Northwest Festival Watch – April 2015

Blackpool’s a lovely place to visit at this time of year. Y’know, the Pleasure Beach, the sun starting to shine across the promenade, the neo-impressionistic ambient compositions and field-recording led drone soundscapes. Hang on…

Between 10 and 12 April, a couple of dozen artists all pushing the boundaries of their respective genres – or, more often than not, totally managing to skip between the whole idea of genre at all – descend across several of the seaside town’s venues in a three-day celebration of outsider sounds. It’s an admirably bold move by promoters Must Die Records in an area that isn’t hugely known for its receptiveness to sound art and avant-garde musical ponderings; but if anything’s going to change that then it’s Other Worlds' carefully curated lineup, which sees everything from mutated strands of noise rock (Evil Blizzard, Sly & The Family Drone) to industrial and psychedelic malevolence (Gnod, Devi/Devas), multi-instrumental weird-pop (Thomas Truax) and everything else that falls through the cracks. Among our favourite discoveries on a lineup with much to explore is Halifax-based Isnaj Dui, who coerces sparsely linked yet rich tapestries of sound from flutes, home-made dulcimers and electronics.

Also catching our eye this month is the presence of That Fucking Tank on the bill for Manchester Punk Festival: not because of their name (though it does remain one of the best out there), but because the baritone guitar/drums twosome have been incinerating audiences on the Leeds circuit and beyond for years; 12 of them, in fact. If you haven’t previously enjoyed a tarring from their potent slurry – thick with sediment and bitter as tonic – you may have encountered Andy Abbott as one of Nope, a Leeds supergroup made up of members of Hookworms and Mucky Sailor. With 40-plus bands at Sound Control over a weekend – including The Murderburgers, who you’ll be relieved to know are a pop-punk band from Scotland, not an option from the menu of a new bar on the NQ/Ancoats border – all for 15 quid, there should be something for even the hardest to please of hardcore heads.

A couple of heads ups for early May: you’ll want to book in advance for the 11th Sounds from the Other City festival, which will be storming Salford on Bank Holiday Sunday (3 May) with its usual madcap concoction of odd, uncompromising indie and electronic music from the UK and beyond – courtesy of the Northwest’s finest DIY promoters – plus visual art happenings and one-off conceptual stunts (see promoters Bad Uncle’s attempt to host a festival within a festival and Deep Hedonia’s ominous-sounding ‘Human Entertainment System’). If one day just isn’t enough for you, then a sturdy showing of local heroes (Dutch Uncles, Hookworms), radio darlings (Emmy the Great, Lucy Rose), retired heartthrobs (Carl Barat, Gaz Coombes) and spiky eccentrics (LoneLady, Joanna Gruesome) on 2 May for Live at Leeds mean you can do both in one weekend with nobbut a short train journey in between.