Audioscope
This year was the tenth year it’s been running. A frightening yet pleasing milestone. Highlights this year included Wire being very nice chaps, Felix and Rome Pays Off being welcome breaks of blissful quiet in amongst the noise, and Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element (featuring me) playing our great one-off comeback show to a rapt audience of, oooh, twenty people. (Simon Minter)

Lightning Bolt
Thrilled to interview Brian Chippendale when LB played at the Brudenell in Leeds after desperately borrowing an mp3 recorder from the uni Language Centre to help “with my German degree”… Also really enjoyed this year’s Earthly Delights LP: the usual frantic cartoony cacophony. (Pascal Ansell)

LED BIB/GET THE BLESSING
The event that gave me the real Goosebumps and hairs standing up moment was called Avant! Noir which was part of the London Word Festival and featured four modern noir writers (Toby Litt, Courttia Newland, Ray Banks and Cathi Unsworth) doing readings while accompanied by Led Bib then Get The Blessing in addition to a comic strip being shown on screen at various points. It all made for a smoky night of perfection which culminated in both bands onstage facing off against each other attempting to blow the other offstage with their playing. It was the most powerful musical performance I saw all year. If only all music was like that. From a more straight ahead rock perspective the Mission Of Burma set at Dingwalls was easily the best set I witnessed this year which even saw me drunkenly air guitar. (JGRAM)

The Yummy Fur, Stereo, Glasgow
This was easy since I went to just one gig in 2010, and in the middle of December too! I mentioned my plans to see The Yummy Fur reunion show in last year’s catch-up, but I managed to catch an awful cold from a snow-filled train journey, adding to my lengthy list of Yummy Fur near-misses by ridiculous circumstance. Thankfully, they gave me one last chance and despite all efforts by fate to nobble me by cutting off my entire water supply for a week (seriously, we now have some of those disaster zone bottles of emergency drinking water courtesy of Scottish Water), I finally made it to a proper Yummy Fur gig. Of course it was amazing in every way. The audience was full of old-skool Glasgow lo-fi fans, the band members were on good joke form, and the tunes! I think they played everything I could possibly have wanted, though I would have happily stood there while they played their entire back catalogue from beginning to end. I’m generally against nostalgia-driven reunions but this was more like righting a 15 year wrong. Seems I can die happy now. (Marceline Smith)

Ausland in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin
I generally don’t bother to even look up who’s playing – it’ll always be some incredibly weird but very fun stuff. If you’re “in the near”, turn up and you’ll have a good night of avant-garde brilliance in one form or other. Link (Pascal Ansell)

Ahem. I went to six festivals this year, and I have to say the one I enjoyed the most by far was Download. Not least because AC/DC live was one of the best things IN HISTORY, but also nice to see RATM, Dillinger Escape Plan, Cancer Bats, and relive my teenage years with Deftones. Ace crowd as well, loads of fun. Sadly, next year’s headliners are Linkin Park and System of a Down, so unlikely to go back in 2011. (Stu Fowkes)

Jonatan Nästesjö
Beautiful ambience in a freezing cold church in Leeds. (Pascal Ansell)

Posted: 01|6|11 at 10:00 am. Filed under: catch-ups, end of year, live reviews.
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