tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34499847120380070132024-03-13T06:33:19.326-07:00What Amy WroteAmy Minshullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08962415813334081667noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449984712038007013.post-40415634403906109422013-05-30T07:34:00.003-07:002013-05-30T07:34:39.317-07:00WOW, 22/02/13<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WOW: </span></span></b><b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A Celebration of the Music and Artistry of Kate
Bush @ Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool</span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Kate Bush, a singer
famous for her love of privacy and seclusion, only ever toured once in 1979, so
it is understandable that people will pay good money to see musicians attempt
to capture the magic of her records in a live setting. The band behind WOW: A
Celebration of the Music and Artistry of Kate Bush are able to do just that,
with a little help from some special effects and a ‘troupe’ of dancers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Maaike Breijman, the
Kate of the show, is an outstanding tribute artist whose impressive attention
to detail means that even her hand gestures and facial expressions are spot on,
let alone the dancing prowess and huge vocal range required for the part. Seeing
her act out the story lines of lesser known tracks such as <u>James And The
Cold Gun</u> and <u>The Wedding List</u> (with the help of two male dancers) really
made the unique creativity of Kate’s peculiar brand of pop come alive.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The band, most of whom
are Liverpool-based musicians, managed to make their relatively small ensemble
of guitar, bass, drums, keys and backing vocals sound huge, which ensured that
nothing was lost in the transition from record to stage. Breijman herself
created a beautiful contrast to their full sound in the second half, when she
performed <u>The Man With The Child In His Eyes</u> and a haunting <u>This
Woman’s Work</u> at a grand piano. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The visual aspect of
the show was clearly heavily influenced by Kate’s (often eccentric) music
videos, so Breijman danced with a double bass as a partner for <u>Babooshka</u>,
fought with men in trilbies for <u>Them Heavy People</u> and during <u>Cloudbusting</u>
actually operated a rain-making machine that was pushed onstage. Indeed, the
most spectacular moment of the night came when Breijman, re-enacting the video,
performed <u>Breathing</u> from within a large, transparent sphere. The
apocalyptic lyrics about a foetus in a nuclear fallout zone were intensified
considerably when delivered by a woman lying in a plastic ‘womb’.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps inevitably,
they finished with the classic <u>Wuthering Heights</u>, but as Wow have
successfully demonstrated, there is much more to Kate Bush’s body of work than
a woman in a white dress singing about Heathcliff.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">@AmyMinshull</span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Amy Minshullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08962415813334081667noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449984712038007013.post-71759441675854590592013-05-30T07:20:00.001-07:002013-05-30T12:53:40.946-07:00ESCO WILLIAMS, 21/02/13<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 150%;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">ESCO WILLIAMS @ O2 ACADEMY, LIVERPOOL</span></b></span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ljHT9AYRnPU/UaesnpyQJNI/AAAAAAAAAEs/LNjRyuzg9bA/s1600/Esco1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ljHT9AYRnPU/UaesnpyQJNI/AAAAAAAAAEs/LNjRyuzg9bA/s400/Esco1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></i></b><b><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">All photography by Gaz Jones (@GJMPhoto)</span></span></i></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This gig was something
of a family affair for ESCO WILLIAMS. With close collaborators as supports acts
and an audience full of family and friends, the atmosphere from the start was
one of homecoming for a local boy done good. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Singer-songwriter and
Esco backing singer JANIECE MYERS showed off her impressive vocals with nothing
more than a couple of acoustic guitars to back her up, and made the crowd
collectively melt when she brought her tiny niece onstage to sing with her. <u>Work</u>,
Myers’s urban blues about the 9 to 5 grind, was a deceptively sweet ode to
exhaustion and paranoia, while her experiment in audience-led improvisation
resulted in a belted out jam about being betrayed by Justin Bieber. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">MiC LOWRY’s appearance
onstage prompted the kind of screaming hysteria among the teenage girls in the
audience usually reserved for members of One Direction, and the five local
teenagers displayed real boyband talent with their Esco Williams-penned
originals and tight harmonies. The Scouse JLS? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zhnXJxZJwWg/UaetbtEfFjI/AAAAAAAAAE4/4ewBHI3DpLM/s1600/Esco2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zhnXJxZJwWg/UaetbtEfFjI/AAAAAAAAAE4/4ewBHI3DpLM/s400/Esco2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the man himself
strutted onstage, however, it became abundantly clear where the MiC LOWRY lads
had learnt their charm. In trademark snapback and glasses Esco Williams,
accompanied by his band The Kontrollers, was a man at the top of his game,
effortlessly rolling out hit after hit from debut album <u>New Challenger</u>.
The lilting, feel good <u>Starry Eyed </u>emphasised his dedication to the
music with its mantra “We don’t care ’bout no A list/ Just wanna be on your
playlist,” while the sultry soul of <u>I Want You More</u> easily stood its own
next to a mash-up of Rihanna’s <u>You Da One</u> and Usher’s <u>Climax</u>. In
fact, despite being a self-professed nerd Esco plays the part of the confident
ladies’ man well, as in the smooth RnB of <u>Hi-Score</u>, where he promises to
“make your girlfriends hate you,” and in the often dark and ominous sounding <u>Just
Friends</u>. Throughout the gig The Kontrollers sounded tight, funky and very
loud, and the three backing vocalists especially played off Esco’s exuberance
to create the kind of live energy impossible to capture on record. Their first
ever performance of a brand new and as of yet unnamed track also hinted that
Team Esco have no plans to slow down and featured a blinding, Prince-like
guitar solo. An adapted cover of Estelle’s <u>American Boy</u> delighted the
crowd as a charismatic Esco sang about getting a Nandos from L1 and being taken
to Toxteth by his Liverpool girl. The highlight of everyone’s night, though,
was undoubtedly the triumphant closer <u>New Challenger</u>; a slice of defiant
funk about beating the bad guys and winning the girl, video game style,
complete with N64 sound effects. Esco had the audience eating out of the palm
of his hand as he led them in an extended refrain of “I win, I win/ Perfect!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In <u>Hi-Score</u> he
rapped “I’m like King Kenny I run Liverpool,” and by the end of the night no
one needed convincing that Esco Williams is the new challenger to be reckoned
with on the local music scene.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">@AmyMinshull</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i><br />
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Amy Minshullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08962415813334081667noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449984712038007013.post-76113346036057627302013-05-29T15:15:00.000-07:002013-05-30T07:12:57.853-07:00BIDO LITO! <span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So a couple of months ago I did an internship with Liverpool's coolest music magazine, <a href="http://www.bidolito.co.uk/" style="color: blue;" target="_blank">Bido Lito!</a>, and wrote about some pretty cool stuff, as well as editing copy and uploading stunning images from local photographers to their Lens Galleries. The people behind the pink pages are a friendly bunch and I've continued writing for them ever since!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I interviewed Andy Delamere of <a href="http://www.deadbelgian.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">DEAD BELGIAN</span></a>, who play dark yet raucous covers of legendary crooner Jacques Brel: <a href="http://www.bidolito.co.uk/content/feature-interview-54" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.bidolito.co.uk/content/feature-interview-54</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I also interviewed a very cool, up-coming producer called <span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/bdbancel" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">BJØRN DAVID BANCEL</span></a> </span>who recorded an amazing compilation of 5 Liverpool artists in 5 different Liverpool locations, which I urge you to listen to <a href="https://soundcloud.com/bdbancel/sets/bidolito-2013-compilation" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">NOW</span></a>: <span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.bidolito.co.uk/content/feature-interview-59" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.bidolito.co.uk/content/feature-interview-59</span></a> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Previews & Shorts page of Issue 32 is worth reading if only for the section on </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bongripper, who played the Kazimier in April, which saw me spending a whole afternoon attempting to describe the</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> stoner sludge doom metal favourites : </span><span style="color: blue; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.bidolito.co.uk/issues/issue-32" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.bidolito.co.uk/issues/issue-32</span></a> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(find it on page 20).</span></div>
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Amy Minshullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08962415813334081667noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449984712038007013.post-30232059955696995002013-01-23T07:00:00.000-08:002013-01-23T07:00:39.016-08:00LIVERPOOL SOUND CITY 2012<h2 align="center">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Liverpool Sound City, 17th- 19th May, 2012</span></h2>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em>With the new issue of </em>Ellipsis<em> magazine coming out very soon I thought I would put up the review of my wonderful Liverpool Sound City weekend, which featured in the last issue, along with my interview with</em> <a href="http://www.bidolito.co.uk/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Bido Lito!</span></a><em> editor, Craig Pennington. You can buy tickets for Sound City 2013 </em><a href="http://www.liverpoolsoundcity.co.uk/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;"><em>here</em></span></a><em>.</em> </span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">It is impossible
to separate Liverpool from its hallowed musical heritage, but how many students
living in this thriving city are actively engaged with the music scene as it
stands today?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The annual
Liverpool Sound City festival, which took place last May, was the perfect
opportunity to see the best of local talent performing alongside major
headliners across various venues, Camden Crawl-style, right in the centre of
town. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Early favourites
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Mystery Jets </b>got the weekend off to
a good start in what appeared to be a corrugated iron warehouse with highlights
from all four of their albums. Using a battered stars and stripes backdrop the
band focused on the Americana-heavy side of new record <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Radlands </i>but still sounded best on the English pop of ‘Someone
Purer’ and ‘Greatest Hits’, both of which featured charming ‘sha-la-la’ style
backing vocals. Those who didn’t bugger off early after ‘Two Doors Down’ to go
and see <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Professor Green </b>at the Echo
were also awarded with a ramshackle rendition of ‘Behind The Bunhouse’, which
got the (sadly diminished) crowd dancing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">In another
temporary gig venue/garage, local ladies <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Stealing
Sheep </b>were casting their glorious hippy spell with three part harmonies,
loud percussion and a lot of glitter. With only drums, a guitar and keyboards
the building psychedelia of songs such as ‘Gold’, taken from their debut album <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Into The Diamond Sun, </i>filled the cold concrete
space with warmth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The minimal
synth indie of recent buzz band <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Alt J</b>,
however,<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>failed to translate in the
noisy bar atmosphere of the Kazimier, and even singles ‘Breezeblocks’ and
‘Tessellate’ had little impact. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Following night,
same venue, and charismatic frontman <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene
McGuinness</b>, who has toured as a guitarist with Miles Kane, was on fine form
accompanied by his equally dapper band. With driving 60s riffs and sharp, witty
lyrics (“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">If beauty is truth that makes
you a l-l-liar</i>”), the likes of ‘Shotgun’ and ‘Lion’ are the stuff indie
dancefloor dreams are made of. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Dressed like
WWII evacuees, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Spring Offensive </b>provided
a different kind of performance with their jittery, angular folk in the
abandoned-house-turned-art-space of the Wolstenholme, breaking their set
halfway through to stand in a tight circle and sing a cappella in the middle of
the crowd, who were hushed and thrilled. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Come Saturday, and
Sound City almost lost its grip on reality with an eardrum-popping set from
local ‘eccentrics’ <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Jazz Hands</b>.
Playing alongside Liverpool-based gig poster exhibition Screenadelica, the five
piece hardcore/rock/jazz band dressed entirely in orange and included one
topless, balaclava-wearing member whose job seemed solely to be playing the
cowbell in people’s faces in an aggressive manner. Mad and wonderful.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The
old-fashioned opulence of the newly opened Epstein Theatre played host to a
number of more laid back and acoustic acts throughout the weekend, including <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Michael Kiwanuka</b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">James Vincent McMorrow</b>. Ex-LIPA
(Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts) lad <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Dan Croll </b>really shone as someone to watch out for in the future; the
beauty of ‘Home’ and ‘Marion’ was hard to ignore and he has since been played
by the likes of Lauren Laverne and Nick Grimshaw. “I loved the Epstein and had
an amazing time playing in it,” Croll told <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ellipsis.</i>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The highlight of
the weekend, however, came from one of the best bands in Liverpool at the
moment, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Death At Sea</b>. Kitted out
entirely in grandma-style summer dresses (because the city needs more “fun”,
apparently) and playing to an impressively big crowd considering their output
at the time was only three songs uploaded to YouTube, they proved themselves
worthy of the hype surrounding them with a set that burned with energy and
ambition. Debut single ‘Drag’ especially has a lo-fi, slacker rock sound The
Cribs would be proud of, and boasts an epic chorus in the making in “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">When he’s with her/She bleeds glitter</i>”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">This may have
been a hard act to follow, but LA sisters <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Bleached
</b>did a pretty good job and managed to look effortlessly cool to boot. Sounding
like The Ramones if they were a 60s girl group, their 3 chord songs injected
some romance into fuzzy punk guitars with self-consciously simple lyrics such
as, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Baby won’t you please/Come on back
to me</i>” (‘Searching Through The Past’).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Frustratingly, Sound
City 2012 fell during exams; this year, however, the festival is due to be held
much earlier (2<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">nd</span></sup>-4<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> May). So by all means get your fix of Penny Lane
and the Cavern Club, but with a thriving local music scene as rich and varied
as this, who would want to remain stuck in the past?</span></div>
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(<em>All pictures belong to me.)</em></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"></span> </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Craig G Pennington, Editor of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bido Lito!</i>, Liverpool’s premier music
magazine, had this to say:</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">As well as
seeing some amazing bands and listening to some brilliant music, the biggest,
most exciting change at Sound City this year was the way that Wolstenholme
Square became a kind of central hub for the festival. The way the car parks and
the warehouses near the Kazimier were used as venues felt very much like South
by Southwest [legendary music festival held in Austin, Texas]. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">I personally
didn’t get to see that many bands because I was in the office making the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bido Lito!</i> daily magazine! But from what
I saw I thought <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Toy</b> were fantastic,
they were a real standout. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tea Street
Band</b> were stunning; the Red Bull Garage played perfectly to their
strengths. It felt like some weird, Haçienda-esque, industrial space and just
came alive with them. When it came to Liverpool bands, I’ve seen <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Death At Sea</b> get continually more and
more exciting, and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Owls*</b> were
brilliant; it was their first show with their new line-up and they were really
good. From what we heard from our contributors, I think <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Willis Earl Beal</b> was probably the headline act that stood out. He
really introduced himself and seems like a very exciting artist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">To anyone who
has just moved to the city, I would say the Liverpool music scene is so varied
and diverse that it will be much more exciting than you could ever imagine it
to be. We’ve got so many artists breaking through on a national level, from
grime and drum and bass, through to really interesting electronic and
avant-garde artists, through to rock and roll bands and female MCs. It’s the
strongest music scene that I’ve ever known in Liverpool.</span></div>
Amy Minshullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08962415813334081667noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449984712038007013.post-5729032020749591992012-11-23T08:39:00.000-08:002012-11-23T08:39:13.995-08:00THE VACCINES, 22/11/12<h2 align="center">
THE VACCINES @ Mountford Hall, Liverpool Guild of Students, 22/11/12</h2>
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My review of The Vaccines' first gig in Liverpool is available to read now on TheStudentGuide.com <a href="http://www.thestudentguide.com/news_and_reviews/article/the_vaccines_mountford_hall_liverpool_guild_of_students_22_11_2012" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></a>. It was an amazing night and if you haven't already bought their second album <em>Come of Age </em>I suggest you do so now.</div>
Amy Minshullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08962415813334081667noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449984712038007013.post-45192867757730640232012-09-26T04:07:00.000-07:002012-09-26T04:08:26.202-07:00THE STUDENT GUIDE<div align="center">
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<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">HAIM AND DEATH AT SEA</span></strong></div>
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My pick of bands to watch out for (Haim and Death At Sea) appears in the new issue of <a href="http://www.thestudentguide.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">The Student Guide</span></a><span style="color: blue;">, <span style="color: black;">which will hit the shops on October 1st! You can see my article <a href="http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/1d272263#/1d272263/76" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></a> or check out the full magazine <a href="http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/1d272263#/1d272263/1" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">here.</span></a> </span></span><span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
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Amy Minshullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08962415813334081667noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449984712038007013.post-28023508394699089242012-09-03T04:03:00.002-07:002012-09-03T04:07:56.782-07:00BUY MY FACE.COM INTERVIEW<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><strong>BUY MY FACE?</strong></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gLJ01GPhoK8/UESN3I3QD0I/AAAAAAAAACM/_yweNbyvMeg/s1600/10-03-12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gLJ01GPhoK8/UESN3I3QD0I/AAAAAAAAACM/_yweNbyvMeg/s320/10-03-12.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<em><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>I talked to
Ed Moyse, graduate entrepreneur and co-founder of </strong></span></em><a href="http://buymyface.com/"><em><span style="color: blue; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>BuyMyFace.com</strong></span></em></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong><em>, about looking
for jobs and jumping out of planes. [Originally appeared in issue 5 of</em> </strong></span><a href="http://ellipsisliverpool.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong>Ellipsis</strong></span></a><o:p><em><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong> magazine.]</strong></span></em></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Have you got The Fear yet? The crippling realisation that
University doesn’t last forever, and that at some point in the near future you
will have to find a career in the most competitive graduate job market for
decades? Ed Moyse and Ross Harper, who studied Economics and Neuroscience at
Cambridge, certainly did. Now, however, they have their own international
business in the shape of BuyMyFace.com, a viral marketing concept which happens
to involve a lot of face paint. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“We weren’t completely sure what we wanted to do when we
graduated,” says Ed. “About halfway through our final year we were still on the
lookout for jobs; we didn’t really have a clue.” Instead they decided it was
time to get creative. “Rather than going down the conventional careers path and
being faced with massive amounts of competition, we quite fancied trying our hand
at our own thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“We’d been keeping this little black notebook of any ideas
we came up with. We wanted to make some money and have a good gap year, but the
problem was that we didn’t have any money to invest.” Ironically, the flash of
inspiration they needed came to Ed while he was travelling to an interview for
a job.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“As soon as it was done I went straight back to Ross’s at
university, and I didn’t care at all about the outcome of the job interview. I
just said, ‘Come on, we’ve got to sell advertising space on our faces,’ and he
said, ‘Yeah, alright.’ After that we had a few bar sessions, just mulling it
over and trying to come up with something that was workable really.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">At the time of writing, BuyMyFace.com has been up and
running for only 182 days, but its founders are already £33,182 <em> </em>closer to
paying off their student debts <em>[the total at day 338 is currently £47,080]. </em>It’s a fiendishly simple idea: companies or
individuals can buy Ross and Ed’s faces by the day, with the price going up
over time as the website gets more hits. They will then paint an advert on
their faces and upload pictures of themselves which become links to the
company’s website. This new approach to marketing has proved incredibly
successful, but I imagine their families must have been shocked when they
announced their new business plan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“We were very wary of telling anyone that we were going to
be doing this before it actually got going. The first thing we did was to get
the help of our friend Tom from university to set up a website for us, and we gave
him a share in the business too. After the website was looking really good and
we were ready to start selling, we actually told our families at graduation. So
I met Ross’s parents, then he met my parents, and we said, ‘Instead of getting
a job, this is what we’re doing…’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“They were a bit shocked I reckon, but they’ve been very
supportive and they’ve been surprised at how well it’s gone. We couldn’t have
done it without them because I have to kind of live with Ross the whole time,
so we’re always at Ross’s house in London or my house in Poole. I’ve seen Ross
more than I’ve seen my girlfriend in the past few months.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">As well as creating a lot of publicity in the UK (as a
recent front page feature in the Sunday Times confirms) the website has become
surprisingly international. The two graduates have even featured on Australian
TV. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“Weirdly, we really
took off in Germany. We’ve been on all three national TV channels, as well
as in all their national newspapers. We’re bigger in Germany than in the UK so
we’ve had quite a few German companies buy space. An American company called
Revolver Studios sent us to the Royal Opera House to see a ballet dressed up in
our suits with our faces painted up as well. It was pretty ridiculous; we had
champagne reception and stuff because they wanted us to get some funny photos.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Of course most adverts exist purely online, but Ed and Ross do
occasionally get asked to venture a bit further in order to spread the word; accounting
firm Ernst & Young bought their faces for a week and used the time to send
them skiing with students, which Ed describes as my “best week of work.” They
have even been asked to jump out of a plane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“My girlfriend was talking to someone from Altitude
Solutions about this weird idea I had, and the guy she was talking to said he’d
heard about us on the news. Instead of just getting advertising space on our
website, he wanted to send us sky-diving, in the hope that newspapers and our
blog readers would be interested. It worked out pretty well for him.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Sound like your sort of thing? Well you’re in luck, because BuyMyFace.com are looking for new student recruits<em>
</em>around the country… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“Basically Tom’s come up with this really clever code for
the website, which means anyone visiting it from say, London, would see a
London version of the website, and anyone visiting from America would see the
American version. So we can get geographical targeting and get people in
different areas doing it. It’s a good way of getting more people involved, because
what we didn’t want was it spilling out into the real world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“The role would basically consist of face painting, but there’s
also quite a lot of work to do with the media because people are talking about
it and they want to know more. They may have to get in touch with their local
news for example. But we are trying to make it as little work as possible, so
that a student could do this alongside their studies as a way of raising a bit
of money, because we know what being a student is like.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">In a graduate job climate with an average of 83 applicants
per job, students coming up with their own creative ways around unemployment
may become something of a trend, a way to stand out from the job-seeking crowd.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“That’s the irony, really: we’re doing this crazy project
because it’s a really tough time to get a job, and then because we’ve done this
crazy project, we’ve had loads of job offers. In our first month alone we had
five job offers, which is awesome.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“We’ve got some more ideas in our little black notebook and
we’d quite like to give one of them a go. It’s just a question of do we accept
a job offer or do we try something else out, and we’re not really sure at this
stage.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">So while graduating may seem like a daunting prospect,
especially when even Cambridge alumni are struggling, the boys from
BuyMyFace.com have proved that hard work and a fresh perspective can still get
you noticed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“My advice would be that if you’ve got a good idea and you
think it’s worth giving it a go, then as soon as you graduate is an excellent
time to do it. I’d say go for it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.buymyface.com/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">www.buymyface.com</span></i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></i></div>
Amy Minshullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08962415813334081667noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449984712038007013.post-24218941446364056042012-08-20T04:36:00.000-07:002012-08-20T04:41:40.322-07:00MAX PEMBERTON INTERVIEW<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">“WHAT WILL AFFECT MEDICINE GRADUATES THE
MOST? TUITION FEES.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<strong><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">I</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> talked to Max Pemberton,
author of </span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">The Doctor
Will See You Now,<em> about his life as a
student journalist and his anger over the NHS reforms. From</em> <a href="http://ellipsisliverpool.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Ellipsis</span></a><em> magazine issue 4.</em></span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><strong><em>[I have since been informed that Max appeared as a medical expert recently on a Channel 4 documentary called '</em>Sex Story: Fifty Shades of Grey', <em>which, if you so wish, you can watch <a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/sex-story-fifty-shades-of-grey/4od" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></a>.]</em></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Max Pemberton
seems to be an unstoppable force. He has degrees in Medicine and Anthropology.
He writes regular columns for the Daily Telegraph and the Reader’s Digest. He
has published three semi-autobiographical books. He is adapting his books for
television and is writing a new thriller. He has even appeared on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Jeremy Kyle Show. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">He is also a
full time doctor in the NHS. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">“I don’t have a
television, and I don’t have children. If you don’t have a television, and you
don’t have children, what else do you do in your evenings? You write books or
you write articles. It’s quite straight forward!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">But there is
more to Max than his self-deprecating humour suggests, and as I speak to him it
becomes apparent that the secret to his success is an astonishing capacity for
hard work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">“I think a lot
of people look at me and think, “Oh you got your column when you were 23,
that’s not fair,” but what they fail to appreciate is that I spent five years
slogging away in journalism while I was a medical student. The number of
tickets to the theatre that I’ve wasted, the people I’ve let down… You have to
be really quite determined.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">In fact, Max’s
career in journalism started not because of a passion for writing, but out of
financial necessity. In his second year at UCL medical school and down to his
last two hundred pounds, he applied for a job writing for an internet company
that outsourced news content. Then when Max left university he realised that
his life as a freelance journalist would not fit in with the busy schedule of a
junior doctor so, unwilling to give up his aspirations of being a writer, he
came up with a plan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">“I just wrote a
letter to the Daily Telegraph and said, ‘I’d like a column please. This is the
idea I’ve got.’” After an interview with the editor the Telegraph agreed, giving
Max a column in which to write about his first year as a junior doctor. It
proved so popular with readers that he was kept on to provide opinions on current
healthcare issues and has written a weekly article ever since. “I wanted to
bring out a human interest angle in the big, political stories. There would be
stories in the press about people on sickness benefits and it would all be very
polarised; then I would see people on sickness benefits and think, ‘Well
actually it’s a lot more complicated.’” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">He has since
written three books about his and his friends’ early years as doctors: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trust Me, I’m a Junior Doctor, Where Does It
Hurt </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Doctor Will See You Now.
</i>The latter sees Max returning to hospital work after a year spent working
with homeless people and drug addicts, and illustrates the incredible range of
human experience doctors encounter every day. From Tony the school child who
has taken an overdose because of homophobic bullying, to Mr Clements, who
complains that a certain part of his anatomy has started to resemble an
aubergine. One of the main issues of the book is the quality of care elderly
patients receive, especially those suffering from dementia. Through stories of
neglect and suffering Max challenges the way society views older people and
exposes the major flaws in the way the NHS cares for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">“I appreciate
how lucky I am to have this platform to talk about the things I feel passionate
about. It’s really lovely and quite overwhelming, but it can also be absolutely
petrifying. So sometimes when I sit down to write I have to pretend that I’m
just writing for me, because otherwise I get overwhelmed with the anxiety that
some people aren’t going to like it, or some people won’t agree.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">This would
certainly have been the case for a series of articles he wrote recently
denouncing Andrew Lansley’s NHS Reform Bill, claiming that the Health Service “will
be spliced and diced into bite-sized portions to be thrown down the gullet of
the corporate sector.” I found it refreshing to see someone defending the
principle of care to all from cradle to grave, as well as explaining in simple
terms the consequences of this complex piece of legislation. “I just thought it
was absolutely disgusting and didn’t want to let them get away with it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">“I read the
white paper, which is like the government’s explanation of what the legislation
is going to do, and to me it bore absolutely no resemblance to the actual
legislation I was reading. What annoyed me was not so much that it was essentially
a roadmap for privatisation, although that would perturb and upset me, but that
they were being disingenuous about what the actual legislation was. The white
paper was all about patient choice and making things better for patients; in
fact it is all about undoing caveats that had been put in to protect the NHS so
that it can be sliced open for the private sector. It made me incandescent with
rage.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Fairness and
honesty play a big part in Max’s writing, and he is committed to fighting for
the causes he feels passionate about. “I suppose it comes from being in
medicine: you realise that the world is inherently unfair. Some people get
cancer and other people don’t, some people get knocked over by a bus and other
people don’t. So society should be as fair as possible because underlying that
is an inherent unfairness. When I see individuals behaving in a way that is
unjust or unethical it gets me so angry because I think, well the world is so
unfair anyway we don’t need people like you!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">When I ask if
now is a difficult time for medicine graduates, he brings up another issue
close to his heart. “I think the biggest and most significant thing that has
happened to medicine students recently is the introduction of tuition fees,
which I think is fucking disgraceful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">“It makes me
worry. If you have gone through six years of medical school, and you’re paying
£9000 a year, then who will want to become a community paediatrician? Or work
with drug addicts in East End slums? People will want to go into the lucrative
areas of private practice because they’ll think, ‘I bought the degree, I paid
for it, what do I owe anybody?’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Despite
assurances that being a doctor is still his “main passion,” the balance must
have shifted a little more towards writing as he became more successful, and I
wonder if he would ever consider leaving the hospital to concentrate on journalism.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">“I wouldn’t want
to give up medicine,” he answers straight away, obviously not fazed by his many
commitments. “I did have a bit of break a couple of months ago. I just couldn’t
do everything so I took some time out of medicine and I actually really, really
missed it. I love being a journalist and I love writing books but I also love
working with people and seeing my patients, and I don’t think I really appreciated
that until I gave it up.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Amy Minshullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08962415813334081667noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449984712038007013.post-35773826284918423872012-04-24T13:48:00.000-07:002012-04-25T13:22:56.995-07:00DEATH AT SEA<h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><em>GAME
THEORY</em> </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">RECORD STORE DAY LAUNCH PARTY @MELLO
MELLO, 21/04/12</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">It
is Death At Sea’s first gig in Liverpool and the sense of expectation and
anticipation is almost palpable, mixed in with the heady atmosphere of sweat
and beer at a packed Mello Mello. Ever since a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bido Lito! </i>front cover back in February predicted that the
relatively unheard of band would “blow a hole in Liverpool’s unsuspecting music
community”, there has been a real buzz about them, despite the fact that most
fans had only heard the three songs put up on YouTube. In spite of all this
hype, which any band would be rightly wary of as a kiss of death before they’d
even started, Death At Sea rise magnificently to the occasion, opening with the
melancholy pop fuzz of ‘Sea Foam Green’ and showing off their lush three way
harmonies to best effect. The band themselves acknowledge their sudden burst of
popularity when they introduce the Cribs-esque ‘Drag’ as “one of our old songs…
well, three months old,” but even at this early stage there is an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">almost </i>sing-along moment during the
chorus (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“when he’s with her, she bleeds
glitter”</i>) which is testament to the swooning warmth of these tracks.
Following up with the faster paced and heavier punk of ‘Selfless’ and new song
‘Driving Range’ it is clear that what worked well on record merely becomes more
special when translated to a live setting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">‘Sea
Foam Green’ opens with the lines, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“In any
other city in the world, tonight it gets dark- but not in Liverpool” </i>and
for the small crowd here to celebrate Record Store Day to the soundtrack of
local talent, Death At Sea have definitely brightened up their night. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></h3>Amy Minshullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08962415813334081667noreply@blogger.com0