Issue 105 / November 2019
November 2019 issue of Bido Lito! magazine. Featuring: THE MYSTERINES, NUTRIBE, TRUDY AND THE ROMANCE, KEITH HARING, BLACK LIPS, RICHARD DAWSON, LYDIAH, BALTIC WEEKENDER, IBIBIO SOUND MACHINE, RED RUM CLUB and much more.
November 2019 issue of Bido Lito! magazine. Featuring: THE MYSTERINES, NUTRIBE, TRUDY AND THE ROMANCE, KEITH HARING, BLACK LIPS, RICHARD DAWSON, LYDIAH, BALTIC WEEKENDER, IBIBIO SOUND MACHINE, RED RUM CLUB and much more.
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ISSUE <strong>105</strong> / NOVEMBER <strong>2019</strong><br />
NEW MUSIC + CREATIVE CULTURE<br />
LIVERPOOL<br />
THE MYSTERINES / RICHARD DAWSON<br />
NUTRIBE / TRUDY AND THE ROMANCE
Thur 24th Oct<br />
Jake Clemons<br />
+ Ben McKelvey<br />
Fri 25th Oct<br />
Keywest<br />
+ Keir Gibson<br />
Fri 25th Oct • 7.30pm<br />
Hang Massive<br />
Wed 30th Oct<br />
MoStack<br />
Sat 2nd Nov<br />
Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
Rival Sons<br />
+ The Record Company<br />
Sat 2nd Nov<br />
The Cheap Thrills<br />
Sat 2nd Nov • 9pm<br />
Jo Whiley’s<br />
90s Anthems<br />
Sun 3rd Nov<br />
Loyle Carner<br />
Fri 8th Nov<br />
MONKS<br />
Fri 8th Nov<br />
Bear’s Den<br />
Sat 9th Nov<br />
She Drew The Gun<br />
+ Peaness + Mamatung<br />
Sat 9th Nov<br />
Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
Greta Van Fleet<br />
+ Yola<br />
Sat 9th Nov<br />
Antarctic Monkeys<br />
+ The Alleys + The Patriots<br />
Fri 15th Nov<br />
Boston Manor<br />
+ Modern Error<br />
Sat 16th Nov<br />
The Macc Lads<br />
+ Dirt Box Disco<br />
Sat 16th Nov<br />
UK Foo Fighters<br />
(Tribute)<br />
Wed 20th Nov<br />
Fontaines D.C.<br />
Fri 22nd Nov<br />
Airbourne<br />
+ Tyler Bryant & The<br />
Shakedown<br />
Fri 22nd Nov<br />
Absolute Bowie -<br />
Legacy Tour<br />
Sat 23rd Nov<br />
Life At The Arcade<br />
Sat 23rd Nov<br />
Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
Sam Fender<br />
Sat 23rd Nov<br />
The Steve Hillage<br />
Band<br />
+ Gong<br />
Sun 24th Nov<br />
Primal Scream<br />
Fri 29th Nov<br />
The Doors Alive<br />
Sat 30th Nov • 6pm<br />
The Wonder Stuff<br />
performing ‘The Eight<br />
Legged Groove Machine’<br />
& ‘HUP’<br />
+ Jim Bob from Carter USM<br />
Sat 30th Nov<br />
Pearl Jam UK<br />
Thur 5th Dec<br />
Shed Seven<br />
+ The Twang<br />
Fri 6th Dec<br />
Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
Happy Mondays<br />
+ Jon Dasilva<br />
Fri 6th Dec<br />
SPINN<br />
Fri 6th Dec • 7.30pm<br />
Conleth McGeary<br />
Sat 7th Dec<br />
Prince Tribute -<br />
Endorphinmachine<br />
Tue 10th Dec<br />
Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
Razorlight<br />
Wed 11th Dec<br />
D Block Europe<br />
Thur 12th Dec<br />
Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
Daniel Sloss: X<br />
Fri 13th Dec<br />
Mountford Hall,<br />
Liverpool Guild of Students<br />
Dermot Kennedy<br />
Fri 13th Dec<br />
The Lancashire<br />
Hotpots<br />
Fri 13th Dec<br />
Scouting for Girls<br />
Sat 14th Dec<br />
The Smyths<br />
… The Smiths 35<br />
Sat 14th Dec<br />
Ian Prowse &<br />
Amsterdam<br />
+ The Supernaturals<br />
+ Steve Pilgrim<br />
facebook.com/o2academyliverpool<br />
twitter.com/o2academylpool<br />
instagram.com/o2academyliverpool<br />
youtube.com/o2academytv<br />
Wed 18th Dec<br />
The Darkness<br />
+ Rews<br />
Thur 19th Dec<br />
Cast... All Change<br />
Album<br />
Fri 20th Dec<br />
Cast... Mother Nature<br />
Calls Album<br />
Sat 21st Dec<br />
Cast... Magic Hour<br />
Album<br />
Sat 21st Dec<br />
Limehouse Lizzy:<br />
The Greatest Hits of<br />
Phil Lynott & Thin Lizzy<br />
Wed 29th Jan 2020<br />
The Interrupters<br />
+ Buster Shuffle<br />
Tue 4th Feb 2020<br />
Mabel<br />
Mon 3rd Feb 2020<br />
Kano<br />
Tue 25th Feb 2020<br />
The Murder Capital<br />
Thur 27th Feb 2020<br />
Kiefer Sutherland<br />
Thur 5th Mar 2020<br />
Gabrielle Aplin<br />
Thur 12th Mar 2020<br />
Tragedy: All Metal<br />
Tribute to the Bee<br />
Gees & Beyond<br />
+ Attic Theory<br />
Sat 28th Mar 2020<br />
Becky Hill<br />
Sun 29th Mar 2020<br />
Cigarettes After Sex<br />
Sat 4th Apr 2020<br />
808 State Live<br />
Sat 2nd May 2020<br />
The Southmartins<br />
(Tribute To The Beautiful<br />
South & The Housemartins)<br />
Sat 9th May 2020<br />
Fell Out Boy & The<br />
Black Charade<br />
+ We Aren’t Paramore<br />
Sat 16th May 2020<br />
Nirvana UK (Tribute)<br />
Sat 23rd May 2020<br />
The Bon Jovi<br />
Experience<br />
Fri 11th Dec 2020<br />
Heaven 17<br />
THUR 24TH OCT 7PM<br />
MICHAEL RAY<br />
FRI 25TH OCT 7PM<br />
LITTLE COMETS<br />
+ RATS + SEPRONA<br />
FRI 25TH OCT 7PM SOLD OUT<br />
INHALER<br />
+ APRE<br />
SUN 27TH OCT 7PM<br />
STRIKING MATCHES<br />
FRI 1ST NOV 7PM<br />
REIGNWOLF<br />
FRI 1ST NOV 7PM<br />
DAUGHTERS<br />
SAT 2ND NOV 7PM<br />
STONE FOUNDATION<br />
+ STEVE PILGRIM<br />
TUE 12TH NOV 7PM<br />
HUGH CORNWELL<br />
ELECTRIC<br />
WED 13TH NOV 7PM<br />
BLACK LIPS<br />
+ YAMMERER + OHMNS<br />
+ PISS KITTI<br />
+ DJ CARL COMBOVER<br />
THUR 14TH NOV 7PM<br />
THE REGRETTES<br />
+ LAURAN HIBBERD<br />
FRI 15TH NOV 7PM<br />
KNE<br />
SAT 16TH NOV 7PM<br />
LONDON CALLING<br />
PLAY THE CLASH<br />
FRI 22ND NOV 7PM<br />
BLOOD RED SHOES<br />
+ QUEEN KWONG<br />
+ GEN & THE DEGENERATES<br />
FRI 22ND NOV 7PM<br />
SLADE<br />
FRI 29TH NOV 7PM<br />
SPORTS TEAM<br />
SAT 30TH NOV 6.30PM<br />
SKINNY LISTER<br />
SAT 30TH NOV 7PM<br />
HERMITAGE GREEN<br />
WED 4TH DEC 7PM<br />
ALDOUS HARDING<br />
THUR 5TH DEC 7PM<br />
BEAK><br />
FRI 6TH DEC 7PM<br />
POLAR STATES<br />
& WILD FRONT<br />
SAT 7TH DEC 7PM<br />
IAN MCNABB &<br />
COLD SHOULDER<br />
TUE 10TH DEC 7PM<br />
THE PAPER KITES<br />
WED 11TH DEC 7PM<br />
ECHOBELLY “STRIPPED<br />
BACK”<br />
THUR 12TH DEC 7PM<br />
BEABADOOBEE<br />
+ NO ROME + OSCAR LANG<br />
SAT 14TH DEC 7PM<br />
NATALIE MCCOOL<br />
MON 27TH DEC 7PM<br />
SLEEP TOKEN<br />
FRI 7TH FEB 2020 7.30PM SOLD OUT<br />
THE LATHUMS<br />
FRI 21TH FEB 2020 7PM<br />
JAMIE WEBSTER<br />
SUN 23RD FEB 2020 7PM<br />
JULIAN COPE<br />
SAT 7TH MAR 2020 7PM<br />
PINS<br />
SUN 29TH MAR 2020 7PM<br />
WILLIAM DUVALL<br />
(OF ALICE IN CHAINS)<br />
TICKETS FOR ALL SHOWS ARE AVAILABLE FROM<br />
TICKETMASTER.CO.UK<br />
90<br />
SEEL STREET, LIVERPOOL, L1 4BH<br />
EVOL presents<br />
plus support from<br />
ticketmaster.co.uk<br />
11-13 Hotham Street, Liverpool L3 5UF<br />
Doors 7pm unless stated<br />
Venue box office opening hours:<br />
Mon - Sat 10.30am - 5.30pm<br />
SATURDAY 09 NOVEMBER <strong>2019</strong><br />
O 2 ACADEMY LIVERPOOL<br />
11-13 Hotham Street, L3 5UF<br />
TICKETS £12 ADVANCE PLUS BOOKING FEES VIA SEETICKETS.COM & TICKETMASTER.CO.UK<br />
o2academyliverpool.co.uk<br />
@CLUBEVOL @SheDrewTheGun
TATE LIVERPOOL<br />
14 JUN – 10 NOV <strong>2019</strong><br />
Supported by<br />
Media partner<br />
The Keith Haring Exhibition Supporters Group<br />
Tate Members<br />
Keith Haring Untitled 1983<br />
© Keith Haring Foundation<br />
Photo © Annik Wetter
What’s On<br />
<strong>November</strong> –<br />
December<br />
Sunday 17 <strong>November</strong> 7pm<br />
Film<br />
Merry Christmas<br />
Mr Lawrence (cert 15)<br />
Tuesday 19 <strong>November</strong> 7.30pm<br />
Calexico and Iron and Wine<br />
Wednesday 20 <strong>November</strong> 8pm<br />
Music Room<br />
AKA Trio<br />
Saturday 23 <strong>November</strong> 7.30pm<br />
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra<br />
Elton John –<br />
50 Years of Your Song<br />
Tuesday 10 December 7.30pm<br />
Film<br />
Elf (cert PG)<br />
Monday 16 December 8pm<br />
Music Room<br />
Awake, Arise – A Christmas<br />
Show For Our Times<br />
Saturday 28 December 7.30pm<br />
Sunday 29 December 7.30pm<br />
Ghostbusters: Film with<br />
Live Orchestra (cert PG)<br />
Box Office<br />
0151 709 3789<br />
liverpoolphil.com<br />
LiverpoolPhilharmonic<br />
liverpoolphil<br />
liverpool_philharmonic
JERRY MANE’S DEFINITIVE COMEDY SLAM<br />
KAZIMIER STOCKROOM 13 NOV & 4 DEC <strong>2019</strong><br />
JOHN COLPITTS MAN FOREVER<br />
KAZIMIER STOCKROOM 8 DEC <strong>2019</strong><br />
THE AUSTRALIAN PINK FLOYD<br />
M&S BANK ARENA LIVERPOOL 17 NOV <strong>2019</strong><br />
POSITIVE VIBRATION FESTIVAL DJS & LEVI TAFARI<br />
THE CHRISTMAS SPIEGELTENT 8 DEC <strong>2019</strong><br />
DR. FEELGOOD<br />
THE EPSTEIN THEATRE 20 NOV <strong>2019</strong><br />
BEANS ON TOAST<br />
PHASE ONE 20 DEC <strong>2019</strong><br />
LIAM GALLAGHER<br />
M&S BANK ARENA LIVERPOOL 21 NOV <strong>2019</strong><br />
THE FLYING LUTTENBACHERS<br />
KAZIMIER STOCKROOM 20 DEC <strong>2019</strong><br />
RICHARD DAWSON<br />
STUDIO 2 23 NOV <strong>2019</strong><br />
CRAZY P SOUND SYSTEM<br />
CONSTELLATIONS 31 DEC <strong>2019</strong><br />
BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH<br />
THE CHRISTMAS SPIEGELTENT 28 NOV <strong>2019</strong><br />
SOUND CITY 2020<br />
BALTIC TRIANGLE 1 - 3 May 2020<br />
TOMORROWLAND PRESENTS DIMITRI VEGAS & LIKE MIKE,<br />
GARDEN OF MADNESS CENTRAL DOCKS 7 DEC <strong>2019</strong><br />
CREAMFIELDS 2020<br />
DARESBURY 27 - 30 AUGUST 2020
Henri Matisse, L’Escargot (The Snail), 1952-53. Lithographic reproduction (1958), 46.7 x 57.7cm. © Succession H. Matisse/ DACS <strong>2019</strong><br />
Matisse<br />
Drawing with Scissors<br />
25 October <strong>2019</strong> to<br />
15 March 2020<br />
liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/matisse
Armistead Maupin<br />
11 <strong>November</strong><br />
Nadiya Hussain<br />
13 <strong>November</strong><br />
Mark Grist: Mark Can’t Rap<br />
15 <strong>November</strong><br />
James Rowland: Revelations<br />
16 <strong>November</strong><br />
HoneyBee<br />
18 <strong>November</strong><br />
Benjamin Zephaniah<br />
23 <strong>November</strong><br />
Luke Wright: Poet Laureate<br />
28 <strong>November</strong><br />
Festival Finale Poetry Party<br />
30 <strong>November</strong><br />
plus many more!<br />
find out more at storyhouse.com
HALLOWEEN WEEK<br />
25TH OCT : LOST ART SOUNDSYSTEM<br />
26TH OCT : DRE OF THE DEAD<br />
31ST OCT : AN ALL THAT X MELODIC DISTRACTION<br />
1ST NOV : CARL COMBOVER<br />
2ND NOV : FAT WHITE FAMILY DJ SET<br />
3RD NOV: LOYLE CARNER AFTER PARTY FEAT NO FAKIN & ANTI SOCIAL JAZZ CLUB<br />
40 SLATER STREET, LIVERPOOL. L1 4BX THEMERCHANTLIVERPOOL.CO.UK
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New Music + Creative Culture<br />
Liverpool<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>105</strong> / <strong>November</strong> <strong>2019</strong><br />
bidolito.co.uk<br />
Second Floor<br />
The Merchant<br />
40-42 Slater Street<br />
Liverpool L1 4BX<br />
Founding Editor<br />
Craig G Pennington - info@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Publisher<br />
Christopher Torpey - chris@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Editor<br />
Elliot Ryder - elliot@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Digital Media Manager<br />
Brit Williams – brit@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Design<br />
Mark McKellier - mark@andmark.co.uk<br />
Branding<br />
Thom Isom - hello@thomisom.com<br />
Proofreader<br />
Nathaniel Cramp<br />
Cover Photography<br />
John Johnson<br />
Words<br />
Elliot Ryder, Sophie Shields, Jordan Ryder, Scott<br />
Charlesworth, Christopher Torpey, David Weir, Brit<br />
Williams, Ambre Levy, Jennie Macaulay, Craig G<br />
Pennington, Sam Turner, Rhys Buchannan, Scott<br />
Burgess, Nina Franklin, Lewis Dohren, Jack Turner,<br />
Dr Ariel Edesess, Daniel Blunt.<br />
Photography, Illustration and Layout<br />
Mark McKellier, John Johnson, Michael Kirkham, Keith<br />
Ainsworth, Scott Charlesworth, Carin Verbruggen,<br />
Shea McChrystal, Sally Pilkington, Yana Yatsuk, Fin<br />
Reed, Glyn Akroyd, Stu Moulding, Robin Clewley,<br />
Lewis Dohren.<br />
EDITORIAL<br />
The longer nights were always going to be the home<br />
for this new nadir of uncertainty. Turn the clocks back<br />
three years, not just the customary hour, and you’d be<br />
forgiven for thinking the minute and hour hands have<br />
frozen and reality ceased.<br />
Everyday absurdities rendered<br />
meaningless. Career-ending soundbites<br />
now campaigning rhetoric. Every day,<br />
the same excruciating arguments evenly<br />
squared off by the BBC, Question Time<br />
now being an exercise in self-harm. The<br />
vernacular of logic has been crowded out<br />
in favour of blind-hope terrace chants.<br />
Consequence has been removed from<br />
the vocabulary of those at the wheel of<br />
political madness.<br />
With Bido Lito! being a collection<br />
of voices, stories and song, it’s perhaps<br />
most disheartening to witness this<br />
growing desecration of language. What<br />
should remain a medium free from<br />
fearmongering, division and deceit has<br />
been weaponised in the most odious<br />
manner – all in an attempt to win the<br />
stalemate with little regard for the irreparable chasm it carves<br />
between us all. It wasn’t so long ago that discourse rewarded<br />
those who had a way with words. Now, discourse is a battlefield<br />
for those who want their own way with the help of words.<br />
This being my first editorial as Editor, it feels somewhat<br />
hollowing to know it’s delivered with a tone of anxiety. But it’s<br />
important to acknowledge that the arts and music can’t reside<br />
offshore from these bizarre goings on. This is not to say all art<br />
FEATURES<br />
“There remains a<br />
strong appetite for<br />
visual language<br />
that takes on the<br />
biggest issues<br />
in society with<br />
positivity and hope”<br />
should aim to reflect, respond and protest these times ahead;<br />
to do so would be limiting and unfair. In return, artists must<br />
be granted space. However, it’s clear that those at the levers<br />
of power are drawing an ever-tightening perimeter around<br />
free spaces of thought and ideas,<br />
movements and cultures. Art should<br />
allow for the momentary escape free<br />
from ideological borders, many of which<br />
are currently under threat from a barrage<br />
of isolationist rhetoric.<br />
Looking to our cover feature, The<br />
Mysterines break with the haze of<br />
shadow-encrusted language and tell<br />
us how it is. They let their music do<br />
the talking and, surprisingly, leave little<br />
else to mystery. We also come to see<br />
the effervescent hip hop trio Nutribe<br />
as an antidote all should endeavour<br />
to experience. As they put it across<br />
themselves: “Everyone likes to hear<br />
positivity. Why wouldn’t they? People<br />
like to see three MCs having a good<br />
time, chatting goodness.” This direct,<br />
positive language is not solely reserved<br />
for lyricism in this issue. As we see in Jordan Ryder’s assessment<br />
of Keith Haring’s work, there remains a strong appetite for<br />
visual language that takes on the biggest issues in society with<br />
positivity and hope. It is perhaps the visual artist’s energy and<br />
belief we should look to when the longest nights roll in.<br />
Elliot Ryder / @elliot_ryder<br />
Editor<br />
Photo by Robin Clewley<br />
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All contributions to Bido Lito! come from our city’s<br />
amazing creative community. If you would like to join<br />
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revenue to WeForest.org to fund afforestation<br />
projects around the world. This more than offsets our<br />
carbon footprint and ensures there is less CO2 in the<br />
atmosphere as a result of our existence.<br />
14 / THE MYSTERINES<br />
Take a deep breath and hang on tight as the ascendant trio wind<br />
up to release the full force of their hair-raising repertoire.<br />
18 / NUTRIBE<br />
Fresh from renowned Future Bubblers programme, the<br />
effervescent hip hop trio bring us up to speed on the<br />
interplanetary aura that unifies their artistry and being.<br />
20 / COMING OUT THROUGH THE<br />
GIFT SHOP<br />
As the hugely successful Keith Haring exhibition moves into<br />
its final month, Jordan Ryder ponders whether there is a battle<br />
to sustain the artist’s campaigning sentiment in the face of its<br />
aesthetic appeal.<br />
22 / TRUDY AND THE ROMANCE<br />
Oliver Taylor walks us through Trudy’s pillow-headed paradise<br />
and towards a new musical world yet to be shaped.<br />
24 / THE DIRT I’M MADE OF<br />
Writer and photographer Scott Charlesworth locates the<br />
homebound escapism of the River Mersey.<br />
29 / RICHARD DAWSON<br />
“The power of a word or a melody can be quite profound: it can<br />
change the way in which people perceive things”<br />
31 / BLACK LIPS<br />
“I grew up in a church that was way more wild than any rock ’n’<br />
roll show”<br />
The views expressed in Bido Lito! are those of the<br />
respective contributors and do not necessarily<br />
reflect the opinions of the magazine, its staff or the<br />
publishers. All rights reserved.<br />
REGULARS<br />
12 / NEWS<br />
26 / SPOTLIGHT<br />
32 / PREVIEWS<br />
34 / REVIEWS<br />
44 / ARTISTIC LICENCE<br />
46 / THE FINAL SAY
NEWS<br />
Mellowtone @ 15<br />
Mellowtone<br />
From a leap of faith back at the The View Two Gallery in<br />
2004 all the way to the here and now, MELLOWTONE are<br />
celebrating 15 years of gigs, parties and quietly creating<br />
a stir. To mark the occasion, the promotions companycum-record<br />
label are hosting an exhibition at Buyers<br />
Club featuring 15 original screenprints. The show opens<br />
on 6th <strong>November</strong>, where the specially commissioned<br />
illustrations and posters will sit alongside historic flyers,<br />
prints and ephemera from the Mellowtone archives. There<br />
is also a programme of free entry shows in collaboration<br />
with Handyman Brewery, with the Smithdown Road<br />
establishment brewing a special beer for the occasion. A<br />
host of Mellowtone favourites and regulars from down<br />
the years will be turning out, including SEAFOAM GREEN<br />
(Wednesday 20th <strong>November</strong>), ANWAR ALI AND DAVE<br />
OWEN (21st <strong>November</strong>), EDGAR JONES (23rd) and NICK<br />
ELLIS (24th).<br />
Dig At The Dock<br />
The Royal Albert Dock’s independent spirit is soon to<br />
be bolstered by the arrival of Bold Street favourites Dig<br />
Vinyl. Far from just a tired replication of the popular city<br />
centre vinyl emporium, DIG AT THE DOCK will be offering<br />
memorabilia, books, art prints and merchandise related<br />
to music and Liverpool, alongside a mixture of new and<br />
vintage vinyl stock. Due to open in <strong>November</strong>, the pop-up<br />
will bring the local scene to the Dock, as the Diggers look to<br />
work with other independent Liverpool businesses that fit<br />
alongside their vision. We can soon look forward to music<br />
having a firm presence within one of the city’s biggest<br />
tourist destinations, in line with the docks being Liverpool’s<br />
access not only to trade, but also to music from across the<br />
globe.<br />
Dig At The Dock<br />
Laces Out, Dan!<br />
Laces Out!<br />
LACES OUT! trainer festival celebrates its fifth birthday on 16th <strong>November</strong>, by returning to Camp<br />
and Furnace for its biggest event yet. There have been 11 Laces Out! festivals since it began back<br />
in 2014, and with its return to the venue where it all began for AW19, there’s a lot in store for<br />
sneakerheads. The usual array of rare footwear, deadstock and streetwear will be on hand from the<br />
dozens of independent retailers, offering unique deals and services to sneaker enthusiasts. Even if you<br />
don’t consider yourself a trainer expert, there’s still a great selection of artwork and apparel for the<br />
discerning sports casual. Key industry figures will be on hand to share their wisdom and experience<br />
during a number of panel discussions, with guest DJs on hand throughout to make sure it’s as smooth<br />
as your Air Jordans. lacesout.co.uk<br />
Louder Than Words<br />
A Year In Liverpool Music<br />
A famous comment (erroneously attributed to Elvis Costello) suggested<br />
that writing about music is like “dancing about architecture”; in other words,<br />
a tricky, abstract thing to even attempt. However, many careers have<br />
been forged by those interested in working across the worlds of music<br />
and writing, and that is what one panel at the LOUDER THAN WORDS<br />
festival will attempt to unpick. The panel features our own publisher<br />
Christopher Torpey, who joins a discussion with a number of storied writers<br />
and journalists: Professor Martin James, Dr Lucy O’Brien and Dr Simon<br />
A. Morrison. The whole festival, which takes place between 8th and 10th<br />
<strong>November</strong> at the Principal Hotel in Manchester, will bring together a host of<br />
intriguing panels, interviews and workshops, with Edwyn Collins opening<br />
the event. Full details can be found at louderthanwordsfest.com<br />
The <strong>2019</strong> edition of the Bido Lito! Journal is now available to pre-order!<br />
Collating and celebrating 12 months in Liverpool’s creative and cultural<br />
endeavours, the Bido Lito! Journal will bring together the story of <strong>2019</strong><br />
in a supreme, glossy format. Printed in a limited edition run, the Journal<br />
will feature a selection of the best photography and commissions from<br />
artists we’ve covered throughout the year. It’s our way of reflecting on<br />
another amazing year in Merseyside for new music and creative culture,<br />
and to showcase the talent that makes this city such a vibrant place to<br />
live, work and create in. It’ll arrive in time for Christmas, too, so it’s the<br />
perfect gift for yourself or for the music and culture-loving pal in your<br />
life. Head to bidolito.co.uk to find out how to pre-order a copy.<br />
River Of Light<br />
River Of Light<br />
The River Mersey is the stage once more for the RIVER OF LIGHT celebrations.<br />
The annual spectacular returns as a nine-day festival of light and colour, with<br />
the huge fireworks spectacle on Sunday 3rd <strong>November</strong> as its centrepiece.<br />
Titanium Fireworks – one of the world’s leading pyrotechnic companies – will<br />
lead simultaneous displays on both sides of the Mersey from 6.30pm, with a<br />
firework show soundtracked by artists who have been popular in the region during<br />
<strong>2019</strong>. Around this, Liverpool’s waterfront will be transformed with a number of<br />
spectacular light commissions between 1st and 9th <strong>November</strong>, featuring some of<br />
the most exciting visual artists in Europe. The Royal Albert Dock will be the canvas<br />
for two light installations, with the Liver Building, Wapping Dock, Liverpool Parish<br />
Church and Mann Island also being illuminated. visitliverpool.com/riveroflight<br />
12
DANSETTE<br />
The Zanzibar Club’s Scott Burgess<br />
picks out a selection of songs that<br />
have been on constant rotation on his<br />
virtual jukebox of late.<br />
Sam Cooke<br />
A Change is<br />
Gonna Come<br />
RCA Victor<br />
Winter Arts Market<br />
Open Culture’s WINTER ARTS MARKET will set up<br />
home again in the Anglican Cathedral on 7th December,<br />
the festive sibling of the sunnier Summer Arts<br />
Market. The independent shopping experience brings<br />
together over 200 artists, designers and makers under<br />
one magnificent roof for what is always a heartwarming<br />
day out in the festive hustle and bustle. Whether you’re<br />
looking for screen prints, photography, paintings or<br />
homewares for yourself or for that hard-to-buy-for<br />
family member, it’s likely you’ll find something that fits<br />
the bill here. In addition to the main market, there’ll be<br />
craft opportunities for little ones in the Kids Craft Lab,<br />
and a pop-up vintage and clothing fair in the cathedral’s<br />
Concert Room. You may even find some music, too,<br />
if you go exploring the cathedral’s many nooks and<br />
crannies.<br />
2020 And Beyond<br />
Winter Arts Market<br />
Playing Fast And Loose<br />
The Merseyside Guitar Show, which takes place<br />
at Aintree Racecourse on 24th <strong>November</strong>, is the<br />
setting for the launch of a new line of instruments<br />
by Cumbria-based guitar builders LUCEM GUITARS.<br />
Having made guitars for ex-Verve guitarist Nick<br />
McCabe, Slowdive’s Neil Halstead and Greg Dulli<br />
from the Afghan Whigs, Lucem have a cult following<br />
in the high-end custom built market – and their new<br />
Silver Series is a more affordable line. The logo on this<br />
series has been designed by Brian Cannon at Microdot<br />
Creative, who was the man behind many iconic album<br />
sleeve designs from the 90s (Oasis, The Verve). The<br />
new guitars will available at the Merseyside Guitar<br />
Show to view and demo in a private booth, and guitar<br />
maker and designer Graham Skimming will be present<br />
– along with a special guest – to take questions.<br />
This song always has a place<br />
in my heart. My mum was<br />
a massive Motown and disco freak, and this massively<br />
influenced my musical likes and dislikes when I was<br />
growing up. Music transcends time and this song takes me<br />
back to sitting in my mum’s car, listening to the CDs belting<br />
out tracks.<br />
Run The Jewels<br />
Lie, Cheat, Steal<br />
Mass Appeal<br />
These guys are focusing<br />
on real issues across the<br />
world, from poverty to gun<br />
crime. They do this in a really<br />
comical way with beats which deserve the best bass face.<br />
If you’re already a fan of RTJ, I recommend watching Killer<br />
Mike’s docu-series Trigger Warning. Lie, Cheat, Steal is<br />
basically about how everyone is doing everything in their<br />
power to rise to the top, regardless of the consequences.<br />
This song is the revolution.<br />
National Museums Liverpool has announced a run of outstanding exhibitions and new permanent<br />
displays for 2020, with a focus on art, photography, technology and revolution. Opening on 25th<br />
April, the LINDA MCCARTNEY RETROSPECTIVE at Walker Art Gallery will feature some iconic<br />
photography taken by McCartney during the 1960s, some of which have never been on public<br />
display before. Alongside depictions of luminaries of the 60s music scene, a number of her private<br />
shots of family life with Paul will also be on show. The major piece for summer 2020 comes at<br />
the World Museum, as AI: MORE THAN HUMAN arrives after an acclaimed run at the Barbican.<br />
Running from 10th July to 1st <strong>November</strong>, it will give visitors a thrilling glimpse of the future through<br />
interactive and immersive artworks. Find more at liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/nml2020.<br />
Imtiaz Dharker<br />
A Literal Feast<br />
Chester Literature Festival is one of the UK’s oldest. This year it celebrates<br />
its 30th anniversary, with 128 events taking place at Storyhouse between<br />
9th and 30th <strong>November</strong>. Major authors ARMISTEAD MAUPIN and MICHAEL<br />
MORPURGO will take part in evening discussions about their work and life, with<br />
writers and broadcasters NADIYA HUSSAIN and JOHN OSBORNE also stopping<br />
by. The festival is a great chance to engage in discussion and find inspiration<br />
for new work, with the words of poet IMTIAZ DHARKER joining those of Lemn<br />
Sissay and Hollie McNish on the walls of Storyhouse’s vibrant library, cinema<br />
and theatre spaces. Dharker has even penned a special poem for Storyhouse,<br />
which can be heard when she is joined by friends CAROL ANN DUFFY and<br />
KEITH HUTSON for a special event on 22nd <strong>November</strong>. storyhouse.com<br />
Red Rum Club<br />
Would You Rather<br />
Be Lonely?<br />
Modern Sky UK<br />
I first heard these guys way<br />
back when I was a bartender<br />
working in Some Place and<br />
I heard them soundchecking downstairs in The Zanzibar.<br />
I had to pop my head in when I heard the brass come<br />
steaming in. From then I was hooked. We have a few of<br />
their songs on the playlist in Some Place and, no matter<br />
what time this song comes on, the feels are there. When<br />
half the bar are singing along to an awesome homegrown<br />
band and an equally awesome song, how could this not be<br />
on the list?<br />
Cymande<br />
Cymande<br />
Janus Records<br />
Sweet Release(s)<br />
We’ve been lucky enough to hear tonnes of great new music<br />
again this month, far too much for us to fit in a single issue.<br />
It would be remiss not to mention some of the finer releases,<br />
however, such as the fabulous new effort from ambient wizard<br />
LO FIVE. The producer’s new LP, Geography Of The Abyss, is a<br />
masterpiece of downbeat techno that’s full of sumptuous synth<br />
work, and is a late contender for your favourite record of the year.<br />
Songsmith EMILIO PINCHI is back with a six-track mini-album<br />
on 15th <strong>November</strong>, and new electro noir trio RISE ATHENA have<br />
made some waves with their first track, Jericho. Any new music<br />
from the world of idiosyncratic songwriter and producer News<br />
From Neptune is something to enjoy, and the new EP – Fields Of<br />
Industry, credited to NEWS FROM NEPTUNE FEATURING THE<br />
SINCLAIR C5 – is a beguiling brew of twinkling guitartronica.<br />
Lo Five - Geography Of The Abyss<br />
I recently discovered this<br />
album while deep in the rabbit<br />
hole of YouTube. They are a<br />
British funk band who were<br />
active in 70s, and they reunited recently. They’re also<br />
massively overlooked considering their unbelievable talent.<br />
Cymande is derived from the calypso word for ‘dove’,<br />
symbolising love and peace. This album is pure escapism:<br />
sit back, close your eyes and feel the Calypso funk.<br />
thezanzibarclub.com<br />
Head to bidolito.co.uk now for an extended list of song<br />
choices on Scott’s Dansette.<br />
NEWS 13
Blink and you’ll have missed The<br />
Mysterines’ rise from smoking area<br />
adulation to the name on the lips of the<br />
country’s biggest taste-makers. This<br />
is merely the start. Take a deep breath<br />
and hang on tight as they wind up to<br />
release the full force of their hair-raising<br />
repertoire.<br />
THE MYSTE<br />
Over the last 18 months, you might have noticed posters surfacing around the city’s<br />
streets crying out ‘Who are The Mysterines?’ Those early few who knew, knew. But,<br />
beyond the striking shredded typeface, there was no explanation. Who, what or were<br />
THE MYSTERINES? Overheard whispers in the smoking areas of venues gave the odd<br />
hushed clue. But, even if you didn’t know, it felt like you should care.<br />
Until now the band have had little internet presence and only a handful of songs to go with<br />
their poster campaign. Yet, even with a relatively low profile over the last year, the trio have been<br />
able to build a fair amount of excitement, just in time for the release of their statement EP, Take<br />
Control.<br />
People love a mystery. Everyone strives to be the first person on the pulse of a new band, to<br />
be the first person to bring them up in conversation. However, after supporting Miles Kane on his<br />
UK tour and with fans in Steve Lamacq and Huw Stephens, the aforementioned heavyweights<br />
have beat many to it. The Mysterines are fast becoming less mysterious to discerning rock fans in<br />
Liverpool and further afield. Word is spreading.<br />
So, here I am on a Saturday night at the O2 Academy, preparing myself for my first full<br />
experience of their much-touted live show, one that so many have attested to in Liverpool since<br />
the arrival of those posters. It’s a sell-out in the main room for tonight’s headliners Red Rum Club,<br />
so it’s fair to assume most up-and-coming bands would feel a hint of pressure in the situation. Not<br />
quite. Rather than smile and be thankful for the opportunity, the trio offer a direct lesson in the<br />
need to turn up for support acts.<br />
No frills, no fuss, no hype. Just grungy guitars, dirty bass riffs, pounding drums and rough<br />
vocals that sound like a combination of PJ Harvey, Courtney Love and Dua Lipa. The show pretty<br />
much carries on in this vein for the rest of their set, with a distinct absence of unnecessary chatter<br />
from the lead singer, or anyone for that matter. The band don’t need it. The crowd don’t need it.<br />
The music speaks for itself.<br />
Take the eponymous EP opener. There’s no revving up of the engine or false start. It’s a<br />
juggernaut already in monition, like a brick laid on a muscle car accelerator pedal. The soaring<br />
vocals that career alongside give off the cool of a Ray-Ban clad James Dean. Hormone is pumped<br />
full of wiry attitude, a song that begs to played with the windows fully rolled down with little care<br />
14
“There’s a lot you can<br />
take from being at this<br />
stage so young, but<br />
there is also a lot that<br />
can fuck you up”<br />
RINES<br />
for the decibel level. Gasoline and Bet Your Pretty Face are as unsparing as they are anthemic; they<br />
could happily draw the curtain on a sunburst backdrop as you speed off in the distance. The EP as a<br />
whole sounds like it was recorded with a white-hot intent; it’s clear no single thread of energy was<br />
spared in its assembly.<br />
Seeing all of this live forces home the feeling. Their lack of online presence means their whole<br />
persona, style and stage presence is a surprise until curtain call. It harks back to the good old days of<br />
not knowing what to expect from a show. When you couldn’t pre-watch glimpses of sets on YouTube<br />
seemingly recorded by a potato. When setlists were still something to be anticipated. The Mysterines<br />
are bringing back that first time excitement of going to gigs.<br />
Behind the posters and lashings of overdrive, The Mysterines are a three-piece band from Wirral.<br />
Lia Metcalfe provides their fierce vocals and guitar, George Favager adds gritty bass and Chrissy<br />
Moore relentlessly bangs the drums.<br />
Yet, mysterious by name and mysterious by nature. When I meet up with Lia a few days after the<br />
show, even though I had seen her on stage a few days prior, I have no idea who I’m looking out for.<br />
I try to make myself look obvious in the bar we are meeting in; laptop and notebook poised,<br />
pen in hand, anxious knee tapping. After a number of bodies and faces come through the door, she<br />
eventually arrives. It’s clear who she is. Lia oozes a sense of nonchalant coolness, one I’d never be<br />
able to achieve in a million years. Much more sedate in nature now, but with a lot more to say than the<br />
weekend’s stage presence. She’s only 18 years of age. Suddenly, I feel old.<br />
In between their Red Rum Club gig and pending support slots with Seagirls and The Amazons<br />
we sit down to address the posters and finally answer the elusive, A2 sized question: ‘Who are<br />
The Mysterines?’ We start at the very beginning, with a good old blast to the past. Well, one not so<br />
distant; Lia and George are 18, and Chrissy is only 23, after all.<br />
“My dad was a singer-songwriter in a band,” Lia starts, when asked how she got the impetus<br />
to explore the world of music and eventually form her own band. “He taught me my first two chords<br />
when I was nine and I just wrote songs off the back of that.” She recalls this while shrugging her<br />
shoulders as though learning how to play guitar at nine is commonplace. “I didn’t want to learn guitar.<br />
Weirdly, I just wanted to learn tunes, so I sort of skipped learning to play theoretically. It’s only the<br />
past few years I’ve been like, ‘Shit, I really need to learn some stuff’.”<br />
FEATURE<br />
15
16<br />
“Sometimes you<br />
need to take the<br />
artist for what they<br />
are; music first”
Having known Chrissy pretty much since birth (“his parents<br />
used to babysit mine!”), Lia had a readymade drummer at her<br />
fingertips when needed. George’s acquisition can be as much<br />
owed to his aesthetic as his ability with a bass. “When I met him<br />
I just thought he looked quite cool,” she confesses, before adding,<br />
“I assumed he played an instrument, just from the way he was<br />
dressed.” A little further social media detective work and the<br />
band’s fixtures were in place: “I stalked his Facebook until I found<br />
him and sent a really long message like, ‘I’m not a weirdo, I’m just<br />
looking for band members’.” It paid off, and the band have carried<br />
on an upward trajectory since, sharing a journey from practices<br />
in the front room, a first gig at 14, right up to the release of their<br />
debut EP in August and selling out a December headline show at<br />
Jimmy’s – almost three months in advance. It’s been a progression<br />
they’ve undertaken together, as Lia explains: “It’s the first band<br />
I’ve ever been in, so we’ve all grown up together with it.”<br />
Despite starting so young, the three of them have grown into<br />
the musicians they are under the watchful eye of James Skelly of<br />
The Coral and Skeleton Key Records, who is also credited with<br />
shaping the world of The Mysterines. “As we were so young<br />
when we first started, Jay said to keep everything condensed,<br />
music-wise. I suppose the mystery thing was an unintentional<br />
way to protect our personalities because we were so young. But<br />
then people caught on and we just blagged that we came up<br />
with the idea. We’re sort of mysterious, but not to ourselves.”<br />
The question on everyone’s lips then: why the name? Lia<br />
starts: “I think we wanted something that was quite 80s, a Lost<br />
Boys sort of thing,” she explains. “Jay was saying The Coral<br />
got their name from a mouthwash in the 90s called Oracle or<br />
something, so we were joking about saying Listerine and then Jay<br />
said ‘Mysterine’. We were like, ‘Yeh, let’s just use it!’”<br />
With Take Control now out in the open, the ‘Who Are The<br />
Mysterines’ mantra less prevalent than regular mainstream radio<br />
plays, it leads to the question of whether the band are now<br />
looking to take control of their identity. Will they opt to sculpt<br />
more shadows or present an open book to go with their hairraising<br />
rock ’n’ roll? “I think it will be a good idea to keep [the<br />
mystery surrounding the band] because we are still so young and<br />
have opinions that probably shouldn’t be let out into the world<br />
yet,” Lia adds with humour, casting light on the fact that the band<br />
are still likely to be asked for ID upon entry to most venues they<br />
play. “It’s like a cautious thing. I don’t really like sharing too much<br />
as more music gets released either. I think, sometimes, you can<br />
attach the artist to the person a little too much. For certain artists<br />
that can work, but sometimes you need to take the artist for what<br />
they are; music first.”<br />
Lia’s maturity is palpable. Mainstream media tends to create a<br />
preconception that young people in the music industry aren’t able<br />
to handle the pressure. In this instance, writing music and gigging<br />
from the age of 14 has sped up the steps towards gaining<br />
confidence in ability, especially when it becomes your livelihood.<br />
“There’s a lot you can take from it going in so young, but there<br />
is also a lot that can fuck you up because you’re so young,” Lia<br />
muses. “You don’t really understand how people work yet. When<br />
we first started we just got thrown into the deep end. We were<br />
just saying yesterday, it’s mad to think that we haven’t been to<br />
that many gigs as spectators. Instead we’ve played hundreds.”<br />
Playing such a large number of gigs is no easy feat, especially<br />
when you’re trying to juggle school, the added pressure of<br />
fronting the band and essentially being the spokesperson for<br />
the group. It’s a role that Lia is happy to be taking on, but not<br />
without its caveats of expectations for musical progression and<br />
development. Lia shrugs off the standardised thought of these<br />
expectations. “You get compared to people who have been in<br />
the industry for years, like grown women and men. I haven’t<br />
even finished puberty yet, you know,” she jokes. And it’s not<br />
only confined to the stage and recording studio. While the<br />
efforts are paying off, taking the reins of The Mysterines is an<br />
all-encompassing endeavour. “It can get stressful because I write<br />
everything. I do everything; social media and stuff, too. It’s all<br />
from me, really.”<br />
However, Lia is quick to outline that it is far from a selfreflective<br />
endeavour. The Mysterines are a band that are toploaded<br />
by the lead singer-songwriter and guitarist, but only with<br />
all the other parts pulling in tandem do they become a force to<br />
be reckoned with. “When I bring the songs to the boys they turn<br />
it around in a different way. It’s like putting bread in the toaster,<br />
the toast is the final product,” Lia explains. I like the analogy.<br />
Bread is always better after a quick run in with the toaster; gives<br />
it an edge. “There is definitely an energy there that needs to be<br />
communicated when we play live.”<br />
Beyond strong influences from Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, PJ<br />
Harvey and Patti Smith, I’m intrigued to find out where she gets<br />
her songwriting inspiration from. If I think back to when I was in<br />
my early teens I wouldn’t know where to start with writing my<br />
own music, yet Lia has managed to turn those turbulent times<br />
into clever lyrics and angsty songs. “I think it’s changed over<br />
time,” she muses. “Initially, when I was younger. it was from<br />
my perspective on feelings, which it still is to a certain point.<br />
Sometimes I’ll write something and I still don’t realise what it’s<br />
about until I’ve got over the issue. I’ll look back at the song like,<br />
‘Oh shit, that’s what that was about’. I think now, because I’m<br />
a bit older, I like to get points across in songs, especially from<br />
a female perspective. But love is probably the main thing, it’s<br />
probably the main thing everyone writes about, really.”<br />
Touching on the female perspective she mentions can often<br />
be a subject lingered on when speaking to female musicians.<br />
But when you’re fronting a heavy rock band in a city that lacks<br />
this sort of genre, more so with the recent end of Queen Zee,<br />
I want to find out how she feels being in this position as a<br />
young woman. Does society load it with a greater responsibility,<br />
expectation and rules, and does she even notice the pressure<br />
at the age of 18? “I feel like a lot of people get those questions<br />
and they are quick to jump to the answer of, ‘Being a girl in the<br />
industry is no different to being a boy’, but it really is. There<br />
is a major difference,” she says passionately. “The way you’re<br />
perceived and treated is sometimes even more positive than<br />
boys, but then sometimes it’s really degrading,” she adds,<br />
with an expression that lightly leans on the experiences she<br />
is mentally recalling. “The lads have gone through it with me<br />
as well. Their perspective on feminism has changed over time<br />
because they have watched me deal with it. Two years ago, if<br />
you had asked them if sexism exists in the music industry they<br />
probably wouldn’t be so certain, but now they would say, ‘Yes’.<br />
It’s not in the way that girls are better than boys or boys are<br />
better than girls. I think it’s more the fact you become a gimmick<br />
in some ways. It’s mad, sometimes people shock you and treat<br />
you normally, it’s good when that happens because you feel a lot<br />
more comfortable.”<br />
The Mysterines are certainly no gimmick. They’re in good<br />
company, slowly on their way to sharing a platform with some<br />
of the biggest female voices the band take their cues from. The<br />
Mysterines are leading a charge. They’re leading it with a power<br />
and maturity the music industry needs. They are only just getting<br />
started with an exciting future built from the humble beginnings,<br />
one where the alluring charm of mystery has paved the way to<br />
near ubiquity within the Liverpool scene.<br />
“It’s hard to see far ahead,” Lia says, as we wind down our<br />
conversation. “We’re just taking it as it comes and not getting<br />
ahead of ourselves because the pressure kicks in then. I’m just<br />
letting myself grow into a style as a writer. Hopefully we’ll still be<br />
doing this in five years, because if not I’d have to get a job,” she<br />
laughs. As far as I can see, the only job now for The Mysterines is<br />
to keep the music coming and the posters at eye level. Finishing<br />
with a sigh and a smile she ends with a grounding comment, “It’s<br />
been a long road and there’s probably more shit to come, but it’s<br />
been great. It’s all worth it.” !<br />
Words: Sophie Shields / @sshields43<br />
Photography: John Johnson / johnjohnson-photography.com<br />
soundcloud.com/themysterines<br />
Take Control is out now via Pretty Face Recordings. The<br />
Mysterines play Jimmy’s on 7th December.<br />
Thanks to Vessel Liverpool Studios – and keep your eyes open<br />
for behind the scenes content from this photoshoot on Bido<br />
channels.<br />
FEATURE<br />
17
NUTRIBE<br />
Fresh from the renowned Future Bubblers programme, the effervescent hip hop trio bring us up to speed on<br />
the interplanetary aura that unifies their artistry and being. Time to understand the ‘ness’ of Nutribe.<br />
It’s difficult to imagine NUTRIBE ever sitting still. As they<br />
lock into pose to have their picture taken, the lens has barely<br />
snapped shut before they’ve contorted into another elastic<br />
shape. And even when their bodies hold still just for a<br />
second, there’s a constant harmony of staccato noises emitting<br />
from their formation; you can almost see the rapids of thought<br />
and ideas rushing between their heads as their bodies feel the<br />
suppress of static. Their unified presence is a life force of its own.<br />
That’s even before you add their music into the equation. When<br />
they pull together into frame, they become a North Face, fur hat<br />
and beret-clad megazord; a three-headed hip hop hydra sporting<br />
razor sharp rhymes instead of deadly teeth.<br />
For a number of years, the trio of Stickydub, Yloh and<br />
Doopsman have been injecting a dose of classic hip hop and<br />
boom bap into Liverpool’s rap scene. But they’re by no means<br />
heritage-facing revivalists. They sound like a trio from the<br />
year 3,000 who’ve dug up dusty artefacts left behind by De<br />
La Soul, Slum Village and The Roots, inspired to put their own<br />
raps to record. The product is music centred on feeling and<br />
bodily movement – the latter often choreographing the vocal<br />
accompaniment. It’s an energetic blend that has led to support<br />
slots with the GZA and taking to the main stage at Africa Oyé.<br />
But, more recently, they’ve caught the attentions of Gilles<br />
Peterson’s Brownswood Music, featuring in the third cohort of<br />
the Future Bubblers artist development programme.<br />
Now back in their home city, Elliot Ryder sits down with the trio<br />
get the inside track on transcending the energy of the Nutribe ‘ness’.<br />
You’ve been releasing tracks for a few years now, with a recent<br />
inclusion on Future Bubblers 3.0. When did the world of<br />
Nutribe start coming together?<br />
Doopsman: When I was born.<br />
So, friends first and the music came after?<br />
Yloh: Yeh, the music came last though. We went through a lot of<br />
things first before we got to music.<br />
D: We all studied dance at arts college in Liverpool. We all parted<br />
ways for a year; Sticky went to London, I went to Leeds and Yloh<br />
stayed here. Then we met back up a year later in London.<br />
Y: The London era was like a level up for the music, we<br />
concentrated on it a lot more when we got there. As for when<br />
all this started, you could say from the first time we met; that<br />
first time we all jumped on Virtual DJ. From there we just started<br />
writing raps and bars.<br />
D: One of the turning points was a<br />
night out we went on in London. We<br />
were on our way to an event and we<br />
came across some turntables just left<br />
in the street. We were like, ‘Ah, should<br />
we take these back?’ but we were<br />
going out, so hid them and planned to<br />
get them on the way back. Anyway,<br />
at this event, the DJ failed to show,<br />
so we ended up filling in and DJing.<br />
When we went back, the turntables<br />
just happened to be there, which in<br />
any other circumstance in London,<br />
they would not have. So we took<br />
them home – now we make music…<br />
So it seemed like it all started pretty<br />
casually. Is it still quite laid back, or was there a moment you<br />
thought, ‘We should try at this with a certain intent’?<br />
Stickydub: There was one moment when we were having a jam<br />
with our friends in London, and I remember listening back to the<br />
voice memos and I was like, ‘Oh, shit, we can do stuff you know’.<br />
Then we started hitting up open mic nights, practising.<br />
D: We started with Butcha B, our big brother – man’s got pure<br />
flavour. I remember on my 21st birthday in Leeds. We were in a<br />
circle, spitting, singing and just chatting shit. There was, like, 20<br />
people around us and we were just in this zone of making noises<br />
together. It was a pretty pivotal moment.<br />
Y: It’s pretty mad how people get the expression of what we give<br />
off, like the warmth. When it resonates, it resonates. It’s genuine.<br />
“It’s not how you<br />
dress, it’s how you<br />
think – your way of<br />
being. Anyone can be<br />
a part of Nutribe”<br />
You started out as part of the Collecta Family, a<br />
multidisciplinary art collective. Are you still part of this scene?<br />
D: It’s still got the family umbrella, but without the name. It’s just<br />
Nutribe. That’s the family, that’s the thing.<br />
Would you say you’re a reflection of a changing community,<br />
or one that was developed in your<br />
youth?<br />
S: I’d say it’s hard not to be a reflection<br />
of the community we were brought<br />
up in. A reflection doesn’t necessarily<br />
mean the same, though, but you can’t<br />
escape that similarity. We’re part of so<br />
many communities; we’re of complex<br />
culture. Lots of our families are<br />
mixed, we’ve lived in different cities,<br />
our identities are complex. We’re a<br />
reflection of many, not just one. That’s<br />
what Nutribe is.<br />
There’s quite a democratic style in<br />
the way that you perform in that<br />
there’s a collage of voices often<br />
present at one time. How did this develop?<br />
D: I think it’s just how we are with each other. We have a respect.<br />
We strive on communication so much. That makes everything so<br />
much easier. So, if Yloh was like, ‘I wanna spit there’, we’d be like,<br />
‘Spit there, go for it’. Standard. Cool, let’s hear it.<br />
Y: It’s one of those where if Doops says he’s coming in, I know<br />
he’s going to come in with something that I’m going to be gassed<br />
with. We have that mutual artistry that is one collective voice. It’s<br />
just different voices in the one voice.<br />
S: We just know our ‘ness’, n e double-s. We just know what<br />
our ness is. Our ness, our vibe. We’re just lacing our words with<br />
the same vibe, you get me? I just trust them. I don’t care how<br />
much that I say. I’m norrarsed. It doesn’t matter. I’m still there, my<br />
energy is being represented, pushed out.<br />
D: We have a track without Yloh on, and obviously it’s not the<br />
same exact flavour, but it’s still got the same ingredient.<br />
18
So, Nutribe is a feeling?<br />
D: It’s a way, it’s a ness.<br />
Y: I can make a track by myself, that’s Nutribe. I could make<br />
pottery, that’s Nutribe. Doesn’t matter what the instrument is, it’s<br />
the expression that’s within in it.<br />
Are each of you bringing a certain style, or have a certain<br />
musical responsibility? Is it very much a socialist sort of make<br />
up to the group?<br />
Y: We all have unique tools, but we’re all happy to give opinions<br />
on each of them.<br />
S: It all comes together in the expression.<br />
D: I view it as a kitchen. If we were<br />
all head chefs on day one, it wouldn’t<br />
work. You need the Sous-Chef, the<br />
porter. We switch roles. And whoever<br />
is more active on a certain topic, we<br />
just roll with it.<br />
Listening to the likes of the Wu-<br />
Tang Clan, there’s a strong feeling<br />
that every member is jostling for the<br />
mic, wanting their moment. Were<br />
these influences prevalent in your<br />
early days, and how did you break<br />
from the more self-promotional<br />
display?<br />
Y: We do have tunes where each<br />
of us have our time to shine. But,<br />
you know, it’s not like one of us would be like, ‘Yo, it’s my time’.<br />
Rather, one of us would be like, ‘Yo, it’s your time, we want you to<br />
take the lead’. As much as we all shine together, there’s a certain<br />
time when one of us has got something special, and we want to<br />
highlight that.<br />
D: Our music isn’t something we’re specifically trying to get out,<br />
it’s just what we do, how we step. We don’t bring each other<br />
down on that; we big each other up all the time. It’s not fake.<br />
What would be the point? I know mans is going to spit fire bars,<br />
why would I dash the mic from him?<br />
S: Even back in the day when that competitiveness was there, I<br />
still believe in the Wu-Tang’s language, it’s like a sparring match.<br />
It’s not a bad thing.<br />
Would you say your style derives from freestyle?<br />
S: Most of our songs are written verses, but we write in very<br />
“We’re part of so many<br />
communities, our<br />
identities are complex.<br />
We’re a reflection of<br />
many, not just one”<br />
different ways. We incorporate that into our shows a lot. Usually<br />
we have a whole track that is just freestyle. We do write though,<br />
whether it be through voice notes, or notebook and pen.<br />
D: Because we all project the same thing, we don’t need to be<br />
in the same place to write. Even without a topic, we can gel our<br />
words together.<br />
So it’s almost like a subconscious being; one of you could write<br />
a few lines, and the other will naturally have the hook, or the<br />
harmony<br />
D: It’s the ness. Once again, it’s the ness!<br />
S: We know the lifestyle innit, and we live the lifestyle of Nutribe.<br />
We’re in that; it’s not a choice. What<br />
we talk about, it’s all within that. The<br />
cohesiveness is embedded in that.<br />
Was there a moment where you all<br />
collectively understood the ness?<br />
S: Before we made music, we were<br />
already creating together, dancing<br />
together. I think the ness was<br />
something that was visible to others<br />
before it was visible to us. Other<br />
people could pick up on the energy<br />
between us.<br />
Can other artists be part of the<br />
ness?<br />
Y: Yeh. But other people think that<br />
they can’t be part of the ness as much as they actually could<br />
be. They might see an aesthetic, and not feel a part of it, but<br />
we understand it in a different way. It’s not how you dress, it’s<br />
how you think, your way of being. Anyone can be a part of it; it’s<br />
open.<br />
S: I think just being around the ness, you become subject to the<br />
aura of the ness. If we’re here just nessin, then ness with us.<br />
Y: It’s not exclusive.<br />
A lot of your raps have a distinct colloquialness. Do you think<br />
you benefit from having the Scouse accent in a rap game<br />
dominated by southern accents?<br />
D: Yeh, 100 per cent.<br />
Y: It’s very stylised, unique in its own way.<br />
D: Even without music, Scouse captivates an audience, just<br />
talking. It’s a recipe isn’t it?<br />
Lately, so much of language seems bound up in charged<br />
rhetoric for negative purposes. Do you think it’s important to<br />
use language in a celebratory way?<br />
Y: I think it’s important to be honest. You can write, see negativity<br />
and reflect on that. Everything you create, you can reflect on and<br />
learn more about yourself. As an outsource, everyone likes to<br />
hear positivity. Why wouldn’t they? People like to see three MCs<br />
having a good time, chatting goodness. Not your typical moody<br />
language.<br />
S: I wouldn’t say that it’s necessary to emit positivity for an artist.<br />
I’d agree it’s all about being honest. You shouldn’t be trying to<br />
control your expression. I don’t think people should try to be<br />
positive, I think we just are that way. I wouldn’t write something<br />
and think, ‘Oh, that’s not positive enough’. It’s where we are at.<br />
Does the mix of music, writing and dance help sculpt your<br />
style?<br />
S: Out of all of those there, the one that we’re doing is movement.<br />
The broader term. This is all movement. It’s the first thing you do<br />
in your life. Without movement, there can’t be language.<br />
Y: Everything is intersectional. Everything affects the other, you<br />
know, connecting those dots within yourself. You see that in<br />
yourself. There are times where I’ve written a verse, dancing<br />
around at the same time; I can see the similarities in the way the<br />
words and my body move.<br />
So, do you have to see Nutribe to get Nutribe, to understand<br />
the ness?<br />
Y: Best way is to be around it. The more you get, the more you<br />
get.<br />
S: It’s just a higher dosage.<br />
Y: Some people are fluent in music and get the whole picture<br />
from just listening to it.<br />
S: It can depend on the person, though. But sometimes you can<br />
bump into people and…<br />
Y: …and they just get it!<br />
S: They just get it. !<br />
Words: Elliot Ryder / @elliot_ryder<br />
Photos: Michael Kirkham / @Mrkirks<br />
Sittin On The Step by Nutribe features on Future Bubblers 3.0<br />
compilation, which is now available on Brownswood Music.<br />
FEATURE<br />
19
COMING<br />
OUT<br />
THROUGH<br />
THE<br />
GIFT<br />
SHOP<br />
20<br />
As the hugely successful Keith Haring<br />
exhibition at Tate Liverpool moves into<br />
its final month, Jordan Ryder ponders<br />
whether there is a battle to sustain<br />
the artist’s campaigning sentiment<br />
in the face of its aesthetic appeal.<br />
I<br />
recently got my nose pierced. Yes, that<br />
darkening shape you can see on the horizon is<br />
my 30th birthday. Maybe I can blame that. Or<br />
I can blame my boyfriend for catching me at a<br />
weak moment and making a long held (but crucially<br />
hypothetical) desire happen. Regardless, the weight<br />
of my already sizeable head has increased marginally<br />
and I travel everywhere with a bottle of saline. Both<br />
my mother and a number of my male friends have<br />
remarked that they like it, it suits me, and “it makes me<br />
look more gay”. Brilliant. But, I suppose that was part of<br />
the point, when I think about it. This fairly unexceptional<br />
act of identity assertion happened aged 29. American<br />
artist KEITH HARING died in 1990, aged 31, of AIDSrelated<br />
complications.<br />
Over the course of his career he challenged the<br />
American government’s ignorance of the AIDS crisis,<br />
promoted safe sex and addressed the crack epidemic<br />
in 1980s New York, as well as highlighting the dangers<br />
of nuclear power. In conflating these two I do not seek<br />
to elevate my choice of metallic facial furniture to that of<br />
confrontational activist art, but rather highlight just how<br />
young Haring was to be one of the visual voices of socially<br />
conscious art during the Reagan era, and how an earlier<br />
knowledge and understanding of his work may have eased my<br />
own reconciliation with my homosexuality.<br />
Had I been exposed to his art beyond the T-shirts of<br />
my more fashion conscious friends, would I have felt more<br />
comfortable in myself? I’d like to believe this is the case. Equally,<br />
for any persons unsure of their gender, sexuality or even morality<br />
that visits, or has visited, the exhibition. Subtracted from this line of<br />
questioning, however, the exhibition is a huge success. Not just for<br />
the Tate, but for Liverpool in general.<br />
Returning to my point: if you expand this further, can art, in any<br />
format, provide a focal point for solidarity and identification in the<br />
same way music can, or is the message of an image or object more<br />
firmly rooted in the time and place of production? Does radical art<br />
only remain radical for so long, its didactic power only temporal and<br />
therefore limited?<br />
Essentially, can an exhibition of political art ever avoid the castration<br />
of that art’s political message? Indeed, can a work of art retain its political<br />
undertone without being part of a biographical retrospective?<br />
Take Haring’s Silence Equals Death (1989), for example. Building on<br />
the campaign of the same name by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power<br />
(ACT UP), Haring’s image recreates the infamous pink triangle on a stark<br />
black background. The reclaimed triangle, initially used as a marker of<br />
homosexuality in Nazi concentration camps, is plain and flat in the ACT UP<br />
poster, but in Haring’s work is overlain with figures representing the ‘see no<br />
evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ maxim. The overall effect is striking in a very<br />
different way to the ACT UP poster. The tumble of human figures inevitably<br />
connote a pyramid of bodies, Haring certainly conflating the AIDS pandemic<br />
with the Holocaust, presenting both as a systematic eradication of a group<br />
maligned and ignored by the ruling class, the wilful ignorance and inaction of the<br />
Reagan administration set alongside the ideological antisemitism of the Nazis.<br />
As a 29-year-old gay man in <strong>2019</strong> this work of art represents not just a<br />
period in time and a particular aesthetic style, but a pivotal moment in the history<br />
of people like me, one that has shaped not only my perception of what it is to<br />
be gay, but also why it matters to not simply accept the superficial equality that<br />
is framed as progress. But I wonder whether that is the same for younger gay<br />
people, less politically aware gay people, or people who are not part of the LGBTQ+
“The exhibition preserves and<br />
promotes an undeniably brilliant<br />
and important artist. Maybe<br />
an aesthetic appreciation will<br />
lead to a greater engagement,<br />
therefore provoking a discovery<br />
of the radical activism”<br />
Tseng Kwong Chi - Keith Haring in subway car, (New York), circa 1983. Photo © Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc. Art © Keith Haring Foundation<br />
community. Do they enter the final room of the Haring exhibition – where much of the work he<br />
produced around the AIDS crisis and his own AIDS diagnosis is situated – and leave with the same<br />
hollowed out, ‘there but for the grace of God’ feeling that I did? Or, despite the obvious trauma<br />
of those images, are they more preoccupied with Haring’s “attractive and lovely and wearable”<br />
designs? And if they are, is that a bad thing?<br />
Exhibitions and Displays Curator at Tate Liverpool Darren Pih endorses the view that Haring<br />
created “images that communicated in the moment” and “reflect the paradoxes of American<br />
culture”. In a way this supports the idea that the true fire of Haring’s activism is lost in the exhibition<br />
of his work, in that it implies that Haring’s work is unextractable from the time and means of<br />
production, that his work is both a product of and “symptomatic of the possibility of the 1980s”.<br />
The work then becomes historically categorised, situated alongside Bonfire Of The Vanities, Angels<br />
In America, American Psycho, and Wall Street as artefacts and touchstones of a time and place,<br />
historically important and certainly contemporarily relevant, but reduced in their potency, lessened<br />
in their impact. Have they been superseded, are they victims of culture’s desire to historicise and<br />
periodise, the easy categorisation much more tempting than asserting their continued relevance?<br />
This question, and others, I ponder as I make my way through the Tate Liverpool retrospective<br />
of Haring’s work. The 1980s are not so long ago to feel so distant to teenagers in <strong>2019</strong>. I wonder<br />
whether the queer and questioning young people who see Haring’s work (maybe for the first<br />
time) will allow it to validate their feelings and support their sense of self, or whether, encased in<br />
the riverside gallery with Kandinsky, Dalí and Warhol, Haring’s work has been institutionalised,<br />
neutered, made part of the static aesthetics of the artistic canon. That is not to denigrate the Tate<br />
Liverpool exhibition in any way. It is a brilliantly conceived space that presents Haring’s work in a<br />
way that is accessible to strangers and illuminating for acquaintances. The exhibition leaflet is a<br />
necessary partner, providing vital details about the consistent motifs that percolate Haring’s work,<br />
not simply an illustrative map or reproduction of the text found in the exhibition. Further note must<br />
also be given to the exhibition’s wider programme which coalesces around the world of Keith<br />
Haring to provide advanced context. Be that in the form of his city’s music, captured on Soul Jazz<br />
Records’ carefully curated compilation, fashion displays and talks about LGBTQ+ art and its activist<br />
sentiment. But one does wonder whether this exhibition can fully retain the activism and social<br />
consciousness of Haring’s work, the radicalism that spurred the production removed so that it is<br />
only the aesthetic visual that remains. Pih, believes that one of the values of Haring’s work is that it<br />
was “not constrained by the studio”, produced (as much of it was) on walls and in subway stations.<br />
If Haring’s work is to have continued significance beyond the aesthetic, if it is to retain its social and<br />
political relevance, one assumes that it cannot be constrained by the exhibition.<br />
Cultural leader and collaborator Amy Lamé, who will speak at Tate Liverpool in <strong>November</strong><br />
about Haring, LGBTQ+ activism and art, believes that Haring’s political consciousness is<br />
“inextricably linked” to his art work and that the two are “almost impossible to separate”. But, I<br />
wonder if I disagree. Because Haring’s work is “so accessible [...so] commodifiable because it’s pop<br />
art”, I wonder if it suffers from an inevitable dilution. It looks so natural on T-shirts, shoes, as easily<br />
bought wall art. Did the teenage boys that my friends once were realise they were clothed in the<br />
socially conscious work of an AIDS campaigner who was heavily influenced by indigenous art and<br />
semiotics? As Lamé acknowledges, Haring “was able to use his art to get across really difficult<br />
messages in a deceptively playful way that didn’t seem threatening, because it looks like cartoons”.<br />
But, for me, this creates a problem. The messages are muddled (or entirely ignored) in favour of<br />
the aesthetics. Banksy in many ways suffers from the same fate, existing in reproductions and tea<br />
towels, commodifiable to the point that even a self-destructive piece is extortionately valuable and<br />
the take home point is sorely glazed over. But where would Haring’s art reside if it not were for<br />
the curatorial ownership of his activism taken upon by Tate Liverpool? Faded away on the subway<br />
station walls? Hidden in personal collections? While the messaging can be seen to be diluted in its<br />
impact and ubiquity, it still has the power to convince when grouped together to be viewed as a<br />
time-stamped artefact of his fight. Ultimately, it’s needed. Otherwise it could disappear altogether.<br />
All art is a social commentary in some way, at the very least a visual time-capsule for the<br />
means of production of the artist. But for those artists who seek to use their art to convey a political<br />
message, I feel that their political reach only extends as far as their life does. Banksy can, in his/<br />
her/their own anonymous way, clarify and reclassify the meaning and message of the work they<br />
produce. Haring is denied this opportunity and so his work is free to be marketed, commented on and<br />
scrutinised with no reply from the most authoritative voice of its existence. While this isn’t entirely<br />
perfect, I realise that the exhibition preserves and promotes, and allows those sections of the public to<br />
access the work of an undeniably brilliant and important artist. And maybe an aesthetic appreciation<br />
will lead to a greater engagement, and therefore will provoke a discovery of the radical activism of the<br />
producer of these jelly baby figures, these flat monochromatic images filled with life.<br />
For all my concerns about the constraining and neutralising power of the exhibition hall, I was<br />
able to wander around with my mother, avoid her in the more risqué moments, and watch the<br />
tears swell as the true fear and horror of the 1980s manifested itself in Haring’s later work. Art and<br />
artists are conduits for understanding society, for making sense in a (normally) single space of our<br />
multifarious world. As we left the exhibition together, Keith himself watching the exit door, there<br />
was understanding where once there may have been unease between our relationship, and maybe<br />
that is enough. !<br />
Words: Jordan Ryder<br />
Images: All Haring Works © Keith Haring Foundation/Collection Noirmontartproduction, Paris<br />
Keith Haring at Tate Liverpool runs until 10th <strong>November</strong>.<br />
Amy Lamé, A Conversation on LGBTQ+ Activism And Art From The 1980s - Today takes place at<br />
Tate Liverpool on 4th <strong>November</strong>. Tickets for the exhibition and talk can be purchased online from<br />
tate.org.uk.<br />
FEATURE<br />
21
TRUDY AND<br />
THE ROMANCE<br />
Following on from the band’s debut album, Sandman, released earlier<br />
in this year, Oliver Taylor walks us through the record’s pillow-headed<br />
paradise and towards a new musical world yet to be shaped.<br />
“When you record<br />
anything with music,<br />
it becomes real in a<br />
sense. It becomes<br />
more powerful. You<br />
can become anything<br />
when you put it down<br />
on to record”<br />
22
Wake early enough and you’ll find a circuit of<br />
joggers making their way around the Sefton<br />
Park perimeter. The daily ritual is as much about<br />
fitness as it is about an understanding of self. Not<br />
all make their way around at the same speed. It’s sometimes the<br />
slowest that return with the greatest discovery on that given day.<br />
At least this is the case for Oliver Taylor, a sort of stray amongst<br />
the pack.<br />
Wake earlier than most and you might come across him<br />
drawing his own circuit of the wooded area. It’s a personal<br />
(albeit quite recent) ritual no less integral to self-understanding,<br />
inspiration and capability, even if its undertaken at a walking<br />
pace. Rather than keep an eye on time, the TRUDY AND THE<br />
ROMANCE frontman is there to relieve a sense of restriction.<br />
A place where new songwriting ideas are being finely tuned<br />
internally while all others are tuning all things cardiovascular.<br />
New songs, he says, that lend inspiration from the singersongwriter<br />
greats – Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell and Kate<br />
Bush. “Something you could maybe tell around the fire,” he notes.<br />
“Cosy little stories, perhaps a little bit deeper. Somewhere beyond<br />
the fantasy.” Maybe somewhere beyond from the celestial doowop<br />
stylings the band had come to perfect.<br />
Foregoing a punctual agreement with the sunrise, it’s closer<br />
to midday by the time we meet beside the park and amble<br />
around its paths and discuss the fantasy of his band’s debut<br />
album, Sandman, released in May. The current backdrop might<br />
not reflect the rhythmic lineage of inner-city doo-wop; a genre<br />
that would be at home tapping its foot around the craning streets<br />
of 1950s New York. But the band’s depiction of the genre is as<br />
much space-age as it is heritage filled. There’s a clear escapist<br />
sentiment to Trudy’s music.<br />
In the collage of croons, harmonies and train-track rattle of<br />
guitar, it feels like the music has been trapped in an old transistor<br />
radio where it stewed, warped and mutated for decades, before<br />
being released from its dust encrusted capture with a zest for<br />
contemporary life. The album was a present force, but seemingly<br />
elsewhere in its pining and desire. Looking at the 12 tracks<br />
through the prism of Taylor’s newfound meandering, the pensive<br />
space of the park provides a warming fit for the seemingly upbeat<br />
songwriting.<br />
Turn the clock back three years and Trudy arrived in Liverpool<br />
via Leeds. It took Olly, Brad and Lew less than a year to carve out<br />
their own scene, alongside Her’s and Pink Kink. It owed much to<br />
their boyish knack for tunes hardwired with moonlit melodies and<br />
delivered with a Brylcreem slickness. The combination marked<br />
them out as an intriguing oddball, but one with a distinct talent.<br />
They were the slicked-back slackers, howling under a neon light<br />
wired into their amplifiers. A slew of singles and an EP in 2017,<br />
Junkyard Jazz, helped retain their presence, before the release of<br />
the anticipated full-length record.<br />
“We started writing the album quite a long time ago,”<br />
Taylor tells me from within his flat, just a short walk from the<br />
park. We’re perched at a table by the living room window, each<br />
adorning socks of the jazzier variety. Although my cautious grey<br />
with stripe is easily trumped by his patchwork ensemble of red,<br />
yellow and blue, picked up in Hamburg on tour only a few days<br />
earlier. “We’d been sitting on some songs for a long time, so we<br />
decided that Sandman was going to be a concept record,” he<br />
informs. “The early singles – My Baby’s Gone Away and Sandman<br />
– they sort of told their own stories. They were quite theatrical. I<br />
thought they could be amid other songs similarly theatrical and<br />
that carried an emotion through the storyline.”<br />
The concept saw the record spread across a double-sided<br />
narrative. Side A introduces the listener to the character of the<br />
Sandman, a sort of keeper of people’s dreams. Or the “bad guy<br />
of love”, as Taylor puts it. “The idea was to have side B slip into<br />
dreams, which I think happened quite naturally where the songs<br />
turn a little bit more psychedelic.” Aiming for a concept album<br />
is an ambitious step for a debut record. However, in doing so, it<br />
opened up for exploration of a theme that had been brewing in<br />
well-worn songs.<br />
“It added a greater theatre to it,” he agrees. “Therefore, it<br />
was consciously quite cartoon. It gave us the space to get away<br />
with more, to create more. You could sing in certain ways, say<br />
anything really in terms of lyrics. We aimed to push the barriers<br />
of the narrative, without being too cheesy.”<br />
The cartoon, doo-wop pastiche typifies much of the band’s<br />
music. Even the fantasia smattering of colours on his socks seem<br />
to take cues from the music’s visual palette. Through this you can<br />
see the connectors to the 1950s aren’t solely in the barbershop<br />
refrains, the baited melodic hooks led with such endearing charm<br />
that even the most timid voices would struggle not be pulled<br />
into harmony. Sandman draws in all of the throbbing colours of<br />
post-war US advertising. Its soundtrack has the smoky charm<br />
of a teenager trying their luck in a suit three sizes too big.<br />
The hopeless intent eventually bowls you over with its sweet<br />
bubblegum pop. “It’s sort of autobiographical,” Taylor underlines.<br />
“It was meant to be a bit of a break-up album,” he adds, musing<br />
on the authenticity of the record’s fictional narrative. “The themes<br />
and memories weren’t all so recent. It had to be stretched out a<br />
bit. There was a tongue in cheek element to it, harking back to an<br />
age that shaped your future. I wanted it be sort of like the Ziggy<br />
Stardust approach, pretending to be famous before you were.”<br />
You can detect that the record’s atmosphere stems from a<br />
rekindling of youthful ambition, a belief blinded by the alluring the<br />
haze of cartoon innocence. “For us it was like amplifying all of our<br />
experiences to appear as though we’ve lost ourselves in this new<br />
world. When you record anything with music, any sort of lyric,<br />
it becomes real in a sense. It becomes more powerful. You really<br />
can become anything when you put it down on to record, even if<br />
you don’t feel like you’re worthy of saying it.”<br />
Generating a hospitable world for the music required adding<br />
new layers of atmosphere. Moving away from the DIY, lo-fi<br />
aesthetic of Junkyard Jazz and the releases that proceeded it,<br />
the record builds around luscious arrangement with the added<br />
reverberations of a session choir. The finished product was to be<br />
something much more cinematic than previously produced. At<br />
very least a feature length cartoon. Taylor notes the addition of<br />
Alex Stephens (Strawberry Guy) – who played keys on the record<br />
– as a catalyst for the music’s dreamier, pillow-headed aesthetic.<br />
“It naturally softened everything up,” Taylor attests. “We wanted<br />
to instil an attitude that was inspired by Pet Sounds and take a<br />
calm approach. Instead of struggling through it, we wanted to be<br />
a bit more in control. I’d like to think you can listen to it a lot more.<br />
It’s not quite so intrusive. It’s just more in charge of itself, with the<br />
hope of being a little bit more timeless.”<br />
Much of Sandman was recorded in 2018. Come its release,<br />
the make up of the band had shifted from its original line-up of<br />
Brad on drums, Lew on bass, and, more recently, Alex on keys.<br />
All three are no longer part of the set-up. Now, the band takes<br />
the form of a touring five-piece. At the centre remains Taylor. The<br />
great singer-songwriters he mentioned earlier are strewn across<br />
the walls of his flat and serve as the ideal company for a new solo<br />
written endeavour.<br />
“Me, Brad and Lew had played together for five years, so it<br />
was really important for the album to be our album,” he starts,<br />
assuring how Sandman will always be a reflection of the earlier<br />
incarnation of the band. “For the record we took on the form of<br />
fictional band The Original Doo-Wop Spacemen. From them we’d<br />
move on to something else.”<br />
Similar to the runners that pass him most mornings, the<br />
musical set-up hinges on control. Being the sole architect of a<br />
fantasy landscape may, in turn, lead to urges of being the sole<br />
engineer implementing design. “Having that control is quite a<br />
sad thing, because you want to have that approach and turn up<br />
and doing everything together, but it’s realising how you do it.<br />
And I think I’ve realised how I want to do it.” Taylor’s expression<br />
is one of self-understanding. It is clearly a painful acceptance<br />
to relinquish the world of the original doo-wop spacemen, but<br />
seemingly the only viable route. “I would really like to be open<br />
with songwriting. I will be. You want to respect people and their<br />
instruments and what they’ve got to give. But it’s important<br />
not to confuse things and promise things that you cannot give<br />
away. They had their own projects [Brad Stank, Terry Venomous,<br />
Strawberry Guy] that were quite different, and I don’t think I<br />
was really quite understanding of that. I had this kind of Beatles<br />
outlook where somewhere down the line we’d all write a song<br />
each on the album. But it wasn’t there straight away. I think they<br />
were smart about that, so would write for themselves.”<br />
Now in a more defined position of writing for himself, Trudy<br />
is in a new phase. “It’s a bit like take two now,” as he puts it.<br />
Taylor will remain the frontiersman, striding away into new lands<br />
with an equally cinematic score. The effort to sculpt music with<br />
its own atmosphere, aura and colour palette will remain. It’s just<br />
perhaps the hues might not be as bright and luminous as before.<br />
And much of this, as he admits, is the departure from innocence,<br />
or “growing up and taking responsibility for who you are”. The<br />
departure of the bright-eyed fascination and boyish swagger that<br />
carried Trudy towards the album. Now he’s going someplace else,<br />
somewhere new. “Maybe somewhere where I can understand<br />
myself a little bit better.” !<br />
Words: Elliot Ryder<br />
Photography: Keith Ainsworth / arkimages.co.uk<br />
trudymylove.com<br />
Sandman is available now on B3SCI Records.<br />
FEATURE<br />
23
In his works The Dirt I’m Made Of, displayed as<br />
part of his first solo exhibition at Output Gallery<br />
in September, writer and photographer SCOTT<br />
CHARLESWORTH locates the homebound<br />
escapism of the corridors that stretch over<br />
the idling sweeps in the River Mersey. The<br />
collection of photographs and poems capture<br />
his personal reflections of a landscape subtly in<br />
transit, momentarily freed from its foundations<br />
by the lives that pass over its contours.<br />
A<br />
s strange as it seems to use a symbol of the motorway in my exhibition,<br />
the work itself was birthed from the act of travelling up and down constant<br />
motorways within my life. Firstly, as a child and as a spectator, where<br />
everything seemed possible. Secondly, as a young adult and looking out<br />
through the window with a more cynical view of the world, repenting the past in hope of<br />
pastures greener. Then thirdly, as who I am now and whatever that may be; humbled by<br />
the place that I simultaneously owe nothing and everything to. There was one evening<br />
that I drove past The Sporting Ford pub, the one featured in this series. It was always an<br />
establishment that I’d been wary of, mainly because I had never seen its curtains drawn.<br />
On that one evening, despite having been set alight the night before, The Sporting Ford<br />
revealed more of its battered and boarded up self than it had ever done in my lifetime<br />
of passing it by. It was as a result of this that I felt compelled to look at old settings<br />
with the eyes given to me through these three stages of my life, catalysing the heavily<br />
romanticised and nostalgically intertwined photograph that I felt compelled to take.<br />
Words and Photography: Scott Charlesworh / @Scottcharley<br />
scottcharlesworthphotography.com<br />
THE DIRT I’<br />
The Dirt I’m Made Of<br />
White lines on blue signs lead<br />
me back to friends of old.<br />
Perennial youth, once made of<br />
stone, succumbed to attrition.<br />
Their faces disfigured and weathered;<br />
their hands ground to bone.<br />
The cracks in familiar pavement<br />
have pulled further apart;<br />
now pits upon the floor.<br />
The meandering workers’ misery<br />
march, still out in full force.<br />
The same eight grey towers pollute innocent skies<br />
in the only way that they have ever known.<br />
Once thought invincible Northern grit<br />
now washed upon the Western bank;<br />
yet steel structures still stand strong.<br />
24
M MADE OF<br />
Concrete Cord<br />
Their demise was once thought a given.<br />
No hope or nearby neighbour to call to arms.<br />
Two towns, written off to<br />
the outer world<br />
that had<br />
stripped them<br />
of all their possessions,<br />
united by industrious pillars.<br />
Now joined by<br />
concrete cord<br />
and never to be without each other again.<br />
Through Soot-Stained Eyes<br />
Cooling towers and steel scarecrows<br />
stand tall in the polluted wind;<br />
pointing the way back home<br />
to the children of one club towns.<br />
We feel it,<br />
in heart and lungs alike,<br />
yesterday’s golden embers.<br />
Beacons of old still remain,<br />
cemented deeply,<br />
within their unshakeable<br />
concrete roots.<br />
The romanticised dream,<br />
and their simpler times<br />
get barked back<br />
at setting sons,<br />
in the same seats<br />
their fathers took.<br />
The furnace may have cooled,<br />
or been made redundant altogether<br />
but through the most gentle of reminders,<br />
the once smoldering flame<br />
returns for one last fight.<br />
FEATURE<br />
25
SPOTLIGHT<br />
“It’s almost<br />
therapeutic to spill<br />
everything onto a<br />
page. People can<br />
always draw from<br />
your emotions”<br />
LYDIAH<br />
This attentive singer-songwriter<br />
pores over tales that provide a<br />
stark reflection of their teller.<br />
If you had to describe your style in a sentence, what would<br />
you say?<br />
I’d describe my music as alternative folk. It’s very emotionally<br />
strung with vividly poetic lyrics.<br />
Have you always wanted to create music?<br />
I’ve always loved music, but didn’t really delve into it too much<br />
until I was around 14. I had sung for years and used to write<br />
poetry. I wanted to be able to add that to an instrument, so I<br />
made it my mission to learn the guitar. I played day in, day out<br />
for hours on end and, once I was able to form a few chords,<br />
I was able to write my own songs and it blossomed from<br />
there. I entered a competition with my first ever song – Peter<br />
Pan – and ended up winning which gave me a huge boost of<br />
confidence to really delve into music as a career.<br />
Can you pinpoint a live gig or a piece of music that initially<br />
inspired you?<br />
Joni Mitchell is someone who I take a huge amount of inspiration<br />
from; Both Sides Now is a classic. I listened to her earlier version<br />
of the song then later found she’d re-done it in her later life.<br />
It was even more emotional than the first time I heard it – like<br />
her career had come full circle and the song had even more<br />
depth and meaning. The lyrics really spoke to me and there was<br />
something about the tone of her voice that made me want to cry.<br />
Do you have a favourite song or piece of music to perform?<br />
What does it say about you?<br />
One of the first pieces of music that really resonated with me is<br />
Landslide by Stevie Nicks. I can remember listening to it when I<br />
was 13 and being blown away. It’s just always resonated with<br />
me personally and still does now, so I always slip it into a set. No<br />
matter how many times I play it, I still get the same feeling as<br />
when I first heard the song.<br />
What do you think is the overriding influence on your<br />
songwriting: other art, emotions, current affairs – or a mixture<br />
of all of these?<br />
It’s definitely a mix. I tend to write foremost from personal<br />
experiences and emotions, though. It’s just natural for me to do<br />
it that way. I feel that everyone pulls from personal experience,<br />
even if it’s not a conscious decision, although mine definitely is. I<br />
get to be completely vulnerable this way; it’s almost therapeutic to<br />
spill everything onto a page. It’s raw and honest and I find there’s<br />
not enough of that, lyrically, these days. People can always draw<br />
from your emotions. If you’re connecting with a song that you’ve<br />
poured your heart into, then the people listening to it will too.<br />
If you could support any artist in the future, who would it be?<br />
It’s always been a dream to support Damien Rice. I think my<br />
life would be complete if I accomplished that. There’s another<br />
artist not too dissimilar called David Keenan who I think is just<br />
an incredible folk influenced singer/songwriter. He’s grown really<br />
organically in the music scene and I admire that. More recently I’d<br />
say Sam Fender. His lyrics are so hard-hitting – really depressing,<br />
but relevant and raw. I admire him so much for writing around<br />
these subjects since I write around very similar topics.<br />
Do you have a favourite venue you’ve performed in?<br />
My favourite venue to perform in is 81 Renshaw. It was the first<br />
venue I had a real gig in, so it’s always going to be special. The<br />
whole atmosphere is just so welcoming , not only the musicians,<br />
but the audience are so respectful and genuinely interested in<br />
what you’re performing.<br />
Why is music important to you?<br />
Music has helped me massively. My entire life revolves around it.<br />
It has such great power to move people. If I can help someone out<br />
with what I write I think that would be an incredible feeling. You<br />
can write a song and sing it to a room full of people and they’ll all<br />
connect with it in different ways. I think it’s incredible.<br />
Photography: Robin Clewley / robinclewley.co.uk<br />
soundcloud.com/lydiah_official<br />
26
LITTLE<br />
GRACE<br />
Callum Horridge introduces us to<br />
the trio’s luscious pop stylings,<br />
which are pulled together with a<br />
collage-esque freedom.<br />
“Music is like a<br />
photo album for us”<br />
If you had to describe your music in a sentence, what would<br />
you say?<br />
I guess we’d define it as DIY pop, there is certainly a strong<br />
element of RnB in there though.<br />
How did you get into music?<br />
It was a pretty spontaneous decision. We all went to college to<br />
enrol on courses that we weren’t ‘qualified enough’ to be on. We<br />
all enjoyed playing music and decided that this sounded like a<br />
good idea. I don’t think, at the age of 16, any of us were really<br />
thinking about the future of this decision.<br />
Can you pinpoint a live gig or a piece of music that initially<br />
inspired you?<br />
My mum has always been into Motown/soul, but my dad played<br />
me a cassette of him and his friend when I was younger. I had<br />
this strange feeling, which you might say is ‘cringe’, but I think<br />
something really resonated with me back then. I felt like it was<br />
a definitive moment and I thought, ‘I could do this; I could be a<br />
singer or a musician’.<br />
Do you have a favourite song or piece of music to perform?<br />
Perhaps Silence, our latest release. We’ve never actually<br />
performed it at a show, but we have done a live video with some<br />
amazing musicians, vocals and synths. We got our friend Tee<br />
involved with that, which was an honour. He put a verse over it<br />
and it’s just the heaviest.<br />
Why is music important to you?<br />
It’s a huge therapeutic measure. Some things we write in our<br />
songs we could maybe never imagine saying them to the person<br />
who it’s directed at, so being able to put that in a line and letting<br />
it be said, that can heal a person. Also, there’s a documenting<br />
side of it; we often reflect on songs that we’ve written and who<br />
was involved in our lives at that moment in time. It’s like a photo<br />
album for us.<br />
Do you have a favourite venue you’ve performed in? If so, what<br />
makes it special?<br />
Churches. The live video I mentioned earlier, that was shot in the<br />
Church of St Matthew and St James in Mossley Hill. The way the<br />
sound travelled in the room was haunting. We also played in a<br />
church in Leicester with Sofar Sounds. It hadn’t been used for 30<br />
years prior and it had no heating, in the middle of February, so it<br />
was a cold set. They passed around those foil safety blankets it<br />
was that cold.<br />
What do you think is the overriding influence on your<br />
songwriting: other art, emotions, current affairs – or a mixture<br />
of all of these?<br />
I’d be lying if I said we stick to one thing when writing, but we<br />
do focus closely on mental health. If there’s something that we<br />
can’t really voice in general conversation, it’s most likely in a tune<br />
somewhere. We’ve also been known to lend from other artists,<br />
such as Tracey Emin on our track My Bed.<br />
Photography: Shea McChrystal<br />
littlegrace.org<br />
Silence is out now, as well as a new version featuring a verse by<br />
Tee.<br />
NIKKI & THE<br />
WAVES<br />
Drift away on the cloud-lined melodies of<br />
this Amsterdam infused outfit who are<br />
sweeping through the local scene.<br />
“It wasn’t until I<br />
moved to Liverpool<br />
and met other<br />
musicians that<br />
something clicked<br />
with regards to<br />
music making”<br />
If you had to describe your style in a sentence, what would you<br />
say?<br />
Breezy, dream-laced pop, surf and new wave elements.<br />
Have you always wanted to create music?<br />
Nikki: I started playing piano at age 12 but never practised very<br />
seriously. I tried writing some songs in my room when I was<br />
a moody teenager, but the grassroots scene in Amsterdam,<br />
where I am originally from, is basically non-existent. It wasn’t<br />
until I moved to Liverpool and met lots of other musicians that<br />
something clicked in my head with regards to music making.<br />
Can you pinpoint a live gig or a piece of music that initially<br />
inspired you?<br />
Tom W: When my dad played me Black Magic Woman by<br />
Fleetwood Mac for the first time on tape as we were driving<br />
through France looking for somewhere to pitch our tent. It made<br />
me love Peter Green as a songwriter, and the early Fleetwood<br />
Mac allowed Mick Fleetwood to definitely influence my drumming<br />
style.<br />
Do you have a favourite song or piece of music to perform?<br />
N: I really love playing our new song Romance At The Sha-La-La.<br />
It’s one of the few songs that I don’t play keys on, so I get to walk<br />
around on stage a bit more. Our new single Welsh Mountains is<br />
always really nice to play as well because it starts off so softly<br />
but builds to something more cinematic.<br />
Jake: About You because I dig the way it starts with a Crumbstyle<br />
riff and then progresses to a heavy, Tame Impala-esque riff,<br />
which shows off our versatility.<br />
What do you think is the overriding influence on your<br />
songwriting: other art, emotions, current affairs – or a mixture<br />
of all of these?<br />
N: My own emotions and memories as well as observations I<br />
have of the people around me. I’m also inspired by other artists<br />
and bands and films that portray a mood or atmosphere that I<br />
tried to recreate through music.<br />
Why is music important to you?<br />
N: I guess music has and will always be a way for me to relate to my<br />
emotions and feel less alone. It’s not just writing music that makes<br />
me feel like I can express myself – even just listening to something I<br />
really love, or that speaks to me at that time, can do that.<br />
Tom S: It’s everything.<br />
Do you have a favourite venue you’ve performed in?<br />
N: I think we all agree that it’s probably the Palm House in Sefton<br />
Park. We played there in March for Fiesta Bombarda. It was such<br />
a surreal and beautiful setting to play in; glass, plants and palms<br />
all around us. Totally different from the usual dark and moody<br />
basements.<br />
If you could support any artist in the future, who would it be?<br />
N: We each have our own idols and dream artists that we would<br />
love to support. As a band we would love to play with Whitney,<br />
TOPS, No Vacation or Metronomy. Though I would be lying if<br />
I didn’t mention Arctic Monkeys, even if we don’t fit that well<br />
musically.<br />
Photography: Carin Verbruggen<br />
facebook.com/nikkiandthewaves<br />
Welsh Mountains is out now.<br />
SPOTLIGHT<br />
27
lonely up here in Middle England,” laments<br />
RICHARD DAWSON on Jogging, the first single<br />
lifted from his latest solo album 2020. It would<br />
“It’s<br />
appear Northumberland’s finest harbinger of doom<br />
has bid farewell to the sixth-century kingdom of Bryneich that<br />
provided the grizzled backdrop to his last record Peasant, turning<br />
in favour of an all too familiar contemporary scene.<br />
Whether detected in the nervous sideways glance of the<br />
jogger, in the pained expression of the Civil Servant severing<br />
another Disability Living Allowance, or stood quivering in the<br />
piss-specked shoes of the fulfilment centre employee peeing in<br />
a bottle to save missing their quarters, it’s easy to make out the<br />
emerging figure of a conflicted 21st-century Britain in Dawson’s<br />
tales.<br />
Yet, despite the bleakness, 2020 still triumphs through<br />
instances of courageousness, black comedy and real lingering<br />
beauty. Tasked with decoding his aching accounts, David Weir<br />
caught up with the Hen Ogledd main-man to discuss UFOs,<br />
time perception and the ins-and-outs of writing a minor-key<br />
masterpiece.<br />
There’s definitely a stronger pop feel on 2020 compared to your<br />
past records. What triggered the move away from acoustic and<br />
brass in favour of synths and vocoders?<br />
Well, I think a big factor is Sally’s [Pilkington] influence. She’s<br />
been introducing me to a lot of classic pop that I’ve never really<br />
explored. Artists like Kate Bush, Erasure and Prince. This record<br />
needed to be really direct or ‘direct sounding’. So, I wanted to use<br />
the language of rock music to create these big, anthemic choruses,<br />
but then the words would be in opposition to that. I hope it makes<br />
for a really awkward feeling, but you might not even really pick up<br />
on why. Musically, it should almost sound ubiquitous. Peasant had<br />
a very distinct sound design. For instance Angharad Davies’ violin,<br />
I saw this almost as if it were a weather event, like frost.<br />
This record needed to use this ‘common language’ of electric<br />
guitar and drums. It feels more familiar, like the estate where you<br />
grew up. These blocks of sound, all semi-detached houses. Then<br />
hopefully, the melodies and the words are the lifeforms that aren’t<br />
quite fitting in to that blander picture. It’s a strange aim to make a<br />
record that’s bland sounding!<br />
Peasant and The Glass Trunk required a lot of archival research,<br />
whereas 2020 is obviously more concerned with current affairs.<br />
Against the constant flood of news and media content, how did<br />
you manage to narrow down the individual accounts in these<br />
songs?<br />
Well, I’m quite lucky in a way, people will just open up to us about<br />
things. This time around it was more through my own experiences,<br />
talking to friends, family and to a lot of people at gigs. I’m not one<br />
of those vulture kind of writers, always on the hunt for lyrics. But<br />
repeatedly people would mention the same kind of issues they<br />
were going through. It just felt like this was worth writing about.<br />
When I’m working on a piece – I’ve had this sense more and more<br />
recently – of the people being real and alive. I recognise it could<br />
be a symptom of my mental health situation, but I’m convinced<br />
that it’s possible to be in touch with people in different ways and<br />
different times. You know our perception of time is that it goes in a<br />
line. Well, that’s our experience of it, for the sake of our bodies to<br />
manoeuvre them safely through space. But actually, I find time… it<br />
doesn’t work like that.<br />
I’ve been singing this song about a mother in 15th-century<br />
Hexham and I really like this person, she’s alive! It’s not an act of<br />
imagination, it’s just a different way of life. When you’re working<br />
on these songs and these people make themselves known –<br />
whether or not this is all bollocks, and it’s just my imagination<br />
and I’m disguising that, the fact remains that you have to be<br />
honourable to these people and treat them with respect. It was<br />
just a case of trying to do right by them.<br />
Certain tracks remind me of David Foster Wallace’s short stories<br />
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. Wallace was interested in<br />
our approach to ‘dreary, seemingly meaningless routines’. He<br />
spoke about the kind of freedom that’s truly important is the<br />
one we rarely hear about in the ‘great outside world of wanting<br />
and achieving’. I was wondering if you feel that crops up in the<br />
narrative at all?<br />
I guess it’s more about what’s the stuff of life? In the space of all<br />
of this, how do you keep your eyes and heart open? How can we<br />
really express something about what it is to be alive? Because<br />
these things like having to brush your teeth, wipe your arse, put<br />
on clothes in the right manner, it’s so basic yet it amounts to so<br />
much time. It has a massive effect on our day, though, and it’s not<br />
separate from a big life event.<br />
If you don’t feel comfortable in your clothes, you’re going to feel<br />
awkward and anxious in public. Even just walking past people in<br />
the street, everyone you pass you’re going through an internal<br />
dialogue in your head at a hundred miles per hour. I don’t see<br />
separation between this and maybe more dramatic events. It’s<br />
amazing to think about brushing your teeth, all those little germs<br />
and microbes that you’re dislodging. If you could zoom in and see<br />
all the living things that are in between your gums. There’s drama<br />
at every level.<br />
People in these songs are often simply just trying to catch their<br />
breath or start their day on the right side of the bed…<br />
Yeh, for sure. We wake up and we just get stuff hurled at us in a<br />
way that has never been part of the human make-up ever before.<br />
GIG<br />
PREVIEWS<br />
RICHARD DAWSON<br />
Parr Street Studio 2 – 23/11<br />
The North Eastern bard casts his gaze towards 2020 and locates an<br />
endearing magic found in the most common sets of eyes.<br />
Just the sheer amount of information we’re processing and the<br />
different ways we’re engaging with faces and people, all the<br />
streams we’re looking at. It’s so brand new. We haven’t adapted. I<br />
think it’s a really crazy time to be a human.<br />
We wonder why we’re kind of confused and a bit lost, but the<br />
landscape has just changed so dramatically that it’s no wonder. It<br />
would be more of a wonder if we weren’t anxious or depressed.<br />
It’s more of a physical reaction to being surrounded by stress,<br />
information and fast change.<br />
Black Triangle is a standout for<br />
me. It begins with a UFO sighting.<br />
Do you feel these kinds of reports<br />
are founded in escapism or<br />
something else?<br />
From my experience with these<br />
kind of things, no. I’m sure that’s<br />
an element to it, you see all these<br />
conspiracies on YouTube. But this<br />
song is not about that for me. None<br />
of the album is autobiographical,<br />
but the first half of this song<br />
is drawn from something that<br />
happened to me and my pal Neil.<br />
We did see this incredible black<br />
craft come over my parents’ house<br />
and it wasn’t a commercial aircraft<br />
either. The government released<br />
papers on this phenomenon, as it’s the most widely spotted<br />
UFO. It was so crazy the explanation they gave, they said it<br />
was a “triangular illusion” created by plasma. I can tell you with<br />
certainty, this isn’t what we saw. This was a solid thing and it<br />
moved incredibly fast and silent. So, it’s either a secret aircraft or<br />
it’s extra-terrestrials. I don’t see that there’s any other explanation.<br />
It’s a hopeful song in some ways. He goes out to the country with<br />
his daughter and they share in watching the stars together. I can’t<br />
think of a happier moment than that, really. There’s a lot of hope<br />
on the album, even if it is predominantly sad.<br />
It can regularly feel as humans we’re chasing some form of<br />
magic or mystery. How do you feel that plays into you work as<br />
a songwriter?<br />
I believe in magic. I’ve talked in a few other interviews about Alan<br />
Moore and an interview he gave where he speaks about the role<br />
of the bard. In the past, the role of the bard was doubly important<br />
“The power of a word or<br />
a melody can be quite<br />
profound: it can change<br />
minds, it can change<br />
the way in which people<br />
perceive things”<br />
because not everyone had access to the written word. So, to cast<br />
a spell was simply to ‘spell’ – this is Moore talking, not me. I’ve<br />
thought about this a lot since, what the role of a musician is.<br />
The power of a word or a melody combined is something I think<br />
can be quite profound: it can change minds, it can change the way<br />
in which people perceive things, it can change the way people act.<br />
So, it’s absolutely the highest honour and of grave importance to<br />
try connect with people. Without wanting to be self-righteous, you<br />
feel that you’re maybe fighting the good fight. It’s probably a losing<br />
battle but those are the only battles worth fighting anyhow.<br />
So, is that how you keep faith,<br />
then? Does sharing it within<br />
a musical community help<br />
strengthen that feeling, maybe<br />
making it more impactful?<br />
You don’t have a choice whether<br />
you do it or not, really; you just do<br />
it. People have always made stuff<br />
regardless of the scene or what the<br />
wider picture is. Even just playing<br />
music at home, you’re communing<br />
with something off in some far<br />
place. Music is alive and that’s<br />
enough. But, if you share it with<br />
other musicians and audiences,<br />
you can really change things. We’re<br />
all making an impact. Hence why<br />
you’ve got to be careful with your time and be considerate of how<br />
you live. It all has an effect. Whether you’re doing something public<br />
and outgoing or something quiet and private. I think that as much<br />
as I treasure the role of the bardic tradition and my place in that,<br />
I see that it’s not brain surgery. It’s not being a nurse, fireman or<br />
teacher. I’d be very remiss to place it in any hierarchy, because how<br />
can you say anything is more life-changing than those jobs. !<br />
Words: David Weir / @betweenseeds<br />
Photography: Sally Pilkington<br />
richarddawson.net<br />
Richard Dawson plays Parr Street Studio 2 on Saturday 23rd<br />
<strong>November</strong>. 2020 is out now via Weird World.<br />
PREVIEWS<br />
29
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In anticipation of their Liverpool gig, Brit Williams spoke to<br />
bassist Jared Swilley about the band’s new album, growing<br />
up in a religious family, and what’s help keep the Black Lips<br />
alive for two decades.<br />
PREVIEWS<br />
Black Lips have a little bit of a connection with Liverpool. You<br />
guys have worked with Sean Lennon before. How did that<br />
happen?<br />
We have actually known him for a while. Three albums ago<br />
we were recording with Mark Ronson and we needed a guitar<br />
player, and it happened to be Sean who came in. We kind of<br />
just stayed friends after that and we all had mutual friends. We<br />
also played SXSW with Sean’s band and with Fat White Family,<br />
so we both discovered them at the same time. Sean ended up<br />
recording the Fat Whites and they invited Cole [Alexander] to do<br />
guitar. We didn’t really have a label at the time and didn’t have<br />
many resources. Cole was up there in New York and Sean just<br />
said, ‘Come record here’. So we moved in with him.<br />
I heard you locked yourself in his recording studio for two<br />
months. Do you normally go into the studio like that, with<br />
nothing written?<br />
That one took a little longer than usual because we didn’t have<br />
a lot written, and we didn’t have a drummer. We also just had<br />
the luxury of being on this magical mountain in the middle of<br />
nowhere, so it was easy to kind of just turn off and tune out.<br />
Both aspects have their ups and downs. I mean, I prefer to have<br />
at least something done. That one was probably my favourite<br />
recording experience we’ve ever had, just because we were in a<br />
point of transition and it was such a magical place.<br />
Do you feel like, as you get older, you are writing about more<br />
mature topics, or are you just trying to stay as authentic as you<br />
know to be?<br />
Oh yeh, I don’t really try to set out to write about anything. I<br />
mostly write about stories. Everyone has their own different<br />
writing style. I never really wrote love songs. I mean, the last<br />
sort of love song I wrote was a couple getting separated on<br />
Kristallnacht in Berlin. I was trying to think of one of the most<br />
devastating ways to split a pair up.<br />
We hear you might be playing some new music on tour?<br />
Yeh, our album’s done. It’s been done for a while. By the time<br />
we get to Liverpool we’ll have some of those singles out and<br />
already be playing a lot of those songs. We like country music<br />
and always flirted with that kind of style. It’s not a purist country<br />
record by any means, but we just felt like had to go back to our<br />
roots and do country music. That’s where we’re from.<br />
Can you tell us what it’s called?<br />
Oh yeh, I don’t see why not. It’s called, The Black Lips Sing In A<br />
World That’s Falling Apart.<br />
Love that. What inspired the name?<br />
My family are all preachers and they put out a lot of gospel<br />
records from the 50s to the 80s, and they had an album called<br />
The Swilley Family Sings, and then we had a lyric on our album<br />
“in a world that’s falling apart”, so I wanted it to sound like an old<br />
gospel record title.<br />
Coming from such a religious background, at what point did<br />
you pick up a guitar and get into music?<br />
Before I can remember. I grew up on the stage. I’ve seen<br />
performances of me on stage that I don’t even remember doing,<br />
so basically my whole life. It’s like the family business, kinda.<br />
So what does your family think of you being in the Black Lips?<br />
They’ve always been a very accepting, liberal theology. My dad’s<br />
a homosexual; he came out a few<br />
years ago. He lost his main church,<br />
but he still has his church. They<br />
mostly preach love and acceptance<br />
and all that. There was never a<br />
conflict at all. I got most of my<br />
inspiration from the church, ’cos I<br />
grew up in one of those churches<br />
where they’re screaming and the<br />
music’s wild and they’re speaking<br />
tongues. It was way more wild<br />
than any rock ’n’ roll show I’ve ever<br />
been to.<br />
That must be where some of the<br />
outrageous onstage antics come<br />
from?<br />
Totally. I always thought that if I<br />
could get just a [bit of their vibe],<br />
’cos those people are doing that on<br />
a Sunday morning with no alcohol<br />
and they’re going wild. And they’re<br />
singing about something that they think is eternity and is way<br />
more powerful. We sing about, I dunno, dumb stuff. Well, not<br />
dumb, but if we could get even a fraction of this energy into our<br />
shows, I’d be happy.<br />
Do you think there will still be garage rock bands in the digital<br />
age?<br />
I think there will be a few, but I don’t really think you’ll see any<br />
GIG<br />
“I grew up in one of<br />
those churches where<br />
they’re screaming<br />
and the music’s wild<br />
and they’re speaking<br />
in tongues. It was<br />
way more wild than<br />
any rock ’n’ roll<br />
show I’ve been to”<br />
BLACK LIPS<br />
Arts Club – 13/11<br />
Garage outfit BLACK LIPS have resided in an all-encompassing<br />
rock ’n’ roll lifestyle for the better part of two decades. Their story is<br />
one that has grown from the suburbs of Atlanta into countless nights<br />
on tour, audience-led stage invasions and work alongside some of<br />
music’s biggest names, including Mark Ronson, The Black Keys and<br />
Beatle-descendent Sean Lennon.<br />
bands doing what we did. It took us seven years in a van, eating<br />
shit. I mean, that was self-imposed. We were middle-class kids,<br />
we didn’t have to; it was self-imposed poverty. I don’t really<br />
think there’s a formula any more. I could be wrong. But now it’s<br />
so easy to connect with everyone. When we started, no one<br />
had cell phones, and it was a very<br />
different thing. We never used the<br />
internet and we still are luddites<br />
about all that stuff. Even ’til this day,<br />
I can barely use the internet. I can<br />
email, but I don’t even know where<br />
to look for stuff.<br />
Yeh, there’s almost too many<br />
resources these days. It’s kind of<br />
exhausting.<br />
I only had a few sources when I was<br />
younger. Mail order catalogs and<br />
Maximum Rock ’n’ Roll and that was<br />
it, but those were physical copies.<br />
I’m glad that there’s people like ya’ll<br />
still having stuff in print. I like stuff I<br />
can pick up.<br />
What do you want the crowd to<br />
get out of your performance?<br />
I want people to get their damn<br />
money’s worth because it’s not cheap to go out. It’s kind of like<br />
an escape ’cos the world can be rough and you need to just go<br />
out and let loose. We just want people to have a good time and<br />
meet each other. One of the best compliments is that we’ve had<br />
a few Black Lips babies, from people who have met at our shows<br />
and got married. That makes it all worth it. I love seeing Black<br />
Lips tattoos, too. If you have one of those you get into all of our<br />
shows free for life.<br />
What have you been listening to lately?<br />
As far as new stuff goes, I am totally out of the loop. I was just<br />
in Croatia to go and check it out. I actually got my tooth busted<br />
out a while back, so I heard they do cheap general surgery<br />
over there, and I was just cruisin’ around the mountains in the<br />
most beautiful place I’ve ever been and I think I listened to The<br />
13th Floor Elevators all together for 22 hours straight. Last<br />
night when I was up in Malibu I was listening to Loretta Lynn<br />
and Tammy Wynette. I found the music I like a long time ago.<br />
In my record collection at home I’ve got about 300, I don’t buy<br />
any new records. Mostly just 45s now. I just listen to a lot of<br />
country music and gospel, soul and R&B. It got a bad rap, the<br />
South. It’s not really what most people think it is. It’s real dear<br />
to me. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I think most forms<br />
of popular music came from the South East. It was the first time<br />
you had all of these different types of people thrown together,<br />
living in poverty. You had poor Irish, mixing with slaves and<br />
Native Americans and it was such a weird mix of stuff where<br />
everyone shared their ideas and came up with some really cool<br />
styles.<br />
What do you think has kept Black Lips alive for 20 years?<br />
This is what we do. This is what me and Cole set out to do<br />
when we were kids, and we don’t really have that many other<br />
skills. If we hadn’t gotten into music it would have been prison<br />
or the military. That’s what a lot of the kids I went to high<br />
school with ending up doing, so it kinda saved our lives. !<br />
Words: Brit Williams @therealbritjean<br />
Photography: Yana Yatsuk<br />
black-lips.com<br />
Black Lips play Arts Club on Wednesday 13th <strong>November</strong>.<br />
PREVIEWS<br />
31
PREVIEWS<br />
Warm Worlds And Otherwise (Anna Bunting-Branch)<br />
EXHBITION<br />
YOU FEEL ME<br />
FACT – 01/11-23/02<br />
The rigid power structures that govern our world have profound impacts on our<br />
everyday experiences, such as the way we relate to technology, politics and each<br />
other. FACT’s new exhibition seeks to challenge the traditional ideas around those<br />
who hold this power by compelling us to question who ultimately benefits from it.<br />
Presented by FACT curator-in-residence Helen Starr, you feel me_ will transform FACT’s<br />
galleries into alternative worlds. Interactive artworks will suspend in the air, float in a hazy<br />
mist and explode onto walls. The immersive exhibition includes a range of different artworks<br />
that reaches beyond FACT’s usual digital remit: there will be ceramics, virtual reality, artificial<br />
intelligence and game design in play. The result is the creation of a mystical space, free from<br />
division and bias and a sanctuary for healing.<br />
ANNA BUNTING-BRANCH’s Warm Worlds And Otherwise contains a mix of artworks,<br />
centred upon the piece META, which uses experimental animation and digital technology to<br />
transport viewers between environments, including unknown planets and a restaurant orbiting<br />
in space. MEGAN BROADMEADOW’s Why Can’t We Do This IRL? is a virtual reality experience<br />
that is based on the video game Red Dead Redemption 2. The two-part artwork will challenge<br />
a viral video from the game in which a player uses his in-game avatar to kill a suffragette.<br />
Blending the boundaries between the game world and the ‘real’ world, the work exists as an<br />
act of justice. The video game character is placed on trial to be judged ‘in real life’, with the<br />
‘verdict’ set for December when the artwork will be installed in FACT’s galleries in its final form.<br />
When looked at through the prism of restorative justice, it is hoped that you feel me_ will<br />
make it easier for the viewer to imagine a world without division. By challenging the systems of<br />
power that are all around us, and allowing otherwise marginalised voices to flourish, maybe we<br />
can disrupt the world in a way that creates a fairer system for all.<br />
fact.co.uk<br />
LECTURE + CABARET<br />
WHO CALLS THE<br />
SHOTS?<br />
Museum of Liverpool and The Bluecoat – 30/11<br />
Theatre maker and associate director for Graeae Theatre Company, NICKIE MILES-<br />
WILDIN, is the keynote speaker and host of the annual Edward Rushton Lecture,<br />
which takes place at the Museum of Liverpool at the end of the month. Titled<br />
Disabled Women In Arts And Culture: Who’s Calling The Shots?, Miles-Wildin’s<br />
address looks at the representation of disabled women in the arts sector – and is part of a<br />
two-pronged event from DaDaFest as part of RISE Liverpool, a season of exhibitions, events<br />
and happenings featuring extraordinary female artists, thinkers and leaders in Liverpool.<br />
This annual free event is inspired by the strength and revolutionary ideology of human rights<br />
campaigner Edward Rushton, who was born in <strong>November</strong> over 260 years ago. Following the<br />
lecture that bears his name, a lively panel discussion will interrogate the theme further. Chaired<br />
by DR ERIN PRITCHARD, lecturer at Liverpool Hope University in the Department of Disability<br />
and Education, the panel of artists – JACKIE HAGAN, CHERYL MARTIN and TAMMY REYNOLDS<br />
– will look at how stereotypical portrayals of disabled women affect our perception of disabled<br />
women in reality.<br />
The second part of the day’s activity sees the action move over to The Bluecoat for Raw.,<br />
where attendees are invited to “dress to impress… yourself”. A wild night of raucous, irreverent<br />
and inclusive cabaret centred on disabled women’s voices in the North West, Raw. is hosted by<br />
Liverpool legend MIDGITTE BARDOT, and boasts an incredible line-up of performers, including:<br />
CHERYL MARTIN, IVY PROFEMME, Jackie Hagan and MARILYN MISANDRY.<br />
Both events are part of DaDaFest’s ongoing programme of activity that uses the arts to<br />
educate, challenge attitudes and remove the barriers that restrict life choices for disabled and d/<br />
Deaf people to live independently and equally in society. Head to dadafest.co.uk to book tickets<br />
for both events, which have limited capacities.<br />
DaDaFest<br />
EVENT DISCOVERY PARTNER<br />
ticketquarter.co.uk<br />
32
GIG<br />
Mac Demarco<br />
Bramley Moore Dock – 28/11<br />
Mac Demarco<br />
MAC DEMARCO’s magnetic charm has seen his star rise from lo-fi slacker to full<br />
blown superstar of the indie scene. But he’s far from a one trick pony. While his<br />
earlier records drifted by with a soft summer breeze, his two most recent efforts -<br />
This Old Dog and Here Comes The Cowboy - see the laid back crooner display a<br />
slower, more introspective side to his songwriting. Rather than swerve between<br />
sweet reverb washed licks, he’s embraced more acoustic guitar, hardwiring<br />
personal narratives into the music to complete an intriguing transformation to<br />
campfire storyteller with hints of expansive country. But where his music has<br />
grown softer curves, his live show still appears to flex every musical muscle of his<br />
discography. Setting up at the sizable Bramley Moore Dock, this stop on his UK<br />
will serve as an opportunity to refamiliarise yourself with Mac the showman.<br />
THEATRE<br />
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein<br />
The Playhouse – 11/11-16/11<br />
Mary Shelly’s Gothic masterpiece has become a totem of the horror genre, with its<br />
DNA embedded in our modern day fascination with the shadowy dungeons of the<br />
human condition. Much has been made of the teenage Shelley’s formative travels<br />
across Germany and Switzerland in the early part of the 19th Century, but what of<br />
Shelley’s own place as a young woman in this tale? This adaptation of the revered<br />
story of Frankenstein’s monster, by the award-winning writer Rona Munro, places<br />
Mary Shelley in the drama as a character. As the action rages around her, the<br />
writer is forced – in an eerie mirroring of the travails of Frankenstein himself – to<br />
wrestle with her creation, and also with the stark realities facing revolutionary<br />
young women, then and now. Tickets available at ticketquarter.co.uk.<br />
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein<br />
GIG<br />
Declan Welsh & The Decadent West<br />
Phase One – 09/11<br />
This has been a busy year for DECLAN WELSH. Along with his band, the Glaswegian<br />
songwriter and poet has been touring his taut indie rock across sold-out shows in the<br />
UK, topped off with an electrifying, Billy Bragg-approved appearance at Glastonbury. By<br />
way of introducing their new album, Cheaply Bought, Expensively Sold, to the world, THE<br />
DECADENT WEST are stopping by Phase One for a show with Edge Hill University and<br />
their label, Modern Sky UK. Supporting Welsh and co are THE INDICA GALLERY, whose<br />
psych-inflected indie surrealism will be the perfect foil to Welsh’s unapologetic, direct<br />
swagger. Experimental Welsh artist ANI GLASS is charged with adding an air of mystique<br />
to proceedings, and we recommend you don’t miss her synth wizardry.<br />
GIG<br />
Têtes De Pois<br />
The Jacaranda – 19/11<br />
ParrJazz’s regular dose of telescopic sounds welcomes the much-touted Leeds<br />
ensemble TÊTES DE POIS for a good old knees up in the Jacaranda basement.<br />
Meeting as students of Leeds College of Music and forming the band in 2016,<br />
the seven-piece have been quick to win plaudits for their intra-band fluidity; each<br />
member happily carries leads and can navigate the group through switches of jazz,<br />
neo soul, Afrobeat and hip hop – all of which is executed with an enviable harmony<br />
and flair. You might even say they play with the snugness of seven jazzy peas in a<br />
pod. Head on down and watch their instruments unify to take on the role of a deep<br />
digging DJ. Head to TicketQuarter.co.uk now to pick up your tickets for this show.<br />
GIG<br />
Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi<br />
Grand Central – 28/11<br />
Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi<br />
The combination of Italian jazz multi-instrumentalist FRANCESCO TURRISI and singer-songwriter RHIANNON GIDDENS<br />
produced one of the most awe-inspiring albums of <strong>2019</strong>. There Is No Other was heralded for its daring fusion of genres that<br />
sees the two strike up a partnership that covers Mediterranean, African and Arabian influences. The pairing’s mastery is the<br />
glue that holds it all together. The album’s alluring folk compositions will be on display in an equally baroque setting when the<br />
two import their music into the confines of the Dome in Grand Central. Perhaps one of the more thought-provoking shows<br />
throughout the month, the exhibition of genre fusion will leave little to the imagination once their set has completed its sonic<br />
travels.<br />
GIG<br />
Calexico and Iron & Wine<br />
Philharmonic Hall – 19/11<br />
Emerging from the ‘desert noir’ outer edges of the Californian border, long-standing indie<br />
Americana duo CALEXICO head Liverpool way for a journey to the atmospheric, Latin-infused<br />
landscapes encapsulated in their sound. First playing together in the early 90s, the band have spent<br />
the best part of the last three decades crafting soundtracks pulled from sunburst sunsets and the<br />
open landscape hugging the Mexican ridge. One of their most memorable records, 2005 EP In<br />
The Reins, was a collaboration with indie folk singer-songwriter IRON & WINE, who is also set to<br />
appear on the bill for the show at the Philharmonic. The EP is lauded in the Americana world for<br />
its ingenuity and groundbreaking soundscapes, with their combination live on stage as stirring as<br />
it is uncompromising. Expect to hear further cuts from their new collaborative effort Years To Burn,<br />
released in June.<br />
Calexico and Iron & Wine<br />
PREVIEWS<br />
33
REVIEWS<br />
“Baltic Weekender is<br />
vital to the existence<br />
and quality of<br />
Liverpool’s electronic<br />
music scene”<br />
My Nu Leng (Fin Reed / @finlayreed)<br />
Baltic Weekender<br />
Baltic Triangle – 27/09-28/09<br />
September has always been a standout month. It signals<br />
a particular new starting point. More so than January. At least<br />
a more realistic one. This starting point is not static, but very<br />
much in motion, bridging two seasons and taking place at<br />
certain crossroads in people’s lives. Be it the beginning of a new<br />
academic year, a new work environment or simply a revitalised<br />
perspective after glorious summer holidays, September is<br />
a month of promise, anticipation and excitement. It seems<br />
only right that the organisers of BALTIC WEEKENDER have<br />
chosen this period to take the next step forward in the festival’s<br />
development.<br />
Baltic Weekender is a two-day, multi-venue event which,<br />
until now, has taken over the whole of the Baltic Triangle<br />
during the last weekend of May, or the first weekend of June.<br />
Upon launching in 2017, it instantly became one of the most<br />
important dates in Liverpool’s electronic events calendar. The<br />
musical talent collated by Andrew Hill of Abandon Silence and<br />
24 Kitchen Street’s Ioan Roberts is vital to the existence and<br />
quality of Liverpool’s electronic scene. Baltic Weekender is a<br />
celebration of the musical flavours that have graced the Baltic<br />
Triangle throughout the academic year, bringing many genres of<br />
electronic music to the fold including house, techno, disco, grime,<br />
bass music and more. Showcasing renowned pros of the game<br />
as well as the new generation breaking in, Baltic Weekender<br />
September Edition displays a renewed awareness and thirst to<br />
place Liverpool on the electronic map.<br />
To start off, we head straight to Constellations. The garden<br />
is beautifully lit, refreshingly vacant and extends a mellow<br />
vibe. There is a modest gathering around the far left corner<br />
where good friends GIOVANNA and SOFIE K are going b2b.<br />
Both having a penchant for cosmic sounds; the DJs flood<br />
Constellations with tumbling melodies, harmonising their mix<br />
with the setting in which they are playing. But this is a short-term<br />
harmony. A rapid yet seamless switch-up takes the crowd by<br />
surprise as some infectious UKG filters its way into the speakers.<br />
Shortly, a mixture of Italo and Balearic house flows in, syncopated<br />
by powering basslines. I turn my attention to the two selectors as<br />
my view of them begins to be obstructed by committed dancers.<br />
Whether it’s an approving smile at the other’s drop, animated talk<br />
concerning the queued track or cheerful and carefree dancing,<br />
Giovanna and Sofie K are in constant interaction with each<br />
other which helps establish the general atmosphere as intimate,<br />
unentitled and groovy.<br />
I leave the warm revels of Constellations Garden to check out<br />
how different the atmosphere is at Hangar 34, where bassline<br />
dons MY NU LENG are in the process of obliterating the crowd<br />
with their infamous wobblers. Queuing for entry, I wonder how<br />
many people bought their tickets just to see My Nu Leng. Once<br />
I’m in, I realise probably quite a few. Hangar is rammed with<br />
people dishing out gun-fingers to every wob they hear.<br />
Returning to Constellations Garden, I’m greeted with a crowd<br />
dancing to a twinkling 4/4 beat on top of the venue’s chairs and<br />
tables. It’s not even 12 yet, so we’re all good here. As I head in<br />
to get my spot for the upcoming boogie marathon courtesy of<br />
DAN SHAKE, I catch the end of ANDY GARVEY’s set. Playing<br />
to a gaggle of about 15 dancers, the Australian producer and<br />
label boss of Pure Space instils an extra-terrestrial soundscape<br />
composed of leftfield techno, breaks and acid rips, all lending<br />
from the darker spectrum of musical tones. The change that<br />
takes over as Dan Shake steps up to the decks is mind-blowing.<br />
The dancefloor is packed and sizzling within mere minutes of<br />
his mixing. The crowd is electrified with funky disco and jackin’<br />
house overlaid with blaring trumpet solos and roaring vocals.<br />
The groove is infectious. Dan Shake knows it. As he alternates<br />
between galvanising acid house, rolling percussions, disco<br />
classics with euphoric screeching vocals and more, he does<br />
justice to the latter part of his name. It’s 30 minutes before<br />
the end of his set when he delivers his biggest weapon: The<br />
Chemical Brothers’ Mah. I see Dan Shake turn the volume up<br />
to its fullest with a grin as the build-up progresses towards<br />
its pinnacle. The track’s infamous swirling acid rips zero in on<br />
us through the speakers – we are all floored. I look around in<br />
disbelief asking my friends, “Did he actually just do that?” It’s no<br />
surprise that people are still present when the lights come up at<br />
4am. We leave Constellations reeling.<br />
Stretching into day two and I’m drenched. Aside from being<br />
cold, the main nuisance caused by the unrelenting rain are the<br />
venue changes. KORNEL KOVACS is on duty at Blundell Street,<br />
superimposing his trademark tropical house with some farreaching<br />
trance, but is shortly moved inside as a result of the<br />
weather. A chaotic rush ensues as everyone attempts to secure<br />
their spot in the venue. I make it about three metres in before I’m<br />
pushed out. I check the set-times and head to District to get a<br />
healthy dose of jungle and DnB instead, courtesy of NICANDER<br />
HI-FI b2b OUTHOUSE SOUNDS.<br />
Conscious of time, I make my way over to Kitchen Street in<br />
order to guarantee a spot for HELENA HAUFF. Apart from the<br />
Kitchen Street sign that is lit up in ruby red, all the lights are out.<br />
The queen of electro appears behind the decks seemingly out<br />
of nowhere. She is ruthless in her takeover. She unleashes unto<br />
the under-prepared crowd overwhelming pieces of dark electro<br />
punctuated by rugged industrial clanging. Thrown into the mix<br />
is barbed acidic techno and apocalyptic breakbeats which engulf<br />
the room in a paradoxical sense of exhilaration. Paradoxical<br />
because the particular thrilling sense of release experienced<br />
during her set is achieved through exposure to fierce intensity.<br />
For some, this is too much. I notice people are restless when a<br />
man shifts his attention to the giant disco ball which hangs over<br />
the centre of Kitchen Street and begins to swing it. Others join in<br />
and it becomes clear to me that this is an attempt to distract and<br />
regain control of themselves, finding the absorption into Hauff’s<br />
nebulous world too extreme.<br />
It’s 2am and I’m enveloped in Hauff’s murky mystique,<br />
unsure of where to go next. I set my sights on Constellations<br />
where L U C Y is set to take us through to the end of the night<br />
with dashes of footwork. The room is just under half full, with<br />
the lights erratically projecting colours across the room. As<br />
I make my way to the front I stop short and stare at the DJ.<br />
Her face is hidden by a surgical mask – an accessory that she<br />
always wears when mixing – upon which is drawn a disfigured<br />
nose and mouth, with a bright red tongue dangling out of it.<br />
Amid the multi-genre 160-190 bpm chaos she’s playing which<br />
encompasses bass, breakbeat, grime, dubstep, happy hardcore,<br />
and genres I’m pretty sure only exist in a post-apocalyptic world,<br />
I’m taken by her contrasting tranquil composure. Despite her<br />
lashing out disorientating bass, L U C Y seems introspective<br />
as she slowly sways to the insane voltage she’s mixing. She<br />
throws quick glances to the crowd as she unfurls a universe of<br />
sounds accompanied by jagged and pitched-up one-word vocals,<br />
distorted sirens and old school arcade sound effects. By the end<br />
of the set, the expression drawn on her mask is the expression I<br />
found on every face in the dance – including my own.<br />
Returning to new beginnings of projects already in motion,<br />
Baltic Weekender September Edition marks a turning point for<br />
the series in terms of musical tone, diversity and crowd. What I<br />
experience is not the summer social event that everyone goes to<br />
once exams have finished; instead, Baltic Weekender hosts an<br />
event wherein burgeoning lovers of electronic music ae given a<br />
chance to get what they really want: the discovery of new sounds<br />
and new perspectives on those that are familiar. These dual toned<br />
editions are the best way forward for the future development of<br />
Liverpool’s electronic scene, alternately offering visibility on the<br />
one hand and an indulgence in intricate musical curiosity on the<br />
other. Baltic Weekender is the tangible proof of Liverpool’s power<br />
of community; the city’s ambition and its ever-growing passion<br />
for dance music – whatever the season. !<br />
Ambre Levy<br />
No Fakin (Fin Reed / @finlayreed)<br />
34
Ibibio Sound Machine<br />
I Love Live Events @ Invisible Wind Factory<br />
10/10<br />
The couple of hundred people who are at tonight’s show are<br />
the lucky few. Inside it’s a different world from the dreary October<br />
night of the real world and it’s a shame more people don’t get to<br />
see the spectacle.<br />
Without exaggeration, IBIBIO SOUND MACHINE produce<br />
one of the most entertaining and engaging gigs that Liverpool’s<br />
seen for a while. From the moment Eno Williams stalks on to<br />
the stage and launches in to I Need You To Be Sweet Like Sugar<br />
(from this year’s album, Doko Mien), to the last note of Basquiat,<br />
it’s a night that’s full of pure joy, happiness and dancing. So.<br />
Much. Dancing.<br />
Without exception, the eight-piece group is made up of<br />
incredible musicians (more of whom later) but the focus inevitably<br />
falls on to Williams whose stage presence, movement and voice<br />
are incredible. She commands attention and mesmerises the<br />
audience. Singing in a combination of English and Ibibio, her<br />
voice is powerful but maintains its clarity, and her chat between<br />
songs charismatic and so lovely. She makes it look easy – dancing<br />
round exuberantly with a charming smile, keeping time and note<br />
perfect, all in treacherously high heels.<br />
Her energy is contagious: with each song the mood lifts<br />
further, building to a euphoria by the end of the night. It’s a<br />
furious riot of sound – the riffs of the guitars and percussion<br />
work with the three-man brass section to build a multi-layered<br />
sound. It’s a wonderful atmosphere that fills the cathedral-like<br />
dimensions of the IWF with ebullience and joy.<br />
It’s not an overstatement to say that Williams’ voice is close<br />
to perfection: it’s a well-judged mix of raw power, control and<br />
warmth. When she’s not singing, she dances with the band<br />
during their solos and positions the microphone just so it’s<br />
in the right position to capture the sound of the trombone or<br />
saxophone.<br />
The brass section lifts the sound and adds a playful punch.<br />
It’s reminiscent of the 70s and 80s and the links to disco and funk<br />
jump out, but it’s anything but backward looking as the electronic<br />
sound, courtesy of the keyboards, brings a contemporary element<br />
and adds layers. The styles could clash in a cacophony but it’s<br />
amazing, vital and a wonderful combination – the genres blend<br />
together to create something new that defies easy definition.<br />
It’s a multi-layered sound from talented musicians that<br />
looks forward and which has an energy and creativity bubbling<br />
underneath. Alfred Kari Bannerman is the coolest looking lead<br />
guitarist in any band. The pace is furious and is maintained<br />
throughout with the exception of one track (I Know That You’re<br />
Thinking About Me) which gives everyone a chance to catch their<br />
breath.<br />
There are not many gigs where the majority of the audience<br />
are dancing – and I mean properly giving it some – from the<br />
first note. There’s a vibrancy and urgency that makes dancing<br />
inevitable: coats are discarded and everyone’s moving as the heat<br />
builds. The atmosphere is lovely and the crowd is a really friendly<br />
bunch. There’s no demarcation between audience and band by<br />
the end, just a group of people having a party.<br />
It’s a raucous sweaty affair that makes you feel the world<br />
would be a better place if Ibibio Sound Machine gig tickets were<br />
available on the NHS. When they tour next, be kind to yourself<br />
and go.<br />
Jennie Macaulay<br />
Ibibio Sound Machine (Glyn Akroyd / @glynakroyd)<br />
Ibibio Sound Machine (Glyn Akroyd / @glynakroyd)<br />
PuzzleCreature<br />
LEAP @ Invisible Wind Factory – 7/10<br />
“We have decided not to die,” announces the voice of artist<br />
Madeline Gins. The opening statement projecting from the eight<br />
speakers hung around the inflatable venue we find ourselves in.<br />
As the show begins, three dancers have recently entered via the<br />
zip-up door, quickly, so as not to deflate the translucent structure.<br />
Those dancers stare down audience members and inspect the<br />
mesh plaster casts of different parts of the body which are<br />
suspended from the ceiling. We’re collectively trying to solve<br />
PUZZLECREATURE.<br />
Gins’ words are part of her and partner Arakawa’s philosophy<br />
of Reversible Destiny. The artist-philosopher-architects worked<br />
with theories of architectural bodies – the human body’s<br />
interaction and blending with its surroundings and, more famously,<br />
worked on designs which looked to achieve immortality in their<br />
inhabitants. It’s ambitious stuff.<br />
The eight speakers now deliver Sebastian Reynolds’ specially<br />
commissioned soundtrack for the piece. It’s warm inside the plastic<br />
walls, yet the bassy drones, which ebb and flow in intensity, put<br />
the audience on edge. The three dancers contort into impossible<br />
shapes. They reflect and react to the white floating casts, copying<br />
the poses and inserting their own forms inside.<br />
Through projects like The Reversible Destiny Lofts and<br />
Bioscleave House, Arakawa and Gins sought to solve the issue<br />
of mortality by designing liveable environments which constantly<br />
questioned and challenged the way we live. In a statement after<br />
Arakawa passed away in 2010 Gins said “this mortality thing is<br />
bad news”. It is difficult to know how serious or sincere the artists<br />
were in their mission but they were consistent throughout a<br />
number of projects over several decades.<br />
The dancers lean on the soft walls of our temporary venue,<br />
climb over audience members and gyrate into the middle of the<br />
room. Audience members suppress smiles as they are pulled<br />
into the performance. The music gathers momentum and the<br />
dancers merge together before splitting off and exiting the<br />
inflatable arena. No one’s sure whether this signals the end of the<br />
performance and the questioning is palpable.<br />
We are then invited to leave the tent as quickly as possible<br />
and await the second half. In the exposed environs of the<br />
Invisible Wind Factory’s main room we experience a chill as we<br />
see the tent we called home now partially deflated.<br />
Across the undulating landscape the dancers tentatively<br />
begin again to engage with their expressive movements and<br />
each other. Atop the structure they are never still, slowly walking<br />
towards the audience, bending in and out of one-another. It’s<br />
difficult to look away. The scene is reminiscent of a sci-fi movie as<br />
one dancer is cocooned in the tent while the others move around<br />
them.<br />
Arakawa and Gin’s Reversible Destiny Lofts were all<br />
about defying conventional living by design. In prompting the<br />
inhabitants of the loft to constantly question and analyse their<br />
own processes of domestic routine the artist believe they could<br />
stave off the inevitable.<br />
By the end of the performance the inflatable stage is all but<br />
flat with some internal air still animating it. The dancers are all<br />
smiles after an hour of provocative or inscrutable expression.<br />
It’s the end of the performance and, while the inspirations<br />
of this piece Gins and Arakawa have since left this mortal stage,<br />
their ideas and challenges are a puzzle that won’t be solved and<br />
therefore live on.<br />
Sam Turner / @samturner1984<br />
REVIEWS 35
REVIEWS<br />
Modern Nature (Stuart Moulding / @Oohshootstu)<br />
Modern Nature<br />
Harvest Sun @ Shipping Forecast – 18/9<br />
In a time when it’s growing increasingly harder to connect<br />
with the natural world, MODERN NATURE’s music provides a<br />
fitting soundtrack for such escapism with their debut long player,<br />
How To Live. The band’s identity is very much a sum of its parts,<br />
featuring names from Ultimate Painting, Beak and Woods. As<br />
you might expect, the resulting sound is cosmic, reclined and<br />
altogether warming.<br />
They take to the stage without drawing too much attention<br />
to themselves The modestly decent turnout quickly edge forward<br />
to fill any unused space and what follows is an explorative and<br />
soul-soothing affair. Opener Bloom is an elegant introduction,<br />
commencing the set with an atmospheric and solitary saxophone.<br />
It’s clear from the off that these musicians are meant to be<br />
together; they simply glue so well.<br />
Jack Cooper’s voice has been key to the success of his many<br />
past projects and things aren’t much different this time around.<br />
There’s such an effortlessness behind the quartet as they<br />
continue to dispatch How To Live in its entirety. Evidently the<br />
record was built to flow, but also to retain a sense of freshness<br />
and surprise. There’s a light and shade throughout the night, as<br />
the band lull the crowd into their meandering jams before quickly<br />
bringing the tempo up into new territory.<br />
Theon Cross<br />
Stepping Tiger @ Storyhouse – 06/10<br />
Entering Chester’s Storyhouse to the unmistakable Nigerian<br />
electro-funk of William Onyeabor, it’s clear Stepping Tiger have<br />
something wilder in store than your average Sunday night at<br />
the theatre. Bordered by bookcases with pink ambient lighting<br />
riding the walls, the venue’s open-plan spread does have an air<br />
of sophistication about it. Just over the shoulder of a guy carefully<br />
buttering scones we spy Ben ‘Roman’ Haslett DJing, the man<br />
bringing THEON CROSS and so much more to our walled city.<br />
Incredibly tight from the off, REMY JUDE ENSEMBLE open<br />
up and ease us in with a deep four-part harmony. Mellowing into<br />
a blend of alt.jazz and hip hop, there’s shades of Tom Misch and<br />
Loyle Carner in their sound. Occasionally they shift feel and a little<br />
funk slips in, vocalist Amber Kuti and keys player Max O’Hara<br />
being Galactic Funk Militia ex-recruits, after all.<br />
The fluid interplay between Jude and Kuti on hook-heavy<br />
standout Band Bak 2Geva quickly wins attendees over. Coming<br />
Home then segues into Yes Music, where a smooth-tongued<br />
Remy urges us to “thrust those shoulder blades when you hear<br />
those stabs”. Dropping down to a Cinematic Orchestra-esque<br />
bridge, Kuti’s melismatic scat inflections weave their way around<br />
a tasteful lead guitar and Jude’s fired-up MCing.<br />
Having made his name as one of the breakout talents of the<br />
UK jazz scene, Theon Cross is known for bringing the almighty<br />
There’s not much room for any dialogue between songs.<br />
They take a breather halfway through the set which opens the<br />
door for some discussion. “So we’re halfway through the album<br />
now and this is the part where you flip it over,” says Jack Cooper,<br />
jokingly. They continue into the track Nightmares, a track puts the<br />
listener into a weird dream state if anything. It begins to verge on<br />
peculiar just how calming and absorbing this experience begins<br />
to become; there are big saxophone solos, wandering guitars and<br />
hushed vocals that seem to soak into the crowd.<br />
This band don’t look like they have joined forces with a<br />
mission to flip the music world on its head. Instead, you get the<br />
feeling that this is a more informal project constructed to satisfy<br />
their own creativity. Despite exploring a vast landscape of psych<br />
on the record and in the live environment, it’s hard to see this<br />
project doing anything radical in the near future. Perhaps that<br />
could eventually be seen as a limitation, but none of that really<br />
matters tonight. This is a bunch of accomplished musicians who<br />
are clearly comfortable in their own skin.<br />
What we see tonight is a band confident enough to tackle<br />
their ideas; they’ve got the history and experience to back up<br />
their humble ambitions. As long as this group keep their hunger<br />
to create then it looks like we’ll be gifted with some great material<br />
in the coming years. And while it’s early doors for this particular<br />
project, it already feels like Modern Nature are well on their way<br />
to becoming a finished package.<br />
Rhys Buchanan / @rhysbuchanan<br />
bottom-end with Sons Of Kemet and guesting with Steam<br />
Down. As soon as Cross and touring line-up Chelsea Carmichael<br />
(saxophone), Patrick Boyle (drums) and Nikos Ziarkas (guitar)<br />
take the stage, the audience shift forward, filing up the stairs and<br />
mezzanine.<br />
Veering wildly between improvised solo bursts and dub<br />
bass lines, the versatility of the tuba in Cross’ hands is quite<br />
astounding. You’ll normally see a tuba played sat down in an<br />
orchestra; Cross performs spinning on a heel, teasing it from<br />
gurgled drawl to blaring sustain. Coasting the outer fringes of<br />
jazz, at times the songs appear formless, yet the quartet remain<br />
violently in sync.<br />
After a euphoric The Comet Is Coming-styled excursion, they<br />
slip into a sleazy Latin/bossa swing, almost verging on spiritual<br />
jazz climbs before settling into an afrobeat groove. Then after<br />
goading Carmichael and Boyle into a lengthy improv spin-out,<br />
Cross takes the mic and talks humbly about the importance of<br />
self-belief when writing music, before powering through CIYA<br />
and two encores.<br />
Granted there will have been sweatier stops on the tour,<br />
but for a damp Sunday evening in Chester tonight’s scenes are<br />
simply unprecedented. Cross is undoubtedly at forefront of a<br />
movement that’s no longer confined to London.<br />
David Weir / @betweenseeds<br />
The Good Life Experience<br />
Hawarden Estate, Wales – 12/09-15/09<br />
We live in unprecedented times. Politically, socially,<br />
technologically, environmentally. However you skin your daily<br />
existence, you face a cocktail of decisions, challenges and<br />
dilemmas, the like of which our species has not seen before.<br />
Faced with this cacophony of noise, two concepts become more<br />
important than ever; escapism and the quest for new ideas.<br />
And it figures that the two are closely related. In order to<br />
shape new ideas, we first need to sidestep the daily treadmill, the<br />
24-hour battle for our attention, the glare of those omnipresent<br />
screens. We need to create environments for open minds,<br />
expansive conversation and spaces to challenge our digital-norms.<br />
We need to reset. God, we need to breathe.<br />
With this in mind, THE GOOD LIFE EXPERIENCE embraces<br />
both and it seems is expertly tuned to our times. A well whittled,<br />
wonky, welly-clad, weird weekend of perpetual wellness that<br />
implores its guests to slow down, take stock, learn crafts, cook,<br />
care and commune.<br />
I succumbed to the temptation to take to the open water at an<br />
artist-led swimming session, followed by freeform poetry writing<br />
around an open fire. In the wrong hands this could all be very<br />
Nathan Barley, although under the tutelage of Vivienne Rickman-<br />
Poole the reality is anything but. It is hugely uplifting, invigorating,<br />
elating. I dive back in.<br />
Once suitably de-compressed and unplugged, the festival’s<br />
pinpoint curation manages to envelop its audience with wide<br />
ranging and outlook-shaping conversations led by truly inspirational<br />
subjects. Set within Hawarden Castle’s reading room, ANDREW<br />
EVANS speaks with astonishing openness and humility about his<br />
experience as a haemophiliac on the wrong end of the contaminated<br />
blood scandal, currently the subject of a public enquiry. Listening<br />
to Andrew recount his story – one that saw the wonder-drug he<br />
self-injected as a five-year-old inadvertently leave him HIV positive<br />
and almost dead as a result of AIDS by his late teens – is a deeply<br />
moving experience. His subsequent fight for justice for all those<br />
effected (taintedblood.info) goes on and his message here is simple:<br />
keep fighting. Right on cue as I leave the reading room, I notice a<br />
bookmark underfoot, inscribed simply: “ideas change things”.<br />
JNR WILLIAMS’ crystal neo-soul marries clean lines and vocal<br />
acrobatics with spades of individuality. I doubt he has played to an<br />
audience containing such a high concentration of neckerchiefed<br />
whippets before, but he leaves them (and their owners) aghast.<br />
Come night time and we’re dancing the jive with the assembled<br />
pre-schoolers at the vintage disco to Duffo’s take on Walk On The<br />
Wild Side (our Georgia steals the show). It’s a fitting curtain call<br />
to the weekend, an off-kilter take on conventional wisdom which<br />
catches you off guard, that suggests another way.<br />
The Good Life Experience is for the curious. I implore you to join<br />
them in raising a glass of organic nettle ale, delving into the sound<br />
of Welsh birdsong and leaving your preconceived conventions in the<br />
car park. A slightly better version of yourself may well come out the<br />
other side.<br />
Craig G Pennington<br />
36
ADD TO<br />
PLAYLIST<br />
Red Rum Club<br />
EVOL @ O2 Academy – 28/09<br />
It’s a packed, expectant and hot O2 Academy that awaits<br />
RED RUM CLUB. Everyone’s up for a good time with these local<br />
crowd pleasers; there’s almost a sense of reverence towards<br />
them.<br />
In terms of set design it’s perfectly pitched: the tension and<br />
excitement are built to a peak before the silhouetted band walk<br />
on behind a red curtain, fitting with the Matador theme, which<br />
tumbles to the floor to reveal a group rightly confident in their<br />
abilities accompanied by a celebratory explosion of confetti and<br />
the first notes of Honey.<br />
Singer Fran Doran’s adept at whipping up the bodies before<br />
him to near hysteria. Before he’ll start playing Would You Rather<br />
Be Lonely? during the encore, he insists people get on shoulders<br />
– it takes a fair while and leads to some precarious pairings. He’s<br />
got the swagger and charm all the best frontmen have and that<br />
mysterious ingredient which means all eyes are pinned on him.<br />
On record Doran’s voice is at times reminiscent of Ian<br />
McCulloch (which is such a lovely thing) while on a couple<br />
of tracks – Kids Addicted in particular – the overall sound is<br />
reminiscent of latter day Manics (OK, but not breaking any new<br />
ground). Live these subtleties are lost in the mix: the vocals are<br />
still strong, but the ubiquitous trumpet drowns out the guitars<br />
meaning at points it becomes one unstoppable mass of brass.<br />
Red Rum Club (Stuart Moulding / @Oohshootstu)<br />
They seem like a group who are loving the acclaim they’re<br />
receiving after years of working hard. Doran speaks with<br />
understandable pride about their album after seven years of<br />
graft, and what they do they do well. They come across as a<br />
band who’ve been selling out arenas for years. If the success of<br />
tonight is anything to judge it by, their stock will continue to rise.<br />
Performance wise they’ve got the confidence and charm<br />
nailed and, technically, all six are really good musicians. It just<br />
depends what you’re in to and people here are very much on<br />
the Red Rum Club team – as the inflatable trumpets proffered<br />
towards the band attest. It’s a packed-out singalong, but<br />
at points it teeters precariously close to being the musical<br />
equivalent of Live Laugh Love, guaranteed to whip up emotion<br />
in a hometown crowd on a Saturday night. Not necessarily a bad<br />
thing, depending on what you want from a band.<br />
A cover of Golden Slumbers is lovely and fits the bill,<br />
showing in whose trail they’d like to follow: if success is built on<br />
confidence, they’ve smashed it. They could and will be playing<br />
venues far bigger than this soon – commercially their songs<br />
strike the right note between indie guitar rock and radio-friendly<br />
earworms. They’re fully formed and rounded as a live act ready<br />
for much bigger things – but sometimes a bit of edge does us all<br />
good.<br />
It’s definitely crowd-pleasing, if not ground breaking, but it’d<br />
be petulant to argue with a room so full of joy.<br />
Jennie Macaulay<br />
ADD TO PLAYLIST is the monthly<br />
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DISTRACTION RADIO, delving into the<br />
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Night Slugs<br />
Oh man, well if the artwork alone doesn’t sell you on it,<br />
then what will? This compilation is practically a who’s<br />
who of some of the best global club DJs and producers<br />
at the moment, with 8ulentina, Foozool, Scratcha DVA,<br />
Ikonika, Manara and Bok Bok all bringing dishes to the<br />
potluck. With proceeds going to international human rights<br />
organisation Restless Beings, what’s more you’ve got your<br />
pre-going out playlist pretty much sorted for the rest of<br />
eternity. Canned hype, extra spicy.<br />
Hanna<br />
I Needed<br />
Melodies International<br />
Floating Points’ reissue label,<br />
Melodies International, is back<br />
to school with another dusty<br />
crate dig. Warren Harris, aka<br />
HANNA, offers up some laid-back classic Chicago house<br />
and a little tipple of sunshine to take the edge off all this<br />
autumn nonsense. It’s strictly buttery smooth edges and<br />
no surprises, filled with sultry street soul vocals, no-baddays<br />
keys and a lithe garage skip. Expect to hear this at a<br />
trendy biodynamic wine bar very soon.<br />
Anunaku<br />
Forgotten Tales<br />
Louder Than Death (Michael Kirkham / @Mrkirks)<br />
Whities<br />
Louder Than Death<br />
The Go-Go Cage and No Fun @ The Zanzibar<br />
– 13/09<br />
Leaves hang like cobwebs throughout The Zanzibar, a retro<br />
space that feels like a treasured discovery among the new venues<br />
around Liverpool. Tonight, however, it serves as the perfect fit<br />
for an intimate gig presented by garage-rock madman King Khan<br />
and his newest outfit, the ferocious LOUDER THAN DEATH.<br />
The band, who are currently blazing around Europe in<br />
promotion of their album Stop Und Fick Dich! have collected a<br />
troupe of punks from The Spits and Magnetix along the way,<br />
however, much to our dismay, Spits member Sean has been held<br />
up in customs.<br />
The lights dim as Khan walks out on stage to applause from<br />
the room, dawning pleather short-shorts, a police hat and a<br />
denim vest speckled with patchwork. Armed with a bouquet<br />
of roses, he sets a light, careless tone for the evening; “I’m just<br />
trying to make some money on the side here if anyone wants to<br />
buy a flower,” he laughs. Raging on, LTD rip-roar through a set<br />
with songs dedicated to Lemmy, Bad Brains, Christian conversion<br />
camps, Al Capone’s syphilis, Hermione from Harry Potter and, for<br />
good measure, the punk rock women of England. The prerequisite<br />
pogoing ensues in front of the stage as King Khan and his cohort<br />
bring their 77 punk style to with a blast of spilled beer, sweat<br />
and pleather. As the night extends, then begins the stage banter.<br />
After three or four stop-starts of a song they learned just that<br />
day, Khan, ever the gifted spokesman, keeps the extremely<br />
patient Scouse crowd entertained with one-liners.<br />
On a night saturated with a lo-fi, raw and dirty attitude from<br />
the makings of a band who seem like they’re just having a really<br />
damn good time, we are indeed given what we were promised: a<br />
full throttle onslaught of much needed energy and fun on a Friday<br />
night.<br />
Brit Williams / @therealbritjean<br />
Tasker’s Whities label has<br />
pretty much become buy-onsight,<br />
barely putting a foot<br />
wrong over the last couple<br />
years. Whities 024 is no different. Although the release has<br />
little to do with its alleged zeitgeist theme of ‘mythology’,<br />
the three tracks explore the intersection of global<br />
percussion and club music, careening from screw-face<br />
breakbeat to polyrhythmic drum loops. Forgotten Tales – a<br />
shimmering, padded ambient techno track – stands out as<br />
the smart, well-heeled slice of the moment. For fans of Yak,<br />
Minor Science, Poly, Leif etc.<br />
Words: Nina Franklin<br />
melodicdistraction.com<br />
Melodic Distraction Radio is an independent internet radio<br />
station based in the Baltic Triangle, platforming artists,<br />
DJs and producers from across the North West. Head to<br />
melodicdistraction.com to listen in.<br />
REVIEWS<br />
37
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FREE
ARTISTIC<br />
LICENCE<br />
This month’s offering is a selection of writings and artefacts taken from The Casserole Of Nonsense, a new<br />
book pulled from the bubbling mind stew of Lewy Dohren and Jack Turner.<br />
If you had to describe your style in a sentence, what would you<br />
say?<br />
A reaction to the plight of new age confusion, caked inside an<br />
embryo of semi-hysterical tripe.<br />
It’s fair to say that poetry isn’t your primary creative outlet.<br />
When and why did you start writing for The Casserole Of<br />
Nonsense?<br />
Lewy: It had probably been festering inside our minds for years<br />
without realising. But I had started writing some stuff while I was<br />
in Berlin, just as a reaction to the confusing hilarity of modern life. I<br />
was telling Jack about it at this fezzy, and while we were there we<br />
started writing down some of the shite we were coming out with.<br />
Jack: Yeh, something defo got switched on at that fezzy.<br />
Almost as if our collective mental pen drives got hooked up to a<br />
mainframe of ridiculousness, and both of us pressed ‘download’<br />
at the same time. Not to plagiarise MLK but I also had a dream<br />
about it.<br />
Can you pinpoint a moment or a piece of writing that initially<br />
inspired you?<br />
L: I remember reading Caravan by Nick Power on a train journey<br />
in the cold depths of winter, during the crescendo of sensory<br />
bombardment that is Christmas. And I thought it was amazing<br />
(the book, not the bombardment). That got the inspiration cogs<br />
nice and oily, I reckon. I should probably say thanks to him here as<br />
well, because he offered us some good advice in the early stages<br />
of the project. Tar lid!<br />
J: We’ve been spewing up nonsense butties ever since we met<br />
many moons ago, but it was when he told me he’d started writing<br />
stuff down in Berlin, that’s when I thought, ‘OK, maybe we should<br />
try and get something down together and see where it takes us’.<br />
Where does the inspiration come from for your work? Are<br />
there any particular influences (everyday life, the outside<br />
world, other art, people, society, politics, etc.)?<br />
L: Probably just an amalgamation of years of confusing existence<br />
and the monotonous struggle of day-to-day life. Mushing<br />
together the generic boring things we all encounter with a packet<br />
of cold hard insanity.<br />
J: Dreams, nightmares, supermarkets, TV, GFs, current-eff-airs,<br />
mates, pets, pubs, clubs, whatever’s left in the bottom of the<br />
tea cup and a large dollop of the social medication we’re all<br />
unflinchingly prescribed to.<br />
If you could read at any event, work with any artist, or be<br />
published anywhere, what would you choose?<br />
Behind the bins at the Mecca Bingo in Birkenhead with Derek<br />
Acorah, published in the Bible’s Ultra-New Testament.<br />
Sound and rhythm are key to the emotional punch of The<br />
Casserole Of Nonsense. Why do you think that slang and<br />
vernacular speech works so well with your message?<br />
L: Maybe because it feels like you’re in there actually swimming in<br />
the pond of our fragile minds or something. Part of the confusing<br />
world we’ve created for yer.<br />
J: A lot of the poems and stories in here are written in the same<br />
way they’d be spoken. The localised references comprised within<br />
that would be impossible to avoid having lived on both the upper<br />
and lower lips of the Mersey for pretty much all of our lives.<br />
Why The Casserole Of Nonsense?<br />
L: The name, or why are we even bothering to do this? The name<br />
came in a dream and the rest, well, we’ll wait and see if it’s all<br />
gonna be part of that same dream…<br />
J: Who knows, someone could very easily just tap us both on<br />
the shoulder… and there we are both standing in the middle of<br />
that sweltering summer festival. Dazed, confused, bareback and<br />
speechless to the fact that none of this has ever even happened.<br />
Loser<br />
An Ode To A Bifter<br />
A Clean Sweep<br />
-<br />
-<br />
I lost the nerve<br />
And lost the receipt<br />
I lost the number<br />
And the street<br />
I lost the tickets<br />
And all the money<br />
I think I’ve lost the beak<br />
And my sunnies<br />
I’ve lost my card<br />
And my jacket<br />
I lost the plot<br />
Cus I thought you had it<br />
But one thing I haven’t lost<br />
That I didn’t mean to find<br />
Is you.<br />
Oh fuck where’ve yer gone…<br />
Lewy Dohren, September 2018<br />
Your silky sweet and sultry scent<br />
Has in my heart now left a dent<br />
A dent for all those times we shared<br />
A toast to all lost eyebrow hairs<br />
I’ll take with me these yellow teeth<br />
Laid round my mouth, a stale wreath<br />
Commemorate the biffs I’ve lost<br />
Whilst balking at the total cost<br />
And so to you I bid farewell<br />
Tears in my eyes now start to swell<br />
The plaster’s on, I can’t look back<br />
A smoky curtain fades to black<br />
Jack Turner, August 2018<br />
There it was<br />
A warp of time<br />
A pool of self excrement<br />
5 past nineteen ninety nine<br />
Containers of excitement<br />
Swamps on the Wirral line<br />
Contract with the sphincter<br />
Read and then sign<br />
Sunshine and sins<br />
And the start of a new deal<br />
Good meaty hands<br />
Keep them behind the wheel<br />
Tape player’s wrecked<br />
And we’ve broken the seal<br />
It’s been 48 weeks<br />
Since we called in that meal<br />
A long forgotten pop star<br />
Picking chewy off his toes<br />
A sly fart from nostalgia<br />
And I’m selling Matalan clothes<br />
Stuck behind the tills<br />
Getting necked by a rose<br />
Is this still my birthday?<br />
Fuck, nobody knows<br />
Memory lane asylum<br />
Wheelie bins of thoughts<br />
A lifetime in the cloakroom<br />
Wanking over Sunday sports<br />
Sniffing loadsa fentanyl<br />
With Sooty, Sweep and Paul<br />
I’ve got it all on VHS<br />
And in my school reports<br />
Lewy Dohren & Jack Turner, March <strong>2019</strong><br />
44
Bohemian Chiropody<br />
Is this my real foot<br />
Or is that just fungal cream<br />
Caught in my bird’s tights<br />
Can’t escape the reality<br />
The specialist sighs<br />
She looks down at her notes and says<br />
‘You’re just a poor boy<br />
No cash for Bazuka Gel’<br />
Cos my feet are sad, I can’t ignore, a little dry, a little sore<br />
Any way my shoes walk, it doesn’t really matter to me, two feet<br />
Mama, just removed a sock<br />
Sat on the chair and bent down low<br />
A once-white Donnay had to go<br />
Mama, they never used to smell<br />
But now I’ve had to throw them all away<br />
Mama, am so uncouth<br />
I didn’t mean to scrape your eye<br />
I’ll hack these toenails off this time tomorrow<br />
Sand ’em down, sand ’em down<br />
They’re turning into daggers<br />
It’s too late, my letter’s come<br />
Got a referral from the quacks, now there ain’t no turning back<br />
Goodbye rotten pinkies, you’ve got to go<br />
I gotta buy a pumice stone and make you smooth<br />
Mama, gotta face the truth<br />
I don’t wanna go<br />
I sometimes wish I’d been born with no feet all<br />
I see a little white-clad body of a man<br />
Wielding tools and he says ‘can you feel your verrucas?’<br />
Sharp harsh pain and white bits, need things to take my mind off please!<br />
(Chips and mayo) chips and mayo, (Brian Oviedo) Oviedo, dormant volcanoes, figgy rolls<br />
I’m just a poor boy, nobody loves feet<br />
He’s just a poor boy with some snide scabby feet<br />
Spare him his soles for their callosities<br />
Easy scrape, with a stone, banish that whitlow<br />
As if that’ll go! It will not fucking go<br />
(Make it go!) As if lad, it will not fucking go<br />
(It’s tryna grow!) Oh shit lad, I think we’ve lost control<br />
(Ah me toe!) Pus began to flow<br />
(Ah me toe!) What a holy show<br />
(Ah me toe!) Ahhhhhhh...<br />
No no no not my big toe<br />
Give it here, pass it here, give it here that’s my toe<br />
The chiropodist has just left it on the side for me, for me, for me!<br />
So you think you can charge an extortionate price? So you think you can chop feet and<br />
leave me to die? Oh, maybe, I’ll see you at the Old Bailey<br />
I just gotta get out, I just gotta get right out of here<br />
My feet don’t really matter, cos no one ever sees<br />
My feet don’t really matter<br />
My feet don’t really matter to me<br />
Any way my bunions grow<br />
Jack Turner, December 2018<br />
Vision for Condiments<br />
For as far as her stagnant vision would carry her glazed eyesight<br />
There were Nettos<br />
Like bald yellow fish<br />
In a big and badly ventilated pond<br />
Each new sighting brought a slightly more pungent joy<br />
She could almost taste the 16 for 1 whole chickens<br />
Knowing that the synthetic bag would keep them fresh and<br />
frozen well into the next century<br />
Only the big man in the discounted sky would know how...<br />
Hurriedly she scampered down the first aisle<br />
Past the fruit and veg void<br />
Through the household deterrents<br />
Across snack sanctuary<br />
Until finally<br />
The cool stale air reached her trembling lips<br />
The smell of iced plastic was almost too much to bear<br />
She began to quiver with excitement<br />
Clutching her branded reusable and degrading bag like a symbol of her unity<br />
She slowly turned to face the glory of the frozen section<br />
And there...<br />
There it shone...<br />
Like a portal to another dimension<br />
Rows upon rows of deteriorating iced coffins<br />
Radiating their frozen advertisements<br />
Offering carnivorous delights for such menacingly cheap prices<br />
She could barely walk<br />
Never had she been in such awe<br />
Never in her wildest misery, had she imagined she’d make it this far<br />
Overcome with emotion she gripped tightly onto the nearest freezer<br />
A frozen lid of fulfilment propping up her dreams<br />
A glistening tear trickled down her ageing face<br />
And for the first time she looked down at what glorious opportunities awaited<br />
her<br />
Peering down into the frosted glass she began to try and read what was on<br />
offer...<br />
V..<br />
Vee...<br />
Veal?<br />
She couldn’t make out the words past her haunting cataracts so she asked the<br />
shining yellow angel stocking the shelves nearby for assistance...<br />
“What is the offer here sweet cherub?”<br />
“Oh are you on frozen aisle love?”<br />
“Yes dear... I’m from the Emerald Isle of Frozen Love”<br />
“Haha, if you say so... 2 seconds, wait there.”<br />
Surely it can’t be the vegetables again, she had already passed that section<br />
“Yeah it’s all vegan now isn’t it... legal requirement... been like that for about 6<br />
months I think. So what you’re looking at there is a vegan cod, 2 for 1 on those.”<br />
Words and Design: Lewy Dohren and Jack Turner<br />
The Casserole Of Nonsense is available from 1st <strong>November</strong>.<br />
Lewy Dohren, October 2018<br />
ARTISTIC LICENCE<br />
45
SAY<br />
THE FINAL<br />
Working at the heart of the<br />
North West based Low Carbon<br />
Eco-Innovatory – a university<br />
affiliated research and action<br />
group – Dr Ariel Edesess and<br />
Daniel Blunt underline that the<br />
fight to reverse climate change<br />
is nearing the final round, yet the<br />
contest is far from decided.<br />
It was the 1950s and 60s: World War Two was over and the<br />
world was trying to heal. With the end of the war came a<br />
global population boom. The rate of growth reached a peak<br />
of two per cent per year in the late 1960s (as compared<br />
to one per cent per year now). This accelerated increase in<br />
population, coupled with limited food resources, was alarming to<br />
many, and sparked what is now called the Green Revolution, or<br />
the Third Agricultural Revolution.<br />
In this “revolution”, resources (both financial and human)<br />
were diverted towards collaborative research and technology<br />
initiatives designed to increase food production. The Green<br />
Revolution was, for the most part, a resounding success. And,<br />
while it is true that an unacceptable amount of people are still<br />
without basic nourishment, this is due to unequal distribution of<br />
resources and inequality, not the amount of food produced.<br />
We are presently faced with creeping global warming,<br />
perhaps the greatest threat to the human race we have ever seen.<br />
The oft-used description of global warming is as an “existential<br />
crisis”, named so because it could threaten the entire existence of<br />
the human race. For most of us, global warming exists mainly as<br />
something to be afraid of, to rally up against, to use as an excuse<br />
to rage against capitalism, or to deny is happening at all. The<br />
success of the Green Revolution in increasing food production<br />
(notwithstanding its many flaws) provides us with a blueprint of<br />
how to approach another, seemingly, Herculean challenge.<br />
Every day, I work closely with the public and small-tomedium<br />
sized businesses in Liverpool city and Lancashire regions<br />
to meet the goals laid out in the various local and global emission<br />
reduction plans. While the range of feelings about climate action<br />
is as broad as the issue itself, the majority of feelings encountered<br />
can be roughly summarised by the following: recognising the<br />
problem and feeling anxious and motivated to contribute to<br />
solution; recognising the problem but believing that, because of<br />
their sector or business, they are not part of finding a solution;<br />
recognising the problem but struggling to see any financial<br />
benefit for making changes; recognising the problem and feeling<br />
“The fight is not yet<br />
lost – the world as<br />
we know it today is<br />
not set in stone”<br />
overwhelmed and incapacitated to help; recognising the problem<br />
but feeling that it is hopeless or caused by large corporations, and<br />
therefore not their individual responsibility.<br />
While these are wholly understandable reactions to an<br />
immeasurably complex problem, they should not dictate how<br />
we move to address the challenge. Luckily, this is not the first<br />
time humanity has faced a major global crisis and we have some<br />
examples to help readjust how we approach and think about this<br />
crisis.<br />
With the recent passing of Paul Polak on 10th October, a<br />
world-renowned innovator, entrepreneur, anti-poverty warrior<br />
and one of my personal heroes, the urgency to highlight his<br />
accomplishments and what we can learn from them for the<br />
current fight against global warming has increased. Born into a<br />
Jewish family in Czechoslovakia in 1933, Polak fled the advancing<br />
Nazis with his family when he was six years old. Following a<br />
perilous and terrifying journey through Germany, where young<br />
Paul even paraded as a member of the Hitler youth to hide<br />
his family’s true identify, the family eventually found refuge in<br />
Ontario, Canada.<br />
This experience could have left him with a bitterness towards<br />
humanity, but instead he chose to direct his innate curiosity to<br />
understanding and trying to help others in need. Polak practised<br />
psychiatry for two decades before shifting his attention to the<br />
problem of global poverty, especially those who were surviving<br />
on $1-2 per day.<br />
Animated by his experiences as a child and equipped with his<br />
training as a psychiatrist, Polak sought to fill the gaps where the<br />
Green Revolution failed to reach those most in need. What made<br />
Polak special was where others saw insurmountable obstacles,<br />
he simply saw challenges that needed solutions – or, as he said<br />
to me once, “People often say I’m an innovator... if innovation is<br />
walking along a sidewalk and, on reaching a step, you step up<br />
and continue walking, then sure, I’m an innovator.”<br />
Polak understood that the key to changing behaviour and<br />
affecting change was to look for solutions most in harmony with<br />
the people for whom the solution is intended, to include them in<br />
the process, to track progress, and to adjust the approach when<br />
needed. His most basic tenet was to treat people who are lower<br />
on the socio-economic ladder (in his work, those making $1-2 a<br />
day) as customers rather than charity recipients. At the heart of<br />
this message is an appreciation of the role of human dignity and<br />
feeling of accomplishment in promoting behavioural change.<br />
The climate crisis fight is not the same as the anti-poverty<br />
fight or the Green Revolution, but they are all inescapably linked.<br />
Mountains of research show over and over again that it will<br />
be people lower on the socio-economic ladder who are most<br />
impacted by the climate crisis. This is true worldwide, from<br />
Kolkata to Merseyside. Here in Liverpool, it might not look like a<br />
community decimated by wildfire or a village washed away in a<br />
hurricane, but it might look more like fuel poverty, leaking houses<br />
due to extreme rainfall and flooding, or rising food costs, and it<br />
will be those already struggling to make ends meet who are hit<br />
the worst.<br />
The climate crisis monster we find ourselves facing<br />
encompasses far more than the environmental realm – its roots<br />
are buried in centuries of deep-set behavioural patterns and<br />
social paradigms. Years and years of damaging activity, pursued<br />
even when we suspected, and then became fully aware of the<br />
impacts, have driven us to this crossroad. Tackle the beast and its<br />
many faces? Or be blissful in our apathy, ignorance and business<br />
as usual?<br />
We all know which is the easy option, and we’ve probably<br />
all felt justified in reneging on our personal responsibilities to be<br />
better – to use less, reuse more, throw away less, and vocally<br />
support difficult or disruptive plans, policies, or technologies.<br />
It is exhausting, and anxiety-inducing to be in a constant state<br />
of worry about the looming destruction of humanity and it is<br />
much easier to ‘opt-out’ and just keep planning your next trip to<br />
Tuvalu – yet we all play a big role in challenging the climate crisis.<br />
So, how do we take on this issue as individuals (yes, yes, we<br />
are all individuals!) and maximise our impact? Put simply, there is<br />
no single answer. There is not one action you could do that would<br />
be the ‘right’ way to go – each one of us must choose our own<br />
way to contribute. Your contribution is not just certain individual<br />
choices you can make, like choosing to go meat and/or dairy-free<br />
a couple of times a week, reducing and reusing water whenever<br />
possible, or driving less – your most important tool is your voice<br />
and how you exercise your expectations of how society should<br />
operate.<br />
But, more important than any action we can take today is<br />
our resilience and drive to insist on change, to be different and<br />
better from how we were before. The fight is not yet lost – the<br />
world as we know it today is not set in stone, and “that’s just how<br />
it is” is not how it should always be. We should learn from Paul<br />
Polak’s philosophies, such as talking to the people who have the<br />
problem and listening to what they have to say, focusing on small<br />
solutions to big problems, seeing and doing the obvious, and<br />
learning from mistakes and adjusting when required.<br />
Polak is an example that each one of us can be an influencer<br />
and that each one of us has the capacity to affect major change.<br />
When choosing your own path forward to address the crisis, here<br />
are four useful points to remember: keep it local, keep it timely,<br />
keep it personal, and keep it honest – uncertainty is not your<br />
enemy. I’ll leave you here with a reminder from Hannah Arendt:<br />
“We are free to change the world and start something new in it.”<br />
By reading this piece, I hope you’ve felt encouraged to take<br />
action. This list is by no means comprehensive, but here are some<br />
activities to take part in/actions you take:<br />
• Clean ups (CleanupUK, the National Trust and Keep Britain<br />
Tidy all have easy routes to involvement).<br />
• Seed bombing (get yourself some seed balls and go wildflower<br />
guerrilla gardening – like a rebel Alan Titchmarsh).<br />
• Write letters to local government to insist on reducing public<br />
transport prices and build better green infrastructure. I mean,<br />
it feels like Liverpool City Centre is actually a deterrent for<br />
cyclists right now (believe it not, your letters are actually read<br />
and if enough people speak up, they are obliged to take action).<br />
• Change daily habits: reduce water use, turn off lights, don’t<br />
charge phone overnight, switch off cars at long traffic lights,<br />
reduce and reuse waste (standard but worth remembering).<br />
• Promote holistic solutions – think creatively. Ask questions, find<br />
supportive peers.<br />
• Adjust expectations, both of yourself and of the companies you<br />
spend money on. Demand drives the market, we can influence<br />
the market by changing our consumer behaviours.<br />
• Engage your company or place of work with the Low Carbon<br />
Eco-Innovatory at LJMU. We exist to help small-medium<br />
businesses in Liverpool, Sefton, Wirral, St Helens, Knowsley<br />
and Halton develop low carbon products, processes and<br />
services by engaging them with our team of researchers. We<br />
work across all sectors and love to be given a challenge! Want<br />
to decarbonise your business but don’t know where to start?<br />
Give us a shout. Developing the next great piece of green tech<br />
and need it testing? You know who to call (Disclaimer: it’s not<br />
Ghostbusters).<br />
Words: Dr Ariel Edesess and Daniel Blunt<br />
Photography: Robin Clewley / robinclewley.co.uk<br />
ljmu.ac.uk/ecoinnovatory<br />
The Low Carbon Eco-Innovatory is a partnership between<br />
Liverpool John Moores University, University of Liverpool and<br />
Lancaster University. Find out more about how to get involved<br />
with their Clean Growth UK action at @EcoInnovatory.<br />
46
Richard Dawson<br />
SATURDAY 23rd <strong>November</strong><br />
Studio 2, Liverpool<br />
SOLD OUT<br />
Beans on Toast<br />
FRIDAY 20th December<br />
Phase One, Liverpool<br />
The Local Honeys<br />
Wednesday 22nd January<br />
Gulliver, Manchester<br />
King Creosote<br />
Performing a live accompaniment to the film<br />
From Scotland with Love<br />
Monday 16th March<br />
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester<br />
@Ceremonyconcert / facebook.com/ceremonyconcerts<br />
ceremonyconcerts@gmail.com / seetickets.com