We have asked two of our favourite guitar-pop bands to help curate an all day party in Leeds at the Brudenell Social Club.

In part an excuse to celebrate the release of Personal Trainer's brand new album on Bella Union, and similarly Bull's great 2nd record 'Engines Of Honey' (which landed at the beginning of the year), but also just to celebrate celebrating with friends at the end of our summer.

Personal Trainer

If you like pop music to keep you on your toes, Amsterdam’s Personal Trainer provide that service fulsomely on their second album. Essentially the project of Willem Smit (working with co-producer/collaborator Casper van der Lans) on record and a band live, Personal Trainer showed a facility for DIY indie-pop exuberance and experiment in sync with 2022’s debut, Big Love Blanket. Now signed to Bella Union, Willem returns re-energised with Still Willing, a multi-faceted album of shining contrasts and spry melodies, bursting arrangements and subliminal sounds, playful lyrics and self-reflection: in short, a pop album executed with dynamism, vim and charm.

As Willem says, this is a record fuelled by its extremes: sometimes energetic and loud, sometimes quiet and thoughtful, always full of hidden pleasures. “When I listen to the records I make, the main thing I hope is that every time something happens on them, you’re like, ‘Wow.’ I like to be taken by surprise like that on a record, to kind of be thrown around.”

Willem is the epicentre of the band, which originated from impromptu and exhilarating live shows featuring ever-shifting members of different local bands sharing a bustling stage. The live line-up has solidified somewhat but Willem still welcomes the contrast with his recorded work: “When I make the record, it’s me calling the shots. But I can’t tell everyone exactly what to do every second when we’re on stage. There’s, like, shakers flying around or instruments being thrown all over the place, so I don’t have the capacity to control that. And that’s really exciting to me.”

The band consists of Willem Smit (vocals) Kilian Kayser (percussion), Leon Harms (drums), Mart Boumans (guitar/sax), Franti Maresova (guitars), Ruben van Weegberg (bass), and Abel Tuinstra (keys/synths).

Press:

'A triumph of creative soundcraft, knitting together samples, studio trickery, and towering hooks.'
Under The Radar

'Cushily familiar yet riotously unique; pantomiming and compelling.'
So Young Magazine

'Dutch indie-rockers expertly juggle with pathos, clatter and Malkmus-esque deadpan.'
MOJO

Bull

Formed by vocalist and songwriter Tom Beer and guitarist Dan Lucas, Bull’s mission is simply to make the music they wanted to listen to, inspired by their 90’s heroes such Pavement, Yo La Tengo and the Pixies. The rest of the band came together through a mix of friendships and happenstance. Drummer Tom Gabbatiss joined after he and Tom jammed together in bars while they were back-packing round Thailand, and Kai West had previously used to jump up on stage with the band and “Bez” (verb meaning to dance badly while intoxicated) before they eventually let him play bass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cctAv1FZTU8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQp1diI21Vk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cctAv1FZTU8

Captain Starlet

Drawing on a range of influences from the power pop of the early 1970s and the DIY approach of Postcard Records groups such as Josef K, to contemporaries such as Tim Presley and H. Hawkline, Captain Starlet haul the past into the future. They are formed out of deep roots - Tom Carroll (guitar/vox) and Sam Festenstein (bass) have both been in bands together since the early 2010s whilst Cameron Baker (drums) and Ethan Carroll (guitar) have also been playing in York’s thriving music scene for a number of years. This connection and camaraderie forms the basis of a memorable live set, with which they have already supported Bull, Willie J. Healey, and Snapped Ankles.

https://safesuburbanhomerecords.bandcamp.com/album/family-tree-love-is-…

Bumble B Boy

Bumble B. Boy is a fast-emerging art-punk artist and failed children's entertainer, pushing boundaries and pulling in shocked, awe-struck crowds with his unique blend of theatrics, storytelling and electric punk energy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9j9riqDPIw

Autocamper

With enough melancholic charm and a cardigan collection that would make even Stephen Pastel blush, Autocamper are the perfect pop tonic to Manchester’s predictable post-punk machismo. Like a Northern kitchen sink rendering of The Vaselines’ call and response motif, vocal duties are shared by Jack Harkins and Niamh Purtill – their wide-eyed reflections on unrequited romances, bedroom tiffs and hungover misdemeanors effortlessly retrofits the jangle pop sounds of
the ‘80s without the C86 revisionism; think Sarah Records-era The Wake fused with the shambling, melodic impulse of McCarthy and The Close Lobsters, but with one foot always firmly in the present.

Music for a new generation of the melody hungry and overstimulated, Autocamper make the everyday gorgeous, conjuring images of rain droplets pouring down bus windows on a grey sigh-ridden, pedestrian Sunday, or waiting in line at a service station the morning after the night before, lukewarm pasty in hand.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4A81Q5VArMNNHeERStPXYx?si=Jap3TYNnSv-hU…

Keenan Mundane

When Dutch rapper/producer Keenan Mundane grabs the mic, there’s no choice but to listen. Inspired by the sounds of artists such as JPEGMAFIA, Earl Sweatshirt, and MF DOOM, Mundane chews up his influences and spits them back at us, repackaged as something entirely his own. His story began on debut mixtape "Treasures of the Mundane" in 2021, in which the country and the world were introduced to his chilling lyricism and tenacious instrumentals. It is, however, only starting, as Keenan continues to explore the unexpected in the mundane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kBceBwX0eQ

Rowan & Friends

Rowan Evans is a left-field singer-songwriter from Coventry who moved to York a few years ago and is on a mission to keep the city’s live music scene diverse and interesting hosting a great monthly sessions and left field gig promotions.

The 2024 album ‘Rock N Roll Super Powers’ showcased their wordy, ramshackle rock with a folk-ish noir slant, heartfelt at times and with tongue in cheek wit at others. Not a million miles from the soul’s of Richard Dawson, John Darnielle, Jeff Magnum and our hero David Berman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PC1IER4le8