Ahead of Thursday’s intimate show at Dulcimer, Hey! Manchester catches up with Steve West, front man of Marble Valley and drummer in Pavement.

Hi Steve, how are you?

It’s been an uppin’ downer week here, cold as Big Ben’s hour hand.

Obvious question first: where does the name Marble Valley come from?

My mother’s father grew up on a farm with 12 siblings in Marble Valley, located in the blue ridge mountains of Virginia.

Why did you decide to record the latest album, Slash and Laugh, in Amsterdam?

Remko Schouten, our Sampler guy, owns a fabulous studio named Island Studios there, and he graciously offered to record us.

The songs are incredibly fun and quirky. How do you go about getting these elements into the music?

When we are together it comes out naturally like a burp or hick up. Alone, I just think about these guys playing the songs and go with it.

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Ok, so it’s a whole 12 days off the pace (I’ve been busy booking shiny new shows!) but I finally got round to making a list of my favourite albums of last year:

1. Fever Ray – Fever Ray (Rabid Records)
2. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Vs. Children (Tomlab)
3. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)
4. Au Revoir Simone – Still Night, Still Light (Moshi Moshi)
5. Sleeping States – In The Garden of the North (Bella Union)
6. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest (Warp)
7. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (Domino Recordings)
8. The xx – xx (Young Turks/XL)
9. Miike Snow – Miike Snow (Sony)
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz! (Polydor)
11. At Swim Two Birds – Before You Left (Vespertine & Son)
12. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca (Domino)
13. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Up From Below (Community Records)
14. Alaska in Winter – Holiday (Regular Beat)
15. Taken By Trees – East Of Eden (Rough Trade)

Oh, and one more for good luck – favourite soundtrack of the year:

• Clint Mansell – Moon OST (Black Records)

All these albums bar Grizzly Bear are rather handily available on Spotify – so click here for the Hey! Manchester albums of 2009 playlist.

‘Manchester’s New Order’ is what Dazed witly calls the current crop of local bands. Four of these great new hopes feature on the debut EP by Love & Disaster, a Manchester label with big plans. We asked founder Dan Parrott to explain more.

What inspired you to start a label now – and why 10-inch gatefold?

I have been involved in the Manchester music scene for a few years now, and I think the idea for the label comes from the fact that I have seen a recent and distinctive lack of cohesiveness in the new Manchester representing itself to the outside world. People say this every year but I genuinely do believe that it is Manchester’s time to be at the forefront of the UK music scene again, with a collection of amazing new bands whose sights are set only towards the future.

I would like to think that our first record is how we mean to go on, and is hopefully more than the sum of its parts. The bands are all at different stages of their careers but it was a mutual respect and friendship that pulled them together. The decision for who was on the record fell to the bands as much as me. Hopefully this EP puts the spotlight on these artists as well as the city and for the right reasons, not falling into the usual Manchester cliches. Most of these guys were too young to go to the Hacienda anyway so they don’t even feel the need to try and ’swear they were there’ – they were busy watching Blue Peter or something.

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