Munroe Effect – Album Launch

Local band MUNROE EFFECT deal in a unique brand of progressive, schizophrenic rock music characterised by passages of relentless epic noise and brooding intimate melody. They have a new album launch next Sunday 29th May at The Fat Fox. Grab a ticket before they all go.

” with a touch of At The Drive-In, some gorgeous sonic textures and aching vocals, this Portsmouth mob demand your attention from the off.” – Kerrang!

“all over the place – in a good way – with the odd, math-rock time signature mix-up pushing them away from local band mediocrity, and attention-grabbing vocals that drift between melodies and high-pitched screaming.” – Rock Sound

“jagged guitars and a pounding rhythm section … moments of shouting and lifting melodies mix and softer, intimate verses sound natural and unforced” – Big Cheese

Kid Carpet @ The Fat Fox

A little ahead of schedule on this maybe, but I’ll post closer to the time as well. Just thought I’d throw up the poster that Rusty just finished. Good work mate. Also a little heads up that Sarah from HKGC has spoke with Kid Carpet and arranged a short interview period with him exclusively for Strong Island. Mainly because when she emailed he was playing I went nuts like a total fanboy. Check him out HERE.

Check my Flickr for some of my photos from when he was down in Southsea last. Oh and he’s at Bestival again this year.

Let’s Wrestle, Ono Palindromes and Clayton Strange

Continuing the Hong Kong Gardeners Club residency at the Fat Fox on Thursday will be the following:

Let’s Wrestle
We are really lucky to have the ever so lovely artrockfolkindiepopsters Let’s Wrestle coming to play for us as part of their UK tour, hot on the heels of their Radio One live lounge performance.
Let’s Wrestle met years ago and bonded over Meat and Records after a while a band was formed and soon the world shall be conquered. Other things Let’s Wrestle like include Beer, Paul McCartney, Model Villages, Top Gear and Volvos Let’s Wrestle have influences as vast as Black Flag to Buddy Holly or Faust to Edith Piaf, But are ultimatly trying to be as raw as possible and they try to write songs that make your soul crumble aswell as making you smile, sing along and clap your hands
“Mark E Smith, Thurston Moore and Eddie Argos all bundled inside an awkward kid in sunglasses,which is basically fucking amazing” NME

Ono Palindromes
Post-punk art-rockers from Exeter. They played for us once before and we all had such a jolly good time they are coming back again!
“Sounding like the love-child of Arcade Fire, The Pixies and Art Brut, Ono Palindromes deliver a slice of fun, literature filled pop with a twist. It won’t be long until you hear a lot from the media about this band.” – The Mag

Clayton Strange
Four piece from Portsmouth whose sound takes in such diverse acts as Bloc Party, Idlewild and Foals.

Plus HKGC DJs Abbie and Keef

All for £4! (£5 on the door). Buy tickets online or over the bar at The Fat Fox.

Wise Children, Alex Denham, Tom Fossum, Hometown Show and Champ of the Day

Once again, HKGC presents live music in The Fat Fox this Thursday night. This week they provide some lullabies and sea shanties from some stunning musicians. This event will have tables and chairs so you can properly appreciate the musicianship.

Wise Children
Wise Children is Charlie Richards, Jamie Wilson and Robin Warren-Adamson. They are currently unsigned, but if we branched out into recording music, this would be the act that made us do it. Heart-breakingly beautiful music played by true musicians, with lyrics that would make the best poets jealous. The live line up varies from just Robin and his guitar to a much bigger sound with drums, cello and more…
“Astonishingly beautiful” – Phil Jackson (BBC South:Live)
“Really excellent stuff” – Huw Stephens (Radio 1)
“Fresh, engaging and beautiful… Poetically articulate lyrics …Wise Children have everything they need to achieve very big things” – Dave Jones (SouthScene)

Hometown Show
Southsea-ites Hometown Show produce a take on bluegrass which is reminiscent of the best camp fire singalongs, singing songs about late nights drinking whiskey, women, touring, running out of petrol and playing in bars, basements and backgardens…

Alex Denham
Alex Denham is a musician/songwriter, living in Southsea. He writes and plays dynamic, original acoustic songs in the vein of artists such as Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens and Damien Rice.

Tom Fossum
Keef from The Dawn Chorus solo side project, He will be joined onstage by Wit from The B of the Bang

Plus Champ of the Day will be playing an acoustic set. That is five acts for £3!

Edinburgh Fringe in Portsmouth

Black Cat Comedy Club at the Fat Fox brings the Edinburgh Fringe to Portsmouth with Exclusive Previews from the Hottest New Stand-Ups around…and if you’re wondering why a couple of their faces look familiar it could well be because two of the comics, Joey Page and Luke McQueen, appeared on the latest series of Channel 4′s ‘Coach Trip’ (the new Come Dine With Me).

Sunday 5th July sees Joey Page, Pat Burtscher & Luke McQueen at The Fat Fox with compére Richard Brophy, tickets are £5 in advance. For more information see the Facebook event for the evening.

Run Toto Run and The B of the Bang

It’s that time of the week again, Hong Kong Gardeners Club’s Fat Fox residency continues tomorrow evening with the following:

Run Toto Run
A sublime mix of delicate vocals and folksy bits with some electronica and post modernism. Out on tour to promote their single “Plastic Gold” the very lovely Run Toto Run are coming to play with us for the night. Currently garnering tons of interest and becoming an internet sensation with their cover of Passion Pit’s Sleepyhead.

The B of the Bang
Portsmouth’s own The B of the Bang are just releasing their first album, and this is their album launch party, so get to the Jelly Maid shop and purchase an album in preparation then come and see them PLAY THE FULL ALBUM IN IT’S ENTIRETY while dressed as characters from Miami Vice…

Plus Lonely Joe Parker and the HKGC DJs too. Check the Facebook event for full details.

Black Cat Comedy

The Black Cat Comedy Club returns to the Fat Fox on Sunday 7th featuring The Raymond and Mr Timpkins Revue plus special guests Juliet Meyers and Joel Dommett with Richard Brophy as compére for the evening. Tickets are £6.00 in advance and doors open at 7:30pm.

For more information check Black Cat Comedy and the Facebook event for the evening.

Televised Crimewave, Fresh Legs and Villiers Terrace

This week’s The Hong Kong Gardeners Club Fat Fox residency on Thursday 4th June brings us three bands and the Hong Kong Gardeners DJs. The three bands are:

Televised Crimewave
“Televised Crimewave play up their love of Pixies and Pavement on their Myspace page but listening to them is like jumping in a Ford Granada retrofitted with a Flux Capacitor and travelling to an indie club in 1982. That’s not a criticism, it’s a recommendation.” Q Magazine

Fresh Legs
“One of the most exciting unsigned bands on the scene at the moment their brand of indie punk setting pulses racing wherever they play. Already mainstays of the south coast live music scene and have caught the attention of a certain Rob Da Bank who is said to be a very big fan indeed.”

Villiers Terrace
Really rather awesome new shoegaze/punk project from our own fair Southsea

Tickets are £4 in advance £5 on the door and are available at the Fat Fox or online at We Got Tickets. For more information check out the Facebook event.

I Remember Tapes, Our Lost Infantry & TSDOLE DJ set

Another last minute heads up, as mentioned previously, The Hong Kong Gardeners Club have a residency at the Fat Fox in Albert Road and tonight they will be hosting I Remember Tapes and Our Lost Infantry (both playing live) plus plus DJ skillz from The Strange Death of Liberal England DJing all night. Only £3 entry, can’t be bad. For more information on the evening and the bands check out Facebook.

Love Life

Love Life is a charity fund raising pub quiz about graphic design that will be on the 11th December in the Fat Fox. As well as the quiz there will be DJs and a raffle and loads of prizes such as design books, limited edition screenprints, t-shirts, etc. It’s £2 per person and all money raised goes to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust in memory of Alex Matthews, be sure to make it down there and show your support.

For more info check the poster or hit up the Love Life Facebook group.

PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage