Recently in Leeds it’s seemed to me there’s been less of the smaller, hobbyist promoter types putting on their own for the hell of it. I don’t know if this is down to the established promoters dominating with their bookings, or if there’s less people in the current climate who are willing to gamble their cash in the game of promotion roulette. The number of gigs happening each week doesn’t seem to have dipped so it could have passed largely noticed. It certainly hasn’t affected the competition between the professional day-job promoters either, in fact it looks like things may be hotting up in that department thanks to some new kids moving blocks…

Much loved in Manchester, Now Wave have come bounding across the Pennines with their enthusiastic brand of promotion – you may recognise their trademark circular poster designs, loud tweeting, or most importantly they might be synonymous in your mind with a particularly memorable Manchester gig you once attended. After all, in the last 5 years they have been stalwarts for all that has shone in what could quite possibly be a new dawn in Manchester’s illustrious music history, having curated small scale gigs for 50 punters right up to 3000 at the Apollo. Their recent Leeds promotions have included Japandroids, Youth Lagoon and Health, but their most exciting offering to Yorkshire may be yet to come; in the shape of an all-dayer called 'MONO’ taking place at the Brudenell with an array of exciting pysch and alt bands. It’s happening on Sunday 29th September and features White Manna, Carlton Melton, Hookworms, Gnod, Kult Country, Cold Pumas, Sauna Youth plus several more!

Now Wave aren’t the only Manchester promoters to have braved the M62 Westwards, with the admirable ‘Hey Manchester!’ now dabbling in Leeds gigs using the much more palatable moniker ‘Hey Leeds!’. They tend to specialise in gigs of the Americana/folk persuasion, and have previously promoted the likes of The Travelling Band and Jesca Hoop and more here, and they recently announced a gig with guitar marvel John Smith at the Brudenell for November.

It's likely that you'll already be, in some way, aware of the next new city-centre venue with it having been the subject of many conversations this summer, named Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen, it is the combined work of two promoters who are much less of an unknown quantity round these parts. Between the two of them they have promoted at The Cockpit, Nation of Shopkeepers, The Faversham, Live at Leeds, Constellation and Beacons Festival - which should give you a solid clue as to the faces involved. The lack of official announcements until very recently has only helped build the intrigue for a venue that seems set to become an important facet of the Leeds music scene, especially going off the gigs that have slowly been drip fed to us from what looks like being their official promotions twitter feed; @ superfriendz. They have so far announced that Fun Adults (video below), Wet Nuns, Pins, Future of the Left, Money, Sweet Baboo, and Deadulus will all be amongst the first to grace their new stage from the beginning of October. It will supposedly have a gigging capacity of 200, but as their name suggests it is not just focused on the music, and a big emphasis has also been placed on providing high quality food from two varying kitchens. It looks like it has all right ingredients to be a great addition to the city, and should give plenty more excuses to frequent some of the fine bars in the northern part of the city centre. You can see the latest additions and full list of the upcoming gigs here, and there's a website for the venue here.

---

---

However such is life that as one new venue arrives, another has announced its immediate closure. With Royal Park Cellars sadly stating that it will no longer be hosting gigs there due to them not fitting in with the breweries plan for the future of the pub. It has played host to some great gigs, my personal highlights include seeing both Pulled Apart By Horses and Tubelord for the first time there, as well as being a regularly used venue for Brainwash and British Wildlife Festivals. Announcement here

Then there is the inaugural Recon Festival, which isn’t new promoters as such, but a newly formed collaboration of organisations and minds led by the people behind Bradford’s Threadfest. It describes itself as “A series of pioneering Music, Art and Film events culminating in the week of the 22nd – 29th September” which will take place across both Leeds and Bradford and intends to showcase what they endearingly refer to as “the innovators, risk-takers, mavericks and outsiders”. Their biggest coup has been persuading Gang of Four to make a nostalgic return to the city in which they formed whilst at university in the 70s. The post-punk icons will play the Brudenell on 28th Sept in what is their only gig this year, with support coming from local cult heroes Bilge Pump. The following day is the aforementioned MONO all-dayer, and there will also be several other gigs such as Oneohtrix Point Never, and Black Pus (Lighning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale). Support for the Black Pus gig comes from gargantuan two-piece That Fucking Tank who will release their next album with Gringo Records later this year, if the preview track below is anything to go by then they posess a definite winner. As well as the gigs, there are several film screenings and an event featuring 30 drummers outside Leeds Art Gallery, but you would be wise to take a look at their site for the latest announcements here

---

---

In other news the annual winners of this years Futuresound competition were recently announced as Battle Lines, which will see the electronic-groove purveying four piece get to play the Festival Republic Stage at both Leeds & Reading Festival. You can watch the video for ‘Huh Her’ below, it's a great punchy track but I find that Carly Humphries vocals to be distractingly reminiscent of Sophie Ellis Bextor - although to be fair SEB never lent her voice to anything with half as much attitude. It’s difficult to begrudge them the victory, and their dark energetic pop is sure to go down well with the young crowd. Joining them on the bill will be fellow winners Witch Hunt, Modo Stare, The Grand, Class Caves and City of Lights who will all get to play the BBC Introducing Stage at both sites. The Dance to the Radio Stage will also be representing some of Leeds finest with its traditional Thursday night slot at Bramham Park hosting Menace Beach, Hookworms, and Black Moth – an impressively curated line-up for a defunct record label!

---

---

BODYWORK

In terms of releases, we seem to be in a bit of a summer drought, but the DiS editor has been right on the money in his championing of the newly-emerged electro eccentrics Bodywork. The fact that their album, entitled 'The Grind', was made available as a free download with little to no fanfare had left my expectations ill-prepared for how accomplished it is when I gave it the first of its many plays. Their internet presence is quiet to the point of enigmatic but I have reason to believe Bodywork is the work of Trumpets of Death who bid farewell late last year, although how many of them are involved in this new project is unknown. It is definitely a departure from what they have created previously, as whilst there is evident playful electro experimentation throughout, The Grind remains well within the realms of accessibility with the delivery of its pulsating power pop. Below is the opening track 'Tame' which magically fuses industrial noise with an electro-pop beat that The Knife would surely be proud of. Take a chance and work through the rest of the album though, as it showcases plenty more strings to their bow. Get it free here.

---

---

BEACONS

It's been a while since I spoke to anyone in the Leeds music scene for this column to see what they're doing and currently listening to, so to put this straight I grabbed a quick word with local promoter Thomas Stabler. Tom is the in-house promoter at Nation of Shopkeepers and part of the small team behind Beacons Festival which takes place this weekend near Skipton, so I thought it'd be an opportune moment to have a chat with him.

Here's Tom on the many local bands playing Beacons...

Choosing the local acts can be an impossible task at times, as there are so many good bands in Leeds that you want to put on and pretty much everyone submits a request; you find yourself looking for slots where there aren't any. You will generally find that Ash (Festival Director / Programmer) will book acts that have played supports for him and ones that he knows are great live and will fit well at the festival which I think is reflected with the success they're gaining. Bands like Hookworms who are gaining a lot of praise and have just signed to Weird World (part of Domino Records) and Menace Beach who I've seen a couple of times and are brilliant, are quite rightly placed in between some of the best acts around. Also if you look at the likes of the ELfm stage, there's some really strong bands such as Cottonwoolf who have just been added - Grant's got an incredible voice.

---

On what makes Beacons different to other festivals... There's a huge emphasis on supporting things that are local and that we like and believe in, from the stages down to the food vendors. Bands/dj's aren't just booked with ticket sales in mind - they're all bands that everyone in the office likes (we all took a trip to see Django Django at the 02 recently). The directors also own Whitelocks Ale house and are somewhat specialists in good ales, hence we have incorporated a real ale festival, and then we have our favourite food places coming along such as Reds BBQ, Patty Smith's and Fish&. Basically the whole of Beacons is a collection of things we really like and try to bring together in one weekend.

There's something for everyone, my dad's coming, you probably won't find him in the dance tent much but he's a big Dutch Uncles fan so he'll go and watch them and similar acts. We have a great film programme too as Sam who works with us spends a lot of time travelling round the country picking up different films.

On what will be different from last year at Beacons...

Last year was effectively the first year (what was to be the first festival Beacons was cancelled in 2011 due to flooding), and you learn a lot of things and get a lot of experience when you've actually done it. We'll be making it more diverse, so we've got comedy happening this year as well as the many films (Dawson's Hash House). John and Dan have put a lot of thought into the site map so that there aren't things like stage noise interfering with other areas. We've put a lot of emphasis on making changes where we thought we could improve - so things like more toilets, more security, making sure there's more arts, and the family side is well looked after for which we've brought in people who specialise in working with families at festivals. The weather and what we can do, is something we're constantly thinking about, the drainage on this site is really good; the farmer has been really great in working with the directors, and the site will be able to accommodate some water should it come to it (touches wood). For a first year I thought it was a great weekend, and we're going to make it better this year which is what makes the hard work exciting.

Aside from Beacons, Tom has plenty of other live events coming up...

I'm doing a co-promotion for Giant Drag (NoS, 12th Sep), it's been 7 years since they last played Leeds and I'm really looking forward to it as it's their last ever tour. We've got our free entry Wednesday shows every week, the first week in September is with These Monsters (4th Sep). You know what you're getting with them - it's going to be full on, and it's going to be entertaining. On the 21st Aug we've got 3 bands I really like - Best Friends, Temple Songs and Wanderlings. We've got Widowspeak on the 28th August who are great. It's all looking good, we're bringing some new stuff into Shopkeepers to freshen things up too.

---

---

Speaking about his favourite new Leeds sounds...*

I think Leeds at the moment seems to be having another wave of exciting new stuff. There's the likes of Cottonwoolf, Tibetan Youth, Bodywork and Imp who have just recorded a new album - I know they're technically not from Leeds (Wakefield) but they're amazing and we should hear more about them. There's a new fellow called Joseph Lyons who does stuff as Eaves, he's playing the Widowspeak gig too actually, he just popped up through a friend and I was wowed. I'm enjoying These Monsters' new album and looking forward to the next Sky Larkin album coming out soon. I'm also looking forward to hearing what comes next too as Leeds College of Music have a habit of springing up good stuff, and there's the new year coming which will bring a new bed of talent across the genres.

Beacons Festival takes place at Heslaker Farm in Skitpon from 16-18th August, and is headlined by Django Django, Local Natives and Bonobo. greetingsfrombeacons.com

---

_As usual we welcome all gig, release and label news - direct it to myself at leeds@drownedinsound.com or tweet me @hideleeds