Islet are a new band. That much is obvious. Less obvious is the route they took before emergence, which is suddenly, strangely radical. And they don’t even know they’re doing it.

I know you’re out there
I know you’re gone
You can’t say that’s fair
Can’t you be wrong?

-Dinosaur Jr., Out There, 1993

Islet are a band who have done it differently without even trying, and the story is not so much a breath of fresh air as a huge, Mistral-sized gust…

Writing about new bands is the fun bit. Wading through acres of PR email bluster to get to the bands is the hard part.

PR emails are a necessary evil – without them I’d have a lot more spare time in my life and would certainly have heard many fewer dreadful Evanescance sound-a-likes that hopeful/stupid PRs think I’ll some how find fascinating.

And yet I would also have missed out on a a raft of thrilling new artists. Thrilling new artists like Li Daiguo, who, on the strength of the PR blurb, ought…

Dutch Uncles, like Egyptian Hip Hop, are another exciting new Manchester-based band that has chosen a name which guarantees career-long facile questions: whether any band member is Dutch, or is an uncle, or indeed has an uncle from the Netherlands. Maybe it’s why Wu Lyf keep such a low profile.

Either way, these universally strange monikers do highlight the skewed thinking and deliberately obtuse nature of Manchester’s newest crop of bands. Hiding complex musical arrangements behind breathless pop songs and charity shop shirts, Dutch Uncles are more obtuse than…

My Awesome Mixtape were reviewed on ANBAD to fairly rapturous acclaim back in November.

I was so taken with their delightful song, I quickly collared them (virtually, of course – they’re based in Bologna) for an interview. Which I then promptly forgot about.

Here it is then, charming pigeon-English intact, a couple* of months late. It turns out they are not only purveyors of lovely, multi-faceted pop songs, but wholeheartedly nice people to boot. Nice people, who, hopefully, will forgive my forgetful indiscretion…

Hi My Awesome Mixtape! How are…

Matt shakes his head, raises a fist to the blue, vapour-trail-free sky, and shouts “Damn you!” in mock-anguish. He has no-one in particular to be angry with, but is still frustrated – and for good reason.

He ought to be in New York, playing the violin; instead, Eyjafjallajokull’s petulant ash-gasm means all flights are nixed – so he’s stuck in gloomy Manchester, and nursing a heavy cold to boot.

He shrugs. “Oh well,” he grins, after his momentary release of steam, “what can you do?” Bandmate Rachael suggests that we…

Once again, our intrepid and talented southern-UK reporter Sarah Stead has filed a report that delves into the grimy madness at the heart of a young rock band.

She spoke to The Circus Sands, a young, exhilarating rock group from the south-east about sweat, ceilings bowing from the weight of the moshpit and  the vital importance of whether T-Rex was an influence (or not)…

The first time I interviewed The Circus Sands, front man Simon Corcoran was hungover, wearing a strip of material as a tie and there was an earring holding…

This is an interview designed specifically not to eke away at the carefully constructed WALL OF MYSTERY that surrounds the Golau Glau collective.They originally contacted ANBAD with an email consisting of carefully constructed confusion, and we’ve been hooked ever since. Here, they (whoever ‘they’ are) charmingly bat away our quasi-probing questions…

Hi Golau Glau! How are you? Where are you in the world right now? What do you see? And what is good about that place?

We are in GG Towers in the UK, an international HQ for mystique…

Bands come, bands go. And as such, bands that take themselves too seriously in this brief period end up wasting the best opportunity they will ever be presented to have a lot of fun. Hell, even the Clash had a sense of humour: just listen to Cut The Crap.

That said, anyone who plays it purely for laughs only end up being laughed at. Ace Bushy Striptease are a rare breed of new band: they’re having fun, but are deadly serious about it.

Ace Bushy Striptease // Michael Kightly Is Pretty Rad

With…

Egyptian Hip Hop are an easy band to love. Or to hate, depending on your point of view. The most interesting people are divisive in this way. This interview is the story of a band who are loathed and loved for exactly the same reasons. By the end you’ll know where you stand. And they won’t care what you think.

At Manchester’s In The City Music Conference last year, a powder-puff of sneers billowed with every mention of Egyptian Hip Hop. The vitriol was curiously vocal, and this was confusing; local…

Some bands revel in providing dull answers to the oft-dull process of a Q&A. Others revel in the opportunity to play with the boundaries and, metaphorically, drive sensibility out to a remote woodland and finish it off with a shotgun.

The delightful and talented Stained Glass Heroes are such a band, and the following interview has been left in its raw state to preserve the full ludicrous luminescence.

As such, I hope the facile nature of the questions is cancelled out by the ingenious fun of the answers.

Hi SGH!…