My most watched band of the year was Public Service Broadcasting, but as usual British Sea Power featured heavily along with a new band, Black Honey.

January was busier than in previous years featuring a number of new bands such as the fun Hinds, Tamun Shud, Jagarra and Saint Agnes. The highlight of the month was the postponed British Sea Power ‘Sea Of Brass’ concert at the Barbican.

February featured some excellent sets by Thurston Moore, Honeyblood, Peace and Public Service Broadcasting. I also caught new bands such as Dolomite Minor, Ex Hex and Songhoy Blues. The highlight was a visit to Leicester’s National Space Centre for Public Service Broadcasting’s album launch gig.

March proved to be a very busy month. Lots of new bands, some excellent, such as Courtney Barnett, Kid Wave, The Lovely Eggs, and a rather amazing group of Spanish teenagers, Mourn. It was also a chance to catch Bo Ningen being their usual expressive selves. The Staves also were sublime. February also featured two of the worst band of the year, Madonnatron and Giant Swan.

April featured some excellent sets from Wolf Alice, Saint Agnes, PROM, Nadine Shah, Saint Saviour and Jagarra, Laura Marling, PINS, Drenge. I also reappraised Bloody Knees who seem to have improved since I last saw them. Highlight was the Lock Tavern’s Easter freebie gigs with a whole host of excellent bands.

May looks quiet on paper. Only 12 gigs. In reality, I hardly had a free evening as two of those ‘gigs’ were The Great Escape festival and my first visit to Primavera Sound. As you can imagine, this meant I saw lots of bands, too many to run through. New band highlights were Black Honey and Torres.

As if it was possible, June was even busier than May, with 25 gigs during the month. From a gig in a Catalonia cathedral, to favourites such as British Sea Power, it was a varied month. Highlights were Blur, Coathangers, Torres, Savages, Sea of Bees, Wolf Alice. But the best gig of the month was British Sea Power at the Roundhouse celebrating the 12th anniversary and re-release of the ‘Decline of British Sea Power’.

July and August are ‘Classical’ months as the BBC Proms start. It’s also the time when bands seem to disappear off to festivals so there’s less happening around London. So both months were pretty quiet. July’s highlight was the Savages and Dead Forest Index’s Barbican ‘sound space’ and in August, Girl Band, a band who’s impressed me throughout 2015.

September was back to normal with some excellent sets by Torres, Drinks, Bo Ningen, Kid Wave, Kingsley Chapman and the Murder, Baba Naga, and Sexwitch. There was also a new mini (free) festival near Kings Cross from the Green Man Festival featuring some excellent bands. Hopefully, it will happen again next year. Highlight of September was Torres. Her Scala gig one of my highlights of the year.

In October I made my first ever visit to Butlins. They’d put together their own new indie festival , Rockaway Beach. It was pretty good. The line-up featuring lots of bands I didn’t know and some were excellent, such as the Band of Holy Joy, Membranes, John Knox Sex Club, Ghostpoet, Telescopes. Definitely something I’ll consider going to again.

November I managed to catch the Eagles of Death Metal. With the attacks in Paris a week after the London gig, it left many of us regular gig goers in reflective mood. They’re such a fun band that it somehow makes it worse. That they of all bands, were attacked. If you want any doubt of what kind of world ISIS wants to create, go to an EODM gig. The fun and joy they want to create, is the antithesis of what ISIS stands for and I for one know which world I want to live in. Other highlights were FEWS, Bully, Kingsley Chapman and Josh T Pearson.

December closed off the year in pretty good style with Christmas gigs from Josh T Pearson and British Sea Power and an excellent set from Queen Kwong. But there was also a surprise in the form of the Savages playing a relatively small venue in advance of the January launch of their new album. They are just such an impressive live band.

Best gig: Torres at Scala

I was really tempted to give the gig of the year to British Sea Power’s Roundhouse gig. It was an amazing gig for fans. But this year Torres has impressed me more than anyone else. Her album is sublime and her Scala gig with her full band was just amazing. She’s such an expressive singer so her album’s emotional numbers seemed to take an extra dimension when played live. At times you feel like putting an arm round her to comfort her, other times, almost scared that she’s about to go ‘psycho’!

Band of the year: Torres

I’ve seen her play on her own on a big stage at Primavera and also with her band at Scala and she’s equally impressive.

Best new band: Black Honey

Technically, 2015 was the first time I saw Torres. But I loved her first album and missed her 2014 tour. But as she’s won best band, I’m choosing a second band, Black Honey, as my new band of the year. I’d not heard much from them before I saw them at the Great Escape. I’ve since seem them four other tines. I think that says it all. They’re such a good live band and I’m looking forward to seeing them record and album in 2016. Definitely worth catching them live.

Best venue: Moth Club

A very late entry. I’ve only been twice and on consecutive nights at the end of November. The Moth Club is an old Services Club in Hackney and they’ve turned the function room into a gig venue. It’s a bit odd but that’s part of what I liked about it. They’ve created a great little venue. Yes it’s tacky with sparkly roof and lots of Service memorabilia on the walls. But I really liked it.

Best Festival: The Great Escape

Primavera was enjoyable but too big for me. I’d do it again because Barcelona is a lovely place to visit. Rockaway Beach was surprisingly good and I’m definitely going to consider going again. It was far better than I expected but it has some operation issues to sort out. It wasn’t too busy (which is a good thing in many ways) but this meant that outside of festival hours the place was dead and much of the Butlins site shut. With Bognor being pretty much dead in October, there’s little to do. So this doesn’t compare well to Brighton’s The Great Escape, where there’s more than enough to do if there’s a lull in the festival line-up. So for this reason, The Great Escape wins.

Worst Venue: Lock Tavern

Oddly, they put on a decent weekend at Easter. But it’s just too crowded. The venue is actually a through-room to the roof garden. So it’s really not a conducive space for a gig as there’s always people pushing by.  

Best gig photo: Black Honey at the Garage

I’ve already written about my favourite photos of the year. My favourite photo of the year was this photo of Black Honey taken with my pocket camera.

Album of the Year: Sprinter from Torres

‘Sprinter’ by Torres narrowly edged out ‘Holding Hands with Jamie’ by Girl Band.

January

I chose this photo as my favourite from the month. It was a photo of the FAUNS playing Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen.

But I also liked a few I took at the Hinds gig. They’re a fun band and I think these photos capture the atmosphere of their performances.

February

I love crowd surfing photos. I rarely catch good ones as I’m usually using a pocket camera. But this one came out okay.

Public Service Broadcasting featured heavily this year. But because of their stage setup, I didn’t get many great photos of them. But this one I thought came out really well.

March

My best photo from March was a mini technical triumph. The Spectres played in near darkness at the Lexington. With only a pocket camera it was a challenge to capture anything. But using the flashes of some of the photographers with big flash guns and my camera set to long exposures, I managed to capture a few ‘ghostly’ images of the band.

Another photo where I was pleased to get something despite the limitations of the technology I had with me. A room filled with smoke and back lit, isn’t easy to photograph.

I also photographed a Daylight Music in March and managed to get some reasonable shots, this one I quiet like

Bo Ningen are interesting to photograph because they always put so much energy into their performances. I took quite a few decent photos at their Hoxton show.

April

At the time I thought April was a bit of a poor month for photos. But looking back, despite my position in the crowd for the Wolf Alice gig, I managed to get some interesting shots. But this shot of Saint Saviour was the photo I selected as photo of the month.

But I think if I’d spent some time processing these Wolf Alice gigs, these could have come out better than they did.

I noticed later in the year that the band had posted this photo to Facebook, generating a massive amount of likes. I suspected it was more for the singer than the photo

May

May featured lots of gigs, the Great Escape Festival and Primavera. But as often happens at festivals, I was limited by my position. So I didn’t get many decent shots. I gave the photo of the month to a shot of God Damn. Loking back, I’m not sure if this was the best shot. I think shots of Baby Godzilla were better. I think at the time, I was impressed that I’d managed to a get a shot of a band member in the crowd at the Shacklewell using a pocket camera.

But looking at these Baby Godzilla photos, I think these are better shots.

And despite the limitations of my pocket camera, there were also some decent shots from the Great Escape

June

June saw a good few chances to take some interesting photos as I saw a number of my favourite bands who always put on good shows. My photo of the month was this one of the British Sea Power gig. There were quiet a few decent shots taken at this gig, despite being limited to a pocket camera.

Bo Bingen who provided support, also provided a number of decent photo opportunities

The BSP B-Side’s special in-store gig a few days later also provided lots of opportunities to capture interesting photos.

The Field Day Festival featured several bands I’d seen before. One, Spring King hadn’t impressed me on a big stage a the Great Escape but on a small stage they were so good to photograph 

For some reason, the Lexington has been a difficult place to photograph this year. They have the lighting, but just don’t seem to want to use it. So I’ve struggled whenever I’ve photographed bands using only my pocket camera. But I liked this photo of Kikagaku Moyo relaxing before playing.

The local Rhythms of the World festival was also a decent opportunity to capture some reasonable images from the crowd

I also love these images of Wolf Alice and the mosh pit at Rough Trade! Something I never expected to see.

Another shot with a pocket camera that came out remarkably well and has been used by Daylight Music of their most recent flyer was a shot of a dancer at a Daylight Music in June

I also took some nice shots of the Riddles at the Shacklewell.

July

August

August was a quiet month with a switch away from indie to classical so photo opportunities were scarce. It didn’t help that the gig I did have, was at the Lexington with it’s eversion to lighting. So I gave the monthly award to this photo. Taken without a flash, it’s ‘grimyness’ I felt reflected Girl Band.

September

September was a busy month and a pretty decent month for photos. I gave the monthly award to this photo of Black Honey, but there were numerous other photos that could have won this month.

Bo Ningen headlined Stolen Records Anniversary gig and as usual provided ample opportunities to get some great shots.

Kingsley Chapman is always good to photograph and his gig in September was no exception.

Torres, possibly my artist of the year, also played in September and put on a good show

Despite only being two of them, the Picturebooks were also really interesting to photograph

October

Another busy month and some reasonable photos. I thought this photo of VANT’s young crowd captured the enthusiasm of their fans.

Black Honey have been one of my favourite bands to photograph this year. Great band with an expressive lead singer

November

My favourite photo from November was from a Daylight Music session. I was using a 30 year old manual focus lens and managed to get loads of interesting lens flare.

December

This shot of the lead singer of BSP on drums was my photo of December, but there were several good shoots during December. A new camera contributing to the improved quality as it’s capability in low light is so impressive that even the poor lighting in the Lexington offered little resistance.

My Top Photo

My favourite photo of the year was this one of Black Honey. I just love the colours and the expression on Izzy’s face.

New bands are in italics

Bands I liked:
Josh T Pearson, Savages, James McVinnie, Dronningen, Shopping, The Wharves, Queen Kwong, Pictish Trail, Kid Canaveral, Tough Love, Seamus Fogarty, British Sea Power, Jock Scott, Serac, Clowwns, Membranes, Battery Hens, FAWN, Evelinn Trouble

Bands I didn’t dislike:
Jono McCleery, HART, Mara Carlyle, Liam Byrne, Kay Reyes, Jennylee, Loom, The Carnabys, Exit Black, GAPS, Go Go Cult, Inca Babies, The Golden Dregs. GANG, The Graphite Set

Bands I won’t be going out of my way to see again:
Little Pebbles, Man With Feathers, Echo Parade, Nocturne

Best gig:
There were several great gigs this month. Josh T Pearson playing a Christmas gig in the small Rough Trade West and British Sea Power celebrating Christmas in energetic style were both enjoyable gigs. Queen Kwong was close to being the best gig. She put on an excellent show at the Barfly. But with the Savages showcasing new material and playing a small venue, it felt pretty special.

Best new band:
Tiny small venues can work in the favour of bands. In this case, Dronningen’s energy level was impressive. Definitely a band I’ll catch again.

Albums of the month:

• The Glass Trunk – Richard Dawson
• Monastic Living – Parquet Courts
• City Lake – Bing and Ruth

Best photo: