Northwest Clubbing Highlights: June 2013

While we love nothing better here at The Skinny than to bring your attention to the Northwest's hidden clubbing treasures, it’d be essentially impossible to begin this month's column without acknowledging the Parklife Weekender (8-9 Jun). The Warehouse Project’s festival juggernaut is finally making the transition from Platt Fields and up the Metrolink to Heaton Park, where – hopefully – punters will be offered a little more breathing space. Meanwhile, the sound engineers won’t have to contend with an adjacent school’s exams, and a church, risking the wrath of both God and OFSTED.

The event's commercially focused and somewhat studenty nature might not be to everyone’s taste, but the line-up is inarguably massive, and excellent, with fans of most genres and scenes equally and expertly catered for. At the time of going to press, weekend tickets are sold out, but snuffle one out and, while dodging Capital FM fare like Rita Ora, Plan B and Example, you can expect live sets from the likes of Scuba, Four Tet and Simian Mobile Disco, and whole tents curated by favourites like Heidi and Hudson Mohawke, drafting in Derrick Carter and Breakbot respectively – as well as always reliable DJ mainstays such as Jackmaster, Damian Lazarus, Erol Alkan and Ben UFO. Even post-punk fans can get on board, with The Horrors, Savages and Liars lined up by Now Wave for the Sunday. And that's not to mention the afterparties. Yikes!

At a slower pace, Liverpool welcomes A Love from Outer Space to Haus (8 Jun, £10). Over the course of the evening, veritable legend of rave, dub and everything more Andrew Weatherall will be joining forces with slo-mo sparring partner Sean Johnston to bring their popular London underground disco to Merseyside. Weird, moody and euphoric, as ALFOS the pair spend the whole night dealing in chuggers, working the crowd into a slow sweat while “never knowingly rising above 121BPM.” Oof.

The following weekend, LCD Soundsystem reform in magical cinescope at Camp and Furnace, Liverpool, for a special screening on 14 June of their triumphant Shut Up and Play The Hits show, filmed live at Madison Square Garden in 2011 (£8 earlybird, £11). Though the movie is now available on DVD, it’s fair to say that the likes of Yeah and All My Friends are best experienced among others, with wild, drunken abandon, as they were intended. As well as the film, there’s DJ support from Discoteca Poca’s Paul Hutchinson and Andrew Hill of Abandon Silence, as well as some promising live electronics from local Lunar Modular.

Post-Parklife, and it’s back to business in Manchester’s basements, with the debut of Livity Sound live at Soup Kitchen (14 Jun, £5). A sort of Discogs dream, the label project stems from Bristol and combines the talents of Peverelist, Kowton and Asusu, who individually have been doing some of the most exotic and forward-thinking things with drums and synths in the land – all of which will be recreated with heads down and much hardware, if their recent Boiler Room set is anything to go by. Support comes from local lad on the up, Acre.

With the student populace fleeing home for the summer (or, to Croatia), you might have to wait a little longer than usual for a few good parties – but then, like buses, they all come along at once, as evidenced on 28 June, when the shortest night (OK, it's a week later than the shortest night, but work with me here, yeah?!) sees no end of opportunities to go out into the dark (or, erm, light). First of all, there's the seventh birthday of electronic-leaning indie night, Dots and Loops, who are offering a bumper event at Kraak featuring a DJ set from Spacemen 3's Pete Kember, performing as his solo project, Sonic Boom. What will doubtlessly be a raft of fairly mindbending electronica and psych comes with support from a fine bunch of local freak-out merchants, namely Plank!, Weird Era and Mind Mountain. It’s a long night from 8pm, but only £7 for earlybirds.

Meanwhile, in the basement of The Deaf Institute – one of Manchester's most underrated and pleasingly intimate venues for a good party – Jozef K and Winter Son head up the bill for the Berlin inspired Fortsetzen 3 (28 Jun, £4 earlybird). As both a promoter and a brilliant young DJ not afraid to dig deep, Jozef was one of the forces steering Sankeys in the right direction until its recent end, while Winter Son is best known as one half of cult electronica act Ghosting Season. Incidentally, the other half is on the decks, as well as representatives from local wax institution Eastern Bloc. Jozef and Winter Son's debut EP gets off to a nice start this month on Sasha's Last Night on Earth label, and the pair will be DJing at the Deaf with live 808 accompaniment adding dashes of acid whenever necessary. Spoiler: it's always necessary.

Completing this unofficial post-solstice party selection, the always reliable Content bring Prosumer to Joshua Brooks for a three-hour session (28 Jun, £10). More often than not found around the back of Berghain, expertly eking out the last energies of those out for a Sunday afternoon session during his much celebrated Panorama Bar sets, Prosumer is described by Content as “simply one of the best deep house DJs in Europe” – to which his rabid fanbase is testament. More than that, he has that increasingly rare and genre defying skill to simply blend great music with a real lightness of touch.

Last but not least, it’s difficult to know where to start previewing Move D – or David Moufang, to his pals. With a career spanning nearly a quarter of a century and encompassing everything from jazz guitar to spaced-out disco, it's probably best to just know that he's a bit of a living legend, and that you should head to YouTube and seek out his three-hour Boiler Room session with Optimo for a glimpse into his enviable record collection. He'll be playing at Liverpool's Fallout Factory on 21 June (£12, tickets only), and earlier in the month in Manchester at The Roadhouse (7 Jun, £8), as part of a Dimensions festival launch. Mr Moufang's popularity may end up betraying the relatively small capacity of his parties, so it might be worth jumping on board in advance for this one.