Issue 80 / August 2017

ISSUE 80 / AUGUST 2017
NEW MUSIC + CREATIVE CULTURE
LIVERPOOL

SAT 29 JUL
11PM-3AM · 18+
BLACK
PARADE -
OO’S EMO
ANTHEMS
SUN 30 JUL 7PM
ENERGY
FRI 11 AUG 7PM
MY LIFE
STORY
SAT 19 AUG 7PM
MARMOZETS
SAT 2 SEP 7PM
THE
HUMMINGBIRDS
SAT 16 SEPT
9PM-1AM · 18+
HOT DUB
TIME
MACHINE
SUN 24 SEP 7PM
LEWIS
WATSON
WED 27 SEP 7PM
LUCY
SPRAGGAN
ACOUSTIC TOUR
SAT 30 SEP 7PM
LOYLE CARNER
THU 5 OCT 7PM
TOM McRAE
SAT 7 OCT 7PM
TURIN
BRAKES
THU 12 OCT 7PM
KING NO-ONE
FRI 13 OCT 6PM
ARCANE
ROOTS
WED 18 OCT 7PM
HURRAY
FOR THE
RIFF RAFF
FRI 27 OCT 7PM
CLAY
TUE 7 NOV 7PM
SPOON
FRI 10 NOV 7PM
SYLVAN ESSO
SAT 18 NOV 7PM
THE
JACKOBINS
WED 29 NOV 7PM
BLAENAVON
+ THE NIGHT CAFE
FRI 22 DEC 7PM
SPACE
PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS
ELEANOR NELLY
KYLE CROSBIE & THE SOUTHERN SOUL ASSEMBLY
SAT 2ND SEPT 2017
WEARETHEHUMMINGBIRDS.COM
LIVERPOOL
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CASABLANCA:
FILM WITH LIVE
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Tuesday 14 November 7.30pm
BILLY BRAGG:
BRIDGES NOT
WALLS
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Saturday 9 December 7.30pm
KATE RUSBY AT
CHRISTMAS
–
Friday 26 January 8pm
DEAR ESTHER –
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CONTENTS
New Music + Creative Culture
Liverpool
Issue 80 / August 2017
bidolito.co.uk
Second Floor
The Merchant
40-42 Slater Street
Liverpool L1 4BX
Editor
Christopher Torpey - chris@bidolito.co.uk
Editor-In-Chief / Publisher
Craig G Pennington - info@bidolito.co.uk
Media Partnerships and Projects Manager
Sam Turner - sam@bidolito.co.uk
Assistant Editor
Bethany Garrett - editorial@bidolito.co.uk
Reviews Editor
Jonny Winship - live@bidolito.co.uk
Design
Mark McKellier - mark@andmark.co.uk
Branding
Thom Isom - hello@thomisom.com
Interns
Cassie Hyde, Georgia Turnbull
Words
Christopher Torpey, Damon Fairclough, Rebecca
Frankland, Cath Bore, Janaya Pickett, Georgia Flynn,
Matthew Hogarth, Roy North, Bethany Garrett, Sam
Turner, Georgia Turnbull, Philip Morris, Bernie Connor,
Tom Bell, Jessica Fenna, Glyn Akroyd, Christopher Carr,
Del Pike, Charlotte Keenan, Cassie Hyde.
Photography, Illustration and Layout
Mark McKellier, Jimmy Cauty, Robin Clewley, Keith
Ainsworth, Jordi Gomez, Mina Bihi, Glyn Akroyd, Stuart
Moulding, Ed Robinson, Gareth Jones, Matt Sav, Michael
Sheerin.
Distributed by Middle Distance
Print, distribution and events support across
Merseyside and the North West.
middledistance.org.uk
The views expressed in Bido Lito! are those of the
respective contributors and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of the magazine, its staff or the
publishers. All rights reserved.
9 / EDITORIAL
Editor Christopher Torpey consults Liverpool’s
ley lines in a bid to understand the role the
city has played in the dadaist dreams of Bill
Drummond and Jimmy Cauty.
10 / NEWS
The latest announcements, releases and nonfake
news from around the region.
12 / WELCOME TO THE
DARK AGES
Now that a self-imposed 23-year moratorium
is over, what next for the collective known
variously as the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu, the
KLF, the Timelords and the K Foundation.
16 / ALL WE ARE
Back with a brash, punchy record built on their
own experiences of society’s turmoil, All We Are
are ready to confront the world head-on.
18 / YOUSEF’S 15-YEAR
CIRCUS
For a generation of clubbers, Liverpool has long
been seen as the place to be largely due to the
success of Circus. Yousef’s decade-and-a-half
party shows no signs of stopping.
20 / ST. JUDE THE OBSCURE
The reinvention of a pair of musicians with a
flair for moody atmospherics steeped in lyrical
melancholia has made for one of the brighter
moments of 2017 so far.
22 / A CHANGE IS
GONNA COME
Janaya Pickett looks at humanity’s effect
on climate change, and why we seem so
determined to wreak further damage on our
fragile planet.
24 / SHOUT ABOUT IT
Celebrating the art of live gig photography with
the brains behind Liverpool’s newest festival.
28 / SPOTLIGHT
We take a closer look at some artists who’ve
been impressing us of late: LUNA and Big
Heath.
30 / POND
In preparation for the arrival of the acid-fried
prog of Perth’s weirdest sons, Matthew Hogarth
catches up with Pond about heat, the Aussie
music scene and dodging pigeons.
32 / LEE SOUTHALL
A change of scenery and a fresh approach have
proven to be the defining factors in the former
Coral man’s emergence as a songwriter of great
dexterity.
34 / PREVIEWS
Looking ahead to a busy August in Merseyside’s
creative and cultural community.
36 / REVIEWS
Kamasi Washington, Bluedot, Hans Zimmer and
Nas reviewed by our team of intrepid reporters.
46 / THE FINAL SAY
Charlotte Keenan, curator of the Walker Art
Gallery’s landmark exhibition Coming Out:
Sexuality, Gender And Identity, talks about the
vital role art plays in representing the LGBT+
community.

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EDITORIAL
When deciding on a location for a photo shoot or
interview for the magazine, I often turn to the city’s
urban landscape for inspiration. Not only are we
surrounded by tonnes of stunning settings – from
the grand and obvious to the quirky and hidden-away – there’s
also a plethora of stories and connections tied up in the city’s
dense historical web. It never ceases to amaze me how perfect
a backdrop Liverpool is, not just visually, but in the context of it
being a great place for creativity to flourish. There’s no doubt that I
am biased in this view, but it impresses me nonetheless.
Another thing that I’m interested in is a sense of place – how
a location inspires an artist to create the work they do, either
consciously or subconsciously. Beautiful landscapes, sweeping
vistas and bleak architecture will always have an impact on a
creative process, as will rivers, the sky and people; but what
interests me more is the intangible essence of a specific location,
the vibe it gives off, and how artists tap into it. I’ve probably
bored more musicians than I remember in looking for answers
to these questions, but it’s a line of questioning that regularly
throws up some pertinent insight. In his interview with us in this
month’s issue, Lee Southall tells us how he’s become attuned to
“the way place influences me creatively” now that he’s moved to
his new home of Hebden Bridge, paying particular attention to
the way the sound moves about the valley. Similarly, the three
members of All We Are (from Ireland, Norway and Brazil) sang
the praises of their adopted home during our recent interview,
and totally understood the significance of undertaking our chat
on board the Mersey Ferry. As the river churned around us and
the city’s landmarks fanned out in front, the sense of Liverpool
as a place of great dynamism and flux was striking. With the
huge volume of ideas that our inventive, defiant port city has
welcomed over the past hundred years, it’s no real surprise that
we’ve seen so much creative ingenuity spring from its midst.
There’s a school of thought that all locations are shaped
metaphysically by the events that occur in them, and that
the recounting of myths and legends is humanity’s way of
understanding physical space in some kind of spiritual way.
This overlaps with the notion of psychogeography – that the
behaviours of individuals are tied up with the shape and flow
of urban environments, and that the best way to study these
“If you’re willing to allow
for the possibilities
of synchronicity,
you can open your
minds to a trove of
potential insight”
effects is to drift about cities and towns and see where they take
you. Now, I’ve never considered myself a psychogeographer,
nor a student of the Situationist International movement that
the approach came from, but I’ve often drawn inspiration from
the nooks and crannies of an urban landscape, and the peculiar
features associated with them. There’s a mass of energy to
be drawn from walking the city and noticing its (seemingly)
random points of convergence, where buildings cluster and the
layers of myth and legend run deep. Excavations and scientific
research will never truly be able to tell us why certain buildings
were built where they are, or why a road runs in the direction it
does, because reason doesn’t live in fortifications or fossilised
remains. These gaps in our knowledge are the key, cavities where
conjecture, folklore and character flood into. These are the things
a city is built on.
If you’re willing to allow for the possibilities of synchronicity,
you can open your minds to a trove of potential insight that
extends beyond this. For example, there’s a point in Liverpool
where three ley lines intersect, a place which has long been
venerated – by those who believe in such things – as a vortex of
energy. Marked by a manhole cover at the point where Mathew
Street and Button Street merge, this place of psychogeographic
alignment is the supposed site of Carl Jung’s “pool of life” and
Peter O’Halligan’s spring, just a stone’s throw from The Cavern,
Eric’s and the School Of Language, Music, Dream And Pun.
Ley lines are purely arbitrary lines connecting points of spiritual
interest, but the lack of hard scientific evidence in explaining
their course is no reason to discard their importance. There’s no
denying the power of a thought, and what it inspires you to do.
Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty are two people who,
in one way or another, were brought together by Liverpool’s
synchronous diagrammatic fluctuations. The city’s pull on
them remains strong, as, in 2017, they prepare to return for
the latest chapter in the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu story.
Their remarkable, baffling career has been characterised by an
ability to stay one step ahead of expectation, enabling them to
survey artistic expression from a heightened perspective, and
occasionally toss of the apple of discord into a stratum of the arts
they believe has become too obsessed with its own importance.
There are many stories that connect Drummond and Cauty to
Liverpool, and their presence has imprinted greatly on the city’s
self-image. One of my favourites concerns Drummond’s last act
at manager of Echo & the Bunnymen, an almost Situationist event
that traversed the city for what was, ostensibly, a gig. On 12th
May 1984, the Bunnymen hosted an event for their hometown
fans titled A Crystal Day, which began at Brian’s Café on Stanley
Street for the ceremonial stamping of tickets. Then followed a
banana fight on the Mersey Ferry, hundreds of blue and yellow
balloons being released, a bicycle ride around the city on a
course in the shape of a rabbit (with the rabbit’s navel centred
on a certain manhole cover), before, finally, a sold-out show at
St. George’s Hall. There was even room for a broadcast from
The Tube, with Jools Holland darting between barber shops and
a Yates’ Wine Lodge (which Mac referred to as “those pastelcoloured
trouser bars”) on a Hesketh motorbike. It was pure
Drummond in its theatrical flair, designed purely to mess with the
audience’s heads.
On 23rd August 2017, the next chapter of the Justified
and Ancient story will be written into the fabric of the city by
Drummond and Cauty. Want to know what the FUUK is going
on? So do we. !
Christopher Torpey / @CATorp
Editor
09

NEWS
Days Of PZYK
With a host of audio delicacies from across
the globe, Liverpool International Festival
Of Psychedelia is a veritable cornucopia of
psychedelic/space rock/shoegaze/kosmische
delights. Individual day tickets for the event
on 22nd and 23rd September are now on
sale, with the 70+ acts split between five
performance areas across Camp and Furnace
and District. Malian rockers SONGHOY
BLUES headline the Friday night, with Texan
psych juggernauts THE BLACK ANGELS
topping the bill on Saturday. What’s
more, NYC noiseniks A PLACE TO BURY
STRANGERS have been added to the lineup,
alongside DEAD VIBRATIONS and LA
WITCH. liverpoolpsychfest.com
Songhoy Blues
New Bido Lito! Student Society
– Get Involved!
Bido Lito! wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the hard work, love and enthusiasm of our
huge team of volunteer writers, photographers, illustrators, organisers, doers and
dreamers. And from September we’re adding a new Bido Lito! Student Society into
the mix, giving Liverpool’s music and culture loving students the opportunity to
play a key role in the Bido Lito! team. The Bido Lito! Student Society will contribute
to the production of the magazine each month; writing and organising content,
developing editorial angles, and generally working with the Bido team to make the
magazine the best it can be. We would love students in the city with a passion for
music, writing and culture to come along to meet the team for a few drinks at The
Merchant on 17th August from 6pm, ahead of our August Bido Lito! Social (see
page 35). Join us as we continue to immerse ourselves in Liverpool’s vibrant music
scene – it’s bound to be fun!
Bido Lito! Student Society
Dayglo Cliché: Celebrating Poly Styrene
Poly Styrene
Beyond her work as the frontwoman of X-Ray Spex, POLY STYRENE’s
incredible life story, including battles with racism, misogyny and mental health
issues, remains largely uncovered. Though, not for much longer – join Poly’s
daughter, Celeste Bell, acclaimed writer, Zoë Howe, and writer, musician and
close friend of Poly, John Robb, at the British Music Experience on 1st August
in celebration of her incredible and varied life. Bell and Howe are putting
the jigsaw pieces of Poly’s story together in both a documentary film and
a biography to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the release of X-Ray
Spex’s Germ Free Adolescents late next year.
If You Guild It, They Will Come
SOUTHPORT FILM GUILD have announced a top-notch
programme of screenings for their new season starting with
the film Court on the 2nd August. Based at The Atkinson Arts
Centre, the Guild was founded in 1966 and is one of the most
established clubs of its kind in the country. Members of the
Film Guild can take in all 12 films in the run, which last until
May 2018. The programme includes one of the movies of last
year I, Daniel Blake, and other critically acclaimed favourites
such as Julieta and Manchester By The Sea, all of which can
be enjoyed by Guild members, as well as other perks, for the
membership price. theatkinson.co.uk
Better Late Than Never
Perfect for the after-work crowd, FACT Lates give people
an extra chance to see the superb exhibition The New
Observatory currently on display in FACT’s main galleries.
On the first Wednesday of every month, the exhibition
spaces will be open a little later, closing at 8pm. Put
together in collaboration with the Open Data Institute, The
New Observatory looks at how we use data to measure,
predict and sense the world and explore our experience of
that relationship. Special events relating to the exhibition
will take place throughout its run, which lasts until 1st
October. fact.co.uk
Win Tickets To Festival No. 6
Festival No. 6
Sitting pretty in the picturesque environs of
Portmeirion, FESTIVAL NO. 6 celebrates its 6th
birthday this year, with out-of-this-world headliners
THE FLAMING LIPS, BLOC PARTY and MOGWAI
taking over the North Wales idyll from 7th to 10th
September. You can also get your poetry fill with KATE
TEMPEST and comedy courtesy of DIANE MORGAN
(aka Philomena Cunk). Elsewhere, drum ‘n’ bass legend
GOLDIE and nu-disco pioneers HERCULES AND LOVE
AFFAIR head up the festival’s illustrious electronic bill.
Fancy winning a pair of tickets? We bet you do: just
head to facebook.com/BidoLito and keep your eyes
peeled for further details.
10

DANSETTE
Bido Lito! are taking over the
airwaves. Our new show, Pink Audio
Dynamite, will be broadcast to you
every month on IWFM Radio. Here’s
a taster of what to expect from our
first attempt at wireless domination.
Psychedelic Furs
Pretty In Pink
Columbia
Photo by Yetunde Adebiyi
Affecting Change
@ Open Eye Gallery
So, you’ve waved a placard at a demonstration,
demanding change – but are you looking for the kind
of meaningful change that society actually needs? By
focusing on the work of community organisations as
seen through the prism of five emerging artists from
Merseyside, the latest exhibition in Open Eye Gallery’s
Open season challenges that very question. AFFECTING
CHANGE features photography exhibitions as a canvas
to have these discussions – and we’re giving you an
opportunity to delve further behind the themes the
exhibition raises with a curator and artist tour on 6th
September. Advance tickets are on sale now from bidolito.
co.uk – Bido Lito! members get in free.
We decided to open up our first show with this little nod
to our own pink gorgeousness. A classic bit of pop music
songwriting with that decidedly British post-punk slant,
which somehow seemed to chime with the themes of
the Brat pack film. I hope we didn’t ruin it with too many
jingles.
Blawan
Say What You
Want To Say
Ternesc
A slice of elastic, squidgy techno for all the audiophiles,
selected as we cast our minds back to BLAWAN’s live
show at 24 Kitchen Street in March. And we also felt it was
a nice segue between Madonna and The Housemartins (we
were so right).
Dans Dans
TV Dreams
Unday Records
Pizza The Action
If you are going to the Frankie Cosmos gig at The
Magnet on the first day of the month, or checking out
The Vryll Society’s show on 25th August, there’s only
one place to go pre-gig. Bido Lito! have put together
the perfect playlists for the build-up up to both
shows featuring the artists, their influences and their
contemporaries. AMERICAN PIZZA SLICE will not only
be playing these mixes, but they’ll also be offering 2-4-
1 pizza slices to ticket holders for each show. Go along
from 6pm on the evening of each gig for the perfect
pre-gig pizza party.
Welcome To The Warehouse
With New York dance-punk titans LCD Soundsystem having
already sold out the opening weekend of Manchester’s
WAREHOUSE PROJECT, anticipation is high for the line-up for
the remainder of the season’s run. The mighty Welcome To The
Warehouse double-header at the Store Street venue is a sign of
things to come, featuring a slew of hotter than hot big names –
Eats Everything, Seth Troxler, Bicep, Or:La, Ben UFO and tonnes
more. Head to thewarehouseproject.com to see what other
eclectic late-night parties they have planned, bringing the best
DJs from around the world to Manchester each weekend, running
all the way up to New Year’s Day.
Bido Lito! x Friends DJs
@ The Merchant
We always said that when we had our own radio show
we’d play a ten-minute ambient jazz fusion tune on it. This
is us not only sticking to our word, but also providing you
with a blissful example of restraint from these Belgian
maestros.
Ali Horn
Days Like Today
The Label
Recordings
The Merchant
Who loves payday weekend? We do. So much
so that we’re dedicating the last Friday of July
and August to a resident DJ slot in the cool, leafy
environs of The Merchant. Sip a gin and tonic, ice
cold beer or whatever your signature tipple might
be (we can guarantee The Merchant will stock
it) and groove along to some choice selections
courtesy of Bido DJs plus a few vinyl-happy pals
with excellent taste. Expect fresh cuts, tasteful
dancefloor fillers, none-hit wonders and maybe a
pinch of psychedelia.
One of our favourite tunes of the year, from the artist who
appeared on the cover of Issue 76. It’s pure sunshine and
surfing from a beach boy raised on Spiritualized and Brian
Jonestown Massacre. We could listen to it for hours – in
fact, we probably already have.
Tune in to IWFM Radio on the first Saturday of every month
to hear our latest Pink Audio Dynamite broadcast. Catch up
with Volume One, and all subsequent editions, at bidolito.
co.uk/podcast.
NEWS 11

WELCOME
TO THE
DARK
AGES
12

The ley lines that run through Liverpool have been at the heart
of many strange goings on, centred around the collective known
variously as the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu, the KLF, the
Timelords and the K Foundation. Now that a self-imposed 23-
year moratorium is over, it’s time to bring out the JAMS.
I
want to tell you a story, but I don’t know where to
begin. I mean, how the hell do I tell this tale without
winding back past burning bank notes, past totemic
ice-cream vans, past the Turner Prize baiting, past
the BRITS mock massacre, and on and on, back past
Whitney and Abba, past Bunnymen and Teardrops, and
into a world of discordia and chaos, of synchronicity
and magic, of apocalyptic conspiracy, a place where
civilisations clash?
And all this over a pop group?
I want to tell you a story about The KLF, about how
two men from the music industry combined to create a
unit-shifting monster, a brand of art-pop terrorism, an
endlessly unpeeling conceptual onion with pandemonium
at its heart. And I also want to tell you a story about The
JAMS, or the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, who appeared
to be the same two men, this time connected with an acidfried
legend that was in large part hilarious hogswallop
and yet sometimes startlingly, staggeringly true.
But you might also want to know about The
Timelords, being the human guise of a battered Ford
Galaxy that managed to get a record to number one. Or
the K Foundation, who taunted the world of Brit Art while
simultaneously creating one of the most authentically
shocking artistic statements since… well, since when?
It soon becomes clear that this isn’t one story but
many stories, not an easily navigated narrative footpath
but a labyrinth of art and ideas. So where on Earth to
begin? As I gaze out of the window, I realise the answer
is staring me in the face. Because, as with so many pop
culture stories, the place to begin is Liverpool – or rather
an idea of Liverpool, a city made from sandstone and
dreams.
When we use the word ‘story’, we often mean
something that’s been invented. But if that story gets
repeated and starts to affect the way that people behave
– in such a manner as to cause the story to become a
self-fulfilling prophecy – then at what point does the story
switch from fiction to fact?
Take this story for example. In 1927, the
psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote about a dream he’d had: “I
found myself in a dirty, sooty city,” he said. “It was night,
and winter, and dark, and raining. I was in Liverpool…”,
and after some nocturnal narrative meandering, he landed
the killer line: “Liverpool is the ‘pool of life’.” For most who
noticed, it was an incidental phrase in a book, a detail
to be read and then passed over. But for a Liverpudlian
poet called Peter O’Halligan it had meaning, and in the
early 1970s he searched for the site that Jung might have
visited in his dream. And he found it.
Or, he imagined he had found it – a site at the bottom
of Mathew Street where you’re now more likely to find
vomiting hen parties than cosmically tuned dreamers.
But Liverpool then was no stranger to poetic projects – it
was the home of performance art and happenings, the
Liverpool Poets and The Mersey Sound, after all – and,
channelling the spirit of Mersey surrealism, O’Halligan
took over the nearest building and called it The Liverpool
School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun.
Among many other things, it attracted a theatre
director called Ken Campbell, who used it as the venue
for a play based on the Illuminatus! Trilogy – a dense,
lysergically-flavoured series of books influenced by a
parody religion called Discordianism. Illuminatus! didn’t
so much weave conspiracy theories together as tie them
all up, prod them with sticks and leave them to fight it out
among themselves.
Campbell’s take on Illuminatus! shot off in its own
zig-zagging direction towards London, with future stars of
stage and screen battling their way through its bafflingly
brilliant nine hours. And caught in its slipstream was a
young Bill Drummond, an ex-art student in Liverpool who
had been working as a carpenter at the Everyman Theatre
before being taken on to build the Illuminatus! sets.
Drummond was impressed by Campbell’s methods,
which involved imagining impossible things and then
simply finding the right phone numbers to make them
happen. He was inspired, too, by Illuminatus!, whose
clump of conspiratorial literary knotweed proved a
bountiful source of verdant, conceptual sprigs. So, even
as he formed a band called Big In Japan, and started
a label called Zoo, and managed other groups such as
Echo & the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes, and
saw something dangerously close to a conventionally
successful pop business career begin to coalesce beneath
his feet, his instinct was to continue reaching for the
extraordinary, the astonishing, the impossible, in a quest
to see where these untamed forces could lead.
“A unit-shifting
monster, a brand of
art-pop terrorism, an
endlessly unpeeling
conceptual onion
with pandemonium
at its heart”
FEATURE 13

After all, not many bands’ managers arrange gigs according
to the squirming of an interstellar ley line that apparently hits the
earth in three places – one of them being Mathew Street – and
even fewer of those managers then stand on a manhole in the
hope of channelling the universe’s power. Certainly, it seems
unlikely that Simon Cowell ever did that, but it’s what Illuminatus!,
pop music and the pool of life had done to Drummond.
By 1987, with the city now in his rear-view mirror but with
its writhing ley lines still electrifying his imagination, Drummond
connected with an artist and musician called Jimmy Cauty and set
out to make a record.
It was the year that house music, sampling, club culture
and hip hop collided, a temporal sweet-spot in which some
stylistic ground rules had been laid, but the industry had yet to
catch up. There was space, therefore, for creative fast movers
and low-budget visionaries to grab a hit and steal a piece of the
dancefloor. And for Drummond and Cauty, it was time to release
a clutch of copyright-busting sampling singles under the name
The JAMS (or ‘Justified Ancients of Mu Mu’, a name swiped from
the pages of Illuminatus!) and seed the nascent scene with the
same themes and ideas that had proved so inspiring to Ken
Campbell all those years before. And because the dance scene
was still being scoped out, its boundaries unbuilt, pop music
opened up for The JAMS, accepting their esoteric concepts and
danceable beats and turning them into chart hits even as they
fielded legal challenges in response to their brazen sonic theft.
Records that might have looked like novelties in a certain
light became dancefloor smashes under stuttering strobes, and
The JAMS begat The Timelords who begat The KLF, and the
sound became bigger, brighter, less raw but no less conceptually
vital, still hurling around ideas even as the beats dropped hard.
And still they wriggled, shifting their shape as they switched from
stadium house to ambient chill, from pin-sharp edits to bottleneck
guitar, from kids’ TV to underground raves to the point at which
they were the biggest-selling singles band of the year.
At the 1992 BRIT Awards, they burned all their musical
bridges by firing machine guns filled with blanks at the industry
bigwigs and dumping a dead sheep on the steps of the after
party. It wasn’t the end of Drummond and Cauty as artists – both
continued working, travelling, writing, thinking, and there was
still a million quid of KLF cash to get rid of, which they incinerated
in a bonfire on Jura as the ultimate punk-dada act – but it was the
ceremonial end of an era, the extinguishing of an incendiary pop
career.
“Something
is happening,
it seems, and
it’s no surprise
that it should be
happening here”
But, all these years later, with their catalogue having long
been deleted of their own volition and that million quid having
long ceased smouldering, those late-80s/early 90s records have
lost none of their of-the-moment power, and their discordian
thinking has lost none of its ability to intrigue. So, when a single
flyposter recently appeared on a wall in Hackney announcing
the approaching end of a 23-year moratorium on JAMS activity,
and rumours of a JAMS book began to circulate, and an image
appeared on Twitter that stated “The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu
will be unearthing aspects of the 2023 trilogy across Liverpool”,
The KLF’s dormant pan-global networks burst into life.
Something is happening, it seems, and it’s no surprise that it
should be happening here. Because, while the pool of life and the
ley lines may be imagined, their power over people can be true.
And if the result is that ideas become action, our city’s story can
turn from fiction into fact.
Again. !
Words: Damon Fairclough / noiseheatpower.com
Welcome To The Dark Ages, a three-day situation by The
Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu, takes place between 23rd and 25th
August. To get your tickets for the event, head to bidolito.co.uk/
jams
14

“If you have a
message, you can
make people think –
you can make little
tiny, incremental
changes in the world”
ALL
WE
ARE
16

It’s hard not to be forthright in our opinions in the current climate, or
angry about the injustices we see around us. Back with a brash, punchy
record built on their own experiences of society’s turmoil, All We Are
are ready to confront the world head-on.
Given that ALL WE ARE’s first Bido Lito! interview
came way back in April 2012, you’d be forgiven for
thinking that we’ve covered all the available bases
with them already. But that’s an assumption that
doesn’t take in to account the restless nature of musicians, and
the trajectory that Guro Gikling, Luís Santos and Rich O’Flynn
have been on since our first encounter has been one of constant
evolution. Only the faintest traces of the haunting ambience that
attracted us to them five years ago still clings to Sunny Hills, the
second album the trio have released on Double Six (an imprint of
Domino Records). Even the gloopy psycho disco of their breakout
single Utmost Good has taken a back seat, which is probably an
albatross that Guro, Luís and Rich are glad to have removed from
around their necks. But Sunny Hills is far from an overhaul of
the RnB-inflected dynamism of 2015’s debut self-titled LP; the
new record is more a sensual update on the template that has
propelled the band to the level of players on the national circuit,
with the added bite of their political convictions.
Far from shying away from being seen to have an opinion, All
We Are have responded to the turmoil our society currently finds
itself in with their own defiant message of togetherness. From
the album’s artwork (a photograph of a small house sandwiched
between large-scale developments, a symbol of resistance) to the
trilogy of music videos accompanying the singles Human, Animal
and Dance (depicting the plight of the residents of a small village
at risk of being torn in two by a motorway development), there’s
a sense that the trio aren’t holding anything back. Bursting
out of the traps with Burn It All Out’s cathartic slow build and
the driving gusto of Human – which comes with its own set of
accompanying short films, where they ask people on the streets
of Liverpool ‘What does is it mean to be a human?’ – Sunny
Hills finds the band on the front foot from the outset. There’s a
real sense of urgency to the All We Are of 2017, and there’s no
mistaking that the themes they’re bringing up really matter to
them.
Away from the vigour of this opening salvo, the rest of the LP
has a different feel, more akin to the groove of All We Are. The
halogen-lit midnight drives conjured up by Dance, Dreamer and
Animal allow the band to deal with more personal issues (loss,
depression, identity), giving Sunny Hills even more emotional
depth than it first seems.
In a bid to find out more about the motivations at the heart of
this album, I invited All We Are down to the Pier Head for a chat,
hoping that a trip on the Mersey Ferry would be the perfect spot
to chew over the themes brought up. As life and the river churned
around us, the conversation soon began to flow…
All We Are on… getting in people’s faces with Sunny Hills.
Rich O’Flynn: We never really set out to kind of make the record
the way it was. What we did want was to do something really
honest, something really direct and personal, you know? And yeh,
get in people’s faces. We had a lot of energy and a little bit of
darkness in us, but it was only afterwards when we took a step
back, we were like: ‘Oh, all these themes are quite apparent.’
Guro Gikling: For this record, I think we kind of decided that
whoever did the lead on the song did the lyrics, because you really
need to be able to deliver them and to feel whatever is coming
out.
Luís Santos: The first record was a bit more open insofar as how
you could interpret the meaning of the songs, and puposefully [it
was] written in a way that you can take your own experience into
it and make your own interpretation. Now, it’s a lot more personal
in that sense.
ROF: It [All We Are] was sort of more ambiguous – or ‘open’ I
think is a better way of saying it. Whereas this time around we
wanted to make a really direct record.
GG: I also think the vocal performance is not so… pretty? It’s more
gritty, and more from the gut.
ROF: We definitely felt a sense of duty to ourselves [as well];
we were like, ‘We have to just get this out of us.’ It wasn’t, like,
a selfish thing, but we had this duty to express ourselves in that
way. And then we thought, ‘Fuck it, what’s the point of music if
you’re not trying to make a point or get something across in some
way?’
All We Are on… playing the live game.
LS: As we were writing the songs [for Sunny Hills], we had a
couple of very important gigs where we hit on this energy, where
we realised there was something really special there. We were
really connecting with the audience, being honest on the stage. It’s
not so much about playing a part for a song but about the energy
that you put into the performance. Particularly the Crow’s Nest
show, at Glastonbury in 2015: loads of our friends were there,
there was just a really special energy. We always talk about that,
actually! We just wanted to get [that energy] across in the new
songs, to take that sentiment and put it into the writing. When
we went into the studio we tried to provoke that sentiment again.
Now, when we’re playing those songs live, they’re just a bit more
intimate so it’s really special for us to play them live.
All We Are on… being aware of reviews.
GG: What I really enjoyed with the first record was people
contacting us saying what the songs meant to them. Which, I
think, is way more important than any critic, really. That was,
without a doubt, a very positive experience and made you realise
that music can change things.
ROF: I don’t think we tend to really listen to the critics that much.
We had some really cool requests, like to play Feel Safe at a
wedding, and questions like ‘Could you please explain the lyrics
to us? Because this is what we interpret from it’; they were ‘wow’
moments, definitely. To feel that you make music and it really does
make a difference. That’s the kind of thing we brought into this
record as well: if you have a message, you can make people think
– you can make little tiny, incremental changes in the world.
GG: I also really enjoyed the story of a new dad, who emailed us
saying that his daughter was born while they were listening to
Keep Me Alive, and he had a picture of the new baby!
All We Are on… identity.
ROF: I think Sunny Hills definitely has more of a specific identity.
It was important for us to have a coherent theme going through.
It all ties together with the Human episodes, the big long reveal at
the end of Burn It All Out, and then the three music videos. There’s
this sense of defiance, standing up for what you believe in – and
then that kind of raw undercurrent of humanity – that all just ties
in to the identity of the record. Whether or not it comes across…
it’s quite subjective.
GG: Also, Jack Whiteley [friend and filmmaker] has been following
us for quite a long time, just documenting. There will be a
documentary that will be released in three episodes that kind of
explains more about where we’re coming from, where the record
is from, Liverpool’s part in it, the political scene, everyone in
Liverpool. So that’s going to make the picture even clearer.
All We Are on… asking people ‘What does it mean to be a
human?’
ROF: We think that the record is a raw, more emotive kind of thing
– and Human is sort of the leading tune from the record. So, the
idea was to approach random people and play them that song,
and then gauge their response to that music. If you ask them that
question straight away – ‘What does it mean to be a human?’ –
you can kind of catch people off guard. In that instant, more often
than not, the response you get is incredibly profound. Doing it was
very out of our comfort zone – but I think that was very much part
of the process as well.
GG: I learnt so much. The whole process of doing it made me
learn so much about myself as a human. The whole thing was
extremely emotional; you just realised that people are actually just
great.
LS: There were a lot of different interpretations: most people were
extremely positive, said really positive things; a couple of people
just really didn’t want anything to do with it, which was totally fine
– and interesting as well. A couple of people said amazing things
and then later we found out that they were horrible people!
ROF: That’s what humanity is though, warts and all.
LS: That’s exactly what it was supposed to be. They surprise you.
ROF: It’s quite an obvious thing really, but I learnt that there’s just
this thin membrane between a total stranger and this profound,
beautiful human being. And you just have to break through that
membrane in whatever way it is, and suddenly you’re just there,
you’re communicating on an amazing level.
All We Are on… what it means to be a human – in their own
words.
ROF: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! OK, you can’t really think about
it too much.
LS: Well, I was thinking about it before! And the conclusion that I
got to was: you can’t be human to answer that question; it would
need to come from outside, to figure out what we truly are. That’s
one way to look at it; you know, if aliens came over, they can
define what being human is. If they see just negative things then
it’s pretty worrying, isn’t it?
ROF: To me, basically it’s just about communication and
cooperation. If you think about it, everything we do is based
around this ability to cooperate and to communicate with each
other, which is pretty amazing. Music, human rights, any ideology,
that’s all based around us communicating and building. We’ve
got this really cool ability to connect with each other and be selfaware.
GG: I was kind of going to say being self-aware, as well. I think
it’s important to be caring. And look outwards and not inwards. I
think that’s something that human beings are able to do. !
Words: Christopher Torpey / @CATorp
Photography: Robin Clewley / robinclewley.co.uk
thisisallweare.co.uk
Sunny Hills is out now via Double Six.
FEATURE
17

18

YOUSEF’S
15-YEAR
CIRCUS
For a generation of clubbers, Liverpool has long
been seen as the place to be largely due to the
success of Circus. Yousef’s decade-and-a-half
party shows no signs of stopping.
YOUSEF is a name synonymous with Liverpool’s thriving
clubbing scene; a deep-rooted association which stems
from his loyalty to his hometown city despite his global
success as a DJ and producer. It’s almost certainly a
fond reputation which wouldn’t be quite the same without his
endeavours into putting on his own Circus parties, something
which he considers a beloved hobby above anything else. Now,
an impressive 15 years since it began, the brand is still at the
heart of everything he does, from its label offshoot to the regular
club nights.
“The reason Circus was born was because I started to
feel musically constrained,” says Yousef Zaher, shuffling to get
comfortable before continuing his story. We are sat down at The
Merchant bar in the city centre: the warmth that has earned him
city-wide respect is infectious as he catches up with bar staff and
passes us a drink, before we then pick up on the beginnings of
Circus which is fast approaching such a pivotal milestone. “I had
my residency at Cream, but I was more interested in underground
house and techno. We came up with the solution that I would do
my own night and take over the whole club [Nation] – I was really
excited about it all.”
Not long after that, and with just a matter of weeks until
the scheduled party, Cream sadly closed and its weekly parties
stopped for good. “I thought ‘Shit, what am I going to do here?
I really want to carry on playing in Liverpool.’ So, my business
partner, or just my mate then, Richard McGinnis, said ‘You’ve got
a good concept and a good following in Liverpool, so why not do
it somewhere else?’”
With McGinnis’ promotional background and Yousef’s drive
to create a platform for him to share the music he believed in with
a fresh audience, the pair managed to pull together a party which
took place at Barfly (formerly the Masque and now the Arts Club)
in September 2002. It was just Yousef and MYNC Project billed
to play, and despite expectations of a measly couple of hundred
coming through the door, more than 500 made it in. “It was a
great party,” recalls Yousef. “It was really raw and honest. After
that we were like: ‘OK, let’s go.’”
And go they did. Within a year they had hosted an Essential
Mix for Radio 1 and picked up the accolade of BBC’s Club Of The
Year, and Circus’ first ever birthday party was a complete sell
out. “I managed to book my hero, Derrick Carter,” says Yousef.
“I’d been touring for five or six years by that point, so I was able
to bring in favours. I got Derrick on board, and we had Jon Carter
and Lottie – who were huge names at the time – and it was in a
small club. I remember thinking, ‘We’ve started something here.’”
While Circus went from strength to strength, Yousef’s
personal achievements as a DJ were blossoming, with more gigs
being secured and more productions being snapped up by labels.
“I had to make more egotistical sacrifices,” he recalls. “I was
doing my thing as an artist, but then I had to get on the phone
and start booking my mates and negotiating with their agents.
Richard [McGinnis] did that too, but it grated on me a little bit to
be honest, because I’m naturally creative.” Despite his initial lack
of interest in the office-based work, Yousef still spends a good
chunk of his time doing it to this day. “I’m not one to ever sit on
my arse,” he adds.
“The DJing is the
easy part, it’s the
fun part; it’s the
other bits that go
with it… they’re
your choices”
His drive and ambition is no doubt something which has led
to him mastering the balance between DJ life and personal life,
something which many an artist can struggle to grasp when life
moves at 100mph on the road. You only have to take a look on
Yousef’s Instagram to see how prized he considers quality time
with family and friends to be. Between videos of gigs across the
globe and artwork from new releases on the Circus Recordings
label, proudly sit captured moments of home comforts along with
photographs of his three-year-old son.
“I like the balance of sleeping in my own bed, seeing my son
grow up, spending time with my wife,” explains Yousef with a
smile, “but I have the opportunity to go out and play at some
amazing gigs over the weekend.”
For most top-tier DJs, the crossroads faced at a certain age
can be testing. Do you carry on with 20 gigs a month and the
highs that come with it? Do you start to think about meeting
someone and starting a family? “I think the whole psychological
analysis of DJing and everything that goes with it, it could be
its own study,” says Yousef. “I’m reading a lot about DJs having
depression and anxiety. I understand that: I’ve been on the brink
of anxiety in the past. If you’re getting off your head two or three
times a week, you’re drinking a lot, and you’re with acquaintances
rather than family and friends, that’s not good for anybody. The
DJing is the easy part, it’s the fun part; it’s the other bits that go
with it… they’re your choices.”
If you haven’t already noticed, despite the whirlwind lifestyle,
staying grounded is something Yousef has always been pretty
good at. “I’ve got the same map on my wall that my first girlfriend
got me as a present when I’d just started DJing,” he tells us. “It
came with these black dots and she said, ‘Go on then, start filling
it up.’ Until I was 20 I’d never been on a plane, but it’s covered
now. Without getting heavy, for someone who grew up with
a pretty difficult upbringing – with unbelievable turbulence –
to have that on my wall as a kind of benchmark for what I’ve
achieved, that’s welcomed.”
With this wealth of experience as a travelling DJ and with
one foot always in the door of his hometown, Yousef has seen
Liverpool’s clubbing landscape shift and change over the years,
but one thing stays the same according to him. “Pound for pound
there are not many cities which have as many quality nights as
Liverpool, it’s amazing. If you look at what is a relatively small
place, the amount of major name artists who are coming here
week in, week out is truly impressive.”
Back when Circus began, there were just a few underground
house and techno nights in the city, with only the likes of Bugged
Out and Voodoo boasting a similar music policy. Now, it’s one of
the most common genres pushed by promoters – but Yousef is
quick to explain that’s not always a negative thing. “The benefit
of underground being the mainstream sound in Liverpool is that
a lot of the young, new ravers are going straight into it; I mean,
they’re into the big Italian techno names,” he explains. “They’re
skipping the typical beginners dance music.”
But why is Liverpool so good at putting on and hosting
parties? “It’s a good question,” replies Yousef. “I think, obviously,
the energy and the necessity to party is really high in Liverpool
because we’re not cynical as a city and we’re open-minded
musically. I wouldn’t even say we’re cliquey as a city: we go to
each other’s nights and all that. I think it’s always been like that,
there’s a good community overall.”
As with all long-standing projects, and with more and more
new club nights starting up, the questions surrounding Circus’
future is something Yousef considers regularly. “It is literally a
hobby, so does that mean I finish it or I carry it on?” he ponders.
“I do think it’s etched in the history of Liverpool now, it’s as
important as any club night. I mean, obviously Cream is head and
shoulders above the rest historically speaking, but Circus has
definitely done its thing. Do I want to stop? I think about it every
day, but then, every other day I want to carry on.”
That’s Yousef for you; a man with a level head but also a
man so emotionally invested in his projects. “Everyone thought
I was going to stop at five years, because I was, but when the
fifth birthday came it was so good and I couldn’t stop it. I think it
would be nice to pass Circus over to someone else to carry it on
at some point but then again, so many DJs these days are playing
into their 40s, 50s and beyond. Why would you want to stop
doing something you enjoy? I’m not quite there yet.” !
Words: Rebecca Frankland / @beccafranko
Photography: Jordi Gomez
Yousef presents Circus’ 15th Birthday on 30th September at
Camp and Furnace, headlined by Carl Cox. Life Is Too Short is out
now via Knee Deep In Sound.
circusclub.co.uk
FEATURE
19

“I think we’ve done a bit
of a turnaround because
we were halved [as a
band] and forced in to
a more organic sound”
ST. JUDE THE OBSCURE
The reinvention of a pair of musicians with a flair for moody
atmospherics steeped in lyrical melancholia has made for
one of the brighter moments of 2017 so far.
In 2014, Liverpool band Bird came to an abrupt end, due
to legal reasons arising from their name. Two members
left shortly afterwards, but for singer Adéle Emmas and
Christian Sandford on guitar and synths, there was “no
question” of not continuing in music together. Bird had released
an album, My Fear And Me, had toured Europe, played Liverpool
Music Week, Festival No. 6 and the BBC 6Music Festival, and
received critical acclaim from all quarters, in addition to airplay
on BBC Radio 1 and 2. Emmas and Sandford had a track record
and proven success and, fuelled by a belief that if it ain’t broke
there isn’t anything to fix, the pair dusted themselves off and
cracked on, under the name Feral Love. Yet, because the band
was so suddenly and dramatically ‘halved’ and reduced to a duo,
they were prevented from exploring further along the dark and
atmospheric post-punk alleyways that Bird were known for, by
the introduction of a drum machine and samples which, in Adéle’s
words, “forced” them to follow a different creative path.
“The way we were writing, a lot of the instrumentation we
were using didn’t feel natural to how we play music,” explains
Christian. “And the name.”
“We had to change our name by a certain date so we picked
the name Feral Love. We had a couple of ideas, but that one
seemed to stick. We did a few gigs and brought out a single
[Like The Wind on Edge Hill University’s The Label Recordings].
We went to Canada last year and played POP Montreal festival
under the Feral Love name. But it never felt right,” Adéle adds.
“The wildness I quite liked! But people from cat sanctuaries kept
commenting on our Facebook, which was hilarious. There was
one woman in particular from a sanctuary called For Cat’s Sake,
or something. I think we messaged once explaining it was a music
page, not cats, but she carried on. ‘I love cats! Do you love cats?’”
The hunt for a new moniker was on. Adéle went away on
holiday over Christmas 2016, taking with her a copy of Thomas
Hardy’s classic novel Jude The Obscure. First published in serial
form in 1894, the book explores Victorian conventions around
marriage and religion, and how the rules of social class restrict
freedoms. The hero dies – well, it is Thomas Hardy, after all –
and, though it may not strike you as being typical festive reading
material, Adéle was struck by the romance of the book’s title,
combining it with a saintly reference to come up with their new
name: ST. JUDE THE OBSCURE.
“He’s [Jude] quite a downtrodden person, isn’t he?”
chimes in Christian. “I think that fits well with us. Not that
we’re downtrodden people, but we do sometimes enjoy the
more miserable side of music… miserable-sounding music. It’s
reflective, isn’t it? Even though our songs can be positive and
uplifting, they have undertones [of sadness].”
SJTO’s songs are things of melancholic beauty, and it is from
literature that lyricist Adéle finds most of her inspiration. She cites
Sylvia Plath as a touchstone, and Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes’
famous collection of poetry written in response to Plath’s suicide
and their explosive marriage, plus the work of Charles Bukowski
and Jack Kerouac. Of Kerouac, “Reading the Beat Generation
writers has come quite late to me,” she confesses. “I’m reading
The Dharma Bums and that makes me want to go off on my
travels, and write and live that kind of life. I love reading and I
love poetry, and lyrics are a massive thing for me… but words
have always been important. I got lost for a little while and forgot
how important words were to me, but I feel I’m back there now.
We try and write every day, and not just music – I’m finding that
inspirational. I’d like to do something with the poetry I write at
some point too. The words feed their way into the music.”
“I’m big into lyrics even though I’ve never been a lyric writer,”
adds Christian. “I like the pictures that get painted, and the
romanticism.”
With three tracks to show for their new efforts as St. Jude The
Obscure so far – Wonders Of Youth, Wreckage and Ruins – the
continuation from Feral Love is obvious, exemplified by the use of
electronic instrumentation, samples and a definite pop sensibility,
all of which are especially evident in Wreckage. But Adéle insists
we shouldn’t expect the band to stay preserved in aspic; there are
subtle changes afoot. “I think we’ve done a bit of a turnaround
because we were halved [as a band] and forced to use samples
and things, but now we’re reining it in to a more organic sound in
the stuff coming out in the next six months to a year.”
“Working electronically was good and we’ve learnt a lot
doing that and we’re still keeping that with the St. Jude stuff,”
says Christian, picking up the thread. “[But] the new project’s a
lot more organic, we use a lot fewer samples. We use real drums
on things, fewer vocal layers and it’s more about the main vocal
melody.”
As for the newer material currently being worked on, Adéle
reveals that they’ve found a place which is a lot more sparse.
“We’ve had a realisation: with past stuff, we’ve thrown too much
stuff at it, whereas you can strip a song down and be on to
something good. Having the bare bones of the song and letting
the lyrics and the vocals shine through. That’s not in every case
but I feel it’s where we’re at, at the moment. Asking things like,
‘Do we really need that part? Is it really necessary?’”
St. Jude The Obscure released more material in July,
a 30-minute “mini-mixtape EP type of thing,” as Christian
describes it. Singles And Obscurities carries the first three St.
Jude singles, plus demos and covers, and is released on cassette
tape only. Cassettes are coming out of the shadows once again,
the format once derided for its lack of listener quality and yet still
cherished for that DIY aesthetic. Why the decision to release only
on cassette?
“There are loads of reasons behind it,” Christian asserts.
“People want something physical, and I read an article saying
that people are buying vinyl at the minute but a high percentage
don’t have record players. So, it’s an acknowledgement of that,
that no one has cassette players!”
There’s that, Adéle concedes, but also: “It was a way of being
creative with the songs we’ve put out so far. Because we use
Christian’s tape player to record little demos and things, it was to
mould it all together and be creative. We’ve worked together for
such a long time now, we know each other really well. We both
bring a certain something to the table.”
This twosome’s long association as musical partners has
helped to refine their songwriting process, but Christian admits
that he still likes the variety. “Sometimes Adéle will just write
a song completely on her own at home on a piano; then, other
times, we can be playing together and ideas start forming that
then turn into songs – there’s so many ways to do it. How many
ways are there to skin a chicken?”
Adéle starts. “Skin a chicken? We can’t say that, two
vegetarians! Can’t we say… skin an aubergine, or something?”
It’s only on the way home from our meeting that I realise, it’s
‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat’ that Christian meant. It
might not make their cat fanatic friends on their Facebook page
happy, but St. Jude The Obscure understand the restorative
qualities of reinvention. The third chapter of their particular story
is only just beginning, and it’s got us gripped already. !
Words: Cath Bore / @cathbore
Photography: Keith Ainsworth / arkimages.co.uk
sailtothe-moon.tumblr.com
St. Jude The Obscure’s limited edition Singles And Obscurities
cassette is available to buy now from stjudetheobscure.
bandcamp.com. St. Jude The Obscure also play the Bido Lito!
Social at 81 Renshaw on 17th August.
20

WHP17
REVEALED
16.09.17
—
01.01.18
THEWAREHOUSEPROJECT.COM

A CHANGE
IS GONNA
COME
22

As President Trump’s decision to remove the United States from the Paris Agreement
deals another blow to global efforts to tackle climate change, Janaya Pickett looks at
why humanity seems so determined to wreak further damage on our fragile planet.
Climate change is a concept that the vast majority of us
are now aware of. We are at a point in history where
97% of the world’s climate research scientists agree
that the Earth is warming due to human activity. The
burning of fossil fuels is altering the atmosphere, at such a speed
as to dramatically alter the place we inhabit within the next 50
years. When – not ‘if’ – the last Arctic ice melts and seas rise to
predicted levels, coastal cities across the globe (housing some
tens, possibly hundreds of millions of people) will be submerged
in water. Due to the acidification and temperature increases of
the oceans, up to half of the world’s largest living structure, the
Great Barrier Reef, has been killed by bleaching in the last two
years. Large parts of the planet will be rendered uninhabitable,
and it has been predicted that by the end of the century
anywhere from 25-50% of all species will be extinct.
As depressing as it is, this is not surprising information. The
fundamental facts of climate change and the severe threat it
poses have been public knowledge for around 30 years. I was
born in the early 1980s, and I vaguely recall the media beginning
to highlight that the way we live damages our planet. For the
average person who does not follow scientific publications,
information about the climate (and most things for that matter)
comes from various media outlets – and how those outlets have
reported climate change can tell us much about how we have so
far reacted.
1988 is seen as a landmark year in the climate movement,
as it was the year the first official conference on climate change
was held, in Toronto, Canada, and the year the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed. In Toronto,
hundreds of scientists, policymakers and representatives from
multinational organisations came together to discuss the
evidence that, by our pollution, we are conducting what chair
Stephen Lewis called “an unintended, uncontrolled, globally
pervasive experiment”.
During the late 1980s it’s interesting to note that the
existence of climate change was widely accepted across the
political spectrum. Nowadays we can see clear links between
conservative opinion more generally and climate change denial.
Yet, Margaret Thatcher is often cited as one of the first world
leaders to speak publicly on the threat of global warming.
George Bush Snr. also showed concern and pledged to fight the
greenhouse effect with the ‘White House effect’. Granted, both
used climate change to push their own interests, but what this
shows is that climate change did not yet represent a threat to
capitalist ideology.
What scientists quickly agreed at the 1988 Toronto
Conference, however, was that fuel emissions needed to be
curbed on a global scale, and quickly, to avoid catastrophe. It was
agreed that a 20% decrease in CO 2
emissions by 2005 would
go some way to achieving this. Yet, in 2013 we hit 60% more
emissions than 1990 levels. In 2007 it was recommended by
climate scientist James Hanson that 350 parts per million (ppm)
of CO 2
in the atmosphere was the maximum level allowable
to keep the situation manageable. In 2013, the Mauna Loa
Observatory in Hawaii reported that we’d surpassed 400ppm –
and, as of June 2017 there is, on average, 408.84 ppm of CO 2
in
our atmosphere.
The story of our planet’s metamorphosis through human
activity is arguably the biggest story there is, ever has been or
ever will be. This gargantuan living organism floating through
space is all we have, and our place on it is fragile. Then how has
the issue been so pathetically managed in the 30 years since
we’ve understood its severity? Why isn’t it on the front page of
every publication, every day of the week? Why are we not only
not doing anything but making it worse?
In her 2014 book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs.
the Climate, Naomi Klein attempts to explain this shocking lack
of action around climate change. In a nutshell, Klein puts forward
the argument that not only is free market capitalism responsible
for the Earth’s crisis, but its players (business moguls and
politicians) have actively fought against attempts to solve it. The
fossil fuel industry is the wealthiest in the world, she points out,
and the one most threatened by the need to shift to renewable
energy. Further to that, “…we live in an economy created by,
and fully dependent on, the burning of fossil fuels.” It touches
everything we do and everything we consume.
Klein paints global warming as the biggest market failure
seen under neoliberal capitalism, but welcomes this as an
opportunity to affect social change. It’s inevitable that we are
facing unprecedented change, but tackling the crisis would
involve increased taxation and regulation on polluting businesses,
a redistribution of wealth, increased government spending on
public infrastructures, the localisation of economies, sustainable
housing and energy… the list goes on. These long-term changes
sound ideal to the many but certainly not the few. “I think the
answer is far more simple than many have led us to believe: we
have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions
because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated
capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have
been struggling to find a way out of this crisis. We are stuck
because the actions that would give us the best chance of
averting catastrophe – and would benefit the vast majority – are
extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold
over our economy, our political process, and most of our major
media outlets.”
In their 2010 book, Merchants Of Doubt, science historian
Naomi Oreskes and NASA historian Erik Conway examine the
nature of thinktanks (funded by the fossil fuel industry and
conservative foundations) that were set up in the 1990s to
peddle doubt about climate change. Climate deniers such as Fred
Singer, Fred Seitz and Bill Nierenberg in particular were involved
in such groups and had previously been employed in similar
roles by the tobacco industry. The aim of the book is to highlight
how influential these shadowy figures have been in clouding the
focus around climate change. These are men that have the ears
of US senators, congressmen, generals and media organisations
and have (on behalf of interested parties) succeeded in delaying
policy on climate change and influencing public opinion.
Climate change in the past has been presented to us as a
scientific problem. This Changes Everything and Merchants Of
Doubt show us that climate change is also a socio-political issue
that can be understood with science that highlights the reality of
the world we live in today: a reality in which the powers that be
are willing to sacrifice our collective safety to keep their wealth.
Klein sees this as further proof that a new economic model is not
only desirable but inevitable. The market logic we adhere to now,
“the logic that would cut pensions, food stamps, and health care
before increasing taxes on the rich[,] is the same logic that would
blast the bedrock of the earth to get the last vapours of gas and
the last drops of oil before making the shift to renewable energy.”
“The story of our
planet’s metamorphosis
through human activity
is arguably the biggest
story there is, ever has
been or ever will be”
Real life logic dictates that, if you understand something is
causing damage and you avoid that something, you will avoid
damage. We learned 30 years ago that burning fossil fuels and
increasing consumption are disrupting the biological conditions
we need as a species to survive, yet we continue. Governments
have, throughout this time, met and agreed (over and over again)
that the time for change is now, yet they leave these conferences
having done nothing more than promise to try to change and do
their best to meet emissions targets. Until 2008, for example,
there was no legal obligation for the UK to lower emissions and,
although the Climate Change Act was pioneering, with other
countries following suit, the 2015 Infrastructure Act legally binds
the UK government to maximise their offshore drilling potential.
On the one hand, ministers pledge to cut emissions, but on the
other they have enacted legislation to extract more fuel as quickly
as possible. They present these issues without the slightest
recognition that if you’re planning on extracting fuel, at some
point that fuel will get burned.
In 2016, celebrity businessman Donald Trump was elected
as President of the United States of America. Part of Trump’s
campaign involved promises to dismantle the US Environmental
Protection Agency and withdraw the US from the Paris
Agreement of 2015, the first attempt at a united attack on climate
change, involving 195 nations. Trump’s election is a devastating
blow for the climate movement and he brings in a powerful
cabinet with track records of climate denial, conservatism and
ties to ‘big oil’. What has become clear, however, is that Trump
is already the most unpopular US president in history, whose
own emphasis on climate change denial has brought much
attention from the press and, as a consequence, more pressure
on the issue. What has also emerged as a positive contrast to
the attitude of Trump and his cronies is the number of individual
towns and cities across the US taking it upon themselves to act,
despite the national government’s position.
On 1st June this year, the United States Climate Alliance
was set up in response to Trump’s announcement that the USA
would withdraw from the Paris Agreement. As of 7th June there
are 13 members, including New York, Washington and California,
who have voiced their concern and pledged to stick to the 2015
agreement.
The post-democratic system that we live under has meant
that the planning and managing of our societies is left largely
to an unpredictable market. You don’t have to dig deep to get
a sense of the influence the fuel industry has over our political
institutions, and, to excuse the actions of that industry and the
people involved, a myriad of media wizardry is enacted to distract
or confuse us. So many times we are told that there is nothing
we can do to change our situation, so most of us do not. But
Naomi Klein’s political framing of the crisis simplifies the issue.
It provides us with an opportunity for change that we didn’t
know we had. There are clear goodies and baddies and, as in all
good moral stories, good has the power to overcome evil, it just
needs to mobilise. What this version of the story underestimates,
however, is the philosophical question around climate change.
Environmental activist and writer George Monbiot has argued
that the issue of climate change is bigger than capitalism. Yes,
the neoliberal revolution has damaged democracy but, regardless
of the economic model used, it is still the fossil fuels themselves
that are doing the damage. This is evident in the fact that socialist
economies are also inclined to pollute and that those in power on
the left have been similarly as useless as those on the right when
it comes to climate action. Fossil fuels have benefited our society
immeasurably in the past 250 years, but they have also increased
our capacity to do long-term damage to the planet and ultimately
to ourselves.
The changes we face are not only the responsibility of
industries or governmental bodies but of us all. Climate change
challenges philosophical ideologies, stories that we have told
ourselves about ourselves for thousands of years: man has
inherited the Earth which is his (or hers) to pillage; as a species
we will continue to evolve and grow and be dominant of our
environment. These stories are entrenched in religious, cultural,
scientific and political doctrine and are the basis for our collective
identity.
In thinking about climate change there is the emerging
realisation that how we view the world does not reconcile
with nature and, in the wake of this, a newfound respect has
emerged for indigenous cultures that offer a different outlook.
Indigenous communities are now playing a vital role within the
climate movement and taking a legal stand against extraction on
scared lands (such as the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in response
to the Keystone XL Pipeline). Unlike in Western culture, Native
American cultures centre around a deep respect and mutual
relationship with the Earth. Man is no more, or less, important
than any other species. Indeed, we all play equally important
parts that make the whole.
In 2017 it feels like those of us in the ‘developed’ world are
ever more disconnected, stuck on a seemingly never-ending
wheel of consumption and waste. And the scale of the damage
we cause in relation to what we are causing that damage for
is really very astonishing. In its beginnings, the burning of fuel
brought us transport, powered medical advancements and
increased our capacity to feed populations. It still does all these
things but in our mad ambition to have a constantly growing
economy we need more reasons to burn more fuel. Nowadays,
we burn fuel also to make throwaway goods: fashion, novelty
gifts and accessories, things designed to be used once or twice
and then thrown away. These are not essentials or comparable to
the physical labour we put in to having the money to pay for said
items, but we buy into them anyway.
It is generally known that, although money and objects can
cushion existence, you cannot buy happiness. What climate
change demands of us is a re-evaluation of what it means to live
a fulfilling life and the steps needed in order to overcome the
crisis will be beneficial in that sense. Preparing for the change
predicted would involve largescale co-operation and mobilisation,
comparable to that in the run up to WWII, according to advocacy
group The Climate Mobilisation. The fight for our climate is
also the fight for economic, racial and sexual equality, and the
potential power of the climate movement spans many spheres.
It’s impossible to solve a problem unless you engage with
it and that engagement becomes much easier when you have
something to look forward to. At the moment we tell ourselves
that there is little we can do stop climate change so we should
carry on as normal. What we need to do is engage with it and
figure out what we will do when it does happen – because the
time to do this was yesterday. In the wake of Brexit, opinion
emerged in the press and on social media that the ‘baby boomer’
generation is responsible for society’s current ills, having taken
part in the credit bubble that resulted in the 2008 crash and
allowing austerity to creep in. The irony here is that most of us
are in contact with younger generations: children who may be
ours, our brothers or sisters, nieces or nephews, etc. And it is
they who will bear the brunt of our current actions or lack thereof.
How they will feel about us depends on what type of world we
leave for them: that will be our legacy, and something potentially
more fulfilling than any product money could buy. !
Words: Janaya Pickett
FEATURE
23

“I catch myself smiling
at a concert and
photographing an
audience that are having
the time of their lives”
SHOUT ABOUT IT
Celebrating the art of gig and live photography, Shout About It is a music festival crossed with a photo
exhibition which aims to shed some light on the practitioners who normally toil away in the shadows, but are
an essential part of the live music experience. Festival founder – and regular Bido Lito! contributor – Georgia
Flynn tells us why it’s an art that needs to be celebrated.
I’ve been a photographer for around eight years now. While I
can safely say that’s a super short time to be in the industry
and I’ve still got a long way ahead of me, I’ve found that gig
photography has always been my biggest challenge. I started
my gig photography career photographing Loyle Carner for
Bido Lito! in 2016. Since then, I’ve photographed over 190 gigs
alongside weddings, events, promotions and sports, and I’ve still
found gigs to be the most exciting and thrilling challenge of them
all. What could be more of a challenge than trying to take an
incredible picture in the darkness?
In my short time of being a gig photographer, I’ve learnt a
lot. The main thing I’ve learnt is that there is never a lot of love
shown to the work gig photographers put in. Yes, we’re all super
lucky that for a short time we get to stand in the pit for some of
our favourite bands and that is never forgotten. But I think people
forget that many photographers have travelled for miles, paid a
fortune in petrol and parking and constantly work hours way past
their usual 9-5 to stand there for 15 minutes getting shots that
people may never even see.
SHOUT ABOUT IT focuses on gig and live photography
because I feel it’s the forgotten art. Music is a huge part of
everyone’s life and if someone can capture that moment for a
large group of people, that should be remembered. The festival
brings together the work of gig photographers from not just the
UK but Germany, Austria and Australia. Live music plays a huge
part in many people’s lives for various reasons and Shout About
It Live – our first ever festival – aims to showcase that alongside
some live music from upcoming bands that will thrive on gig
photographers for their future promotion.
There is a massive sense of risk and reward with live
photography. You feel such a huge sense of reward when
you get that shot you’ve come out for. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve
photographed over 190 gigs and I’ve only ever been paid for
one. I think people have no sense of how much work goes into
photographing a gig. Not just the photographing and editing but
the travel costs, late nights away from family and time just to do
something we love for people we respect. There’s also a lot of
pressure to make sure you get the shot you’re expected to get
and to send that over before the deadline.
The great thing about live photography is the thrill of the event.
If the band are clearly very happy to be playing and particularly
happy to see a photographer in the audience, this makes a huge
difference. Unfortunately, there are a fair few gigs where people
just see you as a massive nuisance to the whole event.
I guess the biggest reward of photographing hundreds of
gigs is that lucky moment when you get the gig you feel you’ve
waited for your whole life. Just the other week, I got a last-minute
confirmation to photograph Coldplay in Cardiff. It took me six
hours in torrential rain to drive there and four hours to drive back.
Standing in that pit with just 20 minutes with three ‘big wig’
photographers, who had clearly been in the industry for years,
I’ve never felt so out of place with my tiny camera, but so ready
for the challenge at the same time. Luckily, it all paid off and I got
shots I will be proud of for the rest of my life.
No matter the size of a venue, the energy in the room always
makes a huge difference. As I mentioned, a lot of the time I can
be tired from a full day of work and questioning whether I have
the energy to get out and take photographs that night. The
second you walk into a venue and people are buzzing, it changes
everything.
I love going to gigs, it’s one of my favourite things to do.
If I’ve decided to attend a gig as an audience member and not
photograph it, there is a lot of excitement that builds up in the
day and I really feel that buzz for the gig. If I’m photographing
a gig, I have often found out very last-minute and things are so
rushed I don’t feel that sense of build up to the gig.
Sometimes, there are moments where you manage to get
some incredible crowd shots which you wouldn’t expect. This
is something a lot of magazines and blogs ask for, but are often
difficult as people shy away as soon as your camera points at
them. I love those moments: I catch myself smiling at a concert and
photographing an audience that are having the time of their lives.
I love it when someone I photograph shares or even likes a
photograph that I’ve gone through a huge amount of effort to
capture. Shout About It is all about bringing live music and gig
photographers together, to make sure that those photographs
that gig photographers work so hard for are never lost. I hope
that this festival helps people to appreciate the work that
photographers have put in, and to show them the importance gig
photographers hold within the music industry. Personally, I don’t
think people would fully value gig photography unless there were
no photographs of live music. As the old saying goes, you don’t
know what you’ve got til it’s gone.
Technology has played a huge part in the work of gig
photographers. I have grown up in the new age of rapid
technological advancement, and I understand the importance of
giving your work a place to exist. Platforms such as Instagram,
Facebook and Twitter have provided a massive space for
photographers to share their work with fans, friends and family.
When I first came up with the idea for the festival, I had
absolutely no idea who would step forward to take part. Frankly,
I didn’t know if anyone would want to be involved. I had been
running this little community of gig photographers for a while and
just wanted to make something magical happen. I had no idea of
what themes, angles or kinds of work would come to the festival.
But something magical did happen: a small handful of
gig photographers came forward and said that they believed
in the idea. I have opened up the exhibition space to be as
free as possible to exhibitors and I can’t wait to see the ideas
they come up with. I believe that giving people the freedom to
exhibit however they wish will bring a wider variety of styles to
the table. We all have photographs we are proud of for many
different reasons. This exhibition isn’t about showing off or name
dropping, it’s about coming together to celebrate all of this work
we put in.
Ultimately, the endgame of this project is to give gig
photographers a friendly, enthusiastic place to share their work;
a place where bands, musicians and artists can come to get
themselves out there and support them in any creative need.
Shout About It loves and supports live music and the people that
make that happen. !
Words: Georgia Flynn / georgiaflynn.com
Photography: Mike Sheerin / michaelsheerin.photoshelter.com
letsshoutaboutit.co.uk
Shout About It Live takes place at District on 19th and 20th
August, with an exhibition of work from 15 photographers,
including Jed Stuart Welland, Deb Kloeden and Tomas Adam.
There will also be live performances from Black Pulp, Eleanor
Nelly, The Buffalo Riot, Astles and lots more.
24

Fit The Bill in association with Albert Dock presents
Liverpool’s international festival
of folk, roots and acoustic music
Presented by Janice Long
Wildwood Kin
Moulettes
Lee Southall
Henry Priestman
Incorporating the Liverpool Sea Shanty Festival
26 - 28 August
Artists announced daily
Visit our website for up to date
artist line up!
wwwfolkonthedock.com
@FolkOnTheDock

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music and creative culture. As you’re reading
this, we’re pretty confident that you do too.
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26

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Edition will hit your
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Join us now at bidolito.co.uk
Wednesday 2nd August
Handyman Supermarket
Bido Lito! Special Event
EMPTY SPACES CINEMA NIGHT
A selection of locally-made short films followed
by cult film Be Kind Rewind in Smithdown Road’s
newest, coolest venue.
Free admission for members
£5 non-members adv from bidolito.co.uk
Thursday 17th August
81 Renshaw
The Bido Lito! Social Featuring:
ST. JUDE THE OBSCURE
+ TV ME
+ LUNA
Free admission for members
£4 non-members adv from bidolito.co.uk.
Wednesday 6th September
Open Eye Gallery
Thursday 21st September
Constellations
Bido Lito! Special Event
OPEN 3: AFFECTING CHANGE
CURATOR TOUR
A special tour of Open Eye Gallery’s new
exhibition around societal change with special
insights from curators and artists.
Free admission for members
£5 non-members adv from bidolito.co.uk
The Bido Lito! Social:
PZYK EDITION
Live performances from acts selected by the team
at Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia.
Free admission for members
£4 non-members adv from bidolito.co.uk.
MEMBERSHIP 27

SPOTLIGHT
LUNA
LUNA is a rising star of the electronic pop scene, amalgamating
the sound of the classical voice with the innovation of electronica.
“Music is that
one shoulder to
lean on when the
rest of the world
turns its back”
sub and sass.” Kate Hazeldine provides
a very fitting description for the electro-Kate
Bush sound of her project, LUNA. “It’s almost
“Samples,
like my alter-ego… all the things I try to be.
That’s why, when I am songwriting, I am truly myself, laying
everything bare through my lyrics.”
Recently snagging a spot within LIMF Academy’s top 20
artists for 2017, Kate’s musical curiosity has permeated her life
since early childhood. “I started learning piano from the age
of six, then writing silly little songs shortly after,” she explains.
“My mum was constantly blaring Kate Bush out of the kitchen
speakers, so it was something I grew up enveloped in.” But Kate’s
dream didn’t finally become a reality until she moved to Liverpool
five years ago, when she started performing and dedicating more
time to producing music.
It’s this crystal-clear production, as well as the sound and
vision behind her music, that makes LUNA stand out in the world
of electronic music. “I write and produce everything, then my
bezzie Nathan plays beats and samples live. I co-produced my last
three singles, but now I’m working solo on producing new material
and working towards mixing and mastering everything myself.”
The relationship between Kate’s own world and LUNA’s is
an interesting one; Kate has created an enigmatic persona for
her creative output, using her own experiences as a jumping-off
point. She’s also unafraid to talk about current affairs. “Much of
my writing is based upon my own emotions or feelings, or about
someone/something completely different – a character or scenario
I’ve built around a phrase I like, for instance.”
“As a musician, particularly at the moment, I think it’s important
to respond through our craft. To have music as a communicative
medium puts us in a powerful position – it’s easily accessible, allows
us to express our opinions honestly and appeal to the masses, and
so we should make full use of that. However, I also think it’s good
to address the balance with songs about the trivial to provide that
escapism from the world we live in sometimes.”
The importance of music is clear within Kate’s life; it’s
apparent it’s been her sole passion since she was a child. She
enthuses that, “Music is that one shoulder to lean on when the
rest of the world turns its back. It’s always been my outlet and
the only way I can truly express how I’m feeling,” before adding,
“On a more universal level, I admire the power it has to connect
anyone with anyone – it eradicates social barriers and truly allows
you to release your inhibitions.”
Words: Georgia Turnbull
Photography: Mina Bihi / adjustmentbureau.portfoliobox.net
soundcloud.com/sheislunamusic
LUNA plays the Bido Lito! August Social at 81 Renshaw Street
on 17th August with TVME and St Jude The Obscure. The gig is
free for Bido Lito! Members and tickets are also available for nonmembers
from bidolito.co.uk
28

BIG HEATH
“Like a mix of a slow-cooked rap stew, with R&B dumplings and
grime seasoning.” Meet MC and pizza aficionado BIG HEATH.
How did you get into music?
I’ve loved music all my life. I can always remember singing a lot of
Jackson 5 and other popular music as a kid. I really got into music
through my stutter, which I have had since I can remember. It was
so bad as a kid that I can remember being nervous whenever I
spoke. It wasn’t until I was in the car with my brother when I was,
like, eight, and he was playing Kanye West’s College Dropout
album, I started to rap along without stuttering at all. Since that
day, the rest is history.
How does where you are from affect your writing?
I don’t think it does really. I mean, being from Cambridge has a
‘posh’ stigma around it, but I’ve just got used to that now. At the
end of the day, ‘it ain’t where you from it’s where you at’.
What’s the latest release you have you – and what does it say
about you?
My latest LP is called $mells Of Beef. It is an ode to what bullies
used to say to me at school – ‘Christopher Heath smells of beef’
– which, by the way, is the worst insult. It is me saying to anyone
in the world that tries to stop me on this path that I will continue
to push on, and, even better, make them the laughing stock. I’m
really proud of that body of work: it has different styles of beat,
sick flows and is topped with nice hooks.
Did you have any particular artists in mind as an influence
when you started out?
One of my favourite rappers as a kid was Kanye West; I love his
attitude. Some call him cocky, but I call him confident – there
is a fine line. He always said, if you’re a fan of his, you’re a fan
of yourself – I liked that a lot. He has a sense of self-love and
proudness that I always respected and like to think I’ve added to
my music. I loved Biggie’s flow, it was so free and off-beat, which
I studied a lot. It terms of melodies, I used to dig Nate Dogg loads;
that guy was so good he could make a song about your dead nan
sound good. I always loved Akon a lot as well; I’ve just always
loved good hooks, which is something I try to work hard on.
How do you see your career progressing from where you are
now?
My dream is to tour the world man, that’s always been my dream.
I love culture and am fascinated by how music brings people
together all around the world despite language barriers – man,
I find that stuff crazy. I’m trying to build a brand for myself and
love vlogging, so maybe try and grow my personality more as
well.
Why is music important to you?
Music is so important to me, because it makes me have a
purpose. I was a smart kid in school with good grades and could
easily have gone straight into a well-paid 9-5 career, but I was
always in love with music. I can’t explain the feeling when I’m
on stage, it’s just mad. I just love making people smile, whether
that’s through laughter or music – but it’s normally through music.
9t9t5.com
“ It is me saying to
anyone in the world
that tries to stop
me on this path
that I will continue
to push on”
SPOTLIGHT 29

PREVIEWS
“Great music is
always passed
around and heard
at some point, even
if it’s 50 years
down the line”
GIG
POND
Invisible Wind Factory – 26/08
In preparation for the arrival of the
acid-fried prog of Perth’s weirdest
sons, Matthew Hogarth catches
up with Pond about heat, the
Aussie music scene and dodging
pigeons.
In recent years, Australia’s Sunset Coast has been a
particularly fertile breeding ground for a group of artists who
have broken into the mainstream. Kevin Parker, Nick Allbrook
and Jay Watson are the architects of this assault of sunbaked
antipodean rock oddness, the trio making up the DNA of
Tame Impala, Mink Mussel Creek, GUM, and POND, who drop by
at Invisible Wind Factory in August.
Having done his stint as the regular bassist in Tame Impala’s
live band, Allbrook has now turned his focus fully on to Pond, the
fabulously weird rock band he pilots alongside Watson, Shiny Joe
Ryan and Jamie Terry. The band’s seventh record – The Weather,
released in May on Marathon Artists – finds Pond moving into
the sort of territory normally inhabited by Wayne Coyne and his
Flaming Lips: a glitter-strewn place where prog gambols happily
next to psychedelia, delivered through the medium of some
perfectly-crafted pop songs. It’s a step up as much as it is a step
outside of their normal sphere, and heralds Pond’s arrival in the
big league.
Although Parker has enjoyed the greater successes of Perth’s
latter-day musical bigwigs – what with his chart-topping Tame
Impala records and collaborations with Lady GaGa and Mark
Ronson – he remains close friends with his old allies, and has
produced each of Pond’s four albums. On The Weather, Parker
and the band have found a sweet spot which allows Allbrook’s
madcap genius to run wild, confined within the bounds of rock
operatics and tongue-in-cheek humour. The curious world this
throws up – which Allbrook has stated is a quasi-concept album
about colonial cities around the world – is captured in all its glory
on the video for Sweep Me Off My Feet, which veers from sendups
of romantic holiday promo films to Allbrook’s impish religious
posturing.
Thanks to Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia,
we’ll be getting a chance to witness the full Pond whirlwind
up close in August, as part of a showpiece launch event for
September’s festival. They will be joined by hypnotic guitarist
Chris Forsyth and his Solar Motel Band on the bill, along with a
host of special guests. Ahead of this show, we caught up with
Pond’s guitarist Shiny Joe to lift the lid on the group’s most
ambitious work to date.
First and foremost, congratulations on The Weather, it’s boss!
How long has the album been with you?
We recorded the album in January 2016. We sort of constantly
write stuff and then when we find time, pool all of our ideas
together and go and record them. There are songs on that album
which are over five years old now, while there are other bits that
we have just written while we were recording. So, all in all, it’s
quite a hodge-podge of the last five years of writing.
So, is the album a collection of home recordings which were
mastered or was it all made in the studio?
We did it in the studio but there are elements of home recording
mixed into it. So, we’ll bring our own solo material and little bits
and pieces before going into the studio and recording those
pieces as a full band. Sometimes we use bits of our own home
recordings within the song alongside the studio recordings – and
sometimes even bring elements of other people’s songs into the
mix.
Where does the name The Weather actually come from?
Well, we didn’t have a title so we just named it after one of the
songs on the album. Where we’re from, it’s something that
people always seem to be talking about. It’s pretty hot today; I
don’t know if it’s hot in Liverpool, but this is what our summers
are like constantly, and hotter again.
It’s been said that the album is somewhat of a concept album
based around your hometown of Perth. Could you elaborate on
this and what Perth means to you?
There’s a lot of criticism of Perth – and Australia as a whole –
contained within the album, but there’s a lot of love for it on
there too. We’ve lived in other places but we always come back
to Perth. It’s a weird place, as is Australia in general. It’s pretty
difficult to explain. The bulk of the lyrics are Nick [Allbrook]’s
musings around that.
At this moment, Shiny Joe becomes a little less shiny as he comes
under excremental fire from a flock of seagulls (not Liverpool’s
own 80s synth pop band, that would be horrific). While cleaning
himself up with “dunny paper”, Joe dutifully soldiers on with the
interview.
There’s a lot of news report samples scattered throughout the
album. Could you tell us a little more about their significance of
these?
We were trying to evoke a mood in general across the whole
record. We were trying to create something that was very
Australian. We have this show back home called 60 Minutes,
which has stories such as ‘WASHING MACHINES KILL PEOPLE!’.
A lot of them we just found funny so we just threw them in there
– however, there were a few which were a bit more poignant and
meaningful.
Paint Me Silver contains a sample with Todd Rundgren’s
Cosmic Cowboy on it. Did that bring about a dialogue with
him, in order to get clearance to use it?
Yeh, it was a pretty simple process. He was pretty cool with it all
and was fine for us to use it. Obviously he has a cut of the track,
but I’ve not cleared stuff in the past when I’ve used samples and
it wasn’t a great idea. With Cosmic Cowboy I just slowed it down.
Jesus, I really am covered in this stuff… Man, I might have to pick
this up another time if that’s OK? I need to clean myself up…
Safe and sheltered from birds, Joe finished off the interview via
email…
What are your thoughts on the Australian music scene in
general?
I feel like the Australian music ‘scene’ is as good as any other
country, but maybe there are a few factors that help us out. Most
people are reasonably well off: you can record drums/make loud
noise and rehearse in your house – very few people I know live
in apartments in Perth. And there’s quite a strong history of live
music and bands in each city.
There are far too many bands, artists and producers that I’m a
fan of in Australia to name and not leave anyone out, but I feel
now with the internet, if something is good enough and vital
enough it will come to light and be discovered or heard. It may
not be commercially successful, but great music is always passed
around and heard at some point, even if it’s 50 years down the
line. !
Words: Matthew Hogarth
Photography: Matt Sav
pondband.net
The Weather is out now via Marathon Artists. Pond play Invisible
Wind Factory on 26th August.
30

PREVIEWS
“I’m really
interested in the
way sound moves
around up here”
FESTIVAL
LEE
SOUTHALL
Folk On The Dock @ Albert Dock – 26/08
A change of scenery and a fresh
approach have proven to be the
defining factors in the former Coral
man’s emergence as a songwriter
of great dexterity.
With its peaceful isolation and Bohemian setup,
Hebden Bridge has been a retreat for many
artistic souls down the years. The proximity to
both the picturesque landscape of the Calder
Valley and nearby cities (Manchester and Sheffield are within
easy reach) has made it the perfect spot for those wishing
to escape the hurly-burly urban life, without having to travel
too far off the beaten path. For LEE SOUTHALL, swapping
Hebden Bridge for his home town of Hoylake was just the tonic
he needed, sparking in him a purple patch of creativity that
culminated in this year’s below-the-radar album of the year so
far, Iron In The Fire.
Five years after last playing with The Coral, the band he
grew up with, Southall struck out on his own, with a record of
windswept Americana that was written, produced and released
under his own steam. Now, Southall finds himself back in the
limelight, with a headline Liverpool show at Folk On The Dock in
August. We caught up with him to find out how difficult it was to
get to where he is now.
Was writing and recording Iron In The Fire the fresh start you
were looking for?
Recording-wise, yes. It was about taking the bull by the horns
and getting the record out. I’m a single parent and time is pretty
stretched but I realised I needed to work with what I had and
move forward. It was a long process from writing to release date.
Once it came out it was a relief, and I could start working on the
second album.
How has Hebden Bridge influenced you? Did moving away
from where you grew up help you appreciate home anymore?
It made me realise how structured my life was, musically, with
The Coral. There are aspects of that I’ve come to appreciate more
but I also appreciate the freedom I have in West Yorkshire. When
you play together as a band for so long, certain ways of doing
things become ingrained. This starts to loosen-up when you’ve
been out of that context for a few years. There are clear shades
of The Coral in Iron In The Fire, but the second album, which I’m
doing demos for now, is something quite different.
There’s a sense of kinship with nature in some of the themes
and approach to your music on this LP – and it’s something
that Merseyside musicians are adept at. Do you notice this
when you’re writing songs?
I live in a rural location and the landscape can be breathtaking,
but also a major pain in the arse: snow drifts, floods and stuff like
that. There are magical moments too. A few weeks back I went
to the bus stop with my daughter and in the field next to us a
foal had just been born. This was amazing for my little girl. We
live high up on the edge of a steep-sided valley in the wettest
place in England, so weather was a definite theme in the LP.
The landscape and constantly-shifting weather seeped into the
songs I was writing. I’m not sure if this is a kinship with nature,
I’d say it’s more about the way place influences me creatively.
I’m really interested in the way sound moves around up here. It
can be difficult to pin-point the origin of a sound; because of the
steepness of the valley, it bounces around in weird ways. Again
that’s about landscape, not just in the sense of what it looks like
but what it sounds like.
Is Iron In The Fire the album you’ve always had in you?
Only in the sense that those songs were shaped by the kind
of music I’ve always been interested in. I was in The Coral for,
like, 18 years and I was there as a guitarist. Back then I didn’t
envisage myself making solo records but for me that transition
has happened really naturally. If I’d stayed in Hoylake with the
others it would probably be a different story. Had I done a solo
album there then it’s likely all the other band members would
have played on it!
Do you think working on these songs and playing live has
opened the floodgates for you, musically?
It’s given me more confidence and creative focus. As a solo artist
you need to work out your own way of doing things, and that’s
taken time. The first batch of songs prompted me to develop
a home studio for recording demos and that’s been a learning
curve. The writing part now takes place out of the house and
I’ve learnt the value of finding a space that works for me. Luckily
a friend offered for me to share her writing space in a Victorian
chapel up on the moors. It’s incredibly beautiful in a falling apart
kind of way, but I wouldn’t want to spend the night up there. We
don’t like to talk about floodgates up here in Yorkshire, but yeah,
things are opening-up for me creatively, and I have a few project
ideas on the go.
From our point of view, you’ve had a lengthy period away from
music (since you left the band) – but have you ever really left
music? And can you ever see a period when you ‘retire’ from it?
I’ve played guitar every day since I was a kid. If I haven’t pickedup
the guitar by early evening I start to feel twitchy and the
world seems slightly off-kilter. Music is part of who I am and
it’s the only job I’ve ever had, apart from labouring work. So, no,
retirement is not on the horizon.
Was there ever a point prior to the album coming out where
you were worried it might never happen?
It was such a long process getting the first album out, and most
of that was down to lack of money. I’m not the only musician
who has to deal with that. My history with The Coral seemed
to work against me a bit. Making the transition from guitarist in
a band to solo artist is tricky; people like you to stay in the box
they are familiar with. I was confident the record would come
out but finding ways to make that happen was a slog. With Iron
In The Fire, I was very close to the actual process of making a
record. In The Coral, all of that was done by the label. This was
the first time I had to sort artwork, including endless discussions
about the weight of paper for the sleeve. I was stressing about
getting the masters to the bloke who was cutting the vinyl on
time, dealing with distribution issues as the record came out
around Easter etc. So, yeh, I was really anxious because I was
responsible for all this stuff.
What does the album mean to you, listening back to it?
It means a lot. There was no label or finance in place, no
management etc. It was me, on my own, in the hills of West
Yorkshire. Back in Hoylake everything is set-up, ready to go –
practice room, other musicians. I didn’t have access to any of that.
So, yeah, I’m really proud of what I achieved with the debut album. !
Words: Roy North
soundcloud.com/lee-a-southall
Lee Southall plays Folk On The Dock on 26th August. Iron In
The Fire is out now via Wonderful Sound, which you can find at
wonderfulsound.bandcamp.com.
32

What’s On
Cinema
Southport Film Guild
Court (PG)
Wed 2 August, 7.30pm
Subtitles
Totally 80s
The Goonies (PG)
Sat 16 September, 2pm
Love film? Then you’ll love the Southport
Film Guild. September ‘17 – August ‘18
Memberships are now on sale!
On the first Wednesday of every
month we show art house, blockbuster,
documentaries and lesser known films
from the last eighteen months. Join us
and have a cinematic experience like no
other. sfg@theatkinson.co.uk
Music
Grateful Fred’s
Henry Priestman
Wed 2 August, 7.30pm
Lindsay Lou &
The Sweet
Water Warblers
Sat 26 August, 7.30pm
Hue and Cry
Fri 15 September, 8pm
An Evening with
Nik Kershaw
Sat 16 September, 8pm
Comedy
Laugh Out Loud
Comedy Club
Sat 5 August, 8pm
With comedians Rob Deering,
Jack Carroll & Paul Tonkinson
Sat 2 September, 8pm
With comedians Jamie Sutherland,
Allyson Smith & Mark Smith
Tom Allen: Absolutely
Fri 15 September, 8pm
Totally 80s
Join us for a weekend of 80s inspired
events and activities including themed
food, arts and crafts, a screening of the
family favourite The Goonies (PG) and
appearances from 80’s legends Nik
Kershaw and Hue and Cry!
Box office:
theatkinson.co.uk
01704 533 333
(Booking fees apply)
–
: TheAtkinson
: @AtkinsonThe
: @TheAtkinsonSouthport
The Atkinson
Lord Street
Southport
PR8 1DB

PREVIEWS
GIG
Regina Spektor
Empire Theatre – 07/08
Regina Spektor
After releasing her critically-acclaimed seventh
album, Remember Us To Life, as well as completing a soldout
UK tour last November, singer-songwriter, pianist and
anti-folk hero REGINA SPEKTOR returns to the UK with a
show set in the beautiful surrounds of Liverpool’s neoclassical
Empire Theatre. Having moved from the USSR to New York
City in 1989, Spektor began elaborating her classical training
in piano, writing pop songs in her teens, ultimately releasing
her debut album in 2001. Since then, critical and commercial
success has followed her all the way, making this a show
you’d be sorry to miss.
FESTIVAL
Skeleton Coast
Hoylake Parade – 06/08
Wirral’s sunshine coast gets its annual freaky makeover as
SKELETON COAST FESTIVAL returns to Hoylake Community Centre.
Modern Kosmologist JANE WEAVER tops the bill, riding on a crest of
huge critical acclaim from her latest album, while shadowy Swedes
JOSEFIN ÖHRN + THE LIBERATION add their thumping psych slew
to proceedings. Hoylake natives and Skeleton Coast programmers
THE SUNDOWNERS head up a great local cast on the bill, which
includes LAURIE SHAW, MARVIN POWELL, PEACH FUZZ and new
line-up additions THE MYSTERINES and AGP.
Jane Weaver
GIG
DJ Food
81 Renshaw – 26/08
Electronica lovers rejoice – Emotion Wave returns for its
10th outing at the intimate 81 Renshaw, headlined by Ninja
Tune legend DJ FOOD. The underground electronic enigma
will bring his masterful experience to yet another lovingly
curated Emotion Wave line-up, a stormer that caters for
electronic aficionados and curious newcomers alike. The
show will also feature a rare set from psychedelic electronic
outfit MELODIEN, while LO FIVE will showcase tracks from
acclaimed debut album When It’s Time To Let Go, and
Food’s old Ninja Tune labelmates LOKA will DJ their mix of
psych, jazz and radiophonic weirdness.
DJ Food
LECTURE
Slavery Remembrance Day
International Slavery Museum – 23/08
The International Slavery Museum, situated within the Maritime Museum
at Albert Dock marks its 10th anniversary this year. The only one of its
kind in the world, the International Slavery Museum has run countless
important exhibitions and events since its opening on the bicentenary
of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007, highlighting modern slavery
as well as the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy. New exhibition
Ink And Blood: Stories Of Abolition will open as part of the anniversary
launch week, which also includes a programme of inspirational free
activities at the venue. Every year the museum also marks Slavery
Remembrance Day with a Memorial Lecture on 23rd August. Head to
liverpoolmuseums.org.uk for more information.
FILM
Stop Making Sense
Picturehouse at FACT – 10/08 and 28/08
Stop Making Sense
In memory of legendary film director Jonathan Demme, who passed away in April this year, FACT are
showing a special screening of his iconic Talking Heads concert film, STOP MAKING SENSE. Shot over
three of their performances in LA in December 1983 for their (then) new album Speaking in Tongues,
Demme’s creative spark and Talking Head’s staggering energy collide. His beautiful cinematography,
their back-to-back showcase of brilliant and bizarre art punk songs and, of course, David Byrne’s ‘Big
Suit’ make for one of the best music films of all time. Tickets available from fact.co.uk.
FESTIVAL
Folk On The Dock
Albert Dock – 26/08-28/08
The Albert Dock plays host to a three-day folk, roots and acoustic music
festival in August, where established names and emerging talent appear
alongside each other on free stages and selected ticketed events. FOLK
ON THE DOCK celebrates the role that Liverpool’s waterways played in
exporting and importing music across the world. Arty, proggy folk troupe
MOULETTES join former Coral man LEE SOUTHALL and former Yachts and
Christians songwriter HENRY PRIESTMAN on the free Dock Stage, which
is hosted by Janice Long. The festival also incorporates the Liverpool Sea
Shanty Festival and a stage dedicated to breaking local folk acts, named in
honour of the late Stan Ambrose.
Moulettes
34

FILM
Be Kind Rewind
Handyman Brewery – 02/08
Be Kind Rewind
Michel Gondry, the French filmmaker responsible for music
videos for artists from Björk to The White Stripes, directed
the first featured film for Bido Lito!’s August Special Event and
inaugural film night. BE KIND REWIND will be illuminating
the Handyman Brewery as we work with pop-up screen
specialists Empty Spaces Cinema for this special event.
Together with a selection of Merseyside-made short films, the
night will celebrate the magic of movie making.
Jack Black and Mos Def play two video store clerks who find
themselves having to remake a raft of classic films when they
inadvertently wipe the shop’s VHS stock. The cult classic looks
at the community that can build around film, and the creativity
filmmaking can unleash. These are sentiments very much
shared by Empty Spaces Cinema: organiser Laura Brown said
of the project, “film is incredibly accessible and this is a good
way to encourage people to explore new spaces and to bring
people together in their own communities.”
The event takes place at the newly opened Handyman
Brewery on Smithdown Road, an independent venue which
enamoured itself to music fans at Smithdown Road Festival
back in May. Laura is also a fan: “I’m in complete awe of
the work the team at architectural Emporium has done.
Smithdown Road is probably my favourite street in Liverpool
and this is one of my favourite buildings. Turning it into
somewhere exciting – where you can also get a very nice beer
– is a laudable ambition.” With the venue’s own beer brewed
on the premises and a custom-built venue space at the back
it’s the perfect setting for a film night.
As with all Bido Lito! Special Events this will be free to our
members. There are a limited amount of advance tickets on
sale via bidolito.co.uk but be quick as this one will sell out.
GIG
Jens Lekman
Leaf – 30/08
Jens Lekman
Gothenburg’s answer to Jonathan Richman, JENS LEKMAN has been an
auteur operating on the fringes of anti-folk and chamber pop for over a
decade, amassing a cult reputation among his masses of fans. 2017’s album
Life Will See You Now, his fourth, sees the Swede confront some challenging
issues with his usual droll sense of humour; the addition of Ewan Pearson on
co-production duties adds punchy, bold hues of funk and disco to the mix,
lifting the subject matter away from being a mournful slog, making it more
a joyous romp. This is a rare treat for Merseyside Lekman fans – tickets are
already shifting for it too, so don’t leave it late.
GIG
Big Youth feat. The Upper Cut Band
District – 18/08
Not content with piloting a masterful festival of reggae sounds and culture for one weekend a
year, Positive Vibration are committed to bringing big-hitting names from across the genre all
year round. The first such event for 2017 sees legendary DJ, toaster and recording artist BIG
YOUTH rock up at District, accompanied by the UK’s finest roots reggae group THE UPPER
CUT BAND. One of the founders of conscious music, Big Youth is a stylistic innovator of the
highest order, imbuing his work with the power of his Rastafarian beliefs.
Big Youth
GIG
Bido Lito! Social
81 Renshaw – 17/08
TV ME
Our monthly live showcases are fast becoming the stuff of legend, the perfect
type of shindig for welcoming the latest issue of the pink pages. For August’s
effort we’re opting for a strain of electronica, as we welcome ST. JUDE THE
OBSCURE, TV ME and LUNA to the party. An evolution of Tom Low’s band that
blossomed in 2016, TV ME take you for a jaunt on their future pop jamboree,
which wraps up a host of pop culture references inside the wonky, catchy hooks.
Tickets are £4 in advance, or free if you’re a Bido Lito! member. Sign up now at
bidolito.co.uk and make sure you don’t miss another event (and read more about
LUNA on page 28, and headliners St. Jude The Obscure on page 20).
PREVIEWS 35

REVIEWS
“Washington emerges
from the mystery, an
absolute mountain of
a man with a tangibly
Technicolor aura”
Kamasi Washington (Glyn Akroyd / @Glyn Akroyd)
Kamasi Washington
Bam!Bam!Bam! @ Arts Club
30/06
Liverpool finally gets it chance to welcome the shape of jazz
to come: future-minded Los Angeles saxophonist KAMASI
WASHINGTON. An eager crowd, recently starved of star power,
file in to the syncopated funk of Idris Muhammad. From the fizz
and clamour experienced on the way in, there’s a genuine sense
of expectation evinced for Washington’s strain of big band jazz:
but exactly how will his sprawling 2015 opus The Epic measure
up to the diminishing practicalities of the live circuit?
Washington emerges from the mystery, an absolute
mountain of a man with a tangibly Technicolor aura. I can’t help
but think of the imposing and mercurial maestro Charles Mingus,
as his frame and authority fills the stage with abundant majesty.
Adorned in a lavish kimono-cum-dashiki-combo, our shamanic
guide coolly wets his reed and announces we’re about to be
taken on “a sort of journey”. Askim is my favourite cut from the
Washington oeuvre and makes for an immediately disarming
opener. Reminiscent of the melancholic melodies of Heavy
Weather and, later, Coltrane’s Transition, it simmers and rasps
with a deep introspection before morphing into a pyretic hard
bop. Sweet-lipped trombonist Ryan Porter showcases a solo
so boss that it even draws a wry smile from his band leader,
and the first of much applause from an audience otherwise
transfixed by sheer musicianship.
Moxie keyboard demon Brandon Coleman also catches the
ear and eye, indulgently revelling in every febrile gesture he
Kamasi Washington (Glyn Akroyd / @Glyn Akroyd)
offers while demonstrably having the most fun anyone has ever
had substituting a tritone. There is a palpable synergy between
all of the performers tonight and the band are cooking from the
get go. We are witness to a meaningful moment as Kamasi’s
father, saxophonist and flautist Ricky Washington, joins the
mélange of talent on stage. We’re told that, “This is the man
who taught me how to play, taught me how to tie my shoes…
taught me how to do just about everything.”
From one homage to another, blues standard Cherokee lifts
the room further still with declarative harmony from bolstered
ranks. Immortalised by Bird, this rendition utilises the delightful
pipes of Patrice Quinn, who momentarily lapses from her
interpretive and revelatory visual performance to deliver verse
and hook in rapturous fashion. Quinn again comes to the fore
on new track Black Man, a salient post-Civil Rights reminder
that brings to mind the woke words and visionary interludes
of Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah or Amiri Baraka’s It’s Nation
Time.
There’s a rich vein of black consciousness and solidarity
prominent throughout Kamasi Washington’s vibe; aside from
the obvious emancipatory subtext of the genre, he channels
the same Afrocentric cultural nationalism that awoke across
America in the 1970s. Overt in aesthetic, this is refracted more
subtly in the synthesis of his output, a unity of jazz and the
music it has since inspired. As Washington justifies the excess
of both drummers, a dialogue between the two percussionists
ensues and a fluid arrangement of Re Run Home brings us
on home. The Epic is every bit as ambitious and every bit as
mesmerising in the live arena as it is on the record – but whether
Washington can usher in a more sagacious era of spiritual jazz,
only time will tell. !
Philip Morris / @mauricedesade
Kamasi Washington:
Eight Miles High
by Bernie Connor
I left my home not knowing what to expect. I had immersed myself
in The Epic and it blew my mind. It blew my mind in a way that rock,
or most other genres of music, never will. It contains an element of
outward and upward spirituality that generally isn’t available in other
forms of sound, something that just might ‘take you there’ should you
need to go. There is no external force driving your life and making
decisions, other than yourself, but if there was, this is the sound and
shape it would take. If you wanted to get closer to your God, this is
the medium you might use.
For many years jazz has tried to reach out to a larger community.
Record labels would marvel at what might happen if it was exposed
to a larger ‘rock audience’, for the want of a better phrase. John
Coltrane would have been one of the major stars of the American
counter-culture, had he lived. He died on the morning of the Summer
Of Love. Miles Davis, despite his record label’s valuable support
during the late 60s and early 70s, was just too ‘out there’ to be taken
to heart by the acid-fried hippy kids at the Fillmore. Neil Young and
Crazy Horse is one thing, but an hour of improvised Bitches Brew
was just off the scale.
The audience tonight is full of youngsters who wouldn’t look out
of place at a Hooton Tennis Club gig. Hopefully they are the same
youngsters at both shows. If that’s the case, music is certainly – and
positively – moving in the right direction. If that gap has been bridged,
then music has a future unlike any time in the last 60 years.
Washington takes to the stand with his seven-piece band, and
within moments that horn is blowing into the heavens, a be-bop big
band that sounds the size of Canada, frantically rearranging all the
atoms in the room and reconfiguring them into a personal wall of
profound audio, just for you. The sheer force is relentless: at every
twist and turn the audience are peering around the room, just to
check if everybody else is feeling how utterly life-affirming this music
is. Don’t blink, don’t move. If you have to, just close your eyes and be
carried away by this truly astonishing cacophony.
Jazz isn’t for everyone, I understand that. What Kamasi
Washington has done in a very short space of time is to invoke the
spirits of modern jazz into a wholly new, modernised modern jazz,
taking it to a new and wide-eyed audience. The essence of the
Charlie Mingus big band, and the dizzy heights of Sonny Rollins’
horn are all captured and reproduced in a beautiful contemporary
form, highlighted by some of the best musicianship available to
humans. And to do this in front of a young, eager and knowledgeable
audience, familiar with every twist and turn, is no mean feat indeed.
36

“Anyone
missing it is
a plank, and
that’s the
scientific term”
Bluedot
Jodrell Bank – 07/07-09/07
There’s a stretch of the Luminarium – Architects Of Air’s inflatable
sound-and-light walkthrough psychedelic playpen, nestled in one
of BLUEDOT’s outer fields – where you can peer along a corridor
of disjointed caterpillaring arches and feel, if so inclined, all the
stimuli of its temporary locale collapsing in on your perspective
on the world. Stuff like engineering and creativity and ethics
having to lock vaguely in line – they never do completely – before
we’re really getting somewhere. The words “it’s no longer ‘what
can we do?’ but ‘what should we do?’” are used in a discussion
about data (boons of, security of, bullying with, war over) just
before we wander in – and it’s all staring to make some kind of
sense.
Seems there’s too much data to know what to do with,
and it’s increasing exponentially. Ain’t necessarily so, mind you,
for PIXIES, topping the Friday bill, because for a long stretch
they had ceased producing data. They run through a Doolittledominated
set that starts Gouge Away, Debaser, Here Comes
Your Man, Monkey Gone To Heaven. Aren’t they going through
the motions, ‘artistically’ and that? Or to flip it: why keep trying
to split the atom if you cracked it 30 years ago? The only new
aspects are 2016 tune Head Carrier and bassist Paz Lenchantin,
doing a replica Kim Deal. So, do we want fresh numbers, or the
most pertinent from an act who gave us art with a utilitarian
brevity? Quantity or quality? Purveyors of just the hits are
many; purveyors of just the hits who decline ruinous solos and
enhanced drum dismounts, as Pixies do, are few. Nothing is
wasted in this, one of the snappiest, most persuasive, executive
summaries in the archives.
Short of introducing a brutal year-zero policy of barring
past punters to keep up the churn of minds to turn on to Jodrell
Bank’s pioneering work, Bluedot may face similar questions
eventually. Great discoveries never get old, though, and what
ties strands as different as talks about coding and the dark
web and astrophysics (cosmic), ANDREW WEATHERALL (still
cosmic), augmented reality (getting bleakly cosmic if you ask
me), SOUNDS OF THE UFOs (analogue cosmicry), various 3D
printers (cosmic three ways), MOOMINS AND THE COMET:
LIVE RESCORE (quaintly cosmic), loads of Star Wars references
(pass), ANDY VOTEL’s history of space rock (was/is cosmic; still
cramming on this) and DELIA DERBYSHIRE DAY (the cosmicest)
is the wonder that these reached into futures in their own times
yet still sound way out in front of most in their fields.
Several of the aforesaid feed into ORBITAL’s timetravelling
set. Near-vets the brothers Hartnoll may be, but the
pummelling vitality of Chime and The Box marries old tech to the
contemporary scene and modern research to the Derbyshirearranged
Doctor Who Theme, which they nail, guest-starring
the late Derbyshire’s old ‘supergroup’, the RADIOPHONIC
WORKSHOP. The site’s mahoosive Lovell Telescope has never
looked better than to their beat, in its new clothes, designed this
time by DAITO MANABE – his projections generated by, yes,
data. It’s later suggested in a seminar that even Bluedot quietly
harvests our data – for its own probably-OK ends, but who does
it partner with, people start asking – and then we feel somewhat
ashamed, sitting in its manor, raging about how we came to be
at this smashing event. Because if data is used to understand
us better, when do we say no? When it lurks in our democratic
process, say the legal, political and journalistic minds in a gripping
if dispiriting debate about (further reading alert) Cambridge
Analytica and its many-limbed friends.
That’s a case for illumination more generally. The counter is
GOLDFRAPP. How much we see of her is not in our gift; she’s
the only artist, word has it, that banned photographers in the ‘pit’.
Well, good for her, because despite tonight’s on-stage warmth,
it’s been her consistent part-retreat from view that, in tandem
with Alpine stylings and electro-shock treatment, makes you feel
like the space-foxx you came here to be. ‘Show your workings,’
I think they used to say at school. Alison Goldfrapp rejects that:
here’s what she has to tell you, and you’ll never know how she
arrived at it.
Compare and contrast with the eager pupils of ALT-J
and their immaculate exercise-songbooks. Adept, with a
commendable work ethic. Not without originality, within an
overall easy compliance. Think of how a streaming service
suggests what you’d like and how plenty of those roads could
lead you to alt-J and you might be quite pleased. Thing is, I
don’t like those platforms, for reasons to do with tech share
valuations, but also because it’s about the least visceral thing
to hit Earth since Jive Bunny. It feeds on? Data – naturally. If I’ve
learnt anything this weekend – besides that anyone missing it is a
plank, and that’s the scientific term – it’s that we and automation
need to get along but not act interchangeably. There’s too much
precision onstage. Alt-J play a really decent show. They’re a
terrific bunch of lads with bright futures. Let’s leave it at that.
WARPAINT, warming up the brain farm just before, had been
in unusually frisky mood. Still, one of their strengths remains
that they don’t try too hard to bend to you. For every hit there’s
a rabbit hole of an instrumental section, not some new thirst for
jazz odyssey but what they always did. It’s way more alluring to
scramble codes and cover your answers sometimes. Preceding
Warpaint, THE WHYTE HORSES EXPERIENCE show they’ve
taken their craft forward a stage from last year’s long-player Pop
Or Not, and in so doing produce the most dazzling set of results,
whether you think they’re an echo of pop from Derbyshire’s 60s
heyday or not. There’s Josefin Öhrn and some of her Liberation,
Badly Drawn Boy out of Badly Drawn Boy… and that’s as much
as I detect behind a distracting line of ghoulish dancers – again,
protecting us from the workings.
Can’t we wish on a duality of open access to data and
knowledge except in art and performance? We’ve gotta aim high.
And the last or ‘newest’ or most optimised discovery may not
reach the furthest. And the boffins, the good boffins of all hues,
are still miles ahead when they’re behind us, off on one, up a hill,
at space telescopes, making hay and alchemising. !
Tom Bell / @WriterTomBell
Bluedot (Keith Ainsworth / arkimages.co.uk)
REVIEWS 37

Nas (Stuart Moulding / @oohshootstu)
“It’s clear that
Nas is still in it
for all the right
reasons”
Nas
+ Big Heath
Mountford Hall - 10/07
The Guild is packed on arrival and, in fact, even outside around
the whole area surrounding Paddy’s Wigwam people are bustling
around in tight crowds on this balmy summer’s eve. You can hear
Brummy accents in the throngs; it’s clear that tonight’s event is a
rarity that people have come from far and wide to witness.
Inside it’s humid, warm, and sticky. Weighty breaks burst out
of the speakers as the playlist offers a mesh of hip hop’s finest
while the room fills fast. Pretty soon, smoke clouds rise above
certain groups huddled close. This is hip hop.
The support for tonight is BIG HEATH, who strolls on stage
to an unsure crowd. When you’re the main support for hip hop
royalty, it’s going to be a chore to win over a crowd that already
belong to the headliner. He flows his way through tracks Trigga
Blow and M!crophone Checker; his particular brand of hip hop –
of the polished, contemporary ilk – turns heads, even despite its
slight jarring with the headliner’s style. He’s made the hard sell
look easy: who knew Cambridge had rappers?
There’s a wait that seems like eternity in between acts,
as anticipation hangs in the air like ectoplasm. Weird thing is,
Liverpool has never played host to NAS before, even being a
world-renowned major city and a proposed cultural hotspot.
Somehow, we’ve slept on this one. Now’s our time.
So, after the wait, bring on Nasir Jones, who strides on stage
to thunderous applause and screams from the crowd. It seems
that he’s making up for lost time in Liverpool, as he lunges into a
set crammed with legendary material from his equally legendary
career. Here is an artist who has been hailed as the greatest MC
of all time, who has had eight consecutive platinum albums, sold
over 25 million records and has maintained credibility as a true
pioneer of hip hop culture, and he’s tearing through his entire
back catalogue to a humble crowd in Mountford Hall. When
many of his contemporaries only appear in arenas or stadiums,
with a distinct drift from the people and their audience, it’s clear
that Nas is still at it for all the right reasons.
He spits raps from NY State Of Mind and The World Is Yours
as though it’s still 1994, with as much passion and weight that
the meaning of each syllable is felt by every single person here.
Nas is a lively performer and is visibly humbled and privileged to
be able to connect with crowds like this one. He pays a touching
tribute to the recently departed Prodigy of Mobb Deep, reciting
words from Shook Ones in homage to the fellow friend and
rapper. Further tribute is paid to the late Amy Winehouse as Nas
plays their collaborative piece Cherry Wine.
The crowd keep bouncing and rapping along as the tracks
come thick and fast: Memory Lane, If I Ruled The World, I Can,
Made You Look, and plenty more, this set is perfectly composed.
The crowd are up in arms throughout, with even a sense of
longing when he finally departs. Don’t leave it so long next time,
yeh?
Christopher Carr
38

Hans Zimmer (Ed Robinson)
Hans Zimmer
Echo Arena
17/06
HANS ZIMMER is, without doubt, the most prolific film
composer of our time, working closely with some of the biggest
directors in the business. Knowledge of Zimmer’s multiple Oscar
nominations and a win with The Lion King, plus his unrivalled
work on the three Christopher Nolan-directed Batman movies,
does not even nearly prepare you for the spectacle we are seeing
tonight at the Echo Arena.
Within seconds of taking the stage, Zimmer shows us he is
a man who not only knows how to play a cinema audience but
who is adept at playing a live audience just as easily. Alone on
stage, he glides across the keys on the quirky refrain from Driving
Miss Daisy as his band enter the space one by one, adding their
parts. Throughout this opening medley, which also takes in
scored music for Sherlock Holmes and Madagascar, the stage fills
and curtains lift to reveal more and more musicians, around 50
at the final count. The lights, the projections, the sheer mass of
talent and the surprisingly comedic character of Zimmer himself
promise a night of high entertainment and unashamed awe.
Zimmer likes to explain the stories behind the scores and
continually praises the talents of his collaborators, providing
back stories of how they met, giving a sense that there is a lot
of mutual respect in the touring company. The master composer
explains how his score for The Da Vinci Code reflects the
architecture of The Louvre, where some of the film was set, and
includes modern and traditional arrangements to match the
architecture of the gallery. In addition to being entertained, we’re
also getting a thrilling insight into Zimmer’s life on-set and the
processes of film scoring.
With an emphasis on the choir, Crimson Tide provides
the first example of a truly bombastic score tonight and is as
absorbing as it is breathtaking, closely followed by the elegiac
wheat fields conjured up by Zimmer’s famous Gladiator score.
Czarina Russell, who Zimmer met when she was a three-year-old
bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding, provides angelic vocals over the
Gladiator suite and it is impossible not to be completely swept
away.
The second act seems almost like an extension of the Comiccon
event that was held next door a couple of months back.
Zimmer is more than aware of how much of his audience is pure
geek squad as he sighs, “I guess I’ll have to do some superhero
stuff now,” before launching into Man Of Steel / Batman V
Superman. Starting off almost as pedestrian as the Man of Steel
itself, it soon takes flight as all the orchestra’s principal female
members – Zimmer’s “Wonder Women” – line the front of the
stage and go wild in a flurry of strings and strobe lights.
The bombast of the blockbuster material is given relief from
more sedate moments like the unusually sweet theme from Tony
Scott’s True Romance, a mesmerising guitar solo from Nile Marr,
son of Johnny, and a metronomic performance of the theme from
The Thin Red Line.
The show draws to a close with an emphasis on spectacle:
a lengthy piece from Interstellar blows each and every one of
us away, and Aurora proves to be the focal point of the night:
a drawn-out, beautiful piece that stands as a tribute to Heath
Ledger and to the people killed in the Aurora cinema shootings.
Zimmer takes time to spread the love by extending the tribute to
the victims of the recent terrorist attacks in England.
An encore of the themes from Inception raises the bar with
upbeat psychedelic rhythms and hypnotic visuals and no one is
left in any doubt of this man’s pure genius. Even the most dyedin-the-wool
film buffs will not leave the Arena tonight without
feeling at least a little more akin to the world of filmmaking and
scoring.
Del Pike / @del_pike
Jeronimo Voss, Inverted Night Sky (Gareth Jones)
The New Observatory
FACT – 22/06-01/10
FACT’s latest offering, THE NEW OBSERVATORY, promises to
“reimagine how we measure, sense and predict the world today.”
The multimedia exhibition showcases the work of internationally
acclaimed artists through concentrating on the creation of a meta
observatory for the 21st Century, suggesting that we have become
observatories of ourselves.
FACT’s thematic displays interrogating technology and its
impact on everyday living through the use of contemporary art
have been particularly impactful of late. The New Observatory
further explores the lines of enquiry set up in FACT’s highly
successful ‘How much of this is fiction?’ exhibition, but in a less
overt manner. While the previous exhibition was undeniably
political in nature, this offering is more subtly so; the visitor is left
with questions rather than answers, with the exhibition presented
as a series of investigations rather than as a blueprint for a certain
mode of thought.
The exhibition utilises the trope of a science museum while
simultaneously subverting it: many of the works portray the
paraphernalia readily associated with the world of science,
but these instruments are used in an anomalous manner. The
scope of the exhibition is far greater than the exploration of cold
measurement and observation – this is merely a tool used to
highlight an array of issues around privacy and technological
advances.
The New Observatory is particularly pertinent as it comes at
a time of heated debate surrounding proposed changes to Net
Neutrality (a day of action was held on 12th July), as well as the
increasing concern around issues of the privacy of personal data;
the participating artists powerfully encapsulate this. For instance,
in James Coupe’s A Machine For Living, a watchtower is looming
over the central hallway, which may seem like an obvious motif to
choose when raising questions over observation and surveillance.
However, Coupe embeds screens in the structure, which show
images of the living rooms, bedrooms and workplaces of hundreds
of people who are crowd-workers, from an online marketplace that
employs workers to complete tasks that cannot be undertaken
with computers. This highlights what becomes a central tenet of
the exhibition, that of surveillance and the role that technology
has taken in everyday life, how pervasive it has become. With this
piece the artist disrupts the usual narrative, that of our reliance
on technology; the workers must be sourced through the use of
technology, while still being required due to a lack in technology.
The most clearly politicised work comes from Thomson and
Craighead’s Recruitment Gone Wrong, featuring a re-enactment of
a covertly recorded exchange between a group of student activists
and the NSA, confronting them over the Edward Snowden
allegations. The conversation is recreated through the use of
grotesque masks – the wearer becoming an anonymous tool in the
transmission of information. The piece again raises questions over
issues of privacy: to whom does information belong? And to what
extent are governmental overreaching, commercial interference
and loss of control of one’s personal privacy being accepted as a
necessary sacrifice in exchange for easily disseminated information
and a more connected world?
The exhibition is certainly thought-provoking and further
cements FACT as a force to be reckoned with in the Liverpool art
scene, exploring contemporary art with a unique angle to create
fascinating exhibitions.
Jessica Fenna / @jess_fenna
REVIEWS 39

Miles & Erica
(Of The Wonder
Stuff)
The Deaf Institute,
Manchester
Monday 11th September
Thea Gilmore
PHILHARMONIC HALL, LIVERPOOL
Tuesday 19th September 2017
Luke Haines
Night & Day Cafe, Manchester
Sunday 15th October
The Frank &
Walters
The Ruby Lounge, Manchester
Sunday 22nd October
DJ Format &
Abdominal
The Magnet, Liverpool
Thursday 2nd November 2017
The Magic Band
PHILHARMONIC HALL, LIVERPOOL
Friday 10th November 2017
John Smith
PHILHARMONIC HALL, LIVERPOOL
Saturday 11th November 2017
ROB HERON &
THE TEA PAD
ORCHESTRA
THE MAGNET, LIVERPOOL
WEDNESDAY 22ND NOVEMBER
Peggy Seeger
PHILHARMONIC HALL, LIVERPOOL
Tuesday 28th November
Nick Harper
The Magnet, Liverpool
Friday 1st December 2017
LAU
PHILHARMONIC HALL, LIVERPOOL
TUESDAY 5TH DECEMBER
@Ceremonyconcert / facebook.com/ceremonyconcerts
ceremonyconcerts@gmail.com / seetickets.com

An Arts Council Collection National Partners Exhibition
Sexuality, Gender & Identity
28 July to 5 November 2017
FREE ENTRY
liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/comingout
@walkergallery
#comingout
Arts Council Collection is managed by Southbank Centre, London on behalf of Arts Council England
@A_C_Collection #ACCNationalPartners
Detail of still from I Want, 2015, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz. Courtesy Marcelle Alix, Paris.
ComingOut_BidoLito_249x181mm.indd 1 11/07/2017 15:02

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SAY
THE FINAL
Ahead of an important
anniversary and the Walker Art
Gallery’s landmark Coming Out
exhibition, curator Charlotte
Keenan talks about the vital
role art plays in representing
the LGBT+ community and how
equality on a global scale is still
some way off.
“We believe in the power
of museums to help
promote good and active
citizenship, and to act as
agents of social change”
27 July 2017 is the 50th anniversary of the passing of
the Sexual Offences Act 1967. This law decriminalised
sex in private between men over the age of 21 in
England and Wales, though it didn’t apply to those in
the armed forces. Sex between men had been illegal since Henry
VIII’s introduction of the Buggery Act in 1533. The Labouchére
Amendment, introduced in 1885, had similarly criminalised any
other sexual contact between men.
Events across England and Wales will mark the anniversary
this year. They include BBC Three’s Queer season, showcasing a
series of television programmes on contemporary LGBT+ culture
presented by YouTuber Riyadh Khalaf; and the Queer Theatre
programme at the National Theatre in London, which will mark the
occasion with nine days of events and performances in early July.
The anniversary is a poignant moment. It offers the chance
to reflect on the achievements of LGBT+ communities and
campaigns since 1967, but it is also a reminder of the work still
to be done. It remains illegal to be homosexual in 74 countries
throughout the world, many of them former British colonies
which continue to criminalise sex between men due to historic
penal codes enforced by the British. Earlier this year, reports
emerged of the abduction and torture of up to 100 gay men in
concentration camps in Chechnya, with three gay men thought to
have been murdered. Closer to home, research published in July
2017 by Stonewall, the LGBT+ rights charity, reports that 55%
of young LGBT+ people in the UK have been bullied at school. A
further study by Pride in London has revealed that 42% of LGBT+
people in the capital have been the victim of a hate crime in the
last 12 months.
National Museums Liverpool believes in the power of
museums to help promote good and active citizenship, and
to act as agents of social change. As such, we are committed
to representing LGBT+ history within our museums and
campaigning for LGBT+ rights and equality across the globe.
The Walker Art Gallery began programming LGBT+ related
events and displays in 2003, often in close collaboration with the
Liverpool-based social justice organisation Homotopia. This year,
to mark the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act 1967,
we are hosting our biggest and most important exhibition to
date. Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender And Identity brings together
nearly 100 works by artists including Steve McQueen, Anya
Gallaccio, Linder and Derek Jarman to explore how artists have
addressed the exhibition’s themes since the Act was passed.
Art can help us to see the world differently, offering insights
into personal experiences beyond our own. Many of the artists
in this exhibition have used their art to give visibility to LGBT+
causes and issues. For some, this has meant being open about
their sexuality. David Hockney, speaking about his print series
Illustrations For Fourteen Poems From C. P. Cavafy, once said,
“Of course they are about gay love, and I was quite boldly using
that subject then. I was aware that it was illegal, but… I wasn’t
speaking for anybody else, I was defending my way of living.”
The American artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz
(1954-92) stated that “history is made and preserved by and for
particular classes of people. A camera in the hands of some can
preserve an alternative history.” Several artists in the exhibition,
such as Sunil Gupta, use photography to give visibility to
communities that are overlooked and to draw attention to their
experiences. Photos from his series Exiles are on display. Each
photograph in the series was taken at a different cruising site
around New Delhi in India in the late 1980s. They feature the
gay men that Gupta met there and appear alongside quotes from
his conversations with them. Reflecting on the series, Gupta has
commented: “Exploring the Indian gay scene as an adult I found
an intimidating wall of silence. Those [gay men] I met in India
lived a marginalised existence, giving in to communal pressures
to maintain a ‘normal’ front.” Sex between men remains illegal to
this day in India.
Contemporary artists, such as John Walter, continue the
legacy of activism within the arts. His multimedia installation
Alien Sex Club explores sex and sexual health in the 21st
Century. The artist is particularly concerned with the increasing
transmission rates of HIV and the factors for this. The installation
at the Walker is specifically concerned with PrEP (Pre-Exposure
Prophylaxis). This medication, when taken correctly, can prevent
the user from contracting HIV if they are exposed to the virus.
The NHS will shortly begin trials for the drug regime after a
lengthy debate about whether it should be available to people
at risk of HIV infection. Many felt the arguments against PrEP
revealed society’s continued homophobia. Walter’s ‘maximalist’
style uses pop culture, humour and hospitality to broach these
subjects in a way that is accessible and engaging. In doing so,
he encourages people to think about these important issues and
perhaps change their behaviour and attitudes.
These are just some of the works visitors will be able to see and
experience in Coming Out this summer at the Walker. Central to the
exhibition is a programme of events, performances and discussions
that will take place in a specially designed space at the heart of
Coming Out. The campaign for LGBT+ equality and rights is far
from over and it’s here that we hope people can come together and
plan for a better tomorrow. We hope to see you there. !
Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender And Identity takes place at Walker
Art Gallery between 28th July and 5th November.
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Bido Lito! Special Event
EMPTY SPACES
CINEMA NIGHT
a selection of short films followed by a screening of
BE KIND REWIND
Handyman Brewery,
Smithdown Road
2/8 - 7pm
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at bidolito.co.uk
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15TH BIRTHDAY - SAT 30TH SEPT
CAMP & FURNACE - LIVERPOOL