The organisers of Chorlton Arts Festival are preparing for its twelfth year in 2012. Ian Pennington looks forward to a few of the early announcements.
Neko Neko is the alter ego of Graham Shortland, an electronic musician with a knack for successfully interlocking samples into fresh, soulful and funky settings. Ian Pennington meets the artist to find out all about it, and what he’s got in store.
Described by singer Martyn Jacques as “Brechtian punk cabaret”, the Tiger Lillies have been delighting fans with vaudevillian gypsy-like songs about infanticide, rape, prostitution and murder for twenty years across no less than 30 albums. For those who haven’t come across the Tiger Lillies however, their show at the Contact Theatre would have been a poor introduction.
It is not uncommon in Manchester to find different kinds of performers side by side on the same night. You might see a performance poet followed by a singer-songwriter at Fuel in Withington, or a burlesque dancer upstaged by a six-piece blues band at Islington Mill. Rarely, though, does a night come along that aims to fuse different media and with such interesting and successful results as Video Jam at Antwerp Mansions.
On 19 December Manchester’s own Dub Phizix and Skeptical released Marka. With it’s hypnotic, creepy minimalism and atmospheric groove, it’s clocked up nearly 400,000 hits on youtube and become an instant favourite for drum and bass fans everywhere. Last week, MULE magazine caught up with Dub Phizix to see what he made of all the hype…
On Monday 21 November hip-hop artist Lowkey will be launching his highly anticipated second album Soundtrack to the Struggle at the Manchester Academy 2 alongside Logic, DJ Awate, and Crazy Haze. Also present will be local talent from the Manchester Hip-Hop Society in the form of Dante, Bamo and Abdus. So who is this, and why should you care?
Tubers Music, a monthly night of experimental music held at St. Margaret’s Church, Whalley Range promotes experimental and improvisational music by local and national artists/musicians who make music, sound and noise that falls outside of the mainstream.
