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.

Manchester Festivals: Spring 2009

You'd have to be some kind of dreary misanthrope to own up to not liking festivals. Why, the very word conjures a kaleidoscopic vision of dizzily cavorting through the streets while brightly-clad revelers play joyful melodies upon pipes and pan flutes.

No? Well, maybe that's just me.

Manchester's spring festival season is about to get underway, and as a public service I like to put all the relevant info together in one place, because there's a lot of it. Don't say I never did anything for you. And don't forget your pan flute. If you become disoriented, please consult the special pan flute instructions above, (courtesy of Eating Sandwiches.)

Chorlton's Big Green Festival
Sat 4 April, St. Clement's Church

A right-on riot of sustainability and folkin' madness. A surprisingly huge amount of stuff on for one day including film, music, art and dance, bike parades, ceilidhs, organic food, crafts.


Moves Festival
23-28 April, venues around the city

The theme of year's movement on screen festival is narrative. Highlights include a screening of Lotte Reiniger's shadowbox Arabic fairy-tale from 1926, The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Carte Blanche to Comma Press features 12 new films adapted from poems and short stories published independently in the region - based on work by John Cooper Clarke, Hanif Kureishi, Tony Walsh, David Constantine and Brian Patten, among others. And the ever-popular moves lab gets people together to make short films in six days with a screening at the end (they need writers, so get your stories and ideas in.)


Sounds from the Other City.
Bank Holiday Sunday May 3, 3pm-late, venues around Salford.

A chance to while away an afternoon and evening listening to arty bands in various Sallywood boozers, offices and churches in the company of fuzzily inebriated but mainly happy people. The acts are curated by an eclectic bunch of local promoters. Good fun. Tickets on sale now. It usually sells out.


Hungry Pigeon
May 22-25, venues around the Northern Quarter

Last year's MAPS festival has returned with an interesting new name. This year, we're promised a large outdoor stage in a secret location for "up to 5000 people." Who's playing? Mostly a bunch of local bands. Some of them probably have a big following, but I can't get too excited about them (because I don't know who they are. Mostly.)


Eurocultured
May 24-25, New Wakefield Street (that's the one off Oxford Rd right by the train bridge, where Font and The Thirsty Scholar are.)

This festival has been going for quite a while and I always hear good things about it but I never manage to make it down. Maybe I will this year. The splendid Nouvelle Vague are coming, along with a lot of bands/djs from Europe and, um, Manchester. Plus some live art too.


Mad Ferret Festival
June 12-13, Platt Fields Park

Oh dear, looks like someone forgot to renew their domain, so I'll have to direct you to their facebook page. Not much up at the minute, though.

Music blogs

Just noticed this good article on music blogs in Sunday's Observer, by Killian Fox. The article is fairly explicit about the increasingly important role the blogs play in spreading the word about new artists. If anyone's thinking of setting up one, don't worry about artists or labels coming after you (as long as you aren't silly enough to post whole albums in perpetuity) - they're almost always more than happy for the publicity. In fact, they're sending stuff out to bloggers constantly, as I'm sure the Manc music blog brigade can attest to.

Even this non-mp3 blog has been getting a lot more requests to post tracks and press releases from music labels and prs lately, most of them Manchester-based. I won't say trying to get me to listen to/post about music is a total waste of time, but chances are pretty slim that I'll end up writing anything. The tiny bit of music-related blogging I do on here is basically me mentioning gigs of bands I like that are coming up in Manchester. These bands are more and more likely to have released their best work sometime in the last century. I'm open to new music but I just don't care enough anymore to spend too much time trying to keep up with musical fashions.

I accept that as a media outlet you're going to get a certain amount of pr spam from club promoters and music bods, and that's fine. But sending me three emails a day about your sizzling band is probably just going to annoy me.