The ‘Other City’ is Salford, nestled sullenly in the immediate shadow of Manchester, often unthinkingly bracketed under it, and generally enduring its resentment stoically enough. A significant underground music scene thrives here, and is duly celebrated in this one-day, nine-venue festival, a less hyped and more manageable Camden Crawl. As with all such events part of the delight comes from the Russian roulette of discovery, ranging from potentially uncovering your new favourite band to the glum disappointment of realising that the artist referred to in the listing is in fact a DJ (and no, I’m not having it that someone intermittently prodding their laptop is an ‘event’).
Thus, early discoveries include ambient / noise duo SERFS tucked away in the small art studio of From Space. Two apologetic-looking young men with their backs turned to the assembled viewers, they hesitantly coax gently chiming improvised chords from their guitars in the manner of a distracted Low soundcheck, but occasionally wrench deafening Robert Fripp-like guitar solos from their instruments, startling the audience’s eardrums in effective fashion.
Generally, experimentalism and envelope pushing is the order of the day, but there’s quite a fine between nudging creative boundaries and plain pratting about, and in the plain white space of the Salford Restoration Office this line lies trampled in the dust by LEXIE MOUNTAIN BOYS, a group of women with joke shop false beards offering a preposterous acapella stream of consciousness. As giddy as this may be to perform, there seems little reason to watch it for too long, so it’s over instead to The Salford Arms where a time-slipped slice of old Salford nestles alongside the beardy earnestness of the festival clientele, making for a peculiarly charming blend as acoustic rockabilly outfit Jack Pudding perform in the corner.
In the basement of the United Reform Church Manchester noise-trance–improv experts Gnod accompany a screening of drug-addled cinematic mash-up Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda, utilising a battery of hand percussion, much of which is distributed among nearby audience members, and accrue a steadily building wall of noise with tribal drums, thrumming bass and eerie chants. Excellent.
Classy London dance merchants THE INVISIBLE pack out The Rover’s Return (no, not that one) and agitate a sweaty dancefloor with their tight and imaginative avant-funk-disco, like A Certain Ratio with added Chic, immaculately performed and driven by a superlative rhythm section.
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Uncompromising noise merchants TODD are a trap for the unwary. Perhaps people knew exactly what to expect and stayed away accordingly, because The Kings Arms, packed to capacity for the likes of Pavement-esque indie guitar botherers Mazes earlier in the day, is now disappointingly only half full. No matter. Seconds into the gut-lurching rhythms of the first song Craig Clouse, the band’s ‘singer’ (if we may dignify his primal bellowings thus), has kicked his microphone stand at one audience member and promptly lunged into the crowd to wrestle another observer to the floor, delivering the remainder of the song while straddling the prone individual. The crowd nervously forms a tight semi-circle against the rear wall.
For the next song Clouse disappears from the room entirely. The remaining band members dutifully finish the song, during which time unsuspecting latecomers arrive and walk to the front. With gleeful predictability Clouse returns and ensnares a newcomer in the microphone lead and forces him into a drunken waltz around the dance floor, beer spilling everywhere as they go. Fans of the recently resurrected Jesus Lizard ought to seek this lot out forthwith, but mind how you go.
After that it’s back to the glorious Grade 2 listed surrounds of the Sacred Trinity church for closing act GALLOPS, a mesmerisingly effective Welsh quartet who deliver an instrumental set that recalls a more muscular Battles, a laptop initiating a sequenced introduction before an especially manic drummer and two guitarists send the songs off into hyperspace.
A triumphant showcase for the obscure, the invigorating, the mystifying and the up-and-coming, today in The Other City effortlessly tops another bank holiday screening of James Bond. Roll on next year.
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