City Reign

This is the ambitious first single from Manchester’s City Reign and for their debut they decided that a bland old recording studio wasn’t good enough and instead set about putting the track together at Sacred Trinity Church in Salford. To be fair it wasn’t the band’s idea but that of producer Sam Jones, and it sounds like a good call.

City Reign’s vocalist and guitarist, Chris Bull, says the single is a risk because of its epic sound and there is certainly a widescreen feel to the gently building guitar anthem. The ethereal surroundings may help with the atmospheric feel but ultimately it is the gentle guitar strokes that lift the track from the mundane. With a slow rhythm Ahead of Ideas could have sounded ponderous, before a storming finale with screaming guitar and pained vocal.

It is unclear whether the title has a deliberate double meaning, or whether it is a spelling mistake as Bull sings of “filling your head full of ideas and writing them down on a page”. Whatever the meaning, the song and band have some backing from the likes of 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq, so watch out for them! They play several dates across the UK in November