Leicester is the indie capital of the UK

Wednesday 15th October 2008

No other city or town in the UK has produced such a good crop of excellent bands as has Leicester. Leicester's top bands are writing the best songs in the country.

Leicester's indie rock bands stand out as being some of the best to be found anywhere in the UK. Leicester band The Chairmen beat 11,000 other bands for the coveted top place in the national Surface Unsigned competition. They did this because their songs were clearly the best, by any criteria.

Local bands The Heroes, Autohype, Razmataz and The Utopians have written amazingly good songs which, if released into the UK charts, would go straight to the top and become classic hits.

Bands such as M48, The Screening, The Dandilions, Project Notion and many others are putting on high quality sets with excellent musicianship, great vocals and, above all, highly listenable songs. They are good to watch live and have laid down incredibly good tracks in recording.

We know this because we (as Get Your Band On) have listened to thousands of tracks over the past five years, from bands in every part of the UK. We have not found another city or town which has produced so many great bands or in which you will hear so many indie rock songs as good as those being written by Leicester's bands.

It is our experience of listening to tracks every day for the past five years and of bringing bands to Leicester to play, from all over the UK, that confirms our knowledge of the nation's indie scene.

In the UK, Leicester stands out as being the most prodigious source of good music and musicians, with songs that stand up against the best being heard anywhere. Our city is a centre of musical excellence and one of the best places to be found for live music.

If labels are in search of new bands that will rise quickly into the top of the charts, they should be going to gigs in Leicester and listening to Leicester based bands. Our local bands are writing high quality songs and deserve to heard at national level. There is a great wealth of talent in this city and if labels are not looking for bands here, they are clearly looking in the wrong places.

A&R should be focusing their attention on bands such as The Chairmen, Autohype, Razmataz, the Heroes, The Utopians, The Screening, M48, The Dandilions and many other of our local bands because these are the bands of the future and the ones that are producing music that stands up to the best to be found in the UK.

Much more needs to be done to bring label reps to Leicester to hear music. If they want to find the highest quality talent in the UK, here in this city if where they should be spending their time.