Unsigned Band Reviews

• Rupert Stroud: 'Rupert Road'

  Whilst the advent of the internet and file sharing has in some ways been detrimental to the stability of the music industry, in other ways this fragmentation has opened up space for musicians to reach an audience without the help of major labels.

   
• Motion Picture Soundtrack: 'The Shapes We Fear Are Of Our Own'

  Taking their name from the closing song of Radiohead’s 'Kid A' album, Motion Picture Soundtrack more often recall 'The Bends' era, as performed by One Republic.

   
• Loci: ‘Medic’

  With binary-code promo design and a barely comprehensible branch of maths for a band name, you’d be forgiven for expecting Loci’s self-produced sophomore effort to be a geeky ‘80s synth record replete with Tron references.

   
• The Gullivers: ‘Ambulance‘

  It is remarkable what you can do with reverb. It is more remarkable still what some acts will attempt to get away with by simply applying dense reverb to their instruments.

   
• Olympian Fall: ‘Long, Long Time’

  With a bit of wordplay - “Can you remember, how to forget now?” - and an agreeably musical production, Olympian Fall have created a release which shows real promise.

   
• Amongst The Arrows: ‘A Succession Of Wrong Answers’

  Glasgow based quartet Amongst The Arrows as yet remain unsigned. However, their five track EP, ‘A Succession Of Wrong Answers’, is being distributed by Stolen Quiver records indicating a deal may be looming for them somewhere on the horizon.

   
• The Ridings: ‘The Big Demo’

  Uninspired, frighteningly unoriginal, and armed with that most measly of pop tools - greasy chip shop guitars - West Yorkshire’s Ridings grate on the nerves almost immediately.

   
• Kings Die Kings: 'The Onus EP'

  It’s a regular occurrence; you hear the first 30 seconds of a song and already you’re comparing, scouring the recesses of your mind for sound-a-likes, contemporaries and potential plagiarism.

   
• And The Winner Is: 'United We Fall, Divided We Stand'

  Sometimes a demo just falls into the right hands. Anyone with the audacity and ambition to craft music of mastodonic power, a sound of colossal capacity, deserves high praise indeed.

   
• Half Day Closing: 'Weird Little Monsters EP'

  Like a marriage of two different eras, Birmingham three-piece Half Day Closing play a heavy grunge that has been clipped back by the economising of post-punk.

   

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