July 2019 issue of Bido Lito! magazine. Featuring: BILL NICKSON, SPINN, MICHAEL ALDAG, KITTY'S LAUNDERETTE, NEIL KEATING, RAHEEM ALAMEEN, KRS-ONE and much more.
ISSUE 101 / JULY 2019
NEW MUSIC + CREATIVE CULTURE
LIVERPOOL
BILL NICKSON / KITTY’S LAUNDERETTE
SPINN / ROLLING BLACKOUTS C.F.
facebook.com/o2academyliverpool
twitter.com/o2academylpool
instagram.com/o2academyliverpool
youtube.com/o2academytv
WED 10TH JUL 7PM SOLD OUT
JOHN NEWMAN
SAT 26TH OCT 7PM
THE ESKIES
Fri 2nd Aug
The Fillers
(The Killers Official Tribute)
Sat 14th Sep
Ocean Colour
Scheme
(Ocean Colour Scene Tribute)
Sun 22nd Sep
Rodrigo y
Gabriela
Fri 27th Sep
Skrapz
Sat 28th Sep
Guns 2 Roses
+ Dizzy Lizzy
Sat 28th Sep • SOLD OUT
Red Rum Club
+ The Mysterines
Mon 30th Sep
Gary Numan
+ Kanga
Sat 5th Oct
Definitely
Mightbe
(Oasis tribute)
Tue 8th Oct
Mountford Hall,
Liverpool Guild of Students
Richard Hawley
Fri 11th Oct
Fleetwood Bac
Sat 12th Oct
The Marley
Revival
+ UB40 Tribute Set
Sun 13th Oct
New Hope Club
Sun 13th Oct
Easy Life
Fri 18th Oct
Sea Girls
Thur 24th Oct
Jake Clemons
+ Ben McKelvey
Wed 30th Oct
MoStack
ticketmaster.co.uk
Sat 2nd Nov
Mountford Hall,
Liverpool Guild of Students
Rival Sons
+ The Record Company
Sat 2nd Nov • 9pm
Jo Whiley’s
90s Anthems
Fri 8th Nov
MONKS
Fri 8th Nov
Bear’s Den
Sat 9th Nov
She Drew
The Gun
Sat 9th Nov
Mountford Hall,
Liverpool Guild of Students
Greta Van Fleet
+ Yola
Sat 9th Nov
Antarctic
Monkeys
+ The Alleys + The Patriots
Fri 15th Nov
Boston Manor
Sat 16th Nov
The Macc Lads
+ Dirt Box Disco
Sat 16th Nov
UK Foo Fighters
(Tribute)
Wed 20th Nov
Fontaines D.C.
Fri 22nd Nov
Absolute Bowie
- Legacy Tour
Sat 23rd Nov
Life
At The Arcade
Sat 23rd Nov
Mountford Hall,
Liverpool Guild of Students
Sam Fender
Sat 23rd Nov
An Evening with
The Steve Hillage
Band
+ Gong
o2academyliverpool.co.uk
11-13 Hotham Street, Liverpool L3 5UF
Doors 7pm unless stated
Sun 24th Nov
Primal Scream
Fri 29th Nov
The Doors Alive
Sat 30th Nov • 6pm
The Wonder Stuff
performing ‘The Eight
Legged Groove Machine’ &
‘HUP’ in full
+ Jim Bob from Carter USM
Sat 30th Nov
Pearl Jam UK
Thur 5th Dec
Shed Seven
+ The Twang
Fri 6th Dec
Mountford Hall,
Liverpool Guild of Students
Happy Mondays -
Greatest Hits Tour
Fri 6th Dec
SPINN
Sat 7th Dec
Prince Tribute -
Endorphinmachine
Thur 12th Dec
Mountford Hall,
Liverpool Guild of Students
Daniel Sloss: X
Fri 13th Dec
The Lancashire
Hotpots
Sat 14th Dec
The Smyths
… The Smiths 35
Sat 14th Dec
Ian Prowse
& Amsterdam
Wed 18th Dec
The Darkness
Thur 19th Dec
Cast... All Change
Album
Fri 20th Dec
Cast... Mother
Nature Calls
Album
Sat 21st Dec
Cast... Magic
Hour Album
Venue box office opening hours:
Mon - Sat 10.30am - 5.30pm
ticketmaster.co.uk • seetickets.com
gigantic.com • ticketweb.co.uk
WED 17TH JUL 7PM
LAUREN ALAINA
THUR 25TH JUL 7PM
THE MURDER
CAPITAL
FRI 30TH AUG 7PM
THE FAIM
THUR 5TH SEP 7PM
MORGAN EVANS
SAT 7TH SEP 7PM
EDWYN COLLINS
WED 11TH SEP 7PM
LOVE FAME
TRAGEDY
SAT 14TH SEP 7PM SOLD OUT
THE SNUTS
SAT 5TH OCT 7PM
A BAND
CALLED MALICE
SUN 6TH OCT 7PM
CREEP SHOW
FRI 18TH OCT 7PM
NINE BELOW ZERO
SAT 19TH JUN 7PM
SAINT AGNES
FRI 25TH OCT 7PM
LITTLE COMETS
SUN 27TH NOV 7PM
STRIKING
MATCHES
FRI 1ST NOV 7PM
DAUGHTERS
SAT 2ND NOV 7PM
STONE
FOUNDATION
TUE 12TH NOV 7PM
HUGH CORNWELL
ELECTRIC
WED 13TH NOV 7PM
BLACK LIPS
THUR 14TH NOV 7PM
THE REGRETTES
SAT 16TH NOV 7PM
LONDON CALLING
PLAY THE CLASH
FRI 22ND NOV 7PM
BLOOD RED SHOES
+ GEN & THE DEGENERATES
+ QUEEN KWONG
WED 4TH DEC 7PM
ALDOUS HARDING
TUE 10TH DEC 7PM
THE PAPER KITES
TICKETS FOR ALL SHOWS ARE AVAILABLE FROM
TICKETMASTER.CO.UK
90
SEEL STREET, LIVERPOOL, L1 4BH
EVOL EVOL presents presents
with guests to be announced
with guests to be announced
09.11.2019
O2 Academy 09.11.2019 Liverpool
O2 Academy Liverpool
TICKETS £12 ADVANCE PLUS BOOKING FEES VIA SEETICKETS.COM & TICKETMASTER.CO.UK
@CLUBEVOL @SheDrewTheGun
TICKETS £12 ADVANCE PLUS BOOKING FEES VIA SEETICKETS.COM & TICKETMASTER.CO.UK
@CLUBEVOL @SheDrewTheGun
20 July
O 2 Ritz
Curated by
MARY ANNE HOBBS
Featuring
Jlin
Holly Herndon
Aïsha Devi ft. MFO
Klara Lewis
Katie Gately
Produced by Manchester International Festival.
Photos (L-R): Jlin by Mahdumita Nandi; Holly Herndon by Bennet Perez;
Klara Lewis by Hampus Högberg; Katie Gately by Jasmine Safaeian; Aïsha Devi by Emile Barret
FREE ENTRY
SUN 21ST JULY
What’s On
September –
November
Wednesday 4 September 7.30pm – Gods
Thursday 5 September 7.30pm – Heroes
Friday 6 September 7.30pm – Men
Mythos: A Trilogy
by Stephen Fry
Wednesday 2 October 8pm
With Great PowerPoint Comes Great
ResponsibilityPoint
Dave Gorman
Plus support Nick Doody
Tuesday 12 November 7.30pm
Adam Ant
Tuesday 19 November 7.30pm
Calexico and Iron & Wine
Plus Lisa O’Neill
Thursday 17 October 8pm
Music Room
Mad Dog Mcrea
Box Office
0151 709 3789
liverpoolphil.com
LiverpoolPhilharmonic
liverpoolphil
liverpool_philharmonic
Principal Funders
Principal Partners
Media Partner
Thanks to the City
of Liverpool for its
financial support
Image Mythos – Stephen Fry © David Cooper
23. - 24. AUGUST 2019 → BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND
WEEKEND & DAY TICKETS → FUTUREYARD.ORG
BIRKENHEAD TOWN HALL | BIRKENHEAD PRIORY | BLOOM BUILDING | GALLAGHER’S
SIDE A: FRIDAY
SIDE B: SATURDAY
BILL RYDER-JONES
STELLA DONNELLY
SZUN WAVES QUEEN ZEE
ANNA CALVI
NILÜFER YANYA
AUDIOBOOKS PIXX
DAY TICKETS
ON SALE NOW!
SQUID • CHARLES WATSON
BLACK COUNTRY, NEW ROAD
SCALPING • JOHANNA SAMUELS
THE INTERGALACTIC REPUBLIC OF KONGO
WILLIE J HEALEY • BILL NICKSON
DIALECT • MUNKEY JUNKEY
STRAWBERRY GUY • SAMURAI KIP
KYAMI • UNCLE JANE • ORGAN FREEMAN
WILD FRUIT ART COLLECTIVE • SPILT
WORKING MEN'S CLUB
POTTERY • AMAROUN • DRY CLEANING
EYESORE & THE JINX
TRUDY AND THE ROMANCE
BRAD STANK • SPQR
BEIJA FLO • SEATBELTS • MEILIR
ANI GLASS • HMS MORRIS
LAURIE SHAW • ALEX TELEKO
LO FIVE • BYE LOUIS
FOXEN CYN • POLYPORES • STORES
NIKI KAND • GINTIS • TORI CROSS
PODGE • THE JAGZ
23. AUGUST 2019
24. AUGUST 2019
FRI
FOREST SWORDS PRESENTS PYLON
A NEW INSTALLATION WITH THE KAZIMIER
SAT
WITH A FURTHER WORLD OF WEIRD WIRRAL WONDERMENT
www.liverpoolbandvans.co.uk
info@liverpoolbandvans.co.uk +44 78 544 94764
Cain’s Brewery District ● 9 Mann Street ● Liverpool ● L85AF
New Music + Creative Culture
Liverpool
Issue 101 / July 2019
bidolito.co.uk
Second Floor
The Merchant
40-42 Slater Street
Liverpool L1 4BX
Publisher/Founder
Craig G Pennington - info@bidolito.co.uk
Editor-in-Chief
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Sam Turner - sam@bidolito.co.uk
Features Editor
Niloo Sharifi - niloo@bidolito.co.uk
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Words
Christopher Torpey, Niloo Sharifi, Georgina Hull, Elliot
Ryder, Sam Turner, Cath Holland, Tom Doubtfire,
Laura Brown, Richard Lewis, Harriet Morley, Johnny
Quinn, Huw Livingstone, Julia Johnson, Georgia
Turnbull, Sophie Shields, Joel Durksen, Jennie Macaulay,
Iona Fazer, Sam Taylor, Glyn Akroyd, Jake Penn,
Paul Fitzgerald, Megan Walder, Mark Rowley, Andy
McGlinchey, Bluboy, Amina Atiq.
Photography, Illustration and Layout
Mark McKellier, Keith Ainsworth, Hannah Blackman-
Kurz, SPINN, Neil Keating, Mark Loudon, Maclay
Herriot, Tarnish Vision, Nata Moraru, Carmen Zografou,
Michael Kirkham, Stu Moulding, Jessica Grace Neal,
Lucy McLachlan Glyn Akroyd, John Middleton, Brian
Sayle, Paul McCoy, Georgina Hull, David J Colbran,
Carlos Santos, Milos Sampraga, Robin Clewley.
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The views expressed in Bido Lito! are those of the
respective contributors and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of the magazine, its staff or the
publishers. All rights reserved.
EDITORIAL
Going by my rough estimations, there were definitely
a few more people out on the streets for Liverpool
FC’s Champions League victory parade than were
out in Birkenhead for Tranmere Rovers’ League
Two Play-Off victory celebrations six days prior. Just a handful
fewer, I’d say, maybe the odd half a million or so… I was there in
Hamilton Square for Tranmere’s civic reception, and though we
didn’t have quite the pomp of Liverpool – nor the glitter cannons,
the multiple buses of millionaire superstars, the pyro or quite
as extensive an arsenal of annoying chants (Zoum Bakayogo’s
rendition of “Oh Birkenhead!” aside) – we still enjoyed it for what
it was. It may have been quaint, but it was ours.
I watched the Liverpool FC parade on the endless scroll
of news updated and Instagram posts – I even heard the
fireworks on The Strand from the other side of the river. Perhaps
I was still on Cloud Nine following Tranmere’s back-to-back
promotions, but I felt a similar kind of warmth from watching
these celebrations taking place across the city. As a football fan,
it’s hard not to feel a bit envious when watching these things,
wishing it was you and your team; but I actually felt weirdly
proud from the city’s point of view. Here was a team at one
with the place it was representing, the players and fans feeding
off each other, and bringing out all that is good about Scouse
exceptionalism (NB – if you haven’t read Laura Brown’s excellent
The Problem With Scouse Exceptionalism article on Liverpool
Long Reads yet, do so; it’s excellent). Here, also, was the world’s
media with their eyes trained on the city; and huge numbers of
visitors basking in the positivity.
Now, this strain of Liverpool culture is one that’s easy to
package up and sell around the world. Indeed, it’s done very
well by LFC, so much so that they can command such a global
FEATURES
12 / BILL NICKSON
Memories on a Polaroid. The winsome artist who is following a
tradition of great Liverpool singer-songwriters.
14 / KITTY’S LAUNDERETTE
The washhouse-cum-community space on the border of Everton
and Anfield is the newest member of a crop of social enterprises
across the Merseyside area.
18 / READ IT IN BOOKS
Publicist to the stars, Mick Houghton, recounts some of the
wisdom picked up from decades working with some of pop’s – and
Liverpool’s – most notorious acts.
22 / WHISC AT 35
From behind their unassuming façade on 120 Bold Street, the
quiet heroes of WHISC have been offering advice and support to
generations of Liverpool’s women.
24 / ARAB FUTURISM
What does the future look like if you fear you won’t exist? Laura
Brown asks if we see the privilege in our ability to think it will
always be better tomorrow.
REGULARS
10 / NEWS
30 / SPOTLIGHT
33 / PREVIEWS
audience. But it’s far from the only form of culture the city
has, and my mind started to wonder about the visitors and
well wishers present at the parade, and how much they knew
about the city’s many different strands of culture. Did they visit
Homebaked when they made their pilgrimage to Anfield, or
stop by Kitty’s Launderette to look in on the workshops? Did
they stop by Squash for a cuppa, pick up some souvenirs at the
Granby Street Market or swing by Output gallery to see work
by local artists? How, indeed, can you grasp the multitude of
conversations and ideas that make a place what it is, even if
you’re just passing through?
I’m pretty sure that I already knew the answer to this question
– but it was upon reading Emma Warren’s brilliant book Make
Some Space that the answer became crystallised. We document
what happens – the small and the big, the glitzy and the decidedly
un-trendy – so that we can piece together a much richer story.
We give a voice to those movements and people that might not
always have their voice heard over the tumult. We bring together
what happens on the streets, in the minds of the doers and behind
closed doors, laying down the stories and myths of the future – the
things that don’t make it so readily into Twitter streams or onto
newspaper front pages. Documenting your culture is a way of
preserving it, making it real. That’s why our monthly cycle of Bido
Lito! feels so important: because there are so many stories to keep
telling, such a rich tapestry of life contributing to our society, that
we need a repository for them that can be accessed by anyone
who wants to know more about the living culture that surrounds
us. We all have our part to play as documenters of this. !
Christopher Torpey / @CATorp
Editor-in-Chief
20 / SPINN TOUR DIARY
With a fresh new album in their back pocket, Liverpool’s jangle
pop darlings SPINN hit the road to charm the rest of the UK.
26 / DIGITAL LOVE
Artist Harriet Morley delves into her experiments with
programmed communication, showing how new modes of
communication have complicated human relationships.
28 / NEIL KEATING
Huw Livingstone meets the man quietly shaping the aesthetic of
Liverpool’s favourite spots and our Instagram feeds, one mural at
a time.
32 / ROLLING BLACKOUTS
COASTAL FEVER
“We’ve always tried to make pop music from what we have lying
around”
34 / MARY ANNE HOBBS
“In my heart, it’s the avant-garde that excites me the most”
40 / REVIEWS
54 / ARTISTIC LICENCE
NEWS
Future Yard Additions
Anna Calvi
You’ve got the date in your diary and the early Friday dart from
work sorted – now all you need to plan your FUTURE YARD
festival weekend is a breakdown of which artists you’re going to
see at the Birkenhead festival on August bank holiday weekend
(23rd and 24th August). The Bard of Wirral himself, BILL
RYDER-JONES, headlines Friday’s activity, joined by underground
Aussie star STELLA DONNELLY and head-spinning nu jazz trio
SZUN WAVES. Strident queen of cinematic gothic rock ANNA
CALVI headlines proceedings on Saturday, joined by a string
of 2019’s hottest talent – NILÜFER YANYA, PIXX, POTTERY
– with Ninja Tune’s FOREST SWORDS unspooling his brand
new sound and percussion installation PYLON over both days
at Merseyside’s oldest standing building, Birkenhead Priory. A
selection of experimental Welsh artists are among those acts
joining the bill – MEILIR, ANI GLASS and HMS MORRIS among
them – with a world of weird Wirral wonderment also promised.
Day and weekend tickets are now available from futureyard.org.
Leviathan, Yeh We All Want One
Shezad Dawood’s epic film series LEVIATHAN comes to
the Bluecoat this summer as part of a season examining
society and migration. Presented alongside paintings, resin
sculpture and woven textiles, Leviathan follows migratory
patterns between Europe and Africa. The works combine
marine biology, climate change, political systems and mental
health to show how human activity and marine ecologies are
intertwined. The first four chapters of Leviathan premiered
in Venice in conjunction with the 57th Art Biennale. The
work has developed, adapted and grown across exhibitions
and screenings in Wales, the Netherlands and Italy, before
reaching the Bluecoat for a major exhibition charting
Dawood’s ambitious project.
Leviathan by Shezad Dawood
The World Of Keith Haring
Keith Haring
In collaboration with Tate Liverpool, Soul Jazz Records are releasing a
stunning new collection entitled The World Of Keith Haring featuring
music influential to the New York street artist Keith Haring, including Fab
5 Freddy, Yoko Ono, Gray (Jean-Michel Basquiat’s group), The Jonzun
Crew, Larry Levan, Pylon, Johnny Dynell and many others. The World
Of Keith Haring is released to coincide with the presentation of the first
major exhibition in the UK of Keith Haring’s work, which is running now
at Tate Liverpool until November 2019. Keep your eyes and ears peeled
for an exclusive playback of this record coming soon!
Design For Life
Blown away by the talent on display at Liverpool John
Moores University’s Art and Design Degree Show, we
have drafted in design students to lend their expertise to
the poster for the monthly Bido Lito! Social. This month
CALUM JONES has put together the graphic for our July
Social at Sound Food And Drink, featuring OHMNS.
Calum’s Rock n Roll Youth Culture project stood out
among the great work in the degree show at the John
Lennon Art And Design Building last month (see review
on page 44) and made him the perfect candidate for July’s
raucous rock show at Sound. You can find more of Calum’s
work at calumjonesdesign.weebly.com.
Total Bike Forever @ The Merchant
Globe-trotting DJs and producers Tim Stephens and Adam
Faulkner have just completed a 12-month cycle trip across the
world, stretching from London to Tokyo – and they’re playing a
DJ set in Liverpool to celebrate their return. Under their TOTAL
BIKE FOREVER banner, the pair set themselves a task of writing
an album while travelling the world, taking inspiration from their
surroundings and people they met along the way. They’ve been
documenting this with a series of brilliant vlogs and a number of
groove-laden podcast mixes, which you can find at bidolito.co.uk.
Cycle down to The Merchant after work on Friday 28th June to
hear a special set from Tim and Adam where they’ll be debuting
some new material.
Station To Station
Merseyrail Sound Station
The third semester of Merseyrail Sound Station is underway with
an array of talented artists taking part. The group of musicians
– including Eggy Records’ ANA MAE, fast-rising stars GEN AND
THE DEGENERATES and psych jazz bastions THE BLURRED
SUN BAND – are in the midst of an intensive development
programme and will all play a live showcase at Liverpool Central
on Friday 26th July. Merseyrail Sound Station will also be taking
a group of artists down to London for a showcase gig at The
Waiting Room in partnership with promoters Eat Your Own Ears
later in 2019. More details to be announced in due course – but
get along to Central station from 3pm to see the city’s future
stars in action, for free.
10
MEMBERS’
MIXTAPE
In this new regular feature, we ask one
of our members to compile a selection
of music from their recent listening
playlists. Mark Rowley grasps the nettle
this month and gives us a sample of his
listening habits from this year.
Bundobust
Big Thief
Orange
4AD
Desi Island Discs
The newest edition to Bold Street’s mouth-watering
foodie offer now has a soundtrack to match its
impeccably tasty menu. Crate-digging DJ and
promoter Stepping Tiger has put together a heady
concoction of tasty sonic morsels to accompany
patrons’ lunchtime experience at the Indian street
food mecca BUNDOBUST. Stirring in a scrumptious
selection of new jazz, Afrobeat and marinating it
with some succulent soul, TOO MUCH SPICY is the
perfect accompaniment to Bundobust’s lunchtime
offer. You can hear the mix in store while you sit
down to your tarka dhal and Bundo chaat, and make
use of the £7.50 for two plates lunch offer. Stepping
Tiger DJs play regularly around the region and
host an eclectic new music night once a month at
Alexander’s, Chester.
In The CAN
Named as one of the top 10 greenest eateries in the
country, CAN WATERLOO is a vibrant new ecofriendly
café just five minutes from Crosby beach. As
well as serving up all manner of great vegan comfort
food, CAN are a virtually plastic free business with a
commitment to preventing any plastic that comes into
the building from ending up in landfill. Instead, they
host regular ‘ecobrick workshops’ to turn single use
plastics into a reusable building block for their pop-up
food stall, which will be appearing at a number of
festivals this summer. If you need any more incentive
go and try it out, CAN’s chefs have included a sparkling
new addition to their summer menu in the form of the
Bido Lito! pink pizza: a beetroot hummus base with
roasted cauliflower, walnuts, and beetaroni topping.
Big Thief are a Brooklynbased
alternative folk band,
who earlier this year released
their third album U.F.O.F. to critical acclaim. Any band with
a guitarist going by the name of Buck Meek has to have an
edge over the rest… and with the angelic tones of singer
Adrianne Lenker, we pretty well hit the jackpot here!
Maribou State
(feat. Holly
Walker)
Nervous Tics
(DJ Tennis Remix)
Counter Records
Thirst For Firsts
WIRRAL FESTIVAL OF FIRSTS is getting in on the borough’s year in the spotlight with a host of activity between
5th and 14th July. As the city region’s Borough Of Culture, Wirral has been home to scores of events and exhibitions
throughout 2019, and WFOF brings a slice of summer to these celebrations. West Kirby’s Westbourne Hall plays
host to a number of events throughout the run, including music from audacious five-piece KABANTU (5th July), a
celebration of jazz, Baltic and Indian Carnatic music with MAYA JAZZ (11th July), and a premiere of Teatro Pomodoro’s
darkly comedic new piece FISH OUT OF WATER: A SHIPWRECKED ODYSSEY (12th July). Author Mike Haskins has
written for Steve Coogan, Sue Perkins and Smack The Pony, and he brings his extraordinary true history SEX, DRUGS
AND QUEEN VICTORIA to West Kirby Arts Centre on 7th July. There’s tonnes more, including fun for all the family at
HOYLAKE STREET FESTIVAL on 6th July – and you can find full listings at wirralfestivaloffirsts.org.uk.
New Tunes Coming
AI Audio Lab
You just can’t stop the good tunes rolling in – and you’re
never gonna hear us complaining about that at Bido HQ.
We’ve been treating ourselves to some astounding sounds
this month, not least in the form of TRUDY AND THE
ROMANCE’s Sandman. The doo-wop spacemen show
off their winsome, jazz chops on this stormer of a debut
LP – and you can catch them live at Future Yard festival in
August. Fellow Future Yarder BILL RYDER-JONES has stolen
our hearts all over again with Yawny Yawn, the piano-only
version of last year’s acclaimed album; and rising star of
the internet, PODGE, has unveiled his glorious first single
Yuka-Peno via Edge Hill’s The Label Recordings. You can
also catch an IRL version of Podge in Birkenhead at Future
Yard – hmmm, I sense a theme developing…
AI Audio Lab
In our 100th issue, we considered the implications for art and
creativity in an increasingly digital world. In particular, we wanted
to focus on how artificial intelligence is being used to power
music-making tools, and how that might hinder or help tomorrow’s
musicians. We have been carrying out further research into this
at our AI AUDIO LAB installation at SEVENSTORE, which invites
artists and members of the public to create a piece of music using
AI software in a pop-up studio environment. There are still places
to be filled on our weekly workshops on 29th June and 6th July. To
book on, please email aiaudiolab@bidolito.co.uk. No prior music
experience is needed – just a desire to test the parameters of AI,
and yourself.
Bill Ryder-Jones
The original track appeared on MARIBOU STATE’s 2018
album Kingdoms In Colour. It now features on the 2019
remix EP and, by the time Manfredi Romano (DJ Tennis)
has worked his magic, it’s even more of a sublime slice of
soulful beauty than ever. Really looking forward to seeing
these up close later in the summer.
Skinny Pelembe
No Blacks, No
Dogs, No Irish
Brownswood
Recordings
South Africa-born, Doncasterraised
SKINNY PELEMBE is causing quite a stir at the
minute. Championed by illustrious BBC Radio 6 Music DJ
Giles Peterson, among others, his debut album Dreaming
Is Dead Now came out last month and oozes quality from
start to finish. This track, which came out as a precursor
to the long player, is a throwback to the experiences of old
Commonwealth immigrants made current by the Windrush
scandal of last year, and is a major standout.
Drahla
React/Revolt
Captured Tracks
Leeds-based four-piece
DRAHLA also released their
highly regarded debut album
last month. Sounding very
1980s New York and fronted by singer-guitarist Luciel
Brown, Drahla has drawn comparisons to post-punk
legends Sonic Youth. They tore up Jacaranda Phase One
recently, despite a modest turnout, and this track, featuring
an absolute killer extended sax introduction, shows off
their versatility as well as the range of their compelling
sound.
Head to bidolito.co.uk for a playlist compiled by Mark. For
more information on our Community Membership, head to
bidolito.co.uk/membership.
NEWS 11
12
Ahead of the release his latest EP, Niloo Sharifi meets the man
behind the bedroom pop wizardry and throwback childhood
photos. Delving into the making of the EP, Bill Nickson opens up
about the sentiments fuelling the pure emotion that emanates
through his poignant songs.
I’m sitting in my room, trying to convince a reluctant BILL
NICKSON to let me hear his new EP. He doesn’t have
the newest mixes with him, and he doesn’t want to play
me the old versions on his SoundCloud. “I’ve heard them
so much that I can only hear the weird, sticky-outy parts,”
he tells me, but I’m insistent – I can’t interview him about an
EP I’ve not heard. When he finally lets me hear it, he’s still
mumbling apologies about EQ levels.
But it’s all beside the point – these songs would be
beautiful in any circumstance, even croaked out on a sore
throat with a barely tuned five-string guitar. The faraway
sound of his voice and the instruments make me feel
intensely nostalgic: for what, exactly, I don’t know. They feel
plucked out of time, ageless in their sincerity. Each song
feels intimate – like someone talking to their best friend,
not the public. His sound varies quite a lot; from laid-back
melodies, really relaxing and heartbreaking, like the last
warm days of summer, on tunes like Better Days and Are
You Alright; to the cerebral, relentless thrum of Grave, the
aggressive wonkiness of its repetitive riff and drums, angry
lyrics indistinct over the top.
Maybe this is something to do with the recording
process – Bill doesn’t like to record anything twice, because
it’s all about the moment, and the feeling of that moment,
above everything else. “I’ve always just worked, like, the first
time I do it is the final. I don’t approach it like a demo. I just
approach it like I’m making the next song now; just bash it
out in four hours, and spend the next eight months messing
around with the EQs and the volumes and that.”
This dedication to spontaneity produces sounds loaded
with emotion – even if we’re straining to make out the lyrics.
“In Grave, the vocals are quite hard to hear in certain parts of
it – I’ve kind of had a nightmare,
just spent the last year trying to
make them a bit more clear.” The
song reminds me of Joy Division
tunes – emotion is stripped bare
and displayed in its most brazen,
ugly form, doubling down on its
own melodrama. I can imagine
angsty teens loving that one,
not in a bad way, I tell him. “Yeh,
I think that’s where it’s come
from,” he replies. “The chorus
as well is: ‘You don’t know what
it’s like’, and it’s one of those
choruses where I wish I could
be there and explain it to each
person that listens to it, and be
like: what I meant by that is that ignorant feeling that your
problems are the biggest thing to ever happen, and no one
gets it and stuff. It’s a tongue-in-cheek kinda thing.”
He admits to a certain early predilection for pop punk,
one that we share. “I had a band in year six, but it was really
embarrassing stuff – I was into Green Day back then, so I
was straining my voice to sound punky – it was just really
embarrassing. I used to watch Kerrang! religiously; I got
into Blink-182 really early. I feel like there’s some stuff in
my music that I will have picked up from back then; I’m not
scared to go in that whiny territory a bit.”
Personally, I believe no genre has ever paralleled pop
punk/emo’s capacity to just let the adolescent emotions fly
without a shred of self-consciousness – and the result is pure
theatre. Bill’s sound couldn’t be further from pop punk, but
it retains that same confessional quality: “I dunno, it’s kind of
like a diary of sorts; you can pinpoint each song in the past.”
After his early forays into the nasal world of childish
bedroom rock, Bill has experimented with many musical
mediums before finding his way back to guitar. “It was only
just before I went to university in 2014 that I got into guitar
stuff after doing electronic-y stuff for a while. And, I don’t
know, it’s hard to write a song [that’s] not coming from
somewhere inside, for me anyway. One of the first songs that
I sang on was, kind of, about being alone and that, because
I was always in my room, on my computer, throughout the
summer and stuff, and I just found it to be… I dunno, it felt
weird, it felt like a weight off my shoulders a bit, if y’know
what I mean – not to get, like, typical. I just got into writing
about how I was feeling.”
Years down the line, his songs still feel cathartic for
him, which becomes a strange experience now that he’ll be
singing them to an audience. “I don’t realise sometimes how,
like, almost embarrassing some of the songs can be – like that
Grave song. I dunno, I swear in it and that. Having a swear
word in your song hinders it a bit in this day and age, but it
felt like the right word at the time. I think it’s quite personal. I
try to make the songs sound like how I’m feeling. And Grave
is quite an all-over-the-place song on the drums – quite busy
–and it’s just how your head can feel.”
“Daniel Johnston
opened my eyes to
how music can be
your outlet. If you can
see music’s from the
heart it’s easy to like,
because it’s pure”
The other songs on the EP go in a totally different
direction; they’re incredibly soft, steeped in sentiment that
feels really genuine. You’re a real romantic guy, that’s what
I think, I tell him. “I am a romantic guy, but in a way where I
don’t really know what I’m doing,” he replies. He tells me how
each song relates to a moment in the whirlwind year he’s
had, falling in love for the first time. “It’s weird; not what you
expect from, like, the films and that.” The EP bears witness to
the sweetness of these searing, complicated feelings.
Are You Alright is a beautiful song, I tell him: for me,
it’s one of those god-touched melodies. “I still think about
you sometimes, can you see that? Can you hear that in this
song?” he sings.
“That one’s the oldest one in there, I recorded that in
2016,” he explains. “Can’t actually mess with it, either,
because I haven’t got the project file anymore, so I just have
this lo-fi music file for it. It’s the most complete one there, I’d
say, even though it’s the roughest one. It’s kind of a Daniel
Johnston song, where it’s just short and simple.” I tell him
I’ve never listened to Daniel Johnston, and he can’t believe it.
“He’s a massive figure in my whole musical journey, I think.”
I want to know what he loves about him. “He’s probably the
purest musician I’ve ever listened to – it’s just straight from
the heart, and there’s no… he’s not doing it for any other
intention than creating for himself. You can hear it in every
song, and he sings as if there are a million people watching,
but it’s inward facing. He definitely opened my eyes to how
music can be your outlet. And people can find a way to love
that. It’s true what they say, where if you can see it’s from
the heart, it’s easy to like things, because it’s, like, pure.”
I’m curious as to how Bill’s very personal, pure
relationship with music sits with the very public nature
of a musical career. “Yeh, it’s
weird. I don’t fully enjoy going
to gigs and that, and standing
in the crowd, and just being
surrounded by people. I always
have that feeling that they’re
looking at the back of my head.
It’s like that kind of insecure
feeling in a crowd – I dunno,
I prefer it to going to a gig I
think, but it’s still awkward,
I don’t know.” Bill has an
irreverent approach to his own
introversion, which comes
through in the clear-sighted way
he presents emotion. “I think I
have select people that I’m quite
comfortable with, and I’m not shy around, really, but I can
still be a bit awkward. Like right now, I feel a bit awkward,
’cos of the interview, as you can tell from my voice – it’s, like,
got this weird, shaky quality to it and I don’t know why.”
Bill’s musical development goes in the direction of
himself, rather than the public. He’s stopped processing his
own voice until it’s unrecognisable. “I used to make really
dreampoppy, reverby stuff – it was a noticeable feature
of the stuff I was making – and it was due to insecurity as
well,” he admits. “I wasn’t a singer, so I used to hide my
voice a bit by drenching it with reverb. Through university I
got a lot more confident and found the sound that I’m doing
now.” It’s about getting better at creating honest pieces of
himself in songs, for himself.
“I think, when I grow older, the stuff I’ll be making grows
with me a bit. That’s why I really want to put this EP out,
because I keep making EPs, and getting tired, and putting
them away instead of putting them out. I feel like I’m just
missing loads of key parts of my musical growth being out
there, so I’ve tried my hardest to make these songs good
enough to put out. Even though they’re a bit older, a bit
embarrassing and stuff – so I just wanna get them out there,
so I can move on and make something new, and feel like I
can grow a bit.”
Wherever his sound ends up in a decade, it’s certain
that Bill’s now locked in. “Music has just consumed my aims,
and what I wanna do in life. It’s what I think about all the
time – my aim is to just make music, and keep putting it out,
and doing shows.” !
Words: Niloo Sharifi
Photography: Keith Ainsworth / arkimages.co.uk
@billnickson_
Bill Nickson’s new, as-yet untitled EP is released in August.
Bill plays Liverpool International Music Festival on Saturday
20th July as Bido Lito!’s selection for the Music City stage,
and plays Future Yard festival on 23rd August.
FEATURE
13
KITTY’S LA
After making headlines for their
successful, community-backed
Kickstarter campaign, the muchanticipated
Kitty’s Launderette
has finally opened its doors. The
washhouse-cum-community space
on the border of Everton and Anfield is
the newest member of a crop of social
enterprises across the Merseyside
area, all working together to create
local solutions to societal problems.
Anfield-based Tom Doubtfire talks to
the organisers behind the launderette
to gauge the scope of this masscollaboration,
and the new forms of
grass-roots organisation that are
inspiring them.
KITTY’S LAUNDERETTE is a new social enterprise
functioning as a washhouse in the Everton area
of Liverpool, aiming to provide an affordable and
ecological laundry service while also providing a space
for people to gather, spend time and learn. Kitty’s was named in
honour of Kitty Wilkinson, the Irish migrant worker who founded
the first public washhouse in Liverpool and became known as
‘the Saint of the Slums’ for her pioneering work. Underpinning
this whole business is a wish for autonomy and better control
over our own lives. Social projects like these are transforming
Liverpool by inches – and they raise a hopeful question: with a
space of our own, how can we begin to reshape the world around
us?
After going to one of their gatherings in October last year,
it was empowering to feel that I was just a part (even if very
minute) of bringing this project to life. Kitty’s Launderette officially
opened on the morning of 18th May this year, with a busy
opening party during the evening, and then hosted a night of live
Irish music in the form of a céilí from Mikey Kenney and Friends
the following evening. During the day, the space was used as a
playschool for children. The washhouse’s profits as a business are
invested directly into the local community, through their myriad
programmes and through direct employment. Now sat right at
the end of Grasmere Street, they hope to become a useful asset
to the local community through hosting events showcasing music
and art, film screenings and workshops as part of wider goal of
centring people-focused activity, adding value to the local area.
They are not alone in this. Homebaked Anfield have been
a valuable resource in sharing knowledge and skills during the
years prior to Kitty’s opening their doors. They have grown from
an art project which asked the simple question ‘what does it
mean to live well?’ into a multi-faceted business which puts local
people at the core of its decision-making.
Initially, Kitty’s used Homebaked, another cooperative and
community focused enterprise in Anfield, as a proxy space to
host meetings and events to gather thoughts, feelings and ideas
about how people saw the launderette functioning and operating
in the future. Throughout the three years the business was
14
UNDERETTE
preparing to open, events like this enabled them to get a feel for
what people in the area would be interested in using the space
for, as well as being a way of bringing people together of all ages
in a fun and relaxed, but productive, environment. At Kitty’s, they
speak openly of how important this accessibility to these spaces
was. “You’d go there and have your lunch,” says launderette coordinator
Grace Harrison, “and it would be like a sandwich and a
question on a daily basis.”
For Grace, Homebaked is a crucial model for what they want
to achieve. “I think there is something really powerful about
seeing the success of all the hard work they put in, and the
degree to which it has been really taken on by a whole range
of people who now use and love that space, so I think that also
gave us a lot of confidence that what we were trying to do was
complementary and comparable.” Inspired by their conversations
on the social high street, Kitty’s Launderette are following the
likes of Homebaked in taking ownership of the spaces that are
likely to become derelict over the next few years. Rather than
being a collection of impersonal spaces, the high street in and
around Anfield is transforming into somewhere packed with
character and warmth.
Through the community’s openness and willingness to
share knowledge, time and resources, Kitty’s have been able to
build upon the work of other community-focused organisations
in Liverpool. Rather than start from scratch, places such as
Homebaked, Rotunda, Rice Lane City Farm, Squash and
Blackburne House have been happy to help at various points
from conception. As Grace explains, this is rare: “In the traditional
third sector where you are grant dependent, you end up being
in competition with people who should be your collaborators.”
A dedication to support those who ultimately share our goals is
one part of a wider ethos formed around the fundamental belief
Grace expresses. “What people can achieve together is greater
than what any one person can achieve on their own.”
In the context of growing austerity, and a government
which still chooses to pursue a ‘there is no alternative’ narrative
in favour of severe public service cuts and centralised decision
making, the UK seems to be divided on what the future should
look like. It becomes increasingly clear that elites and politicians
alike are unable or unwilling to address the complex problems
people face in the world around them.
Communities have always found ways to care for
themselves through taking matters into their own hands, and
Kitty’s Launderette is one such business hoping to pump money
back into the local community. For Kitty’s Launderette, creative
thinking is integral to the world they are trying to build a corner
of. “In our dream scenario,” says Grace, “it’s that we continue to
value creative thinking as the business goes forward and we see
that as not supplementary but integral.” In a time when funding
for creative courses is the first to be squeezed, Kitty’s are intent
on recognising the value of creative labour. “[That’s] also part of
the social impact, because, I think artists should be paid for the
stuff they do, and often they’re not – so we, as the business, can
recognise value and remunerate for creative involvement.”
It has become clear that the only way to solve some of the
toughest issues facing people in the UK is through creative
thinking and behaving with a certain nuance. It feels necessary
now, as it always has been, to properly recognise the creative
labour of artists, musicians and performers. Creatives work not
only to give platforms to voices and experiences, but to add
value and meaning into our lives. By ensuring that this business
functions firstly as a launderette, Kitty’s hopes that this will
enable them to become much more involved with a whole range
of creative activity happening in Liverpool.
Kitty’s recognise the contexts which make creativity
inaccessible to people and wants to break them down. “We
can just commission the work that we think is going to look
good, or that the artist wants to make – we don’t have to think
about someone else’s agenda.” Autonomy here is key. Through
being a self-sustaining business, they can support people. This
could take the form of commissioning artists to create a piece
of work to be displayed somewhere in the local area, or creating
more local jobs which pay a living wage; two examples where
autonomy would be brought about through income generation,
which was a big motivating factor in the early stages of setting
up Kitty’s.
The team of nine (Grace, Ehsan, Louis, Rachael, Kerrie, Kathy,
Natalie, Kirsty and Michelle) aim to ensure that the project is led
by as many people as possible through active listening; being
open to and in favour of change. This is a business that started
as a small group with an idea, but now wishes to cater not only
to locals but also those who live further afield. Figuring out how
they can begin to support and be supported by people who don’t
live locally is something they admit will start to become clearer
over the next few months. They recognise the only way to make a
space as accessible as possible is through allowing people to be
actively involved in shaping how the space functions in the future.
The Talk Of The Washhouse project is one way they have
been able to do this.. As part of their ongoing research into
washhouses as important social spaces, Kitty’s run weekly
drop-in conversation sessions for collecting local memories of
washhouses. Supported by the heritage project, this aims to
collect stories from people sharing their past experiences of being
in launderettes to produce a lasting archive. Grace describes
how this process has allowed forgotten pasts to be rediscovered:
“We were finding out that the washhouse was a site of social
life, particularly for women, and there is hardly anything written
about that. Working class women’s history is largely unrecorded
so this is a really important project for us.”
Through listening to and harnessing memories and stories
about the washhouse as a place of social activity, they hope to
produce a telling archive which not only accommodates for the
nostalgia of a shared past, but guides us along the path towards
a shared future. By actively listening to stories and the people
telling them, their enterprise continues to be “informed by the
things that people really care about. People have told us what
was great about it was this or that, and we can build that into
how we do things – that allows people to be heard, and know
their experiences are valuable and cared about.”
There is a recognition here that every interaction and
encounter, whether it be between members of the team or
discussions with the public, have all been equally vital in allowing
the business to open. “It’s really important that this business is
owned by, and led by, as many people as possible, because that
FEATURE
15
“Taking greater care
for those around you –
enacted through active
community organising
– allows people to
have power over the
decisions that affect
their lived experiences”
is how it will be strong as a business,” Grace tells me. Funding
has helped the business reach a certain point of comfort, but
above all, conversations between people, and continuous mutual
support are what injects energy and life into this space, and
that is what will help the launderette sustain itself in the future
– Kitty’s recognise the value of people – “the guy at Homebaked
who comes in everyday and tells a joke and gets off”. It feels
important and valuable to recognise how spaces such as Kitty’s,
which have managed to become relatively autonomous, and
are dedicated to working with people, can not only improve the
conditions that we live in, but begin to completely shift the way
we relate and interact with one another.
The city of Preston offers one inspiring example of how
businesses such as Kitty’s fit into wider societal models which
offer crucial infrastructural change. As a reaction to govenrment
cuts to local council and big businesses pulling out of planned
regeneration work, Preston shifted their thinking towards
principals of municipal socialism, and began to carry out
community wealth building often through using the services
of local businesses. Preston City Council now works with
institutions like schools, universities and hospitals to provide
contracts to businesses operating in and around Preston rather
than outsourcing to private national companies. The result is
more wealth being kept and spent between people within the
local area. There has also been a successful push for companies
to adopt the Living Wage, as well as the creation of the Preston
Co-operative Development Network, which aims to promote
worker co-operatives and employee buy-outs of businesses,
for example. When a council reduces the control they have, this
allows people to have greater control over their own agendas.
Much needed regeneration, but achieved through focused
organisation and community led businesses, committed to
steering well clear of private companies, who too often favour
quick profits at the expense of real investment in the area and the
people living there.
There is an alternative to austerity and cuts, which is actually
listening to the concerns people have in a more positive and
proactive way. We should reject the manifestation of racism and
nationalism that has become prominent in discussions around
how the UK has shifted and changed, and switch our thinking
to how we can tackle capital to improve everyone’s quality of
life. Simplified narratives and political slogans are not what will
provide this. As Grace says, “It’s just great, because you don’t
even have to get into a particularly theoretical conversation. You
know, all these racists who are going round, talking about making
England great, and of forgotten towns – this is the answer to
that, and it is actually trying to listen to those concerns, and do
something about them in a proactive way that’s tackling capital
more than it is blaming it on people who aren’t actually to blame.”
There is power in recognising the complexity of the world around
us, and one alternative which will begin to produce positive
change is a greater care for those around you, enacted through
active community organising which allows people to have more
power over the decisions that affect their lived experiences.
If we’re interested in the sort of social impact that Kitty’s
Launderette has, then our support is vital. Whether this means
doing your laundry there, employing Kitty’s as your commercial
laundry service, working with them on a project you have in mind,
or spending time in the space, your support will become a key
part of a much wider network of people all pushing for positive
and meaningful change in our communities and in our city. !
Words: Tom Doubtfire
Photogrpahy: Mark Loudon
kittyslaunderette.org.uk
Kitty’s Launderette is open Monday, Thursday and Friday 9.30am
to 8pm, and 10am to 8pm on Saturdays and Sundays. If you’d
like to contribute to the Talk Of The Washhouse project then
there are drop-in sessions every Thursday from 1pm until 8pm.
16
READ IT
IN BOOKS
In his new memoir Fried And Justified, publicist to the stars, Mick Houghton, recounts some of the wisdom
he picked up after a generation working with some of pop’s – and Liverpool’s – most notorious acts.
The man described by many as The KLF’s unofficial
biographer, MICK HOUGHTON handled the publicity
for a string of the independent sector’s greatest groups
between 1978 and 1998. After working at Sire Records
for Seymour Stein with the Ramones, Talking Heads and The
Undertones, Houghton set up as an independent with Brassneck
Publicity. Alongside the likes of The Jesus And Mary Chain, Sonic
Youth, The Wedding Present, Felt, Elastica and Spiritualized
were a triumvirate of Liverpool acts: Echo & the Bunnymen,
The Teardrop Explodes and The KLF. Houghton’s new volume,
Fried And Justified: Hits, Myths, Break-Ups and Breakdowns
in the Record Business 1978-98, charts an era marked by the
dominance of the four weekly music papers, all of which are now
(virtually) defunct.
With a foreword by Bill Drummond and jacket design by
Jimmy Cauty, all the principal players of the Liverpool music scene
of the period are featured. What was it that got Mick so involved
in the Eric’s scene? “It all started with the Bunnymen,” Houghton
recalls on the phone from his London home. “The reason I got to
work with them was because I was working with Warner Bros.
who were the parent label to [the Bunnymen’s imprint] Korova.
In a way I was kind of lucky to work with them, ’cos I was there
at the time they were signed. By then I’d been working with the
Ramones, Talking Heads, The Undertones, so I was the obvious
person to do the Bunnymen.”
“I’d already heard Crocodiles [the group’s 1980 LP] and I
still think that’s one of the great debuts. They progressed so
much – they weren’t a brilliant live band but almost overnight
they became one. That’s what’s exciting if you’re involved with
anything, it’s to see a group evolve. That continued certainly
up to and including the Ocean Rain period, and it sort of fell
apart a bit after that. There’s something about the dysfunctional
nature of groups: after two or three years quite often you get
factions developing and you suddenly find that the strength of
relationships starts to dissipate a bit.
“The way I worked as a PR – and particularly with those
Liverpool bands – was [that I was] so involved with them and
[manager] Bill Drummond,” Houghton continues. “The line
between publicist and a manager is blurred. If you work with
people enough then you become part of the whole process,
really.”
Having done press for one of the city’s biggest bands,
Houghton found himself doing the same for their friends and
creative competition, The Teardrop Explodes. “I left Warner Bros.
and began working as an independent, and Bill Drummond asked
if I would look after the Teardrops. I wasn’t really aware of the
rivalry between them and the Bunnymen at that time. Because
Crocodiles was so critically successful, and the Teardrops’ album
[1980 debut Kilimanjaro] wasn’t out for another for another few
months, I think that Julian felt the Bunnymen had got ahead
of him. The Teardrops had had more singles out, they’d had
more press, Julian was already being seen as a bit of a star. The
Bunnymen always had this solidarity as group whereas the
Teardrops became Julian Cope’s group, really.”
While the Teardrops’ principal player was singer, chief
songwriter, shamanic guru and future highly respected author
Julian Cope, the band’s membership travails were so tangled
it was surprising that anyone could remember who was in the
group week to week. Keyboard player (and future Blur label boss
and Country House dweller) Dave Balfe was the antagonist foil
to Cope, the friction between the two producing the band’s best
work.
Distinguished by Cope’s ear for melody, the Teardrops’
post-punk informed psychedelia swiftly won them a sizeable
audience. Gilt-edged singles Reward and Treason (It’s Just A
Story) saw them crossover to a wider audience. Reward marked
the first of four Top Of The Pops appearances for the band, with
Cope becoming a bona fide pop star. “In a way it became a bit of
curse for him,” Houghton says of the period. “Julian kind of envied
what the Bunnymen had, this kind of critical mass and a real cult
following. What kind of ate away at
the Teardrops – and to some extent
unhinged Julian – was when Reward
was a Top 10 hit.”
“There was a point during 1981
when Julian was perceived as one of
the biggest pop stars coming out of
rock,” Houghton recalls. “Even though
he’d only had a couple of hits, he
was on the cover of Smash Hits and
teen magazines like Jackie and Oh
Boy. You would think the Teardrops
would be as big as Duran Duran or
Adam And the Ants, the amount of
press they got. He didn’t really want
that. On one level he did want to be
successful, and on another he didn’t
like the nature of the success the Teardrops were getting. Julian
would far rather have been Jim Morrison or Tim Buckley, not a
pop star. That was weird for me, personally, ’cos I wasn’t used to
dealing with that kind of success.”
Moving into the second half of the 1980s, Houghton began
doing press for The KLF, continuing a working relationship
with key Liverpool player Bill Drummond. “We were lucky to be
around in that era. The music press was so dominant you could
become successful through the music press and have fun with it,”
Houghton states. “That’s what The KLF did. Actions speak louder
than words and by their actions people wanted to write about
them ’cos there was nothing else like it, there never has been.
What other group at the height of their success says, ‘We’re
splitting up, we’re deleting all of our records’, then burns a million
pounds?”
“In 1991 they were the biggest-selling singles artists in the
country – [but] it wasn’t what they wanted. I think they genuinely
felt ‘we can do anything now’ and the press would lap it up. It
really did become too much for them. KLF Communications was
about six people: there was them, their partners, I did the press,
Scott Piering did the TV and radio and that was it. I think they
were both having breakdowns, which explains what they did at
the Brit Awards [spraying the audience with blank machine gun
bullets and dumping a dead sheep at the afterparty]. It was fun to
be part of, but a bit scary in some ways.”
All of which leads to the most (in)famous chapter in The
KLF’s history, The K Foundation Burn A Million Quid. “I wasn’t
“The music press
was so dominant in
the 80s, you could
become successful
through solely that
and have fun with it”
there, but I never, ever doubted that they did it,” Houghton says
of the notorious event that took place on 23rd August 1994 in
a farmhouse on a remote Scottish island. “They could shape
the story because they didn’t make anything of it, they allowed
people to find out for themselves. The journalist they had with
them wrote a story for the Observer Magazine – that was all
there was. But most people at that point actually didn’t believe
them, because they had this reputation of being – and I hate
this – ‘pranksters’, or they were involved in these scams. Which
is completely wrong because everything they were alleged to
have done, they did. When the story first came out I sat in my
office thinking that the phone wasn’t gonna stop ringing all day.
Most people’s reaction was they couldn’t believe they did it and
then ‘how dare they, who in their
right minds would burn a million
quid?’ And when they did there was
outrage.
“When they were at the signing
in Liverpool at News From Nowhere
in 2017, for a long time people still
doubted they’d done it,” Houghton
continues, bringing the story back up
to the present day. “It would’ve been
very easy to fake the photographs
and everything, but what’s interesting
when we did the thing two years
ago, I don’t think anyone nowadays
doubts they burnt it, it’s just been
accepted. It’s kind of overshadowed
everything else they’ve ever done to
some extent, which on one level is quite possibly deliberate on
their part, ’cos I think they wanted to move on and do something
else. You can’t buy the records and there aren’t greatest hits
albums coming out every six months, so the music has kind of
faded into the background a little.”
In a vastly changed landscape when waiting a week for a
music story to break through the press seems incredibly quaint,
the era of drip-feeding news and slowly building up bands is very
different. “Some groups do far too much press,” Houghton says.
“I always thought it was a ‘less-is-more’ thing. If you don’t need
to do press, don’t do it. Justine Frischmann from Elastica thanked
me for keeping them out of the press!” Indeed, despite scooping
NME’s Album of the Year for Ladies And Gentlemen We Are
Floating In Space in 1997, Spiritualized main man Jason Pierce
was seldom interviewed.
“Part of the reason I kinda gave up doing press by the end
of the 90s was that I was never gonna repeat that experience.
I was never gonna work with anyone like Bill and Jimmy again,
or Julian, or the Bunnymen, or Spiritualized, or the Mary Chain.
I think, for me, music was going into this incredibly dull phase
post-millennium. Partially because the music press had been
diminished so much.” !
Words: Richard Lewis
Fried And Justified is released on 4th July via Faber & Faber.
18
SPINN
With a fresh new album in their collective back pocket,
Liverpool’s jangle pop darlings SPINN hit the road to
charm the rest of the UK. The band’s winsome frontman
Johnny Quinn gives us a peek at his tour diary.
Hi! For the past month I’ve been hitting everyone
interested enough to ask with the statistic that the
band I’m in (SPINN) has played 31 gigs in 30 days.
However, after completing the largest tour in our fancy
haircut and jangly guitar spangled history, I was informed that
my favourite catchphrase was factually incorrect and that we’d
played a mere 26 gigs in 28 days. SHAMEFUL!
Last month we released our debut album, it’s called SPINN
because we couldn’t think of a decent enough name. I implore
you to listen to it. It’s not exactly rock ’n’ roll, and it’s mostly in a
major key, but it will probably brighten your mood and it also has
the word ‘transgressions’ in one of the songs, so there! Anyway,
we booked a tour last month to promote the shit out of it, we
thought a normal tour would be enough but we got booked to
do an HMV tour on top of it. This was a logistical nightmare, but
most of the time we got free Kettle Chips.
With that in mind, dear reader, I invite you to read a tour
diary that I wrote one afternoon while fighting a mild red wine
hangover.
Love from Johnny x
3rd May – Manchester
The first gig of the tour was in HMV Manchester. picture the
scene, dear reader… windowless
backstage, no Kettle Chips on the rider
and all topped off with a perilous 30-foot
drop off the side of the stage because
we were playing next to some stairs. We
spent 20 minutes arguing about who
was going to stand on the side with the
drop; Andy had vertigo, so decided it
would be Sean because he’s the bassist
and, as everybody knows, they’re the
easiest to replace. My little sister was
present and asked, “Is it always this
exciting, Johnny?” I said “Yes.”
I’d like to extend my thanks to HMV
and their staff for having us; they were
lovely to us and applauded us even if
nobody came, ha!
5th May – Liverpool
Last year we played to 400 people at Sound City after just
releasing our EP – this year we had just released our album
and played to, like, 800 people. It felt like a homecoming to so
many people who were just made up for us, kind of how Trent
Alexander-Arnold must have felt when he was texting that girl
while riding that Champions League victory bus. Unbelievable
scenes. Liverpool is our home and the city that we love most,
and we’ve been all over the UK, man, believe me. I’ve seen the
bright lights of Bedford don’t you know? Can’t remember much
of Sound City after the gig, we spent it with Nathan from The
Peach Fuzz and all of Monks. For me, Confidence Man were the
highlight – they’re just fab, aren’t they?
23rd May – Huddersfield; 24th May – Aberdeen
This set of dates was probably the biggest surprise I’ve had
since my mum and dad got me Mousetrap for Christmas 2005,
and the people who came the gig were probably more up for it
than seven-year-old Johnny was when he opened his prezzies
that fateful morning. To be completely honest, I didn’t even
know where Huddersfield or Aberdeen were and I’m still not
“Terror-stricken
faces and spew…
this is how I
will remember
St Albans”
entirely sure. But I do know that they know how to do a gig right,
absolute limbs throughout, the people were all dead friendly,
too. In Aberdeen we stayed in some crazy hippy commune,
there were twigs glued to the ceiling (cool) and a trapeze on the
stairway (dangerous). That said, our hosts were fantastic and
cooked us all some delicious cinnamon and apple French toast
for breakfast, with a vegan option available for Louis, our loverly
Brummie drummer.
Note: against our will, we found out the hard way what
a ‘true Scotsman’ wears under his kilt in a smoking area in
Aberdeen. Actually, it wasn’t hard but it would have been a lot
more interesting if it was… snigger.
28th May – St Albans
We’re all human, so, alas, there comes a time in our life where
we must all face some sort of gruelling and/or embarrassing
moment. I thought my entire high school experience, or perhaps
when I gracefully threw up on stage during last year’s Liverpool
International Music Festival, was more than enough to cover
my fair share of said moments. Surely, I mean surely, it couldn’t
happen again… But as we all know too well, dear reader, life
has a funny way of doing things. Perhaps it was a higher power
trying to keep me humble, or perhaps it was an underlying
stomach issue that needs addressing –
who knows – but despite my hopes and
prayers I did throw up again during a
performance, and also managed to terrify
the entire front row when I announced
this. And this is how I will remember St
Albans: terror-stricken faces and spew…
31st May – Manchester
Full circle! First gig of the tour –
Manchester; last gig of the tour –
Manchester.
However, two very different affairs:
the most notable difference being the
fact that there wasn’t a drop to certain
death on one side of the stage. The
gig was in The Deaf Institute with
Manchester band Carpet and our mates Monks on the support.
If you take anything away from this, let it be Monks – very
talented young lads indeed. We went for a Nando’s off Oxford
Road. I got the halloumi and portobello mushroom burger (hot)
with peri chips and garlic bread. Free refills. Optimal hydration.
My whole family was present for this one and one particularly
sweet moment was when my mum saw that we were sweating
on stage, got us all a cup of water each and handed them to
us halfway through the set. The crowd were amazing, our long
suffering roadie Alex Forster said that the floor was shaking,
I think that’s a good thing. Anyway that was the last date of
the tour, when we got back we bumped into a load of Baltic
Weekender goers, they were so barneted they didn’t know who
was playing when we asked. Ended up out till 5am with Monks.
Liverpool won the Champions League the day after. Stayed in the
house all weekend, drinking myself out of the pit of misery Divock
Origi caused me, while the rest of SPINN partied. Wrote this.
Up the Toffees. !
@spinn_band
SPINN’s debut, self-titled album is out now. SPINN’s UK tour was
supported by Liverpool Band Vans.
20
FEATURE
21
“Bold Street is truly
at the heart of culture
in our city. How many
of us have strolled
past WHISC and never
given it more than a
passing glance?”
WHISC AT 35
From behind their unassuming façade on 120 Bold Street, the quiet heroes of WHISC have been offering
advice and support to generations of Liverpool’s women.
In 1984, a group of women in north Liverpool noted
the provisions around the city for helping women gain
knowledge of their own health were scant at best. Armed
and strengthened with knowledge from a women’s health
course plus money from the council, they went on to create
Women’s Health Information And Support Centre (WHISC). The
service zigzagged between different premises across the city
before finally settling at 120 Bold Street in 1994, where WHISC
resides to this day.
In the mid 80s when the germ of the WHISC idea began,
Thatcherism was on the march. In the here and now it’s easy to
reflect that, in some ways, we’ve come full circle. Women’s rights
are still under attack or under threat of erosion, equality is not
won, and women are the first to suffer when cuts bite.
Nevertheless, over the past 35 years WHISC has adapted
with the ever-changing political and social landscape to improve
the lot of women living on Merseyside.
“Originally things were about physical health and sexual
health, but now, over the years, our primary focus has moved to
mental health because there’s been such an increase in demand
in Liverpool,” says WHISC funding officer Kelly Teeboon. Many
difficulties experienced by Merseyside women in 2019 are the
ongoing results of austerity, she believes, pointing out cuts to
refuge and sexual violence services as perilous to women’s health.
Kelly cites the introduction of Universal Credit and limiting
child tax credits as the two main things affecting women
disproportionately. “There’s been a change in women’s mental
health in response to benefit changes, so we’ve had a huge
number of women come in for support,” she says. “Universal
Credit is often paid to only one member of the household, which
makes it difficult for women who are being abused financially.”
WHISC’s main ethos is the belief that all women and girls
should have equal access to education around their physical
and mental health. “They should have equal opportunities to
access that information. Regardless of race, sexuality, disability,
status, we work with all women. Whether they are homeless or
not, it doesn’t matter. It’s about supporting all women. Because
we know women are backbones of the community and their
families.”
The charity boasts over 50 volunteers, supported by seven
paid members of staff. Many volunteers are previous service
users. They’re giving something back, in a way, I mention to Kelly.
“Women are experts in their own life,” she nods. “The support
groups we have, like the domestic violence support group, eating
disorders, depression anxiety groups, these are all led by women
who have personal experience in those issues who then want
to share their coping mechanisms, what they’ve done to help
themselves, with other women.”
Merseyside has a disturbingly high rate of domestic violence,
so I ask what support there is at WHISC for survivors. As Kelly
lived in a refuge when younger, her interest in the issue is strong.
“We know [for] a lot of the women who attend our anxiety and
depression groups, there is a history of domestic violence there.
We didn’t want to tread on the toes of organisations we’ve
worked with for years… they do a lot of amazing work, but we
wanted to create a support group that goes beyond the initial
help, once women are safe. We created a peer-to-peer support
group.
“We also wanted it to be open to women who are still with
their partner. Because we know a lot of women don’t leave, but
we wanted that support there, so they know other women are in
the situation. We hope women can teach each other what to look
out for. In those groups you can see the penny drops on occasion,
someone else who is still with their partner thinks, ‘I thought that
was just me’.”
It’s so empowering for women in abusive relationships to not
feel alone, and important that women who stay with partners
or go back to relationships don’t feel they’re doing something
wrong, or are at fault in some way.
“The most important thing, whether it’s domestic or sexual
violence or mental health, is that the door stays open,” Kelly
stresses. “If they fail to attend meetings, we don’t write them off.
If they have an appointment and they don’t come, we just create
another one. We keep that door open because we know that
access to these services is difficult anyway, the last thing you
want to do is feel like you’ve burnt a bridge and have nowhere
to go. We know that when you have mental health problems you
can be inconsistent, we know that sometimes you’re unreliable,
but that’s fine.”
WHISC are hosting a fundraising event in July at Leaf
on Bold Street, a mixture of music, spoken word and poetry,
plus an auction and raffle to boost funds, but also to celebrate
35 successful years. The fundraiser is supported by local
independent businesses and the wider creative community
across the city. Yvonne Page, business manager from Dig Vinyl
record shop, is stage manager for the event.
“Bold Street is truly at the heart of music and culture in our
city. We all walk up and down this street on our way to work
or to meet friends or go about our daily lives,” says Yvonne.
“How many of us have strolled past WHISC a million times and
never given it more than a passing glance? The support that the
organisation gives to women all over Merseyside is so important
and, with this event, I really hope to engage with the local arts
and culture community and bring in a diverse crowd to celebrate
and support this great organisation.”
There’s been an assumption that WHISC is a service for
older women when in fact anyone 18 or over can use the service.
Recent times, Kelly emphasises, have seen an increase in the
number of young people coming through the doors. “We’ve
branched out to the universities, we have a lot of students who
are on placement, social work students, counselling students,”
she says. “We’re open to all women, and my own mental health
has benefited from that intergenerational aspect of WHISC –
hearing experiences from older and younger women, women
from different cultures and communities. It’s that resilience that
women have across the board.”
There’s a massive value in women only spaces, I think. They
bring with them a sense of safety. “A huge number of women
who come here rely on us being a women only service. Especially
if you’re a survivor of violence, also with some of the refugee and
asylum-seeking women there are issues compounded by their
gender and there aren’t many services available to just women.
Because of maybe cultural stigma, we have women who come
here and take their headscarves off. When they come in they feel
like they’re free to do that, because they’re not in the presence
of men. They’re with their children. And there are things women
will say to other women that they won’t in the presence of men. I
think that’s really important, almost [like] consciousness raising in
the 60s [laughs]. We have a women’s health course talking about
different issues and sometime it’s freeing to be away from men.”
Confidentiality is a big issue for many women and it is
reassuring that WHISC benefit from their location in that respect.
There’s so much footfall on Bold Street that women could be
in the area – or building – for myriad reasons. For things like
domestic violence, sexual violence, if women want to disclose
that information in a safe space then WHISC is the perfect place.
“No one’s going to know why you’re here,” says Kelly. “There’s
no flashing neon sign outside saying ‘I’ve got a mental health
condition!’ You could be coming in for yoga, a massage or some
intervention support, but nobody knows. I think that’s the key
value of WHISC.”
There’s a monthly poetry group, a reading group (“short
stories and extracts, we don’t have a specific book, it’s to get out
of your head a bit, get into a good story. A lot are usually fables,
it gets women talking, having conversations”) plus meditation,
a craft group, self-esteem workshops, drumming group,
menopause and gynaecological support. As Liverpool has one of
the largest dispersals of refugees and asylum-seeking women in
the country, WHISC have a Saturday club doing English language
classes, to support integration and racial cohesion. “We’ve bits of
everything really,” jokes Kelly.
Accessibility is at the root of what WHISC do. As 29 per cent
of the women who use WHISC are disabled, there’s a stairlift,
and the yoga and pilates they teach is doable in a chair. “Liz, our
mental health worker, will sometimes offer a telephone listening
ears service for women who can’t leave the house.”
With the fundraiser, all are welcome to attend and WHISC
are keen that as wide a demographic as possible is able to enjoy
the night, but learn about WHISC’s services as well. People can
help with increasing accessibility by buying a ticket and donating
it to someone who otherwise cannot afford to attend. “We
wanted to do a pass-it-forward scheme for our service users who
have little or no income,” says Kelly. “WHISC is about women
supporting women and it’s great that people have done this
already.”
“To have a sanctuary dedicated to the support and wellbeing
of women at the heart of the city on Bold Street is a testament to
the forward-thinking bold character of Liverpool’s community,”
adds Abi Dot aka Galileo Girl, who is to perform at the event. “To
the women that provide safety, compassion and vital information
to women in the midst of difficult and sensitive situations, you
are so appreciated and loved. I can’t wait to perform for the
celebration of such a special place.” !
Words: Cath Holland / @cathbore
Illustration: Hannah Blackman-Kurz / @HBKurz
whisc.org.uk
An fundraiser for WHISC’s 35th anniversary takes place on 11th
July at Leaf.
22
What does the future look like
if you fear you won’t exist?
With the launch of Palestine +
100 – a new collection of short
stories by Comma Press which
invites ten Palestinian authors to
look ahead to 2048, 100 years
after the Nakba – at Liverpool
Arab Arts Festival in July,
Laura Brown asks if we see the
privilege in our ability to think it
will always be better tomorrow.
ARAB
FUTURISM
24
From the outside, at the end of the drive, my
grandmother’s house looked like any of the other
1930s semi-detached homes in Yorkshire. Yet, cross its
doorway, and you were transported through space and
time.
At the other end of the hall was the kitchen, so first you
would smell whatever was bubbling on the hob. When we
visited, she would often be making our favourite: stuffed cabbage
with rice and lamb, served with lemon. She would stand for
hours, patiently rolling each cigar-shaped cabbage leaf. The
pictures on the wall showed a family from another land. A
single hand shielding the eyes as they
squinted into the sun, low-level, white
buildings behind them. Decorative
plates, in vibrant colours and Arabic
calligraphy, dotted around the walls.
When the conversation turned to
something we children shouldn’t hear,
it slipped from English to French. If
she was on the phone to her siblings
and a word better described what she
wanted to say, Arabic and Italian would
also enter the lexicon. Eavesdropping
was a challenge.
My grandmother had grown up in
Palestine. From the time she still held
me in her arms, I would hear stories of
her mother’s ‘pension’ (a hotel or guest
house); of the fruit trees; the market. In her rich Arabic accent,
elongating the first vowels of my name, she would talk of her
home. They had fled, when my father was just seven, his sister
11, carrying a suitcase each. First to Cairo, and then to England,
with its black and sooty air.
The stories were interwoven with the daily violence they
lived with in that period. Bombings, stabbings, shootings. One
of my father’s earliest memories was of being scooped up into
someone’s arms when shots were fired on a beach.
Yet, however horrific the story, my grandmother still hoped,
one day, to return. Her life in Palestine, the place of her birth and
her siblings, was not a closed chapter in her mind. God willing,
she would say, one day, I will show you where we lived. She
ached for it, in a way.
She was happy here, but it was not home. She – we – were
not English. Our story, our history, was wrapped up in this other
land, far away. The future brought with it, always, the possibility
she would return.
The Palestine diaspora is filled with stories like this.
Grandparents, parents, uncles, siblings, keeping stories of the
country alive, as though that will keep its candle burning.
Basma Ghalayini is the translator and editor of a new
collection of short stories by Comma Press. PALESTINE + 100
looks ahead to 2048, a century after the Nakba. The Nakba
describes the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes
in 1948. The word ‘Nakba’ means ‘catastrophe’ or ‘disaster’.
“When I was a child,” Basma writes in an essay on the 71st
anniversary of the Nakba, “my grandfather would tell us about
his shop in Yaffa, a business he owned with his brother in 1948,
before being expelled to Egypt, where my father was born and
grew up. He told us that, on their departure, they only packed a
few days’ worth of clothes for him, his wife and children, as they
were told they would be back as soon as it was safe. They left
their sheets on the lines, chickpeas in soaking water and toys in
the yard. He locked the door, put his key in his pocket and headed
to safety as instructed. They never returned, and his key stayed in
his pocket until he died in Cairo 60 years later.”
There is a privilege when we look to the future. The final line
of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind, as Scarlett O’Hara
promises “After all, tomorrow is another day” always provoked a
guffaw from deep within my bones. What rot, I have said more
than once. What idiocy to assume you can go back home after
war, that tomorrow will be well? But we do, with our (Western)
power, privilege and agency, assume that even if we just have
our wits, we will make tomorrow better than today. That is, we
believe, our right.
And yet, even though I know it is probably impossible,
I dream that tomorrow I will go back to my family home in
Palestine; a building or dwelling that probably does not exist.
As Basma says, “This child has never been to any of those
places, but they know that if they keep them alive in their heart,
then once they go back, it will be as if they never left; they can
pick up where their great grandfather left off. Indeed, wherever
Palestinian refugees are in the world, one thing unites them: their
undoubted belief in their right to return.”
Futurism, especially Arab futurism, is about seeking the
future as a place of hope and potential. Following Comma Press’
Iraq + 100, which asked Iraqi writers what the country will look
like a century after the 2003 invasion, Palestine + 100 is part of
a genre that feels relatively new in literature. The stories blend
time-travelling angels, technophobic dictators, talking statues,
macabre museum-worlds, even hovering tiger-droids – using
science fiction to bring hope into the darkness. There is Basma
Abdel Aziz’ The Queue, Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in
Baghdad. In artist Larissa Sansour’s A Space Exodus (2009), she
plants a flag in the moon sand: “One small step for a Palestinian,
a giant leap for mankind.” It is both hopeful and profoundly
depressing. Hopeful because it suggests a country with either the
“We are all
refugees because
our identity is so
tied to this place
that is so fragile”
individual power of statehood to afford and coordinate a space
programme, or a powerful proponent enabling it to do that. It is
depressing that this lone voice of Palestinian development seems
only to find its place in the vast emptiness of space.
Arab futurism is different from the arguably better known
Afrofuturism, which came from jazz artist Sun-Ra, with the
phrase coined by Mark Dery in the 1990s. It reflected on the
scarcity of black representation in science fiction, a buoyant
genre in 80s and 90s popular culture. From Sun-Ra to Black
Panther, Afrofuturism imagines a stronger black identity across
its diaspora. Autonomy, authority, independence – Afrofuturism
often imagines a future in which there
is much hope.
Arab futurism is slightly
different, especially when we think
about Palestine. Anwar Hamed, the
Palestinian-Hungarian author of Jaffa
Prepares Morning Coffee (longlisted for
the 2013 Arabic Booker Prize) features
in the Palestine + 100 anthology.
“Palestinians are living in a harsh
reality that would kill their appetite for
life, so for them to survive they need to
believe in the future, not to lose hope,”
he says. “The present reality does not
hold much hope for them, yet they
cherish a mysterious hope that things
will change one day. Here comes the
role of ‘futurist writing’: to scan the present in search of seeds of
hope for the future, to give readers some kind of motivation and
appetite for life.”
Basma Ghalayani says storytelling allows us to imagine a
future and, notably, the elements of the future we would like to
avoid. The power of the dystopia is that it allows us to articulate
our deepest fears of what might come to pass.
“Often what we don’t want to happen ‘here’ is informed
by things we’ve seen happen, tragically, elsewhere. So in the
West, dystopias and science fiction provide countries that have
never experienced certain types of societal nightmares with a
vocabulary for talking about them: modern Britain, for instance,
has never quite experienced totalitarianism, so a book like
Orwell’s 1984 is really important for you
to feel what it might be like. America has
never been occupied by a foreign military
power, so American audiences go crazy
for extended space-dramas about
rebels fighting imperial occupiers with
lightsabers. And when these Western
writers come to do their worldbuilding,
they only have other people’s
recent pasts to go on. So they steal
it and, if they can, elaborate on it
too. Orwell stole from Russia under
Stalin and reset it in a British future.
Lucas stole the whole Third Reich
thing and re-dressed it for a
galaxy far, far away.”
To assume the future offers a
renewed strength suggests you
are in a secure present, or are
confident you have the means
to shift your present into a
more solid future. Palestinians
do not have this luxury. Arabs
are used to sharing stories; it
is a vital part of their culture
and heritage. The stories
written in Palestine + 100
are all by (and about)
Palestinians. Yet many of
its authors exist within
the diaspora, much like
Palestine itself, which
largely exists within the
people who hold its
culture and heritage
on foreign shores.
“It’s difficult,”
says Basma, “to
begin with, the
Palestinian diaspora
is a special case –
because, for many
of us, ‘home’
doesn’t even
exist anymore. It
got deleted. And
yet, our link to
what’s left of
home is all
the stronger
for it. Any
Palestinian
living abroad effectively lives
in two places at once. We’re over here in
body, but we feel every bomb that drops in Gaza, every
bullet that’s fired at a checkpoint in the West Bank. We live a
strange double-life.”
Anwar adds: “Literature and storytelling is built on
imagination, trying to use your imagination to tell a story that
never happened about people who don’t exist. Whether a writer
writes about the present, the past, or the future, what they do
is try to use an existing model to weave a new one, and furnish
it with events, characters and thoughts. So the future, though
the fruit of imagination, is based on the author’s knowledge of
the past and present. An understanding of the past and present
is needed to nourish the imagination in its quest for the future
model.”
We are all refugees, one way or another, says Basma,
because our identity is so tied to this place that is so fragile.
Those with Palestinian heritage are so tied to Palestine’s
preservation and future that, when we imagine what it might
be one day, we aim to frighten and scare. Science fiction is an
incredibly powerful medium to achieve this. Yet, we are also a
cautionary tale. And perhaps it is this edge which infuses Arab
futurism with something of difference; that the future may
harbour something far worse, more unstable, more chilling.
Palestine is proof that anyone’s land and nation might not exist in
their future, and that they will have a duty to preserve it through
imagination and storytelling. !
Words and images: Laura Brown / lauramariebrown.com
arabartsfestival.com
Palestine + 100 launches at Liverpool Arab Arts Festival on
Tuesday 6th July.
FEATURE
25
D I G I T A L
L O V E
Artist Harriet Morley delves into her experiments with programmed communication,
looping us in on an internal monologue about the complications that new
modes of communication have introduced to human relationships.
The creative processes I find myself in take form through
research and experiments: they’re necessary for me
to produce work. They’re necessary for informing my
perspective so that I’m able to represent feelings of
uncertainty with a kind of urgency, in a way that can be received.
Experiments being: expressively talking into Google Translate and
analysing its understanding; getting Alexa and Siri to converse;
calling people up simultaneously for an (unwitting) conference
call; texting people replies while they’re speaking next to me to
test my restrictive feelings; conversing with people using Google
Answers instead of my own thoughts. I wanted to apply this
same approach to Tinder, after being away from my work for a
time. It’s interesting to test out technology by using it in ways
other than its prescribed function – by talking to it, analysing its
interpretation of my words, how it registers/receives/perceives
the way I approach language, how it hears my tone, what it does
with what I’ve said. How it doesn’t understand the way in which
I mean things, in any way. And why should it, I suppose. You can
argue some people adopt these strategies irl too – misperception,
lack of engagement, how some pretend to understand, or how
they’re becoming less and less receptive to human elements. Or,
perhaps introversion was always inevitable for some. I don’t have
the answers; I’m just trying to unpick this stuff – the uncertainty,
ambiguity, increasing physical distance.
I also find myself torn between recorded and live processes
– between performing or playing something recorded (e.g.
spoken word/conversations), knowing the recorded will do
what I want it to, but knowing I can’t ignore the beauty in the
unexpected nature of a live performance. I want for something
to be lived presently, but I want to remember the feeling of
that presence, so I inevitably record it, retrospectively removing
myself from actually being present, instead creating something
smaller and fragmented. The fragments become something
minimised and framed in a digital pocket that we can return to,
enlarge or remove, and momentarily re-live. And everything,
to me, feels transitory and short-term. Short-term-letting of
each other, moments, possessions, things feel disposable and
replaceable with capitalist materials, apps, online intimacy, digital
conversation, inhaling and exhaling currents of data, moving at
a speed so fast we skim-read our way through
moments.
I did performances in university
with students where they asked me
questions: I typed what they asked into
Google and copy-pasted the first
answer that came up into the
Google Translate voice. I liked
using this tool to converse;
I never got bored of
it. It was refreshing
to have the weight
of conversation
alleviated from me
because I didn’t
have to carry
it or worry
about being
interesting. The conversation that happened was disjointed
but direct, it was random and every sentence was new; it was
engaging. Once you start speaking in unconventional ways, the
‘normal’ elements of human conversation make themselves clear. I
got Tinder in November after feeling lonely. I’d never had it before.
Human window shopping for any potential similarities and trying
to extract that from infinite option
was fun… but overwhelming and so
strange. The users never end. Swiping
face after face, inspecting only their
appearance with nothing else to go
off; not being able to get any sense
of who they could be, what type of
humour they have, what their voice
sounds like, how genuine they are,
what type of laugh they have, if they’re
self-conscious or bold, how they hold
themselves. It’s pretty far-fetched to
approach it with that expectancy, but it
is literally so difficult to decide whether
you’ll get on with someone just based
on their 2D frozen appearance, and
I think I just notice how much more
I have got out of interactions that weren’t dating apps, the
intricacies and layers to a personality, and hoping people don’t put
too much wasted faith in these systems.
It’s a guessing game, and it feels like a gamble of my time.
Putting my energy, momentarily, into disposable users who I’m
not able to trust is a gamble of my time. Every interaction we
have with someone is because of a shared experience, something
that binds you together by place. So Tinder, naturally, feels
obscure and forced and unnaturally placed. Tinder has limitations
on connection, and maybe it’s exciting to experience fleeting
moments of a displayed attraction but it is just that, fleeting. How
do people translate themselves online? Like, how do you achieve
a distinctive translation of your character? Is that important?
Intimacy and humour find new expressions in text, replacing
speech and touch. We’re learning to read empathy and emotion
through the composition of texts – every typed word becomes
heavy with potential, intentionality – macro, fleeting
love letters that disappear instead of lining
your drawers.
After having it for a couple days I
thought it would fill a void, or give me
instant gratification, but I felt even further
away from intimacy, and closer to
loneliness. I realised I wanted familiarity,
something I knew, but all this was so
unfamiliar and brief. I felt so disposable.
I initially just wanted sex, but after
having it for a bit I realised I missed
knowing someone. I don’t really like
displaying the best version of me in
2D edited pics, but I feel the need to.
I don’t like the pressure to live up to
that, the worry of them not liking
the intricacies about you that you’re
conscious about. It’s so easy to create
an ideal of someone through their
online persona, and the pressure to
get something valuable out of it is
overbearing. Maybe I’m thinking too
much into it, and the time is worth
the embarrassment or failure, maybe
not. All of this isn’t infallible, but my own
subjective, personal experience of digital
compatibility. I had more success with
women on Tinder – the men were very
transparent to me.
I really wanted to experiment
again with Google Answers. This time I
was deceiving them; they didn’t know I was
“These new forms
of communication
are changing how
we relate to each
other – it’s exciting to
poke and prod at the
alien possibilities”
Google. I felt guilty doing it, because of my false self, making
them believe I thought they were attractive and then pretending
to follow their conversation, even though everything about my
profile was how I would usually present myself online. I also felt
vulnerable and exposed as I had no filter on who I was matching,
and I knew that I was more open to objectification. On top of this,
I felt protected by my programmed
façade. Because I’d programmed
myself to be something other than
myself, I was untouchable to them;
because I wasn’t absorbing anything
they said, their words didn’t matter to
me. They could ask anything, insult
or compliment me, and I wouldn’t
be touched by any of it; I was
inaccessible, shielded by Google.
Despite the guilt, I realised that I
could speak any way I wanted to – why
does it matter if it’s recycled, direct and
unemotional language? Why did I feel
momentarily disloyal to these strangers
for programming myself? I don’t owe
them anything and I’m not harassing
or manipulating them – they started the conversation and were
able to control where it went, just like I could. Some of them, I
could tell, felt refreshed because it was completely different to the
usual mundane small talk and it was something that threw them
off guard, made them feel maybe a little on edge and confused
but intrigued. Some knew it was something bot-related and went
along with it; some knew it was something bot-related and exited
quickly; and some didn’t have a clue. Conversing in this way feels
exhilarating because it either makes you think really hard or not
at all, because the content is there already, and the interaction is
solely derived from the words’ experience rather than either of our
personal experiences. So, instead of us talking about ourselves, we
were forced to talk about what related to the words, while they
were trying to figure me out and place me with the history of those
words. They would either be relentlessly trying to work out what
the fuck I was talking about, unpicking each sentence, or ignoring
me entirely and saying what they wanted, like I was, like we were
having our own separate conversations. It was interesting for me
to test, because I was able to look at how Tinder operates without
being there. Like, I felt removed from the situation, because I was
Google. I’d only previously tried it with students or friends irl,
so I felt compelled to do it with strangers online, because while
everything else is stripped back, it limits it to just the exchange of
topics and how they’re received and interpreted, I knew there’d be
more willingness and urgency behind it.
I’m drawn to the shift in how human interaction and intimacy
now operates, how that is sieved through online and into offline
space and where the gaps are translucent in both. People fall
in love online all the time – maybe there’s a beautiful freedom
to accessing people you’ll never meet, and maybe it’s just nice
to not have the constant strain of self-consciousness that is
permeated in real life situations, and instead a space to curate
yourself in a relaxed setting by your choice of language. I think
those fleeting mini-relationships can be a cathartic saviour when
distance is so strong in a society that separates us by exhaustive
work hours and mental health. Maybe it depends on the person
– it can be a destructive self-display where people are almost
encouraged to be shallow and exploitative, but sometimes the
relationships formed in the nowhere of the internet turn into the
foundation for something real somewhere. It can be a beautiful
platform to discover people who are exactly like you who you’re
unable to access in your day-to-day life. These new forms of
communication are changing how we relate to each other, and it’s
exciting to poke and prod at the alien possibilities and the foreign
digital languages we are writing collectively. !
Words: Harriet Morley
hlmorley3.wixsite.com
26
“As a younger artist,
you worry a bit too
much about your art.
Now I don’t really care…
I trust my instinct”
NEIL
KEATING
Huw Livingstone meets the man quietly shaping the aesthetic of
Liverpool’s favourite spots and our Instagram feeds, one mural at a time.
NEIL KEATING’s success is visible, painted on the
streets of Bold Street and the Baltic Triangle; his style
has been the vehicle for a new crop of independent
businesses to make their mark. You might not know
Keating by his appearance and perhaps not by name, but for the
past two years he has been painting himself into the tapestry of
the Liverpool independent bar and restaurant scene. The man
himself claims that despite his ubiquitous presence as a local
artist, he keeps a low profile. “You might know the back of my
head from my Instagram feed, but that’s about it.” Since 2017,
he has been working with venues around Liverpool, promoting
their efforts with an inventive style of guerrilla marketing and an
aesthetic infused with an eclectic array of influences ranging from
Robert Crumb to The Beano. If you ever saw the Avocado Is Bae
mural on the late Love Thy Neighbour on Bold Street, you are
familiar with his work.
As we weave through a bright and windy day down the
back streets of the city centre towards the Baltic Triangle, he
tells me about his professional history and how it has shaped his
style and mentality. Growing up in Liverpool, he had a natural
fixation on art and drawing. “I spent a lot of my youth just
copying comics all the time, just trying to get as close as I could
to them. I went away from it when I went to university, where
you kind of deconstruct yourself, a little bit too much sometimes.
After university, I went to work in a studio at the Bluecoat. I was
messing around with loads of different styles, messing with live
art and stuff. They used to commission me to automatically draw
as part of an exhibition. They’d have a poet on deconstructing
their poetry: I’d sit there and illustrate what they were saying.”
He went from there to work in an animation studio in
Southport called Wyzowl, taking from that an education in how
to work to the clock, but also a distaste for office life. “I was just
sat behind a desk and I felt like I could do so many other things
aside from animation. I missed the physical aspect of painting and
that’s what convinced me to take the plunge and go freelance.”
If the idea of risking safety and trusting your instincts to
venture into a financially insecure world is daunting to you,
Keating’s story has been one of success. Since then he’s gone
from creating a series of prints and labouring with his dad to
support his family to finding himself battling through the chaos
of fully fledged freelance work. “The past 12 months have been
the busiest, but also the hardest in my life for personal reasons.
The work has really helped me through that. I threw myself into
my work and sometimes that emotion can drive you to success. I
thrive off other people’s energy, that’s what drives me.”
The demands of the job seem to have had an impact on his
process. “I don’t really like going back to things. I think that’s just
the pace and the way I have to do things now, and that pace stops
you from over-thinking things as well. I can get quite manic when
I’m working. If I’m doing a mural, I won’t eat all day because I’ve
gotta keep my mind on it. As a younger artist you worry a bit too
much about your art, whereas now I don’t really care what people
think about it. If I feel what I’m doing is a good thing, I trust that
instinct.” This kind of internal confidence must be essential when
working with people who are placing their trust in you.
He tells me about a particularly successful job where he
was granted this trust at The Dog House on Penny Lane. “It was
absolutely dead and the venue had lost its coherence. They got
me in and, slowly but surely, we started developing a branding
project for it. It’s a different approach to the way a design agency
would go at it. It’s giving the artist the freedom to go with it, and
they were happy to give me the license to do my own thing. It’s
been six or seven months now and the place is chocker. We’re
collaborating with local breweries now to create some beer labels
and keep it inventive.” Is it always this rosy? “Not always, I did a
project with the Dockside Dining Club, we put our heart and soul
into that one and it didn’t really work out. After about three or
four weeks I stopped going in there for my breakfast. It was a bit
too much. You’ve got to laugh, really.”
We wander in sight of two of his pieces on Jamaica Street.
One is a reproduction of a simplistic, line-based illustration he
created for Craft Minded. There’s no name or obvious brand
screaming at you; it sidesteps the crudeness of traditional,
money hungry advertisement and in its subtlety, betraying the
optimism of a venue which is first and foremost passionate
about what they do. The other is a personal piece that depicts
‘life’ symbolised as an arcade game, and the distraught character
playing it has run out of lives. Game Over. “I just came out and
did this on a Wednesday night, I wanted there to be something
on the wall that wasn’t branded by anything.” It’s a mischievous
and colourful reflection on failure and is in tune with Keating’s
die-smiling attitude. “You’re always going to get setbacks, but it’s
about taking your chances. You can’t let things get to you, you
just have to keep going.”
The stylistic contrast between to two pieces shows the
versatility Keating has developed as an artist, a quality that has
won him a job with local stalwart Cains Brewery developing a
graphics project for their latest effort, the revamped The Brewery
Tap. “It’s a mix of contemporary and traditional styles. We’ve got
some poppy screen prints. We want to slowly build the brand
with it, develop merchandise, badges and T-shirts, and slowly
draw people into them from it. And that’s where street art comes
into it. I started thinking of different ways of using it, maybe
doing some guerrilla marketing round the Baltic, finding locations
for street art, maybe using QR codes.”
These inventive strategies have been key to Keating’s
success in monetising his talents, and as the arts take their usual
hammering and financial starvation from our blessed political
leaders, the feeling that art has little value is laser beamed into
our collective conscience. I thought I’d ask Keating where he
hopes to take it from here and what the future holds for Liverpool
and its budding artists. “Prices are starting to go up round the
Baltic, and studio space is expensive. The government should
provide funding to help artists get a space to work. There are a
lot of young artists with talent out there – I hope my work shows
people that you can work with artists, you can trust them. On the
other hand, your talent is in your ideas – it’s up to you to work
hard and make something grow. I love working in Liverpool but I
want to start working more nationally. The summer is going to be
mad, I’ve got projects winking at me, they’re all exciting projects
but I know it’s gonna be busy.” !
Words: Huw Livingstone
Imagery: Neil Keating
@Neil_Keating
28
the
social
OHMNS
SILVER LININGS
IRENE & THE DISAPPOINTMENTS
SOUND FOOD
AND DRINK
THUR
18th JULY 7:30PM
£5 ADV/ MORE ON THE DOOR
SPOTLIGHT
MICHAEL ALDAG
A rising star who is managing to merge classic Scouse songwriting with the freshness of contemporary
electronic production. You heard him here first.
If you had to describe your music in a sentence, what would
you say?
It’s anthemic electro-pop. It can range from heartfelt ballads to
guitar driven anthems. My aim is to have people screaming at the
top of their lungs, and then sobbing, within the same set.
How did you get into music?
As soon as I came to the harsh realisation, when I was about
seven years old, that I wasn’t going to play up front for England,
I really focused on it. I started writing when I was 14. The first
song I wrote was a tribute to the victims of the Hillsborough
disaster, as it was around the time of the inquest that found they
were unlawfully killed.
Can you pinpoint a live gig or a piece of music that initially
inspired you?
My dad used to play The Killers a lot. I remember listening to
them in the car on the way back from my nan’s and it gave me
this feeling of vast awesomeness and emotion. Like you could cry
but you wouldn’t know why you were crying. I was lucky enough
to see them two years ago in the Echo Arena and I’ve never felt
jealousy like it in my life. I just wanted to be Brandon Flowers. I
still do.
Why is music important to you?
It’s crazy the fact that you can be sat there, hear something, and
then three and a half minutes later your mood has changed. And
that’s something anyone can experience. I think writing is one of
the best outlets: a lot of the time I’ll write a song in a rush, listen
back to it and it’ll outline events
in my life and feelings that I didn’t
necessarily know I had. That’s special.
Then sharing what you’ve made
with other people who might relate
to something that you’ve written,
alone in your bedroom, creates a
connection that we can sometimes
overlook but is amazing.
What does your favourite song to
perform live say about you?
I have a song called OKAY and it has
an energy about it that people seem
to respond to. It’s basically a confession of all my insecurities and
flaws and it’s a strangely liberating feeling getting to sing them
out to a room full of strangers. It has a cool synth line on it as
well, so that helps.
What do you think is the overriding influence on your
songwriting?
Definitely a mixture of influences and art, but the majority of the
time it’s my own emotions. I think writing about current affairs
is very important, though; I’m trying to do it more. As artists we
have a unique platform with which we can do a lot of good, so
we should try to.
Do you have a favourite venue you’ve performed in? If so, what
makes it special?
“As artists we have
a unique platform
with which we can
do a lot of good, so
we should try to”
I recently played a new electronic
set at Constellations for Sound City
as a part of Levi’s Music Project.
Debuting songs that you’ve produced
over months is always exciting,
if not nerve-wracking. Levi’s had
personalised the venue for us artists
and created graphic design to play
as a backdrop while we performed. It
was grand.
Can you recommend an artist, band
or album that Bido Lito! readers
might not have heard?
There’s this guy called Jimothy Lacoste who I’ve only just
discovered. He has an 80s feel and does some funny songs.
It’s worth watching his videos because his dance moves are
something else.
If you could support any artist in the future, who would it be?
It’ll come as no surprise after my earlier fanboying, that it would
be a dream to support The Killers. Bastille as well. They’re both
great bands who’ve influenced me a lot.
soundcloud.com/michael-aldag
Michael Aldag is one of the new cohort of Merseyrail Sound
Station artists who will be performing live at Liverpool Central
station on Friday 26th July.
30
SHAI-LI
This Liverpool-based producer
and multi-instrumentalist
crafts sweeping vistas from her
minimalist compositions.
“I love that I
can express
myself without
needing to talk”
If you had to describe your style in a sentence, what would you
say?
The demands of dedicated training provided the confidence for
experimentation: contained within major and minor notes is an
atmosphere of hope and of focus.
Have you always wanted to create music?
When I was five I started playing piano – and I haven’t stopped
since then. I started playing guitar when I was 10. I have always
been playing, studying and listening to music, and I think I
always knew that this was my path. However, it was only after
my military service in 2013 that decided I wanted to develop it
as my profession. That’s when I ended up moving to Liverpool
from Israel to study at LIPA, where I focused on production and
composition.
Can you pinpoint a live gig or a piece of music that initially
inspired you?
Opening by Philip Glass. I came across this piece last year and
it introduced me to the style of minimalistic music. I found the
hypnotising feeling of this piece meditating and really unique.
Do you have a favourite song or piece of music to perform?
If I have to pick one piece it might have to be Clair De Lune by
Debussy. A simple melody line accompanied by rich, beautiful
and effective harmony is what I’m trying to create as well when I
compose. I find the simplicity in it powerful and moving.
What do you think is the overriding influence on your
songwriting: other art, emotions, current affairs – or a mixture
of all of these?
For me it is the mixture of all these together. I never write with
a clear intention, but when I need to explain to myself whether
a piece of mine is one to keep, I analyse it considering how it
matches the state of mind I was in.
If you could support any artist in the future, who would it be?
Absolutely Ólafur Arnalds!
Do you have a favourite venue you’ve performed in?
I performed in an OUTPUT gallery in May. What made it special
– aside from the fact it was my EP release – was that it combined
two types of art together: music and visual arts. The space was
small and the audience was set on the floor. Taking music outside
the studio or the regular stage created an intimate connection
with the audience that I’ve never felt before when playing at
typical music venues.
Why is music important to you?
Music is my way to express myself. I usually write instrumental
music, and I love that I can express myself without needing to
talk.
soundcloud.com/shai-li
RAHEEM
ALAMEEN
One of last year’s LIMF Academy Most
Ready artists has started to fulfil his
huge potential, with two stellar tracks
already released so far in 2019.
“Music helped
me through a
tough time in my
life and it also
helped me get on
a better path”
If you had to describe your music in a sentence, what would
you say?
I take a lot of influence from RnB and combine that with Afro
style music.
How did you get into making music?
I’ve been singing since the age of four and have wanted to do
music since I can remember. I decided to take it up at university at
the age of 18. I started writing and making music in my friend’s
studio and we’d just mess around ’til I thought it would actually
be good to pursue this is a career. I put out a song on BBC
Introducing in early 2015 and then everything just started to fall
in place after that.
Where were you brought up? How, if at all, did your
surroundings inspire the music you make now?
I was brought up in Liverpool. My family were heavily into RnB
and hip hop when I was young, so I took my influences from
there and made my own path as I grew older.
Can you think of any artists who inspired you when you were
starting out?
Maverick Sabre. I Need was the first song I ever recorded in a
studio. I remember a friend asking me to come in and record a
cover for one of his university projects. I went and recorded it and
that’s when I really fell in love with creating and recording music.
What do you think is the overriding influence on your
songwriting: other art, emotions, current affairs – or a mixture
of all of these?
I write about things I’ve been through in life and also what other
people around me have gone through. I take inspiration from life
events and try and interpret them in my own way. Writing music
to me is like writing a script to a film, I always visualise the story.
Which contemporary artists do you feel are making the most
interesting music today?
I think Yxng Bane, Octavian, Khalid and Daniel Caesar are really
paving a way for the younger generation in music.
Why is music important to you?
Music saved me… It helped me through a tough time in my life
and it also helped me get on a better path. I spend most days in
the studio writing and creating music. It’s become a lifestyle for
me and I’m finally starting to turn my dreams into a reality.
@raheemalameen
Raheem Alameen’s new track Too Deep is out now. Raheem
performs at Liverpool International Music Festival on Saturday
20th July on the Central Stage.
SPOTLIGHT 31
PREVIEWS
“We’ve always
tried to make
pop from what
we have lying
around”
GIG
ROLLING BLACKOUTS
COASTAL FEVER
Invisible Wind Factory – 09/07
These self-christened “soft-punks” from Melbourne
have been riding a wave of acclaim that has taken
them across the world, showcasing their bright and
thoughtful guitar rock.
Prior to their European tour, Melbourne’s ROLLING BLACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER
return to the UK, stopping off in Liverpool for the first time when they play at Invisible
Wind Factory. Their tour is currently in support of their new 7” double A-side single,
In The Capital/Read My Mind, a continuation of their critically lauded 2018 album,
Hope Downs. To measure up to this acclaim, the group have been on the road fairly consistently,
drawing ever-increasing crowds the further they play from home. Georgina Hull spoke to vocalist
and guitarist Fran Keaney for his take on how the quintet have found the ups and downs of the
past year.
So you’re currently in the midst of a worldwide tour. How is that treating you so far?
We’re just in the middle of a US run; we started over at the East Coast – New York, Washington,
Philadelphia, Toronto, Chicago – and then flew over to the West Coast. We played Seattle last night,
we’re just driving up to Vancouver today to play there, and then we’ll play Portland tomorrow night,
finishing off the US run playing San Fran and L.A. It’s been really good. I think it’s our fourth time over
here now, and I think we’re getting slightly better at doing the big American road trip scene.
Compared to the tour you had for your debut album, how have you been finding the run of shows?
In the States it’s been a bit bigger this time around. We put a double A-side out recently, but it
seems like a lot of people who are coming to the show that haven’t seen us before and have sort of
come onto the album a little bit more recently. The States is a little bit of a different beat to the UK or
Australia. There are these little spot fires, ’cos all the towns have their own radio stations so they’re
very separate entities; state to state, town to town. It’s different in the UK and Aus because we have
national broadcasters that people listen to.
For me, the music on the new single sounds like you’ve paid a little more attention to the finer
details – it’s not quite as stripped back and direct as the album. Do you think this is a sign of
maturity, or advancement in your songwriting?
I hope so. We worked on In The Capital for a long time, actually. It was in the mix for the album, but
we couldn’t quite capture the essence of what the song felt like. So we just worked on it and worked
on it and changed the lyrics, eventually we got to the heart of it a lot better. I think the themes fit
together a lot with the other single, Read My Mind; overall the lyrics are a bit more opaque than our
earlier stuff. I think they service the feelings that the melodies use, that’s something that we tried to
do – not to distract from the point that was being made by the music. I don’t know if we’ll do that all
the time, but for these songs it seemed like the way to go. They’ve been nice additions to the set, ’cos
they’re more introspective and subdued, or something. The crowds seem to react positively to them,
so it’s been feeling good.
What changes and adjustments have you made in terms of style and production?
There hasn’t really been anything different that we’ve done this time around, our band has always
been a basic sort of set up. We’ve always tried to make pop from what we have lying around. We
don’t have any vocal effects, really; I think we just sound like what a band from 30 years ago would’ve
sounded like. We don’t try and toy with the formula too much, we just try to work within the confines
of the tools that we have. We stay true to ourselves and our original style; initially, the band was just
a few acoustic guitars, sitting around in a bedroom and trying to find strong melodies and ideas. So
we’ve just tried to make that the focus to make the songs strong enough. Then we don’t have to rely
on smoke and mirrors to beef things up here and there. Making the ingredients work hard for you, like
they do in some cuisines.
At the time of writing the new material, was there a particular sound palette you wanted to
surround yourself in? Any artists you found yourself listing to a lot?
Musically speaking, not really. We just sort of noodle around until we find a melody that feels like
something, feels like a feeling, and then we have to sort of diagnose what that feeling might be,
and chase down the lyrics and jigsaw pieces to fit that. We just listen widely, and what comes out,
comes out. Lyrically, for In The Capital – which I wrote the lyrics for – I had a breakthrough when I was
reading this Australian author called Gerald Murnane, who’s got this really odd little book called Border
Districts. It’s about this guy who’s just, sorta, tracing his memory through this ‘mind’s eye’ imagery. He
goes on tangent upon tangent, recalling the tint of a stained-glass window that was at a house when
he was five years old and had a piano lesson, and the song in the piano lesson that he was learning
– retraces that through to some party somewhere, and it’s this long roundabout memoir. It’s all very
hysteric and lyrical, so it’s hard to describe it. Just a long bit of poetry, basically.
In terms of the music you’re currently making, do you perceive yourselves as band firmly in the
indie bracket? What’s your perception of this genre tag?
Certainly. I mean, it’s very broad. It’s so broad as to be un-useful, but I’d proudly say that we are in that
category. There are a lot of subsections in that category that might be more useful with describing our
sound. We say “tough-pop, soft-punk”. Soft-punk is a little tongue-in-cheek; not too many punks that
would describe themselves as soft, but we’ve got no problem with that. We’ve got melodies, strong
hooks, but we also like playing the songs with conviction. That’s what I really like about The Smiths,
you know, they really played strong melodies and ambitious melodies with absolute venom – I think
that’s a really cool thing.
I noticed that when you were discussing Hope Downs you mentioned “there was a general sense
that things were coming apart at the seams and people around us were too” – is this a direct
reference to the change in the political and social climate happening in many countries across the
world?
Yeh. The album came out in 2018, it was recorded in 2017, the songs were written in 2016 and 2017,
and obviously 2016 was where everything went to shit. I think everyone was just trying to make
sense of it; it really rocked a lot of people. Particularly the people I know. A lot of those songs are
just, sort of, trying to grapple with this shit thing in the sands. I don’t really have a definitive answer
regarding my own take on it – one thing that we say is to just try and find the ones you love and hold
on to them. That sounds pretty drastic, but… we had an election two or three weeks ago just before
we came over here, and it was the same sort of feeling. It was quite deflating because it seemed like
maybe our country was heading in a positive, progressive direction, and all of the polls suggested that
was the way it was gonna go, but then there was this shock on election day like what happened in
2016 in the UK and the States, just watching everything turn blue rather than turn red. I don’t know
if it’s the same in the US, but the shade of blue is a frightening one. It’s driven by selfishness, first and
foremost. That seems to be the story of the day, and that was what was so deflating about it, to see
that selfishness is still pretty much the basis in our country. It takes the wind out of your sails a bit.
Is it a feeling you want to explicitly want to highlight in your music, or a reality you’d like to escape
from?
Yeh, but the escapist thing is a bit of a weird one. You don’t want to just close your eyes and pretend
everything’s fine. I think we just want to make people have a good time and want to create an
inclusive atmosphere and break down some barriers. I don’t have a clear answer yet. We try and
carry ourselves through our music, we try and break down walls between people. A lot of our songs
are about men who are closing themselves off from others, which is something that happens a lot in
Australia, which we want to hold up to the light and poke at.
More specifically, are these issues more closely linked to the rise of social media and the decrease
of actual human contact? Are people’s views becoming more isolationist?
I think the main thing with social media is that it creates these echo chambers; people just live in their
own separate communities. If they wanna just read Premier League news or if they just wanna read
about darts, they’ll do that, and they don’t have to watch the nightly news or read the daily paper.
Previously there were, sort of, established mediums; people were on the same page, as it were, and
they’d have different views but at least there was a common conversation that was happening, but now
it’s just babble. People living on the same street live in all sorts of different communities, so they start
talking about different realities, different facts, different takes on science. That seems to be the problem.
In an entertainment way, it’s great. You can just go down your own little rabbit warren, you can
find all sorts of things, and as a band you can establish a worldwide community without any real
physical infrastructure and you can see on Spotify that people are listening from Mexico City and
Philadelphia. So, yeh, it’s really useful, you don’t have to rely on as much luck as you used to, because
you’ve got a platform in your own bedroom. !
Words: Georgina Hull / @georgiehull
Photography: Maclay Heriot
rollingblackoutsband.com
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s new single In The Capital is out now via Sub Pop.
32
Nile Rodgers
FESTIVAL
Liverpool International
Music Festival
Sefton Park – 20-21/07
MEMBERS
PICK
Le Freak, Everybody Dance, Good Times, I Want Your Love…
we haven’t got the space in this previews section to list all of
the copper-bottomed bangers NILE RODGERS AND CHIC
have been responsible for, but you get the idea. To get the full
experience, Liverpudlians can get their hands on a wristband for this
year’s LIVERPOOL INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL. In a wildly
exciting turn of events, the disco originators have just been announced
as this year’s headliners! And the fun doesn’t stop there.
Returning to Sefton Park for its seventh consecutive year, LIMF is
celebrating the 30th birthday of legendary homegrown label 3Beat Records
with a run of exclusive live headliner performances. The Saturday will
present special guests including British-German DJ duo M-22, Liverpoolborn
house producer ANTON POWERS and platinum-selling SIGMA.
Adding to the disco flavour, SISTER SLEDGE FEATURING KATHY
SLEDGE will be dishing out more familiar funky favourites on Sunday,
before DISCO CLASSICAL give the orchestral treatment to any remaining
floor-filling anthems.
Another genre-defining act, in the form of hip hop pioneers DE LA
SOUL, will also be wowing Sefton Park crowds. The New York trio, famous
for hits The Magic Number, Me, Myself, And I and Eye Know, is another
coup for the jewel in Culture Liverpool’s musical crown. There will also be a
healthy smattering of homegrown emerging talent; PIZZAGIRL, EYESORE
& THE JINX, SUNDOWNERS and our own pick, cover star BILL NICKSON,
to name four, will be gracing the Music City stage this year. The festival’s
esteemed LIMF Academy will present a selection of its progeny across the
two top stages throughout the weekend. We recommend checking out
LUNA, KYAMI and RAHEEM ALAMEEN from 2018’s intake.
For those who want to groove down to phat beats, the legends that
are NORMAN JAY MBE and Soul II Soul’s JAZZIE B will be spinning tunes
in the True School Clubhouse on the Saturday of the festival, while the
Shubz DJ Tent hosts DJ ACE and MANNY MORTE among others across the
weekend. Offering a truly eclectic and impressive line-up that will appeal to
a multitude of generations and fans of a diverse mix of genres, this year’s
LIMF will be a real highlight in July’s packed festival calendar. Ridiculously
good value day tickets, priced at £10 each, can be purchased now from
ticketquarter.co.uk.
Candice Breitz, Sweat (2018)
EXHIBITION
REAL WORK
FACT – 12/07-06/10
Established concepts of work and employment have shifted
massively over the course of the last decade. Since the 1980s,
the barrier between work and perceived freedom has gradually
been rubbed away to the point where the working 40-hour week
no longer exists for most people living in the UK. Shift patterns are split,
casual, unreliable, applied with short notice. In contrast, office-based
work can stretch well beyond five o’clock and into the weekend – emails,
agendas, social media accounts attached to phones that don’t switch off
when the head hits the pillow. But it’s not only these seemingly established
lines of work that are changing. In certain parts of the world, work in the
sex industry is working its way into public discourse and rightly shifting
attention towards better protection and rights for workers.
It’s these themes of precarious work that are to be the subject of FACT’s
brand new summer into autumn exhibition, titled REAL WORK. The exhibition
features one brand new commission piece by New York based visual artist LIZ
MAGIC LASER. In Real Life, a series of films by Laser, explores the most current
and largely deregulated profession of online gig-working. Shown alongside
the new commission will be Sweat, the 2018 film by CANDICE BREITZ, which
seeks to destigmatise sex work, a profession that remains criminalised in
most parts of the world. Both of the artworks on display as part of Real Work
incorporate an experimental documentary format, highlighting the human
dimension of invisible work by putting the uncensored, unfiltered stories of real
life workers front and centre.
Real Work’s core pieces will be accompanied by a season of events, the
centrepiece of which will be The Liverpool Complaints Choir – Citizens Singing
About Work. Created by TELLERVO KALLEINEN and OLIVER KOCHTA-
KALLEINEN, anyone living in Liverpool is invited to share their personal
complaints related to work, and join a process where these complaints are
turned into an impressive choir song. Anyone is welcome to join, with an open
call being launched during the exhibition. FACT’s 2019 summer events will also
include family activities, exhibition tours, summer camps, film screenings and
hands-on creative technology workshops.
fact.co.uk
EVENT DISCOVERY PARTNER
ticketquarter.co.uk
PREVIEWS 33
PREVIEWS
“In my heart, it’s
the avant-garde
that excites me
the most”
FESTIVAL
MARY ANNE
HOBBS
Queens Of The Electronic Underground
@ Manchester International Festival – 20/07
Broadcaster and proud Lancastrian Mary Anne
Hobbs returns to MIF to curate a celebration of avantgarde
female musicians while simultaneously bigging
up the North’s credentials as a cultural powerhouse.
The cultural magnetism of Manchester International Festival has proven a compelling force
since launching in 2007. It consistently pieces together a colourful programme of music,
arts and film, one that stands out on a national scale – not simply in the North. With
the help of a talented team of curators and guest curators, the festival places innovative
commissions on a platform beside emerging artistic practice, evolving year on year to light up
the rapidly expanding Manchester cityscape. This summer’s edition follows suit. Brand new
experiences featuring Skepta and David Lynch are just some of the highlights on the line-up.
Over the years, MIF’s future focussed sensibilities have helped carve out a relationship with
BBC Radio 6 Music’s MARY ANNE HOBBS, who returns to this year as a guest curator and creative
advisor. Previous incarnations have seen Mary Anne curate her own Dark Matter series in 2017, as
well as collaborations with The Warehouse Project. For 2019, Mary Anne will be taking over the O2
Ritz on Saturday 20th July for a one night only audio visual showcase headed up by academically
astute sound designer HOLLY HERNDON. Looking ahead to the show, Elliot Ryder spoke to Mary
Anne Hobbs about her latest showcase.
So, this year you’ll be returning to MIF with Queens Of The Electronic Underground. Can you tell
us a little bit about the project?
Queens Of The Electronic Underground is essentially a creative statement with feminism imbued
within. The greatest thing about MIF is they give you a licence to dream, to destroy boundaries, to
do something that is pure. This event aside, on the full line-up there’s a great selection of hugely
influential women, so it’s great to be working alongside Laurie Anderson, Maxine Peake, Janelle
Monáe, Yoko Ono. For this event itself, we’re going to black out the entirety of the O2 Ritz and build
and eight-metre AV screen across the back wall. With this, artists can premiere new visual work,
as well as the sound that they’re bringing. Holly Herndon, JLIN, AÏSHA DEVI, KATIE GATELEY and
KLARA LEWIS – these women are going to show you what the future looks like.
I think it’s really interesting where you mention that these artists will show us what the future
looks like. Do you think there’s an argument that we’re on a steady trajectory for these sounds
and concepts to more heavily influence mainstream artists in the next few years?
What’s really fascinating, if you look at the work of Holly Herndon, who’s released a serious
contender for album of the year with PROTO, you’re looking at an artist who is building a whole
new relationship with machines and AI. I think she really understands the value of integration with
technology. She is creating high art in new ways by teaching and mentoring machines. As for Jlin,
she’s breaking new ground in a way that no other artist really has. Her rhythm patterns at the
moment are second to none. With these two women, they’re not just pushing the boundaries of
music and the mainstream, they’re asking what music even is.
With the eight-metre AV screen, there’s going to be a strong visual element to the show. To
what extent have you been involved with the visual design of the shows? Is this something you
find frees up another side of your imagination away from radio?
In terms of my involvement, visually, I’m just a catalyst for things to happen. I’m creating a bridge
for an audience that’s hungry for this new sound, bringing them into a space where they can see
the most incredible all women line-up. The creative element is given over to the artists themselves.
Aïsha Devi is working with a Berlin-based visual artist named MFO. She’s a really unpredictable,
radical artist, and she’s going to be premiering that show for the very first time at the festival. I have
absolutely no idea what it’s going to look like, but my belief in her is absolute; I trust her implicitly
to bring something that’s going to absolutely blow people away. The first time I’ll see it will be in
soundcheck, which I’m completely fine with. I need that rush of seeing something brand new, you
know? For me, just investing in an artist and the visual aspect is a really exciting process.
Looking at your role as a DJ compared to your freedom as a curator, do you feel there are any
barriers to your remit to testing the boundaries of a listener in the daytime hours?
I think finding a balance is really important. Personally, I’m a child of the underground; I grew up
as a disciple of John Peel. When my dad smashed up all of my records, he didn’t find this tiny
little transistor radio that I had that I would listen to in the dead of night. Peel, for me, stood at a
gateway to a complete alternative universe. As much as the world has blossomed and changed with
coming of the internet, I still feel like I carry his torch. I feel like the pendulum has swung so far in
the opposite direction to when I had my transistor radio, where we now we have oceans of sounds
online. I think it’s very difficult to navigate through; you need a trusted guide to get through it, in the
same way John was my trusted guide as a kid. So I feel passionately about that role. And still, in my
heart, it’s the avant-garde that excites me the most. I think if you listen to the daytime show and the
things we’ve played in the short space of time we’ve been on air, such as premiering the new Sun
O))) album, you can start to hear elements of the avant-garde making their way onto the radio in the
daytime hours. Many people will be listening with a vast musical knowledge, and they’ll be coming
to me to discover something they don’t know. It’s a joyful task to bring elements of the avant-garde
forward and infuse them into daytime listening. Ultimately, it’s about reimaging what you can do
with daytime radio.
You’re also involved in the curation of the really exciting David Lynch exhibition, which covers
everything from film, art, and music. What role did you have in this side of the project?
I was there to help select the artists that David wanted to work with throughout the programme.
I think I put together a list of maybe 100 artists at the outset with an understanding that he really
wanted to work with local artists, as well as British and international artists. The first message I got
back was that he loves them all, but can you please narrow it down a little bit. But, really, it was an
incredible honour for me to be involved, even in just a small way.
As for the programme, it’s his first major show of visual art. Unbeknown to most he’s a highly skilled
painter and sculptor, and the curators at HOME have been able to bring together some of his most
extraordinary pieces. They’ll be going on display as part of a free exhibition, but there’s also a brilliant
cinematic element. There’ll be an archive of his work shown in some of Manchester’s most beautiful
cinemas. The music element will also take place in a theatre space – a setting that completely fits with
the whole Lynchian vibe. It’s a beautiful backdrop with three-tiered balcony. It’s been put together with
the help of a specialist set designer, with further input from lighting designer Stuart Bailes, someone
who I’ve worked with on many occasions, including Dark Matter.
It’s going to be exciting to have David Lynch’s influence pervading Manchester throughout the
summer. And it’s great that the exhibition will be free. For me, it’s almost miraculous that we were able
to bring him here and create a programme that reflects all the different elements he’s excited about.
In terms of the festival’s cultural magnetism, a couple of weeks back there was a widespread
campaign by northern newspapers for greater power in the North. With festivals like MIF
and the new Keith Haring exhibition opening in Liverpool, do you think that there is a strong
argument for equal arts funding to be spread through the country?
I think there is a real appetite for boundaryless creativity in the North. But, the North’s really exciting
because the North is going to do it anyway. It won’t wait for something to be given and to be told
to get on with it. People will always just find a way. I think there’s a real sense of ingenuity and a
real desire to make things happen – and that’s a beautiful thing. Obviously, we would love to have
more funding, which may well be forthcoming, but we’re going to do it anyway, aren’t we? With or
without anyone’s approval, with or without anyone’s purse, with or without somebody’s sanctioning.
The North’s always been that way. There’s an organic audience who will gravitate towards these
events. Artist experiences up here have always created an incredible sense of communion with
an audience, whether it be in the back room of a tiny pub or to a full crowd at Old Trafford cricket
ground. The symbiotic exchange of energy for artists is so important, and you find it in abundance
when anywhere in the north. The proximity between some of the main cities, Liverpool, Manchester,
Leeds, provides so much opportunity. If we can encourage people to move between them all,
support one another’s events, the future should be really exciting. !
Words: Elliot Ryder / @elliot_ryder
Photography: Tarnish Vision
Mary Anne Hobbs curates Queens Of The Electronic Underground at The O2 Ritz on Saturday 20th
July. Head to mif.co.uk to view the full festival programme.
34
Juliana Yazbeck (Carmen Zografou)
FESTIVAL
Liverpool Arab
Arts Festival
Various venues – 05/07-14/07
Bringing a selection of the music, art, performance and theatre
of the Arab diaspora together, LIVERPOOL ARAB ARTS
FESTIVAL has a packed and vibrant schedule for its Shadow
And Light-themed 2019 edition. LAAF is the UK’s largest
annual Arab arts festival, taking place in Liverpool for a fortnight in
July.
Premiering with a performance of JULIANA YAZBECK’s debut
album, SUNGOD, at Royal Court Studio, LAAF will feature exhibitions
and performances across nine days, including the Shadow And Light
exhibition at Northern Lights inspired by BEAU BEAUSOLEIL, a tribute
to Palestinian singer and activist Rim Banna. Shadow And Light is a
collaborative project honouring the lives of more than 400 academics
killed in targeted assassinations between 2003 and 2012.
Born in the US to Lebanese parents, Juliana Yazbeck is an
unapologetic lyricist who challenges the effects of colonisation on cultural
identities. Drawing on her mixed cultural upbringing, SUNGOD is a call
to all women and cultures to shed internalised shame, through Yazbeck’s
signature sound that’s a mesmerising fusion of spoken word, otherworldly
electronics and haunting Levantine vocals.
An inspiring line-up of groundbreaking women artists from across
the Arab diaspora has also been curated across LAAF’s bill, in support
of RISE, Liverpool’s season of extraordinary female artists, thinkers
and leaders. Award-winning Palestinian writer, performer and activist
DANA DAJANI is the festival’s artist in residence for 2019. Bringing her
theatrical poetry with gesture and character to four festival events, Dajani
will perform a world exclusive of her one-woman show Heroine With A
Thousand Dresses at the Bluecoat on 13th July. Palestinian dancer and
choreographer, FARAH SALEH and spoken word artists AMINA ATIQ and
LISA LUXX are also part of the multifaceted array of events that speak of
LAAF’s devotion to celebrating this rich culture.
The ever-popular Family Day rounds off festival proceedings at Sefton
Park’s Palm House on 14th July. A packed day showcasing traditional
and contemporary Arab cultural music and dance is brought together by
DARAA TRIBES and HAWIYYA DANCE COMPANY. Alongside this there
will be an offering of authentic cuisine, traditional crafts, market stalls,
henna painting and an enhanced programme of family-focused activities.
LAAF’s storyteller in residence ALIA ALZOUGBI will also be on hand to
share folk tales from the Arab world.
arabartsfestival.com
Liverpool Pride 2018
FESTIVAL
Pride In Liverpool
Various venues – 27/07-28/07
Liverpool’s pride event may have a new name, but it’s all
systems go when it comes to celebrating the foundation’s
ethos of acceptance. PRIDE IN LIVERPOOL has also adopted
the theme Come As You Are for its programme of events,
cultural and community activities. The theme calls to all people,
regardless of where they are from or how they identify, to take pride
in their identity and come together in the spirit of friendship, love and
respect.
The free festival will return to its usual home on Tithebarn Street
in the city centre on Saturday 27th July, with multiple stages of live
entertainment, a dedicated youth zone and whole host of inclusive
activities, stalls and food and drink vendors. Festival-goers will also be
invited to March With Pride on Saturday 27th, along the traditional route
from St George’s Hall, finishing at Moorfields. Those wishing to march
are encouraged to sign up to the LCR Pride Foundation mailing list at
lcrpride.co.uk to be notified when registration opens.
The fun will continue on 28th July – billed as Pride Sundae – with
more activities taking place at a soon-to-be revealed city centre location.
There are also plans to further celebrate pride all year round, with LCR
Pride Award in October, acknowledging the brightest, bravest and best
of the region’s LGBT+ community and its allies. There will also be a
chance to explore the very best of new and classic LGBT+ cinema from
around the world, with exclusive post screening discussions at FACT at
Picturehouse and other venues across the region. Upcoming films include
Lizzie, Sauvage and Rafiki.
Co-chair of LCR Pride Foundation, John Bird, said: “At a time
when the LGBT+ community is increasingly misunderstood, marred by
misconceptions and targeted with hate, LCR Pride Foundation wants the
world to know that the Liverpool City Region is taking a stand. No matter
where you are from or how you identify, we are open to all and you are
welcome here, just Come As You Are!”
PREVIEWS 35
PREVIEWS
GIG
Anathema
Grand Central Hall – 19/07
Anathema
Back To The Start will be the title of this exclusive
hometown show for rock titans ANATHEMA, who remain
one of the world’s leading pioneers of doom metal.
Forming in 1990, and initially going under the name Pagan
Angel, Anathema stand as one of the most underrated
bands to emerge from the 90s, having released over
20 studio albums across their 29-year career. 2019
also marks the 20th anniversary of their fifth album,
Judgement, an album that marked a more experimental
strain of Anathema’s trademark style. Nostalgia and awe
will be present in equal measure when the quintet are in
town for this homecoming show.
GIG
Mount Kimbie
Meraki – 13/07
MEMBERS
PICK
London-based electronic duo MOUNT KIMBIE are due to perform
a whopping four-hour extended DJ set at Meraki’s Summer Yard
Party, bringing summer bopping and weaving to the North docks.
Joining them behind the decks are local selectors BOOGALOO,
FLOSSY (Down To Funk) and GIOVANNA BRIGUGLIO (SisBis)
for some cheeky choons blasting all the way through until the
next morning – if you can hack it. But don’t worry, it’s not as
exhausting as it sounds, especially when Faux Liverpool will be
supplying an array of vegan snacks and treats. Be sure to grab
tickets as soon as you can – Summer Yard Party is known to sell
out early, so you’d best get cracking.
Mount Kimbie
GIG
Harambe Maoni
Phase One – 02/07
ParrJazz are renowned for bringing some of the newest local breakthrough
acts to centre stage, and their latest effort is more of the same. HARAMBE
MAONI is the latest project of saxophonist Andrew Myers; joining him at the
best-established jazz night in town are funk jazz-driven trio ANDCHUCK.
Myers has an extensive list of jazz projects he has previously worked on: The
Sputnik Two, Ranga and Harambe, Rumjig, The Fire Beneath The Sea, We
The Undersigned and The Solid Air Band. Influences from DnB, Afro jazz, hip
hop and modern and contemporary jazz are to be expected. The event also
offers the chance to win a vinyl record of your choosing on the night. Tickets
for this show are available now via Ticket Quarter.
CLUB
SAL-SOUL
24 Kitchen Street – 13/07
The first edition of the SAL-SOUL summer party sets expectations
of a non-stop, all-day concoction of disco, funky house, club classics
and everyone’s favourite summer anthems. After selling out earlybird,
first and second wave tickets, Sal-Soul is very limited capacity with a
very varied line-up including DJ sets from: ADAM RYLANDS, ANSON
AND CHELLEW, ANTHONY BRAY, and LUCA WINTERTON. After
successfully selling out at the launch party in December, this summer
time day party foresees a sardine-packed Saturday with Sal-Soul
developing a fierce audience of their own from dedicated listeners to
their Sal-Soul Presents mixes on SoundCloud.
FESTIVAL
Bluedot
Jodrell Bank Observatory – 18-21/07
Kraftwerk 3D
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing of 1969, BLUEDOT festival combines a fusion of music,
science and cosmic culture all under the grand Lovell Telescope. For fans of electronica, Bluedot could not
be a more perfect line-up: headline acts over the three days include HOT CHIP and NEW ORDER, with a
special KRAFTWERK 3-D audiovisual show topping off things on the Saturday night. Bluedot is inspired by
the 1990 photograph taken of Earth by the Voyager 1 space probe in 1990, popularised by astronomer Carl
Sagan. Much like the analysis of Sagan, the philosophy behind Bluedot is to highlight the fragility of earth,
while exploring the frontiers of human advancement. Family friendly workshops and panels will explore this
throughout the weekend – but even if music’s your primary vice, there’s plenty to satisfy your needs.
FESTIVAL
Manchester International Festival
Various venues – 04/07-21/07
The quite brilliant Manchester International Festival gets underway this month
(if you haven’t already, check out our interview with curator Mary Anne Hobbs
on page 34). As well as a sterling programme of activity including theatre from
IDRIS ELBA, happenings by YOKO ONO and curation from DAVID LYNCH, MIF
HQ has announced they’ll be transforming the city’s Albert Square into Festival
Square with marvellous programme of live music and DJs. JANELLE MONÁE
opens proceedings with a show at Castlefield Bowl on 4th July; elsewhere on
the bill you’ll find varied events and performances featuring, among others,
NITIN SAWNEY, THE ORIELLES, THE BLACK MADONNA and HORACE ANDY.
MIF.co.uk
Janelle Monáe
36
GIG
Deeper Cuts
Phase One and Kazimier Garden – 13/07
A three-venue all-dayer on the lower end of Seel Street is
Getinothis’ contribution to summer festivities. Deeper Cuts
– an expansion of their monthly shows – takes place across
Phase One, the Kazimier Garden and intimate new space
Kazimier Stockroom. Teeth-rattling noisemakers TEETH OF
THE SEA and GUM TAKES TOOTH lead the charge, with
some smart supporting acts in the form of HOUSEWIVES,
BUZZARD BUZZARD BUZZARD and URF. Liverpool’s own
maverick noiseniks are more than up to support billing,
too, with art-proggers RONGORONGO, thrash metal outfit
VIDEO NASTIES and industrial noise-makers LONESAW
joining the fray.
GIG
Chip Wickham
The Spot – 13/07 and 14/07
With his latest offering labelled “fantastic dancefloor jazz”
by Clash magazine, and spearheading a house revolution
in a previous life, CHIP WICKHAM is responsible for
soundtracking various eras of hedonism. More recently the
flautist has rebounded from Gilles Petersen’s Brownswood
label to settle at Madrid’s Lovemonk, where he’s created
some truly vibey new jazz. Last year’s Shamal Wind album
demonstrated Wickham’s appreciation for middle eastern
sounds combined with his dance background. Wickham
drops in at 3b Records’ wonderfully intimate The Spot venue
for a full live show on 13th July, before curating a line-up of
DJs for the Chip-Fest All-dayer the following day.
GIG
SPQR
The Deaf Centre, Chester – 05/07
Fresh off the release of new EP Low Sun Long Shadows,
SPQR are ready to export their frantic, squalling rock to
a new fanbase, down the road in Chester. The trio have
expanded on the blueprint they laid down with 2017’s The
House That Doubt Built EP, adding more tightly-wound
tension and explosive, Pile-esque dynamism to the mix.
They’re sure to find adherents to their cause in old Deva –
and they’ve got some great help at hand to make the night
fire on all cylinders. Restless Bear signees YAMMERER are
well known to Chester audiences, as are fellow support ace
DEH-YEY. Expect audio fireworks from this lot. And don’t
moan if you miss it, we did give you plenty of notice.
SPOKEN WORD
Matt Abbott
Naked Lunch Café – 01/07
Either side of volunteering at the Calais Jungle refugee camp, MATT
ABBOTT saw his native city of Wakefield vote 66 per cent leave in
the EU referendum. In a bid to understand why so many workingclass
communities like his come out in droves for Brexit, Abbott
devised his Two Little Ducks tour to find some answers. Following a
full run at Edinburgh Fringe in 2017 and a 22-date UK theatre tour
in autumn 2018 that gained rave reviews, Abbott’s political spoken
word show has established itself as one of the most vital pieces
of work on the poetry scene. Powerful and personal, the show’s
sequence of 22 poems is an intense, moving and challenging piece
of theatre.
Matt Abbott
GIG
Cream Classical In The Park
Sefton Park – 19/07
Cream Classical
Electronic dance music’s most notorious brand returns to its spiritual home this summer
for an orchestral rendering of some of the most memorable dance anthems committed to
tape. CREAM’s successful Cream Classical series adds an open-air string to its bow by
bringing the mighty Kaleidoscope Orchestra to Sefton Park, welcoming thousands of fans
across two stages to experience a show that features FAITHLESS, PAUL OAKENFOLD
and ROGER SANCHEZ, among others. It’s only right that these classic tracks from
Cream’s esteemed 25-year history are re-imagined and recreated in spectacular fashion
in Cream Classical’s biggest show to date, right here in Liverpool. The final few tickets for
this show are on sale now at ticketquarter.co.uk.
GIG
The Murder Capital
Arts Club – 25/07
MEMBERS
PICK
Dublin quintet THE MURDER CAPITAL are whipping up a frenzy in anticipation of the release of their debut album When
I Have Fears, with over 50 tour dates booked in for 2019 across the UK and Europe in the run up to the album’s release on
16th August. The birth of The Murder Capital is important to note when parsing the group’s intense relationship between
freedom and pain; the suicide of a close friend is a defining message of not just their philosophy, but also of their upcoming
album. This is in addition to their discovery of the work of photographer Francesca Woodman, who took her own life at
the age of 22. The group’s fiery post-punk growl is reminiscent of Idles and Fontaines D.C. – and if The Murder Capital can
follow in a similar vein to those two acts, it won’t be long before you’re wrapped up in their intriguing slew of noise.
The Murder Capital
GIG
The Bido Lito! Social w/ OHMNS
Sound Basement – 18/07
Ohmns
Normal service resumes for the monthly Bido Lito! Social in July. After the
bido100! celebrations we’ll be returning to our M.O. of ringing in each new issue
with the best new music Merseyside has to offer. Issue 102 will be celebrated
with the brash brilliance of OHMNS at Duke Street’s premier muso den, Sound
Food And Drink. Also on the bill on 18th July are SILVER LININGS, Eggy Records’
loudest noiseniks, and IRENE & THE DISAPPOINTMENTS, who will raise the
curtain with their infectious brand of dreampop. As usual, Bido Lito! Members get
free entry – tickets are available now from ticketquarter.co.uk. Come along and
champion great new sounds.
PREVIEWS 37
5pm til 9pm - SUNDAY TO FRIDAY
£2 Slices
£10 Pizzas
2 cocktails £10
cheap plonk
25 Parr Street, Liverpool L1 4JN.
0151 559 2599
Box office:
theatkinson.co.uk
01704 533 333
(Booking fees apply)
–
: TheAtkinson
: @AtkinsonThe
: @TheAtkinsonSouthport
The Atkinson
Lord Street
Southport
PR8 1DB
Exhibitions
Free Entry
—
donations welcome
Opening Times: Mon – Sat 10am – 4pm
Inspired by Alice
Until 7 September 2019
An imaginative and slightly bonkers exhibition looking at the
impact of Alice in Wonderland on the world of Art and Craft.
Exhibition includes Salvador Dali illustrations of Alice and
original sketches by Lewis Carroll.
Southport Double Take II
Until 7 September 2019
Intriguing photography that blends the historic with the new.
Old photos have been overlaid with new images giving the
appearance of people from the past looking out on modern
day Britain.
Bessie Downes: Flowers
of the Southport Coast
Until 2 November 2019
Beautiful botanical illustrations of flowers found on the coast
from the 1890s until the early 20th Century.
Cross Pollination
Until 28 March 2020
A celebration of floral art and literature including a digital
artwork of 18th Century Dutch still life that gives the illusion of
the painting steadily dissolving into the digital sands of time by
Gordon Cheung and an installation by Heywood and Condie.
The Atkinson is just 3 minutes walk from Southport Train Station
REVIEWS
“This is a festival
that has its eyes
fixated on bringing
a full spectrum of
sounds into the
heart of the city”
Loyle Carner (Michael Kirkham / michaelkirkhamphotography.co.uk)
Sound City 2019
Baltic Triangle – 04/05-05/05
If 2018 was a year of self-discovery for SOUND CITY, refinding
itself once more in the Baltic Triangle, then 2019 was
to be all about restabilising confidence. The wide spanning
programme of headline talent, international and burgeoning
artists serves as a good starter. It’s up to the music to fill in the
blanks from here, and only good things can follow.
Manchester-based trio ELEPHANT TREES treat the
crowd that have squeezed into Ditto Coffee to a stripped back
performance of their usually energetic shows. Their quality isn’t
lacking: lead singer Martha Phillips belts out acoustic versions of
tracks such as Uncomfortable and Monster with enough energy
to wake everyone up on a Saturday morning. Ending a brilliant
set on a positive note, Phillips sends everyone on their way with:
“It’s Saturday morning, enjoy yourself. It’s not often you get a day
off, so spend the day in a beautiful city listening to some music.”
Wise words that we all go on to follow.
The beauty of festivals is that you may stumble upon
something entirely magical. Seoul shoegaze outfit DABDA give a
performance that would make some headliners blush. Infectious
guitar lines and African rhythms are peppered throughout the set,
like the lovechild of Totorro, Chon and Paul Simon’s Graceland.
Kim Jiea channels Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins and Bilinda
Butcher of My Bloody Valentine, casting a spell over the audience
with her heavenly voice and Korean lyrics.
Constellations is the setting for a heartwarming performance
from THE FLORRIE GUITAR CLUB. The local jam group
consisting of people of all ages, backgrounds and ability overflow
the stage with their guitars. Led by The Tea Street Band’s Timo
Tierney, the group treats the crowd to renditions of some classics
in a performance that shows off everyone’s skills to much
applause.
The great thing about Sound City is the variation of genres
across all the stages. Over at Love Lane Brewery, the party duo
TOO MANY T’S spit out lyrics reminiscent of old school hip hop
of the 90s. Encouraging the crowd into the middle of the room,
the London duo do a stellar job of starting a throwback rave in a
brewery.
SOPHIE AND THE GIANTS are another stand out act of the
weekend. Packing out Hangar 34 to no surprise, the Sheffield
natives put on a hell of a show with their retro pop/indie rock
inspired tracks. Bulldog is definitely a track to look out for.
Completely throwing rockism to the wayside, HUSKY
LOOPS embrace dance music and hip hop to a degree that is
unmatched by most rock bands in this day and age. Husky Loops
have the audacity to straight-up cover Lift Yourself by Kanye
West. And why shouldn’t they? Like a punk interpretation of
Death Grips, stuttering samples and a demonic pitch shifter on
guitarist/frontman Danio Forni’s voice as he screams, “What’s up
Liverpool!” The Italian band are a talented bunch, with Forni and
bassist Tommaso Medica switching instruments, while drummer
and quasi-DJ Pietro Garronev plays as tight as a drum machine.
The trio are heading for bigger and better things, with their
song Everytime I Run being included in the FIFA 19 soundtrack.
Hopefully they return to Liverpool soon for a big blow-out party.
SHAME are swiftly on their way to becoming titans of the
rock world. The paradox of a punk show is that, sometimes,
the worse the show goes the better it actually is. Bassist Josh
Finerty had technical troubles from the start, with his bass amp
coming crashing down mid-song. He sends his bass flying and
soon follows suit, flipping and cartwheeling across the stage
like a madman. “We’re not getting paid for this show,” frontman
Charlie Steen jokes. The crowd feeds off the wild energy from the
band, there’s a feeling in the air that anything could happen. They
are conducted into a mosh pit at the wave of a hand. Plastered
behind the band is a blown up image of EDL founder Tommy
Robinson from the infamous milkshake incident in Warrington
just days prior. Inadvertently, their set serves as the perfect
metaphor for the political climate they rail so hard against: in the
midst of adversity, the youth rally together when the odds are
stacked sizeably against them.
Saturday night makes way for the first headliner of the
weekend, MABEL. The pop star is currently working her way
through the charts with her new single Don’t Call Me Up and she
puts on a show stopping performance at the New Bird Street
main stage worthy of her chart positions. Armed with backing
dancers and a set list of all her biggest hits including Finders
Keepers, Fine Line, Ring Ring and a cover of Drake’s Passionfruit,
the stage is made for her. With vocals permanently on point,
the crowd join in singing and dancing along. Having not even
released an album yet, she shows her worth and proves to be a
Confidence Man (Michael Kirkham)
perfect headline act to be championing new music.
The night is not quite over yet, however, as Liverpool rockers
QUEEN ZEE have been announced as the late night secret gig
at Best Before. Fans who got wind of the news have packed out
the tiny venue as one of the most energetic performances of the
day ensues. However, the secret is surprisingly quite well-kept,
especially for a few at the front chanting for Miles Kane. The
eyeliner-drenched Queen Zee take the stage and absolutely give
it their all. In keeping with the punk-show-paradox of the worse
the show goes the better it actually is, Queen Zee’s raw power
is too much for Best Before’s electrical systems to handle during
I Hate Your New Boyfriend, causing a full scale power outage.
This doesn’t stop the crowd as they pick up where the band left
off, chanting the chorus at the top of their lungs. It’s a sweaty
ordeal, with three out of five members ending up shirtless by
the end of the set, despite bass player Frank drenched in an allwhite
turtleneck. Queen Zee doesn’t go out looking for severed
mannequin legs, they always seem to make their way to show
on their own. Frontwoman Zee holds it up like a Tusken Raider
holding a rifle, shouting “this is the second time someone’s
brought a fake leg to our show”.
Late on Saturday night, an interactive experience is brewing
within District. Curated by GWENNO, Both Sides Now is a
cult-like silent disco, encouraging you to immerse yourself in
sound. There’s a mix of synthetic sounds and also organic folk
vocalisation coming from my channel – with two selections on
headphones across the venue, meaning you’d hear one half of
the set, bizarrely. There’s rapping, there’s poetry, there’s classical
instruments and chanting. It feels amazingly innovative but also a
bit of a left field choice for such a big festival. Very experimental
and atmospheric, but once the headphones are removed
someone can be heard muttering “is this just them warming up?”
Sunday afternoon welcomes a whole load of great acts.
Proceedings kick off early at Birdies Bar, with Canadian rock ’n’
rollers MOTHERHOOD taking the stage. The crowd at this time
is sparse, but the band are having a great time anyway. Their
sound is very likeable when it works, but does have a habit of
sliding into twee. There’s a sense that there’s not much substance
behind it yet, but the pieces are all there and with a bit of work
they could fall into place nicely.
SCALPING take things up to a whole other level at the
Baltic Social. Their techno-punk sound is ferocious and brilliantly
unrelenting. Their graphic presentation captures their mood
perfectly – contorted bodies tumbling through a warping
blackness. It does feel particularly incongruous that it’s only
2.15pm – this is music for the small, dark hours of the morning,
and the crowd seem to wish it was too so they could truly let
loose. Ones to watch, these.
As a showcase festival with a focus on discovery, it’s great
to see the Levi’s Music Project feature heavily within Sound City
this year. The talent development programme hosts its own
packed out showcase at Constellations on both days, and it’s
heartening to see the crowds being so supportive of the artists.
Having built a studio in Anfield where the handpicked local talent
have been mentored by festival headliner LOYLE CARNER, the
40
“Aystar sets a high
bar for celebrating
Liverpool music in
the city tonight”
Shame (Stu Moulding / @oohshootstu)
Mabel (Jessica Grace Neal / jessicagracecreative.com)
project brings them into the bosom of Sound City where their
new fans await. SSJ gets a great reaction from a crowd keen to
deliver on his request for “energy”. You can hear the poetry in his
rhythmic delivery, with lyrics based on everyday life. Similarly
well-received are fellow LMP alumni REMY JUDE and MICHAEL
ALDAG, who perform to a bustling room in Constellations.
Over in Brick Street’s garden, SAMURAI KIP are wafting
along jazzily just as the clouds come across, which feels unfair,
as their retro-inspired sound is perfect for the sunshine, blending
cosmic jazz with punchy lyrical delivery. Retreating somewhere
warmer, Hobo Kiosk is the home of the day’s acoustic sounds. MK
PATTERSON are a fascinating trio: with double bass, cello and
violin, accompanying an extraordinary vocal performance, they
tap into folk’s stranger depths.
Back at Constellations it’s KAGOULE’s turn to take the stage.
These guys know how to make a sound that is slightly grungy:
bass-driven and stripped back at the right moments. But what
makes them great live is their stage presence. Bassist Lucy Hatter
is a particular draw, and it’s the contrast of her sweet harmonies
against the big chorus riffs that defines the core of their sound.
A rainy Sunday evening welcomes Loyle Carner, perhaps
the most critically acclaimed hip hop act in the UK at the
moment. Through albums Yesterday’s Gone and Not Waving But
Drowning, he’s captured the hearts and minds of people across
the UK, especially within Liverpool. Even if you haven’t heard a
note of his music, it’s clear to see he’s a master of his craft. No
matter how far you are in the sea of people in front of New Bird
Street’s outdoor stage and how many rucksacks clash into you,
the energy and soul is still there, reverberating off the walls.
By the time CONFIDENCE MAN hit the stage late into Sound
City’s endurance-testing run, Hangar 34 is still bouncing, proving
that the crowd’s appetite is still to be sated. Two people in
cloaked hats emerge and blast out a hypnotic beat, sucking you
in before the gig has even properly started. The bonkers Aussie
disco quartet’s debut album Confident Music For Confident
People gives off the air of Talking Heads at a Zoolander after
party. Somehow the live show exceeds that mad expectation:
perfectly choreographed dance moves throughout; the constantly
infectious beat; various costume changes, including flashing bras;
the sleek monochrome aesthetic; and the cheeky, well-composed
dynamic between the joint leads Janet Planet and Sugar Bones
is unmatchable. You won’t have seen anything like it before, and
neither will have anyone in the audience. There’s a fun energy
in the air, especially when their hit Boyfriend lands, making
everyone get down to the ground and jump in the air. They’re the
perfect mix of disco, house music and drama that we all need in
our lives.
The show goes on, and opening the Levi’s × Noisey after
party on Sunday night at Constellations is Levi’s Music Project
participant REMÉE. Projecting her voice with perfection over the
melodic, electro RnB tracks proves to be the correct way to warm
up a crowd. To follow is fellow participant and Ellesmere Port
rapper THAT’S JUVEY? From the bouncing boom-bap of Modern
Science to the grittier grime and fast flows of Land Of The Poor,
Juvey’s creatively charged vernacular creates new atmospheres
with each song in the set. The third act of the night is the hotly
anticipated AYSTAR. The up and coming Scouse rapper instantly
turns up the vibe with his signature flow and trappy beats and
a few of his popular tracks – 86 ’ozs, Trap Mode – get the crowd
fully involved and the energy is real. Aystar sets a high bar for
celebrating Liverpool music in the city tonight.
Next to come through is the queen herself, MS BANKS.
The crowd adore her, especially when she drops the remix for
arguably this year’s biggest drill anthem, Gun Lean. Suitably
tasked with closing proceeding is SLOWTHAI. The king of
Northampton makes a royal entrance on to the stage, greeted
by a room screaming at full lung capacity. He initiates what feels
like a riot with his hit Drug Dealer. The feeling of being at an
after party hits; the set is a literal shut down. Mosh pits, crowd
splits and Slowthai’s face contorted inside a Donald Trump mask
are memories to treasure. This year’s Sound City finishes with a
sweaty, satisfied audience, a wave of excited screams ringing in
the ears.
Back to its best as a three-day musical trip into the
established and unknown. With a clear focus on the next
generation, this is a festival that has its eyes fixated on bringing a
full spectrum of sounds into the heart of the city. !
Sophie Shields, Joel Durksen, Georgia Turnbull,
Julia Johnson, Iona Fazer
REVIEWS 41
REVIEWS
standing firm as a band completely unique and refreshing in the
current music scene. With added brass and percussion, their beat
builds the tension song by song, note by note. You’re waiting in
anticipation for the crowd to go mental, but they don’t – not quite.
The first signs of wildness begin to show during their blistering
single Houseplants, a song that builds and builds with growing
21st-century disillusionment. It’ll be interesting to see where
Squid go next. I have a hunch that it will be far.
Mainly playing their new album Street Worms, Viagra Boys’
show is a full-on sonic assault. It’s hard to stand still and take
in what’s going on from the front few rows; everything and
everyone is moshing, slamming into each other in the aftermath
of each chord and snarled lyric. Even if you don’t know the song,
you’re dancing along – or practically forced to.
Sweaty. This is how I’d describe the night. Very, very sweaty.
I’m pretty sure items of clothing are being lost while bruises are
found. It’s almost hard to pay attention to the music being played,
but when you hear it, it’s tight. It oh so cleverly orchestrates
Beefheart-esque punk. It’s crazy but contained. An artistic
paradox resting on loose hinges, clinging on to established
stability. Just. With songs such as Just Like You, you can hear it
in there.
With a Viagra Boys crowd, it almost seems cultish. You know
full well that loads of fans will be over at that merch table at
the end of night buying the full Viagra Boys tracksuit. There are
people in the crowd who will say it’s the greatest gig they’ve ever
been to. Others, however, will say it’s like a fight for survival. You
just don’t want it to end. But, in contrast, it becomes too much
to handle. I guess that’s a sign of a good punk gig: full of sweat,
intensity and mesmerising.
Georgia Turnbull / @GeorgiaRTbull
Viagra Boys (Tomas Adam)
Viagra Boys
+ Squid
Harvest Sun @ Phase One – 22/05
Music enthusiasts young and old are steadily piling into
tonight’s upgraded venue, reminiscent of the following Swedish
punks VIAGRA BOYS have gained over the years. They’ve only
released a bunch of EPs and singles since their inception in 2015,
gaining some attention through certain indie and punk scenes.
But with their debut album Street Worms and their juggernaut
single of fun and rage, Sports, crowds of people outside of the
hipsters and aficionados have started talking about them. With
added buzz from the much-hyped Brighton act SQUID, tonight in
Phase One seems the hottest ticket of the month.
Squid set the tone for the night. With a tight bassline groove
reminiscent of post-punk bands such as Gang Of Four or early
Talking Heads, they break beyond these initial comparisons,
The Mysterines
+ The Besiders
Telford’s Warehouse – 31/05
Baby-faced and bold, THE BESIDERS kick off at Telford’s
Warehouse in their hometown of Chester. It’s an instrumental
track to warm things up. Without a wrinkle in sight, they
proceed to test our hearing with glass-shattering, shrieking
guitar shreds ripping from a red Fender Jaguar. Despite guitarist
George Asbridge’s evident capabilities, his entire presence
screams imposter syndrome; it’s as though he doesn’t feel
talented enough to be laying his hands on the mighty Fender,
the source of so much energy in the room. It burns his fingertips
to the touch. The indie four-piece deserve to have a lot more
confidence. They show a large amount of potential for an art-rock
band just starting their music career.
In the blink of an eye, the holy trinity of palatable indie-postpunk-who-knows-what
(who even cares?) appear almost out
of nowhere. Fittingly, there’s a deployment of angst during THE
MYSTERINES’ opening track, Good Conditions. Lead vocalist and
guitarist Lia Metcalfe’s menacing voice cuts through the crowd
like a hot knife through butter, closely resembling the piercing –
and rightly irritated – tone of The Big Moon’s Juliette Jackson. All
hope of not needing a hearing aid later in life is completely gone;
my eardrums are probably permanently damaged, but it’s totally
worth it. When it becomes so easy to lose yourself in the heat
and energy of sonic delight, ironically, the last thing you’re going
to be thinking about is your ear health.
Listening to The Mysterines invokes a curious depth in your
chest, almost a nervous energy. The kind that makes you feel
like you’re going to throw up. But, weirdly, in this situation, it’s
somehow a good thing; something big is coming, and neither you
or I are ready for it.
The Mysterines take no prisoners with their all-guns-blazing,
kicking and screaming attitude. They use this to their advantage,
progressing through more of the eerie, upbeat and harrowing
tunes, including Bet Your Pretty Face, which fits immaculately
into their shadowy yet gorgeous aesthetic.
The frame of the stage is all very cinematic. On the far left
you’ve got the ruthless heroine Metcalfe, who looks to have been
transported straight from the riot grrrl movement. In the middle is
drummer Chrissy Moore. The fast forward button is clearly stuck
on this guy. He’s an example of why you should always make
sure your real-life remote is in working order…Wait, what? That’s
not a technical issue? So, he’s genuinely that fast? Someone hide
him away before he’s harnessed by scientists as source of heat
energy. Completing the set with a naughty bit of bass, right of
stage, is George Favager.
They are the kind of people your stiff elders warned you
about when growing up. Which, of course, means that The
Mysterines are fucking badass, in the best sense. They’re the
perfect way to get back at those voices of authority, those that
haven’t allowed you to be exposed to the very real, no bullshit,
stating-it-how-it-is stuff, rather than experiencing it all first hand.
I’m certain that the trio would have been a great comfort to
many during those times; their music has a way of empathising
with those who are heartbroken and frankly pissed off with the
world. They simply vocalise that pain in a way that’s accessible
to everyone. Although this seems very depressing, it’s really not.
The general vibe, while embedded with a twang of pain, carries
the listener through its high-energy style, rather than weighing
them down.
Gasoline, the threesome’s most recent single, is the song that
The Mysterines (Georgina Hull)
marks the unfortunate end to the short but sweet set. During
those last few thrashes of each instrument, Metcalfe finds the
perfect opportunity to mercilessly boot the microphone stand
down to the ground. That move – and indeed the whole gig –
feels like it’s been lifted straight out of an impossibly cool coming
of age movie. One about a young teenager from a relatively
sheltered, suburban background who learns what rock music is
for the first time. I feel like I want to hit replay on this experience.
Blow off the dust and rewind the video. I didn’t prepare myself
well enough for so much to come at me so quickly; I need a round
two. There’ll definitely be a next time.
Georgina Hull / @goergiehull
42
Anne-Marie
+ Lennon Stella
Mountford Hall – 03/06
English singer-songwriter ANNE-MARIE has been storming
her way through the UK charts over the last 18 months.
Appearing on some of the biggest hits to grace the airwaves
– David Guetta’s Don’t Leave Me Alone and Clean Bandit’s
Rockabye, to name a few – and with a string of her own hit
singles, she’s growing in popularity by the second. After the
release of her debut album, Speak Your Mind, in 2018 and a
support slot opening for Ed Sheeran, Anne-Marie’s first headline
UK tour has unsurprisingly sold-out.
Mountford Hall is the setting for her Liverpool show and a
venue she probably could have filled three times over. It’s unlikely
we’ll get to see her play in a space of this size again. Hordes of
adoring fans fill the room with excited anticipation as Canadian
singer LENNON STELLA warms up the crowd. Another regular
who features on chart hits, Stella works her way through tracks
from her new album and her version of Jonas Blue’s Polaroid.
The crowd is dancing non-stop: not necessarily knowing the
songs but fully getting into the occasion of the evening. I’m not a
frequent flyer at pop gigs and I didn’t really know what to expect
but it’s so refreshing seeing a room full of people making the
most of the music.
Lights dim, the crowd screams and a thousand phones are
raised into the air as Anne-Marie bounds onto the stage, bursting
with energy. Drum stick in hand she dives straight into the
anthemic track Bad Girlfriend from her debut album. There doesn’t
seem to be a person in the room who isn’t chanting along with
hands in the air or sitting on shoulders to grab a closer look. Pop
singers can sometimes get a bit of stick for their vocal capabilities
but she can ignore all those comments. Her voice is powerful
and full of range and as she bounces around the stage it doesn’t
falter once. The crowd often provide backing vocals so loud she
occasionally gets lost in the volume but it only highlights how big
of a fanbase she has. A room full of people screaming back your
lyrics can only be a good thing from her point of view and it adds
to the party-on-a-Monday-night vibe she has going on.
An impressive backdrop of a light show accompanies her set
and it feels more like a rock show at times as shredding guitar
solos and heavy drums shake the room. It’s not like listening to
her reel off song after song from an album; it’s a proper show you
expect to see in arenas up and down the country.
Mixing up a setlist filled with dance tracks, ballads and
punchy pop, Trigger, Ciao Adios, 2002 and Alarm are highlights
of the evening. A bit of audience participation comes in the
form of fans in the front row providing Sean Paul’s rap during
Rockabye, which they have obviously practised, because it is
word perfect.
There’s definitely a theme to a lot of the songs this evening.
Brushing off old boyfriends and expressing the importance of
loving yourself are topics included in the majority of the tracks.
The latter, however, is a powerful message and one Anne-Marie
expresses well on the stage. A video of people, including Ed
Sheeran, talking about their perfect imperfections gains cheers
of appreciation from the crowd before she bursts into the ballad,
Anne-Marie (Jessica Grace Neal / jessicagracecreative.com)
Perfect To Me.
Ending on a high note with her rendition of FRIENDS,
a collaboration with producer, Marshmello, Anne-Marie has
managed to keep a crowd dancing and singing along for her
whole set. Playing hit after hit from a range of genres, the energy
doesn’t die once and for a singer-songwriter with just one album
to her name, it’s an impressive feat.
Sophie Shields
This Is The Kit
+ Racheal Dadd
Harvest Sun @ Phase One – 06/06
There’s no new album to tour, but THIS IS THE KIT are on the
road to test out some new material and have some fun with their
previous effort. 2017’s Moonshine Freeze saw Kate Stables and
friends introduce a fuller sound, while staying true to the psychfolk
template of their earlier albums and maintaining Stables’
reputation for writing quietly insistent and engaging songs full of
interesting observations and leftfield subject matter.
Support comes from long-time collaborator RACHAEL DADD
– with a new album of her own due for release in November
– who is joined by drummer Rob Pemberton. The duo enjoy a
healthy early crowd and one that is quickly immersed in Dadd’s
multi-instrumental virtuosity. Moving from banjo to electric guitar
to keyboard she works through traditional folk stylings to jazzier,
modal chord progressions. She delivers some delightful discord
along the way, a counterpoint to her beautifully melodic vocals,
and draws a hugely appreciative reaction.
There’s something disarming about This Is The Kit even as
they set up; band members sitting, kneeling on the stage chatting
about pedals and connections as though they were back in a
West Country practice room, seemingly unaware of the proximity
and size of the crowd which has now packed out Phase One to
the rafters. It’s all very good natured and that is a feeling that
persists throughout, with Stables’ ease and charm winning over
the audience from the off – although, in truth, I think this audience
were won over long ago, repeated requests for songs from the
band’s earlier albums are testament to that.
But we begin with something new. “This is a work in
progress,” announces Stables, going solo, her delicate vocal
floating over a choppy riff, the audience already in the palm of her
hand.
Stables’ lyrics suggest a constant state of searching, of
uncertainty, of flux – her meaning sometimes shrouded in
mystery, lovely melodies rubbing up against gritty imagery.
Barefoot, she occasionally steps into a tambourine and adds
shimmering percussion with the tap of a foot. Mostly she sings
standing on tiptoe, the tension implied by her stance adding
a physical quality to her delivery. Her vocals are accompanied
beautifully by bassist Rozi Plain and Dadd, who joins them for
several songs, their harmonies adding yet another layer over the
hazy groove.
There is a persistent pulse to TITK’s music, a rhythm that
sits beneath the shifting waters of Stables’ traditional folk vocal
stylings, her banjo picking, her guitar riffing, and guitarist Neil
Smith’s blues rock wizardry. The pulse is nailed down courtesy
of Plain’s bubbling basslines and Jamie Whitby-Coles’ crisp
drumming. Smith plays some beautifully melodic counterpoints
to Stables’ rhythms before launching into some wonderful sonic
explorations of his own, really hitting the heights on Hotter
Colder and Earthquake, amping up the dirty blues riff of the
latter and wildly replicating the climactic saxophone squall of the
former to great effect.
This Is The Kit (Glyn Akroyd / @GlynAkroyd)
The set takes in the full range of TITK’s work but Stables
goes on to perform a couple more solo “works in progress”,
starting one and then deciding it should be in a higher key, but
the new work sits right in with the old and it will be a treat to
hear them fully realised. Amid great applause she laughingly
says, “OK, now let’s play some songs we know how to play,”
and the band kick back in for the final few songs of a hugely
enjoyable evening, the crowd nodding, dancing, cheering their
approval.
Glyn Akroyd / @GlynAkroyd
REVIEWS 43
REVIEWS
“The ideas here
represent the end
of learning, and the
beginning of practice”
The End Is Nigh! (Carlos Santos and Milos Sampraga)
The End Is Nigh!
LJMU Art and Design degree show
2019 – 24/05
As an early major platform for many of the artists involved,
degree shows are a unique prospect. LJMU’s 2019 edition –
dramatically titled THE END IS NIGH! – is big in both significance
and size, occupying every floor of the John Lennon Art and
Design Building. Four subjects have been given space: alongside
fine art there’s graphic design and illustration, fashion design and
communication and architecture.
The fine art presentations cover pretty much every
medium – film, painting and sculpture. There are a couple of
rooms dominated by installations that are clearly meant as ‘big
statements’. The ambition to do something large-scale must
be tempting when several years of study have all led up to this
moment. The success of these pieces, though, must rest on the
same question as any artwork: what’s their point, or purpose? Is
it clear, and do they succeed in moving the audience? In a couple
of cases, this isn’t entirely successful. The best is one of the
simplest: a tent-fort made out of dyed sheets. Inside music plays,
soundtracking videos of people being unequivocally themselves;
whether dancing semi-naked or dressing up, this is a space for
expression without shame, and filled with warm feeling because
of it.
Among the rest of the show, in the objects of the walls
and floors, there are some really great pieces to discover. An
armadillo-accordion hybrid creature, standing in a sea of torn
fables, is totally endearing. There is a corner of weavings
stretching up from and down to the ground like braids – slightly
unnerving, but irresistibly tactile. An intricately detailed, sexually
charged dragon appears to shoot lasers from its eyes at anything
that might disturb its power.
Despite being closely related disciplines, there’s a massive
difference between the work by the fine art and graphic design
and illustration students. The graphic design and illustration
section is somewhat more straightforward in terms of message
and medium – more enjoyable for it. It’s not that politics isn’t
present – there are zines about the environment, cults and Trump.
But there’s a sense that the more defined medium unlocks a
different sense of play. Details of everyday objects are enlarged
to abstraction; new worlds are filled with characters ready for you
to join their adventures. These artists have produced work that is
confident in its own ability to make a point without feeling a need
to overthink things
The fashion design and communication show is
predominantly based around the publication of UN_FOLD
magazine. Combining design, editorial, photography and
graphics, the look and feel is polished and it feels ready to sit
alongside any other publication on the shelves in a gallery gift
shop. It’s an impressive vehicle for conveying the students’ skills.
Architecture is arguably, in terms of its impact on the way
we live, the most significant discipline here. In exhibition form,
however, it can be difficult for a casual observer to relate to.
Each building comes with a significant amount of rationale and
exemplification about its approach and solution to issues. This
isn’t to say it’s not impressive, but it’s a very different kind of
experience to engage with. So as well as being here for design
value, the decision to have these presentations sharing the space
with the more immediate visual disciplines is interesting for the
questions it raises about what it interrogated in each type of
work, and the complexities of defining success.
The End Is Nigh! is a title that really only tells half the story.
The degree show marks the end of one phase, but the beginning
of another. So the ideas here represent the end of learning, and
the beginning of practice. Should we expect the finished article?
Or should this be seen instead as a starting point for the next
stage? The world offers huge learning curves: if an idea doesn’t
land now, it can still be a point for the development that comes
with experience. !
Julia Johnson / @MessyLines_
44
KRS-One
+ Beyond Average
+ DJ 2Kind
Bam!Bam!Bam! @ 24 Kitchen Street
28/05
J Mascis
+ Rosali
Harvest Sun @ Arts Club – 17/05
Moving past the eclectic mix of fans that occupy the Arts Club
tonight, I’m reminded of The Bronze from Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
A slow and steady sway of its inhabitants congregate around the
bleak yet appealing tones filling the room – sounds that pine for better
times. The low murmur of Philadelphia-born ROSALI harps back to
the dreary 90s alternative scene, with flashes of heavenly vocals,
accompanied by meandering chord progression. Cutting a lonely
figure on the stage, Rosali produces a dreamy cover of Karen Dalton’s
Something On Your Mind before shortly departing the stage with a
quick thank you, leaving everyone with something to contemplate.
“Alright?” is just one of two words J Mascis utters all night as he
greets the room of hopeful followers waiting to capture a glimpse
of his capabilities. With his Gibson slung low to the hip, he starts
with Thumb from Dinosaur Jr.’s 1991 album, Green Mind, reminding
onlookers of the impressive catalogue he can call upon, both with
his band and various solo outings over the years. On Little Fury
Things the incredible amount of distortion and volume produced by
one man stuns the crowd; the reverb shakes everyone to their core
A Certain Ratio
Phase One – 23/05
40th anniversary tours are generally pale imitations of a band
in their heyday, with connotations of rockers past their best giving
lacklustre performances even Status Quo fans would swerve. A
CERTAIN RATIO, however, not only meet the expectations of those
who remember these Flixton natives during the Factory Records postpunk
explosion of the late 70s, but also gain a fair few new converts
to their music during the night. But then again, talent and good tunes
always win the day.
Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the tour and the release of
their new album acr:box, which comprises over 50 tracks of well
known material and some unreleased songs, the set list is a trajectory
through their career.
It starts with 1979’s debut single All Night Party, with its
repetitive rhythmic guitar and heavy metallic sound inspired by their
industrial Manchester setting. The track segues into their recent
cover of Talking Heads’ Houses In Motion. The cowbells, bongos and
whistles which come out for the tracks from 1990’s acr:mcr (Be What
You Wanna Be and Won’t Stop Loving You) take it up a notch or two
and conjure up the spirit of the times.
The crowd is made up of diehard fans and music aficionados with
a real appreciation for how good the band are. But it’s surprising there
are not more people eager to see them; tonight’s gig is relatively quiet
and empty, especially for a band with A Certain Ratio’s calibre and
history. What it is does allow for, though, is an intimate gig that’s a
pleasure to be at. There’s enough people here with love for the band
and their songs that dancing breaks out sporadically. And by the end
of the gig everyone around the room is moving – on and off stage
there’s joy and palpable passion for the music.
It’s clear the band still enjoy playing together, too, and vocalist
Denise Johnson extends this throughout the venue as she banters
with the audience. Technically they’re excellent. A fair few musicians
are multi-instrumentalists, but to add a certain frisson to the
J Mascis (Lucy McLachlan / lucyalexandramclachlan.com)
before surfacing back into the calm waters of acoustic delivery. It’s a
juxtaposition that Mascis has honed throughout his career; streaming
distortion coupled with mumbled sensitivity. It hits hard, no matter the
setting. The exclamation of “I know you’re out there” from Out There
prompts a wave of psychedelic euphoria as the venue becomes the
artist’s spaceship, transporting its passengers with every change in
tempo and dictated by the exploration of Mascis on his fretboard.
He starts to layer his sounds, playing one riff on top of the next,
giving him the freedom to melt faces with his solo endeavours.
Watching him command his instrument, I wonder how he can
continue at such a blistering pace, but he does. Unrelenting. It’s like
his industrious musical capacity knows no bounds, like he does not
observe auditory norms. The more recent hits of Elastic Days and
See You At the Movies are met with huge approval from the crowd
as Mascis amazes the room again with his ability to gear change into
thrashy solo brilliance.
Acknowledging his contemporaries, Mascis then produces his
unique homage to The Cure with a redeveloped cover of Just Like
Heaven, before ascending to the heights of Fade Into You by Mazzy
Star. It leaves the crowd astonished, a momentary wonderment as
they arrive at a true contented disposition with the night’s events.
Tonight shows that Mascis’ axe-wielding powers are still
significant. The considerable importance he has played in forming the
modern landscape of alternative rock should not be forgotten.
Jake Penn / @p3nno
experience, Martin Moscop and Donald Johnson swap over between
guitar and drum mid-song, which isn’t something that can be done
without years of practice. They literally clamber over instruments
on the cramped stage without missing a beat or a chord. The bass
playing by Jez Kerr is hypnotic, reverberating round the small room
round better than any recording in post-production.
It’s an energetic and entertaining gig that belies the age of both
the band and the majority of the people in here, those of which should
be so lucky to get the opportunity to see the band in such an intimate
space again. They’re as fresh as they were at the start of their career
and could give some younger groups a good run for their money. If
and when the chance arises again, whatever you do, do not miss out.
Jennie Macaulay
A Certain Ratio (Paul McCoy / paulmccoyimagery.com)
It’s a quiet night in Baltic Triangle, but there’s
still room for 24 Kitchen Street to embrace hip hop
legend KRS-ONE, appearing on his The World Is Mind
tour. KRS-One is one of the most respected figures
in hip hop, one of the original pioneers of the musical
culture within the hip hop movement of The Bronx.
Once predominately known as a member of the group
Boogie Down Productions, there became a vacant
space for KRS-One as a solo artist, amassing over
13 albums under his belt to date. His new album The
World Is MIND is a boom bap rap throwback, including
a track called Fuck This, recorded in Liverpool’s own
GoPlayStudio’s with Kofi and featuring a verse from
one Liverpool’s own rappers KOD (now known as
Niggy Raw).
Pushed back from last November, KRS-One’s
arrival in Liverpool has been hugely anticipated by
eager Scouse fans and upon stepping in, you can
feel it. Instantly I am embraced by masterfully mixed
set from Liverpool’s urban music advocate DJ 2KIND
(L100), channelling the crowd’s needs and providing
tracks from hip hop greats. In the short time prior to
the supporting act arriving on stage, DJ 2Kind played
classic hip hop tracks by MF Doom, A Tribe Called
Quest and Wu-Tang Clan that massively pleases the
Scouse fans.
Liverpool’s own a grassroots Scouse rap duo
BEYOND AVERAGE, consisting of Jeopardy and Big-O,
bring finesse in production and lyricism. The audience
is seduced by the raw energy of popular new releases
The Mullah, The Re Up and No Comment. Finishing
up with Be Like You – a trappy beat featuring up and
coming rapper Jono – the entire set allows us to catch
the talent in the flesh rather than just on Spotify. DJ
2Kind holds it down with Pharcyde’s Drop while we
sing along and chat, queueing for our drinks, awaiting
the grand reveal.
Suddenly, with no warning and bursting onto the
stage, is KRS-One. Enthusiastic in his entrance, but the
crowd is oblivious, he returns to the exit, announcing
that he’ll give this one more attempt. This time he
bounces out on to the stage receiving loud cheers
of appreciation. His attire is a simple black tracksuit
with contrasting clean white Air Max, a black cap
covering his dreads. The performance kicks off with
the rumbling of bass notes and crunching samples.
In come the old school DJ scratches over the grungy
and grimy boom bap beats. His first vocal note booms
down through the mic and out the speakers, “This is
the sound of the city,” he announces, like an old school
preacher. “Real hip hop is over here,” he states like an
invocation of the true spirit of hip hop to a church of
loyal followers.
We cool off as a low beat kicks in and he starts
recites a thoughtful spoken word scripture, then the
beat kicks back in and we give out the cheers. His
poetry helps us visualise back on yesterday and the
potential that our future holds: “The world is mind,”
he tells us. Next thing, the beat spins back and with a
swift click, it’s a sing-along. “WOOP WOOP that’s the
sound of the police!” It kicks off a riot. To follow, 9mm
drops with such an aggression it feels like the room is
going to blow up, and the source is a cooking pot of
hip hop front and centre on stage. Some trouble with
the sound engineering means that KRS’s microphone
drops in and out, but it really doesn’t matter too much;
everyone knows the lyrics anyway.
One microphone switch later, we can finally
hear him, although it’s clear that the 50 years young
artist doesn’t miss a bar – even when inaudible. Over
beats that he credits to being “the original sound” he
consciously and openly speaks of his conspiracies
concerning Mexican culture under the affairs of Donald
trump. KRS shouts at the sound guy to turn this
music up higher and higher, really wants us to feel the
“healing music”. It feels like I’m in a lecture from a wise
oak tree.
The fact that KRS has been performing since the
80s means it’s no surprise that he decides to take us
through a journey, spanning over three decades. He
even shows off his complex rapping skills by spitting
over classical music. Overall the beat production
holds a range of styles, all appealing to the crowd of
hardcore fans. It seems that KRS will forever deliver
the rawest of live hip hop performances. Liverpool
should always remember them.
Iona Fazer / @_iona_fazer
REVIEWS 45
REVIEWS
Manic Street Preachers
Eventim Olympia – 30/05
The Olympia’s theatre walls shine blood red. From the fog
they appear: lead singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield,
followed by bass player and lyricist Nicky Wire, dressed in a Lou
Reed Transformer T-shirt, with patch and badge adorned white
blazer featuring a picture of David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust
stitched onto the back. Then, finally, drummer Sean Moore sits
Manic Street Preachers (John Middleton / johnmiddletonphoto.co.uk)
himself down, drumsticks in hand eager to let out his rage.
The Olympia is filled to the brim at this point with fans
sporting feather boas, leopard print blouses and lipstick and
military surplus uniforms replicating their heroes. The MANIC
STREET PREACHERS are ready to preach their manifesto
of culture, alienation, boredom and despair to the people
of Liverpool. Their first 13 songs of reflective ballads are in
celebration of 20 years of their second most commercially
successful album, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. After that, as
Bradfield says, is “cheap, dancey fun”.
They open with The Everlasting, calling out to the useless
generations of past and present while Bradfield screams with
his mighty and majestic voice: “The gap that grows between our
lives/The gap our parents never had/Stop those thoughts control
your mind/ Replace the things that you despise”.
The audience is completely captivated by their teachings
of nihilistic beliefs. They stand strong in protest of a hegemonic
world blinded by neon lights and societal expectations. Soon
after, the stage disperses, and Bradfield is standing alone below
the spotlight. He gently strums his guitar playing Born A Girl, a
song with lyrics that judge what it is to be a man, the androgyny
a more human way of expression of the self: “And I wish I had
been born a girl Instead of what I am/ Yes I wish I had been born
a girl, and not this mess of a man”.
Later, Nicky Wire’s bass sends a wave of aggression that
penetrates the sweat soaked crowd, droplets falling from their
hair. They cover Guns N’ Roses Sweet Child O’ Mine, a song that
many compare the Manics’ sound in their formative early years to.
Though surprised, the audience scream back the words and jump
up while their arms wail in the air.
Bradfield spits at the stage floor then wipes it with his
shoe. Wire limbers up, stretching on the amps decorated with
Welsh flags; he turns, flinging his twig-like legs in the air, which
provokes screams of enjoyment from the fans pressed up on the
barricade. Halfway through the gig Bradfield stops playing his
guitar, Wire stops strumming his bass and Moore’s wailing arms
came to a halt. Bradfield introduces his band: “General life force
and lifeblood to everything which is MSP, currently standing in as
tall as Radio City in Liverpool: Mr Nicholas Wire”. Then Sean: “the
man who gives the beat with no punctuation and the power and
the madness: Mr Sean Anthony Moore.” Nicky reminisces on their
love for Liverpool from performing at the Hillsborough Justice
Concert in 1997, and the love for Liverpool that the band’s key
lyricist and rhythm guitarist Richey Edwards, who mysteriously
disappeared 24 years ago, had for our city. Wire states that
he “tried to look like Ian McCulloch for five fucking years”, then
dedicates their next song, You Love Us, to his greatness. Their
final song, A Design For Life, comes to an end, and the band wish
us goodnight as they leave the stage and we, the exhilarated
audience, turn to the exit doors, wading through a sea of spilt
lager and plastic cups.
It’s clear from their monumental performance that the Manic
Street Preachers are one of the last true rock ’n’ roll bands out
there. At one point during the performance, Wire says that
“sometimes only through true misery do you achieve greatness”. I
think that’s understandable whether you’re a writer, an artist or a
musician. There’s nobody more inspiring than the Manics.
Sam Taylor
Liverpool Arab
Arts Festival
5-14 July 2019
Discover the richness of Arab music,
culture, film, art and performance
at venues across the city.
Featuring
UK Premiere
Juliana Yazbeck: SUNGOD
Fri 5 July | Royal Court Studio
Yara Boustany: ēvolvō and
One Day and One Night in Beirut
Thu 11 July | Unity Theatre
Rim Banna:
The Trace of the Butterfly
The only show outside London
Fri 12 July | Philharmonic Music Room
Gesturing Refugees: Farah Saleh
Sat 6 July | Bluecoat
LAAF Family Day 2019
Supported by Qatar Foundation International
Featuring Daraa Tribes UK debut, Hawiyya
Dance Company and Reham al-Hakimi
with the Al Awahdal Band, as well authentic
cuisine, henna painting and family activities.
Sunday 14 July | Sefton Park Palm House
See the full programme and book tickets at:
arabartsfestival.com
arabartsfestival @arabicartsfest @liverpoolarabartsfestival
Search ‘Liverpool Arab Arts Festival’ arabartsfestival.com/spotify
46 LAAF_Bido_Lito_half_Page_Ad_v5.indd 1 11/06/2019 17:18
Kaiser Chiefs
Mountford Hall – 04/06
From the slick merchandise stall in the foyer to Ricky Wilson’s
reminders to pre-order their new album, this is a gig by a band
who have a keen awareness of their commercial appeal. The gig’s
a mix of their early material and the less palatable newer stuff. It
feels as though they’re trying to carve a place for themselves in
the rock cannon (a cover of The Who’s Pinball Wizard as part of
the encore seems a calculated stab at relevancy) as they make
their way to the bank, made all the more ironic by them coming
on to Dire Straits’ Money For Nothing – one of several ironies
through the night.
Ricky Wilson is an engaging frontman and he has a good
voice. His patter with the crowd is easy (“We’re here to entertain
you” and “Are you going to scream?”) and hints at a persona
honed through various TV performances and a burgeoning,
latter-day career as a TV celebrity. But it’s when he relaxes,
removes his pristine blazer and gets going on the tambourine –
expertly caught after being thrown on from the wings – that it
becomes a more interesting and natural performance.
Kaiser Chiefs have some good songs, they really do. The
indie-rock style of their initial albums, 2005’s Employment and
2007’s Yours Truly, Angry Mob, are pretty good and reminiscent
of a particular cultural era that many in the crowd seem to be
harking back to.
Part of the demographic is very much Radio 2 listeners
and, while there are quite a few younger people here, there’s a
sense the older part of the audience and band are reliving their
glory days. There’s an awful lot of filming, taking of photos and
uploading on to social media, but then, why not? It’s a welldesigned
show that is visually captivating.
The light show is on a big scale, timed to perfection to help
work everyone in to a frenzy for the big hits. There’s a disco
ball during Love Is Not A Competition and a truckload of paper
streamers and party poppers which are fired in to the crowd
intermittently. There’s also a backdrop of the band’s name in
lights, which flashes throughout the performance – useful in case
we forget who we’ve been watching when we go to download
that new album, as requested.
Some of the newer material leaves the mood a bit flat. Some
of it is pretty mediocre pop which doesn’t fare well when placed
next to their older stuff: the crowd understandably go crazy for I
Predict A Riot, Ruby and the pinnacle of the encore Oh My God.
15 years in the business has certainly honed Kaiser Chiefs’
self awareness; they know who their material is aimed at
and who their core market is. And it’s here that the ironies lie:
those who were young and carefree in the 2000s are now the
Kaiser Chiefs (Brian Sayle / urbansubrosa.co.uk)
characters in The Angry Mob who “read the papers everyday”.
Even the band itself has mutated from relevant indie rockers to
the more mundane “everything is average nowadays”.
But they’re popular: the packed hall and stomping and
cheering which continues until they reappear for the encore
shouts down a lot of the criticisms – people here are loving
it and, at one and a half hours, the bottom line is it’s a very
comprehensive tick box exercise in giving the mildly-disgruntledby-middle-age
mob what they want.
Jennie Macaulay
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets
Shipping Forecast – 21/05
Stewart Francis: Into The Punset
+ Rachel Fairburn
Philharmonic Hall – 25/05
Opening up a comedy show for a name as big as STEWART
FRANCIS can’t be easy, especially to a full house of dedicated
fans who’ve been watching his unique act on stage and screen
for decades; fans who are, by definition, used to big laughs at
short jokes, a particular and defined style of humour and delivery.
Undeterred, RACHEL FAIRBURN takes to the Philharmonic stage
and delivers a short set of self-deprecating gags to a supportive
crowd. Hers is a different style to that of the headliner (isn’t
everyone’s?) and the Phil is a big room to fill, but she battles
through the quieter responses. And there are a few, it’s fair to say.
The few laughs there are come as a result of the self-deprecation,
rather than the content, so at times, it does feel a little forced.
Stewart Francis comes dancing onstage and immediately
launches into a characteristically relentless barrage of one-liners,
wordplay gags and brilliantly observed puns. His unique take
on this style of instant humour is full of the trademark sharp,
acerbic wit that all his material is crafted from. The nuanced art
of the pun is a skill few of his peers possess. Much of his work
involves deconstructing well-known phrases and giving them a
new meaning, and Francis’ gift, or one of them, is in how easy
he makes it look and feel. And the deadpan delivery helps him
Kaiser Chiefs (Brian Sayle / urbansubrosa.co.uk)
distance himself from the punchlines, the jokes just left hanging
for all to enjoy. He takes a scattergun approach, flying wildly
between related, and often unrelated topics, yet somehow makes
it all feel like one big joke.
The set is peppered throughout with callbacks – a wellpractised
specialty of his – which sees him referring back to
earlier jokes, earlier shows and older material, so when a joke
works, as they all do, we’re given several chances to laugh at it
again. In other comedians this would be seen as some kind of
disappointing sell out. With Francis, it’s practically demanded
of him. That’s why it works so well. Again, the delivery and
the timing is pin sharp throughout. He moves in parts towards
physical theatre, using every part of his body to stretch the
surreal narrative of so much of the show’s highpoint. The magic
of his act is held in the sober, straight-backed nature of how
he sets the jokes up, leaving the audience concentrating their
focus so hard on the build-up, that the punchline, when it lands,
really does punch. Even though they’re often so very obvious,
we just don’t see them coming. Which, of course, makes them
even funnier. Comedy such as this is really the perfect craft, and
Francis an absolute master. It really is a shame that this tour, Into
The Punset, is his final swan song at standup, as he retires from
performance at the end of this year. Punderful, wonderful work.
He’ll be missed.
Paul Fitzgerald / @NothingvilleM
A mannequin foot with a hat on points towards the band in a
kind of salute. For a band like PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS,
I don’t think anyone expects the ordinary.
The beating heart of the crowd jumps and thumps the
roof to the drum beat. You can feel it in your chest. Heads nod
uncontrollably as the music takes over.
Hailing from Australia, this band aren’t easy to come by in
the UK. And ever since Dependent On Mary came out in 2017 on
High Visceral Pt. 2, they’ve been on my must-see live list. Recent
single Bill’s Mandolin sends an electric shock through the crowd;
the jumping gets higher, the voices louder and the atmosphere
becomes its own entity. Pints are downed and no one is going
to the bar out of fear they’ll miss what comes next. The speed
of the guitar increases and my sympathy for the photographer
in front of me heightens. This song is the exact song I’d
recommend to those wondering if they would like tonight’s
act. Quintessential PPC: the mix of national flavours and killer
musicianship. Even without being in a room of fans, you can feel
the energy from it, but tonight elevates the entire experience.
The energy that exists in the room is similar to that at
a football game, with the band stepping onto the stage to
the sound of the Champions League tune. This football-like
atmosphere adds an air of tribal allegiance and a thrill of what
will happen next. It’s not dampened by the risk of us losing
something, other than a pair of glasses that went skidding across
the mosh pit.
Self-proclaimed “soy latte drinking hippies”, PPC’s sound
and demeanour definitely doesn’t bring that imagery to mind, no
matter how long their locks are. More like Cousin It, or long-lost
Cousin It, the weird just exudes from this band. In a day and age
where anything other than the ‘norm’ is facing judgement, we
need to go further in our weirdness. We should amplify it.
Their finale, Cornflake, has us gasping for breath. In the lulls
of garage psych crunching, the crowd is dripping with sweat,
waiting for the guitar and drums to ramp up to 100 per cent
capacity for the chorus. We’re a whole now, my sweat is yours
and the grossness of it no longer matters because just listen to
that guitar! If Psychedelic Porn Crumpets aren’t now on your
must-see list, they should be.
Megan Walder / @m_l_wald
REVIEWS
47
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Shezad Dawood, Leviathan, 2017, courtesy of the artist and UBIK Productions
Grace Ndiritu, The Ark, 2017
Shezad Dawood:
Leviathan
Grace Ndiritu:
The Ark
At Bluecoat from Sat 6 Jul – Sun 13 Oct
Two major exhibitions examining society,
migration and the environment.
School Lane, Liverpool, L1 3BX
thebluecoat.org.uk
@thebluecoat @the_bluecoat @thebluecoat
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ARTISTIC
LICENCE
As part of our continuing series focusing on the region’s wordsmiths, we’ve
curated a selection of work from some regulars on the city’s poetry scene.
Andy McGlinchey
Celestine
I’ll let you in on a secret
An astronaut floated down to me last night
They all fell at once, without a word
And I was doing pretty fine without her
But then I woke, to see myself gazing back through reflection
I helped her fix her helmet,
After a while she helped me with a few things
She fixed the painting in my wall and made it crooked again
Made me fresh wax gave me Valium and skunk rats,
And we played with the stars, they were ours
Though she never spoke a word of her Heavenly birth
A devilish curse but only at first
Later we didn’t even need to speak we knew each other’s taints and
flukes, even though she never let me see her beneath the suit
Others came and they never knew; all wore the same suit
White helmet and black boots
though you couldn’t see through
You could always tell when her eyes saw the real you
Amina Atiq
Sir, I speak Scouse
My gran-dad arrived on a boat to a strange land,
rested on her port, drank water from her Mersey –
greeted by her Liver birds – they lent out their
wings and here, he opened his corner shop on Lawrence Road –
selling broken biscuits for half a penny. Here, he settled
where dreams are carved and never forgotten.
She is not New York where dreams are wonders.
She is a promise never broken and secrets are cross
my heart and swear down to never tell a soul.
She is the love letters found at the bottom of the riverstories
floating to her waves – voices echoing her painhappiness
of those who passed by and those who stayed.
The Irish, Afro-Caribbean, the Chinese, the Yemenis,
Somalis, the Greeks – her beauty is her diversity.
She has a face that is hard to forget. Maybe not the
prettiest of them all but the most friendliest you’ll find.
She is the most down-to-earth bird you’ll ever find,
enough to make your heart go by.
Her stubbornness is her resilience, reds or bluesshe
never gives up, she never walks alone – wounded
or scarred, she picks you up too – that’s her charm.
She is Hope Street, hoping for a better tomorrow and when
The broken-hearted people living in the world would agree/
There will be an answer, let it be, let it be…
What makes her whole, is the peoples voice because Sir,
I speak Scouse, fire from my stomach – love and kindness
from my heart – she taught me to Stand up, Stand up, Speak up-
Speak up be Anything, Anything.
My city is my home and my home is my city.
She is perfect and her name is Liverpool.
Balcony
Featured in ROOT-ed zine’s Arrival City issue
Bluboy (@thisisbluboy)
Untitled
They said don’t dream big! Don’t dream grand!
Our parents said work twice as hard to get half as far
So we work four times as much keeping our feet to the ground while
we reach for the stars
But even if we succeed you won’t let us be!
Trapped! With your assumptions, even if we break through that glass
ceiling. Or if we beat the odds Because we’ll still be considered the
red and brown eyed beans, never seen as the same green peas in a
pod.
Strength of our women over romanticised, because they’re still
standing because it’s an understatement to say they’ve been through
a lot!
But they never stay down they reach for the top! But we never let em
have a couple moments weakness.
Small things everyday that you face, from having to stand up for
yourself on both sides!
Practically at all times, being fetishised in your daily lives.
“I’ve got a thing for black chicks”
“Black women have always been a fetish of mine”
Sometimes even get it from one of us like:
“You’re pretty for a dark skin girl”
Or
“I like lighties”
But for years you’ve been the backbone of the community!
So we gotta teach our kids they’re already dripping they can shine
without jewellery.
There I go again romanticising the strength of black women.
But the press want to paint a picture a black man’s a strapped villain!
Truth be told we’re full of beautiful spirits, brilliance and excellence.
Inventive, innovative.
Is that why they love to appropriate us?
Or see us as taste-makers is that why you copy our slang kid and
adopt it as a language?
Copy our sense of fashion from the hats to the kicks.
You wanna be like us till it comes to our trials and tribulations.
But you’ll never face our daily situations.
I feel like I shouldn’t even have to say that because it’s obvious.
People assume we’re violent because we have no choice but to be
warriors!
As we fight small & big battles daily.
Try and call out someone for micro aggressions then we’re labelled
as crazy.
54
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