The Evan Whitton Blog: After Hours

Underworld - *Upcoming 2024 Album* - The Singles, Reviewed Along with the likes of Leftfield and Faithless, Underworld are one of the first and best examples of purveyors of what we now know as progressive house, often using expansive, 6/7/8+ minute run times and a number of eclectic influences to construct dance floor anthems of truly epic proportions. Made up of vocalist Karl Hyde and producer Rick Smith (and formerly DJ Darren Emerson), they have a nearly inscrutable back catalogue. Starting out as a synth-pop band of all things, with the release of their 1994 classic ‘Dubnobasswithmyheadman’, they began to produce what will likely prove to be some of the best dance music of all time. Of course mega hit ‘Born Slippy NUXX’ sticks out, but there’s so much more, whether it’s with other breakout albums like ‘Second Toughest In The Infants’ and ‘Beaucoup Fish’, or indeed with much of their later material, like with the brilliant ‘Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future’ in 2016, or the...

John Kearns 'The Varnishing Days' Review at  Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds - Loveable Oddball's New Show is Whimsical, Pensive Genius  It seems to have been somewhat of a trend with me in recent times that the people I'm most excited to see on the new series of Taskmaster are the people I'm least familiar with. John Kearns is perhaps the perfect example. Some people upon initial googling may have found his highly abstract character comedy incongruous with the very timid, eccentric, loveable portrayal he put across on that show, but I absolutely loved it. The one thing I knew with any certainty was that an eight year old five minute YouTube clip wasn't enough, I needed more. Luckily for me, as any savvy comedian would after becoming a fan favourite on one of the biggest comedy shows in the country, John announced his new stand-up tour 'The Varnishing Days' soon after, with a date scheduled at the Hyde Park Book Club in Leeds. So with that, I rocked up on a r...

PENGSHUi - EP ii - The Singles, Reviewed I imagine like many people, I was introduced to PENGSHUi’s music through a brilliant remix of The Prodigy’s ‘Light Up The Sky’ in 2018, but after recently deciding to check out their own stuff, I was very impressed. Their mix of raucously heavy, crushing metal with hyped up, gnarly rap flows and electronic textures almost felt like a UK take on nu-metal, while also being more distinctive and, quite simply, a lot heavier in their approach. So when I saw that they had a new EP out in just a few weeks, March 10th to be exact, I jumped at the opportunity to cover it. So, let’s have a look at the singles. Madman Talk about setting out your stall because this track does it nigh on perfectly. The instrumental pulls absolutely no punches, with one of the absolute gnarliest basslines I’ve heard so far this year, complemented by some really nice, snappy drums. Then, when those wobbly electronic textures come in and the chorus hits with those monstrous wal...

Evan's Extraneous Interests: My Personal Best of Stand-Up Comedy Genres: Part 3 of 3 Hello and welcome back to the third and final part of my personal best of stand-up comedy genres. As the title suggests, in this series, I intend to present what I believe to be the best of the best in terms of stand-up comedy videos/shows in a variety of different genres, 9 in all, to recommend for your viewing pleasure. To recap the winners last time: the winner of the blue comedy category was Jethro’s ‘Ready For Battle’, Victoria Wood claimed the title in the old-style category with her ‘Audience With...’, and the victor in the absurdist category was the James Acaster double bill ‘Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999/Make A New Tomorrow.’ So with that out of the way, let's round this thing out with the final 3 categories. How about we start with a bit of music, and discuss those comedians who integrate music into their act to great effect? Whether it be to compliment a particular joke or routine, o...

The Residents - 'Faceless Forever 50th Anniversary Show' Review at Leeds  Stylus  - Eyeball Quartet Produce Their Most Accessible Show Yet The Residents are one of my favourite bands ever, and have been at the forefront of avant-garde music for over half a century now, producing a large number of brilliant albums, multimedia projects and live shows in their existence. While many hold a candle for their 70s and 80s output, understandably so, they have great projects wherever you look, from 1998's twisted retellings of bible stories with ''Wormwood', 2008's proto-ARG multimedia venture 'The Bunny Boy', or their recounts of historical train crashes on 'The Ghost of Hope'. The point is, The Residents have proven themselves to be not only great avant-garde artists, but also arguably the most consistent band in the musical underground as a whole. So it's natural that when the 50th anniversary rolled around there was gonna be some cool stuff in ...

BABYMETAL - THE OTHER ONE - The Singles, Reviewed I reckon BABYMETAL are genuinely one of the more interesting metal acts in recent years. Yeah, you can make jokes about it being metal music for weebs, and talk about how their fusion of metal, J-Pop, electro, rap and everything else is just a tacky novelty, but despite all that, I have been known to enjoy their music, albeit in small doses, and mostly for the novelty. I thought a handful of tracks off of their self-titled album were decent, and a few tracks from the follow up, but I never really followed them too closely, especially after I got word of the departure of their main vocalist. Regardless, I was undeniably intrigued about their new concept album, ‘THE OTHER ONE’, dropping on March 24th. The reasons for this were mainly because, not only were the reviews of 2019’s ‘Metal Galaxy’ quite respectable, but I thought that, with time, perhaps some of the overly cutesy cheesiness of their early days had worn off, and that now they w...

Slipknot - Bone Church - Standalone Single Review Slipknot is arguably the biggest and most consistent band in the nu-metal movement of the 90s and early 2000s. Not only did they burst on to the scene with two brilliantly brutal albums - 1999's self-titled debut and 2001's 'Iowa' - but also continued to experiment past that, for instance with elements of acoustic rock and psychedelia on 'Vol. 3', as well as with groove metal on 'All Hope is Gone.' But their two most recent outings - 2019's 'We Are Not Your Kind' and 2022's 'The End, So Far' - have proven to be their most brazenly experimental, incorporating elements of not only psychedelia, but stoner rock, prog rock, orchestral, ambient/electronic, horror soundtracks, and much else. But, while this combination of sounds combined with their metal roots is admirable, their last album unfortunately proved to be, in my opinion, not the worst, but perhaps the most disappointing album ...