Northwest Music News – 9 Apr: Other Worlds Festival, The Kazimier Closing and more

Other Worlds Festival – Five To Watch

Blackpool isn't hugely renowned for its experimental music scene, but in curating the first ever Other Worlds Festival, Must Die Records have put together a stunning line-up that looks set to change all that. Across several venues, the three-day event will be welcoming everything from scorched psych rock, minimalism, field recording exploration and everything inbetween. Here are five acts not to miss, further line-up details can be found here.

1. Gnod

The Salford collective are set to make their boldest statement on record yet this month, with the sprawling triple album Infinity Machines, out on Rocket Recordings. Stripped down to their core membership live, the group hold no live template other than to provide an intense, sensory atmosphere unremitting in its physicality. Previous incarnations have dabbled in psych and industrial electronics, but the current Gnod squad look set to eclipse all they've done before. We recently spent an afternoon with the band at their Islington Mill residence here.

2. Sly & The Family Drone

A thunderous percussive unit that rumbles between live polyrthythms and spooling cassette samples, Sly & The Family Drone are a thrilling proposition live, just as prone to virulent explosions of energy as they are to griptight passages of tension. 

3. Evil Blizzard

Looking at Evil Blizzard on paper alone gives you an idea of how brutal the Lancastrian five-piece's post-punk-meets-doom repetitious cycles can be, the group employing four bassists and one drummer, ensuring that their fierce racket constantly levels out at around thunderous levels. The group are currently on John Robb's Louder Than War label, which makes a lot of sense when put next to some of The Membranes' comeback material. 

4. Isnaj Dui

It barely needs saying, but the joy of such a carefully curated festival as Other Worlds is that discovery is the absolute key to its line-up; so it is that as we plundered through the names appearing this weekend, we were delighted to stumble across the rich tapestries of Halifax-based Isnaj Dui. The solo artist coerces sparsely linked yet fulsome structures from flutes, home-made dulcimers and electronics.

5. The Ceramic Hobs

Relatively prolific over the past five years but in fact knocking about in some or other since the mid-1980's, local avant-punks The Ceramic Hobs have taken something of a Fall-esque approach to band membership, with most of Blackpool's DIY musicians of the past 30 years popping up at some point or other. The Hobs' sound has constantly evolved as a result, albeit based around a solid core of warped post-punk, sludge and avant-garde meanderings.

The Kazimier to close

It looked like Liverpool's much-loved music and club venue The Kazimier might have gained a reprieve following negotiations around the development of Wolstenholme Square last year; however this week an official statement has been made announcing that the space is to close on New Year's Day 2016.

"After discussions with Elliot Group, the developer of Wolstenholme Square, we would like to make it public today that The Kazimier Club will be closing its doors as a venue for the last time on New Years Day 2016. This gives us nine months of events to celebrate the life of the venue and provide it with a fitting end. We have been offered a new site within their new development plans – talks are ongoing. The Garden will not be affected," the statement on Facebook said. "As this chapter draws to a close, we want to make it clear that this is the end of a building – the original artistic core and the wider Kazimier team are moving forwards with a variety of new projects in various new spaces." 

It is inevitable that venues will and come and go; cities are effectively living organisms and the music community of Liverpool, perhaps more than most, has an extraordinary capacity to find new spaces and affect their surroundings in a whole new way over and over again. Nevertheless, the loss of such an iconic venue can't be denied, and we at The Skinny will miss it hugely. See here for further analysis.

Air Cav announce second album

A mainstay on the periphery of Manchester's music scene, Air Cav have nevertheless maintained a strong following over a decade, an album and a handful of singles together. Rarely aligning themselves to any great movement going on regionally or otherwise, the four-piece cut through the middle of a variety of rock tropes, from psychedelia to frayed-edge shoegaze and traditional folk rootsiness. They return with their second record Procession on the 18 May, through their own Crystalline Recordings, hear the first track from it below.

Digital Crate Digging

Kepla

It'd be too simplistic to call Liverpool-based producer Kepla's otherworldly constructions of mangled synthetic detritus and plunging lo-end sound collage; there's no ad-hoc mashing together of the elements here, each spark point simultaneously complementing and corroding with another in a way designed to maximise a physical rather than tonal impact on the listener. Kepla doesn't really do orthodox linearity, but as tracks like Virile Landscape show, there is a sub-narrative there, with stargazing lunar lines gradually pulling themselves free of the seething industrial melee to push the track towards a fragile state of clarity. 

Elsewhere from the Northwest

• Liverpool International Music Festival announced their first names of this year's massive weekender at Sefton Park. Details here.
• Pins and Horsebeach were among the local acts joining this year's Dot To Dot line-up, see who else is involved.
• We've announced details of our involvement in Sounds From The Other City this year! Head here for more.
• Check out our gigs of the month recommendations for April!
• Matthew Cooper ran the rule over Liverpool grunge band Scouts at their Maguire's Pizza Bar show.