sound like bees”. Accurate, but they also create enormous soundscapes and atmospheres that encapsulate incredibly emotional sounding (lyrically incomprehensible) post-rock-esque songs. ‘Finishing Moves’ is a building crescendo of a song, full of dark melody and subsequently pure, chaotic guitar noise.

Concrete Sea’ is somewhat more upbeat and less noisy but still retains a great deal of emotional depth. 

There are in fact so many noteworthy bands on Howling Owl Records, that the label seems to have single handedly revamped the Bristol music scene. From GuMM’s impressive wall of sound to Let’s Kill Janice’s fuzzy guitar pop to Velcro Hooks’ gritty, Pixies-esque garage rock, guitar music is leading the way in a city normally renowned for its history in electronic music, trip hop and d’n’b. Just as the music press start making their regular-as-clockwork declarations of the death of the guitar band, it is Bristol, and Howling Owl Records in particular, that seems to be staging its strongest revival in years.

DBx

Really looking forward to Throwing Snow’s new EP, Clamor, three spanking new tracks with a Gold Panda remix to boot, slightly delayed but out on the 14th August.

But for now though, a smashing remix of Part-Time Heroes.