Leeds, the jewel of the north, is well known for its steady turnout of self-sufficient, trend-proof rock wallahs. Bilge Pump are no exception. These three men have forged a sound based on clang and whallop, given shape by the rollicking bonh(a)mie of Neil Turpin, a man who has loaned his rhythm to Him, Enablers and Damo Suzuki more than once. Think Gang Of Four bass tumbling over Led Zep drum-rollick, slammed up against gnarled, screeching King Crimson guitar fripperies. Bilge Pump are heavy and off-kilter, but never turgid. Sharp melodies and upbeat delivery jump out with repeated listening.

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Stewed down rock'n'roll at its most primitive played by two punk/blues/garage rockers featuring 4 stringed guitar, minimal drum kit and shouting. Subject matter included getting divorced, boozing, wanting to be the next James Bond, crashing your car and wanting to make the world a better place. During their time together Clambake sonically changed from their earlier 50's inspirations to a two man Motorhead, or the Ramones with a slide guitar. Whatever way you sliced it, it was just good time Saturday night rock'n'roll - not designed to change peoples lives, but intended to make people jump about, drink, shout and large it up.

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COLD PUMAS specialise in pounding, motorik repetition that grabs the groove for dear life. Running rings around themselves with exultant abandon, these four spirited men are haunted by grand visions, combining cyclical, harmonised guitar riffs, impressionistic vocals and interwoven rhythms to great effect. Combining post-punk, Krautrock, shoegaze, and experimental indie rock into an equally driving and reflective sound, Cold Pumas was formed in 2008 by brothers Oliver and Patrick Fisher and Dan Reeves, also the founder of Faux Discx.

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Fists have been writing, fighting and exciting in various bedrooms and rehearsal spaces across Nottingham since 2005. Fists' music is influenced by everything from mid-50s skiffle and rockabilly, through lo-fi pioneers like Daniel Johnston and Simon Joyner, to proto-punks the Monks. Their noisy, joyful and ferociously energetic gigs display the Fists sound in all its crisp, fresh, beautifully bruised glory. Sweet vocal harmonies, rich raw power; original, electrifying indie rock.

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Grey Hairs are channelling aggressive surf rock and some of the lesser known 80's and 90's bands of their optimistic riddled youth, now seen through the eyes of the barrel staring 10's. It's 100% definitely punk rock, but it's way more than that. You want a soundbite, go hunt your own - But I'm saying Takeshi Terauchi & The Bunnys V's The Wipers done Notts style, this time it's war. Paranoid Time, The Minutemen done by The Fall and the B52's.

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Holodrum are a new disco-infused synth-pop group, who feature members of Hookworms, Yard Act, Cowtown, Virginia Wing, Drahla and more.

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I'm Being Good are from Brighton, formed in 1993, with an ever shifting line-up around the lynchpin foundation of Singer/Guitarist Andrew Clare. They have released numerous albums, singles and tracks on compilations. Both live and on record the band are becoming renowned for their electrifying live shows, slinging deleriously woozy lead guitars over tightly wound, angular art-rock foundations, and for playing themselves and their equipment into the ground.

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Irma Vep is the on-going, evolving main vehicle for polymath musician Edwin Stevens. Llanfairfechan's most prolific vagabond is a songwriter absolutely committed to mixing sincerity with chaos. His forthcoming album, "Embarrassed Landscape", is the most vivid depiction yet of his almost dichotomous space jam rock squeezed into pop tunes with self-assured depictions of crushing dread and doubt. There aren't many records out there that bring to mind Richard & Linda Thompson, Bardo Pond, and Country Teasers. Irma Vep will make you wince and then make you feel elated - all of the highs and all of the lows you need to feel alive, with jams wired enough to equilibrate out at elation.

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Jutland Songs is an indie-rock band from Glasgow, Scotland. Their vibe is chunky, chiming guitars, boy/girl vocals, rolling drums and an anchor of a bass. Influences: Superchunk, The Replacements, Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, Polvo, Chapel Hill, Twin Peaks, Aeropress, dogs, cats and Westbrook Gose. Colin takes beer exams, Cecilia makes jewellery, Brian got in a fight at a Smog gig and Paul isn't Italian.

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Melodically, Order of the Toad have something of a medieval fixation, filtered through late 60s influences which end up sounding something like Jefferson Airplane - not least in vocalist Gemma "The Wharves" Fleet's powerful lung-force - mixed with British psyche heat.. think Kaleidoscope or even Syd Barrett drug-damaged whimsy. There's no other band doing this in the U.K. that we know of, a musically rich tapestry woven from strands outside current trends

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Ox Scapula have helped make their hometown, Stoke-on-Trent, exciting. Really. Their debut album "Hands Out" captures the fierce sonic storm of their rugged and raucous live performances. Fans of Unwound or Drive Like Jehu will already know the feeling - frantic, stroppy guitars over a heaving, grooving, bass and drumset jam. Then expanding space.

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Reciprocate is an alt-soul power-trio playing songs written as quiet soul-ballads, then performed as loud
rock-n-rollers. Lots of lovely touch n feel in the playing, bursts of in-the-moment flights of improv, some total
abandon, and pleasing rock-n-roll.

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Artistic affinities are pledged to Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Pissed Jeans and The Intelligence, but as Kurt Cobain once asked "Why can't we be both Black Sabbath and The Beatles?", Sauna Youth consistently and urgently pose the question, 'Why can't we be both The Ramones and Steve Reich?'.

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Up from the sea-lap pebbles of the Sussex coast, beneath the battled sky, there, cupped like metal-fire in the clutching cauldron of the Brighton downs dwells the throb, purr, snarl and roar of Sweet Williams. A band whose grooves warm like loving wine, whose riffs swagger and lurch with all the seeming bonhomie of a sailor new on shore-leave, and yet like a stray dog which you imagined you could tame, those same riffs are liable in the end to wind up biting you on the arse.

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The Unit Ama make music that explodes outward: dense but soothing metronomic pulses morph into a wild fracturing of the traditional rock trio, taking the possibilities of what can be done with guitar, bass, drums and vocals into the stratosphere. Whereas others have sought to push the limits of rock music by intense complication and trickery, The Unit Ama's approach is natural, human, shamanic even. This is not anthemic, easy listening, but something far more challenging and ultimately, rewarding.

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Post-Punk? Indie Rock? Post-Hardcore? The Van Pelt walked between all these worlds. Spoken/sung vocals, anthemic pop hooks, fiery guitars and a tightly wound rhythm section made them stand outs of the DIY basement scene they emerged from. The 1990's indie heroes have had a lasting power far greater than so many of the other once bigger bands of that era. The sort of interest that has neither waxed nor waned over the decades since they disbanded, yet just mysteriously continues on despite their discography being out of print since the end of the last millennium.

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Broken Arm are a punk group from Leeds, deepest, darkest West Yorkshire. The question is, what kind of punk group? Or indeed, what kind of punks? There are many. It's confusing. Although they have short hair and are known to wear check shirts, they have no affinity with straight edge. Although they like dogs and lager, they don't appear to be crusties either. It might well be that they are four fairly anonymous individuals who occasionally crawl out from under their respective rocks and meet up on a Friday night to play an aggressive mixture of garage rock and uncouth 80s-style noise rock in a way that sounds... not quite like any other group.

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Designer Babies started as the musical brainchild of Dusty Bible, following years of experimentation with bizarre and innovative fusions of blues-rock, electronics and the avant-garde. Manifesting in various incarnations throughout the formative years of the 21st century, Designer Babies finally reached stability in late 2002 with its present line up of Dusty Bible (guitar, bass, vox), Kushal Gaya (vocals), Nick Perry (drums) and Kate Deane (noises). Designer Babies collage the old and new, fast and slow, melodic and abrasive. Their influences range from old blues and rock n roll to traditional Mauritian music and Japanese experimentalism.

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Empire-Builder was never prolific. Recording their 3 song debut 7" for Gringo in 1999, their self-recorded follow-up was released six years later and featured only one song. Too awkward and unsettled to be that super-familiar type of post-rock they played a weirdly soulful style shot through with uneasy cynicism. Their output is minutely perfect like a nice wee satsuma or a Belgian chocolate. You'd like it.

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Until now most famous for the fact that old drummer and good friend Stuart Braithwaite left to start Mogwai, Glasgow's most under-rated band are here with the goods to claim their crowns. Sure, they can master the slinky genre bending instrumental, but they are also adept at the dual vocal math-pop rock that has won them all that airplay and all those adoring fans. This record sounds less-straightforward and more inventive with each listen but you'll never forget the first time that the catchy opening wriggle of "Goodbye To Victories" sucks you in.....

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Hirameka Hi-Fi formed in that long hot summer of 97. Tom Coogan and Chris Baldwin met whilst downing cheap alcohol at a ruined Roman wall in Colchester. The two had schooled together, and quickly found that they shared the desire to make music that was exciting, angular and accessible enough to buy them and the nascent Gringo Records a ticket out of Colchester. Their first record, 'Munchin', was released in January 1998. Its canny mix of shouty vocals, sugary car-alarm guitar riff and pounding rhythm may have owed a lot to contemporary influences like The Yummy Fur, Bis and Urusei Yatsura, but it also won the band support from both John Peel and Steve Lamacq's Radio 1 shows.

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For a while now Leeds five-piece Hookworms have been terrorising headlining bands across northern England and beyond, not through histrionics or gimmick, but through sheer sonic velocity and emotive intent. Often bracketed among the latest wave of psychedelic rock currently appearing in pockets around the UK, this tag is somewhat of a misnomer for a band whose use of repetition and reverb is not to open the third dimension or for some sort of flower-power escapism. Instead the reel feels cathartic, each fresh revolution of the loop a confrontation between the band and themes of depression, loss and anger.

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Their rhythms are suggestive, their cello phrasings majestic. Their soaring, sprawling soundscapes preach revolution in a manner more vivid than the most eloquent of words. I am Spartacus recordings persist in an eerie half-life. They were taped, not for commercial speculation, but for the fulfilment of its members' transient needs. They serves as a memento of three heady months of discovery and joy. From the opening reflective piano of "a dream woke me" to the gradually mounting tension of the closing title track, "Forward!" offers ten instrumental tunes of devastating beauty, punctuated only by the occasional burst of redemptive, startling ferocious climax.

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Not since those heady nights when the Jesus Lizard were getting arrested for public indecency has a well formed rock unit made me want to repeatedly bang my head against the wall for the love of having a headache. By 'well formed rock unit' we mean, of course, guitar that does not sound pretty, bass that leaves a chest pain, drums that Pound! Pound! Pound! and vocals that wobble on the precipice of detached humour and righteous anger.

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Kogumaza formed in Nottingham in 2009. They use primitive rhythms, patterns and riffs to create dense and mesmeric song-cycles. The band's live sound is manipulated through dub delays and echoes, allowing what is basically a heavy rock trio to expand and willingly lose control of the sound they make as they make it. The resulting music marries fuzzed-out psychedelia to an ambient aesthetic, placing the band somewhere between the infinite repetition of Moondog, the thick gloop of Master Of Reality-era Sabbath and the hypnotic pulse of Lungfish.

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Lando fell together at the end of school. They rehearsed in the middle of nowhere in a broken home. They walked there through dirty snow. A metaphor. They were alienated from the cheap stock of local culture. Fuelled by utter contempt, their music was loud, grinding, fluent. Poetically, the original self-recorded tapes were lost. Jason Graham, Gringo boss, remembers the songs being "out of context...a consistent motor of anger and madness...". Many now claim to have been at their one live show. In reality the audience was small and disgusted. Direct and urgent, they traded off tunes against proud ugliness. Deaf and paranoid, they split in acrimony.

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Lords deliver good vibes at exceptional volume. Their rock is both shonky and squidgy. They follow the 'drunken master' approach. They are one part 70s rock, one part euphoric free jazz, one part primitive blues, one part garage rock and one part DC hardcore. They are all parts love. They are no longer teenagers.They laugh hard in the face of woe and strife. One of them is a lifeguard. Their drummer's real name is Elvis. Do not lend them your amplifier

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Camberwell's Part Chimp has at its core guitarists Tim Cedar, Iain H and drummer Jon Hamilton (aka Drumm Chimp). Their reputation for being extremely loud is a justifiable one. As they put it, "turning [the volume] up won't magically bring the music to life. The secret is to have the music sound deafening even when it isn't turned up to eleven." Part Chimp have played with the likes of the Melvins, collaborated with Alexander Tucker and put out split singles with everyone from Joeyfat to Gringo;s own Lords. They called their most recent record Thriller (yes, it's meant to be a joke) "a stoner rock piss take that happily came up trumps".

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Polaris (Andrew Pollard Guitar, vocals, Joe O'Sullivan Guitar, John Ford Bass guitar, Neil Turpin Drums) release their second album on April 10. For a band that's been around since the mid-nineties, that might seem a little slow, but there's more to Polaris than meets the eye. Formed in Leeds in 1993 and featuring members of bands like Bilge Pump and Quack Quack, Polaris have quietly become godfathers of their now exploding local scene, turning at their own pace and never compromising quality for quantity......

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Just when you thought 'punk rock' was gonna keep on being divided and subdivided by 'punk rockers' until it existed only as atoms, Sailors come along and remind you why you ever listened to it in the first place. Sailors absolutely, 101% DO NOT FUCK ABOUT. Their songs are examples of economy of rhythm and purpose seen too rarely and singer Nick spits forth snottily in a manner that'll make all you Sam McPheeters and Chris Thomson fans wonder why the hell you didn't do it first. "For fans of Monorchid, Circus Lupus, Born Against and Sweep The Leg Johnny" is what I'd write on the record in the record shop if I owned one and I was into all that microscopic genre breakdowns. Which I'm not.

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Formed in the Black Country after the break up of their school band Fused, San Lorenzo aimed to create a varied and emotive sound from a basic three-piece set up. Owen's lyrics drew on suburban myths and dreams while the band's music was able to wrap these words in fragile melodies or noisy maelstroms. Their first 7" release garnered praise from the weekly music press with its dynamic intensity and melodic boy/girl harmonies. Comparisons were made to Codeine, Slint and Fugazi but these never quite hit the mark. In 2000 San Lorenzo toured with Idlewild to promote their debut album Nothing New Ever Works which was supported strongly by John Peel and Steve Lamacq's BBC radio shows.

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Nottingham, England - home to Seachange. A band that takes a sledgehammer to the preconceptions of alternative rock. They are band who rock like the Stooges jamming with the Valentines. They take the neo-psychedelia of the Spacemen 3 and the tautness of Joy Division to the outer limits. Yet they rein in the wild excesses to pack a mighty punch.

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Soe'za are currently a five-piece band, hailing from points along the M4 corridor, from Bristol to Swindon. With a somewhat unorthodox line-up of two drum kits, electric guitar, bass and French horn, Soe'za mix Can-esque grooves, and urgent guitars and folk tinged melody with Ben Owen's clear-voiced declarations. The band twist this template in every conceivable direction, their command of the irresistible rhythm is second to none, with the French horn rounding out subtle modulations of mood.

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Souvaris are five like minded souls spilling forth rhythm and texture in songs that are long on the CD timer but seem short in the listening as you move along with them. Comparison are often made to Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, Godspeed, Sigur Ros, Tristeza etc but Souvaris are about different things. Those bands concern themselves with the spectacle and the distance between themselves and their audience but Souvaris, however grand the heights they push their music to, remain an exciting and sweaty live proposition working these amazing songs just for YOU. It may have elements of prog-rock or modern composition but it never fails to move you or make you move.

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Spin Spin the Dogs take the bare bones of what's commonly known as the 'post-punk' sound and immediately swing off course into uncharted waters, constructing an inherently surreal and energetic pile of mess that almost resembles the Trout Mask-era Magic Band playing Prayers on Fire-era Birthday Party, with a big (probably unintentional) nod towards underrated trouble-makers Prolapse. And the singer is something else, charging around wild-eyed, spewing out head-spinning reams of dadaist beat blather like his life depends on keeping his mouth moving quicker than his brain can implement coherence.

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Teebo was formed by Tom Coogan as a riposte to his former allies Lando. At the peak of his cynicism, he found a like mind in bassplayer Gareth Crane. Trapped for a year in a small town, the sporadic rehearsals became a vent for the duo's frustrations at their listless lives. Adrift in a sea of negativity, Coogan knew things had to change. Even as musical differences led to internal conflict, he sought to regain his idealism and explore more accessible, optimistic sounds. The songs Teebo recorded for the debut Gringo release reflected this new bright sensibility struggling to life, accompanied by a wider, more flexible musical palette. Shortly afterwards Coogan jumped ship to form the upbeat, energetic Hirameka Hi-Fi.

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That Fucking Tank is Andy Abbott and James Islip. They have been playing music together since pre-teenhood when they met at school in 1991. Tank was formed in Leeds as a one-off performance utilising some novelty equipment - a baritone guitar tuned to play bass and guitar lines simultaneously through two amps, and a minimal drum set - which kept on going. Their most recent album, "Tanknology", has extended grooves, progressive structures and pop hooks for Reef's Gary Stringer to sing along to.

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Hailing from Ireland, France and England THE WHARVES sport startling duel vocals, courtesy of Gemma Fleet and Dearbhla Minogue, which hang gracefully over their minimal rock format. They invoke the reverberated spook of 60's girl groups, the mid-fi guitar crunch of Kim Deal's The Amps, the vocal flavours of The Roches and the narrative and structural panache of 70's progressive folk. Marion Andrau's thunderous drumming drives through these compositions, ensuring the wealth of disparate influences remain focused and celebratory.

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Thick Syrup was formed in Leeds in 2013 by Guy, Paul and Tom out of a mutual love of 60s garage, 70s funk and early hard rock, with the intention of creating music outside of the stylistic ballpark of their other more straight up aggro bands Broken Arm, Mob Rules and Whipping Post. An adequate description of the group's particular blend of guitar band genres is not easy, but touchstones exist on a continuum somewhere between The Meters, Black Sabbath and Shocking Blue.

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Imagine buying a Captain Beefheart record, playing it at 45 instead of 33, recording that, and then playing that at double speed really fucking loud with lots of screaming over the top. They're a massively enjoyable experience all the more so for the obvious delight they take in their aural assault. Simon the singer manages to wipe out half the drum kit after the first bar and they only slow it down once in the set to play a song that sounds like Black Sabbath trying to play something by Conflict and giving up halfway through to go doom. Steve the drummer has been doing this for years (in Heresy) and keeps the beat feeling good even when playing faster than you can see! Cont....

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