I struggle to write a review these days. I’m not a trained journalist, I’m a music fan. I’m middle aged. I don’t have a trend to align myself to. I hear good albums and see good gigs all the time. What I don’t see or hear that much is anything I have anything much interesting to say about.

You’re lucky to see a band at their best play a great gig. I’ve been lucky enough to do so several times in my life, but more often that not I’m seeing a good band play a good show. That is nothing to sniff at, but it is nothing to write home about.

So attending Deerhunter this week I was lucky enough to see a really really good band play an interesting, and definitely unusual gig.

I’d looked at recent set-lists and I had a good idea of what the band would play. 5 or 6 tracks from the latest album and Halcyon Digest (each) and a couple from earlier albums. This in itself is very good news as these are, to my mind, their best two albums with (the lengthily titled) Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? being a contender for album of the year.

The gig started as such. After some really nasty white noise (for about 5 minutes) Bradford and Co. play some really solid versions of those tracks. ‘No Ones Sleeping’ is great, ‘Revival’ is beautiful. The set continues as expected.

Between tracks Bradford engages with the crowd, he’s witty and likeable, his faux-English accent amuses me. About half way through the evening things start to get a bit weirder. He announces the start of  a dance contest that he’d hinted at earlier in the evening.

Six people are invited onto the stage and the band start to play a sort of mid-60s instrumental tune whilst the contestants dance awkwardly on the stage. This lasts for some time. At the end of this a voting process begins where the acts are judged based on the loudness of the audience clapping and cheering. At the end of this Bradford Cox picks his favourite and they are awarded the trophy.

The Deerhunter Dance Contest

This rather lengthy diversion has eaten into lot of song time, so it is another surprise when the band decide to play their new, non-album, 13 minute single ‘Timebends’. This is the first live outing for the song, and it is great, but t probably knocks another three songs off the list for the evening.

It is at this point that the gig takes a lengthier break. Bradford appears to want to stop playing for a while and starts chatting to the crowd. This goes on for some time. So long that audience discontent starts to set in. It is fascinating to watch. It has the same feel as an extended Stewart Lee joke, the longer it continues the funnier it seems. Conversely, to those who want him to play some more songs the more annoyed they get.

After 30(!) minutes someone shouts “Nothing Ever Happened!” and Bradford immediately agrees. The band then play this early favourite and it sounds great. It is at this point that the band are told their time is up and leave the stage, Bradford himself clearly a bit surprised to have run out of time.

A great gig? Perhaps not. An interesting and memorable gig? Definitely.

By Dorian Rogers

In less than two weeks Brighton holds the sophomore Together The people festival in Preston Park. The two-day event is similar to London’s Field Day, taking place in a city park without fields and campsites associated with most festivals.

Neon Filler attended the 2015 event, and the enjoyed range of music on offer from the fledgling festival, with Brakes, Public Service Broadcasting and the Super Furry Animals being amongst the highlights.

We’re even more excited about this year as a genuine musical legend, Brian Wilson, will be descending upon the park to play Pet Sounds in full! It is worth noting that the beach Boy’s legends other UK shows are either sold out (London) or cost as much for a ticket as the whole Saturday at the festival (Southend-On-Sea).

Sunday brings another act that, although whippersnappers next to Wilson, have been around for 27 years; Suede. The band may officially hail from London but singer Brett Anderson and bassist Mat Osman hail from West Sussex making this something of a homecoming gig.

Across the weekend a wide range of interesting acts are set to play with Gaz Coombes, Songhoy Blues, M. Ward and local favourite Chris T-T being top of our must-see list. Another interesting act, albeit one we approach with some trepidation, is Peter Hook & The Light. The recent works by New Order have been a surprise success so we will see what the bearded bass-player brings to covers of his former bands back catalogues.

Families are well catered for (Lazytown Live is top of our list) and a range of food stalls and other attractions are promised across the site.

Visit the official website at http://www.togetherthepeople.co.uk/tickets/ to get day and weekend tickets.

By Dorian Rogers

Together The People launched in Brighton last year and we had a great time enjoying the 2015 festival with Brakes, Public Service Broadcasting and Super Furry Animals being amongst the highlights. The festival is back for 2016, in the same location in Brighton’s Preston Park, and promises to be bigger and better whilst offering the same great mix of music, food, film and arts.

The first wave of artists have been announced with Gaz Coombes, The Horrors and Songhoy Blues being amongst the eclectic mix of acts confirmed so far. Most exciting of all is that the event has bagged Brian Wilson’s only UK festival appearance this year as he and his band play the Beach Boys’ 1966 classic Pet Sounds. Brian’s band also includes fellow Beach Boy Al Jardine and the show is part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the classic album.

Together The People takes place on the 3rd and 4th September and full details can be found at www.togetherthepeople.co.uk

See below for the full line-up so far.

The long awaited return of Brighton to the urban music festival scene finally came to an end with the inaugural offering from Together The People, a two-day event hosted in Brighton’s Preston and Park. Our intrepid reporters selflessly left their home and crossed one busy road to bring you all the highlights they could squeeze into an acceptable length article.

Preston Park is no stranger to public and private events, having already presented Brighton Pride and a Thai Food Festival in the weeks previous to Together The People, but we were initially taken aback by the modest size of the festival vs the ticket price. Still, mighty oaks and all that.

Access and entry was well organised and by the time we were through the slightly superfluous crowd chicane, the sunny space was laid out before us down the gently sloping grass and we were quickly able to get to grips with the music stages and tents TTP had to offer.

First up, and with a £5 pint of beer in hand, we headed to the small acoustic tent (more of a gazebo) to catch the acoustic guitar wizardry of Jye Whitman. Armed with a ton of skill and a beanie, Jye Whitman served up refreshing a portion of up-tempo acoustic tunes and songs that made a nice change from the usual earnest (and slightly dreary) output from the usual acoustic stage.

Jye Whitman

Cheered along by this, and with a cup of tea and slice of cake, we headed to watch the end of Lucy-Spraggen-off-the-X-Factors set, chock-a-block with attempted audience participation numbers and wait for Ghostpoet to take the main stage.

Lucy Spraggen

With three albums under his belt, Ghostpoet has come a long way from his self-produced days and has collected a tight and professional band along the way to back him up and provide a foundation to build his melancholy stories of modern living. Opening with tracks from his new album Shedding Skin, the skies briefly darkened to accompany the musical the atmosphere while Ghostpoet closed his set with the very excellent single, Liiines.

Ghostpoet

As the afternoon moved along and grass was flattened by picnic blankets and arses we looked forward to the arrival of everyone’s favourite Bolshevik balladeer, Mr. Billy Bragg, and what urban music festival would be complete without him? But it’s not the reliable renditions of old favourites like New England and Sexuality that really impresses us about Billy Bragg, but his unrelenting political optimism and faith in his fellow man.

Billy Bragg

Maybe it’s this dedication to an uncynical attitude that makes the arrival of old Brighton favourites, The Levellers, on the stage less cheesy than it might have been to the jaded music fan. The sun was shining, the jigs were up-tempo and the delivery was as enthusiastic as it ever was. To not bop a bit was not an option.

The Levellers

Before the main event of the day came around we were able to catch the lion’s share of local super group, Brakes, thanks to a day of well-planned and well-maintained schedules. Formed by members of other local talents like British Sea Power and the Electric Soft Parade, Brakes fired out a volley of frenetic and deranged power-pop tunes like Porcupine or Pineapple? and All Night Disco Party to their core of loyal fans, and still managed to line up room for their more accessible country-leaning songs. These reviewers were particularly thrilled to hear Brakes cover of Camper Van Beethoven’s 1986 cult classic, Shut Us Down.

Brakes

To bring day one to a close, festival favourites and Cardiff’s finest Super Furry Animals take the stage with an unassuming modesty during the intro to Slow Life that quickly leaves the audience with the peculiar certainty that this stage was built for this very moment. Resembling a Power Ranger taking a break from his decorating, Gruff Rhys and the gang segue through a list of greatest hits that include (Drawing) Rings Around the World, Do or Die and Hello Sunshine. Despite a slightly stodgy middle, Super Furry Animals baked a crowd pleasing song pie of well crafted furry hits and a crust of Juxtaposed With U and Golden Retriever that they eventually served to the audience on an extended platter of The Man Don’t Give a Fuck to make their playout ending and encore that would have to scores of mop-haired children who’d been running around the bottom half of the audience something to sing to their parents on the way home.

Super Furry Animals

Day two arrived hot on the heels of day one and provided a clearer and sunnier early September day than before, the perfect festival weather that seemed to have failed to coax in the disappointing number of Sunday attendees.

Regardless of the low turnout, we headed off to the smaller BIMM stage to catch space over-filling enthusiasm Astrid’s Tea Party who belted out their three piece songs despite (or possibly because of) the audience-lite reception.

Big Dada signed Roots Manuva laid out his blend of hip hop dub across the main stage audience like warm blanket of summertime goodness and everything was right and good in the world – a sentiment echoed from the acoustic stage across the other side of the park by Tiago’s nostalgia-tinged songs and stories of growing up in Portugal.

Roots Manuva

The first surprise of day two came from another local Brighton talent who have been making a reputation on Soundcloud, Kudu Blue on the second stage. This was our first experience of the band, and their slick and soulful post-triphop proved to be a real delight to behold. Kudu Blue combine beautiful ambient layers of guitar textures and synth loops across a foundation of deep bass and crisp syncopated rhythms, polished off with a smooth, natural vocal that glues them all together. Take a moment to check out the video for their song Bones  and hear for yourself.

Kuda Blue

Things only get better when Public Service Broadcasting and a homemade sputnik take control of the main stage and spread instrumental joy and delight throughout the crowd. I’m not sure why anyone would want to, but it’s hard not to like them and their happiness and pleasure in what they do is infectious. Tracks like Theme From PSB, Spitfire, Go! and trumpet-tastic Gregarin provide the party vibe that any audience hungrily eats up like a festival burrito. We hope that TTP carries on in the future and are able to do something about the noise bleed between stages; some of PSB’s atmospheric moments were drowned out by nearby stages. However PSB provided one of the best performances of the weekend and could (even should) have headlined day two.

Public Service Broadcasting

It seems fitting that such a new event might want an established act to lend it some history, and there aren’t many acts about today with the history of Martha Reeves & The Vandellas who graced the stage with the kind of authority you get after six decades of performing.

Martha Reeves

We couldn’t shake the feeling however that after Public Service Broadcasting, the party was already winding down, a sentiment shared by Luke Sital-Singh as he closed the second day on the second stage with stark and intimate versions of songs like Still from his new EP The Brakeneck Speed of Tomorrow and Nothing Stays the Same from The Fire Inside that sound like music for a Monday morning. “Depressedon Park…” he quips. Highly recommend catching Sital-Singh live, his connection to his audience through raw vocal performance and warm banter, definitely won over the last of the weekends revellers.

Luke Sital-Singh

Finally the two day festival is brought to a close by Swedish singer songwriter superstar Jose Gonzalez as the September air chills the now straggling audience. Included in his set were some of his well-loved cover versions including Kylie Minogue’s Hand on Your Heart alongside material from his new album Vestiges and Claws as well as the odd Junip track thrown in for good measure, but it somehow didn’t quite cut the proverbial mustard. We are fans of all things Jose Gonzalez and Junip, but we can’t help feeling that this was the wrong choice to end the day. The beauty and intimacy of Gonzalez’s songs were simply lost in this setting and we headed home feeling chilly and serious.

Jose Gonzalez

Hats off to the organisers for producing such a well-managed event with a rich and varied line-up and opportunities to showcase so much up and coming talents. Together The People champions local arts, small business and community issues. We hope this festival has the opportunity to grow in size and offerings, whilst keeping costs accessible to a wider audience. If it does, we’ll definitely be back for more burritos and beats.

By Lisa McDonnell & Nic Newman

See more of Nic’s pictures from the festival on our Flickr page.

One thing that Brighton has been missing for some time is a decent outdoor pop music festival. The Shakedown festival has always had a bit of an identity crisis about whether it was a dance festival or not, and featured some really loathsome headline acts (Razorlight anyone?). The Great Escape is a brilliant thing, but multi-venue festivals with largely little-known acts aren’t for everyone.

You have to go back to 2008 for the folly that was the Beachdown Festival and even further back to 2000 for the Essential festival , which also had a bit of a checkered history.

So it was great news when Together The People was announced earlier this year, and even better news when the festival line-up was announced.

Set in Preston Park the festival is a modest two-day affair that seems to be putting quality over quantity whilst offering up a really diverse set of acts.

Headliners Super Furry Animals and Jose Gonzalez are ably supported by this year’s must-have festival act Public Service Broadcasting with festival stalwart Billy Bragg and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas offering up some more mature sounds.

Local music also gets stage time with Brighton’s best known band, The Levellers, and Brighton’s best band, Brakes, both featuring on the bill.

The festival also offers up folk, spoken-word, art installations, street food and local beer across the site, all of which adds up to decent value for the £70 weekend ticket.

The festival is on September 5^th and 6^th, more information (including ticket outlets) can be found at http://www.togetherthepeople.co.uk

By Dorian Rogers

Any festival is only as good as your viewing choices, and this is especially true of a multi-venue festival such as The Great Escape. If you choose to watch some of the not-so-great acts, missing out on better acts elsewhere, then you have nobody to blame but yourself. However, if you take random(ish) choices as an overall guide then I think it is unlikely that this 10th anniversary Great Escape will go down as one of the vintage years.

Very little stood out as being particularly new or different this year, and a lot of acts were so middle of the road that the whole thing was in danger of becoming a traffic accident. Nothing I saw hit the highs of Parquet Courts or Phosphorescent from previous years and although one of the best live acts I’d previously seen at the festival, Django Django, were playing it was their third appearance here and nothing to get excited about.

My underlying sense of ‘meh’ with the weekend was probably caused by a combination of jet lag and a reaction to a band as bad as The Vaccines being the festivals secret special announcement. I have no desire to be a killjoy, and everyone else I’ve spoken to loved the weekend, so in the spirit of positivity here are some of my personal highlights.

Happyness

Happyness released one of the best albums of last year and are one if the most likeable live acts I’ve seen in a long time. Their catchy homage to the best bits of 90s indie rock sounds as good as ever in a cramped Sticky Mike’s and the non-album tracks they play have me itching for their next release.

Saycet

Slightly sombre European electronica is something that you are always guaranteed at the Great Escape, and this year was no exception. The Unitarian Church is one of the more reserved venues on the circuit, but it was a good match for French duo Saycet. This wasn’t a hugely upbeat affair, but it sounded pretty good to an attentive audience.

Sons of Bill

A listing error meant that a trip to check out Popstrangers, in the recently branded Hub, actually meant a set by Sons of Bill. This was the cause of some confusion to those expecting antipodean pop and getting some guitar heavy US country rock. For those that were there by mistake it turned out to be a happy accident as quality playing and appealing tunes made this a very satisfying way to spend the afternoon.

C Duncan

C Duncan may sport some unwise facial hair, but his likeable tunes and genial performance more than make up for it. His performance is a little low-key, and it is hard to tell exactly where his career will go from this show, but he is definitely somebody to put on the “ones to watch” list. Brighton’s own Fatcat records saw enough in the classically trained Scot to sign him up and I’ll personally be keeping an eye on his progress.

Get Inuit

I’m not somebody who cares hugely about originality, borrowing is an essential part of pop music, but I do wonder why you’d wear the Weezer glasses if you sound this much like Weezer. And when Get Innuit don’t sound like Weezer they sound like Cloud Nothings, another band with a singer that sports Buddy Holly specs. Eyewear decisions aside they sound pretty good and it is a really fun set of songs, and if you are going to have obvious influences I can think or worse places to start.

SLUG

SLUG are the work of Field Music bass player Ian Black and their debut album was good enough to lift them above the side-project category and establish them on the festival list for 2015. The songs are great and Ian Black is a surprisingly gifted front-man with a great voice and some proper axe-an skills. The backing band are uniformly great, featuring both Brewis brothers, and the whole set sounds wonderful. I’m already looking forward to seeing them play again at the Green Man festival in August.

Ralegh Long

The Independent Label Market held in the Open Market was not as huge success, and footfall for the labels who set up stalls was disappointing. I hope that this feature of the festival is repeated next year, but some thought from festival organisers on how to get crowds down this end of town is needed if it is repeated. It was also disappointing for the acts that played on the market stage throughout the afternoon, with only a handful of passers-by stopping to watch some quality sets. However, for me it was great to see the guys from Gare Du Nord on their stand and Ralegh Long’s songs (accompanied by Jack Hayter) sound great even if there isn’t the biggest audience to hear them.

Low Pines

One great feature of the festival is getting to hear live music in a wide range of venues, some that I don’t visit at any other time of year. Something new for me in 2015 was getting to see the Brighton Museum used as a setting for a range of acoustic acts. I was largely bemused by the popularity of openers, the Dunwells, who got the biggest applause of the evening. They clearly had some talent, but they looked and sounded just like a group you’d see getting voted out in the later rounds of the X-Factor and they left me pretty cold. Much better was the soft folk of Low Pines and the endearingly cute Japanese pop duo Moumoon who provided one of the most charming sets of the weekend.

The risk of a multi-venue event like this, with so many acts and so many styles, is that you’ll not always see the best it has to offer. This year I don’t think I saw the best of the festival, but I still saw enough great music to make the time worthwhile. The Great Escape is still one of the best value musical events in the country and I’ll be back again next year searching the venues for something extra special.

By Dorian Rogers

Our friends at Bleeding Heart Recordings bring us news of another talented Brighton based act for us to sink our ears into. Step forward Seadog, the dream pop creation of singer songwriter Mark Benton and musician Max Numajiri, who met while studying at Brighton University, alongside such notable alumni as Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan.

Full of melodic guitars and glockenspiel twinkle the five tracks on  their latest EP Transmitter  have certainly impressed us, from the swirling intro to the title track to the catchy lead track Haunted there’s welcome echoes of other fine Brighton originated acts such as The Leisure Society and Miserable Rich. For those that like even less known acts, Brighton’s Robot Heart, also on Bleeding Heart Records, is another good point of reference.

As with all good EPs, this seems woefully short. Looking forward to a forthcoming album from Mark and Max already.

8/10

by Joe Lepper

For more information about Seadog and to download the EP click here.

Time is against me this week but I don’t want to let an excellent Waves Pictures gig go by without a mention. In the absence of a full review I’d like to present five bullet points and a few pictures.

• Support was nicely provided by The Creaking Chair. It would be lazy journalism by me to mention Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd, so I won’t.

• Don’t chuck a pint over the band. Don’t do it at any point and least of all during the first song. I don’t care how excited you are. Don’t.

• How does David Tattersall play so well even down to four guitar strings? I’d have been interested to see how he’d have faired if the set had been longer and more had broken.

• What a great three piece band this is. The rhythm section is as superb as the guitar work and The Jam spring to mind. Even though they sound nothing like The Jam.

• Isn’t it great when Jonny Helm stands up and sings? Passionate balladry at its best.

The Creaking Chair

The Wave Pictures

The Wave Pictures

The Wave Pictures

Do try and see the band live, they are great on record but even better on stage. The good news is they gig a lot, the bad news is they often sell out. It looks like they may have some tickets left for Ramsgate this Friday (27th Feb) and they are back in London (after a European tour) on the 18th June.

By Dorian Rogers

Neon Filler is delighted to present Tigercats and Fever Dream on the Brighton leg of their forthcoming tour. Support comes from the excellent Brighton band Seadog.

The gig is at The Joker in Brighton (view map) and is on Friday 27th March (Doors 8pm).

Tickets are £6 (plus outlet booking fee) and are available from Wegottickets, Gigantic and Brighton Source online.

There is definitely a real buzz around Viet Cong right now. The band have a highly rated new album, a sell-out tour and an interesting back story to their credit. What they don’t have is that many great songs, just yet. This isn’t meant as a criticism as they haven’t released that much music yet. About three songs from their Cassette EP and five of the seven songs from their debut album are all  pretty great, but that does only amount to eight songs in total.

The first set of songs come from the EP and ‘Oxygen Feed’ is just as wonderful a piece of twitchy pop music live as on record. The feeling that everything is about to collapse, but never does, is part of the songs charm and a key element of that EP. In contrast the songs from their album sound assured and ordered, they sound like a band that has decided on what it wants to be.

Different songs fare better in the live environment, with ”Bunker Buster’ in particular shining tonight as a wonderful piece of sonic bombast. ‘Continental Shelf’ in contrast loses the perfection it displays on record, the driving bass and drums are all there, the chiming guitars sound great, but the subtlety of melody, especially in the vocals, doesn’t quite come through.

In general though the band perform this brilliantly, and have enough humor about them on stage to offset the dour edges of the music. Album finale ‘Death’ is a particularly fine live performance and captures the bands best elements in 14 noise-filled minutes. The instrumental break in particular is fantastic, the repetition of sound is hypnotic and takes the audience to the edge of tolerance before breaking back into the song.

The only flaw here is that the song ends but it isn’t yet time to end the set and the band is persuaded to play another song, and this rather dulls the impact of their magnum opus.

The set lacks surprises, you know exactly which songs they are going to play from their slim catalogue. It feels like a festival set, not a headline, and it would work perfectly at an ATP festival or as part of the Great Escape.

These are minor criticisms though of a pretty great set from an act that is establishing themselves as one of the real bands to watch. We need to hear more from them to be sure if they are the real deal, but I’ll be first in the queue when they release their second album.

By Dorian Rogers