Despite last night's dreary weather, The Magnetic Fields exercised their usual level of restraint by not performing "All The Umbrellas In London" nor even "In The City In The Rain". This reserve extended beyond mere meteorological facts, as the band mostly held back the hits for the entirety of both sets at their first of three performances this week in Sloane Square's Cadogan Hall. The night began with delays and an overcrowded foyer, which......

Always reliable purveyors of fine musical offerings, Sheffield's Warp Records recently signed their first Australian artist, Pivot. Specialising in off-kilter, driving rhythms peppered with just the right amount of electronics, these lads start their UK tour tonight in Camden at Proud Galleries. Having served in the support slot for the Australian tours of Four Tet and Battles, sonic comparisons to the latter cannot be avoided, but ring true in the best possible way: this......

As part of his ongoing first solo UK exhibition at the ICA, this Saturday sees French artist Loris Gréaud present an interpretation of his Cellar Door libretto with CocoRosie's Sierra Casady and pianist/violinist/cellist Gael Rakotondrabe. Whilst for the ICA this is another instalment in Stage of the Art, their cross-Channel cultural exchange series with Palais de Tokyo, for Gréaud this performance will be another step in his larger Cellar Door experiment. Having recently exhibited......

You don't need us to remind you that the weather on Monday was terrible. The whole day off work and not the smallest bit of sun to be seen. We had it all planned out to stay tucked in bed listening to Spiritualized records until we remembered that we actually had to go outside and trudge through the rain to see them play at Rough Trade East that night. Hard life we have, yeah?......

With multi-venue neighbourhood crawls fastly becoming the favoured method of throwing a festival in the city, new ones are springing up all the time. This past weekend the Dot To Dot Festival took the focus away from the capital and into the clubs of Bristol and Nottingham, though thankfully not without giving us a little taste of things to come. Thursday's introductory mini-event, Hox To Dot, featured several of the artists that would go......

If you happened to miss both the Camden Crawl as well as the Stag and Dagger, all hope is not yet lost for you catching an urban festival this season. This weekend the Dot To Dot festival runs through Bristol and Nottingham, but organisers are starting the party early in Hoxton on Thursday with the cutely-named mini-event Hox To Dot. Hopefully you were smart enough to have already requested Friday off work, but if......

With their Ether 08 festival still in full swing, Southbank Centre didn't take even a moment to rest this past weekend when they announced the line-up details for this year's Meltdown. Curated by Massive Attack, the 15th instalment of Meltdown will pack an incredible amount of talks, films and gigs into the eight short days from 14 - 22 June. Fans of the bassbin Bristolians will have an excellent opportunity to explore the band's......

After five hours of sleep (thank you Mr. Postman for waking us up) and an Eggs Benedict at the Camden Kitchen, we had mostly recovered from the first day of Camden Crawl 2008 and were once again hungry for more gigs. With several artists playing both days of the festival, there were a few acts we missed on Friday that we wanted to catch on Saturday, as well as many Saturday-only artists that we......

With the Camden Crawl spanning two days and as loaded as ever with amazing acts, it's impossible to do it any justice in only one post. Whilst we easily could write at length about everything we saw, you just want the highlights: who rocked us, who we're dying to see again and how we came to love doing the Rolex Sweep. Without further ado, let's try to remember how we spent Friday 18 April......

Still a newcomer to the city festival circuit, Field Day returns for a second year to Hackney's Victoria Park on 9 August 2008. The recently announced line-up looks like it should provide a diverse sampling of some of our favourite acts. How could we miss a party that Richie Hawtin, Dan Deacon, The Field and Jeffrey Lewis are rockin'? Unfortunately that question seems to have loads of answers that all involve the word "queue".......

Before his gig at Islington's Union Chapel, we talked to cult indie hero Malcolm Middleton, formerly of the greatly missed Arab Strap, about his new solo album, Madonna and a failed bid for the Christmas number 1. Can you tell us about your new album, "Sleight of Heart"?   It was originally supposed to be a mini EP, like a four track acoustic album with two songs, "Blue Plastic Bags" and "Love Comes in Waves" and......

We love it when great club nights not funded by some huge company come along. DIY night NoOneDied has been pumping it up at The Enterprise in Chalk Farm for over a year and given they even managed to survive the fire, we thought it was about time to check up on them. When and why did you set NoOneDied up? We planned No One Died around Christmas 2006, but the first night wasn't......

We've got to be honest with you, we're not particularly keen on The Guillemots; they make us kind of itchy and we want to reach into the television and give them a good shake. But if you are (and we recognise people do seem to like them quite a lot), then you're probably be very excited to find that they're playing a live club date this Saturday night at the relatively small 93 ft......

Whilst often lovingly, and perhaps ad nauseam, compared to Panda Bear's Person Pitch, El Guincho's debut Alegranza! is a more extroverted affair than its most cited point of musical reference. Joyous and celebratory from start to finish, Alegranza! mixes repetitive chanting with looped tropical rhythms to create the best summer pop record anyone could hope to release right in the middle of winter. It's that rare album that makes you feel a bit wrong......

This Saturday London’s comic lovers can pop out to Mile End and discover what’s lurking in the UK’s small comics scene. The fifth year of the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing is happening at Queen Mary, and it should be a grab bag of indie delights. A look at the list of stuff on show reveals a pretty good menagerie: you can check out comics about friendly beavers, depressed dinosaurs, ninjas in various......

Clocks sprung onto our radar early this year when we got very excited by the incorrect idea that 90s dance 'pioneers' Clock had reformed. Instead we were presented with a fun, new poppy indie band from Epson making the type of music that puts a spring in your step and a summery smile on your face. Genuinely feelgood - we went to check what they were all about. Have a look at the video......

It's been a strange ol' week for Londonist music-wise. On Monday we got worried about a rise in nightclub violence, on Tuesday caught Goldfrapp at Union Chapel, on Wednesday caught Nick Cave at HMV and on Thursday got excited about a new-ish club night at Three Blind Mice. Looking ahead to this week however, Monday sees Panic At the Disco and Kate Nash play sold out shows at the Roundhouse and Hammersmith Apollo respectively, whilst......

As much-loved venues like the Spitz and Hammersmith Palais closed their doors forever last year, we began to worry that the small gig would one day become an endangered species. One of our favourite things to do in this great city is to pack into a tiny, sweaty club and damage our hearing as much as possible before last orders. Without that in our lives... well, we'd probably be loads more productive with our......

It's rocking around to Eurovision time and in case you didn't notice last year, we get pretty excited about it. Admittedly the UK normally seems to send embarrassing rubbish, but every year we have a little hope that the song we select will be actually good. Today the BBC announced the singers hoping to represent the UK and to be honest it's not a great list. Nearly everyone is from a loser from a......

The only music star to be his only Cockney rhyming slang, James Blunt is playing Hammersmith Apollo on Monday night and also Tuesday night, though unsurprisingly tickets are all gone for now. Meanwhile, if you like something a bit more country-fied and American, then Texan Ryan Bingham plays the Borderline. Tickets are £12.50 from See Tickets. Tuesday sees The Kills grace the Soho Revue Bar, though tickets are sold out. New Indie-pop scenesters The Voom......

Londonist spent all of its money this week getting drunk at its 3rd birthday party. Hopefully, you were one of the many people who decided to join us. As a thank you, London On The Cheap is back (hurrah!) showing you what fun and fabulous free stuff you can entertain yourselves with next week: Sunday: We had an extra hour today so you get an extra day of news from us. Out to Lunch......

Kick off the week tomorrow with Stephen Fretwell at Cadogen Hall (£15). The singer songwriter is touring his 3rd album "Man On The Roof" and by all accounts it's pretty good. Or if you like your things with a bit more soul (or rubbish pop depending on your point of view) then the 'legend' that is Craig David begins the first of four dates at Ronnie Scott's (£25). The Mercury nominated one man dream-machine......

Part 1: Introduction Mods. Rockers. Teds. Punks. Ravers. Swingers. Skinheads. Suedeheads. Hippies. Yuppies. Rudeboys. Indie kids. Emo kids. Beats. Glam kids. Tribes. Subcultures. Neo-tribes. Groups. Bands. Movements. All of the above, and more, have - despite their points of origin - been magnetically attracted to the capital. To attempt to cover all of the ages of London’s youth might seem an exhausting task worthy of Peter Ackroyd who wrote of his biography of London......

As a wise man once said, "Bloody hell, it's Soft Cell!" Well, actually, it's not Soft Cell. It's just Marc Almond solo. And the man wasn't all that wise. It was Alan Partridge. Either way, though, Monday gives you a chance to see Marc Almond of Soft Cell at Shepherd's Bush Empire. It's his 50th birthday party, so buy him something nice. For those whose prefer sax to synth, septuagenarian free jazz legend Ornette Coleman......

Another exciting week of music in the capital coming up, with us here to give you the best guide through what's hot and what's not in the indie / pop scenes this week. Want a lazy way to spend your Bank Holiday Monday? Why not see Good Shoes at Morden Park bandstand? They're on at 2pm, and we previewed it earlier last week here. Later on Monday evening The Holloways play The Electric Ballroom......

A week or so ago, we were trundling down Tottenham Court Road underground station dreading the face-sweating levels of heat that were about to hit us when we heard something we thought was rather wonderful. While buskers have got much better since the Underground introduced their licensing laws a few years ago, most of the time we don't pay attention to them unless they're drunk and they're the bongo man at Bank. This time......

So what have we picked for you this week? Tonight: Indie shoegazers unite, you have nothing to lose but your memories as Ride's Mark Gardener promotes his new solo outing: Beautiful Ghosts. Televise and Model Morning These join the bill at the Luminaire. Elsewhere, quirky art-pop punkers The Victorian English Gentlemens Club play a free show at Catch 22 with Black Wire. Band onstage at 9.15 Saturday: Glam gutterpunks Lorca play Flook @ Nambucca,......

Henry Rollins will be rolling into town again next month for one of his annual spoken word gigs - at least we hope he will, because whether he gets here may well be down to what reading material he decides to bring with him. His choice of in-flight read caused a ridiculous kafuffle when he recently travelled from New Zealand to Australia. It turns out that a fellow passenger objected to Rollins reading Ahmed......

One of the briefs for Londonist's music writers has always been to cover London's new, unsigned or unheard bands. And maybe a few from out of town who we think are particularly special. We run reviews and interviews but the proof of the pudding is in the listening so we're also collecting songs for you to listen to. Rather than browse our collection of interviews or music posts to track down these terrific tunes,......

This week: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Broken Flowers and Into The Blue. Kicking off this week then with more half-term, stop-animation goodness in the form of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride The film gets three stars from Pete Bradhsaw who thinks it will be "best be enjoyed by tweenie goths, who will want to turn out for it out in full costume on Halloween night before getting into the real business of annoying the neighbours......