Red Sparowes

 Creating epic instrumental songs that are given room to breath they allow you to fully immerse yourself in their world. Red Sparowes are brutally heavy and have no need to rely on any hackneyed riff to pummel you into submission. Their cascading sound owes as much to Goblin as it does to Sabbath. Featuring Bryant Clifford-Meyer of the recently disbanded ISIS.
http://www.myspace.com/redsparowes

Mothertrucker

Mothertrucker have been combining the riff power of Sabbath and Kyuss, the quiet menace of Slint and Mogwai and the epic ambience of Isis and Pelican to create a powerful rock onslaught since 2003 and are still rolling. The band have released a number of records in that time, including the album Trebuchet released by Argghh records in France, and have shared the stage with the likes of Boris, Mono, 27, Jesu, Aereogramme and Truckfighters.

http://www.myspace.com/mothertrucker

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Head of Wantastiquet
The alter ego of American musician Paul Labrecque, now residing in Belgium.

He has recorded several solo albums and collaborations (with Chris Corsano and Valerie Webb) and he plays and records with the bohemian group Sunburned Hand of the Man. His new album under the Head of Wantastiquet moniker is set for release on Conspiracy Records in October 2010.

Historically, aesthetically, sonically, his new work bears genuine comparison to ‘American Primitivism’. It’s a mix of psychedelic banjo hymns, apocalyptic space folk and incredible drugged out soul whispers.

http://www.myspace.com/headofwantastiquet

Josephine Foster

One of the most enigmatic, luminious  and enlightening American singers of her time sings Federico Garcia Lorca’s popular folk song collection “Las Canciones Populares Espanolas” with guitarist Victor Herroro and live band.

‘Anda Jaleo’ the recordings of these songs will be released in September by Fire Records. Live the band want to play suitable acoustic spaces. Josephine sings, dances a bit and play castanets with the band whom she describes as “a like a Andalusian jug band playing very energetic and animated music”. Taking their cue from Lorca and La Argentinita’s infectious 1931 recording of the songs, Josephine Foster and her partner Spanish musician Victor Herrero have arranged the poetically rich collection for their new acoustic band, formed while living in the Grenadine Sierra.  Anda Jaleo is the band’s live recording of “Las Canciones”; a visceral celebration of the persistance of popular anonymous song. 

http://www.josephinefoster.info/

Swallows

Swallows is Sian Macfarlane, hailing from the weirdest core of the Midlands and intent on harnessing the hum of the trees and the rattle of electric pylons. She uses samples creeping alongside a heady mix of harmonium, mandolin, and keyboards, weaving simple spells with folk elements and abstract instrumentation, often accompanied by some extra dissonance and her ghostly vocal.

http://www.myspace.com/swallowsoverhead

Twisted pop wonders Tunng hit the Arena stage this summer. Performing songs from their new album called…And Then We Saw Land. The band have been on adventures both personal and shared, which have helped shape Tunng’s approach to their album.

Full of adventurous spirit…And Then We Saw Land is the first Tunng album to take more than a year to write and produce, it’s packed with big choruses and joyful tunes. “We wanted to make a record that would be a great live set,” says Mike. “My friend described it as ‘Epic Folk Disco Brass Magnificent,’ and I’m not sure you could call any other Tunng record that.”

Tonight’s Arena gig is the latest stop on Tunng’s adventure and it promises to be full of colour, character, joy and optimism.

http://www.tunng.co.uk/

Health & Efficiency – Their music traverses an encyclopaedia of influences; psych, folk, no wave noise and electronic perhaps being some of the more predominant. They utilise banjo, two basses, two guitars, synths, samplers and more effects and loop pedals than it’s reasonable for one band to need.

http://healthandefficiency.net/

Silver Apples

An electronic/psychedelic duo formed in 1967 in New York City. They originally consisted of Simeon Coxe III (who played a custom home-made synthesizer known as the “Simeon”) and Danny Taylor (drums). The duo split in 1970. The group was reformed in 1996 by Simeon and new drummer Xian Hawkins. Danny Taylor returned to the band in 1998 and the band toured and recorded as a trio until 1999 when Simeon was injured in a car accident. The band returned to making music in 2006, but without Taylor, who died in 2005.

Contrasting the flowery psychedelic rock music of the late-1960s, Silver Apples created an avant-garde sound based on little more than a homemade synthesizer (named the Simeon after their lead singer – Simeon) and an extensive drumkit.
Silver Apples created what are now widely regarded as the first rock-orientated albums to utilise electronic techniques. The pulsating, droning rhythms of the oscillators, backed by Taylor’s repetitive, free-form drumming, pre-dated the similar sounds made by Krautrock acts such as Can and Neu! by a couple of years, and the records later became a huge influence on such bands as Suicide, Spacemen 3 and Stereolab.

http://www.myspace.com/officialsilverapples

Micronormous

Matt Eaton of Pram

Home of Metal is a project aimed at creating the first digital archive  http://www.homeofmetal.com, of metal music memorabilia and fans stories, to tell the story of this unique moment of Midlands’ musical heritage. It focuses on the innovators of the genre and those that continued to develop it – Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Napalm Death and Godflesh.

From Thursday 17 to Saturday 19 June 2010, 10am to 6pm, Home Of Metal will be taking up residence in a disused shop located at City 10, 18 Queen Square in Wolverhampton city centre, inviting fans to bring along their memorabilia & stories to be photographed & recorded to contribute to the digital archive or drop in to look at some of the Heavy Metal related wares we have already discovered!

Home Of Metal are looking for everything from concert tickets to photographs, badges, album covers, t-shirts, demo tapes, fan letters, fanzines, flyers, lyrics, posters, press articles, set lists and promotional materials to build the collection online, which will inform a series of major exhibitions which are being developed for 2011.

On Saturday 19 June, from 2pm to 6pm, renowned rock photographer Steve Gerrard will be in residence, fans are invited to have their portraits taken by him in their prized band T-shirts to feature in the Home Of Metal Exhibition.

Plaid & Southbank Gamelan Players

The Warp label’s foremost laptop wizards Plaid are no strangers to unusual collaborations, and this mesmerising show is their most ear-opening yet, blending their trademark sound with the hypnotic textures of a Javanese gamelan orchestra. Performing new work they have created together with Indonesian composer Rahayu Supanggah, the electronica duo weave a subtle soundscape around the Gamelan’s fluid rhythms, thickening the pounding of gongs with echo and delay, looping intricate xylophone patterns, and adding eerie dissonances to ancient harmonies. Gamelan has influenced so much western electronica, from Aphex Twin to Kode9, but both genres have never before shared the same stage, until now..

‘.. the effect is bewitching.. it’s illuminating to see artists from these two genres working together’ Drowned in Sound

http://www.plaid.co.uk/

http://www.sbgp.org.uk/

SHOW BEGINS AT 8PM

Brooklyn, NY resident Mathew Houck is the sole member of Phosphorescent. Houck’s career began in 2000 when he released the Hipolit album under the name Fillup Shack. A tour of England and Spain followed, and while the European press drew comparisons to Bob Dylan and Will Oldham, the London Evening Standard declared him “the most significant American in his field since Kurt Cobain.” Houck’s first release as Phosphorescent, entitled A Hundred Times or More, appeared in 2003 on the Warm label. The 2004 EP The Weight of Flight was his last release for the label, as the 2005 full-length Aw Come Aw Wry landed on Misra. Two years later the release of Pride began a relationship with the Dead Oceans imprint. To Willie, Phosphorescent’s tribute to Willie Nelson, followed in early 2009.

Fulfilling a dream by playing with Willie Nelson on TV at Farm Aid 2009 (alongside Neil Young and Wilco), and touring with the likes of Bon Iver, Bowerbirds, Akron/Family and Deer Tick, PHOSPHORESCENT is set to be welcomed to the top table on the strength and charisma of this immaculate, breakthrough album Here’s to Taking It Easy, Houck’s first new original material since Pride, set for release May 11 in the U.S. and May 10 in the U.K.

Where Pride was a deeply personal, haunting record that Houck recorded on his own, playing all of the instruments himself, To Willie featured musicians who’ve now become bandmates, rifling and rambling through the Nelson catalogue with an undeniable vigour. Not only did it feed their collective unity as players but gave them the oomph to solidify the makings of what Houck sees as their ‘classic’ sounding record in Here’s to Taking It Easy.

Galvanized by heavy hitters like early 70’s Rolling Stones, Bobby Charles and Dylan’s Street Legal (1978), Houck found his songwriting path through to some killer tunes that are given enough space for them to really fly. If Pride was built for 5am introspection and To Willie soundtracked the last chime at the bar, Here’s to Taking It Easy seems as though it’s made for any time, any season.

http://www.myspace.com/phosphorescent

Forest Fire

“They have been described as a punk band playing folk songs, and they do indeed have the ramshackle quality of a lo-fi garage unit thrashing and bashing their way through their set. But sometimes they sound as ragged and electric, as fast and loose, as an alt-country quartet”

The Guardian

http://www.myspace.com/fuckforestfire

Rich Batsford

One of the most exciting emerging pianist composers in the UK with performances of his hypnotic and beguiling piano music.

http://www.richbatsford.com/