Monday evening starts in TV21 where I am one of precisely four punters in the basement at 6.14pm, one minute before the first band are due on. Luckily by 6.15 there's another 30. Phew, was worried for a second there. The Law are from Dundee and spent the summer ripping up T In The Park before being crowned XFM Scotland's Breathrough Act 2009, and their set starts with a warning siren, which is always good.
What follows is completely unreconstructed four-chord meat'n'potatoes indie punk rock'n'roll which could have existed at any point in time since Dr. Feelgood first dragged their Transit to the pubs of London. And yeah, it's not a million miles from their good mates The View, and was recently panned in the NME for being unimaginative. Well, yeah, OK, can't say I'd go out and buy one of their records, but that's not the point - this isn't music to sit and listen to in your bedroom or to contemplate the inner depths - it's music to watch live in a sweaty basement. They say unimaginative, I say timeless. Chunky riffs, loads of woah-ohs and Oasis-when-they-were good choruses, I came here expecting to hate them and left thinking about the large gulf between the fickle music press (two years ago NME would have loved them) and what a lot of people actually enjoy. By three songs in there's a sizeable crowd and a few of them are singing along. And yes, if I'm being honest, they're shit - shit but fun.
There's more noisy punk rock'n'roll going on in the Roadhouse - only with more emphasis on the punk, here. Brighton's Telegraphs are reminiscent of early Idlewild - great thrusting choruses and angry riffs - and guitarist Aung Yay clearly isn't wearing that Black Flag T-shirt as a fashion item. They actually seem to get more abrasive as they go on, almost as if they decided not to scare people too early on - it is barely seven o'clock after all. Thing is even at their most aggressive they've still got massive tunes, and the macho edge is tempered slightly by the fact that energetic, monitor-mounting frontman Darcy Harrison shares vocals with bassist Hattie Williams. That said, she plays like Lemmy's secret daughter and looks like she could easily have any of her male bandmates in a fight.
OK, I admit even I can't get from The Roadhouse to Bar38 in ten minutes so I miss the start of the very hotly tipped Copy Haho, but I believe Tristan saw them yesterday so we might have a report somewhere. Blending a bit of grungey alt-rock with air-punching indie anthemics they land in a similar territory to Nine Black Alps. With the side-order of Pavement that's clearly one of this year's must-haves now the indie godfathers have reformed. 2010 is the new 1992, apparently.
It's all been a bit, well, guitar-ish today, hasn't it? Thank heavens then for Unicorn Kid and a much-needed electronic fix. I'm watching him with a fellow Hacienda-generation survivor and we can't believe this 17-year-old kid is channelling the spirit of our own teenage years via the slightly more up-to-date technology of a laptop and some rewired games machines. One track does sound rather like "Hardcore Uproar" for fuck's sake, only faster, and the lad wasn't even born when that came out. It's not just beats, though, there are fantastically loopy mathematical melodies that echo the electropop of even earlier generations like OMD on speed or a raved-up Jean-Michel Jarre. Oh, and he's wearing an animal-head hat. Ace.
"Are these Scousers?" asks my mate. We get the book out - nope, Young Rival are... Canadian. Canadian Scousers? We've gone over the road to Studio and the band onstage is Young Rival. They sound like a garage-punk Beatles. Like The Beatles probably sounded back in Hamburg when they were whizzed up to the eyeballs playing through dirty distorting PA's, only Young Rival's distortion's meant to be there. By the end of the set it's full-on garagey rock'n'roll blues and they do it really well, tight as anything, sweat soaking through the guitarist's moptop fringe. We're still amused by the idea of Canadian Scousers, though.
Hook And The Twin are a bit of a mind-melting experience. They consist of one bloke who records all sorts of demented things (himself singing or occasionally wailing; heavily distorted guitar noise; synth basslines; real basslines; drones; the kitchen sink) into a loop machine - and a drummer who does his best to work out what's going on and stick a beat on it. It doesn't always quite work - one track gets abandoned after the second failed attempt - but when it does it's a thick Krautrock space-groove soup. Unfortunately there are more technical hitches towards the end that leave a lot of people shrugging in bafflement, and a decidedly thinner crowd than when they started which must be pretty demoralising. Lots of good ideas, but some lost in the actual execution.
It's horribly dead (and absolutely bloody freezing) in the No.1 Club (formerly One Central Street), the bouncer says it has been all night, last night too. Tonight's a Brighton Live showcase, and I'm fairly sure myself and photographer-about-town Shirlaine Forrest are the only people here not from Brighton (and possibly in or with the bands). And I'm largely here because I saw Heels Catch Fire down there recently and they were great; here the obviously demoralising effect of the small crowd coupled with a decidedly ropey sound system sees them a bit under par to start with, but they do pick up.
They have an interesting line in edgy angular art-pop: interesting because it doesn't just rely on the post-punk stylings generally associated with such things, but is equally informed by the noisier likes of Sonic Youth and the more recent post-hardcore scene. So there are jerking rhythms alongside crunching noise; gloomy basslines and energetic guitars. The drummer, who's shirtless and looks like a Brazilian footballer from the 80s - is an absolute joy to watch in his own right as he piles his whole body into the kit. It's always good to see a band who take a few well-worn ingredients and create something quite original from them. Even if there aren't too many people sharing the experience.
Walking through near-deserted streets back to Ruby Lounge I'm quite saddened by how quiet the whole thing's been this year. I've seen some brilliant music today but the general atmosphere has been somewhat downbeat. Obviously the recession's taken its toll; there just aren't as many record labels or music magazines as there were five years ago (maybe it's just the rosy tint of nostalgia, but I remember ITC04 - or even as recently as 07 - being like a great throbbing weekend-long party), and those that survive are doing so with greatly reduced staff and budgets. This might also account for the lack of international showcases which I have personally really missed this year; whether it's an Icelandic alt-rock band all dressed in gonad-crunching shiny gold trousers (Skatar, 1007), the delights of listening to someone check microphones by counting to five in Finnish (Boomhauer, 2004) or being completely blown away by a teenage Japanese post-rock orchestra (Siberian Newspaper, 2006) these often provided the unexpected highlights of the weekend. Where are the big buzz spectaculars? The high profile artist special guest slots? I am aware of one well-known "big indie" band, as in top ten album and Mercury nomination level, who were pencilled in for an event but clearly nothing came of it. And no Sunday afternoon delegates' free bar special, either; I've been quite cynical in past years about that and I can't say I personally even noticed its absence until now (for us here at MM it genuinely is all about the music), but it's a telling sign of an event whose budget doesn't strech as far as it once did.
Daytime live music events have been somewhat thin on the ground, too - little on Monday and nothing at all Tuesday, where in previous years you used to get three full days of twelve hour venue-hopping. The relatively recent shift to Sunday-Monday-Tuesday is probably the main reason for this; a shift which has definitely affected the attendance from non-delegate non-music-scene members of the public, too. Your average Joe Punter is just less likely to want to go out from seven til midnight than he would at the weekend. The £20 wristband scheme has turned the public away too: until a couple of years ago most sessions were free entry for all. I guess they looked at the success of events like Brighton's Great Escape and its plethora of offspring, and figured people don't mind paying for those - usually 30 to 40 quid for three days or a tenner or more for the single day ones, so on the surface £20 isn't bad value for money at all, but on the other hand people don't generally like paying for something they didn't used to have to. And even if it doesn't deter the serial gig-goer, plenty of people (my friends, for instance, or myself back in the days before I was writing for MM) would probably pop into two or three gigs and make a night out of it. There were, of course, plenty of gigs this year which were free to all - the No.1 Club session I've just come from, for instance; some other Peter Street events as well as the Bay Horse days and other fringe events, but this wasn't made massively clear to people. This year it feels like In The City passed a lot of Mancunians by.
At the time of writing I've just been interviewed by a media consultant about why In The City is good for Manchester - and as a conference and seminar of course it is. It brings the world's music media to our doorstep, throws a spotlight on our city. But I do feel something needs to be done to bring the public back. Because you read the stories of how in recent years bands got signed on the back of an outstanding performance in a packed venue - and they're not just myths, I actually know some who did - it's not the same for a band just playing to a handful of people with passes around their necks.
Ruby Lounge is once again my final stop of the night, and the reason is simple - back in May at Great Escape me and my mates were intrigued by one of the names on the schedule: Ou Est Le Swimming Pool. We knew absolutely nothing about them but a band with a name like that just had to be seen. Only we forgot to actually go and watch them, and I have managed to not see them at several other festivals since then. We made the same mistake two years earlier with The Airborne Toxic Event and when we eventually discovered they were a great band as well as a great name we all rather regretted it.
Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, however, would have been probably best off left as a comedy name on the schedule: the reality is rather disappointing. Unless you're a fan of rubbish 80s disco pop. The first track sounds like The Scissor Sisters but without any of the charm: instead of flamboyant androgynous New York City club queens we get a bunch of Shoreditch scenesters-by-numbers. The backing tracks - provided by a serious-looking type in a suit and a slightly less serious looking one with a multicoloured scarf wrapped round his head - are decent enough, but the frontmen let the side down: the bleach-haired singer attempts the old high-pitched disco thing but is lacking in any sort of soul, and I can't work out what the other one's even there for. Third track "Better" is, yes, better. A bit Pet Shop Boys, even. Thing is I just can't lose the overriding feeling that I've landed in a suburban Nite Klub circa 1986, possibly called Cinderellas or something. Maybe I'm being a party pooper but no, this is grade one Emperor's New Clothes. They will probably be massive in about three weeks.
TUESDAY
Time to go out again already? I've still not got a plan, but I seem to have managed OK without one so far... I'm very much feeling the effects of three days' full-on gig-going in case you were wondering, yes, I do sometimes get tired. And I could really do with not having to go out again. But there are bands to see, and I wouldn't want to miss anything. A couple of hours later as I stumble out of TV21 trying to process what I've just experienced I have completely forgotten about being tired. Welcome to Cath's Day Three, in which I only see six bands but every last one of them is absolutely brilliant. This is why I do this.
Right, so there's no official Japanese showcase this year, but I seem to have found the unofficial one. Brilliant! It's brought to us by all-ages promoters XOX (leave your drinks at the door) down at TV21 and, well, there's two Japanese bands in a row followed by one with a Japanese synth player so I suppose it sort of counts.
We first encountered Bo Ningen at this September at the ultra-hip Offset festival - I'd like to say "saw them" but in reality I could barely poke my head inside the overstuffed tent. This excuses me having thought hyperactive, helium-yelping singer/bassist Taigen was a girl - which here in his skinny bare-chested glory he clearly isn't, although he does have a girl's haircut. Two, in fact, simultaneously - a pretty 60s fringe and bob at the front and luxuriantly long and straight tresses at the back. Guitarists Kohhei and Yuki and drummer Mon-chan have equally long, straight hair and some of them appear to be wearing 1970s pyjamas; they're like four baby Damo Suzukis and the noise they make is every bit as insane. Blisteringly loud guitars do prog, post-rock and metal often within the space of one song, whilst Mon-chan just about steals this year's Animal From The Muppets Award For Drummer Insanity (beating yesterday's Heels Catch Fire into a distant second place) as he appears to be drumming with his head as much as any sticks or accessories. The other three bounce off the amps and pillars and each other as Taigen alternates between Damo-esque rambles and frenzied punk attacks; each track is like a brilliant swirling full-on psychedelic wig-out compressed into a few minutes and with everything turned up to 11. As is often the case with international showcases there's a decent ex-pat contingent down watching them and they're going crazy too, whilst the bloke standing next to me just appears to have his eyes out on stalks for the entire thing. It later transpires he is Ezra Bang whose band's on later and is possibly wondering how the hell they're going to follow this. By the end of the set Taigen is crouching with his legs splayed simulating sex with his bass and Kohhei and Yuki are throwing themselves and their guitars into the drumkit while Mon-chan continues battering it and them, until they all fall over and lie there grinning. Set of the weekend, no contest.
I've long had a theory that there's something about the highly ordered and reguated nature of Japanese society which makes all bands from over there do whatever it is they do about 30 times more intensely than tneir Western counterparts. Japanese punks have the tallest, most colourful Mohicans; indie bands the tightest blackest jeans and most perfect fringes; rappers the biggest gold chains and baggiest sportswear; metallers the most piercings and wildest tattoos... and what happens next makes Bo Ningen look relatively sane.
They're called Asakusa Jinta and there's a raspberry-haired girl blowing a tenor sax whilst pogoing, an older lad with a moustache and a double-neck guitar; others have a trumpet, electric double bass and large curly horn thing respectively (as regular MM readers will know, I've never been any good at identifying brass instruments). In the tiny space in front of the stage there are two tiny Japanese girls trying to start a ska knees-up moshpit. Oh yeah, the music? Just your average everyday mixture of Glenn Miller big band, Bad Manners lunatic ska, a military parade, cartoon punk and soul revue. Proportions of the above vary from one track to the next, although it's hard to keep up as the whole lot is administered at roughly 300 miles an hour. They do something that sounds like "In The Mood" but not quite, and raspberry haired girl is leading the crowd in a sort of one-potato-two-potato hand dance. They do something that vaguely resembles a rocket-powered Can-Can and several of the end up in the audience. And the last of my brain, the bit Bo Ningen didn't melt, holds up a little white flag.
Later I look them up online and discover that "Their base is Asakusa, Tokyo's old downtown, an area reminiscent of traditional Japan. They love this town and people who live there love the band as they are known as a marching band playing on the shopping streets or for weeklong parades." I don't think there's a lot more to be said about this, really. Just try and hold that image.
Oh fuck, there's more.
Ezra Bang And Hot Machine are five extremely cool-looking people variously hailing from New York, London, Berlin and Sapporo, who much like their two predecessors at this event seem to think easily pigeonholed music is for dullards. Ezra raps (mostly) in a sort of Public Enemy stream-of-consciousness style which if he'd decided to plump for a traditional hip-hop style backing would still justify a place in the ones-to-watch list, but where's the fun in doing something there's already loads of? Instead, he's assembled a synth-bass-drums electro band who sound like Soulwax in particularly hedonistic mode. The first track is brutal, euphoric and hilarious all at aonce - the latter largely due to the way synth player Mio Kuromori sings the word "motherfucker" in a really sweet little girl voice between his rap streams. He's all over the front of the stage, fixing people with his eyes, revving them up - but this isn't just party music, there's a politicised side to them as well: "This next song's called 'White Power', er, please take a look at this stage and realise it's meant with a sense of irony..." (Ezra and bassist Sara are black and there's two white lads as well as Mio) - and, it seems, a sense of hard glam-flavoured drumming. Some of which involves a bin lid.
Congratulations to XOX for this triple shot of mayhem.
It's five to nine though and I'd best leave them to it, as the always entertaining Morton Valence are on at ten past at Electric Boogaloo, which used to be... oh god I don't know, some shiny Peter Street identi-bar. There are precisely no taxis on Oldham Street. I run it and arrive just in time. I tell you, if ITC was once a month I'd be fit as an athlete.
Morton Valence are delightfully, wilfully unclassifiable. I've seen them a few times - including In The City 06 - and I'd still struggle to describe them to someone. Suppose I'd better have a go, though, given that that's what I'm here for. At the most very basic level you could call it electropop, but that covers all manner of ills these days. To start with, when most bands make a debut album they collect together their best songs, maybe write a few more and arrange them into an order that works. Morton Valence decided to make an audio romantic novella called "Bob And Veronica Ride Again", with the knowingly Mills and Boon style story also included in a book (released on, um, Bastard Recordings). Some people just have too much imagination. "Sailors", their brilliant early single, is not on it as there are no sailors in the story, but it is a rather excellent piece of skewed and slightly camp thumping electronic pop music which here goes down equally well with the ITC delegates and punters and the after-work drinkers. They're a great visual act, too, with their ironing board keyboard stand and the fascinating are-they-aren't they interaction between the singers Rob Hacker (think: captain of the Yellow Submarine after a long night's raving) and sultry, pouting Anne Gilpin. They're having all manner of technical difficulties so it ends up being a pretty short set but well worth the effort.
It's pushing ten o'clock on Tuesday and I finally give in to the first taxi of the weekend. It's cold and raining and it's a long way from Peter Street to Grosvenor Street. The plan is to see the night out at the Deaf Institute with The Northwestern at 10 and Rogues at 11, but I arrive to find the line-up's been shifted. Rogues went on earlier, there's just The Northwestern to go and it's rather under-attended to say the least, although as the band come onstage a few more people appear - maybe they were hiding in the seats up the back or something...
The Northwestern are the latest incarnation of Sam Herlihy and Simon Jones, formerly of Hope Of The States, and MM was lucky enough to catch one of their first gigs under this name at the Roadhouse in June. They were good then, but three months down the line they've got a whole lot better. There are only four of them now but the sound's so much bigger: single "Telephones" is a case in point, a quite brilliant piece of power-indie with the grasp of song dynamics Sam perfected in his old band very much present and correct. As ever, he's on delightfully chatty form and it's always great to watch a band who clearly love playing life so much it shines out of every chord they play. They still remind me a lot of Ride, with their noisy fuzzed-up perfect pop melodies ("All The Ones" could be a harder, faster cousin of "Like A Daydream") and even Teenage Fanclub - and this is never a bad thing.
I decide to finish the night off at Space purely on the grounds that it's nearby (and near home) and it's still raining and I've done enough crosstown treks these past three days. I really miss FictionNonFiction right now, my traditional ITC curtain call. Still, Friends Of Mine (who've been running this venue over the three days) are only marginally less anarchic; 11pm comes and goes, there's a band in the stage area but they're not doing anything... Twenty past they start, which isn't bad for FOM (we love them really!)
Koko Von Napoo are absolutely, unmistakeably French. I don't know what it is about them exactly, they just are. There's a gloriously retro organ sound, cute and slightly yelpy girl vocals that are oddly reminiscent of Altered Images' Clare Grogan (yes, I know she wasn't French) and big fat echoes of synthy 80s pop - but the good sort, frothy but not insubstantial. They sound like they live in the sort of vibrant primary coloured world you see on kids' TV, eating sherberty sweets while listening to OMD and Stereolab but ignoring the miserable bits. It's basically indiepop done electronic style (with real bass or guitar - being the same bloke who plays both - and drums), twee with spikes, and lovely. Shame there's only about 15 people left by the end, but then out in the real world it is nearly midnight on a Tuesday.
Amazing what a difference 24 hours can make. Monday night I was feeling jaded with the whole thing, but six brilliant and very different bands later I'd be right up for doing it all again. Oh well, I'm sure 2010 will come round soon enough. There might be some sort of closing party going on at the Midland somewhere, but I neither know nor care. I'm not an industry professional. I don't think I want to be. I don't know how many live bands MM has covered this year: I think I managed 28, Jon probably a similar number, and we're still waiting to hear what Tristan got up to (last seen at Morton Valence, so we know he survived at least most of the three days) - I'll be willing to bet the only people who come close are the other people who do it for the same reasons we do: our good friends at Fugitive Motel seemed to mostly see completely different bands from us so go and check their reports out at
http://www.thefugitivemotel.org.uk/ in a couple of days when they've got them all online. The professionals were probably all back in their offices in London by the next afternoon, treating music as a commodity. Me I went straight out to see The Twilight Sad at Ruby Lounge, because for us here the music doesn't end when ITC does. I think I probably say this every year... I've now finished cutting and pasting the reviews from here onto the MM site proper, while Jon gets on with planning our tenth birthday celebrations for November. It ever stops... and we wouldn't have it any other way.