Call Upon The Author

Hype is a funny thing. It can make you famous with everyone even before they’ve had a chance to hear you, and this can be such a curse.

According to their press release, The Enid have been on a long hiatus. They haven’t been around since their split in 1988, but have returned to inflict their prog-rock on an unsuspecting world once more. And how is it? Well…

We’re back with another Southsea fest update and we’re headed to The Wine Vaults again. We’ve already previewed the downstairs stage, but head up the wooden staircase to find the volume turned right up and the vocalists competing to obliterate your face. WHAT CAN WE EXPECT? Much heavier than the stages we’ve looked at previously, [...]

Ask yourself a question… when was the last time you listened to the radio? You remember? I’ll bet you don’t. Sure you might remember the last time you had the radio on, it might even be playing away in the background while you’re reading this, but when was the last time you really listened?

25 years after Suzanne Vega’s debut album, this one has a promising and impressive start to it. The gentle acoustic guitar strumming and her somehow comforting voice draws you in. After the slow and relaxing first two tracks, (If You Were) In My Movie catches you off-guard, setting a new individual sound. It is like [...]

Dying To Confess, debut album from In Darklight, passes by in a blur of whiney inconvenience. Whilst listening to the opening track, ‘What’s Happening?’, the vocals seem quirky and give the impression that they could be the selling point of an otherwise average band. Yet as the album drags on, Ben Sellers’ whiney vocals begin [...]

Thomas White decided, while touring for his current album, The Maximalist, to do his own take of songs, that were already created. This is pretty brave, as it could either horribly wrong, or amazingly right.
Fortunately, Thomas picked the right songs to cover.

With Samantha Gibb being the daughter of the late Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, I had high hopes for the band’s EP, which it easily fulfilled without any doubt. What a fantastic start with My Spell, which draws the listener in to the EP, with a tune just as catchy as the remaining three [...]

The Wine Vaults is such an integral Southsea Fest venue that it has two stages! Today we’re focusing on the downstairs stage WHAT CAN WE EXPECT? A smorgasbord of styles that pretty much covers every base. NOT TO BE MISSED: Head Full Of Yoko. The editor caught these boys a week or so ago and [...]

Sometimes, it seems, life likes to imitate the movies. The fact that Mike Connaris, a recording studio producer, first heard Brooke Sharkey’s voice floating through an open window and subsequently offered her free use of his studio, appears to be one of these times.
Listening to Brooke’s calm and relaxed vocals it’s hard not to be enthralled in the same spell that captured Connaris. Every now and then, there are bursts of song in which her voice is reminiscent of Liv Kristine’s, of the Leaves’ Eyes persuasion, and the guitar remains a gentle but prominent companion throughout the five-track EP, A Taste Of Truth.