Beach House, Fleet Foxes, Explosions In The Sky, Jonathan Wilson, Midlake, Dirthy Three, The Walkmen, Veronica Falls… The AB’s love of the London label, Bella Union, is great. The latter in this impressive list is coming on 4 February to carry on from a much lauded Bella Union debut (3*1/2 in Humo: “delightfully witty indie pop songs”), so we’ll be there like a flash to greet the intriguing Roxanne Clifford and her male retinue.

Early in 2012 their raw, driving rock with heavenly harmonies sent an overcrowded AB Club into indie pop orgasm and, with their latest ‘Waiting For Something to Happen’ , Veronica Falls are aiming for the heart and the pit of the stomach again. “I wanna get sick, I wanna catch everything you’ve ever caught” sings Clifford in the new single ‘Buried Alive’. Goth romantic at its best, and proof that the band is maturing both musically and lyrically.

"Exquisite...the foursome make accelerating into adulthood sound like the ultimate adventure.” Early reactions to the ‘sophomore album’, such as those in Q-Magazine, are full of praise and the dreamy first single ‘Teenage’ only whets the appetite for more. Extremely promising!

The brain behind solo-project Dirty Beaches is the mysterious Canadian Alex Zhang Hungtai, of Thai origin, who amalgamates lo-fi Elvis Preslian rockabilly with hypnotising sound-collages full of distorted surf and psychedelica. Hungtai had previously released a handful of EPs on ‘cassette-only’ labels, but on his debut ‘Badlands’, from ’11, he dug deeply into the fifties and cut and pasted together a dark, static laced album… The ideal, melancholy soundtrack to his nomadic existence.

After a split-single with Xiu Xiu on Bella Union (Veronica Falls), in honour of Record Store Day, Hungtai came up with a live-album ‘The Spirit Of Crazy Horse’, recorded in Bergen, Norway. “Dirty Beaches presents his membership card to the club of purebred performers on this album, even though you must experience this bizarre piece of theatre live, of course” was to be read in the Cutting Edge review. This pedigree performer comes to AB in May to present his yet to be released album ‘Drifters/Love Is The Devil’.

“We stood with dropped jaws, watching what took place right before our very eyes. Art.” (Cutting Edge, review of Dirty Beaches live in Trix, Nov. ’11)

“Dirty Beaches’ dark and exciting electro-doo wop transformed the jam-packed hall into a sweaty disco, a trip stuffed with darkness.” (Enola, review of Dirty Beaches live in Les Ateliers Claus, Sept ’12)