Inside Seaside 2026 @ Amber Expo

Flytjendur

• 

  Jessie Ware

  Glasshouse, the new album, out now. Buy / download / stream: https://jessieware.lnk.to/Glasshouse
• 

  Editors

  Marrying dark angular rock with a sharp pop sense, English band Editors emerged in the early 2000s as part of the post-punk revival that also included contemporaries Interpol, White Lies, and the Cinematics. Following their 2005 debut, The Back Room, they scored a pair of U.K. chart-toppers, including In This Light and on This Evening, which found the band incorporating more synth pop elements. They furthered that digital push on 2015's In Dream, before striking a balance between rock and electronic with 2018's Violence.

  Formed in 2003, Editors became one of the leading bands in the post-punk revival that swept America and England in the early 21st century. Originally dubbed Snowfield, the group comprised four music technology students from Stafford University -- singer/guitarist Tom Smith, lead guitarist Chris Urbanowicz, bassist Russell Leetch, and drummer Ed Lay -- all of whom had relocated to Birmingham after graduation. A series of a well-received club dates and demo recordings earned Editors some attention from British labels, and the group soon signed with the revitalized Kitchenware, the venerable indie label once home to Prefab Sprout.

  Kitchenware issued the band's debut single, "Bullets," in early January 2005. The record reportedly sold out in one day, and its sound earned comparisons to the dark, dramatic atmospherics of contemporary bands like Interpol and Bloc Party (not to mention veteran outfits like Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen). Editors' follow-up single, "Munich," made them darlings of the U.K. music press, and just weeks after their standout performance at the annual Glastonbury Music Festival, the band issued a third single, "Blood." Their much-anticipated debut LP, The Back Room, followed in mid-2005. "Munich" was reissued in January 2006 to ramp up support for the album, which entered the Top Five in the U.K. and eventually earned platinum sales. A U.S. tour with stellastarr* coincided with the American release of The Back Room in March, and a Mercury Music Prize nomination followed in July.

  Editors' sophomore effort, An End Has a Start, came out the following summer, preceded by the Top 10 single "Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors." Like its predecessor, the album went platinum in the U.K. and maintained the band's modest audience in America, where they returned in September 2007 to launch another stateside tour. Editors remained on the road through the middle of 2008, playing a slew of festivals in the U.K. and opening a string of European shows for R.E.M. before the year was up. By this point, the band had grown tired of their sound, however, and 2009 found them tinkering with synthesizers and industrial music. After enlisting the help of producer Flood (known for his work with Depeche Mode, U2, and Nine Inch Nails), they decamped to the studio to record In This Light and on This Evening, which unveiled their newfound electronic fixation upon its release in October 2009.

  Eager to build on the success of a second U.K. number one album in a row, Smith immediately began to write material for a prospective fourth full-length. By the time the In This Light and on This Evening promotional tour had ended in late 2010, the band had enough new songs to enter a London studio, with Flood once again behind the desk. The majority of the band wasn't satisfied with the initial results of these sessions, and by early 2012, Smith, Leetch, and Lay had asked Urbanowicz to leave Editors when it became clear that the vision they had for the band's future wasn't shared by their guitarist and founding member. Very shortly after Urbanowicz had departed, the band were offered a high-profile festival slot in Werchter, Belgium. They honored this commitment, bringing in ex-Yourcodenameis: Milo guitarist Justin Lockey and Airship member Elliott Williams to their lineup, bolstering the band's sound and laying the foundations for the straight-ahead rock approach that their fourth album would ultimately take. Recorded as a five-piece in Nashville with Jacquire King as producer, The Weight of Your Love was issued in June 2013 and nodded to the ambitious, guitar-led, stadium-filling sound of U2 and R.E.M.

  In 2015, Editors delivered their fifth studio album, the self-produced In Dream, which featured background vocals from Slowdive's Rachel Goswell and included the singles "No Harm," "Marching Orders," and "Life Is Fear." They toured extensively behind the effort before returning to the studio for their sixth LP, 2018's Violence, which featured the singles "Magazine" and "Hallelujah (So Low)." A version of the album originally recorded with electronic producer Blanck Mass was issued a year later as The Blanck Mass Sessions. The short set featured alternate versions of seven tracks from Violence, adding the previously unreleased song "Barricades." ~ Jason Ankeny & James Wilkinson

• 

  Hermanos Gutierrez

  Hermanos Gutiérrez is a two-piece band formed of the brothers Alejandro and Estevan Gutiérrez.
  Taking influence from 1950's Latin America Sound they transfer the listeners to journeys through beautiful landscapes.
• 

  Maruja

  Artists in the truest sense of the word, Maruja’s ferocious combination of punk, harsh noise, and transcendent cosmic jazz is fast marking them out as one of the most exciting new acts in the country. The years spent relentlessly honing their craft are paying off in style, driven not just by passion but rather an all-consuming need to create and perform with a visceral intensity, they are both electrifying and terrifying.

  Anyone who’s seen a Maruja show will know what drummer Jacob Hayes means when he talks about an atmosphere that’s “both feral and loving.” Maruja gigs are a spiritual experience – free-flow jams of uncategorisable music. Punk meets free jazz, with lyrics, rooted in rap, that are all about the message; vicious guitar loops, psychedelic bass, transcendent saxophone – and a voice, in Harry Wilkinson, that stretches from a Manchester version of Zack de la Rocha, to a call to prayer.

  Their long-awaited debut album Pain to Power captures those moments in live performance when, as Jacob puts it, “things move to another level – the flow state”. The band compose in a unique way: their music is largely improvised, and they bring their personal feelings into every jam – so it was natural that contemporary politics bled into their songwriting. “Trump came in on 20 January, slap bang in the middle of our recording process,” says saxophonist Joe Carroll; and the band have followed the conflict in Gaza with grim attention, resulting in (as bassist Matt Buonaccorsi puts it) “that combination of heavy tragedy and hope. This is a tragedy that’s beyond horrific, it’s so oppressive that hope itself seems impossible to find.”

  This cycle of tragedy and hope is there at the heart of Pain to Power. “It starts off brutal and turns into something powerful and expressive,” says lyricist, rapper and singer Harry. “We have to trust in that circle of life, and in our power to overcome pain.” The album follows the arc of a live show: an onslaught of energy, arriving at a place of transcendence, the music itself “rising from the ashes”.

  Some of the most political music is the least prescriptive. At their heart, Maruja fight against an increasingly individualistic society. At the end of every show, Harry repeats the same mantra: “We wish you peace, prosperity and unity in these times of global oppression. Together we are stronger, please raise a fist for solidarity”. Everyone joins in, he adds.

  Pain to Power was put together in an astonishingly short time – just two months, at the start of this year – and was produced by Samuel W Jones, already expert at giving Maruja records the feel of the crowd that wasn’t there.

  The lead single Look Down On Us is a hair-raising critique of late-stage capitalism, morphing into a poignant meditation on the need for hope fuelled by plaintive sax.

  The ferocious Bloodsport (“Complicit! Crossfire! No Vision! Live wire!”) was finished in just two hours. The song started with a guitar loop and a pounding drum roll, but the boys realised it had the same BPM as many of the records in their vast drum and bass collection: “so this is drum and bass through a punk filter.”

  Harry almost raps, even talking about the record, his words coming in a rhythmic flow of energy. Maruja have always been acutely aware of mental health, and Bloodsport takes world events and examines their corrosive effect on the individual: “We're swallowing our fears till our kids are overdosing… I'm an addict addicted to my bad habits…”

  “How does someone feel when they have no power?” Harry says. “All they want to do is find a little bit of dopamine to release them from the oppressive cloud that hangs over their head. All of these narratives coalesce into mental health crises. How are you going to pull yourself out of that? It takes courage to try and find inner peace, to recognise our own flaws…”

  Pain to Power identifies the frustrated energy of a disengaged populace, and of people who want to protest but are finding it harder and harder in the current climate. On a recent American tour, the band spoke with fans who have taken to wearing balaclavas on peaceful demonstrations, afraid of arrest and deportation.

  Maruja have a strong message of spirituality and talk about it with an understanding that recalls John Coltrane and other jazz giants of the past. It is a sentiment captured in Born To Die (“We are universal spirits and our kingdom is this earth,”) which whirls into a storm of cymbals and industrial feedback.

  “Music itself is healing,” says Harry, “and we should help other people in a culture that is very repressed. The only spiritual things left in the world are music and love. Spirituality is ridiculed – people would rather believe in nihilism, which shows how disconnected we are.”

  The tension of Pain to Power – the rage that informs those heavy opening songs – is repeatedly built up and broken by sonics reproducing the euphoria at the end of Maruja shows.

  Zaytoun, with its vocal cries like seagulls, is a fully-improvised free-jazz piece, named after the Arabic word for olive tree: a symbol of peace and resilience with connection to the land that is deeply rooted in Palestinian culture. “That’s what our jams are,” says Joe. “Coming together to release this energy. We can’t do it by ourselves, so it symbolizes our unity.”

  Saoirse, meaning ‘freedom’, and inspired by the band’s own Celtic roots, is a showcase for sax and strings. This remarkable track looks at the ties between Ireland and Palestine, epitomised in the Irish protest slogan “Saoirse don Phalaistin”. Among his grandfather’s possessions in Sligo, Joe found a decades-old comic strip depicting a “Black and Tan” Irish soldier boarding a boat to Palestine. Lyrically the song speaks to the power of unity to combat division with frontman Harry Wilkinson’s deeply moving mantra: 'It’s our differences that make us beautiful’.

  The exquisite nine-minute opus Reconcile, with an entrancing polyphonic interlude and a story all of its own in the drums, is about embracing love, being at peace with the cycle of destruction. “The hatred will always come,” says Joe. “Embracing love is the overall message.”

  The shuddering metal of Trenches was inspired by one of Maruja’s regular messages to fans before gigs: “See you in the trenches!” The song is a nod to the band’s personal story – and to their belief in the power of music to effect change: “We use those words, see you in the trenches,” says Joe, “because the message of the band is about community – trying to make a difference.”

  Does he think Maruja can make a difference?

  “Yes. Music used to be a superpower – Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone, all these artists were speaking to the Black Power movement, and music was at the height of culture. The world is crying out, especially on the left, for people to build from a place of community. For years it’s been your solo artists, your Ed Sheerans – but to have a band, a community… We see it at the shows, the countless personal stories we’ve heard.”

  Maruja don’t hide their political feelings at gigs, but they have to be increasingly subtle at US shows at the moment; in Washington recently, Harry spoke about a kakistocracy – being governed by those who are unfit to lead.

  “We have to be careful about the way we put things, in order to reach as many people as possible. It’s strange when you have world leaders out there committing atrocities and there are no consequences at all! But if it’s harder to say stuff, it means it needs saying more than ever…

  Their music, their very dynamics, speak loud enough: and the four-way friendship at the heart of the band is a metaphor for the kind of unity they’re seeking.

  Matt and Harry studied music and performance together in Manchester, before Harry transferred to electronic music production. In their early days, Maruja sounded as funky as Parliament. Joe pushed it further into jazz territory when he brought his sax into the picture: his playing can bring to mind the mesmerising loops of Sufi music.

  As for the jazz references, they have no training. It is more of an attitude, they say – a sense of possibility and freedom. “Jazz is having no boundaries,” says Harry, “and being completely free to express yourself. There is no formula, no rules. It comes from us loving what we do. We could improvise together all day and have the best day of our lives.”

  “It’s about the energy of letting yourself go, something you can only achieve when you have been at it for prolonged hours,” Jacob adds. “You have to be really comfortable with one another emotionally so you can allow your unconscious to take over. We go into a trance-like state when we’re playing – an hour goes by, and you have no sense of time.”

  “When we play, it’s always to do with getting things out that have been trapped in us,” says Harry. “Whether it’s war across the sea, relationships, society’s pressures – it’s always like you’re relieving some kind of pain. It’s about not being afraid of being vulnerable on stage, completely letting yourself go. People can see how free you are. I never felt as free in my life as I do on stage, jamming with the boys.”

  “killer from front to back and I can’t wait for these guys to get into album mode….when these guys eventually go into full record mode, it’s going to be incredible” – Anthony Fantano

  “will leave listeners breathless but begging for more” – DIY Magazine

• Spoiwo
• The Streets (US)