Concert Reviews

26.02.2016 The Rainbow, Digbeth / Birmingham It is not that common to get three great acts for a mere tenner and to have an evening of mainly ambient electronica, which made that gig special from the word go The evening started with the not-so-ambient electropop duo ‘Field Harmonics’ consisting of Bryony Williams and Rob Glover aided by drummer Matthew Pinfield. Highly energetic they started off the evening nicely with a tight set that was very well presented. Bryonies vocals sounded beautiful and thrown against the rhythmic music offered a nice contrast to the beats. Field Harmonics played new tracks such as their single ‘Girl’ from their forthcoming album ‘Corners’ as well as stuff from their 2013 album ‘Walls’ and with a set of 30 minutes they left the audience wanting more. With the second support act, Rocky Steps, a one-man project, we were moving into the ambient part of the evening. Using backdrops and dense music laden with samples of f...

12.12.2015 Actress & Bishop, Birmingham Birmingham is not a city that can boast about electronic music much but radio show host Johnny Normal did it anyway and brought 5 fine acts to pre-Christmas Birmingham, upstairs at the actress & bishop. The stage was rather small and littered with equipment of the performing acts gave opener BLOTT (Geoff Martin) and his two fellow musicians little room to maneuver and to put on a show. As it turns out, BLOTT didn’t need to as the music spoke for itself with its cool rhythms and electronic bleeps. xxx What really made the night for me were the ever brilliant ‘Shelter’ and the duo  FUTURE PERFECT Using a cliched line here: they truly were perfect. Playing many a tune from their new album ‘After the fall’ and its predecessor ‘Escape’ Simon and Rebecca Owen aka Future Perfect were in sync with one another, the music was dance-able and the melodies catchy and many of the lyrics were quite deep-ish, which made fo...

September 26th 2015, Bournbrook Social Club, Selly Oak, Birmingham £10 Sometimes it feels hard to relate to when people refer to events as magical, but this night was not only epic in every sense of the word but purely magical, too. Depeche Mode and Yazoo – founding member Vince Clarke and the ever flamboyant Andy Bell’s epic musical journey started three decades ago with the release of their first single “Who needs love like that”.Millions of record sales and releases later, some hitting the upper regions of the global charts while others went almost unnoticed or even slowed down the band’s career, a crowd of die hard fans came together, organised by the amazing Rory Jones and wonderful behind-the-scenes people, to celebrate the British institution that is Erasure. 2014s release ‘The Violet Flame’ and the tour saw Erasure’s star on the rise once more and Classic Pop magazine named the album ‘album of the year’. It was on that tour that Shelter garnered a large fan...

11.06.2015 Town Hall Birmingham, £15, Support act: Fairns In the 32 years of my going to gigs (I was 16 when I went to see Udo Lindenberg in my native Germany back in 1983) and especially regarding my fondness of going to synthesizer/electronic music related gigs THIS event ranks among the finest examples of AWESOMENESS I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. The town hall itself has an impressive past as she played hostess to the likes of Buddy Holly (in 1958), Ravi Shankar (1956), Simon & Garfunkel (1968), Black Sabbath (in 1972) and many more over the decades. Fully refurbished the hall now allowed for the 2015 Super Sonic Festival to be officially opened by Will Gregory’s MOOG Ensemble.  For synthesizer freaks (and I mean that in a nice way) that was a feast but for any music lover the high musicianship displayed during the concert itself must have felt like a treat and, of course, the MOOG Ensemble incorporated quite a number of classical musical...