Northwest Gig Highlights – August 2015

There's one thing we'll say for the quieter summer months – with the usual suspects off the road and in the fields, you've the opportunity to take a punt on something new. Some unexpected patterns emerge, too; for example, if you feel like it you can enjoy a string of formative punk rock, from The Offspring (O2 Apollo, 25 Aug) to Bad Religion (The Ritz, 3 Aug) via Misfits (Club Academy, 2 Aug).

The Kazimier, as ever, leads the way in programming interesting, conceptual bills, this month offering the only northern date on the first UK tour of Arthur Russell's Instrumentals (see our Do Not Miss, below, for more details). The venue is really preparing for its closure at the end of this year with aplomb; this month they've the Liverpool debut from Bronx rapper KRS-One (7 Aug), while in September ambient artist William Basinski presents two new compositions as part of a quarterly series, Saisonscape, which investigates the seasons through sonic art, and in October, Xiu Xiu play the music of Twin Peaks, fulfilling the fever dreams of sensitive outcasts everywhere. More on those gigs in the next couple of issues.

As evident on our cover, Liverpool International Music Festival – or LIMF for short – also offers some quality lineups this month (the aforementioned Arthur Russell concert is in association with them). Besides their tribute to Gil Scott-Heron – skip back to page 10 for more on that – there's Basement Jaxx on 28 Aug and Katy B on 30 Aug (both playing in Sefton Park), while admired local songwriter Natalie McCool appears twice over the weekend, at the Epstein Theatre on 28 Aug and on the itsliverpool stage in Sefton Park on the 30th. If you're keen to make the most of the weekend, club promoters Circus take over Sefton Park's leafy Palm House on the night of Sat 29 Aug, with Lewis Boardman among others bringing groove to the glade, while Cologne's Lena Willikens, recently occupier of a prestigious FACT mag mix slot, will be found among the fronds the night after.

For those having a chilled month in Manchester, this could be a good time to pop your head into Stuart McCallum's residency at Matt & Phreds (19 Aug). The alternative jazz guitarist and Cinematic Orchestra mainstay has maintained a residency at the iconic jazz club for a few years with an evolving cast of musicians; he's currently joined by versatile vocalist Rioghnach Connolly, and, for tonight, violinist Emma Sweeney. Entry is free, but get down at a decent time to secure a table, some wine and a civilised time.

Manchester also enjoys two long-awaited returns at either end of the indie spectrum this month, in the form of Micachu & The Shapes at Soup Kitchen (28 Jul) and Sufjan Stevens at the O2 Apollo (31 Aug). Having come clattering up through the tail-end of last decade's gutsy London underground with her band of found-sound misfits, Mica Levi was most recently responsible for the chilling, alienated score to Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johannsson as a predatory extra-terrestial – and tonight will see her present new material from upcoming album Good Bad Happy Sad. If you're either very lucky or very dedicated and have picked this Skinny up on the day we're published, then you have a matter of hours – perhaps minutes! – to get yourself to this show. Unless it's midnight, in which case the outlook is dim, my friend. American indie's leading expert in wist and melancholy, Sufjan Stevens comes to the UK off the back of recent LP, Carrie & Lowell (review here) his first in five years and a tender, precise exploration of his relationship with his mother, the titular Carrie. While Stevens has been seen to do little wrong for most of his career, even by those standards the new album was hailed as a return to form; hopefully the cavernous bowels of the Apollo won't dwarf the tinderbox delicacy of tracks like Fourth of July.

Surburbanites and people who like the tram can head to Chorlton's Strange Brew bar on Barlow Moor Road for a performance from local noir-folk talent Elle Mary, who'll be there with both her stirring voice and her band, The Bad Men (30 Jul). Levenshulme's wonderful Klondyke Bowls Club, meanwhile, welcomes another 'Box Social' all-dayer, this time headlined by Glasgow synth duo Happy Meals (recently nominated for the Scottish Album of the Year Award) and also featuring the criminally overlooked From the Kites of San Quentin, with their head-melting drone and glitch.

Finally, at what will surely be a very special show, multi-instrumentalist Peter Broderick appears solo and performing songs from his new album, Colours of the Night, in the intimate red-brick engine room of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation on 18 Aug. Broderick's first LP for Bella Union in three years, Colours came out of time spent in Lucerne, Switzerland, a famously musical spot thanks to its annual summer festival, which classical music aficionados flock to every year for its famous patronage and serene surroundings. After completing a recording residency there, Broderick ended up staying in the small town for a few weeks longer and recording the songs with a band made up of entirely local musicians. We look forward to hearing them in their simplest form.

Do Not Miss: Arthur Russell's Instrumentals, The Kazimier, 11 Aug

The musical range of Arthur Russell in his time – and its reach since his passing, in 1992 – cannot really be overstated. Traversing loose classical forms, warm-hearted folk and hugely human, sensitive disco, the cellist, composer and singer was a chameleonic figure; an artist free to explore as perhaps few are now able under the scrutiny of contemporary ultra-connectedness.

Tonight, The Kazimier hosts the only northern date of a short tour of Russell's concert piece Instrumentals. Written in the early 1970s at the suggestion of Shingon priest Yuko Nonomura, from whom Russell took guidance in Buddhism and whose nature photography helped inspire the piece, Instrumentals was originally conceived as able to last a potential 48 hours, with no specific playing order in mind – though in reality it was only ever performed in sections.

This reading of it, directed by Peter Gordon (who played piano and organ in the original lineup), premiered at The Kitchen, New York, in 2012. Members of the Kitchen show's lineup and Russell's original ensemble join Gordon this evening. Between them, they have also been associated with such acts as LCD Soundsystem, The Modern Lovers, and Steve Reich. This is an opportunity to witness figures from New York's seminal downtown scene in close quarters, and also to see some of Nonomura's original photography, which is used in the live show.