Audio

Five Manchester artists we’ve been listening to this month | November 2024

Another quintet of quality from the unofficial music capital of the word.

Danny Jones - 29th November 2024

Well, hello there; fancy seeing you all here – presume you’re waiting on another batch of new Manchester bands and artists you’ve not come across before?

Stupid question, of course you are. It’s the end of the month after all and that’s how we like to start the next one. Best foot forward and all that.

In case you happen to be new here, right about now is the time (as you’ve probably guessed from the title) that we round up five of the best musicians from in and around Greater Manchester that we’ve been listening to recently.

Let’s not muck about any longer, shall we?

Five Manchester bands and artists you should listen to

1. John Bramwell

His S-heavy voice cuts through so much this album in such a satisfying way.

First up on our list is John Bramwell, best known for his years with noughties alternative and indie band I Am Kloot, but he’s been enjoying his solo journey since 2016, and so have we. With his sophomore album released earlier this year, we finally found time to try it out – in a word: stunning.

Hailing from Hyde, the former frontman and guitarist released his standalone debut in 2017, but even before that he released a passion project under the name ‘Johnny Dangerously’ way back in 1989 entitled, You, Me and the Alarm Clock, once called “the best British album you’ve never heard” by The Guardian.

Suffice it to say, the 60-year-old has been on a long and winding road to becoming a straight-up singer-songwriter for some time now and it’s great to hear where his sound has got to. There’s a real 1960s and ’70s feel to a lot of it; we’d start with the title track, ‘It’s Just You’, and ‘I Am The Sky’, which shows a real range to those vocal tones.

2. Hollows

Second on our list of Manchester bands and artists for November is the alternative trio, Hollows, who after stumbling across a little while back we’ve now rediscovered following their release of their latest EP, Running With Scissors.

While it’s by no means heavy, they’re probably the most guitar-driven name on the list this month. We picked up bits of Placebo and even contemporary Smashing Pumpkins at times but, put most simply, they’re just a good rock band and we still think there’s a lack of those around these days.

Their newest stuff is undoubtedly their best but you’ve still got to start with ‘UV Lights’ in our opinion (simply because we did), but from there we’d encourage you’d move on to ‘History’ and ‘Talon’.

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3. Oldboy

Shifting over to electronic for a spell, our next nod goes to rising DJ and producer Oldboy. Named after the cult-hit film, his sound certainly carries over plenty of inspiration from movies and TV – and not just because he samples Brad Bitt in Seven on one of his tracks.

Born in York before spending his uni days in Sheffield and eventually landing here in Manchester a few years ago, the rising Northern star – real name Max Carter – does garage, dub and house best but there’s lots of variety on show. He also has his own record label, Front Toward Enemy.

With a catalogue dating back to 2021 and a versatility spanning so many sub-genres, not to mention a truly great selection of instant earworm sampled, he can pretty much turn his hand to anything provided there’s bass and some distortion involved. ‘Grab Di Mic’ is his latest, ‘Find Da Cure’ is a great intro and his ‘Got Yo $’ rightly went viral on TikTok a while back. Give him a spin.

Amidst all these new Manchester bands and lesser-known artists, Oldboy’s live sets are a nice change of pace.

4. The Recreation

Penultimately, we’ll quite literally keep effing and blinding until you listen to the fantastic local five-piece that is The Recreation, who have quickly become a bit of an obsession of ours. They released their second LP this past May and the only thing we’ve been listening to the same amount is their first.

To be completely honest, we’ve only really chimed with the stuff from 2020 onwards, but let’s just say we really struggled to pick our favourite tracks from the Oldham lads because we genuinely love all of it so much. That being said, if you had to push for once from each album, we’d go ‘Summertime 35s’ from their debut and ‘Call Me Back Sugar’ from Love In.

A really special shout-out also has to go to the extremely stripped-back spoken word track, ‘remember the future? interlude’, which delivers such matter-of-fact but surprisingly moving Northernisms that we really urge you to find a quiet corner in a dark room and just experience it. Big up The Rec.

couldn’t have done it without the wizardry of @thekaratesuit and a huge thanks to Ramin Bostan for providing the luscious trumpets you hear on track 6 ‘Kharhi’. Both amazing talents in their own right!

until the next one…
Love, ALWAYS.
THE REC ❤️‍🔥
— THE REC (@TheRecreation_) May 24, 2024

5. Montello

Last but not least are the whippersnappers of the bunch, local lads Montello who were recently got onto thanks to the Stanleys lads, who named this little four-piece one of the names helping fly the flag for the mini music hamlet of Wigan.

When we say young by the way, we’re talking no one much older than 17 in this promising little outfit but they’ve already got a style and a sound that gives the impression of a band that has been at this much longer than they have and there’s definitely some similarities to The Lathums, Stanleys and more.

It’s no-nonsense indie rock and you know we love a bit of that. Better production levels and even more confidence will come as they inevitably mature but, at the minute, they’ve got three tracks you have no excuse not to work through them all. The Wigan scene really is growing and we’re here for it.

They also happen to be playing our Audio North stage at Year’s End Festival next month, so we best see your there and listening to live!

And we’re sorry to say it but, once again, that’s all for another month.

We sincerely hope you give these fantastic Manchester-based bands and artists a go over the coming weeks and come back for more recommendations for our final edition of 2024 at the end of December.

What a great year it’s been for music, eh?

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Featured Images — Press Images (supplied/via Facebook)