Jon Reverend, lead singer and founder of Reverend & The Makers, has revealed to ATL that he wants to quit the music business.

Speaking to our online team after the bands appearance at Belsonic last Thursday, he said:

'I played a festival recently and I put up a peace sign and I got the crowd to put up a peace sign and it was written in the music press [The Nme] that my asking people to put up a peace sign was a crassism. Now if it's a crassism to ask people to put up a peace sign at a time when we're at war in two countries - we're shafted.

'And therefore I'm going to retire from the music industry in January because I'm disgusted by it. I don't want nothing to do with it no more.

'I'm going to retire from the music industry because it's run by rich white men who are very conservative and have been around too long...they don't wanna hear anybody with anything truly rebellious to say and that's why British indie music has stalled for the last ten years. Look at the hip hop scene - Skinnyman, Roots Manuva, these people lyrically have been pushing boundaries for years. That's where the real innovation is. And I ain't never seen them on the front of a magazine.

'I got herded into that pop game by the management I had at the time, who also managed the Arctic Monkeys. Now I'm going to go to Venezuela and go on Chavez's tv show and I'm going to go to the Lebanon. I would never have been allowed to do that before, I would never have been allowed to say anything of a political nature because it didn't square with their idea of what a pop artist is.

'But in reality, you only get two albums anyway before the industry replaces you, so on this album I might as well do what I want to do and go out telling the truth.'

You can hear a track from the band's set on our listen again (alongside live music from The Zutons, Kowalski and the Go! Team) and see them perform this Thursday, on ATL Summer Live, BBC2 NI at 10pm!