The Skinny Northwest October 2013 by The Skinny

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INDEPENDENT CULTURAL JOURNALISM FREE

Northwest Issue 07 October 2013

P.19 THE SELFISH GIANT

P.32 BARRY STEADMUND

P.43 SOUNDGARDEN

Photo: Alex Bell

P.12 THESE NEW PURITANS

October 2013

I N D E P E N D E N T

C U LT U R A L

J O U R N A L I S M

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Editorial Northwest Editor Film & Deputy Editor Events Editor Music Editor Books Editor Clubs Editor Comedy Editor Deviance Editor Fashion Editor Food Editor Travel Editor Staff Writer

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Contents

25/09/2013 12:06

THE SKINNY

Contents Up Front 06

Opinion: Hero Worship praises Stephen King; our sister paper’s Comedy ed Vonny offers a strong argument against categorising victims of rape, and Mystic Mark contemplates the contours of his BALLS. Plus: Shot of the Month, Stop the Presses, Skinny on Tour, and Online Only. Heads Up: A cultural event a day helps

08 you twerk, jest and slay. Or something.

Prodigious producer Daniel Avery detonates his debut LP Drone Logic this month; he discusses its nocturnalcity sound and recalls being holed up in Andrew Weatherall’s bunker. Elton John loves them, and so do we: These New Puritans reflect on new album Field of Reeds.

Daughter's founder Elena Tonra considers audience connections and nervous laughter.

The music strand at Liverpool’s Abandon Normal Devices festival is pretty epic, with The Haxan Cloak and Ital promising to take us to pant-crapping levels of sound.

Mark Boulos’ Echo, the centrepiece of Abandon Normal Devices festival’s art programme, presents the viewer with an eerie, interactive doppelganger; but is it really like an out of body experience? Lucien Castaing-Taylor talks about capturing humanity in an inhumane environment with avant-garde documentary Leviathan. Clio Barnard heads back to the Arbor estate in Bradford to direct The Selfish Giant, a realist fairytale based on Oscar Wilde’s children’s story.

feature director Paul 20 First-time Wright guides us through his poetic

Word of Warning’s director reveals the daring theatre company’s autumn programme, which includes the opportunity to take a lovely shower.

Jeremy Deller deconstructs the Industrial Revolution in touring show All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, which comes to Manchester Art Gallery this month; plus, we recommend a trip to Glasgow for Sonica.

Much-maligned, outrageously successful painter Jack Vettriano gets locked in a toilet.

Lemn Sissay had a dream: to write a poem about Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech for Manchester Literature Festival, to be precise.

Deviance: Rosie Garland chats about the influence of sex, sexuality and gender in her debut novel The Palace of Curiosities; plus one woman's struggle with society's insistence that all women are obsessed with babies. Showcase: Full-time parapsychologist and sometime artist Barry Steadmund reveals his research into the supernatural – and marshmallows. Fashion: Trend report: London Fashion Week offers a glimpse into the sartorial crystal ball – you'll be wearing a neon lip come next summer. Food & Drink: Ahead of Hallowe'en, we look at when food and horror movies collide – although food on its own can be pretty terrifying also, as Phagomania proves this month (well, every month).

OCTOBER 03 ZERVAS & PEPPER leaf

NOVEMBER 08 MONEY the blade factory

PHOSPHORESCENT the kazimier with evol

SWEET BABOO leaf

ESBEN & THE WITCH, TEETH OF THE SEA & THOUGHT FORMS the kazimier with evol

FOSSIL COLLECTIVE leaf

PINS leaf

LANTERNS ON THE LAKE the kazimier

JOHN GRANT sold out east village arts club with evol

JULIA HOLTER leaf

LOW the anglican cathedral

DEPTFORD GOTH leaf with bam!bam!bam!

CRYSTAL STILTS the shipping forecast

EUROS CHILDS & BILL RYDER-JONES leaf

DEAD SKELETONS & FOLLAKZOID the kazimier: pzyk xmas party

ALMUNIA (live) & DJ RAY MANG the blade factory

JONATHAN WILSON the kazimier

Music: great new records from Future of the Left, Laurel Halo and DARKSIDE; stuff to buy tickets for, including all the top shizz at Islington Mill; reviews, and Steve Mason reveals his love for film scores and soundtracks.

Film: David Gordon Green returns to contemplative comedy (Prince Avalanche) and we get set for Hallowe’en with Grimmfest.

DVD: We’ve the recipe for a dimly generic wedding movie (Bachelorette) and revisit masterpieces from Douglas Sirk and Michelangelo Antonioni.

Art: Ahmed & Carpenter turn corporate employer with Aversion Management at Rogue Artists’ Studios, while Plan for a Ruin at Islington Mill involves a decomposing cat – lovely.

Comedy: Why a haircut tells you a lot about how funny a comedian is, and why the presence of a Y chromosome in your genetic make-up doesn’t.

Theatre: Contact’s new artistic director previews the new season.

Books: Kate Tempest storms [YEAHHH! Thankyou, thankyou – Ed] to the top of the class.

Competitions: Win tickets to see Pet Shop Boys at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, and weekend passes to Louder Than Words Festival.

Listings: Things to get crunk at.

Out Back: It’s only bloody John Lydon having the last bloody word as usual.

DECEMBER 04 YO LA TENGO east village arts club

Tickets on sale from ONLINE: Ticketweb / Bido Lito! / Ticketline IN PERSON: Probe Records (School Ln) & The Brink (Parr St) FOLLOW ON TWITTER: @HARVEST_SUN @LPOOLPSYCHFEST

Clubs: We lose Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington to the Darkside; plus, an homage to DJ Derek.

26 Local loves Dutch Uncles and

Everything Everything take the opportunity to grab pints and grill each other in the pub, as though they’re not gonna be doing any of that when they head out on tour together this month.

Travel: Writer and broadcaster Vic Galloway takes a pilgrimage to Germany's krautrock shrines.

Review

study of grief and mental illness, For Those in Peril.

LIVERPOOL LISTINGS

Lifestyle

Features

Poet and avant-garde spoken word night host Michael Pedersen tells us about his erection.

soup-kitchen.co.uk | facebook.com/SoupkitchenMcr #showsatsoup | @Soupkitchen_Mcr

LIVE Tue 1st Wed 2nd Fri 4th Sun 6th Mon 7th Thu 10th Fri 11th Sat 12th Wed 16th Thu 17th Fri 18th Sat 19th Sun 20th Tue 22nd Wed 23rd Thu 24th Fri 25th Sat 26th Mon 28th Tue 29th Wed 30th Thu 31st

DALEY Nominated on BBC Sound of 2011 Shortlist YUCK + OLIVER WILDE MIKE GARRY A Great Northern Poet OXJAM TAKEOVER SMALL BLACK Brooklyn based Chill Wave Synth Pop NADINE SHAH Critically acclaimed “Love Your Dum and Mad” out now SECOND SHEPHERDS Manchester indie 4 piece LETTERS TO FIESTA plus More Tree Please & Songs For Walter DYLAN CARLSON Of legendary musical outfit EARTH TROUMACA Tropical indie band from Birmingham FATIMA & THE EGLO LIVE BAND + EGLO DJS A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL DAY #1 A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL DAY #2 HOLOGRAMS Swedish Post Punk MARK EITZEL Alt Country from American Music Club main man TRAUMTOURS feat. THE INVISIBLE, HEJIRA, MXIXE DESTRUCTION UNIT + HELM (PAN Records) YOUNG REBEL SET Psychedelic shuffle meets blue eyed indie soul DEAFHEAVEN American Avant Metal ALLO DARLIN’ Perfect, sophisticated pop gems RAFFTERIE (Ninja Tune) plus Trap Door meandyou Presents METASPLICE

OCTOBER

CLUB Fri 4th Sat 5th Fri 11th Sat 12th

NXNW feat. FKJ BEAT BOUTIQUE YOU DIG? ETC...feat. MOOMIN & DEEP SPACE ORCHESTRA

Sat 19th Sun 20th Sat 26th Mondays

SWING TING feat. SPOOKY A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL SOUP KITCHEN Presents TORNADO WALLACE REMAKE REMODEL

KITCHEN Wed 2nd Thu 3rd Fri 4th Sat 5th Mon 7th Wed 9th Thu 10th Fri 11th Sat 12th Mon 14th

MIND ON FIRE FUTUREPROOF TEASERS PLEASERS JASON BOARDMAN (Aficionado) DJ SAMRAI RUM & REGGAE with JOEY B & SAMRAI MIND ON FIRE FUTUREPROOF YOU DIG? Funk in all shapes and sizes! ANNABEL FRASER DJ MATTHEW & DAVID (Wasps Nest) SLIP DISCS

Wed 16th MIND ON FIRE FUTUREPROOF Thu 17th WILL LONG (Doodle) Fri 18th LEVI LOVE Sat 19th JON K (Hoya:Hoya) Wed 23rd MIND ON FIRE FUTUREPROOF Thu 24th KRAUT UND OWT Fri 25th MACCA + RICH Thu 26th THUMBS UP with RUF DUG Sat 29th ROBERT PARKINSON (Teasers Pleasers) Every 2nd & last Sunday - PSYCHEDELIC SUNDAYS

ticketline.com | skiddle.com | seetickets.com

October 2013

Contents

Editorial

Online Only Eyes to the website Documentarian Lucy Walker talks to us about her exhilarating and heartbreaking new film Crash Reel (in cinemas 4 Oct), which follows the seesawing career of champion snowboarder Kevin Pearce; and we preview the Northwest’s annual celebration of gore, Grimmfest (2-6 Oct). www.theskinny.co.uk/film

t’s purely by coincidence that ‘all that is solid melts into air’ becomes something of a mantra throughout this edition of The Skinny – it’s the title of both Jeremy Deller’s upcoming exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, and a piece of documentary by Abandon Normal Devices festival’s central artist Mark Boulos – but it perhaps provides a nice lens through which to view a lot of the boundary-blurring and genre-bending going on in these pages. From Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington’s project as DARKSIDE, which insists on pursuing “this weird direction – these two things that really should not work” (Jaar) to the aforementioned Boulos’ new work, Echo, which displaces its viewer’s own sense of self and transplants a version of them into an alternate reality, the idea that what we thought we understood can be quickly dismantled or even dissipate altogether is a recurring one. Showcase artist Barry Steadmund, meanwhile, gets literally melty with marshmallows. On the flipside, the intangible, the notional, can often become powerfully concrete: as Lemn Sissay explains in Books, discussing his new commission for Manchester Literature Festival (a poem in response to Martin Luther King’s revolutionary speech), the idea of ‘the dream’ works to galvanise real action and change; while in Music, These New Puritans ringleader Jack Barnett recalls how he found a way to realise his abstract ideas for their latest album, Field of Reeds – which required at-the-time impossible or as-yetuninvented instruments to come to fruition. Right, that’s the pontificating out the way, time for some bangers. Our cover star is the nauseatingly talented producer and DJ Daniel Avery, whose nascence as a clubber through the fickle rise and fall of indie-dance in the late 00s has lent him both the perspective of a seasoned elder and an informed, separate, grown-up sound all his own: if you haven’t yet found yourself reduced to an assembly of twitching neurons in a yawning black vacuum somewhere out in Trafford, try to snag a ticket for his appearance at the sold-out Warehouse Project on 8 Nov (or y’know, just get hold of his debut LP, Drone Logic, out 7 Oct on Erol Alkan’s Phantasy label). Elsewhere in Clubs, when he’s not already “knackered” himself out wrestling morbid levels of sub-bass from the

orifices of the Earth, The Haxan Cloak prepares to launch a sonic assault on Liverpool at Abandon Normal Devices – an awesome festival of new cinema, digital culture and art that we give a good seeing-to by way of a look at the music, art and film programmes, the latter of which boasts Leviathan, a punishing portrayal of life at sea. Film also visits the Brafferton Arbor estate in Bradford, to which director Clio Barnard returns for her new movie based on Oscar Wilde’s fairytale of the same name, The Selfish Giant; and, in between penning a monster feature looking at the state of new Scottish cinema for the cover of our sister publication – go read the piece online! – our Film editor somehow found time to speak to Paul Wright about his unflinching depiction of mental illness in For Those in Peril. And finally! Manchester darlings Dutch Uncles and Everything Everything get together to compare touring with Paramore and Muse; poet Michael Pedersen considers what constitutes a semi; Steve Mason identifies the new musical genre of ‘dusty horse’; John Lydon squares up to Britain (“Nobody gets up and does anything”); Deviance quizzes Rosie Garland on whether her first novel offers a critique of marriage; Art interrogates hugely successful modern painter Jack Vettriano’s questionable inspirations; and Comedy offers a pictorial and textual analysis of hair. Hair. This issue of The Skinny was brought to you by peanut butter chocolate balls. [Lauren Strain] This month's cover illustration is by Thom Isom, and is a response to Daniel Avery's debut album Drone Logic (out 7 Oct on Phantasy). Thom is a designer and artist based in Liverpool. He works for organisations and individuals in arts, music and creative sectors. He uses design, illustration and moving image to make work about the past, the present and the future. He also designs this 'ere Skinny, and, uncannily, bears a striking resemblance to Daniel Avery. When pressed to comment, Thom said, "Put whatever, I'm not arsed." www.thomisom.com

Soundgarden’s Ben Shepherd sneaks under the wire as new solo venture HBS with LP In Deep Owl, a diverse collection of haunting folk ballads and kaleidoscopic psych rock; The Lemonheads’ formerly estranged co-founder Ben Deily revisits the band's punk origins as the Boston outfit prepare their earliest recordings for a new lease of life; and Alfred 'Daedelus' Darlington tells us how grief inspired his new album, examines the dangers of 'press-play' electronic music and gives some insights into the roots of the LA beat scene. www.theskinny.co.uk/music

DAEDELUS

Turner Prize-winner Lucy Skaer speak to our sister paper ahead of her return to Glasgow with new show Exit, Voice and Loyalty. www.theskinny.co.uk/art Ahead of the one-off extended edition of his hugely popular Fringe show Nude Echo at The Citrus Club in Edinburgh, Russell Brand’s kittenfaced whipping boy Trevor Lock leads us on a meandering journey to happiness via Google chat. www.theskinny.co.uk/comedy

Last call for tickets for INDY MAN BEER CON, a weekend of beer, food and great music (the latter curated by yours truly) from 10-13 Oct at Victoria Baths, Manchester. There are still some tickets on sale. Head over to www.indymanbeercon.co.uk to find out more. The pick of Liverpool’s Capstone Theatre’s October events looks to be SONIC INTERACTIONS. Now in its fourth season, it presents a variety of electroacoustic works, and this year’s showcase is Dutch bass-clarinetist Marij Van Gorkom – the concert also features a range of UK-based composers and student works from Liverpool Hope. www.thecapstonetheatre.com The judging panel for BLOG NORTH, the annual online writing awards that form part of Manchester Literature Festival, has been announced. The decision makers include novelist Jenn Ashworth, social media evangelist Christian Payne, and the Guardian’s Sam Jordison. Appropriately, they’ve blogged about it: www.blognorthawards.com. And looking south to Birmingham, Capsule curate BRING TO LIGHT (25-27 Oct), a weekend adventure of music to celebrate the opening of the city’s new library. The line-up includes some of The Skinny’s fave sonic performers (Dinos Chapman, Shangaan Electro, Masaki Batoh, Josephine Foster), so it’s well worth a trip down the M6. The mint-fresh £189m library is also worth a look. www.capsule.org.uk.

The Skinny on Tour

Shot of the Month SOUNDGARDEN BY ALEXANDER BELL

This month, The Skinny on ‘Tor’ took in some kultur outside a very old and important building somewhere that isn't in the United Kingdom. It might even be a kapital city. Go on, try and guess – do your wurst. For your chance to win The Bumper Book of Simon’s Cat by Simon Tofield (courtesy of those lovely volks over at Canongate), just head along to www.theskinny.co.uk/about/competitions and tell us where you think this shifty looking Skinny reader is holidaying. Competition closes midnight Sun 27 Oct. Winners will be notified via email within two working days of closing and will be required to respond within one week or the prize will be offered to another entrant. Full T&Cs can be found at www.theskinny.co.uk/about/terms.

Chat

THE SKINNY

Opinion: Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Time for a Bit of Equality

ut of context, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a pretty gauche opinion. When you attribute it to a discussion about rape itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s disturbing. Just as horrifying, is that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s come from the mouth of a respected comedy critic for a national newspaper during John Flemingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chat show last Fringe. Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more â&#x20AC;&#x201C; sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a woman. Kate Copstick is something of a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;big dealâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in the comedy world; when sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not making caustic statements about rape, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a serious arts journalist. With her longtime gig as a reviewer for The Scotsman, and a reputation for being a bit of a gob, people pay attention to what she has to say. With this penchant for saying the unsayable comes a certain hubris. A sense of being bulletproof. The idea that you can say what you want and thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sod all anyone else can do about it. This reckless imperviousness flapped its wings this Fringe on Russell Kaneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s festival chat show, where she savaged award-winning comedian Sarah Millican, saying â&#x20AC;&#x153;If she wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a Geordie, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be told to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;go away, lose weight and come back when youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re funny.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;? Aside from the visible repressed outrage from Kane and his co-host, it disgusted fans and fellow comics alike. Why? Because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a crap opinion. When you lay into another woman because of her appearance, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not critiquing; youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re bullying. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s got as much depth and relevance as a jibe from Mean Girls. Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more, is if this had come from a bloke, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be shot down in flames. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time for a bit of equality. Time to be held accountable for your actions, regardless of gender, or status, or just plain stupidity. There are millions of young women desperate for cultural leaders to teach them about self worth, tolerance and about compassion.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I genuinely believe â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go down well, but â&#x20AC;&#x201C; if you walk into Battersea Dogs Home with your legs covered in prime rump steak, you cannot complain if you get bitten.â&#x20AC;? Our sister paperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Comedy editor was so incensed by this quote, she drafted a reasonable response

What are we gaining by poking at someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s weight? Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pernicious enough, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an altogether bigger deal when you start making indiscriminate generalisations about men, women, and sexual responsibility. Copstick continues on John Flemingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blog: â&#x20AC;&#x153;One word [rape] covers both someone who is wandering along a road and some person completely unknown to her leaps out â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which must be horrendous and terrifying and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not about sex, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about violence. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a very specific form of assaultâ&#x20AC;Ś That is one thingâ&#x20AC;Ś That is horrendousâ&#x20AC;Ś But then thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s some twat of a 19-year-old who dolls herself up, covers herself in make-up, goes out, gets shit-faced, gets a guy, gets more shitfaced, takes him back to her place or goes back to his place, takes some items of clothing off, starts playing tonsil hockey, has her nipples twiddled, starts playing the horizontal tangoâ&#x20AC;Ś Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too fucking late to start complaining. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not his fault any more. You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Oh! â&#x20AC;&#x201C; No! â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not fair.â&#x20AC;? Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s crass enough to summarise rape with a dog analogy, but to assume that a woman is begging for it because of her outfit, her locale, or the fact that she had a drink is missing the point somewhat. Call me old fashioned, but I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to smother the notion that skirt-length or vodka jellies transfer culpability. These details are irrelevant in comparison to the act of a man physically putting his penis inside a woman when she does not want it there. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to acknowledge that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s okay if at some point in the night you think, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Hey, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not so sure about thisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for any reason. Our vaginas donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come with a sense of duty. Changing your mind is still a no. No is not an ambiguous sentiment. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not some Robin

Hero Worship: Stephen King

October 2013

our actions. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re reinforcing that we women are inferior. That we are incapable of making decisions. That our bodies are currency. That we should fear men. This is the same danced-around responsibility we put on the shoulders of our daughters as soon as theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re old enough to take notice of boys. What about teaching consent? What about discussing sexual autonomy? How about we stop telling girls how to dress, and start telling men not to rape? Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to take rape seriously. To empower victims. To give them the confidence to act without fear of reprisal â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not only from the judicial system, but from other men and women picking apart their actions and victim-blaming. We need to give women the confidence to report crimes without worrying that everyone thinks like Copstick. Comedy is moving on from this, just like the rest of the world. In a year when Adrienne Truscott and Bridget Christie claimed the big Fringe prizes with unabashed celebrations of feminism, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beyond disappointing to hear such morally bankrupt contrivances spilling out of one of the most exalted critics in the business. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not even misguided Joan-of-Arc-ing; not some sort of perceived martyrdom with Copstick speaking for the silent. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just a frighteningly bad opinion. And much like the Sarah Millican comments, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s utterly irrelevant. The time has come to take a stance against damaging attitudes. We need to embrace progressive voices and stop giving mileage to vestiges of an era weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing our best to forget.

BALLS.

your delighted boss who agrees to implement your recommendations immediately.

with Mystic Mark

LIBRA Your Jekyll and Hyde personality manifest itself in a variety of ways. can For instance, this month youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll pass out only to revive days later naked in an empty penguin enclosure surrounded by skinned dolphins, wondering who shat in your pants.

ARIES You just canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to empathise fully with others until youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve walked around for a day in their skin and hair. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the only way you can experience what itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like to be them inside and understand the stresses theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re under all while being pursued by packs of hungry, stray dogs that bite at the flapping bits of skin around your ankles.

his is a good year for fans of Stephen King. Two new novels, one of which is the muchawaited sequel to The Shining, and the successful TV adaptation of Under the Dome have all materialised within the space of only a few months. Seeing all this new work advertised on my last shop online has reminded me of three things. Firstly, that I miss the fact that I could once read King without anxiously getting my pencil out to highlight important passages. Secondly, that now that I work in Higher Education, I find it hard justifying the time that it takes to read what are, more often than not, volumes between 500 and 900 pages long. Thirdly, that were it not for this manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s influence, I would probably have chosen a very different career path. The truth is that, when I was a teenager, I was obsessed with King. In fact, there was a period of two or three years where I did little else other than read him. I was told off at the local gym for getting out my copy of Salemâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lot instead of doing my push-ups, and I distinctly remember a meeting with my literature teacher (an unapologetic genre reader himself) where he smiled and kindly suggested that maybe I should try reading other writers. Like a good student, I went off and picked a copy of Frankenstein. Tastes change, and so do reading habits, but my penchant for the landscapes of the gothic

Thicke-flavoured word that we throw around to be coy. It means donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. We need to teach women that we have that power. We need to recognise that rape is gruesome however it happens; be it a stranger, someone you know or even a partner. Imagine the horror of waking up sore, and that sickening feeling when you discover thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a good chance you were sexually assaulted whilst non compos mentis? There are no degrees of realness; rape is rape. Not only is this mindset back-to-the-futuring the womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rights movement by at least a hundred years, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s doing a hell of a disservice to men. While entirely derogating half the population, it simultaneously nurtures engendered stereotypes that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;justifyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; reprehensible actions. Are men really animals, impervious to controlling themselves at the sight of skin or arc of a breast? Are they fundamentally powerless to decide where their sex organs go? Are we hostages in our own bodies, wandering around in a state of prerape, solely determined by our diligent efforts to bat off attackers? Also, if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re raped, does that mean you didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t try hard enough to stop it? This attitude essentially de-genders us and divides us into two categories: victims and criminals, where the former has to make allowances for the latter. Women are helpless and responsible; all men are evil and waiting for you to slip up. This is not real. How can we still permit such a fundamental lack of respect? For men, yes, but mostly for women. When you spout the same sort of tired rhetoric as the fossils in the Steubenville or Norwood rape cases, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re underlining the entrenched prejudices that bridle us to the past. Chaining us to fear and fiction. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re fortifying the myth that we coordinate our own abuse with

Gothic Manchester Festival co-organiser Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes tells The Skinny about Stephen Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s influence on his research and teaching

TAURUS In October media executives agree to produce the pilot of your TV show, The Young Adventures of Jesus Christ, starring a roller-skating messiah who teaches Bethlehem how to dance.

GEMINI Life is like a game of Monopoly: you look like a boot, your house is tiny and you spend half the time in prison.

CANCER When you talk to your friends down the pub about how many â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;birdsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; you made love to last night they have no idea just how literally your claims should be taken.

STEPHEN KING

imagination has not abandoned me. Although I have since then discovered, cherished and even taught the work of other gothic writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, M. R. James or Angela Carter, I keep indulging in some King when I get the chance. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that he made me want to study and teach literature. Gothic Manchester Festival runs 21-27 Oct www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/gothicmmu/ gothic-manchester-festival

Words: Vonny Moyes

LEO Deciding itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time you finally dealt with some household chores, you start defrosting the corpse freezer.

VIRGO While producing a report on how to improve efficiency at work, you inadvertently discover the company would actually be better off if all the employees were crushed into bone meal and sold as fertiliser. You dutifully hand in the report to

John Fleming's blog: www.thejohnfleming.wordpress.com

SCORPIO Much like your ruling planet Mercury itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unlikely that humankind will ever touch your pockmarked surface. The chances that anyone in their right mind would ever attempt to visit you are negligible; the vast majority of humans feel quite comfortable observing you in disgust from afar.

SAGITTARIUS When buying products you are particularly prone to buyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s remorse. After spending an entire day looking for and purchasing the perfect watch, only a few hours later you can be seen fastening it around the neck of a seagull and crying as you hammer it to death with a brick.

CAPRICORN After the accident you have to have your groin amputated.

AQUARIUS As an enraged Daily Express reader, in October your furious attention turns to all the job-shy serf ghosts enjoying the afterlife of Riley in your Victorian townhouse for free. PISCES You take comfort from the fact that humans are able to predict with greater accuracy what will happen to the stars than the stars can predict what will happen to humans. That said, this month the stars accurately predict it is actually you who will reach the end of your life cycle and violently explode.

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As the Women in Comedy Festival gets all fired up, we welcome Sameena Zehra to the stage as she talks frankly about her upbringing in South London by way of Kabul and Kashmir. In her usual disarming style, Zehra will touch upon what it really means to be the ‘other’, while telling stories of her grandmother swatting terrorists like flies. Taurus, Manchester, 10pm, £5

Tue 8 Oct

It’s OK, you can open your eyes now. Grimmfest is almost over, but there’s still a chance to scare the bejeezus out of yerself as the final day sees some heart-stopping features (such as Big Bad Wolves, pictured) and short films get a well-deserved airing. And then there’s the aftershow party to look forward to. The Dancehouse Theatre, Manchester, from 1pm, £24 (day ticket)

And you thought Grimmfest was bad! Because they’re, like, mean or something, FACT are hosting a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror, The Shining – all 144 minutes of it, without the nips and tucks it’s gone through over the years. And Monday might just be the perfect day to remind yourself what all work and no play does to a person. FACT, Liverpool, 8.30pm, £9.10 (£7.60)

Mikhail Bulgakov’s darkly comic novel The Master and Margarita makes its way onto the stage with a plethora of new technology to help capture the complex imaginative forces at play – see the cast of supernatural and historical characters brought to life with film, puppetry and A/V mapping. Shit just got weird, yo. Unity Theatre, Liverpool, until 12 Oct, 7.30pm, from £8

BIG BAD WOLVES

THE SHINING

Sun 13 Oct

Mon 14 Oct

For Brain Machine Radio's first foray into live events – with more outings in isolated locales planned for the future – they’re popping their cherry with a live set from mysterious electro-meets-techno outfit Photodementia, while Oxford’s Diffuse and Andrew Ingram fill the club space at Islington Mill with live ambient textures. Islington Mill, Salford, 9pm, £10

As the Manchester Literature Festival takes hold with a vice-like grip, we look forward to rubbing shoulders with some literary greats in unique venues across the city. Catch Booker Prize-winning author Roddy Doyle as he discusses his latest book, The Guts, which reunites the world with Jimmy Rabbitte. Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 5.30pm, £8 (£6)

Glasgow’s buzz band trio CHVRCHES – recently seen levitating on the cover of our sister publication up North – drop by Manchester on their whistlestop tour of the UK to showcase their debut LP The Bones of What You Believe, of which singles Lies, The Mother We Share and Gun are proving to be but the tip of their mighty electro-pop iceberg. The Ritz, Manchester, 7pm, £13

ANDREW INGRAM

RODDY DOYLE

Photo: Ameila Stein

Sat 12 Oct

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA

CHVRCHES

Fri 18 Oct

Sat 19 Oct

If introverted electronica is your style, rejoice as London-based producer and singer-songwriter Daniel Woolhouse ventures north of the M25 to play a live set at The Deaf Institute under his Deptford Goth guise, between a European and North American tour. The Deaf Institute, Manchester, 7.30pm, £9

Hot Bed Press and Manchester School of Art will be taking over Manchester Metropolitan University’s Holden Gallery for the Manchester Artists’ Book Fair, with more than 40 tables crammed full of all manner of wares, including zines, teeny letterpressed miniatures, decorative papers and beautifully bound tomes. The Holden Gallery, Manchester, until 19 Oct, Free

Carefully Planned return with their third annual music festival, putting bands on stages in places all over the Northern Quarter. Highlights include The Physics House Band at Soup Kitchen, All We Are at Night & Day Cafe, and Shield Patterns at KRAAK. Catch them all for a very modest £12.50. Various venues, Manchester, until 20 Sep, £7 day (£12.50 weekend)

MANCHESTER ARTISTS' BOOK FAIR

ALL WE ARE

DEPTFORD GOTH

Photo: Magnus Aske Blikeng

Thu 17 Oct

Thu 24 Oct

Fri 25 Oct

If you’re still harbouring dreams of being a Ghostbuster, look no further than the Manchester Gothic Festival’s Hands-On Ghost Hunt. Starting out in the Great Hall of Salford’s Tudor mansion, Ordsall Hall, you’ll learn some practical skills before splitting into groups to go nab some ghoulies. Bring a torch, and don’t expect to sleep ‘til Christmas. Ordsall Hall, Salford, 6pm, £25

Kickstarting its Performer as Curator series, The Lowry hosts an exhibition curated by Alison Goldfrapp in which she presents over 20 artists, including Anna Fox and further painters, photographers and filmmakers, who have inspired her own artistic output over the years. Basically, go have a gander at Ms Goldfrapp’s giant mood board. The Lowry, Salford, until 2 Mar 2014, Free

Talented noise-masters Russian Circles drop by Manchester for one of their famously energetic live sets, with Mike Sullivan and Brian Cook utilising an array of pedals, samples and loop effects to build up their wall-ofsound, er, sound. They’ll be joined on the night by the atmospheric, matteblack vocals of Chelsea Wolfe, who lent her voice to the Circles’ upcoming album, Memorial. Gorilla, Manchester, 7pm, £12.50

ORDSALL HALL

Chat

Photo: Gary Clee

Wed 23 Oct

ANNA FOX

RUSSIAN CIRCLES

THE SKINNY

Photo: Tom Lox

Mon 7 Oct

Photo: Lara Parsons

Sun 6 Oct

SAMEENA ZEHRA

Photo: Eoin Carey

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Photo: Marie Hazelwood

On the run up to Hallowe’en – which this calendar doesn’t stretch to, there’s another Skinny before then! – there are all manner of horrors in store, including Grimmfest, a screening of Kubrick’s The Shining, a Hands-On Ghost Tour and a rave apocalypse as The Warehouse Project takes over the city. Chilling.

Catch the world premiere of Chris Hannan’s gripping adaptation of Crime and Punishment, the psychological thriller that makes an episode of CSI look like a Pixar short. Share in the guilt and squirming as destitute student Raskolnikov dodges the law following his double murder spree. Liverpool Playhouse, until 19 Oct, 7.30pm, from £12

Photo: Chris Strong

Compiled by: Laura Howarth

Wed 2 Oct

Photo: Tim Morozzo

Heads Up

Tue 1 Oct

Thu 3 Oct

Fri 4 Oct

Sat 5 Oct

Abandon Normal Devices festival hosts a major exhibition of artist and filmmaker Mark Boulos’ work, the centrepiece of which is Echo, an immersive piece that presents the viewer with an eerie, interactive doppelganger, utilising every neuroscientific trick in the book to utterly bug you out. FACT, Liverpool, until 21 Nov, Free

New kids on the block Big Teeth theatre company tackle the big guns as they present Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot – that highbrow-turned-popular classic tragicomedy in two parts, still flaunting its relevance some 60 years after it was first staged. The Lantern Theatre, Liverpool, 3-4 Oct, 7.30pm, £10.50 (£6.50)

Word of Warning return with an autumn programme to reward the curious. Emergency 2013 is a mini arts festival spread over two venues, offering a pick’n’mix of various formats: stumble across spoken word performance next to site-responsive art installations. Last year they taped folk to the windows – it’s all fair game! BLANKSPACE + Z Arts, Manchester, 12 noon-4pm, Free

Beer, music and food – that most holy of trinities – come together to make the next four days of your life less laughable than usual. The Independent Manchester Beer Convention (or Indy Man Beer Con) kicks off today, with a Skinny-curated line-up of music, including BC Camplight, Elle Mary and Being There. Victoria Baths, Manchester, until 13 Oct, from £6

The Berlin-based electronic duo of Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary – who we know as Modeselektor – return to The Warehouse Project to curate an immersive live show. For Modeselektion, they’ve lined up sets from LFO, Karenn and Pantha du Prince, alongside a rare set from Dopplereffekt. Victoria Warehouse, Manchester, 8pm, £25

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS

INDY MAN BEER CON

Wed 16 Oct

This Mancunian quartet kept us waiting around for bleeding ages for their debut album, Girls Like Us – drip-feeding us tracks and teasers and tempting us with live shows, zines and, y’know, a cassette-only label, as you do. Now that the LP’s here, PINS embark on a UK-wide tour to show it off proper. Leaf, Liverpool, 7.30pm, £7

The middle of the month finds the Liverpool Irish Festival in full swing. A far cry from the green-beerand-silly-hats homage of St Patrick’s Day, this celebration of Irish culture spans film, music and art, with highlights including appearances from Luka Bloom, Damien Dempsey and Thomas McCarthy. Various venues, Liverpool, see listings for further details

PINS

Photo: Elinor Jones

Tue 15 Oct

MODESELEKTOR

LUKA BLOOM

Mon 21 Oct

Tue 22 Oct

Taking guerrilla filmmaking to extremes, Manchesterbased collective Filmonik are gearing up for an intense, four-day collaborative filmmaking sesh. Pooling their collective talent and disregarding the need for sleep, the group will emerge on Sunday to show off their shorts at the Gorilla Kabaret screening. Islington Mill, Salford, 7.30pm, £5 (door)

Moody trio Daughter – formed at the prestigious London Institute of Contemporary Performance – stop off in Manchester as part of their autumn tour, bringing folk-tinged melodies by the bucketload. Still riding the wave of success of their most recent release, If You Leave, their new spot on the 4AD roster sees them assuming a dizzying trajectory. The Ritz, Manchester, 7pm, £15

Known for showcasing the best in European theatre, Birmingham’s BE Festival sends the cream of this year’s crop out on the road for a boundary-pushing, threeshow strong event. Catch the heady French delight Al Cubo, Hungarian physical theatre piece Tae Te and Danish production Next Door. Unity Theatre, Liverpool, 8pm, £10 (£8)

GORILLA KABARET

DAUGHTER

Mon 28 Oct

Returning to The Warehouse Project following his appearance at the WHP X RA event in 2012, Julio Bashmore curates the night with a line-up spanning his wide range of influences, with appearances from Laurent Garnier and Derrick Carter, and Metro Area’s first live show in Manchester in almost a decade. Victoria Warehouse, Manchester, 8pm, £25

Still riding high on the release of their LP Piramida – which incorporates more than a thousand sound samples taken from an isolated archipelago way up in the Arctic – Copenhagen arthouse exports Efterklang arrive in Liverpool to deliver one of their energetic and potent live sets, with audience sing-a-longs looking likely. The Kazimier, Liverpool, 7.30pm, £12

Back to the Kazimier we go, as the London-based Portico Quartet – known for their distinct and inimitable sound, drawing on influences as wide-reaching as Mount Kimbie and Bon Iver – play a trademark creative set utilising a variety of oddball instruments, including the hang, a UFO-like percussion instrument. The Kazimier, Liverpool, 7.30pm, £12.50

JULIO BASHMORE

October 2013

EFTERKLANG

Photo: Andreas Koefoed

Sun 27 Oct

Photo: Elle Sheriff

Sat 26 Oct

Photo: Daniel Harris

Sun 20 Oct

BE FESTIVAL

PORTICO QUARTET

Chat

Photo: Claire Burge

The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle brings his unique nasal quality and lyrical dexterity to Manchester as part of a European tour, moving effortlessly between acoustic rock and barbershop folk while singing songs of loss, broken relationships and off-brand spirits – y’know, standard Wednesday night fare. Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, 7.30pm, £17.50

Photo: A E Harris

Fri 11 Oct

Photo: Jamie Leit

Thu 10 Oct

Photo: DL Anderson

Wed 9 Oct

Photo: Ragnar Schmuck

CLARISSA SACCHELLI

WAITING FOR GODOT

MARK BOULOS

Dance Evolution Fostered by Erol Alkan and Andrew Weatherall but with a tunnelling, paranoid sound all his own, Daniel Avery is convinced that now is the most exciting time for electronic music in a long while – and we’re pretty sure he’s the ringleader

uring the notoriously prolonged production of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, frontman and sonic mastermind Kevin Shields told Vox magazine that ‘Sound is like a picture in my head... I’m thinking of writing them down some day.’ Shields’ tireless pursuit of emotional sonic transcendence nearly bankrupted Creation Records and its owner, Alan McGee, who eventually made some change back with Oasis. Daniel Avery, for whom Loveless is an all-time favourite LP, shares a similar vision, but has been fortunate enough to render his psychedelic soundscapes in a landscape far less fraught with tension than his hero. “I think ‘trippy’ is the key word,” Avery notes. “I don’t want to use it as a cheap drugs reference, but trippy is definitely important. Loveless is basically the ultimate trippy record, for example.” Out this month, Drone Logic, the first fulllength from the producer and DJ, is a reliably and, it’s fair to say, refreshingly trippy record, as well as a steady and assured debut LP. Ostensibly still a club record, it nonetheless revels in feedback and delay to create dancefloor drama; it’s a detailed sound that’s practically slow-motion compared to that of the current spate of young producers flooding clubs and playlists. Over 12 tracks, Drone Logic conjures both menace and melancholy amid the euphoria – and while it’s full of moments that will ensure hands in the air, it’s obvious that Avery’s work is nonetheless indebted to more outsider influences such as Chris Carter and NEU!, with The Chemical Brothers as a wider reference point.

“I wanted it to sound like it could only have been made by me, in London, in 2013” Daniel Avery

Avery is something of a survivor of the indie dance scene of the mid 00s, a lively time that, at its height, gifted us the likes of LCD Soundsystem and Simian Mobile Disco, then quickly escalated to somewhat more aggressive excesses before being put out to pasture on a trailer for the first series of Skins. At almost the exact same time, Erol Alkan closed his legendary weekly Trash party in London after a decade of evolving, sweaty service. Having passed the club’s notoriously non-specific dress code test a few times, Avery caught the tail end of Trash and would continue to see Alkan elsewhere on visits to London, alongside the likes of Michael Mayer and Ewan Pearson, DJs known for their versatility and somewhat broader record collections than many others found in the stale superclubs of the time.

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“Now’s the most exciting time for electronic music in a while, because for whatever reason, crowds seem to have become way more receptive,” observes Avery, who, at 27, is something of a club veteran and saw the scene he was initially inspired by – and even a part of, through his retired ‘stopmakingme’ persona – “sort of dry up of ideas.” Or maybe we can’t see the wood for the trees? “There might just be a load of good music around?” he offers. If Avery’s acid-flecked sound isn’t thundering around clubs all freshers’ week long, then that’s because he’s done a fairly spectacular job of carving his own offbeat niche. At a mere 114 beats per minute, the album’s title track – ‘drone logic’ is, he says, a phrase that “doesn’t mean anything in particular, it just sounds right” – goes at an essentially leisurely pace that’s often relegated to the sole domain of the warm-up DJ. Made quickly and exclusively for a party, the record’s impact was said to be strong when a friend who dared to play it to a full room called with feedback the next day. Incidentally – not to mention usefully – that friend was one Andrew Weatherall, and the party was his much-feted A Love From Outer Space (or ALFOS, to its devotees), an intimate dedication to everything slow, druggy and chugging. Still, Drone Logic has retained its appeal from London basements to huge outdoor festivals, such as earlier this year in Cophenhagen, where Avery witnessed the slow build of the track work one young man into such mania that it prompted a slow-mo stage dive. “I’ve seen sane kids, boys and girls lose their shit to weird records that Daphni is playing at a festival, or something Ben UFO is playing. And these kids love it all,” he says. “And the DJs don’t really care about what genre something comes from. It’s not eclecticism for eclecticism’s sake. The best DJs take things from different genres and make them sound like they’re from the same famous – basically utilising a lot of methods normally associated with bands.” world. Things like Boiler Room have only helped If ‘never meet your heroes’ is considered with that breaking down of barriers.” As DJs, a standard creative maxim, then Avery’s career listeners and clubbers drown in splinter genres thus far has been laced with opportunities for and promos, Avery is, like many, also committed to the notion of the DJ as curator, and cites Mary disappointment and disillusionment; both seemingly dodged entirely. Having a direct line to the Anne Hobbs and her early Breezeblock shows palm of Andrew Weatherall’s hand is an enviable on Radio 1 as a direct inspiration for his current position for any young DJ or producer to be in, monthly appointment on London’s Rinse FM. In fact, Avery was keen that the city itself left a mark but Avery has produced much of his finest work in a studio just down the corridor from the man on his debut LP, having rented a studio space himself, having met Weatherall’s muse and engiin a shipping container beside the East of the neer, Timothy J. Fairplay, and taken up residency Thames, contending with freezing temperatures but rewarded with beautiful views of the financial in their East London labyrinth. Such a range of introductions came about via a mutual friend district at sunset. in Richard Fearless, producer and frontman of “The whole experience made me feel like I Death in Vegas, but despite it resembling what was very much in London and I like to think that might look like his own fan fiction, Avery reinit’s one that comes across on the record,” he forces that the whole process was “bizarre, but says. “I think it has a British heritage to it but, felt very right and natural.” But what’s it like in more than that, I wanted it to sound like it could Weatherall’s Shoreditch bunker? only have been made by me, in London, in 2013.” “Aside from being surrounded by a staggerIt was during this period that Avery began ing record and synth collection, it’s just a very to experiment to create the record’s eventual inspiring place with an ever-present creative live and enveloping feel, “mainly putting synths atmosphere,” he reveals. “It’s not a knees-up boys through guitar pedals, playing live drums on club like I’m sure some people imagine it to be; the tracks and using things the AMS reverb unit a lot of hard work goes on down there and the that Martin Hannett (of Factory Records) made

CLUBS

Photo: Steve Gullick

Interview: John Thorp

results show. Simply being down there for ten minutes and talking with everyone can get you excited about a new idea or inspire you to try something new.” It’s Alkan, however, with whom Avery shares the most affinity. Though over a decade older, Alkan shares with him a similar renaissance man ability, and while now in the position of being a sort of British clubbing institution, it’s easy to forget he once topped a DJ Mag readers’ poll ahead of the likes of Armin Van Buuren – which isn’t bad for a man who would regularly play The Fall or Talk Talk while warming up for techno pioneers. Nowadays, Alkan remains a forwardthinking force and, as well as supporting the likes of Drone Logic, has been able to nurture offbeat artists such as Connan Mockasin through his Phantasy imprint. “He is a good boss,” Avery affirms. “He’s a very good boss, in that we come from similar places with similar reference points. We mixed the album in his studio in his house, excitedly showing each other records and trying to work out how things were done, how people got certain sounds. So the whole thing has just been a really exciting, creative process.” Avery is also pleased with the level of creative

THE SKINNY

freedom afforded to him by Alkan and Phantasy, who, unsurprisingly, “aren’t looking for a radio hit.” Nonetheless, the label’s cult following and no doubt the support of a DJ as well-travelled as Alkan have offered him gratifying exposure. Instead of endless remix packages “that nobody cares about,” the two have instead sought reworks for Avery’s original work from kindred spirits such as Paul Woolford and Factory Floor, both of which have achieved success on underground dancefloors in all corners.

“I can get weirder. I think I can push it into even more psychedelic directions” Daniel Avery

“The stuff I’ve been doing seems to have clicked with a few people in a wider scale, from Maya Jane Coles to some of the Innervisions guys, like Marcus Vogel, who invited me to play with him in Amsterdam recently,” he says. “It’s great, because these are people I respect across a really broad spectrum.” Nonetheless, those already accustomed to his particular sound – as well as those to whom the album may prove a very pleasant surprise indeed – will likely be excited to hear that Avery is still keen to press further, deeper and weirder with his music. “If anything, I just want to stick with Phantasy for the moment, where I’m quite happy, and can get weirder. I think I can push it into even more psychedelic directions,” he stresses. Having played in suddenly dance-dominated America over two tours in 2013, Avery looks an ill fit on the line-ups of certain commercial dance events that he’s graced the stage of nonetheless. “In America, I never try and be obtuse, but I don’t do what everyone else there wants to do,” he acknowledges. “But it’s cool when you notice that there’s kids who are just waiting for a drop but then eventually have got into a groove instead. I’m not going to make millions of dollars in America, but I feel zero affinity with that scene anyway.” Still, one of the more potentially clinical gigs on his recent tour paid alone for the ability to play elsewhere on the West Coast, and Avery still regularly turns down festivals “that aren’t for me,” preferring to play intimate gigs. “Then again,” he considers, “intimate gigs don’t necessarily have to be small. Playing in Room One of Fabric can be an intimate gig.” Drone Logic is released 7 Oct on Phantasy; the official album launch party is at Dance Tunnel, Dalston, London, 4 Oct Photo: Steve Gullick

He plays The Warehouse Project, Manchester, on 8 Nov, and Fabriclive at Fabric, London, 15 Nov www.daniel-avery.tumblr.com www.phantasysound.co.uk

October 2013

CLUBS

Feature

Field Music Ahead of this month’s tour, we talk to These New Puritans’ Jack Barnett about their visionary, Elton-praised third album, Field of Reeds

Interview: Chris Buckle

THESE NEW PURITANS

“T

his music’s symbolic,” sang Jack Barnett on These New Puritans’ debut Beat Pyramid. But while there were obscurities and tensions to sink into and unpick from the start, it wasn’t until 2010’s Hidden that his work’s symbolism and complexities truly began to take hold. As taiko drums confronted children’s choirs, lyrics spun riddles of Egyptian gods, swords and labyrinths, making an open mockery of early, confused efforts to align the band with the transitory pleasures of nu-rave. On tracks like We Want War, Barnett embarked on psychogeographic tours that evoked Sebald, Keiller and other chroniclers of the British landscape as much as any musical points of reference, resulting in an album of striking ambition – the sort of grand project that can see lesser acts flounder in a mire of self-importance, but which, for These New Puritans, evidenced a conceptual, compositional intelligence unafraid to challenge its listeners without severing all tethers to the mainstream. “We don’t fit easily into certain brackets,” says Barnett, speaking over the phone in-between legs of an extensive tour that’s seen them collaborate with avant garde vocalist Salyu in Tokyo and support Björk in Los Angeles, and which this month takes them around the UK. “I like the fact that we do that, because we always have one foot in popular music, or with a popular music audience, whatever that might entail. I like that it’s not exclusive.” This balance between experimentation and accessibility continues with recently released third album Field of Reeds, which ditches the militant percussion and mantric vocals of its predecessor in favour of a quieter, more pastoral tone. While much has been made of the album’s more esoteric aspects – the arrangement of tracks into extended suites; the estuarine topography traversed by its lyrics – it’s not as opaque as the sum of its parts, which incidentally range

Feature

from a prototype Magnetic Resonator Piano to a hawk taking flight (together, a neat representation of an album with its roots in nature and its sights future-facing). To Barnett’s evident chagrin, the hawk recording has been a conspicuous focal point in recent interviews (“music doesn’t lend itself well to being talked about – there isn’t a good vocabulary for it really, so for that reason everyone has to talk about everything other than the music,” he sighs), but he volunteers background information for the other piece of kit, which uses electromagnets to warp the piano’s string vibrations into something straight out of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop. “Most of the time it’s obvious to me when I write a piece of music what instrument should carry a part or roughly what the sound should be,” he explains. “Because of the way we work, with lots of instruments, we can’t muck around in the studio – we kind of have to plan every hour precisely. But there was one sound on the album where I didn’t really know how we’d get it. We called it an ‘un-organ’ – a kind of organ sound, but something else. It was the last piece in the jigsaw. I thought I was going to have to sound-design it, to fit this particular role, and then purely by chance we got a phone call from someone who had seen a demonstration of this instrument that had recently been invented. So yeah,” he deadpans, “that was a bit of luck.” It’s the first time the piano’s otherworldly timbre has featured on an album, but you don’t doubt for a minute that novelty played little part in its inclusion. When even the piano sound comes with a layer of mystery, it’s clear why These New Puritans attract active, investigative listeners. With recurring motifs and repeated imagery, their music offers a rabbit hole down which to get lost, seemingly filled with immeasurable meanings that beg to be deciphered. “Our music does seem to invite a lot of peculiar interpretations,”

Barnett agrees. “It reminds me: I recently got a letter from a molecular biologist who was saying that Hidden was all to do with Christian symbology. That was quite an interesting read.” Not only does the example indicate the intellectual calibre of the average piece of These New Puritans’ fan mail, it also makes clear the breadth of interpretive possibilities. “A lot of interpretations seem to say and write that it’s really ominous and dark music,” Barnett adds, “but for me, quite a lot of the songs are quite hopeful. There’re bits of darkness in them and bits of lightness.”

“There are very few bands in the world who have the level of autonomy that we have” Jack Barnett

The other key narrative to have affixed itself to Field of Reeds is Barnett’s Kubrickian desire to get things absolutely perfect, Working Time Directive be damned. For Fragment Two, it reportedly took 76 takes for twin brother George to nail the drum sound the band had in mind. “The process of making this album necessitated inhabiting this very insular world,” Barnett reflects. “I think a lot of people got sick of us because we were determined to get it right at all costs. It’s quite a difficult mindset to get out of actually – I remember a couple of weeks after we’d finished the album I went to buy a pair of shoes. I don’t care about shoes, it’s not something I think about, but I ended up taking them back and

MUSIC

getting more, then taking them back and getting more until they were exactly right. I think we had to be a bit rehabilitated.” Barnett credits the process of rearranging songs for live performance with “bringing the pieces back to life” again after the precision engineering of the studio. “It’s a process I’ve enjoyed quite a lot for this album,” he says. “When you’ve been working on the music for a long time, getting it to its final state…” He pauses. “It sounds a bit like a bullshitty artist thing to say, but I’ve lived very close to this music and given so much for this album that it was difficult. I don’t like listening to things after I’ve finished them, because I think too much about what I would change. But when you’re reinventing the music live, you make it different every night and add different things. I think this band generally is probably the best we’ve had. We’ve a seven-piece band – small enough that we can have agility and big enough that we can bring a lot of different sounds. Plus we’ve got Elisa [Rodrigues, Portuguese jazz singer who appears on several Field of Reeds songs] singing with us, which is pretty fun because she can do her 50 per cent and I can do my 50 per cent. I don’t have to try and do everything – we can specialise a little bit.” And it’s not just vocal duties that are divided 50/50, with Barnett promising an equal split between Hidden and Field of Reeds material at the upcoming shows. “It gives us a big range of contrasts,” he somewhat understates. “It allows us to do a lot of stuff.” This freedom to ‘do a lot of stuff’ is not one Barnett takes for granted, noting that “there are very few bands in the world who have the level of autonomy that we have.” Indeed, These New Puritans seem to occupy a blessed middle ground where they have the time and budget to, for instance, set-up 28 Thai gongs or spend a day recording the sound of smashing glass (both features on Field of Reeds), despite the decidedly un-commercial end results. Barnett has also recently become more involved in the band’s visuals, scripting a ten-minute animation for V (Island Song), due later this year. “Up to a point any idea is just as expensive and time-consuming as any other idea, they just have to draw it. So it’s amazing what you can do, in terms of the range of ideas you can use,” he enthuses. We end by asking about a tweet (“not ‘industry’ enough”) made the night of the recent Mercury Music Prize shortlist announcement, for which Field of Reeds was submitted for consideration but not chosen. “People had said to me ‘oh no, that’s so disappointing,’” Barnett explains, “but I never expected to get it. I just don’t think it’s the kind of album that would go on,” before noting that he’s “not deadly serious all the time” and drawing attention to the tweet that followed in order to prove it (“Maybe it’s the fact that we’re touring with the Operation Yewtree Roadshow as support act”). When asked more generally if there are any accolades that mean something to him, Barnett’s pensive interview manner suddenly becomes animated. “Yeah, yeah!” he replies. “In today’s Guardian, Elton John said he loves the arrangements on Field of Reeds. I genuinely think he’s an incredible songwriter, so that’s fantastic.” But, he adds, the most satisfying feedback comes from less starry quarters. “It’s more important to me when people come up to me and say things like ‘this album changed the way I think about music,’” he concludes. “That’s a wonderful thing to hear.” These New Puritans play Gorilla, Manchester, 11 Oct www.thesenewpuritans.com

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Common People As Daughter explore America’s Deep South for the first time, founder Elena Tonra stops to ponder why they’re connecting with listeners far and wide

Interview: Gary Kaill

aughter are that rare beast: an act whose gradual ascendancy throughout 2013 has been seemingly without fanfare or hype. They are a genuine, old-fashioned word-of-mouth success. Debut album If You Leave, a sprawling, atmospheric adventure, received plaudits for its sharp reworking of indie-folk tropes. It’s a work of beautifully understated dramatics: the delicate precision of its guitars and its spare, elementary arrangements form an uneasy alliance with the dark husk of singer Elena Tonra’s voice and the unnerving candour of her lyrics. A schedule of non-stop touring at home and abroad has seen them win a sizeable, loyal following. And emerging signature tune Youth has seen festival crowds switch from curious to swooning in a (broken) heartbeat. Elena and band mates Igor Haefeli (guitar) and Remi Aguilella (drums) are part way through an American headlining tour, and she thinks for a moment when The Skinny asks her where she is today. “We’re in Nashville,” she says. “Yeah, it’s amazing really. We’ve not been here [the American south] before; we’re just thrilled to be here. The crowds are, you know, quite up for it in terms of participation, which is great.” Another pause. “I don’t know, the American crowds are just so expressive, I think in both singing and in heckling… in a nice way!” If You Leave is something of a live performance challenge. A shadowy, intimate work, much of its impact comes via what it dares to leave out: it’s an album that thrives on the space it creates. There are near-silent passages that ask much of the relationship between audience and band. At Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral during their last run of UK dates, the tension, at times, was palpable. You prayed no-one whooped or whistled as the band began by stepping lightly through epic album-closer Shallows. “Oh that was awesome. That was a really special night,” says Tonra. “The setting was so impressive and it was just the kind of space where even we perhaps don’t want to make too much noise. The audience were quite quiet which can be unnerving. You feel like saying ‘Is everyone having a good time?’ Well, as good a time as you can have with our kind of music!“ Daughter’s emergence and development feels uncommonly unforced, the album preceded by a series of singles over the last couple of years that culminated in the release of The Wild Youth EP in 2011. It seemed entirely fitting that they announced, in late 2012, their signing to 4AD, that home of artful mavericks and wayward innovators. Smother, their first release for their new label, gave notice of a gradual shift away from a studied, skewed folk to something more expansive and free. Like much of the album, Smother is unflinching (‘I’m wasted, losing time / I’m a foolish, fragile spine’) in its deconstruction of the delicate architecture of relationships. Beneath its swelling atmospherics, If You Leave documents ‘the lovers that went wrong’ with a cool head and a level eye; it’s a blackened wonder but there’s no denying that it might not be for everyone. “Yeah. It’s not the easiest first listen,” says Tonra. “A lot of people have said that. They’ll say ‘Oh I’m not sure…’ and then they’ll come back and say they’ve got it, so maybe after repeated listening it starts to make sense. I don’t know. There was never really a plan, as such. We made it in confined spaces and we never really played it to anyone apart from the people we were working with.”

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DAUGHTER

“Production-wise, Igor had help from other people but he was very much in control of that side of things,” Tonra continues.” A lot of the time it was just me and Igor in a flat, coming up with ideas and then we went off for two weeks or so into the countryside in Dorset with our recording gear. So it was all very isolated and because of that we were never really sure how from the outside listening in other people were going to react to it – or even if it would turn out to be something that people could listen to or even want to listen to. A lot of people have been very positive about it. People have said that it makes sense with respect to their lives and experiences and that they’re able to connect with it. Which is surprising and really beautiful: to think that there are other people who share the same thoughts, perhaps, that I have.” If You Leave doesn’t readily offer itself up. It demands much, challenges the listener to meet it somewhere in the shadows. But, like much of the most singular and uncompromising art, that effort pays back with interest. “Well that’s really nice of you to say. Thank you.” Tonra pauses to consider. “I’m glad you like it and that you took the trouble to listen. Some people have just quickly listened to it and gone ‘Nah – fuck it!’” John Lennon once said that songwriting was the act of ridding yourself of the demon within, but Tonra is keen to avoid over-dramatising her work. “I can’t necessarily compare my experiences too directly with other people’s because there are people who have been through bizarre amounts of shit in their lives. I’m not trying to say I have a really hard life. I’m just trying to distil what I think. So, yeah, perhaps it is about releasing the demons but you just have to remember

that you’re not writing for everyone and, you know, everyone has their own… shit.” Many of Tonra’s interviews since the album release have tried to uncover the source of her lyrics, something she always appears to graciously sidestep. She’s philosophical about the curiosity. “A lot of people do get caught up in the specifics of why I’ve written something,” she says.” I get questions like – ‘What is this about? What does it mean?’ And I just say that what I wanted to say, I’ve already said. I’ve already written as much as my brain wanted to let me write at the time, through the song. I always say I don’t want to tell people what the songs are about. I’d rather people find out for themselves by relating the songs to their own lives.”

“When we’re in the songs, it’s almost like a trance” Elena Tonra

We talk some more about the slightly surreal lifestyle defined by motorway miles and anonymous hotel rooms. The band is unsure how long the If You Leave cycle of promotion and touring will last. We cover the prospect of album number two – “I need a level of isolation for things to make sense. But yeah, there are a few ideas

MUSIC

kicking around. There are just no songs as such yet. We’re not jamming in the back of the tour bus!” – and their growing confidence onstage. Tonra recently saw CHVRCHES for the first time, another act whose singer has received the occasional misguided duff notice for refusing to scissor-kick her way across the stage like David Lee Roth, and declares herself a fan: “I don’t get the criticism. She’s just performing the way she has to perform and it’s right and appropriate for what they do. Lauren’s brilliant live. I don’t know what some people expect. Dancing? I’m lucky in that I have a guitar to hide behind; I really can’t imagine what I’d do if I just had to perform without it.” Daughter’s brooding inner visions are captured in unflinching close-up on If You Leave but it’s onstage where they manufacture drama and test the boundaries of their material. Throughout our interview, Tonra is endearingly self-mocking (“Sorry. Are you sure you’ve got enough to make a feature?”) and giggles non-stop. She does the same onstage – often, if the crowd dares to break those high-tension silences, mid-song. It’s an ultimately winning approach: “I’m not the kind of person who’ll just walk into a room and start talking to people. I do have that nervous laughter thing about me, which I think I’ll have forever. I guess that’s the way we perform. If I really fuck up, yeah, I’ll laugh during the song. It’s actually between the songs that’s most difficult. When we’re in the songs, it’s almost like a trance – we’re escaping into our own heads and then you come out and suddenly you’re like, ‘Oh shit! People are here!’” Daughter play The Ritz, Manchester, 21 Oct www.ohdaughter.com

THE SKINNY

Photo: Eliot Lee Hazel

Sonic Assault The music programme of this year’s Abandon Normal Devices festival promises to explore extremism and isolation, and challenge state surveillance. Participating artists Ital and The Haxan Cloak hint at what’s in store Interview: Hayley Avron Illustration: Rachel Davey

bandon Normal Devices (AND) cares little for your comfort zones. The multi-arts festival of new cinema, music and art, based alternately in Liverpool and Manchester (it’s the turn of the former city this year), was founded in 2009 with an aim to ‘push the boundaries of audience experience’. The theme of this year’s AND is not overtly publicised, but a trawl through the schedule quickly reveals a preoccupation with both our concern and enthusiasm for technological progress – and two of the musical events in the programme, though distinct in their approach to these overarching concerns, both strive to subvert their audience’s expectations and experience of a traditional electronic music event. Explaining the inspiration behind opening night event The Cloud – which will feature live sets from house/techno music producer Ital and techno artist Stellar OM Source, as well as a venue dressed by Andrew Grune of London fashion label Primitive – Jon Davies of Liverpoolbased music event curators Deep Hedonia says it intends to explore issues around “how to remain [as] anonymous as possible in a society that has accepted suspended democracy and mass state surveillance.” “Techno has always dealt with the futuristic,” says Ital, aka Daniel Martin-McCormick, offering an insight into how his music plays a part in this

exploration of our relationship with advances in technology. “I think the genre generally encourages some kind of engagement with these issues. My two albums for Planet Mu definitely embraced a certain tech-revulsion.” Matt Smith and Sam Wiehl of electronic music enthusiasts and event organisers HIVE Collective are also a little reluctant to unveil the finer details of their own event, DIN 19643, the name of which relates to a 1970s therapeutic technique that, using isolation and flotation tanks, relied on sensory deprivation to lead the way to spiritual enlightenment. Far from replicating sensory deprivation, though, DIN 19643 – featuring electronic noise assailant The Haxan Cloak and visual collaborator Adam Cooke – promises to deliver a ‘sensory assault’ and an ‘uncompromising experience’ to its attendees. “Broadly,” Smith and Wiehl say, “people should expect something in turns evocative, hallucinatory, abstract and extreme.” There are few live electronic artists that can deliver on such a promise as effectively as The Haxan Cloak, a man who admits to being “knackered” by his own live shows. “When you’ve been pounded with that amount of sub-bass for that long, it’s tiring,” explains Bobby Krlic, when we meet him before a show in Leeds, sipping on a glass of red wine. “When I was seven or eight, [my

brother] would bring home stuff like Slayer, stuff like that – really heavy music like Pantera, really extreme,” he says, discussing his fascination for the intense. “When it comes to making music, I don’t wanna go unheard. I wanna put a stamp down.” Krlic’s shows have become renowned for their unforgiving extremity: abrasively loud and suffocatingly bass-heavy, his recent appearances with Fuck Buttons have been stripped of visual accompaniment, reliant instead on the internal narrative of the music to guide the audience’s journey. The DIN 19643 show, however, suggests a multi-sensorial intensity, with the artistic visual input of HIVE conspirator Cooke. What The Cloud and DIN 19643 share is an engagement with – to utilise a phrase of our

THE LOWER TURKS HEAD

technological age – the ‘user experience’. And in the case of the latter, it will most likely not be a comfortable one. The HIVE Collective stress the importance of creating an event outside of the standard ‘turn up, pay your money, dance, go home’ process. “This is absolutely critical to how we look at things,” they comment. “We want to offer something different than the usual passive audience gazing at a distant artist.” The uncertainty of what may happen once you’ve passed the paying-in desk, of course, is all a part of AND’s appeal. The Cloud, Static Gallery, Liverpool, 3 Oct, 9pm, free DIN 19643, HAUS, Liverpool, 5 Oct, 10pm, £5 www.andfestival.org.uk

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October 2013

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Exhibition

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Performer As CURATOR

Opens Sat 19 October 2013 | FREE Pier 8, Salford Quays, M50 3AZ Copyright Simon Periton, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London

The Doppelganger Effect Heading up a programme concerned with technology’s effect on our enactment of identity, Mark Boulos’ new work for Abandon Normal Devices festival presents viewers with a distorted version of themselves

NO PERMANENT ADDRESS, 2010

f anyone were able to enter an art gallery and have an out-of-body experience inspired by the work, then surely the art world would be brought to a shuddering conclusion, or at least a rereckoning: we’d quickly become concerned solely with the possibility of drifting from our earthly husks to the precipice of afterlife. But SwissAmerican artist Mark Boulos’ aim to invoke such a reaction in his latest immersive film, Echo – a cocommission between Forma Arts and Media and Liverpool’s FACT, and showing as part of the city’s Abandon Normal Devices festival this month – is, of course, open to interpretation. Working with Swiss neuroscientist Prof Olaf Blanke, a pioneer in the exploration of outof-body experiences, Boulos has drawn on his collaborator’s laboratory studies to stretch the boundaries of filmmaking and the gallery experience. Coupling analysis of the human brain with Hitchcock’s perception-altering camera techniques and principles of Victorian theatrical illusion, Echo creates an intentionally unsettling experience as perspectives are distorted and reality becomes less certain. But Boulos tempers expectations of an out-of-body experience, saying it doesn’t necessarily mean people will be forced to decide whether or not to walk into the light. “I can’t replicate the kind of hallucinatory, out-of-body experience that people suffering a stroke and those who have had a near-death experience have described,” he explains. “But the kind of apparatus that Blanke is using with video disturbs the orientation of perception to create a feeling of disembodiment and dislocation. Olaf is trying to do a similar thing to me, to create a

October 2013

disturbance in the unity of our sense of perception and understanding of body, but he is trying to do it in a neurological lab and I am trying to do it in a gallery.” Since his 2008 film All that Is Solid Melts into Air, a two-screen installation tying together two sides of the global battle for oil, its title drawn from The Communist Manifesto, Boulos has been building a reputation for uncompromising film work that surrounds the viewer. (That film is one of three previous works also showing at FACT, including No Permanent Address, Boulos’ 2010 three-screen feature that saw him capture the movements of a communist Philippine guerrilla group decried internationally as terrorists, and The Origin of the World (2009), which has Boulos’ image reflected in his own iris in a moment of self-analysis.) Echo, though, is being billed as a significant turning point in Boulos’ practice. Filmed in the financial district of London, it makes the viewer the character of the piece, relaying their own image and voice back in realtime as the backdrop drifts away and morphs around them. The person facing the screen is transposed and their image adjusted in the projection using ‘Pepper’s ghost’, a 19th-century illusion technique that creates ghostly apparitions. By having no words and no documentary footage, it’s a piece that Boulos, evidently a keen self-critic, feels resolves some of his misgivings concerning his previous output. “One problem with my previous work is that it is not obviously expressive,” he says. “How is it an expression of my ideas or imagination or of myself in any way? This new work is addressing that issue as it’s something of a self-portrait,

although the self is subtracted as it’s only a self-portrait if I am standing there. The previous works were so discursive, so about the narrative; I wanted to create something that was wordless and much more formal.

“Just because we see something or because the camera records something, it doesn’t mean that it exists irrefutably” Mark Boulos

“I feel one of the great pleasures of the work, without sounding arrogant, is to face you with your own image,” he continues. “I think video and cinema often begs identification from the viewer; they ask them to identify with the hero of the movie, to suggest that they in some way represent something of you. But I actually wanted to do that, to place the viewer in the movie as they are actually watching it.”

ART

Photo: Artist and Lission Gallery

Interview: Rob Allen That Echo is a wordless departure doesn’t mean that Boulos’ worldview, so strongly evident in previous works, is completely lost. In All that Is Solid Melts into Air, the suited traders of the colossal futures trading centre, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, are contrasted against the guerrillas of the Niger Delta who are locked in a battle for the rights to the oil that is sold from under them. They invoke their native spirits to make them bulletproof in their battles, perhaps a ludicrous notion to Western ears, but Boulos laughs when he recalls that “the beliefs of the traders in the film actually seemed more metaphysical, more abstract and less understandable or material than those of the guerrilla fighters.” In Echo, the choice of the City of London as the street scene retains and promotes the idea that financial systems operate far away from the understanding of those they affect – a continuation of a personal agenda that permeates Boulos’ practice. “The architecture seems to shrink away from you in the film,” he explains. “It’s an almost physical alienation of how we are socially or economically alienated by the financial system and its machinery and architectures.” Though the films draw on current affairs, the artist is at pains to point out that they seek no journalistic credit or appraisal. Rather, they are artworks that explore significantly more than the narrative that we are presented with, and at their heart is an interest in phenomenology: notions of subjectivity and consciousness that raise more questions about the validity of the recorded image and what we perceive to be real than about the subject itself. “In both All that Is Solid Melts into Air and No Permanent Address, there is a sense of questioning what is seen and what is believed and an equation of documentary with fact,” Boulos says. “I think that just because we see something or because the camera records something, it doesn’t mean that it exists irrefutably and outside of our own subjective experience. Echo is trying to undermine the assumption of objectivity of a photographic or a documentary image by breaking it apart and putting you at the centre of it.” That Boulos’ moment of change comes as part of Abandon Normal Devices (AND) is appropriate given the event’s focus on experimentation with the inauguration of the new AND Fair, which takes vintage World’s Fairs as its inspiration, and four ‘ateliers’, which offer artists the space and time to explore new elements of their practice. The ateliers include Marshmallow Laser Feast, a collaborative blend of artists Memo Akten, Robin McNicholas and Barney Steel who will work to connect cinemas across the country in a networked transmission of animation and special effects (the residency itself is closed, but concludes with a public showcase). Other highlights include SEFT-1, a road- and rail-ready vehicle devised by Mexican artists Iván Puig and Andrés Padilla Domene to explore their home country’s forgotten outposts, overlooked as political and commercial interests passed them by. It will appear in Ropewalks Square after a month-long experiment in Blackburn to make the craft amphibious – proving that if progressive artists have a wild idea, AND is the place to try to float it. Mark Boulos, Gallery 1 & 2, FACT, Liverpool, 3 Oct-21 Nov, daily 12-6pm except Sat 11am-6pm, free Abandon Normal Devices, various venues, Liverpool, 3-5 Oct www.andfestival.org.uk

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Horror at Sea Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s eye-popping documentary Leviathan screens at Abandon Normal Devices before release in November. He describes a gruelling shoot Interview: Chris Fyvie

“W

e film in people’s faces, we violate,” says Liverpool-born filmmaker Lucien Castaing-Taylor of the cinematic style that brings us Leviathan, an extraordinary, and extraordinarily divisive, documentary set on a New England fishing trawler. Through this violation, the reality of life at sea comes out. When we speak, Castaing-Taylor and his film have, just 20 minutes previously, won the Michael Powell Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and he seems a touch bewildered. “I don’t really like recognition,” he explains. “None of my films have ever been selected for any festival in the UK before; I’ll go back and tell Véréna we’ve won a prize and try and come to terms with it later.” Leviathan, co-directed by the now Bostonbased anthropologists Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel (who are also partners), offers 90 minutes of sensory discombobulation; it’s documentary as art installation, as out-of-body experience. Long, unforgiving takes of aching brutality, natural beauty and wonder, whirring machinery and an almost rhythmic tedium combine to disorientate, appal and entrance. “We’re always interested in tackling a subject that involves humans, but marginalising the human, or putting them in a much larger natural, ecological, cosmological framework,” says the director. “We wanted to make something different.

It can’t just be the typical romantic, sentimental thing like, these great guys, risking life and limb to come back with the fish.” And different it certainly is. Some critics have noted Leviathan shares more DNA with the horror genre than any form of journalism. Castaing-Taylor, while not rejecting this assertion, is keen to expand: “We talk about horror, or we talk about film noir, or sci-fi films, or romantic films, but there’s a lot of bleeding, a lot of slippage between these genres,” he explains. “You can see this film as a sci-fi film in certain regards, as a horror film, as an environmentalist documentary, you can see it as an apolitical documentary, as a nature film on a totally different kind of non-anthropomorphic register. I don’t think it’s just a horror film. I think it throws everything in the pot and… and something else comes out. “We’re totally sympathetic to the fishermen; it’s not intended to be a criticism of them as individuals, or even their lifestyle, but for me the film is still an ecological film and a very political film,” he continues, illustrating his own interpretation of the work. “There’s no cod left, there’s no fish left, but it’s not the fishermen’s fault – it’s the nations’ fault. It’s the United States, it’s Canada, it’s England, it’s France, Spain – it’s all the governments who fucked up.” Shot entirely at sea over six trips, each

LEVIATHAN

lasting two to three weeks at a time, the difficulties of the environment contributed to the experimental techniques employed. “There are only four still shots in the whole film, tripod based or attached to some hard thing in the boat,” he says. “We started by filming ourselves with more conventional filmmakers’ cameras, but we lost them all to the waves on the first and second trip. So all we were left with was a DSLR, a small still camera that can also shoot video, and then these small extreme sports cameras that didn’t even have a viewfinder. There are only four shots in the entire film that weren’t attached to a human.” The footage this yields is a miracle. Though directly in their subjects’ faces, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel afford them a freedom to go about their business. “We never do interviews, we never tell people what to do or what not to do,” he explains. “We’re happy for them to

acknowledge the camera when they want to; we don’t tell them to pretend as if we’re not there, but we just hang out with them and we don’t really talk to them when we’re not filming and they can tell that we’re working, so they sort of stop performing for the camera.” With this approach, the filmmakers have captured genuine humanity in one of the most inhumane of environments, conjoining people with a harsh nature we often forget we’re a part of. An opaque, multifaceted and emotive piece that will rile as many as it enthrals, Leviathan is quite unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Leviathan, FACT, Liverpool, 4 Oct, 9.15pm, £7 Leviathan is released nationwide 29 Nov by Dogwoof www.andfestival.org.uk

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THE SKINNY

THE SELFISH GIANT

Realist Fairytale The Arbor director Clio Barnard discusses her second feature film The Selfish Giant, an adaptation of the Oscar Wilde fairytale of the same name, which sees her back on the Arbor estate in Bradford

s Clio Barnard talks about her second feature, The Selfish Giant, her infant son can be heard playing in the background. He comes to the phone once or twice, trying to get her attention, and she carefully mothers him without breaking stride in the interview. It’s apt that Barnard’s son should try and get in on our conversation. After all, he’s key to the creation of The Selfish Giant: it’s his favourite bedtime story. “My son requested it again and again,” Barnard says. “It’s a Victorian fairy story about the wounds of love. It’s beautifully written and it’s very sad; a fable about excluded children that contains something eerily truthful in it.” In Oscar Wilde’s children’s story, the giant of the title builds a wall to stop children from playing in his garden, letting it fall into a perpetual winter seared by the north wind. But a gap is found in the wall, and as the children return, so does spring, in full blossom. Seeing this, the Giant emerges from his castle, and the scared children flee. But a single boy remains, trying to climb a tree. The Giant takes him in his hand and helps him, before tearing the wall to pieces: ‘And the tree broke at once into blossom, and the birds came and sang on it, and the little boy stretched out his two arms and flung them round the Giant’s neck, and kissed him.’ Barnard says that her version of The Selfish Giant “is in the tradition of realist films like Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, Ken Loach’s Kes, and The Apple, the Iranian film by Samira Makhmalbaf. But I referenced Oscar Wilde’s fable because telling a fairytale based on real lives creates a paradox.” In Wilde’s story, the child, who dies at the end with stigmata on his hands, welcoming his friend to heaven, is an allusion to Christ. But Barnard’s film has no sacred ending. “Sometimes I think we can idealise children and childhood,” She tells me. “But when I made my first film The Arbor, I saw loads of children that are excluded, not just from school, but from society. And then they’re demonised.” Set in the Brafferton Arbor estate on the

October 2013

Interview: Tom Seymour

south-western edge of Bradford, The Selfish Giant is about young boys who don’t get much attention. It makes you think back to the kids in your class who rarely turned up to school, and of whom no one asked too many questions. It shows, with a burning anger and a tender eye, the fate of those pushed to the very edges of British society. “The film is born out of my anger about young people, who have become very important to me, and what’s not being done for them,” says Barnard. The Arbor was a formally audacious documentary about the tragic life of playwright Andrea Dunbar, who grew up on these same streets. Although The Selfish Giant is straighterplayed and more elemental in its formal technique, both films throb with the anger of an ignored people. A major inspiration for the new film was Matty, a local Bradford boy whom Barnard met while filming The Arbor. Excluded from school, Matty turned to scrapping (scavenging on the streets for discarded metal before selling it to a scrapyard) to give himself a sense of a living. “Matty has been very angry and frustrated and misunderstood in his life, and that made him volatile. But he also rejected youth culture; he wasn’t interested in consumerism, and he was labelled a pikey for it, but he went scrapping and wore the dirt of it with pride.” She met The Selfish Giant’s two stars – Conner Chapman and Shaun Thomas – doing outreach work in Brafferton Arbor’s local school. Chapman plays Arbor, a whirlwind of a kid, powered by energy drinks and prone to lashing, violent mood swings. His best friend is Swifty (Thomas), a shy boy with a natural connection to horses, who carries the term ‘pikey’ like a noose around his neck. School does nothing for them, before getting rid of them with the excuse ‘it’s not right for them’. Arbor’s father is missing; his mother is trying vainly to discipline and care for him. Swifty’s case is even worse: the first time we meet his father (Steve Evets), he’s selling the

family’s sofa and shouting at Swifty’s mother (played with gut-wrenching depth by Siobhan Finneran) as she serves countless children tiny portions of cold baked beans.

“I think we can idealise children and childhood. But when I made my first film, I saw loads of children that are excluded, not just from school, but from society” Clio Barnard

The struggle of maternity in the face of overwhelming odds is a key theme in The Selfish Giant, but this is not a feminist take Barnard consciously wrote in, more simply a reflection of the reality she sees on the streets of Bradford. “I knew I wanted to make a film about men and boys, and the surprise for me was that Swifty and Arbor’s mothers became so important to the final film. These are women who fight tooth and nail, but what they’re up against is a total lack of opportunity for their children, both in and out of school. I talked to a woman whose boy had been excluded; she told him to go back to school, everyday, regardless. But school is a very difficult environment for boys who don’t feel they belong.”

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The film builds to a beautiful crescendo: a wordless scene between Siobhan Finneran as Swifty’s mum and Chapman’s Arbor that’s freighted with meaning. “We did several different takes of the scene, and I was experimenting with different lines of dialogue, and then at the end of the day I suggested Siobhan try the scene without saying anything, and she just worked this magic. She starred in the film of Andrea Dunbar’s Rita, Sue and Bob Too, so I was actually quite nervous about meeting her. She’s a phenomenal actress.” Chapman, though, is just as good. It’s almost unbelievable that both he and Shaun Thomas had never performed in front of a camera before, such is their ease and energy on screen. Both stars accompanied Barnard to the Cannes Film Festival this year, and stood on stage at the end of the film’s premiere as it received a sustained standing ovation. “They put the spotlight on them, and I just stood there and looked at their faces,” Barnard says. “It was just a wonderful moment. I told them during the film shoot how well they’d done, but until then I don’t think they’d ever realised the extent of their achievement. They were totally amazed by it all.” The Selfish Giant lays itself open to the ‘grim up north’ and ‘poverty tourism’ fallacies that attach themselves so readily to the social realist canon. Yet it’s not didactic; neither is it worthy. It’s an honest and heartfelt attempt to communicate something that transcends the streets of the Arbor and the poverty of its children. As it builds towards a tragedy, both small, slight and all the more painful for it, it asks us who the selfish giant is. Is it Swifty or Arbor? Is it the scrapmonger who exploits them, or the school that rejects them? Is it the remote policies sent forth from Whitehall? Is it God himself? Or is it we the audience, who will see this film and maybe tear up, and then walk out of the cinema into the veined streets of a divided Britain? The Arbor is released 25 Oct by Artificial Eye www.cliobarnard.com

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States of Consciousness Following its world premiere at Cannes’ International Critics’ Week, For Those in Peril reaches these shores on a wave of praise. We speak to Scottish director Paul Wright about bringing this intense sensory experience to the screen Interview: Jamie Dunn FOR THOSE IN PERIL

t’s late September and Paul Wright is in a wet and blustery London. “Aye, man, no bad,” he says in his soft Scottish brogue when I ask him how his day’s going, “I’m inside at least.” Watching Wright’s debut feature, For Those in Peril, you’d think he’d be quite at home in the dreich, given that he makes such good use of the wind-lashed coastal landscapes around where he filmed in Gordon, Aberdeenshire. It’s the kind of village the director knows well, having grown up in Lower Largo in Fife. Was it his formative years in a close-knit fishing community that drew him to centre his first full-length film on the aftermath of a tragedy onboard a fishing trawler? “Your first one chooses you, I think,” says Wright. “This kind of story had been floating about for a long while in my head as a potential idea.” It’s a story floating around a character’s head – specifically that of the film’s protagonist Aaron (an extraordinary George MacKay), the 18-year-old sole surviver of a boat that goes down at sea, claiming the lives of five local lads, including Aaron’s older brother Billy (played by Conor McCarron in flashback) – that drives For Those In Peril’s narrative; it's a bedtime fable his mother

(Kate Dickie) used to read to him as a child about a devil who lives at the bottom of the sea and who swallows sailors whole. Aaron, in his posttraumatic anguish, believes that if he can slay this beast, like a young boy does in the fable, then he can bring his brother back from the depths of the drink. “We had similar mysteries of the sea growing up – maybe it’s like that in all small villages, I’m not sure – but those myths were the starting place,” Wright explains. “I was interested in what happened when someone latched on to one of these stories out of desperation – someone who was old enough to know better. That, to me, was interesting.” The power of For Those in Peril comes not from the narrative itself, which is a rather modest one about grief and loss, but from the way it’s visualised. Over its 93 minutes, Wright plunges us into Aaron’s confused state. You become marinaded in his emotions and his environment; you’ll be checking your pockets for sea water as you leave the cinema. “It was about getting right into the character’s bloodstream,” says Wright when asked about his filmmaking approach. “So the highs and

lows of this character are really tangible and the audience hopefully goes on this journey with him, rather than just observing this character and his journey; I want the audience to really tune in to his states of mind, whether it’s his memories or his fears or the realtime action. It was about having a mosaic of different states of consciousness coming back to him.” This intense storytelling is achieved by Wright’s singular style, which has been developed and honed through a trio of bracing short films, including BAFTA 2011-winner Until the River Runs Red. “I’ve always really been interested in images and sound and how you can play with them to make an emotional impact,” he says. The signature technique Wright uses to create this impact in For Those in Peril is mixedmedia collage: the main narrative, shot in velvety digital by cinematographer Benjamin Kracun, is peppered with grainy vignettes of myriad forms (lo-fi digital, video, Super 8), which evoke a range of emotions, from the nostalgic to the nightmarish. These are paired with haunting voiceovers, mostly Aaron’s as he works through his mental anguish, but also the voices of friends and anonymous village folk, who seem to be vox pops

from a sinister local news station broadcasting into Aaron’s subconscious. It creates an intense imbroglio of images, sounds and visual textures. “I do see film as a really sensory experience,” Wright says. “There were probably half a dozen images in my head when I started writing, and then it was just a case of exploring them to find how to make them feel vital on screen.” What’s so pleasing about this sensory experience is that its meanings and emotions aren’t telegraphed in. The sound and image is often disjointed and contradictory. There’s a feeling that your neighbours in the dark of the auditorium are having a completely different relationship to what’s on screen than you are. “It’s a lot about leaving some space for the audience to put themselves into the film,” explains Wright. “A lot of my favourite films are the ones that kind of cause a discussion. I think that’s a healthy response. I like to leave some room for interpretation.” For Those in Peril in released 4 Oct by Soda Pictures www.sodapictures.com

21st – 27th October 2013 Booking information: www.mmu.ac.uk/gothicmmu Twitter: @gothicmmu E-mail: gothic@mmu.ac.uk

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FILM

THE SKINNY

Advance Notice Ever taken a shower at the theatre? Or drunk a bottle of rum in a bath? As director Tamsin Drury explains, Word of Warning’s autumn season reduces the form to its bare bones, and stops asking: ‘Is it art?’

amsin Drury has been active in the Northwest’s theatre scene for several decades, having set up theatre production company hÅb alongside Helen Cole with an aim to discover, promote and develop emerging artists. After their first decade and a half spent in Manchester’s much-missed Greenroom, hÅb is now run from Z-arts, a former church turned community arts centre in Hulme whose other residents include urban dance specialists DiGM, and ODD Theatre – and since January 2012, hÅb have run Word of Warning, a programme of contemporary theatre and performance with a difference. Word of Warning’s autumn season opens on 5 October with Emergency, a free, 11-hour event featuring short works staged at BLANKSPACE and Z-arts, for which 25 participants were selected from an open call, with submissions ranging from postgraduate university students to anyone who simply fancied having a go. Those taking part include London-based collective Drunken Chorus and immersive theatremakers Collective Unconscious. Describing it as a “lucky dip” of performance styles, Drury is keen to emphasise that Emergency is a way for anyone curious about experiencing live art to get involved. She explains: “Nothing fixes you in a space for longer than 15 to 20 minutes, so if you don’t like that one there’ll be another along soon. A lot of it is silly and playful

and really moving at a visceral level. We spend far too much time saying, ‘Is it art?’ But a lot of it is a moment, an image or a feeling. And some works do challenge you intellectually, but not in a way that’s inaccessible.” Emergency is also a platform for work in progress, such as Nathan Birkinshaw’s durational piece That Night Recurring. Staged in the bar of Z-arts, the piece contains, he says, “an elliptical narrative around alcohol and love and loneliness.” For an emerging artist like Birkinshaw, Word of Warning is a platform to experiment and develop: “In the last show,” he continues, “we drank a bottle of rum in a bathtub and pretended to be pirates, which was fun. This one’s a little bit more serious. And it’s whiskey-based.” From 8 to 17 November runs Domestic – a series of interventions, live art and theatrical skullduggery – staged in Cooper House, an art deco block of flats in Hulme. Works include Mental, by the artist-activist known as ‘the vacuum cleaner’, an autobiographical work based on psychiatric records, police intelligence files and corporate injunctions; Jo Bannon’s Exposure, which Drury describes as “a one-on-one piece in the dark with her trying to get you to see how she experiences light through her albinism”; and Alex Bradley and Scott Smith’s Field Test in Garageland, a sound installation in, yes, a garage. There’s also Small Acts’ Shower Scenes, an

LIVERPOOL’S INTERNATIONAL ARTS VENUE

Autumn Season 2013

Grand Union Orchestra

Instructions for a Better Life

The Necks

Thursday 24th October, 7.30pm £11.50 (£9.50 concessions)

attempt to recreate Psycho in a bathroom. “Yes, you do have to get your kit off and have a shower,” laughs Drury, promising that it’s a unique but completely private experience. Elsewhere, Word of Warning have collaborated with Contact to stage The Ugly Sisters (11, 12 Oct), a reworking of Cinderella from University of Hull graduates RashDash, which Drury terms “raucous, dark but fun... a fucked-up panto, basically” – while the season finale on 29 Nov at Z-arts is The Falsettos, a one-woman reimagining of The Sopranos from comedian-turned-performancemaker Stacy Makishi. Things don’t let up, though: next year will be another busy one for the company, with separate spring and summer seasons. Similar to Emergency, Turn will be a platform for emerging danceworks from Northwest companies, while Hazard is a day of performances across

Manchester city centre that in past years has seen Cathedral Gardens wrapped in 6km of hazard tape, and a failed attempt to circumnavigate the city by canoe. There’s also Works Ahead, a follow-on event to Emergency with selected works re-staged at Contact. Drury considers it “a barometer for us to see the health of theatre and art in the region and the country. There’ll be four or five pieces we’ve nurtured so the audience can see that development outcome.” This desire to foster new talent and take risks is clearly central to hÅb’s values – leading to the creation of an exciting programme of work well worth checking out. Emergency, 5 Oct, BLANKSPACE (12 noon to 4pm) then Z-arts (3pm to 11pm), Manchester, free www.wordofwarning.org

WHAT’S ON

Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts Monday 7th October, 7.30pm £11.50 (£9.50 concessions)

DOMESTIC

Full listings www.thecapstonetheatre.com

Trembling Bells and Mike Heron

Tuesday 15th October, 7.30pm £14 (£11.50 concessions)

Saturday 12th October, 7.30pm £13.50 (£10.50 concessions and £7.50 under 16s)

Friday 1st November, 7.30pm £16.50 (£14 concessions)

´ Branka Parlic: The Cone Gatherers

Tuesday 12th November, 7.30pm £14 (£11.50 concessions)

BOX OFFICE 0844 8000 410

www.ticketquarter.co.uk October 2013

THEATRE

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Photo: Manuel Vason

Interview: Jacky Hall

Conditions of Life Collecting objects, artworks, audio and film, Jeremy Deller’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air considers the personal impact of the Industrial Revolution. He talks about his role as curator Interview: Ali Gunn

orthwest audiences will remember Jeremy Deller’s Procession at the 2009 Manchester International Festival, where he worked with different communities and groups in the city to create a very special Mancunian celebration. More recently, he represented Britain at the Venice Bienniale with English Magic, a visual narrative of past, present and future Britain, containing both fact and fiction. Deller is an artist with an interest in all things British, from the sounds of acid house to the eccentricities of gurning competitions. This October, he returns to Manchester with his Hayward Touring show, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, at Manchester Art Gallery, before it visits Nottingham, Coventry and Newcastle. Looking at the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent urbanisation of Britain, it promises to be, in true Deller style, a collision of objects, narratives, and sounds. Music has always played an important part in Deller’s work, and, he writes by email, for him “it’s just an emotive way to get to people,” adding: “we all like it more or less.” For All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, audiences are promised a presentation of industrial folk music, glam rock and heavy metal playing out alongside the sounds of the factory floor. This seemingly random assortment is just part of what Deller describes as a personal selection of things and events that interest him:

through music, film, photography and 19th-century objects, he hopes to create a strong sense of the trauma that the Industrial Revolution – and its influence – has had on our lives today. Often simultaneously playing the role of artist, curator and, in many respects, historian, Deller sees the process of making the exhibition as “getting in a car having left the map at home” – and his Art History training at university as giving him “a historical perspective on art, maybe.” Taken from a passage in The Communist Manifesto about how capitalism can change and adapt, the phrase ‘all that is solid melts into air’ is, Deller says, “unusual when you think of the context” – he sees it as “a metaphor or something for how we have gone from an industrial to a service/entertainment economy.” Whether recreating an important moment in British history for The Battle of Orgreave or conducting an investigation into British cultural pursuits for his Folk Archive, Deller’s work is political. His visual language relates to class, power and social experience, and it does so, he states bluntly, “because it’s important.” Through his work Deller presents us with a mirror that allows us to look into the past, the present and even the future. But when asked what people can learn from All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, he says, “I’m not into teaching as such, more pointing at things, overturning stones to see what is underneath.”

JOHN DAVIES - STOCKPORT VIADUCT (1986)

Two figures are at the centre of the exhibition: James Sharples, a 19th-century blacksmith and self-taught painter famous for his engraving The Forge, which will feature in the exhibition; and Adrian Street, the professional wrestler who was born into a Welsh mining family. Prominent in the 70s and 80s, Street is famous for his glamrock style and toying with audiences’ perceptions of his sexuality. Although he may be unknown to some, Street is, Deller states, someone that “is very attractive to any one, let alone an artist,” and he hopes that the film he’s made about him will convey Street’s character, making people aware of him. “Adrian especially is a character that transcended his environment through sheer will power and self-belief, he is 73 and still wrestles, he is a phenomenon, a one off,” Deller says.

Both Sharples and Street are self-made men, and, for this exhibition, are representative of the industrial radicalisation of Britain, acting as symbols for people’s own ability to challenge the status quo on a very personal level. For his approach to All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, Deller is described in the exhibition notes as ‘a social cartographer’ – and it is through his visual mapping of seemingly unrelated events and objects that he is able to subvert and challenge historical and social frameworks, highlighting the importance of both personal and political histories. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air curated by Jeremy Deller, 12 Oct 2013-19 Jan 2014, Manchester Art Gallery, free www.jeremydeller.org

Facing the Future Breaking down the walls between live music performance, visual art installations and bleeding-edge technology, Sonica returns to Glasgow with a fascinating bill. We speak to Sonica/Cryptic founder Cathie Boyd, and two of this year’s featured artists

he Sonica festival returns this year with a programme just as packed as their 2012 debut, but crammed into a four-day long weekend in a smaller selection of venues, allowing audiences easier access to the entire programme. Showcasing ‘sonic art for the visually minded’, Sonica’s hybrid performances and carefully constructed interactive experiences exist on the front line of technology, creative practice and experiential art. The Sonica programme is curated by Patrick Dickie, Graham Mackenzie and Cryptic founder Cathie Boyd. Sipping a coffee in the cafe of Glasgow’s Tramway Theatre, Boyd is brimming with enthusiasm for Sonica as a concept, and in particular this year’s programme. “Cryptic have a history of working with technology,” she explains. “Looking at how technology can enhance a performance is very important to us. We live in a digital world now. When scientists are developing new technologies and prototypes, an artist will look at it in a completely different way – so there’s a lot of scope for bringing those together. In Sonica, these two realms are not divided.” Boyd says she is “really delighted with the number of live performances” taking place this year, as opposed to static installations. From Norwegian composer and sound artist Maja S. K. Ratkje, whose live collaboration with visual artist

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HC Gilje will showcase her jaw-dropping use of cut-up and processed vocals, to Compositions for Involuntary Strings, a performance led by Michaela Davies which sees electronic muscle stimulation used to create a symphony from the paroxysmal movements of string players, there is more of a concert element at play in this year’s programme. “With Sonica, music is at the core of everything,” says Boyd. She has had “a passion for years about how music is presented visually,” and Sonica is an extension of this. Having run a series of events under the Cryptic Nights banner in 2009, she wanted to create a cultural space for some of the new generation of artists she worked with. One of those artists is Rob Van Rijswijk, who brings two collaborations with fellow Dutchman Jeroen Strijbos to this year’s festival. The first, Whispers, is inspired in part by a close friend’s battle with deafness. It features five ceramic ‘trumpets’ created by visual artist Pierluigi Pompei: “We looked at the sonic characteristics of the horns,” says Rijswijk, “and of course, ceramics are not great, because they hardly resonate at all. So that was a challenge for us, to find out what we could do with it.” Previously exhibited at the Ceramics Biennale in Korea, the piece is just as interactive as Rijswijk’s other work for Sonica, Walk With Me.

MAJA S.K. RATKJE

Built around an app, which will be available after the festival has concluded, it is experienced by walking through specific locations in Glasgow, listening through a smartphone. “Here again, we are looking for the interaction with people,” he continues. “We like to go out of the four walls of the concert hall, because the outside world is more dynamic – it is more about stories, there is more to tell about people.” Another fascinating hybrid of installation and concert comes from Robin Meier and Ali Momeni. Their event, Truce: Strategies for PostApocalyptic Computation features compositions drawn from the Indian Dhrupad vocal tradition, harmonised with the song of a mosquito. The ‘truce’ in the title refers to the bond Meier and Momeni developed with their diminutive, biting subjects. “Even though the apparatus may look like a torture device, the actual effect is almost the opposite,” Meier explains. “The mosquito becomes something very fragile. You try not to hurt it. That’s how the installation began, I was holding up the mosquito and singing to it and it would tune in with my voice. So it’s like making peace

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with an insect which, if you saw it, you would usually try to kill.” This barely scratches the surface of what Sonica 2013 has to offer – a secret venue will be announced for Suspense, a collaboration between TAKTAL and visual artist Jack Wrigley, with music from Golden Teacher and Jack Perring. In Picture Windows, the windows of various public locations in Glasgow will be transformed for four days into pop-up sonic art exhibitions. “There’s a demand from the public for theatre to be much more fantastical and multilayered. As a result of the internet, we are much more used to multi-platform – it is part of our language,” explains Boyd. By helping to define and develop that language, Cryptic are helping to trace the outer limits of what art, theatre, music and technology are capable when they interact. Experience it for yourself this October. Sonica takes place 31 Oct-3 Nov at various venues throughout Glasgow Read an extended preview of Sonica online www.sonic-a.co.uk

THE SKINNY

Photo: Maarit Kytoharju

Interview: Bram E. Gieben

WEDNESDAY 23 OCTOBER 8pm, THE LOWRY A triple bill of dance set to a soundtrack by Relaxed Muscle and Scritti Politti Box Office

0843 208 6007 www.thelowry.com/dance Pier 8, Salford Quays, M50 3AZ Commissioned by Barbican, London. Co-produced by Barbican, London, Michael Clark Company, Maison des Arts de Créteil, Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg and Tramway, Glasgow.

Photograph: Harry Alexander by Jake Walters. Design: Images&Co.

‘The joy comes from the aesthetic collision of music and movement’ The Independent

THE SKINNY

The Art World’s Barry White Ahead of a major retrospective in Glasgow, Jack Vettriano, Scotland’s most successful artist, gets down to the nitty-gritty of human nature

Interview: Andrew Cattanach

ELEGY FOR A DEAD ADMIRAL (1994)

ack Vettriano is trapped in the toilet when I arrive. This gives me a moment to take in the penthouse suite of the luxury hotel where I’m to spend the next hour with Scotland’s most successful living artist. Decked out in stylish, modern furniture and with a balcony overlooking central Edinburgh, it’s more a wealthy bachelor’s living room than somewhere to spend a vacation. He’s soon liberated from the bog, asking me not to write about the toilet escapade, but in an interview that ends with a lengthy treatise on procreation and, more specifically, the role played by women’s lingerie in human reproduction, the bathroom incident seems trivial. We’re here to discuss his retrospective at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow. Featuring over 100 paintings, the show includes his best-known painting, The Singing Butler, which sold for £774,000 in 2004, and is the most comprehensive exhibition of his work to date. He’s surprisingly compliant for a man of his age and significance and happily sits where I ask him. His stiff posture and stilted small talk suggest he’ll be less compliant in conversation, but nothing could be further from the truth. At times during the interview I get the sense his honesty is almost pathological, and so unmediated are his answers that he strikes me as naïve. He is, nonetheless, charming and friendly and approaches every question with the seriousness you would expect from someone who once told The Telegraph he can get up in the morning and say to himself, “I fancy making £50,000 today.” But it wasn’t always like that, and Vettriano will be the first to tell you so. Born Jack Hoggan into a working-class family, Vettriano was brought up in the seaside town of Methil in Fife, where he left school at 15 to start working in the coalmines. In a strange inversion of logic common among social-climbing baby boomers, he now regards going down the pits as “the best thing I ever did, because it’s all turned out incredibly well.” At 21 a girlfriend bought him a set of watercolours and he started to “potter around.”

October 2013

“My friends were all down the pub playing darts, drinking pints and getting rat-arsed, and I was at home painting,” he says. “But I wasn’t trying to teach myself how to paint. I was trying to paint so I could say to people, look, look what I’ve managed to do. There was no set agenda, that in 20 years’ time I was going to be a professional artist. It wasn’t until I was 36, 37 that I could see that I had a certain talent.”

“One day I just thought to myself, why don’t you paint women erotically dressed, the way that you would like them, the way that your wife used to dress for you” Jack Vettriano

Vettriano packed in his job, separated from his wife and moved to Edinburgh, where he set out to become a painter. He started dressing differently – “aye, no like a transvestite” – so he would stand out from the crowd and look more like an artist. Around this time he applied to study painting at Edinburgh College of Art, where his portfolio was rejected. But the rejection had little effect on his progress as an artist and in fact,

JACK VETTRIANO

like his childhood experiences down the mines, he has come to regard the rebuff as “another huge break, because if they had accepted me I wouldn’t be here today.” Like anyone who has cast himself in their very own myth, Vettriano plays fast and loose with the facts of cause and effect. It seems a little too accommodating to suggest his youthful experiences of coalmining and his rejection from art school – aspects of his life that must have seemed pretty unfair and discouraging at the time – led to his success as an artist. He’s certainly not the only person to have been seduced by his mythology and, without a doubt, this personal narrative has had some impact on his success. “The press loved the whole story,” he says. “Had I gone to art school there wouldn’t have been a story. The fact is, I went down the pits when I was 15. That’s what made the story.” He began his painting career copying his favourite paintings, some of which hang in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, including works by the Scottish Colourists and the Glasgow Boys. But he was soon frustrated with all the copying and for a brief while struggled to develop a style of his own. “What frustrates the amateur artist is that you think that everything’s been done, what else is there for you to do – there’s nothing you can do. And then one day I just thought to myself, why don’t you paint women? Why don’t you paint women erotically dressed, the way that you would like them, the way that your wife used to dress for you.” And here we arrive at Vettriano’s firmest conviction: the role of sexuality in his art. He is unequivocal about the importance of eroticism in his work, but when pressed about the representation of women in his paintings, which, according to Alice Jones in The Independent has led to him being labelled a chauvinist, he shows no remorse. “That’s the one thing I have no issue with. You can criticise the way I actually apply paint

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to canvas, but my subject matter, I have no problem with that at all. I think we’re living in a curious world of hypocrites who on the one hand will rubbish my work and who will then go home and watch some porn. People, especially in this country, are not particularly honest about their sexuality. There’s too much being hidden underground. “I think my work, if it suffers, it suffers because there are some people in power who think that sex is not real art. They think that maybe intercity decline, industrial decline and drug problems – that’s art, that’s addressing real issues. Whereas, if you’ve got a couple sitting on a sofa with a glass of champagne, you know, and she’s got her suspenders and everything on, then that’s not art. That’s somehow not art. And I will argue ’til the day I die that that is art. Because that is exactly why we are here, to reproduce. And what she’s doing is putting on her finery in order to attract him. He’s got on his finery in order to attract her – so they can mate and the species can continue. Now I know you can knock a few holes in that argument, but that’s why we’re here.” I was not expecting Jack Vettriano to appeal to evolutionary theory to justify his depiction of women wearing stockings, and at first it seems disingenuous. Does he really believe his admirers see him as an advocate for furthering the human race? I start to wonder, in parody of Vettriano’s cod-Darwinism, if these are his genes talking. Is this a childless man taking credit for some of the procreation going on in the world? Is he vicariously furthering the human race like some kind of art world Barry White? “And on that note,” Vettriano’s publicist interjects, “I’m afraid you’ve run out of time.” We finish the interview and he shakes my hand. “Tell me,” he asks in hushed earnestness, “do you like my work?” www.jackvettriano.com

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Duet As they prepare to head out on tour together, Everything Everything and Dutch Uncles have a meeting of minds about arena experiences, songcraft and when to say ‘I love you’

t’s more than a penchant for putting pop music through a warped filter that Manchester-based Everything Everything and Dutch Uncles have in common. Arc and Out of Touch in the Wild – their second and third albums respectively – both furthered the two camps in profile and artistic progress; the former dealt with themes of male depression, societal class difference and mortality; the latter addiction and humanity’s mortal coil. Mixing cerebral ideas with gut-felt emotion, both acts have enjoyed their most successful year to date, with Dutch Uncles recently supporting Paramore on tour in Europe, while for Everything Everything, the forthcoming shows are their largest headlining dates so far. Upstairs in a quiet Northern Quarter pub, we got together Dutch Uncles’ Duncan Wallis and Robin Richards, and Everything Everything’s Jonathan Higgs and Jeremy Pritchard for a headto-head before their travels. The Skinny: You’re both bands who are fans of pop, but who can’t resist putting something weird in your own music to move it from out of that. Discuss... Jonathan Higgs: We’ve had things that we know could be really popular, and we all fucking hate it! And we’ve tried to disguise it, although sometimes we let them through, but then we just refuse to play the songs live! Jeremy Pritchard: You’re talking about Armourland aren’t you? JH: And Come Alive Diana – pop songs that we can’t get through without fooling around or pissing each other off. We have to strike a balance so there’s something like Kemosabe, which is quite pop but then there’s lots of leftfield elements. Duncan Wallis: When we were touring with Paramore there were so many cheesy moments to their set, but then the way the crowd reacts to it makes you think, ‘You know what? There is something to that.’ JH: I believe that, when Gary Lightbody goes on stage and plays D, A, E major and a sweet lovely melody, he thinks it’s lovely and great and everyone else there feels the same. If I was to do that I would feel cheapened because of my own hang-ups, not because anything could possibly be better.

“We’ve had things that we know could be really popular, and we all fucking hate it!” Jonathan Higgs

Do you ever get to a point where you feel like, ‘This is beyond who we are?’ Robin Richards: We had that recently on a demo. We thought, ‘We could turn this into a pop song’ and we kind of forced a radio edit out of it without any vocals. We came out with this thing that we didn’t really like anymore because we’d pushed it in a way that wasn’t natural. DW: I remember feeling really nervous the day

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Interview: Simon Jay Catling Photography: Simon Bray

before we knew Flexxin’ was going to radio because for us that’s probably been our biggest commercial departure from what people would associate with us. RR: Flexxin’ was natural though. DW: You tried to out Prince me, I tried to out Prince you. JH: For us, our band name reflects our approach, which is we can do anything and I still write like that. But once it goes through the process of the band it does come out sounding like us regardless, even if it starts in a deeply off-the-wall way. Torso of the Week started with Willow Smith’s Whip My Hair! I just copied the drum beat and thought, ‘Why does this make me feel so good?’ And I ended up with this sort of dark weird song that sounds like… what it sounds like. On Arc and Out of Touch in the Wild both singers have de-coded yourselves to an extent and opened up lyrically; where did the confidence to do that come from? JH: Being in Europe on tour, it felt like you could be much more open than you can in Britain. Here we’re so fucking cynical with this sort of ‘impress me’ thing you get, folded arms. JP: I think that environment breeds good bands overall. JH: It’s very easy to get very English about it and just criticise yourself on everything. But in Europe I suddenly realised there wasn’t any of that. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the crowds in this country, I’m as much to blame as anyone else, but you’ve got to make the jump. Also definitely having people say ‘We like the band, we like the melody, we don’t know what the hell you’re talking about’ is something you have to address. JP: People say ‘What’s the biggest influence on the record?’ But the biggest on the second was actually our first. And it’ll happen again. We can’t make a record without rubbishing the first one saying, ‘This was shit’ – but that’s a good thing! JH: It’s natural. You’ve got to think in your previous album that you can do better. I prefer Man Alive to Arc right now, which is exactly what I’d expect. RR: You need that time to let each album settle before you can really judge it. JH: What about you, Duncan, how have you found confidence in your voice? DW: My impression of songwriting is that, if you’re a songwriter you should have the confidence to write a song like The Beatles’ Love Me Do and use simple lyrics that still make a song work. You’re right; the cynical impression of crowds plays on your mind. In terms of having the confidence to speak with more clarity… for me it’s just that I’m getting better at understanding great music. At the beginning of writing Cadenza I think I knew what a great song was, but I didn’t know how to translate that into our own stuff. JH: It’s finding the most straightforward way of saying something that isn’t a cliché. ‘I love you’ is a cliché but a thousand singers could sing that to you and you’d believe them. DW: There’s so much contemporary music that uses the same phrases. JH: I’ve used the word ‘love’ once in the history of the band – but I’m closer to singing ‘I love you’ now than I ever have been in my life because I know it’s something you should do. JP: It’s basic personal maturity as well. JH: Yeah, I’m 29 and I can’t sing ‘I love you’ in a song, it’s crazy. But I feel like the next step for us

is to actually do that. DW: I think both our bands are at this stage where we’ve established this reputation of complexity within our music. So it’s OK now to try and do something different and be more direct. How would you compare your experiences of touring with Muse and Paramore? DW: It’s certainly a circus at that level. Paramore were trying to get out to see these cities we were playing, but Hayley is pretty much bound to her tour bus. RR: If she wants to go out she has a selection of wigs. DW: It felt a bit nasty to be honest! Like, you really want to do that to yourself? For us, though, it was really fun to break down the barriers of genre. JH: The Muse tour felt quite disconnected. They didn’t seem to know each other very well anymore. There was a huge distance between the band and the crowd, and it added to an overall feeling almost like… even if they couldn’t be there the machine would keep going… obviously that’s not true, but it was like: as long as those three were on that stage at the specified time then they could do whatever the fuck they wanted outside that. I just didn’t really know what they were doing it for anymore.

MUSIC

JP: As a support act it was liberating. You’ve literally nothing to lose. We did an arena tour with Snow Patrol and it was exactly the same. The other thing to say is that arenas are all the same, they’re de-humanising. DW: I had a question about you using Elbow’s rehearsal space and you said some of your ideas didn’t translate to a big room... JH: Before recording Arc we were noodling and all the usual bollocks and it just wasn’t working. Dutch Uncles wouldn’t work in that space either, there’s too much detail in the acoustics. JP: It was good for us in a way though because it meant that subconsciously we were arranging songs for the first time. There’s a chapter in David Byrne’s How Music Works about how no one really acknowledges the space in which your music is represented, and I’d not thought about that before but definitely did for our second album. You never think of any of that stuff in your first album, which admittedly is why I like debuts – you’re not writing to audit. Playing The Ritz, Manchester, 11-12 Oct, and O2 Academy, Liverpool, 13 Oct They also play Academy 2, Manchester, with Outfit on 6 Dec www.everything-everything.co.uk www.dutchuncles.co.uk

THE SKINNY

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October 2013

16:36

Calm Before the Storm Tasked with writing a poem to mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, Lemn Sissay reflects on his own relationship to home, history and the power of delivery

magine being commissioned to write and perform a poem to commemorate Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech – surely one of the most poetic utterances in human history. “It’s like being asked to do a painting of the Mona Lisa,” laughs Lemn Sissay. “Well, we’ve got the Mona Lisa!” This year marks the 50th anniversary of King’s momentous speech, which was delivered from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. to a crowd of over 250,000 people (and to many thousands more around the world). It came to be seen as the tipping point of the African-American civil rights movement, and therefore nothing less than a pivotal moment in the development of Western civilisation. With his upcoming performance at Manchester Literature Festival, Sissay aims to pay homage to this world-shaking event by creating what he calls an “equivalent I Have a Dream speech for the Northwest” – though he quickly adds, “That’s a very dangerous thing to say, because really I don’t think you can.” It makes sense, though, for Sissay to attempt such a bold feat. For one thing, he is, at a time when much poetry is knotty and self-referential and academic (poetry by poets for poets), a firm believer in poetry as an art form for the masses – he wasn’t made official poet of the 2012 London Olympics for nothing. And, like King, he knows that the delivery of his words can sometimes be just as important as the words themselves. He therefore takes pains to ensure that his poetry lives a life beyond the page: whether it’s spoken aloud in his frequent live readings around the world, or written on the streets and walls of Manchester in what he proudly refers to as “my tattoos on the city.” (They’re all over the place: Tib Street, Hardy’s Well pub, Shudehill Station and Piccadilly Station, to name just a few.) With his forthcoming work, Sissay hopes to create “a piece of writing which will be around

Feature

Interview: Kristian Doyle Illustration: Michael Howlett

for some time... An utterly universal poem” that echoes King’s grand, humanistic themes but in a contemporary context. At the same time, the city that Sissay considers his spiritual home will have a part to play: “Manchester was, and is, everything to me,” he says passionately. “It’s done so much for me, and I feel so much a part of it. With this poem I want to give back to Manchester my best, my absolute best.”

“You have to dream the impossible to make the impossible happen” Lemn Sissay

Although Sissay was raised in Lancashire, he decided, around age 15, to run away and forge a new beginning after a life spent in care homes and foster care. “I actually walked up the A580 into Manchester,” he says. “I ended up sleeping in Moss Side for a night, near a club called The Reno. And then I don’t know what I did. I think I just came back again the next day.” He would remain in the city for the next 20 years. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he says, reflecting on this. “I ran away to Manchester. I had a dream as well. Manchester was my dream.” When it comes to King’s speech, it’s precisely this notion of ‘the dream’ that matters most for Sissay. “For me, the idea of the dream is incredibly important,” he says. “Great things are not built without the dream first – you have to dream the impossible to make the impossible happen. That’s on a personal level and a political level.

And I’m not saying that we live in our dreams, because the two things are important: the dream, and the action. And that’s precisely what is exemplified in this speech.” And why now? What makes the 50th anniversary so special? “There is something about this 50th anniversary,” he says, “which has raised Martin Luther King, which has raised the speech, and which has resonated with this time that we’re in at the moment. King was against the Vietnam War – we’re right at the edge of war with Syria.” He adds, parenthetically: “Immediate contradiction as to Cameron and everybody celebrating the speech, while at the same time they want to go to war, you know?” There’s also the issue of the ailing economy. A large part of the March on Washington “was for the workers,” Sissay points out. “And we are right now at a time when, because of industry change, much of our workforce is under a lot of pressure. Really,” he says, “I think there couldn’t be a better time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the most momentous speech of the 1960s, and even of the 20th century.” It’s only after being prompted that Sissay talks about race – for him, the speech encompasses far more than this issue alone. “King’s speech brings back to me the real fact that the subject of race is a great metaphor, or a great conduit, for an understanding of humanity,” he says, after a moment of deliberation. “In other words, how somebody sees the subject of race will tell you how they see humanity. “If you understand the subject of race as a humanitarian subject,” he continues, “then you get to be able to empathise with and work with the racists – to get them through it.” To them, you have to say: “’We’ve got to work on this, because if you want to have a better life, you’re going to have to come down this road eventually.’ “People say, ‘Oh I wouldn’t let my daughter marry, or go out with, or blah blah.’ God that’s

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such a big deal, because what you’re saying to your daughter is, ‘The world is your oyster,’ and then you’re saying, ‘No it’s not... You cannot engage. You cannot enter any part of the world where you cannot predict the outcome.’ And therefore she can’t leave the front door. Ultimately the racist is locked into themselves, you know? “Racism is one of the most universal learned behaviours,” he surmises. “I don’t think we’re born with a racist gene. Across the world, wars happen, genocides happen, all because of racism, ignorance and fear... If we’re driven by fear, we don’t grow as a society. This is why artists are really important, this is why Banksy is really important, this is why Linton Kwesi Johnson is important, this is why Martin Luther King is important... We need the fearless.” In King’s speech, the crowd is moved by his fearlessness, Sissay says – and they are fully aware of “the passion of the speaker and the fact that the speaker is personally involved in what it is that he’s speaking about.” King goes “beyond being angry, into this incredible calm in the middle of the storm. And if a storm rages around you, you cling to truth, and slowly the calm happens – and you can see the houses being whipped up by racism and spun around, you can see the burning crosses and the children and the deaths and the murders and the hangings spinning around you, but in that truth, in that speech, on that podium, with those thousands and thousands of people, he was in the calm, in the eye of the storm... “It makes you think,” he pauses. “How many times in history do we get to see a person truly in the eye of the storm?” I Have a Dream: Lemn Sissay & Manchester Camerata, Manchester Town Hall, 19 Oct, 7.30pm, £10 (£6) Following Lemn’s reading, Manchester Camerata’s principal players will perform Beethoven’s String Quartet Op 130 www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk

THE SKINNY

What’s He Playing At? Following the success of his first full collection, Play With Me, and the continued dominance and expansion of his monthly avant-garde night, Neu! Reekie!, we ask Michael Pedersen where it all began

“P

oetry sort of tumbled into my life,” explains Michael Pedersen, when asked how this all started. ‘This,’ being his recently released and critically lauded first full collection of poems, Play With Me, and his successful and expanding night of performance, animation and music, Neu! Reekie! – oh, and he’s also in the process of collaborating with various musical acts in a songwriting capacity. It was a chance encounter with a “Tom Buchan book (Poems 1969 – 1972): a thin, sharp yellow, aesthetically awkward looking volume that blew my cotton socks off,” he tells me. “I was in second year of Portobello High School when I yanked it from my ma’s bookshelf. The punch and proximity of the words were a revelation.” Fastforward some years and he is currently at Scotland’s cultural locus; one of its most interesting up-and-comers with a hand in established and new communities of artists. It’s quite a change of direction from where his life seemed to be headed after leaving school: “Throughout my teenage years and early twenties I was mostly trying to run away from Edinburgh; the bastard kept dragging me back. I left school a very serious (mostly hairless) young man, adamant of attending an ancient, collegiate university doon sooth (and reading Law). And I did – passed from Durham to Nottingham; Nottingham to London; London to Siem Reap. Travelling the world for a year in between (I know, a likely fucking story – but I plucked plenty of my principles out from time spent in India, Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam and Japan – both from expats and the denizens). I came back to Edina for a pit stop in 2010 and never left. My anchor got stuck in Leith Harbour / fell down an open drain.”

“If Neu! Reekie! itself was a penis it’d be starting to expand and twitch a little, a semi at a push” Michael Pedersen

Edinburgh and the worlds of poetry and performance can count themselves lucky it did. Play With Me is an accomplished debut collection; diverse and appreciable to many audiences, with Pedersen’s unique perspective and voice pushing the reader on to gobble these verses up in as few sittings as possible. “Poetry-wise it’s a pretty diverse menu,” he explains. “Talking Cambodian treehouses to NHS overdose clinics; teenage perversion to wet arses, quitting cheese and learning to read people as rivers. It’s like taking my hand and walking me through a peculiar puberty – sometimes we’re leaping forwards together, often we’re somersaulting backwards; an ending spoiler would be I’m not quite there yet. I’m caught between Irvine Welsh and Alasdair Gray – in terms of the landscape covered and the

October 2013

Interview: Ryan Rushton Illustration: Ricardo Bessa

characteristic introspections (not as regards their brilliance).” As a collection it comes after two wellreceived chapbooks and brings together the best poems Pedersen has penned in the last few years. In typically self-deprecating style he describes it as “a greatest hits for someone who hasn’t had any charting hits; akin to sneaking cover versions of your own singles onto the new album.” He says his earlier chapbooks “reek of a writer over-ardent to find his work in print. For young poets keen to secure their inaugural chapbook publication there’s no telling them to slow down and really I don’t think it does any lasting harm – all the dribble and zeal of rushing into it. I used both experiences as an edification in working towards a full collection. So perhaps it’s less the greatest hits/cover version scenario and more a process of warming up or redressing the leftovers to accompany all the new recipes you’ve learned – a buffet fit for feasting on. I compare a lot of things in life to food.” Play With Me is something he is much more prepared to stand behind and he’s clearly proud of it: “The collection felt ready to hatch because it wasn’t rushed but incubated lovingly up until the shell began to crack. Thought was given to sequencing, placement on the page, typography, all that; everything that needed pondering was bloody well pondered. This was partly due to deft editors politely prodding at me. The poems were put on the treadmill – losing words where they could, in some instances shedding stanzas. The collection started out a pub brawler and ended up an athlete – 100 plus pages down to 70 odds. I like to think that’s because we all saw the fire in its eyes. That’s not to say it’s flawless of course, it’s not.” Perhaps the collection’s greatest strength and weakness is its diversity; darting in a hundred different directions and sometimes missing the mark. The thing is, when it hits, it hits hard. Reading the poems, the assumption one makes is that it is largely autobiographical. Pedersen often places himself, or a version of himself, squarely in the middle of proceedings, encouraging the reader to follow him into awkward adolescence, booze-soaked epiphanies and the task of finding truth or honesty in among the morass of life in one’s twenties. When I ask him directly he describes poems like Colmar – the opener, on awakening teenage sexuality – or Jobseeker – a lament on returning to the dole many of us will relate to – as “100% autobiographical.” He explains that “If it’s not my story it’s likely to be somebody else’s I’m close with or have related to. Many pieces are self-reflections, others’ self-revelations, some nothing more than ugly self-indulgence; all are strung together using different versions of myself.” Nowhere are the varying voices and versions of Pedersen more apparent than in his live performances, of which he admits that “Yes, there are layers of meaning that can only be conveyed when experiencing the work live, just as there are insights that won’t be picked up on unless scrutinised on the page. How’d ya like your eggs? For me it varies day-to-day and that affects the way I write. I try to keep a balance although I’m not sure which way it’s heading.” It is no surprise to learn that “performancewise I try to memorise a lot of my works; which

makes readings less clinical.” Seeing Pedersen read his work is to see him straining through his mouth and body each nuance of each word, wrapping his tongue around the complex syllable pairings he conjures and the rises and falls between high-faluting vernaculars and Edinburgh patter. He also likes to experiment in each performance, saying “Not least is that I’ve lots of different versions of each poem burned into my memory; the cadence, the hostility and even the words are alterable within each audience. There’s definite moments where I walk into a room and quickly realise if it’s to be the more performance-based pieces (humour laced) or those poems I’d consider more stylistically accomplished.” Of course the place to see performances from Pedersen and his cohorts is Neu! Reekie!, which was conceived and is run jointly with Kevin Williams of renowned alt-publisher Rebel Inc. Pedersen relates how “Neu! Reekie! recently got described by a local councillor as ‘a weird laboratory of cross cultural pandemonium.’ I liked that. At its core N!R! is a meticulously curated medley of spoken word, animation, performance and music. Although we’ve been known to spiral out into: table sculptures; origami; digital portraits; live drawing; lightshows; and our (now formidable) Raffle of the Absurd – prizes for which have ranged from rare books and aged whisky to pig heads and dubiously labelled sugar pills.” The night is on the up. A recent Neu! Reekie! featured performances from names as mainstream as Liz Lochhead, as well as recent recipient of this year’s SAY (Scottish Album of the Year) Award, RM Hubbert. It is clearly the place to be: “Neu! Reekie! is booming at the moment, there’s new limbs to every show; it sort of gives me an erection, because despite gathering speed we’re still in the infancy of what we want to achieve,” Pedersen casually notes. He continues by saying that “If Neu! Reekie! itself was a penis it’d be starting to expand and twitch a little, a semi at

BOOKS

a push; a creature bubbling with excitement at the thought of the size and shape it’s destined to take; the extremity of which it alone knows; and even then it’s only a gut feeling. That’s not to say it’s strictly masculine, the same metaphor exists with growing levels of vaginal moisture.” It’s charismatic analogies like that which must have convinced the great and good to perform at Neu! Reekie! in its early anonymity. Nowadays Pedersen is invested in the musical side of things. He has assembled and written songs for Jesus, Baby who have enjoyed a BBC Radio 6 session and some decent airplay. He admits “I’d like to collaborate more on songs – I’m working out a way to make this work with my good pal Bill Ryder-Jones (formally of The Coral, he’s went on to produce two sensational solo albums). I’m also hoping to collaborate with Scott Hutchison from Frightened Rabbit at some point – although nothing’s being confirmed and we’re still not sure just how that would work.” For now though it’s his poetry that leads the way, whether written or proclaimed to a growing number of admirers. It’s ideal for Pedersen: “Poetry is that allusive remote control that can pause, fastforward and rewind time, plus a wand and a crystal ball all rolled into one.” He describes it to me as a way to reconfigure past experiences with a greater dexterity than he could ever manage in the maelstrom of life. A key realisation for him was that “it wasn’t so much about having an extensive vocabulary, but an explosive one – there were/are writers out there using very simple language to say very powerful things. Building bombs.” This is exactly how the best verses of Play With Me land – like a rupture of truth and recognition, of wish-fulfilment, of dragging the base and crude into something transcendent. They leave you sputtering for air. Play With Me is out now, published by Polygon www.facebook.com/neureekie

Feature

Vic Does Deutschland As Germany continues its rise as Europe’s de facto cultural epicentre, Vic Galloway analyses the rich past and present of its enduring music scene

s a broadcaster, journalist and author, taking a week away from the Edinburgh International, Fringe and Book Festivals is a most curious thing to do in August. But when invited by the Initiative Musik gGmbH in Germany to embark upon a week-long tour of their four main music cities, it was a no-brainer. I had only vague awareness of Germany’s current music scene and sparse knowledge of their federal system, so it was a fact-finding mission from the off. Being the only UK representative, I was part of an 18 strong group of music writers, radio presenters and bloggers from across the globe. Hand-picked from as far and wide as the USA, Canada, Estonia, Greece, Finland, Italy, South Africa, South Korea, Ukraine, Poland, Cameroon, Japan and Uzbekistan among others, I found myself in good company indeed – here was a group of nerds like myself, who’d happily chatter all day about pop culture obscurities. We laughed, we bonded, we stroked our chins! As you might imagine, the daily routine was tightly scheduled and organised within a minute of its own life. This suited us fine, actually – the more you experience and immerse yourself, the better. With a day in Cologne, another in Düsseldorf and two days respectively in Berlin and Hamburg, it was an enlightening whistle-stop tour. Over the six days I’d not only find out huge amounts about German music past, present and future, but I’d see a country whose cultural life seems to be blossoming, thanks to investment and encouragement from all sectors. Here are a few highlights of a week scouring the German urban landscape for aesthetic artefacts and nuggets of sonic invention... Studio für elektronische Musik When looking into the earliest experiments in electronic music, you may hear about the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR – West German Broadcasting Corporation) who set up a studio in 1953 especially for its development, way before the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop. Seventy-one year old Volker Müller was our passionately animated guide, an original tape operator and engineer from the years 1971 until 2001, when the studio was eventually closed. Here’s a man who aided and abetted Karlheinz Stockhausen, among other luminaries. Now housed on the outskirts of Cologne under a health-complex, the reconstructed studio is more or less a museum with a vast assortment of synths, analogue desks, tone generators and tape machines. Those with an interest in the dawn of sampling and looping were left with their jaws agape. Kompakt Records Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Cologne’s internationally revered minimal techno and electronica label opened their doors and welcomed us into their lair. Housing a vinyl and CD store,

warehouse, recording studio, live agency, meeting rooms and in-house, chef-run kitchen under one self-managed roof, it’s every creative’s dream come to life. After a guided tour by co-founder Reinhard Voigt we were treated to label signings Coma performing a live instore, before emptying our wallets in the shop. Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom), Gerhard Richter Window & Päffgen Brauhaus Cologne is home to the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe, and the city is proud. An enormous tourist attraction, it was augmented inside by an exquisite, abstract stainedglass window by artist Gerhard Richter in 2007. Glorious and yet utterly non-religious, the design was criticised when unveiled, but is now part of the cathedral’s unique, imposing charm. Having visited the offices of INTRO magazine and the C/O Pop Festival offices to meet and greet various Cologne scenesters, we paid a visit to one of the city’s most traditional hostelries, ‘Päffgen’ Brauhaus, our dinner-venue of choice. Meat, meat, two veg and even more meat was the order of the day as my Canadian counterpart tucked into a three-quarter metre long wurst! When in Germany...

Lifestyle

pieces of vinyl at every pit stop. From punk Mecca Ratinger Hof, via the tragic story of Kraut-synth wunderkind Wolfgang Riechmann, to meeting legendary, deceased drummer Klaus Dinger’s wife and local artist Miki Yui at her Slowboy gallery, it was riveting. Yet again, I purchased another sackfull of goodies including an original pressing of La Düsseldorf’s Viva album and the Klaus Dinger Lick my ass if you can book.

Hans Peter Zimmer Stiftung – Hauschka Whenever the city of Düsseldorf is mentioned, the term ’krautrock’ immediately trips off the tongue. Home of electronic pioneers Kraftwerk and other essential groups such as NEU!, its punk and post-punk scenes in the late 1970s and 1980s also blazed a trail, giving way to the proto-industrial movement that would take hold across the world. It’s an important city, but today it somehow plays second fiddle to its nearby rival Cologne. However, when shown around the Hans Peter Zimmer arts compound, a real sense of unbridled resourcefulness shone through from their connected community. We were introduced to the enchanting, effervescent, gifted composer and ‘prepared’ pianist, Hauschka, currently signed to FatCat Records. With a private, solo recital in one of the complex’s many gallery spaces, he demonstrated why he is sought after for film and theatre soundtracks, as well as unique concert performances.

Salon des Amateurs – Stefan Schneider & Sven Kacirek Bringing our Düsseldorf experience to an end was a one-off performance from To Rococo Rot’s visionary Stefan Schneider and drummer Sven Kacirek, in the acclaimed arts hub known as the Salon des Amateurs. As they coaxed us through a menacing set of throbbing, improvised electronics, the assembled crowd were spellbound in an unassuming venue that has seen Michael Nyman, Mouse on Mars and Kreidler through its doors over the years. The aforementioned Hauschka has even named an album of his after the venue.

Kling Klang studio, Düsseldorf street tour & Slowboy Gallery Now at a secret countryside location run by sole original member Ralf Hütter, every fan-boy who visits Düsseldorf needs to pay homage to Kraftwerk’s Kling Klang Studio at the original Elektro Müller building. We duly did, and... there was nothing to see! Still, I can now say I’ve been there. Far more interesting however was a city tour with local music aficionado Dr Michael Wenzel, and his meticulously planned route complete with an eccentric DJ who played relevant

KOMPAKT RECORDS

MICHAEL ROTHER & VIC GALLOWAY

Photo: Vic Galloway

to breakthrough German acts Kid Simius and Claire as we admired the ever-changing architecture and scenery. Kraftwerk 3D Exhibition & Talk and Q&A with Michael Rother, Andreas Dorau & Kurt Dahlcke Leaving Berlin, by way of an astonishing Kraftwerk 3D exhibition of projections currently used in their live show, we soon arrived in Hamburg via train. My inner fan-boy jumped once again, as we were introduced to NEU! and Harmonia guitarist Michael Rother. Approachable, straightforward and down-to-earth, it was a pleasure to hear him talk about the late 1960s and 1970s, Bowie, Eno, and Germany’s curious indifference to ‘krautrock’. Has there been a more influential sub-genre of 20th-century music? Flanked by the equally significant Kurt Dahlke of the Ata Tak label and Der Plan, and Neue Deutsche Welle prankster Andreas Dorau; an absolutely fascinating afternoon was spent in their company.

Reeperbahn Tour & Dockville Festival No trip to Hamburg is complete without a Beatles tour, stopping at the Kaiserkeller and Star-Club Dear Reader at Badeschiff & Berlin nightlife sites where the band cut their teeth and learned Undoubtedly one of the world’s major creative their chops. On a short Reeperbahn sight-seeing hubs, Berlin is steeped in potent, political history and an underlying tension between east and mission to Hamburg’s seedier, edgier music venwest. Today its unification has brought with it an ues such as the infamous Molotow, we were under the wing of hilarious, foul-mouthed, electrooutpouring of innovation in music, arts and new media. Vibrant areas such as Neukölln, Kreuzberg punk anti-guide Lars Lewerenz. The metaphorical cherry on the cake of the tour came in the form and Friedrichshain are 24-hour party zones with low rents and breathtaking club spaces. Clocking of the Dockville Festival set to the mechanised docklands backdrop of cranes, oil-tankers and up the miles with visits to the Spacehall record shop, local label Robosonic, an intimate acoustic industrial buildings. Combining mainstream acts such as Foals and Woodkid with new talent Vimes show from South African Berliner Dear Reader in the converted warehouse Badeschiff and beers in and Fenster, as well as our very own CHVRCHES, Das Gift, Barry Burns from Mogwai’s bar, the tone it’s the brainchild of artists, instigators and freewas set for two evenings of tasty Turkish food and thinkers. A fitting end to an inspiring adventure! As you read this piece, I’m heading back to righteous, repetitive beats. Hamburg once again for the annual Reeperbahn Festival, which hosts another selection of homeKreuzberg Tour & Berlin Boat Trip grown and international acts including Anna Pounding the streets of a hip, bohemian city is Calvi, Roosevelt, The Strypes, 65daysofstatic, the only way to get to know it and with a team Barbarossa, Kraak & Smaak, David Lemaitre, of experts at hand we visited the Festsaal Kreuzberg, whose bookings look like a who’s who Efterklang and many more. It’s a well organised urban music, arts and trade festival on a par with of the finest incendiary, independent, DIY music The Great Escape or a mini SXSW, and even more in recent memory. Tragically scorched in an electrical fire this year, they’re raising the money proof that this powerful European epicentre is further upping its game in the cultural stakes to make the space come to life again. Legendary – something we in the UK could learn something SO36 punk club was also on the agenda, and entering its hallowed corridors you understand how from. Deutschland, ich liebe dich! Berlin’s DIY scene has flourished over the decVic Galloway’s book Songs In The Key Of Fife is out now, ades. Venues such as these are crucial in uniting published by Polygon the young punk, queer, techno and even Muslim www.twitter.com/vicgalloway fringe groups within the city. A boat trip around the canal and river systems of Berlin played host

TRAVEL

THE SKINNY

Oh Baby, I Just Don’t Care! The world tells us all women are fascinated by babies. What if that’s not true?

got more interesting when my sister got pregnant. I know this because suddenly, people had questions. They wanted to know about my sister’s choices regarding birth, breast-feeding, and child-rearing; about baby weight and diet and mysterious baby-stuff I don’t have answers to. I’m not a terrible person. I’m not so hideously self-involved that when the conversation turns to babies I just switch my brain off and drool, daydreaming about my dinner. (Actually, I do do that. But not about my sister’s baby, I’m not that much of an asshole!) During Zoe’s pregnancy we became closer than we’ve ever been, and at every step I knew the important stuff: Were they healthy? Were they happy? Was she looking after herself? I made an effort to know these things because they matter to me. If my friend has a

Words: Miriam Prosser

baby, that matters to me too. What is important to those you love is important to you, right? But I could not tell you how much my niece weighed when she was born, and if I could, I probably wouldn’t. Because it pisses me off that you expect me to know. I was in no way prepared for the sort of in-depth cross examination I would get around the photocopier. I understand that people ask to be polite, that it’s an expression of kindness. I like talking about my family and friends; I could talk to you about my sister until you’re so bored you want to hack off your own foot and beat yourself to death with it. I find her fascinating. I find people in general fascinating. But babies? Not so much. When you have a female body, you are expected to care. If you adopt a position that’s very

‘whevs’ about it all, people start to get weird. The way you are spoken to makes it impossible to just not bother adopting a position on it. My mum has known me for 29 years, and still recently lumped me into the baby-sitting chat when discussing a family holiday. She assumed that I would love to babysit my niece, instead of being horrified by the prospect. Did she assume this of my dad? No, she did not. Is he in fact way more qualified to look after a child than me, having been around for the raising of two already? Yes he is. Does he have a vagina? No. That’s how he gets out of the baby chat. People don’t bother to include him. Me, I couldn’t give less of a stuff, but when pregnancy happens, if you’re a woman, you start to exist in relation to it. There is no opt-out.

I am frustrated that because of my body type (you know, boobs and a vagina and whatnot) I will spend my life being expected to adopt some kind of position on babies. People will assume I’m interested. If I say I’m not, it will be a stand that I have taken, rather than just a preference. I gather from reading the Guardian that at some point people are going to want me to explain when I’m going to have babies myself, or why I don’t plan to. Yawn. Why would I have babies? Isn’t it a bit old-fashioned now to start assuming that people are going to do stuff just based on their gender? We all know that women can be doctors and men can be nurses; we’re getting used to the idea that mum can go out to work while dad kicks ass at child-rearing. So why are we making any assumptions at all about who is interested in procreation?

Freaks and Queers With her first published novel, The Palace of Curiosities, Manchester veteran Rosie Garland turns her hand to yet another medium with sparkling results. Our Deviance editor catches up with her

he Palace of Curiosities is your first novel, but you’ve been a writer for quite a while. Can you tell us a little about how ideas of sex, sexuality and gender have influenced your work? My fiction is about people who won’t (or can’t) squeeze into the one-size-fits-all templates on offer, whoever they might be, and the friction that occurs when they try. That’s what gets my creative engine going. I know this comes from having always been an outsider myself. However, as Stella Duffy says, feeling different is part of the human condition. So I hope my stories strike a chord for many other people. This inspired my creation of Eve, one of the main protagonists in The Palace of Curiosities. Eve has hypertrichosis, a condition where the entire body is covered in a thick mat of hair. Her ‘difference’ is overwhelmingly visible, yet she is determined to get by on her own terms. She refuses to shave herself to pass for human. She fends off exploitation, discovers fulfilment, self-expression and self-reliance. I’ve been told that Eve’s hairiness can be seen as an interesting analogy for being queer in a heteronormative world. I’m happy if she makes one person think about what it means to be female and have body hair. Let’s face it – women’s relationship with their hair is particularly fraught. We mustn’t have too much, and we sure as hell shouldn’t have too little. There is the trope that Victorian women weren’t supposed to have a sexuality at all. In Eve’s case, this goes even further. There is a horror (now, let alone in the Victorian era) around people with a very obvious disability being sexual. Why the hell not? Eve’s sexuality makes her very much human. You recently appeared at Manchester Pride, right? Can you tell us how it went and maybe comment on the idea that, in Manchester, Pride has lost its political relevance? Considering the situation for queers in Russia at the moment, Manchester Pride and events like it are more important than ever before. The fact

October 2013

that we still have this freedom is worth fighting for, and passionately. If that ain’t political, I don’t know what is. In some quarters it’s becoming fashionable to knock Manchester Pride. Sure, don’t go to the Big Weekend and expect a small-scale meditative grass-roots community experience. It’s big, it’s noisy and it’s a money-spinner. It doesn’t pretend to be anything else. I was happy to do a spot on the Women’s Stage this year – and agreed to do so after I felt more comfortable about the general line-up. As I say in one of my poems, the problems start when ‘those of us who are white and rich / think the battles have all been won.’ This is why I am very committed to supporting Pride events around the UK and the wider world that aren’t so glitzy and flash. This year I was delighted to perform as part of Queer Alt Manchester, which promoted alternative, independently funded LGBTQ events over the August Bank Holiday weekend. It’s great to put energy into events where it feels like I can make a difference. I’m a patron of Oldham Pride, and very proud of it too. Come along next year and experience what it’s like marching through a town where not everyone is gay-friendly and on your side. It’s a heartening reminder of how different queer life can be only a short tram ride away from the centre of Manchester. Let alone anywhere else… Do you think the portrayal of homosexuality in the book is realistic for the time period it’s set in? I hope so! I don’t use the words gay, queer, or even homosexual. In mid-19th century England, when the novel is set, ‘queer’ meant odd and ‘gay’ was used to describe prostitutes. Executions for sodomy continued in England until 1835. The sexual act was seen as a sin, rather than being an expression of who you were. There was no sense of ‘homosexuality’ being an identity. That concept didn’t begin to enter the UK consciousness until the end of the 19th century. Alfred, one of the characters in TPOC, would be called ‘gay’ nowadays. But he would not have

ROSIE GARLAND

used that label to describe himself. All Alfred knows is that he has feelings he ‘shouldn’t’ have. He represses them – largely successfully. Would you say there is a critique of marriage in the novel? I don’t have a problem with ‘marriage’ per se. I am far more intrigued by dysfunctional relationships. You sure as hell don’t have to be married to be stuck in one of them. One theme in TPOC is how tangled things can get when people don’t get the relationships they need, and waste a lot of time chasing the relationships they think they want. For example, Eve has a fairytale notion in her head about what a ‘marriage’ should look like. A big part of her story is what happens when the fantasy doesn’t fit the reality. Abel and Eve, your protagonists/narrators are both referred to as ‘freaks’ during the course of the novel. Do you feel an affinity with the ‘freaks’? What do you think it means

DEVIANCE

to be a ‘freak’? ‘Freak’ is a term I use on purpose and purposefully. Brits especially struggle with it – those who think of themselves as normal, that is. As for me, I’m not so much ab-normal as anti-normal. ‘Normal’ doesn’t exist, folks. It’s not real. But it gets into our heads and shreds what meagre confidence we might have in our selves and our bodies. It makes us depressed, envious and mean. Perhaps if we spent less time trying to be something we’re not and accepted ourselves – celebrated ourselves – complete with all the marvellous, dangerous, uncomfortable, ill-fitting, weird, odd and freakish contradictions we encompass we might, just might, be a whole heap happier. The Palace of Curiosities is out now, published by HarperCollins Rosie Garland reads as part of Manchester Literature Festival, The Manchester Museum, 16 Oct, 7.30pm, £6 (£4) www.rosiegarland.com

Lifestyle

Photo: Arcane Sin

Interview: Ana Hine

STICK AROUND A WHILE/BIODEGRADABLE BOX (2013)

STICK AROUND A WHILE (2013)

Barry Steadmund B

arry Steadmund is first and foremost an acclaimed medium and investigator of the paranormal; recently, however, he has come to be regarded by many as an artist. Although Steadmund has previously shunned this label and seen it as a secondary outcome of his research into the supernatural, he readily concedes that he does employ certain artistic techniques during his work as an intermediary. “I suppose I can understand why people see it that way, with my use of materials and the visual nature of that side of my work,” he says. “However, while others have found artistic merit in the work I create, I have little regard for its aesthetic sensibilities; to me it is just a catalogue

of evidence, a tool in my ongoing research.” Steadmund’s process firstly involves entering into a cataleptic state and, once this is achieved, alongside conventional parapsychological methodologies he frequently relies on automatic drawing and free-association writing to document mediumship. He is also known for designing and building structures which he uses to amplify and guide spiritual exchanges, and for surrounding himself with materials he has found to be effective for this purpose: “I have found materials such as marshmallow to be very useful in the amplification of paraphysical effects. To me marshmallow acts as a sort of ectoplasm – it transcends worlds, it has so much to teach me.”

After realising that he possessed abilities beyond normal human mental capacity in his early years, Steadmund has since gone on to hone these extra-senses, developing particularly strong powers of Clairalience, Claircognisance, Clairgustance, Clairsentience and Clairaudience. With his work being created while channelling, Steadmund often does not understand the results; his recent drawings, for example, appear to show a narrative between two characters in French, a language he claims he has never studied nor understood. Born in Blythburgh, Suffolk, Steadmund gained qualifications in Parapsychology from the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina after beginning his career in

SHOWCASE

entertainment as an intern with ITV television in Manchester. He first reached public notoriety after his alleged affairs with the nation’s favourite television presenter Yvette Fielding were widely reported on in local media. Steadmund loosely admitted to the liaisons last year in an interview with the European Journal of Parapsychology and was quoted as saying “yeah we did stuff, but we never went all the way.” www.mostly-haunted.eu STAY: New drawings by Barry Steadmund curated by Aliyah Hussain, North Tea Power, Manchester, until 14 Nov, free

THE SKINNY

WHAT WAS WILL BE! WHAT IS WILL BE NO MORE! (2013)

October 2013

SHOWCASE

Sportsluxe Goes Street

I Want Candy

Luxe sportswear is fast becoming as ubiquitous with the S/S catwalks as leather is to A/W. As an increasing number of editorials embrace the ‘tomboy’ and androgynous looks and the creative classes cry out for cool workwear, the trend (particularly on the London and NY catwalks) has grown from strength to strength. Granted, there are designers who are synonymous with the trend already, so there was little surprise that the likes of House of Holland, Sister By Sibling & Nasir Mazhar showcased street-led, sloganclad designs. What was more surprising and refreshing, however, was that traditionally more luxe and demi-couture designers also showed pieces that would not look out of place on a street-fashion starlet. From Richard Nicoll’s use of Lurex Merino to Christopher Kane’s oversized jumpers and Fyodor Golan’s slogan sweatshirts, the influence of street fashion pervaded the high end of the market. Interestingly, however, the opposite phenomenon simultaneously occurred, as normally street-heavy looks from Ashish and KTZ increasingly embraced the ‘luxe’ aspect of the sportswear aesthetic. Both designers showcased more mature, directional and intelligent looks, while still retaining their whimsy and street credibility.

This one is for the sweet toothed. The past couple of seasons have been no stranger to the candied pastel look, but this season, it seems almost every designer attached a penny sweet to their moodboard. From gentle to overt uses of the colour palette, everywhere you looked, feminine hues of mint, candy floss and gumball were present. But where were they best displayed? Mint, faded turquoise and in particular candy floss pink were used to great effect at J JS Lee, as the colours softened her uniquely stark, modernist tailoring. A special mention also goes to the mint overcoats and jackets seen at Peter Pilotto and Burberry Prorsum, which made the models look as if they were being hugged by a giant mint-chip cone. Overall, the collections had us craving cola cubes and Love Hearts; no mean feat for our generally black-leather-clad fashion team.

Fyodor Golan

Peter Pilotto

London Fashion Week

Words: Alexandra Fiddes & Emma Segal

The Return of Denim

This is another trend that just won’t quit. In a collection that the designer himself described as ‘avant bland,’ J.W. Anderson showcased his technical ability and artistry with sheer tier-ruffled maxi dresses that were delicate in detail but rigid in structure. Elsewhere, more glamorous takes on the trend were shown; the sister design duo behind Felder Felder showed flowing maxi dresses in sheer white and printed blue chiffon and silk – quilted panels and PVC inserts added an interesting twist.

This functional material has, in the recent race towards Sportsluxe, tended to fade into the background of the S/S collections; this season, however, denim has come back into play in new manifestations. Holly Fulton’s collection as a whole offered an interesting and beautiful departure from her signatures, and this was nowhere more apparent than in the crescent cut out denim T-shirt she sent down the runway. The crescent shaped accessories also contained the fabric, and it was used to great effect in her print dresses. We also enjoyed the sequined, frayed denim looks at Ashish, and frayed denim featured prominently in Marques’ Almeida’s collection.

Photo: Catwalking

Photo: Christopher Dadey

Take It to the Maxi

Felder Felder 34

Lifestyle

Holly Fulton FASHION

THE SKINNY

Mellow Yellow

Black and White Stripes

Whether it was sherbet, buttercup or lemon, there was a surprising amount of (the notoriously difficult to wear colour) yellow on the catwalks. Opening the SS14 proceedings, and a fan of the sunshine hue, was Turkish born Bora Aksu, who was showing for the tenth time at London Fashion Week. The collection was full of pretty frills and gathering, sheer pockets and hand crocheted fabrics. There were nippedin waists and prim shaped dresses, shorts and capes in a pretty palette of bright zesty yellow alongside china blue and white. The prim vibe continued at Emilia Wickstead who showed beautifully tailored skirts with elegant folds and neat boxy cropped jackets to match. Fyodor Golan took a different tack, with cheeky standout pieces (a skirt and bandeau top) made of plastic acid-yellow smiley faces. Or do like Lucas Nascimento did, and pair a flash of yellow (here as an unusual jutting neckline) to add fun to business-like grey.

We coveted them at Ashish – shimmering and glittering on polo shirt dresses in the labels’ signature sequins. We loved the styling idea of combining thick, in-your-face versions, with baby pink like at Jean-Pierre Braganza. And we adored the elegant tomboys at Richard Nicoll showing off fine graphic stripes with a slight sheen (a nice touch) in mini-dress form or as skirts paired with clean separates and sheer layers.

Mini-trend: Neon Lips Team Skinny likes to appreciate the entire styling of runway looks, from head to toe. And this season, we couldn’t help but notice the key make-up statement of choice was a neon lip. For subtler, pink manifestations look at J JS Lee and Fyodor Golan, and for full-on orange lip inspiration, check out Tabernacle Twins who showed as part of Fashion Scout.

Fyodor Golan

Richard Nicoll

SS14: Trend Report Mini-trend: Ethnic Jewellery

There were some truly outstanding examples of peekaboo and sheer looks this season. Special mention must go to the oversized overcoats and leggings at KTZ, as well as the impossibly chic cloudy macs from Terra NY (displayed in the Designer Showrooms). Antipodium offered an interesting take on the trend, with its barelymetallic pleated skirts and dresses; and at J.W. Anderson, the technique was used to great effect on a variety of silhouettes, from billowing peasant dresses to minimal graphic crop tops. Finally, at both Bora Aksu and Thomas Tait, white graphic looks were transformed by the inclusion of sheer detailing.

Although we’re not particularly keen on the term ‘ethnic’ (a lazy way of describing something that is ‘non-western’), large statement pieces of silver jewellery from other cultures, including Indian, Tibetan and African, were seen at KTZ, where they gradually became part of the garments themselves, and at Ashish (jewellery from Pebble London) where the pieces emphasised the magpie nature of the collection. Think layered oversized cuffs, huge pleated neckpieces, brooches and large crown-like headpieces.

Photo: Melodie Jeng

Photo: Christopher Dadey

Peekaboo and Sheer

J.W. Anderson October 2013

KTZ FASHION

Lifestyle

Cinema Not So Paradiso In honour of Hallowe’en, we investigate what happens when food and horror films collide. It’s, er, all killer, no filler Words: Jamie Faulkner

ood has a fairly big place in the whole tradition of Hallowe’en, this most Americanised of holidays: pumpkins, apple bobbing, tonnes of candy. Food associated with Hallowe’en is, however, a well-worn trope, one that comes around every year with the same degree of certainty as Michael Myers will grace the late-night BBC broadcasts on 31 October. But it feels remiss of us not to include it in some way. So how do we get a food and Hallowe’en mash-up going on without resorting to cliché? Well, what do many of us do on Hallowe’en? Watch scary movies. So how about food AND scary movies? Genius, right? Here are our favourite moments:

Eraserhead: Seen that YouTube video of a girl trying to eat/catch a live octopus at the Noryangjin fish market in Seoul? If not, it’s suggested viewing for anyone who wants to know what cephalopod molluscs look like when they’re shit-scared. Animate food brings to mind the dinner scene from Lynch’s much-lauded film: a tiny chicken squirting and jerking robotically as it is about to be carved. Just plain off-putting. In retrospect: not as creepy as the mother’s strange tableside moans.

Dumplings: If the idea of eating aborted foetuses sounds appetising then we suggest you get some help. If it doesn’t (well done, you’re normal) then Dumplings will almost literally turn your stomach. In this Hong Kong horror, a certain Mrs Li seeks a more youthful appearance after her husband has an affair with a younger masseuse. The solution is Aunt Mei’s dumplings, the contents of which come from the local abortion clinic. Like 2010’s Somos lo que hay, the cannibalism has allegorical weight, in this case lampooning the cult of youth. Seven: If you really think about it, any food can kill you. I mean, the fugu fish is more of a risk than nutmeg, say, but they can both be lethal. Just think: munching on a PB&J could have dire consequences for someone with a nut allergy. David Fincher’s Seven (or Se7en for those who need reminding what the number seven looks like) takes a different tack in the opening ‘Gluttony’ crime scene: innocuous jarred sauce and pasta plus a serial killer who’s got too much time on his hands, and, hey presto, you’ve got homicide by over-eating.

DUMPLINGS

Frenzy: By his penultimate feature film, Hitchcock’s appetite was uncontrollably spilling over into his medium: the film’s villain, Robert Rusk, otherwise known as the ‘Necktie Killer’, is a fruit and veg merchant by trade (interestingly, Hitchcock’s father was a greengrocer and poulterer); the two onscreen murders are framed by Bob taking a bite of an apple and tucking into a slice of pork pie; and there’s a subplot where

the case detective has to endure his wife’s cackhanded cooking. At the very least, that should give you some fodder for a Hallowe’en movie-marathon. And to those who stumbled across this while grabbing a bite to eat, we’re sorry if the contents of your stomach are now conspicuously no longer there.

Phagomania: The Food, the Bad and the Ugly We’ve all taken (and tweeted) a picture of a good meal, but one blog is dedicated to the art of the bad food photo. We take a trip back to the past to find out why there was so much jelly going around Words: Lewis MacDonald

JELLY VEG

MAYO LOBSTER

Lifestyle

ime to point and laugh at the past, as, in Kim Webb of San Antonio, Texas, this column has found a kindred spirit. Collecting various old cookbooks and recipe cards, her Bad and Ugly of Retro Food blog has been showcasing the wonders of both awful photography and questionable food palattes of the 60s and 70s to the world. Kim set up the blog to counter the current engrossment with perfectly and tastefully shot food photography, detracting from what the food should really be about – eating. And the internet agreed, it seemed. Kim didn’t expect the level of popularity the site reached. “If someone told me it has the potential to reach over 100K views when I first started,” she explains, “I wouldn’t have believed it.” What we don’t believe is the amount of mayonnaise and cold, leftover vegetables we used to go through. Even lobster. Lobster? Smother it in mayonnaise. Rack of lamb? Cake it in jelly and serve it with some boiled eggs. In the world of bad food photography there’s nothing a sprig of parsley, mayonnaise and soft lighting won’t sort out, a motto that seems to have escaped us over the years.

FOOD AND DRINK

So why do the photos strike a chord? Kim thinks she knows why: “I think it triggers nostalgia in a lot of people. There are those who remember eating it, cooking it, smelling it, etc. “For the younger people, it’s a morbid fascination that food wasn’t always beautiful and perfectly packaged. Who nowadays can imagine slicing into a jellied tongue or eating bologna with a cherry glaze sauce?” Indeed. You won’t find trending, Instagrammed jellied tongue on your ‘15 minute recipe from celebrity chef du jour’ app, but today’s image filters might have made a big difference to the pictures. Kim says: “With today’s skills and equipment, the same gelatin mold from 1971 could possibly look edible. There wasn’t as much doctoring of the photographs. What I saw in those cookbooks is probably what it would look like if I tried to cook it.” It is that honesty that makes us even more glad we are not subjecting ourselves to these culinary monstrosities. But really, look at that radish garnish. If you do try that next time they’re to hand, be sure to take a photo. www.badanduglyofretrofood.com

THE SKINNY

Around the World in 20 Drinks: Canada

Food News Supper clubs are so last month. Get yourself down to a pudding club Words: Anna Tully Illustration: Vicky Ledsom

The latest stop on our global booze tour is where everything is frozen and the beer has bits of Christmas tree in it

Words: Peter Simpson

Canada, you something-something land. Like the USA but with cheaper hospitals and policemen in delightful red uniforms, Canada has a lot of interesting methods to teach us when it comes to booze. Methods such as ‘just let that freeze over, it’ll be fine.’ Icewine comes from vines that have frozen while they’re still growing, and is a concentrated and intense blast of grapey goodness that sounds like it should be similar to Buckfast but really isn’t. An icewine from Ontario hit the headlines when it went on sale in 2006 – for £18,000 a bottle. It’s not like Buckfast. Ice cider follows the same principle – let your apples freeze in the harsh Canadian winter, then make them into a complex and full-bodied cider to help you through said winter. Good work with those elements, Canada, but the story of the Newfoundland Screech makes us wonder whether you’ve been spending a bit too long out in the cold. The Screech, named after the horrendous noise made by an American soldier when he first tried it during the war, is a specially selected blend of Jamaican rums. So far, so cultural, but then there’s the Screech-In. It’s a

EVERY MONDAY Movie Night Monday*, classic cult movies with a pizza and beer or wine for £6.95 and 50p a bag of popcorn

EVERY TUESDAY Let’s get Quizzical, £1 entry incl. free pizza and cash prices

EVERY THURSDAY One More For the Road with Terry Gray, the only open mic with FREE SCOUSE ON THE HOUSE

EVERY FRIDAY The Hatch acoustic session, live acoustic music from local and travelling souls

ICEWINE

ceremony involving a shot or two of rum, a large frozen cod, some semi-formal paperwork and a man standing in a pub in a fisherman’s overcoat. Trust us, we have not made any of this up. Still, all that time in a winter wonderland has resulted in one of the best innovations we’ve seen in this series – making beer out of Christmas trees. While we can’t give Canada full credit for Spruce Beer – the Vikings were making it back in the day, and they’re sticklers for attribution – Canadians have refined and honed the formula over time. There are alcoholic versions, there are soft versions that taste like a root beer bumped into a hedge, it can easily be brewed up at home, and it reminds everyone of the joys of Christmas. That is to say drinking, and keeping trees in your home. Good job, Canada!

oodie or not, you’ll have been hard-pressed to miss the hype around the opening of Manchester House at the tail-end of last month. Loveable local Aiden Byrne teams up with the Goliath of Manchester, Living Ventures, to open the £3 million restaurant. Helps explain the menu prices, we guess. Still, if you’ve realised you’re never going to be able to afford to buy that house, blow your cash on a tasting menu here. It’s all go in Manchester where ‘sleb chefs are concerned. James Martin is raising the stakes (OK, that’s the one casino pun over, promise!) as he opens James Martin Manchester at Manchester 235. We have it on good authority there won’t be any omelettes. Phew! Enter through the side door in the Great Western unless you enjoy the sight of endurance gamblers as an aperitif. Elsewhere, Simon Rogan continues his Midland Hotel takeover with the opening of Mr Cooper’s Garden and House. We haven’t tried the grub yet but the menu is pleasingly affordable – though it’s the cocktail list we’ve got our eye on. Popcorn-infused bourbon? Served in a hip flask? We’ll take ours to swig at the bus stop then, thanks! Keep watch for the word from Liverpool’s Pudding Club. Hosted at blink-and-you’ll-missit speakeasy Berry and Rye (no relation to Mary, Queen of Baking), this month’s event sold out in 12 hours. Guests are treated to a cocktail by the host venue, followed by SEVEN desserts. Wear something with an elasticated waist, yeah? Tickets for their next event on 3 Nov go on sale

on 7 Oct via their Twitter page (@livpuddingclub). Fingers on buzzers people. Or iPhones. Or whatever it is you kids use these days. Last month we were introduced to two of our new favourite things: the 23 Club in Liverpool and the Mad Hatter Brewing Company. The former’s a basement bar with a fine selection of beers and bourbon, the latter’s a new brewery run by existential experts Gaz and Sue (no really, ask Sue what she thinks of Sartre). You can therefore only imagine our delight when we found the two were teaming up for a Meet the Brewer night, taking place on 7 Oct. Learn while you drink? Sounds like our kind of education. 23 Club, 23 Hope Street, Liverpool, 6pm start, tickets £10. On the topic of craft beer, for those of you who weren’t super organised in buying your tickets for the IMBC – that is, the Indy Man Beer Con, held at Manchester’s Victoria Baths from 10-13 Oct – you’ll be pleased to hear there are still a few tickets left for the Thursday and Sunday sessions. Make sure you taste the beers IMBC have produced in collaboration with five breweries – Quantum Brewing Co., Buxton Brewery, Marble, Rooster's Brewing Co and Thornbridge Brewery. Of the five, we've got our eye on Quantum's Imperial Treacle Stout. Hello autumn.

THE 1ST SATURDAY OF EVERY MONTH Open Soul, a night of acoustic music from a spectrum of genres including folk jazz, blues and funk, £3 entry

THE 3RD SUNDAY OF EVERY MONTH Hobo Bazaar from 12-5pm, a unique shopping experience

EACH SATURDAY Join us for the unexpected. HOPSKOTCH Street Kitchen & Bar \ THE HATCH Mathew Street Liverpool L1 6AU 0151 908 0098 hello@hopskotchliverpool.com hopskotchliverpool.com

Other discounts apply to student card holders *10” margherita pizza, bottle of beer, small glass of wine applies

October 2013

FOOD AND DRINK

Lifestyle

OCTOBER IS CIDER MONTH AT BAR FRINGE North Manchester cider pub of the year. Cider tasting from Craft cider and Chilli-tastic Sunday 6th October.

CAMPAIGN FOR REAL ALE

SWAN ST, MANCHESTER, 0161 835 3815

THE SKINNY

Gig Highlights

Down at the Mill

Ah, October. Trees are getting bare, nights are drawing in and strange children are preparing to turn up at your door with outrageous demands for free sweets. Not to worry, there’s plenty more on offer, like Bonobo! And Willis Earl Beal! And... M People

Words: Daniel Jones

Reasons to visit Salford’s premier home of the weird and wonderful this, er, fall. Yes, fall

nybody lucky or wealthy enough to have a ticket for Fleetwood Mac’s return to Manchester on 1 Oct (they play the Phones4u Arena) will be buoyed by recent speculation that Christine McVie may well turn up for a few songs. Stevie Nicks stated back in December that there was more chance of an asteroid colliding with the earth than that happening, but then we’ve never had Stevie down as much of an astronomer. No surprise that ticket prices are already skyrocketing online. Over in Liverpool on 2 Oct, the O2 Academy hosts Bonobo, continuing a ridiculous live schedule off the back of The North Borders. Dates have been pretty much non-stop since April, so hats off to Simon Green and co for putting in some serious hours – there’s support from Dauwd too. Two days later on 4 Oct, heavyweight dub providers Fat Freddy’s Drop bring their soulful blend of roots music to Manchester Academy. The New Zealand troupe are internationally recognised for their improvisatory abilities and tremendous stage presence – a class brass act if ever there was one. In terms of inspired bookings, Now Wave exert their prowess once more by getting Willis Earl Beal in to play Salford’s Sacred Trinity Church on 4 Oct. A new age bluesman and army veteran, Beal spent a large chunk of his twenties drifting around Albuquerque, leaving demos and self-illustrated flyers in public places in the hope of gaining attention. His efforts paid off last year when he signed to Hot Charity – a sister imprint of XL – as their flagship artist. Fair play, Willis. Elsewhere, one of the better examples of Brit School alumni, King Krule, takes to Manchester’s Ruby Lounge stage on 5 Oct. The lad has only just turned 19, so if you’re up for feeling old and talentless then this is the gig for you. He is very pasty and ginger though, so it kind of equals out. One for all the mums out there, 10 Oct sees M People performing at the Phones4u Arena (they also play Liverpool Empire Theatre on 20 Oct). This much anticipated tour marks the 20th anniversary of Mercury Prize-winning LP Elegant Slumming and is unofficially billed by us as Ten Nights in Heaven. If you’re up for something a tad more humble then head down to Fossil Collective at Leaf, Liverpool, a day later on 11 Oct for some tunes to drink tea to. The folky elements of recent LP Tell Where I Lie are sure to captivate

Words: Laura Swift

TUNNG

anybody wearing a cardigan within a 400-yard radius. Dreamy vibes are the order of the day at Manchester’s Gullivers when Chilean psych-pop duo The Holydrug Couple bring their spacedout sophomore album Noctuary to Oldham Street on 7 Oct. The record – their first fulllength on Sacred Bones – is the brainchild of Ives Sepúlveda, who wrote, recorded and engineered all the tracks from his self-built home studio over in Santiago. Ives must have the patience of a saint. There’s another twosome on offer in Manchester at The Deaf Institute on 10 Oct as effervescent indie punkers No Age make their overdue return to the Northwest (they play Liverpool’s Korova on 4 Oct). Expect high volume and heaps of static; theirs is a lo-fi rage that leans toward the finer side of grittiness. Back across the M62 and in the slightly more dignified surroundings of Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Bright Phoebus Revisited sees, on 14 Oct, the late Lal and Mike Waterson’s Bright Phoebus album – regarded as a pivotal piece in the British folk revival – performed live for the first time since its release back in 1972. The record will

be covered by Richard Hawley, John Smith and Kami Thompson, among other special guests. Elsewhere, folktronic experimentalists Tunng are due down Seel Street at East Village Arts Club the following Friday (20 Oct), with potentially raucous support from Pinkunoizu (the two also play Manchester’s Band on the Wall on the 15th). Finishing up the month, Arctic Monkeys bring acclaimed album AM to the Phones4u Arena and Echo Arena on the 23 Oct and 28 Oct respectively. With their new record, Turner, Helders, Cook and O’Malley have hit an undeniable return to form, and it will be interesting to see how the dark, portentous feel of the LP manifests itself as a live spectacle. Either that, or witness the hypnotic Portico Quartet at Liverpool’s Kazimier on 28 Oct (they’re at Manchester’s Gorilla on the 27th) for a fraction of the price; they’re a percussive post-jazz ensemble well worth spending a tenner on. Last but not least, Ozric Tentacles celebrate 30 years in the prog-psych game at Band on the Wall, Manchester, on 29 Oct (or, at Liverpool’s O2 Academy the night before). Word is that you get in free if you dress up like a giant squid.

DO NOT MISS:

ased in Brooklyn, raised in Texas, Parquet Courts are a four-piece garage band with DIY sensibilities. They’re also funny as fuck. Lyrically, songwriter Andrew Savage taps into commonplace occurrences and skunk-inspired observations with refreshing syllabic nonchalance and a delivery reminiscent of Daydream-era Sonic Youth. But it’s the tighter tracks on last year’s full-length debut Light Up Gold that catapult the group away from potential comparison. Stoned and Starving, N Dakota, Master of My Craft and big single Borrowed Time bring humour to the fore while perfectly exhibiting the no-frill-allthrill unit of Austin Brown on lead, Sean Yeaton

October 2013

PARQUET COURTS

on bass and Andrew’s brother Max Savage behind the drums. Their performance on KEXP in a random bike shop earlier this year reeks of energy, oozes momentum and is reason enough not to miss out when the boys turn up at Gorilla this month. Support comes from Mazes and Hookworms, the latter an entrancing, fuzz-driven

live act and arguably one of the greatest things to come out of Leeds since Delta 5 and Tetley’s. That’s if you don’t count The Pigeon Detectives of course, and we’re not doing. Recently signed to big boy imprint Domino, Hookworms – in true rock’n’roll pretension – prefer to go by their initials rather than their full names, which is OK with us. Saves money on ink. [Daniel Jones]

MUSIC

Photo: Ben Rayner

Parquet Courts, Mazes + Hookworms, Gorilla, Manchester, 29 Oct

s much thought and effort can go into programming a venue as curating a festival line-up, and Islington Mill’s autumn music programme is an exercise in quality over quantity. Regulars will tell you that the Mill’s strength lies increasingly in hosting and promoting uncompromising artists in one of the city’s most unpretentious, welcoming spaces – making experimental clubnights like the essentially terrifying Gesamtkunstwerk a simultaneously fearsome and inclusive experience – but if you haven’t paid a visit before, October and November offer several opportunities to discover why the venue occupies such a firm place in the hearts of its frequenters. The next two months kick off with neurotic Baltimore chuggers and Dan Deacon buddies Ed Schrader’s Music Beat on 1 Oct, a treat for Wham City aficionados and anyone who’s picked up The Skinny on the day of publication i.e. today (quick! Run!), but perhaps less of one for anyone who can’t stomach the sound of the name Schrader right now, which is most of us. On a less whacky tack, Manchester’s leading contemporary music ensemble Psappha team up with local producer and DJ Sam O’Neill, aka TCTS, on 6 Oct (9pm, £6). The notion of a ‘classical clubnight’ has been explored with varying success over the past couple of years, with Gabriel Prokofiev’s Nonclassical among its most notable proponents; given O’Neill’s developing track record as a selector (check out his 20-minute mix for Eton Messy over on his SoundCloud), hopefully this partnership’ll do something equally innovative – and moodier – with the concept. Things get properly dark, though, when cult German doom-jazz quartet Bohren & der Club of Gore arrive on 22 Nov (7.30pm, £15); props to promoters Fat Out Til You Pass Out for presenting ‘em in their only UK date, and generally continuing to plough their own very particular furrow through the nocturnal and half-twisted (they also bring Enablers to Kraak on 6 Nov, and Jarboe to Sacred Trinity Church on 21 Nov). The next night offers introspection of a different hue in Anticon’s Will Wiesenfeld, aka Baths, who in an interview with The Skinny earlier this year described the themes of his recent, glistening Obsidian LP as “brutal” and influenced by everything from research into the Black Death, Dante’s Inferno and Silent Hill 2 – but wrapped it up in electronic pop and thick, lush, slushing arrangements (23 Nov, 8pm, £8). The sturdy profile of the Mill as an artists’ studio and exhibition space perhaps means its other occupants are occasionally overlooked – but on 27 Oct, it brings together the labels that have their base there for a free live show and market from 2pm, so you can browse the output of the likes of Gnod’s cassette label Tesla Tapes, Gizeh Records (home to Ghostly International friends Fieldhead and the up-and-coming Shield Patterns), Baptists and Bootleggers and Tombed Visions. And then it’s Christmas. God knows what they’ve got up their sleeve for those of you who haven’t been behaving.

www.islingtonmill.com

Preview

Album of the Month

Future of the Left

How to Stop Your Brain in an Accident Prescriptions, 21 Oct

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“The music industry is lying to you” preaches Andy Falkous on serrated satire Singing of the Bonesaws, chiding listeners for “[confusing] excitement with the fear of missing out” before venturing down some dark recesses involving Kim Kardashian, a masked bear and self-inflicted ocular mutilation. It’s one of several tracks on Future of the Left’s fourth album to provoke nervy laughs, with Falkous again proving a peerless lyricist: incisive, articulate and pulling no punches as he eviscerates targets from Christmas to record labels. On the latter note, the PledgeMusic-financed How to Stop Your Brain in an Accident is

Quasi

The Grand Gestures

DARKSIDE

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Mole City, Domino, Out now In an era where bands struggle to get two records out before falling foul of industry fashions, cash flows or personality defects, the 20 years or so Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss have been jamming out alternative-minded, wig-out grunge must count as some kind of triumph. Back to the founding duo after the departure of bassist Joanna Bolme, Mole City ’s 24 tracks of fuzzy bass, hammered keys, and slacker vocals catch the twosome in no mood for slowing down. See You on Mars and The Dying Man put the keys front and centre, resulting in a neat kind of cabaret scuzz – like a noisier Ben Folds Five. The number of tracks, Coomes’ workaday voice, and a sound so slack it’s barely in time, make the album a difficult proposition at first and some of the jams – Dust of the Sun and Head Shrinker to name two – will be a bridge too far. But Mole City is nothing if not interesting, and at the end of the day you just gotta dig it. [PJ Meiklem]

Black Hearted Brother

Stars Are Our Home, Sonic Cathedral, 21 Oct

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While Black Hearted Brother can’t quite be called a supergroup, the trio’s personnel nonetheless possess an impressive pedigree between them: Slowdive’s Neil Halstead, Seefeel’s Mark Van Hoen, and Coley Park’s Nick Holton comprise a trio with a wealth of experience in shoegaze, post-rock and ambient electronica between them. It’s Halstead’s influence that initially feels most pronounced, as the opening title track unwinds through an epic space-rock jam, anchored by an irresistibly dramatic chord progression. Following that compelling beginning Stars does begin to fragment somewhat, as each member is given licence to explore their own avenues: Time in the Machine’s woozy violins and wobbly bass, for example, recall Holton’s other work; while the tentative, stripped-back electronica of I’m Back echoes Van Hoen’s solo projects. When the LP’s elements gel, however – as on the driving electro-shoegaze of My Baby Just Sailed Away – Black Hearted Brother transcend the sum of their parts. [Sam Wiseman]

For his second collection as The Grand Gestures, Spare Snare’s Jan Burnett invites faces old and new to supply vocals for diverse compositions. Returning figures include Jill O’Sullivan – responsible for the last album’s standout Deer in a Cross Hair, and again opening proceedings with a deliciously moody offering – and Sanjeev Kohli, who injects a waggish irreverence in the form of grotesque spoken-word piece The Spree of Brian May (as in killing, not shopping). Elsewhere, first-time Gesturers include RM Hubbert (soulsearching over industrial electro-pop on Regret Is a Dish Best Served Cold) and Pauline Alexander (a serene presence on A Whisper of Sayonara), both helping distinguish Second from its predecessor. But while it’s the guests who are name-checked on the sleeve, it’s Burnett who warrants the most acknowledgement and praise, for taking a motley grab bag of sounds and contributors and crafting something genuinely fresh and – somewhat against the odds – cohesive. [Chris Buckle]

Psychic, Other People, 7 Oct The first full-length outing for Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington’s DARKSIDE project opens with Golden Arrow, 11 minutes of arrestingly beautiful ambient electronica, deftly embellished with Harrington’s muted guitar. Jaar’s astonishing ability to seamlessly meld techno, house and jazz within an uncanny, weightless soundworld remains in evidence; but Psychic manages to incorporate elements of prog- and post-rock, reflecting Harrington’s own influences, while still maintaining that characteristic sense of fluidity and cohesion. The spell threatens to break when the guitar takes centre stage, as on the bluesy Paper Trails; Jaar and Harrington instead combine most effectively on languid, cosmic explorations like the closer Metatron, anchored by a dramatic, organ-led chord progression. Throughout, Jaar’s trademarks are in evidence: disorienting fluctuations in BPM, and a deceptively complex sonic tapestry, despite the ever-present sense of space. DARKSIDE’s success in opening up these soundscapes to rock’s outer realms demonstrates the duo’s remarkably intuitive creative bond. [Sam Wiseman]

DJ Rashad

Bailterspace

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Double Cup, Hyperdub, 21 Oct Trap, footwork and juke all have the potential to be seen as disposable, relying on chopped-up samples, and beats that go as dumb as they go hard. In the hands of Chicago footwork legend DJ Rashad however, this sampledelic approach becomes a masterful and energised dancefloor assault, where every complex series of kicks and snares, each time-stretched soulful wail, every synth and horn stab is placed with meticulous precision and decisive effect. Featuring collaborations with other scene stars such as Spinn, Taso and bass maestro Addison Groove, Rashad’s fulllength debut is perhaps one of the best starting points for novices in the world of this high-tempo, rapidly evolving subgenre of US dance music. Highlights include the loping, ultra-polished, lurching future R’n’B of Show U, the chopped soul of Only One, the post-modern G-funk of the title track, and the minimal, bleeping gangsterisms of I Don’t Give A Fuck. Another convincing entry in Hyperdub’s celebrated and challenging bass music canon. [Bram E. Gieben]

Trinine, Fire Records, 7 Oct In their original incarnation, Bailterspace’s tendency towards crushing, voluminous noise saw them frequently compared to Sonic Youth. If the New Zealanders’ recent return from a 14-year hiatus has demonstrated anything, however, it’s that their dogged pursuit of lustrous cacophony was worlds away from the intricately refracted light of the NYC luminaries. The seductive mystery of Together sees Alan Parker using subtle guitar lines to pry open spaces between the opaque, coiled-spring drum hits; filled in by his own soft murmurs amid the creeping fog of John Halvorsen’s woozy bass. Meanwhile, motorik psych daydreams like Films of You offset the addictively murky riffology that characterises Trinine to make for a record that becomes more intriguing with every listen. Granted, they still feel in thrall to the same thunderous squalls that characterised their 90s work, but whoever looked to reunited bands for personal growth? More of the same, and better for that. [Will Fitzpatrick]

Laurel Halo

Misty Conditions

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Recorded using only hardware, and no computers, Axel Willner’s fourth solo album since 2007’s much-lauded debut From Here We Go Sublime is, typical to form, the same but different, maintaining the artist’s trademark of making small changes to create an altogether different mood. Deeper and darker, Cupid’s Head came out of an intense period of “producer’s block”, and the influence of his less melodic, more repetitious side projects Loops of Your Heart and Black Fog is evident. Darker doesn’t mean inaccessible, though; the sentimental contemplation of FHWGS, gleaned from its subtle instrumentation, is eschewed for an equally compelling state of suspended hypnotism, pointing at something larger and more futuristic. In fact, it’s when the tiny, tight R&B-tinged loops and propelling 4/4 beat which characterise the album release into a claustrophobic acid-techno pulse on the album’s climax, Black Sea, that you truly get the sense of its dystopian core. [Rosie Davies]

Review

Second, Chute Records, 7 Oct

The Field

Cupid’s Head, Kompakt, Out now

a paragon example of crowd-funding done well: rawer, heavier and angrier than ever, it distils the band’s abrasive appeal, and as such should leave no pledger disappointed. Tracks like French Lessons advance the quartet’s less-frequently celebrated (but also rewarding) capacity for restraint, with Falkous’ barbed sneer replaced with a precarious melodic croon (though with the opening line “they say the price of love is a black hole,” its curbed aggression shouldn’t be mistaken for softness). From the growling bass of Bread, Cheese, Bow and Arrow to the unhinged howls of Why Aren’t I Going to Hell?, it’s possibly their best work yet – so whatever Falkous says, don’t go missing out. [Chris Buckle]

Chance of Rain, Hyperdub, 28 Oct It ends as it starts, book-ended by the brief electric piano meanderings of the opening Dr. Echt, and the closing Out. Mini-overture and coda, they house the body of this beguiling second album from the Michigan producer. A blitzkrieg of twitchy, pulsing beats, its lack of clutter gives it space to breathe. With little in the way of melody, bar the near-euphoria of Ainnome, Chance of Rain is dominated by a battery of skittering rhythms. Difficult to buttonhole, its mix of frenetic snare, warped atmospherics and spartan soundboard sit somewhere between early Aphex Twin and the spare, astringent stylings of Factory Floor. Crafted with considerably more care than its minimal arrangements might immediately suggest, it’s possessed, crucially, of a cool musicality. Thrillingly, its very minimalism highlights sections of Laurel Halo’s canvas left blank – intentionally, you suspect – and crying out to be filled by the listener. Accept that invitation: Chance of Rain has vision and scope to spare. [Gary Kaill]

RECORDS

D’Zzzz, Planet Mu, 7 Oct

Fans of extreme electronic music will be pleased to hear of Henry Collins aka DJ Shitmat’s return, a sonic terrorist who explored the realms of jungle, drum’n’bass and hardcore with his transgressive productions. Now one half of Misty Conditions with LA producer Richard Wilson, he has entered the realms of trap, bass music and hip-hop, with a thick, sticky film of sonic grime that is Collins’ stock in trade. The beats on D’Zzzz are often simple, with relatively little complexity or variation, but the loops here are killer, and when they hit home, as on the infectiously banging trap of Dusco, on D’Mmmm’s hyperactive juke assault, in the loopy boom-bap of Death, or the pitch-dark Dank, they are devastatingly effective. More challenging cuts, like the beatless synth-wash of Drowning, or the scuzzy, static-laden dub techno of Dilute, have less broad appeal, but are just as intriguing. An essential record for Shitmat aficionados and beyond; Collins’ most accessible to date. [Bram E. Gieben]

THE SKINNY

The Spook School

Of Montreal

Monoganon

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Dress Up, Fortuna POP!, 7 Oct If quotes from the band weren’t on hand to guide you toward it, it’d be easy to miss indie-pop quartet The Spook School’s pronounced interest in issues of sexuality and self. Since they occupy a genre long associated with fluid gender identities (see, for instance, twee’s challenge to conventional notions of masculinity), great swathes of debut Dress Up’s lyrical content seem like standard reiterations of well-established themes: fears of fitting in, the messy bits of relationships, etc. But songs like Are You Who You Think You Are? or History (“I was a boy or so it’s told”) offer more considered takes on the subjects at hand, supplying grist for a record that could otherwise have struggled to distinguish itself from others of its ilk. Not that The Spook School are as serious as all that sounds: joyously noisy, sometimes silly, and always fun, they’re a must-listen for the Indietracks world and worth a swatch for everyone else. [Chris Buckle]

Lousy with Sylvianbriar, Polyvinyl, 7 Oct Prolific glam-funk outfit of Montreal are giving us their 12th studio album in Lousy with Sylvianbriar, an expectedly whimsical and seductive offering. Like much of the band’s back catalogue, the record mixes a palette of styles, ranging from an indie quirkiness à la Spinto Band or early OK Go, to the honest vocal harmonies of The Beatles or Elliot Smith circa Figure 8, to a rockier, bass-led sound elsewhere. Triumph of Disintegration boasts a sparky and upbeat backing redolent of Spoon, and the salty cowboy twang of Amphibian Days and Hegira Émigré proves this psychedelic parade is a changeable one, albeit less theatrical than before. Some tracks do suffer for their simplicity, alas; occasionally the album idles where it should jive. But, while very much a far cry from the skits and glitter of earlier work, Lousy... is an analogue, uncluttered experience with a welcome lack of frills. [George Sully]

Daedelus

Islands

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Drown Out, Anticon, 14 Oct He has released 12 albums in as many years, but Daedelus shows no signs of tiring on his debut album for Anticon. Inspired by the turbulent emotions that followed the death of his friend and Brainfeeder collaborator Austin Peralta, and the passing of his grandmother, Drown Out is a deeply emotional, complex record, even by Daedelus standards, and he refuses to anchor those emotions lyrically. Voices are used to great effect, whether on the album’s centrepiece, the formal and classically-arranged choral track Tiptoes, featuring his wife Laura, or on the hip-hop flavoured Keep Still, which features a familiar rap hook. There are nods to his back catalogue in the cosmic soul of Perpetually, which recalls the sublime clockwork electronica of Denies the Day’s Demise. Elsewhere, Daedelus continues to define ‘mercurial’ with his intensely complex take on rhythm, melody and dynamic range. By turns reflective, uplifting and gloriously melancholic, it’s another fantastic album from a genuinely unique producer. [Bram E. Gieben]

Islet

Released by the Movement Shape Records, 7 Oct

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Musical misfits Islet would like to take you on a journey. The places you pass along the way may well feel familiar – woozy psych, groove-led post-punk, even slight shades of post-rock – but the destination is distinctly fresh, as genres are gleefully scrambled and reconstituted with a keen spirit of adventure. Often sonically murky but never short on ideas, Released by the Movement shares with acts like Deerhoof or Animal Collective a careful equilibrium between experimentation and approachability. Opener Triangulation Station supplies a representative 101 of the Welsh quartet’s outside-the-box interests, starting out as some kind of tropical-tinted, falsetto-sung spiritual and getting only more idiosyncratic as it progresses. At the other end of the scale, Carlos is Islet at their most conventional – though with a sound that touches upon The Cramps, The Rapture and the midnight incantations of a haunted monastery, the epithet is very much relative. [Chris Buckle]

Paper Tiger

Laptop Suntan Wah Wah 45s, 28 Oct

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The appeal of Paper Tiger’s debut full-length album is exactly the same thing that makes it slightly underwhelming, although absolutely competent. This is the kind of release that Ninja Tune made their name with – taking electronic and synth-driven productions and adding a large dose of funk and London hip-hop swagger, mixing in a few guest vocals from the likes of Homeboy Sandman, Infinite Livez and Bang On! over smatterings of agreeable, chirpy post-grime beats. When it works – as on the bubbling Air, or the footworkflavoured, jittery Treasure Town, or even the Brainfeeder-esque neo-soul of Irresistible – the results are enjoyable, but as a whole the album feels a little too much like territory that has been conquered more convincingly by a raft of producers from Coldcut to Hexstatic to Wiley, exacerbated by some run-of-the-mill lyrical turns. A good album, but not a great one, Laptop Suntan feels strangely dated from the off. [Bram E. Gieben]

October 2013

F A M I L Y, Lost Map, 28 Oct The second album from the Glasgow-based four piece shows as little regard for compartmentalisation as their 2011 debut, Songs To Swim To. A disorientating mesh of angular guitar, off-kilter beats and mood piece confessionals, Family was inspired by a deep personal loss in the life of singer and songwriter John B. McKenna. Its candour may be too much for some, as might its unpredictability: you’ll strain to catch a hold of the drifting Quick Crescent Moon before Best Pals ups both volume and intensity. Stick with it – repeated plays start to sketch in colour and shape. Its more frenetic moments snarl like the best of 90’s US college rock but it’s the darker, quieter tracks that slip under the skin and stay there. The chiming Easterhouse has a touch of those similarly adventurous noiseniks from the previous generation, AC Acoustics. Difficult but ultimately rewarding, F A M I L Y is balm for shattered souls. [Gary Kaill]

Botany

Ski Mask, Manqué, 28 Oct Canadian indie outfit Islands have impressive heritage. Frontman Nick Thorburn was lead singer with the Unicorns, a blistering jewel in the famed early 2000s Montreal scene that released three stunning albums in two years. Thorburn’s work since then has been consistently pleasant, without ever managing to generate the same levels of excitement as what went before. The trend continues on album number five, Ski Mask. A few of the tracks on here (the Spoon-like opener Wave Forms, lyrically intelligent Becoming the Gunship and harmonic, sunny Here, Here in particular) have choruses that will lodge themselves in your psyche for hours, but they’re sadly in the minority. Too much of the record is MOR fodder – the decidedly dull Of Corpse and the awful, Arctic Monkeys-aping Nil spring to mind – laden with forgettable melodies and banal arrangements. It all makes for an album that flatters to deceive on occasion, but which on the whole is par for the course. [Finbarr Bermingham]

Lava Diviner (Truestory), Western Vinyl, 28 Oct

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The bizarrely clunky title of Spencer Stephenson’s debut as Botany reflects the LP’s similarly bonkers concept, which narrates the tale of a fictional sect awaiting a volcano eruption. While that suggests Lava Diviner could be a tiresomely pompous ride, the Texan has actually crafted a beautifully ornate work of epic electronica. Pieces flow amorphously into one another, their oozing, molten textures perfectly reflecting the LP’s theme, and charting gradual shifts in mood. Rhythmically, the record betrays the influence of the LA scene, all stuttering, distorted hip-hop breaks and lolloping samples (indeed, Brainfeeder’s RYAT provides chopped-up guest vocals on several tracks). Combined with Stephenson’s visionary imagination, those rhythmic tropes are rinsed of generic predictability; Lava Diviner encompasses them within a wider soundscape of chants, drones, strings and murky samples. The end result is that rare thing, an (essentially) instrumental electronica record with a strong sense of narrative cohesion. [Sam Wiseman]

Tim Hecker

Glasser

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Virgins, Kranky, 14 Oct Tim Hecker’s choice of nomenclature for his songs can be incredibly misleading. On Virgins, his undeniably enigmatic but strikingly warm follow-up to the award-winning Ravedeath, 1972, titles like Stigmata I and Amps, Drugs, Harmonium nestle up to Stab Variation. Yet there is nary a Ministry cover nor violent aural assault in sight. Virgins is concise, cogent and considerably less clouded in hypnotic fuzz than Hecker’s previous efforts, as if the Canadian has finally made friends with the edit function. Black Refraction and Radiance positively hover in shimmering equipoise between the beguiling and the beatific, the latter almost conventional with its gentle piano figures and only sporadic ghostly interruptions and disconnects. But the beauty of this album and, by proxy, Hecker’s muse, lies in its sheer incomprehensibility. Whatever theory or reasoning you apply to this is irrelevant; Virgins is a masterful album which appears to exist in a vacuum, merely guided by an indiscernible hand. [Colm McAuliffe]

Russian Circles

Memorial, Sargent House, 28 Oct

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Varied textures and technical proficiency are just about as common as a big chap grunting into a microphone in the modern metal world, but Chicagoans Russian Circles continue to break new ground. Over four previous albums they’ve stretched the boundaries of the genre and moulded it as their own with some breathtaking arrangements and instrumental skill. Memorial adds further weight to their reputation. You’ll again be wondering how the hell the bludgeoning sounds of Deficit could be created by a mere three-piece while 1777’s juddering drums and contorted guitar turn the track into a genuine thrill ride. Soft cooing guest vocals from dark-ambient chanteuse Chelsea Wolfe shouldn’t belong here at all, but not only do they work, the music adapts around them, and as the title track slinks to a close you could be forgiven for thinking a Mazzy Star number has been popped on by mistake. But that certain je ne sais quoi remains Russian Circles’ overall strength. [Stu Lewis]

RECORDS

Interiors, True Panther Sounds, 7 Oct The second album by Cameron Mesirow, aka Glasser, begins with promise – her powerful, emotionally resonant voice is paired with loping proto-dubstep on Shape, showcasing her skills as a songwriter, and setting out the New Age-inspired stall of her producer Van Rivers, who has previously worked with the likes of Fever Ray. As the album progresses, the multi-tracked vocal layers remain Interiors’ most appealing aspect, but one cannot help but feel that post-Grimes, Mesirow’s approach is sometimes rooted a little too much in conventional song structures; almost as if she is afraid to let the more experimental elements lead the charge. As a result, the likes of Design and Landscape are somewhat underwhelming, although pleasant enough. The echoing, birdsonginflected electronica of Dissect lifts things, with some astonishing melodic progressions from Mesirow, but the lasting impression is of an artist who needs to push further to escape her more twee, prosaic lyrics and arrangements. [Bram E. Gieben]

The Top Five 1 2 3 4 5

Future of the Left

How to Stop Your Brain in an Accident

Laurel Halo

Chance of Rain

Russian Circles

Memorial

Monoganon

FAMILY

Darkside

Psychic

Review

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STEVE MASON

Whitworth St West, Manchester, M1 5NQ

26/09/2013 11:53

THE SKINNY

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Duuun dun, duuun dun, dun dun dun dun… It’s clear that the hype gathering around tonight’s headliners, Jaws, in their native Birmingham has spread, as the East Village Arts Club gathers a substantial crowd this Sunday evening. As they grace the stage with an amalgamation of greasy, floppy haircuts and grunge-inspired attire straight outta the 90s, it’s easy to assume we’re going to be treated to a nostalgic, slacker pop revival. Yet Jaws are more than meets the eye, with their blend of dreamy nu-gaze sounds and droning riffs. Run Tiger Run, supporting alongside hotlytipped Liverpool locals Vynce, warm up the eager crowd with their spirited instrumentals and penultimate track Hummingbird, the lyrics of which burn the band’s name deeply into our heads. With little fuss Jaws launch into Toucan

Surf, their new single from EP Milkshake, which sounds somewhere in between upbeat summer pop and bleary-eyed, washed-out rock. The highlight of the set arrives at the midway point with Gold, which explodes in a release of built up tension and teases out spurts of movement from the crowd. Jaws’ retro 90s stylings of haze-inducing rock echoes around the high ceilings and expansive surroundings of this former theatre, but it becomes obvious between tracks that the band is not on top form tonight. Facing away from the crowd to cover his head in a towel, frontman Connor Schofield, sombre and enigmatic throughout, is clearly struggling with illness, which explains the short six-song set. Despite leaving us yearning for more, Jaws put on a tight, solid performance and certainly show us that the music scene in B-Town has a lot to offer. [Natasha Linford]

FUCK BUTTONS

Fuck Buttons / The Haxan Cloak Gorilla, Manchester, 9 Sep

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JAWS

Soundgarden

O2 Apollo, Manchester, 13 Sep

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Like guitarist Kim Thayil’s porkpie hat and electroshock ponytail combo, it’s business up front with a party at the back as Soundgarden return to the Apollo after a 17 year absence. Tonight there’s a pronounced slickness to the Seattle quartet as they get their collective head down to a roll call of stadium-sized anthems; The Day I Tried to Live, Burden in My Hand and A Thousand Days Before are all presented with workmanlike immaculacy for the smartphone-waving hordes. Business time over, it takes rarely played hellraisers like Never the Machine Forever and Black Rain, the resurrected Badmotorfinger era banger that announced their return in 2010, to light the touchpaper. Thayil, momentarily shaking his game face, can’t resist pointing a wide smile

October 2013

toward the circle-pit as they roll out latenight 90s MTV anthem Outshined for a victory lap. “Feel free to come over the wall,” barks frontman Chris Cornell, inviting a flock of crowdsurfers over the security barrier and singling out anyone in the nosebleeds who might have forgotten how to go apeshit on a night like this. A swaggering turn at Rusty Cage brings it back in technicolour; the whole house is finally up on its feet. Sticking mainly to the roaring lower range he’s discovered in his 40s, Cornell’s feral caterwaul is less regularly employed than YouTube videos from 1992 might have younger fans prepared for, but when he lets it out of the bottle for the propulsive encore of My Wave, Dusty and bulldozing fan favourite Beyond the Wheel, it’s abundantly clear Soundgarden can still thrill the old way. [Dave Kerr]

Buttons’ Birmingham show left long before the end in order to seek medical attention for what they feared to be irreparably damaged eardrums. It’s an ominous anecdote, but such drama is to be expected from an outfit needing to live up to both their incendiary summer festival performances and the slow-burning promise of their third full-length, Slow Focus. What follows is an oddly divided affair. The older material, including Tarot Sport ’s nowinfamous Olympians, buzzes with a kind of noisy energy that engages the audience, less by seducing than bludgeoning it; a retina-scorching light show is more than a match for the fierce volume levels. Cuts from Slow Focus, though, present an odd disconnect with the crowd. Whether it’s a lack of familiarity or difficulties translating the new tracks on stage, there’s a noticeable gulf in intensity. Make no mistake: Fuck Buttons firing on most cylinders are still a potent live proposition, but there’s enough sign of rust here to suggest that there’s work to be done if the duo are to reclaim their position as one of the live circuit’s most powerful acts. [Joe Goggins]

Photo: Adam Edwards

Gorilla hasn’t been open long – in fact, this month marks a year since it first began putting on live shows – but I already fear for the structural safety of the room after a brutally noisy double-bill featuring two of the country’s most unforgiving purveyors of extreme volume. Opening proceedings is The Haxan Cloak, or Bobby Krlic, if you were to ask his mother. It’s a recording moniker that on tonight’s evidence is by no means inappropriate: his set, which draws heavily upon recent LP Excavation, is smothered in darkness. Skittish, persistent beats are largely overshadowed by an apparently interminable supply of foreboding synths and sinister sound textures. Sonically, Excavation is accurately recreated, but access to a formidable sound system allows Krlic to bring a new, unsettling dimension to his already disquieting avalanche of sonic gloom; he’s adapted to the live environment with impressive ease. There’re already rumours circulating over by the merch stand that one attendee at Fuck

JON HOPKINS

Jon Hopkins

Gorilla, Manchester, 24 Sep

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A screen lowers, and a single synth-drone reverberates around the room before buzzing into Abandon Window from Jon Hopkins’ latest album, Immunity. The twice Mercury Music Prizenominated artist leads us through tonight’s soldout AV show: colours running the complete spectrum shimmer behind him, then transition into a wider galaxy. The crowd is in a state of trance. That trance soon shifts, and we quiver as Open Eye Signal’s delicate but swift snares transform into muddy synth beats. Rapidly transforming shapes – their colours inspired by Immunity ’s album artwork – bob onscreen like multi-coloured glaciers, their timings representing an equaliser display.

MUSIC

Photo: Sam Huddleston

East Village Arts Club, Liverpool, 22 Sep

As Light Through The Veins from 2009’s Insides delivers its euphoric electronica, there’s a sense that tonight’s performance has reached its most tremendous and epic moment, the track lending the atmosphere something of the orchestral – and the build-up elicits mass applause. The visual behind Hopkins is now a glittering, shapeshifting creature of sharp hues, enveloping the crowd in its majestic presence. The show’s close takes a dark turn as Hopkins presents Vessel, an emotive piece with a piano-keyed build-up that leads to thunderous crashes suggestive of Squarepusher. This hectic, back-to-basics drum’n’bass sends the crowd berserk; and the air is filled with electricity even after the lights come down. [Edwina Chan]

Review

Photo: Richard Manning

Jaws

Under the Influence: Steve Mason From Morricone to Fab Five Freddy, Steve Mason digs out the inspirational film scores that soundtrack his breakfast time Photography: Eoin Carey

1. Various Wild Style Original Soundtrack (1983) Until 1998 you just could not get this. It didn’t exist, certainly in the UK. The film came out in 1983 and was required viewing for all us aspiring B-Boys and hip-hop lovers in Scotland. The film and soundtrack give you a snapshot into a time in NYC and the Bronx when hip-hop was in full flow and still a beautiful pure way of life for the people involved. It’s a kind of cross between a documentary and a fictional story and is crammed full of the main protagonists and originators of the day: Fab 5 Freddy, Lee Quiñones, Busy Bee, Cold Crush Brothers, Dondi, Rammellzee and Grand Wizard Theodore to name a handful. The album has many film clips in it – which have since been sampled all over the place from Nas to the Beastie Boys – and at least six live MC battles from 1982/83 which are well recorded and just amazing to hear. The incidental music is by Fab 5 Freddy and a collection of musos such as Blondie’s Chris Stein. This is more than an album, it’s a living document of a time when the youth of the projects in New York rejected violence and embraced art. Its an amazing thing. 2. Alan Price O Lucky Man! (1973) Composed by Alan Price (from The Animals and Alan Price Set), this is the soundtrack to a very surreal film starring Malcolm McDowell. This would stand up as a solo album in its own right, it’s full of really good simple songs played in a gentle way with just a few instruments. The track Sell, Sell, Sell is actually pretty funky and Alan Price has such a great voice, possibly my favourite of the ten tracks. I highly recommend this as an album in itself, even if the film confuses you. Which it will. 3. Michel Legrand Le Mans (1971) Michel Legrand composed this soundtrack to one of my favourite films, I love the sound editing and pace of it. I don’t think anyone says a word for the first 30 minutes. This maybe is not an album you would just bung on like O Lucky Man!, it’s more of an experience you should give some time to. Plenty of dialogue clips from the film, I love it when they put those on the soundtrack, which helps paint the picture of the build up to the race and everything that unfolds during it. 4. John Williams Jaws: Original Soundtrack (1975) Might seem an obvious choice but forget about the ‘duh duh duh duh’ signature riff and concentrate on the incidental music. John Williams is a master film composer and possibly my favourite. Yes, he has done loads and loads of massive films, he certainly can’t be considered leftfield but the builds, melodies and repeating themes in all his scores are so beautifully put

Review

together. One Barrel Chase is a great piece from this album. It’s from the part when they attach a barrel to the shark and it’s full of hope, excitement and a kind of innocence before the tide turns against them. The glaring admission from this soundtrack is no film clips. Can you believe that?! One of the best Hollywood scripts ever and it doesn’t make the soundtrack. I would love to re-release a deluxe double Jaws soundtrack album with all the best dialogue clips. ‘Here’s to swimming with bow legged women.” 5. Louis and Bebe Barron Forbidden Planet (1954) I don’t know if this got a release as a soundtrack at the time, but I hope so. It’s absolutely mental, widely regarded as the first ever electronic film soundtrack. Electronic instruments did not really exist as we know them now in 1954 and these two voyagers had to build their own circuits which were bespoke for the Forbidden Planet soundtrack. So the film has a totally unique sound, quite literally, because the cybernetic circuits were built for this purpose only. It’s not an easy listen, however – no soaring melodies and impassioned refrains, just quite disturbing blankets of electronic terror! There are gentle pieces, one of my favorites is Giant Footprints in the Sand, which, if you have seen the film, is pretty scary and descriptive. Overall, a strange record but one you should hear at least once. 6. Bob Dylan Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (1973) Composed by Dylan, this soundtrack has an impressive roll call of talent, including Booker T, Jim Keltner and Roger McGuinn. It works really well as an album even if you haven’t seen the film, which Dylan himself is in. The main title has a great dusty horse kind of feel but my favourite track is Billy 1, with a great sad and passionate vocal from Dylan. Turkey Chase is so evocative as well, has that Wild West feel down just right. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door is the centrepiece but I always think that song has been ruined by Guns N’ Roses, right up until you hear Dylan’s vocal come in. Amazing track from a very good album and soundtrack. 7. John Carpenter Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) Another of my favourite film composers who does the music for his own films, John Carpenter. Written and performed entirely by Carpenter himself, this is bleak stuff. The recurring main theme is an epic riff played on some kind of modular synth and it’s just relentless. This was my album of choice for breakfast for about a year and I never got sick of it despite the fact it’s just like one long track. Needs to be experienced! 8. Jack Nitzsche One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) Side two of this beautiful and spooky soundtrack is the best

STEVE MASON

side two of any LP ever made and a classic breakfast album. Composed by Jack Nitzsche who really needs no introduction, and if he does, Google the mutha. I love the inclusion of the musical saw in this soundtrack, such an amazing sound, so strange, sad and beautiful, especially on the track Act of Love and the Opening Theme. Really wonderful piece of work. 9. John Carpenter and Alan Howarth Escape from New York (1981) More from the bleak vision of Carpenter. This is a much easier listen than Precinct 13 and has a much broader spectrum of sounds and melodies. I would say it does work as an album in its own right, but only just! My memories of this film are renting VHS tapes from the Video Glen in St Andrews and watching it round at friends’ houses. It seemed really dangerous and subversive at the time and I can still remember the smell of that shop and the tapes themselves. The soundtrack for me is interwoven in all these emotions and memories.

MUSIC

10. Ennio Morricone Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Ennio Morricone is a man with many fine moments under his belt but this, for me, is his finest work. A more evocative, sad, lonely, angry epic and beautiful soundtrack has never been made. Indeed, it has sold ten million copies worldwide. Many people instantly recognise the Man with a Harmonica and the searing guitar in A Dimly Lit Room but the wide expanse of the main theme is incredible. The female vocal grasping at so many emotions, hope and loss at the same time. Not easy to do. Morricone was one of the greatest film composers, along with John Barry, John Williams and Jack Nitzsche, and this is his finest work. Steve Mason plays The Ritz, Manchester, 2 Nov www.stevemasontheartist.com

THE SKINNY

Turn to the Darkside Genre-defying prodigy Nicolas Jaar has teamed up with guitarist Dave Harrington for an ambitious project that throws elements of rock’s outer limits into Jaar’s potent mix of jazz, house and ambient. We discuss their venture into the DARKSIDE

Interview: Sam Wiseman

t 23, Nicolas Jaar has already assembled a list of accolades that suggests a level of creative maturity far beyond his years. The ChileanAmerican’s 2011 debut, LP Space Is Only Noise, was hailed by many critics as the album of the year, and in 2012 he was voted the best live act in the world by Resident Advisor readers. As if that wasn’t enough, Jaar has recently wound up one record label, Clown & Sunset, in favour of his new imprint Other People; and somewhere along the way, he’s found time to study comparative literature at Brown University. Perhaps surprisingly for a man whose music is marked by an otherworldly sense of space and timelessness, Jaar is fundamentally restless in his determination to explore new creative avenues. The latest of these is DARKSIDE, a collaboration with his touring guitarist and fellow New Yorker, Dave Harrington. Following their debut EP in 2011, DARKSIDE are set to release their first full-length, Psychic, this month. While the record is unmistakably a Jaar project in its rich textures, elastic sense of temporality, and seamless fusion of disparate genres, Harrington’s background in rock and blues adds a new dimension to the mix. The results have some uncanny, unexpected echoes, with certain points recalling the solemn post-rock soundscapes of Labradford, while others suggest Pink Floyd’s dreamy theatricality. The duo’s name is not, however, a nod to that outfit’s magnum opus, as Harrington assures The Skinny when we catch up with the pair over the phone from New York. Rather, he explains, the word came into use when they first started working out material together in 2011, and discovered an intuitive musical connection – one that could sometimes be unnerving, in its sense of accessing “the other part, the dark part, the part you don’t see. The part that’s secret, maybe a little dangerous.” The word eventually “became like an adjective, something we would use when things got a little bit scary, intense, exciting, or noisy.” That instinctive approach to composition has always been central to Jaar’s creative process. He tends to speak about his music in terms of honesty, integrity and experimentation, eschewing any sense of a prior overarching vision, and Harrington clearly shares this mindset: the way they work, he explains is “not very calculating... we respect each other, and we work together well, and we have fun. So, if there’s any vision, it’s that we trust each other.” It’s a compositional approach perfectly suited to collaboration, and this shared understanding goes some way to explaining the eerie sense of connection evident on the appropriately-titled Psychic. Jaar also has a sense of wider cultural currents that might relate to his own work in unexpected ways. At one point our conversation turns, somewhat surreally, to Swedish house megastar Avicii, whose recent True LP is a bizarre amalgamation of populist 4/4 dance music and country. Jaar sees this, along with Daft Punk’s recent embrace of live instruments on Random Access Memories (which was remixed in its entirety by Jaar and Harrington, under the name Daftside) as evidence of a broader cultural movement: “We all want to just go in this weird direction,” he suggests, “to combine these two things that really should not work.” That said, both members of DARKSIDE are keen to stress the project’s serendipitous origins. Without their creative relationship, Jaar explains, “I wouldn’t be making guitar music. So whether it’s part of the zeitgeist or not, honestly, Dave and I just needed to get into a studio

October 2013

DARKSIDE

together two years ago, we needed to make music.” Yet he is aware of the duo’s distinctive value, declaring himself to be “very excited by what is left to be done with rock instruments, and how they can be combined with electronic instruments in maybe novel ways... There’s something there which still excites me, the idea of layering real drums with electronic drums, and layering guitars with synths – there’s still, it seems to me, things there left to be done.”

“We all want to just go in this weird direction, to combine these two things that really should not work” Nicolas Jaar

From many producers, such sentiments might sound naïve, but even a cursory listen to Psychic demonstrates how assured Jaar and Harrington are in their ability to mould genuinely new, cohesive forms and textures from this combination of rock and electronica. While collaborations between artists from different generic backgrounds often feel awkward and artificial, the duo’s shared faith in the creative value of instinct and intuition allows them to avoid such pitfalls. That spirit, in fact, is wired into the band’s very reason for existence: DARKSIDE really developed as a means of pursuing improvisation and experimentation, aside from Jaar’s more high-profile solo work. “You know, we’d be in Oslo playing a festival

with Nico and we’d get asked to play an afterparty in a tiny club as DARKSIDE,” Harrington explains. “Basically all of those shows were experiments. Each one would be radically different. One would focus on playing slow, one would be focused on playing loud. It was just whatever was exciting us at the time: we could use these shows – that were mostly pretty small – as kind of workshops, experiments, little laboratory environments.” Of course, Jaar has always been known for his fearlessly unorthodox, improvisational approach to live performance as a solo artist as well; but both recognise that working as a duo has brought a new creative depth to the experience. Despite DARKSIDE’s germination in this kind of impromptu, small venue approach to live performance, both Jaar and Harrington are enthused by the prospect of touring larger venues in October, when they will play Fabric in London, Berghain in Berlin, and the AB Club in Brussels. For Harrington, “playing in larger venues can be very exciting. Sometimes DARKSIDE can be like a bulldozer if we want it to be, or a wrecking ball. What we do live is very much built around improvising, trying to do something that fits that room, that night, that moment. So if it’s a big room and a big moment, we’re gonna pull out the wrecking ball!” Jaar concurs, dismissing the idea that large venues are necessarily impersonal. “It can feel really good to play in front of a lot of people, because DARKSIDE’s music is kind of meant to fill a big space, and we feel very close to the crowd.” That represents one way in which the duo are crossing conventional boundaries between rock and electronica. “When you see those DVDs of Queen playing in the most gigantic stadiums,” Jaar explains, “guitar just does the job, you know? It’ll just fill any space, and so will huge electronic synths – with that, playing to a lot of people feels intimate.” That closeness is also maintained, Harrington stresses, by avoiding a conventional

CLUBS

performance of recorded material. “When everything’s on the line, when anything can happen, when you open yourself up to being an improviser and an experimenter, in front of a lot of people, those people become part of what you’re doing, whether they like it or not.” With its emphasis on slow and fluctuating BPMs, Psychic also suggests that the duo’s upcoming shows will challenge typical expectations of a dancefloor-friendly set at venues like Fabric and Berghain, just as Jaar’s solo shows have. He’s keen to stress, however, that the choice of venues doesn’t reflect a deliberate intention to explore the boundary between gig and clubnight; rather, he explains, such decisions are guided by the club scene’s emphasis on sound quality. “I want to play a show with the best sound possible, honestly. I don’t care about much else... I want the music to go through speakers that I can trust, so that’s why we picked those venues.” Characteristically, then, Jaar is unwilling to position himself as an artist who deliberately challenges orthodoxies, preferring to stress the instinctive approach behind his music. In Harrington, he’s clearly found a kindred spirit: through collaboration and improvisation, the project has further accentuated the sense of fluidity and possibility that has always permeated Jaar’s work. In fact, he’s so enthused by DARKSIDE that he believes the project represents a longterm future, despite his restlessly creative nature. “Most people usually start with a band and they go solo,” Jaar explains, “but I weirdly happen to have reversed that. I was solo for five years, but now this is a new phase.” As always, however, the only certainty is that whatever he goes on to do, Jaar will continue to produce music that defies expectations and conventions. DARKSIDE release Psychic via Matador on 7 Oct They play Fabric, London, 7 Oct www.darksideusa.com

Review

Clubbing Highlights The nights are drawing in, and shit is getting dark in more than just this basic meteorological way. As our clubs calendar heaves into motion, it brings in the heavies from Four Tet to Paul Woolford via Deep Space Orchestra, and a swansong from DJ Derek Words: John Thorp Illustration: Camille Smithwick

hough arguably underrated, Ewan Pearson is one of the dance music world’s most beloved producers; a forward-thinking and, well, generally always thinking figure. On 4 Oct, clubnight Cowbell Radio are bringing Pearson out from his adopted home of Berlin to Salford’s Islington Mill for another of their proper parties with a discerning but free-for-all feel (£10). The following day sees the debut at Manchester’s Sound Control of Guiltless Days, a new party running 2-8pm designed to lubricate you for an evening out and featuring disco extraordinaires Rory Phillips and Luke Unabomber (5 Oct, £13). Anyone intrigued by the record collection behind the ever-evolving style and output of Four Tet is guaranteed a very enjoyable field trip indeed on 10 Oct, when the wise and, let’s be honest, wonderful Kieran Hebden arrives for a five-hour set at The Shipping Forecast, Liverpool. Having spent the past couple of years skirting the edges of dance music’s better-established scenes (he inexplicably but refreshingly played at Ibiza’s Pacha this summer), Hebden has still had time to produce an LP for Syrian technofolk impresario Omar Souleyman, as well as the upcoming Beautiful Rewind for himself. Expect to hear new material, and some of the strangest and most invigorating club music around (£12). The afore-Tet mentioned [WOAHHH! – Ed] event is brought to you by Abandon Silence, who, one week beforehand, are also gifting Liverpool’s student masses and weeknight warriors a no doubt similarly thrilling back-to-back session from Ben UFO and Paul Woolford. The former is one of the most transcendent DJs the UK has seen in yonks, whereas Woolford has had a golden year even by his own standards, with the anthemic Untitled about to see a wider release after its Hotflush premiere earlier this year, and a doubtlessly rather more abrasive project from his hardcore-focused Special Request alias due this month. The night is of those that could go anywhere, and all the better for it – and Hoya:Hoya’s Krystal Klear brings fresh and archived funk and disco in support (3 Oct, £12). Selective Hearing have proven over the past few years to be one of the most effective, no-bullshit party promoters in the Northwest, and while most of their work nowadays seems to take them across the Pennines to Leeds, their fearsome warehouse parties in mystery locations around Manchester have proven to be a big hit. With a location announced on the night as usual, on 5 Oct lucky punters can expect sets from Tom Demac of Aus Music, a live set from much loved underground techno madman Basic Soul Unit, and New York’s Anthony Naples, whose productions – including last year’s incomparable Mad Disrespect – demand much deserved attention (£10 earlybirds, £12/£15 advance). See you there? Wherever it is we’re going. Bridging the gap between Liverpool and Manchester like a musical M62, Scenery Records are bringing a one-off showcase of their forward-thinking and occasionally nostalgic house sound to Soup Kitchen on 12 Oct. The line-up includes some proper cosmic disco exploration from Deep Space Orchestra, a live set from

Preview

CLUBS

Merseyside’s Bantam Lions, and label head and former Skinny feature star Stu Robinson under his ASOK alias – as well as the impeccably named Audinary People (£5). Meanwhile, back on Merseyside, there’s three shades of rave from Chibuku at East Village Arts Club with one of the most increasingly popular DJs of recent times, George Fitzgerald, demented techno and EBM from Gessafelstein, and – inexplicably only just about to release his first solo EP – Erol Alkan bridging the gap (12 Oct, £15). It’s always a pleasure to introduce readers to new talent, but very occasionally a well-respected figure on the scene might be doing the honourable thing and unplugging his decks when the time feels right. DJ Derek, the 73-year-old Bristolian reggae and dancefloor selector, has decided that said time is right now, or specifically New Year’s Eve 2013, when he’ll be seeing out a 50-year career with a final set of 60s rocksteady, reggae, ska, dancehall and soul music at London’s Notting Hill Arts Club. As well as an encyclopaedic knowledge of the aforementioned genres, Derek is a real-ale enthusiast with a visit to every operating Wetherspoons in the UK under his belt. Eschewing his favourite chain, he’ll be heading to Underdog for one last visit to Manchester on Sat 26 Oct (£4). Expect riddims, and sage, learned advice on the mic. Meanwhile in Old Trafford, with The Warehouse Project in full swing, fellow Bristol resident Julio Bashmore aims to battle the fullscale charismatic assault of Derek with one of the finest line-ups of the season, somehow not sold out at the time of writing. While Bashmore has his detractors after releasing the inescapable, builder-whistling-friendly crossover tune Au Seve, the line-up he’s put together for his WHP showing is one of this year’s best: as well as contemporary crowdpleasers such as Breach and Bicep, you’ll find fresh acid from Funkineven, a rare live band performance from Metro Area, and French touch heroes like Cassius and Laurent Garnier (26 Oct, £25). Elsewhere, although Moderat have been forced to pull out, Modeselektor’s annual Modeselektion bill two weekends earlier on 11 Oct (also £25) promises to do much of the same across the spectrum of techno – Dopplereffekt meet Karenn, among many others – now with an added, doubtlessly raucous performance from Modeselektor, who last year managed to coerce 3000 far-gone punters into sitting down on the floor for a classic jump-up. Finally, Liverpool is offered a taste of some of Manchester’s most reliable party starters on 25 Oct, when the Riot Jazz live band head to The Kazimer with a full show including bonus Chunky on the mic, while The Mouse Outfit perform tracks from Escape Music, one of the finest underground hip hop LPs this year, unfairly slept on over the summer. Rich Reason will be behind the decks, whipping up a proper party atmosphere with choice cuts of funk, hip hop and jazz throughout (£10). Ticket prices are advance unless otherwise specified; some events may be more on the door

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NOVEMBER

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Fri 4 October

October Film Events PRINCE AVALANCHE

We Are What We Are

Director: Jim Mickle Starring: Bill Sage, Ambyr Childers, Julia Garner, Michael Parks, Ethan Suplee, Nick Damici Released: 25 Oct Certificate: 15

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The Broken Circle Breakdown

Director: Felix Van Groeningen Starring: Veerle Baetens, Johan Heldenbergh, Nell Cattrysse, Geert Van Rampelberg, Nils De Caster Released: 18 Oct Certificate: 15

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Jim Mickle updates Jorge Michel Grau’s 2010 cannibal family drama in solid style, building on the promise of his low-key vampire saga Stake Land from the same year. Moving the action from a bustling Mexico City to rural USA, Mickle and co-writer Nick Damici have lost some of the original’s sharp political subtext – the impoverished being easy pickings in huge metropolises – but a shift to American Gothic and oppressive religious faith brings its own rewards. When their mother dies unexpectedly, teens Iris (Childers) and Rose (Garner) must take a more active role in the macabre household chores dictated by their zealot father Frank (Sage) – namely, preparing captured young women to be the main dish in their traditional family feast. Here character and emotional conflict provide the real dread as a doleful mood is maintained; this existential disquiet and melancholy prove welcome antidotes to the tiresome ‘Look! Surprise!’ brand of horror that’s currently in vogue. [Chris Fyvie]

Breaking up a film’s narrative chronology is always a risky endeavour. If not used judiciously and purposefully, such a tactic can appear to be nothing more than a gimmick, or a means to sweep storytelling deficiencies under the carpet. The Broken Circle Breakdown succeeds because director Felix Van Groeningen uses this approach to bring a sense of balance to the heart-wrenching story, and because his two leads, Veerle Baetens and Johan Heldenbergh, provide a tangible emotional honesty that helps to guide us through their shattered lives. As a musician couple who’ve lose their young daughter to cancer, Baetens and Heldenburgh never strike a false note, even when the latter is asked to tackle some odd political rants that feel awkwardly shoehorned into the otherwise tight script. The bold editing and imaginative cinematography impresses throughout, but it’s the soundtrack that proves to be The Broken Circle Breakdown’s biggest asset, with the bluegrass songs performed by the cast beautifully underscoring the characters’ fluctuating fortunes and augmenting the picture’s thematic weight. [Philip Concannon]

V/H/S/2

Crash Reel

Directors: Adam Wingard, Eduardo Sánchez, Simon Barrett, Gregg Hale, Gareth Huw Evans, Timo Tjahjanto, Jason Eisener Starring: Lawrence Michael Levine, Kelsy Abbott Released: 14 Oct Certificate: 18

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V/H/S/2 sprints on to the screen at the same manic pace as its splatterific predecessor, inviting a handful of filmmakers to do their worst with a selection of horror shorts. Director Adam Wingard kicks things off by starring as a bloke who can see dead people through his newly installed robotic eye. Next up, The Blair Witch Project co-creator Eduardo Sánchez straps a Go Pro camera to the hungry head of a freshly turned zombie, allowing us a grizzly glimpse at how the other half eat. Messy stuff. The Raid’s Gareth Evans and newcomer Timo Tjahjanto tackle the feature’s main event, Safe Haven, in which a documentary team witnesses the demonic second-coming of a crazed cult. And finally, Jason Eisener’s Slumber Party Alien Abduction finishes things off with a fright when some unexpected guests crash a teen sleepover. The final product is a lo-fi, handheld hellraiser with a varying success rate but with more ballsy gusto than most mainstream horrors. [Simon Bland]

Crash Reel, Lucy Walker’s compelling new documentary, has it all: sports rivalry, You’ve Been Framed-style carnage, family drama, and, in Kevin Pearce, an inspiration. In 2010, Pearce was one of the finest snowboarders on the planet. And then, with the Winter Olympics just a few weeks away, it all ended with a brutal wipeout that put him in a coma for six days. Walker’s movie is a diptych. Part one, composed of archive footage, shows Pearce’s charmed life up until his accident, the good times with his friends on the snowboarding circuit and the thrill of the sport captured through fish-eye lenses. Part two follows Pearce’s recovery and shows his determination to get back on the slopes – and, poignantly, the terror of the people closest to him that he might not be so lucky in his next spill. If this were a Hollywood movie, Pearce would have overcome his adversities and won gold. Real life, as it proves in Walker’s film, is far messier, far more humbling and far more heroic. [Jamie Dunn]

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Review

oof, it’s getting chilly, isn’t it? Luckily, cinemas are nice and cosy. First up this month is Grimmfest (2-6 Oct), Grimm Up North’s annual gory get-together boasting tonnes of tantalising horror. Exclusive screenings, Q&As and the chance to get zombiefied by SFX maestro Shaune Harrison – there’s something for every fright fanatic here. However, our pick has to be Grimm’s preview night screening of The Wicker Man: The Final Cut, which is followed by a Q&A with director Robin Hardy. To create this new edit of one of Britain’s best horrors, StudioCanal conducted a worldwide search for lost footage – and found it – making this Hardy’s definitive vision. Cult classics aside, we’d also suggest catching Curse of Chucky (2 Oct), the Hellraiser trilogy with cast Q&A (4 Oct), John Dies at the End (5 Oct), and the after-party on 6 Oct.

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For Those in Peril

David Gordon Green rejects his recent form for crude stoner clowning to provide more oblique, contemplative comedy with 80s-set Prince Avalanche. Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch are excellent as Alvin and Lance, two very different but equally moronic road crew crackpots discovering themselves and a semblance of perspective while maintaining the trail in a burnt-out Texan forest. Alvin, having taken on his partner’s brother Lance as a favour, is distraught at having his solitude disrupted by the younger man. An uptight mass of pretension and disdain, Alvin prefers to spend his time in the bush with self-improving introspection and taped German lessons, while loudmouth Lance longs for a trip to town to get laid. Rudd and Hirsch have great chemistry, and Green gives them room to develop their characters with a languid pace and unobtrusive style. This is a nuanced work with some ambiguous spiritual elements complementing all the male anxiety. A couple of older characters of mysterious origin intermittently dip in to add philosophical depth to an already smart two-hander. [Chris Fyvie]

Words: Simon Bland

Director: Lucy Walker Starring: Kevin Pearce, Shaun White Released: 4 Oct Certificate: 12A

Prince Avalanche

Director: David Gordon Green Starring: Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsch, Lance LeGault, Joyce Payne Released: 18 Oct Certificate: 15

The autumn leaves are beginning to turn a shade of red and so too are our movie screens as Grimmfest, Cornerhouse and Blackpool’s Outdoor Cinema serve up enough horror to see you through to All Hallows’ Eve

Director: Paul Wright Starring: George MacKay, Michael Smiley, Kate Dickie Released: 4 Oct Certificate: 18 “Respect the sea, because the sea’s the master,” reflects a voice over ominous images of crashing waves. It’s surely the boss of Aaron, whose brother and crew were swallowed by it on his virgin fishing voyage. Survivor guilt manifests as he sponges up the community’s shared grief. Superstition fills the gaps in their comprehension of death; they turn to myth, a type of sacrifice to the sea – their god and monster. Director Paul Wright shows enough verve to cut through the kitchensink morbidity miring so much UK film. Documentary-style footage punctures the bubble of cinema, allowing us to imagine the true tragedy of lost young lives – only one example of Wright’s inventive techniques. When the director tips the scales a little too far stylistically, however, serious flaws emerge; poetic inner monologues scream Terrence Malick mimicry, while metaphors are muddy. The film eventually unravels with Aaron’s fragile mind. Still, this is bold and interesting filmmaking, with a reliable and familiar cast supporting the strong performance of talented newcomer George MacKay. [Alan Bett]

FILM

CURSE OF CHUCKY

Speaking of frightening fun, don’t miss Cornerhouse Manchester’s British Gothic Double Bill on 26 Oct, where you’ll find Night of the Demon and Sir Christopher Lee’s Dracula playing back-to-back. Meanwhile, anti-horror folks might prefer John Ross’s Evidently... John Cooper Clarke, a doc chronicling the turbulent life and career of the Northern punk poet, which is followed by a live Q&A with the man himself. On 5 Oct, Manchester’s Video Jam heads to Liverpool to take part in Abandon Normal Devices festival. They’ll host an evening of experimental shorts stripped of their sound and scored by a selection of innovative musicians, artists and poets. Their pièce de résistance has avant-garde ensemble Ex-Easter Island Head score Ron Fricke’s non-narrative doc Baraka, the first film to be restored at 8K resolution. The whole event takes place in Liverpool’s ornate Anglican Cathedral and celebrates the life and career of Golden Age actress, Hedy Lamarr. If you do fancy braving the harsh October weather, give Blackpool’s Outdoor Cinema a visit. This newly installed drive-in is showing a selection of beauties on their 60m open-air screen at Whyndyke Farm. Over 2000 local film fans cast their vote and personally picked a nice mix of family fun for the daytime and something a little meaner for later on. Dirty Dancing and A Nightmare on Elm Street christen the screen on 25 Oct, with The Lion King, Grease and The Shining set for 26 Oct, and Dumbo, Toy Story, Star Wars and Halloween on 27 Oct. Lovely stuff.

THE SKINNY

Pieta

A Time to Love and a Time to Die

La Notte

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Director: Kim Ki-duk Starring: Jo Min-soo, Lee Jeong-jin Released: 14 Oct Certificate: 18 A divisive winner at last year’s Venice Film Festival, Pieta features an unpleasant protagonist who has unpleasantness revisited upon him, with onscreen emotions twisted and scarred with all the delicacy of a flame held to an open nerve. With mutilation and humiliation throughout, the film makes for a challenging watch, as debt collector Gang-do (Jeong-jin) ensures defaulters square their balance sheets even if it literally costs them an arm and a leg. When a woman (Min-soo) arrives at his door claiming to be the mother who abandoned him at birth, it triggers a bleak (but silly) oedipal revenge drama that, while too neatly circular to be plausible, uses its third act to dissect themes of guilt and retribution in a more nuanced way than its most histrionic moments might imply. Violence and redemption are familiar territories for writer/director Kim Ki-duk, but rarely are they proffered so confrontationally, with semi-vérité camerawork purposefully underscoring the ugliness. [Chris Buckle]

Director: Douglas Sirk Starring: John Gavin, Liselotte Pulver Released: Out now Certificate: PG

Douglas Sirk’s penultimate film is something of an anomaly in his body of work, but it’s also perhaps the most personal and interesting film he ever made. A Time to Love and a Time to Die is an adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel (which was burned by the Nazis), and in the opening moments the overwhelming sense of destruction and despair instantly establishes it as something far removed from the lush tales we expect from Sirk. There is a love story here, between John Gavin, playing a German soldier, and the spunky Liselotte Pulver, but it’s set against the ruined backdrop of a bombed-out Germany. There’s also an awkward but fascinating tension between traditional Hollywood storytelling and the bleak realism of the surroundings. Gavin and Pulver lack the chemistry and magnetism of the director’s erstwhile stars, but Sirk’s direction is as elegant as ever, and this is a strange, beautiful and touching late production from this often undervalued filmmaker. [Philip Concannon]

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau Released: Out now Certificate: 12 Has any director ever been as adept at exploring the spaces that exist between people as Michelangelo Antonioni? His 1961 film, La Notte, is the story of a married couple slowly drifting apart in Milan, when their visit to a hospitalised friend proves to be the catalyst that opens up long-hidden fissures in their relationship. The couple are played by Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau, and both actors are quietly mesmerising as they embark upon a 24-hour odyssey through the city – a city that ultimately becomes a key character in itself, as Antonioni and his extraordinary cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo brilliantly frame the characters against their environment (the use of reflections in windows and mirrors is astonishing). Some may feel suffocated or even bored by the deliberate pacing and creeping sense of ennui, but La Notte is a visually ravishing and deeply moving masterpiece, and patient viewers will be amply rewarded by a wonderful ending. [Philip Concannon]

Bachelorette

The Fury

The Last American Virgin

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Director: Leslye Headland Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher Released: 7 Oct Certificate: 15

This simple recipe will produce exactly one dimly generic comedy wedding film. You will need: three hateful female stereotypes, some cocaine, a plush hotel, one wedding dress and an overweight woman. (If you haven’t any Melissa McCarthy, Rebel Wilson will do.) Take a preppy control freak (Dunst) and combine with the news that her overweight friend dared wed, until she’s thoroughly soured. Slosh in a slut (Fisher) and a chain-smoking nihilist (Lizzy Caplan), and dispense these into a Manhattan hotel suite. Oil up a male stripper, sift in the cocaine and agitate until the bride (Wilson) is wretched. Combine the control freak and slut in a large wedding dress until destroyed. Put the remains of the dress in a strip club and spatter with bodily fluids. Pour this into a Bridesmaids-shaped mould and leave to fester until no traces of humour remain. Serve in a DVD case. [Kirsty Leckie-Palmer]

October 2013

Director: Brian De Palma Starring: Kirk Douglas, Andrew Stevens Released: 21 Oct Certificate: 18

A sort of blown-up companion to 1976’s Carrie, The Fury follows Peter Sandza (Douglas) as he searches for his psychic son, Robin (Stevens), who’s been kidnapped by one of those under-explained, villainous agencies that Hollywood just can’t get enough of. It begins with a marvellous set-piece: Sandza, Robin and an agent named Childress (John Cassavetes) are relaxing at the beach. Suddenly, a group of terrorists arrives, firing at everything in sight. But wait: amid the carnage, there’s Childress, sending Robin to safety and then talking to one of the ‘terrorists’. It turns out the whole thing’s a macabre hoax, designed to eliminate Sandza and fool Robin, whom Childress wants to experiment on. In a way, the opening is a synecdoche for the film itself; but instead of Robin, it’s we who are being fooled. The Fury is about as ludicrous as De Palma gets, but aesthetically there’s so much to admire that you just might fall for it. [Kristian Doyle]

DVD

Director: Boaz Davidson Starring: Lawrence Monoson, Steve Antin Released: Out now Certificate: 18 A near shot-for-shot remake of his cult Israeli coming-of-ager, Boaz Davidson’s The Last American Virgin is less a movie, more a succession of skits set to a great New Wave soundtrack (which often proves hilariously inappropriate – an abortion scene is inexplicably scored by U2’s I Will Follow). The thin plot revolves around three horny high school archetypes as they chase tail and get laid. Despite its sleazy premise, the film’s vibe is closer to the warm bonhomie of, say, Meatballs than the hateful vulgarity of Porky’s. But just when you settle into the predictable saucy shenanigans, things take a turn towards the melancholic. Perhaps a downbeat ending wasn’t too unusual back in 1982 – American cinema was still coming off the back of a decade’s worth of coal-black denouements. But today, post John Hughes and Cameron Crowe, who between them set the complacent formula for teen-movie fairy tales, it’s a refreshing punch to the gut. [Jamie Dunn]

Review

Ahmed & Carpenter: Aversion Management

Rogue Artists’ Studios & Project Space, Manchester, until 6 Oct

Islington Mill, Salford, until 9 Nov

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Islington Mill’s fifth floor is vast and doesn’t conform to traditional notions of gallery space. Windows are boarded up in preparation for the exhibition, paint is peeling from the bricks and the room appears semi-derelict. Such a space could easily put off a curator, but it is this rawness that Simon Morrissey has fed off and embraced. On the first floor of the exhibition the works are placed sparsely in pockets around the cavernous room, creating a highly choreographed setting. The works appear independent from one another, yet the narrative that is whispered throughout Plan for a Ruin interconnects them. Heather and Ivan Morison’s work creates a dissonance within the space, transporting you outside of the walls of the industrial mill and out into the natural world. A bench made of cast iron sits in front of a pile of ashen bones constructed to look like a fire that will never keep you warm. Hung on the wall only feet away is another work from the duo, a photograph of a decomposing cat with geometric shapes embellishing the body, fossilising the creature in a crystalline form. Sitting on Heather and Ivan Morison’s bench you face out towards David Wojtowycz’s video

projection, The Lake. An eerie soundtrack beams out filling the whole of the floor. The droning sound mirrors the looping video; a plane of water behaves in a seemingly unnatural way, creating an atmosphere of beautiful uneasiness. The stillness of the exhibition is reflected in James Parkinson’s series of paintings. Parkinson’s subtle application of different materials and hues of paint create architectural shapes, forming a space that will never exist. 243,000mm, by Melanie Counsell, encased in a glass frame, is 16mm film that measures itself and can never be shown. A relic of something that never existed, 243,000mm would catch fire and destroy itself if it were ever played. Upstairs, Counsell’s model, a concept for a space that cannot be inhabited, is pivotal for the whole exhibition and links the two floors. Using transponders to turn a wall into a speaker, Marie Toseland’s sound piece loops a description of an ice block melting; the factual tone creates a sense of ease, making you question what it was you heard in the second passage. [Ali Gunn] Plan for a Ruin is curated by Simon Morrissey, director of Bristol based WORKS|PROJECTS. The exhibition acts as a contrast to WORKS|PROJECTS presentation at Manchester Contemporary www.islingtonmill.com

AHMED & CARPENTER

A brutal form of converging lines and reflective space, the piece seeks to address the human need to make work become more efficient. Without being able to read the Payment Policies Document or knowing whether they have met their targets, it is difficult to assert whether the artists have been successful in their contractual obligations. Performing the role of exhibition manager, Ahmed & Carpenter have instigated full control over the artists and the exhibition, authoring the whole action as an artwork in itself. By creating a corporate environment in a space that is normally autonomous, Ahmed & Carpenter are bringing the economic relationship between artist and curator/gallery to the forefront of the discussion. Ahmed & Carpenter will release a full evaluation of the project and the artists’ contributions/ remunerations once the exhibition opens to the public. [Ali Gunn] Open by appointment www.rogueartistsstudios.co.uk

OPEN ART

COMPETITION

2013 Photography Portrait (inc. Digital Art) Drawing

1st Prize £500

2nd Prize £300

3rd Prize £200

Entry Registration & Artwork Submission: Wednesday 11th & Thursday 12th September, 3.00pm - 8.00pm

Exhibition Preview:

Prize-giving Ceremony: Open Art Exhibition:

Thursday 19th September 6.00pm - 8.00pm

Thursday 19th September 6.45pm

Friday 20th September Saturday 9th November 10.00am - 4.00pm

The World of Glass, Chalon Way East, St.Helens, WA10 1BX For further information or to download an entry form, visit: www.sthelens.gov.uk/openart or call: 01744 22766 RAINFORD TRUST

Review

ART

THE SKINNY

Photo: Emily Reid

Plan for a Ruin

Abstract

PLAN FOR A RUIN

Loss aversion theory and target-based pay scales are more akin to a sales environment than a gallery, but, for Aversion Management, Ahmed & Carpenter have created pressurised working conditions for artists Hannah Dargavel-Leafe, Adam Renshaw and Thomas Yeomans. In Aversion Management the relationship between artist and gallery is analogous to that between employee and employer, with both parties working towards the shared goal of producing content for public viewing. Employed to create new work responding to the topic of ‘work,’ the artists had to meet targets outlined in their Payment Policies Document in order to earn the maximum fee for their labour. Visitors to the exhibition literally step on to Adam Renshaw’s work. Instructed to create a site-specific piece that would act as legacy for Ahmed & Carpenter’s management of Rogue Project Space, he has used Tarmac to mark out the boundary of one corner of the Project Space, creating a physical manifestation of a performative action; interpreting ‘work’ as physical labour. Thomas Yeomans’ film, Eternal September, which is projected on to a wall, is a collage of effortlessly edited found footage. The mixture of sports, creative and corporate imagery alights on the 21st-century quest to work harder and achieve more. Eternal September presents a hyperreality, a lifestyle embedded with stylised objects, social trends and competition between one another. Taking a more transcendental approach to the exhibition topic, Hannah Dargavel-Leafe has created a large-scale sculpture. Tasked with creating an architectural structure that will exist in four dimensions, Dargavel-Leafe’s piece is a mass of geometric shapes and transparencies.

Landscape

Photo: A.P Macarte

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Hirsutes You, Sir! Or, why male comedians may put more into their appearance than you first thought Words: John Stansfield Illustration: Greg Wynne

ou can’t always judge a book by its cover. Unless that cover has several wolves and an eagle on it. Also, if its title refers to ‘killing’ or ‘the end of days’. Then you can go ahead and presume it’s the greatest piece of literature since Apocalypse Howl by Franco Vendetta. If you are the kind of person that judges books by covers, you more than likely judge humans by hairstyles. Which is also a risky business. Unless of course those people are comedians, in which case there is a fair chance you can get all the information you need about them by their preferred coifs. Some comedians actively encourage this judging, letting you know what you’re in for by the style they sport, slavishly attending to a barnet so that you will know if they are about to spout absurdisms, observations or pithy one-liners. Some, though, just like to look pretty for you. Balding It is a natural part of male life that you will lose hair as you get older. For most, a quick Bic razor to the remainder of the hair will suffice, letting you go about your day. For comedians, however, this is something that can be used to set tone. World-weariness sounds better coming from someone who may have torn their own hair out at the vapidity of youth and the stupidity of the modern world. Offering up vicious barbs about the decline of man can be very depressing, but uproariously funny. Examples: Louis CK, Larry David, Dara Ó Briain.

X and Y D

espite this being a stellar year for women at the Edinburgh Fringe, with Adrienne Truscott and Bridget Christie claiming the big prizes for their shows with an unashamed feminist backbone, there are still those who believe women have no place being funny: an opinion a good few women intend to change, as they celebrate those born without a Y chromosome who are in the business of making us laugh at this month’s ‘Women in Comedy Festival, running 1-27 Oct across Manchester. The first of its kind in the UK, the festival intends to showcase the best female stand-up, comedy theatre, spoken word and improvisation, featuring around 100 events across various venues that, here, we have hubristically whittled down into three picks. On Wed 9 Oct, former reality TV contestant (Survivor 2001), ex-psychologist and current very talented stand-up Zoe Lyons performs at

October 2013

A Haircut This is when someone has had their hair done to such a degree that it’s all you can think about. It takes over. Highlights, straighteners, curlers and an atomic amount of hairspray make the act look different, letting you know from the off that they will be as flamboyant and ridiculous as their bouffant. Comedy audiences can be judgmental folks, so having such a ludicrous haircut can give you a mountain to climb from the off – and goes a long way towards why people are only now warming to Russell Brand, despite his solid comedy chops that have been in evidence for years. Examples: Russell Kane, Russell Brand, Noel Fielding.

Long Hair Long hair will always single you out. No matter where you are from, it always seems that having long hair is subverting normal practices. How dare you not get your hair cut you hippy! Being different from a young age helps these comedians to form their own outsider view of the world – to see it from outside the mainstream, and thusly to have a more astute yet whimsical take on the things we take for granted. And in being smelly, untrustworthy, smelly hippies, there’s a good chance they’ve partaken of strange substances, helping to colour their worldview and therefore enhance yours. Examples: Ross Noble, Bill Bailey, Mitch Hedberg.

The premise of the first UK Women in Comedy Festival is the subject of much debate, but either way, it’s happening, and in a big way, with gigs all over Manchester throughout the month. We choose some chuckles

The Frog & Bucket (7pm, £7 advance, £10 on the door). Appearances on Mock the Week, Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and Dave’s One Night Stand have cemented Lyons’ place on the comedy circuit, and an affable charm combining the mundane with the whimsical means that Lyons can make even the most commonplace – and sometimes disgraceful – goings-on seem delightful. Her reappropriation of gender roles and stereotypes is a breath of fresh air in comparison to the lazy one-dimensional musings some hacks attribute to what it is to be man or woman. Daring without being terrifying, Lyons is a great comic performer and one we urge you to see live. Barbara Nice is the kind of woman you would call ‘Auntie’ when you were a kid, knowing full well she wasn’t your Auntie. Also, you’d look forward to her visits because she would bring balloons and generally be the most fun lady you’d ever

met. Mrs Merton without the tragedy and snide edge, Barbara Nice performs a family friendly matinee show at The King’s Arms, Salford, on Thu 10 Oct at 5.30pm before performing a later, slightly more adult show at 7.30pm in the same venue (both gigs £6 adv, £8 otd). No stranger to a double shift, Mrs Nice should enchant with her stories from the backyards and supermarkets of her native Stockport. Her cheeriness is infectious, and if you don’t catch it, she may just pull you up on stage until you do. Duo Norris & Parker have just returned from an extremely successful debut stint at the Fringe with their show All Our Friends Are Dead, daily performances of which went from strength to strength at Ryan’s Cellar Bar in Edinburgh and can now be seen at the Lass O’Gowrie on Sat 12 Oct (8pm, £3). Switching between roles, they are reminiscent of early League of Gentlemen,

COMEDY

Disheveled Displaying as much disregard for their audiences as they do for their physical appearances, these comics will mostly seem drunk, drugged or otherworldly. Not caring about conventions means these cavemen-like characters can play with traditional comedy tropes and offer something new – and they give you fair warning of how many directions their mind will go in by the wayward follicles sprouting from their dome. A beard as haphazard as their mane may indicate an even weirder experience. Examples: Zach Galifianakis, Reggie Watts, Dylan Moran.

Words: John Stansfield

their gender-bending sketches relying more on weird and wistful characters rather than strict set-up and gag territory. The comedy comes from the pair’s dedication to their creations. They love them and hate them all at the same time. They’ve been the subject of a lot of lazy comparisons with other female duos, because of course that’s much easier, but of all the double acts tossed at them, it is probably most fitting to put them in the dark comic territory of the collaborations between Jessica Hynes and Julia Davis, specifically Lizzie and Sarah. That show, however, never made it past the pilot stage, despite being brilliant – let’s hope Norris & Parker go a lot further. www.womenincomedy.co.uk

Preview

Venue of the Month: Contact In Contact’s new artistic director, Matt Fenton, we find an enthusiastic voice behind a theatre of youthful excitement and near-reckless daring Words: Conori Bell-Bhuiyan for young artists, and that won’t be changing anytime soon. “Rather than importing my taste, I’m working with the young people at Contact to develop what the vision is,” he says. “And the programme that they’ve been putting together is absolutely amazing.” That’s not to say he doesn’t have ambitious ideas of his own: “I want the theatre to be much better known,” he says, “in the city, and nationally – and I want to expand our audiences... I’m interested in more international work here but also, really importantly for me, is to get Contact’s young people’s work shown internationally as well.” He also explains that he wants people to move away from the idea of theatre as a fixed genre of art, and to be open to more experimental work that doesn’t exactly meet the specifications of traditional theatre. “I’m not really

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

worried about whether we call it ‘theatre’ or not,” he explains. “I’m interested in events – in performances – that draw on all different kinds of art forms. Contact have always been miles ahead of the game when it comes to merging things like spoken word, rap, street art, performance, dance, MC-ing, DJ-ing… all of that is in the mix here.” Fenton is awash with enthusiasm when it comes to the venue’s “brilliant” upcoming programme, and his new position seems to consist of negotiating a never-ending stream of interesting ideas, projects and performances. Launching on 3 Oct, the autumn season’s first show could be seen as a showcase of everything the organisation does well: from returning company 20 Stories High, Melody Loses Her Mojo (1-5 Oct, various times, £11 (£6)) weaves theatre, spoken word, hip-hop, dance, street art and even a little

Crime and Punishment

back in the 70s), plays wily detective Porfiry, and Adam Best (who you might recognise from Holby City, but who’s also got solid stage credentials) stars as murderous but endlessly fascinating Although Dostoevsky’s reputation rests on a protagonist Raskolnikov. number of hefty, fiercely inward-looking novels, The impressive team behind the produchis work attracts more theatrical adaptations tion, which includes director Dominic Hill (who’s than you might expect. But then, as Virginia also the artistic director of Glasgow’s Citizens Woolf wrote, his books, far from being tiresome, long-winded tomes, are more like ‘seething whirl- Theatre), are keen to capture the spirit of the novel in any way they can. “There is a lot of varipools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in.’ Chris Hannan, who’s ety in the play,” Hannan tells me. “There’s music, there’s song, there are radio techniques, stunresponsible for adapting Dostoevsky’s most faning lighting. The production never settles down mous novel for the stage, couldn’t agree more. Crime and Punishment, Hannan tells us, “has into one monotonous style. It’s continually lookgot everything. It’s a crime thriller meets Karl ing to tell the story in the freshest way possible. Marx and Jesus Christ. It’s set in the slums but it “All of this,” he says, “is a way of bringing out deals with the big philosophical issues.” It’s perthe essential quality of Dostoevsky – he doesn’t fect for a stage adaptation, because it’s dramatic see anything as fixed, he sees people and charto the core: “The hero commits a murder so acter as always in crisis, always at a moment of throughout the story there’s a hideous suspense. change. There’s a line in the play – ‘Everybody Will he be caught?” It has a definite “thriller elewants to change the world. Nobody thinks to ment,” he says, but ultimately it works so well on change themselves.’ The novel and the play are the stage because “Dostoevsky creates characabout a person who has to change and change ters who are engaged in huge emotional crises, utterly. We take the audience on that journey.” and that’s meat-and-drink for drama.” [Kristian Doyle] Of course, there’s a lot more to it than the Crime and Punishment , Liverpool Playhouse, 1-19 Oct, source text. George Costigan, who has a long various times, from £12 relationship with the Liverpool Everyman www.everymanplayhouse.com Playhouse (he was a member of the company

Preview

www.contactmcr.com

MELODY LOSES HER MOJO

Liverpool Playhouse, 1-19 Oct

puppetry into the innovative story of three young misfits. The following week brings an ominous and sensuous retelling of Cinderella in the form of emerging company RashDash Theatre’s The Ugly Sisters (11-12 Oct, 8pm, £11 (£6)). Caroline Horton presents Mess (16-17 Oct, 7.30pm, £11 (£6)), which, tackling anorexia, has won acclaim everywhere it’s been; and of course, it wouldn’t be Contact without even more of a hip-hop vibe, and Jonzi D will be bringing his Lyrikal Fearta collection (23-24 Oct, 8pm, £11 (£6)) featuring a brand new piece about the fractured lineage between modern hip-hop and old skool hip-hop. Forced Entertainment – a group known for their innovation – will also be turning up with Tomorrow’s Parties (31 Oct-1 Nov, 8pm, £14 (£8)), an exploration of the many possible futures, absurd or otherwise, that could be coming our way.

Melody Loses Her Mojo

Contact, Manchester, 1-5 Oct Hip-hop, beatboxing, slam poetry and puppetry are at the heart of a brand new drama about the lives of young people in care. The latest touring production from Liverpool-based young people’s theatre company 20 Stories High, Melody Loses Her Mojo, written and directed by the company’s artistic director Keith Saha, combines all their trademarks for a show that lives up to its promise of being “full of surprises.” “Our ethos is everybody’s got a story to tell and their own way of telling it,” says Saha of 20 Stories High. “Melody Loses Her Mojo is inspired by real stories about real people. It’s challenging stuff and it goes to quite difficult places. It’s a journey from childhood to adulthood.” The play is inspired by Saha’s own experiences, as well as those of some of the company’s young actors. Melody – a striking performance from Remmie Milner – has been separated from her little sister Harmony, but keeps the younger girl’s toy monster, Mojo, as a reminder to keep her on the straight and narrow and that they will one day be together again (which is where

THEATRE

the puppetry comes in; Milner interacts with the toy, like a conscience). “When I’m feeling down he helps me lay off the Bacardi Breezers,” she says of her Mojo. “Just watch a DVD with a box of Malteasers.” But when new girl Blessing (Simone James) arrives from Nigeria and tries to steal her best mate, Rizla (Darren Kuppan), Melody’s demons begin to take over her Mojo with serious consequences. The story is enhanced by the involvement of 20 Stories High’s largest creative team to date, which includes puppet director Sue Buckmaster from specialist company Theatre-Rites, choreographer Kwesi Johnson from London-based dance and physical theatre group Kompany Malakhi, club art from visual artist Mark Wigan, cellist Hannah Marshall, and international beatboxing champion Hobbit. The company has always incorporated a love of hip-hop in its work and promotes the positive side of it – lyricism, dance and music, and social awareness – while challenging the idea of a showy, intolerant bling culture. [Vicky Anderson] Melody Loses Her Mojo opened at Liverpool Playhouse on 20 Sep and calls at Contact, Manchester, 1-5 Oct, £11 (£6)

THE SKINNY

Photo: Robert Day

n the approach to Manchester’s Contact theatre, Oxford Road – currently welcoming its newest batch of university freshers – is as buzzing as the venue’s new artistic director, Matt Fenton. He’s in his third week of the job, assuming the position following the resignation of Baba Israel in December last year, and he’s jumped to the task with an infectious enthusiasm: “I’m really up for it!” he exclaims. Despite the title, however, Fenton – who was previously, as director of Live at LICA, in charge of programming at Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts – is quick to stress that he’s not planning to boss everyone around by himself. “My job is less to come in with grand ideas, and more to facilitate artists and young people and communities to help define what the programme at Contact will be,” he insists. Contact has always been a place inspired by and providing a platform

Photo: Tim Morozzo

JONZI D

BOOK OF THE MONTH

MaddAddam

The Son

Half the Kingdom

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By Margaret Atwood

by Philipp Meyer

By Lore Segal

Brand New Ancients

By Kate Tempest

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The transition from rapper and performance poet to page poet is not an easy one, but Kate Tempest has managed it with graceful ease. Brand New Ancients is the culmination of her success so far, for which she has earned the Ted Hughes Award for Innovation in Poetry. Tempest has toured the UK with this epic poem set to a musical score, most recently appearing to sellout crowds at the Fringe. The poem focuses on two inner-city families whose lives are irrevocably woven together. Drawing heavily on Ancient Greek mythology, it tells of characters whose lives may at first seem mundane, but which hang heavily with acts of bravery, brutality and love no less worthy than those found in the gods of old: ‘The Gods are still here, / Because the gods are in us.’ Performance poetry often loses something vital when it appears on the page, but this is certainly not the case here. The poem is shocking and all consuming, leaving the reader hungry for more of the gritty beauty of Tempest’s words. Despite the bleak urban backdrop, the poem is ultimately redemptive: ‘You born for greatness; / believe it. Know it. / Take it from the tears of poets.’ [Rosie Hopegood] Out now, published by Picador, RRP £9.99

MaddAddam is the last instalment in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian trilogy that began with Oryx and Crake and continued with The Year of the Flood. The novel follows a group of post-pandemic survivors – the Gardeners, a one-time ecospiritual group, and the Crakers, a new species bioengineered to replace humans. The Crakers are one of the book’s most interesting elements and are designed to lack human flaws: they are vegan, require no homes or clothing, mate in groups, and experience no sexual jealousy. The novel shifts between Gardener Toby’s presentday life and defence of the compound, and the telling of her lover Zeb’s past and that of his brother, Adam. In her signature style, Atwood deftly balances original and timely philosophies with sharp satire. She brings to life genetically modified organisms that include human-goat splices called the Mo’Hairs and human-pig splices called Pigoons. Atwood’s inventions are eerily conceivable and her ideas are, as always, foresighted if not borderline prescient. The book’s appeal, as is the case with the trilogy as a whole, arguably lies predominantly in those ideas, while fiction elements like characterisation, setting and story are less generously crafted. Ultimately, it is MaddAddam’s complexity, sardonic humour and acute insights that make the novel an engrossing read. [Dima Alzayat] Out now, published by Bloomsbury, RRP £18.99

Rumours of Philipp Meyer’s method approach to research have swirled around his second novel, The Son. At last August’s Edinburgh International Book Festival he spoke of learning to track and hunt to better understand the lives of the American Plains Indians. He also confirmed drinking significant quantities of buffalo blood – consumed in Comanche rituals – in order to accurately describe its taste. Following in a Southern Gothic tradition, there are traces of Faulkner everywhere, but it is Cormac McCarthy’s brutal rewriting of the Old West in Blood Meridian this feels closest to. The extent of Meyer’s research is evident, not just in the firsthand experiences he feeds directly into the narrative, but more tellingly in the vast history of Texas he draws from. The Son is the story of three generations of McCulloch. In alternating chapters we follow Eli (known as the Colonel in later life) – kidnapped by and ingratiated into a Comanche tribe – his disapointment of a son, Pete, and his great-granddaughter and oil magnate Jeannie. Meyer’s book is a retelling of the American creation myth, an unflinching look at how fragile the bonds of love and family are, but most strikingly a testament to the inescapable cruelty of men, which has shaped history throughout the centuries. Never quite finding the beauty or elegiac notes of McCarthy, this is still a first-rate historical novel and a modern American classic. [Ryan Rushton]

In 1985, The New York Times declared that Segal was “closer than anyone to writing the Great American Novel.” Not only is this bewildering, it’s harmful: if that race didn’t end with Melville, it’ll never end, and to burden someone with such an impossible task is to set them up for certain failure. Unfortunately, her latest novel doesn’t just fall short of Moby-Dick – it falls short of Pierre. Joe Bernstine, an ageing eschatology buff, has assembled a team to compile The Compendium of End-of-World Scenarios. Soon, however, his team are roped into assisting a local hospital with a strange Alzheimer’s ‘outbreak.’ One by one they interview the victims, and one by one we’re introduced to new characters. It’s a creaky contrivance, but it’s nothing compared with the novel’s real problem. See, despite its preoccupation with grand themes (family, ageing, death), and its attempt to capture, through its hopelessly fractured narrative, the fluctuations and vicissitudes of existence as we really experience it, it’s a shallow, artificial book. Dozens of characters flit through the text – they’re named, nicely sized up (‘legs mapped with varicose veins’), given a snappy backstory; they display a quirk here, make an arch remark there (‘Kafka wrote slice-of-life fiction’) – but, ultimately, few of them manage to possess even a glimmer of life. [Kristian Doyle] Out 10 Oct, published by Melville House, RRP £15.99

Out now, published by Simon & Schuster UK, RRP £14.99

Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow and Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh present

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J O U R N A L I S M

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Illustration: Sophie Freeman

October 2013

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Review

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WIN TICKETS TO SEE PET SHOP BOYS AT EDINBURGH’S HOGMANAY

Edinburgh’s Hogmanay and The Skinny are giving you the chance to welcome in 2014 in style with tickets to see Pet Shop Boys at this year’s Concert in the Gardens, the music and fireworks spectacular on Tuesday 31 December. With over 50 million records sales worldwide, 22 Top 10 singles, including four No.1 hits, Pet Shop Boys are listed as the most successful duo in UK music history. This exclusive UK show celebrates a landmark 21st anniversary for Edinburgh’s Hogmanay and promises a night packed with greatest hits, fireworks and very special guests to be announced. For regular artist updates and programme announcements register at: www.edinburghshogmanay.com

We've got two pairs of tickets to give away. To be in with a chance of winning, just log on to theskinny.co.uk/about/competitions and tell us: What was the Pet Shop Boys’ first UK No.1 single? A) B) C)

West End Girls Left to my Own Devices It’s a Sin

Louder Than Words is a brand new genre-based literary festival celebrating words – oral, written and published – associated with the music industry. Authors, artists, poets, performers, lyrics and lyricists, journalists, DJs, aficionados, bloggers and publishers of music and popular culture are all included, sharing conversations, discussions, debates, interviews and casual opportunities for further engagement. The weekend festival takes place at The Palace Hotel, Manchester, 15-17 November 2013.

Competition open to over 16s only. Please include your location in the entry.

More and all information at: www.louderthanwordsfest.com

Competition closes midnight Sun 2 Nov. Winners will be notified via email within two working days of closing and will be required to respond within 48 hours or the prize will be offered to another entrant. Full terms and conditions can be found at www.theskinny.co.uk/about/terms.

We have a pair of weekend rover tickets to give away to one winner. To be in with a chance of winning, just head to theskinny.co.uk/about/ competitions and correctly answer the following question:

The festival opening night includes a music quiz by which author, frontman and indie music mainstay? A) B) C)

Rob John John Robb Joss Tom

Competition open to over 18s only. Competition closes midnight Sun 20 Oct. Winners will be notified via email within two working days of closing and will be required to respond within 48 hours or the prize will be offered to another entrant. Full terms and conditions can be found at www.theskinny.co.uk/about/terms.

Want something to get your teeth into? Vote in The Skinny Food and Drink Survey 2014 Support your favourite venues and tell us what you think Closes 24 Nov 2013 tinyurl.com/foodsurveyNW

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Illustration: Caroline Dowsett

COMPETITIONS

THE SKINNY

Manchester Music Tue 01 Oct

NIGHT & DAY’S LOCAL SHOWCASE

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £5

Live music showcase, giving a stage to local up-and-coming performers.

XIBALBA + HIEROPHANT (BELOW)

THE STAR AND GARTER, 19:00–22:00, £8

California’s hardcore troublemakers Xibalba play a double headline European tour with blackened hardcore Italians, Hierophant. FLEETWOOD MAC

PHONES4U ARENA, 20:00–22:00, FROM £50

The legendary British-American ensemble play a set of hits. HOBBIE STUART

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–22:30, £8

Roberto Stuart da Cunha Lima, aka Hobbie Stuart – which is less brain breaking to spell – takes his YouTube-famous singer/songwriter thing on the road.

MARQUES TOLIVER & THE SOMETIMES

FAT FREDDY’S DROP (ADE SULEIMAN)

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–22:30, £9

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £22.50

The Florida-residing songwriter/ producer/violinist takes his debut album, Land of CanAan out on the road. SATANIC DYSTOPIA (UNDER THE HORNS + LORDS OF BASTARDS)

FALLOW CAFE, 19:30–23:00, £3

Black/thrash metal four-piece from The North, bringing their début album, Double Denim Shotgun Massacre to a live setting. GERARD & THE WATCHMEN

THE CASTLE HOTEL, 19:30–23:00, £6

Alternative folk lot rich with harmonies and prone to grabbing whatever instrument comes to hand.

RECKLESS LOVE (LAURA WILDE)

Heavyweight (geddit?) purveyors of soul and danceable music, touring with their latest album, Blackbird. BLACK SPIDERS (HAWK EYES + BABY GODZILLA)

CLUB ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £10

Rock lot from Sheffield, usually found rockin’ and/or rollin’, or in this case, touring with their latest album, This Savage Land. THE CULT OF DOM KELLER (THE JANITORS + BASE VENTURA)

ROADHOUSE, 19:30–23:00, £7

Nottingham-based psychedelic four-piece, still riding the wave of a successful year that includes

Merry metal outfit hailing from Finland, touring with their latest album, Spirit.

the Black Angels asking them to play at Austin Psyche Fest.

ED SCHRADER’S MUSIC BEAT (COWTOWN + HORRID) ISLINGTON MILL, 19:30–23:00, £5

Baltimore’s Ed Schrader’s Music Beat return to the Mill following their appearance at Orbit: A Show In Seven Parts last year – bringing the rock, as per.

GRAPHIC SCORES (JOANNA MACGREGOR + ELAINE MITCHENER + TOM ARTHURS + OLIVER COATES + ISAMBARD KHROUSTALIOV)

ROLLER TRIO (GO GO PENGUIN)

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:30–23:00, £10

Wed 02 Oct YUCK (OLIVER WILDE)

SOUP KITCHEN, 19:30–22:30, £9.50

Noise-pop 90s revivalists, building their sound around the lullaby-lilt of Daniel Blumberg’s ghosting tones. RICHARD II

CLUB ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £10

An innovative live show fronted by artistic director, Akala, exploring the parallels between William Shakespeare’s work and modern day music and spoken word theatre. Rescheduled date. PETULA CLARK

THE LOWRY, 20:00–23:00, FROM £19.50

International, award-winning singer, active on the music scene since 1949. THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 19:30–23:00, £15

Indie rock lot from California, borrowing their name from Don DeLillo’s White Noise.

FROGBELLY AND SYMPHONY (DENIS JONES)

FALLOW CAFE, 19:30–22:30, £5

Thomas, Liz, Benjamin and Ray/Ally showcase their debut album, The Eye – a Kickstarter funded project. ZERVAS & PEPPER (TOM HICKOX)

THE CASTLE HOTEL, 19:30–23:00, £7

Cosmic folk rock five-piece, formed in 2007 when Cardiffbased singer/songwriters Paul Zervas and Kathryn Pepper discovered a mutual love of harmony-heavy folk.

Thu 03 Oct BEANS ON TOAST

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £6

Politically-charged one man folkmachine from London, via Essex. TONIGHT ALIVE

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3 19:30–23:00, £12

IONA BAND ON THE WALL, 19:30–23:00, £13

Celtic folk band with a distinctly progressive sound.

Fri 04 Oct WHEATUS (MC LARS)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3 19:30–23:00, £13

New York indie-popsters led by Brendan B. Brown and his heartfelt nasally drawl, forever defined by hit single Teenage Dirtbag. SO SOLID CREW

THE RITZ, 18:30–22:30, £13.50

The long-awaited return of the Battersea-based garage, grime and hip hop collective, responsible for such earworms as 21 Seconds. LIAM FROST (BIRD TO BEAST)

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–22:30, £10

Hailed as the UK’s answer to Bright Eyes, local boy Liam Frost blends delicious alt-folk melodies with heartfelt lyrics – all while navigating hefty subject matter. Playing a series of dates in his home town, with an extra date added due to demand. BLACK LIGHTS (YOUNG WAR + HUGO KENSDALE)

FALLOW CAFE, 19:30–23:00, FREE

A trio of local rock acts, er, rock out. THE JOHNNY CASH ROADSHOW

OPERA HOUSE, 19:30–22:00, FROM £18

A musical journey through the life and music of the legend, Johnny Cash. KIDS IN GLASS HOUSES (CARTEL + PROPELLERS)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2 19:30–23:00, £13.50

The Cardiff hailing rock styled five-piece, touring with their latest album, Peace.

JOHNNY BORRELL AND ZAZOU (PAT DAM SMYTH + Z BERG)

THE RUBY LOUNGE, 19:30–22:30, £10

Aussie rock ensemble led by ballsy young songstress Jenna McDougall and her inimitable soaring contralto.

The Razorlight frontman goes it solo, playing a full band set with his Zazou players – featuring piano, sax and Razorlight’s Fred Stitz on drums.

PHONES4U ARENA, 19:30–22:00, FROM £37.50

JAY Z

The American rapper and producer returns to Manchester to share tracks from his latest album, Magna Carta Holy Grail in an intimate setting.

JAY Z

The American rapper and producer returns to Manchester to share tracks from his latest album, Magna Carta Holy Grail in an intimate setting. PINS

DULCIMER, 19:30–00:00, £7

All-girl Mancunian quartet currently living out their love of the C86 sound.

October 2013

SMALL BLACK

NADINE SHAH

SOUP KITCHEN, 19:30–22:30, £6

Made up of front man Miles Hunt and violinist Erica Nockalls of The Wonder Stuff, the duo tour with their second studio album, Catching More Than We Miss. OXJAM MANCHESTER TAKEOVER: DAY 1

VARIOUS VENUES, 13:00–22:00, £8 EARLYBIRD (£10 THEREAFTER)

Oxfam take over the Northern Quarter (Bay Horse, Blue Pig, Dry Live, Matt and Phreds, Night and Day, Odd Bar, Takk, Thomas Street Cafe and TV21) with their eclectic mix of music spanning hip-hop, folk, disco and motown.

THE ENGLISH (Y KEY OPERATORS + IN PIXELS + PARALLEL OREOS + EDUCATED RISK) ROADHOUSE, 18:00–22:00, £5 ADV. (£7 DOOR)

Brit four-piece, channelling a retro vibe in line with their influences, namely Joy Division and The Beach Boys. MINOR BLUES

ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC, 19:30–23:00, £12

Composers and artists come together to create visual scores that allow musicians to play a picture – spanning everything from graphic art, comic strips and abstract art. SESSION AMERICANA

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:00–23:00, £12

Acoustic folk supergroup mashing together roots and Americana influences. THE BRAKES (SMALL GREEN INVASION + BLANK CHEQUE)

DRY LIVE, 18:30–22:30, £5

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 19:30–23:00, £14

The Welsh emo stalwarts take to the road armed with their new album, Conduit, which finds ‘em on particularly fine form. BRUNO MARS

PHONES4U ARENA, 19:30–22:00, £38.50

Mainstream American singer/ songwriter and producer, aka Peter Gene Hernandez. KING KRULE (FILTHY BOY)

THE RUBY LOUNGE, 19:30–22:30, £8

The teenage London newcomer (also known under his Archy Marshall and Zoo Kid alter egos), plays under his live four-piece guise, King Krule. SPLASHH (CHARLIE BOYER & THE VOYEURS)

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:30–22:30, £9

Australia, New Zealand and UKstraddling alternative dreamers. MANC FLOYD

CLUB ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £10

An evening of free acoustic music showcasing emerging talent from Manchester and the surrounding areas. SPACEHOG

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–23:00, £12.50

The English rock lot take to the road for their first UK tour in fifteen years, FOXES

ROADHOUSE, 18:00–22:00, £7

One-woman band rising along on Louisa Rose Allen’s resplendent synths, industrial percussion and by-turns-searing-and-soaring vocal. BOOTLEG FESTIVAL

Indie tribute band night. ISLINGTON MILL, 21:00–00:00, £6

Contemporary classical music group Psappha perform with Manchester-based producer Sam O'Neill aka TCTS. OXJAM MANCHESTER TAKEOVER: DAY 2

VARIOUS VENUES, 13:00–22:00, £8 EARLYBIRD (£10 THEREAFTER)

Oxfam take over the Northern Quarter (2022NQ, Gullivers, Matt and Phreds, Night and Day and Soup Kitchen) with their eclectic mix of music spanning hip-hop, folk, disco and motown.

Mon 07 Oct GLASVEGAS

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £16

Boom-voiced James Allan and co do their thing ahead of the release of their new LP: cue glacial guitars, heavyweight lyrics and mass audience singalongs.

SLEEPING WITH SIRENS (THE SUMMER SET + HANDS LIKE HOUSES + THE GETAWAY PLAN) MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £14

The Florida post-hardcore fiends bring their latest LP, Slow, to a live setting. MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 3 AND CLUB, 19:30–23:00, £15

THE PLAZA, 19:30–22:00, £26

Stars of the TV Series, The Choir take to the stage with all the biggest hits.

ROADHOUSE, 19:30–22:30, £5

Caveman doom warlords from Liverpool, who bring the bawdestroying riffs. LADY LAMB THE BEEKEEPER

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £5

ARUN GHOSH SEXTET (ZOE RAHMAN)

More supercharged rock’n’roll from the Jim Jones-led London quintet.

GORILLA, 19:30–22:30, £8

TIDESWELL MALE VOICE CHOIR + THE MILITARY WIVES

CONAN

BAND ON THE WALL, 18:00–23:00, FREE

SUNDAY ACOUSTIC SESSIONS (PAPA GUNS)

JOHNNY FLYNN AND THE SUSSEX WIT

Ohio-hailing singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has recorded with and founded Royal Crescent Mob, Howlin’ Maggie and the Twilight Singers, as well as performing with myriad others.

Tue 08 Oct

Clarinettist, Arun Ghosh presents his trademark IndoJazz, with a full band line-up.

Pink Floyd tribute act. HAPPY CHICHESTER

Psychedelic punk rock from the Los Angeles/Auckland-hailing duo, Helga Fassonaki and Andrew Scott.

The young Pittsburgh rapper and self-taught musician, aka Malcolm McCormick, tours his latest (admittedly poorly-titled) LP, Watching Movies With The Sound Off.

SACRED TRINITY CHURCH, 20:00–23:00, £8

FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND

METAL ROUGE (AULOS’ SECOND REED + CHALAQUE)

KRAAK, 19:30–23:00, £4

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:30–23:00, £10

PSAPPHA

Sat 05 Oct

GULLIVERS, 19:30-23:00, £4

The Chilean psych-pop duo showcase their spaced-out sophomore album, Noctuary.

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £17.50

MAC MILLER

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 19:30–23:00, £20 (£15)

Chicago-born musician and artist whose debut album consists of lofi demos recorded while homeless.

THE HOLYDRUG COUPLE

Sun 06 Oct

Indie blues five-piece from Manchester, offering up catchy riffs and sing-along choruses in equal measure. WILLIS EARL BEAL

Brooklyn-based four piece made up of Ryan Heyner, Josh Hayden Kolenik, Juan Pieczanski and Jeff Curtin, touring with their latest album, Limits of Desire, a stripped back experiment in the synth pop tradition.

Catch an intimate set from Aly Spaltro, aka Lady Lamb The Beekeeper, as she tours with her debut album, Ripley Pine, an album conceived in the back of the video store where she worked for four years.

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £5

Local DIY label, Scruff of the Neck Records present the Salford-based blues bunch as part of their longstanding monthly showcase.

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3 19:30–23:00, £11

Leeds-based young jazz tinkerers of the menacing and bass-heavy variety.

MILES & ERICA MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £10

After a two-year hiatus from the live circuit, folk-rock singer/songwriter Johnny Flynn dusts off his guitar for a mini tour in celebration of the release of his third LP with his The Sussex Wit cohorts. DEVON SPROULE & MIKE O’NEILL

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:30–23:00, £14

The Charlottesville singer/songwriter -and wife of musician Paul Curreri – embarks on a UK-wide mini-tour.

Wed 09 Oct

THE JIM JONES REVUE (THE AMAZING SNAKEHEADS)

THE RUBY LOUNGE, 19:30–22:30, £12.50

RYAN KEEN (GAVIN JAMES)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 3 AND CLUB, 19:30–23:00, £9

Totnes-based singer/songwriter doing his acoustic, folksy blues thing with highly rhythmicpercussive guitar playing and heartfelt lyrics. LAURA MVULA (BETH ROWLEY + PETER AND KERRY)

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £15

Soul lady of the moment, imbued with gospel stylings and a voice that’ll most likely make you stop and savour.

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS (ALESSI’S ARK)

ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC, 19:30–23:00, £17.50

John Darnielle, the face behind the Goats, brings his unique nasal quality and lyrical dexterity to bear – moving from acoustic-rock to barbershop folk.

Fri 11 Oct

THE HAWKLORDS (MUGSTAR)

The British born, by way of Norwegian and Pakistani parentage, vocalist and pianist does her alternative-styled solo thing – built on her trademark gently tremulous textures and unique smoky intensity.

Born from the disbanded Hawkwind, Harvey Bainbridge and Steve Swindells et al join forces for this live re-group.

PHONES4U ARENA, 19:30–22:00, FROM £25

More pumping melodies and driving guitar from the energetic rock five-piece, if you can handle it.

M PEOPLE

Marking 20 years since the release of their seminal album, Elegant Slumming, the pioneers of the Manc music scene return to the stage. KACEY MUSGRAVES

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 19:30–23:00, £13.50

Young American country music songstress, recently nominated for myriad Country Music Association awards. NO AGE (WET NUNS)

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:30–23:00, £11.50

The Los Angeles based duo tour their fourth LP, An Object, which finds them on rather more jagged territory, guitarist Randy Randall’s washed out noisescapes scaled back to angular rhythms and taut riffs. THE TAHETIAN SONS

FALLOW CAFE, 19:30–23:00, FREE

Psychedelic indie bunch from Manchester play a set with special guests. DAN WHITEHOUSE

THE CASTLE HOTEL, 19:30–22:00, £8 (£4)

The Birmingham-based singer/ songwriter takes his second studio album, Reaching For A State of Mind to a live setting. THE RAMONA FLOWERS

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £6

Five-piece electro indie outfit from Bristol, taking their name from Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. LUKA BLOOM (PIP MOUNTJOY)

WATERSIDE ARTS CENTRE, 19:30–23:00, £15

Irish folk-rock troubadour, who also boasts the accolade of personal musician to the Dalai Lama.

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:30–23:00, £10

THE LAST CARNIVAL

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £6

EVERYTHING EVERYTHING (DUTCH UNCLES)

THE RITZ, 18:30–22:30, £SOLD OUT

Manchester residing indie-rock quartet still riding high of the release of their early 2013 LP, Arc, and cropping up everywhere everywhere. AHAB (THE HUMMINGBIRDS)

THE RUBY LOUNGE, 19:30–22:30, £10

Country, folk and grunge-straddling London ensemble. ELLIE GOULDING

O2 APOLLO, 19:00–23:00, £22.50

Hereford-born young singer/ songwriter of the moment, fusing electro-pop and indie-folk into her mix. THE OTHER TRIBE

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–22:30, £7

Bristol-based indie/90s rave/ synthpop group – likely to be kitted out in tribal gear and daubed in neon face paint. Just go with it. THESE NEW PURITANS

GORILLA, 19:00–22:00, £15

The London-based indie-pop ensemble take to the road to air their newest LP, Field of Reeds. RACE TO THE SEA (OLYMPIAN + ALEX CHOW)

THE CASTLE HOTEL, 19:30–23:00, £5

The Manchester-based songwriter and instrumentalist plays an intimate set with support from Olympian and Alex Chow.

Sat 12 Oct DEEP PURPLE

O2 APOLLO, 19:00–23:00, £40.50

The British rock mainstays hit the road with their new LP, NOW What?!, giving it a global airing in some suitably huge venues.

EVERYTHING EVERYTHING (DUTCH UNCLES) THE RITZ, 18:30–22:30, £16

Manchester residing indie-rock quartet still riding high of the release of their early 2013 LP, Arc, and cropping up everywhere everywhere.

CROSBY, STILLS AND NASH PHONES4U ARENA, 20:00–22:00, FROM £52

Old-school rockin’ musical teamup of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. LANDSHAPES

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–22:30, £6

Wonky pop four piece, built from the ashes of Lulu and the Lampshades known for their fluid live performances where drummer Dan is the only constant. CHARLES BRADLEY AND HIS EXTRAORDINARIES

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £17.50

The American funk/soul/r’n’b singer airs his new LP, Victim of Love, accompanied by his live band of players. THE ORB (SYSTEM 7 + JOE MCKECHNIE)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 21:00–02:30, £15

The English electronic mainstays mark 25 years of ambient house, with sets from System 7 and Joe McKechnie.

TURISAS (REVOKER + ASTRO HENGE)

CLUB ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £12

Another Finnish export, this time bringing battle metal to our shores and touring with their fourth album, Turisas2013.

FROM ANOTHER PLACE (CHEAP JAZZ + BEARFOOT BEWARE) FALLOW CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £3 ADV. (£4 DOOR)

Purveyors of fine new music, From Another Place, present the riffdriven Cheap Jazz with support from energetic Leeds three-piece, Bearfoot Beware.

THE HYENA KILL (NAKED VEINS + SAM HAINE AND THE BLOODFLAMES + JOHN AINSWORTH) ROADHOUSE, 19:30–22:30, £5

Manchester-based duo, made up of Steven Dobb and Lorna Blundell, fond of riffs and grooves. THE RUBYS

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £5

Launching their new single, Silhouettes, on the night, the Manchester-based indie rock play a headline set awash with rock’n’roll vibes. VANCE JOY

THE CASTLE HOTEL, 19:30–23:00, £6

The Australian folk pop artist, Vance Joy, plays an intimate set in the Northwest in support of his latest EP, God Loves You When You’re Dancing. OMAR (PIECES OF A MAN)

BAND ON THE WALL, 20:00–23:00, £13

The International soul star returns to BOTW, cherry picking songs from his seven album back catalogue.

WE LAY WAITING (MOTIONS + THE BURIED AND BROKEN + BLACK DAZE + ONE MAN DOWN)

IMPERICON NEVER SAY DIE! TOUR (EMMURE + CARNIFEX + I KILLED THE PROM QUEEN + BETRAYING THE MARTYRS + HUNDREDTH + NORTHLANE + HAND OF MERCY)

DRY LIVE, 18:30–22:30, £5

A night of metal and deathcore, with a five-strong line up of bands from the Northwest.

Sun 13 Oct

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 3 AND CLUB, 19:30–23:00, £15

THE SOUTH

CLUB ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £20

Impericon bring their Never Say Die tour to the Northwest, with a mixed bag line-up of metal bands.

Former members of The Beautiful South, Dave Hemingway, Alison Wheeler and Dave Stead come repackaged as, er, The South. BOWLING FOR SOUP

THE FEVERS (THE REVERED + LUCY WAS A DECOY + SECOND HAND WINGS + CAUTIOUS RETREAT)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £20

The Texan rockers return to UK soil to play what will be their final shows after almost 20 years together.

ROADHOUSE, 19:30–22:30, £5 ADV. (£6 DOOR)

PASSENGER (ST LARSEN)

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £13

The Brazilian rock bunch, formerly known as The Fenders, play a typical set of electro funk rock you can dance to.

Brighton born singer/songwriter Mike Rosenberg’s pared back new guise (i.e. five piece band becomes one).

Thu 10 Oct

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:00–23:00, £16.50

THE HIGH KINGS

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE (THE MELTING PARAISO UFO + CLEFT)

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:30–23:00, £11

Kawabata Makoto and his band of sonic outlaws, mixing traditional melody with hyper-aggressive playing techniques and plenty improvisation. SPEAR OF DESTINY (TENSHEDS)

THE RUBY LOUNGE, 19:30–22:30, £14

Dark rock outfit founded in 1983 by singer and songwriter Kirk Brandon and bassist Stan Stammers, on the road celebrating 30 years and counting.

JOHNNY MARR WIRED: BRAINS AT NIGHT (DENIS JONES + WASP VIDEO) THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY (MOSI), 19:00–22:00, £5 ADV. (£7 DOOR)

Explore the Brains: Mind As Matter exhibition while Manchesterbased loop master, Denis Jones, stimulates your grey matter with some live music.

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £23.50

The celebrated Smiths guitarist plays a selection of tracks from his debut solo album, The Messenger. LETTERS TO FIESTA

SOUP KITCHEN, 19:00–22:15, £6

Manchester-based four-piece, currently carving out their path in the post-punk/electro-pop arena – expect delicious vocals courtesy of Anna-Louisa Etherington.

Irish folk quintet, selling out shows left right and centre as they dazzle audiences with their multi-instrumental skills racking up a total of 13 instruments between ‘em. TICH

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £6

The young popstress hits the road for her first solo UK tour, fresh from supporting the likes of Olly Murs, Little Mix and JLS. PAUL WELLER

O2 APOLLO, 19:00–23:00, £43

The Jam and The Style Council singer/songwriter, doing his solo thing with that haircut.

Listings

Manchester Music Mon 14 Oct ISLET

THE RUBY LOUNGE, 19:30–22:30, £7

THE QUIREBOYS (BONAFIDE + BAD TOUCH) CLUB ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £15

Hard rock group formed in 1984 in London – on an off until 2001 when they reformed with their current line-up. THE GAME

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £25

Experimental Cardiff rockers touring their debut album, Illuminated People.

American rapper, aka Jayceon Terrell Taylor, Dr Dre protégé, and multi-platinum selling artist.

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–22:30, £8

ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC, 19:00–23:00, £18

BROTHER AND BONES

Blues-meets-folk-meets-rock quintet moving from the delicate to the, well... let’s just say they’ve got two drummers.

THE IMPOSSIBLE GENTLEMEN

The Atlantic-straddling jazz super group tour to mark the launch of their second album.

Thu 17 Oct

THE ANSWER (TRACER + CAGE THE GODS)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £14

Geordie/Northern Ireland foursome sounding pretty much like what you get when you cross classic, hard and blues rock together. NINA NESBITT

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 19:30–23:00, £SOLD OUT

Half-Swedish, half-Scottish singer/songwriter in possession of a fine technical agility and emotive style.

SYD ARTHUR

VV BROWN

A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

WASHED OUT

GIDEON CONN AND DONNA MACIOCIA

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–22:30, £7.50

GULLIVERS, 13:00–02:00, £12.50 (WEEKEND), £7 DAY (SAT/SUN)

GORILLA, 19:30–22:00, £12.50

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:30–23:00, £5

The Northampton-born songstress (aka Vanessa Brown) bring the sixties-aping indie-pop and charm on tour. VOLBEAT (ICED EARTH)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £15

The Danish metal heavyweights tour in support of their new LP, Outlaw Gentlemen and Shady Ladies. THE MIGHTY DIAMONDS

BAND ON THE WALL, 20:30–03:00, £14.50

Jamaican reggae harmony trio, who for 40+ years have been entertaining and educating the world with their sweet harmonies and conscious lyrics. JOHNNY GET THE GUN

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 19:30–23:00, £6

ROADHOUSE, 18:00–22:00, £5

Young psychedelic pin-up from Canterbury, taking in Glasgow as the only Scottish date on his month-long UK mini-tour.

Essex-based four-piece, making

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

CLUB ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £12

American Christian melodic metalcore ensemble hailing from Dayton, Ohio. MGMT

O2 APOLLO, 19:00–23:00, £23

The US-of-A psychedelic rockers – founded by Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden – hit the road armed with their justdropped new LP, Your Life Is A Lie. CHILDREN OF BODOM (NAPALM DEATH)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £18.50

Finnish heavy metal ensemble, formed in Espoo in ‘93, touring with their latest musical offering, Halo of Blood, out now on Nuclear Blast. JOSEF SALVAT

THE CASTLE HOTEL, 19:30–23:00, £5

Breezy popster from London, drawing comparisons to Gotye and Morrissey. WE LIVE THE DREAM

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:30–23:00, £5

A musical tribute, marking 50 years since Martin Luther King’s legendary speech.

Wed 16 Oct LAWSON

O2 APOLLO, 19:00–23:00, £22

London-based foursome completed by the later addition of singer/songwriter Andy Brown, who apparently bonded with the rest of the band over pear cider, as you do. DYLAN CARLSON

SOUP KITCHEN, 19:30–22:30, £8

The Earth guitarist and principal member plays a solo set ahead of his first major solo project, combining field recordings from various megalithic and other sites of human/fairy encounters across the UK. One word: magical. QUEENSRYCHE

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £22.50

Progressive heavy metal band hailing from Bellevue, Washington. SAN CISCO (F.U.R.S)

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–22:30, £9

Aussie quartet of the indie-pop persuasion, formerly playing under the name King George.

London producer and singer/songwriter Daniel Woolhouse plays under his Deptford Goth guise. HEM

GORILLA, 19:00–22:30, £15

Brooklyn-hailing progressive folk ensemble, known to throb and expand to include other musicians and orchestral accompaniments. ROYAL BLOOD

ROADHOUSE, 19:30–22:30, £5

Brighton-based alternative rock duo made up of Michael Kerr (bass and vocals) and Ben Thatcher (drums). TROUMACA

SOUP KITCHEN, 19:30–22:30, £6

GOO GOO DOLLS (FLESH FOR LULU)

Birmingham-based bass escapism fivepiece, touring with their debut album, The Grace.

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £24

The long-standing American rockers return to the live circuit to air their new LP, Magnetic.

SUB FOCUS LIVE

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £14.50

The electronic music producer (aka Nick Douwma)

Listings

NUMAN TRIBUTE ACT

DRY LIVE, 19:00–23:00, £6

Gary Numan tribute act.

Sat 19 Oct GHOSTPOET

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:30–23:00, £12.50

More inspired experimental hiphip from the Mercury-nominated lisped Londoner. KATE NASH (VIOLET + VULKANO)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 19:30–23:00, £13.50

Ms Nash keeps it reliably chirpy with her vocally-loose melodic ramblings, touring in support of her latest album, Girl Talk. TOM ODELL

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £SOLD OUT

A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

NIGHT & DAY, 13:00–02:00, £12.50 (WEEKEND), £7 DAY (SAT/SUN)

BLUE

Launch night of Hot Beat Repeat’s second UP, Soul, and their last live show for a while.

Multi-venue two-dayer taking place across Soup Kitchen, Night & Day, KRAAK, The Castle, Gullivers and Bakerie. Timetabling tbc, but bands playing at Soup across 12 and 13 Oct include Base Ventura, Johnny Foreigner and It Hugs Back.

Sheffield-based brothers Eoin and Rory provide the guitars and drums-built soundscapes.

Lou Barlow’s post-Dinosaur Jr project, bringing the lofi indie sound.

HOT BEAT REPEAT

KRAAK, 19:30–23:00, £4

A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

DRENGE (BAD GRAMMAR)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £15.50

rock of the pop punk variety, touring with their latest EP, Never Far From What We Know.

SOUP KITCHEN, 13:00–02:00, £12.50 (WEEKEND), £7 DAY (SAT/SUN)

ROADHOUSE, 19:30–22:30, £8

DAN LE SAC VS SCROOBIUS PIP THE RUBY LOUNGE, 19:30–22:30, £SOLD OUT

Returning after a two-year absence, the hip-hop duo continue in their quest to mash up electronic beats with sung, spoken and rapped lyrics.

plays a trademark captivating performance, featuring audio-reactive circular LED technology. MICK COADY’S SYNERGY

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:30–23:00, £10

New jazz quintet featuring Dave Binny and Julian Arguelles.

Fri 18 Oct

THE SMOKE FAIRIES (RASPUTINA)

ST PHILIP’S CHURCH, 19:30–23:00, £9

Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies sing the blues. ZEDD

GORILLA, 19:00–22:00, £14.50

One of the EDM scene’s brightest new stars, Zedd (aka Anton Zaslavski), mans the decks for the evening.

EARTH, WIND AND FIRE

Bands playing at Night & Day across 12 and 13 Oct include All We Are, Denis Jones, and Elle Mary & The Bad Men. A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

KRAAK, 13:00–02:00, £12.50 (WEEKEND), £7 DAY (SAT/SUN)

Bands playing at KRAAK across 12 and 13 Oct include Air Cav, Miaow Miaow, and Human Hair. A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

THE CASTLE HOTEL, 13:00–02:00, £12.50 (WEEKEND), £7 DAY (SAT/SUN)

Bands playing at The Castle across 12 and 13 Oct include Letters to Fiesta, Fever Dream and The Junipers.

selection of songs from her 1982 album The Changeling, released some 30 years ago. THE EFFECT (RISIN TIDES + FAKE THE ATTACK + LIT LIKE VEGAS)

FALLOW CAFE, 19:00–23:00, £5

Four-strong line-up of alternative rock bands. SECTION 25 + AAAK

ISLINGTON MILL, 20:00–23:00, £8

The Factory Records post-punkers back with the first in a string of live shows. BAKER MAKER (THE SOMETHING + THE HERO COMPLEX + THE SWIINES + GOOD FOXY + OSKI BREMWICH + YOUNG SUITS) ROADHOUSE, 18:00–22:00, £7

Live music and cake, what more could you want? This round sees indie rock lot The Something take the headline spot. Mmm... cake. JAGGED EDGE (112)

THE RITZ, 18:00–22:00, £27.50

American r’n’b group formed by identical twin brothers Brandon and Brian Casey.

Sun 20 Oct CHARLENE SORAIA

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–23:00, £10

London-based singer/songwriter, known mostly for her cover of The Calling’s Wherever You Will Go, which may or may not be a good thing. A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

SOUP KITCHEN, 13:00–02:00, £12.50 (WEEKEND), £7 DAY (SAT/ SUN) Multi-venue two-dayer taking place across Soup Kitchen, Night & Day, KRAAK, The Castle, Gullivers and Bakerie. Timetabling tbc, but bands playing at Soup across 12 and 13 Oct include Base Ventura, Johnny Foreigner and It Hugs Back. A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

NIGHT & DAY, 13:00–02:00, £12.50 (WEEKEND), £7 DAY (SAT/SUN)

Bands playing at Night & Day across 12 and 13 Oct include All We Are, Denis Jones, and Elle Mary & The Bad Men. A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

KRAAK, 13:00–02:00, £12.50 (WEEKEND), £7 DAY (SAT/SUN)

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:30–23:00, £19.50

Fri 25 Oct

IMAGINATION (LEEE JOHN)

Early 80s soul and funk band, brought to life once more by lead singer Leee John.

Wed 23 Oct

THE FEELING (YELLOWIRE)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 3 AND CLUB, 19:30–23:00, £18.50

Harmless indie-popsters led by Dan Gillespie Sells’ wishy-washy vocals. ARCTIC MONKEYS

PHONES4U ARENA, 19:30–22:00, FROM £25

THE PIGEON DETECTIVES

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £14

By the numbers indie-rock, chockfull of staccato and jangly guitar riffs intermixed with unassuming bass lines and hip-swaying beats. HURTS

O2 APOLLO, 19:00–23:00, £19.50

Synthpop duo made up of Theo Hutchcraft and Adam Anderson.

RUSSIAN CIRCLES (CHELSEA WOLFE)

GORILLA, 19:00–22:00, £12.50

The talented noise-masters allow their sound to evolve outwith the quiet/loud template, taking it to some contemplative new places, more's the joy.

ORANGE

SOUP KITCHEN, 19:30–22:30, £14

THE LOVELY EGGS (KING CHAMPION SOUNDS + MORE TREES PLEASE)

GIRLS NAMES

The Lancaster duo of Holly Ross and David Blackwell do their purebread punk thing, sung in Ross’ unmistakably northern lilt.

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £7

MARK EITZEL

Live set from the respected American underground musician, best known as the lead singer of American Music Club. NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £6

Skate-skuzz indie outfit from big ol’ London town. SUSHEELA RAMAN

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:00–23:00, £12

London-based alternative rock lot, out touring in advance of their new LP dropping.

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 19:30–23:00, £13

London-based hip-hop coupling of Aluna Francis and George Reid, hence AlunaGeorge. Geddit? Good. GENTLEMAN’S DUB CLUB

MINT LOUNGE, 21:00–02:00, £8 ADV. (£10 DOOR)

Suited and booted dub collective who also take in elements of ska and roots reggae. DAUGHTER (INDIANS)

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £15

Moody and electronic folk-esque melodies from the London-based trio, formerly just the solo work of Elena Tonra. COASTS (HEY SHOLAY + CIVILIANS)

THE CASTLE HOTEL, 19:30–23:00, £5

Bristol-based five-piece known for making shimmery pop sounds that go well with cold cider and a sunny day. Or, y’know, beer and dark clouds.

Tue 22 Oct ALTER BRIDGE

PHONES4U ARENA, 19:00–22:00, £25

Formed from the ashes of Creed, three of the original members continue to rock (with the added vocal skills of Myles Kennedy). BARONESS (ROYAL THUNDER)

CLUB ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £10

US-of-A hailing heavy metallers, traversing the line intelligently between melodic and ferocious. BASTILLE

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £SOLD OUT

GORILLA, 19:30–23:00, £15

WRETCH 32 (GEORGE THE POET + JACOB BANKS)

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £15

Tottenham-based rapper and former grime MC, touring on the run up to the release of his third studio album, due at the end of this year.

Thu 24 Oct THE CAT EMPIRE

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £20

The genre-busting Australian ensemble embark on their biggest world tour to date, blurring the line between hip-hop, jazz and reggae as only they know how. HIM (CASPIAN)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £20

Finnish rock ensemble formed at the beginning of the 90s by vocalist Ville Valo, guitarist Mikko Lindström and bassist Mikko Paananen. SKID ROW (UGLY KID JOE)

CLUB ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £18.50

American heavy metal band formed in New Jersey back in 1986. ALISON MOYET

THE LOWRY, 20:00–22:00, FROM £25

The English singer/songwriter marks a return to her electronic roots, playing tracks from her new LP, The Minutes. CLEAN BANDIT

GORILLA, 19:00–22:30, £9.50

Eccentric young pups from London, building their sound on the instrumental core of bass, drums and strings, bolstered by a variety of budding vocalists. ROBBIE BOYD

THE CASTLE HOTEL, 13:00–02:00, £12.50 (WEEKEND), £7 DAY (SAT/SUN)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £16

ROACHFORD (JON ROWE)

The soulful London-based singer/ songwriter – and main force behind Roachford – plays a solo set.

Old school-styled English punk ensemble formed in Hersham way back when (aka 1976). PETER GABRIEL

PHONES4U ARENA, 19:30–22:00, FROM £30

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of his multi-platinum album, So, Mr Gabriel plays a special set accompanied by the original live band who toured the album with him all those moons ago. THE APPLESEED CAST (JUNE MILLER)

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–23:00, £12

Post rock quartet hailing from the US of A, touring with their 2013 album, Illumination Ritual, and showcasing their newly evolved sound built up on a bedrock of hardcore emo. JOHN POWER (IVAN CAMPO)

CLUB ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £12.50

Cast and The La’s front-man takes his rock’n’roll solo project out on the road. DESTRUCTION UNIT (HELM)

SOUP KITCHEN, 19:30–22:30, £5

Desert dwellers from Phoenix, Arizona, touring with their heavypsych debut, Self Destruction Of A Man.

RUBY TUESDAY (DEATH VIGNETTES + HYENA KILL) FALLOW CAFE, 19:30–22:30, FREE

A three-strong line-up of twopiece rock’n’roll bands. TOY + YOUNG BRITISH ARTISTS + MYSTERIANS

THE RITZ, 18:30–22:30, £8

Korg Delta led five-piece fueled on a chugging motorik rhythm.

BLITZKRIEG

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 19:30–23:00, £17.50

BILL RYDER-JONES

SHAM 69

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £12

The Mansfield-based band, mixing up traditional instruments – think fiddles and whistles – with buzz saw rock’n’roll vibes.

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £10

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:30–23:00, £10

Acoustic blues guitar wizard, apt with fingerpicking technique.

FEROCIOUS DOG (MAELOR I’ANSONHUGHES)

London-based acoustic folk-pop unit who drench their sound in rays of feelgood sunny nostalgia.

THE APPLES (3421)

STEFAN GROSSMAN

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–22:30, £9

Dan Smith-led indie ensemble who may or may not have their faces painted as skulls (aka, they will). Nine-piece funk/jazz line-up hailing from Israel, formed amidst Southern Tel Aviv’s burgeoning underground scene – the band grew organically from jams, to parties, to gigs and finally, international tours.

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £29.50

MY VITRIOL

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:30–23:00, £9

ALUNAGEORGE

THE CULT (ELECTRIC 13 + BO NINGEN)

The Ian Astbury led rockers continue their Electric 13 tour, playing their Rick Rubin-produced third album, Electric, in its entirely.

British Indian musician known for using the sacred Bhakti and Sufi traditions of India and Pakistan to energetic live effect.

Expect psychedelia grooves, otherworldly bleeps and huge chunks of gnarly formless noise from the fuzzed-oot New York rockers.

THE RUBY LOUNGE, 19:30–22:30, £9

THE RUBY LOUNGE, 19:30–22:30, £12.50

More perfectly-wrought goth-tinged pop songs from the ramshackle London four-piece, touring on the back of their new LP, Waiting For Something to Happen.

Bands playing at KRAAK across 12 and 13 Oct include Air Cav, Miaow Miaow, and Human Hair.

Bands playing at The Castle across 12 and 13 Oct include Letters to Fiesta, Fever Dream and The Junipers.

Manchester-based singer/songwriter and artist signed to Skinny Dog Records, playing a gig on his home turf.

Benefitting from some mentoring from a certain Mr Josh Homme, the Monkeys are back on the live circuit with latest offering, AM.

The former Coral guitarist embarks on a solo project with a debut album, A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart in tow.

A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

The chillwave output of Ernest Greene, the excessively talented singer/songwriter/producer hailing from Georgia, USA.

O2 APOLLO, 19:30–23:00, FROM £51.25

Genre-spanning band from the US of A, traversing R&B, soul, funk, disco, jazz and rock in their endlessly innovative style.

WHITE HILLS

Often two-piece, occasional three-piece, hailing from Sydney and making alternative indie music you can dance to.

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £6

An evening of free acoustic music showcasing emerging talent from Manchester and the surrounding areas.

VERONICA FALLS

JAGWAR MA

Tyneside quintet with a penchant for wistfully-styled indie-pop, riding along on Sarah Hall’s angelic vocals.

BAND ON THE WALL, 18:00–23:00, FREE

GORILLA, 19:30–22:00, £11

GORILLA, 19:00–22:30, £SOLD OUT

LET’S BUY HAPPINESS

Bands playing at Bakerie across 12 and 13 Oct include Irma Vep, Literature Thieves and Mat Riviere.

Mon 21 Oct

Chichester-born singer/songwriter who studied at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music.

SOUND CONTROL, 19:00–22:00, £7

A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

Los Angeles based pop punk outfit who caught the attention of Rancid front-man, Tim Armstrong, who slapped the four-piece on his Hellcat Records label.

DEPTFORD GOTH

Seriously cool art-punk outfit from Brooklyn (where else?) playing scuzzy, lo-fi punk with enough of a hint of pop to get those fists pumping in the air.

SEBADOH

UK FOO FIGHTERS

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £10

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:30–23:00, £9

JAPANTHER

Charming English folk band rich with electronic influences and a love of strange instruments (caveat: they’ve been known to play the seashells).

Electronic pop sounds from the Manchester-based trio, often seen alongside the likes of Alt-J and MONEY.

Communion returns to The Ruby Lounge for an alternative disco, headed up by live acts and continuing until late.

Fragile and cinematic folk soundscapes from the Newcastle-based sextet.

TUNNG

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:30–22:30, £8

THE RUBY LOUNGE, 19:00–22:30, £8

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:30–23:00, £8.50

BAND ON THE WALL, 19:30–23:00, £13

SUNDAY ACOUSTIC SESSIONS (JAMIE BREWER)

COMMUNION (TRAVELLING BAND + PAUL THOMAS SAUNDERS + GEORGE EZRA + STEFAN MALBOURNE)

LANTERNS ON THE LAKE

Following their stint on ITV’s The Big Reunion, Lee Ryan et al get back on the road. Thank God.

NO CEREMONY

Bands playing at Bakerie across 12 and 13 Oct include Irma Vep, Literature Thiev ves and Mat Riviere.

80s icon Toyah Wilcox performs a

Tue 15 Oct

MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £SOLD OUT

BAKERIE, 13:00–02:00, £12.50 (WEEKEND), £7 DAY (SAT/SUN)

A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL

TOYAH

Belfast-based indie four-piece who describe themselves as ‘honest, raw and loud’ – who could argue with that? The buzz band trio take to Glasgow’s O2 ABC for a two night stint to air their mighty debut LP – of which singles Lies, The Mother We Share, and Gun et al prove to be but the tip of their mighty electropop iceberg.

BAKERIE, 13:00–02:00, £12.50 (WEEKEND), £7 DAY (SAT/SUN)

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £18

KRAAK, 19:00–23:00, £6

CHVRCHES

Bands playing at Gullivers across 12 and 13 Oct include Cyril Snear, Shallows, and Honey Ride Me A Goat.

Foo Fighters tribute act.

MORE THAN CONQUERORS

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £13

Bands playing at Gullivers across 12 and 13 Oct include Cyril Snear, Shallows, and Honey Ride Me A Goat.

Best known as the drummer for the legendary Ramones – oh, and his clothing line and pasta sauce empire – Marky takes his solo punk rock project, Blitzkreig, on the road, bolstered by Andrew W.K. Vocals. CANDY SAYS

FALLOW CAFE, 19:30–22:30, FREE

Lo-fi chic pop DIY outfit from Oxford, most oft to be found recording homemade pop in their bungalow garage. SONGS ABOUT DEATH (BILLY RUFFIAN + ESA SHIELDS)

THE CASTLE HOTEL, 19:30–23:00, £4

The Liverpudilian psych-acoustic act playing songs about, you guessed it, death. Although not in the necessarily dark gothy way you’d expect, intriguing.

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £7

Sat 26 Oct STEVE HACKETT

O2 APOLLO, 19:30–23:00, FROM £28

The former Genesis guitarist dips into old classics and new solo work, with his distinctve guitar sound ever-present throughout. NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £12

Southern rock-meets-blues jam duo, inspired by the Mississippi Hill Country Blues tradition. EUROS CHILDS (LAURA J MARTIN + THE WELLGREEN)

ROADHOUSE, 19:30–22:30, £9

The Welsh musician and songwriter, best known as the frontman of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, takes to the stage solo, with support from Liverpool’s Laura J Martin and The Wellgreen.

THE SKINNY

THE BLACKOUT (FRAMING HANLEY + BLITZ KIDS) MANCHESTER ACADEMY, 19:30–23:00, £15

High energy rockers, known for their party-hard attitude.

LOCAL NATIVES (CLOUD CONTROL)

THE RITZ, 18:30–22:30, £15.50

BOOK NOW: 0161 832 1111

manchesteracademy.net

Silver Lakes indie-rockers whose core trio met at high school, to be joined later by a bassist and a drummer. THE GROWLERS

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:00–22:30, £9

OCTOBER Black Spiders Friday 4th

Known for blending fuzzy surf with sexy psychedelia and throwing in some hypnotic melodies and tripped out lyrics – they’re calling it beach goth.

Kids In Glass Houses + Cartel + Propellers Friday 4th

CONTACT, 20:00–22:00, £11 (£6)

Airborne Toxic Event Wednesday 2nd Fat Freddy’s Drop Friday 4th

Wheatus + MC Lars Friday 4th Funeral For A Friend Saturday 5th

THE BLACK SOUND SERIES

An evening celebrating music of black origin, as part of Black History Month. THE RATELLS

Miles & Erica (of The Wonder Stuff) Saturday 5th

DRY LIVE, 18:30–23:00, £5

Manc Floyd Saturday 5th

Sheffield-based alternative indie scamps led by Ashley Holland on lead vocals and bass guitar.

Mac Miller Sunday 6th Glasvegas Monday 7th

MANTIS FALL FESTIVAL

MARTIN HARRIS CENTRE FOR MUSIC AND DRAMA, 18:00–20:00, £7.50

Johnny Flynn And The Sussex Wit Monday 7th Ryan Keen Wednesday 9th

The Orb + System 7 Saturday 12th

Manchester Theatre In Sound present a whole weekend of electroacoustic experimentation, with a full concert played out over their orchestra of loudspeakers.

Turisas + Revoker + Astro Henge Saturday 12th

SOUND CONTROL, 19:00–23:00, £10

Kacey Musgraves Thursday 10th Johnny Marr Saturday 12th

LONDON GRAMMAR

Children Of Bodom Monday 14th The Quireboys + Bonafide + Bad Touch Tuesday 15th

The indie-pop Mercury Prize favourites take their debut album on tour.

ABANDON (VELOCETS + THE MINX + LVLS + WAGS (DJ) + MC TUNES (DJ) + SCOT LA ROC (DJ))

Sebadoh Tuesday 15th Goo Goo Dolls + Flesh For Lulu Wednesday 16th The Answer + Trace + Cage The Gods Thursday 17th Volbeat + Iced Earth Friday 18th

BASSMENT, 19:30–03:00, £7 ADV. (£8 DOOR)

Roachford Tuesday 22nd

An Oxjam charity gig beneath the streets of Manchester, with a mixed bag line up of indie/rock bands and DJs to keep feet moving until the small hours.

Baroness Tuesday 22nd

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £10

Kate Nash Saturday 19th AlunaGeorge Monday 21st

IAN SKELLY (THE SERPENT POWER)

Former The Coral drummer embarks on a solo psychedelicinspired project, touring with his debut album, Cut From A Star.

The Feeling Wednesday 23rd HIM + Caspian Thursday 24th Marky Ramone’s Blitzkrieg w/ Andrew WK Thursday 24th

KING KARTEL

KRAAK, 19:00–23:00, £6

Skid Row / Ugly Kid Joe Thursday 24th

EP launch for the Manchesterbased indie rock lot, King Kartel, with supoort from Franks Wilder Years.

The Cult Electric 13 + Bo Ningen Friday 25th The Pigeon Detectives Friday 25th John Power (Cast/The La’s) + Ivan Campo Friday 25th TheBlackout+FramingHanley+BlitzKidsSaturday26th North Mississippi Allstars Saturday 26th Lissie Sunday 27th Warpaint Tuesday 29th Tyler Hilton Wednesday 30th Birdy Wednesday 30th

NOVEMBER Boomtown Rats Friday 1st Watsky Tuesday 5th Bring Me The Horizon Monday 4th Deap Vally Tuesday 5th Dillinger Escape Plan Wednesday 6th Public Service Broadcasting Thursday 7th Unknown Mortal Orchestra Friday 8th Ian Prowse & Amsterdam Friday 8th Alice In Chains Monday 11th Gary Numan Thursday 14th Laura Veirs Friday 15th Television Sunday 17th Hayseed Dixie + Tom Copson Tuesday 19th They Might Be Giants Wednesday 20th The Rifles Thursday 21st The Virginmarys Friday 22nd Lee Nelson Saturday 23rd Ms Mr Sunday 24th Barenaked Ladies Monday 25th The Fratellis Wednesday 27th Flux Pavillion Saturday 30th

DECEMBER White Lies Friday 6th Dutch Uncles Friday 6th Gogol Bordello Saturday 14th

Sun 27 Oct PORTICO QUARTET

GORILLA, 19:30–23:00, £15

London-based quartet known for their distinct and inimitable sound, drawing on influences as widereaching as Mount Kimbie and Bon Iver – also known for their use of the hang, a UFO like percussion instrument. TRAVIS

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £22.50

The Glasgow-formed 90s mainstays make their live return, marking the release of their new LP, Where You Stand. JAMIE CULLUM

THE LOWRY, 19:30–22:00, FROM £25

The tiny jazz pianist does his tiny jazz pianist-y thing. RECONNECTED

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3, 19:30–23:00, £12.50

British vocal group formed from the boy band, Connected – finalists in the fourth series of Britain’s Got Talent in 2010. LISSIE

MANCHESTER ACADEMY 2, 3 AND CLUB, 19:30–23:00, £13

The Rock Island folk-rock songstress (aka Elisabeth Corrin Maurus) plays tracks from her just-dropped second LP, Back To Forever. MANTIS FALL FESTIVAL

MARTIN HARRIS CENTRE FOR MUSIC AND DRAMA, 14:00–16:00, £7.50

Manchester Theatre In Sound present a whole weekend of electroacoustic experimentation, with a full concert played out over their orchestra of loudspeakers. KADAVAR (BUFFALO SUMMER)

THE DEAF INSTITUTE, 19:30–23:00, £9

Riff-driven hard rock from Berlin, all doom and gloom, in the realm of Black Sabbath et al.

The record labels who call Islington Mill home present a live showcase, with Gnod’s Tesla Tapes, Gizeh Records, Baptists and Bootleggers, Tombed Visions, Noise and Drone, Sacred Tapes and Little Red Rabbit all getting involved. CHARLIE BROWN

NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, 20:00–02:00, £8.50

London-based singer/songwriter, melding soulful melodies with pop sensibilities.

Mon 28 Oct EMMA’S IMAGINATION

THE CASTLE HOTEL, 19:30–23:00, £7

Glasgow-based alternative acoustic singer/songwriter, aka Emma Gillespie. LUCY SPRAGGAN

THE RITZ, 19:00–23:00, £12.50

Little Lucy Spraggan, of X Factor fame, now a fully fledged touring musician making ‘flop’ – that’s folk meets hip-hop for the uninitiated. JOSH RITTER

ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC, 19:30–22:00, £18.50

The American singer/songwriter, guitarist and now author performs an all-acoustic set rich with his usual countrified folk sounds and heartening lyricism. JOSH RITTER (TIFT MERRITT)

ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC, 19:30–23:00, £18.50

The American singer/songwriter, guitarist and now author performs an all-acoustic set rich with his usual countrified folk sounds and heartening lyricism. DEAFHEAVEN

SOUP KITCHEN, 19:30–22:30, £10

San Franciscan metal outfit formed after George Clarke and Kerry McCoy recruited three more members and started touring – currently signed to Sargent House and touring with their 2013 album, Sunbather.

Liverpool Music Wed 02 Oct BONOBO (DAUWD)

O2 ACADEMY, 19:00–22:00, £16

Brighton’s Bonobo (aka Simon Green) tours his fifth LP, The North Borders, an atmospheric and patiently honed gem of a thing drawing on elements of jazz, garage and shimmering dubstep. KID KARATE

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 19:00–23:00, £6

The Dublin-based duo, made up of Kevin Breen’s riffing and howling, and Steve Gannon’s thunderous drumming, tour with their debut album, Lights Out EP. WHALES IN CUBICLES (BELIEFS)

THE SHIPPING FORECAST, 20:00–23:00, FREE

Indie rock lot from London formed back in 2010, touring on the run up to the release of their debut album.

Thu 03 Oct CONAN

THE ZANZIBAR CLUB , 19:30–23:00, £5

Caveman doom warlords from Liverpool, who bring the bawdestroying riffs. ZERVAS AND PEPPER

LEAF, 19:30–22:00, £5

Cosmic folk rock five-piece, formed in 2007 when Cardiffbased singer/songwriters Paul Zervas and Kathryn Pepper discovered a mutual love of harmony-heavy folk. CANTERBURY (SCHOLARS)

KOROVA, 19:00–23:00, £8.50

Stylistically various Surrey rockers perform their unique brand of melodic indie, with support from Scholars. THE ROBERT CASTELLI BOOM QUARTET

THE CAPSTONE, 19:30–22:00, £8 (£5)

American drummer and composer, Robert Castelli brings his New York stylised street funk to Liverpool, complete with full band.

Liverpool Music Fri 04 Oct

TONIGHT ALIVE (SET IT OFF + DECADE)

O2 ACADEMY, 19:00–22:00, £12.50

Aussie rock ensemble led by ballsy young songstress Jenna McDougall and her inimitable soaring contralto. SPLASHH

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 18:00–22:00, £9

Australia, New Zealand and UKstraddling alternative dreamers.

LIVERPOOL STRING QUARTET: MUSIC FROM THE MOVIES

THE BLUECOAT, 19:00–22:00, £12

The Liverpool String Quartet play a beautiful arrangement of film and TV scores. NO AGE

KOROVA, 19:00–23:00, £8.50

The Los Angeles-based duo tour their fourth LP, An Object, which finds them on rather more jagged territory, guitarist Randy Randall’s washed out noisescapes scaled back to angular rhythms and taut riffs. HIP HOP NIGHT (LADY LESHURR)

THE ZANZIBAR CLUB , 19:30–23:00, £5

Lady Leshurr, the Midlands-based musician headlines this month’s hip hop night at Zanzibar. JOHN TURVILLE TRIO

THE CAPSTONE, 19:30–23:00, £14 (£11.50)

Award-winning contemporary jazz ensemble, built up on ten years experience of crafting music together.

Sat 05 Oct THE ALBION BAND

THE CAPSTONE, 19:30–23:00, £14 (£11.50)

Fresh guise for the English folkies, with Ashley Hutchings’ torch being passed to a newer generation of folk talent. MADINA LAKE (FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS + PAVILIONS + BUCKLE TONGUE)

O2 ACADEMY, 19:00–22:00, £15

The Chicagoan alternative rockers take to the road for one last blast, playing what will be their final UK tour.

ONES TO WATCH (TITORS INSIGNIA + HEX + INDIANIC + ARKHAM KARVERS + SIGNAL AURORA + SPIRAL VANILLA + RED JESTER + THE RED + THE SENSORS) O2 ACADEMY, 17:30–22:00, £10

Showcase event put together by Jar Live Music, giving the up-andcoming names in music a moment in the spotlight. THE HIGH KINGS

EPSTEIN THEATRE, 19:30–22:00, £16

Irish folk quintet, selling out shows left right and centre as they dazzle audiences with their multi-instrumental skills racking up a total of 13 instruments between ‘em. THE RESTARTS

THE KAZIMIER, 19:00–23:00, £6

Mid-90s punk band hailing from London, made up of Kieran, Robin and Bram, pioneering the independent music scene and shunning industry giants. ZICO CHAIN (THE LONELY BRAVE)

THE SHIPPING FORECAST, 19:30–22:30, £5

Hard rockin’ Londoners with a snappy and visceral approach to the genre. WILSON MINDS ALBUM LAUNCH

THE ZANZIBAR CLUB , 19:30–23:00, £5

Three-piece alt-rock bunch from the Northwest, launching their new album on the night

Sun 06 Oct CHINA RATS

KOROVA, 19:00–23:00, £5

50s-pop-inspired garage rock up-and-comers from Leeds..

Mon 07 Oct DRENGE

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 19:00–23:00, £8

Sheffield-based brothers Eoin and Rory provide the guitars and drums-built soundscapes.

For full listings visit manchesteracademy.net

MORE THAN CONQUERORS

THOMAS MCCARTHY

KOROVA, 19:00–23:00, £5

LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC HALL, 17:00–20:00, £6

Belfast-based indie four-piece who describe themselves as ‘honest, raw and loud’ – who could argue with that?

Wed 09 Oct WET NUNS

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 19:00–23:00, £7

Blues-punk red necks from, er, Wild West Yorkshire.

ESBEN AND THE WITCH (TEETH OF THE SEA + THOUGHT FORMS) THE KAZIMIER, 19:30–23:00, £8.50

The Brighton trio blend druggy guitars, sinister ambience and gothic lyrical themes in their own inimitable way, all reliably intense in a live setting.

Thu 10 Oct JON ALLEN

ERIC’S LIVE, 19:30–23:30, £8

Acoustic singer/songwriter with his kit-bag of soulful, gravely tunes. THE HAWKLORDS (THE CRUCIFIED TWINS)

O2 ACADEMY, 19:00–22:00, £16

Born from the disbanded Hawkwind, Harvey Bainbridge and Steve Swindells et al join forces for this live re-group. DRY THE RIVER

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 19:00–23:00, £12.50

London-based quintet of the ‘stealth rock’ variety, so say they. PÁDRAIG RYNNE, DÓNAL LUNNY AND SYLVAIN BAROU (RIOGHNACH CONNOLLY)

EPSTEIN THEATRE, 19:30–22:00, £16

A unique festival performance of traditional Irish music from a trio made up of various members of Planxty, Moving Hearts, The Bothy Band and Guidewires.

Fri 11 Oct

LUKA BLOOM (DOMINIC DUNN)

THE ZANZIBAR CLUB , 19:30–23:00, £12

Irish folk-rock troubadour, who also boasts the accolade of personal musician to the Dalai Lama. Part of Liverpool Irish Festival.

FOSSIL COLLECTIVE (STORY BOOKS)

LEAF, 19:30–22:00, £8

Bright young multi-instrumentalist duo from Leeds, made up of David Fendick and Jonny Hooker. EEF BARZELAY (CHRIS OTEPKA)

VIEW TWO GALLERY, 20:00–23:00, £9

The New York-based musician – and man behind the alt-country act Clem Snide – brings his Clem Snide back catalogue to the Acoustic Dustbowl, with support from The Heliogoat’s Chris Otepka. OUR IMBALANCE (CYTOTA)

O2 ACADEMY, 19:00–22:00, £15

Metal four-piece from Liverpool, playing a live show on the run up to the release of their album, Pandora’s Box.

Irish folk singer from Co. Offaly with a distinct and unusual unaccompanied singing style, performs as part of the Liverpool Irish Festival. GRAND UNION ORCHESTRA

THE CAPSTONE, 19:30–23:00, £13.50 (£10.50)

A line-up of musicians from around the world come together to throw myriad influences into the melting pot.

Sun 13 Oct

THE JIM JONES REVUE (THE AMAZING SNAKEHEADS)

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 19:00–23:00, £12.50

More supercharged rock’n’roll from the Jim Jones-led London quintet. EVERYTHING EVERYTHING (DUTCH UNCLES + ALL WE ARE)

O2 ACADEMY, 19:00–22:00, £16

Manchester residing indie-rock quartet still riding high of the release of their early 2013 LP, Arc, and cropping up everywhere everywhere. LUMIERE (ANNA CORCORAN)

PALM HOUSE, 19:30–22:00, £12.50

Éilís Kennedy and Pauline Scanlon doing their intense and earthy singer/songwriter thing as part of the Liverpool Irish Festival.

Mon 14 Oct

BRIGHT PHOEBUS REVISITED

LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC HALL, 19:30–23:00, £22 (£28)

Lal and Mike Waterson’s Bright Phoebus album, regarded as a pivotal piece in the British folk revival, is performed live for the first time since its release back in 1972, by Richard Hawley, John Smith, Kami Thompson, and other special guests.

Tue 15 Oct TEMPLES

THE KAZIMIER, 19:00–23:00, £9

OUTFIT

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 18:30–22:00, £10

Liverpudlian guitar-pop ensemble playing a selection of new stuff offa their recent EP. DEAN FRIEDMAN

EPSTEIN THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £20

US-of-A singer/songwriter doing his thing on vocals, piano, keyboard, guitar... and maybe even harmonica. CHRISTY MOORE (DECLAN SINNOTT)

LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC HALL, 20:00–23:00, FROM £30

Tue 08 Oct JACKIE OATES

LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC HALL, 20:00–23:00, £12

THE SHIPPING FORECAST, 19:00–22:30, £5

TWELVE GAUGE

English classic rock quintet taking their sound into some hard and metallic places.

Thu 17 Oct COASTS

THE SHIPPING FORECAST, 19:00–22:30, £6

Bristol-based five-piece known for making shimmery pop sounds that go well with cold cider and a sunny day. Or, y’know, beer and dark clouds. ANDY IRVINE

LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC HALL, 20:00–22:00, £12

The traditional Irish folk singer/ songwriter and multi-instrumentalist plays a set plucked from his hefty repertoire.

Fri 18 Oct

CLOUD CONTROL (MT WOLF & SUNDOWNERS)

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 19:00–23:00, £FREE (BOOKING REQUIRED)

Alternative rockers hailing from the Blue Mountains in Sydney. BOWLING FOR SOUP (PATENT PENDING)

O2 ACADEMY, 19:00–22:00, £SOLD OUT

The Texan rockers return to UK soil to play what will be their final shows after almost 20 years together. JOHN GRANT

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 19:00–23:00, £SOLD OUT

The American singer/songwriter and onetime frontman of 90s act The Czars does his solo thing. THE ILLEGAL EAGLES

LIVERPOOL EMPIRE, 19:30–22:00, £24.40

Eagles tribute act.

MICHAEL HEAD & THE RED ELASTIC BAND

THE KAZIMIER, 20:00–23:00, £SOLD OUT

The new folk stylings of Michael Head and his Red Elastic Band. STATE OF QUO

ERIC’S LIVE, 20:00–23:30, £8

Status Quo tribute act.

Sat 19 Oct

SEAN TAYLOR (DAVE O’GRADY TRIO)

THE ZANZIBAR CLUB , 19:30–22:00, £6

ERIC’S LIVE, 20:00–23:30, £15

TREMBLING BELLS AND MIKE HERON

Original Incredible String Band member Mike Heron teams up with Glasgow’s own kings and queens of modern folk, Trembling Bells, to perform new arrangements of some ISB classics. PINS (SEPTEMBER GIRLS + SANKOFA)

LEAF, 19:30–22:00, £7

All-girl Mancunian quartet currently living out their love of the C86 sound.

ODI (ONLY CHILD + RONAN BOYLE + DJ JONNIE O’HARE)

FACT, 20:00–22:00, FREE

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 19:00–23:00, £6

Sat 12 Oct

THINK FLOYD

O2 ACADEMY, 19:00–22:00, £14

Pink Floyd tribute act.

THE CAPSTONE, 19:30–23:00, £14 (£11.50)

Alto saxaphone, guitar and drums come together for a live show wide-ranging in influence, featuring heavy metal guitars alongside free improvisation.

Seven local musicians explore acoustic music in a digital age.

Neo psych bunch hailing from the midlands/the early 80s, built on frontman James Bagshaw’s impressively polished vocals.

Bon Jovi tribute act.

MARTIN SPEAKE TRIO

ACOUTE II THE BLUECOAT, 19:30–21:30, £5 (£3)

The acoustic blues singer/songwriter takes his latest album, Chase The Night to a live setting as part of the Liverpool Irish Festival.

The Irish singer/songwriter Alice Murdol performs a special set in the FACT garden.

BON GIOVI

ERIC’S LIVE, 19:30–23:30, £8

The Irish singer/songwriter celebrates the release of his new album, Folk Tale. Part of Liverpool Irish Festival.

Staffordshire-based singer/fiddle player and finalist on the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Awards 2003.

Primal Scream Sunday 15th

DANCING YEARS

Alternative acoustic two piece from Leeds, made up of Stephen Budd and Al Lavelle.

Wed 16 Oct DAMIEN DEMPSEY

THE KAZIMIER, 19:30–22:00, £15

Favourited Irish singer/songwriter bringing his mighty voice to bear on topics both local and global. CONNOR HARRIS

O2 ACADEMY, 19:00–22:00, £7.50

Birmingham-based hip hop artist, fresh from supporting everyone from Chipmunk to Professor Green. ANDY IRVINE

LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC HALL, 20:00–22:00, £12

The traditional Irish folk singer/ songwriter and multi-instrumentalist plays a set plucked from his hefty repertoire. PUBLIC IMAGE LTD (THE SELECTER)

O2 ACADEMY, 19:00–22:00, £26.50

Post punk outfit led by Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon, re-formed in 2012 and now with a new album under their belts. ROYAL BLOOD

THE SHIPPING FORECAST, 20:00–23:00, £5

Brighton-based alternative rock duo made up of Michael Kerr (bass and vocals) and Ben Thatcher (drums).

THE BEAT

Popular ska and 2-tone revivial band, founded way back in 1978. THE SMYTHS

O2 ACADEMY, 19:00–22:00, £10

The Smiths tribute act. DEPTFORD GOTH

LEAF, 20:00–22:00, £9

London producer and singer/ songwriter Daniel Woolhouse plays under his Deptford Goth guise. THE WEEKS

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 18:00–22:00, £8

Alternative sludge pop five-piece hailing from Nashville, currently embarking on a mammoth UK and US tour. CATFISH AND THE BOTTLEMEN

KOROVA, 19:00–23:00, £6

Welsh four-piece who play loud, energetic rock’n’roll. Expect a tight performance – apparently they’ve been mates since school. MOTOWN’S GREATEST HITS: HOW SWEET IT IS

LIVERPOOL EMPIRE, 19:30–22:00, FROM £20.50

A musical celebration of Motown, returning for its 10th successive year, combining all of the greatest hits with slick choreography. SEAN KEANE

ST MICHAEL’S IRISH CENTRE, 19:30–22:00, £12

Traditional Irish, folk, country and blues all from one man, once described as the greatest musical find of the 90s – performs as part of the Liverpool Irish Festival. THE CRAZY WORLD OF ARTHUR BROWN

THE KAZIMIER, 20:30–23:00, £15

The self-styled ‘God Of Hellfire’, a certain Mr Arthur Brown, celebrates 45 years of Fire. DEAF SCHOOL: BOOK LAUNCH

EAST VILLAGE ARTS CLUB, 19:00–22:00, £18

The 1973 Liverpool rock band, Deaf School, get back together for a couple of shows and celebrate the launch of Paul du Noyer’s book, The Non-Stop Pop Art Punk Rock Party.

Listings

October 2013 SKINNY.61x314.Master.indd 1

RECORD LABEL SHOWCASE ISLINGTON MILL, 14:00–00:00, FREE

23/09/2013 16:11

Sun 20 Oct M People

Liverpool Empire, 19:00–22:00, From £26

Marking 20 years since the release of their seminal album, Elegant Slumming, the pioneers of the Manc music scene return to the stage.

Tunng (Pinkunoizo + Loved Ones)

East Village Arts Club, 19:00–22:00, £12

Charming English folk band rich with electronic influences and a love of strange instruments (caveat: they’ve been known to play the seashells).

Mon 21 Oct

Trembling Bells (The Magic Arm + David Hirst + Beaten Tracks DJs) Leaf, 20:00–22:00, £10

Those kings and queens of modern folk treat our earlugs to a special solo acoustic set.

Tue 22 Oct

Deaf Havana (Charlie Simpson + Big Sixes) O2 Academy, 19:00–22:00, £14

Four East Coast Village lads making a rammy of rock sounds, taking to the road in support of their new LP, Old Souls.

Wed 23 Oct

To Kill A King (Keston Cobblers Club)

Blade Factory, 19:30–23:00, £7.50

Leeds/London quartet fronted by the brooding vocals and densleycrafted songwriting of Ralph Pelleymounter. The Monochrome Set

Eric’s Live, 20:00–23:30, £12.50

Longstanding indie-pop outfit, marked by songwriter Bid’s laconic vocals and intelligent wit.

Thu 24 Oct Big Boy Bloater

Eric’s Live, 19:30–23:30, £10

The Jools Holland-prasied bluesmeets-roots guitarist and singer/ songwriter does his live thing. Peter Hook and The Light

East Village Arts Club, 19:00–22:00, £20

The former Joy Division and New Order bassist plays with his new band, The Light, cherrypicking a set of predominantly Joy Division songs. Beaty Heart

The Shipping Forecast, 19:30–23:00, Free

London-based three-piece making psychedelic pop music – formed at Goldsmith’s College out of a videoart and music collective.

Euros Childs (Bill Ryder-Jones + Laura J Martin )

Leaf, 19:30–22:00, £10

The Welsh musician and songwriter, best known as the frontman of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, takes to the stage solo, with support from Coral frontman Bill Ryder-Jones and Liverpool’s Laura J Martin.

Fri 25 Oct Spector

The Shipping Forecast, 20:00–22:00, £10

The happy-go-lucky London ensemble churn out the pop tunes, still riding high on the release of their debut LP. Spector

The Shipping Forecast, 20:00–23:00, £11

The happy-go-lucky London ensemble churn out the pop tunes, still riding high on the release of their debut LP. Space

East Village Arts Club, 19:00–22:00, £12.50

The Liverpudlian indie rock lot mark 20 years of music making with a tour. John Law’s Congregation

The Capstone, 19:30–23:00, £14 (£11.50)

John Law joins forces with bassist Tom Mason and drummer, Tim Giles to create powerful songs with the simplicity of rock, ramped up with the delicacy of classical music.

Sat 26 Oct

The Mighty Diamonds (HandCart Band + One a Penny Sound)

District, 21:00–23:00, £12

Jamaican reggae harmony trio, who for 40+ years have been entertaining and educating the world with their sweet harmonies and conscious lyrics.

Listings

Touchstone + Von Hertzen Bros Eric’s Live, 20:00–23:30, £12.50

Progressive hard rockin’ fivesome Touchstone take to the road for a double headline set with similarly progressive rock lot, the Von Hertzen Brothers

The Songbook Sessions (Jimmy & The Revolvers + Black Mountain Lights + Johnny Panic & The Fever + The Roscoes + Wobbly Hearts + Sue Whitebrook & The Amateur Hour + Mick Flaterty)

The Zanzibar Club , 19:30–23:00, £5

Manchester Clubs Original Bangarang

Afterlife

Woo Hah

Fallow Cafe, 22:30–02:00, Free

South, 04:00–07:30, £6

Trof Northern Quarter, 21:00–03:00, Free (£1 after 10pm)

New student night out in the Fallow, serving up ska, rocksteady, reggae and 2 tone.

Thu 03 Oct Murkage

South, 23:00–04:00, £3

A showcase event for new and up-coming music in the area.

House, hip-hop, grime and garage from the Murkage residents.

The Capstone, 13:00–15:00, Free

Mint Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £3 (£5 after 11)

Samyo Too

Play Doubt

The ensemble leaders of The National Youth Orchestra for Indian Music, amping up traditional Indian music with contemporary influences.

New monthly event moseying on to the nightlife scene, offering up hip-hop, dubstep, garage and more.

Sun 27 Oct

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free

Efterklang

The Kazimier, 19:00–22:00, £12

Still riding high on their newest LP, Piramida – incorporating over 1000 sound samples taken from the former Russian Settlement – the Copenhagen arthouse exports perform a special set for which they’ll be bolstered by a six piece band. Goldheart Assembly (Cattle & Cane)

East Village Arts Club, 19:00–22:00, £8

Experimental pop five-piece from London touring with their new album, Long Distance Song Effects. Blue

O2 Academy, 19:00–22:00, £sold out

Following their stint on ITV’s The Big Reunion, Lee Ryan et al get back on the road. Thank God.

Mon 28 Oct Steve Cradock

East Village Arts Club, 19:00–22:00, £12

Long-serving guitarist to Ocean Colour Scene, Steve Cradock takes to the road solo. ARCTIC MONKEYS

LIVERPOOL ECHO ARENA, 18:30-22:30, FROM £28

Benefitting from some mentoring from a certain Mr Yosh Homme, the Monkeys are back on the live circuit with latest offering, AM. Ozric Tentacles

O2 Academy, 19:00–22:00, £15

The psychedelic space rockers take to The Arches armed with a 28-strong back catalogue of albums. Portico Quartet

The Kazimier, 19:30–23:00, £12.50

The Capstone, 19:30–23:00, £11.90 (£9.50)

Now in its fourth year, Sonic Interactions returns with a variety of electroacoustic works alongside acousmatic works for loudspeakers.

Stop Making Sense

Common’s regular club-in-a-bar night of hipster bullshit, with Mr Seb Valentine, Benatronic & Luke Warm. Neil Diablo

Black Dog Bowl, 22:00–04:00, Free

Mr Diablo, of El Diablo’s Social Club, serving up balaeric groovers and disco hits. Shakedown

Black Dog Ballroom NQ, 23:00–04:00, Free

DJ Da Funk offers an eclectic mix of funk, soul and hip hop. Reggae Thursdays

The Deaf Institute, 21:00–01:30, Free

Weekly reggae session at the institute, serving up a blend of roots, rocksteady, onedrop, dancehall and ska. ZebrelEphant

Fallow Cafe, 23:00–02:00, Free

Student night of soul, motown, disco, funk and psychedelia – basically the 60s and 70s in soundtrack form. Kolor (Okain)

Venus, 23:00–04:00, £6 (£7)

A new student night hitting the Deansgate scene, aiming to bring the Ibiza vibes to Manchester students. Tuk Tuk

Antwerp Mansion, 22:00–03:00, £4

New weekly club night at the mansion, playing ghetto funk and disco. Coded Rhythm (Karma Kid + Armeria + Blocworx + Boy Nukem + Subtonic)

Joshua Brooks, 22:00–04:00, £5

Satrting this up again after the summer months, coded rhythm return with the up-coming Karma Kid for an r’n’b-esque set.

Fri 04 Oct Melting Pot

Trof Northern Quarter, 21:00–03:00, Free (£1 after 10pm)

A new Friday-nighter offering up smooth soul and elevating disco. Revolver

The Deaf Institute, 23:00–03:00, £3 adv (£4 door)

Manchester’s premier 60s party, now a bi-monthly reason to get excited. Expect 60s pop, garage, motown, rock’n’roll. Top Of The Pops ‘13

Mint Lounge, 22:30–03:30, £2

Manchester Clubs

Get your weekend off to a great start with this healthy mix of dancefloor fillers and guilty pleasures served up by residents and guest DJs. Tusk

Tue 01 Oct Gold Teeth

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–03:00, £4

Legendary bad boy, mixed-bag night that invites use of the term ‘carnage’. Student House

South, 23:00–04:00, £2

The weekly student house and techno night returns to South, keeping you on the dancefloor till the early hours. Gimme Shelter

Roadhouse, 23:00–03:00, £4 (£2.50)

Strictly vinyl-only night of rock’n’roll, Motown, Northern soul, punk, indie and more.

Wed 02 Oct Lipstick Wednesdays

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–03:00, £4 adv (£5 door)

New weekly house night, with cheeky gimmicks and cheap entry for party-goers wearing lipstick.

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–03:00, Free

Disco, house and general oddities from Manchester’s Tusk. Well Future

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free (£2 after 10)

Guest DJs on the decks, bringing you music from the past, present, and well, future. Under

Gorilla, 22:00–04:00, £10

Under return to Gorilla with their forward thinking music and big rave attitude.

The Warehouse Project: Armin Van Buuren (W&W + John O’Callaghan + Jordan Suckley + Lange + Jochen Miller + Menno De Jong + Craig Connelly + Beat Service + Chris Metcalfe + James Rigby) Victoria Warehouse, 20:00–04:00, £28.50

Armin Van Buuren – Dutch trance producer and DJ – curates the night in his only UK performance of 2013, supported by some stars of his Armada Music label.

The official Warehouse Project afterparty, taking revellers into the small hours led by a selection of DJs from the night. Ewan Pearson

Islington Mill, 21:00–05:00, £10

Returning after their show with Andrew Weatherall, Cowbell bring the electronic musician and producer – known for releasing material under a variety of names, including Maas and Sulky Pup – to the Mill. Limbo: Robsoul Recordings Label Party (Phil Weeks + Joss Moog + H2 + 5eighty6) South, 23:00–04:00, £10

Limbo celebrates its third birthday with the underground house label, Robsoul Recordings providing sounds. BPM

Roadhouse, 23:00–03:00, £tbc

Club night turned record label returns to serve up the best in underground and emerging artists across grime, garage and experimental bass. D Tached (Madtech Records + Applebottom + Walter Ego + AZ & TOR) Antwerp Mansion, 22:00–03:00, £5

From the same people who brought you Hit&Run, focussing on house, techno and future bass. XFM First Friday (DJ Jo Good ft. Theme Park)

Band On The Wall, 23:00–03:00, £4

New Saturday-nighter spanning old school, hip-hop, soul and funk. GoGo

The Ritz, 22:30–03:30, £5

Weekly club night serving up Katy B, Example, Tine Tempa and other bangers of the club variety.

The Warehouse Project: Paradise (Jamie Jones + Maya Jane Coles + Art Department + Lee Foss + Damian Lazarus + Cassy + Dyed Soundorom + Infinity Ink + Richy Ahmed + Alex Arnout b2b Clive Henry + Waifs & Strays + Robert James + Digitaria) Victoria Warehouse, 20:00–05:00, £sold out

Jamie Jones returns to The Warehouse Project with some Hot Creations family members, Lee Foss and Infinity Ink to curate a three room event spanning the techno spectrum. Afterlife

South, 04:00–07:30, £6

The official Warehouse Project afterparty, taking revellers into the small hours led by a selection of DJs from the night. Girls On Film 1st Birthday

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–04:00, £3 adv (£5 door)

Pink lady cocktails, disco balls, glitz and glamour – a monthly club night where you’re free to let your inner 80s child loose. Wolf Music Showcase (Krl + Greymatter)

The launch of a new gig and club combo, with a live set from indie dance trio, Theme Park, getting things started.

House, disco and soul from this Wolf Music Recordings showcase.

Joshua Brooks, 23:00–04:00, £5 (door)

Fallow Cafe, 22:30–02:30, Free

OPTIC

OPTIC launch a new monthly residency at Joshua Brooks.

Sat 05 Oct Remake Remodel

The Ruby Lounge, 23:00–03:30, £4

A night of alternative rock’n’roll shenanigans.

SELECTIVE HEARING (TOM DEMAC + BASIC SOUL UNIT + ANTHONY NAPLES) SECRET WAREHOUSE LOCATION, 23:0006:00, £15 (£12, £10)

The latest in no-bullshit party promoters Selective Hearing’s secret warehouse parties, with the location to be announced on the night as usual. RJ Fletcher, Bam and Olsen join Aus Music’s Tom Demac (live), Basic Soul Unit (live) and New York’s Anthony Naples. Funkademia

Mint Lounge, 22:30–03:30, £5 adv. (£6 door)

Mancunian nightclub institution – delivering a chronological history of soul on a weekly basis, courtesy of their DJ collective. Clint Boon

Gorilla, 23:00–04:00, £6

Turn It Out

A new alternative club night out in the Fallow, serving up the best in alt-rock, punk, indie, new wave and hip hop. Texas Party

Islington Mill, 21:00–03:00, £3

The Blackpool-based collective of chunky bass line-loving folk bring their love of underground Djs to the Mill.

Guiltless Days (Rory Phillips + Luke Unabomber + autoKratz (live) + MDNGHT (live and DJ set) + MDNA + Rich Reason) Sound Control, 14:00–20:00, £13

A new clubbing concept offering party-goers the chance to get things going earlier, 2pm to be exact, with things wrapping up before 8pm – New Yorkers love it.

808101 take to their new home at Roadhouse with a launch party for UK producer, Ziro. Rum&Bass Part VIII

WhoSaidWhat?

Regular Friday-nighter, packed with disco, house and funk, with a dash of hip-hop and reggae for good measure. Neil Smallridge

Black Dog Ballroom NQ, 22:00–05:00, Free

Effortlessly blended indie, disco, hip-hop and house served up by Neil Smallridge. Patterns

Black Dog Bowl, 23:00–04:00, Free

WHP resident, Krysko, taking over the decks and playing his blend of soul, disco and house anthems. Friends in Common

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free (£2 after 10)

Common invite their buddies to take over the decks.

Itchy Feet

Mint Lounge, 23:00–03:00, £5 adv. (£6 door)

A unique blend of rock’n’roll, funk and swing, engineered to get feet moving. Gold Teeth

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–03:00, £4

Legendary bad boy, mixed-bag night that invites use of the term ‘carnage’. Student House

South, 23:00–04:00, £2

The weekly student house and techno night returns to South, keeping you on the dancefloor till the early hours. Gimme Shelter

Roadhouse, 23:00–03:00, £4 (£2.50)

Strictly vinyl-only night of rock’n’roll, Motown, Northern soul, punk, indie and more.

Wed 09 Oct Lipstick Wednesdays

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–03:00, £4 adv (£5 door)

New weekly house night, with cheeky gimmicks and cheap entry for party-goers wearing lipstick. Original Bangarang

Fallow Cafe, 22:30–02:00, Free

New student night out in the Fallow, serving up ska, rocksteady, reggae and 2 tone. Flow

Roadhouse, 23:00–03:00, £3

Strictly vinyl-only night of rock’n’roll, Motown, Northern soul, punk, indie and more. Live Life Then Give Life (Matt Lynch + Busik Mase + The Natural Vibes + Saturday Morning Cartoons + Albino Gorilla) Antwerp Mansion, 19:00–00:00, £3

Charity night raising awareness of organ donation, offering up a mixed bag night of anything from chilled acoustic, to feel good reggae vibes.

Thu 10 Oct Murkage

South, 23:00–04:00, £3

Stop Making Sense

Common’s regular club-in-a-bar night of hipster bullshit, with Mr Seb Valentine, Benatronic & Luke Warm. Neil Diablo

Mr Scruff Keep It Unreal

Sound Control, 23:00–04:00, £10

A new mixed bag night on the Manchester scene, paying sunny house, electronica and techno with a Balearic vibe. High Five 3rd Birthday (James Holroyd + Krysko + Alan Hall + Matt Wilden)

2022NQ, 23:00–04:00, £6

Black Dog Bowl, 22:00–04:00, Free

Shakedown

Black Dog Ballroom NQ, 23:00–04:00, Free

DJ Da Funk offers an eclectic mix of funk, soul and hip hop. Reggae Thursdays

The Deaf Institute, 21:00–01:30, Free

Weekly reggae session at the institute, serving up a blend of roots, rocksteady, onedrop, dancehall and ska. Kolor (Him_Self_Her)

Venus, 23:00–04:00, £6 (£7)

A new student night hitting the Deansgate scene, aiming to bring the Ibiza vibes to Manchester students.

What started as a one off charity fundraiser is now celebrating its third birthday, inviting some of their first guest DJs back to mark the occasion.

Mint Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £6 adv. (£8 door)

Mon 07 Oct

Tuk Tuk

Switch

Gorilla, 23:00–04:00, £5

A new weekly event at Gorilla from the people that brought you Bassface, offering a mash up of house, hip-hop and bass.

Juicy

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–03:00, £3 adv (£5 door)

Bringing together the best of the UK hip-hop scene under one club night roof – enjoy hip hop, soul and reggae.

Mr Diablo, of El Diablo’s Social Club, serving up balaeric groovers and disco hits.

Just Add Sunshine (Jody Wisternoff)

Trof Northern Quarter, 21:00–03:00, Free (£1 after 10pm)

A new Friday-nighter offering up smooth soul and elevating disco.

Tue 08 Oct

Antwerp Mansion, 22:00–03:00, £3

DJ set from the musical mastermind, known for mixing a junkshop bag of sounds and bringing his beats to life with squiggly, scribbled animations

Melting Pot

All party, no bullshit night of everything from classic hip-hop to disco and funk.

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free

Band On The Wall, 21:30–03:00, £11 adv. (£12 door)

Black Dog Ballroom NWS, 22:00–04:00, £2

South, 23:00–04:00, £6

Fri 11 Oct

Ruining Tuesday morning for students everywhere, the latest addition to South’s calender promises late night crammed with r’n’b, oldskool and house music.

Roadhouse, 23:00–04:00, £5 earlybird (£6 thereafter)

Relapse (Aaron Spectre)

Three-strong line-up featuring drum’n’bass and jungle heavyweights, all geared up to celebrate Relapse’s return to Sound Control.

Recess

House, hip-hop, grime and garage from the Murkage residents.

South, 23:00–04:00, £5

Sound Control, 21:00–04:00, £12

Rum & Reggae returns as a monthly event, with music from Holmilk’s Joey B and Swing Ting’s DJ Samrai, and Caribbean treats, like rum cocktails and goat curry.

808101

A night of strictly bass heavy house.

Mixed-bag night from local DJ ledge Clint Boon.

Rum & Reggae (Joey B + Samrai) Soup Kitchen, 18:00–00:00, Free

Hot Wuk (The Heatwave)

The Heatwave arrives in Manchester, just in time for, er, winter. Expect to sweat. Antwerp Mansion, 22:00–03:00, £4

New weekly club night at the mansion, playing ghetto funk and disco.

Golden Egg

Fallow Cafe, 22:30–03:30

Top Of The Pops ‘13

Mint Lounge, 22:30–03:30, £2

Get your weekend off to a great start with this healthy mix of dancefloor fillers and guilty pleasures served up by residents and guest DJs. Pumping Iron

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free (£2 after 10)

Mixed-bag night of nu cosmic Italio, vintage avant garde disco and lo-fi rhythmic punk funk, as you do. SO Flute

Roadhouse, 23:00–03:00, £10

So Flute serves up their usual smorgasbord of food, connecting the dots between genres.

The Warehouse Project: Modeselektion (ModeselEktor + LFO + Pantha Du Prince + Dopplereffekt + Marcel Dettmann + Ben Klock + Scuba + Dusky + George Fitzgerald + Karenn feat. Blawan & Pariah + Ben UFO + Cosmin TRG + Boddika + Martyn + Benjamin Damage & Doc Daneeka + Anstam) Victoria Warehouse, 20:00–05:00, £25

Modeselektion returns to The Warehouse Project, curating a night with rare appearances from LFO, Dopplereffekt and Karenn. Afterlife

South, 04:00–07:30, £6

The official Warehouse Project afterparty, taking revellers into the small hours led by a selection of DJs from the night.

mute! (Brawther + Tom Neatis + Daniel Sanders + Gerado Stretton)

Neil Smallridge Black Dog Ballroom NQ, 22:00–05:00, Free

Effortlessly blended indie, disco, hip-hop and house served up by Neil Smallridge. Patterns

Black Dog Bowl, 23:00–04:00, Free

WHP resident, Krysko, taking over the decks and playing his blend of soul, disco and house anthems. Friends in Common

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free (£2 after 10)

Common invite their buddies to take over the decks. Woo Hah

Trof Northern Quarter, 21:00–03:00, Free (£1 after 10pm)

New Saturday-nighter spanning old school, hip-hop, soul and funk. GoGo

The Ritz, 22:30–03:30, £5

Weekly club night serving up Katy B, Example, Tine Tempa and other bangers of the club variety. The Warehouse Project: Rudimental Presents (Andy C + David ‘Ram Jam’ Rodigan + Bondax + Gorgon City + Jazzy Jeff + Buraka Som Sistema + DJ Ez + Kidnap Kid + Snakehips + Joel Compass _ Darq E Freaker + Wox + Scruffizer + Manik + Monki + Compa + Juicy Djs + Jonny Dub + Rich Reason + Lee Scratch Perry) Victoria Warehouse, 20:00–04:00, £sold out

Rudimental returns to The Warehouse Project following a year in the UK charts and on summer festival line-ups, he curates a three room line-up, including a four-hour set from Andy C. Afterlife

South, 04:00–07:30, £6

The official Warehouse Project afterparty, taking revellers into the small hours led by a selection of DJs from the night. The Orb (System 7 + Joe McKechnie)

Manchester Academy 2, 3 and Club, 21:00–02:30, £15

The English electronic mainstays mark 25 years of ambient house, with sets from System 7 and Joe McKechnie.

South, 23:00–04:00, £6

Brain Machine Radio (Photodementia + Diffuse + Andrew Ingram + Johnny Abstract + Rick Nicholls)

Hit&Run (Kastle + Eagles For Hands + Keeno + Epsile)

Brain Machine’s first foray into live events sees them bringing the mysterious electro/techno outfit, Photodementia to Islington Mill for a live set.

Mute returns to South with a bang, bringing house DJ Brawther down for a three hour extended set I the rave cave. Antwerp Mansion, 21:00–03:00, £5

A night of forward thinking music and underground sounds.

Verdampft (Dave Haslam + Will Tramp + Everything Everything (DJ Set))

2022NQ, 22:00–03:00, £7

Verdampft, meaning melts into air, setting the tone for this uplifting night of music from Manchester stalwart, Dave Haslam, and a DJ set from band of the minute, Everything Everything.

Sat 12 Oct GOO

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–04:00, £4 adv (£5 door)

Monthly club night tribute to 90s indie – expect Pulp, Nirvana, Suede, Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies and more. Funkademia

Mint Lounge, 22:30–03:30, £5 adv. (£6 door)

Mancunian nightclub institution – delivering a chronological history of soul on a weekly basis, courtesy of their DJ collective. Clint Boon

South, 23:00–04:00, £5

Mixed-bag night from local DJ ledge Clint Boon. WhoSaidWhat?

Black Dog Ballroom NWS, 22:00–04:00, £2

Regular Friday-nighter, packed with disco, house and funk, with a dash of hip-hop and reggae for good measure.

Islington Mill, 21:00–06:00, £10

Hotmilk

Roadhouse, 23:00–03:00, £tbc

Guiding Star Hi-Fi leads the way for a night of dancehall, soul and dirty south. D Tached (Troy Gunner + Anushka)

Antwerp Mansion, 22:00–03:00, £5

From the same people who brought you Hit&Run, focussing on house, techno and future bass. Adobe Musique

Joshua Brooks, 22:00–04:00, £5 (door)

After launching in August, Adobe Musique return to Joshua Brooks for more house madness. Lowdown (James Lavelle)

Sound Control, 23:00–04:00, £12

For the latest edition of Lowdown, they invite Mo Wax Records boss, James Lavelle along for a night of techno and electronic grooves. Scenery Showcase (Deep Space Orchestra + ASOK + Bantam Lions)

Soup Kitchen, 22:00–04:00, £5

For their latest showcase event, Scenery Records invite DJ and producer duo Chris Barker and Si Murray, aka Deep Space Orchestra, and Liverpool’s Bantam Lions down to the Soup Kitchen basement for a sweat box night of revelry.

Mon 14 Oct Switch

Gorilla, 23:00–04:00, £5

A new weekly event at Gorilla from the people that brought you Bassface, offering a mash up of house, hip-hop and bass.

THE SKINNY

Recess

Zedd

From Here To Eternity

South, 23:00–04:00, £6

Gorilla, 19:00–22:00, £14.50

Fallow Cafe, 22:30–02:30, Free

Ruining Tuesday morning for students everywhere, the latest addition to South’s calender promises late night crammed with r’n’b, oldskool and house music.

Tue 15 Oct Gold Teeth

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–03:00, £4

Legendary bad boy, mixed-bag night that invites use of the term ‘carnage’. Student House

South, 23:00–04:00, £2

The weekly student house and techno night returns to South, keeping you on the dancefloor till the early hours.

Wed 16 Oct Lipstick Wednesdays

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–03:00, £4 adv (£5 door)

New weekly house night, with cheeky gimmicks and cheap entry for party-goers wearing lipstick. Original Bangarang

Fallow Cafe, 22:30–02:00, Free

New student night out in the Fallow, serving up ska, rocksteady, reggae and 2 tone.

Thu 17 Oct Murkage

South, 23:00–04:00, £3

House, hip-hop, grime and garage from the Murkage residents. Stop Making Sense

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free

One of the EDM scene’s brightest new stars, Zedd (aka Anton Zaslavski), mans the decks for the evening. The Mighty Diamonds

Band On The Wall, 20:30–03:00, £14.50

Jamaican reggae harmony trio, who for 40+ years have been entertaining and educating the world with their sweet harmonies and conscious lyrics.

The Warehouse Project: Size Matters (Steve Angello + Sunnery James + Ryan Marciano + AN21 + Third Party + Max Vangeli + Qulinez + Tim Mason + Matt Everson + Nick Coulson + Leo Slater + No Curfew) Victoria Warehouse, 20:00–05:00, From £25

Steve Angelo of Swedish House Mafia and Size Records curates the night, with appearances from label mates and a range of UK talent. Afterlife

South, 04:00–07:30, £6

The official Warehouse Project afterparty, taking revellers into the small hours led by a selection of DJs from the night. In The Loop

Roadhouse, 23:00–03:00, £tbc

Monthly hip hop night taking to The Roadhouse.

Sat 19 Oct Revolver

The Deaf Institute, 23:00–03:00, £3 adv (£4 door)

Common’s regular club-in-a-bar night of hipster bullshit, with Mr Seb Valentine, Benatronic & Luke Warm.

Manchester’s premier 60s party, now a bi-monthly reason to get excited. Expect 60s pop, garage, motown, rock’n’roll.

Black Dog Bowl, 22:00–04:00, Free

Mint Lounge, 22:30–03:30, £5 adv. (£6 door)

Neil Diablo

Mr Diablo, of El Diablo’s Social Club, serving up balaeric groovers and disco hits. Shakedown

Black Dog Ballroom NQ, 23:00–04:00, Free

DJ Da Funk offers an eclectic mix of funk, soul and hip hop. Reggae Thursdays

The Deaf Institute, 21:00–01:30, Free

Weekly reggae session at the institute, serving up a blend of roots, rocksteady, onedrop, dancehall and ska. ZebrelEphant

Fallow Cafe, 23:00–02:00, Free

Student night of soul, motown, disco, funk and psychedelia – basically the 60s and 70s in soundtrack form. Kolor (Just Be)

Venus, 23:00–04:00, £6 (£7)

A new student night hitting the Deansgate scene, aiming to bring the Ibiza vibes to Manchester students. Tuk Tuk

Antwerp Mansion, 22:00–03:00, £4

New weekly club night at the mansion, playing ghetto funk and disco.

Fri 18 Oct Melting Pot

Trof Northern Quarter, 21:00–03:00, Free (£1 after 10pm)

A new Friday-nighter offering up smooth soul and elevating disco. Top Of The Pops ‘13

Mint Lounge, 22:30–03:30, £2

Get your weekend off to a great start with this healthy mix of dancefloor fillers and guilty pleasures served up by residents and guest DJs. Drop The Mustard

Gorilla, 23:00–04:00, £6

Oft packed club night bursting at the seams with dancefloor filling hits. Black Bee Soul Club

KRAAK, 23:00–03:00, £tbc

Up-tempo Northern Soul in the Northern Quarter – inspired by the underground clubs of the 60s and 70s. Well Future

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free (£2 after 10)

Guest DJs on the decks, bringing you music from the past, present, and well, future. Slippery People

Fallow Cafe, 22:30–02:30, Free

A new club night serving up slippery music you can dance yourself silly to – think Talking Heads, Prince and Daft Punk.

October 2013

Funkademia

Mancunian nightclub institution – delivering a chronological history of soul on a weekly basis, courtesy of their DJ collective. Clint Boon

South, 23:00–04:00, £5

Mixed-bag night from local DJ ledge Clint Boon.

Soul Boutique (Norman Anthony + B.I.Z.Z.Y.B + Paul Mac) Band On The Wall, 22:00–03:00, £8

A night of glamour and drop dead gorgeous dance floor-filling tunes. WhoSaidWhat?

Black Dog Ballroom NWS, 22:00–04:00, £2

Regular Friday-nighter, packed with disco, house and funk, with a dash of hip-hop and reggae for good measure. Neil Smallridge

Black Dog Ballroom NQ, 22:00–05:00, Free

Effortlessly blended indie, disco, hip-hop and house served up by Neil Smallridge. Patterns

Black Dog Bowl, 23:00–04:00, Free

WHP resident, Krysko, taking over the decks and playing his blend of soul, disco and house anthems. Friends in Common

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free (£2 after 10)

Common invite their buddies to take over the decks. Woo Hah

Trof Northern Quarter, 21:00–03:00, Free (£1 after 10pm)

New Saturday-nighter spanning old school, hip-hop, soul and funk. GoGo

The Ritz, 22:30–03:30, £5

Weekly club night serving up Katy B, Example, Tine Tempa and other bangers of the club variety.

The Warehouse Project: Resident Advisor (Richie Hawtin + Nicolas Jaar + Seth Troxler + Heidi + Eats Everything + Subban + Gaiser + Move D + Will Saul + Kowton + Dro Carey + ?kkord + Ivvvo + Krysko + Nic Baird) Victoria Warehouse, 20:00–05:00, £sold out

The Warehouse Project and Resident Advisor join forces to curate a night of house and techno, with appearances from WHP regulars, Seth Troxler and Eats Everything. Afterlife

South, 04:00–07:30, £6

The official Warehouse Project afterparty, taking revellers into the small hours led by a selection of DJs from the night.

Moving on from their spiritual home of The Gaslamp, From Here To Eternity continue on their forward thinking music quest out in the ‘burbs. Norman Jay MBE

2022NQ, 22:00–03:30, £8 adv. (£10 door)

The inimitable Sir Norman Jay returns to 2022NQ following his appearance in March to deliver another Good Times set.

Sun 20 Oct Haxan

Common, 16:00–00:00, Free

Michael Holland and Boomkat’s Conor, dishing up radiophonic disco and film score techno.

Mon 21 Oct

Gentleman’s Dub Club

Mint Lounge, 21:00–02:00, £8 adv. (£10 door)

Suited and booted dub collective who also take in elements of ska and roots reggae. Switch

Gorilla, 23:00–04:00, £5

A new weekly event at Gorilla from the people that brought you Bassface, offering a mash up of house, hip-hop and bass. Recess

South, 23:00–04:00, £6

Ruining Tuesday morning for students everywhere, the latest addition to South’s calender promises late night crammed with r’n’b, oldskool and house music.

Tue 22 Oct Gold Teeth

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–03:00, £4

Legendary bad boy, mixed-bag night that invites use of the term ‘carnage’. Student House

South, 23:00–04:00, £2

The weekly student house and techno night returns to South, keeping you on the dancefloor till the early hours.

Wed 23 Oct Lipstick Wednesdays

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–03:00, £4 adv (£5 door)

New weekly house night, with cheeky gimmicks and cheap entry for party-goers wearing lipstick. Original Bangarang

Fallow Cafe, 22:30–02:00, Free

New student night out in the Fallow, serving up ska, rocksteady, reggae and 2 tone.

Thu 24 Oct Murkage

South, 23:00–04:00, £3

House, hip-hop, grime and garage from the Murkage residents. Stop Making Sense

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free

Common’s regular club-in-a-bar night of hipster bullshit, with Mr Seb Valentine, Benatronic & Luke Warm. Neil Diablo

Black Dog Bowl, 22:00–04:00, Free

Mr Diablo, of El Diablo’s Social Club, serving up balaeric groovers and disco hits. Shakedown

Black Dog Ballroom NQ, 23:00–04:00, Free

DJ Da Funk offers an eclectic mix of funk, soul and hip hop. Reggae Thursdays

The Deaf Institute, 21:00–01:30, Free

Weekly reggae session at the institute, serving up a blend of roots, rocksteady, onedrop, dancehall and ska. ZebrelEphant

Fallow Cafe, 23:00–02:00, Free

Student night of soul, motown, disco, funk and psychedelia – basically the 60s and 70s in soundtrack form. Kolor (Tom Green)

Venus, 23:00–04:00, £6 (£7)

A new student night hitting the Deansgate scene, aiming to bring the Ibiza vibes to Manchester students. Tuk Tuk

Antwerp Mansion, 22:00–03:00, £4

New weekly club night at the mansion, playing ghetto funk and disco.

Fri 25 Oct Rebel Music

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–03:00, £3 adv (£5 door)

Resident DJs spin the very best of the last six decades of controversial icons, from Elvis, The Clash, Chick Berry and Snoop Dogg.

Soul:ution (Fabio + Loxy + Marcus Intalex + Bane + MC DRS)

Band On The Wall, 22:30–03:00, £10

2-hour set from Grooverider, aka Raymond Bingham, the Londonbased legend of the illegal raves/ warehouse scene of the late 80s and early 90s. Top Of The Pops ‘13

Mint Lounge, 22:30–03:30, £2

Get your weekend off to a great start with this healthy mix of dancefloor fillers and guilty pleasures served up by residents and guest DJs. Block Party

Trof Northern Quarter, 21:00–03:00, Free

Another Mof Glimmers night, serving up block party essentials with free house punch ‘til it’s gone. Well Future

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free (£2 after 10)

Guest DJs on the decks, bringing you music from the past, present, and well, future. Holy Circus

The Ruby Lounge, 23:00–03:30, £4

Blissed out night of indie, rock, lofi garage and all in between; expect to hear The Smiths, Talking Heads and The Cure. The Warehouse Project: The Knife

Victoria Warehouse, 19:30–03:00, £20

The Knife mark the release of their 2013 album, Shaking the Habitual, with a live show and three-room event – line-up TBC. Afterlife

South, 04:00–07:30, £6

The official Warehouse Project afterparty, taking revellers into the small hours led by a selection of DJs from the night.

Metropolis (Redlight + Hannah Wants) Gorilla, 23:00–04:00, £8

A genre-straddling night of drum and bass, dubstep, electronic and garage, with London/Bristolbased Redlight at the helm. Disco Stew

Fallow Cafe, 22:30–02:30, £tbc

Resident and guest DJs serve up nothing but disco into the small hours. Dub Smugglers

Islington Mill, 21:00–02:00, £tbc

Dub Smugglers take up their monthly residency at Islington Mill, with reggae, dancehall and ska a-plenty. Dots & Loops (Zomes)

KRAAK, 21:00–03:00, £8

Mixed bag club night of shoegaze, psych, indie, electronic, krautrock, low-fi and pop.

Sat 26 Oct Caged Asylum

The Ruby Lounge, 23:00–03:30, £6

Straight up rock and metal night with DJ Mikee Diablo on decks and a dress code that encourages fancy dress. DJ DEREK

UNDERDOG, 22:00–04:00, £4

Legendary rocksteady, reggae, ska, dancehall and soul DJ plays his last Manchester gig before retiring at the age of 73. POP

The Deaf Institute, 22:00–04:00, £3 adv (£5 door)

Pop classics in the music hall and glitzy girly disco in the main bar – all of which is designed to keep you dancing all night. Funkademia

Mint Lounge, 22:30–03:30, £5 adv. (£6 door)

Mancunian nightclub institution – delivering a chronological history of soul on a weekly basis, courtesy of their DJ collective. Craig Charles Funk & Soul Club (Hackney Colliery Band) Band On The Wall, 21:00–03:00, £13

DJ and actor Craig Charles will be manning the decks until 3am, playing his picks of funk and soul.

Clint Boon South, 23:00–04:00, £5

Mixed-bag night from local DJ ledge Clint Boon. WhoSaidWhat?

Black Dog Ballroom NWS, 22:00–04:00, £2

Regular Friday-nighter, packed with disco, house and funk, with a dash of hip-hop and reggae for good measure. Neil Smallridge

Black Dog Ballroom NQ, 22:00–05:00, Free

Effortlessly blended indie, disco, hip-hop and house served up by Neil Smallridge. Patterns

Black Dog Bowl, 23:00–04:00, Free

WHP resident, Krysko, taking over the decks and playing his blend of soul, disco and house anthems. Friends in Common

Common, 21:00–02:00, Free (£2 after 10)

Common invite their buddies to take over the decks. Woo Hah

Trof Northern Quarter, 21:00–03:00, Free (£1 after 10pm)

New Saturday-nighter spanning old school, hip-hop, soul and funk. GoGo

The Ritz, 22:30–03:30, £5

Weekly club night serving up Katy B, Example, Tine Tempa and other bangers of the club variety.

The Warehouse Project: Curated by Julio Bashmore (Laurent Garnier + Derrick Carter + Breach + Cassius + Bicep + Metro Area + Henrik Schwarz + FCL + Motor City Drum Ensemble + Space Dimension Controller + Velour + Jus-ed + Karizma + Funkineven + Andres + Krysko) Victoria Warehouse, 20:00–05:00, £25

Returning to The Warehouse Project following his appearance at the WHP X RA event in 2012, Julio Bashmore curates the night with a line-up spanning his wide range of influences, including Metro Area's first live show in almost a decade. Afterlife

South, 04:00–07:30, £6

The official Warehouse Project afterparty, taking revellers into the small hours led by a selection of DJs from the night. Solar (Robert Dietz)

Gorilla, 23:00–04:00, £10

A series of events focussing on all-encompassing techno, letting everything but the music slip away. Howl Sessions

Fallow Cafe, 22:30–02:30, Free

Remake Remodel DJs take to the Fallow to spin some rock’n’roll tracks, old and new. Hoya:Hoya

Roadhouse, 23:00–03:00, £tbc

Liverpool Clubs Tue 01 Oct

HNQO (Jordan Turbil + Smothie Criminals + Liam Dutton)

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, £5

Hot Creations world-travelling Brazilian, HNQO, doing his deep house thing.

Ldms 2nd Birthday (Sante + Gavin Herlihy + Josh Butler + Jay Murt)

Haus Warehouse, 22:00–03:00, £10

Celebrating their second year of party throwing, with live sets from Sante, and Crosstown Rebels’ Gavin Herlihy.

Wed 02 Oct Revolution

O2 Academy, 23:00–03:00, £2.50

Grab a slice of the midweek rock action with a night of alt, rock, metal, punk and emo with exclusive DJ sets and giveaways. Social Club

Brooklyn Mixer, 22:00–03:00, Free

The folk from No-Wave present a new alternative clubbing experience at Brooklyn Mixer, bringing the indie, hip-hop and electronica to the mid-week crowds.

Thu 03 Oct Juicy

The Shipping Forecast, 23:00–03:00, £3

All party, no bullshit night of everything from classic hip-hop to disco and funk. Time Square

The Krazy House, 22:00–04:00, £2

Recess

Ruining Tuesday morning for students everywhere, the latest addition to South’s calender promises late night crammed with r’n’b, oldskool and house music.

Disco, funk and a dash of classic hip hop in the bar, courtesy of Rich Furness. Subvert (Kissy Sell Out + Lewis Jardine)

Revolution (Albert Dock), 22:00–04:00, £3

The London-based speed garage DJ takes to Subvert in Liverpool as part of his UK tour.

Chibuku Shake Shake: Hospitality (Camo & Krooked + High Contrast + Fred V & Grakix + Cyantific) East Village Arts Club, 22:00–04:00, £16 (£14)

The drum and bass duo from Vienna, Camo and Krooked, lead the way as Chibuku return with their usual line-up of electronic pioneers. Rahaan (James Morgan)

The Shipping Forecast, 23:00–03:00, £5

Renowned Chicago DJ Rahaan returns to Liverpool, playing deep beats engineered to move feet. DIN 19643 (The Haxan Cloak + HIVE + Adam Cooke)

Haus Warehouse, 22:00-LATE, £5

Mon 07 Oct

Stock Exchange

Ease those double-dip recession woes and dance yourself silly at Chameleon’s weekly Stock Exchange. Gossip!

Garlands, 22:00–03:00, £4

Student night with 5 rooms of music spread over 2 floors and the occasional theme night. Abandon Silence (Ben UFO + Paul Woolford + Krystal Klear + Andrew Hill + Rich Furness + Harry Sheehan)

East Village Arts Club, 22:00–04:00, £11

Abandon Silence bring back to back sets from Ben UFO and Paul Woolford.

Pause

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, £5 earlybird (£7 thereafter)

Sheffield’s DJ Q drops by The Hold for one of Pause’s most anticipated bookings to date, expect garage, house and bassline.

Wed 09 Oct Revolution

O2 Academy, 22:00–03:00, £10

Radio 1 DJ, MistaJam, aka Pete Dalton, brings his latest mix album, Speakerbox to a live setting, showcasing his blend of bass music with streaks of dubstep, house and grime. Cobra Commander + AK47

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, Free

Back to back DJ set from Cobra Commander and AK47/247.

Sat 05 Oct Rage

The Krazy House, 22:00–05:00, £3

Mixed-bag blow-out night spread out over all three floors – indie, rock, alternative and dance tunes.

Rage

The Krazy House, 22:00–05:00, £3

Mixed-bag blow-out night spread out over all three floors – indie, rock, alternative and dance tunes. Bedlam Saturday

Garlands, 22:00–04:00, £10 (£5)

Extravagant and flamboyant club night complete with Avant garde entertainers – where the crazy club kids of Liverpool come out to play. Jazzy Jade

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, Free

Back with more old school hip hop and 2 step garage grooves. Chibuku Shake Shake (Gesaffelstein + Erol Alkan + George Fitzgerald + Eli & Fur) East Village Arts Club, 22:00–04:00, £15 (£13)

French techno artist, Gesaffelstein – known for his remix work with Kanye West and Lana Del Ray – takes to East Village for another night rammed with forward thinking electornic music. Hard Dock and Drome (Ramirez + Awesome 3 + Human Resource + Trevor Rockliffe + DJ Rusty + DJ Reflex + DJ Alan James + MC Cyanide + MC Cutter & Wizzy G Mc) O2 Academy, 21:00–03:00, £15

To celebrate the early years of Hard Dock and Drome club nights in Liverpool, Retro Trax are throwing a bit of reunion party. Get Down (Alexis Raphael)

The Shipping Forecast, 23:00–03:00, £7 adv. (£10 door)

Get Down takes to The Hold, bringing London-born house DJ, Alexis Raphael along as he ventures North for The Warehouse Project.

Wed 16 Oct Revolution

O2 Academy, 23:00–03:00, £2.50

Brooklyn Mixer, 22:00–03:00, Free

Thu 10 Oct

Mistajam (Dominique Young Unique + Ray FOXX + Devolution + Majestic + DJ Fusion)

Sat 12 Oct

Social Club

The Cloud (Ital + Stellar OM Source + Tomasu)

Fri 04 Oct

The Abandon Silence resident serves up a set of bass and beats.

Grab a slice of the midweek rock action with a night of alt, rock, metal, punk and emo with exclusive DJ sets and giveaways.

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, Free

The celebrate the launch of Abandon Normal Devices 2013, go hide out in The Cloud, a place offering refuge from modern surveillance society, with live sets from Planet Mu Records’ Ital, dance producer Stellar OM Source and tech-noise fiend, Tomasu.

Andrew Hill The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, Free

O2 Academy, 23:00–03:00, £2.50

Grab a slice of the midweek rock action with a night of alt, rock, metal, punk and emo with exclusive DJ sets and giveaways. The folk from No-Wave present a new alternative clubbing experience at Brooklyn Mixer, bringing the indie, hip-hop and electronica to the mid-week crowds.

Sean Stephenson

Mon 28 Oct

South, 23:00–04:00, £6

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, Free

Chameleon Bar, 20:00–02:00, Free

Static Gallery, 21:00–02:00, Free

A new weekly event at Gorilla from the people that brought you Bassface, offering a mash up of house, hip-hop and bass.

Rich Furness

An immersive and experimental night of sonic exploration through sound and visuals, with sculptural installations, stroboscopic light and live performances from The Haxan Cloak and HIVE.

DJ set from the Shipping Forecast resident, SS. Stephenson.

Switch

Extravagant and flamboyant club night complete with Avant garde entertainers – where the crazy club kids of Liverpool come out to play.

Staple student night at the Krazy House, with a mix of music across the three floors (think: rock, indie, alternative, dance and a sprinkling of cheese)

Hoya:Hoya returns with their rotation of residents, including Chunky, Eclair Fifi, EMN, Fox, Illum Sphere, Jon K, Jonny Dub, Krystal Klear and Lone.

Gorilla, 23:00–04:00, £5

Bedlam Saturday Garlands, 22:00–04:00, £10 (£5)

Juicy

Social Club

The folk from No-Wave present a new alternative clubbing experience at Brooklyn Mixer, bringing the indie, hip-hop and electronica to the mid-week crowds.

Thu 17 Oct Juicy

The Shipping Forecast, 23:00–03:00, £3

All party, no bullshit night of everything from classic hip-hop to disco and funk.

Time Square

The Krazy House, 22:00–04:00, £2

All party, no bullshit night of everything from classic hip-hop to disco and funk. The Krazy House, 22:00–04:00, £2

Staple student night at the Krazy House, with a mix of music across the three floors (think: rock, indie, alternative, dance and a sprinkling of cheese) Stock Exchange

Time Square

Staple student night at the Krazy House, with a mix of music across the three floors (think: rock, indie, alternative, dance and a sprinkling of cheese) Stock Exchange

Chameleon Bar, 20:00–02:00, Free

Ease those double-dip recession woes and dance yourself silly at Chameleon’s weekly Stock Exchange.

Gossip!

Garlands, 22:00–03:00, £4

Ease those double-dip recession woes and dance yourself silly at Chameleon’s weekly Stock Exchange.

Gossip!

Garlands, 22:00–03:00, £4

Student night with 5 rooms of music spread over 2 floors and the occasional theme night.

Four Tet

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–02:00, Free

Student night with 5 rooms of music spread over 2 floors and the occasional theme night. The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, £12

Sean Stephenson

Kieran Hebden takes to the stage under his Four Tet moniker, bringing the post-rock/electronica awash with abstract sensibilities.

DJ set from the Shipping Forecast resident, SS. Stephenson.

Fri 11 Oct

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, Free

Aeroplane

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, £10

Vito De Luca, the Italian-Belgian producer behind Aeroplane, brings the party-starting cosmic-disco remakes, as per.

Fri 18 Oct Carl Combover

60s rock’n’roll and raw r’n’b from the Go Go resident, Carl Combover.

Go! (Bloom + Longtingz + Go! DJs)

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, £5

Go! present a night of grime, bassline and garage in The Hold.

Listings

Sat 19 Oct Rage

The Krazy House, 22:00–05:00, £3

Mixed-bag blow-out night spread out over all three floors – indie, rock, alternative and dance tunes. Bedlam Saturday

Garlands, 22:00–04:00, £10 (£5)

Extravagant and flamboyant club night complete with Avant garde entertainers – where the crazy club kids of Liverpool come out to play. Jess Gascoigne

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, Free

House, hip hop, latin and funk from Jess Gascoigne. Hustle (Jeremy Underground + James Morgan + Jimmy Allen)

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, £10 (£8)

Hustle kick starts its second year with a visit from one of Paris’ most prestigious house imprints, My Love Is Underground, with label boss, Jeremy Underground taking care of proceedings.

Bedlam Saturday Garlands, 22:00–04:00, £10 (£5)

Extravagant and flamboyant club night complete with Avant garde entertainers – where the crazy club kids of Liverpool come out to play. No Fakin

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, Free

Selector set from the No Fakin DJs, spanning hip hop, funk, soul and reggae.

The Mighty Diamonds (HandCart Band + One a Penny Sound)

District, 21:00–23:00, £12

Jamaican reggae harmony trio, who for 40+ years have been entertaining and educating the world with their sweet harmonies and conscious lyrics.

Manchester Theatre

Mon 21 Oct Pause (DJ Q + Andrew McAndrew)

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–03:00, £5 earlybird (£7 thereafter)

Sheffield’s DJ Q drops by The Hold for one of Pause’s most anticipated bookings to date, expect garage, house and bassline.

Wed 23 Oct Revolution

O2 Academy, 23:00–03:00, £2.50

Grab a slice of the midweek rock action with a night of alt, rock, metal, punk and emo with exclusive DJ sets and giveaways.

BLANKSPACE EMERGENCY 2013

5 OCT, 12:00–16:00, FREE

Mini arts festival hosted by Word of Warning spread over BLANKSPACE and Z-arts, offering a pick’n’mix of various formats: stumble across spoken word performance next to site-responsive art installations.

Capitol Theatre The Cherry Orchard

16 Oct, 17 Oct, 18 Oct, 19 Oct, times vary, £8 (£5)

The folk from No-Wave present a new alternative clubbing experience at Brooklyn Mixer, bringing the indie, hip-hop and electronica to the mid-week crowds.

David Salter presents Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, following the story of Madame Ranevskaya as she returns home from Paris to crippling debts and faces losing the family cherry orchard – bad times ahead.

The Shipping Forecast, 20:00–02:00, £2

Contact

Social Club

District, 22:00–03:00, Free

New Blood Club

Indie disco showcasing some new live talent, followed by DJ sets from New Blood Club residents.

Thu 24 Oct Juicy

The Shipping Forecast, 23:00–03:00, £3

All party, no bullshit night of everything from classic hip-hop to disco and funk. Time Square

The Krazy House, 22:00–04:00, £2

Staple student night at the Krazy House, with a mix of music across the three floors (think: rock, indie, alternative, dance and a sprinkling of cheese) Stock Exchange

Chameleon Bar, 20:00–02:00, Free

Ease those double-dip recession woes and dance yourself silly at Chameleon’s weekly Stock Exchange. Gossip!

Garlands, 22:00–03:00, £4

Student night with 5 rooms of music spread over 2 floors and the occasional theme night. Sean Stephenson

The Shipping Forecast, 22:00–02:00, Free

DJ set from the Shipping Forecast resident, SS. Stephenson.

Fri 25 Oct

Coax (AudioJack + Makes No Sense + Jack Brown) The Shipping Forecast, 23:00–03:00, £7

Leeds duo Audiojack lead the way as Coax comes to The Shipping Forecast – they’ll be joined on the night by Makes No Sense and Coax Resident, Jack Brown.

RIOT JAZZ LAUNCH (RIOT JAZZ BRASS BAND + THE MOUSE OUTFIT + RICH REASON)

THE KAZIMIER, 22:00–04:00, £10 (£8)

Chunky MCs a night from the Riot Jazz Family, with Rich Reason on the decks and The Mouse Outfit performing tracks from Escape Music in support.

Sat 26 Oct Rage

The Krazy House, 22:00–05:00, £3

Mixed-bag blow-out night spread out over all three floors – indie, rock, alternative and dance tunes.

Listings

Melody Loses Her Mojo

1–5 Oct, times vary, prices vary

20 Stories High present a new and unique piece of hip hop theatre, melding spoken word with music, dance and street art to tell the story of three young girls in care, learning to navigate a world that often seems unreal. The Ugly Sisters

11–12 Oct, 8:00pm – 10:00pm, £11 (£6)

An anarchic blend of music and high-energy performance from the RashDash theatre company, telling the real story of Cinderella and proving that whoever holds the pen writes the story. Caroline Horton: Mess

16–17 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £11 (£6)

Caroline Horton unflinchingly takes on the big issues and confronts anorexia head on in a darkly funny and deeply moving show. Jonzi D: Lyrikal Fearta

23–24 Oct, 8:00pm – 10:00pm, £11 (£6)

An evening of choreopoetry from hip hop theatre legend Jonzi D, including his acclaimed solo The Letter, which explores his response to being offered an MBE. Zhe (Noun) Undefined

25–26 Oct, times vary, £9 (£5)

A brave new theatre piece exploring the lives of two British Africans from childhood to adulthood, and across cultures and continents, gender and sexuality.

Gullivers Othello

2–4 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £6 (£5)

Northwest theatre company, Theatre By Numbers present the classic Shakespearean tale of sex, death, lust and revenge, following Othello as he engineers his own downfall.

O2 Apollo The Illusionists

4–5 Oct, times vary, prices vary

A handpicked cast of internationally renowned illusionists come together to play out a series of illusions – moving from levitation to mind-reading – a selection of which have never been seen before.

Theatre Opera House Seven Brides For Seven Brothers

21–26 Oct, times vary, From £10

Musical favourite set in Oregon in 1850, following young Adam – the eldest of seven brothers – and his quest to get a bride for them all. The Magic of Motown

10 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, From £24

Singalongable motown hits, capturing the original Detroit sound of The Supremes et al. The Vagina Monologues

2 Oct, times vary, prices vary

Eve Ensler’s Broadway and West End hit returns with an all-new cast. The Johnny Cash Roadshow

4 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, From £18

A musical journey through the life and music of the legend, Johnny Cash. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

8–9 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, From £19

Douglas Adams’ immortal creation is given a re-invention in the form of a surround-sound radio show, avec robots, naturally. Ellen Kent’s Nabucco

11 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, From £15

Giuseppe Verdi’s opera of four acts, featuring the famous Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, presented by Ellen Kent. Ellen Kent’s Aida

12 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, From £15

Verdi’s classic love story of war, jealousy and revenge is brought to the stage by a cast of international soloists under the direction of Ellen Kent. Go Back For Murder

14–19 Oct, times vary, From £6

A retelling of one of the great lady of crime’s classics, about a young woman who learns a disturbing family secret.

Palace Theatre Wicked

1 OCT–16 NOV, times vary, From £20

The captivating and oft-sold out musical, telling the story of how the 2 witches of Oz came to be known as good and bad, through song ‘n’ all that.

Phones4u Arena Jesus Christ Superstar

11 Oct, 8:00pm – 10:00pm, prices vary

Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s legendary rock classic takes to SECC as part of its tour of UK arenas.

Royal Exchange Theatre All My Sons

1–26 Oct, times vary, From £10

Arthur Miller’s first commercial and critical success, based on a true story about a successful self-made businessman whose factory supplied the US military during the war. Chewing Gum Dreams

3–5 Oct, times vary, £12 (£10)

A one-woman play, written and performed by Michaela Coel, in which she recalls the days of innocence before adulthood, taking in everything from emergency contraceptives to raves.

Royal Northern College of Music Thoroughly Modern Millie

15–19 Oct, 7:30pm – 11:00pm, prices vary

1920s set musical based on the classic Julie Andrews’ movie, all flapper girls, dashing chaps and singalong merriment.

The Dancehouse Liza (On An E)

1–2 Oct, 8:00pm – 10:00pm, From £30

Trevor Ashley returns to the UK for his first ever British tour to take on the iconic role of Liza Minnelli in a full band show packed with all her greatest hits.

The King’s Arms Opera Appetisers

18 Oct, 7:30pm – 11:00pm, £10

Get a taste of Pint-Sized operas upcoming season as the talented young singers perform extracts from their shows while you sit back and relax with a glass of something fizzy. All Tomorrows Parties

23 Oct, 26 Oct, 27 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £7 (£5)

A dramatic comedy about a young woman who hasn’t left her flat for three months since her husband left her and she grapples with the idea of being alone forever. Cabaret Fandangles

24 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £3

Get all set up for Halloween with a musical theatre extravaganza of horror themed classics in a cabaret style performance. Embryo 81

25 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £5

Mixed bag night that acts as a platform for performances currently in development – you’ll see anything from short films and comedy to poetry and bands of all genres. Bloomin Hell: The Kings Arms Ghost Tour

25–27 Oct, times vary, £3

A 30 minute ghost tour complete with zombie musical – telling the story of the history of the King’s Arms to way back in 1893, it’s relocation to the current site, and the haunted ground it now rests on. Chilling Stuff!

The Lowry Educating Rita

1–12 Oct, times vary, £12

Reworking of Willy Russel’s stage comedy set entirely in the office of an Open University lecturer, played by Matthew-bloody-Kelly. After the Rainfall

19 Oct, 8:00pm – 10:00pm, £12

Navigating the arid Egyptian desert, continental Europe, the British Museum and a quiet village green, Fringe First winners 2011 excavate the aftermath of Empire. Multimedia and movement unravel artefacts, mining and our connection to ants. A Clockwork Orange

21–26 Oct, times vary, From £16

Burgess’ infamous literary masterpiece of ultraviolence gets a re-working for a new generation in this electrifying all-male celebration of gorgeousness and gorgeousity.

Rambert 9 Oct, 10 Oct, 11 Oct, times vary, From £10

A stunning dance performance featuring four contrasting dance works performed by 22 dancers accompanied by the Rambert orchestra. People

15–19 Oct, times vary, From £18

The National Theatre on Tour present a new biting satire by Alan Bennett, telling the story of a family and their estate as they argue over hanging it over to be managed by the National Trust.

The House That Stank of Death

25 Oct, 8:00pm – 10:00pm, £12 (£10)

Manchester-based writer David Isaac presents his comedy/horror multi-media experience, featuring five short plays and short films.

The Plaza

Essence of Ireland

27 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, From £20.50

Traditional and modern songs set to choreographed dance routines, Emerald Isle-style. 51 Shades of Maggie

7 Oct, 8 Oct, 9 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, prices vary

A riotous send up of 50 Shades of Gray, telling the story of Maggie and her endless search for Mr Right. Hello, Dolly!

22–26 Oct, times vary, From £10

The Stockport Operatic Society present the captivating tale of Mrs Dolly Levi, a meddlesome widow living in New York at the turn of the 20th Century.

Three Minute Theatre Playback Theatre

11 Oct, 7:00pm – 9:30pm, £7.50

A unique theatre experience, turning the audiences stories and anecdotes into original pieces of theatre instantaneously. Desperate Measures

23–26 Oct, 7:00pm – 9:30pm, £8.50 (£7.50)

A new play written by John Topliff and Hannah Ellis and directed by Gina T Frost, offering up a new interpretation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, a dark comedy set in the streets on Mancia.

Z-arts

EMERGENCY 2013

5 OCT, 15:00–23:00, FREE

Out of His Skin

17–18 Oct, 8:00pm – 10:00pm, From £14

2Faced Dance Company present their experimental and boundary-pushing show, using their trademark urban language to connect with audiences. The Disappearance of Sadie Jones

10–12 Oct, times vary, prices vary

Liverpool Theatre

Hannah Silva presents her contemporary drama starring Stephanie Greer, Elizabeth Crarer and Alan Humphreys, exploring the absurd world of Sadie Jones through language, image and physicality.

Epstein Theatre

2 Oct, 8:00pm – 11:00pm, £12

26 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £15

Morgan and West

Family-friendly show featuring two Victorian time-travelling magicians. The Tell-Tale Heart

3 Oct, 8:00pm – 11:00pm, £12

Edgar Allan Poe’s violent minimasterpiece takes to the stage, with just one actor and a live soundtrack building the suspense as the silence of an empty house is shattered by a thumping beneath the floorboards. Would Be Nice Though

4–5 Oct, times vary, £12

A site-specific performance in a real working office, those crucial moments before that job interview. Join other hopefuls in this head-to-head environment of matching stationary. Keep your self-worth intact and your nerves under the table!

Martini Lounge

19 Oct, 8:30pm – 10:00pm, £20

A tantalising night of burlesque performances, carefully pieced together by Liverpool’s own Millie Dollar. Don’t Stop Believing

A mash up of Glee, High School Musical and Smash, presented by LHK Youth Theatre, expect a sing-a-long.

Liverpool Empire

The Rat Pack Vegas Spectacular

12 Oct, times vary, From £17

Rat Pack-styled musical favourite, taking a trip back to the glitz and glam of 50s Las Vegas. Blood Brothers

28 OCT–9 NOV, times vary, From £10

The favourited musical tale of separated-at-birth twins who grow up on opposite sides of the tracks.

Ha Ha Holmes 13 Oct, times vary, prices vary

Humourous parody of Sherlock Holmes best loved mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles, staring comic Joe Pasquale as Holmes. An Evening of Burlesque

11 Oct, 8:00pm – 10:30pm, £28.90

Britain’s biggest burlesque show makes its way North after a run on London’s West End, complete with knife throwing act. Liverpool Empire Youth Ballet: Peter Pan

9–10 Oct, 7:00pm – 10:00pm, £19.90

The Liverpool Empire Youth Ballet present their debut production of J M Barrie’s Peter Pan, the classic story about the boy who didn’t want to grow up – complete with a score of modern classics and incredibly choreography. Welsh National Opera’s Tosca

22 Oct, 26 Oct, 7:15pm – 10:00pm, From £5

The Welsh National Opera take on Anthony Besch’s treasured production of Tosca, Puccini’s fast-paced operatic thriller.

Welsh National Opera’s Anna Bolena

23 Oct, 7:00pm – 10:00pm, From £5

Reimagining Anne Boleyn’s final days in Henry VIII’s scheming court, Allessandro Talevi’s production with the Welsh National Opera will captivate and move. Welsh National Opera’s Maria Stuarda

24 Oct, 7:15pm – 10:00pm, From £5

An operatic showdown, asking what would have happened if Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots had met face to face, directed by Rudolf Frey and presented by the Welsh National Opera.

Welsh National Opera’s Robert Devereux

25 Oct, 7:15pm – 10:00pm, From £5

The Welsh National Opera, directed by Alessandro Talevi, takes on the tale of a love triangle between Queen Elizabeth I, Robert Devereux and Sara the Duchess of Nottingham, sung in Italian with English subtitles.

Royal Court Theatre Sons of the Desert

1–8 Oct, not 6 Oct, times vary, prices vary

Sixty years on from Laurel and Hardy’s last appearance on stage in Liverpool, the hapless duo are brought back to life in this world stage premier of of their best vintage comedies.

The Capstone

Mediva: A Dance To The Music of Time

2 Oct, 7:30pm – 11:00pm, £14 (£11.50)

A dance-led tour of Europe, exploring culture and traditions through their use of movement. Ibsen’s Ghosts

7 Oct, 7:30pm – 11:00pm, £11.50 (£9.50)

A fresh adaptation of one of Henrik Ibsen’s finest works, Sell a Door theatre company bring the ghosts of the past to life. Instructions for a Better Life

24 Oct, 7:30pm – 11:00pm, £11.50

Part thriller, part comedy, part romp through human psychology, Uncanny Theatre present their new work that stretches logic to its limits.

The Lantern Theatre Miss Julie

11 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £8.50 (£6.50

The Hyde Festival Theatre return to the Lantern Theatre with their adaptation of Miss Julie, an uplifting tale set in the North of England in the early 50s, following Miss Julie during fas-changing times. Waiting for Godot

3 Oct, 4 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £10.50 (£6.50)

Big Teeth – Liverpool’s newest theatre company, formed by a group of Hope University grads – sink their teeth into Samuel Beckett’s two act tragicomedy, Waiting For Godot, still relevant some 60 years after it was first staged.

The Disappearance of Sadie Jones 8–9 Oct, times vary, prices vary

Hannah Silva presents her contemporary drama starring Stephanie Greer, Elizabeth Crarer and Alan Humphreys, exploring the absurd world of Sadie Jones through language, image and physicality. Letter-Headed Paper

12 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £8.50 (£6.50)

A new show written and directed by Grace O’Leary, following a group of 9-5 workers in a cement manufacturing company office, all revealing their true colours when their jobs are on the line. Jane and Lizzy

17–19 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £8.50 (£6.50

This mind-bending new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice sees Jane Austen meeting her fictional character, Lizzy Bennett, who is both the character and actress playing her (lost yet?) in a fast-paced production. Married in Black

22–23 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £7.50 (£5.50)

An oral history project celebrating the strength of white women in Liverpool forced to choose between family or love in the 70s and 80s when racism and prejudice were rife.

The Liverpool Actors Studio Theatre Beyond The Veil

13 Oct, 7:30pm – 10:00pm, £11 (£9)

Mikron Theatre Company present a dark comedy set in the sleepy village of Thistledale, following DCI Mark Starkey as he aims to uncover the truth behind the sudden and unnatural death down by the beehives. FEAR

19 Oct, times vary, £8 (£6)

Four one act plays from the License to Thrill Theatre Company, featuring strong language and scenes of graphic violence throughout – as in, not for the faint-hearted.

The Playhouse Crime and Punishment

2–19 Oct, times vary, From £12

Chris Hannan’s new stage adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s iconic novel, told with a raw energy and bold conviction intended to shine new light on its relevance to today’s world of corruption and crime.

Unity Theatre Translunar Paradise

25 Oct, times vary, prices vary

Theatre Ad Infinitum present a tale of life, death and enduring love, following a chap called William as he escapes to a world of fantasy following his wife’s passing. The Master and Margarita

1–12 Oct, not 6, 10, times vary, prices vary

Bulgakov’s wild imagination is brought to life using puppetry, magic, animation and performance, telling a multi-layered story of love, Satan’s visit to Moscow, and Christ’s final days, with a cast of supernatural and historical figures. Hurricane Hill

18–19 Oct, 8:00pm – 10:00pm, £10 (£8)

A new show by director Chris Leicester, telling the story of a famous recluse, a stranger and what happens when we face our past. Best of BE Festival

22 Oct, 8:00pm – 10:00pm, £10 (£8)

Showcasing three of the best shows from Birmingham’s BE Festival, including physical theatre piece Al Cumbo, award-winning show, Tao Re and Next Door, a moving tale exploring human connections.

Manchester Comedy Tue 01 Oct Adam Hills

The Lowry, 20:00–23:00, £17

Host of Channel 4’s The Last Leg, Edinburgh’s favourite adopted Aussie son comes to the Northwest with a brand spanking new show. Chris Ramsay: The Most Dangerous Man on Saturday Morning Television

The Comedy Store, 19:30–23:00, £6

After being booted off the Soccer AM sofa, Chris Ramsay takes his musings on saying the wrong thing at the wrong time on the road for a 2013/14 tour. Women in Comedy Festival 2013: Launch Show (Janey Godley + Allyson Smith + Annette Fagon) The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £8 adv (£10 door)

Scottish comedian, author and newspaper columnist Janey Godley gets the Women in Comedy festival going, followed by a Q&A session on the subject of women in comedy. Andrew O’Neill is Easily Distracted (Sarah Cassidy + John Lebbon + Phil Pagett + MC Toby Hadoke.)

Jabez Clegg, 19:00–23:00, £5 (£3)

Borderline ADD sufferer Andrew O’Neill tries to stop looking at Slayer videos on YouTube long enough to write another very funny, very odd show.

Wed 02 Oct Funny Business

The Comedy Store, 19:00–23:00, £50

Various members of the Manchester business community are the butt of the joke for this fundraising evening for cancer charities. Semeena Zehra: Tea With Terrorists

Taurus Bar, 22:00–23:00, £5

Semeena Zehra navigates global unrest, the feeling of being an outsider, and being an athiest in a religious but liberal household – in a funny way, obvs. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Thu 03 Oct

Stand Up Thursday (Jeff Innocent + Jason Cook + MC Mandy Knight)

The Comedy Store, 20:00–23:00, £10 (£5)

Cheat life and get that Friday feeling one day early with a night of comedic delight from some circuit funny folk. Big Value Thursdays (Danny Deegan + Joe Wells + Gary Tro + Dan Nightingale + MC Barry Dodds) The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £9 (£6)

A Frog flagship event offering up four great acts for stonkingly great value. Elf Lyons Is A Pervert

The King’s Arms, 18:30–19:30, £4

Elf Lyons’ first solo stand up show, as part of the Women in Comedy Festival. Vic Groskop: I Laughed, I Cried

The King’s Arms, 19:00–23:00, £4

The tale of an impressive comedic feat; 100 gigs in 100 nights. Gruelling. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival. Elaine Miller: Gusset Grippers

Taurus Bar, 18:30–19:30, £5 (£4)

A physiotherapist takes an extended look at what would normally be a one liner in a male stand-up routine – get ready to get to know your pelvic floor. (?!) Part of the Women in Comedy Festival. Chella Quint: Adventures in Menstruating

Taurus Bar, 20:00–21:00, £5 (£4)

White skirts, blue blood and Mother Nature, Chella Quint takes on the lot. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

THE SKINNY

Comedy Fri 04 Oct

Stewart Lee: Much A-Stew About Nothing

The Lowry, 20:00–23:00, £21

The writer and comedian takes to the stage to test out some new material in preparation for his 2014 TV show.

Brian Appleton’s History of the World in Three Darts

The Lowry, 20:00–23:00, £12

The rock musicologist and parttime lecturer takes to the road with his bag of music anecdotes. The Best in Stand Up (Jeff Innocent + Jason Cook + John Moloney + MC Mandy Knight)

The Comedy Store, 20:00–23:00, £18 (£9)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians. Barrel of Laughs (Danny Deegan + Bobby Mair + Dan Nightingale + MC Barry Dodds)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–02:00, £16 (£8)

Three top-notch comics, a sprinkling of Frog compere funnies and a late night disco courtesy of the resident DJ. I Am Happy

Taurus Bar, 19:30–20:30, £8 (£5)

An energetic and uplifting show exploring the secret to happiness. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival. Ava Vidal

The King’s Arms, 21:00–22:30, £7

The British comic presents her new show questioning the ideas of community and responsibility. In a funny way, o’course. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Sat 05 Oct

Stewart Lee: Much A-Stew About Nothing

The Lowry, 20:00–23:00, £21

The writer and comedian takes to the stage to test out some new material in preparation for his 2014 TV show. Peacock and Gamble

The Lowry, 20:00–22:00, £tbc

Comedy nice boys Ray and Ed bring the idiocy and handsomeness (so say they) to Manchester. The Best in Stand Up (Jeff Innocent + John Lynn + John Moloney + MC Mandy Knight)

The Comedy Store, 19:00–21:00, £20 (£10)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians. The Best in Stand Up II (Jeff Innocent + John Lynn + John Moloney + MC Mandy Knight)

The Comedy Store, 21:30–23:00, £20 (£10)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians. Barrel of Laughs (Danny Deegan + Bobby Mair + Dan Nightingale + MC Barry Dodds)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–02:00, £17 (£10)

Three top-notch comics, a sprinkling of Frog compere funnies and a late night disco courtesy of the resident DJ. S.O.S Comedy

Three Minute Theatre, 20:00–23:00, £5 (£4)

The Superstars on Saturday crew present an evening of character comedy and sketches. Kate Fox: Good Breeding

The King’s Arms, 16:00–17:00, £5

Radio 4 regular ruminates on what it means to not want to me a mum. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival. India Macleod: La Haine

Taurus Bar, 17:30–18:30, £4

India Macloed take a comedic look back on her time spent in France as an awkward 12-year-old. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Sun 06 Oct Marcel Lucont

The Lowry, 20:00–22:00, £13

Witty Frenchman and awardwinning comic does his endlessly charming thing. Paul Foot

The Lowry, 20:00–23:00, £tbc

Rant-heavy comedian from Bucks, with a Guild of Connoisseurs, rather than fans – as you do!

October 2013

King Gong (MC Mick Ferry) The Comedy Store, 19:30–23:00, £6 (£3)

The night when ordinary folk can have a bash at stand up-all in hope of being crowned King Gong, until next month. Prestigious. Susan Murray: Eyes Down For A Full Murray

The King’s Arms, 21:45–22:45, £5

Angst driven comedy from Susan Murray, taking a hilarious look at middle age and everything that bugs her. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Mon 07 Oct Comedy Playground

Contact, 19:30–22:00, £6 (£3)

Open mic comedy night presented by Kerry Leigh of Laughing Cows, offering Manchester’s emerging comics the chance to develop their work, and established comics the chance to hone their craft. Beat The Frog: World Series (Phil Ellis)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £5 adv (£3 door)

Dan Nightingale presents the final of The World Series – with the final 8 acts competing to beat the frog, with audience members deciding the winner. Dead Cat Comedy Crèche (Red Redmond)

Sandbar, 20:00–23:00, Free

A brand new comedy night for brand new comedy, offering comedians the chance to hone their craft in front of a friendly crowd (that’s you!). Sajeela Kershi and Suzy Bennett: Funny Fillies

The King’s Arms, 18:00–19:00, Free

Two award-winning comedians horse around for an hour, telling stories to made you chuckle. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival. Kate McCabe: Timeless

The King’s Arms, 20:00–21:00, £5

A stand up show about short attention spans and not givng your stand up show a theme. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Tue 08 Oct

The Worst Comedy Night in Salford

The King’s Arms, 20:00–23:00, Free

Keeping expectations low with this open mic night of stand up, all are welcome to give it a bash. Ray Peacock (Tom Appleton + Cheish Merryweather + MC Toby Hadoke) Jabez Clegg, 19:00–23:00, £5 (£3)

One half of the Chortle Peacock and Gamble podcast dream team, doing his stand up thing. American All Stars

The Black Lion, 20:00–22:30, £7 adv. (£8 door)

A showcase of funny women from across the pond. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival. Jo Neary

The Comedy Store, 19:30–22:00, £7 adv (£10 door)

Jo Neary breathes new life into her Perrier award-nominated show from 2004. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Wed 09 Oct

Women in Comedy Festival 2013: Zoe Lyons (Hayley Ellis + Dotty Winters + MC Kerry Leigh)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £7 adv (£10 door)

More acerbic comedy rants from the award-winning Zoe Lyons, awash with silliness, satire and caustic one-liners. Russell Brand: Messiah Complex O2 Apollo, 19:00–23:00, £32

The outspoken comic takes to the road for his first ever world stand up tour, taking the form of a dissection of various social and religious figures and the reality of their lives through comparisons of each other.

Thu 10 Oct

Beat The Frog: World Series (Danny McLoughlin)

The Comedy Store, 20:00–22:00, £10 (£5)

Dan Nightingale presents the final of The World Series – with the final 8 acts competing to beat the frog, with audience members deciding the winner.

Stand Up Thursday (Alistair Barry + Paul Chowdhry)

Cheat life and get that Friday feeling one day early with a night of comedic delight from some circuit funny folk. Big Value Thursdays (Gary Delaney + Ian Smith + MC Mick Ferry)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £9 (£6)

A Frog flagship event offering up four great acts for stonkingly great value. Russell Brand: Messiah Complex O2 Apollo, 19:00–23:00, £32

The King’s Arms, 19:45–20:45, £6 adv. (£8 door)

Janice Connolly is Barbara Nice, a caricature of a middle aged housewife from Stockport. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Fri 11 Oct

The Best in Stand Up (Alistair Barry + Paul Chowdhry + Alex Boardman + Markus Birdman)

The Comedy Store, 20:00–22:00, £18 (£9)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians.

Barrel of Laughs (Gary Delaney + Mick Newall + MC Mick Ferry) The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–02:00, £16 (£8)

Three top-notch comics, a sprinkling of Frog compere funnies and a late night disco courtesy of the resident DJ.

Sat 12 Oct

Milton Jones: On The Road

The Lowry, 20:00–22:00, £tbc

The neurotic English comic takes to the road with another tour – imaginatively entitled, erm, On The Road – rich with one-liners, and some pictures wot her drew specially. NORRIS & PARKER: ALL OUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD

LASS O’GOWRIE, 20:00–21:00, £3

Returning from a successful stint at the Fringe with this show, Norris & Parker switch between roles, their gender-bending sketches relying on weird and wistful characters. Part of the Women in Comedy festival. The Best in Stand Up (Alistair Barry + Paul Chowdhry + Alex Boardman + Markus Birdman)

The Comedy Store, 19:00–23:00, £20 (£10)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians. The Best in Stand Up II (Alistair Barry + Paul Chowdhry + Markus Birdman + Mick Ferry)

The Comedy Store, 21:30–23:00, £20 (£10)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians.

Barrel of Laughs (Gary Delaney + Mick Newall + MC Mick Ferry) The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–02:00, £17 (£10)

Three top-notch comics, a sprinkling of Frog compere funnies and a late night disco courtesy of the resident DJ. Ruth E CockburN: Doesn’t Even Smoke

Taurus Bar, 21:00–22:00, £3

A lesson in being happy with your lot, even if your lot isn’t cool. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Sun 13 Oct

The Comedy Network (Paul McCaffrey + Phil Wang)

The Lowry, 20:00–22:00, £12

A new comedy night from The Lowry theatre, hosted by Manchester comedian Hayley Ellis. New Stuff (Toby Hadoke)

The Comedy Store, 19:30–21:00, £3

A chance for those on the circuit to test out some new, never before heard or seen material, with MC Toby Hadoke.

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £5 adv (£3 door)

Women in Comedy Festival 2013: Luisa Omielan (MC Kerry Leigh)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £5 adv (£10 door)

The What Would Beyonce Do? funny lady takes to the Frog and Bucket stage as part of the Women in Comedy festival.

Tue 15 Oct

Boothby Graffoe (James Meehan + Luke Graves + Gavin Inskip + MC Toby Hadoke) Jabez Clegg, 19:00–23:00, £5 (£3)

Barenaked Ladies musician does his stand up comedy thing, awash with his surreal sense of humour. Kerry Leigh’s Love Bitsd

The Dancehouse, 20:00–21:30, £8

Low key comic known for leaving people wanting more with her witty banter and at ease persona. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Wed 16 Oct

Elis James + Chris Corcoran

The Lowry, 20:00–22:00, £12 (£10)

Comedy duo James and Corcoran bring workingman’s club culture into the 21st Century, complete with bingo. Richard Herring: We’re All Going To Die

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £10 (£8)

Death is inevitable and universal. Let’s laugh in its face while our hearts still beat and our jaws are still attached.

Thu 17 Oct

Stand Up Thursday (Mick Ferry + Andy Askins + MC Sean Collins)

The Comedy Store, 20:00–22:00, £10 (£5)

Cheat life and get that Friday feeling one day early with a night of comedic delight from some circuit funny folk.

Rosie Wilby: 90s Women Lass O’Gowrie, 21:00–22:30, £5

Interactive storytelling meets stand up comedy, taking a journey through early 90s feminism. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival. Cheekykika

Ape and Apple, 21:00–22:00, £5

Oddball, high energy comic doing silly songs and couple of dances. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Sun 20 Oct Josh Widdicombe

The Lowry, 20:00–22:00, £16

Star of Channel 4’s The Last Leg, Live at the Apollo, 8 Out of 10 Cats and Mock the Week, rocks up in Manchester with a new show fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe. Pat Shortt

The Lowry, 20:00–22:00, £12

One of Ireland’s best-loved comedians presents a new one-man comedy show in which he plays solo lounge musician Dixie Walsh, reminiscing about his path into music with the help of some quirky characters. Jojo Smith: Once In A Lifetime

Lass O’Gowrie, 20:30–22:30, £5 adv. (£8)

Jojo Smith reflects on her life as a German-born, Canada-raised Air Force brat. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Mon 21 Oct

Dead Cat Comedy Club (Red Redmond)

Sandbar, 20:00–23:00, Free

Dead Cat Comedy invades the Northern Quarter sci-fi bar with their unique night of alternative comedy.

Tue 22 Oct

The Worst Comedy Night in Salford The King’s Arms, 20:00–23:00, Free

Keeping expectations low with this open mic night of stand up, all are welcome to give it a bash. Women in Comedy Festival 2013: Jen Brister (MC Kerry Leigh)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £7 adv (£10 door)

Big Value Thursdays (John Warburton + Tony Cowards + Jim Campbell + Jeff Innocent + MC Jonathan Mayor)

Jen’s cup is half empty, will she ever fill it? A splendid hour of laughing till your face hurts.

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £9 (£6)

The Ducie Bridge, 20:00–21:30, £3.69

A Frog flagship event offering up four great acts for stonkingly great value.

Fri 18 Oct

The Best in Stand Up (Mick Ferry + Andy Askins + Dave Fulton + Ian Coppinger + MC Sean Collins) The Comedy Store, 20:00–22:00, £18 (£9)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians.

Sat 19 Oct Josh Widdicombe

The Lowry, 20:00–22:00, £16

Star of Channel 4’s The Last Leg, Live at the Apollo, 8 Out of 10 Cats and Mock the Week, rocks up in Manchester with a new show fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe.

The Best in Stand Up (Mick Ferry + Andy Askins + Dave Fulton + Ian Coppinger + MC Sean Collins) The Comedy Store, 19:00–21:00, £20 (£10)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians. The Best in Stand Up II (Mick Ferry + Andy Askins + Dave Fulton + Ian Coppinger + MC Sean Collins)

The Comedy Store, 21:30–23:00, £20 (£10)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians. Barrel of Laughs (John Warburton + Scott Bennett + Jeff Innocent + MC Jonathan Mayor)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–02:00, £17 (£10)

Three top-notch comics, a sprinkling of Frog compere funnies and a late night disco courtesy of the resident DJ.

Debs Gatenby: Hi Anxiety

Debs puts a funny spin on mental health and her relationship with her mother. Part of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Thu 24 Oct

Stand Up Thursday (Justin Moorhouse + MC Mickey Hutton)

The Comedy Store, 20:00–23:00, £10 (£5)

Cheat life and get that Friday feeling one day early with a night of comedic delight from some circuit funny folk.

Fri 25 Oct Gina Yashere: Live!

Contact, 20:00–22:00, £15 (£10)

A comic round up of the last 12 months of Gina Yashere’s life, from enjoying the Olympics from a couch in Los Angeles to purchasing reading glasses. The Best in Stand Up (Jimmy McGhie + Gordon Southern + MC Mickey Hutton)

The Comedy Store, 20:00–23:00, £18 (£9)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians. Barrel of Laughs (Seymour Mace + Tom Toal + Steve Royle + MC David Longley)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–02:00, £16 (£8)

Three top-notch comics, a sprinkling of Frog compere funnies and a late night disco courtesy of the resident DJ.

Sat 26 Oct

The Best in Stand Up (Justin Moorhouse + Jimmy McGhie + Gordon Southern + MC Mickey Hutton)

The Comedy Store, 19:00–21:00, £20 (£10)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians.

The Best in Stand Up II (Justin Moorhouse + Jimmy McGhie + Gordon Southern + MC Mickey Hutton) The Comedy Store, 21:30–23:00, £20 (£10)

Regular night of stand up with five world-class comedians. Barrel of Laughs (Seymour Mace + Tom Toal + Steve Royle + MC David Longley)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–02:00, £17 (£10)

Three top-notch comics, a sprinkling of Frog compere funnies and a late night disco courtesy of the resident DJ.

Sun 27 Oct

Andrew O’Neill is Easily Distracted

The Lowry, 20:00–22:00, £12

Borderline ADD sufferer Andrew O’Neill tries to stop looking at Slayer videos on YouTube long enough to write another very funny, very odd show. New Stuff (Toby Hadoke)

The Comedy Store, 19:30–21:00, £3

A chance for those on the circuit to test out some new, never before heard or seen material, with MC Toby Hadoke.

Laughing Cows (Jen Brinster + Angie McEvoy + Maureen Younger + MC Kerry Leigh)

Sara Pascoe vs the Truth

Gary Delaney (MC Ray Peacock)

The Kazimier, 20:45–22:00, £8

Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £15

Everything is subjective. Sara has starred on Live at the Apollo, Stand Up for the Week and Twenty Twelve and despite this, cannot be absolutely sure that she exists.

Thu 03 Oct

Chris Cairns (Phil Chapman)

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £12 (£10)

Triple headline show with a delightfully hilarious line-up of circuit funny-folk. Philberto (Dan Nightingale + Phil Chapman + MC Katie Mulgrew)

Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £15

Four top-notch circuit comedians take to the Comedy Central stage for an evening of fresh comic material.

Beat The Frog: World Series (Dan Nightingale)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £5 adv (£3 door)

Dan Nightingale presents the final of The World Series – with the final 8 acts competing to beat the frog, with audience members deciding the winner. Dead Cat Comedy Club (Red Redmond)

TV21, 20:00–23:00, Free

Dead Cat Comedy invades the Northern Quarter sci-fi bar with their unique night of alternative comedy. Sidekick Comedy

Via, 19:00–23:00, £3 (£2)

A monthly comedy gig with a line up of delightfully hilarious circuit funny folk, this time offering up an extra special Manchester Pride show.

Fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Max and Ivan present their stand-up routine about love, loss and shatterproof rulers. Chris Cairns (Keith Carter as Nige + Daliso Chaponda + MC Neil Fitzmaurice)

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £15

Philberto (Dan Nightingale + Stuart Goldsmith + MC Dave Twentyman)

Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £15

Four top-notch circuit comedians take to the Comedy Central stage for an evening of fresh comic material.

Sat 05 Oct

Daliso Chaponda (Chris Cairns + MC Neil Fitzmaurice)

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £17.50

Malawian comic, with a career spanning Canada, South Africa and more recently, the UK. Philberto (Dan Nightingale + Stuart Goldsmith + MC Dave Twentyman)

Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £18

Four top-notch circuit comedians take to the Comedy Central stage for an evening of fresh comic material.

Wed 09 Oct Steve Hughes

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £15 (£13)

Liverpool Comedy

The Australian comic and ex-heavy metal drummer does his beautiful live rant thing.

Thu 10 Oct John Bishop

Unity Theatre, 20:00–22:00, £sold out

Tue 01 Oct Daniel Sloss

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £13.50 (£10)

Award-winning comedian and internationally acclaimed halfman-half-Xbox Daniel Sloss brings the laughs. Doc Brown: Of Mic and Men

O2 Academy, 19:00–22:00, £14

The rapper turned comedian takes his fresh-from-the-fringe routine out on the road, offering a tongue in cheek perspective on hip hop culture.

The marketing director turned comedian takes to the road with his new tour. Take A Stand

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £10 (£7)

A charity stand up night in partnership with Liverpool FC’s Action for Health programme. Gary Delaney (MC Ray Peacock)

Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £15

Wed 02 Oct

Writer and stand-up comic Gary Delaney continues with his quest to tell as many jokes as possible, because apparently most shows simply don’t contain enough for his liking.

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £5 (£3)

Fri 11 Oct

The Laughter Factor

A monthly event giving comicsthe chance to try out new material before the weekend shows – it helps if you think of yourself as a comedic guinea pig. Tony Law: Nonsense Overdrive

The Kazimier, 19:00–20:30, £10 (£8)

Multi award-winning Tony Law presents a deeply hidden, powerfully meaningful show.

Keith Carter presents the lovable scouse, Nige, renowned for securing Liverpool the title of Capital of Culture, so they say. Gary Delaney (MC Ray Peacock)

Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £18

Tue 15 Oct

Max and Ivan: The Reunion

Quippopotamus

Mon 28 Oct

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £17.50

The Kazimier, 20:45–22:00, £8

Triple headline show with a delightfully hilarious line-up of circuit funny-folk.

Fuel’s free stand up night returns for another night of – let’s face it – slightly bizarre comedy.

Keith Carter as Nige (Markus Birdman + Allyson Smith + MC Ste Porter)

Simon Munnery stabs at the void between dead film and live theatre in his latest fylmtastic fylm.

Fri 04 Oct

Fuel Cafe, 20:00–23:00, Free

Sat 12 Oct

Writer and stand-up comic Gary Delaney continues with his quest to tell as many jokes as possible, because apparently most shows simply don’t contain enough for his liking.

Simon Munnery: Fylm

The Kazimier, 19:00–20:30, £10 (£8)

The Frog and Bucket Comedy Club, 19:00–23:00, £7 adv (£9 door)

All-female line-up of comics from the Laughing Cow bunch – a group that has helped the likes of Sarah Milllican and Jo Brand launch their careers.

Writer and stand-up comic Gary Delaney continues with his quest to tell as many jokes as possible, because apparently most shows simply don’t contain enough for his liking.

Marcus Birdman (Keith Carter as Nige + Allyson Smith + MC Ste Porter)

Pat Shortt: I Am The Band

Unity Theatre, 20:00–22:00, £13 (£10.50)

Wed 16 Oct

Jason Manford - First World Problems

Liverpool Empire, 20:00–22:30, £27.40

Fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Northern comic, Jason Manford talks first world problems through anecdotes and a dose of audience banter.

Thu 17 Oct

Jason Manford - First World Problems

Liverpool Empire, 20:00–22:30, £27.40

Fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Northern comic, Jason Manford talks first world problems through anecdotes and a dose of audience banter. Rob Beckett

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £10

Multi-award-winning comedian and rising star Rob Beckett presents his latest stand-up show. He’s from South East London, was in Fresh Meat (C4) and has nice teeth. John Warburton (Daliso Chaponda + Paul James + MC Danny McLoughlin)

Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £15

Four top-notch circuit comedians take to the Comedy Central stage for an evening of fresh comic material.

Fri 18 Oct

Micky D (Ste Porter + Philberto + MC Neil Fitzmaurice) The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £15

Triple headline show with a delightfully hilarious line-up of circuit funny-folk. John Warburton (Daliso Chaponda + Joe Lycett + MC Danny McLoughlin)

Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £15

Four top-notch circuit comedians take to the Comedy Central stage for an evening of fresh comic material.

Sat 19 Oct

Philberto (Ste Porter + Micky D + MC Neil Fitzmaurice)

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £17.50

Four top-notch circuit comedians take to the Comedy Central stage for an evening of fresh comic material.

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £15

London-based comedian, fresh from presenting his new show, Happily Ever After at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Listings

John Warburton (Daliso Chaponda + Joe Lycett + MC Danny McLoughlin) Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £18

Art

Four top-notch circuit comedians take to the Comedy Central stage for an evening of fresh comic material.

Manchester

Tue 22 Oct

2022NQ

The Playhouse, 19:30–23:00, From £12

17–26 Oct, not 20, 21, 12:00pm – 5:00pm, Free

Mark Thomas: 100 Acts of Minor Dissent

All-new material from the renowned political comic, chronicling his task of committing 100 acts of minor dissent in the space of 12 months – cataloguing everything from the smallest and silliest gesture, to the grandest of confrontations.

Wed 23 Oct Gina Yashere

Epstein Theatre, 20:00–22:00, £15

A comic round up of the last 12 months of Gina Yashere’s life, from enjoying the Olympics from a couch in Los Angeles to purchasing reading glasses. Life Without Oscar

Unity Theatre, 20:00–22:00, £10 (£8)

Nick Cohen tells the story of an EastEnders star transplanted to Hollywood to live out his starstudded dreams alongside an Academy Award winner, all the while desperate to win an Oscar. Rob Newman

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £12.50

Writer, comedian and political activist, known for his work with fellow Cambridge classmate, David Baddiel.

Thu 24 Oct Lucy Porter

Unity Theatre, 20:00–22:00, £14 (£12)

The Radio 4 regular and TV panel show luminary returns with her all-new stand-up show, drawing on her time spent as an anthropology student and party animal.

The Lumberjacks: Stewart Francis + Craig Campbell + Glenn Wool St George’s Hall, 20:00–23:00, £16

Following their successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe, Stewart Francis, Craig Campbell and Glenn Wool hit the road to each perform their own set, side by side, on their debut UK tour as ‘The Lumberjacks’.

Jonny Awsum (Roger Monkhouse + Rich Wall + MC Sully O’Sullivan)

Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £15

Four top-notch circuit comedians take to the Comedy Central stage for an evening of fresh comic material.

Fri 25 Oct

Gavin Webster (Christian Schulte-Loh + Andy Askins + MC Chris Cairns)

The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £15

Triple headline show with a delightfully hilarious line-up of circuit funny-folk.

Jonny Awsum (Roger Monkhouse + Danny Deegan + MC Sully O’Sullivan) Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £15

Four top-notch circuit comedians take to the Comedy Central stage for an evening of fresh comic material.

Sat 26 Oct

Christian Schulte-Loh (Gavin Webster + Andy Askins + MC Chris Cairns) The Slaughter House, 20:00–23:00, £17.50

Triple headline show with a delightfully hilarious line-up of circuit funny-folk.

Andy Askins (Gavin Webster + Christian Schulte-Loh + MC Steve Harris)

The Slug and Lettuce, 20:00–23:00, £17.50

Triple headline show with a delightfully hilarious line-up of circuit funny-folk.

Jonny Awsum (Roger Monkhouse + Danny Deegan + MC Sully O’Sullivan) Comedy Central at Baby Blue, 18:00–22:30, £18

Four top-notch circuit comedians take to the Comedy Central stage for an evening of fresh comic material. Nina Conti: Dolly Mixtures

The Playhouse, 19:30–23:00, From £12

BAFTA-nominated filmmaker and ventriloquist presents a whole host of characters in a show that refuses to go as rehearsed.

Listings

MancheSter Marauders

20 years after A Tribe Called Quest changed the trend of showcasing the group on their album cover, Midnight Marauders, Manchesterbased artist Adam Air pays tribute with a music themed exhibition.

BLANKSPACE Emergency 2013

5–6 Oct, 12:00pm – 12:00am, Free

A full day event cramming in over 25 live art and performances pieces – so you can drop in for ten minutes, or stay for the whole day. It’ll be a celebration of the weird and the wonderful, the wacky and outlandish.

Bankley Studios & Gallery Bankley Open Call 2013

various dates between 4 Oct and 25 Oct, 12:00pm – 4:00pm, Free

The artists studio and gallery hosts their first open call exhibition, inviting artists from across the UK working in any 2D media, video or sculpture to submit their work, with a solo show at Bankley Gallery awarded to the winner.

Castlefield Gallery

Nicola Ellis and Aura Satz

various dates between 6 Sep and 20 Oct, 1:00pm – 6:00pm, Free

The latest head to head exhibition features the work of Aura Satz, a London-based artist who transfers abstract patterns onto 16mm film, and Nicola Ellis, an artist interested in the synchronisation of the natural with the unnatural.

Chinese Arts Centre

Wu Chi-Tsung: Recalibrate

various dates between 29 Aug and 12 Oct, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

The first UK solo exhibition for Taiwanese artist; Wu Chi-Tsung, showcasing two new works including a new commissioned piece, Crystal City 004, an immersive piece that places the viewer into a constantly moving city scape. Re-Form Design Show

various dates between 21 Sep and 19 Oct, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

For the Chinese Arts Centre’s second graduate show this year, artists Sophie Ho, Dian Luo, Yang Zhao, and Donald Chung will present a collection spanning fashion, graphics, interior design and jewellery, taking inspiration from geometry and nature. Bill Kwan: Breathe Residency

various dates between 3 Sep and 23 Nov, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

Hong Kong-born and Canadabased artist Will Kwan explores the post-industrial landscape of Manchester, inspired by Engels’ 1844 text, The Condition of the Working Class in England, and utilising video and photo work to explore the new economies created.

Cornerhouse

Michelle Harrison and Stuart Farr

various dates between 22 Aug and 1 Oct, times vary, Free

The Cornerhouse projects series continues as Michelle Harrison explores the invasion of the lens into our lives through painting, while Stuart Farr presents a series of acrylic on plywood pieces, resting somewhere between the absurd and the real. Double Indemnity

various dates between 14 Sep and 5 Jan, times vary, Free

A new group exhibition taking inspiration from Billy Wilder’s classic film noir, Double Indemnity, exploring desire, possession and complicity and featuring two newly commissioned works by Ming Wong and Anicka Yi. David Chadwick: We Were All Here, Once

various dates between 3 Oct and 5 Nov, times vary, Free

Manchester-based artist David Chadwick presents a collection of rarely seen images of Manchester nightlife from the late 70s and early 80s, documenting the punk, new romanitc and rag-doll scenes of the time.

Gallery of Costume

Christian Dior: Designer in focus

12 Jun – 12 Jan, times vary, Free

A unique exhibition of Christian Dior’s work, including London and Paris couture with highlights including a piece from his New Look collection, a 1949 black ribbed silk cocktail dress commissioned by the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson.

Imperial War Museum North Sean Smith: Iraq

4 Jun – 2 Feb, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

A photographic exhibition by the award-winning British war photographer, Sean Smith, documenting the collision of two worlds as local Iraqis and military personnel are forced to co-exist. Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War

12 Oct – 23 Feb, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

A new exhibition bringing together the work of over 70 artists across photography, film, sculpture, oil paintings, prints and book works to explore our changing perceptions of conflict in a time when our reactions are so influenced by the media.

KRAAK Collabo

23–24 Oct, 7:00pm – 12:00am, £2

For this experimental and collaborative performance evening, attendees will be split into groups and create an improvised performance based on a theme, this month that theme is Elephants.

Manchester Art Gallery Radical Figures: Post-war British Figurative Painting

16 mAR 2013–16 Mar 2014, times vary, Free

Contact

A new collection of works that explore the role painters such as Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and David Hockney played in the reinvention of figurative and realist art in post-war Britain.

various dates between 12 Sep and 14 Dec, times vary, Free

24 MAY 2013–23 May 2014, times vary, Free

Blank Media Collective: Invented Identities

The latest exhibition by Blank Media Collective explores ways in which we sculpt our own identity and re-imagine reality through false images and alter egos.

Home, Land and Sea: Art in the Netherlands 1600-1800

Bringing together over 50 paintings from the Manchester City Galleries’ 17th and 18th century Dutch and Flemish collection, including portraiture, landscapes and seascapes from Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Jacob van Ruisdael. Between the Wars

13 Jul – 13 Oct, times vary, Free

An exhibition of work exploring the creative landscape in Britain between the First and Second World Wars; from the nostalgia of 1920s landscapes to the development of abstract and surreal work in the 1930s.

Channel Crossings 11 Jul – 6 Dec, times vary, Free

An exhibition of English and French Impressionist and PostImpressionist paintings, exploring the allure of French art for a generation of English and Scottish painters. Alison Erika Forde: The Tallest of Tales

27 Aug – 10 Nov, times vary, Free

Explore the playful yet uncanny world created by Manchesterborn artist Alison Erika Forde in this new exhibition; inside the custom built hut – reminiscent of a fairy tale – you’ll find salvaged mass produced images and charity shop bric a brac. A Highland Romance: Victorian Views of Scottishness

20–1 Sep, times vary, Free

A collection of some of the most popular 19th century paintings and works on paper by Scottish artists is shown alongside visions of Scotland by artists from England, exploring the changing view of Scotland and Scottishness over the past two centuries. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

12 Oct – 19 Jan, times vary, Free

This new touring exhibition curated by Jeremy Deller explores the impact of the industrial revolution of British pop culture through music, film, photography and objects, with Deller’s approach to the materials likened to that of a social cartographer. Greyson Perry: The Vanity of Small Differences

24 Oct – 2 Feb, times vary, Free

Inspired by William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, artist Grayson Perry created six tapestries to tell the story of class mobility and the influence of social class on aesthetic taste.

Manchester Craft and Design Centre Forming Words

various dates between 13 Jul and 9 Nov, 10:00am – 5:30pm, Free

A group exhibition in which the artists explore different aspects of text, words and the meaning of communication, using everything from embroidery to jewellrey to explore these themes.

Manchester Jewish Museum Chagall, Soutine and the School of Paris

various dates between 20 Jun and 24 Nov, times vary, Free

An exhibition showcasing work by some of the most famous Jewish artists in history, including work by Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Lazar Berson and Sonia Delaunay.

Manchester Museum

Warriors of the Plains: 200 years of Native North American honour and ritual 24 May – 3 Nov, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

An exhibition of Native North American artifacts alongside photographs of them in use, bringing to life the ritual and warfare from 1800 to the present day. 90 Degree Citizen

10 Oct – 17 Nov, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

As part of Platforma National Refugee Arts Festival, six artists explore the broken line between homeland and destination through photography, painting and printmaking.

National Football Museum

Hey ‘Ya: Arab Women in Sport

26 Jul – 13 Oct, times vary, Free

A special exhibition, part of Qatar UK 2013 Year of Culture, featuring pictures and film of over 90 Arab sportswomen – many of them Olympians – by photographer Brigitte Lacombe and her film-maker sister, Marian Lacombe.

True Colours: Stuart Roy Clarke 12 Jul – 31 Dec, times vary, Free

A raw and gritty collection of photographs shot by Stuart Roy Clarke, captured throughout the 2012/13 season, capturing the passion, joy and loyalty of fans.

North Tea Power BARRY STEADMUND: STAY

1 OCT–14 NOV, FREE

New drawings from elusive artist and this month’s Skinny Showcase Barry Steadmund, whose practice involves parapsychology and marshmallows.

People’s History Museum The People’s Business: 150 Years of The Co-operative

12 Oct – 11 May, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

An exhibition exploring the vast history of The Co-operative, from their origins as the Co-operative Wholesale Society in Manchester, to their innovative branding. Part of the Manchester Weekender.

The Holden Gallery Schools of Art

30 Sep – 15 Oct, weekdays only, 10:00am – 4:00pm, Free

The Manchester School of Art and the HfBK Dresden Academy of Fine Arts join forces to present an exhibition of work by Diploma and Post Diploma students; artists includeJohannes Flechtenmacher, Manuel Frolik, Julia Gaisbacher and Alex Lebus. Manchester Artists’ Book Fair

18–19 Oct, times vary, Free

Hot Bed Press and Manchester School of Art host a artists’ book fair, with more than 40 tables crammed with all manner of book art wares, including zines and pamplets, teeny letterpressed books, decorative papers and beautifully bound books.

The John Rylands Library The Polari Mission

16 Aug – 2 Feb, times vary, Free

As part of the Manchester Pride Fringe festival of events, two artists are embarking on a mission to protect and preserve Polaris – an ancient and endangered language – with an exhibition that examine how LGBT groups identify with Polari today.

The Lowry

Defining Me: Musical Adventures in Manchester

28 Sep – 23 Feb, times vary, Free

An exhibition charting the Manchester’s rich musical heritage through ticket stubs, posters, video and photographs; spanning everything from the Hallé Orchestra’s first performance in 1858 to the present day musical landscape. Alison Goldfrapp: Performer as Curator

19 Oct – 2 Mar, times vary, Free

To kick off their Performer as Curator series, The Lowry invite English singer/songwriter Alison Goldfrapp to curate an exhibition of work offering insight into the singer’s personal inspiration through paintings, film, illustration and photography.

The Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) Brains: The Mind As Matter

20 Sep – 4 Jan, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

On display for the first time outside of London, MOSI present a collection of artifacts, including real brains, artworks, manuscripts and more, showcasing our relationship with this most vital of human organs.

The Penthouse Holly Rowan Hesson In Residence

10–14 Oct, 1:00pm – 5:00pm, Free

Following her degree show at Piccadilly Place, Holly Rowan Hesson will be in residence at The Penthouse and using her time to explore site specific approaches to photography, opening her studio to visitors for four days at the end.

The Portico Library Paul Brotherton: A Retrospective

3–31 Oct, not 6, 13, 20, 27, times vary, Free

An exhibition of work from the Cheshire-based artist Paul Brotherton, best known for his boundary-pushing methods of painting and his wide-ranging exploration of artistic movements, including Abstract Expressionism.

Fallout Factory Jesus, Mary and Joseph

various dates between 13 Sep and 5 Oct, 11:00am – 6:00pm, Free

Liverpool-born artist Steve Gibson returns to his hometown to present an exhibition of three lifesized sculptures alongside works on paper, including some life-size drawings.

International Slavery Museum White Gold: The True Cost of Cotton

1 Jun – 31 Dec, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

Liverpool Art Exhibition Research Centre Bob Cobbing: ABC in Sound

9 Oct – 22 Nov, weekdays only, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

An exhibition of documents, books, films, prints, musical instruments and sound pieces from Bob Cobbing’s collection, a British sound poet best known for his anarchically stretched language interspersed with recognisable spoken work.

FACT

Headspace

26 Sep – 1 Dec, times vary, Free

Taking over the FACT foyer with their art-exhibition-meetsscience project, Headspace aims to build a database of head shapes to assist with paediatric Craniofacial surgery research – with added interactive art and workshops. Mark Boulos

3 Oct – 21 Nov, times vary, Free

Artist and filmmaker Mark Boulos presents a solo exhibition of work, the centrepiece of which will be Echo, an immersive work that will present the viewer with an eerie, interactive doppelganger, utilising every neuroscientific trick in the book. SEFT-1 Public Showcase

3 Oct, 6:30pm – 10:00pm, Free

A public showcase of the road and rail vehicle created by the Mexican artists, Los Ferronautas, arriving in the UK for a series of expeditions. Michelle Ellsworth: Three Optimal Solutions

3 Oct, 6:00pm – 8:00pm, Free

Catch a showcase of Michelle Ellsworth’s latest work, a series of performable websites designed to solve real world problems, including religious followers, and the environmental impact of hamburgers. New Cinema Lab Public Showcase

3 Oct, 6:00pm – 8:00pm, Free

Following a two day lab experiment, exploring new cinematic possibilities in storytelling and audience interaction, Marshmallow Laser Feast will present a public showcase of the results. Nicolas Maigret: The Pirate Cinema

A colloborative exhibition with the Environmental Justice Foundation exploring how the cotton supply chain works and our roles as consumers in this chain. British Dance: Black Routes

13 Sep – 23 Mar, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

A new exhibition exploring the experiences of Black British dancers from 1946 to 2005 and shining the spotlight on their contributions to British dance, through jazz, contemporary, ballet and hip hop.

Lady Lever Art Gallery The Drawings of Edward Burne-Jones

14 Jun – 12 Jan, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

A collection of 26 drawings by the Pre-Raphaelite master, comprising of independent drawings, preparatory studies and designs for stained glass.

Merseyside Maritime Museum

Titanic and Liverpool: The Untold Story

30 Mar – 31 Dec, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

A collection of previously unseen archive footage and materials that document Liverpool’s central role in the Titanic story. The exhibition marks the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic.

Museum of Liverpool

Merseystyle: Photographs by The Caravan Gallery

10 May – 27 Oct, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

A new exhibition from the mobile Caravan Gallery, featuring photographs that explore the many elements of the Merseyside and Wirral identity. Part of LOOK/13.

Open Eye Gallery

Tim Hetherington: You Never See Them Like This

various dates between 6 Sep and 24 Nov, 10:30am – 5:30pm, Free

A new exhibition celebrating the work of the late Tim Hetherington – the Liverpool-born photojournalist – on display will be a collection of photogrphas and film work taken during his time with American soldiers in Northern Afghantistan.

Sudley House

20th Century Chic: 100 Years of Women’s Fashion

Chagall: Modern Master 8 Jun – 6 Oct, 10:00am – 5:00pm, £10

A collection of paintings by the Russian Jewish artist Marc Chagall, exploring the universal themes of love, loss and suffering through his unique and poetic style – bold, brightly hued and influenced by folklore and his rich heritage.

The Bluecoat

3am: Wonder, Paranoia and the Restless Night 28 Sep – 24 Nov, 10:00am – 6:00pm, Free

A group exhibition featuring the work of Francis Alÿs, Tonico Lemos Auad and Sandra Cinto, exploring our current state, represented by 3am; a darkened hour filled with dreams, nightmares and the feeling of dread. Laurie Mitchell

14 Sep – 13 Oct, 10:00am – 6:00pm, Free

Staffordshire-based artist, Laurie Mitchell presents a new body of work made primarily of paper – the collection will include prints, paper art and altered books often featuring small stylised studies of birds and insects. Deaf School: The Art School Dance Goes On Forever

19 Oct – 15 Nov, 10:00am – 6:00pm, Free

Celebrating 40 years of Deaf School, formed at Liverpool College of Art, this exhibition will feature an art/pop crossover of posters, vinyl sleeves and previously unseen films and photos.

The Kazimier Future Primed

4–5 Oct, 9:00pm – 2:00am, £5

Get an upgrade to Human 2.0 with this future proofing workshop that starts at the temporary experience centre at 45-61 Duke Street, then follows up at The Kazimier for a post treatment drinks reception.

The Liverpool Academy of Arts Crap Art

1–17 Oct, weekdays only, 12:00pm – 4:00pm, Free

An open-entry exhibition of work drawing inspiration from, er, toilets, in tribute to Thomas Crapper.

Victoria Gallery and Museum Remember Them.

various dates between 27 Sep and 1 Feb, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

In Cuidad Juarez in Mexico, over 2000 women have been murdered or have disappeared since 1993, as the families struggle for justice, this exhibition brings together the work of artists trying to raise international awareness, and commemorate those lost.

Walker Art Gallery Draw Tomorrow

18 Aug – 9 Dec, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

An exhibition of drawings by architect and town planner Stanley Davenport Adshead (1868–1946) in which he presented a new vision for the centre of Liverpool in 1910.

21 Aug – 31 Dec, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

A collection of 12 evening outfits spanning 1900 to 2000, charting Digital art and sound experimenter, the changing role of women in soNicolas Maigret reveals the hidden ciety throughout this period, and how these changes were reflected activity of online P2P networks in the fashion of the time. with a movie monitoring system, making it possible to watch Tate Liverpool fragments of movies as they’re Moyra Davey: Hangmen of transferred across the globe. 3–5 Oct, 12:00pm – 7:00pm, Free

Jesse Darling: Our Bodies, Our Selfies Public Showcase

5 Oct, 6:00pm – 7:00pm, Free

Jesse Darling presents a showcase of her three-day workshop aiming to help people take control of their online persona through social media and selfies. AND Fair

5 Oct, 11:00am – 6:00pm, Free

England

8 Jun – 6 Oct, 10:00am – 5:00pm, Free

An exhibition by New York-based photographer, Moyra Davey, known for capturing everyday objects to tell a story, and then mailing them back to the city of origin. In this exhibition she presents a series of photographs taken in Manchester and Liverpool.

An exhibition of artists and former AND collaborators, presenting new inventions, with emerging and archaic technology being found alongside each other.

THE SKINNY

The Last Word With his attention now fully on a rejuvenated Public Image Ltd, John Lydon explains why he’s happier than ever making music, and why he’s done with the Sex Pistols

ello? Hello? HELLO? Oh for fuck’s sake…” A dodgy transatlantic phone line gets us off to a less than ideal start. Somewhere on the end of that line is John Lydon. The man who used to be Johnny Rotten. The man who sounds far from amused as the re-dial gods smirk down on his hapless interrogator. Lydon’s most recent public travails are small beer next to the excesses of his formative years but he keeps himself in the headlines with the odd bit of (alleged) fisticuffs, advertising and reality TV. But his real work, his real love, remains Public Image Ltd, the band he formed in 1978 after the break-up of the Sex Pistols. With 2012’s This is PiL, the band’s first album in 20 years, receiving positive notices, his hunger for live performance is unabated. Still, he remains beautifully and dutifully irascible. “Hurry up, man!” he offers by way of encouragement. “Get on with it. Come on! Let’s hear what you’ve got to say!” Or, in Lydon parlance, let’s hear what John’s got to say. And for nearly an hour, he sets about interviewing himself. Pinning him down becomes the conversational equivalent of plaiting sawdust. Still, by his own admission, he just loves to talk. “All I want is a conversation,” he says. “Yes, of course it helps these rags if they can continue to paint me as this monster but that’s not who I am. Music is a conversation. And, let me be clear on this, I still have a lot to say.” Indeed. Ramble on. On Never Mind the Bollocks… “I’m not averse to bragging about my work occasionally. It’s a fine piece of work and it set me off onto an amazing, honest and beautiful career. Yeah, I’m well proud. Sadly, it didn’t make me rich by the time the lawyers, accountants and band in-fighting had ended.” On the re-packaging of punk… “I think that shows very good taste. Who needs a Ramones t-shirt when you can have a Sex Pistols one? Or a PiL one? As long as they’re not bootlegs, of course. If they’re official then it’s money well spent. Those people are investing in something that is true, as opposed to the rest of pop culture, which is very fabricated and very false. Hey! We’re the Pistols! We specialise in sizing for fat and socially awkward people, but we make room for the thin ones, too. No, it’s a statement to wear a Pistols t-shirt – not going along with the general shit-dom of popular culture.” On record labels… “Well the Pistols started me off on a long and rocky road with record labels and guess what – I’m still here and they’re not. Or at least not in the way they would hope to be. I’ve had quite a significant influence on the downfall of record labels. I don’t really take any joy from that. I quite liked the idea of a record label being a home from home but of course they didn’t see it quite that way. It’s all warm and cosy until you run into the accounts department and then things change.” On the current music scene… “I don’t even know if it is a scene. I watched the VMA awards and it’s the same acts now, year in, year out. The same bunch. Nothing ever changes. There’s no room for anything new unless it’s easily sucked up. It’s hollow, it’s a dead end, it’s a trap and none of the people involved seem particularly interested in helping artists have a future for themselves. It’s a very greedy, selfish structure. But then it always has been. I opened

October 2013

some doors but the lot that ran in closed those doors firmly behind them.” On Public Image Ltd… “Public Image suffered a great deal due to the backlash against the Pistols. All that buying into the Malcolm thing about it being a great rock ‘n’ roll swindle and I had to endure all of that shit. But look, I’m still here and people do now realise that I’m a figure of some respect because I mean what I say. PiL don’t put out rubbish. We’ve never kow-towed to the industry and with PiL I manage to make damn fine records that are actually about something and that relate not just to my life and my lifestyle but to the audience’s as well. We all get on very well with each other. I always thought that being in a band was about managing the animosity but it doesn’t have to be that way, as I’ve found. We tour together, we’re all on the same bus and that’s where ideas are formed and shared. It’s a really healthy friends zone. It’s the best musical situation I’ve ever been in. Ever. Ever.”

“That bastard Cameron, I’ve got plenty to tell him” John Lydon

On finding a new audience… “The crowds, they turn up and a good time is had by all. Our crowds are very varied these days so that’s a good indicator that we’re on the right track. We get young kids, kids who are bored with the way they’re being manipulated. We get college professors. We get the lot these days. We make room for everyone. Light shows, lasers and whoop-dee-do fireworks – it’s very underwhelming, that stuff, for me and, I think, for a great many people. We get onstage and we get on with it. I’m doing this these days with my audience.” On Glastonbury… “They only gave us 50 minutes! What a shame. We did well but we could have done ever so much better. I would have loved to have done two hours at Glastonbury. That would have been in the spirit of the piece. We opened a great many minds that day. The people who went along seeing us as that Sex Pistols sell-out commercial thing were hugely ignorant but as soon as they heard us play, they knew it was something else.” On I’m a Celebrity… “I provided £275,000 to charity from that show. Hell, I could have done with that money! It could have got PiL out of a hole. I didn’t like it. It was blood money, that’s why I gave it away. Most of the celebrities were pocketing it for themselves. I’m a Celebrity… is hand in glove with publications like News of the World. They’re looking for these scandal angles and missing the opportunity to make a potentially interesting programme. Everyone in there was so lazy. There was a presumption there would be showers and five course luncheons. I loved it! But all they wanted to do was sit around moaning: ‘Oh, I’m so hot, I’m so tired.’ That was all very indicative of what’s wrong with Britain. Nobody gets up and does anything. But, you know, it was most definitely, properly wild. It’s the jungle. Some of the beasties in

Photo: Paul Heartfield

“H

Interview: Gary Kaill

them there woods were most definitely not to be fucked with.”

they found me very wholesome indeed. I think that bodes very well for China in the future.”

On getting old… “Unlike Pete Townshend, I don’t hope I die before I get old – I wanna get old. I hope I live to a hundred and if it’s the arthritis that keeps me offstage, so be it. But it won’t. Whenever you hear the phrase ‘act your age’, you know it’s someone jealous because you’re enjoying your life or you’re doing something. There’s a terrible morose inclination in the English to just sit back and give up – it happens at about 40. People just give up. Living in California has been an amazing eye opener for me. Everybody is very active. Yes, of course there’s fat ones, and the newspapers are full of them, but let’s face it – when you’re that big, you’re gonna grab the headlines.”

On politics… “No government will be my friend. Ever. But they do realise I am one of the people and if you want the people to function properly in any political situation, you’d better be listening to me. That bastard Cameron, I’ve got plenty to tell him. I’d happily help him out and talk to him. I’d talk to the devil. I have done many a time, actually. You don’t view your fellow humans as your enemy. You can view their politics as your enemy. Open discussion is the key, the cure. If you want a scab to heal, don’t put a bandage over it.”

On travel… “Every nation I’ve ever been to, and there are a hell of a lot of them, I’ve learnt something from. Music has led me towards the unravelling of prejudice as I’ve travelled. The more you see of the world, the more you want to see, the more you love. I don’t want a Lamborghini. I want a conversation with mad monks in Tibet. I managed to get PiL into China and they’re very good at banning people over there or digging into the political persuasions of the people coming in. Yet

MUSIC

On reforming the Pistols… “It would be pointless. The last conversation I had about this was with Paul Cook, our drummer, and we came to the same conclusion: that that band was making us enemies. So now we can get on with each other as human beings. Too many negatives always crept into it. I can’t go back and imitate that time period and I don’t want to anymore. I can’t write new material for the Pistols and I haven’t been able to for a long, long time. Nah. Enough. Done.” Public Image Ltd play O2 Academy, Liverpool, 16 Oct www.pilofficial.com

Out Back

E uT / r su D-o ETs o L oL ck LE c I b EN Ts s s T IL a E EN Va k D a TIc ar w G o N

oNLY uk show Th E M u s Ic & F I r Ew o rks s p E cTacuL ar

ConCert in the Gardens LIVE

Plus very sPecial guests to be announced tuesday 31 deCember – into the new year For full Edinburgh’s hogmanay 2013/14 Event & Tickets Details visit:

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