Friday, 23 May 2025
Gate Kicks in The Big Issue!
Tuesday, 13 May 2025
METAL MADNESS reviewed in The Quietus!
Here are the paragraphs on Labake's album from the 'New Weird Britain' section by Noel Gardner:
There are 17 songs on the debut album by Labake Sabbath, but despite this relative glut and its variable styles, it flies by with a keen balance of emotion and humour, personal and political. It’s a window into the life of Labake, who makes music at The Gate in Shepherds Bush, London – an arts centre catering to the learning disabled community – where she’s been attending for about a decade and a half, and recorded Metal Madness over the last couple of years.There is little if any metal madness to be heard on it, but instead Labake and her band/production team triangulate synthpop, post punk and folk rock with a taste for trippy effects that sometimes blur these modes into one another. ‘It’s Not Easy’ and ‘Life Stinks’, two distinct flavours of private press-style synth heater, are perhaps this listener’s highlights, but don’t sleep on ‘Life And Struggle’ (proto-rap, no wavey funk bassline), ‘Rights’ (a demand for increased accessibility in public spaces set to a Messthetics-esque punk stroll) and ‘Sitting On The Dock Of The Gate’, one of two quasi-covers on here and which gives this soul staple a Young Marble Giants type do-over. Hearty recommendation!
Thanks to Noel Gardner for the review :)
Monday, 14 April 2025
SHREDDER: The Gate Art Show @ Fishtank Workshop
Monday, 24 February 2025
Andy Slaughter MP comes to The Gate
Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick, visited the Gate on Friday at 11am. Mandy asked him questions about benefits, social care, day centres and a few other things.
He said the government was going to make new policies on benefits and suggested The Gate could respond to the 'green paper'.
He said Hammersmith and Fulham council don't charge for social care but they're the only borough where that's true. He said that it was better not to charge.
Andy said he was concerned about day centres closing and said he was working locally with the council to help community groups keep control of their premises. He was interested to learn about The Gate's funding situation.
Mandy asked him why we had to pay for Liz Kendall's second home. He said some MPs had to come from far away.
Andy said Mandy had given him a good grilling and at about noon he had to leave to meet local business owners and explain to them why Labour had raised business rates.
Thanks to Andy for coming.
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
METAL MADNESS by Labake Sabbath CD release
METAL MADNESS by Labake Sabbath is released on CD and Bandcamp today! Featuring Labake's songs mostly from 2023 and 2024, recorded at The Gate.
https://thegate54.bandcamp.com/album/metal-madness