Issue 68 / July 2016
July 2016 issue of Bido Lito! Featuring FROM LIVERPOOL WITH LOVE and JOHNNY ECHOLS, OHMNS, MELÉ, PEANESS, A PORTRAIT OF BRITISH SONGWRITING and much more.
July 2016 issue of Bido Lito! Featuring FROM LIVERPOOL WITH LOVE and JOHNNY ECHOLS, OHMNS, MELÉ, PEANESS, A PORTRAIT OF BRITISH SONGWRITING and much more.
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<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>68</strong><br />
<strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
From Liverpool With Love by Adam Bresnen<br />
Johnny Echols<br />
Ohmns<br />
Peaness<br />
Melé<br />
A Portrait Of<br />
British<br />
Songwriting
MON 20 JUNE 7pm<br />
BOYSETSFIRE<br />
TUE 21 JUNE 7pm<br />
NAPOLEON<br />
WED 22 JUNE 7pm<br />
UNKNOWN MORTAL<br />
ORCHESTRA<br />
SAT 9 JULY 7pm<br />
TWIN ATLANTIC<br />
SAT 25 JUNE 10pm · 18+<br />
DJ PREMIER<br />
MON 11 JULY 7pm<br />
JESSE MALIN<br />
FRI 15 JULY 7pm<br />
SPACE & STEPHEN<br />
LANGSTAFF<br />
+ SATIN BEIGE<br />
SUN 17 JULY 7pm<br />
RAGING SPEEDHORN<br />
TUE 19 JULY 7pm<br />
AREA 11<br />
WITH SUPPORT FROM<br />
MILESTONE, NORTHVIEW<br />
& LOST IN TRANSLATION<br />
SAT 23 JULY 6.30pm · 18+<br />
LIMF PRESENTS:<br />
76-16 FROM ERIC’S<br />
TO EVOL LIVE<br />
(PUNK/NEW WAVE)<br />
BUZZCOCKS<br />
40TH ANNIVERSARY<br />
WORLD TOUR<br />
MON 25 JULY 7pm<br />
THE LAFONTAINES<br />
WITH SUPPORT FROM<br />
THE BASEMENT EFFECT,<br />
NEW ATLAS & THE PYNES<br />
TUE 9 AUG 7pm<br />
BIG D & THE KIDS<br />
TABLES<br />
TICKETS FOR ALL SHOWS ARE AVAILABLE FROM TICKETWEB.CO.UK<br />
90<br />
SEEL STREET, LIVERPOOL, L1 4BH<br />
WED 10 AUG 7pm<br />
SARA BETH<br />
& GLEN MITCHELL<br />
THU 25 AUG 7pm · 16+<br />
KANO<br />
TUE 6 SEPT 7pm<br />
BROKEN BRASS<br />
ENSEMBLE<br />
WITH THE<br />
BLOWBACK HORNS<br />
THU 8 SEPT 7pm<br />
ELEANOR<br />
FRIEDBURGER<br />
THU 15 SEPT 7pm<br />
THE SHERLOCKS<br />
SAT 17 SEPT 7pm<br />
MOON HOOCH<br />
(RESCHEDULED FROM 31 MAY)<br />
SUN 25 SEPT 7pm<br />
KING NO-ONE<br />
STEVE MASON<br />
MON 11 JULY at 7pm<br />
JESSE MALIN<br />
THURSDAY 6th OCTOBER <strong>2016</strong><br />
LIVERPOOL<br />
TICKETWEB.CO.UK<br />
LIVERPOOL<br />
TICKETWEB.CO.UK<br />
An Academy Events presentation<br />
stevemasontheartist.com
A Portrait of British<br />
Songwriting - Liverpool<br />
8TH JULY - 7TH AUGUST <strong>2016</strong><br />
Exploring songwriting today through candid photography<br />
by Rachel King and intimate interviews by Rachael Castell<br />
with writers from the Domino Publishing roster taken in their<br />
homes and placees of inspiration.<br />
Featuring Clive Langer, Bill Ryder-Jones, Jon Hopkins, Kate<br />
Tempest and more.<br />
Bold Street Coffee, 89 Bold St, Liverpool L1 4HF<br />
www.wolfanddiva.com<br />
www.aportraitofbritishsongwriting.com
facebook.com/o2academyliverpool<br />
twitter.com/o2academylpool<br />
instagram.com/o2academyliverpool<br />
youtube.com/o2academytv<br />
Thurs 14th Jul • £23 adv<br />
The Maccabees<br />
Sun 24th Jul • £24 adv<br />
LIMF presents Eric’s to Evol 76-16 Part 2<br />
Lightning Seeds<br />
+ Pete Wylie & The Mighty Wah!<br />
+ The Clang Group (Clive Langer from Deaf School)<br />
+ The Sugarmen<br />
Fri 29th Jul • £27.50 adv<br />
George Clinton<br />
& Parliament Funkadelic<br />
Sat 30th Jul • £10 / £15 adv<br />
Keywest<br />
Sat 3rd Sep • £15 adv • 7.30pm<br />
Animal Collective<br />
Wed 7th Sep • £28 adv<br />
Barenaked Ladies<br />
Fri 9th Sep • £20 adv<br />
The Enemy<br />
Sat 17th Sep • £12.50 adv<br />
Definitely Mightbe<br />
20th Anniversary of Maine Rd & Knebworth shows tour<br />
with extra greatest hits show<br />
Fri 7th Oct • £14 adv<br />
Hot Dub Time Machine<br />
Sat 8th Oct • £12.50 adv<br />
UK Foo Fighters Tribute<br />
Sun 9th Oct • £30 adv<br />
UB40<br />
Tues 11th Oct • £27.50 adv<br />
All Saints<br />
Thurs 20th Oct • £29.50 adv<br />
Heaven 17<br />
Wed 26th Oct • £9 adv<br />
Yak<br />
Fri 28th Oct • £15 adv<br />
Glass Animals<br />
Sun 30th Oct • £16.50 adv<br />
Y&T<br />
Mon 31st Oct • £15 adv<br />
Augustines<br />
Fri 4th Nov • £25 adv<br />
The Two Mikes<br />
Mike Graham and Mike Parry from talkSPORT<br />
Tues 8th Nov • £21 adv<br />
The Wailers<br />
performing the album Legend in its entirety<br />
Fri 11th Nov • £14 adv<br />
Absolute Bowie<br />
Celebrate the life of David Bowie<br />
In support of Teenage Cancer Trust<br />
Sat 12th Nov • £15 adv<br />
The Carpet Crawlers<br />
The Ultimate Genesis Tribute<br />
Invisible Touch Tour<br />
Sat 12th Nov • £11 adv<br />
Antarctic Monkeys<br />
Fri 18th Nov • £14 adv<br />
Crystal Fighters<br />
Sat 19th Nov • £12 adv<br />
Pearl Jam U.K<br />
25th Anniversary of Ten<br />
Fri 25th Nov • £12 adv<br />
The Doors Alive<br />
Sun 27th Nov • £14 adv<br />
Electric 6<br />
Wed 30th Nov • £17.50 adv<br />
The Fratellis<br />
Costello Music 10th Anniversary Tour<br />
Fri 2nd Dec • £13 adv<br />
The Lancashire Hotpots<br />
Tues 6th Dec • £25 adv<br />
The Levellers<br />
Levelling The Land 25th Anniversary Tour<br />
Tues 6th Dec • £16.50 adv<br />
The Wedding Present<br />
Sat 10th Dec • £15 adv<br />
The Icicle Works<br />
Wed 14th Dec • £22.50 adv<br />
Kula Shaker<br />
20th Anniversary of K<br />
Sat 17th Dec • £20 adv<br />
Cast<br />
Sat 16th Jul • £18.50 adv • 7.30pm<br />
Father John Misty<br />
Fri 28th Oct • £15 adv<br />
Sleaford Mods<br />
Sat 12th Nov • £18.50 adv<br />
Jack Garratt<br />
Sat 26th Nov • £23 adv<br />
Soul II Soul<br />
Ticketweb.co.uk • 0844 477 2000<br />
liverpoolguild.org<br />
Sat 16th Jul • £18.50 adv<br />
Father John Misty<br />
Sun 24th Jul • £24 adv<br />
Lightning Seeds<br />
Fri 29th Jul • £27.50 adv<br />
George Clinton<br />
o2academyliverpool.co.uk<br />
11-13 Hotham Street, Liverpool L3 5UF • Doors 7pm unless stated<br />
Venue box office opening hours: Mon - Sat 11.30am - 5.30pm • No booking fee on cash transactions<br />
ticketweb.co.uk • seetickets.com • gigantic.com • ticketmaster.co.uk
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
5<br />
Bido Lito!<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> Sixty Eight / <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
bidolito.co.uk<br />
12 Jordan Street<br />
Liverpool L1 0BP<br />
Editor<br />
Christopher Torpey - chris@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Editor-In-Chief / Publisher<br />
Craig G Pennington - info@bidolito.co.uk<br />
IT’S THE TERROR OF KNOWING WHAT THIS WORLD IS ABOUT<br />
Editorial<br />
“Stop killing people you fucking twats.”<br />
Images of this statement, painted on a banner that was unfurled at a protest in the UK at some point between 2011 and 2013, have been widely<br />
shared on the internet over the past month. Again. It sums up a lot of people’s frustration, anger and sadness at the utterly senseless actions of<br />
the few to ruin the lives of the many – but it’s becoming depressing that we have to keep seeing it. In recent weeks the world has reeled from a<br />
series of shocking incidents: the harrowing attack on the LGBT community in Orlando, where 49 innocent people were killed; the murder, in their<br />
own home, of two French police officers, in full view of their three-year-old son; and the horrific attack and murder of Batley and Spen MP Jo Cox<br />
during a weekly constituency surgery. And this is without mentioning the scores of other atrocities around the world that have gone unnoticed. It’s<br />
remarkable how strong the spirit of the human condition is, that each mindless act of violence and terror actually brings forth the kind of solidarity<br />
that we’ve seen in the wake of these atrocities. But it is the only answer, because divisions are what weaken us, not unity.<br />
I had reason to think back to my physics degree studies this past month as we worked on a project for the Bluedot festival, which takes place<br />
at Jodrell Bank Observatory in <strong>July</strong>. Dominating Jodrell Bank’s tranquil site is the giant and iconic Lovell radio telescope, with its great dish turned<br />
to the stars. Looking at the huge structure as it was gathering information from distant pulsars made me realise just how far the human race has<br />
come in such a short amount of time; and how we have done this by being outward-looking, progressive.<br />
For all its tricky maths and weird symbols, physics is actually a very deep field of study: it was, until as recently as the middle of the 19th century,<br />
actually known as natural philosophy. Sociology, psychology, and politics and are all macro-sciences, created by humans to put meaning to the<br />
actions of humans. By their very nature they are imprecise, because of the presence of humanity, which is far too varied a beast for any grand<br />
theory to unite, far less predict. The study of physics dwarfs these human-made creations, being observations of that which happens regardless<br />
of doctrine or intent.<br />
It was while re-reading the work of the great American astronomer Carl Sagan – in particular the passage in his best-selling 1994 book A Vision<br />
Of The Human Future In Space, from where Bluedot festival takes its name – that I came across the most pertinent description of our race so far;<br />
a passage which puts into perspective the whole mindlessness of our petty squabbles, as he considers a photograph taken of our Earth from a<br />
distance of 3.7 billion miles away. Sagan’s beautiful prose can’t be bettered, so I’ve re-produced it in full here:<br />
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here.<br />
That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their<br />
lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every<br />
hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful<br />
child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar’, every ‘supreme leader’, every saint and sinner in the<br />
history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.<br />
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and<br />
triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of<br />
this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one<br />
another, how fervent their hatreds.<br />
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of<br />
pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come<br />
from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.<br />
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit,<br />
yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.<br />
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human<br />
conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and<br />
cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”<br />
Christopher Torpey / @BidoLito<br />
Editor<br />
Media Partnerships and Projects Manager<br />
Sam Turner - sam@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Reviews Editor<br />
Philip Morris - live@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Design<br />
Mark McKellier - @mckellier<br />
Proofreading<br />
Debra Williams - debra@wordsanddeeds.co.uk<br />
Digital Content Manager<br />
Natalie Williams - online@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Interns<br />
Matthew Wright and Scott Smith<br />
Words<br />
Christopher Torpey, Richard Lewis,<br />
Roanne Wood, AW Wilde, Matt Hogarth,<br />
Matthew Wright, Andrew Hill, Phil Gwyn,<br />
Rachael Castell, Philip Morris, Scott<br />
Smith, Sam Turner, Glyn Akroyd, Jonny<br />
Winship, Paul Fitzgerald, Melissa Svensen,<br />
Stuart Miles O’Hara, Christopher Carr,<br />
Robert Aston, Alastair Dunn, Maurice<br />
Stewart, Will McConnell, Harry Brown.<br />
Photography, Illustration and Layout<br />
Mark McKellier, Adam Bresnen, Tami Valer,<br />
Rachel King, Debs Turner, Nata Moraru,<br />
Gareth Arrowsmith, Rich Maciver, Keith<br />
Ainsworth, Robin Clewley, Sam Rowlands,<br />
Mike Sheerin, Glyn Akroyd, Georgia Flynn, Gaz<br />
Jones, Mook Loxley, Darren Aston, Lexi Sun.<br />
Advertising<br />
To advertise please contact<br />
ads@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Distributed By Middle Distance<br />
Print, distribution and events support across<br />
Merseyside and the North West.<br />
middledistance.org<br />
The views expressed in Bido Lito! are those of the<br />
respective contributors and do not necessarily<br />
reflect the opinions of the magazine, its staff or the<br />
publishers. All rights reserved.<br />
bidolito.co.uk
Words: Richard Lewis<br />
Photography: Tami Valer<br />
Front cover Illustration: Adam Bresnen / @AdamsPortraits<br />
bidolito.co.uk
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
7<br />
ow you’re part of the chain. Pass it along.”<br />
So exhort the liner notes in the 2001 reissue of<br />
iconic LOVE album Forever Changes, something that<br />
successive generations of Liverpool music fans had already<br />
been doing for decades. The 1967 album by the late Arthur Lee’s<br />
cult LA rock band is a melange of acoustic arpeggios, Mariachi<br />
trumpets, beautifully scored strings and gently foreboding lyrics<br />
that shares a thread of poetic beauty with Merseyside greats,<br />
from The Teardrop Explodes to Echo & The Bunnymen, from The<br />
Stairs to The Coral. Arguably the most ardent Love disciples in<br />
a city of Lovers, however, are chamber-pop doyens Shack. Led<br />
by longstanding members John and Michael Head, the band<br />
brought Lee, Love’s brooding, mercurial force to the city for a gig<br />
in 1992, a show that he later described as “the most memorable<br />
of my life”. As the time-worn aphorism goes, ‘In Liverpool you’re<br />
never more than 200 yards away from a copy of Love’s Forever<br />
Changes’ (provenance unknown).<br />
The story of Love, and how their seminal proto-punk, protopsychedelic,<br />
protest music came to chime with this city, is being<br />
celebrated in an event of our own making, to be performed<br />
especially for this summer’s Liverpool International Music<br />
Festival. FROM LIVERPOOL WITH LOVE is a re-presentation of<br />
the ideas, themes and music of Love, told with the help of the<br />
band’s original guitarist, JOHNNY ECHOLS, who will be joined by<br />
a band and special guests comprising some of Liverpool music’s<br />
most revered names. It is also the story of our own name. For a<br />
band who never toured their home country or had any notable<br />
commercial success, the weight of Love’s cult status is even more<br />
remarkable given that it spread largely by word of mouth. To<br />
understand how this came to pass, we need to venture back<br />
to LA in 1965, to a ragtag bunch of musicians with a vision, in a<br />
street off Sunset Boulevard.<br />
“We didn’t consider ourselves to be part of an underground<br />
scenein 1965, when we were still known as The Grassroots,”<br />
Echols replies when asked what kind of music scene existed in<br />
LA in the mid-sixties. “Later, when we became Love, we were able<br />
to fill whatever venue we played and, for reasons I don’t quite<br />
understand, we were able to out-draw virtually every other group<br />
playing in Los Angeles at the time. So we had a much different<br />
experience than most other groups.”<br />
“We moved over from the Brave New World Club [located<br />
nearby] in the summer of 1965, to a brand new venue called<br />
Bido Lito’s, which was an acronym for venue owners Bill, Dorothy,<br />
Linda and Tommy,” Echols continues. “Being that we were the<br />
first group to play there, we were given the opportunity to have<br />
input as to the layout as well as the type of soundsystem the<br />
club would have. We played six nights per week, from 8pm<br />
until 2am. Soon after we began playing there, we were drawing<br />
overflow crowds. So much so, that the club owners blocked off<br />
Cosmo’s Alley [where the club was located] and installed huge<br />
Voice Of The Theater speakers. So the literally hundreds of kids<br />
who were unable to get into the club could dance in the street.<br />
“Bido Lito’s became the in spot, in a very short period of<br />
time,” recalls Echols of the time. “Groups like The Doors, the<br />
Iron Butterfly and many others followed Love, making it a very<br />
important venue for up-and-coming groups.The decision to<br />
open up Cosmo’s Alley was a huge factor: many others could<br />
be a part of the scene without having to pay to get into the<br />
club. Because of that, we were playing to huge audiences every<br />
single night.”<br />
Uniquely in LA (and even in the US itself), Love were a mixed race<br />
group at a time of social and political upheaval. With the Vietnam<br />
War and the Civil Rights movement in full flow, we wonder, how<br />
much did these events effect them as young artists? “Arthur and I,<br />
like most young people at the time, were very socially conscious,”<br />
Echols replies. “From our perspectives, one almost had to be. We<br />
were at ground zero, because of our ages, and were constantly<br />
bombarded by images of that war. It was absolutely surreal, to be<br />
enjoying the privileged life we were living – and at the same time,<br />
being informed of the deaths of many of our former classmates<br />
and high-school friends. Both of us were certain that it was only<br />
a matter of time before our numbers would be called. And we<br />
would wind up dying in some God-forsaken jungle. Many people<br />
think this country is polarised now; this is a love-fest compared<br />
to back then. They were bombing churches, unleashing dogs on<br />
citizens who dared to try and vote. They were routinely killing<br />
political leaders. Students, peaceful protesters, anybody that<br />
made too much noise, was fair game. One could, and often would<br />
be arrested, and beaten for ‘fraternising’ outside their race. With<br />
that as a backdrop, it doesn’t seem so improbable that a bunch<br />
of race-mixing California musicians would be most unwelcome<br />
in certain areas of the country.”<br />
‘More confusion, blood<br />
transfusions/the news<br />
today will be the<br />
movies of tomorrow/<br />
And the water’s<br />
turned to blood/And<br />
if you don’t think so,<br />
go turn on your tub.’<br />
With the riots in LA at the time, and Love being one of the<br />
biggest groups in the city, they were undoubtedly a product of<br />
their time and place. As two racially mixed young men, fronting<br />
a racially mixed group in the sixties, Echols and Lee faced<br />
widespread discrimination across a country that was racked<br />
with its own inner turmoil. Much of the country expressed a ‘You<br />
folks need not apply’ attitude towards them, or insisting on them<br />
playing to a segregated audience for fear of the outpouring of<br />
emotion they would bring forth from a gagged section of society.<br />
“We absolutely refused to be a part of that insanity,” Echols states.<br />
“When the group did manage to play a gig outside the West Coast,<br />
the police would often monitor our hotel, to find out who was<br />
visiting our rooms. The whole scene seems so bizarre now.<br />
Arthur and I were so embarrassed, and put off, to be caught up<br />
in something so un-cool. After a point we began turning down<br />
gigs outside the East, or West Coasts altogether, evencollege<br />
towns, where we would have been welcomed. To save face we<br />
began claiming that not touringin many parts of the country <br />
was a matter of choice,rather than circumstance... the myth was<br />
born of reality.”<br />
An exceptional lyricist, Arthur Lee’s words transported the<br />
listener right to the location that inspired them, and Echols was<br />
fully aware at the time of how powerful Love’s output was. “In<br />
the reality in which we found ourselves, we were in effect town<br />
criers,” the guitarist says. “So much of Love’s music is actually a<br />
newsreel, memorialising the times in which we lived.”<br />
The band were signed to Elektra Records by label boss Jac<br />
Holzman after he saw them play at Bido Lito’s; the label (and<br />
by extension its president) acquired a stellar reputation over<br />
the next half-decade, signing The Doors, The Stooges and The<br />
MC5. As Echols explains, however, Love’s tenure on the label<br />
was difficult. “While the counter-intuitive, illogical, and patently<br />
ridiculous mythology that has swirled around this group with<br />
an almost religious intensity may have helped to cultivate a<br />
‘darkly romantic’ cult status, the fact remains that, no matter<br />
how talented, dedicated and well-schooled the ‘alchemist’ is, he<br />
cannot transmute bullshit into reality! Jac Holzman is portrayed<br />
as a genius record company president who discovered the<br />
group and was the brains behind our success. Nothing could<br />
be further from the truth. Jac, and by extension Elektra, were<br />
an impedimentfrom day one. After the first recording session,<br />
it becameclear that they could not recreate Love’s ‘live’ sound<br />
in the studio. Holzmanand [Forever Changes co-producer/band<br />
engineer] Bruce Botnick kept saying everything was fine, and we<br />
should trust their judgement. They got along well with Arthur<br />
and Bryan [McLean, guitarist and fellow songwriter], who were<br />
inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. I, on the other<br />
hand, was seen as an impediment to getting the album done.<br />
In effect they wanted me to ‘Shut the fuck up and play!’That old<br />
aphorism ‘Truth is stranger, than fiction’ could have easily been<br />
written about this group. However, it should be noted that truth,<br />
in this case, is a hell of a lot more interesting as well!”<br />
With the exception of a Top 40 hit with Little Red Book and<br />
an appearance on American Bandstand (the US equivalent of<br />
Top Of the Pops) to plug the track, Love were a colossal success<br />
amongst native Angelinos but never became known nationally<br />
during their initial run. “There were many reasonswhy Love did<br />
not become as big as we should have. Some of those reasons<br />
are due to decisions that we made; others were outside our<br />
purview,” Echols explains. “One huge blunder on our part was<br />
insisting that Elektra sign The Doors. We had been offered a<br />
fantastic deal to leave Elektra and sign with MCA, a much larger<br />
and better-financed company. Being very young and naive as<br />
far as business is concerned, we reasoned that if Elektra had<br />
another successful group, and considering how unhappy we<br />
were, they would let us go. That obviously did not happenand,<br />
to show us who was in charge, they refused to promote Love;<br />
instead, monies that were to be allocated to promote us were<br />
used to promote The Doors, thereby leaving us to make do with<br />
word of mouth.”<br />
Following Forever Changes’ lacklustre sales, the original band<br />
line-up splintered in 19<strong>68</strong>, with Lee continuing work under the<br />
Love banner while Echols, whose childhood friendship with Lee<br />
formed the bedrock of the group, departed LA. “After leaving<br />
the group, I moved to New York and became a studio musician<br />
[Echols’ credits include working with jazz legend Miles Davis].<br />
Arthur and I remained in touch,” Echols explains. “He would<br />
often visit me in New York, or I would come to LA to hang with<br />
him. Through all the travailsthat the group was forced to endure<br />
by Elektra and through the many personal changes we both had<br />
to deal with, Arthur and I remained friendsuntil the day he died.”<br />
Given this huge upheaval, did Echols find Love an enjoyable<br />
experience? “Besides this year being the 10th anniversary of<br />
Arthur’s passing, it is also the 50th anniversary of the group<br />
Love. I have enjoyed every moment of that experience... the<br />
tough times as well as the good times.”<br />
From Liverpool With Love takes place as part of LIMF Presents, in<br />
the form of a live performance on the ItsLiverpool Stage in Sefton<br />
Park on Sunday 24th <strong>July</strong>. Johnny Echols will be joined by a live<br />
band featuring Liverpool legends and special guests.<br />
bidolito.co.uk
LIVERPOOL:REDEFINED<br />
LIMF <strong>2016</strong><br />
Words: Matthew Wright<br />
LIMF’s series of commissions, taking<br />
place in various venues across Liverpool<br />
between 20th and 24th <strong>July</strong>, celebrate<br />
artists, music and projects that have and still<br />
are redefining music in the city, while having a<br />
wider cultural impact. Whether it is through acts<br />
that redefine the global musical zeitgeist or the<br />
city’s continual rebirth in maintaining a vibrant<br />
and vivacious music culture, the lens of ‘redefinition’<br />
seems an appropriate one through<br />
which to take a look at Liverpool’s musical<br />
tradition. This year’s LIMF Presents series bring<br />
us seven projects that do just that.<br />
Gilles Peterson (From The Soul)<br />
“We are celebrating the fact that our city loves<br />
music – whether it’s diverse, cultural, new or<br />
well-known,” says Yaw Owusu, curator of LIMF’s<br />
music programme, which also encompasses a<br />
series of events that go beyond performance to<br />
bring some of the city’s hidden stories to life.<br />
“With a calendar full of outdoor concerts, club<br />
nights, intimate showcases and exclusive aftershows,<br />
we are authentically spanning the true<br />
breadth of musical genres and cultures. This is<br />
what makes LIMF inherently different from any<br />
other festival: we’re reflecting this city’s true and<br />
ever-changing musical DNA.”<br />
National treasure GILLES PETERSON curates<br />
and presents the opening event of the series,<br />
entitled From The Soul. Taking place at the<br />
Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room on Thursday<br />
21 st <strong>July</strong>, the event explores the genre-defining<br />
sounds of British soul music over the past 30<br />
years, and where Liverpool fits in to that story.<br />
The evening features a special, one-time house<br />
band collaborating with key artists from across<br />
the British soul spectrum, such as INCOGNITO,<br />
OMAR, CARLEEN ANDERSON and Merseysideeducated<br />
ADY SULEIMAN. The after-party<br />
features Peterson himself playing selections<br />
from his world-renowned record collection,<br />
exploring three decades of soul alongside sets<br />
from SWINDLE and THRIS TIAN (Boiler Room/<br />
NTS).<br />
The following evening, the ROYAL LIVERPOOL<br />
PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA return to Sefton<br />
Park to open up LIMF’s flagship Summer Jam live<br />
shows with a classical tribute to the Liverpoolborn<br />
songs that have resonated the world over<br />
and irreversibly redefined pop culture in doing<br />
so. The Music City: Reimagined performance<br />
takes place on the Central Stage and will<br />
feature Liverpool’s pre-eminent classical outfit’s<br />
orchestral re-imaginations of songs from Cilla<br />
Black, The Beatles, The Real Thing and Frankie<br />
Goes To Hollywood. Sandra Parr, Liverpool<br />
Philharmonic’s Artistic Planning Director, says:<br />
“We’ve been proud to perform at LIMF every year<br />
since it began and it’s been fantastic to see how<br />
quickly it’s grown in scale, ambition and profile.”<br />
Friday night also sees the culmination of<br />
the unique House Nation project at Sefton<br />
Park Palm House. LIMF have travelled to three<br />
international music cities under the direction<br />
of Liverpool producer and DJ YOUSEF, who has<br />
immersed himself in those scenes to return<br />
home and make four records influenced by the<br />
sound of those cities as well as his hometown<br />
of Liverpool. As well as being a seasoned DJ and<br />
producer, Yousef owns a label and is host of the<br />
world-renowned Liverpool club night, Circus.<br />
The line-up features international house music<br />
Yousef (House Nation)<br />
trailblazers DENNIS FERRER (Objektivity, NYC),<br />
REBOOT (Noon Artists), HECTOR (Vatos Locos)<br />
and LEWIS BOARDMAN. Speaking about what<br />
we can expect of the event, Yousef reveals that<br />
he and the four musicians have “collaborated<br />
in the studio and behind the decks to produce<br />
music, looking ahead for an unmissable event.<br />
It’s been an honour to be asked to represent<br />
Liverpool and to connect our city’s new UNESCO<br />
Music City status with other musically significant<br />
cities around the world. We are coming together<br />
to explore each of our city’s musical histories.”<br />
Spanning four decades which saw the city<br />
spawn scenes that consistently incubated<br />
absurdly important musical movements after<br />
The Beatles, 76-16 From Eric’s To Evol: The<br />
Story Of Punk And The Counterculture explores<br />
these epochs through the figures who played<br />
a central role. An expert panel convening at<br />
District on 20th <strong>July</strong> will be taking a look at<br />
the culturally and socially redefining impact<br />
of punk music and counterculture since punk’s<br />
rebellious and confrontational arrival forty years<br />
ago. Whether it is music, fashion, inspirational<br />
individuals, key venues, or a combination<br />
of all of the above, the panel – consisting of<br />
musician and journalist JOHN ROBB, journalist<br />
PAUL DU NOYER, Liverpool punk and new<br />
wave artist JAYNE CASEY, PETE WYLIE of Wah!,<br />
PAULINE MURRAY of Penetration, and our own<br />
CRAIG G PENNINGTON – will ask what drives<br />
counterculture movements. Part two of this<br />
commission brings us a live representation of<br />
this underlying ethos, featuring performances<br />
from bands who have spanned these various<br />
scenes. The line-up of BUZZCOCKS, CLINIC,<br />
POLTERGEIST, FERAL LOVE, VEYU and ORGAN<br />
FREEMAN tells the inter-generational story of<br />
the city’s underground music scene and how it<br />
has continuously evolved and redefined itself<br />
over the past 40 years, keeping alive the ‘punkindie’<br />
attitude that has been influential to the<br />
swathe of cultural movements it has birthed.<br />
“Liverpool has always had a small but very<br />
important underground music scene,” says the<br />
Eric’s To Evol music director, Marc Jones. “In 1976,<br />
Eric’s opened its doors and punk exploded into<br />
life. In many ways, Eric’s has been as influential<br />
to Liverpool as both The Cavern and Cream<br />
have been, and out of this scene came a set<br />
of Liverpool bands that went on to dominate<br />
the 80s. It’s a great tradition that has been<br />
continued to this day.”<br />
Fifty years ago, before the advent of punk,<br />
Millie Small’s My Boy Lollipop reached number<br />
1 in the UK charts and introduced reggae to the<br />
British mainstream. UK settlers went on to bring<br />
their own unique brand of reggae and reshape<br />
Feral Love (From Eric's To Evol)<br />
the global image of the genre. Between Lover’s<br />
Rock, roots reggae and vocal reggae, the sound<br />
left a considerable imprint on the music scene.<br />
The LIMF Presents commission Roots, Rock,<br />
Reggae sees award-winning BBC Radio DJ and<br />
Grammy-nominated reggae producer SEANI B<br />
curates a collaboration between British reggae<br />
artists who have helped to shape the history of<br />
the genre. “Reggae has brought many amazing<br />
moments to the music scene in the UK, and<br />
continues to do so,” states Seani B. “I’m pleased<br />
Levi Tafari (Yes Indeed!)<br />
that some of my talented illustrious friends will<br />
be joining me in Liverpool – from the son of an<br />
icon, CHRISTOPHER ELLIS; the queen of Lovers<br />
Rock, CAROLL THOMPSON; to a man who has<br />
helped push the sound of reggae to bands such<br />
as Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz, SWEETIE IRIE; and<br />
the sound of the new generation, KIKO BUN.”<br />
Following on from last year’s brilliant<br />
discussion and live event Next Stop New York,<br />
event promoters Mellowtone bring us a uniquely<br />
created live performance featuring contemporary<br />
singers and musicians reimagining works of<br />
forgotten Merseybeat pioneers. Working with<br />
a range of Liverpool artists, both established<br />
and emerging, Yes Indeed! will reinterpret<br />
and reimagine the works of black Merseybeat<br />
poets, unearthing and celebrating their legacy.<br />
This cross-generational collaboration is led<br />
by the soul band THE EQUATION and features<br />
performances from XAMVOLO, MERSEY WYLIE,<br />
LEVI TAFARI, EDGAR SUMMERTYME, AMIQUE, MIC<br />
LOWRY and ESCO WILLIAMS. Immerse yourself<br />
in Liverpool’s untold musical past, challenged<br />
through the soul-influenced artists of the<br />
present at the ItsLiverpool Stage at Sefton Park<br />
on Saturday 23rd <strong>July</strong>.<br />
The LIMF Presents <strong>2016</strong> series offers a varied,<br />
in-depth programme of events that reanimate<br />
various aspects of Liverpool’s rich musical<br />
heritage, proving that there’s even more to the<br />
festival than its Summer Jam bill. Make sure<br />
you take the opportunity to experience some<br />
of what is on offer.<br />
LIMF Summer Jam, Europe’s largest free music<br />
festival, takes place across various stages in<br />
Sefton Park between 21 st and 24 th <strong>July</strong>. The LIMF<br />
Presents events take place at multiple venues<br />
across the city, with some events being ticketed.<br />
You can find full line-up and ticketing details<br />
on all aspects of this year’s LIMF line-up at<br />
limfestival.com.<br />
Head to bidolito.co.uk to listen to our specialedition<br />
LIMF podcast, featuring music from<br />
artists on the bill and interviews with the festival<br />
organisers. This will also be part of the LIMF Radio<br />
coverage, on 87.7FM and limfradio.co.uk.
NEW GIGS<br />
Liverpool Philharmonic<br />
<strong>July</strong> – October<br />
ELVIS COSTELLO<br />
& THE IMPOSTERS<br />
Monday 11 <strong>July</strong> 7.30pm<br />
–<br />
IAN PROWSE<br />
Friday 15 <strong>July</strong> 8pm<br />
–<br />
LIMF: FROM THE<br />
SOUL LIVE WITH<br />
GILES PETERSON<br />
Thursday 21 <strong>July</strong> 7pm<br />
–<br />
MARY CHAPIN<br />
CARPENTER<br />
Wednesday 27 <strong>July</strong> 7.30pm<br />
–<br />
LEVERET<br />
SELLING FAST<br />
Thursday 8 September 8pm<br />
–<br />
MAWKIN<br />
Thursday 11 September 8pm<br />
–<br />
SUE PERKINS LIVE!<br />
IN SPECTACLES<br />
Tuesday 13 September 8pm<br />
–<br />
RODDY WOOMBLE<br />
PERFORMING<br />
‘MY SECRET IS MY SILENCE’<br />
Friday 16 September 8pm<br />
ROMESH<br />
RANGANATHEN<br />
IRRATIONAL<br />
Wednesday 21 September 8pm<br />
–<br />
KESTON KOBBLERS<br />
Thursday 29 September 8pm<br />
–<br />
EXPLOSIONS IN<br />
THE SKY<br />
Sunday 9 October 8pm<br />
–<br />
THE HOLLIES<br />
Saturday 15 October 7.30pm<br />
–<br />
LYNCHED<br />
Sunday 16 October 8pm<br />
–<br />
ROBYN HITCHCOCK<br />
Saturday 22 October 8pm<br />
–<br />
LOUDON<br />
WAINWRIGHT III<br />
Sunday 23 October 7.30pm<br />
Box Office<br />
liverpoolphil.com<br />
0151 709 3789<br />
Image Elvis Costello
10<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
OHMNS<br />
Words: Matt Hogarth<br />
bidolito.co.uk<br />
Photography: Nata Moraru / @natamoraru
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
11<br />
If you’re a regular frequenter of any of Liverpool’s darker,<br />
dingier gig venues, you are sure to have set eyes on OHMNS<br />
– and it’s probably not an experience you’ve forgotten.<br />
They’re a band who have managed to smash through the everrepeating<br />
increasing circles of landfill indie and Coral tribute<br />
acts which have bloated Liverpool gig line-ups in recent years.<br />
Lurking in the gloomiest realms, places where even the best<br />
photographers haven’t even been able to catch their full glory,<br />
Ohmns have become the city’s best-kept secret, cultivating a<br />
devoted following. Within a relatively short period of time, the<br />
quartet have become cult heroes with a ferocious tenacity on<br />
stage twinned with a fierce blend of fuzzed-up, distortion-driven<br />
anarchic rock.<br />
In pursuit of the group we meet them in the car park of Edge<br />
Lane Retail Park, a place where you can find all the tools to<br />
dispose of a dead body before catching the latest Adam Sandler<br />
film with the kids. The band are sat basking in the last of the day’s<br />
fading sunshine atop the bonnet of their car, fags in hand, whilst<br />
drummer Kingy sups on a warm tinny wrapped in a polythene<br />
bag.<br />
Stood outside the rather archaic Hollywood Bowl with its<br />
garish pink ‘H’ standing out like a pre-emptive tombstone of<br />
glory days now passed, lead guitarist Kendall tells us, “We like<br />
it here. There’s something in the way it’s just a decaying place;<br />
a sort of Americana-in-the-middle-of-Old-Swan thing. Bowling<br />
just seems a bit out of place in the middle of Wavertree.” This is<br />
something that seems to have inspired the musical output of the<br />
fearsome foursome, whose formative years were spent playing<br />
covers of garage and punk bands from the US. “We started out<br />
by just playing Gories and No Age covers and jamming. It was<br />
something else to do then,” bassist Ali tells us. There seems to<br />
be something in the slightly tarnished glamour of the bowling<br />
alley, in the multi-coloured carpets, the bright flashing lights and<br />
faded spirit which holds something of the Gories’ hometown,<br />
Baltimore. Ali continues: “We all used to just sit in Kingy’s and<br />
listen to records: The B52’s, The Fall, Nirvana, etc., etc. We’d all<br />
been in bands when we were dead young and jibbed it in when<br />
we got to 16. We just thought, ‘Fuck it, why don’t we start up<br />
again?’”<br />
Amidst this talk, Kendall swoops and delivers a stunningly<br />
athletic kick that sends Kingy’s can flying into the air in a fountain<br />
of mid-strength booze, the still half-full can landing inches away<br />
from the bonnet of a rather shiny Audi. Almost like a firing gun,<br />
the Chun-Li-esque Spinning Bird Kick signals the start of a hefty<br />
bowling tournament (where I play abysmally). It appears that the<br />
band are built on the friendship that ties them together. Their<br />
close-knit nature becomes apparent with a cryptic set of bowling<br />
nicknames: DADHUG (lead guitarist Kendall), MUMKISS (drummer<br />
Kingy), KRAZZ (bassist Ali) and BRISKET (guitarist and singer<br />
Quinlan). With the names originating from a series of teenage<br />
antics and MSN nicknames, the group have obviously known<br />
each other for a long time. There’s a great deal of camaraderie<br />
between the lads and it’s pretty obvious that they’re all in it for<br />
the fun. “We’ve made a pact that as soon as it isn’t fun we’ll pack<br />
it in,” Ali tells us. “There are no real egos in the band. No-one who<br />
dominates. We like to see each other as equals and that’s the best<br />
way to be. I know it sounds clichéd but we’re all in it for the love<br />
of music, y’know,” adds Quinlan.<br />
Twisting mundane aspects of normal life into well-written,<br />
raucous garage rock smashers, the band seem to have found their<br />
lyrical capability in a series of in-jokes in which they revel whilst<br />
the audience looks on, slightly lost but distracted by the fastpaced,<br />
riotous live show. Take track Boil D Rice for example: an<br />
ever-speeding, bass heavy and largely instrumental track which<br />
kicks into overdrive in the last minute with primal screams of<br />
“BOIL D RICE / IT’S TWICE AS NICE”. Slightly reluctantly the band<br />
reveal the track’s origins: “It’s just about how Mike [Quinlan] was<br />
always late because he was always cooking some rice!”<br />
Liverpool is yet another key influence on the group. “It’s just full<br />
of some of the weirdest and best characters, and that’s exactly<br />
what we love,” Quinlan tells us, with Ali adding, “We wouldn’t<br />
live anywhere else.” Such frenetic characters include the likes<br />
of local legends Craig Charles and Purple Aki. “Try explaining to<br />
a London audience who Purple Aki is, ha!” They have also gone<br />
about writing a full seven-minute epic around Craig Charles,<br />
entitled Keshi Heads, which combines themes of cult Japanese<br />
game show Takeshi’s Castle (for which Charles used to provide<br />
the English voiceover) and recollections<br />
of how the Red Dwarf star sat in the<br />
back of a taxi smoking crack and reading porn on what he called<br />
‘naughty Fridays’. The track is a ballad to the man, drug-fuelled<br />
and in constant state of flux, flicking between punky riffs right<br />
through to doom-laden thrash. “We definitely want to sort out a<br />
show with him. It’d be boss,” laughs Kendall.<br />
The band do have a few quips about the city they love so<br />
much, though. “People are far too afraid to put their foot on the<br />
distortion pedal round here. The heavier scene has definitely got<br />
a lot better over the last few years, though,” quips Kingy. The<br />
predilection of a lot of bands in Merseyside for melodic folk and<br />
psych is being evened out with the emergence of Ohmns and<br />
their fellow, more rough-edged bands, Strange Collective and Bad<br />
Meds, who have an equal appreciation for pedals and fuzz. Taking<br />
influences from the likes of Thee Oh Sees, Iggy Pop and The Fall,<br />
such bands have found a home in Liverpool’s punkier, more DIY<br />
venues, such as Maguire’s and Drop the Dumbulls.<br />
“Since the Kaz closed a void’s been left to fill and it seems<br />
that everyone’s fighting for it. To us, though, Maguire’s is just<br />
home,” says Kendall. “We love the fact that we can just put on<br />
a show spontaneously in there and just get going.” This is the<br />
appeal of Maguire’s: no security, no barriers and the ability to<br />
avoid the extortionate prices of some of the other venues in the<br />
city. Kendall continues: “Gentrification is pushing people, and<br />
good music, out of the centre – and I think that’s where it belongs,<br />
on the outskirts.” This comment rings true for some of Ohmns’<br />
heroes too, such as Mark E. Smith’s Salford industrial-estate<br />
home or the weirdo chic of The B52’s, which brings us slightly<br />
closer to the bowling alley we find ourselves in today.<br />
Due to the group being in the minority in the Liverpool scene,<br />
there seems to be a certain sense of camaraderie within the<br />
smaller group of heavy, garagey bands they find themselves in.<br />
“We recorded our Rice Tape EP with Paul Rafferty from Bad Meds.<br />
We didn’t have an awful lot of money to record it and the guy’s<br />
a genius,” explains Quinlan. “Then we just made all the tapes<br />
ourselves on an old 80s recorder in my bedroom. We just sat<br />
there for hours. I bought little baggys and made a stamp with our<br />
name on, and put rice in them, which we put in the box as well,”<br />
explains Ali. Such a task must’ve taken hours and shows a real<br />
love. Rather than merely releasing the tracks into hyperspace, the<br />
band show a creative flare in their beyond-the-call-of-duty ‘rice<br />
tape’. Its crackling lo-fi edge epitomises what the group are about.<br />
This sense of humour translates well onstage, where the<br />
band really do come into their element. “We used to drink quite<br />
a lot when we first started out, out of nerves,” Kendall explains,<br />
to which Kingy adds, “And then it just became a habit, ha ha!”<br />
Having seen the band live on a number of occasions, it seems that<br />
it’s their mischievous, ballsy nature that dictates their<br />
unexpected and volatile live<br />
shows rather than alcohol<br />
consumption. Arriving at<br />
an Ohmns gig you’re never<br />
quite sure what to expect.<br />
Take the time in Maguire’s<br />
when drummer Kingy<br />
accompanied Strange<br />
Collective on stage for a<br />
recital of Super Touchy:<br />
things got a bit weird<br />
when Kingy proceeded<br />
to take his kit off,<br />
eventually dancing<br />
on an amp in just<br />
his Y-fronts. What<br />
then followed was<br />
a wigged-out, debauched and snarling<br />
psych explosion which encapsulated the volatile nature of<br />
the two bands, who feed off each other for the best possible<br />
outcome. Or when they played at FestEVOL in May of this year,<br />
running onstage doing forward-roll guitar solos while their<br />
mate ran about smashing his head with a piece of wood until<br />
it bled. “We never plan what’s going to happen,” Quinlan tells<br />
us. “It’s not planned, it’s not contrived, it just… happens!” This is<br />
perhaps what makes them so interesting, this authenticity and<br />
lack of pretension. This isn’t some act to sell records, merely four<br />
mates having fun onstage. Ohmns are probably Liverpool’s most<br />
entertaining live band: a band who keep an audience on their<br />
toes, whether that be dodging flying microphones or trying to<br />
fight off tinnitus with ear drum-trembling decibel levels.<br />
Ohmns are exactly what Liverpool needs. They may not be<br />
reinventing the wheel but they are reaffirming what rock ‘n’ roll<br />
has always been about: a sense of rebellion and a kick against<br />
the norm. Ohmns are as heavy, dangerous and with as much of an<br />
appetite for destruction as the bowling balls they chuck tonight.<br />
The Rice Tape is out now, available to buy from ohmns.bandcamp.<br />
com. Ohmns play The Invisible Wind Factory on 2 nd <strong>July</strong> for Strange<br />
Collective’s all-day garage party.
A PORTRAIT OF BRITISH SO<br />
“ “<br />
Bill Ryder-Jones<br />
“I write in the bedroom, I write for the bedroom.<br />
The places I want the music to live is for people<br />
who listen to music in their bedroom... That is the<br />
aspiration, to be part of that lineage of people who<br />
write about the outside from inside. You only have<br />
your own thoughts...that’s what I consider it to mean<br />
to be someone who makes art.”<br />
Kate Tempest<br />
“Everything is rich, everything wants to<br />
communicate with you. Everything. If you’re<br />
an artist, your eyes are open to these tiny little<br />
moments that ring out so strong it’s like being<br />
struck by a mallet and you’re ringing.”<br />
” ”<br />
It is widely acknowledged that the music industry has changed immeasurably over the past<br />
decade, favouring the global brand artists who can use their celebrity standing to sell as<br />
many pairs of tracksuit bottoms as they can copies of their albums. So what of the humble<br />
songwriter, quietly plugging away at their art, often only for meagre returns? A PORTRAIT OF<br />
BRITISH SONGWRITING, an exhibition put together by creative agency Wolf & Diva, is a candid look<br />
at this oft-overlooked craft, through a series of photographs and accompanying audio interviews<br />
with some of Britain’s most influential independent songwriters from the Domino Publishing<br />
roster.<br />
Photographer Rachel King (Wolf) and writer/songwriter Rachael Castell (Diva) devised this<br />
exhibition as a way of celebrating the never-diminishing power of British music, to contemplate<br />
the rich pool of musicians whose talent for capturing experiences of a place and a time in song is<br />
as strong as it’s ever been. They launched Portrait at Sonos Studio London in October 2015, and<br />
we are fairly stoked to be working with them to bring the whole exhibition to Liverpool, running<br />
between 8 th <strong>July</strong> and 8 th August at Bold Street Coffee.<br />
Bill Ryder-Jones, Kate Tempest, Steve Mason, Clive Langer, Bella Hardy, Jon Hopkins, Luke Abbott,<br />
Sara Abdel Hamid (Ikonika), Eugene McGuinness, Oli Bayston, The Bohicas and Hot Chip’s Felix<br />
Martin and Al Doyle all invited Rachel and Rachael in to their personal creative spaces, with<br />
the resulting candid photography and intimate interviews reminding us of the physicality of<br />
songwriting, the work of the art.<br />
Ahead of the exhibition’s launch, Rachael Castell spoke to us about how A Portrait Of British<br />
Songwriting showcases what Steve Mason described as the “beauty and compassion, joy and<br />
love, emotion and heartbreak and all the things that go to make us the complicated, wonderful<br />
things that we are”.<br />
“I am a songwriter myself. I write songs with a writing partner, but it took me a really long time<br />
to give myself permission to be a songwriter because it felt like it was a dark art, or a mystical<br />
process that I wasn’t party to. I’m intrigued by songwriting because I like to listen to songs and<br />
think about how they’re constructed. What was interesting to Rachel and I when we started this<br />
project was not only the craft of songwriting, but also the skill and the practice and the work of<br />
being a songwriter in the time that we live in now.”<br />
“In the series, it comes across that there is no one way to write a song: people come at it from<br />
different angles and from different places. It is an endlessly fascinating area. I could just keep<br />
having these conversations with songwriters for ever and ever because everyone’s different: the<br />
experience of making music is unique to everyone. The liberating or enlightening thing about it<br />
is that people just find their own way. It’s a vulnerable thing, particularly if you’re a performer.<br />
I’m really in awe of people for whom [making music] is just what they have to do, that is their<br />
beating heart.”<br />
“We’re living in such a strange time to be a musician and you have to be so dedicated. I mean, I<br />
write songs as a hobby, but these people do it professionally. How you keep that going and what<br />
your working life is like and how do you find your inspiration – these are the questions we were<br />
interested to ask. There’s a whole layer – a really, really rich layer – of British songwriting talent<br />
that isn’t really in the public eye and doesn’t get celebrated as much as it should do. Portrait is us<br />
looking at songwriting through the window of now, asking ‘how can you survive and keep that<br />
passion burning?’.”<br />
“There were some themes that came about that were really fascinating to me. For instance,<br />
there was a whole theme around people who see music, like Jon Hopkins, and Ikonika. They talk<br />
about literally having a visual accompaniment to the music that they can see. There was also a
“ “<br />
Steve Mason<br />
“The most important thing is bearing your soul<br />
and having no barrier between your heart and<br />
lyrics and the piece of paper, and being fearless<br />
in terms of melody and direction.”<br />
Clive Langer<br />
“Sometimes I’ll be walking along and a lyric will<br />
come to me, but normally I’m just working on the<br />
music and some idea will come. I’m not very good<br />
at writing normal formula pop. I write songs that are<br />
a bit ‘to the left’...I try and mess things up, to throw<br />
them up in the air a bit and see where they land.”<br />
” ”<br />
NGWRITING<br />
Words: Rachael Castell<br />
Photography: Rachel King wolfanddiva.com<br />
really strong rhythmic bedrock to the people we interviewed: Ikonika again, Luke Abbott, Steve<br />
Mason, they all started out playing drums. So there’s something about the comprehension of<br />
rhythm that’s at the heart of songwriting. And then the other thing that I think is interesting is<br />
the marriage between words and music. I write lyrics and I love writing poems, but for many<br />
people words come later, they’re not quite so integral – apart from someone like Bella Hardy,<br />
who comes from the folk tradition. She’s always writing lyrics and then the songs find their<br />
way from the lyrics.”<br />
“The other thing that was particular to the project was that all the songwriters let us go to the<br />
creative space where they make their music – so you’re suddenly looking at the equipment and<br />
the headspace that an artist has to get in to make music. And that’s different for everyone. Ikonika,<br />
for example, has a cabin behind her mum’s house where she works, which was full of little bits<br />
of paraphernalia that are specific to her. It was a whole world that I don’t know about too much,<br />
but you could suddenly feel where her head was by being in her space.”<br />
“Bill [Ryder-Jones], in particular, is really anti the demystification of songwriting. Him and Steve<br />
[Mason] both kind of said, ‘I don’t really wanna talk about it because it’s not something that I<br />
wanna reveal to myself’, in a way. And then when you get them going they just talked for hours!<br />
There is no demystification: you can talk about it [the process] and it doesn’t become any less<br />
moving in the moment. I could kind of sometimes see pennies dropping when I was talking to<br />
people, where they’d be like, ‘Oh yeh, I guess I did do one album like that…’”<br />
“I didn’t want to race in [to the interviews] with a Dictaphone and be like, ‘OK, let’s talk about<br />
songwriting – GO.’ I wanted to settle myself in their creative space, and feel respectful about it<br />
and learn about it and have a conversation before pressing record. So I think that made quite a<br />
difference in that we took our time. Rachel [King] was shooting on medium-format film so there<br />
was a real analogue taste to the whole thing, and that felt quite unusual. I also recorded most of<br />
the interviews onto tape. There’s something more raw about that exchange.”<br />
“Who was my favourite to interview? Ooh, that’s really tough. I loved talking to Steve Mason, he’s<br />
got so much character and has so much to say. He’s got a real history, too: he’s written songs as<br />
part of a band, he’s done it on his own, he has that mystical relationship with his art. He’s funny<br />
and warm and has had dark days and bright times – he was just a great, fun interview! And he<br />
definitely gave us a lot of himself; he was very raw and authentic. But then, they were all interesting<br />
to me in so many different ways. It kind of made me feel really proud of the history and tradition<br />
of British songwriting too, and also really excited about British music. It was hard when it was<br />
over really, because I wanted to keep talking to people!”<br />
“I love doing interviews, I love people and I love listening to people. I like to go deep quite<br />
quickly, and I’m not often sure how it ends up happening. But then, I suppose that’s the magic<br />
art of conversation. Speaking to Jon Hopkins really inspired me to take up a course in improvised<br />
singing. One of the things with songwriting that you feel you should know is the technical aspects<br />
of music, but I’m not very good at that stuff. I realised that I needed to trust myself more because<br />
so many people talk about the music, the songs just presenting themselves to them: they just<br />
open their mouth and sing. So I took a course to try and exercise that muscle. So, it’s lived on in<br />
lots of different ways.”<br />
aportraitofbritishsongwriting.com<br />
A Portrait Of British Songwriting runs at Bold Street Coffee from 8th <strong>July</strong> - 7th August. We will also be<br />
inviting special guests to Bold Street Coffee to take part in a Bido Lito! Social on Thursday 21st <strong>July</strong>,<br />
in the form of a panel event followed by a live show. See the news item on page 23 for full details.
EANESS. Yes, you read it right, but don’t get carried away<br />
with dirty images. The name has a much more innocent<br />
meaning than you may think. Peaness are a selfproclaimed<br />
‘pea-pop’ trio hailing from Chester, made up of Balla<br />
(guitar and vocals), Jess (bass and vocals) and Rach (drums), who<br />
specialise in a deliciously catchy vein of indie pop which bubbles<br />
along with a faintly punky, punchy growl. Huw Stephens is a fan,<br />
as is pretty much anyone who lays their eyes and ears on them.<br />
Peaness have a way of leaving a lasting impression.<br />
I first heard the name Peaness at the Sound City+ music and<br />
digital conference, when, during the Musicians’ Union and<br />
Association of Independent Festivals panel, John Rostron of<br />
Sŵn Festival explained the reasoning behind the pea badge he<br />
was sporting. Not surprisingly, there were a few titters when he<br />
mentioned the band’s name, which all three members have grown<br />
accustomed to now. “I saw an image with the word ‘peaness’ and a<br />
bowl of peas on Tumblr and just thought it was funny,” Jess clears<br />
up. “It was a joke name when we started off, and it just stuck<br />
because we couldn’t think of anything better or worse. For us it’s<br />
just funny, but for others it’s not, which makes it even funnier.”<br />
“Some people have been offended by it, but it’s not like we’re called<br />
Cock ‘n’ Balls,” adds Balla.<br />
The band originally met at University and eventually formed a<br />
band after they’d all finished in 2013. The original aim, Jess says, was<br />
to form a band that sounded like Sex Bob-Omb from Scott Pilgrim vs.<br />
The World, but “it kind of turned out less fuzz and more pop”. After a<br />
flurry of travelling, moving up and down the country separately, and<br />
struggling to find somewhere to practise, the band bagged their first<br />
gig two years later in <strong>July</strong> 2015, in Oxford for The Young Women’s<br />
Music Project 15 th Anniversary. It’s not often your first ever show is<br />
an out of town do, never mind a celebratory one for a special cause,<br />
so there must undoubtedly have been some nerves? “It went really<br />
well,” says Rach of their debut outing. “We were all really nervous<br />
but everyone seemed to enjoy it so it spurred us on.”<br />
Of course, everyone enjoyed it. In fact, it’s hard not to enjoy a<br />
set from Peaness, combining as they do the winsome indie of The<br />
Pains Of Being Pure At Heart with the upbeat Britpop bounce of a<br />
Two Door Cinema Club. After watching their set at Sŵn in Cardiff<br />
2015, Stephens, the festival’s co-organiser, took a shine to them,<br />
mentioning them in NME and on his Radio 1 show soon after. Adam<br />
Walton of BBC Radio Wales has adopted the band too, giving them<br />
a spin on his show almost every week, with a bunch of online blogs<br />
also replicating this word-of-mouth popularity in featuring them.<br />
Sticking to the grassroots, Jess claims that the band are “very DIY,<br />
we don’t have any managers or booking agents, we just do it all<br />
ourselves.”<br />
The most pleasing aspect about the band’s popular ascent has<br />
been how organic it’s been. Not all bands are chasing the dream<br />
of ‘making it’; and not all those that do chase it end up making it.<br />
“I can’t stand all the bullshit that supposedly comes with trying<br />
to get signed,” Jess says. “I’m tired of getting emails about paying<br />
for followers or views or plays or paying for sponsored posts on<br />
Facebook!” Balla adds, “I think the independent label scene is a<br />
lot more exciting than the majors,” which Rach agrees with: “We<br />
like the idea of being signed by an indie label more than a major<br />
label because we want to have control over what we do.”<br />
However, they do dream of being able to have the band as<br />
their day job – although that doesn’t mean being tied down to<br />
contracts, being told what to wear, who to talk to and what your<br />
next album should sound like. Luckily there are the likes of Pledge<br />
Music, which London band The Tuts have recently used to release<br />
their debut album – and, of course, the power of the internet.<br />
‘Women in the music industry’, in front of and behind the<br />
scenes, is an ongoing topic of discussion in the press and among<br />
those who work in the industry, which in recent months has<br />
been gaining a lot more, deserved, attention. Peaness are an allgirl<br />
band who couldn’t have started off with a more ‘GIRL POWER’<br />
first show. How do they feel about being called a girl band? “We<br />
don’t really think it should be made a point of that we’re girls; you<br />
don’t see all guy bands calling themselves ‘boy bands’ unless<br />
it’s something like *NSYNC,” says Rach. “So, we don’t see why<br />
we should. With that in mind, though, I think women in music<br />
should be celebrated, so if other bands put themselves across in<br />
that way, then that’s cool too.” Jess thinks that it’s “a tricky and<br />
confusing subject, and I find myself thinking about it a lot. It’s<br />
hard to decide what’s good or bad or right or wrong for feminism.<br />
Whether we should shout it out that we’re female, or to ignore<br />
that fact and just be a band.” Balla summarises the point neatly<br />
when she says, “You wouldn’t really be referred to like that in any<br />
other profession, like a ‘female plumber’. You’re just the plumber.<br />
If you can do the job, I don’t care what’s going on downstairs.”<br />
Peaness think they’re lucky to have fallen in with the DIY<br />
scene, locally and nationally, having nothing but positive<br />
experiences in playing with different types of bands. “We did<br />
a show in London called DIY Pop Fest in April and it struck me<br />
then how many bands have women in them in the DIY scene,”<br />
Jess says. “It shows that the musicians are out there. They’re just<br />
not represented on a wider scale in bigger bands. It’s cool that<br />
there are so many other women doing the same as us, though.”<br />
Despite being Chester-based, the band already have a<br />
reasonably full association with Liverpool, which you can<br />
even stretch back to Jess being featuring in Bido Lito! back in<br />
August 2011 with her previous band The Thespians. The Shipping<br />
Forecast, Forever True Tattoo, Bar Burrito and Maguire’s Pizza<br />
Bar all hold a special place in Peaness’ heart too, and they’ve<br />
done the hard yards already in embedding themselves in their<br />
adopted home. “I once practised at a rehearsal room which was<br />
literally the grossest thing I’d ever seen,” says Rach. “The drum<br />
kit was rusty and there was a slow cooker in the corner full of<br />
piss.”<br />
If you want to catch a ‘pea-pop’ band who like to sing about<br />
life in your mid-20s and the thoughts and struggles that come<br />
with that, a band who unashamedly like Pokémon and who<br />
are all about having an all-out fun time – then be sure to catch<br />
Peaness. You’d be foolish not to.<br />
Oh George is out now, available from<br />
peanessband.bandcamp.com.<br />
Words: Roanne Wood / @grrrlparts<br />
Photography: Asupremeshot / asupremeshot.com/music
16<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
Words: A. W. Wilde / awwilde.co.uk<br />
Extraordinary things occasionally happen to each of us.<br />
They can be positive, but mostly they’re not. When these<br />
occurrences arrive uninvited into our lives they erode<br />
comfortable reality. When we’re in their raucous midst we’re often<br />
heard exclaiming ‘I thought this only happened to other people’.<br />
FRANCIS BACON’s life was made up entirely of experiences like<br />
this. He didn’t seem to mind. They shaped him and they shaped<br />
his art. The marks he made on canvas continue to get under our<br />
skin and his considerable understanding of the allure of violence<br />
still pushes our buttons. He may well be our most individual<br />
painter – but I bet he was a better drinking partner. His worldview<br />
and portraits were uniquely unsettling, unbelievably wise. His<br />
time for drinking was plentiful and his drinking time was 1950s<br />
Soho. England was still letting out sighs of relief, the horrors<br />
of WWII absorbing into the mauled fabric of memory. Horrors<br />
Bacon avoided fighting in by hiring a German Shepherd from<br />
Harrods and sleeping next to it in order to aggravate his asthma<br />
on the eve of his army induction. They granted him immediate<br />
medical exemption – but not from pulling dismembered bodies<br />
from bombed-out buildings or the who-gives-a-flying-fuck<br />
attitude of Soho’s dimly-lit dens of iniquity. In these boozers,<br />
between fleshpots on a grubby warren-like assembly of backalleys<br />
and streets, bonds were formed and livers were scarred.<br />
Drinkers often fell foul of cirrhosis or Sohoitus: a geographic<br />
illness causing drinkers to become frayed at the edges and<br />
riddled with Bohemian tendencies, dahling. Bacon’s Wrecking<br />
Crew was no exception, staffed by a rag-tag collection of aristos,<br />
lowlifes, writers, chancers, fighter pilots and career criminals.<br />
All of whom lived their lives as theatre, lead characters or walkons,<br />
beneficiaries or victims of Bacon’s legendary generosity, his<br />
precision guile and his character-building put-downs. To be given<br />
the nickname ‘Cunty’ in his treasured local, the Colony Room,<br />
meant you’d been accepted.
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
17<br />
Iconoclastic paintings often reveal as much about their<br />
painter as the times in which they were painted. And in much<br />
the same way as the work of his friend Lucian Freud, it’s Bacon’s<br />
portraits that slosh the truth onto the canvas. The ridiculously<br />
good summer exhibition at Tate Liverpool features a wealth<br />
of Bacon’s paintings that provoke and jab at the senses, the<br />
outcomes of which I’ll not do justice with cod-psychology or<br />
highfalutin’ words. It was a familiar feeling: when I left his 2008<br />
retrospective at Tate Britain, I felt as if I’d been watching pure<br />
violence from a moving train. Bacon himself said that, “If I could<br />
express what I mean with words, I wouldn’t bother painting<br />
it.” It remained his life’s desire to capture the human scream<br />
on canvas, obsessed as he was by atrocity’s open mouth. It<br />
was his belief that he’d failed in this endeavour, and countless<br />
scrapped paintings (he estimated he destroyed nine-tenths of<br />
his paintings, “very probably the best ones, too”) act as proof of<br />
this unwavering ambition. He was careless with these discarded<br />
paintings and they often fell into the wrong hands; approaching<br />
the height of his fame, one appeared in a London gallery. Bacon<br />
bought it for thousands, stamped it to shit on the pavement<br />
outside the gallery and then went for oysters at his favourite<br />
restaurant. Fuck you.<br />
The new exhibition’s title, Invisible Rooms, refers to the boxes<br />
he painted around his subjects: these became an essential part<br />
of his painterly repertoire although they were chiefly used to<br />
draw his eye. But they have another, far more devious, effect:<br />
they trap the subject against their will, perpetually howling<br />
for their lives. It is cage-fighting on canvas. Although he never<br />
worked on portraits with the sitter present, he always referred<br />
to the work he did to their faces as ‘doing them an injury’. Given<br />
that he often painted people he cared for, we arrive at an insight:<br />
hurting those we love. An accomplished sadist, Bacon believed<br />
that true love and artistic aspirations were incompatible:<br />
tempestuous is the one word that applies to his affairs of the<br />
heart. Two paintings in this exhibition, Study For A Portrait Of P.L,<br />
No.2 and Three Figures And Portrait, act as silent biographers<br />
of his fondness for turmoil. Both are of significant partners,<br />
both of whom died tragic deaths on the eves of pivotal solo<br />
shows: Peter Lacy the night before the 1962 Tate Gallery show<br />
and George Dyer the night before his show Grand Palais in Paris,<br />
1971. Fuck me.<br />
Peter Lacy was a fighter pilot who fought in the Battle of<br />
Britain and was held captive by Sohoitus, precisely where he<br />
met Bacon. Lacy was a talented pianist who squandered much<br />
of his sizeable inheritance on promoting a pop group. Forever<br />
in a pristine white suit and bow tie, he is described by Bacon as<br />
quintessentially English with “the face of a poet who has dropped<br />
in to remark that life after death is tolerable”. Needless to say, he<br />
liked a drink. And he ended up playing in a piano bar in Tangiers,<br />
soundtracking the bar’s tyrannical owner stuffing cannabis in the<br />
asses of exotic birds he then sold for export. Tangiers at this time<br />
was heaving with spies, gigolos, smugglers, countless brothels<br />
and proper hedonists. Tangiers made Ibiza look like the Norfolk<br />
Broads. William Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch there and Marlene<br />
Dietrich, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall all fell<br />
for its badman charms. It was also the preferred playground of<br />
the latterly-born English aristocrats; the ones set not to inherit<br />
the bulk of the family money. Tangiers was small beer; here<br />
they could live like white royalty and behave as such, creating a<br />
behind-closed-doors lawless atmosphere in open water in which<br />
Lacy revelled and Bacon swam on frequent holidays. Their rows<br />
were catastrophic; one such saw the end of 30 paintings, Lacy<br />
slashing them in a fit of rage before they could be shipped to<br />
New York for his first stateside show. Bacon, ever the nihilist, later<br />
confessed he “rather enjoyed” watching him do it. It was that kind<br />
of relationship: although Bacon felt privileged to have known him<br />
and painted him frequently, they never fully-clicked in late-fifties<br />
Soho, and Moroccan distance settled their differences in a way<br />
proximity never could. In May 1962 Bacon was in the Colony Room<br />
the day after his first solo Tate show, opening wads of praise-filled<br />
telegrams from around the globe: he had arrived on the world<br />
art stage and the champagne was flowing. The last telegram he<br />
opened informed him Peter Lacy had died the night before.<br />
George Dyer haunts plenty of Bacon’s paintings. And there<br />
are many myths about their relationship – which is surprising<br />
because the truth is eye-watering enough. Despite a genuine<br />
affection and an undeniable connection, it wasn’t to be. Dyer<br />
was an East End petty crook with old-fashioned manners who<br />
(you guessed it) knew the Krays. And it was his air of violence<br />
that attracted him to Bacon – he liked ‘em rough. And Dyer<br />
was drawn, moth to flame, to Bacon’s assured manner and<br />
considerable cultural clout. Before long, Dyer was a kept man; a<br />
situation that exacerbated the despair that underlined his savage<br />
ways. As so often happens in imbalanced relationships, one half<br />
loses their identity as it becomes subsumed by the power of<br />
the other. When this unfolded, shit got messy real quick. They<br />
were arguing on holiday, screaming ab-dabs and bitch-slaps,<br />
when Bacon stormed from the bedroom headed for the hotel<br />
bar. Whilst drinking champagne a call came through to say that<br />
George had taken an overdose, but that Mr Bacon would be glad<br />
to hear he’d been saved by the house doctor. Bacon asked the<br />
manager if the doctor was still with him, the manager replied<br />
yes: without missing a beat Bacon said, “Then tell him to write<br />
another prescription so he can do the job properly.” When they<br />
got back to Blighty, George Orwell’s wife, Sonia, hired a hit man<br />
to kill Dyer: you really couldn’t make it up. News of the contract<br />
skulked around the back streets of Soho and ended up in the<br />
ear of Lucian Freud, who wrote to Sonia Orwell instructing her to<br />
call Blond Billy the hit man off. He ended the letter, “With friends<br />
like you I really don’t need enemies.” Along with a large group of<br />
friends including Sonia Orwell, Bacon and Dyer took their caustic<br />
dance to Paris for the grand opening of his show at the Grand<br />
Palais. At the Hotel St Peres, Dyer was found dead on the toilet:<br />
suicide. The news was kept hush-hush but inevitably some of<br />
the French dignitaries found out. When Bacon was showing the<br />
Minister of the Arts around the exhibition, the first painting that<br />
caught the Minister’s eye was a portrait of Dyer on the toilet:<br />
a reverberating image of his actual death hours before, blood<br />
spilling from every orifice.<br />
Francis Bacon lived what he painted and painted what he lived.<br />
Capturing these experiences on canvas was his greatest gift to<br />
us: it gives us the luxury of the voyeur without the discomfort of<br />
turmoil. His work is the sea milliseconds before the shark attacks,<br />
the air turning thick when someone pulls a knife. The paintings in<br />
this exhibition are brooding masterpieces, touched by something<br />
impossible to explain. His power is undiminished by time. I’m<br />
writing this on the day a discarded pair of his paint-splattered<br />
gloves sold for £7,000 at auction. They were both left-handed.<br />
I’m reliably informed Bacon held his drink in his right. Here’s<br />
looking at you, Cunty.<br />
Francis Bacon: Invisible Rooms is showing now at Tate Liverpool,<br />
running until 18th September.<br />
bidolito.co.uk
18<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
Words: Andrew Hill<br />
Photography: Rich Maciver<br />
MELÉ’S MANOR<br />
bidolito.co.uk
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
19<br />
Six years. In the context of music, especially dance music,<br />
that is an eternity. In six years, one local artist has<br />
progressed to the forefront of his scene through hard<br />
work, graft, DJ skills and some amazing productions. He doesn’t<br />
get nominated for local awards, nor does he appear much in the<br />
local press, though he is easily the most successful breakthrough<br />
electronic music act from Merseyside in the last decade. Regular<br />
Radio 1 play, worldwide tours, festival appearances at spots<br />
such as Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds, Benicassim, Parklife<br />
and a recent year-long residency in Liverpool where every show<br />
has sold out… yet you probably haven’t heard of him.<br />
Six years ago I interviewed MELÉ, real name Christopher Peers,<br />
for this very magazine. At that point he was 17 years old, not old<br />
enough to enter the clubs in which he performed – including my<br />
own club night, Abandon Silence, at which he played the launch<br />
party, incidentally also in the summer of 2010 – and his first<br />
tracks were starting to get picked up further afield.<br />
The intervening years have been very kind to the Wirralborn<br />
artist, who’s just recently moved to London to pursue his<br />
career. Following on from the knockout success of his Melé’s<br />
Manor residency in Liverpool, he heads back to the North West<br />
for this summer’s Creamfields. Having been to the festival as a<br />
youngster, he now completes the circle to perform alongside<br />
Groove Armada, Tiga and Erol Alkan on Fatboy Slim’s Smile High<br />
Club stage.<br />
Andrew Hill: It’s six years since I first interviewed you for the<br />
second issue of Bido Lito!, so to pick up where we left off – what<br />
would you say has been the biggest change for you over those<br />
years?<br />
Melé: No messing about! I think the biggest change has probably<br />
been natural, as over the years I’ve grown as a DJ and producer<br />
as I’ve got older. When I look back on some of the stuff I was<br />
playing and making six years ago I’m quite surprised; but saying<br />
that, there’s some stuff that has definitely stuck with me. Doing<br />
this as a job from the age of 17 was a bit weird because I just<br />
had to wing it a bit.<br />
AH: I can remember that first gig we did at The Magnet when I<br />
had to soften up the bouncers to even let you in! Now that you’re<br />
a little older, is there anything you would’ve done differently<br />
back then?<br />
M: Nah, I don’t think I would. If I made any mistakes over the<br />
years it’s probably helped me get to where I am now. It’s good<br />
to look back on how far I’ve come since then; I don’t think I ever<br />
really imagined I’d still be doing it now!<br />
AH: If you listen to your releases across the six years, there is a<br />
definite progression in sound and production, though you can<br />
still hear elements of that early work in your recent tracks. Is<br />
there a particular influence that has inspired your work in the<br />
intervening years?<br />
M: Rather than any particular influence, I think there has been<br />
a natural progression. Around 2014/2015 I realised that there<br />
were tracks in my sets that I didn’t actually like. I was playing<br />
lots of house in the first 20 minutes and they were they only bits<br />
I was really enjoying, to be honest. In terms of production style<br />
I just thought it needed switching up; it just got a bit stale for<br />
me. I think the turning point was probably when I made Melé<br />
Vanelé Vol. 3, which I originally thought was just going to be a<br />
one-off concept, but it’s ended up being the sound I’m really<br />
comfortable with now.<br />
AH: That’s understandable, I think that echoes the general<br />
movement of the underground over those years as a lot of<br />
different ‘scenes’ moved from 140bpm to 120-130bpm. You<br />
managed to flow pretty seamlessly across that bridge as, in<br />
my opinion, your DJing came to the forefront to a point where<br />
I would suspect you became more known for your DJ sets than<br />
your productions. Releases like Ambience have changed that<br />
recently; how has it been having a true ‘track of the moment’<br />
that people would be demanding in sets?<br />
M: It was good! It’s something I always wanted to have, so when<br />
it happens it’s great. But there’s always pressure for a follow-up,<br />
especially when the track was big on the radio as well, but I’ve<br />
never been great at churning out music. It was a tune I never<br />
thought was gonna be big, it was just a DJ tool really.<br />
AH: You mention there that the track wasn’t intended for radio,<br />
though when you approach a new production do you ever set<br />
out with a plan to make, say, a radio hit or a DJ tool, or does<br />
that just happen? I’m intrigued by how you approach each new<br />
project.<br />
M: I usually like to come into the studio with an idea of a tune in<br />
my head – I might have a sample I wanna use or I’ve heard a tune<br />
that I want to try make in the same style. If I go into the studio<br />
with no ideas I’ll find it hard to come up with something there<br />
and then. I used to be worried about tracks not being accessible<br />
for radio, but since Ambience I’ve learned to just go with my gut<br />
feeling. If it goes down well in the club it’s good enough for me.<br />
AH: Ambience certainly has been going down well in the clubs.<br />
I’ve noticed it grow and grow across each Melé’s Manor, to a<br />
point where it became the highlight of the last couple of shows.<br />
How has the party been for you in the first year?<br />
M: It’s been so good. I had about a year where I didn’t play<br />
in Liverpool properly, so I decided it would be fun to have a<br />
regular thing. I suppose I just want it to be a night that doesn’t<br />
take itself too seriously, which I think we’ve managed to do. In<br />
particular, the night when Artwork joined us was truly special;<br />
it was one of the best parties I have ever been involved in and<br />
was exactly what I had in mind when we first discussed the idea<br />
12-18 months ago.<br />
AH: Yeah, the Artwork night is a particular standout, the Ship<br />
was rocking that night! The night was a collaboration between<br />
yourself and a number of people based in Liverpool and London:<br />
how have you found it running parties in your hometown but<br />
being based day to day in London?<br />
M: It’s been sick. I don’t really play that much in London at the<br />
moment and don’t really have a favourite place down here [in<br />
London], to be honest, so it’s been good to switch it up and head<br />
back to Liverpool with a proper brand and plan in place. And,<br />
there’s nothing like playing in your hometown!<br />
AH: You’re now heading into the festival circuit, with some<br />
shows alongside Monki [Radio 1 host, label owner] for your NRG<br />
Flash project and some on your own. How do you find the shows<br />
differ across each project? And can you describe the changes in<br />
production, set-up wise?<br />
M: Well we got asked to do a b2b tour with Annie Mac at the end<br />
of last year, and we just thought that if we were going to play<br />
huge venues like Brixton Academy and Warehouse Project we<br />
should make it more of a show. There’s a lot more techno in an<br />
NRG Flash show than we would play on our own – I hardly play<br />
any techno at all when I DJ solo. Though there are some big<br />
old-skool party classics in there too, and we use a Roland TR-8<br />
to do live edits with, which is really fun, and hopefully that fun<br />
comes across to the crowd!<br />
AH: Using the Roland TR-8 takes it to a different level! How have<br />
you found playing around with it whilst also DJing? As Monki<br />
is predominantly a DJ does that mean it’s you controlling that?<br />
M: Nah, we both do it, she’s picked it up really quickly, which<br />
works really well. We basically just use it for extra drum loops,<br />
to build more energy in build-ups, etc. In essence it just works as<br />
an extra deck – we don’t midi it to the mixer, we just mix it in by<br />
ear, which brings greater risk and a bit of a variable quality, but<br />
it seems to work and the crowd appreciate that we are working<br />
live and not synced.<br />
AH: You are heading to Creamfields later this summer, what are<br />
you looking forward to about that?<br />
M: Yeah, I can’t wait! Creamfields is always sick. I went in, like,<br />
2008 or 2009 pretty much on my own, just because there was<br />
so much music I wanted to check out. I saw Annie Mac, Diplo<br />
pre-Major Lazer, Erol Alkan... it was great! So when I was first<br />
invited to play there in 2012 it was amazing. It still feels surreal<br />
to be DJing at Creamfields as growing up it was ‘the’ event of<br />
the summer and was an annual milestone.<br />
AH: Looking to the future, what have you got on the horizon that<br />
you’re looking forward to?<br />
M: Everything is really exciting at the moment, I feel like I’m in<br />
a bit of a transition period right now, just finding my feet with<br />
the music I want to be playing and making. I have a backlog of<br />
music ready to be released, which is always much better than<br />
none! In particular there are four or five tracks I’m really excited<br />
about that I’ve started sending out to a few DJs – I’ve seen videos<br />
of those guys playing them to big crowds with big reactions,<br />
so that is always gratifying. We did our first NRG Flash show<br />
yesterday, which was amazing, and we’ve got four more this<br />
summer, so I’m really excited about them too, as well as some<br />
great solo shows including, of course, Creamfields!<br />
thisismele.com<br />
Melé plays Creamfields on 28th August as part of the Fatboy Slim<br />
Presents Smile High Club stage.<br />
bidolito.co.uk
20<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
It’s the dream job interview: the A&R role at XL Recordings, the agency opening at SJM Concerts,<br />
or just the privilege of a six-month unpaid internship at a publishing giant. You’re spewing<br />
platitudes; politeness and slippery fingertips are all over the place as you try to position<br />
yourself in your chair in a way that says ‘confident, but not assertive enough to complain about<br />
exceeding the 48-hour working week’. It’s at about this time that some next-level interview content<br />
would be handy, and you start wondering what will really break the ice: your hazy recollections<br />
of Foucault’s thoughts on power dynamics, which you learnt by rote in second year? Or perhaps<br />
that time that you worked on the sound desk at a festival, smashed the bass solo at the Liverpool<br />
Philharmonic, or started a primal techno night somewhere within the resurgent bowels of the<br />
Baltic Triangle?<br />
Education has changed. That’s not to dismiss academia – the interest in the pursuit of knowledge<br />
and the cultural contributions that it makes to society – but recently academic institutions seem to<br />
have had one of those rare moments of clarity of thought, wondering to themselves, ‘Why the fuck<br />
are we only teaching an entire generation admittedly very important but completely parochial topics<br />
that only a tiny minority of them will actually pursue?’ As with football, food and fast cars we’ve<br />
been casting a glance at what they’ve been doing on the continent and plagiarised their focus on<br />
apprenticeships and a more vocational focus to degrees that are as much about practice as they<br />
are theory. Ultimately, when you end up in that interview, shaking hands with the intensity of a<br />
thousand Vinnie Joneses, being able to prove that you’ve actually already done the job is going to<br />
trump being able to reel off the opinion of someone who once thought about something tangentially<br />
related to it (Saha, 2012).<br />
Today’s music students still have libraries, or ‘Resource Centres’, as Liverpool Institute of<br />
Performing Arts (LIPA) lecturer (and guitarist of The Farm) Keith Mullin tells us they’re now called,<br />
but the city’s swelling population of music students is also out there, learning from and contributing<br />
to the city’s music culture. From LIPA to Liverpool Hope University, John Moores University to the<br />
University of Liverpool, right through to Hugh Baird College, the SAE Institute, Edge Hill University<br />
and City of Liverpool College, the city is awash with young people who’ve decided to call Liverpool<br />
their home for three years and try and make a career in the creative industries.<br />
With that being said, you’ll find a contingent of people telling you that education is overrated.<br />
Music is all about rebellion, they’ll say, and the internet now means that you can compose, record,<br />
market and distribute music within moments of having had the initial thought. Mullin, though,<br />
tells us what he’s observed at LIPA with students on their music and theatre performance courses.<br />
“We’re getting them to put things into professional practice and try new things, but not be afraid to<br />
fail a few times,” he explains. “When you start, you don’t even know what you’re good at yet! Also,<br />
it’s about supporting each other, because in this industry you can spend a lot of time not getting<br />
paid, so you have to create your own job. So you’ve got to go out and get involved in stuff so you’ve<br />
got those skills.” And, in fairness to him, it’s that mixture of talent and collaborative spirit at LIPA<br />
that has produced artists like All We Are, Stealing Sheep, Dan Croll and scores of sound production<br />
professionals (Arctic Monkeys producer Mike Crossey is an alumnus) and managers (Lana Del Rey<br />
manager Ed Millett studied on their Entertainment Management course). The ability to upload noise<br />
to SoundCloud is one thing; actually making it into something resembling a career is another. As<br />
Mullin puts it: “What we’re doing here is actually trying to teach people how to survive in the creative<br />
industries.” Dr Laura Hamer, Hope University’s Head of Music, echoes Mullins’ thoughts on the<br />
breadth of experiences that an education in music can lend you, saying they “cover a very broad range<br />
of different types of music, including classical and popular musical genres and traditions, Indian art<br />
music, electroacoustic music, women in music, aesthetics, analysis, composition, and performance.”<br />
The point is clear: yes, it’s very impressive what you can do on your Mac, but collaboration and<br />
horizon-changing experiences generally happen outside of the box.<br />
From Liverpool’s point of view, these hordes of young people getting involved in music in the city<br />
isn’t just great for them or from an economic point of view, they’re actually building the music scene<br />
here as well as building CVs. To some extent, Mullin may be to thank for that. “One of the things I say<br />
to them in their first year is, ‘You’re going to be here in Liverpool for three years: go out and find who’s<br />
who. Who are the writers of Bido Lito! that you need to get to know? Who are all the local promoters?<br />
Who are all the local record labels?’ You have to grow it locally before you can grow it nationally.”<br />
Hamer is just as enthusiastic about the role that the creative infrastructure of Liverpool can play<br />
in the education of students, pointing to a number of organisations that Hope University is involved<br />
with, including “the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra – who workshop all of our students’<br />
compositions and support student performers – the European Opera Centre, The Beatles Story,<br />
Milapfest, and Liverpool’s two cathedrals. These partner organisations also put on special workshops<br />
for our students and students also have the opportunity to undertake a project with one of them in<br />
their final year of study.” Advertising hyperbole this is not: we checked with recent alumnus Emma<br />
Haughton, now successfully carving a career as a professional clarinettist, who says that, “Hope<br />
is so wonderfully connected with every aspect of the music industry in Liverpool, including the<br />
Liverpool Philharmonic, recording artists, and established academics… This is why it was perfect for<br />
me, as the course is so varied that it allows you to develop into the musician that you want to be.”<br />
It’s with some justification that greyer heads might complain of the injustice that their student<br />
experience consisted solely of a library pass and accommodation the illegal side of dishevelled,<br />
as this is a student experience that is replicated right across the city. Over at Hugh Baird College,<br />
students on their Festival Management course are placed under the tutelage of Clinic bassist<br />
Brian Campbell, whose own experience playing Sound City at the Bombed Out Church made him<br />
determined to get his students involved in helping to run the festival – an initiative that enjoyed<br />
its third successive fruitful year at this year’s event.<br />
Underlining how far music education has come from the stuffy ivory towers of the music<br />
departments of old is the relationship between the SAE Institute and James Rand. An ever-present<br />
dancefloor lubricator of Liverpool’s electronic music scene between 2009 and 2013, Rand regularly<br />
DJed at Chibuku nights and produced Ex-Easter Island Head’s Mallet Guitars Three EP. He did all<br />
this while studying at the SAE Institute, getting to grips with the range of technology that would<br />
help him to become one of the city’s most prominent names in electronic escapism. “I had recently<br />
finished the Audio Diploma at SAE when my old lecturers asked me to come back in for an interview.<br />
On top of my studies, I had been getting some great tips on Ableton Live from my good friend<br />
Dauwd – who now works for Ableton – and I suppose it was informed by the quality of the work I’d<br />
already done and my passion for the Liverpool electronic community that sealed it,” James says.<br />
He went on to become a mentor for the students on SAE’s flagship Electronic Music Production<br />
course, before moving to London to set up his own music recording service Tailored Rhythms. As<br />
Rand shows, education and experience aren’t antagonistic approaches anymore, but have become<br />
essential elements of any progressive education: “Understanding the theory behind something like<br />
compression is one thing but applying it appropriately to your chosen style of music can be another.”<br />
In fact, considering the sheer volume of educational organisations involving their students in<br />
game-changing work experience the city over, it’s a fair shout to claim that Liverpool is leading the<br />
way on educating music and creative students in a really modern and unique way. And as a result,<br />
they’ve contributed to making Liverpool one of the UK’s thriving music scenes. Just consider Edge<br />
Hill University’s The Label Recordings venture: for the uninitiated, The Label is a student-run label<br />
set up by the university’s Senior Lecturer in Media Film and Television, Carl Hunter – also a member<br />
of The Farm. It’s quickly becoming one of Liverpool’s more successful cottage industries, incubating<br />
new acts like the now Heavenly-signed patrons of dishevelled slacker rock, Hooton Tennis Club, as<br />
well as a fistful of other talent including The Inkhearts and Oranj Son.<br />
Another facet of the same phenomenon is the changed view of LIPA students in the city. Perhaps<br />
a decade ago, LIPA students were derided by the more extreme cynics amongst Liverpool’s music<br />
fans; but today, it’s fair to say that the contribution of their groups and music professionals is<br />
recognised as a key part of the city’s scene. As Mullin continues, “If you look at the Bombed Out<br />
Church, it’s been our management students that have worked with people from the Bombed Out<br />
Church to keep it open. In the first five years of Sound City, it was LIPA students who were working<br />
there. We still do it now – to get that experience at Sound City. We want the students to not just be<br />
part of the local scene, but to help create it.”<br />
Education has changed and is still changing. Condescendingly dismissed by some of the<br />
academic status-quo as ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees back around the turn of the millennium, these<br />
sorts of academic/practical hybrids have proved through a foot-long list of alumni and impressive<br />
tie-ups with arts organisations in the city that they actually provide the indispensable real-world<br />
experience that the modern creative industries are demanding. As Mullin sums up, voice justifiably<br />
laden with bitterness, “There was nothing like this when I started out, let me tell yer!”<br />
Find out about the range of courses on offer at these institutions online: Hope University @<br />
hope.ac.uk/music; LIPA @ lipa.ac.uk; SAE @ sae.edu/gbr/campuses/liverpool. You can also find more<br />
info on selected courses at these institutions at bidolito.co.uk.<br />
SOUND + REVISION<br />
bidolito.co.uk<br />
Words: Phil Gwyn / @notmanyexperts
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
21<br />
bidolito.co.uk
22<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
JULY IN BRIEF<br />
Edited by Matthew Wright and Scott Smith<br />
FATHER JOHN MISTY<br />
Our father, who art on tour, Josh Tillman be thy name… Once described as Jim Morrison’s head on Jarvis Cocker’s body, the long-haired, slut-dropping<br />
enigma that is FATHER JOHN MISTY brings his tales of marital love and sexual humiliation to town. I Love You, Honeybear, Tillman’s second album, was<br />
the surprise hit of 2015, giving a play-by-play of his prurient misadventures alongside a warming tale of falling in love. Part theatre and part pure honesty,<br />
expect a showering of love songs but without the bullshit.<br />
Mountford Hall / 16th <strong>July</strong><br />
PRIDE – IN THE NAME OF LOVE<br />
Liverpool will be painted all the colours of the rainbow this month as PRIDE returns with a fabulous free programme of events. The bulk of the action<br />
will take place in St George’s Plateau and the city’s Cultural Quarter, with attendees encouraged to dress up around this year’s theme – Liverpool Icons.<br />
The LGBT festival is now in its seventh year and will take place over two days with a riot of live music, family activities, speakers, a market place and<br />
some fabulous food and drink. Further details on what can be expected from this riotous Liverpool insitutution can be found at liverpoolpride.co.uk.<br />
St George’s Plateau / 30th-31st <strong>July</strong><br />
HAVING A LAAF<br />
LIVERPOOL ARABIC ARTS FESTIVAL brings an array of events showcasing the richness of Arabic culture to the city. The festival celebrates the traditional<br />
and the contemporary with a programme of visual art, music, dance, film, theatre, literature and other special events. Spread across various venues<br />
between 9th-24th <strong>July</strong>, the events explore the theme of the ‘undocumented’. Musical highlights include Dublin-based Palestinian musician RUBA<br />
SHAMSHOUM (pictured); Liverpool-born Yemeni singer REHAM AL-HAKIMI, who at 14 years old is gaining a reputation as a festival show-stopper, as<br />
well as TARABBAND, YEZ FENTAZI TRIO, WHIRLING DURVISH/SUFI MAHMOUD PHAROAH and 47SOUL. arabartsfestival.com<br />
FOLK ON THE DOCK<br />
A new festival takes over the Albert Dock on August Bank Holiday weekend and we are getting involved. FOLK ON THE DOCK FESTIVAL takes place<br />
in multiple venues throughout the Dock with all brands of folk and roots music being represented, from HENRY PRIESTMAN to WINTER WILSON. The<br />
event looks to tell the story of the importance of folk in Liverpool’s musical heritage, assisted by a specially commissioned song performed by local<br />
community choirs for the Voices On Water project. Bido Lito! will be flying the flag for contemporary folk with a special Bido Social gig at Tate Liverpool<br />
on Sunday 28th August. folkonthedock.com<br />
LIMF BROADCAST<br />
After our special Sound City podcast in May, we’re putting together another special edition podcast focusing on one of our city’s premier festivals.<br />
We’ll be looking at the multiple facets of LIMF with festival curator Yaw Owusu, who’ll be sitting in as a guest. Local legend Edgar Jones will also be<br />
dropping in to talk about his involvement in Yes Indeed!, a LIMF commission exploring forgotten Merseybeat Pioneers. Love guitarist Johnny Echols<br />
also talks to us about the exciting From Liverpool With Love project. As well as this, the Bido Lito! team and guests will be picking out the tracks that<br />
best represent this year’s fantastic festival bill.<br />
FLYING HIGH<br />
There are more fantastic free events coming to the city over the next three months as the FLYOVER SUMMER TAKEOVER begins. The Churchill Way<br />
Flyover (by the World Museum) will come alive with dance, music, performance and conversation over several dates from Friday 24th June. Highlights<br />
include an acoustic picnic from Threshold Festival, cycling tours, flash mob and acrobatic street theatre from Acrobou as well as a Light, Space and<br />
Technology takeover with installations, film and music. Friends Of The Flyover are looking to transform the structure into a park in response to<br />
multi-million pound plans to tear it down. For more information go to wemakeplaces.org.<br />
COMPETITION: WIN TICKETS TO FESTIVAL NO. 6<br />
You could be taking life as easy as they do in the Med after you’ve won tickets to FESTIVAL No. 6 – a music festival like no other, set in the Italianate<br />
Welsh village of Portmeirion. Headlining the bespoke event are heavyweights NOEL GALLAGHER, HOT CHIP and BASTILLE, with further music from<br />
SUPER FURRY ANIMALS, CASSIUS, ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN, BILL RYDER-JONES and LUCY ROSE. To get your hands on a pair of tickets for this stunning<br />
event, simply answer the following question: Which famous Italian fishing village is Portmerion said to be modelled upon? Email your answer to<br />
competition@bidolito.co.uk by 21st <strong>July</strong> to be in with a chance of winning.<br />
bidolito.co.uk
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
23<br />
STRANGE COLLECTIVE<br />
STRANGE COLLECTIVE are at the head of a new kind of energy powering through the Liverpool music scene. Their breed of garage-trash psych rock<br />
culminated in their new EP, Super Touchy, which arrives on 1st <strong>July</strong>. To celebrate, they’re bringing a helping of garage madness to Invisible Wind Factory<br />
– an all-day event featuring an outdoor stage, a BBQ and food stalls. BEACH SKULLS also celebrate the launch of their album Slow Grind at the event,<br />
where FUSS, LYING BASTARDS and CAVALIER SONG among the other performers.<br />
Invisible Wind Factory / 2nd <strong>July</strong><br />
BIENNIAL<br />
Liverpool will welcome artists from all over the world as they arrive to take part in this year’s BIENNIAL. Taking place in fictional realms located in<br />
galleries, public spaces, unused buildings and online, pieces will be themed around the city’s past, present and future. Birkenhead’s own MARK LECKEY<br />
will be present his film Dream English Kid (pictured) as part of the programme and Glasgow artist MARVIN GAYE CHETWYND is creating a piece inspired<br />
by Brecht and Betty Boo. biennial.com<br />
Various Venues / 9th <strong>July</strong>-16th October<br />
ADP RIOT TOUR<br />
Acclaimed international artist and KLF member JIMMY CAUTY returns to Liverpool after 25 years with his thought-provoking ADP installation following<br />
a critically acclaimed run at Banksy’s Dismaland. Housed in a 40ft shipping container, the Aftermath Dislocation Principle is a monumental post-riot<br />
landscape in miniature. Viewed through peepholes, the dystopian model village shows a wrecked and dislocated land awash only with police and<br />
media teams. The free entry launch night on 8th <strong>July</strong> features performances from DJ JANICE LONG and spoken-word artist BLACK ICE.<br />
The Florrie / 8th-14th <strong>July</strong><br />
PORTRAIT IN SONG<br />
We are delighted to be teaming up with Domino Publishing and Wolf & Diva to bring the acclaimed exhibition A PORTRAIT OF BRITISH SONGWRITING<br />
to Bold Street Coffee between 8th <strong>July</strong> and 7th August - you can read more about this in our full feature on page 12. To get things going, we’re hosting<br />
a launch night on Saturday 9th <strong>July</strong>, an exclusive viewing of the exhibition accompanied by Bido Lito! and Domino Records DJs. Then, on Thursday 21st<br />
<strong>July</strong>, our Bido Lito! Social will take place in the midst of the exhibition, featuring a discursive event on the nature of British songwriting with Domino<br />
artists All We Are and Clinic, followed by a live show.<br />
SHINY NEW SWANSONG<br />
The Lantern Theatre’s annual SHINY NEW FESTIVAL returns this <strong>July</strong> for its fifth and final year at their Blundell Street venue. Running over 10 days, the<br />
festival offers audiences an eclectic mix of new writing and comedy. The first five days are dedicated to comedy, with headline acts including ANDREW<br />
HUNTER MURRAY of QI and FERN BRADY (pictured) of 8 Out Of 10 Cats. Headline comics will be joined by local acts, including the Lantern’s in-house<br />
compère ALASTAIR CLARK. For more information and the full line-up visit lanterntheatreliverpool.co.uk.<br />
15th-24th <strong>July</strong> / Lantern Theatre<br />
THE STAMP<br />
The real reason guitar music will never die? Because mates will always want to form bands. Connah, Andy, Ben and Hollis have been friends since<br />
school and grew up in Liverpool listening to their parents’ record collections, the work of artists like Paul Simon, The Who and The Kinks seeping into<br />
their consciousness. Fresh off joining The View on a European tour, THE STAMP take to the Shipping Forecast courtesy of La Violette Societa, also<br />
featuring support from HORSEBEACH and poetry from JB BARRINGTON.<br />
Shipping Forecast / 27th <strong>July</strong><br />
YOUNG DADAFEST<br />
Celebrating the talent of young disabled people, YOUNG DADAFEST boasts a trio of events as it follows on from last year’s sold-out event. This year<br />
the event expands to include a music-focused event in the Music Room at the Philharmonic Hall featuring HEART N’ SOUL ART, who will perform<br />
their own digital music on 6th <strong>July</strong>. The theme for this year’s festival is Scratch, originating from the overall theme of DaDaFest’s international<br />
festival, Skin Deep, allowing for an interesting and unforeseeable artistic prospect and direction, that you’ll have to discover for yourself.<br />
dadafest.co.uk/youngdada<br />
MAGNIFIQUE MARAY<br />
DJ duo extraordinaire Radio Exotica are helping boutique Bold Street eatery MARAY celebrate the launch of their Spritz Sundays by putting together<br />
an exquisite Parisian-style mix to help diners while away the sunny summer afternoons. Maray, inspired by La Marais district in Paris, launch their<br />
two spritz for £10 offer to help bring the good-time summer vibes to one of our favourite city-centre dining spots. The suave mix features Parisian Bal<br />
Musette, gypsy and American jazz, swing musette and a nod to the Middle Eastern communities of Paris. You can hear the mix in Maray, or by tuning<br />
in online at bidolito.co.uk now.<br />
bidolito.co.uk
24<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
Sound City <strong>2016</strong> (Mike Sheerin / michaelsheerin.photoshelter.com)<br />
SOUND CITY<br />
Bramley-Moore Dock<br />
stage in the Freeze-curated Baltic Warehouse,<br />
his music resting upon impressive live<br />
instrumentals. The delicate bursts of violin and<br />
ascending woodwind and brass sounds create<br />
a meditative euphoria against the backdrop of<br />
the striking cosmic light display, anaesthetising<br />
Last year’s SOUND CITY was met with<br />
trepidation by many, unsure about the<br />
relocation to Bramley-Moore Dock and<br />
lamenting the move away from the old city<br />
centre-based arrangement. However, the<br />
feast of music served up in 2015, featuring<br />
a legendary performance from Saturday<br />
headliners Flaming Lips, convinced many of the<br />
new site’s potential. With a few tweaks to the<br />
site’s layout, the second year of Sound City 2.0<br />
looks set to be on the right course for a special.<br />
Sound City+, the conference element of the<br />
festival condensed to one jam-packed day of<br />
industry talks, DJ demos and a label market,<br />
whets the appetite for the main event. The<br />
Titanic Hotel, down the road from the festival<br />
site, is buzzing with wide-eyed students<br />
looking to get ahead in an industry still<br />
adjusting to the digital age. Older heads like<br />
ALAN MCGEE talk about bygone days of record<br />
labels and Britpop while panel discussions<br />
navigate through the tricky worlds of streaming<br />
and sync.<br />
The festival proper arrives on Saturday and<br />
Sam Shepherd’s FLOATING POINTS get things<br />
going. He and his band occupy most of the<br />
Levelz (Glyn Akroyd / @GlynAkroyd)<br />
bidolito.co.uk
26<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
the crowd into a rhythmic trance. The set is<br />
capped off by the emphatic Silhouettes (I, II,<br />
III) from his last album, Elaenia, resulting in a<br />
powerful crescendo and cacophony of sound.<br />
The atmosphere in the Baltic Warehouse<br />
doesn’t really let up thereafter – an early<br />
evening MOUNT KIMBIE set of trancey, deep<br />
bass sees some eyes glazing ecstatically over<br />
and some euphoric dance moves break out.<br />
It’s been almost four months since the<br />
car containing the four members of VIOLA<br />
BEACH – Kris Leonard, River Reeves, Jack<br />
Dakin, Tomas Lowe – and manager Craig<br />
Tarry tragically crashed near Stockholm. The<br />
band’s last recorded performance is played<br />
over the speakers on the Atlantic Stage in<br />
the slot the band would have occupied. The<br />
last song, Swings And Waterslides, allows a<br />
perfect opportunity for the Sound City crowd<br />
to celebrate and pay homage to the young lads<br />
from Warrington.<br />
Over on the North Stage, BLICK BASSY’s<br />
unique voice erupts, with no support from<br />
anything but his microphone, and it feels<br />
like the first ‘moment’ of this year’s festival.<br />
It’s a literal call to arms: before the minute’s<br />
singing is up, a throng of punters with eager<br />
ears is gathered. Bassy begins to play his<br />
golden banjo, his voice vaulting higher and<br />
higher. They are small, mellifluous songs,<br />
sometimes accompanied by banjo or parlour<br />
guitar, sometimes a cappella. More than once,<br />
there’s a blue note, the kind that are James<br />
Blake’s secret weapon. But Blick Bassy’s money<br />
notes are not the sound of the blues – this is<br />
no lament, it’s a joy on a Saturday afternoon,<br />
looking out to sea in a city that looks out to the<br />
rest of the world.<br />
Blick Bassy (Mike Sheerin / michaelsheerin.photoselter.com) synth lines building and weaving their way<br />
As the sun sets beyond the North Stage,<br />
colouring the sky the same pink hue as your<br />
favourite monthly magazine, Manchester’s<br />
LEVELZ bring the noise, a great noise.<br />
Frenetically paced, skilfully observed and<br />
absolutely infectious, it is a show of such<br />
force, and again, such humour, delivered with<br />
so much charm and character, it is hard not to<br />
love what they do. Plenty more bounce to the<br />
ounce, this crew, and a love of crowd surfing<br />
to boot. Prime lyricist Black Josh is happy to be<br />
held, triumphant at the end of the show, as the<br />
crowd go nuts beneath him.<br />
The Cavern Stage hosts some of Liverpool’s<br />
most exciting emerging talent this week and<br />
here is the weekend’s first appearance of<br />
the dreamy FERAL LOVE, collaborating with<br />
Montreal/New York-based electronic duo WAKE<br />
ISLAND, on a piece that was written only the<br />
previous day. An interesting piece; analogue<br />
through layers of earthy samples and oldschool<br />
beats before giving way to twin lilting<br />
vocals, and some funked-up guitar stabs.<br />
Less dreamy are Andrew Fearn and<br />
Jason Williamson of SLEAFORD MODS. The<br />
juxtaposition between the gentle silent<br />
swaying of Fearn and the sporadic rants of<br />
Williamson proves powerful. Like a starting<br />
gun, the infernal drumbeat sends Williamson<br />
into a red-faced narcotic rage, as though he’s<br />
just had adrenaline shot straight to the heart.<br />
As he flicks his head between a florid string of<br />
expletives, beads of sweat glimmer in the light<br />
as though the anger that has permeated the<br />
performance has turned into steam. Despite<br />
a large proportion of the crowd being more<br />
interested in chatting and getting intoxicated<br />
in whichever way they see fit, the set proves<br />
captivating.<br />
YOUNG FATHERS have found fame in their<br />
genre-bending sound. Arriving on the North<br />
Stage a little early for their headline set,<br />
the Edinburgh trio make no introduction,<br />
falling straight into a sea of brutal electronic<br />
drumbeats. They make the most of the<br />
festival’s second stage, bringing huge energy<br />
to it with an onslaught of a set that is one hit<br />
after another. There’s no audience interaction<br />
or witty remarks. They just stick to what’s<br />
important: the music. This approach seems to<br />
only drive the audience crazier, as the band flick<br />
rapidly between gentler RnB moments and the<br />
almost tribal Shame.<br />
Sunday brings Portland stalwarts THE<br />
DANDY WARHOLS to the Atlantic Stage. Though<br />
you can’t help but assume the majority of the<br />
Sleaford Mods (Sam Rowlands / samrowlandsphotography.tumblr.com)<br />
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The Stamp<br />
JB Barrington<br />
Horsebeach<br />
VIO-022.4<br />
Wed. 27 <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
THE SHIPPING FORECAST<br />
15 Slater Street, Liverpool L1 4BW / Doors 7.30pm<br />
Ticket £7.50 - www.michaelhead.net/boxoffice<br />
Liverpool<br />
Biennial<br />
<strong>2016</strong><br />
Festival of Contemporary Art<br />
9 <strong>July</strong> – 16 October<br />
Free<br />
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28<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
crowd are simply holding out for Bohemian<br />
Like You, the set is being met with unclouded<br />
enthusiasm. Though there may be a suggestion<br />
that the band has run its course (21 years on<br />
The Dandy Warhols may perhaps be, in their<br />
own words, “too old for this shit”), their<br />
experience seems only to aid them in putting<br />
on an effortlessly enjoyable show. Conversely,<br />
DILLY DALLY are just starting out and on a<br />
trajectory to be as big as The Dandys. As soon<br />
as guitars are strapped on the band take no<br />
time in showing who they are and what they<br />
do, hitting the crowd right between the eyes<br />
with a surge of distortion-filled guitars and<br />
the visceral cries of vocalist Katie Monks. The<br />
raw power that captured lovers of the album<br />
rings even truer live on the North Stage, thus<br />
fulfilling their statement that they must be<br />
seen ‘in real life’.<br />
Local favourite BILL RYDER-JONES’ early<br />
afternoon half-hour slot raises eyebrows but<br />
the Wirralite’s performance is sincere and<br />
honest; the simplicity and vulnerability of his<br />
songs mirrored by his wounded vocals. The<br />
cathartic, lamenting melodies and draining<br />
guitar sounds from the second half of Two<br />
To Birkenhead are a further encapsulation of<br />
Bill’s immediacy and emotion. ‘Our Bill’ closes<br />
the set with the impressive Satellites, which<br />
gushes out of the speakers on an epic tide.<br />
From poetic paeans to fun-loving charisma<br />
and playful rapture, we stop by the North Stage<br />
again for THE BIG MOON, who delight with<br />
bouncy, riff-laden music and at times crooning<br />
vocals. By the time the quartet punch out their<br />
The Dandy Warhols (Robin Clewley / robinclewley.co.uk)<br />
chirpy tune, Cupid, the crowd are intoxicated – a performance that would perhaps be better<br />
and whisked up within their charm.<br />
without the glare of evening light streaming<br />
After quickly checking out HOT CHIP’s DJ set through the doors – it’s back to the main stage<br />
Pink Kink (Sam Rowlands / samrowlandsphotography.tumblr.com)<br />
for CIRCA WAVES. Unfortunately, festivals –<br />
or gigs in general – are renowned for things<br />
going wrong and the Liverpool lads fall victim<br />
to a power cut. A few people meander around<br />
during this interruption, and are rewarded<br />
when the band make a triumphant return to the<br />
stage, and close their set with a rousing cover<br />
of Revolution and finish with aplomb with their<br />
own hit T-Shirt Weather.<br />
Back at the Cavern Stage, local darlings PINK<br />
KINK seem a little taken aback by the size of<br />
the crowd they have drawn. But they embrace<br />
it and go on to produce a fabulous set of<br />
shimmery pop that’s perfectly in keeping with<br />
the summery vibe. To say it’s a fun set would<br />
be damning it with faint praise – it is absolutely<br />
fun but it’s also clever, playful and bang on<br />
both instrumentally and vocally.<br />
Over on the North Stage, a more household<br />
name is also drawing a crowd. With what is a<br />
more reserved display than most will be used<br />
to, PETER DOHERTY fumbles through his set<br />
with a relative smoothness; however, dotted<br />
here and there is the odd messy, loose guitar,<br />
and of course wailing vocals. He remains<br />
contained right up to his last song. On his<br />
encore, Doherty explodes into his former self,<br />
as the band reappear for Fuck Forever. The<br />
crowd respond as they are whipped up in a<br />
crazed frenzy; Doherty appears possessed as<br />
he continues to let loose, crashing to the floor<br />
and climbing the drum kit, before breaking free<br />
from the restraints of the stage and into the<br />
bidolito.co.uk
30<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
The Coral (Keith Ainsworth / arkimages.co.uk)<br />
crowd. He then rushes behind the stage and<br />
doesn’t reappear, leaving a group of satisfied<br />
and exhilarated fans, capping a chaotic and<br />
driven performance.<br />
As twilight darkens and the last rays of sun<br />
fade in the Mersey sky, the time approaches<br />
for what many will consider the weekend’s<br />
main event, as THE CORAL return to Liverpool<br />
in a blaze of heavy guitars and deep melodies.<br />
Launching straight into Miss Fortune, what<br />
is released on the crowd gathered for the<br />
festival’s defining headline set is a massive<br />
stonking throb of a sound, West Coast-style.<br />
No: North West coast-styled. The Coral’s<br />
songwriting transcends so much of the music<br />
that comes out of Liverpool, and they’ve been<br />
sorely missed. With this new harder, heartier<br />
sound, they’ve parked up much of the earlier<br />
trademark jangle, and taken their cosmic pop<br />
on fresh tangents, and to fresh fields. New<br />
beginnings to be capitalised on, we hope.<br />
Then, four songs in, darkness and silence.<br />
Another power cut. Later, The Coral arrive back<br />
onstage, in great humour and appreciative of<br />
those who’ve stayed, and blister triumphantly<br />
through an incredible set of new and old<br />
wigged-out wonder, absolutely saving the<br />
day with attitude and style – it’s that gang<br />
mentality. It’s all over too soon though, with<br />
an encore of Goodbye, Dreaming Of You and<br />
Fear Machine, they, and Sound City <strong>2016</strong> are<br />
gone. It’s been a hell of a weekend, full of<br />
surprise and promise, great new music, fresh,<br />
vital and relevant. Sound City are settling into<br />
their new home – they just need to sort the<br />
electrics out.<br />
Paul Fitzgerald, Jonny Winship,<br />
Matt Hogarth, Glyn Akroyd, Melissa<br />
Svensen, Stuart O’Hara<br />
OMPHALOS<br />
The Invisible Wind Factory<br />
If you’ve been living under a rock for the<br />
last month, then you wouldn’t have heard<br />
of the Invisible Wind Factory. Now, I’ve been<br />
searching my mind for the last week trying<br />
to not say “it’s nothing like The Kazimier”<br />
but I’ve decided to go one step further. The<br />
Invisible Wind Factory – the brand-new North<br />
Liverpool venue owned by the people behind<br />
The Kazimier – is nothing like anything else in<br />
Liverpool or even the North West.<br />
As a guest you arrive with an excitement<br />
akin to entering a Disney theme park ride as<br />
an eight-year-old child. Describing the factory<br />
as Disneyland is justified in the imagination<br />
surrounding the building, the people and the<br />
whole persona the place gives off. Upon arrival,<br />
a black curtain with a slight opening teases<br />
people with the sounds and visuals of a movieset<br />
straight out of War Of The Worlds. Even the<br />
location of the factory creates a strange buzz<br />
within, as you venture to a part of Liverpool you<br />
would never go.<br />
Drama experts set the scene and invite<br />
people to indulge in the mystery they’re serving<br />
up. The mystery being OMPHALOS – Eternal<br />
Energy, which you’re still none the wiser about<br />
after 15 minutes in the building’s reception<br />
area. The pure energy and commitment the<br />
IWF team has put in to realising the story<br />
behind Omphalos, however, challenges your<br />
imagination, makes you want to know. The<br />
‘show’ is in fact more like a tour taken in small<br />
groups, consisting of showing people various<br />
art pieces displaying the best of the Invisible<br />
Wind Factory. From lights, smoke, flying chairs<br />
and working machinery, you’re taken on a<br />
journey in pursuit of this mysterious ‘invisible<br />
Omphalos (Darren Aston)<br />
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32<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
wind’. The use of an eight-piece choir alongside<br />
homemade instruments creates an almost<br />
cult-like setting in which the audience are at<br />
the mercy of our Empyrean and Cthonic hosts/<br />
performers, listening to them beautifully “um”<br />
and “ah” in sequence for almost 25 minutes.<br />
You can’t help but get carried away with the<br />
potential of the place. Yes, the imagination<br />
and creativity are rather mind-blowing, set<br />
around an amazingly surreal art performance;<br />
however, the raw space and imagination<br />
behind the staging are what excite me most.<br />
With the introduction of gig performances to<br />
the venue it will surely lift the environment<br />
to new levels. The imagination of creating an<br />
experience around a gig makes it feel much<br />
more than just going to your average Friday<br />
night viewing. Potentially, it will become the<br />
hottest place to be in Liverpool, in the middle<br />
of nowhere.<br />
Music lovers in Liverpool felt as if a part of<br />
their heart had been torn out when the holy<br />
ground of The Kazimier was ripped from the<br />
Liverpool music scene. Yet its passing has<br />
opened up a completely new atmosphere<br />
for people to enjoy music and embrace the<br />
‘invisible wind’ around them.<br />
Robert Aston<br />
Omphalos (Darren Aston)<br />
BC CAMPLIGHT<br />
Harvest Sun @ Leaf<br />
It has, to say the least, been a tumultuous<br />
year in the life of Brian Christinzio. Having<br />
released his breakthrough LP, How To Die In<br />
The North, under the moniker of BC CAMPLIGHT,<br />
he was deported from his adopted Mancunian<br />
homeland and forced to cancel his well-earned<br />
UK victory lap. With those circumstances in<br />
mind, tonight has the feeling of both vindication<br />
and much-prolonged anticipation and there is<br />
the sense in the room that something truly<br />
special may well be in the offing.<br />
Christinzio’s terminal bad luck, however, is<br />
clearly far from waning as we are informed that<br />
his late arrival is due to being involved in a car<br />
accident on the M6. Luckily, fate has failed to<br />
seal the deal this time and the band ease into a<br />
long-overdue rendition of single You Should’ve<br />
Gone To School. Backed by an impressive fivepiece<br />
group, Christinzio is seated at a keyboard<br />
emblazoned with his initials. This may seem<br />
of little relevance musically but actually<br />
embodies the dynamic of the set-up pretty<br />
well, with Christinzio emerging as a relaxed<br />
yet charismatic leader.<br />
Though at first the sound levels are a<br />
little ropey this does little to mask the sheer<br />
brilliance of the songs themselves, and<br />
the exquisite power-pop of Grim Cinema<br />
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Ceremony Concerts Present<br />
Roddy Woomble<br />
Performing 'My Secret is my Silence'<br />
The Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool – Friday 16 th September <strong>2016</strong><br />
The Travelling Band<br />
Magnet, Liverpool – Friday 14 th October <strong>2016</strong><br />
Heaven 17<br />
& British Electric Foundation<br />
O2 Academy, Liverpool – Thursday 20 th October <strong>2016</strong><br />
George Monbiot<br />
& Ewan McLennan<br />
The Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - Thursday 20 th October <strong>2016</strong><br />
Blue Rose Code<br />
The Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool – Friday 21 st October <strong>2016</strong><br />
Robyn Hitchcock<br />
The Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - Saturday 22 nd October <strong>2016</strong><br />
Michael Chapman<br />
& Nick Ellis<br />
The Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - Sunday 20 th November <strong>2016</strong><br />
Sheelanagig<br />
The Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - Sunday 27 th November <strong>2016</strong><br />
TicketQuarter / See Tickets / WeGotTickets / Gigantic
34<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
emphasises both the band’s cohesiveness and<br />
the excellent craftsmanship on display. Each<br />
new track breathlessly jumps between genrebending<br />
influences and refusing to stagnate. To<br />
my mind there are few artists currently writing<br />
who can do this with such ease and fluidity.<br />
Perhaps the most enthralling element of the<br />
show is Christinzio’s remarkable vocal ability,<br />
and as the other members of the band leave<br />
the stage midway through the set there is a<br />
chance to witness this in its purest form. A<br />
solo rendition of Atom Bomb has the sizeable<br />
audience in awe and a performer who seemed<br />
incredibly talented before now appears tinged<br />
with virtuosity.<br />
Having made up for lost time in the<br />
showcasing of tracks from the last LP, we are<br />
now treated to a couple from the upcoming<br />
record. Though not introduced by name,<br />
they linger in the memory due in part to the<br />
contrast between them and the other material.<br />
A beguiling mix of dark funk and feathery<br />
piano melodies that reflect the soul-searching<br />
Christinzio has undergone in the past year, they<br />
are something truly unique, imaginative and<br />
puzzling.<br />
For those of us who loved the last album<br />
and were sorely disappointed not to see it<br />
performed live upon its initial release, tonight<br />
has been somewhat of a reminiscence but<br />
mainly a long-awaited experience. All there is<br />
Quantic (Mook Loxley / mookloxley.tumblr.com)<br />
to do now is await the next record and pray that<br />
the immigration office has learned its lesson.<br />
Alastair Dunn<br />
QUANTIC<br />
Bam!Bam!Bam! x Madnice Marauders<br />
x Hot Plate @ Constellations<br />
As important as music is to the cultural fabric<br />
of Liverpool, every now and then it has to defer<br />
to its big brother: football. Liverpool’s run in<br />
the Europa League has decimated Thursdaynight<br />
gig crowds, so for the final those crafty<br />
bleeders at Constellations have decided to join<br />
in rather than compete. The venue’s versatility<br />
allows us footie heads to be indulged inside,<br />
whilst those in the garden enjoy the sweet<br />
Latin-flecked sounds of DJs Danny Fitzgerald<br />
and legendary festival favourite Ole Smokey.<br />
It wouldn’t be fair to frame a QUANTIC show<br />
as merely a coronation or commiseration; main<br />
man Will Holland has garnered a glowing<br />
reputation for party music with a touch of<br />
elegance, whether it’s soundtracked by soul,<br />
Afrobeat, jazz or his more recent works with<br />
Columbia’s Combo Barbaro. He’s certainly<br />
having to work to maintain that reputation<br />
tonight. The atmosphere stalls due to<br />
unfortunate technical difficulties, scuppering<br />
the admirable aim of playing the first note<br />
bang on the final whistle. However, once the
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CARAVAN PALACE<br />
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NOTHING BUT THIEVES<br />
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FRIDAY 2ND DECEMBER<br />
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SUNDAY 4TH DECEMBER<br />
A TRIBUTE TO MANCHESTER VOL. 2:<br />
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FORMERLY THE MDH FORMERLY THE HOP & GRAPE FORMERLY THE CELLAR<br />
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TUESDAY 28TH JUNE<br />
ULTIMATE EAGLES<br />
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FROM THE JAM<br />
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AGAINST THE CURRENT<br />
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THE HUNNA<br />
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JP COOPER<br />
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FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK<br />
LIVEWIRE AC/DC VS FEDERAL CHARM<br />
SATURDAY 12TH NOVEMBER<br />
FOY VANCE<br />
SUNDAY 13TH NOVEMBER<br />
LACUNA COIL<br />
WEDNESDAY 16TH NOVEMBER<br />
TEENAGE FANCLUB<br />
FRIDAY 18TH NOVEMBER<br />
LUCKY CHOPS<br />
SUNDAY 20TH NOVEMBER<br />
ABSOLUTE BOWIE<br />
SATURDAY 3RD DECEMBER<br />
CHAMELEONS VOX<br />
SATURDAY 17TH DECEMBER<br />
TONY MORTIMER & HIS BAND<br />
THURSDAY 22ND SEPTEMBER<br />
CATS IN SPACE / SPACE ELEVATOR<br />
FRIDAY 23RD SEPTEMBER<br />
UNION J<br />
WEDNESDAY 28TH SEPTEMBER<br />
TOWNSMEN<br />
THURSDAY 29TH SEPTEMBER<br />
JAKE QUICKENDEN<br />
SATURDAY 1ST OCTOBER<br />
UGLY KID JOE<br />
MONDAY 3RD OCTOBER<br />
FRANKIE BALLARD<br />
FRIDAY 7TH OCTOBER<br />
ROYAL REPUBLIC<br />
TUESDAY 11TH OCTOBER<br />
GUN<br />
WEDNESDAY 12TH OCTOBER<br />
GLASVILLE<br />
THURSDAY 13TH OCTOBER<br />
ANTI-NOWHERE LEAGUE<br />
FRIDAY 21ST OCTOBER<br />
UK FOO FIGHTERS TRIBUTE<br />
SATURDAY 29TH OCTOBER<br />
BARS AND MELODY<br />
SUNDAY 30TH OCTOBER<br />
ANNIHILATOR<br />
WEDNESDAY 2ND NOVEMBER<br />
DAN BAIRD & HOMEMADE SIN<br />
FRIDAY 4TH NOVEMBER<br />
THE SOUTHMARTINS<br />
SATURDAY 19TH NOVEMBER<br />
EDEN’S CURSE<br />
TUESDAY 22ND NOVEMBER<br />
ELECTRIC SIX<br />
WEDNESDAY 23RD NOVEMBER<br />
MOTORHEADACHE<br />
(A TRIBUTE TO LEMMY)<br />
FRIDAY 25TH NOVEMBER<br />
THE DOORS ALIVE<br />
SATURDAY 26TH NOVEMBER<br />
BIG COUNTRY - THE SEER TOUR<br />
SATURDAY 3RD DECEMBER<br />
AYNSLEY LISTER<br />
SATURDAY 17TH DECEMBER<br />
RADIO BIRDMAN<br />
THURSDAY 23RD JUNE<br />
BLACKALICIOUS<br />
SUNDAY 26TH JUNE<br />
COLLIE BUDDZ<br />
WEDNESDAY 29TH JUNE<br />
SUPERSUCKERS<br />
THURSDAY 21ST JULY<br />
ROYAL SOUTHERN BROTHERHOOD<br />
WEDNESDAY 31ST AUGUST<br />
DESTRUCTION<br />
THURSDAY 6TH OCTOBER<br />
THE TUBES<br />
SATURDAY 8TH OCTOBER<br />
THE FEELING<br />
WEDNESDAY 19TH OCTOBER<br />
BLUES PILLS<br />
SATURDAY 5TH NOVEMBER<br />
THE GRAHAM BONNET BAND<br />
SATURDAY 12TH NOVEMBER<br />
THE LANCASHIRE HOTPOTS<br />
SATURDAY 3RD DECEMBER<br />
PEARL JAM UK<br />
SATURDAY 10TH DECEMBER<br />
REAL FRIENDS<br />
WEDNESDAY 14TH DECEMBER<br />
MANCHESTER ACADEMY PRESENTS<br />
EVIL BLIZZARD<br />
SATURDAY 9TH JULY<br />
PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT<br />
FRIDAY 16TH SEPTEMBER<br />
facebook.com/manchesteracademy @mancacademy FOR UP TO DATE LISTINGS VISIT MANChesteracademy.net
36<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
music starts, this bumper crowd take no time<br />
in getting over any disappointment and into<br />
the groove.<br />
It’s hard to characterise the group Holland<br />
has put together for this tour – the Tropical<br />
Elevation ensemble – as a normal band: they’re a<br />
trio of talented multi-instrumentalists dancing<br />
between a smorgasbord of instruments. One<br />
minute Holland is pogoing while playing<br />
the accordion, the next he’s laying a fuzzy<br />
blues guitar solo over some gorgeously<br />
spacious soul. There are still signs of the band<br />
battling the elements; the disparate nature<br />
of the instruments make them a sound tech’s<br />
nightmare, and the mix isn’t always right – but<br />
there’s a genuine enthusiasm for the music,<br />
which earns them a bit of patience from the<br />
audience, meaning those of us who notice the<br />
glitches couldn’t care less. The dancefloor is<br />
packed with glistening grins, inspiring those<br />
in red to dance away their heartache.<br />
Singer Jimmeta Rose coos deliciously over<br />
a loping reggae beat, before really opening<br />
her lungs as the song reaches its emotional<br />
crescendo. Holland is undoubtedly the band<br />
leader, but he makes a rather understated<br />
frontman. Whenever Rose appears there’s a<br />
marked injection of energy. The instrumentals<br />
show off the musical chops of the band,<br />
frequently ending in a different musical time<br />
zone from which they started, but Rose creates<br />
a necessary focal (vocal?) point. The demanded<br />
encore features a carnival version of Pushin’<br />
On, prompting the kind of rousing singalong<br />
that would put any football ground to shame.<br />
Maurice Stewart /<br />
theviewfromthebooth.tumblr.com<br />
NASHER<br />
Scandinavian Church<br />
The pews of the Scandinavian Church are<br />
packed out on a sweltering night: NASHER is<br />
back in his hometown for a solo intimate gig<br />
of old songs and new. Musically, Brian Nash<br />
has been the most prolific former member of<br />
Frankie Goes To Hollywood since the band’s<br />
demise. With three solo albums under his belt,<br />
and another in the can for release later this<br />
year, this evening he takes a seat in front of<br />
the altar to deliver a mix of material, songs of<br />
love, anger, restraint and protest. Intolerant of<br />
intolerance in all its forms, and with a finely<br />
honed and unforgiving sense of social justice<br />
and an innate ‘one love’ philosophy, he’s ready<br />
to tackle prejudice wherever he finds it. Much of<br />
the new album, 4,3,2, One: Opening The Vein,<br />
floats around these themes, and if, to use the<br />
obvious reference given the location, this is<br />
some sort of sermon, then this tightly packed<br />
crowd are already converted.<br />
It is noted with a heavy heart by several<br />
here that there are far too few protest songs<br />
being written right now, at a time when there’s<br />
much to be protested – more than ever before,<br />
some would argue – so songs like Nasher’s<br />
Prostitutes And Cocaine, dedicated here to<br />
its subject matter, George Osborne and that<br />
photo, are warmly welcomed, and delivered<br />
with Nash’s characteristic snarl. As a resident of<br />
north London for the last few decades, he finds<br />
the relentless rebuilding of the capital, which<br />
he characterises as being led by “the cranes<br />
of greed”, filling the city with towers of luxury,<br />
and, more importantly, empty homes. With<br />
another new song, Where Will The Kids Live?,<br />
the anger is all too clear. There’s a pain in the<br />
vocal lines of this new work, a howl for truth,<br />
and the guitar ringing out around this beautiful<br />
space brings added drama to reinforce the<br />
many valid points.<br />
Yesterday’s News, based around the prejudice<br />
he sees and hears in the tabloids and the lack of<br />
humanity in overheard conversations about the<br />
Syrian refugee crisis, of it all, is simply stunning.<br />
This is real, accomplished, sensitive and intuitive<br />
songwriting, again highlighted by this special<br />
setting, amplified by the reactive acoustics. It’s<br />
a harsh and honest portrayal of the unforgiving<br />
narrowness in the minds of some.<br />
There is, perhaps inevitably, a nod to his<br />
former musical life, with a beautiful and<br />
sublime version of the Frankie Goes To<br />
Hollywood classic The Power Of Love, with his<br />
sparse and well-spaced guitar playing met his<br />
powerful and soulful vocal, soaring around the<br />
roof space above the crowd. It’s not often you<br />
see a standing ovation in a church; this song<br />
brings the first of several and for good reason.<br />
This is Nasher’s first show in the city since<br />
the conclusion of the Hillsborough inquests,<br />
which brings about a powerful and emotional<br />
tribute with a cover of the Pink Floyd song<br />
Fearless. Utterly suitable in its choice, its layer<br />
upon layer of looped guitar and towering vocal<br />
provides a perfect, climactic end to this very<br />
special performance from a much-loved son<br />
of the city, with this dedicated congregation,<br />
again, on their feet.<br />
Paul Fitzgerald / @nothingvillem<br />
BALTIC GARDEN PARTY<br />
The Mouse Outfit – Harleighblu – Mr Thing<br />
Bam!Bam!Bam! @ 24 Kitchen Street<br />
It’s that time of year again. It’s a balmy<br />
summer’s eve and the Baltic Garden Party is in<br />
full beast mode in the small outdoor area at the<br />
back of 24 Kitchen Street. Hip hop archivist MR<br />
Friends Of<br />
THE FL OVER<br />
FLYOVER<br />
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exploring a future urban park for our citY<br />
check out www.friendsoftheflyover.org.uk for our full programme
camp and furnacE<br />
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baltic triangle, liverpool<br />
23+24 SEPTEMBER <strong>2016</strong><br />
SUPER FURRY ANIMALS.<br />
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THE STAIRS. THE VELDT. GWENNO.<br />
LA LUZ. GNOOMES. FLAMINGODS.<br />
JOSEFIN ÖHRN & THE LIBERATION.<br />
LORELLE MEETS THE OBSOLETE.<br />
GURUGURU BRAIN PRESENTS:<br />
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DEEP MIND FEATURING: KIKAGAKU MOYO +<br />
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FÊTE SOUTERRAINE featuring: FRANCE + AQUAGASCALLO + ARLT + MOSTLA SOUNDSYSTEM.<br />
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SATURDAY<br />
THE HORRORS.<br />
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CAVERN OF ANTI-MATTER. EAGULLS.<br />
THE MOONLANDINGZ. LA HELL GANG.<br />
HARALD GROSSKOPF. ULTIMATE PAINTING.<br />
THE LUCID DREAM. SPECTRES.<br />
PURE PHASE ENSEMBLE 4<br />
FEATURING MARK GARDENER (RIDE)<br />
THE OSCILLATION. THE EARLY YEARS. POP.1280. ACID WASHED.<br />
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THAT FuCKING TANK. VANISHING TWIN. ELECTRIC EYE.<br />
SADDAR BAZAAR. RATS ON RAFTS. NEW CANDYS. TAMAN SHUD.<br />
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38<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
THING is in deep, fuelling the dancing footsteps<br />
of a horde of avid beatsters with some classic<br />
beats and rhymes. Spirits are, simply, high. It’s<br />
a lush scene in the haze of the summer warmth,<br />
the sun burning low in the sky, the musical<br />
mix absolutely on point, and, before Sunday<br />
turns to Monday and we have to shrink back<br />
into normality, we have a night of live music<br />
to spur us on.<br />
Before long people start to venture indoors.<br />
It’s about time for the band to start. Up comes<br />
HARLEIGHBLU and her band. As they dive into<br />
their set it seems, at first, as if they’re battling<br />
with the DJ outside. Once the news starts<br />
to spread that the party’s moved indoors,<br />
however, it’s a full room in no time.<br />
Harleighblu herself is a fierce frontwoman.<br />
She has enough range and power to turn<br />
anybody’s head and she does so almost<br />
instantly. Musically, there’s a grey area here<br />
that seems to bridge a gap between neosoul<br />
and blues rock. It’s partly Erykah Badu,<br />
partly The Internet and partly, somehow,<br />
Funkadelic. The players are adept and precise,<br />
dynamically attuned to Harleighblu’s vocal<br />
delivery to such a degree that they underpin<br />
her charisma perfectly. It’s a strong set that<br />
gets a deservingly warm response from the<br />
small but enthused crowd.<br />
The grand finale of the Baltic Garden Party<br />
comes in the form of headliners THE MOUSE<br />
Spring King (Gaz Jones / @GJMPhoto)<br />
OUTFIT, who unfortunately have to battle with<br />
the noise of Mr Thing’s DJ set outdoors for the<br />
first few minutes. Soon enough, though, the<br />
throng swarm indoors and gravitate towards<br />
the front of the stage where rappers Dr Syntax<br />
and Sparkz hit their stride with their rhymes.<br />
The set is unbelievable from the get-go. The<br />
music could be a perfect homage to the great J<br />
Dilla and, as the musicians on stage play more<br />
tightly together than any band I’ve ever seen,<br />
Sparkz and Dr Syntax dance over the beats<br />
with decorative vocabulary. They run through<br />
a set brimming with their best material, from<br />
Shak Out and Who Gwan Test to Power and It’s<br />
Gonna Be On.<br />
The technical proficiency and musicianship<br />
from the band is astounding, but even more<br />
impressive is the subtlety displayed here.<br />
This is a band that understands that hip hop’s<br />
greatness lies in its simplicity.<br />
SPRING KING<br />
Get Inuit – Strange Collective<br />
Harvest Sun @ Arts Club<br />
Christopher Carr<br />
SPRING KING have gone a long way since<br />
leaving university here in Liverpool. The band<br />
P R E S E N T S<br />
Hosted by:<br />
DAVID MONKS BBC MERSEYSIDE<br />
FRIDAY 15TH JULY <strong>2016</strong><br />
LIVERPOOL<br />
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#FolkDock16<br />
PLUS...
40<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
have gone onto become one of the most<br />
exciting mainstream indie groups emerging in<br />
the past year, playing with the likes of Slaves,<br />
while lead singer and drummer Tarek Musa has<br />
found fame separately as a producer for the<br />
likes of Bad Breeding, Big Moon and Gengahr.<br />
So it’s with great excitement that we greet<br />
the band for their return to Liverpool. The<br />
substantial crowd are eager to catch the group<br />
prior to their ever-looming album release.<br />
First up tonight, though, is something a<br />
little different in the form of Liverpool’s finest<br />
psych surf foursome, STRANGE COLLECTIVE.<br />
The barrier between themselves and the crowd<br />
proves an unusual sight at one of their gigs<br />
as they usually throw themselves headlong<br />
into the crowd, but it’s no real barrier to a<br />
band with this amount of verve. Smashing<br />
drunkenly through a debauched, swirling set<br />
of psych-inspired garage, the group win round<br />
a crowd filled with faces unfamiliar with the<br />
lysergic tunes. The set’s highlight comes with<br />
the announcement of playing Four In One<br />
Hole. “Yeah it is what you think it’s about,”<br />
lead singer Alex says cheekily as the face of<br />
one accompanying mum’s face drops.<br />
From the leftfield fuzzed-up psychedelia of<br />
Strange Collective we move to the snot punk<br />
of Kent’s finest, GET INUIT, who have released a<br />
string of well-received singles and EPs. Arriving<br />
onstage the band stamp their prominence with<br />
a bang. However, it is lead singer Jamie who<br />
struts around the stage like a prepubescent<br />
Jagger, with a series of neck bops and obscure<br />
dance moves. His voice proves extremely<br />
powerful as he pulls the microphone away<br />
and still projects just as loud. The group’s set<br />
proves an electric one with vitality and virility.<br />
With drinks flowing and a now booming<br />
audience it’s time for main act Spring King to<br />
take centre stage. Before even donning their<br />
instruments the group have the audience on<br />
their side. With an ocean of Spring King badges,<br />
tees and hats scattered amongst the crowd,<br />
it’s obvious that their fanbase is a devoted<br />
one. With a small shout-out to Liverpool (“This<br />
is our second home”) the band explode into<br />
life, with the audience following shortly in a<br />
frenzied mosh pit with both arms and beers<br />
flying. The band power through a set of nowfamiliar<br />
singles – most notably Summer and<br />
Rectifier – as well as a handful of yet-to-bereleased<br />
album tracks. It’s impossible to doubt<br />
Spring King’s boisterous and infectious stage<br />
presence, a trait which has been key in them<br />
cementing the devotion of their fans. However,<br />
there’s an issue tonight in Musa’s juggling of<br />
both drumming and singing duties. A rare off<br />
night? Here’s hoping.<br />
Matt Hogarth<br />
ADAM GREEN<br />
EVOL @ O2 Academy<br />
Some artists make music to sell as many<br />
records as possible. Some want to write songs<br />
with the aim of pleasing tens of thousands<br />
of people in stadiums. ADAM GREEN makes<br />
films with papier-mâché backdrops starring<br />
former child stars and writes songs about crack<br />
cocaine and paraplegic lovemaking. Luckily<br />
for the New Yorker there are sizeable crowds<br />
in towns around the world who have similar<br />
tastes.<br />
Tonight, in the smaller room of the O2<br />
Academy, there is a strong air of affection<br />
towards the former Moldy Peach. He bounds<br />
on stage to the jaunty melodies of backing<br />
band Coming Soon looking like he’s just told<br />
a very successful joke backstage. Singer and<br />
backing band are dressed in costumes from<br />
the film Green is over to promote – Adam<br />
Green’s Aladdin. He later proudly states it’s<br />
the best piece of art he’s ever made, quite a<br />
touching declaration from someone who has<br />
been restlessly creative for a long and fruitful<br />
career which has caused few ripples in the<br />
mainstream.<br />
The songs from the film soundtrack perhaps<br />
don’t hit the heights of more of the established<br />
favourites such as Emily, Buddy Bradley and<br />
Drugs, but Green hasn’t lost his knack for<br />
writing delightfully skewed pop music: newer<br />
singles Never Lift A Finger and the joyous<br />
Interested In Music more than cut the mustard.<br />
As well as pleasing himself with his array of<br />
projects and whimsical stylings, there is clearly<br />
a lot of love for Green amongst Liverpool’s<br />
muso fraternity. Midway through the set, Green<br />
stands alone on stage and invites requests<br />
from the audience. The more puerile elements<br />
of the singer’s oeuvre get an airing as a result.<br />
A bizarre singalong to the decidedly un-PC<br />
Ladyboy, as well as the rather childish No Legs,<br />
is received with delight.<br />
A constant entertainer, Green keeps dancing<br />
throughout the set, eyeballing the crowd as he<br />
shimmies around the stage. Impressively, he<br />
manages not one but two rounds of crowd<br />
surfing on an audience that seems way too<br />
sparse to support a grown man (albeit a<br />
diminutive man wearing a fez). Songs from all<br />
of Green’s extensive solo back catalogue get an<br />
airing, each clocking in at under three-and-ahalf-minutes<br />
and featuring the lyrical panache<br />
of Lou Reed if he were a bit more clown than<br />
curmudgeon.<br />
Green’s career trajectory has taken him<br />
from kerbside anti-folk through cartoonish<br />
crooner to new territory as freewheeling indie<br />
film star/director. The end of his set sees an<br />
amalgamation of the three periods with<br />
The Merseyrail sound<br />
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Get There By Train
Reviews<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
41<br />
the Moldy Peaches favourite Who’s Got The<br />
Crack getting a run out alongside a track from<br />
Aladdin, and perhaps still his highest point,<br />
Dance With Me – this last track from his debut<br />
album which was, amazingly, released some<br />
14 years ago. Doing what he likes and staying<br />
true to his artistic vision is obviously keeping<br />
Adam Green young and he’s got the jokes, and<br />
the moves, to prove it.<br />
Sam Turner / @samturner1984<br />
VIDEO JAM<br />
Kelpa — Ling — Karl Astbury — Ant<br />
Dickson — Shield Pattern<br />
unfold @ FACT<br />
Adam Green (Georgia Flynn / georgiaflynn.com)<br />
Intended as a response to Japanese artist<br />
Ryoichi Kurokawa’s stunning new audio/visual<br />
installation, UNFOLD, five short films have<br />
been set to newly commissioned live scores<br />
by local and international musicians. unfold<br />
is an astral assault on the senses. Drawing<br />
from data taken from giant molecular clouds<br />
in space, Kurokawa has created his vision of the<br />
secrets behind the birth and evolution of stars.<br />
Taking place in FACT’s main gallery, three large<br />
projection screens are stacked to the ceiling.<br />
This provides a unique viewing experience,<br />
prompting the audience to stretch out on
42<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
an intercepted alien transmission beamed<br />
through static, now that the curvature of the<br />
Earth can be seen.<br />
Manchester duo SHIELD PATTERNS take their<br />
turn on untitled by ALICE DUNSEATH. Quick cuts<br />
of time-lapsed clay geometric configurations<br />
and crystals are complemented by descending,<br />
machine-assisted vocal harmonies. Spoken<br />
word now looms over clarinet improvisations<br />
and I can’t help but spot the similarity of the<br />
visuals to the red vortex of Stevie Wonder’s<br />
Songs In The Key Of Life artwork.<br />
Lastly, Spanish-born and current Chester<br />
resident ISABEL BENITO GUTIERREZ scores<br />
Abstraction 41+50 by MORGAN BERINGER.<br />
Deep double-bass bowings and flourishes from<br />
saxophonist Ged Barry, switching between alto<br />
and tenor, feel like the most inspired and truly<br />
improvisational moment of the night.<br />
Will McConnell<br />
the carpet. Tonight’s ‘performers’ are mostly<br />
hidden to the rear of the stage, seen only by<br />
the glow of running equipment.<br />
Liverpool-based producers KEPLA and LING,<br />
both having released their respective debut<br />
EPs this year, EP and Attachment, kick the night<br />
off, scoring KARA BLAKE’s Timbre – a short that<br />
explores the intimacy of synaesthesia. Opening<br />
with swells of dark energy that punctuate<br />
the sound of skittering insects, a measured,<br />
dissonant piano part takes the dominant voice.<br />
Heavily degraded sample sources are reduced<br />
to a percolating bed of ambient noise which<br />
at times comes to resemble the flow of water.<br />
Timbre features tight shots of human activity<br />
in common urban settings with a consistent<br />
colour scheme. The warmth of the short is very<br />
much at odds with the cold and distant score.<br />
KARL ASTBURY (of Manchester band<br />
Nine Black Alps) ramps up the intensity by<br />
giving SAM WIEHL’s Fragment a pummelling<br />
soundtrack. The intermittent stop-start sounds<br />
of bubbling water create a feeling of unease,<br />
which only intensifies as layers of wind and<br />
hail clash. Cutting away to lo-fi strings that<br />
are reminiscent of Mica Levi’s haunting score<br />
for Under The Skin, we see monochrome 3D<br />
renderings of what appears to be a long<br />
abandoned wasp nest. Following Fragment,<br />
Kurokawa’s unfold is exhibited. In contrast<br />
to the indebted scorings, unfold becomes a<br />
more choreographed and precise experience<br />
– Hollywood ‘hit points’ and all. Presented in<br />
surround sound and making full use of the<br />
projection surface, unfold packs a punch!<br />
After the intermission, North Wales-based<br />
ANT DICKINSON scores SIMON FAITHFUL’s<br />
30km, which was filmed solely via weather<br />
balloon. A lone distress call starts the piece,<br />
fading away as our vantage point of the Earth<br />
gets further away from the ground. A single<br />
Video Jam (Lexi Sun / @Gieesio)<br />
violin note punctuates the suspenseful air<br />
of dancing delay effects. The piece reveals<br />
its breadth at a glacial pace. The distress<br />
call returns but this time feels more like<br />
DIZRAELI<br />
Wild Rossa And The ‘88 – Eno G<br />
Bam!Bam!Bam! @ Buyers Club<br />
There’s already a strong crowd gathered here<br />
in Buyers Club when the first act, ENO G, steps<br />
up to the stage. Eno is a masterful keyboard<br />
player who has his stylistic roots planted in the<br />
rich soils of disco and soul. His guitar player<br />
Dizraeli (Mike Sheerin / michaelsheerin.photoshelter.com)<br />
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44<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>July</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
The Chills (Georgia Flynn / georgiaflynn.com)<br />
adds some tight, funk-fuelled syncopation,<br />
bringing a clear sense of momentum to the set.<br />
The dynamics throughout seem to be a little<br />
lost; maybe Eno would be better suited to a full<br />
band affair. Despite the nit-picking though, it’s<br />
a strong, solid set that definitely warms up the<br />
venue’s growing crowd.<br />
Next up come WILD ROSSA AND THE ’88. It<br />
would be quite a feat to categorise this bunch:<br />
they have elements of folk, jazz, rock, blues<br />
and soul in their sound. First off, though, the<br />
searing vocals of Luke Papini soar across the<br />
room and reduce the crowd to silence. This is<br />
a heart-wrenchingly sincere show of emotion<br />
and, as the other band members eventually filter<br />
their way into the performance, we are stunned.<br />
The players onstage display absolute technical<br />
proficiency and their musicianship makes the<br />
set flow beautifully. Rossa And The ’88 leave an<br />
indelible stamp on the night as a whole.<br />
It’s been a little while since tonight’s<br />
headliner, DIZRAELI, has played in Liverpool.<br />
Last time he was here he was with his musical<br />
troupe The Small Gods, touring as a full band in<br />
support of their last single. Tonight’s show is a<br />
much more stripped-back, personal experience,<br />
however, and from the minute he steps on<br />
stage there exists a deep, engaging connection<br />
between him and the audience. The elaborate<br />
stage design is all of Dizraeli’s own making and it<br />
evokes something tribal and spiritual. Indeed, as<br />
he starts the show, he talks of his interpretation<br />
of the phrase ‘Attention is the natural prayer of<br />
the soul’ by Nicolas Malebranch and admits that,<br />
while he is far from religious, he can’t help but<br />
believe that we as humans are, in his words,<br />
fuckin’ holy.<br />
Then comes the music and the poetry. His<br />
guitar playing is flawlessly raw and he sings<br />
with such power and passion that the sound<br />
leaps from the bottom of his throat and his heart.<br />
There is simply no question about sincerity or<br />
integrity in this performance: Diz bears his soul<br />
with such naked, stark intensity that he seems<br />
to explode with energy throughout the set.<br />
There’s a relentless mix of music interspersed<br />
with poetry and stories. He plays through the<br />
tracks from his profound and vital new EP,<br />
Eat My Camera, and dedicates the powerful<br />
Cool And Calm to the sufferers in Calais and<br />
Palestine. He also plays other EP tracks such as<br />
the stirring Morning Light and the inspirational<br />
title piece Eat My Camera. The most moving<br />
spoken piece is his poem The Depths, which<br />
tackles homophobia and is taken from The<br />
Small Gods’ song of the same name. He also<br />
runs through a glut of various pieces, such as<br />
Maria, Reach Out and We Had A Song.<br />
By the end of the set we’re no longer a room<br />
full of strangers. Dizraeli’s new material puts<br />
emphasis on intimacy and paying attention to<br />
our surroundings in every respect. As he walks<br />
off stage, having experienced this together,<br />
we’re now a room full of friends.<br />
Christopher Carr<br />
THE CHILLS<br />
By The Sea<br />
Harvest Sun @ Philharmonic Music Room<br />
The Philharmonic Music Room seems the<br />
perfect settings for tonight’s gig. Tucked<br />
away and slightly hidden but beautiful<br />
and intricate, the venue reflects tonight’s<br />
headliners, THE CHILLS, perfectly. The New<br />
Zealand outfit are infamous for being key<br />
pioneers in the Dunedin scene, an indie pop<br />
scene characterised by its jangling guitars,<br />
minimal guitars and loose drumming. Despite<br />
any real commercial success the group have<br />
become somewhat of a cult classic, finding<br />
fans all over the world. This is the first time<br />
they have brought their group to the Mersey<br />
shores, with a line-up that’s quite different<br />
from their original one, drawing a more evenly<br />
mixed crowd of older and fresher faces than<br />
expected.<br />
bidolito.co.uk
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FRI 26th AUG<br />
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£19.50 | £17.50 conc<br />
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@Dawsonsmusic<br />
Dawsonsmusic
There seems no better a band to open up<br />
for the main act than the dreamy indie pop<br />
of Merseyside stalwarts BY THE SEA. Arriving<br />
on stage with their ever-present modesty,<br />
singer Liam Power quips, “Cheers for standing<br />
up”. But the lads are more than worthy of the<br />
standing audience. In the process of writing<br />
their third album the band have mastered<br />
their craft to a T, performing a tight and wellconsidered<br />
set. The hushed tones of singer<br />
Liam Power weave seamlessly with the dreamy<br />
sounds around him, as the audience watch on<br />
with silent respect. The real appeal of the band<br />
comes in the lack of ego and sheer talent with<br />
which they play. Serenading the audience with<br />
a selection of old songs as well as a handful<br />
of new, the local favourites seems to win a<br />
handful of new fans who may not have heard<br />
them before. The band slump off back into the<br />
shadows whilst still beating on in the crowd’s<br />
memory.<br />
With a magical set coming from the support<br />
and a small interlude, it’s time for the main<br />
act to take stage. There seems to be a gaping<br />
hole where fiddle and synth player Erica<br />
Scally should be, who we find out is back at<br />
the hotel extremely ill. This doesn’t seem to<br />
faze the remaining Chills too much though,<br />
as they start to slay through a set of classic<br />
songs alongside a handful of new ones. With<br />
a similar modesty to Powers, singer Martin<br />
Phillips introduces the set by saying, “Sorry<br />
it’s taken us 36 years to get here Liverpool<br />
but hopefully we’ll make up for that tonight.”<br />
What follows is an eclectic mix of material both<br />
new and old from a band who seem to all have<br />
very unique stage personae. By far the most<br />
interesting of these is drummer Todd Knudson,<br />
who looks far more like he’s playing in a metal<br />
group as he smashes away at his kit, throws<br />
sticks about with abandon and stands up to<br />
drum. By far and away the highlights of the set<br />
come in the form of new material Kaleidoscope<br />
World and Pink Frost. Though their music may<br />
not be quite what it used to be, the band play<br />
well and fulfil the audience’s dream of catching<br />
the fleeting chance to see this elusive group.<br />
Matthew Hogarth<br />
PERFUME ADVERT<br />
Best Available Technology – Ondness<br />
Deep Hedonia @ 24 Kitchen Street<br />
Brought together by cassette tape-friendly<br />
labels, such as 1080p, Seagrave and Where To<br />
Know?, Deep Hedonia’s line-up of underground<br />
house producers offers a glimpse of more<br />
diverse and experimental forms of the house<br />
genre. Unlike most house sets you are likely to<br />
see, improvisation is a large part of the ethos<br />
of this particular event.<br />
Opening to gestating pulses of muted<br />
dub-delay, Lisbon-born ONDNESS (Bruno<br />
Silva) navigates through a tension-filled,<br />
entirely melody-free set. Playing to an empty<br />
dancefloor, Silva is the one moving to the<br />
music the most, becoming the metronomic<br />
beacon for the room to follow. Favouring<br />
long, textural build-ups, the audience is most<br />
rewarded when Silva provides a rhythmic<br />
framework. Once the murky textures coalesce<br />
into a slinky hi-hat-driven, one-bar drum<br />
pattern, spectators on the fringes of the room<br />
start to show some movement. A few minutes<br />
into this pattern I couldn’t help but draw a line<br />
to James Brown’s most potent late 60s/early<br />
70s work. Specifically, how the relationship<br />
between simplicity and repetition forms the<br />
key to an effective groove – something that you<br />
never want to stop and can’t stop feeling when<br />
it’s gone. The line between monotonous and<br />
hypnotic is navigated expertly here, something<br />
the headlining act would later struggle with.<br />
BEST AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY’s set is well<br />
matched to the preceding one, joyfully chaotic,<br />
and at times disorienting, although still devoid<br />
of melody and anything resembling a human<br />
voice. BAT is Portland-based Kevin Palmer, a<br />
true experimentalist. The way he utilises his<br />
array of effects and samplers suggests a strong<br />
sense of control, despite how warped and<br />
lawless the result is. BAT could’ve delivered an<br />
equally masterful set with just a delay pedal<br />
and a Ham radio receiver. Often, the music<br />
seems to emanate from entirely different<br />
acoustic spaces, sometimes large industrial<br />
factories, a tiled bathroom or a stairwell.<br />
BAT’s ability to manipulate the perceived space<br />
seems to go beyond simply changing reverb<br />
settings. Instead, the music provides a portal<br />
to the pictures in your mind.<br />
Middleborough duo PERFUME ADVERT<br />
– finally coaxing a few attendees onto the<br />
dancefloor – settle into much more familiar<br />
rhythmic territory. Given how respectively<br />
dynamic and fragmented the preceding sets<br />
were, Perfume Advert sound frustratingly<br />
common. Staying put at 120bpm, they<br />
meander through uninspired house tropes.<br />
A shame considering the more nuanced,<br />
and exciting take on atmospheric house<br />
they demonstrate on their debut 2013 effort,<br />
Tulpa. The sequencing in the duo’s set does<br />
not provide any revelatory moments, nor<br />
does it attempt to explore any alternate<br />
sonic territory. The presence of harmonic<br />
development, memorable syncopation,<br />
melody, or any expressive lead voice is largely<br />
eschewed, leaving a void that not even the<br />
duo’s improvisatory inclinations can fill.<br />
Will McConnell<br />
SOUND MATTERS<br />
In this monthly column, our friends at DAWSONS give expert tips and advice on how to achieve a<br />
great sound in the studio or in the live environment. Armed with the knowledge to solve any musical<br />
problem, the techy aficionados provide Bido Lito! readers with the benefit of their experience so<br />
you can get the sound you want. Here, Dawsons’ keyboard connoisseur Harry Brown discusses the<br />
multitude of possibilities offered by the latest developments in keyboard technology.<br />
In a previous article I talked about keyboardbased<br />
instruments being among the most flexible UK and around the world, are frequently the most<br />
Dawsons Music, and many similar retailers in the<br />
instruments to perform and compose music on, due convenient way of experiencing a new instrument<br />
to their ability to play more than one part or line in the flesh when it's released onto the market. But<br />
simultaneously. For this article I'd like to introduce in the case of Artiphon's Instrument 1, you'll need to<br />
some alternative keyboard-based instruments to our be more patient. Unfortunately, this mould-breaking<br />
readers, because as technology has moved forwards instrument, only unveiled last year, is only available<br />
over the years, so too have the options available to to order from Artiphon's website. Hailed by Time<br />
keyboard players in terms of the instruments that their Magazine in its ‘Best Inventions of 2015’ list, it can be<br />
particular skillset could be used on.<br />
played horizontally like a keyboard, held sideways and<br />
Is a keyboard a keyboard if it doesn't have black strummed like a stringed instrument (guitar, mandolin,<br />
and white notes? Or, if it doesn't even actually have ukulele et al) or even bowed like a violin. It is still the<br />
separate ‘keys’, so to speak? The following products are highest-grossing musical instrument on Kickstarter<br />
good examples of instruments that many professional to date.<br />
musicians across the globe are employing to create Thanks to the implementation of technology with<br />
music in a different way than they have done previously. human creativity, putting this product across several<br />
The first example of such an instrument is closer different instrumental categories, in the hands of so<br />
to the conventional keyboard design than the others, many musicians from different backgrounds, it has the<br />
because it still has the traditional black and white potential to change the musical instrument market<br />
keys, but provides the musician with more flexibility landscape.<br />
in terms of movement and sonic creativity. Roland’s Be it a new idea being introduced to the marketplace<br />
AX-Synth is a 49-key, self-contained synthesiser, with or an older idea repurposed specifically towards the<br />
a powerful synthesis engine specifically designed with keyboard format, technology seems to reappear in<br />
melody, lead lines or solos in mind. It can be used in different forms as time goes on. A good example of this<br />
conjunction with a wireless system much in the same happening in a product is the Haken Audio Continuum<br />
way a guitar can, meaning you're free to move around Fingerboard, an XY-type controller previously seen in<br />
the stage as much as you like. The last time I saw one MIDI/DJ controllers laid out in a format most familiar<br />
of these used live was by Stevie Wonder when he to keyboard players. It has a touch-sensitive neoprene<br />
opened his landmark Glastonbury performance. What surface with over seven octaves’ worth of microtonal<br />
better endorsement or proof of these alternative kinds pitch control, much like the Seaboard. But, on top of<br />
of keyboards infiltrating the instrument market could this, it has another two dimensions of control in the<br />
you need?<br />
'Y' axis (front to back) and amount of pressure applied<br />
Article number two is the hugely successful and to the surface, which can be used to control any<br />
cutting-edge ROLI Seaboard. I must have seen 20 parameter of synth or even an effects unit if you wish.<br />
stunning videos of various talented musicians putting Seeing an increasing number of products that are<br />
this instrument through its paces since its commercial pushing the boundaries of what is considered to be<br />
release last year. The stand-out feature of the Seaboard a ‘keyboard instrument’ hitting the marketplace, it<br />
is the ability to play microtonally, ‘between’ the could be considered that the keyboard and therefore<br />
fixed pitches available on a conventional keyboard keyboard players are moving into a new era. A keyboard<br />
instrument. For most keys players, this feature will 2.0 phase, if you will. You have at your fingertips the<br />
previously have only been available to them via a capability, with these kinds of instruments, to produce<br />
‘pitch wheel’ controller on the side of the keyboard performances on a number of levels. Not just on a<br />
itself. But with the Seaboard the player can alter pitch musical level, but also sonically, adding levels of<br />
by simply moving their finger across the key toward expression perhaps previously untapped.<br />
the neighbouring key, either upwards or downwards.<br />
It also facilitates much more expressive vibrato, much You can find Dawsons at their new home at 14-16<br />
like that available on a stringed instrument.<br />
Williamson Square. dawsons.co.uk<br />
Gareth Arrowsmith
Liverpool<br />
Biennial<br />
<strong>2016</strong><br />
Saturday 9 <strong>July</strong> - Sunday 16 October<br />
Galleries 1, 2 & FACT Connects Space / Daily 11am – 6pm / FREE<br />
The UK’s biggest art festival comes to FACT, featuring work by<br />
Krzysztof Wodiczko, Lucy Beech and Yin-Ju Chen.<br />
fact.co.uk/biennial16 / #Biennial<strong>2016</strong><br />
Image: Lucy Beech, Pharmikon, <strong>2016</strong>. Image courtesy of the artist