PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER APRIL - MAY 2011 *FREE*

THE WAVE PICTURES - INDIE SCIENCE - MAMMAL CLUBDR MARTIN AUSTWICK - SALFORD - BEER GARDENS - ROBIN INCE

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PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER APRIL - MAY 2011WELCOME LETTERS FROM INDEPENDENT NEWCASTLE

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Hello and welcome to this spring time edition of Pull Yourself Together. Since last we spoke the sun has attempted to shed some sunlight on the world again, and the starts of new life can be seen again. We’re kind of celebrating that in this issue, with a focus on some of our favourite places to soak up the sun in and around Manchester popping up on the back cover. We’ve also got a focus on the best way to spend May Bank Holiday - catching some rays (hopefully) as you wander between the fantastic entertainment on offer (100% certainty) at Sounds From The Other City. We’ve been pretty busy over the past couple of months. To kick off things Christopher Eatough played a stunningly beautiful show at The Kings Arms to celebrate the release of his album A Creak in the Cold. From Christopher’s heartfelt folk we shifted to noisy and weird things as we welcomed Napoleon IIIrd’s quite incredible full band to Islington Mill. Oh, and that show also saw a DJ set from the worriedaboutsatan boys which managed to mix The Four Tops into Ben Klock and keep people dancing. Great times.

ON THE PYT STEREOBLOOD ORANGES, DUTCH UNCLES,

THOSE DANCING DAYS, NEDRY,

GRUFF RHYS, HELP STAMP OUT

LONELINESS, TOM WAITS

Hello, as a member of Mammal Club I spend most of my time stood in the cold under a bridge somewhere in Byker. Yeah, Byker Grove, Ant n Dec, Gill Halfpenny and all that, yeah that’s what we’re about in Newcastle… Newcastle, yeah, all ‘Toon Toon Mike Ashley out’ yeah that’s us, wandering around with no clothes on even when it’s snowing, doing nothing but talking about ‘the good old days’ when Shearer was still playing and anything on TV that was set in Newcastle featured Jimmy Nail in at least one of the starring roles. Because up here we really are just one big city shaped cliché.

If you’re buying music (and you should always be buying music) then the first place you need to head to is RPM just off High Bridge St. RPM is a pretty small music shop but pretty much essential to Newcastle as probably the only true ‘indie in the way indie mean’ type of way. Dealing with pretty much everything cool and leftfield in most genres it is pretty hard to go in there and not spend money. The staff in there are great too (they’ll honestly talk you out of buying something if they think you’ll think it’s shit) and also have loads of back catalogue stuff at sale prices.

If you’re going to a ‘sizeable’ gig in Newcastle then you’ll either end up at the Academy (have you been to any Academy anywhere? Yeah, so is this one) or The Cluny. The Cluny is a great venue and a great pub. You will get lashed there. You should also try and eat there, The Cluny kitchen is looked forward to by gig goers, regulars and touring bands alike. Honestly, the burger will destroy in a way of your own subliminal choosing. If you are just out drinking then you should probably go to The Tyne and The Free Trade, both are within walking distance

of The Cluny and are within stumbling up or down the stairs distance of one another (depending on which order you tackle them in). These are great pubs. If you know what a pub is then these are two examples of a good pub. They have ales and lagers and spirits and character, but aside from all this they are set in a pretty cool place, all three pubs are in an area called the Ouseburn, which has a river running through it and comes out in the Tyne (hence the name of one of the pubs). Basically, you can sit outside and drink beer where it looks nice, which is apparently what our forefathers fought wars for or something. And if you go out drinking in Newcastle then you will end up in The Head of Steam as it’s open until 3am.

As for bands, well like any city there’s a lot of them. Many people will try and tell you about the difference between Newcastle and Sunderland and the ‘scenes’ that thrive in these cities. These people are idiots and should be ignored as they are more caught up with what music should be than what it is.

There are a lot of bands who wear their influences proudly on their sleeves, and that’s probably the best thing I can say about them. However, if you are into good music done well then you should really listen to Mr Blazey, Holy Mammoth, Grandfather Birds, Vinyl Jacket and Brilliant Mind.

I need to go and stand under a bridge somewhere in Byker.

Please enjoy Newcastle responsibly.

For more information including some upcoming tour dates with Patterns in London and Cardiff, head to mammalclub.com

MAMMAL CLUB’S GUIDE TO NEWCASTLE’S MUSIC SCENE

Team PYT are off on our travels on April, and can’t wait. We’re off back to Cardiff, which is probably our 2nd favourite city in the UK after Manchester. We’re delighted to be guest DJs at Modern Life Is Rubbish, and are really looking forward to-a: Seeing friends b: Playing some great records c: Heading to Spillers RecordsHowever, it isn’t all fun and games at the moment. You are all well aware of the tragedy which has hit Japan, and have read about it everywhere. We’re not going to try and add anything new, we just want to appeal to any of our readers who haven’t already done so to donate anything you can towards helping the Red Cross efforts to help the people there - redcross.org.uk

SO WHAT’S IN ISSUE 17?P3: We’re off to the North East this time round, as the fantastic Mammal Club take us on a tour of Newcastle

P4: Science, music and comedy. Not necessarily the most well-known of bedfellows but Dr Martin Austwick is here to let us know why they make perfect sense together.

P6: With Sounds From The Other City just around the corner, we’ve been chatting with David Tattersall of The Wave Pictures, who will be gracing the stage at the Salford festival.

P8: More from SFTOC, this time with a few words from the folks in charge, and our own tips for the day!

P12: To welcome the sun back to Manchester, we’re finishing a trio of beer-related zine pieces with some of our favourite beer gardens around the city.

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PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER APRIL - MAY 2011THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING INDIE: AN INVESTIGATION INTO INDIE SCIENCE THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING INDIE: AN INVESTIGATION INTO INDIE SCIENCE

Test One

I can’t remember exactly how it happened. For a couple of years, I’d been in the house band for Robin Ince’s comedy night The Book Club - and then, in 2007, rumblings began that The Book Club was to be dissolved and replaced with the brighter, stronger School for Gifted Children - a night dedicated to science and wonder and maybe the odd bit of Danielle Steele poetry. I can’t remember exactly how it went down, so let’s pretend Robin rushed breathlessly up to me after a performance and said:

“Hey Martin, I hear you have a PhD in quantum physics and nanotechnology. And I know you’re a kick-ass guitarist. So why not write some songs about physics and shit and come play them at my new night?*”

Well, gee, Robin, I don’t know... I guess that would be ok...

My debut was “Hippasus of Metapontum”, the story of the discovery of irrational numbers, the irrational reaction of the Pythagoreans, and the unfortunate consequences for Hippasus. Legend has it that Hippasus of Metapotum discovered irrational numbers (numbers that cannot be expressed as a fraction) whilst at sea, and his colleagues, freaked out that such an aberration could exist, chucked him into the Mediterranean. In my experience, mathematicians will physically strike you over a misplaced subscript, never mind an epoch-shattering pure maths discovery, so this seems entirely plausible.

Flushed with this early success, I’d turn up to every School for Gifted Children with a new song, sometimes about the invention of the printing press, sometimes Brownian Motion or the periodic table of elements. Before I knew it, I had an album’s worth of quite different (but all rather quirky) songs,

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING INDIE: AN INVESTIGATION INTO INDIE SCIENCE

which I nipped, tucked and otherwise tweaked into “Songs from the Scientific Cabaret” (available at drmartinaustwick.bandcamp.com for your delectation). I struck on the idea of presenting the CD in a petri dish (which turned out not to be as original as you might think) and putting the sleeve notes in the form of a scientific paper (no-one has yet called me on this, so I assume I’m the first). This was primarily for my amusement, and anyone with enough time and inclination to read a 20-page treatise on geeky songs only has themselves to blame...

Of course I’m not the first to do this; Tom Lehrer is the person most people think of when I mention songs about science, even though most of his songs are not about science and he’s much better than I am (but then, he’s much better than most people). They Might be Giants and Jonathan Coulton fly the flag over the pond, and closer to home, the Geekpop festival provides sanctuary for musical geeks like me.

So what have we learned? Well, it’s not terribly hard to write a song about a discredited Victorian theory of light in the style of the Kings of Leon, as long as you don’t mind throwing taste and restraint out the window; you can make even a song about the brilliance of scientific methodology sound fun if you play the stylophone with your big toe; and last but not least, even mathematics gets interesting when actual bodily harm is involved.

*Robin is far too well-spoken and not remotely street enough to ever say anything like this. I probably asked him (very nicely), or just slipped on stage when he wasn’t looking.

Test Two

As seen in Test One, Robin Ince is a man who bridges the gap between the worlds of Comedy and Science. He is about to head out on tour with Professor Brian Cox, taking the Infinite Monkey Cage out of the studio with Uncaged Monkeys. The tour reaches Manchester Apollo on Friday 6th May.

Hmm, The Infinite Monkey Cage sees a physicist and an idiot try to get to the bottom of everything in the universe in 28 minutes - for Uncaged Monkeys we have a whole two hours per night, so we should get there by the end of the tour if I can just get my handheld particle accelerator to work. Uncaged Monkeys is accessible to everyone as long as you are the sort of person interested in things (maybe don’t drink too much in the interval as we will cover the end of the universe), then get drunk afterwards as you try and take it all in.

Can science, comedy and music mix? Well when I put on a night mixing Jarvis Cocker singing I Believe in Father Christmas, Simon Singh on error bars and Chris Addison on anthropology and see the glee on people’s faces as they departed suggests it does work, but might not have done if it had been Jim Davidson, Whigfield & Heinz Wolf.

robinince.com

Test Three

Did you watch the BBC’s Stargazing Live programmes back in January? Do you live in Cheshire? Do you travel south on trains from Manchester? If the answer is ‘yes’ to any of these questions then surely you’ve been over-awed by the sheer scale of the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank. It does actually have a bit of history with musical misadventures, but this summer sees thing step up a gear. BIG TIME. The Flaming Lips, they of making a film about the celebration of Christmas on a newly colonised Mars, are being joined by British Sea Power, they of general overdeveloped obsession in all things interesting, are playing a gig in the shadow of the Lovell Telescope. AMAZING. We honestly couldn’t think of two bands better suited to playing in such a unique venue. Well, maybe Doves - they have previously used the telescope as a very very big effects pedal. Not only is there going to be the gig, but in the daytime there are set to be space-y activities, alongside free access to the newly refurbished Visitor Centre. Oh, and Prof. Brian is playing keyboards with BSP... Team PYT are stupidly excited about this!

jodrellbanklive.co.uk

Results

Does all this sound interesting? As well as heading to Martin’s bandcamp page you may be interested in the following podcasts:

The Infinite Monkey CageBright ClubJodcastGuardian Science WeeklyTED Talks

And on the comedy side of things, if you’re not subscribed to answermethispodcast.com you really should be...

Hypothesis

You may have become aware over the past year or so that PYT have become increasingly interested in science. Neither of us are scientists, oh no, in fact neither of us managed to progress with a STEM subject beyond GCSEs. We are still both unsure as to whether this was due to a particular aptitude for arts, a lack of ability when it came to science, or science teaching circa 2000. What we are sure of, however, is that science now fascinates us, thanks in part to shows such as Professor Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Solar System and Wonders of the Universe, and podcasts that combine science and comedy such as The Infinite Monkey Cage and the School for Gifted Children. The latter of these features Dr Martin Austwick (who you may know as Martin the Soundman from Answer Me This), a man who seems to be on some kind of quest to combine science (he has a PhD in quantum physics and nanotechnology), music and comedy. His new album, Songs from the Scientific Cabaret, is out now.

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PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER APRIL - MAY 2011IN WHICH PYT INTERROGATE... THE WAVE PICTURES

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IN WHICH PYT INTERROGATE... THE WAVE PICTURES

The Wave Pictures are one of the most prolific bands around, and they’re about to release another album in the form of Beer in the Breakers. David Tattersall took the time to answer a few questions for us...

- Good evening Wave Pictures, how are you doing? Very well, thanks.

- How do you feel about playing in a lecture theatre for Sounds From The Other City? We’re assuming this will be a new experience for you...I have to admit, I don’t know anything about it. I don’t really know what I’m doing from one moment to the next. I guess I will find out when I get there what it is like. We’ve got a few bits and pieces here and there for other festivals too.

- It’s quite a tour you’ve got starting at the end of April. Is it easy to keep things running smoothly across a whole month of dates? You’ve certainly got enough songs to choose from to keep things interesting! Oh, we love touring and playing live. And the three of us get on really well. So, things run pretty smoothly. And, yes, we have a lot of songs and we change the set every night, always playing some different things. We don’t use setlists ever. We just go on and start and choose the songs as we go. It’s good to be a bit spontaneous. We keep things interesting that way.

- Can you tell us a bit about Beer in the Breakers? By our count this is ‘album’ number ‘three’ - is that right? Obviously it isn’t your third release... Well, it depends on how you count it. It’s our third album for Moshi Moshi, but we also did an album called ‘’Susan Rode The Cyclone’’ for some European labels last year, so actually Beer In The Breakers is the 4th album we have made

since we signed with Moshi Moshi. It gets more complicated still if you count ‘’Sophie’’, which Smoking Gun Records released, and all the albums we made that no one has released. If you count all of those then it might be our tenth or eleventh album. I like the idea that they are all debut albums. I want to make hundreds and hundreds of debut albums. I never want to make that difficult second album. We’re all really happy with this one. I think Jonny and Franic might say that it’s their all time favourite Wave Pictures album.

- Why did you dump Simon for Darren? Ok, lets re-word that... Simon Trought seems to have produced a whole heap of our favourite records of the past few years, and indeed a pile of your recordings. Was it time for a slightly different approach? We’ve recorded a whole load of different ways with a whole load of different people. If You Leave It Alone was recorded by Clemence Freschard in Berlin. Then we did Susan Rode The Cyclone with Simon again. I had done recording with Darren Hayman before, and I have always been extremely impressed by Darren’s engineering skills. So the idea came up to record The Wave Pictures at his house. I have to say, I think Beer In The Breakers is the best sounding album we’ve done. See, when we play live together I never feel like I wish there were other instruments or other things going on. But whenever we’ve recorded, we always have to do little bits and pieces of overdubbing to fill out the sound. But there was no need to do that here. I’m so happy that there’s a document of us recorded this way. We had done recording sessions in a whole bunch of different places over the last two years. It had never been quite right when we had listened back. But the feeling was right on the recordings we did with Darren.

- Are there any songs about fruit? There often seems to be fruit in your lyrics, be they in preserve form or having names scrawled upon them. I do like to sing about fruit but I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I feel like I should be eating more fruit, so it’s on my mind. I sing about cigarettes and beer quite a lot as well, to balance things out. I can’t remember off the top of my head if I sing about fruit on Beer In The Breakers. I mention sour jam in the third track, Little Surprise. I should definitely try to sing more often about a wider variety of food groups. I don’t sing about pasta very often. I try not to sing about sausages, which are on my mind a lot, because then a vegetarian would be unable to enjoy the song. I have a lot of vegetarian friends and I don’t want to isolate them. It’s a political mine-field, singing about food.

- Your songs always seem to have this wonderful simplicity to them, allowing the lyrics to wander over the top. Do you start with these melodies before the lyrics come to you? Or does it tend to work the other way round? It’s a mixture, they come in all different ways. I usually find it easiest to have the lyrics first, though. If you write words to fit a melody, you always end up with forced rhymes and a forced metre to the words. I’m not sure that is the correct term. I like songs more when the lyrics are leading the whole thing along. Simple chord changes and interesting lyrics. I like that kind of music more.

- As far as the lyrics go, there are similarities to Jeff Lewis, Jonathan Richman, Herman Dune and the aforementioned Hayman running through the tales you weave. I guess the similarity is that all those guys write quite narrative based songs, which you also seem to settle nicely into...Well, I’m not sure I agree entirely. I agree with you broadly speaking. I love all those people you mentioned. And they all sometimes have narrative songs which I like. For me, though, there are very big differences between the styles of those people. Jonathan Richman, for instance, is someone I really like. I love his style and the way he plays and sings. I love his melodies. But I don’t think my lyrics are at all like his! I think that since people know I like him, they have over-exagerrated the similarities. I can’t write the way he can. I don’t want to either. There is that similarity that you mentioned but the differences are equally big. I suppose I think that the relationship between a musician and his influences is a little more complicated than your question suggests. I hope that doesn’t sound pretentious. It just seems worth saying because I don’t think anyone should lump those people together, like ‘’because you like this, you must also like this’’. They aren’t so similar.

- Where are you up to with recording at the moment? With the new album about to come out, does that mean that you are already on with the next release? I wrote about thirty songs in December, January and February and me, Jonny and Franic have been working through them trying to find what works and what doesn’t and which ones we like and so on. I’ve been trying something new, which is writing a song based on a bass line of Franic’s. Usually, I write the song and then he comes up with the bass line afterwards. But we’ve written a couple together for the very first time. So, we’ve been doing that, trying to decide what we like and don’t like. It’s been a lot of fun. But we haven’t done any recording yet. I’m itching to do some more recording soon though.

- It seems as if you have a kind of constant creative process, with songs always itching to be recorded/released. Your EPs are often longer than some people’s albums, kind of like The Style Council - is this something you aim to do, or is it just that the songs force you to put together these lengthy collections? Yes, you’ve hit the nail on the head. We don’t aim for anything or plan anything. We just want to do it. Or it wants to do us! I really feel incredibly lucky to get to make music all the time. I really like it. It’s not more complicated than that. I know that what it means is that we make more music than most people want to listen to, but that’s OK. I don’t expect everyone to listen to all of it. One thing we do try to do, one thing we aim for, is that everything we do is equally good (or bad, depending on your opinion). We don’t do throwaway songs. We don’t think ‘’oh, it’s a b-side’’, let’s do something silly. Mine and Franic’s favourite recording from around the time of Instant Coffee Baby was the song Puncture My Pride, which we put out as a b-side. Possibly our most popular song Now You Are Pregnant, was a b-side. But generally, the ambitions are to do with playing and writing, not to do with releasing and not to do with the response people have to the releases.

The Wave Pictures headline the Hey Manchester! Stage at Sounds From The Other City on Sunday 1st May. Their new album, Beer in the Breakers, is released the following day on Moshi Moshi Records. thewavepictures.com

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PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER APRIL - MAY 2011SOUNDS FROM THE OTHER CITY 2011 IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ADVERTISING IN PYT PLEASE GET IN TOUCH - HELLO@PULLYOURSELFTOGETHERZINE.CO.UK

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“Unpredictable, unruly and underground. The regions best independent promoters present the best in new alternative sounds from around the world in Salford’s weirdest and most wonderful places!”

That’s what Mark Carlin, one of the brains behind Salford’s premier music festival has to say to try and sum Sounds From The Other City is. This year’s festival takes place in and around Chapel Street on Sunday 1st May, and here at PYT we can’t wait for it. Our connection to SFTOC goes back many years to seeing great bands as punters, then a few years ago were invited to write the festival programme, and just last year we joined force with the rest of Postcards From Manchester to promote a stage, which included highlight sets from Islet, The Rural Alberta Advantage, a pub drunk dry and a disco including limbo dancing and long jumping. Only at Sounds…

We’re going to be back at The Old Pint Pot for Postcards From Manchester this year, moving upstairs whilst WOTGODFORGOT take on the downstairs bar. We are delighted to have Swedish indiepop heroines Those Dancing Days headlining our stage, alongside PYT favourites Young British Artists & Tigercats, Eagulls, Weird Era, The Louche FC and this issue’s tour guides Mammal Club. We are delighted to be involved again, and asked Mark from SFTOC what makes it special as a festival.

“Well obviously every festival is different from each other but as a general rule I think we are very much about independence, freedom and celebrating the people that make where we live so vibrant during the year. For us its not about booking big acts and hoping they shift truckloads of tickets, but rather about bringing together all those independent promoters and

people that make so much happen during the year and setting them free on making the best one day party possible. So if we invite someone to programme one of the spaces and they come back with a programme of 7 hours of silence then we genuinely would be happy and get behind the idea. Also we really like to focus on the bits around the edges- the bits that aren’t programmed but give the day a real atmosphere and sense of difference.”

As long time converts, we’ve always really liked the fact that the festival breathes life into Chapel Street, dragging folks away from their cosy Northern Quarter hideaways, out into the open to run around Salford for a day. Looking at things long term, it seems as if SFTOC has played a big part in kick starting the arts scene in this part of Salford.

“I love this notion that every year a load of people pile in like its a summer holiday yet most of them live them within a 5 mile radius! However that also adds a real sense of fun and occasion to the day but it would be nice for us to think that because of the festivals existence that we have helped make the idea of going to Salford less scary and there is notably a lot more stuff happening here now. SFTOC kicked off music events at Islington Mill, Sacred Trinity and St Phillips Churches. Also there are so many varied and interesting spaces in a really close proximity and that is also really adds to the feel of the event. We’re even lining up some lawn croquet and that is not even touching on the obligatory odd happenings off the day!!”

Tickets for Sounds From The Other City are available now for just £18 from Piccadilly Records, Islington Mill, Common, Kings Arms, Quay Tickets and Skiddle. Head to soundsfromtheothercity.com for all the details.

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PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER APRIL - MAY 2011THE LISTINGS

11THE LISTINGS APR-MAY 2011

PYT @ Common - Wednesday 13th April, Wednesday 27th April, Wednesday 11th May, Wednesday 25th MayApril is your usual deal. We’ll play records we think you’ll love, with old favourites and new releases a-plenty. May is a bit different, as there’s a PYT takeover going on! On the 11th you can join Patterns as they take to the decks in our stead, and on the 25th Pigeon Post will be filling in to keep those of you not at Primavera from feeling blue. He’s good like that.

Postcards From Manchester + NOW WAVE present... The Rural Alberta Advantage - Deaf Institute - Mon 23rd MayAt last year’s Sounds From The Other City the Rural Alberta Advantage almost caused a riot at the Pint Pot which was beyond full to bursting and the sound system nearly came crashing down with the surge of the crowd eager to get closer to this wonderful noise. Now the Postcards team has joined forces with NOW WAVE to bring them back, and it’s sure to be another riotous treat!

EVENT OF THE ISSUE

Errors + MAY68 - Joshua Brooks - Saturday 9th April There isn’t a whole lot more we can say about Errors that we haven’t already said. They are easily one of our favourite live bands in the country right now, and to see them in a venue a) as small and b) as good for dancing in as Joshua Brooks isn’t an opportunity to miss up.

Underachievers 3rd Birthday featuring Mammal Club - Gullivers - Saturday 9th April Is it really that time of year again? The twos for Underachievers haven’t been so terrible - ok so the venue upheaval towards the end of last year wasn’t ideal, but they’ve found their new home from home over at Gullivers, and have had many triumphs along the way. In the birthday style we’ve come to expect of Underachievers there will be great bands like Mammal Club and some secret special guests, along with masks and mix CDs and quite possibly some mayhem. Many Happy Returns!

A Sense of Perspective - Tate Liverpool - until Sunday 5th June This new exhibition of contemporary work from the Tate’s collection looks at the state of ‘betweeness’ - considering generational, migratory and cultural senses of perspective. Highlights include the UK debut of Rosangela Renno’s Experiencing Cinema installation and Sarah Jones’ photographic study of young women’s identities.

I’m From Barcelona - Ruby Lounge - Thursday 14th April This band are LOADS OF FUN. I’m From Barcelona are kind of like an indiepop Flaming Lips. Or maybe just a more party orientated version of Jens Lekman’s live band. You get the picture right? Loads of energy, upbeat Swedish pop songs, balloons, lots of jumping around. We once saw a show where Emanuel performed one track whilst riding around the crowd on a pink lilo. Ace.

Lykke Li - Academy 2 - Tuesday 19th April When did Lykke Li switch from being a pretty Swedish girl with a quite nice pop song to being a bastion of hipster cool? Little Bit was a lovely little song, and gave her a springboard for the first album Youth Novels, which itself was a fantastic piece of quiet pop music. Follow up Wounded Rhymes appears to have shifted things up a level, with the cool kids getting on board this bigger, cooler, and way less ‘nice’ sound. I’m really interested to see what her live show is now, are we talking sophisticated pop rather than nice indie?

Johnny Foreigner + Ghost Outfit - Night + Day - Thursday 28th AprilNow here’s an excuse to start your weekend early if ever there was one. JoFo may not have captured me from the start, but my word they are a lot of fun - a lot of shouty scuzzy indiepop singalong fun that will make you bounce up and down and shout too loud and do all the things that - if you’re anything like me - you feel you don’t do often enough anymore.

Mount Kimbie - Deaf Institute - Friday 29th April This band confused and delighted in equal measure when their early records saw the light of day. Coming out on a hip UK dance/dubstep label, Mount Kimbie seemed to be referencing Boards of Canada more than straight up dance. Pitching somewhere between the found and collected noises of CocoRosie and TV on the Radio, these guys would appear to have been slightly overlooked since the explosion of their friend and contemporary James Blake. I prefer them. They were fantastic playing Band on the Wall at In The City - expect bass that runs right through you.

Borderlands - CUBE - 6th May - 4th June Rupert Griffiths’ Borderlands draws on the fragmented spaces around roads, rail, river and canal networks to offer an intrepretation of the derelict and hidden landscape of modern cities. In a city which features such a mix of regeneration alongside areas of city centre decay this exhibition will be an interesting way to engage with the ways that Manchester as a city and Manchester as an entity collide.

The Radio Dept. + The Answering Machine - Deaf Institute - Wednesday 11th May Oh oh oh this is going to be BRILLIANT. Clinging to a Scheme by Swedish popsters The Radio Dept. was one of the best records of 2010, and seeing them playing tracks off it at the Deaf is going to be beautiful. Perfectly picked support comes from The Answering Machine, themselves playing tracks from their terrific new album Lifelines. This will be special.The DJs will be pretty good too...(ahem)

An Evening With Steve Reich - RNCM - Thursday 12th May Steve Reich has been called America’s greatest living composer, and to tell the truth, we would tend to agree. One of the pioneers of Minimalism, Reich has inspired musicians from Sufjan Stevens to Manchester’s own Dutch Uncles. Broken Trains and Music for 18 Musicians are clear highlights, and are bound to feature in this FutureEverything showcase which will feature the man himself performing Clapping Music.

65daysofstatic live soundtrack Silent Running - RNCM - Saturday 14th MayCrikey, FutureEverything are pulling out all the stops this year. Silent Running, a science fiction tale of environmentalism set aboard a fleet of biodomes which represent the last remnants of a scorched Earth, has inspired others from Wall-E to Red Dwarf to Moon. All in all, it is a great film. Which is why 65daysofstatic are endeavouring to make it even better by adding their brand of postrock to this screening with a live soundtrack. This will be special.

Explosions in the Sky - Academy 1 - Tuesday 17th May If anyone can fill the cavernous hall that is Academy 1, surely it’s Explosions in the Sky. Here we have a band who make music that is meant to swell and surge through open and empty spaces, and we’re damn sure they’ll do it well having seen them pull off Pavilion sets at ATP (twice) where many others have failed to create an impact. New album Take Care, Take Care, Take Care is out in April (featuring some beautiful packaging), so there’ll be some wonderful new music alongside old, faithful favourites.

Team Ghost + Daniel Lands and the Modern Painters - The Castle - Wed 18th MayLast year PYT got hold of the debut EP from former-M83 songwriter Nicolas Fromageau’s new band - Team Ghost’s atmospheric You Never Did Anything Wrong To Me. We loved it. We told anyone who would listen about it. We interviewed them for the PYT website. We saw them live, and it wasn’t quite as accomplished as on record - but the start was there. We can’t suggest this gig highly enough, especially given that the support comes from one of the finest shoegaze bands in the city, Daniel Lands and the Modern Painters.

Mercury Rev performing Deserter’s Songs - Bridgewater Hall - Friday 20th May Certain albums come to define a band, and there is little doubt that the back-to-back run of Deserter’s Songs and All Is Dream represent the key period of Mercury Rev’s career. Initially made as an album sherely for themselves following the relative failure of See You On The Other Side, Jonathan Donahue and co. actually produced one of the best records of the late 90s, packed with gems including Goddess on a Hiway, Holes Opus 40 and Tonite It Shows. A fantastic record revisited.

Friends Of Mine Festival - Capesthorne Hall - 20th-22nd May If there is one thing that had been missing from the very well strung Friends of Mine bow, it was probably a weekend of live music in the grounds of a Jacobean manor house. Bingo, they’ve sorted it. FOM Fest brings together a varied lineup, including great new bands like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, PYT Records’ own Christopher Eatough and Patterns, The History of Apple Pie and Beat The Radar and big hitters like The Fall, Lightning Seeds and Toro Y Moi. This promises to be a cracking weekend, especially given that you can enjoy a PYT disco there too!

Primavera Sound 2011 Parc Del Forum, Barcelona 25th-29th May

THE LISTINGS

Yes, it’s a bit further away than our listings usually are, but as we write this there are still tickets for what may be our favourite ever festival line-up. Primavera Sound has almost lured us to Spain on various occasions in the past, but this year’s event just looks too good to be true. For starters, some of the other listings on these pages will also grace the Primavera stage (Explosions In The Sky, Mercury Rev), but then add to that the following: The National. Belle and Sebastian. The Flaming Lips. Grinderman. Sufjan Stevens. Animal Collective. Oh, and some band called Pulp. Pulp! If that isn’t the perfect cherry on top of a highly generously iced cake then I honestly don’t know what is. Add to that some sun (hopefully), Spanish culture (almost certainly), a sneaky trip to the Nou Camp (if Dan gets his way) and cheap Estrella (probably PYT’s new favourite lager), and you’ve got yourself a summer holiday to remember. Consider yourselves told.

PULL YOURSELF TOGETHERMEET ME IN THE BEER GARDEN

12

So there’s been a bit of a beery theme of late on this page, and here we have the final instalment of back-page beery goodness. Spring is finally showing signs of springing, and the longer days and lighter evenings have left us longing for that seasonal treat: the Beer Garden. There’s just something perfect about sitting at a slightly wonky picnic table whilst sipping a delightfully cold beer as the illusive Mancunian sun shows its face, and it’s a pastime that will be coming to a drinking establishment near you in the near future!

Open space is at a premium here in Manchester’s city centre, but if you know where to look there are still some lovely little spots to enjoy a cooling beverage. Top of the list has got to be Fringe Bar on Swan Street. Not only does it have a marvelous range of real ales and (lethal) ciders, but its beer garden is perfect for the mid-afternoon sun. It even has plants and flowers, unlike many of its city centre counterparts! It may be short on greenery, but the prize winner for lunchtime rays has got to be our spiritual home, Common. Most Northern Quarter streets are shadowy affairs, but Edge Street seems perfectly aligned for maximum sunshine over the spring and summer months. Nice pint of Stowford Press and a Common Cheeseburger? Don’t mind if I do.

Another little suntrap can be found if you hop over the river to Salford’s Mark Addy, with their riverside terrace that demands to be used of a nice day - particularly as you may see an otter in the Irwell! Resident chef Robert Owen-Brown’s food is some of the best PYT have tasted in this city too, so it’s well worth saving up and treating yourself to a meal after those beers on the terrace.

If the potential to sun yourself and the quality of the ale mean more to your than picturesque surroundings, a trip down Rochdale Road may be in order - ok so it’s basically a car park with tables made from beer crates, but there’s more space at The Angel than anywhere we can think of in the city centre. Well, unless you venture a little further out back down Oxford Street. Rain Bar’s terrace may not be the brightest, but it may well be the biggest - just watch out for those geese on the canal, they’ll have your crisps if you’re not careful!

Of course, we’re not going to try and kid you that the city centre has better beer-garden options than the surrounding suburbs; sometimes the sunshine demands more space, more greenery, and more buzzing insects than the rather cramped city conditions can cater for. At these times, there are a couple of local Lions that call to you. The pub itself may have changed hands more times than we’ve cared to take note of over the years, but the fact remains that the Rampant Lion on Anson Road has a lovely, leafy garden extending from its rather nice conservatory, making it a perfect location for an afternoon whiled away sipping drinks and reading papers. One thing it’s missing, however, is sporting action; specifically that most civilised summertime sport, bowls. Watching a tense game of bowls under a broad blue sky is exactly what you can do at our other choice of Lion, the Red Lion on Wilmslow Road in Withington. There aren’t many things that PYT have missed since moving to the city centre, but the Red Lion is certainly one of them, our ideal spot for a quiet pint while your Sunday roast is in the oven. Perfect.

So next time the sun peeps around the clouds, and the longer evenings call you out for a relaxing drink with friends, remember there’s more to Manchester’s beer gardens and terraces than Sinclair’s. It may have the reasonably priced beers that lure you in, but there are many alternatives that won’t leave you jostling for a spot to stand.

MEET ME IN THE BEER GARDEN