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New decade, new look: IQ 88 out now

IQ Magazine is back with a revamped look, compact design, additional content and brand new features for its 88th edition, which is available to read online now.

A special edition asks for special content and IQ #88 does not disappoint, with the issue’s main feature celebrating IQ’s Agent of the Decade, Rod MacSween.

Having sold more tickets internationally in the past ten years than any other agent, and with a roster boasting the likes of Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Guns N’ Roses, Def Leppard, the Who, Christina Aguilera, Kiss, Black Sabbath, and many more, MacSween is a veritable legend of the industry. The anecdotes, interviews and testimonials appearing in IQ 88 are testament to the super agent’s past and present success.

With the 32nd International Live Music Conference just around the corner – now just a week away! – this edition of IQ Magazine provides a full agenda guide to help delegates plan their jam-packed days for this year’s special game show-themed conference.

IQ Magazine is back with a revamped look, compact design, additional content and brand new features

Elsewhere in the magazine, metal takes centre stage, with an in-depth tour report on metal juggernaut Slipknot’s hugely successful We Are Not Your Kind tour, as well as a wider overview of the booming metal business.

Festivals and events dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community and the state of play in the Scottish market are other highlights of this bumper 88th edition.

The new-look magazine also comes filled with some shiny new regular features, such as the Readers’ Lives page featuring the favourite pastimes of top industry figures; the Unsung Hero feature, profiling the stars of the production world; and an agony Aunt/Uncle column, this time led by Solo Agency’s John Giddings.

As always, most content from the magazine will appear online in some form over the next few months. However, if you can’t wait for your fix of essential live music industry features, opinion and analysis, click here to subscribe now.


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New signings and rising stars (Mar–Apr 2020)

Germany’s Sparkling, a new signing for ATC Live in London, and Scottish band Tide Lines, newly repped by Paradigm’s Rob Challice, are among the latest acts to have been added to the rosters of international agents.

Find out more – including a full list of new signings – below…

 


Sparkling (DE)

Agent: Felipe Mina Calvo, ATC Live

A concentrated blend of hypnotic drums, multifaceted pop songwriting and guitars, Sparkling bring us electrified post-punk, breathless and elegant, somewhere between Cologne and London. In the universal language of pop, the music transcends its featured languages of German, English and French. If you are after sweaty euphoria, this is your promised land.

Sparkling released their long-awaited debut album I Want to See Everything (IWTSE) in August 2019, and it has been making huge waves since. As one of the first German bands to play a Maida Vale Session for BBC Radio 1, Sparkling made it onto BBC 6 Music’s heavy rotation list and are frequently played by Annie Mac, Matt Wilkinson, Jack Saunders, Steve Lamacq and many more.

IWTSE has been featured in countless blogs and magazines across Europe including Musikexpress, Rolling Stone and Magic Magazine, and has created a buzz around one of the most exciting bands Germany has produced in years.

 


Paradigm's Tide Lines

Tide Lines (UK)

Agent: Rob Challice, Paradigm

Winners of the Rising Sound of Young Scotland award at the Scottish Music Awards, Tide Lines’ new single, ‘Shadow to the Light’, is set for release on 6 March, ahead of the band’s eagerly awaited second album, which will be released in the spring.

Written by singer/frontman Robert Robertson, the new track is a rabble-rousing anthem that the band recently debuted at their sell-out Barrowlands Ballroom show.

“I tend to write better at nighttime when my train of thought is uninterrupted,” says Robertson. “But sitting alone with my guitar trying to finish a song before the morning can be a pretty solitary experience. The idea of ‘the place I see in the all-too-distant light’ came to me on one such night. It is the place I was brought up (in the Highlands), which is something my mind can hold onto as a form of escapism and hope.”

The band have been selected by Scottish Rugby to provide the pre-match entertainment at the Six Nations match between Scotland and France at Murrayfield on 8 March, performing four songs to the sell-out crowd of 60,000 and countless millions watching on television. In May, they’ll embark on a seven-date tour of Scotland.

 


For full artist listings, including new signings for Primary Talent, UTA, ATC Live, X-ray, Paradigm, ITB, Echo Location, Progressive Artists, Pitch & Smith and the Lullabye Factory, see the digital edition of IQ 88:


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