Other Worlds, Blackpool, 7-10 April

Live Review by Duncan Harman | 20 Apr 2016

It’s easy to sneer at Blackpool. A funny wee place; wander along the prom, and you’re assaulted with adjectives. Kitsch. Garish. Tacky. Kiss me kwik; dress up as a ballerina, meat and two veg none-too-discreetly fettered, and you’re hardly likely to stand out from the crowd.

So thank heavens for Other Worlds. Bijou a festival it may be, hidden up a couple of side streets as if a little self-conscious, but such is the sensual breadth on offer, the nuance behind celebration comes to mind. Taking an audio-visual approach to putting on a show, there’s the opportunity to think. To breathe. To enjoy art on its terms, not yours. Laura Cannell has a way with a violin that’s quite uncanny, her performance at the Grundy Gallery speaking of intrigue. Inspired by folklore and stringent acoustics, alternating between fiddle and two recorders played concurrently, her compositions have a remote, brooding quality that has the audience rapt.  

In fact, we’re treated with quite the range of strings. And whilst live playing against a looped sampler isn’t an especially novel way of taking to the stage, there is something very much special in the manner by which Manchester’s Elizabeth Preston wields her cello, her clear and linear sense of songcraft illustrated with impromptu percussion and vocal yelps.

Elizabeth’s embracing set takes place amidst knowledgeable punters at the Bootleg Social Club, the hub for four nights of entertainment ranging from fluid to quirky and back again (indeed, The Skinny’s only regret is that it paid but a flying visit, unfortunately missing Thursday’s line-up curated by the Dubai-based collective Tse Tse Fly as well as Sunday teatime with the likes of Left Hand Cuts Off The Right). Heather Leigh, seated at her pedal steel guitar, represents an acerbic honesty that stands in contrast to much of the hi-jinks featured elsewhere on the line-up, be it the incendiary electronica of Platemaker – his beats forsaken for white noise, and a gravity well of incendiary dimensions – or the agit-camp of Bristol’s The Perverts (whose cover of I Will Survive is one-part Hazel O’Conner to two-parts headbutt).

Also (as the stag-do ballerinas on the seafront would attest), Blackpool certainly likes dressing up. Saturday’s fizzy cocktail includes the challenging and exotically-monikered Filthy Turd, whose box-of-tricks gimp rock (with papier-mâché balaclava) is uncompromising (if not exactly successful), followed by Anglo-Korean trio Tirikilatops, all shaman masks and bubblegum yee-hah, front woman Bom Carrot dressed as an extra- huggable Godzilla. Yes, there’s backing tapes involved, but such is the sense of fun they engineer that they really are endearing, tracks exalting the importance of happiness and serenading UFOs demanding of giant smiles.

The Bongoleeros wear masks (of course), their grinding soundscapes rattling fillings… whilst Paddy Stear manages to go one better, fashioned as if a Mesopotamian interpretation of a kitsch sci-fi baddie behind banks of equipment both analogue and digital.

It’s all a little noisy – in a good way, Richard Dawson and Gum Takes Tooth taking different routes through sound, but both equally rewarding. But perhaps the most buzzing offering from the Bootleg’s basement features Newcastle’s Fret! Compared to much else on the bill they’re somewhat conventional – guitar, bass, drums, few vocals, and no masks. Instead; bass-driven, amplified maths, material from the recent Killing Susan EP resplendent, reminiscent of Robert Hampson.

“It’s great to have something so different happening in Blackpool,” one guest tells us between sets. And she’s right; the swing between cerebral and the caustic adding to experience; it’s not often you can dip your toes in bleeding, thoughtful acoustics one minute (such as the Breathing Space exhibition at the Central Library, a quorum of speakers in each corner of the room filling the space warmth and data), then the next enjoy something as blatantly silly as Mrs Cakehead, whose trombone and Lancastrian toasting represents the rail replacement bus service of DIY ska. But that’s the attraction of Other Worlds; a blend of the weird and the wonderful that triggers grins-aplenty.

http://otherworldsfestival.co.uk