Editors

Belladrum Festival

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Editors

• Tom Smith – vocals, guitar
• Chris Urbanowicz – guitar
• Russell Leetch – bass, guitar
• Ed Lay – drums

Editors, formerly known as Snowfield, hail from all over the country but settled in Birmingham in the autumn of 2003. the new band found themselves with a clutch of tracks that will form the basis of their debut album, due later in 2005.

Drawing on their love of early REM, Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen, Editors honed an identifiably English sound focused on the grand themes of love, loss and redemption.»

Ocean Colour Scene

Ocean Colour Scene are...

• Simon Fowler - vocals, guitar
• Steve Cradock - guitar
• Damon Minchella - bass
• Oscar Harrison - drums

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British Sea Power

British Sea Power are a band like no other. They make spell-binding, angular music and write peerless songs about obscure Czech novelists, nuclear power stations and 'benign nationalism'. Their reference points range from Dostoyevsky to Charles Lindberg.

Live, they wear army fatigues and submarine uniforms. They cover the stage with foliage and plastic animals. Their sets usually end in a riot of sonic and visceral chaos akin more to performance art than rock music.

Where does their inspiration come from? The group's history provides a few clues. Brothers Yan, the singer, and Hamilton, the bassist, are the sons of an unpublished writer and along with Wood, the drummer, they were brought up in the remote wilderness of England's lake district. Yan met guitarist Noble while studying psychology at Reading University. The four teamed up, and British Sea Power were born. The quintet was completed when bass-drummer and keyboard player Eamon later joined the band.

Seeking a more inspirational base with better venues, the group headed south and landed in the cosmopolitan seaside city of Brighton, where they established Club Sea Power, a night at the Lift and Freebutt clubs, where they DJ'ed, played live and provided a platform for other unusual performers, such as the Copper Family, a 200-year-old Sussex folk troupe.

Following the release of their first single, Fear of Drowning, on their own label, Golden Chariot, and some ecstatic reviews of their live shows, the group signed to Rough Trade records. For a while, during 2001 and 2002, the band were continually touted as the 'next big thing' but the delay in releasing their first album meant that the fickle British music press quickly lost interest.

However, a succession of brilliant singles followed - and the band's breathtaking live shows meant they were steadily building a devoted fan base. Their extensive touring schedule has recently taken them around Europe where they have been supporting avant garde New Yorkers Interpol. Their last UK tour took in venues from Aberdeen to the Scilly Isles.

The latter concert was arranged in association with Operation Lighthouse Keeper, an organisation that campaigns for the reinstatement of manned lighthouses. Prior to the start of the tour, the launch gig for their new album, much to the bemusement of the invited guests, was held in a village pub deep in rural Sussex.

All this may seem like mildly eccentric posturing by an up-and-coming band seeking media attention. But BSP's leisure interests are about as far removed from the traditonal rock'n'roll lifestyle as you could get - ornithology, rambling, Ordnance Survey maps, the flora and fauna of the English countryside and forgotten coastal villages all hold an attraction. They would rather be heading off to the woods with rucksacks on their backs than throwing televisions out of hotel windows.

The group's fondness for pastoral pursuits, coupled with a shy off-stage persona, might lead a casual observer to assume their music would be lacking in energy and passion. In fact, they are one of the most exciting live acts in the country.

The shows inevitably end with the band ad-libbing in a manner that is as infectious as it is chaotic. Yan and his cohorts turn their performances into theatres of the absurd. Tree branches are thrown into the audience; Yan shrieks his lyrics while swallowing the microphone; Eamon marches through the audience banging his drum; Noble climbs onto the speakers and plays the guitar with his teeth; Hamilton, wearing a crown of leaves, makes owl impressions and performs some kind of pagan dance ritual...

Such antics could be used to compensate for the quality of the material. But in the three years since BSP formed, they have created an entrancing collection of songs, from emotive ballads such as new single Carrion and The Lonely (written about the band's late friend, musician Geoff Goddard), to the jerky, psychedlic cacophony of tracks like Favours in the Beetroot Fields and Apologies to Insect Life, and searing rift-driven epics such as Remember Me.

There are echoes of Joy Division (who the group acknowledge as an influence), the Fall, Echo and the Bunnymen and even XTC. But in truth they are really not like any of these.

Whether the group's eclectism and 'English ecccentricity' will inhibit their appeal in an era of manufactured bands and bland indie pop, has yet to be seen. But we do not have too long to wait to find out. Their debut album, The Decline of British Sea Power (released on June 2), should establish them in the heart of the masses. And don't be surprised if NME and Q suddenly decide they are flavour of the month. Let's hope that in all the attention the band are about to receive that they continue making the music they want to make in the way they want to make it.

Into the breach, dear friends - grab it with both hands, you deserve it...

Written by Kevo from Brilliantine Mortality website (linked below)»

DeVotchKa

Eastern European folk influenced band with all kinds of crazy strings and brass going on.

http://www.devotchka.net»

Toploader

Toploader are (or rather, were)...

• Joe Washbourn - vocals
• Julian Deane - guitar
• Dan Hipgrave - guitar
• Matt Knight - bass
• Rob Green - drums

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Noah & The Whale

Heartbreaking folk anthems, mostly about death and the like.

MySpace

Noah & The Whale is Charlie, Doug, Urby and Tom.

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Sons and Daughters

Catch them on tour with Franz Ferdinand in April.

Sons and Daughters formed in winter 2001 and feature Adele Bethel on vocals and guitar (has featured on Arab Strap, Zephyrs and Sofia releases), David Gow on drums (Arab Strap, David Kitt), Ailidh Lennon on bass, piano and mandolin (Cover star from Arab Straps 'Mad for Sadness') and Scott Paterson on guitar and vocals (March of Dimes).

They play sad, dirty folk music that kicks fuck out of Johnny Cash. And they mean when he was young and hard.»

Alabama 3

In the American deep south during the 1930s, two black men are hung for allegedly raping a white woman. Their case becomes a symbol for justice miscarrying and they go down in history as the Alabama 2. Over half a century later in South London, the son of a Welsh Mormon preacher meets the offspring of a Glaswegian trades unionist at an underground acid house party and they embark upon the mischievous miscegenation of Hank Williams, gospel and acid house. Expanding in the mid 90s into a Brixton based collective, they called themselves Alabama 3 and continue to be one of the most joyous, righteous, provocative and inspirationally delinquent bands Britain has ever spawned.

Whoever it was they met that sulphurous night at the cultural crossroads, they've been working hard on behalf of Alabama 3. The likelihood of a crew of miscreant, theo-pharmalogical, neo-situationist, holy music junkies floating high in the anemic river of mass entertainment, was never realistically that great. Yet, come the new millennium, the band are lodged firmly in both subculture and mainstream. There they are, as you might expect, quoted in songform at the start of Scottish council estate-verite author, Irvine Welsh's 'Filth'. There they were, as you'd never have thought, flickering in front of 25 million Americans, guiding a 26 piece gospel choir through 'Woke Up This Morning' on the Jay Leno Show.

The use of Alabama 3's 'Woke Up This Morning' as the theme to America's hippest TV show of 1999, neurotic mafiosa series The Sopranos - accessed blanket exposure for the band in the US. It also set them up in New York, New Jersey and Chicago with the sort of permanent dinner invites you can't refuse. Acknowledgement for the track from their 1997 debut album 'Exile On Coldharbour Lane' was, however, poetic justice for a band who are no strangers to the underworld and have frequently been upbraided for wanting to "reduce Americana to a sample".

For last year's 'La Peste', the creative core of Alabama 3 remained the same. Comrades in country and blues obsession, Rob Spragg aka Larry Love and Jake Black aka The Very Reverend Dr D Wayne Love, formed the vocal and preacherman MC front Line. They were joined by programmer Piers Marsh aka The Mountain of Love, percussionist Simon Edwards aka Sir Real Congaman Love, keyboardist Orlando Harrison aka The Spirit, guitarist Mark Sams aka Captain Empiricist and Jonny Delafons aka LB Dope on drums. The house band for the Alabama 3 convened First Presleytarian Church of Elvis The Divine, continued to feel the spirit. It started life in an isolated studio farmhouse near Lincoln where the new direction was pinned down, aided by illicit postal deliveries from the big smoke. 1997's 'Exile On Coldharbour Lane' had found committed cult approval thanks to the arch, but soulful clash of anti-redneck country, snakepit spirituality, dirty rave tones and ideological perversity exhibited in 'Ain't Goin to Goa' and 'U Don't Dance 2 Tekno'. 'La Peste' wittled the Alabama's needling pleasure implement down to an even sharper point.

And sharper still on this autumn's "Power In the Blood"; featuring fourteen Alabama 3 originals, plus an inspired version of Springsteen's "Badlands", the new album draws on a typically electic castlist of contributors including Keith Allen, BJ Cole, Rolo McGinty, Eileen Rose and Irvine Welsh. Bearing titles like "Woody Guthrie", "The Devil Went Down To Ibiza", "Strobe Life", "R.E.H.A.B" and "Lord Have Mercy", this is very much a band approaching the peaks of their powers. Still as lyrically wound up as ever, but this time borne on a raft of brilliant tunes, "Power In The Blood" finally does justice to the band whom one broadsheet editor recently described as "the oddest, sleaziest, unhealthiest and most talented blues band in the nation".

Alabama 3's politics are not grafted on. Resistance to social programming has been innate since Rob was fighting a Mormon upbringing by dosing himself with magic mushrooms and The Velvet Underground. D Wayne Love was schooled in Marxism from an early age. From their involvement in illegal raves (notably the infamous Castlemorton gathering which set the UK's anti-rave Criminal Justice Bill in motion) through the 'Straight Outta Rehab' banners which hung over their early Brixton gigs, the band have been rigorous in their counter-culturalism. Their blues-in up of sterile house and techno was in itself an act of defiance.

What Larry Love once described as 'a nostalgic notion of the empowering ability of underground culture' continues to drive them. In rcent years they have played shows in support of Mental Health Service Users (MAD Pride) and London's now defunct Anarchist Book Center and helped organise the anti-Brixton Bomber show, Resistance. They also set up the Memphis 9 web site, claiming that they were a renegade paramilitary outfit, who'd killed Alabama 3, and engaged in drunken one to one dialogue with the Police Commission about Larry Love's MI5 file.

"What's kept us buzzing - and I think the same thing was there in 'Ain't Goin To Goa' - is I think dance music, back in the day an' all that, it was cracking underground warehouses and getting in trouble with the law and people going to prison for fuckin' Es and there was a renegade attitude in that. All these fuckin glossy dance mags and star DJs and superclubs and girls in fluffy bras - I mean, fair enough, people wanna do that - but for us it's about something else".

All those waiting to enter the chat room of the corporate sponsored Alabama 3 web site: acid-country cowboy digi-drifter, icon-sampling, low-life, party-pinko, squat-rave, paramilitary-fetishist, Bible-belt-pushin', mind-blown, underclass ideologuery.com, will however, as Hank might have said, have to wait a long time for the light to shine

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Howling Bells

• Juanita Stein - vocals, guitar
• Joel Stein - guitar
• Brendan Picchio - bass
• Glenn Moule - drums

Howling Bells formed in 2005 under the leadership of honey throated Juanita Stein and her guitar wielding brother Joel. Debunking from their native Australia to the mean streets of London, the duo ganged up with Glenn Moule and Brendan Picchio before putting out debut single Wishing Stone in February 2006. Their self-titled album is out now on Bella Union.

Myspace

Bella Union Page »

Shed Seven

Shed Seven are...

• Rick Witter - vocals
• Paul Banks - guitar
• Tom Gladwin - bass
• Alan Leach - drums

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Transglobal Underground

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Aberfeldy

From roughtraderecords.com:

Aberfeldy is Riley Briggs, Ian Stoddart, Ruth Barrie, Sarah McFadyen and Ken McIntosh, a collaboration of like minded folk, who met in Edinburgh's pubs and cafes, and who share an appreciation for making great choral pop music.

Recently signed to Rough Trade, the five piece's beautiful boy-girl harmonies, gentle acoustic sensibilities and fine percussive accompaniment look set to win over your hearts...

Named after a small Scottish coastal holiday town, Aberfeldy make music that would suitably soundtrack life in such a place. Dreamy, natural and happy with everything, however, be warned, there are even hints of surf rock - forget West Coast California. East Coast Perthshire is where it's at!

The Aberfeldy recording experience revolves around...

…well, one microphone.

The band have got back to basics in a truly individual way not done so much these days. Producer Jim Sutherland explains 'We are using techniques that were used by people like Sinatra when they didn't have any other option.' By ignoring the developments in studio technology over the past 50 years and working within such constraints, the band feel this is how they achieved the fresh sound on their forthcoming releases.

Songwriter Riley Briggs' simplicity and honesty within his lyrics add a charm and connection with the listener. Ruth from the band explains 'A lot of people say that listening to us just makes them happy.' But it doesn't always work does it Riley? Commenting on the track What You Do, 'Another song I wrote to impress a girl... I played it her but she had a boyfriend'.»

Seth Lakeman

“I suppose the music I make is folk-influenced – because that’s what I grew up with. However, I like to think that my music crosses barriers and genres - that’s the whole point of what I do"

Seth Lakeman hates labels. And those who label the music he makes ‘folk music’ may find themselves having to redefine the widely perceived meaning of the term. Maybe he’s the new face of folk for the 21st century; more likely he’s just a great new singer songwriter.

Music has always been part of Seth’s life: his parents were part of a touring band which included Seth and his older brothers Sean and Sam, who all played from an early age and subsequently performed as The Lakeman Brothers. Seth grew up rubbing shoulders with British folk legends like Martin Carthy and recent Mojo Award winner Bert Jansch. But at the same time he was playing air guitar in his bedroom to AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black’. Twenty years later you can hear both influences.

While there are elements of the traditional in his music (in the sense that he uses acoustic instruments) he also delivers a rhythmic, contemporary sound and vivid lyrical imagery, fusing the energetic performance ethic of punk or rock with the heartfelt emotion of blues and soul.

What Seth Lakeman loves best of all is performing live. On stage he’s intense and compelling, attacking his four-string tenor guitar with the ferocity of Joe Strummer, and singing with the passion of Jeff Buckley. Never was such a furious sound kicked up by an ‘unplugged’ quartet of fiddle, acoustic guitar, bodhran and cojon (the percussive box used in flamenco) and double bass.

Lakeman's first album, Kitty Jay, was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. His second album, Freedom Fields, is out now.»

Dananananaykroyd

Dischord-esque post-hardcore band, apparently "formed from spacks of Multiplies, Michael Dracula, Kill Yourself, Acrnym and Simplestorm. Fight-pop anthems that are as 'right-on' as they are 'smellin'"»

Broken Records

MySpace

Jamie - vocals, guitar, mandolin
Ian - guitar, piano, glockenspiel, melodica
Rory - violin, accordion, mandolin
Arne - cello
Dave - piano, trumpet, harmonium
Gill - bass, guitar
Andy - drums

Much-championed by DiS, Broken Records are an emerging group from north of the border who have kicked up one heck of an industry buzz. And rightly so, too. For once. For fans of: Murder By Death, Dirty Three, Arcade Fire, Bruce Springsteen, Cursive, Guillemots.

Photo: Neil Thomas Douglas

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The Phantom Band

The Phantom Band are: Duncan De Cornell - Guitars & Fast Cars, Gerrard "Hartbreak" Harvard - Bass & Big Business, Andrew T Oxford - Keyboards & Cheeseboards, "Richard The Turd" Princeton - Harmonies & Libraries, Damien Duke Stanford - Drums & The Law, Greg Yale - Pedals, Gold Medals, Banjos & ASBO's »

Kid Carpet

Whimsical underdog kid's toy craziness. Musical marmite. Lyrically fun - "Jobseeker: You're a world-beater!"

(photo: John Brainlove)»

The Lost Brothers

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Hatcham Social

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Sucioperro

Picture this: a gorgeous little town on the West Coast of Scotland. It's got a beach, lovely parks, cheerful tourist attractions and Scotland's best-loved poet Robert Burns. This place is Ayrshire. It's not exactly the setting for chunky riffs, beers, gigs and laughs but this little seaside town has been quietly making progress on the music front. This is where metal band Sucioperro met, this is where they make music and for a while now Ayrshire's held it's own and seems to be producing much music finery as of late.

The band released their debut EP 'Why Bliss Destroy' in October 2002. Only 200 copies where pressed and they sold out in no time at all. The EP also featured Simon Neil (also an Ayrshire lad) of Biffy Clyro doing vocals on 3 tracks. Their latest rock offering is titled 'The Hidden Perils of Dancing'.

Things are looking up and up for the boys from Ayrshire. They play a mean live show, are gaining more and more fans, have begun to tour England and are playing London more regularly as well as Scotland and are growing all the time. »

LAU

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Sam Isaac

MySpace

The Sam Isaac show frequently resembles an indie cottage industry. Friends make artwork, do recording, direct music videos and carry clipboards. Perfect strangers sell his CDs. Sam’s part of the bargain is donning an acoustic guitar, a Casio keyboard or occasionally just his own voice and making the music that is at the centre of all of this.

Counting Bright Eyes, The Spinto Band and Ed Harcourt amongst his influences, twenty-year-old Sam grew up in the sleepy town of Malvern in the West Midlands before moving to East London in 2005. Having self-released two mini albums, both of which recieved glowing reviews and national radio play, April saw Sam Isaac releasing a split 10" with Luke Leighfield on Mannequin Republic - the new label of Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly's Sam Duckworth. He has recently done sessions on Janice Long's Radio 2 show, Huw Stephens' Radio 1 show and John Kennedy's Xfm show and has been played by Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq on Radio 1. Sam has spent the summer touring UK festivals, including Wireless, Glastonbury, Truck and Latitude.

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The Saw Doctors

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Unicorn Kid

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Kid British

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Official Secrets Act

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Magistrates

MySpace»

Blue Roses

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Twin Atlantic

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Babel

website

myspace»

Little Comets

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Tommy Reilly

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Peatbog Faeries

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Sergeant

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3 Daft Monkeys

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Orkestra del Sol

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The Wallbirds

MySpace»

Sparrow and the Workshop

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Washington Irving

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Edward II and the Red Hot Polkas

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Shutter

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Kissmet

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Healthy Minds Collapse

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The Dangleberries

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Animal Behaviour

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Glen Tilbrook and The Fluffers

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Scooty and the Skyhooks

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