Now Then Manchester

Vice Magazine Issue Launch Event featuring Clockwork Radio & Foreign Hands @ Deaf Institute, Tuesday 24th January 2012

2012-01-27T17:26:00.003Z

Antiseptic Vice

Oh the incongruity of the situation; a Vice event taking place in a part of Manchester named All Saints and less than 500 yards from a church. There is a distinct lack of protesters outside the venue against such potentially corrupting issues but there are a few smokers getting their nicotine fix. Inside there’s not much to distinguish the occasion from another routine gig night.

It’s not a reflection on the musical ability of Foreign Hands, but each time they play there does appear to be a lack of number of people wanting to hear them. It’s the perennial problem of being the opening band at a gig.

At Antwerp Mansion just before Christmas less than 20 people were in the venue and tonight, at a free event, the sight of them picking up their instruments to start the set sends people scurrying to the steps that form a seating area at the far end of the venue. Only two people remain on the dance floor and they are starting to question the wisdom of providing such a display of loyalty to their Telford compatriots.

It’s a different situation at the end of their performance, by which time there is a substantial number of people congregated around them, with some even chancing their legs and starting to dance.

The drum/bass/guitar trio starts at a relatively sedate pace, with a couple of tight almost funk like numbers that illuminate the richness in Matt Adams’ voice. Couplets such as “Take me now / on this broken tiled floor,” are perhaps as close as we will get to any vice-ness tonight. Then they step up a gear, switching to a more aggressive guitar led sound that doesn’t seem to scare the crowd as much as they thought it would, before leaving with a few more interested listeners in tow.

With five members in the line up, Clockwork Radio are not going to be the type of band that play brisk, sharp sets, but there’s nothing wrong in that.

In the way that the Eurostar train picks up passengers at stops on this side of Dover before travelling along at dizzying speeds, Clockwork Radio similarly construct their songs. It’s a simple piece of percussion from drummer Dan Wiebe that gets things moving, that’s added to in turn by Sam Quinn (keyboards/samples) and as the momentum builds up, the remaining trio of Richard Williams (vocals, guitar), Iwan Jones (lead guitar, vocals) and Nadim Mirshak (bass) jump on board. The songs twist and turn from simple beginnings, in the way that Santana, on ‘Samba Pa Ti’ (ask your parents), negotiates the subtle, percussive sound before breaking out into a full-on guitar blast, then graciously slipping back into a subtle groove.

In front man Jones, they have someone who can be considered either ingratiating or engaging, depending upon your viewpoint to such verbal, between-song throwaways, such as: “This is for all the women with child-bearing hips,” or “We have some CDs for sale at £3 or you can buy the band for the night.” That’s about as scandalous as the evening has been.

Words & Images: Ged Camera

Interview: Dr Butler's Hatstand Medicine Band

2012-01-26T15:19:00.006Z

Formed in 2006 with the tunes of ragtime, swing and jazzy blues vibrating from their musical minds through to their stringed instruments of choice, Dr Butler's Hatstand Medicine Band set upon a journey bringing joviality and frown-busting good-time jives to many, from traditional stages small and large to church courtyards, television sets and south Manchester parks.

Their nine-track record Music For Parlours and Promenades, available via bandcamp, is a waltz through jocular rhymes ('Penny Farthing', 'Rosie') and instrumental jig-inducers ('Too Tight Rag', 'The Manchester Shakedown') bringing a range of instruments to the table en route. From washboards to banjos, mandolins to kazoos via acoustic guitar, ukulele and double bass, the multi-talented troupe are well equipped with the tools of uptempo melody.

Co-founder Andrew Butler talks to Now Then Manchester ahead of the band's headline slot at Dulcimer this Sunday 29th January about folk trains, collaborators and loss of balance.

Now Then: How did the Hatstand Medicine Band get its name?

Dr Butler: I’m sure I know this one.

NT: As a flexible group of musicians, how do you decide who plays in which gig? Is there any song-writing autocracy or is it a democracy?

DB: We have core line-up of Dr Butler, Papa John and Black Jack Barnet and when possible the three of us try to do every gig, whether paid or unpaid. Since forming the band in 2006 we’ve worked with loads of other musicians and performers and it’s always lots of fun to have a big band. We’ve done a few gigs in recent times with as many as 10 people on stage. But, the unfortunate drawback about making music with such a big band is the cost.

We’re a democracy in terms of song-writing. Whoever has a new tune just brings it to the table, we will then commence taking the piss out of it, deconstructing it, pointing out misspelled or mispronounced words and drawing his or her attention to how it sounds like something else. Then, if we haven’t broken their creative spirit we’ll all take it to our heart and start working on it. We’re all highly critical of each others work but that keeps us on our toes. We recently co-wrote the lyrics to a new song for our forthcoming album called ‘Beer Festival Calypso’ which was a first for us but it worked really well.

Whoever happens to be playing with us at any given time generally has the freedom to do whatever he or she wants, we rarely dictate what a musician should or shouldn’t play. We’ll be joined by Dom Dudill on fiddle on the 29th and it’ll be the first time he’s ever done a gig with us. Prior to that we had a jam for an hour or so and it was obvious that he was a top musician; we’ll develop our sound on stage, rather than beforehand.

NT: You’re due to travel aboard the folk train again this week and have done so in the past; what are your best memories of those shows?

DB: We’ve been performing on the folk trains since forming the band, so we’ve done quite a few. There have been lots of memorable occasions but one that stands out is one we did on Halloween a few years ago. It was probably the busiest folk train we’ve ever been on, everybody was in costume and it stands out as one of our best gigs I think.

The folk train is a bit like the Olympics for acoustic bands, especially the ones to Hathersage and beyond. You have to entertain the carriage on the way, at the destination pub and also on the way back. So, you have to be musically fit and know a lot of songs. We’re proud to say that we’ve never had to repeat a song on a folk train.

NT: Do you get put off by any bumps or corners? Or does the momentum enhance your musical grooves?

DB: Papa John will inevitably lose his balance at some point but the rest of the band have found their folk train feet over the years. That’s University education for you.

NT: How do unsuspecting passengers react? Have there been any adverse reactions to the concept of live music on public transport, in your experience?

DB: Because it’s a regular commuter train it’s always full of people on their way home from work. For the most part people react positively, it’s difficult not to when people are having so much fun and wearing bowler hats at the same time. But, for some reason the prospect of having to sit in a carriage and listen to banjos and washboards all the way home doesn’t appeal to everyone.

NT: What does the proposed SOPA & PIPA legislation mean to independent artists such as yourselves?

DB: Doesn’t mean anything to us.

NT: Finally, which records are you playing the grooves off at the moment and which of your peers would you recommend?

DB: A devil woman took the record player with her when she went to live with a fat dwarf so I have rows and rows of records gathering dust at the moment. The last thing I had on was a record called The Moon’s in a Fit by a band called the Umps and Dumps, released in 1980. It’s a really interesting mixture of traditional English folk with ragtime and late 19th century popular balladry. It has an excellent re-working of one of Irving Berlin’s less well known songs ‘After You Get What You Want, You Don't Want It’ – “After you've got what you want you don’t want it, if I gave you the moon, you’d grow tired of it soon.”

People should go and watch Krazy Horse and Mik Artistic if they want to be happy. They should catch Aidan Smith, either solo, with his band or with PJ Party if they want to witness a genius song-writing machine. They should try and catch Gideon Conn before he moves to London. They should go to a Josephine gig if they want to hear the most powerful female vocalist in Manchester. If they want something a bit more raucous they should go to the upcoming TNS all-dayer in March, organised by our good friend Andy Davies from Revenge of the Psychotronic Man.

Dr Butler's Hatstand Medicine Band will headline the next Now Then Sunday Soirée gig at Dulcimer on Sunday 29th January. They will be supported by Aidan Smith, James Munro and Shen and more information can be found here. Doors are at 5pm and entry policy is pay-what-you-like with £3 suggested to support artists and future gigs.

Words: Ian Pennington
Poster Design: Hattie Lockwood
Images: Courtesy of Dr Butler's Hatstand Medicine Band (credited on individual photographs where applicable)

Underachievers Please Try Harder ft. Brown Brogues & Great Waves @ Roadhouse, Saturday 14th January 2012

2012-01-17T13:09:00.004Z

A Brown Resurrection

In between songs, the guitarist of the Brown Brogues, Mark Vernon, is looking down at the stage with his back to the crowd preparing for the next song when a cry of, “Know any Stone Roses?” rings out. He slowly lifts his head, half turns around and slings a look of disdain in the direction from where the heckle came from. After all wasn’t it the Roses who said, “The past was yours / but the future is mine”?

The future looks bright for the Underachievers Please Try Harder promoters whose nomadic wanderings has led them to the Roadhouse. If a capacity crowd is anything to go by, it will be there for a good while to come. After all, the essential ingredients seem to be in place; an always differing but intriguing line-up combining with excellent between-bands DJ sets and a value for money door price of £3. It’s not a recession buster, more just common sense.

Great Waves by name, great waves by nature as rich textures flow from the guitar and keyboards. The duo stands on opposite sides of the stage, allowing the space between them to be used as a backdrop for a series of projections.

A chiming resonance builds, with a Cocteau Twins style lushness breaking out. Using the past as a reference point only, they take their own directions towards a form of blissed-out beauty before exiting the stage in a myriad of noise and distortion.

The condition of the drum skin is a testament to the ferocity with which it has been assaulted by Ben Mather, the drummer with Brown Brogues; it is held together with gaffa tape. It is always likely that more will be required before the evening is finished.

The guitar and drums duo from Wigan are equally ferocious throughout the rest of their set. They can veer from a Cramps type rawness to a full on deranged onslaught that has a substantial amount of the audience jumping along. It’s effectively simple in that two standard instruments are utilised, but the sound swamps the venue and the passion spilling from the stage is impressive. Like all good performers, they leave to chants of “more”, without any hint of a Stone Roses cover.

Words & Photos: Ged Camera

Corpsekisser, Maria & The Mirrors, No Womb @ Kraak, Friday 6th January 2012

2012-01-14T20:19:00.003Z

No Womb at the Kraak Inn

Memories of Christmas are receding fast but some people still appear to be playing with their toys. No Womb is using a set of drums and a bass guitar on max settings to see what they can come up with. Ironically, it is an errant microphone stand that seems to be the most difficult to control as it moves in the opposite direction to where the vocalist has her mouth. The songs seem almost to be about themselves; “I wanna f*** you all day,” (I think) or “She doesn’t care about me,” all delivered in a loud and shouty manner, with the emphasis seemingly on the fun side of DIY music spectrum.

It’s not quite clear exactly when Maria and the Mirrors start their set as they seem to be trying to test their equipment out, but are suffering technical problems. Even in the dimly lit room at Kraak, the trio catch the eye. Crystabel and Keira are seemingly vacuum packed into brightly coloured leather pants, whilst at the rear of the stage on laptop and miscellaneous equipment Charlie has kitted himself out in a lace, see-through one-piece, that’s rounded off with a bicycle chain wrapped around his neck.

One of the percussionists is hitting her pads as hard as she can, with a desperate look of bemusement. No output is coming from them, but the other two are so focused on what they are doing they don’t realise their colleague is in distress. For the listener the fact that only two thirds of the music is being relayed should be an easy point to pick up on, but the intensity and ferocity emerging from the speakers masks this. There’s a look of panic on said percussionist’s face as she screams across to her colleague that, “Nothing’s coming out!”

However, a few tweaks of leads later and the situation is remedied. The resulting bursts of unleashed noise burn the synapses, disrupting the thought process of those in front of the speakers. Tribal rhythms pound the walls of the confined space in a relentless and unforgiving manner. When all 3 are in sync, echoes of early Adam and the Ants with their twin drummers eventually surface, then the pulsations intensify, flooding through the body. As a unit, they can probably do more structural damage than gale force winds.

Corpsekisser don’t as much as take to the stage as sit in front of it. The duo arrange their instruments across the floor as if trying to generate the intimacy of an impromptu music session at a house party.

To label Corpsekisser as a band is perhaps to do them an injustice in relation to the show they put on. The husband and wife combination of Heather & Ethan Swan integrate the visual (faces painted white presumable to simulate a deathly pallor) with mime (all the vocals are all pre-recorded) and dance as displayed via their jerky and angular, at times synchronised, robotic motions. Imagine Peter Crouch doing his robot dance as he celebrates scoring a goal and you’re part way to glimpsing the idea.

Their choice of equipment is quirky, including a toy piano, approximately 12 inches tall, upon which a young child may hit their hands. Their tunes usually last between 30 seconds and two minutes, comprising of sparse tinkling on said piano or a glockenspiel, all of which seems to either leave people bemused or draw appreciative applause.

The New Year has begun.

Words & photos: Ged Camera

Arts, Music & Events Preview, January 2012

2012-01-08T22:54:00.012Z

As mentioned in a previous post, the Midwinter supplement of Lass Fest is ongoing at Lass O’Gowrie with an array of comedy and drama productions until Sunday 29th, but there is plenty more to shelter you from the gales.

We’ll start with a relaxed event on Wednesday 11th; down in Didsbury there’s a Manchester Friends of the Earth endorsed film night, screening ‘No Impact Man’, in which New Yorker Colin Beavan decides to eliminate his personal environmental impact for one year.

Onwards to Thursday 12th, which is when the top shout on the Song, By Toad label / blog’s tips for 2012 list, Easter, will be headlining a show at Dulcimer with fellow reverb-friendly post-rockers Outer Dark (three quarters of To Sophia) and Cyril Snear. Before you head along, you will have had ample time to discover and download (legally; ie paying the music maker) the new Borland EP, Romantic Animals, which is organised via local label Gulf Records and sits in the early Nathan Fake-esque cosmic soundscapes corner of electronica.

If you were playing a magical version of Monopoly and encountered a Community Chest card that says you could be a giant for one day then Saturday 14th might be the day to opt for, so that you could leapfrog through town and sample a bit of each of the following. Mellowed out ambient duo A Winged Victory For The Sullen pop into Academy 3 to emit some peaceful tones, the Underachievers clubnight continues its Roadhouse stint by welcoming local indie favourites Brown Brogues and Great Waves and Kraak welcomes the justifiably hotly tipped Trailer Trash Tracys. Given the lack of such a card, you’re going to have to take a chance and choose.

Take a deep breath for a few days after that one.

The first Now Then Manchester show for this year of supposedly imminent oblivion will play host to Dan Haywood’s New Hawks, Samson & Delilah and Ottersgear. Haywood himself has been likened to Nick Drake and Mark Kozelek by critics who were running out of superlatives to describe his self-titled debut album, released late in 2010. That LP documents the ornithologist Haywood’s five years of bird-and-people-watching during travels around Highland Scotland. Combined with the New Hawks, a band comprising talented musicians such as Paddy Steer, Mikey Kenney and Mia Bleach, Dan emits a crazed stage presence, which can be sampled on Thursday 19th at Dulcimer.

If your disco feet are getting itchy by now, then never fear! Casiokids are here. I remember when ‘Fot I Hose’ planted itself in my subconscious back in the day and it hasn’t left since, such was the rhythmic infection bestowed. The Scandinavians’ sophomore LP is due out this year to coincide with a tour that stops at Deaf Institute on Friday 20th.

Humble Soul, believe it or not (you'll have to believe it because it's the truth), will have been promoting some of the area’s finest music for five years this month and have assembled a typically stellar bill for the occasion. Denis Jones, Paddy Steer, Table, Aidan Smith and GladEyes all jostle for attention at Band On The Wall on Saturday 21st. Then as an after party option the Spektrum attic club at Sankeys hosts another edition of Continue through the early hours, this time roping in a recently arrived Manchester resident in the shape of R&S and Magic Wire signee Lone.

Some more folky types will be showcasing some songs at Dulcimer on Sunday 22nd; Imploding Inevitable presents the Manchester leg of Laura J Martin’s album launch mini-tour. As a multi-instrumentalist (flute, piano, mandolin) who favours a looping pedal to build her compositions, Martin brings an off-kilter zaniness to the alt-folk template, leading chirpy melodies through meandering sonic textures. Emily of former Red Deer Club cohorts Stealing Sheep supports in Emily & The Faves guise.

Last year an arts group based at Islington Mill decided that the best way to counter the public sector cuts would be to subject their work to a fiery communal death, very much shaped by its participants, in order to rise again from the ashes with new ideas and outlook. The Artists’ Bonfire returns this year with concern for funding in the arts still ablaze, but interpretations of the event needn’t be as incendiary as the fires, as artists are encouraged to join for reasons both political and personal. This will take place at Islington Mill on Thursday 26th but be aware that the deadline for submissions is Friday 20th.

Warehouse Project may be cocooned for hibernation again pending an announcement of their new lodgings – supposedly in, around or nearby Manchester – but that won’t stop them from treading a nomadic path along with Drop The Mustard in pursuit of some of the best international electronic musicians. Nicolas Jaar is scheduled for Saturday 28th with the likes of Scuba and Damu at the ever impressive Sound Control, which is entering its third year in the dubiously named Southern Quarter.

Also on 28th will be Air Cav's first show of 2012 across the Irwell at the Kings Arms

And if neither of those are striking the right chord then there's the grand reopening of Antwerp Mansion, Rusholme’s answer to Islington Mill. No concrete details as yet, but they don’t tend to operate on anything less than full-speed so it’ll be worth a look. And while your eyes are on the Mansion, have a glance down to the Now Then Manchester monthly there; 4th Thursday of the month from February. More info soon...

On the subject of self-promotion, our monthly Sunday Soirée slot at Dulcimer recommences on Sunday 29th. That one opts for an acoustic feel featuring Dr Butler’s Hatstand Medicine Band and Aidan Smith, with support from James Munro and Shen. Future Sundays will assemble some of the best local comedy (February) and electronica (March), all maintaining an earlier start of 5pm.

Neko Neko has a new single ('Trouble In The Streets' / 'Ya Playin'') lined up for vinyl release via My First Moth on Monday 30th, so I suggest you dust off your record player in preparation. Also scheduled for that day, the home of the aforementioned Samson & Delilah, Little Red Rabbit Records have a taster for Last Harbour's forthcoming album in the form of a single entitled 'Never'.

To finish the month off, Grey Lantern are teaming up with dependable shoegaze selectors Sonic Cathedral, whose signings of a few years back, The Early Years, have reformed and are back on the gig trail, calling at Kraak on Tuesday 31st.

A quick peek into February illuminates an enticing double promoted by Hey! Manchester. Saturday 4th sees a Jesca Hoop show at The Annexe room in The Cornerhouse and then on Monday 6th they bring back the folk / electronica crossover collaboration King Creosote & Jon Hopkins, this time at Central Methodist Hall.

Then a little further along is a special tour for Now Then interview alumnus The Electronic Exchange, who are set to treble in numbers for a full band performance at Kraak on Friday 10th. Also on that bill is Dayse & Aver from the always excellent hip hop collective The Natural Curriculum.

And for the photogenic amongst you, contact The Last Party about appearing in their forthcoming single's video alongside various local celebs from the radio and telly. (The catch is that you'd need to be available over the weekend of Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th February).

I’ll stop there before I chew any further into February...

Words: Ian Pennington

Preview: Mid Winter Lass Fest 2012

2012-01-05T11:17:00.006Z

The Lass O'Gowrie on Charles Street (just off Oxford Road) is one of the finest pubs in the city (if not the finest). It serves fine food, excellent beer and there is comic book artwork on the walls. It mixes retro nostalgia and traditional boozer vibes to create something unique that offers something for everyone.

This ethos runs through their often varied and exciting entertainments. Currently ongoing is their Mid Winter Lass Fest that runs until the end of January. There is theatre, comedy, retro gaming, live music and beer tasting with Men Behaving Badly star and home brewer Neil Morrissey.

Theatre-wise things kick off with a sci-fi theme with an adaptation of Alan Moore's feminist space opera Halo Jones and for Doctor Who fans (or indeed fans of intensely scripted and stunningly performed live action terror) Russell T Davies' Midnight using the original script and approved by the author.

Mid January sees the start of a mini Jack Rosenthal season featuring some of his classic Coronation Street scripts (some performed in the bar) and his long lost Play For Today Hot Fat, a fable that still resonates today and has an excellent cast*.

*Okay, full disclosure, I'm in that one.

Towards the end of the month there is a smorgasbord of theatrical premieres: Conor McPherson's The Weir, Rebekkah Harrison's We Took That and Partied and Thinking Out Loud as well as Carly Tarret's one woman show Sinful. Also, for two nights only the return of Brian Gorman's one man bio-play of Patrick Magoohan's life, Everyman, told as if an episode of cult TV classic The Prisoner.

Other highlights include Let's See What Happens, improvised comedy from ComedySportz, Manchester's premier improv troupe, character comedy from the ever charming Danny Pensive and Chap Hop from that most excellent of fellows Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer.

Also, did I mention the beer tasting? The retro gaming? The live stand up and sketch shows from some of Manchester's finest comedians? Not to mention all of the other events too numerous to, err, mention?

Tickets are available on the door or via WeGotTickes by searching for the Lass O' Gowrie or following the links over at their website. NB: capacity is limited and so are the tickets. Don't miss out.

Something evident in the Lass O' Gowrie is the love and dedication put into these events by its managers Gareth Kavanagh and Lisa Connor. They work tirelessly to pull everything together and provide a space for performers of all varieties of entertainment.

There is a growing fringe theatre scene and the Lass O' Gowrie is one of its most important venues, providing a stage for new writing as well as in house productions and revivals of classic scripts. 2012 is going to be a big year for them and they've started it in style.

Words: Sean Mason

NHS: Competition and Privatisation

2012-01-03T21:59:00.003Z

Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill has been attacked on many grounds. I’ll summarise these objections before adding my own.

Neither the Conservative Party nor the Liberal Democrat Party mentioned wholesale reforms of the NHS in their manifestos. David Cameron expressly promised there would be no top-down reorganisations. Questions regarding the influence of donations to Andrew Lansley’s political office by private healthcare providers remain unanswered. In January 2010, The Daily Telegraph revealed John Nash, chairman of Care UK, donated £21,000 to Lansley’s private office.

GPs currently receive no training in the commissioning of services and have no expertise in the management of large budgets. The administration of these large sums of money by the same people who provide care will create conflicts of interest and affect the trust that patients place in their doctors. The provision of services by ‘any willing provider’ will lead to fragmentation of services, which will make the co-ordination of care more difficult. Currently, the management of patients with complex medical conditions – e.g. children with multiple related but separate diagnoses, such as cerebral palsy, epilepsy, learning disability or psychiatric illness – require the GPs and specialists to collaborate to provide a delicate, customised, evolving package of care. If the service providers are seeking to compete with one another, the smooth provision of such a package will become more challenging. Similarly, junior doctors require exposure to many environments and specialties during their training. This will become increasingly haphazard.

The bill will lead to duplication of services, rather than the streamlining that one would associate with economic efficiency. The evidence that competition within healthcare improves efficiency is sparse and mixed. The duty of care of the secretary of state to provide or secure health services will be removed.

I wish to add one more reason to oppose the bill; it will make the NHS less beautiful.

Yesterday, I stood at a urinal in an airport in another country. In front of me, there was an advertisement for earplugs. Below the name of the brand and a picture of what one was being led to assume was a satisfied user, it read, ‘Ask for them by name and beware of imitators.’ In other words, buy our earplugs, not our competitors’. We won’t deign to explicitly say that ours are better, but we will imply as much by describing our rivals as ‘imitators’.

Of course, that’s all they can do, because they are just earplugs. How much better can one brand be than any other? But in order to ‘compete,’ they must cast aspersions. They must secure the custom and loyalty of the public. In order to do this, they do not need to provide a better product. They just need to convince the public that they are providing a better product by devoting time and money to doing so.

Is this what we want in healthcare? Apart from the vulgarity of describing health services as products, is the way to deliver the best, safest and most efficient care by opening it up to a system in which each provider will have to budget for advertising as much as they do for the actual care they provide? I not only contest the evidence that this will lead to greater efficiency or better health, but I also object on aesthetic grounds.

The tone of the earplugs advertisement was bullying. It was meanspirited. It aimed to hector me and to denigrate its competitors. It was ugly. But it was a necessary component of the market. And the principles of the earplug market will apply to the healthcare market as well. Providers will vie to convince those who commission services that their product is better, but the cheapest way to do this will not always be to actually provide a better, safer service. Mr Lansley’s hopes that forcing competition on the NHS will also force increased efficiency are misguided. They may lead to increased efficiency in some cases. In others, they will lead to cost-shaving, corner-cutting and the expert concealment of this by companies whose key purpose is to turn a profit.

We have already seen evidence of this in other public services that have been privatised. Within the UK, the railways have become a running joke, and utilities prices are a source of continuing worry for normal people. 15 million British citizens are currently facing fuel poverty. In Australia in April, the outsourcing giant G4S pled guilty to failing to ensure the health and safety of a person in police custody being transferred from one facility to another in one of its private security vans. The man was cooked to death over three hours in the back of the badly maintained van with metal seats, no air conditioning and no water while the outside temperature was above 40°C.

I would like to think that I am wrong. I would like to think that in ten years time, I will look back at these opinions and see them as quaint, but to force myself to think that now would be disingenuous. I believe we are throwing away something great.

Words: Piyush Pushkar (doctormagiot)

This article first appeared in the December issue of Now Then, published and distributed in Sheffield.

Manchester's Music at Xmas: Festive Freebies

2011-12-29T22:21:00.003Z

The advent of the internet has paved the way to uncertain times for recording artists but, amidst the bad news and knee-jerk headlines, many musicians are taking advantage of the relative ease of access to listeners’ ears. Combine that with the perceived spirit of unselfish giving associated with this time of the year and you find yourself with an abundance of festive freebies. ‘Tis the season to give away free music, be it compilation albums or individual tracks; cover versions or selected album tracks.

But with so many floating freely across the ethereal www – and with a limited space on your hard-drive – how are you to know which samplers to stream or sample? Fortunately, our round-up is here to help you filter through the downloads of Manchester’s 2011 Yuletide.

We’ll start with a regular in the compilation game, Red Deer Club Recordings. Their fourth selection predictably comprises ditties from the folk pigeonhole in which they’ve built a strong reputation for picking winners (Stealing Sheep, Awesome Wells, Sophies Pigeons), but less predictably also includes many a nod to the post-Animal Collective ‘chillwave’ genre so prevalent on the palate of 2011’s tastemakers (Jewellers, O>L>A, Sun Drums). The seaside field recording seeing in the first 90 seconds of Chewy Benson’s opener ‘To Fallow, To Fall’ isn’t in the traditionalist’s model of folk music either, particularly when it kicks into sample-heavy electronic glitches. Elsewhere, Jonnie Common weighs in with a reworking of his own ‘Summer Is For Going Places’ and one of the standouts is Jess Bryant’s version of Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Games’; an indicator of the reason why RDC has signed her to the label for 2012.

Also on the compilation theme, Little Red Rabbit have a varied record available on their website, lumping together album tracks, B-sides, exclusives and covers. Some are noticeably festive; Crazy Man Michael’s sombre but catchy copy of Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ obviously so, Last Harbour’s ‘Alone For The Winter’ more tenuously. As a collection, it’s an eerie, acid folk haunt through wintry isolation that sometimes steps inside to the warmth of a crackling open fire and knitted jumpers. The odd one out is Kalbakken’s ‘Ulversdale’ with its spiky, icily disjointed strings and avant-garde rhythms. Support act at the first Now Then Manchester gig of 2012 Samson & Delilah feature with a rejigged ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’, while the headliners for that show, Dan Haywood’s New Hawks, have also recorded a separate Christmas special, ‘My Heart Was Set On Christmas Eve’.

Debt Records provide the most appropriate set for the season; their amply talented roster chipping into an album concentrating solely on covers. Certainly there are improvements on originals – Rioghnach Connolly’s voice on Honeyfeet’s ‘The Wexford Carol’ is a delight, Louis Barabbas is his usual exuberant self with The Bedlam Six on ‘Do-Wap In A Manger’ and Alabaster DePlume’s eclectic a capella riffs around ‘Away In A Manger’. The worry with an album of Xmas covers is that tedium might set in, but with such an array of characters and styles within the label, tedium is never really an issue; Biff Roxby’s curtain closing Wonky Disco mash-up ‘All I Want For Xmas Is Spoo’ means you wouldn’t have chance to nod off with your belly full of turkey. The compilation’s title is a cracker: Debt It Snow! Debt It Snow! Debt It Snow!

Shifting genres, From The Kites Of San Quentin have grouped together their 2011 remixes under one bandcamp page; as ever with these aural inventors, there’s a fair range between the four, from the dubby, atmospheric Badly Drawn Boy number to a remix of 808 State’s ‘In Yer Face’ for BBC Radio Manchester, neatly supplanting its Haç pulse races with Alison Carney's calming vocal pining, via a more deadpan, mellow Dresden mix.

Vocal sculptor, beatboxer and electronic music whizz Jason Singh has produced an ambient plateau 'Christmas Thanks' worthy of a listen on soundcloud. Finally, take the time to add Air Cav’s cover of Kraftwerk’s krautrock classic ‘The Model’ to your download queue; adding Sophie Parkes’ violin to the mix in place of the high pitched synths makes it an inspired choice for the band.

Words: Ian Pennington
Dan Haywood's New Hawks gig poster art: Craig Brown (Beards Club Illustration)
Rioghnach Connolly Photo: Ged Camera
Jason Singh Photo: Courtesy of Jason Singh

Merry Punkin’ Xmas! Stuart Taylor Promotions presents: Leather Zoo, Kingcrows & Culprits @ Star & Garter, Sunday 18th December 2011

2011-12-25T18:25:00.003Z

Eighteen holes are on show and it isn’t a golf course or an orgy; instead it’s the DMs that are on display, alongside labels affixed to parkas acknowledging the likes of bands such as The Vibrators and The Misfits. Welcome to the Star & Garter, where there’s one of its regular glam rock/punk afternoons and it’s been set up by Stuart Taylor Promotions (STP).

The sense of rebellion and anarchy that was proudly advocated in the past can seem old hat, with the short time span that the punk ethic flourished in now being looked upon with a whiff of nostalgia; a romantic yearning for the purity of the spirit. All that seems to have happened is that one of the alleged leaders of the uprising now appears in an advert for butter. What a rebellion eh, Lurpack or Kerry Gold? Choose your weapons of mass slippery.

So within the confined spaces of the S&G, here’s an event that allows an opportunity to celebrate some of the original vitality and energy from the period. With the majority of those present appearing to be on the wrong side of 30, the energy levels may be rationed just a little bit although the performances themselves are impressive. The Culprits are just completing their raucous set as I ascend the stairs. This band seems to belong to the ‘anyone can do it so let’s have some fun’ view of things and those present do seem to enjoy them.

The more glam rock end of the punk spectrum is represented by Leeds outfit, The Kingcrows. “It’s our 5th anniversary gig and nobody knows who the F^^^ we are,” announces Phil E Stine, their vocalist. Cheers and jovial jeers are returned. With Stine’s bottle blonde hair and black eye shades, allied to the white, tight pants with their thin, black vertical stripes on, which belong to bassist Rocco, they do make a striking impression, one that’s not easy to forget.

“Anyone here like Country and Western?” Stine asks – knowing full well what the answer is. “Good, ‘cause we don’t do it,” is the next line that serves as the introduction to start their aural onslaught. Backed up by Rocco on bass and Lee on guitar, it’s a loud and intense affair, even at the back alongside the mixing desk. Yet there are faithful followers stood next to the stage savouring the performance, especially when the lyrics include the refrain: “Shit shit shit”.

Gradually the crowd builds up and when Leather Zoo announce that they are ready to go, the sub zero temperature has almost, not quite, left the venue. In frontperson Mel-ski they have someone who can banter with the crowd in a relaxed manner and discuss the finer detail of dealing with customers in the Meadowhall shopping centre then turn into a whirling dervish the moment the guitars kick in.

The Zoo take a more controlled, less intense, road on the punk highway. It may not be a case of toning down the sound levels, possibly more a case of the fact that the increased number of bodies in the place has absorbed some of the sound, but they do come across in a more controlled and restrained fashion but no less potent for that.

Eagerly received and warmly applauded, all the bands are keeping the spirits, if not the flag, flying.

Words & photography: Ged Camera

Stroke Club Presents: The Pigs & Onions @ Gulliver’s, Thursday 15th December 2011

2011-12-16T23:25:00.004Z

In the manner that a fishmonger might chalk up the best deals of the day on a board outside a shop, at about 9.30pm the list of bands appears inside Gulliver’s, the scribbled white chalk just about visible above the remnants of the last Stroke event. Initially it states only two bands, but after Onions have played their set, a brief addendum is added, just about fitting into the residual space, almost as an afterthought. This late addition is listed as The Pigs, although they appear to also go under the moniker Rapid Pig. To add to the ad hoc nature of things, their front man also appears as a solo artist under the guise of SpaceGhost.

This may be very confusing, but the performance is one that will stick in the memory bank. Before they have started, attention is diverted to the stack of A3 sized sheets of paper that contain the hand written – or scrawled – lyrics to the set. Kneeling over these, staring at them intensely is Eoin O’Connor, aka SpaceGhost.

Before the band is halfway through the first number, O’Connor is crawling off the front of the stage, his legs flailing in the air as if he is trying to swim across the floor. Even in this twisted position, the microphone is still held to his mouth, the vocals flowing. The band looks on this with a knowing amusement, even flicking out the odd playful kick to O’Connor’s torso.

The control exerted by the other four band members as they lay down the musical background for O’Connor’s nasal chants is more restrained and suitably dense – and loud. A keyboardist produces psychedelic sounds whilst the overall experience resembles the results of too much inbreeding between Fraser King and Jim Morrison.

It’s a magnetic performance from O’Connor that does tail off towards the end as he dips into the all too easy refrain of “F*** you,” but, for a band that has not played a live set in a considerable amount of time, still impressive.

Pop permeates the set by Onions. Within 10 minutes of the trio approaching the stage with their equipment they are starting their first number. With an equally impressive speed, the seemingly empty venue now has a decent sized crowd.

Whether or not their content takes a nod to the infectious nature of songs such as Norman Gimbel’s theme tune to Happy Days, there is a contagious vibrancy to their set. So much so that a fair proportion of the crowd are now twisting in a positive way. It’s not quite approaching dancing but it’s a move in the right direction.

They have enough time changes in each song to create the illusion that three are segued together and the pace is unrelenting, ideal for a cold winter’s night.

Their tongue is not so much planted in the side of their collective cheek; it’s more like it’s against the wall of the bar. “I’ll keep taking my vitamins / So I can live with you,” they jest and at one point I’m sure they refer to one of the lesser know areas of Manchester called Belle Vue with the refrain of, “Nobody ever comes here.” Well, not unless you are a speedway enthusiast.

Taking place on the first and third Thursdays of the month, the free entry event that is the Stroke Club still throws up a fascinating array of entertainment.

Words & Photography: Ged Camera

The Narrows with Swansong & Flashing Astraptes @ Night & Day Café, Tuesday 13th December 2011

2011-12-14T22:18:00.007Z

Manchester has battened down the hatches in readiness for the forthcoming storm. The chill wind is blowing along the deserted streets. Yes coming up is Black Friday, i.e. the one where every office Christmas party descends upon the bars and eateries in the centre, purportedly in support of a good time. Yes, I will indeed be somewhere in the mêlée the evening, but the consequence is a bleak Tuesday night. The paucity of numbers tends to indicate that I may be the only paying customer in the Night & Day, or at least one of the first.

Sat to one side of the stage, facing the side wall, the solo performer that goes under the name Flashing Astraptes is creating weird though not always wonderful sounds with his guitars and foot pedals. At times there is a comforting rhythm to the output, but with the amplifier ramped up to max, the distortion kicks in and self control seems to wane as the noises start to override any ambience.

Swansong consists of another solo artist, who has been playing the local venues, honing his keyboard skills and sounds, in a similar manner to xxxy. He is even wearing a t-shirt advertising another promising Manchester act, From the Kites of San Quentin.

Hunched over the synths, the icy rhythms dispensed are wrapped in a deliberately created warmth, just like an Arctic roll (ask yer mum!). It’s crisply dispensed and his lyrics roll freely from the stage. For all his body twisting and efforts though, on a night like this it’s going to be difficult to get anyone up and moving as the music deserves. Rather, it forms a pleasing backdrop for the evening’s conversations. When he finishes, the silence is quickly filled with genuine applause.

A night billed as an electronic extravaganza continues with The Narrows. The emphasis this time is more a case of the keyboardist (Phil Drinkwater) supporting the raucous energy of the two guitarists, Dave Battle and Adam Hynes. From the start there’s a frenetic energy flowing through the trio, as exemplified when the keyboard is almost knocked from its stand by Drinkwater.

The band forces their performance onto the listeners, attempting to dispel any pre-Christmas lethargy with vibrant, effective songs that certainly require a second listen. The unwanted technical “hitch” – a stray, repetitive burst of noise plaguing a song – fails to detract from an impressive performance.

Words & Photography: Ged Camera

Interview: thebrokendoor

2011-12-05T19:29:00.002Z

Pantomime is reasonably considered to be the all-singing, all-dancing staple of the festive season. Its aesthetic and auditory enterprise appeals to both the coach-loads of school children high on Christmas spirit and the TV soap thespians who line their pockets with a Christmas bonus. But what if the icy chill of winter lessens your appetite for overly jovial slapstick and rhetorical audience interaction isn’t a prerequisite for an evening’s entertainment?

Experimental drum’n’bass specialists thebrokendoor think they have the answer. Using their knack for forward-thinking and unbounded creativity, they have adapted musically memorable films, reincarnating the originals’ tunes as technologically tweaked tangents using samplers and well-trained musical ears. The Lancashire quartet have hosted two previous annual audio-visual adventures in their native Bolton and the third will focus on the classic film Singing In The Rain.

They embark on a mini-tour, calling in the south Manchester area this Sunday (11th December) at Dulcimer bar in Chorlton, where they’ll be joined on the line-up by two of Manchester’s finest exports in electronica, Jason Singh and Veí, who’ll re-score the Quay Brothers’ Streets of Crocodiles and a walk-through of the computer game Limbo, respectively.

Now Then Manchester spoke to thebrokendoor’s vibraphonist and vocalist Emma Welsby ahead of the Manchester leg of the show.

Now Then: You performed an improvised set to Charlie & The Chocolate Factory last year. What made you decide to take this step?

thebrokendoor: We have been doing an alternate soundtrack to a film every year for the last three years. Charlie & The Chocolate Factory was a film which was a big part of our childhood memories and the original soundtrack lent itself well to being re-sampled so we could add our own twist on the songs. We were really pleased with the outcome of this and decided to try Singing In The Rain this year.

NT: How did it compare with your usual performances?

tbd: What we enjoy about our band is we can step out of the live improvised drum n bass we normally do and have side projects such as this to challenge us musically. In our normal set-up we pick a key and improvise around that, whereas working around the structure of a film makes us have more discipline. It changes how we work together as a team and we learn more about each other as a result. Instead of playing to people to make them dance this is much more a ‘sit down and watch’ affair, which is different for us.

NT: How did you select the film to use?

tbd: The film has strong songs which occur regularly throughout so it lent itself to us having quite a lot to perform. When we originally watched the film we had strong ideas for each song so it made sense to give this one a go!

NT: Are there any other musicians who’ve influenced this direction for the band?

tbd: This particular direction probably took influence from bands such as The Cinematic Orchestra who have written for film before. We also really vibe off musicians who push the boundaries of live technology such as Amon Tobin who have a great live show which is highly visual. One thing we wanted to do differently is to not just be a band playing in front of a film taking no inspiration from the original soundtrack. We stay true to the songs and take influence from them – hence why you can hear samples from the original songs as we play with them.

NT: Who inspires you in the world of film?

tbd: We all have different tastes in film in the band but we like the darkness of the soundtracks written by Danny Elfman and the abstract musical writings of Maurice Binder (James Bond). We also like Sofia Coppola for her selection of soundtracks for film. And writer Frank Darabond, producer Ridley Scott and director Ron Fricke because he creates tone without the need for a narrative. We like the French animator Moebius who creates fantastic other worlds.

NT: This year will be Singing In The Rain; what can we expect from that?

tbd: If you want to hear the original soundtrack re-sampled and reworked to incorporate big beats, bass, vibraphone and electronics, taking influence from drum n bass, dubstep, electronica and post rock then this might be the show for you!

Words: Ian Pennington
Poster #1: Craig Brown (Beards Club Illustration)
Poster #2: Courtesy of thebrokendoor
thebrokendoor photo: Courtesy of thebrokendoor
Jason Singh photo: Courtesy of Jason Singh

thebrokendoor headline an early evening of electronic music performed to specially selected films at Dulcimer in Chorlton on Sunday 11th December. Jason Singh (performing to Streets of Crocodiles by the Quay Brothers) and Veí (performing to a reworked walkthrough of the Limbo computer game) will also perform. Doors at 5pm; entry policy is pay-what-you-like, £3 suggested.

Interview: D'lyfa Reilly

2011-12-04T20:28:00.005Z

Other than being a dab hand at picking a pun ridden alias, D’lyfa Reilly has been perfecting his art of relaying tales untainted by sugar-coated commercialism. A comradeship with fellow Red IQ lyricists Bo’Nidle and C Aye Monk is partly to thank for his progress, but the pivotal point in his short history as a solo musician arrived earlier this year on the digital release of the Sewing Seeds EP. Adopting the stylistic immediacy of hip hop, the record is unafraid to confront the insecurity of youth. Reilly writes about himself and those around him by putting his soul on show through lyrical delivery ranging from laid back and thoughtful moodiness to sharp-tongued scythes.

Even as a solo artist, D’lyfa’s path isn’t totally lonesome. The credits for his EP nod towards Riddle, who mixed and mastered the tracks as well as co-producing the artwork with Bo’Nidle; his video library is slowly swelling thanks to collaborations with northwest filmmakers Chris Wrench and Daniel Entwistle (Shtuffs Productions); he’s shared bills with musicians both local and beyond from The Natural Curriculum and Sparkz to Ghostface Killah and Jehst.

D’lyfa fills in the gaps by answering Now Then Manchester’s questions ahead of this Thursday 8th December's show at Dulcimer in Chorlton.

Now Then: What does hip hop mean to you?

D’lyfa Reilly: A narrative of the emotions felt at one particular time, then captured once recorded.

NT: Who inspires you lyrically?

DR: Lyrically, I’m inspired by Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), Jim Morrison (The Doors) and from an early age SkinnyMan, after I heard Council Estate of Mind when I was about 12. Just because I make hip hop right now, it doesn't mean I’m completely inspired solely by hip hop artists. But if anyone really inspires my writing daily with their presence it would be Bo'Nidle & C Aye Monk, my Red iQ amigos.

NT: ‘Moment of Soul’ dabbles briefly with the big questions of life and death – are these questions important to you or is it all about the here and now?

DR: ‘Moment of Soul’ and the rest of the Sewing Seeds EP were written around the end of 2009 to early 2010 when my mind frame was in a different place, as 2011 went on I was learning more and more about myself and for the time being my thoughts are definitely on the here and now.

NT: You say you want to carve your name in the tree of life; when will you feel you’ve accomplished this?

DR: Truthfully I don’t know how to answer that, I guess I will know when I know. I hope I never stop carving to be honest!

NT: Do you change your approach when writing music with Red IQ? If so, how?

DR: When we write together, we just jam; on-the-spot tracks, etc. At most times with a lot of inspiration from Riddle when he’s churning out them badman beats in studio and more recently I’m getting so much energy from the beats I’m hearing from Bo'Nidle!

NT: Do you prefer performing with others or as a solo artist?

DR: Definitely better performing alongside my brothers - I couldn't hack standing alone! And it’s always a big boost when Konny Kon is behind the decks; Manchester legend and all round don.

NT: Who has done your EP artwork for Sewing Seeds and what are your impressions of that?

DR: Bo'Nidle & Riddle actually threw that together for me, immediately after I mentioned the EP title. And I thought it captured the image in my head perfectly.

NT: Your videos for ‘Concrete Safari’ and NT: ‘The Path (Walk On)’ have a distinctive, stop-start animation style – who have you been working with on those, how much input do you have and what do you think about the results?

DR: ‘The Path’ was filmed and directed by Chris Wrench and co-directed by myself, and ‘Concrete Safari’ was filmed and edited by Daniel Entwistle. Both are immense and I wouldn't really want to have worked with anyone else on them, both are actually top geezers – look out for more of my work very soon with them both!

NT: Who are you listening to at the moment and which of your peers would you recommend?

DR: Right this second I’m listening to Lauryn Hill - I find it hard to say! Tune! But my favourite tape at the moment is 'Ab-Soul - Longterm 2: Lifestyles Of The Broke & Almost Famous'. The guy is absolutely gripping my attention right now. But as far as my peers are concerned I recommend you all go out and listen to and download anything from Bo'Nidle, C Aye Monk and Riddle (goes without saying really!) and Dirty North (the best band doing it right now in Manchester!), TNC (killing every show I see from 'em!) and outside of Manchester go listen to R kid More 1 (West London) and BLG (a cold collective in Leicester).

Words: Ian Pennington
Video: Daniel Entwistle (Shtuffs Productions)
Posters design: Max Peake (Hurtdeer)
Album art: Bo’Nidle & Riddle

D’lyfa Reilly headlines the next Now Then Manchester show on Thursday 8th December at Dulcimer bar in Chorlton. TNC regular Bill Sykes is lined up to support while Mind On Fire DJs fill in the gaps with their usual taste-making tune selection. Will Not Be Televised co-promote. Entry policy is pay-what-you-like; £3 suggested.

Now Then Imploding Inevitable: Event Photography (Thursday 10th November 2011 @ Dulcimer, Chorlton)

2011-12-02T10:46:00.008Z

The first of two November Now Then Manchester shows launched Najia Bagi's new album, Six Months. The ever-reliable folk-tinged taste-makers Imploding Inevitable (who have announce the dates for their third summer festival at Fell Foot as Friday 29th and Saturday 30th June) stepped up to co-promote, with Avital Raz performing her last show in the UK before a stint travelling to Israel and USA and ex-Witness guitarist Gerard Starkie performing with his rhythm section.

First on, Gerard Starkie:

Followed by Avital Raz:

And finally, Najia Bagi, airing her solo compositions fr the first time, ably aided by a string trio:

All photos: Ged Camera
Words: Ian Pennington

Preview: Nexus Night Café

2011-11-25T22:28:00.003Z

Two years ago a friend and I found ourselves stumbling out of a bar in the Northern Quarter not wishing to go home but no longer able to find an open bar or particularly interested in walking about looking for a taxi and avoiding fights and vomit.

We were handed a flyer for a place down the road. Normally I'll take a flyer and then throw it away but I liked the vibe coming from this person and the flyer had a pretty picture. I’m very easily persuaded.

That place was Nexus Art Café which runs a Night Café on Saturdays, open from 2am to 6am. We were welcomed into the warm space, where we bought hot chocolate and delicious cake. We had a few slices of cake.

There were industrial sized rolls of paper on the floor and plenty of crayons and here we all were; adults, merry and playing like kids. 4am Scrabble, art installations on the wall and good music.

The Café has also been open weekdays from 2008 and holds regular community and arts events. The food is great. You can bring your own mix tapes and put them in the jukebox. There are books and games, regular art exhibitions, music and theatre.

All of this is run not-for-profit. It is one of the friendliest and most important venues in the city but funding cuts mean the Night Café has been running at a loss for over a year.

Please help Nexus Night Café to stay open beyond December by making a donation to the charity, either using the box at the counter or by contacting emily@nexusartcafe.com for further information.

They are also holding a fundraiser on Saturday 3rd December from 8pm 'til 6am. Tickets are £7 and available from Skiddle.com in advance.

The event will see performances from PYJAMA PARTY, sublime songtresses HAT + EL, young whippersnappers BROUHAHA and late night DJ sets from FAUST, RK and GREENY.

They'll also be holding a raffle with some cool prizes, including a whole year of life drawing classes, tickets to Bright Club Manchester, a brew a day 'til 2013, a year’s membership with our jazzy neighbours Matt and Phred’s and vouchers for other NQ businesses, as well as cakes and boxes of delicious Teapigs tea.

If you care about Manchester and you care about interesting and exciting things happening where you live or if you just care about having somewhere to play board games and eat really good chocolate cake at four in the morning then go along or donate.

Words: Sean Mason
Image: Nexus poster

Carefully Planned Festival 2011

2011-11-23T12:20:00.004Z

The aptly named Carefully Planned All-Dayer has been a fairly regular occurrence over the past couple of years. Handpicking a variety of acts to take the stage, the brains behind Everything You Need first took up a whole chunk of Manchester’s daylight hours back in 2009 – and before that entertained Huddersfield. The modus operandi is merely ‘alternative’, which remains pleasingly vague and probably translates as: ‘a bunch of stuff you haven’t yet heard of’. This time around that equates to 66 acts scheduled across two days and four Northern Quarter venues.

My route through the above format isn’t the most extensive – in fact it’s a particularly small percentage of the total music on offer – but it gives a taster; a few bites from the festival buffet, bouncing between platters with an open mind and receptive palate.

For starters, I’m jumping in on day two; Sunday. Shen is downstairs at Centro, retuning his guitar as a mid-set adjustment on his debut show. The hawkeyed amongst a modest early audience have identified his cohort for the slot as the Dr Mahogany’s Goat Circus guitarist. He watches as intently as everyone else during Shen’s intricate acoustic picking combined with heartfelt lyrics partly aided by echo, before adding beats to a Bill Callaghan cover and incongruous bleeps to an anomalous set closer, which could be likened to Thom Yorke’s electronic tendency in the same way as Shen’s deep, straining vocal emotion to simple yet loquacious lines.

Sitting around for Mount Fabric entails a bout of high pitched Matt Bellamy-isms and a wilful reliance on effects pedals to add flesh to bone-shaking rhythmic skeletons. Following that, an exploration is in order. Inter-music prep at The Castle Hotel leads to a brief dalliance with the post-post-post-noise guitar-string mistreatment advocates Crash Of Rhinos; a popular choice whose curtain soon closes to herald a stroll to calmer climes down the Bay Horse’s stairs.

The Gardenelles’ classical folky vibe recaptures Sandy Denny and Vashti Bunyan through finger-picked tales related to Whitehaven’s episode of ‘Coast’ and its tinted specs of invasion reminisce. What is striking is the almost immaculate behaviour of an audience who receive songs with the respect the duo’s delivery deserves.

And that attitude remains (barring the occasional twitter or phone chirp) through Greta Santagata’s sparse yet involving compositions. The harpist sings in the languages of English, music, wonder, lust and her own personal diction as delicate chimes resonate, sandwiched between the face of anticipant stillness reflected back out by the mirror behind her.

With a fleeting glance back into Centro, where Decadence In Berlin are bashing out high octane thrashy punk numbers about the recession with a pleasing insistence on cowbell for percussion, my not-so carefully planned path through Carefully Planned comes to a close. An enjoyable path, although maybe next time I’ll take the event moniker’s advice and better prepare.

Words: Ian Pennington

Liz Green Album Launch @ Kings Arms, Salford, Saturday 12th November 2011

2011-11-22T19:39:00.006Z

“Welcome to Liz Green’s album launch party – I put the emphasis on party rather than slick gig...” These are the opening and warmly appropriate sentiments of George Thomas from support band on the night The Thomas Brothers. This is more of a celebration of the four years it’s taken for Green to release her debut LP, O, Devotion (through Play It Again Sam).

The Thomas Brothers open the evening’s proceedings with their upbeat 60s rockabilly with wonky edges courtesy of “astronaut sound effects” and occasional use of an old Ace Tone organ. The duo charm the room and have them in stitches between songs – “If you like watching rehearsals, you must be loving this.”

But the night isn’t about trying to win over a hostile crowd; it is a gathering of friends and well wishers all set on helping Liz Green celebrate her first full length release. And as such when Green does take to the stage she begins by downing a glass of rum to a chorus of “down it!” from the room.

However, for all the banter and general frivolity in the packed room, when Green opens with the a capella ‘Grinnin’ In Your Face’ it shows why everyone is here. Her idiosyncratic songbird warble causes the crowd to become listening statues before joining in to clap and stamp along bringing the song to a close.

Two songs in, Green’s band (who she affectionately names 'Team Me') join her on stage to begin a whole host of bouncy double bass driven songs with a slow 1920s sounding brass section that is always present but never overpowering. The only thing missing from the swirling jazzy sound is a stereotypical overabundance of finger clicking and toe-tapping.

Despite being a night full of warmth, rambling stories between songs and hand drawn storyboard explanations of songs, Green always brings it back to her record’s more sombre feel. “Enough of the hilarity; here’s a song about death,” is her way of introducing 'Hey Joe', a song about her half-man, half-bird imaginary friend.

Green is clearly in great spirits about finally releasing O, Devotion on a night which shows just how much affection and devotion there is towards her, both in the room and surely soon from a much wider audience.

The Set List

Grinnin’ In Your Face [Son House cover]
Dying Crapshooter’s Blues [Blind Willie McTell cover]
Ostrich Song
Midnight Blues
Displacement Song
Rag and Bone
Hey Joe
The Ballad of Joe and Oko
The Quiet
Bad Medicine
Gallows
[Break]
French Singer
Bei Mir Bis du Shoen

Words: Ben Robinson
Set list courtesy of Folly of Youth.

Interview: Air Cav

2011-11-18T13:57:00.005Z

So far Air Cav have resisted the temptation to cash in on acclaim afforded them since emerging in 2008, choosing instead to hone their skill for heart-poundingly epic shoegaze compositions. The ‘Alliance / Branches’ single was tagged by Steve Lamacq as one of his five picks for ‘Hottest Records in the World Right Now’ and various analyses have alluded to Arcade Fire when searching for an appropriate simile for uplifting violin embedded within the alt-rock line-up. Unhurried and unfazed, the quartet have been biding their time, adding to that an armoury of tunes all tried and tested as part of an oft-applauded live show. Everything is now picking up pace – a new single ‘A Call To Arms’ was released earlier this month and the debut album entitled Don’t Look Indoors is set to follow on 5th December.

The album in question meanders from alt-rock’s choppy staccato to the engulfing reverberations of shoegaze which, with the presence of the undeniably soothing violin lines, embraces both the classical and contemporary. Serene yet stirring instrumental breaks belie the urgency of motorik marching beats and Chris Nield’s Brian Molko-esque vocal charges; it is a collection of contrasts cohesively soldered into shape. The band’s name (Air Cav is the name for an air-mobile division of the US Army) isn’t where army influence ends; from ‘A Call to Arms’ to ‘Alliance’, ‘So Others May Live’ to ‘Here Be Dragons’, there are military references aplenty, which violinist Sophie Parkes defines as “metaphor and a combined respect for war films – from the males in the band at least!” The record could be interpreted as a concept album; in the same breath, the architects could be interpreted as a concept band.

Released on the band’s own label, Crystalline Recordings, Don’t Look Indoors realises that promise with all the grandiose aplomb that you’d expect. Still the standout track, ‘Alliance’ is that rare musical adhesive that’ll stick to your inner playlist long after listening and it is accompanied by an often fearsome arsenal of fellow euphoric climbs. But the highlights aren’t necessarily always the besieging; ‘Exile’ and album closer ‘Glossary’ retreat to forge a fortress of melancholy, captivating those who enter its melodic gates.

Ahead of a headlining slot at Now Then Manchester’s first Antwerp Mansion showcase on 24th November, violinist Sophie Parkes spared some time to answer our questions.

Now Then: You were initially victims of the journo shorthand for melodic indie: ‘sounds like Arcade Fire’. Did you welcome this? What did you think about the reaction to your recording emergence back then?

Sophie Parkes: Well, as much as I love Arcade Fire, it seemed very simple to be able to equate ‘girl on violin’ with ‘sounds like Arcade Fire’ – I don’t think we would have had those comparisons had we not the line-up we do, because I’m not sure there is all that much in common. It’s one of those journalistic timeframes where everyone is caught up with the ‘big sound’; a decade ago, everyone sounded like The Strokes. Otherwise, I think we were really pleased with the reaction to our first singles: we had some really nice airplay, including Radio 1 and being made ‘Single of the Week’ on XFM. It’s always heartening to have that kind of reaction when you’re essentially doing this yourself; no manager, no agent, no label, no PR specialist and so on.

NT: It’s been a long time in the making since the first singles released back in 2008. What has been the hold up?

SP: We’ve spent a long time scrapping, rewriting... We weren’t going to hurry, as there seemed nothing to hurry for! It’s not like we’ve ever been involved in the hype machine or anything. We thought we’d take our time, get together a collection that we were pleased with and see what happened...

NT: Did you hesitate before including the early singles on the album, given the length of time since they were originally recorded, or were they too significant to omit?

SP: I don’t think we hesitated as such, just as we’re really proud of ‘Alliance’ and ‘Picking At The Bones’ and wanted to include them, but we did want to record them differently, with a different slant. So ‘Alliance’ is calmer, fuller, whilst ‘Picking At The Bones’ includes different backing vocals and more noise.

NT: What has the response been to the album so far and how do you feel about it?

SP: The reviews have started filtering in and they’ve all been really positive and enthusiastic so far – and some of our nearest and dearest are very impressed, and that’s what matters. We’ve also had some great airplay: Steve Lamacq has played ‘A Call To Arms’ to end one of his shows on 6Music and John Kennedy gave us a whirl on XFM, so it’s looking good.

NT: You’ve recently been taking support slots on Now Wave and WotGodForgot promoted shows... How have they gone for you?

SP: It’s really great to be able to support interesting, well-received bands from outside the UK and see what all the fuss is about. And, of course, they’re experienced promoters who choose great venues and really think about which support bands will complement their headliners, meaning that fans might well have an ear out for us, too.

NT: Which has been your most memorable live show and why?

SP: Well, there’s been several really. We were really lucky to head to Holland with our friends, Daniel Land And The Modern Painters, for a couple of shows and meet some really lovely people who we’ve stayed in touch with. We also put on our own Christmas gig a couple of years ago at the Cross Street Unitarian Chapel which was amazing; mulled wine, mince pies and music in a very ambient setting always goes down well! Then this year, Dave Haslam invited us down to play at the Manchester International Festival, which was really great, and we also loved supporting Ringo Deathstarr at the Ruby Lounge, just because they’re fantastic.

NT: Which records are you playing the grooves off at the moment and which of your peers would you recommend?

SP: I’m a big folk fan and I’m currently enthralled by a new female English folk singing collective called Lady Maisery who specialise in ‘diddling’, singing instrumental tunes rather than singing words. Chris is desperately awaiting the new Spiritualized album, following their performance at the Albert Hall last month.

As for other bands at the moment, we’re big fans of Driver Drive Faster, who we asked to support us at our Christmas gig a couple of years ago, and I love Caulbearers, too.

NT: Where will Air Cav go from here?

SP: Well, we’ve already got a clutch of new songs that we’re really chuffed with, songs that are sounding a little different to what we’ve done before, so we’ll be looking forward to playing those live and seeing how they go down.

Words: Ian Pennington
Photographs: Courtesy of Air Cav
Logos: Courtesy of Air Cav / Crystalline Recordings
Promo design: Craig Brown Beards Club Illustration

Air Cav headline the Now Then Crystalline Records show at Antwerp Mansion on Thursday 24th November. Foreign Hands and Ivan Campo will also perform; entry policy is pay-what-you-like, £3 suggested.

Denis Jones: Then & Now

2011-11-13T17:26:00.009Z

Years ago, neatly tucked in alongside Humble Soul’s other local traditional folkies including Liz Green and John Fairhurst, Denis Jones was merely one part ‘electronic’ dabbler, while remaining for the most part safely concurrent with 21st Century folk & blues.

Ever since then, he has slowly but surely drifted out into a sea of spliced soundwaves and, in pairing with multi-instrumental beats merchant David Schlechtriemen (also of The Pickpocket Network, HoneyFeet and Driver Drive Faster), his soulful side is being rejected for something altogether more immediate. The quaint (if wrongly attributed) folk-tronica tag has long since been shed. Tracking his progress as a musician very much open to experimenting with his art, you can still sense the early learning in folk and blues, notably in tonight’s recognisable tracks ‘Beginning’ and ‘Clap Hands’, but Denis has used his accumulated coats of technological paint to embrace something far more hard-hitting, raw, visceral and primordial: dance music.

If you were to see him tonight for the first time, his abundance of facial follicles would seem more sonically apt alongside pre-shave Beardyman or moustachioed Andrew Weatherall than folk’s William Fitzsimmons or Iron & Wine. The audience are still heckling for the standouts of his first two LPs: “‘Elvis’! ‘Sometimes’!” they plead; “Judas!” you can almost hear them thinking. From David’s arrival partway through opener ‘Clap Hands’ until he departs again for ever-beguiling curtain closer ‘Beginning’, it is a deluge of electronic indulgence. During that time, some shuffle uncomfortably and reminisce about more intimate climes of days gone by, sat cross-legged in crammed south Manchester bars, but in realising his own musical present and future, he is steadily leaving that audience in the past.

Or is he?

Denis’ ever-developing brand of dance noise would most cohesively fall into the IDM category alongside the likes of Walls, Fuck Buttons and Ghosting Season. But Denis and David (or Tatetitotu, as they're tentatively calling the project) are unchained by genre and also retain a certain organic feel that some peers cannot boast. Their compositions are untethered to the workings of a macbook, generating a production less disguised than the others. Looped sample pads and a mesmerising array of gadgets seem over-complicated, but groundings are often laid by the more human elements. Denis’s acoustic guitar plucked with intricate precision; his vocal howls and hollers adding an entombing atmospheric intensity. In this sense it could be interpreted as in keeping with the bluesy roots.

And does a dance music orientation necessarily leave folk and blues behind? If the folk and blues leviathans of days gone by had access to the sound warping equipment that today’s sonic sculptors readily employ, would they too reshape and adapt? Indeed, they did adapt. John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters trailblazed with electric blues; John Martyn championed alternate guitar tunings; Don Van Vliet rewrote the recording rulebook in his secluded forest cabin (albeit a rulebook that few would willingly follow).

That progressive dynamism is as fundamental to the synthetic as it is to the natural. Indeed, the open-minded are shifting their feet to the Denis/David duo’s block rockin’ beats. The only sticking point would be that it’s not Denis Jones as advertised; it’s a wholly different racket. Tuneglue.com nods to John Fairhurst, Adrian Crowley and Alin Coen Band as reference points, but those are inaccurate and inadequate to his direction; every step he’s taken has been away from those peers. Which means that local promoters Mind On Fire are way ahead of Tuneglue. They saw the sonic signs more than 18 months ago by pitting him alongside the likes of From the Kites of San Quentin and xxxy on a bill topped by Mount Kimbie; next week (Thursday 17th November) they’re taking that a stage further by seamlessly coalescing him (plus David) with the supports for IDM electronic glitch tweaker Shigeto at Islington Mill.

And so to the future, which for Denis should include many more of the kaleidoscopic frames distributed on entry to this gig – albeit with more of a light show to hammer home his realignment in techno-musical technicolour. The specs, incidentally, are an apt side-story and one that lends credence to Denis’s strides into dancefloor-filling territory. Distributed on entry to the Deaf Institute, they build a hallucinatory experience with minimal effort, cost and after-effects; the silver screen is dabbling with 1980s 3D comebacks, so why not independent music? Many seem sceptical, but taking on the paraphernalia of Biff’s infamous Back to the Future crony means you’re only a short leap into the surreal away from a psychedelic Chemical Brothers or Orbital spectacle. Not often will this be used as a simile, but then it hasn’t been often that Denis has provided an encore with the ballistics of a D’n’B beats bombardment.

Words: Ian Pennington
Photography: Stephen Hicks
Poster: Mind On Fire

Interview: Ghost Outfit

2011-11-10T13:47:00.003Z

You may have heard Manchester buzz band Ghost Outfit causing a clamour on Wilmslow Road buses, in art galleries or on record; all very lo-fi, guerrilla, DIY so far. When Now Then’s Ben Robinson decided to investigate further, frontman Jack Hardman told him about the ghosts of the band’s past, present and future.

Hallowe’en was the perfect time for the aptly named Ghost Outfit to release their new single Tuesday through Sways Records – hand knitted ghosts and all. Early in its musical life, the duo comprising Jack Hardman and Mike Benson has been branded with the currently trendy ‘lo-fi’ and ‘DIY’ tags, but the poltergeist-loving pair is now trying to move away from such labels by setting sights on taking the distorted shoegaze noise-pop further afield.

“I understand why we’re called [lo-fi], you can’t exactly call the earlier recordings anything but lo-fi; it was kind of lo-fi by necessity rather than associating it with the genre. It wasn’t really an attempt to recreate that genre it was more making what we could with the equipment that we had.”

Ghost Outfit are part of the Salford-based Sways Records and have also been championed by local promoters Underachievers Please Try Harder and MCR Scenewipe. They have been associated with the lo-fi re-emergence in Manchester of late along with countless other distortion loving, budget-sounding bands, such as Sex Hands, Former Bullies and Milk Maid; a trend owing a debt to love of nineties American indie.

“I’d have to say it’s all stemmed from the re-emergence of that scene of bringing back nineties American indie rock. And I like the fact that a lot of Manchester bands are putting a completely unique spin on it – they’re not trying to recreate the sounds of these American lo-fi bands.”

Ghost Outfit fell into this ramshackle DIY scene through a combination of need and bad experiences in the recording studio as they were starting out. After that experience, Jack says the band are heading to the studio for a lengthier process with their sights on moving away from previous lo-fi efforts.

“We want to get stuck into something a bit lengthier because we’ve not done that before, the two EPs we put out before this single are online. They were all sort of compilations we did over the space of nine months, so we want to do a long EP; that’s our next call.”

“We’re actually talking about polishing off a couple of songs and then going down in a couple of weeks to start recording at the Sways studio in Salford. Because it’s their studio we can kind of do what we’ve wanted to do for ages which is move in and stay there for like three or four days while we live there and do all the recording then fall asleep and stuff.”

“With the old EP we had no interest in going into a studio because we went into a studio early on as a band – one of those pay-per-day studios – and we just had a horrible experience of it. So we thought everyone’s doing it DIY at the moment so we’ll give that a go. We took that and sort of pushed that as far as we could go whilst still trying to be pop and yeah it was great, we had a great time doing it, but because the scene at the moment is very heavily lo-fi sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the people who’ve worked really hard to get it to sound interesting and lo-fi.”

Jack insists though that the band is wary of finding themselves as part of a ‘trend’ for the sake of sounding a particular way. For their future planned recording sessions they’ll be aiming for a sound that’s “nice and live”. So expect to hear a slightly different Ghost Outfit sound in their next releases.

“People like Chad VanGaalen have really tried to use lo-fidelity to their advantage, but then you get people who are the other way around. Like bands who stick a microphone as low as the reverb and distortion in the room and play into their microphone and they’re done in an hour or something.”

“And there’s merit to that but at the same time it allows bands to sound really trendy at very little effort on their own part. I think we’re looking at disassociating ourselves from lo-fi completely, we don’t want go for a really slick sound just nice and live in the studio.”

Words: Ben Robinson
Images: Simon Bray (Music photography)

Grey Lantern presents... Ghosting Season @ Kraak Gallery, Saturday 22nd October 2011

2011-10-27T23:09:00.005+01:00

It can’t just be the mere proximity of Hallowe’en on the Gregorian calendar that has ushered in a cluster of emergent recording artists opting for ‘ghost’ in their name; it seems to be the onset of the 2010s in general. Manchester’s fuzzy reverb-shrouders Ghost Outfit are one. Mercury Prize recognised Ghostpoet and Holy Ghost! have both released records this year while Sheffield bedroom remixologist Ghost Hunter has also spent the start of this decade using a moniker that includes ‘ghost’. That’s before you even consider the Swedish black metal mysteries named, simply, Ghost.

However, none of those are the headlining attraction tucked away in Northern Quarter’s Kraak Gallery. That accolade falls to Ghosting Season, a pair originally from Leeds who’re now residing in the M postcode, a fact for which Manchester is grateful. Not only have they switched city, but also name; on the Hallowe’en theme they’ve merely changed costume, now appearing under the lexical apparel of spirits rather than the previous fierily threatening imagery conjured by worriedaboutsatan.

First of all, Grey Lantern promotions have compiled a bill shared by three others. Veí’s laconic, languidly looping chimes and shuffles are still awaiting the perfect setting as a scenic film’s score but the performance is memorable for the effects his basslines have on the ceiling panels, which vibrate as the physical manifestations of the musical tectonics.

Hourglass Sea is almost as far removed from that as possible. The ceiling panels must take a pounding, not that it would feature anywhere near the top of a list of concerns during a deluge of unrestrained musical ADD. The incongruous venue and lack of audience response count against him in mitigation, but the overly hyper homage to both DJ and Guitar Hero is his own doing. Parts of the polished live production are a more fidgety M83, punctuated intermittently by screaming lead guitar and then tarnished by tones close to Pendulum.

A more balanced set follows from Cloud Boat. Balanced in the sense that high and low pitched vocals are equally catered for amidst the echoes of sampled beats and ringing guitar, despite deriving from the same mouth. That vocal range is the main display of originality by the seated pair of purveyors of downtempo dub and daydream dynamics who, particularly when compared with their R&S Records label mates and alumni (notably James Blake), are very à la mode.

Which leads succinctly back to the earlier point about bands with ‘ghost’ in their name. Unsurprisingly not dissimilar to their ulterior worriedaboutsatan selves, Ghosting Season add their trademark bow-operated guitar density to samples and synths, sending shimmers like a submariner’s SONAR. The twosome take uptempo turns in the direction of techno floor-fillers – remarkably failing to cause much of a stir from an eerily static crowd, just as Hourglass Sea before them. That comparison stops there though because, although Ghosting Season provoke more pensive chin stroking than hip gyrating, their appeal can be summarised as similar to that of Fuck Buttons, Walls or The Field within the realm of IDM. But should you plant them in a club environment, surely the roof would erupt.

Words: Ian Pennington
Images: Alex Dorweiler

Interview: Najia Bagi

2011-10-24T18:22:00.012+01:00

One half of The Electronic Exchange; one quarter of To Sophia; one half of The Ground, Najia Bagi has been fractions of other musical projects. With the release of her solo debut recording, Six Months, she is now a whole.

Sparsely arranged pieces combining shimmering, uncomplicated piano and vocals discard the accompaniment and layering effects familiar within her other projects – most notably a sample-heavy fusion as The Electronic Exchange on the Concrete Moniker label. If that collaboration with beats merchant Tullis Rennie finds Najia pushing the boundaries of her own comfort zone, then her solo work is the antithesis of that; songs built from the epicentre of her musical learnings. There’s an added confidence born from broad musical experience, but it is a return to independence that accentuates Najia’s vocal style – fragile yet captivating – while keeping instrumental congestion to a minimum.

Najia spoke to Now Then Manchester’s Ian Pennington about her various musical projects along the road to becoming a solo artist.

Now Then: Having been a part of very different sounding musical projects, how far does your solo album define your preferred style?

Najia Bagi: I feel like all the music I’ve ever been involved in has led up to this album, which is a nice feeling to have. I only really started to write music that I was proud of with To Sophia, so I think that was the beginning of the process that led to this album. And then I found myself wanting to write music that was more and more simple and gentle until I got to this point. It can’t get much more simple and gentle than this!

Also, the music that I listen to has changed over the years, which has always been reflected in what I’ve written at any given point. But I remember hearing the stuff that has inspired me to write this album (Nils Frahm, Anthony and the Johnsons, Soap&Skin) and at the time I thought, “This is it, this is the music that I want to respond to.” I think that it is a combination of being in a certain frame of mind and being a bit tired of music that is too busy. I think it’s a bit like reading a brilliant book – what you feel and learn is held between the notes, if you know what I mean?

NT: Do you prefer the stage to yourself or with other musicians to fill out the sound?

NB: I prefer being on stage with other people. I get incredibly nervous and I’m not that comfortable with being the centre of attention on stage, so it’s hard to be up there on my own. But there is something really incredible about sharing completely personal experiences and feelings with the audience that you don’t get with a band on stage and I love that part. It’s a bit like having a really lovely heart to heart with a friend.

NT: What has been your most memorable live show, either solo or with another project?

NB: This is a hard one. I think there have been a few memorable shows over the past few years. The Electronic Exchange was commissioned by FutureEverything Festival this year to develop some of our music with a string quartet, live drums and live backing vocals, which was just incredible. It was so humbling to be on stage with those brilliant musicians – when the string quartet really let rip it was almost impossible to sing! And the first time I played these songs was memorable. I had never played piano to an audience before and I was completely terrified, but the crowd were brilliant. They were completely silent.

To Sophia had a few brilliant shows too; we were all best friends so when we felt like we were connecting with the audience we all felt completely elated and proud of each other. At least that’s how I felt! And once we played for a cocktail bar full of people at around 2am, which was pretty memorable because we were paid in tequila! I have patchy memories of that performance, which include me standing on a barrel and shouting at the poor people in the bar: “Okay everyone, we’re going to play now, so can you all be quiet!” Awesome.

NT: You’ve recently supported Julianna Barwick, who arranges her music live by looping vocal parts, and (correct this if it’s wrong!) you often loop your own voice with The Electronic Exchange. Did you consider using that style on your solo record?

NB: Well, Tullis (Rennie, the other half of The Electronic Exchange) loops my vocals actually. He records me singing and plays around with it live – he’s brilliant. But I have recently started to write music with Dave Johnson (drummer from To Sophia), which is just drums and vocals and we use a loop station. It’s hard! I find it difficult to use technical equipment but I’m learning. I did think about using effects for a while with this material but I decided not to, I think there’s a time and place for effects and stuff like that but for me one of the things I like about this piano music is that it’s clean. It’s just a set of stories, just piano and vocals. And at the moment I don’t want it to be any more.

NT: Has the experience of diversifying into different forms of electronic production (ie with The Electronic Exchange) affected your solo work?

NB: Yes absolutely. Because The Electronic Exchange writes via email, I found myself writing and singing alone for the first time in a very long time, during the process, and I loved it. I found that I had time and space to write exactly what I wanted to, without the pressure of there being other band members present. I think that this gave me the confidence to write solo material. But in terms of the music being electronic, I suppose it made me want to write something non-electronic, something acoustic and simple.

NT: What’s been happening with The Electronic Exchange and what's lined up for the future?

NB: We’ve had some really exciting things happening! This month we released a second EP on Concrete Moniker, which is two new songs and two remixes (the remixes sound amazing)! And then we played at Band on the Wall supporting one of Tullis’ heroes, Bugge Wesseltoft, which was great. Then we were off to Barcelona to play at the Apollo there, which was incredibly exciting. We’re also planning a tour next year with the same musicians that we worked with for FutureEverything and we’re in talks with the festival, which could result in something amazing happening at FutureEverything 2012. It’s all going really well!

NT: For how long will To Sophia be on hiatus? Are there any future plans for the band?

NB: Well, To Sophia is taking a break for now and I’m not sure how long that will be for. But although it’s sad not to be playing with each other, it has given each of us the opportunity to write new and exciting music. Paul (Balcombe, one half of The Ground) is writing solo material that is haunting and beautiful; Dave, Paul and Adam (drums, guitar and bass from To Sophia) have formed an amazing band called Outer Dark which I think sounds like a mixture of Radiohead and Tool, which is great for all of them and of course I’m doing this stuff which I absolutely love. We were having a laugh recently saying that maybe we’ll reform one day like Pink Floyd and that the strap line could be: “No one came to see our gigs then, and no one will now!”

NT: Finally, which records are you playing the grooves off at the moment and which of your peers would you recommend?

NB: Peers – that’s easy. Rioghnach Connolly (Honeyfeet) has the best voice in Manchester and possibly the UK. She sings all over Manchester all of the time in different bands and everyone should go to see her. She sounds like heaven. She’s amazing. And Outer Dark, of course! I also love Jesca Hoop, who plays in Manchester a lot, but she’s not a peer, she’s way beyond me in terms of success. Records, well, I listen to Rory Gallagher, The Temptations, Little Dragon, Nils Frahm and Yann Tiersen. There’s a song called ‘Til The End’ on his album Dust Lane that just keeps getting better and better until you think you can’t take any more – and then it keeps going! It’s amazing.

Images #1 & #5: Jacob Russell
Images #3, #4 & #6: Courtesy of Najia Bagi
Images #2 & #6 album artwork: Adam Dolan
Image #7 poster design: Louie Mitchell & Matthew Mathieson

Najia launches her debut solo record, Six Months, at Dulcimer bar in Chorlton on Thursday 10th November. She will be joined onstage by a string quartet, while Avital Raz and Gerard Starkie will also perform at the show, which is a Now Then Manchester co-promotion with Imploding Inevitable. Entry policy is pay-what-you-like, £4 suggested; anyone paying £4 (or more!) will also receive a download code for Najia's album.

Now Then Debt Records: Event Photography (Thursday 13th October 2011 @ Dulcimer, Chorlton)

2011-10-22T19:19:00.006+01:00

[Ged Camera]

October's Now Then Manchester show at the Dulcimer combined the musical dexterity of Debt Records artists with the linguistic compositions of Wordlife poets. This latest photographic compilation plots its visual path.

The three selected Wordlife poets were separated by a solo set by HoneyFeet saxophonist Alabaster DePlume; James Lock warming the gathering crowd as a seated raconteur. Alabaster then set a trend of performing amid the audience, ranging between delicate and vociferous with acoustic guitar in hand.

[Ged Camera]

Joe Kriss duly followed, recounting poetic tales with eloquent humour.

[Ged Camera]

The prop-wielding Stan Skinny not only introduced himself, but also bagels and tabloid newspapers, earning attention through an observant wit.

[Ged Camera]

Louis Barabbas diverted eyes and ears music-wards with his characteristic rumbustious flair, shifting ambience to rhythmic and feet to jive.

[Ged Camera]

Finally, HoneyFeet hardly need an introduction. Singer Najia Bagi (who will launch her debut solo album at our next Dulcimer showcase on 10th November) describes Rioghnach Connolly simply as having "the best voice in Manchester and possibly the UK - she sounds like heaven." She's not wrong; an enraptured audience wholeheartedly agree.

[Nathan Gibson]

[Ged Camera]

[Nathan Gibson]

Images: Nathan Gibson & Ged Camera [as indicated next to individual photographs].

Words: Ian Pennington

Preview: Manchester Literature Festival 2011

2011-10-10T23:23:00.002+01:00

Oh dear, the onset of the dreaded Autumnal gloom is now well and truly here and the inches of rainfall from the now ever grey skies are increasing as the nights grow colder. Exactly the kind of weather where people decide that going out is just a bit too much effort. “I might just stay in and read a good book...” Yes I’ve been there; we’ve all been there, but for the next two weeks why not pack your books along with your umbrella and defiantly head out into the sodden streets? Today (10th October) marks the start of the annual Manchester Literature Festival, held across the city with plenty of interesting events to shelter you from the rain.

Saturday 22nd at Whitworth Art Gallery, for example, sees the world’s first purpose built mobile poetry emporium – or so they claim. The idea of which is to serve up eager poetry consumers with free, made-to-order poems in 10 minutes or less courtesy of their ‘poetry chefs’. Surely healthier than any burger van.

A particularly intriguing prospect is the audience with Anthony Horowitz (Thursday 3rd November) who will be discussing his modern take on Sherlock Holmes, a character loved by millions across the world. Horowitz is the first modern author to be officially commissioned by the estate of the original author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Has Horowitz continued the Holmes legacy staying true to his famously logical deductions to solve crimes in foggy 19th century London or has he updated and bastardised the character for a Hollywood generation?

Some of us are more interested in bright and shiny playthings rather than dusty old tomes. A need to be aware of everything and anything happening before it actually happens has led to a growing fascination with blogging culture. Everyone these days has a blog but only a handful of people do it well, to see who is champion of this minority head to The Deaf Institute for the Manchester Blog Awards (Wednesday 19th).

If the idea of this festival of literary delights has whetted your appetite don’t let the rain dampen your spirits – get out there! Chances are you’ll find a celebration of our greatest art form more entertaining and worthwhile than sitting around waiting to dull your brain with next week’s X-Factor tripe.

Words: Ben Robinson
Images: Logos from Manchester Literature Festival & Manchester Blog Awards

MCR Scenewipe presents... @ Kraak Gallery, Friday 7th October 2011

2011-10-08T17:19:00.008+01:00

Now Then almost doesn’t make it to this show. Distractions are lurking on the streets of the Northern Quarter as on my way to the venue I am stopped by six very attractive Swedish girls looking for somewhere for dinner. However, the dilemma of choosing whether to commit to helping them in their quest for a fine eatery or continue on to sample some of Manchester’s finest indie rock was a decision made by my better self and therefore I find myself wandering down back streets and dodgy alleyways to find Kraak Gallery.

To set the scene, MCR Scenewipe is a website focused on supporting local musicians and touring bands alike, predominantly through filming unplugged songs in unusual locations. It re-launched last week with a lovely shiny new format, complete with news and listings. The love shared between the website and the current crop of Mancunian indie bands is on show tonight as the bands express their gratitude to Scenewipe for their continued support.

First up are The ABC Club, a band whose particular brand of indie still seems to involve borrowing from the Strokes, but with more swoons and swells. The lack of energy on stage is mirrored by a fairly underwhelmed audience and, although in places they manage to muster some guitar stylings not dissimilar to local boys Dutch Uncles, it lacks the bite and all feels a bit flat.

Second on is a band that has been attracting attention from all the right places in recent months. The Louche FC is a far noisier affair, doing all they can to fill the room with reverb soaked brooding guitars, although suffering at the hands of a PA that can’t quite do it justice.

Just when I thought I had them pinned as a girl-fronted My Bloody Valentine, they dish out a cute 50s melody that tries to disguise itself as a mean noise piece, but is actually a marvellous pop tune that lilts and shuffles along with an enjoyable ease that could almost be radio-friendly, except for the two minute outro which graciously repeats the line, “I wanna die.” Again the local love is evident as the band encourage label reps from SWAYS down the front and are evidently intent on trying to have a good time. They have a lot to be excited about; this lot have a bright future.

Next up is two-piece Ghost Outfit, who produce straight up chunky riffs mixed with backbeat drums and some very catchy melodies, all very reminiscent of PS I Love You (the Canadian band, not the romance novel or its big screen adaptation), which is no bad thing. The band do divulge themselves into one melancholic track "about being sad," but soon move on to “one that’s about being angry” and as the pace picks up their fresh inventiveness even manages to engage the crowd to the point of some hip shaking. As the band progress through their set, the energy seems to turn up a notch with each song and as the band let themselves loose the audience responds, culminating in a mass brawl type stage invasion for the set finale, by far the most enjoyable set of the night.

To complete the night was Driver Drive Faster, who are by far the most accomplished band of the evening. Their scuzzy blues based indie rock is eloquently topped off by charming vocal melodies, occasionally allowing themselves to build nicely into more raucous rock’n’roll solo sections, held down by accomplished rhythms. A great end to an evening showcasing some of Manchester’s brightest indie rock talents, all thanks to MCR Scenewipe.

Way better than dinner with blonde Swedish girls. Probably.

Words & Images: Simon Bray

Interview: Debt Records

2011-10-06T17:59:00.012+01:00

Debt Records is a non-profit co-operative comprising like-minded creatives, including musicians, artists & film-makers. They replace record label bureaucracy with collaborative self-sufficiency, evoking a mantra that Debt's Louis Barabbas files next to "loose art collectives like the Bloomsbury Group, Pre-Raphaelites, Beats, etc.." Spurred on by questions supplied by Now Then Manchester's Ian Pennington, Louis and fellow co-founder Biff Roxby go into more detail about the aims of the label, gigs with wobbly floorboards and indifference towards comparisons with Factory Records.

Now Then: How did the label begin; who started it; how many bands were involved from the outset?

Biff: Soon after I joined the Bedlam Six Louis and I were having a beer in a park, playing songs with Tom our drummer. Record labels came up in conversation and we both admitted our teenage fantasies of owning a label. Why not, we thought. We knew enough people then to put a great roster together and to begin thinking about websites, venues for showcases, videos and all sorts. But it had to be different. Mainly because we had (and still have) no money. The label benefits hugely from its artists' other skills and their links to good people to make having no money a little easier.

Louis: Biff and I talked a lot about the traditional role of labels and how, when you ignore all the things that are now in crisis (traditional distribution, expensive marketing, etc) what you have is, quite literally, a label – a quick description to stick on a product, something that makes you know instinctively that a band put out by Subpop or Rough Trade is going to be very different to a singer put out on Sony. While the internet and affordable recording equipment are making the established record companies rethink their business strategies and abandon their traditional revenue streams, that doesn’t mean people don’t still benefit from filters and taste-makers. The best independent labels are just that, a badge of recommendation that helps artist and audience alike. It was that model that we sought to follow rather than, say, EMI.

NT: Have you modelled Debt on any other labels, either contemporary or historically? If so, which one(s)? If not, how is Debt individual?

Biff: We intentionally avoided trying to be a 'proper label', sick of the images those two words imbue in an artist or musician. We opted for a transparent and friendly approach, perhaps somewhat idealistic in its early days but one that focussed on artists and listeners instead of profits. Many aspects of how we run are similar to those of other independent labels that we have met along the way. This only helps to strengthen our resolve, knowing other people want a change in their industry too.

Our artists were already active on the live circuit. We believe strongly that live is where it's at and that records are something that can supplement that as a means to earning, whilst also being a valuable documenting of an artist's output. The idea is to give artists the ability to make a sustainable career for themselves. As artist and label, you realise quickly what works and what doesn't.

Louis: Early on we were compared a lot to Factory (ie Manchester based and useless with money). I’ve always seen us more like those loose art collectives like the Bloomsbury Group, Pre-Raphaelites, Beats, etc. – not in the things we do, say or wear, but in the fact that there’s no rigid infrastructure and that, essentially, it’s a league of independent creators under one banner. That’s where the idealism ends though, we’re pretty practical and understand that the modern social obsession with networks is a phenomenon that could become the saviour of all artists – penniless and profitable alike – Debt tries to establish a context for those on the roster that can help with broadening their appeal, marketing their projects and, ultimately, helping them make a living.

NT: How much debt is Debt Records in? Can you put a price on artistic freedom?

Biff: We aren't in a huge amount of debt. We started with hardly anything and only have slightly less than that now.

Louis: In money terms the label is down but in every other respect business is booming: our name is growing overseas, the network is spreading and the artists are all touring and producing great work. That was always the goal. We try not to let money ruin our progress, in my experience once you start making it you invariably have to start spending it and that’s when it gets complicated.

NT: You often facilitate collaboration between artists affiliated to you; what’s the secret to your successful fusions? Do you just pick names out of a hat?

Louis: We don’t force anyone to do anything. Most of these things just happen because it’s very common to have members of two or more different bands in the same room sharing the same wine. What happens after that doesn’t take much facilitating, indeed it’s hard to stop!

NT: Do you ever collaborate outside of the broadly folk genre?

Louis: We’re hoping to do some more radical cross-overs soon. We plan to start a more regular remixing operation of the records we put out, hopefully open things up to other influences.

Biff: I'd say all our artists have a strong folk influence but are developing outside of that themselves. However this is no doubt informed by collaborations made in both live and studio situations.

NT: What has been the biggest (and best, if different) gig you’ve staged as Debt?

Louis: The ones I like have been those that allow the label aspect of what we do to mingle with the live operation. For instance we recorded the launch for the last Bedlam Six studio record and then released that as the next album. There was a nice interconnectivity there. It sort of fills in the gaps between the various processes. Plus we always talk about the importance of live music so it suits us to make those big shows into material for release.

Biff: We've staged packed out shows at several venues around Manchester including The Dancehouse Theatre and The Ruby Lounge. They were a lot of fun but my personal favourites are always the smaller, more intimate gigs where people are standing on tables at the back to be able to see. We had nights just like that at Fuel in Withington. We ran free entry gigs there for two years where the same crowd would sit cross legged for an acoustic artist or poet and then half an hour later make the floor wobble (quite worryingly) when the dancing started.

NT: Are arts organisations deserving of public funding? Why / why not? Do you ever seek public funding? Why / why not?

Biff: If an arts organisation meets the necessary criteria then yes I believe they are deserving of funding. What the criterions are is another matter entirely. Some of our artists have received public funding, though the label itself has not. Those who have received funding have benefited hugely and I think the label would too although it is not for me to say wether the label is deserving of it. I'm far too biased.

Louis: The UK is in danger of being a nation that no longer produces anything. We’ll just be sitting there surrounded by crumbling castles, quoting our ancient poets and lamenting the lost empire. The arts brings in so much international interest and money for the country that it is a folly not to invest in it. That said, I think arts organisations need to be wary of reliance on funding. Look what happened to the Green Room Theatre in Manchester: its funding got cut and it closed its doors almost instantly. These organisations need to be realistic and be able to exist (at some level) independently or they become unstable and unsustainable.

If Debt had some funding we could do some great things but it’d be essential that we continued to operate in the way we already do, on a project-by-project basis. My friend Jeff at Un-Convention once said that funding is like morphine – it helps when you’re in pain… but if you start relying on it, you’re in trouble! What I’d like to see from the government is more respect for the arts sector, full stop. Everywhere is getting cuts at the moment and the arts suffer more than most, but saying that the creative industries are less important (and less deserving of investment) than other areas will spell disaster for more than just the artists.

NT: Which records are you playing the grooves off at the moment and which of your peers would you recommend?

Biff: I'm remixing 'Song of the Foundling' by Alabaster Deplume at the moment. I also helped arrange the choral parts for the original so I've listened to that song more times than I can count. I still love it.

Of course I'd highly recommend all of Debt's artists but outside of that I'd suggest The Moulettes and Moneytree, both with the Sotones cooperative label in Southampton who do great work. Jamie Harrison on Manchester's own Red Deer Club Label is also one of my current favourites.

Louis: I agree with Biff on those for sure. We’ve also been seeing a lot of Kirsty Almeida, Mika Doo and Liz Green recently, they’re all fantastic. Bridie Jackson over in Newcastle is another one to watch. It seems to be all women on my list, well I suppose it’s probably about time the independent scene was a bit more balanced that way!

NT: Describe the music lined up for the Now Then event...

Biff: Alabaster Deplume - performance poetry and songs that will make you cry with laughter, sadness and fear all in the same breath.

Louis Barabbas - high kicking, dirt swinging leader of The Bedlam Six. If he plays his pretty ones you'll swoon. If his foot gets too close in the raucous ones, you'll be knocked unconscious.

Honeyfeet - When these guys play, hearts move and dancefloors shake. Bring boogie shoes.

Images #3, #4 & #5: Simon Bray Photography (live & promotional photography) taken of Louis Barabbas & The Bedlam Six at Un-Convention 2010. Image #6 (The Red Tides) taken by Simon at the Debt Records showcase at the same event.
Poster design (image #1) by Craig Brown [Beards Illustration]
Image #2: logo courtesy of Debt Records.

Debt Records curate the forthcoming Now Then Manchester show on Thursday 13th October at Dulcimer bar in Chorlton. Wordlife will co-curate by adding selected poets between the music. Joe Kriss, Stan Skinny & James Lock are so far confirmed for spoken word slots. Pay what you like; £3 suggested.

Now Then Mind On Fire: Event Photography: Danny Drive Thru (Thursday 11th August @ Dulcimer, Chorlton)

2011-10-05T18:04:00.006+01:00

The final instalment of photographs from our August show with Mind On Fire pictures the night's headliner, Danny Drive Thru, whose DJing veered between soulful splicing and the occasional jungle track.

[GB Multimedia]

If you have any photographs from our previous shows that you'd like to see on the blog - or would like to photograph future shows - then please email ian [@] nowthenmagazine [dot] com. The next Now Then Manchester gig is on Thursday 13th October, featuring a combination of musicians from the Debt Records roster and poets selected by Wordlife.

Now Then Mind On Fire: Event Photography: Vieka (Thursday 11th August @ Dulcimer, Chorlton)

2011-10-03T11:22:00.001+01:00

A continuation of a selection of the memorable images from our August gig with Mind On Fire. Performing as a quartet, Vieka enraptured a Dulcimer bar with barely space to move; one audience member recalling Bjork and many would've been happy to watch a set twice or three times the allocated length.

Vieka's debut vinyl single is available to buy from On The Corner on Chorlton's Beech Road.

Now Then Mind On Fire: Event Photography: Dayse & Aver (Thursday 11th August @ Dulcimer, Chorlton)

2011-09-30T16:58:00.006+01:00

A trip through the photogenic flashbacks of recent memory lane sees Dayse & Aver (of The Natural Curriculum) captured, both on camera and by the loitering CCTV drones, during their August performance at Chorlton's Dulcimer bar. Now Then Manchester co-promoted with Mind On Fire as the roof was raised to the tune of a thought-provoking dissection of society, relayed through hip hop lyrics as they're meant to be.

Dayse & Aver perform again tonight (Friday 30th September) with the full Natural Curriculum collective at Trof in Fallowfield. £1 entry all night; doors open at 10pm, closing at 3am. Promoted by cutting-edge hip hop connoisseurs Will Not Be Televised.

More images from the gig to follow soon...

Interview: King Capisce

2011-09-16T11:21:00.008+01:00

There are many musical hybrids in this global village era of broadband and rapid file sharing; tunes on technological tap. Musicians merge distinct stylistic ideas and genres evolve unrecognisably from their original incarnations. Sheffield’s King Capisce represent one of these breakaway niches. Not quite jazz, but embodying the same spirit of aural adventure; not quite rock, but similarly unafraid to crank up the volume; not quite prog, but often hyperopic in melodic and structural vision. Guitarist Tim Feben explains it better in his own words, talking to Now Then Manchester’s Ian Pennington.

Now Then: You’re fronted by a dual sax action pairing that takes on most of the lead parts. Who or what inspired this? Did it just fall into place or was it intentional?
King Capisce: Well, we actually started off as a four piece with only one sax. Without any vocals in the band the saxophone carried a lot of the melodies in the tunes and it worked out as we were more of a jam band back then. But when we started to write and experiment with the tunes for our debut album we found adding a second sax line beefed up the sound and gave the melodies significantly more depth and character. Rich, our sax man, basically went through all our tunes and reworked them for two saxophones. After that we couldn't write or gig with solo sax again! We got Alex in and the harmony between two tenor horns became the ‘vocals’ for Capisce's tunes.

NT: You appeared at the Manchester Jazz Festival recently - how did that go?
KC: It was a pleasure to be part of and a bit of a personal goal of ours, especially with all the great bands featured at the festival year after year. We were on at Matt and Phreds and it was packed out, which was wicked. Typically speaking though we love a standing crowd right up with us, dancing and thrashing around – it keeps the energy up, makes us play better... But that's just nitpicking, it was an awesome weekend, we'd love to play again next year...

NT: What's the biggest (and best, if different) gig you've performed at?
KC: Supporting some of our favourite bands such as Polar Bear and Led Bib has been fantastic but I think playing to a couple of thousand people at Sheffield's own Peace in the Park festival this year has got to top it. There is such a communal vibe and the atmosphere all day was fantastic - by the time we came on at around 7pm it was already through the roof. We just needed to turn up to be honest! Seeing our tune 'Cheer up Cyclops' start up a mosh pit in our home town was something behold... having a gig like that on our doorstep is magic.

NT: Are lyrics superfluous?
KC: In general? No. In our music, I think so. For one, it frees the music up and gets us away from verse-chorus-verse clichés. More importantly to us, we've tried to create tunes that are multi-textural and the lack of lyrics helps other elements of our music shine through. Our 'dual sax action' as you put it, has its own lyricism - if that doesn't sound too cheesy. But also with Capisce, we all try and put originality and personality into our playing... lead lines come from all of us and we hope that the connection with the music and instrumental performance is enough to replace the need for a traditional front-person. Who knows what the future will bring? There are amazing lyricists out there who define the importance of vocals but, for us at least, the connection you get watching musicians who are really connected with their playing is as good as music gets, words or no words.

NT: How do you feel jazz / progressive music forms are portrayed (in the media and otherwise) & how would you alter it?
KC: That almost certainly requires a better answer than we can think of right now, but they both don't have it anywhere near as good as they should! 'Progressive' rock is arguably a large part of our sound, but being associated with the classic image of 'prog-rock', as in 1970s hair rock with over-the-top guitar solos, is not an idea we're too keen on... We happen to have a long-haired type in the band, unfortunately enough, who also plays guitar, so it’s dangerous territory for us! But it does seem like if you call yourself ‘jazz’, you're suddenly being inaccessible or exclusive... And being called post-jazz, or post-this or that, just sounds pretentious! Maybe we should all spend less time on genre tags and just listen to more music?

NT: With your mix of prog rock and jazz, do you see yourself as part of a 'scene' or as a space between different musical styles?
KC: With the previous half-rant in mind, I think the answer to that is probably a bit of both. We play music that comes naturally to each of us individually, without trying to force things or follow suit, so inevitably that gives things their own flavour. We've also actively tried to fuse some of our favourite elements from, say, the post-rock or contemporary jazz scenes, so in this regard we can definitely identify with the 'space between' concept – especially when it comes to being paired with other artists for gigs. Having said that, there are loads of amazing live bands who are 'cross-genre', experimental, jazz/rock influenced and/or mostly instrumental who we love and maybe feel some kind of 'musical affinity' to... we've already mentioned Polar Bear and Led Bib – off the top of my head, bands like Jaga Jazzist, Get The Blessing, Portico Quartet. It’s not necessarily a 'scene' we feel connected to I guess, it’s more of an approach and ethos towards making new and original music of mixed origins.

NT: I once interviewed Peter Hammill from prog rockers Van Der Graaf Generator who suggested that by 1977 music had become "overblown" and for some new bands it didn't make sense to say "you can only be a band if you've got 6 keyboards" so the lo-fi punk model was a more feasible alternative for many young musicians... What's your view on prog vs punk, both in terms of an impression of then and how you see it now?
KC: I don't think across the band we're particularly into either in their purest form. However aspects of each are great and have undoubtedly informed each of us and our sound. Punk tells you to strip down what you’re playing to its most essential elements and play it with balls. That's a good lesson, especially if you want the tune to be high octane and catchy. Prog might tell you not to rush an idea and let it evolve and layer up as required. That's also a good idea. What's not necessarily a good idea is taking each to their extreme and ending up with a tune that is either wishy-washy and over technical or so simple and harsh that it misses out on some of its potential depth. So that's it essentially; each has a lot to teach the other.

NT: Finally, which records are you playing the grooves off at the moment and which of your peers would you recommend?
KC: Well I think we've already mentioned a few of our favourites, so we'd better just promo bands we are playing with who we consider 'peers'! It's altruistic self-promo, we promise...!

We are going to be gigging with the mighty Red Snapper at Sheffield nightclub Plug on 18th November. They have been doing awesome stuff for years now, mixing jazz with various modern beats and grooves and paving the way for bands like us. We also played with an awesome young jazz trio from Manchester called GoGo Penguin [who will support King Capisce at Dulcimer Bar on Thursday 22nd September] who we were so impressed with that we're bringing them to a night we are organising in Sheffield – they are definitely worth seeing live.

Images #1 & #3: Simon Bray.
Image #4: Courtesy of King Capisce.
Now Then This City Is Ours poster design: Craig Brown - Beards Illustration.

King Capisce headline the next Now Then Manchester show on Thursday 22nd September at Dulcimer Bar on Wilbraham Road in Chorlton. Get a free copy of their latest single 'If Not Now, Then When?' GoGo Penguin and Kerfuffle support, with the This City Is Ours DJs LSN and Blood Boy providing the audio intervals. Suggested entry fee is £3, but it is a pay-what-you-like premise that encourages as much or as little as you can contribute to support the musicians involved.

Interview: Dayse & Aver

2011-08-10T13:09:00.003+01:00

Following the release of their debut vinyl EP and in the run up to a live show at Chorlton's Dulcimer bar for Mind On Fire and Now Then Manchester this Thursday, Dayse and Aver of The Natural Curriculum met with MOF’s Spurious Scholars to discuss their inspirations for the EP, social issues and what’s next for TNC.

MOF: The EP’s really vivid in describing a totalitarian dystopia. Could you give us a bit of insight into your inspirations?

Dayse: How long have you got?

Aver: Manchester & its rain…. George & Aldous... Edward & Sigmund... Curtis & Morris...

MOF: Was it your intention to make a 'sci-fi' record or is it just something that evolved naturally?

D: That really does depend on whether you put Star Trek on the same shelf as Blade Runner...

A: Sorry about him. We meant to make a record that sounded advanced and industrial in order to differentiate ourselves from the guitar pickers, the endgame of which is to spit roast a cyborg, if you get my meaning?

MOF: Musically, it switches a lot, futuristic synths one minute, deep spiritual jazz the next. What’s your typical song writing / production process?

A: I’ll make a beat from the weird noises with big drums, Dayse will write a verse or two based on some old book he just read, then blam!!! 6 months later Omas will murder the cuts and we got ourselves a B-side...

MOF: Speaking of books, you reference a lot of philosophers on the EP – particularly those who deal with ideas of the state and control. In these dark times how relevant do you think these issues are?

D: It’s relevant to us at least, because our consciousness was born into it. The whole world got paranoid after 9/11. That paranoia got real in the United Kingdom during the events that surrounded the 7/7 bombings. Both events happened at a time when our generation was beginning to sow the seeds of its own political and philosophical consciousness. So things such as the illegal murder of Jean Charles de Menezes on the Northern Line by London Metropolitan Police in 2005, for a crime that he never committed, naturally stained our outlook.

It showed a weakness in the technology and dangers of human error when using it. And there’s a substantial list of fuck-ups like this. We put the whole mass surveillance operation under scrutiny and began to rebel against it. For panopticism to work in society at large, the state can’t afford to reveal itself as it did. You have to stand back and keep people paranoid without them knowing why they feel the way they do. The state held it up for a while with their right-wing, anti-Islamist propaganda and some groups in society are still struggling to see through it today. But eventually I think we smartened up on a whole issue and the state failed. Thankfully, we never became a police state, but we nearly did. That paranoid fear turned into something else. You’re seeing the results on the news everyday now.

MOF: So in effect you’re questioning the right of the state to watch over and control us. You mention it on the EP so I’d like to hear your thoughts on Hobbes’ Leviathan...

D: Bollocks to the serpent! My take on social contract theory is simple: I didn’t sign shit! I don’t believe in absolute chaos, but if you’re going to grant the state a monopoly on physical violence, which is what law enforcement and social governance really boils down to, then it should be there in black and white. This country has no constitution so to speak, we just have a long history of conflicts and fuck-ups that we’ve never learned from, partly because they’re not included in the traditional agenda of our education system.

I also think that we should be deriving certain rights from the State of Nature. In the modern world, the right to bear arms is an extension of the human animals’ natural right to defend itself. That includes defending itself against the state. The state could justify another Peterloo by hiding behind a social contract that doesn’t exist. This is relevant until we get together as a nation and make it irrelevant.

MOF: Anyone who has been to a rave in Manchester has seen the GMP misuse of this ‘monopoly on violence’, but it extends (perhaps less visibly) to every aspect of the rest of society. To quote a wise man: “What is to Be Done”?

D: We should all buy a mocha and a blueberry muffin from Starbucks. And cherish them...

A: Honestly though, I could mash off a double-choc-frappacino with extra cream right now... Then it’s off to a march about capitalist oppression in the 3rd world.

MOF: Indeed the idea of The Protestor as an Identity (or, even worse, as a way of relieving middle class guilt) is as much a part of the system as the police - but what about the source material, Marx and the ideals of a 'real' revolution?

D: The global economy is upside down. I’m broke and looking for answers. Naive as it may be (and it definitely is, but let’s not get into a debate about the PRC or the Soviet Union or Cuba... the list goes on) where do you think I stand on this issue? Accept it or not, this is still a class society, it just lacks a clear divide.

MOF: And in what ways is this reflected in your lives and music?

D: That’s life I guess. Music is my life...

A: Very

MOF: Back to music then, it’s clear you dig deep; any tips for find the wax Holy Grail in Manchester?

A: Not a chance son. I dug so deep once I woke up in a record store in Japan!

MOF: The bass sounds really stuck out for me, are they all samples or is there an element of live instrumentation as well?

A: Brother Tom played bass for tracks 3 [Dark Matter] & 5 [Dear George].

MOF: A lot of people know you from TNC, how different have you found working as a duo?

A: Not that different.

MOF: Hip Hop has always been about consuming different influences, but in some quarters it seems like the digestion process is getting a bit clogged up. As Flow Inspectors what’s your diagnosis… does UK Hip-hop need an enema?

D: Old-timers cashing their Hip Hop pensions + Untalented senseless urban youth that can’t relate = Yes.

A: What’s an enema?

MOF: And finally, which producers and MCs are doing it for you at the moment, locally and from further afield?

A: [Old Bill] Sykes' EP is nearly finished and that is gonna be nuts. It’s mostly Chalky-p on the beats, with a few tracks by myself and Poynton’s one & only DJ Omas, so that’s something to look forward to. As for further afield Odd Future are sick, check the Earl album if you get a minute.

This interview first appeared on Mindonfire.co.uk. The Now Then Mind On Fire showcase, also featuring Danny Drive Thru, Vieka and Zoir, takes place on Thursday 11th August at Dulcimer in Chorlton. Danny Drive Thru, Dayse & Aver and Vieka will all have new vinyl records available to buy for the first time on the night.

Interview: Mind On Fire

2011-08-08T16:33:00.012+01:00

“People have asked what Mind On Fire is before and I’ve always kind of struggled – it’s a monster...”

It’s been a long road since humble beginnings as a crew of bands looking for gigs back in 2004, but Mind On Fire Collective’s Joe Webster believes they’ve finally understood and tamed the beast that has kept growing over the years. Persistence and steady evolution (“We’ve not had a five year plan or anything like that – we just followed opportunities as they’ve come”) has been the key to laying the groundwork across a range of artistic and musical disciplines.

“I feel like we’re at a point now where we can say: 'this is what we do: we’re a record label, we run a website, we run occasional events showcasing experimental music from all around as well as having a big emphasis on pushing local music',” he adds, looking back over the years since he and his Mind On Fire Band bandmates took the first steps along a varied musical path. That path has meandered from podcasts to radio shows, promotion to performing, DJing to recording, with all manner of musical collaboration in between.

To start with, all that was a pipedream. The first strides down the Yellow Brick Road were merely seeking to gain self-sufficiency and avoid the venomous Pay 2 Play snakes at all costs. Webster explains: “We were at odds with that [P2P] and never really felt comfortable with that sort of scene. So when we started to do clubnights and collaborate as Mind On Fire (MOF), that was very much part of the ethos. We were an alternative to that Pay 2 Play scheme.”

“We were all playing in bands in our teens with a few friends and it just seemed like commonsense really that once we were ready to start doing gigs, the natural thing to do seemed to be to book a venue and put a gig on, so we put on a few gigs, not even realising that what you’re supposed to do is make a demo and send it off to real promoters!”

They themselves soon became real promoters, booking a mixture of local bands with the occasional headliner from further afield. To begin with, Webster recalls that often a multitude of tastes was catered for across one night, but soon they realised that success in this was erratic and not everyone could quaff their intense cocktail of sounds all in one dose. It’s one of the toughest tasks of the niche music promoter to strike a balance between what you’d like to see and what’ll draw in an audience, but a MOF Mint Lounge series managed to squeeze jazz/funk, hip hop and electronic bands onto the same bill with consistent success (“that stands out as some of the best stuff we’ve put together”).

Whether good or bad, they’ve tended to be memorable: “There’s been some hilarious moments! We had Shitmat getting thrown out of Music Box in his underpants because he’d been hanging off the rafters by his feet, swinging a chair at the crowd. I had to run around the club to find his trousers to take to him outside! That was pretty good!”

“Some of the standout shows have been Onra and Martyn at Mint Lounge and the series we did at Deaf Institute with My First Moth last year where we had Kelpe, Lone, Lukid – E-Man’s visuals for that were some of the best stuff we’ve had at anything.”

It’s not only this diversity of scheduling that has helped the Mind On Fire name to become synonymous with an eclectic array of local independent music. This month will see the release of the first single on Mind On Fire Recordings, but they’re no strangers to distributing recorded music. A series of compilation CDs, CD-Rs and digital releases have helped to define the extent to which the MOF are prepared to unearth and highlight originality and proficiency in non-commercial music. Danny Drive Thru, who is headlining the next Now Then Manchester showcase at Dulcimer on Thursday 11th August, is the first musician to command sole attention on a Mind On Fire Recordings vinyl pressing with his ‘Psychedelia Smith’ / ‘Violence Makes’ split.

The prospect of embarking on a venture into the notoriously unstable territory of music sales could be a daunting prospect. But the Emerald City is in sight and Webster is nothing but pleased to see it around the corner; the culmination of seven years' work is near – a fact that will be marked by an October celebration gig.

“I’ve always found it quite exciting actually; how it’s developed with digitals and stuff. I think it has democratised music a lot. We’ve known that it’s a scary time to be trying to start a label selling vinyl and we know that the margins aren’t good and that sort of thing, but that’s not why we’re doing it, you know, it’s for a love – not just a love of the music – but we wanted to have that tangible product, the whole thing with the artwork and everything.”

Webster’s reasoning is unsurprising given the tendency of MOF to support the arts broadly. En route, they’ve worked alongside Sketch City, Herbal Sessions and most recently produced the Hear No Evil See No Evil publication / compilation combination with onefiveeight. Unafraid to explore different visual styles, Mind On Fire have made E-man (aka Cycloptics) a mainstay of live VJing at their shows. But one of their most distinctive artistic elements so far is the range of design for event posters.

“We always made a point at first of having completely different artwork for each event – for the flyers we never had any proper logo or branding for at least the first 3 or 4 years there was no set logo. So we might get a kind of theme going for a series of events but we commission different artists to do different flyers so if you look at our flyers it’s chaos!”

All of which indicates the wider sense of kinship and collaboration amongst the Collective. Webster is keen to point out the introductions that MOF have facilitated over the years (“We’ve had artists who’ve played at the same event then started working on tunes together”) but even within the Mind On Fire group itself there’s a certain fluidity that over time has seen faces come and go. Whoever is involved, there is always a sense of genuine democracy.

“We used to try to decide everything together and then realised that it was impractical – we still do a lot together but for specific events or projects someone will take a lead on it. But then for the releases and stuff like that there are a lot of meetings and arguments with everyone wanting to get their input in.”

One recent decision was their next physical output after the imminent Danny Drive Thru record. “We’re chatting to Paper Tiger about doing a 12” for them but there’s no set date on it yet,” Webster reveals. The production duo transform into an eight-piece live act and have already caught the eye of Jus Like Music Records, who released their debut EP ‘Worldwide Takeover’ last month. In the meantime there are a few live shows courtesy of Mind On Fire with Thursday 11th August’s collaboration with Now Then Manchester followed by a website launch for Upper Space chalked up for late August, the aforementioned seventh birthday bash and then an enticing Ghostpoet headlined gig at Deaf Institute. All of which suggests that, despite finding its niche, the Mind On Fire Collective won’t be resting on their laurels; there’s still plenty of road ahead yet.

Words: Ian Pennington
Images: Courtesy of Mind On Fire

Now Then Manchester will team up with Mind On Fire for our next show at Dulcimer on Thursday 11th August. Below, Joe describes the event...

First up we’ve got Danny Drive Thru, who’s the next release on the label. He’s an awesome beat-maker and he’s been doing it for quite a long time so I’ll be really excited to hear some of his stuff. The last few times he’s performed with G-Kut, so it’d be good to see him flying solo. We’ll have the record there as well – it’ll be the first time it’ll be available.

With the Mind On Fire Band we’ve done a lot of stuff with TNC before so we know those guys pretty well but that new Dayse & Aver EP blew me away – I think it’s one of the best records this year and I think it’ll be pretty hilarious pulling it off in here (Dulcimer)! We’re working on doing the D&A EP as a full live set so we’re quite excited about that. We’ve not really started jamming yet so it’ll be a good few months off. But it’s in the pipeline anyway.

And then Vieka [pronounced Vee-Ecker]. We had those guys on at Sounds From The Other City and they were really good, Chantelle’s got a great voice and they do this awesome loop-pedal wizardry. Joe Luckin’s too good on the drums for his age – it’s not fair!

Then there’s MOF DJing and Ben from the label, who goes by the name Zoir [pronounced Zo-ear], is going to DJ some of his own productions – maybe doing a live Ableton set, that’s the plan. Bargain at £3!

Now Then Broken Bubble: Event Photography (Thursday 14th July @ Dulcimer, Chorlton)

2011-07-19T22:42:00.010+01:00

The recent collaboration between Now Then Manchester and the Broken Bubble netlabel in the cosy confines of Chorlton's Dulcimer bar elucidated first hand the melodic malleability of 'dubfunk'.

Sharing the limelight were a trio of DJs mixing some of the less constrained electronic music; a free-flowing reign of beats subjugated by individual tweaks, tangles and technological transfusions from the hearts of Duskky, Hurtdeer and Cogidubnus.

A visual summary has been compiled by Gary Brown.

Words: Ian Pennington
Images: Gary Brown

Interview: Broken Bubble

2011-07-12T21:16:00.018+01:00

Dance music is a lexical maze these days. The roots of the genre family tree are more intricately twisted than the soundwaves pounding your eardrums.

Not that there’s anything wrong with niches so long as music is constantly shifting and progressing, as Broken Bubble netlabel founder Guy Thompson would attest: “The reason there’s so many [names] is that genres tend to stagnate after a while so if you can look at things afresh then it’s a good thing. The group mentality means that everyone ends up taking too many similar elements to each other and so when something new springs out it’s one of the great things about the evolution of music. Now people can go from house to dubstep to techno to drum’n’bass to house to acid to anywhere else so it’s great if you can find a way to bring that all together in a meaningful experience...”

The development of dance music since dubstep nodded its head into a bass hungry public eye has served to further blur genre boundaries, so the dance family tree is more a forest and the resultant mixes make for varied listening. Those dabbling in post-dubstep have dipped into anything from reggae to jazz via funk and ambient IDM. If you ask any individual, they’ll label their sound differently. Broken Bubble artists Hurtdeer and Duskky call their output ‘dubfunk’, which Thompson agrees with, but the only certainty is that dubstep’s successors have presented a fork in the road.

“Some people still try to claim that dubstep’s a single genre but I think it’s blatantly split into at least two distinct styles. The very mid-range heavy stuff – I don’t really want to mention artists, but that kind of sound doesn’t connect with me on an emotional level at all. Then a lot of people are pushing the deeper sounds; that’s where names like future garage have come from. Duskky and Hurtdeer are calling their stuff ‘dubfunk’, which is quite a good catch-all term for the kind of sound they’re pushing. You could call some of the stuff my labelmates are making post-techno-funky-wonkstep, etc, etc and that still wouldn’t adequately describe the sound of the track.”

While Broken Bubble as a label opens its arms to a plethora of genres, there is a distinct sound emerging – one that owes a debt to the likes of Hotflush, Hyperdub, Echodub, Acroplane and Planet Mu, both in terms of forcing wide the mainstream gates for forward thinking and inspiration: “Burial’s albums obviously, Boxcutter’s Glyphic and Benga’s Diary of an Afrowarrior – they were all big inspirations that got me back into mixing tunes rather than just being a listener. From then it just seemed like I had a rare surge of motivation and decided that to get something going I might as well do it myself. Right now FaltyDL, Floating Points and Ital Tek are producers I look up to – he’s got his sound absolutely nailed on at the moment.”

From that surge, Sicknote was born. Thompson put his own decade’s worth of experience with DJing in deep house, prog house and broken beats into the fresh post-dubstep template of the late 2000s. Then, unafraid to stick to his guns with regular residents, including xxxy and From The Kites Of San Quentin’s Phil ‘Blood Boy’ Bretnall, he also gambled by bringing in the occasional imported non-Manc to headline.

“I’d met xxxy at a night called Offbeat Suburbia and got him on to do the first one, then had him as a resident for a while. Now things have gone extremely well for him; he’s headlining shows all over the place. I tried to focus on people who were away from the trends of the genres I suppose. The first one we did at the Corner in Fallowfield we brought Phaeleh up from Bristol for his Manchester debut and packed the place out – it was a really buzzing atmosphere. Again, he’s another one who’s gone on to have a huge amount of success.”

During a brief hiatus in Sicknote promotions, the Broken Bubble label has taken shape with the help of links with London-based Mothers Against Noise collective and the rapidly improving technologies accessible to anyone who puts the time into learning about them. Bandcamp is one of the online platforms that can help with music distribution by cutting out the middle man and collating similar sounds under one virtual roof.

“I think seeing people selling music that way showed that it was the thing to do. There’s a big trend for giving music away... for an artist the most important thing is to be heard as widely as possible, but at the same time there’s so much free music out there that people can perceive that it doesn’t have as much value as the stuff that’s being sold, so I’m trying to strike a balance with that. And there’s a lot of good music set ups now – I think Soundcloud really helps as a platform as well; helping like-minded producers to hear each other’s stuff – it’s been a major factor in getting such a good roster of artists together for the label.”

The roster has grown almost exponentially since Thompson’s DJing alter ego Cogidubnus launched the label in February with an EP entitled The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank. Others have followed and Duskky’s second digital album Rascality, released this week, is the eighth through Broken Bubble when including the superb 14-track mutual remixing compilation We Can Build You, which displays the kinship and respect shared between a group of producers whose shades of melody and rhythm can fuse harmoniously but equally command praise individually.

“Having been in contact with Duskky and Hurtdeer for a bit and swapping tunes with them, I realised we had all the wherewithal to do it ourselves, so I’ve been doing the artwork and distribution, whilst Sandy (aka Duskky) and Max (aka Hurtdeer) have been doing the mastering. They’ve been instrumental in helping me set up the label in the first place, adding a lot of ideas with all aspects of the process and it’s the same with a couple of the other guys.”

“Duskky tends to take quite a break-beat science approach to his tunes. He likes pulling apart drum breaks and working a real rhythm with a lot of reggae and funk influences. Hurtdeer brings in influences from techno, breakcore and videogame music and explores different time signatures with a lot of tunes in 7/4 instead of 4/4, which makes them difficult to mix from for other people, but it sounds great when he does it!”

The roster isn’t limited to that core trio. Second Line has so far appeared on the compilation and has an EP pencilled in for September, while Macka’s eclectic combination of dubstep beats, freestyle melodics and the occasional Shakespearian quote gives his Piano Works digital record some of the standout Broken Bubble moments.

Beyond those are a couple of newcomers in Broke’nFolk (“he’s done a really cool EP made out of funk, jazzy drum breaks and a lot of interesting synth work as well”) and Gravious (“he had an early release on Hotflush and has had a quiet few years, but he’s back with a vengeance pushing a very fresh sound”) who promise to add yet more sonic colour to an already luminous palette.

Although there’s a scientific approach to making the synthesis, selected samples often originate from science fiction. Cogidubnus in particular is partial to building on ideas from sci-fi literature and soundtracks: “Pan-Galactic Memory Bank is named after a novel by Kilgore Trout, who’s a character in Kurt Vonnegut’s novels. I’d been reading his Breakfast of Champions book just before I made that track... Then there are a few samples from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and, yeah, it’s always interesting to explore your influences by sampling.”

Cogidubnus brings those influences with him to Chorlton’s Dulcimer bar on Thursday 14th July, where he, Duskky and Hurtdeer will share the limelight for what will be a Broken Bubble live showcase. Thompson’s latest foray into live mixing prior to this was at the Total Garage night at Joshua Brooks; a more diverse line-up in a sense, but Thompson profited from an open-minded audience: “I think it [Total Garage] went well. The crowd was open to exploring the possibilities of what garage could be, I was able to play a lot of the minimal, 2-step stuff that comes under the ‘future garage’ umbrella. It’s an area that has a lot of creativity with producers like Roof Light, Sorrow and Fedbymachines all making great sounds.”

“I think at the Now Then Manchester night we’re probably going to alternate; we’ve got about four hours or so and I think we’ll rotate with half an hour each and gradually build it up. Max (Hurtdeer) and Sandy (Duskky) have been working on stuff at 200bpm – one of the things about dubstep when it started was getting a good change of vibe from switching tempo between 70 and 40bpm, so they’re trying that with 100 and 200bpm.”

Words: Ian Pennington
Images: Courtesy of Broken Bubble & This City Is Ours

A taster of Cogidubnus' mixing vibes can be heard here.

Arts, Music & Events Preview July 2011 (Part One)

2011-07-01T11:45:00.007+01:00

So, onwards to the latter half of the year. July, the delta of a month when MIF docks at Manchester’s shores, overflows into multifarious distributaries as fringe events seek to swim in its big fish slipstream.

Enough nautical nonsense, though. Tonight (Friday 1st) is a night split by a couple of worthy shouts from contrasting shades of the musical spectrum. Firstly, Cogidubnus is among the DJs for the Total Garage night; unfortunately not actually at a Total Garage fuel dispenser, instead at Joshua Brooks where you’ll hear future garage, dubstep, 2-step and associated genres. If you dig that scene then why not also shuffle down to the Dulcimer in Chorlton on Thursday 14th for the second of Now Then Manchester’s stint, a showcase of Cogidubnus’s label Broken Bubble.

On the topic of Dulcimer, the second option for tonight has to be Wooden Wand; lured across the pond by Golden Lab Recordings for a performance of alt-folky psychedelics.

Saturday 2nd beckons in more of the aforementioned fringe events. Lass O’Gowrie pub’s own Lass Fest hosts the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. There’s not a lot I can add to that, other than it sounds like something you won’t see very often – so check it out this time around! Elsewhere, there’s more from Not Part Of Fest that day, including the Manchester Art Crawl launch party at Islington Mill.

The annually anticipated Beech Road Festival is set for Sunday 3rd. The road renowned for its independent boutiques will welcome stalls and arty attractions aplenty.

If Lass Fest’s sock puppets sound like a niche market then ‘chap hop’ must be a genre whose purveyors can be counted on one hand. Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer Monday 4th performance will answer any inevitable questions about what to expect.

[More to follow after the weekend...]

Words: Ian Pennington

Interview: Doodlebug

2011-06-26T13:01:00.012+01:00

“All right Barney?” enquires another of the passersby on a sunny, yet blustery, afternoon outside Beech Road’s On The Corner cafe in Chorlton. The bespectacled man sat before me is the Barney in question. Multi-talented arts instigator Michael Anthony Barnes-Wynters is recognisable not only as a resident of Manchester suburbs since moving up from Bristol in 1989, but also for his work supporting independent arts within the city.

“I’d come from Bristol and one of the guys who lived in our household was from Manchester and in the house we had a band, which I used to do all the artwork, stage visuals and promotions for. We came up to Band on the Wall to play, so that was my first trip to Manchester back in the early 80s. It was amazing; it all stayed with me. And also knowing this guy called Charlie Clarke, who used to go on about Wigan Casino; he was a Northern Soul head. It lead to a kind of soft spot so in 1989 I moved – came up to Madchester and got straight involved with what was going on. My next door neighbour was Steve Williams who was a main DJ for the Haçienda and the Blackburn parties. So straight away I got to do flyers for the Haç and that.”

Barnes-Wynters may have arrived during Madchester, but his own experiences weren’t directly dependent upon the Wilson-oriented media buzz. Instead Barney started up his own regular Sunday night slot at a nascent Dry Bar under the moniker Hoochie Coochie. “I walked into Dry Bar, which had just opened, and approached Leroy – Leroy, by the way, ran it then and also now runs Gulliver’s. It’s quite interesting, actually I think it’s brilliant, looking now at how Dry (201) started bar culture, frankly, with the whole design aspect and it kicked off bar culture in ’89, so I walked into that sort of scenario.”

The night saw many names en route to local and national acclaim, one of the more notable being DJ, illustrator and tea connoisseur Mr Scruff. “Andy [Carthy, aka Mr Scruff] had approached me to DJ, so we would DJ side by side together, one deck each at Dry (201). He later approached me and gave me a tape and said, “Have a listen to that.” So I’m thinking, “Okay, I’ll take it into Rob (Gretton)...” Rob’s reaction was, great, as long as we cover costs, you can come in, use the [production] desk and do it – and so, from that, the relationship between myself and Andy started there and the rest you know; the story, which is brilliant.”

Barney has much to say on the subject of stories, which ones are told and which ones remain largely or entirely untold. “’Madchester’, Manchester, Haçienda, music – all that stuff – it was interesting having a spokesperson like Tony Wilson around, because you needed that intellect, that articulate person who could actually focus it all. Now looking on back to it, it’s just the churning out of that same story – ‘the story, the story...’ 24 Hour Party People was brilliant, I thought, but there are many stories here, which haven’t been touched and which, hopefully, will be touched. I always remember a time years ago when Manchester always used to take the piss out of the Beatles story but, you know, it’s become the same thing here; actually, worse.”

Where the present-day stories are concerned, Barnes-Wynters is always striving to unearth the next artistic gems – the reason behind which he attributes to his upbringing in Bristol. “It’s a core of my ingredient, you know. I grew up in the ‘70s in Bristol and my street was like Sesame Street, you just had all these characters; all these different flavours from all over the world on one street. It was amazing! Terraced houses, two up/two downs; we had the Adams family across the road – they were this kooky, mad family – brilliant. A Teddy Boy and girl family plus the hippy house, where I used to hang out, they were in their early 20s. Meanwhile I’ve got this music, which, you know, I couldn’t understand the lyrics... because it was Serge Gainsbourg. I was listening to L’Histoire de Melody [Nelson] aged 10... Then listening to Gil Scott Heron – God rest his soul – and Pentangle; all sorts of stuff. So what drives me? I just feel lucky enough to have been brought up where and when I grew up. Because now I flex, you know, it’s easy... I never let go of analogue, meanwhile I embrace any new...”

Barney’s gratitude extends to his fundamental ability to be able to enjoy the world in all its glory. “Bottom line is that I appreciate that fact that I have all my senses – as a kid growing up in my school we had a deaf unit and I used to hang with the deaf kids. For some reason I tend to attract... what’s the word?! Oddballs, let’s say! Introverted, definitely. I tend to hang with the underdog; I always have.”

“The deaf kids would get taunted and I always used to just stick up for them... And so, I’ve got this thing about appreciation of my senses so I tend to explore by any medium necessary, so with Doodlebug and the whole thing with International Doodlebug Day, which I set up in Manchester, London and Tokyo on the same day, at the same time for the first 3 years and then we did it ’98 to 2006 where we invited different artists... basically, bedroom artists, doodlers literally, but it was also to do with doodling with sound – it wasn’t just pen to paper, it wasn’t just mark making.”

“It never goes away because someone is always reminding me or asking me, ‘when is the next one?!’”

Indeed, the legacy of the annual tri-city triumph remains in Manchester. Sketch City met at one of the events (“Those guys got the bug by coming along to International Doodlebug Day – on my site there’s still photos of the first time they got together”) and now embody the Hoya:Hoya experimental electronic clubnights. Internationally recognised artists, such as Alex One and Boris Hoppek, joined the party (“It was very much about bringing in International artists to design collaboratively with local artists”) and as a result Barnes-Wynters was involved with curating the UK’s first street art exhibition at URBIS in 2003.

“There are pieces up in the Northern Quarter which are still there from 2006.”

“Bearing in mind my background from Bristol was very street-based in terms of visual art, so there was the thing with Banksy obviously – there was that connection because Doodlebug used to work with Arc Gallery Store (RIP), which was a clothing/accessories shop with a gallery on Oldham Street opposite Magma and basically brought Banksy to drop stuff here.”

As for taking International Doodlebug Day into double figures, Barney is happy to speculate: “I stopped at nine, because I felt it needed to stop ad breathe. Indeed, there’s plan of a number ten – I think it would be... it’s going to be a 21st century DIY flex in cahoots with Madlab to really take it beyond the page and back to Doodlebug’s original 1998 manifesto of the synergy of art and science, beyond just marking – so it’d be a very wonky Madlab / Doodlebug scenario.”

Castlefield Gallery and greenroom were amongst those to recently lose Arts Council funding, but, aside from enthusing about Madlab, Barney remains confident that the arts in Manchester have enough platforms to survive and thrive. “greenroom is gone, but artists are still here. Contact [Theatre], which is where I’m based and have been since it opened, still remains – with a spearhead of Baba Israel who is a brilliant artistic director for that place. But also in particular Islington Mill and Blank Media Collective.”

“It was always Doodlebug presents… and you couldn’t pigeonhole it, but is was described as a 21st century Old Grey Whistle Test, which is a compliment because only a couple of days ago I noticed with Old Grey Whistle Test there are people paying its homage,” says Barney. That Old Grey Whistle Test set-up is the vibe for the first of a trio of summer Now Then Manchester shows at Dulcimer in Chorlton. As host for the event on Wednesday 29th June, Barney elaborates on a few of his choices to join him onstage. “There’s liveness from Rioghnach Connolly from Honeyfeet and Your Orange Coat: German Techno Lesbians. I am speaking with Naomi Kashiwagi in the mix as well as Howard Walmsley – film maker (808 State), Biting Tongues frontman, working with MC Tunes and Ed Barton. Lotte Karlson, Norwegian designer, glass blower who I collaborate with on Alexandra Arts. And Thick Richard I think is without doubt the dog’s bollocks performance poet, end of story plus David Boultbee and Kate Moran of Bread Art Collective and artist Kerry Howarth.”

“Really with next week, we’re just going to flex and feel how it goes. It’s that thing of mindfood, which is what I’ve always put Doodlebug as. Sharing ideas and inspirations, so conversations are good to engage with whoever’s there because I think it is an experiment, so it’s not going to be, right, this DJ’s on then and this is going to be here, no – I think we’ve just got to feel it. But we’ll be prepared for whatever audience is there. I like to engage with the audience rather than just throw things at them.”

Words: Ian Pennington
Image #1: Poster design by Louie Mitchell; photography by Simon Bray.
Images #2, #3 & #4: Courtesy of Doodlebug.
Image #5: Courtesy of Opus Independents.

Doodlebug Nuggets fortnightly show on ALL FM 96.9 starts Sunday 3rd July: 7-9pm
Doodlebug Nuggets screening of Howard Walmsley’s ‘Nish, Clish, Bangin’: The MC Tunes Tapes at Islington Mill on Thursday 7th July, 7.30pm

Tom Vek @ Ruby Lounge, Monday 13th June 2011

2011-06-26T00:34:00.007+01:00

There is, at the same time, everything and nothing to say about Tom Vek. His rise and rise of 2005 yielded great plaudits, but that instant has long since perished. The now and the next should be anticipated very differently. More than six years separates full-lengths We Have Sound and Leisure Seizure and the sparks of the former remain in a realm of music history now wholly separate from the ever-shifting electronic progressions of today.

But such is Tom Vek’s allure that many would cite him as an influence on their music. In this context, support act Breton appear almost to be a tribute band, as if Vek’s last five years or so since touring have been spent training up another vocalist in his image. It’s that same deadpan delivery, but instead the accompanying notes are also drained of melody en route to anticipant eardrums. As a unit, Breton can be pinned to the same board as fellow synth/sampler-friendly hoodies D/R/U/G/S and Fixers.

It doesn’t take long into his Ruby Lounge set to realise that it’s the same slender art scholar with his same monotone vocal, same passion for suave bassline slides; all the same in fact, apart from somewhere along the line he’s given the feathers a trim. Potential Sterling Cooper employee or post-adolescent scruff – it matters not.

Vek fires the first cylinders with an oldie in ‘C-C (You Set The Fire In Me)’, highlighting his penchant for funky bass twangs with a dual 4-stringed attack, before newbies ‘World Of Doubt’ and ‘We Do Nothing’ sink in with contrasting staccato highs and drolly submerged glistens. Further familiar grooves ‘If You Want’, ‘Nothing But Green Lights’ and ‘I Ain’t Saying My Goodbyes’ are unsurprisingly received more favourably than any newcomers yet to make an impact, but leave it another six years and it might be a different story.

The distinction is that Vek’s lyrical lethargy hasn’t had time to settle; the depth to his rhyming satire as yet undiscovered below the po-faced wall of his David Byrne-ish narrative. Every time this outing is in danger of stagnating, bogged down by the similarity of that detached vocal ennui, it is a tune of the prolonged digestion period that reasserts a freshness of groove.

That’s not to say the newer songs wash over completely. The bouncing conga rhythms of ‘Aroused’ match the energetic beats of ‘Hold Your Hand’ and set-closer ‘A-P-O-L-O-G-Y’ is a suitably uptempo sign-off with its echoes of Digitalism. Just don’t underestimate the power of an extended hiatus to pale any slow-burning stragglers by comparison with the return of long-awaited floor-fillers.

Words: Ian Pennington
Images: Paul Green

Arts, Music & Events Preview June 2011 (Part Two)

2011-06-18T12:46:00.008+01:00

My assertion earlier this month that Parklife always attracts the best weather proved to be only half true on this occasion, leaving in its wake a sludgy trail of well-trodden mush. Fortunately for today’s (Saturday 18th) Envirolution, they’ll be drawing punters to a different part of Platt Fields park.

The event ties in with both Team Green Britain’s Bike Week and International Day of Action to Stop Tar Sands; the former offers incentives for cycling and the opportunity to ‘pimp your bike’; the latter will be instigated by Manchester Friends of the Earth as a gesture against the Canadian oil depository labelled by Greenpeace as “a literal hell on earth”.

Elsewhere today there’s a worthy line-up at Islington Mill for Portals. Comic book DJ Fingathing and Denis Jones’ project with The Pickpocket Network are musical picks; all the while supported by a multitude of artists’ interpretations of ‘portals’, including Elle Brotherhood, Used Pencil and plenty more.

Onwards to Tuesday 21st when a couple of politically edged bookings vie for attention. Firstly, at the Shakespeare pub, Manchester Salon’s Valuing the Arts in an Age of Austerity is one to whet the appetite of debate, given this government’s disdain towards artistic institutions often proven to not only culturally satiate, but also economically recoup. One such example is the UK Film Council, abolished last year in an early sign of Tory intent. And on the topic of film, Manchester Film Co-operative’s latest selection also screens on that Tuesday, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. It fits with their current ‘surveillance’ theme and takes place upstairs at The Kings Arms in Salford.

The following weekend is a busy one, ushered in by Content on Friday 24th. The tech house promoter have Octave One secured for a Joshua Brooks show. Apparently there’s another festival happening this weekend on the telly; not as far as Islington Mill are concerned. Their Alternative Glastonbury weekend may not have quite the same available acres, but it does flex its variety muscles with one69A’s t-shirt prints, Salford Zine Library, arts & crafts stalls and Shangaan Electro on Sunday 26th. Preceded by an Eastern Bloc vinyl DJing takeover on Saturday 25th, which clashes with more within the twisted electronic brains of Hoya:Hoya; Machine Drum's funky sampledelica at Roadhouse.

Woodpigeon top a Tuesday 28th bill at the Dulcimer that includes Eagleowl and Rob St John (both of Song, By Toad Records).

You want more? Well there is the small matter of the rearranged Now Then Doodlebug Nuggets event, also at Dulcimer bar in Chorlton. Mark down Wednesday 29th for that one. Plenty more to say on that one very soon, but here’s a little taster:

Expect dabblings with the esoteric: leftfield music, live conversations with local arts personalities, spoken word, audience participation; a multi-arts mélange under the curative eyes of host M A Barnes-Wynters.

It’s free entry as well. And if you like what you see in the various midweek entertainment showcase then dipping into your pockets to the tune of £3 would be much appreciated to support performers and ensure the future unearthing of similar gems.

Before the month ends, on Thursday 30th there's also the launch of half-month long performance palette Not Part Of Festival, which originally began as a more inclusive balance to the heavily funded and commissioned Manchester International Festival. Interwoven betwixt and between will be Lassfest at the Lass O'Gowrie, but more on both next month...

Words: Ian Pennington

Interview: Caulbearers

2011-06-10T10:13:00.008+01:00

This week sees Caulbearers, one of Manchester’s most progressive music outfits, release their much anticipated debut EP. Manchester MULE's Tim Hunt meets their front man Damien Mahoney to find out all about it.

“Sorry I’ll be five minutes late,” reads the text from Caulbearers' frontman Damien Mahoney a minute before we had agreed to meet. My heart sinks, this usually means 20 minutes (at least) and I have to get back to work, but luckily he arrives just three over time. A record.

On arrival he looks clearly stressed out. The Caulbearers’ debut EP launch night is on Friday and “there’s loads of spanners in the works, you forget you have to do some music.” The latest problem is that the bass player has broken two fingers on his left hand. “It’s a bit of a fucker,” says Damien, which with a gig on Friday seems a bit of an understatement.

“We rehearsed last night but with a totally different line up, it wasn’t the one that will be playing on Friday,” he explains. “The drummer is on tour with Magic Hat Ensemble, he is so difficult to track down, Dan’s not around as he lives in London but now he’s bust his finger anyway, Matt (guitarist) couldn’t make it… It’s like that at the moment. Having eight members is difficult to work between you.”

Luckily the Caulbearers use the “squad rotation system” as Damien calls it, a pool of musicians that can play all the songs (and learn new ones quickly). And this squad has a bit of everything: “We have drummers who are multi-instrumentalists and can read music like a book. Then there’s me who can’t play a chord and that’s an interesting mix in Caulbearers.”

But the system is born out of necessity and does have its problems. “It’s the only way,” says Damien, “otherwise the band wouldn’t survive. We’ve had to cancel gigs anyway. Once because three drummers can’t do it and another because Julie (vocals) can’t do it because her tour manager [from her other band] with Shaun Ryder has asked her to fly out somewhere a day early. But there is nothing you can do about it. It’s really frustrating.”

Today these problems seem to be causing him some concern and he looks as if he’s carrying the weight of the world (or at least the band) on his shoulders. I ask him if he’s the manager as well as the lead singer. “I’m the Daddy,” he says with an air of resignation, “but I’d rather be the Daddy to a small child than a group of musicians.” Others of course chip in that the recent mini-tour of Ireland was organised by Gavin (percussion), which Damien says was great, adding, “I could enjoy it more.”

But Friday’s gig at Islington Mill is down to him. The night will see the launch of the band’s long-awaited first EP, entitled More Lie Deep. “It’s our first proper release, proper in a DIY sense.” It’s DIY, for Damien at least, because he has produced the whole thing himself. “I’m pleased with it,” he says with an air of real pride, “because there were times I felt up against it.”

“We did the drums and bass at the Blueprint studio in Salford, all the other recording has been done in the Redbricks [a housing estate] in Hulme, in my flat. We sound proofed up a room using whatever we could and used the living room as a control room, and we just edited it all there.”

The final mixes were done at Moolah Rouge Studios in Stockport with producer Seadna McPhail, who’s worked with several big Manchester artists including Badly Drawn Boy. The first track on the new EP has quite a light sound not dissimilar to that of Mr Gough. “This,” says Damien, “is quite different from other Caulbearers tracks.”

I ask him if this change in sound from one track to another is a conscious decision or something that’s just happened organically. “The thing that unites them is more where they are coming from lyrically. Some Caulbearers stuff is quite outward looking and angry, looking at society and things that are going on, and political. Not that it’s rammed down your throat,” he adds quickly, “it’s more poetic. It’s not like a Billy Brag track where there is a really obvious narrative. But the tracks on this EP are a lot more introspective, about trying to deal with yourself and your psyche and that’s what links them together more than the sound.”

The other songs on the EP lurch from deep funk to brighter pop, with a whole range of sounds and influences all neatly mixed together. “There’s this thing that it’s funk or soul or this that and the other,” complains Damien, “and it always feels uncomfortable, a lot of the strings don’t fit within that and vocals don’t fit within that.”

The EP is available from Bandcamp. He says this tag makes it sound “‘slick’. But it isn’t like that. We’re trying to pull lots of things together and the EP is an expression of [different] influences with other textures.”

And those influences are widely varied. “It comes from a background of New Order and Joy Division and The Smiths and The Specials being really big influences and reggae and African music,” adding, “we’ve got space for a big variety of those things.”

This eclecticism is really what marks Caulbearers, yet all spins around the centrifugal force of Damien. As well as singing, producing and being Daddy, Damien also writes most of the songs. “I come up with the basics of a track,” he tells me, “I’ll get a demo together and send that out to the band. Then we bring it to a rehearsal and it gets jammed out and changes made and the song develops.”

‘Sinking’, the first track on the EP, was done in that fashion. “It’s pretty much as the first demo with the same parts,” while other songs he says “change radically. People add parts and change parts, so people are massively involved in the writing process but the initial germ of it tends to come from me.”

However, this has started to change. Julie, Will (sax / keyboards) and Dan have started to write more. “You could feel usurped,” he says, but instead feels “like a Dad, full of blushing pride.” Let’s hope the tracks that the other band members give birth to are just as interesting and enjoyable as those their Dad has created on the new EP, which comes with a handmade cover (very DIY) and is well worth a listen.

Words: Tim Hunt

The band’s launch night is 8pm-2am this Friday, 10th June at Islington Mill, Salford M3 5HW.

There will be support from the Mind on Fire Band & Ben Mellor and DJs: King Spinna; Joe Sope & Defunkles.

Tickets are £5 on the door.

[This article originally appeared on the Manchester MULE website]

Arts, Music & Events Preview, June 2011 (Part One)

2011-05-31T21:11:00.010+01:00

Beyond another Bank Holiday, we’re now knocking on the door to summer. And in Manchester’s own meteorological way, its showers and sunshine indecisiveness is making us all well aware of this. Don your water proofs, shorts, flip-flops and/or Wellies for a stroll through the next fortnight or so of events.

First up for any calendar month is the 1st so the Chicago noiseniks Disappears’ gig on Wednesday 1st seems as good a place to start as any. The psyche-drone supergroup comprises the drumming dexterity of Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, a tangled web of reverb and the Gulliver’s stage for the evening.

Skip a day to Friday 3rd for a selection in the suburbs. Wilmslow Roaders might favour Fuel Café’s rock oriented line-up of Day For Airstrikes, Easter and Emperor Zero, hosted by the ever inventive independent music vloggers Manchester Scenewipe. Alternatively, the Blowout promoters’ latest Chorlton’s Irish Club captures include warped 80s electro throwbacks Water Signs.

Caribou and Battles headlining the same show is quite a tussle for attention, but at least Now Wave have allowed them enough space to do so with it taking place at the Apollo on Saturday 4th. Support is too long to list, but think Hoya:Hoya vibes and you’re in the right ball park.

Put your thinking cap on for the latest First Tuesday discussion and debate courtesy of Manchester Salon; the topic to brush up on is The struggle for democracy in the Middle East and Africa. Head to the Shakespeare pub on Tuesday 7th if you think you have more of a solution than major politicians or their mouthpieces in the mainstream media.

After that mind-melter you might need something to relax the senses, so take advantage of the arts students who’re now nearing their long summer holiday and feel ready to showcase their work. The first of two in this preview is on Wednesday 8th at Kraak Gallery, where adorning the walls will be The Manchester College’s Parallax photography exhibition

If you’ve been pencilling the other events in then get the permanent marker out for this next one. Hot on the trail of our last Now Then Manchester show (...ish) is another venture into the realm of live music and spoken word, this time in collaboration with the leftfield arts taste-makers at Doodlebug. Performances for the first of a monthly Thursday slot are sitting in the TBC column, but think along the lines of esoteric music punctuated by spoken word; Dulcimer in Chorlton on Thursday 9th. [NB: We've postponed this to a later date, hopefully within the month of June, but otherwise we'll be starting the stint with a Broken Bubble label showcase on 14th July. Watch this space...]

Catch your breath and steer towards Fuel again on Friday 10th for the monthly Debt Records acoustic dabbling, before a weekend rubbing shoulders with excitable revellers amidst the tents, sideshows and empty pint pots strewn across Platt Fields for the 48 hours of Parklife Weekender. Expect Beardyman, DJ Shadow, Mount Kimbie, Kode9, James Holden and Grandmaster Flash to prove highlights of a festival that never fails to bring sunshine with it, even including the Madferret days.

One more who might’ve tipped that line-up over the edge and into a spectacular abyss is Tom Vek, who’ll make a reappearance even longer overdue than Now Then Manchester events. Instead he’ll be at the Ruby Lounge on Monday 13th, which is a date shared by Merril Garbus and her wildly capitalised alter ego tUnE-YaRdS’ trip to the Deaf Institute.

Part two of the aforementioned student arts displays is one by University of Cumbria MA scholars at CUBE on Tuesday 14th. Born from interpretations of philosophical texts, this one’s another photographic assortment under the title of Touching Space. Or, if you’re more into preserving natural environments than seeing snaps of them, there’s always CityCamp, which is launching itself to those who shares their ideals ahead of a Manchester sustainability festival in September; Northern Quarter’s Noho bar.

Closing in on the month’s halfway mark is the recently renamed ad rehoused Imploding Inevitable’s choice of live music for Dulcimer bar’s Wednesday 15th; alternatively for town dwellers, there's another helping of Soul Sessions headed up by Beggar Joe, which has also rehoused to Oxford Road's Revolution bar. Then Thursday 16th is one for Little Red Rabbit’s Fuzzy Lights who entertain at Salford’s Sacred Trinity Church, with Red Tides lending support.

Words: Ian Pennington

Chorlton Arts Festival: Dislocation Dance @ St Clement's Church, Monday 23rd May 2011

2011-05-30T12:26:00.012+01:00

I love pop music. I have always loved pop music, even before I understood what it meant or where it came from. When I was a teenager, I loved the dominant sound of the day – britpop. The first album I ever bought was Moseley Shoals by Ocean Colour Scene. I listened to The Longpigs, to Oasis, to Blur, (take a breath), to The Bluetones, Echobelly, Cast. When I was a little bit older, I began to listen to their antecedents – Paul Weller, The Jam, The Beatles. The fucking Beatles. To make it to the Beatles, I had to battle through, past or around Space, Menswear and fucking Suede. Well, it was worth it when I got there.

Unlike many people who are interested in pop music, the house in which I grew up was not particularly musical, or at least it was not soaked in the sounds of Western pop. My parents listened to Bollywood playback singers, more so in the car than in the house. My father’s favourites were, and still are, people like Mohammed Rafi, while my mother preferred the female singers, such as Lata Mangeshkar. So it was only much later on that I heard Ocean Rain by Echo and the Bunnymen, and began to trace historical influences less obvious than the simple Beatles – Smiths – Stone Roses – Oasis trajectory.

It was at that point that I began to get into post-punk, listening to the bands that had been emerging around the same time as Factory; associated with it, influenced by it or subsequently influencing it. I was attracted to the darkness, the misery, the exposition of a beaten post-industrial landscape created by Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher. Of course, this misery was often clothed in upbeat melodies, and many of the songs were love songs. But they were not flippant, they did not ignore where they came from, they were mired in it. There was no attempt to escape it, nor to festishise it through explicit reference. It simply was. You could hear it in the reverberations of the singing, in the strained guitars, in the muffled - not quite defeated, not quite defiant - anger. Songs like Hand in Glove by the Smiths and, of course, Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division are perfect examples.

I had never heard of Dislocation Dance before reading through the programme for the Chorlton Arts Festival. It bills them as experimental jazz punk, and describes them as having been initially signed on the same label as Buzzcocks, before signing for Rough Trade at the same time as The Smiths. A bit of further research has informed me that they were friends with the Factory crowd. They were once flown back from a tour of the USA by one Anthony H. Wilson, after a mishap with their original tickets left them stranded there. This has all built up a picture of something really quite exciting. So I’m excited.

I arrive in the hallway of St Clement’s Church, with the partition doors still closed while the band sets up. We can hear them sound checking, and they sound a little more conventional than I had imagined, a little more bubblegum. But that’s OK. It’s quite possible to be happy and heartfelt, or saccharine and ironic, or for the soundcheck songs not to be representative of the whole set. There’s any number of explanations, so I don’t think too much about it. I look around me and see a crowd that makes me quite happy to live in Manchester. Not a group of hipsters eager to impress, but mostly people over the age of thirty. I wonder if some of them remember the band from the 80s, or if some of them actually know or knew the band personally. There are also a couple of children under the age of ten, whose parents I assume are here too.

So the doors open, and we file into the church. St Clement’s is a beautiful building, dimly lit tonight to create a lovely warmth. The band is set up in what I think is known as the chancel, in front of the altar. The evening sun shines through a stained glass window above, showering them in shimmering blues and reds. We sit in the crossing, surrounded by shadows.

Ian Runacres tells us they will start with softer tunes before getting on to the heavier stuff. So they kick off, with Phil Lukes singing the first three songs, while also playing ukelele. He has a deep, rich voice that fills the church and seems to work well in the absence of the bass guitar for these songs. Jon Board plays trumpet and (I think) French horn to add some texture. This is enjoyable pop, with a touch of the wistful, and reminds me of Teenage Fanclub.

For the next few songs, Ian Runacres takes over on vocals and Lukes replaces his ukelele with a bass. This creates a real change in the sound, as Runacres’ voice is higher-pitched and his range a little narrower. The songs lose that wistful touch and seem to vacillate between self-indulgent and glib. Some are both. A song called Shinjuku Junction has the lyrics, “Shinjuku Junction / East meets West / We see the best of all around us / The best meets the rest.” I begin to see where certain aspects of britpop came from. His voice is not unlike Ian Broudie’s and some of these tunes remind me of The Lightning Seeds. I fucking hate the Lightning Seeds.

I begin to contemplate what it is that I love in pop. Whatever it is, this is not it. When Lukes takes over singing again, I begin to wake up a little. His voice has a greater resonance that seems to penetrate real feelings, whereas Runacres’ seems to bounce off them. He introduces one song, “Like most of my songs, it’s about my misspent youth.” Misspent how? Why? I don’t feel that this music is attempting to breach the superficiality of the imagined experiences of our youth. And pop music can do that. I know it can do that, I have seen it do that. I came here tonight expecting to hear these guys do that.

Not all pop music analyses, not all pop music describes, not all pop music is about pain, or is qualified by pain. But it does have to engage. At least make me dance, make me tap my feet. Tonight I’m not engaged, I’m floundering. Runacres seems to be enjoying himself, which I’m heartened by. But this seems to be a reminiscence of something for him and his band. It sounds pleasant enough, but it is ultimately unedifying for those of us who do not share a history with him. It is tame. While Lukes seems to mean it more, his ultimate lack of conviction is belied by his introduction to The Ruins of Manchester: “It’s not my fault, it’s just a song.”

This is not angry, nor is it impassioned. It is certainly not experimental. It is a kind of plodding pop that carries no meaning for me. One review I found of their work in the 80s described it as “background music for the foreground.”

Pop music can do more than this.

Words & Images: Piyush Pushkar (Piyush also writes the Doctor Magiot blog)

Chorlton Arts Festival Launch featuring Badly Drawn Boy, Thursday 19th May 2011

2011-05-25T00:11:00.007+01:00

Congratulatory backslapping is rarely a spectator sport, but the oratory build-up creates a swelling of pride in the precinct's populace, who're later led through Chorlton Arts Festival's newly opened metaphorical doors by the subsequent strums of an elevated Damon Gough, aka Badly Drawn Boy.

Gough initially completes a Chorlton FM radio slot before volunteers, contributors and organisers are thanked in various short speeches. And onto the night's performers. First, a schoolgirl dance troupe's R'n'B dance mix tests the soundsystem, which in turn awakens the decent-sized early evening audience.

Despite operating under a thinly veiled disguise of ‘special guest’ until the morning of the event, Badly Drawn Boy, one of the three patrons of the festival (the others are John Thomson and Carol Ann Duffy, since you ask) is an obvious choice to draw in the crowds. His warm, homely reflections know how to twang on the heartstrings of reminisce, although his lofty presence intermittently loses audience attention.

For the man himself, it must be surreal; standing mid-balcony overpass – acoustic guitar in hand, microphone afore – faces glaring upwards almost in celestial worship. Positioned below, the amplification rises up to him. The sensation must be one of flying atop the soundwaves to tour the rooftops of his hometown. Or perhaps it just affords him an alternate view of the chipped lurid green precinct decor.

Regardless, the Chorlton resident talks us through a tour, of sorts, stopping off between songs to indicate locations relevant to the occasional ditty. Chorlton Cafe is evoked by ‘Journey From A To B’ and Born In The UK’s title track due to the album’s cover photo, while ‘Is There Nothing We Could Do?’ was written in response to Gough's own soundtracking of The Fattest Man In Britain, which features an amble down Wilbraham Road. There isn't a 'local landmark only' policy in set-list selection though, as 'You Were Right', 'This Electric' and 'The Time Of Times' also resonate past the shop windows.

He’s keen to state the reason behind his bird’s eye view. {this way:UP} is the National Lottery and Arts Council funded answer. The project also explains why you’ll see artwork in high places through the town until the end of the month, although as far as I can tell only Gough himself warrants a skyward glance at this particular precinct positioned point of the festival.

Words & Images: Ian Pennington

FutureEverything Presents: Steve Reich @ RNCM, Thursday 12th May 2011

2011-05-20T14:07:00.006+01:00

Ideas. Theories. Labels. There’s a scene in Annie Hall (or is it Manhattan?) in which Diane Keaton describes Ingmar Bergman as "too cerebral." Woody Allen does not understand how she can use this word to describe why she does not like a piece of art. He does not grasp the argument. Surely, the more cerebral a piece is, the more it challenges the systems and patterns which hold your perceptions of the world together, the better. At the risk of sounding somewhat like a Cameron Crowe movie, this can only work if the piece still speaks to its audience; if it has ‘soul.’

We started the night with Steve Reich up on stage himself, with percussionist Simone Rebello, performing ‘Clapping Music’. The word ‘minimalism’ means many things to many people, but no one could possibly argue with labelling this as minimalist. Two people, up on stage, clapping. No instruments other than their hands. It was composed in 1972 and must have been incredibly original at the time. But tonight it reminded me of Stomp. Sure, it challenged one’s sense of rhythm and, sure, it must have been technically incredibly difficult to perform, as one clapper claps one phrase repeatedly while the other shifts one note every few bars to become increasingly out of sync, before returning to being back in sync. And while that is technically impressive, I spent much of the piece just wincing at the possibility that one of the clappers might make a mistake and step completely out of sync (whether or not many of us would have noticed is a moot point). To bring Cameron Crowe back, this piece did not speak to me.

The second piece was ‘Cello Counterpoint’, a piece written for eight cellos. It can be played live by eight cellists, or by one cellist with the other seven parts pre-recorded by the same player. Tonight, we had the latter, played by David McCann. Again, I found myself thinking that the idea of playing live with a recording of oneself would have felt completely alien for many classical musicians when Steve Reich started to experiment with the idea in the 1980s. But hip-hop artists had been doing it for several years by then. And now the technique is employed in many different genres, and has been added to through the use of pedals and other instruments used to make recordings and loops of oneself so that one can create textures previously not possible as a solo artist. So why then do we return to Steve Reich for this idea? I found myself wondering about the cache of being an accepted part of the classical music canon, and whether this was the reason we still cared about Steve Reich and his innovations. These techniques that are now so widespread within the world of popular music, are they not somewhat gimmicky when transposed back the world of classical music?

And then I melted.

Finally, the angular phrasing, McCann’s jolting movements and head-nodding, the anxiety-inducing disharmony hit me. Yes, it spoke to me. And finally, the ideas, the theories mattered. I began to consider why it is that I had initially thought the piece would have been better had all eight parts been played live. What is it that would have been different? Obviously the sound would have been, but the feel would have been too.

Eight people playing one piece is the coming together of those eight people, to try to achieve some kind of harmony. Even if the piece is as disharmonious or filled with angular tension as this, the eight players create that tension together, after starting out as eight separate entities. When one person is playing, he/she starts out as one, and branches out to fill many different possibilities at once; a musical representation of the multiverse. The effect on McCann was visible; it felt as though he was not just playing with himself, but also against himself. There was a Sisyphean element of competition to the performance. Heartbreaking because he could never win.

The third piece was ‘Eight Lines’, performed by the RNCM Chamber Ensemble. On stage were two pianos, two string quartets, two clarinets, a bass clarinet, a flute and a piccolo. The pianists played separate but repetitive phrases, overlapping at times, while the others played repeating phrases that faded in, out and back into the tune. The overall effect was astounding. While each player or group of players repeated its own phrase or allowed it to grow sequentially, the sounds of the others around it caused it to seem to mutate, so that a single phrase or idea was reinvented. Its purpose, place and effect within the whole piece was reinvented without it having changed itself. John Adams said of Steve Reich that, “he didn’t reinvent the wheel so much as he showed us a new way to ride.” This sentiment was embodied within this one piece, as Reich repeatedly showed us new ways to listen, new ways to hear.

The final piece was ‘Different Trains’, performed by the Caecilius Quartet. This was a piece written for the Kronos Quartet, a meditation on Reich’s childhood sitting on trains across the USA in the 1930s and 40s, and on the fact that had he been born in Europe, those trains could have been taking him to concentration camps. It starts out as a quite jaunty piece, quite comical actually, quite appropriately for a reminiscence of one’s childhood. There are recordings of announcements from railway stations, a clipped “from Chicago,” or the elongated, “from Chicago to New York.” I say comical, because the tones of these announcements were then mimicked by the players on their instruments. It was a kind of mockery and an homage, both of the musicality of the announcers, and also of the call and response musical model.

We seamlessly moved into the second movement, where the recordings being played were no longer these benign sounds. They were air raid sirens and harsh whistles. Again the players responded with similar sounds, but it was no longer amusing mimicry. The sounds were adding up synergistically to create an overarching sense of fear and panic. I shifted around repeatedly in my chair, unable to find a comfortable position, a position in which I could sit back and be anaesthetised by the music rather than enervated.

Finally we reached the third movement, returning to the American train announcers, “Chicago to New York.” Somehow the call and response was no longer so amusing. It felt vapid, empty. I felt gutted, drained. But edgy.

And then it stopped.

Steve Reich may have invented minimalism. He may have invented, or at least discovered, the technique we now call phasing. He may have “shown us a new way to ride” and he may have done so more than once. His work is certainly cerebral, but what we saw tonight, is that the man has soul.

Words: Piyush Pushkar (http://doctormagiot.wordpress.com/)
Images #1 & 3: Simon Bray

Arts, Music & Events Preview, May 2011 (Part Two)

2011-05-19T16:30:00.007+01:00

We’re now deep into festival season with Sounds From The Other City and FutureEverything (look out for our Steve Reich review in the next few days) already having passed us by. But the festivities, along with the weather, are just warming up; here’s what to look out for in the closing days of May.

Tonight (Thursday 19th) at 6pm is the launch of Chorlton Arts Festival (CAF) in Chorlton precinct, as artwork created in line with the {this way: UP} theme will be unveiled by special guest, Chorlton resident and CAF Patron, Damon Gough (aka Badly Drawn Boy). BREAD Art Collective have positioned the artistic contributions in unannounced locations through the town; above eye level to provoke shoegazers into a varied view. Amongst the art portrayed will be a preview of a project co-curated by Doodlebug and Alexandra Arts, which takes a lead from JR’s Inside Out socially cohesive guerrilla art by asking local schoolchildren to take and pose for portrait photographs while considering what the area's parks mean to them.

Friday 20th is the first day of action at Friends of Mine’s three-dayer in a Cheshire field (FOM Fest 2011), which boasts Walls, From The Kites of San Quentin, The Fall, Toro Y Moi, Jim Noir, Working For A Nuclear Free City, The Longcut, plus plenty more besides.

All the while Chorlton Arts Festival will be ongoing until the end of the month; best to check their listings to pick out a selection of the live music, spoken word, literature, DJs, comedy sketches, visual arts, drama and participatory improv.

Retro soul maestro Bill Withers is the subject of a night in homage to his recording career at Soup Kitchen on Sunday 22nd, featuring recent documentary Still Bill, live performances (not by the man himself, albeit) and DJs. More music follows on Monday 23rd in the form of Three Trapped Tigers at Night’n’Day Café; the avant garde noise merchants have been booked in to top a bill ahead of Tall Ships by the ever-progressive and ambitious promoters WotGodForgot. That is unless you’d prefer the alt-folk dabbling of Hey! Manchester of a Monday evening; in which case they’re offering Juliana Barwick’s solo choir dreamscapes at Kraak Gallery, with past Now Then Manchester interviewee Najia Bagi providing support.

One for environmental activists next: Kindling Trust has organised a get-together for otherwise disparate groups all striving for similar goals. The Bull’s Head pub on Thursday 26th.

And soon enough there’s another Bank Holiday weekend. Wet Play and Hoya:Hoya are vying for attention on Saturday 28th; they have Deep Space Orchestra at Kraak and Brainfeeder’s mind-melting Lorn at Roadhouse respectively.

The standout for Sunday 29th / Monday 30th is Eurocultured, nucleated along the New Wakefield Street bars and inclusive of another veritable multinational line-up. The headline-grabbers are Scando-techno sextet Slagsmalsklubben, Israel’s Balkan Beat Box and the effervescent performer David Thomas Broughton, but fail to explore at your peril; Mind On Fire, Doodlebug and Hoya:Hoya are amongst those flexing curative muscle, with Naomi Kashiwagi, Aardvarck and Vieka all confirmed. Not to mention the must-see live street art.

Monday 30th is also the day to catch another festival: Dot to Dot.

Words: Ian Pennington

Post War Years @ Deaf Institute, Monday 9th May 2011

2011-05-17T12:32:00.008+01:00

First up are openers, The Louche FC, who, on tonight’s evidence, are not a 5-a-side football team, but an intriguing gloomy shoegaze 5-piece. Their expansive guitar driven rock swells around the room, topped off by passionate female vocals that begin with the lyrical theme of death, but continue with a far more pop driven accessibility. A very exciting prospect, who are already attracting attention from those on high.

Next on is Golden Glow, whose repertoire averages around the plodding indie realm, all rather reminiscent of The Dears. When it does pick up a bit there are hints of Bloc Party and although there are signs of promise, the whole thing feels a bit underwhelming.

Where excitement was lacking before, we find it in abundance upon the arrival of Post War Years. Greeted onto a stage filled with boxes of trickery all linked together with a tangle of wires, the expectant audience is treated to a showcase set consisting of only new material. Whereas often in this scenario one is left gagging for one of the old hits, Post War Years deliver an amazing cacophony of fuzzy synths, frantic drums beats, soul shaking sub bass and an array of bleeps, samples and soaring synth melodies, completed by three part vocals that sail atop the washes of sound.

Whereas older material hinted towards the noodly guitar lines and brass stabs of Foals and Friendly Fires, new tracks display a far more cohesive song-writing approach; more reminiscent of Yeasayer, but without the weirdness. The final two tracks of the set are simply huge tunes, filled with hooks aplenty, catchy melodies and so much trance groove you can’t help but want more. Tonight Post War Years have displayed a collection of songs that will surely attract a whole host of new fans and, with the second album due in the New Year, hopefully catapult them into the limelight.

Words & Images: Simon Bray

Sounds From The Other City 2011, Sunday 1st May

2011-05-14T15:10:00.014+01:00

This year’s Sounds From The Other City (SFTOC) festival sees that elusive guest not immediately associated with previous Bank Holiday Sunday afternoons in the Chapel Street locale; clear skies and sunshine. The blustery, extrinsic seaside breezes are forgivable given the lengthier-than-ever linear perimeter near the River Irwell (wind direction permitting).

The Islington Mill hub is the first stop on everyone’s SFTOC journey but with so much booked in to see it’d be hard not to plot your own unique path from there. First step along is a quick dip into the ground floor gallery space where Sonny Smith’s abstract ‘100 Records’ exhibition is housed. The jukebox centrepiece holds all the aural results of a project that has imagined, designed and storyboarded a century of conceptual musical acts. Browsing the end products of record sleeves and biographies, it’s easy to see how the lines of fact and fiction may have been blurred, while a satirical angle could lament the aesthetic roots and reasons behind musicians’ practise, as opposed to music for music’s sake.

Scheduled as festival starters, but over 30 minutes late on the HearHere / Bad Uncle stage, Dr Mahogany’s Goat Circus have a useful template for diminishing any such sardonic cynicism. A fluid sextet filed under jazz/world, they set the benchmark for the United Reformed Church’s Soundtracks From The Other City premise by composing beside a film, Baraka, which features scenes of expansive landscapes, terraced Asian paddy fields and a choreographed seated dance. Although unintentional, there’s an appealing audio/visual synchronicity early in the set as images fixate conga drum-led eyes, but the grip is loosened as they drift between songs, such as the Doors-esque rhythms of ‘Stomping Foot, Clapping Hand’, and interconnecting improv.

From then on there’s a sense of déjà vu as the aural weapon of choice is the sampler. The Mind On Fire curated Salford Arms begins with synth/drum duo Vieka’s glitch-hop under distinctively enunciated vocals (think caro snatch or From The Kites of San Quentin), who’re hampered a little by unwanted amp feedback and lead in with coin jangling samples similar to Pink Floyd and MIA. The subject of money is an appropriate topic for another band reliant on synthetic sound snippets, Money, who embellish atmospheric guitar effects with backing visuals of their own. Lyrical content with a mortal preoccupation is enhanced by a tortured delivery akin to The Walkmen’s records, while thudding bass à la Joy Division permeates the misty introspection.

Waiting next to the nearby grassy verge is a testimony to the eclectic nature of the festival. The Rhythm’N’Blood Mobile dubs lo-fi saxophone over bluesy tape recordings including ‘All Along The Watchtower’. Rumours have it that he lectures at Salford University and serenading passing punters as a one man band with a backline of four mini amps strapped to a trolley is an endearing hobby.

Where do you go from that? As it turns out, Day For Airstrikes is where to go. Back at the United Reformed Church, DFA are backed by Rita, Sue and Bob Too; managing to pinpoint a climactic ending as the film pauses with the male protagonist in mid-air, leaping towards a bed with Union Jack duvet. Planned or otherwise, it works well (and can be listened to here). And they’re another succumbed to the lure of sampled structures; replacing post-rock guitars of old, but maintaining their same slow builds towards apocalypse. A stark contrast to Veí, whose downtempo sampling orchestra transforms the Salford Arms into a meeting atrium for hollow glockenspiel clacks, disparate ivories and lonely strings.

Too much perambulation would seem wasteful, which is exactly what strides down to Peel Hall conspire to be as Willy Mason’s lure is strong enough to force a one-in-one-out scenario at which the queue doesn't look promising. One punter describes the show as “underwhelming”, but that really depends on your expectation ahead of the performance of one man and a guitar. The next stop certainly isn’t underwhelming. Easter have been causing a stir amongst post-rock purveyors and some good old-fashioned axe duelling belittles the need for rhythm guitars as instead intricate noodling harnesses the roaring feedback.

Another genre shift back to laptop connoisseur Neko Neko. His squelchy electronic samples solder to Moby-esque ambient soundscapes, while submerged progressions of swooshes and minimal percussive stabs sink indolently before giving way to melodic harp twinkles.

Denis Jones then tackles the Soundtrack stage; an improv whizz in his natural habitat. Opting for a simple film tracking ball bearing movements, Jones also opts for simple, steady loop layering patterns with acoustic guitar undercurrents and gradual introduction of electronic manipulations. The occasional recognisable songs, the typically soulful ‘Clap Hands’ being one, are supplemented by onstage collaborator David Schlechtriemen (aka The Pickpocket Network), who adds a disco remix monotony to the live compositions; the pair facing each other with gadgetry primed, evoking Fuck Buttons or worriedaboutsatan.

The finale is littered with uptempo electro of various persuasions. Capac at Salford Arms and Islington Mill festival-closers Anchorsong and D/R/U/G/S all sail aboard the good ship synth, navigating a sea of processed beats, while sandwiched between are Fixers and Rainbow Arabia. Firstly, Oxford’s Fixers take on a soundtrack to looped cuts from Mariah Carey’s Glitter by pounding their combined keys, and yet more samples – this time directly influenced by the post-Animal Collective acclaim boom. If SFTOC is an indicator for the sounds from all other cities bubbling under the mainstream radar then there’s plenty more sampledelica (?), samplecore (?), to add to this generation’s synthetic symphonies.

Apt then, is Rainbow Arabia’s headlining jaunt at the Old Pint Pot. Signed to revered German electronic music label Kompakt, the Afrobeat disco duo show themselves to be infinitely more energetic than a jaded and weary crowd; vocoded vocalist Tiffany Preston gyrates between elevated archways as her husband Danny operates a mini electronic orchestra. It’s an engaging spectacle for the Pint Pot’s poky viewing confines, which you’d expect given the endorsement from youtube-bothering politico MIA.

Words: Ian Pennington

Deerhoof @ Club Academy, Tuesday 3rd May, 2011

2011-05-10T15:37:00.005+01:00

As I descend into the basement, I feel tired, edgy, and actually a little bit morose. Vague memories of the excesses of the weekend haunt my consciousness.

Deerhoof emerge without much ceremony, and seemingly without much charisma. The drummer takes a seat to the right, unsmiling singer stands to the left and two guitarists in the centre. And they start playing.

Fuck.

Art rock, math rock, experimental rock – in its quest not to be cliché, it can become exactly that. It can become frustrating, it can become obvious. But this, this is urgent, it is erratic, it is beautifully inconsistent. Greg Saunier’s manic drumming is filled with power, but not rage. It is perfectly controlled in its exuberant abandon. It does everything you expect a lead singer to do – ebb, flow, reach out, draw in, pause, return.

The pauses. Again and again we pause and then re-emerge from the pause, slowly, quickly. If a singer was to lead such changes of rhythm, direction and pace, it would be nauseating. Led by Saunier’s drumming, they are exhilarating.

So what is the singer doing? Satomi Matsuzaki’s inexpressive face is accompanied by an inexpressive voice, but high-pitched, dreamy and reminiscent of Japanese pop. With her comically energetic dancing opposite the mesmerisingly energetic drumming, I initially don’t realise the importance of the guitars. The boys in matching T-shirts, John Dieterich and Ed Rodriguez, are powerhouses of melody and bass. Their variations of rhythm and pace are less obvious than Saunier’s on drums, but equally affecting – some sudden, some evolving, some graduated. Some subtle, some less so. Their playing is jagged at times, while other riffs seem to draw from influences as broad as Hendrix, Steppenwolf and the sweet sounds of bubblegum pop. And of course, metal. Metal hardened by Saunier’s virtuoso drumming and softened by Matsuzaki’s unreadable voice. Urgent, erratic and wonderfully inconsistent.

Before their final tune, Saunier stands to make a speech thanking the support band, Milk Maid, for playing at short notice, and thanking the audience for coming. The cadence of his speech is stilted, filled with pregnant pauses. He speeds up, slows down, plays with the sounds he is making and the effect they are having on us. His speech mimics how they play, but less expertly. Deerhoof are playful, droll and full of ideas. Their set is a maze of compositional complexity created from the sounds of pop and rock.

Urgent. Erratic. Wonderfully inconsistent.

Words: Piyush Pushkar [Piyush also writes for Doctor Magiot]
Images: Courtesy of In House Press; photography by Sarah Cass