Tag: Dot to Dot

Manchester Venue 114 – Albert Square Festivals

One of the most famous buildings in Manchester is the neo-gothic Town Hall which obtained Grade 1 listing status in 1952 and currently houses Manchester City Council and other local government staff. The town hall was completed in 1877 after a nine-year build and the small matter of the usage of 14 million bricks! It contains within the Great Hall, which is adorned with Ford Madox Brown’s Manchester Murals, there is also the impressive Clock Tower which is 85 metres high which even has a singular name for the clock bell, Great Abel. 

Manchester Town Hall. Image Credit citybaseapartments.com

The Town Hall’s resemblance to the Palace of Westminster resulted in it being used as a location for the original 1990 version of House of Cards and the BBC drama State of Play. The venue was in fact used to announce the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum.

However, a report in 2014 highlighted the urgent need for modernisation and essential repairs to be undertaken on the building. Subsequently it was closed to visitors in 2018 to undergo a £330m renovation. I have read in the last month that due to ongoing pandemic impacts and the rise in pricing of materials the original completion date has pushed back from July 2024 to provisionally summer 2026.

The building faces St Peters Square to the South and Albert Square to the North. Due to its size and location, the latter named has been used for events and public gatherings including memorials commemorating the Manchester Arena bombing.

It is also a perfect site to host music events so in July 2018 I attended Manchester Albert Square Festival Hall when the 9-day Manchester Jazz Festival was taking place. I grabbed a couple of opportunities to dive into the site for some bonus gigs when heading from work to Manchester Oxford Road station for my commute home. On the first occasion, I saw Minor Swing and on the second I witnessed Squid Ink.

Manchester International Festival. Image Credit ilovemanchester.com

In March 2019 they also had a St Patricks day festival gathering around Cheltenham races time, and I saw the Ceilidh Boys at that soiree. A couple of months later when attending the Dot-to-Dot festival I managed to catch a bonus act called Gobe Band there at a separate event taking place on the square as they were not part of the festival roster of my event.

In 2019 the bi-annual Manchester International Festival took place with the hub location being Albert Square. It was a relaxed set up with lots of food outlets and a couple of real ale tents and with music starting at noon I also had a sally over at lunchtime on the days I was in the office. They set up the music stage under a covered marquee with comfy seats and I always had room when I visited, but I heard it was extremely busy when The Orielles and Working Mens Club played a late evening set there.    

The Orielles. Image Credit soundofbrit.fr

Thus, my first attendance was on 05/07/19 when a group of us were in town and we headed to the site and happened to see House of Ghetto. On my next visit I witnessed Chloe Foy, a singer-songwriter from Gloucestershire who subsequently released her debut album ‘Where Shall We Begin’ in 2021.

The following day there was a Welsh oriented bill hosted by 6 Music DJ Huw Stephens. He introduced a Welsh-language pop band called Gwilym (translates as William), who sounded like they have been influenced by their forebearers Super Furry Animals. Mary Anne Hobbs also hosted a 6-music show on the festival site in a temporary DJ booth and there was the obligatory appearance from the omnipresent John Robb.

The following week I saw a seven-piece local band called Kara. On the lunchtime the next day I witnessed a solo singer Matthew Whitaker and after work the artist was Hannah Ashcroft, a local indie lass who has collaborated with Beth Orton and had support slots with BC Camplight and the Lathums.

My final appearance was when I met up with Gill and we grabbed some tea on the site. Playing that day were acts called Aim Sky High and One Little Atlas who are a local two-piece dream pop combo. They had an ethereal sound and have composed a couple of film scores and have had the opportunity to play at unusual venues such as John Rylands Library and the Whitworth Art Gallery in the city.

Manchester Venues 98 to 101

As I am sure regular readers of this blog can attest, I have always been a huge advocate of attending Manchester venues. This is even though for my first 49 years on this Earth I was living in Preston, which has involved an extraordinary number of train ride commutes, quite often in challenging circumstances due to Northern Train’s incompetence. Don’t even start me on their brazen temerity relating to a staggeringly unjust penalty notice I received from them recently for making the ‘catastrophic’ error of buying two singles instead of the intended purchase of an open return for virtually the same price!   

My first Manchester venue back in the mists of time in 1985 was the Apollo with the 10th being the short-lived Planet K in the Northern Quarter which I first visited in 1999. The 25th followed in 2011 with the Castle and the 50th was the Sound Control downstairs club venue in 2013.

The dramatic spike in numbers of venues visited on the numbers between 25 to 50 was in no small part to my attendance at several multi venue wristband events including Dot to Dot and Sounds from the Other city (SFTOC) festivals and it became a personal mission around then to see how high I could increase the overall number to.

When we relocated to Manchester in 2017, I had at that stage reached 76 venues and I knew the much sought after century was a question of when not if and I have since rolled on to run past over 150 and counting Manchester venues.   

At SFTOC they utilise a central gathering area of the Regent trading Estate located behind Islington Mill where they have drink and food outlets and have acts performing in the Manchester Regent Trading Estate Car Park. In 2017 I saw the local artist Dub Smugglers and the following year witnessed an act called Kiss Me Again.    

Manchester Regent Trading Estate Car Park. Image Credit soundsfromtheothercity.com

In a more recent year, they based the whole festival site around the Regent Estate, I didn’t attend that year, but I saw the feedback was unfavourable as punter’s preference was to have a suite of venues dotted all around, and they have not since repeated that experiment.

The other three venues in the vicinity are very novel as they based in the warehouse units which I am assuming are normally working areas at other times and can imagine they could have been fine sites for Acid House gatherings back in the day!

The first and largest one we visited was Manchester Unit 5 Regent Trading Estate. The first band I saw there was HMLTD, an art punk band from London town whose original moniker was Happy Meal Ltd. They were a vibrant bunch, and their garb embraced the 1980’s New Romantic era. The following year, I witnessed another London jazz infused artist called Laura Misch.        

HMLTD. Image Credit nme.com

When in attendance at the SFTOC 2018 event I reached my 100th Manchester venue which was a big deal for me as it had taken 33 years to achieve that aim, the venue itself was Manchester Unit 2 Regent Trading Estate. I was hoping and praying it would not be a limp act to celebrate this milestone and thankfully the music gods were smiling on me!

The band was an upcoming Australian artist called Hatchie and her backing band and they produced a terrific slab of dream pop which was perfect for the occasion. I attended the festival again this year and we saw an excellent set from the C-86 infused shoegazers The Early Mornings, who turned out to be the band of the day.  

Hatchie. Image Credit vrtxmag.com

The other area was the smallest one on the Reform Radio Stage within Manchester Unit 4 Regents Trading Estate where I have seen Bennett is Coming and a Spanish soul singer with African roots called Femme Fatene.