After 16 years of friendship, Leeds-based pop-folk band Sunflower Thieves are a strong soulful sisterhood nurturing a unique sound, through ethereal vocal harmonies and honest lyrics to sooth the mind. Each track is hugely personal to the songwriters, hence the intimate atmosphere and sincere performance you experience in watching them.
‘Don’t Mind The Weather’ translates as “don’t worry, this is where you’re grounded and safe”. It’s easy to get swept away in everything that’s going on, but there’s beauty in that and you overcome it together anyway. Sunflower Thieves are Lily Sturt-Bolshaw and Amy Illingworth wrote Don’t Mind The Weather as a simple acoustic composition. But Lily’s production to the video clip adds texture, weight and light.
She says: “The song’s message is that no matter how the seasons and weather may change, the gravitational pull of the moon – the person you feel safe with – will keep you safe. We based it on the moon’s relationship with the tides. It’s easy to get swept away in everything that’s going on, but the relationship with this person overcomes it all.”
Check out this live version “Don’t Mind The Weather” performed live at Evoke Studios, Leeds.
we wanted to do a nice big video shoot for this song with our friends, but for obvious reasons, that hasn’t been possible. instead, we decided to show you a little of where we’ve been hibernating this year – walking in the beautiful countryside back home has been good for the soul in this storm of a year
Written by Amy Illingworth, Lily Sturt-Bolshaw and Rachel Clark.
‘Don’t Mind The Weather’ will be released 26/02/21.
UK trio Mush release new album “Lines Redacted” and here’s one last new single before the whole album drops. “The concept for “Hazmat Suits” bizarrely predates the pandemic,” explains frontman Dan Hyndman. “It then quickly became relevant and I retroactively rewrote some of the verses. I saw a group of guys in Hazmat Suits going into a building in Leeds town center around March, it was a really strong image that made me pick the tune-up again. It evoked a real modern dystopian vibe.”
The Leeds three piece, Mush’s new album Lines Redacted is out this week. Politically on point without being didactic, musically uncompromising yet as catchy as the Kent variant and as funny as it is coruscating, it’s Album of the Day on BBC 6 Music today and is getting praised to the rafters elsewhere:
“One of the finest British guitar records of recent years” 8/10 UNCUT “Rallying against aggravating, absurd political realities with passion and humor, the Leeds post-punks offer a tongue-in-cheek counterpoint to dourer contemporaries” Pitchfork “Twisty indie rock that pulls from the gamut of the arch and angular” Brooklyn Vegan
The Leeds-based art-rock trio, Mush, release their feverish second LP, “Lines Redacted”. The new release, which finds the group recruiting Lee Smith (The Cribs, Pulled Apart By Horses) on mixing duties, arrives just under a year after their debut LP, 3D Routine, capping off what has been an obviously tumultuous, but remarkably prolific year for the band. With any prospect of live shows decimated, the group, led by songwriter, Dan Hyndman, has found the time to release two EPs (‘Great Artisanal Formats’ and ‘Yellow Sticker Hour’) and now a duo of full-length albums.
Mush, comprised of Hyndman (guitar/vox), Nick Grant (bass/vox) and Phil Porter (drums), present their own sonic idiosyncrasy. It’s a sound that blurs the lines of abstract surrealism, existentialism and social commentary; utilising guitars as tools in 2020 to stave off malaise whilst simultaneously commenting on the nation’s ability to fall into such dire straits. It’s a sensory overload of wiry tones that zig-zag between punk, prog and sardonic-funk with a relentless ability to reflect society’s faults and apathy in a unique and acerbic manner. Whereas the band’s debut was very much a product of its time, something part-inspired by the political atmosphere of mid-2019 and a genuine moment of optimism when the prospect of a socialist government in the UK was on the cards, this new record uses tongue-in-cheek cynicism as a coping mechanism for the environment that we now find ourselves in.
From one song to the next, Lines Redacted introduces a string of different narrators with each providing a different reflection on the Armageddon scenario that we are slowly entering, whether that’s bemoaning it or gleefully willing it along. 3D Routine presented a bed of scathing political jibes latching onto themes and decisions of the time. Lines Redacted mutates these ideas into something slightly more sinister whilst maintaining all of Hyndman’s razor-sharp wit that permeates the album.
The Leeds-based art-rock trio, Mush, are set to release their feverish second LP, Lines Redacted via Memphis Industries on February 12th, 2021.
Bored At My Grandma’s House is the moniker of 19-year old Leeds-based Amber Strawbridge, starting out as an exercise in passing time when she was quite literally bored at her grandma’s place. First single & EPp opener ‘Showers’ is about time alone & listening to your mind – “do you ever think of showers as like a new beginning?“ is a poignant opening line, about that therapeutic space for you to really think and let your thoughts surface. In Amber’s own words “showers are a kind of therapy in my opinion, they give you time to reflect and think without influence from anything external.” born in Whitehaven, Cumbria to musical family, and raised on the likes of Bowie & Pink Floyd there was always plenty of opportunity to mess around on the various instruments lying around the house.
Attempts at proper music lessons went awry as Amber shunned the rules & rigidity, and so instead she gradually taught herself piano, guitar & drums. after time travelling in Cambodia, teaching English & helping with projects in various villages, Amber stayed with her grandma & began to use the aeons of spare time to make tunes on garageband & upload them to soundcloud. as a wave of BBC introducing support rolled in, coupled with a move to Leeds to study music, the bedroom set-up evolved & a full EP began to take shape. Playing all the instruments & self-recording most of the EP at home, Amber took the tracks to Alex Greaves (Working Men’s Club, bdrmm) at the Nave studio for live drums & some final mixing flourishes, leaving an EP full of lo-fi charm but with a studio feel.
Inspired by Slowdive, Wolf Alice & Alvvays, “Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too” showcases Amber’s singular vision of indie-pop, on an ep that deals with topics like humanity, nostalgia & the current refugee crisis. speaking on the EP title Amber says “Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too” is the realisation that everyone is the same. in the sense that we are all human, everyone has issues and problems to face, everyone makes mistakes and has success. I used to compare myself to others a lot and think ‘wow they have their life together’ or ‘how are they so happy all of the time’ but that’s not the case it’s just what you can see on the outside …so it’s kind of an EP of self assurance and reminding myself that it’s ok to not have it together all the time because no one does as we’re all just human after all” .
The EP is just the start for Bored At My Grandma’s House “I’ve already got a few tracks which I’m thinking could be potentially for an album, I’d definitely like to do a bigger project next and have the sound I’d like in mind. I’ve recently just got a band together so hopefully when live shows are resurrected 2021 is looking to be anything but boring for Amber Strawbridge.
‘Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too’ is the debut EP from Leeds-based artist Amber Strawbridge, someone who records under the name Bored At My Grandmas House. In the same vein as a brace of well-received singles throughout 2020, ‘Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too’ is a collection of five warm, lo-fi studio recordings influenced by shoegaze, dream-pop and indie-rock. Nothing about the sound of Leeds-based songwriter Amber Strawbridge is new. Let’s make this clear from the start. But if you happen to be a lover of warm, dreamy indie-rock with shoegaze like me, her alter ego Bored At My Grandmas House might bring a few moments of delight into your cold and grey lockdown reality. And yes, I fall for that sound less often than I used to in the past but occasionally it happens and the sounds of all the singles of her upcoming EP Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too so far really spoke to me. This title-track I’m showing you right here is a perfect example. And yes, she also has a really great artist name which definitely roots in a real-life-experience because she started to write songs when she was in fact bored at that said place. The EP is out next week, please give it a spin.
Debut EP from Leeds based 19 year old Amber Strawbridge (Aka Bored At My Grandmas House). Starting out as an exercise in passing time when she was quite literally bored at her Grandma’s place. Playing all the instruments and self-recording most of the EP at home, Amber took the tracks to Alex Greaves (Working Men’s Club, Bdrmm) at the Nave studio for live drums and some final mixing flourishes, leaving an EP full of lo-fi charm but with a studio feel.
Inspired by Slowdive, Wolf Alice and Alvvays, Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too showcases Amber’s singular vision of indie-pop, on an EP that deals with topics like humanity, nostalgia and the current refugee crisis.
my new EP ‘Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too’ is available to order now,
We’re very pleased to announce the new Gang of Four 77-81 Limited Edition Boxset, out on Matador Records on December 11th, available to preorder now here: gangoffour.ffm.to/boxset.ofp
The boxset features:- Entertainment! (Remastered) LP- Solid Gold (Remastered) LP- Exclusive Singles 12” LP- Exclusive ‘Live at American Indian Centre 1980’ Double LP- Exclusive Demo Cassette Tape of Outtakes, Rarities and Studio Demos- 2x New Badges- 100 Page full-colour Hardbound Book curated by Allen, Burnham and King.
“I stumbled upon a copy of Gang of Four’s Entertainment! accidentally and it went on to become one of the most influential records of my life as a producer, lyricist and fan of music in general. Their sparse, unorthodox, riff heavy guitars and nasty, funky, in-the-pocket rhythm section drew me in, but it was their questioning of the world that kept me listening as I grew. I consider them a seminal band, whose influence and effect permeates the music world in a deeper way than many realize. Thank you, Gang of Four, for existing.”
The box set contains “Entertainment!’ and ‘Solid Gold’ (both remastered from the original analogue tapes), an exclusive singles LP, and an exclusive double LP of the never officially released ‘Live at American Indian Center 1980’. Additionally, the package includes two new badges, a C90 cassette tape compiling 26 never-before-issued outtakes, rarities and studio demos from ‘Entertainment!’ and ‘Solid Gold’, and an epic 100-page, full-colour hardbound book.
The book details the history and legacy of the original Gang of Four with never before seen photos, contributions from surviving original band members, rare posters, ephemera, flyers, essays, artwork, liner notes and more. It also marks the first official publication of their lyrics.
Gang of Four was formed in Leeds in 1976 by bassist Dave Allen, drummer Hugo Burnham, guitarist Andy Gill, and singer Jon King. The band pioneered a style of music that inverted punk’s blunt and explosive energies — favouring tense rhythms, percussive guitars, and lyrics that traded in Marxist theory and situationism. They put every element of the traditional “rock band” format to question, from notions of harmony and rhythm to presentation and performance. This original line-up of the band released two monumental albums, ‘Entertainment!’ (1979) and ‘Solid Gold ‘(1981). A third, ‘Songs of the Free’ (1982), was recorded with bassist Sara Lee replacing Dave Allen. After ‘Songs Of The Free’, Burnham departed the band and Andy Gill and Jon King continued on to release Hard in 1983. After this release, the band broke up. In 2004, the original quartet reformed for tour dates and released ‘Return The Gift’ (2005).
Gill’s untimely death in February 2020 was cause for many to once again re-examine the group’s catalogue and the legacy of these early releases was widely cited. Not only did Gang of Four’s music speak to the generation of musicians, activists, writers, and visual artists that emerged in the group’s immediate wake, but the generation after that. And the generation after that, even.
In the last few years, their songs have continued to resonate with and been sampled by artists far afield including Run the Jewels (“The Ground Below”) and Frank Ocean (“Futura Free”). Now forty years since the original release of ‘Entertainment!’, Gang of Four’s legacy cannot be overstated.
Music, specifically pop music, is as much of a commodity as pork bellies. It’s bought, packaged, sold, traded and has as little to do with the Platonic triad of beauty, goodness and truth as, well, pork bellies. And it hasn’t just become this way. It’s been this way. From its inception to now, its value is what’s made it significant in the marketplace. But pressed against a wooden stage in New York at Hurrah’s in the late 1970s, what stepped out on stage had nothing to do with any kind of commercial calculus. That I could see.
See, in 1979, after a steady diet of The Ramones, the New York Dolls, Klaus Nomi, fer chrissakes, and on the strength of the name alone, a single, the press and the locale, the Gang of Four was a must see. But wrapped in the earlier vaudevillian aspect of punk rock, new wave, no wave, and a sort of well-meaning but very extant schtick, expectations were in keeping with what had already been seen. But what had been seen would in no way prepare you for what you were about to see.
Four Brits, no leather jackets, no make-up, and outside of an opening song with about two minutes of unremitting feedback, no schtick.
“We all grew up around vaudeville. It was part of the zeitgeist,” said drummer Hugo Burnham, from outside of Boston where he toils in academia and presently makes his home. But Gang of Four? “It was anti-schtick. And it was somewhat deliberate because we were serious about what we were doing but we weren’t dour. We didn’t go as far as the shoegazing thing.”
Which is almost right. Gone was the clever art school quirk of Talking Heads or the mordant rumble of a Joy Division, musicians framing what we were understanding about new music at the time. Replaced instead with something that was equal parts both cool and hot, and when they tore into their set that night it was with a life-changing brio. No “Hello Cleveland!” No foot on the front wedge rock god posturing, just songs and songs played like those that were playing them meant it. It, here, being coruscating takes on very precisely what it was we were doing while we were doing it. Again: not by accident. But very specifically, deliberately.
“We sat in pubs and talked about it,” Burnham said. Right down to things like, “No fucking feet on the monitors.”
What Burnham fails to mention and this is an amusing Rashomonesque feature of chatting with the three members still living – Burnham, singer/lyricist Jon King, and bassist Dave Allen – is that the no-feet-on-the-monitors “chat” didn’t happen in a pub. King, in a call from London, offers an alternate scenario. “It happened backstage after a show in what used to be Yugoslavia,” King laughs. “And it involved a fistfight.” So Gill and Allen settled things the old-fashioned way and while it’s unknown who won, at the Hurrah’s show there were no feet on monitors.
But first a little historical political perspective and a sense of the tableau upon which whatever Gang of Four was, was created. In the late 1970s in the U.K., there was 14 percent inflation, 18 percent in 1980, one in five adult males were out of work, interest rates were 14 percent, and there was massive industrial unrest. “In ’78 and ’79 it was called the Winter of Discontent,” King said of the hellscape that England had been even before Thatcher dug in. “There were piles of garbage four meters high in the street, people weren’t going to be buried because there was a strike of mortuary workers and grave diggers, there were dozens of IRA terror attacks in mainland UK, there were plotters looking to pull a coup d’etat, plus Russian SCUD missiles in eastern Europe and Americans sending Pershing missiles to NATO, so threats of nuclear attack. Songs like ‘In the Ditch’ on Solid Gold? That was the context we were working with.”
And given that context, a steadfast mark of Gang of Four’s genius that they didn’t zig into what was a popular pose at the time (and still really) and try to pull off the working class hero crap that had smart people dumbing down in the name of some sort of shopworn idea of what was authentic. That is, the Gang of Four were driven and obsessed with what middle class art school students should be obsessed with: making great music and art in and of the times they are living, fully realizing that you can’t fake authenticity. “Look, in looking back I have decided I really like this sort of troublesome 21-year-old me who wrote these totally un-commercial songs,” said King. But the charm, at least for the creator, is that “there’s nothing in it that is an attempt to pander to people. And it may sound kind of stupid but I kind of thought of us as like a blues band.”
“So I tried to avoid cliché, but it’s quite difficult trying to not write about things that everyone else was writing about,” King explains.” But there’s a reason hip-hop is the biggest genre in the world now and that’s because it’s got some authenticity about it; it talks about things that are actually happening. The world is a shit show now. To not write about it is a remarkable evasion of responsibility.”
Something that wasn’t missed in 1979 New York either with crime at an all-time high and the city collapsing financially. So mid-set when King dragged a metal crate on stage – “we later switched to a microwave,” Burnham said – and started blasting it with a drum stick it was both the sound of the city and the times all at once.
Adding percussive elements in and from trash, well in advance of Einsturzende Neubaten and even Stan Ridgway from Wall of Voodoo who Burnham initially thought they had lifted it from (“No,” corrects King), this was a perfect sweat-drenched statement of intent: Gang of Four absolutely were not fucking around.
And it was perhaps this quality specifically that drew the heavy. “We were political with a small P,” said bassist Dave Allen who followed a post-Gang of Four career with music tech gigs at both Apple and Intel, which is how he ended up in Portland. “But we were fighting Nazis. The fascists that came to the shows. They would jump onstage when we were playing in London, skinheads, and they had knives.” Allen, in general soft spoken, neither laughs nor smiles in the retelling. “The security guards would all run away. Having a big heavy bass in this instance helped quite a bit.”
But before reforming in 2005, Allen was the first to leave Gang of Four, in 1981, and his leaving was part of that whole not fucking around piece and almost perfectly Gang of Four-ish. “EMI were always pushing us. They wanted us to make ‘hits’. Be on the radio. Top of the Pops,” Allen sighs. “That’s not what we do. We don’t make pop songs. The 2005 reunion only lasted a few years, but Andy Gill continued with replacement musicians and died right in the midst of touring with them. He left giant shoes to fill. But even considering trying to fill them? A straight-up damn the torpedoes move. To which they are well matched. “When you try to audition a guitar player they just can’t do it,” Allen winds up. “They come in blasting thinking it is punk, but we were post-punk. It was us and Wire…”
On December 11th, Matador will release GANG OF FOUR: ’77-81”, a stunning, limited edition box set gathering Gang of Four’s influential early work.
Despite live music being derailed for 2020 Leeds’ will host a monumental reunion show to look forward to in May 2021! Returning to the stage are The Music, the Kippax band that shot to the top of the charts back in the early 00’s with their hugely infectious dance-rock songs including ‘Take the Long Road and Walk It’, ‘Welcome to the North’ and the track with everyone’s favourite riff from 2002 ‘The People’.
Joining the reunion party in May is a line-up of indie legends, leading the support billing is Wakefield’s very own ‘The Cribs’ themselves returning from a short hiatus with their brand new album and first in 3 years ‘Night Network’ set for release in November 2020. Joining them will be The Wirral’s indie-pop heroes ‘The Coral’ a mainstay of the indie scene for the best part of two decades. Fast-rising Scottish band ‘The Snuts’ who have already been selling out venues across the country and London outfit ‘The Skinner Brothers’ completing the bill. With such a strong line-up of bands this will surely be one of the gigs of 2021 as live music makes a triumphant return to Yorkshire, and an exhilarating way to forget live music’s most forgettable year.
Crake are an alt-folk four piece from the city of Leeds in northern England who write melodic and (sometimes) hopeful songs about flora, fauna, anxiety and the tough stuff. Formed on the cusp of 2016/17 after a New Year’s Eve pact, Crake spent their first couple of years playing locally with loose-line-up changes, self-releasing two EPs – 2017’s By the Slimemould and 2018’s The Politics of Lonely.
Led by singer/guitarist Rowan Sandle, Crake blend shimmering alt-folk and indie-rock, featuring an increasing density of guitars, tape-loops and synth blankets. Their songs provide a more sonically reassuring but equally intimate bed for Sandle’s poetic lyrics.
In late 2018 the band supported Big Thief’s Buck Meek on the Leeds date of his solo tour, impressing the guitarist so much that he invited them along for Big Thief’s forthcoming tour across the UK and Europe. Those three weeks spent travelling and playing with their musical heroes saw Crake go from a small, beloved act who’d barely left their hometown, to finding themselves with a legitimate fanbase of their own. Their third 3-track EP Dear Natalie was subsequently released in 2019, also marked by the addition of lead guitarist Russell Searle, joining Rob Slater on drums and Sarah Statham on bass. The EP was the sound of Crake finding their feet on a larger stage, both literally and figuratively, with opening track ‘Glycerin’ shining a spotlight on Sandle’s ever-confessional words.
Since the Big Thief tour and the Dear Natalie EP the band have focused solely on writing and demoing new music, assembling in garages, practice rooms and the beloved Greenmount Studios in Leeds (The Cribs, Pulled Apart By Horses) where drummer Rob Slater works.
The first results of this focused time away can be heard on Enough Salt (For All Dogs) b/w Gef, a brand new, two-track single which will be released on 7” vinyl via Saddle Creek’s ongoing Document Series. Their first self-produced effort, the new single is Crake at their most confident. Exploring the depths of their sound while staying rooted in Rowan Sandle’s brilliant songwriting and captivating lyrics.
Crake are an alt-folk four piece from the city of Leeds in northern England who write melodic and (sometimes) hopeful songs about flora, fauna, anxiety and the tough stuff. Formed on the cusp of 2016/17 after a New Year’s Eve pact, Crake spent their first couple of years playing locally with loose-line-up changes, self-releasing two EPs – 2017’s “By the Slimemould” and 2018’s “The Politicsof Lonely”.
Led by singer/guitarist Rowan Sandle, Crake blend shimmering alt-folk and indie-rock, featuring an increasing density of guitars, tape-loops and synth blankets. Their songs provide a more sonically reassuring but equally intimate bed for Sandle’s poetic lyrics.
In late 2018 the band supported Big Thief’s Buck Meek on the Leeds date of his solo tour, impressing the guitarist so much that he invited them along for Big Thief’s forthcoming tour across the UK and Europe. Those three weeks spent travelling and playing with their musical heroes saw Crake go from a small, beloved act who’d barely left their hometown, to finding themselves with a legitimate fanbase of their own. Their third 3-track EP “Dear Natalie” was subsequently released in 2019, also marked by the addition of lead guitarist Russell Searle, joining Rob Slater on drums and Sarah Statham on bass. The EP was the sound of Crake finding their feet on a larger stage, both literally and figuratively, with opening track ‘Glycerin’ shining a spotlight on Sandle’s ever-confessional words.
Since the Big Thief tour and the Dear Natalie EP the band have focused solely on writing and demoing new music, assembling in garages, practice rooms and the beloved Greenmount Studios in Leeds (The Cribs, Pulled Apart By Horses) where drummer Rob Slater works.
The first results of this focused time away can be heard on “Enough Salt (For All Dogs) b/w Gef”, a brand new, two-track single which will be released on 7” vinyl via Saddle Creek’s ongoing Document Series. Their first self-produced effort, the new single is Crake at their most confident. Exploring the depths of their sound while staying rooted in Rowan Sandle’s brilliant song writing and captivating lyrics.
The band formerly known as ’Ørmstons’ has undergone a massive reinvention including changing their name, and their newest single is an absolute tour de force.
Now going by the new name RAE, ‘Never Meant To Start A Witch Hunt’ is heavier than a Rugby prop and bites like a rabid Yorkshire Terrier. They’re a typical indie band who aren’t bothered about becoming world famous, it’s the music they care about the most. RAE was announced to the world in January 2020. A time for a clean slate and a new journey.
Jess, Will, Bob and Jamie are no strangers to being in a band together, previously know as ‘Ørmstons’, they have grown together as friends and musicians and are ready to take the next leap into the big black pit, or as its normally called – the music industry. Their music takes a spin on indie/pop and indie/rock – the best of both worlds. Lyrically, they touch upon all the issues we face as we grow up, love and heartbreak (which we will go through over ad over again in our lives), politics, mental health. The band aspire to be as raw and real as they can be in both person and in their music.
The way I see it they’re like a cross between Blondie and the Manic Street Preachers. Frontwoman Jessica Huxham is the star of the show, and can captivate audiences at the drop of a hat. Her lyrics are haunting and quiet, similar to Morrissey’s back in his prime.
This track is the flag in the ground that marks RAE’s reinvention. It’s not quite Bohemian Rhapsody or Jailhouse Rock, but it is simple and easy to listen to, and well worth a few repeats.
Band Members
Jess Huxham, Will Smith, Bob O’Hare, Jamie Collins
RAE“Never Meant To Start A Witch Hunt” Released on: 2020-06-12
The Fat Angel Sings 