Issue 107 / February 2020

New Music + Creative Culture
Liverpool
Issue 107 / February 2020
bidolito.co.uk
Second Floor
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Founding Editor
Craig G Pennington - info@bidolito.co.uk
Publisher
Christopher Torpey - chris@bidolito.co.uk
Editor
Elliot Ryder - elliot@bidolito.co.uk
Digital Media Manager
Brit Williams – brit@bidolito.co.uk
Design
Mark McKellier - mark@andmark.co.uk
Branding
Thom Isom - hello@thomisom.com
Proofreader
Nathaniel Cramp
Cover Photography
Kate Davies
Words
Elliot Ryder, Rhys Buchannan, Richard Lewis, Anouska
Liat, Megan Walder, Georgine Paige Hull, Christopher
Torpey, David Weir, Craig G Pennington, Ian Salmon,
Deborah Bassett, Ian R. Abraham, Adam Coffey, Nina
Franklin, Brit Williams, J.P. Walsh.
Photography, Illustration and Layout
Mark McKellier, Kate Davies, John Latham, Keith
Ainsworth, Robin Clewley, Aida Muluneh, Hanna-
Katrina Jedrosz, Tomas Adam, Paul McCoy, Michael
Kirkham, Bart Heemskerk, Hannah Blackman-Kurz.
Distribution
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EDITORIAL
December’s election result made me question the
innate ability to change circumstance. As 10pm came
that night, I watched on silently, looking at my phone
and television in utter disbelief. Instantly, the pundits
clicked into gear. This was the inevitable, apparently. In some
ways it was, but such a take fundamentally short changes those
who believed in the ability to change
circumstance through action; those who
knocked on doors hour after hour in the
darkest hours of mid-winter. Their belief
is no less weak in currency due to the
overall outcome.
While Liverpool courageously
remains the anomaly in nationwide
democratic exercise, the feeling of being
able to bring about real change shouldn’t
be seen as a once in every five years
opportunity. Nor should it be reserved
to the political playing field, either.
Anywhere and everywhere change can
happen. Find the cracks in their reality
and continuous escape can happen.
These were the exact thoughts
that came to me as I was sat underneath an underpass of the
M53 a few days after the election. Rather than placing myself
in the cold and wet of the motorway that bisects Wirral, this
metaphorical totem of Birkenhead’s Mark Leckey had been
installed in Tate Britain for the Turner Prize-winning artist’s
latest exhibition, O’ Magic Power Of Bleakness. Under Under
In, one of three films shown in the exhibition, depicts a group of
boys sat under this very motorway bridge which Leckey would
frequent in his childhood. All throughout the film, the notion of
FEATURES
“Find the cracks
in their reality and
continuous escape
can happen”
bleakness – the cold concrete reality the boys are surrounded
by – is interspersed with reaches from a supernatural of their
own design. The pining for escape crosses over with the thrill
of existence, as class, place and innate power is energetically
displayed in the boys’ ownership of circumstance. All of the
eventualities – magic, safety, escape – are possible under
Leckey’s conception of the underpass.
The safe space is one of the many cracks
in this reality where we can find the
energy for innate change, the eventual
strength to return to overhaul.
Similar to Leckey’s fascination with
the underpass, this issue’s cover artist,
Pizzagirl, explains how ownership
of personal landscape has provided
transport to new a level of acceptance.
Growing up in North Liverpool, Pizzagirl
resided under the safe confines of the
internet before breaking through its
contours with his antidote to bleakness.
Music itself is the underpass for Dan
Disgrace, who highlights the art form
as an uninterrupted world away from
strained office life. Equally for many in this city, 24 Kitchen
Street, which remains under threat, is the underpass that so
many have congregated under, sharing an energy and escape
that’s brought about change beyond its four walls.
This magical bleakness of ours, it can be anything and
everything we want it to be. !
Elliot Ryder / @elliot_ryder
Editor
Pizzagirl (Kate Davies)
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10 / PIZZAGIRL
Liam Brown’s effervescent musical vehicle has found that
acceptance is the best form of sincere expression. In the world of
Pizzagirl, nobody needs to hide.
14 / DAN DISGRACE
Loose tie karaoke stardom supressed by dulling office lights, Dan
Disgrace’s dreamy cloud is now ready to take flight.
18 / AIMÉE STEVEN
The Walton singer-songwriter pores over the influences that
shimmer through her captivating blend of art nouveau chic and
charming Scouse pop.
REGULARS
8 / NEWS
20 / SPOTLIGHT
26 / PREVIEWS
16 / WHO WILL SAVE KITCHEN
STREET?
Ioan Roberts, one of the owners and operators of the Baltic
Triangle club, speaks up about the frustrations of working
creatively under the shadow of gentrification.
23 / FATOUMATA DIAWARA
“I’m trying to convince the new generation to be survivors and
fight for their own stories”
25 / DRY CLEANING
“I’m trying to encapsulate what the world appears like to me – for
comfort, essentially”
28 / REVIEWS
36 / ARTISTIC LICENCE