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Diary Dates

Soundhouse Summer Sessions – Every Saturday through the summer
The Soundhouse

The Summer Sessions are BACK. Enjoy live music outdoors on the city centre’s best outdoor stage. From 1-6pm every Saturday through the summer. Enjoy a mixed bill of local acts with some drinks in the sunshine. Free entry and all ages welcome..

Declan Welsh & The Decadent West – Friday 5 August
The Soundhouse

Music Venue Trust has teamed up with The National Lottery to help to #ReviveLive music in Grassroots Music Venues across the UK this summer with a fantastic line up of tours, one off events and special performances. And it’s all about bringing friends and communities back together. Don’t miss this brilliant Glasgow based indie rock band as they return to Leicester.

Gazelle – Saturday 6 August
The Soundhouse

Enjoy a Saturday night of proper rock ‘n’ roll with this energetic foursome from Leicester.

Ultimate Coldplay – Saturday 13 August
The Musician

Ultimate Coldplay are a live tribute to Coldplay, performing all the hits and more in a brilliant sound and look-a-like show.

Rakim – Saturday 13 August
2Funky Music Cafe

Universally acknowledged as one of the greatest MCs of all time within the hiphop community. When it comes to flow & depth on the mic, Rakim is virtually unparalleled. His flow is smooth and liquid, inflected with jazz rhythms and carried off with an effortless cool that makes it sound as though he’s not even breaking a sweat. He raised the bar for MC technique higher than it had ever been, helping to pioneer the use of internal rhymes.

The Mercians – Saturday 20 August
O2 Academy

The Mercians are a Midlands based, Indie band with influences like Catfish & The Bottleman and Sam Fender shaping their sound.

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INTERVIEW: Handmade Festival

Handmade Festival returns on Saturday 6 August as the popular music events goes back to its multi-venue city centre roots. With another brilliant line-up, we catch up with organiser, John Helps, about what to expect at this year’s event.

What can people expect from this year’s Handmade?

The essence of what Handmade has always been but distilled in to one day and some of Leicester’s best smaller venues. We’ve kind of gone back to how the event started – just amazing new music brought together by Firebug, The Cookie Presents and Robot Needs Home over three stages in the middle of the city. We want people to discover something new that they haven’t seen or heard before.

Who are some of your line-up must sees?

Personally I’m a huge fan of the new music Soot Sprite are putting out – sort of showgazey indie but with real depth – and a long time fan of Yr Poetry and Katie Malco who are both from different bits of the midlands and just have incredible songs – But everyone on the line-up this year is carefully hand picked by Nik Sharpe, Matt Kirk and Myself and we love every last one of them.

Handmade has changed format over the years, is it nice to be back in the city centre?

It’s changed through necessity every time – either because we out grew spaces or because of building work up at the university and that’s been tricky to manage – so yeah, it’s nice to be back in venues we know like the back of our hand in a manageable format which just lets us get one with it for the love of it.

What did you miss most about Handmade when it was away?

The community of Leicester music fans and friends who put it together, honestly. That was always my favourite part. A lot of those folks from the early years have gone on to work jobs in the music industry elsewhere and it’s really amazing to see them all grow and move away and even more incredible that some of them still come back to help us now.

How would you describe Handmade in 5 words?

Just great music in Leicester

Where can people buy tickets?

They can go to https://www.gigantic.com/handmade-tickets/leicester-various-venues-in-leicester/2022-08-06-12-00 – there are literally only a handful left.

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WEEKLY PLAYLIST

This week we’ve got a selection of artists that you can catch at Handmade Festival. Check out the line-up and plan your day.

Have a listen and get in touch to tell us which tracks you’re loving.