Sounds From The Other City, Salford’s celebration of new music, returns on Sunday 2 May – and this year it’s expanding. If you’re lucky enough to bag one of the £15 passes, you may well find yourself watching space rock in Islington Mill, a bike orchestra in The Salvation Army, ex-shoegazers in St Phil’s Church, and even poetry in the excellent ale pub The New Oxford. Here’s the one-day festival’s first daytime (3pm-11pm) announcements:

Lamb and Wolf at Islington Mill (club space)
Chrome Hoof
Bo Ningen
Divorce
Breaking Colts
Klaus Kinski

Mind On Fire vs. Wotgodforgot at The Salvation Army
Seaming
The Laze
The Legend Of The Seven Black Tentacles
Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra

SWN vs. Hey! Manchester at St Phil’s Church
Damon & Naomi
Jesca Hoop (solo)
Y Niwl

Room Tones at Islington Mill (engine room)
The Boats
Danny Norbury
Dean McPhee

Ya Mamas Cooking at The Crescent
Liz Green
Serious Sam Barrett & David Broad
Elvis In Disguise
Zacc Rogers
‘Rockabilly Bingo’

Paradox at The New Oxford
Neil Bell
Mike Garry
Neil Campbell
Chris Killen

Bring On The Dancing Horses at The Old Pint Pot (upstairs)
Egyptian Hip Hop
Wu Lyf

Postcards From Manchester at The Old Pint Pot (downstairs)
The Rural Alberta Advantage
Islet
Help Stamp Out Loneliness

Comfortable On A Tightrope at The Angel Centre
Talk Normal
Pheremoans
Levert
Way Through
Sex Hands
Dinner Party
Waiters

And rather than just an over-crowded Islington Mill, SFTOC will be offering three different options by night:

The Old Pint Pot
Upstairs – Bring On The Dancing Horse vs. Now Wave
Downstairs – Under Achievers Please Try Harder vs. Pull Yourself Together

The Kings Arms
Upstairs – Mind On Fire, Herbal Sessions, This City Is Ours & Drum Music
Downstairs – Naive Melody vs. Stop Making Sense

The Black Lion
Upstairs – Contort Yourself residents party
Downstairs – Bollox vs. Bad Dancer

There’s also a Mount Pleasant Exhibition at the Gallery Space in Islington Mill, plus a ‘Box Office’ artist project to be announced. To stay up to date, join the Facebook group and follow SFTOC on Twitter. Tickets are available from Piccadilly Records, Islington Mill and Quaytickets.com.

This is shaping up to be the busiest musical weekend in Manchester, with more and more events coming to our attention. Here’s what we’ve spotted:

• The previously mentioned Hungry Pigeon festival, which will have an outdoor stage in Piccadilly Gardens. Friday-Sunday, £19.50 weekend or £10 per day. Tickets
• The Eurocultured street festival, with two outdoor stages and five venues around New Wakefield Street. Sunday-Monday £3/2 each day. Website
• Friends of Manchester summer party, which features 11 bands on two stages in the Chorlton Irish Club. Friday, 7pm-1am. £7. Facebook
• Hedge at St Margaret’s Church in Whalley Range, with John Smith and Denis Jones. Sunday. £8. Myspace
• A Switchflicker night at the Deaf Institute, with three bands plus DJs until 3am. Saturday. £5. Website
• Strummercamp, which brings the likes of Billy Bragg, the Damned, the Alarm and Goldblade to the Manchester Rugby Club in Cheadle Hulme. Friday-Sunday. £59.50 weekend or £30 per day. Website
• John Cooper Clarke will be DJing and ‘taking to the mic to tell us what the tracks mean to him with his comical and intelligent verse’ at South. Friday. £5. Facebook
• And of course Hey! Manchester’s own celebration of folk music at – where else? – Chorlton’s folk bar Dulcimer. Sunday, 6pm-midnight. £10. Website

Plus there are some more straight-up gigs by the likes of Morrissey, Black Lips, Akron/Family, Inspector Tapehead and Jean Michel Jarre. Good luck planning your weekend!

Salford’s only new music festival is back! Or is it in fact Salford’s only music festival? Either way, Sounds From The Other City returns for its fifth outing on Bank Holiday Sunday, 3 May. We’ll be there supporting what is one of (Greater) Manchester’s best one-day events – assuming we can get tickets before it inevitably sells.

This year there are 10 promoters involved, with Terrorist, Hoya:Hoya, Your Mama’s Cookin, Bad Uncle and Huw Stephens among them. Here’s how their various stages are lining up…

LAMB AND WOLF @ THE KINGS ARMS

Sleeping States
Chops
Mazes
Wulf Wulf
Banjo or Freakout
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YOUR MAMA’S COOKIN @ THE SALFORD ARMS

Earnie’s Rhythm Section
Vinny and The Curse
JD Smith
Tom Attah
Zacc Rogers
Jack Pudding & Hans Abattoir

+ Rockabilly Bingo, Doo Wop Raffle, Jump-blues Bake-off, Vintage Stalls and more…

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MIND ON FIRE & HOYA:HOYA @ THE MARK ADDY

Live artwork by SKETCH CITY artists
Focused Lights Installation by VJ CYCLOPTIC
YouTube AV set by NORVUN DEVOLUTION
Illum Sphere (Fat City / Hoya:Hoya)
LA77 (live – Timbreland / Mind on Fire)
Mind on Fire House Band (live)

Resident DJs from Mind on Fire & Hoya:Hoya
JONNY DUB / RYAN HUNN / WOLI WOLS / LOGA / ZOIR

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BAD UNCLE @ UNITED REFORMED CHURCH

Fonik (Performing to Ghosts)
Gnod (Performing to The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda)
Sam and the Plants (live improvisation to animation)
A Middle Sex (performing live to Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Lodger)
SoPhIeS pIgEoNS (live set)
David A Jaycock

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COMFORTABLE ON A TIGHTROPE @ SALFORD RESTORATION OFFICE

Lexie Mountain Boys
Former Bullies
Sir Yes Sir

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GOLDEN LAB @ FROM SPACE

The Skaters
OAWRE
Bridget Hayden
Serfs

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BRING ON THE DANCING HORSES @ ROVERS RETURN

Plugs
Cats in Paris
The Invisible
Young British Artists
Hot Knives
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SWN @ SACRED TRINITY CHURCH

Marina and the Diamonds
Gallops!
Peggy Sue
Sweet Baboo
The Tombots
Nia Morgan

Jakokoyak DJ set
Huw Stephens DJ set

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TERRORIST UPSTAIRS @ BLACK LION

Legowelt
Digitonal
Dorian Wood
Troubleshooter
Mark Jones
English Electric
GordonTinnitus

Our picks from the lineup so far are Sleeping States, Mazes, Young British Artists, Banjo or Freakout, Sam and the Plant, Gnod, Cats in Paris and Former Bullies.

The day runs from 3pm until late and tickets are just £12.50 from QuayTickets.com and Piccadilly Records on Oldham Street.

Local promoters Mushaboom Folk have just announced an event happening later this month, and it looks to be a cracker. This festival will celebrate the humble ukulele with performances from…

• Jeremy Warmsley – half English, half French songwriter whose debut is out on Transgressive Records
• Sparky Deathcap – Manchester-raised, London-based musician and cartoonist
• Meursault – ‘think Frightened Rabbit meets the Postal Service’, from Edinburgh
• Kathryn Edwards – who also has a stall in the Manchester Craft and Design Centre
• Jam on Bread – ‘singing ukukele songs about Jason Donovan, Manetees and Swedish indie bands’ apparently!

We asked Phill from Mushaboom why it was time Manchester got its own ukulele festival:

Now is the perfect time to celebrate the mighty uke. It is a glorious instrument, and it seems some of the coolest musicians around today agree with me: Beirut, the Wave Pictures, Darren Hayman, Herman Dune, Noah & The Whale… and check out the amazing Dent May, on Paw Tracks.

And here’s what he’s most looking forward to:

Jeremy is brilliant, and I know he’s looking forward to ukeing it up. But for me, Meursault are the the must-see. I found their debut album Pissing In Bonfires/Kissing with Tongues in Vinyl Exchange in December, and have not stopped listening since! A perfect blend of ukuleles, guitars and electronica. Heartbreaking with every word uttered.

The festival takes places from 7.30pm on Sunday 22 February at Moho Live on Tib Street. There’ll also be a prize draw to win yourself a uke – and home-made cupcakes.