chorltonartsfestival's posterous

Kerry Howarth's thread-entwined tree brought a big splash of brightness to leafy Chorlton Green as part of the {this way:UP} project organised by Bread Art Collective. It's a shame it was only temporary, but who knows what colourful treats Chorlton Arts Festival 2012 will hold - see you next year!

Image courtesy Rachel Bywater. All rights reserved by Rachel Bywater

Here's a reminder of the melancholic robot that appeared on the roof of Chorlton Library during this year's Chorlton Arts Festival. The robot was created by artist George Longland for the multi-site {this was:UP} project, which ran throughout the festival. George says: "The work produced for the {this way:UP} exhibition is the first in a series of pieces that look at a dystopian future where machines will have emotions."

{this was:UP} was coordinated by the Bread Art Collective, the second time they have been involved in Chorlton Arts Festival (in 2010, they ran the {flashlight} participatory project). According to Bread's David Boultbee, the various artworks scattered above eyeline around Chorlton aimed: "to encourage people to look up. To move beyond the ubiquitous shopfronts they're constantly confronted with. To find a new way to explore a space that they may feel they know well".

The bright yellow robot stood out against the sky in his prime position on Manchester Road and seemed to be possibly contemplating jumping. Actually, you'll be glad to know that he just came down quietly once the festival was over for another year.

Image courtesy Simon Faircloth All rights reserved by Cloth69

I can’t quite remember how I first came across the The Sisters of Transistors but I remember being utterly delighted when I first saw them and have been back for more a whole bunch of times now. If you (like me) are a fan of vintage synthesisers being played by four ladies with cheeky smiles wearing shiny capes then you will also be enthralled. This time at St Clement's they were on pretty good form despite having not performed in public since last October. The setting of St Clem’s and awesome live projections provided by Albino Mosquito is ideal for their organ-rich sound - my only gripe being that the audience were not allowed beer on the carpet.

Musically they occupy my almost ideal niche in the psychedelic electronica plane, songs with a quite dark and doomy feel which are somehow also very jolly and whimsical. They are kept in time by a combination of careful observation and Graham Massey (of 808 State fame) on drums and laptoppery. It’s lovely to watch them play off each other: their 50 fingers and 10 feet combined with numerous knobs and dials can weave some terribly intricate melodies and textures into their foot-stompers. In short they are damn good fun.

Support came from Triclops, a trio of blokes who seem to have ditched the ironing boards which they used to use as surfaces for their array of electronics. I didn’t get to see all of their set and what I did see was pretty sonically chaotic. But to be honest chaos IS the whole point of what they do!

Keep it Chorlton!

 Words and images: Sam Easterby-Smith. For more of Sam's images from the night, see:

Cellist Li Lu played the six Bach cello suites at six different venues and locations around Chorlton, setting classical music in a totally new context. As well as rocking up at places like the Horse & Jockey and Electrik, Li Lu set up the strings on the steps outside Chorlton Library, pictured here. Another fantastic first for Chorlton Arts Festival 2011.

Image courtesy Simon Faircloth All rights reserved by Cloth69. For other images of Chorlton Arts Festival see: http://tinyurl.com/6cqyqrc.

St Clement’s Church is a deliciously odd venue for bands to play in, and last Saturday it hosted the appropriately deliciously odd Moulettes for Chorlton Arts Festival. Arriving, it sort of felt like the village fete had been hijacked by hipsters. No drinks in the playing space then, not even communion wine.

Despite the drum kit dominating the altar space, the demure feel seemed to be confirmed by two young ladies taking up the most sensible of instruments: the violin and the cello. Then they ripped in to them and the walls shuddered. The Moulettes take no prisoners with their strings, conjuring a whole orchestra with an infectious rhythmic energy. The two guys joined to add percussion and even the good folk of Chorlton were moved to sway a little in appreciation.

Moulettes are a class act as a live band: fragile vocals offset by thundering drums, quirky lyrics spiced up with sly looks across the cello. They had a seemingly offhand way with the audience - apologies for leaving the drum strap backstage (in the vestry?) - and self-deprecation. But this belied a razor-sharp tightness and some top-notch musicianship.

Apparently they are a ‘pirate folk-band’, although they seemed admirably free from the constraints of any particular genre. At times they seemed like Bach rocking out, at other points like a Balkan wedding band launching a full out attack on Bjôrk. 

Perhaps best of all, at a time when so many fans are being accused of being pirates, just for sharing their enthusiasm about the sounds they love, here was a band that shows music is alive and kicking despite all that we are told to the contrary. The sheer verve of the last number raised the nave. I’ll drink to that. Pass the communion wine...

Words: Loz Kaye

Images courtesy Simon Faircloth  All rights reserved by Cloth69

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Monday night saw the last events of this year’s Chorlton Arts Festival calendar. This one, in Chorlton Library, was suitably sedate after ten days of razzle-dazzle and involved readings by two local writers: Heather Leach and Robert Graham. The pair are connected by the independent publishing house Salt: Heather has a story in the newly released Salt collection The Best British Short Stories 2011, edited by Didsbury-based author Nicholas Royle; Robert’s 2009 novel The Only Living Boy and latest offering, A Man Walks Into A Kitchen, are on Salt.

Heather kicked things off by reading from Nick’s introduction to the anthology: “The best stories take you somewhere new, somewhere different, or they take you somewhere you might have been before but by a different route. They help you see the world afresh. They wake you up and make you dream, both at the same time.” She has chosen to read a number of stories from the book that illustrate Nick’s criteria perfectly, firstly Foreigner by Christopher Burns, an unusual tale about a couple who have split up following the death of their soldier son. She follows this with Kirsty Logan’s The Rental Heart, which, she explains, uses a continuing metaphor to build up a picture in the reader’s head.

Next Graham takes to the floor, reading an extract from The Only Living Boy about a bunch of teenage friends who take an MGBGT for a spin. “It felt more like being in a cockpit than a car”, was one of the many good descriptions. He then introduced his friend who helped him voice the first entry in his pamphlet Four Stories, about a Polish waitress called Irena and her parrot Bogdan.

Heather then made a reappearance, explaining and recommeding Notes On A Love Story by Philip Langeskov, then actually reading an extract of Michele Roberts’ Tristram and Isolde, with (apparently) the author’s trademark themes of sex and food. She then gave us her own story, So Much Time In A Life, outlining some of the background to the character who she’d had in the back of her mind for about five years. Finally she gave us Winter Break, by Man Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel, before passing back to Robert for the first two very funny chapters of his latest book (of which there weren’t any copies for sale due to an admin error, though he was very apologetic and promised to deliver copies personally if anyone wanted one!).

All in all a very interesting and enlightening evening.

Words: Sarah-Clare Conlon. Check out her award-winning blog Words & Fixtures.

Cloud Control was a much-anticipated gig and, scheduled on the final Saturday night of festival week, the headline act for the whole of Chorlton Arts Festival. The four-piece have supported the likes of Vampire Weekend, Supergrass and The Magic Numbers, and recently won the Australian Music Prize (the equivalent of the Mercury in their native Oz). A BBC review of their album, Bliss Release, said this week: “The prospects of them storming the charts seem thunderously fine.”

When they took to the stage, however, I was thinking they might not really be my bag. Lead singer and guitarist Alister Wright had his hood up on his anorak, which led me to believe, mistakenly, that they were nothing more than a Madchester-throwback band, despite being from the Blue Mountains near Sydney.

But as the set progressed, the hood came down and eventually the coat came off, and it quickly became clear the band are unique in their sound and very polished in their performance. I was impressed by Alister's vocal harmonisation with keyboardist Heidi Lenffer and there were some lovely key changes, and I was very much liking the guitar fuzzbox and the bass reverb.

After the slightly trippy Into The Line, off their EP, came an album track, There's Nothing In The Water We Can't Fight, which was a brilliantly stomping number and got the band's money's worth out of drummer Ulrich Lenffer (Heidi's brother). Another Bliss Release song, 6 Music single of the week Gold Canary, also went down a storm, especially with the fans in the crowd (of which there seemed to be quite a critical mass!).

Bass player Jeremy Kelshaw did most of the links and chats, and at one point asked the audience how often Chorlton Arts Festival runs. “Once a year?” he said, disbelieving. “It should be twice!” Aw shucks.

Words: Sarah-Clare Conlon. Check out her award-winning blog Words & Fixtures.

Image courtesy Simon Faircloth All rights reserved by Cloth69

Flash fiction, for those not in the know is a notoriously difficult format to get right. Five hundred words or less to make a complete story, beginning, middle and end. It’s harder than a short story, often harder than a novel, so what kind of insane person decided to centre an entire competition around it?

Five people. That’s who.

Flash Mob was a writing competition to find the finest flash fictions from all over, and on Thursday 26 May we crowded into the Dulcimer and tuned in on Chorlton FM to hear the results.

From an initial eighty eight entries, the Flash Mob judges whittled them down to just twelve, and these twelve all performed live (albeit not all in person) alongside the judges own pieces and a headline performance from Nik Perring. We were also treated to some fine crowdsourced stories courtesy of the ‘exquisite corpse’ method of storytelling.

We heard some incredible stories, from Craig Pay’s magnificent metafictional odyssey ‘Metagurneypunk’, to Sandra Jenson’s brilliant ‘Karaoke Girl’ (via the magic of a laptop). Personal highlights for myself were Nick Garrard’s serene ‘The Underwater Detective’ and Nicola West’s ‘The Cracks’.

The audience certainly enjoyed creating the ‘exquisite corpses’, a shared storytelling method created by the surrealists, with each person choosing in turn, one of the following - a man, a woman, a place, something he says, something she says, the consequence - without the rest seeing the previous results. This gave rise to stories in which The Pink Panther met up with Eva Braun in a casino amongst other slightly brilliant concepts.

And a lot of mentions of somewhere near Bath…

In the end though, there were three winners, each receiving a beautiful illustration of their piece. Sal Page, Michael D Conley and Socrates Adams (pictured here accepting his award off one of the organisers Fat Roland) were all fully deserving of their prize.

Everyone had a thoroughly excellent time, and I will be lobbying the Flash Mob judges to open up the competition again.

Words: Dan Carpenter, who blogs at Winter Hill and is one-third of the Bad Language writing collective.

Image: John Andrew Hutchinson.

I had no idea what to expect from Ellen & The Escapades. I caught them on 6Music once, but one song does not a gig make - and actually it turned out this gig at St Clement's Church was nothing if not varied. Much more than the “alt folk/rock” label they'd been described as in the festival programme, the five-piece spanned genres, styles and noise levels.

There were some rocky pieces with funky basslines, plenty of drums and some great keyboard playing; there were quieter more soulful songs played just by Ellen on her acoustic guitar. They even got a cover of The Beatles' Here Comes The Sun in. Really good: ones to watch.

Words: Sarah-Clare Conlon. Check out her award-winning blog Words and Fixtures.

All images courtesy of Gill Moore Photography

It's hard to believe that it's almost a week since Badly Drawn Boy got {this way:UP} off to a start we could never have dreamed of. Thanks once again, Damon. It was the icing on a really special evening cake. Thanks too to the dancers from Company Fierce who started things off with such a bang and to everyone who came down to help celebrate the launch of the project and the festival.

So we were wondering who has been particularly eagle-eyed and found the artwork at all 15 sites? Don't worry if you haven't had time to see it all yet, things will stay in place right up until the end of the festival on Monday (30 May). And if you've struggled to find anything, fear not! Help is at hand. There's a map on our website and we're about to give the game away further with some posters and handy maps which you'll find at the festival hub or we may even hand you one when you're out and about.

All the sites are now labelled and, if you're technically minded, there's a even handy QR barcode to scan on your smartphone with more information. Remember to let us know what that you've spotted something either on our Facebook page (like us while you're there!), or by tweeting it with the hashtag #cafthiswayup. If you tweet a photo it'll even appear on our website.

We've also spotted some guerrilla contributions to the project which we're dead chuffed about. Why not get involved too and show your own artwork in your windows? If it's above head-height, we'll be into it. Tweet up what you've done...

Enjoy the rest of the project and the Festival. We think it's been a great one this year!

Kate and David

P.s We had to temporarily remove the Alexandra Arts photos on the Children and Adult Services Building because they were blowing away in the wind. We'll be returning them shortly!

Kate Moran and David Boultbee are two thirds of Bread Art Collective. To find out more visit: http://breadartcollective.co.uk/