Terry Christian is an unlikely source for genuine insight. He’s more Manc than an Arndale Centre full of parka-wearing monkey boys. To be fair, he has pretty much crafted a career out of being a professional Mancunian. From fronting 90s Channel 4 pop-culture totem ‘The Word’, through to radio and journalism, Manchester is writ large […]
Tag: A Certain Ratio
As one of the initial signings to Factory Records, ACR were contemporaries of Joy Division. Their output is often overlooked but is hugely influential across genres. Electronic, post-punk, funk. They defy easy categorisation.
2010 has been quite the year for music. Everything Everything emerged from nowhere to knock out an album which more accomplished bands would struggle to match. Badly Drawn Boy returned, and produced his best work in a decade. Supergrass departed stage left, but left behind the unadulterated joy of The Hotrats. And, after a silence […]
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Yes, we turned down Oasis
Staggering onto the stage, in front of 1,000 other students experiencing the effects of advanced alcohol consumption, one of my mates came out with a cracking line. One of the best. He was introducing Mancunian dancefloor pioneers 808 State. For a period in the mid 90s, Lancaster University had an annual set of outdoor end […]
My love of Manchester is no secret. It’s a great city. Second only to New York in ‘places I want to live’. It’s a close second, at that. I totally acknowledge that I have the capacity to bore people with my paean towards the heart of the Industrial North. So, I won’t go down the […]
So that’ll be volume 6 done, then. We’ve had nights which, without necessarily planning it out in advance, have had very different vibes. At times heavier on house, at other times with a reggae undercurrent – part of the beauty of the freethinking movement is the notion of being able to blur genres, and to […]
You’ve probably missed this. My guess is that the music press is barely going to take notice. The NME won’t be screaming a headline, celebrating the tenth studio album of one of the most outstanding contributors to British music over the last 30 years. It’ll go without note – just as the majority of their […]
Volume 2 of freethinking nyc took place at Kush last night. The idea is simple: 2 DJs playing a genre-spanning set of music that you would not normally hear in a club setting. It’s not just about the same thumping hip hop, or chart pop. There’s some great music out there, that if given the […]
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Civic pride
Manchester. I’m not from there, but I still feel a tremendous sense of pride towards the city. Yes, it’s a great place to live, it’s got more decent pubs than an alcoholic could get around in a week, and it’s cheap. But it’s the music that counts. Last night I DJ’d at an event in […]