NOW THEN. ISSUE 6. A MAGAZINE FOR MANCHESTER.

The final batch of issue 6 magazines went out yesterday, so look out for a copy in the usual areas in and around the city if you missed it the first time. It features some cracking illustrations by Peter Et Le Wolff, along with articles on the London Road Fire Station campaign, a retrospective on the riots, an homage to fish 'n' chips, interviews with Norris and Parker, BC Camplight, and The Natural Curriculum, and plenty more.

Here's the online version in the meantime:

We'd like to thank all our supporters for this issue (in page order):

SUPPORT INDEPENDENTS.
Morley Cheek's.
Manchester MULE.
Proof Chorlton.

MCR FOOD AND DRINK.
Battery Park Juice Bar.
The Eighth Day Shop & Cafe.
Épicerie Ludo.
POD Deli.
OPUS Distro.

MCR INDEPENDENT ALE.
The Hope Inn / Fool Hardy Ales.
Marble Beers.
Mary And Archie.
The Hillary Step.
First Chop Brewing Arm.
Privateer Beers.
The Spoon Inn.
Pie & Ale (By Bakerie).
Sandbar.

ART & DESIGN.
Agapanthus Interiors.
H Blyth & Co.

SUPPORT INDEPENDENTS.
Mogul.
Ken Foster's Cycle Logic. (10% off see magazine advert for info.)
Mockingbirds.
Chapel St Folk Festival.

MANCHESTER ACADEMY VENUES.
Manchester Academy.

TROF VENUES.
The Deaf Institute.
Gorilla.

GIGS AND FESTIVALS.
GrimmFest 2013.
The Manchester Print Fair No6.
Chapel St Studios / The Black Lion.

RAMSBOTTOM FESTIVAL 2013.
Outstanding Beers.
Ramsbottom Festival.

Review: Frameworks & BluRum13 - The Brickbuilders LP (Remixed).

The alliance of Manchester’s own Frameworks and Washington DC’s BluRum13 gave birth to the Brickbuilders LP on My First Moth Records earlier on this summer. The fusion of old-school American hip hop vocals with grooving production beats lead to an audio excursion back to the golden age of rap. Now the upcoming remix LP takes the original greyscale choruses and adds vivid colour in the form of breakbeat backing tracks.

‘Moonlighting’ (Rondos Brothers Remix) and ‘Real Love’ (Blend Mishkin Remix), two tracks of note, receive a bass overhaul whilst managing to maintain the punchy vocals, taking the 1990s backstreet sound and moulding them into the club resonances of the 21st century. The remix album has brought the sound into the current and makes both entities ones to watch in the future.

Words: Charles Veys.

Review: Marconi Union (feat Jah Wobble) – Anomic (30 Hertz Records)

I did my research and according to the formidable information powerhouse and everybody’s good old failsafe site, Wikipedia, ambient music is described, and I quote: “Intended to enhance acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies in the sound environment”. So to you and me or the untrained ear, that’s background music. Something we relate with awkward visits to the barbers, Pilates classes and other sluggish forms of physical activity.

Admittedly I felt relaxed, but switched off? I certainly did not. Genres and my general preferences aside, you have yourself something really rather intriguing here. After listening what seemed a copious amount of times to the album in its entirety, all of which required very little attention, I came to the conclusion this type of music is massively underrated.

The trio of Marconi Union, consisting of Richard Talbot, Jamie Crossley and Duncan Meadows, along with Jah Wobble’s intermittently sublime basslines, have created a body of work that is captivating, yet equally disturbing. The album title, Anomic, which is the slightly more worrying term for alienation and social instability or disorientation, is gritty but gives you a sense of weightlessness. I can’t imagine what their live performances would be like to experience.

I felt myself becoming increasingly complacent with tracks like ‘Terminus’, ‘Times of Despair’, and the album title track, and in a trance-like state amidst their low tones and prominent rhythm sections. You’re struck by ‘Wealth’, a succulent textured sound whose richness of African percussion you can almost feel. And then there’s ‘Love in the Banlieues’, a song essentially about falling in love in a French council estate. My favourite was ‘Reality Crash’, blending oriental elements with sounds illustrating a feeling of despair, but the real eye-opener was ‘The Rain Has Stopped’; the punchiest track of the album and the only one to contain vocals, in the form of a poem.

What failed to enlighten me was the fact the album told no story and I was not enticed from beginning to end. In order for this kind of music to earn commercial success they must have a lot of faith in their niche audience. A crowd pleaser it was not, but with an open mind and a set of headphones it’s a damn sight cheaper than your weekly Feng Shui class.

Words: Emma Louise Milton.

Review: Mathew Gray – The Crocodile EP

I approached Mathew Gray and The Awful Truth's EP, The Crocodile, with a little caution; more than a little in fact. For some reason, I was fearful of sub-Syd Barrett whimsy. Maybe it was the title and the cover image and I am clearly as shallow as a puddle because, it turns out, I was miles and several genres wide of the mark.

The title tune is our entry into Mr Gray's world. It is dense with wordplay, poetry and imagery, deeply serious in subject, and light, skippy and joyous in performance. He wraps a deep sense of our place in the world as puny humans and our tiny part in the history of the earth, in something we would dearly wish very cool teachers to play to our children at school. The next song, ‘Took Away Tomorrow’ aches to its bones with emotion and is sung with a rare blend of sadness and detachment, with faint echoes of the criminally underrated Ed Harcourt. I especially love ‘Someone To Blame’, a cool dissection of the motivators of extremism with a percussion part so perfectly placed it made me grin like I was having my feet gently ticked.



In fact, all the playing here is from the very top drawer: all the musicians knowing when to hold back and when to politely run riot. The EP closes with ‘The Soldier’, its first person narrative occasionally dipping into the well worn war's a bad thing, who exactly are we fighting for? point, but driven forward by genuinely wonderful instrumental work pulled in from the worlds of classical and folk. The Crocodile by Mathew Gray and The Awful Truth is altogether rather ace.

Words: John Wigley.

Review: Temple Songs – Passed Caring (RIP Records)

Nothing represents youth more than a three minute pop song with a big hook about being completely void of care. All the above is captured to perfect extent by Temple Songs on their latest single, ‘Passed Caring’. This song comes three years into the quartet's career and is as riddled with teenage angst as if they started popping spots last week. The release shares in a new wave of lo-fi bands (see Brown Brogues and Splashh) in that, although they contain melody and hooks, there seems to be a conscious effort to drag the sound through the mud and deface any cleanliness. This is perhaps most evident on the ‘Coffee and TV’ Blur-like guitar solo that sounds like the leads are rusted and the guitar has been put through a blender rather than an amplifier.

Yet all the scuzz doesn't pertain towards racket or noise pollution, instead it lends warmth and charm to the track. Temple Songs have succeeded in producing a catchy single that's distorted enough to deter unwanted outsider fans yet its character draws in those who share in the group’s DIY ethos and hope they continue to drag their melodies through the swamp, for here it is done to brilliant effect.

Words: R Miles Sayer.

All Our Friends Are Dead @ 3MT, 27.07.13

There’s nothing funny about happiness: it’s just annoying. Sorrow, sadness and suffering, however, are side-splitting, so comedy couple Norris and Parker’s Edinburgh preview of All Our Friends Are Dead sounded promising. Having already performed a show called Comedy Wake they had form on their side, and with a set of promotional posters designed to cause goth boys to wet themselves with more than just wee it almost felt like a dead cert.

As with their other shows, All Our Friends Are Dead is loosely based around making the show itself. Opening with a delightful number about the joys of being a twat that set the tone for the rest of the evening (lots of music, lots of them being twats), they then romped through an hour’s worth of material covering murder with a tin opener, the art of improvisation and ills of society at large.

Sketches also broke down the 4th wall, with Norris and Parker regularly chiding their long-suffering manager Amanda Clapham (who appears on stage with them) about her lack of acting ability, her poor planning for their upcoming Edinburgh shows and her choice of clothing (described as “peasant whore”). This cruelty is part of their persona – few of their characters come across as likeable, and they opt instead to play people trapped in relationships that are mutually malefic.

The strongest asset that Norris and Parker have is the naturalness of their performance: it doesn’t seem like a performance at all (that could be an insult, but in this case it isn’t). That said, an area where they could do with improving is in their stage-craft itself, as some jokes were spoken over the audience’s laughter. A couple of sketches were recycled from their last show and, while still funny, the new material has taken a step forward, and so these older bits are now not quite as sharp. But these are minor quibbles about a very funny performance, and I’m sure they’ll do well in Edinburgh. All of their friends might be dead, but with material like this Norris & Parker should have no problem making new ones.

Words: Andrew Anderson.
Photography: Sam Edge.

No Soft Option @ 3MT, 25.07.13

Crime doesn’t pay, but does it play? The evidence, your honour, suggests that it does – the justice system is a repeat offender as a setting for drama. Whether this is catching the criminals in Lewis, sentencing them with Judge Judy or watching them behind bars in Bad Girls, we’re used to seeing the law laid down for our amusement. But one facet that doesn’t get covered is community service. The words ‘community’ and ‘service’ don’t exactly set the pulse racing, but actually it’s a great setup: it throws together people with different personalities from all sides of the social spectrum, united in a common task that they don’t want to do. It is this maelstrom into which No Soft Option takes us, written by Brian Marchbank and showing at 3MT as part of the 24:7 theatre festival.

Under the supervision of newbie social worker Emma (played by Katie McArdle), a ragtag bunch assemble to carry out a seemingly simple task: painting a room in a community centre. How hard could that be? As the story unfolds, with personalities clashing, managers ranting and tools being downed, it seems the answer is: very hard indeed. There are some strong characters on display, particularly the neurotic Karen (Jane Allighan), who reveals her man isn’t actually her man but just a neighbour she is secretly filming, and Abby (Kimberly Hart-Simpson) who has recently had some not-so-successful anger management training. The relationship between Emma and her manager Viv (Penny McDonald) is also good value, with Viv providing an outward pressure on the whole group.

However, a problem for No Soft Option is believability – it is hard to imagine it all really happening, even in exaggerated form. Some of the writing comes across as slightly too stereotyped, especially for the two younger protagonists and the oldest member of the group, Malcolm (Leo Atkin). The evolving of the various relationships comes across as a touch forced, with unexpected reconciliations undermining what had gone before. Laughs come at regular intervals, with lots of good one-liners, but perhaps fewer jokes would have meant bigger laughs, and also given more space for the emotional side of the story to develop.

The above does not detract from the performances of the actors, who worked well together and added some nice touches, such as Abby’s dead-eyed stare and Karen’s ‘talk to the hand’ blocking of anything she didn’t want to hear. Jeff Butler’s directing was clear and uncomplicated, which suited the production, and keeping manager Viv as a constant menacing presence at the front of the stage added tension. The verdict? While not perfect, No Soft Option was entertaining, with lots of good jokes, and by the end I had definitely been won over. Watching paint dry might be considered boring, but seeing it not painted at all is actually quite fun.

Words: Andrew Anderson.
Images: courtesy of 24:7.

Away From Home @ New Century House, 23.07.13

Football and homosexuality are like City and United fans: the two don't mix. Insulting players from the stands with gay epithets is still common, the first openly gay professional footballer in the modern era hung himself and the 2022 World Cup is being held in a country where homosexuality is illegal. With this in mind, how would a drama about a young man in a relationship with a closeted Premiership footballer fare? The answer is that Away From Home in one of the best written, performed and directed dramas I have seen. Normally I take notes during a play I am reviewing, but by the end I realised I hadn't written anything beyond the first five minutes; I’d been too caught up in it.

In Away From Home, Kyle (played by co-writer and lone actor Rob Ward) talks an un-seen partner through his relationship with a professional footballer who plays for his club’s rivals (referred to as “the scum” throughout). But this is no ordinary relationship, as the footballer is in the closet and no one can know. Oh, and they meet as John and rent boy, not as equals. Add to that the pressures being brought on Kyle by his family and catastrophe never seems far away. But, such is the heart of this play, nor does hope.

Littered with great one-liners, such as describing a girl as so clever that “she's re-taking her first year of uni” and telling the crossbar to “fuck off” during a game, the play is funny as well as thoughtful, dealing with difficult relationships while also poking fun at them. The directing (by co-writer Martin Jameson) sees Kyle move smoothly around the stage, with each re-enactment running seamlessly into the next – a scene set in hospital was particularly striking for its simple brilliance.

There is a lot you can take away from this play: the power of friendships, the difficulties that families go through, the pressure of keeping a secret. But most of all I think it is that we are all capable of growing as people, so long as we keep our self-respect, and there is always hope that conflicts can be resolved. Well, most conflicts: I’m still not sure that City and United fans will be hugging come match day anytime soon.

Words: Andrew Anderson.
Image: Courtesy of 24:7 Festival.

Away From Home's run concludes on Thursday 25th July, while the 24:7 Festival continues until this Friday, 26th July.

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.

Waiting Man / Stevie Wonder’s Stern Warning @ Black Lion, 13.07.13

The standout pieces of Nowt Part Of Festival (on the second Saturday, at least) were two one-man shows written and performed by Josh Coates (Stevie Wonder’s Stern Warning) and Jon Coleman (Waiting Man). The pieces share a common theme of being alone, of dealing with a void, and of waiting for something – or someone – to come along.

Waiting Man is an existentialist musing littered with hope, potential, loss, action, and inaction. Told in the third person by a bard-like narrator, the audience is not quite sure whether the story being told is true or not. However, the delivery, the investment in everything being said, and the incredibly effective and deceptive simplicity of the storytelling is so compelling that by the end we are visualising the trajectory of a character who never actually appears onstage, and with devastating results. This is a desperately cynical and yet strangely life-affirming piece of theatre which can lead the audience to think about the path that life could potentially take. On a stage covered with incomplete crossword puzzles, origami birds, clocks, empty food wrappers, and even juggling balls, the Waiting Man waits so that we don’t have to.

By contrast, Stevie Wonder’s Stern Warning is an immediate, first-person monologue depicting a man slowly unravelling whilst trying to hold together a comeback gig – a comeback gig where he is the only member who has turned up. Armed with a ukulele and a suitcase full of enthusiasm, Josh attempts to maintain a smile as he continues through the performance, making every effort to keep the audience buoyed up and happy as the dream of a reunion begins to fade and the realisation sets in that the end has actually already happened. As with Waiting Man, it is the immediate rapport with the audience, the eye-contact, the informality of the event and the complete ease with which Coates delivers the performance which enables the audience to relax and enjoy the ride. We wanted him to succeed, to get through it, to enjoy the gig, and to take us with him on his musical journey. The song ‘Macbeth’ was a wonderful opener, and it would have been great to have heard some more of the talent for lyric writing that this man obviously has.

Both Coates and Coleman made great use of the space, of the audience, of time, silence and sound. We could trust these guys to tell us their stories with great style, emotional intelligence, and honesty. They are definitely ones to watch for in the future.

Words: Claire Dean.