Welcome to the homepage of Red Leicester – Leicester’s sexiest promoters of cutting edge contemporary live music.

Forthcoming attractions:

Fri 25th Mar

New Potatoes (& Old Kraut) featuring a live set from Evil Dick and the Banned Members . The Attik, Free Lane, Leicester. 9pm to 2am. £3 on door “ Art Rock! Space pop! Krautrock! Post Punk! Electronica! Exotica! Psyche! Breakbeat! Experimental! French Pop! Live music from the finest psychedelic, experimental surf instrumental group Leicester has ever produced. Plus, the spinning of recorded discs from the New Potatoes DJs (Ludlow and Nobody), which might well include the work of such luminaries as the birthday party, add n to x, esg, television, the strokes, kraftwerk, gang of four, the fall, captain beefheart, serge gainsbourg, suicide, need new body, hot hot heat, wire, evolution control committee, josef k, love, yo la tengo, boards of canada, the faint, the passage, american analogue set, stooges, belle and sebastian, the pop group, subway sect, syd barrett, trembling blue stars, lcd sound system, franz ferdinand, felt, dinosaur jr, 23 skidoo, the velvet underground, pram, ladytron, the misunderstood, flying saucer attack, faust, nico, a certain ratio, neu!, kreidler, MC5, new york dolls, stereolab, 13th floor elevators, tortoise, harper lee, count five, orange juice, can, dymaxion, stockhausen and walkman, white stripes, silver apples, mekons, new order, dj shadow, my bloody valentine, joy division, miss kittin, the go! team, public enemy, the rapture, meanwhile back in communist russia, death in vegas, the residents, the notwist, black heart procession, the beach boys, public image limited, clinic, the modern lovers, lee hazelwood and nancy sinatra...

Sat 7th May

Pickled Egg Records Showcase featuring Scatter, George, Oddfellows Casino, James Green (Big Eyes), Zukanican, Dragon or Emperor and Fabulous Foxes. The Phoenix Arts Theatre, Leicester 7pm to 11:30pm. £8/£6(conc) Leicester-based Pickled Egg Records is one of the most sharp-eyed, adventurous independent labels around, releasing some of the best music of any label, anywhere. Eclectic to a fault, and firmly out of step with current trends, since it's inception in 1998, it has dedicated itself to redressing the world’s musical balance in favour of quirky genius, bent tunefulness, noisy playfulness, jazz turmoil, inventive retro-futurism and downright emotional heart-on-sleeve belief, hope and passion. In a world in which the musical balance is already, irretrievably, weighted down on the side of corporate flatulence, labels like Pickled Egg are so a priori unnecessary, and yet so a posteriori essential. The label's roster is genuine quality. Artists like Philadelphia's Need New Body, Chicago-based Bablicon, Pop-Off Tuesday from Osaka, and Leicester’s very own Volcano the Bear, have tapped rich musical mines, mixing jazz, avant rock surrealism, and a punk rock approach. Tonight’s show features the cream of the UK roster: Scatter are a Glasgow-based collective, who create music to spite those who classify sound into genres: there’s a lot of brass instrumentation (over some fairly swinging rhythms), but you wouldn’t call them jazz; there's a proliferation of voices and acoustic instruments, though you wouldn’t call them folk; but there are flourishes of stranger sounds - electronics, vocal babbling, and odd percussion - as well as ethnic/rock leanings. George sound partly like Manchester's answer to Low, but a studied eccentricity percolates their music, pitched somewhere between folk electronica and sepia-hued melancholy. Instrumentally, George display an antiquarian's magpie methodology, with their vintage sense of otherness broadly occupying the same territory as Pram or Young Marble Giants - the music's junk shop aesthetic matching primitive electronica and music box tinkling. However, Suzy Mangion's voice cuts through the muggy layer of postmodernism to deliver songs that beautifully capture a sense of perpetual loss. Oddfellows Casino is the latest incarnation of Brighton-based singer-songwriter David Bramwell, whose past exploits have included recording with cult producer Kramer for the Shimmy Disk label. Bramwell makes some of the most swooningly harmonic melodic pop-as-art being recorded today. The group have recently released their 2nd album, 'Winter Creatures'. Written and recorded in collaboration with Stereolab's Simon Johns, the album mixes elements of psychedelia, the dark folk sounds of the Wickerman, dirty electronica and early Soft Machine. James Green is the brainchild behind Sheffield/Leeds folk/art/modern classical ensemble, Big Eyes . James will be playing a solo acoustic set on acoustic guitar. By consciously limiting himself to this instrument, James has developed a sound that might complement the New Folk troubadours currently emerging from the US, such as Jack Rose or Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), but with a lightness of touch almost absent in any of those guitarists' work. Let it be said that this is closer to the work of Mick Turner (Dirty Three), John Williams, Bert Jansch, Eric Satie or Debussy than Fahey, Kottke, Basho or other names so often paraded but rarely equalled. Zukanican are like an unholy hardcore collision between Can, The Soft Machine and Art Ensemble of Chicago: theremin battery, skippy keys, s-bending bass, drill pattern drums, siren organ in continuum, other pulses muscling in on the action, a diversion into free-funk with sci-fi white noise cutting across. This is merely track one. Sax skronks, flights of intense fancy, you can imagine Acid Mothers' Cotton Casino wanting to collaborate with this lot, but would be hard pressed to make it more dynamic than it already is, or cram much more in than is already there. This is a jammed door-way of sound. ” Plus sets from local rising stars, Dragon or Emperor - the exciting new duo of Aaron Moore (Volcano the Bear/Songs of Norway) and Stewart Brackley (Black Carrot/Songs of Norway), and Fabulous Foxes - those spiky young upstarts, who really don't sound anything like Neutral Milk Hotel.

The Attik is located at 15 Free Lane, Leicester. Tel 0116 222 3800. http://the-attik.tripod.com

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Updated 25^th March 2005 by Nigel Turner