Popular local venue The Mad Ferret played host to some of the most promising bands in the North West in a fierce battle of the bands competition. The JD Set Unsigned rolled into UClan looking for some of the most talented university bands, and well, we may have found them.

National Year of Reading and Get It Loud in Libraries present Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip’s Christmas Library Tour.

Not many bands have reached the musical progression that Bloc Party has in the last three years. From spiky, raw guitars in ‘Silent Alarm’, to the more polished, rounded sound of ‘A Weekend In The City’. Now however, they seem to have settled into an almost perfect niche.

A five-piece girl band forged from the remnants of S Club Juniors may not be everyone’s cup of tea but Chasing Lights is a fine example of how pop music should be done.

After last year’s unsettling excursion into arena rock, it seems Funeral for a Friend have rediscovered their mojo.

Gojira’s name is French for ‘Godzilla’ and accurately sums up this superb album. If Gojira is a monster then the drumming on this album is surely the heart of the beast, demonstrating that the band can do complex time changes in their sleep, which is shown best on ‘Toxic Garbage Island.’

Lead singer of The Charlatans, Tim Burgess, has it seems invented a time machine and arrives on stage directly from the year 1990.

The NME Awards Tour has finally taken to the road and the hype surrounding it is tremendous. Four great indie bands, playing over 25 days, in 19 cities.
Tonight is the fourth stop on the tour and sees the bands rolling into the North-West to play at Manchester Academy.
The Academy is pretty ramshackle at present, with work underway on a major facelift for the venue. Toilets are in a portakabin. There is no cloakroom. The lights don’t even seem to be working. It’s frankly a bit of a mess and absolutely …