‘Like a Lie’ follows the release of debut single ‘Faith’ in early 2017, which reached artist of the week on BBC Radio 1 including plays from Huw Stephens, Greg James and Scott Mills, the latter who proclaimed, “this sounds amazing” and second single ‘Hands’ released in September. 

Speaking about ‘Like A Lie ’ James explains “‘Like a Lie’ is a song about a dark spell with certain substances and how they can make you feel great but also the realisation that it makes you feel much worse and like you are wasting all of your time. It is a hard one because the song is basically saying “look you know this is bad for you so why the fuck are you still doing it” in a round about way. It really comes back to that little self destruct button that so many people have and it’s acknowledging that it does exist and it’s hard to make the right decisions that will make your life better for longer not better for an hour. There is a lot of soul searching going on around this time and a lot of regrets, but this is how it was and you can’t escape that. It has made me who I am now, regardless of how happy or unhappy I am. It is weird sometimes to know that you can pin point it back to a few points in your life clearly, the only problem with that is that I felt like I kept reliving those mistakes over and over even though I had moved on from that in a way.”

Going on to speak about what influences, James says, “My influences are the feelings that I feel. I don’t like to say that I am, influenced by bands because I think there is a lot more to music than sounding like other people. It is an expression of how I feel and think and I can’t pin it down to one particular style.”

{soundcloud}https://soundcloud.com/whoisalexanderjames/05-like-a-lie-alex-partington-may-2016-mixes-a/s-HiXDz{soundcloud}

The momentum continues for Bristol punks Idles, who follow raucous shows at Reading & Leeds, selling out Village Underground in just a few hours and supporting Foo Fighters at The O2 with the announcement of their biggest headliner yet at London's Heaven on April 19. They will also play Manchester's Gorilla the night before on the 18.

This year's Brutalism LP received considerable attention on its release and this alongside their incendiary live shows have garnered them a growing fan base ever since. Jeremy Vine is among their admirers, they’re in Radio 6’s albums of the year, they were 33-1 for the Mercury Prize at Ladbrokes ahead of announcement and they had the biggest crowd of the whole weekend on The Lake Stage at Latitude where they also performed a secret set for the BBC, also rammed, directly after at the Introducing stage.

As well as their own headlining tour, the band have performed dates with Dead Kennedys, DIIV and were The Maccabees special guests at all three of their final shows at Alexandra Palace.They’ve not been hurt by a succession of brilliant music videos either. Take a watch of their recent video for ‘Mother’, where front man Joe Talbot proceeds to destroy a table full of china, piece by piece.