Militarie Gun

Militarie Gun’s new album, God Save The Gun, starts with a confession. “I’ve been slipping up” frontman Ian Shelton roars on the opening cut “B A D I D E A.” It’s real vulnerability tucked amongst distorted bass and blown-out drums, and the perfect introduction to one of the most exciting records of the year. This isn’t just a sonically daring, massive swing of a rock album, it’s also a very human document of being at your worst when you should be on top of the world – an absurdist guide to the intersection of self-destruction and self-belief.

Lewis Capaldi

19 • South London • Artist • Songwriter

Flaming Lips

The Flaming Lips are an American rock band from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S. The band formed in 1983 and are founders of the label Lovely Sorts of Death.

Tom Odell

Sign up: http://smarturl.it/TomOdellEmail

Teddy Swims

“I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Pt. 1.5)” Out Now

https://teddyswims.lnk.to/ITEBTpt1.5

David Gray

Recorded for no budget in a Stoke Newington bedroom in 1998 by a down on his luck singer-songwriter and self-released on a kitchen sink label, White Ladder slowly (very, very slowly) found an audience. It took a year to creep into the lower reaches of the British charts, then worked its way all the way up to number one. White Ladder eventually spent 3 years (from May 2000 to March 2003) in the UK top 100, spawning classic hit singles ‘Babylon’, ‘Please Forgive Me’ and ‘Sail Away’. It went on to sell over 7 million copies worldwide. It remains in the top 30 best-selling British albums of all time and the best-selling album ever in Ireland (a nation who know a good song when they hear it).

Celebrating its 20th anniversary with an expanded edition, it is interesting to consider the extraordinary aftermath of White Ladder. Its success spawned a new wave of singer-songwriters in an acoustic boom that resonates to this day, a soul-baring lineage that can be directly traced from David Gray to the all-conquering Ed Sheeran. Indeed, Ed is a fan, whose passionate live version of ‘This Year’s Love’ can bring tears to the eye. Fellow world beating British superstar Adele is also an admirer, citing ‘This Year’s Love’ as one of her all-time favourite break-up songs.

In the wake of White Ladder, every major record company began signing and developing guitar wielding troubadours. David Gray was followed into the UK charts by Damien Rice, KT Tunstall, Katie Melua, James Blunt, James Morrison, James Bay, Paolo Nutini, and, ultimately, Ed Sheeran and a second wave of guitar boys including George Ezra, Tom Walker, Tom Grennan and Lewis Capaldi. In the US (where White Ladder sold 2 million copies), Jack Johnson, John Mayer and Jazon Mraz were amongst singer-songwriters whose careers received a significant commercial boost. White Ladder was a music industry game changer.

And yet White Ladder remains apart from everything that followed. While the record company model involved putting young guitarist-singers into the studio with teams of established pop writers and producers, White Ladder was the work of a lone artist plumbing the depths of his soul.

White Ladder was born of difficult circumstances. David Gray had been struggling on the margins for a decade, a lonely figure with an acoustic guitar swimming against the tide of Britpop, grunge, hip hop and electro. With three albums to his name, he found himself advertised third on the bill to beer and a barbecue. “Futility was so thick on the ground it was utterly soul destroying.” He came close to quitting. But instead, he asked himself some difficult questions: “Can you make a better record? Can you write a better song? The decision was to open up and give it everything I’ve got. The open heartedness that White Ladder has at its very core is in direct relation to the sense of bitterness and defensiveness that prevailed upon me. White Ladder is the negative flipped into positive.”

He wrote and recorded in a tiny terraced house on Lordship Road in Stoke Newington. He had to record during the day so as not to disturb the neighbours. “The windows were open because it was hot, and you can hear traffic noises very clearly. It’s the ultimate bedroom recording, actually made in my bedroom.” Lacking big studio facilities, David experimented with drum machines and electronic elements, creating a blend of folktronica that has since become a familiar part of the musical landscape, aided by drummer Craig McClune and engineer Iestyn Polson.

David released White Ladder in Ireland on his own IHT label in November 1998. “We cobbled it together, got a distributor, pressed 5,000 copies and hoped for the best.” Released in the UK in March 1999, it reached number 69 in the charts. American jam rock superstar Dave Matthews was such a fan he personally licensed the album for his ATO label in the US. Meanwhile East West records, a division of Warner, took the reins, releasing ‘Babylon’ as a single in June 2000.

After that, the floodgates opened. ‘Babylon’ became one of the hits of the summer, White Ladder became a multi-million global phenomenon, and David Gray jumped from playing pubs to theatres to arenas in the space of a few frenetic months. “It was nuts. We were just laughing all the time. It was like a slow explosion, with moments of detonation that took it to another level. It was perfect in a way you could never design.”

White Ladder has become part of the fabric of the world. “A friend was in the Himalayas and ‘Sail Away’ was playing at base camp. I’ve heard tell of my songs coming out of radios and stereos in the strangest places, from Tel Aviv to Timbuktu. We made the best record we could, and by some miracle it managed to charm its way across the threshold. It didn’t just open the door a crack, it kicked the fucking thing down. We came straight through. That was astonishing. You can make a great record but it is exceedingly rare that it will go on and become something bigger than itself. It was charged with all kinds of energies, the right thing in the right place at the right time, in this openhearted moment.”

White Ladder caught something of the mood at the end of the century and the start of a new one, the comedown from the pomp of the nineties mixed with nervous hope for the future. Gray’s music is both intimate and broad, intensely personal yet capable of speaking to the masses. “I don’t write behind some sort of cloak. I’m the opposite of an enigma, I am just heart on sleeve. I think your strength as a creative person is your vulnerability. If you're not venturing anything you’re nowhere, there has to be something fragile and breakable being handed over. That was White Ladder. It is almost all I can say about it.”

Gray has released 12 complex, ambitious, heartfelt albums across his career. Some have been big commercial successes (2002’s A New Day At Midnight and 2005’s Life In Slow Motion were UK chart toppers), others have been more intimate and experimental. “It’s instinctive, you have to go where the music needs to go, otherwise the gleam, the sparkle will fall away.” All offer up songs of the highest quality, performed as if his life depends on them. Gray’s passionate, vocational approach has established an incredibly loyal audience prepared to follow him on every adventure.

“I've been happy after the event to get back to writing the music that I felt was in me and following my creative path. I don’t think the records I've made since have been worse or better. I just think what happened with White Ladder involved more than music. It was a sort of heart and soul moment of total surrender for everybody involved, for me and the audience. That was it. It doesn't get any better than that.”

Twenty years on, White Ladder remains an album of great depth and startling beauty, a superlative collection of emotional songs capturing a very special moment in time, as raw and immediate as when it was recorded.

Wet Leg

International pop star. Writer of songs. Fearer of bugs. Girlboss of the Very Sexy CMAT Band. Once, twice, three times a loser at 2024’s BRITs, Mercury Music Prize and Ivors. Soon to release a new album, EURO-COUNTRY, which will rectify these errors.

Vanessa Carlton

"Always building up, falling apart. Love is an art," sings Vanessa Carlton on the title track of her sixth album, Love Is An Art. Like the record itself, the song is a meditation on the eternal seesaw that is human connection: the push, the pull, the balance, the bottoming out. It's that constantly evolving nature of love, expectations and compassion that Carlton analyzes from all angles on Love Is An Art, from romantic, to parental, to the friends that hold us up and the leaders that repeatedly let us down. And on tracks like the album's opener, "I Can't Stay the Same," that also includes the relationship with the person staring back at us in the mirror, each and every morning.

"Love is the energy you put out into the world," says the Nashville-based Carlton, who was inspired in part by the 1956 book The Art of Loving by philosopher Erich Fromm, and by stories and struggles both in her interior world and the world around her. "And it can be so incredibly messy at times."

Produced by Dave Fridmann (MGMT, Flaming Lips), Love Is An Art finds Carlton reckoning with toxic relationships (the confessional "Miner's Canary"), eternal partnership ("Companion Star") and the children who fill the world with love and grace while politicians fill their pockets (the passionate "Die, Dinosaur," written after the shootings in Parkland, Florida). And true to Carlton’s skill as both a lyricist and an instrumentalist, the arrangements on Love Is An Art tell these tales as vibrantly as the words themselves: piano parts that speak of rage and tenderness, synths that burst and glow like dawn.

Love Is An Art doesn't just explore connections – it was also born of one. Carlton wrote the album with the acclaimed Nashville-based singer-songwriter Tristen, camped out and working while her daughter napped. "This record is about being out of my comfort zone," says Carlton. "What's going to happen when we do things that people assume are not naturally a match, like working with Dave Fridmann? I loved the idea of working with someone who’s known for a palette that isn’t associated with me, but it was a fit the second we started working together. Or what could happen when I sit with another writer, and just collaborate?"

The result is an extremely dynamic LP filled with sticky melodies and haunting phrases as well as experimental constructions: super high highs, super low lows, and song structures that break the mold from the expected. Unlike her previous, critically-acclaimed 2015 album Liberman, which Carlton describes as having a calming, almost meditative palette, Love Is An Art reads, and sounds, "red." Huge. Passionate. The color of a beating heart.

"I want to run, but I won’t get very far," Carlton sings on "The Only Way to Love," the album's first official single. "Cause I can’t fight the force of my young beating heart. Like a soldier's steady march, answering the call. It’s the only way to love." It's a song about loving with everything you've got – that love itself is precious and rare enough to commit to, above all. "When you believe in a relationship, in a connection, you are actually believing in yourself," she adds.

Carlton has constantly challenged that belief, in both herself and the expectations that surround her throughout her lengthy, accomplished career: she attended both the School of American Ballet and Columbia University, and was discovered as a singer-songwriter/pianist when a cassette tape demo was given to legendary music impresario Ahmet Ertegun. With her debut single "A Thousand Miles," Carlton soared to the top of the Billboard charts and garnered multiple Grammy nominations, though that song is only a small fraction of the body of work and artistic identity she's developed since then, ever evolving and growing as a performer and songwriter. In the summer of 2019, she pushed that even further, making her Broadway debut as Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.

There's a striking image on the cover of Love Is An Art: it's a delicate hand grabbing a tiger by the tail, but it's not meant to conjure the familiar colloquialism. Instead, it captures something different. It’s a about going after something bigger than you, more powerful than you, something that you’ll never be able to really control: but you grab it anyway. Something like love. That's the spirit of Love Is An Art – connections aren’t easy to make, and sometimes we fail. But it's always worth trying. As Carlton sings on "Die, Dinosaur," the hope comes when there's nothing left to lose.

"Why not grab the wild animal?" Carlton asks. "And see what happens?"

Temples

https://www.templestheband.com/

Temples’ name has become synonymous with a band with an adventurous spirit; constantly exploring new ideas. The British band formed in Kettering, England consists of James Bagshaw (vocals/guitar), Thomas Walmsley (bass), Adam Smith (keyboards/guitar), and Rens Ottink (drums). On their fifth album, BLISS, they shake up the perception of theKettering-formed four-piece with a record that ventures into electronic territory while staying true to their core DNA. Euphoric and melancholic melodies of late ‘90s dance music blend with psych-tinged riffs and loops to create something fresh.

Sonically, BLISS reinterprets dance music in Temples’ style. Lead single Jet Stream Heart captures the thrill of being drawn into music, while Vendetta merges scuzzy riffs with lasering synths and dance melodies. Blue Flame, drawn from a chorus Smith had in his pocket for some years, explores disconnection with a slower, icier sound. Revelations nods toGregorian chants, blending spiritual and matter-of-fact elements. Megalith tackles frustrations, surrender, and the fear of being stuck amidst a moving world.

David Byrne

DATAROCK’s debut came in at #36 on NME's albums of the year, 'Computer Camp Love' made both #88 on Rolling Stone Magazine's "songs of the year" and #12 on Australia's Hottest 100, Spin Magazine listed 'See What I Care' as an "essential download", their second album RED was critic's choice of the week in NY Times – and both their first albums were nominated for Norwegian Grammies.

They’ve since then produced everything from the unofficial longs plays Music For Synchronisation (2011) and B-sides & Rarities (2011) and the official albums DATAROCK The Musical (2015) and Face the Brutality (2018), to EPs like California (2010) and Catcher in the Rye (2011) — or the 30 minute instrumental «In E».

In 2023 DATAROCK unleashed their latest studio album Media Consumption Pyramid mixed by 5-times Grammy-winning producer Steve Dub (The Chemical Brothers), 2-times Grammy-winning producer Mark Rankin (Block Party), DnB legend TeeBee, and Grammy-nominated Mike Marsh (Oasis, Björk, The Prodigy). The new album feature ALL the band’s 7 main members; Rocksteady Freddie, Ketel One, Ketel Two, Stig The Mystical Casio Operator, T-Man, LA Gear & Ike Andy.

DATAROCK’s 1000 + shows (in 36 countries on five continents) include 20 tours in the US, 8 tours across Australia, festivals such as Coachella, Lollapalooza, Reading & Leeds, Summer Sonic, Hurricane, Roskilde and Sónar — and in 2025 they’re finally back on tour in celebration of the 20th anniversary of their debut album.

The Last Dinner Party

Billy Ocean

Kevin Morby

KM

Join the Beautiful Strangers Fan Club: https://www.facebook.com/groups/335709801144189/

Alice Phoebe Lou

Husband-and-wife duo Flora Cash craft atmospheric indie folk and pop music born from a cross-Atlantic courtship. In 2012, the pair met on SoundCloud and struck up a musical connection, leading Shpresa Lleshaj to travel from Stockholm to Minneapolis to meet Cole Randall in person. They returned to Sweden together and immediately began work as Flora Cash. Their debut EP, Mighty Fine, was released just months later. The next year, they released another set of harmonious tracks on Made It for You. Flying back to Minneapolis, they got married and honeymooned in Los Angeles before making their way back to Europe in 2014. Their third EP, I Will Be There, was issued that year. After signing with Icons Creating Evil Art, they released mini-LP, Can Summer Love Last Forever, in 2016 and followed that with a full length offering, Nothing Lasts Forever (And It’s Fine) in mid 2017 to rave reviews incl. a 9/10 review from Earmilk, 98/100 from Elmore Magazine, a #1 single on the Hype Machine’s Most Popular chart and support from Noisey by VICE, Paste, The Music Ninja, Interview Magazine, The Line Of Best Fit and more.

Tom Grennan

Beth Orton

The Undertones

The Undertones (originally formed in 1975) is a Northern Irish punk rock/new wave band, hailing from Derry in Northern Ireland.

Cian Ducrot

Saint Etienne

Dry Cleaning

Dry Cleaning are a 4-piece from South London.

James Marriott

Peter Hook & The Light

Jalen N'Gonda

Born in Maryland, USA, Jalen NGonda chose the city of Liverpool as the place in which he would flourish as a musician. It was at the age of 11 he began getting into music, inspired by his father's collection of jazz, hip-hop, and soul records.

Since moving to Liverpool Jalen has been playing gigs across the UK and beyond. Two years later Jalen is selling out headline shows in Germany, UK, and Switzerland, is breaking into Spotify's Viral Charts and is supporting touring acts such as Laura Mvula, Martha Reeves and Lauryn Hill at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

His debut EP is due in early summer 2018.

English Teacher

On the epic centrepiece to English Teacher’s debut album, Lily Fontaine laments that not every-body gets to go to space. “You’re too busy here,” she points out. “How could you fit it in?” The Leeds four-piece certainly have had a hectic couple of years, with a burgeoning fanbase watching and listening to them refine their sound in real time, and now, at the end of it, their sprawling, stir-ring first full-length caps an hugely impressive rise for the group.

The seeds of the band were sown in 2018, when Fontaine met the rest of the members at the Leeds Conservatoire, where they were all students. Lewis Whiting plays guitar, Nicholas Eden is on bass, and Douglas Frost drums; Fontaine, meanwhile, sings, alternates between guitar and piano, and pairs the group’s consistently adventurous compositions with lyrics at one aching and abstract, scored through with northern wit.

Self Esteem

Management: louise@goldenarm.me & cherishkaya@googlemail.com

Live: Andy Duggan at Primary ADuggan@wmeagency.com

Instagram @selfesteemselfesteem

Jalen Ngonda

Alessi Rose

Florence Road

Flo Ro / Wicklow / Ireland.

Say She She

Just Mustard

Getdown Services

Snapped Ankles

FOR BOOKINGS CONTACT: richard@popwire.live

Panic Shack

An international artist from the UK.

Keo

Keo is a 4 piece alt-rock band formed by the Keogh brothers. Based in London the band draw inspiration from artists like Nick Drake, John Martyn, Pearl Jam and Radiohead. Keo strives to create authentic music.

DEADLETTER

An international artist from the UK.

Joe Armon-Jones

Lime Garden

Brighton four-piece Lime Garden release their self-reckoning second album, Maybe Not Tonight, due April 10th 2026 via So Young Records. Order now via our Merch Store or Web Site

Westside Cowboy

B R I T A I N I C A N A

Overpass

Birmingham.

The Guest List

Maria Somerville

‘All My People' LP out March 1st 2019 https://mariasomerville.bandcamp.com/ | Monthly NTS residency https://www.nts.live/shows/maria-somerville bookings: daisy@qujunktions.com |

Jacob Alon

The Lilacs

Live enquiries: dougie@soloagency.com

Management: enquiries@upthelilacs.com

Ross Noble

This page is setup and run by Ross Noble's webmonkeys on his behalf to provide (along with rossnoble

Jack Dee

Sonny Tennet

Adult DVD

Bleech 9:3

mustbejohn

Madra Salach

Madra Salach are a six piece contemporary folk band from Dublin. Originally playing in various local outfits, their shared love of the Irish traditional canon led them to form a bond playing impromptu sessions in pubs. Taking inspiration from the growing Irish experimental folk scene, Madra Salach focuses on original writing and composition, utilising electronic equipment. These songs, while modern thematically, are written with a voice that could have emerged at any point throughout the last century.

Vlure

Alex James

Fabio & Grooverider

Good Health Good Wealth

Gok Wan

PEM

Blair Davie

Growing up in Perth, Scotland meant being surrounded by music from the very beginning. As a non-binary artist, they were raised in an environment where guitar sat naturally alongside traditional bagpipe sounds, and they started writing their own songs early on. Music wasn’t just a source of joy – it also became a refuge during a period of bullying. That’s when their approach to songwriting began to take shape: open, personal, and without the need to pretend. Blair Davie moves between indie pop and a singer-songwriter approach, with a clear focus on voice, piano and guitar. Their current EP First and Last is a deeply personal record about a long-term relationship as something that evolves over time. They have worked with writers and producers connected to artists like Lewis Capaldi or Kodaline and have been recognised as one of the emerging names on the UK scene, including a nomination for the Ivor Novello Rising Star Award. Live, they build on a growing connection with the audience and a sense of energy that doesn’t rely on effects, but on something much simpler – believing in what you hear.

Hugo Hamlet

Goodbye

David O'Doherty

Sara Pascoe

pollyfromthedirt

Jen Brister

Stand up comedian, writer, podcasting human.

Lenny Henry

BIIRD

1000 Rabbits

Sue Perkins

Scott Bennett

Josie Long

Ellie O'Neill

Ellie O’Neill is a songwriter, vocalist and recording artist from Meath, Ireland. Her work is tender, rich and diverse, and explores intimacy, loss, friendship and queerness. So far in 2024, she has supported Adrianne Lenker on her Irish dates, performed at a number of UK and Irish festivals and played some London shows for Bird on the Wire and Parallel Lines. Her debut album will be released in the spring of 2025.

Robin Ince

Robert Llewellyn

Josh Baulf

Militarie Gun

Flytjendur