You can now see The Half Rabbits’ recent MTV short film by clicking here. The band recently made it through to the semi-finals of MTV’s Get Seen Get Heard competition, which is run alongside Oxfam’s Oxjam - we’ll be following the band’s progress further in the competition here on the site.

The Audioscope charity festival last November raised a total of £1,200 for national homelessness and bad housing charity Shelter, taking the total raised to well over £16,000. Last year’s show was headlined by Kraftwerk and Neu! legend Michael Rother (pictured), and previous Audioscope shows have brought performances from Four Tet, Explosions in the Sky, Damo Suzuki, Clinic, Luke Vibert, Deerhoof, Electrelane, Oxes and many more. The organisers will be announcing plans for Audioscope08 shortly.

In 2002, Audioscope released a compilation CD featuring tracks from Cat On Form, Nøught, Pram, eeebleee, Souvaris, Fighting Red Adair, Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element, Dustball, Appliance, and Meanwhile, Back In Communist Russia… A few copies of this have been unearthed in a recent clearout, and they’re free to good homes on a first-come, first-served basis. Just email them if you’d like one - donations to Audioscope or Shelter in return are welcomed.

Here is a video of ‘February Snow’ from The Winchell Riots’ show at The Wheatsheaf on 12 April. Happy viewing.

This week’s MP3 download is ‘Forever’ by The Gullivers - if you click right here, you can download it and listen to it.

Do you remember, ‘The Slaughtered Lamb’? For those with weak stomachs, it was the most unfriendly pub in Yorkshire, into which the ill-fated Yank hill-walkers strayed in ‘An American Werewolf in London’. Hopefully the welcome will be warmer for late-of-Oxford eight-piece Captive State when they take up their residency at the Farringdon branch of that establishment. They certainly deserve one.

Their current EP opens splendidly with ‘Mona’, a tune which can only be described as groove-based folk-pop. Is this a new genre? Perhaps, although there are echoes of The Super Furry Animals in there. Oh, and the producer is Lemon Jelly’s Nick Franglen, so the credibility levels are already pretty damn high. Captive State’s secret weapon is their horn section, which blows a lovely blowsy wind over the track. Warning! Hippy-haters should beware, as the lyrics are unapologetically of the ‘peace-out, man’ variety, and there is even what I call a ‘Send for Ravi’ moment, in which a sitar player takes a solo. Possibly the only misstep in a complex and wonderful piece of work.

Dave Gilyeat and Tim Bearder single-handedly justified the licence fee when they played the next track, ‘China White Doll’ on their BBC Oxford local music show last week. Imagine if Scott MacKenzie, instead of getting in a load of San Franciscan stoners to record his hymn to the city, had instead enlisted the Bilston Glen Colliery Band: hopefully this barmy idea gives a flavour of the unearthly gloriousness of this track. Ambitious, tender, passionate, timeless and brilliantly paced, this is the love song in epic form, culminating in an almost Schubertian piano coda. Quite simply, the opportunity to hear music like this is why I write reviews.

The remaining two tunes are pretty decent but don’t reach the level of the first two. ‘Weatherman’ starts with some annoying chirpy noises that sound like a saw put through an octaviser, before a rather unremarkable folk-rock number emerges. Think Kasabian fronted by The Beta Band’s Steve Mason. (Actually, don’t. It’s rather an unappetising prospect). Franglen does his best with various bleeps, bloops and loops, but he can’t hide the essential ordinariness of the tune. ‘Lost’ starts prettily enough with more lazy-day hippy-dippy vocals, before launching egregiously into a straightforward Robert Palmer-flavoured rocker that might have been in Patrick Bateman’s album collection in ‘American Psycho’. Actually, bombing down the M5 on the way to Devon, I quite enjoyed it as cruising-music, but then again, so would Jeremy Clarkson.

These reservations aside, Captive State have managed two brilliant numbers on a four-song EP, which promises much for the full album. I would recommend anyone to take a trip to Farringdon (two Fs, regrettably) to see them, but if the locals start telling jokes about the Alamo, to promptly scarper.

Captive State Myspace

By Colin MacKinnon.

This week’s free MP3 is ‘Motorway To Moscow’ by local kraut-pop robots Space Heroes of the People - click here and it’s yours to treasure forever.

Worthless musical revisionist Mark Ronson is amongst the big names confirmed for this year’s Wakestock festival on 27-29 June at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock. Other stars confirmed for the summer bash are former Truck headliners The Futureheads, Pendulum, Lightspeed Champion, Ty, Groove Armada, The Streets, Hadouken and local heroes Supergrass and The Young Knives. Tickets for Wakestock, which celebrates the cult watersport of wakeboarding, cost £110 for weekend with camping, £85 for weekend without camping and £40 for a day ticket. For more information, have a look here.

Blood Red Shoes, the band formed by former Oedipus and Cat On Form man Steve Ansell, took part in a photo shoot in Oxford for Love Music Hate Racism, along with local stars Mr Shaodow, Bethany Weimers and Pete and Charlie from InLight.

‘If you’re drinking Southern Comfort, you’re coming with us. If you’re on the Red Bull, you’re going to be disappointed.’ Richard Catherall of Gappy Tooth Industries is explaining how this week’s Gappy Tooth night is going to become more chilled-out as it progresses.

Mind you, it isn’t difficult to be more chilled out than David K Frampton. His experimental electronica cranks the intensity up to 11 within seconds of his getting on stage, and it just gets louder and dirtier from there. Animated artwork from Collective Era provides some much-needed light and shade, but really the performance is just one man and his frenzied bellowing. He gathers an intensely appreciative mini-crowd, but when he pauses mid-set and says “I’m not finished”, a voice from behind me yells “We are!”

Toupe are a sorbet to cleanse the palate, which is a polite way of saying they’re very silly, interspersing songs with jokes and dodgy hip-hop covers. Bassist Grant keeps the one-liners coming, although he gets fed up with the surprisingly muted response to his banter and by the end of the show is reduced to making Inspector Morse jokes in an attempt to find something an Oxford crowd will react to. By popular vote their music is declared to be “smut-funk”.

The Mile High Young Team have a lot to follow, but they’re relaxed and assured. The set is a mixture of new material and songs from the Distance Between Them EP. Newie “Becalmed” is a cracker, lyrical sea metaphors melding perfectly with the ocean-like rhythms. (As an aside, I’ve never understood why a band so lyrically linked to water is called the Mile High Young Team.)

It’s a set that sees the band on top form, despite the absence of their cellist. The chemistry between the six members on stage translates into a lovely, chilled-out experience for the rest of us in the room.

It seems that the guy from Gappy Tooth was right: the night did get more chilled out as it went on. The atmosphere at the Wheatsheaf suggests that most people took the Southern Comfort option and came right along with it.

By Kate Griffin

Tuesday (1 April) sees the launch of new local music magazine Oxfordshire Music Scene - the magazine will be distributed throughout shops and venues across the county and will be available free. The team behind the magazine celebrate with a launch gig at the Jericho on 1 April, featuring first issue cover stars Little Fish, plus Not My Day, The Moneyshots and Baby Gravy.