Liverpool Venues 33 to 35

I shall return this week to my ongoing review of the 2025 Liverpool Sound City event, with our next port of call being Liverpool Kazimier Stockroom. As I have discovered when writing these scouse based blogs their background stories of the venues never seem to be simple. So, this particular tale commences with the much touted original arty Kazimier venue in Wolstenholme Square.

The venue opened in 2007 in an old mirror-lined club owned by local boxer John Conteh and came complete with an octagonal dancefloor, outdoor space and a top-deck bar and it was the size of the Titanic. It finally bowed out in some particular style on New Years Eve 2015 after a self-created sci-fi themed Escape to Planet Kronos party with one hundred and eighty performers. A mere four months later alongside Nation, the original home of Cream, the whole area was razed to the ground under the banner of gentrification plans.

Kazimier Stockroom. Image Credit liverpooltheatres.com

A regular performer there was the in-house carnival techno act The Krunk Band. They chose not to perform on stage, instead they mingled into the crowd whilst booting out their tunes and included a mishmash of trumpets, percussions, barrel organ and accordions in their sound. Other bands to play there include Sleaford Mods, Blossoms, Buzzcocks, Miles Kane, Michael Head and The Harlequin Dynamite Matching Band.  

Then in 2016 the newly formed Kazimier Collective opened up a new venue on Regent Street near to the Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse. The three storey building comprises of two events spaces, the basement one called Substation, and some artist studios. It was named The Invisible Wind Factory and has a 1500 capacity. Fat White Family, Ride and the Orielles have played there, and it has also been used for daytime rollerdisco events, thereby invoking unwelcome memories of Cliff Richard and Frank Spencer!  

The Collective then opened up the Kazimier Stockroom which is a multipurpose small site with a 100 capacity and alongside being an intimate showcase for fledgling local and national bands they also host film screenings and theatre shows. It has an open courtyard area, and its name derives from its location adjacent to Kazimier Gardens.  

Upon our arrival it took us a moment to find the venue which was located just off from the outside area behind an unmarked wooden door, it was a busy enclosed space and was absolutely sweltering. On stage was a young R&B singer called Immi Dash who was born in Scotland to British and Trinidadian parents, raised between California and Slough and now resides in Liverpool, sounds like an eventful journey!  

Arts Club. Image Credit tagvenue.com

We then moved onto the nearby Liverpool Arts Club on Seel Street, a venue that has existed since 1928 and was before that date The Liverpool Royal Institution. Its original remit under the new banner was as a social club before morphing into a live music venue. Prior to its current moniker it was known also as The Barfly, The Masque and East Village Arts Club.

In the early part of 2023, like many other similar establishments it faced closure, but was subsequently thankfully saved from that ignominious fate by the Manchester based Tokyo Industries. That particular company also own Gorilla, The Deaf Institute and Factory 251 and brought that previous expertise and a major regeneration to this venture. Early gigs by The Wombats and Two Door Cinema Club served to cement its reputation back on the live circuit.

The venue has three individual rooms, the first is the lobby which is utilised as a club space with a capacity of 200 punters. The second is Liverpool Arts Club Loft which has a live maximum of 550 people. When we attended there, we saw a Manchester act called Cooper T who are a duo comprising of two producers Kong and TMNMS. They sported brown shell suits and matching balaclavas and were verging on the grime genre, not dissimilar to Sleaford Mods, a band who has always left me cold, though the crowd around me appeared to be lapping it up!

The Florentenes. Image Credit youtube.com

Along a linking corridor brought you to Liverpool Arts Club Theatre, which was my preferred venue of the two and has a capacity of 550 and the space reminded me of the old Preston Polytechnic venue. First up we saw a local singer called Neil Noa and then later in the day Florentenes. The latter three piece were from Manchester and astoundingly young with the two guitarists aged eighteen and the drummer only fifteen. They reminded me in parts of The View, early Strokes and The Vines and they created a very pleasing racket!  

Manchester Venues 219 to 220

In 2017 a new variation of the ‘Mackie Mayor’ food hubs, or perhaps more so a mirror of the BoxPark in Shoreditch, was opened by Bruntwood Property Group on Oxford Road which was named Manchester Hatch. It is situated just beyond the old BBC buildings and lies underneath the Mancunian Way motorway bridges.

My first memory of those bridges was in 1985 as part of a very early morning trog back into the city centre from the Manchester International venue after a fabulous seminal Husker Du gig. The reasons behind that particular march were there that there no late trains in those days and the walk was followed by a restless kip in Manchester Victoria station waiting rooms before subsequently catching the 6am train home.  

Hatch complex. Image Credit manchestersfinest.com

Hatch lived up to its name as it was comprised of a suite of around thirty colourful repurposed shopping containers which housed various local and independent food and drink traders including Kongs, Parmogeddon, House of Habisha and OL Brewery. There were three separate bars and in the middle of the central space there was a large food courtyard where I once grabbed some tea prior to a gig at Castlefield Bowl.

The name also implied that it was specifically for small pop up businesses to then be able to grow into more bespoke bricks and mortar sites. It was open seven days a week from 12 noon, and the contracts stipulated that each trader was required to be operational when the overall venue was open and their retention was desirable to endeavour to create favourites for footfall to return regularly. Due to their close proximity to the universities, they were a key component of Freshers Week.  

At one stage the overall business was achieving a £3.5m turnover, however in the summer of 2023 it all came to an abrupt and inglorious end. The traders were initially given a very short notice closure period, which was subsequently extended after an understandable backlash to October 2023 and this then transpired to be its final closure date.   

It was then scheduled to be taken over by STACK who already have existing sites in Leeds, Middlesbrough and Newcastle, the latter directly outside St James football stadium.  Initial plans were for it to open by the end of 2024 after a full refurbishment with the original Hatch traders being given first refusal within the revamped site, but to this day the area remains closed.

Venue nightclub. Image Credit Manchester Evening News.

They also incorporated a small stage where live performers would play on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday whilst you were dining or imbibing and I saw two such acts there on different occasions, they were namely Reggae Collective and The Events. At other times a DJ was employed from a local record shop to provide the tuneage which apparently included ‘non-offensive hip hop’ which instantly reminds me of the Parental Advisory label initiative instigated by Tipper Gore in 1985.

I will then move across the city to take you to the Manchester Venue nightclub located at 29 Jacksons Row just above Deansgate. It is a student based establishment that first opened its doors in December 2006 and has no dress code apart from an aversion to football tops and has a 400 capacity.  

It is open from Wednesday to Saturdays with a theme event each night, namely Jam Wednesdays (including live gigs), DISORDER Thursday, Live Forever on Friday and Independence Saturday. To be honest, I was barely aware of its existence until it became a surprising addition to the 2019 Dot to Dot festival roster, so naturally I had to make a visit alongside the other twenty one gigs attended that day, it was a proper shoe leather erosion event!  

We arrived there about 5.30pm on a sunny day and headed down the stairs into the sparsely populated dimly lit basement with the obligatory sticky carpeting. I recall a large poster on the wall with a musical version of the Usual Suspects picture including David Bowie and Iggy Pop amongst others.

Stanleys kitted out. Image Credit facebook.

The band on stage was The Stanleys, a four piece from Wigan and they are supporters of their local footy team, so much so they appeared in the recent 26/27 home kit launch. They have released a slew of singles and appeared on the Strummerville stage at Glastonbury in 2025. It is refreshing that on their upcoming tour they are supporting their local venues by performing two nights at the Snug in Atherton, unsurprisingly both already sold out.

It is always very odd attending nightclubs in the afternoon, thus after their set we re-emerged from the dingy den looking like vampires squinting into the bright light!