Fine Live Music • Open Til Late
Kite Base, a two-piece band consisting of bass guitarists Ayse Hassan (Savages) and Kendra Frost, have announced details of a headline U.K. tour in June. The band previously announced a run of shows supporting Thor & Friends (Thor Harris of Swans / Shearwater) and an appearance at this year’s Field Day Festival.
Fresh from their month long, main support jaunt around UK/Europe with kindred spirits Slaves at the back end of 2016, Life drop new track ‘Euromillions’, their first since last summer’s 6 Music playlisted ‘Rare Boots’.
‘Hidden Driver’, the opening track of LVL UP’s third album and Sub Pop debut Return to Love, never stops moving. What starts with unassuming guitars and vocals adds new lines, depths, and intensity, until its unrestrained, triumphant finish. “God is peeking, softly speaking,” repeats the chorus, working through the relationship between spirituality and creative inspiration, and introducing a band that is always pushing further.
Coming up this week at The Sunflower Lounge we have pop four-piece Club Drive on Tuesday, rhythm’n’blues trio King Salami & The Cumberland Three on Thursday, and Saturday sees Liverpool’s swaggering psychedelic outfit The Vryll Society. Check out the full listings below:
Eyedress is 26 year old Idris Vicuña from Manila, the Philippines. He presents his debut album proper – Manila Ice– out 12th May via Lex Records.
From the West Midlands rises the heavy-laced rock of HVMM. When was the last time you went to a gig and felt that teenage combination of fear and excitement? Picture a sepia-lit stage with four smartly garbed musicians staring out steely eyed. Collarless cotton, cravats, smoked chrome glinting on resting Fenders: the scene feels theatrical, anachronistic, subversive.
This is London’s greatest and most sensational rhythm’n’blues-punk band. And this is a band that truly represents London, being a mongrel mix of Caribbean, France, Japan and Spain.
Flyte are Will Taylor (vocals, lead guitar), Nick Hill (bass, vocals), Sam Berridge (keyboards, guitars, vocals) and Jon Supran (drums, vocals). The band has spent the first months of 2017 in Australia putting the finishing touches to their debut album with Courtney Barnett producer Burke Reid, a collaboration that delves deep into new sonic territory to create a modernist but timeless sound that revels in coming-of-age nostalgia, cinematic synth melodies and prolific storytelling themes of life, love and death.
West London rock band Måntra would rather stand up and deliver music with a message for the left-behinds and the disenfranchised in these increasingly polarised times. Frontman/guitarist Simon Stark formed Måntra with two friends from Ealing, Richard Leeds (bass) and Rob Emms (drums), as an expressive outlet for these subversive sentiments, underpinned by their shared musical influences.
Wovoka Gentle are an experimental folk three-piece from London, comprised of William Stokes and twins Imogen and Ellie Mason. Taking its root in folk and Americana songwriting, the Wovoka sound draws upon the psychedelic soundscapes of the late 60s as well as contemporary experimental, jazz and collage music; marrying classic instrumentation with sampling, analogue synthesis and sound manipulation.
