Manchester
ALBUM REVIEW: A Certain Ratio – ‘ACR Loco’: taut Mancunian future funk and effortless electronic pop
“THIS album is a culmination of everything we’ve ever done,” says A Certain Ratio’s Jez Kerr. “We’ve got some real momentum at the moment.” He’s talking about A Certain Ratio’s first album in 12 years, ACR Loco, which drops this week. Excited much? You wouldn’t bet against a musician so steeped in the groove; A …
ALBUM REVIEW: King of the Slums – ‘Encrypted Contemporary Narratives’: the life we live now as we may not wish to see it
MANCHESTER: that great north-west city with, in the words of an idol very much on an unfortunate downward curve these days, so much to answer for. It’s given us some of the most amazing acts and subcultures of the popular music age. But I’ll advance a theory here, if I may; there’s very much two …
SEE: The video for A Certain Ratio’s ‘Berlin’: UK dates for 2021
MANCHESTER legends A Certain Ratio, whose brilliant new album ACR Loco will be with us on Mute come September 25th, have just dropped the video for the none-more-Mancunian effortless pop of “Berlin” – we’ve embedded it, below. And it really is a great record: we’ve embraced its taut, breathtaking funk and its intelligent pop and …
Feature: Does Manchester really need the two largest music venues in the country?
It opened in 1995 and was originally planned as part of a bid to land the 2000 Olympic Games. With a maximum capacity of 21,000 spectators it is the largest indoor arena in the country, and in Europe, and for several years in the noughties it was the busiest in the world by ticket sales, …
Track: Doves – Cathedrals of the Mind
In my recent interview with Jez Williams from Doves and review of the forthcoming Doves’ album, ‘The Universal Want’, I described the album as immersive. There is no greater example of this than the surprise track just released off the album, the literally vaulting ‘Cathedrals of the Mind’. Shimmering layers of arpeggio, sequencers and sampling …
Meet: We chat with Jez Williams from Doves about Northern Soul, getting the band back together and the new album, plus we review ‘The Universal Want’
The new album from Doves, ‘The Universal Want’ is a blistering rebirth from the Mancunian band. It’s much more than a return to form – their previous albums were uniformly brilliant – but there is a sense of identifiable development and growth in the intervening eleven years since ‘Kingdom of Rust’ was released. Songs such …
NEWS: Doves tease track from ‘The Universal Want’ – as sheet music!
YOU have to admit, it’s pretty much a stroke of genius. Just weeks before the release of Doves’ fifth album, The Universal Want, the Manchester trio has shared the album’s closing track, “Forest House”, but have left it to fans to work out how it sounds – by leaking the sheet music and lyrics. You wanna hear it, they’re saying: …
NEWS: King of the Slums announce ‘Encrypted Contemporary Narratives’ for September 25th
A FEW weeks ago Backseat Mafia had the pleasure to catch up with Charley Keigher, wordsmith of the rejuvenated King of the Slums. He revealed in the interview – which you can read in full, here – that they were due to “start mixing the new album in a few weeks; got two more albums …
SEE: A Certain Ratio – ‘Yo Yo Gi’: fantastic funk futurism sees ACR in fine form; album and live stream
A CERTAIN RATIO have shared a new track, “Yo Yo Gi”, from their eagerly anticipated new album, ACR Loco – and it comes with a dazzling video; watch below. Culled and edited with visual distortion and colour casting from rapid transit systems, railway interchanges, road junctions, flickering at speed through timelapse, it’s a dizzyingly urban …
SEE: Cabbage – ‘Get Outta My Brain’: Pennine baggy-psychesters waylay us again; album news
MOSSLEY – pronounced Mozzley – high up where the Pennines lurch high and wild, right out on the north-eastern fringes of Greater Manchester, has spawned a looming, mist-blurred collective known in whispers, from Delph to Dobcross, to beset weary travellers with hard and chaotic, baggy funk, lyrics chomped and spat, guitars sprawling, the better to …