Friday 24th June

On this page: Ashes to the Fall, Hip Hop at the Music Cafe.

Braunstone Gate: Hardcore and Hip-Hop

Our night in the West End of Leicester begins at Sumo.

It's wet. The rain has been coming down steadily for most of the night. Sheltering under the umbrellas of Sumo I catch up with Leicester band Ashes To the Fall.

Ashes to the Fall: Phil, Nayf, Sid, Eddie and Danny

In Leicester's music hive, the queen bee continuously deposits new bands and a year ago, Ashes to the Fall took their first flight out to find the flowers of our local music stages. Now armed with new drummer Phil, the teenage musicians feel they are ready to really make a go of it.

Powered by the optimism and energy of their youth, they exude a feverish desire to make music. They even went to the recent Glastonbudget festival, despite not having been booked to play, just in case a spare slot became vacant. Undeterred by their failure to get on a stage this year, they plan to re-audition for the 2012 festival.

These guys are taking on the fiercely competitive Leicester music scene and ambition is not a problem for them. They have it by the bucket load. Aged from 17 to 19, they are fairly typical of the cadre of teenage bands that are the new wave of venue stage fillers.

New songs are going on to their set list regularly. I asked them how they make their songs. Like most bands, they said they all work on it together. They start with riffs, those musical phrases, tunes and ideas that are the building blocks of guitar bands. Having got a rough structure of a piece, the rhythms, the chords, the drum beats, they start to weave in the lyrics.

It's an interesting process and having sat in a corner with several rock bands and watched it happen, I can vouch that it's a fairly amazing process of artistic creativity. Don't get visions of Mozart-like musicians sitting with large piles of staved paper though. Rock musicians don't write music in the conventional sense. Music emerges on the hoof, in their minds. Having decided what's going to happen, bar by bar, they have to memorise every chord, every beat, every word. Nothing goes anywhere near a sheet of paper.

Eddie is the main writer of words. Phil acts as a kind of lyrics sub-editor. The key thing is that all five of them contribute to putting a piece of music together. Eddie said "It takes us a long time to complete lyrics because we write stuff that means something to us".

This was an insight into the life of the band. These guys don't chase conventional musical cliches. Despite their testosterone dripping teenage vitality, they insist they don't write songs about beer and girls. Whilst there might be no shortage of these mainstays of youthful life, these five young men are passionate about music and write words that are about their lives, their experiences and the various angsts they face. Phil told me, "I don't want to be a window cleaner for the rest of my life" and the others haven't got jobs yet. They see their passion for music as being their ticket out of the pit of their urban existence. Nothing new in that; many young musicians have trod that path before.

They came across as five genuine lads; no posing, no slavish subservience to fashion and chique, no bowing down to the shibboleths of coolness. When they said "we are not doing this for the beers or the girls, we are doing it for the music", I believed them.

Eddie screams into the microphone.

After a long session of tuning up and fiddling with bits of drum kit, Eddie picks up the mic, the crowd gathers in front of the stage and Ashes to the Fall launch into their set. Eddie calls to the crowd and then begins screaming into the mic. This is no picnic of lilting melodies. This is rough, raw, ear punching post-hardcore noise.

Nayf doing some serious stuff on the strings.

The guitarists are working away steadily, and the aggressive sounds leap off the stage backed by grinding bass lines and thrashing drum beats. Danny adds the vocal backing and most of them jump and run round the stage while Eddie hangs around the girder that is slap bang in the middle of the stage and screams into the mic.

Danny adding some backing vocals. The t-shirt says it all.

Having warmed up the crowd with their first song, they launch into their next number. "That was our first ever song what we wrote", Eddie tells the crowd and they scramble into their next piece of big pounding rhythms driven by feverish beats. This is not bog standard stuff you would easily associate with an icon band. They have borrowed musical ideas from metal, punk and grunge for their crackling, in your face, hardcore numbers. No soothing musical delights here; it's an all out attack, a rough and raw set of adrenaline pumping numbers that grab the listeners by the throat and slaps them on the sides of their heads.

On stage they put on a show; they live the music, they play it like they mean it. In the middle of the perfect storm of sound, there is a moment of reflective calm, atmospheric colours are evoked from the guitars, before they plunge back into the fireworks of their set. After a year of live shows, mistakes, trials and tribulations, these guys have demonstrated that they know what it's about. Their commitment shows.

Before Ashes took to the stage we got the other side of the story. Four freshly laundered teenagers from Northampton put on a delightful set of ear-pleasing indie songs. Playing in Leicester for the first time, the quartet of 15 and 16 years olds, offered up a set of distinctly different compositions, lead by vocalist Angus McAlpine. Badly Kept Fish played pleasantly listenable songs. They were nice. You could easily take your grandma to see them. Having been playing for about a year and half, they have come up with a set of well polished tunes no one would want to argue with.

Ashes to the Fall | Badly Kept Fish.

From Rock to Hip Hop

Leaving behind the halls of rockademia, I splash through the rain to the Music Cafe for a night with the Leicester's top rappers.

After rock, the next biggest genre in the city, is what I call Urban: rap, hip hop, dub, grime. I have come to the Music Cafe in Braunstone Gate to see some of the top artists on the Urban scene.

Yasin hosts the show.

The night was organised by Yasin El Ashrafi, a guy who has been doing a lot of good works in Leicester and now has his own company TMC. Having just finished a project in New Parks where he worked with 19+ NEEPs on music production, he has been producing a seven week course for rappers and MCs and tonight's charity fund raiser was an end of term show.

I talked to Matthew R, a rapper who has been putting songs together since he was 12. He went on Yasin's course and is a local boy born and bred. I asked what inspires his music and he tells me "I sing about positive things. I am inspired by people who are positive." I like this. Urban rap has a reputation for having a dark side but Matthew is an artist that wants to deal with the bright side of life.

As a music artist he knows about the importance of building up a fan base. He came to the attention of the people who run the BBC 's Beat Programme and his ambition is to play a festivals. So we talk about the plethora of festivals in our local area as we shelter from the rain.

He has been recording at Yard 26 and I have been following his work on SoundCloud | See Matthew's page on Facebook | You can check out his sounds on Youtube.

Jermaine Jones (Jamstar) who sings with Yung Katz

Jamstar's set of R'nB style songs were rich in rhythms, a very now sound in which he shows his skills in both melody and fast rap. Before we want on he confessed to feeling nervous but as soon as he picked up the mic what you saw was a very polished and confident performer.

Listen to Jamstars's song: What did I do

Jamstar on Facebook

It was a pleasent surprise to watch a set by Curtis Clacey. Somehow I hadn't come across this guy before but his set was crackin'; with a brilliant stage show he really got the audienced warmed up.

What makes him stand out is his big-on stage presence. Great entertainment, he put on a star quality act.

See Curtis Clacey on YouTube | Download his tracks for free.

Alex and Marlon on stage at the Music Cafe

On stage were Offbeat Reprobates, an act including Alex Brodella who I I used to know when he played in the rock band Wayward Trippers. The band has split up now but there are plans to start a new one. Their set of melodic raps was impressive. The Alex and Marlon Foster got tonight's show off to a good start. No stranger to reggae rythms, they broke to some really good beats and got some of the audience hopping around.

I know the Music Cafe well. I put on my first ever gig there, some years ago now but got 300 people in that night. The venue has changed hands so many times since then I lost touch with it. Nice to see that the large hall has had a bit of a makeover now and is not as grubby as it used to be.

In a busy weekend of gigging, Calvin Jeffrey took his guitar to the stage for another performance of reggae and affro tunes. Over from Birmingham was rapper The Boss.

It was a great night of good music. The crowd were a nice bunch too. As I said to some of the artists I met, I am new to Urban, having been covering rock for so many years, I am just beginining to get into the hip-hop scene. But I know what I like when it goes into my ears and I know good artists when I see them on stage. I'm glad I went, it was a top night.

Urban showcase - 4th August

Artsin is producing an Urban showcase in partnership with NewBornz Entertainments on 4th August, at Leicester's Sub91 venue. Get the details.

Other pages this weekend

Friday 24th June | Saturday 25th June | Sunday 26th June