Hey! Manchester promotes gigs by folk, Americana and experimental bands from around the world in Manchester, England. Read more here, see below for our latest shows, check out our previous shows, contact us, or join our mailing list, above.

Upcoming shows: Daudi Matsiko... Jolie Holland... Christof van der Ven + Niamh Regan... Ariel Sharratt & Mathias Kom... Giant Sand... Melanie Baker... Sophie Hutchings... Jerron Paxton... Ghostly Kisses... Sounds From The Other City 2024... Francis of Delirium... The Buffalo Skinners... The Handsome Family... Memorial... His Lordship... Florry... Bad Bad Hats... Dana Gavanski... Caoilfhionn Rose... The Lovely Eggs... Rain Parade... Charlie Parr... Ryley Walker... Erland Cooper...

When: 7.30pm on Monday 1 August 2016
Where: The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham Street, Manchester M4 1LE

We’re delighted to presenting a rare headline show with Irma Vep – plus guests dbh and Secret Admirer!

Irma-Vep-Castle-Manchester

Irma Vep is a loner, a joker, a roamer, a ribald construct riddled with both earnest anxiety and mercurial songwriting talent birthed by a young Edwin Stevens in Llanfairfechan, North Wales. Having since fully grown into Irma Vep and now residing in Manchester, Stevens’ discography has expanded to document every aspect of his music, from ecstatically free group experiments to bare, sparse songwriting that cuts to the quick, shorn of ornament or pretence.

Much Irma Vep feels like what ‘classic’ music should feel like if it weren’t so Classic. Each record, each song and each performance exists as an evolving drama. Instant classic The Jerk (Great Pop Supplement) is a case in point. Heightened by Velvets-style violin scrapings and Stevens’ silky guitar improvisations, the song’s real power is the towering insecurity turned into an thrilling, hypnotic storyline. Irma Vep’s latest LP Disappointment (Golden Lab) contains both Stevens’ most wild excursions into avant-guitar landscaping and his most ‘accomplished’ songwriting. The title track flirts with Richard Thompson-esque guitar and rhythms, with Stevens’ cracked vocal recalling a more introspective Bill Callahan, but Irma Vep’s delivery, off-the-cuff and vibrant, is all his own. At other times the listener is taken deep into a wormhole of tranced-out rock music on the fringes of chaos.

Having bedded down into Manchester’s bourgeoning DIY scene, Stevens moonlights in several other groups (Sex Hands, Klaus Kinski, Desmadrados…), bringing with him a instantly recognisable guitar language. However it’s in Irma Vep that his most life-affirming, troubling and thrilling music is made.

– Michael Kasparis, 2015

Main support comes from dbh. Awesome composer and man-of-many-bands, this understated virtuoso can also boil it all down to just one guitar. He released the marvellous Time Flies LP on Crowfoot Records, and, recently, the possibly even more marvellous Mood, on Thread Recordings.

Opening the show is Secret Admirer, the new solo-project from Nick Ainsworth of Former Bullies and Dinner Party fame. He has recently released a 20-song self-titled tape via Belfast’s CF Records.

Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from the bar, Common (both no booking fee), Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Billetto.co.ukWeGotTickets.comTicketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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All shows are 18+ unless otherwise stated.