Northwest Festival Watch: Liverpool Sound City

Like any city-wide, multi-event music festival, Liverpool Sound City has two main objectives. The first is obvious: pull the biggest, most richly diverse names together to pull the public in and shift tickets; but it also has something of a regional responsibility, the size of the 25-strong venue event potentially providing a platform for its local talent and, if it performs its role properly, giving them a platform to new audiences they might not usually have on a midweek night in the basement of The Shipping Forecast.

“It’s something that’s been problematic in the past,” says Ex-Easter Island Head’s Benjamin Duvall, of the festival’s efforts to include locals. The mallet-hitting Rhys Chatham-inspired guitar trio have a relatively prominent spot on this year’s bill, supporting Jon Hopkins – a sign, perhaps, that Sound City is learning year-on-year and striving for diversity. “You can do a gig to a lot of people who don't know or care who you are, but then there is the potential to play to a whole new audience in that particularly special environment that comes with a festival and suddenly find a whole load of new fans or like-minded peers.” This year several Merseyside artists are joining Duvall and co in taking prize slots among the likes of Fuck Buttons, Thurston Moore and Gruff Rhys, with All We Are, Ninetails and Circa Waves all taking pride of place on the bill.

Bird are another. Having spent most of the year readying their debut LP, My Fear and Me, Sound City will act as – what they hope will be – a stirring home launch pad for its release and a subsequent tour in support of the legendary Rodriguez. “It’ll be our first show in Liverpool of the year, we’ve been holding back,” says Adele Emmas. “There's loads of great bands coming out of Liverpool at the moment – there always has been – and there's a real buzz around at the moment. I think Sound City highlights and celebrates that.” Bird will be playing the salubrious setting of the Anglican Cathedral (“It’s going to be really special, and as a venue works for the atmosphere we already try and create in our live set”).

Other Northern multi-venue crawls on the bank holiday weekend go two ways – Live at Leeds places most of its acts in established, to-spec venues; Salford’s Sounds from the Other City goes the other way, with international touring bands finding themselves playing pubs and cafes. Sound City finds a balance. The Kazimier and The Shipping Forecast are used, but then so are the Cathedral and, in the past, the Bombed-Out Church. Placing artists out of context can be a tricky act of booking, but when perfected it can change the entire perception of live performance. “We really like that we’re playing [former super-club Cream] Nation,” says Duvall. “We're normally playing either really intimate venues or spaces like galleries or churches... I think it'll be a good juxtaposition having us as a 'guitar band' in one of the defining spaces of dance music.”

Both groups feel that Sound City’s strongest benefit is to the city itself, and the atmosphere it provides over three days, its sprawling festival site bringing in all corners of Liverpool. “Cultural infrastructure does incredibly well out of it,” Duvall agrees. “Local magazines, freelance photographers, sound techs, crew all get work out of it, and the venues get a guaranteed crowd through the door. There are great people like Horse Design – who normally curate an exhibition of gig posters and series of shows to go with them – involved, which balances out the more industry side of the conferences.”

In terms of the loose definition of a ‘local scene’, the year-on-year event also allows artists to catch up on how peers are progressing. “Sound City doesn’t focus on just those at the top, it caters for musicians at various stages in their career,” says Emmas; “and it’s always nice to see how they’re developing.” Where to start on who to see, then? Emmas lists Drenge, The Wytches and Pins among her must-sees; Duvall picks Kogumaza, Jon Hopkins and Bird themselves. So whichever path people choose to navigate Sound City, it’s clearly unlikely to be the same as anyone else’s.