The Best Gigs in Brighton October 2015
Brighton is so great for live music it’s sometimes near impossible to pick what to see! Gig gurus Brighton Noise have made it a bit easier for our readers by picking their best gigs in Brighton this October with everything from Post Industrial Disco to Garage Rock!
Mantana Roberts – Prince Albert
Jazz saxophonist Mantana Roberts might be best known for her collaborative work alongside TV On The Radio and Godspeed You Black Emperor but she is an heavyweight, internationally respected artist on her own terms as proven by her status as a Wire magazine cover star. Born in Chicago she has been a keen student of saxophone improv since the age of 16, something she has been keen to display through her work with a wide variety of collaborators. Her recent series of 3 albums entitled ‘Coin Coin’ have received global recognition. Seeing her operate at such an up close and personal venue will be a rush.
Date: Wed 7 October
Time / Price: 7.30pm / £10.00 adv
Lonelady – Patterns
It’s a bit early to be totally sure but we’d be massively surprised if Lonelady’s outstanding second album ‘Hinterland’ doesn’t feature very highly in our albums of the year. Rooted in post-punk and with an obsessive ear for the sounds of her native Manchester including Magazine, Joy Division, The Fall and A Certain Ratio, she effortlessly mixes it up with the heavy funk of George Clinton’s projects, whilst bring it all up to date with a bold, clear and streamlined production. Somehow the end result is more than the total of its parts. Touring with a live band, this is one to catch now before the venues get a lot bigger.
Date: Sat 10 October
Time / Price: 7.00pm / £11.00 adv
Acid Mothers Temple – Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar
Has the name Acid Mothers Temple piqued you interest? If so, you should probably go, it’s no exercise in irony. This lot are the super-blotter- tab version of psych rock; they can be completely feral and unhinged, yet disturbingly hypnotic when they drop themselves into a krautrock groove. Formed in 1995 by guitar wizard Kawabata Makoto, numerous side projects and line-up changes have kept things fresh across a ridiculous number of badass, outlaw albums. Regular visitors to Brighton in recent years, if you have any affinity for this sort of thing, you’ll be picking your jaw off the floor after the gig.
Date: Friday 16 October
Time / Price: 8.00pm / £11.00adv
The Space Lady – Westhill Hall
A surprisingly delightful concert we saw last year was the Brighton debut of solo synth and vocal artist The Space Lady, the project of Susan Dietrich Snieder, in what we assumed would be a one-off lap of honour to celebrate the long overdue release of a retrospective ‘Greatest Hits’ album. A street performer in San Francisco in the 80’s she came to a wider prominence through her contribution to outsider music compilation ‘Songs In The Key of X Vol 2’ alongside Captain Beefheart and Jandek. She specialises in cover versions with a twist and has been championed by Errol Alkan and John Maus in recent years.
Date: Sat 24 October
Time / Price: 7.30pm / £7.00 adv
Deerhunter/ Atlas Sound – All Saints Church
Through their 14-year career Deerhunter have released ugly noise rock, grimey psych wig outs, earbusting shoegaze, idiosyncratically tender ballads and ramshackle garage rock in a prolific back catalogue of immense depth. Also, one of the most accomplished live acts of their generation as evidenced by some of the best shows we’ve ever seen in Brighton and their three immense performances at All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival at Camber Sands in 2013. Highlighting how much of a ‘no brainer’ this show is, front man Bradford Cox’s poppier but introspectively wonderful project Atlas Sound is coming along for the ride as well. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Date: Fri 30 October
Time / Price: 7.30pm / £16.50 adv
godspeed you! black emperor – The Dome
In an ideal world Godspeed You! Black Emperor would be lauded as one of the great touring orchestras. The clues are there: thirty minute ‘pieces’, immense detail, ebb and flow of a mountain expanse, cinematic emotional wallop. As it is the nine-headed gang of post-rock Marxists are scruffy ex-punks that play from the heart rather than the head and would probably quickly dissolve waistcoats and tails. It’s a no brainer really. They’ll play for ages, it will feel like five minutes, you’ll go home utterly purged of all the angst of contemporary Britain. That’s what it’s all about!
Date: Wed 28th October
Time / Price: 7.30pm / £23.50
xiu xiu plays the music of twin peaks – Komedia
Xiu Xiu’s queer art-pop was never going to fill stadia, but they’ve been consistently one of the most exciting and challenging bands of this millennium. Releasing not only a remarkable discography but making sure that each tour is radically different from the last. This being no exception, they are taking on Angelo Badalamenti’s superlative and deservedly-revered Twin Peaks soundtrack. Given Xiu Xiu’s track record it wont be straight by any margin and may take in gamelan, seething indie rock, pounding electro or just plain noise. You have our permission to sit and marvel at how utterly brilliant it is.
Date: Wed 7h October
Time / Price: 7.30pm / £12.00
Kollaps – Cowley Club
Industrial music is difficult to quantify and means many things to many different people. The Kollaps favoured incarnation is the seventies into eighties panel beating black or bleached white chilling monologue European sort. Militant politics, social estrangement, outsider sounds: prefect for the oncoming grim tory winter. Ostensibly a club but kicking off with with live music from Hypnotized side-project Cardinal Fang, who are playing their debut performance, and a secret special guest set. And of course it’s at The Cowley so it’s cheap to get in, cheap to get drunk, and you know you’ll be in right-minded company.
Date: Sat 23rd October
Time / Price: 7.30pm / £3
My life story – Hope & Ruin
Pop shouldn’t be minimal. It should be rich colourful and multi-layered. My Life Story know this, there’s twelve of them for christ’s sake! It’s worth going to see how they fit on the Hope & Ruin’s stage. Chamber pop of the highest order, and we’re talking proper pop. Choruses you can hang a coat on, songs about girls, pop songs about girls. Pop and girls. Girls and pop. MLS were sadly a bit overlooked in the britpop era. Their tasteful foppishness and elegant strings not clicking with the nu-lad arseholes. Well they made a reckless mistake, you definitely shouldn’t!
Date: Fri 30th October
Time / Price: 8pm / £13.20
OxJam @ Joker!!!!
One should always do their bit for charidee. And why not make that bit all noisy and pissed off and stuff? Well Brighton Noise are doing just that. A smorgasbord of indie rock, metal, noise rock, mathy stuff and some good old fashioned rock and roll. Just cause we’re being nice doesn’t mean we have to be nice. Seriously, have a ganger at these bands: Broker, Vincent Vocoder Voice, Nature Channel, Emperors of Ice Cream, Exploder Than You, Moodhoover, Kellar, Hell Beings, Blush, and Regency Harmonics. None of that self-serving celebrity rubbish, just good tunes and a dollop of angst.
Date: Sat 17th October
Time / Price: 5pm /£9 for wristband for all 11 venues
