MIF Acoustic Stage @ Albert Sq, 04.07.15

The denizens of Manchester are enjoying these weekend festivals. Following the popularity of Manchester Day, it’s no surprise to find that Albert Square was thronged for the opening weekend of Manchester International Festival.

In glorious sunshine illuminating the festival tent, balcony bar and acoustic stage, it's not just the food stallholders and ice-cream sellers who have smiles on their faces.

Throw in four sets of musicians to perform from early afternoon to evening and it all added to the relaxed atmosphere that people savour. The downside for a musician is that an open-air arena, with young children freely running around and taking advantage of the kid friendly area, is not the best location to demonstrate the quality of your works. Mix that with the background chatter and the performers are relegated to the level of sideshows.

Playing an instrument called the handpan, Matthew Bailey eschews vocals to focus on comfortable, percussive sounds that match well with the atmosphere. To the untrained eye, the instrument looks like two distorted cymbals taped back to back, but the sounds are languid and fluid.

Charlie Cooper appears in different guises, both as a solo artist or part of a band, and for this afternoon event she was supported by Rachel Lasham on drums. It turns out be a wise choice that provides substance to support Cooper’s keyboards which could have otherwise rapidly floated away in the warm air.

Josephine, minus her surname Oniyama, is well-known and respected amongst the music followers in the northwest area, but when it comes to competing with the chimes of the town hall clock, first at 6pm then 7pm, even she will come off second best. The first time she used the interruption to signal the start of her set, but the second time, occurring mid-song, pretty much destroyed the effects of her stories.

Still, it’s a positive move to promote local talent of varying styles, and the approach will be replicated during the remainder of the festival at its Albert Square base.

Words & photos: Ged Camera

The Festival Square Acoustic Stage schedule continues until Sunday 19 July.

Competition: 0161 Festival @ Moston Miners Centre

0161 Festival makes its debut at the Miners Community Arts and Music Centre in Moston on the next bank holiday weekend, running from Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th May.

The festival aims to raise money for antifascism and antiracism groups through staging an array of live music, DJs and film across the three days. Genres covered range from high tempo pulse-racers such as punk, hardcore, jungle and drum and bass, to the more laid back musical leanings, such as reggae and acoustic.

Headlining the mostly punk-fuelled main stage are Stage Bottles (Friday), The Oppressed (Saturday) and What We Feel (Sunday). Currently touring Canada, the Frankfurt band Stage Bottles have been stirring up a frenzy on the road with their saxophone-led riffs. The Oppressed have been splitting and reforming since they first formed in the early 1980s in Cardiff as outspokenly antifascist punks, but vocalist Roddy Moreno remains ever-present as the driving force behind the band. Finally, the Muscovite hardcore punks What We Feel add their own politically motivated music to round off the weekend.

Beyond the main stage, there are two further venue rooms each day. One features acoustic acts, including local artists such as Bo Weavil and Crywank, while the other features artists tuned into rap and drum and bass, bringing MCs and DJs together. Hackney rapper Klashnekoff takes centre stage on the Saturday with Manchester-based Danny Diatribe further down the bill, plus many more across the full weekend.

We’ve teamed up with the festival organisers, the antifascist label Infiltrate The System Records, to offer a lucky winner a pair of tickets to the whole event. All you have to do to enter the competition is like and share the image via this link (making sure it’s set to ‘public’ so we can see that you’ve entered).

We’ll notify the winner on Wednesday 30 April. Good luck!

Weekend tickets cost £31.50 and money goes to supporting the bands that are spreading the antifascist message. For more information follow this link.

Daniel Bachman @ The Castle Hotel, 19.06.13

A good example of the appeal of this all-seater affair at The Castle Hotel is when, during headliner Daniel Bachman’s set, attendees without chairs were filling in all the nooks and crannies by crouching, kneeling, reclining and resting behind and betwixt the furniture and in the aisle.

It was a busy, yet attentive, one from the start, as a pair of Manchester’s most active musicians, Tom Settle and Dan Bridgewood-Hill – aka dbh – set the scene in the Oldham Street alehouse’s back room. The former, a soft spoken finger picking guitarist whose strings collection extends tonight to a mandolin, compiles a collection comprising his own work and Jefferson Airplane’s ‘My Best Friend’, evoking the spirit of that 60s psyche band’s ballad by inviting the latter to join him to perform a rendition of Shirley Collins and Davy Graham’s ‘Hares on the Mountain’. Underneath the spotlights of a web of fairy lights that dangles overhead, dbh carries the appearance of an Eisenberg-Cera hybrid, with the pair’s gently strummed songs resembling Juno’s final scene.

When he takes centre stage, dbh can be seen in better light, showing the Eisenberg-Cera fusion to be no more than whimsical myopia on my part. His set is more forceful, with each note immaculately considered despite being short-lived amidst the fluid arpeggios of flamenco and Americanised acid-folk. While often searching and introspective, his closing tune, ‘Fix’, hits the major notes to offer a happy ending.

The main attraction – the touring American Daniel Bachman – sits just as the other two before him: quietly and politely in voice, but the most intensively of the three in sonic terms. This time launching in with his lapsteel guitar and a bottleneck slide before reverting to type with an acoustic guitar, whose open low-E string shudders in discord with other elegantly selected notes, the whole set is turned up a notch on the speedometer.

Between songs, he re-tunes, red-faced in concentration.

Then liftoff, again, with a style that isn’t quite strumming, and is far from finger picking; notes that often seem to be merged, yet are audibly separate. The catch, if there is one, is in the divergence from the core technique; beyond the opening bottleneck slider, there’s little to differentiate his songs, and a set continuing any longer would merit another direction the break up his favoured style. His chord shapes are no more inventive than anyone else’s, but with a playing technique so vigorous there’s enough to mesmerise the gathered audience.

Words & photos: Ian Pennington.
Poster design: Fliss Horrocks.

The next Crowfoot Records gig is scheduled for tomorrow, 24th July, at Kro Bar on Oxford Road, and will feature L’Etrangleuse, McWatt, Irma Vep and David M Birchall.