This week Londonist has gone a tiny bit music mad. As Massive Attack's Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre gets into full swing, we caught The Future Sounds of Hip-Hop, The Dubstep Chronicles, the Blade Runner Soundtrack and Gong at the festival this week. Just so we weren't too biased between North and South London, we also made it up to Camden to catch Atmosphere & Brother Ali at Koko. Have you heard of Mumford and Sons? No, neither had this Londonista until Sally introduced us all to them earlier today. We also bought you news of the iTunes Festival at Koko and Amy Winehouse's latest drama.
Looking ahead to this week, and Monday night sees identical twin Canadian sisters Tegan and Sara play Shepherds Bush Empire. Tickets are still floating around for £13.50 each, so be sure to catch their catchy tunes and amusing between song banter if you're at a loss as to what to do to start off your week. Alternatively for you more die-hard indie fans (or just those who don't want to see a bunch of faux-lesbian teenage girls at Tegan and Sara) then wander over to Water Rats to catch The Alps, the quickly rising Greenwich four piece. Tickets are £6 each.
Tuesday sees the battle of the titans: Radiohead vs My Bloody Valentine vs Sigur Ros, at Victoria Park, The Roundhouse and Westminster Central Hall respectively. Understandably, tickets for all three are pretty hard to get hold of. For something with tickets still available, check out either Neil Diamond at the O2, or The Bravery (remember them? "It was an Honest Mistake" etc?) at the Islington Academy. Tickets are £12.50 each.
Wednesday once again features a stellar lineup, with Radiohead, Goldfrapp, Ben Folds and Rodrigo y Gabriela all playing sold out shows, at Victoria Park, the Royal Albert Hall, Shepherds Bush Empire and the Roundhouse respectively. One of the hardest working bands in the UK at the moment, Officer Kicks play Monto Water Rats - tickets are £6 each. For you noise fans, Melt Banana, the Japanese experimental noise rockers play ULU. Tickets are £12 each.
Just when you were beginning to think that summer wasn't a good time to catch heavy metal in London, Def Leppard play Wembley Arena on Thursday night. If you want something a bit smaller, death metallers from LA Morbid Angel play the Astoria 2. Tickets are £12.50 each.
If you're not off to Glastonbury for the weekend then why not do the poor man's version by going to Hyde Park to catch Nelson Mandela's birthday party on Friday? He's holding an all-star gig for his 46664 charity, featuring Queen + Paul Rodgers, Annie Lennox, Razorlight, Simple Minds, and Amy Winehouse if she's sane enough. We'll be there, bringing you a review and maybe live blogging it if we can work out the technology. Tickets are £65, and well worth it we think. Meanwhile if you want to be indoors then grime star Wiley plays the Barfly - tickets are £5 each.
We always recommend ethical gig trading site Scarlet Mist as your first port of call for tickets particularly when they're sold out, so check them out and beat the touts. Failing that Gumtree is always a friend.
