Northwest Gig Highlights – February 2015

Right, c’mon, that’s enough sitting around indoors lamenting the inevitable collapse of your foolishly concocted new year’s resolutions and hiding from weather that’s doing exactly what it does for most of the year ’round here. It’s February fercrissakes! If the region’s promoters can untangle themselves from their winter beards to get out the house then so can you.

Horns at various levels of protrusion this month please for Viet Cong (not so much), a Niskala/Barberos double bill (a fair amount) and Hawk Eyes (full extension). Viet Cong at Manchester’s Deaf Institute (5 Feb) bring a sort of head-nodding, Pitchfork-approved style of sonic malevolence, all artfully implemented time signatures and chiming guitar tones. Niskala and Barberos at Kraak (6 Feb), meanwhile, promise a four drum-kit assault (that’s two per band, maths fans). The former fuse seemingly incongruous post-hardcore and gamelan influences together to fierce effect, while Liverpool’s Barberos work in hypnotic synchronisation to create a mutated hybrid of noise rock, techno and krautrock. Leeds stalwarts Hawk Eyes play it far more down the middle, but latest record Everything Is Fine thunders through the basics of hard rock arguably better than at any point in their career to date. They play Maguire’s Pizza Bar in Liverpool (12 Feb).

Two highly individual personalities visit the region, stylistically different, but both sharing the art of telling stories through an abstract prism. Former Teardrop Explodes frontman Julian Cope recently launched his acid-trip road novel One Three One, but he’ll be returning to his musical psychedelic troupes at the Epstein Theatre (5 Feb). Northeast songwriter Richard Dawson, meanwhile, is a master at drawing on his own personal past to reflect an off-kilter take on the present, as proved on beguiling latest LP, Nothing Is Important. He plays the Shipping Forecast, Liverpool (18 Feb) as well as Soup Kitchen in Manchester a week earlier (11 Feb). Lyricism of a plainer but no less personal kind has long been the forte of Ryan Adams, who, after a classy turn at Manchester’s Albert Hall last September, returns to the Northwest with his sophisticated rock show, this time calling at Liverpool Guild of Students (1 Mar), which has just reopened after a £14.5-million spit-and-polish. Should suit the godson of alt.country just fine.

And a moment’s silence, please, to reflect on the majesty of the godfather of neo-soul’s first album in 14 years, Black Messiah, and his much-anticipated live return. Thank you. D’Angelo plays Manchester Apollo (18 Feb).

Back on Merseyside, the Liverpool Jazz Festival kicks off at the Kazimier, with recent Mercury nominees GoGo Penguin (25 Feb) sure to set an impressive benchmark for the ensuring three days – turn to listings for full details on who else is playing. On a similarly freeform bent, This Heat drummer Charles Hayward takes the results of his 2014 Islington Mill residency on a short UK tour this month, including calling into the Kazimier Garden (20 Feb).

If nothing else, this shortest of months provides a chance to run the rule on two acts we placed favourably in our December Albums of the Year list. First up, Ex Hex call into Soup Kitchen (12 Feb), mixing a familiar DC hardcore urgency – they hail from historical punk hotbed Washington – with an uncanny knack for effortlessly infectious choruses. (And while we’re on the subject of a catchy chorus – the silver-tongued Wave Pictures, surely one of the hardest working bands in the UK, call in at The Kazimier on 18 Feb; drop by for gymnastic wordplay and Moleskine wit.) Meanwhile, Baltimore four-piece Dope Body visit Islington Mill Gallery (15 Feb) for a matinee show, bringing all the blood-and-guts punk of their latest record Lifer with them.

Finally, the end of February is punctuated by two forward-thinking multi-day festivals, with Salford University’s Sonic Fusion Festival (19-22 Feb) a convenient precursor to FutureEverything (25-28 Feb). Sonic Fusion’s programme mixes more traditional routes through classical music with events more futurist-leaning – such as a live streamed trans-Atlantic performance between C_LEns (Columbia Laptop Ensemble) and ALE (Adelphi Laptop Ensemble), featuring animal sounds from Chicago and Salford. Digi-culture-music-fest FutureEverything, meanwhile, marks its 20-year milestone with a live programme that has properly come into its own the last three years. A recent emphasis on supporting artists’ continuing relationships has yielded some exciting-sounding collaborations, most notably between Koreless and visual wiz Emmanuel Biard (who last year teamed up with Evian Christ). We recommend basically all of the programme, but keep your sharpest eye out for a rare appearance from LoneLady and, at the opening gala, Memo Akten’s brand new commission, Simple Harmonic Motion for 16 Percussionists. Be sure to take advantage of the free events, too, including Renzo Spiteri investigating the resonances of household and large-scale objects and Liverpool-based collective Deep Hedonia’s ‘Unresolved Projects’ showcase, featuring the haunted mutterings of both Tri Angle’s Boothroyd and Modern Love’s Rainer Veil. The late-night/clubs programme is also huge, with Lee Gamble and Anthony Naples at Soup Kitchen on the Friday, and Saturday’s closing party one fit to crack chasms deep into the floor of Soup Kitchen with Bloom and the PAN label’s M.E.S.H.

And finally, a couple of artists you’ll have seen gracing our pages/website lately – this issue’s front cover, in fact, in the form of sororal duo Ibeyi, who appear at Manchester’s Night & Day cafe on 22 Feb; and local label Gizeh Records’ signees Last Harbour, whose video for single Before the Ritual is up at theskinny.co.uk as we speak/I write/you read, and who launch their debut album Caul at Soup Kitchen on Valentine’s Day (n’aw). For so short a month, this embarrassment of riches is genuinely blush-worthy.

DO NOT MISS
Kate Tempest, The Kazimier, Liverpool, 18 Feb
London poet/rapper Kate Tempest’s past couple of years have seen her stitch a patchwork of projects, each piece eagerly received by her public. Starting out as a word-of-mouth phenomenon, she came to prominence with the publication of Brand New Ancients, her long-form poem playing with classical myth (which was then adapted as a stage theatre piece); then, she set about recording her debut album, Everybody Down, which came out on Big Dada in spring 2014 and was promptly nominated for the Mercury Prize. While touring, she found the time to finish her latest collection of poetry, Hold Your Own, edited by literary giant Don Paterson and published through Picador last autumn; and now she’s back on the road again, the appetite for her street-smarts and rousing stage presence seemingly insatiable. (Somewhere amid all this, presumably, she’s putting the finishing touches to her debut novel.)

The empathetic rap and warm buzzsaw beats of Everybody Down should find an ideal home in the up-close-and-personal Kazimier; as her patter builds, you want to feel those caught, coughed consonants; as that stout, indignant bass takes hold, you want to assume its swagger, move with it, breathe it. Take advantage of the chance to see this young firebrand in the first flush of fame. [Laura Swift]