Sounds From The Other City: 2017 preview

Multi-venue arts and music festival Sounds from the Other City brings together some of the North's most exciting local promoters to curate individual stages along Salford's Chapel Street and beyond. Find your way around this year's event with our guide to the various stages, and their peculiar unearthly qualities...

Now Wave

Habitat: Unit 5, Regent Trading Estate

Strengths: Predicting the stars of the future. Promoters Now Wave have put on early gigs for the likes of The xx, Sleigh Bells and Wild Beasts, and in the past they’ve brought hot names including Pumarosa and PINS to Sounds from the Other City. Of this year’s line-up, then, you can fully expect Happy Meal LTD, Goat Girl, Shame and Plastic Mermaids to be tipped for greatness.

Special powers: Time travel. Now Wave have been conjuring ‘the sounds of the near future’ for several years now, and we still don’t understand how they do it.

Grey Lantern

Habitat: Unit 2, Regent Trading Estate

Strengths: Ferocity. Specialising in bracing, experimental rock and genre-bending but always melodic and accessible contemporary music, Grey Lantern present artists who feel urgent, exciting and determined. Flamingods and Vanishing Twin head up their picks for this year’s festival, alongside Virginia Wing, Snapped Ankles, Farhood and Melting.

Special powers: Freaky voodoo. More than one third eye has been known to open at a Grey Lantern gig.

Bad Uncle

Habitat: The Egerton Arms

Strengths: Volume. Whoever you see at a Bad Uncle show, expect them to be loud. One of our favourite local bands is on their stage this year – don’t miss high-energy, all-action indie rockers Patty Hearst, or Leeds’ spectrally minimal post-punkas Drahla for that matter.

Special powers: Levitation. Which is to say, this line-up'll have you walking on air.

Hey! Manchester

Habitat: St Philip's Church

Strengths: Cockle-warming. Having led the way on Manchester’s folk scene for years, putting on spellbinding acoustic and Americana artists and encouraging audiences to snuggle up in some of the city’s most intimate venues, Hey! Manchester gigs are known for their inclusive atmosphere. Hannah Peel, The Lovely Eggs, Fazerdaze and The Proper Ornaments lead the line-up for 2017.

Special powers: Hygge. Hey! Manchester mastered the art of creating warm, fuzzy feelings long before bloody hygge came along.

Good Afternoon present The Love Cave

Habitat: The New Oxford

Strengths: Seduction. The Good Afternoon crew promise a love-in of gigantic proportions for this year’s SFTOC, with appropriately named guests Kiss Me Again and Slag Heap Disco.

Special powers: Hypnosis. Last year’s pink balloon-festooned Good Afternoon party had its attendees under a spell, dressed head to toe in sequins and gyrating repetitively for hours. Nobody seemed to leave all day. Definitely something weird going on there.

The Wonderful Sound of Aficionado

Habitat: Islington Mill

Strengths: Bringing the vibes. Longtime party promoters in Manchester, Aficionado know how to work a room and join the SFTOC line-up for the first time this year. They’ve booked Horsebeach (Manchester’s answer to Wild Nothing), Coral-guitarist-turned-solo-artist Lee Southall, ambient post-rock outfit July Skies and former Proud Mary man Nev Cottee for the Mill’s main room so far.

Special powers: ‘Jazz-donk’. Listen to releases on Aficionado Recordings to experience it for yourself.

Heavenly Records

Habitat: The Old Pint Pot (upstairs)

Strengths: Topping the charts. Heavenly Records are responsible for key early releases from big-hitters like Manic Street Preachers and Doves, not to mention home to rising Wirralian wonders Hooton Tennis Club, and if the lush shoegaze-y sound of recent signings The Orielles isn’t made to fill rooms and hearts then we don’t know what is. Catch this young trio plus Utrecht’s equally fine Amber Arcades on Heavenly’s stage this year, joined by Ali Horn, Britain, Creatures and TVAM.

Special powers: Transcendence. The clue’s in the name.

Sham Bodie & Ping Pong Club

Habitat: The Salford Arms

Strengths: Bringing the LOLs, obviously. Comedy club Sham Bodie are well-loved for their variety show-style line-ups, matching the best emerging comic talent with musicians and, of course, free hot dogs. They kick off their bill with the man, the legend, Birthday Bread Man, plus delightful duo Sam & Tom and the even more delightful Delightful Sausage.

Special powers: The ability to bend logic into strange new forms – as Black Sabbath would have it, Sham Bodie are true masters of reality.

Family Tree

Habitat: The Angel Centre

Strengths: Friendliness. As you might have guessed from the name, it always feels like a family affair at a Family Tree gig. If you want to find some new chums as well as some new favourite artists, pop by their stage and get pally with the sounds of electro-kraut noisemaker Sammartino, and surfpop maestros Katie Pham & the Moonbathers.

Special powers: Preternatural levels of empathy. Family Tree know just what you need, even before you do.

The Beauty Witch

Habitat: The Crescent

Strengths: Fury. Expect frantic fuzz, speeding psychedelia and excoriating walls of sound from these noiseniks, who’ve previously brought out-there explorers like The Cosmic Dead, MiSTOA POLTSA and Shit and Shine to Manchester. Bookings including Bruxa, Casual Nun and Stupid Cosmonaut set the pace for a visceral ride at this year’s festival.

Special powers: Extraterrestrial intelligence. The Beauty Witch seek their sounds somewhere beyond this dimension.

Tru Luv

Habitat: Bexley Square tent

Strengths: Community. A still-growing collective of music lovers, Tru Luv’s activities are spread across their fine work as blog, digital label and gig promoters, dedicated in each instance to providing a platform for new music. Here they’ve gathered a high quality line-up including urban jazz artist IAMDDB and trap-centric rapper Sleazy F Baby; such philanthropic displays of public spirit surely cannot count for nothing.

Special powers: Divine intervention. As the occupants of Sounds from the Other City’s only outdoor stage, Tru Luv will have the sole responsibility of making sure it doesn’t rain. But we reckon they can manage it.

The White Hotel presents: 2000AD

Habitat: The King’s Arms

Strengths: Secrecy. The White Hotel may sound fairly self-explanatory as a concept, but the nightclub’s usual base is tucked away on an industrial estate, 20 minutes’ walk away from SFTOC’s main hub, where they’ve previously hosted acts like Factory Floor and Demdike Stare. Their King’s Arms outpost, however, plays host to live performances from ambient pop types Jupiter-C, dubbed-out scientists Space Afrika and Argentinian partystarters The Rebel.

Special powers: Meticulousness. A published author, White Hotel’s Austin Collings also helped compile the autobiography of Prestwich post-punk hero Mark E Smith. Given The Fall’s labyrinthine history, that’s a herculean undertaking in itself.

Samarbeta

Habitat: Salford Cathedral

Strengths: Wizardry. For the last few years at Sounds from the Other City, programmers Samarbeta have encouraged truly magical collaborations, bringing together members of the BBC Philharmonic Ensemble with mesmeric minimal Liverpool outfit Ex-Easter Island Head.

Special powers: Persuasion. This year they’ve convinced wondrous dark folk musician Laura Cannell to join the Phil and Ex-Easter Island Head, for a special show in Salford’s beautiful cathedral.

Comfortable on a Tightrope

Habitat: United Reformed Church

Strengths: Balance. Comfortable on a Tightrope have managed to toe that line for many years now, bringing a pleasing mixture of local and international talent to enchanting spaces across Manchester, including two Omaha cult heroes: spine-tingling craftsman Simon Joyner (an inspiration to both Beck and Bright Eyes) and songwriting genius/lo-fi aesthete David Nance.

Special powers: Mind-reading. How did these guys know how much we’d love to see Simon Joyner at Sounds from the Other City?

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Further stages and activities come from Night Fantasy, hosting the Old Pint Pot's upstairs afterparty with a very special guest; spoken word collective Young Identity, who'll be popping up around the festival site with impromptu performances, and NTS Radio, who're manning the gallery space at Islington Mill with only the edgiest sounds. Hebden Bridge lot Ink Folk are holding the fort for the Islington Mill afterparty; Sacred Tapes are occupying the Mill's Engine House and T'OPP Collective will be doing weird and wonderful things with the downstairs of the Pint Pot. Oh, and there's gonna be a pizza party. A pizza party. All in the spirit of Sounds...