Kiran Leonard, Broads, Ugly

Anyone lamenting a lack of singular minds in today's musical landscape is pointed in the direction of Kiran Leonard from Saddleworth, Greater Manchester. His 2012 debut album Bowler Hat Soup, recorded when he was 15 and on which he played upwards of 20 different instruments, sounded like "Sufjan Stevens jamming with Frank Zappa in a music hall". His next album, Grapefruit, famously included the 16-minute single 'Pink Fruit' ostensibly about an erotic encounter between a woman and a squid as a metaphor for emotional freedom but actually a pointed and impressionistic f*** you against homophobic bullying.

On the back of that album, he was last seen in Cambridge in 2016 at a sold-out show at The Portland Arms, where he and his band served up a bewildering set of impassioned torch songs, multi-part prog epics and sprawling jazz-rock, all delivered with the precision and intensity of a post-hardcore unit that wouldn't have been out of place on SST records.

Following the media flurry surrounding Grapefruit's release, he disappeared to Portugal for an extended sojourn in Lisbon, before returning to take up a place at Oxford University. Due to his studies his live shows are pretty few and far between, so this one should not be missed.