Next weekend the excellent, exciting, and excellently exciting Sounds From The Other City festival is taking place in Salford, and all week, ANBAD is showcasing the pick of the bands playing there.
For the benefit of international readers, Salford is a big grimy city right next to Manchester, which is another big grimy city. (If you’re still unsure, it is all in that bit of the UK that’s not London or Stratford.)
Smaller, city-based festivals like SFTOC that showcase new music get me all a-quiver with excitement, partly because of the array of thrilling new bands and partly because these kind of festivals are cheap, cheerful and are a brief glimpse into what life would be like if I ran the country.
The feeling of popping into a venue, catching a band, before swiftly finishing a drink and scuttling off to somewhere equally sweaty and noisy to see another is almost heavenly.
Float Riverer are one of the bands I’ll be looking to catch, though of course, at any festival, best-laid plans are the first thing to shoot out of the window, along with dignity, sobriety and basic motor function.
By the sounds of Calves, it would be a shame if I did miss them.
The song is a template for anyone who wants to make crunchy, noise-from-next-door, yelp-rock. These kind of songs recorded in this kind of fashion are so endearing and full of life that listeners surf gleefully over the crackles, the fuzz and the ‘poor’ recordings and simply enjoy the songs.
Perhaps my best hope is to aim to miss Float Riverer, and then serendipity will ensure that I’ll accidentally catch the whole gig. Good stuff.
looks like a fun event