Simon A. MorrisonThe sonic raindrops of ‘Echoes’ ripple out across the banked seating of the Apollo and I have something of an acid flashback… only, there is no LSD involved and this echo bounces me back to a moment I wasn’t even in, the first time. This wonky...
If you spent any significant time in your youth raving on any of this planet’s finest dancefloors, then this collection of psychedelic inflatables might … just might… already make some time of sense. You might also be in with a shout if your name...
There has, of course, been much debate about The Factory, not least of which is that it is no longer called The Factory. I have passed this strange, white, contemporary carbuncle developing on the side of a new concrete block on the banks of the...
There is a moment during this performance when projections – astral projections that give you the feeling you are floating in space – when I catch myself thinking … this is wonderful, but I need to focus on Ryuichi Sakamoto. Only… not only am I not...
I recently read Ged Duffy’s memoir Factory Fairy Tales, detailing his time in Burnage’s finest band (no not that one)… The Stockholm Monsters, the nearly men of Factory Records. One of the interesting things to come out of the back is that, yes, the...
We take our seats for the second act of The Hound of the Baskervilles (hereafter … Hound) and Jake Ferretti, playing Holmes (alongside a mélange of other characters) berates the audience for a Tweet he claims to have seen during the interval, from...
Half way through the first half of this very enjoyable take on the Dick Whittington story, the ultimate pantomime villain appears, stage right. Boris Johnson. It doesn’t take much in wardrobe to recreate our Prime Minister. Pull a mop head from its...
“It’s such a privilege being back on a stage,” says Damon Albarn, half way through tonight’s show. “And extra super lovely for me, being back in Manchester. At the festival.” Indeed, Damon Albarn has become something akin to the spiritual heart of...
Do you have one of those brains that comes pre-equipped with an internal jukebox? Personally, every morning, I wake up and my mind immediately fires up that jukebox, flips in a dime, and on comes some track; a soundtrack as I fix my breakfast and...
Cards on the table, I am somewhat unsettled in both my bones and my city as it is. For parts of this last year, living in the city was like existing in some dystopian Alex Garland movie. Free to walk down the middle of Deansgate, hardly...