Issue 70 / September 2016
September 2016 issue of Bido Lito! Featuring LIVERPOOL PSYCH FEST 2016 (inc. GURUGURU BRAIN, VR with Draw&Code and MARK GARDENER), JALEN N'GONDA, LAUREN LO SUNG, A.J.H.D. and much more.
September 2016 issue of Bido Lito! Featuring LIVERPOOL PSYCH FEST 2016 (inc. GURUGURU BRAIN, VR with Draw&Code and MARK GARDENER), JALEN N'GONDA, LAUREN LO SUNG, A.J.H.D. and much more.
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<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>70</strong><br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia by John Johnson<br />
PZYK <strong>2016</strong><br />
Guruguru Brain<br />
Mark Gardener<br />
Jalen N'Gonda<br />
Lauren Lo Sung<br />
Animal Collective
THU 25 AUG 7.30pm · 16+<br />
KANO<br />
MON 29 AUG 6pm<br />
PETE ROCK<br />
& CL SMOOTH<br />
TUE 6 SEPT 7pm<br />
BROKEN BRASS<br />
ENSEMBLE<br />
+ THE BLOWBACK HORNS<br />
+ THE SOUL RAYS<br />
THU 8 SEPT 7pm<br />
ELEANOR<br />
FRIEDBURGER<br />
SUN 11 SEPT 7.30pm<br />
SPEAR OF<br />
DESTINY<br />
THU 15 SEPT 7pm<br />
THE SHERLOCKS<br />
SAT 17 SEPT 7pm<br />
MOON HOOCH<br />
+ HALEM<br />
(RESCHEDULED FROM 31 MAY.<br />
ALL TICKETS REMAIN VALID)<br />
SUN 18 SEPT 7pm<br />
THE LOTTERY<br />
WINNERS<br />
WED 21 SEPT 7pm<br />
SUNDARA<br />
KARMA<br />
FRI 23 SEPT 7pm<br />
WESTERMAN<br />
SUN 25 SEPT 7pm<br />
KING NO-ONE<br />
MON 26 SEPT 7pm<br />
THE MAGIC GANG<br />
WED 28 SEPT 7pm<br />
JAKE<br />
QUICKENDEN<br />
+ BAILEY McCONNELL<br />
+ LAUREN PLATT<br />
WED 28 SEPT 7pm<br />
THE HUNNA<br />
SAT 1 OCT 7pm<br />
ELVANA:<br />
THE WORLD’S FINEST<br />
ELVIS FRONTED TRIBUTE<br />
TO NIRVANA<br />
MON 3 OCT 7pm<br />
AKALA<br />
10 YEARS OF<br />
AKALA TOUR<br />
WED 5 OCT 7.30pm<br />
NE OBLIVISCARIS<br />
+ OCEANS OF SLUMBER<br />
THU 6 OCT 7pm<br />
STEVE MASON<br />
SAT 8 OCT 12pm<br />
LIVERPOOL<br />
SOULFEST<br />
FRI 14 OCT 7pm<br />
WARD THOMAS<br />
MON 17 OCT 7pm<br />
BLACK FOXXES<br />
TUE 18 OCT 7pm<br />
MØ<br />
WED 19 OCT 7pm<br />
WE ARE SCIENTISTS<br />
FRI 21 OCT 6.30pm<br />
LISA HANNIGAN<br />
+ HEATHER WOODS<br />
SAT 22 OCT 7pm<br />
THE HUMMINGBIRDS<br />
SAT 29 OCT 7pm<br />
CLEAN CUT KID<br />
TUE 1 NOV 7pm<br />
GOGO PENGUIN<br />
FRI 4 NOV 7pm<br />
HIGH TYDE<br />
THU 10 NOV 7pm<br />
THE MEN THAT WILL<br />
NOT BE BLAMED<br />
FOR NOTHING<br />
FRI 17 NOV 7pm<br />
WADE BOWEN<br />
FRI 18 NOV 7.30pm<br />
THE VAPORS<br />
THU 24 NOV 7pm<br />
BY THE RIVERS/<br />
WILL & THE PEOPLE<br />
FRI 25 NOV 7pm<br />
NICK HARPER & THE<br />
WILDERNESS KIDS<br />
SAT 26 NOV 7pm<br />
WHITE LIES<br />
MON 28 NOV 7pm<br />
MOTORHEADACHE<br />
(A TRIBUTE TO LEMMY)<br />
FRI 2 DEC 7pm<br />
EMMY THE GREAT<br />
SAT 3 DEC 7pm<br />
IAN PROWSE<br />
& AMSTERDAM<br />
+ THE SUMS (DIGSY)<br />
+ KYLE CROSBY<br />
FRI 9 DEC 6.30pm<br />
GALACTIC EMPIRE<br />
SAT 10 DEC 7pm<br />
UNCLE ACID<br />
FRI 16 DEC 7pm<br />
THE MOUSE OUTFIT<br />
SAT 21 JAN 4.30pm<br />
THE FALL<br />
WITH HOOKWORMS,<br />
KAGOULE & LOADS MORE<br />
TICKETS FOR ALL SHOWS ARE AVAILABLE FROM TICKETWEB.CO.UK<br />
90<br />
SEEL STREET, LIVERPOOL, L1 4BH
— september listings —<br />
Folklore<br />
Acoustic Sessions:<br />
Open Mic Night<br />
8—11:30pm | Free<br />
Wed’s 14 / 28 Sept<br />
Common People:<br />
Indie, rock, grunge<br />
punk anthems<br />
10pm—3am | £3<br />
Tues 20 Sept (weekly)<br />
Tim<br />
Burgess<br />
DJ Set<br />
(The Charlatans)<br />
9pm—3am | Free<br />
Fri 23 Sept<br />
2—4—1 burgers<br />
every Tuesday<br />
Resident DJs all<br />
weekend in the bar<br />
15 Slater Street Liverpool L1 4BW<br />
phone: 0151 <strong>70</strong>9 6901 email: info@theshippingforecastliverpool.com<br />
web: theshippingforecastliverpool.com @sHip _ Cast shipping.forecast ship.forecast
FRI 23 SEP<br />
WHP16 LAUNCH PARTY<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
M.I.A.<br />
MURA MASA<br />
DAVID RODIGAN<br />
SECTION BOYZ<br />
GOLDLINK<br />
JUNGLE DJ SET<br />
NOVELIST<br />
SG LEWIS DJ SET<br />
SIAN ANDERSON<br />
JOSEY REBELLE<br />
MADAM X<br />
WILL TRAMP<br />
NOW WAVE DJS<br />
21:00 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | £29.50<br />
SAT 24 SEP<br />
WELCOME TO THE WAREHOUSE<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
ADAM BEYER<br />
JOSEPH CAPRIATI<br />
EATS EVERYTHING<br />
BEN UFO<br />
SAN PROPER<br />
FATIMA YAMAHA LIVE<br />
MATTHEW DEAR<br />
JASPER JAMES<br />
MOXIE<br />
KRYSKO & GREG LORD<br />
ZUTEKH DJS<br />
LAUREN LO SUNG<br />
HACKETT<br />
18:00 – 05:00| STORE STREET | £29.50<br />
WED 28 SEP<br />
MODERAT AT THE ALBERT HALL<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
MODERAT<br />
LONE<br />
NOW WAVE DJS<br />
19:30 – 23:00 | THE ALBERT HALL | SOLD OUT<br />
FRI 30 SEP<br />
BUGGED OUT!<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
DUSKY LIVE<br />
JACKMASTER B2B JOY ORBISON<br />
DANIEL AVERY<br />
JEREMY UNDERGROUND<br />
JIMMY EDGAR<br />
PAUL WOOLFORD<br />
ARTWORK<br />
AVALON EMERSON<br />
MELLA DEE<br />
LEMMY ASHTON<br />
HOLLY LESTER<br />
21:30 – 05:00| STORE STREET | £28.50<br />
SAT 01 OCT<br />
SKEPTA<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
SKEPTA<br />
GIGGS<br />
CASISDEAD<br />
ZOMBY<br />
FRISCO<br />
PLASTICIAN<br />
MAXIMUM<br />
MUMDANCE<br />
MURLO<br />
RICH REASON<br />
JONNY DUB<br />
21:30 – 04:30 | STORE STREET | £29.50 / £35.00<br />
FRI 07 OCT<br />
WHP & RELENTLESS PRESENT<br />
THE METROPOLIS BIRTHDAY<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
ANDY C w/ TONN PIPER<br />
LETHAL BIZZLE<br />
TQD (Royal T, DJ Q, Flava D)<br />
DIGITAL MYSTIKZ: MALA & COKI<br />
YUNGEN<br />
DELTA HEAVY<br />
CULTURE SHOCK<br />
MJ COLE<br />
CHAMPION<br />
BARELY LEGAL<br />
MURLO<br />
NORTH BASE<br />
RICH REASON<br />
21.30 – 05.00 | STORE STREET | £29.50<br />
SAT 08 OCT<br />
YOUSEF PRESENTS... CIRCUS<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
THE MARTINEZ BROTHERS | LOCO DICE<br />
STEVE LAWLER<br />
YOUSEF<br />
B.TRAITS<br />
SOLARDO<br />
ACID MONDAYS<br />
LEWIS BOARDMAN<br />
CIRCUS RECORDINGS PRESENTS<br />
DAVID GLASS<br />
THEO KOTTIS<br />
KI CREIGHTON<br />
18:00 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
THU 13 OCT<br />
GORGON CITY — KINGDOM<br />
LIVE AT THE WAREHOUSE PROJECT<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
GORGON CITY LIVE<br />
PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS<br />
CLAPTONE<br />
DISCIPLES<br />
KIDNAP KID<br />
NVOY<br />
ELDERBROOK<br />
21.00 – 02.00| STORE STREET | £19.50<br />
FRI 14 OCT<br />
WHAT HANNAH WANTS<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
HANNAH WANTS<br />
MY NU LENG<br />
REDLIGHT<br />
SONNY FODERA<br />
MONKI<br />
SAM DIVINE<br />
MAK & PASTEMAN<br />
BRAM FIDDER<br />
TOM SHORTERZ<br />
ELLIE COCKS<br />
JACK SWIFT<br />
DEVSTAR<br />
21:30 – 05:00| STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
SAT 15 OCT<br />
PARADISE<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
JAMIE JONES<br />
DUBFIRE<br />
MATHEW JONSON LIVE<br />
PATRICK TOPPING b2b RICHY AHMED<br />
CATZ ’N DOGZ<br />
GUTI LIVE<br />
wAFF<br />
LUCA CAZAL<br />
JEY KURMIS<br />
18:00 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
THU 20 OCT<br />
RAM JAM FOUNDATION SESSIONS<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
DJ EZ<br />
DAVID RODIGAN<br />
GOLDIE: INFLUENCES<br />
DJ MARKY w/ MC GQ<br />
ZINC w/ MC TIPPA<br />
SPECIAL REQUEST<br />
RANDALL w/ MC GQ<br />
CHIMPO<br />
BANE<br />
RICH REASON<br />
VENUM SOUND<br />
21:30 – 03:30| STORE STREET | £25.00 / £28.50<br />
FRI 21 OCT<br />
HEIDI PRESENTS THE JACKATHON<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
LAURENT GARNIER<br />
BLACK COFFEE<br />
HEIDI<br />
THE BLACK MADONNA<br />
JOB JOBSE<br />
JASPER JAMES<br />
MIKE SERVITO<br />
MOXIE<br />
GREG LORD<br />
ZUTEKH DJS<br />
21:30 – 06:00 | STORE STREET | £29.50<br />
SAT 22 OCT<br />
WHP & FOUR TET PRESENT<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
NINA KRAVIZ<br />
FOUR TET<br />
FLOATING POINTS LIVE<br />
BEN UFO<br />
THE BLACK MADONNA<br />
LEON VYNEHALL<br />
AVALON EMERSON<br />
KAITLYN AURELIA SMITH<br />
EAT YOUR OWN EARS DJS<br />
NOW WAVE DJS<br />
21:00 – 04:30 | STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
THU 27 OCT<br />
KURUPT FM PRESENTS<br />
CHAMPAGNE STEAM ROOMS<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
KURUPT FM<br />
BIG NARSTIE<br />
MY NU LENG b2b ONEMAN<br />
TODDLA T<br />
MIKE SKINNER & MURKAGE<br />
PRESENTS TONGA<br />
P MONEY<br />
GENERAL LEVY<br />
AJ TRACEY<br />
CASISDEAD<br />
SLIMZEE<br />
WOOKIE<br />
BARELY LEGAL<br />
STRIPES RECORDS TAKEOVER<br />
KLOSE ONE<br />
MYSTRY<br />
TRUE TIGER<br />
SUKH KNIGHT<br />
MONKEY WRENCH<br />
CHUNKY<br />
21:30 – 04:00 | STORE STREET | £22.50 / £25.00<br />
FRI 28 OCT<br />
NINJA TUNE<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
BONOBO DJ SET<br />
JON HOPKINS DJ SET<br />
GILLES PETERSON<br />
ROMARE DJ SET<br />
MARIBOU STATE DJ SET<br />
LONE<br />
SOULECTION<br />
PRESENTS THE SOUND OF TOMORROW<br />
FAKEARLIVE<br />
THROWING SHADE DJ SET<br />
JON K<br />
NOW WAVE DJS<br />
PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS<br />
MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED<br />
21:30 – 04:30 | STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
SAT 29 OCT<br />
ELROW<br />
DAY & NIGHT<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
EATS EVERYTHING<br />
PAN-POT<br />
SKREAM<br />
SOLARDO<br />
TONI VARGA<br />
MARC MAYA<br />
BASTIAN BUX<br />
ROBERT JAMES<br />
LUKAS<br />
ADAM SHELTON<br />
TOM CRAVEN<br />
KRYSKO<br />
14.00 – 02.00 | STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
WED 02 NOV<br />
DJ SHADOW<br />
AT OLD GRANADA STUDIOS<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
DJ SHADOW<br />
THE MOUNTAIN WILL FALL<br />
PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS<br />
BONDAX & LAPALUX<br />
NOW WAVE DJS<br />
19:30 – 00:00 | OLD GRANADA STUDIOS | £19.50<br />
FRI 04 NOV<br />
MK AREA 10<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
MK<br />
KENNY DOPE<br />
SHADOW CHILD<br />
DANNY HOWARD<br />
A*M*E<br />
DOORLY<br />
TCTS<br />
JAX JONES<br />
KC LIGHTS<br />
SIAN BENNETT<br />
LEE DRAKE<br />
21:30 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | £29.50 / £35.00
SAT 05 NOV<br />
JACKMASTER & NUMBERS<br />
PRESENT MASTERMIX<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
RICARDO VILLALOBOS<br />
b2b SETH TROXLER<br />
MARCEL DETTMANN<br />
JACKMASTER<br />
BICEP<br />
GERD JANSON<br />
LEON VYNEHALL b2b RYAN ELLIOTT<br />
DENIS SULTA<br />
SPENCER<br />
KRYSKO<br />
18:00 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
FRI 11 NOV<br />
THE APE BIRTHDAY<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
DANNY BROWN<br />
WILEY<br />
SECTION BOYZ<br />
CLAMS CASINO<br />
BENJI B<br />
PREDITAH<br />
ONEMAN<br />
D:BRIDGE<br />
WOOKIE<br />
AMY BECKER<br />
BANE<br />
CHUNKY<br />
RICH REASON<br />
JUICY DJS<br />
21:30 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | £29.50<br />
11 NOV<br />
KNEE DEEP IN MANCHESTER<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
HOT SINCE 82<br />
STEVE LAWLER<br />
CRISTOPH<br />
22:30 – 05:00 | THE ALBERT HALL | £25.00 / £28.50<br />
SAT 12 NOV<br />
ADAM BEYER PRESENTS DRUMCODE<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
ADAM BEYER<br />
GREEN VELVET<br />
SCUBA<br />
ALAN FITZPATRICK<br />
IDA ENGBERG<br />
DENSE & PIKA<br />
NICK CURLY<br />
JULIA GOVOR<br />
GREG LORD<br />
ANTON FITZ<br />
18:00 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
SAT 12 NOV<br />
CHANCE THE RAPPER<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
CHANCE THE RAPPER<br />
SAMM HENSHAW<br />
JAY PRINCE<br />
19:00 – 23:00 | SOLD OUT<br />
FRI 18 NOV<br />
CURATED BY FLUME<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
FLUME<br />
JULIO BASHMORE<br />
TOURIST LIVE<br />
BONZAI LIVE<br />
SG LEWIS LIVE<br />
MOXIE<br />
MSSINGNO<br />
KRYSTAL KLEAR<br />
JON K<br />
NOW WAVE DJS<br />
WILL TRAMP<br />
20:00 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
SAT 19 NOV<br />
CHANCE THE RAPPER<br />
AT MANCHESTER ACADEMY<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
CHANCE THE RAPPER<br />
JAY PRINCE<br />
SAMM HENSHAW<br />
19:00 – 23:00 | MANCHESTER ACADEMY | SOLD OUT<br />
SAT 19 NOV<br />
CIRCOLOCO<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
DIXON<br />
APOLLONIA<br />
(DYED SOUNDOROM, SHONKY & DAN GHENACIA)<br />
NICOLE MOUDABER<br />
DAMIAN LAZARUS<br />
WILLIAM DJOKO<br />
BORIS WERNER<br />
KRYSKO<br />
PIRATE COPY<br />
PETE ZORBA<br />
ADAM ROSS<br />
PLUS MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED<br />
18:00 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | £19.50 / £35.00<br />
FRI 25 NOV<br />
ABOVE & BEYOND<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
ROOM 1<br />
ABOVE & BEYOND<br />
JEROME ISMA-AE<br />
OLIVER SMITH<br />
UNIVERSAL SOLUTION<br />
ROOM 2 — ANJUNADEEP<br />
WAY OUT WEST LIVE<br />
CUBICOLOR<br />
MARTIN ROTH<br />
DOM DONNELLY<br />
21:30 – 04:30 | STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
SAT 26 NOV<br />
MOSAIC<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
MACEO PLEX<br />
TALE OF US<br />
MANO LE TOUGH<br />
ROMAN FLUGEL<br />
TREVINO<br />
OR:LA<br />
KRYSKO<br />
GREG LORD<br />
PLUS SPECIAL GUEST<br />
CARL CRAIG<br />
20:00 – 05:30 | STORE STREET | £29.50 / £35.00<br />
SAT 26 NOV<br />
AUTECHRE LIVE<br />
AT OLD GRANADA STUDIOS<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
AUTECHRE LIVE<br />
LEE GAMBLE LIVE<br />
RUSSELL HASWEL LIVE<br />
ANDY MADDOCKS LIVE<br />
21:30 – 02:00 | OLD GRANADA STUDIOS | £16.50<br />
FRI 02 DEC<br />
ANTS<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
GROOVE ARMADA DJ SET<br />
JORIS VOORN<br />
KÖLSCH DJ SET<br />
ANDREA OLIVA<br />
WAZE & ODYSSEY<br />
ELI & FUR<br />
FRANCISCO ALLENDES<br />
LAUREN LO SUNG<br />
KRYSKO<br />
AUSTEN / SCOTT<br />
21:30 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | £29.50 / £35.00<br />
SAT 03 DEC<br />
DJ EZ<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
DJ EZ<br />
TQD (ROYAL T, DJ Q, FLAVA D)<br />
MISTAJAM<br />
SPECIAL REQUEST<br />
AJ TRACEY<br />
BARELY LEGAL<br />
JAMZ SUPERNOVA<br />
SIAN ANDERSON<br />
GOTSOME<br />
RICH REASON<br />
PLUS MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED<br />
21:30 – 04:30 | STORE STREET | £29.50 / £35.00<br />
FRI 09 DEC<br />
OLIVER HELDENS PRESENTS<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
OLIVER HELDENS<br />
BLONDE DJ SET<br />
CHOCOLATE PUMA<br />
CHRIS LORENZO<br />
LOW STEPPA<br />
THROTTLE<br />
SAM GRAHAM<br />
FONO PRESENTS FOR THE FUTURE<br />
FONO<br />
KARMA KID<br />
KIWI<br />
JOE HERTZ<br />
PAN:INC<br />
21:30 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | £29.50 / £35.00<br />
SAT 10 DEC<br />
FEEL MY BICEP<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
JEFF MILLS<br />
RØDHÅD<br />
BICEP<br />
MOTOR CITY DRUM ENSEMBLE<br />
JOY ORBISON<br />
MIDLAND<br />
LEON VYNEHALL<br />
HAMMER<br />
BRASSICA LIVE<br />
OR:LA<br />
SWOOSE & CROMBY<br />
HOLLY LESTER<br />
18:00 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
SAT 10 DEC<br />
FATBOY SLIM AT THE ALBERT HALL<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
FATBOY SLIM<br />
SHADOW CHILD<br />
SOLARDO<br />
SAM GRAHAM<br />
22:30 – 04:00 | THE ALBERT HALL | SOLD OUT<br />
THU 15 DEC<br />
LVL25: LEVELZ 3RD BIRTHDAY<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
LEVELZ LIVE<br />
FEATURING: BIOME / BLACK JOSH<br />
BRICKS / CHIMPO / CHUNKY / FOX<br />
JONNY DUB / METRODOME<br />
RICH REASON / SKITTLES / SPARKZ<br />
T-MAN / TRUTHOS MUFASA<br />
DUB PHIZIX, STRATEGY & DRS<br />
ZED BIAS w/ TRIGGA<br />
CHILDREN OF ZEUS<br />
CRITICAL SOUND:<br />
IVY LAB / KASRA / SAM BINGA<br />
EMPEROR / HYROGLIFICS<br />
PLUS SPECIAL GUEST<br />
ALIX PEREZ<br />
HIT & RUN vs DUB SMUGGLERS<br />
DUB SMUGGLERS DJ SET<br />
K1 + SLAY<br />
BURST GANG<br />
CUL DE SAC<br />
RED-EYE HIFI + FREE WIZE<br />
MEN + MORE<br />
HYPHO b2b X27<br />
KYDRO + DEEPO<br />
21:30 – 04:00 | STORE STREET | £15<br />
FRI 16 DEC<br />
WHP VS THE HYDRA<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
RICHIE HAWTIN<br />
BEN KLOCK<br />
BEN UFO<br />
ANDREW WEATHERALL<br />
DANIEL AVERY<br />
OBJEKT<br />
SHANTI CELESTE<br />
JAY CLARKE<br />
DOLAN BERGIN<br />
SHENODA<br />
TASHA (NEIGHBOURHOOD)<br />
MEANS & 3RD b2b KERRIE<br />
19:30 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | £29.50 / £35.00<br />
TUE 27 DEC<br />
TUSKEGEE<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
ROOM 1<br />
SETH TROXLER & THE MARTINEZ<br />
BROTHERS<br />
BAS IBELLINI<br />
ROOM 2<br />
RICHY AHMED<br />
KRYSKO<br />
21:30 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | £29.50<br />
FRI 30 DEC<br />
CARL COX & FRIENDS<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
CARL COX<br />
NIC FANCIULLI<br />
PATRICK TOPPING<br />
JON RUNDELL<br />
LAUREN LO SUNG<br />
ELLIOT ADAMSON<br />
GREG LORD<br />
ABODE<br />
21:30 – 05:00 | STORE STREET | SOLD OUT<br />
SAT 31 DEC<br />
WHP & RELENTLESS PRESENT<br />
NYE AT THE WAREHOUSE PROJECT<br />
——————————————————————————————————————<br />
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Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
7<br />
Bido Lito!<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> Seventy / <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
bidolito.co.uk<br />
12 Jordan Street<br />
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Christopher Torpey - chris@bidolito.co.uk<br />
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Philip Morris - live@bidolito.co.uk<br />
STRUGGLING FOR REALITY<br />
Editorial<br />
Streams. Feeds. Updates. A conveyor belt of information passes before our eyes each minute, shaped by algorithms that crunch the stats on our<br />
previous clicks, likes and shares to determine what we’re more likely to want to see. But does it mean we’re getting to see what we want? Are we<br />
allowing meaningful content to slip through our net, to be replaced by soft, rehashed versions of things we’ve already identified with? Have you<br />
ever thought about how the algorithms actually work, and what we’re missing out on?<br />
Before you start inwardly groaning that this is going to be another ‘corporate stitch-up’ gripe about brainwashing and ‘the man’ controlling what<br />
the sheeple consume, it ain’t – there are far too many of those paranoid concerns clogging up Facebook already. But it does help to take a couple<br />
of steps back from our online world and think of the careful selections we all make, involuntarily at times, about what news we are exposed to.<br />
During the last General Election and the EU referendum debate, my own personal social media echo chamber would have me believe that what<br />
I was voting for (a Labour victory and an EU remain vote, if you must know) was going to be an outright certainty. If there’s anything I’ve learned<br />
from the shock of how wrong my carefully selected world of commentators was, it’s that we all need to expand our net of wisdom much wider,<br />
and expose ourselves to those views that we may not necessarily agree with. That doesn’t mean following the BNP on Facebook, but it does mean<br />
occasionally reading opinion pieces from The Telegraph, or, heaven forbid, actually talking to people. How are we to understand – and thereby<br />
defeat – the arguments of those we wish to convince if we’re starting from a point of aloofness about what they believe in the first place?<br />
Katharine Viner’s brilliant Guardian article, How Technology Disrupted The Truth, considered this neatly. As well as being a lament about our<br />
post-truth society, it analysed the ‘filter bubble’ of the web – that our choices reinforce what the web selects us to see, meaning that we’re less<br />
likely to be exposed to facts and articles and opinions that challenge our worldview – which restricts our ability to develop a more rounded outlook.<br />
The sentence near the end of her conclusion on the matter, which ranged on to the merits of responsible journalism vs “churnalism”, threw up a<br />
prescient point about the nature of content in our easy access world: “My belief is that what distinguishes good journalism from poor journalism<br />
is labour: the journalism that people value the most is that for which they can tell someone has put in a lot of work – where they can feel the effort<br />
that has been expended on their behalf, over tasks big or small, important or entertaining.”<br />
Often, when I’m in need of a reality check, I find it handy to read some work by sci-fi author (or ‘fictionalising philosopher’ as he called himself)<br />
Philip K. Dick. For PKD, reality was a bubble – a bubble to be considered at some remove, prodded and intellectually interrogated. Riven with<br />
paranoia that almost certainly stemmed from his excessive drug use, the worlds Dick constructed were certainly dystopian, but he had a unique<br />
talent for challenging the notion of reality, or what we perceive to be real. This phildickian mindset looms large over popular culture even now,<br />
especially in Hollywood. The dystopian ethos he brought to modern sci-fi films gave the genre its dark, smart, despairing tenor. And you know<br />
more of his work than you think, too: Blade Runner, Paycheck, The Adjustment Bureau, Impostor, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall and Minority Report<br />
are all adapted from PKD’s novels and short stories. The same goes for the hit Amazon TV series The Man In The High Castle – and you could even<br />
argue that The Truman Show, Vanilla Sky, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and even the first Matrix film all owe a debt of gratitude to PKD’s<br />
world-questioning outlook.<br />
It just so happens that, one innocuous Sunday evening, Facebook’s algorithm threw up an article about Philip K. Dick that immediately caught<br />
my attention. There was a passage in there – a quote from PKD himself from some time in the <strong>70</strong>s – that felt remarkably apt: “Today we live in a<br />
society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups…<br />
So I ask, in my writing, ‘What is real?’ Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people<br />
using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing<br />
power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”<br />
To obsess about chemtrails and false flags is to be a conspiracy theorist; to question yourself, and the things around you, is a responsibility we<br />
all have.<br />
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Words<br />
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8<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
P Z Y K<br />
<strong>2016</strong><br />
Words: Richard Lewis<br />
Festival photography: Keith Ainsworth / arkimages.co.uk<br />
bidolito.co.uk
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
9<br />
Super Furry Animals<br />
Flamingods<br />
eturning for its fifth consecutive edition, LIVERPOOL<br />
INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF PSYCHEDELIA continues<br />
to swell and multiply each year. Boasting two<br />
headliners that, simply put, surpass anything that similarlysized<br />
boutique festivals have on offer, Liverpool Psych Fest<br />
showcases a stunning collection of supporting psych acts and<br />
a dazzling selection of additional events that complement the<br />
main music programme across the two days. Held in the Baltic<br />
Triangle’s former industrial heartlands of Camp and Furnace and<br />
District, the souls of those congregated inside will reverberate<br />
to guitar drones, krautrock rhythms, dream pop melodies and<br />
everything in between.<br />
Friday night’s assembly of scintillating acts is capped with an<br />
appearance by iconic Welsh trailblazers SUPER FURRY ANIMALS.<br />
A band who have inspired scores of groups over the course of<br />
their 20-year history, including many on this year’s line-up, the<br />
Furries’ amalgam of krautrock rhythms, psych folk melodies and<br />
sonic experimentation bound up in a hallucinogenic spirit entirely<br />
their own, has flowered with each succeeding release. With a ninealbum<br />
back catalogue to draw from, since their reformation last<br />
year the band have picked up where they left off, rubber-stamping<br />
their reputation as one of the best live acts these Isles have<br />
produced over the past few decades.<br />
Saturday night sees a group who barely need any introduction<br />
to psych fans bring proceedings to a close on the main stage, as<br />
Southend psych/krautrock harbingers THE HORRORS headline.<br />
Since their emergence in 2007 the band have developed their<br />
garage rock template to blossom into a fully-fledged shoegaze/<br />
dreampop outfit, amassing increasing praise as their career<br />
has progressed. A firm favourite on Merseyside with legendary<br />
shows across the city to their name, the group are a sparkling live<br />
proposition. On record the quintet’s most recent LP, Lumious, in<br />
tandem with previous records Skying and Primary Colours, won<br />
universal critical acclaim and saw the group’s profile increase<br />
worldwide.<br />
Shining a light on legendary underground psych stalwarts<br />
is another feature of this year’s Psych Fest. One of the loudest,<br />
not to mention prolific, bands in existence, Japanese ear-drum<br />
manglers ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE showcase the harder-hitting<br />
end of the psych spectrum as their colossal 20-minute plus space<br />
rock jams unfurl in mesmeric style. Fully revived and soaking<br />
up long-overdue acclaim are Liverpool’s very own psychedelic<br />
progenitors THE STAIRS, who make their Psych Fest debut this<br />
year. While frontman Edgar ‘Summertyme’ Jones is no stranger<br />
to the festival, having played at 2012’s inaugural event, this will<br />
be the trio’s first Liverpool date following their hugely acclaimed<br />
sold-out show at the legendary Kazimier late last year. Looking<br />
across to Scandinavia, Swedish cult heroes DUNGEN have become<br />
revered for their unique mixture of prog, psych and garage rock<br />
The Horrors<br />
over the past decade and a half,<br />
slowly emerging into the mainstream with each album release.<br />
Switching focus to the newest harbingers of the psych style,<br />
Brighton-based garage quartet THE WYTCHES have become firm<br />
favourites on Merseyside with a clutch of highly praised shows<br />
on these shores over the past four years. The band’s anticipated<br />
second LP, All Your Happy Life, is due for unveiling at the end of<br />
<strong>September</strong>, with PZYK patrons in store for a pre-release airing of<br />
tracks from it. A labelmate of the band on storied indie set-up<br />
Heavenly is Welsh psych pop artist GWENNO. Formerly a member<br />
of pop art band The Pipettes, the singer’s debut LP Y Dydd Olaf<br />
was released to huge acclaim last year for its melodic dreampopinfluenced<br />
tunes. Described as “one of the most experimental<br />
psychedelic bands in existence”, FLAMINGODS were founded in<br />
their native Bahrain and are now based between there and the<br />
UK, and have a beguiling, innovative sound that showcases their<br />
borderless aesthetic.<br />
Turning to focus on two unfairly overlooked psych pioneers:<br />
NYC-based collective THE VELDT have re-emerged with their<br />
idiosyncratic take on psychedelia that owes as much to Otis<br />
Redding as My Bloody Valentine, with new material from the band<br />
imminent. Referenced as a major influence on Oneohtrix Point<br />
Never, meanwhile, German psych/prog groundbreaker HARALD<br />
GROSSKOPF was the first drummer and percussionist in the<br />
world of electronic music to accompany electronically-generated<br />
melodies on drums.<br />
A superior raft of crate-diggers are slated for appearances this<br />
year, with DJs including hugely revered BBC Radio 6 Music stalwart<br />
MARC RILEY, who returns to the festival. Making his debut on the<br />
ones and twos for Psych Fest is six-time World Snooker Champion<br />
turned respected DJ and prog/psych authority STEVE DAVIS – THE<br />
INTERESTING ALTERNATIVE.<br />
Elsewhere, a portion of the festival that grows year on year,<br />
the wider programme of collaborations and showcases at Psych<br />
Fest held throughout the performance spaces in the labyrinthine<br />
Camp and Furnace are events in themselves. Again underlining<br />
the ‘International’ focus of the festival’s outlook, Tokyo-based<br />
label GURUGURU BRAIN will be presenting NARROW ROAD TO<br />
THE DEEP MIND at this year’s<br />
event (more on that on page 10). The highly influential<br />
French underground label La Souterraine – who have been<br />
uncovering the cutting edge of French pop since 2013 via a<br />
series of compilations – present FÊTE SOUTERRAINE, which<br />
features AQUAGASCALLO, ARLT and the Quietus-approved<br />
kraut outfit FRANCE. Featuring Mark Gardener, the lead<br />
singer of shoegaze legends Ride, international space rock<br />
collective PURE PHASE ENSEMBLE have a revolving annual<br />
line-up, bringing together a wide range of collaborators from<br />
the psych underworld: you can read more about the first-ever UK<br />
performance of this stunning project on page 14.<br />
A brand new addition to the festival for <strong>2016</strong> is PZYK COLONY, a<br />
360-degree immersive audiovisual installation which takes place<br />
in the Camp performance space from midnight on each evening<br />
of the festival, transforming the room into a trance den/live space<br />
that plays host to some of the event’s most eagerly-anticipated<br />
sets. Led by Tim Gane of psych pop ensemble Stereolab, drone<br />
rock collective THE CAVERN OF ANTI-MATTER feature alongside<br />
hard-hitting psych fest alumni THE OSCILLATION, dark ambient<br />
pairing DEMDIKE STARE and legendary US electronic pioneers<br />
SILVER APPLES.<br />
Continuing the event’s series of art installations, <strong>2016</strong> sees the<br />
development of a major new series of three virtual reality artworks,<br />
reflecting the ongoing discussion of VR as a potent new cultural<br />
force. The first of these, PERAMBULATOR V.1, will bring together<br />
the singular, off-kilter madness of long-time Super Furry Animals<br />
illustrator and designer PETE FOWLER, brought to life in harness<br />
with Liverpool creative agency Draw&Code. Promising to be a<br />
mind-warping excursion into a wonderfully off-beam netherworld,<br />
the piece will be soundtracked by SFA guitarist Huw Bunford.<br />
Alongside all of the above are returning features including the<br />
record shop, where all of the featured acts plus the latest psych<br />
compilations will be on sale, as well as the consistently fascinating<br />
MUSINGS IN DRONE spoken-word programme. A new hook-up<br />
with FACT for the PSYCHEDELIA IN FILM season, meanwhile, sees<br />
a clutch of lysergic celluloid being exhibited at the organisation’s<br />
Wood Street premises each Wednesday in the run-up to the event.<br />
FACT will also be curating the on-site PZYK Cinema programme<br />
this year, a zone in/zone out area that’s become a vastly popular<br />
addition amid all the cosmic goings on.<br />
A breathtaking selection of audio visual delights await – all<br />
that’s required now is your presence, and the open invitation is<br />
right in front of you. Come join the PZYK Colony.<br />
Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia takes place at<br />
Camp and Furnace, Blade Factory and DISTRICT on 23rd and<br />
24th <strong>September</strong>. Full line-up and ticket details can be found at<br />
liverpoolpsychfest.com.<br />
bidolito.co.uk
Guruguru Brain Melt<br />
MISSIVES FROM THE ASIAN UNDERGROUND<br />
Words: Will Lloyd<br />
Japan has a long and fertile tradition in the<br />
area of psych-tinged experimentation,<br />
from the explosive jams of Acid Mothers<br />
from some of the other Asian islands, and it’s<br />
not like Europe, where you can take a train<br />
or a bus [to another place]. Also, we always<br />
Fest will be something that you can take back<br />
to Japan to show that supporting underground<br />
artists can and have been successful?<br />
KIKAGAKU MOYO<br />
Dreamy Japanese mind-wanderers who are also<br />
the chief Guruguru Brains. Glittered with soft<br />
Temple to enthralling sludge of Bo Ningen,<br />
have to ship to Europe, which is a key point<br />
GK: Definitely. We want to be able to say,<br />
vocal harmonies, warm sitar and biting fuzz,<br />
and Boredoms’ experimental noise iterations.<br />
financially because of shipping costs.<br />
‘We’ve already done this in Europe, so why<br />
Kikagaku Moyo’s delicately executed kraut/<br />
But scratch a little deeper and you’ll find that<br />
not here too?’ Plus, some of the smaller bands<br />
folk songs take the listener on an unexpected<br />
there’s a fearsome swathe of contemporary<br />
BL!: In terms of the artists that you’re looking<br />
that we’re bringing to Liverpool would never<br />
sonic journey.<br />
artists right across Asia that are busy<br />
for, what do you look for stylistically and<br />
have thought about playing a festival with so<br />
expanding on this heritage with hallucinatory<br />
visually?<br />
many amazing bands from all over the world.<br />
class. Conceived by the members of cosmic<br />
GK: It’s kind of difficult to put it into words, but<br />
I feel so glad that we can be part of such a<br />
Japanese dream merchants Kikagaku Moyo,<br />
we like bands or artists who think their music<br />
great event.<br />
the record label GURUGURU BRAIN was<br />
is global, rather than just ‘we want to be big<br />
brought to fruition to recognise the supersonic<br />
in Japan’ or ‘big in this country’. To be heard in<br />
BL!: Do you think it’s possible that Japan<br />
efforts of musicians from across Asia who flirt<br />
Europe is like being two steps ahead [of the<br />
and Asia could one day come together and<br />
around the edges of psychedelia.<br />
scene at home]. We want to find bands who<br />
combine their efforts similarly to propel their<br />
2014’s Guruguru Brain Wash compilation<br />
think, ‘OK, the UK is on the same planet. It’s<br />
own artists, big or small, into the world?<br />
was the label’s manifesto, and shows how<br />
not impossible’. Those people tend to make<br />
GK: Yeah I think so. Take events like<br />
deep and varied the cosmic exploration<br />
music with more confidence.<br />
Glastonbury or Coachella, for example. Both<br />
goes. Suitably impressed by their stated aim<br />
that, “as label heads and musicians we’re<br />
BL!: Taking this idea of a ‘global sound’ forward<br />
are huge festivals that can showcase acts<br />
from all around the world, but we don’t have<br />
MINAMI DEUTSCH<br />
interested in the unique cultures that spring<br />
then, what sort of things are indicative of<br />
any such kinds of festivals in Asia yet. If a label<br />
Born out of the vibrant Japanese psych<br />
up around music in each country”, Liverpool<br />
that in bands that you watch or listen to? Do<br />
like us or our artists can gain more awareness<br />
explosion, Minami Deutsch’s pulsating,<br />
International Festival Of Psychedelia<br />
you imagine certain bands being played on<br />
then the scene becomes bigger, and then<br />
futurist krautrock whirls its way into the deeper<br />
invited the team behind Guruguru Brain to<br />
European radio, or do you just sort of ‘know’?<br />
anything could happen. All it would take is<br />
recesses of your cortex. A spectacle of cyclical,<br />
present a cross-section of this buzzing Asian<br />
GK: Both concepts are important. Plus, if<br />
for Europeans travelling to China or Indonesia<br />
crystalline guitar noise.<br />
underground at this year’s festival. The result<br />
we hear that the artists haven’t really been<br />
to find themselves at a decent music festival<br />
is Narrow Road To The Deep Mind – consisting<br />
discovered or are maybe stagnant, or play<br />
and suddenly they’re discovering unknown<br />
of live performances from four Guruguru Brain<br />
loads but don’t really look outside their own<br />
local bands. That’s what I wish for one day,<br />
artists (profiled below) – which invites you to<br />
country, we give them our ideas. We’ll say,<br />
and I do believe that it will happen. Before us,<br />
step inside this world and be transported to<br />
‘Let’s surprise other countries, people outside<br />
no one in Asia had done anything like what<br />
the far side of the globe.<br />
of this country.’ We put the path in front of the<br />
we do. Labels mostly put out <strong>70</strong>s reissues,<br />
Will Lloyd speaks to one of the label’s chief<br />
artist. It’s kind of difficult to define but when<br />
and so weren’t contributing anything new to<br />
Brains Go Kurosawa to find out a little more.<br />
we hear, we know.<br />
local scenes. We hope to be at the forefront of<br />
Japanese and Asian labels affecting a positive<br />
Bido Lito!: How would you describe what<br />
Guruguru Brain does as a label, to someone<br />
who has never heard about it before?<br />
BL!: Do you feel there’s more of an appetite for<br />
those kinds of bands in the West?<br />
GK: It totally depends on the band. Like<br />
change, if we can.<br />
BL!: Can this be the beginning of a much<br />
NAWKSH<br />
The project of an anonymous, masked<br />
Go Kurosawa: So we, the label, are based<br />
with Nawksh or Prairie WWWW, they have<br />
greater movement?<br />
experimental producer from Karachi,<br />
in Tokyo and are focusing on finding and<br />
a following and have already made careers<br />
GK: Yes, and that’s why we’re so happy to<br />
Pakistan. Imagine the analogue-worshipping<br />
releasing [artists from] the Asian music scene.<br />
in their own countries. But some bands, like<br />
be a part of it. Its name is the International<br />
experiments of Flying Lotus mixed with Eastern<br />
We don’t really care about genre, what we care<br />
Ramayana Soul and Scattered Purgatory –<br />
Festival of Psychedelia. But until now it’s<br />
influences and genuinely daring songwriting<br />
about is region. For the whole of Asia, we want<br />
who we’ve released on tape – are from other<br />
mainly had European bands, Western bands<br />
and you’re close to the Nawksh experience.<br />
to surprise the main market, which is Europe,<br />
countries like Indonesia and Taiwan. They, like<br />
and American bands, but to be international<br />
the US and the whole world because we have<br />
most Japanese bands, are stuck in their scene<br />
you need to include Asia. You cannot forget<br />
hidden, good artists still undiscovered and<br />
and are not recognised in their countries.<br />
about Asia, Africa and all other parts of the<br />
waiting to be heard.<br />
world. If you, the reader of this interview,<br />
BL!: It must be rewarding to take some of the<br />
are finding yourself bored or even just<br />
BL!: That brings me nicely onto my next<br />
smaller artists to those bigger stages abroad.<br />
used to the European and American music<br />
question: how do you actually go about<br />
Is that something that motivates you?<br />
that’s on offer – look to the other side of the<br />
finding and unearthing those hidden gems<br />
GK: Yeah, plus it’s great when we put<br />
world, where there are still tonnes of acts<br />
from across the continent?<br />
something out and then you hear people<br />
waiting to be discovered that could change<br />
GK: Since we’re based in Tokyo right now, for<br />
starting to chit-chat about that band or other<br />
your life or even make your mind explode.<br />
bands in Japan I go to see them and meet them<br />
to talk about concepts etc. For other Asian<br />
countries it’s more difficult. But we still hear<br />
music scenes like, ‘So what’s the scene like<br />
in Karachi?’ or ‘What’s Jakarta got going on?’.<br />
Most have no idea, and so knowing that we’re<br />
Please keep an eye on us, and thank you for<br />
supporting us.<br />
PRAIRIE WWWW<br />
An experimental folk band formed in Taipei,<br />
from [other places like] France, for example,<br />
playing a part in their discovery of new music<br />
gurugurubrain.com<br />
Taiwan. Their music combines poetry, folk,<br />
and we’re always constantly online looking<br />
scenes is really rewarding.<br />
ambient and tribal elements, seeking<br />
and trying to discover what’s out there.<br />
Guruguru Brain present Narrow Road To The<br />
inspiration from the might of nature. The four<br />
It’s an advantage to be in Japan, but there are<br />
BL!: Are you hoping that your Narrow Road<br />
Deep Mind at Liverpool International Festival<br />
Ws in their name are not to be pronounced,<br />
disadvantages too. Japan is really far away<br />
To The Deep Mind curation at Liverpool Psych<br />
of Psychdelia on 23rd and 24th <strong>September</strong>.<br />
serving as a pictogram for a waveform, as well<br />
as the imagery of grass billowing in the wind.
Liverpool Philharmonic<br />
COMEDY<br />
NOW ON<br />
SALE!<br />
GIGS<br />
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STEWART LEE:<br />
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Wednesday 2 November 8pm<br />
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ROSS NOBLE:<br />
BRAIN DUMP<br />
Saturday 5 November 8pm<br />
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SEAN LOCK:<br />
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Sunday 20 & Monday 21<br />
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Sunday 11 December 8pm<br />
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JIMMY CARR<br />
THE BEST OF, ULTIMATE,<br />
GOLD, GREATEST HITS TOUR<br />
Friday 27 January 8pm<br />
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liverpoolphil.com<br />
0151 <strong>70</strong>9 3789<br />
Image Sean Lock
12<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
Virtual reality – or the concept of an alternative existence<br />
– is a technological dream that’s been toyed with for<br />
longer than you may think, and not merely as an<br />
academic thought experiment or in the bedrooms of techy<br />
gamers. The closest resemblance to what we now think of as<br />
VR – navigable environments that appear before our eyes but<br />
are a virtual construct – sprang up in the 50s, when a handful<br />
of visionaries saw the possibilities inherent in watching things<br />
on a screen that never ends. The initial potential was just that,<br />
as the limited technology and clunky visuals weren’t advanced<br />
enough to realise the grand dreams; but the idea remained live,<br />
a going concern, while the visionaries waited for the equipment<br />
to catch up. Indeed, there’s lots of evidence to suggest that<br />
the military never forgot about the possibilities of VR, and the<br />
fact that they’ve been using virtual reality technology for war<br />
simulation for years would seem to bear this out. By the time<br />
the personal computer took off in the early 90s, the utopian<br />
ideals of a VR universe were already starting to be revisited.<br />
Fast-forward to March 2014, and the furore that erupted when<br />
Facebook purchased Oculus VR, the inventors of the Oculus Rift<br />
VR headset, for $2bn. Why would a (social) media organisation of<br />
the size of Facebook want to invest in Oculus? The optimists said<br />
that it heralded VR as the next great breakthrough in interactive<br />
media, while the pessimists vehemently believed that Facebook<br />
were buying up the biggest player in this emerging field in order<br />
to bury it, or at least control the pace of its growth. Whether you<br />
believe the acquisition of Oculus to be part of the nefarious<br />
mechanisms of Mark Zuckerberg’s global giant or not, the real<br />
question that pops out from the ordeal is not “How did VR<br />
become such a big deal?”, but “How did it take so long?”<br />
In an airy office space off Hope Street there exists a creative<br />
digital business that’s working at the cutting-edge of this bloom<br />
of interactive art and gaming. DRAW&CODE, founded in 2010,<br />
specialise in developing a host of visual worlds in virtual and<br />
augmented realities for a number of clients. Their collaborationheavy<br />
approach has seen them bend their minds to a number<br />
of eye-catching projects: large-scale projection mapping at<br />
Parr Hall (Warrington) and the Shankly Hotel; the creation<br />
of a virtual version of Hope Street, traversed using Oculus<br />
Rift; and the tension-filled interactive theatre piece Race<br />
Against Time that snaked its way right across the city. Just<br />
before one of Draw&Code’s founders, Andy Cooper, heads off<br />
to Cologne to present the latest version of their augmented<br />
reality toys SwapBots (which Andy describes as a cross between<br />
“Top Trumps, Pokémon and Exquisite Corpses”) at Europe’s<br />
largest video-game trade show Gamescom, we caught up with<br />
him and fellow founder John Keefe to discuss this VR revolution.<br />
“The stuff that really excites us is the weird, immersive,<br />
interactive experiences that really inspire people,” says Andy<br />
about what drives Draw&Code’s creative process, “whether<br />
that’s something really small and beautiful happening in an<br />
app, or a large-scale, outdoor, projection-mapped show, or all<br />
the other things in between.” The twin vestiges of the business –<br />
the Draw side and the Code side – are just two different ways for<br />
them to look at things: two halves of a brain working in unison.<br />
“What inspires us most is the kind of project where both sides<br />
[of the business] kind of mush together – working together,<br />
throwing ideas around, and being inspired by someone else’s<br />
idea.”<br />
As overdue as the VR big bang may be, one of the things<br />
we have been exposed to – namely augmented reality – is an<br />
important stepping stone towards us getting prepared for<br />
the possibilities virtual reality can bring, and their practical<br />
applications to our lives. And the possibilities are endless. “The<br />
reason why we do projection mapping is about this idea of<br />
transforming physical spaces with digital content, which is at<br />
the core of what we do,” explains John. “But, the ability to create<br />
these new realms with AR and VR hardware is really where we<br />
see the future. I mean, we have stereo vision, but we spend our<br />
lives just looking at these flat devices – it just makes no sense.<br />
So, the great thing about VR is that you can technically put every<br />
other medium inside it: you can sit and watch TV in a swamp, if<br />
that’s what you want to do!”<br />
Warming to his theme, John confirms what we secretly hoped:<br />
that virtual reality could be the next major breakthrough in<br />
humanity’s relationship with technology. “VR is the medium<br />
that has the potential to change so many people’s lives; it’s<br />
the closest thing to teleportation that we’ve got, and may ever<br />
have. The ability to take people from the real world and transport<br />
them to any other world is a phenomenal, world-changing, lifechanging<br />
technology.”<br />
As it stands right now, you may think that this revolution<br />
has still passed you by; unless, that is, you’ve forked out a<br />
couple of grand for HTC’s Vive console, or you happen to own<br />
an Oculus Rift headset and its operating machines. But, with<br />
Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear being developed to work<br />
with smartphones, more and more people are being exposed to<br />
these experiences, which is likely to accelerate the development<br />
of affordable gaming software and hardware.<br />
One other place you can tap into these virtual otherworlds is<br />
Liverpool Psych Fest. Following on from hosting the amazingly<br />
trippy Thorium-232 VR module in 2015 (a piece developed by<br />
Michael Saup, Stanislav Glazov and Li Alin, and soundtracked<br />
by Anton Newcombe), the festival is presenting a series of VR<br />
commissions at this year’s event, and Draw&Code are in the<br />
thick of the action. Working with acclaimed illustrator, artist<br />
and frequent Super Furry Animals collaborator Pete Fowler, D&C<br />
are developing an exclusive environment for the festival titled<br />
Perambulator v.1 that pitches you inside Fowler’s monster-filled<br />
world in a way you’d never imagined possible. Soundtracked by<br />
a deliciously mischievous piece created by SFA’s guitarist Huw<br />
Bunford, the project has the possibility to blow people’s minds<br />
– and it’s got Andy and John pretty excited, too.<br />
“Pete Fowler’s stuff is, without doubt, the coolest, trippiest<br />
artwork ever!” laughs Andy when we ask him about Perambulator<br />
v.1’s progress. “We love his stuff, and we’re so honoured to be<br />
collaborating with him on this project. His brain and creativity<br />
are perfect for working on an interactive project, cos it kind of<br />
feels like all the stuff that he does has been made for VR; there’s<br />
just so much depth to the worlds he creates.”<br />
“We are literally teleporting people into Pete Fowler’s mind,”<br />
adds John, “which is an amazing and weird place!”<br />
At its core, virtual reality is an organic experience.<br />
OK, you need some complex (and expensive)<br />
hardware to access and navigate the<br />
environments where the action happens,<br />
but what happens thereafter is strictly<br />
within the mind. “These technologies<br />
allow us to deliver the experiences<br />
we’ve always wanted to,” agrees John.<br />
“I don’t think the technology should<br />
be the focal point of it; it’s just a way<br />
of delivering an experience. So, if we<br />
do our job right, you forget about the<br />
technology.”<br />
Forget about the technology, forget<br />
about the room in front of you, forget<br />
about life for a bit: Liverpool Psych Fest<br />
invite you to suspend all disbelief and<br />
experience a reality you never thought<br />
existed. Anything is possible.<br />
VIRTUAL<br />
INSANITY<br />
VR EXCURSIONS AT<br />
LIVERPOOL PSYCH FEST<br />
Words: Christopher Torpey / @CATorp<br />
Photography: Keith Ainsworth / arkimages.co.uk<br />
drawandcode.com<br />
Draw&Code have collaborated with Pete<br />
Fowler on an exclusive new VR module<br />
for Liverpool International Festival of<br />
Psychedelia, soundtracked by Huw<br />
Bunford of Super Furry Animals. You<br />
can experience Perambulator<br />
v.1 as part of the festival’s VR<br />
programme, along with<br />
several other new and<br />
exclusive productions.
BUREAU EXPORT<br />
PRESENTS FRANCE @<br />
camp and furnacE<br />
b lade factory - DISTRICT<br />
baltic triangle, liverpool<br />
23+24 SEPTEMBER <strong>2016</strong><br />
Arlt<br />
arlt.bandcamp.com<br />
Friday 23rd <strong>September</strong><br />
Aquagascallo<br />
aquaserge.com<br />
Friday 23rd <strong>September</strong><br />
France<br />
standard-in-fi.com<br />
Friday 23rd <strong>September</strong><br />
Bantam Lyons<br />
bantamlyons.com<br />
Friday 23rd Septembe<br />
Acid Washed<br />
facebook.com/acidwashed<br />
Saturday 24th <strong>September</strong><br />
FRENCHMUSICUK.CO.UK
14<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
PURE PHASE ENSEMBLE<br />
MARK GARDENER’S SONIC EVOLUTIONS<br />
Words: Matt Hogarth<br />
Each year on the icy, windswept coast of the Baltic Sea, a<br />
group of sonically-aligned pilgrims convene to worship<br />
together at the altars of space rock. One of the main<br />
draws of Gdansk’s annual SpaceFest! is PURE PHASE ENSEMBLE,<br />
the international music collective they assemble each year to<br />
explore the boundaries of repetition, audio innovation and<br />
collaboration. Pure Phase Ensemble was set up by former<br />
Spiritualized musician Ray Dickaty to explore the potential<br />
of experimental music to unite, by inviting an assemblage<br />
of musicians from across the alternative spectrum: to date,<br />
members of Slowdive (Simon Scott), Stereo Lab (Laetitia<br />
Sadier) and Dead Skeletons have been involved in Pure Phase<br />
Ensemble’s various iterations.<br />
In 2015, Ride guitarist MARK GARDENER was invited to lead<br />
the collective, writing and performing a stunning, shoegaze<br />
opus, which has since been released as a live record and film. In<br />
an eclectic mix of spacerock, shoegaze and psych, PURE PHASE<br />
ENSEMBLE 4 first played their composition at SpaceFest!, after<br />
spending just five days working and jamming together. That<br />
composition is now going to have its first UK performance as<br />
part of Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia, with<br />
Gardener re-joining the collective for its latest version. Matt<br />
Hogarth speaks to the Ride frontman and leader of Pure Phase<br />
Ensemble 4 about this latest challenge in his long and varied<br />
music career.<br />
Bido Lito!: First of all, how did you get involved in the collective?<br />
Mark Gardener: Well, I was approached a couple of years before<br />
I actually took part, in 2014. They came to me asking if I’d like<br />
to take part in a workshop and I didn’t quite get it. I didn’t<br />
really fancy the idea so instead I told them I’d do a solo show.<br />
When I went over I saw how the set-up actually worked and it<br />
all seemed to click – so when I got asked to do it again I was<br />
delighted.<br />
BL!: How did you find the experience?<br />
MG: It’s quite well supported. We stayed in a new kind of art<br />
centre in a pretty rough part of Gdansk. It’s outside the city<br />
centre and a bit dodgy really, not the sort of place you’d want to<br />
be walking around late at night. However, in the middle of all<br />
this there’s this oasis in the form of an arts centre where we’d<br />
eat, drink and sleep, and where I met my fellow band members,<br />
who rehearsed with me for five days in the pursuit of making<br />
music to be played at SpaceFest! on the Friday.<br />
At the end of the day we’d head into Gdansk and drink vodka<br />
because that’s what you do when it’s that cold, ha! You just hang<br />
out and get to know these people. In fact, I went to see the<br />
drummer and bassist’s band on the first night. As soon as I saw<br />
them and how good they were I knew it was going to be great.<br />
The only other English guy who was there was Ray Dickaty, who<br />
played sax in Spiritualized and set up the whole thing. A lot of<br />
the other guys’ English wasn’t that great, so it was interesting to<br />
play off the cues and in the end it came out pretty good.<br />
Jamming together in rehearsals allowed us to explore each<br />
other’s talents. When rehearsing, I realised one of the Polish<br />
guys was a great singer as well, so it was great to get him<br />
involved with harmonies. There was very little time but it when<br />
we got it going it seemed to really work out.<br />
It was around the same time that I was reforming Ride, so it was<br />
kind of a strange time, y’know? I thought it was one of the last<br />
collaborations I would be doing for some time, but the way it<br />
worked out in the end really felt great to me; I was really happy.<br />
BL!: What did you want to achieve creatively from the project?<br />
MG: I just wanted to make something good. I knew we had<br />
an hour and that was pretty much it. Making something good<br />
was by far the most important thing. In this day and age you<br />
can’t really get away with anything. We knew it would receive<br />
press and so we were highly critical of ourselves. I think the real<br />
challenge was how to create something new and interesting. So,<br />
when it’s good you feel you can take people on a transcendental<br />
journey and you can see that in their faces when you play. I<br />
managed to achieve this first with Ride and my main aim with<br />
every collaboration I do is to try and [recreate that].<br />
BL!: You made the piece especially for SpaceFest in Gdansk. Did<br />
the location affect the music that you composed?<br />
MG: Well, whenever I remember the place I always remember<br />
it as cold and dark. Every night we’d go for dinner in a place<br />
which was basically someone’s dining room. In the background<br />
there were lorries just loading freight onto the ships and, as I’ve<br />
already said, it was absolutely freezing. I think these conditions<br />
really helped colour the tracks. I mean, Poland’s a beautiful<br />
place but it has a huge amount of horrific history which it’s<br />
still recovering from. It’s still recovering from its past and you<br />
can still see the scars on its geography. Places like Auschwitz<br />
obviously carry this really dark history, and it’s quite visible in<br />
some places.<br />
It was great to see these Polish musicians and how much the<br />
music means to them. It’s really tough for Polish musicians<br />
to break through on to the world scene. Don’t get me wrong,<br />
some do – but I think that places like Poland, where life can be<br />
quite tough, need music more than ever. It was present in these<br />
musicians [in] how much music meant to them and the effort<br />
that went into their art. That’s where they find their sunshine<br />
and happiness, and that’s a great environment for creativity.<br />
BL!: What made you want to get involved with the project?<br />
MG: I hate borders and barriers and I think music transcends all<br />
of that. I think of myself as a European as much as a Brit: I lived<br />
in France for a few years, too. In England I think there’s loads of<br />
great music coming out and you just think, ‘Ugh, French music is<br />
crap,’ but then you realise there’s tonnes of great French music<br />
which we just don’t hear about in the UK because it doesn’t really<br />
get mentioned. However, I do think those barriers are getting<br />
less and less. Europe is an amazing melting pot of culture, art,<br />
music and language, and if something like this brings all this<br />
together and produces something which is fresh, creative and<br />
interesting then that’s great.<br />
BL!: How, if at all, will the project change for Liverpool?<br />
MG: I don’t think it’ll change too much. I’m going to listen<br />
again to the album. We’re literally going to arrive and have a<br />
day to rehearse it, like the Gdansk show. Obviously it won’t<br />
be completely the same: it will hopefully take on the feel of<br />
Liverpool, so perhaps a bit warmer! There are points we are<br />
going to keep but other bits are a bit more freeform. It’ll be<br />
great to get in a nice space and just jam it.<br />
I never thought that we’d ever play this again actually, but<br />
obviously when we got asked to play by Liverpool Psych Fest I<br />
was a bit surprised, and excited. On top of this, it means so much<br />
to these Polish guys. I love Liverpool, but for them they can’t<br />
wait to come and play a city with such a rich musical heritage.<br />
To see that level of excitement refreshes you and it’s nice to see<br />
such enthusiasm again. I feel more excited about music than<br />
ever and things such as Pure Phase Ensemble remind me how<br />
powerful music is.<br />
purephaseensemble.bandcamp.com<br />
Pure Phase Ensemble 4 featuring Mark Gardener will be presented<br />
for the first time in the UK at this year’s Liverpool International<br />
Festival of Psychedelia on 23rd and 24th <strong>September</strong>.
SATURDAY<br />
camp and furnacE - blade factory - DISTRICT<br />
FRIDAY<br />
baltic triangle, liverpool<br />
SUPER FURRY ANIM<br />
SILVER APPLES. THE STAIRS. THE V<br />
JOSEFIN ÖHRN & THE LIBERATION. FLAM<br />
GURUGURU BRAIN present: NARR<br />
KIKAGAKU MOYO + MINAMI DEUT<br />
FÊTE SOUTERRAINE featuring: FRANCE + AQU<br />
FATHER MURPHY. HOWES. FLAVOR CRYSTALS.<br />
TREMENTINA. cellar doors. MAN OF MOON. M<br />
MDME SPKR. GO!ZILLA. DEJA VEGA. THE LOVE COF<br />
THE HORRORS. ACID MO<br />
CAVERN OF ANTI-MATTER. THE<br />
HARALD GROSSKOPF. ULTIMATE PAIN<br />
PURE PHASE ENSEMBLE 4 FEA<br />
THE OSCILLATION. THE EARLY YEARS. POP.1280<br />
METHYL ETHEL. ULRIKA SPACEK. TAU. EARTHEATE<br />
YE NUNS. ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS. IN ZAIRE. THA<br />
CAIROBI. SADDAR BAZAAR. RATS ON RAFTS. TAMAN S<br />
NEW CANDYS. PLANK. 10 000 RUSSOS. DESERT MO<br />
VAYA FUTURO. HAS A SHADOW. BABA NAGA. SILV<br />
DJs... ANDY VOTEL. CHERRYSTONES. TOM FURSE (THE HORRORS). DJ FITZ.<br />
ADRIAN (ECCENTRONIC RESEARCH COUNCIL). MAI MAI MAI. BERNIE<br />
NICK POWER (THE CORAL).EDGAR JONES. JASON STOLL<br />
AFTER DARK... /// PZYK COLONY /// A LATE NIGHT IMMERSIVE 360 AUD<br />
SILVER APPLES, CAVERN OF ANTI-MATTER. DJs STEVE DAVIS, ANDY VOT<br />
ATRIUM SESSIONS feat. TOM FURSE<br />
PZYK PRYZM feat. EXCLUSIVE LIVE PERFORMANCES + PE<br />
PZYK VR inc. 3 x NEW EXCLUSIVE VIRTUAL REALITY COMMISSIONS inc. P<br />
PZYK CINEMA CURATED BY FACT. MUSINGS IN DRONE CONVERSATION<br />
WORLD OF PSYCHEDELIC WAX WONDERS. BLACK LODGE CRAFT BEE<br />
WEEKEND, DAY TICKETS + ACCOMMODATION BUNDLES AVAILABLE AT:<br />
SEETICKETS.COM. TICKETS ALSO AVAILABLE ONLINE AT<br />
SKIDDLE.COM+ TICKETQUARTER.COM + SONGKICK.COM<br />
- AND IN STORE AT PROBE RECORDS,<br />
PICCADILLY RECORDS<br />
+ JUMBO RECORDS
23+24 SEPTEMBER <strong>2016</strong><br />
ALS.<br />
DEMDIKE STARE. DUNGEN.<br />
ELDT. GWENNO. LA LUZ. GNOOMES.<br />
INGODS. LORELLE MEETS THE OBSOLETE.<br />
OW ROAD TO THE DEEP MIND FEATURING:<br />
SCH + NAWKSH + PRAIRIE WWWw.<br />
AGASCALLO + ARLT + MOSTLA SOUNDSYSTEM.<br />
COOL GHOULS. THE HANGING STARS. HELICON.<br />
USCLE & MARROW. OLIVER COATES. COWTOWN.<br />
FIN. BANTAM LYONS. BIG NATURALS. BRAHMA-LOKA.<br />
THERS TEMPLE. THE WYTCHES. EAGULLS.<br />
MOONLANDINGZ. LA HELL GANG.<br />
TING. THE LUCID DREAM. SPECTRES.<br />
TURING MARK GARDENER (RIDE)<br />
. ACID WASHED. GUADALUPE PLATA. YETI LANE.<br />
R. FLOWERS MUST DIE. CHUCK JOHNSON. TOMAGA.<br />
T FuCKING TANK. VANISHING TWIN. ELECTRIC EYE.<br />
HUD. TANGERINES. WOODEN INDIAN BURIAL GROUND.<br />
UNTAIN TRIBE. PURE JOY. BONNACONS OF DOOM.<br />
ER WAVES. BRAIN WASHINGTON. VIRTUAL FOREST.<br />
MARC RILEY (BBC6 MUSIC). STEVE DAVIS THE INTERESTING ALTERNATIVE.<br />
CONNOR. CLINIC.RICHARD HECTOR-JONES. CHARLIE SALVIDGE (TOY).<br />
(GOD UNKNOWN). NORMAN KILLON (ERIC’S) Plus Many More...<br />
IO VISUAL REALM FEATURING PERFORMANCES FROM DEMDIKE STARE,<br />
EL + MORE. DARK SIDE OF THE BLADE feat. DJ FITZ + CHERRYSTONES.<br />
(THE HORRORS) + BERNIE CONNOR.<br />
RCEPTION by Pierce Warnecke + Matthew Biederman.<br />
ERAMBULATOR V.1 by PETE FOWLER, DRAW&CODE + HUW BUNFORD (SFA).<br />
S PROGRAMME. PZYK PLANETARIUM. BOLD STREET BEDOUIN BOUDOIR.<br />
R BUNKER. EXCLUSIVE RECORD RELEASES + CRAFT BREWED POISON.
Walking up Bold Street on a rainy day<br />
may not be everyone’s idea of heaven<br />
but, when you start to listen to the<br />
different kinds of music drifting out of every<br />
rain-spattered doorway, it doesn’t take much<br />
working out as to where our heart lies as a<br />
city. Uptown Funk is nowhere to be heard, but<br />
a heady fusion of Beatles, jazz, soul and 80s<br />
pop drifts through my ears as I near Bold Street<br />
Coffee. A lone sax player sits outside Forbidden<br />
Planet and his craft is soon drowned out by the<br />
unexpected sound of Queen’s (definitely unjazzy)<br />
Jazz album emanating from the coffee<br />
shop’s turntable. The surprises never end. I am<br />
here to talk to JALEN N’GONDA, the young soul<br />
sensation from Washington, DC who has made<br />
his home in Liverpool and has just spent a year<br />
on the LIMF Academy train, impressing all who<br />
come across him. I want to find out why he has<br />
made his home in this most musical of cities,<br />
and learn a little about his plans for the future<br />
now as he is flying solo away from the guiding<br />
hands of LIMF.<br />
Looking as slick as ever, N’Gonda shakes off<br />
his umbrella as he enters the café and we order<br />
drinks. I start by complimenting him on his new<br />
single, Why I Try, which is already available to<br />
hear on SoundCloud, Spotify and iTunes. It’s<br />
a funky, choppy workout that follows up his<br />
equally soul-filled, smooth effort Holler (When<br />
You Call My Name).<br />
“I wrote that song, like, a year ago, and at that<br />
time I was just doing an old-time sound. So the<br />
next single after this and stuff I do in the future<br />
will have a much more modern approach, but it<br />
will still have that old-school feel.”<br />
If you’ve not heard N’Gonda or seen him play<br />
live then it’s about time you did. He’s a living<br />
time machine. Close your eyes and you could<br />
be in the old Motown, Hitsville USA studios in<br />
Detroit or at an intimate 60s soul revue. HIs<br />
voice falls somewhere between Sam Cooke and<br />
Marvin Gaye, which isn’t shoddy company at all.<br />
Mixing his own compositions with a few classic<br />
cuts, N’Gonda’s performances make for one of<br />
the most incredible listening experiences in the<br />
city – but how does someone so entrenched in<br />
classic soul function in the 21 st century?<br />
“I’m going to be releasing 45s, vinyl pressings<br />
alongside Spotify and iTunes. We thought<br />
[about doing] that since, having it on vinyl, it’s<br />
for life, if you don’t break it, it’s for years and<br />
years. People find it more attractive; one day<br />
Spotify might not still be a website, or iTunes<br />
may go in the future, but if you’ve got vinyl – it’s<br />
yours.” N’Gonda is aware of the current trend<br />
for vinyl as a must-have, but wants to release<br />
his style of music on the format it was meant<br />
for. “Vinyl sales have increased so much in the<br />
past five years, loads of artists are releasing<br />
stuff on vinyl, it’s going with the times now, and<br />
it’s been hipsterised. Back then, vinyl was the<br />
only way you could buy music, now it’s so cool<br />
to have it, so I try not to seem like I’m saying,<br />
‘Look, I’m a hipster.’ When you put your music<br />
onto vinyl, it sounds fuller; when things get<br />
digitised a lot of stuff gets taken out.”<br />
I am intrigued as to why N’Gonda has left the<br />
US and made Liverpool his base, particularly when<br />
his style of music is so American. “Well, I came to<br />
LIPA and I started gigging, working on my own<br />
thing – I just wanted to get a career as a musician.<br />
It is inspiring, because of the whole Merseybeat<br />
sound, The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers<br />
and so on, but still today it’s like everyone…” he<br />
pauses. “Listen, there’s a saxophone outside”.<br />
Indeed, the guy is still blowing his blues away in<br />
the rain. “You’re just surrounded by it all the time.<br />
I used to always listen to it all the time on the<br />
radio, to oldies and sounds of the 60s.”<br />
Whilst the young Jalen N’Gonda is very much<br />
a modern man, his dress sense is sharp, fitting<br />
in with both 21 st -century cool and 60s New York<br />
bohemia. His spoken voice is not unlike that of<br />
Prince, meditated and quiet, saving any energy<br />
for performance. His voice was made to sing<br />
soul. “I’ve always been a big fan of Motown, Stax,<br />
Chicago Soul, jazz,” he enthuses. “Before that I<br />
didn’t really listen to music, but when I started<br />
listening to that stuff, I kind of immediately fell<br />
in love with it. I try and stay away from a clichéd<br />
sound and try to bring a bit of British influence to<br />
it, like Alex Turner and The Last Shadow Puppets,<br />
elements of that as well.” His guitar playing<br />
certainly has echoes of the distinct Alex Turner<br />
style. “I never really had a specific favourite when<br />
I was younger, but a big influence was always<br />
David Ruffin from The Temptations along with<br />
Marvin Gaye and Amy Winehouse.”<br />
We return to N’Gonda’s new-found home in<br />
Liverpool “Yeah, I do see this as my home now.<br />
If I was to go back to the US, I would probably<br />
go and live in New York City; it’s a place I’ve<br />
always wanted to live, but I just fitted so well in<br />
the UK. I have a really comfortable career based<br />
here. Everybody is humorous and spontaneous<br />
when you meet people in the street. I mean,<br />
everywhere you go, you’re going to meet assholes,<br />
but people have been really receiving and<br />
they think it’s cool that you’re from somewhere<br />
else… ‘You ain’t from here…you don’t understand<br />
us’, so they want to get to know you.”<br />
Studying at LIPA, the McCartney-led home of<br />
musical talent, has served him well thus far. It<br />
was from his association with the school that<br />
N’Gonda became part of the 2015 roster of LIMF<br />
Academy performers alongside the likes of<br />
Michael Seary and Amique. “LIPA helped me to<br />
develop as a musician and as a person, you know?<br />
For the first time, I had friends from Korea, from<br />
here, Ireland and South America. Music-wise,<br />
everyone at LIPA is very supportive, right down<br />
to borrowing each other’s amps. LIMF Academy<br />
was just really spontaneous. I ended up staying<br />
in Liverpool over last summer ‘cause I couldn’t<br />
afford to get back home. I had a friend named<br />
Kady and she suggested I get involved. They<br />
called me up one day and said, ‘Would you like<br />
to apply to be part of LIMF?’ and suddenly it was<br />
like, ‘Hey! You’re in LIMF now!’” His involvement<br />
with the Academy is clearly something he is very<br />
proud of, and there is a twinkle in his eye as he<br />
reflects on this valuable time. “It’s been such a<br />
good experience in just meeting those people,<br />
talented musicians and producers, and having<br />
those opportunities to play the actual LIMF<br />
festivals; it’s been an amazing experience so far.”<br />
We chat a little about how young people<br />
are given a bad press, particularly in inner-city<br />
areas such as ours, and how LIPA and LIMF give<br />
opportunities for young artists to show their<br />
worth and maybe change attitudes towards<br />
youth in general. “It’s always been like that. You<br />
look back to the 40s and 50s and most of those<br />
people who were being innovative were young,<br />
early 20s, late teens. Unless you wanted to be a<br />
seasoned jazz pro, which takes years and years<br />
of practice, when you’re young you just write<br />
daring things and daring songs. At first people<br />
freak out, until they realise it changes the culture<br />
around them.” N’Gonda’s own songwriting is not<br />
exactly daring, but certainly stands against the<br />
over-produced bulk of what makes today’s charts.<br />
I ask him does it come naturally to write in this<br />
style or is it a challenge? “I don’t really see my<br />
songwriting as a challenge,” he replies. “I write<br />
like that naturally. I don’t pre-meditate that it’s<br />
going to sound like My Girl, you know? It’s just,<br />
when I pick up the guitar or play the piano, the<br />
chord progressions are melodies that I think of,<br />
and they come naturally.” I ask him if he employs<br />
older production techniques so as not to ruin the<br />
sound. “To an extent, yeh. Take the vocals: I put<br />
a little delay on it and a reverb sound on the<br />
guitar – it makes it sound authentic rather than<br />
sounding like a machine. I want to make it as real<br />
as possible.”<br />
With N’Gonda’s new single performing well<br />
already via streaming services and finding its<br />
way onto Spotify’s Sweet Soul Sunday Playlist,<br />
I ask him if he is planning on an album anytime<br />
soon. “I’ve not really thought about that yet; I’m<br />
just living with the single right now, seeing how<br />
well it does, and then see if a label is interested<br />
or whether we feel independent enough to do<br />
it ourselves.” By the we, N’Gonda is referring to<br />
his band. I ask him if he considers himself a solo<br />
artist or a band member. “Well, we all used to live<br />
together a few years back and I had played in a<br />
few different projects, but back last year in March<br />
I asked them if they wanted to form a band. It’s<br />
obvious I’m a solo artist, but when we perform at<br />
gigs we’re a band. We talk to each other on stage,<br />
we joke, we give each other respect; if someone<br />
comes in with an idea we all listen. So it’s not<br />
just like we play in a gig; we all get paid equally.”<br />
As we drain the dregs of our coffee, N’Gonda<br />
asks if he can thank his fans for listening to the<br />
single and coming along to the LIMF festival the<br />
previous weekend. “I look forward to playing and<br />
writing for the people,” he smiles.<br />
N’Gonda is a genuinely nice guy with an<br />
incredible talent that would have been cool in<br />
the 60s but is both cool and unique now. We’re<br />
glad that he has chosen Liverpool as his base as<br />
it suits him down to the ground.<br />
soundcloud.com/jalen-ngonda<br />
Why I Try b/w Holler (When You Call My Name)<br />
is out now on iTunes, and will be released as a<br />
double A-side vinyl single in <strong>September</strong>.
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
19<br />
jalen<br />
n , gonda<br />
Words: Del Pike / @del_pike<br />
Photography: Keith Ainsworth / arkimages.co.uk
There’s so much romance in a railway station. Sometimes<br />
it may be tricky to discern, as your ticket gets jammed<br />
in the barrier and your super-heated coffee breaches<br />
its plastic lid and cascades down your forearm, but beneath all<br />
the hurried inconvenience and inaudible announcements there<br />
remains the fact that stations are where adventures begin and<br />
end. For some, stations are portals to another phase of life; they<br />
are also places where the world’s Billy Liars will never have the<br />
courage to board their trains. They are places of meetings and<br />
separations; they are temples to the possibility of somewhere<br />
else.<br />
The coming of the railway heralded the arrival of the modern<br />
world and, as the source of so much narrative potential, it’s no<br />
wonder that stations – and the journeys that connect them –<br />
have also catalysed the creation of memorable art. Whether<br />
the railway in question runs to distant sun-bleached horizons<br />
as in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West, or simply<br />
out beyond the edge of repressive suburbia as in Bronski<br />
Beat’s evocative British Rail-era video for Smalltown Boy, those<br />
endless parallel lines are the tracks on which some epic tales<br />
have run. It may be, however, that it’s the celebrated American<br />
composer STEVE REICH who has tackled the darkest railway<br />
journey of them all.<br />
Reich is one of the pioneering minimalists who stripped<br />
music back to its constituent parts in the 1960s, then rebuilt<br />
it using repetitive phrases, shifting patterns, tape loops and<br />
recorded fragments. His 1988 composition Different Trains<br />
begins as a rhythmic evocation of a very personal<br />
memory – the pre-war journeys Reich himself used<br />
to take as a boy, from New York to Los Angeles,<br />
to visit his parents when they no longer lived<br />
together. But, as the thrilling, chugging<br />
strings and confident whistle blasts<br />
head west, the focus shifts to<br />
wartime Europe and the trains<br />
that carried Germany’s Jews<br />
to their fate.<br />
One commentator<br />
has described<br />
Different Trains as “one of the few adequate artistic responses<br />
to the Holocaust in any medium”, and, on 29 th <strong>September</strong>, Steve<br />
Reich himself brings this acclaimed piece to Liverpool. After all,<br />
if you’re going to muse on the divergent nature of two train<br />
journeys – one a personal reverie, the other a global horror –<br />
where better to do it than in the place where all significant train<br />
journeys began?<br />
Edge Hill station is now the first stop after Lime Street, but<br />
it was once at the Liverpool end of the world’s first inter-city<br />
railway – the revolutionary connection that joined our mighty<br />
seaport to the city of Manchester in 1830. The present station<br />
buildings date back to 1836, making Edge Hill the oldest<br />
passenger railway station in the world that is still in use.<br />
Arts organisation Metal have occupied Edge Hill since 2009,<br />
and their programme of commissions and residencies has kept<br />
the station at the heart of Liverpool’s cultural life ever since.<br />
It is Metal who are bringing Steve Reich to the city alongside<br />
filmmaker Bill Morrison, who is creating an archive-driven visual<br />
accompaniment to Reich’s piece; together with the London<br />
Contemporary Orchestra (LCO), they will turn Edge Hill station<br />
into an outdoor concert venue with the kind of pedigree that<br />
makes trainspotters weep.<br />
For Robert Ames, the co-founder of LCO and one of the<br />
performers who will be bringing Different Trains to life, the<br />
project is proving to be exciting. “I’m really looking forward to it,”<br />
he tells me. “At the London Contemporary Orchestra, we spend<br />
a lot of time not playing in traditional concert halls – we try and<br />
find interesting venues to put on music, so we play off-site a lot<br />
and try and find narratives in the places we’re performing in. To<br />
find a venue like this that already has such a strong narrative<br />
that’s so closely connected to the piece of music – it couldn’t be<br />
better. It’s ideal, really.”<br />
One of the innovations that Reich developed in Different Trains<br />
was the use of recorded documentary speech to determine the<br />
melodies that the string quartet play. Audio reminiscences<br />
were recorded by a range of interviewees, including Holocaust<br />
survivors, and fragments of these recordings are woven through<br />
the piece; the vocal intonations are picked up by the instruments,<br />
resulting in a series of see-sawing melodies that<br />
pass like words overheard on the breeze.<br />
“There’s a lot of speech in the piece,”<br />
says Ames, “and a lot of recordings<br />
of different trains. One of the most<br />
interesting things for me is that<br />
we use our instruments to try<br />
and imitate the voices of the<br />
people who were recorded,<br />
which is really cool. It’s<br />
also a piece in which one<br />
quartet plays live, but<br />
there are also recordings of multiple string quartets, so before<br />
the performance we’ll spend some time with Steve in a studio<br />
recording the other elements of the music. So it’s a kind of multilayered<br />
thing.”<br />
As one of the great names of contemporary classical music,<br />
Reich’s work is more than familiar to Ames.<br />
“This is a piece that the LCO has played and programmed<br />
a couple of times now. The first time was at the Roundhouse<br />
in Camden, which is also an old train-related building. We’ve<br />
played it at a couple of festivals as well, including Latitude. It<br />
always goes down well, but to perform it with the man himself,<br />
as we will be doing in Liverpool, is particularly exciting.”<br />
Although Different Trains is the main event at Edge Hill, the<br />
evening will also feature a performance of Reich’s wriggling,<br />
undulating Electric Counterpoint, played on this occasion by<br />
Mats Bergström. Even those who don’t know the piece in its<br />
original form have probably heard a snippet of Pat Metheny’s<br />
version, used as the chief melodic sample on The Orb’s Little<br />
Fluffy Clouds.<br />
As with Different Trains and a lot else of Reich’s works, the<br />
stark simplicity of the individual phrases belies the complexity<br />
of the interwoven whole as elements begin to curl and twist<br />
around each other. I ask Ames about the pleasures and<br />
challenges of being immersed in music like this – music that<br />
can leave the performer frighteningly exposed. “It’s rhythmically<br />
really intense,” he says, “and that’s one of the difficulties,<br />
because it’s just tough to get really tight and get the vibe just<br />
right. But at the same time it’s one of the pleasures, because<br />
when you do get it together, it’s so intense and driving. It can<br />
be really, really powerful.”<br />
It seems then that the stage is set for a memorable night at<br />
Edge Hill station, the place where inter-city rail travel can be<br />
said to have begun. From childhood journeys across a continent<br />
through to the industrial horror of 20 th century Europe at war,<br />
Steve Reich’s meditation on the places that train travel can take<br />
us is a haunting and poignant piece of work.<br />
While most of us know what it is to take a train – from Edge<br />
Hill, perhaps, or somewhere else – we don’t always appreciate<br />
the magic and potential inherent in this mundane and routine<br />
act. And it’s worth remembering too, as we settle into our seats<br />
and whip out our Kindles and iPads and paperbacks, that there<br />
are some historical journeys that hopefully no one will have to<br />
embark on ever again.<br />
metalculture.com<br />
Steve Reich and Bill Morrison present Different Trains Live with<br />
the London Contemporary Orchestra at Edge Hill Station on 29 th<br />
<strong>September</strong>. We are offering a special bundle of items, including<br />
tickets to the event and a pair of tickets to a pre-show Q&A<br />
session, in a competition that’s online now at bidolito.co.uk.<br />
Words: Damon Fairclough / noiseheatpower.com<br />
DIFFERENT TRAINS<br />
Steve Reich Arrives at Edge Hill
22<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
Words: Sam Turner / @samturner1984<br />
“Malcolm McLaren’s son’s going to burn all his dad’s punk<br />
paraphernalia because London is going to have a year-long<br />
celebration of punk, and the Queen, the actual Queen,<br />
has given it her blessing,” Gav Cross has gone off on another<br />
tangent. Like all good podcast presenters he is liable to going<br />
off course into conversational rough. This time he chips back<br />
onto the green to return to his favourite subject, “but from<br />
punk came that blend of these performance poets who would<br />
go out and open for bands, Porkie the Poet, etc. That scene at the<br />
same time became a burgeoning comedy scene – punk poetry,<br />
punk comedy, the punk ethos.” We’re in Cross’s Allerton attic<br />
surrounded by biographies of comedians, audio equipment and<br />
pin badges. This is where the London-born adopted Liverpudlian<br />
presents his weekly podcast, FUNNY LOOKING LIVE, which has<br />
mutated into a series of live shows, and now an entire festival.<br />
Hayley Ellis<br />
IDIOCY, LUNACY AND DARKNESS<br />
A PERFECT NIGHT OUT<br />
Gav Cross’ Funny<br />
Looking Revolution<br />
Gav Cross is more than a comedy fan; his friend and comedian<br />
Arthur Smith describes him as a “comedy savant”, in fact, which<br />
is definitely more accurate. In our conversation we cover<br />
Liverpool’s improvisational comedy heritage, American female<br />
comics, the current trend of clowning and French buffoon.<br />
When I manage to steer the discussion back to his own project,<br />
I learn that his podcast, which in its original form encompassed<br />
interviews with touring comedians coming to Liverpool and the<br />
North West, was all about him tapping into Liverpool’s scene.<br />
“It was about me re-engaging with comedy; I’d been turned off<br />
by telly, I missed going to gigs. I started going to [Manchester<br />
comedy night] XS Malarkey, keeping an eye on the Invisible<br />
Dot in London and I was getting very frustrated that this wasn’t<br />
happening in Liverpool,” says Cross.<br />
As he re-engaged with comedy in his locality, Cross got<br />
involved with Liverpool Comedy Festival and Funny Looking<br />
Live was born, a live podcast broadcast in situ after a gig. As he<br />
became entrenched in the local scene, Cross’s comedic tastes<br />
led him to some of the characters who performed regularly:<br />
Terry Arlarse and Thaddeus Bent, characters born out of the<br />
Legion Of Doom sketch troupe, perplexed high-vis wearer Top<br />
bidolito.co.uk
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
23<br />
Terry Arlarse<br />
Joe, comic ringmaster Alastair Clark<br />
– all crossed his path, and it was clear a scene could be nurtured<br />
in the city.<br />
“I want to see interesting people, arts-based, theatre-based,<br />
story-based or stand-ups with mainstream sets, who throw<br />
themselves into their festival hour,” Cross tells me, lent forward,<br />
anxious to put across his idea of interesting comedy. “They have<br />
to do something different, engage a different gear to get up<br />
that one-hour hill. I like a dialogue between an artist and an<br />
audience over a longer period of time.”<br />
Top Joe<br />
The punny titles continued with Funny Looking<br />
Presents, a long-form comedy show followed by the live<br />
podcast. The series took place in arts café 81 Renshaw Street,<br />
seven monthly shows of highly rated alternative comedians<br />
coming to Liverpool followed by a chaotic podcast which<br />
brought together the aforementioned local characters. Cross<br />
recalls the mayhem: “There was a truly awful event when we<br />
all got thrown out because Top Joe did bring a smoke machine<br />
in. How disturbing was it to have a piñata of my own face and<br />
body hung from a noose?” There’s a twinkle in his eye as Cross<br />
relives the self-imposed horror.<br />
Cross will be putting himself through it all again from 15 th<br />
<strong>September</strong> when Funny Looking Fringe commences at the<br />
same venue. Acts who are currently causing a storm at the<br />
Edinburgh Fringe, hand-picked artists who have long been on<br />
Cross’s comedic radar, and local acts who are making a name<br />
for themselves will all be performing. After an opening party in<br />
association with Bido Lito!, which will include music as well as<br />
short spots from some of the festival’s acts, there’s a veritable<br />
marathon of humour. 17 consecutive nights in 81 Renshaw<br />
Street and over 40 performers displaying their chops make up<br />
the Fringe element of Liverpool Comedy Festival, which runs<br />
concurrently across the city.<br />
Cross points to the growing open mic scene in Liverpool,<br />
the established nights such as Hot Water Comedy and<br />
Laughterhouse as well as the newer comedy nights springing<br />
up, such as The Witty Committee at Constellations and Liverpool<br />
Comedy Club at Camp and Furnace, to show there is a hunger for<br />
the art form in the city. His own gigs as well as those organised<br />
by the likes of Alastair Clarke, such as Another Comedy Night<br />
and Matchbox Comedy night, bring a new, alternative brand of<br />
performance humour to the mix. Talking about the explosion in<br />
the art of clowning, Cross describes key elements to this strand<br />
of comedy: “Not what a lot of the general public will think of,<br />
with white face and red nose, but as a technique [clowning is]<br />
idiocy, lunacy and darkness combined … which to me is a perfect<br />
night out”.<br />
Thaddeus Bent<br />
There will be no shortage of idiocy, lunacy and darkness<br />
at Funny Looking Fringe. A jam-packed programme includes<br />
Sheffield’s Gein’s Family Giftshop, favourites of, and comparable<br />
to, The League Of Gentlemen, associates of Stewart Lee,<br />
Rasputin’s Lunchbox, bring their music-based anarchy, and Top<br />
Joe is launching a word that he is hoping to get into the 2017<br />
Oxford English Dictionary.<br />
Gav Cross’s Funny Looking revolution shows little sign of<br />
slowing down, as he has already began to schedule in a run of<br />
shows later in the year as well as a Spring Jamboree consisting<br />
of more acts who pique his attention at this year’s Edinburgh<br />
Fringe. In the current climate, Cross believes the art form he has<br />
so much invested in is more important than ever, “I do have great<br />
hope: think about Chaplin, Laurel – they were clowns in that<br />
traditional model; they were often the weakest, the stupidest,<br />
the most put-upon, the poorest, the saddest; they were idiots;<br />
an idiot is a beautiful thing; a clown and a comedian is so<br />
important politically. Whilst the next few years will be a struggle<br />
for everyone, people will start losing money again and maybe<br />
culturally we’ll have to retract, there will still be opportunity<br />
for people with voices to be heard, and to stand up, literally.”<br />
funnylooking.co.uk<br />
The Funny Looking Fringe runs alongside the Liverpool Comedy<br />
Festival from 15 th <strong>September</strong> to 2 nd October. It launches with a<br />
Funny Looking Fringe Launch Party held in association with Bido<br />
Lito! on Thursday 15 th <strong>September</strong> at 81 Renshaw Street featuring<br />
some of the best local music and comedy.<br />
LIVERPOOL COMEDY<br />
Festival<br />
Now in its 14 th year, LIVERPOOL COMEDY FESTIVAL<br />
has grown exponentially. The 15-day event is<br />
curated by a small team, Liverpool Comedy Trust,<br />
who run projects throughout the year that use comedy<br />
workshops to alleviate the taboo around mental health.<br />
Acts such as Flight Of The Conchords, Jimmy Carr and<br />
Russell Howard have appeared at previous editions of the<br />
festival, which takes place over various venues throughout<br />
the city and encompasses grassroots acts as well as<br />
critically acclaimed telly-friendly performers. This year<br />
the programme is looking very strong with recognisable<br />
names Romesh Ranganathan, Mark Thomas and Tiff<br />
Stevenson catching the attention as well as alt comedy<br />
stalwart Simon Munnery and Jason Byrne putting in a shift.<br />
Festival curator Sam Avery says: “I hope that, as always,<br />
more people come to see shows than the previous year,<br />
and even more take a chance on acts they’ve never heard<br />
of. We’ve got a proud history of hosting future household<br />
names to audiences of 50 or less.” Whilst the Fringe<br />
programme takes place at 81 Renshaw Street, the main<br />
festival brings comic action to all corners of the city, from<br />
the Philharmonic Hall and Baby Blue to The Laughterhouse,<br />
across to The Pilgrim, The Magnet and beyond.<br />
The festival builds on Liverpool’s healthy comedy scene<br />
to combine local talent who ply their trade in the city’s<br />
clubs all year round with acts of international renown<br />
who will stop off in Merseyside as part of national or<br />
international tours.<br />
Funny Looking Fringe adds an extra element to<br />
the programming with Avery commenting: “They’ve<br />
programmed a beautifully diverse line-up of shows at<br />
81 Renshaw Street which wonderfully complements<br />
the main programme. We’re also super-excited for the<br />
Liverpool Echo Stand Up of the Year competition that’s<br />
hosted by Laughterhouse, as it gives everyone in the city<br />
an opportunity to get involved in performing this year.” The<br />
Stand Up Of The Year competition opened last month with<br />
local acts invited to submit a tape of a performance. The<br />
winner receives a spot on the festival bill as well as £500<br />
and should serve as a barometer for the current level of<br />
comedic talent in the city.<br />
liverpoolcomedyfestival.com<br />
bidolito.co.uk
The GOODLiFE with<br />
Words: Rebecca Frankland<br />
Photography: Samantha Milligan / samanthamilligan.co.uk<br />
Lauren Lo Sung<br />
It’s nearing 1am at the prestigious Space Ibiza and LAUREN LO<br />
SUNG is preparing to step up to the decks. She’s inside the<br />
superclub’s bustling terrace to make her debut, after a day<br />
of lounging poolside at Carl Cox’s private villa. It’s approaching<br />
peak time, and the 25-year-old from Calderstones, Allerton, is<br />
about to play the gig of a lifetime.<br />
It’s Cox’s final stint at the iconic venue after a 15-year<br />
residency, and Space’s last-ever season full stop before it<br />
changes management, making the gig even more memorable.<br />
This will also be the last time Lauren plays the club, which has<br />
been a seminal part of the island’s history for 27 years, and<br />
it will be the last time many of the ravers on that terrace will<br />
be engulfed by techno and house euphoria as they leave their<br />
everyday troubles behind.<br />
As always, Lauren is creative and meticulous in her approach,<br />
showcasing a real eye for detail and an energy that radiates<br />
when she’s bopping behind the decks, smiling infectiously<br />
in response to the crowd’s hoots or the support from fellow<br />
DJs alongside her. Cox is the most inspiring example, caught<br />
bouncing behind her during her performance wearing a T-shirt<br />
emblazoned with her LOLiFE brand.<br />
To understand why Lauren was placed in that position in front<br />
of the terrace’s textured stone walls, under the salient lighting<br />
installation with one of the biggest DJs in the world backing her<br />
so vociferously, you have to trace her modest roots. “I always<br />
had it in my head that I wanted to do something to do with music<br />
when I was younger,” she tells us, with a warmth in her voice.<br />
“My sister and brother have a lot to do with that, they’re 12 and<br />
18 years older than me so when I was younger they were going<br />
to Cream. I’ve always been into music from a really young age<br />
because they used to blast it round the house.”<br />
It was a passion which was clarified from as early as 11 when<br />
Lauren got her first pair of beginner’s decks, serving her well as<br />
she got a proper feel for the basics of DJing. From there it was<br />
on to playing parties for friends, taking DJ lessons during sixth<br />
form and then getting to grips with local bars, before moving to<br />
Manchester for university and borrowing cash from her family<br />
to get her first pair of Pioneer CDJs.<br />
With more knowledge and a knack for the proper equipment,<br />
Lauren began to play at hotspots like Canal Street in Manchester<br />
and G Bar in Liverpool, before taking her talents to underground<br />
club nights like Waxxx in her hometown, where she secured a<br />
residency. “That’s when I started to branch out more into the<br />
music that I really loved,” she remembers. “I mean, I’ve always<br />
loved funky house and I always will love house music, but<br />
the stuff I play now is deeper, more techy and stripped back. I<br />
couldn’t play that in Liverpool bars.”<br />
When Lauren shed her skin and delved into that side of<br />
electronic music, the natural progression was to create something<br />
that reflected her new ethos in its entirety – along came her own<br />
night, LOLiFE. “I started that in really small venues,” she recalls.<br />
“We used to get a bit of a following from the students. It was<br />
intimate spaces but absolutely full of people and they were all<br />
really up for it.” With a platform in place to showcase her skills<br />
as a DJ and her keen forward-thinking ear, it wasn’t long before<br />
Lauren was picked up for bigger gigs like Parklife Festival and<br />
TRMNL in Birmingham, including the opening weekend of the<br />
Warehouse Project season at Manchester's Victoria Warehouse<br />
on 24th <strong>September</strong>.<br />
It’s not just about being behind the decks, though: she started<br />
producing around five years ago, and is a dab hand at it. “I’ve had a<br />
few EPs out, three or four of the tracks were in the Beatport Top 100<br />
for minimal,” she explains modestly. Her commitment to sourcing<br />
and delivering standout music was highlighted even further when<br />
she started her own label E1even with partner and fellow DJ Sian<br />
Bennett last year.<br />
Despite being younger than most of her peers Lauren has an<br />
almost matchless understanding of timing and reasoning. “DJing is<br />
a very success-hungry game to be involved with – you always want<br />
to be doing better than what you were doing last year; it’s good<br />
to have that desire,” she says. “To be honest, I’ve never not been<br />
happy with where I was. I’ve always thought, ‘I want to be really<br />
big one day’, but my attitude has always been, ‘It’ll come when I’m<br />
ready for it.’” And there’s no doubting she was ready for this year.<br />
Things have really started to click into place for Lauren<br />
during <strong>2016</strong>. She was snapped up to Safehouse Management,<br />
Cox’s own company, who also look after John Digweed, Nicole<br />
Moudaber and Yousef, a move which led to a confirmation of the<br />
slot at Space. “It was a whirlwind. I had friends from Australia<br />
that came over and surprised me; I had family and my girlfriend<br />
there. It was just mad. As soon as we got there, I had my pin curls<br />
in looking like a Scouser and I thought, ‘I’ve had them in for 24<br />
hours; I’m not taking them out for any DJ,’” she says, pausing for<br />
a giggle. Well, you can take the girl out of Liverpool…<br />
“The villa was absolutely stunning, really chilled and so<br />
peaceful, and we had a little massage by the pool. I’m not just<br />
saying this because I’ve played there recently, but out of all the<br />
clubs I’ve wanted to play, apart from maybe DC10, Space is the<br />
one. So to play there for the final year on such an historical night,<br />
was a real massive buzz.”<br />
Having her close-knit family along for the ride is something<br />
Lauren cherishes immensely and she more than appreciates her<br />
brother and sister’s musical knowledge. Just weeks before the<br />
gig her mum found a box filled with tapes including recorded<br />
Carl Cox sets. “My mum said to me, ‘Imagine if your Paul knew<br />
back then that his little sister would be playing with Carl Cox!’,<br />
she says, followed by a laugh. “Seriously, nothing gets me more<br />
than when my mum tells me she’s proud of me; it makes me<br />
quite emotional.”<br />
It’s not just her mum who should be beaming; Lauren should<br />
undoubtedly feel proud of herself as lots of young, aspiring DJs,<br />
particularly in Liverpool, now have a figure to look up to who<br />
has achieved so much through utter determination. “As cringey<br />
as it sounds, people need to believe in themselves,” Lauren<br />
says, sounding completely sure of her words. “I think the most<br />
successful people are the ones who fail but who continue to<br />
believe, and then bounce back from that.” Perhaps it’s Lauren’s<br />
ability, belief or work ethic that have led to a truly remarkable<br />
breakthrough year – it’s probably all of them – but whatever she’s<br />
doing, she’s doing it right.<br />
soundcloud.com/laurenlosung<br />
Lauren Lo Sung plays Circus’ 14th Birthday Party at Arts Club on<br />
24th <strong>September</strong>.
26<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
ome music is so tethered to the time it was made that<br />
it’s become a kind of byword for an era: Oasis and 90s<br />
Britpop, Human League and 80s synth-heavy pop, The<br />
Beatles and 60s British invasion guitar pop. There’s something<br />
timeless about those musicians who manage to dodge these<br />
weighty associations, as if their music could be taken from any<br />
period of time in history. In their reverb-heavy sonic journeys<br />
with a fondness for experimentalism, A.J.H.D. have a touch of<br />
the timelessness that mirrors that of their great inspirations<br />
Deerhunter and Sparklehorse.<br />
Rich in introspection and layered textures of distorted noise,<br />
A.J.H.D. are a trio who have the ability to cast a spell that can<br />
instantly transform the atmosphere of a room. Originating as the<br />
solo project of songwriter Alastair Dunn, the group’s powerfully<br />
understated hypnotism can send you drifting into a dreamy state<br />
through thrumming waves of guitar noise. Their entrancing,<br />
mesmerising sounds filter into your conscious: A.J.H.D. are here<br />
to chill you the fuck out, whether you like it or not.<br />
So, how do you make the transition as a songwriter from<br />
brooding, Elliot Smith-style torch songs to crafting reverb<br />
melodies in the vein of Bradford Cox, while maintaining<br />
your signature sound? Alastair Dunn explained to us<br />
how he’s managed to navigate this journey thus far.<br />
“We started the band in its current format –<br />
which is myself, Callum Bocker on drums and<br />
Andrew Parry on bass – about two years ago<br />
now. I’ve always been pretty open to external<br />
ideas when it comes to writing music so it<br />
wasn’t difficult at all, really, to add in these<br />
other elements. Plus, the three of us have<br />
been in various bands together since we were<br />
kids, so we find it really easy to play together<br />
and have a mutual respect and understanding<br />
of each other. I never fully intended A.J.H.D. to be<br />
a solo project anyway, so having the other two to<br />
bounce ideas off and just generally play music with is<br />
perfect. I still write the songs but it’s definitely become<br />
a very collaborative project.”<br />
“To be honest I don’t take the specific<br />
emotion I want to invoke in people into<br />
consideration too much. I definitely<br />
consider what kind of atmosphere<br />
thematically and musically that<br />
I’m trying to create, but in<br />
terms of emotional reactions<br />
to the music I think it’s so<br />
subjective that it would<br />
be hard to predict. I have a<br />
general tendency to reach into<br />
darker places for subject matter,<br />
to the point where at some gigs<br />
I’ve done on my own I’ve been<br />
concerned that I might be making<br />
the audience uncomfortable.<br />
But I think, with all art, that once<br />
you’ve created it and put it<br />
out into the world then you’re<br />
essentially giving up control<br />
of the meaning. It’s all a<br />
matter of perspective and<br />
personal experience.<br />
Death Of The Author<br />
and all that.”<br />
“When I first started writing songs I was about 13 years old<br />
and I didn’t really have any idea of what it was to try and be an<br />
artist. Like most people I was just trying to imitate others that I<br />
admired, and it wasn’t really until I was about 16 that I started to<br />
develop my own voice in what I was doing. I think the thing that<br />
has probably changed the most, apart from hopefully becoming<br />
better at it, is that I’ve come to terms with the idea of separating<br />
myself from the person I have to be on stage when performing<br />
these songs. At first it’s hard not to feel a little bit stupid and<br />
embarrassed when you get up and show these dark, personal<br />
things you’ve made to people that have known you for years.<br />
They know what you’re like in everyday life and it’s hard not to<br />
worry that they would think you’re being inauthentic in some<br />
way. But gradually you realise that this performative role you<br />
inhabit isn’t actually a barrier but an advantage and that people<br />
are aware of this shift subconsciously anyway. Everyone knows<br />
that an actor on screen is not that person in real life and I think<br />
it’s the same with musicians.”<br />
“Most of my songs<br />
come from ideas<br />
and themes in<br />
books that<br />
I’ve read<br />
more than from music I listen to, so the kind of emotions and<br />
places I’m exploring and writing about are heavily influenced by<br />
that. I like creating a kind of world for these stories to happen in,<br />
so usually they’re not directly about me or my own experiences.<br />
A lot of my favourite writers come from the Southern Gothic<br />
School, so I often try to convey that sense of bleakness and<br />
use a lot of gothic imagery. The emotional experiences in the<br />
songs are commonly ones of isolation and degeneration. I know<br />
it sounds pretty heavy but it’s the just the avenues of art that I<br />
find the most interesting.”<br />
“People listen to music for different reasons. Some just<br />
use it for entertainment, and that’s fine, but a lot of people<br />
find a connection between themselves and the person that’s<br />
making this music. I think you can always find a part of your<br />
own experience and thoughts in the way another person views<br />
things, so I suppose that’s why there is an appetite for the more<br />
introspective moments in music. On a personal level, I’ve often<br />
felt more connected to people I’m listening to or reading than<br />
people I actually know just because I’ve felt a shared sense of<br />
perspective with them. So, in terms of the voyeuristic nature of<br />
that, I think it’s really an inescapable part of listening to music<br />
in general.”<br />
“How much of yourself is safe to pour into the music? It’s<br />
different for everyone, I suppose. I would assume that a<br />
lot of people think that the musicians who write really sad,<br />
emotional songs are the ones putting the most of themselves<br />
into it because it’s so raw. But who’s to say people who make<br />
really upbeat, party music aren’t just exposing an extension of<br />
themselves to the same extent? You can never really get away<br />
from yourself in art regardless of how abstract you may try to<br />
make it, so I think it’s safe to put as much or as little of you into<br />
it as you want. As long as you’ve been honest with yourself<br />
about what you’re trying to do, I think for the most part you’ll<br />
always be fine.”<br />
soundcloud.com/a-j-h-d<br />
A.J.H.D. play the Bido Lito! Pretty Green<br />
Liverpool Weekender at Camp and Furnace<br />
on 3rd <strong>September</strong>.<br />
Words: Christopher Torpey / @CATorp<br />
Photography: Chloé Santoriello
HIP HOP<br />
KARAOKE<br />
LIVERPOOL<br />
THINK YOU CAN RAP? PROVE IT !<br />
SAT 24TH SEPT<br />
FREE ENTRY<br />
WWW.THEMERCHANTLIVERPOOL.CO.UK
Words: Dave Tate<br />
Photography: Tom Andrew<br />
For 15 years ANIMAL COLLECTIVE have been rewriting<br />
the musical map, their line-up and aesthetic shifting<br />
with each astonishing release as they continue their<br />
pursuit of a new strain of psychedelia. The most recent<br />
product of the endevaours is Painting With, a dizzying high<br />
definition LP concerned with art and the human experience,<br />
and the point where the two collide.<br />
The 11 th full-length Animal Collective album, Painting With<br />
was recorded in 2015 at EastWest Studios in Hollywood; a<br />
warm and personal offering, it’s an unmistakably Animal<br />
Collective concoction, making for an elemental and joyous<br />
experience. Ahead of their Liverpool show at O2 Academy<br />
on 3 rd <strong>September</strong>, Dave Tate caught up with Geologist, aka<br />
the band’s electronics wiz Brian Weitz.<br />
Bido Lito!: How did moving from writing and honing songs<br />
across a number of years to writing in the studio feel? What<br />
do you think it brought to the newest album?<br />
Brian Weitz: The main difference was how fresh the parts<br />
sounded. We’ve never really spent ‘years’ working out<br />
material on the road before going into the studio. Maybe a<br />
year at most. This process was about six months from start<br />
of writing to the start of recording. Not too much shorter than<br />
the process for Merriweather Post Pavilion, which was about<br />
nine months from start of writing to start of recording. We<br />
also didn’t really write in the studio. Most of the writing was<br />
done at home or at a rehearsal/writing session we did prior<br />
to tracking. Once we get to a studio we like to have a good<br />
idea of what we need to do, so the bulk of the parts and<br />
arrangements are written beforehand. The lack of having that<br />
repetition this time made the early ideas feel fresh throughout<br />
recording as opposed to in the past where certain ideas felt<br />
very old by the time the studio process came around.<br />
BL!: Each of your albums has an aesthetic unique to that release.<br />
What dictates the parameters of each album? Is it a conscious<br />
decision to work within a specific creative framework from<br />
album to album?<br />
BW: Some parameters are dictated by individual members<br />
more than full band decisions. Like, ‘I won’t use this piece of<br />
gear I relied on [for] that last couple [of] records’. We never want<br />
to be too rigid, but we like surprising ourselves so sometimes<br />
setting a general guideline, like no slow ambient songs, or no<br />
super-washy reverb on all the vocals, can be helpful because<br />
we don’t know where we will go when our usual tendencies<br />
are taken away. But, at the same time, if something needs<br />
some reverb, we don’t like to be dogmatic, so we’ll make an<br />
exception, and then usually that moment where we make the<br />
exception stands out as something unique.<br />
BL!: Why did you choose to make the hocket vocal style so<br />
prominent on this album?<br />
BW: Similarly to the answer about challenging ourselves,<br />
it was exciting for Dave and Noah to find a new way to use<br />
their two voices together. They had done the harmonies and<br />
counterpoint stuff a lot over the years and felt like they knew<br />
what that would sound like, and that was less exciting to<br />
them than trying to weave their voices into something that<br />
felt both like a melodic element and a rhythmic element that<br />
would blur the lines of who was even singing the lead, so<br />
that two voices would become one thing.<br />
BL!: How has it felt playing and developing the songs live<br />
after the recording process when you’re so used to doing it<br />
the other way around?<br />
BW: It’s great. Mainly we stretch out the intros and outros of<br />
the songs. Natural Selection is about two minutes on the<br />
album, but some nights it becomes eight or nine minutes<br />
on stage. And that extra time is all improvised and forming<br />
into something new over time. We’ve always wanted our<br />
songs to have more than one identity.<br />
BL!: How does your touring schedule feed/inhibit your<br />
creativity?<br />
BW: That answer depends on time and circumstance.<br />
Sometimes, after a lot of energy is put into writing and<br />
recording, it’s nice to engage with playing live as the only<br />
creative output. It’s more physical and less cerebral. But if<br />
there is an idea in the head that you want to get out, touring<br />
can interfere. Especially since it prohibits access to gear<br />
when it’s in the trailer or just waiting in storage between<br />
two tours that are close together. But it’s also easy to have<br />
Pro Tools or Ableton on a laptop and work on stuff with midi<br />
during a tour. Personally, I don’t use a lot of electronic/midi<br />
production when I use music so that’s less help to me, but<br />
other people use it.<br />
BL!: How do you cope with the weight of expectation since<br />
becoming a festival headline act?<br />
BW: Ha, that probably depends on who you ask! We don’t<br />
stress it too much. Sometimes we get those headline slots<br />
based on reputation from our past, but it’s a past we don’t<br />
engage with regularly [un]like some bands that have been<br />
around as long as us. We don’t play old songs that often<br />
and, when we do, we’re not always in the mood to play the<br />
biggest hits; that doesn’t mean we won’t add them back in<br />
sometime – I’m sure we will – but it’s always way more fun<br />
and fulfilling for us to play the newest material. From my<br />
point of view, it actually means I’m having a moment with<br />
the audience where we are all present together because the<br />
audience is with us when we’re most engaged and unsure<br />
of where things will go. But we’re aware that, after 15 years,<br />
the audience wants to hear certain songs, and we know<br />
sometimes when we head on stage we might be about to<br />
let some people down who are only there to hear a select<br />
few of them. Especially at a festival, which is a challenging<br />
enough place to engage with music because of the extreme<br />
lack of intimacy. Familiarity helps.<br />
BL!: Have you had to replace the intimacy lost on bigger<br />
stages with spectacle (for example, using the large props<br />
on stage)?<br />
BW: Well, first and foremost, we like visual experiences<br />
during concerts regardless of size. It’s in the tradition of a<br />
lot of psychedelic music performances across the decades.<br />
We’re fans of early Floyd and the Dead and those bands<br />
incorporated visual elements early on. Seeing a band like<br />
Caroliner play in the 1990s to 30 people, but still deck the<br />
entire stage out in DayGlo and blacklights is one of the most<br />
beautiful shows I’ve ever seen. We just didn’t always have<br />
the resources or time to do what we wanted. Even before<br />
moving to bigger stages we started adding production<br />
elements. It started during the first tours of Merriweather…<br />
material when we added stage lights. Some shows on that<br />
tour were still in bars that didn’t even have dressing rooms<br />
for us, so that was based less on intimacy and more on the<br />
fact that we are aware that three dudes standing at tables<br />
pressing knobs are not very exciting to look at. And we don’t<br />
have a ton of performance ego, so the less people look at us<br />
and instead look at the art around us, the better!<br />
BL!: Do you have any specific ambitions left for the band<br />
or do you feel like you’ve achieved what you wanted from<br />
the beginning?<br />
BW: There are a few things: it’d be cool to do more scoring or<br />
sound design for film, or maybe a full ambient album. There<br />
are also ideas we have for albums we haven’t gotten to yet.<br />
It’d be sweet to have a comprehensive live archive, but [I’m]<br />
not sure we have enough archived material for that. I’d say<br />
the main ambition is always to keep going and surprising<br />
ourselves. If we use that as our fuel we’ll always be trying<br />
to achieve something new we can’t even anticipate.<br />
myanimalhome.net<br />
Animal Collective play O2 Academy on 3 rd <strong>September</strong>, and<br />
Painting With is out now on Domino Records. You can read<br />
the full interview with Brian on bidolito.co.uk now.
Liverpool<br />
Biennial<br />
<strong>2016</strong><br />
Festival of Contemporary Art<br />
9 July – 16 October<br />
Free<br />
www.biennial.com<br />
Re<br />
ember the futu e<br />
#Biennial<strong>2016</strong><br />
@biennial<br />
@liverpoolbiennial<br />
Liverpool Biennial is funded by<br />
Founding Supporter<br />
James Moores
30<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
SEPTEMBER IN BRIEF<br />
PRETTY GREEN LIVERPOOL WEEKENDER<br />
We’re delighted to once again be teaming up with those sharp couturiers at Pretty Green, this time bringing you to a three-day party of music and<br />
fashion celebrating some of Liverpool’s most exciting new bands – all for free. The Pretty Green Liverpool Weekender will see SANKOFA (pictured), TOM<br />
LOW, PSYCHO COMEDY and a host more representing the city's buoyant live music scene for two storming evening gigs in the Upper Blade Factory (Camp<br />
and Furnace) on Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd <strong>September</strong>. Meanwhile, the Saturday and Sunday daytime activities will host a sample sale from some of<br />
Pretty Green’s most iconic clothing lines, accompanied by DJ sets and live acoustic performances from the likes of JO MARY and DANYE.<br />
Edited by Will Lloyd<br />
THE ZUTONS – REMEMBERING KRISTIAN EALEY<br />
All of us at Bido Lito! were truly devastated to hear about the passing of actor, Tramp Attack founder and musician Kristian Ealey in May. So, when we<br />
heard that the original line-up of legendary Scouserock outfit THE ZUTONS were planning a one-off show at Mountford Hall in celebration of Kris’ life,<br />
we were made up. Mountford Hall promises to be jam-packed on the night for what will probably the last-ever Zutons show. As well as promising to<br />
be a fitting and heartfelt tribute, all proceeds raised on the night will be donated to Kris' family.<br />
Mountford Hall / 30th <strong>September</strong><br />
DEAP VALLY<br />
If there was ever a time to bag yourself a ticket to see Californian grungecrotch duo DEAP VALLY, it’s now. Having already splintered the foundations<br />
of Mountford Hall, The Shipping Forecast and Arts Club in previous shows, the two-piece return to Liverpool once again just four days after dropping<br />
their sophomore album Femejism. Produced by Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and described as “a fuck you collection”, the album promises to be<br />
incendiary, especially if its lead single Smile More is anything to go by.<br />
Invisible Wind Factory / 20th <strong>September</strong><br />
THE AGE OF BOWIE<br />
In his new book The Age Of Bowie, respected author, arts commentator and Bowie-phile PAUL MORLEY constructs the definitive story of The Man Who<br />
Fell To Earth that explores how he worked, played, aged, structured his ideas, influenced others and entered history as someone who could and would<br />
never be forgotten. Morley will be talking about the book this month at an In Conversation event, drawing on his recent role as an artistic advisor to<br />
the curators of the highly successful David Bowie Is retrospective exhibition for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.<br />
Philharmonic Music Room / 19th <strong>September</strong><br />
SMITHDOWN STUDENT FESTIVAL<br />
The team behind May’s massively popular Smithdown Road Festival are ringing in the new academic year with a whopper of a Student Party at the<br />
end of <strong>September</strong>, which sees acts such as NICK ELLIS (pictured), THE BOSTON SHAKERS and VOO headlining. Some of the thoroughfare’s most popular<br />
venues – Kelly’s Dispensary, Evil Eye and The Brookhouse – will join newcomers Naked Lunch Café in hosting the free one-day festival of music, providing<br />
the perfect excuse for freshers and grizzled veterans to acquaint themselves with even more of what Liverpool has to offer.<br />
Various Venues / 24th <strong>September</strong><br />
INHEAVEN<br />
Having appeared at nearly every major UK music festival this summer, South London four-piece INHEAVEN are taking no prisoners. Since being<br />
hand-picked by The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas for his label Cult Records, Inheaven have been unstoppable, showing few signs of relenting with<br />
the unveiling of a mammoth UK tour. Clearly, appearing on the main stage at this year’s Sound City struck a chord with the band, as they bring their<br />
new thumper of a tune All There Is back to Liverpool and the intimacy of Studio 2.<br />
Studio 2 / 30th <strong>September</strong><br />
VOODOO BALL: RETURN TO AFROTOPIA<br />
October sees the return of the annual VOODOO BALL, a visceral Halloween party that heralds the Day Of The Dead whilst celebrating all things wild<br />
and magickal. The Invisible Wind Factory will witness this year’s RETURN TO AFROTOPIA theme, as conflicting afroPUNK and afroLORD tribes do battle<br />
amidst a futuristic dystopian setting. The Ball welcomes the likes of AFRIQUOI and ELECTRIC JALABA to provide the soundtrack to the night’s theatrics,<br />
as well as the infectious RADIO EXOTICA DJs. Expect an addictive concoction of reggae, Latin and funk laced with a healthy dose of African drumming.<br />
Invisible Wind Factory / 29th October<br />
bidolito.co.uk
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
31<br />
CIRCUS 14TH BIRTHDAY<br />
14 years is a long time to consistently fill a dancefloor, never mind establish yourself as a Liverpool institution. DJ extraordinaire YOUSEF has managed<br />
it with his own unique panache, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon. CIRCUS, the winner of DJ Mag’s ‘club event of the year’ award, celebrates<br />
its fourteenth year with what promises to be an unforgettable night of stellar artists and resident DJs: LOCO DICE (pictured), PATRICK TOPPING and<br />
Yousef himself will be among those hitting the decks on this special night.<br />
Arts Club / 24th <strong>September</strong><br />
NATALIE McCOOL<br />
Alt. pop singer/songwriter NATALIE McCOOL makes a long-awaited return this month in the form of new album The Great Unknown, to be released<br />
on the 9th <strong>September</strong> via Pledge Music. Described as “an awakening of prickly pop tunes” and favoured by Radio 1 Messrs Stephens and Levine, the<br />
album sets itself apart from its self-titled predecessor through a shift from darker realms to the light of day. If this wasn’t enough to be getting your<br />
teeth into, a full UK tour follows the album’s launch, with dates scheduled for venues such as the prestigious Bodega and Brudenell Social Clubs in<br />
Nottingham and Leeds respectively, plus a closing date at Buyers Club. nataliemccool.co.uk<br />
ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER<br />
In an epoch of randomised playlists and musical algorithms, it’s often difficult to know what to put on next. What would we suggest? Only giving<br />
the so-sharp-she’d-cut-herself ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER a listen. Having released her third album New View in January to sparkling reviews, it’s clear<br />
to see that the former Fiery Furnaces frontwoman is still white-hot. Friedberger’s new record carries an autumnal spaciousness that’s been absent in<br />
previous releases, the expanse of upstate NYC feeling closer than ever. Head to bidolito.co.uk now to read a full interview.<br />
Arts Club / 8th <strong>September</strong><br />
ONE MORE TIME WITH FEELING<br />
Anything Beyoncé can do, NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS can do better. The brand new feature film One More Time With Feeling will screen in cinemas<br />
for one night only on 8th <strong>September</strong>, doubling as the launch for Cave and the Seeds’ new album Skeleton Tree. Originally a performance-based concept,<br />
One More Time With Feeling evolved into something much more significant as director Andrew Dominik delved into the tragic backdrop of the writing<br />
and recording of the album, which came soon after the death of Cave’s son, Arthur. Picturehouse at FACT is the only venue in Liverpool where you<br />
can catch it.<br />
RODDY WOOMBLE<br />
To many, RODDY WOOMBLE is the familiar face of Scottish rock troupe Idlewild, the frontman and chief lyricist partly responsible for its worldwide cult<br />
following. However, this month the Philharmonic Hall will be hosting Woomble in his capacity as a solo artist, as he celebrates the 10th anniversary of<br />
his debut solo record My Secret Is My Silence. To accompany the number one album’s revival, an exclusive UK tour and songbook have been unveiled<br />
which will surely find themselves sold out before you can say ‘the Phil’.<br />
Philharmonic Hall / 16th <strong>September</strong><br />
FREE RADICALS<br />
Live theatre has ever been the harbinger of tongue-in-cheek social commentary, jabs at the monarchy and most importantly grown men in tights.<br />
Given that it’s been a while since Bill Shakespeare’s time though, Collective Encounters and the Department of Applied Theatre are hosting the first ever<br />
REDISCOVERING THE RADICAL, a melee of creative experiences and self-proclaimed hotbed for new thinking. So, if you’ve ever wondered what place<br />
community arts has in 21st century society, get yourself along to LIPA between 1st and 3rd <strong>September</strong> for inflammatory workshops, performances<br />
and a keynote speech from sociologist John Holloway (pictured). rediscoveringtheradical.org.uk<br />
SUNDARA KARMA<br />
Dust off the post-festival blues with a healthy spoonful of SUNDARA KARMA, who return to Liverpool after stints supporting both Wolf Alice and<br />
Nothing But Thieves. Having taken <strong>2016</strong> by storm with solid releases such as Loveblood and A Young Understanding, the Reading four-piece are<br />
insistent that we get ourselves out of the house and into a sweaty Arts Club crowd. Expect some pretty dark lyricism and guitar riffs sweeter than<br />
homemade treacle. With support coming from THE NIGHT CAFÉ too, we’re sold.<br />
Arts Club / 21st <strong>September</strong><br />
IN RESPONSE TO… FRANCIS BACON – AFTER DARK<br />
Bido Lito! are massively proud to be presenting a live version of the latest In Response To… project at Tate Liverpool to help bring down the curtain on<br />
their hugely successful Francis Bacon – Invisible Rooms exhibition. For the showing’s official Francis Bacon After Dark closing event on 16th <strong>September</strong>,<br />
MERSEYSIDE IMPROVISORS ORCHESTRA will lead a live reimagining of some of the exhibition’s work, and also featuring live performances by LUNA,<br />
LO-FIVE and THE GENTLE SEX of the pieces they’ve created in response to the work of Francis Bacon. tate.org.uk/liverpool<br />
bidolito.co.uk
32<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
From Liverpool With Love (John Johnson / johnjohnson-photograhy.com)<br />
LIVERPOOL INTERNATIONAL<br />
MUSIC FESTIVAL<br />
Liverpool is the best city for<br />
music in the world and that’s no<br />
understatement: the city has been<br />
churning out cutting-edge music since the<br />
break-up of The Beatles. From rock ‘n’ roll to<br />
punk, to new wave and post-punk, to dance<br />
to pop to indie, the city has conquered<br />
the world’s music scene for nearly <strong>70</strong><br />
years now. So what better place to hold<br />
the biggest international free festival in<br />
Europe? Sure, LIVERPOOL INTERNATIONAL<br />
MUSIC FESTIVAL may attract 13-year-olds<br />
who’ve had their first blue WKD, but the<br />
camaraderie and feeling of unity with a<br />
pride for the music this festival produces<br />
is hard to beat.<br />
Our team spent the glorious weekend<br />
at the end of July soaking up the sights<br />
and sounds on offer across the free shows<br />
in Sefton Park’s Summer Jam, and a<br />
selection of the fascinating LIMF Presents<br />
commissions in venues across the city.<br />
bidolito.co.uk<br />
LIMF Summer Jam @ Sefton Park<br />
of LIMF’s Summer Jam sees the most sociable<br />
of Friday evening crowds make their way down<br />
The by-now-customary opening showpiece to Sefton Park to bask in the sounds of the<br />
Stealing Sheep (Mike Sheerin / michaelsheerin.photoshelter.com)<br />
ROYAL LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA.<br />
The venerable ensemble lead young and notso-young<br />
on a stately trip through some of
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34<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
Liverpool’s great musical moments, with the<br />
orchestral flourishes that adorn All You Need<br />
Is Love and The Teardrop Explodes’ Reward<br />
gilding the familiar tunes with a touch of<br />
class. The only surprise is that they are initially<br />
overshadowed by the Philharmonic Youth<br />
Orchestra’s collaboration with LIMF Academy<br />
artists Xam Volo, Eleanor Nelly, Amique and<br />
Suedebrown.<br />
With Liverpool being a port city proud to<br />
welcome people across the world, it seems no<br />
better than to kick off Saturday’s proceedings<br />
with a visit to watch the brilliant JALEN N’GONDA<br />
on the LIMF Academy stage, nestled between<br />
the trees deep in Sefton Park. Hailing from<br />
Maryland in the US, N’Gonda arrives onstage<br />
cool, calm and collected, prepared to play to an<br />
audience completely unaware of his talent or<br />
who, having come prepared, are waiting to get<br />
lost in his stripped-back soul. Despite the early<br />
slot, this soul sensation gives it his all as his<br />
smooth-as-silk vocals seem to float over the<br />
crowd. Alongside his original material, N’Gonda<br />
pays tribute to one of the greats with a cover<br />
of Woman. Leon Bridges might have to watch<br />
out, as Liverpool appears to have a new soul<br />
sensation.<br />
From a field slightly closer to home come<br />
Liverpool’s newly adopted sons from Leeds,<br />
TRUDY & THE ROMANCE. Having already won<br />
over many a local music fan including Bill<br />
Ryder-Jones, the trio arrive to a slightly lessaware<br />
crowd but the lads don’t let this get them<br />
down. With a mischievous grin, lead singer<br />
Oli greets the crowd with the enthusiasm of<br />
a redcoat at Butlin’s adorned in his oversized<br />
50s attire. Upon receiving a rather reserved<br />
reply by the still rather sober early crowd, the<br />
group crash into their music. Despite the oldfashioned<br />
sensibilities of doo-wop and odes<br />
to Brian Wilson, the group prove extremely<br />
refreshing. Oli makes rather a distinct front<br />
man, with his clothes flapping in the wind<br />
whilst his voice swoops from high to low withe<br />
the audience occasionally being treated to the<br />
DIY vibrato of his Adam’s apple manipulations.<br />
Despite a small turn out, the band play as if it’s<br />
Wembley, fuelled with an obvious passion for<br />
what they do.<br />
After having sat through CHINA CRISIS’s<br />
nostalgia trip we are brought hurtling into a<br />
stylised future by STEALING SHEEP. With spaceage<br />
balloons behind them and with their spaceage<br />
make-up, the group really don’t do things<br />
by half. Commanding the stage with their alt.<br />
pop, the band bring some much-needed female<br />
presence to the very much male-dominated<br />
stage. Like all the best pop bands, image and<br />
show are just as important and the group<br />
don’t let us down, with a furore of spectacles<br />
throughout the set which climaxes with handheld<br />
glitter cannons. Both enchanting and<br />
entrancing, it’s hard not to smile watching a<br />
set like this.<br />
With the Saturday seeming to be dominated<br />
Clinic (Hannah Johns / hannahjohnsphotogr.wix.com)<br />
by Liverpool’s imports, Sunday is the day for its does remain is McCabe’s skill as a songwriter,<br />
hometown heroes – bar one very special guest. with tracks like Let Me Go proving both<br />
Straying from the security of the ‘It’s Liverpool’ poignant and infectious. Despite the obvious<br />
Stage to the Main Stage, it is only local legend feature of a couple of Zutons tracks, McCabe’s<br />
CRAIG CHARLES who would make us even less well-known newer material proves just as<br />
consider doing such a thing. Woven into local good as his old.<br />
mythology, Charles is a man who knows how Despite the domination of local faces, one<br />
to get a party started. With a crowd made up face coming all the way from Memphis who<br />
of pissed-up kids, soul aficionados and people doesn’t seem one bit out of place is iconic<br />
who just want to see that fella off Robot Wars, Love guitarist JOHNNY ECHOLS. With Arthur<br />
the group is a huge mix; however, they all come Lee passing 10 years ago, it seems only right<br />
together upon the miraculous wheeling-on to pay tribute to the man in his second city.<br />
of the man himself. With his trademark hat It could be argued that Love are one of the<br />
and sunglasses combo along with a cracking most influential bands in Liverpool’s history,<br />
orange suit, Charles delves right into the so the crowds who have gathered here today<br />
classic soul hits. He seems rather reserved are prepared for an event to go down in<br />
in this surprisingly early slot, so it feels like local history. Arriving onstage with a band of<br />
it’s up to the crowd to get things going with well-known Scouse faces, Echols is received<br />
dance-offs seeming to take the eyes off the with the praise he deserves. With EDGAR<br />
main man himself. As he plays more accessible SUMMERTYME JONES already having played<br />
well-known tracks than his usual selections, to large crowds last night, it’s great to see him<br />
the crowd seem to feed off him like he’s a DJ up there again leading this ensemble cast of<br />
playing Wonderwall in a shit indie nightclub. musical maestros. Alongside Jones appears a<br />
Having experienced the triumphant powerpop/rock<br />
hybrid of CLEAN CUT KID it’s time for POWER, TOM BLACKWELL and MIKE BADGER as<br />
succession of guest vocalists, including JOHN<br />
DAVE MCCABE & THE RAMIFICATIONS. Despite well as McCabe, making his second appearance<br />
attempting to escape his Zutons’ past, he’s met of the day, and NICK ELLIS. The generations of<br />
with a drunken “Where’s Abby? Where’s Abby?”, songwriters reflect Love’s enduring legacy in<br />
which is countered with a few unsavoury the city and with this performance hopefully<br />
words. Despite this slight mishap, the group some four-year-old watching will be inspired<br />
prove their worth with a new sound. Gone are to pick up a guitar and write a song to keep<br />
the lo-fi, 60s guitars but in their place stand the torch burning.<br />
electronic synths. However, something that<br />
Matt Hogarth<br />
LIMF Presents: From Eric’s<br />
To Evol @ Arts Club<br />
Punks old and new gather in the heat of a July<br />
evening at Arts Club, for this, the first of two gigs<br />
curated by Marc Jones for the LIMF commission<br />
From Eric’s To Evol, a celebration of all things<br />
punk, new wave and post-punk: the music, the<br />
movers and shakers, the venues, posters and<br />
gossip and the tales of this important history of<br />
the city’s gig scene since the late <strong>70</strong>s, and the<br />
wider cultural impact of this much-discussed<br />
but short-lived moment in time.<br />
The influence of the punk ethic, the DIY<br />
nature of it all, is writ large on this bill, featuring<br />
originators BUZZCOCKS and Bunnyman<br />
Will Sergeant’s simmering psychedelia<br />
instrumentals project POLTERGEIST rubbing<br />
shoulders with contemporary locals such<br />
as those lovably intense rockers VEYU, the<br />
spacey soundscapes of FERAL LOVE and PETE<br />
BENTHAM, replete with, as ever, THE DINNER<br />
LADIES, and the fall-about punk urgency of<br />
QUEEN ZEE AND THE SASSTONES, as well as<br />
Crosby’s mystery mischief-makers CLINIC.<br />
Clinic, ever intriguing and inventive are, for us,<br />
the standout band of the night. It is, to us at least,<br />
the proverbial unanswered question as to how<br />
this band have not reached far dizzier heights;<br />
they really are a special prospect. Elements<br />
of 60s psych, mixed with repetitive Durutti<br />
Column-style guitar lines, early Kraftwerk, and<br />
bidolito.co.uk
BOOK NOW: 0161 832 1111<br />
MANchesteracademy.net<br />
TOOTS & THE MAYTALS<br />
SATURDAY 10TH SEPTEMBER<br />
THE BLUETONES<br />
PLUS VERY SPECIAL GUESTS CAST<br />
+ MY LIFE STORY<br />
SATURDAY 17TH SEPTEMBER<br />
ALL SAINTS<br />
SATURDAY 8TH OCTOBER<br />
WILD BEASTS<br />
SUNDAY 9TH OCTOBER<br />
UB40<br />
FRIDAY 14TH OCTOBER<br />
BILLY TALENT<br />
SATURDAY 15TH OCTOBER<br />
SUNSET SONS<br />
SATURDAY 22ND OCTOBER<br />
SLEAFORD MODS<br />
THURSDAY 27TH OCTOBER<br />
KYTV FESTIVAL <strong>2016</strong><br />
PLUS VERY SPECIAL GUESTS EMF<br />
+ DUST JUNKYS + FEROCIOUS DOG<br />
+ RINGO DEATHSTARR + DJ MILF (EMF)<br />
SATURDAY 29TH OCTOBER<br />
AMON AMARTH<br />
MONDAY 31ST OCTOBER<br />
3 DOORS DOWN<br />
SATURDAY 5TH NOVEMBER<br />
ARCHITECTS<br />
SATURDAY 12TH NOVEMBER<br />
CARAVAN PALACE<br />
WEDNESDAY 16TH NOVEMBER<br />
THE DAMNED<br />
40TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR<br />
FRIDAY 18TH NOVEMBER<br />
LUSH<br />
FRIDAY 25TH NOVEMBER<br />
MARILLION<br />
MONDAY 28TH NOVEMBER<br />
NOTHING BUT THIEVES<br />
THURSDAY 1ST DECEMBER<br />
PIERCE THE VEIL<br />
FRIDAY 2ND DECEMBER<br />
BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE<br />
+ KILLSWITCH ENGAGE + CANE HILL<br />
SUNDAY 4TH DECEMBER<br />
A TRIBUTE TO MANCHESTER VOL. 2:<br />
THE SECOND COMING<br />
FRIDAY 9TH DECEMBER<br />
KREATOR<br />
TUESDAY 28TH FEBRUARY<br />
FORMERLY THE MDH FORMERLY THE HOP & GRAPE FORMERLY THE CELLAR<br />
ULTIMATE EAGLES<br />
SATURDAY 10TH SEPTEMBER<br />
RED FANG<br />
TUESDAY 30TH SEPTEMBER<br />
FROM THE JAM<br />
SATURDAY 1ST OCTOBER<br />
AGAINST THE CURRENT<br />
SUNDAY 2ND OCTOBER<br />
THE HUNNA<br />
MONDAY 3RD OCTOBER<br />
AKALA<br />
TUESDAY 4TH OCTOBER<br />
MOOSE BLOOD<br />
SATURDAY 8TH OCTOBER<br />
PARQUET COURTS<br />
MONDAY 10TH OCTOBER<br />
WALTER TROUT<br />
TUESDAY 18TH OCTOBER<br />
GLASS ANIMALS<br />
WEDNESDAY 26TH OCTOBER<br />
JP COOPER<br />
THURSDAY 27TH OCTOBER<br />
THE UNDERTONES<br />
SATURDAY 29TH OCTOBER<br />
LAKE STREET DIVE<br />
WEDNESDAY 9TH NOVEMBER<br />
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 />
WHO’S BAD - THE ULTIMATE<br />
MICHAEL JACKSON EXPERIENCE<br />
TUESDAY 29TH 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 />
ROYAL SOUTHERN BROTHERHOOD<br />
WEDNESDAY 31ST AUGUST<br />
KRS-ONE<br />
THURSDAY 15TH SEPTEMBER<br />
DESTRUCTION<br />
THURSDAY 6TH OCTOBER<br />
THE TUBES<br />
SATURDAY 8TH OCTOBER<br />
THE FEELING<br />
WEDNESDAY 19TH OCTOBER<br />
THE JAPANESE HOUSE<br />
WEDNESDAY 2ND NOVEMBER<br />
BLUES PILLS<br />
SATURDAY 5TH NOVEMBER<br />
IMPERICON NEVER SAY DIE! TOUR <strong>2016</strong><br />
WHITECHAPEL + THY ART IS MURDER<br />
+ CARNIFEX + OBEY THE BRAVE + FALLUJAH<br />
+ MAKE THEM SUFFER + POLAR<br />
MONDAY 7TH 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 />
PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT<br />
FRIDAY 16TH SEPTEMBER<br />
facebook.com/manchesteracademy @mancacademy FOR UP TO DATE LISTINGS VISIT MANChesteracademy.net
the early 80s pop of labels such as Postcard<br />
Records, it’s a mix that shouldn’t necessarily<br />
always work, but absolutely does every time.<br />
Arts Club’s Theatre space, tightly packed<br />
and increasing in temperature as the set<br />
goes on, is filled with appreciative nodding<br />
heads. Tight, driving rhythms, courtesy of one<br />
of the best rhythm sections we’ve seen in<br />
many a moon, laid down underneath layered<br />
indie grooves, help give their sound a stark<br />
fractal uniqueness. Tonight’s set, with the<br />
band bedecked in trademark surgery scrubs,<br />
delivers little in banter, and that lack of visible<br />
emotion, courtesy of those masks, actually<br />
lends an admirable sense of cool distance and<br />
an almost icy intensity. No brooding menace or<br />
malice exactly, but not entirely engaging either.<br />
Nowhere is this atmosphere more evident than<br />
in the heavy, overdriven and urgent delivery<br />
of 2012’s See Saw, all angry flanged guitar,<br />
throbbing bass and insistent drumming. A<br />
more than welcome highlight of the set, as<br />
is the forever glory of The Second Line: subtle<br />
arpeggioed guitar groove over analogue beats,<br />
and emphatic, floating vocals. An all too brief<br />
set from one of Liverpool’s least recognised,<br />
figuratively and literally, bands who have<br />
existed in one form or another for over 30 years.<br />
Masters of the psych in all the right places, and<br />
all the right ways. As ever, with Clinic, we’re left<br />
ready for some more.<br />
Paul Fitzgerald / @nothingvillem<br />
LIMF Presents: From The Soul<br />
@ Philharmonic Music Room<br />
Who better to curate a night of British soul<br />
than world-renowned radio-show host, DJ<br />
and tastemaker, Gilles Peterson? On behalf<br />
of LIMF, Peterson has assembled a line-up<br />
of artists that represent some of the purest<br />
ambassadors of the genre.<br />
In something of a triumphant homecoming,<br />
ADY SULEIMAN returns to the city that saw<br />
many of his formative gigs and provided a<br />
home base for his time studying at LIPA. Later<br />
in the set, before playing the ballad Longing For<br />
Your Love, he reminisces on writing the song<br />
at his Bedford St South flat, two streets over<br />
from the venue.<br />
Suleiman’s lyrics strike a careful balance of<br />
sweet and romantic with blunt and profane.<br />
His confident and pitch-perfect delivery is<br />
complimented by a band that have fleshed out<br />
under-4-minute pop songs with arrangements<br />
that reinforce his multi-genre approach. He<br />
has the songs, voice, band and even signature<br />
mic hold to fill much larger venues in the near<br />
future.<br />
Taking to the stage, Peterson and<br />
INCOGNITO’s founding member and rhythm<br />
guitarist Jean-Paul ‘Bluey’ Maunick banter<br />
like only two long-time friends can about<br />
their respective origin stories. The influence<br />
Peterson has had over British funk and soul<br />
music can’t be overstated. He was an early<br />
supporter of every act on tonight’s bill, and all<br />
but Ady Suleiman released music on his 90’s<br />
label Talkin’ Loud.<br />
Leading a 12-piece band of superb musicians,<br />
Bluey draws from Incognito’s 17 studio albums,<br />
including two Stevie Wonder covers (Don’t<br />
You Worry ‘Bout A Thing and As). “Can’t go<br />
wrong with a bit of Stevie,” he observes. As<br />
one of Incognito’s three lead vocalists, Tony<br />
Momrelle’s vocal tone is best described as<br />
a blend of post-Hotter Than July Stevie and<br />
Luther Vandross. Momrelle and co. manage to<br />
channel the intimacy and enduring warmth of<br />
Donny Hathaway’s Live album on songs like<br />
Labour Of Love and Still A Friend Of Mine.<br />
First special guest OMAR establishes his<br />
presence, performing his signature song<br />
There’s Nothing Like This, crowd sing-along and<br />
all. Next, Incognito clear the stage, allowing<br />
for a solo piano rendition of Little Boy at the<br />
behest of Bluey. It is in this setting that Omar’s<br />
vocal melismas come out to play.<br />
Performed live for the first time ever, Omar<br />
and CARLEEN ANDERSON’s duet Who Chooses<br />
The Seasons gets off to a shaky start, with<br />
backing vocals and horns entering too soon,<br />
but recovers to become one of the night’s<br />
highlights. (Later in the evening, Peterson<br />
reveals that it’s the only time he has ever cried at<br />
a concert!) The stage then empties for Anderson<br />
to allow her Pentecostal interpretation of<br />
Oasis’ Don’t Look Back In Anger to take centre<br />
stage as a fire and brimstone gospel number.<br />
With band in tow, Anderson then pays tribute<br />
to Liverpool and one of its most revered sons<br />
with Maybe I’m Amazed.<br />
Before concluding the evening with<br />
Incognito’s breakthrough single Always There,<br />
percussionist João Caetano and drummer<br />
Francesco Mendolia put on a jaw-dropping<br />
display of technical chops.<br />
Last year’s LIMF-commissioned Gil Scott-<br />
Heron tribute was bogged down by too many<br />
disparate acts that felt shoehorned into the<br />
event. This year, Peterson has effectively<br />
delivered a much more succinct and cohesive<br />
celebration of music.<br />
Will McConnell<br />
Head to bidolito.co.uk now for a full gallery<br />
of photos from the LIMF weekend.<br />
BLUEDOT<br />
Jodrell Bank<br />
Science and art. Art vs science. Earthlings,<br />
meet BLUEDOT, where matter matters (or<br />
doesn’t – we’ll come to that), physics – invented<br />
recently by Brian Cox, or was it? – asserts its<br />
fairly pivotal place in the scheme of things and
Reviews<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
37<br />
Jean-Michel Jarre (Keith Ainsworth / arkimages.co.uk)<br />
big data, tiny particles and the deadly serious how we view ourselves. Can science and art be<br />
topics in between invite you for weekend good reconciled? Let’s howl that at the ether; it may<br />
times near Macclesfield.<br />
bounce back later in the review. For starters,<br />
Jez and Andy Williams from DOVES certainly it’s worth noting (building the next hexagon<br />
approve. Their dawns spent hanging out here, here) that the minerals in the microscopes tent<br />
post-Hacienda or while sequencing album remind us that the most out-there work of art<br />
tracks, are revealed in a talk about their project is an original by Ma Nature.<br />
with Jodrell Bank’s Professor Tim O’Brien. They It’s hard to be the biggest star on the bill<br />
turned guitar riffs into radio waves, using the when you’re dwarfed by the Lovell, the world’s<br />
Lovell telescope to send them to the Moon, (formerly) largest telescope, but JEAN-MICHEL<br />
where they bounced back, arriving seconds JARRE embellishes Oxygène and... all the<br />
later: the grandest delay pedal ever.<br />
others with enough charm and gravitas to<br />
More conventionally, there’s a typically give it a go. JMJ can do enormity: he’s filled the<br />
comet-like hour of MOON DUO, some igneous Champs-Elysees, rocked the pyramids, and<br />
formations from a grungy BIG MOON, Ian this joins that list. The Lovell, though, bows<br />
Brown’s My Star during AZIZ IBRAHIM’s stellar to no pioneering Frenchman, and spends each<br />
semi-acoustic looping, and CARIBOU’s allwhite<br />
uniforms, suggesting NASA spacesuits. installation, conceived as visual music. It’s<br />
evening wearing BRIAN ENO’s projected light<br />
And, less conventionally, BE ONE, aka Wolfgang spellbinding, and keeps science top of the<br />
Buttress, whose 2015 sculpture The Hive agenda.<br />
featured sound from a beehive. That had In the Arboretum, digital arts headline<br />
revealed bees were humming in C, spawning and actors roleplaying scientists connect<br />
his classical/rock ensemble, who improvise constellations and Greek gods. That’s the<br />
with a live feed of the bees, behind a projection intersection: humanity animating science’s<br />
of these yellow-black construction operatives need to tidy up, to guarantee outcomes, to<br />
assembling their hexagonal units in wax. reach the end. Andrew Smith’s talk, Meeting<br />
Now, hold that hum while we weave, Every Man Who Has Walked On The Moon,<br />
modulate and arpeggiate, because this festival discusses explorers with nowhere left to go.<br />
floats contrasting ways in which we structure He fears, too, that soon there may be no one<br />
alive who has walked there (how I feel about<br />
the official singles charts).<br />
So we’re floating in space; can we master<br />
it? Let’s build more hexagons: in the wilful<br />
malfunctions of the human Tardis, PADDY<br />
STEER, and the way THE VRYLL SOCIETY’s<br />
cosmic lava suggests undefined space, it<br />
appears we shouldn’t. As for cyberspace, comic<br />
JAMES VEITCH’s talk Dot Con – autoreplying<br />
to autoreplies and spamming spammers –<br />
suggests we can’t. GWENNO, meanwhile,<br />
inverts it, advising between electro-pop<br />
ditties that singing in Welsh prevents aliens<br />
deciphering us. Even in not understanding,<br />
we’re building pathways. EVERYTHING<br />
EVERYTHING shower us with sonic allsorts, and<br />
where fact and myth overlap most affectingly<br />
here is where they coexist without cooperating.<br />
Dr Catherine Loveday, in her session Why Our<br />
Brains Love Music, says melodic events woo us<br />
by “violating expectation”.<br />
You’d envisage 65DAYSOFSTATIC’s belief<br />
system matching their rock-reshaping set,<br />
which is a varispeed Big Bang. And if John Robb<br />
cornered you, insisting the world was flat, you’d<br />
like to think, through force of personality, the<br />
motion could carry. “We’re here to explore dark<br />
matter,” claims Robb, leading THE MEMBRANES’<br />
regression from answers to questions via postpunk<br />
– albeit pausing to take space questions<br />
from the floor. This direction of travel spirits<br />
us out of Gerry Gilmore’s absorbing if savage<br />
lecture about the universe when he notes:<br />
“Not only is mankind not the most important<br />
thing, but what we know is insignificant. Our<br />
matter doesn’t matter.” Which, to be truthful, is<br />
a bit of a buzzkill. Hence skipping the “Life on<br />
Mars?”-themed seminars: maybe it’s best that<br />
humanity, from Bowie down, dies wondering.<br />
Father John Misty (Gaz Jones / @GJMPhoto)<br />
Knowledge is a moving target – and so is magic.<br />
So we lurch, depressed, into BRITISH SEA<br />
POWER, and dissolve into bliss. They are why<br />
the brain likes music. Not knowing what planet<br />
they’re from helps; if you’re in astrophysics<br />
class right now, you’re failing a test you didn’t<br />
even know you were taking.<br />
It’s here that the laughable construct<br />
attempted earlier in the review bounces back:<br />
if you emit a signal and are ready to receive<br />
one, expectation can be violated. It hits home<br />
in Saturn by PLASTIC MERMAIDS, whose gear<br />
resembles the Lovell’s control room. It’s a song<br />
you didn’t think possible, melding an operatic<br />
intro by a guesting RHAIN to a raging yet rustic<br />
groove, leaving a dumbstruck throng and a<br />
review-concluding residue of mechanics and<br />
sorcery. This is dark matter. WAS dark matter.<br />
And you know it matters.<br />
So, to build back around to the first<br />
hexagon and science vs the music in us: our<br />
pained, exquisite hum must be something<br />
like the wondering, the journeying, the<br />
inconsequential matter and the compulsive<br />
everything-everything (forever incomplete).<br />
Therefore: festivals. Let’s never lose that.<br />
Tom Bell / @WriterTomBell<br />
FATHER JOHN MISTY<br />
Harvest Sun @ Mountford Hall<br />
Steven Patrick Morrissey spouts a lot of<br />
nonsense. While few would question his<br />
ability as a songwriter, it’s difficult to warm to<br />
a tendency to correct people when they label<br />
his art as a ‘performance’ or him a ‘performer’.<br />
bidolito.co.uk
38<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
“Seals perform,” Morrissey will say. FATHER<br />
JOHN MISTY does not claim to be a seal;<br />
however, he is more than happy to highlight<br />
the fact that what he does is pure performance.<br />
He is in Liverpool tonight, squeezing<br />
the last promotional drops from last year’s<br />
breakthrough album I Love You, Honeybear,<br />
and an exhausting worldwide jaunt that’s seen<br />
him capitalising on the Bella Union release.<br />
But the artist formerly known as J Tillman<br />
shows no signs of tiring. Or if he does, they<br />
are the same signs he exhibited when he first<br />
appeared in front of sell-out crowds, after years<br />
spent labouring in the shadows of the big halls;<br />
tonight, his message is connecting with a mass<br />
audience.<br />
His bombastic bravado, silly stage name and<br />
piped-in canned laughter are all part of the<br />
Misty message. This is not a show for those<br />
who want raw, honest emotion or navel-gazing<br />
introspection; seek out his albums under the J<br />
Tillman moniker for that (although I wouldn’t<br />
recommend it). Father John Misty is a product of<br />
Tarang (Glyn Akroyd)<br />
the 21st century, with all its ironic detachment,<br />
beards and false promises.<br />
There’s a sense of division in the crowd<br />
tonight, which is to be expected at any<br />
Saturday night gig in a big room which is close<br />
to being sold-out, even more so for an artist<br />
who has successfully achieved ‘cross-over’.<br />
The constant chatter and audible shushing do<br />
little to put Misty off his stride, though. From<br />
the opener, throughout communal favourites<br />
Chateau Lobby #4 (In C For Two Virgins) and True<br />
Affection, to the empathic vinegar strokes, it’s<br />
a honed act which delivers little in the way of<br />
spontaneity, but the magnetism is undeniable.<br />
His voice is worthy of a room like Mountford<br />
Hall, huge if a little soulless (a charge regular<br />
levelled at our host). Father John’s delivery<br />
of Ideal Husband, however, is like that of a<br />
tornado. For all the elegant flourishes and<br />
sarcastic facial expressions, this furiously<br />
energised performance seems to suggest he<br />
does mean it, although many who needed<br />
convincing have left by this point.<br />
The performance tonight is everything one<br />
can expect from an artist who is loved but<br />
inevitably divisive. It’s quite the achievement<br />
to be both so charming and infuriating. Those<br />
who are enamoured by the songs on his two<br />
albums will have fallen further in love with<br />
Father John. Those who believe him to be a<br />
hipster faker will probably not change their<br />
opinion. I’m firmly of the former category.<br />
Sam Turner / @samturner1984<br />
SABRANG<br />
Tarang<br />
Indika Festival @ Capstone Theatre<br />
The Indika Festival, promoted by the locallybased<br />
arts development trust Milapfest, is now<br />
firmly established as the largest festival of<br />
Indian arts in Europe. The week-long festival<br />
coincides with an educational programme that<br />
sees British-based students of Indian music and<br />
dance converge at Liverpool Hope University’s<br />
Creative Campus under the tutelage of some of<br />
the contemporary masters of the multifarious<br />
Indian styles, and features a series of concerts<br />
at the campus’ Capstone Theatre.<br />
Emerald-green lighting stabs through<br />
swirling smoke before a deep, velvety red<br />
backdrop and the musicians are resplendent<br />
in traditional Indian dress, richly coloured and<br />
patterned. Tonight’s opener, TARANG, looks<br />
on paper to be something of a risk – the first<br />
performance of an experimental musical style,<br />
dubbed Great British Gharana by Milapfest (a<br />
Gharana being a particular musical style), it is<br />
the developing sound of these young musicians<br />
and their mentors, initially trained in the Indian<br />
classics, rubbing up against the contemporary<br />
world-wide influences of the modern musical<br />
diaspora and adapting, adopting, rejecting,<br />
as they go. The evening kicks off with a short<br />
video, shot only days ago in the Capstone<br />
Gardens, of Tarang’s arrangement of Brubeck’s<br />
Take Five. The music is playful, joyful, a perfect<br />
precursor for what is to follow.<br />
It’s a short set, they have five pieces<br />
completed (and are working on five more before<br />
releasing an album), but what the performance<br />
lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in<br />
quality. The first piece sees a traditional Western<br />
violin part playing a repeated motif underlain<br />
with the tabla, strings (sitar, veena, sarod) and<br />
a variety of percussion instruments, and takes<br />
us immediately from the Celtic fringes of the<br />
Atlantic to the shores of the Indian Ocean. The<br />
drone that underpins both Indian classical and<br />
folk music, traditionally played on the fretless<br />
tanpura, is here provided by a harmonium, its<br />
rich tone swelling and receding throughout<br />
and enabling keyboard flourishes to be added<br />
to the richly layered instrumentation.<br />
As the evening progresses the confluence<br />
of East and West, ancient and modern, is<br />
explored. Vocal traditions combine exquisitely,<br />
no more so than during a passage that weaves<br />
a traditional Indian vocal part around a<br />
lovely interpretation of the Flower Duet from<br />
Delibes’ opera Lakme. The use of a cajon adds<br />
a modern bass drum sound to the percussive<br />
beats of the third piece and drives the rhythm<br />
alongside the lightning-quick finger-work of<br />
the accompanying percussionists. Another<br />
delightful innovation is the use of a Hawaiian<br />
pedal steel guitar, which adds a ringing tone<br />
to the deftly played Indian notations that<br />
embellish the underlying rhythms.<br />
The tempo of the pieces is well varied, slow<br />
contemplative passages building to epic,<br />
layered soundscapes or ecstatic, feverish<br />
whirlwinds which, after a thrilling finale,<br />
have the audience on their feet clapping and<br />
cheering.<br />
SABRANG, an even younger vocal collective,<br />
line up to perform a series of classical and folk<br />
songs, continuing the intriguing theme of the<br />
evening, choral music being a little-explored<br />
area of Indian music.<br />
The choir are backed only by a single,<br />
handheld percussion instrument and the<br />
harmonium, which gives them plenty of space<br />
to allow the vocals to soar over the ubiquitous<br />
drone and an initially simple rhythm. The three-<br />
and four-part harmonies are delightfully sung,<br />
one piece based on a pentatonic raga featuring<br />
alternate smooth as silk and chattering<br />
staccato passages. There are songs of the<br />
fields that proceed in mesmerising, trance-like<br />
fashion, to ease the pain of a hard day’s labour,<br />
amidst the slow, lilting beauty of Gujurati and<br />
Rajastani folk ballads. The pace subtly quickens<br />
in the final piece, which features an intricate<br />
hand-clapped chorus and a vocal crescendo<br />
which again has the audience on their feet.<br />
Conducting duties are shared between resident<br />
and visiting teachers and the sustained<br />
applause from students and their families<br />
when they are introduced is indicative of the<br />
positive nature of the event.<br />
Once again at Indika it is not only the<br />
virtuosity of the musicianship that delights, but<br />
the sense of joy in performing, in learning, in<br />
teaching, and in the bonds that these activities<br />
engender.<br />
AMP FIDDLER<br />
Hustle @ 24 Kitchen Street<br />
Glyn Akroyd<br />
Beneath the giant disco ball of 24 Kitchen<br />
Street is a perfect setting for the effortlessly<br />
cool AMP FIDDLER. Illuminated by red lighting,<br />
Amp is dressed in a boiler suit proudly<br />
emblazoned with the name Detroit, a gorgeous<br />
hat and sunglasses. Sunglasses inside a small,<br />
bidolito.co.uk
Reviews<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
39<br />
dark studio? Why? Because he can. Because he’s<br />
Amp Fiddler. A celebrated, Detroit-based funk<br />
and soul musician, and longstanding member<br />
of George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic. He<br />
has shared stages and studios with the likes<br />
of Prince and techno/house Detroit-based<br />
producer, Moodymann, and tonight he starts<br />
his UK tour in Liverpool, promoting his recent<br />
album, Motor City Booty.<br />
Prior to his set, the amiable Amp mingles<br />
with the expectant crowd. Delivering a mix of<br />
jazz, funk and soul, RnB, disco and house, it<br />
is a set that anyone could have appreciated<br />
in the snug space of 24 Kitchen Street, where<br />
suddenly everyone’s your mate and anyone<br />
can dance. Performing his own tracks as well<br />
as remixes of others, Amp’s set portrays the<br />
<strong>70</strong>s vibe of his unique and modern sound,<br />
which derives from diverse musical influences.<br />
However, it is clear that Amp’s music is<br />
rooted in funk and soul, which feeds into the<br />
overall warm and relaxed atmosphere of the<br />
night. Songs from Motor City Booty, such as<br />
Superficial, Your Love Is All I Need, and Soul<br />
Fly Pt. 2, have an overlap of funk/soul bass<br />
and vocals, with the repetitive techno beats of<br />
house music. Nobody’s standing against the<br />
wall in 24 Kitchen Street tonight. As well as<br />
singing his own smooth, swooning vocals over<br />
the tracks, he often leaves his perch behind the<br />
decks to dance with us. The set unfolds without<br />
any awkward pauses; those moments when<br />
you find yourself unsure of how to move, or<br />
abruptly interrupted by an off-beat. He delivers<br />
the perfect soundtrack that you can’t help but<br />
move to, that even the shyest of folks can<br />
effortlessly move to. Amp enthusiastically<br />
bops to his own sound, evidently having just<br />
as much fun as we are.<br />
Remixes, such as Alice Smith’s Love<br />
Endeavour, heighten and speed up the rhythm,<br />
incorporating techno beats and drums, whilst<br />
maintaining the smooth jazz and soul of the<br />
original track. The night reaches its height<br />
during Amp’s remix of Patti Labelle’s Music Is<br />
My Way Of Life, with the continuous, intense<br />
bongo drums and repetition of the lyric, “music<br />
is my life, got to keep on dancing”. He begins<br />
by mixing warped techno and jazz beats, with<br />
a light, twinkling piano, keeping with the funk<br />
and soul flavour, which gradually builds up as<br />
the track becomes more fast-paced and discolike.<br />
Tonight, 24 Kitchen Street has been filled<br />
with the catchy beats and rhythms of Amp’s<br />
deep funk, electro and house set. It hasn’t<br />
taken long for the audience to warm up to Amp<br />
and maintain high spirits. In the words of Amp<br />
himself, this is “music for the head as much as<br />
food for the heart and soul”.<br />
Jessica Greenall<br />
IMARHAN<br />
Harvest Sun @ Philharmonic Music Room<br />
In the warmth of the Music Room, where<br />
a small but lively crowd have assembled,<br />
IMARHAN are drawn to the stage with<br />
the dimming of the lights. Thriving and<br />
appreciative of the decided positivity of the<br />
audience, the band creep into their first number<br />
utilising traditional harmonies, firmly rooting<br />
the importance of culture to these young<br />
musicians.<br />
Whilst they take many cues from their<br />
Grammy Award-winning predecessors and kin<br />
Tinariwen, funk notably influences Imarhan’s<br />
approach to Tuareg music, and with that we are<br />
infected by some particularly… funky bass that<br />
gets the audience locked in a groove. All the<br />
while, the band maintain that ever-present and<br />
important traditional backbone, with the use<br />
of two percussionists who alternate between<br />
two West African instruments: a familiar<br />
animal-skin drum accompanied by a hollowedout<br />
dome-shaped drum, struck fluidly with a<br />
small beater producing varying tones. Working<br />
almost effortlessly, both musicians create<br />
interlocking rhythm patterns and, with these<br />
guides, handclaps and stomps are a-plenty as<br />
we all move united and unified in community<br />
for this collaborative experience.<br />
There’s a sense of community in Imarhan’s<br />
music that always prevails in foreign-language<br />
music; that we the audience, though not<br />
entirely sure what is being sung, are always<br />
sure what is being communicated, and in single<br />
Tahabort – an ode to a busy market square<br />
in Tamanrasset – we’re instantly in joyous<br />
harmony for the movement and excitement of<br />
desert life. Like much of their self-titled album,<br />
it is plain to see how intrinsically linked their<br />
culture is to their music, yet there is a familiarity<br />
that unites us all.<br />
As a moodier, atmospheric number<br />
undulates on, there seems to be a foreign<br />
melancholy that lingers throughout, and the<br />
band’s exposure to Western blues rock is<br />
evident. This is something that Imarhan have<br />
done to modernise and set themselves apart,<br />
coupled with their Western-style clothes – save<br />
for one headscarf – the range of influences<br />
works, maybe in part due the historical roots of<br />
rock ‘n’ roll. Familiar West African melodies are<br />
played exuberantly, whilst almost psychedelic<br />
guitar riffs power through. So, the band build<br />
naturally and in sync on each other’s story<br />
continually and landscapes emerge, allowing<br />
us to experience the cyclical rhythms that<br />
converge into a natural conclusion.<br />
Imarhan provide us with a healthy dose of<br />
the diversity of contemporary West African<br />
music and, by taking various American genres,<br />
Ceremony Concerts Present<br />
Roddy Woomble<br />
Performing 'My Secret is my Silence'<br />
The Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool – Friday 16 th <strong>September</strong> <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 & 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 />
Kristin Hersh<br />
The Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool – Saturday 19 th November <strong>2016</strong><br />
Michael Chapman & 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 />
Ezio<br />
The Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool – Thursday 16 th March 2017<br />
TicketQuarter / See Tickets / WeGotTickets / Gigantic<br />
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THURSDAY 22ND SEPTEMBER<br />
TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM: TICKETWEB.CO.UK<br />
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DOORS 7:30PM<br />
TICKETS £12.50 ADV | SEE TICKETS | 0871 220 0260
40<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
Imarhan (Paul McCoy / photomccoy.tumblr.com)<br />
duties. It’s almost tear-inducing. The crowd are<br />
hanging on every movement, every nuance of<br />
sound that the band make. No stone is left<br />
unturned as we’re given a glimpse of presentday<br />
Funkadelic with Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda<br />
Hard On You?. Calling this set well-rounded just<br />
wouldn’t quite fit. Perfect is the word.<br />
Everybody in the room is moving, and the<br />
heat keeps going up and, truly, this is nothing<br />
but a party. Not since 1971 has the infamous<br />
Star Child led his band of Funkateers to our<br />
shores but, after 45 years, Clinton’s back and<br />
better than ever. Welcome back, the dealers of<br />
the funky music. P funk. Uncut funk. The bomb.<br />
Christopher Carr<br />
LOW<br />
Harvest Sun @ The Epstein Theatre<br />
then melding them with their sub-Saharan<br />
story, the band benefit from an accessibility<br />
that does not diminish the Tuareg in their<br />
music, and rightly so. In Tamashek – the band’s<br />
native tongue – ‘imarhan’ means ‘the ones I<br />
care about’, and with a riotous call for encore,<br />
translation is not necessary.<br />
Yetunde Adebiyi<br />
Clinton takes a back seat while we’re treated<br />
to some more contemporary tracks from the<br />
vocalists. Some of the music is astounding,<br />
but a certain section of the audience seems<br />
indifferent. After all, they’ve waited a long time<br />
to hear their favourite P.Funk tracks and this<br />
is not that.<br />
Before long, though, the classics come<br />
through thick and fast as we’re given a history<br />
lesson in funk. Right from P.Funk, with Clinton’s<br />
cool monologues still sounding fresh, through<br />
to Flash Light, One Nation Under A Groove,<br />
Atomic Dog and the timeless, beguiling Maggot<br />
Brain, with a refreshed dynamism and with<br />
the legendary Blackbird McKnight taking over<br />
the late, great Eddie Hazel on guitar wailing<br />
Since the release of their debut LP I Could<br />
Live In Hope in 1994, LOW have become one<br />
of the most critically adored and fervently<br />
admired bands on the face of the Earth. Their<br />
performance at the Anglican Cathedral in 2013<br />
was possibly the best of that year in this city,<br />
and with the promise tonight of a rare two-set<br />
GEORGE CLINTON &<br />
PARLIAMENT-FUNKADELIC<br />
O2 Academy<br />
Tonight the people pile through the doors of<br />
the Academy to witness a spectacle 45 years in<br />
the making. It’s barely past seven and already<br />
the place is filling up.<br />
The most striking thing about an event such<br />
as this is that in the crowd are the among the<br />
most diverse groups of people I’ve ever seen<br />
gather in a room together. There are punks next<br />
to middle-class suburbanites, outsider hippy<br />
types stood next to well-dressed trendies<br />
and the obvious group: the hip hop heads,<br />
the b-boys and girls, here feeling as though<br />
they’re meeting their maker. The point is, all<br />
these people are occupying the same space<br />
and spirits could not be higher. That is the<br />
power of the funk.<br />
As the No Fakin’ DJs end their warm-up mix,<br />
Mr GEORGE CLINTON, the Godfather of Funk,<br />
strolls up to the stage followed by his band<br />
members, who form PARLIAMENT-FUNKADELIC.<br />
The first part of the set is split between funk<br />
tracks and pieces from the band members’<br />
various solo careers. Although Clinton has<br />
always been the band leader, he’s also<br />
frequently testified to his desire for members<br />
to use the band as a vehicle for their own<br />
creative outlets. To that end, for a brief while<br />
George Clinton And Parliament-Funkadelic (Glyn Akroyd)<br />
bidolito.co.uk
Reviews<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
41<br />
display there is the sense we are once again in<br />
for something special.<br />
The three-piece, comprising spouses Mimi<br />
Parker and Alan Sparhawk accompanied by<br />
Steve Garrington on bass and keys, enter the<br />
stage to an understated electronic drum track.<br />
There is a momentary sense of adjustment<br />
to their new surroundings before they ease<br />
into Gentle, the first track from their latest<br />
full-length, Ones And Sixes. The lynchpin of<br />
any Low performance or record is always the<br />
sumptuous harmonies between Sparhawk<br />
and his wife, and it takes all of five seconds for<br />
this blissful vocal intertwining to materialise.<br />
It has to be said at this point that Harvest Sun<br />
have absolutely nailed the venue choice. The<br />
acoustics of the space incubate the subtle yet<br />
powerful sound of the trio perfectly, whilst the<br />
size and the layout of the Epstein are conducive<br />
to a level of intimacy that allows the audience<br />
to truly experience the beauty of what is<br />
occurring on stage.<br />
A rendition of cult favourite Plastic Cup<br />
breaks up the exquisite melancholy of the<br />
first set nicely and allows an element of<br />
humour and surrealism to creep into what<br />
has otherwise been a thematically bleak and<br />
existential experience.<br />
After a short interval the crowd re-take their<br />
seats ready for the second performance. There<br />
are not many bands around that could firmly<br />
hold the attention of an audience for three<br />
hours without it becoming tiresome, but at<br />
Low (Keith Ainsworth / arkimages.co.uk)<br />
the end of the first set there was a definite<br />
sense that we were just beginning to scratch<br />
the surface and so deeper we delve.<br />
This half seems more geared towards classic<br />
tracks such as Sunflower and Monkey with<br />
songs from the new record slotted in. Simple<br />
and emotionally honest, they often blend into<br />
each other even when there is a sizeable gap<br />
in between, making for a cohesive and almost<br />
seamless sonic experience. Parker’s singing is<br />
extraordinary, and Garrington’s creative input<br />
on both the bass and synths is impressive<br />
but by far the most breathtaking element of<br />
the night is Sparhawk’s sheer vocal ability.<br />
His gravelly and barely audible speaking<br />
voice is transformed into something quite<br />
transcendental when strained to a melody<br />
and it is clear that this has come about not just<br />
from natural ability but decades of personal<br />
expression.<br />
As the second half draws to a close it feels<br />
as though as we have all been on a journey<br />
together. Despite the lengthy duration, the<br />
crowd appear unfazed and hungry for more<br />
and, eventually, with forceful encouragement,<br />
a short encore does occur. There are definitely<br />
many in Liverpool who wish they could have<br />
been here tonight but, alas, it was sold out.<br />
Then again, of course it was. This is fucking Low.<br />
Playing for three hours. In a theatre.<br />
Alastair Dunn<br />
The Merseyrail sound<br />
Station Prize is Now oPen!<br />
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42<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
Kelis fails to ignite on this occasion. For some<br />
reason her set is a mixture of songs that people<br />
are struggling to remember, with all the hits<br />
such as Milkshake and Acapella squeezed into<br />
the last 10 minutes of the set. Kelis herself<br />
even seems to lose interest midway through,<br />
spending one whole song taking a photo of the<br />
crowd. It’s actually quite baffling, something<br />
you’d expect from someone who had never<br />
played a festival audience before, but not a<br />
seasoned performer like Kelis.<br />
You can bet that a group of seasoned<br />
performers like SUGARHILL GANG are not going<br />
to let the audience down. In Kendal Calling’s<br />
Glastonbury-aping Sunday legends slot, the<br />
group know that they are not just there to<br />
go through the longest-possible version of<br />
Rapper’s Delight that they can remember. As<br />
they charge on to the stage, the collective all<br />
start to work the crowd with the usual hands<br />
in the air, this side/that side, bounce bouncestyle<br />
crowd participation, and it’s obvious that<br />
this is a masterclass in hip hop. The audience<br />
are absolutely putty in their hands. This set is<br />
a festival-goer’s delight.<br />
Everybody knows what they’re going to get<br />
with Sugarhill Gang; RATBOY, on the other hand,<br />
makes everybody in the Calling Out tent stand<br />
on their tiptoes in anticipation. Accidentally or<br />
not, the set gets delayed and Ratboy starts to<br />
entertain immediately – much to the chagrin<br />
KENDAL CALLING<br />
Lowther Deer Park<br />
KENDAL CALLING has, slowly but surely,<br />
become one of the key events in the northern<br />
music calendar. Not, admittedly, as big as<br />
the celebrations over at Leeds in August, but<br />
Kendal’s far more family- and adult-orientated<br />
event has provided an opportunity for people<br />
to party in the memorable and picturesque<br />
surroundings of the Lake District for the last 11<br />
years. With the expansion to 35,000 festivalgoers<br />
this year, it is almost certain to be bigger<br />
and bolder than ever before.<br />
Due to the crowds packing into Tim Burgess’<br />
Tim Peaks Diner, it’s obvious that the secret set<br />
by BLOSSOMS is not much of a secret at all.<br />
The wooden shack shakes with the cheers of<br />
those inside, packing themselves in to see<br />
these new pretenders to the throne enter and<br />
have to squeeze to the front. You don’t get<br />
to the top of the pile without being a welloiled<br />
machine, but even this gig is a test for<br />
Blossoms considering the lack of space in<br />
this tent. It’s impossible not to get enjoyment<br />
from seeing them revelling in this, though,<br />
and getting swept up in the singalong. With a<br />
set in a bigger tent to follow later in the night,<br />
Blossoms get the Friday of the festival off to<br />
a start that’s something special. Although,<br />
looking at the extra security needed and the<br />
thousands of people left outside, maybe secret<br />
sets should be a bit more secret.<br />
While Blossoms are on the newer end of<br />
Blossoms (Gaz Jones / @GJMPhoto)<br />
the spectrum, it is for reasons of nostalgia<br />
that a large crowd are gathered at the Main<br />
Stage waiting around for KELIS’ set. These kind<br />
of party sets can really light up a festival, but<br />
of the security on stage, who are rightly taking<br />
offence at his creation of a flamethrower using<br />
some Lynx body spray and a 50p lighter. This is<br />
comedy anarchy, though, as he is obviously as<br />
dangerous as a tin of soup. But his fans cannot<br />
help but lap it up, and the rough tunes he has at<br />
his disposal show that there is reason behind<br />
Kelis (Gaz Jones / @GJMPhoto)<br />
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44<br />
Bido Lito! <strong>September</strong> <strong>2016</strong> Reviews<br />
the attention grabbing. He makes the audience<br />
want to listen to his music, and makes sure that<br />
you do not take your eyes off the stage.<br />
Throughout Kendal Calling, the Calling Out<br />
stage serves as a showcase of the very best<br />
of UK music talent. It’s so exciting every time<br />
you go near to the stage, with bands like THE<br />
AMAZONS, SPRING KING, FALSE ADVERTISNG<br />
and SUNDARA KARMA consistently blowing the<br />
roof off the tent.<br />
The last night of the festival is dominated<br />
by one act. NOEL GALLAGHER’S HIGH FLYING<br />
BIRDS are in town, and the biggest crowd that<br />
anybody has ever seen at Kendal Calling are<br />
there to watch Gallagher Senior sing some<br />
of the highlights from his two-album solo<br />
career and then anything from his old band.<br />
The Mexican and If I Had A Gun… are sounding<br />
brilliant as Noel is most definitely on form, but<br />
the reaction of the crowd to a series of Oasis<br />
B-sides shows that these old tracks are the<br />
reason that the likes of GHOSTPOET are not<br />
being visited. Noel lifts the stars in the sky with<br />
Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova, and,<br />
as he finishes with Don’t Look Back In Anger,<br />
you can almost see the magnetic connection<br />
between him and his followers.<br />
Gaz Jones and Gary Lambert<br />
ring any bells?<br />
The first part of tonight’s two-and-a-halfhour<br />
set starts with Opening Tears, with songs<br />
Pump It Up, I Don’t Want To Go To Chelsea<br />
and Watching The Detectives making an early<br />
appearance in the set. The Philharmonic crowd<br />
can be a strange bunch, it’s as if everybody is<br />
glued to their seats and afraid to get up and<br />
enjoy themselves. Costello, trying his utmost<br />
to engage the crowd, passionately bellows<br />
out Oliver’s Army as if it’s the first time round.<br />
Costello tells us he “finds it hard to stay<br />
positive these days”, but for first time he has<br />
his four boys and Lillian watching him. He also<br />
gets the audience to sing a rendition of Happy<br />
Birthday to his proud mother.<br />
Noted for being one of the great lyricists of<br />
his generation, Costello has a varied catalogue<br />
to choose from. His band have two of the<br />
original members from the Attractions days,<br />
Steve Nieve (Keyboards) and Pete Thomas<br />
(Drums). If one thing is for certain, Costello<br />
likes to keep his audience guessing and he<br />
returns for the encore but delivers more of<br />
a second-half act, with another 30 minutes.<br />
Nowadays, when Costello speaks there is a<br />
strange American twang to his accent, probably<br />
due to his hanging out with too many country<br />
acts in Nashville or listening to Spencer Leigh<br />
on Radio Merseyside.<br />
Ultimately, the main man delivers a very<br />
stripped-back set in the grand hall, where<br />
he seems to be at home. No gimmicks or<br />
special guests are needed, and the numbers<br />
still come thick and fast: Tramp The Dirt Down<br />
and Shipbuilding chime with the historical<br />
moments in our society that this country has<br />
recently witnessed, with change hanging<br />
heavily in the air. Moving effortlessly into a<br />
short version of She, Costello then blends into<br />
Good Year For The Roses as he shows off all of<br />
his wide talents.<br />
Paying homage to the city where he grew up<br />
and which influenced his music and his writing,<br />
Costello delivers his own tribute to The Beatles<br />
with Polythene Pam and I Saw Her Standing<br />
There. If ever there was a homecoming that<br />
showed his roots really do lie in this city, this<br />
was it. Finally, Alison and Pump It Up have the<br />
audience up on their feet, providing a fitting<br />
end to an epic night at the Phil.<br />
Mike Sheerin<br />
ELVIS COSTELLO AND<br />
THE IMPOSTERS<br />
Philharmonic Hall<br />
Sometimes, homecomings can be a bit of a<br />
disappointment: overhyped sentimentalism,<br />
self-indulgence, or a legend who lives in<br />
the past and whose voice left them 20 years<br />
previously, left to rely on the audience to hit<br />
those notes that their vocal chords could only<br />
manage in their pomp. ELVIS COSTELLO doesn’t<br />
fit into that category; ever the perfectionist,<br />
always pushing and striving to surprise his<br />
followers, his voice as strong and fresh as ever.<br />
Looking trimmer and younger than his years,<br />
Costello arrives on stage wearing a dark suit<br />
reminiscent of Johnny Cash, and sporting the<br />
customary shades that are a staple of the rock<br />
star’s wardrobe.<br />
Costello found fame in the 19<strong>70</strong>s, born in<br />
London to two musical Liverpool parents – his<br />
father, Ross McManus, was a jazz trumpeter<br />
and singer with The Joe Loss Orchestra in the<br />
50s and 60s, also famed for the R Whites<br />
Lemonade advert of the <strong>70</strong>s, on which a<br />
younger Elvis sang backing vocals. After his<br />
parents’ divorce he returned to Liverpool with<br />
his mother, Lillian, as a teenager, wondering<br />
where he would fit in. After missing the<br />
Merseybeat era and not being a glam rocker,<br />
the young Declan McManus found the sound<br />
of punk rock that spoke of the dissolution of<br />
a generation, the establishment and politics:<br />
Elvis Costello (Mike Sheerin / michaelsheerin.photoshelter.com)<br />
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Spread over two floors, Dawsons Liverpool stocks a vast range of equipment and<br />
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Dawsonsmusic
DIGGING A LITTLE DEEPER<br />
with Radio Exotica<br />
We’re always interested to hear what waxy gems are lurking in the depths of the record bags of the<br />
city’s DJs, or the kind of music they’re indulging in away from the dancefloor. In the latest in our<br />
series, the guys from RADIO EXOTICA take us on a tour of some of their favourite psychedelic music<br />
from around the world.<br />
Ranging from blasts of Anatolian rock to raga-based Indian film scores, Rory Taylor takes us on<br />
a trip to the farthest corners of the globe with these selections and accompanying mix. “If you dig<br />
these tracks, I urge you to check out more psychedelic sounds from Turkey, including the music<br />
of Selda Bağcan, Nese Karaböcek and Bariș Manço. There have also been some great reissues and<br />
compilation albums courtesy of labels such as Finders Keepers and Bouzouki Joe.”<br />
OKAY TEMIZ<br />
DOKUZ SEMIZ<br />
I first heard this belter in 2010 when I stumbled across a fantastic<br />
compilation album called Turkish Freakout (Psych-Folk Singles 1969-<br />
1980). This particular track was originally released as a 7" back in 1975 by<br />
legendary drummer OKAY TEMIZ and is heavily influenced by the American<br />
psychedelic jazz-fusion movement. From its haunting saz loop opening<br />
to its killer synth bass drops, the track is textured with a broad spectrum of unique sounds – joyful<br />
noise at its very best!<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 you<br />
can get the sound you want. Here, Dawsons’ guitar aficionado Tosin Salako discusses a question<br />
inspired by the unique set-up of last month’s cover artists Ex-Easter Island Head.<br />
CHICHA LIBRE<br />
SONIDO AMAZÓNICO<br />
In several Andean countries, 'chicha' is an alcoholic drink made from<br />
fermented corn. In Peru, it’s also a style of music popularised in the late<br />
1960s, when local musicians fused Andean folk melodies and Colombian<br />
cumbia with American rock and surf music. Fast-forward 40/50 years, we<br />
are seeing a chicha revival, which was kick-started by Brooklyn-based<br />
band CHICHA LIBRE and associated record label, Barbès Records. For the past eight years, both band<br />
and label have released a wonderful catalogue of music showcasing vintage Latin and tropical<br />
sounds, including this stonker. If you like the vibe (I bet you do), also check out the album Peru<br />
Maravilloso on the Tiger’s Milk record label. Stunning stuff!<br />
MASHA BHOSLE<br />
YEH MERA DIL YAAR KA DEEWANA<br />
In the 1960s and 19<strong>70</strong>s Bollywood composers adventurously adopted the<br />
trippy guitars, spiralling synthesizers and ethereal vocals of psychedelia<br />
and mixed them with lusciously over-the-top Indian orchestrations.<br />
Evidently the Western psychedelic movement owed much to Indian<br />
inspiration and the relationship was mutual: the sounds and styles of<br />
the swinging 60s trickled back to Indian shores and went on to manifest themselves, first in the<br />
underground scene, and then Bollywood. This track was featured in the Bollywood classic Don and<br />
was recorded by legendary playback singer (and sister of Lata Mangeshkar) ASHA BHOSLE.<br />
UNKNOWN<br />
HOPE TO MEET YOU<br />
This beautiful instrumental features on Electric Cambodia – a compilation<br />
album put together by LA-based band, Dengue Fever. I’ve been exploring<br />
Cambodian music (particularly from the 1960s and early 19<strong>70</strong>s) for the<br />
past couple of years, and have fallen madly and deeply in love with its<br />
incredible mix of American blues, rock and RnB with traditional hypnotic<br />
rhythms. Almost eradicated during the time of the Khmer Rouge, modern Cambodian music has been<br />
revitalised by the likes of Dengue Fever and the Cambodian Space Project. Definitely check these<br />
bands out, as well as the pioneers, such as Ros Seresyothea, Sinn Sisamouth and Pan Ron. The<br />
music documentary Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll is also worth a watch.<br />
Want some more psych from across the globe? RADIO EXOTICA have provided us with a mix to<br />
accompany this column, which you can listen to now at bidolito.co.uk. The RADIO EXOTICA DJs will<br />
also be bringing their global psych wares to Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia with a<br />
hit-laden DJ set.<br />
@RadioExoticaDJ<br />
FOR MUSICIANS LOOKING<br />
TO EXPERIMENT WITH THE<br />
POSSIBILITY OF SOUNDS, WHAT<br />
ALTERNATE TUNINGS CAN YOU USE<br />
WHEN SETTING UP AN ELECTRIC<br />
GUITAR? AND WHICH GUITARS ARE<br />
BEST USED FOR EXPERIMENTING<br />
WITH DIFFERENT TUNINGS?<br />
That's almost like saying how long's a piece<br />
of string, because you can tune your guitar to<br />
anything. If I was to say, “You can use standard<br />
or drop D or open A or open B or open C or open<br />
G”, it could literally go on and on. Generally,<br />
alternate tuning's all about anything that's<br />
varying or deviating from the standard E-A-D-<br />
G-B-E which is your first point of call for tuning<br />
a guitar. The possibility of tunings is endless<br />
because nobody is going to tell you that you<br />
can't tune a guitar a certain way. I only really<br />
use maybe a bit of open tuning if I'm maybe<br />
playing with a slide, but I keep it simple – I'd<br />
be in open A – something like E-A-E-A-C#-E. But<br />
we could sit here and we could juggle letters<br />
between A to G and there's no one to stop you.<br />
It might sound terrible; it might sound good. I<br />
can pick up a guitar now and there's not much<br />
to stop me from going G-G-G-A-E-C. It's not<br />
necessarily going to work but, as long as you've<br />
got strings that will cater for the tension or the<br />
snag and they're meeting a frequency relevant<br />
to a certain note, then the world's your oyster.<br />
As far as what guitars are best for<br />
experimenting with different tunings, props to<br />
Gibson and the G-force Tuning System. A G-force<br />
Tuning System will save all your tunings into<br />
the bank so you can literally press a button<br />
and strum your guitar and it will tune itself. The<br />
technology came about around seven years<br />
ago and you'd see it on YouTube like, “Wow,<br />
look at this amazing technology: a guitar that<br />
can tune itself”, and from 2015 it’s been out in<br />
the mainstream worldwide. It’s had a mixed<br />
reception: some loved it some hated it. I like it<br />
the old traditional way, but you've got to give<br />
props to the technology. There's also the Variax.<br />
With the Variax, the trick is that the guitar is still<br />
in standard tuning and through the processing<br />
of the signal – which is transposed into midi and<br />
manipulated through the technology – we hear<br />
it as though the guitar were in a different tuning.<br />
One of the benefits of using an alternate<br />
tuning over standard is that it creates a whole<br />
other dimension in what I like to call the home<br />
sound of a guitar. With an open tuning, when<br />
you strum all your strings open, you've got a<br />
chord before you even touch the fretboard.<br />
So, it brings in a whole different dimension<br />
of possibilities when it comes to composing<br />
and finding melodies and chord shapes and<br />
structures because it takes you outside of the<br />
conventional sense of, ‘Alright I'm in standard<br />
and this first note's an F and then an F#’.<br />
But, as I say, there are a million different ways<br />
of tuning a guitar. The best thing to do would<br />
be to experiment!<br />
You can find Dawsons at their new home at 14-16<br />
Williamson Square. dawsons.co.uk
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