It’s with great excitement that we’re welcoming Mr Willy Mason, the esteemed New York singer-songwriter, to our stage at this year’s Sounds From The Other City festival. We thought we’d build up the anticipation further by catching up with Willy in the meantime…

Hey Willy, how’s it going? Where are you and what are you doing at this very moment?

I’m in the US doing boring things getting ready for my trip overseas. While I was on tour the phone got shut off and there’s no hot water. My bus needs new brake-lines and my girlfriend’s truck just got towed away. Spring is a very exciting time of year. As soon as I get all this figured out I might get to record some stuff for tour but it’s not looking so good since I’m flying out on Friday, thanks for asking. Continue reading »

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.

Following on from its inaugural year in 2008, Un-convention returns in June to bring independent music debate and performance to the Sacred Trinity Church  in Salford.

Last year’s event complemented the more mainstream In The City conference – but with its early summer slot this time around, the event is even more tempting. Here’s what’s on offer panels-wise (click on each for more information):

• The Artists Panel
• ‘Outside the Box’
• The Modern Role Of Collection Agencies
• ‘Music as Culture’
• Bands As Enterprise
• It’s Easier to Ask For Forgiveness

And the music programme isn’t bad either, with Everything Everything, The Loose Salute, Arthur Delaney, Magic Arm, Jake Flowers and I Am Kloot among the potential highlights.

Plenty of familiar names are signed up: Peter Hook, John Robb, Jay Taylor, Howard Monk from The Local… plus BBC DJ Tom Robinson is lending his support in the form of an Introducing show featuring 22 tracks from artists involved, and sessions with Kyte, Sisters of Transistors and Gallops.

Un-convention 2009 kicks off next Thursday, 4 June, and continues throughout Friday and Saturday. A full pass costs £40 and live music tickets cost £7.50 per night or £18 for all three nights. Check out the Un-convention site for more details, and follow the event on Twitter.

We just heard about a gig at Salford’s Islington Mill tomorrow night and, rather than trying to sound all knowledgeable about it, we thought we’d pass on details word for word:

Thursday 7 May gives us the second in the Salford Concert Series – Claus Van Bebber. This German-based artist of longstanding comes directly out of and is contemporary to the late 70s Milan Knizak ‘Broken Music’ school of playing physically ruined records. In 1982 he co-founded the artists’ collective Heinrich Mucken, an intermedia platform animated by a handful of experimental musicians, visual and performance artists. Joining in will be Mick Beck, Ben Gwilliam, Sonic Pleasure, and Matt Wand, whose many talents are far too lengthy to list here, you will just have to come along and witness for yourselves, concert starts 7.30 pm on Thursday 7 May and costs £5.

The mill is just off Chapel Street in Salford – a leisurely 15-minute walk from Deansgate.

It’s the first Bank Holiday weekend in May, which means Sounds From The Other City is happening tomorrow, Sunday, along Salford’s Chapel Street. Each of its previous four years have sold out – and 2009 looks to be no different. Here’s a note from one of the organisers:

Just a quick message to say that the last 40 Sounds From the Other City tickets went in Piccadilly Records on Firiday afternoon. Quay tickets is sold out now so this is your last chance to get hold of one.

There’s no guestlist and there won’t be any tickets available on the day. Stage times for the event, which kicks off at 3pm, are up on the SFTOC Facebook group.