Ramsbottom Festival 2015 Preview

Summer's well and truly over, and we know this because it has stopped raining. We also know this because Ramsbottom Festival is happening this weekend 18-20 September (and wonder of wonders, the forecast is for partly sunny weather Saturday and Sunday! Friday looks, well... considerably less dry.) As usual, you can expect arty sideshows, family events and way too much good beer. You can peruse the full musical lineup here but here's the headlines: Friday headliner: The Wonder Stuff. Saturday Headliner: Idlewild. Sunday headliner: The Proclaimers. But who else can you see? These guys, for starters...

Jesca Hoop


The Magic Numbers



Black Rivers


Slow Readers Club



The Go! Team


Blue Rose Code


Walk



Adult Day tickets from £24, for booking and full information visit the Ramsbottom Festival website.

Manchester live music preview: Spring 2015

I like gigs. More accurately, I like making plans to go to gigs. I get to roughly 25 percent of the gigs I fully intend to go to. Because, you know, my life is complicated. Also, sometimes I find out that my new favourite band was in Manchester last week, oh no, you weren't there? Best gig ever! Ah, too bad they're not coming back for another year... or four. This makes me sad. So I sat myself down and made a formal plan to get more live music in 2015, and this post is the manifestation of it. If you see me at any of these, I'll probably be looking very happy. If you don't see me, I'll be at home, resenting the hell out of you.


February


Matthew Halsall with The Gondwana Orchestra, GoGo Penguin, and Mammal Hands at RNCM, 7 February

I've been known to bitch about the fact that the jazz scene in Manchester is kind of lame, and then a concert like this comes along and makes me realise how completely full of shit I am. Three jazz acts, each Manchester-based, each good enough in their own right to warrant a trip down to the venue with the best acoustics in the city. But together - trumpeter; composer Matthew Halsall's new outfit the Gondwana Orchestra (with vocals from special guest Josephine Oniyama), Mercury Prize-nominated GoGo Penguin and the slick Mammal Hands - they make for an unmissable lineup.




Ex Hex at Soup Kitchen, 12 February

I'm not so into February. You know what's good in February? An all-woman power pop band fronted by fount of musical awesomeness Mary Timony. I want Ex Hex hanging on my wall in a box with a little sign that says: IN CASE OF FEBRUARY, BREAK GLASS. Their Rips was one of my favourite records of 2014: a storming succession of short and punchy riffed-up songs that will make you slam dance around your kitchen. Or Soup Kitchen.




D'Angelo at The O2 Apollo, 18 February

Sneakily dropped on us like a stealth soul bomb in December, the long-awaited Black Messiah is an intensely textured and timely album, and features the work of the exquisitely-named bass genius Pino Palladino. Pino, Pino, Pino...





Father John Misty at Gorilla, 24 February

He was the drummer in the Fleet Foxes and recorded a bunch of moany songs as J. Tillman before re-inventing himself as the glorious Father John Misty after some psychedelic vision in a tree. His new album I Love You Honeybear, produced by Laurel Canyon music god Jonathan Wilson, is out on 9 February and to say I'm looking forward to hearing it is kind of an understatement. I actually don't even know where to start with this guy. Maybe just read this. And listen to this:




Olafur Arnalds at RNCM 26 February

Appearing as part of FutureEverything (25-28 Feb), Icelandic composer Olafur Arnalds has recently become better known here on account of his excellent film and TV scores, most recently for Broadchurch. It's good stuff for long winter evenings: spare, minimalist electronically-inflected classical music that exudes warmth and emotional resonance. Should be mesmerising live.




Ariel Pink at RNCM 28 February

Another gig that's part of the FutureEverything programme, Ariel Pink. With the Haunted Graffiti he made some good lo-fi psych pop, with appealing melodies and growly singing. On his newest release, pom pom, he's performing as a solo artist. Oh, and he likes to say daft things. He's a kind of professional weirdo at this point. Honestly worth going down just to see what he does. And wears.






MARCH

All We Are at the Deaf Institute, 9 March 

All We Are are from Liverpool and I've been listening to their eponymous new album for a couple of days now but I still don't know how to describe it. Hmm. Can't really better their own description: "The Bee Gees on diazepam". No? Oh, okay, it's kind of stripped down electronic post-rock, with a dreamy, shoegazey wash of guitars and boy-girl vocals but sunnier and poppier than, say, the xx. Good tip from the clued-up folk at our friendly local record store, Piccadilly Records.





Handsome Family Band at the Martin Harris Centre, 21 March 

The husband and wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks make a cinematic kind of alt-country that reminds me a little bit of Nick Cave and, actually, Calexcio (see April). They've been performing together for 20 years, which makes their gigs feel like real family affairs.



Dutch Uncles at The Ritz, 27 March

The Manchester heroes of angular, thoughtful-math pop launch their long-awaited new album with a hometown gig and a tighter, more polished sound.






APRIL

Courtney Barnett at Gorilla, 3 April 

Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett's debut album is yet to come out, but her double EP A Sea of Split Peas is full of songs that are raw and messy and delivered in a deadpan shout. If you're as tired of twee, safe, overly-produced lady singer-songwriters as I am, you might like her. Her lyrics are always excellent, as in the cuttingly Dylanesque Out of The Woodwork. But her just-released  single is faster and even edgier. She clearly hasn't calmed down any. Good.



Calexico at The Albert Hall, 30 April

Ah Calexico, you stayed away for too long, hiding out in some Mexicali boxcar making music full of tumbleweeds and long nights and mysterious strangers with itchy trigger fingers. But we'll forgive you because you're coming back to us, and in the fantastic surroundings of the Albert Hall, too, with solid support from The Barr Brothers.

Sinead and Richard Hawley headline Ramsbottom Festival

I expected good things from Ramsbottom Festival this year, but Richard Hawley (aka the bard of Sheffield) and Sinead O'Connor as headliners is beyond exciting. And errrmmm I'm looking forward to seeing Futureheads too, even if I can't think of any of their songs besides that Hounds of Love cover just at this minute (hear that? That's the sound of whatever small amount of indie cred I still possessed vanishing in a puff of smoke)

But further down the lineup announced a few minutes ago there are gems aplenty: The Unthanks, the ace Junip, who my brother recently turned me on to, the really rather cool Public Service Broadcasting, and The (English) Beat. Full lineup and details here at the festival website. I'll be publishing a full preview closer to September, but in the meantime: YAY.

Stuff to do in May 2013: film, zines and art

Some interesting events for yer Manchester diaries, lovingly cut and pasted from press releases:

Anna Colin artist talk Wednesday 1st May (tomorrow) 6.30pm at Islington Mill. Free.

Post Tenebras Lux Manchester premiere at Moston's marvelous A Small Cinema. 2 May, 7:30pm. £3. This Mexican indie film has been making serious waves among some cinephiles of my acquaintance, who reckon director Carlos Reygadas is the best thing to come along in ages. Go decide for yourself.

Victoria Baths Zine Fair. May 5. £2.50 Who said print was dead? Zines galore, plus a musical tour of Victoria Baths by Manchester zinester David Carden, a film screening of Manchester DIY music film Helpyourself Manchester, talks by David Hartley and Karren Ablaze! and workshops.

Steven Severin and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari at International Anthony Burgess Foundation, May 10, 8pm. £10. Siouxie and the Banshees' Steven Severin in a rare performance of his electronic score for The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (above). Support is from the trio Ears In Excellent Condition, performing soundtracks for Cinderella (1922) and The Death-Feigning Chinaman (1928), two ten-minute silhouette animations by the German director Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981).

Ramsbottom Festival 2012 preview

I am making many sacrifices to the rain gods in hope that the sun will shine down upon our soggy Pennine Valley over the weekend of September 14-16, when the Ramsbottom Festival comes to town. Last year's festival was many things, but dry was not one of them. It was, however, all of these things: fun, well-run, immensely entertaining, child-friendly, adult-friendly and (in a humble, Rammy-appropriate way) totally rocking. You can read my review here.

Can we expect the same degree of awesomeness this year? I had a nice chat with Victoria Robinson from The Met the other day and she filled me in. For starters, ticket prices have gone down (when does that ever happen?) with day tickets £18 on Friday and £20 Saturday and Sunday,  weekend tickets £50 and Saturday/Sunday tickets £37.50. Kids under 6 are free, kids 6-16 pay £5 day and £10 weekend, and there are family tickets available too. (You can buy tickets here )

You can't really do anything about the weather, but there is much more preparation happening at the Ramsbottom Cricket Club site to prevent mud and/or flooding in the event of serious rain. They've done more to make the festival truly family friendly: There's going to be a ladybird tent with children's entertainments, and the funfair rides will be free. The festival ale will be brewed within shouting distance at Rammy's own Irwell Works Brewery, whose wares I was able to sample the other day and I'm not at all worried about the quality of the beer. Camping has moved to St. Andrews Primary School, a short walk away.   (Updated: I heard residents' complaints have put the kibosh on this campsite, but sure the festival folks have cooked something else up for campers.) And I understand they're laying on coaches to transport folks to and from Chorlton and the city centre each day of the festival. Not as atmospheric as arriving by steam train on the East Lancs Railway, perhaps, but surely very handy for some.

Here are some of the acts I'm most excited about:

Sometime in early 2004 I went to my very first Manchester gig knowing literally nothing about the band, the venue, or the city. I just thought the band's name sounded interesting. It turned out to be I am Kloot at The Night and Day. (Yes, I accidentally went to the most Manchesterest gig ever.) They put on a great show and I instantly became a fan of this fine band, fronted by the raspy-voiced songwriter Johnny Bramwell, joining an army of other Mancunians who make up their loyal following. Why they haven't gotten really big like their contemporaries Elbow and Doves is a complete mystery to me.



I like folksinger Thea Gilmore a lot, something about her lyrics remind me a bit of Suzanne Vega. Her ballads are beautiful, spare things. Recently she became a little bit famous when the BBC used her song 'London' in an Olympics montage. Her latest album sets to music a notebook of Sandy Denny's lyrics found after the folksinger's untimely death. Here's an older song:



The Leisure Society are an artful indie band whose arrangments and musicianship put most of their contemporaries to shame. I saw them play a great show at Ruby Lounge a couple of years ago so I'm expecting a good set from them. Their biggest hit is probably this beautiful song:

Scottish musician Roddy Frame is a wonderful songwriter, and I'm looking forward to hearing his new solo stuff. But most people will surely know him best as the lead singer of Aztec Camera, the ace indie band from the 80s whose hits included Somewhere in my heart and my favourite, this one:



Seth Lakeman is a traditional fiddler and singer-songwriter who was nominated for the Mercury Prize a while back. This song is about a servant girl who killed herself on Dartmoor and is said to haunt the place. Intense.

 

Liz Green has become a firm favourite in the Manchester area and is developing a growing audience around the country. A bluesy folksinger whose voice sounds a lot like Billie Holliday to me, doing her own thing musically and sounding great at it.
 


There are plenty of other acts on. Some performers my friends are excited about include: Roddy Woomble (of Idlewild fame), The Inspiral Carpets (sorry, I kind of missed that whole Madchester thing) Air Cav and Admiral Fallow. And there's plenty more fun to be had in the silent disco, which proved the sleeper hit of last year.

But as entertaining as the silent disco was, it couldn't compare to the sheer joy of watching this guy dance. Like a Lancashire Bacchus, Stripeyman embodied the true spirit of the festival. I'll be looking out for him.

Stripeyman photo by Brian Connor.

Ramsbottom Festival 2011: The Recap

So I've just about recovered from the inaugural Ramsbottom Festival. Here's a little summary:

Rain factor: You have an outdoor music festival in Ramsbottom. In September. Of course it's going to rain. The question is, how much and when. This rain wasn't too bad - it came and went, it was a bit of a drag, but you could mostly ignore it. There was always a place to get out of it if you wanted to.There was no wading through mud. We even had a few hours of sun on Sunday.

Best in show: The Waterboys. It was the very last band of the festival, it was dark, cold and wet, but they still made it very possibly the rockingest Sunday night Ramsbottom has ever seen. Those guys are professionals. The encore of Fisherman's Blues had the crowd twirling like idiots and sent us all home smiling (and shivering):


Runners up: Cherry Ghost, The Travelling Band and Young Knives all turned in solid performances on Saturday, Capercaillie rocked on Sunday. Can a traditional Celtic band rock? The answer is yes.

Miss (Non)Congeniality award: Badly Drawn Boy. I've always been kindly disposed to the beardy one's music, but after seeing this performance I'm less kindly disposed. He started things off by having a hissy fit about the sound and finished up by grousing that he should have been the headliner. In between: a whole bunch of meh. Stay in Chorlton next year and knit yourself some new hats, dude.

Personal disappointment: Missing Steve Cropper Friday evening. It was very wet, but still.

Taste sensation: Salted Caramel and Peanut Butter ice cream on a toasted brioche from the wonder that is Ginger's Comfort Emporium (long may they reign.) Really freaking good.

Best non-live-music-related activity: Silent Disco. Lots of fun.

Unexpected impressive thing: Whalley Range All Stars "PIG" performed inside a specially-built pig. The play was ten minutes long and only ten people could watch it at once. The audience had to don curly tails and stick their heads right into ten holes along the pig's belly, so they looked like a line of piglets.

Best thing for kids: The bouncy pirate ship, apparently. I spent about two hours standing next to this handing a very polite teenage girl money while my daughter bounced. And bounced. And bounced. Lots of kids about on Sunday, not so many on rainy Saturday. And don't ferris wheels look cool at night?

Comfort Factor: Weather aside, the festival was a pretty comfortable place to hang out. The drinks were excellent and keenly priced - Outstanding Beers' very pleasant festival real ale at £2.50 for a reasonably sized pint, fancy shmancy cider for £3.50. I think they had some weird mixed-drink-in-a-bottle stuff going on too, but I didn't get involved in that. In short, a far sight better than the shockingly bad beer selection (Bud and Coors?? In plastic bottles? Really?) at the Manchester International Festival pavillion this summer. You got served quickly at the bar. The food vendors were good and again, nobody was ripping you off (£5 for a massive plate of tasty Tibetan Kitchen.) There were enough toilets, so you didn't spend hours in the loo queue, and they stayed reasonably clean. Thumbs up.

Best flavor of Rekorderlig Cider: Strawberry Lime. I know, me either.

Unexpected funny thing: The VIP area resembled a cattle market - a roped off, exposed-to-the elements plot with bare benches, about as far from the stage as it could be. I think I saw two people in there all weekend. That kind of sums up the festival's ethos nicely.

Hero of the day: Stripeyman. The tirelessly boogieing, permanently ecstatic painted fellow below will dance on in the memories of festivalgoers for many years to come. I'll have what he's having.

In summary: a very good time. Of course, I walked down the road to get there, was sensibly attired and got in for free, so admittedly it would have to be awful for me not to have enjoyed it. But it surpassed my expectations in pretty much every way (apart from the weather, sadly.) Hey, I'm looking forward to next year already.

All images Brian Connor (via Flickr.)

Ramsbottom Festival Sept 16-18 2011

I don't want to be a smug, horrible person, but I've got to say it: Ramsbottom is pretty wonderful. I really do love living here. It's hard to keep this in mind at certain times (like when I ocasionally miss the last tram to Bury.) It's bloody miles away from the nearest (non-steam) train station. There's no decent bakery, no bookstore, and the town shuts down on Wednesday afternoons which is both quaint and annoying. And old-fashioned mill towns in the Pennines can be bleak places in the winter. But it's a beautiful place with an old-school community feeling, and I mostly love it.

So I realise I'm becoming almost insufferably happy to be living here now that the Ramsbottom Festival is about to kick off. It's a proper music festival, with camping and nice food and beer and DJing and kids' activities and multiple stages. And crucially, good music. I'd be excited about a festival like this starting anywere around Manchester. But to have it delivered virtually on my doorstep, a few days after my birthday, is like God's way of saying "sorry about that whole hurricane-and-vomit vacation, I've still got your back."

The festival takes place at the lovely Ramsbottom Cricket Club on 16-18 September. Bury Met, a real gem of a performing arts venue that we are extremely lucky to have right down the road, have programmed a weekend full of music with something for everyone. As with much of their programming the overall focus is on relaxed, sunshiney acoustic pop, folk, celtic and roots, with a welcome jolt of high-test indie and blues. The last supplied by Steve Cropper, Stax guitar legend. You know, Booker T and the MGs? Green Onions?

Indie fiends will be happy with The Young Knives, Cherry Ghost and Guillemots. Yup, it's pretty cool that a band as big as Guillemots is going to be playing at Ramsbottom Cricket Club.



Folkier folks should come on Sunday, when The Waterboys headline and the lineup includes Celtic band Capercaille, led by glorious singer Karen Matheson


...and ahab, amusingly identified as a "German funeral doom trio" in their Spotify bio:


There's a fair number of performers from Manchester, but thankfully there's an emphasis on quality local talent. And world class talent that just happens to live here, like Chorlton's own Badly Drawn Boy. The beardy one always puts on a good show, and he doesn't have far to come for this one. I'm hoping he'll play his near-as-dammit Smiths cover "I saw you walk away." Which I would find totally objectionable if it wasn't so good.



Other Mancunian standouts include raspy-voiced Kirsty Almeida and her charmingly ramshackle band...




...and 6music frequent fliers The Travelling Band:



It's also good that they're serious about making this a family event, with reduced prices for kids, a creche, rides and children's activities. If I were coming from Manchester, I'd take the East Lancs Railway from Bury and arrive in style by steam train (the ELR station is just outside the entrance and they're doing cheap tickets for the day with parking at the stations in Bury and Rawtie). Definitely don't drive - parking is a nightmare here at the best of times. A bus and tram daysaver is the way to go from anywhere else in Greater Manchester - you get the tram to Bury and pick up the Rammy circular which runs every 10 minutes. Booking info here. See you there!

#MIF11: Bjork's Biophilia

So this turned out to be one of those general admission, crick in the neck gigs where you really need to get their early. Trouble was, I didn't, and as a result I stood in the back of a crowd of tall men catching glimpses of Bjork between heads. My own fault. It was a proscenium gig in a big old warehouse, so I don't know what I was expecting. Never mind. It is a mark of how good this performance was that I didn't really even care that I couldn't see much of Bjork. This is because the projections were a whole show in themselves, and because there was so much happening with the music that not being able to see was kind of sensory blessing ( a theory I'm looking to test further at Amadou et Mariam next week). I didn't get to see any of those instruments she famously made herself for these gigs. But I did get to see her costume, a ruffley blue number topped by a big red afro wig with what appeared to be a chinstrap. Must have been devilishly hot.

On first listen the new music was wonderful, with a crystalline, fractured beauty to it. I think her new songs were about things like DNA, cosmology, the origin of life, and viruses, but I'm not quite sure; parsing her lyrics live is a challenge. Nobody sounds like Bjork, her voice can transform itself from a small, feline, warm creature to an avenging banshee howl in a few heartbeats.

The Icelandic women's choir, Graduale Nobili, provided an incredible texture to proceedings, like the layers of sound created through overdubbing in production but done live. I've never heard an Icelandic choir before so I don't have much to compare it to, but their sound had a stark, Eastern European dissonance to it. The choreography added a nice element to the show. Sometimes they jammed on their own, swinging loopily in their glittery choir robes, other times they loomed over Bjork like angry maenads. After seeing them perform after the show in Albert Square, I'd definitely be up for seeing the choir on their own (they're playing at St. Phillip's on July 14.)

The performance must have taken a lot out of Bjork. It was clear she threw every ounce of herself into it. And it's an intense experience for the audience too, taking all that in. So it was a great decision to end it with a raved-up version of Declare Independence, in which audience and performers joined in for a joyous jam, a needed release of energy after all that intensity. We all left smiling.

Image from Bjork Spain

#MIF11: Sinead O'Connor

As we filed out of the venue in Albert Square, I was walking closely behind a white-haired rather posh sounding gentleman. "The music was smashing," he remarked to his companion. "But of course, she's a complete crackpot."

This nicely sums up what most people think of Sinead O' Connor. (If they think of her at all, and judging by the blank expressions on the twentysomethings round my pavilion table when I announced I was off to see Sinead, they increasingly don't.) Nice songs, but completely Dagenham. She tore up a picture of the pope on telly, for chrissakes. In the 80s she was a beautiful young woman with a stunning voice, but she shaved her head and wore shapeless clothes and made a habit of saying angry things that made people uncomfortable. Then she went all religious and wanted to sing a lot of songs based on scripture, didn't she? The record industry loves it when you do that.

This was all in the background when I went to see Sinead O'Connor last weekend. The woman who took the stage was simply dressed and seemed nervous. There was a strange dynamic between her and her backing band which became clear when she told us she'd only met them the week before. There was a white cotton banner embroidered in rasta colours with the word "Joseph" draped from her music stand, and a piece of paper facing her instructed her to BREATHE. She periodically jumped into kind of a nervous boxer bounce.

Her set was a nice combination of new and old. I'd heard she didn't perform old songs any more, but The Emperor's New Clothes was one of the first she played, followed by many of her old hits. Her acappella version of I am stretched on your grave raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Beautiful, unearthly and harrowing. For me, that alone would have been worth the price of admission.

But her newer songs, most of which I had never heard, were lovely; her voice is lower than it used to be but just as magnificent, and her songwriting skills are still very much in effect. I'm not a religious person, but I found her songs from the Theology album touching, and wondered why sacred music is so little tolerated in the world of rock and roll, where ironic detatchment often seems to be the default setting. Songs from her forthcoming album, Home, also went down well, as did a reggae cover of Buju Banton's Untold Stories. The only place where she lost me a bit was a long sermonizing number called What is a real VIP?, which could have done with some editing.

She has a salty sense of humor, which was increasingly in evidence as the show went on, and curses like a sailor. I found this mostly funny, even later on when she had a nerve-induced attack of turrets - yes, she's rough around the edges, but she seems like a real person, a far cry from the standard plastic persona of the musician on display. On the strength of this performance, I'll certainly be giving her new music a listen.

Playing out

I'm a huge fan of after hours parties in museums, and The Whitworth's Midsummer House Party looks set to be a cracker, with a houseful of music, poetry and crafty goodness courtesy of local promoters For Folk's Sake and Pull Yourself Together and the Manchester Craft Mafia. It's this Thursday, from 7:30 to 10:30pm.

The weather is gorgeous at the moment, so the timing couldn't be better for Parklover's handy guide to public parks and green spaces in the city centre. It's a really comprehensive look at all the options for summertime picnics/recreation/sprawling on the grass hidden away in the urban streetscape. Some great little-known spots on there I will definitely be checking out soon.

If you feel like getting outside by the water this weekend, join Manchester Modernist Society for Tales of the Riverbank, a group meander in search of nature in the heart of the city. They say: "Join us on an investigative journey to find out how life on the riverbank has evolved through changing times. How have architects and planners responded to the presence of elemental forces of nature in the city centre? Sarah’s walk will follow the River Irwell uncovering tales of ecological development in the urban environment." Meet up at 1pm outside Manchester Cathedral on Sunday 27th June.

And if getting into the water is more your thing, you might want to check out my piece for Creative Tourist about wild swimming spots near Manchester. If I've missed any, and I'm sure I have, please add your own favourite swimming places in the comments (and no, the Rochdale Canal doesn't count.)

Let's do launch: New Manchester websites

The past few weeks have seen the launch of three long-anticipated sites that all aim to shake up the way Manchester's cultural life is represented online. I have written something for all of them, so I'm not exactly impartial or anything. But I think each has a lot to offer in its own way.

Following the formal lifting of election purdah (such a funny idea, that) first out of the starting gate was Visit Manchester with a bold approach that sets out a new model for city tourism websites. Built by magneticNorth, it's a dramatically different user experience, with continuous scrolling, invisible navigation and an open-door approach to content.

It would be fair to say that it has divided the city's digital folk. For my part, I'm a fan of the site's design. Of course, it has bugs that need to be worked out over time. I really love that they have incorporated so much social media content, and though its nigh-on impossible to ensure that only relevant tweets/photos end up there, VM is to be commended for relinquishing absolute control of what people say about Manchester on their own site. I wrote a little rundown of the city's cheap eats options for VM, and I'm happy that they used other bloggers' writing as well - hope that continues.

Next up was Creative Times, with a re-launch of the regional creative industry news site/print newsletter formerly run by the sadly-departed CIDS. Creative Times has been reborn in online-only format as a joint venture between The White Room consultancy, Cornerhouse and Fudge in Bolton. Edited by former Metro editor Chris Sharatt, the site looks good and has some interesting features (as well as a good amount of original multimedia content.)

It will be interesting to see how exactly it carves out its own identity alongside sites like How-Do and Creative Tourist that weren't around during its last incarnation; participation from the creative community will be key to its success. And if anyone was interested in the Manchester blog aggregator project I first posted about here a while back, you can read a bit more about it in my Creative Thinking column: Are blogs the future for arts coverage? (though I should point out that the aggregator we're working on won't just feature arts blogs, it'll have Manchester blogs on every subject.)

Finally, fresh out today is Go See This, the new what's on website from All About Audiences (them that used to be Arts About Manchester, who took on a new name following their designation as the regional audience development body in the NW). Now, I did quite a bit of work helping Editor Adam Comstive develop the content side of things, so there's no way I can even pretend to judge it in a disinterested way. It's a place where you can find out what's happening in the city's arts and cultural venues, plan outings, book tickets and get involved in a conversation about the arts in Manchester. We have needed something like this for, oh, about as long as I can remember, and I hope that it will prove extremely useful to anyone who wants to know what's happening in Manctown.

Also want to point you in the direction of the excellent Manchester Scenewipe, a smorgasboard of video from Manchester-based bands, and This is The Now, also from Visit Manchester but focusing solely on promoting live music in the city. It looks very nice indeed, but hope that content is going to keep getting updated as most of the stuff on the mainpage happened back in May.

Sounds from the Other City 2010

Mayday... mayday. Sounds from the Other City is this Sunday. I will not be there as SFTOC involves standing around in hot, crowded rooms and watching other people get drunk, both profoundly un-fun ways to spend your time if you happen to be a pregnant woman. But you should go, of course. If you're looking for a rundown of the music on offer, head over to Creative Tourist, where Matthew Britton did us an excellent preview. This year, however, the homegrown Salford music festival has expanded its focus to include art and literature.

Box Office is an art installation at Salford Central station, a phantom ticket booth which will offer tickets to an intriguing assortment of one-off gigs, events and performances taking place across the city in a range of overlooked and under-loved spaces between 26th April and 2^nd May. It launches tonight with a little opening shindig from 5-7:45.

Paradox is a mash-up of live literature readings and music featuring the likes of Socrates Adams Flourou, Chris Killen, Thick Richard, Jackie Hagan and Frank Sidebottom. Watch out though, they might try to give you a flower if you go in there.

And take a gander at the SFTOC souvenir programme from the folks responsible for the Shrieking Violet zine (that's the cover up there). Pretty neat.

The Magnetic Fields at Manchester Cathedral

Another great gig coming up: I'm getting pretty excited for The Magnetic Fields at Manchester Cathedral this Friday evening. A Magnetic Fields show is always something to look forward to, but this one especially so: It'll be my first time at the Cathedral since the church began hiring itself out as a gig venue and I'm really curious to hear how that vast, grand space deals with rock music.

With their love of strings and unusual instruments I think the Fields are probably a good choice to try out the acoustics. Their most recent album, Realism, released in January, was recorded entirely unplugged, and used a variety of gonzo percussion instruments. I love this album, as does Alexis Petridis from the Guardian, whose glowing review includes the following delicious qualifier:

"It's not a perfect album: it is perhaps otiose to complain about the level of camp in the songwriting of a man who owns a Chihuahua called Irving Berlin, but it has to be said, The Dolls' Tea Party would cause Duncan "Chase Me" Norvelle to suggest Merritt man up a bit."

Hopefully they'll be playing lots from Realism as well as some old favourites from the warped and beautiful mind of Stephin Merritt.

Gigs: Jesca Hoop and Jonatha Brooke

Tonight Jesca Hoop (above) is playing at the Deaf Institute. A few months back I heard a track from her recently released second album on the possibly endangered 6Music (BBC: so, so wrong) and loved it enough to get her amazing first album, Kismet. It's hard to describe her songs - quirky, funky, folky but very personal, and she's got a killer voice. Turns out she moved from California to Manchester last year at the urging of her friends in Elbow. Yay! I'll be looking for other chances to catch her playing her hometown.

Another amazing folksinging lady and one with a voice that's equally unique: Jonatha Brooke is coming to Band on the Wall on Feb 20. Her old band, The Story, released a couple of great albums back in the early nineties and disappeared, but Jonatha's been doing some quality solo stuff since then. Should be a good gig.

Factory seconds

So Peter Hook's Factory-themed nightclub, FAC251, opens tonight. Whoop-dee-doo.

Sure, everyone's entitled to their own nostalgia trips, but this particular one has been rammed down our throats for the last 20 years. And I'm not even one of these hippersnappers that utterly scorns the music that came out of that scene. Yeah, I decorated my teenage walls with Peter Saville album cover postcards and still consider most of it great music (Happy Mondays, though... I think maybe you had to be there and on those drugs). But enough already. I've got chronic Factory fatigue.

And I know I'm not alone. Check out Tony Naylor's exasperated, well-argued post on Guardian Music Blog, and this post on Words Dept., which is where I found out about the brilliantly vitriolic FUC51. They're also on Twitter. Anyone considering going along to the opening tonight should check out their blog for an eye-opening Youtube preview of what's likely to be on tap.

Maybe it's time for us to move on and show some love for the great new music coming out of Manchester? It'd be interesting if this club actually did that, but I'm not holding out much hope after checking out their website. Too much grandstanding and too much Rowetta. There's something depressing about watching the Factory folk shamelessly attempting to cash in over and over again, with books, reality show slots, second-rate reunion gigs, crap DJ sets and now this. I ask you: Can officially merchandised Joy Division oven gloves be far away?

'My log has something to tell you'

Twin Peaks. The drama. The flannel. The unearthly blend of mawkish and surreal that could only come from the dark, dark mind of one David Lynch. And, of course, the pie.

I'm not sure exactly how watching the weekly adventures of The Bookhouse Boys, Agent Dale Cooper, the Log Lady and the rest of the gang as an adolescent warped my mind, but I think it was in a good way. Nobody's ever figured out how the TV execs agreed to let Lynch loose on prime time, but thank god they did. The first season is some of the best TV ever. The second season... well, really, it's kind of a mess but still miles more interesting and original than 99 percent of the crap on television.

If you've always secretly longed to don Laura Palmer's prom dress, you're in luck: Islington Mill in Salford will be turned into the town of Twin Peaks for one night only on Sunday Dec 13. Come in character. There will be a Miss Twin Peaks 2009 pageant, live music, performances and djs. £11 (advance only here, limited capacity) gets you in with a slice of cherry pie.

I'm also going t'mill tonight to catch the amazing Mayming and World Sanguine Report. Some really great gigs coming up there.

Club Brenda, the big hearted club night renowned for its eclectic playlist, is the subject of a limited edition book. Strange Trees. The book is getting a proper DJ-assisted launch Dec 1 at Urbis 7:30-10 (free entry). The book "moves through the history of Club Brenda, using a series of classic narratives to form a dark urban fairytale, alongside a series of commissioned photography and artwork" from the likes of Rachel Goodyear and David Hoyle, who will also be selling art on the night. Enjoy your Urbis while you can, kids.

And closer to home (well, for me and those of us who live in the farthest reaches of North Manchester, much further for everyone else) Horse & Bamboo's Deep Time Cabaret comes to the Boo in Waterfoot on Saturday, 28 November. Looks like fun.

To Do: Homelife, food fest and blogger treats

The ever-changing Mancunian musical collective Homelife are launching their new album Exotic Interlude (out Oct 5 on Humble Soul) with a gig at Sacred Trinity on Friday. The band's latest incarnation has shrunk to founders Paddy Steer and Tony Burnside (pictured above). I've listened to the album and am really impressed with the new more mellow and folky sound emerging, but there's plenty there along the lines of their older sound, a ramshackle goody bag of surprising noise, tiki grooves and snatches of melody. This is sure to be a popular show as live Homelife appearances are rare as hen's teeth, so get in there.

Manchester bloggers are invited to join Havana rum for a shindig to launch their Havana Cultura twitter campaign/new mix CD at Cord on October 8th, preceding a Havana club night at Odder, which they will take you along to. And yes, they're handing out some booty in the form of CDs, photo books, drink mixers and free rum. Yo ho ho! If you're a blogger who's interested in attending email Krista AT theneonhub dotcom.

Any Manchester bloggers interested in covering the upcoming Conservative Party Conference should speedily contact Craig Elder (craig dot elder AT conservatives dot com) Don't think they'll be doling out free grog there, though. Oh, and in other digital gathering news, Social Media Cafe is back at The Northern, Tib Street on Tuesday October 6. FYI, I'm posting stuff like this here now but will likely move these blogger-relevant announcements over to the MCR Bloggers Facebook group, so sign up if you haven't already.

The Food and Drink Festival is set to yummify Manchester October 1-11. This year brings a brand new independent wine festival, foodie hubs at St. Ann's and Albert Squares, and all manner of special meals, food tours, talks and cocktail hours. They have a shiny new website too. Go forth and nosh.

At Urbis, 'Show & Tell' opens today and runs until Oct 12. It's an exhibition by the Urbis Creatives art collective. The exhibition will give the Urbis team a chance to show their work and tell the visitors about what they do outside of the creative environment of Urbis. It will comprise of many different disciplines from photography to illustration, painting and also projects the members are involved in such as community work and music events. For more information about the collective visit the website at www.urbiscreatives.org.

In other art happenings, the big Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism exhibition has opened at Manchester Art Gallery. And the famously difficult to please Jonathan Jones has called it "magical."Am going to this soon and will report back with a full review.

To Do: Hobopop, Mixed Up North, Umbro Industries

This summer is officially OVER. Don't know about you, but I am so over it. (Glances out window, shivers.)

So what happens now? Now we get overrun with students, overloaded with festivals, and overwhelmed by tasty offerings from cultural venues freshly awakened from their summer siestas. Happens every Autumn.

One interesting recent discovery of mine is Kirsty McGee (that's her above) and the Manchester-based Hobopop Collective. I'm really digging their rootsy, old-timey stomps, rags and torch songs. McGee has the kind of voice you can expect great things from. And it turns out they're recording a live album over at Contact (This is October 10, not Thursday as I wrote before, sorry peeps! But hey - more time to get tickets.)

Thursday night Bolton Octagon raises the curtain on Mixed Up North, a provocative play that revisits the Burnley race riots. Director Max Stafford-Clark and the wonderful Out of Joint theatre based the play on interviews with Burnley residents. Some blistering comments in the Burnley Citizen suggest there is strong resistance to the idea of reopening any kind of discussion about the riots there. Seems to me that's just what this kind of theatre is for - making it possible for us to talk about and think about difficult things, and consider different people's perspectives on the past. Kudos to the Octagon for having the chutzpah to mount this production, which runs from Thursday to Sept 26.

Umbro Industries is a pretty impressive new project from the Manchester-based manufacturers of athletic gear: a rolling fund of bursaries to support Manchester-based creative industries. If you have an idea for a club night or an art exhibition, want to make a book or record an album or create a pop-up fashion line, or want to do something else creative that will cost less than £10,000, go to the site and submit it and you could get the money. While people who view the site can give ideas a thumbs up, their votes have no impact on who gets the dosh. That's decided by a somewhat Hacienda and football-heavy judging panel.

Speaking of soccer, there's been some interesting news about Urbis today. The Football Museum is moving in, and Urbis' programme of changing exhibitions is moving out, or at least into much smaller quarters (I'm sure if I've got the wrong end of the stick on any of this one of Urbis' team of eagle-eyed blog readers will write in to correct me...) This might be great news if you're very enthusiastic about football, but not such great news if you're more excited about art and popular culture exhibitions, and like me were enjoying Urbis' new wide-ranging programme of events. Times are tough and needs must, I suppose. But for me, it's Art 0, Football 1. And the goths are NOT going to be amused.

(Photo Graham Smith)

Manchester International Festival: De La Soul

The 20th anniversary of 3 Feet High and Rising? That can't be right. Man, this album was the soundtrack to my college years, along with the followup De La Soul is Dead. So this makes me, let's see ... yep. Offically old. Shit. How did that happen?

3 Feet High didn't really sound much like the hip hop we knew before it came out, but pretty much everything that came after sounded at least a little bit like it. It was that influential. It was also pretty important for me personally, because this music was the gateway drug that eventually got me hooked on the deep funk source tracks that they were sampling. If you really, really like Me Myself and I, you'll love the song's venerable direct ancestor, (Not Just) Knee Deep, recorded by Funkadelic in 1979. From Parliament/Funkadelic and their whole crazy conflagration of splitoff projects it's a short hop to Bootsy Collins, James Brown and The JBs, Issac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, The Meters and the rest of the soul/funk explosion. So I owe De La Soul a lot.

What I miss about this music is its friendliness, the De Las willingness to be silly and lyrically real on top of actually making good music. There are people making great hip hop today that does all of these things but you mostly do not hear them on the radio.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I heard De La Soul would be coming to Manchester for the festival. And they put on a wonderful show. Believe it or not I had never been to the Ritz before. It's definitely seen better days but I was pretty happy with the venue, which was the perfect place for a gig like this.

The De Las and Prince Paul gave us a gig that was a seamless good time. Sure, they might be a bit older (and, in some cases, living very much larger) but there was no doubt that these guys still have it. Sometimes performing as a full band, and other times stripping it back to how it was in the very beginning, three men and a machine, they played the hits (A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays, Me Myself and I etc), but also revisited some less well-loved tracks from their back catalogue that actually held up extremely well.

The night had a wonderful vibe. The band seemed to be having a great time and the crowd sure was - everyone was dancing. I've never encountered a friendlier audience in Manchester. For me it was a great close to what has been a really fantastic festival. Roll on 2011.

Manchester International Festival: Antony and The Johnsons

Hearing Antony Hegarty sing is like listening to God speaking right in your ear. If I were a religious person, I would appreciate The Almighty even more for putting this voice in the body of a 300-pound transvestite who uses it to sing songs about being beaten up by lovers and falling for dead boys. Who, moreover, chooses for his opening act a painted woman clad only in silver knickers and two strategically positioned strips of duct tape, straight out of an East Village performance art dive, who danced for twenty minutes to avant-garde noise. (The audience, which seemed heavy on nice middle-class couples, was slightly discomfited.)

Anyway, I'm here to tell you that last night's Antony and The Johnsons/Manchester Camerata concert at Manchester Opera House was a real experience.

In his flowing white gown, Antony Hegarty was an angel, big and wise and sad. He has that peculiar quality of otherness that David Bowie has - as if he is visiting us from another planet or another time, watching our downfall with a powerless sorrow.

And at the opera house, with the full powers of the Manchester International Festival at work, you really felt like you were seeing him perform in the best and most fully-realised way. The lights, the set, the whole staging of the performance was incredible.

The set featured a white kite-like structure suspended above him where he stood at the centre of a multilayered set with a series of scrims that went up as the night progressed, only revealing the orchestera near the end. The lighting did something different for every song, weaving facets, veins and bouncing prisms of light. Hegarty explained it as the manifestation of "my dream of what it's like to live at the centre of a mountain." The overall effect was weirdly powerful.

I hadn't heard any of the songs in The Crying Light before, so it's a testament to Hegarty and composer/arranger Nico Mulhy that I found every song completely engaging. And this was a million miles away from the soupy arrangements you often get when pop singers do the orchestra concert thing. The Camerata provided a lot more than a musical backdrop, at times working as a surprisingly complicated foil to Hegarty's melody, at other times creating something very different on its own.

Hegarty strayed from the new material to give us a joyous For Today I Am A Boy and an intense Cripple and The Starfish. And we had the unexpected pleasure of a gleefully deranged cover of Beyonce's Crazy In Love, reimagined as a dirge of doomed obsession.

But, for me, the high point was Another World, when he stood against a dark background studded with red pinpricks and flares of light like a starfield. Against a sustained drone, as if emphasizing the emptiness of space, Hegarty sang words chilling in their simple truth: "I need another world. This one's nearly gone." Listening to him, you feel like he's more than halfway there.

(Photo by Flickr user black_celt)