December always turns out to be a bit busy on the events front. Tonight our work Xmas party conflicts with Suede and Doves free Witnness bash at the Mandela Hall (all tickets snaffled I'm afraid) and the very tempting Monkey vs Robot club at the Menagerie. Don't forget to check out our gig previews forum for details of events - and post your own as well!
Hopefully some site updates will happen tomorrow as my keyboard has now come back to life and the E, D, and C keys are working at the moment.

Mary Hansen of Stereolab has died
I'm very sad to hear that Mary Hansen of Stereolab has been killed in a cycling accident in London. I had met her on both Stereolab's visits to Belfast, and then when I moved to London she seemed to be an ever present fixture on the gig going front. I know a lot of people are going to miss her.
A formal announcement is on the Stereolab site, the news story can be found at the NME.

BelFEST
This year was the first time I had been in Belfast for BelFEST and I made the most of it, I saw around 15 acts. It was odd that I thought a lot of the solo acts stole the show - Kidd Dynamo on his own, Robyn Shiels and Barry Peak in particular. One negative side to the whole thing is that the accompanying CD hasn't made into the shops yet and the festival is over. It's quite ironic that when I lived in London people had no trouble getting me copies!

It's nearly end-of-year round-up time, although I always refuse to publish mine until January in case I discover something too late to include. We're running a reader's poll as opposed to a simple albums list like last year, the details are on the message board now. Closing date 31 December.