Issue 93 / October 2018
October 2018 issue of Bido Lito! magazine. Featuring: SPQR, NIKI KAND, SHE DREW THE GUN, VILLAGERS, SHIT INDIE DISCO, PUSSY RIOT - RIOT DAYS, DAVID OLUSOGA, PROTOMARTYR and much more.
October 2018 issue of Bido Lito! magazine. Featuring: SPQR, NIKI KAND, SHE DREW THE GUN, VILLAGERS, SHIT INDIE DISCO, PUSSY RIOT - RIOT DAYS, DAVID OLUSOGA, PROTOMARTYR and much more.
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ISSUE <strong>93</strong> / OCTOBER <strong>2018</strong><br />
NEW MUSIC + CREATIVE CULTURE<br />
LIVERPOOL<br />
SPQR / NIKI KAND / VILLAGERS<br />
SHE DREW THE GUN / PUSSY RIOT
Tue 11th Sep<br />
The Stairs<br />
+ Silent-K + Peach Fuzz<br />
Sat 15th Sep • 6pm<br />
Wayward Sons<br />
+ Doomsday Outlaw<br />
Sat 22nd Sep<br />
Spring King<br />
Sat 22nd Sep<br />
The Notorious B.I.G<br />
An Orchestral Rendition<br />
Of Ready To Die<br />
Sun 23rd Sep<br />
Fish<br />
Mon 24th Sep<br />
Pale Waves<br />
Fri 28th Sep • SOLD OUT<br />
Half Man Half Biscuit<br />
Fri 28th Sep<br />
SPINN<br />
Sat 29th Sep<br />
Red Rum Club<br />
+ Life At The Arcade<br />
+ Columbia + Tracky<br />
Wed 3rd Oct<br />
The Magic Gang<br />
+ The Orielles<br />
Fri 5th Oct<br />
The Night Café<br />
Fri 5th Oct<br />
Jilted John + John Otway<br />
Sat 6th Oct<br />
Definitely Mightbe<br />
Sat 6th Oct • 10pm<br />
VK Electric ft Tom<br />
Zanetti & K.O Kane<br />
Wed 10th Oct<br />
Maribou State<br />
Thur 11th Oct<br />
Mo Gilligan AKA<br />
Mo the Comedian<br />
Fri 12th Oct • Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
The Coral<br />
+ She Drew The Gun<br />
Fri 12th Oct<br />
Elvana: Elvis Fronted<br />
Nirvana<br />
Sat 13th Oct<br />
Reverend And The<br />
Makers<br />
+ RedFaces + Sophie & The Giants<br />
Sat 13th Oct<br />
The Men They Couldn’t<br />
Hang<br />
Thur 18th Oct<br />
Bugzy Malone<br />
Fri 19th Oct<br />
The Sherlocks<br />
Fri 19th Oct<br />
The Vryll Society<br />
Sat 20th Oct • SOLD OUT<br />
Tom Grennan<br />
Sun 21st Oct<br />
Dermot Kennedy<br />
Wed 24th Oct • Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
SOLD OUT<br />
First Aid Kit<br />
Thu 25th Oct<br />
Neil Hilborn (USA)<br />
Fri 26th Oct<br />
The White Buffalo<br />
Sat 27th Oct<br />
The Southmartins<br />
Beautiful South & Housemartins<br />
Tribute<br />
Sat 27th Oct • 10pm<br />
ABBA Disco Wonderland<br />
Fri 2nd Nov<br />
Bad Sounds<br />
Sat 3rd Nov<br />
Ladytron<br />
Sat 3rd Nov • SOLD OUT<br />
Old Dominion (USA)<br />
Sat 3rd Nov • 11pm • Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
Festival Of The Dead<br />
Wed 7th Nov<br />
Hothouse Flowers<br />
Fri 9th Nov • Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
SOLD OUT<br />
George Ezra<br />
Fri 9th Nov<br />
Less Than Jake &<br />
Reel Big Fish (USA)<br />
Fri 9th Nov<br />
Shaun Ryder’s Black<br />
Grape<br />
Sat 10th Nov<br />
The Carpet Crawlers<br />
Perform ‘Selling Foxtrot By The<br />
Pound’<br />
Sat 10th Nov<br />
Antarctic Monkeys<br />
Tue 13th Nov<br />
The Dead Daisies<br />
- Welcome to Daisyland<br />
+ Massive Wagons<br />
Fri 16th Nov<br />
Slaves<br />
Fri 16th Nov<br />
Absolute Bowie Presents<br />
50 Years of Bowie<br />
Sat 17th Nov<br />
UK Foo Fighters<br />
Sat 17th Nov • SOLD OUT<br />
Johnny Marr - Call The<br />
Comet Tour<br />
Thur 22nd Nov<br />
Limehouse Lizzy<br />
25th Anniversary Tour<br />
Fri 23rd Nov<br />
Stillmarillion<br />
Fri 23rd Nov • 10pm<br />
Foreverland<br />
- Enchanted Forest<br />
Sat 24th Nov<br />
Pearl Jam UK<br />
Sat 24th Nov<br />
Heaven 17<br />
+ Propaganda (Ger)<br />
Wed 28th Nov<br />
Natty<br />
Thur 29th Nov<br />
Bars and Melody<br />
facebook.com/o2academyliverpool<br />
twitter.com/o2academylpool<br />
instagram.com/o2academyliverpool<br />
youtube.com/o2academytv<br />
Thur 29th Nov<br />
The Damned<br />
Fri 30th Nov<br />
The Doors Alive<br />
Sat 1st Dec<br />
Alabama 3<br />
Thur 6th Dec<br />
Razorlight<br />
Fri 7th Dec<br />
The Lancashire Hotpots<br />
+ Stu Penders & Spladoosh<br />
Sat 8th Dec<br />
Slade<br />
Merry Christmas Everybody 45th<br />
Anniversary<br />
Sat 8th Dec<br />
CKY<br />
+ Sumo Cyco<br />
+ Bullets and Octane<br />
Sat 8th Dec • Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
Miles Kane + Cabbage<br />
Tue 11th Dec<br />
Bjorn Again<br />
Fri 14th Dec<br />
Polar States<br />
Sat 15th Dec<br />
Prince Tribute<br />
- Endorphinmachine<br />
Sat 15th Dec<br />
Skindred<br />
Fri 21st Dec<br />
Sex Pissed Dolls<br />
Sat 22nd Dec<br />
Ian Prowse &<br />
Amsterdam<br />
Sat 22nd Dec • Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
Cast<br />
Sat 22nd Dec<br />
The Smyths<br />
Wed 16th Jan<br />
Enter Shikari<br />
Sat 26th Jan<br />
The ELO Show<br />
Fri 1st Feb<br />
Clem Burke and Bootleg<br />
Blondie<br />
Tue 5th Feb<br />
The Dead South (CAN)<br />
Wed 20th Feb<br />
White Denim (USA)<br />
Sat 23rd Feb<br />
The Spitfires<br />
Thur 7th Mar<br />
Trixie Mattel<br />
Fri 22nd Mar<br />
Sat 30th Mar<br />
Liverpool Rocks – Semi<br />
Final<br />
Sat 6th Apr<br />
The Showhawk Duo<br />
+ Benji & Hibbz<br />
Sat 27th Apr • 6.30pm<br />
Liverpool Rocks Final<br />
Sat 25th May<br />
The Icicle Works<br />
FRI 14TH SEP 7PM<br />
THE ANOMALY<br />
SAT 15TH SEP 7PM<br />
PINSTRIPE EP LAUNCH<br />
+ THE HIGHERSIDE<br />
+ THE BESIDERS<br />
+ THE GEAR<br />
SAT 15TH SEP 9PM<br />
HORIZON:<br />
EXCESSIVE FORCE<br />
FT. ART OF FIGHTERS,<br />
MECCANO TWINS,<br />
DEATHMACHINE,<br />
THRASHER, BIG WORM,<br />
DEMONIC TECHNIQUE,<br />
TUGIE & MORE<br />
SUN 16TH SEP 7PM<br />
JARET REDDICK<br />
SAT 22ND SEP 6PM<br />
CATHERINE MCGRATH<br />
MON 24TH SEP 7PM<br />
THE LAFONTAINES<br />
SAT 29TH SEP 6.30PM<br />
THE BLUETONES<br />
THU 4TH OCT 7PM<br />
WILD FRONT<br />
FRI 5TH OCT 6PM<br />
ODDITY ROAD<br />
FRI 5TH OCT 6PM<br />
THE DANIEL<br />
WAKEFORD<br />
EXPERIENCE<br />
SAT 6TH OCT 7PM<br />
A BAND CALLED<br />
MALICE<br />
THE DEFINITIVE TRIBUTE<br />
TO THE JAM<br />
SAT 6TH OCT 10PM<br />
SONNY FODERA<br />
PRESENTS:<br />
SOLOTOKO ONLINE<br />
TOUR<br />
WED 10TH OCT 7PM<br />
GLASVEGAS<br />
THUR 11TH OCT 7PM<br />
THE SHE STREET<br />
BAND<br />
FRI 12TH OCT 6.30PM<br />
OMYO<br />
FRI 12TH OCT 6.30PM<br />
NICK MULVEY<br />
TUE 16TH OCT 7PM<br />
SUPERORGANISM<br />
WED 17TH OCT 7PM<br />
HER’S<br />
FRI 19TH OCT 6PM<br />
KILA<br />
+ BILL BOOTH<br />
FRI 19TH OCT 7PM<br />
HERMITAGE GREEN<br />
SAT 20TH OCT 7PM<br />
WE ARE SCIENTISTS<br />
THUR 25TH OCT 7PM<br />
VILLAGERS<br />
MON 29TH OCT 7PM<br />
THE BLINDERS<br />
FRI 2ND NOV 6.30PM<br />
RHYTHM OF THE<br />
90’S<br />
SAT 3RD NOV 7PM<br />
TIDE LINES<br />
TICKETS FOR ALL SHOWS ARE AVAILABLE FROM<br />
TICKETMASTER.CO.UK<br />
90<br />
SEEL STREET, LIVERPOOL, L1 4BH<br />
SAT 10TH NOV 6PM<br />
MIC LOWRY<br />
SAT 10TH NOV 7PM<br />
ROBERT VINCENT<br />
SUN 11TH NOV 7PM<br />
BRIX AND THE<br />
EXTRICATED<br />
TUE 13TH NOV 7PM<br />
SHEAFS<br />
FRI 16TH NOV 7PM<br />
HINDS (MADRID)<br />
SAT 17TH NOV 7PM<br />
SOLD OUT<br />
GRUFF RHYS<br />
SAT 24TH NOV 6PM<br />
MORGAN JAMES<br />
FRI 30TH NOV 7PM<br />
CLEAN CUT KID<br />
SAT 1ST DEC 7PM<br />
THE ALARM<br />
+ RYAN HAMILTON & THE<br />
HARLEQUIN GHOSTS<br />
SAT 1ST DEC 7PM<br />
THE WANDERING<br />
HEARTS<br />
SAT 8TH DEC 7PM<br />
SAINT PHNX<br />
SAT 15TH DEC 7PM<br />
THE WEDDING<br />
PRESENT<br />
SAT 16TH MAR 7PM<br />
ADY SULEIMAN<br />
with special guests STEALING SHEEP and HAARM<br />
SATURDAY 3RD NOVEMBER <strong>2018</strong><br />
O ACADEMY LIVERPOOL<br />
11-13 HOTHAM STREET, L3 5UF<br />
DOORS 7PM 14+ SHOW | TICKETMASTER, SEETICKETS AND SKIDDLE<br />
EVOL 15TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW PART 1<br />
ticketmaster.co.uk<br />
o2academyliverpool.co.uk<br />
11-13 Hotham Street, Liverpool L3 5UF<br />
Doors 7pm unless stated<br />
Venue box office opening hours:<br />
Mon - Sat 10.30am - 5.30pm<br />
ticketmaster.co.uk • seetickets.com<br />
gigantic.com • ticketweb.co.uk
An Arts Council Collection National Partners Exhibition<br />
29 September <strong>2018</strong> to<br />
17 March 2019<br />
FREE ENTRY<br />
liverpoolmuseums.org.uk<br />
#leofitzmaurice<br />
#ACCNationalPartners<br />
Arts Council Collection is managed by Southbank Centre, London on behalf of Arts Council England<br />
Image: Supplicant 101, 2008, Milena Dragicevic. Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © the artist, courtesy Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna
ROASTS &<br />
RECORDS<br />
LIVE MUSIC<br />
THURSDAYS<br />
EVENT<br />
LISTINGS<br />
Roasts, resident diggers, tasty beats, free entry Live music, Thursday evenings, free entry What’s on in the event space this winter<br />
OCT<br />
Roasts & Records<br />
Independent Record Fair<br />
07/10/18<br />
Roasts & Records<br />
Plant Swap<br />
21/10/18<br />
Roasts & Records<br />
28/10/18<br />
NOV<br />
Roasts & Records<br />
04/11/18<br />
Roasts & Records<br />
11/11/18<br />
Roasts & Records<br />
18/11/18<br />
Roasts & Records<br />
25/11/18<br />
DEC<br />
Roasts & Records<br />
02/12/18<br />
Roasts & Records<br />
Independent Record Fair<br />
09/12/18<br />
Roasts & Records<br />
16/12/18<br />
OCT<br />
Addicted TV<br />
Orchestra of Samples<br />
04/10/18<br />
The Jam Scones Quartet<br />
11/10/18<br />
The Art of Dffrnce<br />
Xam Volo<br />
18/10/18<br />
Born to Roll<br />
Apparel Launch<br />
25/10/18<br />
NOV<br />
Seyni Diop<br />
01/11/18<br />
Mamadou & The Lekette Band<br />
08/11/18<br />
The Jam Scones Quartet<br />
15/11/18<br />
TBA<br />
22/11/18<br />
DEC<br />
The Sneakbeats Social<br />
06/12/18<br />
The Remy Jude Ensemble<br />
13/12/18<br />
Godwash<br />
20/12/18<br />
OCT<br />
Funzing Talks<br />
Tales From a Psychedelic Researcher<br />
02/10/18<br />
Funzing Talks<br />
Do You Have a Narcissist in Your Life<br />
03/10/18<br />
Gathering & Gig<br />
World Mental Health Day<br />
13/10/18<br />
Soul Train<br />
19/10/18<br />
Funzing Talks<br />
The Psychology of Raving<br />
23/10/18<br />
Soul Jam<br />
24/10/18<br />
LOST Halloween<br />
27/10/18<br />
Good Life Halloween<br />
31/10/18<br />
NOV<br />
Mouvement<br />
03/11/18<br />
Funzing Talks<br />
The Science of Self Esteem<br />
06/11/18<br />
DaDa Fest & Homotopia Drag Cabaret<br />
17/11/18<br />
Soul Jam<br />
21/11/18<br />
Liverpool Print Fair<br />
24/11/18<br />
DEC<br />
Soul Jam<br />
05/12/18<br />
Soul Train<br />
21/12/18<br />
Boxing Night with LDF<br />
26/12/18<br />
New Year’s Eve with 303<br />
31/12/18
What’s On<br />
<strong>October</strong>– November<br />
Monday 15 <strong>October</strong> 8pm<br />
Music Room<br />
Ragged Union<br />
Saturday 20 <strong>October</strong> 8pm<br />
Music Room<br />
Liverpool Irish Festival<br />
The Hot Sprockets<br />
Monday 19 November 8pm<br />
Live on Mars<br />
Sunday 25 November 2.30pm & 8pm<br />
Music Room<br />
A Theatr Mwldan Production<br />
Catrin Finch &<br />
Seckou Keita<br />
Tuesday 30 <strong>October</strong> 7.30pm<br />
One Man Stranger Things<br />
Friday 16 November 8pm<br />
Seafoam Green’s<br />
The Last Waltz<br />
Box Office<br />
0151 709 3789<br />
liverpoolphil.com<br />
LiverpoolPhilharmonic<br />
liverpoolphil<br />
liverpool_philharmonic<br />
Principal Funders<br />
Thanks to the City<br />
of Liverpool for its<br />
financial support<br />
Principal Partners<br />
Media Partner<br />
Image Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita
SAT 27TH OCT<br />
NORMAN JAY MBE<br />
GOOD TIMES HALLOWEEN SPECIAL<br />
FREE ENTRY<br />
40 SLATER STREET, LIVERPOOL. L1 4BX. THEMERCHANTLIVERPOOL.CO.UK
New Music + Creative Culture<br />
Liverpool<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>93</strong> / <strong>October</strong> <strong>2018</strong><br />
bidolito.co.uk<br />
Second Floor<br />
The Merchant<br />
40-42 Slater Street<br />
Liverpool L1 4BX<br />
Publisher<br />
Craig G Pennington - info@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Editor-in-Chief<br />
Christopher Torpey - chris@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Media Partnerships and Projects Manager<br />
Sam Turner - sam@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Features Editor<br />
Niloo Sharifi - niloo@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Live Editor<br />
Elliot Ryder - elliot@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Digital and Social Media Officer<br />
Alannah Rose - alannah@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Design<br />
Mark McKellier - mark@andmark.co.uk<br />
Branding<br />
Thom Isom - hello@thomisom.com<br />
Student Society Co-Chairs<br />
Daisy Scott - daisy@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Sophie Shields - sophie@bidolito.co.uk<br />
EDITORIAL<br />
Liverpool’s music community lost one of its great<br />
pillars recently when Tony Butler sadly passed away<br />
following a short illness. For almost two decades<br />
Tony presided over The Zanzibar with gruff authority,<br />
with warmth and a depth of passion that belied his caustic wit.<br />
The thoughts of all of us at Bido Lito! are with Tony’s family<br />
and friends at this time.<br />
Tony was one of those behind-the-scenes operators who<br />
didn’t seek out public praise for what he<br />
did, but, to those who knew him, he was<br />
a true hero. Over the years, he gave a<br />
helping hand to thousands of musicians<br />
who passed through The Zanzi. Though<br />
not all of those musicians who cut their<br />
teeth on gigs at the club – and it was<br />
always a club, not a bar – had direct<br />
interactions with Tony, they benefited<br />
massively by it just being there; a place<br />
where they could be themselves and<br />
perform. But those who did form lasting<br />
relationships with Tony picked up huge<br />
amounts of inspiration from his steely<br />
determination. It’s been heartwarming<br />
to read all the recollections and tributes<br />
to Tony written by scores of these<br />
musicians since his death, reflecting on<br />
the various ways in which he dished out guidance, cajoled and<br />
encouraged them, and dished out the odd affectionate kick up<br />
the arse when needed.<br />
I didn’t have too much direct contact with Tony over the<br />
years – he treated our requests to review shows at the club<br />
with immense scepticism, which, ironically, probably stood us<br />
FEATURES<br />
“The Zanzibar<br />
was Tony Butler’s<br />
domain, his<br />
spiritual home…<br />
its walls and<br />
floor resonated<br />
with prestige”<br />
in good stead. But we were always aware that he had respect<br />
for what we were doing and wanted us to succeed; because, if<br />
Bido Lito! was successful then that only meant good news for<br />
the city’s musicians, which he really did care about. You’d be<br />
damned if you thought you’d get an ad out of him, however.<br />
The Zanzi was Tony’s domain, his spiritual home. There<br />
was pride in its independence, and its walls and floor<br />
resonated with prestige. They still do. In time, we will probably<br />
come to view The Zanzibar alongside The<br />
Cavern and Eric’s in terms of its impact on<br />
Liverpool music culture, in particular for<br />
The Bandwagon years in the early 2000s<br />
that spawned groups like The Bandits,<br />
Tramp Attack, The Basement, The Coral<br />
and The Zutons. It was also a home for<br />
musicians like Howie Payne and Edgar<br />
Jones, who went on to have great success<br />
in the music industry. Tony Butler was this<br />
scene’s godfather.<br />
There was a touching moment on the<br />
day of Tony’s funeral when his last journey<br />
passed outside the club, with the arrival of<br />
his coffin being met by a rousing round of<br />
applause on Seel Street. It felt like a final<br />
goodbye – and also like the baton was<br />
being respectfully passed on. The best way<br />
of respecting Tony Butler’s legacy would be to ensure that The<br />
Zanzibar remains – as a venue, a club and a playground to the<br />
city’s future musicians. I hope we’re all up to the challenge.<br />
Christopher Torpey<br />
Editor-in-Chief<br />
Proofreader<br />
Nathaniel Cramp<br />
Cover Photography<br />
Graham Smillie<br />
Words<br />
Christopher Torpey, Niloo Sharifi, Matt Hogarth,<br />
Cath Bore, Jamie Carragher, Sophie Shields, Conal<br />
Cunningham, Elliot Ryder, Georgia Turnbull, Sam<br />
Turner, Esme Grace Brown, Ian Abraham, Jennie<br />
Macaulay, Paul Fitzgerald, Julia Johnson, Gina Schwarz,<br />
Chay Heney, Glyn Akroyd, Leighton Ramsdale, Ciarán<br />
Hodgers, William Baines, Dean McMillan, Jack Haworth,<br />
Sarah Bristow, Matty Loughlin-Day.<br />
Photography, Illustration and Layout<br />
Mark McKellier, Graham Smillie, Nata Moraru, Keith<br />
Ainsworth, Sean Ryan, Andrew Millar, Rich Gilligan,<br />
Jack Parker, Stu Moulding, Georgia Flynn, Tomas Adam,<br />
Kristian Patten, Roger Sinek, Brian Roberts, Essod<br />
Photography, Glyn Akroyd, Gary Young.<br />
Distributed by Middle Distance<br />
Print, distribution and events support across<br />
Merseyside and the North West.<br />
middledistance.org.uk<br />
The views expressed in Bido Lito! are those of the<br />
respective contributors and do not necessarily<br />
reflect the opinions of the magazine, its staff or the<br />
publishers. All rights reserved.<br />
10 / SPQR<br />
“I find that you can often find the most beauty in the darkest<br />
things”<br />
12 / SHE DREW THE GUN<br />
“Being hungry to know what other people say about the<br />
world; I like that kind of stuff”<br />
14 / NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL<br />
A MUSIC PHENOMENON!<br />
“Now isn’t the future of music, it’s a vestige of the past<br />
miraculously thriving in the present”<br />
22 / SHIT INDIE DISCO<br />
“It’s about doing your own thing – it’s like being at a big<br />
house party with a load of mates. That’s what we want”<br />
26 / THE GREATEST GIG I<br />
NEVER SAW<br />
“Institutionalised fun-sponge-ism continues to thwart Paul’s<br />
attempts to democratise his coveted performances”<br />
12 / NIKI KAND<br />
“I think everything’s kind of related to love, because we are<br />
all very hungry and desperate to be loved”<br />
30 / VILLAGERS<br />
“If people respect themselves and their culture, then<br />
hopefully they will have the capacity to respect other diverse<br />
cultures and peoples”<br />
32 / WARMDUSCHER<br />
“We work with a ‘whatever happens, happens’ ethos”<br />
REGULARS<br />
8 / NEWS<br />
28 / SPOTLIGHT<br />
31 / PREVIEWS<br />
38 / REVIEWS<br />
52 / ARTISTIC LICENCE<br />
54 / THE FINAL SAY
NEWS<br />
Bido Lito! Membership<br />
Queen Zee<br />
Do you ever get that feeling that you want to be part of<br />
something, a collective of people just like you? Does a<br />
fear of missing out stalk your waking hours? Well, banish<br />
those thoughts as the answer is here – the Bido Lito!<br />
Membership gives you access to all the best bits about<br />
our monthly missives (pink paper, great writing, loads of<br />
recommendations) and a whole load of extras. Not only do<br />
you get the magazine delivered to your door before it’s out<br />
on the streets, you receive a digital bundle of new music and<br />
an online version of the magazine before it’s published; you<br />
also get access to our monthly Bido Lito! Social live shows,<br />
featuring the amazing artists featured in the pink pages;<br />
and you also get to tap into an exclusive monthly members’<br />
playlist selected by the artists featured in the magazine.<br />
Want in? Sign up now at bidolito.co.uk – do so before 30th<br />
November and you’ll also receive our end-of-year Journal<br />
(see below).<br />
I’m Picking Up Good Indikations<br />
We are treated to a festival of the finest arts from the Indian<br />
subcontinent in <strong>October</strong> as INDIKA comes to town for its eighth<br />
annual outing. Once again the event will bring together some of the<br />
biggest names in Indian music and dance as well as emerging talent<br />
to claim you saw first. This year’s festival takes place across several<br />
venues including the Philharmonic, 24 Kitchen Street, FACT and Leaf<br />
as well as the festival’s de facto home, the Capstone Theatre. Names<br />
on the impressive bill this year include world-renowned Bansuri<br />
flautist PRAVIN GODKHINDI, mandolin virtuoso U. RAJESH and<br />
clarinetist ARUN GHOSH. Find out more at milapfest.com/indika.<br />
Arun Ghosh<br />
Hail Discordia<br />
Mina Bihi<br />
A distinctive new immersive show, which blurs the realms of art gallery and<br />
theatre space, DISCORDIA is a fusion of visual art, choreography and music<br />
composition. The exhibition, which takes place at the Hope Street Theatre<br />
between 3rd and 6th <strong>October</strong>, explores the theme ‘Making Sense of the Chaos’<br />
through an exploration of various cultural, philosophical and shamanic ideologies.<br />
By inviting the audience to experience the varied meanings and perspectives<br />
of a collection of paintings within an audio-physical tapestry, Discordia curator<br />
Laura Brownhill is asking us to question our ideas about reality and our place in<br />
the universe. Dance and music accompanies the visual stimuli in the 90-minute<br />
performance, but are you prepared to embrace this discordian vision?<br />
Brace For Impacts 18<br />
Beyond the giant spectacles, the festivals, the pride and the projects, how much<br />
impact did the European Capital of Culture award have on Liverpool? This is<br />
the question central to the IMPACTS 18 symposium, taking place at the Cunard<br />
Building over two-days of talks and workshops hosted by the Institute Of<br />
Creative Capital. The event will welcome culture thought-leaders from around<br />
the world to look at research programmes into culture as a catalyst for change<br />
and the opportunities as well as challenges in cities’ cultural strategies. Speakers<br />
appearing over the 18th and 19th <strong>October</strong> include Institute of Cultural Capital<br />
chair DR BEATRIZ GARCIA, Capital Of Culture Creative Director PHIL REDMOND<br />
and former Deputy Prime Minister MICHAEL HESELTINE. Go to impacts18.org for<br />
more information.<br />
Big Blues Up<br />
Pub rock trailblazers DR FEELGOOD head up the line-up for<br />
this year’s BIG BLUES FESTIVAL at The Atkinson in Southport.<br />
The Canvey Island RnB legends enjoy cult status to this day and<br />
launched the career of the iconic Wilko Johnson. They are joined<br />
by blues artists from around the country including SAM KELLY’S<br />
STATION HOUSE and the return of IAN SIEGAL. Blues fans will be<br />
familiar with Siegal’s status as a constantly touring evangelist of<br />
the genre and multi-award winner. Elsewhere on the bill, REBECCA<br />
DOWNES blends the genre with a unique mix of soul, jazz and<br />
funk. For full details of the festival head to theatkinson.co.uk.<br />
Liverpool Honours Nelson Mandela<br />
South African star musicians BCUC are coming in <strong>October</strong> to celebrate the unveiling of<br />
Liverpool’s new Nelson Mandela Memorial in Prince’s Park. These stars are known for<br />
their fusion of funk, punk, hip hop and Fela Kuti-esque intonations. The 23rd <strong>October</strong><br />
show at District show will be presented by the memorial campaign group Mandela8, who<br />
visited South Africa earlier this year to collaboratively design the installation. The group’s<br />
one-off performance is a fitting way to reflect on Mandela’s importance to Liverpool;<br />
Liverpool’s inhabitants have felt connected to Mandela for decades, campaigning in<br />
support of his anti-apartheid message since the 1960s, championing the Free Nelson<br />
Mandela campaign, and giving Mandela the Freedom of the City in 1994. The Prince’s<br />
Park installation will provide a space for learning, events and reflection, incorporating<br />
Mandela’s inspiring words into the artwork.<br />
BCUC<br />
8
DANSETTE<br />
MERSEY WYLIE opens up her record<br />
bag to shed some light on the music<br />
that inspired the emotional journey<br />
that is her new EP, The Skin I Live In.<br />
Biennial Last Chance<br />
The 10th edition of LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL draws to a<br />
close at the end of <strong>October</strong>. The sprawling visual arts<br />
festival has taken over venues across the city since July,<br />
with thought provoking, beautiful, weird and wonderful<br />
exhibits. The free festival has worked with communities<br />
in Granby, brought avant-garde video artist Agnès<br />
Varda to the city and received acclaim from art critics<br />
across the world. You’ll need to be especially quick to<br />
catch Ari Benjamin Meyers’ installation at the Playhouse<br />
Theatre. The collaborative film piece featuring members<br />
of She Drew The Gun, Deaf School and Siouxie And The<br />
Banshees comes down on 7th <strong>October</strong>. The festival ends<br />
officially on 28th <strong>October</strong> – if you’re still looking for an<br />
answer to the festival’s theme – Beautiful world, where<br />
are you? – you’d better hurry.<br />
Where Are The Girl Bands?<br />
Agnès Varda (3 moving images. 3 rhythms. 3 sounds, <strong>2018</strong>)<br />
In Unison<br />
The Unity Theatre’s new season of shows is as<br />
diverse and exciting as ever with a host of thoughtprovoking,<br />
radical and mind-bending productions<br />
coming to the Hope Place boards. WHERE WE<br />
BEGAN is a timely exploration of what would<br />
happen if every citizen were ordered to return<br />
to their place of birth. Told by theatre company<br />
of refugees, Stand And Be Counted, the play is<br />
another moving and honest production tackling a<br />
key societal issue. Acclaimed British playwright Leo<br />
Butler and beloved company Told By Idiots looks<br />
at how acid has the potential to change the world<br />
in the intriguing ALL YOU NEED IS LSD. Read an<br />
interview with Butler on bidolito.co.uk now.<br />
ESKA<br />
Shades Of Blue<br />
Naim/Earthling<br />
Recordings<br />
I saw ESKA perform at<br />
Liverpool SoulFest in 2015 not<br />
knowing anything about her,<br />
and she completely blew me away. At that point I was at a<br />
bit of a musical crossroads and I felt like that performance<br />
gave me permission to really go for something completely<br />
different. It was this incredible blending of folk, soul and<br />
rock, these powerful yet vulnerable vocals, the unexpected<br />
interplay between the vocals and different instruments<br />
that I had never considered before; so many dichotomies<br />
that shouldn’t have made any sense together, but were<br />
absolutely perfect.<br />
Tune-Yards<br />
Gangsta<br />
4AD<br />
Merrill Garbus writes with a<br />
fearlessness and ferocity that<br />
I really admire. She says very<br />
real things, but packages them<br />
in this bouncy, sometimes<br />
aggressive, sometimes playful package so that you don’t<br />
always notice at first. I love the raw energy and easy<br />
dissonance of Gangsta and tried to capture a little of that<br />
in the choruses of Only You. Again, I was playing with<br />
what could be said without words, this time through the<br />
messy and raucous instrumental section.<br />
As a new platform for female and non-binary musical talent in Liverpool,<br />
Where Are The Girl Bands is asking for any and all artists who want<br />
their voices heard to contact them via their Instagram account, @<br />
wherearethegirlbands. They asked us to print their callout, supporting them<br />
in tackling the overrepresentation of men in our music scene: “Our aim is to<br />
elevate those who feel the local scene does not represent them. We want<br />
everyone to get involved in the project, by sending us their art, music and<br />
writings on inclusivity. We do weekly illustrated features and promote gigs,<br />
videos and singles – DM us to be featured.”<br />
Let’s Go Outsiders<br />
Chic Slater Street store Outsiders is celebrating its first birthday<br />
in <strong>October</strong> with an in-store party that doubles as an AW18<br />
launch. From 6pm on Thursday 11th <strong>October</strong> you can wander<br />
inside and feast upon some of Outsiders’ new season products,<br />
featuring some of the most suave outerwear you’ll find this side<br />
of Patagonia. There will also be a selection of drinks in-store,<br />
and music from Outsiders DJs (plus guests) until 8pm. After<br />
that, the party moves on to The Merchant with even more guest<br />
DJs. If you’ve not ventured inside Outsiders yet, now is the<br />
perfect chance to see what it has to offer.<br />
A Year In Liverpool Music, <strong>2018</strong><br />
We’re deliriously, ecstatically happy to announce that we will<br />
be publishing the second edition of the Bido Lito! Journal this<br />
November. Collating and celebrating A Year In Liverpool Music, the<br />
Bido Lito! Journal will bring together the many stories of <strong>2018</strong>’s<br />
cultural journey in a deluxe, coffee table book format. This year’s<br />
edition will be printed in a very limited run, featuring a curated<br />
selection of the best photography and artwork featured in this<br />
year’s magazine, as well as exclusive commissions and reflections<br />
from artists we have covered throughout <strong>2018</strong>. The Journal is<br />
free to Bido Lito! members – sign up for a membership by 30th<br />
November to receive yours for free. Sales will also be taken online<br />
at bidolito.co.uk, and, from November, you’ll be able to purchase a<br />
copy from the city’s independent retail hubs.<br />
Outsiders<br />
Roomful Of Teeth<br />
Partita For 8<br />
Voices Part 2:<br />
Sarabande<br />
New Amsterdam<br />
Roomful Of Teeth explore vocal techniques from all over<br />
the world and commission composers to write music that<br />
incorporates them. They completely defy the boundaries<br />
of what is possible in contemporary classical and I always<br />
strive to do a little of that with my own music. This<br />
stunning partita by Caroline Shaw really made me think<br />
about what is possible to convey with the human voice<br />
without lyrics. That was a massive inspiration for the intro<br />
to Can’t Let Go that opens my EP.<br />
Laura Mvula<br />
Overcome<br />
RCA<br />
This was the first track Laura<br />
Mvula released from The<br />
Dreaming Room and I was<br />
instantly obsessed. I love<br />
the groove, the super cool Nile Rodgers riff, the sneakily<br />
changing time signature and lush harmonies. I love that<br />
she started talking so candidly about her mental health<br />
struggles. I love how the song changes tonality at the<br />
end and goes into this new jubilant section. I definitely<br />
tried to mimic that shift in feeling at the end of Stronger.<br />
After so much darkness, I really wanted to end with this<br />
massive celebration. I wanted it to feel like you were being<br />
surrounded by people who all understood what you were<br />
going through and who were there to celebrate your<br />
triumphs and pick you up when you fall.<br />
merseywylie.com<br />
The Skin I Live In is released in November. Head to bidolito.<br />
co.uk now for a full list of song choices on Mersey Wylie’s<br />
Dansette.<br />
NEWS 9
10<br />
S P Q R
Matt Hogarth talks death,<br />
emotions and juggling a nine-tofive<br />
with Liverpool-based rising<br />
stars, experimental-alt rockers<br />
SPQR.<br />
“You can often find<br />
the most beauty in<br />
the darkest things”<br />
It’s a Saturday night in the middle of Birkenhead’s industrial<br />
heartland. Amid storage units, scrapyards and proper oldschool<br />
pubs, a quiet voice edges from behind a steel door,<br />
offering solace from the eerie quiet with the hottest new<br />
music from the peninsula. We walk between excited in-theknow<br />
crowds and through a veil of cigarette smoke to catch one<br />
of the acts shaking off the shackles of sea-shanty folky psych,<br />
offering much heavier and darker fare. On the stage of Fresh<br />
Goods Studios’ first ever live event stands a ginger, denim-clad<br />
behemoth screaming into the audience as though possessed,<br />
leaving no room for air. The bassist ducks and weaves wideeyed<br />
and open-mouthed, his moustache curving around a fixed,<br />
sinister smile. The anarchy is happily managed by a drummer,<br />
whose rhythm keeps the whole sordid affair in order. The group<br />
onstage is unmistakably SPQR, a band who have been turning<br />
heads for quite some time now – from shouting out of windows<br />
at disturbed passers by to shaking as though possessed, their<br />
time onstage is hard to forget.<br />
With the memory of that night hazy yet lingering, frantic<br />
shadows tussling among a rum-tinged hue, the faint scent of<br />
alcohol as I meet the trio brings everything flooding back. With<br />
that in mind, it is a little surprising to find that their daytime<br />
personas are a calmer, tamer beast than their night time entities.<br />
We’re sat in the beer garden of Peter Kavanagh’s as lead singer<br />
Pete rolls a cigarette. “I find that going mad onstage allows me<br />
to stay normal offstage,” he says. Smiley and placid, it’s a far cry<br />
from the 40 minutes after his last set where he scrambled on<br />
hands and knees trying to retrieve the glasses he threw halfway<br />
across the room in the heat of the moment. The individuals who<br />
sit in front of me are not the intimidating collective who shook<br />
violently before me mere days ago. As Robert Louis Stephenson<br />
once wrote, “man is not truly one, but truly two”. It’s something<br />
that has appeared throughout the whole of rock ‘n’ roll, where<br />
performance becomes a cathartic escape from the frustrations<br />
of everyday life. While Iggy Pop could be found greased up and<br />
rolling in broken glass, James Newell Osterberg Jr was a much<br />
more civilised and modest individual. Music, and the limelight<br />
it brings, seems to have a liberating quality; it’s an unrivalled<br />
chance to show a side to yourself that would otherwise be<br />
shunned, and it seems like SPQR are no different.<br />
Bassist Jack adds, “I like to go for it onstage, as the best<br />
music… makes you feel something.” It’s true that their energy<br />
onstage is highly infectious. “When we first started I felt<br />
super crazy, as the SPQR thing had been a long time coming.<br />
Nowadays I actually want to be good but back then I was like,<br />
‘Fuck everyone, I want to piss everyone off,’” Pete adds as a child<br />
whoops repeatedly across the room. Whether it be a growing<br />
maturity and comfort in his style, or the company that Pete now<br />
keeps on stage, the band seems to be a much stronger, tighter<br />
unit. The furious snarled live persona of old has endured even<br />
as their music has changed and improved. On the other side of<br />
things, their amicable, friendly and approachable nature offstage<br />
has helped them find both gigs and fans. “I think that we have<br />
always taken the time to be as interested in our fanbase as they<br />
are in us. When people come up and say, ‘I really like your band,’<br />
we are just as interested to chat to them as it always gets us<br />
that people are such big fans.” It’s a sentiment which has really<br />
cemented their following, not just in Liverpool but across the<br />
wider North West and as far as Dublin and London.<br />
“I used to write everything myself, from lyrics through to<br />
bass and drums, but now that I have Bex and Jack I feel a lot<br />
more open to having them contribute,” Pete continues. This has<br />
added a punchier dimension in the latest songs, and this more<br />
matured and developed line-up is receiving more attention than<br />
ever. Having signed a deal with the Liverpool-based Modern Sky<br />
UK, the band have recently been in the studio with Margo Broom,<br />
whose work has become some of the most exciting in the guitar<br />
underground in recent years. “It was great for us. Everything that<br />
we’ve released to date has been done by us in our little studio in<br />
Neston,” explains Pete, with a slight air of awe. “I thought that<br />
would hold us in good stead when we went down, but as she’s<br />
very good at what she does and she’s a very honest person she<br />
said, ‘Oh you’ve got this, but you need this, this, this, this and<br />
this’. She asked us if she wanted to make a record or just a bunch<br />
of singles. She’s made us realise that if you want your record then<br />
you have to make it. It was fun as well; it was like recording with<br />
your mate. It helps when the producer isn’t a knobhead.” The<br />
switch from DIY to commercial studio has opened a new chapter<br />
for the band’s future.<br />
Despite strong connections in the city with Society Of Losers<br />
and the Wrong Freak Scene crowd as well as the likes of Eggy<br />
Records, their alter egos’ nine-to-five existence makes it hard<br />
for them to really fall into one particular group. “With us working<br />
normal jobs, after a gig we’re usually knackered and just want<br />
to go home and sleep! We like the idea of going out as partying,<br />
but after an hour we’re usually just knackered.” But getting a<br />
good night’s rest has not stopped them from amassing a crossgenerational<br />
diehard fanbase swarming down to any show with<br />
their name gracing the bill. Without penning themselves in within<br />
any particular clique, they have created a loyal cult following<br />
who turn out for a true variety of gigs. From indie pop through<br />
to heavy punk line-ups, you can find them anywhere. “I think we<br />
make pretty heavy music, but I don’t think your mum would hate<br />
it either and that’s our strength!”<br />
With growing support has come an ever-improving line-up<br />
and sound. Their place in the Liverpool music scene escapes<br />
categorisation, and their sound is just as impenetrable. “I don’t<br />
listen to too much heavy music. I used to listen to a lot of heavy<br />
music and I always wanted SPQR to be a heavy band… but I<br />
listen to a lot more indie to be honest.” SPQR seem to break<br />
down genre boundaries taking on the previous constraints of rock<br />
which have come before them. “The music is more emotionallyled<br />
than musically-led. I think that’s where you get a lot more of<br />
the schizophrenic nature of the songs.” This encapsulates what<br />
makes the music so hard to pin down, what gives them such<br />
cross-sectional appeal. They remind me of the early Manic Street<br />
Preachers records, ignited by the emotional instability, anger and<br />
wit of Richey and put to music by Bradfield. SPQR allows Pete a<br />
release not only onstage but through his words. People tune into<br />
emotion both in stage performance and song as it’s real. It’s the<br />
feeling of shared alienation which brings people together.<br />
One thing we all share is loss, and the obligation to die. “I<br />
find that you can often find the most beauty in the darkest<br />
things... I think about death a lot in lots of ways. I find in the<br />
heavy stuff, that’s where you can pull the most beauty… That’s<br />
kind of what I live to do. When I’m having the most fun is when<br />
I’m exploring a darker thing and getting something lighter out of<br />
that.” Our environment mirrors this mindset; merely feet away sit<br />
the ashes of deceased drinkers, forever in their favourite drinking<br />
hole. In both Pete’s mindset, and the pub’s approach to death, is<br />
almost a lightness. Maybe one way to think of SPQR is a coping<br />
mechanism. For the band, it appears to be much more than just<br />
a profession or brand – it’s a way to remove themselves from the<br />
mundanity of the nine-to-five, and the anger and frustrations<br />
that it brings with it through escapism. “I think one of my main<br />
philosophies in life is the importance of chatting complete and<br />
utter shite. Just spending a few hours in the pub at least twice<br />
a week with friends and just chatting about nothing.” And as I<br />
press the button to end the recording, we get another pint and do<br />
just that.<br />
What separates SPQR from their counterparts is their<br />
uncompromising duality: modest, humble and amicable offstage,<br />
ferocious, unpredictable and inimitable on it. With a streamlined<br />
sound, label backing and more focused than ever, SPQR are a<br />
band who seem to have their fingers on the trigger just waiting to<br />
unleash their most impressive move yet. !<br />
Words: Matt Hogarth<br />
Photography: Graham Smillie / @smillie77<br />
spqrmusic.com<br />
SPQR headline Sound Basement on 6th <strong>October</strong>.<br />
FEATURE<br />
11
12
Ahead of the release of their newest album, Revolution Of<br />
Mind, Cath Bore meets with Louisa Roach to learn about<br />
her musical past, tracing that revolutionary spark which<br />
her politically infused psych-pop now burns with.<br />
SHE DREW THE GUN’s second album, Revolution Of<br />
Mind, hits the stands in <strong>October</strong>, off the back of the<br />
slow-burning success of 2016’s Memories Of The<br />
Future. Produced by The Coral’s James Skelly at Parr<br />
Street Studios, it sees singer-songwriter and guitarist Louisa<br />
Roach rage against the injustices of the world around us, and<br />
laying out possible solutions.<br />
The roots of this egalitarian impulse can be found even in her<br />
early musical interests. The first gig Louisa attended was Oasis<br />
at Manchester Maine Road in 1996. She must have been about<br />
14 or 15 years old, she reckons. The Gallaghers, as it turns out,<br />
are an important part of her music-making history; she learnt to<br />
play guitar using an It’s Easy To Play Oasis chord book. What a<br />
journey she’s been on from then to now, musically speaking and<br />
in myriad other ways.<br />
“That book is an important book in my life,” she laughs. “I<br />
think [Oasis] invaded the whole consciousness. Everyone loved<br />
the songs, learned the songs, played the songs, enjoyed singing<br />
them. I think the Oasis thing made guitars cool again.”<br />
What’s more, Oasis coming from a working class<br />
background, gaining a voice and being proud to use it, was a<br />
valuable example for northern creatives of the time. “There was<br />
the north-versus-south thing with Blur… it did become an identity<br />
thing,” Louisa explains to me as we’re sat in The Casa, Liverpool’s<br />
own symbol of resistance and of power in solidarity. “[They were]<br />
northern, working class lads, but everyone got involved.”<br />
The power of Oasis’ songs are hidden, in a way; the choruses<br />
carry a life-affirming vibe rather than any solid meaning. Louisa<br />
agrees. “[Noel Gallagher’s] lyrics don’t especially make sense.<br />
They’re vague enough not to be pinned down to anything, but<br />
they’re also poetic, aren’t they? My favourite is always Noel and<br />
an acoustic guitar. I used to collect all the singles and go straight<br />
home to play the B-sides; the B-sides are what I loved the most.<br />
I’ve still got all the singles at home.”<br />
Before Oasis, she got into The Beatles and John Lennon.<br />
“When I was 12 I heard [Lennon’s] Working Class Hero for the<br />
first time – it was on the end of a film and I rewound the film<br />
loads of times and wrote down all the lyrics. I was like, ‘Wow’.<br />
It was a social analysis in a song. There was no social media or<br />
anything, [so] you got your social analysis from the arts – that<br />
was an important song for me.”<br />
For Louisa, Lennon’s vocal delivery is crucial. “When men<br />
sing, it’s a vulnerable kind of thing to do, isn’t it? I love anything<br />
John Lennon anyway – there’s a vulnerability to men singing<br />
which is a bit different [to] women,” she tells me. Which brings<br />
us neatly onto the subject of the new album. Revolution In Mind<br />
is threaded through with sociopolitical themes, issues around<br />
gender non-conformity being one.<br />
“With [lead single] Resister, I wanted to do a song that<br />
reached out to people that feel pushed out or at the edges of<br />
what’s going on in society. Keep fighting, keep resisting. It’s a<br />
shout out to everyone that’s doing something different.”<br />
The social construct of gender is limiting; as I put it to<br />
Louisa, it’s a credit to the human race that none of us are gender<br />
conforming, not really. We all rebel and break the rules. She<br />
nods. “We’re a massive spectrum, aren’t we?” Yes! Because if<br />
we weren’t, all men would be like Action Men and women would<br />
be like Barbie. Even Barbie is in some sort of paid employment<br />
these days. “Have they given her a job now?” laughs Louisa. “The<br />
patriarchy is bad on men as well as women. It tells boys it’s not<br />
OK to cry and to shut off from their emotions – they’ve got to be<br />
‘masculine’.” This is what made a nakedly sensitive male voice like<br />
Lennon’s so radical for Louisa.<br />
The word count on Revolution Of Mind, I point out, is 2,700.<br />
Proof on its own that you, Louisa Roach, have a hell to a lot to<br />
say to the world. True? “I suppose!” she chuckles. The idea that<br />
knowledge is power, which the album riffs off conceptually, is<br />
something we’re not always aware of, I remark.<br />
“What I’m saying with that is, I don’t think anyone’s going to<br />
hand stuff to you… in school, you’re gonna learn the government<br />
approved version of how we got to where we are, as a society.<br />
If you wanna learn…then you have to go and find it, read and<br />
discover. That does give you power. Just for yourself.”<br />
This learning process, or as she puts it, “making the lens<br />
a bit bigger”, started for her with listening to the likes of<br />
the aforementioned Lennon and Bob Marley. “It gave me a<br />
grounding… [after a while,] I found myself living a more everyday<br />
kind of existence – well, not everyday… I don’t know how to put<br />
it, but I found myself needing another wave of educating myself<br />
when I was a bit older and after I had my son. The last thing I was<br />
doing before I got into music, [which] overlapped with me writing<br />
my own songs, was studying psychology for five years, because<br />
I did a Masters as well. I got into reading again, not necessarily<br />
mainstream psychology, but reading about all the philosophers,<br />
sociology… Being hungry to know what other people say about<br />
the world, and making the power structures that are there more<br />
visible by what they write about; I like that kind of stuff.”<br />
The title track of the album arrives about two thirds of the<br />
way through the record. In the She Drew The Gun tradition<br />
of using spoken word to maximum effect – Poem (recently<br />
chosen by Steve Lamacq as one of his top 25 songs to mark<br />
his quarter century at the BBC) being an obvious reference<br />
point – Generation Of Mind is a stand-out listening experience;<br />
the medium of spoken word gives the messages within it more<br />
muscle.<br />
“When you do spoken word, it makes everyone stop what<br />
they are doing and listen. I’ve done that sometimes at the start<br />
of a gig because everyone shuts up, and their attention is on you,<br />
because they want to hear what you’re saying. I really do think<br />
people want to hear the words.”<br />
The #MeToo movement, stretching over the last 12 months,<br />
is not just women sharing stories. #MeToo is also a massive<br />
instruction for men to shut up and listen. And this is not a polite<br />
request, either. Revolution In Mind encapsulates that feeling,<br />
especially when performed live.<br />
“Kate Tempest, she commands the attention of everyone.<br />
It’s something I admire in women when they do it. I think the<br />
#MeToo movement is amazing. I feel there’s a massive difference<br />
now and you can feel it in the air. It hasn’t reached everywhere,<br />
but the vocabulary that surrounds it is becoming more and more<br />
everyday… feminism has stopped being a dirty word.”<br />
Louisa admires a number of feminist voices throughout<br />
history, including folk singer-songwriter Malvina Reynolds (SDTG<br />
covered her No Hole In My Head), author and poet Marge Piercy,<br />
through to today’s names like Kate Tempest and Nadine Shah. I<br />
mention the Nadine Shah show at Leaf at the beginning of the<br />
year. Although everyone had a splendid time and took in Shah’s<br />
political and social messages, I couldn’t help but think that she<br />
was preaching to the converted, in a way. What does Louisa<br />
hope to achieve with the new She Drew The Gun album? What<br />
will people take away from it?<br />
“Anyone who comes to a She Drew The Gun gig is probably<br />
on the same page. It’s more about collecting everyone together<br />
and going ‘Shall we enjoy some new music that’s about that<br />
shit?’” she smiles. “I try not to be preachy, but it’s the same as if<br />
you go and watch Kate Tempest, you know what you’re going to<br />
get – someone speaking about all this shit, but [the reaction] is,<br />
‘Wow, I love what she’s just said, it’s blown me away’.”<br />
So, collecting people together, is that a driving force here?<br />
“If everyone at the bottom started to gather consciousness,<br />
to realise we can change things… movements are changing<br />
people’s consciousness, gathering people together. Trying to<br />
connect with people is an important part of it.” !<br />
Words: Cath Bore / @cathbore<br />
Photography: Keith Ainsworth / arkimages.co.uk<br />
shedrewthegun.com<br />
Revolution Of Mind is released on 5th <strong>October</strong> on Skeleton Key<br />
Records. She Drew The Gun support The Coral at Mountford Hall<br />
on 12th <strong>October</strong> and play a UK headline tour in February and<br />
March 2019.<br />
“Being hungry to know<br />
what other people say<br />
about the world, and making<br />
the power structures that<br />
are there more visible by<br />
what they write about; I<br />
like that kind of stuff”<br />
FEATURE<br />
13
NOW THAT’S<br />
WHAT I CALL<br />
A MUSICAL<br />
PHENOMENON!<br />
“Now isn’t the<br />
future of music,<br />
it’s a vestige of the<br />
past miraculously<br />
thriving in the<br />
present”<br />
Having passed 100 editions in its chronicling of pop music, the Now That’s What I Call Music! series has<br />
outlasted more zeitgeist genres and artists than you’ll ever remember. Jamie Carragher catches up with a<br />
man who was there at the very beginning.<br />
Stephen Navin greets me in a red and yellow fez. He<br />
leads me into his sleek Shepherd’s Bush semi, down to<br />
the kitchen, all creams and granite. On the wall there’s<br />
a framed photo of Sid Vicious, the only hint of Navin’s<br />
longstanding links to the music industry. But never mind the<br />
Sex Pistols, that’s not his claim to fame; I’m here to talk to Navin<br />
about his involvement in the most successful compilation series<br />
of all time: NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC!<br />
Now… is the great survivor of pop. Reflecting the trends<br />
and outlasting technological advances, the series has reigned<br />
over the hit parade since 1983, with the 100th edition released<br />
this summer. Originally designed to bolster the profits of Virgin<br />
Records, Now became a cash cow and a golden calf, a cultural<br />
cornerstone recognised and replicated around the world.<br />
Navin, head of licensing during Virgin’s 80s heyday, didn’t<br />
see it coming. “Jesus, hardly, no – it has become a social, cultural<br />
phenomenon. It wasn’t going to be a one-off, but I can’t claim<br />
to have had a helicopter view [of what was going to happen].”<br />
No longer in the game, Navin is unguarded and gregarious<br />
throughout the interview (“I can bullshit with the best of them”).<br />
You get the impression he’s always been that way.<br />
Although Now is the definitive compilation album, it wasn’t<br />
the first. Navin regularly struck deals with the likes of Ronco<br />
and K-Tel, ragtag companies that wanted Virgin’s tracks for<br />
compilation albums such as the imaginatively named Raiders Of<br />
The Pop Charts.<br />
“When we started to get hot, they [Ronco and K-Tel] were<br />
banging down our door. It became a turkey shoot because to get<br />
a Culture Club song or a Human League song, they would be<br />
prepared to take three other tracks as well. I remember licensing<br />
a track by one of our French artists, Julian Clerc, singing in<br />
English. We put his album out and of course it was a stiff. But I<br />
licensed one of his tracks to K-Tel and it just shows they’d take<br />
anything.”<br />
Navin totted up the sums. By creating their own compilation<br />
album, bypassing Ronco and K-Tel, Virgin could make a killing.<br />
He took the idea to head of Virgin Records, Simon Draper, and<br />
together with General Manager Jon Webster, they quickly settled<br />
on the idea of a partnership with major label EMI. One question<br />
remained: what to call it?<br />
Navin laughs, “This was arguably when my creative genius<br />
came into play.” As the three Virgin execs chatted in an office just<br />
off Portobello Road, Navin’s eye was drawn to a poster behind<br />
Draper’s desk, a quirky advert for Danish bacon which depicted<br />
a pig listening to a cockerel crow its morning song. The caption?<br />
‘Now that’s what I call music’. “And I said, ‘Why don’t we call it<br />
that?’” With minimum fuss, a franchise was born.<br />
Rushed out in 1983 for the “ferocious feeding frenzy<br />
of Christmas time”, Now’s rapid conception and rollout is<br />
emblematic of how Virgin Records worked. That ‘sell first,<br />
think later’ attitude that pervades every branch of the Branson<br />
behemoth. “It was very uncorporate. Richard [Branson] lived<br />
on his houseboat; all meetings you’d go round there, and it was<br />
all done in a very relaxed sort of way. None of this modern shit.<br />
Slightly autocratic.” Branson as Sun King holding court aboard<br />
the Duende, docked on the shimmering waters of Little Venice.<br />
But it was Simon Draper who held the reins of the record<br />
company, having led Virgin from the esoteric indie that released<br />
Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells in 1972, to punk house of the Sex<br />
Pistols in the late 70s and major industry player with Phil Collins<br />
on the books at the dawn of the 80s. “People always talk as if it<br />
was Richard, Richard, Richard – Richard doesn’t know anything<br />
about music and he’d be the first to admit it. Simon was the<br />
genius. And what was wonderful about that type of world was<br />
that nobody did costings. You signed a band if you liked it and<br />
sometimes shit hits the fan and sometimes shit hits the wall.<br />
Either way, one of them’s good, one of them’s bad.”<br />
Draper’s particular tastes dictated Virgin’s creative direction,<br />
especially early on. “I mean he’d throw up if you mentioned Chris<br />
De Burgh – I mean literally. I remember talking to him about it,<br />
he said, ‘I don’t even want to talk about it, Chris De Burgh is just<br />
shit.’ On the other hand, I was at university with Chris De Burgh<br />
so I felt rather hurt by it.” However, Now came at a time when<br />
Draper was willing to sideline his niche interests in pursuit of<br />
Virgin’s ascendant market share; The Lady In Red was track nine<br />
on Now 7; Virgin Records was eventually sold for a billion dollars.<br />
Like any good compilation album, Now’s success is the<br />
sum of its parts: catchy tunes, consistent marketing and the<br />
unabashed desire to reflect what’s hot in the charts. Being<br />
popular has proved popular; Now 44, replete with bangers such<br />
as Britney Spears’ ...Baby One More Time, Lou Bega’s Mambo<br />
No. 5 (A Little Bit Of...) and Shania Twain’s That Don’t Impress<br />
Me Much, remains the UK’s highest selling compilation with 2.3<br />
million copies sold. This should impress you much: Now is still<br />
dominating the (admittedly dwindling) charts, occupying four of<br />
Apple Music’s Top Ten biggest selling albums of 2017.<br />
Now’s success is testament to the lasting appeal of<br />
ephemeral pop. Apart from the diehards who buy every issue,<br />
each generation identifies with a flurry of Nows before moving<br />
on to define their own tastes. Now has inadvertently chronicled<br />
modern pop in distinct snapshot form. Each edition is a<br />
kaleidoscopic tapestry of the epic pop battles won and lost (Oasis<br />
vs Blur, Eamon vs Frankie, the S Club Civil Wars) with space for<br />
both the losers and winners alike; each a Blue Peter time capsule<br />
crystallising the merits and the sins of your musical upbringing.<br />
The sins. Who can forget Fast Food Song (Now 55) or<br />
The Ketchup Song (Now 53) where status as a song had to be<br />
categorically stated in the title to remove all doubt? Not me,<br />
unfortunately. Catch the skip button a second too late and the<br />
‘brringg-brringg’ of Crazy Frog (Now 61) would bring-bring on a<br />
state of travel sick anxiety. In reflecting the charts faithfully, Now<br />
lays bare the inherent problems of democracy.<br />
But the alchemy of sequencing imprints strange nostalgia.<br />
Find yourself wandering the frozen aisle of ASDA when Maroon<br />
5’s She Will Be Loved pipes through and you’ll be disappointed<br />
if it’s not followed by Natasha Bedingfield’s These Words, a<br />
song that’s both catchy and an ode to the rich history of English<br />
literature. And it must follow, as the night the day; 50 Cent’s In<br />
Da Club goes into Justin Timberlake’s Cry Me A River, Eric Prydz’<br />
Call On Me into Girls Aloud’s Love Machine.<br />
Now has proven adaptable. It’s outlived the cassette and<br />
MiniDisc, the Walkman and iPod. It’s a brand that can’t be sullied<br />
by selling out: the franchise has been wrung for all its worth,<br />
with spin-offs including Now That’s What I Call...Running, Chill,<br />
Mum, Christmas, Love, Fitness, Britain, Brit Hits, British, Love<br />
2, Feel Good, the 90s, Slow Jams, Drive, Legends, Faith, Funk,<br />
Jazz, Arabia! etc. Navin sighs and utters a near universal, near<br />
existential malaise: “That Now Christmas Album, I must have<br />
had three or four copies... played it to death really.” Securing<br />
a permanent slot on Now That’s What I Call Christmas! is the<br />
modern equivalent of possessing a landed title or precious dowry<br />
– £££ forever.<br />
Perhaps Now’s greatest appeal is physical. The act of picking<br />
up the CD from a shelf, of buying it for yourself or for a loved one,<br />
remains a treasured gesture: in Navin’s words, “the excitement<br />
of going into the record store and coming out with that gem,<br />
knowing that was all you needed.” Just as you would never send<br />
an e-card to someone you actually liked, deep down nobody<br />
wants to receive an iTunes voucher in the form of a birthday link.<br />
But what happens when the high-street CD racks disappear<br />
for good and the CD slots go with them? (Woolworth’s, where art<br />
thou?) And what if Spotify stops accommodating Now as Navin<br />
did for Ronco and K-Tel?<br />
Navin considers the prospects of the Now series and the future<br />
of the music industry more generally. Without the slightest hint of<br />
sentimentality he concludes, “My sense is that, there’s no going<br />
back to the golden age of money-making for the music industry.”<br />
It’s hard to bet against a beloved prize-fighter that’s gone so many<br />
rounds, but the reality is Now isn’t the future of music, it’s a vestige<br />
of the past miraculously thriving in the present. !<br />
Words: Jamie Carragher / @CarragherJamie<br />
nowmusic.com<br />
14
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18
NIKI<br />
KAND’S<br />
QUIET<br />
COMMAND<br />
We spend an afternoon with Niki Kand, a rising star whose choice<br />
releases have already established her as an intriguing presence in the<br />
city. Niloo Sharifi attempts to unpick this featured Merseyrail Sound<br />
Station artist’s charming presence and the persona fuelling a beginning<br />
that can already be described as sharply cohesive.<br />
NIKI KAND has a uniquely verbose presence for<br />
someone who doesn’t say much. She seems ageless.<br />
I don’t know how old she is, and I don’t need to. Softly<br />
spoken and friendly, performative egotism is strangely<br />
absent from this artist’s conduct. Yet, as I see her chat quietly<br />
with our photographer, Nata, I could not call her shy. In front of<br />
the camera, her poise is effortless; her<br />
words are few but carefully chosen,<br />
and she looks you in the eye when she<br />
asks a question. As I come to learn,<br />
the duality contained within this quiet<br />
power of hers forms the foundation<br />
for Niki’s artistic practice, both visually<br />
and sonically. She produces her<br />
crisp, minimal dream-pop heedless<br />
of attention’s fickle current, which so<br />
loves shouting. She goes along her<br />
own stream, saying only what she<br />
needs to say.<br />
Niki and I are both Iranian and,<br />
as we wander through L1 looking for<br />
somewhere to eat, we discover that<br />
we share a language. We switch to Farsi and chat for a while,<br />
talking about our experiences of immigration. But, she tells me<br />
in her characteristically amicable but direct way, that this is not<br />
what she wants the interview to be about. Niki Kand’s music has<br />
nothing to do with politically-generated cultural identity – it is<br />
solipsistic in the way things are when they belong to the world<br />
of pure imagination. Niki’s real life runs parallel to an interior<br />
world that is freed from the constraints of reality or identity. Her<br />
alt.pop dreamworlds come from somewhere more cerebral – a<br />
private world of play which does not contain sticky proclamations<br />
of identity, which are easier than looking inside and finding<br />
something unnamed.<br />
“I think everything’s<br />
kind of related to<br />
love, because we are<br />
all very hungry and<br />
desperate to be loved”<br />
Inspiration does not come from the usual sources for this<br />
artist: she is indifferent to the concerns of the day. It’s the<br />
minutiae and debris of people’s lives and characters which<br />
inspire. “Sometimes an attitude inspires me, sometimes a smell…<br />
Like, if I see a woman who smells great and is really chic, it gives<br />
me passion to make something.” I ask about her latest single,<br />
China Doll, and she tells me how<br />
it was conceived. “My friend had a<br />
little [china doll] for her daughter.”<br />
Intrigued by the unfamiliar phrase, she<br />
researched the term and its figurative<br />
uses. “The definition was an innocent<br />
lady who is typically obedient.” The<br />
other part of her inspiration came<br />
from her friends: “The lyrics were<br />
actually inspired by a relationship –<br />
not my own – where the woman is<br />
worshipped by her boyfriend. I found<br />
it interesting how an innocent woman,<br />
who is obedient, who is good, who is<br />
a doll, can be so influential to the point<br />
she can impact all the decisions that<br />
another person can possibly make… You don’t expect a little tiny<br />
girl to be so powerful, but she’s valuable to somebody.”<br />
This idea of power without force or excessive display<br />
epitomises Niki herself, and is the conceptual thread that<br />
underpins her aesthetic decisions. “I actually like minimalism for<br />
everything. I keep thinking it’s best for me to get rid of most of my<br />
stuff, because it just takes space in my brain and my head, and I<br />
don’t need that. Like with furniture, the less the better. In terms<br />
of design and style I like simple lines – straightforward, clean<br />
designs.” The same applies to her music. “I like to keep it to the<br />
bare minimum, until only what is strictly necessary remains.” The<br />
sounds she uses aren’t potent because they’re big; they undergo<br />
FEATURE<br />
19
“Liverpool is in<br />
my heart already.<br />
It’s beautiful…<br />
it’s definitely<br />
the place”<br />
a process of distillation through which they become compacted.<br />
Small and powerful is not a contradiction in Niki Kand’s world,<br />
where strength can be found in a light touch.<br />
As I point out to her, absent from Niki’s music are any<br />
impulses towards cathartic lyrical vengeance. Her work is not a<br />
vessel for her pain, but an escape from it. “There’s no hidden or<br />
serious message there. It’s all about having a fun, light moments<br />
when you listen to the song.” When she describes her creative<br />
process, it also contains this lightness: “I can endlessly play<br />
around with chords, melodies and beats, and I can’t even realise<br />
the time is passing by… There’s no seriousness. It’s just an escape<br />
from reality, which is most of the time boring and bitter.”<br />
This is not to say that Niki cannot contend with depth. The<br />
subject, she tells me, that she always unwittingly finds her way<br />
back to is love: “I mostly write about [love], even though when I<br />
first start writing I don’t think about love. I think everything’s kind<br />
of related to love, because we are all very hungry and desperate<br />
to be loved. Like, maybe we’re not always conscious of it, but<br />
that’s at least how I see it.” Niki’s sensitivity propels her creativity.<br />
In Iran, she got her degree in visual arts and fine arts. “Music was<br />
my number one passion, so that was always clear, but I was also<br />
very passionate for other types of art – like theatre, or movies – I<br />
can see the beauty in it. I can feel the beauty in a picture and a<br />
photograph – even in the way you’ve dressed up today, I can see<br />
all the details and I can be touched by it.” Suddenly, I feel very<br />
warm; Niki really has a way of making people feel prized with her<br />
sincerity.<br />
Niki explains to me the process that ended in her deciding to<br />
pursue music full-time. She started playing the piano when she<br />
was 14, but it was too late to join the music school she wanted<br />
to. Left with no choice, she went to art school and bought into the<br />
Bohemian dream. “I was really inspired by that type of lifestyle,<br />
where you belong to no nothing and no one… I wanted to become<br />
the next Picasso or something like that.” Then, there was a<br />
period of uncertainty: “For some time, especially around my 20s,<br />
I was a bit unsure which way to go.” But after graduating, she<br />
redoubled focus on what had been there all along, and was not<br />
wrapped in egoistic ideations: music. “That must be really nice, to<br />
just know,” I say, wistfully. “Yeh? You don’t know? Still lost?” she<br />
asks, laughing. “Don’t worry, you’ll find out.” She reassures me.<br />
I am inconsolable; “I don’t know if I will…” But she fixes her eye<br />
on me and speaks firmly: “You will, trust me – you have to. Under<br />
pressure you always find a way.”<br />
“It took me some time to figure out my sound, but now I’m<br />
confident enough that whatever I put out represents me 100 per<br />
cent.” She arrived at a confident grasp of her craft not through<br />
an epiphany, but through trial and error: “It just took about 50<br />
songs. I’ve got loads of songs just on my laptop that I’ve never<br />
released, and that’s because I was trying to figure out what I like<br />
and what’s me.” Her focus on self-actualisation reminds me of<br />
something she said earlier. “I like what you said before, about<br />
how even if nobody listened to music you’d still make it. I think<br />
you need that type of solipsism, so that you’re not always trying<br />
to predict what other people are going to like.” For her, this<br />
solipsism is natural. “It’s really difficult to figure out what people<br />
like and then go for that. My taste is good enough for me to rely<br />
on. If I’m happy, I just want to put it out and hope that people<br />
like it – you can’t control people. It’s really exciting if people find<br />
them interesting but the very first reason why I started writing<br />
wasn’t to show the world – it was just for me.”<br />
This independence of spirit marks every aspect of her<br />
practice. Thus far, she has produced all of her own music, edited<br />
her own videos and curated her own aesthetic. “I think that’s<br />
just my personality – I don’t know, I can’t really trust anyone. I<br />
don’t think anybody else can do it better than I can.” I like this<br />
self-assurance; Niki may be softly spoken, but her confidence<br />
is unshakeable. I ask her whether she would sign her life away<br />
to record labels if the opportunity arose and she is just as<br />
nonchalant in her certitude: “No. Sometimes I think about it<br />
and I wonder why people need record labels, because we have<br />
enough tools to make something interesting. It’s just a matter of<br />
time and passion.” Her DIY philosophy is very in keeping with<br />
the zeitgeist: “You don’t need anything, you don’t even need a<br />
studio. I work in my closet. I know that part of this whole thing<br />
is business, so for that bit I think it’s probably good to work with<br />
others, but for the creative bit I am happy where I am.”<br />
Liverpool is the perfect match for such a freewheeler, and<br />
she has nothing but good things to say about her four years<br />
here. “Liverpool is in my heart already. It’s beautiful, and the<br />
music scene is great. I think is the best thing about it is that it’s<br />
good quality, but small enough for you to find your place – I like<br />
the fact that it’s not massively big.” I ask her whether she would<br />
ever go to London, as the prophecy seems to go for Liverpool’s<br />
talent all too often now. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t know why<br />
I should.” She tells me several of her musician friends moved<br />
to Liverpool specifically for its thriving scene. “It’s definitely the<br />
place.”<br />
The city, in turn, has welcomed her with opportunities. “My<br />
next gig is on 28th September, for Merseyrail Sound Station<br />
at Liverpool Central Station. I’ll be performing with a choir for<br />
the first time, and I don’t know if it’s my last time, because it<br />
doesn’t happen every day.” As one of the artists who qualified<br />
for Merseyrail Sound Station’s artist development programme,<br />
she has been asked to arrange her songs for the purposes of a<br />
special choral performance as part of BBC Music Day’s Liverpool<br />
activity. “It’s just such a great opportunity. I’m really, really<br />
excited for that.” For those unfamiliar with Niki’s work, this will<br />
be a unique opportunity to hear her perform, and escape into<br />
the meticulous fantasies of this craftswoman. !<br />
Words: Niloo Sharifi<br />
Photography: Nata Moraru / facebook.com/NataMoraruPhoto<br />
20
AUTUMN / WINTER <strong>2018</strong><br />
/EPSTEINTHEATRE @EPSTEINTHEATRE EPSTEINTHEATRE<br />
Sat 29 Sep 8.00pm<br />
QUADROPHENIA THE ALBUM, LIVE!<br />
Tue 9 Oct – Sat 13 Oct 7.30pm<br />
1.30pm mat<br />
A TASTE OF HONEY<br />
Thur 18 Oct 8.00pm<br />
TOM ALLEN: ABSOLUTELY<br />
Fri 19 Oct 8.00pm<br />
ULTIMATE BOWIE<br />
Mon 22 Oct 7.30pm<br />
PRIVATE PARTS LIVE<br />
Mon 29 Oct 8.00pm<br />
SONS OF PITCHES:<br />
100 NUMBER ONE HITS<br />
Tues 30 Oct 8.00pm<br />
PHILL JUPITUS: JUPLICITY<br />
Tues 6 Nov – Wed 7 Nov 7.30pm<br />
SOMETHING ABOUT SIMON<br />
Tues 13 Nov 7.30pm<br />
ELIS JAMES AND JOHN ROBINS:<br />
THE HOLY VIBLE BOOK TOUR<br />
Thur 15 Nov 8.00pm<br />
RICH HALL’S HOEDOWN<br />
Wed 21 Nov 8.00pm<br />
JINKX MONSOON & MAJOR<br />
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SHIT INDIE DIS<br />
Right now, absolutely everyone is<br />
going mental for Shit Indie Disco,<br />
brought to us by the industrious<br />
twins Nic and Sean Ryan. Sophie<br />
Shields meets with the reigning<br />
kings of Liverpool student nights<br />
to get the story of their success.<br />
People of a certain age will probably have fond memories<br />
of being 18, can of Carling in hand, or blue WKD<br />
depending on your preference, and screaming along<br />
to the opening lyrics of Mr Brightside in your mate’s<br />
kitchen at a house party. Those were the days: mid-noughties<br />
indie anthems were the soundtrack to many people’s teenage<br />
years. The Skins generation, growing up learning important life<br />
lessons from Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s<br />
What I’m Not, and the politics of youth from Bloc Party’s Silent<br />
Alarm, all under the guise of having a raging party with your<br />
mates. We may now say, ‘Oh, the nostalgia’, or ‘I wish we could<br />
do that again’, and sigh. Enter SHIT INDIE DISCO.<br />
What started as a pre-drinks playlist full of ‘shit indie songs’<br />
in a hotel room in Berlin, has turned into the ultimate night out<br />
for students and indie fans alike. Twin brothers and local lads<br />
Sean and Nic Ryan, under the alias of Shit Indie Disco, have<br />
brought their old favourites like Oasis, The Stones Roses and The<br />
Courteeners to the Liverpool club scene with no judgment, and<br />
a determination to recreate the good old days at Bumper and<br />
Le Bateau. Described by themselves as “a big party with all our<br />
mates but without the clear-up afterwards”, complete with party<br />
hats, glow sticks and some badly drawn posters, Shit Indie Disco<br />
is an indie disco, but it’s definitely not shit.<br />
“We were in Berlin, just on a holiday,” says Sean, the oldest<br />
twin by seven minutes (important to get that in there), as he<br />
describes the moment of Shit Indie Disco’s conception. “We were<br />
meant to be going out but got a few bevvies in, put our shit indie<br />
playlist on and ended up dancing on the table in our apartment<br />
all night. We were like, ‘When we get back we are doing this<br />
with our mates’ – it was too good of a playlist not to. Bloc Party,<br />
The Killers, Oasis, The Stone Roses, all the classics. It was at that<br />
point we got in touch with 24 Kitchen Street about getting a<br />
22
CO<br />
“It’s about doing your<br />
own thing – we’re<br />
never going to be<br />
like Bongo’s Bingo.<br />
Someone described<br />
it online as like being<br />
at a big house party<br />
with a load of mates.<br />
That’s what we want”<br />
night there.” The Baltic Triangle’s disco venue, also home to Sonic<br />
Yootha, was where the party started. “We had been to a few<br />
events [there] and just got in touch with them,” Nic recalls. “I was<br />
like, ‘Hiya mate, any chance of us putting on an indie night?’. They<br />
had a Friday night free, so just said yeh.”<br />
Trying to sell old indie songs to students, with no background<br />
in putting on events, is no mean feat. But armed with a laptop,<br />
a subscription to Spotify and a passion for keeping the music<br />
going, the lack of experience didn’t stop the duo. “We had no idea<br />
what we were doing.” Sean laughs. “They [24 Kitchen Street]<br />
were like ‘Have you ever put a night on before?’ We were like,<br />
‘No’. ‘Do you need a mixer?’ ‘Don’t know!’ ‘Have you got a float?’<br />
‘What’s a float?’ We were winging it, it was literally a learning<br />
curve. We just bought some glow sticks and some party hats and<br />
got stuck in there.”<br />
Getting stuck in there ultimately turned their Spotify playlist<br />
into a packed-out Loft at the Arts Club. Over 300 students and<br />
indie fans dedicate every Thursday night to the indie disco, as<br />
a result missing Friday morning lectures. “We didn’t plan on it<br />
being a student night, it was mainly just for us and our mates to<br />
get together and dance to songs that we used to dance to at the<br />
likes of Mixed Bag or Double Vision,” Nic explains, “but then 24<br />
Kitchen Street asked us to do a student night there. We did that…<br />
then we asked Arts Club if they had any space for us and they<br />
gave us every Thursday night.”<br />
The student scene in Liverpool is currently overflowing with<br />
events and club nights, from gigs and album launches to Bongo’s<br />
Bingo and Liquidation. “Yeh, there is so much going on.” Nic<br />
reflects. “When we first started there would be queues round<br />
the block at Heebie Jeebies and we would be offering free pizza<br />
to get people through the doors. I think it’s about just doing your<br />
own thing – we are never going to be like Bongo’s Bingo but we<br />
just said, £3 in, party hats, glow sticks and just keep it at good<br />
times. People connected with that, keep it small, like a bit of a<br />
secret. Someone described it online as like being at a big house<br />
party with a load of mates. That’s what we want.”<br />
You leave your pretension at the door for Shit Indie Disco,<br />
but when I asked if their Nickelback night went down well they<br />
thankfully replied with, “April Fools! No, that was a joke for April<br />
Fools’ Days. We put that poster out and everyone was like,<br />
‘No, you can’t!’. We do have some exceptions, like with Kings<br />
Of Leon, everyone loves the first two albums but we’ve always<br />
said we won’t play Sex On Fire. We actually gave a money<br />
back guarantee saying if we ever played it everyone will get<br />
reimbursed.” With a setlist made of predominantly indie anthems<br />
from the last two decades, they do sneak in a couple of the old<br />
classics by the likes of The Smiths and The Cure. They also offer<br />
themed nights solely dedicated to celebrating anniversaries or<br />
new albums. “Arctic Monkeys and Oasis are the popular ones,<br />
they always go off. We do whatever people ask for, really. We<br />
had a lot of people asking for The Courteeners so we did a St.<br />
Jude special and it was one of our biggest nights.”<br />
But why “shit” indie disco? “We do like the music, we aren’t<br />
just playing it because we think it’s shit, but there was a time<br />
when it went a bit out of fashion. People called it ‘landfill indie’,<br />
so we just thought we would call it shit indie and turn it into a<br />
disco!”<br />
“Also, when people come and they think it’s shit we can<br />
blame it on that, it lowers people’s expectations,” they humbly<br />
add, laughing. It’s not necessary, however, as hordes of students<br />
continue to descend on Arts Club every week. As seen on Shit<br />
Indie Disco’s Instagram, each week there’s inflatable swans<br />
and Morrissey-style gladioli flying through the air, with people<br />
on shoulders adorned in party hats clutching the famous Shit<br />
Indie Disco signs that people aim to steal at the end of the night.<br />
“We started with the flags and posters, just throwing them out<br />
and people loved them,” Sean says. “We didn’t make them one<br />
week and everyone kept asking for them, so we started making<br />
more out of old cardboard. People keep asking us to put ‘happy<br />
birthday’ on them, or there is this group, Flat 23, they always ask<br />
if we can put ‘afterparty at Flat 23’ and everyone goes mad.”<br />
“They have even started bringing their own, which we<br />
always encourage. We’ve had people bring ones with ‘Thank<br />
Fuck It’s Thursday’ on a massive Wetherspoon’s menu and one<br />
with mine and Sean’s face drawn in the Badly Drawn style, which<br />
was nice.”<br />
The DIY element is what really brings together the whole<br />
‘party in your mates’ front room’ vibe, which is topped off by their<br />
posters, produced by Badly Drawn Models, aka Sean. “It comes<br />
back to doing everything on a budget,” Sean explains. “It was<br />
something I was doing anyway, so we just did it with Shit Indie<br />
Disco too. We did it for an Oasis special, rather than use a photo<br />
we thought we’d put my drawing on there. People kept asking<br />
for copies so we kept doing it and it turned into our brand. People<br />
collect them as well and its great seeing them up in their rooms<br />
on Instagram.”<br />
So, what’s next for Shit Indie Disco? “We want to keep on<br />
doing Thursday night at Arts Club,” Nic explains, “get a good<br />
student following, get a nice crowd to keep it going. We’d<br />
like to do a festival as well, try and get into Leeds Festival.”<br />
Keeping to their simple formula of indie classics, party hats,<br />
cheap beers and a packed-out Loft seems to be working, so it’s<br />
understandable why they want to keep going as they are. Their<br />
genuine excitement and love for what they do is infectious and I<br />
found myself recounting my own youth of listening to the exact<br />
same music at house parties and the famous second floor of ‘The<br />
K’, stumbling out at three in the morning with no voice and only<br />
a little dignity. They have ultimately turned their love for their<br />
own student days into a rave they get to call work every week, a<br />
genius idea I wish I had thought of myself. !<br />
Words: Sophie Shields<br />
Illustration: Sean Ryan<br />
The Bido Lito! Social with Shit Indie Disco takes place at The<br />
Jacaranda Club on Thursday 25th <strong>October</strong>. Attendees get free<br />
admission to Shit Indie Disco with a Bido Lito! Social gig ticket or<br />
hand stamp.<br />
FEATURE<br />
23
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cheap plonk
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THE GREATEST<br />
GIG I NEVER SAW<br />
Why is seeing Paul McCartney live in Liverpool such an odyssey? Conal Cunningham investigates how the<br />
evils of ticket touts and capitalism thwarted his attempts to witness the greatest gig he never saw.<br />
Going to see Paul McCartney perform in Liverpool<br />
should be the most natural thing in the world. So why<br />
the fuck is it so hard? The musical legend began his<br />
life and career in our city, and he remains a hero for old<br />
and young across Merseyside. The Beatles loom like a monolith<br />
over Liverpool; we are almost suffocated by a pageantry of<br />
the past at every turn. They are constantly offered to us as the<br />
proof of our value and importance in cultural history. Unless you<br />
subscribe to the theory that he was killed and replaced with a<br />
doppelgänger in 1967, Sir Paul is our greatest living ambassador.<br />
And yet opportunities to see him are as vestigial as the Scouse in<br />
Paul’s accent.<br />
That’s why five of us waited at 9am on a Friday with two<br />
laptops each, perched, poised to attack. But as expected, his<br />
Liverpool show was snapped-up and sold-out before our eyes had<br />
time to blink. So, imagine my delight when my friend somehow<br />
beat the insufferable influx of touts and fans to secure six tickets<br />
for the Glasgow leg of his only three shows in the UK. The tickets<br />
were £90 each, but we didn’t think twice. After receiving an email<br />
confirmation from AXS Tickets (and a payment receipt for £540),<br />
I was ecstatic: getting possibly the only chance I’ll get to see the<br />
(probably) real Paul McCartney play Get Back and Let It Be.<br />
But the dream was not to be. AXS Tickets, with no prior<br />
warning, cancelled the tickets and refunded us in full, stating only<br />
that there had been an “error in pricing at the time of booking”.<br />
After countless emails, the realisation dawned that the company<br />
had oversold the venue. They had panicked, cancelled whatever<br />
they could, and were now desperately trying to push the issue<br />
under the rug. Online, McCartney fans were seething that within<br />
minutes Ticketmaster and AXS had completely sold-out – yet<br />
there were thousands of tickets available to buy on secondary<br />
ticket sites such as Viagogo and StubHub half an hour later, for<br />
prices upwards of £1,000.<br />
It’s a feeling of frustration that I encounter on countless<br />
Friday mornings, always at exactly 9.01 am. I am – again – the<br />
unlucky, yet relentlessly returning customer, simmering in<br />
bewilderment that a mere 60 seconds can pass and a venue<br />
capacity’s worth of tickets can be snapped up, all gone, just like<br />
that. It’s cyclical and wearying, leaving you powerless. We’ve all<br />
been there. Perhaps you have been to a ‘sold out’ show that quite<br />
visibly has empty seats. Perhaps you missed out on a once-ina-lifetime<br />
reunion gig like The Rolling Stones, heard the stories<br />
of Adele tickets going for up to £9,000, or of fans being turned<br />
away from Foo Fighters shows after not knowing about needing<br />
correct ID for tickets.<br />
So, why does this happen? The facts are infuriating: in 2016,<br />
ex-Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard revealed that for big events,<br />
a mere 10 per cent of tickets are left by the time they go on general<br />
release; tickets are held back for the artist, promoters, record label<br />
bosses and all their entourages. They are<br />
also sold through event pre-sales, which<br />
Hubbard admits are often infiltrated with<br />
touts buying as many tickets as possible,<br />
using software that generates different<br />
names, credit cards and email addresses.<br />
Shockingly, Hubbard explained that ticket<br />
companies like Ticketmaster purposely<br />
sell tickets, profiting from inflated prices<br />
without seeming like the ‘bad guys’.<br />
Since Hubbard’s report over two<br />
years ago, the industry has orchestrated<br />
attempts to crack down on touts. The<br />
<strong>2018</strong> Digital Economy Act enforces fines<br />
on touts caught using bots that bypass<br />
the number of purchasable tickets.<br />
See Tickets have already employed a<br />
fan-to-fan system and many big-name<br />
bands such as Arctic Monkeys have teamed up with fan-led<br />
company Twickets, which allows fans to sell tickets through their<br />
website for face value only. Most profoundly, Ticketmaster are<br />
shutting down their secondary ticket websites Seatwave and<br />
GetMeIn!, now offering a genuine fan-to-fan, authorised re-sale<br />
site. It is a very promising move. There is light at the end of this<br />
corrupt tunnel, where those without connections or vast amounts<br />
of disposable income are routinely cheated out of incredible<br />
memories.<br />
Yet this encouraging step must be closely followed and<br />
regulated, as the past has shown us that any room for profit will<br />
be unquestionably exploited by touts, and situations like my own<br />
will only continue. Although we see less tickets than usual on<br />
secondary ticketing websites for some conscientious bands who<br />
partner with conscientious sellers, they are still there, and touts<br />
are still seen sheepishly flogging them outside venues. For years,<br />
touts have immensely profited over the corruption of a rigged<br />
system. I picture them, evil and wizened, rejoicing in our despair,<br />
knowing that when the next Paul McCartney gig comes up, fans<br />
“Institutionalised<br />
fun-sponge-ism<br />
continues to thwart<br />
Paul’s attempts<br />
to democratise<br />
his coveted<br />
performances”<br />
will have no choice but to fuel their rigged machine.<br />
Music in its purest form is an art that doesn’t discriminate;<br />
it brings people together from all walks of life with the unique<br />
opportunity to hear music you love. Even in modern Liverpool,<br />
The Beatles soundtrack our coming-of-ages, friendships and<br />
relationships. The unfortunate reality is that, for decades, the<br />
system has been a sham; being a loyal<br />
fan, signing up to pre-sales and having<br />
multiple friends waiting at nine on the<br />
dot, just hasn’t cut it. It’s not hopeless<br />
– change is happening, with the work<br />
of initiatives like FanFairAlliance. But<br />
perhaps we could all be doing more to<br />
help them, with fan-to-fan interaction<br />
and organising. Hopefully, the next<br />
batch of Paul McCartney tickets will be<br />
sold conscientiously, and I’ll finally get to<br />
see him before one of us dies.<br />
To be fair to Paul McCartney, he<br />
shows a lot of love for Liverpool. He<br />
is known for offering free impromptu<br />
gigs at The Philharmonic pub and The<br />
Cavern Club, as well as a live Q&A<br />
at LIPA. The spirit of The Beatles’<br />
famous Let It Be performance, on the roof of Apple Corps<br />
to unsuspecting bystanders, is alive within Paul. But just as<br />
the police were intent on spoiling everyone’s fun that day,<br />
institutionalised fun-sponge-ism continues to thwart Paul’s<br />
attempts to democratise his coveted performances. Spaces at his<br />
free gigs are limited, and often go to those who are in the know<br />
about where to buy them. Paul is also known to insist against<br />
camera phones, refusing to play if he can see one in the audience.<br />
I’m sure this allows everyone to be more present in the moment,<br />
contributing to the intimate and often tear-jerking atmospheres<br />
reported by the lucky few who attend. But it also means the rest<br />
of us can only imagine, wistful at our rainy windows, what it<br />
would be like to see Paul perform in <strong>2018</strong>. !<br />
Words: Conal Cunningham<br />
fanfairalliance.org<br />
beatthetouts.com<br />
26
#UTP<br />
up-coming fixtures<br />
september<br />
18 barnoldswick town A HSL<br />
22 Chester city A FAC 2Q<br />
25 Litherland REMYCA H HSL<br />
29 Winsford United h HSL<br />
october<br />
2 silsden a hsl<br />
6 W Dids & Chorlton h HSL<br />
20 ashton athletic h mc1<br />
Watch city of liverpool this season<br />
adults £6 concessions £3 under 15’s free!<br />
TDP Solicitors Stadium, vesty road, bootle l30 1NY
SPOTLIGHT<br />
EIMEAR KAVANAGH<br />
“I buzz off of bringing<br />
other people’s stories<br />
alive through my art<br />
and wish to<br />
collaborate more with<br />
musicians or writers”<br />
Working across fashion, street art, illustration, album covers and much<br />
more, this Irish-born artist has worked on commissions in India and<br />
Australia and is now preparing for a month-long residency in Iceland.<br />
But first, she has unfinished business in Liverpool.<br />
If you had to describe your artistic style in a sentence, what<br />
would you say?<br />
I work in mixed media and my art is contemporary, intuitive and<br />
forever changing.<br />
Have you always wanted to create art?<br />
Yes, I’ve not stopped since being a child. I had some great<br />
influences, one being our next-door neighbour Val – she gave a<br />
lot of time to me and my sister to create art and play music. Her<br />
house was full of floor cushions, plants and incense and had a<br />
huge rainbow painted in the hallway.<br />
Can you pinpoint a moment or a piece of art that initially<br />
inspired you?<br />
Not really, other than travelling to new places because it makes<br />
me feel alive and to see in an alien-like way. Or being around<br />
nature, because it looks beautiful and clears the mind. Or music:<br />
songs that give me goosebumps, lyrics I can relate to. Or an<br />
overheard conversation. There you go, there’s loads! All things<br />
that just occur on a daily basis. Sometimes it’s the smaller<br />
things.<br />
Do you have a favourite piece of your own art? What does it<br />
say about you?<br />
Yes, I have one untitled painting from 1999. It’s abstract,<br />
simple, beautiful with deep colour and flowing marks. Works<br />
like that cannot be reproduced, they’ll never come out the same<br />
the second time around so I won’t ever sell it. It doesn’t say<br />
anything about me, but it takes me back to a moment in time, a<br />
place and its surroundings.<br />
What do you think is the overriding influence on your<br />
artmaking: other art, emotions, current affairs – or a mixture of<br />
all of these?<br />
Emotions, I guess? My experience of how I perceive things in my<br />
mind. The child and the fantasist in me that wants to explore and<br />
see things differently to how they really appear.<br />
If you could show at any gallery or event in the future, who<br />
would it be?<br />
I’m not fussed about galleries. I buzz off of bringing other<br />
people’s stories alive through my art and wish to collaborate<br />
more with musicians or writers.<br />
Do you have a favourite venue you’ve shown in?<br />
I like venues that are inviting for all and not intimidating to walk into.<br />
If I’m thinking of aesthetic pleasure, minimalist spaces with bare<br />
brick walls show off artworks wonderfully. For all these reasons<br />
I loved seeing my work up in Milo in Leeds and am really looking<br />
forward to seeing it in Naked Lunch next month. Community vibes<br />
that encompass art in all forms and good times.<br />
Why is art important to you?<br />
I use art as a form of meditation, escape, release and a way of<br />
self-expression. Without it I might be a little lost soul.<br />
eimear-art.co.uk<br />
Curious Minds, an exhibition of Eimear Kavanagh’s mixed<br />
artwork, runs at Naked Lunch café between 1st and 31st<br />
<strong>October</strong>, with a private view launch event on 4th <strong>October</strong><br />
featuring live music from Reid Anderson.<br />
28
PISS KITTI<br />
Thrashy and punky and with a<br />
whole lot to say: Dom and Esme<br />
from brand new quartet PISS KITTI<br />
tell us what’s in their manifesto.<br />
“My mum doesn’t<br />
believe that I’m a<br />
vocalist or that people<br />
like Piss Kitti”<br />
If you had to describe your music/style in a sentence, what<br />
would you say?<br />
“A bit too pissy for me” – Esme’s mum<br />
How did you get into music?<br />
Dom: I grew up around punk music and have been in bands since<br />
I was a kid, so it just happened organically.<br />
Esme: I personally have no musical talent. The band started off<br />
last year as three girls who met through our ex-boyfriends; we<br />
split up with the lads and created Piss Kitti. I guess it’s just a<br />
product of that bonding experience. We used to practise in my<br />
tiny flat… but then we met our guitarist Dom one night and that’s<br />
when it all kicked off.<br />
Can you pinpoint a live gig or a piece of music that initially<br />
inspired you?<br />
Dom: Hearing songs like Complete Control and Janie Jones by<br />
The Clash were always poignant influences for me.<br />
Esme: Lyrically, I’m very inspired by Syd Barrett and Daniel<br />
Johnston, that kind of childish storytelling, diary entry vibe. I also<br />
like how neither of them can actually sing, it makes me feel better<br />
about myself. I’m not a poet; I’m not a singer.<br />
Do you have a favourite song or piece of music to perform?<br />
What does it say about you?<br />
Esme: My favourite song of ours to perform is Watch Ur Mouth. I<br />
get to mince around on stage being all angry and snotty.<br />
Dom: Feeling Badly.<br />
What do you think is the overriding influence on your<br />
songwriting: other art, emotions, current affairs – or a mixture<br />
of all of these?<br />
Esme: The thing I enjoy most about the band is that I don’t feel<br />
like we take ourselves that seriously. Most of the lyrics are just<br />
little rhymes that I’ve jotted down in my phone. I’ll show them<br />
to Dom and he’ll jam out a stanky riff that always seems to<br />
understand my words.<br />
Dom: Esme’s voice and her lyrics are what really inspires me<br />
when I’m coming up with the music.<br />
If you could support any artist in the future, who would it be?<br />
Dom: I got introduced to Parquet Courts’ music recently – I don’t<br />
think we’d be out of place supporting them.<br />
Esme: Cupcakke.<br />
Do you have a favourite venue you’ve performed in?<br />
Esme: The best gig in town is Drop The Dumbulls, I knew it was<br />
my favourite venue when I weed on the Queen’s face in the loos.<br />
Very on brand.<br />
Why is music important to you?<br />
Esme: It’s not, really. I’m primarily a visual artist so never imagined<br />
I’d be in a band. My mum doesn’t believe that I’m a vocalist or that<br />
people like Piss Kitti.<br />
Dom: I think hearing the right band at the right time can really<br />
help you figure out who you are.<br />
pisskitti.bandcamp.com<br />
Piss Kitti’s six-track demo cassette is out now via Sasstone Records.<br />
DANIEL<br />
BOOCOCK<br />
The Desolate One<br />
The breakout success of this<br />
Liverpool filmmaker’s debut short<br />
The Desolate One has marked him<br />
out as a poetic storyteller with an<br />
arresting visual aesthetic. You’ll be<br />
hearing more from him.<br />
“When something grabs<br />
my attention or causes<br />
me to stop in my tracks<br />
without me necessarily<br />
realising, those are the kind<br />
of things that can spark<br />
some type of inspiration”<br />
If you had to describe the style of your films in a sentence,<br />
what would you say?<br />
They’re badass. There’s a distinct visual aesthetic and a narrative<br />
flow that can be either loose or cohesive, depending on the<br />
project. Whichever way it goes, the aim is to leave people<br />
wanting more.<br />
Have you always wanted to create films?<br />
I’ve always been drawn to them. I’ve taken something from them,<br />
studied them in my own way. I’ve worked on some, but I wasn’t<br />
a fan of that at all. It felt authentic to go out and create them, so<br />
that’s what I’m doing.<br />
Can you pinpoint a moment or a piece of art that initially<br />
inspired you?<br />
There isn’t anything specific – though when something grabs<br />
my attention or causes me to stop in my tracks without me<br />
necessarily realising, those are the kind of things that can spark<br />
some type of inspiration.<br />
What do you think is the overriding influence on your<br />
filmmaking: other art, emotions, current affairs – or a mixture<br />
of all of these?<br />
All those things, really, in different doses. But the main influence<br />
on my filmmaking is me; my own imagination mixed with how I’m<br />
feeling with regards to different things from various points within<br />
my life.<br />
If you could show at any film festival or win any award in the<br />
future, which would it be?<br />
Every one. At the highest level. First with a high-end short, then<br />
features.<br />
Do you have a favourite venue you’ve shown in? If so, what<br />
makes it special?<br />
I’ve missed most of the international screenings where The<br />
Desolate One has been shown due to commitments and priorities<br />
to do with my next project, The Neolith. But the first time I saw<br />
The Desolate One on a large cinema screen sticks out. It was<br />
local, on the biggest screen in Picturehouse at FACT. It was just<br />
me, the film’s DOP and sound designer checking a few technical<br />
things. I remember they sat down to watch it and I stayed<br />
standing the whole time. Also, when it was screened publicly at<br />
the same place several months later that was cool. I had a big<br />
crowd turn up making lots of noise so it was pretty memorable.<br />
Why is filmmaking important to you?<br />
It feels authentic to me when I’m doing it. Particularly when it’s<br />
my own project out in the open. When you see it come to life<br />
from a thought in your mind, to paper, then a screen then with<br />
people in front of a camera, there is a clarity to that kind of stuff<br />
I don’t have with other things. It feels correct to be going in that<br />
direction.<br />
Can you recommend a movie, director or cinematographer that<br />
Bido Lito! readers might not be familiar with?<br />
Yeh, me, Daniel Boocock. If you’re not familiar now you will be<br />
soon enough. I’m just getting warmed up, ha!<br />
claretandbluefilm.com<br />
SPOTLIGHT 29
PREVIEWS<br />
“The song is<br />
always finished<br />
off by the listener,<br />
and I think that’s<br />
really beautiful”<br />
GIG<br />
VILLAGERS<br />
Arts Club – 25/10<br />
The third LP from Conor O’Brien’s inventive folkpop<br />
outfit sees the lyricist deal with faith and<br />
the sensation of just about coping in his typically<br />
disarming and confessional manner.<br />
There’s a serenity about VILLAGERS. A meditative state of calmness, softly bound in<br />
lapping waves of melody and observant lyricism. This is confined to the exterior; Conor<br />
O’Brien’s creative vessel combusts internally.<br />
Cut through the delicate outer edges, finely constructed, and you come face to<br />
face with a musical project built on the deepest honesty. A project comfortable in its acceptance<br />
that honesty is not always fixed, often short-lived and capable of unravelling in the face of new<br />
discovery. With a desire to self-document at the height of feeling, it’s unsurprising O’Brien often no<br />
longer recognises the confessor or all of the confessions colouring his early musical palette.<br />
Over the course of three studio albums, Villagers has congregated around traditional folk<br />
instrumentation, experimented with electronic influences and mastered the control of atmosphere<br />
through sparse arrangements lined with emotive sentiment. O’Brien’s latest effort, The Art Of<br />
Pretending To Swim, is no less confessional than previous efforts. There’s simply a sense of<br />
weightlessness to its compilation; a happiness in understanding confusion that the album’s title<br />
eludes to.<br />
Ahead of a Liverpool show next month, we pick up on this theme when we begin our phone<br />
conversation. It’s fitting that the mystique of serenity is instantly washed away as Elliot Ryder<br />
catches O’Brien wired and breathless; his thoughts still plugged into tour rehearsals which, he<br />
informs us, concluded seconds before Ireland’s dialling code was punched into the phone.<br />
I just wanted to start by touching on the name of your new record, The Art Of Pretending To<br />
Swim: is this a metaphor for how you currently perceive your position as a songwriter and<br />
musician?<br />
Initially it was the name of a song that I was trying to write, but I never actually wrote it. I was<br />
trying to write it all the way through the making of the album, however parts of it kept breaking off<br />
to form the other songs. In a way, the DNA of that song is scattered throughout the whole album.<br />
It seemed fitting I should name the album after it, even if it wasn’t written. For me, though, it was<br />
a feeling-based title. It exemplifies the way I see life; you’re not swimming but you’re equally not<br />
drowning. You’re just kind of making it up, you know? The album is trying to say that the sensation<br />
is absolutely terrifying, but also rather beautiful. I’ve always found interviews quite difficult because<br />
I don’t over-think what I’m writing about when it comes to writing a song. Words are not always<br />
prescriptive. In a way I see them as little diagrams of my feelings. All of these feelings that are talked<br />
about in hindsight might be true, but I just haven’t figured it out yet. Maybe after a few years of<br />
touring the album I’ll have a better understanding.<br />
Personally, it evokes a sense of self-depreciation, in that you feel your art is a pretence despite<br />
the emotive connection it draws from the listener. Is it rather you’re telling us there’s a sense of<br />
catharsis in coming to understand you can never explicitly fulfil life’s expectations?<br />
I’m constantly on the verge of feeling like I have no idea what I’m doing. There’s a lot of, ‘Fuck, what<br />
even is this, I don’t know what to do’. But, eventually, if I keep hacking away and working at it, my<br />
records document something that was in my soul at that time. And I can always see that looking<br />
back. Knowing this gives me something to hold on to when I feel like I’ve lost track in the creative<br />
process. I have faith in that cycle of creativity. Even if you are just 100 per cent floating, you have to<br />
have faith, you have to have faith in that moment you feel like nothing is coming because that’s all<br />
part of the process. It’s a matter of growing to become OK with that, and it’s the same feeling that<br />
filters into your life.<br />
You’ve said previously that you don’t listen to your early records, choosing to only give them life<br />
through your live shows. Do you think this is due to the confessional strain they carry and, if so,<br />
have you consciously attempted to write songs that aren’t so rigidly signposting your emotions<br />
at the time of writing?<br />
I’m definitely proud of everything I’ve ever produced, but at times I listen back and I don’t feel as<br />
though I recognise the person who wrote some of the tracks. Even down to my voice. I heard a<br />
recording of my voice from eight years ago and it really sounds like someone different. The words<br />
I’m using and the tone of my voice, even the method I’m using to sing is different. Therefore, you<br />
sometimes don’t feel real singing some of those tunes. There are a couple of tunes people shout for<br />
at gigs and I just can’t play them; it wouldn’t be a good performance. Nothing would be happening<br />
in the room. All you’d be getting is somebody acting out a pantomime version of something that<br />
was initially heartfelt and real.<br />
Keeping with playing live, do ever feel that your writing is diluted by having to perform so often,<br />
in the sense that the painter or poet can simply offer their creation for interpretation and step<br />
aside in the moments after?<br />
It’s something that has crept into my mind when writing. However, it’s something to ignore as<br />
much as possible, I think. I tend to take anything I say about my music or my songs quite lightly. It is<br />
pure feeling based. It’s never put together with the ramifications already in mind. In the beginning,<br />
having to talk about my music and justify it really got to me. It made me start overthinking the<br />
process because I was worrying over how I would justify it once put together. For me that’s the<br />
death of creativity. Although it might sound clichéd, the song is always finished off by the listener,<br />
and I think that’s a really beautiful quality of music. It’s true. Quite often the reason I’m writing<br />
music is because I have a feeling inside of me that cannot be adequately expressed through<br />
discussion, so I put it to tones, run it through sequences, rhythms and build something up that is a<br />
little bit more articulate that anything I can normally say. Sadly, I don’t really have the gift of speech<br />
writing, or whatever.<br />
One theme that stands out on the album is your interpretation of faith. Seeing the Stand For<br />
Truth silent protests that took place alongside the Pope’s mass in Dublin, do you think your<br />
questioning of faith is one that is growing more prevalent in Ireland?<br />
Ireland has changed dramatically in the last 20 years and it is still is changing. Personally, I really<br />
enjoy using words like God and faith in my music, because I feel like I’m reclaiming them from the<br />
organised religion I was part of as a child, when I started to build up quite negative connotations.<br />
When I was very young, the Church was still very prevalent in society and in the education system.<br />
It was pretty rotten. For me, the word God can be about anything that animates you: it could be a<br />
person, an object, or even yourself. It really can be anything. All words are compromises anyway, so<br />
I enjoy using the likes of God and faith on my own terms. It’s liberating.<br />
Finally, I just wanted to quickly touch on your Liverpool date. As a port city, similar to Dublin,<br />
we’re always facing outwards towards Ireland. Do you think being an outward-facing person<br />
enables a better, introspective understanding as a musician?<br />
I think there’s no point in trying to love someone unless you can love yourself, and the same can be<br />
said in the opposite direction. I think it’s something you have to keep in mind as an artist otherwise<br />
you’ll find yourself travelling too deep into the small box that is your own world. You have to keep<br />
your eyes open, ears open, and feed back into whatever you’re putting onto the page and singing to<br />
audiences. It’s all a sort of necessary energy. !<br />
Words: Elliot Ryder / @elliot-ryder<br />
Photography: Rich Gilligan<br />
wearevillagers.com<br />
Villagers play Arts Club on 25th <strong>October</strong>. The Art Of Pretending To Swim is out now via Domino<br />
Recordings.<br />
30
Jona Frank - Inside The Family Caravan<br />
FESTIVAL<br />
Liverpool Irish Festival<br />
Multiple venues – 18/10-28/10<br />
Liverpool’s outward gaze has always kept one eye on Ireland.<br />
The influence of this port city’s neighbour, placed on the opposite<br />
side of the murky stretch that lies between, is salient in our<br />
contemporary cultural make up. Not least in offering an early outlet<br />
for trade, but also rolling its native dialect into the region to contribute to<br />
the now distinctive Scouse accent. In essence, Liverpool projects a homely<br />
reflection of the Emerald Isle in its music, art and literature.<br />
Liverpool Irish Festival has been celebrating these cultural ties since<br />
2003, with each year offering a growing programme of events including<br />
talks, films and live music. This year’s incarnation, focusing on the<br />
themes of travel and migration, will stretch across 10 days in <strong>October</strong>,<br />
draping Irish culture across the likes of The Everyman, FACT, Liverpool<br />
Philharmonic, St George’s Hall, The Florrie and Victoria Gallery And<br />
Museum, among other venues within the city.<br />
The festival’s schedule includes a number of eye-catching additions,<br />
none more so than Lizzie Nunnery’s latest dramatic creation TO HAVE<br />
TO SHOOT AN IRISHMAN. The play, running for three nights, explores<br />
the unfolding events of the Easter Rising of 1916 by zeroing in on<br />
the life and subsequent death of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. Sure to<br />
be one of the most popular events of the festival, comedian Deborah<br />
Frances-White is set to record a special live edition of her GUILTY<br />
FEMINIST podcast at the Liverpool Playhouse. Elsewhere KIÍLA, one of<br />
Ireland’s most esteemed musical acts, will take over Arts Club for an<br />
energetic, floor stomping set with support from BILL BOOTH.<br />
A major exhibition of photography will also look at the lives of<br />
women and children in Liverpool’s Irish Traveller communities. IT’S THE<br />
TRAVELLING LIFE features photography by American artist Jona Frank,<br />
and provides a glimpse into this culture from 25 years ago. It runs at the<br />
George Henry Lee’s building between 18th and 28th <strong>October</strong>, and then<br />
moves to The Brink as part of Liverpool Mental Health Festival’s The Art<br />
Of Falling Apart exhibition, which runs until January 2019.<br />
For the first time in its existence, the festival will join hands with the<br />
Liverpool Literary Festival to shine a light on writers, both established<br />
and emerging, who continue to contribute to Ireland’s long standing<br />
literary tradition and prowess. Acknowledging the importance of<br />
modern Irish history, Output Gallery will offer its walls to an exhibition<br />
responding to the successful repeal of the Eighth Amendment of<br />
Ireland’s constitution – a landmark moment for the autonomy of women<br />
within the Republic.<br />
liverpoolirishfestival.com<br />
Zakia<br />
CLUB<br />
Aerie<br />
Buyers Club –<br />
throughout <strong>October</strong><br />
Buyers Club’s upstairs space welcomes a new concept this<br />
month as AERIE takes up residency. A collaborative music<br />
venue from the mellifluous minds behind Anti Social Jazz<br />
Club, Buyers Club and Mono-Tone, Aerie will host regular loft<br />
parties every weekend. The new venue opens on 29th September with<br />
radio presenter and trans-global sonic explorer ZAKIA helming the ones<br />
and twos along with Liverpool’s DANNY FITZGERALD and ASJC’s own<br />
selectors.<br />
A venue “where good things grow” say the organisers, Aerie is set<br />
to be a place for the city’s discerning musos to enjoy sounds from around<br />
the world from jazz to psychedelia, soul to hip hop and everything<br />
in between. As well as sounds to open the mind, the space will be<br />
transformed for an immersive experience like no other. For those who<br />
have a thirst for discovery and a penchant for the unexpected, this brand<br />
new venue will be a vital hangout. With a full list of loft parties still to be<br />
announced, the collaborators behind the project promise both the most<br />
interesting, cutting edge selectors alongside live music plus hosting the<br />
likes of Archive Liverpool, Duo-Tone, Melodic Distraction and Humble<br />
Abode.<br />
Later on in <strong>October</strong> the brilliant SAZZY will appear for a three-hour<br />
set of dependably diverse selections courtesy of Archive. A regular<br />
at the likes of Dekmantel and Selectors festivals, the Swiss DJ has<br />
become a major player in the Netherlands’ underground scene and will<br />
be welcomed back to Merseyside after her triumphant set alongside<br />
Or:la and Moodymann a couple of years hence. Support on the evening<br />
comes from Archive residents who will be playing the latest deep cuts<br />
discovered on their respective vinyl hunts. Until then, pay a visit to Aerie<br />
Thursday-Saturday from 6pm for an experience unique to Liverpool.<br />
PREVIEWS 31
PREVIEWS<br />
“We work with a<br />
‘whatever happens,<br />
happens’ ethos. And<br />
if you don’t like it,<br />
you get whipped in<br />
the legs by one of the<br />
other band members”<br />
GIG<br />
WARMDUSCHER<br />
Shipping Forecast – 16/10<br />
Shouty, punky and funky, Warmduscher are a<br />
collection of misfits who are not only keeping the<br />
spirit of The Fall alive, they’re also the best band<br />
you’ve not yet heard. For now…<br />
WARMDUSCHER are still an unknown gem within the post-punk resurgence.<br />
They’re even unknown to some fans of the band’s other projects. To start off,<br />
Warmduscher are a supergroup, of sorts, that formed in 2014, supposedly at a<br />
New Year’s Eve house party in London. They comprise of members of Childhood,<br />
Fat White Family and Paranoid London. They don’t hold back on being wild, weird and unlike<br />
any of their respected peers or any other band today. Their stage names (Clams Baker Jr., Jack<br />
Everett, The Saulcano, Mr Salt Fingers Lovecraft and The Witherer aka Little Whiskers) give<br />
you just an inkling of what I mean by wild and weird and, perhaps, what to expect from the<br />
Warmduscher sound.<br />
The band have gained a reputation for their live shows which are mainly improvised. Some<br />
shows have resulted in members being kicked out mid-set or walking off. Stories such as this<br />
certainly had me intrigued to see them on their next UK tour, which hits The Shipping Forecast in<br />
<strong>October</strong>. They’ve also gained notoriety and interest with their surreal music videos, with Noisey<br />
calling the video for The Sweet Smell Of Florida “the weirdest shit to appear in our inbox”. Quite an<br />
achievement.<br />
Their first album Khaki Tears, released three years ago, cemented their place as an act not to be<br />
messed with. Tracks such as The Salamander offered us unadulterated fuzzy sleaze sounds similar<br />
to The Fall or even guitarist Saul’s main project, Fat White Family. But where next? It was quite a<br />
wait, but I’m sure many weren’t expecting Whale City, with its discernable level of development,<br />
when it dropped this year. It’s an album that seems funkier and smarter in a sense, and it’s even<br />
been compared to the likes of Funkadelic. Even better, Whale City hasn’t lost that fuzzy, simmering<br />
sound from the band’s debut. In fact, Whale City appears to have gained a clear concept, more<br />
transatlantic in nature, making it all the more interesting and exciting.<br />
But I’m curious to know more about this band. There’s a lot of mystery surrounding them, a lot<br />
of unanswered questions for a band mainly described as a ‘supergroup’ or a ‘side project’ by the<br />
press and critics. How does one manage creative control within a band of big personalities? How<br />
does a band like this keep it together? Does it sometimes feel like you’re in the shadow of something<br />
separate? There are also plenty of unanswered questions about their onstage antics, and how they<br />
feel about them. Are they intentional? Do they add to the live experience or take away from the<br />
music? Are the band elusive or do they just let the music do the talking?<br />
Georgia Turnbull speaks to Lightnin’ Jack Everett and Clams Baker Jr. hoping to delve further into<br />
the band’s mind and discover some of these answers. We’ll let you judge if the ensuing conversation<br />
about musically endorsed microwave meals throws up enough of those sought-after answers.<br />
You guys formed at a London house party in 2014, right? How did come about and what made<br />
you decide to keep working together?<br />
Jack: It came together by accident and working together since than moment was never difficult, so<br />
we kept doing it. And that’s all I can think of. There was no trying; it was just easy. That’s basically<br />
99 per cent of the reason Warmduscher are still going. But we didn’t start at that house party, we<br />
formed together in AA meetings. That’s how me and Clams met anyway. We met The Witherer at a<br />
blimp convention.<br />
Various members of the band have separate projects such as Fat White Family and Childhood.<br />
How do you manage creative control within the band?<br />
Jack: It’s anyone game, whoever wants to take control can. Sometimes it’s me; sometimes it’s<br />
someone else. It’s nobody’s and everyone’s at the same time. We work with a ‘whatever happens,<br />
happens’ ethos. And if you don’t like it, you get whipped in the legs by one of the other band<br />
members [laughs].<br />
Your live shows have gained quite a lot of attention from critics and music fans. Some would say<br />
notoriety. Why do you think that is? Are you more focused on live shows than recording?<br />
Clams: I’d say we’re a live band. I think a lot of shows turn out the way they do because of the<br />
nature of the music we play. With Whale City, we have a set built up of practised songs. Before<br />
then, we’d improvise half of the set, which was great but now it’s definitely more structured. Now all<br />
we need is matching suits.<br />
Your new album Whale City sounds more influenced by the other side of Atlantic in comparison<br />
to the debut. What inspired that change and what inspired the album in general?<br />
Clams: It wasn’t anything intentional; it was just how we started playing. We began by playing the<br />
songs for the album live, but we recorded it so quickly that no concept was planned or anything<br />
like that. We didn’t really know what it would sound like until we went into the studio and began<br />
recording it. We made the album, then the ideas and images of Whale City followed. Jack and I<br />
came up with the song names and lyrics, so it became conceptual in the sense that the titles tell a<br />
story but it wasn’t set out to be one, none of us have the energy or brains to intentionally create a<br />
concept album. It was more a desire to record the songs that inspired its making.<br />
Jack: The songs were written before we really had the songs down, kind of because loads of songs<br />
were taken from live shows. The lyrics were conceptual but we didn’t know what the outcome<br />
would sound like, to be honest. Then Dan Carey and Alexis Smith – producers of Whale City –<br />
did a good job of that, they didn’t tell us what to do that much but they created a good working<br />
environment for us. They gave us a constructive pressure. The time constraint was an obvious<br />
pressure, but it didn’t feel stressed out. They were really good in that way, that and making the<br />
album sound amazing.<br />
Finally, are there any future plans for Warmduscher?<br />
Jack: After the UK tour with our friends Silent K, I think we’ll start working on a new album. It’s kind<br />
of the thing to do. Maybe then a line of microwave meals, it’s an untapped market that needs to be<br />
tapped. !<br />
Words: Georgia Turnbull / @GoergiaRTbull<br />
Photography: Jack Parker<br />
warmduscher.bandcamp.com<br />
Warmduscher play Shipping Forecast on 16th <strong>October</strong>. Whale City is out now via The Leaf Label.<br />
32
FESTIVAL<br />
Liverpool Disco Festival<br />
Camp and Furnace – 13/10<br />
Evelyn Champagne King<br />
In recent years, Liverpool Disco Festival has proven to be one<br />
of the brightest lights in the city’s autumn schedule. Staying<br />
true to form, the festival’s mirror ball will be turning its gaze<br />
back to the Baltic Triangle where it will unload a plethora of<br />
soulful grooves and rhythmic spinners throughout the day.<br />
Camp and Furnace’s multiple event spaces will be packed to<br />
the rafters with selectors shipped in for the festivities, some<br />
of which include DANNY KRIVIT, HORSE MEAT DISCO, KON<br />
and LAKUTI. The festival will also be honoured with live<br />
performances from CRAZY P and one of the unmistakable<br />
voices of disco, EVELYN ‘CHAMPAGNE’ KING.<br />
GIG<br />
Sophie<br />
24 Kitchen Street – 20/10<br />
SOPHIE is as innovative as they come. The Scotland native’s most<br />
recent LP, Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, only serves to cement her<br />
place as a contemporary star with an abundance of artistic quality.<br />
Utilising a combination of analogue gear and digital effects, she’s<br />
been able to wire together a sound that’s as effervescent as it is<br />
thought provoking. Her layered music will be on display in what<br />
should prove to be one of the most rewarding exhibitions of artistic<br />
creativity this autumn. Her Liverpool debut at Kitchen Street is not<br />
one to be looked past for any lovers of leftfield wonderment.<br />
Sophie<br />
THEATRE<br />
A Taste Of Honey<br />
Epstein Theatre – 09/10-13/10<br />
One of the finest moments in the British kitchen sink canon<br />
comes to the Epstein Theatre this month. Inspiration to artists<br />
from Morrissey to Akira The Don, Shelagh Delaney’s universally<br />
acclaimed A TASTE OF HONEY tells a stormy domestic tale set in<br />
1950s Salford. The story also became a high watermark of British<br />
cinema with the 1961 adaptation directed by Tony Richardson.<br />
Liverpudlian actor Sharon Byatt heads up the cast at the Epstein<br />
when the award-winning Daniel Taylor production comes to<br />
Hanover Street.<br />
GIG<br />
Whitechapel Fundraiser #2<br />
Invisible Wind Factory – 27/10<br />
From post-punk to the freakscene via psych, a diverse musical offer has been assembled<br />
for this show which has the dual aim of raising money for homelessness and housing<br />
charity The Whitechapel Centre. London-based noise rock groove machine PUNCHING<br />
SWANS head up the shindig, bringing a ferocious blast of invective that sets the<br />
template for the kind of show on offer. Rollicking blues meisters THE CUBICAL also<br />
join the fray, alongside a host of Merseyside grot ’n’ roll luminaries: YAMMERER, BISCH<br />
NADAR and event hosts CRIKEY, IT’S THE COMPTONS. As the country’s homelessness<br />
epidemic deepens, this is a timely reminder that we must not let this issue drop off a<br />
socialist agenda.<br />
GIG<br />
Jack White<br />
Echo Arena – 20/10<br />
Jack White<br />
In recent years JACK WHITE has cut something of a revolutionary figure in his flag-wielding defence of honourable rock<br />
music. Throughout this quest to ensure the guitar-toting male figure isn’t washed way into echoing streams of the blues,<br />
he’s pumped out a consistent flow of future-facing music (as well as launching vinyl into space), perhaps most notably<br />
this year’s Boarding House Reach. In support of the album, the Detroit native will be descending on the Echo Arena with<br />
a live show of sonic exploration and audience limitation (or enhancement, depending on how you look at it). The show will<br />
be mobile phone free, aiming to eradicate the familiar fixture of gig goers watching the show through the camera lens, as<br />
opposed to watching with their eyes and really feelin’ it, man. Partying by the rules never seemed so rock ’n’ roll.<br />
GIG<br />
In Good Company: Phosphorescent and BC Camplight<br />
Grand Central Hall – 26/10<br />
The reopening of The Dome, following refurbishments, brings a new dimension to prospective gig<br />
spaces in Liverpool. The theatre-like room, officially known as Grand Central Hall, may appear a<br />
formidable stage to fill, such is the ornateness of its furnishings. However, this appears to be no barrier<br />
to Harvest Sun. Rather, it’s been something of an inspiration, with the promotors jumping at the chance<br />
to stage a number of shows at the venue in the coming months. One of which will be the first edition<br />
of In Good Company, an event we can expect to see return annually. The first of its kind will be sound<br />
tracked by indie virtuoso PHOSPHORESCENT and the equally talented BC CAMPLIGHT, with further<br />
acts set to be announced.<br />
BC Camplight<br />
PREVIEWS 33
PREVIEWS<br />
GIG<br />
Jane Weaver:<br />
Loops In The Secret Society<br />
Leaf – 18/10<br />
JANE WEAVER, fresh off the back of her 2017 release Modern<br />
Kosmology, is set to embark on a sense-alluring audio visual tour this<br />
autumn. The Cheshire native will return to familiar surroundings when<br />
the tour reaches Liverpool where she will take to the stage at Bold<br />
Street’s Leaf. The tour itself appears ambitious and multi-disciplinary<br />
in its approach. Weaver will be bringing together music from her latest<br />
LP and previous release, The Silver Globe, which will be modified and<br />
reworked to complement the accompanying audio-visual display.<br />
Jane Weaver<br />
GIG<br />
Superorganism<br />
Arts Club – 16/10<br />
While SUPERORGANISM’s musical biology may have<br />
only surfaced quite recently, the cosmopolitan collective<br />
have already left quite a big impression. Their evolution<br />
reached its most distinctive marker to date with the<br />
release of their debut record album, shortly followed by a<br />
memorable appearance at Sound City. Once again in the<br />
Mersey Riviera, all eight of this particular organism will<br />
be journeying up from their adopted London homes for a<br />
blissful display of musical community.<br />
Superorganism<br />
GIG<br />
Seabass featuring Meatraffle<br />
Sound Basement – 27/10<br />
The JO MARY crew have pulled another winner out of the bag in their ongoing<br />
series of <strong>2018</strong> shows at Duke Street’s happening venue. For their massive Seabass<br />
all-dayer they’ve snared Trashmouth noiseniks MEATRAFFLE to headline, bringing a<br />
dash of Soviet-skewed jazz-skronk to a show that will make your teeth rattle in their<br />
sockets. BLACK MIDI were being hailed (by Shame) as the “best band in London”<br />
before most of us even knew they even existed. Details on them are still scratchy, but<br />
their appearance here is hardly one you can miss given the reputation that precedes<br />
them. STARLIGHT MAGIC HOUR, ILL, MOLD, SPILT, WILD FRUIT ART COLLECTIVE,<br />
HANNAH AND THE WICK EFFECT… the insane line-up continues in this vein, but<br />
you’ve already made your mind up at this point. See you in the moshpit.<br />
GIG<br />
Noya Rao<br />
Alexander’s Live – 18/10<br />
Alexander’s is quickly establishing itself as the groove garrison<br />
of Deeside with the likes of Skinny Pembele and Oxman already<br />
gracing the stage there this year. Leeds-based electronic soul group<br />
NOYA RAO are next up at the venue. Supporting their debut album,<br />
released on Gondwana Records last year, their dreamy danceable<br />
electronica is sure to go down well in Alexander’s idiosyncratic<br />
enclave. The project of producer Tom Henry, who has laid down<br />
tracks with Yellow Days and Cosima, the quartet’s unique style<br />
draws on jazz, soul and electronica and provide a live show worth<br />
jumping on the Merseyrail for.<br />
The Orb<br />
GIG<br />
The Orb<br />
Invisible Wind Factory – 18/10<br />
Hot on the heels of critically acclaimed new album No Sounds Are Out Of<br />
Bounds, longstanding electronic titans THE ORB return to the live stage in<br />
celebration of 30 illustrious, fun-filled and envelope-expanding years. The<br />
celebratory show will feature a 30th Anniversary Greatest Hits set highlighting<br />
the best of Alex Paterson’s troupe’s global sound, that has stretched from acid<br />
house and ambient electronica to hip hop and minimalism across 15 albums<br />
and numerous EPs and singles.<br />
CLUB<br />
Daniel Avery and Four Tet<br />
ENRG @ Invisible Wind Factory – 05/10<br />
Acquiring the services of DANIEL AVERY and FOUR TET as separate entities is more than<br />
enough to turn the heads of the local electronic music circles. Pairing the two on the same bill,<br />
for two all night long sets? Well, it’s a fair to say ENRG’s return following a summer hiatus has<br />
been well worth the wait. Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, is a true musical intellectual, with a<br />
career that’s conjured albums which continually shift between experimental orchestration and<br />
more dance-orientated structure. An array of selections lacking a conventional compass, though<br />
always led with a steady hand, is to be expected in the main room. Daniel Avery’s subterranean<br />
soundscapes have catapulted around the tight confines of clubs for the past decade and will be<br />
primed and ready as he steers proceedings in the Substation.<br />
Daniel Avery<br />
34
GIG<br />
The Allergies<br />
Brick Street – 04/10<br />
Bristol’s B-boys THE ALLERGIES and Ugly Duckling’s Andy<br />
Cooper will bring their infectious hip hop and rare groove to<br />
Brick Street in <strong>October</strong>. The trio of collaborators are on their UK<br />
tour following the release of The Allergies’ third album Steal The<br />
Show, with resident and Bonsai Hi-Fi founder Pooky on the bill,<br />
too. Over the course of two funk-fuelled albums on Jalapeño<br />
Records the dynamic duo of DJ Moneyshot and Rackabeat have<br />
been on a tireless schedule of non-stop partying across Europe,<br />
rocking up at Glastonbury and the legendary Space in Ibiza. The<br />
event also coincides with Brick Street’s Hip Hop Fancy Dress<br />
Party, which isn’t solely reserved for freshers (honest).<br />
FILM<br />
On The Waterfront<br />
Philharmonic Hall – 13/10<br />
ON THE WATERFRONT, with eight academy awards to its<br />
name, is regarded as one of the most complete pieces of<br />
cinema of the 20th Century. With starring roles from Marlon<br />
Brando and Karl Malden, and a directing credit from Elia<br />
Kazan, the film certainly isn’t lacking in credentials to make a<br />
strong case for such a reputation. Rounding off its complete<br />
sound and vision experience is an arresting original score<br />
provided by Leonard Bernstein. In a special screening of the<br />
film at the Liverpool Philharmonic, this very score will be<br />
performed live by the philharmonic orchestra to add a whole<br />
new dynamic this already compelling cinematic experience.<br />
GIG<br />
Our Girl<br />
Sound Basement – 21/10<br />
OUR GIRL have grown quite accustomed to the Merseyside<br />
landscape having opted to record their debut album,<br />
Stranger Today, with Bill Ryder-Jones on production duties.<br />
With that in mind, it’ll be a homecoming show of sorts<br />
when the trio return to the land of their recording muse.<br />
The band’s debut is an honest account of the trio’s shared<br />
ambition once mused over and now realised on record.<br />
Its stirring presence is compounded in raw lyricism and<br />
instrumentation, often masked behind a healthy dose of<br />
visceral pedal board action. So, go on, lend your time and<br />
ears to these Merseyside adoptees.<br />
TALK<br />
Jenny Hval: Paradise Rot<br />
The Bluecoat – 25/10<br />
This Norwegian polyglot is a formidable intellect, developing<br />
through her music and writings an uncompromising view on<br />
politics and sexuality. Her music and prose share the same sharp<br />
characteristic which has now become her signature. Now her<br />
upcoming appearance at The Bluecoat offers a rare chance to pick<br />
the brains of this rare talent. Her appearance marks a momentous<br />
occasion for the author and musician’s career; the publication of her<br />
lyrical debut novel, Paradise Rot, which is appearing in English in<br />
the first time. In conversation, HVAL lets us into the novel’s heady<br />
world of queer desire.<br />
Jenny Hval<br />
Lou Sanders<br />
COMEDY<br />
Comedy Weekend<br />
Storyhouse – 27/10-28/10<br />
While the dust still settles on the Edinburgh Fringe, Storyhouse Chester<br />
have wasted no time in getting in their pick of stand-up talent for their<br />
first Comedy Weekend. Alongside household names ADAM HILLS<br />
and THE HORNE SECTION there are some under the radar treasures<br />
that deserve your attention. Hotly-tipped panel-show-botherer LOU<br />
SANDERS is one such act. Another is BRETT GOLDSTEIN, whose<br />
appearance on sitcoms Uncle and Derek may make him familiar to some.<br />
Get over to Chester’s Hunter Street venue early to see the fantastic<br />
MATTHEW CROSBY and TOM ROSENTHAL for more laughs. More info<br />
at storyhouse.com.<br />
GIG<br />
Hollie Cook<br />
District – 09/10<br />
HOLLIE COOK’s much-lauded solo career brings her to Liverpool as she tours her latest album,<br />
Vessel Of Love. With support from Positive Vibration DJs, Cook combines her vocal prowess and<br />
charming stage presence for an unforgettable performance, the result of a seasoned artist and<br />
professional who has spent her life around musicians and performance. The daughter of Sex<br />
Pistols drummer Paul Cook, she was part of the final line-up for iconic post-punk band The Slits.<br />
Now she brings her self-described ‘tropical pop’ to District. Get yourself along to witness this<br />
classic talent’s unique spin on reggae.<br />
Hollie Cook<br />
GIG<br />
Bido Lito! Social w/ Pale Rider<br />
The Jacaranda – 25/10<br />
Pale Rider<br />
We love PALE RIDER’s wondrous racket, the turbo-charged stomp<br />
that swirls with hints of Hawkwind, early Verve and the psych slew of<br />
The Black Angels. The quartet of Ben Russell, Fran Codman, Sophie<br />
Thompson and Louis Dutton know a thing or two about groove, and<br />
we’re made up that they’re going to be bringing it to our monthly Social,<br />
alongside fellow eardrum-botherers SAMURAI KIP. It’s going to be a<br />
wild old ride in The Jac’s basement – and remember, Bido Lito! members<br />
get free access to all of our Socials. Head to bidolito.co.uk to see what<br />
other perks you can get when you sign up.<br />
PREVIEWS 35
sept & october<br />
sept 29 hollywood eyes + support<br />
oct 4 cool it<br />
oct 5 metrocolor sound presents: daisy starspeed<br />
oct 6 top of the hill presents<br />
oct 12 scruff of the neck presents: urban theory<br />
oct 17 evol presents: the velveteers<br />
oct 20 capeesh presents: kick.out #8<br />
oct 21 sink soul club<br />
oct 24 i love live: husky loops<br />
oct 26 two birds and m.e.a.n present: liberty ship<br />
oct 27 bribes single launch<br />
oct 29 vinyl junkie presents: jean pierre & three from<br />
above<br />
oct 30 evol presents: black waters
BOOK NOW<br />
big blues<br />
festival<br />
–<br />
FRI 12 – SAT 13<br />
OCTOBER ‘18<br />
theatkinson.co.uk<br />
–<br />
01704 533333<br />
Dr Feelgood<br />
Ian Siegal<br />
Sam Kelly’s Station House<br />
Xander and the Peace Pirates<br />
Rebecca Downes<br />
Tom C Walker<br />
George & George<br />
Acoustic Blues Stage<br />
Join us in Southport for a<br />
great weekend celebrating<br />
rock, rhythm & blues!<br />
Festival Tickets: £48<br />
Saturday Ticket: £35<br />
#BluesFest
REVIEWS<br />
“As I watched Maria<br />
onstage scream<br />
and shout about the<br />
revolution, I can’t<br />
help but wonder, the<br />
revolution for whom?”<br />
Riot Days (Stuart Moulding / @oohshootstu)<br />
Riot Days<br />
Pussy Riot presents @ Arts Club – 22/08<br />
A man in front of me collecting his guestlist ticket seems<br />
disappointed the girl on the door doesn’t respond when he says<br />
thanks in Russian. Really, that sums up the common western<br />
attitude to PUSSY RIOT, and perhaps even Russian politics in<br />
general. We view Pussy Riot’s Russian background as quirky and<br />
a commodity; we fetishise and demonise the eastern state as<br />
being on one hand mysterious and on the other viciously cruel.<br />
Western news sights are so biased in their portrayal of Russia<br />
that to find any factual information on what is actually happening<br />
is not only difficult, but more often than not it’s misleading. I say<br />
this because you can’t really appreciate Pussy Riot, and tonight’s<br />
Riot Days performance, without some sort of context in which<br />
Pussy Riot exist. Without the political and activist motivations<br />
behind this performance, it is nothing.<br />
It’s not musical; anyone who had come along for a dance is<br />
bitterly disappointed. Riot Days’ musical backdrop is very much<br />
just that, a backdrop to the spoken word of Pussy Riot founding<br />
member and tonight’s frontwoman Maria Alyokhina. For context,<br />
in 2012 Pussy Riot performed two main feats of activism, most<br />
notably storming Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in<br />
protest of the Church’s right-wing presence on the Russian<br />
political environment. This resulted in the arrest of Alyokhina,<br />
along with Nadya Tolokonnikova and a prison sentence of two<br />
years for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. Later, a<br />
third member was arrested, and in 2014 all three were released<br />
under amnesty. Since then the group’s guerrilla antics have<br />
made appearances at the Sochi Winter Olympics and the FIFA<br />
World Cup final. All this has made them, in the west at least,<br />
unrivalled feminist heroes. We love to champion Pussy Riot<br />
because, to us, nothing could be more punk rock than fighting a<br />
system we perceive to be as evil as Russia. And yet our media<br />
champions Pussy Riot because it confirms their bias that Russia<br />
is the ultimate evil. That very well might be true: Alyokhina’s<br />
documentation of her time in prison and her treatment by<br />
Russian officials and police is little less than horrifying. Straight<br />
out of Orwellian dystopia, there is little more evil than torturing<br />
three young people for questioning the corruption of a state. This<br />
is something empathetically highlighted in tonight’s performance.<br />
As Maria, or as she is addressed tonight, Marsha, comes to<br />
the stage donning her iconic blue balaclava, she is meet by a<br />
roaring room. The energy is strange; in his introduction the host<br />
asks us to act as punk rock as possible and yet the low tempo,<br />
often ambient bleeps and bloops of the synths chill you out<br />
rather than fire you up. As Alyokhina starts her performance,<br />
entirely in Russian with English subtitles, you’re instantly given<br />
an insight into the world of Pussy Riot: how they hatched the<br />
plan, the reaction, the feeling, the emotion. Regardless of your<br />
opinion on Pussy Riot, it is interesting. In an age where most<br />
punk bands went to music school and fund their bohemian<br />
lifestyle via their dad’s bank balance, Pussy Riot are at very least<br />
a change in the pace of modern punk. Yet, this seems at odds<br />
with their behaviour post-release. Nadya opened an art show<br />
– Inside Pussy Riot – at London’s Saatchi Gallery, where paying<br />
punters have a chance to walk around in a colourful balaclava,<br />
hold a sign that says ‘Share the World’s Wealth’ and then meet<br />
at the end for pricey Prosecco and posh nibbles. Is this a sell out?<br />
A contradiction? Or is this milking rich idiots to fund activism?<br />
Both Nadya and Maria appeared on Netflix drama House Of<br />
Cards, as themselves, criticising a Putin-based character. Nothing<br />
spells out punk rock more than a Netflix Originals cameo. But<br />
who wouldn’t? Perhaps we hold our standards too high for our<br />
punk icons; perhaps after spending two years in Russian prison,<br />
of which a large portion was in solitary confinement, there is<br />
nothing wrong at all with cashing in. I would agree, but I feel as if<br />
these high standards are set by Maria and Nadya themselves.<br />
Riot Days is a performance filled with aggressive intent;<br />
fists go flying in the air, slogans such as ‘YOU ARE PUSSY<br />
RIOT’ flash on the screen. It’s being sold to us as authentic, and<br />
yet we’re all left questioning, ‘Is it?’ There must be something<br />
severely wrong if you can do two years hard time for activism<br />
and people still doubt your cred. For me, it has been the outing<br />
of tonight’s frontwoman Maria, and her links to the Russian<br />
far-right Orthodox Christian group God’s Will, the very group<br />
that campaigned publicly for Pussy Riot’s incarceration. Pre-<br />
Riot Days (Stuart Moulding / @oohshootstu)<br />
Pussy Riot, God’s Will was a little known far-right group, their<br />
main intent to be anti-LGBTQ+, to attack pride parades, and to<br />
intimidate LGBTQ+ groups. However, during the trial of Pussy<br />
Riot, God’s Will surged to fame in Russia, as they echoed a<br />
common sentiment publicly, that Pussy Riot deserved a prison<br />
sentence for religious hatred. Some would call Maria and God’s<br />
Will leader Dmitry Enteo’s relationship forbidden, secret and<br />
proof that love can conquer all. More cynically, I believe it to be<br />
that Pussy Riot was always more about Pussy Riot’s notoriety<br />
than enacting real social change. I don’t believe anyone who is<br />
as politically minded as Maria would be able to forgive Dmitry<br />
Enteo’s actions, both physically against the LGBTQ+ people he<br />
has attacked and politically against the far-right fascism that<br />
he stands for. More obscurely, Maria’s attitude to this news<br />
circulating has been suspicious to say the least: The Daily Beast<br />
reported that when interviewing Maria in New York, the interview<br />
was stopped whenever Enteo was mentioned. While Nadya<br />
talked about a friend who was “fucking a fascist” in an interview<br />
last year.<br />
So, as I watch Maria onstage scream and shout about the<br />
revolution, I can’t help but wonder, the revolution for whom? For<br />
women? What about lesbian women? What about trans women?<br />
There is no doubt in my mind that a force against Putin is<br />
essential, but should we so blindly believe what we are being<br />
sold. Which brings me back to my first point, we view Pussy<br />
Riot’s Russian origin as a quirk and a commodity. You can wear<br />
your balaclava, you can buy the book, you can pay £145 to go to<br />
the immersive experience, but in the words of Gil Scott-Heron,<br />
if “the revolution will not be televised”, be dubious at how much<br />
Pussy Riot have made it onto your TV. !<br />
Esme Grace Brown / @catmilf123<br />
38
“It’s dirty, noisy,<br />
tuneful, dark and so<br />
twistedly rhythmic that<br />
when you find out the<br />
author is a librarian it<br />
doesn’t compute”<br />
A Day In The Sun (Georgia Flynn / @georgiaflynncreative)<br />
A Day In The Sun<br />
Emotion Wave @ Birkenhead Priory – 25/08<br />
Maritime or religious? These are the bizarre surroundings<br />
in which a group of ‘itk’ folk have found themselves today.<br />
Birkenhead Priory is the oldest standing building on Merseyside.<br />
It’s awkwardly picturesque with swathes of the rebuilt aspects<br />
dominating the fight against the rusting cranes that sit old and<br />
proud next to it. Built in 1150 it was where the monks helped<br />
people across the river and, no doubt, back again. It is a tidy part<br />
of Birkenhead and the locals are very proud of this remaining<br />
piece of Merseyside architectural history.<br />
But it’s <strong>2018</strong>. The Priory is looked after by helpers that strive<br />
to keep the building and its frontage alive. They do a sterling job<br />
and so eyebrows are raised when Wirral New Music Collective<br />
decide to help promoters Emotion Wave put on an ‘all-dayer’ at<br />
the front of the impressively elderly church. Because when you<br />
see the religious iconography of this sandstone brick building, of<br />
course it screams ‘post-punk’ and ‘IDM beats’. OK. It doesn’t, but<br />
A Day In The Sun is a worthy and inspiring attempt at making<br />
Emotion Wave break out of the cosy and cool confines of 81<br />
Renshaw.<br />
THE JUPITER ROOM is a radio broadcast and one-man<br />
electronica obsessive Mike Stanton. He is Wirralian, and his<br />
knowledge of his subject knows no bounds. It does seem a<br />
shame to shove him on stage at 11.15 in the morning, but it’s a<br />
lovely sunny day (thankfully for the marketing department) and<br />
The Jupiter Room seems nervously happy to be here. DJ sets at<br />
ungodly hours are a chore. Not this. The core of what Emotion<br />
Wave stands for is expertly demonstrated with a 55-minute<br />
set that veers between the gorgeously sublime and the angrily<br />
industrial. Skam’s Blackpool sample guru VHS Head gets things<br />
started and the well-thought-out set comprises of the clattering<br />
pop of The KVB, the gentle decaying of Brian Eno (from the<br />
underrated Nerve Net, no less) and stopping off at Meat Beat<br />
Manifesto, Leftfield, Belbury Circle and King Of Woolworths.<br />
Sprinkle on a smattering of newbies (Jacob 2-2, Blackhill<br />
Transmitter and the wonderful Makeup And Vanity Set) and<br />
here’s a radio show writ large on any electronic radio bucket list.<br />
Go search and peer into his damaged box of dark pop delights.<br />
The headliner TVAM is playing to a happy few as the remains<br />
of the sun slips behind us, creating a haunting view of the church<br />
and an eerily demonic backdrop for Wiganer Joe Oxley to begin<br />
the campaign to promote his brilliant debut album Psychic Data.<br />
He’s all bigtime now the single has made the BBC 6Music playlist<br />
and there’s a national tour in the pipeline. So, Emotion Wave are<br />
humbled that he’s kick-starting everything off outside a disused<br />
church in Birkenhead.<br />
To be honest the surroundings suit the noise. His version<br />
of angry post-punk – more of a tantrum morphing into a sharp<br />
slap in the face – should be at odds with the ornate and flyblown<br />
backdrop. But as the set opens with the album’s title track, Oxley<br />
is gazing downward at his vast array of pedals as his television<br />
that stands proudly alongside him, belches out DIY cut and<br />
pasted video scrawls, idents and visually damaged feedback. The<br />
TV draws you in and allows the TVAM experience to stamp on<br />
your ears whilst you allow it to happen.<br />
The debut single Porsche Majeure is still possibly the way all<br />
artists that like post punk should aspire to. It’s dirty, noisy, tuneful,<br />
dark and so twistedly rhythmic that when you find out the author<br />
is a librarian it doesn’t compute. These Are Not Your Memories is<br />
the track that everyone is getting excited about. Steam-hammer<br />
synths and minimal punky guitars cascade over mumbled and<br />
anxious lyrics. Oxley’s tremendous fringe flops sourly over the<br />
mic and he grapples with his guitar as images of 80s pretty boys<br />
getting their hair cut on the screen do make you wonder what the<br />
hell is going on in Wigan’s libraries to create this.<br />
Even when the lights go up, TVAM extends the final psychsynth<br />
wig-out Total Immersion to give the rusting, yellowing<br />
cranes something to dance about. And then it stops, infuriatingly.<br />
It’s going to be album of the year. He is one of the cleverest new<br />
artists this writer has seen in a while and the gig in November<br />
at EBGBS is essential as Joe will have tweaked the set and the<br />
album will have bedded in. Be there. Or at least go and support<br />
Emotion Wave. It’s a serious glimpse into the future of artificial<br />
life. !<br />
Ian Abraham / @scrash<br />
A Day In The Sun (Mook Loxley / mookloxley.tumblr.com)<br />
TVAM (Georgia Flynn / @georgiaflynncreative)<br />
REVIEWS 39
REVIEWS<br />
Protomartyr (Tomas Adam)<br />
Sauna Youth (Tomas Adam)<br />
Protomartyr<br />
+ Sauna Youth<br />
+ Eyesore And The Jinx<br />
EVOL @ O2 Academy 2 – 30/08<br />
Regular visitors to this parish should already know about<br />
EYESORE AND THE JINX. They are possibly the best new band<br />
in the region. Their potential is huge, almost as big of the sound<br />
they create. It’s gnarly, angry, bass-driven slabs of damaged<br />
guitar pop. It evokes a hybrid of the Blues Explosion, Grinderman<br />
and The Voidz. The early arrivals are here just for them, they<br />
know and play like their lives depend on it. It’s incredible. Nurture<br />
them with your presence.<br />
SAUNA YOUTH are three albums in. They were asked by<br />
the headliners to support which is always a good sign. Two<br />
songs in and you can see why. There’s an early 90s vibe to this<br />
London-based four-piece. It’s edgy with a healthy dollop of<br />
anorak fanzine chic. The stage is overly littered with various pot<br />
plants, which doesn’t really give a homely feel to proceedings. It<br />
distracts from what is a very tight and fluid set of rather excellent<br />
dark indie pop tunes. New Fear is brash and swarthy, while<br />
Monotony is anything but with its yelping and repetitive chorus.<br />
Jen Calleja cuts a slightly nervous figure as a lead but her voice is<br />
a great instrument and by the time they reach the high-point of<br />
Transmitters, her fragile confidence is scowling into the mic, her<br />
eyes at one with the crowd. After 13 songs, which is apparently<br />
“loads”, they scuttle off back to their transit van and a four-hour<br />
slog to that London, safe in the knowledge that Liverpool really<br />
took to them, and their plants.<br />
After the greenery has been painstakingly cleared, the<br />
sparseness of the stage is making the room feel like the Echo Arena<br />
and Detroit’s PROTOMARTYR have just the sound to fill it. Having<br />
had their third album released by Domino, the four-piece seem like<br />
they’ve been doing this for decades. Although you could be fooled<br />
by that assumption as lead ‘singer’ Joe Casey lurches onto the<br />
stage, drink in hand and shirt nicely ironed. Maybe the right word<br />
is ‘staggered’ as the opener is pure Mark E. Smith. The diction, the<br />
prose and the delivery screams ‘FALL’. Thankfully, that’s where it<br />
ends as the 15-song set gets better and better and better.<br />
There’s performance here that seems part planned and part<br />
shambles. Casey is every inch the anti-frontman. Slurping from<br />
a can of nasty lager as the band veers between The Jesus Lizard<br />
and Hüsker Dü, he is prowling the front line like a disheveled<br />
comedian who has fallen from grace. Eager to get one more<br />
laugh from the crowd, failing and not caring, all the while with<br />
an air of that bloke at closing time that won’t leave you alone.<br />
Windsor Hum is a highlight, its choppy guitar lines feeding Casey<br />
with the energy to rant and leer, his erratic movements becoming<br />
more intense as the lager kicks in. Why Does It Shake? gets the<br />
plaudits, though, for ending the set on a heavy and driving skullpounding<br />
noise as Casey is virtually screaming.<br />
It’s a surprise success for this writer; it’s entertainment on<br />
the rocks, methodically interwoven with absolute chaos and fair<br />
play to the enthusiastic Thursday night town crowd for helping it<br />
along. The sound of new Detroit is guitar-heavy and a bit pissed.<br />
Or is that pissed off? No matter. It’s a beautiful noise.<br />
Ian Abraham / @scrash<br />
Haley Heynderickx<br />
+ Charlie McKeon<br />
+ Rachael Jean Harris<br />
Harvest Sun @ 81 Renshaw – 24/08<br />
In March of this year, HALEY HEYNDERICKX delivered I<br />
Need To Start A Garden, an album of tender, delicate melodies,<br />
and finely crafted folk moments, high on emotion and steeped in<br />
personality. These are songs of someone trying to understand<br />
others, while trying to understand herself. Her haunting and<br />
haunted vocals, at once pure and understated, seem to leave<br />
the melodies almost hanging in the air, floating across the finger<br />
picked rhythms of her guitar. The appeal of her writing – and<br />
there’s a lot of appeal – is in the warmth, the subtlety and the<br />
restraint. It’s all for the sake of the song.<br />
Our evening of well-crafted song, of rich melody and strong,<br />
intelligent lyrics begins well when RACHAEL JEAN HARRIS<br />
appears onstage. Truly gifted, with a voice capable of carrying<br />
clear and often raw soul and emotion, her melodies seem to find<br />
their natural place, almost unaided. Natural, intuitive and utterly<br />
spellbinding. There are songs of confinement, of the oppressive<br />
nature of isolation and the damage it can do. Sublimely imagined<br />
and perfectly delivered over her skilled guitar work, there’s pain<br />
in these songs, a real edge and, in some places, a welcome<br />
melancholy. Finishing with Hair Of The Moon, a song from this<br />
year which sounds older than its time, somehow more familiar<br />
than it should be, is a fine example classic songwriting. They<br />
should teach this kind of thing. Soul and depth.<br />
CHARLIE MCKEON is a fine fellow. A ridiculously talented<br />
writer and performer, steeped in the rich tradition of English and<br />
Irish folk, of the Appalachians, and of performers such as John<br />
Martyn and Davy Graham. He’s as comfortable with traditional<br />
folk song as he is in writing about apple pie. And write about<br />
Apple Pie he does. Wonderfully. Better than anyone else, I’d<br />
say. McKeon’s guitar playing is a thing to behold, too, his fingers<br />
dancing effortlessly through the changes, up and down the neck.<br />
We’ve seen him play many times now, and we’re starting to really<br />
believe that some tangible product, an actual release of some<br />
shape or other, is well overdue.<br />
Dwarfed by her 12-string, Heynderickx seems genuinely<br />
surprised at the sell-out crowd at 81 Renshaw as she takes<br />
to the stage. Playing solo for over an hour, she outlines her<br />
determination to return to the UK with her band, but even on the<br />
album, the accompaniment is sparse and barely used. There’s<br />
humour here, too. Goofy, kooky takes on life, such as in The<br />
Bug Collector, where she personifies “the praying mantis in the<br />
bathtub” and “the millipede on the carpet”. “The fucker’s out to<br />
gets you,” seems incongruous against such a fragile guitar line,<br />
but it certainly makes us smile.<br />
Drinking Song, a bluesy stagger, is reminiscent of Karen<br />
Dalton’s scratched folk-blues vocal twists. As its name suggests<br />
it’s a woozy, late-night tale. The people and places, and the slow<br />
release memories of a night’s drinking. It feels apt in the tightly<br />
packed quarters of 81 Renshaw, and the crowd hang on every<br />
word. The dynamic leaps of Worth It, another album highlight,<br />
sees her moving swiftly between ethereal country-flavoured, part<br />
whispered melody, to rockier, heavier sections and back again.<br />
The melody dancing around itself, turning, twisting. It’s a song<br />
about the study of self. Introspective, critical, but hopeful.<br />
After a stunning cover of Blues Run The Game, by the<br />
brilliant and tragic Jackson C Frank, she ends the set with a<br />
mesmerising version of Oom Sha La La, which is probably I Need<br />
To Start A Garden’s most perfect pop moment, with a catchy-asyou-like<br />
chorus prompting a singalong from the crowd. It sees her<br />
resolving to throw out the sour milk, stop worrying about the gap<br />
in her teeth, to regroup, start again, stop judging herself and, yes,<br />
to start a garden.<br />
Haley Heynderickx is a writer and performer of real depth,<br />
who keeps a healthily ironic eye on life and the challenges and<br />
opportunities it brings. Everything in the garden should be rosy,<br />
and on this indication, it will be for some time to come.<br />
Paul Fitzgerald / @NothingvilleM<br />
40
Dorcas Seb<br />
Unity Theatre – 07/09<br />
The launch of DORCAS SEB’s album Vice Versa is more than a run-through of songs;<br />
an evening which allows Seb to reveal quite what a talent she clearly is. Her skills in music,<br />
poetry, dance, and acting all come into play to make the launch come together as an<br />
insightful piece of inter-disciplinary theatre.<br />
Vice Versa is almost a concept album, a story of finding a path through the anxieties of<br />
the modern world. Much art has looked at the dystopia that underlines modernity, but it’s<br />
rare to find resolution so optimistic as Seb’s. Beginning with that familiar feeling of conflict<br />
between the demands of the real world and the peace of our dreams, the story ends with<br />
her finding the liberation that comes with self-acceptance. Rather than feeling conventional<br />
or well-worn, the story works because of the conviction of her performance. You sense this<br />
isn’t just a good story, but a true one.<br />
It’s her abilities as a performer that really convince. Already given a glimpse of her<br />
vision through the ever-changing graphics projected onto three walls of the theatre, Seb<br />
also makes full use of the space to use dance as another entry point into her message.<br />
Seeing the colours and shapes gives her story a physical presence; they accompany a set<br />
of songs that take inspiration from myriad genres, from the disco-inspired drive of Feel The<br />
Music to the RnB vibes of Ice Cream. You sense that Seb has let the narrative lead the way,<br />
making decisions based on what the lyrics require to best convey the story. Her gorgeous<br />
voice, sweet and emphatic, brings it together.<br />
If the lyrics occasionally feel obvious, it’s worth bearing in mind that Vice Versa is<br />
actually still a work in progress, emerging out of a commission from Slate: Black.Arts.<br />
World. What distinctly emerges from tonight is that this process has given Seb the space<br />
to explore, to work out how she can best express her vision with confidence and clarity.<br />
This is a culmination of one creative phase, a step into the next one, and certainly proof that<br />
Dorcas Seb is a talent to keep an eye out for.<br />
Julia Johnson / @messylines__<br />
Dorcas Seb (Essod Photography / essod.photography)<br />
Life In Motion: Egon Schiele /<br />
Francesca Woodman<br />
Tate Liverpool – 24/05-23/09<br />
Life In Motion is the latest ambitious exhibition at Tate<br />
Liverpool, showcasing two of the most influential figurative<br />
artists who lived at opposite ends of the 20th Century. Self<br />
portraits, specifically nude, are fundamental to both artists’ body<br />
of work. Each examine the expressivity of human posture and<br />
Self-Portrait in Crouching Position 1913 by Egon Schiele (Roger Sinek)<br />
shape; Egon Schiele with his sharp, decisive lines and Francesca<br />
Woodman’s soft blurs of motion. This major confluence of<br />
the two collections allows us to contrast two very innovative<br />
storytellers, both connected by their ability to capture the<br />
transient nature of the living.<br />
An early exponent of expressionism, the art of Austrianborn<br />
Schiele is characterised by the unflinching, glowering<br />
sexuality of his subjects, an angular contortion of graphite limbs<br />
suggesting motion and unrest. A protégé of seminal symbolist<br />
painter Gustav Klimt, Schiele considered the hands to be one of<br />
the most expressive extensions of the body, perhaps a cunning<br />
cover story for someone who can’t actually draw them very well –<br />
we’ll call them ‘expressive’. In Self Portrait In Crouching Position,<br />
Schiele crawls onto one knee, his hands twisted into claws, his<br />
naked body momentarily coiled, energy and intensity seeping<br />
through jutting bones. During many parts of Schiele’s life, money<br />
was hard to come by. Prostitutes, street children and his own<br />
reflection became the cheapest option for a subject to draw and,<br />
because of this, Schiele’s work becomes a timeline of strong<br />
human allegories capturing love, life and death all in one.<br />
Throughout her fleeting yet productive career, American<br />
photographer Francesca Woodman continuously explored<br />
the spatial and spiritual boundaries of the human body, and<br />
like Schiele it was often her own. The rooms of the exhibition<br />
alternate between Schiele and Woodman, a continual flux<br />
of identities, grotesque and pure. The small square format of<br />
Woodman’s photographs prove the viewer with a continuous<br />
pseudo-presence, allowing you to observe her movements<br />
through a crack in the wall of the many sparse rooms she stages<br />
herself. In her Angel series, Woodman wears only a skirt and<br />
shoes leaving her chest bare. Her body blurs in a spectral motion<br />
as she jumps up, a pair of white sheets strung in the distance<br />
like a pair of arching wings. There’s something both morbid and<br />
humorous about her brand of phantasmagoria, the blurs of longexposure<br />
photography a continuous choreography.<br />
Woodman’s shifting series of illusions are often surreal,<br />
exploring the interplay of flesh and object. She disappears and<br />
appears from interior elements; a fireplace, torn wallpaper, glass<br />
cases. Much of her work is about avoiding the gaze of the viewer.<br />
She glows beneath unhinged doors, crawls into cupboards, coils<br />
face down around a bowl of eels.<br />
Many of Woodman’s images have been construed as erotic,<br />
but her photographs don’t rest under the aegis of beauty; her<br />
conscious articulation of feminism, movement and ability make<br />
them beautiful. Although, in a slightly macabre way, I wonder if we<br />
think they’re beautiful because we know she is heading towards<br />
her own destruction? Similarly, for Schiele, the unapologetic<br />
portrayal of raw human spirituality for which he was once criticised<br />
now holds a powerful relevance in contemporary art. The radicality<br />
of both short-lived artists is perpetual, a testament to their<br />
revelatory and poignant pairing in this show.<br />
Georgina Schwarz / @gsschwarz<br />
REVIEWS 41
REVIEWS<br />
Omni<br />
Harvest Sun @ The Shipping Forecast –<br />
14/08<br />
Three members, six hands but the sound of 12. You may<br />
make the mistake of thinking OMNI are from New York, sonically<br />
they could easily fit in to a high calibre lineage of art rock bands<br />
from the mean streets of Manhattan. With such wonderfully<br />
thoughtful, smart, clear and simple guitar riffs you could make<br />
comparisons to people like Tom Verlaine from Television, but<br />
in the souls of the songs there’s something very different. As I<br />
watch them I come to realise they are something quite out there<br />
on their own.<br />
Omni are from Atlanta, Georgia, and maybe it’s just me, but<br />
I really do think you can hear something of that in the songs;<br />
there’s something of the South in them; an outsider essence.<br />
A striking feature of the gig is how with only three members<br />
the band manage to produce a dense sound (Multi-task was<br />
a good album title choice). Guitarist Frank Broyles appears<br />
to be playing two riffs at a time; drummer Doug Bleichner is<br />
relentlessly thundering forward, hitting each drum with the same<br />
velocity as the last; and vocalist/bass player Philip Frobos is<br />
effortlessly plucking away at the bass strings while delivering a<br />
cool, calm and unique vocal, one that’s instantly recognisable. He<br />
does all this from a position of ease. The bass riffs themselves<br />
perfectly weave their way in between the guitar riffs that seem to<br />
be emitting from more than just one human.<br />
Omni make their way through their albums, Multi-task<br />
and Deluxe, with a sense of ease (but most certainly not<br />
complacency) in what feels like a pretty short space of time. They<br />
even have time for an unplanned encore following enthusiastic<br />
demand. For me, that’s how any good show should feel:<br />
effortless and emphatic.<br />
Chay Heney<br />
Jake Shears (Stuart Moulding / @oohshootstu)<br />
Jake Shears<br />
Arts Club – 21/08<br />
JAKE SHEARS is a star. That’s decided before he even<br />
appears on stage. The signs are there: band in matching dapper<br />
suits? That one’s ticked off. Name, quite literally, up in lights,<br />
as a backdrop? It’s emblazoned up there alright, along with a<br />
picture of a top hat and cane. Packed out Arts Club? Yep, we’re<br />
all delighted to be here. It all conjures up an image of a cabaret<br />
crossed with an old-style glitzy disco making his intentions for<br />
our night clear: quite simply, it’s going to be brilliant.<br />
The party starts with a bang as Jake Shears struts on to the<br />
stage and launches in to Good Friends, his perfect teeth a beacon<br />
as he dazzles us with his moves, wit and voice. He is a talented,<br />
funny man. He’s also incredibly physically fit: anyone who can<br />
high kick his way round a stage, dancing and jumping with such<br />
energy his cummerbund flies off mid-song while remaining note<br />
perfect deserves all the plaudits they get. Great stuff. So much<br />
more than a Len Goodman seven!<br />
Dressed in a top hat and tails, he embodies the showman,<br />
beguiling and charming us with tales of delight, debauchery and<br />
depression, each delivered with a wink and humour. Even when<br />
songs deal with a marriage breakdown and a move to New<br />
Orleans, the upbeat tempo means he comes out on top (Sad Song<br />
Backwards). As the gig goes on, the top hat and trousers are cast<br />
aside, leaving him dancing round in a leotard and fishnet tights.<br />
He stalks the stage, partly comic, partly melodramatic. But<br />
these theatrics don’t detract from the music. The songs from his<br />
newly-released eponymous debut solo album are ones he should<br />
be justifiably proud of. They’re instantly recognisable, drawing<br />
from genres from country to musicals to rock without being<br />
derivative.<br />
Scissor Sisters favourites Laura, Mama and I Don’t Feel Like<br />
Dancin’ are interspersed through the set and every time the<br />
intro for one of them starts things move up a gear, getting even<br />
the stubborn ones in the crowd dancing. Whether you’re on the<br />
stage or in the crowd, everyone’s having a ball.<br />
The encore sees him reappear after a costume change in a<br />
long dress and flower-emblazoned bonnet (of course it does) and<br />
he belts out Creep City and Mississippi Delta (I’m Your Man). He’s<br />
self-deprecating and seems genuinely happy and touched that<br />
his gig warrants such a big turnout, displayed as he comes off<br />
stage at one point earlier to get up close and personal with the<br />
crowd.<br />
Even if this isn’t the type of music you’d actively put on in the<br />
house, there’s no way you can’t have a good time when faced<br />
with such wide-eyed grinning exuberance.<br />
It’s just what’s needed: an entertaining gig with a star who<br />
knows how to hold the attention of a packed-out room, sweaty<br />
from dancing. Jake Shears is the greatest of showmen who<br />
creates a wonderland you don’t want to leave.<br />
Jennie Macaulay / @jenmagmcmac<br />
Omni (Kristian Patten / kristianpphotography.myportfolio.com)<br />
Ethan Johns With<br />
The Black Eyed Dogs<br />
+ Robert Vincent<br />
Heaven’s Gate @ 81 Renshaw – 21/08<br />
Part classic Americana, part trippy, voodoo space cadet<br />
blues wig-out, the new ETHAN JOHNS album, Anamnesis, finds<br />
him back in his true comfort zone. Though highly regarded as<br />
a producer, working with such road-worn and whiskey-soaked<br />
wanderers as Ryan Adams, Howie Payne, Ray LaMontagne<br />
and The Jayhawks, he is first and foremost a songwriter and<br />
storyteller. And he’s more than handy with a bewildering array of<br />
instrumentation.<br />
The evening begins as the room warms to the level of airless<br />
and oppressive, with a fine set of country blues songs from<br />
Liverpool’s own ROBERT VINCENT. Vincent’s instinctive and<br />
soulful vocal tones, layers of slide guitar and keyboards, tightlypacked<br />
harmonies and his innate ability as a songsmith prove<br />
that him winning <strong>2018</strong>’s UK American Album Of The Year Award<br />
with the superb I’ll Make The Most My Sins is not only well<br />
deserved, but also somewhat overdue. His gift for a song, like his<br />
self-effacing humour, is natural and easy, like every great writer,<br />
like Ethan Johns, it is simply a part of his being. Again, this is an<br />
artist who is deserving of a much bigger stage.<br />
Johns paints romantic pictures in his songs. Rich in character,<br />
these are tales of history, of the road, of love and loss. Stories<br />
of the everyday, and of everyday folk, tinged and flavoured with<br />
many years on the road.<br />
For this record of organic, earthy blues folk, he’s assembled a<br />
new band around him, The Black Eyed Dogs, and together they<br />
recorded the album in his garden studio in just two weeks. It<br />
doesn’t feel that way, though. Typically for Johns, these songs have<br />
a striking familiarity. To hear the opening song of this set, Runaway<br />
Train, you’d swear Merle Haggard had knocked it up in Folsom<br />
Prison decades ago. He wears those years on the road well. The<br />
band tonight is missing drummer Jeremy Stacey, who according to<br />
Johns is “away earning a living”, so there’s a relaxed, stripped-back,<br />
front porch atmosphere in the music, the mood and here in the<br />
desert-hot back room of 81 Renshaw.<br />
Ruskin’s Farthing is a great piece, an ancient tale of a court<br />
case brought against the 19th Century art critic John Ruskin<br />
following a particularly ungracious and dastardly review. In the<br />
event, only a farthing and no costs were awarded in damages. A<br />
story you’d think more suited to a hero of English folk like Martin<br />
Carthy or Chris Wood, but imagined here and delivered in Ethan<br />
Johns’ rich, part-sung, part-whispered and cracked vocal, it feels,<br />
again, so natural a setting.<br />
Leaving It All Behind, with the delicious plaintive strains of<br />
Georgina Leach’s violin weaving through it, and the melodic bass<br />
work of Nick Pini, is another highlight of a set rich in beautiful<br />
moments. Redemption and forward movement are the themes here,<br />
and the song’s dusty country blues landscape carries it so well.<br />
Armed with a Stratocaster, the set mutates midway to the<br />
darker side of the street, twisting into the heat of Renshaw Street<br />
with the Hawkwind-esque blues psych of The Knot Of Aurelius<br />
Augustine, and the dark, Dylan-tasting 21st Century Paranoid<br />
Blues, with its sadly all-too-familiar themes. It’s all squeezed<br />
Strat motifs and clanging dissonance over the simple pulse of<br />
Pini’s bass.<br />
The climax of this perfectly-pitched set included a simple<br />
and beautiful tale of a lonesome drive across America from Los<br />
Angeles to upstate New York to collect his then girlfriend, now<br />
his wife. His heart open, his love laid out for all to hear, The Great<br />
White North has everything you need from a love song. It’s an<br />
open and honest portrayal of one man’s deepest love. Special.<br />
Really special.<br />
This is a set of old and new tunes, the brightest shining<br />
light and the darkest melancholy shade, all effortlessly delivered<br />
by this accomplished writer and his supremely talented band.<br />
Highlighting an album that is only available in physical form with<br />
no streams, these are songs to climb into, songs to live and for<br />
living. Let’s hope that this fourth Ethan Johns album sees him<br />
getting similar plaudits to the work he does behind studio desks.<br />
Paul Fitzgerald /@NothingvilleM<br />
42
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REVIEWS<br />
“The whole idea of<br />
Skeleton Coast Festival<br />
is to focus on local<br />
and emerging talent<br />
and to bring attention<br />
back to Wirral…<br />
most undoubtedly,<br />
new voices”<br />
The Mysterines (Georgia Flynn / @georgiaflynncreative)<br />
Skeleton Coast Festival<br />
Leasowe Castle – 01/09<br />
Returning for its third successive year, SKELETON COAST<br />
lives up to (and far exceeds) the teasing taglines of being<br />
their biggest and boldest adventure yet. It brings a summer of<br />
contrasting climates to a close in an equally contrasting live<br />
music venue, Leasowe Castle, a 16th Century building that is so<br />
elegantly haunting it furthers the unconventional mystique of the<br />
day.<br />
There is a relaxing aura around the site as fans effortlessly<br />
slip between the castle’s two stages, past the merch stand<br />
crammed with Coral memorabilia, and outside for a quick<br />
breather between sets. You feel like you’re gatecrashing an<br />
exclusive wedding that has somehow convinced THE CORAL to<br />
provide the music. The preliminary bands accentuate the feeling<br />
of exclusivity. Here at Skeleton Coast it always feels like you’re<br />
witnessing something special.<br />
The Chapel Stage is left exactly like it would be on a wedding<br />
day. It’s only lacking the bride and groom. Its church benches<br />
and white walls create a quiet atmosphere of sentimentality<br />
and, when musicians take to the stage, they absorb this. When<br />
seats become full, audiences take to the floor, complementing<br />
to the room’s tranquillity. Skeleton Key artists will mainly take<br />
centre stage here today, as is currently the case with NIAMH<br />
ROWE of The Sundowners who captivates with her rich and<br />
soaring acoustic performance. RITUALS are also impressive, with<br />
frontman Ryan Sandinson’s vocals drawing similarities to Nick<br />
Cave and Lou Reed. His dark delivery lolls around the chapel in<br />
harmony with his band’s catchy bass riffs and haunting keys.<br />
On the Main Stage, CUT GLASS KINGS are providing a<br />
rollicking performance, with the two-piece drawing obvious<br />
similarities to Royal Blood thanks to their heavy rock sound.<br />
The scratchy, Velvet Underground-esque guitar licks for TIM<br />
BURGESS & THE ANYTIME MINUTES fuses well with the<br />
harmonising vocals between Burgess and Average Sex vocalist<br />
Laetitia Bocquet. The guitarless pair provide a catchy melody<br />
among their finger-clicking and dancing, yet attention from the<br />
audience does seem to fade.<br />
Merseyside three-piece THE MYSTERINES manage to get<br />
the crowd’s undivided attention. With no social media presence<br />
or online music to stream, the band seem like they’re living<br />
in a parallel universe, and hype has only snowballed through<br />
traditional word-of-mouth. Unlike the infamous Alex Turner<br />
line “don’t believe the hype”, you certainly should be doing the<br />
opposite for The Mysterines. There is little chat to the crowd,<br />
but this only adds to the enigma, and you can’t deny the trio<br />
of lacking stage presence. The projection of frontwoman Lia<br />
Metcalfe’s voice is so powerful, if you close your eyes you could<br />
believe it was Patti Smith. Their rocking half-hour set is so<br />
rousing and charged you’re left almost breathless and counting<br />
on one hand the few bands that have delivered a similar<br />
experience.<br />
To finish off the night, a patient crowd finally set their eyes<br />
on Wirral godfathers The Coral. Complete with aviators and<br />
hat, James Skelly and band take to the stage to exhibit their<br />
stalwart status. Their contribution to the British music scene<br />
has been huge since their eponymous debut way back in 2002,<br />
but personally, being too young to have been immersed in their<br />
pomp and swift rise to success, it is easy to forget what this band<br />
means to so many people, especially in their hometown.<br />
In this small wedding function room, the sheer love for the<br />
band becomes overwhelmingly clear. Throughout the set people<br />
of all ages, groups of friends and couples dance and swing their<br />
arms around each other amid chorus chants. Shoulders are<br />
mounted for the hits. The genuine indie classics Pass It On, In The<br />
Morning and Dreaming Of You will always go down a treat in any<br />
Coral gig. Goodbye, elongated in their encore, sounds climactic,<br />
spiritual almost. Yet what is more interesting is how well the new<br />
songs fare. Reaching Out For A Friend and Stormbreaker, taken<br />
from eighth album Move Through The Dawn, show the band on<br />
top form. Additionally, new and instantly catchy singles Sweet<br />
Release and Eyes Like Pearls are lapped up and sung back by the<br />
crowd as if they were features of their greatest hits album.<br />
The whole idea of Skeleton Coast Festival is to focus on<br />
local and emerging talent and to bring attention back to Wirral.<br />
Fans leave the castle with beaming smiles; Dreaming Of You is<br />
hummed in their minds, but in the days to come they’ll be cueing<br />
up that new tune from the new album and wondering the name<br />
of the bands that preceded The Coral. And most undisputedly,<br />
new voices will sound the question, ‘Who Are The Mysterines?’ !<br />
Conal Cunningham<br />
The Coral (Georgia Flynn / @georgiaflynncreative)<br />
Tim Burgess (Georgia Flynn / @georgiaflynncreative)<br />
44
David Olusoga<br />
The Bluecoat – 05/09<br />
The dust is yet to settle on 2016. There’re more fitting times<br />
to digress on how, in the space of two elections, liberalism proved<br />
to be something of a worn-out DVD squared up against a futurefacing<br />
populist gramophone, spouting its out eerie triumphs of<br />
spitfires and the necessity of blue passports. For me, the two<br />
can be happily traded in at CEX for an insurmountable loss, but<br />
whatever. What’s important to take, at this point, was how 2016<br />
quickly became regarded as the year of post truth. So much so<br />
the phase wore a sort of ill-gotten crown when it was named as<br />
Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year. Prestigious.<br />
With the double hit of Brexit and Trump the word was<br />
propelled into our everyday diction, despite having been coined<br />
by Ralph Keyes in 2004. We’re not all academics, or historians,<br />
or people who take an interest in public affairs. Most people<br />
don’t give a shit, really. But, it’s easy to see why post-truth<br />
rose to public attention when it did. We’ve always lived in an<br />
age of post-truth and alternative facts – we’ve just been less<br />
aware of this actuality. 2016 wasn’t the touchstone. Liberalism<br />
has explained away its failures as a victim of a morally-lacking<br />
rhetorical practice, post truth. The same practice it has weaved<br />
across our eyes for centuries, as DAVID OLUSOGA, acclaimed<br />
TV historian and academic eloquently explains, with tinges<br />
of frustration meeting the sharpest ends of his finely-crafted<br />
arguments. Post truth so easily became the harrowing red<br />
light in the darkness of liberalism’s failure. History will be more<br />
forgiving of those who were subject to injustice, so they’d have<br />
us believe. Just as the liberal play script would have us reminded<br />
of the British abolition movement ahead of our once dearest<br />
royals and their business venture, the Royal Africa Company.<br />
It’s rarely mentioned that the company, run by the Duke of York,<br />
was a heavyweight of the slave trade. No. Instead we’re handed<br />
a lyric sheet to Amazing Grace and we sing along, happily, as a<br />
shameless nation.<br />
It’s fitting that David Olusoga ignites this train of thought<br />
as he discusses Britain’s camouflaged history; our continuing<br />
adherence to alternative facts regarding Britain’s role in slavery.<br />
“Historical blind spots,” he asserts. What’s clear is that post<br />
truth, stretching from as far as the industrial revolution, has been<br />
disseminated so effectively that Olusoga, delivering his talk on<br />
camouflaging slavery, does so in a building co-founded by a<br />
slaver. Or is it, as any naïve heritage organisation would claim, a<br />
building co-founded by a West Indian Planter and philanthropist?<br />
David Olusoga (Brian Roberts / brianrobertsimages.com)<br />
Olusoga, stood at the dimly-lit lectern, stands as the tip of this<br />
metaphor, which crushingly falls on the heads of the majority<br />
white audience. And so it should. It’s these contradictions that<br />
Britain celebrates so discourteously. Britain’s firm hand in slavery<br />
is all but looked past due to the image rehabilitating efforts of<br />
these so-called philanthropists whose names adorn our streets<br />
and buildings. Olusoga is firm is his argument that they should<br />
be remembered only for their orchestration of mass social death.<br />
Curricular history only serves as an exemplary of our continual,<br />
post truth-scripted narratives.<br />
Britain was the force of the industrial revolution. Britain<br />
was the force of abolitionist movement. Be proud or be<br />
unpatriotic. But what enabled such grandeur and progression?<br />
As Olusoga reiterates throughout his talk, there are gaping holes<br />
in our history. Ones we fail to address, be through shame or<br />
ambivalence. It’s Britain’s failure that places Olusoga here on this<br />
very evening. We’re capitated by arguments of Britain at work,<br />
working hard for the betterment of the world. The towering<br />
chimney stacks scattered across Lancashire didn’t equal the<br />
heights of ambition compounded in our sacred revolution. This<br />
was an era where we spun cotton day and night to solidify our<br />
status. An era where we spun a web of lies, emotive-ridden<br />
post truth, to ensure every primary school student of the future<br />
knows our betterment came from hard work. And it was us, those<br />
setting the moral compass, when the timing suited, who were the<br />
first to fight back against the demands of slavery.<br />
Britain wears its guilt with pride. The grandeur of limestone<br />
statements displaying our excellence have been whitewashed<br />
and falsified, poisoning the streams of truth and fact running<br />
through their very foundations. Liverpool should know better<br />
than most. Industrial wheels where turned by the hands of<br />
enslaved Mississippi cotton pickers, but the two are kept apart<br />
in well-rehearsed narratives. One American and unforgivable,<br />
one proudly British. Olusoga can barely scratch the surface of<br />
Britain’s ignored history in his 45-minute speech. He is a gifted<br />
orator. His delivery is not lacking in detail, nor is it overbearing<br />
and overwhelmingly academic. The clear progression from<br />
historian to TV personality has issued a more digestible, direct,<br />
and approachable style in his speech.<br />
The evening’s Q&A with Bluecoat director Bryan Biggs<br />
carries a more uplifting tone when acknowledging the<br />
contemporary surge for the removal of slavers’ names from<br />
our buildings. This is barely a note of progression, however.<br />
This society has made no progress if it chooses to brandish, so<br />
publicly, its contempt for refugees, as seen with the latest act of<br />
Biennial vandalism.<br />
Olusoga concludes his talk by reiterating that historical facts,<br />
resting in plain sight, have been out manoeuvred by emotive<br />
sentiment and alternate accounts. 2016 was the year people<br />
heard what they wanted to hear, so it goes. This is far from the<br />
case, as Olusoga effortlessly illustrates.<br />
I depart, walking through the Bluecoat’s orderly courtyard<br />
before meeting Hanover Street. Peering through the early<br />
evening revellers and black cabs, I’m hesitating in my step as<br />
I lock focus with a pub harboured on the corner of the street.<br />
‘The Empire’, alive and well; it’s titling haunted by a half memory.<br />
Historical blind spots are only hidden when looked upon with<br />
eyes of selective blindness.<br />
Elliot Ryder / @elliot_ryder<br />
Imarhan<br />
Harvest Sun and Africa Oyé @ District<br />
07/09<br />
Another desert storm is seeding on the fertile Saharan winds<br />
as the crests of sand dunes are whipped off in meandering trails<br />
that will end up who knows where. Following standout Liverpool<br />
shows by Tinariwen and Tamikrest in recent years it’s the turn<br />
of fellow Tuareg troubadours IMARHAN (‘the ones I care about’<br />
in their native Tamasheq) to return to our shores with their<br />
own, searching brand of desert blues. They hail from Algeria,<br />
but rather than allowing the mapmakers’ lines in the sand to<br />
define and confine them, it’s the unifying context of environment<br />
and culture which links them to their Malian mentors and<br />
contemporaries to the south.<br />
It is not, in truth, initially a huge crowd that is drinking<br />
from the deep well of warm-up DJ Jacques Malchance’s record<br />
collection, but a steady stream of people begins to boost the<br />
numbers and there is a noticeable air of expectation in District<br />
as Imarhan play it cool, waiting until numbers grow sufficiently<br />
for their entrance to be warmly greeted. The five-piece roll<br />
straight into the trance-inducing rhythms that define the genre.<br />
The weaving of American blues and Tuareg folk by guitarists<br />
Sadam (Iyad Moussa Ben Abderahmane) and Abdelkader Ourzig<br />
is played out over Haiballah Akhamouk’s traditional percussive<br />
beats, and the funk-infused rhythm section of drummer Hicham<br />
Bouhasse and bassist Tahar Khaldi and draws an immediate<br />
reaction from the crowd, all bobbing heads and shuffling feet<br />
from the off.<br />
Where their eponymous first album bears direct comparison<br />
to the work of earlier desert blues artists, their recent follow-up<br />
Temet (appropriately meaning ‘connections’), draws on the far<br />
wider influences absorbed during several years of global touring,<br />
moving the genre on a step further as rock, funk and disco are<br />
added to an already irresistible mix.<br />
Save for Akhamouk’s sometimes frenzied percussion the<br />
band are pictures of concentrated introspection, Sadam and<br />
Ourzig occasionally glancing sideways to consult each other<br />
with a conspiratorial nod, occasionally looking out into the<br />
dancing crowd and smiling at the feedback as their bluesy licks<br />
and lightning quick picking are woven into a seamless whole.<br />
When Sadam raises his arms and brings his hands together the<br />
crowd follow suit, clapping along to the relentless rhythm; the<br />
repetitions are hypnotic, the fiery, sinuous solos spinning out in<br />
delightful tangents before coalescing once more.<br />
On tracks Azzaman and Imuhagh (both from Temet), metal<br />
riffs that Ritchie Blackmore would be proud of, Talking Heads<br />
pop-funk grooves and tabla-like calabash provide the worldly<br />
embellishments to homespun rhythms. The vocals provide<br />
another more traditional aspect to their music. Sadam and<br />
Ourzig’s voices are as well matched as their guitar playing and<br />
when Akhamouk and Bouhasse join them, the harmonies evoke<br />
centuries of flickering caravan campfires, even if their subject<br />
matter is more concerned with the current affairs of politics and<br />
the heart than with the telling of ancient stories.<br />
Imarhan (Glyn Akroyd)<br />
They close with Tumast, a funky bass and percussion<br />
intro builds to a frantic pace and draws electric applause from<br />
a cheering crowd as they leave the stage. Just Sadam and<br />
percussionist Akhamouk return for a song that takes things down<br />
to the bare bones, a delicately picked rhythm and plaintive vocal<br />
harmony giving us an inkling of how this all began, before they<br />
are joined by the rest of the band who take us back to the future<br />
during the whirling dervish finale of a superbly delivered set.<br />
Glyn Akroyd / @glynakroyd<br />
REVIEWS 45
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ARTISTIC<br />
LICENCE<br />
As part of a continuing series, Leighton Ramsdale curates<br />
a selection of poetry from some of the regular contributors<br />
to his Cotton Mouth poetry night.<br />
Jack Haworth<br />
Said the Real Man Regarding the Actor Who Replaced<br />
Him:<br />
Perhaps one day a man may jaunt before a crowd<br />
And when he saunters forth they may be unsure<br />
Who he claims to be and yet know of his face<br />
And by the end may care for neither nor<br />
If his dance of mine fares not so safe<br />
As when I danced it, when I raced<br />
Wore robes which fit not him<br />
That seem obliged to split<br />
As he ties his timely lace<br />
But tell them, he is fine<br />
And only reads a line<br />
Or two and then<br />
Steps down<br />
And so too<br />
Do<br />
I.<br />
Sarah Bristow<br />
Untitled<br />
Oh I walk these Liverpool streets<br />
I’ve never felt so alone<br />
Friendly gestures and eyes on the phone<br />
Whilst I do my usual 1-9<br />
maybe 6-8<br />
Always fucking late<br />
My bus is always fucking late<br />
Saw our usual John<br />
gave him a quid and said<br />
“Look after yourself lovely”<br />
As much as he can<br />
Whilst only a cardboard to grope<br />
And his undying need to hope<br />
Friends are fraying – uninterested<br />
Drugs are more than a habit here<br />
“We’ll just play it by ear”<br />
Cold mornings turn to cold sweats<br />
Turn to many, many regrets<br />
And usual John died the other day<br />
No one ever talks about it<br />
No one will ever pay<br />
We’ll still chant away to underground bands<br />
And bruise covered hands<br />
And ket-fuelled sleeps<br />
And that 14-year-old collapsed here,<br />
I can still hear his ma weep<br />
But us kids<br />
We’ll still dance when the world is at war<br />
Stomp and march to piss pensioners off even more<br />
Oh and I walk these Liverpool streets<br />
And I’ve never felt more at home<br />
Tired smiles and glances up from a phone<br />
Free food for all!<br />
Fuck Trump! Fuck May!<br />
Meant to meet at 8<br />
My bus is always fucking late<br />
Oh and I walk these Liverpool streets in a daze<br />
Look after yourself lovely – it’s never just a phase.<br />
William Baines<br />
Something More Than Tragedy<br />
Don’t worry; it’s fine<br />
Tell me all about the thinning line<br />
As opinions stretch and polarise and<br />
The Sun prints the 14th lie this week<br />
Don’t worry; it’s fine<br />
What’s yours is yours and what’s mine mine<br />
You make your point like a prophet’s eye<br />
But if you stick to your own and you’ll find no peace<br />
Don’t worry; it’s fine<br />
The truth don’t speak she dances blind<br />
So when you step leave your thoughts behind<br />
So don’t let other words twist the arm of what you see<br />
Don’t worry; it’s fine<br />
As conquered nations crawl on wealth’s paradime<br />
Not enough will have to suffice<br />
Cos far too much never satisfies the need<br />
Don’t worry; it’s fine<br />
Take it all; your gall’s her delight<br />
While she wages wars on all that fights<br />
And the end comes forth slowly by degrees<br />
Don’t worry; it’s fine<br />
As it all falls on its keens and dies<br />
And you beg for home from the blinding light<br />
That burns the sage and stone alike<br />
And the ashes fall like rain from the sky<br />
And there’s not a soul, a word or a thought in mind<br />
And nothing and all dance entwined<br />
And what’s left, all that was meant to be<br />
In spite of you and me<br />
There’s something more than tragedy<br />
Don’t worry, it’s fine<br />
Dean McMillan<br />
Grounds For Divorce<br />
there is no substance<br />
in my<br />
love you’s<br />
there is no<br />
heart<br />
behind my<br />
shame<br />
i love you more when<br />
you’re asleep<br />
but fucking hate the way<br />
you snore<br />
you told me i’ll<br />
be yours forever<br />
i hope you<br />
say this just<br />
to please<br />
me<br />
i just want<br />
to be<br />
alone<br />
And<br />
every<br />
time<br />
I take a shite<br />
I wish that<br />
I was<br />
Elvis.<br />
52
CIARÁN HODGERS<br />
<strong>October</strong>’s featured writer explains about developing his voice and how the musicality of his spoken language seeps into his work.<br />
When and why did you start writing poetry?<br />
The first poem I distinctly remember writing was an ode to Spike Milligan when he died, when I was about 12. I’d written before that<br />
but nothing too memorable, apparently. I didn’t really know much about Spike Milligan then, but I think that was the catalyst; that I was<br />
moved by the idea of someone’s name preceding them and that if I, who knew nothing about him, was affected by his death, think of<br />
those closest to him and how they might be feeling. The amazing community and friends I’ve met along the way have kept me writing<br />
poetry ever since.<br />
How would you describe your poetic voice, if you had to?<br />
I’ve been told that I’m lyrical and emotional. I remember first being emotionally moved by Sylvia Plath and John Donne: their linguistic<br />
flair and emotional honesty resonate with me still. For me, poems remind me of puzzles; I’m trying to get to the essence of a feeling<br />
and there is a right combination of sounds that, when put into a particular order, will unlock that feeling in me, and hopefully others.<br />
That might sound academic or a bit pseudo-spiritual, but I actually think it’s punk as fuck in an environment where we’re constantly<br />
being emotionally manipulated on a mass scale. To be radically sensitive could be argued as one form of resistance.<br />
Do you feel there is a ‘Liverpool poetry scene’ to speak of?<br />
Of course there’s a scene, and it’s buzzing! There’s a host of regular nights and stalwart individuals supporting them; A Lovely Word,<br />
Dead Goods Poets, Liver Bards, Rhymes And Records (which I secretly pray will come out of retirement) and Writing On The Wall, of<br />
course. Even the bigger organisations are tapping into the spoken word scene, we’re seeing the major venues bringing internationallyrecognised<br />
poetry to the city with their bookings. I champion this communication between the institutional and the individual;<br />
Liverpool has a proud sense of independence and quality and it should be celebrated by everyone.<br />
Your use of sound is kind of like a symphony of everyday noises and images that roll together to make even your more grim, clearsighted<br />
observations feel misty-eyed. What would you say about how your use of language’s rhythms and idiomatic phrases have<br />
developed?<br />
Being an immigrant, where my accent is less common than it would be if I were still at home, gets me a lot of leeway with people.<br />
People (tend to) instantly like an Irish accent; it’s lilting and friendly, but not always very practical. I’ve found occasionally that I have<br />
problems communicating: being asked to repeat myself; having my name mispronounced; jeering comments at my way of saying<br />
things. These all made me aware of the particular musicality to the Irish voice. I sometimes only hear these patterns or rhythms<br />
once I perform aloud and discover there are a lot more connections and harmonies happening under the surface than even I, at first,<br />
understood.<br />
Cosmocartography is Ciarán’s debut publication and is available from Burning Eye Books in <strong>October</strong>, with a special National Poetry<br />
Day Preview in association with Beers For Queers and Writing On The Wall in District on 4th <strong>October</strong> at 7pm.<br />
Sibling City<br />
For Liverpool<br />
C’mere till I kiss ya,<br />
and let you slip me a tenner and some fags under the<br />
table,<br />
you auld matriarch,<br />
stitched down the middle<br />
with hope, history and heart,<br />
never undone,<br />
not even with all the little wars and woes waging on<br />
inside you,<br />
and you lacking the money for thread.<br />
You sit patiently and alone in the kitchen,<br />
kettle steam and cigarettes for smoke signals,<br />
signs of life welcoming fresh footprints of new<br />
neighbours,<br />
and remembering how each leaving was a happy, hopeful<br />
grief.<br />
You speak in negative spaces, absences; in dirty bricks,<br />
churches like top-down convertibles, statues pulled from<br />
pedestals<br />
and unfinished apartment blocks.<br />
You are Bold Street Bardot, wearing hair rollers on the 86,<br />
96, and an airport no bigger than a Tesco Extra,<br />
companion cathedrals, applause at funerals,<br />
the Cavern in spite of the Cavern,<br />
sunny students smoking Smithdown spliffs<br />
and the pillar of salt we pinch for the lime;<br />
a thousand ghosts traipsing past Pier Head<br />
where now pianos twinkle,<br />
a girl waiting for her leave plays for tourists waiting to<br />
leave.<br />
Lamb dressed as mutton,<br />
mutton dressed in whatever it was lambs wore back in<br />
the day,<br />
tipping your taxi men, no-bullshit bus drivers, eye contact,<br />
how no one really cares where you’re from<br />
even if it’s Manchester or across the water,<br />
street cred rolling rough, another round, another song,<br />
from where we go to where we’re from,<br />
but neither more important than if we belong.<br />
ARTISTIC LICENCE<br />
53
SAY<br />
THE FINAL<br />
“You can’t depollute<br />
the air. You<br />
can rebuild houses,<br />
but you can’t<br />
rebuild homes”<br />
North Liverpool’s sprawling Rimrose Valley parkland is home not just to flora and<br />
fauna, but now also a fight for its very future. Matty Loughlin-Day explains why he<br />
is invoking his deep-seated spirit of protest – and why you should, too.<br />
“From each according to his ability…”<br />
Do you remember the first time you, with a resigned<br />
shrug, sighed and muttered, “Well, what can you do?”<br />
The first seeds of learned helplessness taking root.<br />
It wasn’t always like that, was it? You were going to<br />
change the world. But the boy kicked out at the world and the<br />
world kicked back a lot fucking harder, didn’t it? What can you<br />
do?<br />
For those in the corridors of power, it’s the oldest trick in<br />
the book; simply put, injustice thrives on apathy and apathy<br />
flourishes in powerlessness. Although the 15-year-old, Morning<br />
Star-reading me would be horrified to learn, that’s exactly what<br />
happened to me as the years ticked by. The rallies, protests and<br />
meetings I was attending weren’t changing anything; the bankers<br />
were still getting away with it, ‘dem forriners’ were still being<br />
blamed for everything, Everton were still crap. Why bother?<br />
Well, luckily, I live in a city that reminds you why to bother.<br />
Disclaimer: I’m in a band. We’re called The Shipbuilders. You<br />
might have heard of us, you might not have, but over the past<br />
few years, we’ve been lucky enough to know the good people<br />
within the creative ranks who get up and stand up. We’ve been<br />
part of nights that have raised money and supplies for homeless<br />
charities, fundraisers for cancer research, even gigs to save the<br />
bees. I don’t say this to paint us as saints (believe me, we’re far<br />
from Heaven), but to demonstrate the power of music. What can<br />
you do? Well, you do what you can, and in this case, we play gigs.<br />
Much has been written about Liverpool’s spirit of protest; from<br />
1911 and gunboats on the Mersey through to chasing fascists<br />
out of Lime Street to the Benny Hill theme song – it’s a (rightly)<br />
well-worn yarn and, thankfully, one that resonates through the<br />
city’s independent art channels.<br />
Which brings me onto the reason I write this piece. Chances<br />
are, many reading this fine publication won’t have heard of<br />
Rimrose Valley Country Park – I hadn’t before I moved north of<br />
Old Swan, but on stumbling upon it, I was taken aback. Here is<br />
a green space, tucked away between Bootle and Crosby, that<br />
stretches for miles, with a canal running through it. It is home to<br />
an array of amphibians, flora, birds and mammals – in the past<br />
few months, deer have been spotted there. Deer, in Litherland!<br />
Jays, the shimmering, secretive members of the crow family,<br />
rarely seen, have recently taken nest there. It’s a green route for<br />
families, runners and cyclists, a space for sports and is a genuine<br />
haven of quiet in the middle of a busy, built up area.<br />
You can guess what’s coming, can’t you?<br />
In late 2014, following the expansion of the Port of Liverpool,<br />
Highways England began considering ways to manage the<br />
increased traffic from an already busy port. Why the expansion<br />
of the port was given the green light before this was sorted<br />
presents the first of many questions,<br />
but let’s not focus too much on that bit<br />
yet. Despite local protest, Highways<br />
England opted that rather than a tunnel,<br />
or expansion of any existing routes, the<br />
best (read: cheapest) option was to build<br />
a dual carriageway through Rimrose<br />
Valley. Naturally, this is distressing in itself<br />
– green spaces are sacred and diminishing<br />
at an alarming rate, you don’t need me to<br />
tell you that. Yet the wider implications<br />
are more worrying – a recent report<br />
examining the quality of air in areas near<br />
busy ports and coastal towns estimates<br />
that levels of air pollution are four times<br />
higher than previously thought. Given that<br />
the Port of Liverpool is already one of the<br />
busiest in the country, the idea of further<br />
contribution to pollution, at the expense<br />
of a precious natural reserve, is simply<br />
heartbreaking.<br />
It gets better.<br />
Throughout this period, Highways England were adamant<br />
that this option was the only one that could ensure no houses<br />
would be demolished and no families would be displaced.<br />
Residents were assured in person. You’re probably ahead of<br />
me here, but sure enough, come Summer <strong>2018</strong> and nearby<br />
residents are advised to ring a hotline to discuss CPOs. CPOs are<br />
compulsory purchase orders. Basically, you’re selling your house,<br />
we’re knocking it down, and there’s naff all you can do. Trebles<br />
all round. Mercifully, local MPs are against the road (although<br />
Metro Mayor Steve Rotherham is notable by his silence) and<br />
the decision to build the road has been taken back to judicial<br />
review on the grounds that other options weren’t given enough<br />
consideration; but the threat of concrete over grass still looms all<br />
too large over the Valley. Rumours abound that staff have already<br />
been hired to start work; Highways England are digging their<br />
heels (and machinery) into the matter.<br />
Of course, the situation is all too familiar on Merseyside,<br />
with developers casting greedy eyes over Sefton Park and<br />
Calderstones Park and property valued more than parkland,<br />
with scant regard for the people who<br />
use them and, you know, breathe in the<br />
oxygen from the trees – yet this one<br />
feels different. This is a dual carriageway<br />
through a Country Park. You simply can’t<br />
replace that. You can’t de-pollute the air.<br />
You can rebuild houses, but you can’t<br />
rebuild homes.<br />
Yet thankfully, as insinuated earlier,<br />
there are more than a bunch of us in<br />
this city ready to fight this. No less than<br />
Mick Head spoke about his disgust at the<br />
plans at his recent gig at the Museum<br />
Of Liverpool. An online petition has<br />
garnered over 10,000 signatures, protests<br />
have been well-attended and plans<br />
are – naturally – afoot for gigs to raise<br />
awareness and support for the Valley and<br />
the cause, which I have been involved in<br />
organising. Plans are not set in stone (or<br />
Tarmac) yet, but genuinely big names from the music scene have<br />
pledged their support and the numbers are growing by the day.<br />
Information on the campaign can be found on Facebook<br />
(Save Rimrose Valley) and updates regarding these gigs will be<br />
posted on there; but before then, I’d urge anyone to jump the<br />
train to Waterloo and take a stroll through the park and see what<br />
we stand to lose.<br />
What can you do? Plug in and make a fugging great big<br />
racket about it, that’s what you can do. !<br />
Words: Matty Loughlin-Day<br />
Photography: Gary Young<br />
saverimrosevalley.org<br />
54
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