Big Huge New Circle at The Sebright Arms, London, 29th March 2025 – There’s a natural flow here, an easy chemistry, Cambridge band Big Huge New Circle’s early moves feel right. Sure, they’re clever, accomplished, yes they can certainly play but none of it feels forced, more importantly none of it feels forced on us. Their tightly-woven knit feels naturally right from the off tonight when it could so easily have been awkwardly unengaging. If anything then Big Huge New Circle were a joy, just five friends making music together and yes it will come up again and again so we’ll get it out of the way right now, they do sound like a little like Radiohead (or maybe The Smile), in a very positive way though, a thing that does make you smile rather than scoff, actually they bare as much a relation to Chicago’s deliciously deceptive Cheer Accident with that blend of progressive warmth, jazz trumpet and those notions of art rock as they do anybody else and at this obviously early stage of the band’s life they already have more than enough of their own in there to keep tonight’s attentive audience focussed on them.

There’s progressive bite in there with those trumpet flavoured jazz undertones and that already knowing chemisty, with that tight interplay and musical personality, with the colour of the players and the way they work so well together, in those bass lines and the fact than none of them have any need to show off or force their obvious ability on us. This is fun, this is great and if they want it, then there’s something rather special potentially happening here, something rather worth keeping an eye on, those details really do thrill…

We’re in this dark pub basement and watching a set played mostly to what I’m guessing are the band’s mates, they’re going down rather well and I couldn’t care less about musicianship or how they actually put this all together, there’s other people around here who might get excited about time signatures and notions of whatever, I just need it to sound good, to sound right, to flow in the gorgeous way this does, I just need it to engage. There’s none of the chatter the previous band were subject to, no one is making holiday plans with their annoying hipster mates while Big Huge New Circle are on stage, everyone’s attention held, silence while the five of them play, cheers and joy after each fine piece of music. And it is fine music, no filler here, Daylight Saving is introduced as a new song, things are clearly progressing in the right way, properly progressing as it were, things feel extremely good in here, a new band to get a little bit excited about. Twenty Four hours ago we hadn’t heard of them, discovered as the result of that habit of quickly jumping on line and checking out the bands playing free gigs in places like the Sebright, the Old Blue Last, the Shacklewell Arms and such to see if there is anything worth checking out, a habit and a curiousity that took us down the Hackney Road last Saturday evening to see if there was more than the rather impressive early moves found online, there was. New musical encounters like this is why this Organ thing still goes on, this is why we do it, go see this band when you can… (sw) 

To be continued, the next Big Huge New Circle gig is 20th April, at East London’s Old Blue Last, free entry again. Watch this space (and of course they were straight on to the Other Rock Show and Resonanace FM)

Bandcamp / Linktree / Spotify