Track of the week: Catgod - 'Sleep In'

Following a busy Summer of shows, including a slot at last weekend's Ritual Union festival in Oxford, our friends Catgod are back with a brand new tune, Sleep In, and it's our track of the week! Always fans of experimenting with new sounds, the group, which focuses around brother and sister duo Robin and Cat, have allowed the flute to take centre stage on this release. It's a slow-burning, dreamy track, and the harmonies of the duo are as beautiful as ever. You can download the release through their Bandcamp here - keep an eye out there for new Catgod t-shirts too!

Follow Catgod online - Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Track of the week: Catgod - 'Let Go'

Friends of Tigmus, Catgod, shared their latest EP online last week. Heartbeat in My Hand is a sublime collection of tracks - they're a band who aren't shy of experimenting with new sounds in order to find where they want to place themselves musically. For us, Let Go is a bit of a stunner and we're making it out track of the week, but please do take a listen to the full EP here on Soundcloud and Spotify!

Follow Catgod online - Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Gig of the week: Catgod at Ronnie Scott's TV Nights (5th June)

Our faves Catgod are venturing into London to perform at famous jazz venue Ronnie Scott's alongside Brinx, Diane Birch, Amy Lawton and Alice Auer for their TV Nights showcase. It's our gig of the week - find out more here (tickets all sold on the door.) We're loving the band's new version of their recent single Keep My Promises and can't wait to hear their upcoming EP...

Follow Catgod online - Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Track of the week: Catgod - 'Heartbeat In My Hand'

Our track of the week this week comes from our Oxford favourites Catgod, with their new single Heartbeat In My Hand, which premiered on The Line Of Best Fit last week. With the track focusing around Cat's soothing, almost ethereal vocals it is both gentle and magical. We love it! Catgod headline this Friday in London at The Islington (info here) before playing a free hometown headline at The Cellar in Oxford on 23rd June (info for that one here.)

Follow Catgod online - Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Gig of the week: Catgod and Holly Redford Jones at Surya, London (20th Dec)

With the festive season in full swing we've got our last couple of shows of the year coming up this week and our gig of the week is with three of our favourite artists playing a show for us in London! Catgod and Holly Redford Jones co-headline at Surya in King's Cross - they've both played many gigs for us and are two of our favourite live acts. With the beautiful Calÿpso opening up the night, it's sure to be a wonderful evening and we'd love to see some of you there! Check out our artists below and grab tickets for the gig here.

Track of the week: Catgod - 'Keep My Promises'

Our good pals Catgod are our track of the week this week with their crazy new tune Keep My Promises. It's their first new track since the beautiful Someone Love EP which was released over Summer, earning them acclaim from the likes of Lauren Laverne and helping to secure them slots at some great festivals. We're digging the new tune and can't wait to hear more... Catgod play for us at Surya in King's Cross on 20th December, co-headlining with Tig fave Holly Redford Jones and with Calÿpso opening up the night. Grab your tickets here (and don't forget the Santa hats.)

Follow Catgod online - Twitter | Facebook | Instagram.

Gig of the week: BBC Introducing Uprising at O2 Academy Oxford (22nd Sep)

Our gig of the week this week is a regular fixture in the Oxford music scene, with BBC Introducing bringing their night of new bands, Uprising, to the O2 Academy Oxford this Friday. With sets from Zaia, Lowws, Laura Theis, Catgod and Wandering Wires and a Zaia DJ set after the show all for £8 in advance it's a bargain and always worth heading along to catch budding talent in the city, including our faves Catgod who you should definitely catch live if you haven't yet (check a video from their performance at Sofar Sounds Winchester below!)

Here's the Facebook Event for the show which is this Friday (22nd September)!

Gig of the week: Catgod at The Harrison (27th July)

Our gig of the week is Tigmus faves Catgod as they play their London EP launch this week at The Harrison in King's Cross, following an Oxford EP launch and a set at Truck Festival over the weekend. Get down to the show for a funky night of quality tunes, with support coming from Laish and Anna McRae - an absolute bargain with £3 advance tickets available online - be sure to register your interest on the show's Facebook event here. Take a listen to the EP below, grab your dancing shoes and we'll see you on Thursday!

Tig Digs: Catgod - 'I'm Innocent'

Oxford musical collective Catgod have released I'm Innocent, a Talking Heads-esque track and the second of three which make up their upcoming Someone Love EP. While the title track (which you can listen to here) is busy getting radio play from Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 6, Tigmus's own Oli Steadman gave the new track its radio debut on Hoxton Radio last Friday, which you can listen back to here towards the end of the show.

We've all been digging I'm Innocent in the band's live performances that we've been lucky to catch over the first half of the year, including a support slot at our sold out Holly Redford Jones EP launch in Oxford and the secret opening slot in our Alt Escape stage at Brighton's Great Escape festival, and we're sure that audiences at Common People, Cowley Road Carnival and Tandem Festival to name a few have been enjoying their tunes too over the last few weeks! One of your next chances to catch them live is in London at their EP launch show at The Harrison, a folk venue in King's Cross, on Thurs 27th July - tickets here!

Track of the week: Catgod - 'Someone Love'

Our track of the week this week comes from one of our favourite Oxford bands, Catgod. After launching their debut record Ready When You Are with a busy launch show in Oxford back in December, they've been busy in 2017 working on a new EP and playing lots of shows, including supporting on our sold out Holly Redford Jones gig and opening up our stage at The Great Escape. The EP is set to be released in July (21st) and the title track Someone Love is out now - check out the premiere on Gigslutz here!

If you're in Oxford, Catgod have just announced that they'll be playing Truck Festival on the EP release weekend (21-23 July) as well as Happy Valley Festival and Tandem Festival in June - lots of other brilliant local Oxford acts at all three, so be sure to head along if you can, this summery tune is bound to go down extremely well at the festivals!

(c) Milly Cope

Follow Catgod online - Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Soundcloud.

Tigmus at The Great Escape Festival (May 2017)

A couple of weekends ago Team Tigmus headed down to not so sunny Brighton for The Great Escape, a 3-day festival with live music, conferences and all the free brunches and drinks parties our hearts could desire. As well as all this, we were there to run our own stage as part of the Alternative Escape at the wonderful North Laines Brewhouse on the Saturday, but first here's a little rundown of what we got up to on Thursday and Friday!

After kicking off the first day of the festival, a dreary rain-filled Thursday, with brunch at Dead Wax Social which had been taken over by the lovely folks at Music Glue, we caught a couple of panels at Duke's at Komedia for the drugs conference, including 'Music Making & Drug Taking'. A couple of us braved the rain and headed over to the Vevo stage at Wagner Hall to catch the end of Will Joseph Cook's stripped back set, which we followed up by a walk to Queen's Hotel on the seafront, where we dried off and caught one of my favourite sets of the weekend from Fil Bo Riva - check out his track Like Eye Did here. After fuelling up with burgers and catching up with the lovely Low Island chaps we caught some more live music from OUTLYA, The Amazons and another stand out act from the weekend - Leo Stannard, whose performance has already developed so much in the year since I last caught him playing.

Leo Stannard at Harbour Hotel

After drying out in our Airbnbs the sun came out (slightly) on Friday, and a couple of us headed to The Old Courtroom with Dazy Crown's Thomas for a really interesting talk hosted by PRS entitled 'Evolving as an artist with Marika Hackman' where Marika, her producer Charlie Andrew (Alt-J, Sivu), radio plugger Claire Collins and Tim Dellow from Transgressive were chaired by Radio 6 Music's Tom Ravenscroft, discussing her career as a musician and the work behind her second record, which is set to be released this Friday. It was really interesting getting an insight into just a small part of the team behind a musician and the different responsibilities that they all have!

Evolving as an artist with Marika Hackman panel at The Old Courtroom

This talk was followed by some great parties hosted by French organisation Oui Love (by bureau export), PRS for Music and Music Glue (with a Bear's Den DJ set, no less!) Once we'd taken a trip to the beach to make the most of the weekend's sun we headed to Komedia to catch MarthaGunn on my recommendation - thankfully the rest of the team enjoyed their set! They were opening up the Communion showcase and have since announced that they've signed to the label, so big congrats are in order! A perfect pairing if ever there was one. Once they'd finished, all our energies went into catching what we anticipated (rightly so) would be the stand out set of the weekend from our pals Low Island. It was a short walk away at Patterns and on the way we bumped into last year's Tigmus stage headliners Strong Asian Mothers who performed a card trick for us on the street... it was my first TGE personally, and a big highlight was all the friends and Tigmus alumni we bumped into across the weekend, walking with The Travelling Band's Jo to the venue and seeing Willie J Healey once we were there.

As we thought, Oxford's Low Island were pretty incredible and seem destined for great things... they've just spent the weekend playing at Dot To Dot Festival in Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham as well as stopping off at Oxford's Common People, and after a successful London show a couple of weeks back they're heading back for back-to-back shows at Corsica Studios in November, finishing up a UK tour, with lots of dates to be announced (tickets for those shows here.) Their latest release is the total tune That Kind of Love which you can check out on Soundcloud here! Once their set had finished we rushed back across town to see if we could get in to Komedia again to catch the Communion headliner, Dan Croll, and we got in just in time to catch his last track, From Nowhere - the perfect party tune. Look out for his new record Emerging Adulthood in July!

Low Island at Patterns

Suddenly Saturday had arrived and we fixed our lack of sleep with a delicious veggie breakfast from Wai Kika Moo Kau (if in Brighton we hugely recommend it) before heading to North Laines Brewhouse to kick off the afternoon session of our stage. From 12-4 we had the wonderful Catgod, Holly Redford Jones, Brudini, Neonomora, Hazey Jane and Valaire, and after a little break Pace, JYLDA, Bare Traps, The Fin., Gutxi Bibang and Little Brother Eli played us through til 11pm! After months of planning it was great to see the stage come together and to see lots of our favourite artists all in one day. The venue was really busy all day so huge thanks if you popped along for a set or two and helped to make it a great day - check out the Tigmus Instagram for photos from each set.

Be sure to also check out our album on Facebook for photos from across the weekend! After another brilliant and sold out show last week at Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre with Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and The Fusion Project we're going full steam ahead to Wesley Memorial Church (just round the corner in Oxford) for Sam Lee and Duotone today, 1st June (tickets). Keep an eye on the Tigmus site for full upcoming listings for the Summer!

Eight questions with Catgod

(c) Ian Wallman

1. Who are Catgod, and what does the change of name represent for the band? (a short introduction)

Catgod are a groove collective based in Oxford who combine trip-hop, jazz n’ soul with too many lead vocalists ;) It signifies us moving away from our previously more flamenco inspired sound(as Roberto y Amigos) and towards influences from more souly types like Otis Redding and darker types like Portishead and Massive Attack.

2. How long have you been making music together, and what have the highlights been so far?

Well we started writing for our album around a year ago now. We’ve been working on our live set together for around 4 months. Being played on BBC Radio 6 Music twice in one week was pretty exciting but it doesn’t top the look George and Henry give me when something goes wrong when we’re playing live…

3. Your debut record ‘Ready When You Are’ was launched just over a month ago with a really successful show at ODHHC, how does it feel to have the record out for people to listen to? Feel free to big up everybody who worked on the record and any interesting stories behind how you started playing together!

Personally I felt pretty relieved to get it out there. I think after you’ve released something you’ve been working on for a while, you feel like you a ready to move onto new things and realise it was taking away some of your energy. Think everyone felt kinda proud? Ggguys? Peeps who worked on the album were a mixture of friends from school and mates from other bands. I’ve been trying to steal George Purnell from his other band Homeplanetearth for years now…

4. As the gig in December was such a hit, for any artists reading this who might be looking to organise a show with Tigmus, or have one booked in already, do you have any tips for successfully self-promoting a gig?

It all starts with getting the people who you know to come along. If you make sure 50% of the people you’ve met and connected with are there on the night it’s a great way to get the ball rolling.

5. Who is your audience and how do you connect with your fans?

We connect via fresh dog and cat videos posted straight to our instagram site… https://www.instagram.com/catgodmusic - also signing up to our mailing list is a great way to hear about secret gigs and crazy cat inspired parties.

6. What would your dream gig look like? Are there any artists you’d love to play alongside, locally and further afield?

The dream would be to play atop the Sphinx to a small group of people who wanted to be that high too.

7. We’re looking forward to your support slot for us at the Holly Redford Jones EP launch in Feb - what kind of set can we expect at the show, and how will you be preparing for the evening? Any unique pre-show rituals?

We’ve been working on our group vocal chord warm ups… 1, 1 2 1, 1 2 3 2 1, 1 2 3 4 3 2 1… Know that one? You can expect hot chords, good bass and two drum kits…

8. What does the rest of 2017 hold for you?

We hope to be releasing some new music soon. Really excited to share it with everyone!

Catgod support Holly Redford Jones at her EP launch at Oxford's Fusion Arts on 18th Feb, alongside Calÿpso  - tickets here!