Sounds From The Other City 2015: Choose Your Own Adventure
Oddball pub crawl/music marathon Sounds from the Other City returns for its 11th year this May Bank Holiday. But with so many possible routes through the festival, what kind of day will you have? Find out by totting up your answers in our ingenious quiz
1. It's 9am on Sunday 3 May, a full 64 hours since you overenthusiastically accepted the Annual May Bank Holiday Weekend Endurance Challenge. Do you:
A) Rocket out of bed, heralding the morning with a triumphant, rallying cry: “It's Sounds from the Other City day!” You have never felt readier for approximately 100 musical acts and art interventions, listening to weird electronica in pubs and encountering people in full costume on the streets of Salford.
B) Groan beneath the covers for the rest of the weekend. There's always next year.
C) Have a lie-in. You practically live in Islington Mill anyway. The festival will come to you.
2. Having made it to wristband exchange, you consult the festival programme. Dammit! All three of your favourite acts are playing within minutes of each other at opposite ends of the M3 postcode. You react by:
A) Strapping on the roller skates you stowed in your backpack for precisely this situation.
B) Hopelessly traipsing back and forth, arriving at venues too late for everything and finally dissolving your tears in a redemptively cheap pint.
C) Accepting fate and, instead, taking the opportunity to register for one of the two special, limited-capacity performances from Ex-Easter Island Head with BBC Philharmonic musicians. You are one of life's winners.
3. Your lightly pickled mind is drawn to the fact that most of the artists playing the Now Wave stage appear to be anagrams of each other. You go and watch two of them to check that they aren’t, in fact, all made up of the same people. Which combination do you opt for?
A) R Seiliog and Real Lies. Welsh guitar pastorals and hazy, cityscape synths sound pretty sweet right now.
B) Real Lies and LA Priest. You've always wondered what happened to that member of Late of the Pier.
C) Gengahr and R Seiliog. There is just something rad about that.
4. Meanwhile over at The Angel Centre, Grey Lantern have programmed a series of descriptive pronouns. Which one most appeals to your senses?
A) Cold Pumas. They sound like they could be your spirit animal.
B) Sex Hands. You've always believed that the hands can reveal a lot about a person.
C) Tense Men. This describes most of the friends you are here with today.
5. It is time to take it incredibly easy. What do you do?
A) Find a gig in a church. If there’s one thing you’re into, it’s a gig in a church. Conveniently, Hey! Manchester are running St Philip’s. Jane Weaver is on!
B) Have a lovely, lovely pint, then head to First Chop Brewing Arm, where the DJs of Wet Play, El Diablo’s Social Club and Red Laser Records are tinkering with the time-space continuum. You enter a wormhole, and do not re-emerge for some time.
C) Browse the record fair at The Deli Lama, then kick back in Bexley Square. You are so chill, even a sudden frenzy of shamanistic activity in the street – initiated by a coven of mysterious figures identifying themselves only as the Faux Queens – cannot trouble you.
6. Observing that the festival has introduced to its programme this year a spot of standup comedy – courtesy of variety show Sham Bodie – you pop along to The New Oxford. However, when you arrive, none of the billed acts are performing. Instead, the host, Ben Tonge, is patrolling the stage performing an accurate imitation of a gorilla. This is:
A) Unremarkable. You head off in search of more musical talent.
B) Oddly bewitching. Is it the booze?
C) Normal. You have been to Sham Bodie before.
7. You overhear that, in one of the New Bailey arches, promoters Bad Uncle are hosting SFTOC: Inception – a festival within the festival. Are you in a state to cope with this?
A) Yes. You have to go deeper.
B) No. You feel sick.
C) It's hard to say, so much of today has already felt like a dream within a dream, within a dream.
8. It wouldn't be Sounds from the Other City without coming into contact with something extremely heavy. Of the various textures on offer on the Fat God stage at The Old Pint Pot, which do you find most attractive?
A) Shit & Shine. It is time for a damn good thrashing.
B) Denim and Leather. Those are both nice fabrics.
C) Lake of Snakes. Featuring members of Gnod, Horrid, Skulldozer, the Tombed Visions record label and some excoriating saxophone, this adds up to sonic heaven.
9. Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and it is time to select an afterparty. Given the day you've had, you are most likely to:
A) Flip out in the middle of Deep Hedonia's souped-up dancefloor to the hyperreal J-pop sounds of PC Music pal Onika.
B) Wander home with your pals through an eerie Salford dawn, contemplating the nature of infinity.
C) See things through ’til morning in the corner of a dark room, while industrial techno peddlars Gesamtkunstwerk, Faktion and the Annex Agency bore a hole ever deeper into the abyss.
How did you do?
Mostly As: Possibly a Sounds from the Other City newbie, you are outstanding in your commitment to the clashfinder. Your energy is both admirable and, if you haven’t crashed and burned by 9pm, quite frankly an insult to us all.
Mostly Bs: Are you even at this festival? It’s debatable.
Mostly Cs: You, friend, are the high priest or priestess of Sounds from the Other City. Secretly combining quiet, diligent study of the timetable with an outward aspect of nonchalance, you manage to enjoy a host of revelatory new experiences while appearing to do almost nothing at all. Hats off.