Issue 109 / September 2020
September 2020 issue of Bido Lito! magazine. Featuring: TEE, JAMIE WEBSTER, ALL WE ARE, DECAY, MOLLY GREEN, FRAN DISLEY, FUTURE YARD, WHERE ARE THE GIRL BANDS and much more.
September 2020 issue of Bido Lito! magazine. Featuring: TEE, JAMIE WEBSTER, ALL WE ARE, DECAY, MOLLY GREEN, FRAN DISLEY, FUTURE YARD, WHERE ARE THE GIRL BANDS and much more.
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ISSUE <strong>109</strong> / SEPTEMBER <strong>2020</strong><br />
NEW MUSIC + CREATIVE CULTURE<br />
LIVERPOOL<br />
TEE BEIJA / ALL FLO WE / ARE LO FIVE / DECAY<br />
JAMIE ASOK WEBSTER/ / SIMON MOLLY HUGHES GREEN
12 Aug - 13 Dec <strong>2020</strong><br />
AND SAY<br />
THE ANIMAL<br />
RESPONDED?<br />
FACT / 88 WOOD STREET<br />
FREE EXHIBITION<br />
Image: Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, The Substitute (2019). Installation view at FACT, Liverpool. Photo by Rob Battersby.
TATE LIVERPOOL<br />
16 SEP <strong>2020</strong> – 9 MAY 2021<br />
‘IRREDUCIBLE AND UNFORGETTABLE’<br />
THE GUARDIAN<br />
FREE FOR<br />
TATE MEMBERS<br />
Supported by the Don McCullin Exhibition<br />
Supporters Group and Tate Members<br />
Media partner<br />
Don McCullin Liverpool 8 in the early 1960’s 1963 © Don McCullin
© Paul McCartney
PEDAL POWERED<br />
MICR<br />
T<br />
URS<br />
CITY CENTRE<br />
STREET PERFORMANCES FROM:<br />
AMINA ATIQ<br />
ALI HORN<br />
IAMKYAMI<br />
DAYZY<br />
29th August / 31st August / 5th <strong>September</strong> / 12th <strong>September</strong><br />
bidolito.co.uk/micro-tours<br />
made possible by Culture Liverpool’s Without Walls fund
New Music + Creative Culture<br />
Liverpool<br />
<strong>Issue</strong> <strong>109</strong> / <strong>September</strong> <strong>2020</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 />
Founding Editor<br />
Christopher Torpey - chris@bidolito.co.uk<br />
Executive Publisher<br />
Sam Turner - sam@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 />
Jordan Ryder<br />
Cover Photography<br />
Tamiym Cader<br />
Words<br />
Christopher Torpey, Sam Turner, Elliot Ryder, Nik<br />
Glover, Will Whitby, Julia Johnson, Tara Dalton,<br />
Anouska Liat, Jessica Phillips, Cath Holland, Stuart<br />
O’Hara, Stephen Lewin, Sufiah Abbasi, Eve Machin.<br />
Photography, Illustration and Layout<br />
Mark McKellier, Tamiym Cader, Stuart Moulding,<br />
Michael Kirkham, Esmée Finlay, Rebecca Hawley, Liam<br />
Jones, Zoë Moungabio, David Cusack, John Johnson,<br />
John O’Loughlin, Xenia Onta, Daniel Frost, Martha<br />
Harris, Ella Fradgely.<br />
Distribution<br />
Our magazine is distributed as far as possible through<br />
pedal power, courtesy of our Bido Bikes. If you would<br />
like to find out more, please email sam@bidolito.co.uk.<br />
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Bido Lito! is a living wage employer. All our staff are<br />
paid at least the living wage.<br />
All contributions to Bido Lito! come from our city’s<br />
amazing creative community. If you would like to join<br />
the fold visit bidolito.co.uk/contribute.<br />
We are contributing one per cent of our advertising<br />
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 />
EDITORIAL<br />
I<br />
don’t know about you, but there are several elements of<br />
the Covid recess that are really starting to grate: the social<br />
distance that has developed; our clunky new vocabulary of<br />
‘lockdown’, ‘new normal’ and ‘Zoom’; Matt Hancock.<br />
The upheaval we’ve had has been necessary, of course<br />
(apart from Matt Hancock). We owe a lot to the selfless<br />
among us who’ve been working hard to limit the effects of the<br />
pandemic. And while I could get used to the new table service<br />
regime and click-and-collect supermarketing, I do still long for<br />
the before times, the sharing of moments, the communality of<br />
groups, the witnessing of a performance together. There’s only<br />
so much music you can listen to on your own, after all.<br />
That cycle that we had grown so accustomed to is now<br />
massively different, changed by our basic knowledge of<br />
epidemiology and infection. Live performances and even<br />
medium-sized gatherings look to be verboten for the foreseeable<br />
future, which causes a massive worry for the precariouslybalanced<br />
music ecosystem – which barely gets by anyway.<br />
We’ve already seen fractures develop in the foundations of this<br />
culture; a quasi-religion of going out, ‘doing a festival’ and Red<br />
Stripe cans at gigs, which is second in the unofficial national<br />
faith stakes to football. In the closure of venues and space, it<br />
is the small fry who prop this pyramid up who have suffered<br />
the most, without the capital to tide them through these tough<br />
times.<br />
There are actually lots of similarities between music and<br />
football. Like in football, if you only protect those at the top then<br />
you remove the very soul of the game. Football in the UK isn’t<br />
just the Premier League. Sure, it’s the home of the best players<br />
and the biggest crowds, but it’s not accessible for everyone,<br />
and as much joy is derived from the fans and players of Prescot<br />
FEATURES<br />
12 / PLAYING IN<br />
The first findings from research in partnership with University of<br />
Liverpool assessing the impact of lockdown and social distancing<br />
on Liverpool City Region’s musicians.<br />
14 / ALL WE ARE<br />
“It’s a summer record. It’s about the good times and we need to<br />
focus on the good things when they aren’t going so well at the<br />
moment”<br />
16 / BIRKENHEAD WON’T DIE<br />
Can culture-led regeneration be the way to narrowing the divide<br />
across the river Mersey? Enter Future Yard.<br />
18 / MOLLY GREEN<br />
Tara Dalton looks for the threads that hold together the jazzy,<br />
soulful undertones of the abundantly creative singer-songwriter.<br />
REGULARS<br />
Cables and Wallasey Wanderers as from Liverpool and Everton.<br />
Value isn’t just measured in profit, or turnover, or jobs sustained.<br />
It’s something more primal that is felt, enjoyed, shared.<br />
I’ve long thought that the health of The Zanzibar was<br />
indicative of the general health of Liverpool music, even if it’s not<br />
been the cultural hotspot that it was 15 years ago. The building<br />
occupies a prime spot on Seel Street, but its presence is far<br />
greater, giving music a place at the heart of a bustling, noisy city.<br />
Sound, on Duke Street, was perhaps on its way to becoming<br />
The Zanzi’s spiritual successor, a special place for a small group<br />
of artists who saw it as their playground. What does it say that<br />
The Zanzi, Sound, and even Parr Street Studios, can’t afford to<br />
hack it in our new-look city centre? Admittedly, the cracks in<br />
this venue-gig-artist-crowd ecosystem existed pre-pandemic,<br />
and have been accentuated because of the lockdown. But that<br />
doesn’t mean we should accept our lot and let them slide away,<br />
does it? When I think of what I want to enjoy in a world free of<br />
Coronavirus anxiety, I think of places where I can listen to music<br />
with others, and feel part of something bigger. Is that too much<br />
to ask?<br />
It might be a small thing, but having Bido Lito! back in print<br />
is a step towards that ideal. Through these pages, we can start<br />
to share an appreciation of music again, as a community rather<br />
than as isolated individuals. And as the gears of pink industry get<br />
moving once more, it’s an apt time for the new people leading<br />
this drive to take up the baton and run with it. Here’s to the new<br />
team leading Bido into a bright new era, as I watch on from the<br />
Mersey’s west bank. This ain’t farewell – it’s see you soon. !<br />
Christopher Torpey<br />
Founding Editor<br />
21 / TEE<br />
With the long overdue arrival of his debut EP, TEE is finally ready<br />
to take his rightful place front and centre.<br />
26 / DECAY<br />
Stuart Moulding / @OohShootStu<br />
“I’ve done everything in my power to be emotionally transparent”<br />
28 / CURATING SAFE SPACE<br />
“Even as an artist I recognise that galleries can be quite<br />
uncomfortable places”<br />
30 / JAMIE WEBSTER<br />
With a debut album centred on the everyday symphony of<br />
working-class Liverpool. Cath Holland profiles the personality<br />
breaking through in his original songwriting.<br />
32 / AS CLOSE TO FLYING AS<br />
YOU’RE GONNA GET<br />
With the way we travel changed for the foreseeable, Stuart<br />
O’Hara looks local and makes the case for finding our two feet on<br />
two wheels in the age of the new normal.<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 />
8 / NEWS<br />
11 / HOT PINK<br />
34 / SPOTLIGHT<br />
36 / PREVIEWS<br />
38 / REVIEWS<br />
44 / ARTISTIC LICENCE<br />
47 / FINAL SAY
NEWS<br />
LAAF Film Programme<br />
In 2019, four filmmakers responded to four Yemeni poets<br />
from four different Yemeni communities in the UK; Liverpool,<br />
Cardiff, Birmingham and Sheffield. What resulted is a<br />
series of new poem-films, created in direct response to new<br />
works by the poets and commissioned by Liverpool Arab<br />
Arts Festival, forming the heart of Yemen And Conflict,<br />
a new partnership bringing together the festival and the<br />
Universities of Liverpool and Leeds. How can Yemeni<br />
literature and poetry be preserved during the conflict, and<br />
how can it be used to further the understanding of those<br />
outside of the country? The poem-films are available to<br />
watch at arabartsfestival.com/yemen-in-conflict.<br />
Two Coloured House by Noor Palette<br />
Writers Workshops<br />
Aspiring scribes take note! BYLINES is a free Arts Awards-accredited course<br />
facilitated by the editorial team at Bido Lito!. Starting from mid-<strong>September</strong>,<br />
the course offers future writers from a wide range of backgrounds the<br />
opportunity to develop their craft. Over a period of 10 weeks participants<br />
will learn key journalistic skills, the best ways of documenting culture,<br />
and tools to equip a career in the industry. We encourage applications<br />
from artists from underrepresented backgrounds, and are committed<br />
to prioritising spaces for participants who identify as BAME, LGBTQI+,<br />
working-class, disabled and female. Applications are open now to<br />
participants between the ages of 16 and 25, closing on 13th <strong>September</strong>.<br />
bidolito.co.uk/workshops.<br />
Vinyl-ly It’s Happened To Me<br />
As with just about everything else on the planet, Record Store Day – the<br />
annual event celebrating the humble vinyl emporium – was inevitably hit by<br />
the pandemic. Organisers decided to pivot from the usual April date to three<br />
separate ‘Drop Dates’ on 29th August, 26th <strong>September</strong> and 24th October. In our<br />
neck of the woods, Probe, Jacaranda Records, 81 Renshaw and Defend Vinyl,<br />
as well as Southport’s Quicksilver Music, Chester’s Up North and Kaleidoscope<br />
Records of St Helens, will all be stocking limited edition releases for the occasion.<br />
The three dates will be followed by a RSD Black Friday in November when more<br />
rare wax will be up for grabs. recordstoreday.co.uk<br />
Film Fund<br />
A funding pot of £250,000 is open for applications from film and TV<br />
makers until the end of <strong>September</strong>. The Film and TV Development<br />
Fund from Liverpool City Region is offering awards between £2,500<br />
and £25,000 for established and start-up production companies to<br />
develop scripted or factual programming. The pot was repurposed<br />
from an existing production fund to support regionally-based<br />
producers, writers and other creative talent during a time which has<br />
been tremendously challenging for screen professionals. Priority<br />
has been promised to diverse, high-quality productions which will<br />
spend budget locally, and decisions will get a 10-day turnaround.<br />
Go to liverpoolfilmoffice.tv for more information.<br />
Theatres Update<br />
Everyman Theatre<br />
While at the time of writing the return of public performances to<br />
our theatres’ stages is still unknown, Liverpool’s thesp roster are<br />
ensuring their community is not going completely unused. As well<br />
as the charming Love, Liverpool podcast story series, the Everyman<br />
and Playhouse’s youth company YEP have recently concluded a<br />
radio series entitled The Visit, available from their website. Around<br />
the corner, Unity Theatre is opening its doors for artist support,<br />
community engagement, and business hire. From the beginning of<br />
<strong>September</strong> the Hope Place hub is also inviting artists to apply to use<br />
their spaces for free rehearsal and development. Meanwhile Liverpool<br />
Empire have been busily rescheduling shows for what is shaping up to<br />
be a massive 2021.<br />
8
Direct Input<br />
Ever wondered how a band suddenly shot from nowhere to<br />
everywhere? Future Yard’s new webinar series, DIRECT INPUT,<br />
might be able to help. By speaking to the people – managers,<br />
agents, record labels – behind some of music’s recent success<br />
stories, this series of fortnightly live events aims to lift the lid on<br />
some of the techniques, and bring you the inside track on the<br />
different kinds of careers and strategies that work across the<br />
music spectrum. Each live webinar is free, and you can sign up at<br />
futureyard.org. Following on from the opening conversation with<br />
Girl Band’s guitarist Alan Duggan, who also manages the band,<br />
the Direct Input series catches up with Leeds-based musician<br />
Katie Harkin on Monday 31st August, uncovering her path from<br />
indie duo Sky Larkin to solo project Harkin, via session work,<br />
backing vocals for Dua Lipa, and touring as a live member of<br />
Sleater-Kinney and Wild Beasts.<br />
Katie Harkin<br />
Liverpool Lighthouse<br />
Hillsborough And Me<br />
Anfield music base Liverpool Lighthouse are<br />
calling out to the creativity of their community.<br />
As they are putting the finishing touches on an<br />
album commemorating the final memorial of the<br />
Hillsborough disaster, they are asking for a fitting<br />
name for the charity LP. Money raised from sales<br />
will go to the Hillsborough Family Support Group<br />
and has been made possible by contributions from<br />
more than 60 volunteer singers. The mixture of<br />
professional and non-professional vocalists have<br />
been working with the Love and Joy Gospel choir<br />
over Zoom, and, at the end of a round of auditions,<br />
have formed a newly established choir around the<br />
project. Go to the Hillsborough and Me section of<br />
liverpoollighthouse.com for more details.<br />
Art Studios Network<br />
As with many facets of the culture sector, arts<br />
studios have come under increased pressure<br />
over recent months. Independently-run spaces<br />
which provide vital space for freelance and<br />
self-employed creatives to produce their work<br />
are the lifeblood of the city’s visual art scene,<br />
and are now looking to work together to<br />
achieve strength in unity. A newly established<br />
network which connects 35 studios, home to<br />
over 500 artists, has been set up to carry out<br />
research into how coronavirus has impacted<br />
their work and how best to recover for longterm<br />
sustainability. The project is being led by<br />
Art In Liverpool with help from Arts Council<br />
England. artinliverpool.com<br />
Homotopia News<br />
Homotopia returns in the Autumn with a programme to be announced<br />
imminently. The UK’s longest running LGBTQIA arts and culture festival hasn’t<br />
stopped working since lockdown; a digital performance with EAT ME + Preach!<br />
was followed by a series of new commissions, Queer Art Always, capturing life<br />
in lockdown and the power of art to connect and unite. The forthcoming line-up<br />
promises to look a little different but will bring the usual eclectic mix of queer art<br />
and culture. In a year where everything has changed, the festival will bring new<br />
voices into the spotlight and tell us why the journey is just as important as the<br />
destination. homotopia.net<br />
Timeless Melody<br />
The success of Melodic Distraction’s Breakfast Club broadcast<br />
has given the Baltic based radio station cause to extend the<br />
programming into the Autumn. Wake Up With! has become the<br />
best way to rise for lots of music heads with the MDR team mixing<br />
pitch-perfect beats with friendly chat. The following 10am-12pm<br />
slot brings in the likes of NuTribe’s Sticky Dub, Go Off Sis Podcast,<br />
Dig Vinyl and others for great tunes, competitions and even phonein<br />
action. The station are also happy to announce they are returning<br />
to their Jamaica Street base having been coordinating home<br />
broadcasts from across the region since March.<br />
Educating Beta<br />
The learned folk at the University of Liverpool<br />
have made their Continuing Education courses<br />
more accessible than ever with a varied array of<br />
subjects to indulge your passion, up your skills<br />
or delve into a whole new discipline. Their online<br />
short courses, seminars and workshops arrive<br />
with the forthcoming academic year and include<br />
Creative Writing, Ancient and Modern History, the<br />
world’s most-used and influential languages and<br />
much more besides. For many, now is the perfect<br />
time to get that Computer Coding qualification or<br />
Neurofinance certificate. Surf over to<br />
liverpool.ac.uk/continuing-education for more info.<br />
Pride Foundation Grants<br />
A city based LGBT+ heritage tour, a campaign to increase<br />
gender neutral toilet facilities, a ‘Big Irish Gay-lí’ and a multigender<br />
inclusive hockey squad are among the recipients of<br />
the LCR Pride Foundation’s inaugural Community Fund. The<br />
£20,000 pot, supported by Barclays, was launched in June<br />
with three separate funds for Inclusive Physical Activity and<br />
Sport, Film and an Open fund. Trans Youth - Trans Truth<br />
from youth collective GYRO, I See Gay People from Light<br />
Factory and Betty & Jean by Tmesis Theatre make up the<br />
trio of successful film projects. The full list of 16 successful<br />
recipients represent an eclectic array of ideas and initiatives<br />
from what LCR Pride Foundation Chair Lewis Collins<br />
described as an “extremely high” standard of applications.<br />
Pride Foundation<br />
NEWS 9
(Michael Kirkham / @MrKirks)<br />
SIX MONTHS LATER<br />
Elliot Ryder considers the lessons learnt from lockdown and the need to take this summer’s protests forward.<br />
It feels surreal to be writing in these pages again. If you’d<br />
have said in March that we’d be able to return to print in<br />
August, I’d have been sceptical. Back then, it was painfully<br />
clear early-on that printing Bido Lito! would have to stop.<br />
What was more worrying were our fears of when, or if, there’d<br />
be an accepting climate for it to return. Even as I write this, the<br />
cultural landscape remains in a state of rubble. But those early<br />
stages were telling.<br />
Like many in Liverpool, my life is unhealthily shaped by<br />
the footballing calendar. By the first weekend of March, I’d<br />
unscientifically assured myself that I’d see Liverpool play three<br />
more times at Anfield before there was any real worry of a<br />
lockdown and curtailment of the football season – similar to the<br />
prelude of the UK’s fate that was<br />
playing out in Northern Italy. The<br />
suggestion of seeing Liverpool<br />
play at home three more times<br />
was partly in line with the ‘two<br />
weeks behind’ narrative that was<br />
prevalent at the time, and partly<br />
because three more times was<br />
the required number to finally<br />
wrap up the Premier League. But<br />
in the space of seven days the<br />
situation changed at an alarming<br />
rate. By the time I’d glumly trudged<br />
from Anfield towards the train<br />
after watching Liverpool lose to<br />
Atletico Madrid, the focus of my<br />
disappointments was to massively<br />
change.<br />
By 13th March, the government had been doing their utmost<br />
to foster a state of ease. Boris Johnson was still shaking hands<br />
with Covid-19 patients. Herd immunity was still bandied around<br />
on radio talk shows as though a sterile fiscal policy. Yet, from the<br />
morning of the 13th March all forthcoming football was to be<br />
cancelled for an initial six week period.<br />
Perhaps ironically, it took the removal of football from my life<br />
for my head to click into gear regarding the severity of what was<br />
taking place nationally. The initial humour and intrigue of a fan<br />
dressed in a DIY hazmat suit, stood a few rows behind me on<br />
The Kop for the Atletico game, paled into a harrowing reality that<br />
was sat on the crest of coming weeks.<br />
The severity of the moment set in. The night after I was<br />
struggling to see how Bido Lito! could continue as the cultural<br />
sector pulled down the shutters and gig after gig was cancelled.<br />
As the penny dropped internally, so did a guillotine cutting off<br />
the magazine from potential advertisers for the foreseeable. I’d<br />
have taken a glass-half-full outlook in that moment. But in the<br />
initial doom it resembled something more empty and shattered.<br />
“As ever, we’re<br />
looking forwards”<br />
The psychological impact of the virus would flare up in similar<br />
instances in the coming six months. As a magazine that is<br />
always looking ahead, it felt like the future was already written.<br />
I wasn’t certain of the significance of my profession in such a<br />
moment.<br />
How much of a city can you see through a 13-inch screen<br />
or never-ending scroll function? That’s what I wrote in early<br />
May, eight weeks after the digital plunge we’d taken – issue <strong>109</strong><br />
lost somewhere on the horizon. As it turns out, you can still see<br />
quite a lot of a city, its creativity and communities. They do not<br />
cease to exist when removed from their natural habitat. As I’ve<br />
noted previously, in our lockdown zine released in July, the early<br />
stages of lockdown were punctuated by adaptation, generosity<br />
and accessibility. Music may have<br />
been on hold for the most part, but<br />
everything that we produced on<br />
a weekly basis aimed to shine a<br />
light on the creativity that took on<br />
the health crisis locally. So much of<br />
this was arranged and organised<br />
via laptop screens and chatboxes,<br />
collaborative playlists and via<br />
community radio stations.<br />
The online world was always<br />
created as a great equaliser. A<br />
realm in cyberspace that borrowed<br />
from the ideals of 1960s acid tests<br />
to sketch out the potential of a<br />
different reality, one free from the<br />
over-bearing corruption and control<br />
of the established order. Ultimately,<br />
the internet was designed to offer an alternative. Yet, rather than<br />
be a home to counter culture, the resulting weeks of lockdown<br />
saw the internet become home to culture en masse. Family<br />
occasions, escape, work, society in general rested on the online<br />
world for an essential line of communication and communality.<br />
It may have been far from the utopian vision that the latestage<br />
hippies had hoped for the internet as a place to make the<br />
acid test become reality – with large corporations and callous<br />
algorithms governing much of what we can see – but there were<br />
strong indications that life can continue bound to micro and<br />
macro webs of community in the online sphere. In Liverpool, so<br />
much of what is good about the city raised its head above the<br />
parapet, with community groups and individuals leading the<br />
way where central government would not. Culturally, too, the<br />
landscape had never been so accessible and democratic. With<br />
online variants the main offering from artists and institutions,<br />
so many have never seen so much. But even with this static<br />
omniscience we attempted to acquire from our homes, there was<br />
still so much as a city we didn’t see or challenge until the days<br />
following the 25th May.<br />
As Jennifer John wrote in Bido Lito! following the killing of<br />
George Floyd, Black Lives Matter was a long time coming. Not<br />
in a sense of momentum, but in the glaring systemic inequalities<br />
that had been consistently overlooked. It took the modern day<br />
lynching of a man on the streets of Minneapolis for people to<br />
look closer at was happening on streets of their own.<br />
That initial doom and fear I’d harboured in the days leading<br />
into lockdown, the feeling of a future already being written;<br />
all that weighed insignificant when taking part in the protests<br />
that took place outside of St George’s Hall in the weeks that<br />
followed. Prior to the resurgence of Black Lives Matter, I’d felt I<br />
had a good handle on Liverpool’s role as an exporter of systemic<br />
racism, something still felt in street names and the necessity<br />
of an International Slavery Museum. But this is only the macro<br />
picture and far from comprehensive or contemporary. The legacy<br />
of chattel slavery is more subtle, more institutionalised. Its very<br />
nature will argue its non-existence. Look closer at Liverpool in<br />
general and it’s important to consider whether it stands as a<br />
destination for black artists, both musical and visual. Just how<br />
many stages are there across the city that aren’t predominantly<br />
filled by indie, psychedelia and rock ‘n’ roll? Why is it that The<br />
La’s one album is widely regarded as the defining sound of the<br />
city’s streets rather than The Real Thing’s 4 From 8? It is simply<br />
because one paints an alluring picture of white working-class<br />
existence, and the other displays a contrasting reality felt in<br />
Liverpool’s minority black communities?<br />
It’s important not to be lulled into the belief that Liverpool is<br />
a utopia of socialism, anti-racism and equality. This city leads the<br />
way in so many social movements, but we’re not yet at an end<br />
goal. In believing so, systemic issues will continue to proliferate<br />
quietly under the radar. More work needs to be done both<br />
institutionally and personally to confront systemic racism and the<br />
health crisis that is far from over.<br />
Bido Lito! returning to print is a joyous occasion personally<br />
and signifies a win in a <strong>2020</strong> characterised by upheaval (oh, and<br />
The Reds making it 19 – eventually). But, as ever, we’re looking<br />
forwards; the tangible aspect of the magazine isn’t what defines<br />
it. More so, it’s the open source nature of the ideas contained<br />
within that make this worthwhile and, I hope, a community<br />
asset. And thankfully these pages cannot yet be guarded by an<br />
algorithm, meaning each idea can be as democratically served as<br />
the next.<br />
In many ways, through being cut off from the city our<br />
eyes were opened wider than before. It is my hope that this is<br />
reflected in this and our upcoming issues. Special thanks to all<br />
those who have supported Bido Lito! over the course of the last<br />
six months. Without you, this magazine wouldn’t be in your<br />
hands right now. !<br />
10
HOT PINK!<br />
Our HOT PINK! playlist is the place to find the newest, brightest and hottest music from across Merseyside.<br />
Featuring the newest drops from local artists, the mix is updated regularly with a multitude of bangers from<br />
an array of genres, guaranteed to pique your interest and please your ear drums. It’s the perfect digest to<br />
keep you briefed on the best sounds currently coming out of Merseyside.<br />
Ragz Nordset<br />
Don’t You Forget (Drumwarp & Guevarism Psychedub)<br />
Mellowtone<br />
The Nordic singer-songwriter continues a triumphant return with some delectable mixes of her<br />
single out on Mellowtone Records. This bassy reimagining, from a duo melded from the Super<br />
Weird Substance and Keep It Cryptic stables, explodes the tune wide open to find trippy Eastern<br />
scales which suck the listener into its dubby vortex. ST<br />
Feral Wheel<br />
The Dolphin Way<br />
The second slice of FERAL WHEEL is a loungey throwback to Echo & the Bunnymen and arrives<br />
with its own Python-esque animated video. More expansive than their previous track Death To The<br />
Humans, The Dolphin Way builds upon the sonic landscape of that track and calls back to classic<br />
Scouse New Wave. NG<br />
Bye Louis<br />
Between The Hedges (Steve Amadeo Remix)<br />
Emotion Wave<br />
Here we have the first fruits of BYE LOUIS’ egalitarian experiment of throwing the stems of his<br />
Same Boy record out into the ether and inviting reworkings. Producer STEVE AMADEO’s addition<br />
of sumptuous strings gives the song pronounced emotional heft while retaining the intimacy<br />
of the original. Gone is the lo-fi feel of the original and in its place a more expansive, dramatic<br />
atmosphere. ST<br />
Niki Kand<br />
It Ain’t Cool<br />
NIKI KAND seemingly arrived fully formed. We last spoke to her at the back end of 2018, when the<br />
Iranian-born singer waxed lyrical about her development as an artist and feeling comfortable in<br />
her own creative skin. It Ain’t Cool feels about as natural as is possible – yearning, dusty soul that<br />
recollects the wonder of Mary J Blige. As is the way at the moment, the next time we’ll be able to<br />
see her live isn’t until February 2021, when she’s set to join All We Are at Arts Club. Should be a<br />
good one, that. NG<br />
Dan Croll<br />
Hit Your Limit<br />
Communion Records<br />
Adopted Scouser DAN CROLL returns with a summery LP packed with pop hammers. The title<br />
track continues to pay Croll’s career-long respects to King of American Pastoral Paul Simon in the<br />
vocal style, but with additional synthy groove vehicle which sets the tone for another well-crafted<br />
collection of tunes. “Everyone succumbs / Everyone’s got their point / Everybody bends and breaks”<br />
Croll coos on Hit Your Limit. I think we all shared this sentiment at some point during the isolation<br />
marathon just endured. ST<br />
Campfire Social<br />
Awake In The Wake Of A Wave<br />
Mai 68<br />
Deacon Blue aren’t everyone’s idea of a good time but as the concept of the guilty pleasure has<br />
all but been assigned to the history bin with CD giveaways and alcopops, maybe time’s ripe for<br />
a reappraisal of the Glaswegian soft rockers. CAMPFIRE SOCIAL seem to be setting out such a<br />
campaign with this single. The satisfying build from sustained keys and skeletal guitar to beatdriven<br />
boogie and anthemic chorus is fitting for arms-round-shoulders set closer glory once we’re<br />
seeing live music again. Then the Deacon Blue debate can begin. ST<br />
Georgie Weston<br />
Around My Room<br />
Lush harmonies aplenty, forlorn vocals, and a driving beat make for a fabulous sophomore single<br />
from GEORGIE WESTON. The addition of sax is always welcome in these parts, and it’s used with<br />
tempered expertise towards the end of this pop nugget. ST<br />
Words: Nik Glover and Sam Turner<br />
Follow Hot Pink! on Spotify: bit.ly/bidohotpink<br />
(Photography from left to right: Ian Skelly, Niki Kand, Dan Croll, Ragz Nordset)<br />
Ian Skelly<br />
Wake The World<br />
Silver Song Records<br />
A highlight from The Coral drummer’s new album Drifters Skyline, this is noisier than much of<br />
the record and steps further from the template you’d perhaps expect from a member of one of<br />
the country’s most distinctive acts, with a fuzzy rock ‘n’ roll strut punctuated by Skelly’s languid<br />
vocal. The rest of the record walks a satisfyingly hazy path between countryfied rock and softer<br />
Americana. A discreet gem. NG<br />
FEATURE<br />
11
PLAYING IN<br />
Lockdown and social distancing delivered a huge blow to Liverpool’s cultural sector, with<br />
its music scene one of the most adversely affected. In response, Bido Lito!, in partnership<br />
with University of Liverpool, has carried out research looking into the impacts on<br />
musicians across the city region, with initial findings painting a devastating picture.<br />
Back in February, if you’d have prophesised that by the end of the<br />
summer the city’s musicscape would be on its knees, few would have<br />
believed you. Enter Coronavirus.<br />
When Boris Johnson addressed the nation on the evening of<br />
23rd March, the country was commanded to grind to a halt in fear of the global<br />
Covid-19 pandemic. Venues across the country shut their doors not knowing<br />
when they could reopen. All gigs in the following months were cancelled. Festivals<br />
were called off. Release schedules damaged, stacks of gig opportunities for<br />
emerging artists no longer going ahead. The best part of a year of live music and<br />
artist progression completely wiped out.<br />
It’s an adjective that has been thrown around the<br />
past few months to the point of extreme tedium, but the<br />
impact that Covid-19 and lockdown has had on the music<br />
industry in Liverpool and internationally is unprecedented.<br />
The loss of live music in Liverpool in the months<br />
that followed have had a devastating effect on the city’s<br />
musical communities. The Zanzibar and Duke Street’s<br />
Sound have now permanently shut their doors after the<br />
ramifications of lockdown took their toll. These stages<br />
were essential for emerging artists to hone their craft,<br />
get key experiences and develop fanbases in the process.<br />
The former was a building of cherished memories shared<br />
by multiple generations, with the latter a key part of the<br />
contemporary DIY scene. Without them, Liverpool is<br />
weaker.<br />
While the devastation of the last few months have<br />
rightly generated an emotive reaction, this emotion needs<br />
to be channelled into cohesive conversations for change.<br />
Bido Lito!, in partnership with the University of Liverpool, constructed a survey<br />
exploring the impact of lockdown on musicians within the Liverpool City Region<br />
boroughs of Sefton, Halton, St Helens, Knowsley, Liverpool and Wirral. It collected<br />
data on a range of themes, including the immediate economic implications,<br />
quantifying creative loss, how supported musicians have felt during lockdown,<br />
adaptations to new limitations and attitudes towards moving forward and social<br />
distancing.<br />
The proposed outcomes of this information will allow us to present a datasupported<br />
reality to policy-makers outlining how lockdown has devastated local<br />
musicians. This will help influence key decision-making processes as musical<br />
organisations and the local combined authority aim to roadmap a strategy that will<br />
get the region’s music economy and communities back up and running safely. The<br />
data further allows the voices of many to be taken into account in the process, and<br />
to make the case for what support LCR’s musicians actually need moving forward<br />
to offset the losses of the last six months.<br />
The survey was open from July 27th to August 7th. In total 175 respondents<br />
took part. We saw replies from all types of musicians from all genres and projects<br />
of all sizes, from bedroom producers to bands, community choirs and larger scale<br />
groups and ensembles including musicians from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic<br />
Orchestra.<br />
“At one point in<br />
lockdown I was<br />
made homeless as<br />
income stopped”<br />
We aim to cover the survey results and what they mean thoroughly in the<br />
coming issues of Bido Lito!. This first piece will focus mainly on the loss of live<br />
music within the city.<br />
Firstly, 87 per cent of the musicians who took part in the survey had scheduled<br />
performances cancelled due to lockdown and the temporary closure of music<br />
venues. The combined total number of gigs unable to go ahead between March<br />
and July was 2,991. As venue doors shut and the lights turned off for lockdown,<br />
the city’s promoters were eager to reschedule, but wary whether this could be<br />
achieved. Out of the performances cancelled, 2,584 (86 per cent) have been<br />
completely cancelled and not rescheduled, with only 442 shows getting rebooked<br />
for potential future dates – which may yet be subject to<br />
social distancing measures. More shows are expected<br />
to be rescheduled in the coming months, as performers,<br />
promoters and venues get used to the new conditions.<br />
But it will still be a fraction of what we would have been<br />
likely to see had the pandemic not intervened.<br />
While it is possible that some of the same shows<br />
would have been included in different individual<br />
responses, it is also likely that the number of lost shows<br />
is greatly higher than the identified 2,500 when we<br />
consider the sample size of the musicians asked and the<br />
greater amount of musicians within the LCR that might<br />
not have taken part in the survey.<br />
The numbers are overwhelming and hard to take<br />
in; at the time of publication, lockdown has closed<br />
Liverpool’s music venues for six months. Some of these<br />
lost performances were headline shows where emerging<br />
acts finally reached that milestone of topping the bill<br />
themselves. Others were the acts’ biggest shows to date, and some respondents lost<br />
out on entire world tours, with upwards of £1m in performance fees taken away.<br />
One individual said it has been “Totally catastrophic, financially, emotionally,<br />
socially and creatively. Everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve has just crashed<br />
to the floor”. Although most were understanding, given the global pandemic<br />
situation, this sense of a doomed future was echoed throughout the responses.<br />
Performance is a key aspect of being a musician and to some it is a<br />
fundamental part of their identity as an artist. For developing a fanbase, live<br />
performance is the best vehicle of promotion, with support slots being a key<br />
platform for putting an artist’s music in front of an already eager and attentive<br />
room of potential fans.<br />
Even when excluding high profile artists’ international tour postponements<br />
from the calculations, the financial impact of lockdown on the city region’s<br />
musicians is seismic. The estimated total loss in performance revenue for the<br />
regional performers asked was a massive £1,747,527. On average, each musician<br />
will have lost £2,397 of live fee income so far due to lockdown.<br />
With the venues closed, many musicians’ incomes were devastated with one<br />
respondent saying they had “90 per cent reduction in earnings gone overnight”.<br />
Another added: “At one point in lockdown I was made homeless as income<br />
stopped.”<br />
12
Creative organisations nationwide, and more locally the LCR<br />
Combined Authority, provided funding to support affected musicians.<br />
Funds were used to allow musicians to support themselves and to<br />
buy new gear to be used at home to help generate new income.<br />
Other services like Help Musicians provided important mental health<br />
support for struggling individuals and their Coronavirus hardship fund<br />
helped out 19 of the artists surveyed. Organisations like PRS and the<br />
Musicians’ Union were also praised for the direction, advice, funding<br />
and support they gave during this time.<br />
However, only 23 per cent of respondents actually sought funding.<br />
And althought the majority of those who did were successful, 45 per<br />
cent received less than £500 and half of them received less that £100.<br />
The funding received has been a drop in the ocean compared to the<br />
amount of money lost to cancelled performances.<br />
A further concern is that 44 per cent of those surveyed were<br />
unaware of the range of specific support available to assist musicians<br />
as they continued to struggle, uninformed about the potential help on<br />
offer.<br />
Funding pots continue to be created to help support musicians as<br />
lockdown continues for the performance industry. The National Lottery<br />
is the latest to open funds to help support artists. Details on how to<br />
apply for this funding can be found on the Arts Council website.<br />
Aims to get the live music sector back onto its feet and running<br />
to a pre-Coronavirus level have moved at a snail’s pace. As we saw at<br />
the start of August, moving into stage four of the reopening strategy<br />
was postponed as the infection-rate nationwide remained too high.<br />
However, the government has since announced that socially distanced<br />
events can take place from 15th August. Yet it must be noted that<br />
the Music Venue Trust remain sceptical of making live performances<br />
financially viable under social distancing. More clarity from central<br />
government is clearly needed.<br />
The nauseating figures noted so far were regarding the six months<br />
of lockdown. Looking ahead to the rest of <strong>2020</strong> the scene is pretty<br />
bleak. The survey ended on 7th August, and from then an expected<br />
143 shows were still scheduled for August, few of which actually took<br />
place. The financial loss of just these shows alone was an estimated<br />
£56,443.<br />
Looking at the remainder of <strong>2020</strong>, only half (49 per cent) of the<br />
surveyed musicians have any shows booked, and though these could<br />
potentially generate nearly half a million pounds (£496,622), even with<br />
the easing of certain restrictions most of these are unlikely to go ahead.<br />
If venues remain shut until the end of <strong>2020</strong>, Liverpool’s musicians<br />
will have lost out on over £2.2 million in performance revenues.<br />
Furthermore, this estimated figure does not include the loss to the 38<br />
per cent of respondents who had gigs cancelled but are yet to have any<br />
new performances booked in.<br />
The return of live music raises as many questions as it actually<br />
solves. Yes, live music can return in front of an audience within a venue,<br />
albeit with stringent safeguarding measures in place, curtailing the<br />
very essence and enjoyment that live music offers.<br />
Interestingly the split in confidence between the artists towards<br />
the viability of performing with social distancing was quite even in the<br />
results, with those confident or unconfident both at around 37 per cent,<br />
with 24 per cent left undecided.<br />
“I feel if we are innovative, patient and willing to do things<br />
differently to what we’re used to, then it could possibly work out,” said<br />
one respondent. Contrastingly one unhopeful reply said “my job is to<br />
bring people together, to make them dance and create an atmosphere.<br />
This is now entirely discouraged.”<br />
Audience rules for limiting transmission of Covid-19 are almost<br />
draconian. No singing along, no dancing with other people, as little<br />
contact with others as possible within a set one-to-two metre distance.<br />
The prospect of going to a show and being unable to sing along and<br />
dance is otherworldly. It eliminates the collective voice and humbling<br />
moments that are only available when hundreds of people sing along<br />
to their favourite act on stage. Replacing it with subdued applause inbetween<br />
songs just isn’t the same.<br />
Worse still for venues, socially distanced shows put immense<br />
stress on the organisation, the logistics, staff and finances of the<br />
building. Live events are a financially precarious business at the best of<br />
times, and it just isn’t possible for both venue and artist to benefit from<br />
a 10-20 per cent capacity of a usually sold-out room.<br />
The first analysis from this study proves that the impact of<br />
Covid-19 on not just Liverpool’s but the nation’s musicians is massive.<br />
But without proper intervention on a national level the state of play<br />
will only get worse and more venues will be forced to close, more jobs<br />
will be lost and more musicians will simply not have the capacity to<br />
continue. This cannot happen. Damningly for the Tories, 55 per cent of<br />
those asked didn’t feel supported at all by the national government. Put<br />
simply, more has to be done to support the music industry.<br />
The next issue’s analysis of the survey will investigate how<br />
musicians have coped and adapted during lockdown while moving<br />
operations online to try to stand out and break through the cacophony<br />
of online gigs and promotion. For now, we long for the first encoure,<br />
sing-along chorus and the joyous escapism that fans and musicians get<br />
from live music. !<br />
Words: Will Whitby / @WillyWhitby<br />
Lead researchers and data analysis: Richard Anderson and Mathew<br />
Flynn (University of Liverpool)<br />
Illustrations: Esmée Finlay / @efinlayillustration<br />
The next stage of this research will take place in October via a Zoom<br />
consultation event led by Bido Lito!, University of Liverpool and other<br />
musician support organisations. The event will consider the wider<br />
impacts across the sector with venues, promoters, educators and other<br />
industry professionals encouraged to take part. Registration of interest<br />
is available on the Bido Lito! website under the feature.<br />
FEATURE<br />
13
The trio return to dish out sunburst rays of joy in the face of an ever uncertain climate. Sophie Shields sits<br />
down for a socially distanced chat with the band following the release of their third album, Providence.<br />
We’re pretty familiar with ALL WE ARE at Bido Lito!. Since emerging almost a decade<br />
ago, the band have woven themselves deep into the fibres of Liverpool’s music<br />
scene through two albums and countless spirit-raising shows. As we reconvene for<br />
what will be the magazine’s fifth interview with the band, in what’s been a year of<br />
unpredictability, All We Are remain as essential and joyous as ever.<br />
We’re returning to talk today in an old converted primary school turned artists’ dream space. It’s<br />
the home of drummer and vocalist Richard O’Flynn. It’s also where we first caught up with the trio<br />
of Rich, Guro Gikling (bass) and Luís Santos (guitar) back in 2012. Back then the trio had only just<br />
stumbled into formation and lit the touch paper for their eight-year career that’s followed. But today<br />
is all about album number three.<br />
Looking on from EP Heart Of Mine, the bridge between 2017’s Sunny Hills and new LP<br />
Providence – at first listen you get the sense that album number three is a bit of a step away from<br />
their first two offerings. It has a similar vibe, the same twangy guitar hooks, funky basslines and<br />
groovy beats; but it leads with a much more euphoric sense of positivity and warmth in the themes<br />
and narrative. Where debut All We Are had ice running through its funky veins, and Sunny Hills<br />
channelled a more insistent aggression, Providence is the perfect combination of catchy tunes with<br />
a summery outlook on life. An apt time to be releasing it into the world after the last few months<br />
and a fine example of how the power of music can offer a bit of respite for musicians and listeners<br />
alike.<br />
Sitting comfortably on tiny chairs (we are in what was a primary school after all) in the<br />
sunny back garden of Rich’s home/music studio/groove factory, it’s difficult to not take a second<br />
to acknowledge we’re able do this again. To physically sit together, albeit at a distance, and talk<br />
about music without a computer screen and a dodgy internet connection between us. A sense of<br />
normality may not have completely resumed but it’s a step in the right direction.<br />
You can’t come to Rich’s creative heaven of a home and not want to know more about it, and<br />
how it feeds into the make-up of the band. “We got this place when the band started nine years<br />
ago, about May 2011,” Cork native Rich tells me. “We were talking about starting a band and then<br />
my girlfriend broke up with me and I was looking for a place. Luís came with me to see the nursery<br />
and it was totally fucked,” he adds. “There was weird shit everywhere. I think some artist from<br />
Newcastle lived here. I didn’t really have any vision and was like, ‘Yeh, I can’t live here,’ but Luís<br />
[convinced me of its potential] and so we just moved in and started the band.”<br />
The space has played an important role in the workings of All We Are, an unofficial fourth<br />
member and the birthplace of Providence. “We wanted to have the familiarity and the space to<br />
spend as much time as we wanted on the album. It’s always been quite key.”<br />
The trio of All We Are hail from all corners of the world: Rich, as mentioned comes from Ireland,<br />
Guro from Norway and Luís from Brazil. Coming together in Liverpool and adopting it as a place<br />
to start their musical endeavour feels like a bit of a calling for them. Like a lot of bands in Liverpool<br />
they met in the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. There’s something about the city, it draws<br />
people in from all walks of life, with an abundance of talent. But, looking back at the first steps that<br />
bring us here today, what was it about Liverpool for these guys?<br />
“I just wanted to come to Liverpool, I had heard about LIPA and wanted to come,” Guro<br />
explains. “I was also a huge fan of The Beatles growing up. I always found like I had a bit of a<br />
connection to Liverpool.”<br />
These sentiments are shared by Rich who describes coming to Liverpool as a bit of a<br />
pilgrimage. “It definitely felt like coming to Liverpool was quite monumental. As a young Irish fella,<br />
it was like ‘Oh My God, this is where it all happened’. It has such an amazing musical history it felt<br />
amazing to be coming here.<br />
“When I used to visit I came into Liverpool through Bootle. I got a black cab and had a pocket<br />
full of pounds that my dad gave me,” Rich laughs. “It’s really stereotypical but I was like, ‘Fucking<br />
hell, this is amazing!’”<br />
In the midst of all the reminiscing of everyone’s travels to Liverpool, a wasp lands on Luís’ lip<br />
which leads to an impromptu conversation about the unscripted scene in Raiders Of The Lost Ark<br />
when a fly lands on Dr Belloq’s lip and crawls into his mouth. The jovial swerve in conversation is a<br />
reminder of the comfort and ease the band share with one another. They project a welcoming sense<br />
of friendship and familiarity into their presence, owing much to their friendship for over 13 years.<br />
“We figured out that lockdown is the longest that we’ve been apart from each other and not<br />
playing music in about 14 years,” Guro explains, highlighting how close-knit their relationship is. It’s<br />
a friendship that seems to have only strengthened over the years.<br />
“I often think about how different it is now to when we first started hanging out or even if it is<br />
different at all,” Rich muses, as Guro responds: “I think the importance of things has changed. What<br />
seemed like the most important thing back then might not be now.” A valid point for a band who,<br />
early in their career, signed with Domino Records imprint Double Six, for the goals only to keep on<br />
coming. “I guess when we started, we wanted to get signed and then we did,” Rich explains. “Then<br />
we wanted to put out an album, which we did. We wanted to play Glastonbury and go to Australia<br />
and we did those. Things change but, ultimately, we just want to put out music. Putting out records<br />
and being signed to Domino is pretty much like… we couldn’t ask for anything more than that.<br />
“We’ve always had a connection. That’s integral to All We Are and it’s inspired by our<br />
different musical backgrounds. It makes the band special,” Rich continues. Having such different<br />
geographical backgrounds alongside a range of musical influences sheds light on their varied<br />
musical stylings. Described in the past as everything from “The Bee Gees on Diazepam” (Spotify)<br />
to specialising in “creeping psychedelia” (Bido Lito! 2015) and producing “languid funk” by Lauren<br />
Laverne, it’s hard to put a finger on exactly what they are, but that’s not a bad thing.<br />
Rich notes his musical influences come from listening almost exclusively to 80s music. “Prince<br />
is a massive influence for me, as well as Tears For Fears, Madonna and Japan. I also listen to a lot of<br />
hip hop from the 90s.” It’s a far cry from Luís who states Radiohead, Broken Social Scene and music<br />
from his home country as his influences. “The last few years I’ve been listening to a lot of Brazilian<br />
music to reconnect with my roots, alongside loads of boogie, funk and soul. I’m not going to say<br />
it’s a guilty pleasure because I’m not guilty but also, Steely Dan. My housemate is really into Steely<br />
14
ALL<br />
W E<br />
ARE<br />
Dan. We have Steely Dan Sundays where we get together and play Steely Dan songs. It’s a very<br />
exclusive club,” Luís laughs.<br />
“It’s hard to know what you’re inspired by as well,” Guro adds. “It just comes out of you and you<br />
don’t know what has influenced you so much. When you’re a kid and listen to music you might pick<br />
up stuff not even knowing you’re doing it. Thinking now, when I play basslines, they are very all<br />
over the place and when I think about it it’s quite like Paul McCartney, but I would never think that.”<br />
“You just thought it…” Rich laughs.<br />
“I did listen to a lot of The Beatles growing up,” Guro clarifies,<br />
laughing, “but I’ve never thought it was my influence. I listen to a lot of<br />
pop music – big bangers with massive hooks is always something I’ve<br />
enjoyed.”<br />
Hearing about their musical influences makes it clear why their<br />
songs have so much variety running through them. You can hear the<br />
80s synth influence from Rich, the funk elements from Luís, and the<br />
pop hooks from Guro. It’s the perfect combination that results in their<br />
toe-tapping tracks. Take recent single Not Your Man as an example:<br />
the bouncing, funky bassline, tropical trumpets and catchy lyrics make<br />
for the perfect summery track to bop away to. With the lyrics “Like a<br />
piña colada, you’re not going to waste me” filling up the chorus, it gets<br />
stuck in your head for the rest of the day. “We had a lot of excitement<br />
from the label about that track,” Rich says after I explained how my<br />
housemate now has a bit of an obsession with aforementioned drink.<br />
“We shot the music video for it in the middle of lockdown, which<br />
was interesting. We had to sign health declaration forms and it was<br />
all properly socially distanced. The director and the stylist were on<br />
Zoom and it was just us in the studio. It was all a bit apocalyptic.”<br />
Watching the video back you would never think it was made under<br />
such constraints and shows how creative and dedicated the band are to their craft. “We never really<br />
discussed postponing the record,” Rich explains, nodding towards some high profile releases that<br />
have been rearranged due to social distancing measures. “It’s a summer record. It’s about the good<br />
times and we need to focus on the good things when they aren’t going so well at the moment,”<br />
Guro adds.<br />
A bit of positivity is something we could all do with at the moment and it’s a theme that<br />
runs throughout their album, alongside everything from friendship, love, lust and loss. “It’s a very<br />
human, honest and emotive record,” Rich muses. “I think the spirit of it is really positive. Making the<br />
record and moving on from the second one was quite healing. To get a different vibe out there and<br />
spreading joy feels incredibly appropriate to put it out.”<br />
The album wears the clothes of a cast of characters, shapeshifting and bouncing in a Hawaiian<br />
necklace. But do any of the tracks carry a personal entity? “I really like How You Get Me,” Luís offers.<br />
“It’s a summer record.<br />
It’s about the good<br />
times and we need<br />
to focus on the good<br />
things when they<br />
aren’t going so well<br />
at the moment”<br />
“We wrote it in Ireland on a writing trip in this cottage by the sea. I wrote it on this guitar that I<br />
found when I went back home in my grandad’s old house. It turned out to be this 60s Brazilian<br />
guitar, so I brought it back because it has this really special sound. There is a lot of sentiment and<br />
feeling to the guitar and it came out in that song.”<br />
“It does kind of sum up the spirit of the album as well,” Rich adds. “The songs are different<br />
thematically and there is a narrative running throughout them, but How You Get Me does sum up<br />
the joyous vibe of the record.”<br />
“For me [it’s] maybe L Is For Lose because it captures all the best<br />
bits from all of us,” Guro adds. “We all shine in that one. All of our<br />
personalities come out in it. It was also written in the same cottage in<br />
Ireland. It must have been something about the air.”<br />
The title Providence also has a rooted connection with the band,<br />
apart from being the first track on the album. “Providence is like, it<br />
is what it is, things will be as they are, an act of God, so in a way it’s<br />
quite a positive thing. Things are the way they are and you just push<br />
on,” Rich explains. “We had to change the album artwork last minute,<br />
too, and it all worked out in the end. Another act of providence in<br />
itself!” On the finalised cover, the trio are scattered around a sunburst<br />
throne of their own making. Each one of them has an air of nobility<br />
about them, a deft assurance. It’s a metaphor that rubberstamps their<br />
entitlement of deity status within not just Liverpool, but modern funk<br />
itself.<br />
As we come towards the end of our chat, the sense of pleasure in<br />
simply being able do that, chat in person at a safe distance, returns to<br />
the fore. Lockdown will have been a contrasting period for many, but<br />
its constraint on the day-to-day regularity of before is not lost on the<br />
band.<br />
“I feel extremely creative now,” replies Luís. “You forget how important practice is and you can<br />
get a little rusty sometimes. It’s good for me to start doing stuff again.”<br />
“I think I needed the break to figure out how much I missed it,” Guro adds. “Now I just really<br />
want to play. We’ve started again and it’s bringing me so much joy.” !<br />
Words: Sophie Shields<br />
Photography: Rebecca Hawley<br />
thisisallweare.co.uk<br />
Providence is available now via Double Six Records. All We Are play Arts Club on 26th February<br />
2021.<br />
FEATURE<br />
15
BIRKENHEAD<br />
The River Mersey draws a physical and psychological line between Liverpool and Wirral, allowing opposing<br />
narratives and identities to take hold. With a publicly accessible bridge over the river’s shortest crossing<br />
a near engineering impossibility, cultural regeneration may just be the road to shortening the divide. Enter,<br />
Future Yard.<br />
Birkenhead, where the dominant waves of Liverpool<br />
broke and rolled back, carries an echo of historical<br />
stasis rather than any discernible glimpse of the<br />
future. On the dockside, ships remain still in a<br />
stripped back Cammell Laird. The town hall and Hamilton<br />
Square remain grand, but even this Grade I listed cluster is<br />
presented as a historical artefact of more favourable times.<br />
Towards the town centre, a frayed array of once optimistic<br />
post-war modernism haunts the contemporary commercial<br />
district. It’s an area that’s neither coming nor going. So, why<br />
look for a creative future in its apathetic resilience? A harsh<br />
question, but perhaps overdue.<br />
Culturally, Birkenhead sits in something of a no-man’s land,<br />
claimed by nobody as their own. Much of the rest of Wirral<br />
doesn’t seem to want it. From New Brighton, Liverpool is<br />
literally more visible. Towns on the western coast such as West<br />
Kirby have their own sense of identity, partly informed by the<br />
‘Leisure Peninsula’ image that doesn’t suit the industrial streets<br />
of Birkenhead. Even Oxton – which is definitely Birkenhead,<br />
geographically – prefers to define itself as a village apart.<br />
And then there’s the river. There’s just about a mile between<br />
the two sides, but the psychological distance it creates is much,<br />
much wider. It’s believed that the Mersey was a historical<br />
border between two ancient kingdoms; on the East bank lay<br />
Northumbria, while the Wirral peninsula lay in Mercian territory.<br />
Maybe it’s the echoes of this historical divide which still pervade<br />
along its shores. Different councils, ‘wools’ and ‘Scousers’, the<br />
river is still seen as a demarcation of difference. Never mind that<br />
the two sides are extremely well connected, with it taking just<br />
three minutes to reach the centre of Birkenhead from Liverpool,<br />
convincing people to make that trip is easier said than done.<br />
Because right now, why should they? A long period of industrial<br />
and commercial decline has left Birkenhead lacking not just<br />
destinations, but a sense of identity or purpose. Right now, and<br />
so close, Liverpool just has more: more venues, more artists,<br />
more willing audiences. More to shout about.<br />
But there are those who see the separation set by the river<br />
and current aimlessness of Birkenhead as opportunities, not<br />
obstacles. After all, this is a town which has always traditionally<br />
been a commercial and community epicentre in its own right –<br />
the town hall and Hamilton Square proudly remind you of this.<br />
Rather than tagging onto the coattails of “over the water”, the<br />
potential exists for Birkenhead to find, or create, its own purpose.<br />
FUTURE YARD began <strong>2020</strong> with the intention of working<br />
towards this purpose. Having tested the waters of what was<br />
possible with 2019’s two-day music festival over some of<br />
Birkenhead’s main landmarks, a series of gigs in a pop-up venue<br />
on Argyle Street was announced. Featuring artists including<br />
Evian Christ, Self Esteem, She Drew The Gun and a special,<br />
two-man performance by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s<br />
Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, the venue was to be<br />
a great statement of a vision for Birkenhead that cut through<br />
the prevalent negative stereotypes of the town. Decorated<br />
with enormous pink letters which read “THE FUTURE IS<br />
BIRKENHEAD”, Future Yard declared its ambitions even before it<br />
opened, when the very structure of the venue was still a work in<br />
progress.<br />
With the spread of Covid-19 putting the brakes on these<br />
plans, some major rethinking has had to take place for the venue<br />
and CIC. The fact that the music programme hadn’t started has<br />
in some ways left Future Yard in a better position than some<br />
venues. The postponement of their pop-up summer schedule<br />
has only hastened their long-term ambition of becoming<br />
established as a permanent space for Birkenhead. And while<br />
the “Near Future” shows originally scheduled for this summer<br />
have mostly been moved to 2021 in one form or other, the team<br />
behind the venue have also been able to schedule new events<br />
for “Near Normal”, a series of socially-distanced in-person<br />
events in their venue on Argyle Street, which will also be live<br />
streamed beyond the 60 people allowed inside. The first limited<br />
capacity event is with She Drew The Gun on 19th <strong>September</strong><br />
– a date which feels tantalisingly close after so many months of<br />
empty schedules. More socially-distanced shows are still to be<br />
announced, coming in clusters of three in <strong>September</strong>, October<br />
and November, appetite-whetters before normal service can be<br />
resumed next year.<br />
It’s a much-needed positive story from the cultural sector,<br />
which has so prominently and heavily struggled under the<br />
lockdown restrictions of Covid-19. Amidst numerous stories<br />
of music venues, theatres and arts organisations being forced<br />
to close – Liverpool already losing integral spaces such as<br />
Sound, Studio 2 and now The Zanzibar – we’re being forced to<br />
consider the reality of what a world without easily accessible<br />
live culture looks like. And for many of us its absence has been<br />
keenly felt; holes left in plans for weeks and months ahead. The<br />
recommencement of live music, in whatever capacity, is cause<br />
for celebration in this climate. But Future Yard co-founder Craig<br />
Pennington’s vision for the venue goes beyond it being, as he<br />
puts it, “a space that opens to the public at half 7 and closes<br />
at 1am”. It’s not just the events that are being missed, but<br />
the culture around them. The opportunities not only for social<br />
interaction, but for artistic growth. Future Yard is about more<br />
than just putting on shows. It’s about building, sustaining and<br />
supporting cultural shifts of the kind that feel more needed now<br />
than ever.<br />
Choosing to open a venue in Birkenhead might be regarded<br />
by some as an unusual choice at the best of times. This is<br />
perhaps best exemplified by the reaction on social media to their<br />
“THE FUTURE IS BIRKENHEAD” mural being unveiled back in<br />
March. For every supportive comment there were three snide<br />
voices: “If Birkenhead’s the future, God help us” and the like. This<br />
reaction actually delighted Pennington, who had “hoped there<br />
would be as much piss-taking and negative reaction as positive”,<br />
adding, “That’s the point!”. The mural is now gone, replaced by<br />
a new design more suitable for the venue’s now-permanent<br />
status as it works towards being the UK’s first carbon neutral<br />
grassroots venue. But the objective of being a starting place for<br />
changing the perceptions of an entire region has been achieved.<br />
“It’s like setting off a flare,” Pennington illustrates. “The response<br />
to that is the conversation.”<br />
There’s a growing recognition that Birkenhead has been<br />
culturally under-served and seeking to correct this imbalance.<br />
There’s a real potential for Birkenhead to be a cultural hub of<br />
its own, to be proudly claimed by Wirral, and Liverpool, as their<br />
16
“It’s about<br />
changing<br />
the story of<br />
a place”<br />
WON’T DIE<br />
own and a model of optimism for others. To have a relationship<br />
with Liverpool that’s not just in its shadow, but to be a centre<br />
for new, self-sustaining, ambitious activity. The audience<br />
certainly exists; Future Yard found that the majority of last<br />
August’s festivalgoers were from the peninsula. And no words<br />
are minced when Pennington calls it “a tragedy... that there’s<br />
not a venue dedicated to supporting new music on the Wirral”<br />
– an astounding fact when you consider the bands which have<br />
emerged from this part of the world.<br />
For culture-led regeneration to begin laying foundations, a<br />
quality music venue is as good a place to start – a stark contrast<br />
with the gentrification that has swept through many areas, such<br />
as the Baltic, laying claim to its few, integral music venues. It<br />
may sound idealistic to say ‘music can change the world’, but<br />
the Future Yard team not only believe this, they have a clear and<br />
practical plan about how to make this apparent in Birkenhead.<br />
That fact about having no new music venues in Wirral matters,<br />
because opportunities which aren’t visible can’t be understood<br />
as real possibilities. How will the next generation access careers<br />
such as sound engineer or promoter unless they have access<br />
to a space where these roles are modelled? Again, there’s a<br />
danger that we can take Liverpool for granted when it’s actually<br />
local involvement which matters most. “When you’re at a stage<br />
at your life like mid-teens, you’re not spending all your time in<br />
Liverpool,” Pennington reminds. “Working within the live music<br />
industry – if there’s not a venue in the town, that story is not<br />
even presented to young people as something they can do with<br />
their lives.”<br />
Right now, when the majority of the news seems weighted<br />
towards the gloom of closures and losses, Future Yard is<br />
determined to set an example of how venues can actively<br />
support the artists they exist for. “We know what we can’t<br />
do, but we also know what we need to be able to do,” says<br />
Pennington. “We’ve got to find ways of artists navigating this<br />
new reality. Both in terms of building their way back into playing<br />
live shows, but also thinking about how we support artists to be<br />
the best versions of themselves.”<br />
As a start, from August, they’ll be running Direct Input,<br />
a programme of webinars with established industry figures<br />
exploring the stories behind their careers. With live gigs set<br />
to restart in <strong>September</strong> they’ll also be running Sound Check,<br />
a training programme for young wannabe sound and lighting<br />
engineers. “We’ve got a fully structured programme...you come<br />
and shadow on all the shows, and by the end you’ll be able to<br />
proficiently mix a live band.” An exciting and meaningful entry<br />
point into a career which, though central to live music’s success,<br />
is often hidden from the spotlight.<br />
The ’new normal’ has also meant the introduction of other<br />
new ways of working, particularly with the increased importance<br />
of online events. Though they’ll never be a replacement for<br />
the full experience of attending live music events, interest<br />
in streamed performances has undeniably grown amongst<br />
audiences since March. They have been crucial in maintaining<br />
interactions between artist and audience, as well as vital<br />
opportunities to recoup some income. Pennington and his Future<br />
Yard partner Christopher Torpey recognise the potential here<br />
for artists to build audiences by creating an experience which is<br />
deliberately different to the live show – not a pale substitute, but<br />
a product of its own. “If you can make it work in a format which<br />
is considered for the way people are engaging with it,” believes<br />
Pennington, “you can create some element of a cinematic<br />
experience.” “You’ve got to approach it differently,” agrees<br />
Torpey. “I think there’s space for streams, ongoing. It’s never<br />
going replace live music, but it’s going to be an additional tool.<br />
But it might not necessarily stay along the lines of traditional live<br />
performance.”. With Autumn’s preliminary Near Normal shows<br />
operating at low capacity, and some people understandably<br />
reluctant to return to enclosed venue spaces, the option of a<br />
digital ticket to stream the gigs is also available. She Drew The<br />
Gun’s show on 19th <strong>September</strong> will be filmed and mixed live,<br />
relayed to punters at home as a high-quality live broadcast in a<br />
step on from the now tired bedroom gig live stream.<br />
Even if the digital experience still dominates for some time,<br />
the ultimate aim remains to get audiences to connect with this<br />
venue in the heart of Birkenhead. Digital may even offer greater<br />
opportunity, the chance to pique the interest of audiences who<br />
wouldn’t ordinarily think of making the three-minute journey<br />
under the Mersey. “We can build the situation where people are<br />
going to a venue, rather than going to see a particular artist,”<br />
says Pennington. With exciting programmes of gigs, artists<br />
and events to get involved in, we can all add our voices to the<br />
emerging conversation.<br />
“It’s just about storytelling. It’s about putting on great shows<br />
and events, and changing the story of a place.” That idea of the<br />
world-changing power of music can be more than a dream;<br />
Pennington points out at how it was music venue The Picket<br />
and arts group A Foundation who first saw the potential of the<br />
Baltic Triangle. How it was the incubation of culture which began<br />
the process of revival that’s led to it now being one of the most<br />
popular districts of Liverpool. Similar shades of change can be<br />
observed by the community power that’s literally reclaiming the<br />
former Smithdown Road Conservative Club, now the Smithdown<br />
Social. Co-operatively run, the venue is a hub of socially<br />
conscious club events with external promoters Wavertree<br />
Worldwide leading their own culture-centred regeneration in<br />
South Liverpool.<br />
Lockdown may have curtailed Future Yard’s plans this<br />
summer, but it’s also made the existing excitement about the<br />
opening of a new venue feel like a beacon of hope. Future Yard<br />
has always been about the long-haul process of major change.<br />
Pennington’s estimation prior to lockdown was that it would take<br />
10 years and continuous innovation to change popular attitudes<br />
about Birkenhead. But with its programme of quality events to<br />
attend and participate in, and offer of access to training in the<br />
skills which can make a scene sustainable, Future Yard feels like<br />
the right place at the right time. Its opening is a welcome piece of<br />
optimism for both Birkenhead and its cultural scene, brightening<br />
otherwise gloomy conversations around the outlook for both<br />
a long-undervalued town, and a sector which has value to so<br />
many beyond the stark financial calculations holding its fate in<br />
the balance. The need to come together and help music thrive<br />
is more urgent now than it has been for a long while. While<br />
the river may still divide many aspects of Merseyside identity,<br />
there’s no reason why it should also be the boundary of cultural<br />
opportunity. !<br />
Words: Julia Johnson / @Messylines_<br />
Photography: Liam Jones / @liamjonesphotie<br />
futureyard.org<br />
Full listings for Future Yard’s 2021 live programme, and further<br />
limited-capacity Near Normal shows for the Autumn, can be<br />
found at futureyard.org. Artist-focused Direct Input live webinars<br />
take place fortnightly, with conversations with Katie Harkin (31st<br />
August) and Rebecca Lucy Taylor (14th <strong>September</strong>) free to<br />
attend.<br />
FEATURE<br />
17
18
MOLLY<br />
GREEN<br />
Tara Dalton looks for the threads that hold together the jazzy, soulful undertones of the abundantly creative<br />
singer-songwriter.<br />
On the outside, MOLLY GREEN is a youthful 22-year-old<br />
dripping in style from head to toe. But on the inside,<br />
she holds an old crooning soul that can grip you from<br />
the moment she opens her mouth.<br />
The native Bristolian singer-songwriter has a past that will<br />
leave you green with envy; performing from a young age and<br />
hitting stages from Colston Hall to Glastonbury. As if that wasn’t<br />
credit to her talent enough, four years ago she decided to move<br />
north to study music at the Liverpool Institute for Performing<br />
Arts. This year, over a Zoom call and a cuppa, we are both totally<br />
dressed to the nines, and I’m eager to dive deep.<br />
Although we’re 100 miles away from each other, it’s crystal<br />
clear to see that Molly’s upbringing was integral to her sound.<br />
In her smooth and jazzy undertones, you can hear the entwined<br />
romance between her grandpa’s love<br />
of sax and her mother’s love of RnB.<br />
While not as obvious from the outside,<br />
even in her acoustic sets, Molly admits<br />
her late father’s love of artists such as<br />
Jack Johnson and Paul Weller crept its<br />
way into her life.<br />
Yet, behind her old soul, Molly is at<br />
most a realist. “I’m actually pretty shit<br />
at genres for a musician,” she giggles<br />
as she attempts to describe her style<br />
to me. To Molly, music shouldn’t just<br />
be another listening process. With a<br />
middle finger to the idea of genres, it<br />
isn’t just sound that’s important, but<br />
where it will take you.<br />
“It’s purely just from how I<br />
appreciate music, I like music to take me somewhere and I<br />
almost forget where I am. When the song finishes, you just want<br />
to be transported there again,” she replies. “I think that’s when<br />
music is at its most powerful, when you forget where you are.<br />
Especially at live gigs as well, I like being totally lost.”<br />
We’ve all felt it. Total enchantment by an artist on stage,<br />
wrapped around their fingertips while the room around them<br />
turns. To Molly, that click into reality after a set has finished is<br />
how she wants every song of hers to end.<br />
With Molly, it’s all her. If music was her personal paint box,<br />
she’s all authentically green as her business and pleasure are<br />
merged together. Her stage name is her own, her girlfriend is<br />
her manager, and her sister is the illustrator of the Naked EP<br />
artwork.<br />
Created and recorded in lockdown, the acoustic EP shows<br />
a stripped-down style to Molly; her usual RnB style straddling<br />
modern neo-soul. As well as original tracks I’m Ready Now and<br />
Dusky Haze, Molly proves she’s ready to capture your heart with<br />
a slowed-down cover of Brockhampton’s SUGAR. In its delicate<br />
13 minutes, you can feel its lockdown influences, as it transports<br />
you to a serene setting of not total isolation, but relaxation.<br />
From the nape of a neck to the curve of a waist, all the<br />
silhouettes featured on the single artworks are a part of Molly.<br />
Each pose is based on a selfie sent to her sister in order to paint<br />
“I like music to take<br />
me somewhere<br />
and I almost forget<br />
where I am”<br />
the full ‘naked’ picture. While it creates a beautiful black and<br />
white storyline, it has, however, left a mark on her photo library.<br />
“I now have a lot of weird pictures on my phone of my ankles<br />
which I should probably delete now,” says Molly. “I’ll be showing<br />
people pictures of my holiday and go one too far and, surprise,<br />
there’s my elbow!”<br />
From single artworks to social media, Molly isn’t just here to<br />
be heard, but to be engrained in your senses. Through her looks,<br />
she aims to capture attention. “You kind of want your fans to<br />
see you as a desirable thing, not sexually, but you want them to<br />
look up to you. There is something to be said for going a little bit<br />
extra, rather than being boring and average,” she explains.<br />
And boring she is not. As well as being musically gifted,<br />
Molly can hear this vintage rhythm in her everyday life. Not only<br />
is she a talented songstress, but a<br />
talented seamstress, creating her<br />
own outfits for both onstage and<br />
offstage use. Having learned the<br />
skill for her Gatsby-themed 21st<br />
birthday, Molly wants Alicia Keys<br />
to be her first client. She channels<br />
her sound into her outfit because<br />
who needs genres, when you have<br />
organza? “I do think if you can pull<br />
something off, you can pull it off,”<br />
she replies. “If you go on thinking<br />
you look ridiculous, people are going<br />
to think it’s ridiculous.”<br />
Fashion is to Molly what<br />
purple is to green; a match made<br />
in heaven. She tells me of her love<br />
for style, and even over our call you can see the twinkle in her<br />
eye as she compliments fabrics and patterns. Her latest peach<br />
piece, created for her supporting set with Abbie Ozard, was<br />
the first item she had made entirely herself, but it’s definitely<br />
not the last. To some of us, the thought of a sewing machine is<br />
too stressful, but in Molly’s eyes, it is another creative escape<br />
outside of music. “Sometimes when you’re so focused on doing<br />
the one thing, it can get a bit monotonous and you can get a bit<br />
bogged down,” she starts. “I can get into a rabbit hole where I<br />
have no motivation to write and I’ll be thinking ‘You know what,<br />
the music’s not doing it for me today, let’s make an outfit’. It<br />
sometimes feels so nice to get that bit of escapism but still be<br />
doing something I love.”<br />
Where some artists try to maintain a persona online, Molly<br />
is here to be herself and no one else. From her socials, her<br />
connection to fans is unrivalled, letting them in to her day-to-day<br />
life to understand who she is as an artist. Her latest video Just A<br />
Girl is a “visual photo album” for fans, showing snippets of the<br />
singer-songwriter having fun and being herself.<br />
It was quite the task during lockdown to create a music video<br />
for the acoustic sets so, as she was already looking back on old<br />
times, she delved into her library. While the track sweetly deals<br />
with parted lovers, the video encapsulates her youth through<br />
snippets of her performances and adventures faced over the<br />
past few years. Collecting these snippets from friends and family,<br />
Molly experienced the same feeling you get when you’re tidying<br />
your room and pick up that one childhood toy from underneath a<br />
cupboard. The faint nostalgia just ignited a spark that she knew<br />
she had to share with friends. With life outside the window<br />
remaining unrecognisable, to make a simple video to get lost in<br />
took on a greater importance.<br />
“I didn’t want it to feel laborious,” she says. “You don’t have<br />
to try and figure out a meaning. Just watch it and enjoy. It is what<br />
it is.”<br />
Being an artist is difficult at the minute, with it being an<br />
unwritten social cue that you have to be creative in lockdown or<br />
else… well, you don’t want to know. The pressure to be creative<br />
can be a motivator for some musicians, giving them free-rein<br />
to experiment. But for musicians like Molly, isolation has only<br />
widened the gap between an artist and their art and therefore,<br />
an artist and their fans.<br />
“I was going to post on Instagram for a monthly recap<br />
in April, so I thought ‘Let’s get a few pictures of me being<br />
productive, like learning how to play the guitar’,” she explains.<br />
“But I remember turning and thinking as I waited there, who’s<br />
that helping? Just because I have been sat at home looking at<br />
everyone else doing this kind of thing, thinking, what the fuck am<br />
I doing?<br />
“I’m not going to lie to the people that support me,” she<br />
continues. “Instead, I’m going to be straight up and say, ‘You<br />
know what, it has been shit and I don’t have any nice pictures of<br />
me because I look like shit so this is what it is’.”<br />
While truthful to fans, Molly giggles as she lets me in on the<br />
white lies woven into her records. “No matter what I do, I always<br />
stand by one thing,” she says, “and that’s to not write a song<br />
about anyone you’re close to.” Molly learnt this lesson after a<br />
writing session with her girlfriend, when a simple brainstorm led<br />
to a romantic tune telling the story of how they got together. For<br />
the outsiders looking in, this seems like the ideal outcome, and<br />
we all do have a sneaky desire to be the character of a ballad.<br />
But the truth isn’t always desirable, as she explains. “Sometimes<br />
you bend the truth a bit or exaggerate a bit because that’s how<br />
you feel when you write the song. If somebody hears it’s about<br />
them, but you threw in that you fell in love right away, just cause<br />
that’s what worked and it made it a bit more romantic, and you<br />
have to say that you threw it in for that reason, it’s always better<br />
to never do that. Ever!”<br />
Lockdown hasn’t hindered her on her path forwards. Even<br />
as she stumbles for a charger to save her laptop, she hasn’t<br />
stumbled once in illustrating the bright future that lies ahead of<br />
her. And we’re on the edge of our seats, waiting. !<br />
Words: Tara Dalton / @tistaradee<br />
Photography: Zoë Moungabio / zoevictoire.com<br />
mollygreenmusic.com<br />
Naked is available now via Modern Sky.<br />
FEATURE<br />
19
BYLINES<br />
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team start <strong>September</strong> <strong>2020</strong>.<br />
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TEE<br />
For the past four years, Tee has established himself in roles behind the<br />
scenes as bassist and producer. With the long overdue arrival of his<br />
debut EP, he is finally ready to take his rightful place front and centre.<br />
FEATURE<br />
21
“I’m not<br />
allowed to hide<br />
anymore”<br />
Today’s sun is stretching high above the Anglican<br />
Cathedral as it moves through the steps of its summer<br />
ascent. It’s the hottest day of the year so far. Everything<br />
below wears a lick of golden paint. This includes Terell<br />
Farrell, as the hues catch his pristine white T-shirt on the corner<br />
of Duke Street where we meet.<br />
Much like the religious icons that bears down on us<br />
(including the sun), Farrell, better known as TEE, is an artist<br />
quietly defined by faith, by commitment, by purpose. His<br />
character and music have been tentatively shaped by faith as<br />
much as the cityscape that looms on the shoulders of the skyline.<br />
“If I hadn’t gone to church,” he says, as we retreat into the shade,<br />
“I probably wouldn’t be into music as much as I am.”<br />
Rather than perusing the storied collection of houses of<br />
worship across the city, we’ve climbed the humble spire of our<br />
office space to meet today. The window is open as far as it will<br />
allow. Through it sweeps the clunky symphony of city centre<br />
beer gardens. Sadly, a breeze doesn’t follow.<br />
It’s currently above 30 degrees in the mid-afternoon sun.<br />
It’s the type of heat when unforgiving chairs fuse with your back<br />
and spinal cord. Unforgiving like the two leather office chairs we<br />
occupy, seeking to find a quiet spot away from the beating rays<br />
and sun tipsy streets. Tee remains unfazed.<br />
Sitting there, nonchalantly swaying on the axis of the chair,<br />
he’s almost excitedly beckoning the red light of the recorder to<br />
be turned on and our interview to start. Comfortable would be<br />
an understatement. Confident? Humbly. Cool? More than most,<br />
especially in today’s heat. “I’m, like, the coldest person,” he wryly<br />
remarks as we savour the heat streaming down. Judging by how<br />
he’s happily reclining in the chair, you’d be lulled into thinking it’s<br />
a fresh spring day.<br />
Just as faith quietly punctuates his art, Tee, originally<br />
hailing from East London, has quietly been garnering attention<br />
in Liverpool over the course of the last five years. But you’d be<br />
excused if this is the first you’re seeing of him, front and centre.<br />
Until now, you’re more likely to have noticed his handiwork<br />
on the other side of the recording-studio glass, to the side of<br />
the stage. Maybe in prosaic writings and monologues which<br />
occasionally surface on his social media.<br />
His production fingerprints can be seen on recent releases<br />
by Sub Blue, Deliah and Little Grace, with his services highly in<br />
demand by local artists pursuing an emotively charged spectrum<br />
of pop and RnB. As a bassist, you may have seen him backing<br />
local behemoths MiC Lowry and neo-soul polymath XamVolo.<br />
But in the artist’s own words, now is time to move to the front of<br />
the stage. “Producer,” he started in an Instagram posts at the tail<br />
of 2019, “this is a hat I’ve had on for a couple years now. I think<br />
it’s time to hang it up for a little while.”<br />
This has given life to A Dozen Roses // A Love Story, his<br />
debut EP as Tee. Given that the assertion to move away from<br />
producing came in over nine months ago, you wouldn’t be wrong<br />
in thinking there’s been a few obstacles for the transformation.<br />
“Lockdown has been up and down,” he says as we start to talk<br />
about everything that’s shaped the EP, unintentionaly beginning<br />
with the inevitable conversation starter of <strong>2020</strong>. “It’s been good<br />
in that it gave people a bit of a break. I definitely need the rest<br />
and to revaluate,” he starts. “But it’s also been bad as the EP was<br />
supposed to be put out in April with a full installation presented<br />
at LightNight.” The event, like many in the cultural calendar of<br />
<strong>2020</strong>, was postpned.<br />
Delays aside the EP has no issue speaking for itself, whether<br />
now or when it was originally slated for release. In many ways<br />
the themes it covers have grown in perspective over the course<br />
of five searching months. And the digital shift in life is met,<br />
too, as Tee and his band will deliver an immersive live-stream<br />
performance in place of the original show.<br />
A Dozen Roses // A Love Story is Tee in his comfort zone,<br />
dealing with the uncomfortable. Across seven varied tracks,<br />
spoken-word interludes and soundscapes, the EP tackles<br />
fatherhood, vulnerability, mental health and love within its<br />
umbrella concept. It is highly ambitious and cinematic in its<br />
sensory delivery. “In the most basic sense, it’s a twisted love<br />
story between a man and a rose,” he says, with eyes and hands<br />
gesturing as if to say ‘wait, hear me out!’. “It sounds wild but… I<br />
played with the concept of the rose, which never had thorns in<br />
the garden of Eden until Eve ate the apple. A lot of it all stems<br />
from the baggage people carry, and that they will love you, but<br />
can still hurt you.”<br />
The end product is all the more impressive given it’s his<br />
debut body of work. Opener A Dozen Roses authoritatively sets<br />
the pace, but the EP offers plenty of time to reflect On I Hear A<br />
Kid, a song written from the perspective of a man who grew up<br />
without a father, reciting the conversation he’d have when the<br />
two meet again. From the early rush of 808s which fades into a<br />
moonlit croon, to the explosive Real, both tracks have a bi-polar<br />
character as they duck and weave through Tee’s repertoire of<br />
22
delicate arrangements and raps, delivered so hard they almost<br />
bleed with conviction. But it’s not just elaborate for the sake of it.<br />
“The art that I was wanting to produce and the music that I was<br />
wanting to create has been leading to this point,” he tells me. “I<br />
think for me, more than anything else, it’s all about storytelling.<br />
That’s why there’s spoken word, rap, why the music is so<br />
emotional. Whatever I deem necessary to tell the story.”<br />
The sonic palette is therefore complex in its emotive range.<br />
It’s as you’d expect when going so deep below the skin. No<br />
binary this or that, happy or sad. It stirs the emotion of social<br />
experience to evoke a vast understanding of the human<br />
condition. In relative terms, it reflects much of the chameleonic<br />
Madvillainy, minus the hazy headspaces of MF Doom and Madlib.<br />
There’s no smoke and mirrors in Tee’s observational lyricism.<br />
“I wanted to talk about things that I’ve seen and been a part<br />
of,” he tells me when pressed on whether the EP is a personal<br />
diary entry. “I’ve lived the experiences through other people.<br />
Telling the story the way that I do helps it seem more real,” he<br />
adds. “Not a confession, more observations.” In the role of the<br />
observer Tee paints self-portraits on other’s faces, instantly<br />
building an emotive connection to the subject and their stories<br />
put to music. These songs aren’t solely from him to learn from.<br />
Crown Of Thorns is the song most discernibly owing to faith.<br />
It’s a track that lays its roots in gospel, albeit spliced by Tee’s slick<br />
production and lyrical motifs of self-empowerment and worth.<br />
It’s the entry point to Tee’s innate musicality of natural rhythm<br />
and deft ear for choral arrangement.<br />
“Both of my families are religious,” he starts when looking<br />
back to the first building block in his musical journey. “Me and<br />
all of my cousins grew up in church and we’d go every Saturday,<br />
which meant I’d be playing drums in church every Saturday. I<br />
was very much into it, asking about which churches we’d be<br />
going to. You’d see your friends there, listening to the same<br />
music. When the latest gospel album dropped, you’d all be trying<br />
to learn it. That was the environment I grew up in, the music that<br />
I was surrounded by.”<br />
Religion itself isn’t something Tee wants to draw on<br />
too much as an artist, but he’s open about its influence and<br />
atmosphere surrounding his musical beginnings. “Gospel is such<br />
powerful music,” he replies, “it’s the kind of energy that I want<br />
to bring into my own music. Being able to do a gig, and for the<br />
music to hit the audience in the same way gospel did for me back<br />
then.”<br />
The early introduction to music would suggest a firm rudder<br />
in following life’s path. And yet, music remained a church-bound<br />
vocation through his mid-teenage years. Ideas of becoming<br />
an engineer were more prevalent until blown off course by the<br />
results of his first year’s study of Maths, Physics and Business at<br />
college. Looking back, it may prove to be divine intervention.<br />
“I remember walking through the park on my way home<br />
and crying, wondering what was I going to do,” he recalls of<br />
receiving the results that suggested engineering may not be a<br />
true calling. “I remember speaking on the phone to my dad, and<br />
he said, ‘Well, what is it that you want to do?’ And I hesitantly<br />
replied ‘music.” He says this, elongating the word, almost as<br />
if to relocate the shy subconscious influence that took hold of<br />
him almost a decade ago. “It was the first time that I ever felt as<br />
though I’d been asked what I wanted to do with my life, because<br />
until then I’d just assumed what would be best. Him asking the<br />
question was the turning point in my head.”<br />
Already well-versed on drums through years of church<br />
concerts, studying music at college saw a switch towards bass.<br />
“There were already too many drummers,” Tee remembers,<br />
outlining his transition to the instrument he’s now renowned for.<br />
“My teacher suggested I go with bass, and I just went with it,<br />
which was probably a terrible idea,” he says laughing to himself,<br />
“as I had to learn it all as quick as I could in two years.” Though<br />
the challenge was happily undertaken, and two years later his<br />
abilities secured him a place at LIPA and a move up north.<br />
Surrounded by a wealth of classically trained musicians at<br />
university, Tee himself was more of an instinctive player and<br />
listener. Most of his experience had come from gigs in churches,<br />
hours sat around in a practice studio with his friends in college.<br />
The change in scenery didn’t instil illusions of star power in his<br />
first few years in Liverpool. “It took me a while to find my feet,”<br />
he says honestly. “I’d been writing my own poetry all the way<br />
before university, but I didn’t return to it until mid-way through<br />
my second year. It just took me a while to work out what I was<br />
comfortable with.”<br />
Come the end of university, Tee had started to leave his<br />
own mark, but through the work of others rather than his solo<br />
production. As the sonic range and intricacies of A Dozen Roses<br />
// A Love Story would allude, his abilities at the studio controls<br />
stood out. “If you’d have told me I’d become a producer I’d have<br />
said, ‘No, I don’t have the time nor the patience’,” he laughs with<br />
a jovial disbelief.<br />
FEATURE<br />
23
It’s rare for an artist capable of mastering a wealth of instruments and sculpting<br />
a dense debut EP to still evade the charms of self-confidence. “To be fair,” he quickly<br />
follows up, “producing was something that I’d done [on my own], but only as a<br />
means of making my own music. I didn’t have the money to pay people to make the<br />
music that I want to make, so I had to learn.”<br />
The self-taught path of producing has proven fruitful. Rather than market his<br />
services out, it was writing sessions and collaborations with fellow artists that led<br />
him towards the studio chair. More natural than a determined choice. In a room full of<br />
voices, it’s his hands that always appeared to draw out the best from the arrangement.<br />
It’s no coincidence when Tee nods back to the years engulfed by the intricate power of<br />
gospel choirs. “[Producing] grew from being in church,” he says when I ask him where<br />
the seemingly innate ability to arrange stems from. “Playing pretty much all of the<br />
instruments in the church band, swapping over with everyone, you get a knowledge of<br />
what a band should sound like. And in a live sense,” he continues, “you get a knowledge of<br />
what a producer should listen out for. Having the ear to do that, I was definitely building it<br />
up subconsciously in church.”<br />
This subconscious framework he’s honed is built on emotion. The feeling of the music<br />
“hitting you”, as he explained earlier, is always the desired effect. That same feeling when the<br />
gospel choir is in full flight and blankets the audience with its wall of sound. Emotion therefore<br />
acts as the compass that guides his music, and those he produces. “I think people come to me<br />
to get their songs produced because we can bring out whatever emotion or feeling you want to<br />
bring out,” he explains. “That’s something I strongly believe in.”<br />
There’s been no mercurial rise with Tee. Every step has been measured along the way. Every<br />
step a lesson of sorts. Rather than take blind control when producing other artists, he’s allowed<br />
their qualities to reflect onto him. The holistic approach of emotive production opens up his own<br />
creative outlet as well as those he’s working with. All the initial shyness about ability is deceiving.<br />
It’s actually a state of study. “As a person I am very observant,” he starts, with the sun jutting in<br />
through the windows at a lower angle, causing a swivel in his chair.<br />
“In 70 per cent of social circles I am quite quiet – human behaviour intrigues me. Being able to<br />
predict or make someone feel a certain way is fascinating. It’s something that I want to be able to do<br />
on stage. I want to be able to silence a crowd, make people lose themselves a bit. I’ve been able to sit<br />
in and watch performers like MiC Lowry and XamVolo and work out what parts of their art I’d like to<br />
build into my own. I don’t want to be the person who draws the attention in a room, but I do when I’m<br />
on stage.”<br />
Understandably there’s currently a limited number of stages where Tee can announce his new front<br />
facing role. But it’s not all lost. In many ways it’ll only enhance the eventual power of the coil when the<br />
live embodiment of the EP springs out. He notes that after the first performances of his own projects at<br />
university he was often greeted with reactions by his peers of “Where did that come from?” The quiet<br />
and humble demeanour of the day-to-day was in stark contrast to the emotive displays some were able to<br />
glimpse. It’ll likely be a different reaction now, four years down the line; assertively planting a flag as if to<br />
say, “I’m here”. And ultimately, it’s what Tee says is most important to his music.<br />
Across the EP and a scattering of live performances, there’s a consistency of monologues and spoken<br />
word. The medium isn’t unfamiliar to him. One of his<br />
first forays into music was part of Spxken, a spoken<br />
word duo set to music. Even now his more contemporary<br />
performances remain punctuated by the starkness of the<br />
spoken word interludes.<br />
In a similar vein to Kae Tempest, when Tee arrives<br />
at these moments, such as on I Hear A Kid, each word<br />
seems to press against the skin. Each rhyme seems to be<br />
wrestled out of the body. You hear the joy in the eventual<br />
release. Every sentence seems to bulge and swell with<br />
magnitude; even the pauses and silences in between the flow<br />
say so much. In his view, the style of delivery isn’t acting, but<br />
enhancing. “I’m very aware that I’m bringing out an emotion,” he<br />
says. “Even if I write a lyric, it’s not necessarily of that moment,<br />
but I’m bringing it from a moment that I’ve experienced.” But this<br />
is not to say words are sterile until forcibly hurled from the body<br />
with performative effect. The written language is what inspires<br />
“Language can be<br />
a really strong tool<br />
for change. It’s a tool<br />
and a release”<br />
the stirring delivery, as though the words are tangible and Braille-like, with a trapped emotion released by the reader and<br />
listener.<br />
“Language can be a really strong tool for change. It’s a tool and a release. If we talk about fatherhood and if we talk<br />
about Black Lives Matter,” he begins, looking to the sky in a more thoughtful manner to his earlier nonchalance as the<br />
conversation moves the role of language in the continuing protests. “Over the past few months, I’ve posted lots of things,<br />
but I struggled to work out what to say. Everything around [Black Lives Matter] was so quick and emotive. I’d feel like I’m<br />
doing myself a disservice because, yes, I’m reposting things and I’m fully here for this, but I don’t fully know what I want<br />
to say. I’m assuming that I’m not the only person who didn’t know what they wanted to say.”<br />
It’s here where Tee sees an ability to unpack the self and world around him through written art forms. He continues in<br />
outlining how his thoughts came to find their flow when changing the medium for using his voice. “For me to be able to put<br />
[the feelings] in a piece of poetry and put that out, hopefully it captured my voice and what I wanted say in the way that I<br />
wanted to say it. It was undeniable,” he affirms. “And I hope that somebody else heard it and thought, ‘That’s what I wanted<br />
to say, too’. Language is important because it gives people a voice. It gives me a voice.”<br />
This desire to connect with other voices is the watermark of Tee’s music. It stems from his observational tendencies, the<br />
idea of placing himself in as many pairs of shoes as possible in order to understand their stories better. There are no solipsistic<br />
tendencies on show. He’s the ear on the other side of the confession box, one that listens out for the diversity of the chorus as<br />
opposed to zeroing in on the soloist. The communality of gospel is always present. “Talking to my audience, in a conversational<br />
way,” he says, “I hope it’s therapeutic for other people as it is for me. It’s the same thing as talking about vulnerability.<br />
“It’s like saying, ‘I go through this as well’, so you can talk to me about it. because I’m telling you I’m going through it. And if<br />
you don’t want to say it first, I will – I’ll take that plunge. Having that conversation is letting people know that it’s going to be OK.<br />
I think that’s necessary in this time. If I have the time, I will 100 per cent talk about issues and what’s happening to me, and the<br />
relations to the songs. Every one of my songs is a conversation, a feeling that I’ve had.”<br />
For Tee, music and lyricism are the purest form of communication, the medium whereby he can best make sense of his own<br />
feelings, and those around him. “The best message I could receive is someone coming away from the end of a gig and saying, ‘What<br />
you said there touched me, I’ve been having similar conversations’. You know what I mean?” he says with a genuine air of sincerity.<br />
“That makes me feel like I’m doing my job. That’s what I want to do. I want to be able to open conversations. As a society we’re better<br />
at it. But there’s not enough conversations about real shit.”<br />
The sun is now lower in the sky but the heat hasn’t departed. But there’s no sense of fatigue in Tee. If there’s any on show, it’s<br />
nervously stemming from having to talk about himself for such an extended period. He clearly sees himself as the messenger rather<br />
than the message, the interpreter for so many others and their vulnerabilities. So much of his journey to now has been about everyone<br />
else, his place in their lives and the whole communities he’s a part of. Until now he’s never been the spotlight focus. I ask him if there<br />
still remains a will to remain behind the scenes. He’s humble as ever, happy in the self-understanding of his once veiled capabilities and<br />
talent. “This, it’s front and centre for life,” he rounds off, as we descend the stairs and back out onto Duke Street where the golden hues<br />
reattach themselves to his white T-shirt. “I’m not allowed to hide anymore. [Being Tee] is me telling myself I can do it.” !<br />
Words: Elliot Ryder / @elliot_ryder<br />
Photography: Tamiym Cader / @tamiym.photo<br />
soundcloud.com/anartistcalledtee<br />
Real and Crown Of Thorns will be available on 11th <strong>September</strong> and 2nd October. A Dozen Roses // A Love Story will be released 17th<br />
October. The VR immersive experience of the EP in partnership with LightNight takes place 23rd October.<br />
24
FEATURE<br />
25
26
DECAY<br />
The four-piece have been making considerable waves in the UK’s post-hardcore<br />
scene over the course of the last year. Following up on their debut album, released<br />
in July, Anouska Liat taps into the unguarded emotional spectrum of the band.<br />
“At first I’ll think, ‘Oh, it wasn’t that bad’, and then<br />
after I’ve written about it, I’m like, ‘Oh, shit’.”<br />
DECAY’S frontman Danny Reposar is<br />
currently recalling the colourful self-assessment<br />
and repeated ritual he puts himself through in order to come to<br />
terms with the more disconcerting areas of life. Although a hardhitting<br />
moment of realisation, it also provides a higher sense of<br />
understanding on how musical appreciation is a platform for so<br />
much more than just audio pleasure. Rather, it’s a pivotal moment<br />
in time to comprehend the complexities you may not initially<br />
acknowledge – something that Danny is more than happy to<br />
revisit during a pleasantly down to earth bus-ride chat over the<br />
phone.<br />
The post-hardcore band’s full-length debut album, Staring<br />
At The Sun, is the pinnacle of these reflective moments. Each<br />
song weaves together stories of self-loathing, loss and love.<br />
Although obvious themes of melancholy protrude throughout, a<br />
parallel theme takes shape. The album<br />
illustrates how with each unfortunate<br />
card dealt throughout life, there comes<br />
a time where things become easier<br />
via a sense of feeling “uncomfortably<br />
comfortable” in your own skin. Be this<br />
an honourable inner strength or a chink<br />
in the mental health support chain, the<br />
album overall presents the bare bones<br />
of human emotion; both reactive and<br />
reflective. This in turn provides a sense<br />
of common ground with their audience,<br />
in hope that speaking their bluntest<br />
truths may be something of a beacon,<br />
as Danny confirms: “I just want people<br />
to connect with it, and I think that’s<br />
what this album was really about – trying to help people.”<br />
This attitude of help-get-a-leg-up is common among the<br />
Liverpudlian community, enhanced further by Decay’s modest<br />
beginnings before rising to become one of the most exciting<br />
movers in the post-hardcore scene. “We all grew up on council<br />
estates or just not in the richest of areas,” Danny notes. “There<br />
are a lot of bands who act bigger than what they are. I know<br />
you have to do that to a certain extent, but we’ve always been<br />
humble and honest from the beginning which is a good portrayal<br />
of our background.”<br />
Growing up with shared streets and stories, the members<br />
of Decay – Nathan Peloe (rhythm guitarist), Toby Hacking<br />
(drummer) and Matthew Pickford (bassist) – are a refreshing<br />
breakaway from your laddish traditions of bottling your emotions<br />
up and turning a blind eye to the more pressing issues ‘at large’.<br />
Instead, they speak about them in an upfront and personal<br />
manner – both through lyricism and achingly expressive riffs<br />
and crashing drum fills. Danny explains this approach. “I always<br />
thought that when comparing our songs to others, I don’t feel<br />
like we’re a real band because we’re so on the nose lyrically – I<br />
just say what I’m thinking instead of just chatting shit about<br />
metaphorical stories.”<br />
Crediting the likes of the emotionally-charged Welsh rock<br />
band Casey for their straight-talking lyrics, it’s explained how this<br />
overarching honesty and openness is what they wish to portray<br />
to listeners – demonstrating their solidarity towards the problems<br />
“I’ve done everything<br />
in my power to<br />
be emotionally<br />
transparent”<br />
of the average fan.<br />
“The type of music we make resonates with listeners, and for<br />
me it struck a chord and helped understand that not everyone<br />
has that perfect generic life that you see on TV,” says Danny.<br />
Digging further into the roots of Decay’s philosophy, Danny notes<br />
how much more unflinching music has become in the past 10<br />
years. “It’s blunt and the storytelling is so honest,” he says, “there<br />
are a lot of artists coming out with their hearts on their sleeves<br />
now.”<br />
Mental health awareness is talked about a lot these days,<br />
progressively getting on with it is a debatable area of discussion.<br />
Where promotion of further aid falls somewhat flat in some<br />
circumstances, other means of self-help present themselves;<br />
a creative umbrella facilitating the healing, understanding and<br />
growth of each individual. For Decay, and many others, this<br />
comes through the form of music. Whether you find yourself on<br />
the creative or the simply appreciative side of the fence, the two<br />
often intersect to make music the<br />
unifier for ways to help deal with<br />
your mental struggles. Similarities<br />
begin to surface that bring to mind<br />
how the making of an album can be<br />
viewed as metaphorically parallel to<br />
the process of improving your mental<br />
well-being.<br />
Keeping your head active and<br />
creative is key for continual positive<br />
growth, however it may not appear<br />
instantaneously, and that’s OK. “I<br />
saw a lot of people getting really<br />
creative during lockdown,” replies<br />
Danny, “and I’m just not that sort of<br />
person – when I force creativity, it<br />
just causes stress.<br />
“I like to keep myself busy by creating things,” he adds,<br />
“whether that be writing, drawing or creating artwork on<br />
Photoshop – I need to keep creatively busy to keep my head on<br />
straight and stay sane!”<br />
Things become easier once the ideas begin to flow, a goal<br />
difficult to reach by those deterred by the intimidation of time and<br />
persistence. Despite fear of the unknown, new experiences are<br />
usually the ones that push us out of our comfort zones and into<br />
a higher state of understanding; a place where we can see what<br />
works for us, and what is in fact hindering our progression. Off<br />
the back of releasing their first EP in the summer of 2019, the<br />
idea of Decay immediately creating an entire full-length album<br />
was quite a shock to the system. “With the album you have to<br />
structure it narratively and find out how it ebbs and flows into<br />
each song, and just overall tell a story with it. It was hard,” Danny<br />
admits. “We’d never really done something like that”.<br />
Creative growth is an ongoing discovery; whether<br />
subconscious or intentional, both are integral to success and<br />
should therefore be embraced. “I’m always writing lyrics,”<br />
Danny recites when discussing his creative process, “especially<br />
definitions of words, which I’ll then write down along with certain<br />
phrases. Writing is like closure, in a way.”<br />
Closure is a word that many refer to, devoting their faith to<br />
the ideal, in hope that, once they peak the mountain, closure is<br />
there waiting to relieve them of their dismays. A journey towards<br />
this desired sense of closure comes in many forms. “I’m quite an<br />
emotional person and I’m not afraid to cry, but I don’t really dwell<br />
on things long enough, so I tend to disregard my life situations,”<br />
Danny continues. “So then I tell stories from my childhood or<br />
current life in order to gain that sense of closure.”<br />
The old mantra of ‘it’s not about the destination, it’s about<br />
the journey’ sometimes may be looked over by those striving for<br />
greatness with their blinkers on. Taking the time to pause and<br />
ground oneself can lead to a better understanding of feelings,<br />
and therefore how to better help others via our experiences. “Feel<br />
Better is an emotionally-driven song that deals with a whole host<br />
of things, from love to loss to love again,” says Danny. “It’s an<br />
honest and naive representation of our story telling that I hope a<br />
lot of people can resonate with and take comfort in.”<br />
While there have been some positive movement towards<br />
shattering the stigmas surrounding mental illnesses, the support<br />
for male mental health in particular is still fighting an uphill battle,<br />
as Danny asserts. “It’s never hard to talk about it, I just don’t want<br />
to feel like I’m burdening others or trying to gain pity.”<br />
Be it pride or shame, it’s no secret; more must be done<br />
to reinforce the valuable awareness recently brought to light.<br />
Thankfully, there are those who are more than aware of the<br />
impact those around them can achieve. “I do feel as if the<br />
emotional openness of a lot of males is rejected, I’m just blessed<br />
to be surrounded by so many people who embrace being<br />
emotionally open because it gives me a good sense of security,”<br />
Danny says. “A lack of openness is a toxic masculinity trait that I<br />
absolutely hate because I’m quite an open person emotionally,”<br />
he continues. “I was always told at a young age to not express<br />
negative emotion and to bottle it up – so, since then, I’ve done<br />
everything in my power to be emotionally transparent.”<br />
As drained by Covid-19 as we all are, it is only fitting to<br />
emphasise the impact such a high-risk global hazard has had on<br />
a fast-rising band like Decay. With their debut album released in<br />
July this year, it’s an obvious assumption that social distancing<br />
will come to hinder touring. “I’m dying to get back to gigs,” Danny<br />
confirms excitedly, “but, obviously, we’re not going to try and get<br />
back out there until it’s safe to do so. I’m happy to let the album<br />
speak for itself – it’s done well so far, so no harm in waiting a little<br />
longer. I think we’re doing a full UK and possible EU tour when<br />
this is all over.<br />
“I’m definitely more excited than nervous, although I do have<br />
to relearn everything,” he adds, with a jovial sense of trepidation.<br />
While some may take music at face value – dance to it,<br />
sing along with it, learn how to play it – it is the moments<br />
in-between that are equally as valuable. Those pauses to<br />
acknowledge the laughter, the tears, the reflection, and then how<br />
gratitude, understanding and growth follow. Danny conveys this<br />
thankfulness towards Decay’s music in just a few simple words.<br />
“It helped me embrace all the negativity in my life and turn that<br />
into positivity.” And that is what life is all about. !<br />
Words: Anouska Liat<br />
Photography: David Cusack / @cusackphotography<br />
decayuk.bandcamp.com<br />
Staring At The Sun is available now via Fox Records.<br />
FEATURE<br />
27
CURATING<br />
Visual artist Frances Disley’s latest exhibition, Pattern Buffer, housed at<br />
Bluecoat until November, invites visitors into an atmosphere of tranquillity,<br />
contemplation and relaxation. Before lockdown, and prior to the exhibition’s initial<br />
opening in March, Jessica Phillips delved inside Pattern Buffer with its creator<br />
to talk about the importance of making galleries more welcoming spaces.<br />
28
A<br />
beige and green room, late afternoon sunlight filtering<br />
in through floor-to-ceiling windows. Exotic – perhaps<br />
extraterrestrial is more apt – bromeliads erupt from a<br />
cream carpeted floor; moss grows lazily on the walls.<br />
Behind me, there’s a trickle of noise as someone lovingly waters<br />
the still-growing greenery. On a television screen a video zooms<br />
into the lulling motions of someone having their hair brushed.<br />
This is FRAN DISLEY’s latest exhibition, Pattern Buffer, at<br />
Liverpool’s Bluecoat Gallery. Both a blend of classic sciencefiction<br />
tropes and a celebration of self-care, the exhibition space<br />
itself is carefully curated to instantly lower an audience’s anxiety.<br />
“Even as an artist I recognise that<br />
galleries can be quite uncomfortable<br />
places that are difficult to linger in,”<br />
Disley tells me. “I tried to realise what<br />
it is about these spaces that makes<br />
people feel anxious, and to puncture<br />
that barrier between the artworks<br />
and the viewer. The ambience was an<br />
integral part of that.”<br />
She’s right. The exhibition, which<br />
spans two floors of The Bluecoat,<br />
doesn’t give off any of the stuffy,<br />
clinical vibes I’d associate with a<br />
traditional gallery. The beige and green<br />
walls have been interspersed with<br />
adhesive tape to create a grid pattern<br />
which opens up the room, and huge<br />
stickers to give the impression of standing inside a painting. The<br />
audience is no longer a separate entity – they become the art.<br />
In this vein, Disley intially set up gaming tables around the<br />
room for visitors to play dominoes or complete a jigsaw, either<br />
solo or in tandem. The tables themselves had been decked out in<br />
felt, pleather, resin, to leave a tactile impression in players’ minds<br />
(though, for health reasons, many of the tactile elements of the<br />
“Even as an artist<br />
I recognise that<br />
galleries can be<br />
quite uncomfortable<br />
places”<br />
note. “There’s a fun and a freedom to the way he talks about art;<br />
rather than it being anchored in heavy theory, he values play and<br />
fun, which I find really liberating. Art is about not listening to the<br />
negative voices in your head.”<br />
Disley’s return to her northern roots after a stint at the Royal<br />
College of Art in London allowed her to rediscover some of this<br />
freedom for herself, and her relief is almost palpable. “Everyone<br />
felt really stuck in London. It was all about controlling output,<br />
and there were loads of negative voices about doing your own<br />
thing. When I moved back to Liverpool in 2010, finding people<br />
at the Royal Standard just playing with stuff and having fun was<br />
really inspirational. There’s a sort<br />
of collective happiness when one<br />
of your fellow artists is doing well,<br />
which was liberating in itself.”<br />
This is all very evident across<br />
Pattern Buffer. The created spaces is<br />
dedicated to lowering anxiety from<br />
the get-go, and allowing Disley to<br />
share this newfound freedom with<br />
her audience members.<br />
We follow a trail of painted<br />
stickers to the second floor, where<br />
nature has taken over the window<br />
boxes and the space above. Between<br />
the quasi-terrariums, the slow curls<br />
of steam keeping them alive, and the<br />
greenery above our heads – all taken<br />
in the Palm House at Sefton Park – I’m not sure where to look<br />
first.<br />
Prior to social distancing measures being introduced, there<br />
were plans for this space to become home to group guided<br />
visualisations, animal yoga sessions and kung fu classes.<br />
Additionally, twice a week, a huge quilt would be taken down<br />
from the wall for people to sit comfortably on, wrapped in fleece<br />
SAFE SPACE<br />
exhibtion have had to be amended). Most notably, it’s all quite<br />
‘green’, from the colour of the walls to the plants growing freely<br />
about the place.<br />
“I looked at studies into spending time with greenery, and<br />
how it can have a restorative cognitive impact,” Disley says. These<br />
studies found that urban green spaces can help lower stress<br />
in people on their lunch breaks, or even how just looking for a<br />
while at a green roof can boost mood. The bromeliads, a type of<br />
epiphyte whose native home is on the side of trees in the jungles<br />
of South America, have been transported to Liverpool to sprout<br />
from volcanoes of cheerfully coloured expanding foam, while the<br />
Spanish moss – or beard lichen, for obvious reasons – survives<br />
solely on the moisture in the air. “I like the idea that they appear<br />
exotic, that they can transport you somewhere else,” she divulges,<br />
“but they’re also representative of the transient nature of the<br />
artwork itself, and its ability to find a home in various hosts.”<br />
Pattern Buffer clearly takes much of its inspiration from<br />
classic sci-fi, plants and all; Disley’s obsession with Star Trek<br />
seeps through into her artwork, and the whole space boasts an<br />
otherworldly feel. She aimed to create her own version of the<br />
Holodeck – a virtual space for hardworking Starfleet officers to<br />
unwind with a leisure activity. “They pick whatever experience<br />
they want, whether that’s skiing in the Alps or something<br />
completely different, and relax that way,” Disley says. “I love the<br />
idea of turning the gallery space into the Holodeck, and running<br />
my own Holo programme.<br />
“Most of all I [wanted] people to spend time together and<br />
have their anxiety lowered. I liked the idea that people can<br />
socialise, play games, do something that’s completely comfortable<br />
while being alien to the gallery space,” she adds. “I’m an artist and<br />
sometimes I still stand in galleries wondering if I’ve spent enough<br />
time looking at a piece. I like the idea that someone could be so<br />
immersed that they take in the art in an incidental way.”<br />
Disley’s affinity with artistic freedom stems from some of her<br />
contemporaries, namely post-minimalist Richard Tuttle, whose<br />
work focuses on bridging the gap between art, philosophy<br />
and life. “You could empty your bin in front of him and he could<br />
compose it in an amazing way,” she says of an artist who’s<br />
clearly left a mark on her, her voice taking on an almost wistful<br />
blankets to imagine themselves as air plants travelling through<br />
familiar countryside. The initial aims of the exhibition were to<br />
encourage socialisation and, despite the pandemic-induced<br />
changes to these tactile, communal aspects, Disley believes such<br />
activities are an integral part of self-care, or rather “group care”.<br />
“I do feel like sometimes self-care can actually be a<br />
distraction from group care,” Disley admits. “It’s obviously<br />
important to offer yourself that kind of care if nobody else is<br />
going to do it for you, but I’d also like to encourage more group<br />
care, and to see more collective positive experiences. Here, you’re<br />
safe in a room with other people, whether you’re starting a jigsaw<br />
for someone else to finish or playing a game of chess together.”<br />
My gaze is drawn to the videos playing on a smattering<br />
of screens around the gallery space. One features hair<br />
stylist Sheetal Maru and her model, who Disley met through<br />
Liverpudlian dance company Movema. “Seeing someone get their<br />
hair done is a big ASMR trigger,” Disley tells me. “I’ve always<br />
loved having my hair played with, and watching other people<br />
have theirs done feels like it’s happening to me. That’s why<br />
there are loads of close-ups of the French braiding, and why the<br />
camera lingers on the brushing. There’s no narrative structure but<br />
hopefully it’s a comforting relaxation aid.”<br />
There’s something distinctly alien about the whole<br />
experience, but if Pattern Buffer achieves anything it’s this<br />
instinctive, almost foetal state of comfort, helped along by the<br />
incubated soothing white noise emanating from somewhere<br />
beneath our feet. It’s something best experienced in all its<br />
multisensory glory, in quiet companionship, or with a stranger<br />
spaced out at safe distance. As I leave the gallery, I’m glad I got<br />
to experience it with the artist herself. !<br />
Words: Jessica Phillips<br />
Photography: Bluecoat Gallery<br />
francesdisley.com<br />
Pattern Buffer runs at Bluecoat Gallery alongside Jonathon<br />
Baldock’s Facecrime until Sunday 1st November. This article was<br />
initially written prior to lockdown in March.<br />
FEATURE<br />
29
30
JAMIE WEBSTER<br />
The singer-songwriter has already witnessed his words sung by a chorus of tens of thousands. Yet the<br />
echoes of football terraces are far removed on his debut album, replaced by the everyday symphony of<br />
working-class Liverpool. Cath Holland profiles the personality breaking through in his original songwriting.<br />
Walking through Liverpool’s north docks, it’s<br />
difficult to ignore the conspiracy theories<br />
sprayed on to walls in big, angry red letters.<br />
If we love our family enough and want a free<br />
world, we need to wise up about 5G, or something like that.<br />
A few steps away, in the building round the corner, and I’m<br />
inside another world entirely: JAMIE WEBSTER’s modest but<br />
well-equipped rehearsal space. There’s a nice selection of guitars<br />
hung on the walls. Each has a personal back story, cheerily<br />
relayed to me by the affable Webster. The affectionately-told<br />
précis of each is in tune with the singer-songwriter’s reputation<br />
as a consummate storyteller, a skill evident on his debut album<br />
We Get By.<br />
I’ve read interviews and listened to podcasts in preparation<br />
for our meeting, and they principally focus on the 26-yearold’s<br />
intrinsic relationship with football. With colourful tales<br />
to accompany events around the sport, both funny and sad,<br />
working-class assurances are typically peppered in. And, true<br />
to form, he describes We Get By, chockfull of stories, as “a<br />
document of the joys, escapes and struggles of working-class life<br />
in a nutshell”.<br />
This seems a little too rehearsed. What does being workingclass<br />
mean to him? It’s tough to define. It can mean poverty, but<br />
doesn’t have to. If we go to uni, move to a leafy suburb and have<br />
two cars on the drive, can we still claim ‘working-class’? The<br />
pair of us chew it over, listing criteria in a ‘how long’s a piece of<br />
string?’ scenario. We settle on an awareness of our roots never<br />
leaving us, no matter what.<br />
“Having that mindset where you can respect people who<br />
don’t do as well as you, you understand their struggle. I could sell<br />
three million records but still be working-class in the sense that<br />
I still understand my mate’s been laid off and he’s looking round<br />
for work,” he explains. “I feel that feeling, that fear. Having that<br />
automatic thought, ‘Is there anything I can do, what can we do?’.<br />
Having that sense of togetherness, sense of community.”<br />
Webster’s album views the world through a working-class<br />
lens, for sure, alternately stark, and in a broader romantic sense.<br />
It’s both scathing and affectionate. Witty,<br />
too. On Common People he sings, “So<br />
officer is it your arse I’m supposed to<br />
kiss/I’m sorry lad today I’ll give that one<br />
a miss…” Carrying a strong narrative,<br />
Webster’s songs can be intensely personal.<br />
He lost a couple of friends due to mental<br />
health issues, and The Joker is “about how<br />
many times someone is abandoned by the<br />
system and for how long does someone<br />
have to put on the mask of a smiling clown<br />
before it cracks”.<br />
He may take a well-aimed swipe at<br />
things that get under his skin, like valuing<br />
appearances over people, and the Tories –<br />
of course – and in the striking Weekend In<br />
Paradise he takes to task going out on one bender too many; but,<br />
ultimately, it’s a record of affection, warmth and honesty.<br />
Webster’s ascendance is a story in itself, “an anomaly”:<br />
winning popularity singing songs long loved by The Kop, videos<br />
of football chants going insanely viral before introducing his<br />
audience to his own material, all while working as an electrician.<br />
His story is the epitome of working-class kid done good, if you<br />
like. We get sold the myth of the everydayness of pop stars,<br />
politicians and public figures all the time, but scrape the surface<br />
and the strong whiff of bullshit clarifies the situation pretty damn<br />
quick. Webster literally got his hands dirty, starting work on a<br />
building site the day after he left school. “Didn’t even have my<br />
summer holidays!” he attests.<br />
At work, at the match, in local pubs, he got to know lots of<br />
people. “Some of them have it well, some of them don’t have<br />
it so well,” he says. It’s their stories as well as his, he explains,<br />
informing his songs on We Get By. In a band when in his midteens<br />
(“we weren’t very good”), he kept his hand in by doing<br />
covers in pubs on Friday nights before moving on to playing what<br />
he calls “the Liverpool gigs”.<br />
“I’ve had the strangest route ever into this industry through<br />
the football back door,” he admits.<br />
He performs with a full band now, and in true Liverpool<br />
tradition, has Scouse music royalty firmly around him. With<br />
Lightning Seeds’ Tim Cunningham on bass, Jim Sharrock<br />
(nephew of There She Goes-era The La’s Chris Sharrock) on<br />
“I’ve had the<br />
strangest route ever<br />
into this industry”<br />
drums, Mick Head’s Red Elastic Band member Danny Murphy on<br />
guitar; plus, he’s produced by Rich Turvey (The Coral, Blossoms)<br />
in Parr Street.<br />
Jamie is proud of his Lakewood acoustic hanging on the wall<br />
in his rehearsal space (“I paid it off monthly over three years. It’s<br />
paid for itself”), and his acoustic singer-songwriter roots earn<br />
comparisons with fellow anomaly, Scotland’s Gerry Cinnamon.<br />
Both men found success by “people power”, as Webster puts<br />
it proudly. But he is gutted he won’t get to play legendary King<br />
Tut’s in Glasgow on the forthcoming tour. Like the Liverpool date,<br />
it’s been upgraded to a larger venue. I suggest it’s a nice problem<br />
to have. “Yeh,” Jamie laughs. “It is.”<br />
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Webster’s musical references<br />
are familiar and close to home. Based on his acoustic singersongwriter<br />
origins, 1980s Liverpool scally pop is unashamedly<br />
present, with toe-tapping tunefulness and heart-on-sleeve<br />
sincerity. The Beatles and Oasis pushed through in his teen years.<br />
“My early songs reflect that,” he replies. The La’s are an ever<br />
present source of inspiration to him in the here and now as an<br />
adult. Bob Dylan’s a big one for him as well, on the surface slightly<br />
more random but in the hours before we meet up, he is taken to<br />
nearby Dublin Street for photographs, where those famous Barry<br />
Feinstein pictures of Dylan with a bunch of Liverpool kids in 1966<br />
were taken. Dylan looked like an alien in black and a noisy checked<br />
shirt, Cuban heels and bird’s nest hair against the empty brick<br />
backdrop, and yet totally at home at the same time.<br />
Jamie finds solidarity with the logic of Dylan’s “I’ve got three<br />
chords and the truth” ideology. “His music’s not unbelievably<br />
complicated. Alright, his lyrics are profound, but he says things<br />
how you’d say them in a conversation.”<br />
Writing a song about Liverpool as Webster does in This<br />
Place, about his love and respect for the city, it’s easy to fall facefirst<br />
into a vat of cheese and sentimentality. He neatly sidesteps<br />
that trap.<br />
“It’s about not forgetting where I’ve grown up. To try<br />
and make the lyrics like me, rough and ready, but they hold a<br />
meaning, there’s a story behind it. Once you’ve got the full story<br />
out, the lyrics start to make sense a<br />
little bit more. It’s like an argument;<br />
you start off an argument but you<br />
don’t stop it two sentences in and take<br />
questions, do you? You put your point<br />
firmly down.”<br />
We go over Noel Gallagher’s<br />
songwriting, how Oasis lyrics are often<br />
as close to nonsense as you can get. In<br />
truth it’s the melodies which capture<br />
the imagination. What Webster takes<br />
from Gallagher is keeping melodies<br />
fresh.<br />
“When I write songs I’ll get my<br />
phone out, record [hums a tune], then<br />
I’ll listen back, and I’ll be, ‘Is that too<br />
generic, maybe?’ So I’ll listen again and [hums similar tune but<br />
not the same], it’s finding the little differences. Wonderwall is a<br />
cracking song, but if every line was ‘today is gonna be the day<br />
they’re gonna…’, and then another one and another one is like<br />
that, it wouldn’t be the song that it is.”<br />
These days he’s more likely to throw on The La’s than The<br />
Beatles, he tells me. That’s even with The La’s reaching its 30-<br />
year milestone this year, meaning it’s older than he is.<br />
“I think it’s a lot more working-class,” he says after a pause.<br />
“He’s talking about Doledrum… without being snobby. I love The<br />
Beatles, but I’m looking for something more ‘now’ in lyrics.”<br />
The Beatles were incredible in capturing their own time, from<br />
those early fresh Lennon songs to the later, darker, more cynical<br />
psychedelic works. Could it be The La’s sum-up your world now,<br />
maybe?<br />
He nods. “Looking Glass is one of my favourite ever songs. I<br />
think the journey it takes you on – the way it builds – is amazing,<br />
but it leaves open-ended questions. The La’s make you think,<br />
they sort of make me want to explore, make me want to write.<br />
Looking Glass is ‘tell me where I’m going, tell me where I’m<br />
bound’: that’s a question everyone asks themselves because no<br />
one knows that, do they? ‘Turn the pages over, turn the world<br />
around’ that could mean one of a million things, but to me it<br />
means let’s keep going, keep moving, see where it takes us.”<br />
Webster’s life has changed so much, going from the day job<br />
to full-time musician. Stopping working for the family business<br />
a couple of years ago was unavoidable after realising mid-tour<br />
he’d been working the equivalent of two full-time jobs. “When I<br />
should’ve been at my happiest because I’m doing all these great<br />
things, I’m thinking ‘Ah, I’ve got loads of paperwork to do when<br />
I get home’. It was an awful lot of pressure, and my personal<br />
relationship with my mum and dad suffered because of it,” he<br />
explains.<br />
“It’s a good trade, it’s made me what I am,” he says of his<br />
days as an electrician. “It’s done everything for me, I wouldn’t<br />
change a thing. But it was my dream to be able to get up in the<br />
morning and play my guitar and write songs.”<br />
He tells of the support he’s had from his community, family<br />
and friends, the Liverpool fans, BOSS Nights, practical advice and<br />
support from The Anfield Wrap and label Modern Sky, adjusting<br />
to this new stage in his life. When his record label explained<br />
to him about booking agents, press, the different people who<br />
support an artist, Webster’s response was “what, can one fella<br />
not do all that?” Everything was a learning curve, writing songs<br />
to a deadline, recording, playing to a click, even maintaining his<br />
social media.<br />
“It was a whole new world to me.” He gestures around us.<br />
“I sit in this room sometimes 13, 14 hours a day writing songs,<br />
thinking about so many different concepts and complexities.<br />
Even changing lines, sometimes, because people might think I’m<br />
having a go but I’m not. Stuff like that. It’s nerve-wracking.”<br />
He confesses to nervousness when he first introduced his<br />
own songs to the world. He sells venues out now, but has recent<br />
memories performing to audiences unfamiliar with his songs. The<br />
crowd gassing to each other about what they had for tea, waiting<br />
for the headliner to come on.<br />
“When it’s not your crowd and you can hear people talking,<br />
you can hear people coming in and out. I can’t wait for the album<br />
to be out so people can get used to the music and fall in love with<br />
it, hopefully.”<br />
So if he has an awkward crowd, how does he cope with it,<br />
how does he get them on his side?<br />
“Early on it put me off big, every single thing was getting<br />
to me. But you’ve got to win them over, that’s what you do, you<br />
can’t let it get you down or moan about it. There’s 300 people<br />
there, but 100 people clap and cheer. You take that and move<br />
onto your next song. It builds as the gig goes on.”<br />
Recently, he was named on the Liverpool Echo list of most<br />
influential people in the city. Does he feel influential?<br />
He laughs. “I just feel like a normal lad who’s had a lucky<br />
break, really.”<br />
Oh, come on! He admits younger musicians “might try and<br />
emulate how I’ve done things, take a few little tricks off me,” but<br />
jokes “it’s not going to add any inches to my height”.<br />
What about your lyrics’ impact?<br />
“I’m hoping so. I’m not trying to start a massive movement<br />
where I’m marching down to Parliament, but there’s a lot<br />
of things that I know people like me feel, people from my<br />
background not only in Liverpool but up and down the country<br />
and other countries.”<br />
It seems to me, seeing his audience’s response to him and<br />
even looking at comments on social media, it’s a collective sense<br />
of shared experiences, that notion of community, which seem to<br />
me as much a part of Jamie Webster’s success as his links with a<br />
popular football club.<br />
“If you feel on top of the world stood on your own, you’ll feel<br />
ten times better on top of the world with ten mates that feel the<br />
same. That sense of togetherness is an invincibility.”<br />
Granada TV are due to film Webster after my allotted time is<br />
up, but there’s a lot to pull apart in the time remaining. The way<br />
the working-class were manipulated over Brexit and blamed for<br />
so much of society’s ills, fingers pointed for using the bus to get<br />
to work during lockdown, and the first ones to suffer in the bad<br />
times. Eventually, I bid him goodbye and return back to town<br />
the way I came, the 5G graffiti still very loud and very there. But<br />
from this angle I glimpse up ahead rolled up nuggets of chewing<br />
gum lined up neatly on a rubbish bin’s ledge, because ‘Only Meffs<br />
Drop Litter’, further graffiti reads. Positive community spirit? It is<br />
alive, and very well indeed. !<br />
Words: Cath Holland / @cathholland01<br />
Photography: John Johnson / @john.johno<br />
@JamieWebster94<br />
We Get By is available now via Modern Sky.<br />
FEATURE<br />
31
AS CLOSE TO FLYING<br />
AS YOU’RE GONNA GET<br />
With the way we travel changed for the foreseeable, Stuart O’Hara looks local and makes<br />
the case for finding our two feet on two wheels in the age of the new normal.<br />
As fine a sport as cycling is, this article isn’t about<br />
Lycra, doping, yellow jerseys or cowbells. It’s about<br />
what might simply be called Riding Your Bike.<br />
Getting from A to B, vernacular cycling, Active<br />
Transport (Liverpool City Region’s term), or just whizzing around<br />
Liverpedlarpool with a bird on your head. There’s a forgotten<br />
Mark Ronson single from 2010 called the Bike Song, featuring<br />
a lad from The View who briefly clambered out of landfill to<br />
sing it, like an indie Stig Of The Dump. That was a good song<br />
about bikes. The chorus goes “I’m gonna ride my bike until I get<br />
home”, which is the most wholesome sentiment going, relatable<br />
to anyone who’s ever gone about on two wheels. On the other<br />
hand, Queen’s Bicycle Race is a bad band’s bad song about<br />
bikes. That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in<br />
silence.<br />
Getting from A to B on Merseyside has a chequered history,<br />
and been dominated by the car – or, rather, the predicted<br />
dominance of the car. Post-war reconstruction banked on<br />
increased car ownership (pending social mobility that didn’t<br />
always come to pass), justifying the dismantling of the tram<br />
network in 1957 and complementing the closure of railways<br />
which left estates like Norris Green stranded. There were even<br />
plans for the M62 to terminate at the Queensway Tunnel – hence<br />
The Rocket being junction 4 – and a Ballardian city centre with<br />
separate levels for pedestrians and motorists, ne’er the twain<br />
meeting. Even the compromised outcomes of these aborted<br />
visions were dully car-orientated, with one-way systems and<br />
partial street closures which, although they did slow traffic<br />
in residential areas, were implemented with social order (and<br />
control) in mind. In trying to prevent rat-runs, city centreadjacent<br />
neighbourhoods like Everton, Kensington and Toxteth<br />
were neglected as their commercial fortunes faded. Whole<br />
communities were uprooted from condemned terraces in the<br />
north end and those who weren’t housed in piggeries or the<br />
few central new builds were moved to Huyton, Skelmersdale,<br />
Kirkby, Maghull – satellites, suburbs, and new towns(). With a<br />
motorway between them and Liverpool, a car was the only way<br />
of commuting, or just getting the heck out of Dodge.<br />
It’s a bit better these days. Some of those disused railways<br />
have been converted into cycle paths, like the Loop Line, part<br />
of the National Cycle Network, under the auspices of Sustrans.<br />
It runs between Aintree and Hunt’s Cross, a sort of cycling<br />
counterpart to Queens Drive. But it’s wild in parts and, crucially,<br />
unlit, meaning it’s not the commuter’s first choice for half the<br />
year. In great swathes of the city, cyclists must share the road,<br />
facing heavy traffic, poorly maintained surfaces like Kensington<br />
and Picton Road, and brutal (the cycling journalist’s adjective<br />
of choice) inclines into headwinds – though the weather here is<br />
no worse than in cycle-friendly countries such as Denmark and<br />
Holland.<br />
Those streets barred to cars partway along their length,<br />
in Kensington, for example, are now largely passable by bike.<br />
The dock road has segregated cycle lanes, hopefully benefitting<br />
entities like IWF, Ten Streets Market and Wired theatre company,<br />
and surely implemented with Sound City, the Titanic Hotel and<br />
Everton’s dreamed-of Bramley-Moore stadium in mind. But the<br />
result of that 20th-century carousel of semi-fulfilled planning is<br />
continued dependence on cars (and, to a lesser extent, buses)<br />
around a modestly-sized city. Therein lies the insensibility of a<br />
car-dominated Merseyside – it’s not huge. According to Liverpool<br />
City Region’s Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan<br />
(LCWIP), two-thirds of all journeys made here are under 5km.<br />
Half of those are taken by car. In May 2019, it says, 2 per cent of<br />
journeys were by bike. The LCWIP’s goal is to improve the image<br />
of cycling on Merseyside, but the desire to ride was already there<br />
in those cycling casually, those thinking about driving less, those<br />
teaching their kids how to ride a bike; it’s only in the last decade<br />
or so that the infrastructure’s appeared. More could have been<br />
done already, but all that can be done now is to look ahead.<br />
So what’s the plan? In 2014 Liverpool City Council pledged<br />
to triple the number of cyclists by 2017, a goal of 45,000 people<br />
cycling once a week. It isn’t clear if that target was achieved, but<br />
there were visibly more cyclists about in 2019, and there seems<br />
to have been another spurt during lockdown, but it remains to be<br />
seen if that will last. Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram has appointed<br />
Simon O’Brien (off Brookside) as a Cycling Commissioner,<br />
and their current plan fits into a ‘Connectivity Scheme’ which<br />
aims to make walking and cycling the primary modes of city<br />
centre transport by 2023, through extensive redevelopment of<br />
Lime Street, the Strand, Tithebarn Street, Victoria Street and<br />
Moorfields. Note that these are mostly around the business<br />
district, though Brownlow Hill – probably the most significant<br />
non-student residential area in the centre – is set for wider<br />
pavements and bike racks.<br />
It’s a nice gesture, but with the best will in the world, it<br />
appears that increased cycling is the means to an end – namely,<br />
reduced traffic, lower emissions and a healthier population.<br />
There is an argument for not looking a gift horse in the mouth,<br />
but why not invest in cycling for cycling’s sake? Not as a discrete<br />
activity but just ‘getting on your bike’. As Guardian journalist<br />
Peter Walker has argued, ‘cyclist’ is often an identity in a way<br />
that ‘driver’ is not. Maybe we need to become the new drivers in<br />
that respect.<br />
The blame can’t always be laid squarely at the council’s<br />
door though. There is a ‘Car is King’ culture on- and off-road<br />
which, being kind, is the inevitable product of a society that’s<br />
long been geared toward car use at every level. Being less kind,<br />
it’s just plain entitlement. A case in point – pop-up cycle lanes<br />
piloted around Liverpool during the relative calm of lockdown,<br />
segregated by plastic bollards, have been repeatedly ignored by<br />
drivers parking across them. It brings to mind Casey Neistat’s<br />
viral video from 2011 in which he gets a $50 fine from the NYPD<br />
for not riding in a cycle lane. He then stays unswervingly in his<br />
lane, literally crashing into scaffolding, parked vans, and a police<br />
car. It’s a bit childish but it makes the point painfully.<br />
Cycling has the potential to be a truly popular mode of<br />
transport in every sense of the word. It’s been argued that the<br />
invention of the bicycle expanded the gene pool in the late 19th<br />
Century, letting people reach the next town or village with ease,<br />
no longer limited to starting a family with their neighbours and<br />
most distant cousins. Bikes aren’t exactly cheap (and sexism in<br />
the marketplace needs calling out more), but running one is far<br />
more affordable than a car for a lot of people. You can tinker with<br />
a bike in a way you no longer can with most cars due to reliance<br />
32
on onboard computers. Those 60s urban planners could (just<br />
about) be forgiven for reading the signs as they did – cars were<br />
small, there was ignorance about fossil fuels, and the post-war<br />
project was utopian, in an individualist way. It wasn’t so long<br />
after, as that project began to sour, that it was plausible for the<br />
Prime Minister to have claimed that anyone over the age of 26<br />
riding a bus was a failure (some people need to sit at the front of<br />
the top deck more). That forecasting created a negative feedback<br />
loop which is still going.<br />
To be clear: this is not a crusade<br />
against all motor vehicles. Buses are<br />
vital, particularly for those with need<br />
of greater mobility and accessibility.<br />
In a city with a strong music scene<br />
and – yeuch, sorry to use this term –<br />
nocturnal economy, there still needs<br />
to be access for motor vehicles to<br />
load bands in and out, for vans to<br />
stock restaurants on Bold Street. But<br />
it should be equally safe for couriers<br />
and Deliveroo riders to navigate.<br />
Influential research conducted<br />
by New York City Department of<br />
Transport found that independent<br />
businesses fared better in districts<br />
with segregated cycle lanes. That<br />
might be a single piece of data but it<br />
opens up a rabbit hole about how cycling can be our means to an<br />
end too – the end being getting politicians to listen in terms they<br />
understand. And bikes are cool. They will never suffer the stigma<br />
other modes of transport have.<br />
On the face of it, competitive cycling’s had a positive<br />
influence on your average rider in the 2010s. Moves to ‘clean up’<br />
doping, a string of British Tour de France winners, and 2014’s<br />
Grand Départ in Yorkshire have almost certainly contributed to<br />
the increase of urban cycling, and not just at rush hour. But the<br />
“It’s not about<br />
picking a far-off<br />
date by which to lay<br />
more red tarmac;<br />
it’s about prioritising<br />
the cyclist from<br />
here on in”<br />
available data isn’t always so useful. Lists of ‘best and worst<br />
cities for cycling’ tend to draw on numbers of cyclists and<br />
Strava, and though that’s often shared with local authorities,<br />
it isn’t always easy to find out who cycles, why, and where to<br />
and from. Though we’ve all heard horror stories illustrated by<br />
footage of road rage and driving that, merely sloppy to the driver,<br />
is potentially lethal to the cyclist, it isn’t easy to track down<br />
quantified data about the cyclist’s experience and how safe they<br />
feel on the road.<br />
There is hard data about cycling<br />
fatalities. Liverpool came bottom<br />
in a Walk And Cycle Merseyside<br />
(WACM) table of metropolitan<br />
boroughs, with 42 deaths per<br />
100,000 of the population (the UK<br />
average is 29/100,000) between<br />
2014 and 2018, and Sefton sits<br />
only a few places higher. Focusing<br />
on fatalities and injuries among<br />
child cyclists, the North West<br />
fares little better, with St. Helens,<br />
Liverpool, Sefton and Wirral in the<br />
bottom 10. But it’s hard to parse<br />
the data (not every local authority<br />
is a metropolitan borough) and put<br />
it in context – higher numbers of<br />
cyclists may imply a greater risk of<br />
injury, but most cycle lanes in Liverpool so far have been painted<br />
on, rather than segregated from other traffic. Cyclists can only<br />
protect themselves so much. Here’s the rub: should building<br />
bike-friendly infrastructure encourage and determine future use,<br />
or reflect and improve the current cycling experience?<br />
Syd Barrett’s Bike occupies the God tier of bike songs. It’s<br />
a very good song but it’s not really about bikes, a bit like many<br />
cycling initiatives at local government level. Similar language<br />
appears over and over in plans for improved conditions for<br />
cyclists. Pretty utopian, drenched in colourful graphics, with a<br />
sense that the only thing stopping better cycling was the lack<br />
of a plan. But cycling’s already simple enough. You strap on<br />
your helmet, check your lights, and you’re off. But the language<br />
of the focus group, the cabinet meeting, or the optimistic<br />
item on North West Tonight doesn’t adequately describe the<br />
cyclist’s experience. It doesn’t describe the near miss with the<br />
cement mixer, the prayer that the dotted line will be enough of<br />
a barrier, the polka-dot jersey waiting at the top of Rice Lane<br />
or Smithdown when there’s a bus up your arse. There’s a gap<br />
between vision and reality, between policy and people, that<br />
could be closed if more cyclists were involved in the process. It’s<br />
not about picking a far-off date by which to lay more red tarmac;<br />
it’s about prioritising the cyclist from here on in. One of the best<br />
things about cycling is the freedom – faster than running, with<br />
the wind in your hair, it’s as close to flying as you’re gonna get.<br />
Every now and then, ‘before and after bikes’ photos of<br />
Amsterdam surface on Twitter’s online trash vortex. The narrow<br />
streets familiar from centuries of Dutch painting and stag dos,<br />
photographed in the 70s, could be present-day Walton, with<br />
cars parked bumper-to-bumper on either side leaving just<br />
enough room for a third to crawl through. It seems astonishing<br />
that such a car-centric European capital could eventually<br />
prioritise the sole, the pedal and half as many wheels. The grass<br />
isn’t greener on the other side of the fence – it took 20 years for<br />
those changes to take place, but they are proof that there’s no<br />
need to accept how things are now. Those holding the purse<br />
strings can’t just clap their hands together and say “job done”,<br />
whistling off to the next planning application for more student<br />
accommodation. Climate change is already happening, cultural<br />
change is necessary, and those making the decisions must be<br />
persuaded to de-incentivise the car. !<br />
Words: Stuart Miles O’Hara / @ohasm1<br />
Illustration: John O’Loughlin / jolworkshop.co.uk<br />
FEATURE<br />
33
SPOTLIGHT<br />
“I’m influenced by<br />
a sense of urgency<br />
to acknowledge<br />
and open up<br />
dialogues about<br />
more challenging<br />
subject matters”<br />
LUKE MAWDSLEY<br />
On his debut album Vulgar<br />
Displays Of Affection, the prolific<br />
polymath goes solo and digs deep<br />
into the human condition for a<br />
sonic exploration of the self.<br />
As with many creative personalities, trauma and<br />
internal conflict are touchstones of Liverpool polymath LUKE<br />
MAWDSLEY’s work. Just as his debut solo EP, Obsessive<br />
Compulsive was, in parts, a reflection on the emotional ebb and<br />
flow of that often-misunderstood condition, his first long-player<br />
Vulgar Displays Of Affection is a work derived from therapeutic<br />
creativity and compulsive necessity. Drawing on a journal of<br />
collected intrusive thoughts, Mawdsley has recorded spokenword<br />
performances bolstered by glitchy soundscapes and<br />
chiming guitar, somewhat akin to Tim Hecker, Xiu Xiu or lateperiod<br />
Scott Walker.<br />
Released this summer on Maple Death records, the album<br />
also features the production talents of Doomshakalaka/Bad Meds’<br />
own Paul Rafferty as well as the bass abilities of Waffle Burger,<br />
from Glaswegian garage-troupe Fallope And The Tubes.<br />
Fans of Texan metal may have already spotted an elephant<br />
in this particular room: that there’s a striking similarity between<br />
the title of Mawdsley’s latest release and Arlington thrashers<br />
Pantera’s 1992 opus Vulgar Display Of Power. However,<br />
Mawdsley is keen to dismiss any notion of paying homage to<br />
a band led by a “white supremacist arsehole” and claims to be<br />
much more interested in the “deconstruction of metal as a tool of<br />
masculine dominance”.<br />
Despite his aversion to the white male machismo of Pantera,<br />
Mawdsley admits that his interest in music does have a childhood<br />
root of sorts in another incarnation of masculine Americana.<br />
“I was gifted a country and western tape with, amongst<br />
other gunslinger classics, various versions of Rawhide on it,” says<br />
Mawdsely. “Dressed in makeshift western attire and whipping a<br />
chair with a belt in time with the beat I would listen to this tape<br />
till the prairie wind changed direction.<br />
“This kind of percussive experimentation was encouraged by<br />
my parents, likely due to the fact that I did not show particular<br />
aptitude for much else,” he adds. “I think the physicality and<br />
accessibility of percussion as a child was hugely empowering and<br />
enabled me to manifest the desires my imagination seemed to<br />
demand.”<br />
There are hints of this early infatuation with Western<br />
soundtracks noticeable on Mawdsley’s latest release; with tracks<br />
such as Misery Gland reimagining the sparseness of Morricone’s<br />
compositions, while Little Blanket maps out a prairie landscape in<br />
screeching oscillations.<br />
As we talk, Mawdsley recalls other childhood memories<br />
which he sees as equally pivotal to his immersion in music and<br />
performance. “I was really sick as a baby and vomited a lot. My<br />
parents nicknamed me Puke,” he illustrates. “As is consistent with<br />
all children at that age, the retching and crying was an innate<br />
expression of something troubling I was unable to fathom. My<br />
personal pallette of expression has, arguably, expanded since<br />
then. However, the compulsion to express through sound has<br />
never really felt like a choice I have consciously made.”<br />
Finding a way to process these compulsions and the<br />
unconscious is something which can so often be key to coping<br />
with OCD. Mawdsley’s approach on Vulgar Displays… sees him<br />
process these suggestions and intrusions from the unconscious<br />
into spoken-word monologues. He then manipulates the tone<br />
of the vocals, creating a sort of obtuse, distorted narration. It is<br />
almost as if, by making the timbre of the speech unrecognisable<br />
as his own, he has cathartically separated these unwanted voices<br />
and ideas from himself.<br />
Vulgar Displays… consists of nine such works, each with its<br />
own level of lyrical and sonic profundity. From the bubbling pulse<br />
of Piss & Leather and the distorted drone of The River Takes<br />
It All to Beberian Sound Studio escapee A Grudge Supreme,<br />
every track manages to entrap Mawdsley’s unnerving modulated<br />
confessions perfectly within its noisy grasp.<br />
In addition to processing trauma and addressing mental<br />
health issues, his compositions also tackle a variety of other<br />
topics of importance to the artist. Mawdsley has described some<br />
of the ideas which appear throughout the album as “shame,<br />
disassociation, grief, control and repressed adolescence”. He<br />
tells us: “I have made attempts to establish spaces to explore<br />
and challenge my own perceptions of the human condition. I’m<br />
influenced by a sense of urgency to acknowledge and open up<br />
dialogues about more challenging subject matters.”<br />
There is arguably much need for acknowledgment and<br />
dialogue at the current moment in time. Certainly, mental health<br />
is one area which could stand to be discussed a lot more. In the<br />
quarter of a century since Pantera’s paean to aggression was<br />
released, it could also be argued that not much has changed in<br />
the sense that wider society, as a whole, fails to address these,<br />
often crippling, tropes of the human condition. The real “power”<br />
of Luke Mawdsley’s creation lies in the fact that he has found one<br />
way of doing so. !<br />
Words: Stephen Lewin<br />
Photography: Xenia Onta / @xeniaonta<br />
lukemawdsleymusic.bandcamp.com<br />
Vulgar Displays Of Affection is available now via Maple Death<br />
Records.<br />
34
TOKKY<br />
HORROR<br />
Rising from the hot ashes of Queen<br />
Zee, the trio of Zee Devine, Ava<br />
Akira and Mollie Rush make their<br />
full throttle introduction as Tokky<br />
Horror. Blink and you might miss.<br />
“When I was a child<br />
I wanted to be Steve<br />
Irwin but there weren’t<br />
many opportunities to<br />
wrestle crocodiles in<br />
Birkenhead, so I decided<br />
to learn drums”<br />
If you had to describe your music in a sentence, what would<br />
you say?<br />
Fast music.<br />
Have you always wanted to create music?<br />
No. When I [Zee] was a child I wanted to be Steve Irwin,<br />
but there weren’t many opportunities to wrestle crocodiles<br />
in Birkenhead, so I decided to learn drums, which, I was<br />
disappointed to learn, has equally few opportunities.<br />
Can you pinpoint a live gig or a piece of music that initially<br />
inspired you?<br />
I remember dancing around my parents living room in a lil white<br />
vest and no pants pretending to be Freddie Mercury, so it was<br />
probably just having MTV on constantly as a child that got me<br />
intrigued. My first CD was a single of Queen’s We Will Rock You<br />
covered by 5ive.<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 emotion. I’m very emotional and do just write<br />
obsessively to help block out all my shit. I’m also just influenced<br />
by the music itself and a desire to write better and better.<br />
If you could support any artist in the future, who would it be?<br />
I’d like to open for artists where you’re getting a mixed bag,<br />
something we don’t properly fit with, like Slipknot, which would<br />
be fun. But then again, all time heroes like Goldie or Underworld<br />
would be major. To be honest, anything where I’m gonna get paid<br />
at this point.<br />
Do you have a favourite venue you’ve performed in?<br />
I got to play at Brixton Academy, that was weird. I was too<br />
anxious to really enjoy it in the moment, but now I can look back<br />
and be like holy shit that was Brixton. Liverpool Olympia is also a<br />
beautiful venue, I really enjoyed playing there.<br />
Why is music important to you?<br />
It’s how I make sense of the world and how I connect to it. I’ve<br />
always struggled with my autism, to really connect to people, and<br />
I find the world overwhelming or confusing most of the time. So,<br />
it’s through music I can have a common ground with people and<br />
make sense of emotions.<br />
Can you recommend an artist, band or album that Bido<br />
Lito! readers might not have heard?<br />
Get onto Donny Soldier, he’s rockin’ it on the main stage.<br />
Photography: Dan Frost / @danfrost.jpg<br />
@tokkyhorror<br />
Girl Racer is available now via Alcopop! Records.<br />
LAZYGIRL<br />
Through saccharine melodies<br />
cooked up in a bedroom studio,<br />
Lazygirl draws you into her haze of<br />
sentimentality.<br />
If you had to describe your style in a sentence, what would you<br />
say?<br />
Upbeat-meets-melancholy bedroom pop – kind of indie, kind of<br />
solemn, but soothing.<br />
Can you pinpoint a live gig or a piece of music that initially<br />
inspired you?<br />
I was initially influenced to start producing my own dreamy, lo-fi<br />
stuff when I saw Clairo’s Pretty Girl music video in 2017. Seeing<br />
someone about my age making massive waves in the industry<br />
from her bedroom was so inspiring, and made me start producing<br />
the music that I would listen to myself.<br />
Do you have a favourite song or piece of music to perform?<br />
I really enjoy performing with my guitar, especially my songs<br />
which are vocals and guitar only. I wrote Papercut (off my first<br />
EP) when I was 16, and I love playing it because I feel like it’s an<br />
homage to my younger self; nurturing her and carrying her on<br />
somehow. The song is about my struggle with OCD which, after<br />
years of treatment, is finally a faded memory. When I’m playing<br />
Papercut now, I can show that vulnerability and really mean the<br />
lyrics, but it’s like therapy – like being able to go back to 16-yearold<br />
me and saying ‘Don’t worry, you survived girl!’<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 />
Definitely a mixture. I write a lot about past and present feelings,<br />
especially mental health, relationships or my sexuality, but my<br />
new EP is based on a lot of stuff that makes me passionate… or<br />
angry. I’ve got a song about rape culture and misogyny and a<br />
couple about the various emotions I’ve felt in lockdown – mostly<br />
missing my other half and annoyance at the Conservative party!<br />
If you could support any artist in the future, who would it be?<br />
It would be my dream to support Clairo. Her discography has<br />
been so influential to me as an artist, so I think it would be the<br />
perfect full circle moment.<br />
Do you have a favourite venue you’ve performed in?<br />
The Zanzibar. It’s such a sweet venue and everyone there is so<br />
lovely – it was the first gig I ever performed in Liverpool, with<br />
my Uni band, and the last gig I did before lockdown. I’m so<br />
heartbroken it’s had to close its doors because of Covid. It’s been<br />
such a special venue to me and countless others in the scene.<br />
Why is music important to you?<br />
It’s so universal. Quite often, people can be really closed off<br />
about their feelings, and music is such a unique outlet to express<br />
emotions and ideas. It’s been such a huge part of my life, but<br />
every year I discover so many layers, artists, types of music<br />
and more that I never knew about. Getting older, I’ve learnt to<br />
appreciate the politics in music, too, and how it can be used to<br />
talk about injustices but also to find community and togetherness,<br />
like in queer culture. It’s so vast, you can never scrape the surface<br />
in a lifetime. Every day there’s the potential for something new.<br />
Photography: Martha Harris<br />
soundcloud.com/lazygrl<br />
Lazygirl’s Orange Roses EP is out on 28th August.<br />
SPOTLIGHT<br />
35
PREVIEWS<br />
Paul McCartney<br />
EXHIBITION<br />
LINDA McCARTNEY RETROSPECTIVE<br />
Walker Art Gallery – Until 01/11<br />
The Walker Art Gallery is welcoming visitors back with a big hitter of an exhibition to<br />
see them through until November. Rescheduled from an original opening date in April,<br />
it’s a much anticipated show displaying the iconic work of a woman who captured the<br />
essence of multiple decades at the close of the 20th Century.<br />
The Linda McCartney Retrospective is open now and can be enjoyed via advance booking on the<br />
Walker’s website. An impressively comprehensive career overview, curated by husband Paul and<br />
daughter Mary, the exhibition covers everything from LINDA MCCARTNEY’s early-career music<br />
photography among the movers and shakers of the 1960s, through intimate family moments at her<br />
home in Kintyre, to her more stylised Sun Prints series. It is rare that a photography exhibition takes<br />
in so much of a career and gives a fully holistic picture of a life at the same time.<br />
The exhibition takes in more than 250 photographs, spanning from the photographer’s early work<br />
when based in New York City, to the 1990s when McCartney was either side of the Atlantic having<br />
conquered the pop world as part of Wings. For local audiences there are familiar scenes around<br />
Liverpool and Wirral in warmingly candid familial moments; for the music historian, rock luminaries<br />
Simon and Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin all make appearances in the exhibition. There are<br />
rare shots of the Fab Four loitering at the iconic crossing before the famous Abbey Road shoot, as<br />
well as in the studio for the recording of their later, seminal works. The show provides a fascinating<br />
window into the life of a passionate activist, artist and family woman.<br />
FESTIVAL<br />
LIVERPOOL DIGITAL<br />
MUSIC FESTIVAL<br />
Various venues – 29-31/08<br />
LIVERPOOL DIGITAL MUSIC FESTIVAL is building on the success of its inaugural event in May<br />
to host a multi-venue streamed festival from across the city. The free event, featuring sets from<br />
ZUZU, The Merchants, Munkey Junkey and Natalie McCool, follows a lockdown edition which<br />
raised over £2000 for the NHS and Music Venue Trust. The M&S Bank Arena have contributed<br />
their space as the headline stage for the August Bank Holiday event while a trio of worthwhile charities<br />
will benefit from viewer donations. L8’s community mental health charity Mary Seacole House, Claire<br />
House Hospice and Merseyside Youth Association are partner charities for the event.<br />
Virtual festival goers in May were treated to sets by the likes of All We Are, Spinn and Zuzu playing from<br />
their own homes, as was the style at the time. Now restrictions have eased artists will set up on stages at<br />
city centre venues Phase One, EBGBS and SAE Institute, as well as the dockside main stage. The students<br />
of SAE will get valuable real world/digital world experience with students of Audio Production to Game Art<br />
Animation taking on a range of roles. Full artist line-up and stage times are still to be announced at time of<br />
writing.<br />
Zuzu<br />
36
LIVE STREAMED GIG<br />
She Drew The Gun<br />
Near Normal @ Future Yard – 19/09<br />
Birko’s newest venue opens in all its weird Wirralian<br />
wonderment this month with a socially-distanced show<br />
from some hometown heroes. While physical tickets<br />
sold out in under a day, SDTG fans thirsty for live action<br />
from a real venue can tune in online with a digital ticket.<br />
The multi-camera broadcast will carry IRL-quality audio<br />
and video mixed live by partners AdLib and Vessel, and<br />
provide a near-immersive experience to virtual ticketholders.<br />
The gig is part of a series of in-situ and streamed<br />
gigs which the venue is rolling out ahead of full capacity<br />
shows scheduled for early 2021.<br />
FILM<br />
<strong>September</strong> Cinema Events<br />
Picturehouse at FACT is back up and running in a<br />
safe manner with a smorgasbord of interesting indies,<br />
mighty mainstreamers and streamed live-streamed fare<br />
to scratch our big screen itch. Amongst the screenings<br />
slated for <strong>September</strong> are NT Live: Fleabag Encore (3rd<br />
Sept), La Haine (11th Sept) and filmed guided tour A<br />
Night At The Louvre: Leonardo Da Vinci (16th Sept).<br />
Also upcoming is a special screening of Karate Kid with<br />
a Remembering Of… featurette preceding the classic,<br />
and the beautiful Gints Zilbalodis animation Away, with<br />
dates TBA. There’s lots more to be announced by the<br />
cinema as they ease their way back to normality. Do<br />
support your local cinema.<br />
EXHIBITION<br />
Don McCullin<br />
Tate Liverpool – 16/09 – 09/05<br />
A popular exhibition when on display at Tate Britain, the work<br />
of photographer DON MCCULLIN has come up north to the<br />
Albert Dock sister gallery. With an arsenal of iconic images and<br />
a career taking him to historic conflicts all over the world, the<br />
exhibition is an eye-opening show from a legendary lensman.<br />
As well as his poignant images of war-torn Vietnam and Syria,<br />
the Tate exhibition will also feature images from working-class<br />
life in the north of England and London’s East End. The show<br />
promises unforgettable images from a photographer who has<br />
been unflinching in his recording of tragic conflicts and the<br />
realities of life near the poverty line.<br />
Don McCullin<br />
FESTIVAL<br />
Lime Carnival<br />
Various venues - 29/08-31/08<br />
LIME are bucking the trend and introducing a whole new IRL festival<br />
for the August Bank Holiday. A trio of venues play host to three events<br />
bringing a strong contingent of DJs for our socially distanced pleasure<br />
across three nights. Friday night begins at Baltic bastion Constellations<br />
with Dancehall and Afrobeats aficionado TOM HALL leading the roster of<br />
selectors. On Saturday night the action is transferred to Kazimier Garden<br />
for more wax jockeys turning the tables with the likes of PAPU.RAF and<br />
DOOPS.SAN on the bill. Sunday night leads us up north to Meraki for the<br />
closing party.<br />
CLUB<br />
Humanoid Collective<br />
Table Service @ Meraki – 04/09<br />
North Docks vibe hub Meraki are continuing their social distanced programme<br />
of DJ nights with Table Service welcoming HUMANOID COLLECTIVE for the<br />
first event of <strong>September</strong>. The popular nights have been a smash hit with those<br />
wanting to hear the best beats while staying safely apart. Signal x Humanoid<br />
are coming together on this Saturday night, 4pm-11pm, to bring a rare<br />
selection of selectors to the Ten Streets. As the monikers alludes to, drinks are<br />
served to tables of no more than six people and there are 22 tables to purchase<br />
tickets for via Resident Advisor. Other guidelines are in place and can be read<br />
on the Meraki website.<br />
EXHIBITION<br />
The Time We Call Our Own<br />
Open Eye Gallery – 02/09-03/10<br />
Dustin Thierry – Opulence.<br />
The nightlives of cities all over the world are currently on life support due to the virus. The full<br />
gamut of hustle, bustle, chips and discarded heels may not be making a return for a while, but<br />
we can experience it to some degree at Open Eye Gallery with their new exhibition. THE TIME<br />
WE CALL OUR OWN explores the nocturnal pulses of cities around the globe with photographic<br />
projects from an assortment of photographers. Style, location and music are central themes to<br />
a show that investigates visibility and counter-cultural scenes which thrives under neon lights.<br />
There’s also a chance to see highlights from the Bido Lito! photo archive with You Out Tonight?, a<br />
special exhibition curated for the Mann Island atrium.<br />
EXHIBITION<br />
And Say The Animals Responded?<br />
FACT – Until 13/12<br />
LIVE STREAMED GIG<br />
Möthmas<br />
Twitch – 30/08<br />
Alongside their online offering of podcasts, live streams, videos, challenges and activities entitled<br />
The Living Planet, FACT’s IRL exhibition AND SAY THE ANIMALS RESPONDED? has reconvened<br />
at the Wood Street space. While lockdown gave us cause to reflect on our relationship with the<br />
natural world, we can deepen our knowledge and seek further exploration through this exhibition of<br />
works from international artists. Whales, dolphins, chimps and a wolf pack all feature in an eclectic<br />
selection of work focussing on humans’ interaction with the animal kingdom. Ariel Guzik (Mexico),<br />
Amalia Pica (Argentina/UK) with Rafael Ortega (Mexico), Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (UK), Demelza<br />
Kooij (Netherlands/UK) and Kuai Shen (Ecuador) all have work which can be safely consumed with<br />
FACT’s Covid measures in place.<br />
For a healthy dose of multi-threat unbridled creativity, VICE MÖTH return on<br />
August bank holiday weekend for a special show. Bank Holiday Möthday,<br />
streamed via Twitch, will feature live performances from BEIJA FLO, MT HALL,<br />
DOM LEWINGTON and more as well as the usual mix of irreverent sketches from<br />
the likes of MOUNTAINEERS, MELODIEN and LAURA SPARK. The brainchild of<br />
Stealing Sheep’s Emily Lansley and Alex Germains (AKA Germanager), Vice Möth<br />
started out as a musical improvisation project and has spawned life as a multilegged<br />
collaborative project with the Möthmas annual arts show. The event will<br />
be re-streamed as part of Liverpool Digital Music Festival. twitch.tv/vicemoth<br />
PREVIEWS<br />
37
REVIEWS<br />
Angel Olsen and Hand Habbits (Ashley Connor)<br />
ISLANDS<br />
IN THE<br />
STREAM<br />
Well, this doesn’t half feel strange. In a normal<br />
month, these reviews pages would be full of<br />
tales learned from the floors of gig venues and<br />
arenas. Reports of sweaty, cathartic or moving<br />
gatherings – accompanied by photos taken from the upwardstilted<br />
perspective of the pit – have been an integral part of Bido<br />
Lito! for the past 10 years. Though the hundreds of reviews we<br />
have published may not say it explicitly, their words speak of the<br />
thrill of experiencing something together; they are memories,<br />
homages to shared moments, a communion of sorts.<br />
Then in March of this year, things changed. A live gig or<br />
concert of any type hasn’t taken place in Merseyside for almost<br />
five months since the country went into lockdown. And, with all<br />
of the Covid safety precautions still in place, it doesn’t look likely<br />
that we’ll see anything close to normal for the rest of this year.<br />
Our reviews section – half of Bido’s output – will be forced into<br />
hibernation for the first time (beyond exhibition reviews, of which<br />
we are continuing), until it can resume its place in documenting<br />
the stories made in the intense moments of connection that live<br />
performances bring us.<br />
Despite the closure of venues and halting of all performances<br />
in March, the artists soldiered on, determined to still connect<br />
with their fans. As a way of relieving the cabin fever of lockdown,<br />
impromptu ‘gigs’ popped up on live streams all over the place,<br />
hosted by those gamely mastering the new skills of streaming<br />
and bedroom production. The sight of an artist (or occasionally<br />
a duo) crammed in to shot, the dusty acoustic guitar jostling for<br />
space alongside mics, laptops and novel lighting setups became<br />
normalised. As an immediate reaction to the forced isolation<br />
of lockdown, these certainly scratched an itch – see Bido’s<br />
own Friday Night Live! series of streamed shows with ZUZU,<br />
BYE LOUIS, STRAWBERRY GUY and DAN DISGRACE – but it<br />
wouldn’t be long until fans and musicians both started to grate at<br />
the limitations. Despite some great efforts, the production values<br />
of bedroom gigs were generally naff, leaving very little room to<br />
do justice to the music. And for those whose only problem was<br />
the buffering of a shaky broadband connection, think about those<br />
artists without the wherewithal to perform from home at all, cutoff<br />
from vital outside engagement as the walls closed in.<br />
If there was any expectation that musicians would sit on<br />
their hands and accept their lot, then that was short-lived.<br />
SAMURAI KIP didn’t let the barrier of being quarantined in four<br />
separate locations stop them from putting together a live version<br />
of Smoke, with neatly collaged video to boot. ALL WE ARE<br />
weren’t content for even those restrictions, setting up in Vessel<br />
Studios for a full live set streamed on YouTube, amps, lights,<br />
natty outfits and everything. In light of their cancelled tour, this<br />
was a chance for the trio to keep contact with their fans ahead<br />
of their imminent album release, and also push a crowdfunding<br />
campaign to help them recover lost earnings from cancelled<br />
live dates. Indeed, the concept of<br />
leveraging financial support from fans<br />
through digital tipping and crowd<br />
funders was finally broached, which<br />
could well be something that stays in<br />
the artist’s arsenal once normal service<br />
is resumed.<br />
Michael Lovett, aka NZCA LINES,<br />
was also not to be deterred from<br />
having a party for the release of his<br />
album A Pure Luxury. Along with<br />
promoters Bird On The Wire, Dice<br />
and Behind The Notes, he set up<br />
a virtual album launch party with<br />
breakout Zoom Rooms for fans to<br />
chat and show off their downloaded<br />
virtual backgrounds. A slick mastery of<br />
video streaming brought the requisite sense of occasion, but the<br />
performance was still a bedroom gig (albeit with programmed<br />
lights and great-sounding audio). Support act CHARLOTTE<br />
ADIGÉRY brought more of a suspension of disbelief with<br />
her green-screened set, beamed in from Belgium as an hors<br />
d’oeuvre. But this show wasn’t necessarily about the show – it<br />
was about the connection with fans, promoting the album,<br />
making it all feel real. Those points of contact that musicians<br />
have with their fans – when they can truly develop the world<br />
they’ve built around themselves – are few and far between.<br />
Performances like this will never be a substitute for concerts,<br />
“Digital shows can<br />
only be a temporary<br />
fix, a stepping stone<br />
towards normality”<br />
but they might be able to open up a different kind of connection<br />
between artist and fan that has been long overlooked.<br />
LAURA MARLING’s live streamed show at Union Chapel<br />
in June saw over 4,000 fans pay £12 for a ticket to see the<br />
Mercury-nominated artist play a show filmed in cinematic luxury.<br />
Despite thousands of fans (plus hundreds more US fans) taking<br />
the option to see Marling performing songs from her brand new<br />
album, Song For Our Daughter, for the first time, the show still<br />
didn’t run a profit. Or, at least, not the kind of profit you would<br />
expect for a full-house Union Chapel show with a live audience<br />
a quarter the size of the dialled in streamers. Naturally, the<br />
streamed set’s lavish production<br />
and multitude of camera angles will<br />
have had something to do with that,<br />
but the scale of economy shows<br />
the level of risk involved in these<br />
performances, even for artists of the<br />
profile of Laura Marling.<br />
But the bug for the cinematic<br />
was catching, especially for those<br />
artists caught mid-album campaign<br />
who had seen touring and promotion<br />
plans pulled from under their feet. I<br />
tuned in to ANGEL OLSEN’s second<br />
Cosmic Stream in July, where the<br />
artist performed live from the<br />
Masonic Temple in Asheville, North<br />
Carolina. The performance was shot<br />
by Olsen’s long-time collaborator Ashley Connor in one glorious,<br />
sumptuous take, that occasionally pushed in close to Olsen as<br />
she sang forlornly to an empty room, circling around her to show<br />
the empty seats gathered in silent congregation. Even Olsen’s<br />
sharp quips fell eerily limp as the absurdness of the situation was<br />
laid bare in the awkward moments between songs. Yet, it all felt<br />
worth it when the camera took you inside the artist’s personal<br />
space, allowing you to feel an energy that you wouldn’t normally<br />
get to experience. When Olsen and support act HAND HABITS<br />
duetted at the pivot of the event, the crackle of emotion that<br />
coursed through my internet connection made me temporarily<br />
38
Tomorrowland Around The World<br />
forget that I wasn’t there with them, in that room in North<br />
Carolina with other fans, revelling in the crispness of Olsen’s<br />
voice just as much as the bum notes and the mistakes. As the<br />
show ended and the camera retraced its route back through<br />
the entrance to the room, it felt like the ending to an arthouse<br />
film: perfect for the setting and the artist, but a reminder of the<br />
distance that was between us.<br />
Jarvis Cocker’s fascination with the Peak District saw him<br />
bring his new outfit, JARV IS…, to Peak Cavern in 2018. So, what<br />
better place for Jarv and crew to host a live streamed show to<br />
mark the release of new album Beyond The Pale in the middle of<br />
lockdown? Streamed free on YouTube, the Live From The Centre<br />
Of The Earth show was shot by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard,<br />
who also directed the 2014 Nick Cave documentary 20,000<br />
Days On Earth. The Devil’s Arse, as Peak Cavern is affectionately<br />
known, added a delicious sense of oddness to the whole setting,<br />
a 53-minute trip inside the mind of one of British music’s most<br />
mysterious characters. The seven-piece group – featuring<br />
Serafina Steer, Emma Smith, Jason Buckle, Andrew McKinney,<br />
Adam Betts and Naala – came alive in a cave that was lit by<br />
spectacular lighting and visuals playing across the walls. “This is<br />
not a live album – this is an ALIVE album,” Jarvis intoned at the<br />
beginning, as their kitchen disco house music swept through the<br />
space in the kind of cinematic drama that only the British could<br />
dream of, never mind pull off. It was a shame when Jarvis bade<br />
us farewell in his breathy baritone; I’m not sure if it left me more<br />
likely to visit Peak Cavern or buy the record.<br />
The summer shutdown has meant that festivals have taken<br />
a huge hit during the pandemic. Their very model relies on one,<br />
big communal experience, which leaves them more vulnerable<br />
than most in the live industry. Those owned by the large live<br />
industry behemoths are the most likely to be able to tide things<br />
over to next summer, while those festivals with smaller but loyal<br />
audiences had to think creatively if they were to have a future<br />
beyond <strong>2020</strong>. Organisers of Bluedot and Supersonic festivals<br />
were, somewhat predictably, at the head of this pack, re-tooling<br />
some of their programmed content for an online variant.<br />
Bluedot’s A WEEKEND IN OUTER SPACE featured plenty<br />
of their popular science talks, done as online webinars. HENGE<br />
presented some suitably oddball space-themed live streams, and<br />
ORBITAL signed off the live proceedings with a set streamed<br />
from a home studio, where the voices of Greta Thunberg and<br />
Brian Cox were sampled over some of their organic beats.<br />
SOFASONIC was Supersonic’s response, a similar collection of<br />
live streamed Q&As and sets, which served as a chance to bring<br />
their close-knit community together. PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS<br />
PIGS PIGS’ hosting of an online bingo and some cooking classes<br />
showed both ends of Supersonic’s bizarro spectrum, with<br />
recorded sets from previous years of the spectrum serving as a<br />
reminder of what should have been happening. Neither event<br />
was hardly a replacement for the festival, but the digital activity<br />
did give a chance for fans to show their support and raise some<br />
much-needed cash for the teams behind the events.<br />
Tomorrowland, the Belgian EDM festival that welcomes<br />
400,000 fans to its two bonkers weekends each summer, are<br />
renowned for doing things differently. So, when they announced<br />
that they’d booked KATY PERRY and were taking the festival<br />
online instead, not many eyebrows were raised. The festival is<br />
an OTT carnival with garish set design, which comes across as<br />
something between Disneyland and Middle Earth for fans of<br />
Euro house music. Their plan for TOMORROWLAND AROUND<br />
THE WORLD, their digital experience for <strong>2020</strong>, was to create<br />
a whole digital environment in which to enjoy a still ridiculous<br />
line-up of performances: DAVID GUETTA, FEDDE LE GRAND,<br />
AMELIE LENS and STEVE AOKI among those joining Katy Perry<br />
over two days. At €12.50 a day, it seemed like a punt, even if the<br />
economics didn’t completely tally (until, that is, you sign up and<br />
get bombarded with never-ending ‘exclusive’ drink and merch<br />
offers) – especially when you see what your €12.50 granted you<br />
access to.<br />
Pāpiliōnem was the virtual setting for the digital festival,<br />
realised by Tomorrowland’s tireless visual team, that came<br />
with the tagline ‘The Reflection Of Love – Chapter 1’. Entering<br />
the festival was like the beginning of a computer game – and,<br />
indeed, the whole festival felt like an extended cut-scene from<br />
an elaborate fantasy game, with various stages (one of which<br />
looks exactly like Fort Punta Christo in Croatia, used as the home<br />
for Dimensions and Outlook festivals) perched on mountains<br />
and in clearings on the island of Pāpiliōnem. As the camera<br />
swooped in to each arena, thousands of computer-generated<br />
arms waved as the most out-there light show danced<br />
over their heads. The performers on the stages were<br />
merely part of the vastness, with DJ performances<br />
melded into the environments using green screen<br />
technology. At times, it felt like the computer game<br />
engine controlling your viewing was more keen on<br />
showing you the elaborate structures it had built,<br />
making for a rather exhausting mental experience<br />
for someone sat in a chair at home.<br />
Katy Perry’s headline set was a remarkable<br />
piece of digital wizardy, giving the impression<br />
that Perry and her dancers were performing<br />
on this blatantly digitised virtual stage. As<br />
bizarre as it was, you have to tip your hat<br />
to the Tomorrowland team for creating<br />
an experience true to their ethos which<br />
also gave you an excuse to suspend your<br />
disbelief long enough to have a good time.<br />
Isn’t that what live performance is meant<br />
to do, after all?<br />
The efforts of artists, festivals and<br />
their teams to find a way around the<br />
problems that lockdown has thrown<br />
up have not only shown remarkable<br />
creativity, but a dogged determination<br />
to keep the music playing. However,<br />
this shouldn’t mask the catastrophic<br />
effect that the paralysing of the live<br />
music industry has had on thousands<br />
of people. Countless artists saw<br />
their plans go up the spout, with<br />
long scheduled release plans for<br />
albums and singles suddenly<br />
compromised. Without the ability<br />
to go out and perform in front of<br />
fans, the ability for all but a tiny<br />
handful of musicians to earn<br />
money was immediately shut<br />
off. And the teams behind the<br />
artists, in PR, radio and at<br />
labels, all suffered as a result.<br />
Venues and promoters have<br />
been pushed to the brink,<br />
and production crews are<br />
still facing huge uncertainty<br />
over their careers as the<br />
live industry remains in<br />
shutdown.<br />
There’s a thrill<br />
to watching a live<br />
performance, a knifeedge<br />
uncertainty that<br />
it may all go wrong<br />
which tautens the<br />
senses. The pay-off<br />
when it lands is<br />
massive, a rush that<br />
is hard to replicate.<br />
Streaming live<br />
performances can<br />
get close to that sensation, but not close enough to give you the<br />
full hit. With the situation as it is currently, these digital shows<br />
can only be a temporary fix, a stepping stone towards normality.<br />
Hopefully, by the time we are able to return to the dancefloors<br />
again, we’ll have a full appreciation of what live music means to<br />
us, and be prepared to support it. !<br />
Christopher Torpey / @CATorp<br />
JARV IS… (Jeanette Lee)<br />
REVIEWS<br />
39
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to view the full programme and to enrol
Jonathan Baldock<br />
Facecrime<br />
Frances Disley<br />
Pattern Buffer<br />
Thu 30 Jul – Sun 1 Nov<br />
Free<br />
Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool, L1 3BX<br />
Pre-booking recommended.<br />
Visit thebluecoat.org.uk to book.<br />
@thebluecoat<br />
@the_bluecoat<br />
@thebluecoat<br />
Facecrime is commissioned by Camden Arts Centre with Tramway.<br />
The work was developed through the Freelands Lomax Ceramics Fellowship.<br />
The <strong>2020</strong> installation at Bluecoat is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.<br />
Pattern Buffer is supported by Art Fund.<br />
Funded by:<br />
Supported by:<br />
Frances Disley, holo programme 222 – restful focus, <strong>2020</strong> Jonathan Baldock, Facecrime, installation view at Bluecoat, March <strong>2020</strong>.<br />
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ARTISTIC<br />
LICENCE<br />
This month’s selection of creative writing is by Sufiah Abbasi, a short<br />
story that recalls a chance meeting with one of Liverpool’s most<br />
shadowy and celebrated muses.<br />
I Met Lee Mavers In 2012<br />
We were both housekeeping and distracted by the thick grim air. I’d seen him before and the time had not been right.<br />
I have nothing to lose any more.<br />
I approach the car.<br />
“Are you Mr Mavers?” He looks suspicious. I begin fawning. “I just want to say that I have known your music for a long<br />
time and it is a genuine pleasure to meet you.”<br />
He seems relieved and surprised. “Yes, it’s me, do you want to go for a coffee?”<br />
Now, I’m surprised. I hesitate for a micro instant. “OK.”<br />
Then it’s diving into the almost universal vision of the world. Not much is said about the cosmos, but there is God,<br />
purity, insanity and perfection.<br />
“Do you love Liverpool?” I ask.<br />
“I love what it’s going to be,” he says mysteriously. OK, I think, but I’m confused.<br />
“I hate music,” he says. I stay confused. “I know who you are. I can see you.” He looks at me.<br />
“I know who you are too,” I respond quickly and reassuringly. “Oh, why 95 in Doledrums?” I’ve always wondered why<br />
he wrote that into the tune.<br />
“It sounded right,” he says.<br />
“Oh, fuck you,” I shout.<br />
I notice that his hands are small as he easily manages to stretch to the chords on my niece’s jazz bass. He’s playing<br />
music and singing. Sometimes he just recites his lyrics. I ask him about the size of his hands. Our palms meet and his<br />
are only slightly bigger than mine.<br />
I play him Old friends/Bookends. He doesn’t like Simon and Garfunkel particularly. He likes real music, but I don’t<br />
understand at the time and it becomes apparent a few days later. I play it to him to demonstrate the discordance<br />
which spins into pure light and magically transforms into a clear note. He is untroubled by my question as to how this<br />
happens. If God were playing the most beautiful music and taught all the angels to play as well, what would happen if<br />
God stopped playing and took His teaching away?<br />
“They would have to learn it themselves?” I ask. He smiles and I’m right.<br />
All the reflections of the souls that ever lived folding upon themselves. I imagine that it would be the most infinitely<br />
tremendous musical note.<br />
Prophetic, lunatic, poet – all I ever expected him to be.<br />
I told him my dreams and he told me his, with full performance and a raw revisiting of the feeling.<br />
I tell him the Kali dream and describe how Dawn brings one of her friends into my flat. Dawn is supporting this girl<br />
and two others are with her. Dawn is supporting the girl as she is very sick. He butts in, “Heroin addict.”<br />
I stop, look up, “What makes you say that?” I ask.<br />
“It’s like a leprosy round here.” He indicates with his eyes all outside the four walls of my lovely flat. “You need to get<br />
out of here.”<br />
He said that he had felt nauseous following me home through the yellow tipped park. He thinks its toxins – not literal<br />
but mental and emotional – need to be expelled. I tell him that I was crazy nervous as I was driving home.<br />
He says he doesn’t watch films. We both have a connection with Morocco, but he’s stayed with the Berbers.<br />
I play him the Gonjasufi album and during the intro, he puts his head back against the wall.<br />
“Hopi Indians,” he says.<br />
“I didn’t know that.”<br />
He sits up a little when Gonjasufi sings Duet.<br />
“I like this one. It sounds like Walk On The Wild Side,” He says without looking at me.<br />
He can tell as soon as Error Operator’s remix of Philip Selway’s Beyond Reason begins that it is a good one. He<br />
reluctantly admits to liking Massive Attack’s Unfinished Symphony and I guess it’s the over production that he’s not<br />
keen on.<br />
I play him the only tune on the bass I know – House Of The Rising Sun. The bass is massive compared to me. I sit<br />
cross-legged on the floor and play it so shit that he doesn’t recognise it. He takes the bass and plays it on open<br />
strings and is trying to teach me.<br />
“It just clicks,” he says. “When you’re on your own.”<br />
I tell him two jokes: one in the Other Place – almost minutes after we met. I saw it on Old Jews Telling Jokes off the<br />
iPlayer. It’s a blue joke and he laughs with his head back. I clap my hands quietly and quickly in front of my face<br />
because I’ve entertained him.<br />
The second joke is from the same programme but hinges on an image. He laughs and then stands up, “That wasn’t<br />
funny. It was a bit Monty Python.”<br />
I remember the sketch he’s talking about: from The Meaning Of Life where the waiter makes you follow him out of the<br />
restaurant and keeps beckoning the camera and you as he walks and walks through the streets and countryside.<br />
“Oh, you like that film as well,” I say.<br />
He recited his own lyrics with me joining in the end of lines, like I was his hip hop hype guy. Then or at another time,<br />
he cried, remembering the pain of his father’s passing. His father contracted asbestosis when building St John’s<br />
Market. I wanted to dry his tears and was an inch away from his face. He didn’t want me to do this and wanted to<br />
leave the salt on his face. He tilted back his head and looked relieved.<br />
“I believe that tears are a mercy,” I proffer. I’ve already made a show of myself when recounting my dream. The one I<br />
had when I moved into this place. We were in the Other Place sitting outside, me scavving a rolly off him, when I tell<br />
him about the moment I hear him and the group singing a cappella. It’s tune so beautiful that I start to well up while<br />
I’m remembering it. I’ve known him minutes.<br />
“You must think I’m fruit loops.” The whole time he is with me, he never looks weirded-out by my behaviour.<br />
“What do those mean?” he asks, pointing his eyes in the direction of my niece’s two small canvases which have<br />
Arabic calligraphy on them.<br />
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“Grace and Mercy.” I look at him and explain flippantly, “They’re just words”<br />
He made me tea.<br />
He met Bill Shankly, who ruffled his strawberry blond hair. He’s a blue-nose, though.<br />
He thanks me for the beans on toast or tea. I say, “I owe you, you owe me”. I suddenly realise that I have absorbed his<br />
words into my consciousness and often say it to people.<br />
I then punched the air with both hands in victory, like Ian Rush after a dink. “I got to say that to YOU,” I squeal.<br />
He turns his face to me and says, “I know YOU can stand on your own two feet.”<br />
I’m delighted.<br />
I play him my party mix – it is a party after all. He plays the bass along with Silicone Soul’s Right On! and seems to perk<br />
up when Carwash comes along.<br />
“You know the bassline I love. The bassline to Hey Joe,” I say. He pulls the guitar and points it up to the sky, just knocks it<br />
out – he’s got to like it too. I start conducting the steps of the notes of that most perfect bassline.<br />
I ask him why he thinks I’m so excited. He says, “Because you’ve found a kindred spirit.”<br />
“Thank you.” I’m surprised and utterly impressed with us both.<br />
Another cup? We’ve run out of milk. Neither of us have slept very well. My back’s against the wall at work and he’s<br />
recently been betrayed. We’ve caught each other at an unusual moment. I ask him to come to the shop with me. Neither<br />
of us go out a lot but we didn’t notice anyone else. As we whisked past the corner of Ivanhoe, I ask him what his name<br />
means. He doesn’t know.<br />
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” I shout. “You don’t know what it means?” I’m genuinely weirded out.<br />
“So, what language is your name from?” he asks.<br />
“It’s Arabic in origin.” I say. “A Semitic language.”<br />
“I thought that was Jewish,” he says.<br />
“Oh no,” I gesticulate wildly, “we’re all Semitic... in that neck of the woods,” I add.<br />
We fly by Phil’s shop and turn the corner.<br />
Now, we’ve picked up the pace and we’re bumping into each other as we swagger up the Lane. We pass the afternoon<br />
drinkers outside the Rhubarb.<br />
“So, what happened there, then?” he asks. “Why the split?” He’s referring to the Jewish/Arab spilt.<br />
“Oh,” I splutter, “it’s that… erm, err… biblical story… erm.” I’m furiously trying to shake the facts in my brain into view. “It’s<br />
the story of Jacob… no.” It’s coming. Bingo. “It was Isaac and Ishmael.”<br />
“What’s that about?” He asks.<br />
“I’ve got no idea.” I look at the ground, disappointed, as if the two of them had made a mistake.<br />
We’re at the cash machine. He doesn’t realise where I’ve taken him because we’ve been engrossed in the talk. I get my<br />
cash out.<br />
“I’ve got £20, I know you’re on your arse. Why didn’t you say?” he says.<br />
I tell him no and make a mental note to discuss this offer with him later. We’ve got the milk and we’re flying back home.<br />
We both tend not to look around. We’re aware of our surroundings. I look up and catch the glance of a young-looking old<br />
vampire. I’ve no fear when I see this guy now, though, I’ve got the Custodian with me.<br />
We’re back in, the kettle’s boiling again.<br />
“So what does my name mean, then?” he asks.<br />
“Oh, it’s going to take a bit longer than that. I’ll have to look in a book or Google it.” I’ve had no internet for over a month<br />
and I have had to entertain myself. This has been like living in a fucking cave and my nerves are shot.<br />
(I cycle over to my sister’s some time later and ask my niece to look it up. Lee – sheltered from the storm. Mavers –<br />
custodian. My sister quietly suggests the Arabic word for this – Khalifa. This word has great potency.)<br />
I remember that he’d offered me money and I pick him up on this.<br />
“You can’t be that generous. I didn’t ask for anything from you,” I tell him firmly.<br />
He doesn’t understand. “There’s no harm in greasing your neighbour’s palm.” He quotes his lyrics.<br />
“That’s right,” I tell him, “but not all the time.”<br />
The kettle’s boiled. He’s tired, I know, but I’m surprised that he hasn’t picked this concept up. I shouldn’t be this frustrated.<br />
I don’t have the right to be because I only learnt it from a book. My voice rises like a soft Dalek.<br />
“Why are you getting angry?” he asks.<br />
I check myself. Yes, I went too far.<br />
“Tell me like I’m a child,” he says quietly.<br />
I sit down at the table with him and demonstrate. “You can’t always have your hand open. It’s got to close sometimes,” I<br />
say and demonstrate by flexing my hand open and closed – not a fist though, more like flapping the hand open and close<br />
like a wing.<br />
He mentions getting shivers as he saw that old building on the corner and tells a story about his friend who he thinks is<br />
lost. He describes to me how she clutches at her rosary beads now. It’s related to a dream he had.<br />
“What are prayers, but dreams,” I suggest. “And some of my dreams seem to be preparation.”<br />
He looks over at me and nods in agreement.<br />
I’ve asked him if I can write about him. He’s generous and comes up with, “Write so that I might know you”.<br />
Words: Sufiah Abbasi / @sufiahbear<br />
Quotes within this story are the account of the writer.<br />
ARTISTIC LICENCE<br />
45
75 ARGYLE STREET, BIRKENHEAD VISIT FUTUREVARC.ORG
SAY<br />
THE FINAL<br />
“After this pause, is<br />
it time to reflect upon<br />
and reassess issues<br />
in the scene, or will<br />
womxn continue facing<br />
the same issues?”<br />
Eve Machin is one half of Where Are The Girlbands?, an online platform dedicated to highlighting the<br />
community of femxle musicians and artists operating in Liverpool. After a tumultuous and sobering few<br />
months for musicians, Eve asks whether the indefinite hiatus on live music will open space for conversation<br />
and eradication of previous microaggressions aimed at womxn in the music industry.<br />
One August afternoon a couple of years ago,<br />
my bandmate Ella and I were sat at our usual<br />
brainstorming spot in Leaf on Bold Street, struggling<br />
to plan our next gigs for the summer. Off the top of our<br />
heads, we couldn’t imagine any line-ups where we would find<br />
ourselves on the bill with a similar style to us; most of the gigs<br />
we’d been to recently had been dominated by similar-sounding,<br />
four-piece jangly pop boy-bands. Not that we don’t love that<br />
classic Liverpool sound; we just felt pretty embarrassed to<br />
admit that we couldn’t name more than two Liverpool acts that<br />
included a woman.<br />
And of course, this issue is everywhere. It was further<br />
brought to attention in the autumn of 2019 after music blogger<br />
Lucy McCourt tweeted a graphic of the <strong>2020</strong> Leeds/Reading<br />
Festival line-up. The poster reveals that, after removing artists<br />
without a femxle member, only 20 of the 96 acts remain. Soon<br />
after, The 1975 frontman Matty Healy declared that the band<br />
would only play at events with a 50/50 line-up, following the<br />
PRS Foundation’s gender pledge initiative, Keychange, which<br />
over 150 festivals subscribe to. This has been met by much<br />
controversy and accusations of tokenism; a gender-balanced<br />
line-up seems to value gender over talent, and at the end of the<br />
day, good music is good music.<br />
Esme Grace Brown’s previous column for Bido Lito!<br />
describes perfectly how booking ‘female-fronted’ or ‘girlbands’<br />
for the sake of it is patronising and diminishes genuine talent.<br />
The issue lies somewhere deeper than just having balanced lineups;<br />
encouragement, empathy, and a bit of respect would help<br />
achieve genuinely fair representation, and so festival bookers and<br />
promoters would have a bigger pool to choose from, naturally<br />
restoring a balance. Really, it’s not about satisfying a statistic, but<br />
rather integration<br />
The meeting between myself and Ella got us thinking about<br />
the reasons for this lack of representation. And so, WHERE<br />
ARE THE GIRLBANDS? was born. It started off as a project in<br />
the form of an Instagram account; we began seeking out local<br />
musicians to feature on the page, and Ella – an artist by trade<br />
– provided a little illustration. We wanted to create an online<br />
community of femxle creatives, almost as a kind of reassurance<br />
that more were out there.<br />
You might be thinking: “I see plenty of women playing<br />
music. There’s nothing wrong with the Liverpool scene; it’s a<br />
very inclusive place.” And you’d be right. In fact, we were met<br />
with immediate backlash, saying that our aims undermine all the<br />
work womxn already do. But our name is purposely ironic; we’re<br />
aiming simply to improve representation and create a space<br />
where womxn can be celebrated, because it’s never easy.<br />
There are all sorts of underlying issues that result in<br />
subconscious microaggressions that affect femxle musicians<br />
daily. We’ve been posting weekly polls on the account to hear<br />
people’s opinions; one week, we addressed whether musicians<br />
had ever felt discriminated against for their gender, and received<br />
countless anecdotes. Being asked if you need help lifting kit;<br />
ignored when talking about sound engineering; being told what<br />
to wear at gigs; being mistaken for another band member’s<br />
girlfriend, despite carrying an amp and guitar. To be honest,<br />
I even think it starts at school; from lads dominating practice<br />
rooms, to parents having their girls play the flute and boys<br />
thrashing the drum kit. Before we jump to conclusions and think<br />
that 50/50 line-ups will solve the problem, we need to look at<br />
why this subconscious behaviour manifests itself in the first<br />
place.<br />
I moved to Cambridge two years ago for university, and<br />
was immediately struck that there wasn’t an obvious music<br />
scene to get involved in, despite the abundance of organ recitals<br />
and choral evensongs. This year, I’ve set up fortnightly gigs at<br />
different venues in the city, making sure they’re free, accessible<br />
and have a jam element at the end so people can meet and play<br />
together in a friendly atmosphere. But even at my own event,<br />
the same subconscious sexism gets to me; the stage is usually<br />
dominated by men, especially during the jams, where I speak<br />
to women in the audience too shy or uncomfortable to get up<br />
and perform. Myself included. At the last gig, I told the guys on<br />
stage to wrap up jamming as the venue was closing. After being<br />
ignored twice, I had to get my male friend to tell them to get off,<br />
to which they immediately responded. It’s frustrating knowing<br />
that although this isn’t overt sexism or harassment, it’s still not a<br />
level playing field.<br />
We’re also not entirely focussed on promoting womxn and<br />
challenging the issues they face in the music scene; in order<br />
to be truly heard you have to engage with men, too, because<br />
otherwise you’re just preaching to the choir. The involvement of<br />
men is just as important as the involvement of womxn because<br />
you want them to be engaged in these kinds of discussions. We<br />
Are The Girl Bands? is inclusive and open to address class, race,<br />
sexuality, disability and more. We’ve also talked to people about<br />
venues and space, age gaps in the music scene, collaborations<br />
with visual artists and cliques. The account has become a<br />
kind of hub for news on gigs, events and opportunities; a<br />
platform where musicians and creatives can go for promotion<br />
or encouragement; a network for promoters to seek out artists,<br />
and, above all, a community – without the artists themselves, the<br />
page wouldn’t exist, of course.<br />
So is it important to have femxle-focused organisations<br />
like ours, or is it patronising? We try to keep the conversation<br />
as inclusive as possible to all genders. Organisations like<br />
Bitch Palace and WeWantWomen do fantastic work to<br />
promote and empower femxle musicians. In a recent interview<br />
with Merseyside punk band Rival Unit, they expressed<br />
their appreciation for the events these promoters put on:<br />
“There’s definitely a different atmosphere. Particularly with<br />
WeWantWomen; they want female artists, most of the crowd<br />
know what they’re coming to see… a lot of the people who do<br />
go to these events are people who want female artists to be<br />
at the forefront… nights like [these] are important for getting<br />
women onto that ladder [when starting out]. It’s a really tough<br />
experience.”<br />
In light of everything that’s gone on over the last few<br />
months, the future of the gig scene is obviously uncertain. With<br />
the closure of legendary venues like The Zanzibar and Sound<br />
– which supported so many local musicians, first-timers in<br />
particular – support for local businesses matters now more than<br />
ever. In a post-Covid-19 world, it’s up to the consumer what the<br />
gig scene will look like to a certain degree. After this pause, is<br />
it time to reflect upon and reassess issues in the scene – or will<br />
womxn continue facing the same issues? Will there be a new<br />
hunger for live music once it can resume – and how can we make<br />
sure that womxn are part of it?<br />
Sometimes I’m a bit sceptical about how we come across; I<br />
feel like a lot of the work I do in both Liverpool and Cambridge<br />
seems to carry a big ‘Feminist Agenda’, but really I just want<br />
womxn’s place on the scene to be normalised and more<br />
integrated – sometimes it feels like it’s either belittled or overexaggerated.<br />
At the same time, it’s clear there is a need for an<br />
accessible space or community outside of what’s presented to<br />
womxn on the scene. !<br />
Words: Eve Machin<br />
Illustration: Ella Fradgely<br />
@wherearethegirlbands<br />
FEATURE<br />
47