In 1987, Leeds band The Wedding Present, riding high on the buzz generated by a number of self-released singles and the support from the likes of Radio One DJ's John Peel and Andy Kershaw, released their debut album, George Best, also on their own label, Reception. It featured a now…
Glastonbury 2013. Chic are on the West Holts Stage, performing some of the greatest pop music ever made. 'Everybody Dance', 'Dance Dance Dance', 'I'm Coming Out', 'Upside Down', 'He's The Greatest Dancer' and 'We Are Family'. That was just for starters. It's relentless, the crowd growing somewhat delirious as Nile…
What is it about Brighton, and its fertile music landscape? Surely, there must be more musicians per head of population than anywhere else. Every other person is in a band it seems. Certainly BIMM has been a major factor, but so has The Great Escape, and Brighton's cultural history, a…
When she was just 17, Natalie Merchant was working in a health food store and was considering a career in special education whilst at college in her home city of Jamestown, which sits just below Lake Erie that straddles the border with Canada. Harbouring no more than your average desire…
"Bands are weird things, they have their ups and downs," says Mark Chadwick, lead singer of The Levellers, Brighton's veteran survivors of a ruthless music industry, and the most successful band to have ever come out of Brighton, with 11 albums under their belt (including a number one in 1995…
Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton are still only 19, and have just released their second album, I’m All Ears, the follow-up to their stunningly inventive debut I, Gemini, which was written when they were aged 13-15, and was finally released just over two years ago. Born and bred in Norwich they…
Ladies and gentlemen, in time honoured tradition, it’s time for the bi-annual Brightonsfinest Half Year review. Every six months we ask our writing team to look back over the past half a year in order to pick out some highlights and to identify some great music that we’d somehow managed…
The word legend is bandied about all too readily these days, sprinkled like confetti by beyond-themselves music fans and hyperbolic journalists. However, there can be little argument that Earth, Wind & Fire are exactly that. Proper legends. Titans of music. Giants of the form. They've won 20 Grammys, been inducted…
Along with Leftfield and Underworld, Orbital were (and still are) masters of the dance universe. An act that not only made mind-blowing progressive dance-techno fusion, but who could properly do it live on stage, helped immeasurably by their improvisatory flair, and of course that distinctive torch on headgear look.
Mike Rosenberg, aka Passenger, took to his home streets of Brighton on a baking Bank Holiday Monday to perform a busking set, as part of a four-day busking tour of the UK. Using the opportunity to promote his Brighton show later in the year at the Dome, 9th September, and…