Gigs? We regularly recommend upcoming gigs via the beautiful no messing thing that is London gig listing site LondonGigs.net. We like London gigs, there’s no messing, no tribute band clutter, no comedy or yoga classes, no getting annoyed as you roll the dice and try to find some actual bands and who might be playing this week, just a basic no messing well released gig guide, it is the nearest thing to the back page gig listings of the inkie press back in the day and so today, LondonGigs is our thing of the day and here’s three gigs that we are recommending over there on LondonGigs in the coming days…

4th February – TEST PLAN / MARTIAL ARTS / FRANCIS PIG / SAM ABBO at Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Dalston FREE  – “Well London’s Test Plan sound rather urgent in the best ways and where have you gone gone gone? I guess we’d call them a post-punk band who need to be somewhere other than wherever they are. The singer sounds like it matters, that he needs to not be eating the wrong flavoured fruit”.

Manchester’s Martial Arts are a little more restrained and caught behind a trail of regret, they sound like the right band to be sharing the back room of a London boozer with Test Plan, they sound rather accomplished and the sound like it might be a rather rewarding double-headed monster of a gig. Hang on though, Francis Pig are on the bill as well, they’re a bit tasty in a no messing attitude-drenched kind of rock n’roll way while Sam Abbo opens things and all for free in a rather decent venue…”  

10th February –  SUNFLOWERS at Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Dalston, E8 2EB, 7.30pm, FREE – “They’re not doing anything revolutionary, they probably don’t want to, what they’re doing is making some kind of urgently raw wired up jagged Devo-flavoured psychedelic garage thing that should make lovers of Frankie And The Witchfingers rather happy…” Find a review of the most recent Sunflowers album here – ORGAN: Albums, albums, albums – Ida The Young, I’m Being Good, Sunflowers, Sterbus, Alto Aria, Kylver and…  

14th February – FAETOOTH / COLTAINE at The Garage, 20-22 Highbury Corner, London, N5, The self-declared “fairy-doom trio from Los Angeles” are in town as part of a UK tour. “Not sure about the fairy bit but the three woman do play some rather atmospheric, rather deliciously doomy slow-moving rather forceful low-end gothy metal…

Last year’s album Labyrinthine was and is a web of darkness that takes all the time it needs to wrap itself around you. Dark riffs, big ones that suggest Faetooth’s UK tour is not to be missed… Faetooth Garage Tickets / Bandcamp / Linktree

Support to Faetooth at the Garage comes from Germany’s rather magnificently moody Coltaine, sounds like a well matched bill to us. Here’s Coltaine’s 2025 album; “exciting and diverse microcosms of dark, atmospheric psychedelia whose feeling is that of foggy, post metal-tinged acid rock with the sombre hues of blackgaze” so they say, how much more black sound it be? Looks to be an excellent double bill to us…. Bandcamp