Sheffield Music: Jeremy Arblaster’s picks of the week

26^th May @ Bungalows & Bears

Homeshake (US) [Live]

+Bernard & Edith [Live]

+Katie Pham & The Moonbathers

Free Entry // 8pm

Though fairly self-indulgent to include my own show, I am incredibly excited to be bringing over Homeshake as part of his European tour. The ex-Mac DeMarco guitarist recently recorded and released his sophomore effort ‘Midnight Snack’. Much of the record was written following Sagar’s dizzying time on the road as touring guitarist with Mac Demarco, reflecting on the loneliness that plagued him towards the end of his run and the longing for life back home in Montreal. Sagar left the band to focus on his own music and to rebuild the infrastructure of his life. While many of the new tracks meander through anxiety and melancholy, it is also a witness to a return to safety.

28^th May @ The Picture House Social

Algiers (US) [Live]

+Blood Sport [Live]

+Dead Badgers [Live]

+Callous Recordings [Dj]

£8 // 8pm

The Picture House Social has the potential to be the best live music venue in the city. Unlike some of our surrounding cities, Sheffield lacks a go-to music venue, and therefore can struggle to bring in the wealth of artists that frequent Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham. Algiers, a band with members split over the Atlantic, but with roots in Atlanta, Georgia, stop by on their tour with Sheffield alumni Blood Sport. They’ll be playing from their “striking, impeccably timed album… with politics over industrial drum machines and raucous southern hymns.” [NY Times] The dark underground of the PSH should prove an adequate setting.

3^rd June @ Hope Works

Mapping Creativity

The Black Dog [Live]

Human [Artists]

+ more…

Free Entry //

Curated by long time promoter and producer Lo Shea, Mapping Creativity is a free event at Hope Works featuring musicians, artists and designers. Sheffield ‘pride’, so often represented by bottles of Henderson’s Relish, is a tricky thing to celebrate. For every wonderful product of Sheffield, there are inevitably a million terrible impersonators. However Mapping Creativity is perhaps the strongest showing of the city’s creative community, and evidence that with more business acumen, and Government assistance, a strong, financially beneficial creative industry could blossom in Sheffield. The sheer amount of names on the line-up should give you a clue as to just how many people there are in Sheffield doing interesting, brilliant things.

12^th June @ The Audacious Art Experiment

Cowtown [Live]

As Ondas [Live]

Beards [Live]

Commiserations [Live]

Rob + Natas [Live]

£5 // 6pm

“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me”. (The Waves – Virginia Woolf)

This narrative runs through the music of As Ondas. In an interview with Spark Magazine, drummer Ochi Reyes explains…“I’m basically the memory thief…[The record is] about the permanence of fragments from which we construct the past.” In the video for La Mujer Que Robaba Recuerdos we see Ochi’s face superimposed onto other people’s photographs. The figures remade and reimagined as she chooses. These faded, distorted visuals are the perfect accompaniment to music that could sit comfortably alongside 1960s surf, or dance amongst its modern day revivalists