Tag: Sounds from the Other City

Manchester Venues 32 to 36

This week, I am returning to the strange and wonderful venues under the auspices of the Sounds from the Other City festival in Salford.

The first venue on the 2018 festival was at the fivefourstudios hall at the bottom of Oldfield Road out beyond Islington Mill. By day, the place was a multipurpose space, wedding venue and a photography studio. It was a slightly style over substance venue but interesting, nonetheless.

We initially climbed up to the attic room as an artist took the stage. We were hoping for some acoustic tuneage to start the day’s proceedings but in the immortal words of Morrissey from ‘Frankly Mr Shankly’ what we actually got was a blast of ‘such bloody awful poetry’! There was only a sprinkling of people in attendance, and it was discourteous to leave so quickly so we allocated one more poem which as luck would have it continued for what felt like days after which we escaped down the stairs!

The venue itself is appropriately five minutes’ walk from Salford Lads Club where the Smiths filmed the famous video on their bicycles for ‘There is a Light that never goes out’.

We caught an RnB singer/songwriter called Rosebud in the main hall. Additionally, in the fivefourstudios annex we encountered some electronic loungecore from a local duo called Pearl City.

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One of the areas within fivefourstudios. Image Credit www.functionfixers.co.uk

Further down Oldfield Road you arrive at Hot Bed Press which is a print workshop and art school that also runs night school courses. It is an utterly self-financing venture and was set up back in 1994. In an area at the side of the building we saw an electronic duo called She the Throne who produced some ambient soundscapes.

As we headed back towards Chapel St, we decreed that nourishment was required before heading onto the next venue. The food establishment of choice was Chungs Chippy. I wonder how the place survives 364 days a year as it is in such a sparse location but that day they were queuing out of the door. The original plan was fish and chips, but we ended up buying probably the finest ever Chicken Fried Rice and Curry Sauce which resulted in envious glances as we walked out of the door. It was fabulous food which kept us satiated for the remainder of the day!

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The famous Chungs Chippy. Image Credit www.tripadvisor.com

   

We needed a sit down after such a hearty snack, so we headed up to Le Cassis on the A6. This was an inviting little wine bar, and it is official address is in the superlatively named Vimto Gardens.  As we lounged on our comfy sofas there was a local band on stage called Gathering of Strangers. They produced some fine anthemic songs even though they were playing that day in acoustic mode. I have endeavoured without success yet to catch their full electric set.

Across the road was the School of Electronic Music. This establishment has been in existence since 1996 and they provide courses for Music Production and Audio Engineering. On stage there was an engaging and amusing set from Manchester drag musician Monopoly Phonic.      

Manchester Venues 27 to 30

Not to be outflanked by their Manchester counterparts the good folk of Salford set up their own festival in 2010 and uniquely called it Sounds from the Other City (SFTOC) and it took over many diverse venues in and around the A6 near to Salford Central train station. I have counted the following venues under the Manchester banner due to their postcodes.

On our first visit in May 2012, we arrived via Salford Crescent Station as there were more speedy trains to that location. The Crescent station only has two platforms but occasionally there is a delightful occurrence of the station announcer excitedly exclaiming ‘Platform Change, Platform Change’ which only in reality necessitates a step forward or backwards to reach the new location! We had only once previously had a couple of drinks around that area in December 2000 prior to watching AC/DC at the MEN Arena.

I have attended three separate SFOTC’s in total and they have always been superbly run chilled events. The central hub for the tickets has been an old industrial building called Islington Mill which is a gig and arts venue with rehearsal rooms within. There is a specific small gig room which in that first year I saw a band called the ABC Club. On a later visit to SFOTC in 2017 I saw Torn Sail, a psychedelic folk-rock band who had the legendary Mark Lanegan contributing to their debut album.

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Islington Mill. Image Credit Fact.

Outside of the festival, we saw Joanne Gruesome there on 18/09/15. They were a five-piece punky band from Cardiff who had modelled their name somewhat bizarrely on musician Joanne Newsom. They were sporadically excellent live in a very intimate setting and I recall the guitarist always facing away from the stage. We had a commendable sally around the local hostelries pre and post gig including a couple of jars in the New Oxford with its array of real ales and were chatting to a couple of punters who travelled all the way across Manchester every Friday to visit the pub.

Down the corridor from the Club room was the Islington Mill Gallery where in 2018 we saw songwriter Claire Wells perform. Outside the back of the building was a large courtyard area where there was a plethora of food options available including appetising looking pizzas. In the corner was a balcony stage called the Engine House where an acoustic duo with a jolly name of White Death were performing.

Our first venue visited at the festival in 2012 was the outermost venue down the A6 away from town, namely The Crescent public house. It was a proper old-fashioned boozer with a distinctive green frontage and a cracking pint of Barnsley bitter on tap. It had a long heritage as it was built in the 1860’s and was a Grade 2 listing building and featured in the good Beer Guide for a sustained period of 25 years. Allegedly Karl Marx and Frederick Engels used to sup in there as they formulated communist principles in the 19th century. The pub sadly closed about five years ago.  

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The Crescent Pub. Image Credit Salford Star.com

The bands played in a very small dark room at the back of the establishment which couldn’t cope with more than 20 people enclosed within.

The first band on were a local act Heroin Diet who produced a 25-minute bracing slab of amusing hardcore punk.  The set curtailed about 5pm on an extremely sunny day so we walked out with ringing ears and squinting like a vampire, thereby creating an interesting start to the day! We returned later to catch sets by an interesting Manchester post rock outfit Dead Sea Apes and a uniquely named 100% Beefcock and the Titsburster, though I cannot remember anything about them bar their name!