Introducing - Just A Crush

I was very happy to hear that more Dance Magic Dance alumni are starting up new projects, to ensure there's absolutely no excuse to stay home on a Friday night. With Mireia and Belle skipping the light fantastic to the world beats of Pap-Il-Lon, Laura's new venture Just a Crush is a new club night and record label based in London, co-run by Claudia with a mission to "capture the same excitement felt listening to a favourite song for the first time, buying a first much-coveted record and sneaking into a first gig and feeling as though the band was playing just for you."

The girls met through a common musical friend and it only took one beer and two gin-tonics to start this new project. Just A Crush will be taking over several London (and later, Spanish) venues on an ad hoc basis, to showcase their favourite British and Spanish music. They will also be releasing their first cassette very soon, so keep an ear out.

And as we all love any excuse to drink beer and party hard, Just A Crush are having a launch party to celebrate their birth into the world! Details below...

Event: Link

Friday May 11th 2012

The Waiting Room (Underneath The Three Crowns)

175 Stoke Newington High Street, N16 0LH London

£4 Advanced (We Got Tickets), £5 On the door

8pm-4am

Over to L&C to give the low-down on this rad line-up...

Fair Ohs - http://www.theefairohs.blogspot.co.uk/

Nothing we could say about this London trio would do them justice. You have to see them. You have to be there. To know them is to love them. This will be their first proper London gig of 2012 and no matter what the weather’s like that day, they will make the sun shine in The Waiting Room!

Colours - http://coloursmusic.tumblr.com/

One of the best London bands at the moment and responsible for our favourite 2012 7” so far: Drip Haze (out on their own amazing label Marshall Teller http://marshalltellerrecords.com/). Colours have been going on for some time now and they keep getting better and better. We just can’t get enough of them!

Mujeres (BCN) - http://www.facebook.com/mujerestheband

We’re super stoked that Barcelona garage rockers Mujeres are jumping on a train to pay London a little visit during their The Great Escape adventure. The band, who just got back from SXSW and are currently playing in Spain with Jacuzzi Boys, will be presenting their new album ‘Soft Gems’ before returning to Spain to play Primavera Sound.

Virginia Wing - http://www.facebook.com/virginiawingband

Virginia Wing is our favourite new band in the world. They’re a made out of people from other bands (Let’s Wrestle, The Proper Ornaments, La La Vasquez) and sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before. They have just released a tape on SexBeat and great things are bound to happen to them!

ON THE DECKS

Rory Attwell - London’s number 1 producer will take over the decks between the bands

Diverge - The one and only Johny Chhetri promises to play a punk-rock special that will sure get everyone dancing!

Just A Crush

WEBSITE http://justacrush.co.uk/

FACEBOOK http://www.facebook.com/JustACrushManagement

TWITTER @just__a__crush

Show: Shudder Pulps, Tense Men, Fair Ohs at The Stags Head

It'd been a good few weeks (or maybe even months) since I'd gone local to a show, and the Fair Ohs single launch at the Stags Head looked set to be unmissable, with a line up featuring two very new bands that have taken shape with roots laid between Brighton and London.

For once, I actually took some photos. And then lost my phone. So pictures nicked from their webpages will (once again), have to do...

The first to bridge the Brighton-London divide was the excellent Shudder Pulps; three guys piecing together a mix of ramshackle post-punk/experimental learnings, broken up with poppier tunes with stand-out choruses and the like. It's very much the jigsawed sounds of a band trying things out and seeing where things lead them, and their set was a lot of fun to watch (albeit from the back of the room behind a lot of very tall men, so it took about ten mins to work out where the vocals were coming from!). They also have a rather nice 6-track cassette out, which I think you can get direct from them or pick up from future shows – highly recommended listening.

The London-Brighton theme then continued with Tense Men, who I'd been hoping to see live for a while now, made up of members of Cold Pumas and Sauna Youth (credited as Righteous James Phoenix and Overland Fisher on their debut tape). And the wait was certainly worth it – between just the two of them, their guitar loops, echoing vocals and incessant drumming felt like a fight for survival rather than yr usual pub set, sweeping up any stray thought or minor distraction into a trance-like state. Sometimes these things work best live, but away from the stage, their self-titled cassette still perpetuates all of the energy and spirit of a show. You can listen to tracks and find out more here.

Tense Men live

And I didn't see their whole set, but from what I did catch Dalston fixtures Fair Ohs were as potty-mouthed and entertaining as ever, packing out the entire room and inciting a lot of dancing and heckles in equal measure. Listen and learn more here.

http://shudderpulps.tumblr.com/

http://tensemen.tumblr.com/

http://fairohs.com/