LTW newsletter 31

Hello Warriors,

Just as we were sinking into the beautiful trance of spring with proper daylight hours and the flickering and soothing tendrils of warmth and even, my god! sunshine in Manchester! it has been stolen away but the cruel and vicious gods of the weather.  The vie in the city saw an astonishing flip when the sun came out. There was a joyous rush to the great outdoors and music and dancing of all descriptions in the city's teaming squares. It felt good to be alive!

Now we are ensconsed back indoors like badgers in their sets or voles wherever they go to avoid the rian drops which must be like buckets of water for them!

Thank got there have been all kinds of musical action in the past week.

From out the blue or the black or whatever colour they would emerge from, Placebo have released a new album called 'Never Let Me Go'. Our reviewer grappled with the band's first relesase for a decade and found that it came up trumps.

Another sudden reappereance out of the past were EMF - who ever thought that they would appear onstage again!  Their gig at the tiny Water Rats club in London was an unlikely triumph and a reminder of what made them one of the biggest bands in the world in their pomp. I remember clearly being in America at their gig when they hit the number one spot in the charts there with 'Unbvelievable' back in the days when British bands got to number one in the USA. That was a good party! What was pretty cool about this gig is that they played the whole of their new alkbum, Go Go Sapiens live instead of relying on the monster hits - more power to their daring elbows!

Dita Von Teese brought her 21st century burlesque show to Manchester and it was an amazing spectacle which our Melanie Smith captured in a great series of brilliant photographs.

Jon Spencer has been navigating the cool zone for decades. We even released his early Pussy Galore stuff on our Vinyl Drip lable back when he started. To this day his skinny and smart take on blues and bubblegum is paying trumps and his new album with his Hitmakers project is as great as you wish it to be - even for the sleeve alone which sees his covered in make up! Our reviewer says 'Garage’s great futuristic crunching chameleon has never sounded better...' and they are right - this is super compressed, super smart bubble garage wildness! 

Killing Joke have a mighty new single out and are also currently on tour. For many years Jaz Coleman was looked on as being a wild eyed maverick with doomsday interviews but these days he sounds like a newe bullitin as he explains to John Robb about the apocalyptic times, the new Killing Joke EP upcoming tour, the sixth great extinction, his near-death brush last year, his remarkable parents and brother and a passion for moth breeding…and so much more.

Rhoda Dakar has spent decades at the musical frontline and our reviewer was initally worried that if she was still relevant before deciding...'You’re goddamn right she is – Rhoda Dakar is a goddamn national treasure!'

We were shocked by the news of the death of the Foo Fighters Drummers Taylor Hawkins.