Sunday starts to take a turn for the strange in Salford...

Staying off the beaten track, next stop is The Attic where another of Manchester's largely unsung and tireless promoters SA Promotions are custodians of an eclectic little bill. Girl Afraid have a nice line in abrasive, emo-flavoured punk-pop-indie fronted by the amazing little powerhouse that is Tara Kidd. Assertive, melodic and wracked with emotion when singing and sweetly shy in between times, she's at her best on the "experimentally one" "Numb" which sounds like a reverb-soaked PJ Harvey; the lads in the band are pretty tight too, but I suspect they might have to get used to Tara getting the lion's share of the attention.

Now I was delighted to see Cohesion's name on one of the official showcase lists after spending about two years wondering why more people haven't cottoned on to their simple brilliance - this isn't it, but if they play the way they just did today it should stand them in very good stead. There's no frills here, no gimmicks, just four lads with three of the greatest Northern indie-pop-rock tunes you'll hear anywhere this weekend. Which is not to say there's anything wrong with the rest of the set - all their songs are good, but three are just upliftingly heartwarmingly great. "Paper Scissors Stone" sees Andrew O'Hara in pensive, nostalgic mode; this band's always been about the words as much as the tunes. "Behind Closed Doors" sees some beautiful searing guitar work from Kevin McPhillips and the final "Can't Ignore" is bordering on anthemic. They're probably never going to appear on anyone's Cool List, butwith the right backing they could win a lot of hearts.

At this point I break my own rule and treat myself to the first taxi ride of the weekend. Look, the King's Arms is a really long way from here... On arrival I find a friendly little fringe party in full swing, a barbecue in the beer garden and a delightfuly chilled atmosphere. This is Underneath The Trees and Borowski would be pleased with the complete lack of idiots here, too. Actualy it seems he did a stint here before the Garratt.

There's more foliage around the two stages than British Sea Power's entire autumn 2003 tour (and I should know, I went to, er, most of it...) - downstairs Kamal Arafa and friends (including the biggest double-bass ever... well at least it looks like it... or are they all the same size? No idea) are doing some slightly wayward folky indie-country. Despite looking about 17 he sings of love and having been skint for years, but there are just too many people cramming in and out to really appreciate him. Upstairs then, wheer something far more sinster awaits...

The Witch And The Robot are no strangers to foliage, being (a) from Cumbria and (b) associates of the aforementioned British Sea Power (they're promoting and supporting at the Brighton-based Lakeland ex-pats' forthcoming gig at Barrow-inFurness Canteen on 6th November, with a third dose of Cumbrian insanity from Wild Beasts - well worth fighting with the M6 for; and even stick on "Fear Of Drowning" over the PA before they come onstage. Attempting to capture the experience that is a TWATR performance in mere words is a bit like trying to interview margarine, in Finnish, but I'll have a go.

There are three men onstage; one has a string of real sausages around his neck, one a pink feather boa and the third is covered in shaving foam. Behind them a screen shows images of a man in a papier mache face mask - think a far more disturbing Frank Sidebottom - running around a field of sheep and hiding behind rocks. They start chanting, slowly; "Fight! Fight! Fight!", and then unleash a form of art punk folk psychedelia-gone-dark that has precisely no comtemporaries in modern music or indeed anything else. One minute they're a mildly threatening Violent Femmes doing film noir soundtracks, the next an acoustic goth Fall with the scariest sounding flute you've ever heard. These comparisons are still pretty wide of the mark. "Everyone on the farm is dead", they intone in low voices. At which point papier mache head man wanders through the door and starts waving a small sprig of leaves in peoples' faces. Feather boa and flute and jumps down from the stage and wrestles him to the ground. This is Mr. Heartbreak, and you might well have nightmares. The three men onstage, by the way, are Mr. Venice, Mr. Goodnight and Hen. They throw the content of a packet of Werthers Originals into the crowd, without really making much of a point of it. By the end, pretty much everyone is standing aghast whilst Mr Heartbreak crawls around and picks up the remaining sweets. They really have to be seen to be believed; afterwards I go and ask the Fugitive Motel ladies, seeing them for the first time, what they thought of them. It's a good few seconds before either of them can actually form a word. Truly one of the performances of the weekend.

http://www.myspace.com/wearegirlafraid
http://www.myspace.com/cohesionuk
http://www.myspace.com/kamalarafa
http://www.myspace.com/thewitchandtherobot

Cath "Beware the creatures from the hills" Aubergine

Cath's Sunday Afternoon - Two Sides Of In The City

Question: does orange VK constitute one of your "five a day"?

Up in the North East they know a thing or two about drinking (at least if my own Geordie mates are anything to go by); thus the annual Spearhead ITC NE showcase is accompanied by a free bar for delegates. At, er, 1pm. This "morning"'s gentle ease into wakefulness is accompanied by the sparkling acoustic melodies of the oddly-named Beth Jeans Houghton. Sweet introspective folk with a few childhood lyrical references is the order of the day from this tiny blonde teenager, more Ladies Of The Canyon than Hoxton birds - sounds familiar? Yep, doesn't she know she's on Lucy And The Caterpillar's home patch here? Oh, and her probably-gets-ID'd-at-bars youth and barely-there babydoll dress yields an overheard conversation between two late-middle-aged male delegates at the bar which I'd be tempted to name and shame if their passes hadn't been dangling back-to-front.

The Chapman Family have some faintly scary stuff on their Myspace and T-shirts proclaiming "We Are Not A Cult", although the singer's own simply states "Middles Fuckin Boro" - presumably in any hapless hack still using the N word can expect to see the head of the family pet in a box, or something... nah, they're not that scary at all really. They are very bloody good. With a level of energy rarely seen anywhere at half one on a Sunday afternoon they chuck out fast, furious slithers of window-rattling postpunk with one foot in Maximo power-indie and the other in Interpol blackness, darkened further by assertive halfway-to-goth vocals and a cloamouring mass of hardcore drums. "Hope you're enjoying the free bar, you cunts" - yep, predictably the back of the venue's somewhat fuller than the front, but this just makes them play harder, faster, angrier; screw the free bar, this is what someof us are here for. By the end of their brutally short and icecubes-down-the-back invigorating set there are drumsticks flying everywhere, guitars rammed into the floor and swaet splattering off this exciting young band. Quality stuff. Er, where you from again?

It's like a conveyor belt; with barely time to nip out for a fag before the next act is paraded before the still rather too disinterested crowd... what's this... ah, right, I get it. We seem to be alternating "nice" and "nasty" here. Uncle Monty are Nice. The flyer promises "melodic, powerful loveliness; songs that will just stay in your head forever". Er, whose head, exactly? Cos yeah, they strum some pleasing tunes with all the chords in the right age-old order, they've probably got a few records by The La's and The Shins and loads of other bands with nice tunes, and transiently they're enjoyable enough but frankly if I do find myself with one of their songs in my head in half an hour's time, never mind next week or "forever", it'll be down to some sort of government mind-control plot. This is music to wash your car to whilst cheerfully greeting your neighbour with a view to borrowing his strimmer. When the singer apologises for "the distortion on that last one" I think that says it all really.

This gets me thinking. Can all bands be divided into those who apologise for distortion and those who turn it up? I reckon The Eye Jab would be in the latter camp, anyway; their "thing" is dreamy, stargazey melodies with all sorts of unexpected little twists of post-rock undercurrent. On the one hand, twinkly piano and vocals that swoop and dive; on the other, piles of guitars crashing all over it and climbing into stirring peaks like iLiKETRAiNS on Prozac or an indie-pop Arcade Fire; somewhat predictably, I rather like them.

By now I'll have missed Tim And Sam's Tim And The Sam Band With Tim And Sam's published set time at the Walkabout, but I'm rather banking on it all running as late as it usually does there. It is. Bargain. Timspotters note: this is the three-piece variant, although between them they slip seamlessly between two acoustic guitars, keyboard, glockenspiel, clarinet and melodica, floating their gorgeous dreamy melodies across this most inappropriate of surroundings. This is the sound of flowers opening, of summer on the breeze, of brightly coloured stars; the clarinet somehow eerie and welcoming at the same time as the guitars stitch a delicate tapestry. Yes, I know, but you try writing about this without getting all flowery. It's just really fucking gorgeous, and whilst some quarters have lamented the lack of local bands at the official showcases this year Tim And Sam's Tim And The Sam Band With Tim And Sam are something Manchester has every reason to be proud of.

The one good thing about the Walkabout - apart from, strangely, better sound quality than some "proper" venues I could mention - is the nachos. Right, if I have the guacamole and the jalapenos, is that two (more) of my "five a day"?

Next up are The Tommys, and... nope, that's definitely three blokes. The Official Secrets Act, to be precise; sat on stools and explaining they'll be playing "with the full band" on Monday (As indeed will Tim & Sam - do drummers have some work-to-rule thing involving Sundays or something?) The problem with blokes sat in a line on stools with guitars is it rather sets off the Del Amitri alarms - and that's before they start whistling. A tad unfair, sorry; their tunes are full of hooks and heartfelt lttle lifts - in this form, at least, they're reminiscent of the early Tides, particularly with the high pitch of Thomas Charge Burke's vocal (Look, that's what it says here. I don't make these peoples' weird middle names up for a laugh, you know). Quite why they cover The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" though is anybody's guess.

You might be wondering why I was so keen to see The Tommys - three reasons, really. Firstly cos they wrote to me a while back and asked me to, and I do actually try and see bands who've made the effort to get in touch, unless they're quite obviously not worth the effort. Secondly, because I once saw them in a previous line-up blasting seven shades of punk rock hell out of a High Voltage night peppered with sad boys who didn't like it. And thirdly because some of them are from Crewe, a complete shit-hole where I nevertheless spent two of the best years of my life at college (attaining five A-levels of a calibre that strongly suggests I used to have a hell of a lot more brain cells than I seem to have these days - as well as publishing my first fanzine) and I've still got a vague soft spot for the place. Anyway, looks like it's not happening, so having managed to have dinner without missing any music it's time to head back away from Peter Street to the fringe of the fringe, namely BUSK at the Garratt. It seems I've missed Nomad Jones's set, but am pleased to report that his hair is now the size of a small tree...

Whilst we await what sounds like possibly not very good news regarding the fate of my beloved Second Floor, their spot on the bill is filled by The Witches. Some of whom we think might have been in New Graffiti and indeed Movement, the latter equipped with a quite terrifying Mexican bandit 'tache. This is apparently their first ever gig and they rock up a lovely filthy garage goth rock'n'roll racket that probably isn't best suited to four o'clock in the afternoon. Go and see them somewhere dark and dirty sometime.

The main reason I'm here, of course, is to catch one of my favourite living legends in action. This is the second of three performances of the day from George Borowski and as ever the veteran singer-songwriter has a couple of things to say about the sort of people who come to ITC and never make it off the Peter Street strip where they stand and talk at the bar in various places on someone else's money. Quite simply, this man is made of music, and his tendency to stop songs part way through to try and emphasise a point is just part of that. He's had a tough year; his beloved mother passed away in May just a day after we saw him absolutely captivate a crowd at Strummercamp punk festival; her photo sits on his amp. And there seems to be a certain pain in his voice still, as his heart-wrenching folk ballads bring people close to tears. the word "troubadour" is often ussed undeservingly. but as George sings of the 53 bus and the streets of this town it's like he carries the spirit of the place within his very soul. And here, in a sidestreet pub where everyone has to muck in with their three quid delegate or not it's a warm reminder that whilst there might well be a Music Industry, music itself runs deeper than that.

Fellow BUSK regulars Optional Wallace are on next (the alternating stage set-up leaving little chance to catch your breath) - this is terse, powerful and ever-so-slightly doom-laden indie rock, administered with that tautness you only get in a three-piece. the Manchesters past in their sound are those of Magazine, early Chameleons, imposing waether formations over crumbling brickwork - but there's a soaring indie-rock sensibility too in their urgent songs. And, of course, they've got an utterly fantastic name.

I'd love to stay longer, but I've got somewhere pretty important to be... more follows shortly (my typing fingers are definitely starting to hurt!)

Cath Aubergine

http://www.myspace.com/bethjeanshoughton
http://www.myspace.com/thechapmanfamily
http://www.myspace.com/unclemontyband
http://www.myspace.com/theeyejab
http://www.myspace.com/timandsamstimandthesambandwithtimandsam
http://www.myspace.com/officialsecretsact
http://www.myspace.com/optionalwallace
http://www.myspace.com/georgeborowski

Sunday night: A&R frenzies and getting 'Out Of The City'

Walking up and down Peter Street this weekend has provided many opportunities to hear Twisted Wheel mentioned. Indeed, as I headed for Bar 38, various snippets of overheard Southern mutterings reminded me that I really should make the effort to see the band being heralded as this year’s Big Deal. A swift about-turn took me to One Central, where I had the unexpected pleasure of Eugene Francis Jnr, adjusting his Village People headdress as I arrived…

When 600 different bands and artists play over the course of three days, it’s important to stand out. It’s possible that this was the reason for Eugene Francis Jnr’s Red Indian feathers, and it may go some way to explaining the Captain America shield he had strapped to his forearm, but he may just like to look like he survived an explosion in a fancy dress shop. Either way, he was really rather good. His skills on the acoustic guitar did not stand out in such an over-populated genre, but as he switched between two microphones his songwriting talent emerged. One mic echoed the yearning mid-Atlantic twang across the busy venue, while the other allowed for some gentle crooning, and he moved between the two frequently. Apparently, Francis normally plays with a six-piece backing band, but half of them were either ill or abroad or (I imagine) working on new costumes, so missing instruments were replaced by the banging of feet and subtle whooping. His final song, introduced as a “political one”, featured many apt lines, including “Keane and Snow Patrol are going straight to Hell” and “Don’t take tips from pricks in suits”. It was only when he threw in a line about Manchester’s weather that we began to consider the possibility that Eugene Francis Jnr was using these inflammatory lyrics to demonstrate a strain of reserved anarchy.

By the time Twisted Wheel arrived onstage, all cat-swinging contests were off, and a whole collection of folk had positioned video cameras and flash bulbs everywhere you looked. A local trio, they are one of a few bands giving new hope to Manchester’s lad-rock contingent, as A&R hoards trip over each other to take a look. And going off tonight’s performance, Twisted Wheel could take off, if only because The Jam, Oasis and The Arctic Monkeys have all taken off before them, and Twisted Wheel are but a Best Of compilation of their predecessors’ triumphs. “Painting pictures of life/Caught in the strife” could be the chorus to any track from Definitely Maybe, while there are no points for guessing where the inspiration behind “He’s a scamming man” came from. Frontman Jonny warrants a new birth certificate reading Liam Turner-Weller, but while his lyrics are the correct mixture of poetic and blue collar, they lack the dry wit of the Arctics. Putting criticism aside though, it quickly became clear that Twisted Wheel are very bloody good at ripping people off. Jonny is a fine guitarist, and the band have made excellent use of their rehearsal time. Fuck-ups aren’t welcome in this operation, and if nothing else, they may just remind us tired old cynics why bands like Oasis were so brilliant in the first place.

It took a shocking amount of time to escape One Central and its headache lighting, which was all the more frustrating as I had a bus to catch. “In The City”, you say? Not quite. Looking further down the weekend’s listings revealed a must-see event; the Out Of The City fringe gig at Heaton Moor’s Blue Cat Café. I have joked about these provincial venues being “the bars that time forgot” and that was before I arrived at the Blue Cat to find AC/DC onstage…

Wired Desire didn’t quite wear school uniforms, but they certainly channelled the spirit of Bon Scott like pros. Having thrown themselves whole-heartedly into recreating a classic rock sound, tight jeans and sleeveless shirts created the look to match, and I expect if any of them decided to get a haircut, their days in Wired Desire would be numbered. That said, they were blisteringly good. I mean, they were scorching, face-melting, super-charged, awesome rock’n’rollers. With a frontman who combined all the best stadium postures from Axl Rose and Robert Plant with a penetrating screech, no-one could argue that the performance was lacking. Shoegaze, this was not. Various galloping Mick Ronson guitar solos and a riotous encore of, naturally, ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’, caused much lamenting of the fact that it was not Wired Desire, but George bloody Michael who opened the new Wembley.

It was Jake Mattison who had really drawn the crowds to this dim corner of Stockport though, his fanbase having grown since he’s fleshed out singer-songwriter material into a full band sound. Some devotees (or perhaps just me) were a little nervous of this new electric direction, having fallen in love with earlier growling acoustic blues, but tonight’s show proved that the rasping soul of Mattison’s voice has only been bolstered by the addition of brass and a raucous rhythm section. ‘Idle Protest’, a long-standing live staple, was akin to something from Tom Waits’ The Mule Variations; bombastic cornet that will make you punch the air with glee mere moments after your dog is dead and your home repossessed. Encouraging his audience with a yell of “Are you all ready for some melancholy?!” ‘Dirty Old Town’ was reason enough to grab your loved ones and sway gently like a Top Of The Pops studio audience, but it was when the band fell into something only a few degrees of separation from a jam session that their infectious exuberance really spread the love. Jutting guitar necks into the crowd and getting more than a little carried away on the drum kit, Jake Mattison and his band proved that you don’t need to look like Tommy Lee in order to rock the f**k out.

I tell you, I needed the journey home just to calm myself down again.

Meg MM.

Sunday morning through bleary eyes and a brain-blowing PA system...

Bloody hell, that Control’s a bit of a party-killer, isn’t it? I thought I’d enter into the spirit of In The City as it operates beyond Peter Street’s basement venues, and check out one of the related films being offered at the Cornerhouse. Control was everything that a film about Ian Curtis’s life should be of course; poignant, touching, sobering, funny in places, and with no shortages of references to the swamping banality of Macclesfield. (Just so you know, I’m allowed to say that because it’s my hometown. If anyone else dares diss the place they’ve got a fight on their hands and I’ve seen The Karate Kid, so know the meaning of real damage…)

Back to the music though, and this morning took me to the recently refurbished Ruby Lounge. The PA system could launch a satellite, but at half past one on a Sunday afternoon, there weren’t many punters to soak up its power. Not discouraged, The Fischers requested a nice bit of blue lighting and commenced the pub-rock. If nothing else, the bass was loud enough to shake me into some semblance of life. A four-piece with occasional saxophone, they were the kind of band who would happily buy you a pint down at your local, but are probably more suited to a game of darts than the world’s rock-n-roll stages. They played a vigorous hybrid of Ocean Colour Scene and the Lightning Seeds, but offered about as much innovation as a Paint By Numbers canvas. The saxophone should have elevated the show to a more bombastic, ska-flavoured bounce, but its use was minimal, and far too quiet. Also, the slightly strained vocals of their lead singer were surpassed by the bassist’s backing and big “no, no, no, no” moment. Methinks the job of frontman was decided with an arm wrestle.

Despite being but a quiet wee soul, it was Kathryn Edwards who really lifted energy levels, with a ukulele of all things. Her voice is exactly how I imagine I sound in the shower of a morning, and its jazz stylings on ‘Sway’ or when she elongates “killer” to be more of a “killerrr-errrr-errrr” were a wonderful tonic after all than bone-shaking from The Fischers. After a couple of songs with trusty acoustic guitar, she exposed her vulnerability with gentle plucking of the uke. By letting her voice shine with such minimal backing, Kathryn Edwards conveyed a gorgeous fragility. Great stuff.

Clipe Sexo Amador is another of your one man bands whose electro-funk singer-songwriter fare has been encouraged by the continual development of musical technology. With a backing track inspired by everything from Prince to White Town (remember him?), he lurched about with a guitar, just about managing to uphold a sense of musicianship, but this man’s expertise did not lie in his manipulation of bells, whistles and samplers. Clipe Sexo Amador was a world-beating lyricist who had obviously spent more time writing poems in his bedroom than making friends with any musicians. Go forth, my friend, find a band who can do musical justice to your wonderful rhymes about self-worth and writing fiction. That said, I imagine that at half eleven on a Friday night, these funkadelic move-busters could fill a rave the size of an aircraft hangar. Sadly, early on a Sunday afternoon was not his natural home.

Pictures on the photobucket account!

Meg MM.

SATURDAY PRT 1 - Jon's DEMO DAY

The enemy so far isn’t poison or intoxication, but rather the more painful and draining curse of sleep deprivation. With so much to see and experience the writing up bit, is actually the part that seems to take the longest.

With an early rise and a ride on the tram, at this time populated by pensioners and crack of dawn shoppers, the train cuts through the mist of north Manchester’s cold but sun filled morning. The mission is to be at the opening of Break In The City at The Bridgewater Hall. For my sins I’d been asked to sit on the demo panel. It’s a proper top table, with microphones and everything. A bit like a press conference for say a football manager about to relay some rather bad news to ardent fans. Except I’m not Stuart Pearce and things, I hope are rosier these days.

Even at this time, the large reception area begins to fill with musicians and people who’ve travelled from London, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Huddersfield – that’s just some of the hometowns of the people that I just happened to get speaking to.

The plots pretty simple – the bands present submit their demo and it’s played over the p.a. and the panel offer their views – in a pretty democratic fashion, the artist is also given a microphone!

Here’s some of my comments – nerve wrackingly relayed via the big speakers …

HUN PILGRAMIGE (www.hoonmusic.com) – a pleasing tune from South Korea (they’d actually travelled over!) – using traditional instruments , piano and modern electronica the bass booms into a beautiful vocal passage. Spacey. Ambient and rather nice. MMM

THE GLORIOUS YANG (www.myspace.com/thegloriousyang ) come up with a quite ravey, dance outing that’s pretty commercial – not that different from anything out there but competent. MM

EPIPHANY also begin their cut with an electronic rock mix of stadium bound stuff – a bit like Marillion playing industrial goth, but it’s a little too heavy and laboured and doesn’t seen to get its wheels off the ground. MM

JASON DUNKLEY AND THAT GIRL SUE (Manchester / www.myspace.com/jasondunkley ) come up with a song that’s a little bit obvious but overcomes this with a great vocal and some really well defined acoustic arrangements. The harmonies are very pretty and it’d be good to hear this band experimenting a bit more. They’re also congratulated for having the best band name so far. MMM

THE MANYANAS have the best overcoats – we’re talking centre pages of The Face here – They’re from Oldham and kick off the song with a drum intro and clatter of indie falling down the stairs. It whips up into an exciting, energetic three minute hit with poppier Clash style thrashes. Good stuff. MMMM

THE UNDERCLASS (www.myspace.com/theunderclassmusic ) I’m ashamed to say were immediately devalued by me on sight of their name and pictures. This was going to be the sound of Oasis. And it was - but I’m not one to piss on someone’s dreams and despite that ‘classic’ Manc stereotypical sound this was the sound of a band who could actually play and who had a singer who could hold his own and who was just about different enough to warrant another listen. If this kind of stuff actually does justify a genre then it’s pretty high up in it.

SKETCHBEAT came up with something that was a little bit dubby, post-jazz with a dash of Portishead in it - but it don’t move me enough to write much else about it – it’s one of those that needs a fairly good listen, which a one minute sample doesn’t allow. MM ½

THE FUSILIERS ( www.myspace.com/wearethefusiliers) are from Edinburgh and put their CD in a simple black and white sleeve with a smart A4 copied PR sheet. It did exactly what was needed and was a perfect example of how to present a simple demo. Musically this was the best CD of the bunch. A full review will follow too on the MM pages. For now let’s say it was a rousing bout of choppy, hooklined strongly fuzzed indie rock akin to something like The Enemy but refreshingly less polished. Excellent. MMMM

STOP DROP AND ROLL (www.myspace.com/stopdropandrolltheband) are another local band and their quite long intro has the feeling of something like Tubular Bells played through bargain basement guitars. The recording and performance are a little dull but there is plenty of promise from what seems to be a first band effort. MM

LADY MUCK (www.myspace.com/ladymuckband ) show plenty of promise too. They muck around with the timings and mix in classical guitar riffs with random indie rock quotes. Apparently the rest of the CD has a vastly different array of styles but as a taster this shows a skilful display of a band trying to break at least a little of the convention. MMM ½

NATIVE STATE I’ve heard before (www.myspace.com/nativestate) and this CD has the vocals of a very talented woman indeed. Musically it suffers like many of the tracks so far, in that the tunes aren’t pushing the singer’s abilities to quite the extent they could. But it’s more than compensated for by a very entertaining singing range. MMM ½

GEKKO are back too ! With a track from their current EP, “Flags” is a bright anthem from this young Manchester band – a full review can be heard on MM from its previous release date.

BASHPELT (www.bashphelt.com) look every inch the pop stars (they were featured on T4’s Popworld a while back) and their jazzy funky pop is just the stuff for mums and girlfriends to dance to down at their next gig – They’re from the Lancs town of Barnoldswick which for those who live North of Lancaster is like Cheshire but smaller, poorer,wetter and higher up. Very well executed. MM ½

LIONS TIGERS & BEARS is a fantastic band name but sadly the proceedings seem a little slow despite a firm vocal. The voice is right up front and centre but seems slightly unsure at times. Better production may well seal the deal on this. MM

DOGHOUND (www.myspace.com/doghound316 ) provided a poor recording and budget / biro sleeve that looked a bit dog-eared (no pun intended). The voice mumbles and is almost invisible within the mix – which only includes an acoustic guitar, ham fistedly rattling out a mundane song that’s not even in tune. Shocking stuff and the guy was actually just looking for band members. Go listen to “This Dark”. M

THE COMFORT (www.myspace.com/thecomfortuk ) are an ageing but pleasant country band from London but if you like Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton and Wilco you might like this folky pub music. Clean, lean classic stuff. MMM

LIGHT SYNDICATE didn’t have any contact info inside which is always a bad move, especially if you’re submitting something to a demo panel. It’s indie pop tumbling over a bed of folky influences. Nice but not overwhelmingly great. MM ½

DARREN TOMLYN has been working on the 50 minute soundtrack opus of “Excalibur” for over nine years and he’s brought it along today – finished !. With just a minute to go on, he seems to have written a classical score performed on synths (he couldn’t afford an orchestra) and it did sound pretty impressive – hard to tell but it looks like Tomlyn has a talent. MMM

Local outfit (previously of Lancaster) BEAT THE RADAR don’t have a great recording but they have absolute bucket loads of ideas and a bleak armoury of brooding anthems that combine post-rock with crashing beats and distortions. It proves that if you’re good, even a dodgy demo won’t be a barrier – keep an eye on these. MMMM

Phew ! – well after a serious review like this I’m going to have a rest. But not before mentioning that fellow panel member Alex Designer Mag tried to fix the random selection of CDs by asking for EL POLICIA to be the last demo played –in the end the CD was faulty and wouldn’t play, much to the amusement of the panel chair who took the rip out of Mr McCanns quote “nepotism gone wrong” !

A fantastic panel which I thoroughly enjoyed thanks to Break In The City – a big thanks to the bands who came over to me later and gave me CDs, asked for advice (I hope I was adequate!) and who just said hello – remember these are just one blokes opinions – to all of you unsigned people out there – good luck.

Coming up in Saturday Part 2 – the open Mic event at the Bridgewater – 15 live acts go under my knife in a fantabulous event hosted by John Robb

– In Part 3 it’s the live bands , gossip comments and how things got very messy – indeed…

JonMM

Back to the other side of town, then...

Afternoon becomes night. We have apparently not won something sport related.. Knuckle-walking animals are swaggering and spilling their anger (bag of sweets for the first person to spot where I robbed that line from) - they've got nothing on Centro's bouncers though. I arrive to be greeted with tales of chaos and extremely disrespectful treatment of promoters and band members by those employed to keep such behaviour outside. That said, it is absolutely rammed in there and I have to kill four people to get down the stairs (er, joke).

Air Cav are absolutely playing out of their skins. The sheer power created by this four-headed engine of psych-folk-indie-space-rock could keep a small village going for a week; I'm hanging onto the wall during "Branches" watching a sea of tightly-packed delight, singing along as Sophie's glorious violin sounds sweep across the driving rhythms, and singer Chris piles on the passion whilst being apparently eaten by his hair. The new one still doesn't have a title and still sounds ike the greatest song New Order ever wrote being administered by a rocket-powered Hope Of the States. Performances like this simply go to prove that they stand a country mile above pretty much ay other band in this town. By the time they finish on a colossal-sounding "Alliance" there are people flinging their arms round each other down the front, heads cramming through the spaces on the packed staircase and fire regulations well and truly bulldozed. I suspect that this marks the end of any relationship between these promoters and this particular venue. Good.

I mention to Meg that Julian Donkey Boy's drummer looks like Art Garfunkel. She says she's already noted this down. I can't stop though because I want to get to Dry Bar for a midnight performance by grrl-punks The Tommys; I get there to find some blokes on stage instead playing decent enough classic Northern indie with a distince Smiths-ish feel to the vocal melodies; who are they? I ask the soundman. "The Tommys". No they're not, pal. Actually they're Little Avis. Who weren't even on the list. I start to feel my brain sezing up. Best go home then; Sunday is looking like one of the busiest days in ITC history and whilst sleep is (as I frequently tell people) over-rated, a bit of it now and then's quite useful.

Cath Aubergine

Cath Does An Official Event, Just To see If It's Any Good

Studio, AKA Late Room, is hosting the Club NME event today, so it's always interesting to see what they're pushing - we manage to catch a couple of somgs of The Beep Seals and they're really riocking out at the end of their set these days with a pretty explosive finish to the excellent "I Used To Work At The Zoo" - we'd have loved to have seen more of you, lads. This show also, rather excitingly, brings the weekend's (and indeed pretty much the year's) first sighting of local legend Dave "One Man And His Beard", previously a man with a gig attendance record to rival MM's (all of us, that is, put together) who retired to the internet sometime in early 2007.

It's been a while since I saw Tired Irie; well over a year in fact, where I was impressed by their "thrashy, demented end of post-rock; from a calm, tuneful and extended introduction echoing all those Canadian bands with beards then suddenly someone presses the 65daysofstatic button" - and bloody hell, they've changed a bit. Suppose the guide booklet's use of the new NME buzz term "puzzle pop" (what?) should've been a clue. The guitars are a long way down these days and the keyboard and percussion brought out to the fore - in fact they appear to have morphed into their sometime contemporaries Foals. Not that there's anything wrong with that; anyway my official advisor on all things Oxfordshire and post-rock tells me Foals don't sound like Foals any more anyway, so someone probably should. I can't keep up... Dance beats underpin bleep-signal guitar sounds; there's a remarkable complexity in the way the instruments and dual vocals fill each others' spaces. They do a particularly deranged version of The Creatures' "Mad Eyed Screamer" (ask your ex-goth uncle); these days, you don't stand and soak up this band, you dance your face off to them.

I've been (semi)consciously avoiding Does It Offend You, Yeah for some time on the grounds that it's a really stupid name and they wear hoods over their hats so I probably won't "get" it being some way past 20. We can't be bothered going anywhere else though - and thus witness what I'm certain should be rated one of the performances of the weekend.
They're bouncing about before they even start, frontman-of-sorts Morgan lamenting the fact that the bar won't serve him a triple rum and coke, and then they're off - except his mic's not working. This is clearly a lad who had way, way too much Sunny Delight as a kid. He stabs at a keyboard for a few seconds before seemingly getting bored with it whilst searingly loud vocoder noises blast from the speakers. Tunes are short, sharp shocks of electroblast frenzy-pop like The Beastie Boys, Shut Your Eyes And You'll Burst Into Flames and Hadouken beating you around the head with an 80s arcade game and then sticking 20,000 volts up your nervous system from behind. They possibly have less musical talent that the average amoeba, but they've got 300 ideas a minute and throw them at you from every angle. It's amusing to note the gulf developing in the crowd as this set goes on; anyone over 23 and/or wearing a delegate's pass is standing well back, some of them looking a bit scared, whilst down the front is rave moshpit mayhem with bodies flying everywhere - not least Morgan's, who seems to see the stage as something of an inconvenience. They do Devo's "Whip It" - Devo being the official old band it's OK to like if you're a glowstick-popping teenager - and it's a delicious mess. I might not fully understand it, but does it offend me? You've got to be kidding. This is what music was meant to sound like in the future and it's rather ace that it does.

http://www.myspace.com/beepseals
http://www.myspace.com/tiredirie
http://www.myspace.com/doesitoffendyou

Cath Aubergine

Where did Saturday afternoon go?

The next couple of hours are a little more stressful. Having started the weekend with no schedule at all, a couple of minutes in the corner of Night & Day on Friday had yielded a timetable of sorts, but it's spannered fairly early on by tecnical difficulties at Centro, where Fugitive Motel and Elah Valley have planned a quality afternoon's entertainment and I'm down for covering the first band(s) til Meg gets here. In the end she arrives just as My Side Of The Mountain start, 40 minutes behind schedule; they're sounding good but we don't really need two of us here. Then I get to Trof just in time for the last two songs of The Star Fighter Pilot's set. He's not having the best of times either; coming up against the sound limiters in this normally acoustic-only venue. Acoustic he isn't. It's always a pleasure to hear "Another Penny" though, undoubtedly one of the singles of the year even here where the daft squelchy noises have to be toned down a bit.

Liam1987 is, I presume, a 20-year-old called Liam, although it would amuse me greatly if he were actually a 23-year-old called Dave. He's also, he tells us, in a band called Downtown Rag - recently reviewed on MM by Ecostos who reported "they attract a crowd of at least 30 young girls and sound like the Coral but without any indication that they might have a hit record under their belts." The former I can understand; the latter might have been a little unkind. Solo Liam plays short but heartfelt acoustic pop tunes whose upbeat strumming is interestingly at odds with the often rather bleak lyrics, best exemplified by "Come Home James", a tribute to a friend who died set to a sprightly indie-pop-flavoured shuffle. Pretty good, actually.

He steps off the stage at 6.15pm. Red Vinyl Fur are onstage at 6.30... at PureSpace. As in behind Oxford Road station. First daft sprint of the weekend then... and... I'm... not... as... fit... as... I... used... to...be... 18:22, Piccadilly Gardens, go away shoppers... reach the bottom of the stairs just as they're plugging in. Gasp.

Dressed entirely in black and probably not hugely familiar with traditional feminine pursuits such as flower arranging, Red Vinyl Fur are the girl gang who laughed at stupid boys at the bus stop, grown up and armed with guitars. A taut salvo of caustic riffs and threatening rhythms, with the glorious foil of Chelle's sultry but tough vocals. Nadene meanwhile attacks the drums with a ferocity that would send most metal boys running home to Mummy, not least on the excellent "Slow Girl" - one can only begin to wonder, but you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of Manchester's greatest post-Riot-Grrl alt-rockers.

There couldn't be more contrast to Eskimo Smile, who at first glance might well have been the boys tough girls laughed at at the bus stop. They start off in funky beat-driven lad-rock territory, sort of like a youth club Kasabian, but enhanced by a rather wayward garagey organ. The singer's a right cheeky little monkey too, clambering all over anything that'll take his weight (which is, well, pretty much anything). I am not known for my appreciation of indie funk rock, but I end up rather liking them. Trust me, it's really hard not to. Because half way through their set they start to go up a gear, and another; their second to last song explodes into a great big Killers-on-disco-biscuits bonkers-pop monster and their last sounds like Rage Against the Machine crossed with The Klaxons. By which point the singer and keyboard player are lying in the space in front of the stage doing press-ups and waggling their legs on the air. All in all a pretty startling turnaround and one of those performances it's a joy to have seen.

http://www.myspace.com/thestarfighterpilot
http://www.myspace.com/liamest87
http://www.myspace.com/redvinylfur
http://www.myspace.com/eskimosmile

Sadly, even roving reporters have to eat occasionally - and whilst I am quite aware this is meant to be about the music, we find ourselves robbed of a good hour of band watching time by the utterly appalling service in the Pizza Express next to the Midland. Delegates be warned; the word "Express" in the case of this franchise is basically a lie. The pizzas are really horrible too. Eventually, reeling from the unpleasant combination of legal mugging and indigestion, we make it down to Studio. Where? Oh, Late Room. Or Downstairs At Life Cafe. Except Life Cafe is now a Chicago Rock cafe. When did this happen? Anyway, we're back on track.

Cath "Right, I'm not bothering eating again this weekend" Aubergine

Chilli cheese fries and a man with a big horn

Cath again. Good morning. I'd like to start with a recommendation - ran into Cumbrian weirdness purveyors The Witch And The Robot somewhere last night, where they told me they were hoping to incorporate raw meat into their performance at The Kings Arms today (7pm). Is this a recommendation? Well, trust me on this, you've never quite seen anything like them...

Anyway, Saturday. You have to start the day, the first day of ITC proper, with a portion of Night & Day's chili-cheese fries. Have to. It's the Law. Onstage John Fairhurst is moving his fingers at lightning speed on a steel-front acoustic, making it sound like a race between banjos, before heading off into some Eastern-flavoured twiddling around a root note. I don't mean twiddling in a bad way; it's really rather lovely, I've just not woken up yet...

Liz Green is the first of the weekend's lone girls with guitars. There's usually quite a few, but this year the schedules are overflowing with them as unimaginative suits chase around looking for the next K*** N*** - which Liz Green most certainly isn't, thankfully. This is delicate, folky blues, sparse and spacious guitar plucking framing her evocatively English folk voice - although she does briefly break the spell to mention that she's been distracted by someone's impressive-looing breakfast. Then works it into the next song. By the end she's accompanying herself on one of those intriguing-looking fold-out wooden box type instruments... and suddenly the place is starting to fill up.

There's always one act at the Acoustic Breakfast who pulls in the crowds and this year it's New Yorker Thomas Truax, one of those people to whom the words "bonkers" and "genius" are all too frequently applied. Yep, we can see why. What the hell is that on the stage? It could conceivably be a small spinning wheel attached to the pulley system of a miniature mineshaft. It is in fact the drummer, explains the young David-Tennant-as-Dr-Who lookalike (complete with pinstripe suit and wild-eyed I've-had-four-Es-for-breakfast stare). Right. Then he starts murmuring down a gramophone horn attached to some tubing. Bet he has some fun getting that lot through airport security. Oh, and he's got a flashing light strapped round his head. It's three o'clock in the bloody afternoon...

Not surprisingly the music which emerges is basically unclassifiable; from mildly portentous proclamations to quickfire young-David-Byrne art-pop babble accompanied by what sounds like Victorian mill equipment shoved through an effects rack. I turn away for a minute or two and he's gone - surely that can't be it - but nope, he's somehow made his way to the bar and does a quick acoustic turn stood up on the corner of it. Before regaling a tale of a butterfly hitch-hiker. I don't know what the weather's like on Planet Truax but I rather fancy visiting sometime...
A bit like Night & Day's chilli-cheese fries, no ITC would be complete without a trip into the borderline chaos that is the three-stage Dry Bar. A sort of car boot sale of unsigned music, piled high and sold cheap, you do sometimes have to sort through quite a pile of rubbish in order to grab the gems but previous years have seen some of the best fringe performances of the weekend in here (the LycaSleep / Second Floor "lost afternoon" of 2004; 65daysofstatic turning the basement into the engine room of a spaceship the following year). It's already sipped behind schedule downstairs by half three but Satellites are worth the wait.

Their downbeat, chiming guitar pop might not look like much on paper but there's a streak of contemplative beauty running through their strong melodies; the faintest hint of dark-hearted country, evoking images of lost highways. "Games We Play" has a Go-Betweens melancholy close to its heart whilst "More Than You Need" recalls those other great 80s Autsralian pioneers of thoughtful indie rock The Triffids as wel as their British counterparts The Weather Prophets. Nick's vocals are laden with introspection, the tunes full of minor chords, and even when the last track rocks up a bit into more mainstream territory it's shot through with something deeper than your average mid-afternoon guitar band. I end up talking to Nick afterwards - he's never heard of the Go-Betweens.

http://www.myspace.com/lizgreenmusic
http://www.myspace.com/johnfairhurst
http://www.myspace.com/thomastruax
http://www.myspace.com/satellitesgb

Photos in the Bucket. As they say.

Slight downer of the day: following recent speculation and the grinding of the Failsworth and Moston rumour-mill, I run into Pete from The Amber Club who confirms they are no more. If you count their previous incarnations as The Flow and Scapa Flow, it's hard to remember a time when their wayward space-antics weren't part of the fabric of the local scene - all the best for whatever you do next, Astral One.

Time to go wandering then...

Cath Aubergine

Saturday night, Centro's basement: It was Cruella De Mill with the lead pipe...

My evening at Centro began with My Side Of The Mountain, a band whose use of drum machine creates blissful Postal Service atmospherics; music to crunch through snow to. Swinging between this simple electronica and a full band sound was not entirely called for though, as it’s in the sweet retro melodica that they charm their crowd, and when the crystal clear guitar rang out it was quite special.

When Little My gathered all their seventy five members together (I may have exaggerated that just a tad…) they emerged as another band from The Melodica And Glockenspiel School Of Lo-Fi Indie, but with a sublime Belle and Sebastian psyche-folk twist. A female vocalist added the Isobel Campbell factor, and although the set could easily be described as a rambling shambles, Little My made me feel all cosy inside. From Cardiff, perhaps it was their presence which attracted Radio 1’s Huw Stephens to Centro’s increasingly sweaty basement, but attention swiftly reverted to Little My’s drummer, who had strapped a tea towel to his tom. No, I don’t know why either…

Following on with, you guessed it, a healthy portion of melodica, The Search Map could be mistaken for a Scandinavian post-rock outfit during their more chilled moments, but their more chilled moments generally only came along after the drummer had broken either his sticks, his pedals, or indeed, his chair. No cutesy tea towels in this band… Some apparent technical difficulties could explain how their vocals were sadly lost, but The Search Map managed to put real power behind tunes that retained a soft, often ethereal, sound.

I think you could safely smack Wakefield’s The Old House in the face with a super-sized melodica and they wouldn’t recognise it. Here we had the first genuine rock’n’roll band of the night. No keyboard, no hippy shit, just guitar, bass, and a drum kit that looked like it needed a good life insurance policy. Alas, they began the set sounding only a smidgen more advanced than a high school punk band who once heard a NOFX album and never looked back. Gradually though, the performance became more polished, growing into a trendier mould. Echoes of The Libertines abounded, but The Old House are by no means the greatest example of the genre.

Speaking of genre, how would one describe local treasure Gideon Conn? Hiphop-folk? A lounge rapper? Acoustic funk-jazz? I’ll settle for simply Downright Excellent. His fusion of Beck and The Beastie Boys with heart-warming lyricism about romantic meals (“I chose the restaurant/You chose the part of town”) and dancing (“Introducing… the groove to the audience/The audience, this is the groove!”) could even make Girls Aloud crack a smile, while his own technique of bending knees and running on the spot could launch an whole new sub-category of exercise video. Accompanied tonight by cornet and minimal percussion, Gideon Conn struck the perfect balance between laid-back and lacing up your very best dancing shoes.

Modernaire were probably born in their dancing shoes. To the sound of Kraftwerk covering ‘Thriller’. A dark electro-pop three-piece, they featured a man looking seriously at a row of knobs and buttons, alongside two glamourpusses (one called Cruella De Mill apparently) who cooed out their simultaneously fun and menacing lyrics about committing murder and getting soaked to the skin by wet Manchester weather. Having just released an EP, they were excellently rehearsed, with choreography for ‘Bloodshed In The Woodshed’ owing clear inspirational debt to Norman Bates. Freeform jazz “bee dah dah”s (from voices with real personality) and guttural synthy whirrs made Modernaire a joy to listen to, as well as to watch…

…unlike Held By Hands. A late addition to the bill, they did an awful lot of buggering about with sound-checking only to produce a mightily senseless racket. I take my hat off to the forward-thinking musicians of this world, but playing electric guitar with a violin bow is surely only ever unpleasant. Using all the traditional instruments as well as banjo, synth and an accordion that appeared to have been shrunk in the wash, Held By Hands momentarily spiced things up with some a cappella yelling before they continued to try our patience as much as the venue’s over-zealous doormen were.

Air Cav came as welcome relief, their fanbase visibly growing with every gig. Like Gideon Conn before them, the unconventional mix of genres evident in their euphoric gypsy post-rock succeeded in sounding both epic and danceable, with the fluidity of the violin given a harder edge by Chris’s commanding vocals. Air Cav are a band who will lift your spirits and soundtrack a brilliant night out, but who might also sign you up to their direct action vigilante army if you’re not careful. An electrifying show from a captivating band.

Ending tonight’s In The City shenanigans from Elah Valley and The Fugitive Motel was Julian Donkey-Boy, but I only got as far as realising that their drummer is the spitting image of Art Garfunkel. It was time to get on the bus home to prepare for everything tomorrow will bring…

Don’t forget to keep checking back for the latest reviews from ITC 2007, and to marvel at our supremely amateur photography on the MM Photobucket album. Sadly, my camera battery ebbed away during Air Cav’s show, but if I track down Julian Donkey-Boy’s drummer again, I’ll get some evidence. Might even ask him to sing ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’…

Goodnight!

Meg MM.

Down At The Bottom Of The Arndale...

Right. Saturday lunchtime and I willingly made my way to the Arndale Centre. This is not normal behaviour, but then, The Bottomfeeders are not a normal band. Returning from a six month hiatus in gold lame and face paint, the customers of Virgin Megastore had never seen anything quite like it, and one suspected that there would have been a significant crowd gathered even if organisers hadn’t bothered with free wine.

Kicking off the day’s Fat Northerner and Humble Soul matinee, The Bottomfeeders are a bonkers ensemble of top hats and retro glamour, marrying demonic stares with requests for audience members to play the coconuts. Vocalist Natalie wails like Kate Bush, and has a sense of theatrics that recalls that Shakespears Sister video where the goth chick from Bananarama becomes the angel of death. The tunes are sometimes ghostly, often funky, and always bloody mental, with their redheaded bassist picking up her musical saw on several occasions, but it is plucked cello that elevates their very best song to a cool Peggy Lee groove; ‘Loretta’ was post-rock chillout jazz, and is very brilliant indeed, while ‘Science Class’ provided the invaluable opportunity for Natalie to sing their best line, “I’m eleven and life is shite!” The woman has a voice rarely heard outside of Polly Harvey’s rehearsal rooms, let alone the basement of Virgin Megastore, and the pictures (check the MM photobucket site) are proof enough that The Bottomfeeders are from Outer Space.

Mark Wilson’s wardrobe does not feature many feather boas, but his guitar genius easily made up for the fact that he looks like a heating engineer. An unassuming man, here was an example of talent far out-weighing ego (Razorlight take note), and the way his fingers ran up and down the fretboard was a pleasure to watch. Wilson sounded a little like Springsteen with his growling vocal (vowels coming from somewhere between Accrington and Atlanta) but he created idiosyncratic rhythms by tapping the body of his guitar in a manner that looked effortless, but was probably ridiculously complicated. ‘Alive’ had apparently been written a matter of days ago, though was gloriously accomplished, and wouldn’t be out of place on a Muddy Waters album.

Following a blood-boiling battle with the great unwashed of Market Street, Night and Day proved a quick-acting tonic for my shopper rage, with the oft-recommended Thomas Truax positioning an enormous gramophone horn up to his face as I entered. Truax builds his own instruments, including the ‘hornicator’, percussion extendable by some dryer tubing, and a drum machine that looked like it began life as a small bicycle. He claims to come from “Wow Town, which seceded from the United States so now floats somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean” and this wandering spirit was brought to the stage, as he wound his way around tables and onto the bar. My own proximity to the stage provided the chance to participate in his DIY silliness, as I stretched out a bit of string till it was ripe for plucking. While Truax was an impressive spectacle to watch, hanging his head over the edge of the stage and threatening to kick over your coffee, he thought nothing of pausing the lo-fi experimentalism mid-song to twiddle about with his homemade contraptions, breaking the momentum frequently. And for all his innovation, the most effective technique was simply the way he played guitar with a handheld fan. The song in question was about a butterfly, the whirr of plastic blades against metal strings reflecting his subject perfectly.

Next up were Former Bullies, whose residency at the psychedelic end of the rock spectrum has apparently come to an end. Perhaps they couldn’t meet the rent so the lava lamps had to go on Ebay. It’s a shame and a disappointment, but to be honest, they remain an admirably tight guitar band, and are more likely to pick up fans without such a vintage sound, even if ‘Road To Hell’ urgently needs to be a further few degrees of separation from Chris Rea’s Mondeo-rock of the same name.

This evening takes me to Centro, for one of the best line-ups of the weekend. Expect news on Modernaire, Gideon Conn, Air Cav, The Search Map and more at a shockingly late hour tonight. In the meantime, take a look at the day’s sights on Photobucket, and keep sending your good vibes to the MM team, as we put our health on hold for the weekend…

Meg MM.

Help, I've not got a plan! Night & Day, Friday.

Good morning. This is Cath, checking in. What day is it again?

Normally In The City for me involves evenings of meticulous pre-planning, scheduling a path through the listings with near military precision, pre-checking a few interesting sounding bands.... not this year. Time has been short and I have precisely no plan. I don't remember ever being this disorganised, even in the days when I was just here as a punter... ah well, I'm just going to have to make it up as I go along. There's bound to be something on at Night & Day so that seems like a decent place to start...

The first band I catch are called Lowlife. There have been about 600 bands called Lowlife in the history of music; my inital run of Google turns up five plus some stuff that's way too seedy for this time in the morning - you'd think someone would pointed this out to them. In the end I give up attempting to find out anything about them, but it's a serious point - over the course of ITC history it's become a lot easier to check out that band you half remember from last night and if people can't find you, they'll forget about you. This lot have a scruffy sort of cool about them, play decent enough garagey punk pop; it's the sort of stuff you can bounce along to without any real requirement to think about it. The last song sounds like early 80s post-punk legends Swell Maps' "Full Moon In My Pocket", and whilst they're not unenjoyable at the time there's not a lot here to make a grand impression. There have also been millions of bands called The Headlines over the years; this lot however have been making a few waves on the local scene over the past couple of years with a smart and polished guitar pop sound, youthful good looks and a shedload of energy; the main drawback being that pretty much all their songs sound exactly like a Mancunian Maximo Park.

Pete And The Pirates are the first of the weekend's hotly tipped bands, and from the off it's pretty impossible not to love them if you like upbeat guitar pop full of cheerful two and three way harmonies. And bands who wear hand-drawn T-shirts. Yep, Pete And the Pirates are indie like it used to be, they remind me of badly photocopied fanzines and sugary lollipops and the mid-80s jangle explosion and the fact that some of the crowd are still singing along to the woh-oh's from the first song long after it's finished is a sign that they've already made a lot of friends simply by being unpretentious as anything and having ace little tunes. There are bits of folky ambling in here, sunny pop hooks, some slightly weird fuzzy bits where it all threatens to go a bit Krautrock but stops short of anything scary, and tunes tunes tunes. With some gloriously daft lyrics which at one point seem to include a few lines about cooking your tea. I might have imagined this. I hope not. It takes quite a talent to delve into the much-trodden path of sparkling guitar-pop and still come up with something that sounds fresh and exciting; I'm desperately trying to shoehorn in a bad joke involving the words "original Pirate material" but... nah, I'll spare you.

I admit this is a pretty poor start from me; just three bands - but it seems Friday's not really part of ITC this year and by the time I stumble out of Night & Day most of the live music has already finished elsewhere. Best get an early one anyway, there's rather a lot of stuff to go to tomorrow...

http://www.myspace.com/peteandthepirates

Oh yeah, the MM Photobucket is now up and running. Check out my typically rubbish pictures (and hopefully some other peoples') at http://s12.photobucket.com/albums/a215/MMinthecity/

Friday Warm-up; Wizz, pop and Ting Ting!

What was that? It doesn’t properly start till tomorrow?

Taking a look around Manchester’s music venues this Friday evening told a very different story. With delegates fishing about in their goodie bags, thumbing through flyers and drinking free pop (insert your own joke about the music industry’s penchant for Coke here), there is no denying that In The City 2007 has already kicked off.

I decided some weeks ago to warm up for the weekend not by enjoying new, fresh and hip sounds from the next generation of trendsetters, but by relaxing in Kro Bar to the sound of legendary guitarist Wizz Jones. I’ll make an educated guess and say that he’s about 125 years old, but definitely looking good on it. Apparently, Wizz was the man to encourage a young Eric Clapton in his musical endeavours but, as Cath said this week, “we won’t hold it against him”. Being very honest about his plans to rake in some cash with a forthcoming ‘Audience With…’ type tour, much of the charm came from his stories rather than his strumming, but it’s fair to say that lesser men would need about four hands to make such gorgeous noises from only six strings.

Two lemonades and one confused taxi driver later, and I approached the camouflaged doorway to Islington Mill having middle-aged thoughts about it already being time for bed. While a shady-looking street in a semi-regenerated ghetto is several lightyears away from the glitz and glamour of the music biz, this was Official Delegate Country. The Ting Tings were holding the first of four single launch parties; London, New York, Berlin and, erm, Salford, with each audience creating the artwork for the records sold at the next city, and I splashed paint around with the best of them in what is an inspired location. Without the mood lighting and projections, Islington Mill is the kind of place where the victim of a low-budget horror movie would meet their death, but assemble a drum kit and fill a few fridges with beer and you have the coolest venue since Sweden’s ice hotel melted in the spring.

While drunkards in skinny jeans amused themselves graffiti-ing cardboard record sleeves, bar service was put on hold for Hotpants Romance. This made sense, as most of the bar staff were actually in the band, but also because they played the gig from behind the bar. A retro three-piece with 70s fringes and, of course, crotch-hugging hotpants, they reminded me of the origins of Siouxie Sioux and The Banshees; cobbled together to fill a space on a fledging punk line-up but then capturing the zeitgeist so completely that shoulders were shrugged and the discordant yells kept coming. I can’t be certain, but Hotpants Romance may have formed sometime earlier today, which could explain why some songs were about forty-five seconds long. They played like Sid Vicious, thrashed seven shades out of their minimal drum kit and donned out-sized sunglasses to shout “it’s a heatwave!”, but despite it all being complete schoolgirl nonsense, Hotpants Romance were the best of fun. A perfect warm-up for the bubblegum madness of The Ting Tings.

Having risen from the ashes of Dear Eskiimo and only played their first gig in May, the massive local profile of The Ting Tings is going to go global just as swiftly. Katie and Jules already look like superstars, one in big shades and the other in a minidress and little rainbow boots (again, insert obvious joke here), but the last few months has seen their live performances go from the ever-so-slightly nervy, to assured and confident declarations of quirky pop intent. Opening with ‘Great DJ’, Jules’ unfaltering beats were accompanied by the kind of sound a cowbell would make if it could chirrup like a grasshopper, and murmurs of “so now” could be heard all around. In keeping with their support act, Katie demonstrated that skilled guitar playing is not necessarily important in music that is made to move your feet to, and while riffs are simply loud, the woman’s energy beams into every corner. She hunches over the mic, reaches out to her crowd, struts along the top of speakers, and when she swung at her big branded bass drum, every one of us wanted to grab a drumstick and join in. With ‘That’s Not My Name’ causing widespread cheering, it’s difficult to see where the ascent of The Ting Tings could stumble. Yes, they will eventually need to write a few more songs. The current stock of five will not perpetuate Rolling Stones longevity. For now though, they are so very now.

Megan Vaughan (who will probably need to be poured into a bucket by Monday).

FRIDAY ON MY MIND PRT 2 - NIGHT & DAY

The next stop is within the welcoming confines of NIGHT & DAY, Greeted as we are by living legend RICH CHEETHAM and KIERAN from LAYMAR, we also rendezvous with CATH AUBERGINE. Schedules are hastily reviewed and ideas precipitated between rounds of spring water and pop. Clean living kids we is.

You’re going to hear this phrase quite a lot (probably) – “Great on record but dodgy live” – or more hopefully the same phrase inverted. Strangely HEADLINES sound quite refined and interesting in the studio but live their jerky repetition can be hard work. The guitars are compelling but the vocals can warble a little like a cartoon character. The band’s stage presence is firm but the operatic spikes and wobbles can be a little disconcerting, but this really is picking at a band who can make the right moves on stage – I just wished they could move me more with a stronger “Fuck! Yeah!” factor.

In between bands, Mr Cheetham gets quizzed about his slightly beefier physique. “You’re looking well cut – been going down the gym ? “ proffers a colleague. “No – it’s the Night & Day dinners …”. As good as home cooking we say.

The interrogation doesn’t stop there. I notice a Night N Day flyer – Is that Elvis or Cheetham himself at the centre of the picture?. He’s in denial; we’re not convinced. Requests for autographs were met with two finger thank yous. Well I for one think it SHOULD be Mr C holding court with a bevy of line drawn beauties…

I digress…

It’s PETE AND THE PIRATES. Great on record. Pretty good live. It takes a bit for the plot to warm up but once it does their slightly ramshackle brand of pop oblivion is infectious. They conjour up party soundtracks and odd ballad soundtracked by fizzy angst. It’s looking good.

In between we say hello to Nick(ex-Cardinal) who has a new band coming our way – watch out for that in the new year. And if you spot MAX FNF he’s looking very dapper with his new trimmed moustache (the beard is gone) and smart retro hair. Apparently that new hedge on Sackville Street isn’t actually a hedge…

Then it’s time for THE TEENAGERS. After the promising release of their single “Scarlett Johansson” the intercontinental outfit drum machine their way to somewhere near Bad Audio Dynamite on a particularly camp day. The guitars are pretty amateurish but the bass and backing track keep things lively. There’s some crowd participation in the form of some lady volunteer backing singers and they actually begin to deliver a raft of decent tunes. It shouldn’t really work but somehow, by a flap of skin or a bent nail, it does.

On exit we’re confronted by half the audience having a fag outside – but we’ll see how brave the smokers are once Manchester gets its weather back…

Back tomorrow – there’s a demo panel at the crack of dawn..well 11am..


JonMM

http://www.myspace.com/headlines

http://www.theteenagers.net

http://www.myspace.com/peteandthepirates

FRIDAY ON MY MIND PRT 1 - ROADHOUSE

It’s not very rock and roll, but at the end of the prelude (ie Friday) to In The City, I’m sat here in my pyjamas in the middle of the night typing up various words and comments from an eye opening night out. And I’m lucid – sober – and very much awake…

After getting mixed up about the LOST & BROKEN event – I now realise that this is in fact taking place on SUNDAY. After being quizzed by the manager, whilst searching out a non-exsting band in the bar. Interesting though that the re-gentrified back alleyways of the Northern Quarter now attract/distract the fashionable youth some distance away from the cultural bastions of the areas long established rock venues.

In The City doesn’t seem to be as inclusive of the Friday events and as such the night is more dominated by drinking and clubbing – but some venues forge ahead with an early doors policy that pick up from late tea time until around 10.30pm.

There’s no better way to break open the weekend than with a trip to THE ROADHOUSE who have some crowd busting gigs on this weekend – upcoming are VAMPIRE WEEKEND and THE COURTEENERS / THE WOMBATS.

Tonight though, it’s the gentle strains of TIGERS THAT TALKED (Leeds) who mix violins with jangled guitars and their strange mix of folky, down beat indie rock. With the strings providing such an impressive verve to the bass / drum / guitar, it all pans out with a certain bohemian style doused in some serious credibility. It’s pleasing but I’m not entirely sure that they have all the tunes they need.

Fear ye not however. PARKA from Scotland are brimming to capacity with their urgent party rock. The band literally explode on song 1 and keep the sparks flying with their electro / rock n roll / sax fuelled machinations. There’s all sorts here, pinned to a series of frenetic beats. They sound at times like The Cash, then it’s the Ordinary Boys Vs Plastic Bertrand. Then there are bits of the Blockheads. It gels well though and they storm through what probably is the equivalent of a greatest hits catalogue. “Hoxton Hair” and “Mr Optimistic” stand out but there’s plenty to pick from. Definitely better live than on record

The best is yet to come. One half of the legendary Nylon Pylon ( the other active half being The Whip) are in the Manchester / London combo THE ANDERSON SHELTER. Stubbsy and Bo Walsh are two thirds of this new outfit who sparkle with their brand of surfing indie which meets at the point where The Beatles hit the grind of San Francisco, California. At times it’s gritty enough to reminisce on the very early sets of The Stone Roses. It’s a song packed outing. Stubbsy exits to find his Capo and Mr Walsh provides some mid-set banter. After condemning a haircut as a “£6.75 Shudehill Special” it’s back to business with the sunniest, melting songs I’ll hear tonight.

People wise it’s also time to catch up with TASH who designed the artwork for our original Oceansize release way back. She’s out and about photographing all weekend (her shots are on the wall of the venue) – I’ll get a link on here once the ink dries and I find out what it is..

JonMM

www.myspace.com/tigersthattalked

www.myspace.com/theandersonshelter

www.parkamusic.com

ITC07 - The Flag Drops as We Run Off The Blocks

The starting point for this entry begins with Cath’s post from last year, typed up in the aftermath of another bloody, glorious FictionNonFiction. In The City is back this year but of course there is a slightly different complexion to the whole affair.

ITC is eminently well organised and justifiably renowned but of course it’s co-founder will be missing. There’s been talks of statues and plaques and other form of recognition which I’m sure have been of massive importance to his family, partner and friends. But surely the whole ITC legacy is one that we all share, year on year and which has done much to ensure that Manchester created its own spotlight, regardless of whether the NME or any other London-centric organ was saying it was a shit city.

We never believed that, neither did its loyal residents and population and more importantly neither did Tony Wilson. In The City is THE event in the Manchester and UK music calendar, possessing enough muscle to get the best names in the world and small enough to be accessible and digestible whilst still providing an impressive corporate platform.

But it’s at a grass roots level that it’s pulled the master stroke. Manchester, like it’s industrial past is a hotbed of obsessive fans, musicians, photographers, designers, promoters and writers, who create an ideal embraced by its indigenous and transient populations. Every one buys into it and computers, CD burners and photocopiers slave through the night to bring together the cottage industry independents into one big scalable voice of industrial passion.

From the mills of Salford and Ancoats, the revolutionaries march. Tabloid indie nights rub shoulders with gritty, dynamic pioneering basement events. You know who they are- and the thing is, this isn’t all new. Alternative indie was reborn in Manchester in the year 2000 and whilst no-one cared to noticed outside of the M postcodes, the world has actually just caught up with us.

This weekend the MM crew are going commando – going random – no plans, let’s just see what hits us. There’s no budget, no corporate support, no wages, no staff and no totting up the takings on Wednesday morning. There’s just passion - and I hope that really is in the spirit of this whole magnificent celebration.

That's it for another year... Tuesday FNF and final thoughts from CA.

Well, where else to end the night - and the longest weekend of the year - than at FictionNonFiction? It is actually Tuesday, after all. And more to the point it's Halloween - and in Tiger Lounge it's always Halloween to a certain extent. It's pretty empty when we get in there, perhaps everyone's just all gigged out. There's a couple of bands to go though...

This Is Pop are from Paris and the trio, known only as M, S and L, comprise two boys and a girl and a cheap keyboard and guitar, and play gloriously dirty electro-punk that sounds like the Rezillos on low-grade speed. Singer L, exuding rather more typically Parisian glamour than her generally trashier looking British counterparts in this genre, jumps up and down on the spot a lot and sings and shouts like Karen O's cheekier little sister in what might be a mixture of French and English although its all rather hard to tell. Their enthusiasm doesn't let up despite the best efforts of their rather stroppy equipment as they deliver pacy, energetic two minute bursts of fuzzy bleeps and guitars, as well as a track where one of the lads takes over lead vocal which sounds like Kraftwerk covering Spacemen 3 in an underpass. That's a good thing, by the way.

And this is my In The City. Not the canape munchers - all probably well on their way home by now, fudging their expenses forms in First Class - but watching a band you'd never heard of until two minutes ago who have travelled from another country to play to 20 people in a slightly seedy cellar just because they're there.

So as the clock strikes midnight (well, over the road in the Town Hall somewhere) pumpkin lanterns are lit, and surveying the largely black-clad stragglers in here it's hard to tell who's dressed up for Halloween and who's just, well, you know... Black Fiction crank up some old-school Crampsy B-movie rockabilly punk thrash carried along at a brain-melting pace by drummer Tim O'Sullivan, who I'm sure in some countries would be classed as a weapon of mass destruction. They're blisteringly loud, good classic rock'n'roll fun - and as far removed from the big money chasing world of corporate ITC as you can get.

*

It seems weeks, rather than four days and five hours, since Decoration opened the ITC batting as the first band on V-Man's Friday curtain-raiser session. My camera batteries have just about gone and my brain's turned to soup. I have seen 54 acts at 16 separate gigs in 12 different venues. What with the rest of the MM crew I'm sure we'll have topped a hundred. Not bad going for a bunch of enthusiasts who don't even do this for a living. I owe lots of apologies to bands I just couldn't fit in; I'll be catching up with Starfighter Pilot tonight at Night & Day as life starts to return to some sort of normality; to other local favourites such as The Amber Club, The Children, iDresden, Duty Now, The Ending Of, Kni9hts and doubtless many more I can only say I'm sure I'll see you soon enough. For those we did catch, over the next week or so we'll endeavour to get them posted up onto the main ManchesterMusic site as well as put together some sort of highlights review; and there's the small matter of the enormous pile of demo CDs people have been stuffing in our pockets along the way. We'll try and review them all, but this could take a bit longer.

In the meantime, enjoy the photos. http://s12.photobucket.com/albums/a215/MMinthecity/

Cheers all
Cath Aubergine

Tuesday evening - Baby Grand & Joshua Brooks

God only knows what the thinking was behind shifting ITC "weekend" to Sunday-Monday-Tuesday. And whilst there were still a good number of passes around on Monday night, as we walk past the Midland Hotel early Tuesday evening there are plenty of official satchels being shovelled into taxis; the seminars and networking sessions are all done, and back in the real world it's two days into a working week - I booked a few days' leave from the day job as soon as the dates were announced - but there's still an evening's worth of bands to go. The NME New Bands Showcase is being held at Baby Grand this year which seems like a really lovely little bar compared to its brash Peter Street neighbours - until our two bottled beers set us back nearly seven quid. Anyway we're here to see a young band from the North East whose demo caught our attention too earlier this year; I'm faintly surprised the NME likes them as there's not a kohl-rimmed eye or processed beat in sight, but at the same time pleased there are clearly still people at the magazine who aren't tied to its official trends.

The six-piece A Woman Of No Importance are from Seaham Harbour, a small town on the coast somewhere between Hartlepool and Sunderland; pleasantly suburban on the surface but whipped by the cold winds of the North Sea and the demise of nearby industry. It's all there in their sound; classic, crystalline indie-pop that harks back to the days of 20 years ago when in a teenage bedroom full of fanzines all indie bands were synonymous with the small towns in which they came together. Nobody was from London then. Their acoustic guitars might be strummed with the sound of summer and the vocals easy-going and melodic but there's a chill factor in the cello and violin which fill out the sound. Shades of the Smiths echo through the minor chords and intelligent, literate lyrics. This band are unlikely to ever trash a hotel room or fuck Kate Moss, but they have timelessly gorgeous tunes which could soundtrack lives. That's got to be more important.

Next stop is the Joshua Brooks, where the weekend all starts to merge into one as I find myself talking to Rachael Kichenside about iLiKETRAiNS. We're here for RealFreshTV (on which Rachael will be performing later, although I have to give my apologies and promise to come and see one of her own gigs soon when things calm down a bit) - a brilliant little operation whose remit of putting on quality four band line-ups in various venues around town for about a fiver, interviewing the bands as they finish their sets and editing the whole thing into a video podcast you can watch a few days later via their website (http://realfresh.tv/) has been one of Manchester's quiet revelations of 2006. I can't help thinking all those suits who were probably discussing the future of how we experience music over cosy canapes back at the Midland should be down here watching it in action. The shows are watched from as far afield as the US and South Korea, apparently, and the link man jokes that we should all cheer particularly loudly because they probably think they're watching some big arena show.

Otra Mano are certainly a band you could imagine playing some big arena show. They look the part, and sound it too. This is commercial adult pop with a big chunk of indie sensibility; the great widescreen sweep of "In Love For the First Time" (surely a contender for single material) with the prominent keyboards of singer Don Vega brings to mind the new-spec, grown-up Killers. With drummer Adi and guitarist Razor adding harmonies to the vocals Otra Mano have a lush, full sound that's not afraid to wear supposedly uncool influences alongside the usual ones; the polished sheen of 80s FM radio pop blends seamlessly with the anthemic Mancunia of Doves and Puressence. "Circles" (more potential single material) has a massive great big uplifting chorus, and the fantastic set closer "Last Man In Europe" has the commercial-with-an-edge appeal of later-period Idlewild. Over the next few days they'll be playing in such rock'n'roll outposts as Sale and Accrington, but you can't help thinking the Apollos and academies are very much in their sights. In the post-set interview they display a charming lack of pretension and arrogance; "Are you getting a lot of attention then?" asks the interviewer. "Well... my mum likes us..."

Palo Alto sound so unlike pretty much anything else going on in this city right now that our mate asks us if they are from Manchester; singer Elaine pretty much answers him before we can; "This next song is called Slade Lane Junction". That'll be a yes, then. Their sound is probably best described as "very 4AD" if that in fact means anything; there's rumbling deep Chameleons bass, Slowdive meets Sigur Ros atmospheric guitar washes and Elaine's quite outstandingly beautiful voice, equal parts soaring and ethereal; whilst on "Catalan" the gently strummed guitars and indie-pop melody recall Lush in their (pre-Britpop-bandwagon-jumping) heyday. In the final song "Yellow" the sound builds up into great waves of delay and passion not a million miles away from the likes if iLiKETRAiNS; and there's that word I'm always a bit wary of using because it still has negative connotations in some circles, but the interviewer's not afraid to jump in with it. "Shoegazing... I know some people get offended by that..." "No" laughs Elaine "we love it". Well, she does have very sexy shoes, after all.

- Cath. One last stop to go then...

Tues Afternoon

With the imagery and sounds of the Japanese showcase (Kouzui & Siberian Newspaper) warming the soul, three days of shoe leather wearing and ITC event book page turning is finally reaching a close, so it’s time to rest the back and take a visit down to the basement of the Bay Horse to catch the Forecast records showcase.

The mixture of church pews and leather seats gives the venue an incongruous mix, but in turn provides a warm ambience. That plus the 15w light bulbs which barely light the cellar, but which in their own way are making a contribution to the reduction of global warming,

Though it may be his fifth performance in 2 days and he is feeling the effects of the flu, Nomad Jones carries his guitar once more to the stage, making sure that the show goes on. With incisive lyrics and a sweet voice that can move through the ranges, I’m glad he did.

So much so that when the next performer, George Borowski, spies him leaving, he shouts out “Great voice mate” and gets a round of deserving applause. Borowski is a Manchester lad through and though, so he identities with the number 53 bus route that dissects the city. It a reference point for his gravely voice to recite stories of what’s going on at the time, from Jesse James and Billy the Kid (both shot in the back) to football thuggery. His passion for playing remains undiminished in the 30+ years he’s been going, and long may it continue

Another act with several performances to their name is the Paper Wives. Or rather one woman and her band. Trying to defy the limited space available, at least 6, (possibly more hidden in the darkness) member featuring cello, double bass, guitars and other things, try to avoid stepping on someone else’s foot. The set is split into two elements; one with the band, and featuring (the lass whose name escapes me) one performer plus keyboards. Solo, she displays a range reminiscent of Kate Bush, but with some nice takes on her days working at the CIS. With the band it’s a very orchestral type of delivery, witnessed and appreciated by a packed area, which may only hold 30 people, but seems much more

Ged Camera