Garfunkel & Simon are not a 2 piece song writing partnership from Brooklyn. In fact Garfunkel & Simon is just Patrick from Bradford's Monty Casino with an acoustic guitar and a gob full of young wit. He took to the stage early in front of an early crowd who remained silent through out his accute set. Patrick takes lead from anti folksters such as Jeff Lewis but with a Yorkshire accent. The subject matter behind his musings are that of Bradford City, David Cameron and library fines. Patrick ends his set with a song he claims to have written with pal Bruce Sprinsteen titled Born in the B.R.I. Garfunkel & Simon is/are a welcome addition to Bradford's music scene.
NOPE
Nope blasted out a 1 song set that lasted no longer than 15 minutes. They are a bit of a super group who include members of That Fucking Tank & Mucky Sailor. No lyrics just 100% prog. We cant think of owt else to say about these apart from they were awesome and they could do with writing another 15 minute song.
Yes. Everybody knows by now how much we love Wonderswan. In fact we are pleased to announce that we will be releasing their debut single Furrrpile late spring / early summer of this year. Exciting or what? The room fills up with more folk before the band blast through their set of slack, scuzzy pop songs in a slack and scuzzy manner. Maybe tonight they were just too loose for some of the crowd but thats what some people love about them. The Guardian recently wrote that they are "a beautifully shambolic fuzz laden racket...the sound of beautiful chaos, Pavement meets Dinosaur Jr." Wonderswan's Hey Nature will appear on Dance To The Radio's first of a series of 12" compilations which is out in early May.
This is the band that we were looking forward to the most. Phantom are a 2 piece dark party machine from London. The band are late on stage but then finally pulsating drums and synth triggers explode before a distant voice echoes around the room which is coming from the sound booth. Suddenly, like a bat out of hell as Meatloaf would say, singer Tic darts through the crowd from the sound booth and leaps on to the stage. Dancing like they do in London. Yelping like a mad dog. Swapping between baritone and bass. The 2 piece power through a set with vivacity with the help of triggers and synth like we haven't heard before. Phantom's sound is fucked up but we heard a lot of soul, 80's pop and funk, which seems to be the trend in the capital at the moment (see The XX, Jack Penate, Golden Silvers etc), but a lot more progy. Every song sounded like a winner to us but check out Risks on their myspace page.
Things are running late by the time Brontide get on stage but this did not spoil the vibe of the evening. Brontide, which is a new project for William from I Was A Cub Scout, played mathy, progressive, instrumental, riffy, melodic, rhytmic tunes very loudly. Their sound is reminiscent to Don Caballero and Battles. They didn't converse inbetween numbers choosing to just bash out the set without coming up for air. Our favourite tune was Crunk Annansie with its delicate and repetitive guitar intro followed by syncopated bass and washed down with Heavy as fuck riffing. Tight!
